Damn, but Matty was happy to have the quiet and the solitude of the mountains. She loved her family, but with as many cousins as she had now, family gatherings were nothing short of chaos. Her aunts and uncles had all eyed her and Logan, scrutinizing every little interaction between the two. Her family knew she was a mutant, and were accepting of her in varying degrees. She could act like any normal, average person around them, and they could forget that she was anything but baseline.

But Logan? Logan had thrown most of them for a loop, with wild hair and dark features. Matty was only thankful they had managed to hold their tongues, and not say anything. Well, everyone except for her Aunt Susie, who insisted it was high time that Matty find a good man and settle down and have children.

Yeah, Matty was thankful for the solitude. As of that moment, she watched Logan as he played handyman around the cabin, replacing boards in the walls, fixing the ceiling. Hell, he'd even fixed the wiring, even though they didn't need electricity. She figured it was probably his way of paying her parents back for letting them stay here. And for not asking awkward questions neither he nor Matty would be able to answer.

She didn't know what they were. Lovers, maybe. He had marked her as his, in a way she would never be able to explain to someone who wasn't like them. She chewed on a strip of jerky as her eyes followed him. Had she marked him, too? she wondered. Was he hers, just as much as she was his?

Logan felt a little lighter for the first time in months. Ororo was home safe, eager as ever to plunge right back into the fray, which freed him up considerably. He still took his responsibilities seriously but some of what he'd been doing required a lighter touch. Kitty was over the moon with Andrew. He still worried about Rogue, especially with new people around and her tendency towards being shy and reserved; he wished there was something he could do for her, but he'd done all he could teaching her to fend for herself.

And then there was Matty, who both calmed and enflamed him. By day they sidled around each other, not quite flirting, at least not so that other people could tell; by night they crashed together like waves seeking the shore, cresting and ebbing as the tide went out. He'd expected her to creep back to her room, to avoid the intimacy that always came when two people just slept together, but she never did. She curled up against him and purred her contentment until sleep claimed her. They rarely spoke behind closed doors. They had their own language of body movement and non-verbal sounds and hands.

He couldn't remember ever being in a relationship, if that's what this was. Sure, there had been a few women when he'd stayed for more than a handful of nights in a town, but they remained faceless when he dreamt of them. They'd meant nothing other than a way to ease his tension, and they hadn't been very good at it. He'd needed more than they could give, needed to give more than they could take, things he'd found in Matty.

Things remained blessedly uncomplicated between them. So he tried not to think about it too hard, tried not to examine it in too bright a light for fear he wouldn't like what he saw. He was afraid of breaking the fragile connection. And if she wasn't inclined to question it then he wouldn't, either. Just two people, two ferals, each giving what the other needed.

And yet, when he finally came back to his room after an evening at a dive bar, he couldn't explain the curious tug in his chest when he opened the door and discovered Matty fast asleep in his bed. She looked even younger and, dare he think it, innocent. She clutched his pillow, her body cradling it, the faintest smile on her lips.

In near silence he stripped his clothes off and climbed in after her, taking the side she'd left unoccupied. She reached for him and he thought she'd woken up as he pulled her close, tucking her in against him, but she remained asleep.

It didn't occur to him until he was on the verge of sleep himself that he hadn't had a nightmare any of the nights she'd shared his bed.

Alright. She'd gotten back, gotten settled, even gotten a little bit of sleep. But since she was back she was sort of anxious to get back to work. After all, she'd just spent three months effectively cooling her heels (however necessary it had been). Now she needed stability and purpose, which is what she'd always had at the institute.

To that end, Ororo made her way to Logan's office after lunch. The best way to start was to find out what had happened while she was gone so she could figure out where to fit herself in. She wasn't picky. Just as long as she was useful.

She knocked on the door.

Thread is now rated NC-17.

There were times when the animal part of her got the better of her, and Matty just had to get away from everyone else. This was one of those times. She had passed quietly through the hallways, guitar in hand, ignoring anyone who spoke to her. Those who knew her well enough just shrugged it off, but there were those who had flashed her hurt or confused looks, or who had looked at her as though she had greatly offended them.

Still, she ignored them. They could get their panties in a knot, for all she cared.

She had stopped once outside the doors, long enough to take a deep breath of air, and to admire the way sunset had painted the sky in a range of pink, orange and purple. She headed across the grounds and into the woods barefoot. It took several minutes for her to find a place that suited her, nice and secluded. She sat against a tree, setting her guitar across her lap as she dug her toes into the dirt. Moments later, her fingers were moving swiftly, expertly, across the strings. Her father had taught her this song when she was young. It was comforting to play now, and reminded her so much of home. She felt the tension slowly draining from her body, felt her muscles relaxing, bit by bit.

Some people had exercise, some had yoga, some had meditation. Matty had her guitar.

Millie had been walking for hours. She didn't mind. She'd enjoyed it. With her car in the shop and all her money going to pay for it to get fixed there wasn't a lot else she could do.

God. Her car just had to choose now to break down, didn't it? Now she would have to put off her trip for months just to find work and get more money. And finding work was going to be the hard part. None of the garden centers or nurseries were hiring. Even the rich and well to do weren't looking for groundskeepers right now. Millie sighed and ran her hand across the bars of the fence on her left as she walked.

It wasn't until her hand ran out of fence that she looked over at the property she'd been walking in front of. "...oh my," she whispered as she saw it. Not the building, (you couldn't call a place that big a house; palace might cover it), but the grounds and gardens surrounding it. They were enormous and extravagant. ...Just one little look around won't hurt, right? The gate was open, after all. And it wasn't like she'd be hurting anything.

She adjusted her backpack and stepped off the sidewalk and into the driveway and into the yard. She walked past bushes that would flower in another month or so, slender trees that were just beginning their lives, and flowers that were just timidly starting to show their faces. She was entranced, and didn't even realize it when she'd walked so far back on the property that she could no longer see the street.

Oh you pretty, pretty things.

[[Open to whoever.]]

Kitty was in a very cheerful mood. No, scratch that. She was in an ecstatic mood.

Andrew had asked her out.

Okay, so, he hadn't said anything about when, much less about where, but the fact of the matter was that he had indeed asked her out. This fact was something that had her walking on air without even having to use her powers.

After she was done with her Computer Science students for the day, Kitty changed and went to one of her favorite places in the institute. No, it wasn't the garage. It was the dance studio.

Dancing was one of the things that had been with her since she was a little girl. No amount of mutant changes or wars or explosions had ever been able to take that away from her. Nothing that had happened had robbed her of this one thing and she would never allow it to. Music and dancing was a part of her and it had been since she was born. Her father told her that his mother had always been a serious dancer, too.

Kitty put in one of her favorite classical CDs -- Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet -- and she took up position at one end of the studio. When the music began, so did Kitty's dance.


[[The door to the studio is open and music can be heard]]

Logan was agitated. That, in itself, was nothing normal, but certain things really set him off. And he prided himself on keeping it contained, on keeping himself in check and under control, which was damned hard when he couldn't get Matty off his mind.

He didn't know her at all, really. She'd dropped in a few times since he'd arrived, long enough that they'd run into each other and circled each other, two ferals sniffing each other out. It hadn't helped that she smelled like the one person in the world he'd enjoy killing, though he'd been quick to separate the two despite the fact she had her father's temper. And then she was gone and he hadn't seen her in over a year, about the time the old school was destroyed.

He didn't have any particular feelings for her for that very reason. He'd been rather neutral to her.

The game out in the woods had definitely made him feel better, less edgy, but that had gotten shot all to hell when she'd kissed him. Had he been putting of some kind of scent? Or had she just seen something she wanted and taken it?

He'd joined Andrew in the Danger Room afterwards, more than happy to slash up some holograms. He'd been able to shut the incident out of his mind until afterwards when he was alone in his room.

He shook himself like an animal, stripped off his clothes, and then sat down in full lotus position. Meditation was one thing that never failed to calm him.

She sneaked in through a second floor bathroom window. The bedroom it led into was empty, and Matty stuffed her hands into the pockets of her hoodie as she stopped to glance around a moment. It didn't seem like anyone lived in this room yet. Silently, Matty wondered how many people occupied the mansion altogether, though she knew the sum was nowhere near the population of the Massachusetts Academy.

( Read more... )

The talking heads were at it again. Usually Logan didn't turn the TV on but he'd needed something to distract him from the pile of papers on his desk, a pile that had gone from a neat stack to something decidedly less organized as he worked his way through it.

I need to hire someone to do this shit, he thought as he came upon the bills. Money wasn't an issue, not with Warren Worthington III's money smoothing the way, but someone still needed to sort through them and make sure all the numbers were right.

And what good was a healing factor if it didn't take care of stress headaches? He could feel one blooming right between his eyes.

A familiar cultured voice caught the edge of his attention and made him look up. The news station had gone to a split screen with the reporter on the left and Eric Lensherr on the right. He wore his signature red and purple, regal colors that spoke to the position he was in as the ruler of Genosha, a position he'd remorselessly shed blood to attain.

"Of course homo sapiens are not welcome in Genosha," Lensherr was saying, his thing lips curling back in a snarl, hatred evident in his words. "This is a haven, a stronghold, for the true race. Here we can live without fear that you baselines will break down our doors and take us in the night, just as the Nazi regime did so many years ago." It was something Lensherr understood firsthand, had the marks on his body to bear testament.

The reporter seemed a bit startled. "But don't you worry about being attacked? All someone has to do is push a button and missiles could be airborne."

"My dear, you forget what I am capable of, what all mutants are capable of. Nothing enters or exits without my knowledge and express approval." His eyes smoldered with contempt. "To come against us would be folly of the highest order. All we want is to live in peace without outside interference."

"And if the rest of the world were to take up the cry that mutants should be registered and catalogued, if the bill being discussed in the Senate were to be put into law, what then?"

"We are above human laws."

The reporter stammered, clearly shaken by such fervor as she stumbled for words. "Do you not worry that your attitude will spark further violence against your kind?"

The mutant known as Magneto smiled, and it was ugly. "There will always be violence, always be hatred. Soon enough it won't matter."

Disgusted, Logan grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. It was bad enough Lensherr was running free without the damn media giving him an outlet to spew his doctrine to the masses. It gave Magneto an inflated sense of self-importance which, given the size of his ego, was already enormous. And having one of the bad guys as the most visible specimen of mutantkind wasn't doing anyone any favors.

Logan groaned and leaned forward, cradling his head in his hands. How the hell had he let himself get roped into this? Ororo and Scott had both survived the blast that took out the original Institute, why not them? The former at least was aiding him in running the place; the latter had taken off for parts unknown, switching usual roles with Logan. Even a year later everything was still chaotic, the new Institute having only opened two months ago.

He needed beer. Several beers. Anything to drown out the frustration.