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Author's Note:
Greetings.
Read, REVIEW, and enjoy. ;) Pretty please. Comments on reviews are at the bottom again.
Cheers.
Jack
------
Ever have one of those mornings where you just want to lie in bed in a half-asleep state and let the day ooze by while you stay safe and cozy under the covers? I certainly did. We'd gotten back late and I have no idea just how long I'd drowsed before finally falling asleep. It was only a little before noon before I finally roused enough to face the day.
Kurt was gone, which was to be expected. His internal clock was connected to his stomach somehow. No matter where he was or what he was doing, he always managed to know when it was time to eat. I figured he'd probably woken up in time for breakfast and just decided to let me sleep.
By some trick of fate, I was actually alone in the room. That I'd grown used to waking up to find people hanging around should tell you something. I basked in the solitude for a while, enjoying every minute of it. I liked being alone sometimes. My world generally moved quicker than the average person's, so I tended to go through life in slow-motion by necessity - holding back, you might say. Not having anyone around allowed me to watch the world go by at my speed.
The only downside came when I decided to see if I could possibly get dressed on my own. The dresser was across the room from the bed, with like a million feet worth of carpet in-between. I'm not saying my bedroom was huge, but a small orchestra could have performed in there with very little effort. Suffice it to say that simply crawling across the bed and stretching my arms was out of the question.
There were a couple options available. I could get off the bed somehow and just drag myself across the floor. Since I was wearing only a tank top and a pair of boxer shorts, that didn't seem like such a good idea. The idea of getting rug-burns on my more, ah, sensitive equipment wasn't that appealing. No, the best thing to do was worm my way into the wheelchair. It would be difficult, but I thought I could manage.
Yeah. Right. Let's just say that my brain must have been asleep at the time.
Twenty minutes later, Summers poked his head in the door.
"Can't sleep the day away, Pietro. Time to..." There was a long pause. "That's funny. I thought Kurt said he was still in bed."
I snorted from my position on the far side of the bed.
"Not hardly."
Summers came into my field of vision and raised an eyebrow. I must have looked quite odd, lying there on the floor with my arms crossed petulantly across my chest and my legs just sort of flopped completely askew. Heck, it felt odd. I wouldn't let that slow me down, no sir.
"What happened?" he said as he picked me up and deposited me on the bed. He started rummaging through the dresser.
"I tried to fly, you moron. What do you think happened?"
Summers shot a frown over his shoulder at me. "I see the attitude fairy visited you last night."
"You're just a bundle of laughs this morning," I muttered.
"I try."
Apparently being a jerk wasn't going to work today. "What's my agenda look like?"
He tossed clothes my way and leaned against the desk as I squirmed into them.
"Not much, actually. Mr. McCoy wants you downstairs for more therapy this evening, but you've got a few hours to kill. Got anything you feel like doing?"
I thought about Mr. Murdock's offer to chat and made a quick decision.
"Yeah, actually. There a telephone I can use around here somewhere?"
I was a little surprised when a rather battered Buick pulled through the gates to the Institute grounds. I'd have thought that with Murdock being a lawyer he'd own a fancier car. Maybe he actually lived in Hell's Kitchen in addition to having an office there. That would have explained the somewhat lackluster set of wheels. Or maybe he had no idea what he was riding in.
The other shocker was that he'd brought a friend. The car pulled to a stop in front of the steps and both doors opened. I suppose I hadn't really thought about how he'd get all the way out here. Driving himself was out of the question, after all.
Gone was the Armani of last night. Mr. Murdock wore a rather plain yellow polo shirt and khakis instead, though he retained the Lennon-style sunglasses. They looked kind of cool. I'd have to get a pair one of these days. His cane was the more traditional white-with-red-tip. He treated it as a prop. While hesitant at times, he had no trouble at all making it across the pavement and up the stairs.
I watched from the porch, where I'd been waiting for the past hour. The guy claimed he wasn't a mutant, but there was something very, very odd about him. Either he was lying through his teeth or...heck, I didn't know. No blind person should have been able to move around that easily. It was unsettling to a small degree. But hey, if he could compensate for his disability, maybe I could too.
Well, you know what they say about pigs and flying.
"Hi," I said. Mr. Murdock tilted his head to face me. I swear that had to be the most uncanny thing I'd ever seen. Considering that my godfather could tell you what the Queen of England ate for breakfast without thinking too hard and that my sister routinely cheated at board games by affecting the probability of dice rolls that was saying something. I returned his faint smile with one of my own before I remembered he couldn't actually see it.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Maximoff," he said. He gestured to his driver, who'd followed him up the front steps. "This is Foggy Nelson, my law partner."
We exchanged handshakes. Mr. Nelson was a little shorter than Murdock, and little chunkier. I guess they weren't starving for lack of clients.
"Nice to meet you," I said politely. See? I could be nice when I tried.
"Pleasure," Nelson grinned. He seemed like a jolly fellow, and I'm not just being stereotypical. Then he bent and, with a grunt, picked me up - wheelchair and all. Nelson was a little beefy, but it certainly wasn't all fat. The three of us walked down the steps.
"Did you want to talk any place in particular?" Mr. Murdock asked.
"Nope. Some place private, I guess." I hadn't really thought about it.
He nodded, unsurprised. "Is that gazebo still out on the cliff? Would that be private enough?"
As soon as he said gazebo, I had a flashback of the night I'd run onto the grounds, covered in blood and worse. Avoiding the house - which was known to be booby-trapped - I'd collapsed on a swing in another gazebo in the side yard and quietly gone shocky. I stared at Murdock and could feel the blood draining from my face. My hands tightened their grip on the armrests of the chair, hard enough to leave indentations.
"Mr. Maximoff?" Nelson asked. I felt his hand on my arm and snapped out of it. I was fine. Dad couldn't hurt me while Xavier was around. With luck, he couldn't even get near me.
"I'm-okay-really," I blurted.
Mr. Nelson's face showed that he didn't believe me, but he didn't press the issue either. Smart move. Instead, he looked around for a pathway leading to the back of the house. I pointed it out and we started walking toward the secluded gazebo on the cliff face. Murdock kept one hand on the back of the chair to guide himself; I could feel his fingers drumming on the padded back as we walked along.
"Have you always been blind?" I asked.
Mr. Murdock 'looked' at me. "No. I had an accident several years ago. Luckily, all I lost was my eyesight."
I had to ask. "What happened?"
"Car accident," he shrugged. His law partner laughed.
"He's too modest," Mr. Nelson said with a chuckle. At my questioning look, he added: "Matt here pushed an old man out the way of a truck before I even met him. Saved the guy's life."
"Oh." I couldn't even imagine doing something like that. Saving lives was one thing, but not at the risk of my own health. I know, I know. I'd done it once. Look what happened. Is it any wonder I wasn't enthusiastic about doing it a second time? "So you remember what it was like to see."
Murdock smirked. "Every day. It was hard at first, not being able to see. Suddenly my whole world had been cut off," he said. Nelson hefted my chair up into the gazebo and guided the blind man up into the little space.
"You all right up here, Matt?"
Mr. Murdock groped around and found the swing.
"Sure," he said, sitting down. "We'll be fine."
"All right."
I watched the portly fellow walk back toward the car, knowing he'd be back eventually. Mr. Murdock, like me, had to have someone watch out for him all the time. It had to have been hell, relying on other people for the smallest things.
A light breeze picked up and the chains of the swing creaked softly. I turned back to the lawyer. "You were saying?"
He thought for a moment. "Ah, yes. I felt suddenly cast out. It was a difficult time."
"How'd you cope?"
"My family at first and then a few friends in college. I learned to lean on everyone around me for a long time. After a while, my frustration got the better of me and I started to learn to do things for myself. For example." He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out. "Take a look at the label."
I took the offered cloth and found the label. Several thick knots, perhaps the size of sesame seeds, were sewn into it. I ran a thumb over them.
"This is Braille again?"
"Yes. It's says 'white'. I figured that the only way to ever dress myself was to label all my clothing in a way I could read. Once I did that, I didn't have to worry about seeing a client while dressed like Liberace. Or," he added, "ask people for help picking out clothing."
"Good idea."
"Once I'd tackled that, other things became easier. Like memorizing the layout of a room so I could move about without barking my shins on every chair or table in my path."
I sighed. "Trouble is, you're still mobile. I'm not. If I can't reach something, I'm out of luck."
"You can't propel yourself?" he asked with a frown. Not unless I wanted to add more blisters to my hands. Stopping this infernal contraption required more skill than I'd been able to acquire. It felt like I'd stripped several square feet of skin from my hands in the last week or so of trying to get the hang of it. The fact that I didn't have enough muscle mass to move more than a couple feet without falling asleep was another part of it.
"I'm not exactly built for it," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh come on," I said, rolling my eyes. "Just look at me." Whoops. I reddened as I realized what I'd said. I expected him to get mad, raise his voice, something.
Instead he reached out and, for a guy who supposedly couldn't see, managed to find my shoulders without trying. I just stared as he ran his hands over me, wincing once or twice as he found a soft spot courtesy of Duncan. His hands were light and surprisingly gentle as they whispered over my torso. I'm pretty sure he counted every one of my ribs. Thankfully, he stopped before I had to tell him to save it for a second date. Still, it seemed strange and vaguely unsettling.
"What are you doing?" I choked.
"Taking a look at you," he said. Oh. I guess that made sense. "I think I know why that Matthews fellow was able to pick on you with such effectiveness. How tall are you?"
The question caught me off guard. "I don't know. Five-five in shoes, maybe."
He thought for a moment, and then leaned back. "And probably not much over one hundred pounds, either, I'd guess."
"Who are you, Sherlock Holmes?"
"No, just a blind man giving you an example of how I've managed to adapt to my handicap," he said with a hint of amusement. What? I didn't quite understand.
"I'm impressed, but a little confused."
He spread his hands. "Since I cannot 'just look at' you, I had to learn about you with another one of my senses." He wiggled his fingers and smirked. Oh. "It was elementary, you might say."
I snorted. "I assume there was a reason for this display?"
"Sure," he said, going serious again. "I'm trying to show you that losing something as important as your eyes or legs shouldn't stop you from having a life and living as normally as possible."
"It's working."
"Glad to hear it. You need to put some meat on those bones, by the way. You feel starved."
"I've got a fairly robust metabolism," I said. He settled back into the swing and gave it a small push. I listened to the chain creaking in time to his motion.
After a while, he spoke up. "I've talked long enough. Why don't you tell me how you feel about your, ah, accident."
I thought about that. How much did I really want to tell this guy? "I feel like crap," I evaded.
"Don't hold back," Murdock said with a smirk. "Tell me how you really feel."
"All right, fine. I feel like a huge chunk has been carved out of me. My power is speed, pure speed, but without my legs I'm just another guy with an activated X-gene. What's worse, not being able to move quickly is killing me. Everything and everyone around me is slower than dirt and I have to live my life at their speed. It's just not fair, damn it. If this had happened to anyone else, it wouldn't have affected them as much." I sighed. "Xavier wants me to fit in with his students, play on their team. How can I do that like this? I feel so freakin' useless. Not being able to run is driving me insane."
"Could you explain some of that?" he asked.
I realized he didn't know everything about me. What a novelty. Just about everyone at Xavier's place seemed to know every sordid detail of my life. Down to and including some rather embarrassing measurements in a few cases. So, haltingly at first, I told him about my mutation. The hyper speed, the increased body processes, the fact that time seemed to move quicker for me. Most importantly, I told him about the liberating feeling that came over me when I ran. Once I started moving, I felt free of everyone and everything. Just me and the speed. I missed that feeling.
"This is where the adaptation comes in," he said after I'd finished. "You're going to have to learn another way to attain that freedom. Running, at least until your legs begin working again, is quite out of the question. Until then you'll need to find another outlet for your tension. I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you from experience that not doing anything will just make the situation worse. I guess the most important thing is to always have faith." He patted my right knee encouragingly.
And I felt it.
I snapped forward, staring at my leg in shock. Incredible. The movement caught Mr. Murdock's attention and he cocked his head to one side.
"What's wrong?"
"I just felt something," I whispered. "When you touched me just then, I mean."
"Oh?" He deliberately jabbed at my knee with his cane. "Feel that?" There. I felt it again. A faint and muffled sensation, but I felt it nonetheless.
"Yeah," I said, trying my very best not to jump up and down in glee. A bunch of my housemates were in the pool a couple hundred feet behind me. I'd probably die of embarrassment if I went sprawling out of the chair. I poked at my right thigh. I could feel the touch as though from a distance, but that didn't matter. This was a really big breakthrough. I wasn't going to be stuck in this chair forever! "Thank you," I breathed as a sort of prayer. I wasn't the religious type, but it wouldn't hurt to cover my bases.
Well, that turned out to be a bust.
"Now?" Hank asked. I shook my head. I'd come down early for my physical therapy session, excited for once. I'm sure the big blue guy was surprised by my eagerness, as I'd previously looked forward to the sessions about as much as I'd have looked forward to a root canal or an enema. When I'd told him that I had a little feeling back, we both thought my body had taken a big step forward. Our rejoicing, however muted it may have been, was premature.
"No."
He poked me a little higher on the leg with one massive claw. "Now?"
"No."
The big guy sat back, absently flipping the back of his white lab coat out of the way. He set aside the clipboard he'd been holding and gave me a helpless look. "I'm sorry, Pietro. I can't explain it. You're sure you didn't just imagine it?"
I pointed to my knee. "It was right there, I swear!" This was starting to frustrate me.
"Pietro, phantom sensations are a documented fact in the medical world," he told me. "It's quite possible that what you felt was wholly in your mind."
"Are you saying I'm going crazy?"
"No, just that you had a normal reaction to visual stimuli. Many people have experienced the same thing. It's not unusual."
I sulked. "Just irritating."
My mood hadn't improved at all by that evening. Poor Kurt. He had to endure my peevishness all through a late dinner at the Kowloon Buffet #3, a pretty good Chinese restaurant on the other side of Bayside. In case you wondered: no, I have no idea why it was called #3. In fact, I once looked all over town once for the other two and came up dry. Just one more weird thing about Bayside, I guess.
Kurt did manage to crack through my shell, though, later on. As a surprise, he took me to see a German flick that was showing at an art theatre over by the college campus. It was a fascinating film, something about a submarine. A little hard to follow, but impressive camera work and terrific pacing made up for it. Having him whisper translations in my ear (and tickling me with his fur) for an hour-and-a-half worked like a charm too. It was a serious feature, but I was having a heck of a time trying not to giggle throughout the entire movie. I hadn't realized how fun that sort of thing could be and made a mental note to pick up a calendar on the way out. Since he had a lot more free time, we could do this again soon.
I wondered briefly just how extensive the foreign film section was at the local Blockbuster. That was another good possibility. Too bad the only DVD player was in the rec room. Maybe we could sneak out of bed at night. I grinned to myself. Oh yeah, this had a lot of possibilities.
"Vhat are you smiling about?" Kurt asked. We had finished the night by parking at a highway turnoff that overlooked the ocean. It was a great night for just sitting in the car and watching the water. Especially since he'd stolen Summers' little convertible. I'll admit the stick shift was a little bothersome, but we worked around it.
"Just thinking that we ought to rent a couple more German flicks so you can translate them in my ear again. I love your fur, man."
He laughed. "Score one for the fuzzy dude!"
"I'm not really into the whole unshaven look, but on you it works."
"How did your talk vith Herr Murdock go?"
"Pretty good. I think I could get used to being stuck in this wheelchair. Maybe," I added at Kurt's disbelieving look. "Don't quote me on that."
"Vell, that's something anyvay."
Kurt flipped the radio on as we drove back to the Institute and started flipping through stations. I shook my head. All of Summers' presets nearly put me to sleep. I couldn't believe the guy actually listened to classical music. For that matter, I never understood why anyone listened to that stuff. Between that and the sugary-sweet pop music, the guy had no taste whatsoever.
"Wait a sec," I said as Kurt started scanning through stations. "Go back to that last one."
"-rk Port Authority officials say the shipment of livestock, a flock of pigs from western Spain, was the first cargo to be landed at the new terminal at LaGuardia. The delivery was made in a converted C-130 Hercules military cargo jet, part of the fleet sold last year by a cash-strapped Air Force, and all one-hundred fifty-four pigs were in good health upon landing. Sources from the buyer, Jimmy Dean, say th-." I shook my head. Un-freaking-believable.
Someone up there had one hell of a twisted sense of humor.
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To Be Continued.
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To My Reviewers:
Mayday: I've got three siblings, ranging from 9 to 12 years older than myself. Thankfully I never had to tell them to get off the computer when we all lived together. I was the only geek in the family. Rahne's a temperamental Scottish girl. I imagine pretty much anyone would go ballistic if they found themselves in her situation. Figured it was only fair. Yeah, Pietro is starting to learn new feelings. Guilt, for example. That's always fun to write. I like writing Kurt's tail. It's interesting to imagine what a fifth appendage would do at any given moment. Using it to hug is one of the less dirty things I've come up with.
Ultramatt17: I'll give you a cookie, but all I've got left are the anatomically correct Wolverine ones from a previous review. Hope you don't mind. My respect for Amanda took a nosedive when I found out she not only leaked the information (however accidentally) but also felt no remorse for the consequences. What an evil person. I'm not sure exactly how Pietro will get his revenge, but it'll be fun to see. Not sure what to tell you about Evan. They may interact in later chapters, but for now Spyke is still resentful of Pietro being added to the cast. He's a bit of a hothead, so it might come to a head eventually. I've got some ideas for Jamie and Pietro interacting, have no fear. I've other ideas that need to be purged from my brain first, though.
Sailor X1: Matt Murdock is the blind lawyer also known as Daredevil from the Marvel comic series. Have a look at www.manwithoutfear.com for more information. Ah, now I get it. You like the fact that I've managed to humanize a cartoon character by giving him problems and thoughts of real teenagers. That makes sense now that I think about it. The problem with pretty much every comic book or cartoon (with the sole exception of Spider- Man, in pretty much every incarnation) is that the characters may be adolescents*, but they rarely have to deal with problems relevant to their age groups. I prefer dealing with life issues, however mundane, and seeing how characters react to real situations. Amanda probably has trouble picking on Pietro. Kurt is a mutant, so being snide about that wouldn't have worked. Gay-bashing is also out of the question, for the same reason. He's certainly not plain-looking, so making fun of his features wouldn't do well. Other than his albino coloring, the only thing left for her to deride was the fact that he was in a wheelchair. That was out of the question. Not only would I be offending any- and everyone in a similar situation, but I also wanted to highlight just how petty she can be. So she picks away at his paleness instead.
*Incidentally, I hate the phrase teenager. The correct term is adolescent. Teenager has such negative connotations, I've noticed. My best friend just turned twenty and he used to bristle whenever I referred to him as a teenager. I guess his indignation rubbed off!
Author's Note:
Greetings.
Read, REVIEW, and enjoy. ;) Pretty please. Comments on reviews are at the bottom again.
Cheers.
Jack
------
Ever have one of those mornings where you just want to lie in bed in a half-asleep state and let the day ooze by while you stay safe and cozy under the covers? I certainly did. We'd gotten back late and I have no idea just how long I'd drowsed before finally falling asleep. It was only a little before noon before I finally roused enough to face the day.
Kurt was gone, which was to be expected. His internal clock was connected to his stomach somehow. No matter where he was or what he was doing, he always managed to know when it was time to eat. I figured he'd probably woken up in time for breakfast and just decided to let me sleep.
By some trick of fate, I was actually alone in the room. That I'd grown used to waking up to find people hanging around should tell you something. I basked in the solitude for a while, enjoying every minute of it. I liked being alone sometimes. My world generally moved quicker than the average person's, so I tended to go through life in slow-motion by necessity - holding back, you might say. Not having anyone around allowed me to watch the world go by at my speed.
The only downside came when I decided to see if I could possibly get dressed on my own. The dresser was across the room from the bed, with like a million feet worth of carpet in-between. I'm not saying my bedroom was huge, but a small orchestra could have performed in there with very little effort. Suffice it to say that simply crawling across the bed and stretching my arms was out of the question.
There were a couple options available. I could get off the bed somehow and just drag myself across the floor. Since I was wearing only a tank top and a pair of boxer shorts, that didn't seem like such a good idea. The idea of getting rug-burns on my more, ah, sensitive equipment wasn't that appealing. No, the best thing to do was worm my way into the wheelchair. It would be difficult, but I thought I could manage.
Yeah. Right. Let's just say that my brain must have been asleep at the time.
Twenty minutes later, Summers poked his head in the door.
"Can't sleep the day away, Pietro. Time to..." There was a long pause. "That's funny. I thought Kurt said he was still in bed."
I snorted from my position on the far side of the bed.
"Not hardly."
Summers came into my field of vision and raised an eyebrow. I must have looked quite odd, lying there on the floor with my arms crossed petulantly across my chest and my legs just sort of flopped completely askew. Heck, it felt odd. I wouldn't let that slow me down, no sir.
"What happened?" he said as he picked me up and deposited me on the bed. He started rummaging through the dresser.
"I tried to fly, you moron. What do you think happened?"
Summers shot a frown over his shoulder at me. "I see the attitude fairy visited you last night."
"You're just a bundle of laughs this morning," I muttered.
"I try."
Apparently being a jerk wasn't going to work today. "What's my agenda look like?"
He tossed clothes my way and leaned against the desk as I squirmed into them.
"Not much, actually. Mr. McCoy wants you downstairs for more therapy this evening, but you've got a few hours to kill. Got anything you feel like doing?"
I thought about Mr. Murdock's offer to chat and made a quick decision.
"Yeah, actually. There a telephone I can use around here somewhere?"
I was a little surprised when a rather battered Buick pulled through the gates to the Institute grounds. I'd have thought that with Murdock being a lawyer he'd own a fancier car. Maybe he actually lived in Hell's Kitchen in addition to having an office there. That would have explained the somewhat lackluster set of wheels. Or maybe he had no idea what he was riding in.
The other shocker was that he'd brought a friend. The car pulled to a stop in front of the steps and both doors opened. I suppose I hadn't really thought about how he'd get all the way out here. Driving himself was out of the question, after all.
Gone was the Armani of last night. Mr. Murdock wore a rather plain yellow polo shirt and khakis instead, though he retained the Lennon-style sunglasses. They looked kind of cool. I'd have to get a pair one of these days. His cane was the more traditional white-with-red-tip. He treated it as a prop. While hesitant at times, he had no trouble at all making it across the pavement and up the stairs.
I watched from the porch, where I'd been waiting for the past hour. The guy claimed he wasn't a mutant, but there was something very, very odd about him. Either he was lying through his teeth or...heck, I didn't know. No blind person should have been able to move around that easily. It was unsettling to a small degree. But hey, if he could compensate for his disability, maybe I could too.
Well, you know what they say about pigs and flying.
"Hi," I said. Mr. Murdock tilted his head to face me. I swear that had to be the most uncanny thing I'd ever seen. Considering that my godfather could tell you what the Queen of England ate for breakfast without thinking too hard and that my sister routinely cheated at board games by affecting the probability of dice rolls that was saying something. I returned his faint smile with one of my own before I remembered he couldn't actually see it.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Maximoff," he said. He gestured to his driver, who'd followed him up the front steps. "This is Foggy Nelson, my law partner."
We exchanged handshakes. Mr. Nelson was a little shorter than Murdock, and little chunkier. I guess they weren't starving for lack of clients.
"Nice to meet you," I said politely. See? I could be nice when I tried.
"Pleasure," Nelson grinned. He seemed like a jolly fellow, and I'm not just being stereotypical. Then he bent and, with a grunt, picked me up - wheelchair and all. Nelson was a little beefy, but it certainly wasn't all fat. The three of us walked down the steps.
"Did you want to talk any place in particular?" Mr. Murdock asked.
"Nope. Some place private, I guess." I hadn't really thought about it.
He nodded, unsurprised. "Is that gazebo still out on the cliff? Would that be private enough?"
As soon as he said gazebo, I had a flashback of the night I'd run onto the grounds, covered in blood and worse. Avoiding the house - which was known to be booby-trapped - I'd collapsed on a swing in another gazebo in the side yard and quietly gone shocky. I stared at Murdock and could feel the blood draining from my face. My hands tightened their grip on the armrests of the chair, hard enough to leave indentations.
"Mr. Maximoff?" Nelson asked. I felt his hand on my arm and snapped out of it. I was fine. Dad couldn't hurt me while Xavier was around. With luck, he couldn't even get near me.
"I'm-okay-really," I blurted.
Mr. Nelson's face showed that he didn't believe me, but he didn't press the issue either. Smart move. Instead, he looked around for a pathway leading to the back of the house. I pointed it out and we started walking toward the secluded gazebo on the cliff face. Murdock kept one hand on the back of the chair to guide himself; I could feel his fingers drumming on the padded back as we walked along.
"Have you always been blind?" I asked.
Mr. Murdock 'looked' at me. "No. I had an accident several years ago. Luckily, all I lost was my eyesight."
I had to ask. "What happened?"
"Car accident," he shrugged. His law partner laughed.
"He's too modest," Mr. Nelson said with a chuckle. At my questioning look, he added: "Matt here pushed an old man out the way of a truck before I even met him. Saved the guy's life."
"Oh." I couldn't even imagine doing something like that. Saving lives was one thing, but not at the risk of my own health. I know, I know. I'd done it once. Look what happened. Is it any wonder I wasn't enthusiastic about doing it a second time? "So you remember what it was like to see."
Murdock smirked. "Every day. It was hard at first, not being able to see. Suddenly my whole world had been cut off," he said. Nelson hefted my chair up into the gazebo and guided the blind man up into the little space.
"You all right up here, Matt?"
Mr. Murdock groped around and found the swing.
"Sure," he said, sitting down. "We'll be fine."
"All right."
I watched the portly fellow walk back toward the car, knowing he'd be back eventually. Mr. Murdock, like me, had to have someone watch out for him all the time. It had to have been hell, relying on other people for the smallest things.
A light breeze picked up and the chains of the swing creaked softly. I turned back to the lawyer. "You were saying?"
He thought for a moment. "Ah, yes. I felt suddenly cast out. It was a difficult time."
"How'd you cope?"
"My family at first and then a few friends in college. I learned to lean on everyone around me for a long time. After a while, my frustration got the better of me and I started to learn to do things for myself. For example." He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out. "Take a look at the label."
I took the offered cloth and found the label. Several thick knots, perhaps the size of sesame seeds, were sewn into it. I ran a thumb over them.
"This is Braille again?"
"Yes. It's says 'white'. I figured that the only way to ever dress myself was to label all my clothing in a way I could read. Once I did that, I didn't have to worry about seeing a client while dressed like Liberace. Or," he added, "ask people for help picking out clothing."
"Good idea."
"Once I'd tackled that, other things became easier. Like memorizing the layout of a room so I could move about without barking my shins on every chair or table in my path."
I sighed. "Trouble is, you're still mobile. I'm not. If I can't reach something, I'm out of luck."
"You can't propel yourself?" he asked with a frown. Not unless I wanted to add more blisters to my hands. Stopping this infernal contraption required more skill than I'd been able to acquire. It felt like I'd stripped several square feet of skin from my hands in the last week or so of trying to get the hang of it. The fact that I didn't have enough muscle mass to move more than a couple feet without falling asleep was another part of it.
"I'm not exactly built for it," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh come on," I said, rolling my eyes. "Just look at me." Whoops. I reddened as I realized what I'd said. I expected him to get mad, raise his voice, something.
Instead he reached out and, for a guy who supposedly couldn't see, managed to find my shoulders without trying. I just stared as he ran his hands over me, wincing once or twice as he found a soft spot courtesy of Duncan. His hands were light and surprisingly gentle as they whispered over my torso. I'm pretty sure he counted every one of my ribs. Thankfully, he stopped before I had to tell him to save it for a second date. Still, it seemed strange and vaguely unsettling.
"What are you doing?" I choked.
"Taking a look at you," he said. Oh. I guess that made sense. "I think I know why that Matthews fellow was able to pick on you with such effectiveness. How tall are you?"
The question caught me off guard. "I don't know. Five-five in shoes, maybe."
He thought for a moment, and then leaned back. "And probably not much over one hundred pounds, either, I'd guess."
"Who are you, Sherlock Holmes?"
"No, just a blind man giving you an example of how I've managed to adapt to my handicap," he said with a hint of amusement. What? I didn't quite understand.
"I'm impressed, but a little confused."
He spread his hands. "Since I cannot 'just look at' you, I had to learn about you with another one of my senses." He wiggled his fingers and smirked. Oh. "It was elementary, you might say."
I snorted. "I assume there was a reason for this display?"
"Sure," he said, going serious again. "I'm trying to show you that losing something as important as your eyes or legs shouldn't stop you from having a life and living as normally as possible."
"It's working."
"Glad to hear it. You need to put some meat on those bones, by the way. You feel starved."
"I've got a fairly robust metabolism," I said. He settled back into the swing and gave it a small push. I listened to the chain creaking in time to his motion.
After a while, he spoke up. "I've talked long enough. Why don't you tell me how you feel about your, ah, accident."
I thought about that. How much did I really want to tell this guy? "I feel like crap," I evaded.
"Don't hold back," Murdock said with a smirk. "Tell me how you really feel."
"All right, fine. I feel like a huge chunk has been carved out of me. My power is speed, pure speed, but without my legs I'm just another guy with an activated X-gene. What's worse, not being able to move quickly is killing me. Everything and everyone around me is slower than dirt and I have to live my life at their speed. It's just not fair, damn it. If this had happened to anyone else, it wouldn't have affected them as much." I sighed. "Xavier wants me to fit in with his students, play on their team. How can I do that like this? I feel so freakin' useless. Not being able to run is driving me insane."
"Could you explain some of that?" he asked.
I realized he didn't know everything about me. What a novelty. Just about everyone at Xavier's place seemed to know every sordid detail of my life. Down to and including some rather embarrassing measurements in a few cases. So, haltingly at first, I told him about my mutation. The hyper speed, the increased body processes, the fact that time seemed to move quicker for me. Most importantly, I told him about the liberating feeling that came over me when I ran. Once I started moving, I felt free of everyone and everything. Just me and the speed. I missed that feeling.
"This is where the adaptation comes in," he said after I'd finished. "You're going to have to learn another way to attain that freedom. Running, at least until your legs begin working again, is quite out of the question. Until then you'll need to find another outlet for your tension. I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you from experience that not doing anything will just make the situation worse. I guess the most important thing is to always have faith." He patted my right knee encouragingly.
And I felt it.
I snapped forward, staring at my leg in shock. Incredible. The movement caught Mr. Murdock's attention and he cocked his head to one side.
"What's wrong?"
"I just felt something," I whispered. "When you touched me just then, I mean."
"Oh?" He deliberately jabbed at my knee with his cane. "Feel that?" There. I felt it again. A faint and muffled sensation, but I felt it nonetheless.
"Yeah," I said, trying my very best not to jump up and down in glee. A bunch of my housemates were in the pool a couple hundred feet behind me. I'd probably die of embarrassment if I went sprawling out of the chair. I poked at my right thigh. I could feel the touch as though from a distance, but that didn't matter. This was a really big breakthrough. I wasn't going to be stuck in this chair forever! "Thank you," I breathed as a sort of prayer. I wasn't the religious type, but it wouldn't hurt to cover my bases.
Well, that turned out to be a bust.
"Now?" Hank asked. I shook my head. I'd come down early for my physical therapy session, excited for once. I'm sure the big blue guy was surprised by my eagerness, as I'd previously looked forward to the sessions about as much as I'd have looked forward to a root canal or an enema. When I'd told him that I had a little feeling back, we both thought my body had taken a big step forward. Our rejoicing, however muted it may have been, was premature.
"No."
He poked me a little higher on the leg with one massive claw. "Now?"
"No."
The big guy sat back, absently flipping the back of his white lab coat out of the way. He set aside the clipboard he'd been holding and gave me a helpless look. "I'm sorry, Pietro. I can't explain it. You're sure you didn't just imagine it?"
I pointed to my knee. "It was right there, I swear!" This was starting to frustrate me.
"Pietro, phantom sensations are a documented fact in the medical world," he told me. "It's quite possible that what you felt was wholly in your mind."
"Are you saying I'm going crazy?"
"No, just that you had a normal reaction to visual stimuli. Many people have experienced the same thing. It's not unusual."
I sulked. "Just irritating."
My mood hadn't improved at all by that evening. Poor Kurt. He had to endure my peevishness all through a late dinner at the Kowloon Buffet #3, a pretty good Chinese restaurant on the other side of Bayside. In case you wondered: no, I have no idea why it was called #3. In fact, I once looked all over town once for the other two and came up dry. Just one more weird thing about Bayside, I guess.
Kurt did manage to crack through my shell, though, later on. As a surprise, he took me to see a German flick that was showing at an art theatre over by the college campus. It was a fascinating film, something about a submarine. A little hard to follow, but impressive camera work and terrific pacing made up for it. Having him whisper translations in my ear (and tickling me with his fur) for an hour-and-a-half worked like a charm too. It was a serious feature, but I was having a heck of a time trying not to giggle throughout the entire movie. I hadn't realized how fun that sort of thing could be and made a mental note to pick up a calendar on the way out. Since he had a lot more free time, we could do this again soon.
I wondered briefly just how extensive the foreign film section was at the local Blockbuster. That was another good possibility. Too bad the only DVD player was in the rec room. Maybe we could sneak out of bed at night. I grinned to myself. Oh yeah, this had a lot of possibilities.
"Vhat are you smiling about?" Kurt asked. We had finished the night by parking at a highway turnoff that overlooked the ocean. It was a great night for just sitting in the car and watching the water. Especially since he'd stolen Summers' little convertible. I'll admit the stick shift was a little bothersome, but we worked around it.
"Just thinking that we ought to rent a couple more German flicks so you can translate them in my ear again. I love your fur, man."
He laughed. "Score one for the fuzzy dude!"
"I'm not really into the whole unshaven look, but on you it works."
"How did your talk vith Herr Murdock go?"
"Pretty good. I think I could get used to being stuck in this wheelchair. Maybe," I added at Kurt's disbelieving look. "Don't quote me on that."
"Vell, that's something anyvay."
Kurt flipped the radio on as we drove back to the Institute and started flipping through stations. I shook my head. All of Summers' presets nearly put me to sleep. I couldn't believe the guy actually listened to classical music. For that matter, I never understood why anyone listened to that stuff. Between that and the sugary-sweet pop music, the guy had no taste whatsoever.
"Wait a sec," I said as Kurt started scanning through stations. "Go back to that last one."
"-rk Port Authority officials say the shipment of livestock, a flock of pigs from western Spain, was the first cargo to be landed at the new terminal at LaGuardia. The delivery was made in a converted C-130 Hercules military cargo jet, part of the fleet sold last year by a cash-strapped Air Force, and all one-hundred fifty-four pigs were in good health upon landing. Sources from the buyer, Jimmy Dean, say th-." I shook my head. Un-freaking-believable.
Someone up there had one hell of a twisted sense of humor.
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To Be Continued.
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To My Reviewers:
Mayday: I've got three siblings, ranging from 9 to 12 years older than myself. Thankfully I never had to tell them to get off the computer when we all lived together. I was the only geek in the family. Rahne's a temperamental Scottish girl. I imagine pretty much anyone would go ballistic if they found themselves in her situation. Figured it was only fair. Yeah, Pietro is starting to learn new feelings. Guilt, for example. That's always fun to write. I like writing Kurt's tail. It's interesting to imagine what a fifth appendage would do at any given moment. Using it to hug is one of the less dirty things I've come up with.
Ultramatt17: I'll give you a cookie, but all I've got left are the anatomically correct Wolverine ones from a previous review. Hope you don't mind. My respect for Amanda took a nosedive when I found out she not only leaked the information (however accidentally) but also felt no remorse for the consequences. What an evil person. I'm not sure exactly how Pietro will get his revenge, but it'll be fun to see. Not sure what to tell you about Evan. They may interact in later chapters, but for now Spyke is still resentful of Pietro being added to the cast. He's a bit of a hothead, so it might come to a head eventually. I've got some ideas for Jamie and Pietro interacting, have no fear. I've other ideas that need to be purged from my brain first, though.
Sailor X1: Matt Murdock is the blind lawyer also known as Daredevil from the Marvel comic series. Have a look at www.manwithoutfear.com for more information. Ah, now I get it. You like the fact that I've managed to humanize a cartoon character by giving him problems and thoughts of real teenagers. That makes sense now that I think about it. The problem with pretty much every comic book or cartoon (with the sole exception of Spider- Man, in pretty much every incarnation) is that the characters may be adolescents*, but they rarely have to deal with problems relevant to their age groups. I prefer dealing with life issues, however mundane, and seeing how characters react to real situations. Amanda probably has trouble picking on Pietro. Kurt is a mutant, so being snide about that wouldn't have worked. Gay-bashing is also out of the question, for the same reason. He's certainly not plain-looking, so making fun of his features wouldn't do well. Other than his albino coloring, the only thing left for her to deride was the fact that he was in a wheelchair. That was out of the question. Not only would I be offending any- and everyone in a similar situation, but I also wanted to highlight just how petty she can be. So she picks away at his paleness instead.
*Incidentally, I hate the phrase teenager. The correct term is adolescent. Teenager has such negative connotations, I've noticed. My best friend just turned twenty and he used to bristle whenever I referred to him as a teenager. I guess his indignation rubbed off!