“Get your paws off!”
“I was just trying to help...”
“I’m blind, not invalid! I was blind for the better part of my teens!”
“Okay, okay. There’s no need to shout. I’m not deaf, you know.”
“Shit... Just tell me what we’re facing. I’ll ask for help if I need it.”
Logan huffed and proceeded to explain their surroundings to Scott, who in fact was doing surprisingly well. It couldn’t have been easy to walk through a foreign forest with your eyes closed.
“Wait, wait... Where are we going?” Scott asked, stopping dead on his tracks.
“Back home. I’m going to drop you off and go and get those tools Marie told us earlier.”
“That’s what I thought. And it’s not going to happen. You’re not going in there alone, Logan. We agreed on this...”
“We agreed to move only as a team when you weren’t blind as a bat and as useless as balls of the Pope.”
“Fuck you, beast-boy. I can still put you down with little effort. All I have to do is to blink.”
“Well, if you put it that way...” Logan said, then lunged towards Scott who avoided his sudden attack and countered it by knocking him down and falling on top of him, their faces only inches apart. And there it was again, that horrendous, pulsating light, swirling underneath his eyelids, small tendrils of it leaking through the slits until it looked like Scott was crying blood.
“Like I said, I’m blind, not invalid. And as fun as this has been, don’t you think we should get going before the girls start to worry?” Scott whispered, his face so close that Logan could actually feel his lips whispering over his. It clashed with him on an instinctual level, low rumble rising from deep inside of him. Scott was deliberately taunting him, trying to appear as the dominant member of their miniscule scouting party. With mighty effort Logan managed to tamp down his basic urge to skewer Scott.
“Back the fuck off, Summers. Up there on the sky you were the one calling the shots. Down here... You’re on my territory. I have forgotten more about survival than you will ever learn. So get the fuck away from me before I forget that we’re on a same team!” He managed to growl, then grabbed the other man and pushed with all he got forcing Scott to move, and rolled back on his feet. And all of a sudden Scott started to laugh.
For a long while Summers just rolled on the ground, laughing and gasping for breath. It was contagious. Soon Logan was laughing as well. He grasped Scott’s arm and helped him to stand up.
“Why the hell are we laughing, anyway?” He managed to ask.
“It just occurred to me... Back home everybody used to say that you were a loose cannon... What would they say about us now?” Scott giggled. There was no sign of his earlier, rather threatening attitude. It was as if nothing had happened. Again they were just two buddies, trekking through this fucking forest to get some parts to that fucking lumber mill. And truth to be told, it scared the shit out of Logan. He knew something about stress. He knew something about extended periods of stress and what it did to a person. He knew that from the first-hand experience. Scott was broadcasting all the classic signs of a proper, nuclear-meltdown-brainfart loud and clear on all the channels, and there was nothing anyone in their small group could do but to duck and cover when it happened.
Earlier Logan hadn’t really thought about it, but now, as they approached the village it struck him like a ton of bricks.
“Scott?”
“Yeah?”
“Does it strike as odd to you that this whole fucking place just sat here, completely deserted?”
“Huh?”
“Just think about it. Think of all the cities we have seen this far. They were filled with corpses and sick people.”
“So?”
“This place is empty.”
“Oh...”
“Yeah. Isn’t that a bit strange?”
“I don’t know. Population wasn’t so big to begin with; maybe they all just left before all this?” Scott proposed, stumbled slightly but regained his balance before he fell.
“You know as well as I do how stupid that sounds. People don’t do that. They don’t just decide to leave. Besides, all the cars, motorcycles, hell, even bicycles are still here. If you have a car and you’re planning to take a hike, wouldn’t you drive rather than walk?”
“We can talk about it when we get back home. I might have a theory about what’s happened in here,” Scott muttered.
“In the mean time I’d appreciate if you kept your mouth shut. I can’t hear where I’m going if you keep talking.”
“So, you’re a bat now?”
“No. But if there’s twigs rustling at my feet I know that I’m not on the path anymore. So shut up already!”
“...Or we could take the more traditional approach. You’d grab my elbow. I’d be your eyes and we could talk about this theory of yours,” Logan proposed.
“Fine. Just don’t coddle me! I can do this on my own, you know...” Scott grumbled.
“Sure you can. Just don’t step on that ditch over there; broken bones are something we can’t afford right now.”
“What ditch?”
“See what I mean?”
“No. I’m blind.”
“Now you’re getting the hang of it. I have eyes, you got brains. We both better start using what we got...”
“Poor jokes aside, this sucks. If something really happens, if we get attacked... I’m useless,” Scott huffed.
“What do you mean?” Logan asked.
“I can’t risk an unregulated blast. At best I’ll blow the attackers to bits and pieces, at worst I burn out my eyes.”
“Yeah. I can see why that sucks ass. Are you sure that there’s no spare visor tucked in to somewhere in the Blackbird?” Logan asked. Scott shook his head.
“Not that I know of. I had spares when we left the mansion, but that was well over year ago. Visors are surprisingly fragile. I cracked one pair because of the turbulence...”
“Huh?”
“I hit my head when the jet swayed. Then there was that one time when those guys tried to swipe the Blackbird...”
“Oh, yeah. I remember that. One of them had a baseball bat, right?”
“Right...”
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