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"True friends stab you in the front."
-Oscar Wilde
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Chapter Twenty-Four: Facing Frontward, Stabbing Back
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"Well, that oughta do it." Pietro stood up and stepped away from the tire, glancing down to admire his handiwork. He dusted his hands on his lean thighs and shot Logan a sideways, derisive glance. His reward was a frown in return and a grunt of irritation.
"You done with that yet, kid?"
"Yep." He grinned with exaggerated zeal, tipping an imaginary cap. Logan ignored him.
Still waiting in the truck, Lance had cranked the stereo's volume knob upward and was shouting something incomprehensible at his companion. He was apparently as unhappy to be there as the X-Men were to have him there. Logan's charges were scattered around the area, all fairly close to the van. Evan had propped himself up on the overturned cooler, now repacked, and was bobbing his head under a pair of massive headphones. Kitty was cross-legged on the van's open tailgate, reading, and Rogue was just standing around, looking bored. Scott and Jean were talking between themselves, tossing furtive glances in the direction of the unwanted truck and its uninvited passengers.
From the side of the road, Nat watched Pietro working, her face burning with an ambiguous embarrassment. He caught her eye and winked, but she turned away and stared at the rocky, leaf-strewn hillside instead, face turned downward. Not far away, Kurt kicked lightly at a little gathering of stones, and the sound of them scattering on the pavement startled her. She looked up and blushed, trying her hardest to smile, and he came forward and slipped her hand inside his.
"It's going to take them a little vile longer to make sure that everything is packed again."
Nat jerked her head, coming back to reality. "Then we ought to go help them, don't you think?"
"Maybe not now, Liebchen." He stepped in closely, lowering his voice and his chin so they stood securely and quietly, isolated from the rest of the group. He rubbed her bare arms, peculiarly cold in the warm midday sunshine.
"Are you alright?"
Nat pressed her lips together, tasting her chapstick, an oddly fruity, chemically taste of raspberries. "Yeah…yeah, I think so," she said, not quite meeting his gaze.
His head cocked to one side, making his straight, dark hair brush against his shoulders. When he spoke, his eyes were gentle, but his tone was firm. "Vat is it that bothers you so much, Nat? About Pietro? I've seen the vay you react at school ven he's around, and you're doing it again now."
So. He'd suspected that something was wrong, and God only knew how long he'd already been suspecting. Her body stiffened almost imperceptibly, and his hand tightened around her palm so her fingernails made little moon-shaped grooves in the tender skin. She watched his face for a moment, searching each curve and hollow and rough place for the response that she was supposed to give, but found nothing but his genuine, skeptical eyes, inspecting.
You can't tell him, her mind warned sternly. If you tell him that Pietro knows about your secret, he'll want to know what it is, too. Inwardly, she rolled her mental eyes at herself. Of course.
Awkwardly, she smiled, making the lemony face from the island but dipping it in the sugar of necessity, of compassion. "Nothing, really. I guess I'm just not used to having enemies." The smile brightened faintly, looking somehow sad and amused at the same time. "At least, not officially."
She was placated with a mild grin, offered up after only a moment of hesitation, and her heart twisted behind her ribs and dropped down past her stomach, settling between her feet. Only Kurt could smile at her with such good intentions, and make her feel as if she'd shot a puppy knowing that his smile was one composed of the ingredients of her own dishonesty. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, but was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat.
Kurt turned, and, being blocked by his body, Nat couldn't see who it was that had approached them. She could guess who it was by the sight of the cordlike muscles at the base of Kurt's neck tightening. She leaned to the side to look around him, and saw Pietro standing a few meters away. He waved at her, and she glared in return, as if she were trying to drain her body of all her animosity in one quick stare.
He stepped forward, stuffing his hands into his pockets and smiling lopsidedly. "You think Nat and I can have a few minutes alone to talk, Wagner?"
Kurt glanced at Nat, trying to gauge her reaction, surprised to see her looking more angry than nervous. Her brow was creased, and her hands had balled into taut little fists. She nodded shortly, not taking her eyes off of Pietro, and Kurt stepped uncertainly away, keeping hold of her wrist for several more seconds before tentatively heading off toward the van. He walked slowly.
As the retreating mutant gradually left earshot, Pietro stepped closer to Nat and slipped his hands from his pockets. He touched her forearms lightly and guided her slightly resisting body to a spot just around the bend in the road, out of view of the others, and sat down on a large, asymmetrical rock. He stuck his legs out as if he were lounging, crossing them at the ankles. Nat remained standing, feeling somewhat uncomfortable. "Have you given any thought to what we talked about in our last conversation, Flamethrower?"
Her eyes rolled, unintentionally. "Oh, shut up, you annoying little shit."
Pietro laughed throatily, surprised and somehow pleased. "Well, I never! We certainly are feisty today, aren't we?" He pouted a bit. "I have to say, this isn't the Nat Fairbanks I know and love."
"What do you know about me, really? All I know about you is that you have a problem knowing when to let things go."
"Maybe, but I know a lot about you."
"Thanks for reminding me. I'd almost forgotten." Her tone dripped sarcasm. She narrowed her eyes into little green slits, glaring.
He frowned. "I would have thought that you'd be a little nicer to me, Natalie. Especially considering the sensitive state of the things I know. Maybe you and I should share your tragic story with Kurt so he can comfort you."
Nat rubbed her palms together at waist level to muffle the prickling burn that seeped between her fingers and threatened to escape. Pietro noticed, but seemed unfazed. "At this point, I don't give a damn what you do. Tell him, tell all of them, if you really want to. Just knock it off and stop bothering me."
She stared at him, channeling all her body's ardor into her expression, but he called her bluff. "I don't believe you. If you didn't care about them knowing, this whole thing wouldn't bother you so much. And you are bothered, no matter how much you try to pretend that you're not." She was silent, raging, motionless. He continued, unabashed. "Just try to remember that with us, with me, it doesn't really matter if you've got a past. Secrets are secrets." Here there was a pause, his voice dropping a shade. "Maybe your sanctimonious friends call us the 'bad guys' or whatever, but at least we don't judge our own."
Her laugh was a bitter sound. She raised her hands to the sky, as if appealing to God. "Oh, heaven forbid! All you judge is humanity's value to you, and whether or not the rest of the human race is worth your precious time and effort."
His eyes flashed, but he remained composed. "And they don't judge us?"
"Yes, of course they do! But it's people like those that you work for that give them a reason to doubt our intentions, and to fear us."
"What about your darling little Nightcrawler, huh? Did he give them a reason to try to crack his skull open on the pavement?"
Had she been an animal, foam may have been sprayed from her flailing, clenching jaw. Now, her flames should have been the last of his worries, as she was feeling quite ready and eager to claw off his face with her bare hands. "You disgusting, deceitful bast—"
In a rush of cool air, he was off the rock and against her. There was a flash of green in his vision, her surprised eyes, open wide to the world for a long moment before they fluttered closed like moths coming to rest on her cheeks. He clutched her fingers between them, holding them tightly and pressing his thumbs into her palms. His lips were hot and dry, like manuscript paper or onion skin, but hungrily searching, questioning, pliant. She felt her body tense, her muscles cry out in sudden terror, and she tried to wrench away. It lasted only a second, this indifferent struggle, before she went slightly limp, and then pressed back with an equal intensity. The washed out red hat was knocked from her head, and landed somewhere in a small, dense thicket of brambles not far away.
A searing iron spike pierced her ribs, as memory and conscience took over. Nat's palms, resting against his chest, pushed him backward, hard, and she stood there, trembling and panting. Her eyes were wide, her fingertips pressed to her lips as if to indent them back into her face, to stamp out and obliterate some dirty deed committed there. Her body staggered backward in a search of a breath, and the world wavered under water. She felt herself tilt, go out of alignment, and he tried to take her by the shoulders, to steady her. As the scenery writhed, she saw his strangely concerned face, his tense jawbone.
"Nat! Are you okay?"
"N-no…I can't do this…just leave me alone."
"Look, I didn't mean to upset you. You kissed back, and I thought you—"
"What's goin' on over here?" A gruff voice interrupted Pietro's wheedling attempts at an apology, but Nat caught a glimpse of his baffled, regretful expression as a foreign arm reached in and yanked her out of his reach. There, Logan's compact, hairy body was poised for attack, or at least for a bit of teenager-slappin'. She stared at the ground, knowing they'd been spotted, unable to tear her eyes away from her untied shoelaces.
Logan glared at Pietro, pausing only to shoot an equally venomous but slightly confused glance in Nat's direction. When he spoke again, his tone was low and brusque, full of authority. He jabbed a finger at the young man's chest. "You. Get yer skinny ass in that truck and haul it outta here. Yer friend's music makes my head hurt, an' I don't much like you either."
Pietro paused, glancing at Nat for confirmation, hoping that she would tell the seething man that he hadn't been hurting her, that she had responded to his advances, if not immediately then quickly thereafter. Nat, on the other hand, was just praying that Logan hadn't figured that out on his own. The younger man frowned, watching her for any sign that she was going to react. Uttering a dejected, irritated huff of sound that wasn't quite a sigh or a word, he vanished in a streak of color as he returned to the truck. The sound of the vehicle peeling out screeched in the mountain air. Logan turned to Nat, eyes sporadically flickering back and forth between incensed and perplexed.
"An' you…"
She bit her tongue, tasting coppery blood and trying not to wince. Her voice was tiny, even in the silence. "Yes?"
"What the hell was that all about?"
Tears filled her eyes, wanted to fall, but she tightened her throat and choked back the whimper that meant to pull through her body. She blinked hard, and met Logan's questioning face, chin wobbling. "I…don't know." He stared at her for a long, heavy moment, the air between them shimmering with tangible bewilderment. She felt vacant, sapped. The universe had come unraveled, and lay in disjointed portions on the spongy forest floor beneath her right foot, while her thoughts lay numbly on the pavement beneath the left. "I just don't know."
He sighed, a low, slow, tired sound. His hazel eyes, which sometimes looked brown and other times blue, were a decidedly cloudy shade at the moment. "Let's go. I don't wanna get to camp too late."
He turned on heavy feet and tromped away, his footsteps making what seemed to Nat to be a glowing trail on the ground. She took a deep, shaking breath, and followed him back to the others.