![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
It started so simply, because things of its nature always did.
He probably should have been more worried than he was, but Artie had been through a lot since his arrival at Xavier's. Even for someone who was ostensibly useless in a crisis, survival through enough of them manufactured a certain desensitization to a new one. There was nothing that someone like Artie could really do in situations like this, and he'd come to realize that long enough ago that he knew better than to get in the way during moments of heightened security. This time, as like with the others, once the patrols started and the disappearances became evident, Artie was content to be shuffled between his more vigilant, more competent friends until whatever attack they were enduring was over, and he could go back to the normal patterns of his life. With most of his friends on teams, there weren't a whole lot of other options available to the mute--or maybe it was more that it never occurred to him to look for other options. It was probably the complacency that got him, in the end, the very fact that he'd allowed himself to grow cavalier and comfortable.
What had started as a chess game with Art had turned into two boys with bodies too old and too small for the size of their spirits moving pieces over the board in a haphazard set of rules that made sense to no one but them. They'd been playing for a while, ever sense Cal had left for his patrol, and even people trying to stay out of the way of the world have to play by the rules of biology from time to time, so it really wasn't that strange, not to the mute or to the young alien, when Artie found the need to excuse himself to go into the bathroom. Neither of them gave a moment's thought to being alone for just a few minutes' worth of hygiene-related privacy.
( When Artie came back out, drying his hands on the sides of his jeans, everything had changed. )
[narrative; closed]
He probably should have been more worried than he was, but Artie had been through a lot since his arrival at Xavier's. Even for someone who was ostensibly useless in a crisis, survival through enough of them manufactured a certain desensitization to a new one. There was nothing that someone like Artie could really do in situations like this, and he'd come to realize that long enough ago that he knew better than to get in the way during moments of heightened security. This time, as like with the others, once the patrols started and the disappearances became evident, Artie was content to be shuffled between his more vigilant, more competent friends until whatever attack they were enduring was over, and he could go back to the normal patterns of his life. With most of his friends on teams, there weren't a whole lot of other options available to the mute--or maybe it was more that it never occurred to him to look for other options. It was probably the complacency that got him, in the end, the very fact that he'd allowed himself to grow cavalier and comfortable.
What had started as a chess game with Art had turned into two boys with bodies too old and too small for the size of their spirits moving pieces over the board in a haphazard set of rules that made sense to no one but them. They'd been playing for a while, ever sense Cal had left for his patrol, and even people trying to stay out of the way of the world have to play by the rules of biology from time to time, so it really wasn't that strange, not to the mute or to the young alien, when Artie found the need to excuse himself to go into the bathroom. Neither of them gave a moment's thought to being alone for just a few minutes' worth of hygiene-related privacy.
( When Artie came back out, drying his hands on the sides of his jeans, everything had changed. )