Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men Evolution or anything to do with them.

Author's Note: My first attempt at an X-Men Evolution story. I hope you guys like this. Any comments, positive or negative, will be welcomed. Constructive criticism will also be treasured – tell me what I'm doing wrong and I promise to try and improve it.

Silver Booms In All Their Glory

Chapter I

It was cold. A horribly cold, miserable night and...well, ok. It really wasn't that miserable. The wind was cold but it wasn't raining like it had been earlier, and if it seemed miserable, it was really only because Tabitha herself was miserable.

She wrapped her coat around herself tighter, willing some warmth, any warmth, to stay in. She wasn't sure how long she'd been walking but it was long enough for her to have started shivering and, damn it, she hoped there would be a sign leading to any village, town or city soon! Any signs of civilisation would be wonderful right now, because that would indicate warmth and food and gods was she hungry! She was walking in what she thought or hoped (or rather wondered) was an easterly direction because she had some vague recollections of somebody once telling her to walk east, if she was ever lost. Surrounded by darkness, walking along a lonely stretch of road with no idea where she was or where she was going, she figured she couldn't really get that much more lost than this, so she'd chosen a direction she'd decided was east and had been walking along it for... damn it, for far too long. She clutched the coat tighter around her but there wasn't any warmth left for it to give her.

A distant light broke the darkness and she moved further to the left as she saw the car approaching, unwilling to attract attention when she was feeling so emotional that she was having to fight the impulse to throw her fire bombs around. She'd rather deal with the cold and shivering than some bastard in a car, and it wasn't like she'd never slept rough before, she mused. It was more the suddenness of her situation that had her off her balance.

And all of her stuff was still in the car; she brooded, a furrow forming easily in her forehead and her lips perking into a pout. There were clothes, lots and lots of clothes she could have used for warmth. And her favourite lip gloss was in there too. And food too – little snacks that would be precious in moments such as these. Her stomach replied instantly, giving a disgruntled growl as she sighed and carried on trudging up the road, the car having passed her without seeing her a while back.

And there were sentimental objects in her bag too. Little things she'd kept from people she'd liked or moments that had been precious to her. They were little things, nothing big or flashy or expensive, but they'd meant something to her and now they were lost for good. She fought back a sniffle. Tabitha did NOT cry. Especially not when it was cold and she was trudging up a lonely stretch of the road. She would NOT cry, no matter how much she wanted to right then!

"Tabitha?"

She jumped at the sound of her name being called from seemingly nowhere, until her vision focussed on the dark shape that she could still identify easily as Pietro. Guess one of the gusts of wind hadn't been wind at all, but Speedy speeding by.

"What are you doing here?" His voice held curiosity, confusion and a couple of other emotions, harder to identify.

And instead of answering his question, Tabby did what she did best. She acted impulsively. "Speedy," she squealed, throwing her arms around him and welcoming the heat that radiated from him and onto her. "It's so good to see you." Squeezing him tight one more time, she let go and flashed him one of her brighter smiles. "So what ya doing?"

"I was running home. What are you doing?" He asked, looking at her slightly suspiciously, slightly curiously. He couldn't have explained what was off with her appearance (soaked to the skin, lacking any luggage and walking along a road several dozen miles away from the nearest locale) but there was a particular buzzing that he always associated with something not being right, and that buzzing was present right now. And so, he was looking at her with suspicion as well as curiosity.

"Oh, just walking." Tabby gave a shrug with her words.

"To where?" There was less suspicion and more curiosity in Pietro's voice now.

"Dunno," Tabby replied, again with a careless shrug.

Peering at her closely, Pietro felt his buzzing subside and was satisfied with her answer, never thinking of asking her where she was walking from. Out of sheer chivalry that he couldn't suppress in time, he asked her, "Do you want me to carry you to home?" He was almost sure that his face showed as much surprise as Tabby's.

"Sure..." Tabby's voice was uncertain but after a second, she gave him a beaming smile. "You gonna carry me on your back?"

Biting back a groan, Pietro agreed, allowing Tabby to fling her arms around his neck before he helped with wrapping her legs around his waist. She wasn't that heavy; without quite consciously realising it, he knew that she was lighter than she had been before, on the occasional times she had made him carry her home (once, drunk and hilarious). Either way, he grumbled in a sotto voce, sometimes causing her to grumble, twice causing her to smack him lightly on the arm, as he ran along with her. Mostly, it caused her to chuckle and giggle.

Landmarks that felt familiar to Tabby started appearing (although everything seemed similar to one another in the dark, with the rain rushing down again). Nevertheless, it gave her a slightly warm feeling inside that, unfortunately, didn't translate to physical warmth. Still, she'd settle for some sort of emotional warmth right now, and she wasn't as cold as she had been before, Pietro's burning temperature managing to keep the worst of the cold away.

"You could do with losing some weight, ya know," Pietro said, yet again. Having run out of responsive insults or replies, Tabby settled for murmuring an ambiguous hmm and snuggling her left cheek into his back.

"My back's going to be all bendy and broken," Pietro whined again, without a clue as to what reply he was looking for or what he wanted from Tabby. He was never the most introspective of people and, like always, he went with whatever he felt like doing without questioning why he was doing it. Hearing no response, he carried on, "It'll be bent forever, like some creepy hunchback from France." He paused, waiting for a response but hearing none, he threw a glance back at her, wondering if she was asleep. She wasn't. She was looking to her right, a slight frown on her face and a look of total abstraction. He'd seen this face many times before, usually in school or when Toad started talking. They were going through the richer part of town now, and he decided that she was just fantasising about how, one day, she'd marry some rich guy (or sleep with him and sue him) and live in a house just like one of these.

A couple of minutes passed and he slowed down, still coming to an abrupt halt across their family run-down building.

"We're home," He said cheerfully, dropping Tabby's legs so suddenly that they collapsed beneath her weight and she fell down.

"Jackass," she muttered but lacking any real venom. She followed Pietro through the front door, taking a wide-eyed look at what was once her home and might possibly be one again.