Runaways: Book II

VIII

I banged my knuckles against the green-painted motel door and it creaked open. Hank was standing there and asked before I entered,
"How'd it go?"
"Well...it went."
The motel wasn't too bad, but still furnished as if we were living in the fifties or something. There was a plush olive carpet, and bedsheets patterned with the same design my grandmother's curtains once bore.
I shuttered a little.
Logan was in the corner of the room smoking a cigar, and the Professor was standing and arguing with some other man, taller and about his age. The man's face was familiar. A news broadcast flashed across my memory.
"Th-that's...Magneto," I whispered to Hank both starstruck and paralyzed with fear.
Their arguing came to a stop. I had spoken too loud.
"Is she like us?" Magneto said examining me, attempting to figure me out with one scan of my head to my toe.
"Yes," the Professor replied.
"Her classification?"
"I don't know. Level Three? Perhaps even Four. Why do you need to know?" Charles said with his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Magneto didn't answer him, instead he stepped towards me and peered down at me intimidatingly.
"What's your name?" he questioned me.
"___..." I answered softly.
"What's your real name? Your mutant name?"
The Professor chimed in,
"For god's sake, haven't you manipulated enough people already, Eric?"
"Look, I'm not about to get in the middle of some long-time feud between you two, so I'm just going to take a walk," I stated holding my hands up in surrender and turning away.
"I'll come with you," Hank said shoving his hands into his jacket and following me outside. I could tell he was desperate to escape their bickering for a while.
We stepped down the metal staircase with a series of clangs and continued onward. Hank gingerly drew his glasses from his face and wiped them with the edge of his shirt.
"So, how are you doing?" I questioned.
He pressed his lenses back into the bridge of his nose and curled his brows in confusion,
"I'm good, why do you ask?"
"It's just that...you're seeing Raven tomorrow and the past forty-eight hours haven't exactly been relaxing or anything."
"Why would seeing Raven bother me?"
I stopped in my tracks and looked at him,
"Hank, I know you love her."
"I don't even know if I love her. What makes you so sure?"
"My powers are...were literally hypersensitivity to life forms' emotions. I could've sensed that you love her from thirty miles away."
He was quiet for a moment, staring at the cement beneath us in thought. He slowly peered back up to meet my eye line and said as soft as snowfall,
"Raven can't be tied down. Loving her is like trying to capture or constantly run after a flock of birds. It's best to just...wait until she comes back again."
"But isn't the wait painful?"
"Not just painful. Utterly excruciating."
He continued forward and I asked him out of curiosity,
"When Eric asked what 'classification' of mutant I was what did he mean?"
Hank responded with the articulation as if he were reading from a textbook,
"Mutant power levels are classified into different levels according to how strong an individual's powers are. One being the weakest and five being the strongest."
"And...the Professor thinks I could be a four?"
"Yes."
"That doesn't make sense, I can't even control my own powers."
"It's not judged according to if you can control them or not. It's about their strength, and I think he was right to place you at a four."
"Well...what about when Eric asked me my mutant name?"
"Most mutants have like a nickname that's based on their powers. The first time we fought together Raven gave us all nicknames. She was Mystique, and there was Banshee, Havoc—"
"What was yours?" I said with a wide smile strung across my face.
He laughed fondly and answered,
"Beast."
I joined him in his laughter and took a deep breath. I sensed a subtle sensation of nostalgia in the air.
The serum was fading a bit now, but a little piece of me didn't mind much. It had worn away just enough to feel a little emotion peak through the heavy curtain of numbness.
"How about you? What's your mutant name?" Hank questioned adjusting his lenses a bit.
A name I hadn't thought of in an eternity subconsciously escaped my lips,
"Firefly."
He thought for a while, struggling until confessing,
"I don't get it."
The words continued spilling out of my mouth with an unstoppable momentum. I didn't really care, they were the few that spoke of the past that I often regretted throwing away with the others,
"Back then I was pretty good at keeping my powers hidden. I could suppress any emotion without having the energy uncontrollably burst out of me—sadness, anger, fear...but there was something about love. Love was just too strong to be held in. When Peter would kiss me, hell, even just say my name, the energy inside me would just radiate out of me in these streams of light. And I would just...glow."
"Ah, I see. Firefly." Hank stated.
I closed my eyes and repeated again,
"Firefly."