Log: Artie and Molly

[x-artie.livejournal.com]

In which apologies are finally given for Artie's poor behaviour on the journals a few weeks ago.


Molly had a racquetball. She brought it at the store not for racquetball but because racquetballs just bounced the best anyway. She was in the gym, tossing it against the wall and catching it as it bounced back. They said it'd be good for practicing control cause she'd have to make sure not to throw it too hard. Anyway, it was pink. And she drew a nose and ears and eyes on it with a marker and it looked like a pig. So she called it Frank. Because Frank was an excellent pig name.

Artie had headed into the gym for a workout now that his ribs were nearly better. He ducked as something small and pink sailed over his head, smashing the window in the door.

He looked up to see Molly and clapped sharply to get her attention. "dude. srsly?"

Okay, so that had been an accident. But now that Molly saw who it had almost hit she didn't feel AS bad. She did feel bad that the window probably would come out of her allowance, though.

"Yeah, actually," Molly said, putting her hands on her hips. She kinda wished she'd been throwing it harder at the time. Appropriately enough? She was wearing a cowboy hat.

He rolled his eyes. Literally, letting his right eye roll out of the socket, an illusion covering the socket itself, and drop onto the floor, where it squished slightly, because hey, sometimes, you just had to roll with it. It would have been better with sound effects. Artie blinked and let the illusions vanish. It looked like Molly was still annoyed and, okay, he was maybe willing to admit she was justified but, still. No-one had arrested her parents and he'd been kind of understandably upset at the time.

Now Molly didn't know that much about Artie beyond the fact that he didn't talk and made moving word bubbles. She didn't think about it much past that, that he could make people see more than that. Never knew why. She had more important things to think about: like her shell hat she made from Hampton Beach and Ron Weasley. She hadn't even really spoken to Artie much in person, even when his mom had kidnapped them, just on the computer when he was being a jerkhead.

So when she saw his eye pop out and drop on the floor? She did what most kids would do: she screamed and ran, bursting through the gym doors back into the hallway before she saw the illusion fade away. Not her finest heroine moment but dude that was scary!

Artie sighed and pelted after her, his longer legs quickly making up the distance between them. "Molly, wait! i didn't mean to scare u!" he said, floating the pink text in front of her. It sparkled, too, and had little rainbows. It was as non threatening as text could possibly be, without a couple of unicorns shooting rainbows out their asses or something. "it was an illusion. it was funny."

Midway to the elevators (her first thought was to go find a X-Person like Kurt), Molly heard someone who she guessed was Artie coming up from behind and caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye.

Spinning around, Molly clenched her fists and gave him the eviliest look a 13 year old could muster, which on her face, the contrast between normally smiling was pretty evil.

"It was not," she insisted. "Evil people attacked the X-Mansion and hurt people and I was afraid something'd come, again, and made your eye pop out, Artie Maddicks. It was scary. Even if you are a jerkface assbucket I do not want you to have your eye popped out. Okay?"

So maybe it hadn't been that funny. "sorry." Artie thought back to the days after Jean had died rescuing them all and said "it helps if you have someplace to hide when you think someone will come back and ... you know. somewhere in your room as well as in the panic room."

Molly dug at the floor a little with her shoe, glancing down with her arms folded. She fell silent for a few moments before almost reluctantly speaking.

"Where's the panic room?" she said, too curious to not say anything else to him.

"Do you scream a lot in it?" Was that why they called it a panic room?

"i guess so but it's probably safer to be real quiet in there. it's just a part of the mansion designed to be extra safe in case anything goes wrong and you can't get out. you go there and then the xmen deal with the problem and don't die while they're looking for you rather than dealing with the intruders." It never even occurred to Artie that what he was saying could be taken as harsh.

Molly made a face and mostly stared at him after a couple of blinks, then unfolded her arms and stuck them in her pockets. "I would not make the X-People die," she said. She hadn't really wanted to talk to Artie anymore in the first place and now he made her sad and mad at the same time, like before.

"I need to go away now. I don't want to talk to you any more. "She slowly backed up, did a 180, and turned to leave back toward the gym. She paused a moment, her back to him.

"And I'm not retarded," she said softly, her voice cracking a little.

She needed to find Frank. He had to be in the hallway somewhere. And maybe if she told Monet or somebody she did it they wouldn't have to make her pay as much for the glass.

"fine. you're not retarded," Artie said, letting the text float after her for a moment. He had things to do and damned if he knew why Molly had just run off.

Stopping in her tracks upon sight of the text, Molly spun around and immediately walked back toward him, jabbing him in the chest with her index finger.

"No. I'm not. And I know you're not sorry," she said, leting out a frustrated grunt. "I'm sorry about your mom and I know you had a hard time cause you wanted to be with her and they took her away. Well my mom and daddy are gone too cause they have to hide from bad people cause they helped bad people but they're not bad people. I can't be with them. And I can't even know there they are," Molly said, furrowing her eyebrows.

"But I never did anything to you and you call me names! That stinks! A lot! And it makes me feel bad," she said, waving her hands around wildly like someone conducting an orchestra.

"Cause people would make fun of me at my old school cause I had problems in class and I thought 'this is a nice place and everyone's nice' and I thought you were nice before I met you and now I know you're not and that makes me sad cause I wanted to talk to you some time cause you're kinda young like me and now I can't cause I wanna punch you in the nose but Monet says it's bad to use your powers when it isn't against a bad guy," Molly said, blowing a few strands of hair out of her face before taking a few breaths.

She ran out of stuff to say and just wiped her nose.

Artie had stood and stared while Molly ran through all that, beginning to feel horribly guilty, especially when she stopped and sniffed. He'd made her cry, again, and this time he hadn't even wanted to. He tugged his hands though his hair for a moment, trying to think about how to put what he wanted to say in words, since he couldn't sign or anything.

This time, the text was simple and blue on a white background, rather than the silly stuff he'd used before. "I'm sorry I called you a retard. That was really mean of me and I do know better, since people do that to me, too, in the other school I go to."

"I didn't know all of that about your parents. I guess we have that in common, since both of us have parents that did some pretty bad stuff." The next bit was harder, so Artie paused for a moment before going on "I'm really sorry about the way I behaved to you. I wanted to go home and I figured that since the X-Men wouldn't let me, if I was enough of a shit, maybe they'd kick me out and I could go back to being a Morlock again and look after the ones that are still down there."

He was getting a headache from projecting so many words so Artie wrapped the next bit up quickly. "Can we maybe start over or something?"

After the question, Molly hugged her stomach, staring at her shoes: pink sneakers that she had drawn flowers on in metallic marker, for a long time.

Finally she looked up and nodded a little. "Okay," she said quietly.

She'd rather be friends with someone than not friends with someone. Being mad was hard work and was not as fun. And he did seem like he meant it. She saw his face when he made the words and stuff so it did look like it.

"So...so are there kids down there too?"

Artie looked like he'd been punched in the stomach at the question and shook his head. "No. Not anymore."

Molly frowned. "Oh," she said. Something about what she said made him sad. "I'm sorry."

Artie took a deep breath and counted to five before slowly exhaling. "It's okay. It's not like Annalee would have told you about the massacre. She ... tries not to think about it."

Molly took a step back, her eyes widening. "Massacre?" she repeated.

"Of...of the other people down there? Who? Why...."

They were things she didn't really wanna know but found herself unable to stop herself from asking.

"I don't know who did it. But it was because we were mutants. Do you get it now?" Artie crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall.

Looking down, Molly nodded. She fell silent for a few moments then walked over and gave him a hug.

She stepped back, then glanced up. "So...do you wanna maybe...play basketball?"

Artie hugged her back and nodded, flashing up a smiley face and a thumbs up. "yeah, basketball sounds like fun. come on!"