ax_main | Clint and Wanda

Clint and Wanda meet in a garage. It's a rocky start. Warning: PTSI

The world was too loud.

Clint hated the idea, because for far too long, the world had been too quiet - soundless, just him and his thoughts and loneliness and despair. He hated the idea that he'd gotten used to that silence. But now, fitted with his new hearing aids, everything seemed loud and grating and startling. The kids in the halls, the lawnmower outside, music in the dorms. The blue guy had said that he just needed some time to readjust, but after one day out there, in the world, in the sound, he found himself stumbling into the school's garage, desperate to hide himself away from...all of it.

He could have turned the aids off. He knew that. But it felt too much like defeat. Like...like he couldn't do it. Like he didn't deserve that one shred of normalcy back. So he ducked down behind one of the larger cars, shoving his back up against the wheel well, and pulled his knees to his chest, listening to his breathing echo softly back to him. In and out. He closed his eyes, imagining himself with one hand on the bow. Feel the breath. Center.

There was a definite feeling of "you're not welcome here" in the halls of the school, Wanda decided. Granted, there had always been people who'd seemed less than happy to have them around, but that had been nothing by comparison. No, this felt practically tangible,a positively unwelcomin miasma, and she was glad that she wasn't staying any longer than it would take to return her library books and track down Scott. Things sucked enough without dealing with this.

He hadn't been in his room or the Danger Room, and given that it was vacation, that pretty much left two options - either he was off somewhere with Jean, or he was in the garage, messing around with his bike. Not wanting to interrupt if it was the first, she instead headed out to the garage. If he wasn't there -

She walked around one of the cars to the area where Scott normally biked his bike, and blinked at the sight of someone she didn't recognize, sitting on the ground with his eyes closed. "You okay?" she asked, hopefully quietly enough to not startle him if he'd somehow dozed off.

Fortunately, he'd heard her coming. Unfortunately, he'd hoped she wouldn't find him here. Opening his eyes, Clint looked up at the girl and quirked a small, wry smile. "No. You?"

Wanda let out a snort that was half amusement, half acknowledgement. "Really not," she admitted. "Want company, or want me to get lost?"

Well, at least that made two of them. And seeing as how Clint didn't want to be lonely and he didn't want to be around other people, being around just one person was maybe a compromise. "You mind sitting on the ground? Cause I don't think I'm moving."

"Sounds more comfortable than anywhere else in here." Wanda came over and sat down just a short distance from him, leaning her head back against the car's door. "Why not moving? Brutal DR session?"

"VR?" Clint asked, frowning in confusion. "They already got that shit figured out?"

"Oh, you haven't seen it yet?" Wanda offered a crooked smile. "Pretty fucking amazing setup. I wish we had it."

If anything, he only looked more confused. "But, I thought you said..."

Wanda frowned, her forehead furrowing, then had a flash of insight and gave him an apologetic look. "I'm not a student here. Or, well, I'm a student? But I'm not." She paused. "Which is probably even more confusing, sorry. I'm Wanda. I'm with the Brotherhood."

Clint stared at her with a blank expression. "Look, I've been in a prison since 2016, so you're probably going to have to spell things out for me here. The guy who runs this place said that everyone that's got that gene thing is safe here. Mutants or whatever."

"Yeah, that's the story." Wanda sighed, then shook her head. "Sorry, he's right - mutants are safe here. Welcome is another story, but that's - well, it's another story." She paused and eyed him with concern. "Prison? Can I ask what happened? Or would you rather I not?"

'Prison' sounded a lot better than 'experimental medical lab'. Faced with a question about it though, Clint felt his stomach turn and he glanced away from her, breathing in the smell of the grease and dirt of the garage. It was a smell so distant from the bleach and antiseptic of the Right's lab that it was soothing. He wanted to tell her to go away right about then, but what she'd said...about mutants not being welcome - he needed to know more. Which meant that he needed to talk himself. Tit for tat. That was how trust worked.

Taking a slow, deep breath, he told her simply, "Medical lab. Not by choice."

"Fuck." Another Right lab survivor - which meant the school had acted on whatever info they'd gotten from Fatale and Tommy without them. No surprise, she supposed, but she'd hoped...

Except that didn't matter. She nodded acknowledgement with an apologetic look, and didn't ask any more questions. "What'd you want me to spell out?"

He glanced up again at her readiness to be helpful. It was both a relief...and unnerving. He didn't like easy answers. Easy answers were always the wrong answers. For a moment, he just watched her. She was...pretty. Gorgeous, really. The kind of girl he would have fallen for in a heartbeat...before. She'd given him her name before: Wanda. Reaching up, he kind of scruffed his hand through his hair, suddenly feeling a little self-conscious. Yeah, sure, try to be suave now, you freak of a medical experiment.

"I'm Clint," he offered finally. "I'm uh. Can you tell me what you meant about not being welcome?"

Wanda sighed. "Have you seen anything on TV about the Friends of Humanity base in Montana that blew up last week?" she began, realizing it didn't directly answer his question. "That was us - I mean, the Brotherhood. Being terrorists. Again. I'm pretty sure we've worn out our welcome here as a result. Which kinda sucks, but it was going to happen eventually."

"No offense, but I'm staying away from TV," Clint told her, rubbing at the back of his neck. He didn't really want to go into why. "What are the Friends of Humanity? And so you're a, what, mutant terrorist group? Like militia, but here at the school?"

"Well, not at the school. Or...not exactly." Wanda offered a crooked smile and stretched her legs out. "A few months back, Xavier offered to let us take classes here if we wanted. Some of us did. But we don't live here. And if being willing to take out the assholes funding the experimental labs and fuck knows what else makes me a terrorist, I'll take the title."

Clint wasn't smart, but he wasn't an idiot either; he picked up what she was putting down. It still took him a few moments to sit there, breathing in, breathing out, centering, before he finally offered, "Then you've got my fucking gratitude."

Wanda smiled. "You're welcome." Because yeah, the mission might have gone to hell - but this, right here, was why they'd done it. It felt good to have the reminder. "Anyway, I've never heard anything about anyone else not being welcome, and to be fair, if we were willing to buy in to his whole co-existence theory, we'd probably be welcome too. We're just not." She cocked her head. "Question 2?"

"Why would they rescue us from that lab and ban you for blowing up a base?" Clint asked. "If I could have set fire to every last inch of that place, I would have."

"That's what we did to the last one," Wanda offered with a trace of a grin, then shrugged. "Near as I can tell, because people died in the explosion, and it's 'bad PR'." She made a face, then shrugged. " We didn't plan that, but it happened. Nothing we can do about it now."

Clint looked down at the stained concrete. People died. But from what she said, they were bad people. Targets. No, not targets. He reached up and gripped his head for a moment. Not targets. The people died in an explosion. And he was safe. He was supposed to be safe now.

Wanda watched Clint for a moment, then reached over and rested her hand on his arm. "Too much?" she guessed, her voice quiet.

He didn't realize he was doing it until he'd twisted in place, pinning her arm back against the car. He held it there only long enough to register what was happening before releasing her and pulling his hands back with a soft curse. "I'm. Wanda. I'm. I'm sorry."

Wanda took a deep breath, dismissed the hex energy that had flared around her hand, then exhaled and offered a faint smile. "It's okay. I should've known better. Combat training?"

Clint noted the energy dissipate and reminded himself to stop being so fucking jumpy. He was going to get himself blown up. Nodding slightly, he stretched his hand, then pulled both back to himself, wrapping his arms around his body. "Yeah. Were you. I mean, were you one of them? Subjects? They said there were others."

"Not me," she admitted. "There are a couple with our team, though. We got them out -" she paused to think for a moment, her forehead furrowing, "over a year ago now? And Fatale still pulls out knives when she's startled." She offered a faint smile. "I just react before I think. No good excuse."

"No knives...or powers here," Clint promised her. Though the knife thing - that wasn't a bad idea. He might need to find a hunting store when he could. He couldn't afford a bow on what the school had given him, but maybe a knife.

"No powers?" Wanda looked at him, surprised.

Clint shrugged a little. "Maybe some. I still heal a little bit faster than most people. Not nearly as much as I used to, though. There was other shit too, but it doesn't matter. It's gone now, along with my hearing."

He made a brief little gesture to the clunky devices there. They were still getting the custom ones made.

"I'm sorry," she said, making a face. "That seriously sucks ass."

"So this VR thing you were talking about," Clint abruptly changed the subject. "It's a game?"

Right. No sympathy. Fuck, when was she going to learn? "Game, training scenario - a little of each," she explained, acting as if the change of subject was totally normal. "Not so much VR as combat sims with holograms and shit." She grinned. "It's pretty cool, even when it's kicking your ass. We negotiated use of it on Thursday afternoons."

A combat sim using holograms. Now he was going to be sick. Slowly, he managed to actually stand up. "I'm. It was nice to. Yeah."

"Hey, hang on." Wanda scrambled to her feet. She'd obviously said something wrong, but she wasn't sure what, and wasn't going to ask and risk making things worse. "Did they give you a phone yet?"

Clint swallowed, but reached into his back pocket, pulling out something sleek and slim and way too expensive to be something he should ever have to hold on to. He fumbled a little with it, but managed not to drop it, despite the numbness creeping into his fingers.

Wanda held out her hand. "Let me put in my number? In case you need anything."

He nodded, passing it to her, grateful he didn't have to try and do it himself.

She pecked in her contact info, offered a crooked smile, and handed it back. "Call me sometime? I'm usually capable of not sticking my foot in my mouth. It's been a crap week."

Clint breathed out something that might have once been a laugh. "Kind of different from where I'm standing."

"Yeah, I bet." She offered a more genuine smile. "Congrats."