Jurassic Park : March 1st, 2 a.m. : for Pam

[morethanhuman]

Erik had managed to sleep for a couple of hours when Bond shook him awake to take over watch duty. He was more tired than he wanted to admit, but he should have expected it-- even running every day wasn't the same as going for a surprise swim in the ocean.

Bond settled down in the sand and to all appearances fell instantly asleep. Erik sat looking out at the water until the sound of shifting sand got his attention, and he turned to see Pam sitting down beside him.

She was more of an enigma than any of the rest of them-- and not one Erik was likely to ever unravel on his own. But he was curious, and while he doubted his ability to get much out of her, he saw no reason not to make conversation. "Glad you decided to come down after all," he said, looking at her sidelong. "Though I don't know how glad you'll be, in the end."

Comments

[ithinkiwasbornforthis]

Pam's already growing bored of pretending. It's been at least a decade since she's been required to act the part of a normal young woman who sleeps when everyone else sleeps, and she likes it no more now than she ever did. She's antsy and on edge.

She's tempted to sneak off on her own, but there's something about Erik's posture gives her pause. Curiosity gets the better of her, and she makes her way over the sand to join him.

"Can't sleep," she says by way of explanation. "Glad? The jury is still out on that."

She holds her silence for another moment or two before she nods in the direction of the jungle. "Does it make your skin crawl?"

Pam has no idea what's out there, but she'd felt eyes on her the whole way to the beach.

[morethanhuman]

Erik glanced over his shoulder, then back to the fire. "Yes." Even if not for the reasons she might think. "I'm much more fond of cities. And I managed to arrive here too late for the only city we've been allowed to visit." Not that Renaissance-era Venice would have been his first choice, if he'd been given the option, but it beat India and wherever the hell they were now.

In spite of himself, his eyes strayed back to the dark of the treeline. "What do you think is out there?"

[ithinkiwasbornforthis]

She sits back a little and considers. "I have no idea," she replies finally. "But I don't think it's afraid of us." At least not for the most part. There had been smaller creatures that fled as she'd trekked through the jungle, but she had not stopped to get a good look. Glancing at him sidelong she says, "Glad you asked?"

[morethanhuman]

Erik shrugged. "It's no more than I assumed-- why send us somewhere deserted unless it's to pit us against whatever lives here?" He shook his head. "It seems to be the goal-- test us in whatever way the station can think of, the more inventive and dangerous, the better."

He met her gaze, cool and considering. "Of course, some of us are more adept at surviving than others."

[ithinkiwasbornforthis]

"Only a fool voluntarily goes where they cannot hope to survive," she says blandly. The number of humans she's seen in the last decade walk into a den of vampires has been proof enough of that and if everything she's heard about the station is correct, the safety is off on these excursions.

"You seem confident," she states. It's a challenge. She's known for a while now that there's something more to him, like Forge, like Mystique, but she has yet to see the proof that her senses aren't fooling her.

[morethanhuman]

"I'm hard to kill," Erik said, baring his teeth a little as he grinned. "A trait I think we share."

He held her gaze, cool and direct. "What are you?" he asked. "If you won't tell me, fine. We all have our secrets. But don't pretend you're human-- at least not to me."

[ithinkiwasbornforthis]

She lifts an eyebrow in surprise, not that he's found her out, she hasn't been very circumspect, but that he's asked at all.

"You're one to talk," Pam says mildly, and smiles a little, a gleam in her eye. "I'm not, as a matter of fact," she says, lifting her arms over her head and stretching like a cat. The truth feels good. "And what makes you so special?" Pam drops her arms and gazes at him expectantly.

[morethanhuman]

She was wearing a little gold necklace-- gold plated, in fact, and more than enough nickel inside for him to work with.

Fine control still came easily to him, thank god, so it took a mere flick of his fingers to open the catch and float it towards him. It hung in the air between them, turning slowly as if it rested on a jeweler's pedestal.

"I don't pretend either," he said. "I'm a mutant, and very proud of it." His eyes lifted to hers again. "But I don't think that's what you are."

[ithinkiwasbornforthis]

Pam reaches out gently and plucks it from the air. "Telekinesis?" she asks. That's a new one. Telepath? Well she knows a few of those, but this is new. "Another mutant," she continues without waiting for him to answer. "There are a lot of you here, aren't there?"

She shrugs. "There are a few of us too," she says and extends her teeth as she turns an unsettling smile on him. "Take a guess?" She looks relaxed, but while she doesn't think that he will try anything, she's ready for him if he does.

[morethanhuman]

Erik's eyebrows went up, a little smile curling one corner of his mouth. "Never thought your kind were real until last year," he said, stretching his legs out in front of him, relaxing in a show of being unconcerned. "But I suppose the same is true the other way round, no?" There weren't any of his own kind in Klaus and Caroline's world, anyway, but somehow Pam didn't strike him as the same sort of vampire.

"My power only lets me control metal," he added. "But I can do more than just move it. Melt it, reshape it-- or at least I could, before coming here." His bitterness was showing through, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

[ithinkiwasbornforthis]

Pam nods. Mutants were new, although it would not have surprised her to discover back home in Shreveport. There were enough supernaturals around that what was one more species.

"Yes, we're all mourning what we were once capable of. Still," she says and looks at him, "better than human."