Alternatively titled Therapy With Toad

He had a girl in his bed. An actual girl, in his actual bed.

It had to be one of the weirdest experiences of Todd's life.

It was even weirder than the day he woke up and realized he could turn his eyes red on command; though to be fair, very little could be stranger than waking up to find Tabby Smith- vibrant, confident Tabby Smith- standing in your doorway at one in the morning with tears streaming down her face.

Now she was curled up in his bed, wearing nothing but a tank top and a pair of barely-there shorts underneath his light sheets. Normally, the idea would have been electrifying (he was a fifteen year old boy, after all). Now it just made his stomach churn. What did she want?

He figured he should probably speak; but he'd lost his voice the moment he saw her standing there, and now he had no clue what to do. So instead of trying he sat patiently in his shaky wooden desk chair and studied the blonde lying in front of him- waiting for her to speak, whenever she was ready.

And finally, after what seemed like an eternity of silence... speak she did.

"I just don't want him to come back," she muttered, her voice barely more than a whisper. Todd's head shot up, his golden eyes blinking owlishly at her in the dim light. "That's what scares me more than anything."

Him. As soon as she said it, there was no doubt in his mind as to who she meant- she had to be talking about her father.

It took a second for it to hit Todd that he was supposed to speak now; and for a second, he panicked. He didn't know how to comfort people- especially not girls like her. "Hey," he replied softly, his brow furrowing. "I can get that." He was pretty sure everyone in the Brotherhood could understand feeling like that. They all had someone or at least something that they dreaded would come back to haunt them. "What I don't get's why you're sittin' in here tellin' all this to me."

She shrugged her shoulders, shivering slightly under his thin sheet. "I don't know," she replied in the same flat tone. "I guess..." Trailing off, she swiped at her eyes again; it was a small comfort to Toad that it looked like her tears had stopped. "I wouldn't tell this to any of them. I couldn't... I don't want them to think less of me. I guess I just knew that you wouldn't be like that."

Todd's surprise registered on his face as he took in her words. Seriously? Did she really think any of them would do that? He could understand that reasoning with the X-Geeks, maybe, but them? He snorted- not insensitively, but still derisively. "Well, that's one thing I know you ain't gotta worry about," he muttered wryly. "All of us, we know where you're coming from. We know what it's like to be scared."

"I'm not-" Tabby started immediately, but then her words drew to a halt. He heard her sigh. "But... I shouldn't be scared. He's my father."

Todd shrugged, recognizing the irrelevancy of her words almost immediately. "Like that means much. It don't, not to them. I had a father. Lance did too, and Freddy..." Frankly, he had no idea what was up with Pietro's parents- aside from the fact that he'd been in foster care before coming to the Brotherhood house, he never really talked about it. "You ain't much different from us here."

The blonde sighed heavily, running a hand over her face; aside from the obvious sadness, he couldn't help but think that she just looked plain tired. She shook her head slowly. "I've never been any different from you. That's why I never fit in with the X-Men. I'm not one of them, and I don't know how to pretend I am."

Todd blinked; she still felt bad about leaving the X-Geeks? "Well, yeah," he stated flatly. "We know you ain't one of them. You're one of us, through and through. You're here, ain't you?" He tilted his head. "And that's why you shouldn't think we'd see you different for feelin' things, yo. Heck, I feel bad all the time! And I feel mad, and happy, and like nothing's ever gonna go right- I know how bad it can be. But it's okay to feel like that, and it's okay to talk to someone..." He trailed off, his voice dying in his throat as he looked up to meet her expressive gray eyes. "If you really want to..."

"Who?"

"Well, me," he said immediately, and only when the words were out of his mouth did he remember- he was terrible at this sort of thing. No one came to him for help for a reason. "or, you know," he added hastily, "one of the other guys. They'd all listen."

She raised a blonde eyebrow, pursing her lips. "Would they?"

"Of course they would," he replied unhesitatingly. "You're one of us now, right? A Brotherhood Babe. We take care of each other." That was, after all, the only way they'd managed to get by for what was close to the past year. "And that's why you ain't gotta worry about your dad, neither- cause just like with anything else, we'll take care of him."

Tabitha's eyes were wide and solemn. "Aww, Toddy. You really mean that?"

He forced himself not to wince at the nickname as he nodded his head. Apparently he was saying the right thing- he was eager to keep it up. "Course I do," he replied, and Tabby grinned as she leaned back against his pillow.

A long, awkward silence followed as Todd waited for her to finally get out of his bed and Tabby, if anything, only seemed to make herself more comfortable. It was only after at least five minutes that it dawned on him that the blonde did not seem to have any intention of getting out of his bed anytime soon.

"Uhh... Tabby?" He poked the back of her shoulder uncertainly, dismayed to find her breathing even. "Tabby?"

There was no response from the blonde. Todd let out a sigh. "Fine," he grumbled. "I'll just sleep on the couch tonight..."

But even lying downstairs on the much colder, much lumpier couch, he found that he still couldn't quite bring himself to regret letting her into his room in the first place. After all, maybe he wasn't any good at comforting people; but it was always nice for Tabby to know that she had at least one listening ear.

Even the next morning, when Fred accidentally ended up sitting on Todd's much smaller body, he still didn't quite regret it.

AN: So, Moonheart13, one of your comment in a previous review ("Tabitha is so adorable with Todd") left me with this idea. And I felt like doing something a little more serious, a little more related to character development- thus, this was born.

I like to think that every so often the other Brotherhood members just come to Toad randomly with their problems and he's left just feeling totally bewildered about why these people are ranting to him.