All Good Things... (Part Two)

"I can't believe you did it again," Eddie sounded equal parts amazed and exasperated when he called me after Laura and I had gotten back to the hotel just outside of Mutant Town, "You ended up on the news again. Twice in one week."

I was seated on my bed, jacket set aside as it had been covered in Laura's blood from dragging her off. She was in the bathroom, cleaning herself up, "I didn't mean to end up on the news again. Everyone has a goddamn camera these days! This is New York! A fight like that on the street should be page three or quarter-hour news. What, was today slow or something?"

"Dude, Summers is gonna be so pissed."

"I know. He's been trying to call me," Mister Summers had sent texts that I'd muted, and left messages on my voicemail. I didn't have the heart to read or listen to any of them, "Do you think he's willing to use Cerebra to find us?"

"Maybe. I'd lean more towards him scorching your ass with detention for the rest of the semester. This better not tank our Field Day chances, Sol."

I scoffed and shot a look toward the bathroom where the shower was still running, "You're more concerned with that than Laura getting cut up like a side of beef from Mister Logan's demon seed?" Granted, she'd healed within moments, but the girl lost literal chunks off of her body during that fight, "He took Logan's eye too. Not that long ago from the looks of things. When did that happen? Laura said he was in Europe on business."

"I dunno. But you can handle it. You seem to have a decent enough track record with fucked up X-Men offspring so far."

If that was what he wanted to call it, sure. I wouldn't have, but that's just me, "Whatever. Either way, we met Dickface-."

"-I thought his name was Daken."

"I know what I said," I replied, doubling down on my statement, "We met him, it didn't go well, and now we're out of here. Laura actually packed extra clothes, so she can wear something that isn't shredded or bloody. On the flipside, I'm shit out of luck until we pass a corner store or something."

"That sucks," He didn't know quite what to say in regards to our situation, which was fine. I wouldn't have expected him to, "So... Pixie made it back to campus, just so you know."

I closed my eyes and breathed out a sigh, "Good to know," Especially seeing as how she didn't let me know that she made it back okay, the way I had asked her to. Not that I had a right to get a courtesy text after suddenly running off to New York in the first place.

"She-."

I stopped Eddie before he could carry on with whatever he had to say next, "Wingman, I don't want to know. I'll talk to her myself when I get back. Whatever you have to tell me should probably come from her anyway."

"Alright, you're the boss."

The shower had turned off a minute or so ago, which was a good enough sign to wrap the call up before it dragged for too long, "I'll see about getting out of here. With any luck, I'll see you jerks tomorrow morning, maybe."

"Just don't get on the news again. If anything else happens, Summers might slap an ankle bracelet on you."

"Later," I said, hanging up the phone as Laura walked out of the bathroom, blood-free, wound-free, looking clean and refreshed in her undergarments.

I felt my eyes go wide at the sight of her and then snap toward her travel bag where her changes of clothes were. Again, with being half-naked in front of me. Why didn't she take those in with her? Have some modesty, girl.

...I mean, I looked this time, unlike the night before. But I didn't vocally react to it. I just let her do her thing, "You okay?" I eventually asked.

"I wasn't hurt that badly," Laura assured me, facing away and wiggling into a pair of jeans. It was the hardest I'd stared at anything in days, "Daken inflicted no injuries that I couldn't heal from by the time we were away from him."

That got me to I roll my eyes and break my focus on the pretty sight before me, "That's not what I meant," Her getting hurt was hard to look at, but I'd seen her in a far worse state before, "You know that him getting Logan's eye doesn't mean anything. I'm pretty sure you and Logan have left body parts all over the world," That would explain how an organization like the Facility got the DNA to clone Laura into existence in the first place, "He's probably fine. Well, fine now."

"When we were fighting, I think I understood," Laura said. An impressive feat, given that all I'd gotten out of their tussle was that both didn't seem to have much of a problem with getting stabbed repeatedly, "Daken wants to destroy Logan."

"So why do anything to involve you?" I asked, "Last time I checked, you and Logan aren't the same person."

Laura sat down on the edge of her bed, looking down at the floor, "It doesn't surprise me. For most of my life, I have been living in Logan's shadow," She said, sounding particularly glum over this fact, "When people meet me, and learn of my origin, they expect me to look like Logan, act like Logan, fight like Logan," She punctuated this by popping the claws on one of her hands.

"That's bullshit," I said, "You're way prettier than Logan," Unsurprisingly, my attempt at a joke fell flat, "Sorry. It's just, when people around me feel like this, I feel bad. I want to make them feel better," It was the truth. I was just awful at empathizing, "...And you definitely deserve better."

Laura smiled at me, letting her claws slide back between her knuckles, "You are a good friend."

It was a nice sentiment, and I tried to be. It didn't seem like I did the best job of it, but I tried, "I feel like a terrible friend. I can't ever stop anything bad from happening to you guys," I started thinking of my various failures involving my friends and loved ones, "The Reavers kidnapped Ruth. Miss Pryde is hurtling through space somewhere. Hisako got leveraged against me by my asshole son from the future. I keep giving Mister Rasputin headaches having to clean up my messes. And poor Pix..."

"You never mentioned how that ended," Laura commented. And no, I hadn't, because it hadn't ended well.

"I told everyone I'd be a shitty boyfriend," I said, as though it had been some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. But that was just an excuse and I knew it, "I'm not-. I can't-," Words wouldn't form correctly, and I eventually gave up on trying to articulate, "Whatever. I don't think it's gonna last much longer, and if it doesn't, it's my fault."

Laura wringed her hands about in her lap, "I'm sorry. I didn't make things any easier with what happened before-."

I had to stop her right there, "No. Nothing is your fault," She was not going to apologize to me for liking me. I wasn't going to allow that miscarriage of justice, "You shouldn't worry about it. It's nothing you did. It was never about you. It's all on me."

If I were better. Funny how that always seemed to be a theme in my head whenever something went wrong. Some would say that was a beneficial way to look at things. Dr. Garrison told me that the degree I took it to was self-destructive. That I would never enjoy any of my successes if all I took the time to reflect on were my perceived failures, some of which I couldn't have prevented.

Well, I was the leader. When things went well, the credit was supposed to go to my squad – to the people around me. When things went bad, it was my fault. That extended into life affairs as well, didn't it?

Laura didn't think so, and much to my surprise, she glared at me, "Bellamy, you're a hypocrite."

I fell out of my own thoughts at Laura's declaration, "Say what?"

She didn't back down. That wasn't her nature. Instead, she doubled down on her point, "You tell me I can rely on you, that I'm not to blame for so many things I've been involved in, but you're just as harsh on yourself as you tell me not to be to myself, and you try to take so much on your shoulders alone. You should value yourself more."

This coming from a person I've seen charge into automatic gunfire and take bullets just because she knew she could heal from the wounds, "...I'm just gonna let that one slide," I mumbled to myself.

I wasn't willing to argue over the issue, but that didn't mean that Laura was finished, "You don't think you're the right person to lead the Paladins, you don't think you're good enough for a relationship with Megan," There was a slight quizzical tilt to her head, "What do you think you're good enough for?"

I never got the chance to think very hard about the question, let alone the chance to answer. Laura suddenly straightened up alertly. I'd been around her long enough to know that when she did that, shit was on.

For a moment, I feared Daken had followed us to try and get another piece of her, before she revealed more information, "Heavy footsteps are coming this way, and I hear the rattle of equipment."

Her training was much more thorough than mine, but my own still kicked in. Equipment meant weapons. Weapons meant guns. Any decent gun would shred the walls around us like paper mache.

Laura popped her claws again and huddled herself into the bathroom by the door of the room. I flipped my bed onto its side and used a finger laser to carve a hole into the wall into the next room.

She didn't ask what I was doing, or what my plan was. She didn't give any advice, or tell me her own thoughts. She had her own schemes, and trusted that I had my own, "They are setting up positions. Fifteen seconds."

My heart began pounding in my ears. With my laser hole finished, I quietly pushed the separated wall down and crawled through, "Please be empty. Please be empty," I mouthed silently to myself.

If I had been moving into a trap, Laura would have stopped me. If I were cutting into an occupied room, it would have been very awkward. The moment I shuffled through, the door was battered open and two gunmen filed inside to sweep the room, while a third checked the bathroom.

Poor bastard was doing the right thing, and got two claws right through him for his troubles. I didn't need to see it to know what Laura's snarl and the pained gasp that followed meant. A body dropped, calls went out, and gunfire started. I tiptoed my way to the door of the empty room and took a handful of deep breaths before yanking the door open. A man who had been leaning against it preparing to head in against Laura fell through onto the floor.

I shot him in the face with an explosive blast and didn't spare him a second glance, instead leaping out into the hallway. Laura had taken on the vanguard of three, while the second wave had been waiting to go in, not willing to cram ten people into a tiny hotel room. Smart. With the guy I probably killed, that left six more people, most of whom had tunnel vision on the room that was supposed to have us in it.

A combatant across the hall from the door I'd come out of saw his partner go down and lifted his weapon to shoot at me. I moved the barrel out of my way and punched him hard enough to leave his jaw hanging by a thread and the facemask he had on.

His allies heard the impact and turned to see me. I used the body of the person I'd hit as a shield, soaking up bullets while I took down anyone I could see around my new very dead friend.

A body flew out of the open door of Laura's and my hotel room, throwing off the murderous fire of my enemies. It gave me enough of an opening to snipe two in the head with explosive shots. The safety was off – I was fighting to put people down quickly, and for good.

Laura swept out of the room and diced up the nearest people she could reach with her claws. One person collapsed to the ground, clutching their throat. Another lost half of their gun and their arm up to the elbow. The third and fourth were preoccupied with avoiding the deadly blades and weren't looking my way when I blew their heads off.

The entire fight took less than two minutes, and it left the hallway looking like a scene from a slasher movie.

Laura and I stared at each other across the expanse of fallen bodies on the floor. Only one whimpering gunman was left alive, and not willing to leave well enough alone, he reached for a gun that hadn't been cut apart. Laura went to finish him off, but light blasts are faster than melee claws, and I shot him first.

She looked up at me, and I gestured with my head to our room, "Go get your stuff. We've gotta go."

Laura nodded and ran to grab her bag while I started toward the end of the hall. Outside, we could hear screaming and sirens. With a moment to stop and think, I looked down at the bodies of our dead attackers. They wore black cloaks with a large white cross emblazoned across the front. More than a few had crosses dangling from their necks.

Okay, holy warriors. Well, hopefully your little divine assassination mission was worth getting shredded and blown apart.

Laura rejoined me right around the time I started checking the stairwell. I started going downstairs when she grabbed my arm and shook my head, pointing up as an alternative. I heeded her advice, and she broke the lock at the top of the stairs to get us to the roof. Leading the way outside into daylight, she pulled back quickly at a gunshot that nearly got her.

"There is someone watching the roof," She informed me, stating the obvious. Behind the cover of the top of the stairwell, she pointed in a general direction, "Aim there. I will draw their fire."

Draw their fire? She had a lot of faith in my marksmanship. That wouldn't have been my first idea, but if that was the plan, I certainly wasn't going to let her down.

Fearlessly, she darted out from cover. I heard a shot and ignored my first instinct to check if she'd been hit or not. I saw the shooter, only using the edge of an adjacent roof for cover, and blasted him from afar. I didn't know if I hit him in the head, neck, chest/shoulder, or what. Either way, enough of him would be missing that it was a fatal wound.

Laura came over, and without prompting wrapped her arms around my neck so I could boost jump us across the street to where the shooter had been. I had gotten him right in clavicle. Not a good spot to have something explode on you. He crawled on the ground, trying to get away from us, a trail of blood from where he'd been previously perched. We could hear him choking, and just watched until he stopped crawling, then went still completely.

It was at that moment where I felt we had overstayed our welcome in New York City.

"Well, we should probably find somewhere else to stay right now. Agreed?" I offered, getting a nod from Laura, "Good. Let's, um..." I suddenly found myself staring at her chest, being that she was still in her bra. I blamed the adrenaline, "...You throw on a shirt, and I'll call a ride."

Goddamn adrenaline hormones.