Shiro and Marie

[x-sanfuaiyaa.livejournal.com]

Marie has had enough with Shiro's self-imposed isolation, and tries to re-break the ice by offering him a ride to school. They finally talk about what happened three weeks ago, and they learn a bit more about each other.


Marie ran a hand through her hair, as she stood in front of the suite that wasn't all that far from her own. She didn't know how she and Shiro hadn't managed to run into each other since she'd been out of the medlab, but she wondered if the Japanese man was avoiding her. True they'd both been busy with the start of school, but it felt a little more deliberate. Today, that was going to change. She missed her friend and they needed to sort things out so that life could go back to getting on as normal - or as normal as was possible in the mansion. This wasn't the first, or probably the last, awkward teammate situation that either of them would have to deal with. She knocked three times in quick succession, feeling a slight rise in her anxiety as she waited for him to answer the door.

Shiro used to get worried when his alarm went off at 5 o'clock, because he thought he'd overslept. Now he routinely threw the alarm clock across the room when it went off at 6:30, despite having over eight hours of sleep. And sleeping on the bus and trains down to the city didn't help to alleviate his exhaustion either. Not being one for coffee, he'd taken to drinking at least two cups of black tea before dragging himself down to the bus station. When Marie knocked on his door, he was on his third.

And he was very thankful, for the sake of his shirt at least, that he didn't spill it on himself when he saw who his visitor was. "M-M-Marie . . ." he stammered uncharacteristically. "You must have the wrong room."

Marie stuck her foot in the door to make sure he didn't try and close it in her face. "Give me a break," she said, her tone more nonchalant than she felt. Now that she was here, she didn't know what to say. It was too bad hallmark didn't make a 'Sorry I kissed you and sucked out your life' card. Jangling the keys she had picked up before coming to Shiro's room, she quirked an eyebrow. "Need a lift?"

Unfortunately, Shiro was too big to hide behind his mug, try though he might. At least he could busy himself by cleaning up the kitchenette and hunting for his bookbag. He didn't have to look at her and be reminded of what he (and she) had done. "I was just on my way to the bus station, actually. But thank you anyway." Even though a trip directly to the train station would cut off a good twenty to thirty minutes from his commute.

She wrinkled her nose at him. "You really telling me you'd prefer the bus to my fine company? Ah have to run some errands in the city anyways. You'll be doing me a favor, keeping me company." She was lying through her teeth, but it was the only way she'd been able to come up with to force Shiro to spend some time with her. After all, he couldn't be silent the whole trip, right? They'd have to talk.

There was no good way to avoid this, was there? Shiro sighed in resignation as he placed his mug in the sink. "Fine," he said. He had his iPod and the caffeine had done nothing to wake him up. He could sleep in the car. Picking up his bookbag and portfolio, he nodded at Marie and led her out of his room.

Neither of them spoke on the walk to the car or for the first few minutes of the drive. The silence continued to build and the tension grew thicker and thicker as Shiro hunched in his seat listening to his MP3 player. Finally, Marie reached over and yanked the headphones out of his ears. "Are we just never gonna talk about it?" she asked, exasperation bleeding into her voice.

"That was more or less the plan," Shiro admitted. He pressed the pause button and glanced at Marie out the corner of his eye. "And it was working wonderfully until just now." Back to the drawing board. "What is there to talk about, anyway? You were in my mind. You know exactly what was wrong with me."

"Shouldn't that make it easier to talk to me then? Because Ah understand?" Her gloved hands clenched around the wheel. "Ah'm sorry, Ah had no right to see inside your head..." she trailed off, mentally damning her poisonous skin. She should have just knocked him unconscious. She ignored the little voice inside her head that was trying to remind her that Shiro hadn't been slowing down with the force she had been using.

Shiro shook his head, his eyes traveling from Marie's gloved hands to her lips and then to his own hands. He dropped the iPod onto his lap for fear of melting it. "Had our situations been reversed, I doubt that I would have acted differently. I don't begrudge you for that."

She chewed on her lip for a moment before asking, "Then why have you been avoiding me?" As soon as she said it, it hit her. Here she'd been thinking that he hadn't want to see her because she'd touched him, invaded him in a way that he couldn't forgive. She'd never stopped to consider he could have a completely different reason.

Shiro was biting his lip so hard that he could almost taste blood. "It is because you know exactly what I was thinking and feeling. I was . . . ashamed." And the admission hardly made him feel any better. But he continued anyway. Couldn't get out of it now. "That you would judge me. Everyone else thinks that Kick was just a stupid mistake that I made, but still something atoneable. You know better, though."

She stared over at him, her eyes full of some undecipherable emotion, before she was forced to return her attention to the road. "Is that what you really think?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper. Was she really that judgmental? She thought back to her encounter with Terry and winced. "Ah know what you know...that it was a mistake. Ah know why you thought you needed to use it the first time and Ah know the feel of being on it and the need to have it again."

"And you know why I never told anyone about it, either," he continued. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead of them, as if estimating the distance remaining between them and the train station, and therefore how long he had to hold out. "That it was humiliating that I had to rely on a chemical to perform my duty. That I was afraid . . . no, terrified that if it was found out then I would be kicked out of the X-Men and the school. Maybe even arrested. I was selfish. What kind of a super hero was I?"

"A human one. Like we all are. Name me one X-Man who hasn't made a mistake, especially because they thought that in the end it would protect someone." She shook her head. "It's ok to feel guilty for what you did, but you have to stop letting it eat you up inside or it will have been for nothing. Learn from what happened and grow." Marie knew the drive would be too short to tell him everything on her mind, but she was going to try and cram as much in as she could . "And you don't need the stimulant to do your job. You were doing it before and you'll keep doing it now if you just have faith in yourself."

"So do you actually ingest your class notes?" Shiro joked weakly. "You sound like a textbook." Yet her words were more reassuring than any of the others he'd heard, even if the message was the same. Maybe because in a way, it was a smarter and more mature Shiro telling him. If a victim of his rampage could truly empathize and not turn him away, then maybe they weren't simply platitudes.

Marie couldn't stop a faint flush from rising to her cheeks, though it was impossible to tell if it was from embarrassment at having been called on quoting heavily from her textbook or relief from finally hearing a joke out of Shiro. "At least Ah know Ah'm getting somethin' for my money," she quipped back.

As they pulled up to their destination, Shiro mock-saluted her. "Ome-desu." He wondered if she retained any knowledge of Japanese after the powers wore off. "Thank you for the ride. I suppose I will see you around . . . this evening," he corrected. No more hermitage. Time to start the recovery already.