Anna stared at the top of the steering wheel in her car as if the worn, age-old leather would provide her answers to a question she didn't know how to ask. The garage was cold, and inside Banana was even colder. Sitting in her car only managed to fog the windows, but did little to insulate even the slimmest amount of heat.
She could turn the car over and turn on the heater, sure. The only problem then was that she'd be using gas, and when she needed to get more from the mansion, Ororo would ask why she needed more gas if they were all obeying the lockdown that had been set in place.
Never in a million years did Anna think she'd actually miss the days Xavier was around. Back then, the days were longer and warmer, and she'd been recently freed from an uncertain future with the Brotherhood. All she had to worry about was getting to know her new roommates and school. The powers were a thing to figure out, too, but at least then it was just limited to absorbing abilities, and she didn't run the risk of hulking out if she got too frustrated. In the past couple of weeks alone, she'd already ruined her math binder and pocket on her backpack when both times she was just trying to put something inside them.
She watched the world exist beyond her windshield and through the open door to the garage. Everything was so still, like a picture waiting to be taken. The only thing that disturbed the image was the occasional gust of wind dislodging snow on the nearby naked branches. Eventually, a red cardinal appeared and bounced unapologetically across the untouched landscape. She watched it peck a few times at the snow till it got frustrated and shook the white off its beak. It fluttered its feathers a few times before finally taking off. She stared at the spot where the bird had disturbed the snow before her hand found the keys in her pocket.
"Fuck this," She said and stuck the keys in the igntion. After a couple of twists, the engine turned over, and the heaters blasted her with lukewarm air. She popped the parking brake and eased into the icy world beyond. Banana crawled over the slush and snow well enough till she eventually got to the gate. The gate that would normally open when a car got near… and now wasn't.
Anna checked her wrist and saw her watch was blinking red when it came into proximity of the gate. To this, she parked the car, got out, and pulled at the gate from within till she heard a loud pop. After the gate swung open with ease and she drove Banana through with little issue.
The road beyond the mansion had gotten plowed once, maybe twice, since the snow and slush had settled in. Even then, it was only by well-meaning farmers and homesteaders with plows attached to trucks or tractors. The road was anything but a smooth ride, and the portion of the road not well trodden by tires felt like rock climbing. Once Anna got into another zip code, the road cleared up a little more, and she was able to pick up speed.
She wasn't sure where she was headed. The town was back the other way, and this direction was nothing but dead fields and forest. There was no music playing over her radio or from her phone. Only the sound of her tires rolling over pavement and the rush of air bounced around Banana's hollow cabin.
Thoughts weren't running through her head, nor were feelings. Her body and mind had become merely something to react to her environment with. Her vision dulled, and she couldn't find the beat in her chest if she were looking for it. The roads twisted and turned through valleys and hills, and she followed along with them like a dance. It eventually got dark enough that she had the use her headlights, and Banana's dull yellow bulbs illuminated the area ahead just well enough to see by.
Her eyelids leaded, though she didn't feel tired, nor did she feel particularly awake. Like the rest of her body, she felt simply like she was floating in the space around her, and like she was only attached to this point in time by a fragile string. Her body was relaxed, and her mind was without a thought or a care.
She didn't even realize she'd driven into a snowbank until she found it more difficult than normal to breathe and a sharp ache in her forehead.
"I got the door!" Anna heard from somewhere to her left in the darkness. "Damn it, come help me with it, Peter!" She felt the car rock back and forth a couple of times in sync with some audibly strained effort beyond the edge of her hearing.
Something loud and metal-sounding twisted and scraped, then, like someone removing an earmuff, she could hear again. "I think she might be unconscious." Said a bassier voice.
"Easy with that, boy. I need to get the seatbelt off." Anna felt her body suddenly go slack, but not before a pair of arms caught her. "Easy, little lady. Help me with her legs, Peter."
Anna felt herself being lifted, and soon a warm hand probed her face. "Hey… hey, can you hear me, kid?" The man's voice sounded like it had seen the bottom of a few too many bottles and was well weathered by a life full of shouting.
"I can't get any service." Said bassier man's voice, she picked up a distinctive Russian accent.
"No," Anna breathed.
"Hey!" The first man shouted, then quieted, "Hey, what was that?"
"No… cops."
"Fine… fine. Can you open you're eyes?"
When Anna tried, the world spun around her. She saw the tips of trees bathed in a blinking yellow light. Stars above dotted an otherwise pitch black sky.
"What's your name, kid? Do you remember your name?"
"Where… am I?" Anna tried to roll to her side but found the pain in her shoulder made it difficult.
"You're on the side of the road. You're car is buried in the snow, do you remember what happened?" A man with a thick, knotted beard appeared in her view. His features were hazy, but his blue eyes pierced through the difficult-to-distinguish fog.
"I was driving…" Her voice trailed off as the man rested a gloved hand on her forehead. "Kid, you might have a concussion. We should call -"
Anna caught the man by the wrist and looked him in the eye. "No… please don't." She sucked in a sharp breath of air that burned her lungs. With a great strain, she pushed herself off the ground and into a seated position with her arms.
The man hovered nearby. "Any… broken bones?"
"Trust me," Anna cracked her neck, "I'm fine."
"Peter, how's the car looking?"
"The front is caved in a little but should still run."
"Think you can get it out of that ditch?"
"Yeah, no problem."
"Out of the ditch," Anna twisted to look back, "How is he going to-"
Snapping fingers drew her attention back to the man. "Do you have your phone to call your parents?"
"Parents… I don't -"
"Guardians, then, anyone who can come out and get you?"
There was a loud grunt, and the sound of metal scraping on metal. Anna tried again to look back, but the man caught her attention a second time.
"Do you know where you live so we can drop you and the car off?"
"Yeah, I live -" Anna pointed in the direction behind her, where she was pretty sure she'd driven from. She got to look back just long enough to see the man, Peter, shift shapes from something larger, back to his original form.
"All done," Peter walked into view, clapping his hands together. Sure enough, when Anna looked back in earnest this time, she saw Banana was back on the road like nothing had happened.
"How did you?" She looked at Peter, "You… you're a mutant?"
The man she'd been talking to helped her to her feet. "The house isn't that far."
"Is that wise?" Asked Peter.
"If the car turns over, I want you to follow me back in it to the homestead. From there, we can call her parents on the landline."
"But she -"
"Just do it, Peter."
Anna was soon lifted into the passenger side of a truck that reeked of diesel and had more than a few ball-wrapped wrappers on the sun-weathered leather dashboard. With square windows cracked, she watched the world beyond speed by as the muted tones of country music poured from a sound system that looked at least 20 years younger than the truck itself.
Nothing felt broken, and nothing felt like she shouldn't be able to move. Still, it felt as if some heavy blanket was draped over her body, preventing her from even raising her head. Once they reached a quaint house, solely lit by a buzzing yellow light following a long stretch of dirt road, Anna was once again lifted like a sack of potatoes out of her seat by the younger Russian man.
Her weight seemed to hardly register to him as he cradled her in his arms. His shoulders and neck were muscular and toned to a degree that looked sculpted. His large hands eclipsed the front door as they pushed it open, but his touch was gentle as he lowered her onto a deeply set couch.
"You sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" The older man, Buck, asked after sitting down a steaming bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup on the fold-out TV table before her. "I mean, considering you were in an accident, you look pretty good, but you never want to risk your health."
Anna only spooned more soup into her mouth. She hadn't remembered the last time she felt that hungry, and the soup was radiating a heat that warmed her bones she hadn't felt since leaving the mansion.
Buck looked back at Peter, who stood nearly the height of the open door leading to the kitchen. He leaned against the door frame with his tree trunk arms crossed. Buck turned his attention to his own boots and bit the bottom of his lip hard enough that the face of his black and gray, wiry beard flexed upward toward his nose. "What is it you're running from, kid?"
Anna's eyes flicked upward toward the man. The small muscles near the bridge of her nose were sore from the effort. "What makes you think I'm running?"
"Because you don't seem to want to go back to where you came."
Anna let silence fall on the room once again like a wet cloth falling from the ceiling. It was enough for the man to return to studying his boots. "Are you a mutant too?"
Anna's throat tightened enough that her next spoonful of soup struggled to slip down. She set the spoon down and found her eyes locking with Peter in the doorway. He was looking right back at her.
"You don't got to answer," Buck said after a while. "But you can't go wandering around in the dark by yourself. It's not safe." He rubbed the knees of his blue jeans with the palms of his hands. "If you want to spend the night and get some rest, you're welcome to." He turned in his chair, "Phone is in the kitchen if you want to call -"
"Why did you help me?" Anna asked.
"What's that?"
"Why did you help me?" Anna eyed Peter, "He's a mutant. I could be some sort of mutant hunter of something. You'd have been better off leaving me in the ditch."
"We weren't going to leave you in that ditch."
"Why?"
"Because people ought to be there for one another."
"But maybe I'm some sort of FOH agent. I could just be waiting for you all to go to sleep, and then I'm going to kill you."
The man scratched his mustache with his pointer finger. "Okay, well, are you here to kill us?"
"No."
"Then I guess it was worth the risk helping you out." Buck stood with a grunt and held onto the back of his chair for support.
"You're just going to believe me? Just like that?"
Buck looked down at her, and the shadows of the lights played off the many lines of his face. "Kid, what do you want me to say?"
"I want you to tell me why," Anna could feel her throat constricting again. "Why did you do it? Why did you help me? It did nothing to help you, and it only put yourself at risk. It doesn't serve you."
"Young lady," Buck grabbed the back of his chair with both hands and stood over it. "We are all only here to be friends to one another. To help one another, to help the world around us, to leave this place better than the way we found it. It's true, we would have been safer leaving you in that ditch, but then I'd have to live whatever life I have left knowing I left someone who might have needed help to die. Who would I be then?"
Buck pushed himself up from the back of the chair to stand straight. He turned toward a hallway and held onto his side. "Do me a favor, if you are here to kill us all, at least do it quietly. I don't like being woken up in the middle of the night." With that, the old man disappeared through a doorway.
Following his absence, the giant dug in a pocket of his overalls and produced Anna's keys. He set them gently next to her soup, "For your car. Don't worry, it still runs smoothly."
"You're Peter, right?"
"I'm nobody," Peter followed after the old man.
"But you -"
"Please," he paused in the doorway a moment, "as soon as you are able, leave this place and never return… please." He then gently closed the door behind him.