Arica lifted her wrist to her face, taking in the small glowing
numbers on the watch Logan had given her last Christmas. Good thing Logan
had got her the kind you could read in the dark, she mused darkly. Four-
fifteen am, almost four hours to go until the final verdict was in at eight
o'clock, according to the news. An eternity and not enough time.
The young woman lifted her face to the soft white glow of the streetlight above her, oddly comforted that it's light blocked the stars out of the sky to her eyes. She didn't want to face them up there tonight, shining and glorious, no different than that had for thousands of years, cold and uncaring of what ws going on here. What glory was there going to be for her friend?
She supposed she was cold, sitting here in the chilly November night. Yet there was no sense of it, her body's signals seemed to be lost under the emotional grief somehow. So she just stayed there, sitting on the wide gray marble of the courthouse steps, bleached to the color of bone in the light from the street lamps. One little girl sitting on a bone stair, how appropriate in a dark way. How many corpses had been made in the rooms behind her, how many lives considered beyond redemption and summarily ended for the sake of society? She wasn't sure. She didn't think the death penalty was used very often, but she was sure that it had to be more than a few. Suddenly she wondered how many other people grieved for those lives, how many friends and relatives disagreed that the lives where beyond redemption. So, what was one more?
One more. One more body, pale and lifeless from an injection.
She hugged her knees tighter to her chest, dropping her head and weeping softly. It was only one more body that meant the entire world to her. Until the day of the sentence hearing she hadn't seen him in three years, he'd told her to stop coming around. He was too worried that something like this would happen, and he would drag her down with him. When she ignored him, he'd quietly moved away. She knew it was for her, but it had still hurt like hell.
God, why hadn't she realized how she felt back when it probably mattered? In the seemingly endless days of classes and lunches and afterschool chats. Before the mutant hysteria, when they were just two more kids. Back when things could have turned out differently. But she'd been too wrapped up in her changing powers, trying to control them without killing anyone, trying to deal with living in the real world as a mutant, and doing well in school and in the X-men. Somehow, it had gone unnoticed in her heart, the simple love that kept growing no matter what she did.
She didn't quite know when she fell in love with Todd, who could ever say the exact moment something like that happened? But she could tell you the exact moment it stopped hiding in her heart, that was easy. The day she'd picked up the newspaper to see his face blazed across the front page, and read the article that followed. Mutant murderer, terrorist, criminal.
The world had fallen around her then in the brightly lit kitchen she had spent the past nine years in. Rogue had been the only one that really understood, having been part of the Brotherhood once. Rogue and Arica were probably the only ones who knew anything real about Todd, other than his mutation. To the rest of the people she'd grown up with he was just the Toad, gross and obnoxious, mean and cruel.
Todd had let Arica in, let her as deep into his mind as she'd wanted to go. He'd told her about being abandoned, how he ended up in the Brotherhood, and why he'd turned Xavier down. About being the most hated kid in school, about the loneliness of not having friends, and about the hope that someday life would be different. She supposed if she'd been driven into the house by Storm, only to be insulted and attacked by Kurt, then teleported into the Danger Room and nearly killed, she too would have refused to have anything to do with the place. She often wondered what the hell Xavier was thinking, pulling that stunt. Cerebro told him who was and who wasn't a mutant, she had no idea why he had needed to 'audition' him. She'd never had the nerve to ask, not quite willing to risk the illusions she held about the place she called home.
She and Todd had become friends by accident, being in several classes together despite her being a year older. Having come from another state, she had to take several freshman classes that were sophomore in her old school to be on even keel with her new state's requirements. In exchange she'd already taken several sophomore classes that were taught at freshman level in her previous year, so it wasn't too much of a hassle.
Todd had surprised her one day by quietly putting a bottle of aspirin on her desk on one of her bad days, when the overwhelming pressure of so many minds around her and the effort needed to keep her shields up was rapidly approaching physical torture. She'd been cradling her head on the desk during most of class, determined not to cry in front of a bunch of people she barely knew.
"One of the guys I live with gets headaches from his powers, yo. And since you live at the Institute, pretty easy guess you have powers too. And your face looks like his now, thought you might need some of these."
He'd left her then, and she'd grabbed up the pills as though they were manna from Heaven and headed for the juice machine. They'd helped the pain somewhat, letting her get through the rest of her day. She hadn't been able to talk to him until after school, when she'd returned his bottle and thanked him, and found herself spending the next hour talking to him.
Come to think of it, she'd ended up spending the rest of her life either talking to him or thinking about him from that point on. A simple, random act of kindness from the most unexpected of sources. And he'd listened to anything she talked about, never made fun of her thoughts or dreams.
The tears came a little faster along with the regret, how easy it would have been to let down the barriers and just kiss him. In retrospect, she realized that just one kiss would have been all he needed to know what she was interested, that she wanted more. But at the time her teenage insecurities and fears had held her back, and so had his. So nothing more than friendship ever came of it. She knew he would never make the first move, too many people telling how ugly, how unwanted he was.
She hadn't found him ugly. She'd liked the way he looked, actually. And cursed herself again for never having told him. So they'd been just 'good friends'.
So why in hell did she get to the courthouse five hours early, to sit alone in the cold? Not to mention going to the sentencing open hearing to beg for his life, ignoring the fact that the day before Xavier had just returned from a long tour of speeches condemning mutants who used their powers against normal humans, or to break the laws.
What in hell was she supposed to do though? Just let him die, slip away from her further than she'd already allowed? She just couldn't walk away then. And she would sit here and pray for the next four hours that those people had listened to her, that someone, any of them, had listened. If even one voted against death, it wouldn't happen. He'd get twenty to life, but he'd still be alive. She could still see and talk to him, tell him, work at helping him get out. There would still be hope.
The lawyer had surprised her. She'd heard of him before, he was good, and expensive, yet he stepped forward and took on what was clearly a losing battle for nothing and did the best job she'd ever seen. But not even he could overcome the fear instilled in the public by the slayings a few years back that had been blamed on mutants. Arica knew better, but without proof, it was just one more mutants word.
She also knew, the moment Todd had seen her walk into that courtroom, that he had only been protecting his life. He hadn't gone looking for trouble, it had been dumped on him like so many times before. The fucking man would have killed him, if he hadn't defended himself. He'd projected the memory at her, wanting her to know. She'd slipped into his mind, just trying to be supportive. The three years of absence had fallen away like water, she knew he was grateful that she had come. She was grateful that he cared, that he hadn't been angry.
She'd gone every day after that, just to be close to him. Just to see all the little changes three years had created in him, and to find comfort in the familiar jade eyes and awkward body. She wondered idly what he would say if she told him she liked the slender form with the too big hands. "Damn fool," she sniffled to herself, watching a tired old homeless man looking for something he could salvage or eat along the street.
Wiping her face, she got up and walked over to him, pulling out twenty dollars and giving it to him, remembering that once Todd had been left out on the streets just like. Everyone was human, everyone deserved kindness. "Here, take this. I'm sorry I don't have more," she told him softly.
He stared at her for a long moment, and she idly wondered what he saw in this crazy tear-streaked girl standing on the empty street at four thirty in the morning. Finally he gingerly took the money from her.
"Thank you, lady, thank you," he said quietly. "That boy a friend of yours?" he asked, nodding towards the courthouse she'd come from.
Arica was a little startled, but supposed that everyone knew now. And how hard was it to figure out why a girl as well-dressed as she was had been sitting there waiting at this hour. It was all over the papers flying around in the streets, on the lips of people walking everywhere. Hard not to know.
"Yeah, we went to school together. And I'm stupid," she answered, not really knowing why. The old man sat down on a near bench, inviting her to sit with him. A quick passive scan told her he meant her no harm, and it was better than sitting alone right now. She joined him, feeling suddenly like the sixteen year old that had first gone to the Xavier Institute, looking for any kind of connection to ease the isolation.
"Stupid how?" the old man asked, studying the girl next to him. Homelessness hadn't stolen his humanity, and his heart could still break. And it broke often. The baby girl's body that had been tossed callously into the trash, a small boy beaten bloody by larger boys just for existing, a young woman weeping on the courtroom steps. He hadn't followed the trial going on inside, hadn't needed to follow it to know that the kid inside wouldn't get a fair shake.
"I love him," she answered honestly, softly. "I've been in love with him since I was seventeen probably, but never said. Never let us be anything but friends, too caught up in myself. And a little afraid to let it go there. My friends...the people I lived with..they hated him. And things were hard enough at the time, or so I thought. But now I know I was just stupid. He would have been worth it."
"It's not too late to tell him, girl. And maybe he'll get lucky, and those jury people will remember this is America."
"Maybe," she agreed softly, too tired not to take the fragile hope offered to her.
They sat in silence for a long time after that, watching the sun slowly rise over the city. Her companion rose to leave, gently squeezing her shoulder comfortingly. She smiled at him, wished him well, and returned to the courthouse.
It was almost time to find out, and she had to be there for him.
The young woman lifted her face to the soft white glow of the streetlight above her, oddly comforted that it's light blocked the stars out of the sky to her eyes. She didn't want to face them up there tonight, shining and glorious, no different than that had for thousands of years, cold and uncaring of what ws going on here. What glory was there going to be for her friend?
She supposed she was cold, sitting here in the chilly November night. Yet there was no sense of it, her body's signals seemed to be lost under the emotional grief somehow. So she just stayed there, sitting on the wide gray marble of the courthouse steps, bleached to the color of bone in the light from the street lamps. One little girl sitting on a bone stair, how appropriate in a dark way. How many corpses had been made in the rooms behind her, how many lives considered beyond redemption and summarily ended for the sake of society? She wasn't sure. She didn't think the death penalty was used very often, but she was sure that it had to be more than a few. Suddenly she wondered how many other people grieved for those lives, how many friends and relatives disagreed that the lives where beyond redemption. So, what was one more?
One more. One more body, pale and lifeless from an injection.
She hugged her knees tighter to her chest, dropping her head and weeping softly. It was only one more body that meant the entire world to her. Until the day of the sentence hearing she hadn't seen him in three years, he'd told her to stop coming around. He was too worried that something like this would happen, and he would drag her down with him. When she ignored him, he'd quietly moved away. She knew it was for her, but it had still hurt like hell.
God, why hadn't she realized how she felt back when it probably mattered? In the seemingly endless days of classes and lunches and afterschool chats. Before the mutant hysteria, when they were just two more kids. Back when things could have turned out differently. But she'd been too wrapped up in her changing powers, trying to control them without killing anyone, trying to deal with living in the real world as a mutant, and doing well in school and in the X-men. Somehow, it had gone unnoticed in her heart, the simple love that kept growing no matter what she did.
She didn't quite know when she fell in love with Todd, who could ever say the exact moment something like that happened? But she could tell you the exact moment it stopped hiding in her heart, that was easy. The day she'd picked up the newspaper to see his face blazed across the front page, and read the article that followed. Mutant murderer, terrorist, criminal.
The world had fallen around her then in the brightly lit kitchen she had spent the past nine years in. Rogue had been the only one that really understood, having been part of the Brotherhood once. Rogue and Arica were probably the only ones who knew anything real about Todd, other than his mutation. To the rest of the people she'd grown up with he was just the Toad, gross and obnoxious, mean and cruel.
Todd had let Arica in, let her as deep into his mind as she'd wanted to go. He'd told her about being abandoned, how he ended up in the Brotherhood, and why he'd turned Xavier down. About being the most hated kid in school, about the loneliness of not having friends, and about the hope that someday life would be different. She supposed if she'd been driven into the house by Storm, only to be insulted and attacked by Kurt, then teleported into the Danger Room and nearly killed, she too would have refused to have anything to do with the place. She often wondered what the hell Xavier was thinking, pulling that stunt. Cerebro told him who was and who wasn't a mutant, she had no idea why he had needed to 'audition' him. She'd never had the nerve to ask, not quite willing to risk the illusions she held about the place she called home.
She and Todd had become friends by accident, being in several classes together despite her being a year older. Having come from another state, she had to take several freshman classes that were sophomore in her old school to be on even keel with her new state's requirements. In exchange she'd already taken several sophomore classes that were taught at freshman level in her previous year, so it wasn't too much of a hassle.
Todd had surprised her one day by quietly putting a bottle of aspirin on her desk on one of her bad days, when the overwhelming pressure of so many minds around her and the effort needed to keep her shields up was rapidly approaching physical torture. She'd been cradling her head on the desk during most of class, determined not to cry in front of a bunch of people she barely knew.
"One of the guys I live with gets headaches from his powers, yo. And since you live at the Institute, pretty easy guess you have powers too. And your face looks like his now, thought you might need some of these."
He'd left her then, and she'd grabbed up the pills as though they were manna from Heaven and headed for the juice machine. They'd helped the pain somewhat, letting her get through the rest of her day. She hadn't been able to talk to him until after school, when she'd returned his bottle and thanked him, and found herself spending the next hour talking to him.
Come to think of it, she'd ended up spending the rest of her life either talking to him or thinking about him from that point on. A simple, random act of kindness from the most unexpected of sources. And he'd listened to anything she talked about, never made fun of her thoughts or dreams.
The tears came a little faster along with the regret, how easy it would have been to let down the barriers and just kiss him. In retrospect, she realized that just one kiss would have been all he needed to know what she was interested, that she wanted more. But at the time her teenage insecurities and fears had held her back, and so had his. So nothing more than friendship ever came of it. She knew he would never make the first move, too many people telling how ugly, how unwanted he was.
She hadn't found him ugly. She'd liked the way he looked, actually. And cursed herself again for never having told him. So they'd been just 'good friends'.
So why in hell did she get to the courthouse five hours early, to sit alone in the cold? Not to mention going to the sentencing open hearing to beg for his life, ignoring the fact that the day before Xavier had just returned from a long tour of speeches condemning mutants who used their powers against normal humans, or to break the laws.
What in hell was she supposed to do though? Just let him die, slip away from her further than she'd already allowed? She just couldn't walk away then. And she would sit here and pray for the next four hours that those people had listened to her, that someone, any of them, had listened. If even one voted against death, it wouldn't happen. He'd get twenty to life, but he'd still be alive. She could still see and talk to him, tell him, work at helping him get out. There would still be hope.
The lawyer had surprised her. She'd heard of him before, he was good, and expensive, yet he stepped forward and took on what was clearly a losing battle for nothing and did the best job she'd ever seen. But not even he could overcome the fear instilled in the public by the slayings a few years back that had been blamed on mutants. Arica knew better, but without proof, it was just one more mutants word.
She also knew, the moment Todd had seen her walk into that courtroom, that he had only been protecting his life. He hadn't gone looking for trouble, it had been dumped on him like so many times before. The fucking man would have killed him, if he hadn't defended himself. He'd projected the memory at her, wanting her to know. She'd slipped into his mind, just trying to be supportive. The three years of absence had fallen away like water, she knew he was grateful that she had come. She was grateful that he cared, that he hadn't been angry.
She'd gone every day after that, just to be close to him. Just to see all the little changes three years had created in him, and to find comfort in the familiar jade eyes and awkward body. She wondered idly what he would say if she told him she liked the slender form with the too big hands. "Damn fool," she sniffled to herself, watching a tired old homeless man looking for something he could salvage or eat along the street.
Wiping her face, she got up and walked over to him, pulling out twenty dollars and giving it to him, remembering that once Todd had been left out on the streets just like. Everyone was human, everyone deserved kindness. "Here, take this. I'm sorry I don't have more," she told him softly.
He stared at her for a long moment, and she idly wondered what he saw in this crazy tear-streaked girl standing on the empty street at four thirty in the morning. Finally he gingerly took the money from her.
"Thank you, lady, thank you," he said quietly. "That boy a friend of yours?" he asked, nodding towards the courthouse she'd come from.
Arica was a little startled, but supposed that everyone knew now. And how hard was it to figure out why a girl as well-dressed as she was had been sitting there waiting at this hour. It was all over the papers flying around in the streets, on the lips of people walking everywhere. Hard not to know.
"Yeah, we went to school together. And I'm stupid," she answered, not really knowing why. The old man sat down on a near bench, inviting her to sit with him. A quick passive scan told her he meant her no harm, and it was better than sitting alone right now. She joined him, feeling suddenly like the sixteen year old that had first gone to the Xavier Institute, looking for any kind of connection to ease the isolation.
"Stupid how?" the old man asked, studying the girl next to him. Homelessness hadn't stolen his humanity, and his heart could still break. And it broke often. The baby girl's body that had been tossed callously into the trash, a small boy beaten bloody by larger boys just for existing, a young woman weeping on the courtroom steps. He hadn't followed the trial going on inside, hadn't needed to follow it to know that the kid inside wouldn't get a fair shake.
"I love him," she answered honestly, softly. "I've been in love with him since I was seventeen probably, but never said. Never let us be anything but friends, too caught up in myself. And a little afraid to let it go there. My friends...the people I lived with..they hated him. And things were hard enough at the time, or so I thought. But now I know I was just stupid. He would have been worth it."
"It's not too late to tell him, girl. And maybe he'll get lucky, and those jury people will remember this is America."
"Maybe," she agreed softly, too tired not to take the fragile hope offered to her.
They sat in silence for a long time after that, watching the sun slowly rise over the city. Her companion rose to leave, gently squeezing her shoulder comfortingly. She smiled at him, wished him well, and returned to the courthouse.
It was almost time to find out, and she had to be there for him.