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Chapter Forty-One: Why is She Always Naked, Anyway?
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She hadn't even been in the shower for a full ten minutes when a rapid banging on the bathroom door made her jump. The plastic shampoo bottle, slippery with suds and water, shot out of her hands and bounced off of the opposite wall, knocking down several other bottles and bars of soap. Cursing under her breath, she gathered the scattered items back up and dropped them haphazardly onto the side of the tub. Jasmine-scented lather was slowly seeping down her forehead and toward her eyes.
"What?!?" she bellowed, and it was more of a shout than a question as she tried to be heard over the streaming of water. She rushed to wipe away the offending bubbles, but managed only to get her face wet and hasten their ascent directly into her eyes. Unable to see, she stumbled back into the stream of water to rinse her hair and face, causing her feet to slip in the soap on the bottom of the tub, which almost sent her tumbling over the edge. She cursed again, more loudly this time. Just as she was finally able to coax the dinosaur-like plumbing in this place to give her a little hot water, someone had to interrupt her shower. Of course.
The pounding stopped, and she thought she could hear someone chortling at her klutziness. She gritted her teeth to the point that they felt they might be wearing down.
After a short silence, a faintly amused voice answered from the other side, "You might want to hurry up and get done in there if you want to meet with Mystique tonight."
There was a long pause. Nat twiddled her soapy thumbs and kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, unsure of how to properly respond. "How about we…skip that part instead?"
She heard Pietro laugh. Damn. She hadn't been kidding. "Yeah, right. Hurry it up! You're even slower than most people, and from me that's definitely not a compliment."
"I'm coming, I'm coming!"
He banged on the door again, and the medicine cabinet over the sink rattled, sending the toothbrush holder falling to the tiles below. Nat sighed and rolled her eyes, stepping out onto the floor, which was wet from water that had leaked out of the tub as she bathed. In the bedroom, the carpeting was ancient and tatty, and in here it was done in broken, cream-colored tiles from the forties. The house might be large and faintly charming, in a vague sort of way, but it was desperately in need of repairs. Then again, it was probably a good eighty years old, and it did house a group of teenaged boys, most of whom were unwilling to do as much as take out the trash unless extenuating circumstances, such as her appearance, convinced them that it might be a good idea. It housed the Brotherhood of Mutants, to be more exact. That was a pretty intimidating job for anything that wasn't completely indestructible.
Those things considered, it wasn't too terrible.
Nat paused when she opened the bathroom door and steam poured into her bedroom, making transparent white coils of air around the door. It was weird, she thought, to be calling another place "hers". She glanced around the room again, trying to memorize all the parts of it. It looked as if it had been lived in before, and had a deeply worn look that hadn't been wiped away when Pietro cleaned up. The bedspread had once been a deep, almost-black shade of purple, but had been washed enough times that it was pale, like flowers, and the paint on the dresser was chipped here and there to reveal a much darker paint underneath. There were faint lines on the wall where posters had hung until very recently, and tiny holes in the plaster that were the telltale mark of thumbtacks.
Sighing, Nat flopped down on the bed, still wrapped tightly in a towel with her long hair dripping down her back. The window was open, and a cool, damp breeze came in to ruffle the curtains and raise goosebumps on her skin. She propped her elbow up on the edge of the desk with her chin in her palm, thinking.
Did they really expect her to easily accept this place as home? And why didn't she want to? There was, of course, that sense of relief that she wasn't out on her own anymore, and the sense of comfort in knowing that she was no longer required to suppress her annoyance with the world. Deep down, she wanted to do something about it, something that she never had the guts to do back in England, or had always felt too stifled to do with the X-Men. She wanted to go out and start a fight with the F.O.H., or torment some jerky kid she'd seen at school sporting anti-mutant patches on their backpack. She wanted to let out some pent-up aggression, now that it was allowed, but she knew she'd have her head smeared on the sidewalk in a second flat if she dared to even try it.
Even more than wanting to fight, she just wanted to fall into bed and sleep for about eighteen hours.
Nat eyed the window and approached it quietly, wondering how much of Bayville could be seen from here. There was a strange, nagging wish inside her that she might be able to spot the mansion, or maybe just Graymalkin Lane, although she wasn't holding out much hope. She tossed aside the curtains, which were now flapping madly in the breeze, and hoisted the window open the rest of the way. The rain hadn't started again, but the wind was getting stronger.
The sky was dark now, and the moon was large and almost full, like a slice of melted butter against the backdrop of the stars. Branches were whipping from side to side in the wind, and leaves were being torn from the trees. She shivered and tried to retighten her towel, which was coming loose around her body. Leaning out, she could see one of the tree-lined streets that led toward the school. She reached out and grabbed a few leaves off of the tree outside her window, drawing in the smell of early summer vegetation. Graduation preparations were probably already underway for the celebration a few weeks away. She sighed. No diploma for her this year, at least not at this rate.
She leaned a little farther outward, her dark hair cascading around her face and puffing into a cloud that obscured her vision. She could taste the wet remains of the rain, and the damp plants that had been left behind, on the wind. Nothing would burn out there now, at least not unless the flame was exceptionally hot. The towel began to slip again, and she grabbed at it madly as the wind tried to do the same. It fluttered around her, threatening to be pulled away.
She didn't quite think of the possibility that the wind might be able to yank her towel out the window, and it didn't even cross her mind as she leaned out a bit farther. Then, before she had been able to put one and two together, she found herself standing in the window stark naked, her towel dancing on the breeze for a moment before it crumpled into a damp white lump on the ground below.
She blinked.
And blinked again.
"God damn it!"
Suddenly, a thought occurred to her that somehow hadn't before: she had nothing to change into.
Of course, she could reapply the clothes that Pietro had given to her. The idea of putting on the dingy, filthy clothing over her freshly cleaned skin was rather revolting, however, and seemed to pretty much neutralize the act of cleaning herself at all. She stood in the center of the room, flapping her arms and making a nervous squeaking sound.
Spurred on by the new thought, and a new mission, Nat went to the closet and threw open the door in search. There was a long black winter coat that was several sizes too small for her, and a box of old car repair magazines on the floor, but nothing that might help her with her current situation. The only other option seemed to be wrapping the faded purple comforter around herself, but the idea of going down the stairs like that was enough to leave her light-headed with humiliation. Another swift rapping was heard at the door.
"Come on, Nat. We ain't got all night! If you don't get out here in ten minutes, I'm sending Tolensky in for you!"
"I said I'm coming!" she shrieked, whirling frantically around. She was starting to get a bit nervous about this.
There! The dresser, of course! She raced over, throwing open drawer after drawer in search of something to wear. She found old newspapers lining each one, but nothing more than dust in any of them until she reached the one on the very bottom. Inside, she found a small note read "left these for you to wear," and underneath it were few things that might be of use to her, including a pair of ragged blue jeans that were a little too long in the legs. When she picked them up, she discovered a small shoebox that had been wrapped in the pants and inadvertently hidden from view. It looked as if it had been left untouched for a while. She dropped the box back in the drawer, tossed the jeans over her shoulder, and grappled among the other items, finally finding a black sweatshirt that looked like it might fit decently.
Something distantly familiar caught her eye just as she got her first leg into the jeans, and her curiosity barely let her finish zipping them up before she dropped onto her knees to stare at the shoebox a little more closely. A small drawing on the top of the shoebox, scribbled in dark red ink, depicted a cartoony figure of a girl. She was frowning viciously with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes had been colored in with bright red marker. There was a piece of duct tape slapped across the bottom that read "Keep Out or DIE!", and the corners were slightly dog-eared.
It was oddly familiar, somehow. It might have been the handwriting that jogged a memory, or perhaps the drawing itself. Whatever it was, Nat's interest was piqued. She rearranged herself on the floor, tucking her feet beneath her and lifting the box out of the drawer. The rest of the excavated clothing lay forgotten all around her.
She blew gently on the box to dislodge the fine layer of dust there, and lifted the lid. Inside, she found a few old magazine clippings about random topics, as well as a photograph or two of a brown-haired woman wearing dark glasses and carrying a cane with a painted tip. Nat pulled these away and gazed inside to see what was underneath them, nearly dropping the box in shock.
It was a pair of gloves. They were black, leather, and very familiar. A shaking that began at her toes quickly made its way up her spine, and she trembled all the way throughout her body. Her teeth chattered together and she nearly bit the tip of her tongue quite hard.
This had been Rogue's room. That explained the dark paint under the whitewash on the furniture, and the eclectic wall decorations that had hung here until so recently. Her breath quickened. It was as if a ghost had made itself known to her, and hovered over the room in all its spectral glory.
She'd known that Rogue had been a member of the Brotherhood for a short time, but it was like being confronted with the fact pointblank. Now and then, when she'd been living at the mansion, she'd had the longing to ask her withdrawn friend about that enemy team, about what it had been like to be a component of Magneto's following. She'd never said anything, out of fear that it would give her interest away, or that Rogue would be somehow insulted. The betrayal was a touchy subject for the leather-clad goth.
Slowly, almost painfully, Nat lifted the gloves out of the box and trailed her hands gently over them. Her fingers tingled, warmed the leather, threatened to spark up again, and she fought the urge to slide them into the gloves. That, in some way, seemed almost sacrilegious, offensive. Had these ever been worn, or had she been keeping them here for when her others got too old to wear? No, they had certainly been worn, probably many times, as the slight wear on the knuckles and palms informed her.
Tears terrorized her eyes, teasing her. They wanted to fall, but she sniffed hard and wouldn't let them.
She hoped that Rogue was doing okay, that they all were. Maybe she was with Kurt at this very moment. She might be comforting him, not really saying anything but sitting there with him so he didn't feel alone, or they might be visiting the professor at the hospital. She hadn't heard anything else about her former teacher's condition. Maybe he had woken up. Maybe he hadn't.
Maybe he had died. Her throat hurt at the thought.
But, it was Kurt's condition that worried her the most. All she could do was pray that he wasn't too horribly upset, and that he was getting over her less painfully than she was getting over him. She sniffed again, slowly setting the gloves back inside their box and packing up the papers and photographs without looking at them again. In Nat's time at the institute, Rogue had never once offered to share her personal things, and it felt wrong to take advantage of the other girl's absence to do so.
"That's it! I said I'd do it!"
Another voice added quietly, "Heh."
Nat screeched as the door was tossed open. She'd forgotten all about Pietro's ten-minute warning, and was standing bare-chested in the middle of the bedroom with someone else's clothes scattered at her feet. Screaming shrilly and incomprehensibly, she looked hysterically around for the sweatshirt and tried to turn away from the two pairs of surprised eyes in the doorway, instead diving for the bed and scrambling to draw the covers over her. Slowly, a smile spread across Pietro's face, and Toad looked stunned only a few seconds longer than his friend did. Blushing bright scarlet, she pointed to the sweatshirt on the floor, a few meters away from her but right next to her two "guests".
"All right! She's a great new recruit!" Toad said with an emphatic nod.
"Give me that shirt, Pietro!" She held one arm against herself, and pointed at the wad of black fabric on the rug.
The two boys paused for a moment that was entirely longer than it needed to be, but Pietro caught sight of her embarrassed expression and consented, tossing the sweatshirt into her arms. She yanked it over her head and glared at them both, now finally dressed. Toad glanced at her and gave her a wicked grin, his eyebrows raised suggestively.
"Get out, you creepy little freak!"
Pietro smirked, ignoring her blatant annoyance. "Why are you always naked when I run into you, Natalie Fairbanks?"
Toad grinned, smacking Pietro's shoulder. "If I didn't know better, I'd say she's tryin' to tell ya somethin'."
"I think you might be right…" He smiled perversely and winked at her.
"I said get out!"
Pietro glanced at Toad and jerked his head toward the door. Toad glanced back and forth between Nat's and Pietro's equally determined expressions and sighed, but couldn't help but grin as he left the other two standing alone in the bedroom. Nat glared at her companion.
"You suddenly don't think that I meant you too, White-Hair?"
He raised his hands defensively, eyes held wide even as he smirked. "Okay, okay! But you might want to hurry up and get downstairs. Mystique'll be here soon."
"Go away!"
Still beaming, he backed up quickly and raced from the room in a flash of super-speeded color, looking amused. When the door clicked shut behind him, Nat dropped onto the bed and buried her face in her hands, trying to muffle a frustrated scream in her palms.
She heard the door open again, and glanced up angrily to see Freddy standing there, his incredible size effectively blocking off her view of the hallway. She blushed and sat up, coming to the door to shyly welcome him. The two had never formally met, and Nat was lost between the embarrassment of the moment before and her desire to make a good start with her new "family".
"Hi," she said softly, holding out her hand. His immense one enveloped hers, and shook it strongly.
"Hi to you, too, I guess," he responded, giving her a peculiar, tipped-over kind of look.
She let him stare at her oddly for a moment, feeling more and more self-conscious as he did so, and she blushed again. She glanced down at her clothes, looking for some sort of oddly-placed stain or something of that sort, half expecting to find that she'd put the pants on backward.
"So…" She trailed off, waiting for him to explain what exactly he was looking at, or at least to knock off the disturbing staring thing. She bounced a little on her toes, anxiously.
He frowned and continued to stare at her assessingly. "You don't look so naked to me."
For the second time that evening, but no less insistently this time, the newest member of the Brotherhood of Mutants slammed the door in the face of one of her teammates.
And felt good doing it, too.