joasakura:

(So, I’ve been craving post-Logan RicStar. Here’s an excuse to write some :D)

By the time they reach the sanctuary in Canada, Ric is running on autopilot. All of them are numb, exhausted, heartbroken by degrees, but he’s their leader of sorts. He has to keep them moving, keep them together. Keep them *alive*

When they’re finally safe, food and beds and a roof – there will be time for introductions later, the other mutants tell them, time to meet and greet – he makes sure everyone eats, gets a bath (even Laura, who just pops her toe claw over and over, dragging patterns in the floor until he shoos her off. He can’t imagine how much more she’s hurting then he is right now, and he doesn’t have the reserves left to deal with it) until he’s the only one left, and all he can do is fall facedown on the bed they’ve given him and try to rest.

He wakes up, a voice in his ear whispering nonsense, much later. His heart hammers in the long dark, moonlight slitting through the window and laying a lacy pattern of leafy shadow across the bed. And beside him, a dark shape, one eye catching the light like a dog’s, a glint of steel in that wan light.

The room lurches with the panic-tremor and he scrambles back against the wall, blindly slapping at it until he finds a light switch.

The boy isn’t much older than he is – skinny and wiry with a mass of tangled red hair, and a star like a bruise, like a brand, cut into his face. He’s weird looking in that sort of way that implies he’s going to grow up unreasonably hot, and Ric realizes after a moment, it’s not steel in his hand at all, and panic burns into shame.

A candy bar, the silvery wrapper crumpled in the other boy’s grip. “I just said you should eat,” he mutters irritably, making an attempt to pick himself out of the wreckage of the desk he’s entangled in.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Ric babbles, still pressed against the wall.

The other boy looks at him, then throws the mangled chocolate in Ric’s direction. “Don’t worry, if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” he says, finally getting free. “Heard you had a bad time gettin’ here. It’s cool. We all do.”

Ric carefully peels open the wrapper, picking smashed nougat out of the corners of the foil. “Did you have a bad time?” He asks, wary. The other boy has an accent he can’t place, a funny way english lilts and stumbles and he can appreciate the fact that they’re both doing so well in a language that’s clearly not either of their firsts.

“Yeah,” the redhead nods and taps his damaged, weird-pretty face. “Madripoor. Me an’ some others, they made us fight for people. You know, like… gladiators. I’m Shatterstar.”

Ric pauses, the bar halfway devoured before he’d even known he was eating. “What the hell kind of name is that?”

“The only one I got. Yours?” Shatterstar shrugs. This is obviously not the first time he’s had that reaction.

“Rictor,” Ric says, pocketing the rest of the chocolate in his cheek. “You know like earthquakes. I make earthquakes. You know,” He looks around at the smashed furniture. The fact that no one’s come running means that the occasional power incontinence isn’t a big deal around here, either that or this Shatterstar guy makes a habit of scaring the shit out of people in their sleep. “Earthquakes,” he says again, wiggling his fingers for emphasis, hoping to impress upon his new friend that he could have liquefied him.

“I don’t break easy,” is all the boy says. “G’nite, Earthquake Boy,” He adds after a moment with an expression so serious that Ric can’t tell if he’s being teased or not as he clicks off the light. “Sleep good.”

In the moonlight, Ric smooths out the wrapper, and while he doesn’t sleep good at all, it’s better than he expected.