Chapter 3
“You good?”
She’s staring at her reflection in the black screen. The orange light of the setting sun looks harsh in contrast to the deep gray clouds that linger on the horizon. Bellona looks over her shoulder. Daken stands in the doorway.
“Yeah,” she says after a moment. “Yeah, I’m fine.” The remote is sitting beside her. She picks it up and turns the T.V. back on, watching as her dark reflection disappears into a flash of moving colors.
“Okay.” He leaves his boots by the door, then walks closer to set his keys and phone on the end table. He starts to turn down the hallway, but then stops. “Are you sure?”
She bites down on her bottom lip until the metallic taste of blood touches the tip of her tongue. She grips the edge of the cushion.
“Yeah.”
She feels the tension in the room and the doubt in his presence. She watches the screen, but she can feel him watching her.
He clears his throat. “Good. Well, I’m gonna take a shower. Today was… eventful, and I reak of sweat, dirt, and blood.” He pauses. “Just… keep making yourself comfortable. I won’t be long.”
“Yeah,” she whispers, and then her breath hitches.
If Daken knows anything, and she’s sure he does, he’s decided to let her process it on her own. And she’s grateful. She strains to keep her face frozen still, and it’s a struggle to allow the tears to fall in a such a way that wouldn’t bother anything else about her. She feels them rolling hot down her face, dripping off her chin. She holds her breath to keep it from getting wildly out of control. She bites her lip to keep it still and she doesn’t blink. She sits frozen for the ten or fifteen minutes that Daken is gone. When he comes back, she breathes.
“So,” he says, and she turns to look at him. “You’re getting settled in now. It’s been over a week. We need to start thinking about how to proceed.”
Bellona sighs. She stands up and wipes both hands over her face before she turns in his direction. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s talk.”
“We can’t stay here forever,” he begins. She walks into the kitchen. He’s leaned back against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest. Bellona sits at the table, turned so she can see him. “I can’t be here forever,” he continues. “And you can’t either. It’s risky leaving you alone, too. I can keep watch while I’m here, but I’m all over the place with these missions and there’s no way for me to guarantee anything without being pretty close.”
She knows he can’t control everything, but he’s been so confident about all of this. Hearing him voice his own semi-defeat is unnerving to her. The idea of even more changes seems exhausting too. Her whole life has been one great escape scheme. For once, it would be nice to be still.
“So what do you suggest I do? Where do you suggest I go?”
He stands up straighter and starts to walk towards her. “Well, we have several options. I’m sure you know about all the varieties of schools you could pick from.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not a mutant.”
“Fair.” He pulls out the chair beside her and sits. “So that narrows it down some. That leaves us with maybe two more reasonable choices.” He waits a beat before he continues and it makes her feel uneasy. “You could,” he says slowly, “find some sort of temporary housing. We could find a family that we know could take you in. Or,” he looks at her. “You could come to Krakoa.”
For Bellona, the idea of Krakoa seems to be the most logical choice. She’ll be out of New York and, as far as she knows, she’d be away from S.H.I.E.L.D. She’ll be safe from any ongoing Weapon X related projects. She’ll be close by Daken. She could get new training. Have a new beginning. Start a new life with a fair chance. She could see Gabby.
“What family were you thinking about?”
It seems to catch him off guard. “Well, this is gonna require you to have somewhat of an open mind.”
“I can’t open my mind if I don’t know what’s going on.”
His eyes linger for a moment. To Bellona, it feels like he’s reading her. He’s deciding for himself if he needs to expand more. She sits back against her chair and folds her arms across her chest. She stares back at him.
“The Kinneys.”
~~~
The subway stops and she looks up at him. It's a wordless conversation that they have. She lifts her brows in a hopeful question and he gives a subtle shake of his head. She frowns, and lowers her gaze.
The bus station is filthy. The grime is evident on the floor and it’s decorated with trash. The only people getting off are those in business suits, designer handbags, and earned eye bags. The ones getting on are far more suspicious. Some are night shift workers. She sees a few nurses and some men who look like factory employees. The rest makes her uneasy.
“Stop that,” he says. She cuts her eyes to his. “Keep your head down. It’s like you want to get caught.”
She sighs, but tilts her chin back down. The hood that covers her hair falls forward, and she isn’t sure how wearing it wouldn’t draw more attention than not wearing it at all.
“Pretty sure no one from S.H.E.I.L.D. is gonna be here at this time of night.”
“Shh.”
She sighs again and rolls her eyes. She knows he won’t see it, but she hopes that he can somehow feel it. The bus doors squeak closed, and the engine groans as it rolls forward.
“How much longer?” she asks, this time making an intentional effort to not look up. “We’ve been here for, like, an hour.”
“First of all,” he says. “It’s been half an hour. Second, we’ll catch the next one. I don’t want anyone to see us. This’ll give all the other people time to be well ahead of us without the new people coming in being suspicious.”
Bellona frowns. She nudges the toe of her shoe against the chipped paint on the concrete.
“Can you tell me where we’re going again?” she asks.
She feels his gaze on her, so she raises hers to meet his.
“Gotta make a stop,” he says after a moment. “You’ll see.”
The only reason he’s not saying it is because she didn’t react very well when they first discussed it a few nights ago. And it’s not that she has anything against his plan, not entirely, it’s only that she wasn’t expecting anything like this so soon.
He mentioned it at the last minute, when he told her to start getting ready.
“I gotta run into the city and I think you’d enjoy getting out of the apartment. It’ll be late, so we should be fine, but we’ll be careful just in case.” He had just come in from his most recent mission, and he set a bag down on the countertop. “These should fit you fine,” he said, referencing the clothes inside.
Bellona was quick to change because the thought of getting to explore the real world sounded amazing. It was something she never truly got to do before, not if I didn’t mean completing a job or a mission. She was always given the dirty work, too. Pulling all the triggers so no one else had to.
She changed with haste, quick to discard the same outfit she’d been wearing, eager to feel like someone new. The clothes inside weren’t even anything that she would consider extremely nice, but they were entirely new to her. As minuscule of a thing as it was, this outfit made her feel real. When she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she passed by, she almost smiled.
“These fit just about perfectly,” she told him when she came back into the kitchen. “How did you know what size?”
Daken smirked. It was the same kind of look he always gave, but this time there was a spark of something in his eyes.
“Pretty easy,” he said. “It’s like shopping for Barbie at the Mattel factory.”
Despite his enthusiasm, Bellona frowned. She glanced down at herself.
“What… do you mean?”
And then he seemed cautious. His eyes locked on hers and there was a brief moment of confusion that passed through the room.
“I mean,” he said slowly, “that they’re Laura’s, so I would hope that they would fit.”
“Because I’m her clone?”
This time he frowned. “You would be a similar build,” he said flatly. “That’s how genetics work, kid. Even in normal families. Besides, it’s gonna be a little like a camouflage because-“
“Why do I need her clothes, anyways?” Bellona asked. “I have her face. I have her training. I have her claws, thanks to her handlers, and I have her incomplete missions. I have a shit ton of her conditioning. I have a lot of hers, so why her clothes? Of all the people, why her?”
Her eyes stung.
Daken was quiet for a few moments, only looking her over intensely. It was as if he was searching out the words to say, or maybe just looking at the warning signs.
“-because wearing her clothes would mask your scent.”
“What?”
He finally broke his gaze.
“Your scent,” he said again. “I don’t know who all might be trying to track you down right now, and trust me, there are people who will be looking. Like it or not, you’re a clone and you do have a lot of hers. Let’s use it to our advantage to keep you safe.”
And it made perfect sense. She wouldn’t have even thought of it, having a scent that could be mistaken for someone else, because she didn’t have that gift anymore than she couldn’t heal. Daken knew though. She should have trusted him. She shouldn’t have asked.
“Oh,” she said, because she couldn’t say anything else, not anything that would make any of it better.
The conversation ended and she sat in the kitchen while Daken got ready.
Now, waiting for the bus, she tilts her head to one side and asks, “Do I have to wait and see? Can’t you just tell me?”
Part of it is out of curiosity, but a bigger part is stemmed from suspicion. She never goes on a mission blindly, and for good reason too. It’s how she got caught this last time, by having too much faith in the ones who should’ve been in control. The ones who should’ve taken care of her.
“If I tell you and you bolt, I’m not chasing after you.”
A wave of hesitance washes over her. “I won’t bolt,” she says, but she knows that he knows it’s only a half-truth.
In the distance, a bus begins to slow. She’s relieved when Daken motions for her to follow, and they join a small crowd that’s gathering to board. She feels her stomach twist into knots.
“We’re just going to another part of the city,” he says. She feels his grip on the upper part of her arm.
“What part?”
“You ever been to Central Park?”
She crinkles her nose at the thought. “I’m pretty sure my life's mission has been to kill people who go to Central Park.”
“Great. Then you know where it is.”
The bus stops and the doors groan as they open. She doesn’t really have to move herself, because the small crowd pushing them forward seems to carry her. She feels his grip tighten.
“So you’re dropping me off somewhere unspecific even though I specifically said I didn’t want to?”
She looks over her shoulder to talk loud enough for him to hear, but quiet enough to not be heard by the strangers around them.
“Not quite.”
They walk until he indicates with a light tug for her to stop. They sit halfway back, right in the middle. Bellona’s by the window and Daken sits in the middle. The way they look right now, she knows no one will want to take the aisle seat.
“Then what?”
“I need to swing by The Treehouse. That’s all. I just thought you’d want to tag along.”
The bus lurches forward and she braces herself by pressing one hand firmly against the seat in front of her. She gives him a hard look.
“The Treehouse, like X-Men headquarters?”
He doesn’t return her gaze.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s the place.”
“The same X-Men that X-23 works for?”
This time he looks at her.
“Laura,” he says firmly. “The same X-Men that Laura works for.”
His face is painted in stripes as they pass rows of street lights. Other than the brief illumination from them, it’s entirely dark here. It makes his expression seem more solemn than she imagines it really is.
“I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to see any ‘Kinneys’.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
And Bellona gives up with a sigh. She sinks down on the cushion and presses her knees against the back of the seat in front of her. She folds her arms over her middle and rests her face against the cool window. There’s no point in arguing, and she doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. She owes him her freedom right now. It was she who sought him out, even if her judgment had been off.
Off, or maybe just tilted. It took some time for her to think about this. He was the only consistent part of her plan from the start, and it started quite some time ago, well before her mission with Kimura came to an unexpected end. The first time she had planned to escape was some years ago, not long after that night in the room at Alchemax.
“Did you know that Weapon X has a son?”
At the facility, they weren’t allowed to call him Logan or Wolverine the same way Laura couldn’t be called anything other than X-23. It kept them in line, the trainers would say. It made them remember what the ultimate mission was.
That particular day, Zelda had sprung the question on Bellona while they were warming up for training.
“That’s fucking bullshit,” Bellona said. “No he doesn’t. You’re delusional.”
But Zelda insisted, “He really does. I saw him.”
Bellona looked around to make sure they weren’t too close to any of the handlers before she stepped closer. “Saw him where?” she asked. “Like, here?”
“No,” Zelda shook her her. “On T.V. On the news.”
But Bellona was doubtful. Their whole existence was rooted in not having a perfect clone. If Weapon X had a son, what use would any of them be? What use would X-23 be?
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because.”
One of the handlers blew a whistle. The two joined the other group of girls, and all of them looked alike in an eerie sort of way. They lined up on the grass in pairs.
“Because why?”
Another whistle blew and they all started a steady jog. Bellona remembers the weather that day was gray and dreary, as it always seemed to be. It smelt faintly like rain. She always enjoyed that much because it gave her the opportunity to pretend like it meant anything to be able to sense it, even though the other humans could too.
“Because he had the claws.” To demonstrate, Zelda held up a fist. With her opposite hand, she mimed claws being extracted from her skin.
Bellona frowned. “So does Sabretooth,” she pointed out. “And Wild Child. Romulus has claws too.”
“These weren’t claws like that though, these were claws like Weapon X because he had to pop them out. He had two right here,” she gestured to her knuckles. “And one down here.” She turned her arm over and pointed to the underside of her wrist. “He had a mohawk and a tattoo, I saw them.”
“You’re full of shit, Zelda. We would know if Weapon X had a son.”
Bellona didn’t want to believe it until she saw it herself. The overwhelming fear of being replaced already lived in her comfortably, intertwining around her bones like vines on a tree. The last thing she needed was to know that her existence had been nearly meaningless, in almost every way too.
“Well what was he doing?”
Zelda smirked. “Fighting. Looked like the good guys he was fighting too.” Zelda seemed as confident as ever. Bellona still doubted. “He was fighting some good guys in one clip, but he was kind of fighting the bad guys too. Kinda looked like he was just there for the chaos.”
She wondered why she hadn’t ever heard of him. If he was making it on the news, then he had to be noticed by someone. Alchemax kept a close eye on anything going on in the mutant community, but especially anything involving Wolverine. They knew him, all of his names, they knew his whereabouts. They knew his friends, his teammates, if he was seeing anyone. They kept tabs on Laura in the same manner. Bellona knew who Gambit was just from the murmurings that floated down the halls amongst the handlers. She knew about a group of de-aged X-Men that had come back. She knew a lot, and she didn’t even have to try. The information just filtered in through the cracks and seams of the building.
She pumped her arms by her side and timed her breathing with her pace. Zelda made an effort to not outrun her and Bellona made the same effort too. Some of the other clones sped up and slowed down. At this point, Gabby had training somewhere else. There were only two other younger girls, and Alchemax had been experimenting with some new techniques. New manifestations, they had called it. Ever since they implemented it, Zelda and Bellona had agreed they’d all stick together as close as possible, when possible.
“Do you think he ever went through this shit?” Bellona asked. Despite the cool air, she could feel strands of loose hair sticking to her face with sweat. Her shirt begin to feel damp.
“I don’t know,” Zelda said. She was breathing heavier. “I guess it wouldn’t be a far fetched idea. I mean, I didn’t see him with Weapon X, and I feel like if they had any dynamic duo situation going on, they would probably be together.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right.”
The idea started then. It was initially a brief fantasy, something that got her through the ten mile run that day. The idea of leaving, something she and Zelda had discussed at great lengths, could be a real possibility. They could take Gabby. Maybe some of the others. They only needed to know how to reach him.
Hours later, she was still thinking about it.
“So what’s his name?”
The lights had been turned out, but all three had a tendency to stay up late.
“What’s whose name?” Gabby asked.
At the time, she was only ten. Bellona found herself studying their youngest more and more at the end of the long days. She looked for bruises and cuts. She looked for signs of fatigue or worry in her small, young face. So far, by some miracle, she seemed relatively unscathed.
“No one, love,” she said. And then she looked at Zelda.
Zelda, weary of Gabby listening, twisted her mouth into a pout and shrugged. “Didn’t catch it,” she said. “And I wouldn’t even know how to find out.”
Bellona sighed. She laid back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. There were no shadows that danced across the ceiling or shimmied along the walls. No cars passed by and there were no animals to chatter beyond the windows. Even their room looked more like a holding cell than a place for rest and relaxation. Of the three beds that were placed inside, all three girls slept in one. It didn’t matter how much they grew, they always found a way. They always would too.
“Don’t worry,” Bellona whispered. “I’ll find out everything.”
When the bus stops again, the overhead light turns on. Bellona squints against it, sitting up to look around.
“Ah-” Daken says. “Don’t let anyone see you.”
She scowls. “I was just checking,” she says, but she turns back around and readjusts her hood. “Is it gonna be much longer?”
“It’s New York,” he says. “It’s never long.”
By sound alone, it seems as though there are a few passengers that get on. Bellona listens to the sounds of their shuffling feet as they find a place to sit. There are low murmurs of conversation, but at this hour it’s hardly anything to worry about.
“I hope you’re right,” she says.
The door shuts and the bus groans as it pushes itself forward. After a moment, the light shuts back off.
They ride the length of one block before she tilts her face to look up at him. At first he doesn’t seem to notice, but then he looks down.
“Need something?”
“Is there another reason you wanted me to come with you?”
Daken sighs gently, then slides down a little in his own seat. He rolls his head to the side to look at her. “Do you want there to be another reason?”
“Well no, but I-”
The worst part of Alchemax wasn’t even the abuse that they named conditioning. It wasn’t the lifeless walls and colorless theme. It wasn’t even the lack of nutrition or sleep or the forbidding of any kind of genuine connections. It was the sense of being entirely replaceable. Bellona had always felt it, but it peaked when she learned of his existence.
“You’re coming back with me too,” he says. For a brief moment, she wonders if he’s able to read her thoughts. “I’m not going to leave you.”
It’s reassuring. He seems to have a way of being convincing. She almost leans to the side to rest her head against his shoulder, but an unseen force stops before she does anything too obvious. Something deep inside her core reminds her not to trust anyone, including him. Especially him. This was just an escape plan, after all. After years of research on who he was, it only made sense that it would be him. She couldn’t track down X-23, not after what she did. She reminds herself over and over, this is all this is. She just needs to get somewhere safe, somewhere she can get Gabby back. After that, she isn’t sure, but they’ll figure it out. They always have.
~~~
That sense of being replaced, it reared its head again when Daken said it before they left for the bus station.
“The Kinneys.”
And Bellona couldn’t think of any words in any language that she knew to accurately express how badly she didn’t want to be anywhere near any blood born Kinney, not the ones connected to Dr. Sarah Kinney. Not the ones connected to Laura Kinney.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
He didn’t really seem alarmed, but she’s sure she saw his jaw clench for a brief moment. It could’ve been from anger, maybe mild surprise, or possibly just disappointment. Bellona reiterated her sentiment again.
“Absolutely not,” she said, and she pushed her chair back from the table to stand. Daken stayed sitting. “I’m not a doll that you can just put in an empty room to fill a missing piece, you know.”
She turned away and walked to the other side of the kitchen, running her hands back through her hair. It had been a long day. A long, dreary day, and he wasn’t there for any of it. She was there, and she was alone. Still alone. Always alone. It wasn’t something that bothered her constantly, but whenever there was a spark of it, it always seemed to explode.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “I meant that if you wanted a chance at-”
She turned around.
“If you’re seriously about to tell me you want me to have a chance at a normal life, I’m just gonna go turn myself in now. If you really, genuinely think that for one fucking second I’ll ever be able to-“
“-if you’ll let me finish,” he said. His voice was low, but his tone was sharp. “I was going to say that if you wanted a chance at being able to breathe for another week or two, you could stay with Debbie and Megan while I make more permanent arrangements on Krakoa.”
She froze. Some of it was because she couldn’t believe she was wrong, and some of it was because that almost didn’t seem like a horrible idea. Not the worst, anyways. Not like what she thought.
“On what planet would that work out?”
Daken sighed as he stood up. “It’ll work out fine. It’s not a matter of that, it’s a matter of what you’re okay with. If you want to stick with me, we can make that work too. You’re just gonna have to get comfortable with being extremely flexible for a little bit of time.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the counter. Daken kept a respectful distance. She worked the idea over in her head a few times, considering both situations and how they’d work out. She considered the odds of being able to form her own back up plan if things started to feel uncomfortable.
It would certainly be easier to sneak off from Debbie and Megan. She knows they’re also human and they likely don’t have the advanced training that she does. She could leave in the night if she needed to, and by the time they’d noticed she would already be long gone. On the contrary, leaving Krakoa would be far more challenging. It would also be more permanent.
“How would me living on Krakoa work? Would I still be hiding from S.H.E.I.L.D.?”
She feels her stomach roll into knots as she watches him gather his thoughts.
“So that’s gonna be the hang up,” he says. “The good news is there are mutants of all backgrounds living there. Like I said before, it’s a safe space for now. Land of second chances and all that bullshit. I’m thinking we can get around S.H.E.I.L.D. I’m just gonna have to talk to the right people.”
The right people, she thinks, would probably be the people she doesn’t want to talk to right now. It’ll be the people she wants to avoid the most.
“Who would be in charge of that?”
“We have a council.”
Bellona scoffs. “Wow, so organized. How lovely.”
Daken raises an eyebrow. “So Debbie and Megan, then?”
“Who’s on this council?”
“No one with claws was interested in sitting at a round table discussing politics all day.”
She chews on her thumbnail for a moment while she thinks. From the start, her problem hasn't ever been things not going according to her plan, only that she didn’t actually have a plan. Things do seem to always work out though. She has a remarkable way of lucking up.
She looks at him. “What are the odds, and I mean real odds, of the council approving?”
He walks to the refrigerator. “Odds are pretty high,” he says as he begins pulling out an assortment of unprepared ingredients. “I think you’re not understanding that part. It’s not gonna be a problem.” He sets everything down on the counter beside the stove, then opens up a lower cabinet to grab a pan. “The only foreseeable problem will be making sure you don’t get caught before we get you on the island.”
She walks over to the opposite side of him and watches as he starts to separate everything into categories.
“That’s a risk I think I’m willing to take,” she says.
He smiles when he looks at her. “Then we have one less mountain to climb.”
He takes several uncut vegetables to the sink and rinses them off. Bellona watches for a moment before she says, “Do you need me to help?”
He looks over his shoulder. “With what?” He asks. “Cooking?”
“Yes.”
He turns back around and places the vegetables on a cutting board.
“I’ll tell you what I tell Laura and Gabby when they ask to help.”
She perks up a little. “Okay.”
“Absolutely not.”
~~~
The bus moves along and Bellona starts to feel nervous as the blocks pass them by. She hopes that by some miracle X-23 just won’t be at The Treehouse at all. She prays that none of the X-Men will be there. Maybe they’ll be tied up finishing some mission, or maybe they’ll get a last minute call that they won’t be able to ignore.
The night they discussed her options, Daken had told her that bringing X-23 into it was going to be inevitable. According to him, she would play a crucial part in winning the council's opinion.
“She’s the reason I’m there,” he had said after they were already eating the meal he had cooked - with no help of hers, at his firm request. “She proved them all wrong herself when she first went to the school, and she helped convince them to let me on board too. I would have anyways, they let anybody on the island, but getting to be on a team and all was because of Laura telling them I was ready for it.”
Bellona made a face. “It doesn’t bother you that she had to be your mouthpiece? Didn’t you want your actions to speak for themselves instead of having someone vouch for you?” Something about his demeanor didn’t strike her as someone who favored networking and spokespeople.
Daken simply shrugged. “If it was anyone else it would have bothered me. But it was Laura, so it was fine. Honestly I didn’t really want to go to Krakoa. She convinced me first, and then she convinced whoever she needed to. That’s why I need her help. She’s better with all that ass kissing. Or maybe they just like her.”
Whenever he talked about X-23, the few times he had, Bellona could feel a subtle shift of energy. He certainly seemed partial to her. She didn’t know how it made her feel. She didn’t even know if she should be feeling anything. That first week Daken had asked what crime she committed, and she told him briefly but she didn’t mention the details. Bellona started to wonder if he would be willing to help her if he knew what it was she had done. She wondered if there was a chance Laura would tell him.
“Do you think she’ll be willing to do the same for me?” She had asked.
Daken stood from the table, taking his empty plate with him. Bellona’s had hardly been touched.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Laura would do anything for anyone. She seems rough around the edges, but she’s soft.”
It didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem true. She remembered her so much different during their meeting in New York. She remembered her different in Madripoor.
“And what if she doesn’t?”
Daken gave her a doubtful look. “Laura would never not help someone in need. Especially someone exactly like her.”
She wasn’t sure if she liked the immediate comparison, but she couldn’t dispute it either. She frowned as she pushed her food around the plate.
“That seems to bother you,” Daken observed. “Is there some other reason you’re not telling me about? Do you not want her help? I get the whole tension with the cloning thing, but is there something else?”
He’s so good at masking all emotions that she genuinely can’t tell if he doesn’t know or not. He said he’d already known what was going on, and when he asked about her past he said he just needed to make sure it lined up with his own information. Would he already know what she did? How she killed all those people? Would he know that she submitted herself to Kimura and framed Laura?
“No,” she said, even though she knew he could smell a lie. “There’s nothing.”
~~~
On the bus beside her, Daken leans down.
“Don’t be nervous,” he says softly. “She already knows you’re with me. She and I have been in communication about this. She’s helping me get it all sorted out.”
He says everything with an overwhelming amount of confidence. He doesn’t have a single doubt in himself or in Laura. He doesn’t seem to have any doubts in Bellona either.
“Is she… okay with me being here? Like, when she sees me, will she… is she going to be fine?”
He gives her a certain look that she can’t particularly read. It’s one that makes her feel nervous, and it’s one of the only times she wishes that she could know if he was lying too. Generally speaking he seems to hide it well, but in the dancing shadows of the bus she’s almost sure she sees a crack in the surface.
“What do you mean?”
Bellona sighs. She shifts in her seat and starts fidgeting with a hole in the fabric beside her. “I mean that things were left off between us a little complicated. I just don’t want her trying to chop my head off or something.”
She’s surprised at the dry chuckle that rattles in his chest. It’s not the reaction she anticipated in the least. “Look kid,” he says, and there’s laughter suppressed in his voice. “If she hasn’t chopped my head off yet, she’s not gonna chop off yours.”
“That’s… reassuring.”
Her stomach twists into tighter knots. The bus seems to be moving faster.
Daken lowers his voice. “We don’t really talk about things before a few years ago, but-” he leans down closer to her. “When Laura and I first met, like really met, it was on Madripoor. I kinda knew about her, but I didn’t think she was gonna be a problem.” The bus stops at an intersection. Bellona braces her hand on the back of the seat in front of her to keep herself from hitting it. “Come to find out, the sole purpose she sought me out for was to be a problem for me. And I deserved it, I can admit that. I guess you can say we fought, but it was a lot worse than that. I needed to find some shit out, and I needed to… exchange favors.” He’s talking so fast that Bellona has to watch his lips to follow along. The bus starts moving again. “Trying to kill each other was one thing, but I let Colcord use her for some shit he wanted to find out. It all worked out in the end, and you know she has a healing factor and youth on her side, so she was fine. But I know it was fucked. I let him do to her what had already been done. And sure, we teamed up and Colcord got his at the end of that little rendezvous, but still. I still think about it sometimes.”
Bellona doesn’t know what to say. She watches him for several moments. “Okay,” she says finally.
When he looks at her, there’s a dark look in his eyes. She wouldn’t call it entirely remorseful, but it’s quite solemn.
“I’m telling you that so you know I mean it. Whatever shit happened between you two, it’ll be fine. One thing about Laura is she-” he pauses. He looks lost for words for a brief second. “Laura won’t hold a grudge against you. If she blames anyone, it’ll be herself.”
The bus whines as it slows to a stop. When the doors open, the white overhead lights turn on. Daken stands.
“This is us,” he says.
Bellona doesn’t have time to think. He grabs her wrist and pulls her along, as if she’d be stupid enough to try and run.
She follows him onto the pavement, and she follows him away from the rest of the crowd. She can already see The Treehouse from where they are. Daken takes what she’s sure are normal strides, but it almost feels like she’s running to keep up. The distance seems to be shortening by double for every step they take. She wants to ask him for further reassurance, to make sure he’s really sure that everything will be okay, but it’s too late now. They start to slow when the pattern of the sidewalk changes to a walkway.
She stays back a couple steps, allowing Daken to do the honors of knocking on the door. She could never smell his emotions or hear the sounds of him, but he looks quite relaxed. In a way, he almost looks eager. The thought of X-23 having this effect on anyone baffles Bellona. She’d seemed so rigid and deadpan the last time she saw her. She seemed absorbed in her task, wrapped up in the mission. She couldn’t imagine X-23 having a personality worth noting. Then again, it could’ve just been the context.
The seconds pass quickly and slowly at the same time, and she isn’t sure how much time passes but it simultaneously is not enough and too much. She only hears the door handle rattling for a brief moment before the door is opened. She isn’t at all sure what to expect.
“Akihiro.”
X-23’s voice is the same as Bellona remembers; it’s rather monotone and hushed. She catches only a hint of enthusiasm behind it.
“Hey punk.”
Daken - or what was it she had called him? - steps forward. Bellona can only watch in stunned silence as the scene unfolds.
She’s met X-23 on two occasions, and both of those involved pretty personal interactions. Despite that, Bellona remembers her… differently. Taller, for starters, and she swears she was so much more muscular. Kind of bulky even, wasn’t she? And she thought she had rugged features that were tired and worn. Of course, one of those assignments she had mostly worn the Wolverine mask, but still. Hadn’t she been harder? More abrasive? Wasn’t she much more ambiguous and tattered, like a rained on newspaper left to dry out in the sun?
The girl in front of her looks so much like Zelda that Bellona has to stare hard at her face to make sure there aren’t any distinguishable scars embedded in her skin. She’s the same height as Bellona exactly, they’re perfectly eye to eye, and she looks rather lean in a sports bra and athletic leggings. Her hair is long and shiny, not at all brittle and dying like she thought it would be.
She’s surprised by the embrace that the two share. X-23 takes a bounced step towards Daken and reaches both arms up, at the same time he takes a step in and reaches his arms down. He hugs her tightly around her waist and her arms wrap loosely around his neck. Bellona watches with a strange feeling of indecisiveness coming over her. Is she capable of this too?
Daken ruffles her hair as she takes a half step back. She drops her arms, but he lets one linger around her shoulders for just a moment longer. Bellona wonders if it’s meant to be a gesture of comfort. She wonders if X-23 is unnerved too. She wonders if he’s reassuring her that he’s got it under control. The indecisiveness morphs into guilt.
And then their eyes meet. Bellona feels lost for words. X-23 looks animal-like, but not in the sense of a beast or untamed feral dog. Her small, angular features make her look more like a doe. She had always thought the same of Zelda, and Gabby too. It would make sense, she thinks, considering X-23 is their prototype. X-23 smiles in a small way. Thin pink lips stretch over perfectly aligned white teeth. She doesn’t remember her being beautiful.
“Bellona,” she says. The rasp of her voice is exaggerated with a type of shyness. “It’s nice to see you again.”