Title: Of Phone Calls
By: A.j.
Rating: PG-13 because Dom has a Potty Mouth.
Spoilers: Knowledge of the last three pages of SoldierX #12 is pretty much essential, otherwise this makes *no* sense.
Disclaimer: Ain't mine. Ain't makin' money.
Archiving: If you want? Take.
Notes: For Timey for various reasons.

Small world.

Small. Fucking. World.

Shit, she needed a cigarette.

As she stared down at the phone, Domino's lungs and fingers itched for them. Almost burned with need. Her hand was half way into her back pocket before she remembered the crushed pack at the bottom of a hotel trash can in Reno. She sighed and slumped forward, the heels of her hands grinding unpleasantly into her eyesockets.

Oh, right.

Dialogue from Airplane stamped through her head. Yeah, this had definitely been the wrong life to quit smoking. And drinking.

Why was she doing this again?

Images - faces - flickered behind her eyelids. A little blonde girl with big grey eyes and hoofed feet crying about a fairytale land and screaming for the mother that wasn't there. A little boy who started to shake at the sound of helicopters. An old man with numbers on his arm who said nothing, but who's eyes said more than enough for five lifetimes.

And raw sewage that was turning up traces of mutant DNA. Among other things.

God, it was supposed to be better. Or different. Not this.

She hadn't expected it to be perfect. Stupidity or naiveté were the only things that would have thrown up that particular scenario, and Domino was neither of those. At least not in large measures.

But not this.

Bittnerness that tasted of (but wasn't) ashes washed across her tongue, and clinging, and turning sour. Hadn't they done this before? Weren't there monuments and museums and terrified whispers? Didn't anyone see?

It was so big. So fucking huge and black and evil. And maybe that's why no one did see.

Because nearly everyone had watched and cheered as that little mutant girl in Florida had died some months back. But no one, not one single person, had asked about the trial.

No one asked about those at all anymore.

She had.

God, the answer...

Violent, she stood, sucking in deep breaths of dry recycled air.

From the cheap little table, the phone stared. Waiting.

Shit.

Dom shook her head and swallowed hard.

This wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

All of it seemed to be pushing for this one single outcome, and despite everything, there was one lesson she'd learned in the past three years. One single cold thing that had her in this room, with this phone, and this to do. She knew when she needed to ask for help.

And god, did she need help.

Because there seemed to be no one else who was doing anything. Who could do anything. Just her and this phone.

The cream-colored plastic was hard under her hand, the sudden dialtone too loud.

It was as though everything she was, or did lead back to him. And that hurt. Beyond telling in every single way because in her mind he wasn't everything. Except when he was.

She didn't want it to go back to the way it had been. She'd changed. He'd changed. They had changed, and not together.

But it was time to stop running away. Because it had gotten her nowhere at all. Just here with the phone beeping a dialtone and ten little numbers that had, until that morning, been locked in a safety deposit box.

Don't think about it. Just do it.

Dial. Connect.

Eyes closed. Stomach in mouth.

Ring-click.

"Leave a message."

No turning back now.

"Nate..."