Disclaimer: Writer not affiliated with Marvel in any way, shape or form, characters and original settings all belong to Marvel Comics. Just wanted to finally give these two a chance, been rooting for them since they met in New X-Men. Now let's all write Craig Kyle and Chris Yost and tell them to give these two a break in the comics, I think we can all agree they both deserve it!
Timeline Notes: M-Day has not happened in this timeline, nor did Laura/X-23 take part in joining the characters of NYX, but her personal timeline before NYX is intact. Claremont's X-Men run and by extension and the events in New X-Men have not involved Laura Kinney at all. Similarly, events that became possible by M-Day such as Civil War, Messiah Complex and Secret Invasion will not have occurred. (Mass mutant rebellion against Registration would have fielded advantage to the Anti-Registration side after all). Julian Keller has left the Xavier Institute approximately one year before the story takes place, but the Hellions Mini and his activity in New Mutants Volume 2 and New X-Men: Academy X have all taken place.
Character Notes: Estimating Julian to be 17 years old at the time of this and Laura to be about 16 years old given Comic timelines move in strange and mysterious ways and characters are suddenly younger and older for no reason. Maintaining Laura's tendency of not using contractions and slang when she talks as seen in New X-Men and X-Force. Also taking my best guess on Laura's personality in this time line and how it would evolve over time.
Note for "M" Label: Contains strong language, strong sexual themes with some graphic description in certain chapters with intermittent violence and some scenes of torture. Not for younger readers of course, but it's the internet and I doubt anyone's taking maturity labels seriously… Read entire chapters before judging please, nothing's written without purpose.
Chapter Eleven: Discovery
Julian had convinced Laura to stay, at least long enough to have the psychic commands in her head removed for her own safety and long-term mental health. Laura spent time initially with Celeste Cuckoo as Emma Frost was busy helping all the captured girls get King's brainwashing out of their heads.
The problem was Laura had to internally disable her psychic defences to let Celeste in and she saw the other side of Laura's mind and her past when she looked inside. Laura had to open herself up and risk exposure of her secret while Celeste had found King's psychic commands and removed them, but being inquisitive as telepaths are she took a quick look at Laura's past..
Celeste nearly passed out from the memories she saw and feeling Laura's internal instincts, her life as X-23 and that she already had eleven plans to kill Celeste without raising any alarm if she had to escape quickly. Emma Frost was called in when this was discovered and demanded a full explanation from Laura about her origins and it created a ruckus over what was to be done with her. Laura was a living weapon, trained in over a hundred ways to kill with bare hands or claws alone. She was brainwashed with a deep-seated command Emma could not remove that left her a victim of the trigger scent the Facility used on her. Laura had killed over four hundred people by her thirteenth birthday and was fully capable of tearing through half the school before she might be stopped. Laura's guarded responses and tendency to release her claws when approached for any medical testing caused great concern about her mental stability and instinct for personal survival. Frost had decided that during her hiding from the Facility and her capture by The Club, she had used Julian as a tool of escape, never telling him what she was or what she was capable of.
Julian had known already, she'd told him about her past during her first night in the Institute, when the school had nearly been emptied to accommodate the sudden influx in population. All mutants under the age of 16 and all male students in the school had been sent on a peer bonding/retreat. Frost had determined the former captive girls needed to be kept away from men while their initial deprogramming and recovery took place. Frost did not want the younger students initiating any accidental contact with the former slaves either. The captured guards, staff, Elites and King had been taken into custody and carefully kept in the sublevels well away from their former captives. The human guards and staff were put in the Danger Room
Laura had slipped out quietly after she and most of the other captives had been given rooms in the dormitory to rest in. The shape shifters had remained in the medical bay for more intensive telepathic treatment and even suicide watch, their cases were especially troublesome. King had gone one step further with them, locking their minds out from assuming their actual forms, requiring them to only shift into forms they had permission to become and adopt required personalities in these new forms. They were forced to behave like sexually addicted versions of the people they impersonated. The requirement to always be in different forms to serve clients and have varied personalities for each of them had left deep psychological trauma. Laura had trouble differentiating between being X-23, Laura and as if a bothersome intruder in her subconscious, Doll. The shape shifters had been required to adopt up to a dozen committed personalities each and form in to even more depending upon preferences from the clients.
Wolverine had been trying to convince Cyclops for about an hour to let him go to the detention cells and just get rid of King and the clients and keep a lid on the whole matter of what went on. Emma Frost was busy using the telepaths in a coordinate effort to keep subtle observation of all the rescued girl's mental states to check for signs of psychological distress and self-harming behaviour. There were already trauma specialists being flown in, from everywhere the X-Men could find to help take part in a massive deprogramming and recovery effort. More X-Men had arrived as well, all women as well Laura noted, likely to help prevent any possible incidents with their interactions with males.
Julian had been sleeping in an isolated tent from the rest of the camped-out students, refusing to be near them. It was either concern of conflict or simple confrontation Laura assessed when she found him. Laura asked him if he could take them somewhere where they would not likely be seen or heard with her hand over his mouth when she woke him up. Julian nodded, seeming surprised she had come to see him at all.
Julian flew them up to the roof and Laura told him about how she'd been born X-23 and only later, had managed to escape and try to be Laura Kinney. Laura told him about how she'd had to say goodbye to Megan and Debbie when The Facility had caught up to her, how she'd had to hide in the streets and lived as a prostitute until The Club took her. Julian had seem more heartbroken than she had felt retelling the story, he realized Laura had spent less time getting to be a regular girl than he'd spent with broken limbs. It had scared him at first, to think of her as a trained assassin from birth, taught no joy or comfort and made into a weapon. Julian saw though, she wanted to be something else, she wanted to be what she called Laura Kinney, the person she least knew how to be.
Julian had been apprehensive even with her telling him she didn't really want to be X-23, but didn't really know how to be anything else. He had seen the fascination in Laura's eyes when he had flown them with his telekinesis to the school roof and when a shooting star flew over them. Julian swore to her whatever happened, he would not let them hurt her or try to turn her in to some government group like SHIELD. Laura didn't deserve to be treated like some little drone assassin while the X-Men decided what was to be done with her. In his eyes, she'd been denied so much, but she was still fighting to get free of being controlled. Miss Frost would probably want to wipe her memory clean, but then it wouldn't be Laura, that was always her solution. Play with someone's head until everything was better. Wolverine had sat down with Laura too, Julian had stood outside, ready to throw Wolverine to the other side of the country if he started threatening her.
It didn't happen, it seemed Wolverine and Laura knew each other from some brief encounter in the past, but he had not mentioned it before now. Wolverine, Logan had said he had kept that information from Cyclops and Frost in case it spoiled them about the mission or made them think to have SHIELD ready to pick her up and take her away. Logan suspected Emma was unduly influencing Scott, but he also said he never quite knew what was going on in either of their heads so had not left it to chance. Logan was on their side and threatened Frost in full view of the X-Men and the senior female students still in the school that if she tried to throw Laura out of there, he'd gut her in her sleep. There were few things that could inspire fear, but Julian was pretty sure that even Emma Frost, the telepath with a diamond skin knew better than to push Wolverine. Logan knew Laura needed refuge, time to establish herself and find an identity of her own.
Julian knew whatever went on, sooner or later it wasn't going to work out well for them. He was fine if he was thrown out or was tossed in jail for what he had been doing, but he knew Laura was the one truly in danger here and he needed to protect her. Emma had Cyclops under her thumb, which is why he had been offered a chance to stay at the Institute because of his efforts. Beast was too busy trying to cover the medical issues of a hundred brainwashed mutant girls who had been starved, abused and even some of them become physically addicted to their Inducer captors. The other teachers were always coming and going and were not reliable. Laura also warned him that she'd eavesdropped with her enhanced hearing, inquiries were being made about the SHIELD unit that had been tasked to capture X-23.
Julian decided enough was enough, he still had a lot of money, a scrambled phone and a few ideas about lying low. He told Laura to meet him in his room at midnight if she wanted to leave the Institute and go somewhere where no one could find her. Julian flew back to New York to get the case the lawyers had held for him, his parents either still didn't know he was in New York or didn't care. Julian wrote a brief note to his parents, saying he had to help some friends out and likely would have to disappear for a very long time.
"Yes, I know what I said. I want it bought, I don't care, just get it. No, I don't need plane tickets or a car. I'll handle transportation, no you don't need to know who this is. I'm paying you double, just make it happen. If you need a name on a document, use Smith." Julian argued on the phone and hung up.
"Take care of her kid, or I'm coming for you." Wolverine said standing in the doorway.
"You know?" Julian asked worried.
"Don't worry, Frost doesn't know anything and I can keep her out of my head. You need help, you call me. They might still come after her , people who'd want to use her." Wolverine said as he handed Julian a piece of paper with his phone number.
"They want her, they'll have to go through me." Julian said, his eyes blazing with green telekinetic energy.
"All I needed to know. You're a good kid Keller, I hope you come back here one day. If only to piss off Summers and the Ice Queen for sticking it to her, again." Wolverine said and walked off. Julian went back to
"Leaving again?" Cessily asked as she looked at Julian's bag, he'd neglected to take most of his things since he had left the Institute, he doubted he would be returning any time soon to retrieve them.
Cessily had refused to let any of his stuff get thrown away, figuring he would come back one day, she had hope like that. Julian was rather thankful, he didn't really feel like flying back across the country just to pick up some clothes.
"Not if Frost is asking, or Summers." Julian said as he checked his bag and made everything was in order. He heard Santo's rather loud footsteps and turned around, Santo, Cessily and Sofia had come in to his room.
"Is she going with you?" Sofia asked, Julian stared back at her.
"Yes, Laura is coming with me. This place isn't going to do her any good, either Frost is going to nuke her mind, turn her over to SHIELD or just kick her out. None of those three things work for her or anyone else. She needs to be free, she hasn't had that a day in her life, I'm going to help her get it." Julian said as he found his old passport and smirked, his fake ones had better pictures than his real one.
"We heard from the Cuckoos what she is. You can't be serious, she'll kill you in her sleep if she has a bad dream." Cessily said concerned.
"Nobody here knows who she is, she doesn't even know. If she wanted to kill me she had more then enough chances by now since she got out of that place. I've stayed with her practically every night when everyone's been asleep, staying in her room to make sure Frost doesn't come in there and mind-wipe her. I have a ridiculously sore neck from sleeping in a chair and making sure no one else was coming after her, I promised her I'd keep her safe from anyone trying to us her." Julian snapped angrily, rubbing his neck after five nights of very unrestful sleep.
"Laura needs to feel what we've taken for granted since we were born. You've all found your place here, The New Mutants will be the X-Men in a few years. Me, I don't know who I am anymore. First I was going to help run the family business, then I was going to be an X-Man, than a mutant saboteur for hire. I haven't had a day off to think about what I should be doing since I was about six years old. She doesn't know what she should be and neither do I, so we're going to take some time away from everything and figure that out." Julian said angrily as he waved his arms in the air, thinking about how he'd just been bumped from one life choice to another.
"Dude you're not in love with her or anything are you?" Santo asked, Julian paused at that.
"I don't know, I don't think I know what it means to be in love. All I know is she needs my help. They mind-wipe her, she stops being her and think about it, would any of us be who we are if we lost most of our memories? No, we'd be dead. You change one thing you change everything and I won't let Frost nuke her mind until she's got the brain of a two year old. They turn her over to SHIELD, she's either executed for things she was brainwashed into doing, or brainwashed into becoming their own private assassin. Frost kicks her out, she's all alone again while I try and pretend being the 50th X-Man is really that important." Julian replied, trying to figure out of he felt he needed to protect Laura out of his renewed sense of heroism, or if he had deeper feelings for her. She needs this, you need this, fresh start, be teenagers before the world takes everything away.
"Dude, you got to do what you got to do and that's cool, anyone gives you trouble, gimme a call, I'll have your back." Santo offered a fist-bump with Julian, who accepted and grinned.
"Just promise to let us know how you're doing, I'm tired of worrying about more friends dying." Cessily said as she hugged Julian and she left with Santo.
"Anything you want to say?" Julian asked as he was left alone with Sofia.
"Yes, while I can never forget what happened that day, when Jay died saving your life, I can forgive you for what you did. You were young, you were angry and we were being attacked for being mutants, you wanted to make them leave us alone. You lost the bit of yourself that made you believe you were invincible, but you also understood that you had to be someone better because of it. You are going to be a better man than you ever were before for doing this, I know it. I don't know if you really believe in God after all you went through but I believe he guided you through all this and will continue to do help you find your way." Sofia said as she entered the room and stood close enough to him for him to get one last whiff of that peach shampoo she washed that long, silky brown hair of hers with.
"I want you to know this because this is what I believe. God had decided to test you and test all of us for many things that day and I think we all succeeded, especially you. You endured his test so one day you could be the hero you always dreamed you would be and more. I know this because you never lost your sense of honour or duty to your fellow mutants even after you had fallen so far. Wherever you go to find your way, you should know this and I would hope you share this with Laura as well." Sofia shared with him her belief about why what had happened over a year ago had.
"What God desires from you is here." Sofia said touching his left temple with two fingers, then his heart.
"And here. Do what you know to be right every day and you will be a good man Julian Keller, Even if you do not take God into your heart, I am sure he will watch over a man such as you who risked everything to help those he did not know but for the fact that they needed his help when no one else could do so." Sofia whispered as she kissed him on his cheek and walked away. Julian silently wondered for a moment what might have been if that one day had gone a different way.
"Were you ever with her?" Julian jumped and turned around, Laura was crouched in the window with her bag slung across her back.
"Not like that, it ended the day I destroyed my future here, or maybe before then, our relationship was never one I really worked out and to be honest, I was a raging asshole around here sometimes. I was different then and I am glad I'm not that person anymore. You wouldn't have liked him at all." Julian said as he thought about who he used to be when he first arrived at the Institute.
"It seems you are still liked by some people here, Are you sure you wish to leave this place? You have been offered a place here where you could be among friends." Laura asked as she looked around.
"I don't need this place and it doesn't need me. What you need is to get away from everything, everyone and find out who you want to be, so do I really. Where we're going is so remote it doesn't even have a real road and the nearest real airport is five hundred miles away." Julian said as he pulled out his GPS unit and checked the coordinates, he'd swiped it from Miss Frost's car as one last act of defiance. He stopped and smiled as he looked at Laura.
"What?" Laura asked as she looked down and wondered if there was something wrong with her clothes.
"I don't think I've ever seen you more beautiful since I met you." Julian complimented her as he smiled.
Laura was dressed like any other girl her age should be, wearing blue jeans and sneakers, she worse his old Chicago Blackhawks shirt that he'd grown out of during his last growth spurt but kept for luck. Laura also had a silver necklace with a pendant that read L.K. that he'd flown into town and had engraved for her, he wanted to give her something so she could always wear her real name proudly. Julian did feel a bit weird about giving her his lucky shirt since it had been something he wore and now she did but, but figured if anyone needed luck it was her. Laura had stopped being anyone's property and looked like a real girl in his eyes. The purple hair she'd been given at the Club remained, Julian had found it alluring once but now just a troublesome reminder of what had unfortunate things had happened while maintaining their cover. Laura had said shaving it off would remind her of something from her past and would wait for it to return to its natural colour.
Laura sniffed to sense his pheromones and intentions. His statement was peculiar and did not make much sense considering the encounters they engaged in during their efforts to maintain their cover at the Club.
"You are not lying… I do not understand, I remembered how you looked at me before." Laura said as she thought back to her time in the Club when could see his sexual desires for her quite well when she had been made to dress in a very provocative way for his pleasure.
"Laura, I could show a picture of you dressed up like you were in The Club to about every guy in this school except Northstar and Anole since they swing for the other team and they'd be lusting after you. I'd have trouble finding a single hetero guy in the country who didn't want you if you were dropped in front of him dressed up like you were. That's just baseline animal lust, everyone's got it to some degree and I'm a seventeen year old guy whose had a thing for every pretty girl he met since he was ten years old." Julian said as he tried to explain the lust he had felt for her before and how he saw her now.
"This is you not being X-23 or Doll, this who you told me you were when I asked you your name and you told me, Laura Kinney, you're beautiful because you're you, You're not some fake fantasy for to someone to live out and you're not what half the jerks in this hole think you are, some kind of remorseless murderer. I see you, I still think you have a pretty face and a nice body but this… it's just different. I don't know how to explain it, I just see you and I think you're beautiful because you're dressed like any other girl your age, you're free. You're your own person for the first time in your life and you get to choose who you want to be and I find that incredible. You told me when you explained your past you wanted to be something that no one had told you to be, that you wanted to just do something because you wanted to and not because you had been told to do it.
This is why I'm leaving with you, I want to help you find what that it is and maybe feel it myself, I've been told or thought I had to be someone since I was six years old and I'm tired of it. Where your life goes from this point on as Laura Kinney is up to you and I'll help you any way I can to find where that life takes you, Then if anyone, and I mean anyone tries to take it away from you I'll rip their fucking heart out with my bare hands." Julian said as pulled her into a hug and enjoyed the simple contact between them.
Laura couldn't help but smile, it felt good knowing someone believed she wasn't just some little assassin drone or other kind of property. It was a nice, although rather unfamiliar feeling that she had a friend to help her, even if she still had trouble understanding what a friend was.
"Now let's get the hell out of here." Julian said as they exited through the window, he picked Laura up in his telekinetic wave and took off, flying so fast he doubted Frost even realized what had happened until he was out of range. With a new kind scrambler he'd bought as well before he left, no one was going to know where two mutants were hiding.
Julian smiled, it was kind of like the guy had said in Land of the Dead, "I'm going up north, where's no people, Canada." And the land he'd bought was perfect. The nearest town was fifty miles away and he was pretty sure the Xavier institute out populated them. He'd bought a remote estate for himself and Laura in Northern British Colombia, scenic, refreshing and about as far away as he could get from the Institute without living in permanent ice and snow while staying in North America.
He decided for the first while he wouldn't his powers, at all, which was harder than it seemed. He tried to keep in shape with various activities, chopping wood was tougher than it looked and Laura would show often show him up with her claws, slicing a full cord of wood while he was working on his fifth log.
Cooking was even harder, but he'd managed to have the house well-stocked for them. The previous owners had been forgetful enough to leave cookbooks behind, but they had been in French and a few disasters occurred before Laura revealed she could also speak and read French, in addition to about seventeen other languages. He was quite confident Laura was trying to discover her sense of humour, a mocking, practical joke sense of humour it seemed to be, but he was glad it was there.
He tried reading, then started doing something he hadn't done in a long time, drawing. He had landscapes to work with and they were okay, but he found himself drawing Laura more and more often, trying to catch her in the perfect picture. He never mentioned he was drawing her, he didn't want her to know until he drew her perfectly, and he wanted her to see herself as he saw her.
Laura went for long walks in the brush, using her senses to get in touch with the nature around her. It was relaxing and she was finding the dark thoughts visited her less often now. The impulses she had picked up from the Facility were less common and easier to ignore most of the time in the restful environment, she stopped flinching whenever she felt something brush along her neck, where she had worn her collar as a slave of The Club.
Julian was supportive of whatever she tried out and at first she had learned the arts of cooking and kept Julian from setting the house on fire, but found herself wanting to read more in general. There were plenty of books in the house that Julian had arranged for them to have to pass the time. She read thirty books in her first month, going through the books as fast as she could turn the pages. She had no idea about the scope of literature outside of combat manuals and war diaries that she'd had to memorize at the facility. Much of it wasn't that easy to understand, when she asked Julian what a particular passage from The Complete Works of Shakespeare meant, he blushed and said he didn't know. She suspected it was just a bit obscene, which was silly considering what they'd done with each other at the Club. Although, Julian had barely made any physical advances toward her since they had arrived. She often found herself having to bridge the gap of physical contact.
She wondered if he still felt disgusted with himself for what they had done together in the effort of maintaining their cover at The Club. It had been regrettable, but she had endured a lifetime of punishment through the first ten years of her life and then another lifetime during the three after that, until Julian had rescued her. He seemed quite preoccupied with never even mentioning that they had engaged in sexual relations and seemed to have a number of conflicting feelings for her. One thing that was constant though a general level of baseline desire was still detected by her enhanced sense of smell, and something else she couldn't quite identity.
Laura had gotten a better grasp of why sex was such a controversial thing beyond the obvious issues of physical intimacy and personal feelings. The various books had given her a better understanding of the pitfalls and significance of physical coupling, although she was surprised Julian seemed so apprehensive, she could smell his attraction to her. But he'd also been very remorseful of how he'd spent his life of late, seeming to think he'd wasted big parts of it while she'd been denied any chance to enjoy a life at all.
Laura kept reading, Julian soon had to make a telekinetic trip down to Vancouver down south to find more books to keep up with her rapid rate of completion. It was relaxing, she could sit back and read about what others had done or were pretending to do or might do in the future. She could just imagine it all happening, rather than whatever she read being what she would have to do to serve her masters. She took time to study the philosophers and writers of the Enlightenment, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine, she wondered when she read all those works of the great philosophers why their ideas were not put into better practice. By the logic of their publication dates, she should never have existed, or at least never been made to be a slave. After a while Julian announced boredom from drawing, but she was pretty sure he was drawing something in secret. She gathered it was either something meant as a surprise, or he didn't want her to know he still imagined her naked and he was drawing it on paper. He returned the next day with a flat screen TV and movies in tow, but Laura kept reading and Julian caught up with what he had missed in over a year of fighting, espionage and regret.
It had been about two months since they'd been staying there when Laura was confronted with a persistent nightmare she had been having since her escape. She was once again in her Club slave outfit, but was given a Facility file and told her to eliminate her target in the next room. She released her claws like she had done a million times before with their familiar snikt but then stopped, it was Julian kneeling before her. Please, this isn't you... he begged as she raised her claws to strike then paused, then a gunshot took off his head and her old handler, Kimura entered. Should've done as they told you X, now you're mine. Kimura said as she began beating her, she awoke in a fright and got out of bed.
Wearing drawstring pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, she lightly crept into Julian's bedroom, he was sound asleep, but sounded restless as well, mumbling something about Hellions.
"Julian." Laura said as she woke him, his right hand came up with green neon energy ready to hit something.
"You were having a nightmare, so was I." Laura said as she sat on the bed and Julian rubbed his eyes.
"Can't shake it, been over a year. They're still there, dying." Julian said as he hung his head and wondered how long the dream would haunt him.
"I was back at the facility, but dressed up like I was Doll again. I was the worst parts of myself at once, then they told me to kill you." Julian's eyes widened at that.
"I did not do it, but then my handler Kimura did and beat me for not doing it. It is not the first time I have had this dream." Laura reassured him that she had not followed the order to kill him as she tugged at her necklace, she hadn't taken it off since he gave it to her except to shower..
"Fly to the middle of nowhere and our nightmares still chase us." Julian grumbled, he turned on the light with his powers and sat up.
"Can I stay here with you tonight? We do not have to do anything, I just do not want to alone right now." Laura asked as she bit her lip and caught his eye.
"Uhh, sure." Julian said as he reached over to pull a shirt on over his bare chest.
"Relax, it is nothing I haven not seen before.". Laura said as she moved him over and got in bed beside him.
"Sleep better." Julian whispered as he turned the light off with his powers once more.
"I am sure I will." Laura replied as she felt better with Julian's familiar presence.
Laura woke first, but decided to relax, her head was resting on Julian's shoulder and she her arm laid across his chest. It should be a way to test his responses, he is being far too apprehensive considering the amount of physical contact we have previously shared. It was irritating her she couldn't define her relationship with Julian beyond the fact that they lived in the same house.
Julian had a strange feeling on his right shoulder as he woke, Laura's head was resting there and her dark hair was splashed across his chest. It was finally free of the purple that had served as a visual reminder of her belonging to The Club at one time and what he had done with her there. Her arm lay possessively over his chest. He hadn't expected this, he'd certainly thought about it, but had not thought it appropriate to try and have Laura define part of her new life just on him.
"Julian, are you awake?" Laura asked, Julian tried to feign sleep but it was too late, he'd lifted his head and met Laura's gaze, hair falling all over her face.
"Thank you, that was the best sleep I have had since you brought me here." May not be subtle but even he should be able to understand that, I need to understand this. Laura thought as she got up and probed how Julian felt about sharing a bed with her.
"Uh yeah, me too actually." Julian replied he couldn't den it, he hadn't had any more fitful dreams after feeling Laura next to him.
"You still find yourself attracted to me do you not?" Laura asked as she went over to the fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice.
"Uhh, well…" Julian thought about his answer.
I do not need to feel your heart rate to know if you are lying to me. I can sense your pheromones, you have never stopped wanting my physical body, what has changed?" Laura asked as she turned around, he stood in his bedroom doorway and thought about his answer.
"You've changed, you've had time to do what you want, see the world like you've never had a chance to. What happened between us is something that shouldn't have happened and I'm still attracted to you, yes, but it doesn't feel right, I've never felt like this before. I want you yes, but right now, I'm just happy knowing you're safe." Julian tried answering as he tried to shuffle away from the topic, he didn't want to think about having a physical relationship with her after what they'd had to go through before.
"Julian, I am not saying we should start copulating like two lust-filled teenagers who have to fake a master-slave relationship to maintain our cover in an underground sex club I am just trying to understand how this works. You have actually had relationships, I do not know how they work. I do not know what love is beyond what a number of books say and I have found them to be incredibly depressing or horribly stereotyped with little useful information. The tone is either complete tragedy or this impossible fantasy that seems far too divorced from reality to be possible. Tell me, are you, or do you at least think you are in love with me? Because this seems to be an incredible effort you have gone to just keep me happy. You could have given me a plane ticket to anywhere in the world and a lot of your money and told me to do whatever I wanted. Why did you bring us here in the middle of nowhere?" Laura asked as she shook her head and tried to understand what was going on, she feelings she couldn't quite understand either and they were driving her mad.
"Laura, my relationships consist of a few one night-stands I had while I was working for my parents, a 10% on, 90% off again relationship with Sofia from the Institute and what we have now. I don't know how this works either, I think I'm in love with you but want to make sure you define how this works. Problem is I've got other urges too, like having you on the floor right now because I haven't been able to keep you out of my head since I met you. I wanted to be with you because I wanted to see what it would be like if you had all the choices in the world, what you would want to do. Maybe it would tell me about something I should be doing and I also knew I cared enough about you that I wanted help you any way I could with that." Julian sighed and rubbed his neck, trying to define what he felt with her..
"That is all you had to say Julian, I do not know what I feel either for you either but it's not just this physical attraction we share. You are the only person who really fought for me, you wanted get me free, you did not care who I was or what someone else had made me. You saw I could be better. I am better thanks to you, Maybe it is love I feel for you but I don't know, but I would like to find out." Laura said, she walked over and kissed Julian's check, then took his hand and kissed his palm as well.
"Also I want us to sleep together in the same bed tonight. If you have a problem with that I will require that you sleep outside. I have been watching the local grizzly bears though lately on my walks, they do look very hungry so sleep lightly." Laura said as she caught his jaw and caught his gaze with her best authoritative stare.
"Since when you did you become in charge around here?" Julian asked as she went back to making her breakfast.
"Because you certainly were not going to do anything by my estimation. I suspect our relationship dynamic has now completely changed from its original form in The Club with you being the submissive while I am your master.." Laura replied as she cracked two eggs into a pan, trying out her sense of humour a bit more.
"Anything you say beautiful." Julian replied and saw her smile in the reflection in the window, that's all he had wanted to call her since he saw her.
