The Fight
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Tabitha Smith wasn't the type to dwell on things that didn't directly involve her, but The Fight was an exception to her rule. What did she care when Lance decked Pietro? Not so much. She only lived with these guys, no one said she had to understand them too. She didn't catch what exactly Pietro had said to make Lance punch him, but she'd endured enough soaps with her mom to get the general picture.
Pietro had a smart mouth, no matter how quick he was, and Lance had a short fuse when anyone made fun of Kitty 'yes I'm acing everything' Pryde. Ugh. Even her name was agreeable. Kitty Pryde. Seriously. The puns that could be made!
Discussing the point with Freddy later, Tabitha decided that Lance must have been really mad. Not only had he socked Pietro (which was a feat in and of itself considering it was Pietro, the speed-demon himself), but he'd emptied his room of anything important and drove off. Freddy explained that Lance tended to do that – make himself scarce when he was mad – but he'd never actually packed his stuff before.
Todd was quick to add that Lance had been talking about Kitty a lot. More than usual, he'd insisted, when Fred had pointed out that he tended to talk about Kitty a lot anyway. All in all, Tabby found the whole sequence of events quite curious, and decided to see how it would play out, even though, as she'd noticed, it really wasn't her business and didn't have much to do with her.
She never would have guessed in a million years that Lance had headed up to Moron Manor. Seriously. She was only too familiar with the types of people that the Prof. liked under his roof, and she was pretty sure Lance didn't fit the bill. He was too rebellious; like her. People like Tabitha or the Brotherhood knew too well the other side of being mutants. They knew that life could essentially suck, and that what came off to others as being insubordinate or impertinent was really their defense against what they knew people were capable of.
But the Prof. knew that, didn't he? Tabitha mused; remembering how he'd bailed her out of juvenile detention, assuring her multiple times that she needn't pay him back. She'd believed him, too. He wasn't the type to say 'Don't pay me back' and really mean 'You owe me later.'
"Jackass."
Tabby's ears perked at the sound of Pietro's voice, and she crossed to the door of her room, poking her head out into the hallway beyond. She saw the speedster prodding at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, wincing as his fingers brushed the notable bruise below his left eye.
"Such a Jackass," Pietro muttered again, standing back from the mirror in annoyance, finally catching Tabitha's reflection peering at him from her doorway. "What? Never seen a bruise before? Take a picture it'll last longer!" he snapped peevishly in his fast-paced manner, firmly closing the bathroom door so as to continue his assessment in private.
Tabitha considered booming the door and harassing him, but decided against it, loping downstairs instead, to see what the others were up to. Fred was in the kitchen, piling up on food as usual to take back into the common room and eat while he watched TV. She could hear Todd swearing at the set, and he leapt past her, she assumed, to fix the antenna on the roof. She nicked a water bottle from Fred's overstuffed arms, ignoring his protests, and going outside, she glanced upward just in time to see Todd yelp in surprise and fall off the roof as he'd been shocked. She sighed, shaking her head, and looked in the direction of the Mansion on the hill.
In a way, she couldn't blame Lance for going there. She felt sometimes that she wanted to go back…Even ostracized as she'd been, it was still the nicest house she'd ever lived in, bar none, and the most freedom she'd ever had. Even living here, with no rules and no responsibilities, Tabitha felt a certain restriction. She could do what she wanted, but at a cost. She missed her friends. Amara, for one, and Kurt…She even missed Jamie. She missed the look Drake would give her when she pulled a prank on him. She missed teaming up with Jubilation and Rahne to massacre Prof. McCoy for their snowball fight. Even more than breaking rules, she missed having rules to break.
"BLOB! You ate all the food again? Money doesn't grow on trees, you know!"
"Shut up, Pietro! You're just pissed off 'cause Lance gave you a bruise!"
"Yeah, Pietro! Don't take it out on us! Besides! Now that Lance is shacked up with the x-geeks, we got free reign of his room, yo! Score!"
"Gee. Free reign of a mattress and some socks. I'm sooo excited, Toad."
"Come on, Speedy! It's not so bad!" Tabitha called, tossing her unfinished water bottle at him. He dodged and then quickly caught it before it hit an oblivious Todd in the face.
"What would you know about it? I had to bribe a guy to make him turn on our water," Pietro muttered crossly, downing the rest of the bottle and chucking the bottle at Fred.
"We'll come up with something. We're mutants! We could always become rock stars! What do you say? I play a wicked tambourine," Tabitha wheedled, sitting down on the dilapidated couch next to Todd.
"This is exactly why Lance is such a jackass," Pietro said decidedly. "He's our defacto leader, is he not? It's him who's supposed to be threatening the bill collectors, not us," he pouted, swiping a piece of bread from Fred's pile, ignoring his protests.
"I thought you said bribery, not blackmail, Speedy?" Tabitha said lightly.
"Hardly the point," Pietro snapped. "Lance thinks he's above blackmailing the bill collectors."
"What'd you say to him, Pietro? He ain't never slugged me before, and I'm pretty offensive," Todd said matter-of-factly.
"Nothing so much as a look in his direction," Pietro muttered. "And maybe I teased his girlfriend at lunch today, but it's our bit, Pryde and I. Who knew Mr. I-don't-like-her-like-that Alvers would take such offense?"
"Touchy," Tabitha agreed. She cocked her head at the bad connection on the television. "Hey, Fred, is that some guy's head? Or is that just a building in the background?"
"I dunno," Fred admitted, shrugging his massive shoulders and taking a handful of potato chips from deep within the pile of food on his lap. "I thought it was a documentary on some bug."
"Oh," Tabitha mused, squinting and turning her head the other way. "I can sorta see it."
"The question is, why are we wasting our electricity on this?" Pietro snarked, turning off the set behind him quicker than anyone could bat an eye. "Obviously we have to deal with this situation."
"Can't we deal with it when the show's over?" Fred sulked, eyeing the now blank screen.
"I don't think we gotta situation," Todd said easily, leaning back on the couch and grinning, showing his green teeth. "All we hafta do is come up with some twenty bucks, right? Cake."
"Twenty? Try 300. or so. Electricity, water, food costs for ten people…" Pietro ticked off on his fingers.
"Ten? There's only four of us now, Pietro," Tabitha corrected him.
"Three people and Blob," Pietro replied.
"Oh."
"Whatever. So if we each come up with fifty bucks, right?"
"How do you figure, Toad?"
Tabitha didn't even bother pointing out that it was a tad more than fifty a person to reach 300 dollars.
"I got by on more than that before you guys came," Todd said evasively, with the air of an expert explaining his craft to an amateur.
"You were a pick-pocket before us guys came," Fred said simply, moving on to a rather large sandwich that Tabitha could have sworn wasn't there before.
"If we're picking pockets the pathetic patrol will write us up," Pietro pointed out.
"Speaking of the x-geeks," Todd said lightly, glancing out the window at a pair of advancing headlights, "Don't that car belong to Shades?"
"Ooh! The fearless Cyclops? Paying a visit to little old us?" Tabby asked, her interest peaking. She hopped up, pulling the curtain aside. "Naw, Greenie's pullin' our legs. The Scott Summers I know would never drive that fast," she said with certainty.
Pietro and Fred joined Tabitha and Todd at the window, watching in silence as the familiar red convertible zoomed past.
"Bet it's Lance joyriding," Fred said, grinning.
"See? He hasn't conformed to their up-righteous ways," Tabitha said, hitting Pietro playfully on the shoulder.
"Whatever. I'll take that bet," Pietro said disbelievingly, and before anyone could dissuade him, he was gone.
"And I thought there was drama at the Idiot's Institute," Tabitha said, whistling at the blur that was Pietro blowing around the corner. "You guys are better than my mom's soaps!"
"Idiot's Institute! That's a good one, Tabby!" Fred said appreciatively, chuckling.
"I personally liked 'pathetic patrol.'" Tabitha said, grinning.
Yes, Tabitha Smith wasn't the type to dwell on things that didn't directly involve her, but she was getting more involved with these guys each day. Who knew? Maybe she'd even pony up some dough for the gas bill. If anything though, The Fight marked the most entertaining time she'd yet had in the Brotherhood house.
Over the course of the next week, Tabitha would find that Pietro was testy because he kind of missed Lance. She'd find quirks and habits about her newfound housemates that she could almost like. The way Todd couldn't go five minutes without going outside to improve the reception on the TV. The way Fred and Pietro would go at it about the food, when they both knew that Fred would win every time. The way Pietro obsessed about his appearance even worse than she did.
All in all, the Brotherhood house was no Mansion. And the Brotherhood was certainly no substitute for Kurt or Amara. But the day of The Fight and the resolution thereof a week or so later made Tabitha realize that the Brotherhood wasn't so bad. And while they didn't have rules, the Brotherhood certainly had unwritten guidelines that Tabitha could bend to her will. And it was better than nothing.
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A U T H O R S N O T E
Written for a contest on deviantart . com
Blah.
More later.
Ayaia.