The landing inside Stark’s engineering lab was not the most grateful. I accidently tensed my body up as we entered the narrow entrance scraping the metal exoskeleton across the concrete tunnel wall. I flipped over myself, and landed with an echoing crash behind me. I groaned as all the oxygen in my lungs emptied very quickly.
“Miss Davis are you alright?” I groaned again and took in a sharp breath. My left wrist felt tight, bulging and bruised.
“I’m fine Jarvis, how is the suit?” I asked as I tried to move my body, but it seemed the exoskeleton had seized up.
“The suit is replaceable.” I chuckled as Jarvis showed a schematic of the areas with permanent damage, so really the majority of it. I quickly pulled the metal plates away from my sore body and suspended them in the air around me. I cradled my left hand against my chest as I walked with the metal.
“It was a prototype styled suit Miss Davis, it wasn’t made for hard landing.” I nodded and sighed to myself, I hope Jarvis disposes of this suit before Tony sees it. If he ever gets to see anything again.
“Where should I put all of this?” I asked as the metal hovered around me. Jarvis lit up a glass able with let up with a 3-D schematic of the Mark V. I lowered the suspended metal onto the glass table forming the correct pieces in the correct place.
“What next?” I asked as I watched small metal pincers come out of the glass table console and examine the pieces of metal.
“I will order new parts for the Mark V, and rebuild it before Tony even knows it was taken off the shop floor Miss Davis.” I nodded and looked down at the touch screen attached to the glass table to see the time was just shy of six in the morning. I sighed and removed myself from Jarvis concentration, and walked up the spiraling stair case to the main living room.
I wandered through the living room and into the kitchen. The large glass wall which faced out to the see showed the oncoming day. I sighed as the automatic door opened up to welcome a strange sight.
There sat Eric Lehnsherr, he had a mug clutched in his grasp, his lips sat on the edge of the mug, as steam rose from the liquid inside. He pulled his mouth away as the automatic doors slid to a close. He held the mug in his lap and looked over to me. His blue eyes glinted bronze from the early morning sun.
Neither of us spoke automatically, if anything we had left things on a sour note. I tucked my healing wrist behind my back and maneuvered myself around the kitchen so that Eric didn’t see any injury from my earlier exploits. I saw a silver coffee machine in the corner with a hot water nozzle. I grabbed a tea bay from the clear glass jar situated next to it, and held it underneath the nozzle. Eric had turned around to face me. He sat on a stool at the breakfast bar which I was safely situated behind.
I pulled away my steaming mug of tea, and walked over to the fridge, still behind the bar. I pulled out the tea bag and dropped it into a waste disposal hatch in the marble worktop. I pulled out the milk and gently poured automatically mixing the tea. I brought the tea up to my lips and leaned against the work top looking directly at Eric Lehnsherr.
“You look tired.” He stated simply, as he set his steaming mug on the breakfast bar. I nodded and set down my own mug on the worktop. I could feel the bags sitting underneath my eyes, a mixture of stress and lack of sleep created them very easily.
“I am tired.” I sighed and blew down at my mug shifting the steam from the surface of my tea. Suddenly he stood up and walked around the breakfast bar which was once a safe haven for me.
“Logan told me that you showed him what happened.” He leaned against the breakfast bar in front of me, staring deep into my own silver and green eyes. I swallowed hard.
Crap.
I expected him to be angry or to be agitated at the least but he just stood there emotionless. His arms were crossed over his chest while my hands clutched at the edge of the marble worktop. He was waiting, waiting for me to say something; I guess waiting for me to explain myself.
“I guess you want to know why?” he nodded and stood there as the golden light of the rising sun caused a halo around his white grey streaked hair. I wanted to clear my throat as it almost became uncomfortable to breathe.
“I showed him because I thought he could handle it. I guess I was wrong about that.” I murmured the last part as I vividly remembered his reaction to seeing what I had done, and what people had done to me. He just left me there to deal with the consequence of my actions all over again.
Eric looked at me with a slightly shocked yet confused gaze. I couldn’t look into his shadowed blue eyes, my hands relaxed on the counter edge as my long nails began to drum against the marble.
“What do you mean?” he didn’t raise his voice, the way he said it was open and honest, he didn’t want me to shy away or close myself off. I had done enough of that to him already.
“Logan said if I continued to bottle things up one day I would just shatter under the pressure, so I thought the best person to show that time to would be him, I thought he understood.” Eric’s eyes soon began to clear away the murky confusion that once shadowed his gaze.
“What did he do after seeing the memory Liberty?” the corner of my lip twitched in a pained way, my chest constricted and caved in on itself as I stood there waiting for myself to speak.
“He left me there, he kissed me and saw every death every experiment I endured, and he just left me there he didn’t utter a single word to me, he just left as fast a physically possible. He ran away from the freak, the monster.” I didn’t want to do this anymore, I was sick of this. I was sick of relieving ever bit of my past just to prove to others that I face as much misery and pain as they did.
I lunged sideways out of the breakfast bar only to feel the tops of my arms gripped in a vice like grip. I was pushed back into the edge of the worktop hard. The marble dug into my back bruising the pale sensitive skin that lay there. I hissed as I looked up into Eric’s eyes, they were full of anger, but also hurt.
“Why did you just call yourself a freak, a monster?” he said in a deadly low voice. It was so deep it vibrated through my body. The words traveled through very synapse causing a shiver to claw its way down my spine at an agonizingly slow pace.
“Because of what I am and what I have done Eric. I’m a mutant hybrid, I’m not fully mutant, and not fully a God. I was given powers I couldn’t understand, while trying to cope with the one I had been born with. The things I had to do in japan were unforgivable! I killed people so I could survive! I let people I cared about kill me on multiple occasions all because I wanted them to live!” hot tears pricked my hot skin as my breaths came out in labored gasps.
I can’t do this anymore.
Suddenly the grips relaxed on my arms I wanted to run far away, I wanted to scream out. But as Eric’s hands gently slid down my arms they suddenly wrapped around me. His large hands splayed out across my lower back and between my shoulder blades keeping my body close to his.
Keeping me safe, as I cried into his grey sweat shirt. My nails dug into his shirt as I balled the fabric up into my fists. My body was tense as my breathing remained ragged uneven and pained.
At a point no more tears can be shed. It is physically impossible to continue the onslaught on tears and emotions. My hands splayed out over Eric’s waist and ribcage as I leaned against him. I couldn’t stand on my own anymore. I’d never felt like this. There hadn’t been a point since I returned where I could just cry and someone would be there to take it all in.
I didn’t want to look up at Eric, instead I moved my head up from his chest and looked over his shoulder to see the dawn break, the sun began to peak over the horizon in a blinding glory. I squinted through heavily lidded eyes and watched the white light glint off the water and watched as the light rushed off the water towards us. I shielded my face in the crook of Eric’s neck as the sun slashed across my eyes, leaving pained spots in my vision, burnt onto my eyelids.
I pulled away slightly; Eric kept his arms tightly around me as I looked up into his storm blue eyes. He had a small smile on his lips. One of sympathy, it was strange the one man who reacted so badly to me seeing his past, reacted so well to the pain I felt because of it, he accepted it.
“How are you feeling Liberty?” he asked sincerely as I remembered I was still leaning against him completely. I planted my feet firmly on the ground and tried to stand on my own without support which ended badly.
My ankles gave underneath the weight. I was exhausted; I sighed and chuckled as I smiled up at Eric.
“Exhausted apparently.” He nodded and quickly maneuvered his hands. He bent down keeping on hand in the center of my spine, while the other pushed in the back of my knees collapsing me into his arms.
“I’m sorry.” I whispered against his ear as he walked us out of the kitchen. I knew what I was sorry for, he had so openly accepted my pain and suffering yet back at the mansion I had openly chastised him, after he showed me the death of his first child, and the length he went to, to get revenge.
“It’s fine Liberty.” He knew why I was sorry; he just knew that right now was not the best time to speak about it. I buried my face into the crook of his neck as he walked down the hallway towards my room. My lips were lightly pressed against his pulse point, as he neared my door.
He gently let my feet touch the ground again. I steadied myself and pushed gently down on the handle to my room, he opened with a quiet click. I stood I the threshold to my room and smiled up at Eric. I could feel the bags underneath my eyes grow heavier with each waking moment.
I looked down at the laminated floor then back up at Eric. He nodded and turned to leave. For a moment everything froze, this was a terrible idea.
I grabbed Eric’s wrist with my hand and pulled him back. He looked as shocked as I did, be I didn’t freeze I continued. I reached up, one hand in his white hair another on hand on his chest.
What was I doing?!
I pulled his lips down to meet mine. My back slammed against the wall next to the doorway of my room. Eric pushed his body against mine. One hand rested don the bleach white wall the other wrapped around my waist as his hand splayed out. I arched my back as he deepened the kiss. My fingers knotted in his hair as I angled my head to the side, further deepening the kiss.
This want a kiss to show him my past, it was a kiss plain and simple. Something that I had only really succeeded with once in my life so far.
My heart hammered against my rib cage, as my lungs screamed at me to breath. I pulled my lips away from Eric’s, we both gasped loudly as out lips broke away. I stayed firmly pressed against his body, as my fingers stayed firmly knotted in his hair.
I slowly and gently pulled my hands from his hair as he pulled his arm from around my waist. Yet I was still trapped by the arm by my head. Finally Eric leaned back and looked down at me with his deep grey eyes.
“You should get some sleep Liberty.” I nodded and stepped towards my door. I opened my door and looked over my shoulder to see Eric waiting for me to leave his eye line first. I closed the frosted glass door and threw myself down onto my plush bed. I stared up at the ceiling and gently brushed my fingers over my lips. They felt swollen and sensitive, a feeling my lips hadn’t felt for a while.
As I stared up at the ceiling I could feel my heavy eyelids draw to a close, as the dawn broke across Manhattan.