With Friends Like These (Part Four)

It never occurred to me how weird it would be for my family to realize that because of my powers, I was now an insomniac. I had left pretty quickly after my powers manifested, so they didn't have to ever deal directly with their son's mutant growing pains. It had never come up in all of my weekly briefings when I called home, or when they called me. Even when I went home, I didn't tell them about it. I just stayed up way later than everyone else as if it were normal.

There wasn't anything I could do but sit up and watch TV and movies, so I sat back and binged shows on Netflix until I got bored enough to do something else. I relaxed with a little notepad and pen in my hands, jotting something down whenever the moment took me. There was no reason not to do something productive while I was doing nothing.

I never heard Laura coming, but at least she had the courtesy to enter the room from the other side where I could see her, clad in the tasteful nightwear of a t-shirt and little black shorts. She forewent coming in by way that would have put her behind me. It wasn't as scary the way she actually chose to do it, and it was late, so her being deathly quiet could be forgiven.

I raised my head at her in acknowledgment, not wanting to start a conversation just to get glared at the whole time. To my surprise, she spoke to me first, "What are you doing?" She asked.

It caught me off-guard, but it wasn't unwelcome. I held up the notepad with things I'd scribbled on it in the meantime, "Coming up with a list of stuff for all of us to do before the end of the break," I told her before taking a look at the clock, "Why are you even still up? It's like three in the morning."

She didn't answer. She just stood at the entrance, looking around at anything other than me. This was starting to get old.

"Are you still not talking to me?" I asked rhetorically, knowing that if she wasn't I wouldn't get an answer anyway, "Hey, I'm sorry, okay? I should have said something before I left the party in the middle of it. I left you dangling in the wind, almost by yourself. I apologize."

Laura looked at me strangely, shaking her head, "That is not why I am upset with you."

Really? Because it had been the reason I'd been banking on since I realized there was a problem. It had started after the party, so I figured it was something I had done during the party, "Why are you mad at me then?" She clammed up and went silent again, "...Laura, I can't fix the problem if I don't know what the problem is."

"I do not wish to discuss this with you."

As if I had expected any other answer. I swung my legs over to sit up properly and free a spot for her, "Come here, sit down," I asked, patting a spot next to me on the couch. She walked over hesitantly and sat down, "I don't know what I can do to actually get you to trust me."

Instead of looking down at the floor like she had been, she looked up at my face without glaring for the first time in days, "I do trust you."

It was a nice thought to consider. Too bad it wasn't true, "No, you don't. Not really," I said with a stiff smile, "It's okay though. It's not like I've given you a lot of reasons to."

It was understandable. With everyone else on the Paladins, we had all been through some kind of mess and got closer that way. Laura hadn't had the team mandated brush with death the rest of us had, even if she'd had plenty by herself.

She could be told by Mister Logan to rely on me until he went blue in the face. For someone like her, who had been through the things she'd been through, she needed an actual reason to put herself out there like that.

Laura, pulled her knees up to her chest, feet on the couch, "I am sorry."

We didn't need all of that. Giving me mean looks and whatnot was no reason to apologize to me. Better to save it for real stuff to be sorry about, so then it would mean more, "Don't be sorry. You're supposed to be mad at me, remember?" I reminded her.

"I do not know what is upsetting me," She said, getting back to the main point I'd been trying to speak to her about, "I cannot think of anything you could have done to originally offend me."

So she was mad for the sake of being mad? That didn't sound right. I couldn't tell if she was lying or not, but the way her brow furrowed in thought at the situation, it seemed she didn't have much a better idea as to what had been eating her as I did, "Are you mad right now?"

"…No."

True enough, she seemed much mellower than she had been at school, or on the Blackbird. And if that was the case, I might as well have tried to get a little more out of our talk, "Well, next time you are, could you tell me? That way I have a fighting chance at figuring out why."

It sounded like an agreeable enough request to Laura, "I can do that," She said before she seemed to sink further into the couch, "...Your mother is afraid of me. I do not think she likes me."

Just like Wolf said about my mom earlier. I felt bad, but it was nothing that couldn't be fixed with time. I was sure of it, "Popping your claws might have just spooked her. We can handle that. And you still haven't met my dad yet. Don't worry about it so much. It's just the first day."