Laura Kinney…
When I take a closer look at her she hasn't had a single reaction since Earl asked the question just continuing to eat where I would have expected her to snap and unleash her claws being the ticking time bomb that she is but instead she continues to eat but that doesn't go on for long since she has eaten everything on her plate and only a few seconds had elapsed since Earl's question and with no food to distract her any longer I would've expected her to react and get aggressive but instead she stared down at her empty plate for while in silence before she looks back up at us and opens her mouth to let out a response which would be the first time I've heard her talk when she isn't roaring or trying to chop off my head. "Laura..."
"Hm, I'm sorry dear. I didn't quite catch that, could you repeat that?" Earl asked after X-23 answered his question actually telling us her name but she was so soft spoken and quiet that I was the only one that heard her with my enhanced hearing and even then it was just barely as she merely uttered the words out and even she looked like she didn't know where they came from and they just happened to leave her mouth in response to Earl's question but evidently Earl didn't hear her and asked her to repeat what she said which seems to have startled X-23 as she suddenly looks up surprised and then she seems to have just heard the own words that came out of her mouth and she seems like she doesn't know what to do in this situation, if anything I'm more comforted by the fact that she became confused and dazed rather than get angry in response to Earl's question for her name which is why I feel just fine when I lower my guard and untense my body since I feel that she is no longer a threat though I do still keep my body ready and a kitchen knife by my side underneath the table just in case I need it though I don't think I will because just looking at her I can tell that she isn't violent or aggressive at the moment as she seems to be preoccupied with the other thoughts in her mind I will be utilising my spider sense to search for danger and at the moment I'm not feeling any since she's busy with her own thoughts and when she registers Earl's question I can slowly see her face morph from confusion into self-assertiveness and determination before she opens her mouth again to answer Earl but this time with a loud voice and an expression that's a mix between confidence and enlightenment I think. "My name is Laura, Laura Kinney. The daughter of Sarah Kinney, my mother."
"That is a lovely name, it's nice to meet you, Miss Kinney. I am Earl Grey and you obviously already know my master, Nicholas James. Though you guys are probably close enough that you call him James, huh? Either way it's nice to know the name of my young master's new friend that happens to be a girl, I suppose I'll leave you two to it then. I will be off Miss Kinney; I hope that I will see you later." Saying so Earl begins to move past the kitchen table and past Laura that is sitting opposite to me and from where I'm sitting I can see Earl send me a subtle wink before he leaves the room closing the door behind him because of course that meddling old man can't leave me alone constantly trying to push me towards people and trying to get me married as soon as possible stating that he wanted to see me at my wedding before he dies and using that as an excuse for trying to match make me up with other which started with Gwen and then Mary Jane and now he's trying to push me towards Laura who is someone he think's I've had a hook-up with when in actual fact she's a girl that's a trained assassin that crashed at my house last night because I was too afraid to tell her to get the fuck out of my house and too tired from my very eventful day, and now that meddling old man has left me alone at the kitchen table with the girl who he just insinuated has less than innocent relations with me as well as telling her our names and leaving me alone with her but it seems that either she has no idea what he was on about or just plain doesn't care about it as she has a nonplussed face and instead seems to be more focussed on looking at my full plate of food since she already cleaned her own plate and seeing that she has her mind on other things I decide that now would be a good time to talk and maybe diminish her stabiness a bit. "Here you can have mine since you already finished yours, I'm not feeling that hungry anyway. But after you've finished, we are going to have to have a chat, about when you're going to be leaving."
I slide my plate of food over to her as I begin to speak and before I've even pushed it halfway across the kitchen table her arms immediately shot out and she grabs hold of the plate and drags it to herself and starts to feast away ravenously without heeding my words but partway through her feast she stops just as I finish my sentence and looks at me before going back to eating her food but this time she does so slowly continuing to maintain eye contact with me as she eats her food, we stay like that for a while and I just stare back determined to not lose the staring contest or be cowed once again by this woman and so we just stare at each other as she slowly eats her food while staring and analysing me with her piercing emerald eyes before she inevitably finishes with her second plate of food and pushes the empty dish away from her and wipes her mouth clean with the sleeve of my shirt that she is wearing before once again levelling her eyes at me. "I have nowhere else to go, originally I was going to follow that man from last night but because of your interference he is dead and I am no longer able to follow him. It is your fault that I have nowhere else to go so I am going to stay here, I realise that may be inconvenient so I am willing to offer something in return."
"Listen, lady, I don't care what you are going to offer. You can't stay here; you just can't, okay. I don't have a problem with your kind or anything but someone with your abilities and skills doesn't go anywhere without bringing trouble with them, probably more so in your case given that you've just killed a man and the police are going to realise that he has three parallel slash marks on his neck and it won't be long before someone puts two and two together and comes for you and I don't want to be involved with any of that. I am a normal person and I can't be dealing with these abnormal situations, so you can't stay here no matter what you say, I don't need a personal assassin or something." I tell her clearly emphasising the fact that I don't want her here no matter what she can offer and it was clear that she was offering her service and skills to me as she is one hell of a fighter and assassin and having someone like that in my back pocket would undoubtedly be awesome and make my life so much easier but I know that she comes with a whole lot of other issues as well such as the people that created her, the X-Men, the families of the people she's killed and also the fuckload of mutant issues such as Magneto coming to get her one day, inevitably the bad out ways the good and so as much as I would like to have someone with her powers and skillset working for me ultimately there are too many strings attached and having someone this high profile near me will no doubt bring me to a lot of people's attention and restrict my actions for fear of other people watching me. "I understand your fears but they are unheeded since anyone that had issues with me are either dead or have lost sight of me and I am very good at covering my tracks, also I wasn't offering to be your bodyguard or assassin though I can be. I was offering to you the same thing that the man from last night wanted, you can have free use of my body and use me however you want, I don't care."
"Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? Why in the fuck would you offer me such a thing, you have some serious power and skills and can easily live well-making use of them so why in the hell would you offer up your own body in return for a place to sleep when you could easily find a place of my own and even if you don't want to do that you could easily become an assassin or bodyguard for someone and get paid for it and own your own house and buy your own food so why would you be resorting to this, something is seriously fucked up inside you. what the hell is wrong with you? Seriously tell me, why in the hell were you willing to follow that pimp from last night and become one of his prostitutes?" I say appalled that she would offer such a thing when she has a whole load of power at her hands so why would she resort to such a thing and it really pisses me off because I am searching for power so that I can survive and no one can take advantage of me and make me do things I don't want to do but she has all the power at her feet and still she's willing to let people use and abuse her for some fucking reason and it really pisses me off, if someone with such power like her is still getting used and abused by others then what hope is there for me when I'm not all that powerful when compared to some of the larger threats and minds out there and I'm not such an asshole to take advantage of someone like that and I'm aware that I am being a little bit of a hypocrite because of what I did to Felicia Hardy but while admittedly some of my reasons were selfish I was also doing what I did to her for her because she was too trusting of strangers and she needed to learn to be cautious and become the strong woman I knew she could be and that's why I did what I did and if I can get some extra benefits from it like a super soldier serum then so be it but I'm broken away from my musing by Laura starting to talk with a deathly calm voice.
"You don't know anything about me, you don't know anything at all. I chose to follow that man last night because it was my way of atoning. To atone for all the people that I killed and to atone for all the wrongs I had committed while following those people. It was my punishment and you had no right to try and keep me from it, to stop me from atoning for my wrongs..."
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