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"Ama me fideliter! / Fidem meam noto:
De corde totaliter / Et ex mente tota,
Sum presentialiter / Absens
in remota."
-"Omnia Sol Temperat",
from "Carmina Burana"
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Chapter Forty-Four: Though I am Far Away
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So, he liked her. Was that so bad?
Growling low in his throat and pressing his fingertips to his eyelids, Pietro tossed a few low-hanging strands of snow-white hair off of his forehead and tried to remember how long he'd been trying to fall asleep. At least two hours, he figured, possibly three, but he dared not glance at his alarm clock out of fear that he would prove himself correct and lay there pissed off about it.
Over the past few hours, however many there had actually been, Pietro had wavered back and forth between several emotions. Actually, he'd only been attached to one emotion, but his targets had been varying throughout the night, which is essentially the same thing.
First, he'd been angry at Mystique for not letting him remain in on the conversation that she shared with Nat. It was as much his business as theirs, the way he figured it. Then, for a few minutes, he'd been angry at Mystique for making Nat feel bad, because whatever she had said had led the girl directly to her room, trying not to cry. Third, he was a little mad at Nat herself for not coming up to him and telling him what was going on. After all, he had been the one to bring her here so she wouldn't have to sleep on the riverfront again tonight. Finally, after a great deal of deliberation, he settled on a mixture of unvented, unfocused frustration that was blowing up in his face with alarming speed.
And why the hell hadn't Magneto come? The old man had made such an enormous deal over this, and he didn't even have the decency to show up?
On top of it all, for the first time in the weeks that he'd been thinking about her, Natalie Fairbanks was mere meters away, separated from him only by a few layers of drywall, a dresser or two, some blankets on a bed, and her nightgown…
Hmmm…her nightgown…
Groaning, Pietro burrowed his head underneath his pillow to muffle his own sounds of rage.
A small noise from the hallway caught his attention, and he recognized the faint squeak of a familiar doorknob. His heart thudded slightly, and he tossed his covers away in his eagerness.
So, instead of lying back down and attempting to catch a few winks before his alarm clock went off for school, Pietro got out of bed and went to his closet to pick out his outfit for the day. He hastily pulled out the closest items he could find so he could catch Nat before she disappeared back into her room, and he dressed in three seconds flat.
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Dreaming again. It took him a moment to figure it out, but when he realized how perfect it was, there was no way that this was reality. She was too relaxed beside him, and that nagging ribbon of doubt was no longer tickling at him behind his ribs, that fear that one of the others would come in and catch the two of them in a compromising situation.
That was when he saw the fallacy in his own mental imagery. She looked the way she should, and her voice was the same, but when he tried to reach out, she slipped through his fingers like mist, insubstantial and pale, like Shadowcat in mid-phase, although even his sleepy mind knew that wasn't the way it was supposed to be.
Then, the flames would start again, licking up around their ankles, and the wide green eyes would turn away from him and onto another figure in the distance, white-haired and pale. She would rise from her spot beside him, leaving his three-fingered hand hanging empty in the air, and she would be gone from his sight before she passed all the way through the flames.
But as she walked away, he thought he heard her crying, and the sound was like his heart being torn from him, his only existence suddenly found to be a lie, a terrible amalgamation of everything that was wrong in the universe bursting free with a cataclysmic bang. Her tears were the end of his world.
A scream tried to tear itself from him, to wrench free of his body and make itself known, so he could, if God were smiling on him, possibly stop her and keep her near him, and away from the pale figure outside her flames. And the scream woke him up.
Just dreaming.
Dreaming again.
Again.
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No matter how hard she strained her eyes Nat couldn't quite make out the face of the person beside her, his hands looped gently around her waist. She felt his lips, his breath upon her throat, but still couldn't quite make out the line of his chin or the shadow of his nose.
She could see his eyes, however, and they glowed like golden lamps near her face, lighting the night and soothing away her fears. So, with a sob of regret and relief, she let herself fall back against him, and he pulled her gently closer so she could go on whispering soft entreaties and apologies into the crook of his warm-skinned neck.
With a gasp for air and a muttered curse with the realization that she had been dreaming, Nat sat bolt upright, her eyes wide and her hair a halo-like puff around her face. She sighed softly and swore again, dropping back onto the pillows and propping up her head on her hands. Across the room, the face of the digital clock told her in glowing red numbers that it was shortly after three, and she tried to force her sleep-addled brain to recall exactly when she had fallen asleep.
Mystique had left around midnight, and Nat had gone directly back upstairs, too rattled by the encounter to face anyone, especially Pietro. Somehow, she knew how that would end up, and it just didn't seem like a good idea at the time. The tears had started to dry up a little later, and her breathing had returned to normal shortly after that. When she gave it enough thought, the entire conversation between herself and Ms. Darkholme had left her flustered and more than a little panicky. Then again, such a reaction was hardly a rarity for her.
So, she was a bit emotional. It wasn't as if she had no cause to be. Wouldn't anyone be this way, in my situation? she often asked herself, although she was never entirely able to convince herself that this was the case. Maybe her emotional state was just one more reason that Nat Fairbanks was labeled a freak.
And the list continues to grow…she thought with a sigh.
Despite her reservations about lodging with the people that were, just days ago, pretty much considered her enemies, she couldn't entirely smother the sense of gratitude that was blossoming in her breast. She had been more or less accepted into the home of the Brotherhood, and given a place among them, even if that position was rather tenuous at the moment. The desire to make herself wanted was almost excruciating in its intensity, as was the dread that she would become a burden to those that had taken her in, something that she felt she had done far too recently as it was.
The crickets had ceased their quiet chirping, but she rose from bed and pattered across the floor to open the window again, leaning out and spying the crumpled lump of white terrycloth that she had neglected to retrieve before lying down to sleep. A warm breeze carried the scent of rain into the bedroom, ruffling the curtains and leaving phosphorescent trails of heavy air in front of her sleep-deprived eyes. Outside, an occasional car would go down the street and shortly bathe the bedroom in the dim glow from the headlights. Nat yawned and dropped back onto the mattress, rolling onto her side, pulling a blanket over her shoulders, and curling into a ball as if doing so would help her reach dreamland a little faster.
No matter how still she held her body, or how slow she made her breathing, she was still wide awake half an hour later. The more she considered it, the more disturbed she was about what Mystique had said to her, and now the conversation haunted her almost as much as sleep eluded her. She couldn't help but ponder that one most mysterious statement, and Mystique's hushed tones seemed to creep into the bedroom unannounced, hovering over her and making themselves known only when she was closest to sleep, jogging her painfully back into the world of the awakened.
"…are you prepared to use your abilities, whatever that may come to entail in the future…?"
What could that possibly have meant? It was as if the shape-shifting demoness had anticipated something about Nat that even she did not yet know, as if she knew there was something inside of the fiery young mutant that promised some sort of further enhancement. Terror had gripped her when she had first heard those words, and it was yet to leave her alone so she could rest, and instead echoed ominously within her skull. She remembered Kurt's mention of mutants who mutated further, and the idea was more than slightly disturbing.
By some means unrevealed to Nat, did Mystique know what Nat had been fearing for the past few days? Since the fire at the mansion, and since she had somehow managed to consume her flesh within the warm embrace of her body's own flames, there had been a lingering sense of doubt in the shadows of her mind. She had never known that she was capable of doing such a thing, nor was she sure of why Jean hadn't been able to stop her psychically when the others showed up in Xavier's office.
In the back of her mind, she was as positive as daylight is bright that her mutation was altering.
God only knew how long she'd been able to block psychic advances, or to spout flame from every part of her in addition to her hot and calloused fingertips. Unlike the years before this fateful discovery, she had now begun to crave the heat, to relish the gently clinching tendrils that encircled her body and mind like loving fingertips. It used to hurt, and now the warmth was more like sunlight, or a tender hand on a cold face in the dead of winter.
She lay there amongst the cradling hold of the blankets with the scent of a summer night drifting in through the window, pretending that she was among the blazing vines even now. She could feel it creeping along her limbs, converging at her core and radiating forth with heat threefold. Imaginary smoke and fire leaped along her skin and danced in her hair, shooting down her throat and into her lungs, filling her up from within.
Instead, she shivered beneath the blankets in the real world and tried to act as if she had imagined everything that had happened after her tenth birthday.
That fateful day at Xavier's mansion had blessed her with a measure of control that she had never before known. Once she had submitted to the fire and allowed it to so completely devour her, it had ceased to linger on her shoulder as an enemy to be scorned and feared, and had resurfaced like a welcome gift, a talent that failed to deceive her now that she had allowed it to possess her. Her body glowed and burned internally. The fire was no longer something separate and dangerous, like an invading virus.
It was becoming a part of her.
But how had Mystique known about that? And what if she didn't know anything at all, and Nat was simply being paranoid, an aftereffect of once again being on the run? It was all so intolerably confusing, like so much of the world had always been.
Whether or not there was knowledge about Nat's abilities being shared with those other than herself, Mystique's statement was a disturbing one. Did she ask all of her recruits such questions, demanding future loyalty? Or, after what happened with the X-Men, were even her former enemies reluctant to trust her?
The second possibility made her insides twist into an aching pretzel. There wasn't a part of her, mental or physical, that didn't cringe at the idea that the Brotherhood didn't trust her. Of course, they had plentiful reasons to doubt her motives, no matter how much she may wish they did not.
After all, she was hardly without a past.
Her eyelids fluttered open again, and she flung the blankets aside with a sigh. On the other side of the bedroom, her gaze fell upon the cardboard box that had once belonged to Rogue, and she threw her feet out of bed and onto the cold floor, shivering despite the warm breeze that entered via the window. On her way to the door, she kicked the mentally offending box aside, hiding it under the bed so she wouldn't accidentally see it when she came back into the room.
Using her hands to guide herself along the darkened hallway, she found the narrow staircase and eventually sought out the kitchen, throwing cabinets open on every side until she located a tall metallic tumbler and filled it with ice and water from the refrigerator door. She gulped down two glasses and was ready to refill the cup with her third when she thought better of it, tossing the empty glass into the sink with an unanticipated clatter that made her jump.
Slowly, she walked into the living room, glancing at the dark television screen and watching the VCR/DVD player flash twelve o'clock in tiny yellow numbers on the digital screen. Finally, unsure of what to do but fully aware that she wouldn't be getting back to sleep any time soon, she slipped into the hall bathroom and twisted the faucet to the left without turning on the light, filling her palms with water and splashing it across her hot face and neck. She had been feeling rather dehydrated since the accident.
Strange, she considered it, for cool water and the stab of fire to both feel so good on the same expanse of skin.
Her pale cheeks and wide eyes met her in her reflection when she stood back up, her face somewhat chalky and blue in the dim light of the bathroom and her eyes looking almost painfully bright. She splashed her fingertips in the water once again and turned the faucet off, never taking her gaze off of the mirror.
What an odd few months it had been, and yet she looked essentially the same. Same features, same expression, same haunted, perpetually nervous glance that always angered her when she realized how damn emotional it made her look. How timid and apprehensive.
Had that been how Kurt had seen her? Did he know how insecure she was, and maybe even take advantage of the fact that she felt that no one harbored any interest in her? She knew he had once been interested in Kitty, who was, in many ways, Nat's exact opposite, but that had never worked out. What if Kurt, who had never had any luck with the opposite sex, had seen Nat as an easy target to get in a little relationship practice? Had she been the "next best thing"?
But, as soon as she had seen that terrible expression in her eyes and face, it was gone, and she was left instead with a mere hollowness that made her feel rather sick to her stomach. Imagining things again, she told herself, but she spent several long moments trying to find the frightened face in the mirror again, unable to make it resurface. Along with it went her doubts about Kurt, which were replaced by a dull pain and a hope that he wasn't having to fight too hard to forget about her.
"Feelin' okay, Flamethrower?" asked a voice from behind her, and she jumped a bit, noticing an even paler orb beside the one that was her head in the mirror. Pietro.
"I'm fine," she said, but she paused a millisecond too long in her retort. She reached for a hand towel and dabbed the remaining water droplets from her palms and cheeks.
He snorted quietly, leaning against the bathroom countertop on his elbow and letting his long legs jut into the doorway as if to block any attempts she might make to leave. "You don't look so 'fine' to me."
"Yes, well, thanks so much for your expert opinion, Sigmund," Nat snapped under her breath, sidestepping his outstretched legs. She set out for the stairs but changed her mind and entered the living room, flopping limply down onto the sofa.
Ignoring the sideways glare he received, Pietro took a seat on the arm of the couch beside Nat's left elbow, his long-fingered hand almost touching her shoulder when he draped his arm across the back. His denim-covered thigh pressed against her wrist and she whipped her arm away in irritation, glancing over to see that he was apparently already prepared for school.
"Why are you already dressed?" Nat asked with a suspicious scowl.
"I don't sleep much."
"Well, what are you doing down here, anyway?"
He yawned, reaching past to snatch the remote from the cushion beside her. "Watchin' TV. And what's with the sudden third degree, Ogień*?"
"What?" she demanded, her eyebrows knitting tightly together as she spun around to face him. He rolled his eyes in response and resumed flicking through the channels.
"Nevermind…"
Nat continued to glare at him as he trailed off, and she got to her feet and stomped a few meters away, standing between him and the television with her arms akimbo and her chin pointing outward. "No! I want to know what it is that you called me. How do I know it wasn't something horrible?"
"God, forget it, okay? It's not important or anything."
"It is if you're calling me something foul!"
"Oh, would you just sit down and shut the hell up?" So quickly that Nat didn't have time to move away or even notice what was happening, Pietro leapt from his seat, tore across the living room and took her by the shoulders, tossing her back onto the couch and returning to his own spot beside her.
Stunned and more than a little annoyed, Nat glanced up at him, her hair disheveled and her mouth a little circle of surprise. "I…I…"
"Should have listened to me? Yeah, you probably should have. Now." He grinned at her, and when he went on he spoke with a terrible approximation of her accent. "Now htat you're done questioning me, what gets you out of bed so early on this fine morning, Miz Fairbanks?"
Hastily trying to flatten her flyaway hair, Nat glanced at him and then back at the television, where a middle aged man was hawking the health benefits of turning carrot sticks and apples into juice. She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. "Not tired, that's all."
With another roll of his eyes and a little snort, Pietro took hold of Nat's shoulder again, spinning her around to face him. She jerked away and slapped at his hands, but he went on unabated.
"Yeah, I believe that."
"Bite me."
"Okay." Laughing, with his pale eyes glinting eerily in the light of the television's dull orange glow, he leaned forward and took hold of the edge of Nat's chin, nipping her sharply with enough force to startle a shriek out of her but not do any damage. Her immediate response was the flail her arms so that at least one of her hands smacked against the side of his face.
"Ow!" Pietro yelped, glaring at her with his palm held to his cheek. "What the hell was that for?"
"What do you think?"
"You told me to!"
With a grunt of disgust, she slapped at his shoulder, nearly knocking him off of the couch, but he swung himself toward her at the last moment so he came forward instead, his chest pressing against Nat's and jolting her out of her seat, sending Pietro tumbling onto the couch on top of Nat. She looked up at him with a shocked expression, her eyes wide and her cheeks rapidly coloring a delightful shade of soft fuchsia.
There was a single awkward moment that seemed to stretch into an eternity, as Pietro's heart thudded against his ribs and Nat's face continued to darken into a deep blush. He could feel her hands on his forearms, and see the wrinkle in her brow that told him she was going to either swear very loudly or send her knee into his crotch at any second.
So he took his chance.
Before Nat had a chance to figure out what was happening, his lips were against hers, grinding against her teeth.
She went slightly limp beneath him before she felt the dream return into her consciousness, when Kurt's hands were on her, and he was kissing her, and she realized in a moment of painful clarity just how different this felt.
"Get off!" Lurching her hips so Pietro spilled onto the carpet below the couch, Nat leaped up and stood in the doorway, towering over her fallen companion who laid there for a moment before he scrambled to his feet, too stunned to move. "Did I ask you to kiss me?"
He looked at her, a strange expression of confusion and frustration warring in his eyes before he quickly masked it. "Not exactly, but you didn't really ask me not to, either. Besides, last time—"
"'Last time' you took me by surprise!" Flinging her hands in the air, Nat stamped her bare foot hard on the floor, letting out a harrumph. "Wonderful!" Her hands flitted about her face like a pair of birds freed from their cage and unsure of where to go, but too afraid to fly away. "I…I can't, okay?"
The confused look returned for a passing moment before he stood and came to her side, trying to fight the urge not to apologize with a hug. She had her arms wrapped tightly around her torso as if she were terribly cold, and she was shaking slightly. "Why not, Nat?"
When her eyes met his he noticed the tears there, and a sudden ache twisted in his stomach at the knowledge that he was probably the one who had made them appear there. "I just can't, okay?"
"Is this about the X-Freaks?"
The tears that fell were then of anger, and she stamped her foot again, so hard this time that it stung in her heel. "God damn it, of course it is, you idiot, and don't call them that!" She wiped her face with a single shaking hand, trying not to make eye contact with him but somehow unable to look away. "I had a life there, don't you understand that? They were the first people that I trusted, really trusted, and n-now I don't even know how I'm supposed to feel about them! They were my friends, damn you, and you expect me to just pretend that I don't remember them? Well, I can't!"
Pietro looked away, and this time Nat either didn't notice the pained look in his eye, or was too wracked with anger to care very much. "You mean Nightcrawler…"
She paused, almost understanding the hollowness in his voice. "No." She lifted her chin and tried to keep her voice from wavering too much "No, I mean Kurt."
He glanced down at his feet, kicking at the leg of the couch with one sneakered foot, listening to Nat as she went on.
"Let me tell you something, Mister Bad-Ass Brotherhood: I don't give a damn what team I'm a part of, as long as the people I love…I mean, care about…are there. That's what matters to me. The friendship—" her voice cracked, and she pressed her lips together tightly "—not the title. Or the codenames. Or even the fucking ideology! If Kurt was a member of the We Kick Puppies Club, I'd sign my name in blood to be a member!"
A cold silence descended between the two. Nat stood there, fuming, with her shirt crooked and her hair a mess, eyes blazing in a way that would have warned back a charging rhinoceros. Pietro stood back a few paces, not quite sure of what he should say next. He opened his mouth to respond, but snapped it closed again like a fish, and repeated the process a few times. For once in his life, Pietro Maximoff was speechless.
Nat's lip curled up in fury, revealing strong white teeth behind it. "But I guess you don't understand that, do you? You're a tough guy who has nothing better to do than kiss girls who have made it abundantly clear that they don't want your fast hands anywhere near them. So I suppose that means that no one has ever made you feel that way."
She spun around on her heel and stormed out of the room, her footsteps echoing down the hallway and up the stairs, fading into the darkness of the early morning house. As soon as he heard her door close, the words he had meant to scream finally returned to him, and burst forth in the form of a whisper.
"Well, that's where you're wrong, Ogień. I know exactly what it's like to feel that way."
*Polish for "fire" or "flame". (Correct me if I'm wrong!)