"Oh, gosh, Pietro, can you hear me?" A light, feminine voice filled Pietro's ears, a dull ringing echoing through his head and a dull ache simply everywhere, vibrating through his bones, making his ribs feel as though someone was trying to pry them from his skeleton. Pietro wiggled his fingers as much as he could, pressing against the squishy mattress he was lying on. Someone was sitting next to him, hands resting on his forearms, which jittered as he groaned in recognition. "What happened? Who did this?" She asked, fuelled by his response.
"Em?" He asked, sluggishly, his brain turning over the gears in his head. Cracking his eyes open, he saw her blonde, curly hair first, her worried expression second. He laughed, the sound raw in his throat and Emelia broke out into a relieved grin.
"I was visiting some friends in a nearby city for the weekend, Bryce told me you were in the sick ward this morning. Who did this to you?" Emelia said, running a hand through his messy, silver hair. Pietro closed his eyes, willing the event to come back into his mind. It hit him like a grenade, the scream, the eyes, the shield - he had been close enough to poke her, to see the flush of her cheeks.
"Barricade." He said, simply. He felt Emelia freeze on his arm and watched her face turn to bitter snarl. There was a brief moment of silence before Emelia returned to normal.
"She's a freak. If she keeps injuring people, she'll be shipped off for sure." She told Pietro, her eyes softening as she smiled at him, before punching his arm lightly. "Its weird seeing you move so slowly." She smirked slightly, but Pietro was lost in his own world of thought.
"Who else has she hurt, Professor X would have told me. She- what did she do?" He blanched, his dark eyes wide as she struggles to prop himself up on his elbows. "Em," his eyebrows knitted as a frown crossed his blonde friend's face, "what'd she do?" His Emelia, for once, looked reluctant to divulge someone else's secret to him. He knew both Em and Bryce weren't the biggest fans of Julia, but he never really thought about it, they always seemed to act the same around Julia as the did everyone else. What had Julia done to make these guys hesitate to gossip?
"I can't tell you." Emelia finally admitted, bitting her lip to keep from talking. Pietro snorted and Emelia rolled her eyes, "Look, I can't tell you, but she can. When you're better, go ask her." Pietro seemed to take it as a personal challenge, zipping out of the bed and standing beside Emelia within a second, before folding over on himself, clutching his ribs.
"What… the hell?" He hissed between breaths.
"You broke two ribs and got a concussion. The healer's fixed your ribs and skull but you're still gonna feel like you've been hit by a truck." Emelia chuckled, resting a hand on the back of his head.
Sleep./Go to sleep./Bed, Pietro./You need to rest./You're sore./Recuperate./Everything can wait./Sleep.
The voices in his head were warm an comforting, stronger than when he usually heard them, and he turned to Emelia. "You think you're pretty funny, huh?" A grin on his lips as he sped from her grip and curled up on the bed once more. Emelia shrugged.
"It worked didn't it? Anyway, its always stronger if I'm touching the person." She shrugged. She turned, walking to the door as Pietro grinned at her and her explanation, but she hesitated, "Ask her about her mother." She said, seriously, an emotion she didn't display often. Pietro nodded at her, his smile fading, but still there as she left. Hank peered through the doorway, bright smile on his face.
"Ah, you're awake. That's good. Are you OK?" He asked Pietro, who shrugged, still curled up on his side.
"Been better, been worse." He told Hank. "Hey, how's Barricade? She seemed terrified. Did I terrify her?" He asked, his sentences speeding up as he began to forget about the pain in his ribs. Hank ducked his head, looking at the clipboard in front of him.
"Julia's fine. She spent your first night here with you. She's back every day." Hank cleared his throat once more, his eyes going serious (but when was he not serious, really, this guy must be only 25 and here he was like an old man). "I need to ask you a few questions." He told Pietro.
"And here I was having such a nice day." Pietro fired off, but sat up in record time. Hank sat beside him, not unnerved by the display of mutation.
"Can you tell me what happened to yourself and Julia?"
"Why, what happened to Barricade?" His eyes were sharp and his voice was quick. "Did she disappear? Can she do that now?" He asked. Hank snorted, a grin on his lips, before he schooled his expression into what he liked to call his 'research face'. Pietro watched for a minute, before sighing and rolling his eyes. "We talked, nothing scandalous." He caught Hank's exasperated sigh before continuing, "And she fell asleep. Her shield retracted - I know, because he was holding me up, then I was laying on her. Well," He rocked his hand side to side, "sort of, I still couldn't touch her skin, but like… I poked her with a stick."
"Your first instinct was to poke her with a stick?" Pietro could heard the exasperation in Hank's voice, despite the fact that the teacher's head didn't raise from where it was bent over his clip board.
"No, my first instinct was to eat. So I did. Then, with the popsicle stick." He reached out, a movement that he would call agonizingly slowly but most normal people would still think was faster than average, as he pressed his index finger to Hank's cheek. "I sat by her, then felt her shield rumble beneath me and - Bam!" The volume of his shout made Hank jump, but Pietro just shrugged, "I get acquainted with the wall."
Hank is quiet for the moment that then stretches between them. "Is there anything else?" He asked, his eyes lifting slowly to look at the sliver-haired teen before him. Pietro thinks, it takes him less than a second because that's just how he is, and nods, quickly, a jerky movement of his head.
"She told me, well," he ducked his head and scratched the back of his neck, "she was asleep at the time," clearing his throat, he looked back up, "'I didn't mean to hurt you' and when she woke up, its like she saw someone else, someone terrifying. I'm not terrifying." He told Hank seriously. "Nothing about me is remotely terrifying." Hank let out a small grin, because next to Charles' bi-weekly melt-downs, a teenaged boy with image issues.
"You're not terrifying. Most of the time." Hank conceded, and Pietro grinned, pleased with himself. "You should go see Julia, she's in her room, probably painting. Mind the fumes." Hank gripped his clipboard, standing abruptly and leaving the room. Pietro waited a minute, Hank was still down the hall and he didn't want to seem too eager, didn't want to bowl the guy over or anything on his way to see Julia.
