Fanfic Time: Flotsam part 27
Continued from yesterday:
Mort could smell her cooking, and the cinnamon was working its magic. And nutmeg. He moaned under his breath. He could smell the sugars caramelising.
O God…
Sara and pastry manufacture were an *experience*. People put on pounds just watching the treats come out of the oven.
It was more than an effort of will to hang back. It took supreme measures just to stay where he was. Those supreme measures currently involved clinging with all his might to a corner and repeating the words, “Remember the deal,” over and over.
His grip was slipping.
“Mercy dash,” announced Kitty’s voice. Right next to him.
He had to back up to focus. “You woh?”
She presented a covered platter. “Sara managed to defend these for you. Hot off the press, as it were. She says she’s sure you’d be missed in the feeding frenzy, but it’s best not to chance it.”
Mort lifted the cover. She’d spelled out ‘love you’ in cookies. "Thanks,“ he said. He inhaled deeply. Oh yeah. That was the stuff.
"Better take 'em away from here before some of the smaller kids try to mob you for handouts,” Kitty advised. “I gotta get back to the mayhem.”
“Tell Sara I said to watch out for 'erself.”
“Roger dodger,” and Kitty was gone back through the wall from whence she came.
It was way easier to walk away from the kitchen, now. He knew where she was. He knew she was safe. And more importantly, he had a pile of her culinary art to cram his belly with until he made himself sick.
Even with the forced absence, life was good.
~
Sara was in her element. Who could have guessed that she was a feeder? And so many people eager to accept her offerings… it never used to be like this.
Cooking by herself was something - covert. Hidden under the veil of the help and discretely delivered to mother so that the woman never knew Sara was even remotely involved.
She even delivered Bake Sale donations anonymously. All because of the one time she *did* use her name and her offering was used callously as a football by jeering jocks.
They’d never make her cry[1].
Sara adjusted her behaviour to suit, up to and including turning her emotions off at the daily locker rat, but she never displayed her inner reactions to her victimisation. Never. She’d boxed it up and packed it away.
And Sara got used to the idea that nobody would ever want any part of her.
That had changed with Mort. After an initial bout of suspicion, he was eager and willing to gladly engulf any culinary offering she could scrape together.
Which encouraged her to bake cookies for the kids.
Who, in turn, made their Moms seek her recipes.
Which turned out to be phenominally popular.
Sara found a unique and almost perverse joy in making treat-food, and a near unholy delight in watching people enjoy what she’d made. People *enjoyed* her.
It had bought on fits in the past, but not any more. Just the odd twitch or tic as her mind battled with two conflicting ideas.
Maybe…
Just *maybe*…
All the things she’d been told… all the conclusions she’d reached… had originated with little-minded people who had no better reason to help her along her darkened path than that she didn’t *look* as nice as they did.
And in this place - there were no appearances.
None to keep. None to judge by. No vanity. No peer system beyond ideals that ultimately did not require a physique.
Sara felt like a fish discovering clean water after living in an almost-perpetual filth.
For the first time in forever, she began to hum without feeling ashamed of herself for humming.
Even with the absence of Mort… life was getting good.
[1] _Cat Ballou_ side-fling ^_^
~
Sara was blushing, since she’d exhausted the kitchen’s supplies of ingredients, but she felt like a million dollars anyway. Everything was, as the show tune said, coming up roses.
A tic reminded her that she still had some emotional unloading to go through before she was *completely* healed. Apparently, her dark side rather expected something bad to happen to her, now.
Sara whispered her mantra as she skipped through the halls. Her body wanted to dance…
_Well… why *not*?_ They had a dance studio in here. Nobody would care a fig if she was too tall and gangly to dance properly. And, since Mr Wagner had decided to join her shadow, she hardly had to worry about seven years’ bad luck[1].
Purpose behind her direction, Sara jogged up to her room, found something brief-but-passable and snagged some of her favourite bootlegs.
There was a sound system in the studio, and someone had made sure it was bootleg-friendly. No doubt, Kitty had done it. Or one of the technomages with little better to do.
Regardless, it took to her personal tune storage unit like an amphibious avian to dihydrogen monoxide.
Sara closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to fret that anyone was there to see her knees, and waited for the randomiser to pick a tune.
*
Ororo found them some time later, practicing a tango. Her resultant flare of envy was brief, owing to the lecherous smirk Kurt shot her when he sensed her presence. Sara’s face was almost scarily blank. A sign she was concentrating on the inside, not the outside.
The song ended with a classic pose, which Sara broke with a deep blush.
“Eep!” Sara said upon spotting Ororo.
“It’s all right,” soothed Kurt. “Ororo also teaches dance.”
“Serendipity,” chirped Sara.
_Darn that economy mode._ “Er… Pardon?”
“If it isn’t too much to ask, perhaps the two of you can make sure Mr Toynbee can dance? I rather plan on -er- sharing the floor with him at some stage. At my party.”
Famous last words, indeed.
Sara, able to learn quickly and absorb information at a rapid rate, had only a glancing concept of what it was like for other people to learn. She’d left them with only three days to teach a fighter and a thief how to fake it on the dance floor.
It took most people a few minutes to learn how to fake a Samba. That was easy enough. It was the *other*, rather eclectic, music in her collection that gave them trouble.
Toynbee got the 'sweats’ whenever he touched Ororo, and considered dancing with Kurt to be 'poofy’.
“I could wear a wig,” suggested the teleporter. “I’m told I look fabulous in a cocktail dress[2]…”
“And it takes a *very* confident man to say that,” joked Ororo, still trying to massage feeling back into her hand.
Mort had fallen into a funk. “Ah, fuck yer both,” he mumbled.
“Was? Don’t you *want* to dance?”
“*Yeh*… with *Sara*.”
“You can’t learn on the dance floor,” said Ororo. “Especially something as complex as a tango.”
Mort went a very strange colour when he blushed. “Sharrup,” he muttered.
Kurt made a little 'back off’ gesture. “Is it something else?”
“I got a Thing, awrigh’?”
“Ah. I see. Pretty girls… they used to make fun?”
“…worse.”
“We will not make fun,” he said. “Sara… *wants* this. *She* will not make fun. If you want - we can lock the door and close the windows. No-one can see to laugh, ja? And I promise you - you *will* be graceful.”
Glare. “An’ how d'you promise that, cocky?”
“I’ve seen you fight.” Kurt smiled. “Sparring takes as much co-operation as a dance. It has a beat… you have to read your partner… The only difference is in the intent.”
“If it helps,” offered Ororo. “You can close your eyes and pretend I'm Sara.”
“Can’t.”
“Too short?”
“Y’ don’t smell like lilac.”
[1] Dance studios contain lots and lots of mirrors. Remember Sara's reputation with breakables? Yeah.
[2] Side-fling to one of the early ish’s of _Excalibur_ in which Nighty somehow wound up in drag…
~
“Lilac?”
“Lilac.”
Ororo stared with utter confusion at the man, then looked to Kurt. "*Lilac*…“
"Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m not in the habit of sniffing ladies who aren’t my girlfriend.”
“Maybe Logan…?”
“Logan’s busy hiding from Callisto… and vice versa.” Kurt pondered. "There’s always Rahne… she can verify any nose news.“
"That still doesn’t solve the problem at hand.”
Kurt got a wicked grin. “Ready for some creative use of the danger room, liebe?”
*
“Oh look, a wolverine in the wainscotting[1].”
“Tallwater, ya got five seconds to piss off, okay?”
“Sorry, needs must,” she flourished a piece of paper. “I need to go shopping for party supplies and you’re the only person who can drive a big enough truck.”
Logan partially unfurled from his hiding place. “*Truck*?”
“One, *all* of the Guthries are coming, and that’s instantly fourteen people. Two, we already know what happens when I start making tasty treats. I need to allow for natural attrition. Three, it turns out I have more friends than I thought possible. Hence the truck.”
He emerged cautiously, checking the air and scanning up and down the hallways. “And Xavier okayed this?”
“After my hazelnut praline muffins?”
“*Riiiiiiigggghhhht*….” he started dragging her towards the car pool.
“Besides, I know this place that does cheap bulk stuff and I know how to get discounts on top of that, so–”
“Tallwater?”
“Yeah?”
“How the hell did you *find* me?”
“Oh, that was easy. You positively *reek* of cigars.”
[1] As opposed to a mouse ;)
~
“What do you think?”
Sam considered her attire. “It isn’t pink.”
It was, in fact, a rather nice shade of purple[1]. A colour 'ladies' were never supposed to wear. It was casual enough for a birthday party, and far, *far* removed from Jaquelline’s usual power suit style. “Is it *enough*?” she said, considering her own reflection. “I want to make enough of a visual impression to let her really *know* I've changed. I don’t think I should wear my hair up. It’s too… old-me.”
“You could always dye it green,” he said.
Jaquelline startled. “*Sam*…”
He laughed. “You’re right. It wouldn’t 'go’.”
She turned back to her reflection. “Now *vermillion*…”
“Darling, we’re not aiming to scare the other mundanes, now.”
“Is that what they call us?”
“Terms vary. 'Flatscan’ is the nasty one. 'Norms’ is mostly-acceptable. Sara came up with 'mundanes’ for the literary implications.”
“Oh yes. Those Xanth books…” Jaquelline fiddled with her hair, trying varying ways of holding parts of it. “Now I’ve left the old shell behind, I… I want to *read* them. See what my own Mommy-dearest had against them.”
“Pagan imagery is my best guess,” said Sam. He snuck up behind her and slid her into his arms. “Wave a centaur at some people and they just go nuts.” Her scent drew him into her neck, where he kissed her.
Jaquelline froze. “You haven’t kissed me like that since…”
“A long time ago,” he said. “I thought you needed breathing space and…” he sighed, looking at her via the mirror. “I inched away because I couldn’t stand seeing you and Sara fight.”
“I missed you,” she said.
“Missed you too.”
Jaquelline wriggled free enough to secure a tissue and daubed at her eyes. “We made so many mistakes. How could she forgive us?”
Sam pondered that question, staring into infinity until he found it. "Gradually, I would think.“
"Step at a time, eh?”
“Baby steps,” Sam agreed. “And we can’t control the path.”
*
The scooter-trolley, as it turned out, was for the “light and small stuff”. The rest of it - intimidatingly large boxes, all - wound up as numbers on her list.
People who worked here knew Tallwater, and greeted her no matter what colour she was now. But then, according to *her*, she’d been shopping here with *makeup* tests on.
It took a subjective eternity to wind through the catacomb-esque shelves and wind up at a checkout, where Tallwater ordered the boxes by number and introduced Logan as the truckdriver.
“Little early for halloween plans,” joked a young man of obviously mixed descent. He was the sort of guy who teenaged girls would hurl themselves at or write tons of angsty poetry over, since he bore all the best elements from both asian and african stock. But the body-speak was… off. “Or is there a movie in the works?”
“Neither,” said Tallwater. “This is me. One hundred percent.”
“Wow. When you go in for a makeover, you go in for a *makeover*, honey.”
Click.
No wonder his body language was off. The guy was almost flamingly gay.
“Logan? This is Steve. We help each other out.”
“Lots and lots,” supplied Steve. “Wow. Zero to homophobic in less than twenty seconds. Relax, sweetie. I’m not into bears or furries.”
Tallwater laughed. “Don’t be nasty, Stephen. The poor man has enough issues.”
“Aaaaawww…” Steve pouted. “I can’t play?”
“Claws back in, cat-boy. C'mon. Got a world-class workout for you out back.”
“Oh, that reminds me, the whole family’s coming to the party. I can't stop them.”
“Yike. Good thing I allowed for that.”
Logan boggled as he followed. “You throwin’ a party or a concert?”
“Knowing me, possibly both. Steve here’s the youngest of ten.”
“Most of them twins,” supplied Steve. “And lots of them as fecund as Mom.”
“Steve swears he 'went gay’ for environmental reasons.”
“TMI, Tallwater,” Logan growled. “Can we get on with this?”
“What? Can’t us social outcasts gossip amongst ourselves any more?”
“Tallwater…”
“I know, I know. Quit giving you ulcers.”
[1] There’s a list going around in email that starts, “When I am old, I shall wear purple” and continues on through a lot of things that would embarrass someone who cares what other people think. I read that and ponder - why wait until you’re old?
~
Rogue and Bobby were sharing a companionable dinner[1] in the kitchen when Logan stalked in. In a different universe, smoke would have been manifesting from his ears.
They paused what they were doing to watch in amazement, wince, and try to *forget* what he just did with singular determination.
“Wow,” said Sara. “That’s the first time I’ve seen someone sink an entire bottle of Maalox…”
“What did you *do* to him?” Rogue accused.
“Do? I just went shopping. Introduced him to some friends… *I* didn’t happen to him, I swear. It was Steve. *He* happened to him.”
“Wait. Is this the Steve that was Carmen Miranda last Halloween?”
“Yes. And that reminds me, Robert. We have unfinished business.” Sara made a stern 'come hither’ gesture. It brooked no opposition.
Bobby shrugged and abandoned his meal. “What?”
{Slap!} “Making light of a man’s bereavement is crossing the line, Robert Barnabus[2] Drake. Cross it again and you will invoke my ingenuity.”
Bobby touched the stinging memory of her slap. “…gotcha…”
Rogue was slackjawed as Sara left the room. “How the hell did she find out your full name?”
“How the hell did she find out about Inflatable Ingrid?” said Bobby.
*
Sara insinuated herself into the couch and joined the intro music. Most people in the room were used to her singing… even if she was currently singing like David Bowie.
“You’re still scary when you do that,” said Kurt.
“Pot, kettle, black,” said Sara. “Can I help it if I love every inch of this movie? Well. Except for the cut'n'paste happy ending. Feh.”
“Don’t throw popcorn at the hecklers?” Avery begged. “That sorta thing tends to escalate.”
“And waste good popcorn? Nay, sirrah, I shall throw the unpopped hulls if they get too injurious.”
“One, two, three, four. I declare a popcorn war.”
“Pleeeeeaaaaaase don’t blow up another TV?”
“Exploding TV’s, he remembers. Last Wednesday’s five dollars? Oy…”
“Shaddup, shaddup, shaddup… it’s starting.”
“Give me the child.”
“Why? I can help get you a new one. Hur, hur, hur…”
“Keep it PG,” warned Kurt.
[1] It’s occurred to me that Xavier’s would *have* to make sure the kids don’t just snack out perpetually. By telepathic compulsion, if necessary. The kids would have the option of eating at the cafeteria or taking their meal somewhere - cosier…
[2] Made up the middle name.
~
December 10.
Word had gone around that Sara had a morning job. Now, there were groups of kids clustered around radios and listening intently to see if they could hear her.
Mort was suckered in, too. Just the hint of the idea of hearing her voice made him stick to the radio as if his life depended on it.
Only the true nerds amongst them actually knew who was who amongst the voices.
Scott read the news of the day. A group calling themselves the Funny Pages play-acted the comics. Music provided an interlude…
And then some kiddies’ show called _Cap'n Dogbiscuit_ turned rooms of kids into anguished wailers.
“Relax,” said Kitty. “The Voices come in and guest on this show. There’s a passing chance we might still hear her.”
“Besides, producing a radio play based on a novel’s like making a movie. Only with less props,” said Rahne. “We probably won’t hear her work on *that* job for a bit of a while.”
“And you know this because…?” prompted Jubes.
“Sara talked my ears off. Did you know that the Cap'n on this show's the same dude who Narrates for the Voices?”
“Good *grief*…” said Mort. “They sound nuthin’ alike.”
“Ah. *There* you are, my good man,” said an overstuffed voice. It instantly conjured the picture of a woman with plenty of rounded edges and a penchant for expensive tastes.
“Sara…” breathed Mort.
“What? Where?” said the Cap'n.
The plot device for the following week - such as it was - was introduced in a mixture of exposition and jocular banter. Including fat jokes that really should have been put out to pasture.
“How can you tell that’s Sara?” boggled Evan. “It doesn’t sound anything like her.”
“Voice-body mismatch?” suggested Kitty. “Who’s the last person you'd think of as playing Lady Calamity?”
“Okay…”
“An’ I cheat,” said Mort. “Heard 'er doin’ that voice for a flashtoon ages back.”
“I say we all put on pirate patches and wait for Scooter,” said Amy. "When he comes in, we’re all, 'AAAARRR, Cap'n’…“
"Well… he *is* one of the swabbies…”
“So’s anybody with a coffee cup and free time at the station,” said Kitty.
“Aaaaanyway… we could still have a lot of fun with this, y'know?”
“Like, instead of 'yes sir’, we say, 'Ar’?”
“Not constantly,” said Mort. “Break it up with 'Aye’s an’ the odd 'hoo-ah’ - just to get 'im off-balance.”
The kids stared at him in appreciation.
“How do you know so much about annoyin’ people?” said Rogue.
“Luv, I used t’ do it every day by breathin’.”
~