Xander X Lennox - Jade Coast Port

The silence that settled between them after Lennox blurted out her confession got more deafening as each slow second ticked by. It felt like years had passed by the time Xander spoke and by then, Lennox’s cheeks were red hot with embarrassment and she was wishing that she had kept her damn mouth shut.

She had known that he liked her at least a little bit, but the verbal confirmation brought a smile to her lips. With it came a sense of safety - safety in which he wouldn’t expect retribution for every little thing he offered her. With that knowledge, she pushed herself off of the wall and grabbed some dried fruit. She had stuffed as much as she could into her mouth before scooping up some more and returning to where she was leaning on the wall to munch on it. When she swallowed her first mouthful, the relief was immediate. And with all this food in the room, she was going to eat until she was full.

His movement caught her eye and she looked at him for the first time since she had admitted that she liked him. She wasn’t sure in what way she liked him, not yet, and maybe it wouldn’t matter at all because at this point, she was living day to day. She was here right now but with how sick she had been, she could be gone tomorrow. But she wanted the chance to figure it out.

Lennox blinked as she absorbed his truth. It was far more ground breaking than hers, or at least the one she had told him. If she hadn’t seen that vision of him mourning, she would have never guessed that he had suffered a loss. Lennox, on the other hand, did not handle loss well. She never had. She would spiral down a rabbit hole of self destruction, sometimes lasting years, before she dug herself out. Even though she suffered deeply with loss, she was unsure of how to comfort someone. She had never had a stable enough relationship with anyone in which she was needed for support. She was always completely reliant on others.

“Whoever did it will suffer. There must be balance in the Universe and sometime, someway, the Universe will strike him down and everything will be balanced again.” She started to say hesitantly because she knew that is what she would want to hear, but then she remembered he didn’t believe in that sort of stuff. She didn’t know what to say and she almost felt guilty for not revealing her real truth. It felt wrong to get close to him and then probably end up dying because of whatever illness she had, especially after he confessed that.

“You should know that before you ask me to be in your family again that I’m sick. Like, really sick. And you probably don’t want to be around that.” Lennox looked down again and focused on slowly chewing her food. She didn’t know how long she would have if she stayed with Xander. His touch seemed to cure her for a couple of days but she didn’t know how long that would last. But she did know that if he chose to not be around her, she wouldn’t last two weeks.

Lennox continued to munch on her food, making sure to refill her hands with more every time they emptied. She regarded Xander’s admission to revenge with a casual shrug, “If retribution comes in the form of you, so be it. But it will come.”

Lennox was no stranger to revenge. In fact, a long time ago, she had prided herself in being an agent of revenge and retribution. It was easier than one would think because at the end of the day, everyone is guilty of something. That stopped for awhile after someone smashed her right knee with a hammer and she couldn’t walk without a limo for a couple of months. Then Stark showed her that her purpose was to punish those who tipped the scale of balance in the wrong direction and she flourished under his ideologies. But then Stark vanished and with him, her sense of identity and she was left to start all over. Again.

Lennox shifted guiltily when he questioned her about her illness. She didn’t even how answer. Even if she wanted to tell him the truth, it sounded insane, even for her. “I’m not giving up. I just don’t know what’s going to happen. Right now I’m okay but I’m scared that I’m going to die alone.” The words tumbled out of her mouth one after another and technically, they weren’t lies. “It’s some sort of magic sickness. It gets worse when I’m alone.” A weight that she hadn’t even known existed was suddenly lifted off of her chest when she revealed her secret. Her body visibly relaxed, as if keeping all of her symptoms and struggles to herself was half the battle.

Lennox has always struggled with balance in her life. When it came to other people and relationships, she was always either all in or all out. After Stark, she had finally started to realize the dysfunction in that and now, staring at Xander, she saw the potential for her to lose herself in him. But at the same time, she couldn’t help herself. It was addicting to be so fully committed to someone, to be so passionate about someone that they became her air. With the added complication of her health, she didn’t even think she had an option. Her only hesitation was that when she loved hard, she fell hard and she didn’t want to scrape herself off at rock bottom again.

Then Xander leaned forward and she became entranced in his intensity. They say old habits die hard and that was turning out to be painfully true for Lennox. She slowly nodded, almost dizzy from the high of being accepted by someone. She had forgotten how much she needed it.

Her thoughts circled back to her health and she truly wondered that if Xander would heal her of her sickness. Or maybe his effect would wear off and she would have to start all over again. She decided that even if he couldn’t heal her and she died, she wanted to be completely lost in him before she went. No matter what happened, she no longer had to die alone.

“I’ll help you heal,” She said, no longer afraid of being too close to him. If anything, she wanted to feel the rush he gave her but she didn’t reach out to him. “And you can heal me.”

Just because she agreed to a friendship did not mean he had all of her trust yet. Lennox rarely gave out trust but once someone had her loyalty, it was absolute and unwavering. Xander still had a long way to go with her and she wouldn’t make it easy for him. Her stubbornness was second to none and until he proved that he was someone worth following, managing her would be a difficult undertaking for Xander. Of course, all of this was dependent on the signs of the Universe. If the Universe started to reveal that her path needed to part ways with his, she had to abide.

Lennox sensed that there was something that Xander wasn’t telling her but she didn’t push it. Lennox was the queen of secrets but she also knew that sometimes, the truth ruined things. Sometimes it was just better to indulge the lies because they rarely cut as deep as the truth did. So she didn’t ask because she didn’t want to know because she didn’t want to ruin the moment. After all the illness and loneliness and generally shiftiness of her life, she needed this moment more than she needed the truth.

It dawned on Lennox just how little they knew about each other. To Lennox, Xander was just the strange boy with the dead mother and an itch for revenge who inexplicably made her sickness go away.

Lennox’s stomach was full enough that she feared if she ate more, she would throw it up, so she stopped. She rarely felt this full these days and her body was buzzing with energy she hadn’t felt in ages. She shrugged her shoulders, no longer concerned with staying in the catacombs because the Universe had already permitted it, “You decide.” She hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t given her the option to part ways and she didn’t want to, anyhow.

“We should play a game. Something to get to know each other.” She suggested, pausing for only a second to gauge his reaction but then charging on forward with her suggestion anyway. “We each ask a question and the other person has to answer. We each get three passes. Got it?” Lennox hadn’t waited for Xander to say he wanted to play, she had simply decided for the both of them - just like how Xander decided that she would stay with him.

“That’s not fair!” Lennox hissed in retaliation but Xander was already sauntering out of the door, leaving Lennox with only the option of following. She did, begrudgingly, a few seconds later, curiously looking around the new room they were in. It had never taken much to impress Lennox and she happened to like the bizarre aesthetic of the bunker. She slowly ran her fingers along one of the bed frames before Xander’s question caused her head to snap in his direction.

She scowled after his intrusive question but she didn’t say anything because she had suggested the game even though they both knew that he was pushing it. She didn’t want to waste her passes though, not yet, so she conceded.

“Not in the sense you’re probably thinking of, no.” Lennox got attached to people, not places or things. For most people, a home was a place they lived but for someone like Lennox, who had always been a drifter, home referred to people. It didn’t matter if they were sheltered in a box in an alleyway or in some abandoned house, home was wherever her people were. There were only a handful of people that Lennox considered herself to be home with but none of them were in her life anymore.

“What are you going to do to the people who killed your mother?” She asked, giving a pointed look mostly to show that if he wanted to ask intrusive questions, then so would she. Two could play at that game. She moved to sit on the bed next to him, scooting back so her back was leaning against the wall and she watched him, waiting to see the anger she knew would surface.

Lennox wanted to roll her eyes at Xander’s obvious satisfaction in her answer. Just because she had nowhere to go didn’t mean she wouldn’t leave. Lennox lived her life in a state of constant motion, always moving, always leaving. He should be more worried about her staying, even though the Universe was telling her to stay. She might have been a professional at leaving but she was an amateur when it came to staying. It wouldn’t take long for the itch to start over would come back, but that was a problem for another day.

Lennox watched the rage bubble up in Xander but she didn’t shy away from it or judge it. She let him simmer in his anger, neither comforting nor scolding him, and just watched him. He spoke with such conviction that she believed him and that didn’t scare her either.

His next question earned him a sharp glare. Even if she had already used up her three passes, she wasn’t ready to answer that question. “Pass.” She said, giving him a look that earned him to steer clear of thar subject.

“Would you let me watch you kill them?” Lennox finally asked, big brown eyes looking at curiously, as if they weren’t talking about ending the life of someone else.

Lennox scrunched up her nose at the thought of killing someone, especially when she didn’t have a personal motive. Doing something that wrong, especially when it wasn’t to right a wrong, was a sure fire way to guarantee bad things. Everything in the Universe was about balance and if nothing was about of balance to begin with, then knocking it out of balance could only cause harm.

“No, I want to watch. And make sure that when he comes back, he won’t come back to kill you.”

Lennox didn’t offer more of an explanation. If he wanted to know, he would have to ask. She absorbed his question with a thoughtful look before nodding, “Yeah, twice.” The memories were buried in the back corners of her mind but she could clearly remember their faces, both times, as they died. She looked down as she tried to push them out of her head. Again, she offered no explanation.

“Have you ever watched someone die?” She asked, turning the question around on him. She didn’t look up, though, still trying to force the faces of her mother and the homeless man out of her head.