Post by Pyro on Sept 10, 2006 4:34:48 GMT -5
Continued from here
-------------------
By morning, it was evident that he was much cooler.
When she came into the room, he was still sleeping soundly despite the fact that Timmy was perched on the end of the sofa bed watching cartoons. The young mutant was fast asleep, clearly peacefully, his chest rising and falling evenly.
He'd shed the pyjama top at some point, and she could see how thin he was, the outline of his ribs perfectly clear to her. He was a strange kid, that was for sure. He had all the guile and arrogance of the teenage street urchin, but there was a childish vulnerability about him...maybe it was just the sickness.
Unfortunately, they all had things to do that day. She didn't want to wake him just to tell him that he'd be alone for the day, so she scooped up Timmy with a grin and left a note taped to the TV.
John,
I've had to go to work, but we'll all be back by four. There's soup in the fridge if you want some, or help yourself to whatever you can find. If you need to reach me, call my cell - the number's at the bottom.
I'll see you this afternoon.
Charlotte.
She wasn't worried about how she'd find the apartment. As much as her mother-in-law might try to point out his delinquency, Charlotte didn't think John was going to take off with their life savings. They didn't really have much in the way of life savings anyway.
When she came home, he was either still sleeping or had gone back to sleep, because it didn't look like he had moved since she left him. The missing soup in the fridge, and the carefully washed-up bowl on the side indicated that he'd got back up at some point.
She also noted that a rather battered-looking copy of Catch-22 was in his hand.
His colour was greatly improved and his sleep seemed peaceful enough.
Though the old woman started grumbling under her breath the moment they returned, Charlotte almost smugly pointed out the fact that nothing was missing and he'd even washed up after himself.
Checking his clothes and seeing that they were dry, Charlotte made Timmy afternoon tea and started folding. She didn't expect John to stay much longer - he didn't seem like the type - but she wasn't going to hold that against him.
When he woke up, there was a neatly folded pile of clothes at the end of the bed, and a delicious smell wafting out of the kitchen.
He sat up, bleary and tired, rubbing his eyes. He hadn't slept so well or for so long in an absolute age. He pulled on the now clean, but still definitely threadbare clothes and carefully folded the sofa bed back up. He was alarmed when he realised just how late it was.
The old woman was sat opposite him, glaring at him as he did so and he felt faintly embarrassed under her scrutiny.
"Who're your parents, boy?" she asked him, to which he replied with an awkward shrug of the shoulder. "St. John and Rachel Allerdyce," he said. "My dad's still in Australia, presumably. Mom...I don't know."
Something in the old woman's attack softened.
"Don't you be taking advantage of Charlotte's kind nature over-much," she said. "You get gone as soon as you can. She has problems enough without another mouth to feed."
The old woman's words puzzled John as he found way to the kitchen.
"Hi," he said, softly.
"Sleeping beauty awakens!" Charlotte grinned when she heard his voice, rushing over to take a quick guage of his temperature. Still warm, but not alarmingly hot anymore. It seemed that a day's rest had done him the world of good, and she found herself wondering if he'd go somewhere else with a roof once he left her or if he'd just go back to the streets.
She'd heard him folding up the sofa - it was a sign to her that he was preparing to move on. There was certainly nothing she could do to stop him, but she'd hoped that he'd stay another night.
"Feeling better?" He was looking much better, but that could be deceiving.
"A lot better," he confirmed and reached up to run his hands through his hair. He'd done a lot of thinking in the periods he'd been awake. "Listen. When we ... uh ... met - you mentioned this Xavier guy?"
He looked faintly ashamed.
"Do you still have contact details for him? I'm figuring I should maybe get in touch."
Lifting the lid to smell the sauce that was simmering away, Charlotte nodded.
"Sure, I've got it written down somewhere. Watch this for a sec, will you?" It was only a simple thing, tomato and herbs to pour over spaghetti, but it was a nice cheap and very tasty meal.
She disappeared into her room for a few minutes, emerging with a sheet of notepaper. Her neat handwriting told only a short tale - the name of an institute, a contact person and a phone number.
"It'd probably be a good idea, they say he can help anyone." Even the people who didn't think they could be helped.
"I've encroached on your help enough," he said, folding the paper up and slipping it into the pocket of his combats. "If you're cool, I'll stay for dinner, but I won't block your living room again tonight. I - ah - get the feeling that Methusulah in there doesn't really like me being here. Plus...well, I feel like I'm taking advantage."
He'd certainly recovered well - or at least seemed to have done. A closer look revealed that much of it was put on. His eyes were bright and there were two spots of heightened colour on his cheeks.
She suspected he'd get about one hundred yards down the street before he collapsed in a heap.
He'd pretended all his life that he was fine. Old habits were hard to break.
"She doesn't like anyone. Not even me, most days, so don't let her sway you."
She took a spoonful of the sauce and passed it over to him.
"Do you think it's ready? More oregano, maybe?"
She shook her head.
"You're not taking advantage, you're getting better. And I'd rather you do it here than on the streets. The only way I'm letting you out for the moment is if I put you in a hospital bed." Her smile betrayed the stern tone she'd used. "And they've got enough on their hands already."
His whole posture sagged. "OK," he said. "Just one more night."
He tried the sauce and considered. "Maybe a little pepper as well, " he suggested. "Can I help? Is there anything I can do to help?"
She got him to prepare the salad, which he did rather awkwardly, but certainly making an effort to help. Right up to the moment, about fifteen minutes later when he suddenly dropped the knife and clutched at his head.
"John, are you alright?" Frowning, Charlotte rushed over and pushed the knife away from the edge of the bench before putting a hand over his.
"What's wrong?" She wondered whether this was related to his 'flu or whether it was something competely different. Headaches weren't exactly uncommon, but not the kind that made you stop what you were doing to grasp at the pain.
"I don't know," he said when he could speak, after the moment of stabbing pain in his head had passed. "Since I stopped that fire, they've been getting worse. The headaches."
With her help, he sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. He'd returned to chalk-white again, but slowly, as the pain ebbed away, colour seeped back into his cheeks.
"Maybe it's just 'cos I'm a bit under the weather," he said, and he sounded faintly woozy.
The pilot light under the pasta sauce suddenly burned with a fierce and furious flame and he whimpered at it.
Charlotte frowned at the flame, glad that the pair of them were alone in the kitchen for the moment. Her mother-in-law would probably be even less welcoming if she knew he was a mutant. If that was possible, it wasn't like she'd been standing with open arms.
"You haven't been sick this whole time, have you?" Maybe it was time to call Xavier now. Charlotte didn't know if the headaches were directly related to his mutation, but she remember John telling her that he didn't do so well with painkillers, and if it wasn't something with a well known medical cause... Well, she wouldn't be able to help out, she was better at patching up gunshot wounds than inexplicable pain.
"Not sick like I am now," he said, after managing to get control of the flame. "But yeah - headaches have been pretty frequent." He gave her a tight smile. "Pretty pathetic, huh?"
Absently, he held out a hand and the light under the pan split, a single lick of flame crossing the kitchen and ending up in his palm as though it were little more than a child's ball. He passed it from hand to hand - a nervous habit.
"John." There was a touch of wariness in her tone - she wasn't afraid of him, but Charlotte was worried for her child, and worried about how John would be received if the old woman saw something so blatant.
She thought about the headaches and decided that they probably were to do with his mutation more than any physical injury. Unless he had some condition that had showed up at the same time as the fire, and that would be incredible bad luck.
"I can check you out if we go down to a doctor's surgery, but I'm not sure we'll find anything. You might need someone more familiar with mutation."
"What? Oh, sorry. Habit."
Charlotte, however, was about to find out how the old woman received it.
"Get it out," came the outraged sentence from the door. "Get that THING out of this house. Now."
John closed his palm too late.
The old woman was barely able to contain her obvious disgust at what she had just witnessed. "Mutant FILTH!"
Thirteen words that went a very long way to pushing the already unstable boy over the edge into the pit of despair. He didn't have to speak a word. It was all in his eyes.
"How dare you? This is my house, if you hadn't forgotten, and John is just as welcome here as you are." Charlotte's eyes were cold and hard as she stared at her mother-in-law.
"More welcome, right now. I am not going to throw a sick boy out on the streets because of your prejudices." You'd have thought an old black woman would be sympathetic about minorities, but apparently her fears ran deep. Charlotte couldn't help but wonder whether the reaction would have been the same if John was black.
She reached out to John.
"You're still not leaving." She didn't care that he was a mutant anymore than she'd have cared if Timmy turned out to be one. All Charlotte saw was a sick boy that needed help, and she needed to give it to him.
"Don't touch me," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He looked from Charlotte to the old woman, his head spinning. He'd grown used to people fearing what he was. But actively hating him, just because he had been born differently? That was something else.
"I have to go," he said, distractedly and Charlotte could recognise the signs of a blossoming panic attack. "I shouldn't have come here in the first place...you're right, I'm a danger, I shouldn't...I..."
The hand went out, the flame from the stove leapt instantly to him and he held it like some sort of threatening weapon.
"I'm going," he said, in a cold, calm voice to the old woman. "Just give me enough time to pick up my stuff, and I'll leave." His voice dropped to a chilling tone. "Get out of my way."
"John." Charlotte's voice was low, and her sadness was obvious on her face.
"I can't stop you from going, it's true." She paused long enough to shoot another glare at the old woman.
"But I want you to stay, I want you to get better. Please, don't go back out there." She didn't think about what she was saying, didn't stop to think that it might make things worse.
"Please, John. I don't want you to die on the streets like your mother did." She'd looked her up at work, to see if she could get contact details. Instead she'd found out that Rachel Allerdyce had been cremated by the state since no next-of-kin could be found to claim her body.
Die on the streets like your mother did.
Die on the streets like your mother did...
"My...mother?" The kid gave Charlotte a look that she would never forget. It was a look of incredulous disbelief. "No, you're just saying that...to make me..."
He turned from Charlotte to the old woman, to Charlotte again, as though willing her to take back the words.
"Not my momma," was all he said before the flame in his hand snuffed out and he sank to his knees, his head bowed, his shoulders heaving in silent sobs.
Even the old woman had the grace to retreat at that point.
She crossed the room to kneel down and put her arms around him.
"I'm sorry, John."
If she could have fixed it all, she would have. But Charlotte had long since learnt that all she could do was help pick up the pieces.
"When?" he finally managed to get out. "When did she die? I should have looked for her, I could have found her..."
"Two years ago."
Charlotte still had her arms wrapped around him protectively.
She wasn't sure whether to tell him about how she'd died, or even if he knew what had happened when he'd been put into foster care in the first place.
"When I ran away from the home," he said, finally relaxing into her embrace. "I should have looked for her, but I was too scared to come ask for help."
He closed her eyes and let her comfort him. He needed it, desperately. He had thought he had no love for the woman he'd barely known, but to hear of her death had sent a wave of misery through him.
"What happened?" he asked, softly.
"I'm sorry John..." She tightened her embrace, wanting to support him when he heard the news.
"It was an overdose, John." There was nothing he could have done about it, she'd had a series of arrests after being forced to give John up. Charlotte got the impression that his mother had spiralled further and further with each new year.
He stiffened briefly, then gave a shuddering sigh. "She was about my age when she had me," he said. "That's about as much as I know of her. So she'd have been...what, 38 years old?"
There was a long silence during which the sick, bereaved, confused and borderline despairing young mutant simply clung onto her. "My momma," he whispered again and then he shed some honest tears for her.
When the moment had passed, he pulled himself gently out of Charlotte's embrace.
"Can I use your phone?"
"Of course you can." Charlotte turned the stove off so that she could leave him in the kitchen to use the phone in privacy. She wasn't worried about him playing with fire again - she was worried about dinner burning.
She pointed to the phone next to the fridge and ducked out of the room, closing the door behind her to find Timmy looking up at her.
"Come here Tim-aroo." She grabbed him and took him into the lounge, speaking quietly to her son and assuring him that she loved him and that everything was fine. She didn't speak to her mother-in-law.
It took him six attempts to dial and speak to the man at the end of the phone, this Charles Xavier, but when John came off the telephone, he felt much calmer, and far more certain in the direction his life was heading.
-------------------
By morning, it was evident that he was much cooler.
When she came into the room, he was still sleeping soundly despite the fact that Timmy was perched on the end of the sofa bed watching cartoons. The young mutant was fast asleep, clearly peacefully, his chest rising and falling evenly.
He'd shed the pyjama top at some point, and she could see how thin he was, the outline of his ribs perfectly clear to her. He was a strange kid, that was for sure. He had all the guile and arrogance of the teenage street urchin, but there was a childish vulnerability about him...maybe it was just the sickness.
Unfortunately, they all had things to do that day. She didn't want to wake him just to tell him that he'd be alone for the day, so she scooped up Timmy with a grin and left a note taped to the TV.
John,
I've had to go to work, but we'll all be back by four. There's soup in the fridge if you want some, or help yourself to whatever you can find. If you need to reach me, call my cell - the number's at the bottom.
I'll see you this afternoon.
Charlotte.
She wasn't worried about how she'd find the apartment. As much as her mother-in-law might try to point out his delinquency, Charlotte didn't think John was going to take off with their life savings. They didn't really have much in the way of life savings anyway.
When she came home, he was either still sleeping or had gone back to sleep, because it didn't look like he had moved since she left him. The missing soup in the fridge, and the carefully washed-up bowl on the side indicated that he'd got back up at some point.
She also noted that a rather battered-looking copy of Catch-22 was in his hand.
His colour was greatly improved and his sleep seemed peaceful enough.
Though the old woman started grumbling under her breath the moment they returned, Charlotte almost smugly pointed out the fact that nothing was missing and he'd even washed up after himself.
Checking his clothes and seeing that they were dry, Charlotte made Timmy afternoon tea and started folding. She didn't expect John to stay much longer - he didn't seem like the type - but she wasn't going to hold that against him.
When he woke up, there was a neatly folded pile of clothes at the end of the bed, and a delicious smell wafting out of the kitchen.
He sat up, bleary and tired, rubbing his eyes. He hadn't slept so well or for so long in an absolute age. He pulled on the now clean, but still definitely threadbare clothes and carefully folded the sofa bed back up. He was alarmed when he realised just how late it was.
The old woman was sat opposite him, glaring at him as he did so and he felt faintly embarrassed under her scrutiny.
"Who're your parents, boy?" she asked him, to which he replied with an awkward shrug of the shoulder. "St. John and Rachel Allerdyce," he said. "My dad's still in Australia, presumably. Mom...I don't know."
Something in the old woman's attack softened.
"Don't you be taking advantage of Charlotte's kind nature over-much," she said. "You get gone as soon as you can. She has problems enough without another mouth to feed."
The old woman's words puzzled John as he found way to the kitchen.
"Hi," he said, softly.
"Sleeping beauty awakens!" Charlotte grinned when she heard his voice, rushing over to take a quick guage of his temperature. Still warm, but not alarmingly hot anymore. It seemed that a day's rest had done him the world of good, and she found herself wondering if he'd go somewhere else with a roof once he left her or if he'd just go back to the streets.
She'd heard him folding up the sofa - it was a sign to her that he was preparing to move on. There was certainly nothing she could do to stop him, but she'd hoped that he'd stay another night.
"Feeling better?" He was looking much better, but that could be deceiving.
"A lot better," he confirmed and reached up to run his hands through his hair. He'd done a lot of thinking in the periods he'd been awake. "Listen. When we ... uh ... met - you mentioned this Xavier guy?"
He looked faintly ashamed.
"Do you still have contact details for him? I'm figuring I should maybe get in touch."
Lifting the lid to smell the sauce that was simmering away, Charlotte nodded.
"Sure, I've got it written down somewhere. Watch this for a sec, will you?" It was only a simple thing, tomato and herbs to pour over spaghetti, but it was a nice cheap and very tasty meal.
She disappeared into her room for a few minutes, emerging with a sheet of notepaper. Her neat handwriting told only a short tale - the name of an institute, a contact person and a phone number.
"It'd probably be a good idea, they say he can help anyone." Even the people who didn't think they could be helped.
"I've encroached on your help enough," he said, folding the paper up and slipping it into the pocket of his combats. "If you're cool, I'll stay for dinner, but I won't block your living room again tonight. I - ah - get the feeling that Methusulah in there doesn't really like me being here. Plus...well, I feel like I'm taking advantage."
He'd certainly recovered well - or at least seemed to have done. A closer look revealed that much of it was put on. His eyes were bright and there were two spots of heightened colour on his cheeks.
She suspected he'd get about one hundred yards down the street before he collapsed in a heap.
He'd pretended all his life that he was fine. Old habits were hard to break.
"She doesn't like anyone. Not even me, most days, so don't let her sway you."
She took a spoonful of the sauce and passed it over to him.
"Do you think it's ready? More oregano, maybe?"
She shook her head.
"You're not taking advantage, you're getting better. And I'd rather you do it here than on the streets. The only way I'm letting you out for the moment is if I put you in a hospital bed." Her smile betrayed the stern tone she'd used. "And they've got enough on their hands already."
His whole posture sagged. "OK," he said. "Just one more night."
He tried the sauce and considered. "Maybe a little pepper as well, " he suggested. "Can I help? Is there anything I can do to help?"
She got him to prepare the salad, which he did rather awkwardly, but certainly making an effort to help. Right up to the moment, about fifteen minutes later when he suddenly dropped the knife and clutched at his head.
"John, are you alright?" Frowning, Charlotte rushed over and pushed the knife away from the edge of the bench before putting a hand over his.
"What's wrong?" She wondered whether this was related to his 'flu or whether it was something competely different. Headaches weren't exactly uncommon, but not the kind that made you stop what you were doing to grasp at the pain.
"I don't know," he said when he could speak, after the moment of stabbing pain in his head had passed. "Since I stopped that fire, they've been getting worse. The headaches."
With her help, he sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. He'd returned to chalk-white again, but slowly, as the pain ebbed away, colour seeped back into his cheeks.
"Maybe it's just 'cos I'm a bit under the weather," he said, and he sounded faintly woozy.
The pilot light under the pasta sauce suddenly burned with a fierce and furious flame and he whimpered at it.
Charlotte frowned at the flame, glad that the pair of them were alone in the kitchen for the moment. Her mother-in-law would probably be even less welcoming if she knew he was a mutant. If that was possible, it wasn't like she'd been standing with open arms.
"You haven't been sick this whole time, have you?" Maybe it was time to call Xavier now. Charlotte didn't know if the headaches were directly related to his mutation, but she remember John telling her that he didn't do so well with painkillers, and if it wasn't something with a well known medical cause... Well, she wouldn't be able to help out, she was better at patching up gunshot wounds than inexplicable pain.
"Not sick like I am now," he said, after managing to get control of the flame. "But yeah - headaches have been pretty frequent." He gave her a tight smile. "Pretty pathetic, huh?"
Absently, he held out a hand and the light under the pan split, a single lick of flame crossing the kitchen and ending up in his palm as though it were little more than a child's ball. He passed it from hand to hand - a nervous habit.
"John." There was a touch of wariness in her tone - she wasn't afraid of him, but Charlotte was worried for her child, and worried about how John would be received if the old woman saw something so blatant.
She thought about the headaches and decided that they probably were to do with his mutation more than any physical injury. Unless he had some condition that had showed up at the same time as the fire, and that would be incredible bad luck.
"I can check you out if we go down to a doctor's surgery, but I'm not sure we'll find anything. You might need someone more familiar with mutation."
"What? Oh, sorry. Habit."
Charlotte, however, was about to find out how the old woman received it.
"Get it out," came the outraged sentence from the door. "Get that THING out of this house. Now."
John closed his palm too late.
The old woman was barely able to contain her obvious disgust at what she had just witnessed. "Mutant FILTH!"
Thirteen words that went a very long way to pushing the already unstable boy over the edge into the pit of despair. He didn't have to speak a word. It was all in his eyes.
"How dare you? This is my house, if you hadn't forgotten, and John is just as welcome here as you are." Charlotte's eyes were cold and hard as she stared at her mother-in-law.
"More welcome, right now. I am not going to throw a sick boy out on the streets because of your prejudices." You'd have thought an old black woman would be sympathetic about minorities, but apparently her fears ran deep. Charlotte couldn't help but wonder whether the reaction would have been the same if John was black.
She reached out to John.
"You're still not leaving." She didn't care that he was a mutant anymore than she'd have cared if Timmy turned out to be one. All Charlotte saw was a sick boy that needed help, and she needed to give it to him.
"Don't touch me," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He looked from Charlotte to the old woman, his head spinning. He'd grown used to people fearing what he was. But actively hating him, just because he had been born differently? That was something else.
"I have to go," he said, distractedly and Charlotte could recognise the signs of a blossoming panic attack. "I shouldn't have come here in the first place...you're right, I'm a danger, I shouldn't...I..."
The hand went out, the flame from the stove leapt instantly to him and he held it like some sort of threatening weapon.
"I'm going," he said, in a cold, calm voice to the old woman. "Just give me enough time to pick up my stuff, and I'll leave." His voice dropped to a chilling tone. "Get out of my way."
"John." Charlotte's voice was low, and her sadness was obvious on her face.
"I can't stop you from going, it's true." She paused long enough to shoot another glare at the old woman.
"But I want you to stay, I want you to get better. Please, don't go back out there." She didn't think about what she was saying, didn't stop to think that it might make things worse.
"Please, John. I don't want you to die on the streets like your mother did." She'd looked her up at work, to see if she could get contact details. Instead she'd found out that Rachel Allerdyce had been cremated by the state since no next-of-kin could be found to claim her body.
Die on the streets like your mother did.
Die on the streets like your mother did...
"My...mother?" The kid gave Charlotte a look that she would never forget. It was a look of incredulous disbelief. "No, you're just saying that...to make me..."
He turned from Charlotte to the old woman, to Charlotte again, as though willing her to take back the words.
"Not my momma," was all he said before the flame in his hand snuffed out and he sank to his knees, his head bowed, his shoulders heaving in silent sobs.
Even the old woman had the grace to retreat at that point.
She crossed the room to kneel down and put her arms around him.
"I'm sorry, John."
If she could have fixed it all, she would have. But Charlotte had long since learnt that all she could do was help pick up the pieces.
"When?" he finally managed to get out. "When did she die? I should have looked for her, I could have found her..."
"Two years ago."
Charlotte still had her arms wrapped around him protectively.
She wasn't sure whether to tell him about how she'd died, or even if he knew what had happened when he'd been put into foster care in the first place.
"When I ran away from the home," he said, finally relaxing into her embrace. "I should have looked for her, but I was too scared to come ask for help."
He closed her eyes and let her comfort him. He needed it, desperately. He had thought he had no love for the woman he'd barely known, but to hear of her death had sent a wave of misery through him.
"What happened?" he asked, softly.
"I'm sorry John..." She tightened her embrace, wanting to support him when he heard the news.
"It was an overdose, John." There was nothing he could have done about it, she'd had a series of arrests after being forced to give John up. Charlotte got the impression that his mother had spiralled further and further with each new year.
He stiffened briefly, then gave a shuddering sigh. "She was about my age when she had me," he said. "That's about as much as I know of her. So she'd have been...what, 38 years old?"
There was a long silence during which the sick, bereaved, confused and borderline despairing young mutant simply clung onto her. "My momma," he whispered again and then he shed some honest tears for her.
When the moment had passed, he pulled himself gently out of Charlotte's embrace.
"Can I use your phone?"
"Of course you can." Charlotte turned the stove off so that she could leave him in the kitchen to use the phone in privacy. She wasn't worried about him playing with fire again - she was worried about dinner burning.
She pointed to the phone next to the fridge and ducked out of the room, closing the door behind her to find Timmy looking up at her.
"Come here Tim-aroo." She grabbed him and took him into the lounge, speaking quietly to her son and assuring him that she loved him and that everything was fine. She didn't speak to her mother-in-law.
It took him six attempts to dial and speak to the man at the end of the phone, this Charles Xavier, but when John came off the telephone, he felt much calmer, and far more certain in the direction his life was heading.
