Hello everyone! I'm so excited to present the next chapter of Remembrance, and I'm glad that I was able to write it in a day, which probably means that I really need to get out more... Anywho, I hope you enjoy!
Laurien wasn't able to see Charles again before they left the next morning. Several government agents had filed into her hospital room the very moment she'd awoken and ushered her and the boys off to the nearest airport. After an anxiety inducing three-hour flight, they finally arrived back in New York. They managed to shake off their government tails in the Westchester County airport, who were no doubt entrusted to follow them to the mansion, and quickly piled into a taxi that started off towards the mansion property at their behest.
They'd sat in uncomfortable silence for the half-hour ride, with the cab driver looking nervously at Hank every now and then as the blue-furred scientist sat rigidly in the passenger's seat. Sean had somehow managed to fall asleep within minutes of them starting their journey, his head resting lazily on an unimpressed Alex's shoulder as Laurien stared unseeingly out the window at the American countryside. She paid no mind to the soft snores filling the cab as she thought about Darwin and how he'd mentioned in passing that he'd driven a taxi prior to him joining them at the CIA base.
Laurien was relieved when she finally spotted the black iron gate in front them, and practically jumped out of the car before it had even stopped moving. After paying the driver the six dollars, which made Laurien wince a bit at the price, they waited until he'd left before attempting to manage their way to the other side of the locked gate. Hank was able to climb over the stone wall just fine, but it was the matter of Alex having a broken ankle, Sean with a previously dislocated shoulder and Laurien not allowed to do any strenuous activity that might rip her stitches that barred their passage.
"Can you feel around with your powers to pick the lock?" Hank asked Laurien through the gate bars, but she shook her head.
"I never learned how to pick a lock." She shrugged. "Even the normal way."
"Well, this is great." Alex muttered as they all looked up at where Hank sat perched on the top of the wall. "Are we just going to wait until the Professor gets back?"
"I could try breaking the chain." Laurien suggested, seriously doubting that she could even perform such a feat.
Hank shrugged. "It's worth a shot. It's either that or Alex slicing it open, and I don't think the Professor will appreciate a smoldering gate when he arrives."
Laurien marched over to where the thick chain lay, wrapped several times around the pair of bars, and gripped it with her powers, looking for the weakest link before trying to separate the iron with her powers. The metal groaned and squeaked, but refused to break, leaving Laurien frustrated and exhausted as the exertion pulled at her consciousness.
"It's sad that we know exactly who we need in this situation." Sean said from where he sat in the grass to the side, munching on an extra bag of peanuts he'd swiped from the plane.
Laurien and Alex gave each other a quick look of exasperation before she moved out of the way and he blasted the gate, creating a large enough hole that they were able to squeeze through and continue on their way to the mansion.
They all gave a collective sigh when they finally stepped through the front doors of the mansion, though all the while, Laurien tugged anxiously at the bottom of her new dress shirt she'd been supplied with before leaving the hospital. The baby blue chemise was stiff and the fabric chafed roughly against her skin, making her fingers itch to take it off, so much so, that she intended to rip it off as quickly as the buttons would allow her the moment she got into her room.
"Are you all hungry?" Hank asked as he shrugged off his coat.
"Always." Sean garbled around his final mouthful of peanuts, while both Alex and Laurien simply nodded in response.
"Do you all want to see if we can collectively made a half-way decent meal?"
Laurien laughed, perhaps her first one since the events on the beach that was not motivated by heavy painkillers. "That sounds like a plan. I'll join you all in a bit, I'm just going to get changed."
"I should go change too." Alex added, adjusting the crutch under his armpit as they made their way towards the stairs.
"Do you need help getting up the stairs?" Laurien asked tentatively, knowing that Alex might take some issue with admitting that he may need help.
She was right. "Uh, I think I should be fine just taking it slow." He replied, though notably without his usual tone of indignation. "Thanks though, Laur."
Laurien gave him a quick smile and decided not to press it any further before climbing the stairs as fast as her aching side would let her, the feeling of the shirt's fabric against her skin grating on her nerves and reminding her how much she wanted out of it.
Upon reaching her room and opening the door, she went straight towards her dresser, only to have her heart jump into her throat when the door slammed shut behind her and she was suddenly grabbed from behind. A strong hand clamped firmly over her mouth, stifling a muffled cry of pain as fiery sparks exploded through her ribcage from the crushing strength of an arm around her middle. Her foot kicked out as she was pulled back, connecting with a stack of books and knocking them over with a large clatter. She grabbed onto the wrist of the hand on her mouth, her nails digging into the skin as she struggled against the hold on her. She tried to deliver a blow to the solid figure at her back, only to be crowded up against the wall as she was shushed by a painfully familiar voice.
"It's alright, it's me."
Erik.
She stilled in his grip, breathing hard through her nose as her mind raced. After a few moments of her silence, Erik started to lessen his grip on her mouth, but with a loud knock on the bedroom door, he tightened it, making Laurien's lips throb with the immense pressure.
"Laur?" Alex's voice floated through the thick oak door, making Laurien's chest ache in mixed relief and horror. "Hey Laur, are you all right? I heard a bang."
She let out a faint sound from beneath Erik's hand, as her instincts screaming at her to resume fighting and to find a way to call out to Alex, but for some unknown reason, she stopped herself.
"Tell him that it's all right." Erik murmured softly, his breath ghosting over her ear, waiting for her small nod before he slowly dragged his hand away from over her mouth and let it rest against the wall.
"I'm fine, Alex." She called hoarsely, her heart beating painfully against her healing rib cage. "A book just slipped through my fingers, that's all."
"Okay, just come knock on my door when you're ready to go down." He said before his labored footsteps soon faded away, leaving Laurien and Erik pressed up against the wall of her bedroom in uncomfortable silence.
Another tense moment passed between them before Laurien took a deep, stabilizing breath and managed to slowly turn in his grip to face him. Words failed her as their eyes finally met for the first time since he'd left her and the others on the beach.
Erik's blue eyes gazed down at her almost apologetically, looking the same as he had the night of the outdoor movie, the night before everything went to hell. His hand came up to touch her face gently. She flinched as his fingers ran over the protrusion of stitches across her cheek where Azazel had cut her deeply with his tail, before a labored breath released itself from his lungs.
"You should see the ones you gave me." She muttered, as hues of red began to slowly bleed into her vision, a suppressed heat sparking within her.
His eyebrows furrowed above his darkening eyes, as a strong wave of guilt bled off of him, sending an unwanted dose of satisfaction burning through her veins.
He opened his mouth, but said nothing, as if his words were stuck in his throat.
"What do you want?" She asked quietly, trying her best to push down the rising tide of anger pulsing through her veins.
He sighed, gently grabbing her hand and holding it against his chest. "I just needed to see you."
"I don't believe you." Laurien blurted out, surprising herself at the amount of control that she was able to exercise over her voice while a storm brewed within. "You've made it very clear on that beach that neither I, nor the others, mean a damn thing to you, therefore you wouldn't be here unless you wanted something."
He shook his head, his grip on her hand tightening. "Laurien, that's not–"
"Don't try to deny it." She interrupted, her anger making her bold. "I could scream and the boys would be here in seconds to break up this little ambush of yours, so if you want to continue speaking with me, you will tell me the truth. What is it that you want?"
He held her gaze for a moment, as though he were considering calling her bluff, but his sense seemingly got the better of him. "I came here with the hope that you would reconsider my offer." He admitted, though she could tell that he was choosing his words carefully.
"Of joining you and the so-called Brotherhood?" She asked, suppressing a sudden urge to laugh. "If that's all you came here for, I'm afraid you've wasted your time."
"Laurien, please. What we're in the process of building is special." He implored, setting his hands on her shoulders. She could feel the power behind his conviction ebbing through his touch, a fraught mixture of long-held resentment and newly blossomed passion. "We could create the future for mutant kind. Don't you want to be a part of that? Moving forwards instead of languishing in the dark ages." He paused for a moment, his gaze flitting between her crimson eyes. "Don't you want to be part of a family again."
"Don't you fucking dare." Laurien spat out, feeling herself begin to shake, though whether it was from fury or fear, she did not know. "Besides, my family is here. They didn't abandon me when the opportunity for revenge came along."
Due to their close proximity, Erik's frustration was unmistakable in the air between them. "I told you what Shaw did to my family, what he did to me. How could you expect me to stand aside when the opportunity to avenge my mother presented itself?"
"I'm not upset with you for killing Shaw. He deserved it." Laurien admitted, shaking her head. She knew her mother would be ashamed of her speaking in such a way, for condoning the death of a living being, but in that moment, she didn't care. "What I'm upset about is what came after."
Erik's brow furrowed in response to her words, yet he remained silent, allowing her to continue unimpeded.
"When you shot those missiles back at the ships, I didn't see you as yourself anymore." Laurien whispered, her anger simmering beneath the surface, as tears threatened to rise in her eyes alongside the reminders of Dan's face emerging from the ocean waves. "You became him."
In the silence that followed, Laurien knew that they were almost certainly imagining different ghosts. But she quickly realized that it didn't matter. Despite the different individuals from vastly different circumstances, the meaning behind her words remained unchanged.
"Please, I can't do this right now." She said tersely, the pain in her side becoming practically unbearable as her breathing began to pick up sharply at the reminder of Dan. She needed another dose of her medication and every ounce of her being started to scream for her to be left alone. "Just go." She pleaded.
When he didn't move, Laurien hurriedly pulled herself away from him and had started towards the door when Erik suddenly grabbed her wrist and pulled her back, only for Laurien to use the momentum to punch him hard in the mouth.
He staggered back, releasing her as he clutched his mouth and groaned softly. "I guess I deserved that." He mumbled, causing Laurien's anger to boil over.
"Of course you do, you bastard!" She cried, throwing her arms up in the air. "And you deserve much worse than that, believe me."
"Keep your voice down, please." He pleaded, his eyes nervously darting towards where Laurien was edging closer to the door. "Look, I know I can't take back what I did." Erik admitted, taking a cautious step towards her. "I made a mistake, and I'm so sorry, Laurien. I never meant to hurt you and Charles. I just–"
"Just shut up, Erik. I don't want to hear it." She spat back at him, her hands curling into fists. "Besides, I'm not the one that you should really be apologizing to here."
He sighed, running a hand over his tired face. "I have already made my peace with Charles on the beach. The bullet wasn't life threatening, he'll be back up in a week or so I expect."
And with that, Laurien couldn't handle it any longer. With a surge of anger, she pushed him back with her powers, sending him crashing into the far wall of her bedroom with a large bang. "The bullet hit his spine, you selfish prick! You paralyzed him for life and he'll never walk again!" She yelled, her whole body shaking with uncontrollable rage that had been building ever since he turned up. "When I visited him in the hospital, Erik, and the emotions that were coming off of him were so fucking overwhelming. His best friend crippled him, took his sister away from him and then left him to die. He's so agonizingly depressed that after feeling for a moment what he's felt these past few days, I wanted to kill myself. Do you really honestly think that you've made your peace?"
Erik's eyes widened, fear and anguish spreading across his face as the information registered in his head. He sank to the ground, as Laurien slowly backed away, raising a trembling hand to her mouth as she suddenly realized the immense weight of what she had just said. Multiple footsteps were heard running down the hallway on the other side of the door before it swung open as Hank, Alex and Sean stumbled in.
Alex quickly pulled Laurien behind him and out of harm's way as they watched Hank advance threateningly when he laid eyes on the shock stricken metal bender cowering across the room. Hank turned to her, his yellow eyes flashing. "Did he hurt you?"
"No." She said, only partially feeling like she was telling the truth. "He was just leaving. I'm sure his new friends will be here soon to pick him up."
Erik looked over at her with hard, questioning eyes, as he slowly got to his feet. She shook her head at him, fighting down the urge to apologize or hurl something his way at the same time, before she turned away and heard the tell-tale sound of Azazel appearing and disappearing from her room as she headed down the hallway and towards nowhere in particular.
Much shorter chapter than I'm used to, but I'll try to make it up to you all in the next chapter. There were many different ways that the scene could have gone, a lot of them involved people just yelling at each other, so I tried to tone it down a bit. In other news, I was able to see Deadpool today, (or yesterday, it's actually midnight here as I'm writing this.) And all I can really say is WOW. I was giggling, but I guess the lady a few rows down in the theatre enjoyed it even more, she was practically cackling and I don't blame her, it was raunchy and funny. Though I cringed when I realized that there were some kids under the age of ten there. Ahhhh! Okay, so thank you all, I hope you enjoyed and hopefully I'll have another chapter in a week or two. Thanks!