Asha Joy: No Armour Against Fate

by Amanda Sichter

She was wearing gloves.

That was the first thing Logan noticed. Burnt by the heat, everyone else at the sidewalk tables was dressed in the lightest of summer clothes, but his eye was caught by the sight of a gloved hand wrapped around a coffee cup. A second glance revealed clothes that concealed: from a polo-necked top, to gloves, to a glimpse of trousers and high boots.

Caught by surprise, he changed his mind on his plans for the next few hours and veered into the café. Taking his coffee and sandwich out with him, he approached the table she sat at, glad the crowded area gave him an excuse.

'Can I sit here?' he asked, gesturing at the empty seat opposite her.

Cool dark eyes, uncaring, flicked up at him, observed nothing offensive. She nodded and then her unwavering gaze returned to the point on the street she had been watching when he first saw her. He munched on his sandwich for a while but her attention never wavered.

'I'm Logan,' he offered, attempting to break into her concentration.

'That's nice,' she responded shortly.

'Nice café. You come here often?' He tried again but got nothing more than a disinterested glance in response.

'I'm sorry,' he said, following his hunch, 'you've got something on your chin.' He leaned forward reaching out with his hand. 'Here, let me brush it away.'

Dark eyes flashed and she flinched backwards, out of his reach. 'Don't touch me,' she said, flat and brutal, directed at him in particular and the whole world in general, a response used so often it had become instinct.

He drew his hand back slightly, caught her gaze with his own. 'You're a mutant,' he said, a statement, softly spoken.

There was no response, no flicker in her face, until he turned his hand over, let the first few inches of adamantium slide from between his knuckles. 'So am I,' he added, just as quietly.

Something changed in her eyes, a lowering of defences, if only minimally. 'How did you know?' she asked, calmly curious.

He gestured at her gloves. 'You remind me of someone I know,' he smiled.

She nodded and then her gaze switched back to the same point in the street, dismissing him from her attention in a way that unexpectedly irked him. Logan felt the sudden need to break through her cool self-possession.

'What's your name?' he asked.

She didn't even look at him, and her voice was flat as she responded, 'Asha Joy.'

'Like I said, I'm Logan,' and she nodded shortly. 'What are you looking at?' he asked.

'What time is it?' she asked distantly, not turning her eyes away.

He glanced at his watch. ''Bout twenty past one,' he said. 'Why?'

She nodded towards the point she had been looking at, so still and self-contained her face was almost mask-like. 'I'm waiting for a man to die.'

'What?' It was a quiet hiss, his hand snaking out to grasp her wrist, pulling back as she turned flashing dark eyes on him. An ascetic face, he realised suddenly, rather than pretty, with huge dark eyes and bronze skin, sharp cheekbones and chin under a cap of short black hair.

'A week ago he brushed against me in a crowd,' she said, distant, unfeeling. 'I try not to let them touch me, but sometimes . . . He's going to die. At one-thirty, right there, he gets hit by a car and dies. I needed to be here.'

'What does he look like?' growled Logan.

'You can't stop it. I saw it. It will happen.' She was calm, beyond calm, sealing herself away into non-feeling.

'What does he look like?' Logan growled again.

'Tall,' she said, remotely. 'Dark-haired. Wearing a dark blue suit and a red tie. He'll walk down there,' she pointed at the other side of the street, 'at one twenty-nine. At one-thirty he'll try and cross the street and be hit by a car and die. Nothing you can do will change that.'

'Wait and see,' he hissed and rose, pushing his way through the crowd until he could sprint across the street. He arrived just in time to see the man, dark blue suit, red tie, round the corner and head towards him.

'Pal,' he said, stepping in front of the man, trying to look unthreatening. 'You got the time?'

The look was confused, startled, but the man stopped, looked at his watch. 'One-thirty,' came the response and he was moving again. Logan reached out, hand grasping at the suit-sleeve.

'Wait,' said Logan, harshly, desperately.

'Piss off,' came the response and the man was slipping away from him, slipping between cars, starting to run, and then the squeal of brakes, the harsh sound of collision and through the sudden screams, Logan was aware that dark eyes were watching, cool and distant, knowing what was to come and now, what had been.

* * * * *

'Why?' he asked.

They were sitting down at the café again, drinking coffee, his strong and harsh to take the metallic taste of failure out of his mouth. He had found her afterwards, when the police and ambulance had been and gone, statements taken, shocked witnesses interviewed. She had been sitting, still, eyes on the place where the body had been and she hadn't argued when he had bought her coffee, sat opposite her once again.

'Why what?' she asked.

'Why watch? If you can't change it, why watch?'

Asha Joy shrugged. 'A memorial,' she said. 'A witness. It seems - important somehow. I knew he was going to die - to watch gives it - meaning, somehow. He didn't die alone.' She sipped her coffee, concealing the downward quirk of her mouth, but he could still smell the tears she had shed.

'But - why can't it be changed?' There was a strange grief inside Logan, a sudden burning sensation of the weight of knowledge borne by the young woman in front of him, an understanding of why she avoided touch so fiercely.

'The first time I saw the future,' said Asha softly, 'I was thirteen. She was a school friend. I saw her hurt - so badly hurt - a week from then. A horse-riding accident. I told her, I told her when and where and why and she promised me, she *promised* me, that she wouldn't ride. She forgot, didn't believe me, I don't know. She hasn't got enough of her mind left to tell me. Every time I touched someone after that, I tried. The stupid, silly things I saw, the bad things, I tried to change them, but I couldn't. Do you know the story of Pandora's Box?'

The change of topic caught him by surprise. 'Um, yeah,' he said gruffly.

'They always get it wrong,' she said, wryly. 'They say she let all the ills of the world out of the box, but captured hope, which is nonsense. Pandora captured foreknowledge in her box, locked it away from humans, because its only when you don't know what's going to happen that you can hope. I don't have that. I can see what's going to happen, Logan, and I can't change a damn thing. I have no armour against fate.' She gave a half-smile, more self-mockery than mirth, lifted her gloved hands. 'Only these.'

'How far ahead do you see?' asked Logan.

'A week. Two sometimes.' She shrugged. 'Not that far. And not just the bad things.' She looked away from him and for the first time Logan saw emotion flit across her face, a massive grief quickly suppressed, hidden in that cool self-possession that he saw was also her armour. 'But enough of the bad things.'

'So you haven't seen the end of the world?' he asked, thinking of Destiny, of the world's fate spun out before the blind eyes of that precog.

'Just who I touch. So now I don't touch.' A sudden smile quirked her mouth. 'Much.'

'So you don't miss human contact?' asked Logan, suddenly curious.

Asha shrugged. 'I have my ways of dealing with it,' she said. 'Not everyone's fate is grim.' Dark eyes shone with private amusement, a touch of wicked pleasure, just for a moment. 'And you could say I've learned to be innovative. When I want.'

Logan grinned at her, suddenly amused. 'How would you like to visit a school?' he asked. 'There's somebody I think you've really got to meet.'

* * * * *

Scott had been non-committal behind red glasses. Jean had smiled but a small, perplexed line had appeared between her brows. Asha Joy had retained her cool self-containment, giving away nothing of what she thought.

Logan hadn't paid much attention, looking instead for someone specific. He'd found her finally in the kitchen, making a sandwich, sweaty from a Danger Room session.

'Rogue,' said Logan and the Southern girl had turned, smiled, then been startled into silence, her eyes fixed on the long gloves Asha wore, then looking down at her own, twisting her hands as though she had never seen them before.

'Rogue, Asha Joy. Asha Joy, Rogue,' grinned Logan.

'Pleased to meet yah,' said Rogue and held out her hand.

Gloved hands met, silk sliding over silk.

The world changed.

The End

back to Amanda Sichter's stories | X-Men archive | comicfic.net