Greater Than What We Suffer (Part Five)

There had been a tracker in the girl's phone that led us to the pier area, but that was as much as it had helped us, unless she was thirty yards out in the bay somewhere. Fortunately, we had something almost as good as GPS to help us out.

Logan took several noticeable sniffs of the air before turning to stare off in a certain direction, "Girl didn't go far," He said, leaning against the railing by the water. It was more of a chance to figure things out than a rest. Suggesting something like that would have been insulting to him, and it was a bright, sunny day, so I was getting a good charge just from being outside, bucket hat on my head or not.

"You can smell her?" I asked. A stupid question, seeing as how I had been around him when he had done things like that before. I dealt with people who had powers on a daily basis, "Right, nevermind. Not important. So is she still around here somewhere? Can you see her?" He didn't answer me at first, letting off a deep scowl instead, "Mister Logan?"

I hadn't pissed him off again, had I?

Fortunately, that hadn't been the case. It was more to do with our current 'mission', as it was, "Yeah, I can. But she can smell me too. She's avoiding me," Ouch. And as long as that was a thing, she could just stay away from us all day. If she was anything like Mister Logan when it came to tenacity, she wouldn't just roll over and give up, "You've gotta find her on your own instead."

I turned toward him so fast my neck cracked, "What? You want me to go alone."

It wasn't that I was necessarily afraid. It was just, well, I kept thinking about the whole 'clone of Wolverine' thing. Randomly approaching Mister Logan on a good day was a questionable decision. Going after him when you knew he was trying to stay away from you was a different level of stupid. I kept thinking that she was an exact copy of him, only a female.

"She won't stay put if she knows I'm on the way," Logan said gruffly. He didn't like putting something like this in my hands, "Just... talk to her and convince her to wait to hear from me."

The word 'convince' was far from convincing language, "And she won't do anything crazy when I bring you up?"

"No. Why?"

Self-preservation, for one thing. Because he was probably the only thing I could talk about that may have gotten her to so much as stop and listen to me, "Just making sure I don't end up in a fight. I've had enough of that lately."

Logan snickered and gave me a shove. It almost sent me stumbling out into the street, "Toughen up, buttercup," He said, "But for the sake of this, ya shouldn't wind up getting into any shit. Laura's a good girl at heart. Kid just hasn't had a whole lot of guidance."

Misguidance was just as dangerous as ill intent, sometimes.

After we went a ways down the street, Logan stopped and took several steps back, as though he were keeping out of a certain range. Once he was satisfied, he nodded to himself, "This is as far as I'm going. She'll move again if she thinks I'm getting' close to her."

So it was my turn to do my thing, "Cool, I'll just-," I stopped before I could head across the next intersection. I had forgotten something very important to the objective of finding a girl, "I have no idea what I'm looking for. What does she look like?"

"She's short; got long black hair and green eyes. If she's around a good number of people, you'll be able to pick her out of a crowd. Just look for the most uncomfortable girl in eyeshot."

That was all he had? It really wasn't much. He didn't have a picture or something? "Are you serious? That's all you've got?" Having three features to try and make out who I was after was better than nothing at least, "You know what? Fine. I'll make do. If you... smell her leave the area, I don't know, just call me or something."

Even though I did live in San Francisco, I wasn't some expert on the city, but we were in a big tourist area. If she were hiding nearby, there were a few public places to pick out before others where anyone savvy wouldn't have forced a confrontation. It was just a matter of whittling them down until I found the right one.

Logan made it easy by basically taking me to the cross-section of the street I needed, pointing me in the right direction, and saying "Two miles, that way."

As I went 'that way', it certainly narrowed down where I was going by a lot. Google Maps was useful like that. When he said two miles, I was pretty sure he meant a hard two miles. And there were only so many things that were exactly two miles away that someone would bother going that might have been able to hide them inconspicuously.

I stood out front of a downtown movie theater. It wasn't the one I usually went to, mostly because there was a better one nearby, and I lived closer to another one away from that part of the city, but it did get good business. More importantly, it was the most notable place that was almost smack dab two miles from where Logan shooed me away.

In other words, not a bad place to start. Dropping $12 for a movie I wasn't going to see just to get inside sucked, but what else could I do? Sneaking into places wasn't really my forte. Once I was in though, I could go where I wanted. They really only had ushers around during busy times, so there weren't people watching the doors to every theater. You just had to be careful to not make it obvious you were going from place-to-place. I snuck between a lot of movies for the price of one ticket like that when I was younger.

"If I were trying to hide from someone like me or Mister Logan, which movie would I go see?" As though it really mattered. There were nine theaters.

And that was how I began searching. It wasn't so bad. Eventually, I stumbled into a random money grab action flick. Why not? Everyone loved a good, mindless, ass-kicking movie.

In theaters where the movie had started already, it was dark enough where no one would notice a guy like me slipping in and going up and down the stairs – other than a little disturbance when I went past them, and with the light from the screen, I could see enough to make out features on people, only seeing as how the features Logan gave me to use could have belonged to any random girl walking down the street, it didn't do me a lot of good.

What did do me a lot of good was picking up on the fact that while I was scanning the moviegoers, one of them was staring right at me, not bothering to so much as blink. Not in a, 'Sit down, asshole. You're interrupting the movie,' kind of way. More like an, 'Oh gosh, I really hope you're not here looking for me,' kind of way.

Well, I was there already. After all, with the effort she had gone through to hide in plain sight, she wouldn't just up and stab me, right?

...Right?

I got to her aisle and started moving her way through the seats. The closer I got, the more she seemed to tense up. I just had to remember to stay calm. She was freaked out and she had Wolverine's powers, so she could probably smell fear or something, and that would just make her more scared, and by the time I got within arms' reach she would come out swinging and I would lose an eye or an arm.

I held my hands in plain sight, palms forward as if to show her that I wasn't there to do any harm. As dumb as it might have been, I sat down next to her, as though it was where I was supposed to be. I was wide open. She could have taken me out in a heartbeat if she'd wanted to.

It was my way of extending an olive branch.

"Is your name Laura?" I asked, whispering as softly as I could. The girl hesitated at first, but nodded one time, sharply, "Hi. Nice to meet you. I'm Bellamy, from the Xavier Institute," I stopped short of offering my hand to shake. There was still a chance I would lose it.

Laura continued to eye me warily, sizing me up. People did that a lot. I must not have cut a very impressive figure, in addition to often making shitty first impressions, "I do not remember seeing you," She eventually said. She was willing to speak to me, which was a good start, "I spent a bit of time there, not too long ago."

I shrugged where I sat in my chair, starting to get comfortable. Laura didn't seem to be the aggressive sort at all, which was weird, given the expectations I had built up for her in my mind, "I don't remember seeing you either, unless you've been gone for the last few months, because that's when I started there."

She seemed to shrink down in the jacket she wore. It wasn't just that she lacked the outward aggression of Wolverine. It was like she lacked confidence.

This did not compute. Then again, it let me understand the spooked deer comparison Mister Logan gave me when he was telling me about her.

If I had to use a word to describe her best from just meeting her the first time, it would have been 'timid'.

"Why did you look so freaked out when you saw me?" I asked her. There were much better places to have a conversation than a movie theater where you were supposed to be quiet.

"You smelled faintly of Logan," She said, a slight wrinkle to her nose, "I could tell he was nearby, but I was more concerned with finding an overwhelming scent from a distance that the minuscule scent on you went unnoticed over the... powerful odors of the theater. A tactical error, perhaps."

I was slightly put out at being identified because the person I had come to see had a bloodhound's sense of smell, "He grabbed me once like five hours ago. It was the only time he touched me. How strong is your nose to-?" Nope. Focus. No getting sidetracked with how everyone's weird-ass powers worked. I had enough trouble figuring out my own, "Ugh, not important. Anyway, sorry to spook ya, but he asked me to come get you because he figured you were trying to avoid him."

Laura stared at me to the point where it got unnerving. If ever a girl could deadpan without being sarcastic about it... "I told him directly over the phone that I did not wish to see him at this time," And then she apparently threw the phone into the water, which should have sent as clear a message as possible.

It was more than likely that she had a point, but in my very limited experience, you wanted someone watching your back when you could get it, "You're probably better off than I would be in your shoes, but the guy is worried about you."

At that, she sank farther back into the cushy chair behind her, "He has no need to be. He is not responsible for me," She mumbled, mostly to herself.

I just shrugged, whether or not she could see it, "Look, I know about... you. Kind of," She noticeably stiffened once I said that, and it only got worse when I went into the little details I had, "You're a black ops badass that's been doing nasty stuff since before I could probably tie my shoes."

*SNIKT!*

I heard a wet popping, slicing noise and looked down to see the tips of her claws poking out of the skin between her knuckles. The light from the screen glinted off of the metal, "You should not know about any of that," She said gravely.

Oh God. After all I had been through, I was going to die on the down-low like this? I was going to get stabbed and bleed out in a dark theater, all alone. And my blood still probably wouldn't have been the grossest thing to get on any of the seats in there.

I tried to keep my cool. After all, fake it 'til you make it. And she was supposed to be level-headed, according to Wolverine, "I don't know much, just the cliffnotes," I said, coolly, "If you don't want to talk about it, it's not any of my business. But it should be someone's besides yours. Logan wants to make it his," How rough must her life really have been if she could go from zero to one-hundred like that? "I don't know what's eating you, but it's got to suck trying to go all lone wolf."

She let out a sigh and turned away from me, giving me more of her shoulder and back than her face, "Have you ever felt as though you were a danger to the people around you, Bellamy?" She asked me, "It is too dangerous at the school. Not for me, but for you, and others. Because of me."

Because of me.

The frown that came to my lips felt heavy. I had been frowning a lot lately, I noticed. Even so, she had asked me a question, and I didn't have a problem answering, "No, I haven't felt that way. And I don't know why you think the way you do. But I have felt like I can't protect the people around me," I revealed to her, "All my best laid plans. Every half-baked little drabble I could come up with, and I still couldn't do what I needed. And people died. Others got hurt. And everybody's scared," My eyes drifted away from her back to the movie, "…This was all a week ago, by the way."

She turned a bit back towards me. Perhaps a little interest, maybe? "But I thought you said that you were a student at the Xavier Institute?"

I let out a laugh. There was no heart or soul to it, "All of this happened at the Xavier Institute," Under the watch of people better than us. Smarter than us. More experienced than us. I shook it off. I didn't want to think about that, "But my sob story is a total drop in the bucket compared to yours from the little bit I got, so I'll just leave it at that," Thankfully, she seemed to let it go pretty quickly, "All I'm saying is, just because you don't think you're good enough for something, doesn't mean you can't have it. Do you want to try and be a student?"

Logan was a pretty demanding guy, but I don't think he would have dragged her to the school against her will, even if they did have the connection that they shared. I don't think anyone was forced to attend the Institute... as far as I knew, anyway.

"I do not know what I want," Laura said, not so much as wincing or reacting to any of the action happening on the screen, "I only know that I do not want to be hunted. I do not want to kill anyone that I shouldn't."

I was wary of this girl, but if she didn't have any bad intentions, there wasn't any reason not to reach out, "Look, you are probably not the most dangerous thing any of us are going to deal with in that place. You probably won't be the most dangerous thing we have to deal with there this week," As much as I was joking, it wasn't really a joke. I was starting to think gathering all of the most impressionable young mutants around in one big old place had both huge positives and negatives.

Laura's sense of humor was lacking though. Either that, or I just wasn't funny, "You do not understand," She said, and for a moment I thought I had blown it, "...But Logan may. I will talk to him."

I nodded, satisfied. That was a huge weight off of my shoulders. I didn't have any other way to get her to go other than trying to convince her, and I didn't really want to return empty-handed, "So... do you actually want to watch this or...?"

Great. Way to make everything awkward again, Bel. Laura didn't answer, instead looking at me like I was some kind of idiot. She might not have been too far off of the mark.

"You know what? Let's just finish the movie," I proposed, "Then we can deal with Mister Logan."

Great. She agreed to that much.