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I.
The shaky kid is already wigging out, so Boom-Boom isn’t sure how it’s possible but he somehow gets even more scared when he hears Cameron Hodge’s voice again. “That’s their leader ,” he tells her as they swing from his precarious grip on the catwalk. “I heard his voice… too much!”
And then he starts talking about shaking them loose. Just breaking free from the twisted metal they’re clinging to and going splat on the floor below. “We’d be better off dead, really,” he rationalizes.
“No! Rictor, suicide doesn’t make anything better,” she says, aware that she’s arguing now for her own life and for his. “Look, I saved you. Now you gotta save me.” Because if he doesn’t care whether or not he dies, maybe he still cares if she dies.
Rictor’s still looking uncertain, despair keeping him from making a move.
“Rictor…” she says, hands tight around his waist, “I don’t wanna die.” (She used to think nobody did, but that was a long time ago, before her friends started shooting up, before she ran away from home, before Angel killed himself and left behind a huge mess for X-Factor to fix.)
Rictor’s still deciding. Hodge looms up above them, the floor looms below. And then finally Rictor says, “Okay… alright… you win.” His hands start moving up the broken railing. “I’m climbin’.”
II.
“Where… where are we?”
“In Genosha, kiddies,” someone leers from up above. Clicking, clacking spider legs bring the monstrosity closer. “Where else would you be?”
Oh, crud. Tabby recognizes that voice. That’s the voice that used to chastise her for running too fast through the halls of the old X-Factor headquarters, the voice that taunted her while she hung suspended by her wrists, a power dampening helmet locked around her head. Cameron Hodge.
She looks over and sees Rictor shaking. Shaking like a leaf. And she realizes that as bad as this whole shit situation is for her, it’s gotta be ten times worse for Rictor. After all, she wasn’t the one who was tortured for weeks and nearly forced to destroy San Francisco. She hates Hodge, but her history with him pales in comparison to Rictor’s.
And that pitiful expression on his face is damn near breaking her heart.
Storm tries to fight back and gets knocked down. Turns out in her teenager’s body she’s no match for Hodge and his forces. And then Rictor does what Rictor does best. The whole building starts to tremble.
One of Hodge’s goons yells at him. “Your power could collapse the citadel and crush us all!”
True to form, Rictor says, “Fine, old man! We prefer death to serving Hodge.”
But then suddenly the ground stops shaking. Rictor stares down at himself in horror. Their powers are gone. Nothing to be done.
“You are in my power,” Hodge gloats with glee. “You owe me your lives.”
With their hands bound behind them, the kids can’t even respond with a rude gesture. Tabby never realized before how goddamn small Rictor looks when he’s not wearing a uniform or a vest or even so much as a bracelet.
It’s like the Genoshans took away more than just his clothes. It’s like they took his nerve, too. His attitude.
Hodge takes their names as well.
“You, all of you, will answer to numbers,” he explains, a Cheshire cat’s grin surrounded by wires and machinery. “Forget who or what you were before— you’re nothing now.” His head swivels and he starts barking orders to the guards.
Tabby looks over at Rictor. “Ric,” she whispers. “Hey. Just for the record… this is all your fault!”
His look of sort of numb horror falters. He seems surprised, annoyed. “What? My fault?”
“‘Hey, let’s go jump in the lake, it’ll be fun,’” she says in a poor imitation of Rictor’s voice. “And now we’re stuck here in some truly heinous dungeon with Daddy Longlegs lording over us. And I blame you!”
“Boom-Boom, that’s not fair,” Rahne pipes up.
“Shut up, Rahne,” Tabby snaps.
That gets Rictor mad. “Hey, don’t tell her to shut up.”
“I’ll do whatever the hell I want, jackass,” Tabby sneers, bumping him with her elbow. “I can’t believe you. You can fight fucking goblins and demons but a head without a body is too much?”
“It’s Hodge ,” Ric hisses, eyes burning. “You know how it is, Boom-Boom. Even just hearing his voice makes my insides feel like ice.”
“So ignore him,” she snaps back. “You’re good at ignoring Cable.”
“’Cause Cable’s a dick.”
“Hey,” Rahne says, looking like she wants to defend the newly minted leader of the New Mutants.
“Not now, teen wolf,” Tabs says. “Yeah, Cable’s a dick, so what’s that make Hodge, huh?”
Unfortunately, Hodge swivels back around to face them just then. “My little mutant nobodies,” he croons. “In just a moment, my guards will be placing you in a cell. In there, you’ll find your new slave outfits. Put them on— or things will be even more unpleasant for you.”
Two guards help Storm to her feet. She marches onward, glaring straight ahead of herself the entire time, head held high. Rahne is next, and then Tabby. She watches as a guard puts a hand on Rictor’s elbow to help him up.
Ric jabs the elbow back into the guard’s stomach and twists around, teeth gnashing as he tries to bite the guard’s hand. “Behave,” Hodge chides from above.
Rictor glares up at his tormentor murderously, but he says nothing. He lets the guard pick him up and lead him into the cell with his friends and teammates. Once they’re all in, the cuffs deactivate.
Storm and Rahne are already pulling out the Genoshan mutate outfits. Rictor turns to Tabby. “Hey,” he says, “ just for the record — when we get out of here I’m telling Cable you called him a dick. And I’m tossing you in that damn lake.”
“Bet,” Tabby says. But inwardly, she smiles.
As long as Rictor’s still talking about getting out of here, she knows there’s hope.
III.
The day after he doesn't jump off a ledge, Rictor is woken up by his phone ringing.
He ignores it the first time, letting the call go to voicemail, but then it buzzes again. Whoever's calling won't be ignored.
Reluctantly, he grabs his cell phone off the nightstand, yanking out the charger, blinks sleep and hangover out of his eyes— he had too much of Guido's shitty beer last night. The contact photo is a blurry photo taken at a bar a couple of years ago, and the name that pops up - TABS - means he's about to get yelled at.
“Hey,” he says, sucking it up and answering the phone. His voice comes out rougher, hoarser than it should be. He coughs and tries again. “Hey.”
“Hey, Ric,” she says back, and her voice sounds funny, too high-pitched, almost faraway. Either she's trying not to yell or she's trying not to cry. “Are you alright?”
He has to think about it. “I, uhm… did Madrox call you?”
“No,” she says, and he can definitely hear the anger now. “No, nobody called me. You were trending on fucking Twitter.”
He takes a moment, lets that sink in. The worst moment of his life, and it got turned into a hashtag. Serves his fool ass right, probably. “I… I didn’t… I wouldn’t have wanted you to find out that way.”
“Then why’d you— ?” She starts angry and stops, making a muffled noise, and Rictor realizes with a jolt that she’s crying. He made Tabitha Smith cry. Suddenly he feels like the biggest jackass in the world. “Rictor, I… I know you’ve been going through it, what with losing your powers and all, but… but, God, you could’ve called me. You know I’m here for you.”
Sure, he could have called her. He could have called her or Sam or Jimmy or Berto, or any one of his friends who still get to call themselves mutants, who haven’t had a piece of themselves yanked away.
“It’s just… it’s a lot, right now,” he says. “I don’t know how to describe it. Losing my powers, it’s like… it’s like I lost my sense of touch. Nothing feels real.”
“You fell off a building,” she says flatly. “That sounds pretty fucking real.”
“I was fine.” He was. He will be. Maybe. “Monet caught me.”
“And what if she’s not there next time?”
Rictor pushes himself up in the bed, looks down at last night’s clothes piled up on the floor. “I… I wanna tell you there won’t be a next time.”
Silence on the other end. Then— “Yeah, I want you to tell me that, too.”
Rictor sighs. He thinks, suddenly, of the time that Tabs had described to him in detail how she spotted Cyclops standing on the roof of the X-Factor building, shouting to ghosts and sounding out of his mind. He’d scared her. When she told Rictor the story, she’d still sounded scared, even though Cyclops was fine.
So his best friend is sad and scared and angry, and he wants to tell her that she doesn’t have to worry but he can’t exactly tell her that without being a liar. So he says, “I love you.”
“Yeah.” It sounds like she might have started crying again. “Me too.”
IV.
Julio walks on the sidewalk while Tabby opts for a balancing act on the retaining wall along the park beside them. It makes her about a foot taller than him as they walk along, talking about clothing sales and Terminator and everything and nothing, like old times. “Hey,” she says suddenly, after a long silence, “are you seeing someone?”
He chokes on his latte, sputtering and coughing in an attempt to laugh. “Are you serious? D’you happen to notice the naked redhead in my kitchen this morning? Jesus, Tab, you’re wearin’ his fucking jacket.”
She is, as a matter of fact, wearing Shatterstar’s black and white jacket, having grabbed it on the way out of Ric and ’Star’s apartment. In her defense, it was chilly. “No, I’m… I didn’t mean like that, dumbass,” she says, shoving him lightly and almost losing her footing. “No, like, are you seeing a therapist?”
Julio gives her an odd look and takes another sip of his latte. “For what?”
Tabby actually stops walking so she can stare at him. “For what? Let’s start with ‘witnessed your dad’s murder’ and follow it up with ‘tortured by an anti-mutant hate group at the age of 14.’ Not to mention almost taking that dive a couple years back.”
Her words hit him but he tries to shrug them off, continuing to walk like they’re still arguing about movies and music. “I was in a bad place,” he admits. “I’m not now. I got my powers back, I got my ‘Star back. I’m good, Tabby. All fixed.”
Tabitha jumps down so she can stop him in his tracks, blocking the sidewalk with her hands up. “All fixed?” she repeats. “Ric, take it from somebody who has tried to ‘fix’ everything with haircuts and new codenames, shit doesn’t get better on its own. It’s there on the good days, too.”
“Jesus, Tabby, there’s nothing wrong with me,” he scowls, trying to bat her away. “What, are you seeing a shrink?”
“Yes,” she says readily. “Twice a month for years now.” It’s obvious he wasn’t expecting that. “What? I may be a garbage pile but I know myself and I know what I need. And I know you too. If you want, I can recommend somebody.”
He shrugs, clutching his latte tighter mostly to keep his hands warm. “... Okay,” he says finally. “Just… just maybe I’ll look them up. I’m not promising anything.”
“I’m not asking anything,” she says, and they continue along down the sidewalk.
V.
The second she sets foot in Rictor’s apartment, Tabitha can smell the stench of stale beer, unwashed clothes and depression. If it were anybody but Ric, she might just turn around. “Hey,” she says, kicking a pile of papers aside as she walks further into the dim, dingy room. “Thought I’d drop by.”
Rictor stares at her from his desk chair. “Without a warning?”
“I’m a friend, not a nuclear missile,” Tabs says. “I don’t need to ‘warn’ you.”
“It’s just that if I’d known you were coming I could have—”
“Tidied up?” she asks, eyeing the overflowing wastebins and giant pots of literal dirt. “Dude, I don’t even think Marie Kondo could fix this mess.”
“Fine.” Ric kicks away from his desk, wobbling a little in his chair. “Sorry I’m not living in paradise, like all the rest of you.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of why I’m here,” Tabs says. “Why aren’t you on Krakoa? What’s with that?”
A shadow crosses his face. “I can’t go.”
“What do you mean you can’t go?”
“I just can’t,” Rictor says, looking increasingly frustrated. “But… but that shouldn’t stop any of the rest of you from living there, having the time of your lives… seriously. Don’t worry about me.”
“All I do is worry about you,” she sighs. “For like. Ever.”
He just looks annoyed. “Why don’t you run on back to Gilligan’s Island, Ginger?” Rictor grumbles, snapping the bottle cap off another beer. “Go on. I think there’s still a couple New Mutants you haven’t screwed yet.”
“You’re trying to piss me off so I’ll go away,” Tabby says, unfazed. “And it’s not gonna work.”
Ric takes a swig of beer and grimaces. It’s gone flat after sitting around this dusty, depressing place. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because you’ve been pissing me off without trying for over a decade, and I still haven’t gone away.”
“Why can’t you just leave me alone ?”
And Tabby says, all in a rush with her voice dead serious, “Because when I leave you alone you end up on a ledge on the highest building in Mutant Town.” Her face goes pale, almost like she didn’t really mean to say it.
Rictor sits up, eyes wide as he stares at her. “That was different.”
“So, you don’t have powers, you try to off yourself. You do have powers, you… you sleep in a coffin.”
Ric swings his legs out of his box, staring moodily down at his knees. “It’s not a coffin.”
“Okay, so what is it?” Tabby asks, flopping down in his desk chair. “A compost bin? Because I gotta say, you are looking more and more like a brown banana peel.”
He scowls. “It’s… I just… it’s the earth, you know? It’s earth. I need… and I can’t go outside right now, I’m all, I’m all over the place. They keep thinking maybe a transformer blew or something, but it’s me , Tabs. I can’t even go outside. And… and I need to be outside. So I guess I tried to bring the outside… in.”
“Well, hell, we could plant a flower right here,” Tabby says, grabbing a handful of soil from one of the big pots. “A Krakoa flower, I mean, not a regular flower. Although you could use a pop of color in here—”
“No.”
“Rictor.”
“No, I’m not going,” he says, and he’s told them this, he’s told them over and over again. “You all have… you all have this wonderful place now, okay? I can’t ruin it. I won’t do that to you. To you, or to Terry or Rahne or Jean Grey or ’St—” He chokes off the name with a deep swig of stale beer.
Tabby huffs. “Is that what this is about? Jeez, Ric, just… look, hey, we’ll get you a guy. You know some of the OG Hellions came back to life? And I think the Not-Sam one swings your way.”
“Shut up.”
“No, I’m serious—”
“Just shut up, Tabby.” He lays back down in his empire of dirt, staring up at the ceiling. After a moment of deliberation, Tabs joins him there. They lie side by side, looking up at the ceiling like it might hold some answer they haven’t yet considered. “It worked on ’Star,” Rictor says finally, voice low and mournful.
She doesn’t look at him, just keeps staring at the ceiling. “What did?”
“Pissing him off,” Ric clarifies. “So he’d go be on the island, where he belongs. He left me alone. I don’t know why you don’t.”
“He probably thought you needed space,” Tabby says. “Me? I don’t care what you need. I miss you. Maybe being here, isolated, is what’s best for you or whatever, like you’re some kind of… dirt monk. But it does shit-all for me. I’m bored, I’m lonely, the muties are in space and all the younger kids ignore me and I just… want you there so we can do shit like steal Hank’s cappuccino machine and… and… well, actually, that’s kinda the only idea I had, but I figured once you were there you’d help me think of more stuff to do.”
She feels him move in the dirt, and when she turns her head she finds him staring right back at her. “I… I want to come to Krakoa,” he admits. “I just can’t. I think… I think maybe I’m going to figure out how to do it. Maybe. But that hasn’t happened yet.”
“But you’re not giving up hope?”
“No. I’m not.”
She smiles, and he smiles back, and even though they’re lying in the dirt in a box in a shitty little apartment far away from all the rest of the mutants, it’s not the end of the world. Not yet, anyway. Not this week.
Their faces are still surprisingly close together. “Do you think we should kiss?” Tabby says.
“Not even a little bit.”
“No tongue?”
“No nothing.”
“Prude.”
“Get out of my coffin.”