Hello there gang.
Matt – Thanks for the help with the Baseball stuff. I am reading your story. And man do you have a load of new chapters! I forget to read for like a week and you put up 15 or something crazy like that. Love Mally though, so I can't wait to find out what's gonna happen. I promise to review soon. I was reading your story at work (very bad) and so I couldn't. But I will soon. And it will be all good.
GothickStrawberry – Bad feelings over Mattie and Davis? Yeah I can relate. I want to just shake her and tell her about Bobby and how great he is. But that's not how the story goes.
Agent G – This town is close but not that close to Mattie's home town, so not everyone would have heard about her amazing speed abilities. And Bekki and Davis certainly had no idea who she was. Glad you thought it was the right time for her powers to show up. Mattie has to concentrate on her speed, like Kitty concentrates on her phasing. So it wouldn't show up until she was trying to run. Poor Mattie, she's really suffering at the moment.
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When Mattie woke it was dark. She lay in bed and knew she was in the wrong room. The window was in the wrong place, and the bed faced the wrong way. So how should it look? She asked herself. The memory slipped away like a dream.
She lay in bed in the dark. She vaguely remembered Bekki putting her to bed. She wouldn't have thought that she could sleep, but her body had obviously had other ideas. Now she was awake, and her brain was racing again. Round and round and round and round. What was she? Who was she?
She got up. She wasn't going to get back to sleep so lying here torturing herself wasn't going to do any good.
She headed down to kitchen and made herself hot chocolate, being a quiet as she could.
A footstep behind her made her jump.
Davis grinned at her. "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."
"Did I wake you?"
He shook his head. "Couldn't sleep. Heard you get up."
Mattie nodded and sat down at the breakfast bar. Davis seated himself across from her.
"Want to talk about it?"
Mattie shook her head, her grip on the mug tightening.
"Okay." Davis held up his hand to placate her. "We don't have to."
Mattie nodded. "I just… don't." She said.
Davis nodded.
They sat in silence.
"It's just not fair!" Mattie burst out, like she couldn't contain it any more.
Davis regarded her steadily.
"I mean what did I ever do to deserve this?" Mattie asked, her worlds spilling out of her now. "Was I some terrible person in another life? Did I cause death and destruction wherever I went? What? What did I do to deserve this? Am I being punished? Cause I've had it. I can't take anymore of it. I'll go mad!"
She jumped off her stool and started to pace back and forth. "If I have to be some inhuman mutant terrorist then so be it. But at least give me my memories back. Let me remember something, anything. Just a glimpse of my life. I can't have been evil for ever. There must be something there. Some good thing that I did."
Her pacing became more frenzied, she raked her hand threw her hair, her voice throbbing with distress. "Maybe I helped an old lady across the street. Maybe I stopped a kitten from drowning." Her voice wavered as she fought her hysterics. "Thought that a rainbow looked pretty! Something! Anything!"
"Mattie." Davis stood up, standing in her way and blocking her path.
Mattie ploughed into him. She stared up at his face, her own face frantic with worry. "Something, Davis. I must have done something that wasn't maiming or killing."
"Mattie, I don't believe that you could hurt anyone."
Mattie stepped past him to begin pacing again. "How can you say that? You saw what I did to Ben and the others. You don't think I'm fully capable of putting them in a hospital?"
"Yes, but so am I." Davis watched her pace. "I could take a gun and kill people. That doesn't mean that I will."
Mattie shook her head. "That's not the same. I hurt those boys. Me, I did that."
"And Ben hurt me." Davis pointed out. "Does that make him a killer? Does that make him a monster? A jumped up bully, yes. But a killer? No."
"And what about me being a mutant?" She fired at him. "You going to explain that one away as well? You've seen the news, same as me. They're terrorists. They hurt and kill people."
Davis shook his head. "I think that people are what people make them. If you treat people like animals, then of course they are going to turn around and bite you."
"So I'm an animal now?"
"You know that is not what I meant."
Mattie stopped pacing for a second to meet his eye. "I don't care how you wrap it up in pretty wording. You can't change the facts."
"No I can't." Davis agreed with her. "The fact is that you are an astonishing young woman with amazing gifts, and I'm not just talking about the ones you demonstrated today."
Mattie made an exasperated noise.
"Mattie, you are smart, and clever and funny, and fantastically talented."
"And that all counts for shit, cause I'm a freak. Fact."
"Alright you want facts." Davis shot back at her. "Fact one, you lost your memory. Fact two, you can fight. Fact three, you are a mutant. Fact four, you have never once threatened either myself, Bekki, or either of my parents. Fact five, you have actually defended Bekki and myself. Fact six, you have had ample opportunity to harm people around you and you have never shown the slightest inclination to do so. So cut out all this bull shit about being a killer. Because I am getting sick and tired of hearing about it!"
Mattie whirled to fact him, her eyes blazing. "What do you know? You can't tell me how to feel, or what I should do! I'm scared. I'm fucking terrified! And all you can do is tell me to get over it!" She glared at him. "Well screw you!"
She marched out the kitchen and Davis stepped in front of her, blocking her exit.
She looked up at him, anger and hatred clearly evident in her eyes. "Get. Out. My. Way."
"Make me."
"I could put you in a hospital in a second!"
"Do it then." Davis stood unmoving, watching her steadily. "You think you're a killer? Prove it."
Mattie's jaw clenched. "Don't tempt me."
"Consider me Satan." Davis replied.
"Just move!" Mattie wailed, collapsing against his chest with a cry of frustration, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Davis wrapped his arms protectively around her, stroking her hair gently. "Shhhh, it's alright, it's okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Mattie clung to him like a child, pouring out all her pent up feelings in one go.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Davis told her over and over again. Inside he was elated. He'd pushed Mattie just as far as he could and she'd snapped. And she hadn't lashed out. She hadn't struck him. If this didn't prove she wasn't violent then he didn't know what did.
Mattie sobbed into his shirt; he could feel her hot tears soaking his shirt. She was shaking again.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He told her. Dropping a kiss on the top of her head.
She sniffed and looked up at him with teary eyes. She swallowed and gave him a watery smile.
Before he knew what he was doing Davis had planted a kiss on her forehead.
Mattie's eyes flew up to meet his. She froze in his arms.
"Sorry." Davis let her go and stepped away from her. "I couldn't help myself."
Mattie nodded, rubbing the spot where he'd kissed her. "Thank you." She said at last. "For talking to me. I needed that."
Davis nodded. "Anytime."
"I'd better get back to bed." Mattie said, making her way across the room. At the door she looked back at him. Davis smiled at her and Mattie gave him a half smile in return.
Davis watched her as she moved out of sight.
"Fuck!"
X
Bekki tore out the house grabbing her brother on route.
"Bekki! What are you doing?" Davis demanded as he found himself in the back garden.
"Using my head. Which is a lot more than can be said for you." She snapped back at him. "Mattie's in the shower so we've got about ten minuets to talk this through."
"Talk what through? Bekki what is going on?"
"We need to talk about Mattie."
"What about Mattie?"
Bekki stared at him as though he was stupid. "Maybe I was the only one who saw that little demonstration yesterday then."
"Bek, we talked about this." Davis said. "Mattie needs us."
"Oh for crying out loud!" Bekki glared at him. "Think with your brain rather than another part of your anatomy would you!"
Davis blushed and grinned.
"This is not funny! I'm serious! We need to think this through."
"Think what through? Bekki you're not making any sense."
"She's a mutant. And there are entire crack squadrons of government agents, just spending their time hunting mutants. And do you know what happens to people who harbour mutants?"
Davis didn't reply.
"Well they don't get a great big reward!" Bekki told him.
"So what? You want to throw her out onto the streets?"
"Of course not!" Bekki replied. "I'm just saying that we need to be damn sure what we are getting ourselves involved in. This is serious, Davis."
Davis nodded his agreement.
"We need to tell Mom and Dad and we need to be sure that we all know what we're doing."
"What are we doing?" Davis asked her.
"Helping out our friend of course." Bekki told him, heading back into the house.
X
Mattie sat in her room thinking. Davis had kissed her. Not on the lips or anything. But it was a definite kiss. One with feelings behind it. And now she had to work out how she felt about that. How she felt about him. Except that she couldn't. She liked Davis, he and his family had been good to her. And she certainly didn't find him ugly. But when he'd kissed her, she had felt such a strong feeling in her gut. Her body had reacted so badly.
She was slowly coming to trust her body. Her mind might not know what was going on, but you couldn't get anything past her body. It was screaming at her to wake up and get a grip on her life. And she was trying.
So when her gut told her in no uncertain terms that Davis kissing her was bad, she believed it. She just wished that she knew what it meant.
X
"Hey, man. We're going to shoot some hoops, you in?" Sam asked swinging open the door to his and Bobby's room.
Bobby was throwing things into a backpack.
"What ya doing?" Sam asked.
"I'm going to see Mattie." Bobby told him, not looking up from his packing.
"Okay." Sam watched him. "And you think this is the right move?"
"She said to come down a couple of days early." Bobby said. "So I am."
"And by a couple of days, she meant two weeks into her holiday?"
"Couple of days early." Bobby repeated.
"And you don't think that the two of you could use the alone time?" Sam asked. "I mean, you do kinda live in each others pockets."
"She'll want to see me." Bobby said.
Sam wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.
"Why don't you call her first? Check that this is okay."
"I can't." Bobby told him. "I don't have the number. If I did I'd have called her by now."
"Bobby, what if she's just having a good time hanging with the girls? You really want to go and mess that up?"
Bobby suddenly looked up and fixed his gaze on Sam. "I'm worried, okay Sam. I just want to know that she's okay. If I get there and she's fine then I'll leave. But I just have this feeling that something is wrong, and I can't leave it for another week."
Sam regarded him for a while. "Okay then. What you going to say to the Professor?"
"That Mattie asked me to go and join her." Bobby told him. "It's the truth."
Sam nodded thoughtfully. "It is odd that she hasn't called you."
Bobby stared out the window, and then shouldered his backpack. "I just want to know that she's safe."