Please allow me to introduce myself... [ota]

[withertodust]

He stared out the window at the blank canvas of white Russia and knew that it didn't matter how dead everything already was; there was always something else to kill. Wasn't the first time he'd had that general thought; in fact it was old enough that it wasn't really depressing anymore. His gloves--up to his elbows under his his long sleeved-shirt, sweater and jacket--were tugged up at the wrists to fit more snugly. The movement was habitual; the gloves would never slip down far enough to expose skin but Kevin still worried. He always worried. That was why he wore high socks, that was why his collar was worn up even on hot days. It was even why his hair was grown out shaggy--although that was somewhat due to self-neglect as well.

The Jeep slid to the right on ice and Kevin's jaw clenched, his hands tight fists around the fabric of his pants. Hanging his head, his hair curtaining his face, he took his mind off the ride by mentally abusing Noriko for finding him and his own idiocy about letting himself be hopeful. He always tried this, over and over. Joining teams. Being useful. It never worked. Never. And Kevin was sure that this time would be no different. It was just another set of people who would hate him and what he could do, who would talk behind his back and--

"Jesus Christ," Kevin breathed out as the Jeep's rear slid again, the sensation dropping the bottom out of his stomach. "Man, can't you--"

But obviously the man behind the wheel couldn't because Kevin's words were cut off as the Jeep went into a sharp, full spin and the guardrail of the road was suddenly much too close. The momentum of the large machine, the angle of the oncoming shoulder and the metal that lined it, it was all more than enough to get the Jeep completely off the ground.

Kevin's body left the seat as the car flipped (stupid that he thought of those bumperstickers in that second, the ones that trendy Jeep owners put on upside-down that said If you can read this, flip me over); the seatbelt slipped over his collar and burned into his neck under his jaw with a rough pressure for only a second before his ability decayed what was organic in the material and it broke apart. Without it his weight was thrown into the belt still across his lap, pain glancing across his hips and then through his chest as his upper body was torqued to one side and then the other as the Jeep went into its second roll. With that abrupt, jarring shift of momentum Kevin's head hit the window and everything went black.

Heather was outside the camp, jogging in the cold. Her mind was still wrestling with the confusion she had about whether joining up had been a mistake, about whether her ability was even working right lately. Add that to the fact that she really hadn't made any friends here and the isolation became somewhat self-perpetuating, but she was a jock. She needed to work it off, not think it to death. At home, or anywhere close to a temperate and usable ocean, she'd have swum, but here the options were limited. So she was running.

When it came the alert was sharp, clear, and unmistakably urgent. She didn't know what was about to happen but it was going to be bad and it was going to be that way.

Heather's top speed abruptly changed as she sped off, from good, for a human in athletic condition, to superhuman.

The wheels were still spinning on the underside of the jeep by the time she made it.

It was a miracle there weren't more vehicle accidents on the icy road, but the drivers knew their business, most of the time. The jeeps were equipped for the terrain and the elements. But the law of averages had to fail sooner or later.

Without conscious thought, she scanned for casualties - one man, in fatigues, half out of the driver's side. Another pinned inside. The blood and cracks in the window told the story of a broken seatbelt. "Hoy! Can anybody hear me? Just hold on, I'll get you out!"

She could smell gas - somewhere, the fuel line had ruptured.

Almost before she recognized it, she felt her skin sheath with gold metal. If the jeep burst into flames, she wouldn't be driven back before she got the two men out. The transformation extended completely, covering her hair, as her eyes whited over. Something else was wrong. Something she couldn't understand yet.

Without waiting, she began tearing the metal door off the jeep so she could get to the men inside.

The MP half into the snow had been thrown there through the window that had broken on the first of several rolls. His neck was at a bad angle, his eyes open but unseeing. A seatbelt would have helped but he'd made the trip a dozen times and knew the road to the mutie camp. Besides, he hadn't ever trusted his cargo and wanted to be able to move without restriction if need be. The paranoia had killed him in the end.

Kevin was unconscious, mostly hanging from the seatbelt digging into his hips. The side of his head was bloody from where it had smacked the window, his dark hair matted. His face was pale but Heather had no way of knowing that it wasn't from blood loss but from a natural aversion to showing skin. Kevin's chest rose and fell with steady breath.

She frowned when she realized the driver was gone. No time to wonder if she'd been closer... if she'd been faster... There was only time to reach for the second man, the passenger. He was hanging from half the seat restraints, the shoulder strap gone, not even torn or cut remnants left. Heather didn't notice the powdery residue on his clothes - he was still bleeding, sluggishly, and gas was still leaking from the broken vehicle.

Gold metallic hands reached for and tore the jammed remainder of the seatbelt, allowing her to take his weight with arms, and then shoulder. She pulled him out and moved far enough away from the jeep to avoid a fire, if there was one. She didn't notice as his head lolled against her parka the way the material reacted as she set him on his back and pressed gloveless gold fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse.

The shoulder of her jacket disintegrated quickly, discoloration setting in first and then the fabric slumping inward before actually falling apart under the motion of reaching for Kevin's neck. Her fingers found a pulse, strong and even.

Eyes shifted beneath lids a few times before dark lashes rose. The world swam into a slow focus and Kevin blinked at the gold shine hovering over him. The car... had he died? And was it so cold in hell?

The figure resolved into a woman, impossibly. A golden woman. She was hanging over him, her iridescent features pulled into worried lines. Her arm was outstretched and Kevin finally connected the posture to the pressure on his neck. His bare neck.

"No!" The yell was stiff and alarmed and Kevin's arm jerked up hard to smack her touch away.

The arm thus smacked was somehow more solid, more dense that it should have been, but the contact nonetheless was broken. At least until she reached for his shoulders to keep him still - he might have broken ribs, that head trauma was ugly, and it might have caused his violent reaction!

And, her clothes were falling off? Um, weird?

Heather wasn't modest in her armor, though she never had willing gone naked in it. But the nature of what she did, the situations she ended up in, clothes were the least of concerns really.

"Hold still, mate, no thrashing, you've been in a bad accident! Just relax, and I'll get you to a medic..."

The decay of her jacket expanded outward from the place where Kevin's head had touched to make a hole a little larger than a man's hand before stopping. Or at least slowing--the edges still seemed to blow off with any gusts of wind.

Kevin actually snarled out his next words, spitting the more explosive sounds, because experience had taught him well that with his power there were no second chances to get the warning across. "Don't fucking touch me!" He didn't even move away because he didn't want to chance her reaching out to stop him; he just lay on his back, every muscle locked so tight that he hadn't even felt the pain of the accident yet.

"Easy, easy there, it's okay, I won't touch you, long as you're quiet..." Heather's tone was somewhere between soothing and an order. "But you have to tell me where you're hurt... and how bad. I need to get you to the camp doctors. Gonna have to touch you for that probably..." But she didn't reach out, hands retracting, if it kept him calmer. "My name's Heather. I'm here to help. What's your name?"

Kevin was breathing heavily with the stress, his eyes following her golden fingers obsessively. They were whole... and continued to be whole. He wanted so badly to close his eyes but he couldn't because she might touch him again. Might actually touch him--she must have been against his collar before. He tried to take deep breaths.

"Wither," he gritted though a tight jaw, reaching up to touch the side of his head and wincing. "Shit. Look, Heather. Don't touch my skin, alright? Don't. It'll kill you."

Better safe than sorry.

Heather frowned, crouching next to him. "You're skin will kill me?" she sounded puzzled rather than scared. Just as his history had produced his reactions, his fears, her history had produced her lack of fear. "Does it take a long time? Cause I already touched ya." She wiggled her fingers, glancing and seeing what she expected - fingers. The gold armor had never been analyzed but whatever it was, it seemed proof against whatever he was talking about.

Kevin stared at her, at her fingers, like he hadn't heard her or maybe just that he was particularly slow. He blinked. Maybe he did have a concussion--after all, she was gold. And shit like that didn't happen.

Right. Neither did turning someone to a husk of nothing with a tap on the shoulder.

"It--" He was still staring at her fingers, his own forgotten against his head. "It's fast. I don't understand. There aren't exceptions. There aren't."

Heather's expression sobered into something grave as the implications of what he was saying added up. He'd given his name as Wither. He was in a jeep on his way to a camp full of mutants with all kind of strange powers. "You're a mutant, right?" she asked softly.

Was that his power?

That was more suck than Heather even had concepts for.

Kevin finally, really, breathed out. His glove was covered in blood from his head but he put it against his forehead anyway, closing his eyes. "Yeah." It was close to being a hysterical sound, something not quite a laugh. "Yeah, I'm a mutant." The words made him think though--think of something other than her touching him--and Kevin's eyes flew open. "The driver--"

Sitting up was instinct, but as soon as he got upright the world swayed crazily and Kevin braced his hands in the snow, swallowing back the thick saliva that pre-cursed tossing up his insides. "The driver," he said again, closing his eyes to try and make the world stop spinning.

"Easy..." Heather held her hand up, but didn't touch, in deference to his request. "He didn't make it. Neck snapped when he was thrown." Her tone wasn't emotional, was calm, but there was something in her frank eyes that clearly said she regretted the loss. "Nothing I could do."

Her tone wasn't bitter, but the feeling of having failed at what she accepted in her gut as her job, keeping anyone in reach of her talents safe, was there.

And it was a grave reminder. "I need to get you back to camp."

Kevin recognized bitter because hell, it was like his default setting. He opened his eyes and looked at her by only tilting his head--his hands stayed planted firmly on the ground. After a moment he looked at the destroyed Jeep. "Shit," he whispered. Funny enough, normies tended to treat him better than muties. Normals thought he was eccentric; mutants knew he was a killer.

"Camp, right." Kevin laughed, thinking of this auspicious beginning. The laughter hurt and he put a hand up under his jacket against his side. "Where's your car? Mine's just--"

He was going to say there when the Jeep exploded.

Splitseconds before the gas tank went up, Heather's danger sense spiked.

She threw herself across the young man without regard for where they touched. Burning debris showered across her back and ripped through her clothes but she only felt it as small impacts that spattered against something that would have torn the fabric anyway - a golden shell, not unlike a huge tortoise shell, spread up and out from her back, covering her charge more completely than just her body could.

She'd never manifested that particular form before, but wings, a fishtail... her mutation took its patterns from nature seemingly, when there was a pattern that would serve.

Kevin had only half raised a hand in reaction--but even that was too late; he was blocked by something large and dark before he got that far. He couldn't even feel the heat of the blast that he knew must be there, just past--

Just past what?

Kevin turned back to where Heather had been a moment before but she was gone. She was gone but looking that way gave him a glimmer of light from the conflageration and showed the edge of something that covered him, golden. Golden. What was she?

"Sorry," she murmured, human hands and face resolving under the shell. "Gotta get out of here, just hold on and don't thrash, right?"

After the big blast, the fire confined itself mostly to the jeep where there was fuel to consume, apart from little smoking bits of shrapnel. The shell shifted, changed into wings, wide and feathered in metallic gold. She scooped him up in now bare arms perfectly able to take the load.

In a few hard beats, they were airborne.

"Hey! No--!"

But it was already too late and Kevin was sure she'd been wrong, that she hadn't touched him... but at least he would die with her, falling when she turned to dust. He wouldn't fight that; it would even some karmic tables or something.

He waited, curled into himself in her solid--bare--arms. The cold wind snapped against his face and he waited longer. And longer.

Finally Kevin opened one eye and let out a breath he'd been holding. She... she was fine. He wasn't hurting her. Hadn't, hurt her. Knowing that made some little part of Kevin want to sob with gratitude.
He put a hand over his face.

Heather glanced down when she felt him shift, and breathe, from the tight knot he'd been clenched in. Her face was beautiful, but the metal skin and softly glowing white eyes were inhuman. Somehow they still conveyed compassion.

"Bet your head hurts... and those ribs," she murmured. He could be hurt worse than that, internal injuries, but he seemed to be handling it. She flew high and fast, the landing a stomach-dropping descent right in front of doors closest to the infirmary.

Guards headed to block them - they didn't recognize Heather, and there were orders about letting unauthorized freaks into the camp.

"Uh," Kevin managed to say against the wind. He'd happened to glance down between fingers and it was the last time he was going to make that mistake-he kept his fingers tightly together after the single look. In regards to his injuries, really, until she'd reminded him he'd blocked out that sickening pounding in his head and his chest with sheer worry.

The land-ward plunge made Kevin's stomach drop-or rise, he wasn't sure-and goddamnit he never wanted to do that again. Returning pain or not, he struggled to get to his own feet in the snow. When the guards moved to block them Kevin barked out from her restricting arms, "we're part of the fucking team and touching me will kill you."

It had--as it often did--the desired effect of backing them off, fast. Kevin looked up at Heather. It was wonderful that he could touch her, he knew it was, but for someone who hadn't even allowed himself to be hugged in six years her embrace was making him panic. "Please, let me down. My legs are fine!"

When Kevin struggled to get on his feet, Heather loosened her encircling embrace, but a hand settled briefly against his back to steady him.

His discomfort, though, had her dropping that contact. "Through those doors," she answered quickly as her wings folded. She moved with him. "Straight and then left at the first turn."

Her danger sense was tingling oddly, keeping her close to his side. Her wings hadn't melted away either.

"Milbury!" The call carried ahead of them. He might not be there, there were other medics, she knew that, but she hadn't met any of them. Her instincts told her Milbury would be able to deal with the unique difficulty her charge here brought with him. The man was as competent as he was cool.

Sinister appeared from the offices into the center of the medlab as they came through the doors. To Heather's appearance (he recognized her voice, as distinct as it was) he only raised an eyebrow before turning his attention to the obviously bloodied young man who looked his hardest to be trying to keep upright, but who was now leaning and wheezing against an exam table.

"Don't touch me," Kevin said as Sinister started over. His voice was weary; he hated having to say it over and over, a reminder of how dangerous he was. Of how it would be best if he were just strong enough to be alone. Of how he was putting everyone here at risk just by exisisting.

"Skin contact will kill you. I destroy organic chemical bonds." At least, that was what he'd been told was the scientific reason. Kevin figured that it was something that a doctor would understand better than, I'll dust you.

Sinister stopped mid-stride with the explanation. Then, with a cool aplomb, he nodded and headed for the gloves. Chances were not to be taken, it seemed. "Get yourself on the table then, if you can."

Kevin nodded, dizzy, and tried his best.

He might not like to be touched, but Heather couldn't just watch him struggle. Without hesitation, she helped him lift his body onto the table. "He was in a jeep that lost control on the ice, flipped over. His shoulder restraint failed. Head injury, probably cracked or broken ribs." Giving relevant information to a doctor or EMT was part of her training, automatic.

This was usually the point where she got out of the way. Usually, though, the person she saved wasn't an unwilling danger to those around him. She stayed.

Kevin grit his teeth as Heather helped but didn't try to stop her. Still, there was a part of him that didn't believe it. Somehow It had to be the gold, whatever it was. It wasn't organic. Weird.

On the table his eyelids fluttered down and back up. "Better double bag it, doc," he murmured.

Sinister already had. The doctor looked at Heather as she stood nearby when he started his exam but didn't let his attention wander--he wasn't stupid enough not to pay attention.

"It's okay," she murmured to the young man. "He's good, and he knows about mutants."

She would need to report the accident, but it went against the grain to leave before she made sure Wither was going to be all right.

Wither... that didn't sound like a name, more like a code name, descriptive, but also threatening. Heather frowned as she put his power in context of a military setting. Those implications she didn't like.

Kevin just closed his eyes and focused on breathing and not flipping out that someone was touching him--he couldn't just huddle in the corner like a beaten dog and lick his wounds. Not if they were serious, anyway. So he clenched his jaw and was silent as Dr Milbury gently prodded and made a diagnosis: stitches for his scalp and two broken ribs.

Awesome. Welcome to the team.

Heather stuck around as Milbury attempted to find something to stitch the scalp wound with that wasn't organic.

"Not much of a welcome," she murmured.

"Indeed," Sinister muttered back, settling for synthetic butterfly bandages that stayed put against the boy's skin and held the gash together well enough; no kind of thread he had was going to work. He didn't doubt Kevin's word now, however. The ribs weren't bad enough to warrant fussing with gauze.

"You'll just have to be on bed rest until you're healed up," Sinister said once Kevin had been made comfortable. He peeled off his gloves inside out with care and tossed them in the hazardous waste. "I'll inform the Major that you're here."

Once the doctor was gone, Kevin looked at the hovering golden woman. "So that's your power? Being a gold shapeshifter?"

"Saving people." Heather said simply, no bravado. In fact her tone was grave. There was a dead man on the road who proved she wasn't completely effective. And there had been other incidents around camp that she didn't have sorted out.

She shook it off quickly and smiled at him though. "I'm not gold most of the time." Her wings had finally melted away, back into her body, but the armor remained.

"Saving people," Kevin repeated, his face almost a perfect blank to hide the bitter pain of his next words. "Funny, because I'm really good at killing them."

Crossing his arms over his chest and feeling the pain of his ribs, Kevin turned his head away and closed his eyes. He should say thank you, should tell her how amazing it was to be able to touch someone... but he didn't. He didn't say anything.

Heather met his eyes, that blank expression, before he turned his face away and closed his eyes.

"That's bloody awful," she whispered, and it wasn't condemnation. She had to swallow the tight lump that formed in her throat.

There were instincts you couldn't control. With his eyes closed he wouldn't see her hand lift to him. Just feel it when she rested light, metal sheathed fingertips against his cheekbone.

The jerk of his arm was nothing but reflex born of years of consequences; his forearm smacked up into hers with a dull ache of connection even through the layers he wore for the second time in the last thirty minutes. It turned his head as well, Kevin's dark eyes angry.

"Look, you've proved that it doesn't work with you, okay? I get it." He laced his arms over aching ribs and glowered at her. "But thinking you're immune is stupid because trust me, it only takes the once." He glanced at the tray near the bed and then reached out, picking up a full, plump roll of gauze that had been abandoned as useless and held it up between him and Heather.

It took less than five seconds. The entire roll seemed to collapse in on itself a little, shrivel, and then it was a rapid decay until Kevin held nothing in his hand but a pile of what looked like papery ash.

He turned his hand over and it feathered to the floor. "Just the once. Okay? So please. Don't touch me."

Heather's expression was serious, the empathic response to his bitterness very real, but held back because a bloke didn't want a woman dithering over him.

He was completely unlike, and yet here, now, he reminded her so sharply of Davis.

She watched the demonstration - it was quite terrifying, though it didn't frighten Heather at all. It did impress her with the extreme nature of his condition.

"I don't think. It's my power," she said quietly, "and it's just as certain as yours. But I get it." Her eyes were white, glowed, in this transformed state, but they carried expression, though not the same way as her normal blue. "You've hurt people you cared about, so you can't afford to get close to anyone."

There was a moment of sharp pain in Kevin's eyes before he looked away from her. Sure, what she said might have been the absolute truth, but he didn't need to discuss it with her. "I'm tired," he said to the wall. "You should let me rest."

"Right."

Milbury was more than capable of making sure the staff knew about their new charge's issue.

Heather turned to go and stopped. "What's your name? Real one?" His mum hadn't named her baby Wither.

That dark gaze turned back her way but it was a moment before he spoke up. "Kevin."

Heather nodded, thanks for the answer. "Ta. 'ooroo, Kevin."

Even as she turned, the gold melted from her skin and hair leaving it bare and tanned under the shreds of her clothes. She grabbed a couple of the tatters and tied them more modestly, in an absent gesture, as she went.

Kevin stared after her, watching the gold melt away. When Heather was out of sight he put his head back and blew a breath out at the ceiling, closing his eyes.

He'd known it had been too good to be true. There was a part of Heather that was just as vulnerable as everyone else.