This is the first chapter in a series of quasi-vignettes inspired by the short character spots advertising the Wolverine movie and the District X miniseries.
Pretty much everyone in this story who isn't from the movie is from the comics, reinterpreted by me. My blanket disclaimer reads that things that don't belong to me belong to someone else, and that's still true! :-P
Anyway. I'm not sure about this first chapter, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Read, review, and enjoy! Thanks for your time.
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Nothing about me is interesting.
I'm just a poor college graduate living in the city.
Maybe I'm a little different, but please don't judge me for it. It's not like I asked to be different.
My name is Hannah Levy,
and I'm a mutant.
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Hannah Levy was slightly past her college degree when she met her current boyfriend.
It hadn't been luck, that much she would gladly tell anyone. Anyone who considered themselves 'lucky' to meet Mort was nuts. He was green, for God's sakes. And his codename was Toad.
Lame.
Especially lame since Hannah Levy knew more about the amphibians than he did, and she was as far from a biology major as most people could imagine. (A bachelor's in social history hardly prepared one for the daunting task of gutting dead animals. Thank God she'd only needed to take a few science courses to graduate.)
No, it certainly wasn't luck. It was more bad luck, really, that she'd been visiting mutant high the same day he'd decided to stop by. Good luck for some people, though— had she not arrived exactly when she did, he might have gotten nailed in the chest with lightning again.
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// Jun 08 //
Hannah hadn't been in a rush to see anyone at Xavier's. She felt obligated to visit, though. Professor Xavier— though it was Storm in charge, now— had generously paid the part of her college tuition that her single mother couldn't. It only made sense that they have proof she'd turned out okay.
She buzzed in at the front gate, heard Storm was waiting at the front door, and parked her car in the long driveway before grabbing her purse. She eyed the man in front of the door and wondered if his hair was green by choice.
The door opened on him, and Hannah saw Storm's face whiten. Something shattered.
"Cor, you're a cack-hander, woman! Cain't even give a hullo for an old friend?"
Hannah hurried to the door as she felt her hair start to stand on end. The last thing she needed was to watch this green-haired British guy get electrocuted.
"Storm, calm down!"
Storm turned to Hannah, surprise evident on her face if not in her white witchy eyes. "Hannah." Her eyes darkened back to their normal brown, and her expression softened slightly. "I think—"
"Well well well, wot 'ave we got 'ere?"
The green-haired fellow was giving Hannah a once-over, and she didn't like it at all. She liked it even less when he shrugged, and turned away once he'd made a thorough inspection of her.
"Who do you think you are?"
He turned back, eyebrows raised. Hannah saw Storm's face pinching with nerves out of the corner of her eye, but no one made insults to Hannah Levy like that without answering to her.
"Well. I'm Mortimer Toynbee. But I could be wrong, luv."
"I doubt it. Even someone as crazy as you couldn't come up with that name from nowhere."
"Maybe I killed th'real Mortimer Toynbee."
Hannah snorted. "Puh-lease. The real Mortimer Toynbee is standing right here and just got saved from getting his sorry ass electrocuted thanks to me."
"Hannah..."
"I don't know who you think you are, Mortimer Toynbee, but nobody treats me like dirt and gets away with it."
"Well them I'm very sorry, ma'm. Won' 'appen again."
Mortimer Toynbee gave a little bow at the waist and a flourish of his hand. Hannah's lips twitched as a fly landed on his sleeve, and he followed her gaze. Before Hannah could see, much less register, the smirk on his face, his tongue had shot out impossibly long to catch the fly off his sleeve.
He smacked his lips together once his tongue (complete with stuck bug) was back in his mouth. "Delicious."
"Those might be good but they are hardly delicious," Hannah said without thinking.
"Wot?"
Hannah tried not to laugh at the surprised look on Mortimer Toynbee's face.
"It's the honeybees that taste the best."
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// Now //
It had turned out that Toad was there to try and find Mystique. Apparently, he'd heard she was there, posing as a student or whatnot. She wasn't there, it turned out, but in the end he managed to make amends with Storm despite their mutual attempts three years previously to kill each other.
Hannah wasn't sure if she was more surprised by the fact that it all went down well or that it all went down with the only other person she'd ever heard of, let alone met, with a power at all similar to hers.
After having known Mort for about a year, she was leaning towards it going well.
Pretty much everything he did was illegal, pretty much everyone he talked to was a criminal, and pretty much everywhere he went was shady.
Except when he went to her place.
He told her repeatedly not to expect anything from him, and she tried not to. It was hard living in a monogamous relationship and not quite knowing what he was up to, but no one else Hannah met, human or mutant, could quite live up to the strange standards Mort unintentionally set.
Only one person he'd told her about had interested her more than the average lawbreaker, and that particular one was an insane mercenary who she was never going to meet.
That's what Mort said, anyway. She didn't have any reason not to believe him.
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// Her Favorite Coffee Shop //
Most mornings before work Hannah got coffee at the cafe on her street corner.
It was at this cafe she'd met the mutant called Mr. M.
Absolon Zebardyn Mercator was, by conventional human standards, mostly unremarkable. He was slightly shorter than the average middle-aged male, had a slim physique, was bald, and generally wore black suits with a fedora. His most curious trait was his bright, light blue eyes. It was his eyes that generally made people give him a second look, but that was pretty much all the time the public had for him.
Hannah was a bit smarter than the average human, however, so she had managed to befriend the Belgian. Later he told her he knew she was smarter. She never doubted it, and that was because Mr. M was probably the most powerful mutant in the world.
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// Four Months Ago //
Winter was unfriendly in most places north of D.C., Hannah was quickly discovering. She'd been visiting around the Northeast, looking for somewhere else to conduct research aside from Boston, when she discovered District X.
It was technically the Middle East Side of Manhattan, but no one called it that any more than they called Kansas City 'City of Fountains'. Everyone called it District X, and sometimes the kids would call it Mutant Town in a touching repeat of the kids at Xavier's dubbing their school Mutant High.
It wasn't like she wanted to move to New York City, but after realizing the potential of living among dozens, maybe even hundreds, of mutants she knew it was an opportunity she couldn't pass up. Plus she'd be near Xavier's if anything went enormously wrong.
So she bought an apartment on the third floor of an old walk-up in one of the nicer parts of District X, cleaned it up some, and started working. By mid-March, Hannah had been 'discovered' by the North American Historical Review and they were publishing some of her better articles about mutants and other minorities.
Life was going pretty well, despite the high crime rate in Mutant Town. Somehow it evaded Hannah's building entirely, and in the middle of March she met the reason.
She met Mr. M at her general haunt, the local internet cafe where she spent a lot of her free time. The internet in her apartment never worked well enough for her liking, so she checked her e-mail down on the corner of her street. It was while she was reading an article sent to her by a co-worker that Mr. M gently cleared his throat.
He'd sat down across the table from her, alarming her slightly.
"Can I help you?"
"My name is Absolon Mercator, and I believe we live in the same building."
"Oh." Hannah took a sip of her coffee, then took another. It was suddenly better than it had been. Absolon Mercator smiled, and she realized with a swift rush it was him that improved the taste. "Um, thank you."
"You're welcome."
"I'm Hannah. It's nice to meet you, umm— do you mind if I just call you Mr. M?"
"Not at all. And I assure you, the pleasure is all mine."
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// Two Months Ago - April //
It had been a month since Hannah met Mr. M, and they had become close friends, to her intense surprise. The fact that such a powerful mutant wanted to spend time with her amazed her.
At first, she thought he could only change flavors of things, so when little by little she realized he was more powerful than probably all the X-men put together, their friendship made her happier than she'd been in a long time.
Mortimer noticed one night when he came over for pizza, and his surly response to her obvious good mood over another guy made her think he might be jealous. That was when she worked up the guts to (finally) kiss him.
After she did kiss him, he gave her a look so shocked that she laughed and kissed him again. This time he sort of kissed her back, and the third kiss he started himself. Hannah felt immensely pleased with herself until he pulled away.
"Look, luv, ya got t' realize I'm not good fer all this."
"Oh, please. You're smarter than the majority of guys and you're cute, or at least I think you are, and that's all that really matters."
He snorted, but sobered quickly, shaking his head. "Yer a bonney and all thins good, 'Annah, but don' get me wrong. It's a bad idea."
Hannah knew he was hoping she'd be too hurt to fight back, and for a moment she was. But being happy, she had discovered, made her stronger. So when he stood up, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him back down onto her futon.
"Oh no. No. I'm sorry, Mort, but don't play that bullshit with me. It's a fantastic idea, and just because you think you're above your baser human instincts doesn't mean I am. I like you, Mort, and I know you like me, so stop playing hard-to-get and just kiss me already."
Mort was looking at her with something akin to pride. "Ya gotta be mighty chuffed, ya little brussen."
"What's a brussen, then?" She crossed her arms. "What's a bruss— ah."
She didn't finish because Mort had pushed her black hair away from her neck and was kissing the hollow behind her ear. Pretty soon he was kissing her on the mouth, and Hannah was so pleased with herself that she didn't care he was a little sloppy.
His codename was Toad, after all. Hannah wasn't young enough to still be praying for a prince.
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// Now //
Mort was hardly the perfect boyfriend.
He was moody, listened to bad English metal music, and never told her what he was doing to make money, although she knew he had a lot.
Today was their two-month anniversary, although Mort refused to acknowledge anything about them was regular enough to warrant anything conventional.
Even though he ended up sliding into her bed most nights well after midnight, he refused to call her a girlfriend, although she consistently referred to him as a boyfriend and he'd only complained once before accepting it. And although he came over for a movie once a week, he never let her distract him.
And he refused to have sex with her. His favorite excuse was that she was too young, but Hannah knew that was bullshit. It wasn't like she was jailbait; she was twenty-two, and a mature twenty-two at that. She was an adult, god damn it, and she'd like to be able to make her own decisions for a change.
So she'd come up with a way to make him realize she wasn't the pristine angel he imagined her to be.
It was funny, really— sometimes when they were making out, she'd try to touch him, and he'd move her hand back to his upper body, or up around his neck or in his hair, just to be safe. Safe from what, she had no idea, but it was high time he treat her like an adult and not some fresh little virgin.
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// Well After Midnight //
Hannah didn't know how Mort got in, but it was through the window on the fire escape. It was easy enough to jump up— well, easy enough for him. And picking locks was something he'd mastered at the age of seven.
So like usual he picked his way through the apartment to Hannah's bedroom, but he stopped when he heard music playing.
He didn't know what it was, but he'd heard her listen to similar stuff before. So when he got to her door and saw the light on underneath, he paused.
Fuck.
He knew it had been two months. It was the longest any relationship-type thing had lasted for him— or at least it would be, if nothing happened to make it end before morning. Two months was the marker for Mort. Two months was how long the one other girl he'd gotten semi-serious with was able to put up with him before disappearing.
Of course, she hadn't been Hannah, she'd been some prostitute that ended up getting together with his crazy mercenary friend before getting killed a few weeks later by her new boyfriend's enemies.
Mort could live with Hannah ending it. That he knew he could live with. He didn't know he could live with her getting in on with Wade Wilson, though, so he was praying everything went well tonight.
He knocked on her door, still praying.
When she opened it, she was wearing a negligee that made his mouth water, and Mort knew the matter was out of God's hands.
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// Well After Sunrise //
It had gone well, although Mort was pretty sure it had more to do with him deciding to throw caution to the wind than any praying.
Now, he was waiting for her to wake up. He was pretty sure she wasn't going to freak out as some of the other girls had the morning after, as those girls had been drunk, and the certainly hadn't been Hannah.
She's so bleedin' diffrent.
Mort didn't understand her at all, but he did understand that somewhere between last night and today, he'd accepted that he wouldn't be able to live with her ending it. Somewhere between the laughs she had at their combined expense and the insanely boring articles she wrote, Hannah Levy had wormed her way into Toad's comfort zone.
He didn't quite mind, although now he worried about keeping her safe.
Before, it was easy to pretend she meant nothing.
Now, what with everything that had happened, it wasn't easy. And he knew he'd have to make sure his work demeanor didn't let anything slip, because he knew one day someone would want him to do something he didn't want to.
God forbid they use her to get to him, because if they did he swore he'd crush them to a—
"Hey there."
Mort looked down at Hannah's face. He hadn't noticed her waking up, but she was smiling at him. He smiled back with little difficulty.
"Hey."
"You should smile more," she whispered. She reached up to trace the smile lines on his cheeks. "Really."
"I'll try."
Still smiling, Mort kissed her.
He had a feeling that in that moment, both of them were happy.