Family Ties
folder
X-Men - Animated Series (all) › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
51
Views:
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Currently Reading:
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Category:
X-Men - Animated Series (all) › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
51
Views:
7,012
Reviews:
30
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own X-Men Evolution, or any of the characters from it. I make no money from from the writing of this story.
13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies,
BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™ and Prophetic Muse…are you missing a Tim? I seem to have a spare… InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are
sparkled for archiving. J ProPhile,
don’t worry…your idea will pop up soon.
So to speak. ;) Ramsey, Jubilee,
and Tex are loverly for being helpful. J
Readers/Reviewers: Gah! I’ve
been typing on German keyboards for so long I can’t find my Z anymore!!!! But I still adore you madly for
reading! J The ducks
are hiding…someone threatened them with Chinese food and they took offense…
“Pardon
me?”
“Brains. They’re not bad…” Rogue shoved another repulsive forkful of calves’ brains
scrambled with eggs and topped with milk gravy [1] into her mouth and smiled at
Amara, her cheeklginlging. And that’s for the second Mississippi in the
Jeep!
Amara
pushed her plate away and looked twice as nauseated as Rogue felt. “No thank you.”
“When
in Rome,” Todd shrugged and bravely took a bite, which he promptly spit into
his napkin.
“If
I hadn’t told you what it was…”
“It
would still taste nasty,” he supplied.
Lance
shrugged and shoveled a large forkful into his mouth. “No worse than Tabby’s cookin’…or Kitty’s!”
Amara
wrinkled her nose and took Lance’s relatively unsullied toast without thinking,
entirely missing his vaguely surprised look.
“It’s vile, to eat such things.”
Rogue
decided she had eaten enough gray matter for one lifetime and set to sopping
gravy with a rather suspect biscuit. [2]
“Think of it as a cultural experience…
I’m sure whatever the Hell y’all eat in Nova Roma ain’t all peaches and
cream.”
“Peaches?” Amara seemed to be flipping through a mental
Rolodex before she nodded. “Peaches…
No. It is not all sweet things or
fruit… But we do not eat brains.”
“You
are what you eat,” Lance muttered and speared his last piece of toast with a
gravy-decorated fork before Amara could take it. “No boyfriend, no food poaching rights.”
She
looked momentarily taken aback before she straightened and turned her face away
to gaze out the window. “Warren is
still sitting there.”
“Duh,”
Todd said as he tried to force down a bite of the breakfast Rogue had ordered
for them during an apparently cruel streak.
“How the Hell would we explain a six foot tall guy with wings, yo?”
Amara
raised a brow and pointed coolly towards the door of the all-night diner. Two teenagers wearing devil horns and black
wings, replete with feathers and glitter, were entering, chattering excitedly,
peppering their conversation liberally with “fuck” and “shit” and “ya
know.” “They seem to get by…”
“Good
to know we’re not the only ones wanderin’ Meridian at ten in the damned
evenin’,” Rogue grumbled, pushing her mostly empty plate to one side. “No one’s gonna look twice at Warren during
the concert but it’s best he don’t go drawin’ stares…”
“Mississippi,”
Amara said tersely, glaring.
“Bitch,”
Rogue responded sweetly. Lance and Todd
had both stopped mid-chew, akin looks of hopeful confusion on their faces. Amara had been spoiling for a fight since
they left New York and Rogue seemed to be her unnecessary target. The tension for most of the ride, especially
after Rogue’s nauseating incident, was thick enough to be stifling. Warren had even turned off his beloved Ring
Cycle CD after several miles of unspoken annoyance from the backseat.
“Cat
fight?” Lance asked rather than stated, looking between the two females.
Amara
looked away first, turning her fierce gaze rds rds Lance. “Not today…”
Something
in her expression flickered and for a moment, Lance saw a familiar look in her
eyes, a combination of lust, love and an ineffable quality that, ninety nine
times out of a hundred, made him want to fling himself at her feet in
supplication. He had to find out, he
decided, if that was some part of her mutation no one knew about yet. No, he sighed inwardly, even before
the idea had fully formed, it’s just because I’m fucking hopeless… As he had been lost in thought, he had not
noticed the two garishly dressed teenagers crossing to their table. “Hey,” he snapped as the one wearing the
shirt proclaiming him a “Sex God” reached out and took a sip of his
yet-untouched coffee. “Fuck off!”
Ignoring
him completely, the alleged sex god smiled at Amara. “Ain’t from these parts?”
“Oh,
God,” Rogue sighed. “Please tell me
that accent’s a put-on…”
The
second teenager, one who seemed to be clad mostly in black netting and
pleather, sneered, “A city girl?”
“Not
unless you count Euclid and Bon Ami as bein’ in the city,” she drawled,
thickening her accent. Todd was not
sure if she was doing it to parody the two teenagers or if it was an
unconscious response to being back in her hometown, but there was no mistaking
her posture and her tone. Rogue, he
knew without a doubt, was pissed.
“Fancy,”
the first said, though he dripped sarcasm.
“We just wanted to see what the little princess there was doin’ for fun
‘round here,” he said, jerking his thumb in Amara’s direction.
Amara did
not respond other than to raise one brow and stare coldly at the speaker. Lance snarled, “Back off…”
“Or
what?”
“My God,
could this get any more childish?” Rogue growled. She shoved back her chair, a noisy clatter
in the otherwise quiet diner, and got in the first teenager’s face, “Fuck off,
little boy, and leave us alone or I’m gonna kick your ass so hard you’re
pickin’ up teeth in Atlanta.”
Lance
seemed to be gaining momentum, speaking again before the insulting teenagers
could form a response. “She’s not your
princess!” he snapped, getting to his feet.
“Uh-oh,”
Todd sighed. “And I was just startin’
to like brains, too…”
The first
punch landed soundly against Lance’s jaw, but rather than fall back, he lurched
forward, grabbing his assailant in a bear hug and lifting him off his
feet. “Shit,” Amara hissed, most
unprincesslike, and jumped to her feet and moved towards Lance in one fluid
motion. Only Rogue saw the orange glow
of her hands as she grabbed his sides and squeezed, but everyone heard him
shout in pain, followed by the dull thud of the shorter teenager in his grasp
hitting the floor. “Stop it,” she bit
out, pushing past him. The jingle of
the bell over the door signaled her exit.
Todd
sighed again. “We’re about to get
kicked out,” he muttered.
Rogue
no. “. “Yeah…we’ve gotta stop takin’
those two places…” She and Todd
extricated Lance from his burgeoning argument with the manager and made a hasty
exit, stepping over the dropped youth and pushing past his rather surprised
friend in the process. Amara was
already in the Jeep, buckled in and glaring out the window, when they piled
in. “Um…” Rogue began.
“Don’t,”
Warren said blandly. “If you tell me,
I’ll have to do the responsible thing and tell Professor Xavier and I really
don’t feel like being an adult right now…”
Todd made
a noise that may have been a laugh but the teenagers were otherwise silent for
the next half hour or so. “You had no
right!” Amara finally exploded, making Warren swerve across two lanes of
traffic with her sudden outburst.
Unlike
the rest of the car full of people, Lance seemed to know exactly what she was
talking about. “Like Hell I didn’t!”
“I broke
up with you!”
His eyes
lit with a devilish glint. “But I,” he
said almost calmly, “didn’t break up with you!”
“What?” This time, it was Warren that spoke. “That’s brilliant…I’m going to have to file
that one away for future reference…”
“That is
not,” Amara said, “brilliant. That is
the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard!”
“No
fair,” Todd said. “You told me my plan
for world domination through the clever use of flags [3] was the most idiotic
thing you’ve ever heard! I feel
cheated!”
“Shhhh,”
Rogue admonished, but she was having a hard time keeping a straight face
herself.
Lance’s
smile had become quite smug. “As far as
I’m concerned, you’re still my girlfriend,” he extemporized. Why the Hell
didn’t I think of this sooner? Weeks
of…Hell…This could’ve been resolved weeks ago! “You’re still my girlfriend, I love you, and there’s not a damn
thing you can do about it!”
“You…I….gah!” Amara clutched fistfuls of her hair and made
a ragged noise of frustration.
“Me too,
dear,” Lance sing-songed.
“This,”
Warren sighed, “is so going to earn me some serious Karma…”
“Ow!”
“Get back
on your side of the car!”
“Don’t
make me turn this car around! Oh, Hell,
did I just say that out loud?”
“Logan,
Piotr’s poking me in the side!”
“Poke him
back, Elf. You got fingers. Use ‘em!”
“But you
said…”
“Fuck
what I said!” Logan roared. “I’m sick
and tired of you two actin’ like spoiled brats!”
“He’s not
acting,” Kurt muttered darkly.
Logan
slammed on the brakes so hard they were all slung forward against their seat
belts, gasping. “Look,” he snarled,
oblivious to the cars honking and swerving around them, “you two’ve been doing
this for fucking hours! Kurt, I
rescind my orders. Touch the Hell outta
him if it’ll make him stop. Piotr,
he’ll stop snipin’ if you keep your damned paws to yourself!”
Piotr
said sulkily, “It’s not my fault the seat is so small…there’s a lot of me to
fit back here!”
“That’s a
matter for debate,” Kurt murmured.
Logan let
out a harsh breath. “Kurt, front
seat. Now.”
Kurt
blinked owlishly for a moment before scrambling over the seat in a feat of
contortion that would make the limpest noodle proud. Logan’s “no one but me in the front” dictum was rarely breached
and Kurt knew better than to point out the rarity of the command. “Danke, Herr Logan…”
„Stow
it,“ he snapped. “Piotr, I don’t care
what Kurt says to you, you keep your hands to yourself all weekend, got it?”
“Da,”
he sighed.
“Kurt,
don’t make me tell Half-Pint about you actin’ like a little kid…”
Kurt
tried not to look embarrassed but failed miserably. He would indeed be embarrassed if Kitty found out how he had
baited Piotr to action for most of the ride, just to get him in trouble. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Now,
we have one hour left on this roadtrip from Hell. When we get to this place, I’m gonna get a beer and a nice,
quiet, dark room. Unless the camp’s on
fire, I don’t wanna see either one of you before sunup, got it?”
“Yes,
sir,” the two passengers chorused.
With a
muttered curse, Logan shifted back into gear and rejoined the flow of
traffic. “They will have cold
beer, right?”
Kurt
answered carefully, “Well…depends on how you ask them… People are very defensive of their limited
beer supply…”
“I can
respect that,” Logan acknowledged.
“You
might have to…to…”
“To
what?”
“Be…nice…”
Kurt said, edging away slightly.
“I’m
always nice,” Logan said roughly.
“See?” The teeth-baring smile he
offered Kurt was just short of frightening.
“Nice…”
“Erk.” He wondered dimly if his mother would still
find Logan charming if he eviscerated her only son. “Maybe Papa will let you have some of his…”
“Good,”
Logan practically purred.
From the
back seat, Piotr said “Is it wise, for trapeze artists to drink as much as your
parents do?”
Kurt
growled, his hands tightening on the seatbelt.
“Herr Logan?”
“No one
insults Astrid…go to it, Elf.” At
least, Logan thought as Kurt ported into the backseat and the sounds of
closely restrained fighting erupted, I’m not stuck at some damned rock
concert.
[1] A popular dish in some parts of the South. My late grandfather loved it, apparently, and you can find little
cans with brains and gravy in some grocery stores south of the Mason-Dixon. Pardon me while I pause to thank whichever
deity is listening that I am a vegetarian.
[2] No, not a tea biscuit or cookie… For you
Southern impaired folks, a biscuit is…hard to describe. Basically a dense, cooked bit of dough that
is used for everything from breakfast to shot putting practice, depending on
how old they are. Mostly used for
sopping. Viva los biscuits.
[3] Eddie Izzard has fucking funny routine about
just such a thing on his “Dressed to Kill” CD.
The man is fucking hilarious.
You can tell by how many times I say fucking as an adjective.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies,
BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™ and Prophetic Muse…are you missing a Tim? I seem to have a spare… InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are
sparkled for archiving. J ProPhile,
don’t worry…your idea will pop up soon.
So to speak. ;) Ramsey, Jubilee,
and Tex are loverly for being helpful. J
Readers/Reviewers: Gah! I’ve
been typing on German keyboards for so long I can’t find my Z anymore!!!! But I still adore you madly for
reading! J The ducks
are hiding…someone threatened them with Chinese food and they took offense…
“Pardon
me?”
“Brains. They’re not bad…” Rogue shoved another repulsive forkful of calves’ brains
scrambled with eggs and topped with milk gravy [1] into her mouth and smiled at
Amara, her cheeklginlging. And that’s for the second Mississippi in the
Jeep!
Amara
pushed her plate away and looked twice as nauseated as Rogue felt. “No thank you.”
“When
in Rome,” Todd shrugged and bravely took a bite, which he promptly spit into
his napkin.
“If
I hadn’t told you what it was…”
“It
would still taste nasty,” he supplied.
Lance
shrugged and shoveled a large forkful into his mouth. “No worse than Tabby’s cookin’…or Kitty’s!”
Amara
wrinkled her nose and took Lance’s relatively unsullied toast without thinking,
entirely missing his vaguely surprised look.
“It’s vile, to eat such things.”
Rogue
decided she had eaten enough gray matter for one lifetime and set to sopping
gravy with a rather suspect biscuit. [2]
“Think of it as a cultural experience…
I’m sure whatever the Hell y’all eat in Nova Roma ain’t all peaches and
cream.”
“Peaches?” Amara seemed to be flipping through a mental
Rolodex before she nodded. “Peaches…
No. It is not all sweet things or
fruit… But we do not eat brains.”
“You
are what you eat,” Lance muttered and speared his last piece of toast with a
gravy-decorated fork before Amara could take it. “No boyfriend, no food poaching rights.”
She
looked momentarily taken aback before she straightened and turned her face away
to gaze out the window. “Warren is
still sitting there.”
“Duh,”
Todd said as he tried to force down a bite of the breakfast Rogue had ordered
for them during an apparently cruel streak.
“How the Hell would we explain a six foot tall guy with wings, yo?”
Amara
raised a brow and pointed coolly towards the door of the all-night diner. Two teenagers wearing devil horns and black
wings, replete with feathers and glitter, were entering, chattering excitedly,
peppering their conversation liberally with “fuck” and “shit” and “ya
know.” “They seem to get by…”
“Good
to know we’re not the only ones wanderin’ Meridian at ten in the damned
evenin’,” Rogue grumbled, pushing her mostly empty plate to one side. “No one’s gonna look twice at Warren during
the concert but it’s best he don’t go drawin’ stares…”
“Mississippi,”
Amara said tersely, glaring.
“Bitch,”
Rogue responded sweetly. Lance and Todd
had both stopped mid-chew, akin looks of hopeful confusion on their faces. Amara had been spoiling for a fight since
they left New York and Rogue seemed to be her unnecessary target. The tension for most of the ride, especially
after Rogue’s nauseating incident, was thick enough to be stifling. Warren had even turned off his beloved Ring
Cycle CD after several miles of unspoken annoyance from the backseat.
“Cat
fight?” Lance asked rather than stated, looking between the two females.
Amara
looked away first, turning her fierce gaze rds rds Lance. “Not today…”
Something
in her expression flickered and for a moment, Lance saw a familiar look in her
eyes, a combination of lust, love and an ineffable quality that, ninety nine
times out of a hundred, made him want to fling himself at her feet in
supplication. He had to find out, he
decided, if that was some part of her mutation no one knew about yet. No, he sighed inwardly, even before
the idea had fully formed, it’s just because I’m fucking hopeless… As he had been lost in thought, he had not
noticed the two garishly dressed teenagers crossing to their table. “Hey,” he snapped as the one wearing the
shirt proclaiming him a “Sex God” reached out and took a sip of his
yet-untouched coffee. “Fuck off!”
Ignoring
him completely, the alleged sex god smiled at Amara. “Ain’t from these parts?”
“Oh,
God,” Rogue sighed. “Please tell me
that accent’s a put-on…”
The
second teenager, one who seemed to be clad mostly in black netting and
pleather, sneered, “A city girl?”
“Not
unless you count Euclid and Bon Ami as bein’ in the city,” she drawled,
thickening her accent. Todd was not
sure if she was doing it to parody the two teenagers or if it was an
unconscious response to being back in her hometown, but there was no mistaking
her posture and her tone. Rogue, he
knew without a doubt, was pissed.
“Fancy,”
the first said, though he dripped sarcasm.
“We just wanted to see what the little princess there was doin’ for fun
‘round here,” he said, jerking his thumb in Amara’s direction.
Amara did
not respond other than to raise one brow and stare coldly at the speaker. Lance snarled, “Back off…”
“Or
what?”
“My God,
could this get any more childish?” Rogue growled. She shoved back her chair, a noisy clatter
in the otherwise quiet diner, and got in the first teenager’s face, “Fuck off,
little boy, and leave us alone or I’m gonna kick your ass so hard you’re
pickin’ up teeth in Atlanta.”
Lance
seemed to be gaining momentum, speaking again before the insulting teenagers
could form a response. “She’s not your
princess!” he snapped, getting to his feet.
“Uh-oh,”
Todd sighed. “And I was just startin’
to like brains, too…”
The first
punch landed soundly against Lance’s jaw, but rather than fall back, he lurched
forward, grabbing his assailant in a bear hug and lifting him off his
feet. “Shit,” Amara hissed, most
unprincesslike, and jumped to her feet and moved towards Lance in one fluid
motion. Only Rogue saw the orange glow
of her hands as she grabbed his sides and squeezed, but everyone heard him
shout in pain, followed by the dull thud of the shorter teenager in his grasp
hitting the floor. “Stop it,” she bit
out, pushing past him. The jingle of
the bell over the door signaled her exit.
Todd
sighed again. “We’re about to get
kicked out,” he muttered.
Rogue
no. “. “Yeah…we’ve gotta stop takin’
those two places…” She and Todd
extricated Lance from his burgeoning argument with the manager and made a hasty
exit, stepping over the dropped youth and pushing past his rather surprised
friend in the process. Amara was
already in the Jeep, buckled in and glaring out the window, when they piled
in. “Um…” Rogue began.
“Don’t,”
Warren said blandly. “If you tell me,
I’ll have to do the responsible thing and tell Professor Xavier and I really
don’t feel like being an adult right now…”
Todd made
a noise that may have been a laugh but the teenagers were otherwise silent for
the next half hour or so. “You had no
right!” Amara finally exploded, making Warren swerve across two lanes of
traffic with her sudden outburst.
Unlike
the rest of the car full of people, Lance seemed to know exactly what she was
talking about. “Like Hell I didn’t!”
“I broke
up with you!”
His eyes
lit with a devilish glint. “But I,” he
said almost calmly, “didn’t break up with you!”
“What?” This time, it was Warren that spoke. “That’s brilliant…I’m going to have to file
that one away for future reference…”
“That is
not,” Amara said, “brilliant. That is
the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard!”
“No
fair,” Todd said. “You told me my plan
for world domination through the clever use of flags [3] was the most idiotic
thing you’ve ever heard! I feel
cheated!”
“Shhhh,”
Rogue admonished, but she was having a hard time keeping a straight face
herself.
Lance’s
smile had become quite smug. “As far as
I’m concerned, you’re still my girlfriend,” he extemporized. Why the Hell
didn’t I think of this sooner? Weeks
of…Hell…This could’ve been resolved weeks ago! “You’re still my girlfriend, I love you, and there’s not a damn
thing you can do about it!”
“You…I….gah!” Amara clutched fistfuls of her hair and made
a ragged noise of frustration.
“Me too,
dear,” Lance sing-songed.
“This,”
Warren sighed, “is so going to earn me some serious Karma…”
“Ow!”
“Get back
on your side of the car!”
“Don’t
make me turn this car around! Oh, Hell,
did I just say that out loud?”
“Logan,
Piotr’s poking me in the side!”
“Poke him
back, Elf. You got fingers. Use ‘em!”
“But you
said…”
“Fuck
what I said!” Logan roared. “I’m sick
and tired of you two actin’ like spoiled brats!”
“He’s not
acting,” Kurt muttered darkly.
Logan
slammed on the brakes so hard they were all slung forward against their seat
belts, gasping. “Look,” he snarled,
oblivious to the cars honking and swerving around them, “you two’ve been doing
this for fucking hours! Kurt, I
rescind my orders. Touch the Hell outta
him if it’ll make him stop. Piotr,
he’ll stop snipin’ if you keep your damned paws to yourself!”
Piotr
said sulkily, “It’s not my fault the seat is so small…there’s a lot of me to
fit back here!”
“That’s a
matter for debate,” Kurt murmured.
Logan let
out a harsh breath. “Kurt, front
seat. Now.”
Kurt
blinked owlishly for a moment before scrambling over the seat in a feat of
contortion that would make the limpest noodle proud. Logan’s “no one but me in the front” dictum was rarely breached
and Kurt knew better than to point out the rarity of the command. “Danke, Herr Logan…”
„Stow
it,“ he snapped. “Piotr, I don’t care
what Kurt says to you, you keep your hands to yourself all weekend, got it?”
“Da,”
he sighed.
“Kurt,
don’t make me tell Half-Pint about you actin’ like a little kid…”
Kurt
tried not to look embarrassed but failed miserably. He would indeed be embarrassed if Kitty found out how he had
baited Piotr to action for most of the ride, just to get him in trouble. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Now,
we have one hour left on this roadtrip from Hell. When we get to this place, I’m gonna get a beer and a nice,
quiet, dark room. Unless the camp’s on
fire, I don’t wanna see either one of you before sunup, got it?”
“Yes,
sir,” the two passengers chorused.
With a
muttered curse, Logan shifted back into gear and rejoined the flow of
traffic. “They will have cold
beer, right?”
Kurt
answered carefully, “Well…depends on how you ask them… People are very defensive of their limited
beer supply…”
“I can
respect that,” Logan acknowledged.
“You
might have to…to…”
“To
what?”
“Be…nice…”
Kurt said, edging away slightly.
“I’m
always nice,” Logan said roughly.
“See?” The teeth-baring smile he
offered Kurt was just short of frightening.
“Nice…”
“Erk.” He wondered dimly if his mother would still
find Logan charming if he eviscerated her only son. “Maybe Papa will let you have some of his…”
“Good,”
Logan practically purred.
From the
back seat, Piotr said “Is it wise, for trapeze artists to drink as much as your
parents do?”
Kurt
growled, his hands tightening on the seatbelt.
“Herr Logan?”
“No one
insults Astrid…go to it, Elf.” At
least, Logan thought as Kurt ported into the backseat and the sounds of
closely restrained fighting erupted, I’m not stuck at some damned rock
concert.
[1] A popular dish in some parts of the South. My late grandfather loved it, apparently, and you can find little
cans with brains and gravy in some grocery stores south of the Mason-Dixon. Pardon me while I pause to thank whichever
deity is listening that I am a vegetarian.
[2] No, not a tea biscuit or cookie… For you
Southern impaired folks, a biscuit is…hard to describe. Basically a dense, cooked bit of dough that
is used for everything from breakfast to shot putting practice, depending on
how old they are. Mostly used for
sopping. Viva los biscuits.
[3] Eddie Izzard has fucking funny routine about
just such a thing on his “Dressed to Kill” CD.
The man is fucking hilarious.
You can tell by how many times I say fucking as an adjective.