You and Me and the Lights Down Low

[Jane]

There was one thing that always made Jane feel better about life, no matter what, even when she was little - music. She'd always loved music, since she could understand what it was. Her mother had played a lot of it to her stomach while pregnant, and it had done its work: Jane was completely under its thrall. A sad song could make her bawl her eyes out, and a happy one could turn her mood around faster than you could press play.

She had a weird memory for it, too. After the second listen to most things, she could keep track of every note and discrepancy in the music, every lilt to the words. Random talent. Everybody had a couple, or a couple dozen.

After bad dreams, she always ended up singing. After the last few bad dreams she'd had, Jane had ended up singing a lot.

It was lucky for the other occupants of the fortress that she had a good voice - better than good. Beautiful. Not soullessly so, either, but with a spirit to the tone, with personality; no pearl-sheened and perfect Sarah Brightman was she, but more a Catherine Zeta-Jones before the world of movies stole her away. A bit higher, perhaps, and purer, and more taken with country than with musicals.

So not really like, after all. The point was, Jane loved to sing.

Someone had left dishes in the sink, so she was washing them. She'd been unconscious for so long that a bit of guilt had started to seep into her brain, and she needed to feel like she was good for something.

Singing and doing chores. She felt very domestic.

"Nothin' on but the ra-di-o," she sang softly, her pretty alto slightly throaty at the low volume. "Hear the music playin' soft and slow... You and me and the lights down low, with nothin' on but the ra-di-o..."

The trashy Kansas twang crept back into her mouth, too, when she sang country. She hated it. It came back at every opportunity, it always seemed like - when she got mad, when she got sad, when she spoke too fast. When she sang.

"Two people meant to be to-geth-er, two lovers dreamin' of forev-er - and it just keeps on gettin' better, with every ten-der lit-tle kiss..."

Ki-ass.

Ew.

[Jane]

Halfway through the dishes, someone flushed a toilet across the base.

This was a Bad Thing.

The water instantly seared hot and Jane pulled her scalded hands back with a sharp hiss, curling them in on her chest like a wounded animal. Ow ow ow ow ow.

Damn. She needed those fingers...

Jane carefully, and with a little wincing, unfolded her fingers to inspect the damage, but instead of (just) the scalding, she found something rather more alarming.

Either she'd burned herself much worse than she'd thought or... she actually couldn't think of another reason. She didn't turn red in autumn; she turned yellow. And it was spring still!

She gently flexed the digits, but the faint reddish-brownish tinge didn't leave; she turned them over, and the color had crawled a little onto the backs as well, staining her a color somewhere between brick dust, red wine and sunsets in towns with nuclear power.

She remembered it, half-formed, from New Jersey, though she'd got there late in fall, after the leaves, and moved out pretty quickly. It was the red of a Japanese maple in full bloom... in fall.

What gave?

Well, whatever. She was going to go find some aloe and put her gloves BACK ON and it was just going to be as if it had never happened.

Maybe I have special mutant cancer!

Oh, that was helpful.