I in no way own or claim the rights to any of the X-men: Evolution characters, only to the writing itself and to Lucy, Carson, and those one-dimensional thugs I throw in there every once in a while that don't really count as characters but I decided to stick in the disclaimer anyway.

"Talking."

Thinking.

"Cason talking through Lucy."

Vorbind / Gânduri în limba română. (Speaking / Thinking in Romanian)

Demon Blood: So Strange

Chapter Three -- Wrong Kind of Angel

Kurt continued to lead Lucy around the house, and she chose to ignore that he was still holding her hand as they walked. She didn't mind. That twingy the-boy-is-a-lie feeling was still following her around, but Kurt himself felt harmless. Carson was still muttering quietly in the back of her head, but she was staying away from Lucy's thoughts for the most part and she wasn't using their mouth either so she wasn't complaining. "This is the main hallvay!" Kurt said with a wide, sweeping gesture to the room.

Lucy laughed at his dramatics. "You act like you own the place."

He jumped up onto the railing of the main staircase and spread his arms, grinning. "Vhat makes you think I don't?"

She laughed again and jumped onto the other railing, mimicking his movements. "You're weird, that's what."

"And you're not?"

"Oh no, I most definitely am. My weird is just a little more…" she hesitated, realizing the can of worms she was about to open up. "Physical than yours."

He laughed out loud at that, surprising her, and reached for the clunky watch wrapped around his right wrist. "Sorry, I sometimes forget." He hopped down to the floor and pressed a button on the watch, the one that should have been the stopwatch on that particular model if Carson's mumblings were to be believed, and his image flickered before her eyes.

She stood stock still and gaped at him for a moment, taking in the blue fur and spaded tail, before impulse took over and she blurted out her thoughts. "I knew it! You are a lie!"

He stepped back as she jumped down from the handrail and began circling him. "Vhat are you talking about?" he asked, confusion and hurt filtering into his voice. "I did not lie."

She waved him off and continued her inspection. His feet were shaped the same as hers, sans one toe, and his tri-fingered hands reminded her of her own from the second knuckle down. "No no, I know you didn't lie, I said you are a lie. There's a difference. I could tell that the person I was seeing wasn't the real Kurt, I just couldn't place what was setting off the feeling." She moved forward quicker than he could respond and took his arm in her hands, inspecting the device that lent him his disguise. He stared in silence at the four-fingered hands that moved over his skin, barely touching the fur. "What is this thing?"

"It's my image inducer."

"Cool." She made to withdraw her hands, but he grabbed her uninjured arm to stop her.

She stiffened against his grasp but didn't pull away. Carson pulled toward the surface in case Lucy needed to bolt. "Please. I have shon you vhat I look like. Vill you do the same for me?"

Lucy reached up and undid the clasp that kept her coat secured around her neck, sliding it off and folding it carefully over one arm as though she wasn't being scrutinized by a blue angel. And he was an angel.

The kind of angel she had grown up with. When her dad was out drinking. When her mom was crying in the kitchen and praying to the wrong kind of god, begging him to take away this burden on her conscience that had shown itself in the form of her youngest daughter. When Carson would come into their room tired and happy from a day of training with their father and playing with friends and would bring her books from the library in town that Lucy wasn't allowed into with the gothic illustrations and the black-hearted fairy tales. Those angels.

The ones that were all fangs and tails and darkness and saved the world without meaning to. The ones she drew in her notebooks at school that led her to be labeled as a freak before anyone even knew what she looked like. The angels that were meant to bring about redemption, not complacency. The ones that made people uncomfortable to talk about. The ones that looked, as far as her four-year-old mind had been concerned, more human than humans did.

Kurt was an angel.

And he was smiling. "You vill fit right in here! I'm sure ov it!"

Lucy laughed lightly, her heavy thoughts dispersing. "That's great, but weren't you supposed to be showing me my room?"

"Temporary room!" Carson insisted loudly before settling back down.

"Yes, Carson, I know."

"Ja! Come on, through here." He started off again, still pulling Lucy with him, and headed through the common area to the back stairs. It would be easier to get to her quarters from there. Suddenly Carson spotted something and twisted free from his grasp. "Vait, vhere are you going?"

Carson didn't respond, just walked over to the sleek black grand piano standing in the middle of the blocks of sunlight filtering in from the windows and sat down on the bench. She ran her hands gingerly over the keys and looked up at their very bewildered tour guide. "May I?"

"Um, sure. I don't see vhy not."

She nodded, her red eyes no longer burning. "Thanks." She touched the keys carefully. "It's been a while though, so I'm sorry if I'm a little rusty." Lucy's hands had suddenly never felt so awkward under her control. The lack of a pinkie finger wasn't really a problem Carson thought about on a daily basis, but it was an issue that became obvious to Kurt the instant the girl started playing. Her hands had to move twice as fast as their five-fingered counterparts would have needed to just to keep all the notes under control. But the music was beautiful. "Rainsong. George Winston." She offered, answering his unasked question. "I never met the guy. Don't know how he would respond to Lucy, or mutants in general. Don't know what he was thinking or what he was feeling when he did this, and I doubt I ever will." She breathed deeply and all but smiled. "But the man made damn gorgeous music."

--

"Carson!" The young girl ignored her sister and sped up slightly, trying desperately to lose her in the crowd, but Lucy's para-human agility enabled her to dodge through the crowd of students surrounding her and she ended up at her side, same as always. "You were supposed to wait for me you dork."

Carson snorted. "So? Obviously I don't need to."

Lucy's eyes flashed a hurt look but it was gone in an instant. "Nah, I just got lucky. Is Mom picking us up today or are we walking to practice?"

Terra, one of their classmates, waved at Carson from her car at the edge of the parking lot. She spotted the swaths of fabric that was Carson's twin walking with her and moved as if to leave without her, but Carson quickly shook her head and jerked her thumb to one side. I'll be right there. Just let me ditch the loser first. "Neither, actually. I'm getting a ride from Terra's mom. You're walking."

Worry crept into the corners of Lucy's golden gaze. "By myself? But what about-" she glanced over her shoulder and stopped herself short upon meeting the eyes of a group of older boys leaning against the side of their middle school. They're watching me again… When she turned back to her sister Carson was already halfway to her friend's car. "Carson…"

Her older twin rolled her eyes. "Come on Lucy, we're sixth graders now. We can't spend every second together like we're still kids. We've got to go our separate ways sometimes."

"Yeah, but-" the car door slammed, cutting her off and leaving her utterly on her own in the middle of the crowd. "-you don't have to do it alone." She whispered.

--

"You play beautifully." Kurt said, watching her. Her eyes were half closed in concentration, glowing slightly crimson under their lids.

Carson didn't respond, but Lucy looked up at him and smiled kindly. "Yeah, she does, although she won't admit it. She says it's just something she learned to pass the time, but really it's one of the only things that calm her down."

Just then Bobby, Sam, and Rahne burst in, laughing. Not seeing the girl perched on the piano bench, Sam went torpedo, slamming into her and knocking them both to the floor. "Sam!" Kurt cried out, running over to help disentangle them from the floor. "Vatch vhere you're going!"

The boy struggled to his feet and reached out to help Lucy stand. "Sorry! I didn't see you there…" he trailed off. She wasn't moving and her eyes were glowing white.

Dark rooms. Catalogs. Fishing trips. "Of course you're normal." "My son is not a mutant!" Coal mines. Jet packs. Hellfire. "You'll be safe here." Motocross. Boycrush. Laughtrack. Balloons. Lucy felt her mind scream through the massive torrent of information, not much sticking but enough grabbing hold to make her feel as though her spinal cord was attempting a getaway through the back of her skull.

Suddenly she came to with a gasp, jerking upright and flailing slightly as she tried to get her bearings. Glancing at her exposed forearms, she quickly tugged her sleeves back over them before letting Sam and Kurt help her to her feet. "Woah. Trippy." She rubbed the back of her head. "You," she said, pointing at Bobby, "Need to quit telling him that you have a supermodel girlfriend. It's driving him crazy. Oh, and if you hadn't gone all cannonball on him you would have won that race. Not sure who 'he' is though. Or why the hell you were racing." She added, addressing Sam. They stared at her, openmouthed. "What?"

"They think you're in their heads. Which you were, technically. His in any case." Carson said, dusting off her arms and picking up the trench coat from where it had fallen.

Lucy looked immediately dejected and more than a little embarrassed. "I didn't mean to…"

Carson grinned. "You still were."

Bobby raised one finger, trying to catch her attention. "Um, who are you-?"

"This is Lucy!" Kurt butted in, trying to distract from the younger mutants' growing feelings that they were being punked. "And her sister Carson. They're going to be staying vith us tonight, so be sure to make them feel velcome."

"But there's only one of them." Rahne pointed out.

Carson laughed, reveling in their confusion. "No, there's twelve of us! You just can't see eleven of them because I'm hiding them with my amazing brain skills." She brought her pointer fingers up to her forehead and wiggled them at the kids for the last part, grinning.

Lucy brought her hands over her face, rubbing her eyes like she had a headache. "Carson, will you shut up! This is hard enough to explain without you doing things like that!" She shook her head and moved her hands out of the way, shooting the confused onlookers an embarrassed smile. "Sorry about that. Carson tends to spit out any and everything that comes into her head, regardless of how completely irrelevant it may be." She added that last part with a pointed edge that made Carson grin like a maniac. Everyone looked at her like she was one.

---------------

"Sorry about that. Carson likes confusing people. Mostly by telling even more ridiculous stories than the one we're living." Lucy smiled apologetically and Kurt grinned. He had found watching the younger students try to figure out what was going on highly entertaining, at least until Lucy got fed up with Carson and told her off in a language he didn't understand. That probably didn't help her seem any more normal in the others' eyes either.

He led her up the back stairs to the far room on the third floor hallway. "Vhat vere you saying to Carson? Something about… cookies?"

Lucy grinned. "Yes, actually. I was threatening to withhold sugary goodness unless she stopped messing with them. Girl is a sucker for some cookies."

"They are my only true weakness. Not all cookies though, just Lucy's. She makes a mean moartea neagră."

Kurt snuck a glance at the girl he was walking with. She was looking off into the distance with a dreamy look in her red eyes. Gold eyes glanced over and translated for him. "'Moartea neagră'. 'Black death'. It's what she calls my chocolate cookies. I honestly don't know what she sees in them, they're ugly as hell."

"Then hell tastes fantastic!" Carson blurted out.

Kurt burst out laughing despite himself, unable to hold in his reaction to her outburst. "S-sorry." He stuttered through his giggles.

Lucy looked slightly bemused. "No problem. I'm just not used to people thinking Carson is funny. Usually they think it's just me being insane. Or they think she's part of my mutation. That I developed a second personality." She grinned. "Plus, she's mostly just annoying."

"Hey!"

"You are."

"Am not!"

"Here we are." The blue-furred boy said quickly, intervening before the two of them could start full-on arguing. He still wasn't quite used to watching their expressions shift the way they did. It was weird. Like videos of two completely different faces were recorded, overlaid and then played forward at the same time. The result was rather unsettling. Kurt pushed the door open and motioned her inside. "This is vhere you vill be staying. I think the Professor had it fixed before you came to."

She walked into the bedroom and looked around in awe. It was way nicer than anything she had ever stayed in before, and about a million miles more so that anything in the past three years. The room was light and airy and had a small balcony that opened out to a view of the back edge of the Institute's property and the water beyond that. Lucy stood still and breathed it in. Even Carson was quiet. "This is way too nice."

Kurt grinned. "You are only going to be here one night; you may as vell enjoy it."

Lucy laughed and walked out onto the balcony, leaning on the railing and looking out. "Yeah, but you're gonna spoil us! We don't get to use a bed when we're out on the road."

He walked over to join her, hopping up and sitting on the bar next to her arms. "Vhere do you usually stay?"

"Oh, here, there, anywhere we can sleep for a few hours without getting rousted by overzealous demon hunters. Mostly we take turns, me and Carson, one sleeps while the other one takes over and moves around. It works pretty well unless the sister in charge gets knocked out, 'cause then there's no one to keep us running from whatever it was that wanted us unconscious. That and the last time I left Carson on her own for more than five hours bad things started happening."

"The pervtard had it coming."

"I don't care. It's my body. I want you to consult me before you go around cutting people's fingernails off."

"Vhat?!"

Lucy shook her head. "It's not what it sounds like. Carson was getting bored and ran into this fifty-year-old man trying to rape a twelve-year-old boy in a back alley. She jumped him, tied him up, let the boy go, called the cops, and proceeded to almost surgically remove the outer part of his fingernails while she waited for them to arrive." Lucy paused, considering, and Kurt stared at her, trying to process the information she was feeding him. "So maybe it is what it sounds like. But she had a semi-valid reason for doing it."

"'Sides, it's not like they wouldn't grow back eventually. They probably just hurt like hell while they were healing. Assuming they didn't get infected while he was in prison…" Carson's smile when thinking about the pain she had inflicted on the 'pervtard' was almost the same as Lucy's when she was first looking out at the serene landscape stretched out in front of their window. Kurt found that even more unsettling than when their expressions shifted toward the radically different.

---------------

"So what's she like?" Kitty asked, bouncing on her heels as they washed the dishes that night after dinner. Kurt had gone upstairs to find Lucy and Carson before they ate but the girl had been fast asleep and the professor thought it best not to wake them, so no one but himself, Bobby, Sam, and Rahne had had the pleasure of meeting her yet.

Kurt shrugged, not sure what to say. "She's a funny girl. Veird, but not bad."

"Do you think she'll stay?"

"I don't know. It's hard to tell. She seems to really like it here, but Carson kept insisting that they move on, and if anything Lucy agrees vith her."

Jean poked her head into the kitchen, glanced around, and frowned slightly. "Hm. I could've sworn she'd be in here…"

Kitty dried the plate she was working on and set it aside. "You could've sworn who would be here?"

"The new girl. Lucy. She's not in her room."

Kurt glanced over at her. "Are you sure? I was just up there a minute ago and she vas dead asleep."

"I'm sure. The door was unlocked and the window was open-" Kurt dropped what he was doing and disappeared in a puff of sulfurous smoke, reappearing in the guest room with a soft 'bamf'. A light breeze ruffled the curtains, but other than that the room was still and looked for all the world completely untouched.

---------------

Carson breathed the night air deep into her sister's lungs, perched on the top corner of an apartment complex near the edge of the town. Lucy was still sleeping soundly, probably a side effect of having so much strain on her body over the past few days. Carson had been good to go after only three hours of rest. The girl stretched her arms and scanned the city lights, the gold and white glow contradicting the cool silver radiating down from the sky. Lucy wouldn't mind her taking a nighttime jaunt as long as she didn't do something stupid. Like getting her arm broken. Carson winced and rubbed the rough plaster cast at the memory. That one had been for the most part unavoidable.

"Get away from me!"

"Where you goin' freak?"

"Yeah, stand and fight like a man!"

"Just leave me alone!"

The girl grinned, her eyes flashing crimson, and followed the echoes over a few block to the back alley behind a few closed storefronts. Three men were backing a fourth, who was shorter than them and shrinking away from their advances, into the corner. Carson pulled her hood up over her head and dropped down between the thugs and their only escape route, allowing a smile to play across Lucy's fanged mouth. This was what she lived for.

This is what she does.

In case you couldn't tell, whenever Lucy touches somebody she sees every time anyone had ever lied to them. It only works on a point-to-point basis, so she only sees the lies from the previous time she touched you up until the present. Because that was the first time she made contact with Sam she got EVERYTHING at once, attempting to process which is a lot like trying to drink from a fire hose. The other passive part of her power is that if someone lies, she'll see the truth. (Ex: "Of course I did my homework." She sees what you did instead of doing your homework.) Oh yeah, and if she lies, people think she's telling the truth, no matter what. (Ex: "Your pants are on fire." If you do not douse your trousers, you will get burned.)

Really hoping to get some reviews this time around.

--Dotskip.