Thin, long fingered, hands were poised above the keys of the piano. It was an old Jesse French, caramel colored wood, a battered and well loved piano. There was no sheet music sitting crisp and ready on the book holder. The fingers delicately ran their tips along the ivory and ebony keys that say like bones in the mouth of a beautiful beast. Short nails bitten to the quick painted with chipped black. Hemp and twisted metal bracelets covered her wrists. She wore a dark blue V neck shirt, showing off her newly discovered breasts. It drove the boys wild and made her father crazy, though her mother liked to joke that he himself would have been one of those boys when they had first met. He would give her a ghost of a smile before coming upstairs, usually to this very piano. Her mother would just smile. She was barefoot (she took after her father in that way) and was wearing a pair of baggy jeans that were broken in like an extra skin, soft life a dollar that had been in your pocket for ages.

When she had asked as a young girl why her mother why her father spent so much time up here at the piano "playing stupid songs by dead people that don't even have a beat", she had laughed. Her mother had asked him that very same question when they had first bought this house, first bought the piano from an old woman across town that they didn't even know. He father's voice asking her to come with him caused her to jump and she felt embarrassed that she had been caught. She had expected him to be angry or hurt, but he just had on that same amusedI-know-something-you-don't smile. He had taken her little hand in his big callused one and led her upstairs. She kept her head lowered because she thought for sure that she was about to get hollered at or spanked or something. Instead he had sat her on his lap even though she was seven years old, count 'em! Seven! And much to old to be sitting on her daddy's lap.

His big hands began to play a familiar oldies song that he often played around the house. Fiona Apple's song Paper Bag was one of her secret favorites, thought not so secret since her father knew. Her eyes examined his hands moving fluidly over the keys. She noticed that the third one over from the middle kind of stuck. Her sharp ears picked up on the different tones, the different vibrations of each note. Now eager to play she tried to shove her hands in with her fathers. The playing stopped and she was afraid that she had done something wrong to stop the music. He had chuckled though. He explained that you can't just start in the middle. You have to start from the beginning, the very beginning to learn how to play. He rummaged through a stack of books on top of the piano. He handed her a battered book. She opened it and saw little black ants of ink dotted along the lines and running through the pages. He told her that he had kept it in case she had ever wanted to learn. He started to teach her right then.

Now ten years later she was still sitting at that very piano. They had to force her away from it, but thankfully in another month she would be going to the arts college in near by Boston. It had taken begging and pleading on her part to get them to agree, but in the end they had. Either by her masterful manipulation, or they wanted more time by themselves to pop out some more kids. He brothers were currently in bed, one 8, the other 10. She tried not to think about that. Old people sex was bad enough, but did anyone really want to think about their parents? Her friends had stories of walking in on their parents. Thankfully hers were subtle about that kind of thing. Her parents were the oddest couple on the block by far, but they also were the coolest, the envy of her friends. After all, their parents didn't have such cool stories.

The doorbell rang franticly and she looked out the window by the piano. She could see somebody but she couldn't tell who it was.

"Who 's it?" Zaq asked, standing in the doorway. Laurie was sitting up in bed. Both of them looked half asleep and confused.

"Go back to bed, it's nobody." They obeyed. She crept down the stairs and grabbed her fathers cane, the plain wooden one that he saved for when his father came over. She opened the door and before she could swing it at the shadow that lurked outside her door, a half ice man with his side soaked in blood fell through the door and landed on her. She caught him in her arms, shocked and not really sure what to do. She closed the door behind he with her foot, still unsure. Maybe he was faking it.

She reached for the phone.

"No." He grabbed her arm. She thought of hitting him, but he whispered "please". She half carried half guided him to the couch. She knew better than to be shocked by his appearance (after all, he was half covered in ice). Her parents were mutants, she herself was a mutant. Her parents had taught her tolerance and acceptance. She just wasn't sure if she should be this accepting of a stranger who could quite possibly be a psycho.

He smiled dizzily at her and was amazed at just how very blue his eyes were. "You're parents will be able to help." He paused. "If they want to of course." He didn't seem so sure of the idea that they would indeed help him. And she had no clue how he knew her parents. He seemed to guess her thoughts. "We used to work together when they were younger. We had a...falling out though." She was confused. Her parents had never mentioned working with mutants.

His breathing was heavy, but when she reached for the phone again he told her not to. "A hospital wouldn't know what to do. It's just a scratch. You're mom can fix it up easy and send me on my way."

Ten minutes they heard laughing and quiet talking outside. "Mom" She called, loud enough so they could here, but not loud enough to wake her brothers. They must have heard her panic, after all, for the last 15 minutes she had been sitting on the couch with a man covered in ice who was bleeding on her shirt as he was basically laying down in her lap.

Her parents must have heard the panic in her voice because they came through the door looking concerned. Her mother looked first shocked then concerned as she rushed over to help the man. For some strange reason she couldn't understand, her father had looked first slightly surprised and then angry. He walked up stairs. Her mother looked worried.

"Roisin, will you check on him?"

The iced man looked awkward for a moment. He laid a hand on her mother's shoulder. "I'm sorry." She just shook her head. Roisin went up to find her father.

Can you guess the pairing?