Healing ||mileven||

The visitor

General POV

"El" Joyce yelled from the kitchen, "breakfast is ready, you need to get up now, no more 5 minutes!"

El groaned, she hated early mornings, much preferring to stay in bed under the warm blankets, they always felt so comforting, a world away from her sparse white room at the lab, her cold metal bed and scratchy sheets. "Coming" she shouted half-heartedly, thinking she could probably get away with a few more minutes as Joyce was usually a bit of a softy.

"El!"

Ugh, ok, not this morning then. She vaguely heard a knock at the front door as she was getting up, weird, bit early for visitors, she thought sleepily. The knocking turned to banging, bringing El out of her stupor, she suddenly felt scared not knowing what was going on. Creeping up to the bedroom door she opened it silently, carefully she padded her way down the hallway, stopping at the end.

"Alright! I'm coming!" shouted Joyce, annoyed at the early visitor and needless banging. Before she could get to the door it slammed open, revealing a drunk, dishevelled Lonnie.

"Hey babe" he said, like she should be impressed by his sudden appearance, "aren't you gonna invite me in?"

"What the hell are you doing here, Lonnie!? Are you drunk?" she said, getting closer and clearly smelling the alcohol emanating from his body.

"I had one Irish coffee this morning on the way, I swear" he said, stupidly crossing his heart. Joyce rolled her eyes, knowing this could only spell trouble.

"What do you want?" she asked, suspiciously, knowing he only ever came when he needed money or a place to stay if his current mess of a girlfriend had kicked him out again.

"Who says I want anything?! I just came to see my boys, I wanna take em somewhere, do something, you know, some father-son time". Joyce looked incredulous, since when are you fucking interested in the boys?

"They're not here, Will is at Lucas's house, and Jonathan's working early shift today. You'll have to come back tomorrow"

"So, you're here by yourself?" Joyce had no intention of discussing El with him so nodded. "So why the fuck have you got breakfast for two sitting on the table?" he said angrily. "What the fuck, Joyce, you lying to me? You got a man here? You know I hate it when you fucking lie!" He was getting angry now and getting closer to Joyce, who was backing slowly away towards the kitchen. She got level with the hallway, looked down it and met El's eyes, she slowly shook her head as if to say 'stay there', but El didn't understand subtle body-language like that. Lonnie did though, he walked slightly drunkenly to the hallway to see who Joyce was looking at, grabbed El's PJs and dragged her into the lounge, she was frozen in fear, not understanding what was happening. "Who the fuck are you?" El didn't understand the word, but she understood how it was being used.

"E...El".

"So, taking in fucking strays now are you? If you can afford this little scrag then you can give me some cash, now bitch!" he grabbed Joyce's wrist, tight enough to start hurting her.

"Stop it, Lonnie, you're hurting me!".

Joyce was trying to break free by pulling at his fingers, he slapped her face hard and shoved her against the kitchen work top, "get me some cash now, and whatever fucking else I can get some money for". He was completely ignoring El, until she jumped on his back and started to hit and scratch him, trying to get him to let go of Joyce, she knew she wasn't meant to use her abilities else she'd get into a lot of trouble. It worked, but not in the way she wanted. He let go of Joyce straight away and easily picked El off his back, standing her in front of him he punched her hard on the side of her face, she went down fast, completely dazed, a cut had opened on her eyebrow and was bleeding all down one side of her face.