The knuckles of Anna's curled fist rested against the cold metal of the Mansion's clinic door. She felt her heart meet the pace of her buzzing mind, and when she closed her eyes all she could see was Kurt's blood being split on the concrete of that gas station on repeat. She pressed her lips together hard and raised her poised fist to tap on the door - when she heard a noise beyond. Gently pressing her ear against the door, she could just make out Kurt and Evan laughing.
'Yeah, you probably would feel left out, you weren't invited.' Evan's words from earlier that day sent a chill that traveled through her bones.
She lowered her head and rubbed the hollow of her throat. Turning away from the door she intended to walk away, but she found her feet rooted to the spot. Her eyes fell on the bouquet of flowers she was clutching in her left hand. The delicate plastic wrap at the stem of the flowers had been clamped down hard enough that it looked near fused together. The flowers, chrysanthemums, and lemon balm she was told they were by the lady at the store were still dewy and glistened under the florescent light of the Mansion's sub-basement. She gingerly pinched one of the peddles between her thumb and forefinger and ran the pad of her finger along its velvety surface.
'Listen'- She heard Kurt's voice gently rise above all her other stinging thoughts. 'I know it may not always seem like it, but we are all family.'
She closed her eyes, then - sucking in a lungful of biting cold air through her nose - she turned to face the clinic door and rapped on the door with her curled fist. She heard a pause in the conversation beyond before receiving a bold 'Come in.' She waved her watch wrist over the scanner and the door slid open to a room she had become well acquainted with.
A relativity small room for the amount of beeping and widescreen equipment stored within, the clinic was fitted with five beds that jutted from the opposite wall from the door. Each of which was dressed neatly in hospital linens, aside from two. In one bed sat Evan, cross-legged, with some sort of handheld game console in his lap and an open backpack spilling over with tiny cases for games and magazines. Across from him, tucked snuggly under several sheets and supported by a mountain of pillows, was… something roughly the size and shape of Kurt. He had the same hairstyle as Kurt, even the same shape of nose and mouth, but when his lips split, Anna could see two canines nearly long enough to be considered fangs. His skin, instead of the typical pale, was a deep royal blue, with a semi-scaly texture that seemed slightly shimmer under the bright light. Around his chin and elbows were tufts of what appeared to be thick fur, and, wrapped around a handheld console identical to Evan's, were a pair of long three-fingered hands with pointed claw-like fingernails. The person, who she understood to be Kurt, raised his angular chin and blinked at her with yellow irises. "Uh - hey, dude." He drew back a low-watt smile that revealed his fang-like canines in greater detail against the silhouette of his near-pitch-black lips.
Anna must of been starring because the next thing she heard was "Take a fucking picture, it'll last longer." She looked and saw Evan staring daggers back into her.
She bit her lip and glanced at her feet. "Sorry - Sorry, I didn't mean…"
"Hey-" Kurt pointed one of his fat fingers at Anna's hands. "Those for me?"
Anna looked down at her clenched fist of flowers and raised it as if noticing it for the first time. "Oh! Yeah, sorry. I know they look kinda crappy." She trod over to the bedside as if walking on actual eggshells and passed them over.
Kurt took them gently out of her grasp and turned them over. "They're great! I love flowers. Thanks, dude!"
"Of course." She leaned against the bed running parallel to his. "How are you feeling?"
He laid the flowers to rest in his lap and looked at her. "I'm fine. The auto-doc cleared me an hour after I got in."
Anna looked over her shoulder to a tall slender robot resting on a chair-like charging port in the corner. It had a single rolling tread for feet, and its long metal body was filled with all sorts of medical-looking gizmos right up to crazy extendo arms. It even had a stethoscope around its neck and a set of scrubs with happy cartoon birds on it. She remembered in her latest visit, the auto-doc testing her for a concussion from the blow to the head she took from the Danger Room. After running its tests, it even gave her a cookie and a juice box from one of its many compartments. It was all in all the best bedside manner she had ever received, and the thing wasn't even technically alive.
"Xavier just wanted me under observation for a little while till he could get a replacement watch for me." Kurt continued.
"So that watch, it puts you under this hologram or something? Makes you look… um-"
"Human?" Kurt finished for her. She shriveled into herself and crossed her arms. He smiled and shrugged a shoulder. "Yeah! It's pretty awesome. I even got to design how I looked and everything when I got it from Xavier." He scratched at his mound of hair. "God, I hope I don't have to do all that all over. Took forever. You know how long it takes to design a whole body? Freckles, skin types - man, I have a hard enough time making characters in a character creator for games!" Anna smiled, her heart feeling like it was about to fall out of her chest and onto the ground. Evan stood, collected his belongings, and shoved them into his bag.
"I should go, man. Auntie wanted to talk and I got homework."
"Alright, Ev."
The pair did some sort of intricate handshake before Evan left out the sliding door. With him disappeared the vacuum of air and Anna felt like she could breathe a little easier. She sat on the bed she had been leaning against, her legs dangling above the ground. "I'm sorry for gawkin' when I walked in. I promise you, I don't care about any of this." Her face cringed. "I mean, I care about you being hurt! I just mean you looking like - you know." She gestured with her arm in his general direction. She paused and slapped her head against her forehead. "God, I don't mean you look like 'that' in a bad way."
Kurt raised his hand and snorted. "Dude, you're good. I won't sick the PC police on you."
Anna pulled another tight smile across her face. "I watched the fight go down… god, I hope that white-haired fuck pays for what he did to you."
Kurt leaned his head back against the mound of pillows propping him up. "I've had a lot of people do a lot of pretty nasty things to me, Anna. If I counted them all and tried to write down the name of every single jerk, I wouldn't have enough time to leave the house."
Anna tucked her legs under her. "What do you mean?"
He shrugged again. "I don't know, really. I've just…" He held out his arms. "Always looked like this. For as long as I've remembered I've been a weird, blue, fuzzy elf. I'm sure you'd be shocked to hear that most don't really jive with that. I've been called all kinds of nasty stuff. Back home, people threw things at me, tried to hit me with cars, I even got shot at a couple of times."
"Fuck man! What?"
Kurt only breathed and rubbed his swollen lip. "All I'm saying is that I've just kinda learned to let things go. I've always been picked on… It's just what my life is, I guess. I look like a monster and I'll always be treated like one. I may hide it under a fancy hologram, but I'll always be the freak. People are going to be angry at me for that, fight me over it - all I can do is keep on living, I guess." He looked at her and smiled. "Not like I have a choice, really." He laughed a dry laugh.
Before Anna realized it, she already found her hand on his shoulder. "I don't think you're a freak, Kurt." She felt her eyes crinkle under the pressure of a grin. "Honestly, I think you look pretty freaking cool."
He put his hand on top of her gloved hand. "Thanks, dude." He smiled back up at her. "Oh-" He turned over in his bed to better face her. "Evan mentioned you talked to him."
"Oh… right, that. Well, talking is one word for what we did. Shouting might be another."
"Either way, he seemed touched."
"What, really?"
"Well-" Kurt adjusted. "He didn't say it so obviously, but I could pick it up in his vibe."
"Oh, well if his vibe said so." She snorted then sighed. "I just wanted him to know that I regretted barging in on you guys, and I wanted it clear that I wasn't trying to steal you away from him."
Kurt blinked. "' Steal me away from him?'" He quoted.
"Yeah. I'm not trying to break you guys up and take you for myself or something, you know."
Kurt looked away, squinted, smiled, and looked back at her. "Um, Evan and I aren't dating, Anna."
"What?"
"Yeah. I mean, we're just good pals. We hang out all the time and play games and stuff, but we aren't 'together' in that way."
Anna blinked until she thought her eyelids were going to take off. "Then you might want to talk to him about that because when I told him that I didn't want to hurt y'all's relationship, he didn't exactly correct me."
"Well - hmm -" Kurt rubbed his neck. "I mean, it's not like I'd be opposed to it, it's just we never talked about it. Not so directly. We've never really, like, done anything either. If you know what I mean."
"I know what you mean, and I don't want to know any more about you two's weird little nerdy fantasies."
Kurt grinned and rolled his eyes.
Anna shifted her jaw to one side. "But, maybe you should consider it. At least have a conversation with him about it. You two seem like you'd be really happy together."
"I think you're right. It is at least worth talking about." He stroked his fuzzy chin, then looked back up at her conspiratorially. "How noble of you to suggest I date your greatest nemesis."
"Please, Evan is hardly my greatest nemesis even in this house." She leaned back on the bed. "Maybe one day he won't be my nemesis at all. I mean, hell has to freeze over at some point."
"I think you guys might hit it off better now than you think."
Anna cocked her head to one side. "I keep hearing that from people."
"Well, it's true. Ev at least is slow to warm to most, but once he sees you as a friend - you're a friend for life."
"If you say so."
"I do. Now," he pulled out the little game console he and Evan had been playing with. "Who is your favorite Pokemon?"
Anna snorted. "Excuse me?"
"In this game, you can pick between, Charizard - who is this fire lizard, Bulbasaur - a funky flower monster, or Squirtle - a turtle who can shoot water out of his mouth. Squirtle is my personal favorite."
Anna shook her head. "Fine, I'll go with Squirtle then."
"Great." He pushed the device into her hands and Anna found herself looking at a dim screen with a happy little turtle standing on its rear feet on it. "Don't forget to name your character and your nemesis!"
***
It was late enough into the night that the mansion felt perfectly still. As Anna walked the hallowed halls, it felt like her weight and feet alone were causing the occasional creek and moan as the old house settled further into its foundations. It was by sound and feel alone she navigated the dim space since someone decided it was a great idea to turn off all the overhead lighting. As she passed the rooms she heard to the occasional whisper of a TV or phone, or the clacking of a computer keyboard. When she found her door and was reaching for the nob, she felt her toe hit something hard. Cursing, she knelt down and picked up what felt like a hardcover book.
Throwing open the door to her and Kitty's room, she found her roommate lying in her bed with the covers over her legs watching something on her laptop. The other girl did nothing to acknowledge Anna's arrival aside from turning on the lamp on her nightstand. Anna, toe still throbbing, limped over to her side of the room, clicked on her lamp, and got a good look at the long and wide book she was holding.
At the top in fancy font read 'Player's Handbook' and in the foreground image of the front cover was a crazy-looking floating eye monster with tentacles. Surrounding it were other monsters in the midst of a fight with an armored warrior, some sort of crazy-looking witch woman, and a tiny guy with a big staff. She noticed a yellow sticky note poking out from behind the cover. She pulled it free and read:
'We meet on Wednesdays and Fridays in the attic around 7:30. Let me know if you need help getting in.
Ev'