DISCLAIMER: I don't know why I call it a disclaimer… I've already disclaimed everything…. suddenly seems to notice the camera is on Uh… o.O Welcome to the newest chapter of Words Unspoken! There's not a lot of action going on in this chapy, but you get to learn a little more about our new spidery mutant. Hope you enjoy!
Norwena watched the sleeping girl from a metal bar stool near the door. Toad had asked her to clean up, bandage, and keep an eye on the little spider while he went out to try and track down Jester.
Necromancer was very pleased with the girl's arrival. With any luck, Toad would soon forget all about the outsider Oyre and turn all his attentions to the battered girl in the bed. She would not cause us trouble as the oz'er girl vill. She thought to herself as she stood, gliding like a ghost to stand over the spider, peering down at her.
The girl was very curvaceous, with hips any belly dancer would kill for. Her face was heart shaped and, through the bruises, Norwena could tell that she had the sort of round cheeks that any obnoxious aunt or grandmother would just love to pinch. When she slept, deep lines of an even deeper, inner pain showed on her face. Norwena felt instantly connected to this young spider and wished the world for her.
She was nothing like the thin, wiry Oyre who Norwena saw as a child more than a young woman. The Oyre who, with a bat of an eye, could acquire anything from anyone and wasn't even aware of the power of innocence she possessed. Oyre, who had been coddled and loved, pampered and adored all of her life. Norwena frowned, feeling a deep hatred for the cat mutant who had never felt a day of pain in all her short years.
The hatred left Norwena's eyes as they locked onto the spider's face as she stirred, whimpering slightly. No emotion showed on Norwena's face as she took a step back, not wishing to frighten the girl when she woke. After a moment of weak tossing and turning, the spider opened her eyes.
"Where am I?" she asked clearly, her voice scratchy from her dry throat. Her eyes scanned the room and fell on Norwena, a defensive but unafraid glint entering their center. "Who are you?"
Norwena tilted her head down slightly, allowing her dark hair to partially cover her face. "I am Norvena, also called Necromancer; I vas z'e one who cleaned your wounds and bandaged them." She spoke slowly and quietly, allowing the girl to remember.
"The alley…" She muttered to herself, her eyes moving back and forth, not seeing the room around her, but the events that took place only a few hours ago. "The man-" she tried to speak, but the excruciating pain in her side and head as she tried to sit up cut her words short.
Norwena was instantly beside her, wrinkled, gray hands that looked like they belonged to a corpse gently pushing her back down. "Toad vill be back shortly." She said reassuringly, assuming he was who the girl was referring to. "Two of your ribs are bruised and one is fractured. You need to rest." In a swift movement, she was once again by her stool; she did not sit. "Vhat is your name?"
"Marlena. I'm called Widow, though." She had come up with the nickname years ago after hearing a group of mutant friends calling each other by nicknames that suited their powers and mutations. Something about having one of her own made her feel less alone in the world: if she had a nickname, surely she had someone to call her by it.
She took a deep breath, like she had many times before, to check the state of her ribs and gasped instantly, biting her cheek against the pain, tasting blood. "You're German." She said after a moment through gritted teeth, as much to take her mind off of the pain as to start a conversation.
"Ja." Norwena replied, lifting her head up and staring at Marlena curiously. "Vhy?"
Marlena shook her head and closed her eyes against the instant pain and dizziness caused by the small action. "No reason. I'm German too, though I wasn't born there like I guess you were." She opened her eyes after a moment and turned her head slowly to look at Norwena. "How bad am I?"
The unaccounted for bond that Norwena felt to Marlena strengthened with the knowledge that they shared a culture. "Everyz'ing is superficial but your ribs." She moved slowly back to Marlena, surprised with the feeling she got that Marlena was not afraid or even repulsed by her appearance. "Z'e vill be painful for quite some time." She gently touched Marlena's forehead with the back of her hand. "Z'ere is no fever, which means no infection. Z'at is good."
Marlena sighed at the gentle gesture and the coolness of Norwena's hand. No one had ever treated her with such kindness or touched her without intentions of harming her. For the first time in her life, Marlena felt like there was some one who actually cared.
"How many are here?" She asked after a moment.
"Three oz'er z'an myself. Toad is our leader." As she spoke she poured water from a battered, metal pitcher into an even more battered tin cup and sat on the side of the bed carefully. "Let me help you." She said, slipping an arm around Marlena's shoulders and easing her into a sitting position.
"Danke." Marlena said with a smile. She had learned to word from an old Marlene Dietrich film that was being shown in its original format of German at a late night film festival she had snuck into. She couldn't read the subtitles or understand the German, but by the end of the movie she had gathered that 'danke' meant 'thank you.' She drank the cold water, trying hard not to choke on the pain, and didn't notice the corners of Norwena's mouth twitch up in a small smirk.
"You are most velcome." She replied, easing Marlena back to the pillow once she was done with the water. "Are you hungry?"
"Not really." She lied. In all actuality, she was starving but it had been painful enough trying to drink the water. "Where are we?" She asked after a moment to let the pain die down a bit.
Norwena sat on her stool once again, her eyes never leaving Marlena. "Ve are in an old warehouse on z'e docks of New York harbor." She continued to stare at Marlena with dead eyes that were a sickly yellow in color. "Z'is is my room."
Marlena looked around at the small, unadorned room. There was a single light hanging naked from the ceiling, the metal framed bed she now lay in, and the stool that Necromancer occupied. "Cozy." Marlena said, a bit sarcastically.
"I find no need for personal possessions." She said, explaining the simplicity of the room. "Vhen you die, you lose them all and it vas all for naught."
Marlena raised an eyebrow and half smiled. "You are so deep." She said mockingly, employing a Californian accent to the extreme.
A small grin played across Norwena's lips but was gone in an instant when Marlena started coughing painfully. She was up from the stool in an instant, a cloth in front of Marlena's mouth and an arm around her shoulders. When she pulled the cloth away, it was lightly spotted with blood.
"There is blood in your lungs." Norwena explained gently. "Probably inhaled during z'e fight. Not a lot; noz'ing deadly. There is no damage directly to your lungs that I can tell; but I am not a doctor. You may cough like this several more times before it is all out."
Marlena watched her with a bewildered look in her eyes as the other mutant began soaking a clean rag in a metal bowl of warm water. "Why are you doing this?" When Norwena didn't answer, she licked her lips and continued. "No one has ever cared if I lived or died before. Not even another mutant."
Norwena brought the warm rag over and started gently wiping Marlena's forehead. "You are one of us. Despite what you may have experienced with other mutants, we do not turn our own avay." She looked as if she were going to say something more when a loud clang caught both their attentions. "He is back." Norwena said in reply to Marlena's frightened look.
Marlena was in the middle of another coughing fit with Norwena patiently holding her when Toad came in the door. He took a seat on Norwena's now empty stool, one foot resting on a metal rung, the other on the floor. He waited for Marlena to finish, a slight flash of worry in his eyes.
"Not dieing on us yet, are you poppet?" He asked with a grin. For a moment, he worried that she actually was when it took her entirely too long to catch her breath.
"She vill live." Norwena said shortly in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, allowing Marlena to fully catch her breath.
"Good. I s'pose a proper introduction is called for." He bowed comically at the waist, staying seated on the stool. "The name's Mortimer Toynbee though most people just call me Toad."
"Marlena… I think my last name's Beck… Can't be certain though…" She coughed once and licked her lips, closing her eyes and placing a hand lightly on her head wound. "People call me Widow. Got any aspirin?"
Norwena silently moved from Marlena's side, making a note to ask about her last name later, and out the door. Toad watched her before turning his eyes back to the injured girl in the bed. Pictures of those startling blue eyes kept running through his mind and he wanted to see what they looked like void of fear or pain. He shook his head, reminding himself that the only eyes he cared about were emerald green.
"So, Little Spider, just what were you doing by yourself in that alley, taking on all those men?"
Marlena opened her eyes lowly, turning her head to look at him, her hand still on her head. She stared at him, eyes clouding over to a grey-blue for a moment. Anyone observant in the least would have deduced that she was trying to come up with a smart ass remark; Toad had no clue.
"I was looking for a nice piece of real estate." She said in a conversational tone. "You know; something with a white picket fence so I could get a dog." She nodded her head but regretted the action, wincing and once again closing her eyes.
"We don't 'ave any with fences, but we do 'ave plenty of room." Toad replied, oblivious to her sarcasm. "You could even call Jester your dog if you'd like." He grinned a bit at the thought.
Marlena's eyes snapped open and focused on him, a new terror in their depths. "No!" She snapped, startling Toad with her harshness. "No." She repeated, a little more gently. "I don't get on well with people."
"Not a problem Spide-deary." He said cheerily, hopping off the stool and a few steps closer to her. Marlena half expected him to start singing 'Chim-Chimney' from Mary Poppins. "This place is big enough that you could go for weeks with out seein' any of our sorry faces." He looked very pleased with himself for coming up with such an answer.
Marlena turned her head away from him and sighed, squeezing her eyes shut against all of the pain; both physical and emotional. "I can't really argue with you right now, can I? I'm such a mess I couldn't leave if my life depended on it." She shuddered a bit, fighting back tears.
Toad noticed that she sounded sad, even afraid, but he couldn't for the life of him understand why. He had saved her life and given her a warm, if shabby, place to stay. He would have questioned her, but Norwena came in with a bottle of aspirin.
"Is that the aspirin?" Marlena asked with out opening her eyes, her voice a little shaky. Toad couldn't figure out if her voice shook because she was in pain or trying not to cry. This troubled him. "I feel like I've been hit by a whole caravan of Mack trucks."
Toad sat back on the stool as Norwena moved forward to pour a glass of water. There was a puzzled look on his face that he did not try to hide from Norwena. Why's she so terrified? I'm not that bad lookin'… At least, Oyre didn't think so. He almost bit his tongue to keep from remembering her. Norwena was right and he knew it; Oyre would be trouble. But how to you just suddenly stop loving some one?
Marlena's cough broke him out of his reverie. He shook his head and watched Norwena wipe some blood from the corner of the Widow's mouth. It was during this fit that Toad realized just how irrationally worried for her he was.
"'Ow old are you, Poppet?"
"None of your business." She snapped defensively before lapsing into another coughing fit. Norwena was instantly by her side.
"Perhaps you should go." Norwena said gently, not looking at Toad. "She should rest more; sleep vill get her through z'is faster."
Toad frowned and stood. "I know when I'm not wanted." He said with bitterness, leaving the small room and closing the door far more gently than some one upset has any right to.
Marlena opened her eyes and stared at the door as Norwena started putting the dirty, unusable rags in a bag. "You should close your eyes and sleep." Norwena said with out looking at Marlena, who was surprised she had noticed.
Marlena obeyed, getting as comfortable as her condition allowed. She was silent a few minutes and was almost asleep before she spoke next. "Tell him… Mort… Tell him I'm twenty." She yawned deeply and grimaced at the pain, deciding to take slow, careful breaths until she finally fell asleep.
Norwena took up her place on the stool again, watching the girl in the bed. Things had gone well, she thought. With any luck, Toad will soon forget about that cat mutant and her and her new spider friend would finally have a permanent place to belong. She smiled softly at the idea, looking human for the first time in a long while.