2013.10.07 - Pull In Here

<< Pull in here. >>
The words that arrive in Kwabena's brain from the redhead riding pillion on his motorcycle direct him to a narrow alleyway that runs alongside an extremely cheap-looking hotel, complete with flickering, broken neon signage advertising 'V CANC ES' at 'LOW R TES'. She'd checked ahead telepathically to be sure they weren't going to run over any sleeping drunks or vagrants, and as soon as the bike stops she's hopped off and is heading for the entrance without waiting for Kwabena to follow.
As she steps in, the only person in the foyer - the bored, portly and unshaven proprietor - looks up from his stained newspaper and then freezes in place. With mechanical movements, he unhooks a key and passes it to Rachel, who barely slows down to take it as she passes by him. It's more mercilessly efficient than is her usual style, but she's been rattled and is in no mood for niceties.
Besides, after what just happened tonight, it might be better for the man if he /didn't/ see them.
A few minutes later and Rachel's inside the room she just 'rented' - on the third floor, since fate has a nasty sense of humour - and she only waits long enough for Kwabena to close the door before the currently-punk redhead demands, "What the HELL have we just gotten ourselves into?"
In the foyer below, the proprietor blinks, looks around as if he's forgotten something, then shrugs, scratches himself, and goes back to reading his paper.
The rubber tires of Kwabena's motorcycle create a squishy sound as they plow over the damp, old asphalt, kicking stray litter to and fro until the idling engine comes to silence. The kickstand strikes pavement with a thud, and soon enough, the African is trailing after Rachel in silence.
There hadn't been time to go back for his clothing or smokes. Fortunately, with the clock creeping on 4:00 am, there aren't many people who might notice him coming 'round the corner and heading for the cheap hotel wearing nothing but what might appear, at first glance, as some kind of spandex costume.
Slowing, Kwabena watches the proprietor with a crooked eyebrow, denoting the suddenly mechanical movements. It's a small touch of entertainment that comes to the corner of his mouth, and as he passes by the desk, he reaches out and snatches the pack of cheap cigarettes from beneath the gate.
That grin is quite gone by the time he enters the room.
There are a few moments of silence, where Kwabena simply looks at Rachel with a dull expression. He's tired, more than he is rattled... worn out from the ever-clutching fingers of an old life that simply refuse to leave him alone. He hadn't dealt so directly with the Darkness, so, understandably, he's probably dealing with a somewhat clearer head.
Turning, Kwabena moves past Rachel and makes for the small, single window the cheap room has to offer. "'We' haven't gotten into anything," he clarifies. The portfolio given to him by Jackie gets tossed ingloriously onto an end table, and he cracks the cheap drapes aside to peer out of the window. Surveying the area.
He quickly realizes just how wrong he is about that.
With a long and heavy sigh, he turns and rests against the wall, giving the room a good once over. "We have a job to do, in Genosha," he clarifies, only then turning to look back at Rachel. "And as far as I'm concerned, Jackie Estacado can rot in hell."
 
Kwabena is almost certainly operating with a clearer head than Rachel. She hadn't expected tonight to be pleasant, but bluntly she hadn't expected to encounter anything more powerful than herself, and certainly nothing that she and Shift couldn't deal with between them.
Instead she went on a brief trip to the Twilight Zone and discovered something dangerous enough to be a nodding acquaintance of the Phoenix Force. Rachel's outlook is understandably skewed.
As Kwabena moves toward the window, Rachel's eyes track him, the look in them intense, impatient. At his seemingly easy denial, Rachel makes a choked-off snort of disbelief. "Oh really?" She takes a step toward him, hands curling into fists to betray her agitation, though it's not really physical violence one needs to worry about, from her. "You think I'm..."
Whatever she was going to say is cut off when Kwabena turns and clarifies his comment. For a long moment Rachel remains where she is, no more than a couple of steps away from him, tension in every line of her body, her eyes fixed on his - when he finally meets her gaze - and then her shoulders sag a bit and she turns away, shrugging out of her jacket and throwing it over the back of one of the room's chairs. She needed a moment to breathe, to stop herself snapping back at him.
"So why didn't you trust me?" She asks, still turned away from him, then looks back over her shoulder. She's calmer now, but the fire is still banked behind her eyes. "It's the right answer." If it hadn't been, she wouldn't be nearly so calm. "But you should have trusted me to deliver it."
It's the million dollar question.
'Why didn't you trust me?'
To this date, nobody has asked that question of Kwabena so directly. In fact, it hasn't really been asked of him indirectly. Oh, the subject has certainly been danced around, but this? No.
There is a moment where Kwabena nearly turns away, grabs one of those stolen cigarettes, and resigns himself to lighting up. He didn't want to answer it. He doesn't have to answer it. But the truth is, he simply can't let it go unanswered. Not this time.
A long sigh comes through his nostrils, for he finds his jaw clenched. Walking over to one of the room's stained and uncomfortable cots, he sits down and reaches to find the clasp of his uniform, unzipping it from where it pinches at his chin down to his collarbone, to get some air. He meets the angry eyes looking at him, still unable to answer for a few moments. When he finally finds the will to speak, he's forced to look away.
"I didn't want to drag you into dis." It's not much of an explanation, and he knows more is due. "It's my past. My dirt. I don't want anyone else's hands stained with it. But... Jean said we'd keep each oddah grounded." The subtext, the unspoken thought behind it all, is that he has come to trust Rachel, and therein lies the true irony.
He doesn't exactly know what to say, still. He's beating around that bush. Why didn't he trust her? It's a very, very long story. Instead, he turns back to look Rachel's way, offering two words laced with exhaustion and truthfulness.
"I'm sorry."
 
Rachel is not actively scanning Kwabena's mind, but this close to him, while she's still dealing with the aftereffects of having touched the Phoenix Force, her control of her powers is somewhat less than complete. Certain impressions bleed through.
Her lips thin as she feels his desire for the cigarette. If he'd lit one, it would have been going out the window. And there's a small chance that he would have been following it.
As Kwabena chooses wisely, Rachel takes a breath, forcing the surge of irrational anger back down, and turns the rest of the way around to face him properly. She's aware that he looks tired, closing on exhausted, but Rachel herself is too wired to feel the effects herself, at least quite yet. A muscle in her jaw twitches at his first words, and she forces herself not to simply reply with 'too late', even though her expression probably conveys that feeling quite well. It's Jean's name that punctures Rachel's very real anger, and she finds herself stifling a sardonic laugh. "Yeah, we're /both/ doing /such/ a good job at that."
Still, Rachel doesn't move, keeps her eyes on Kwabena, wondering if there's more to come. She doesn't expect what he /does/ say, and her surprise lets her annoyance begin to seep away. After a moment she shakes her head ruefully. "All right." That's clearly not all she has to say, but at least it fills the silence.
Taking a moment to tug off first one boot and then the other, Rachel pads over to where Shift sits and settles on the other end of the cot, tucking one leg beneath her so that she can face him easily. "It's too late, though. I already know, and I'm already /here/." That was the nice part of what she had to say. "But if I'm in this with you, I'm a full partner. You can't change the play and cut me off at the knees." She takes a quick breath. "And I have to know I can trust you to back me up."
Kwabena follows Rachel with his eyes as she joins him. Typically, he would have drawn away to avoid being any closer to someone he'd just betrayed. However, not only does he stay put, it seems to help him relax a bit further. His shoulders lose the tension that he hadn't even realized was there, and he turns his body a bit to face her more directly.
A response comes to the tip of his tongue, perhaps too quickly. "I-" He doesn't finish, however, drawing back from his defensive retort. Another short sigh comes through his nose, and for a long moment, he seeks to meet the redhead's green eyes, both thankful that they aren't burning with fire, and thankful that they are there.
"I probably didn't come into all dis with de most ideal of circumstances," he explains. "Professah Xavier didn't find me when I was a child, didn't recruit me from a warm living room. No, Logan pretty much snuck me into de X-Men base in de middle of de night with a hood ovah my head. Long story, but... some few friends of mine felt it was de only option, given what I'd been through in Latveria."
While Kwabena doesn't take the time to expound on his horrible experience at the hands of Victor Von Doom, he does let the room breathe for a moment. If Rachel knew anything about Latveria, she'd be able to understand, or at least piece things together, to some degree.
"Circumstances haven't been ideal, Rachel. Until dat night, I trusted nobody. I was bettah off alone, I thought. But, I was a criminal, a liar, and a thief. I found a new life at the mansion, and it's... it's been difficult getting used to it."
He looks away, mis-matched eyes drawing down to look at her hands, her legs, then off toward the hissing radiator at the corner of the room. A few seconds pass, before he looks back her way. "I'm not de postah story of an X-Man. Probably nevah will be." He reaches gloved hands across the cot, seeking to find hers unless she pulls them away. "But I will always back you up, undahstand?"
In some way, he knows that she'll understand, for her arrival in the twenty-first century wasn't exactly the ideal circumstance, either.
Even as Rachel's eyes see Kwabena relax, she feels his mind gather itself to bite back at her not particularly veiled complaints. Fleetingly, she wonders if she'd have been better to stay on her side of the room rather than invade his.
She has no regrets about what she actually said, though. Tonight's thrown up some questions that need to be answered before they go back to Genosha, and before they're in the field together again.
Feeling him decide to go a different way even before the first word is spoken, Rachel stays where she is and just listens. She doesn't know this story, doesn't know what happened in Latveria, but in many ways she doesn't need to. The way that Shift speaks about it, even obliquely, tells her what she needs to know for now.
And reminds her a little uncomfortably that she's building up quite a store of Kwabena's secrets, while he doesn't know the least of hers. It's in that moment that he reaches for her hands, and Rachel lets him take them, unresistingly.
"Kwabena..." Rachel begins, not for the first time wishing she had Kitty's ease with words. "We don't need to compare scars. I think... I know how deep some of yours are, because I've got plenty of my own." She smiles crookedly, and shakes her head. "If you knew how messed up..." She starts, but then stops herself and meets his eyes again. "What I mean is, people say you can escape your past. I know it doesn't work like that. But what I believe, what I pretty much have to believe is that whatever happened before, it's what you do now that matters. I believe you." Her hands tighten on his as she says that last.
Abruptly she grins again. "Besides, whatever you say, you ARE an X-Man. And so am I. God help them."
Building a team is a dangerous thing. The various military organizations peppering the globe have managed to do it well, finding the perfect balance between dispassionate chain of command and camaraderie.
The X-Men are not a military organization.
There are no drill sergeants. There is no pomp and circumstance. And yet they are expected to be warriors and pacifists in the same breath. They are expected to think critically, dispassionately, and emotionally. It is a truly herculean challenge for anyone, and the X-Men have the additional social challenges that are part and parcel of carrying the X-Gene.
Rachel is right, of course. They don't need to compare battle scars, and her remark brings a similarly crooked grin to his face. "...how messed up your future is?" He takes the liberty to complete her sentence, and shakes his head. "Maybe some oddah time, when we're not on assignment. I've got an expensive bottle of whiskey and de mansion's record collection on lockdown for it."
Seems the African wouldn't mind comparing those tales. But not here, not today.
There is no further argument. He knows that one can never truly escape the past. "But we can choose how de past defines us today." He diverts his gaze a bit, nodding indicatively toward that portfolio. "Mine might try to chase me forevah. But you know what? It doesn't own me. Nevah will."
Rachel's last remark earns a rather hearty smirk, rueful as hell. "Whatevah happens in Genosha, we're coming out of it alive, Red. And I promise, I'll make up for all of dis bullshit." Leaning back, he parts with her hands only to reach up and flick at one of her stray spikes. "I mean it. Keep de spikes. What is it dey say here, it's... funky?"
Her future? If only. She can manage just a little more honesty tonight. "How messed up /I/ am." She says frankly, though her eyes seem to focus on something past Shift and out of sight for just a moment as she softly adds, "But my future's no picnic either." She blinks, back in the room with him again, and laughs quietly at the suggestion he offers. She's thinking that maybe she should have gotten Doug hammered before her ill advised conversation with him a little while ago... but she's not about to say that out loud. After all, what Kwabena's saying right now is more important than past regrets.
His choice of words strikes an ominous chord with Rachel. Her past chases her often enough through her nightmares. She doesn't want to think about the possibility that it might come calling in the waking world, as Shift's just has for him. She pushes that worry away, for now, and answers firmly. "Good to hear." She doesn't say anything trite like she'd never doubted it. She had. Now she doesn't. It's as simple as that.
There's an almost mischievous look in Rachel's eyes as she shakes her head at Kwabena's promise. "Damn right we're coming back alive, but otherwise, no promises." She smirks. "By the time we're done, I'll probably be trying to make things up to you." It's not like she doesn't have a bit of a reputation of her own for causing chaos. Just ask Kitty.
As Kwabena lets go of her hands, Rachel leans back a bit, then frowns as he reaches toward her, almost going cross-eyed as she tries to follow his finger as it flicks at her hair. Her expression as he does so is somewhere between amused and miffed. "I'll think about it." She tells him, shifting to get up off the cot, then stopping to glance down at herself. "The rest of the look needs work, though?" She suggests wryly. "We should get going. Just give me a minute to get the worst of this off, first." Gesturing to her face - and particularly the thick black eyeliner she's wearing - to explain herself, Rachel vanishes towards the bathroom.
Kwabena was not at all expecting the response that is given--the brutal honesty of it. It shows in the way his grin falters, struck by the harsh reality of it. Of course, that is a sentiment he can certainly understand, and that part shows in the softness of his eyes, along with the silence that comes with not pressing the issue.
"Make things up to me?" he quips. "Game on." There is an absolutely mischievous expression in his mis-matched eyes of brown and silver, the oddly colored one glimmering as the pupils dilate. Rising from the cot, he gives her a good once over while a smirk draws across his face. "I could say something about de checkas," he jokes. "Dere's an old punk club not fah from here where you'd fit in like a peg."
Not that he's exactly complaining. Let's not forget the parts of town Kwabena grew up in!
"Yeah," he agrees. It is about time to be going. "I want to be out of here before de commuters creep up. Newsflash, guy in spandex riding bike causes five car pile up." With a mock snap-point toward Rachel's makeup, he turns and collects the portfolio once more. And though he eyes it suspiciously? It goes tucked under his arm, like the sleeping dog that it is.
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