Beyond Evolution

Sunday night, King slung his canvas bag over his shoulder again and left the carnival -- alone. One of the workers took him to the airport in the cab of his pickup, and he walked himself through the lines and gates until he was on a red-eye flight back to New York. The holidays were over. School would be starting tomorrow. Honestly, King was more than ready to head back to Xavier's. If he'd had to spend one more day with the show, he might have just tried to hitch a ride cross-country.

His vacation hadn't felt like much of a vacation at all. At first, it had been really a relief to see all the old faces and feel like an insider again, laughing at the new hands and checking out the new tents, but the tension in their family trailer was so palpable that King often had to find excuses to leave. Prince was practically acting like a zombie, walking around silent and strange-eyed, and their parents alternated between whispering conversations of concern and frowning. King was sure they didn't know what to make of things. Not that he blamed them; the situation was awkward at best, and even he had enough perspective to look at the way things were and realize that they must seem like a real horrorshow. All he could do was shrug. Prince was wrong; this was bad, but things could be worse. Things could always get worse. And then there was the inevitable interrogation from his parents. Mom tried to get him to talk to her, and Dad asked questions and offered advice. King kept his answers short. At some point, they began guessing -- was he on drugs? Was he heartbroken over some girl? Once, his mom even held her breath and asked if he was gay, and he'd come so close to just laughing in her face at the absurdity of how right her guess was. But the skeptical glance he'd given her seemed to satisfy as an answer, and she kept on trying. Guilt, yelling, threats, anything that might make him confess what the problem really was. They even tried taking his handheld away from him. He'd gotten it back from them before he left.

There was only one thing that had made the vacation bearable: Nico's visits. He'd actually come a couple of times. King learned to keep an eye on the edge of the back yard whenever it got dark, because that's where Nico tended to appear. Mostly they just lay together. As much as he knew he should be feeling conflicted about this, after all the shit they'd been through and how badly things kept going for them, but when Nico's head was next to his on the pillow and he could hold the other boy protectively and honestly know that he was helping somehow, he didn't give a shit about anything else. Yeah, he thought, this is love. This was what it felt like. This must be what it felt like. He wanted fiercely to be closer, to be intimate again, and finally when Nico kissed him again like they'd kissed before, he didn't hesitate. He probably should have. Nico warned him, very firmly, that they couldn't date, that it wasn't going to be like that. Still. King knew this wasn't the perfect relationship he'd always wanted. But he'd take what he could get here. Sex -- yeah, they had that -- and affection, as much comfort as possible, and he could choke back his jealousy or whatever conflicting feelings might arise for the sake of keeping things simple.

Telling Nico how he felt might have been really goddamn stupid, but it was worth it.

That was all he could think about on the flight home. He was so exhausted. Physically, because red-eye flights had a way of sucking the life out of him, but emotionally because he was feeling a hundred complicated emotions at once. Elation, because he'd said it and Nico had returned the sentiments. Loneliness, because he knew that whatever he could gain from being with Nico wouldn't begin to fill the gaping hole that Prince's absence was leaving behind. Anger that flared intermittently, because despite the guilt and sadness and everything else, he couldn't stop wanting to yell or even scream at his parents to leave him alone or shake Prince into hitting him until they made up if that's what it took. And fear; going back to Xavier's inspired a godly amount of fear in his chest, as always. He was even a little bit afraid of what people were going to say. He was the kid who had fucked up so badly that even his twin brother couldn't stand to be around him. Prince was staying with the carnival, planning on finishing up his senior year being tutored by their mother. They were worried enough about him to allow that. That, that was King's fault.

Even putting that three thousand miles behind him wouldn't make it go away. So as the plane circled lower around the light-drawn map of New York City, taking him down to the runway that would eventually send him back to his school, King clutched his camera and tried to let the exhaustion take over. Numbness was really, really welcome right now.

[ NARRATIVE ]

The UFO hadn't been doing much in the lake since it arrived. It seemed to be giving off a little more...something. Xavier could tell that there was something alive in it, but not its nature, purpose, or even state. He couldn't even confirm that there was a thinking mind inside, just that there was a feel of something alive within it. Scott had been fending off government sorts, and even legal inquiries from the military, but they knew eventually someone would try to get through. The only choice was to go in.

The team itself was small, only three people. Mimic, Polaris, and Dazzler went in, Lorna there in case something metal was there, Cal because he could shield them from the weight of the water and the lack of oxygen, and Ali because they needed a better way to light things up down at the bottom of the lake. They went in with some of the others watching, both for backup and to keep prying eyes from getting too close from the edge of the water.

At first it was easy. Water sliced by them without issue as they made their way down. But then it started to get more difficult. There was the feel of resistance, not just to Mimic but to the other two there as well, an almost-push against their minds and bodies. The moved more slowly but still made headway, as the resistance grew stronger. Despite Polaris not being able to register anything metal at the bottom of the lake still, it was like an opposing magnet that they were unable to get too close to. Eventually they halted, stuck. More power was thrown into it, and for a moment there was a slight shift as though they might move further.

And then they were sent careening back out of the water as though an enormous hand had slapped them all backwards for trying to get near. The telekinetic bubble surrounding them was popped and water soaked them as they flew back through the wetness quickly -- too quickly. They exploded out of the water and flew backwards sharply, into the side of the actual school itself. Someone (one of them, or someone on the ground) managed to block them with a telekinetic shield before they could break themselves on the bricks, going at that speed, but there was still a loud crack and steady shake of the school from it.

...Well then.


[Narrative; closed.]