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“Where did you go?”
Illiyana spares a look toward Sam, sitting on the edge of the road where they’ve all elected to take a break from walking. Reyes hadn’t been lying about one thing at least: they really were in the middle of nowhere. She lifts Lockheed, silently asking the purple dragon if she should even bother to answer.
Sam’s hair is a mess, her ponytail half undone and matted with blood and dirt. She has more than one bruise on her face, looking even more impressively beaten up than usual. Her cast is hanging on by what seems like strings, and her plaid overtop is too large for her frame.
Illyana rolls her eyes at her, but sits down next to her on the grass. Dany and Rahne are canoodling anyway—disgusting—and Roberto is already sleeping. He’s awfully trusting, considering he’s the only boy in a group of a girls who wouldn’t think twice about drawing a penis on his face.
Well, Illyana wouldn’t think twice.
Too bad she does not have a pen. It would have been funny.
“Limbo,” she says, and her knee knocks into Sam’s. “It’s a special place. Our special place,” she specifies, lifting Lockheed so that Sam can see him. Lockheed is covered in dirt, but it’s nothing a nice bath won’t fix once they find a town.
Not that any of them have come up with a brilliant plan to explain all of what’s happened to them, and Illyana is not going to be locked away again. She’ll kill every last person who dares to even try to lock her up.
At least her… friends… if you can call them that, really, are in her side in that. Together, they’ll fight tooth and nail to survive. Roberto swears his family will take them all in, if he can just get a hold of them. She knows that Dany wants to look into her reservation, to see if Reyes was lying or not about no one else having survived. Illyana doubts they did: she’s seen what Dany’s nightmares can do.
Normal people wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Rahne’s family doesn’t want her back, and Sam has no family left to go back to.
There’s comfort in their shared tragedies, at least.
Illyana had a brother, once. Before… before. She doesn’t know if he’s still alive, or where she would go to find him if he was. It’s a lost cause. All she really has is Lockheed, her best friend. And the other pathetic teenage mutants around her, a strange group forced together, forced to bond through fighting a fucking demon bear and all of their worst nightmares.
Just thinking of it makes a shudder want to crawl down her spine, but she stomps it out.
She is too strong for that.
They can't hurt her anymore.
No one can hurt her anymore.
She’ll cut them down with her sword if they even try.
… and she will protect the others, while she’s at it. Dany may have a freakish power to bring nightmares into reality, but Illyana is still the strongest of them. And the world they’re walking toward is a dangerous place. A dangerous, dark place, full of traitors and monsters with the faces of men and women.
“Oh,” Sam says, that country accent of hers rolling off her tongue. Illyana had found it so irritating at first, but lately, it’s been almost sweet. Sam is kind, and honest to a fault. She’ll get herself hurt some day, and not the sort of hurt she insists on punishing herself with. She’ll trust someone, and they’ll betray her.
She’ll be kind, and they’ll stab that kindness with a knife and twist the blade.
It’s simply how the world works.
Illyana will have to make sure no one has the chance, so long as she and Sam are still together, in this group of misfits. She sighs, and leans on the fist that isn’t holding Lockheed. What a fucking mess.
“Do you really think Roberto’s family will take us all in?” Sam asks, a little while later.
Illyana falls backward into the grass. She throws out her fist, grabbing Sam’s ugly shirt and pulling her down too. There. They are all lying down in the grass, like homeless people.
“They would be crazy to,” she answers, and turns onto her side, pressing her body into Sam’s. Sam’s cheeks go pink, but she stares up at the cloudless sky. Sweet, sweet Sam. Never going to make a move, never going to flirt or touch without permission.
Illyana smiles to herself.
“But they’re Roberto’s family,” she keeps going. “They probably are crazy. And rich, or so he says.”
“I believe him,” Sam mutters. “He throws away his clothes when they get dirty. Doesn’t even wash them.”
Illyana holds being fashionable up as a high standard, but who the fuck has the money to just throw out their clothes, rather than washing them? Even the tights she has on beneath her shorts have been washed—they didn’t originally have so many holes, even if they do look good.
Sam’s body is warm next to Illyana’s.
A comforting sort of warmth, like napping in the sun.
Mm, she may just fall asleep here herself. Perhaps she was too harsh in judging Roberto so quickly. Even Dany and Rahne seem to have fallen asleep, the exhaustion getting to them despite their eagerness to kiss and touch and be generally gross and disgusting. They were cute. Illyana wanted to puke, honestly.
Lockheed, she knows, is laughing at her.
She throws the hand holding him over Sam’s chest, letting him snuggle in close to Sam as well. Lockheed has always loved to cuddle, to be close to Illyana, to protect her and provide comfort when he could not. Sam says, “He was pretty cool. During the fight.”
“Mm,” Illyana murmurs. She moves Lockheeds mouth for him, and then says, “He says thank you,” into Sam’s shoulder. It’s an ugly plaid shirt, but it’s stupidly comfortable on her cheek. She feels Sam shift under her, just enough to raise an arm and oh, yes, that’s better. Like a real pillow, almost.
And just like that, Illyana falls asleep.