Family Ties

Family Ties Chapter Forty Seven (NC-17)

Disclaimers Apply

 

 

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse and Hamster Witch…my mendhi is distracting. It’s hypnotic…must…fight…urge…to…stare… InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are groovy
people for archiving. J ProPhile…
Ramsey, Tex and Jubilee (you still out there?) are nice and helpful and
get extra musekibble for that. J Readers/Reviewers: A few more chapters and…*
gasp * dare I say it? ANOTHER
STORY? Because forewarned is forearmed,
I feel I should let you know this story will have some “loose ends” that’ll be
not only picked up but integral to the next story. *whistles innocently *
Not that I’d cause angst in fic or anything like that…

 

 

 



“Have you
people ever heard of a phone?”

“I had no
idea you were coming.”

“You’re
psychic!”

“I don’t
read everyone, all the time.”

“I had to
schlep Fred from Bayville to New Jersey and back again!”

“You
schlepped?” Kitty asked, one eyebrow creeping upwards.

“She
schlepped,” Todd confirmed, nodding.

“Shut up,”
Wanda snapped, still furious with the Professor for getting to Tabby before
her. “Where is she?”

“Feeding
Lucas in the kitchen,” he answered promptly
“She was anxious to see him.”

“Imagine
that,” Wanda growled, stalking towards the aforementioned room.

The
Professor let out a tense breath and fixed a false smile to his features. “I am aware that we all have many things to
discuss, but I think the most pressing matter is currently in the hangar.”

“Jean’s
coming up from the infirmary now,” Scott said, trying not to stare down the
hallway in anticipation of her arrival.
“She’ll be able to tell us something…”

“Don’t be
so sure,” the Professor murmured, well aware that just because you could read
someone’s mind does not mean that you will know their plans. “I’ve been meaning to arrange a time to
speak with you privately, Scott.”

Scott
nodded, his lips compressed grimly as he looked away, not sure if the Professor
could see what was in his mind just then or not. “Jean!”

“Ah…migraine.
Not so loud.” She was teetering slowly
down the hall, her face pale and pinched as she leaned on Cecilia’s arm. “I think I can make it.”

Beast
smiled fondly and quickly as his not-quite-girlfriend as she crossed to
him. “She’s been sleeping since last
night. Her vitals are normal and she’s
none the worse for wear save for the hellacious headache.”

Jean
frowned at this diminished version of her pain but let it slide. “Where do you want to do this?” she asked
the Professor brusquely.

“The
hangar. They’re still in there and…Um, they haven’t been bound this whole time,
have they?” The sea of faces staring back at him with feigned innocence was all
the answer he needed. “I was afraid of
that.”

 

“I don’t
believe this,” Kurt muttered under his breath.

“Believe
it,” Kitty responded, slumping against the wall. A cacophony of Mandarin, English, and every language in between
was echoing off the walls of the hangar, most of the residents of the Institute
in various stages of argument or assuaging as Jubilee, the ostensible Lees,
Jean, Remy and the Professor tried to sort out what was what.

A bright
flare of multi-colored sparkles exploded overhead and Jubilee shouted, “SHUT
THE FUCK UP, EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!”

The
Professor raised a brow but did not say anything. Jean seemed to take Jubilee’s outburst as a signal and stepped
forward, nudging Jono out of the way and inadvertently shoving him into Paige. “The only person here related to Jubilee is
her,” she said through her crushing headache, pointing a shaking finger at the
woman still wearing a now-bedraggled lab coat.
“She goes by Rose. She was Jubilee’s
maternal aunt who never left China. The
rest,” she said slowly, staring at Lilly, “are hired to bring Jubilee to
certain agencies back in China.”

Jubilee’s
eyes widened. “Why?”

“You know,”
Lilly spat. “You know.”

Jean rolled
her eyes. “Is it always this hard?”

The
Professor nodded. “Sometimes worse.”

“Great. I think I prefer telekinesis.” She sighed and, with a nod to Todd, waited
as he used slime to silence Lilly’s tirade of Chinese invectives. “Thank you.”

“Not a
problem…gotta use it otherwise I drool.”

Rogue made
a noise. “Way to be sexy, babe.”

Jean motioned
for silence again. “Jubilee’s parents
sought and received asylum in the United States several months before Jubilee
was born. The matter was expedited by
the fact that they had some knowledge the United States government found most
useful…they had identified genetic mutations in the Chinese population before
any had been officially identified here.
In fact,” she said, shooting a quick, almost pitying look at Jubilee,
she finished in a rush, “they had kind of promised that, if their daughter were
a…a mutant…that she could be used for…um…”

Jubilee had
gone as pale as anyone had ever seen her.
“No,” she said, shaking her head violently. “No. They never would do
that.”

“Chere,”
Remy murmured close to her ear, “dere were mitigatin’ circumstances…”

Jubilee
could only shake her head harder under Lilly’s smug glare. “No.”
She spun on her heel and ran full-tilt from the room.

“Let her
go,” Logan said, stopping Remy from following.
“She needs to be alone.”

“Mais…”

“Leave
her,” Professor Xavier seconded. “Is
there anything else, Jean?”
“The group they worked for
took issue with their leaving the country.”
Jean sighed and massaged her temples for a moment. “These jerks…er…people…were sent when it was
discovered Jubilee wasn’t dead as they were lead to believe.”

“Why did
they still want her after all these years?
Surely they’ve discovered more mutants in China by now.” Kurt frowned and curled his arms and tail
around himself. He did not like the
idea of being hunted.

“That was
not the issue,” Shuang said quietly.
“Jubilation was the product of her parents, both mutants themselves.”

“No fucking
way!” Lance exclaimed, earning a sharp jab from Storm.

“Yes,” Jean
sighed. “They weren’t active mutants,
though. They were geneticists and
discovered their own differences by accident while testing some new methods of
blood work and DNA analysis.[1] The group they worked for found the idea of
her valuable for the fact she would be a second-gen mutant.”

The
Professor pursed his lips for a moment before saying, “This is more far
reaching than any of us really planned on.”

Logan,
picking up on an unspoken signal, nodded.
“Right. I’ll get on the phone…”

“To who?”
Troy asked suddenly, snapping out of his stupor.

“INS,”
Logan said, grinning.

“Why?”
Kitty asked, frowning at her foster father.
“All they’ll do is deport them!”

“Not
quite,” the Professor murmured, motioning Logan from the room. “Not even close.”



It was one
of those days, Kitty thought, like the day after someone dies. It might be broad daylight and sunny and
lovely, but the world seems more quiet, the people subdued. No one goes outside, no one makes loud
noises. Everything, she thought, was
resting. She was grateful for that as
she sat at the end of the pier stretching in to the lake, the last of the
summer insects making their noise as she stared over the flat surface of the
water, contemplating the strange turns of the past week.

“Hey.”

She looked
up at the figure silhouetted by the sun and smiled faintly. “I was kind of expecting Kurt.”

“He’s
helping Jamie set up some new game system in the rec room. Mind if I sit?”

“Go
ahead.” She scooted over a bit to make
room for Lance’s lanky frame. “Amara
okay?”

“Not
really.” He kicked his feet idly,
letting his boots hit the wooden post supporting the planks. “She’s gone all quiet again.”

Kitty
nodded, remembering how Amara reacted after her incident with Tabby the year
before, how she had become silent and withdrawn, how she had folded in on
herself like a shrinking violet and almost did not come back. “Does she need anything?”

“I don’t
know, Kit,” Lance sighed, looking down at his hands. “I really don’t. I don’t
even know what to do!”

“You’re not
supposed to, you know,” she said after a moment of silence. “That’s part of becoming.”

“Becoming
what?”

“Just
becoming. We have to learn how to deal
with things on our own or sometimes with other people and then we become more
than what we were.” She shrugged and
bumped him with her shoulder. “Some of
us more than others.”

Lance hid a
brief grin. “Do you know?” he asked
softly as if afraid of being overheard.

“Not
really. I just know from Rogue that
some guys tried to jump her at the concert. Warren heard her telling me and
said she should keep quiet until Amara was okay talking about it herself…”

Lance fell
silent again as he had an internal debate about the ethical dilemma involved in
telling Kitty about Amara’s problems.
“Listen,” he said after a moment, “I think Amara is having an identity
crisis or something…”

Kitty
frowned. “She’s seventeen…she’s too young to have an identity crisis…”

Lance
hesitated for a moment then quickly explained what Amara had told him: how she
was disowned, how she found out only recently that her father had the priestesses
and her own mother killed on her departure from Nova Roma. “She never opened the trunk because she
didn’t want to be reminded…”

“And when
she finally got the courage to do it, home kicks her ass,” Kitty sighed.

“It’s not
fair!” Lance exploded. “Why do these
things always happen to us?”

“Would you
throw me in the lake if I told you it was a cosmic plan?”

“Yes.”

“In that
case, it’s because we’re cursed. We
need to ask Kurt’s mother if she knows any Romany luck charms to protect us
all.”

“You,”
Lance said flatly, “get weirder all the time.”

“All part
of my charm.” She leaned back on her
elbows and closed her eyes against the sun’s glare. “You know, I think these things would happen even if we weren’t
all here together. It just seems like
one thing after another because we’re all in one place.”

Lance took
a long moment to contemplate all the things that had happened, good and bad,
since he had first entered into the Institute’s sphere of influence, including
his time with the Brotherhood. “Nah,”
he said finally, “we’ve just got bad karma.”

“To each
their own.” The sound of a car door
slamming made them both crane to look towards the front of the mansion. “Is
that a cab?”

“Unless
hideous yellow’s become a popular color for cars this year, yeah…” Lance stood and brushed the dust from his
jeans, offering Kitty a hand up. “You
expecting anyone?”

“God, I
hope not…”

“Maybe it’s
some other long lest relative come to try and rile one of us.”

Kitty
snorted at his bad joke. “Mary Sue[2]
Pryde come to claim her rightful inheritence from me?”

“Or worse,”
he added in ominous tones, “your parents want you back.”

“So not
funny Lance.”





[1] Again, fast
and loose with canon here. Deal with
it.

[2] Couldn’t
resist.