Work Text:
Laura loved the hangouts she and Akihiro had been having lately, but tonight she just couldn’t relax. The loud music coming from her portable speaker was pounding in her head as she shifted nervously on the couch. She took a deep breath and forced herself to say the words that had been on the tip of her tongue for days.
“I told Logan not to come on Gabby’s first mission with the x-men.”
Akihiro nodded slightly and glanced up at her, though he didn’t stop painting her nails, “What’d he say? Something stupid, I expect,” he squinted at her middle finger and wiped away an errant smudge on her cuticle.
She watched as he zero-ed in on his task and tried not to move her hands, “Nothing yet. He hasn’t even read the message,” She started to shrug but quickly stopped when Akihiro flicked the back of her hand and tsked, “I think he lost his phone again.”
He scoffed but stayed silent, hands steady and face carefully blank as he waited for her to continue.
“I just didn’t want him to make it about himself, you know? I want this to be about her.” Laura sighed and looked down at her lap, not knowing why this was so hard to say. She felt her guard going up even though she knew that Akihiro of all people wouldn’t judge her for this.
As she worried her bottom lip between her teeth, Laura felt her body go tense and still. The way it did when she was younger.
Small. Quiet. Invisible.
A wave of intense emotion crashed over her and she hated it. Her stomach flipped and her hands felt cold.
Akihiro looked up. When he met her eyes, he must’ve seen her distress because he smirked and took on a playful posture, clearly trying to cheer her up. Or distract her.
“Sounds like a good decision, he wouldn’t know subtlety if it walked up to him and shot him in the head.”
His words fell on deaf ears. Laura looked at him despondently, a stubborn frown pulling at her face. She couldn’t hear anything past the heavy guilt dragging her shoulders down.
When he saw her reaction, Akihiro quickly sobered. A serious look crossed his face. Emotional conversations made him uncomfortable, but he was always there for Laura when she needed him. No matter how awkward he was.
He finished painting her pinky nail and put the bottle down, turning to face her fully to show that he was listening.
“I just. I feel like I'm-” her voice wavered and she shook her head before continuing, “like I'm betraying him.”
Her voice was small, and all of a sudden she wasn’t 24 and sitting in her own apartment, she was a scared little girl standing in the rain, begging Logan to stay.
Laura was dragged out of her thoughts by Akihiro scoffing and shaking his head, “What has he ever done for you? For any of us?”
Her hands shook slightly and he gently took them in his own, careful to not touch the still drying nails, and rubbed circles into the backs of them with his thumbs. She could tell that he had no idea what he was doing, but she appreciated the comforting gesture anyway.
Laura emphatically shook her head as conflicted feelings got stuck in the back of her throat and argued, “He brought me to the school and he introduced me to the Hellions and the New X-men, he tried to give me a home when I didn’t have one.”
She could tell how hard it was for Akihiro to maintain his composure at her words, his jaw tensed, “That’s the bare minimum that he could have done, Laura, and he didn’t even really do it. He basically dropped you on Xavier’s porch and left.”
“He- He tried, that’s what matters,” She responded firmly, not letting the cold uncertainty that had been growing in her chest for years bleed into her words, “He just doesn't know how to deal with shit. I don’t either. I wasn’t a kid. I was a weapon and he didn’t know what to do with me.”
Her vision was blurring despite her best efforts and it was taking everything she had to maintain her composure.
Akihiro huffed, “Trying isn’t what matters. The fact that he’s an asshole is what matters. He managed to do just fine with the small army of peppy side kicks that followed him around. He just didn’t want to try with you because he would’ve had to deal with his mountains of emotional baggage. And god knows he didn't want to do that.”
Laura pulled her hands away and leaned back, childishly crossing her arms across her chest and looking away from her brother, “They’re great. Jubilee and Kitty and Hisako and all the rest are great people,” She shrugged, aiming for indifference but landing somewhere else, “Maybe they’re just easier to love than I am.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Laura could see the incredulous look on Akihiro’s face, he gestured wildly with his hands, “That’s bullshit and you know it. You’re very easy to love, Laura. Hell, look at me. I wouldn't be where I am now if it wasn’t for you. And if he can’t see that, then it’s his problem.”
Laura looked down at her nails, coated in the sparkly black nail polish they had picked out together at the drugstore earlier, and mumbled into her chest, “No one got you to where you are now except for yourself.”
“Oh yeah, and meeting you had nothing to do with that,” Laura could see him rolling his eyes theatrically in her periphery but still refused to look at him. She knew she would break if she did.
A memory itched at the back of her mind, she tried to ignore it but it came anyway. The way they always did.
Cold winds howling through pines, frigid air biting at her skin through a blood-soaked uniform. Freshly fallen snow crunching under her boots. Rough bark digging into her back while a thick forearm cut off her breathing. “Rahne Sinclare has two things we’ll never get back… hope and innocence. She’s who we save– She’s why we risk our lives. She’s who we die for. Sinclair is more important than you or me. Our lives are worth nothing compared to hers!”
I do not understand. I do not understand. I do not understand. I do not understand.
Laura blinked herself back to the present, “I just don’t want her to feel the way I felt,” she aggressively rubbed her face, trying to wipe away tears that had yet to fall, “He just has this ability to make me feel like the smallest person in the room.”
Akihiro nodded with a distant look on his face, she knew that he was intimately equated with that feeling.
Laura leaned back into the couch and sighed, tucking her feet up under herself, “Maybe if I cut him off, he’ll finally do something.”
Her brother went still and put a hand on her arm, gently resting it on top of the x-shaped scars littered there, “Laura. Look me in the eyes when I say this” She dragged her gaze from the wall to meet his steady eyes, the eyes that they shared, “That man is never going to change for anyone but himself,” she knew that he had learned this the hard way, “If you decide to cut him off, do it for Gabby. Do it for yourself. Not because he might decide to change. He won’t. And if he does, he’s only doing it because it’s affecting him.”
“I just. I love him,” Laura’s voice cracked traitorously, “I really do. He’s my father. Or at least the closest thing I have to one. When he died. I -.” She shook her head and pressed her fingers into her eyes until she saw stars.
Akihiro shrugged and stared at the wall, “just because you love him doesn’t mean that he’s not a prick, and it doesn’t mean that he didn’t hurt you,” he sighed and ran a hand down his face, “I think you’re allowed to feel both at the same time.”
At that, Laura is reminded of what little she knows about his upbringing. Brief flashes of a horrible, animalistic man and emotionally distant but painfully ordinary foster parents.
“He sees the worst of himself in us,” she barely hid her flinch at his words, “But that doesn’t mean that’s all you are. You have more good in one claw than he has in total. He’s just too dense to see that”
Laura ran a hand through her hair, glancing at him and smirking the best she could with red, watery eyes, “I think you could take a little bit of your own advice”
Akihiro rolled his eyes like he knew that she was right.
Sensing that the serious conversation was over, Laura huffed out a laugh and attempted to make her voice sound light and teasing, “when’d you become so emotionally mature? I thought that was my role in this relationship.”
He smirked at her sideways, “I’m full of surprises,” Akihiro got up off the couch and stretched languidly, not unlike a cat, “Aaaand, I think that just met my emotional quota for the month.”
Laura smiled and tried to hide a sniffle behind a yawn, “You know, Gabby's at a sleepover and won’t be home until tomorrow. We could order some food and watch a movie. I even have some of that German beer that Kurt likes.”
She forcefully relaxed her posture and hoped that she didn’t seem too pathetic. She really didn’t want to be alone.
She couldn’t tell if Akihiro noticed her desperation or not. He looked over, stretching his arms over his chest and tilted his head, “Okay, but I get to pick the movie. I’m not watching Mean Girls again.”
Laura scoffed, pouting playfully and crossing her arms across her chest, “Fine. It’s not my fault that your taste is ancient.” She threw a pillow at him to punctuate her statement.
He gracefully dodged and then caught the projectile, “Are you calling me old, imouto?” He threw the pillow right back at her.
She batted it out of the air and shrugged, “if the shoe fits.”
Akihiro shook his head fondly and padded into the kitchen, opening a few drawers before finding the one with takeout menus, “There’s a lot of these.”
Laura glanced over at the stack of menus in his hands, “Gabby’s on a mission to try every shitty restraunt in the city, something about finding the true meaning of bad food.”
Akihiro barked out a laugh as he read over the menu for a Thai place. Definitely not the worst spot they’ve tried.
While Laura waited for Akihiro to choose a place to order from, she looked at the photo wall she and Gabby had recently put up.
It was a mix of portraits, strips from photo booths, team photos, and selfies with friends. The dumb jcpenney photoshoot that Gabby had forced her and Akihiro to do. A selfie with Kiden. Game night with Cessily and Sooraya. Her and Gambit in France. The college graduation photo Megan had sent her last month. A new mutants team photo. Jonathan wearing build-a-bear clothes. Her and Jubilee holding Shogo.
Looking at the proof of her place in the world, Laura felt that she had finally found a family. Even if Logan wasn’t in it.