InsaneJournal

Who: Evie and Wren (and also bad guys)
What: Oh you know, girl time, then fighting bad guys, power appearance, and guitar retrieval
Where: The apartment building where Jack used to hang his hat
When: NOWISH?
Warnings: Shrieking, weather, lots of blonde and blonder than blonde hair. And also Evie's tee shirt.



Wren wasn't scared about going to get Jack's guitar. She was pretty sure that whoever had kidnapped him wouldn't still be looking at his empty apartment, not all this time later, and she didn't think Evie would've suggested it if it was dangerous. Evie was one of her safer friends, and Wren had left Lia at daycare and taken the subway and two buses to get to the building that SHIELD had provided Jack with.

The building was tall, with a main door and elevators and hallways inside. Ten stories, and Wren knew Jack's place was up on the sixth. She even had a key, taken off the key hook at the house, that Jack had given Luke.

Wren waited on the sidewalk, a sundress and cardigan and flip flops. It was warm in New York, and it was a little humid in a way that reminded her of home. She'd hated Vegas' dryness, and she was trying to focus on the good things about her new home, instead of always focusing on the bed. The weather was a good thing, and the thought of it immediately made her smile as she thought about her best friend; Evie and weather were kind of inseparable in her mind now. She missed Evie now that she was gone, and she missed Daisy too. She knew that finding her own place was important for Evie, but home got lonely a lot with Luke gone so much. But Wren was trying not to focus on that either, or on the stupid thing she'd done to try to fix it. But days had passed and passed, and there hadn't been even the tiniest sign of any kind of ability, and she'd stopped worrying.

Wren pushed blonde curls away from her face, riotous strands of pale, and she squinted as someone approached. She knew the point of this was to get the guitar for Jack, but she was really just looking forward to spending some time with her friend.

Evie had, once again, left Daisy in the calm and comfortable care of Gwen Dailey and Charles Xavier and she was feeling better and better about leaving her with others to go and take care of business outside of the home. She missed staying with Wren and Luke, she missed it more than she could say. And she didn’t say it, she didn’t want them to ask her back because they felt sorry for her. She knew that she was supposed to be finding her own place to stay and getting on her feet. She knew she was supposed to be trying, but it was hard. Evie was half afraid she’d get her own place and never be heard from again. At least staying in a house full of strangers assured that someone was always around.

Evie had an idea in her mind of what “better” looked like and it frustrated her that she couldn’t attain it. A place of her own, a full time job, being a good mother, being a good father, being a good person, making new friends, learning new things, and watching fears just float away as easily as they used to. She was strong, everyone always told her so, she used to think that her emotions - and the connection she had with them - was what made her strong. She was beginning to wonder if that wasn’t the case at all because she had a billion emotions she wasn’t sure of and they weren’t making her feel strong anymore.

But Evie wasn’t all doom and gloom. Of course not. Some days she laughed and laughed, and other days she danced, sometimes she sang songs and made sandwiches and ate ice cream for dinner when no one was looking. Sometimes she flirted - just to make sure she could (the jury was still out), and sometimes she took herself out on dates and went for walks. Sometimes she went to the movies and cried at the sad ones and laughed at the funny ones. Sometimes she drank whole bottles of wine and snapchatted Wren with funny faces and destroyed cooking experiments until 3 in the morning.

And some days Evie went out at night to meet up with Wren to run guitar fetching heists because she felt like she needed to way down deep in her bones. She was honed in on the task at hand, she’d said she was going to do this and she was. Jack wasn’t around, she didn’t know where he was really, or how to find him. She knew he was stuck there for however long and she worried he might never come back. But she had said she was going to do this, and maybe it would help. Or maybe it was just pathetic. She didn’t care. And she refused to think too deeply on it thinking only of retrieving said guitar and getting it back to the Professor’s house all calmly.

Evie hopped off at the bus stop about a block from the apartment building, skinny jeans, a black tee shirt that said “The 3rd Rule of Fight Club is To Have Fun and Try Your Best,” pink chucks, and long blonde hair bobbing down the street. She saw Wren and smiled, Wren looked lovely as usual. And Evie looked good today. Evie had a mission today, a purpose. She hugged her almost immediately. “I miss your face.”

Wren hugged her best friend back with an unguarded ferocity that few people ever saw in the quiet and distant blonde. Evie and Luke and sometimes Jack, and the kids, and the rest of the world saw something very different when they looked at her. A little strange, a little off, a girl who was barely old enough to have a child that would enter first grade after the summer, a girl who wore dresses from the 1920s and had pincurls in blonde, a girl who had grown really, really fond of hats. She wasn't exactly normal, but she was happy. She was a little lonely, a little left out of the new life that all her friends lived, that Luke lived, but she no longer thought that meant she wasn't cared for, even if she did feel alone sometimes.

When Evie lived at the house, it hadn't been so bad for Wren. When Luke wasn't there, Evie was, and that made all the difference. Now she noticed just how often Luke was gone, and Evie was hours and hours away by bus. But none of that mattered as she hugged the other woman, and she pressed a fond and familiar kiss to Evie's cheek and tucked a strand of blonde behind Evie's ear, before stepping back, fingers laced with the other woman's, and looking her over.

"Tu es superbe, mon amie," Wren told Evie, because Evie looked good. Better than she had in a long time, and Wren was happy to see her looking better. Evie had been so sad, and she thought maybe that smile was real, and she was glad she'd agreed to come guitar hunting with her.

Wren turned toward the apartment building, fingers still tangled up with Evie's, arm swinging between them, and she pushed open the door to the building and pressed the elevator button. "I want you to tell me everything, absolutely everything," she told Evie, barely caring that two men had walked into the building a few steps behind them. People lived here, and it was a big place, and there wasn't anything scary or weird about that. "Did you talk to Jack?" she added, concern showing on her pale features.

Evie had missed the city, she loved New York - her and Will had made it their home when she’d been in college and if there was one thing she wished it was their little hipster brownstone was still in this New York waiting for her to come home. But it wasn’t, and she still hoped to be able to come back one day. When she’d lived with Wren and Luke coming into the city had been easier, now it was a long walk, a bus to a train station, a train to Penn station, and then city buses and subways to where ever she wanted to go. It was moments like this that she wished she felt better about dipping into the masses of money the hotel had supplied her with. She still wasn’t feeling good about it, but it would make things easier. She thought that after this they should go have a coffee on a sidewalk for a bit.

She kept Wren’s hand close to her and clutched tightly as they entered the building. She had thought about all kinds of scenarios on the way here. She did wonder if it was safe, but she was safe. She was with Wren. As silly as they sometimes were, and as much trouble as they had found themselves in before - Evie was okay with it. She pressed the “6” button in the elevator when the doors closed and smiled. “Everything? Well there isn’t a lot to tell. The professor is at the house now and he’s eager to help everyone. And he and Gwen keep talking with their brains.” At the mention of Jack she nodded her head, “He says he’s stuck in a door with zombies, he’s looking for a door but I think he likes it there for now,” she wrinkled her nose. “No, maybe not likes it, but he feels better fighting I think,” she could understand that. It made sense to her in a roundabout way.

Wren listened. She didn't really know who the professor was. Maybe Luke had mentioned him in passing, but Luke knew everyone in this door, and she didn't know anyone. Comics and movies hadn't been part of her life, and she was trying to put together names and remember things, but it all felt kind of strange, and didn't do a very good job remembering. Maybe that was why she had such a hard time with Luke's new life; it just seemed surreal to her, and for all her whimsy, she was very much a woman with two feet on the gritty ground. Reality had been hard, and she had a hard time breaking away from all that to imagine people with superpowers in a house, even after days of rain and Luke's claws. Gwen Dailey talking with her brain was really, really hard to imagine, and Jack's zombies were even harder to imagine. But she had a little bit of an easier time with the zombies than with the brain talking, and maybe that was a little telling. "He likes it?" she asked, before Evie made the clarification about Jack liking fighting. She made a soft sound of understanding, because she could see it. If Luke was alone and hopeless, she could see him liking someplace where he could kill lots of things, and she knew he and Jack shared that desire to hurt things sometimes. But Jack had Evie. He wasn't alone. He should come home, she thought, before he forgot about living.

Maybe the guitar would help, Wren thought, as the elevator door began to close. But a hand slid into the gap, and the two men from earlier smiled and slid inside with them, the doors closing obligingly behind them in seconds. They were dressed in suits, black and pinstripe, and they were nearly forty. Their shoes were expensive. Wren's maman had always taught her to look at shoes first, and she thought maybe those shoes were too nice for this place. "Visiting a friend?" one of the men asked, and Wren looked to Evie, a little uncomfortable with conversation and strangers. She held her friend's hand a little tighter, and she pressed a little closer to her side as the man, the older of the two, continued. "Jack up on six? We heard you talking." The man smiled, and Wren didn't like his smile. Her skin was starting to feel like ruffled feathers, and she didn't like that either.

Evie had recently been warned by the person who had borrowed her body that there were people looking for her, it stood to reason that they’d definitely be looking for Jack too. The situation had her hackles up almost immediately and she instinctively stepped closer to Wren and moved just a shoulder in front of her. But there were no rainstorms, not even a drop in atmospheric pressure in the elevator. She was getting better. Just a little. But better.

She didn’t want to do anything other than seem natural in that moment so she smiled and rolled her eyes a little, “I wouldn’t say friend,” just the right amount of amused scorn in her voice. “Just picking up something I left there, haven’t heard from in ages really. Skipped town, sounds like he’s settling down,” which was almost true. And depending on what part of the conversation they’d actually overheard she figured it fit in well enough.

The older of the two men had grey at the temples, and he looked at Evie with a smile that wasn't a smile, curiosity in eyes that were very dark brown. "Really? I been meaning to catch up with him." He moved closer to the two women, crowding. "You have an address, or maybe his number in your phone?" he asked, looking Evie over for a cellphone, and looking her back up again, his attention finally lighting on her blonde, blonde hair. "Aren't many blondes as blonde as you in New York, not natural anyways," he said, and he took another step. His associate reached into his pocket and pushed a button to stop the elevator.

"How about we do this easy?" the guy with his hand on the button said.

Evie might have her ability well under control, but Wren didn't even know she had one, not really. She was holding onto Evie's hand, tighter, and she wished the elevator would let them get further into the corner than they were, because this was really, really bad. She wanted to scream, and she thought about screaming, but what if that gave someone time to pull out a weapon? So she bit her lip, and she wished she'd started carrying knives, and she never, ever thought of Evie's ability to make it rain as an offensive power.

"We really don't know where he is," Wren finally told the man with his hand on the button, and her voice sounded a little bit like nails on a chalkboard, the fear turning it sharp.

Evie, still determined to keep up with what she’d started shook her head at the first question, “If I had either of those things do you think I’d be standing here having this conversation with you?” she said trying to sound as annoyed as possible by the whole situation. And then he was looking closer at her, and mentioning her hair and she grimaced, her forehead forming a hard line and her mouth not smiling or frowning. “I don’t see what my hair color has anything to do with anything,” she hated both of these men in that moment.

When the elevator stopped she stepped a bit further in front of Wren and kept her hand tight. Her whole reason for even entertaining the help of the Professor was because he told her that learning to control her powers was just as useful as willing them away which was not a possibility. She was afraid of them, especially when she heard what had happened with the lightning. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but in this situation she was beginning to understand what everyone had been talking about. She didn’t make a move, not yet. She would have to remember to let go of Wren’s hand first and she didn’t want to do that just yet.

When Wren spoke it grated up her spine like a creepy crawly and she shivered just a bit. She didn’t react other than that, but it certainly was shrill. “Whatever it is you think we can tell you, we can’t.” She said firmly. She doubt it would work and she tried to ignore the fact that the temperature was dropping in the elevator at that moment. Not rapidly, but there was potential for a downward spiral if she didn’t get it together.

The men looked at each other, silently conferring, and the older one smiled as Evie stepped more in front of Wren. "The blonde hair might just be a coincidences. Not sure if I believe in coincidences." The other man laughed, nasal and mean, and he pulled out a knife that glinted in the enclosed elevator. "Why don't you give me your name, we'll take a picture of you with my mobile, and we'll go take a look in Jack's apartment?" he said to Evie, reaching for her arm. "My associate will stay here with your friend, and if you cooperate, then no one gets hurt." His smile was slimy and slick, and his fingers closed around Evie's arm; he tugged.

Wren had the stupid thought that Luke was going to be really, really angry if she got herself killed, and she realized that wasn't the smartest thing that had ever worked its way into her mind. She was only really scared for Evie. But there was already a knife, right? Yelling might get someone's attention. But then the man reached for Evie's arm, and Wren's screamed, "no," as she pulled Evie back toward her was shrill enough to make the glass walls in the elevator snap and crack. They didn't shatter or fall, but lines crawled up the walls like things drawn in sharp pen, and Wren wasn't very good at controlling where the scream was directed yet. The men were clutching their ears, but the no hadn't been loud enough or long enough to do more than cause discomfort.

The man holding Evie's arm yanked her forward, off her feet, and the man with the knife cornered Wren.

Take a picture of her with his phone? Evie was creeped out and she stood up just a bit taller and was about to lunge forward with her hands intent on ripping out someone’s throat when Wren pulled her back and screamed. Her hand let go of Wren’s and both went to her ears almost on instinct. She didn’t have time to react to what had just happened, but she was going to take the opportunity she had. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides and she focused on the falling temperature and grabbed hold of it like it was hers for the taking. She didn’t have much focus, or much time, so when the crack of thunder crashed inside the elevator car she directed it as shakily as she could and two bursts of lightning - one strong and one significantly weaker - hit the floor near the men, but not as close as she’d hoped. So she threw her head back and hollered as loudly as she could screaming rage and fear that she had in spades into it. Her eyes went white - which was new and with a huge gust of wind and crackle of lightning she threw the men back against the wall and tried to catch it before it knocked her back over as well. They needed to get out of here. She’d pry the door open and crawl out, dragging Wren with her, if she thought it would help.

Wren had seen lots and lots of rain storms in the living room, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, but she'd never, ever seen this. She was so surprised by the crackling glass that she didn't even notice Evie's eyes until the split second before the lightning struck near the men. She screamed. She couldn't help it. She really, really screamed, and it was just sound to her, nothing like the sonic shrill that other people heard, directed at the men as the lightning and wind threw them back against the opposite side of the elevator with a crack. She noticed the red trickling from their ears a second later, and she started shoving at the elevator buttons madly. She didn't care which floor the doors opened on, she only wanted them to open. "Please, please, please," she begged, as if that would do something, but the doors cracked slightly open, and the floor was above her head. But they could climb out, right? They could climb out.

Wren looked back at Evie, and she motioned. "Go. Use my hand to climb up. I can jump it." The men weren't moving, and she didn't want to look at them. "We'll call for help when we're away," she added, almost saying Luke's name aloud and stopping herself at the last minute. She didn't know if the men were dead. She just wanted to get out of there. She wanted both of them to get out of there.

Evie was soaking wet, because of course the tail end of her indoor electrical storm ended with a raincloud bursting only on top of her head, and she shook her head slightly half to shake off and half to get the ringing out of her ears. Her ears weren’t bleeding - perhaps a side effect of using her own powers, or maybe the universe understood on a fundamental level that nothing Wren did was ever allowed to make Evie’s ears bleed.

She joined Wren in helping to pry the doors open and she was working hard to catch her breath as well. They could talk about what had just happened once they were out of this elevator. Once the door was open she waited for Wren to go first, but she knew she was the shorter of the two and would need the boost. “I’ll help pull you up. I’ll dangle down,” she said and did an interesting little shimmy up and through the gap between floor and elevator door.

Once Evie was through she held her hands down and stayed halfway in the gap. A precarious situation should the elevator move, but she wasn’t thinking that far ahead. “Take my hands.”

Wren was frazzled enough that she didn't laugh at the sight of her bedraggled friend. She was trying too hard not to look at the men with the bloodied ears and singed heads. She helped Evie up, and then she gratefully took her friends hands and let herself be pulled up and out of the elevator, which was starting to jerk precariously.

No sooner was she on the hallway carpet with beside Evie than the elevator began to scream on its wires. The hallway was open doors and curious onlookers, and someone had pulled the fire alarm. Wren looked at her friend with wide, desperate grey eyes that clearly said what do we do?!

The elevator gave up its fight and plummeted four stories, the doors still parted, and Wren hid her face against Evie's shoulder as the crash resonated and shook the building. Okay, so maybe she was a little bit scared. Her immediate thought was to call Luke, but she didn't want him implicated in this. He couldn't be implicated, he couldn't be.

Evie looked around earnestly at the people who were looking out of their doors. Apartments were in the five hundreds, which meant her main goal was still one floor up and the elevator had just plummeted to the basement leaving her friend clinging to her and she didn’t even bother trying to look unshaken by the whole thing. The people watching would be more likely to expect them to look shaken. So she quivered her lip just a little and held onto Wren tightly. She looked at a man who was standing mostly in the hallway and she took a shaky breath. “Call 911, there was some kind of electrical short in the elevator,” she said and waited for him to get his cell phone. “Honey, we should get downstairs and wait for help,” she said nodding toward the stairs, and just like she lived here. Of course they’d be catching the first train to Westchester, but the people milling around seemed to be satisfied even if they were momentarily distracted by the elevator crash, and Evie was slowly moving toward the door that staid ‘STAIRS’ on it. She opened the door and pulled Wren in with her. “I need to run upstairs,” she said immediately once the door was closed. “It’s one more flight of stairs to his apartment.” She was still on her mission, no matter how misguided.

Wren took that nod of Evie's as more than a suggestion, it was a lifeline, and she walked toward the stairs a little too quickly to be subtle. She really thought they were going downstairs when Evie pushed open the door to the stairs. She loved Jack, but she really, really didn't think his guitar was worth going to prison over, and there were already people in the hallway muttering things like I think there are people down there! and Why was that woman wet? But Wren was with Evie until the end, even if the alarm being pulled had already summoned the police. The sirens were still a little ways off, but she could hear them, and it was only that look on Evie's face (like something was finally, finally important enough to go after) that made Wren nudge the other woman up the stairs.

"Hurry," Wren urged, and fear made her voice nails on a chalkboard, but she couldn't tell, and she moved quick. The sirens were almost on top of the building by the time Wren moved ahead of Evie to push open the door to the sixth floor, and she stopped in front of Jack's apartment and fished for her spare key, not knowing if Evie had one of her own. She handed it over, the key, because her fingers were trembling too badly to get the metal into the keyhole, and the sirens were so, so close now.

Inside, the apartment was quiet and unused, and Wren went to the window instead of moving toward the guitar that leaned against the wall. She could see the police cars at the intersection, and she made a sharp sound of fear that shattered the windows outward. Breathe, breathe, and she turned to look at her best friend. "Can you make a hurricane or something to keep them from getting here?" she asked hopefully, more nails on that already grated chalkboard.

Evie ran up the stairs, tiny feet carrying a soaking wet Evie as fast as she could up the stairs. She could hurry. She had to hurry. She took the key from Wren and while she tried to keep as calm as possible, she missed the keyhole on the first try. She’d never been to Jack’s apartment before, and while this wasn’t a social call she did look around for a moment to try and find her bearings. She was glad to see the guitar case was against the wall and she opened it up to make sure it was in there before she snapped it back closed. She had a brief thought to grab something else he might need or want, but she didn’t know what that could be and didn’t have time to look closely.

She gave Wren a worried look and went to the windows that were now broken. “Take a deep breath,” she said as if that would help. She looked down and had no idea how to go about creating a hurricane. Her blood felt like ice and ice was the only thing on her mind. It was too hot for ice outside, but she thought about trying. “I don’t know, I’d need to try and figure it out, we don’t have time. Let’s go down the fire escape on the back window.” Maybe it would give her time and a wide berth to come up with something clever.

Wren took a deep breath. She would do anything Evie said just then, anything, because Evie was the mature adult in the room. Which was silly, but she was panicking, and she kept shattering glass, and she wasted a full three seconds touching her fingers to Evie's ear, pushing wet blonde hair aside, just to make sure her friend wasn't bleeding. She nodded when Evie suggested going out the window, and she put a hand on jagged glass and yanked her fingers back quickly enough not to get anything impaled in her palm. But at least the windows were completely gone, and she stepped out onto the escape as the sirens stopped in front of the building and became deafening as more police cars neared. Someone was calling to the residents in a loudspeaker. Calm down and return to your units and don't leave the building, and Wren just climbed down the escape and looked up at her friend as a fire truck pulled in front of the building. This was absolutely going to be all over the news, and Luke was going to kill her. "Maybe just a little storm?" she called out shrilly, and she winced as the window she was standing next to shattered. Inside, someone screamed, and she whispered, "sorry," but she didn't stop moving.

Evie was tired, and worn out, and afraid she wouldn’t be able to get them away. She felt terrible for putting Wren into this situation, but she hadn’t thought it would ever be this bad. She watched as Wren made her way down the fire escape and Evie stood on the ledge for a moment trying anything. And, as luck would have it, fog. A thick dense fog that kept the building just out of sight from those pulling up with their siren wailing. The fog swirled around the building, Evie’s head was pounding, but she kept it up as it got thicker and more dense. It was real fog, not just an illusion, it was cold and dense and damp even in the summer heat. She heard the people down below become concerned though she couldn’t see them. She had to make her own break for it now.

Miraculously she made it down to the bottom still unseen, in the fog, and grabbed Wren’s hand. “We have to run, it’s too hot for the fog to stay,” she said and took off guitar in one hand, and Wren’s hand tightly in the other. She needed to ask about the kids, she needed to get Wren to Westchester, she needed to do a million things, but she’d accomplished at least one of them. It was what she was thinking even as her feet hit the pavement with a squish in her wet shoes as she ran down the alley and up the block away from the commotion.