Who: Adam and Nikki Malloy, Beckett Samuels What: Not the way Adam pictured finding his sister. Where: New York City, M-Town When: Sunday, December 6; evening Warnings: Mild violence, language
Winter in New York didn’t feel too different from winter in Washington, and neither of them was that different than the weather in London. Adam wasn’t complaining, it meant that he didn’t have to change between stops. London for the Agency, New York for X-Factor, back to Washington to sleep when he didn’t just find a place to crash in one of the other two cities. Sometimes he wondered why he still bothered going back there, at all. The first time he’d walked by the base and noticed that it didn’t hurt anymore had been over six months ago. He had no clue how long he’d walked by it without feeling anything before he’d noticed. Turned out the secret to being happier was to stay too busy to notice the things that had used to make him feel like shit.
It was a pretty slow night at X-Factor. Adam had headed out for a walk, told Connor that he’d be back in an hour. He’d skipped the leather jacket, that night, stuck with a thick sweater that wasn’t quite warm enough. It wasn’t his usual style, baggy enough that you couldn’t even tell he had muscle underneath it. He hugged himself, scowling. He’d known the sweater was a bad idea, but Connor had handed it to him with a grin and he couldn’t say no. Asshole. Adam would get him back for it somehow. You didn’t piss off the guy who did all your computer maintenance for you, not if you didn’t want things to mysteriously start going wrong with them.
M-Town was quiet, too. No one wanted to be out in the cold if they didn’t have to. And then there was Adam, cutting through back alleys in a fluffy sweater, like a dumbass.
“Give me your wallet.”
Adam almost rolled his eyes, but when he turned around he raised his hands. “Hey, I don’t want any trouble.”
The guy in front of him had a knife, and he was walking toward Adam with it raised. “I said get your fucking wallet out and give it to me.”
“I don’t have any money.” It was a lie. Adam had a wallet with a whole lot of cash shoved into it tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. He’d broken a ten on a pack of gum in one convenience store, stopped in a bar and paid for a beer. He figured that was why the guy had been following him, in the first place. Walking around with a whole bunch of money, that was a dumbass move, too. Adam really deserved this.
The guy was almost close enough to stab him. “Don’t lie to me. Give me your wallet.”
There were various ways that Nikki spent her nights, and most of them weren't exactly what people on the other side of the white picket fence would consider healthy. She was either following around various members of her family to make sure they were okay--she refused to say stalking because that just solidified that she was doing something creepy--or else she was trying to figure out a way to make a quick buck so that maybe she could have a meal for the day. It wasn't uncommon for her to go without food for a day or two; you did what you had to when the alternative was going back in a cage. Being untraceable was the only way to survive.
There were nights though that the loneliness kicked in. She had friends. It wasn't like she was alone in the world with nobody to talk to. She even had one in particular that she stuck with, the two of them helping each other survive because it was all they knew how to do. But even thirteen years later, Nicole Malloy missed her family, and she had a hard time shaking that dark pit that rooted and grew. Those nights all she could do was pick one to watch. Mom. Dad. Sister. They all got turns having an invisible guardian angel. Tonight was Adam’s turn.
She’d been tailing him since he left X-Factor, her hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket that was way too light for this weather, but was also layered over other pieces of clothing that clearly had seen better days. She wore a beanie, plain and gray and pulled down nearly to her eyebrows as she ducked her head to push between people so she could keep him in sight. She’d smiled when he drank a beer, and frowned when he’d decided the seedy alleyway was the right course to walk. Adam, for all he was capable, was apparently also dumb when it came to self-preservation.
She quickly ducked behind a dumpster when the mugger approached Adam, eyes widening in fear. She wanted to interfere immediately, jump in and take him out. It wouldn't be hard with Six’s powers, but she wouldn't let her. Not just yet. Not until it was clearly not going to deescalate.
“Hey!” She hollered, and rushed forward with Six’s speed to tackle the guy off of Adam. The two of them rolled with the force, ass over head, until they finally came to a stop and she scrambled to her feet to kick the knife out of his reach. “Touch him again and I’ll stick a wallet somewhere other than your hand, you got it? Scram!”
One guy in a fluffy sweater with a lot of money hadn’t been a threat. Two people, that was a threat, especially when one of them had already tackled him and kicked his knife away. The mugger looked up at the slender figure that had just attacked him, and made a very, very smart decision to run. He almost tripped a few times before he managed to get himself upright, and then he was off, down the alley, looking back over his shoulder with wide eyes.
“Shit!” Adam took off after him, feet beating against the pavement. If he could just catch up to the guy fast enough, before he could build up any momentum… but it was too late, and soon he’d vanished in a blur, too fast to even see which direction he was heading. Adam dug his heels in, came to a stop a little past the girl who had come to his ‘rescue’ in an alley in M-Town that was supposed to be abandoned. He turned to her, eyes narrowed. “Do you know how long we’ve spent planning this?”
Okay, it hadn’t been that long, and the plan hadn’t been that complicated. It had just been hard to get Connor to sit down long enough to plan anything, and they’d practically had to sit on him to keep him there long enough to come up with something that made sense as a way to catch a guy that could outrun all of them, once he built up enough momentum. As long as you could get your hands on him before he started running, he wasn’t going to get away, from what their client had told them, but if you let him start building up speed… so you had to get him close. Close enough to grab before he realized that you were a threat, thus Adam playing bait.
And then this girl had come along and ruined it, and he didn’t even know who she was.
Adam advanced on her, hands clenching into fists by his sides. “We might never get a chance at him again! We can’t use me, obviously, he’s not going to come after the same person twice.” Well. He might have been stupid enough to, but Adam wasn’t going to count on it. He might be afraid that the same good Samaritan was stalking Adam again.
If he couldn’t grab the guy that they’d been after, he was going to take this girl down instead. See if she could answer a few questions about what she’d been doing in an alley that they’d been promised by the businesses around it was going to be clear at the time that X-Factor needed it.
That was not the reaction that Nikki had been expecting. Sure, she wasn’t expecting sunshine and roses, or a happy family reunion. Quite honestly she’d been hoping to save him and slip off without being seen before he could recognize her. She almost did, too, when Adam went to run off after the mugger who--apparently had some weird kind of super speed. And too distracted by that weird twist of events, she hadn’t gotten away in time, hadn’t thought to use her invisibility, and now he was angrily coming at her like she was on his side or something.
“I’m sorry,” She took a step back, blue eyes wide in shock at the animosity. Talking to him, even just those two words, was breaking her self-made rules for keeping him safe from the skeletons in her closet, but now that they were out she couldn’t force herself to leave. It was the first conversation she was having with somebody in her family since she was nine, and yeah, he was angry at her for apparently messing something up, but it was still a conversation. Something she’d been too afraid to let herself have.
“So get somebody else to do it!” She spoke defensively, taking a step back from him. She had to look angry, pretend that him talking to her like this was bothering her--which, in some ways it was, below the ecstasy of speaking to him at all--which required anger. She had a lot to draw from to show that anger, thirteen years of bullshit. “You’re welcome, by the way. Most assholes around here would’ve just let your ass get stabbed.”
Nikki shook her head, a physical act to clear the cobwebs and force herself to start to walk away. The longer she stayed, the greater the chance that he would recognize her, and Six was urging her to leave for everybody’s safety. Deep down, part of her wanted him to realize it was her, but logically...logically she had to walk away. Again. Preferably before he tried to punch her or something. “Peace out and learn some chill, grumpy cat.”
“He wasn’t going to stab me.” When she stepped way, Adam lunged forward, bringing his forearm and up and shoving it against her chest, pushing her back against the wall of the alley and holding her there. He didn’t have super strength, but Adam was military trained, and Ric was trained by Cable in X-Force, which was so far beyond military training that it might as well have been a whole other world. Adam might have been in a fluffy sweater, but he could still fight, and he was definitely in the mood for one, now that she’d screwed up their case. What was he even supposed to tell the rest of the team about this, huh? ‘Sorry, some strange girl about half my size scared him away’? They’d never stop laughing at him.
She had to be some kind of mutant, or something. That was the only explanation for it, for how she’d been able to take the guy down like that, move like that. Adam couldn’t use Ric’s powers there in the alley, not without taking the buildings down around him, but he hoped that being up close, in her space, would keep her from being able to get away from him so easily. He was going to get his answers, one way or the other. “Who the fuck are you?”
And what the fuck was a grumpy cat? How did that even make sense? Adam was pretty sure cats were just snotty bitches all the time, not particularly grumpy. Yeah, not the important question to be asking, even though Ric was pretty curious about it, too. Adam might spend a lot of time on computers, but he did not spend a lot of time on memes. Especially ones involving fluffy animals.
Really, he should probably call someone for backup. They were waiting with their com units in case it turned out that Adam was in over his head, after all, in case he needed help getting out of a bad situation. Adam didn’t need help, though, even though he was pretty sure that this girl could kick his ass if he didn’t use his powers. Since he’d already covered that he couldn’t use his powers… but Adam wasn’t bringing them in on this one until he’d managed to make up at least a little bit for how embarrassing it was that she’d managed to ruin the whole thing.
Nikki grunted as her back connected with brick that scratched through her thin layers. Adam didn’t have any type of super strength, she knew that, but he was still bigger than her. He still had muscles. She was still at the mercy of his pin. Had he been someone else she could have gotten out of the hold easily; a little fire, or a gust of wind, or even her invisibility legacy to confuse him… Any one of her powers could have helped her get out of his grasp. But she didn’t want to hurt him, even if he was somewhat hurting her. Her lip twitched with a wince as she tried to adjust herself into a position that was a little more comfortable, but she could barely move, and instead she just sighed in exasperation.
“I can’t tell you,” She grumbled, struggling some more against his forearm. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Could you ease up some, killer? You’re not really showing how macho you are by pinning some helpless girl against a brick building.” Insulting him some wasn’t going to help with his anger, but she was seriously hoping that by going after his ego, he’d want to let her go to save face. It was a shot in the dark, and there was a possibility in the end that she was going to have to use some force, but she had to at least try to use her words. Wasn’t that what kids were supposed to be taught in school? Well kids who weren’t working slave labor in factories, at least.
“But seriously, a little gratitude wouldn’t kill you. He was so one-hundred-percent going to kill you with that knife, so. Denial.” Alright, words weren’t working. That was more than obvious. As much as it killed her to, she had to get away, and her brother was going to be too stubborn to just let her walk away. With an apologetic look, Nikki slammed her food down on his, and used the small amount of leverage it gave her to shove him back with a gust of wind. The rest was instinctual; she took off running in the direction she had come from, hoping that her size would be an advantage in agility and speed to get away from him.
Adam wasn’t falling for that one. She might have been tiny, but he knew plenty of small women who could kick his ass, and Ric knew more. There was always a chance that she was one of them, and he wasn’t going to underestimate her. “If you’re helpless, then--” And she was slamming her foot into his and hitting him with… wind? Proved pretty conclusively that whatever she was, she wasn’t helpless, and she definitely wasn’t human. That was okay, though. Neither was he. He might not be completely proud of it, but he was a mutant, and if she was going to run away from him, she wasn’t going to find it as easy as that.
Trusting Ric, Adam focused vibrations into just the ground of the alley, shaking it enough to open a small crack in the pavement as it trembled, nothing more. It would hopefully put her off balance, at least, enough that when he took off running after her (the ground under his feet still completely stable, since he was keeping the vibrations aimed ahead of him) she wouldn’t be able to duck and dodge out of the way as easily as she seemed to think that she would be.
Maybe it would have been easier to take her down, but Adam didn’t want to actually hurt her. He was one of the good guys, supposed to be at least, and she hadn’t actually done anything wrong. She’d just pissed him off a lot, and got in the way. Now, if it turned out that she’d stopped him to help the guy get away with it and she was in it for a take, then he’d beat her up, or at least do his best to. It would have been an interesting new facet of the case, but he was really hoping that she was just someone sticking her nose in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Instead, he grabbed her around the neck from behind, locked his arm to get her in… not quite a choke hold, but something hard to get rid of. The momentum spun her, and he threw himself to the side, letting his back crash against the brick wall. It hurt, the sweater not the kind of protection from hard landings that the leather would have been, and that was something else that he really owed Connor for.
“Little harder to kill than you think.” Adam’s pride was hurt, a little. He could have disarmed the guy before he could actually do any damage, no matter what she thought. What did she know, anyway?
For a brief, glorious moment, Nikki thought that she’d been successful. She got away from Adam without hurting him too badly--he’d get over the foot stomp eventually, she was sure--and she was taking off running. If she got enough distance between them, she could use her invisibility legacy and hide until he gave up the search. Then both of them could go their separate ways, he would still be safe in the dark, and her secret would remain a secret. Of course she knew this meant she couldn’t be stalking him anymore; he’d notice her immediately now. She’d worry about that later.
Then the ground began shaking. She hadn’t been expecting that, and she hadn’t factored it into her escape plan. God, this would have been so much easier if she didn’t care what happened to Adam. Her legacies were built to protect her, to fight against the Mogs when Six had them, but they weren’t exactly gentle tools to use. Even if she held back so that they didn’t kill him, they would hurt. Protecting her secret wasn’t worth hurting her apparently earth-shaking brother. How did she not know he could do that? She’d missed the memo. Shit.
“Ack!” She grunted as soon as he grabbed her, struggling against his grip as hard as she could. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary, wouldn’t to him. He was holding onto her, so she was struggling to get free, and thankfully he didn’t know her other powers so he wouldn’t be able to question why she wasn’t using them. But now, now she was starting to panic. She didn’t see an easy out to this, and his grip was starting to hurt. And what if they attracted attention? What if they attracted the attention of people who worked for…
“Goose,” She pleaded, the nickname slipping out before she could pull it back. “Please.”
The last time Adam had heard that nickname, he’d been fourteen. The shock of hearing it again, there on the street, made him let her go and stumble back, staring at her with wide eyes. For the first time, he actually looked at her, looked her over carefully. The hair, the eyes, the shape of her face… she looked a lot like his older sister. She looked a lot like his mom. Parts of her, just parts, looked like what he saw when he looked in the mirror every morning, just little resemblances. What she looked like most, though, was a poster that his parents got updated every few years, an age progression from the last school photo of a nine-year-old girl. He’d never believed he’d actually see her, but he’d always memorized the details of that poster.
He barely recognized his voice as he asked, soft, hoarse, “Nikki?” It couldn’t be Nikki. Nikki was dead, there was no way Nikki wasn’t dead, after all this time. It had been thirteen years since the last time he’d seen his sister. Since the last time any of her had seen her, before she vanished without a trace, the neighbor that had picked her up from school claiming that she’d gotten out of his van and he just hadn’t stuck around to make sure that she got safely into the house. It didn’t make any sense for Nikki to be chasing off muggers in New York City.
Except it was her. It had to be her. Who else would call him Goose, who else would remember and latch on to that one stupid, embarrassing incident where he’d gotten bit in the ass by a farm animal? No one. Not even the rest of his family had kept teasing him about it the way that Nikki had, had thought it made the perfect nickname for him, so he’d never forget it.
It was Nikki. Nikki was alive, and Nikki was right there, and he’d tried to start a fight with her. Shit.
“Shit.” Nikki didn’t have time to dwell on the fact that she was being crass in front of the brother who hadn’t seen her since she was too young to be allowed to say that word, she was too busy internally panicking. She’d just fucked up. She’d fucked up so badly, her carefully built system to be able to stay on the run but be able to have some small moments of happiness by seeing her family was crumbling to the ground. She was going to have to go back to the empty apartment she and Beckett were temporarily squatting in and tell him they had to leave again much sooner than their three month marker because she’d fucked up so badly and let herself get recognized. This couldn’t be happening.
Nikki stepped back from him, shaking her head. She didn’t look like somebody excited to see their family. She knew she looked scared, because she was. She didn’t know what to do. If she took off running, if she got far away from there with Beckett and started over again, Adam would probably keep asking questions and attract the wrong attention. She’d led her own enemies to his doorstep, and...and… No. No, she could still fix this. They weren’t here yet. She could convince Adam to let her go, and then she could suck it up and leave her family behind.
Fuck. She fidgeted, her hand coming up to rub at her shoulder. She’d never been good at the words thing. Not when it counted, like now. Swallowing, she held out her arms in a half shrug before letting them fall with a clap against her thighs. “Surprise?” Yeah, not the most appropriate thing to say, but what was there to say? She couldn’t explain where she’d been without going into everything, which would lead to more questions and less of her getting away.
“...” She took another step back. “I have to...go…” She attempted lamely. It was too late to try and deny that she was her. If she hadn’t hesitated, if she’d immediately told him he was mistaken and misheard her, she could have tried to play it off convincingly. It was too late for that now.
The only thing that could have jerked Adam out of his shock at seeing the sister he’d honestly thought was dead standing right in front of him was her trying to leave. When Nikki began backing away, he started forward and grabbed her arm again, more gently this time. This was his sister, he couldn’t be rough with her, even if she could obviously take care of herself. He remembered their mom and dad bringing her home from the hospital, telling him that he was a big brother now, that he had to take care of Nicole because she was smaller than him, and she couldn’t do the things that he could. He wasn’t going to hurt her, ever.
His expression melted into something soft, a little sad. “Nikki, no. What… whatever trouble you’re in, I can help.” Because she had to be in some kind of trouble. There was no other reason that she’d be standing there in front of him, looking like that, so skinny, and not going home to see their parents, not coming to talk to him even though she obviously knew where he was, if she wasn’t in some kind of trouble. A reincarnate, too, because she couldn’t be in M-Town if she wasn’t, right? Maybe even a… a mutant, with the way that she’d made the wind push him like that. That’d explain why she’d be there, in M-Town, anyway, maybe it wasn’t because of Adam at all. Nikki was there, she was a reincarnate, and she was in trouble. That was all that Adam needed to know.
“I have friends.” Sure, X-Factor was kind of a joke, most of the time, but they got the job done. If he really needed to, he could go to the X-Men and get some backup, there, too. “I work at the Agency.” Sure, he was kind of in everyone’s bad graces, after the mess with Billie and that unlucky bastard of an intern who’d run away after she assaulted him during the breakup, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t still get some help, quietly, without her having to take the risk of approaching them, herself. “There’s nothing you could be dealing with that’s worse than some of the shit we’ve seen.” Adam believed that, completely. If he didn’t have experience with it, Ric might, and if Ric didn’t, someone he knew probably had, between them and their reincarnates.
Adam wasn’t holding on tightly enough that she couldn’t get away, if she didn’t want to, but he was willing to beg, to get her to stay. The plea was already there, in his eyes. “Please, don’t leave. Let me help you.”
“You can’t help,” Nikki quickly shook her head, but she didn’t pull away from his grip on her arm. She could have easily if she’d wanted to; it wasn’t a tight one, and her legacies were built to get away from stronger. But there wasn’t much use in trying to run away from him. The look he was giving her made her stomach clench with a new wave of fear and guilt, and she knew that this wasn’t going to be fixed with something as simple as breaking that grip and running away. God, she was kicking herself mentally right then. How could she have been so stupid? She and Beckett, they had worked so hard not to get caught, to not be found, to blend in and be ordinary so that they didn’t raise any red flags.
“Adam, please, you have to just let me go. Don’t look for me. Just...just pretend I’m dead or something.” It would’ve been easier for him, for their parents and sister, if she were anyway. There’d be closure. They wouldn’t be looking for her desperately every year, with fresh posters and candlelit vigils that she watched from afar or, if she was brave enough, attended while invisible. It was a fresh wound every time she saw the sorrow on her parents’ faces and knew that just talking to them could end it--but it was too dangerous for them. And it was too dangerous for Adam, but she’d just ripped open this wound again.
“He’ll kill us if he finds us,” There was a hint of panic in her voice, a layer of it underneath the pointed speech and the attempted bravery. This was her life, and up until she was faced with staying with her brother or returning to it, she’d been okay with it. It had been almost easy getting into the routine, not making any attachments other than Beckett, taking off when they had to. They had their flings but they knew; feelings complicated things and they avoided them. This was breaking every survival rule. “And he’ll kill you to get to us. You don’t understand. Your friends can’t help us.” And the Agency…
She’d never stopped to think if Casing or his men were reincarnates. She knew they’d infiltrated at least one police station, probably more. If they were reincarnates, she couldn’t trust that they hadn’t gotten into the Agency too. They avoided it there, only going one time to get BK because he was worth the risk. She shook her head vigorously. “No Agency. You can’t tell anybody you saw me. Please, Adam. Promise me!”
Maybe Adam had gone thirteen years fully believing that his little sister was dead and he was never going to see her again, but now that he knew that she was alive, he couldn’t just pretend like she wasn’t. Adam was great at denial, something that he’d learned from his parents and the fact that they were still pretending that maybe, out of the blue, Nikki would just come wandering back into their lives… though he guessed she sort of had, now, hadn’t she? Not the way they thought, but she’d come back into Adam’s almost at random. He hadn’t learned denial well enough to just pretend like this hadn’t happened, or convince himself to go on living like Nikki wasn’t out there, somewhere, in who knew what kind of trouble, no matter how much easier it would be for him, or for her.
No matter what she said, though, she hadn’t broken free, and she wasn’t running away. Adam didn’t move his hand off of her arm, keeping it there like he was going to make her stand there by willpower alone. Not his mutation. Scarlett could have done it, but Scarlett wasn’t there to take care of this. It was all on Adam, and while normally he’d have said that meant they were all screwed, this was too important for him to let himself fuck it up. Especially since there was apparently someone that wanted to kill her, someone that was after her. No matter what Nikki thought, no matter how much she was trying to protect him, or whatever, there was no way that Adam was letting his baby sister handle that kind of trouble all on her own.
“You don’t know what my friends can do. You don’t know what I can do, Nikki.” Sure, he’d shook the ground under her feet a little, but that wasn’t all that he and Ric could do. “I make the earth move.” It still felt weird to claim it, but for the first time it felt good, too. “My closest friend can create an army of himself. My next closest friend,” no matter how much Ric objected to actually giving Quinn, and Layla, the title, “she knows stuff. There are guys with gadgets, and a girl who can grow as big as a house or shrink down to the size of a flea.” Adam had good friends. Weird friends, but still good, and Connor, Quinn, Colin, Colby… even Q would do whatever he could to help, if Adam asked. Then, of course, there was Billie, but he really didn’t feel like bringing up his ex-girlfriend was going to help his case, right then.
Okay, so she didn’t want to talk to the Agency. Sure, most of his friends were associated with it, anyway, but… “We don’t have to go to the Agency, but I guarantee you this isn’t the first time that someone’s tried to kill any of my friends.”
“I know you can,” Nikki looked uncomfortable briefly. Of course she knew what her brother could do. And most of his friends. His powers--well, she’d just gotten a taste of them. His friends, at least the cloning guy, he didn’t hide them at all. She’d been watching him for a while, and she was hesitant to admit it. He would think she was creepy. Hell, she thought she was creepy. But she’d needed the reassurance that he was okay, and while she couldn’t go everywhere he went, she’d seen enough and been watching long enough to figure some things out. Her inner nine-year-old was practically squealing in excitement and wanted to geek out over it, but there were more important things.
“Your X-Factor buddies,” Because she could read, and she’d read the sign on their door. “Connor, right? He’s unpredictable. His clones are going to get you killed just as easily as they’d help you.” She paused, scuffing her shoe against the ground. The sole was peeling away from the rest of it, and flapped dangerously with her action. “I watch you sometimes, just to make sure you’re alright. Not to be creepy, I just need to make sure…” She shrugged. “I’ve watched mom and dad too.” Not as much. It hurt more to watch them. She was just dancing around what he was saying, and she knew it. Hell, she was sure Adam knew it. He wanted to help her, and after so many years of not having help from anybody but Beckett, it was hard to accept it. There had to be drawbacks. As powerful as Adam’s friends were, every bone in her body screamed that her demons were more dangerous. She was scared, yes, but it was a permanent state, something she’d gotten used to and learned to harness to stay alive. She couldn’t handle being scared for him on top of it. She was already too tired.
“It’s not just me. I have a friend. I can’t make this decision for him.”
Part of Adam was jealous. It didn’t make sense, he knew it didn’t make sense, because it wasn’t like he’d have been all that much help before he’d stopped running from what Ric could do, before he’d stopped repressing their powers. That didn’t mean that he couldn’t be jealous that Nikki had trusted someone else instead of them. Instead of him, when he was her big brother and it was his job to protect her and get her out of any messes she might have been in. Instead, she had some other friend who she’d relied on, instead. Adam didn’t know where she’d found this friend, or why she trusted him more than she trusted Adam, but she had, and she did, which meant that Adam was going to have to deal with it if he didn’t want her to run.
Most of him was just glad that she hadn’t been alone, though. Being alone was, in some ways, worse than dying. It made you want to die, that Adam knew. With a friend along, maybe life hadn’t been as hard on her as it would have been alone. Maybe… maybe less horrible things had happened to her than would normally happen to a girl trying to make it alone on the streets. Adam had seen some shit, especially since he’d started working at X-Factor. He didn’t want to think about any of it happening to his baby sister, was trying to avoid focusing on it, but it was there, at the back of his mind, that ‘what if’ of the thirteen years since he’d last seen her, and what had turned her into the woman that was standing in front of him right then.
...he couldn’t argue her point about Connor, but hey, once she got to know him she’d realize that he had his good points, too.
“Okay.” Adam knew that she was looking for excuses, and if her friend was the only one left for her to come up with, he was pretty sure he’d almost won. Whoever this friend was, he’d care less about whether he was putting Adam in danger than Nikki did. Once Adam showed him what he could do, and told him about his friends, he’d bet that the guy would be a whole lot more likely than Nikki to be okay with letting him help. But if Nikki wanted to let her friend make his own decision… “We’ll go talk to him.” No matter what, he wasn’t letting Nikki out of his sight. Maybe she’d forgotten how stubborn he was, but she was going to get a reminder.
Nikki hadn’t been expecting Adam to want to go meet Beck, at least not immediately. She’d hoped it would buy her some time, maybe enough time to write an apology note and take off again so that she could still keep Adam safe from the insanity. He had his own insanity--some of which she had witnessed first hand, like the attempted mugging--and he didn’t need hers on top of it. And even if he didn’t have his own, hers was far too dangerous for her to pull him into it without guilt. Beckett was different. She hadn’t pulled him in. He’d already been in.
It was clear that she was thrown off by his suggestion by how wide her eyes got, the startling blue practically magnifying her scramble to regroup. She didn’t have a back-up plan. This was her back-up plan. She’d needed that excuse for time, and now… Leave it to her stubborn brother to put a stop to that. Stubbornness was definitely a Malloy trait, and until now Nikki hadn’t really met her match with it. It was a little annoying, to say the least.
“Okay.” She sighed, relenting to his idea. What would the harm be in introducing him to Beckett? It wasn’t like they could stay in their place now anyway, so Adam seeing where it was wasn’t going to ruin anything. And who knew? Maybe Beckett would help her persuade Adam to step back from this, back into the safety of his own life. She doubted it would be that simple, but it was the best she had to work with right then. Maybe even Adam couldn’t be stubborn enough to out stubborn her and Beckett.
“Come on then,” She pulled her hood up to try and hide her face some, her frown deeply etched. She wasn’t happy about even going this far with it, as she started to lead him down the street. The apartment wasn’t far from M-Town--it seemed safe to stick close to a place known for powers so they wouldn’t stand out if they used theirs--but that didn’t mean it wasn’t risky for Adam to be seen with her. “But if he says no you have to accept it, okay? No trying to persuade him with puppy looks or anything like that.” There was almost a smile there. Adam didn’t strike her as the puppy look type.
“I don’t do puppy looks.” Adam sounded offended. He wasn’t a teenage girl, and he wasn’t about to act like one. They were the only ones who could pull off puppy dog looks, and it usually looked ridiculous on him. Whoever this friend of hers was, Adam wasn’t going to flutter his eyelashes and look at him pleadingly. He was too big, and too masculine, to pull off a puppy look. Damn it. Actually, Adam tried to limit his facial expressions to blank or smirking. It didn’t always work, but it usually did, and that was mostly good enough.
He didn’t agree to just accept it if the guy said no. He was hoping that Nikki didn’t notice that, or thought he’d just overlooked it in being offended about the implication that he’d use a puppy look in the first place. He wasn’t, obviously, but he wasn’t going to promise not to try to persuade the guy somehow. It just wouldn’t be with puppy looks. There were other ways to convince someone, and if Adam had to annoy the guy into agreeing, he would. He’d learned from Connor, he thought that he could probably irritate anyone into agreeing to anything.
Adam didn’t give Nikki a chance to get away from him while they walked through M-Town and then out into the city itself. He stuck close to her elbow, ready to grab her again if he thought that she was trying to make a break for it. So it didn’t look good, a guy his size grabbing a much smaller woman in the middle of the city, but he thought they probably looked enough alike that he could at least convince everyone that he wasn’t a total stranger to her. Besides, if Nikki was trying to keep a low profile, she wasn’t going to want to make the kind of scene it would take to get away from him. It was sneaky, and a little mean, but Adam would do what he had to, to get his sister back. To keep her with him.
He was familiar enough with the area of town that she led him to. Most of X-Factor’s cases kept them in M-Town, but not all of them. Some of them led outside, and this was close enough that he’d helped tail someone through it before. He didn’t recognize the apartment complex itself, but one run down apartment complex looked a lot like every other. Did she have a lease here? Adam looked around, noticed the general disrepair. No… she was probably squatting. “This it?”
Nikki was uncomfortably aware of how close Adam was sticking to her, but she hadn’t expected any less. If she were in his situation, she supposed she would have done the same to make sure he didn’t run off on her before she got answers. She couldn’t blame him. As much as it made things much more difficult for her, he was only doing what anybody would do for their family. Still, at one point while they were walking she gave him a very clear “are you serious right now?” glare from underneath her hood. Just because she understood it didn’t mean she had to like it.
“This is it,” She nodded, leading him down a couple of concrete steps to the entrance of one of the basement apartments. The window next to the door was smashed in--it was how she and Beckett had gained initial access--and cracks in the concrete were overrun with weeds. It wasn’t an apartment that was going to be featured in any magazines, or that would be leased easily even if it didn’t have squatters in it. Mostly it was unassuming, which was exactly what they’d needed in a place to stay.
Nikki pushed open the metal door that creaked ominously on its rusty hinges, and gestured vaguely into the apartment. It was mostly empty; she and Beckett didn’t have a lot, and what they did have needed to be able to be packed up at a moment’s notice so that they could run. Mostly what was visible was a lot of empty space, a couple of worn sleeping bags, and a single lightbulb that hung from the ceiling to give them some semblance of light thanks to a mistake in the power company’s books. Miraculously, they had electricity.
“Home sweet home,” She muttered, mostly to herself, before speaking louder. “Hey Becks? Uhhh. You might want to come out here. I fucked up, so you get to meet my brother.”
Sure, there were four walls and a ceiling, but it still wasn’t the kind of place that Adam felt good about his little sister staying. Maybe the door still locked, but it wasn’t like they could leave it locked if one of them was out and the other home, which meant that if Nikki’s friend was gone while she was asleep she was in there unprotected. That was without looking at the busted window, which completely eliminated any hope of security in the first place. Rictor was pretty nonchalant about the fact that he’d stayed in worse places than that, but that was different, and Adam was pretty sure Ric knew it, too. He was just trying to distract him from wanting to grab Nikki and drag her right back out the door, to a place where she would actually be able to stay warm and safe. As much as that sounded like a good idea, Ric did have a point. Nikki really wouldn’t have appreciated it.
“...hey.” Adam scowled at her, the introduction finally registering. Sure, he’d been introduced in worse ways than that. He’d dated Billie for eight months, and a lot of the time she hadn’t even bothered introducing him at all, when they went somewhere together, she’d just shoved her things at him and expected him to trail after her while she made her rounds at whatever place they were at. It was always hanging out with her… he wouldn’t have called them friends, Billie didn’t have friends, but her kind of people. So, yeah, ‘I fucked up, meet my brother’ wasn’t the worst introduction he’d ever had, but she could have sounded a little happier to see him.
He forgot about that when Nikki’s friend emerged from the next room, though. Christ, when Nikki had talked about her friend, he’d pictured some scrawny homeless kid, not much bigger than her. Someone who looked homeless. If Adam didn’t know better, he’d have thought he was looking at the reincarnate of Captain America, or something… but that guy was already around. This was just some other big, good looking, all-American blond guy who might actually have an inch or two on Adam, and Adam wasn’t exactly short. Adam stopped staring down the stranger… Becks?... and looked over at his sister, instead. “Friend?”
Beck had known that Nikki was going to go look in on her big brother. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it, not even since they’d moved into their new place. Going back was dangerous, but he’d never tried to tell Nikki no. It was good, that she still had her family to care about. He didn’t, and he hadn’t even tried to track them down, but he was happy for her. Maybe it was a little dangerous, living not far from one of the places where Nikki’s brother worked, and maybe Beck had thought at the time that it was a bad idea, and wondered if Nikki had picked it just because it would be easier to spy on Adam, but he hadn’t said anything. It was her business, and the place wasn’t bad. It even had electricity, so he’d been able to charge the electric razor he kept with him just in case and take care of the beard that had been growing in. He hadn’t had any complaints… except this, this was kind of a problem.
Like Nikki, he was underdressed for the weather. The busted out window made it impossible to keep the apartment warm, so Beck’s layered white t-shirt, flannel overshirt, and denim jacket weren’t quite enough, not even with the sock cap covering his head. It was what he had, though. Maybe they’d find some coats in a bin at Goodwill, for when the weather got colder. Sometimes, people were nice enough to actually donate coats so people could get them for free, but it was better not to count on things like that. He didn’t like taking things, but Goodwill was supposed to help the poor and needy, and Beck and Nikki were pretty needy. They were the people those things were there to help.
He stepped out into the living room with BK trailing behind him, and almost stopped dead at the death glare that he was getting from the guy that he guessed had to be Nikki’s brother. Compared to tiny little Nikki, it was hard to believe they were related… at least until the guy turned to Nikki and questioned whether he was actually her friend. Sure, it could have been just a normal question, but the (actually pretty bitchy) look on his face, and the sarcastic tone, those made the real question pretty clear. Also, they made the resemblance a lot stronger. He’d gotten that look from Nikki more than once. “Whoa, yeah, we’re friends, just friends.” Nikki was cute as a bug, but they were way too close for it to be any more than that. There were things that you just couldn’t unknow about someone, and it definitely took the option for romance away.
“Uh. Adam, right?” Like Beck didn’t know. He’d heard the names of everyone in Nikki’s family, and details and embarrassing stories about them that he should probably never let Adam knew that he knew. “It’s nice to meet you.” In a way, it was. He’d never gone along with Nikki to spy on her family, so it was nice to have a face to put with the name. In other ways, it really wasn’t. He guessed they were going to have to start packing.
The glare Adam got in return was intense. As much as she loved her family, had taken the time to constantly check in on them, the truth of the matter was that she hadn't gotten to be more than an outsider with them since she was nine-years-old. A lot had happened in that time to them. A lot had happened to her. As much as she wanted what it looked like the families in catalogues had, she was realistic enough to know that wasn't and wouldn't be her life. She was too damaged for that, and the only other person in the world who understood that experience and feeling was Beckett. Because of that, she was highly protective of him, something that Six only encouraged, even when it came to her own brother.
“Yes. Friends. You wouldn't understand,” she spoke dismissively, putting up defensive walls the way she's grown accustomed to for survival. Sure, Adam wasn't going to hurt her, not on purpose, but the world had a funny way of fucking you over and making you jaded. If she let herself get sucked into the idea that she could have her brother back, it would make it extra hard when she had to leave him again. And she would have to leave him. That was almost a guarantee.
“We were held at the same place when we were kids,” Nikki tried to explain a little better, trying to give Adam a good enough picture about why Beckett was important to her without going into the excruciatingly painful details of life before their escape. “He saved my life pretty much. We escaped together. He's good people.”
Nikki moved a little further into the apartment passed both guys, pausing only to stoop down and scratch BK behind the ears. The poor dog had had nothing to do with the mess they were currently in and thus didn't deserve to be ignored when he wagged his tail enthusiastically. From there she moved over to her pathetically small pile of belongings and began packing them away. Might as well get a head start on the inevitable leaving part.
“So now you know each other. Adam wants to help us. I told him no. He's being stubborn.”
Sure, maybe the guy was good people, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t have been sleeping with Adam’s little sister, did it? Look at him, he was the kind of guy that probably would have been the star of the football team, in high school. If… he hadn’t been captured and held captive, something that Adam hadn’t known about how Nikki had grown up until she said that was how the two of them had met. Now, he just felt like a complete asshole. Not that feeling that way was anything new, but it was a little bit different when it was your long lost sister. You kind of wanted to impress her, even if you did also want to threaten the guy she was possibly sleeping with at the same time.
The two of them looked comfortable together. Beck was moving along with her, obviously used to packing up and moving as a pair. He didn’t get in Nikki’s way, just started gathering items and packing them away, the dog moving between the two of them like it was as used to the dance as they were. It hurt, a little, that Adam was on the outside, here. Not that he expected to immediately be as close to her as he had been when they were kids, but he should have been, if something horrible that she wasn’t telling him about hadn’t happened. He could have understood, if Nikki had told him more than that someone was chasing them and trying to kill them. “I’m not being stubborn,” he told her. Stubbornly. “You’re being stubborn.”
Beck figured that both of those things were probably true. Nikki was pretty stubborn, but the way that her brother had his jaw set as he told her that meant that it was probably a trait that the two of them shared. He wasn’t about to get into the middle of an argument about which of them was being more stubborn, though, so he ignored that for the moment and kept packing. No matter what happened, he figured they were probably going to be going somewhere else. If they decided to leave Adam behind, Nikki would want to be far away. If he and Nikki decided that letting Adam help was okay, then he figured that Adam would want them to stay somewhere different, anyway.
Instead of getting into the middle of a fight both of them were too stubborn to lose, he asked, “What kind of help?” If Adam was going to try to convince them of it, Beck would rather he did it sooner so they could deny it and move on (or, more unlikely, accept it) instead of arguing about which of them had a thicker skull. “The kind of trouble we’re in isn’t something that you can hack.” Yeah, he knew that much about Nikki’s brother. Or, at least that he did something with computers, since that was what Nikki had picked up back when he was living in Washington.
Adam stared at him a little harder, then decided that no, he didn’t want to know how Becks knew that. “Look, Becks—”
“Beckett, actually, that’s just a nickname.”
“Beckett. I can do more than just hack.” Even though Adam thought that the guy was severely underestimating what Adam could do with a computer at his disposal. “I can make the earth move. Literally. I’m a mutant.” Adam sounded almost proud of it, now. Ric, in his head, felt like he was almost glowing with happiness, and it wrapped Adam in a warm feeling for a second before he shook it off. “Most of my friends are mutants, too. I work with the Human Torch and Superman.” Alyssa he knew he could talk into helping, especially if he promised to wear the damn Santa hat. He didn’t think Jen would say no, either, especially if Alyssa was along for the ride. “If Nikki would just stop assuming I’m helpless…”
“I'm not assuming you're helpless!” Nikki interrupted him then, standing up straight so that she could stomp her foot in frustration. She'd known that family could drive you crazy. People practically shouted that from rooftops whenever they spoke of family, especially the ones trying to make her feel better over not having hers. Strangers, mostly, who took pity on the homeless with some spare change or their leftover food. Still, she hadn't expected it to happen so quickly after their reunion, in the middle of their sort’ve apartment, and in front of Beckett. In hindsight she should have seen this coming; she was getting more and more careless, and Adam was getting more and more… Well. Heroic, she supposed.
“You're assuming that what we’re running from is something easy that a few powered people can take care of, but it's not that simple. We're not running from one guy.” God, in that moment she just wanted to shake her brother and scream at him. Be more selfish. Move on with your life. Stop caring. All things he was boldly rejecting just by being in that building with them still. “If it was one guy, we would have taken care of it already. We're not human.” They weren't mutants either, but going into specifics might make Six have an aneurism, and since it was her brain as well she was willing to hold off on taking that chance until Adam pried that information out of her. At this rate it wasn't an if, but a when.
As impressive as his list of friends were--and really, if she hadn't been so angry at him for still pressing--their powers meant nothing if they didn't know who they were fighting. And that was the bigger problem, the very reason she and Beckett used aliases and kept on the run. Because they only knew one face, but he had so many people working with him that it was a constant game of “Guess Who?” And looking over their shoulders in fear. Nikki stooped down again, shoving the last remaining items into her overstuffed bag, and pulled it onto her back. She was ready to leave.
“Look, I get it, okay. I know how much this sucks, and it sucks for me too, but we're already looking over our shoulders for these assholes all the time. I don't want that for you, too.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better about you going off on your own again?” Adam crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at her as she stomped her foot. Yeah, that was the way to convince him that she was making a grown up, informed decision about this one. “Cutting people out of your life doesn’t make the bad shit better, Nicole. It just makes it worse, because then you’re alone with it.” A little hypocritical, maybe, but Adam was speaking from experience on that one. Sure, it wasn’t the same thing, but if it had been good advice for him, it was good advice for her, even if what she was struggling with was something a little bigger and more dangerous than being depressed.
Beck thought he should probably take offense to that, started to say that hey, Nikki wasn’t alone, she had him with her, but he only got as far as an “Uh…” before he decided that he was going to keep his mouth shut. With one Malloy stomping and the other scowling, he had a feeling that neither of them was actually going to be listening to him, at the moment.
The noise from Nikki’s friend didn’t phase Adam at all. “If it’s more than one guy, you need more people on your side even more than if it was just one person. Did you stop to think about that? Did you stop to think about the fact that maybe, maybe, your hacker brother can help you start trying to track down who these people are, and where they’re coming from, better than the two of you can while you’re on the run, while he and his superhero friends help you watch your backs? Did you think about that, Nicole? Because I really don’t think that you thought about that.”
As much as Beck hated the thought of disagreeing with Nikki on this one, her extremely grumpy brother did have a point, at least on the hacking thing. He wasn’t so sure on the thing with him and his buddies backing them up, but… the Garde had friends, friends that were human, that helped them out. Beck guessed that at least mutants would be a little better prepared to go up against some kind of threat than they were, when they got tangled up in it. “Can you really do that? The hacking thing?” If he couldn’t actually do that, then Beck was going to have to side with Nikki.
Adam blinked, looked over at Beck with his eyebrows drawn together. He’d… sort of forgot that the guy was there, listening in. “I don’t know. Probably. It would help if I had a name and a location to start with, instead of just knowing that there’s one guy you know about.”
“It's not supposed to make you feel better, it's supposed to make you safe.” Was Nikki’s curt, and unheard, reply. It didn't matter if he'd heard it anyway, it was clear by now that Adam wasn't going to walk away. As infuriating as it was, she was going to have to figure out a way to both include him and keep him alive, which was a lot harder than it sounded. Even with her abilities, and Beckett’s talents, and BK on their side. Even with Adam and his powered friends. She wasn't seeing much hope in them all getting through this alive. Part of it, a huge part of it, was years of cynicism weighing down on her, and she knew that. But cynicism had kept her alive since she was thirteen, and she clung to it like a security blanket. It was easier than hope.
“Of course I thought about it.” Nikki rolled her eyes dramatically. Even though she hadn't felt like a child since she was kidnapped, it was so easy to revert to immature behavior when she was butting heads with her brother. Maybe that was the secret to family. It didn't quite have the hallmark ring to it that “love” did… “I thought about all of that. And I thought about how much I missed you guys, and how freaking amazing it would be for me and Beck to live somewhere with heat, on an actual bed, and guaranteed meals. All of that sounds really, really good, okay? I'm not giving that up because this life is so fucking fantastic.” Nikki gestured wildly around them at the empty space, the broken and frost-tinted windows. Nobody willingly lived like this unless they didn't have a choice. He had to know that. “And after thinking, and dreaming, and wishing about it, I always come back to the same thing. I don't want you, or mom and dad, or anybody else to die, okay? That's not a risk I can take.”
She hmmphed, and immediately shot a look of betrayal at Beckett. Was he encouraging Adam? He wasn't supposed to do that. He was supposed to agree with her, two against one, so that they could leave. Instead he was questioning Adam about his hacking skills, and suddenly she was very aware of how out-voted she was.
“This can't be happening,” she whispered to herself, palms up to press into her eyes before speaking loud enough for both of them to hear. “Victor Casing. He buys kids on the black market, among other things. He heads the whole thing, but he's got people working for him. He doesn't get his hands dirty.”
No matter what Nikki thought, Adam’s life already wasn’t ‘safe’, and he wasn’t about to wrap himself up in cotton to try to make it that way, now. He hadn’t really felt safe since he’d headed off to the military when he’d been eighteen. About a decade later, he was used to it. It might have been a different kind of danger, but he didn’t want to hide away from it. He’d tried hiding away from the things that scared him, after Ric. He was done hiding, he was done with pretending they didn’t exist, and he was done with letting other people do the dangerous parts. No, he didn’t think that Nikki enjoyed being on the run, he didn’t think that she was isolating herself because it was fun, but not even giving them, or at least him, the option to help her out because it was too dangerous? That was bullshit.
“Get over it,” he told Nikki, in response to that ‘can’t be happening’ crap. Obviously it was happening, and it was going to keep happening, because now that Adam knew she was still alive he wasn’t going to let her get away with keeping him out of anything. Their parents, their sister, them he could understand. As far as he was aware, none of them were reincarnates. None of them had any kind of allies that would help keep them safe. Adam, though, Adam could help, and then once they’d taken out whoever it was that was working for this Victor Casing guy, then Nikki could go home and see their parents, and maybe, maybe, the two of them would finally remember how to be parents to all of them. It was a little too late, maybe, but part of Adam still wanted that back, even if he didn’t need it like he had when he was a teenager.
Beck winced, though, fixed an earnest, apologetic look on Nikki. “Look, I know that you don’t want to put your family in danger, but I don’t know anything about how to track someone like that down, and I’m definitely not a hacker. If he can help—”
“I can.”
“...don’t you think maybe we should try?” No, he knew she didn’t, but Beck thought that it might have been a little too late to keep Adam out of things now. “Besides, I kind of think that if we disappear again, your brother’s going to get his friends to turn everything upside down looking for us—”
“I will.”
The second interruption almost had Beck rolling his eyes. “And that’s going to make even more noise and get us all noticed even faster. Right? So maybe we’d better just…” He shrugged. Go along with it, he guessed? It wasn’t like the two of them had anyone else in the world but each other. And if they could sleep somewhere warm, even for a few nights, Beck wasn’t going to turn the opportunity down. He’d heard it was really nice.
Beck was right, she didn't think they should let Adam try. But he was also right that her brother wouldn't stop looking for them if they disappeared, even if only because he was too stubborn to give up. Nikki had seen that resolve in their parents, and the way they continuously updated her missing person’s picture. At least Adam had powers, and friends, and he wasn't a sitting duck even if she felt horrible putting this burden on him. If anything happened, anything at all, she knew it would crush her. But with both Adam and Beck thinking it was for the best…
“Okay,” She nodded, the tension leaving her shoulders as she finally stopped resisting. She was still terrified, but she was sure she'd never stop feeling that way until she died. Even if Adam stayed out of it she was going to live her life feeling paranoid of every shadowy corner, every stranger. Hell, even people she knew. After all, it had been the father of a friend who'd wrenched her out of her life and threw her down this path to begin with. And the nightmares never went away, not after what they'd seen. You didn't forget that kind of stuff. Not ever.
But now that she resigned herself to the idea that this was an actual thing that was happening, that Adam was going to actually be in her life again, she felt her stomach clench with emotion she'd been determined to shut out. There was hope in there, small and fleeting, and it scared her more than the men who wanted her dead. She let her bag drop to the floor, full of everything she owned, and finally moved forward to embrace her brother in their first hug in thirteen years.
“The dog gets to come too.”
Adam had been ready to argue more, if he needed to, in case Nikki wasn’t tired of fighting yet, but he didn’t need to. He’d almost started arguing with her, just because he didn’t expect her to give up yet, so he stopped, looking shocked, when she actually agreed to it. Instead, slowly, his lips curved into a smile. She’d said okay. “Okay,” he echoed. “Okay.” She’d really agreed, she was going to be back in his life without him having to fight her over, it, and… and she was hugging him, and even though Adam wasn’t a big hug fan, he wrapped his arms around her tightly.
It felt a little like intruding, looking at the two of them right then, so Beck turned right back to finishing up packing as Nikki and Adam hugged it out. It was kind of nice, seeing Nikki with family again. Maybe he should have been jealous, but he’d spent so long loving Nikki like she was his own sister that he couldn’t be anything but happy for her, for both of them. Even if it turned out that Adam couldn’t do anything after all, it was kind of worth it for Beck to see her get this.
There was a knot in Adam’s throat as he let go of Nikki, finally, and stooped to scoop her bag up off the floor. Hey, he knew she could carry it, but so could he. It gave him a chance to blink watery eyes until the world got a little less blurry again, anyway. “Come on, we’re going to go to my office. I’m sorry about Connor, in advance.” Maybe he should text them and let them know that he was going to be coming back without their perp, but with two strangers and a dog.
...nah. It’d do Connor some good to be the one with an unexpected twist dropped on him for once. Hey, maybe he’d even manage to surprise Quinn. After the day he’d had, anything seemed possible.