To everybody who has reviewed: THANKS!!! :-)
To Booyah: Fedt at se jeg ikke er den eneste dansker her! Hvor er du fra?
As soon as Frank was up and about, he began preparations to leave. Hank had insisted that he stayed in bed for another three days, but the wounds were almost healed, and he needed to keep up his training. He also felt he had worn out his welcome here in this psycho-circus; he could clearly feel that some of the inhabitants here were less than pleased with having him here. Just the other day he had walked past this woman with a white streak in her hair, and when she saw him, her pretty face had contorted into a mask of pure disgust, and while he knew many people felt that way around him, he still preferred not to have it so close to him. He was almost finished packing when he heard a knock on the door.
"Yes?" He called. Right now social interaction was about as inviting as a headache, but if he wanted to stay on relative friendly terms with the inhabitants here, he had best at least be kind enough not to tell everybody who approached him to fuck off.
"M-mister Castle?" A feeble voice came from the doorway.
Franks mind exploded into visions of a brutalized young girl lying naked in the streets, and all irritation vanished in a heartbeat, making way to a feeling of relief, and he could feel some muscles in his face flexing, almost as if...
...he had smiled.
For a nano-second, Vietnam, his family, his bloody crusade, everything was forgotten in that surge of relief, but as fast as they had been forgotten, he remembered them again, and his face fell back into his normal grimace.
"I-I just wanted to thank you for saving me, that was really brave of you..."
Frank turned around and looked down at her. Now that he saw her without blood, tears and bruises on her face, he had to admit she was a pretty little thing. He hoped the bastards he capped for this was burning slowly in hell. She still looked a bit frightened though.
In truth, Jubilee was somewhere between being ecstatic and terrified. Frank still looked intimidating as hell, but she was convinced that he was a very nice person underneath all that. Just like Logan. He just needed to loosen up a bit. Just like Logan...
She stood there awaiting response for the longest time, and she was almost about to turn around when she heard his raspy voice.
"No problem"
Jubilee could feel bubbles of excitement in her stomach. See. This guy wasn't so bad as everyone made him...
"You're not very talkative are you?" Jubilee joked.
"No"
Deadpan.
She was taken aback at this. Usually people would try to strike a conversation in a situation like this, but this guy seemed to deliberately avoid it. Not in this mansion Jubilee thought to herself.
"Allright then!" She chirped, sticking out her hand "I'm Jubilee"
A beat...
"Jubilee?"
"Jubilation Lee" She explained with a grin
"Oh" He seemed content with this explanation, and after a few tense moments he grabbed her hand and shook it, then promptly grabbed the duffel bag the professor had borrowed him and headed for the door.
"You're leaving! Why!?" Jubilee shrieked.
"Why not? Frank replied with his back turned to her
Jubilee felt bewildered; what was wrong with this guy? "Because I want to get to know you"
Frank's froze in his tracks, as if he had a gun pointed at his back. He ominously looked over his shoulder and caught Jubilees eyes.
Now she really was terrified. He stood in the doorway as the silhouette of the grim reaper, his eyes two pieces of burning ice, cold enough to solidify the very Antarctic itself, a soulless pair of orbs piercing through her very soul; The very essence of hatred where only a sad emptiness had been before.
"No. You. Wouldn't" Each word was like a bullet tearing through Jubilee's flesh.
He abruptly turned around and left.
"He's not like me y'know"
Jubilee's heart suddenly quadrupled its pace
"Logan! Don't sneak up in me like that!" She put on her best pouty-face, but when she saw Logan's face all wishes of humour fled the scene.
"I'm serious Jubes. He's not like me. He'll not open up to you, no matter how hard you try.
"How would you know?" Jubilee demanded angrily. She loved Logan dearly, but sometimes his over-protectiveness could be really frustrating.
A dark shadow settled itself on Wolverine's features. "I just do!"
Jubilee's temper almost escalated off the charts. "That's not an answer! If I can't talk to him I wanna know why!"
Logan also seemed to lose grip of his mighty temper.
"It's personal and that's final! Ya don't wanna know, an' ya don't have to know!"
Had her life been a comic book, Jubilee would be steaming from the top of her head right now. But this was reality, and as she stomped to the door and was about to slam it, she heard Logan's deep growl, suddenly devoid of all anger.
"Don't ask him about it, okay? It's too personal."
She slammed the door shut and marched away, intent on disregarding anything Logan had said, but his final words still reverberated inside her skull.
"Don't ask him..."
"I'm telling you, we can't let him leave"
Three persons were assembled in an office, taking in hushed voices; a handsome young blonde man, a tall, stone-faced man with red sunglasses, and a beautiful woman with an auburn mane with a white streak. Bobby Drake, Scott Summers and Rogue. Taking the closeness of all the inhabitants here into consideration, such a top-secret confederation looked completely erroneous
"I agree with Bobby, we simply cannot let a serial-killer back on the streets. It's just wrong!"
"Why don't the professor stop him. Ah mean, he's the one that brought 'im here right?" The woman spoke.
"He feels that that we owe it to him" Bobby sneered.
"Yes, he did save Jubilee, but he's done something to Jean, I KNOW it! Ever since they met each other she has been strangely quiet. And I can feel her projecting a lot of fear."
The ever-blank expression on Scott's face began to melt into a softer expression.
"She had a nightmare last night" Scott choked. "I have almost never felt to much fear. And I could feel...him...being the source of that fear."
He received comforting words and gestures, and that seemed to steel his will
"I'm going to talk to the professor now!" He snapped. For all his respect for the professor, his love for Jean was more important to him. And right now, for maybe the first time ever, he felt that Xavier's judgement was severely off the mark.
Rogue jumped from her seat and stopped in mid-air, floating like she was underwater. "Yeah, you do that! Ah'll hold him back fer a while" And with that she was off...
Frank walked glumly through the corridors of the mansion. His thoughts were revolving around what Jubilee had said. The conversation had only lasted a few seconds, but it had opened up some festering wounds that Frank had hoped never to touch again. He could not let anyone get close he berated himself. Bad things happened when they got close. Death happened... Maria, Christie, Frank Jr... All dead...
No! Too much emotion. Stow it away. Hide it! Forget it!
"This is as for as ya get!"
This new voice snapped him out of his reverie, and he looked at the person blocking the corridor in front of him.
It was a woman. Perhaps five-foot-nine and very lean. Her reddish-brown hair cascaded down her shoulders, a white streak running through it like a river through a desert. And she looked very pissed off.
He looked at her unfazed, and politely asked her to move aside.
"No way, you're stayin' here!" She grabbed his arm as he passed, her gloved fingers boring into his arm like dull nails.
'Real men don't hit ladies' Or so they say, but a lifetime of experience had taught Frank that anybody could be an enemy, and when someone was an enemy, age, gender, race and all that shit means precisely dick.
Franks body tensed as he looked up and down the girl. Was she about to start a fight?
"Get out of my way" He spoke ominously.
"You just stay raaight here, like a good boy" She smirked
Frank wasted no time, and like snakes his arms whipped out, trying to perform a little skeletal manipulation on her outstretched arm, but too late he discovered that bending her arms was like bending solid steel, and before he knew what had happened his feet was dangling off the ground, the girl holding him by his collar.
Frank kneed her in the stomach, kicked her chest, and generally did enough damage to kill any other man three times over, but Rogue just stood unfazed, smirking slightly at his failed attempts, until he grabbed her throat.
Frank's last conscious though was that she must have some sort of electrical powers, because it felt like his entire body was being wracked by several hundred volts.
...And then nothing...
And that was how they were found. Frank unmoving, and Rogue clutching her temples, screaming at the top of her lungs...
A/N: Okay, I PROMISE there'll be some action soon! All this talk is getting boring, eh? Or not?
Well, hopefully not, but still...
Oh, yeah, and drop a review, so that the proverbial gears may continue turning. (God that sounded cheesy) :-P
Oh yeah, I do NOT hate Scott, Bobby or Rogue!!! I will not bash ANYONE in this story, so PLEASE DON'T FLAME me, awright?
See ya!