Laura's Journal

An X-Men Evolution Fanfic by Quill N. Inque

I do not own X-Men.

"What's popular isn't always right, and what's right isn't always popular."-Maya Angelou

Chapter 11: The Price Paid

Chase was still holding my hand as he led me down the corridor to homeroom. I felt my footsteps fall into synchronized rhythm with his, and I guess the situation would have been somewhat enjoyable if people hadn't started staring us. Chase, being an average human, couldn't hear what they were whispering under their breath with their backs turned, but unfortunately for me, I could.

"What is he doing?" a girl with curly blonde tresses muttered resentfully. "Isn't she, like, one of them?"

"She doesn't deserve someone like Chase," one of her friends nodded. "I can't believe he'd actually hold hands with a mutant. Disgusting!"

"Like, totally," a third agreed, turning so that her back was facing me. "Maybe Chase caught some kind of disease from getting to close to her."

"He's, like, actually smiling," Blondie hissed. "Is he under mind control or something? Mutants can do that, right?"

"I think some of them can, but not all. Like that Little Ms. Perfect, Jean Grey."

I could feel the weight of the countless disgusted, judgmental glances that were lobbed my way like a volley of stinging arrows, and I felt their barbed points sink into me with a sharp, physical pain. I could smell their hate, could see the prejudice and arrogant self-righteousness pouring off the other students in tsunami-like waves, and they buffeted me like a tree in a flash flood as I fought to keep one foot going in front of the other. I looked down at my shoes, desperate to cast my gaze anywhere but at the people around me, and I felt disgusted with myself that their insults could have such a stinging impact. I had never given a horse's ass about what people had thought of me before, I hadn't even cared about Logan's opinion of me until very recently, and yet a bunch of strangers could make me want to crawl into some dark, dank hole and hide? I didn't even think I was able to contemplate such cowardice! I was an ex-assassin, for Pete's sake, and I did not do fear! I feared no one! I feared nothing!

Even as that thought crossed my mind, I couldn't convince myself to believe it.

If there was anything close to a smile on my face before, that little revelation sent it crashing down onto my shoes. My face crumpled like a snowdrift as I bore witness to the scorn of my peers, and I wondered if Chase had the resilience to put up with this day after day. I was used to it, having been born a mutant, but he was accustomed to being liked by everyone around him. How would Chase be able to cope with such a fast and drastic change?

If he heard what those girls were saying, Chase gave no indication of it. He just kept that big banana-sized smile pasted on his face, as if he were never happier than he was now, and I concluded that he was either totally oblivious or intentionally ignoring those who stole furtive, contemptuous glances in our direction.

Chase motioned at the door. "Ladies first," he said.

"That kind of sexist crap pisses me off," I warned him, though I took his invitation anyway.

"But you're so cute when you're angry," Chase laughed teasingly, poking me in the side.

"Then I must try harder to appear otherwise," I snorted. "Apparently, it's not working."

"Nope," Chase hugged me fondly from behind, to the astonished gasps of those already assembled in the classroom. I caught sight of Samantha Kelly practically blowing a gasket in her chair, her face red as a beet and her lips sputtering like a dying motor as she threatened to have a total nervous breakdown. Her eyes glinted with malice and hate as she glared daggers at me; if looks could kill, I would have dropped dead on the spot.

I felt a little bit of vengeful satisfaction as I grinned innocently back at her. Take that, bitch-wad.

A hint of that curious heat welled up in my face as more and more of my classmates turned to stare, and Chase, instead of shunning the spotlight, reveled in it. He seemed to be under the delusion that going out with me was something to be bragged upon to everybody else.

Of course, seeing the twinkle in his eye, I wouldn't put it past him. This guy made Romeo look insincere, for Christ's sake; he'd probably jump off a building if I asked him to.

That thought made me giggle in a way that was unfamiliar to those who knew me, and Chase, walking to his desk, broke into an even bigger grin as the sound reached his ears.

"Did you just laugh?" he asked, feigning surprise.

"Shut up," I told him, but there was no anger in it.

"You should do it more often, Laura," Chase said seriously, before turning a little red himself. "I…I like it when I make you feel happy, ya know."

That would have seemed hopelessly mushy if anyone else had said it, but I could tell that he meant every word. Whatever my own thoughts about our…"relationship," Chase was taking it very seriously.

I raised my estimation of him a notch. Being serious about the important stuff was a quality that I had had hardwired into me by HYDRA, and it was one of the few things (if not the only thing) that I respected about Logan. "Thanks," I muttered, glancing away demurely.

The guy in the row behind me tapped Chase on the shoulder. "Dude, whatcha doin', messin' around with her?" he asked.

I spared him an obligatory glance and immediately classified the individual in the "Neanderthal" category. Broad-shouldered, with a protruding brow and wide face, he stood a good two heads higher than me and looked like he could break someone my size into two pieces. The vacant space in his eyes let me know that this was a person who relied on hitting things to solve his problems, and I could picture him perfectly in a Stone Age museum exhibit.

"Go to Hell," Chase snapped back. "Who're you to decide who I spend my time with?"

"I thought you were better'n that, makin' out with th'likes of a mutant," the other boy spat the word as though it tasted foul. "What's gotten into you?"

"Other than using my common sense and not acting like a racist bigot? Nothing," Chase retorted. "And I wouldn't insult Laura if I were you, capische? Otherwise she might filet you like a fish and eat you for breakfast."

"Oh, please!" the thug laughed, turning to glare at me. "Oooh, I'm so frightened of the new girl! You're kiddin', right?"

I gave him a long, cold, unblinking stare, my eyes boring into his like a high-powered drill. The sight unnerved the bully, as I'd intended, and I could tell that I had really "creeped him out" by the way in which he fought to concentrate on something else.

Chase snorted with smothered laughter. "Nice."

"In order to frighten away predators, you must act like a predator," I shrugged. "They respond to body language, so I merely made myself out to be more dangerous than he'd anticipated."

"But you are more dangerous than he is," Chase pointed out. "Like, way more dangerous."

I gave him a mock-glare. "Don't forget it, either."

He laughed and reached across his desk to hug me again, to the consternation of everybody else. "God, you are so hot when you do that," he smirked.

"Hot?" I asked. I'd heard the expression before, but I was unclear as to what it meant in this particular context.

Chase nodded. "You know, pretty, visually appealing, that sort of thing."

"First you tell me to smile more, then you say that you like it better when I frown. Make up your mind, please," I told him.

"Hmmm…" he pretended to think about it. "I think I'll take the best of both worlds, Laura."

I let out another irritatingly involuntary laugh. I probably hadn't laughed three times in the past three years, and Chase had gotten that reaction out of me in at least as many minutes. What was it about him that made me start to have…stirrings?

Don't you mean feelings? That little doubting voice sneered.

I clenched my teeth and curled my hand into a fist so tight that my knuckles turned pale. The tiny whisper of doubt that I felt in my head like a breath of icy wind was starting to gnaw at my gut like a ravenous mouse. The little knife of uncertainty that I'd first experienced on my arrival at the Institute had become the size of a freaking butcher's knife that someone had rammed into my stomach.

I could have been walking on the edge of the blade, for all I knew. Chase's display of affection in front of everybody in homeroom had riled up the students like a nest of hornets, and I knew I had to proceed with caution if I didn't want to be devoured like the lawyer from Jurassic Park.

Unfortunately, since I was so focused on the "big picture," I failed to notice what was happening right under my very nose. In any other situation, I would have heard Samantha Kelly sneaking up behind me a mile away, but with all the noise in my head, the sounds in the classroom had faded to a muted drone as I sat with my thoughts, Chase, and my thoughts on Chase.

With the exception of Logan, I don't think I've given anyone that much attention before.

Samantha crept up behind me like the slithering wad of shit-stained snakeskin she was, and she let out a high-pitched, vicious squeal of malevolent glee when her finger seized a fistful of my hair and yanked it back, hard.

I let out a yelp of surprise and pain, and Chase turned with an outraged roar that actually achieved commendable volume. I felt the roots threaten to pull free from my scalp as Samantha Kelly's pig-like screech blasted into my ears, and I was so taken aback that I didn't actually consider chopping her into caviar until after the incident was over.

Tears-tears!-of agony squinched from my eyes, and Chase gave the teacher a pleading glance as I felt blood well up onto my skin.

"This is what you get for not knowing your place, loser!" Samantha hissed joyfully. "I hope it never grows back!"

I let out an excruciated grunt as my vision went gray with pain, and the noise finally got the homeroom teacher's attention. An administrator, I thought, certainly wouldn't stand for this kind of blatant violence on school property.

I should have known better.

"Ms. Howlett, please settle down or I will refer you to the principal's office," the instructor said, meeting my eyes with a glint that matched Kelly's own. It was obvious that he saw what was happening; he just didn't care.

I drew my leg back and went to ram the heel of my heavy boot into Kelly's shin, but to my shock and grudging admiration, Chase Lancaster beat me to the punch. He picked up his thick, paper-backed textbook and brought it down on Samantha's head with a satisfying, bone-jarring smack. She staggered, stunned, and I took that opportunity to whirl around and practically ram my fist down her throat. A bloody tooth clattered onto the floor as Kelly tottered backward into her chair and clamped two hands on her bloody face and mouth, and the teacher, being the bigot he was, sprang to her defense.

Chase stopped him. "Before you go and pick that up," he said, nodding toward the teacher's cell phone with a smug smile on his face, "remember that the school has protocols in place that allow exemption when a student engages in self-defense. Samantha struck first and started the whole thing, so Laura was completely within her rights to protect herself. I, being her boyfriend," he enunciated that last word clearly, and I almost flinched as a condense wave of hate and loathing from the other students rolled over me, "was concerned that Laura might need assistance. Ergo, if anyone should be punished, it's Kelly, not us."

The teacher's face turned a shade of crimson red, and he sputtered for a moment before finally spitting, "Fine!" and sinking back into his chair. I took a moment to wipe my hands, which were still covered in blood, on the sleeve of Samantha's shirt as she lay moaning loudly in her chair. I had no doubt that that was a ploy to gain sympathy; before long, Kelly would have distorted the facts and altered the story so that I was made out to be the aggressor.

"Chase…" she sniffed. "How could you do that, choosing one of them over your own kind?"

"That's easy," Chase replied coldly, taking my hand again in a silent gesture of defiance. "You're in it, aren't you?"

"You've thrown your lot in with the mutants," the boy in the chair next to Kelly growled. "Traitor."

"That so?" Chase's grin was amused. "I never knew I was supposed to let other people tell me who I could be friends with, or more."

"Daddy's going to eat you for breakfast when he hears about this!" Kelly snapped. "Better watch your back, mutant-lover!"

"Are you with her because you can have her whenever you want?" another student jeered. "I never knew mutant girls were so easy! Hahahahahaha!"

Chase stood up so fast that he sent his chair clattering to the floor. "Any man dare challenge me, let him speak!" he growled, clenching his hands so that the muscles in his arms bulged. I assumed that the point of this was to accentuate his strength. "I decide who I go with, not you! I decide who my real friends are, not you! You are all voiceless with bigotry! Deaf with the preachings of prejudice that your parents feed you! Mute from the words of hate that spew from your mouths! You narrow-minded, baseless creatures, you make me sick, the lot of you! You deride me for treating Laura like a decent human being, but it is you who deserve to be scorned!"

He turned to Laura's neighbor, who had snarked at him moments before. "You wanna have a go?" Chase snarled, narrowing his eyes as they roved around the room. "Do you, or you, or you? Spout one more crack about Laura being a mutant, just one, and I swear to God I'll meet after school at the flagpole to make you bleed for it!"

The other students, and even the teacher, averted their eyes so as not to meet Chase's burning gaze. I arched an eyebrow, both amused and rather impressed that he'd had the guts to do something like this. That no challengers to his claim of dominance were forthcoming seemed to me like a sign that Chase wielded more influence and power over his peers than I'd originally given him credit for. He certainly did look like the archetypal alpha-male, standing a good head taller than anyone else and rippling with mass that was all brute muscle. Chase wasn't built like an NFL linebacker, that's for sure, but he was lean and fast with a strength that showed beneath his skin. I appreciated for the first time how hard he must have worked to attain such peak physical performance; I hadn't had a need to do that, since it had been hardwired into my genetic structure, but Chase obviously spent more than a little time at the gym.

Without waiting for a response, he ran a scornful eye across the room and, I kid you not, spat right on the floor. "I thought so," Chase said contemptuously, grabbing my hand. "Let's go, Laura."

I let him lead me out of the room. I had a hunch that he wanted to assert that he was capable of protecting me (even though I hardly needed his protection or anyone else's), so I stayed quiet and let him have his moment. I felt my chest flutter again at the sight of the furious expression on his face, and I thought to myself that that was the expression that I'd like to see more often.

Chase, I concluded, was rather attractive when he was riled up. I could smell the adrenaline and testosterone coursing through his veins even at that very moment.

We halted halfway down the hall, and Chase let out a long, drawn out breath as his anger began to vanish. I could see that such things didn't come easily to someone as…nice… as he was. Perhaps Chase's parents had impressed upon him the importance of keeping your temper in check.

A shame. I could have taught him better.

He was visibly pale and beginning to shake slightly as he leaned against a nearby column. "Sorry about that," he told me, giving me a watery smile. "Guess I lost my temper, huh?"

"That's nothing to be ashamed of. Anger can be a powerful weapon, once you know how to harness it."

"You sound like a Star Wars character!" Chase laughed, though the allusion made a sound like a jet plane as it flew over my head.

He suddenly turned serious. "I…I didn't embarrass you, did I?" he asked apprehensively.

"I've never been very self-conscious," I assured him, and I was startled at how quick I was to put his mind at ease.

"Oh, good," Chase sagged visibly with relief. "For a moment there, I was afraid. Think they'll leave us alone now?"

"I doubt it. We would be wise to expect some form of retaliation," I advised him.

"I'll keep that in mind," he nodded seriously as the bell rang. "See you in class?"

No, said my brain. "Yes," said my traitorous mouth.

"Great!" Chase's face lit up like a freaking Christmas tree as he ran down the hall. "Take care, Laura!"

I would only discover later that I wasn't the one Chase should have been worried about.

Much later…

I was surprised to see Logan waiting for me that afternoon, not in the minivan that I had become accustomed to, but on his motorcycle. Two helmets dangled from his meaty hands, which meant that he intended for me to ride on that metal death contraption all the way back to the Institute. I disliked and distrusted this kind of vehicle, with its poor balance, inferior ability to negotiate turns and lamentable brakes.

I should know. I've stolen enough of them to become well-acquainted with the finer points of Harley-Davidson mechanics.

Logan took the precautionary road and shot a well-practiced, menacing glare at any student who got too close to him. I wasn't sure if that was for my sake or because Logan didn't do well with teenagers, but it worked, and even the crosswalk guard gave him a wide berth as I strode up casually to meet him.

"Where's the car?" I asked.

"In the shop," Logan growled. "That idiot Gambit took it for a spin after he'd slugged down a bottle of bourbon and rammed it into a tree in the front yard."

"Why didn't you stop him?"

"I was busy," Logan told me shortly. "You comin' or not?"

"Fine," I shrugged, choosing a black helmet with flame decals and a polarized visor. The chin straps clicked as I snapped them together, but Logan was far from pleased.

"That's my helmet, Small Fry."

"Cry me a river."

"Gimme the damn helmet!"

"No," I told him stubbornly.

Logan must not have felt like arguing, which was unusual for him, because he muttered a curse word in a language I didn't understand and managed to cram the other helmet onto his skull. It just barely fit him, and I would have laughed at him just to piss him off if I weren't halfway convinced that he'd slug me for it.

Logan sniffed the air as I swung my legs over the motorbike. "What's that smell?"

"Diesel fuel?" I guessed, missing the knowing look that flashed in his eye.

"Naw, it's probably nuthin'," Logan shrugged. "Now hang on tight an' don' let go, 'cuz I don' want Chuck yellin' at me if ya go sprawlin' onto the pavement, hear?"

I nodded and dismissed the incident, thinking it nothing more than a result of Logan's perpetual paranoia.

I would curse myself later for being such a fool.

Epilogue

Bayville, 7:00 P.M.

I wouldn't know it until later, but as I sat in my room later than evening, surrounded by homework and textbooks, Logan was out on the prowl. I had no idea that he'd caught Chase's scent on my clothing, never suspected that he might try to trace the smell back to the source from which it originated. I would learn later, to my horror, that Logan had slipped quietly out of the Institute when the Professor wasn't looking and found Chase just outside the entrance of a small diner, presumably about to eat supper.

I do not dare imagine the look of horror that crossed over Chase's features when Logan crept up behind him and tapped him roughly on the shoulder.

"Hey Tinkerbell," he growled. "Let's chat."

A/N: OH, SNAP! Logan KNOWS! What horrible fate will befall Chase now? Will he live to see the next day, or will Logan eviscerate him? Find out in coming chapters! And PLEASE REVIEW! If you have ANY ideas or suggestions, LET ME KNOW! YOUR OPINION COUNTS!

Your humble servant,

-Quill N. Inque