Family Ties

CHAPTER FOURTEEN




CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Disclaimers
Apply

 

A/N Goddess
Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™ and Prophetic Muse…
Bartleby and Loki have bitten Tim-Mach-Two… Something about glitter…the mermaid
is not amused. InterNutter, TC and
Maxwell Pink are wonderful for archiving!
J
ProPhile is going to do a happy dance in about two chapters because of
an idea. ;) Jubilee, Tex and Ramsey get extra sparkles just because. J
Readers/Reviewers: Geewilikers!
You’re still there! J The
platypi are hiding…they think Germany is too cold and want to go back to
Australia,thankyouverymuch. The Killer
Kitties™ are trying to stuff them into a box with no holes in it… Excuse me a moment…

 

 

“Vitals?”

 

“Barely…”

 

“Damn, she looks a mess…any I.D.?”

 

“Whoever rolled her took
everything…even ripped her pockets out, getting everything…”

 

“She can’t be more than sixteen…”

 

“She’s had a baby recently…within
the past six weeks or so. Look…”

 

There was a vague rustling noise as
a chart was rifled through and the patient moaned. “Ah…she lives…”

 

“Not the time, Munoz…”

 

“Sorry. Well, I guess she’s Jane Doe until she wakes up and can tell usherwherwise. Do the boys in blue think
she had the kid with her when she was jumped?”

 

“Not from what the paras said when
they brought her in. No sign of a baby
anywhere, and her breasts were full up, so that just screams that she was
alone. It’s about time for her
meds…” The two nurses fell silent as
one retrieved a small tray of various bottles and needles from the bedside
table and the other prepped the I.V. line and checked vitals. Sevesolusolutions were administered along
with the saline solution keeping the patient hydrated—some antibiotics, heavy
painkillers, and a drug to dry up the supply of milk flooding her breasts. Nurse Munoz made a mental note to get a
breast pump from the maternity ward within the hour and relieve some of the girl’s
pain. She vividly remembered breastfeeding
her twin boys and how terribly it hurt to be so full. After several minutes of silence, the other nurse, a florid woman
everyone, even the doctors, called Sarge, sighed. “I hate working ICU sometimes.
She’s so young…she looks my granddaughter’s age.”

 

“And my boys…” Munoz tipped the sharps into the bright
orange disposal container mounted on the wall.
“Did they indicate where she might’ve gotten those burns on her fingers from?”

 

“No, but some people near the scene
reported seeing some bright flashes of light a few minutes before she was
found, according to the cops. Big Joe…he was one of the ones who brought her
in…said they think maybe it was some drug related thing, freebasing gone bad or
something, but there wasn’t a single drug of any sort in her system, not even
THC [1] and you’d kind of half expect that with street kids…”

 

Munoz shook her head. “She’s no street kid…she’s too well
fed. And look,” she flipped the
patient’s hand over and pointed to her nails.
“Manicured. Street kids don’t
have neat nails like that.”

 

Sarge shrugged. “Well, whatever she was before, she’s in bad
shape now…”

 



 

“Don’t look so tense, Bobby…”

 

“I look tense? I shouldn’t look tense? How tense do I look?”

 

“You’re babbling.”

 

“I’m not babbling. I’m talking fast in the interest of saving
time…”

 

“Bobby!” St. John took hold of his boyfriend’s shoulders and forced him to
stop pacing. “Calm down! If you don’t want them to know you’re a
mutant, don’t tell them. Simple as
that! Not as if you have gills or
something that gives it away…”

 

“But…”

 

“And,” St. John went on, though it
pained him to do so, “if you want to hold on to the whole ‘Guess who’s gay?’
thing for a while, we can…pretend…”

 

Bobby looked steadily at St. John
and felt a swell of stricken emotion rise in his breast. “I…God, I don’t know. I’ve tried for two days now to figure out if
this is the time and…and I don’t know!”

 

St. John sighed and gathered Bobby
into an embrace. They were both
shaking, he noticed, but for entirely different reasons. While Bobby was nervous, St. John was
bordering on scared. He did not want to
hide his relationship with Bobby, not when it had taken so long for the two of them
to finally come to terms with the reality of it all, but he would do it if he
had to. He just hoped that Bobby would
not take the offer to hide things as a signal to crawl back into the shell it
had taken a seeming eternity to crawl out of.
“Look,” St. John said after a full minute, “you’re just worrying too
much. They’re coming up for the
weekend, just to see you and visit. You
can show them the town, maybe go to the city or something, and at night they’ll
be at their hotel and none the wise you live at Freak Central and are dating
someone with a similar chromosomal makeup.”

 

Bobby let out a shaky breath. “Do you really think that’ll work?”

 

“Why wouldn’t it?” St. John
shrugged. “Unless you go freezing
everything in sight, there’s no way they’d know…”

 

“The Professor says I should tell
them…I think he’s right, a little… I mean, they are my parents and all…” He heaved a sigh and pressed his forehead to
St. John’s and murmured, “But I’m scared.”

 

“Whenever you decide,” the blond
teenager said quietly, “let me know and I’ll help you however I can…”

 

Bobby vented a short, mirthless
laugh. “St. John, you don’t quite get
it…It’s not that my parents are conservative…they’re just this side of John
Birch…they’re so conservative it makes the right wing look like a love-in!”

 

St. John arched a brow. “So…what’re you trying to tell me here?”

 

“My parents are a shade…um…” he
blushed slightly and said quickly, “religious.
And…narrowminded.”

 

“Oh?” St. John was a bit surprised.
He had always labored under the impression that Bobby’s family was,
while not exactly liberal, tolerant.
“Since when?”

 

“Since always, I guess…They don’t go
to rallies or picket sex shops or anything, but…well, growing up, they always
told my brother and I that gays and…certain other people not exactly embraced
by their flavor of faith…were going to Hell and we should avoid them at all
costs and if we couldn’t avoid them, then we should pray that they would be
redeemed and become straight.”[2]

 

St. John inhaled slowly and willeimseimself not to laugh. Finally, he said,
“Puberty must’ve been Hell.”

 

“Tell me about it,” he sighed
wearily. The distant chime of the
doorbell infused his spine with a sudden ramrod stiffness. “Oh, God…”

 

“Take a deep breath,” St. John
urged. “Smile…”

 

“I don’t know why they had to come
so late tonight…why they just couldn’t wait till in the morning!”

 

“They love you, you twit! Now go downstairs, have coffee or tea or
Grape Ne Hi or whatever it is you wholesome middle American types do and I’ll
stay up here and keep my manloving self out of sight.”

 

“I love you,” Bobby sighed, pressing
a quick kiss to St. John’s lips before he darted down the stairs to answer the
door.

 

St. John let out a pent up breath
and shook his head. “This is gonna be a
weird weekend…”

 

 

I have two damned PhD’s… Taking
care of an infant for a few hours should not be so…taxing… Professor Xavier grimaced as Lucas
drooled on his shirt. His nice, clean,
pressed shirt. The third one that
evening. “While I know logically that
you have no idea what I am saying to you, I feel compelled to ask you to
refrain from doing that, please,” the Professor said as kindly as possible,
holding the drooling baby at arm’s length.
Lucas merely burbled happily, full andan—tan—thanks to Rahne—and
reasonably well rested—thanks to an unscheduled nap. Where’s Wanda? Not
that I would like to palm off duties but I think Lucas would appreciate a
familiar face… Professor Xavier
sighed and adjusted Lucas so that he rested against his shoulder. Who am I kidding? I just want some answers…and someone to take
over babysitting for me… Lucas made
a sound that reminded the man forcibly of a kitten sneezing, which was followed
by a warm, wet, t tht that seeped through the back of the nice, clean, pressed
shirt…the third of the day.

 

Jubilee drew up short when she heard
the murmur of voices from the Professor’s private study, but knocked hesitantly
despite her reservations. She had
managed to shake Lily and wanted to make the most of her precious moments of
freedom, especially, she frowned at the thought, since she could not seem to
find Remy anywhere. Just as she
prepared to knock again, a subtle voice in her head bade her enter. “Professor?” she said quietly, struck by how
dark the room was. “Are you okay?”

 

“Just fine,” he said aloud, though a
shade more quietly than she had spoken.
“Shut the door, please…”

 

She did so and then blinked at the
near total darkness. “What’s going on?”

 

“Lucas is finally down for a
nap. I hope…” As he spoke, the baby burbled again, then fell sil


 

“Who were you talking to a minute
ago?”

 

“Oh…” He sounded, to Jubilee’s ears, a bit abashed. “Lucas and I were having a bit of a
conversation.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“About child psychology,” he
continued, sounding amused with himself.
“He had some interesting points…”

 

Jubilee wondered if her mentor had
cracked, then decided he was kidding. I
hope… “Um, well, if you’re done
talking with a preverbal infant, could I talk to you for a few minutes? Before my guard dog catches on that I’m not
in the room anymore?”

 

“How did you manage to shake her?”
he asked, and Jubilee could hear the faint whisper of wheels against the highly
polished wood floor as he moved closer.
A creaking noise indicated a cradle nearby and the smell of baby powder
hung in the air, making her a bit dizzy and desperate to sneeze. “Jubilee?”

 
“Oh…um, I kinda pretended to be
asleep and she finally fell asleep too.
I think.., she might be faking it and hoping to catch me doing something
with Remy. Who isn’t even here!” she
added with a vehement note in her voice.

 

“Jubilee, before you go off on a
tear, you should know that the reality you have constructed is venomous to the
true reality… What you are imagining is
poisoning what is real…” nbspnbsp;

Jubilee sighed. “I’m kinda sure of that but still…it’s
damned suspicious is what it is!”

 

“Ah, is this the purpose of your
visit or was there something else on your mind?” he prodded gently, before she
could go off on a rant. He kept up his
gentle psychic lullaby of suggestions and comforting images for Lucas as he
spoke to Jubilee, but he redirected a portion of the calming energy towards her
as well, making her relax measurably.
sp; sp;

“It’s just that…They can’t take me
away, can they? I mean, I was born here
and that means I’m a citizen, right?”

 

The Professor’s silence stretched
for a long moment, nearly breaking Jubilee, before he said quietly, “I met with
your grandparents and their attorney today.
Jubilee, you came to the country with your parents when you were less
than a month old. You were born in
Beijind smd smuggled out of the country with them. Your true birth certificate is on file here…” He did not add now.

 

Jubilee’s breath caught in her
throat and she nearly burst into blubbering, panicked tears before she said as
steadily as she could manage, “My parents came here to give me a better life,
whether I was born here or not. I’m not
going to let the family they ran from…the government they ran from…take that
away from them. I won’t dishonor them that way!”

 

The Professor arched a brow in the
dark. “It’s not going to be easy,
Jubilee…”

 

“I know.” She sighed and said, “Maybe Kitty has some ideas…she’s played
evade the family before.”

 

“Her situation was a bit different,
I’m afraid…”

 

Jubilee growled. “Damn…good point…” Silence fell again and suddenly, she snapped her fingers loudly
in the dark. “How do we know they’re
even my family anyway?”

 

“Pardon me?”

 

“My parents never talked about
having living relatives back home! And
there’s too many of ‘em…there’s a one child limit in China, unless you’ve got
tons of money to pay the fees or you live way the Hell out of the way where
it’s hard to enforce…”

Jubilee was off
and running. “My parents were killed
for something they knew, they left China and were here as political asylum
seekers, even though the U.S. was on pretty good terms with China by the time I
was born…something’s fishy.”

 

The Professor smiled in the
dark. She was reaching many of the same
points he had earlier in the week when her family first arrived. “And what do you propose I do?”

 

“We.
We’re going to find out if they are who they say they are… If they are,
we fight them. If they aren’t, we
destroy them!”

 

“You have a taste for theatre, Jubilation…”

 

“Blame Remy…”

 

“I think I might.”

 

Lucas burbled in agreement.

 



[1] Main chem
co
component of marijuana. Interestingly
enough, chocolate contains trace amounts which accounts for the similar effects
the two substances have on brain function and chemical output. Study hard, kids, and you, too, can be a
font of useless information…

 

[2] There’s this
whole movement where people think they can “cure” gays and bisexuals through
prayer and Divine Intervention and that, once “saved,” they’ll be
straight. Um… Well…uh…Oy. Some things are just…yeah…