Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please: Artie (12/29)
Title: Ladies And Gentlemen, Listen Up Please: Artie (12/29)
Pairing: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, minor Artie Abrams/Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: “Sometimes, people are born a little different.”
The chair mocks him regularly.
He’s sort of getting used to the idea of it-it’s been seven years since the accident, seven years since a handful of mournful-eyed doctors told him he would never again feel a single sensation from the waist down. He thinks it would be pretty lame not to be used to it on some level, after all this time. But no matter how accustomed he grows to the notion of spending his whole life on his ass, there is just something about that damn chair.
It’s nice, he guesses. A solidly built model. It’s prepped for a decent level of speed-and, yeah, okay, it’s not exactly a moped, but it moves faster than his little cousin’s tricycle. And there’s a sense of agility to its slender frame, to the wheels with their thick, strong tubing. He thinks it’s the kind of chair a kid should enjoy, if that kid is under the bizarre delusion that having a wheelchair in the first place could ever been enjoyable.
It’s nice, as chairs go, but at fifteen years old, Artie Abrams can’t get over the fact that the thing seems to hate his guts.
He glares at it from his place on the bed, folded in his ungainly fashion atop midnight blue blankets. It gleams back, haughty and uninterested in his aggravation, pressed close to the mattress.
He glares. It waits. This is a natural morning occurrence.
Half the battle is getting dressed, an activity Artie is pleased to report he has long-since mastered. It was kind of the VIP element on his to-do list, back when this all happened; no eight-year-old boy wants to admit his mother dresses him daily. The only other choice was to leap ahead of that particular curve, figuring out how to shimmy the dead slabs of beef he calls legs into clean underwear and pants without performing the spectacular leap around the room he once enjoyed so thoroughly. It, admittedly, took an embarrassingly long time to perfect; more than once, he wound up facedown on the carpet, eye blackened from the dastardly edge of his nightstand.
More than once, his mother found him curled there, sucking in Febreeze fumes and crying soundlessly into the fibers.
More than once, Artie felt like his whole life was over. Eight years old, and he could not put on a pair of pants without calamity. It seemed sickeningly hopeless.
By now, of course, he has gotten past that roadblock. At this very moment, he is sitting pretty in neatly pressed khaki shorts, his favorite piano-key belt, and bright blue suspenders. He feels good about the look today.
This part, the getting up and into the chair-this part is harder.
His parents offer to help each night; one or both always find a reason to stand patiently in his doorway, chewing their lips and casually mentioning the morning. Hoisting himself from the chair and into his bed is a slightly less aggrandized task, so Artie is usually mid-roll onto the sheets when he shoots them his patented stubborn scowl. He is fifteen years old. Too old to be defeated by a hunk of metal and leather.
They offer to help, but if there is one factor of his father’s personality Artie has inherited (aside from a fascination with model airplanes and an extreme distaste for mayonnaise-based products), it is the resolve to do things for himself at all costs.
Which leaves him here.
Glaring.
The chair waits, the way it always does, parking brake firmly in place. He has learned a couple of tricks like that over the years, at least. It isn’t hard to pick up such quirks after the hitting the ground a fourth consecutive time, the chair three feet back from where it started. He’s learned that, for how difficult it can be to migrate his still-sleepy body from bed to chair, it is ten times more irritating to make the switch from the floor. He’s also learned that busting one’s forehead on the footrest of one’s own wheelchair tends to make one feel incredibly inadequate.
He’s really become a pro at picking up the little things.
It shouldn’t be this hard, he thinks, gripping the sheets in tense fingers. It should be a matter of sliding off of one surface and onto the next. It should be a singular fluid motion. For some reason, though, his body just does not do well with grace before noon-or, it has been argued by some of the less classy jocks at school, ever. He regrets how many of them have seen him ram into doorways or poorly-placed tables. He regrets giving them yet more ammunition against him. Between the glasses and his love of all things RPG, he’s fully aware of what he looked like to them even before the accident.
His body has never worn grace particularly well, and now, well…
The chair is angled next to his bed, particularly placed. Not too adjacent, lest he get caught up on the armrest, nor too head-on, since he can’t very well heave himself backwards off the bed and hope for the best (when he was ten, he spent the better part of a year beginning days this way; succinctly put, it sucked). It has to be perfect. The brake has to be locked tightly. And Artie has to hope to God today is one of the good ones.
His arms tremble as he prepares to lift himself. For a moment, as happens each morning, he seriously considers calling for his father.
He never goes through with that particular bout of weakness. This morning, like every other, he pants and sweats, and eventually manages to worm his way into the chair. It rocks a little, as if it’s debating tipping backwards and sending him sprawling miserably into the dresser (it wouldn’t be the first time), but ultimately stays put. Artie allows himself a satisfied smile.
Getting out of the room is always a chore (he’s a teenage boy, and has never been terribly prone to cleanliness, so he’s more or less doomed to swerve on an endless cycle around discarded sneakers and comic books), but once he manages it-running over only one Playstation controller in the process-he is free and clear.
His mother is in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a recipe three inches from her nose. She is in desperate need of glasses, he knows, but due to the most debilitating case of vanity he has ever heard of, she has always refused to so much as make an appointment with an optometrist. It’s funny, in its own sad way.
As he watches, she turns towards the stove, absently flicking a hand in the direction of a saucepan. It obediently rises, revolving slowly in mid-air, awaiting her next instruction. Artie sighs.
“Oh, good morning,” she greets him, just surprised enough at his stealthier-than-usual entrance to drop the pan half an inch. He waves with two fingers, rolling closer.
“Cake?” he asks hopefully, eyeing the ingredients peppering the countertop. “Carrot, maybe?”
“Toffee brownies,” she corrects, plunking the paper down on the counter and reaching for an egg. “Don’t make that face. You love my baking.”
“I love cake,” he mumbles stubbornly, grinning when, without looking up, she gives his chair a playful push with one foot. He rolls carefully backwards, out of reach.
“What are your plans today, my ungrateful cake-worshipping son?” his mother asks, glancing over her shoulder with a fond smile. He shrugs, adjusting his glasses.
“I dunno. Was thinking about the library.”
“Again?” Her eyebrows lift as high as the telekinetically-controlled saucepan. He feels a burst of envy, a sensation almost as familiar as the sense of longing that strikes him upon waking each morning, and almost misses it when she adds, “Sweetie, that’s the third time this week. Aren’t you going to spend any of your summer vacation outside?”
He quashes the bitter instinct to ask what the point of that would be; it’s not like the other guys in the neighborhood are clamoring for him to join their baseball teams or something. It’s a hearty battle, keeping from falling over the edge of depression, but her eyes are concerned, and he’s tired of making her look so sad.
“I will,” he promises half-heartedly. “It’s only July, Mom. There’s plenty of time.”
From the way she squints at him, he can tell she doesn’t quite trust his attempt at a pacifying statement, which is fine. He doesn’t need her approval, nor her judgment. Honestly, she should know better by now; she’s been watching with a ferocious intimacy for all these years. She has to be aware of the uselessness of such a hope, that her little boy might someday go back to being just like everybody else.
Not that he ever really has been one of the crowd. He is the son of a telekinetic and a man prone to stopping time in its tracks with a flick of his wrist-not exactly the kind of Mom ‘n Pop simplicity found in 50s sitcoms.
Artie himself is gifted with a power too-with his genetics, it would be unheard of not to. He isn’t so sure it really qualifies as a “gift”, however; it’s not like he can really do anything. Making copies of oneself is all well and good if one is in possession of a fully-functioning body. Artie, on the other hand, can only fit so many bulky wheelchairs in one room.
He’s gotten pretty good at feeling sorry for himself and his shitty luck with super-powers. Few people could come from such a powerful melding of bloodlines and wind up with an ability that is not only decidedly unactive, but also downright useless, given the circumstances. He hates it-almost as much as his father hates the stroke of luck that kept him at work the day of the accident, when Mr. Abrams could have (would have, should have) frozen time before his son’s spinal cord could be so irreversibly damaged.
Okay, so, that kind of proves a point; even the most handy abilities can fail in one way or another. Somehow, it doesn’t make Artie feel any better about the situation.
He shakes his head, doing his best to dislodge the thoughts before they can really take over and ruin his entire day. It may not top his mother’s list of Fun In The Sun, but Artie does manage to find pleasure in a few things these days, and he is determined to make the most of what he’s got. Books happen to be fool-proof; even if he starts off saddled with something crappy, he can hurl it across the room with a satisfying thump (the singular blessing of being paralyzed: people usually feel too pitying to react when he pulls some petty, immature move that would get most kids his age kicked to the curb) and locate a new one.
The library, as an added bonus, is a ten-minute walk from his house. Thanks to the chair (the irony pulls from him a derisive snort, which in turn guides his mother’s confused gaze back once more), he can cut down the trip to seven on a good day. Straight shots with no doorways leave him feeling marginally less clumsy than usual.
There’s something to be said about the whole “rolling free with the wind in his hair” thing, but Artie isn’t big on waxing poetic about things like this. His chair has its moments of convenience. It’s enough to keep him from setting it on fire in particularly bleak hours, and for him, that is enough.
He peels out through the front door, his backpack settled carefully upon his lap as he takes the ramp just a little faster than is necessary. Behind him, his mother fires a barely-audible warning to “be careful and have fun”, which he mostly intends to heed on principle. Hell, it isn’t like he’s got anything better to do.
The head librarian, Mrs. Harper, greets him with a nod and a beaming smile. Since he’s taken up near-permanent residence in the stacks, she has apparently decided he serves as a suitable grandson figure. He doesn’t mind; she’s a sweet lady, and she doesn’t get angry when he accidentally rams into shelves and comes dangerously close to starting avalanches of knowledge.
Even when it happens twice a week.
Sometimes, he stops and chats for a few minutes before seeking solitude, but today just doesn’t strike him as one made for hospitality. He feels, in all honesty, like utter crap, despite having gotten into his chair without an endless supply of hassle and knowing a plate of fresh brownies will be waiting on the table when he finally steers himself back home. Sometimes, things like that are enough, but usually, they serve only as reminders of the kid he used to be.
Happy.
Prone to frolicking.
In possession of full faith in the safety of automobiles.
He’d like to think he’s grown, but really, he’s not sure he could go any further backwards if he tried.
Hands gripping his wheels like they’re the last life preservers on a rapidly sinking ship, Artie pulls himself towards his favorite corner, stopping here and there along the way to pull books at random from their shelves. Dean Koontz. Moby Dick.White Oleander. An unauthorized Steven Spielberg biography.
The books feel good in his hands. Heavy. Promising. It almost doesn’t matter whether or not he digests a page or a full story; the weight, the blessing of text scrawled carefully upon each cream sheaf, comforts him.
He reaches the window without doing much damage to his fellow patrons of literature (the seven-year-old girl with the ugly ginger pigtails deserved to get her toes smushed, he tells himself uneasily, if only for the sneer she shot him as he passed). Settling in, he flips open the first cover and simply sits for a moment, relishing the mindless acceptance a new book always offers.
Books do not glare at you for your clumsiness.
Books have no need for carefully disguised disappointment when your long-awaited power proves itself as pathetic as the rest of you.
Books never, ever pity you.
It may be a giant festering cliché, considering these hardbound lovelies to be his best friends, but at least he hasn’t yet upgraded to one-sided conversations and spine stroking.
Although, considering his steady downward spiral these past few years, such social degradation wouldn’t come as an explicit shock.
“Are you okay?” a voice-a girl, he registers, momentarily stunned-asks softly. Well, of course she’s being soft about it; they’re in a library. Though she has no way (he assumes) of hearing his thoughts, he gives himself a mental forehead smack in penance.
“Hello?” she says, waving one black-gloved hand in front of his eyes. If he possessed the capability for motion, Artie would jump at her proximity; as it is, he shrinks down a little in the safe confines of his chair.
“Hi,” he replies dumbly, half from the astonishment of being spoken to and half because this girl is beautiful. Genuinely, amazingly beautiful, and not in that obnoxious cookie-cutter way he’s so used to. All fishnets and chain-laden boy’s pants, with dark eyeliner and purple streaks in her pitch-black hair, this girl looks…
Well. Like she could kick his ass six ways past Sunday.
Artie wonders what it says about him that the idea is less scary and more thrilling.
“I asked if you were okay,” she says, sounding amused. He flushes bright pink, warming to the tips of his ears, and nods unsteadily.
“I’m good. I’m fine. How are you?”
He curses himself, but she smiles kind of shyly and ducks her head. “Just fine, thanks. What are you doing sitting alone?”
It’s not a complicated question, and it certainly doesn’t merit the most overbearing of responses. All he has to say is-
“I like the quiet.” It comes off wry, plastic-coated. He cringes, pushing a finger against the bridge of his glasses. An old nervous habit stolen from a grandfather he barely remembers. The beauty before him nods.
“I hear libraries are good for that.”
He laughs. Maybe he shouldn’t-maybe it wasn’t intended to be funny-but it’s not something he does very often, so he’s left pretty unpracticed in restraining the act. The sound of it reverberates inside his ears, startling him; his face heats further.
“I’m Artie,” he says, because his mother drilled manners into him almost before he could form sentences. He thrusts a hand into her personal bubble, soothed when she takes it sturdily. He likes girls who shake hands like normal people, forgoing the obnoxious delicacy of Victorian duchesses.
“Tina,” she replies, showing off perfect white teeth. “Nice to meet you, Artie.”
He rubs the back of his neck, the skin of his concealed palm tingling pleasantly, though they were glove to glove. “Tina,” he repeats, liking the way his tongue flicks against the roof of his mouth as he says it. “Why haven’t I seen you around, Tina? Do you go to Westbrook?”
She giggles, and this time he knows it wasn’t meant to be funny, but he grins anyway. He can’t remember the last time he made a pretty girl laugh.
“No,” she says at last. “I’m not exactly from around here.”
“Where are you from, then?” he presses, rolling an inch closer to her chair. She crosses her ankles, shrugging.
“Here, there.”
“Army brat?” he guesses, scratching his head. Her smile goes a little rigid, a little strained. His heart sinks. “Or not.”
“Not,” she confirms. Her fingers lace together atop one bent knee, the gesture of restrained anxiety. She wears it well, but not so perfectly that he can’t tell she’s nervous. It’s endearing.
“So you’re, what?” he presses, desperate to keep the conversation alive. “Visiting family? Friends? A little-known, yet beloved landmark?”
It’s been a while since he’s had friends, since he’s tried to entertain another soul for any reason other than feigning the enigma that is being “all right.” He isn’t good at it, this social thing, and he generally is willing to accept that as the inevitable scope of his own reality.
Today, though, feels different. Suddenly, he wants the exact opposite of the usual-and he wants it with her. This strange, ethereal girl. Tina.
Ten minutes ago, he would have given the world to clear this building of human beings, and now, he thinks he’ll die without this basic, normal contact. Maybe he should talk to his parents, see if “contradictory behavior” can qualify as a legitimate superpower.
“I’m looking for someone,” she says, biting her lip and glancing at the shelf behind his head. He wonders if she means this as a cryptic kind of code; is she looking in the books? Does Hemingway hold the key to life’s problems? Or Gaiman? Or Bradbury?
Or maybe there’s something he doesn’t know about this library, like a secret tunnel that can be triggered by tugging on a particularly disheveled copy of The Great Gatsby. Stranger things have happened. He lives in a world where his parents are the most boring, crime-avoidant superheroes on earth, after all.
“Maybe I can help you find…” He hesitates, squinting. “I’m sorry, you’ve really lost me. What’s the punch line to this one?”
Her eyes snap back to his, tiny serious darts pricking straight through to a soul he doesn’t think much about owning. His heart thuds mercilessly in response.
“This is going to sound kind of crazy,” she says slowly, and already he’s nodding with an uncomfortable brand of eagerness. Whatever she has to say, whatever madness is about to spout from those lovely pink lips, he’s totally cool with it. Totally behind it. She’s mega-freaky hot. She can’t possibly say anything that will throw him more than the fact that she’s talking to him in the first place.
“I came here looking for you.”
Okay. That kind of does it.
“What do you mean, you’re looking for me?” he asks through a stupidly-nervous laugh. “You’ve found me. Here I am. World’s shortest game of hide-and-seek.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, smiling at the very edges of her mouth. Her eyes remain solemn, her cheeks tinged with embarrassment. Artie frowns.
“So?”
“So,” she repeats, shrugging. He’s two seconds away from poking her before he realizes, hey-might be better to get to know the chick before physically assaulting her in any way, shape, or form. He settles for drumming his fingertips restlessly against his knee, distracted for the first time in ages from wishing like hell he could feel the sensation.
“So,” he emphasizes. “Why were you looking for me?”
There are a million responses the question could garner, and Artie is just imaginative to expect them all. Maybe she’s a bounty hunter. Maybe an undercover journalist doing a piece on teenage cripples. Maybe she’s the long-lost sister born of his father’s secret tryst with a Korean concubine, and ew, he really hopes this isn’t the case for a grand array of reasons.
“Artie…” She chews her lip for a minute, tongue darting out when she bites a little too hard. He watches, too mesmerized to care that she looks like she’s about to take a long walk off a short pier.
“Tina,” he replies. She gives that almost-smile again, sort of sadly.
“We need your help.”
Okay, it’s not exactly what he was waiting for, but he thinks that’s got something major to do with the lack of explanation. He settles for blinking at her from behind his glasses, eyebrows arched quizzically.
“Okay,” he says slowly. “For what? Summer school homework need doing? I warn you, I charge a neat little fee.”
Her head briskly wavers from side to side, hair curtaining her flushed face. “No, silly,” she replies, and he thinks for the first time in fifteen years, he actually kind of likes being called silly. “For…oh God, I told Rachel this was going to sound too stupid for words.”
“Tell me,” he presses, pulling himself a hair closer. She frowns.
“Promise not to laugh.”
He raises two fingers in what he believes to be the universal ‘scout’s honor’. Tina lowers her head and breathes deeply.
“I want you-we want you, that is, my friends and I…well, I mean, they’re kind of my friends, but sort of n-not, because we mostly hang out from, y’know, worldly necessity and-“
“Slow down,” he instructs gently. She sighs.
“My friend Kurt had a vision. You’re supposed to come with us and use your power to help us save the world from this…guy. Some big bad worthy of, like, I dunno, Star Wars supervillain status. We don’t know when, and we don’t know how, but Kurt keeps getting the visions, and we keep trekking to whatever corner of the country he aims us. We collect who the pictures in his head say we need. And…I dunno. You’re the latest.”
She makes him sound like a trading card. He wonders why this doesn’t insult him in the least.
“You’re smiling,” she observes suspiciously, narrowing her gaze and picking at a fingernail. “Why are you smiling?”
He’s smiling because it’s funny-no, damn near hilarious. He gives the chair an exaggerated thump.
“Maybe it’s escaped your attention,” he says, a bit too snarkily by the way she recoils, “but I’m not really riding in the world-saving boat these days. There isn’t much you can do with…this.”
Her eyes flick to the wheels beneath his palms and back to his face again. “I don’t get it.”
He sighs. “I can’t come with you. I can’t help you. I’m…look at me, I’m useless.”
She’s beautiful when she frowns. “You’re not useless. You’ve got-“
“A completely inactive power,” he interrupts. “Or, well, inactive for me, anyway. What’s the point of making copies of yourself in a chair? I’m a sitting duck no matter how you spin the wheel.”
To his surprise, her almost-smile returns again, this time looking suspiciously like an actual smile. “Is that all?” she asks, sounding strangely affectionate. His mouth sags open.
“Is that all? Tina, look at me. I’m a hunk of flesh. I can’t move, I can’t run, I definitely can’t fight-“
“Can you think?” she asks smoothly. Flustered, he shrugs.
“Well, yes, but-“
“Can you throw?”
“Yeah, I guess, but I don’t see-“
“Can you find it in yourself to care about the well-being of others?” she asks, her voice soft and gentle. “Are you interested in the preservation of life and security above self-pity?”
That one stings. Soundlessly, he nods. Her hand drifts between them and settles upon one of his, her skin delicate and perfect.
“Artie, Kurt’s visions happen for a reason. Always. I’m not asking you to believe in that just yet-I know it’s a lot-but I am asking you to trust me. We need you. We want you. And as for the wheelchair thing…ever heard of the X-Men?”
Oh, now she’s just teasing him. He squints, smirking despite himself.
“You really pulled the Professor X card?”
“I really did,” she replies, mock-solemn.
It’s crazy, he thinks, in the most alluring way humanly possible. He’s spent the summer-hell, the last few years-feeling completely useless, completely vulnerable to the world around him. And now here is the most gorgeous human he has ever laid eyes upon, asking for his help? It’s crazy, and it’s more than implausible, and honestly, he’s waiting for Ashton Kutcher’s stupid face to come leering at him from around a bookshelf at any moment.
But.
If she’s telling the truth, if this is not some over-elaborate prank to get him to look even more like a moron than usual…he can’t deny the appeal. Leaving the well-meaning bear trap that is his home, leaving behind the scathing glares at school and the pitying smiles at the dinner table, leaving the knowledge that he will never, ever be on the same page as his perfect parents again…
Replacing that knowledge with actual optimism, with the hope that he might be able to genuinely do some good in the world, even if the idea makes less than zero sense to him right now…
“If I say yes,” he says hesitantly, “what happens then?”
Tina shrugs. “We get the hell out of dodge. We look for the next kid. We prepare.”
It’s stupid. It’s stupid, and crazy, and his mom will be so pissed when he’s not home for dinner.
But for the first time since he was eight years old, Artie Abrams can see a chance to be somebody. Somebody more than just a lump in a chair.
Moving the books from his lap to the nearest shelf, he straightens up and looks her in the eye.
“Let’s go.”
Pairing: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany Pierce, minor Artie Abrams/Tina Cohen-Chang
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: AU
Summary: “Sometimes, people are born a little different.”
The chair mocks him regularly.
He’s sort of getting used to the idea of it-it’s been seven years since the accident, seven years since a handful of mournful-eyed doctors told him he would never again feel a single sensation from the waist down. He thinks it would be pretty lame not to be used to it on some level, after all this time. But no matter how accustomed he grows to the notion of spending his whole life on his ass, there is just something about that damn chair.
It’s nice, he guesses. A solidly built model. It’s prepped for a decent level of speed-and, yeah, okay, it’s not exactly a moped, but it moves faster than his little cousin’s tricycle. And there’s a sense of agility to its slender frame, to the wheels with their thick, strong tubing. He thinks it’s the kind of chair a kid should enjoy, if that kid is under the bizarre delusion that having a wheelchair in the first place could ever been enjoyable.
It’s nice, as chairs go, but at fifteen years old, Artie Abrams can’t get over the fact that the thing seems to hate his guts.
He glares at it from his place on the bed, folded in his ungainly fashion atop midnight blue blankets. It gleams back, haughty and uninterested in his aggravation, pressed close to the mattress.
He glares. It waits. This is a natural morning occurrence.
Half the battle is getting dressed, an activity Artie is pleased to report he has long-since mastered. It was kind of the VIP element on his to-do list, back when this all happened; no eight-year-old boy wants to admit his mother dresses him daily. The only other choice was to leap ahead of that particular curve, figuring out how to shimmy the dead slabs of beef he calls legs into clean underwear and pants without performing the spectacular leap around the room he once enjoyed so thoroughly. It, admittedly, took an embarrassingly long time to perfect; more than once, he wound up facedown on the carpet, eye blackened from the dastardly edge of his nightstand.
More than once, his mother found him curled there, sucking in Febreeze fumes and crying soundlessly into the fibers.
More than once, Artie felt like his whole life was over. Eight years old, and he could not put on a pair of pants without calamity. It seemed sickeningly hopeless.
By now, of course, he has gotten past that roadblock. At this very moment, he is sitting pretty in neatly pressed khaki shorts, his favorite piano-key belt, and bright blue suspenders. He feels good about the look today.
This part, the getting up and into the chair-this part is harder.
His parents offer to help each night; one or both always find a reason to stand patiently in his doorway, chewing their lips and casually mentioning the morning. Hoisting himself from the chair and into his bed is a slightly less aggrandized task, so Artie is usually mid-roll onto the sheets when he shoots them his patented stubborn scowl. He is fifteen years old. Too old to be defeated by a hunk of metal and leather.
They offer to help, but if there is one factor of his father’s personality Artie has inherited (aside from a fascination with model airplanes and an extreme distaste for mayonnaise-based products), it is the resolve to do things for himself at all costs.
Which leaves him here.
Glaring.
The chair waits, the way it always does, parking brake firmly in place. He has learned a couple of tricks like that over the years, at least. It isn’t hard to pick up such quirks after the hitting the ground a fourth consecutive time, the chair three feet back from where it started. He’s learned that, for how difficult it can be to migrate his still-sleepy body from bed to chair, it is ten times more irritating to make the switch from the floor. He’s also learned that busting one’s forehead on the footrest of one’s own wheelchair tends to make one feel incredibly inadequate.
He’s really become a pro at picking up the little things.
It shouldn’t be this hard, he thinks, gripping the sheets in tense fingers. It should be a matter of sliding off of one surface and onto the next. It should be a singular fluid motion. For some reason, though, his body just does not do well with grace before noon-or, it has been argued by some of the less classy jocks at school, ever. He regrets how many of them have seen him ram into doorways or poorly-placed tables. He regrets giving them yet more ammunition against him. Between the glasses and his love of all things RPG, he’s fully aware of what he looked like to them even before the accident.
His body has never worn grace particularly well, and now, well…
The chair is angled next to his bed, particularly placed. Not too adjacent, lest he get caught up on the armrest, nor too head-on, since he can’t very well heave himself backwards off the bed and hope for the best (when he was ten, he spent the better part of a year beginning days this way; succinctly put, it sucked). It has to be perfect. The brake has to be locked tightly. And Artie has to hope to God today is one of the good ones.
His arms tremble as he prepares to lift himself. For a moment, as happens each morning, he seriously considers calling for his father.
He never goes through with that particular bout of weakness. This morning, like every other, he pants and sweats, and eventually manages to worm his way into the chair. It rocks a little, as if it’s debating tipping backwards and sending him sprawling miserably into the dresser (it wouldn’t be the first time), but ultimately stays put. Artie allows himself a satisfied smile.
Getting out of the room is always a chore (he’s a teenage boy, and has never been terribly prone to cleanliness, so he’s more or less doomed to swerve on an endless cycle around discarded sneakers and comic books), but once he manages it-running over only one Playstation controller in the process-he is free and clear.
His mother is in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a recipe three inches from her nose. She is in desperate need of glasses, he knows, but due to the most debilitating case of vanity he has ever heard of, she has always refused to so much as make an appointment with an optometrist. It’s funny, in its own sad way.
As he watches, she turns towards the stove, absently flicking a hand in the direction of a saucepan. It obediently rises, revolving slowly in mid-air, awaiting her next instruction. Artie sighs.
“Oh, good morning,” she greets him, just surprised enough at his stealthier-than-usual entrance to drop the pan half an inch. He waves with two fingers, rolling closer.
“Cake?” he asks hopefully, eyeing the ingredients peppering the countertop. “Carrot, maybe?”
“Toffee brownies,” she corrects, plunking the paper down on the counter and reaching for an egg. “Don’t make that face. You love my baking.”
“I love cake,” he mumbles stubbornly, grinning when, without looking up, she gives his chair a playful push with one foot. He rolls carefully backwards, out of reach.
“What are your plans today, my ungrateful cake-worshipping son?” his mother asks, glancing over her shoulder with a fond smile. He shrugs, adjusting his glasses.
“I dunno. Was thinking about the library.”
“Again?” Her eyebrows lift as high as the telekinetically-controlled saucepan. He feels a burst of envy, a sensation almost as familiar as the sense of longing that strikes him upon waking each morning, and almost misses it when she adds, “Sweetie, that’s the third time this week. Aren’t you going to spend any of your summer vacation outside?”
He quashes the bitter instinct to ask what the point of that would be; it’s not like the other guys in the neighborhood are clamoring for him to join their baseball teams or something. It’s a hearty battle, keeping from falling over the edge of depression, but her eyes are concerned, and he’s tired of making her look so sad.
“I will,” he promises half-heartedly. “It’s only July, Mom. There’s plenty of time.”
From the way she squints at him, he can tell she doesn’t quite trust his attempt at a pacifying statement, which is fine. He doesn’t need her approval, nor her judgment. Honestly, she should know better by now; she’s been watching with a ferocious intimacy for all these years. She has to be aware of the uselessness of such a hope, that her little boy might someday go back to being just like everybody else.
Not that he ever really has been one of the crowd. He is the son of a telekinetic and a man prone to stopping time in its tracks with a flick of his wrist-not exactly the kind of Mom ‘n Pop simplicity found in 50s sitcoms.
Artie himself is gifted with a power too-with his genetics, it would be unheard of not to. He isn’t so sure it really qualifies as a “gift”, however; it’s not like he can really do anything. Making copies of oneself is all well and good if one is in possession of a fully-functioning body. Artie, on the other hand, can only fit so many bulky wheelchairs in one room.
He’s gotten pretty good at feeling sorry for himself and his shitty luck with super-powers. Few people could come from such a powerful melding of bloodlines and wind up with an ability that is not only decidedly unactive, but also downright useless, given the circumstances. He hates it-almost as much as his father hates the stroke of luck that kept him at work the day of the accident, when Mr. Abrams could have (would have, should have) frozen time before his son’s spinal cord could be so irreversibly damaged.
Okay, so, that kind of proves a point; even the most handy abilities can fail in one way or another. Somehow, it doesn’t make Artie feel any better about the situation.
He shakes his head, doing his best to dislodge the thoughts before they can really take over and ruin his entire day. It may not top his mother’s list of Fun In The Sun, but Artie does manage to find pleasure in a few things these days, and he is determined to make the most of what he’s got. Books happen to be fool-proof; even if he starts off saddled with something crappy, he can hurl it across the room with a satisfying thump (the singular blessing of being paralyzed: people usually feel too pitying to react when he pulls some petty, immature move that would get most kids his age kicked to the curb) and locate a new one.
The library, as an added bonus, is a ten-minute walk from his house. Thanks to the chair (the irony pulls from him a derisive snort, which in turn guides his mother’s confused gaze back once more), he can cut down the trip to seven on a good day. Straight shots with no doorways leave him feeling marginally less clumsy than usual.
There’s something to be said about the whole “rolling free with the wind in his hair” thing, but Artie isn’t big on waxing poetic about things like this. His chair has its moments of convenience. It’s enough to keep him from setting it on fire in particularly bleak hours, and for him, that is enough.
He peels out through the front door, his backpack settled carefully upon his lap as he takes the ramp just a little faster than is necessary. Behind him, his mother fires a barely-audible warning to “be careful and have fun”, which he mostly intends to heed on principle. Hell, it isn’t like he’s got anything better to do.
The head librarian, Mrs. Harper, greets him with a nod and a beaming smile. Since he’s taken up near-permanent residence in the stacks, she has apparently decided he serves as a suitable grandson figure. He doesn’t mind; she’s a sweet lady, and she doesn’t get angry when he accidentally rams into shelves and comes dangerously close to starting avalanches of knowledge.
Even when it happens twice a week.
Sometimes, he stops and chats for a few minutes before seeking solitude, but today just doesn’t strike him as one made for hospitality. He feels, in all honesty, like utter crap, despite having gotten into his chair without an endless supply of hassle and knowing a plate of fresh brownies will be waiting on the table when he finally steers himself back home. Sometimes, things like that are enough, but usually, they serve only as reminders of the kid he used to be.
Happy.
Prone to frolicking.
In possession of full faith in the safety of automobiles.
He’d like to think he’s grown, but really, he’s not sure he could go any further backwards if he tried.
Hands gripping his wheels like they’re the last life preservers on a rapidly sinking ship, Artie pulls himself towards his favorite corner, stopping here and there along the way to pull books at random from their shelves. Dean Koontz. Moby Dick.White Oleander. An unauthorized Steven Spielberg biography.
The books feel good in his hands. Heavy. Promising. It almost doesn’t matter whether or not he digests a page or a full story; the weight, the blessing of text scrawled carefully upon each cream sheaf, comforts him.
He reaches the window without doing much damage to his fellow patrons of literature (the seven-year-old girl with the ugly ginger pigtails deserved to get her toes smushed, he tells himself uneasily, if only for the sneer she shot him as he passed). Settling in, he flips open the first cover and simply sits for a moment, relishing the mindless acceptance a new book always offers.
Books do not glare at you for your clumsiness.
Books have no need for carefully disguised disappointment when your long-awaited power proves itself as pathetic as the rest of you.
Books never, ever pity you.
It may be a giant festering cliché, considering these hardbound lovelies to be his best friends, but at least he hasn’t yet upgraded to one-sided conversations and spine stroking.
Although, considering his steady downward spiral these past few years, such social degradation wouldn’t come as an explicit shock.
“Are you okay?” a voice-a girl, he registers, momentarily stunned-asks softly. Well, of course she’s being soft about it; they’re in a library. Though she has no way (he assumes) of hearing his thoughts, he gives himself a mental forehead smack in penance.
“Hello?” she says, waving one black-gloved hand in front of his eyes. If he possessed the capability for motion, Artie would jump at her proximity; as it is, he shrinks down a little in the safe confines of his chair.
“Hi,” he replies dumbly, half from the astonishment of being spoken to and half because this girl is beautiful. Genuinely, amazingly beautiful, and not in that obnoxious cookie-cutter way he’s so used to. All fishnets and chain-laden boy’s pants, with dark eyeliner and purple streaks in her pitch-black hair, this girl looks…
Well. Like she could kick his ass six ways past Sunday.
Artie wonders what it says about him that the idea is less scary and more thrilling.
“I asked if you were okay,” she says, sounding amused. He flushes bright pink, warming to the tips of his ears, and nods unsteadily.
“I’m good. I’m fine. How are you?”
He curses himself, but she smiles kind of shyly and ducks her head. “Just fine, thanks. What are you doing sitting alone?”
It’s not a complicated question, and it certainly doesn’t merit the most overbearing of responses. All he has to say is-
“I like the quiet.” It comes off wry, plastic-coated. He cringes, pushing a finger against the bridge of his glasses. An old nervous habit stolen from a grandfather he barely remembers. The beauty before him nods.
“I hear libraries are good for that.”
He laughs. Maybe he shouldn’t-maybe it wasn’t intended to be funny-but it’s not something he does very often, so he’s left pretty unpracticed in restraining the act. The sound of it reverberates inside his ears, startling him; his face heats further.
“I’m Artie,” he says, because his mother drilled manners into him almost before he could form sentences. He thrusts a hand into her personal bubble, soothed when she takes it sturdily. He likes girls who shake hands like normal people, forgoing the obnoxious delicacy of Victorian duchesses.
“Tina,” she replies, showing off perfect white teeth. “Nice to meet you, Artie.”
He rubs the back of his neck, the skin of his concealed palm tingling pleasantly, though they were glove to glove. “Tina,” he repeats, liking the way his tongue flicks against the roof of his mouth as he says it. “Why haven’t I seen you around, Tina? Do you go to Westbrook?”
She giggles, and this time he knows it wasn’t meant to be funny, but he grins anyway. He can’t remember the last time he made a pretty girl laugh.
“No,” she says at last. “I’m not exactly from around here.”
“Where are you from, then?” he presses, rolling an inch closer to her chair. She crosses her ankles, shrugging.
“Here, there.”
“Army brat?” he guesses, scratching his head. Her smile goes a little rigid, a little strained. His heart sinks. “Or not.”
“Not,” she confirms. Her fingers lace together atop one bent knee, the gesture of restrained anxiety. She wears it well, but not so perfectly that he can’t tell she’s nervous. It’s endearing.
“So you’re, what?” he presses, desperate to keep the conversation alive. “Visiting family? Friends? A little-known, yet beloved landmark?”
It’s been a while since he’s had friends, since he’s tried to entertain another soul for any reason other than feigning the enigma that is being “all right.” He isn’t good at it, this social thing, and he generally is willing to accept that as the inevitable scope of his own reality.
Today, though, feels different. Suddenly, he wants the exact opposite of the usual-and he wants it with her. This strange, ethereal girl. Tina.
Ten minutes ago, he would have given the world to clear this building of human beings, and now, he thinks he’ll die without this basic, normal contact. Maybe he should talk to his parents, see if “contradictory behavior” can qualify as a legitimate superpower.
“I’m looking for someone,” she says, biting her lip and glancing at the shelf behind his head. He wonders if she means this as a cryptic kind of code; is she looking in the books? Does Hemingway hold the key to life’s problems? Or Gaiman? Or Bradbury?
Or maybe there’s something he doesn’t know about this library, like a secret tunnel that can be triggered by tugging on a particularly disheveled copy of The Great Gatsby. Stranger things have happened. He lives in a world where his parents are the most boring, crime-avoidant superheroes on earth, after all.
“Maybe I can help you find…” He hesitates, squinting. “I’m sorry, you’ve really lost me. What’s the punch line to this one?”
Her eyes snap back to his, tiny serious darts pricking straight through to a soul he doesn’t think much about owning. His heart thuds mercilessly in response.
“This is going to sound kind of crazy,” she says slowly, and already he’s nodding with an uncomfortable brand of eagerness. Whatever she has to say, whatever madness is about to spout from those lovely pink lips, he’s totally cool with it. Totally behind it. She’s mega-freaky hot. She can’t possibly say anything that will throw him more than the fact that she’s talking to him in the first place.
“I came here looking for you.”
Okay. That kind of does it.
“What do you mean, you’re looking for me?” he asks through a stupidly-nervous laugh. “You’ve found me. Here I am. World’s shortest game of hide-and-seek.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, smiling at the very edges of her mouth. Her eyes remain solemn, her cheeks tinged with embarrassment. Artie frowns.
“So?”
“So,” she repeats, shrugging. He’s two seconds away from poking her before he realizes, hey-might be better to get to know the chick before physically assaulting her in any way, shape, or form. He settles for drumming his fingertips restlessly against his knee, distracted for the first time in ages from wishing like hell he could feel the sensation.
“So,” he emphasizes. “Why were you looking for me?”
There are a million responses the question could garner, and Artie is just imaginative to expect them all. Maybe she’s a bounty hunter. Maybe an undercover journalist doing a piece on teenage cripples. Maybe she’s the long-lost sister born of his father’s secret tryst with a Korean concubine, and ew, he really hopes this isn’t the case for a grand array of reasons.
“Artie…” She chews her lip for a minute, tongue darting out when she bites a little too hard. He watches, too mesmerized to care that she looks like she’s about to take a long walk off a short pier.
“Tina,” he replies. She gives that almost-smile again, sort of sadly.
“We need your help.”
Okay, it’s not exactly what he was waiting for, but he thinks that’s got something major to do with the lack of explanation. He settles for blinking at her from behind his glasses, eyebrows arched quizzically.
“Okay,” he says slowly. “For what? Summer school homework need doing? I warn you, I charge a neat little fee.”
Her head briskly wavers from side to side, hair curtaining her flushed face. “No, silly,” she replies, and he thinks for the first time in fifteen years, he actually kind of likes being called silly. “For…oh God, I told Rachel this was going to sound too stupid for words.”
“Tell me,” he presses, pulling himself a hair closer. She frowns.
“Promise not to laugh.”
He raises two fingers in what he believes to be the universal ‘scout’s honor’. Tina lowers her head and breathes deeply.
“I want you-we want you, that is, my friends and I…well, I mean, they’re kind of my friends, but sort of n-not, because we mostly hang out from, y’know, worldly necessity and-“
“Slow down,” he instructs gently. She sighs.
“My friend Kurt had a vision. You’re supposed to come with us and use your power to help us save the world from this…guy. Some big bad worthy of, like, I dunno, Star Wars supervillain status. We don’t know when, and we don’t know how, but Kurt keeps getting the visions, and we keep trekking to whatever corner of the country he aims us. We collect who the pictures in his head say we need. And…I dunno. You’re the latest.”
She makes him sound like a trading card. He wonders why this doesn’t insult him in the least.
“You’re smiling,” she observes suspiciously, narrowing her gaze and picking at a fingernail. “Why are you smiling?”
He’s smiling because it’s funny-no, damn near hilarious. He gives the chair an exaggerated thump.
“Maybe it’s escaped your attention,” he says, a bit too snarkily by the way she recoils, “but I’m not really riding in the world-saving boat these days. There isn’t much you can do with…this.”
Her eyes flick to the wheels beneath his palms and back to his face again. “I don’t get it.”
He sighs. “I can’t come with you. I can’t help you. I’m…look at me, I’m useless.”
She’s beautiful when she frowns. “You’re not useless. You’ve got-“
“A completely inactive power,” he interrupts. “Or, well, inactive for me, anyway. What’s the point of making copies of yourself in a chair? I’m a sitting duck no matter how you spin the wheel.”
To his surprise, her almost-smile returns again, this time looking suspiciously like an actual smile. “Is that all?” she asks, sounding strangely affectionate. His mouth sags open.
“Is that all? Tina, look at me. I’m a hunk of flesh. I can’t move, I can’t run, I definitely can’t fight-“
“Can you think?” she asks smoothly. Flustered, he shrugs.
“Well, yes, but-“
“Can you throw?”
“Yeah, I guess, but I don’t see-“
“Can you find it in yourself to care about the well-being of others?” she asks, her voice soft and gentle. “Are you interested in the preservation of life and security above self-pity?”
That one stings. Soundlessly, he nods. Her hand drifts between them and settles upon one of his, her skin delicate and perfect.
“Artie, Kurt’s visions happen for a reason. Always. I’m not asking you to believe in that just yet-I know it’s a lot-but I am asking you to trust me. We need you. We want you. And as for the wheelchair thing…ever heard of the X-Men?”
Oh, now she’s just teasing him. He squints, smirking despite himself.
“You really pulled the Professor X card?”
“I really did,” she replies, mock-solemn.
It’s crazy, he thinks, in the most alluring way humanly possible. He’s spent the summer-hell, the last few years-feeling completely useless, completely vulnerable to the world around him. And now here is the most gorgeous human he has ever laid eyes upon, asking for his help? It’s crazy, and it’s more than implausible, and honestly, he’s waiting for Ashton Kutcher’s stupid face to come leering at him from around a bookshelf at any moment.
But.
If she’s telling the truth, if this is not some over-elaborate prank to get him to look even more like a moron than usual…he can’t deny the appeal. Leaving the well-meaning bear trap that is his home, leaving behind the scathing glares at school and the pitying smiles at the dinner table, leaving the knowledge that he will never, ever be on the same page as his perfect parents again…
Replacing that knowledge with actual optimism, with the hope that he might be able to genuinely do some good in the world, even if the idea makes less than zero sense to him right now…
“If I say yes,” he says hesitantly, “what happens then?”
Tina shrugs. “We get the hell out of dodge. We look for the next kid. We prepare.”
It’s stupid. It’s stupid, and crazy, and his mom will be so pissed when he’s not home for dinner.
But for the first time since he was eight years old, Artie Abrams can see a chance to be somebody. Somebody more than just a lump in a chair.
Moving the books from his lap to the nearest shelf, he straightens up and looks her in the eye.
“Let’s go.”