milliways_bar | (no subject)

Well.

Sinthia has no idea who Logan is or what, exactly, a rootbeer float is, but she's thirsty and he seems a likely candidate.

"May I have a drink, please?"

Logan looks down at the girl, nostrils flaring slightly as he takes her in.

A moment of study and he finally says, "Sure, what'll you have?"

"Elderberry lemonade, please," she says lightly enough: she's not asking for anything terribly difficult, at least. But there are several markers, scent and otherwise, that declare Sinthia is not just what she seems.

The smell of metal, fear, and blood tend to stick on a person. Even a child.

They're all familiar scents, and while his demeanor doesn't shift much, he's mulling them and the significance of their being on her as he continues to study her with very little outward sign of doing so.

The only change in his attitude is his expression when she makes her request.

"Elderberry lemonade," he repeats, eyes narrowing slightly to give away the fact that isn't one he really knows. "Gimme a sec."

That said, he ambles off to inspect the refrigerators, nozzles and bottles back behind the bar, hunting.

"The bottle is clear," she says, "But it's purple liquid. In the refrigerator."

She's polite, at least. For now. In a much shorter time than a kinder universe would allow, she'll lose that politeness and much of her desire to speak with people. But that's not now. Not yet. Sinthia just climbs up on a barstool to wait.

"Purple... " Why the hell...?

A bit of rooting around and Logan locates the drink in question. He opens the bottle and grabs a glass of ice for her, then returns with both; setting them down on the counter in front of her.

"Here y'go, darlin'."

"Elderberries are dark purple," she replies softly, to the very unasked question. "They appear black sometimes. Hence the latin name."

She takes the glass and the bottle--or rather accept them, her hands still being in her lap. The bottle rises and tips and pours over the ice smoothly, better than she could do it with her hands.

"Do you call everyone that?"

"More wonderin' why anyone would want a purple lemonade," he responds.

Call him old-fashioned. Or just old. Or don't.

Better if you don't.

He arches a brow, watching the juice being poured out. That answers a question or two even as it raises more.

Aiming the look on her at her question, he replies, "S'a habit. Y'got a name I'll use that instead."

"It tastes different," she says simply, putting the bottle down. "They're sweeter than lemons."

She shakes her head. "I don't mind. My name is Sinthia, but I won't insist on it."

"Hm," Logan grunts, acknowledging her answer even as he gives the drink another skeptical look.

Lifting his beer, he gestures with the glass to her introduction and says, "Logan."

Taking a drink, he sets his beer down then reaches over to pluck a toothpick from a holder nearby.

"So, telekinetic, huh," he notes, setting the toothpick in his mouth in lieu of drawing out a cigar.

She nods. "Yes. Among other things; I have telepathy, the ability to teleport, and of voluntary intangibility," Sinthia says, drinking her lemonade. "You're familiar with them?"

"I am," he replies. "That's quite a mixed bag. How're you at handlin' that mess?"

"I'm alright," she says, honestly if not freely. "I'm getting better at it."

Logan wipes the counter down with a towel, nodding to her response.

"S'not really easy for anyone at first. How'd you come by 'em?" She's not a mutant, that much he can sniff out.

He can also read signs on her that suggest how she got her powers and where she's from are not the best.

"They were the results of an experiment," she says, sipping her lemonade. "I was put into a machine and came out with these abilities."

Notably, she does not say how the machine worked--because she doesn't know--or how it felt. Because she doesn't want to think about that. "Why?"

Logan's jaw tics, and there's a low growl to go with it, but he contains any more reaction than that.

"Just wonderin'," he replies. "I work with trainin' mutants where I'm from. Protect them from assholes who'd wanna use them for their powers, or hurt them for havin' 'em."

"I don't think I'm a mutant. My abilities weren't natural mutations," she says equably, though she now doesn't take her eyes off him.

"Define 'use them for their powers', please?"

"No. Yer not," he says simply.

Which in some ways could make her lucky, mutants don't exactly have it great, but it sounds like she has it bad in other ways.

"Lots of ways people have of doin' that," he says, the gravel in his tone speaking of experience while his eyes hold level on hers. "Lab rat is definitely one of 'em. Usin' them as a weapon is another."

"Hm."

Sinthia doesn't flinch from his level gaze, and her little face is very nearly expressionless as she listens. But between them there is a whole world of sound and fury and the feeling of nigh-incomprehensible pain: she can transmit these things as easily as she could lift the lemonade bottle. There are flashes of the sensation of bloody, wet hands, and grown men screaming before the noise is abruptly cut off by something unseen. The words that would go with it if she thought it needed any are simple: he uses me and hurts me and uses me to hurt others.

"And what do you do in the way of protection?"

Something stirs within Logan, an angry animal stalking in the shadows, pacing in fury of what she's sending and the terrible tortures from his own past that it stirs up. Vats and tubes and the body being stripped back piece by piece before being set on fire bone-deep. And then claws and blood and rage that is wild and howling and roars in lieu of any words.

Logan breathes, pulling in slow breaths, holding steady through the tumult until the images dissipate. Like stirred up silt from a river bed they settle and when the waters are clear again there's the picture of a mansion on a hill with rolling green lawns and just beyond it the wide open wilderness.

"I run a school for mutants," he answers. "Teachin' 'em how to use their powers, keepin' them safe from what's out there."

It's not perfect, there are still dangers, but there's a fierce commitment within him to make it as good as it can be.

"I also try an take out the assholes, an' hunt them down when I have to."

She is familiar with the painful aspects of his memories, and it's that connection with them that makes Sinthia unbend when she sees. The rage is completely alien: she has no anger for the people who are brought to her, or for the people who made her what she is. Sinthia has the shyness of an untamed animal, the curiosity at something new, but no thoughts of retaliation.

For all he has done to her and with her, Johann Schmidt is still her father. The only blood relative she knows of in the cosmos. Something still wants to hold onto that, though what to do with it she isn't remotely sure.

"I could give you coordinates," she says lightly, eyes finally flickering back down to the glass of lemonade again, and the connection breaks. Funny how she skips over the idea of being kept safe. "But the soldiers would very likely kill me if they were freed." Sinthia knows they're scared of her, the little blank-faced child with powers she shouldn't have and is only learning to control by use. On them. It's perhaps lucky that no one ever comes back from the isolation ward to speak on what happened.

Logan straightens, drawing back slightly and shifting the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

He pushes everything back down, returning to the same state of being he was in when she first approached the counter, and listens to her.

"How many of you are there?" he asks evenly.

"Of me?" she asks, clarifying. "Just one."

Sinthia is aware that this is devastatingly against her in terms of return-on-investment: one little girl is not likely to produce a large enough net gain to be worth what would certainly be a dangerous operation, engaging in killing someone like her father. She has no imagination of it happening.

"There are...somewhere around four hundred soldiers at the base. Approximately the same number of prisoners-of-war. They're mostly American."

Logan will take on and do a lot for just one person. Knowing the numbers was about planning, not weighing the value of such a mission.

"Eight hundred altogether, must be a decent sized base," he notes. "Where an when are you from?"

"It is," she says. "I'm from Austria, in 1942."

Or rather, she's from what used to be Austria. "Where are you from?"

Logan gives a soft grunt, not quite surprised but it changes the situation some.

"I'm from Canada, but right now I'm in upstate New York. S'the early two thousands for me."

Looking at her glass, he turns and heads back to the cooler, pulling another bottle of the lemonade and bringing it over to top off her glass.

"Went through your time though, on the side of the Allies."

"You must be very long-lived," she says lightly, watching him with the other bottle of lemonade. "Many people have heard of it, but not actually gone through it."

"It's one of my powers," Logan replies. "I have a healing factor, does a lot for me."

Both good and bad, but he'll focus on the good for now.

"Means I don't age a whole lot, and it takes a helluva lot t'kill me."

"So presumably you know how the war ends," she says. "Or your version of the war."

"It gets a helluva lot worse before it gets any better, but we take it," Logan says.

"Wish I could say I stopped havin' t'deal with fuckin' Nazis when it was over, but they keep turnin' up." And he keeps gutting them. Just in smaller numbers.

She sighs, a soft thing that's no less relieved for how it comes about. "That's good. You should win."

She's young: she's not stupid. She understands hers is, and should be, the losing side. That brings potential repercussions for her that she isn't happy to think about, but they've already covered her thoughts on that. "Do you think I'm a Nazi?"

Logan studies her a moment, then gives a single shake of his head.

"No. Not through an' through." But she does their work, even if that's not by choice.

His eyes narrow and stoic and grim seriousness enters his tone.

"I know they created you, but I'm gonna tell you right here an' now, y'don't have to be the weapon. You're yer own person, but only if you choose to be."

"I can't make them stop," she says quietly. "If I don't kill when they want me to, they make it worse on the prisoners. They make it take longer, and it hurts more. And I know they're scared--I don't have to read them to know that."

She sighs softly. "I don't want them to be scared if I can't keep them alive."

"I get it, darlin'," Logan replies, understanding very well.

"Just remember, you get out of there, you make your own life. You need help with that, you let me know."

"I don't know how I can leave," she says, with a new quality to her voice now: tiredness. She's thought about leaving for so long by now, despite her age. "Or if I even can."

"Patience, watch for yer moment and be ready to take it when it comes," he says, the firmness in his voice there to let her know that she definitely can.

"Be careful who you trust, but take help if it's honest. Yer a telepath, work on it, it'll let you t'know who's tryin' ta screw you over."

Logan's eyes scan the crowd for a moment, and then return to her.

"Worse comes to worst, put a team together to get you out. You found this place, could be fer a reason. There's a lot of heroes an' good folk here. I sure as hell wouldn't have any problems guttin' Nazis on a rescue mission."

Sinthia considers that; it's not overly showy, but she does at least keep it in mind. It's certainly helpful information, that he would be willing to do harm to help her. Whether or not that harm would come before his death is another question.

"I don't think taking people unprepared to meet my father would be a very good idea," she says slowly, low-voiced. "Johann is not a merciful man."

Logan's eyes narrow on the name, noting it and remembering, but at this point there's not much evidence to say too much with. Johann is a common name given there when and where she's from.

"Then make sure the people you take are the sort than can handle themselves," he replies simply.

Glancing towards the door, he asks, "You come an' go here a lot?"

"No, just...once," she says. "I've been locked in here since."

"S'not a bad place to hole up for awhile," Logan notes, eyes scanning the bar over again.

He doesn't care for the idea of being bound very much, but in her case it beats the alternative of going back.

"They seem t'take care of people pretty well here, but if y'need anything you let me know. I'm around."

Logan comes and goes as he pleases, but he has a way of being there when needed.

"If I need something, I will," she says. And she genuinely might; her action depends on what the need is.

"Good," Logan says simply.

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TW: traumatic events

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