Tender Your Wounds

[Cameron Bell]

Cameron sat staring at the front door. His apartment, now eerily still, was a picture of bachelor padliness. That meant a small pile of sneakers slouching against the wall, unwashed dishes, an unmade bed, water ring stains, and dumbbells left perilously on the floor. A glossy magazine, ravaged and splayed, clung feebly to the couch, there was a smell of stale take-out, and a few slithers of grey morning light which dissected the room into gloomy quarters. An hour ago, the apartment had been empty – not truly bare, for its furnishings had surely been a fixture since the nineties, but otherwise barren of all signs of life. All signs, except for a man and his radio. Then his phone gave a buzz and the message was received: Aimee was on her way.

It was the first he'd heard from her since the erratic couple of texts which had disturbed his late night vigil over the police scanner. He was swift in his replies, soft words oozed like honey until her asinine needs were sated. The plan was to visit her at home, in the nest of misfits, armed with flowers and trickling kisses, but that was dashed to the wall with a single text. If there was anything to be gleaned from her enthusiasm, it was that the messages had failed to convey the extent of her trauma, but it was becoming rapidly apparent, even without seeing, that the evening's events had taken their toll. Where trauma patients would flock to hospitals, Aimee Connors came to him, to heal her emotional wounds. There is a reason why throughout history the greatest thinkers in the world have equated love to madness.

Cameron sat at the small table for two, with nothing but the scanner beside him, its faint ceaseless drone keeping the silence at bay. A shadow passed by the window that was somehow meek in its appearance. He was out of his seat before the knock sounded against the wood, and opened the door with an urgency that was reflected in his immediate embrace.

[Aimee Connors]

The bus ride over had been full of glances over her shoulder and trying to be aware of everything around her. Aimee hadn't slept well, not with the survival of Jake and Aidan weighing on her mind, but she'd heard them talking to Anna during the early morning hours. What they'd been saying hadn't been clear through the floor and walls, but it was enough for now to know they were both actually alive.

Aimee walked briskly to her boyfriend's apartment, knocking on a door which opened almost before she touched it. She fell into his arms; Cameron's warm presence alone was enough to soothe away a lot of her stress. "Oh my God," she mumbled into his shoulder. "You will not believe the day I had yesterday."

He drew her inside, closing the door behind her and letting her stay snuggled to his chest for a moment before reaching for his phone and it's all important text-to-speech function. She flopped onto his rumpled looking couch, tucking her knees underneath her and hugging a disheveled throw pillow.

[Cameron Bell]

"I saw the fire."

Before joining her on the couch, Cameron made a quick detour to give the volume dial on the police scanner a generous turn. In all likelihood nothing would come of it, given the patterns of activity he'd observed over the last several weeks, but the creeping passage of time was starting to make him desperate. Besides, he'd grown quite fond of the static chatter and couldn't quite recall the last time there had been complete silence. The television was an ancient useless thing with feeble speakers and a picture that went snowy whenever a plane flew by. So the police scanner was a source of much-needed companionship in Aimee's absence, and sometimes, increasingly, in her presence, too.

Curled up as she was on the couch, like a fetus or a ball, as if compressing her tiny form into something tinier still would make her vanish entirely from sight, and danger. She was still very much a child inside, and that hardened shell of the New York City street rat was a rusted armour, made brittle by her friends. Cautious not to smother Aimee, he afforded her some distance when he took his seat. Then, following a limp silence between them in which his fingers danced deftly over the cell phone screen, there came a cold robotic voice:

“Aimee, what happened? I've been up worrying about you all night.”

[Aimee Connors]

She took a deep breath. "I followed Aidan last night. With Jim. He's been spending so much time out, and not with Tess or at work. We were just curious, really."

Aimee scrubbed a hand over her face and then continued. "He was meeting with some guys who looked shady, and then they were... attacked. And Jim and I got caught up in it." She took another shaky breath, the memories of the Nectar gas still too fresh in her mind.

[Cameron Bell]

"What sort of guys was he meeting? Were they mutants?"

It was the first and most pressing question that came to mind. If Aidan had been doing business with shady characters, then perhaps that might explain why the house had attracted so much unwanted attention. It was the nature of his dealings, and the identity of his cohorts that interested him most - there had always been something off about Aidan, in his limited experience with him. Jake, too. Cameron knew when he was being watched, and during his visits their eyes followed him like the haunting gaze of portraits, unmoving and inescapable. And then it was when his own gaze fell upon Aimee that he realised his mistake. The look of curiosity melted into concern, and he shuffled closer.

“Did they hurt you?”

[Aimee Connors]

"I dunno if he was meeting mutants but they were attacked by one. Some guy who turned into smoke. But he was with the Three Elevens. They started shooting at the meeting but me an' Jim were between them. I mean, I'm fine, we didn't get shot or anything but we were running away and they blasted us with this gas grenade. It made my powers so crazy," her voice broke a little, and she frowned, trying to get the words out without breaking down. Dammit, she was stronger than this!

Cameron's intent and concerned expression was making her feel weepy, though. "I got stuck to a fence. It was nectar, like at the rally. Jim shot off like a rocket. Three Elevens got us both, tied us up in that warehouse when we were unconscious." She peeled back the long sleeves of her shirt, revealing her chafed wrists to his concerned eyes.

[Cameron Bell]

He reached out. Fingers probed gingerly, tracing the thin red lines where phantom restraints still bit into her skin. His eyes were soft, his blundering curiosity was in check, but his mouth was pressed into a line, taut with anger. He was no stranger to the effects of Nectar, in fact, he had seen it in action first hand, the horror of it playing out like a scene from a David Cronenberg movie. It had been a month since the rally and the ensuing riot; only a month since Vanguard had given their latest anti-mutant measure its infamous debut, and already it was in the hands of petty street thugs. One hand closed tenderly around Aimee's hand, while the other worked his phone; it was times like these Cameron was thankful for his affliction, for had he a voice, it would have surely betrayed him. As it was, the monotonous drone of his text-to-speech app served as an excellent mask.

“The Three Elevens have caused you trouble before, I know, but what did they want with you? Why the warehouse?”

[Aimee Connors]

"I - I don't know. They seemed to know Aidan. Not in a good way - they fucking hate him. And I guess Jim and I were just easy targets. I mean, they recognized me. Knew where I was from and that they could use us to get to him."

Aimee sighed overly dramatically, trying to break the growing tension in the room. Cameron was trying to hide it but she could see his growing anger in the line of his mouth and bunching of his shoulder muscles. "I am just so damn memorable!"

[Cameron Bell]

The levity was welcomed with a faint smile, still weighted with disgust. Aimee was suddenly wrapped in an arm, and eased close. Cameron placed a kiss on her forehead which said, "Yes, you are." But he was already suffocating her with affection, and, if given the chance, Aimee would gladly drown in it. Before long they would be in each other's arms, locked in amorous exchange upon the couch, then upon the floor, and then wherever fancy took them. That would not do - she had a story to tell and, this time at least, he very much wanted to listen. So he eased off and provided her with a prompt to continue her tale.

"The next part is obvious enough: Aidan turns up and starts to burn the place down. I bet the gangbangers took that well."

[Aimee Connors]

Her yellow eyes sparkled a bit, happy to be safe and able to surprise him with how things actually went down. "Not just Aidan - Jake too. I don't even know..." She licked her lips, remembering the gun against her head as the two men had been forced to prove they were not carrying anything that could be considered a weapon. "I still don't know how they did it. The gang leader, Julio I think? Anyway, the guys came in unarmed. He put a gun to my head and made them show they didn't have anything like something Aidan could burn.

"And they didn't have anything. No weapons... nothing. I thought we were all going to be killed. Aidan tried to get them to let Jim and I go if he and Jake stayed, but they weren't going for it, and then Jake just..." She shrugged wordlessly, making a sort of explosion hand gesture by her head. "He did some kind of psychic attack. I saw all sorts of terrible shit, you wouldn't fucking believe it."

[Cameron Bell]

Cameron was nodding. His suspicions were confirmed: Aidan and Jake had been up to something all along. The suspicion went further than that, morphing into some well-considered theories, on which he'd had a long time to think. But he would not speak a word of them. This was Aimee's show, and as long as his attention was focused upon her, there was not a secret he would be denied. She was almost enjoying herself, or at least she was able to take some pleasure from having such an enthusiastic audience, and, to her credit, as she went about describing the confrontation between the mutants and the gangbangers, she told a thrilling tale. It was a surreal thing to digest, even as she spoke of her time in the company of paramedics and police, such imagery was usually reserved for big budget network television. When at last she came to the conundrum at Redención House, marking the closing act of the whole melodrama, he took a moment to consider:

"That's put Anna in a tricky situation. Do you think the cops know anything?"

[Aimee Connors]

"We didn't tell them anything, other than we were kidnapped and held, and then the place caught on fire. There was a ton of drugs and 'paraphernalia' in that shithole, it almost looked like a meth lab." Aimee hesitated. "Not that I've seen one...recently."

She shook out her black hair, part of it falling in her eyes. "I doubt they believe that's all there is to the story but I'm not snitching on the guys who saved my life, you know." Relinquishing the pillow, she wiggled into his lap. "I don't now what Anna is gonna do. I know they made it out and came home early this morning but I was half asleep by then. I dunno what went down."

[Cameron Bell]

"The cops will dig deeper. They always do."

Inwardly, he considered the narrow possibility that either Aidan or Jake would make it out of their predicament unscathed - 'narrow' was an understatement. The fire would've certainly destroyed any traces of DNA left behind, but then there was the matter of the dozen or more eye-witnesses salvaged from the blaze, there were vehicles to be identified, one of which had itself curiously gone up in flames, and then, finally, there was the most damning evidence of all, which had by that point been broadcasted across the entire country: the blue fire. How many mutants in California were capable of doing that? How many in America? How many in the world? If Aidan's gift was common knowledge, then he surely condemned himself the moment he decided to act. Fortunately for Aidan, however, it seemed that secrecy was his currency.

There was a hiss of radio static followed by a string of rushed muttering voices. Cameron stole a glance at the police scanner, the pale glow from the display beckoned him from across the room, but Aimee had moved in and pinned him to the seat with her tiny body. It was probably nothing, he told himself. His arm coiled around her waist. She felt so small and fragile, like something that was missing its bubble wrap, and yet, her body language told a different story. Already, in his arms, she was starting to relax. He wondered if this extraordinary resillience was a byproduct of a childhood on the streets. Reptillian in her adaptability, she shed her trauma like an old skin, and wilted blissfully into the nook of his neck. In resistance to her touch he went rigid, and quickly thumbed the screen of his phone.

“Aimee, aren't you angry?”

[Aimee Connors]

She could feel his muscles contracting, and tried to ignore the tension and remain in his arms, but after his question she reluctantly sat up again. Aimee ran her hands through her long black hair, smoothing it out of her eyes and pulling it's length in front of one shoulder.

"Shit happens, Cam." She tried to keep her irritation out of her voice. "Raging against the machine can only keep you going for so long. Eventually you learn to bend with the wind or you get broken. So, yeah, I'm angry. But I can't spew fire from my hands and go take revenge on the Three Elevens. Being with you makes all those emotions go... away."

She cupped his face in her hands, searching his eyes that were hard with anger. "I never thought that a mundane would see past all this," Aimee gestured to herself, "and want to be with me. You changed me. I feel... safe with you." She dropped her hands to her lap and looked down at them. "Sorry, that sounds totally sappy. And maybe it isn't cool to duck and hide and try to move on when bad stuff happens, but it's exhausting being angry all the time about things I can't change."

[Cameron Bell]

"Isn't it more exhausting forever being a victim? That's no life, Aimee."

Cameron met her gaze long enough for her to see his disappointment, he shook his head and resumed thumbing his celphone. There were times when all he wanted to do was shake some sense into her, and, in the short space of time he and Aimee had been together, such occassions had been numerous. Now was one of those moments and the chilling truth of the matter was that the only thing stopping him was the fact that he couldn't simultaneously throttle and text. What had happened to the girl who survived the mean streets of New York City, he wondered. Could it be that life at Redención House had turned her into something soft, something submissive, and broken? Victim. That's what he called her, and immediately, objection blossomed on her pretty purple face - which only served to irritate him further - but the more he reflected on his choice of words, the more he found himself in agreement with them. Aimee Connors did not see a dark rare beauty when she looked at her reflection, but an outcast, an unfortunate, a freak. The tough little cookie from the Bronx or wherever had been unmade and shrank in the glare of society. She became what they wanted her to be, and if indeed she was as malleable as all that, then perhaps she could be reforged anew. The celphone finally spoke. It was agonising to hear his own words replicated in such a hollow and passionless manner, and to compensate, he tightly squeezed Aimee's hand to convey his feelings.

"You don't need me to feel safe. You're a survivor - I get that - but sometimes you've got to learn to push back, and you don't need to throw fireballs to do it."

[Aimee Connors]

She had chewed her lip to keep from interrupting him while he furiously typed, and waited impatiently for the text-to-talk to read off his words. "I've spent my life in the shadows," she retorted, tugging at her hand, but not hard enough to pull it from his grip. "I'm not a victim, but it's not like I spent my days in New York kicking ass and taking names. I'm trying to live like a regular person for once and it... sucks and it's great, too."

Aimee did pull her hand free then, and brushed her hair back out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. "So, yeah. I mean. Are we arguing? I am angry. I want to push back but - well. I have more to lose than ever." She made an overly pathetic face at him, and then socked him in the shoulder with a mock snarl. "If you ended up on the wrong side of the law you'd have a trial and a jury of your peers, but I would get a collar and a hole in the ground somewhere."

Cameron was thumbing his phone, typing quickly, but she reached into her front jeans pocket and leaned back to free what was stuck inside. Aimee held it up and waited for him to look up from the phone. "I did get this from the warehouse before everything went to hell, though." In her hand was a small vial with a screw-on top, with a viscous liquid inside.

[Cameron Bell]

While Aimee fumbled her way through a defense, Cameron smiled despite himself. So tepid was her temper that even Aimee wasn't sure whether or not she was having an argument. And just as she was doing a fine job of proving his point for him, she changed the subject. It was unsurprising, given her blasé and evasive attitude towards conflict. As much as he wanted to launch another offensive on Aimee's myriad faults, Cameron found himself transfixed by the glistening tube of glass in her hand. His eyes tracked its movements from each casual gesture as Aimee fed him a painfully short account of her fascinating acquisition. There was no need for words; one fiercely inquisitive glance and an impatient shrug of the shoulders conveyed his thoughts with stark clarity.

[Aimee Connors]

"It's Nectar." Aimee gave the amber liquid another shake, and then watched it settle. "The Tres Onces had a ton of it all over the warehouse. And when Jim and I were leaving...I grabbed some. I shoved it in my shoe and the cops didn't find it. Um, but I'm not sure what to do with it now. I can't have it in the House. I was thinking maybe ...but it isn't any good on mundanes." She shook her head lightly.

"The Tres Onces need a taste of their own medicine but this won't do it." She looked up from the vial to Cameron, feeling unsettled. Was she being too zen about this whole thing? Should she be punching holes in the drywall? Aimee unconsciously flexed her other fist. Perhaps sobbing under the covers of her bed would be better.

She looked at the drug again and shuddered, her fingers reflexively opening, the vial falling to the couch between them.

[Cameron Bell]

When the small vial landed on a cushion with the softest of thuds, Cameron reared up so suddenly that he found himself sitting on the armrest. None of the Nectar had been spilled, and the tension evaporated from his face, leaving him looking rather sheepish. Given that his first encounter with the hateful concoction resulted in him witnessing Geryon shrieking in agony as deformed limbs exploded from his torso, he could surely be forgiven a little apprehension around it. Nevertheless, he shook his head in both amusement and disbelief at his own behaviour, and settled down on the couch again. After another cautious glance at the vial, he cast Aimee a look of wonderment.

"It took serious guts to smuggle that out right under the cops' noses. I'm impressed."

[Aimee Connors]

His reaction caused her to flinch as well, and Aimee picked up the Nectar and held it in her lap. She shrugged as the phone relayed his words, then said, "I am kind of a badass, just keep that in mind."