Keri sat in the doorway, watching as Dan sat in the corner of the room, his back against the wall as he balanced the guitar on his legs. Keri glanced over at Zoe, who was still asleep, as Dan pulled out a pick and started lazily dragging it across the strings. Keri smiled and tilted her head back, letting her eyes drift closed as she listened to the soft melody that he made with the instrument and for a little while, she could pretend that she and Dan weren't on some mission to make Zoe remember who she was. For a little while, Keri could pretend that the three of them were just three semi-normal teenagers.
That flimsy illusion was shattered when Dan started singing. Keri's eyes opened as she watched him, listening to the words that fell from his mouth. She noticed that he sounded like a younger mix of Bryan Adams and Isaac Slade, but at the same time, there was a sorrow in that made him sound much more mature than his sixteen years.
"Sound the Bugle now.
Play it just for me.
As the seasons change,
I remember how I used to be.
Now I can't go on.
I can't even start.
I've got nothing left,
Just an empty heart.
I'm a soldier,
Wounded so I must give up the fight.
There's nothing more for me,
Lead me away
Or leave me lying here."
Keri watched him curiously, completely ignoring Zoe as she slowly woke, rolling onto her side and opening her eyes a slit to see what all the commotion was about. Upon noticing Dan, every muscle in her entire body tensing in fear as she took in his blonde hair and angular features, recognising immediately who he was. She relaxed soon after as she watched him, listening to the anguished way he played, as if he'd lost his only love. She felt goose bumps rise all over her skin when he started singing again, not just because of how good he sounded, but because he sang with so much emotion, so much pain. Quickly, an image flickered on the backs of her eyelids when she blinked, of a pair of strong arms, the underside covered in scars much like her own. Brushing it away, she focused on the song, letting the music affect her the way songs like that always did, the way the notes seemed to pierce through her and touch her soul.
"Sound the Bugle now,
Tell them I don't care.
There's not a road I know that leads to anywhere.
Without a lighter, I fear that I will stumble in the dark.
Lay right down,
Decide not to go on."
Both girls, the one broken almost beyond repair and the girl determined to fix her, took sharp intakes of breath when the intensity of the music thickened and Dan's voice no longer held so much emotion that it brought tears to Keri's eyes. His voice was raw emotion, in most pure form.
"Then from on high,
Somewhere in the distance,
There's a voice that calls,
'Remember who you are.
If you lose yourself,
Your courage soon will follow.
So be strong tonight.
Remember who you are.'"
Keri listened as Dan's focus turned completely on the guitar, his blue eyes cast downward to the strings as he carefully plucked at the strings to produce the final notes. When he raised his head to look at Zoe, he found that she was awake and watching him with curious green eyes. Keri watched the two cautiously, every muscle tensed and ready to push Dan out of the room if she needed to. Zoe was still fragile, no matter how strong she seemed.
"Hey." Dan said gently.
"Hey." Zoe said, pulling herself up into sitting position.
Keri shivered. The tension that hung between Dan and Zoe was so thick and heavy that Keri, easily, could have pulled out a knife and cut it with it.
"How are you?" Dan asked quietly.
Zoe shrugged. "I'm getting better." She held out her arm. "I feel fatter."
"Healthier, not fatter." Dan said quietly, his blue eyes regarding her sadly.
Zoe turned her gaze from her arm to him, watching him with an unreadable expression. Finally, she asked, "If you have a voice like that, why aren't you singing all over the world? Why are you protecting a world full of bad people?"
Zoe's question seemed to take Dan completely by surprise. Apparently, the old Zoe would never have asked anything like that. But finally, he said, "When I was a kid I always wanted to be a superhero. I loved Wolverine."
Zoe's brow furrowed as she tried to remember who Wolverine was. Her knowledge of Marvel superheroes had been quite small before she'd been captured by KORPS, but Dan couldn't see any reason for them to have to changed or locked away the memory of him making her watch his favourite superhero movies.
Zoe watched with interest as the man with an unusually-shaped beard onscreen fought against the Japanese archer, and finally stabbed him into the shoulders with the claws that came out of his knuckles.
"What kind of monster are you?" the archer gasped.
"The Wolverine." The bearded man replied, pushing the archer to the ground. He then pulled the samurai sword from out of his stomach and his skin almost immediately healed over it.
Dan looked over at Zoe from the corner of his eye, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Once again, he could feel how easy it would be to kiss her. He could already imagine how her lips would taste, how they would feel against his own.
But as usual, he held back. Zoe had enough to deal with. She didn't need his emotional baggage on top of it.
"Wolverine's the one played by Hugh Jackman, isn't he?" Zoe asked, almost sounding like her old self. "The immortal one with the claws and his skeleton covered in antiman – "
"Adamantum?" Dan asked.
Zoe smiled. "Yeah, that one."
"Oh, dear God." Keri groaned.
"What?" Dan asked.
"I'm at a Marvel nerd convention." Keri replied with a grin.
Dan turned to Zoe with a grin. "Anyway, when I was a kid, I wanted to be superhero. I love music, but being an agent is the closest humanly possible thing to being a superhero."
Zoe smiled gently. More or less, that answered her question.
Yes, I integrated my newfound obession with Wolverine and the X-Men movies into this. If you haven't watched them, you should. Seriously. The movie mentioned in this is 'The Wolverine' and the song that Dan sings is 'Sound the Bugle', originally performed by Bryan Adams.
