Log In

Home
    - Create Journal
    - Update
    - Download

Scribbld
    - News
    - Paid Accounts
    - Invite
    - To-Do list
    - Contributors

Customize
    - Customize
    - Create Style
    - Edit Style

Find Users
    - Random!
    - By Region
    - By Interest
    - Search

Edit ...
    - User Info
    - Settings
    - Your Friends
    - Old Entries
    - Userpics
    - Password

Need Help?
    - Password?
    - FAQs
    - Support Area


Justin Rhodes ([info]iron_hide) wrote in [info]marvel_nextgen,
@ 2010-08-23 20:09:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Current music:The Truth- Kris Allen
Entry tags:inactive - chris frost, inactive - justin rhodes

The Truth (After return from Providence)

Justin had known mutants all his life, but staying at Xavier's was still a surreal experience. He's still getting to know his way around the place, and the only person he truly knows is Misha. After girding himself against the possibility of running into Misha's old man (who looked exactly like Commander Howlett from his own world) Justin heads to the cafeteria to get something to eat.

He grabs a tray and steps into the line, not really saying anything to anyone else. He's gotten a few stares, being the new guy and all, but no one's been hostile; in fact, they've all been really nice. Grabbing himself a turkey sandwhich and potato chips, he sits down and begins to eat, his mind going over calculations for the armor, when an odd bit of conversation cuts into his reverie.
 

"Dude...what happened to Joey? You think has anything to do with what happened to Tina Frost?" a young man asks.

"I heard they threw down and Joey kicked her ass." a young girl says.

"/I/ heard that poked his eyes out with a knife because he tried to feel her up." a second girl chimes in.

"Neither of those are true." says a second young man, his voice extremely agitated, yet firm.

"Okay, then what do /you/ think happened, Cassidy?" the girl asks.
 

"I don't know, but Joey and Tina...they wouldn't fight without a good reason." Cassidy says.

"You're just saying that because you /like/ her." the boy says.

"No, I don't. She just...I know Tina. She's not like that. Neither is Joey." Cassidy says again.

At this point, Justin turns around to get a look at the boy talking. Dark hair, jeans, blue polo. Justin's never heard Tina talk about this kid before, but he seems to know her.

"Hey, Cassidy." Justin calls out.

The boy looks at him, instantly suspicious.  "Do...I know you?" 

"No, but I know Tina, too. Have you seen her? Is she here?"

---

Ten minutes later, Justin walks into the infirmary, stopping at the door to see his girlfriend doing something strange. Cassidy didn't tell him much, but he told Justin enough for certain things to fall into place.

"So...I.T work, huh? That /is/ what you told me you do for a living, right?" Justin asks simply. There's no accusation in his voice...

yet.


 


(Post a new comment)


[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-24 01:33 am UTC (link)
Four hours in and Dr. McCoy already had a full page abilities written down. There were her own, of course, and the tk she'd willingly taken on, but there were also the freaky ones she'd been spontaneously getting: healing factor to rival total cellular regeneration,limited molecular control, diamond spikes, sonic cry, and now claws like she was Wolverine. Doc had detected other things, too. Surreal strength was starting to show and the tips of the fingers on her left hand were magnetic. It was deeply fascinating.

Tina was terrified.

And then Justin showed up and for a moment her eyes lit up and she moved to run to him, stopping just short of hugging him. He...was here?

"Baby? What are you doing here?"

(Reply to this)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-24 01:47 am UTC (link)
"My boss asked me to come up and help him out with something, so I've been staying here for a few days. Thought I might surprise you when you got in." he says.

"So, I was in the cafeteria, and I heard you were in /here/, because some guy tried to grab your ass? This same Joey who helped you out of the wreck a few weeks ago?" Justin asks.

"I don't normally hit blind guys, but I'll make an exception if your story makes me think he deserves it." Justin asks.

He pointedly doesn't mention that Cassidy refuted that part, because he wants to see what she'll say.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-24 01:56 am UTC (link)
"Joey what?" Tina looked at him with disbelief. "If Joey had tried to grab my ass I would have levelled him, then made his brain bleed. And then his girlfriend Rose would have cut me. It would have been an epic catfight and...no, Joey didn't try to grab my ass. Geez."

Tina shook her head and laughed a little, then stopped herself for fear she'd level the place.

"Actually, let's sit down Justin. I'm not here because of Joey. I'm..." She took a breath. "Joey's my friend. And my teammate. And I'm here not because of him but because of a mission. Otherwise known as my actual job. Guess you kinda figured out by now what else goes on at the school...so...Justin, I'm an X-Man."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-24 02:29 am UTC (link)
Justin listens to Tina in silence for a moment, trying to keep a lid on his anger. He's starting to wonder what else he doesn't know about his girlfriend right now, since he's clearly not smart enough to put together obvious information.

Her mother is filthy rich, yet she has a job. She has an Amex Black Card, yet she eats at Chipotle. She works in I.T. which is so safe it's sick, yet she's got more bruises than a linebacker.

Did he really look as stupid as he felt right now?

"I think I'll stand, Christina." Justin says, a little bit of hurt in his voice. Did Misha know about this?

"How long has this been going on? The first time I saw bruises on you...were you doing this then?" he asks.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-24 02:44 am UTC (link)
"Yeah." Her voice was quiet and she looked away for a moment. The shame she felt right now was on par with certain other moments of shame in her life that she never wanted to relive.

"First time you saw the bruises I went on a rescue mission to save my friends and teammates. I held up the collapsing walls of a cave on a sentient island. And I wasn't in a car accident, Justin. I nearly died saving a kid's life. I...so many bad things have happened in my life, both to me and because of things I was forced to do. I just needed to do something good."

She felt diamond spikes trying to rise along her chest as if forming armor. Taking a deep breath she tried to keep them at bay.

"I didn't know how to tell you."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-24 03:02 am UTC (link)
Justin stops the first comment that comes to mind, because it would be cruel to say. He can see that she's hurting about this, but that doesn't change the fact that she wasn't up front with him from the start. He shifts uncomfortably as he tries to find words for what he's feeling.

"I understand...wanting to help people. There's nothing wrong with that. I respect it and I admire it. Where my problem comes in is when you do that, and you then you tell me you were doing I.T. work in foreign countries." Justin says.

"Or, you save a kid, and then scare me half to death by having someone call and tell me you totaled your car. Can I ask what you planned to have them say to me if you'd died during one of these missions? I really want to know what I was supposed to swallow at the funeral and accept if you didn't come home." he says, the anger now permeating his voice.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-24 03:14 am UTC (link)
"I...hadn't thought that far. I've never let anyone this close to me before. Never. When I tell you that you're the first person I've ever chosen I mean that. I've never had a choice before. It still seems unreal to me that you're even with me."

She'd started shaking now, the strain of trying to keep the diamond armor at bay and the pain of what she was saying uniting to make her physiology even more unstable. Tears started subtly slipping down her cheek. His anger, it was more than she knew how to handle. Even after all she's been through.

"Haven't you ever had a secret so big that you didn't know how to share because you were scared of being alone? My nightmares...they come from real places, Justin."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-24 04:04 am UTC (link)
The tears blunt his anger, and he turns away as she asks about secrets. He's actually sitting on one as well, and his anger at being lied to clouded over that fact for a moment, but now...now he knows he's got to be honest as well.

"Tina, I love you. You're the first girl I've ever been able to say that to, let alone feel that with. Where I'm from, there was just no time for that. Every day was spent just trying to get to the next one, and not knowing who would be with you if you got there.

The stuff I've seen...some nights I still wake up and don't even know where the hell I am." Justin says. "At least, not until I find you next to me, and I realize that you...you're the dream and where I came from is the real nightmare."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-24 04:09 am UTC (link)
"...is Pennsylvania really that bad?"

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-24 04:16 am UTC (link)
"Tina...I wasn't wholly honest about Pennsylvania. I'm...actually not from around here at all. As in, not from /this/ Pennsylvania. Or New York." Justin says, taking a deep breath.

"I'm from another dimension. I'm from a place where there are no X-Men, and barely a few Avengers left. The day I met was three days after I crashed here in the middle of Times Square with a Nimrod robot that made me have a heart attack." Justin says. "I would have died if two of the Avengers hadn't saved my life."

"I didn't know anyone here, really. Tony Stark was like my uncle back home. Here, I barely know the guy. When I went into Chipotle...I'd never seen one before. I'd never had cheesecake before I met you." Justin says quietly.

"My dad sent me here to keep me from getting killed. He tricked me and slipped some kind of teleportation tech in my armor to send me here so he could go on a suicide run against Norman Osborn.

I probably can never go home again, but since I met you...I haven't really wanted to, either." he says.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-24 04:28 am UTC (link)
Armor? An X-Menless dimension? She looked at him with wide eyes for a moment. Strangely it's not the things she didn't know that tripped her up but the idea of Justin, dying from a heart attack until the Avengers saved him. It was overwhelming and the restraint she'd shown when her first confronted her failed her now. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close.

"I had no idea. I had no idea...I wish you'd told me. My sister Anastasia is from another dimension as well. My god...I haven't been there for you and you're here all alone..."

She knew what that was like. To have no one. Her chest tightened but this time, it wasn't about what was going on with her mutations. It was all emotions and she knew that she had to reveal one more secret.

"Justin...I love you no matter where you're from, who you've been, what you've seen...I love you. I hope that you can continue to love me..."

He'd feel her mind, nudging at his then patiently waiting. There were some secrets she didn't want to say out loud.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-24 04:49 am UTC (link)
"Hey, stop that, okay? You don't need to apologize. I didn't tell you because I didn't want to scare you away or freak you out. I also didn't want to get too close to you in case I ended up going home, but you blew that plan away on our first date." he says, hugging her.

He hold her close to him, careful not to touch any bruises. He does treat her like he's made of glass most of the time, and he doesn't want to break her.

"Tina, I love you. I'm upset that you didn't tell me all of this sooner, but just because I'm mad at you doesn't mean I don't love you. In fact...it means the opposite." he says.

For the first time in their relationship, Justin will allow Tina into his head, unsure of what she wants to show him that she can't say aloud.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-24 04:58 am UTC (link)
She hoped that what she was about to do wasn't a mistake.

She took a moment to acclimate to the feel of being in his mind. Every mind was different and crawling around in someone's head wasn't exactly something she really liked to do very much. Privacy was incredibly important and the mind was sacred to her but...what she was showing him was private, too. And she didn't want any more secrets.

Tina let her mind spread out through his and as she did, he would start to see her secrets, her entire life playing out for him like an old-fashioned filmstrip of experiences. She spared him the most vicious of details but...everything was there. There would be nothing he would not know.

Ashamed, after she'd shown him everything, she pulled her mind back quickly and her body followed suit more slowly. Tina hugged herself, taking a few steps back.

"I hope you can still love me."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-25 01:30 am UTC (link)
As Tina crawled about in Justin's head, he did so in hers, not used to the sensation of feeling others' thoughts in his head. He studied the memories of her time with Namor (which was a different take on the man he'd known when seen through a child), and her memories of her mother, all of which seemed to be laced with anger and confusion, even the childhood ones.

He saw Kassia and Tina's silent, but minor, resentment that he little sister was more loved than her. He watched as Tina grew up feeling alone and unloved...until Sebastian Shaw came along.

And then there were things that were so unspeakable that Justin's distress was palpable, even to Christina. The treatment and cruelties she'd endured at his hands caused Justin's hands to curl into fists, ready to kill the man at first opportunity. Her memories of Benedict Kine, whom Justin had never heard of, enraged him further, and it took all that the young Rhodes had not reach out and choke the son of a bitch where he stood, to remind himself that what he was seeing and feeling wasn't real.

He saw the warmth of her caring for Cassidy and learned of the horrors the boy had endured, as well as Tina's fears of what lay ahead now that she was changing so much. And at the head of all these, he saw Tina's greatest fear:

Her belief that all of this would make him leave her, and never want to see her again. He saw how she played it through her mind thousands of times a day, even during near-death situations, and every single replay showed him getting angry, shoving her away, turning his back on her, calling her unspeakably filthy names or worse...asking her to do the things that Kine and Shaw had forced her into, and her compliance even as it broke her soul into a thousand diamond slivers.

Somehow, her belief that his love was only based on her sexual prowess cut him deeper than knowing she risked her life without telling him.

He look at her now, as she backs away, and pulls her back to him, clutching onto her for dear life as her mind releases his.

"Is that...all you got? Gonna have to try harder to get rid of me." he whispers, his voice rough with emotion.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-25 01:46 am UTC (link)
Tina had convinced herself of the outcome of this long before Justin had seen everything. It was why she was backing away from him, subconsciously extricating herself from the relationship in the hope that somehow when her worst fear manifested into reality it would hurt less.

She wondered if the diamond armor would take away the pain and how long she could make it stay once she let it free.

"I under..." She'd started to weakly accept. That he was breaking up with her. That it was over. That she was filthy, dirty, worthless trash. That's how it was supposed to work, after all but she stopped and looked up at him as best she could pressed so tightly to his body that their forms nearly became one body. The warmth of him cut through all the cold she'd started to feel and she gasp a little as a sob tried to escape.

"You still want me?"

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-25 02:39 am UTC (link)
"Tina...you had a shitty past. I used to think I owned that honor, but I lived a cake-walk compared to you. I knew who all my enemies were, and I knew who loved me." Justin says.

"You've been carrying all this around so long...and now so many things about how you act make sense to me. I...I just wish you had a little more faith in me, Tina. I mean, I /love/ you. I've put up with blanket-hogging, snoring, and you sometimes kicking me in your sleep.

Oh, and the talking. That too.

Really, though, I wish you felt like you could trust me to keep you safe. That's what I want to do, and that's what I'm going to do, starting tonight." Justin says, the idea already forming in his mind.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-25 03:09 am UTC (link)
"I kick you?" Tina briefly looked horrified and snuggled herself a little closer to him. "I'll work on the kicking. No promises on the blanket-hogging, snoring or talking. I love you, Justin. It isn't that I don't trust you or have faith in you it's...I don't know how to let anyone take care of me because no one ever has."

She pulled back and looked at him.

"What about tonight?"

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-25 12:24 pm UTC (link)
"Well, I guess I can live with the others if you stop kicking me." he jokes.

When she says she no one has even taken care of her, he decides that that's going to change tonight.

"Well, you better start getting used to the idea of someone taking care of you, since I'm going to do it as much as possible. I have an apartment in the adult area, if you want stop by tonight and talk a bit more. Just...come over a little later in the night if you can? I have to get back to work with the boss-man, but I'm hoping you can meet me tonight." he says.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-25 06:07 pm UTC (link)
"I'll be there. Dr. McCoy can't keep me here too much longer, and then I will go do my mission notes and such. Midnight work for you?"

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-26 12:05 am UTC (link)
Justin considers the flight time from here to the locations he has in mind and smiles at Tina.

"Midnight's fine, baby. I'll be waiting for you." he says, leaning in to kiss her again.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]whosperfectnow
2010-08-26 12:10 am UTC (link)
"I love you," and I'm glad that you're in my world.

Tina kissed him deeply as he leaned in, savoring it as she felt deep relief about the fact that he wanted her. He wasn't running. He wasn't screaming. He was hers.

"See you tonight."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

[info]iron_hide
2010-08-26 12:47 am UTC (link)
"Can't wait." he smiles, then turns to leave.

He pulls his phone out and sends a text to Misha.

Field testing my armor tonight. You in?


-End Scene-

(Reply to this)(Parent)



scribbld is part of the horse.13 network
Design by Jimmy B.
Logo created by hitsuzen.
Scribbld System Status