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Cal and Illyana | Backdated to 7/29/14
Cal visits Yana to hear about her adventure with Nico in Minnesota, and finds out she lied outright might not have been totally forthcoming about what happened there.
Home - or her room, anyway - had never looked so good. Illyana sighed tiredly as she plugged her iPod into its speakers and set it to random. She'd had enough energy this morning to get them back, but it had been a close call; she'd spent most of the previous day scrounging medical supplies and waking Nico on a semi-regular basis just to make sure he hadn't gone into a coma or anything. Not to mention, she was pretty sure the motel'd had bugs, so when she did sleep, it wasn't exactly well.
Besides, she'd had a few things to think about. Not the least of which was how they were going to get away with their misadventure without getting in trouble for it, though some of the things Jake had said had popped into her mind more than once, too.
Or, more accurately, they'd never popped out. Neither had the expression on Sam's face, or the mental image of Nico hitting the ground. Two more reasons she hadn't slept all that well. At least Nico had seemed pretty much okay this morning, and she'd texted Cal to let him know they were back before he could start panicking again. Once she got this done, she was going to give sleep another shot.
Illyana made a face as she plopped a bandage, a tube of Neosporin, and a couple of those alcohol wipes down on her bed, then sat down and gingerly stretched her leg out to remove the bandage she'd applied earlier that morning. Damn it, she really, really hated blood.
Cal hadn't been likely to panic; clearly, all of his fears had been for nothing, and Illyana had actually had a good time in Minnesota, visiting an old friend, eating pizza and watching reality TV. Still, he was curious about the raising the dead bit - likely Nico's mutation, but he could get the 101 on it from Yana before he tracked down the other kid - and he wanted to check how hitting that particular cemetery had seemed like a good idea to his friend. So after getting her text, out he went, using Paul's mutation to fly all the way over to her window. A quick glance in assured him that she was, in fact, dressed, although he couldn't see what she was doing bent over her own leg like that, with her back to him.
He knocked on the window pane, hovering just outside.
Illyana's eyes went first to the door, just by reflex, before flicking back to the window with a panicked expression. Cal. Damn it...she glanced at the bloody bandage on the bed that she'd just removed, the medical supplies, and her leg, and sighed. Right. Not getting out of this, was she? Gingerly, she got up and limped over to the window to open it.
"Did you ever hear of these things called doors?" she asked, forcing a crooked smile, as she took a step back to give him room to climb in. "Most places come equipped with them. And why are you stealing JM's powers, anyway?"
Cal was too busy staring at her leg to really pay attention to what she was saying, and when she stepped back, he floated in and touched down, eyebrows raising demandingly. "Okay, what the fuck?"
"What the fuck what?" she countered, knowing full well what he was talking about but pulling the annoyance card, just to procrastinate and try to come up with a good explanation. Damn it, she was too tired for this. "You're the one who just showed up at my window, not the other way around."
"What the fuck, this," Cal pointed at her leg, and then frowned even more as he noticed the huge bruise on her arm. The kind of bruise that very much looked like someone had grabbed her. "And this!" he pointed at it next, and looked up at her.
Right. This. And that. And she still hadn't come up with a decent explanation. "Turns out raising the dead causes the ground to shake. I fell, okay? Changing the bandage now. Any chance you want to stop yelling and help? I hate blood." Not that he was yelling, exactly, but...well, it felt like it. And she really, really couldn't handle being yelled at while trying to come up with decent explanations. Actually, she really could handle being yelled at right now, at all.
"Yeah, and a zombie grabbed your arm to help you up, poor guy didn't know his strength," Cal muttered, clearly not buying a word of it and getting even more annoyed at her continued lying. Still, he floated over to the bed and grabbed some cotton and the desinfectant. "Come here, and try and realize the truth is your best option now, while I sort this out for you."
"I sorted it out," she protested, but came over to the bed anyway and sat down, simply because standing hurt like hell. "And if you give me a minute, I can come up with a good explanation that you won't yell about."
"I want the truth, and if I need Steve's mutation to make sure you're not lying to me, I'll go find him right now," Cal warned her sourly, and applied the cotton to the wound. Despite his obvious irritation, he was keeping his movements gentle; the disinfectant would sting enough as it was without adding to it.
Steve...Illyana frowned for a second, trying to figure out how the girl who wanted to be a guy or however it was that worked had anything to do with, well, anything, before realizing that Cal was referring to his roommate. Who could tell if she was lying. Great - just what she needed right now. She winced as the disinfectant hit the cut, almost welcoming the momentary distraction of it even as her fingers dug into her comforter. "Well, we went to St. Paul to a cemetery I knew. To raise the dead. I told you that part." She tried to glance down at her leg. "Are you almost done with that? Because I did that already."
"Forgive me for not trusting you with your leg any more than with telling me the truth," Cal pointed out with a glare up at her, then finished making certain that the cut was properly disinfected, and only then reached for the Neosporin, and a new bandage to cover the cut.
Ouch. That hurt - not the disinfectant, but what he'd said. Illyana looked decidedly awkward, chewing her lip as she shrugged. "I told you - lying's what I'm best at," she said by way of explanation/apology. "And if I'd told you what we were going to do, you'd have said it was a bad idea. And after, there really wasn't a lot you could do anyway, other than make my leg sting and worry."
"What did you do?" Cal asked, not going to wonder what he might or might not have been able to do just yet. After he had a better idea of the situation, however, absolutely.
"The zombies needed someone to punch," she said, not bothering to try to pretty it up, seeing as Cal had said he just wanted the truth. She was too tired, anyway, and if Cal wanted to hate her afterwards, so be it. It was going to happen eventually anyway. "So I texted Jake. It would have worked out just fine, too, except he brought a friend."
Cal didn't look any less pissed as she explained, but he remained quiet as he secured the bandage into place, then put the stuff away and, finally, met his friend's gaze. "That was stupid on so many levels, Y." He sighed, shaking his head. "Seriously. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, because I'd love to punch him myself." Especially at a time like right now, when the sun was giving him that much strength. "But I don't have to point out how it could have gone wrong, because it did go wrong - and it could've been way worse. How's Nico doing? His sprain?"
Illyana sighed and leaned back on her hands, wincing just a little when her arm stretched. "Okay. He hit his head, too, but I checked his pupils and stuff and woke him every hour or so. He seems better this morning." She looked back up and met Cal's eyes. "I'm sorry he got hurt," she admitted, "and that things went to hell. But I'm not sorry Jake got his ass handed to him. Just that we did, too."
"It's not even just that," Cal warned her. "It's one thing to use our powers to defend ourselves, but to lure him out like that to attack him with zombies - if that kind of thing makes it to the press, Yana, you're proving right the assholes who say we can't be trusted. We've gotta be better than them." It was easy to say, of course, since he honestly wasn't sure that he could help himself from having a go at the guy if he ever met him, in self defence or not. But with a cool head, he knew better. And he kind of wanted to track down Nico and insist he went and saw Simon, just to make sure.
"Oh please - who's going to honestly believe that a couple of kids raised the dead?" she asked, rolling her eyes and ignoring, for the moment, the part about not being trusted. Which stung, but it was nothing more than the truth, so why argue it? "They'd write it off as a prank or something, even if Jake went to the papers with it - which he wouldn't, because...well, let's say Jake's got a reputation of his own. Sam, too." She took a deep breath and sighed. "Besides, I'm not better than them. I can admit that. And I wanted to see him get his ass kicked." And, at the same time, she'd wanted to run to him when he'd promised it has all been a misunderstanding. No, she wasn't any better than Jake at all, was she?
"Of course you're better than them, you're not a fucking psycho," Cal pointed out shortly. "And even if nobody took them seriously, there are people hunting us down." He was probably as serious now as she had ever seen him, but even hinting at the Facility had that effect on him. "Those people are probably on the lookout for any incident like this, the kind most people would write off as a prank. It's a whole new world we're living in, and we gotta be smarter than that."
"So, I guess I'm not that smart," Illyana retorted irritably. She threw her hands up in the air and got to her feet, ignoring the stab of pain in her leg. She was exhausted, and frustrated, and more than a little angry that Cal couldn't see that she'd needed to do this. That he wanted honesty, but he wasn't listening when she actually tried to tell him the truth. "Because I don't get it, Cal. And I'm sick of hiding. I'm sick of pretending, I'm sick of lying, and I'm sick of being a fucking victim. What's the point of having power if you can't do anything with it? Jake deserved that!"
Cal had to keep consciously staying on the bed so that he would not float off of it, especially right then when she was yelling at him. Of course he understood it, he understood her. But it didn't make it any less of a bad idea, doing what she had done. "Of course he did," he agreed, quieter and steady. He stood, normally, and held a hand out to her. "I'm sorry, Yana."
Grudgingly, Illyana accepted Cal's hand, and exhaled slowly. He still didn't get it - she knew that - but at least he wasn't lecturing. "I know it was stupid, okay? When I came up with the idea, I thought we could just, y'know, send the zombie after him or something. But Nico's powers don't work that way, so I had to get him there." She chewed at her lip and looked up at Cal, with a mix of feelings so jumbled she couldn't sort out what they were. "He - Jake - he said that he hadn't meant it. That he'd never have really hurt me, he just wanted to scare me so my powers would activate. That I should come home. And then, not five minutes later? He told Sam he could do anything he wanted to me, so long as he killed Nico first." The worst thing? She still wanted the first part to be true.
"That kid's a fucking psycho," Cal reiterated what he had said, and tugged her closer, taking a step forward but letting her come into the hug if she wanted. "Never believe a word he says."
Illyana, with only a fraction of a moment's hesitation, stepped in and hugged Cal, relaxing a little as she felt his arms wrap around her in turn. "I don't know what to believe anymore."
"Believe me, alright?" Cal suggested, hugging her warmly, but not so tightly that she couldn't get away in a second. "He's a manipulative bastard." He didn't need to know the whole story to know that much. "If it wasn't a bad idea on so many levels, I'd go find him right now." Meaning amped up on Paul's mutation (she could probably feel that he was warmer than normal), and thanks to her own.
Illyana let out a soft snort of humorless laughter. "Yeaaaah, I think that might be a worse plan than mine, overall," she pointed out, smiling a little as she pulled back. Given the heat radiating from him, he'd probably borrowed Paul's powers, not Jeanne-Marie's, and she didn't suppose anything he did while like that would be any less obvious than a zombie invasion. "I appreciate the thought, though." Her smile tilted as she looked up at him, and she shrugged. "For whatever it's worth? I'm sorry I lied to you. But really, I did have it covered by that point. And you'd have yelled. A lot."
Cal thought that it was a much better plan, all in all, or at least less terrible. He was certain not to get hurt, after all. But it was still not something he would put into effect, no matter how much part of him wanted to. He supposed, in a weird way, that giving her brother what he deserved might make up for his inability to sort things out properly with his father. "You realize there's a pretty obvious alternative?" he pointed out, looking down at her with a small smile. "You tell me about your crazy schemes before being halfway across the country."
"Oh please, you know you'd have told me to forget it," she pointed out, grinning a little. "Besides, I did exactly what I promised. I told you I was going, and I didn't go alone."
"Hey, if I can't talk you out of your stupid ideas, the next best thing's keeping you safe while you go through them, alright?" Cal stated, still serious despite not sounding grave anymore. His hands were loosely on her shoulders, and he pulled them back, stepping back a little. "Don't get cute with me," he added with a smirk, since it was exactly what she was doing.
"I'm always cute," Illyana countered with a smirk of her own. "But okay, you've made your point. No more crazy schemes in Minnesota." Which was easy to promise, considering she couldn't think of anything there she still wanted to do that would qualify as crazy, anyway.
"And you come to me for crazy schemes anywhere, right?" Cal went on. "Seriously." If he could stop her or anyone else from getting injured...
Illyana's eyebrows went up and she shook her head. "Not promising that, or you'll complain that I don't take you along the next time Harley and I decide to go shopping in California. And we can totally try on bikinis without you."
"We need to work on your definition of crazy," Cal pointed out, warmth tainting his smile. "Bikini shopping really doesn't sound like it, unless you're doing it in, like, Qatar."
"Not sure where that is, so I'm pretty sure not," she admitted, grinning sheepishly but relaxing as Cal's smile returned to something a little more "Cal" and a little less "you're in deep shit". "But hey, I'm pretty sure there are people around who'd say cross-continental shopping trips qualify. Granted, I'm not really one of them..." She grinned, then wrinkled her nose and sighed. "You're not going to tell anyone about this, are you? I mean, we are okay, so no harm done, right? I don't wanta see Nico get in trouble; it's not like it was his idea."
"I won't tell," Cal confirmed with a shake of his head. "As long as you're less reckless about this stuff in the future, anyway." But she'd promised, so he was fine sitting on this. "Now, Xavier or Betsy might get it out of you anyway," he warned her with a shrug. The issues with having telepathic staff at school.
Illyana nodded, wrinkling her nose again. Telepathic staff was still an issue, in her mind. "I figure I can avoid them until the statute of limitations runs out or something. Not like I really go looking for either." She smiled, just a little. "Thanks," she said, a little awkwardly as she sat back down on the edge of the bed, trying to encompass it all in that one word - his silence, the bandaging, and caring enough to come chew her out, even if she'd have rather skipped that last bit. Or maybe she wouldn't have. It didn't make much sense, but it felt kind of good, anyway.
"Don't mention it," he acknowledged her thanks, using that particular phrasing because, yeah, they'd just been discussing keeping it on the downlow. "Check in on Nico, okay?" he requested. That way, he wouldn't feel like he should, and he was sure the other kid would prefer this random guy didn't barge into his life.
"I would've anyway, but yeah. Tomorrow, because he said he was probably going to sleep the rest of the day." She grinned a little. "Apparently he's never raised quite so many zombies before. You should've seen it; it was pretty cool."
"Well, yanno, I wish I had," he pointed out with a half-smile, clearly teasing. It was too good of a set-up not to go there. "Zombies are fucking cool. Do they actually walk like them?"
"Well, sort of like the ones in Return of the Living Dead," Illyana reflected, ignoring Cal's jab as he's probably figured she would. "I mean, not quite like normal people, but not like the shuffling ones in most zombie movies. They talk, too. And take orders." She grinned, leaning back on her arms. "Nico told one of them to go get the insurgent, and what I saw of the fight was awesome."
"The insurgent?" Cal asked with a confused frown.
"That's the right word, isn't it? Anyway, the zombie'd been a soldier - apparently they remember some stuff. Not sure how that works," she admitted. "But Nico pointed him at Jake and he saluted and took off, pretty much like a normal person. It was cool."
"So they keep their personalities, but are compelled to obey him?" Cal tried to suss it out. It was so much easier when he was mimicking people.
"Basically? I'm not real clear on the details - Nico was explaining it, but then we got sort of busy. They definitely did whatever he said, though. You should ask him sometime," Illyana suggested. "He'd probably love to show it off. I think he figures everyone just thinks it's creepy."
"Yeah, I'll do that some day," Cal stated with a nod. "It is seriously creepy. Like a lot of the mutations out there."
Illyana shrugged. Honestly, she didn't think there was anything particularly creepy about it, not when compared to the telepaths and the girl who could heal people by turning them inside out (which still made her stomach turn whenever she thought of it), but she had the feeling she was probably a minority. Any elaboration she might have made, though (and that was questionable, because she figured pointing that out would probably be considered just as weird) was cut off by an expansive yawn. Shaking her head, she gave Cal and apologetic look. "Do you mind if I kick you out?" she asked hopefully. "Because honestly? Sleep is sounding really good about now."
"Sure thing," Cal agreed, letting go of pretending at gravity to float over to the window. "You rest. Let's hang out tomorrow?"
"Definitely," she agreed, relieved that Cal didn't seem mad anymore. She got up and limped over so she could close the window after him, then grinned. "Try the door next time? Honestly, you keep peeking in windows, someone's going to call the cops on you."
"Dude, I'd never spy on someone, please," Cal told her with a grin, drifting outside. "Didn't you hear? Flying's the new black." Well, that and orange.
"I'll stick to black!" she called after him, then smirked and closed the window before he could reply, closing the drapes to block out the light as well before turning back to her bed and letting the smile fade. Right. Time to get some sleep. She'd check on Nico once she woke up.
Home - or her room, anyway - had never looked so good. Illyana sighed tiredly as she plugged her iPod into its speakers and set it to random. She'd had enough energy this morning to get them back, but it had been a close call; she'd spent most of the previous day scrounging medical supplies and waking Nico on a semi-regular basis just to make sure he hadn't gone into a coma or anything. Not to mention, she was pretty sure the motel'd had bugs, so when she did sleep, it wasn't exactly well.
Besides, she'd had a few things to think about. Not the least of which was how they were going to get away with their misadventure without getting in trouble for it, though some of the things Jake had said had popped into her mind more than once, too.
Or, more accurately, they'd never popped out. Neither had the expression on Sam's face, or the mental image of Nico hitting the ground. Two more reasons she hadn't slept all that well. At least Nico had seemed pretty much okay this morning, and she'd texted Cal to let him know they were back before he could start panicking again. Once she got this done, she was going to give sleep another shot.
Illyana made a face as she plopped a bandage, a tube of Neosporin, and a couple of those alcohol wipes down on her bed, then sat down and gingerly stretched her leg out to remove the bandage she'd applied earlier that morning. Damn it, she really, really hated blood.
Cal hadn't been likely to panic; clearly, all of his fears had been for nothing, and Illyana had actually had a good time in Minnesota, visiting an old friend, eating pizza and watching reality TV. Still, he was curious about the raising the dead bit - likely Nico's mutation, but he could get the 101 on it from Yana before he tracked down the other kid - and he wanted to check how hitting that particular cemetery had seemed like a good idea to his friend. So after getting her text, out he went, using Paul's mutation to fly all the way over to her window. A quick glance in assured him that she was, in fact, dressed, although he couldn't see what she was doing bent over her own leg like that, with her back to him.
He knocked on the window pane, hovering just outside.
Illyana's eyes went first to the door, just by reflex, before flicking back to the window with a panicked expression. Cal. Damn it...she glanced at the bloody bandage on the bed that she'd just removed, the medical supplies, and her leg, and sighed. Right. Not getting out of this, was she? Gingerly, she got up and limped over to the window to open it.
"Did you ever hear of these things called doors?" she asked, forcing a crooked smile, as she took a step back to give him room to climb in. "Most places come equipped with them. And why are you stealing JM's powers, anyway?"
Cal was too busy staring at her leg to really pay attention to what she was saying, and when she stepped back, he floated in and touched down, eyebrows raising demandingly. "Okay, what the fuck?"
"What the fuck what?" she countered, knowing full well what he was talking about but pulling the annoyance card, just to procrastinate and try to come up with a good explanation. Damn it, she was too tired for this. "You're the one who just showed up at my window, not the other way around."
"What the fuck, this," Cal pointed at her leg, and then frowned even more as he noticed the huge bruise on her arm. The kind of bruise that very much looked like someone had grabbed her. "And this!" he pointed at it next, and looked up at her.
Right. This. And that. And she still hadn't come up with a decent explanation. "Turns out raising the dead causes the ground to shake. I fell, okay? Changing the bandage now. Any chance you want to stop yelling and help? I hate blood." Not that he was yelling, exactly, but...well, it felt like it. And she really, really couldn't handle being yelled at while trying to come up with decent explanations. Actually, she really could handle being yelled at right now, at all.
"Yeah, and a zombie grabbed your arm to help you up, poor guy didn't know his strength," Cal muttered, clearly not buying a word of it and getting even more annoyed at her continued lying. Still, he floated over to the bed and grabbed some cotton and the desinfectant. "Come here, and try and realize the truth is your best option now, while I sort this out for you."
"I sorted it out," she protested, but came over to the bed anyway and sat down, simply because standing hurt like hell. "And if you give me a minute, I can come up with a good explanation that you won't yell about."
"I want the truth, and if I need Steve's mutation to make sure you're not lying to me, I'll go find him right now," Cal warned her sourly, and applied the cotton to the wound. Despite his obvious irritation, he was keeping his movements gentle; the disinfectant would sting enough as it was without adding to it.
Steve...Illyana frowned for a second, trying to figure out how the girl who wanted to be a guy or however it was that worked had anything to do with, well, anything, before realizing that Cal was referring to his roommate. Who could tell if she was lying. Great - just what she needed right now. She winced as the disinfectant hit the cut, almost welcoming the momentary distraction of it even as her fingers dug into her comforter. "Well, we went to St. Paul to a cemetery I knew. To raise the dead. I told you that part." She tried to glance down at her leg. "Are you almost done with that? Because I did that already."
"Forgive me for not trusting you with your leg any more than with telling me the truth," Cal pointed out with a glare up at her, then finished making certain that the cut was properly disinfected, and only then reached for the Neosporin, and a new bandage to cover the cut.
Ouch. That hurt - not the disinfectant, but what he'd said. Illyana looked decidedly awkward, chewing her lip as she shrugged. "I told you - lying's what I'm best at," she said by way of explanation/apology. "And if I'd told you what we were going to do, you'd have said it was a bad idea. And after, there really wasn't a lot you could do anyway, other than make my leg sting and worry."
"What did you do?" Cal asked, not going to wonder what he might or might not have been able to do just yet. After he had a better idea of the situation, however, absolutely.
"The zombies needed someone to punch," she said, not bothering to try to pretty it up, seeing as Cal had said he just wanted the truth. She was too tired, anyway, and if Cal wanted to hate her afterwards, so be it. It was going to happen eventually anyway. "So I texted Jake. It would have worked out just fine, too, except he brought a friend."
Cal didn't look any less pissed as she explained, but he remained quiet as he secured the bandage into place, then put the stuff away and, finally, met his friend's gaze. "That was stupid on so many levels, Y." He sighed, shaking his head. "Seriously. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, because I'd love to punch him myself." Especially at a time like right now, when the sun was giving him that much strength. "But I don't have to point out how it could have gone wrong, because it did go wrong - and it could've been way worse. How's Nico doing? His sprain?"
Illyana sighed and leaned back on her hands, wincing just a little when her arm stretched. "Okay. He hit his head, too, but I checked his pupils and stuff and woke him every hour or so. He seems better this morning." She looked back up and met Cal's eyes. "I'm sorry he got hurt," she admitted, "and that things went to hell. But I'm not sorry Jake got his ass handed to him. Just that we did, too."
"It's not even just that," Cal warned her. "It's one thing to use our powers to defend ourselves, but to lure him out like that to attack him with zombies - if that kind of thing makes it to the press, Yana, you're proving right the assholes who say we can't be trusted. We've gotta be better than them." It was easy to say, of course, since he honestly wasn't sure that he could help himself from having a go at the guy if he ever met him, in self defence or not. But with a cool head, he knew better. And he kind of wanted to track down Nico and insist he went and saw Simon, just to make sure.
"Oh please - who's going to honestly believe that a couple of kids raised the dead?" she asked, rolling her eyes and ignoring, for the moment, the part about not being trusted. Which stung, but it was nothing more than the truth, so why argue it? "They'd write it off as a prank or something, even if Jake went to the papers with it - which he wouldn't, because...well, let's say Jake's got a reputation of his own. Sam, too." She took a deep breath and sighed. "Besides, I'm not better than them. I can admit that. And I wanted to see him get his ass kicked." And, at the same time, she'd wanted to run to him when he'd promised it has all been a misunderstanding. No, she wasn't any better than Jake at all, was she?
"Of course you're better than them, you're not a fucking psycho," Cal pointed out shortly. "And even if nobody took them seriously, there are people hunting us down." He was probably as serious now as she had ever seen him, but even hinting at the Facility had that effect on him. "Those people are probably on the lookout for any incident like this, the kind most people would write off as a prank. It's a whole new world we're living in, and we gotta be smarter than that."
"So, I guess I'm not that smart," Illyana retorted irritably. She threw her hands up in the air and got to her feet, ignoring the stab of pain in her leg. She was exhausted, and frustrated, and more than a little angry that Cal couldn't see that she'd needed to do this. That he wanted honesty, but he wasn't listening when she actually tried to tell him the truth. "Because I don't get it, Cal. And I'm sick of hiding. I'm sick of pretending, I'm sick of lying, and I'm sick of being a fucking victim. What's the point of having power if you can't do anything with it? Jake deserved that!"
Cal had to keep consciously staying on the bed so that he would not float off of it, especially right then when she was yelling at him. Of course he understood it, he understood her. But it didn't make it any less of a bad idea, doing what she had done. "Of course he did," he agreed, quieter and steady. He stood, normally, and held a hand out to her. "I'm sorry, Yana."
Grudgingly, Illyana accepted Cal's hand, and exhaled slowly. He still didn't get it - she knew that - but at least he wasn't lecturing. "I know it was stupid, okay? When I came up with the idea, I thought we could just, y'know, send the zombie after him or something. But Nico's powers don't work that way, so I had to get him there." She chewed at her lip and looked up at Cal, with a mix of feelings so jumbled she couldn't sort out what they were. "He - Jake - he said that he hadn't meant it. That he'd never have really hurt me, he just wanted to scare me so my powers would activate. That I should come home. And then, not five minutes later? He told Sam he could do anything he wanted to me, so long as he killed Nico first." The worst thing? She still wanted the first part to be true.
"That kid's a fucking psycho," Cal reiterated what he had said, and tugged her closer, taking a step forward but letting her come into the hug if she wanted. "Never believe a word he says."
Illyana, with only a fraction of a moment's hesitation, stepped in and hugged Cal, relaxing a little as she felt his arms wrap around her in turn. "I don't know what to believe anymore."
"Believe me, alright?" Cal suggested, hugging her warmly, but not so tightly that she couldn't get away in a second. "He's a manipulative bastard." He didn't need to know the whole story to know that much. "If it wasn't a bad idea on so many levels, I'd go find him right now." Meaning amped up on Paul's mutation (she could probably feel that he was warmer than normal), and thanks to her own.
Illyana let out a soft snort of humorless laughter. "Yeaaaah, I think that might be a worse plan than mine, overall," she pointed out, smiling a little as she pulled back. Given the heat radiating from him, he'd probably borrowed Paul's powers, not Jeanne-Marie's, and she didn't suppose anything he did while like that would be any less obvious than a zombie invasion. "I appreciate the thought, though." Her smile tilted as she looked up at him, and she shrugged. "For whatever it's worth? I'm sorry I lied to you. But really, I did have it covered by that point. And you'd have yelled. A lot."
Cal thought that it was a much better plan, all in all, or at least less terrible. He was certain not to get hurt, after all. But it was still not something he would put into effect, no matter how much part of him wanted to. He supposed, in a weird way, that giving her brother what he deserved might make up for his inability to sort things out properly with his father. "You realize there's a pretty obvious alternative?" he pointed out, looking down at her with a small smile. "You tell me about your crazy schemes before being halfway across the country."
"Oh please, you know you'd have told me to forget it," she pointed out, grinning a little. "Besides, I did exactly what I promised. I told you I was going, and I didn't go alone."
"Hey, if I can't talk you out of your stupid ideas, the next best thing's keeping you safe while you go through them, alright?" Cal stated, still serious despite not sounding grave anymore. His hands were loosely on her shoulders, and he pulled them back, stepping back a little. "Don't get cute with me," he added with a smirk, since it was exactly what she was doing.
"I'm always cute," Illyana countered with a smirk of her own. "But okay, you've made your point. No more crazy schemes in Minnesota." Which was easy to promise, considering she couldn't think of anything there she still wanted to do that would qualify as crazy, anyway.
"And you come to me for crazy schemes anywhere, right?" Cal went on. "Seriously." If he could stop her or anyone else from getting injured...
Illyana's eyebrows went up and she shook her head. "Not promising that, or you'll complain that I don't take you along the next time Harley and I decide to go shopping in California. And we can totally try on bikinis without you."
"We need to work on your definition of crazy," Cal pointed out, warmth tainting his smile. "Bikini shopping really doesn't sound like it, unless you're doing it in, like, Qatar."
"Not sure where that is, so I'm pretty sure not," she admitted, grinning sheepishly but relaxing as Cal's smile returned to something a little more "Cal" and a little less "you're in deep shit". "But hey, I'm pretty sure there are people around who'd say cross-continental shopping trips qualify. Granted, I'm not really one of them..." She grinned, then wrinkled her nose and sighed. "You're not going to tell anyone about this, are you? I mean, we are okay, so no harm done, right? I don't wanta see Nico get in trouble; it's not like it was his idea."
"I won't tell," Cal confirmed with a shake of his head. "As long as you're less reckless about this stuff in the future, anyway." But she'd promised, so he was fine sitting on this. "Now, Xavier or Betsy might get it out of you anyway," he warned her with a shrug. The issues with having telepathic staff at school.
Illyana nodded, wrinkling her nose again. Telepathic staff was still an issue, in her mind. "I figure I can avoid them until the statute of limitations runs out or something. Not like I really go looking for either." She smiled, just a little. "Thanks," she said, a little awkwardly as she sat back down on the edge of the bed, trying to encompass it all in that one word - his silence, the bandaging, and caring enough to come chew her out, even if she'd have rather skipped that last bit. Or maybe she wouldn't have. It didn't make much sense, but it felt kind of good, anyway.
"Don't mention it," he acknowledged her thanks, using that particular phrasing because, yeah, they'd just been discussing keeping it on the downlow. "Check in on Nico, okay?" he requested. That way, he wouldn't feel like he should, and he was sure the other kid would prefer this random guy didn't barge into his life.
"I would've anyway, but yeah. Tomorrow, because he said he was probably going to sleep the rest of the day." She grinned a little. "Apparently he's never raised quite so many zombies before. You should've seen it; it was pretty cool."
"Well, yanno, I wish I had," he pointed out with a half-smile, clearly teasing. It was too good of a set-up not to go there. "Zombies are fucking cool. Do they actually walk like them?"
"Well, sort of like the ones in Return of the Living Dead," Illyana reflected, ignoring Cal's jab as he's probably figured she would. "I mean, not quite like normal people, but not like the shuffling ones in most zombie movies. They talk, too. And take orders." She grinned, leaning back on her arms. "Nico told one of them to go get the insurgent, and what I saw of the fight was awesome."
"The insurgent?" Cal asked with a confused frown.
"That's the right word, isn't it? Anyway, the zombie'd been a soldier - apparently they remember some stuff. Not sure how that works," she admitted. "But Nico pointed him at Jake and he saluted and took off, pretty much like a normal person. It was cool."
"So they keep their personalities, but are compelled to obey him?" Cal tried to suss it out. It was so much easier when he was mimicking people.
"Basically? I'm not real clear on the details - Nico was explaining it, but then we got sort of busy. They definitely did whatever he said, though. You should ask him sometime," Illyana suggested. "He'd probably love to show it off. I think he figures everyone just thinks it's creepy."
"Yeah, I'll do that some day," Cal stated with a nod. "It is seriously creepy. Like a lot of the mutations out there."
Illyana shrugged. Honestly, she didn't think there was anything particularly creepy about it, not when compared to the telepaths and the girl who could heal people by turning them inside out (which still made her stomach turn whenever she thought of it), but she had the feeling she was probably a minority. Any elaboration she might have made, though (and that was questionable, because she figured pointing that out would probably be considered just as weird) was cut off by an expansive yawn. Shaking her head, she gave Cal and apologetic look. "Do you mind if I kick you out?" she asked hopefully. "Because honestly? Sleep is sounding really good about now."
"Sure thing," Cal agreed, letting go of pretending at gravity to float over to the window. "You rest. Let's hang out tomorrow?"
"Definitely," she agreed, relieved that Cal didn't seem mad anymore. She got up and limped over so she could close the window after him, then grinned. "Try the door next time? Honestly, you keep peeking in windows, someone's going to call the cops on you."
"Dude, I'd never spy on someone, please," Cal told her with a grin, drifting outside. "Didn't you hear? Flying's the new black." Well, that and orange.
"I'll stick to black!" she called after him, then smirked and closed the window before he could reply, closing the drapes to block out the light as well before turning back to her bed and letting the smile fade. Right. Time to get some sleep. She'd check on Nico once she woke up.