Maverick (A G.I. Joe Fanfiction)

Chapter 4 : Want

I was fiddling what the frayed end of my right backpack strap when Storm Shadow's head fidgeted towards me, as if he wanted to say something but changed his mind. I rolled my eyes at his indecision and went back to play with the fray.

"How many questions do you have after this one?" he asked distastefully, stopping in front of a non-descriptive door.

"Fifteen," I smirk, moving past him while he held the door open.

This room had the same things inside as the last one with a few upgrades. The bed wasn't an extra-long twin but a full with a thick comforter. There was a desk with a rolling chair against the wall across from the entrance to the room. However, my favorite addition to the room was a bathroom, visible from the entrance thank to the sliding door being left open. I just couldn't have stopped myself from closing my eyes a moment and mouthing, "Thank you".

"I'll go see if your box is here yet," Storm Shadow informed me then closed the door softly behind him.

I waited a minute, smiling to myself before practically running to the bathroom. After releasing a bladder full of pee, I searched the cabinets for the things I needed for my hands and brought everything into the bedroom. I sat in the middle of the room and opened the bottle of alcohol. I started slowly, tenderly removing the soiled dressings of my left hand and placing them in the big bronze bowl in front of me. I held my hand out over the basin and poured a quarter of the alcohol through the dime-sized hole in the off-center of my palm.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Storm Shadow's said, making me almost spill the bottle's continence all over me.

"No," I answered. "Do you not know how to knock or did you what me to reek of disinfectant?"

"Sorry," he apologized, setting himself down in front of me. "How did you get those?"

"It stigmata," I informed him as I bound the wound with the gauze. "I'm just glad I wasn't born with it on my head or feet. Let me seal this one then I'll let you do my right," I began water-proofing my hand with the tape. "I have twenty questions now."

He sat there quietly, waiting for me to finish. When I held out my hand, he took it gingerly, as if I might shatter if he handled me too sharply. He followed my instructions exactly. Doing the whole process with my palm up. Waiting for all the alcohol to run off my hand before dressing it. I think the tape was the hardest for him.

"Do you feel any of this?" he asked, letting my hand go.

"Everything but the pain," I stated, striking a match and throwing it into in basin of bandages and alcohol.

He seemed only slightly stunned by this, "Did you learn how-?"

"I was born unable to feel pain," I cut him off, watching the flames consume everything in the bowl.

"You've never felt pain?"

"Maybe unable was a poor choice of word." I got up off the floor and went to rinse the bowl. "I've felt pain before in the present workings of only two people. A nine-year-old boy I meet in Japan when I visited my drunken uncle Wu. The other was one of my teachers, a very gender-racist man if you ask any of the others but I respected him even if he disapproved of me. Even though I don't feel it regularly, I've got a very high tolerance for pain."

"The boy, what did he look like?" He rose from the ground in one swift movement and was at my heels in three long strides.

"Light brown hair and eyes, and a freckle on each of his cheeks. Now, stop asking questions, it's my turn." I whipped around and notice how close he was, his body one or two inches away from mine. "What does Cobra know about me, what about me made me a target?"

"The Commander wants something from you that he knows you won't give to anyone willingly." he moved in closer, making me hop up onto the counter just to give myself a little more room.

"What exactly does he want from me?" I lower my head, thinking of every upcoming possibility for this situation. I didn't much like any of them but at least I lived in most.

He placed a finger under my chin and tilted my head up, getting my eyes back to his. His finger slid as down my throat with the gentleness of water, making me freeze in place. It fell slowly towards my collarbone and met the chain that lay against my skin. His voice was just a whisper in my ear when he answered, "This."

I placed my left hand against the zipper of his crisp white jacket and I reached towards my boot while I tilted my head in towards his mouth. When my finger contacted with the hidden sai I had in my boot, I yanked it out, shoved Storm into the wall behind him and held the hilt out to his. With a flick of my wrist, I sent the knife deep into the wall, a hair from his ear. I hopped and pushed myself off and away from the counter. I stood in front of Storm a moment before swiping my sai back.

"Your right, he can't have it." The resolve in my words echoed off the tiled walls as I left the bathroom.