Post by Pyro on Aug 11, 2006 12:20:30 GMT -5
Rolling over and stretching sleepily, Angie snuggled into the warmth of her bed. She rubbed her face with her eyes still closed, enjoying waking up slowly after a restful sleep, and smiled. Reaching out with one arm, she felt... Nothing. Her eyes opened quickly and she looked around, finding herself not in the cell that she'd been dreaming she was still in with Pyro, but in her own room, and by herself. With wide open eyes, she looked around a little disorientated, then remembered that Python had kicked her out.
Stretching out with a slight feeling of disappointment, but also a bit of relief, she got up and slipped on her mittens, finding her sketchbook and padding out of her room and down toward the kitchen. Flipping through the sketch book, Angie found the page she was looking for - her tried and true pancake recipe. It was better the longer you could leave it to rest before cooking them, which was why she was out there in her pyjamas gathering ingredients. Slightly worried about whether it would be safe when she went for a shower, Angie decided to make plenty to spare.
Scribbling a quick note telling them not to eat it all, she returned to her room to find some clothes and have a shower. Returning to the kitchen in a pair of jeans and a pink bonds singlet, pulling her hair up in a bun behind her head, the young woman fired up the frypan and started to cook, making two stacks of pancakes and looking for syrup to put on them. Turning over her note and writing a new one - Pancake mix, help yourself (frypan nice and hot, bit of butter) ~ Angie - she put the leftover mix into the fridge with a covering of clingfilm and left the note sitting on top. Making herself a cup of tea, she wandered in her bare feet down toward Pyro's cell, the small bottle of syrup tucked under her arm. Her mittens were in the back pocket of her jeans, just in case, but it seemed pointless covering her hands when her arms were bare, so it was more habit than an actual sense of caution that had made her put them there.
Python was still outside the cell and she suspected he'd never left the chair. He cracked one eye open at her approach and looked almost wistfully at the pancakes and the cup of tea in her hand. He popped his shoulders free of knotted muscle and sat up straighter.
"Should probably go get myself something," he said, which was Python-speak for 'I'll leave you two alone, then'. "Kid's been sleeping peacefully since you stuck him with the sedative, but it should have worn off by now." He got to his feet.
"If you get into any sorta difficulty – holler. I won't be gone long."
"There's pancake mix in the fridge still, if the others haven't gotten to it yet." She smiled at Python as he opened the door for her, and hoped that he wouldn't be too long as she heard him lock it behind her, just in case. Looking up at John, she wondered which version of him she'd be seeing this afternoon - and if he'd remember anything before the sedative.
He was, as Python had implied, sleeping peacefully. At some point, Python had draped a blanket over him and he was curled up underneath it in a tight little ball. Even before his insanity had hit fully, Pyro had always slept in that position, often waking up aching in the morning from the tightly clenched position.
Hearing the sound of the bolt in the door made him stir a little, and he shifted his position slightly.
Bending down and carefully putting the tea on the floor, followed by the pancakes and the bottle of syrup, Angie wandered over to the bed, her feet cold against the metal floor. "Pyro," she said quietly, her hands hovering a foot or so above him. She thought about shaking him, but that wouldn't be particularly nice, and could be downright dangerous if he was in the wrong state of mind. "John, pancakes."
"What?" It took a few seconds for her voice to permeate into his consciousness, but when it did, his eyes opened and he stared up at her for a few minutes. "Pancakes?" Then he sat up slowly and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "Why would you bring me pancakes?"
So he didn't remember their conversation before - well, she had been half expecting that. It was still a little bit of a disappointment, though, especially since she didn't think there was a snowball's chance in hell of them ever being close like that again. "I promised you pancakes before." She didn't bother to elaborate. Jogging his memory might not work, or if it did, might not be a good thing. It was obvious that he still needed time to recover. Or outside help.
He laughed, lightly. "It's more like being in a hotel than being a hostage. They'll come for me, you know. The rest of the X-Men."
Ah.
It was like that this time.
Blinking several times, Angie wondered what he was on about. Hostage? The X-Men might be coming for him, but it'd be to take him in and have him tried for war crimes. It was obvious that he was more than a little... under the weather, to put it mildly, so telling him that he was the leader of the Brotherhood was unlikely to help. "Uh huh. So... pancakes?" She raised an eyebrow at him, not entirely sure what else to say. He thinks he's an X-Man?
"I am pretty hungry," he conceded, "and it'd just be stupid trying to starve myself. Thank you." The frightening thing was, he looked and sounded completely, utterly sane. He was clearly convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was, indeed, one of the X-Men.
He turned round on the bed so his feet were dangling over the edge and looked up at her. "I must have hit my head pretty hard. Guess you hauled me out when I was unconscious and brought me…wherever here is. They WILL come looking, though. And I won't be held responsible for whatever they do."
Nodding, and not wanting to shake him out of the most sane seeming conversation they'd had in the cell - even if it was clearly the complete opposite - Angie smiled. "Of course, John." She padded back over to the food, picking up her tea and having a sip. "I wasn't sure if you drank tea or coffee, so you'll have to stick to the water." This is insane! Oh, god. She tried to remember the running joke online that tea will make anything better, but it didn't seem to be doing the job just then. Insane!
"Water's good," he said and reached for the metal beaker that Python had dutifully filled up by the side of the bed. He took a long drink of it and accepted the food that Angie offered him. He ate like a man who'd been starved. "These are good," he said, his mouth full. "I mean, really good. What are you, like, Kitchen Girl or something?"
She couldn't help but laugh at that. "My mum wasn't home very often, and she's pretty bad... I learnt to cook, it was that or starve." She wondered if he could remember who she was as she took a mouthful of her own pancakes, and thought back to Baltimore, where that guy with the icy hands had seemed horrified that she was a member of the Brotherhood - looking so young and all. It seemed unlikely that he'd have any idea who she was. "I'm Nightingale, actually. Angie."
"I'm Pyro," he said, between bites of pancake which he had smothered liberally in maple syrup. "John. But you knew that already. So why me? When you have people like Wolverine and Storm to pick from, why pick one of the grunts?"
"Uh..." She paused for a moment. "What makes you think we haven't got any of the others?" Hopefully that thought would occupy him for a while, giving her a chance to think. What if he never rememebered who he really was?
"Have you? Got any of the others?" Oh, dear Lord, the hope in his eyes that one of the people he now considered his enemies was there. "Who do you have? Are they OK? I tell you now, If Magneto's laid one of his slimy fingers on any of them, I'll burn his skin off. I swear."
"Magneto?" She was genuinely confused. The business card she'd been handed had mentioned Magneto, but she still didn't really know who he was. No-one had explained the history of the Brotherhood to her yet.
"Your leader. The self-styled 'Master of Magnetism'?" John put aside his finished plate of pancakes. "Nothing but a damn bully if you ask me." He stood up and seemed not in the least surprised that his legs almost gave way underneath him. In his mind, he'd been drugged and taken hostage, not sedated and sectioned. He put a hand out to steady himself.
Nodding slowly, Angie watched as he stood, his legs almost buckling. She put out her hands, ready to catch him, and touched his arm for a fleeting moment, long enough to feel no new injuries. Just a bit of groginess from the sedative, which washed away with her touch, and the ever present mental wrongness, but even that didn't seem as bad. He wasn't in mental pain that made her want to cry, anyway. "Well, fair enough then." She drained the rest of her tea. Should I stay? "So, er... is there anything else you need?" She tucked a stray strand of hair behind one ear.
"I could use a visit to the bathroom," he said, simply. "Unless the Brotherhood don't need to do such things." The smile he gave her was disarmingly charming.
Though his smile was charming - not quite so much as before, but charming enough - Angie knew that Python would kill her if she let him out. Besides, she couldn't get out - the door locked from the outside. "Sorry Pyro, but I can't help you there. I can't even get out until someone lets me - I'm afraid you're stuck with me for a while."
"I can hang onto it for now," he said, with a light shrug. "But I'd appreciate at least that basic level of human rights at some point." He put a hand up to his jaw and seemed surprised that there was several days growth there. "I could use a shave, too," he added, vaguely. "And why the hell is it so hot in here? Haven't you people heard of windows?"
"Have you ever noticed that you seem to be running a fever in comparison to most people?" She could remember the warmth of him pressed up against her, and her cheeks reddened slightly. She hoped that he wouldn't notice. "You're bound to warm a room up. Besides, barred windows are so... hollywood." She flashed a cheeky grin.
"I have a naturally higher body temperature than most people," he acknowledged. "When I DID get sick once, nobody could tell what my temperature was." He remembered that like it was yesterday. A few weeks after his arrival at the Institute, he'd caught a bad dose of the flu and had run a high temperature for days before anybody actually realised he was sick.
"Well, you're not sick now, just warm." She'd almost said hot, catching herself with a slightly deeper blush warming her cheeks. There was something about a guy with a bit of stubble...
He caught the look and a faint smile flickered across his face. "You ever hear of 'Stockholm Syndrome', Nightingale?"
Isn't it supposed to be the other way around, though? "Yeah, I've heard of it. Why?" She put on her most innocent face, the one that she used when she knew she was going to get in trouble, and she wanted the person to realise just how young and incapable of being corrupt she looked.
"Oh, nothing. I just got this feeling that I know you. That we've talked before. Are you trying to get me to fall for you? Give away the X-Men's secrets? 'Cos it won't work. I don't do relationships." He felt in his pockets. No lighter. Damn it.
"Trying to get you to...?" Her cheeks flamed up again, feeling so hot that he ought to be able to pull fire out of them and melt his way out of the cell. "Don't all the best spies get secrets from their marks with just a single night, anyway?" Oh, god. She suddenly felt about as old as she looked. Angie had only ever kissed one boy in her life, which had been before her mutation had emerged. She had ignored all the boys in high school, except for Read, which had made most of them assume she was his girlfriend. It had been a good arrangement for her. "Besides, I don't do... relationships either." She squirmed for a moment, taking her mittens out of her back pocket and pulling them on as if to make a point.
He watched her put the gloves on and memories of Rogue burst into his head like one of his own fireballs. A look of deep suspicion came into his face, destroying the otherwise peaceable young man. "Let me go," he said, in a low, dangerous sort of voice. "I'm not kidding. Let me go."
She saw the look of suspicion and cast her mind back to what he'd said earlier. What was her name? "I'm not like... Rogue, don't worry. I don't take, I give." She paused for a moment. "And I told you, I can't get out myself." She wanted to start scooting back away from him, toward the door, but she didn't move. Python, please be out there.
"I'm more dangerous than you can possibly imagine," he said, his eyes going manic. "Didn't I tell you? I'm Pyro." In a sudden, swift move, he lunged for the plate and picked up the fork. In the hands of anybody else, it would have looked like a ridiculous weapon, but in the hands of a madman, it looked frighteningly lethal. "Let me out of here."
"Please don't." Her face was, no doubt inexplicably to him, incredibly sad as she whispered the words. Oh, god, Python, you better not be making pancakes still.
He moved to the door and began hammering on it. "Let me OUT OF HERE," he yelled. He'd come full circle, back to where he'd started the night before: screaming and shouting. Except this time, as well as his fingernails, he had the fork to cause untold damage with. "Order your people to let me out of here, Nightingale, or so help me, I'll make them regret it."
Standing and moving to the bed, Angie started to feel actual fear for the first time. Even when he'd been at his worst before, it had never been like this. "What are you going to do, John? You think they'd send me in here with you if I was worth anything to them?" Tears started to run down her cheeks, almost as if she believed what she was saying. They're not my people, they're yours. Why couldn't he remember? She picked up the plate, and her own fork, though it did look like a ridiculous weapon with her holding it. She put it in her pocket, if only to deprive him of it.
He spun to stare at her, then there was a hammering on the door. "Angie? You OK in there?" John, startled by the sudden arrival of someone else, spun back round, his back to her, and lunged at the door, beginning to scrabble at it with his fingernails in much the way he must have done last night. "Let me out," he repeated, over and over.
"Don't open the door, Python." Her voice was shaking, but forceful. "He's at the door, you can't let him out." She didn't know what to do, but she did know that she couldn't be responsible for letting Pyro out, not the way he was right now. They'd kill him if he started attacking, take 'Option B' without thinking, and she couldn't be responsible for that.
"Let me out of here NOW, or so help me, I'll kill her. I WILL!" He slammed his hands repeatedly against the door, outraged indignation and fury in his voice. He continued in that vein for a few moments, then suddenly let out a cry of pain and, dropping the fork, clutched at his head.
Her basic instinct to help people was almost overriden by his cry of pain. Almost. She rushed over to him, throwing the forks away in the direction of the bed, and then took off her mittens. She hoped that it wasn't a ploy as she extended shaking hands to grasp his, and she gasped, fresh tears appearing in her eyes, as she felt the pain. So much pain - his head felt like it was... breaking, an intense migraine the like of which she'd never felt before. Her energy poured into him to take it away, her strength flowing in to strengthen him. "What happened? What's wrong?" She couldn't understand where it had come from.
"My head is burning," he said and his eyes were glazing over. "God it hurts. It hurts!" He sank to his knees and curled up, moaning softly, the moment of rage replaced by something far less easy to understand.
She was frantic as she put her hands back onto his skin, willing more of her energy to rush into him but failing. It was like she couldn't keep up, couldn't completely fix the effect because the cause wouldn't go away. "Why isn't it working?" The tears spilled over with the whispered words. Her gift had always worked before, for physical symptoms. This was obviously not an ordinary case, though. "Python, we need a sedative, quick." She called out through the door, hoping to any higher power that cared to help that it wouldn't take too long to fetch one.
"I can't risk giving him any more," came the terse reply through the door. "I'm coming in, Angie." She heard the bolt slide back, as did Pyro, who made a lunge for the door as it opened.
"Shit!" She lunged after him, catching one arm. "John, don't..." She couldn't stop him - she was too small, not strong enough, and with every moment that their skin touched, she became weaker. "Please, don't."
"Get off me," he said, wrenching his arm free. The movement caught him off balance and he stumbled forward, smacking his head into the door which Python had just opened. He staggered backwards, dazed, tripped over Angie and went over almost comically, this time smacking the back of his head off the bed. He slithered to the ground, unconscious once more as Python entered the room. He didn't give the boy a second glance.
"Are you OK?"
Bewildered, halfway to passing out, and more than a little scared, Angie looked up at Python with wide eyes for a split second before burying her face in her hands and sobbing. "He thinks he's one of the X-Men." It was hard to decipher what she was saying through her tears. How could I be so stupid?
Python patted her on the shoulder, rather awkwardly, and laughed a little. "You gotta see the funny side in that," he said, picking up the unconscious Pyro and dumping him unceremoniously on the bed. "Come on, let's get you out of here."
She tried to laugh but just ended up crying more. Wandering over to the bed herself, she looked around for the forks. "I didn't think... he hasn't damaged the door too much, has he?" Finding the plates, and the mug she'd had her tea in, Angie saw that the syrup bottle had been kicked over and spilled all over the place. "Shit." Sniffling, she bent down and righted it. "I'll clean it up, I..." Wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist, she felt like a pathetic mess. "I think... I think we need to call Emma. Or someone. God, he... he's thinks we've kidnapped him, he thinks Magneto is still in charge, he..." He threatened my life. Her face crumpled but she refused to shed more tears over it. He was sick, it wasn't his fault.
"Penultimate resort," said Python, grimly refusing to give in to the inevitable. "Absolutely last resort is Option B. And right now, I'm seriously tempted to deliver that Option. You stupid fucking little idiot." The latter was directed to the prone boy on the bed. "I'm sorry, Angie. I warned you."
Sighing heavily, she nodded. "I know, Python. I... He seemed to be getting better, before the sedative. I thought he'd be ok." How wrong she had been. At least this morning he'd known who he was, who she was, that he was sick. Pyro had managed to seem normal this afternoon, if you didn't count the X-Men thing, and yet it was obvious that he still wasn't. She wanted to leave, wanted to take the things back to the kitchen and let Python do what he needed to, but she wanted to stay, didn't want to see John hurt, didn't think that he was beyond help - and didn't think that Python would do it in front of her. Unable to decide whether to stay or go, Angie ended up hovering at the door, unable to do either.
The tall mutant looked up at her from his perusal of the unconscious young leader of the Brotherhood and she saw the anguish in his eyes. "I want what's best for him, but what right do I have to make that choice? What if we get Frost back here and she can't help him? What if his brain is beyond help? I don't know how to deal with head cases."
"Neither do I, Python... Ever since my mutation kicked in, I've been able to feel pain, feel problems - mental as well as physical, but I can only help the physical kind. I can feel his pain, feel that there is something not right upstairs, but there's nothing I can do for him. I think... I think we just do our best to help him, and hope to anything that's listening that Emma can do the job. If she can't... well, maybe we look for someone else, or else... I don't know, maybe it is time for Option B, and when the time comes we do it as painlessly as we can." She tried to sound strong, but her voice wavered. And what do I do? If there was anyone less suitable that she could have started falling for, Angie couldn't name them.
Angie then became witness to the second person that day to lose their cool.
Python picked up the unmoving Pyro by the t-shirt and held him up to eye level, shaking him, hard. "Wake up, you little punk," he said. "Wake up and start answering a few goddamn QUESTIONS! How do I stop this? How do I FIX YOU?"
Dropping the plates with a clang, Angie rushed over to Python, putting the teacup down and reaching out to grasp the tall mutant's arms from behind. "Python. Come on..." She spoke gently, trying to sound reassuring. "Come on, Python, come outside with me."
Python shook Pyro a few more times for good measure, then tossed him back down on the bed. The boy slithered off onto the floor and it was all Python could do not to kick him in the ribs where he lay. He ran a hand across his scalp. "Yeah," he said, his voice shaking with barely suppressed anger. "Outside."
Seeing Python lose his cool for the first time since they'd met made Angie's hands shake as she picked everything up again. "I'll... um... see you." She looked at Python with wide eyes for a few seconds before taking off, heading back down toward the kitchen and then her room. What was I thinking? The young girl shook as she lay down on her bed, needing time to recover both physically and emotionally.
Before Python left John in his cell, he couldn't help but pick him up off the floor and lay him down on the bed. "I'm sorry, kid," he said. "I let you down."
He would have to call Emma Frost.
He didn't know if he could face Option B. Not yet.
Stretching out with a slight feeling of disappointment, but also a bit of relief, she got up and slipped on her mittens, finding her sketchbook and padding out of her room and down toward the kitchen. Flipping through the sketch book, Angie found the page she was looking for - her tried and true pancake recipe. It was better the longer you could leave it to rest before cooking them, which was why she was out there in her pyjamas gathering ingredients. Slightly worried about whether it would be safe when she went for a shower, Angie decided to make plenty to spare.
Scribbling a quick note telling them not to eat it all, she returned to her room to find some clothes and have a shower. Returning to the kitchen in a pair of jeans and a pink bonds singlet, pulling her hair up in a bun behind her head, the young woman fired up the frypan and started to cook, making two stacks of pancakes and looking for syrup to put on them. Turning over her note and writing a new one - Pancake mix, help yourself (frypan nice and hot, bit of butter) ~ Angie - she put the leftover mix into the fridge with a covering of clingfilm and left the note sitting on top. Making herself a cup of tea, she wandered in her bare feet down toward Pyro's cell, the small bottle of syrup tucked under her arm. Her mittens were in the back pocket of her jeans, just in case, but it seemed pointless covering her hands when her arms were bare, so it was more habit than an actual sense of caution that had made her put them there.
Python was still outside the cell and she suspected he'd never left the chair. He cracked one eye open at her approach and looked almost wistfully at the pancakes and the cup of tea in her hand. He popped his shoulders free of knotted muscle and sat up straighter.
"Should probably go get myself something," he said, which was Python-speak for 'I'll leave you two alone, then'. "Kid's been sleeping peacefully since you stuck him with the sedative, but it should have worn off by now." He got to his feet.
"If you get into any sorta difficulty – holler. I won't be gone long."
"There's pancake mix in the fridge still, if the others haven't gotten to it yet." She smiled at Python as he opened the door for her, and hoped that he wouldn't be too long as she heard him lock it behind her, just in case. Looking up at John, she wondered which version of him she'd be seeing this afternoon - and if he'd remember anything before the sedative.
He was, as Python had implied, sleeping peacefully. At some point, Python had draped a blanket over him and he was curled up underneath it in a tight little ball. Even before his insanity had hit fully, Pyro had always slept in that position, often waking up aching in the morning from the tightly clenched position.
Hearing the sound of the bolt in the door made him stir a little, and he shifted his position slightly.
Bending down and carefully putting the tea on the floor, followed by the pancakes and the bottle of syrup, Angie wandered over to the bed, her feet cold against the metal floor. "Pyro," she said quietly, her hands hovering a foot or so above him. She thought about shaking him, but that wouldn't be particularly nice, and could be downright dangerous if he was in the wrong state of mind. "John, pancakes."
"What?" It took a few seconds for her voice to permeate into his consciousness, but when it did, his eyes opened and he stared up at her for a few minutes. "Pancakes?" Then he sat up slowly and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "Why would you bring me pancakes?"
So he didn't remember their conversation before - well, she had been half expecting that. It was still a little bit of a disappointment, though, especially since she didn't think there was a snowball's chance in hell of them ever being close like that again. "I promised you pancakes before." She didn't bother to elaborate. Jogging his memory might not work, or if it did, might not be a good thing. It was obvious that he still needed time to recover. Or outside help.
He laughed, lightly. "It's more like being in a hotel than being a hostage. They'll come for me, you know. The rest of the X-Men."
Ah.
It was like that this time.
Blinking several times, Angie wondered what he was on about. Hostage? The X-Men might be coming for him, but it'd be to take him in and have him tried for war crimes. It was obvious that he was more than a little... under the weather, to put it mildly, so telling him that he was the leader of the Brotherhood was unlikely to help. "Uh huh. So... pancakes?" She raised an eyebrow at him, not entirely sure what else to say. He thinks he's an X-Man?
"I am pretty hungry," he conceded, "and it'd just be stupid trying to starve myself. Thank you." The frightening thing was, he looked and sounded completely, utterly sane. He was clearly convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was, indeed, one of the X-Men.
He turned round on the bed so his feet were dangling over the edge and looked up at her. "I must have hit my head pretty hard. Guess you hauled me out when I was unconscious and brought me…wherever here is. They WILL come looking, though. And I won't be held responsible for whatever they do."
Nodding, and not wanting to shake him out of the most sane seeming conversation they'd had in the cell - even if it was clearly the complete opposite - Angie smiled. "Of course, John." She padded back over to the food, picking up her tea and having a sip. "I wasn't sure if you drank tea or coffee, so you'll have to stick to the water." This is insane! Oh, god. She tried to remember the running joke online that tea will make anything better, but it didn't seem to be doing the job just then. Insane!
"Water's good," he said and reached for the metal beaker that Python had dutifully filled up by the side of the bed. He took a long drink of it and accepted the food that Angie offered him. He ate like a man who'd been starved. "These are good," he said, his mouth full. "I mean, really good. What are you, like, Kitchen Girl or something?"
She couldn't help but laugh at that. "My mum wasn't home very often, and she's pretty bad... I learnt to cook, it was that or starve." She wondered if he could remember who she was as she took a mouthful of her own pancakes, and thought back to Baltimore, where that guy with the icy hands had seemed horrified that she was a member of the Brotherhood - looking so young and all. It seemed unlikely that he'd have any idea who she was. "I'm Nightingale, actually. Angie."
"I'm Pyro," he said, between bites of pancake which he had smothered liberally in maple syrup. "John. But you knew that already. So why me? When you have people like Wolverine and Storm to pick from, why pick one of the grunts?"
"Uh..." She paused for a moment. "What makes you think we haven't got any of the others?" Hopefully that thought would occupy him for a while, giving her a chance to think. What if he never rememebered who he really was?
"Have you? Got any of the others?" Oh, dear Lord, the hope in his eyes that one of the people he now considered his enemies was there. "Who do you have? Are they OK? I tell you now, If Magneto's laid one of his slimy fingers on any of them, I'll burn his skin off. I swear."
"Magneto?" She was genuinely confused. The business card she'd been handed had mentioned Magneto, but she still didn't really know who he was. No-one had explained the history of the Brotherhood to her yet.
"Your leader. The self-styled 'Master of Magnetism'?" John put aside his finished plate of pancakes. "Nothing but a damn bully if you ask me." He stood up and seemed not in the least surprised that his legs almost gave way underneath him. In his mind, he'd been drugged and taken hostage, not sedated and sectioned. He put a hand out to steady himself.
Nodding slowly, Angie watched as he stood, his legs almost buckling. She put out her hands, ready to catch him, and touched his arm for a fleeting moment, long enough to feel no new injuries. Just a bit of groginess from the sedative, which washed away with her touch, and the ever present mental wrongness, but even that didn't seem as bad. He wasn't in mental pain that made her want to cry, anyway. "Well, fair enough then." She drained the rest of her tea. Should I stay? "So, er... is there anything else you need?" She tucked a stray strand of hair behind one ear.
"I could use a visit to the bathroom," he said, simply. "Unless the Brotherhood don't need to do such things." The smile he gave her was disarmingly charming.
Though his smile was charming - not quite so much as before, but charming enough - Angie knew that Python would kill her if she let him out. Besides, she couldn't get out - the door locked from the outside. "Sorry Pyro, but I can't help you there. I can't even get out until someone lets me - I'm afraid you're stuck with me for a while."
"I can hang onto it for now," he said, with a light shrug. "But I'd appreciate at least that basic level of human rights at some point." He put a hand up to his jaw and seemed surprised that there was several days growth there. "I could use a shave, too," he added, vaguely. "And why the hell is it so hot in here? Haven't you people heard of windows?"
"Have you ever noticed that you seem to be running a fever in comparison to most people?" She could remember the warmth of him pressed up against her, and her cheeks reddened slightly. She hoped that he wouldn't notice. "You're bound to warm a room up. Besides, barred windows are so... hollywood." She flashed a cheeky grin.
"I have a naturally higher body temperature than most people," he acknowledged. "When I DID get sick once, nobody could tell what my temperature was." He remembered that like it was yesterday. A few weeks after his arrival at the Institute, he'd caught a bad dose of the flu and had run a high temperature for days before anybody actually realised he was sick.
"Well, you're not sick now, just warm." She'd almost said hot, catching herself with a slightly deeper blush warming her cheeks. There was something about a guy with a bit of stubble...
He caught the look and a faint smile flickered across his face. "You ever hear of 'Stockholm Syndrome', Nightingale?"
Isn't it supposed to be the other way around, though? "Yeah, I've heard of it. Why?" She put on her most innocent face, the one that she used when she knew she was going to get in trouble, and she wanted the person to realise just how young and incapable of being corrupt she looked.
"Oh, nothing. I just got this feeling that I know you. That we've talked before. Are you trying to get me to fall for you? Give away the X-Men's secrets? 'Cos it won't work. I don't do relationships." He felt in his pockets. No lighter. Damn it.
"Trying to get you to...?" Her cheeks flamed up again, feeling so hot that he ought to be able to pull fire out of them and melt his way out of the cell. "Don't all the best spies get secrets from their marks with just a single night, anyway?" Oh, god. She suddenly felt about as old as she looked. Angie had only ever kissed one boy in her life, which had been before her mutation had emerged. She had ignored all the boys in high school, except for Read, which had made most of them assume she was his girlfriend. It had been a good arrangement for her. "Besides, I don't do... relationships either." She squirmed for a moment, taking her mittens out of her back pocket and pulling them on as if to make a point.
He watched her put the gloves on and memories of Rogue burst into his head like one of his own fireballs. A look of deep suspicion came into his face, destroying the otherwise peaceable young man. "Let me go," he said, in a low, dangerous sort of voice. "I'm not kidding. Let me go."
She saw the look of suspicion and cast her mind back to what he'd said earlier. What was her name? "I'm not like... Rogue, don't worry. I don't take, I give." She paused for a moment. "And I told you, I can't get out myself." She wanted to start scooting back away from him, toward the door, but she didn't move. Python, please be out there.
"I'm more dangerous than you can possibly imagine," he said, his eyes going manic. "Didn't I tell you? I'm Pyro." In a sudden, swift move, he lunged for the plate and picked up the fork. In the hands of anybody else, it would have looked like a ridiculous weapon, but in the hands of a madman, it looked frighteningly lethal. "Let me out of here."
"Please don't." Her face was, no doubt inexplicably to him, incredibly sad as she whispered the words. Oh, god, Python, you better not be making pancakes still.
He moved to the door and began hammering on it. "Let me OUT OF HERE," he yelled. He'd come full circle, back to where he'd started the night before: screaming and shouting. Except this time, as well as his fingernails, he had the fork to cause untold damage with. "Order your people to let me out of here, Nightingale, or so help me, I'll make them regret it."
Standing and moving to the bed, Angie started to feel actual fear for the first time. Even when he'd been at his worst before, it had never been like this. "What are you going to do, John? You think they'd send me in here with you if I was worth anything to them?" Tears started to run down her cheeks, almost as if she believed what she was saying. They're not my people, they're yours. Why couldn't he remember? She picked up the plate, and her own fork, though it did look like a ridiculous weapon with her holding it. She put it in her pocket, if only to deprive him of it.
He spun to stare at her, then there was a hammering on the door. "Angie? You OK in there?" John, startled by the sudden arrival of someone else, spun back round, his back to her, and lunged at the door, beginning to scrabble at it with his fingernails in much the way he must have done last night. "Let me out," he repeated, over and over.
"Don't open the door, Python." Her voice was shaking, but forceful. "He's at the door, you can't let him out." She didn't know what to do, but she did know that she couldn't be responsible for letting Pyro out, not the way he was right now. They'd kill him if he started attacking, take 'Option B' without thinking, and she couldn't be responsible for that.
"Let me out of here NOW, or so help me, I'll kill her. I WILL!" He slammed his hands repeatedly against the door, outraged indignation and fury in his voice. He continued in that vein for a few moments, then suddenly let out a cry of pain and, dropping the fork, clutched at his head.
Her basic instinct to help people was almost overriden by his cry of pain. Almost. She rushed over to him, throwing the forks away in the direction of the bed, and then took off her mittens. She hoped that it wasn't a ploy as she extended shaking hands to grasp his, and she gasped, fresh tears appearing in her eyes, as she felt the pain. So much pain - his head felt like it was... breaking, an intense migraine the like of which she'd never felt before. Her energy poured into him to take it away, her strength flowing in to strengthen him. "What happened? What's wrong?" She couldn't understand where it had come from.
"My head is burning," he said and his eyes were glazing over. "God it hurts. It hurts!" He sank to his knees and curled up, moaning softly, the moment of rage replaced by something far less easy to understand.
She was frantic as she put her hands back onto his skin, willing more of her energy to rush into him but failing. It was like she couldn't keep up, couldn't completely fix the effect because the cause wouldn't go away. "Why isn't it working?" The tears spilled over with the whispered words. Her gift had always worked before, for physical symptoms. This was obviously not an ordinary case, though. "Python, we need a sedative, quick." She called out through the door, hoping to any higher power that cared to help that it wouldn't take too long to fetch one.
"I can't risk giving him any more," came the terse reply through the door. "I'm coming in, Angie." She heard the bolt slide back, as did Pyro, who made a lunge for the door as it opened.
"Shit!" She lunged after him, catching one arm. "John, don't..." She couldn't stop him - she was too small, not strong enough, and with every moment that their skin touched, she became weaker. "Please, don't."
"Get off me," he said, wrenching his arm free. The movement caught him off balance and he stumbled forward, smacking his head into the door which Python had just opened. He staggered backwards, dazed, tripped over Angie and went over almost comically, this time smacking the back of his head off the bed. He slithered to the ground, unconscious once more as Python entered the room. He didn't give the boy a second glance.
"Are you OK?"
Bewildered, halfway to passing out, and more than a little scared, Angie looked up at Python with wide eyes for a split second before burying her face in her hands and sobbing. "He thinks he's one of the X-Men." It was hard to decipher what she was saying through her tears. How could I be so stupid?
Python patted her on the shoulder, rather awkwardly, and laughed a little. "You gotta see the funny side in that," he said, picking up the unconscious Pyro and dumping him unceremoniously on the bed. "Come on, let's get you out of here."
She tried to laugh but just ended up crying more. Wandering over to the bed herself, she looked around for the forks. "I didn't think... he hasn't damaged the door too much, has he?" Finding the plates, and the mug she'd had her tea in, Angie saw that the syrup bottle had been kicked over and spilled all over the place. "Shit." Sniffling, she bent down and righted it. "I'll clean it up, I..." Wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist, she felt like a pathetic mess. "I think... I think we need to call Emma. Or someone. God, he... he's thinks we've kidnapped him, he thinks Magneto is still in charge, he..." He threatened my life. Her face crumpled but she refused to shed more tears over it. He was sick, it wasn't his fault.
"Penultimate resort," said Python, grimly refusing to give in to the inevitable. "Absolutely last resort is Option B. And right now, I'm seriously tempted to deliver that Option. You stupid fucking little idiot." The latter was directed to the prone boy on the bed. "I'm sorry, Angie. I warned you."
Sighing heavily, she nodded. "I know, Python. I... He seemed to be getting better, before the sedative. I thought he'd be ok." How wrong she had been. At least this morning he'd known who he was, who she was, that he was sick. Pyro had managed to seem normal this afternoon, if you didn't count the X-Men thing, and yet it was obvious that he still wasn't. She wanted to leave, wanted to take the things back to the kitchen and let Python do what he needed to, but she wanted to stay, didn't want to see John hurt, didn't think that he was beyond help - and didn't think that Python would do it in front of her. Unable to decide whether to stay or go, Angie ended up hovering at the door, unable to do either.
The tall mutant looked up at her from his perusal of the unconscious young leader of the Brotherhood and she saw the anguish in his eyes. "I want what's best for him, but what right do I have to make that choice? What if we get Frost back here and she can't help him? What if his brain is beyond help? I don't know how to deal with head cases."
"Neither do I, Python... Ever since my mutation kicked in, I've been able to feel pain, feel problems - mental as well as physical, but I can only help the physical kind. I can feel his pain, feel that there is something not right upstairs, but there's nothing I can do for him. I think... I think we just do our best to help him, and hope to anything that's listening that Emma can do the job. If she can't... well, maybe we look for someone else, or else... I don't know, maybe it is time for Option B, and when the time comes we do it as painlessly as we can." She tried to sound strong, but her voice wavered. And what do I do? If there was anyone less suitable that she could have started falling for, Angie couldn't name them.
Angie then became witness to the second person that day to lose their cool.
Python picked up the unmoving Pyro by the t-shirt and held him up to eye level, shaking him, hard. "Wake up, you little punk," he said. "Wake up and start answering a few goddamn QUESTIONS! How do I stop this? How do I FIX YOU?"
Dropping the plates with a clang, Angie rushed over to Python, putting the teacup down and reaching out to grasp the tall mutant's arms from behind. "Python. Come on..." She spoke gently, trying to sound reassuring. "Come on, Python, come outside with me."
Python shook Pyro a few more times for good measure, then tossed him back down on the bed. The boy slithered off onto the floor and it was all Python could do not to kick him in the ribs where he lay. He ran a hand across his scalp. "Yeah," he said, his voice shaking with barely suppressed anger. "Outside."
Seeing Python lose his cool for the first time since they'd met made Angie's hands shake as she picked everything up again. "I'll... um... see you." She looked at Python with wide eyes for a few seconds before taking off, heading back down toward the kitchen and then her room. What was I thinking? The young girl shook as she lay down on her bed, needing time to recover both physically and emotionally.
Before Python left John in his cell, he couldn't help but pick him up off the floor and lay him down on the bed. "I'm sorry, kid," he said. "I let you down."
He would have to call Emma Frost.
He didn't know if he could face Option B. Not yet.
