Roomies (Late Sunday/Early Monday - Slight language warning)
It was late when Max got in, after her visit to Logan, and the house was dark and silent. She had gone down to the basement and woken Joshua to tell him about what was going on in Seattle, and begged him to stay in Tropolis, where he would be safer, but he had insisted on returning home. So she'd helped him pack up a few belongings that could be stuffed into bags, then sent him on to Logan's place.
Now she was upstairs in her room, hurriedly packing essentials into her backpack, but keeping the noise level to a minimum so as not to wake Emma. There would be time enough to talk in the morning. Eyes blinded by unshed tears, Max whirled around the room on autopilot, swiftly and systematically grabbing the things she needed. Alone with her thoughts, the horrific scenes she had witnessed earlier in the evening replayed on repeat in her mind.
Blood is the first impression. Everything she touched, everywhere she looked. Blood and bruises spawning on healthy people's bodies. Christian stands in front of her, crucified. The five wounds of Christ weep freely and behind him a woman draped in blue weeps for the lost, her exposed heart beating drawing the children to her...
Emma rolled over in the bed, hand grasping for the pillow. She was out of place. Her eyes flickered.
"White Queen to Black Rook," came the murmured words. Disjointed and buried half in dreams she didn't recognise. Christian again, the crucified form being beaten. Clinking sounds behind her gather speed and a heavy industrial chain lashes past to split the pale skin of his chest. In the dream, Emma closes her eyes. A fact she'll never forgive herself for. When they open it's not Christian anymore. A young man is bound to a hurricane fence, there's no mistaking the fact he's not a human. Mutant. The chain lashes again and this time Emma doesn't flinch. Doesn't even blink. With clarity comes wisdom and she knows...
This isn't her bloody dream.
...Max, what the fuck...
Emma's mental voice intruded on her thoughts, and Max realised dully that she wasn't shielding her thoughts.
...Sorry, Whitebread, I'll try to keep it down... She projected the thought at her roomie, taking a moment to center herself, and raise the level of mental white noise neccesary to block her thoughts from Emma. She dug through a draw, removing a set of lockpicks, a pocket knife, and an assortment of fake ID's.
"Or," came the groggy voice from the bathroom. "You could tell me what the Hell is going on." Emma nudged open the dividing door, looking worried. More so when she saw what was happening in Max's room. Pulling the white satin robe around her, Emma arched an eyebrow questioningly, "Are we going somewhere?"
"I'm going home - back to Seattle," Max looked up from her task, briefly meeting her friend's eyes, "Something's come up that I need to take care of. I don't know if I'll be back. I probably won't be." She nodded toward a shoebox on the foot of the bed, "I'm not gonna leave you hanging. That's for you - rent for the next two months..." Her focus returned to her task.
"Cool," Emma replied blandly. "So roadtrip." She dropped onto a spot of empty bed. Max was lying, or not saying everything. Either one was stupid. Hello? Telepath?
"When are we leaving?" Emma Frost, brain like a buzzsaw, tact like a mack truck.
"Not We, Whitebread. Me. Singular." Max shot Emma a hard look before crouching at the foot of the dresser, yanking open the bottom drawer and removing a cardboard carton bearing dozens of tiny glass vials, muttering, "It's not exactly a pleasure trip."
"Well, there go all my closely cherished dreams for a weekend in Seattle." Emma rolled her eyes. "Military trained and you still can't dissemble for shit." Emma tried to run a hand through her tangled muss of hair. "Come on Boo. Talk to me. Something's up and it's rather unpleasant if the inside of my head five minutes ago was any measure. You're up and running on me. Why?"
"You're the psychic, why don't you tell me!?" Max bit out, frustrated. She didn't want to talk about this. She paused, taking a breath. "Sorry, Emma, you didn't deserve that."
"Remember how bad I told you things were back home?" She stood, paced across the room and pulled open an antique armoire, rapidly selecting peices of clothing and draping them over her arm, a few tshirts, a sweater, spare bike leathers, kevlar lined jeans. That would do. She crossed back to the bed and started packing the clothing in. "They've gotten worse."
"Much worse." Her tone was grim, and she tasted bile, images of the transgenic being tortured flashing through her mind again. "They need me. I never should have left."
"Psionic," Emma corrected distractedly, her eyes narrowing against the flow of imagery. She could shut this out in theory. But it was Max, and he- They were mutants. Distance was hard to find. "Logan too?" Her head tilted. "And Josh? Is Dogboy heading back with you to fight the good fight?" In theory, Joshua was a fighter. Designed for it, and the instincts were there in his head. But... "He's an artist, not a soldier."
"Both of them. They've already left." Max glanced at her watch, "They're probably on the mainland by now. Back in our world..." a pained expression flickered over her features, "I tried to convince him to stay here, where he'd be safer, but he wouldn't. They're his people too... Even more than mine, in some ways." She shook her head, "He said you could have his paintings... Keep them, sell them, whatever."
The paintings... They'd sit in her office, others would be donated to the art gallery. Under Joshua's name, at least in this town he hadn't needed to hide. Emma shook herself. "So you've no use for me where you're going?" Logan, Bling, even Joshua fighting against humans that would hate Max and Joshua's brethren for existing. It wasn't so different. Not at all. "An indestructible telepath?"
"It's not your fight, Whitebread. It's mine." Max ducked into the bathroom, "Anyway - you say you're indestructable, but you still don't have control over the bling. If you got startled at the wrong moment you'd be exposed. Sure, you're tough when you're all blinged out, but we don't know how long you can stay that way..." Max came out of the bathroom, a toiletry bag in hand, "And even if you could maintain it indefinately, they wouldn't stop. They'd keep going until you were nothing more than a pile of sparkling shards." Her expression haunted, Max paused, and finally met Emma's eyes, "As much as I'm gonna miss you, I don't want you to come. I'd feel like I'd have to watch your back."
"Likewise," came the wry response. Emma toyed with the ends of her hair as she thought. Max was right. Vaguely.
She still didn't know the extent of her abilities, how tough she really was, but...
But there was the shelter. Volcano who she'd promised to train in TK. Plague's need for help, even Switch... None of them she could help if she was so much powdered dust. She had to choose her fights, and there was one right here in Fandom.
"Fine," Emma grunted reluctantly. "But I still say you're severely underestimating a girl. Just because I'm from Boston doesn't mean I can't hold my own you know."
"I'd never underestimate you, Whitebread," A ghost of a smile passed fleetingly over Max's features, then disappeared, she wasn't underestimating the viciousness of the mobs, either. "I just don't wanna drag you into a bad situation." Too many people have been hurt on account of me as it is. She started to squeeze her overstuffed backpack closed, "Besides, you've got stuff of your own goin' on. Grab that zip for me?"
Emma grabbed the other zipper, hauling on it. "I swear to god Ghetto, if it's the last thing I do? I'm going to beat that inflated sense of guilt out of you. You're special, but you're hardly the saviour of the human race." The zipper crept slowly up the backpack "And - God do they sell nothing in your Seattle? - And what I've got going on is only equally as important as your shit."
The zip slid home, overbalancing Emma. She landed on her ass next to the bed, eyes narrowed at the suitcase. The same look suddenly shifted to Max. "You write. You phone. You find a cousin with sodding wings. I don't care, but if I don't hear from you on a regular basis I will come and hunt you down. Don't even doubt that for a moment Ghetto." Emma's eyes glittered in the light from the bathroom. "I've got your scent, and there's bound to be at least one mutant out there with dimension hopping abilities. The day I can't take a mob of flatliners with one hand is the day I stop wearing leather and invest in tweed. I will come after you." She did not just sniffle. In no way was that a sniffle. "Don't make me come looking alright?"
...If only it were just the 'flatliners' we had to contend with...
"I'll keep in touch, Whitebread - you've got my word." Max slid to the floor beside Emma, leaning back against the bed, she wrapped an arm around her roomie, and reached up onto the top of the cloth draped stack of milk crates which served as a bedside table, retrieving a box of tissues, which she offered to Emma, taking one for herself in the process. A small smirk played around the corners of her mouth, "'Sides, there's a few things I'll want you to send me - like a regular supply of coffee beans... You weren't far wrong with that comment about things being hard to obtain in my Seattle, post-pulse america and all that jazz."
A snort comes from beneath the tissue. "Wonderful. I'm your dealer." She leans back against the bed, shoulder-to-shoulder with her roomie. "At least you made the right connections in town. Living with the heir to a multinational company and all." She grins, staring at the wall. "It'll be mine soon. Say it with me Max. 'Resources.'"
"Resources. 'Tropolis today, tomorrow, the multiverse!" Max chuckled, "I think the tweed is safe from you... It's all comin' together, huh?" she angled a curious look at Emma, "What does the illustrious Frost Enterprises deal in, anyhow?"
"Don't tempt me." Emma laughed. "Shipping," she replied dryly. "Amongst other side projects, but the whole thing is built on trade between America and Britain from the 1600's. Now," she turned her head to look at Max. "What's this about 'not flatliner's'? Don't tell me you've got family on the other team? Keeping the good freaks down?"
"Not exactly," Max hedged, "Once the released transgenics clued into the fact that the government which made us wanted to kill us, most of them stopped assisting the government in tracking down their own kind." She studied the carpet, "But, we're not the only ones with unusual abilities... There's another group, super strong, fast, tough. Some of them have abilities like yours... Except, their abilities aren't due to a spontaneous mutation, like yours, and they weren't made the same way that I was was... They're born of thousands of years of selective breeding, by this whacked out cult. From what I've been able to piece together, they're planning to cause some kind of apocalypse or something, to wipe out humanity, so that they can take their place in what they consider to be the natural order... They think the transgenics are some kind of threat to their genetic superiority."
"Someone was actually bored enough to make pedigree mutants? Over thousands of years...and then your lot show up and do it all in a matter of decades?" Emma blinked. "They.... Must be really pissed." She sat there imagining that, letting her mind work over the idea. "Thousands of years of tradition must be very limiting." Her head tilted. "Especially within any kind of Heirarchy." Her mind was practically whirring. "I'd love to take a look at their genetic makeup..."
"Yeah, the familiars take inbreeding to extremes. I'm sure their gene strands are all kinds of interesting." Max chuckled humourlessly, "I just wish they'd leave me and mine alone, y'know?"
"Do they happen to have a penchant for banjo music?" Emma asked dryly. She shook her head. "Honestly, when the gene freaks can't all get along with one another? What's the world coming to?"
"Robes, chants, and badly applied make-up, actually." Max smirked, then shook her head, "They've got a bad attitude... It's not just the transgenics and all of humanity they've got the hate on for, either... They murder thier own children if for some reason they don't measure up - all in the name of genetic perfection."
"They murder their-" Emma's voice cut off, her nostrils flaring. Lips pulled tight and pale against teeth. "That's horrific! In the name of engineered genetic purity...they're children Max, not ruddy showdogs." She drew her knees up to her chest. "And you're going back there. Without me. To deal with these bastards?"
"You're preachin' to the choir, boo..." Max directed a frank look at Emma, "And I'm going there without you because if they discovered you - a homo superior, a natural mutant with your abilities - they'd decide you were perfect pedigree breeding stock - whether you wanted to be, or not."
"And the last thing you need is a squadron of Baby Emma's?" She chuckled. "I'd probably be more danger to them more than anything else. A hivemind of telepaths with my attitude would get ugly very quickly."
Max chuckled at the mental image of a brigade of miniature Emma's, "I've no doubt they'd give 'em hell... If there's one thing I've learned though, it's that children should never be used as weapons, or collateral, or experiments. There is no justification that can make that right."
Emma stared at her feet for a while. Finally she spoke. "Max?"
"Yeah, Whitebread?" Max cast a sidelong glance at Emma.
"Give 'em Hell for me?"
Max smiled faintly, "Definately. 'Sif there was ever any doubt."
With that, Max stood, glancing around the room which had been hers for the last several months.
A smile quirked Emma's lips. "Peachy." She paused. "I'll miss you Max."
Max held out a hand to her roomie, and pulled her to her feet, and into a tight hug. "I'll miss you too, Whitebread."
Stepping away, Max picked up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. "I put Logan's Seattle address in your address book. Don't forget to write me. And send me coffee."
Max took one last look around the room, then with a small wave, she left the room. Moments later, a motorcycle engine roared to life, then faded into the distance...
((OOC: *waves sadly* Bye Max))
Now she was upstairs in her room, hurriedly packing essentials into her backpack, but keeping the noise level to a minimum so as not to wake Emma. There would be time enough to talk in the morning. Eyes blinded by unshed tears, Max whirled around the room on autopilot, swiftly and systematically grabbing the things she needed. Alone with her thoughts, the horrific scenes she had witnessed earlier in the evening replayed on repeat in her mind.
Blood is the first impression. Everything she touched, everywhere she looked. Blood and bruises spawning on healthy people's bodies. Christian stands in front of her, crucified. The five wounds of Christ weep freely and behind him a woman draped in blue weeps for the lost, her exposed heart beating drawing the children to her...
Emma rolled over in the bed, hand grasping for the pillow. She was out of place. Her eyes flickered.
"White Queen to Black Rook," came the murmured words. Disjointed and buried half in dreams she didn't recognise. Christian again, the crucified form being beaten. Clinking sounds behind her gather speed and a heavy industrial chain lashes past to split the pale skin of his chest. In the dream, Emma closes her eyes. A fact she'll never forgive herself for. When they open it's not Christian anymore. A young man is bound to a hurricane fence, there's no mistaking the fact he's not a human. Mutant. The chain lashes again and this time Emma doesn't flinch. Doesn't even blink. With clarity comes wisdom and she knows...
This isn't her bloody dream.
...Max, what the fuck...
Emma's mental voice intruded on her thoughts, and Max realised dully that she wasn't shielding her thoughts.
...Sorry, Whitebread, I'll try to keep it down... She projected the thought at her roomie, taking a moment to center herself, and raise the level of mental white noise neccesary to block her thoughts from Emma. She dug through a draw, removing a set of lockpicks, a pocket knife, and an assortment of fake ID's.
"Or," came the groggy voice from the bathroom. "You could tell me what the Hell is going on." Emma nudged open the dividing door, looking worried. More so when she saw what was happening in Max's room. Pulling the white satin robe around her, Emma arched an eyebrow questioningly, "Are we going somewhere?"
"I'm going home - back to Seattle," Max looked up from her task, briefly meeting her friend's eyes, "Something's come up that I need to take care of. I don't know if I'll be back. I probably won't be." She nodded toward a shoebox on the foot of the bed, "I'm not gonna leave you hanging. That's for you - rent for the next two months..." Her focus returned to her task.
"Cool," Emma replied blandly. "So roadtrip." She dropped onto a spot of empty bed. Max was lying, or not saying everything. Either one was stupid. Hello? Telepath?
"When are we leaving?" Emma Frost, brain like a buzzsaw, tact like a mack truck.
"Not We, Whitebread. Me. Singular." Max shot Emma a hard look before crouching at the foot of the dresser, yanking open the bottom drawer and removing a cardboard carton bearing dozens of tiny glass vials, muttering, "It's not exactly a pleasure trip."
"Well, there go all my closely cherished dreams for a weekend in Seattle." Emma rolled her eyes. "Military trained and you still can't dissemble for shit." Emma tried to run a hand through her tangled muss of hair. "Come on Boo. Talk to me. Something's up and it's rather unpleasant if the inside of my head five minutes ago was any measure. You're up and running on me. Why?"
"You're the psychic, why don't you tell me!?" Max bit out, frustrated. She didn't want to talk about this. She paused, taking a breath. "Sorry, Emma, you didn't deserve that."
"Remember how bad I told you things were back home?" She stood, paced across the room and pulled open an antique armoire, rapidly selecting peices of clothing and draping them over her arm, a few tshirts, a sweater, spare bike leathers, kevlar lined jeans. That would do. She crossed back to the bed and started packing the clothing in. "They've gotten worse."
"Much worse." Her tone was grim, and she tasted bile, images of the transgenic being tortured flashing through her mind again. "They need me. I never should have left."
"Psionic," Emma corrected distractedly, her eyes narrowing against the flow of imagery. She could shut this out in theory. But it was Max, and he- They were mutants. Distance was hard to find. "Logan too?" Her head tilted. "And Josh? Is Dogboy heading back with you to fight the good fight?" In theory, Joshua was a fighter. Designed for it, and the instincts were there in his head. But... "He's an artist, not a soldier."
"Both of them. They've already left." Max glanced at her watch, "They're probably on the mainland by now. Back in our world..." a pained expression flickered over her features, "I tried to convince him to stay here, where he'd be safer, but he wouldn't. They're his people too... Even more than mine, in some ways." She shook her head, "He said you could have his paintings... Keep them, sell them, whatever."
The paintings... They'd sit in her office, others would be donated to the art gallery. Under Joshua's name, at least in this town he hadn't needed to hide. Emma shook herself. "So you've no use for me where you're going?" Logan, Bling, even Joshua fighting against humans that would hate Max and Joshua's brethren for existing. It wasn't so different. Not at all. "An indestructible telepath?"
"It's not your fight, Whitebread. It's mine." Max ducked into the bathroom, "Anyway - you say you're indestructable, but you still don't have control over the bling. If you got startled at the wrong moment you'd be exposed. Sure, you're tough when you're all blinged out, but we don't know how long you can stay that way..." Max came out of the bathroom, a toiletry bag in hand, "And even if you could maintain it indefinately, they wouldn't stop. They'd keep going until you were nothing more than a pile of sparkling shards." Her expression haunted, Max paused, and finally met Emma's eyes, "As much as I'm gonna miss you, I don't want you to come. I'd feel like I'd have to watch your back."
"Likewise," came the wry response. Emma toyed with the ends of her hair as she thought. Max was right. Vaguely.
She still didn't know the extent of her abilities, how tough she really was, but...
But there was the shelter. Volcano who she'd promised to train in TK. Plague's need for help, even Switch... None of them she could help if she was so much powdered dust. She had to choose her fights, and there was one right here in Fandom.
"Fine," Emma grunted reluctantly. "But I still say you're severely underestimating a girl. Just because I'm from Boston doesn't mean I can't hold my own you know."
"I'd never underestimate you, Whitebread," A ghost of a smile passed fleetingly over Max's features, then disappeared, she wasn't underestimating the viciousness of the mobs, either. "I just don't wanna drag you into a bad situation." Too many people have been hurt on account of me as it is. She started to squeeze her overstuffed backpack closed, "Besides, you've got stuff of your own goin' on. Grab that zip for me?"
Emma grabbed the other zipper, hauling on it. "I swear to god Ghetto, if it's the last thing I do? I'm going to beat that inflated sense of guilt out of you. You're special, but you're hardly the saviour of the human race." The zipper crept slowly up the backpack "And - God do they sell nothing in your Seattle? - And what I've got going on is only equally as important as your shit."
The zip slid home, overbalancing Emma. She landed on her ass next to the bed, eyes narrowed at the suitcase. The same look suddenly shifted to Max. "You write. You phone. You find a cousin with sodding wings. I don't care, but if I don't hear from you on a regular basis I will come and hunt you down. Don't even doubt that for a moment Ghetto." Emma's eyes glittered in the light from the bathroom. "I've got your scent, and there's bound to be at least one mutant out there with dimension hopping abilities. The day I can't take a mob of flatliners with one hand is the day I stop wearing leather and invest in tweed. I will come after you." She did not just sniffle. In no way was that a sniffle. "Don't make me come looking alright?"
...If only it were just the 'flatliners' we had to contend with...
"I'll keep in touch, Whitebread - you've got my word." Max slid to the floor beside Emma, leaning back against the bed, she wrapped an arm around her roomie, and reached up onto the top of the cloth draped stack of milk crates which served as a bedside table, retrieving a box of tissues, which she offered to Emma, taking one for herself in the process. A small smirk played around the corners of her mouth, "'Sides, there's a few things I'll want you to send me - like a regular supply of coffee beans... You weren't far wrong with that comment about things being hard to obtain in my Seattle, post-pulse america and all that jazz."
A snort comes from beneath the tissue. "Wonderful. I'm your dealer." She leans back against the bed, shoulder-to-shoulder with her roomie. "At least you made the right connections in town. Living with the heir to a multinational company and all." She grins, staring at the wall. "It'll be mine soon. Say it with me Max. 'Resources.'"
"Resources. 'Tropolis today, tomorrow, the multiverse!" Max chuckled, "I think the tweed is safe from you... It's all comin' together, huh?" she angled a curious look at Emma, "What does the illustrious Frost Enterprises deal in, anyhow?"
"Don't tempt me." Emma laughed. "Shipping," she replied dryly. "Amongst other side projects, but the whole thing is built on trade between America and Britain from the 1600's. Now," she turned her head to look at Max. "What's this about 'not flatliner's'? Don't tell me you've got family on the other team? Keeping the good freaks down?"
"Not exactly," Max hedged, "Once the released transgenics clued into the fact that the government which made us wanted to kill us, most of them stopped assisting the government in tracking down their own kind." She studied the carpet, "But, we're not the only ones with unusual abilities... There's another group, super strong, fast, tough. Some of them have abilities like yours... Except, their abilities aren't due to a spontaneous mutation, like yours, and they weren't made the same way that I was was... They're born of thousands of years of selective breeding, by this whacked out cult. From what I've been able to piece together, they're planning to cause some kind of apocalypse or something, to wipe out humanity, so that they can take their place in what they consider to be the natural order... They think the transgenics are some kind of threat to their genetic superiority."
"Someone was actually bored enough to make pedigree mutants? Over thousands of years...and then your lot show up and do it all in a matter of decades?" Emma blinked. "They.... Must be really pissed." She sat there imagining that, letting her mind work over the idea. "Thousands of years of tradition must be very limiting." Her head tilted. "Especially within any kind of Heirarchy." Her mind was practically whirring. "I'd love to take a look at their genetic makeup..."
"Yeah, the familiars take inbreeding to extremes. I'm sure their gene strands are all kinds of interesting." Max chuckled humourlessly, "I just wish they'd leave me and mine alone, y'know?"
"Do they happen to have a penchant for banjo music?" Emma asked dryly. She shook her head. "Honestly, when the gene freaks can't all get along with one another? What's the world coming to?"
"Robes, chants, and badly applied make-up, actually." Max smirked, then shook her head, "They've got a bad attitude... It's not just the transgenics and all of humanity they've got the hate on for, either... They murder thier own children if for some reason they don't measure up - all in the name of genetic perfection."
"They murder their-" Emma's voice cut off, her nostrils flaring. Lips pulled tight and pale against teeth. "That's horrific! In the name of engineered genetic purity...they're children Max, not ruddy showdogs." She drew her knees up to her chest. "And you're going back there. Without me. To deal with these bastards?"
"You're preachin' to the choir, boo..." Max directed a frank look at Emma, "And I'm going there without you because if they discovered you - a homo superior, a natural mutant with your abilities - they'd decide you were perfect pedigree breeding stock - whether you wanted to be, or not."
"And the last thing you need is a squadron of Baby Emma's?" She chuckled. "I'd probably be more danger to them more than anything else. A hivemind of telepaths with my attitude would get ugly very quickly."
Max chuckled at the mental image of a brigade of miniature Emma's, "I've no doubt they'd give 'em hell... If there's one thing I've learned though, it's that children should never be used as weapons, or collateral, or experiments. There is no justification that can make that right."
Emma stared at her feet for a while. Finally she spoke. "Max?"
"Yeah, Whitebread?" Max cast a sidelong glance at Emma.
"Give 'em Hell for me?"
Max smiled faintly, "Definately. 'Sif there was ever any doubt."
With that, Max stood, glancing around the room which had been hers for the last several months.
A smile quirked Emma's lips. "Peachy." She paused. "I'll miss you Max."
Max held out a hand to her roomie, and pulled her to her feet, and into a tight hug. "I'll miss you too, Whitebread."
Stepping away, Max picked up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. "I put Logan's Seattle address in your address book. Don't forget to write me. And send me coffee."
Max took one last look around the room, then with a small wave, she left the room. Moments later, a motorcycle engine roared to life, then faded into the distance...
((OOC: *waves sadly* Bye Max))