Toad let out a deep breath as he flipped between the news station and a re-play of the previous day's soccer tournament on TV. The open window let in the cold, crisp air and the low mechanical hum of the cars in the city around him. Listening close enough you could hear the sound of a train bumping over tracks and the faint squeal of wheels in the distance.
The news lady droned on and on about the once anti-mutant propagandist: Senator Kelly. He glared at the man with hatred and, actually, smug pleasure. It seemed like their little 'experiment' in making him a mutant had turned his goals in a more mutant friendly direction.
Of course he had no idea at the time that Mystique was actually the one impersonating the man for the benefit of mutants. Really, he had no idea at all about Mystique; she could have been dead for all he knew.
He wondered where Sabertooth was hiding out these days; big numskull, he hated to admit it, but he missed the guy. They'd had an ongoing semi-friendship while he had been with the Brotherhood. Sabertooth would fail terribly at something, Toad would crack a few jokes and sometimes smooth it over. Of course sometimes he just couldn't be helped, like when he'd failed to bring Rogue back or had let Senator Kelly fall into the ocean.
Toad gave a half-hearted, hmp of a laugh and flipped the channel back to the soccer tournament. Utah loses to Texas by a point. He'd never really cared for the Utah team anyway, or Texas actually, but he figured he had to pick at least one side to root for.
He glanced at the clock; it was well past three in the morning, the day of Christmas Eve. The sun was just starting to come up outside. He hadn't been sleeping lately. On the table laid a couple of wallets, coins, dollars, credit cards, and I.D.s scattered all over the table.
He picked up on of the I.D.s. Apparently he'd mugged a high school girl the previous night. She'd been easy, they normally all were. Once they saw him they were willing to toss anything to him just to keep him—a mutie—at distance.
The I.D. said she was seventeen and lived up around Soho. With her sleek black hair and busty figure he snorted and wondered what she was doing on his side of town. How very unfortunate for her. He tossed the I.D. back on the table and briefly considered the multiple I.D.s and cards he'd picked up.
He tapped his fingers on the worn armrest of the old, light tan sofa. He didn't think it was originally tan though. If you moved the seat cushions, which he really regretted doing after finding something so horrifically gross I won't even dare to mention it, you could see the back part of the sofa was white.
What a terrible choice for a sofa: White. He didn't think he would ever get a white sofa, even if against all odds he fell into some immense fortune and had the money to frequently get it cleaned. It was just too easy to stain and he wasn't exactly the cleanest person either.
He picked up the remote ready to turn the TV off when he heard a faint meow sound from his window. He looked over to see a rather thin, sandy brown cat rub up against the window frame. It purred loud enough that he could hear it over the low murmur of the TV.
He eyed it tiredly for a few moments and it purred back at him, wide copper eyes fixed on him affectionately. It eventually invited itself in and hopped down onto the wooden floors and rubbed up against his leg. He reached down and ran a hand over its soft fur. It felt like the fur on Dahlia's ears, even looked like it.
" 'ello, kitten." He scratched behind its ears. "Lookin' for somethin' to eat, are'y?"
The cat meowed a desperate little cry and Toad got up to shuffle through his cabinets. He was really quite sparse on food at the moment; he was beginning to understand again what Dahlia meant when she said they liked to stay under the radar.
He'd only done his shopping at the run down store a few buildings down where the employees all looked hopelessly stoned each time he went in. He envied them, most drugs made him impossibly ill, it might have had something to do with his mutation like how soaps bothered his skin but he wasn't sure.
He opened a can of sardines from his cabinet and set it down in front of the cat. While she ate it in a hurry he walked over to the window to shut it, hoping to keep her furry company for a while longer.
He moved to pull off his shirt to get some sleep and the cat jumped back, eyes wide and tail bristled with fear. He glared, yanking his shirt off. Good, he thought. Be scared'a me. How it's s'posed to be. But after a moment the cat settled down, it licked its paw and dragged it over its head lazily, pranced up to Toad to rub against his leg again.
"If you knew me kitten," He kneeled down to scratch behind its ear again. "You wouldn't be so fond of me."
He laid sprawled out on the sofa bed, his eyes flickering from under closed lids. The light from behind the closed window blinds trying desperately hard to wake him.
In an instant he sat straight up, hand on his chest in an attempt to calm his frantic heart. His furry friend, curled up on the arm rest, looking at him with sleepy eyes and a deep purr.
The clock blinked four PM, he'd only been asleep an hour. He rolled his tensed shoulders and laid back down. He stared up at the ceiling fan turning lazily overhead.
He'd always had a hard time sleeping, growing up at the orphanage where the boys had been so cruel he'd learned to be a light sleeper (Who knew what those little bastard would plot next.) but since leaving Dahlia, things had different. Worse. Lonely.
He had nightmares now. Well, he'd always had nightmares, but now he had them twice as much. He longed for the dreamless sleep that he had upon first waking up from a coma. Normally his dreams had been about the orphanage and his time in England, about the terrible people who mistreated him, but lately it had been about other things.
This one dream stood out to him and kept repeating itself in different ways. It always left him unnerved, not because of gore or violence though, because of abandonment. It was always the same, in some pleasant home his mind had decided to torture him with, then the orphanage.
He had a family, people who cared about him and he wasn't so alone. No, scratch that, he wasn't alone.
He'd be with them, sometimes he was a kid sometimes he wasn't, and everything would be going great. His mum would bring out some dinner and sit with him and his father and younger brother. He'd always wanted a younger brother when he was a kid, someone to look out for, even though he couldn't even look out for himself.
They would be watching some football, or as American's call it soccer. That was another thing; he'd always loved soccer, though he'd be a real gem at it with his legs. He'd tried getting Magneto to watch it with him once or twice, it never happened.
In the dream, they would talk about the game and make jokes, just a regular family enjoying dinner on a weekend he assumed. He put his hands over his face as his stomach churned with the emptiness the dream left him.
But then, as the game reached half-time, his family would pick up their things and the room would slowly melt into the walls of the orphanage as they left him and the taunting of the orphan boys would begin. He would try to talk to them—his family—plead with them. But, he was always unheard, like they didn't want to hear him, like he was nothing.
He pushed himself up wearily, the long nights finally taking a toll on him. He pulled a beer from the fridge, never quite sure how to deal with the emotions his dream lent him.
He took the cap off with the edge of the counter. His habit was starting to leave nicks in the counter and he figured he should get a real bottle opener soon, that or start buying the screw cap lids, the taste didn't matter much to him since his tongue got scorched. Not that he couldn't taste anything, just that it mattered less than it used to. He made his way back to the sofa, drinking half the bottle before he even sat down.
He would probably get a bottle opener; the actual bottle caps always made him feel cool.
He found himself wondering with remorse if Dahlia had been luckier than him or not. To know your family and face the pain and guilt of leaving or to never know your family and face the emptiness he assumed would always be there.
He thought about Dahlia a lot, everything about her. Her voice, her hair, her skin…how he felt in her, wrapped around her, kissing her…how she listened to him and trusted him, always seeming to count on him to look out for her even though she hid it. He'd seen that apprehensive look on her face more than once when he'd suggest she go out on her own; he'd always ended up going with her.
He nursed his beer, finishing it off. His cat sent him a seemingly scolding look but he ignored it and rested his head back on his pillow with closed eyes.
Sometimes he wondered why he'd left her, maybe his one chance at ever belonging, but the images of his dream drowned out his thoughts as he was dragged back to sleep. He would spend the holidays alone again, but that was nothing new to him.