Someone slamming their fist on the door at six in the morning was never a good sign. Teva groaned as she rolled over and squinted at the clock, she'd only been asleep two hours and her mind was still fogged with alcohol. She'd also requested to be left alone until 10.
The knocking continued, getting more persistent, so she got up, belting on a kimono over her nude body.
"What the fuck is it?" she demanded as she opened the door.
There was a newspaper being held up with one hand, the words "Mutant Rock Star" printed across the front page in 48-point font over a picture of her on stage. The paper lowered to reveal the very angry face of her manager, Troy.
"You wanna explain this?" he spat out.
Teva stared for a moment, her heart beating rapidly and her mouth gone even drier than before. His rage was so intense she took a step back from it unintentionally. ""Where did ye get that?" she asked when she found her voice.
The man who'd found her and given her stardom pushed past her into the sitting room. "They're at every newsstand in New Mexico, and probably the rest of the fucking country by now. The record execs are asking if it's true."
"Do you think it is?" She sat down on the couch, curling her legs beneath her. "Would it matter if it is?"
"You know it matters. There are people pushing that registration act, and anyone known or even thought to be associating with mutants suddenly loses their businesses, their homes, sometimes family members ..." Troy threw the paper on the coffee table. It skidded to a stop just before it fell off. "Is it true or not, Teva? Got a lot riding on this."
Teva closed her eyes, panic rising up. She'd been fearing this for years, dreading the possibility of being outed; it meant the end of everything she'd managed to gain, the end of the only remotely happy time in her life. She had kept it locked up, away, forced herself to control it for so long that she'd nearly forgotten sometimes that it was there. It was such a part of her that it was easy to ignore, easy to think that it wasn't such a big deal.
She thought about lying but he was right: if it came out later on that she'd denied the truth, any number of people could be hurt quite literally because of it. She felt her shoulders hunch and she took a deep breath.
"It's true."
"This is just fucking great, Teva. Wonderful." Troy was pacing now. "I'll have to find a new lead singer, if the record company doesn't just void the contract and drop Antiheroine." He turned to glare at her. "Why did you keep this a secret for so long? Do you realize how selfish that is?"
Her anger flared, finally. "Are ye fucking kidding me, Troy? This is the reason why: I'd lose everything. Just like what's happening right this minute. I'm sorry that wanting to live a normal life was so damned 'selfish' in your eyes." She fought to hold onto that anger, because fear and uncertainty were warring to control her, to break her down.
"Do my bandmates ken?"
Troy nodded sharply. "Trudy was the one who gave me the paper in the first place. They're angry, all of them, Andy doesn't even want to talk to you, doesn't even want to hear what you have to say in defense of yourself. You fucked up here, royally."
Teva realized suddenly that her hands were shaking and she clasped them together in her lap to still them. "Ye will'nae give me a chance either, will ye?" She didn't even wait to hear the answer. "I'll make it easy for ye, then. I'll be packed and gone in an hour, far away from your precious band and reputation."
He watched her for a moment, and only then did she feel anything other than anger from him. Feeling pity was about ten times worse. "Antiheroine won't be the same without you, but it's going to have to be."
Teva laughed, a short, sharp bark of sound. "Ye're not fucking getting the rights to my songs, or any of my equipment. Ye'll have it shipped to my penthouse in Manhattan, in perfect condition. That's all I want." Most of her guitars remained with her anyway, but it was the principal of the thing.
"I can do that much for you." Troy stood there, as if he'd expected her to put up more of a fight, even though they both knew it wouldn't have mattered.
"Get out, Troy." She turned her back on him, heading for the bedroom and the bathroom, not even looking back to see if he complied or not.
She stripped her robe off, letting it fall onto the cold tile floor as she turned on the water as hot as it would go. Maybe boiling her skin off would make the pain less, make the screaming inside her head stop. She let herself cry, her body shaking with the effort, the tears indistinguishable from the water pounding down on her, her hands braced against the side of the shower. She'd lost another family, another group she could call her own, and she cried for the incredible wrongness of the situation. Humans should be ashamed of themselves for treating mutants so harshly.
Even as she thought that she knew she hated herself, hated what she was, hated where it had gotten her in life. Without the empathy she likely would have never risen so high, high enough to make the landing almost deadly when she finally fell. But she also wouldn't have truly been able to live her dream of singing for a living, of sharing her music, and part of her couldn't quite regret that.
True to her word she was out of the hotel room in an hour, calling a cab to transport her and her things to the airport. She didn't much care for flying but she wanted to get home as quickly as possible, needed to be surrounded by inanimate objects that didn't place any demands on her or her time, her thoughts, her emotions.
Life got somewhat back to normal, if normal included calls at all hours of the day and night begging for interviews. She finally shut off her landline and her cellphone, not feeling the need for contact with the outside world that didn't involve a laptop and an internet connection. If someone cared enough to get in contact with her, they'd come to her penthouse and say it to her face. So far no one had showed up.
The first couple weeks she'd ignored her instruments, left them in their cases in a spare bedroom because it was too painful to even look at them. The well of inspiration had dried up, left her bereft without any way to deal with what was going on in her head, her heart. It was just easier to not have the reminder of her guitars staring her in the face every time she walked through her living room.
She began drinking a little more heavily and found herself waking up on the couch more often than not, too dead to even sleep in her own bed. With no one to stop her, though, she just kept doing it. It drowned out the things she just didn't want to deal with.
Two months of nothing and then finally she felt like playing again. She didn't write, and she didn't play or sing a single note of anything she'd written with Antiheroine; she picked songs from favorite artists, the songs she'd used to teach herself to play, the ones from her childhood that could still make her smile.
The door buzzer went off one day in the middle of a song, causing Teva to look up in mild annoyance, the chord she'd just struck still reverberating. She slipped the guitar behind her back on its strap as she walked to the front door, pressing the button on the metal plate set into the wall. "What is it, James?"
The doorman's cultured voice came back tinny. "There are two gentlemen here to see you, Ms. Lawson, though I hesitate to use that description for one of them. They said they're from some school."
She blinked, wondering who the hell it could be. "Names?"
"Scott Summers and Logan. He declined to give me a last name, like Cher or Prince."
She snickered, she loved that man's sense of humor. "No, let them up. I ... know Logan." She let the button go and drifted into the kitchen to grab a Pepsi while she waited for the men to take the elevator up.
The doorbell finally rang its obnoxious little tune, announcing their arrival. Her guard was up immediately as she opened the door, not completely sure what they were here for, or how in the hell they'd found out where she lived. It wasn't in the phone book.
She gave Scott Summers a raised eyebrow. Jesus, could he look more like he'd stepped out of a J. Crew catalog? She couldn't quite tell his age because of the strange ruby-red sunglasses that hid his eyes but she figured he was close to her in years.
When her eyes drifted to Logan, she found he looked much the same as before: clothes all beat-up but now he was wearing a leather jacket in deference to the winter weather, with no cowboy hat. His hair was wild, doing this weird little pointy thing in back. She tried to ignore the little flip-flop her stomach did upon seeing him again. His mouth quirked, likely in reaction to her own reaction to the Boy Scout standing next to him. That smile made her heart do a stupid little jig. God, he was old enough to be her father, likely. Christ.
It was the younger man who spoke. "Ms. Lawson? I'm Scott Summers, and I understand you already know Logan here."
She dragged her eyes away from the shorter man and nodded slowly. "Uh, yeah, I met him several months ago after a concert when he brought some of the kids from your school backstage." Her eyes narrowed. "If you dinnae mind me asking, how did you find me? There's a reason my address is unlisted."
Scott managed to look sheepish. "May we come in? It might take a few moments to explain and some of it is rather sensitive information."
Teva hesitated a moment, then stepped aside and gestured for them to come in, heading for the living room as she slipped her guitar off.
"Nice Washburn," Logan commented.
"Thanks," she replied quietly, setting the guitar on the coffee table. "Uh, would you guys like something to drink?" When they both answered in the negative she sat down on one end of her couch. Her nerves went on alert when Logan sat on the other end from her. Scott took an armchair and looked incredibly out of place amongst her comfortable, lived-in furniture. Logan looked right at home.
"We didn't find you by looking in the phone book," the younger man said, sitting forward to engage her attention. She was almost amused by his earnestness. "We have an easier method of tracking down mutants which likely sounds strange to anyone who isn't one of us. The man who runs our school, Charles Xavier, is a powerful telepath. He built a machine many years ago that allows him to amplify his abilities to the point where he can find people with just his mind, it's done wonders for finding kids living on the streets so that we can help them." He spread his hands out. "That's how we found you."
She didn't know what to say in response to that so she just sat there, clutching her bottle of soda.
Logan cleared his throat, shifting in his seat to prop one foot on the opposite knee. "We saw ya on the news, Chuck thought we should find ya and see if ya needed help." Teva thought she read something else from him, some hesitation or something but since she didn't know him, she couldn't be sure. His dark eyes and intense gaze made her feel a little nervous.
Scott nodded to confirm what Logan had said. "You're not alone in the world, Teva. We'd like to offer you a place where you can live with others like you, and if you need help with your powers we can offer that, too. Xavier would also like to extend a teaching position, we're lacking a music teacher."
Teva nearly choked on her soda. "What? Teaching? What the hell for? I dinnae know the first thing about that, I did'nae even go to university!"
"If Logan can teach kids, I'm sure you could, too."
Logan glared at him. "Ya want a claw up the ass to go along with the metal rod, bub?"
Scott glanced aside at him, and Teva got the impression he'd just rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying that if she's worried about experience, you didn't have any when you started teaching, either." He turned his attention back to Teva. "You don't have to accept the position, but the offer of a safe haven still stands."
She nodded, taking another cautious sip. "I guess I can think about it, at least." And likely laugh herself silly over the notion. She glanced around the room. "Might be better than sitting around here all day, I guess."
Scott got to his feet, pulling a business card out of his pocket. "This has the phone number and address for the school on it. Take all the time you need to decide, we don't want to rush you." He started moving for the door. "You coming, Logan?"
"Gimme a second," Logan replied as he stood, shooing Scott out the door. He looked at Teva sitting on the couch. "How are ya doin'? Ya seemed, I dunno, better the last time I saw ya."
Teva snorted. "Being outed will do that to a person. And finding out that the people you thought were friends dinnae care that you're a person and not just a carrier of the X gene." She pulled the guitar off the table and onto her lap, cradling it against her body like a security blanket. Her fingers fell wherever on the frets, picking out a short, sharp tune. "I'm no really sure how to deal with losing everything I'd gained."
He was silent a moment as he watched her. "Where are ya from, if ya don't mind me askin'?"
The question took her by surprise, startling an automatic answer out of her. "Perth, Scotland. I left there when I was 18, after I finished secondary school." A dark humor settled over her. "Should have left the instant I found out what I was."
"And what are ya?"
The look in his eyes made her avert her gaze. She knew he'd seen the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor under the coffee table. "Something not normal." She didn't look up at him, and finally she heard his heavy boots sounding across the hardwood floor.
He stopped, hesitated. "Drinkin' ain't gonna make it any better."
Her head finally lifted but he was moving again, the door shutting behind him, and only then did she realize she was shaking. Her head dropped down, hair falling into her face. She was alone again.