7. mauerbauertraurigkeit.

                                    

                                          
maybe we're all clean-cut c r i m i n a l s
                          
running fast to b l u r the visuals
                          
"For god's sake, children." Exclaimed Charles, scowling, stiff and making his way into his motel room after his impromptu stress-nap had turned into a full eight-hour sleep. Aoibheal finds herself blinking awake, curled up on her side, managing to catch a glimpse of Peter, blurry and gorgeous in the morning light. Scrubbing her hand across her face, Aoibheal rolls to face the Professor, giving him a lazy smile, which he simply glares at. “Meeting in the lobby in ten minutes;” he fired off, expression souring at Aoibheal’s languorous yawn, “Hank’s filling the tank as we speak and then we’re stopping at Goodwill.”
 
“What about breakfast?” Peter’s voice is rough and uncharacteristically slow, still spread out along the bed, face half-smushed into his pillow. Tossing him a wrapped up breakfast burrito from a local chain-restaurant, Charles casts a nod to Aoibheal, who mirrors the gesture, her eyes following him as he leaves the room.
 
Half of the ‘meal’ is already eaten by the time Peter offers her any, but Aoibheal declines politely, heading for the shower. Nothing particularly scandalous had gone on during the previous night, but sleeping in jeans had left the ginger feeling a little stiff and more than a little grimy. Thanking herself for having the forethought to pack a change of clothes, Aoibheal steps into the shower and lets herself relax.
 
"Goodwill?" Peter’s voice is tentative where he’s shouting through the door, well, more confused than tentative, and Aoibheal takes a moment to finish wrinsing the shampoo from her hair before answering.
 
“Disguises.” Comes her reply, quickly washing the rest of her body and turning off the cold tap. The shower comes to a halt and Aoibheal is greeted with a steam-free bathroom thanks to her temperature immunity. Showers were hardly relaxing if you couldn’t enjoy the warmth. Changing into her nondescript jeans and t-shirt, she emerges to see Peter sprawled out across the bed and flipping through the few available channels and humming to himself. His grin is bright when he spots her, whipping around the room to pick up all the leftover food and stuffing it into Aoibheal’s waiting bag, the two of them heading down to the lobby together.
 
The Goodwill was practically empty, apart from the elderly attendant who smiled toothily at the young girl and her brooding, male companions. Peter had elected to wait outside, or more accurately, explore the town on his own, but Charles tells him to stay safe and out of sight, and it’s settled. Hank and Aoibheal scoured the racks for the most tourist-esque outfits they could find, bickering good-naturedly about Hank’s choice of bucket hat, Aoibheal insisting that it’s perfect while he made faces in the mirror and accused her of making a fool of him. They both agree on the yellow sundress Aoibheal picks out and she takes a good moment to twirl in front of the mirror and enjoy how it looks with the sandals and floppy sunhat she finds. There hasn’t been a reason for her to feel pretty in such a long time, and she’ll be damned if she’s letting it slip past.
 
While gathering her secondary disguise of darker, heavier clothes, she spots Charles, wearing a suit that’s just a little bit too big for him, fiddling with the cuffs. Expression softening, she gently swats his hand away, fastening the cuffs before straightening his tie.
 
“I’ve missed you wearing suits.” She finds herself saying, with a hint of nostalgia, though she doesn’t miss Charles’s sceptical eyebrow raise.
 
“I haven’t worn a suit in ten years.” He tells her, looking at himself in the mirror over Aoibheal’s shoulder, examining himself with a furrowed brow. Aoibheal follows his line of sight and moves to stand beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder as he wraps his arm around her shoulder out of habit.
 
“Yes, and six year old me always thought you looked very fancy." Grinning brightly at him, she watches with triumph as Charles’s head dips to in exasperation. He pets her head fondly anyways, and when he looks at her, really looks at her, he smiles without a trace of bitterness. By the time the four of them had bought their disguises – Logan doing the very minimum he could by simply buying a pair of jeans that was slightly more blue than his original pair – Peter’s waiting by the car with enough fast food to feed an army.
 
“What’s the second disguise for?” They’ve all piled back into the car with Peter by the window seat once more, raising his eyebrows at the pile of clothes in Aoibheal’s lap, who had taken the middle seat. Instead of answering, she makes grabby hand for the drink he was offering her distractedly and a clone appears on the empty seat by the other window, yanking the clothes from the original, pulling them on with little preamble.
 
“If anyone spots the distraction-“ the clone, half-wearing a thick, black sweater, jerks her thumb towards herself, before pulling on the article of clothing completely, “we can’t be having them – me – look like someone in the Pentagon – also me.” There was something deeply unsettling about watching the clone speak as the original wolfed down an order of fries right beside her, wearing a sundress and otherwise looking quite beautiful. “And if they manage to get any DNA from the clothes, or whatever, well,” the clone shrugged, wriggling into her khaki pants, “they think I’m dead anyways.” After the initial shock of her far too chipper statement wore off, Peter finds himself relaxing into the banter, just as he had with the original, who looks over the map with interest as the other two talk.
 
“So what do you do?” Peter squints at the clone’s retreated back as she heads through the park on foot towards her final destination. “Everyone just keeps saying you’ll ‘distract them’, but no-one says how.” When he looks to the original, she’s making a face of utmost concentration before she finally focuses on him.
 
“The clones have a function beyond just being clones.” She doesn’t want to talk about it until she can show him what she can do, doesn’t want to elaborate now, doesn’t want to see Peter looking at her with anything even close to pity or fear when she knows she’s done very little to earn it. She’s self destructive in the most literal sense of the word, but she’s still trying to make herself believe that it’s not as bad as people think it is. “Trust me,” she gives him a smile that is barely reassuring, but rests her hand on his, “it’ll work.” While Peter doesn’t look entirely convinced, he settles for playing with her fingers while Aoibheal drifts out of focus, concentrating on the clone as she picks her way through the park towards the Pentagon.
 
Once parked, Aoibheal’s consciousness snaps back into the body of the original, and she knock her shoulder with Peter’s giving him a mischievous smile before she slid out of the car. “Don’t let the cameras catch you.” She teases, eyes sparkling at the sound of Peter’s snort of laughter.
 
“I’d like to see them try.” And he was gone in a flash. Hank introduces her as his daughter to the woman at the front desk, while Charles and Logan rattle off some paper-thin story about being businessmen, the four of them slipping into the back of the tour group with ease. Aoibheal let her concentration slide once more, confident with Hank’s hand on her shoulder to guide her, she waited for Charles and Logan to slip off to head towards the kitchen where the elevator to Erik came up. Hank tapped her on the shoulder once, and the original Aoibheal’s vision went blurry while the clone’s came into perfect clarity as she broke into a sprint heading for a people-free clearing by the building’s side, far enough away to only cause cosmetic damage, and no harm to civilians. The clone dives through the air with a yell, Aoibheal focusing on the anger and bitterness and fear; the clone explodes.
 
The building shakes and someone in their tour group lets out a scream, but Hank’s pulling out a remote control and Aoibheal’s snapping back into her own skull, expression pained as her whole body aches from the aftershocks of being torn apart from the inside out. Like the calm before the storm, there’s a moment of stillness before an alarm is shrieking somewhere in the distance and Hank is fiddling more determinedly with his remote. Evacuating the building, the crowd makes decent cover for the two of them to head back to the car, waiting skittishly for the others. When Logan, Charles and Peter return, the three of them are soaking wet with Erik in tow. He sports a bloody nose and none of them really look like they want to talk about it.
 
Their getaway is swift, but they still manage to drive past hoards of evacuated civilians crowding around an area being cordoned off by security. It’s a crater in the sidewalk, a blackened hole almost six feet deep and black marks scorching high up the walls of the building. Everyone can almost hear the panicked speculation the humans are buzzing with.