Us Mutants Prefer the Term "Special"

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"Leave the fighting for tomorrow," Chance hissed, walking into the room finally, with Sumer at his tow.

"And what are you supposed to be doing tomorrow? Propping your feet up?" Andres accused.

"No I'm here to save all of your sorry asses in case anything happens, or if one of you messes it up," he retorted.

"Some assh0le messed it up by raiding the Academy!" Andres yelled. "Why weren't you there for that!?"

"Stop," Anthony hissed.

"Everything happens for a reason," Sumer muttered. And then her silvery blue eyes connected with mine for a brief moment, hinting at something.

"So tonight is our last night, then," Skye said, glumly. Andres grabbed her hand over the table and kissed her cheek.

"Nothing is going to happen to you," he promised in a whisper with sincerity. I looked around the table and saw all the care. Andres and Skye exchanged their concern with a kiss; Chance and Sumer stood by the doorway, holding hands and talking lightly without a worry about tomorrow; Wilbur was caring about Jane, while Jane was caring for Isaac; and Warren was practicing self control because I knew he wanted to leap across the table and kiss Cariba as much as he could in his last day before we knew what would happen; and Cheshire looked around the table nonchalantly, only allowing people as close as me to realize that he actually cared about everyone in this room—because no matter how tough he acting, he couldn't lose people.

"What if we die tomorrow?" Cheshire asked what everyone else wanted to. But now, it was about three o'clock and the both of us were laying on the ground on separate blankets, staring up at the absolutely clear, night sky.

"We're not going to die," I hoped with a broken voice. I felt him prop himself up on his elbow.

"I hope you don't die. Out of anyone here, I hope it's not you," he expressed and it made me look over at him. He must be kidding. "You have the most to lose out of everyone here."

"How do you figure?"

"You're worth something. Not only to whatever bad guys are running this, but to the world," he started. "You have a family alive and well—I can't imagine how torn up Wilbur would be. You haven't experienced anything or lived your life. Hell, you haven't even had sex."

He put things in perspective and I realized how much more I did have to lose going into battle tomorrow, with or without my extraordinary healing powers.

"Have you even fallen in love yet?" he added. Right then, I wanted to do nothing but shift my brain to the memories of Tyler, but the initial interaction with Zaine had prevented me. I very much felt more strongly for Zaine than Tyler in a fraction of the time, but love? How could that even be possible with all we've been through on this journey? And then suddenly, I was face to face with Cheshire. His blue and purple eyes met mine and then it was Zaine's face I was seeing.

It was the two of us, laying down beneath the sky. It was the butterflies that had escaped the air and found their way into my stomach. It was anything that I had considered negative, being transformed into something worth cherishing solely because it was interaction with him in the first place. It was the unsure feeling of love making a sure answer and just like that, my eye lids had become heavier and my lips had parted just in time for him to lean in. My eyes shut as our soft lips barely touched in order to cause electricity to shoot through my body in a bad way to make my eyes open and revealed that I had been millimeters from—or maybe actually—kissing Cheshire. His eyes were still closed as the tip of his tongue tasted his bottom lip.

"Alice..." he whispered so heavenly as his eyes started to peel open, but that was after I had lifted my hand and smacked his face. His eyes shot open to their normal ocean color and widened. "Aspen, I'm so sorry! It wasn't me—"