Pinocchio, a x-men fanfic

[Beginning Author's Note:] During quarantine, I've been trying my best to finish reading/rereading many DC and Marvel comics that I've left as tabs on my iPhone, some tabs being weeks old and other months old (lol) and only half-read. Comics from the 2000s that were Laura Kinney/X-23 origin comics are a few of these many comics, and I've finished up all that bunch except for the 2007 one (Target X) which I'm on issue #2 of. I always liked X-23 (probably since I'm a Wolverine fangirl) and, well, rereading Innocence Lost and even the infamous NYX made me so heartbroken for the pain Laura Kinney went through that, well, this three times fanfic that I created this morning and finished this evening was the result of said heartbreak. I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed typing it out on Google Drive lol.

[Title:] Pinocchio.

[Author:] Lumiere de Venise.

[Fandom:] X-Men/Marvel.

[Genre:] Angst & Hurt/Comfort.

[Prompt:] 4 situations involving Laura and the book Pinocchio, the first three situations being when the book was read to her and the last situation being the one time she read the book to someone else. My goal was to make the first situation motherly, the second and third situations angsty, and the last situation to be a bit of a happy one after the angsty feel of the previous two situations.

[Word Count:] 3,000 Words/5.5 Pages (Originally Arial Size 11 Font.)

[Rating:] T due to mentions of blood, violence, and teasing of a sex scene but not explicitly an actual full-on sex scene.

[Pairing:] This is not a ship fanfic, but anyone reading this is free to see this as a fanfic in support of JulianxLaura ship since I like that ship.

[Summary:] 3 times someone read Pinocchio to Laura and the one time she read it to someone else. In order, this fanfic deals with scenes either literally depicted in or based on the story-line of the following comic series: X-23: Innocence Lost, NYX, and New X-Men: Academy X. The 2005 Innocence Lost six-part comic had Sarah Kinney read Pinocchio to Laura, which I found clever because, as the man who created X-23 for the cartoon X-Men: Evolution—Craig Kyle—stated: "She's Pinocchio for Marvel Comics—she's a samurai sword trying to become a real little girl." I find comparisons like that to be an amazing way to describe the issues and growth of a character, which is why this fanfic is themed around the story of Pinocchio and the anguish of Laura's backstory. I love me some angsty symbolism.

[Disclaimers:] I don't own Marvel, nor am I or will I ever profit from this work.

PINOCCHIO

By Lumiere de Venise

"Look at him, Figaro. He almost looks alive. Wouldn't it be nice if he was a real boy?"—Geppetto.

THEY SAY BEING A MOTHER can change any woman, and it seemed that saying even applied to Sarah Kinney, the Head of Genetics of a no-feelings-allowed facility that was a branch of one of the many organizations of the Weapons Plus Project.

At first, Sarah did not believe she would feel much for the female embryo that was inside her—after all, she did not and would never give a damn about her father, and she also did not care for the hurt tone her younger sister Deborah spoke to her with when she informed her to cease calling her.

Then again, Sarah never would've thought that she would end up as the surrogate of a baby that would grow up to be a weapon to fight against another weapon, and then again, Sarah did say that she would at least allow drawings and calls from Megan, Deborah's young daughter.

Perhaps, despite Sarah's motto of work over ethics, it seemed that she was never fully someone who disregarded feelings and family for the opportunistic appeal of science.

Rather, as a fault of her own...unpleasant childhood, she tended to shield herself from a topic and aspect of life that destroyed the innocence and enjoyment of what could've been her pleasant childhood.

…

"'Oh, I'm tired of always being a marionette!' cried Pinocchio, disgusted. 'It's about time for me to grow as everyone else does. I want to be a real person rather than a wooden boy.'"

Sarah turned the small page of the classic children's book that she hid in the larger and less-for-children novel The Art of War she grasped in her hands. She felt a small kick, and slightly smiled and rubbed her round stomach.

So far, X-23 seemed to enjoy Pinocchio, Cinderella, and butterfly-themed children's books, but Pinocchio was the one X-23 loved the most.

It was...heart-warming.

"...How ridiculous. Having her be the surrogate was a mistake, Martin..."

Sarah, who was about to read again, ceased the action, looked to her right momentarily, and caught the eyes of two men that stood from behind a glass wall—Zander Rice, the Surgical Head of the X-23 project, and Dr. Martin Sutter, the boss of Zander and her.

The pregnant woman frowned and glared at the way the former male that had been watching her rolled his eyes at her, and she was indifferent to the latter male's half-neutral, half-concerned look towards her.

After she adjusted herself on the hospital bed she was on and allowed a nurse to do another ultrasound test on her, the mother-to-be went back to reading to the fetus inside her.

"'...You will if you deserve it—''Really?' Pinocchio exclaimed. 'Tell me, what can I do to deserve it?'"

X-23 gave another kick and, once again, Sarah smiled and rubbed her large stomach.

ii.

At the age of 11 and ½, when she was not on assassin missions or in a training session with Kimura, X-23 usually spent her time in a white room, where she either stared at the white-checkered ceiling above or glanced at the white-checkered flooring below.

When she had free time on Wednesdays, the green-eyed clone would usually do the former vacant action. So far, she had spent the last two hours straight doing it, and neither moved or talked—though, she never was much of a talker anyways, was she?

"X...X-23...how...how are you today?"

X-23 ceased to stare at the ceiling and instead looked at the door to her left, where there stood Sarah Kinney, the Head of Genetics who was also the surrogate (later on, X-23 would learn that she got some of her DNA from the woman and was actually her biological daughter) that birthed her.

Sarah's hands were behind her back, holding a white-covered book that X-23 could briefly see had Japanese kanji in it. The female geneticist flashed a brief and soft smile at the tween.

"I'm going to read another section of the historical novella The Book of Five Rings I've been reading to you lately. When we are finished, I'll ask you a few questions and see if you remember the answers word by word."

X-23 did not respond; Sarah, who took out her novella from behind her, took a few small steps towards the child before she sat right down next to her. After opening up the war book, the doctor moved her mouth near the adolescent's left ear.

"Today, I'm going to read Pinocchio again to you," Sarah whispered as she moved X-23's body so that X-23's head would be in her lap, "next time, I'll get a new book, but you don't mind hearing Pinocchio once more, do you? It's your favorite, after all."

The pale-skinned woman brushed and caressed the long ebony locks of the quiet girl. X-23, although she did not physically show it in her facial expression, felt a tiny, tiny speck of happiness inside.

"Okay...Thank you."

Although it was the 156th time that X-23 had heard the story be told to her, and although she knew that the brief moment of calmness and lack of bloodshed would change tomorrow when she would have to travel to Argentina to kill a politician running for mayor in Buenos Aires, X-23 was happy.

"How it happened that Mastro Cherry, carpenter, found a piece of wood that wept and laughed like a child…"

Sarah stroked X-23's head again, and patted down a few standing-up strands of the mutant's hair down. Before she continued reading, Sarah smiled at the reticent girl.

X-23 did not smile back, but she did scoot herself so she could rest more of herself on the grown woman's lap. The 11 year old rested on one arm on the woman's lower Kong's and rested the other arm on her pale pink hospital gown.

It was…nice, Laura thought, to have moments where she was treated like an actual child and not like a clone that needed to complete mission after mission after mission.

It was nice. It really was.

"Y...your name is Laura," Sarah croaked out as blood traveled from out of her mouth to her left cheek and then rested and dissolved in the white snow beneath her cold, cold body.

X-23, suddenly renamed as Laura, looked down at her hands. Some of the splatter of crimson from Sarah's torso and stomach covered the adamantium near the teenager's knuckles. In a flash, the mutant retracted her claws and got down on her knees.

"My Laura…"

"N...No," the clone whispered as she grabbed onto the frigid hand of the caregiver she never meant to of maimed, "no, please, no…"

Sarah slightly opened her mouth wider and smiled, but only a few coughs of blood came out. After the wheezing stopped, her focus at the sky above slowly traveled to X-23, before going back towards the sky. "I...love yo—"

…

Silence—and then a quiet gasp left the mouth of X-23.

The black-haired teenager shook the wounded woman, apologized over and over again, and rested herself unto the still legs of Doctor Sarah Kinney, the Head of Genetics that used to read Pinocchio over and over again to her—Sarah Kinney, her mother.

"Please don't leave…"

…

Sarah never got up from the snow that was covered in red and with the stench of rusted metal.

(In her later teen years, Laura would always see Sarah's death as a reversal of the original ending of Pinocchio, and there would be times where she wished that the true faith of the wooden boy happened between her mother and her instead.)

iii.

Zip.

Laura unzipped the red corset top that had clung to her torso. She had thought her service was done, and already had finished redressing herself, but her latest John changed his mind and wanted another round with her.

She was going to take off her black garter belt and even blacker stockings, but her John shook his head no.

"Keep them ol' sexy lingerie stockins' on, lil' Laura," the blond John who only was wearing boxers said to the teenager as he ripped up a condom wrapper, "they look fine on a girl like ya'. Don't take off them boots 'ither."

After she gently placed the corset on the top of the cheap dresser next to the door, the green-eyed mutant slowly sat down on the bed. Half of the bed's two covers were dangling only a few inches above the floor.

"Ya' know, I done came all the way from Alabama to get a night with ya' when I 'eard how good ya' was in the sack with my good ol' New York friend Jimmy. Ya' remember 'im? He likes to dye his hair purple."

The goth-looking teenager said nothing. She only glanced at her black-painted nails, and then blew off a tiny speck of blood that was on her left index fingernail.

When the long-haired girl felt pressure added unto the motel bed, she looked up—the man, who held a book, was right in front of her and grinned at her. When she looked down, she saw his tool covered with a purple condom.

Laura sniffed stealthily. It was grape-flavored.

The man's hazel eyes gleamed with joy as he got unto the bed and rolled over to the empty right side. Laura briefly smelt rusted metal as she eyed the still red markings that were on his back.

"My friend said ya' a fan of Pinocchio. Well, I ain't got da' best readin' skills, but I done got this book that I promised to myself I'd read to ya' if ya' done scratched me da' right way."

The Alabama man flipped a random page in the book and started reading.

"Then the Blue fairy—ooh, she got some nice big ol' titties, don't she!—said to Pinocchio, 'Prove that ya' are brave, truthful, and unselfish and someday 'ya gonna be a real boy.'"

Laura's John traveled his right hand around her lingerie-clad hips, and pulled Laura closer to him.

"Are ya' a brave girl, Laura? Do ya' think ya' can be a woman if ya' done keep at it with them skills ya' got? I know I'm just Finch the Alabama client, but if I could make ya' a star with all that talent ya' got, I done would!"

Laura said nothing.

"I done guess ya' ain't gonna give me an answer. Well, I like that about ya', ya' know? Anyways, I want ya' to ride me while I read, alright?"

Laura nodded her head and got on top of the man. The man rubbed on her knuckles.

"I want ya' to do that special thing again with them blades in them hands. I swear, they make prostitutes different up North, don't they?"

With a frown, Laura swung out her adamantium claws—lightly and slowly, she dragged down the claws of both of her hands unto the surprisingly fit torso of the man.

"Awwww yeah," moaned the male as he grabbed her hands and brought them down deeper so that he started to bleed diagonally across his chest, "when we done, I want ya' to lick all the blood off afterwards. I want ya to drink that all up."

Laura made a nasty scratch unto the man and blocked out the scream of pleasure that came out of him, and also blocked out the next line from Pinocchio that he read out loud.

There was something about using claws that, originally, were meant to slaughter drug-lords and superheroes and other assassins, instead unto the too eager bodies of masochistic clients that never did set well on Laura.

It was disgusting. Even though she at times had cut her own wrists, those times were different—those self-inflicted cuts were done out of the agony and for Laura's atonement of the sins of her past that she was sure would never leave her memories.

The cuts she inflicted on targets—targets that were either too naive to be mayors or too untrustworthy to be allies of the black market—were done out of a forced duty. A forced destiny.

A forced direction of a life that was made with the goal of only to kill kill kill.

Her claws were not designed to cut out of sick pleasure. She would never allow herself to believe that the claws functioned only for that.

She still cut her client, though, even when that one more round of sex turned into sex that lasted the rest of the night. Even when only five more pages of the book were read before he threw the book at a wall and suckled at her neck with his mouth.

Laura licked at the man's chest wounds in the exact way he frenziedly ordered her to.

She did not want to be cussed out and slapped around and beaten up by Zebra Daddy like the other girls who put their feelings and opinions over Zebra's money and the clients' sick fetishes, even though she easily could have killed anyone who dared to hit her.

Laura did not have to worry about being attacked by Zebra Daddy, though. Zebra never struck out at Laura—and why would he? Laura was a good girl who never disobeyed orders and made sure that her natural instincts were not above the desire of grown men.

Good girls do not question or defy Zebra Daddy and his clients. They just don't, and in return, they don't get slapped in clubs full of cocaine and strippers that would work from time to time with Zebra Daddy. Laura knew that and never tried to not be a good girl.

After all, she was made to obey the orders of men in order to unleash her claws unto other men. Perhaps her claws were indirectly used correctly on her clients after all, because she was still in internal agony and financially under orders as she would cut her clients.

…

Laura took another lick of the cuts that covered the Alabama client she was riding—

The blood tasted like cherry.

...AND THE ONE TIME SHE READ PINOCCHIO TO SOMEONE ELSE.

"What...are you doing?"

Laura stopped in the middle of the hallway, closed the book she had gotten from her dorm room, and changed her eyesight from focusing right at her hands to straight ahead.

One feet away from Laura, Julian Keller stood with blue eyes that flashed with wonder.

She had sniffed him earlier—she always remembered that rather intriguing masculine smell he had—but the Wolverine clone was so focused on rereading her favorite work of art, she had quickly brushed it off a sign of his coming presence.

"...Reading," Laura responded. She blinked once at him before going back to reading her book.

"Well...what are you reading? Some gothic book? Some—"

Keller stopped talking and squinted his eyes to look at the book's cover. After a few seconds of processing what it was, he looked up at the other mutant before he looked at the book title again and laughed.

"Pinocchio? You've got to be kidding me."

He looked at the book title for a few more seconds before he took a few steps forward and grabbed the book out of the other mutant's hands.

"Something like that is so...unlike you," the telekinetic male said as he quickly flipped through the pages of the children's book. When he got to the last page, he reached his hands out to give Kinney the book back. "I'd expect some horror novel or something depressing."

"...Well, I like this novel. That's all."

Laura went to the page she was on and finished the last sentence on it before she turned the page. Julian cocked an eyebrow at her.

"You're full of surprises for someone that doesn't talk a lot, you know that?"

"..."

"I mean, I just didn't think someone like you would be such a fan of that. Maybe you're reading some new version of the story where Pinocchio is all mopey and stuff?"

"..."

Laura slid down the wall and sat down.

"What are you doing?"

"Reading. You...can join, if you want."

Julian gave Laura a confused look.

"You want to not only read to me but have us sit...here? In the middle of the hallway? That's not weird at all to you?"

Laura shook her head. "You're free to decline."

Julian gave her an even more confused look.

"Okay, weirdo," the male of the two responded before he flashed a wide grin and sat right next to the other teenager.

Laura did not flash a smile or widely grin back, but in her eyes, there was a tiny speck of adoration in her pupils.

After she gave one more glance at Keller, Kinney turned to the next page in her book. The first thing she saw was The Blue Fairy and Pinocchio.

"'You must learn to choose between right and wrong,' The Blue Fairy told Pinocchio. 'Right and Wrong? But how will I know?' Pinocchio asked The Blue Fairy. The Blue Fairy smiled and patted the shoulder of Pinocchio, and told Pinocchio, 'Your conscience will tell you.'"

After she turned another page, Laura made a side-eye glance at Hellion. He stopped looking at the book and instead looked at her.

"I still can't believe I'm letting you read this children's book to me."

"..."

"...Read what happens next, Laura," Julian said before he gave an embarrassed laugh and then continued on with his sentence, "but don't tell the others, alright?"

Laura gave a tiny smile—as quickly as it came, however, it vanished as her overall facial expression turned into her usual apathetic one, though the small twinkle of adoration that was in her eyes never left.

"...Your secret is safe with me."

Laura continued to read the children's book, and for a moment thought back to her childhood, specifically the moments where she would be in a white room next a woman who would read to her the same tale but in a tinier book hidden in a book that was intended to of encourage Laura to focus only on stealthiness and murder, but then Julian laughed at one page Laura read out loud and Laura focused back on reading Pinocchio to Julian.

[END.]

[Ending AN:]

It is funny how I was able to finish this fanfic in one day yet have a few WIP fanfics 97% done that I have not gotten to yet, lol.

Anyway, one of the regrets I've always had when it came to Marvel was on how I never really read Marvel comics or watched too much of Marvel due to being so much more of a DC fan that I would read comics and watch DC Comic shows waaaaaaaay more than I ever did of Marvel, because I was one of those over-the-top fans who would go "Marvel sucks, DC RULES!" It is sad, because Marvel has many comics that I believe I should've read years ago, and they have some that in that past I'd glance at and dismissed as "DC would've done it better" that now, looking back at it, DC never would've been able to do as good. It is funny how opinions can change over time.

So, yeah. If you liked, you liked, and if you did not write, feel free to tell me what you didn't like, for I enjoy constructive criticism. Thanks!

-Lumiere de Venise.

Fun fact: this fic was gonna be extremely Canon divergent and an AU where everything was in the real world and with X-23 being a child kidnapped and forced to be a child soldier, and the the last part was gonna end with Julian and Sofia with Laura viewing and thus angst and the prompt was "and the one time Laura read to herself" but I decided to make it happier and have Laura read to Julian thus have it he "one time she read to someone else."

Original dialogue (not fully constructed since I changed my mind before I finished and was just writing a few sentences to see the base-line of what my story would be going for):

Laura reading and being approached by Julian and seeing Julian talking to Sofia

"Insert white…"

Laura took one look at the blush that was on Sofia's face as Julian lifted up a strand of her hair and, in an instant, closed the book.

She should never have felt sensitive at seeing Julian with Sofia. After all, Julian was never the book and looked out the window that was at her side. It was a no-brainer that Sofia is a girl who has the looks, charisma, and impact on a person.

Laur—no, X-23 though?

She's just a weapon trying to be a girl.

I took it out because it felt so cliche and also because I decided to go for a more canon-based story, well except for the "one time she read to someone else" part, heh.

...

(Until next time.)