milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

elle,
x-23

(no subject)

When Elle pulls herself up to the bar tonight, she's once again greeted with a book. This time, however, the book has a yellow post-it note attached to the cover, with the following scrawled across it:

I AM NOT A WEAPON.

"Yeah, yeah," she grumbles, pulling the book over and peeling off the note, so that she can start to twist it between her fingers.

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It doesn't take her too long to move her hand away again, in any case.

And as ... not happy as she's been about this story, Elle still points out, "You came back."

"Yes," X says.

"I always come back."

This is true, too.

So far.

Then, carefully, she bumps Elle's shoulder with her own.

Elle returns it, mimicking X's movement exactly.

Then, as she flattens out the note still crumpled in her left hand, "Are you okay in here, too?"

"Yes," X says, after a moment of consideration.

"There has not been any trouble."

Beat.

"You are still waiting for Bela?"

"Yeah."

She puts her hand on the book.

"But I'm still reading stuff."

"It is useful?"

Beat.

"The reading."

Pause.

"I haven't done the job yet."

So. Who knows.

"You will tell me?"

Beat.

"When you are done."

X is curious.

"Yeah."

After she's thought about it for another moment, "I don't think Bela will care."

"Okay," she says.

And a second later --

"That is good."

Elle takes the moment to look away again, back to the note she's still crumpling between her fingers, which she flattens out over her palm.

Oh.

Right.

"Have you... talked to anyone else?" she asks in a way that is not at all pointed. Really.

X frowns, thinking back over --

Oh.

"Yes."

Beat.

"I talked to Sam. He told me that he has powers."

"Okay."

And that's totally all they need to say about it.

Yep.

"You have talked to him, too?"

X is curious. Maybe. A little.

Or possibly she is just not sure what else to say.

"Not since -"

"Before you left."

She's crumpling the note back into her hand about now.

"Oh."

X's gaze flicks down to the hand crumpling the paper, then back up to Elle's face.

"He was not -- "

Beat.

"You are okay?"

"He wasn't what?" she asks, as she puts the note on the bar, now in the form of a wadded-up piece of yellow tinted paper.

There are a lot of things X could say to clarify.

Mean, for instance.

Possessed, for another.

He did not try to hurt you, for a third.

But this is Elle. Some things she would have already told X. Probably.

"Annoying?"

"Yeah. He was annoying."

But it's X, and X doesn't seem to have this problem, so...

X just nods. Once.

"He worries," she says.

Sometimes it irritates X, too.

"For you."

Elle does have some experience with the being irritated over concern for her - at least, how she understands it. Mostly, it's in the form of too many admonitions.

And it might be how X is annoyed by Sam, but Elle can't say it's the same for her.

"Yes."

Beat.

"I am allowed to ask?"

Why Sam annoys Elle, that is.

She does not think it is because Sam is afraid of her.

"I don't trust him."

She doesn't say it as cheerfully as she did before.

"Okay," X says, nodding once.

"I will remember."

This way she won't have to ask anymore. Probably.

Elle frowns, slightly, again at this.

But she also adds, "I don't want him to ask."