Of Mutants and Men

[13]

          While Angelika was aware that she needed to take action, she found it difficult to even move an inch to the right as she lied down on the bed, the surrounding thoughts quietened down to a low buzz. Erik was doing quite a good job in concealing in his thoughts, like he always had.

24 hours had passed since Erik and she fled the chaos and many thing had happened since. It started with a phone call from Hank to reassure her that they've safely returned to New York, informing her that Charles had given up using the serum to regain his power. He went on and on about a machine called Cerebro which essentially allowed him to reach out to any mutant on the surface of this planet, using a string of words that did not sound like to English to her.

And she wondered, if they had used this machine when gathering a team to go up against Schmidt, did Charles ever come across her? Did Erik even think of asking him to find her?

Shaking her head at her own foolishness, Angelika picked up the phone and made some calls around, trying to assess the severity of the damage Erik caused. And, to no surprise, it was worse than she had hoped for. The local police force had scraped off the few drops of blood that Mystique shed and flew it to Trask's research facility. It was another step towards the dark future Logan had came to fix.

The man had already built an X-gene detector and prototypes of his Sentinels. The recent event of mutants crashing the Paris Peace Summit would give Washington the justification it needed to officialise their deployment.

Pulling her knees to her chest, she laid her head on top of them. No matter how intelligent Erik thinks himself to be, it did not go amiss to the telepath that he was eavesdropping on her conversations from behind the door, his thoughts hastily jumping from one topic to other — a cheap trick to fool her.

Getting off the bed as silently as she could, she tiptoed to the door and slowly wrapped her hand around the door knob before giving it a rapid twist and violently pushing the door open. Much to her satisfaction, the piece of wood banged quite audibly against the eavesdropper.

Enduring the smug look on Angelika's face, Erik cleared his throat as if it would lessen his embarrassment and diverged his glance to the space between her head and the frame.

"Can I help you?" Her tone was anything but kind, borderline mocking, and he cursed himself for underestimating her.

Casually running his fingers through his hair, he straightened his posture. "Would you like to have dinner with me? There was some fish in the freezer."

Food? 

Now that he mentioned it, she could smell the scent of baked vegetables and fish, stirring awake the hunger in her belly. But, much to her body's disappointment, she was not about to accept food from him. Actually, she refused to receive anything from him, afraid of the price she might have to pay later on.

Mumbling a short refusal, Angelika spun on her heels to return to the comfort of her closed bedroom before his hand shot out to grab her wrist. She shivered at the sudden surge of warmth, a tingling sensation causing her discomfort. Using her free hand, she tried to break away from his grip but he ended up grabbing the other wrist as well.

"Why are you so keen on avoiding me?" Her mouth became dry. She wished he would take his hands off of her that very instant. Or was it the other way around? "I did not poison the food, if that was what you were thinking."

Although she did not say it out loud, he noticed how her sombre her complexion became. She remembered too well. Whenever Erik prepared food, it meant he was leaving. Caliban and she were ignorant at first but then they grew weary. He never said when he would be back or why he had to leave. All they could do was just wait, hoping that he'd return until he did not.