The train rattled away and I settled into the corner of a unit. If the sentinel was powered down or just didn't sense that I was enhanced I wouldn't know but it wasn't moving and didn't look like it would any time soon. Ideally, I would like to rip it apart. I wouldn't even break a nail if I did due to the whole impenetrable skin thing that I've got going on. Might be worth it, one less robot in the fray.
I don't though. If the train arrives missing one sentinel they might suspect that the rest have been tampered with and I don't want that most of all. The whole purpose of Erik causing a scene in Paris would be redundant. I sink into the floor with a deep sigh. Despite being dead for so long, I'm exhausted. My skin is crawling, uncomfortable in the clothes belonging to strange men, the smell of chemicals buried in the lab coat don't help.
Erik should turn up soon. I'm not sure how I'll know he's here, or how he's intending to find me. I shiver and then glance down at my outfit. Time to make amendments I guess. There's not much else to do until the train slows down. I manage to rip off a good ten inches or so off the bottom of the lab coat and then tie it tightly around my chest. My vogue cover should be out soon. Be on the lookout for a girl in a ripped lab coat, homemade tube top, and suit pants rolled up to her ankles and tied with a red earbud cord around her waist. Honestly, not too bad of a look but doesn't fit the 70s at all.
An hour later, I start pacing to stay awake. This gets interrupted when I hear something on the roof.
"Please be Erik, please be Erik," I murmur under my breath and then the door on the side of the car slides open. Warily, I make my way over and peer up.
"Thought that was you," he greets with a charming grin before leaning down and offering me a hand like he isn't standing on top of a moving train. If we're going to discuss the next plan of action though, he should come down here where we can hear each other.
"They're not a hive mind, individual programming so I can't send out a bug en-masse," I yell hoping he will understand we need to consult on the current plan.
"I've got it, now take my hand," he yells back, his patience evaporating. I give him a measured look before deciding I trust him. He helps me up although I feel the headphone wire tied around my waist dig into it, lifting me up out of the train car and onto the roof next to him. "Are you wearing a wire as a belt?" He asks right into my ear, an arm around my waist to steady me against the winds. Magnetism must be the only thing holding him in place on top of this train. I just laugh and he shakes his head in amazement.
He turns back towards the back of the train, gives me a look before taking my arms and wrapping them around himself. I get the message and hold on. We start levitating down the train towards the caboose before landing solidly on the last car. Hopefully he doesn't see how much that move freaked me out. Doubtful, seeing as I barely stifled the scream but maybe he didn't notice. I don't let go, locking my hands around his dark jacket and watching as he pulls up the rails the train just went over. They levitate in air before he directs them into the train cars and into the sentinels.
I distract myself from my elevated heart rate and focus on the metal bender. He's so assured when he does it, confident and fluid. It was hot. He's hot. Especially in the new clothes. I'm jealous. I'm in a badly fit fashion atrocity and deflecting bullets with impermeable skin and he's looking like a dark knight and derailing the next train. Now my heart rate is elevated for a different reason.
His eyes find mine and I immediately look away and pretend like I wasn't staring although I'm sure my blush gives me away. He wraps an arm back around my waist and tilts my chin up to look at me again before giving me a nod, a twinkle in his eye. I return it and he propels us off of the train to hover in the air for a second before lowering slowly to the ground.
"Are you alright?" He asks, and this time I do pull away.
"Yeah, but I'm in desperate need of a shower and real clothes. I smell like death," I say with a shrug, trying to hide the fact that I'm exhausted.
"I've got one more errand to run before we can rest. There's a safe house in the city," Erik soothes.
"What do you need?" I ask him with a frown. There was nothing on my list besides an invitation to the demonstration.
"My helmet."
"I'm sorry?" I ask, wondering if I heard him right. I swear if this man is also dependent on a piece of armor I'm going to lose it.
"I have a helmet so that Charles can't get inside my head," he explains and I'm somewhat sated. At least it isn't an emotional attachment.
"Charles can get inside people's heads?"
"He's a telepath, a very strong one, however he's been drugging himself and that eliminates his ability."
"Wow. I figured it wasn't a choice that he couldn't do whatever," I state. "Where's the helmet?"
"The pentagon of course," Erik responds with a smirk.
"I'm not stopping my heart again," I tell him, walking off.
"Don't worry, love, I'll handle everything," he assured me, catching up. I just frown as the endearment catches my radar. He capitalizes on my distraction, sweeping me off my feet causing a startled yelp to escape me. "You look dead on your feet," he explains catching my confused gaze before propelling us up into the air.
Is he actually flirting with me or just naturally charming? I wrap my fingers tightly on his jacket and accept the help. He sets us down outside the pentagon and lowers me to my feet. I hold onto his arms to steady myself and feel the muscles he's been hiding. He's full of surprises.
"Wait here, I'll be back in twenty minutes."
"Please don't get caught. I don't want to have to break you out all by myself," I tell him with a smirk. "Especially in this outfit."
"I don't know, I think you look marvelous," he flirts, spinning me under his arm towards a bench.
"Careful. If you keep flirting I might think you're serious," I state before sitting on the bench. "You know where you're going?"
"Yes, dear," he says with a smirk before stalking off, pulling a hat through someone's windshield by the embellishment on it. I chuckle at the flare but focus on staying awake until he gets back.
Erik is dangerous. If that display with the train wasn't obvious enough. Even if he didn't actually kill the president, Charles seems furious at him. Charles may be on some fashion drug but even I can tell he's got the same moral compass as Steve. If he disapproves, I wonder what Erik has done to earn such scorn.
Guess I'll just have to ask him.
XxX
I continue to contemplate the subject in the shower at the space Erik acquired. It was a safe house of sorts and that's all I needed to know. As I stood under the hot water, I realized this was the first moment I took to myself since I got caught on a flying donut. Changing into a new set of clothes at Charles's place didn't really count.
Absently I start singing "Shoot to Thrill" by AC/DC as the nanotech piece I left behind crosses my mind. Stark would kill me for that choice, but it was better than letting it fall into the hands of Trask. Besides, Hank wouldn't be able to figure out all the security measures that went into it for at least a year—not that I would ever be able to. Hank is brilliant from what I can tell, but Tony is a different type of genius.
Hopefully he's okay. All of them. The thought sobers me and I go silent, the rock song dying on my tongue instead of filling me with confidence. I dry off quietly in the steam filled room, realizing the water must have been too hot. Hopefully I didn't use all of it up.
I cringed at the clothes Erik had found for me. Bell bottom jeans that made me want to shrivel up into a husk before I wore them and a very colorful crop top with long flowy sleeves. It made me look like a flower child but at least whoever had these clothes stashed here had undergarments that nearly fit. The horrendous jeans did not fit of course, intensifying their terribleness. Of course, there wasn't any makeup to use to cover all of my scars. We'd need to make a stop if I was going to be appearing live on TV.
"You have a horrible singing voice," Erik muses when I join him. His eyes remain on the tv set in front of him though, I smirk seeing some footage of my body on a covered stretcher being carried out and directed by Trask.
"Some day, you're going to take that back," I tell him with a chuckle. He turns to look at me and I watch him blink in shock, the sarcastic remark he had prepared dying on his tongue. I appreciated the jeans a little bit more.
"Like what you see?" I ask him with a raised eyebrow, turning slowly to give him a good look.
"Who are you again?" Erik asks softly, his eyes caught on my scars.
"Your own, personal Jesus," I muse sarcastically, holding my hands out to the side.
"I'm Jewish," he quips, matching my tone, and a laugh escapes me.
"Annabeth Quill. Also known as Elysium, born in 1983 to my mother, Meredith, and some guy she met at a Fleetwood Mac concert that I never knew. Raised by my Grandfather for the most part-in St Charles, Missouri until I was about ten," I summarize with a shrug.
"And all of the scars?"
"There's a man in this world, named Stryker, and he is very similar to a man I knew in my universe," I admit slowly, formulating my response in my head before voicing my story. "As you know, I never die. At least not for very long. I can heal from most wounds, even without dying. But, Strucker wanted to test that. He wasn't the first to perform experiments, but he was the first to order a full autopsy. No one ever really felt the need to harm me after I was already dead prior to him. I wasn't fully recovered, and when I finally came too, I was surrounded by bodies, and I was bleeding out of the autopsy cuts. When the wounds closed they left scars. Strucker wasn't there so he dodged a bullet. But he got around."
"The names belong to friends. Strucker carved them before he died. They were friends I guess. Fellow lab rats that I wasn't able to save. Three of them disappeared in my zombie fit, could be alive but I probably killed them. Three of them were killed during my time with him, one he killed in front of me the next time he caught me, and this last one he wanted me to think was dead," I say pointing out the very specific scars from the autopsy and then holding up my wrist.
"I lost my mother," he admits softly. "Then I lost my friends, the only family I had ever known. Why did you pretend not to care back on the plane?" He asks.
"Force of habit I guess. I've got no clue who any of you are."
"Then why me?"
"I don't think you'll approve of my reasoning," I warn.
"What made you decide to trust me, Annabeth?" He asks, closing in on my personal space with narrowed eyes. It's an intimidation tactic. He doesn't scare me, but he certainly is making me nervous but that's because of a different reason.
"Because I trust Bucky and he killed the president in my timeline. There had to be some sort of correlation. What made you decide to trust me?"
"You should get some rest," he muses a moment later in lieu of answering, stepping away.
"Answer me first," I press, following him.
"Who said I trust you at all?" He corrects with the same assured look he had when he was rearranging the rails. I just smirk and smooth out the collar of his button down as an excuse to avoid eye contact and give him some time to form a response.
"You're here with me, aren't you?"
"You'll do whatever it takes, despite any sentiment, to fix the world," he says slowly, his breath warm on my cheek. I meet his searching eyes before looking away again.
"Someone once pointed out that I'm never the one with something to lose."
"Yet you seem awfully fond of that team of yours."
"I lost them. Way before I ever got sent here. It's-it was complicated."
"Then maybe it's a story for another time," he murmurs softly. He nods to the door leading to a small bedroom. "Go, get some rest, I'll take the couch."
"I don't mind sharing, Erik. I've had enough old fashioned sentiment for several lifetimes."
"Alright," he breathes out and I press my lips together and step away from him, he follows me into the bedroom. I chuckle as the fact that neither of us have pajamas registers.
"Would you be freaked out if I took these pants off?" I ask him dryly before we settle.