Fragile Wings: Part Three

by Timesprite and kaleko

I hear her moving around in the apartment. She's been getting more and more phone calls lately. Now they come in the middle of the night, and she picks it up on the first ring. She talks for minutes only, then goes outside to the end of the block.

She disappears around the side street, into the alley. She's back inside approximately twenty minutes later. She says she goes for runs, it takes her mind off of things. She's conveinently avoided the subject of the phone calls.

She's crying on the phone tonight. She says, "When I was younger, I could look at anything and it would be so simple. How did everything change? Why have I begun to question everything? Why do people grow up and make everything so complicated?

"Can't I just stare up at the stars and see them just for pretty diamonds in the sky, instead of gases burning in outer space? Can't I just look up into that vastness and think of anything else besides the fact that Marc may be some wandering spirit out there and I'm here, all alone?"

It doesn't sound like something she'd tell an informant, but I check and it was to Florida. Damn her, what's in Florida?

"Want to go for a ride?" she asks out of nowhere while slurping her cereal. I eye her over the toaster. "You know. Get in the car. Drive."

"Where?" I bite into my slightly-blackened toast and wait for a response. She has to think for a moment. She shrugs, sips her coffee and stares at me. "Where, Lem?" If she says Florida...

"I don't know..." she says, and then, "Florida."

I gack. Shit. Here it is, Dom, staring you in the face. "What? Why the hell would we go to Florida? Why the hell would I want to go to Florida?"

"To meet my parents!"

I raise a brow. She wants me to meet her parents. Right. Well, parents makes sense. But the pay phones... her parents wouldn't be on pay phones, and not in that pattern... But I can't say no, can I? And if I say yes, does that mean we're a couple?

"C'mon. We'll get swimsuits and hit the beach. You'll love it."

"Won't they... think we're intruding?"

"Nah," she says, showing me she already has her bathing suit on under her t-shirt. "C'mon. It's not that far of a drive, is it? Three, four hours? We can do it. I haven't seen them in years, I know they'd love to see me and meet my--" She pauses. "Roomie."

Right. Roomie. The person you sleep next to naked every night. The person you... right. Roomie. Maybe this will give me a chance to figure out what the hell is in Florida. She's hiding things, and I don't like that. She wants this, she wants... me. And if she wants us to work together, this phone-calls-in-the-night shit has to stop.

----

"Isn't Florida great?" she grins, letting the wind whip her hair around. We're doing sixty-five on the freeway and we've both got flare sun glasses on and bathing suit tops, shorts and army boots. Lemon's sporting a scarf tied loosely around her neck. She was wearing a fedora until I convinced her she looked like an Indiana Jones reject of the wrong gender.

"It's fucking hot," I reply seethingly, flicking through the stations on the radio. "Fucking... sun... fucking... heat... fucking... fucking..."

"Fucking fucking?" she giggles, grinning ridiculously at me. "So besides the fucking sun, and the fucking heat, who are pretty obviously fucking each *other*, unless they're fucking fucking, how's Florida?"

I sigh, glaring at the pinkness along my skin. I look so silly when I tan. Little blotchy red spots like someone dipped me in blood. Or I am red and someone stuck me in a giant bottle of white-out. I giggle at that before I can stop myself.

She smiles, happy to see me smiling. "What?"

"Nice trees," I say, not telling her what I was really thinking of. All I need is to be mocked as "Blotcho, the Incredible White-Out Woman".

I watch the long rows of wooden livestock fencing pass by us, the car tires kicking up dirt in our aftermath. We've been driving on this dirt road for about an hour now, and there's nothing but farmland and palm trees and fields of dust out here now.

We pass one house and there's not another seen for at least five miles. She finally slows down and I take in the house to the left of us. I can't remember where the fence surrounding it started way back on the road, and I can barely see the white rancher set way back on the land, the only way to it a narrow dirt driveway where the two fences curve up into a right angle forming the barrier of the driveway.

There are horses on the right as we ride slowly up the driveway, silently, like the way chaos usually creeps up. There's a small lake surrounded by about four different kinds of trees, with geese and chickens running all over the place. The house looks like it's new, with clean, white siding. Lemonade puts the car in park in front of the house and I look around.

There's a large in-ground pool in the back, a horse stable way off on the right, a chicken house and storage house to the far left. I can vaguely see a garage somewhere behind the pool. There's a tractor sitting in a field behind the house.

The house is large; white with light green sheer curtains ruffled eloquently in the windows. There's a porch with three dogs laying around on it and a bench swing. There's a wicker furniture set to the left of the porch, the dogs and bench are on the right. Everything looks so neat and symmetrical.

The screen door is white metal, not a dent or chip in it, the screen clean and clear so I'm able to see inside a bit through the glass panes that probably slide on and off depending on whether you want to let air in or not. There's a quiet hum as I open the door, the hum of a central air conditioning unit running outside at the very left end of the porch. There's a blue skylark pulled in opposite us on the left side, facing the driveway. A little cross hangs from the mirror.

God's country, I think. That's what this is, God's country, and Lemonade is going to get us shot down by some whacko with sixty million rifles and eight hundred and forty-nine uses for each of them to a mutie's corpse.

"We asking for directions or something? Maybe we should find a gas station..."

The dogs raise their heads as Lemonade ignores me and walks up the steps to the porch. The dogs bark and she calls them by "Cody, Navy, Walt!" and the three brown/white/black beagles run to her, giving her puppy-hugs.

An old woman comes to the door and screams. She runs out of the door and hugs Lemonade tightly, almost picking her up off her feet. The woman is tall and skinny, with a definite regal look to her. She has short, gray hair, cut like Lemonade's, and a denim tank top and short set on with loafers.

"Mom!"

I stand by and watch as they hug and kiss their hellos, feeling left behind. I suddenly resent ever coming here-- why did I? To be reminded that *I* don't have a family. I don't have *this*. No, wait. Something in Florida. Sigh. Right.

"Oh, mom! This is my... roomie... err..."

"Beatrice," I say, walking over to the porch and up the steps. I shake the enthusiastic woman's hand. "Pleased to meet you, Ms...?"

"Call me 'mom'!" she says, grabbing me into a hug. I stiffen but don't pull away. "All her friends do!" she exclaims before swinging the front door open. "Come on in! Your father will be so happy to see you! And your brother's home from college for the week, wait until you see him! He's gotten so big! He was just a little tot when you left, Reilly, but he's really grown! He'll be so excited to see--"

"Reilly?" I smirk, pinching Lemonade by the back of her arm.

"Not a word," she mutters.

"He's got a girlfriend now and everything! He's really doing wonderfully, it's so nice to see both my kids alive and well! It's such a hard world out there today, I've been so worried for you both! Here, sit down!"

We sit down in a nicely decorated kitchen of light greens and lavenders, with a waxed linoleum floor I swear I can see myself in. All the appliances look new, the green counter top smooth and organized with various appliances. A ceiling fan rotates lazily overhead.

I think that this is the life I always wanted but could never have. This is the life I could be having with Nate right now, but then I remember he's gone and never coming back, and I think of what an embarrassment I must be to Reilly in her nice country home with her nice country home-maker mother, this huge frown glued onto my face as I wallow in self-pity about what could have been. Fuck. Why did she bring me here?

"So how'd you and Reilly meet?"

Lemonade stutters a little, glancing at me across the table. I'm counting the little squares inside the little rows in the design on the linoleum.

"Work related," I finally say, looking up. "We're in the same business. Co-workers."

"Oh?" she says, very interested, not that mock-interest that you get from pushy salespeople trying to find out why you want to buy the blue, cheaper cardigan instead of the red, more expensive one. "What do you two girls do? Please, tell me all about it!"

"We assassinate people for a living," I say, watching her reaction.

She pauses for a moment from her busy workings at the stove to heat up a kettle and slice cake from the bread box and stares. Then she laughs and shakes her head. "Okie-doke! I know when I'm being too nosy, heh heh! You girls can keep your privacy if you're unemployed, I'm just a nosy mom! Heh heh!"

I smile and nod, avoiding Lemonade's glare. I continue to count squares.

"So have you finished college? How's that girl of--" Lemonade shakes her head suddenly. Her mother stops, and then continues, looking hesitant. "How's that girl you were rooming with before?"

I eye Lemonade suspiciously. I was right. Poor fucking kid, I think, and I don't know if I mean Lem or the actual kid. In this business, you learn to catch slip-ups. Lemonade's aversion to her mother's initial question is a sign, blinking bright neon letters to me.

"It wasn't a girl, ma," she says, a little annoyed. "He was a guy."

"He sounded like a girl."

"Well, he wasn't, ma."

"Did he take hormones or something? He really sounded like a girl..."

"No, mom."

"Are you sure? I swear, in that picture you sent me, he looked like a girl, and he sounded like a girl on the phone! And he had a girly name! Maybe he was a bisexual!"

"That's transvestite, mom. And, no, he wasn't."

"How do you know? You didn't--?" I snicker and her mother laughs as Lemonade looks a little flustered.

"Yeah, ma, he showed me his wookie every day. Jiggled it in my face at the breakfast table if he was feeling particularly daring." Lemonade rolls her eyes, crossing one knee over the other.

"Really?" She pauses and then laughs at Lemon's obvious annoyance. "I'm just kidding, dear! Your friend thinks it's funny! Don't you, Beatrice?"

"Yes, ma'am," I snicker, prodding Lemon with a foot under the table. "I like her," I whisper, and I'm suddenly very thankful I don't have a family after all.

----

"You do realize how fucked up this is, don't you?" I shrug out of my tee-shirt and reach for the shorts and top laying on the bed next to me.

It doesn't look as if Lemon's room has been touched since the last time she lived here. The twin beds are covered with yellow comforters and ruffled bed skirts, dated teen heartthrob posters still taped to the walls. Lemonade is flopped on the other bed, clinging to some stuffed hippo and invoking the image of a sullen teenager.

"Don't you like it?"

"Yeah," I sigh. "It's great. Your house is great, your family's great, the dogs are great. It's all fucking great," I finish tiredly, flipping back the covers on the bed.

"You hate me for bringing you here," she mutters, nuzzling her face against the hippo.

"I don't hate you," I retort, and climb into the bed. It's about two inches too short for me. "Fuck. How long has it been since you've been here?"

"I left when I was fifteen," she says quietly. "I came back every once in a while, never for long. I couldn't stand it."

I snort. "Yeah, I can understand how having rich, generous, loving parents, cute dogs and a nice house with good food can get really bothersome."

"Stop it!" she screeched, beginning to throw the hippo at me and then hugging it tightly. "You almost made me hurt Flossy."

"Flossy?"

"That's her name!"

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" I sit up in bed, glaring at Lemonade. "What the hell is this? Why the fuck did you bring me here? To try and, in your own way, impress me? It's not working. We'll never be like this!" She looks hurt, and I just shake my head. "We'll never have a nice house in the country with a farm and two beautiful kids! You're a dyke, how the hell would that even work?!"

"I've got money saved up. I don't have to be a female if you--"

"Stop! Just stop!" I glare at her, my jaw locked, teeth clenched. "Are you manipulating these people, Lemonade?"

"What?!"

"Are you manipulating them? Fucking with their emotions? You tell me right now, god damnit!"

"No! No!"

"Then why are they so happy to see you after all this time? Why the fuck did you leave in the first place? What is it, this wasn't good enough for you?" There are tears running down her face now as she cuddles the little gray hippo in her arms, clenching hard enough to squeeze it to a little ball of cotton. "I bet you were even prom queen. That'd go nicely. You had everything, and you gave it up for what? For an assassin's life only to be knocked up by some vigilante for hire who gets his ass canned any--"

"I left because I was sick and tired of being shut indoors because of what people would think! I was tired of these four fucking walls!" she screams, hugging the toy to her chest as she stands. "You don't know what it was like for me, having them watching me and putting their dirty, filthy hands on me for a few fucking bucks just so I wouldn't have to wonder if someone had seen me and was going to set fire to everything my parents worked hard for! You have no fucking idea and you don't care!"

Damnit. Now I feel like shit. I sit there staring at her for a moment longer-- standing in the middle of this suburban nightmare, eyes wide, a death grip on the damned stuffed animal-- then fall back on the bed and turn away. I hear her moving around the room behind me and stare at my reflection in the mirrored closet doors until the lights go out and I hear her lay down.

----

It's quiet out here, I have to admit. Lemon gave me the cold shoulder this morning, not that I can blame her, so I did my best to make myself scarce-- which basically consisted of hijacking a lawn chair and finding a tree to park myself under that was remote enough to be out of the way, but close enough to be found in need be. I'll probably fry out here, but sunburn isn't high on my list of concerns right now.

I need to do something. Whatever this game between us is-- it needs to be dealt with. But what the hell am I supposed to tell her? That I should have been so lucky to have had the childhood that she did? That mine was probably a thousand times worse than what she could imagine? I don't think that would cut it, somehow.

Maybe I'm just allowing paranoia to get the better of me. Maybe I could deal with her persistent flirting if I wasn't already so damned sure she's keeping something from me. The phone calls, the disappearances... Nate always did that. Kept me in the dark as to what his little agenda was until I was useful, and even then, he only told me what I had to know. But Lemonade doesn't know that. Hell, she doesn't know a thing about me, when it comes right down to it.

What's that phrase... once bitten, twice shy? Enough people I was close to over the years have gotten hurt to make me realize that the world is a safer place when held at arms length. 'Run' has been my first instinct for ages now, it's ingrained in who I am. I'm doing the same here, now. For every move Lemon makes, I counter it with a shove back in the opposite direction, and twice as strong.

The sound of the screen door opening makes me look up, and my breath catches in my throat. Lemon's standing in the doorway in a pink sundress with a plate of food for me. She walks over quietly and sits it in my lap, sitting onto the porch rail. "Well," she remarks, "Won't stay warm forever."

"No, it won't;" I say, scarfing down a few strips of bacon. "I'm... sorry, about--"

"I don't care, Dom. None of it matters to me." Her eyes look cold as she stares out at the grey, cloud-less sky. "I don't care what you think of me anymore, or if you don't feel the same way. If I only get to see your face every day, even if it's scowling at me, that would be enough for me."

I don't know what to say to that. What do you say to something like that? 'Gee, that's nice, I love you, too'? I just stare at the plate, then decide to finish eating. She, or her mother, went through all this work to make breakfast for me, it'd be rude not to eat it.

"I just need you to know that I won't lie and say I'm not like all the others, that I'm different and I'll be everything you'll ever need, because that's a lie. I don't know any of that. I do know, right now, I love you, Domino-- or whatever your name really is-- and right now, I feel like I could wait as long as it takes you to acknowledge that."

I look up at her and her eyes are wide and honest. "Yeah," I say, for lack of any words. "Okay." I change convos as she picks at the grass, letting the uprooted blades fall onto my bare feet. "Your brother's a nice kid."

"He is. Top of his class," she says casually. "I envy him. He's perfect in the ways I never was."

"He doesn't have legs, Lemon."

She nods. "I know. But he never got the abuse I did. Except, once." Her eyes cloud over in remembrance, her clean fingernails digging down into the dirt. "They pushed him out of his chair, the bastards, because he wanted to play ball with them. He could keep up but they said no. They said no and pushed him over and kicked him and threw the ball at his head."

I nudge my foot against her back, trying to be comforting. I'm so fucking bad at it, and she just shrugs. "I made them pay for hurting him. I made them feel the humiliation he did, and every time I saw them after that, I made them feel so ugly and hated. Just how I felt. I made them regret hurting him." She pauses, eyes shifting. "I ran all the way home with him bleeding in my arms. Do you know what it's like to have someone so dear to you bleeding in your arms, not knowing whether they'll live long enough for you to say goodbye?"

I hesitate. "Yes."

"It never goes away, does it? The memory, I mean?"

"No," I say, and take her hand.

---

The sound of her bare feet padding around on the floor is familiar. It reminds me of home, our home, that raggedy-ass apartment I've learned to call "ours". I'd love to pretend hearing her up and about with bare feet in the middle of the night in nothing but a knee-length tee-shirt makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but it doesn't. It makes me question my sanity.

There's not total darkness in the room thanks to the Scooby-Doo nightlight near Lemonade's bed. I can see her moving around in the darkness... taking a book from the nightstand and sitting down before the nightlight. She's... reading something... Boxcar Children. The worn cover and tattered pages tell me she must have loved this book. She sits Indian-style in front of the night light, slowly reading, carefully turning every page as if they're made of fragile butterfly wings.

I wonder about that, about the butterfly wings. I've always thought of her like that. So fragile, so easily crushed. But she's got spirit. She's got a tough shell hidden beneath the exterior of fragile skin she shows off. Like a casing of bone beneath the flesh, when you hit, it's only skin deep. She doesn't inwardly scar, not like me. Her pain is always fresh and open, like a razor's cut, open and red for all to see. And when it heals, it's as if it never existed. How she does it, how she just lets it fall into the wind,I'll never know.

Maybe it's not my place to find out.

And then I think about the theory, my theory that I'm afraid to ask her about. There's a picture of a little girl on the coffee table downstairs that doesn't look like the pictures of Lemonade that are downstairs.

I wonder if the wound from parting is still red and open and fresh like all her other scars, or has she learned to falsely scab over that, too. Scab over the hole where her heart was. I know what that pain is like.

X-Force... damn, it's hard to even say it now... they were my kids. I felt like I had a purpose with them. Here? I'm just treading the damned water, trying not to drown, and not even sure if I'm succeeding.

---

When the rain comes down here, it comes down fast and hard and clear. The only breeze comes through with the rain, and everything freezes up, and life is suddenly not life anymore, but a painting made still except for the moving sheets of rain.

There's no such thing as a drizzle here.

You can hear the water falling down onto the roof, and sometimes it comes in a rhythm that you can hum along to. I watch the rain from all points possible in the house. The upstairs bathroom window, Lemonade's bedroom window, the front porch with the dogs. Eventually I retreat to the back of the house and sit into a dry lawn chair, watching the rain fall into the pool, making ripples. Edgar is out there, too, reading 'Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences'. This is the kid that resents his sister because she doesn't have to do anything with her life.

"The weather here is so... clean," I remark, tilting my head to look at him. "You study in Florida?"

"No," he says simply. "Michigan."

I nod. "Baffles me why the hell the two of you would want to leave this. It seems like the perfect life."

He sighs, closing his book and looking up at me. "Have you really looked around, Beatrice? This place stinks of normality. Hell, Michigan stinks of normality for me, but it's not the same. At least there, I don't have to look at any god damned palm trees."

"Reilly envies you. She thinks you're the one that has it good."

He grins, shaking his head, leaning back in his wheel chair. "If I were a mutant assassin, a junior in a good college with a nice apartment, wonderful girlfriend and good job would look nice to me, too. In fact, it looks nice now. I wish it were me."

I smirk. Touche, Edgar. What we see isn't always the truth.

---

The lazy morning rolls around, the sun peeking in the window, signaling for me to get my ass up and out of bed. I notice Lemonade is already gone... and so is her bag. I find this odd, but maybe she moved to the attic loft. The door is shut and locked, and I frown.

"Mom?" I say, taking two steps at a time. The car is not in the yard. "Did Le-- I mean, Reilly, go somewhere?"

Mom smiled at me and handed me a plate of cinnamon toast. "She went to go take her brother to the airport, and then to see some friends of hers, she said."

I nod. "Did she have a... a big green bag with her? Heavy bag?"

Mom nodded from the toaster oven. "Said she brought her friends' kids some late Christmas presents. Why?"

I grab the nearest car keys off the table and run up the stairs and throw some clothes on. As I load my gun I realize Mom is standing in the doorway, watching me with wide eyes. "You weren't kidding, were you, Beatrice?"

I shake my head.

"Is my baby going to be okay? Oh, please, don't tell me something bad's happened to her!"

I hug the old woman and sigh. This is bullshit. How could I not have known that Lemonade was gonna pull this? How? How?

I tear out of the driveway in Mom's pickup, using my cell phone to call our car phone. There is a click, but no answer. I can hear her breath on the line, that soft rhythm she has, and I scream at her. "Don't you dare do this to me, Lemonade! Don't you dare!"

"I have to go, Dom."

"Don't you put down that fucking phone! PLEASE! Pick up the god damn phone! REILLY!" I sob and slam my head back against the seat. She hung up. God damnit. Christ. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm mad now. Five hours ago, you couldn't tell me it would turn into this.

She made phone calls. Many. It should have seemed suspicious to me, but I didn't ask. This was probably her whole plan, her whole reason for coming to Florida. Bitch. She wrote something down this morning, an address. It was crumpled on the bathroom floor. Makes me glad I stopped to pee before I ran out after her.

The man is uncooperative, but I thought he would be. He's just leaving the scene when I come up, and thinks he can toy with me. He knows what we are to each other, knows by the desperation in my face. "I can tell you where she is... for a price..."

"You tell me where she is, you bastard, and you get to live. How's that price suit you, you monkey-suited donkey-raping shit eater?"

"You don't scare me!"

"Yeah? Maybe this will.."

"...."

"How's that feel, Junior? I got six rounds of ammo. I could take out every major organ in your body and you still wouldn't be dead."

I think it's my sex appeal and pleasant smile that makes them want to cooperate. When else do you get a beautiful girl shoving a large weapon down your throat, especially one capable of splattering someone's insides over a thirty foot radius?

1560 Renauld St, Floor 27, Suite 2. How lovely. I flick the card onto the seat beside me and hit the accelerator. She's going to get herself killed, I know it. Stupid bitch. I ignored the signs, I didn't get involved. Fuck. How could she not tell me, all this time? And the informant was a squealy little pig of a man, how could she be so sure he wasn't a set up, too? Fuck, why do I even care? Because I love her? No.... that makes no sense. I... shit.

There it is.

So what now, I think as I screech the car to a halt and run into the hotel. People turn and look, the man behind the desk is calling security. "Another one!" he says before I run into the elevator and hit 27. Dead guards are on the floor as I enter. Christ, she really did it this time. The doors to the suite are open, and she's there, standing over a man in a wheel chair.

"Glad you could join us, Ms. Domino. Lemonade and I were just getting acquainted."

"Lemon--"

"I caught him, Dom. This is the shitbag that set us up. Not much, is he? But one hell of a talker. He thinks I won't kill him."

"I don't want you," he snarls. "Either of you."

"You took me when you took Marc, you pig! How dare you--"

"You seem to be a bit confused. You kill for a living. You take lives every day. What's one measly embezzler mean to you in the grand scheme of things?"

"He was my--"

"True love? Spare me."

Lemonade is sobbing. Her arm is shaking. She is unsure, I can see it when she looks at me. "I can't do it..."

"Of course you can't," I say, pulling her into my arms and taking out my gun, aiming it at him.

"I wouldn't do that, Ms. Domino. You can kill me, that's no great feat. I'm not afraid, and since getting my revenge on your former employer, I have very little left to live for. You see, your boss set up a few bad guys some years back, but you see, they didn't believe the hostages when they said they were hostages, and instead shot them. My wife was four months pregnant at the time. So you see, I only wanted Marc. I want neither your life nor hers."

I eye him quietly. He's telling the truth. What would be the purpose of killing this man? It didn't make his life any greater to kill Marc, and it won't make me feel any better to kill him.

"Besides, Lemonade won't take the risk of my men having to take... the thing most precious to her if she kills me."

She looks up at me, then turns to him. He's smiling. So is she. It's over in a mere second.

---

It's been a long week. Lemonade isn't anymore outwardly happy now than she was before, but for her I think it's just about silencing the demons in her head. I suppose they're quiet now, but you couldn't tell from her sleep patterns.

It's 4AM and as I wake to use the bathroom I hear her sobbing. She is on her knees in front of the couch, crying like a banshee at the television.

"Lem?"

"Oh God no please I didn't want this god damn him I thought he meant you I wish he would have meant you I didn't think anyone would hurt HIM oh god shoot me shoot me Dom..."

"Lem!" I smack her gun out of her hand and shake her firmly, feeling her go limp in my arms. I look at the TV.

"...this was the scene just moments ago as police taped off this airport parking garage. Twenty two year old Edgar Leons, a student at the university of Michigan was returning home from a visit to see his parents in Florida when he was brutally murdered just a few feet from where I'm standing. His body was found bound with telephone wire and stuck to a wall, along with a note reading 'he told you'. At this time, the police do not have a suspect."

The room goes dark as the bullet hits the screen, making the TV spark and explode. I drop the gun and am reminded of butterfly wings.

*end*

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