I got quite a few responses to last chapter. Thanks guys (:
A few of the ship names that I had suggested : Havren & Attie (Guest) Allie (Spirited Mare) and Alettix (BethyXstar)
I like those a lot. I'm really really digging Havren. Kind of reminds me of a safe haven. Probably because havren and haven are one letter off. Whatever. I like Havren.
As always, thank you thank you THAAAAANK YOOOUUUU for the reviews. You guys are fucking awesome. Especially to those that are still following and favouriting and the ones that haven't just given up because I'm a failure at updating. Okay.
The two boys, regardless of how many times she begged and screamed and kicked, would not let her walk to the mansion, nor up the stairs, by herself. This slightly bothered Lettie. She appreciated it, really she did, okay no she didn't but still, she didn't have to be carried like a babe. Finally they made it up to the top floor of the house and Alex deposited her on the bed. Both of the guys stood awkwardly around her, Alex just shuffling his feet and Sean bouncing around.
"Do you need anything?" Sean asked.
"For you guys to realize that I'm perfectly fine." Lettie huffed.
"Anything else?" Alex asked sarcastically.
"Yes, actually. I'm going to shower. Will the two of you be assisting me in there, as well?" Lettie snipped. Sean blushed a furious shade of red and chuckled nervously. Alex never broke eye contact, though he had a playful smirk on his face.
"If you insist." He quirked his eyebrows as he lifted her once more, this time throwing her over his shoulder, and took her in the direction of the bathroom. "Come on, Sean. The lady requested assistance in the shower."
"Well, alright then!" Sean came bounding after the two mutants, the lady-part of which was yelling,
'"I WAS KIDDING! PUT ME DOWN YOU BIG BABOON! I CAN TAKE A FUCKING SHOWER! GET ME OFF OF YOUR DAMN SHOULDER! I'M GOING TO DROWN YOU!"
Meanwhile, Alex was calming talking under her. "No, my Lady. You requested assistance in the shower. What kind of friends, nay, MEN, would we be if we didn't assist such a proper lady in her time of need? This really is a matter of keeping our manhood."
When they got to the bathroom, Alex gently took Lettie off of his shoulder and placed her in front of him, firmly on the ground. He stared at her, one eyebrow cocked, and she stood back and crossed her arms while huffing.
"You boys are such a fucking pain in the ass. Thank you for your assistance." She bit sarcastically before pushing the boys out and slamming the door in their faces. As soon as the door was shut, she sat on the ground. Her leg really fucking hurt. But she wouldn't let the boys know it. OH no. That would just give them incentive to baby her for MONTHS. Lettie rolled her eyes as she pulled her way up from the ground and hobbled over to the really nice shower. As she was washing off the sweat she had gathered in the cool morning (something she couldn't understand until she realized that she had ran around the grounds for HOW long), she realized what she had thought earlier. Incentive to tease her for months. Months. Subconsciously, Lettie was still planning on being around months from now. Realizing this was weird for her. She hadn't been planning on staying that long. Just for a little while. Surely she could just come up and fight with them whenever they needed her. She really missed her mom. But when Lettie realized that the hot water of the shower was making her leg feel a hundred times better, all other thoughts left her mind and she simply enjoyed the water as she always had.
By the time Lettie was done in the shower, her leg felt as if it had never even been hurt, save for a slight throb when she tested this out and jumped on it. Maybe Charles has magical water, Lettie mused. Wouldn't put it past him, not with everything else.
Throwing on clean clothes, with her hair pulled behind her, Lettie ran down the stairs into the kitchen. She was ravenous. There, she found all of the others gathered with food piled on their plates.
"YOU SAID ONE INJURY A DAY!" Sean yelled accusingly from the other side of the island.
"Really, Sean. You're over-reacting. It's not an injury-" Charles tried to reason with him as Lettie was filling up her plate.
"It'll hurt, that makes it an injury." Sean shot back.
"What's an injury?" Lettie asked.
"Charles wants Hank to run blood work on all of us, see if he can't figure out a bit more about each of our mutations." Raven explained to her.
"And Sean is claiming that having the needle stuck into his skin counts as an injury, so they can't do it today." Erik finished.
"Oh, come on, Sean. It's not that big of a deal! I'll hold your hand for you while you have your arm stuck with the itty bitty needle if it'll make you shut the hell up." Lettie rolled her eyes as she took the opportunity to tease the red-head. Payback for being such an ass and helping Alex carry her all the way to her room. Speaking of Alex, Lettie noted that he was not present in the kitchen. She voiced her wonder as to where he is out loud, and Charles was quick to respond,
"He said he needed to have a bit of alone time. I can only imagine that it's hard for him to be in a house full of people constantly interacting with him. I trust he told you all of his past. He's not use to the social means of living with others. Not quite yet. He still has his walls, and I must ask each of you to not push him. If he walks away, give him some time. Yeah?"
The younger mutants all nodded, but Lettie wasn't satisfied. She wanted to find him and talk to him. Whether he needed a break from people or not, it wasn't nice to be alone all the time. And he'd have to slowly get use to it anyways. So after scarfing down her food, Lettie decided to go find him. With a nod to pass on the word to Alex, should she or any of the others see him, that they would be taking blood this afternoon for Hank to study, she began making her way upstairs. She had no idea where to look and this place was huge. Then there was the fact that he might not even be in the house, and the grounds were... well, huge is an understatement. She decided to start in his bedroom at the top of the house. Damn, she thought as she reached the top floor. With all these stair on top of the training we're doing, I'll be fit in no time. She huffed slightly as she walked to the door that had been claimed as Alex's and knocked. But there was no response. She knocked again, and once again there was no response. Lettie debated. He could be in the shower, so he didn't hear her knock. Or he could be sitting there, hearing her knock, and ignoring her in hopes that whoever it is knocking will just go away. Or he could not even be in his room. Lettie knocked once more, and after getting no response, she acted on impulse and pushed the door open slowly. His room was empty and the door to the bathroom was open. He wasn't in here.
In noticing that his room was empty, Lettie also noticed that his room was... empty. No person touches adorned the room, no extra clothes or books or pictures. It was a homey room, but she could tell that everything in it was Charles'. The fact that Alex had nothing, had the past few years of his life in a prison, was once again brought to Lettie's mind. This boy was something else. He was quiet, but funny. More than handsome, more than beautiful, but broken. And Lettie felt for him.
She realized that she had been standing, staring at the nothing-ness of his room, for a good five minutes when she snapped back to reality and quickly shut the door. She ruled out any of the other bedrooms and went down to the second floor, then the first, searching every room and coming up empty handed every time.
Sighing, Lettie realized that this meant he was on the grounds. This will be fun. I suck at hide and seek. She whined to herself. I guess I don't have to go find him. He'll come back eventually. She thought, her laziness peeking through. But then there came the voice from the back of her mind, Yes, you do. And with no more complaints to herself, she pushed open the front door and stepped onto the expansive greenery.
If I was a teenage mutant boy who had been in prison for most of my life and wanted alone time, where would I go? Lettie asked herself. Sighing when she realized that she had no idea where to even start, she just began walking around. She scanned the trees, looking for a figure or s sign that he had gone that way, but there was nothing. She walked past the gate where she and Sean had found the garden earlier, and backtracked. Peering in, she was surprised to see Alex perched on a bench with his head in his hands. Now that she had found him, Lettie was unsure if she actually wanted to go say something. Of course she did, but maybe it was best to listen to Charles and just leave him alone. If he had requested it... Almost against her will, she found her feet quietly moving her close to him.
"Alex?" She whispered, laying a hand on his (very muscular) back. "Alex, are you alright?"
"I'm fine, Lettie." He whispered. "It's just overwhelming being around people all the time. I'm fine. What are you doing out here?"
"I... I was worried. I wanted to make sure you're okay. Weird or not, I was worried about you." Lettie admitted, standing to go back into the house. "We're drawing blood later this afternoon. Hank is going to run tests and see if he can find anything out about our mutations. I'll see you later, okay?" She rubbed his back comfortingly before stepping away and going back towards the house. She had gotten to the gate when she heard Alex call out.
"Lettie. You can stay." Pausing only for a second, Lettie quickly walked back to him, talking softly as she did.
"Sean is determined that we're not giving blood today. He said that Charles said only one injury a day, and because giving blood will hurt it's classified as an injury." She said with a smile on her face. Alex laughed in shook his head in his hands. It was quiet for several minutes before Alex looked up at Lettie and whispered,
"You don't have to stay. I like having you around, even when it's just quiet, but you can go back to the rest of the house. I'm sure they're much more entertaining."
"I don't mind sitting out here with you." Lettie smiled at him once more. "This is actually where our flag was hidden, I'm assuming. I couldn't really see anything, but I'm guessing that this is the only garden on the grounds. Probably not, though. This place is fucking massive. But I think it was this one. And I'm guessing this bench thing is what Sean climbed on to get to the flag. If I'm talking too much, just tell me to shut up."
"No, no. Keep talking." Alex assured her. "I do like being around people. I'm just not use to it. Even before I went to prison, I kept myself isolated. I wanted to avoid as many accidents as I could. But I always wanted to be around other people."
"I get it. When you're by yourself for so long it, it's what you get use to. On the days where my mom works for two or three days straight, sleeping at the hospital and everything, and I'm off of work, I only ever have my fish to talk to. My fish and my books. I've never had many friends. It's weird to think that I – WE – now have a load of friends back at the house. Friends that are like us, won't judge us for our differences or our backgrounds. The people inside that mansion... I have to believe that they honestly, genuinely care for us. Even Moira, the mutant loving human. We're all good guys here."
"But the bad guys are out there. And they're threatening to take away the closest thing I've had to a family in a long time. They've already taken... Darwin..." Lettie could tell that just saying his name caused Alex a wash of grief, and she placed a hand on his arm. "And now we're against them. Being against them means that we won't just get to sit here in peace, especially not if they're trying to cause what we're trying to stop. We already saw how powerful they are, how dangerous. Why get close to a group of people, when you know that there's a good chance it'll get torn apart?"
Lettie sat in silence, wondering how to say the words on her mind. "Family." Alex caught her stare. "No matter how tough times get, you don't give up on your family. They're strong, but so are we. Do you realize how differently that would have gone, had Charles and Erik been there? Yeah, they took out a building full of C.I.A. Men, and yeah, they overpowered a group of untrained teenage mutants, but that's why we're here. We have to learn to fight. To protect ourselves and our family."
For the first time since they were all thrown in a room together, strangers that would become closer than air, Lettie saw his smile as he repeated one word. "Family."
When the two young mutants arrived at the mansion a few hours later, they walked in on Sean standing at the foot of the stairs with his arms crossed across his chest and a determined look on his face. Charles was attempting to push him up the stairs from behind, Raven was pulling him up, Hank was standing at the top of the landing, unsure what to do with himself, and Moira and Erik were standing off to the side with amused looks on their faces, but he wasn't budging.
"Lettie promised to hold my hand. Since she's not here to hold my hand, I don't have to get stuck with a needle."
"Actually," Lettie spoke up from the door. "We're right here. So come on, you big boob. Let's go." She laughed as she and Alex walked calmly up the stairs. They could hear Sean cussing and still fighting behind them. Rolling her eyes, Lettie stopped, turned, and held her hand out.
She and Sean had an intense stare off before he finally accepted defeat, dropped his head, and walked slowly up the stairs. When they got to the lab, Lettie and Alex both volunteered to go first. Within three minutes, Sean was sat on the table with a rubber band around his forearm, a kicked-puppy look on his face, and Lettie's hand being crushed by his.
"Seriously, Sean. I don't understand what the big deal is. It's just a little-"
"OW! MOTHER OF GOD! WHERE WAS MY WARNING?"
Lettie just laughed, winked at Hank, who had ingeniously stuck Sean while he was distracted, and walked innocently out of the room. The booming laughs of all but Sean could be heard even on the stair case.
I think I'm going to like it here. Family.
