Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men or any of its associated characters or places. I'm only going to say this once, because I doubt that this state will change in future chapters.
AN: could there possibly be an Angel story that isn't romance? Well, the wings are hot. So let's backtrack until there weren't any wings and he was a child, and explore life with a rather bemused father, a sickly mother, and a sister who dreams of being "a teenage dirtbag, baby", embroiled among the Hellfire club, Alcatraz, and the rather horrendous notion of prejduice. Enjoy, and let's begin to find out who this sexy, mysterious Angel really is.
At first, there was only light.
But, as the eye sharpened and adjusted, shapes begun to be more and more distinguishable from the endless white, as if emerging from a very thick mist. Colour followed quickly, until what had previously been mere monochrome billowed into clear, technicoloured 3D in a matter of seconds.
The four year old blinked rapidly as the process occurred, tottering unsteadily on his short plump legs in the doorway, one hand stretched out in front of him to keep his balance. With a shake of his golden curls, the after-images rapidly cleared. He scowled precociously at the flourescent lights above, which had been the cause of the trouble, before ambling around the white corridors.
They reminded him of something he'd seen in a movie not so long ago. His older sister had been watching it intently, seemingly fascinated by a man with a sword made of light. All the young boy could remember was this sword, a shiny gold individual, and a woman with snail-like bumps on the side of her head who said things like "help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope".
"Aliens."
He turned the corner, making small noises to himself and pretending he was on a spaceship.
He hadn't gone very far when a warm voice cut through his make-believe, dissolving the imaginative world in an instant.
"Hullo. What are you doing here?"
The speaker was a woman, in her early twenties. Beneath the white trenchcoat she wore a knitted pink zip-up jersey, and pale jeans. Her hair was pulled together at the nape of her neck in a messy blonde bun.
"'Ullo," he echoed, barely sparing her a glance before he returned to making the "Brr" noise he imagined spacecrafts made.
The woman knelt down in front of him, a frown creasing her pretty young face. "You shouldn't be here," she said as if to herself, "the labs are no place for a child."
He looked at her blankly, blinking once. Her eyes were a pale blue, and nearly too large for her face. She reminded him of another thing he'd seen on TV. It had involved a girl with big blue eyes and blonde hair. She'd been wearing a pink dress. There had been a green dragon. And flames.
She sighed, cocking her head to look at him. "What's your name?"
"Warren," said young Warren, "Wha's yours?"
"Emma Frost. It's good to meet you, Warren."
The young boy stretched his chubby hand forward immediately. Emma took it, and solemnly they shook hands, although the corners of the woman's mouth seemed to quirk slightly.
"Well, Warren, what are you doing here?"
"Seein' my Daddy."
"What's your Daddy's name?"
The four year old stared at her blankly, and blinked once. "Daddy," he replied, slowly, as if she were an idiot.
"Of course," she agreed, rolling her eyes, "How silly of me. Now then, what is your last name?"
"My las' name?"
"Yes."
The child pondered this, looking up at her through those soft blond curls. He beamed suddenly, the smile illuminating his face with a strength that outshone even the flourescent lights. "My name's Warren."
Emma groaned inwardly. This is why she hated kids. They were nonsensical. Look, this one was now muttering something unintelligible about a dragon! She stood, frowning once more. Despite how she might feel about what her fiance affectionately termed "sprogs", she couldn't leave this young child here by himself. There were important experiments being run in these labs, some that definitely weren't for children's eyes.
She ground her teeth. When she found out who's boy this was, there would be some very stern words had with management.
Checking furtively down the corridors. Emma reached for the young boy's hand. He took it instantly, clinging to her steadily while still murmuring nonsense about dragons and fire. As their hands come into contact, Emma pushed her psychic self gently against the exterior of the child's mind.
Suddenly, she was hit by a rush of emotions, memories and thoughts.
Children were more chaotic than she had ever thought. Never before had she used her mutant gift on someone so young – in fact, she wasn't supposed to be using it at all. Invasion of privacy and such. Or so she had been told.
Pressing on, the telepath searched through Warren's mind until she found what she needed. A memory of family dinner, not so long ago, when he'd watched "Sleeping Beauty" with his sister to avoid being pinched on the cheek by numerous doting elderly relatives.
"Well, at least that explains the dragons," Emma mused.
The memory continued, until the boy's father entered. She recognized the man's features immediately, taking a hissing intake of breath. That mouth in its thin grim line couldn't be disguised, even by laughter.
"Of course," she said, exiting Warren's mind and looking down at the small boy who was still clutching her hand, "You're Warren Worthington Junior." She nearly laughed, remembering the solemn pompousity with which the child had shaken her hand. "I might've guessed."
"'es," he replied comfortably, "my name's Warren."
"Do you want to go see your Daddy now?"
"'es!" he squeaked. Then, remembering himself, he added, "Please."
Emma led the way, hand in hand with the chubby child wandering along beside her until she grew frustrated with his slow pace. Huffing irritably, she picked Warren up and positioned him on her hip, thus able to move faster through the maze-like network of corridors until she reached the research laboratory of Doctor Warren Worthington, the Second.
Her knuckles connected firmly with the cool silver surface of the door. She heard the frustrated mutters of the Doctor within as he packed away whatever he had been using and crossed the room. The door opened to reveal his graying head, the dark eyes beneath the brows glimmering with confusion as he looked from her to his young son and back to her again.
"I think I found something belonging to you," Emma said, hefting Warren's dead weight off her hip and offering him to Worthington. The doctor took the young boy and propped him on his own hip easily, gently stroking the curls with the back of his hand, despite being still a little confused. Emma scooted around the pair into the lab, sitting down of the hard stools by the writing bench leisurely. "You know, Worthington," she continued, "if it had been anyone else's child..."
"I know, Miss Frost, I know." He sat down on a stool opposite her, the one as close as his distaste of mutants would allow, still cradling his son's head. The young Warren seemed to have lost interest in the proceedings now that he had been reunited with his beloved "Daddy" and was content to fall asleep in the comfort of his father's hold.
"Why is he even here?"
Worthington took his free hand away from the boy's face, running it through his own hair and shaking his head apologetically. "You have my deepest apologies. I was... foolish."
"You are not usually a foolish man, doctor." When her researcher did not reply, Emma stood and walked closer to him. She leaned on the bench just in front of him, enjoying the way the doctor's neck craned back as far away from her as possible. "You're very important to Alcatraz, Worthington. If there is some... home trouble... I need to know before it becomes "work" trouble." She smiled, showing her pretty white teeth intentionally. "And if you won't tell me, I have other ways of finding out."
"That won't be necessary, Miss Frost."
Emma was impressed to hear the strength of his voice, the calm undertones. Although he was as far away as he could be at the current point in time, Doctor Worthington truly did not hate mutants. He merely didn't know how to deal with them. To some degree he even respected them, but Emma knew she and her kind would always strike a little horror into such a man's soul.
She sank back onto her stool, watching the man carefully.
"My wife... she is, well, she's sick..."
'Ah' thought Emma, 'So that's why he'll experiment on healing mutants to try to find cures... Not many people have the stomach to carry the experiments out...'
"And with her being... sick... and me working so much, there's no one really there for the kids. Except the nanny, of course, but they don't like her very much... you know how kids are... they want me, they want their mother, but we can't..." Worthington shrugged, a hint of embarrassment flickering over his aristocratic features as he admitted what a bad father he was. "Well, I don't "want" to be an absentee father. And when Amelia went off on a school camp... well, I couldn't leave Warren on his own with the nanny after kindergarten..."
"So you brought him here for the day, instead," Emma finished.
"Well, I did leave him with Anna Mc-"
"Alcatraz does not have a damn creche, Doctor!"
He didn't answer, just balanced his son more comfortably on his knee and stroked the downy curls, as if to shield the boy from her unpleasant voice.
Emma sighed, and put her fingers to her temples. "Alright," she said, more softly, "the boy can stay for the rest of the day. But this is a research facility, Worthington. Your son could hurt himself here..."
She trailed off, gazing at the boy's face as some niggling detail nudged at her mind. Something that she had picked up...
"Miss Frost? Emma?"
The doctor's voice was so far away...
She was in a memory now...
'a memory of a memory of a memory that wasn't hers'
There was something, some detail that she had noticed but not realized...
A secret.
Her blue eyes flew open, settling once again on the sleeping four year old who was nestled so snuggly into the crook of his father's arm, face burrowed into his shoulder.
'A secret so well hidden even it's carrier doesn't know it's there...'
She swallowed as she looked into his father's concerned gaze.
'Worthington doesn't hate mutants, they just scare him, make him uneasy,' she reminded herself, licking her lips nervously. But the new discovery nudged at her well-hidden conscience, as if she could see a premonition of things to come.
She swallowed, with difficulty.
"If... if something happens like this again," she began hesitantly, wondering what had gotten into her – I don't even damn well like kids! - "then young Warren can stay in my office. I could use the distraction, I guess, and it's not like the papers are particularly dangerous..."
Worthington looked at the young, female boss of the Alcatraz company with thankful surprise. "Oh, Miss Frost..." he said softly, "Thank you."
"You're welcome. He's uh - " she looked at the child, and tried not to see images of her own painful past overlapping on him. - "He's got a loving father, a devoted father. He'll be fine. He'll be fine. And now, somehow, he's got me. Because I just volunteered, like an idiot to babysit. He'll be fine. He won't turn out like I did", "He's adorable."
He smiled down at Warren's sleeping form, and laughed with surprising gentleness. "Thank you. I consider it a job well done. I don't think I even want him to grow up and lose this baby-fat," he said, as he stood and carefully laid the boy on the top of the table, using his unworn suit-jacket as a pillow. He turned and smiled at his employer, "it makes him look like a cherub, don't you think?"
Emma smiled sadly in return, before saying in an even softer voice – so soft it barely entered the range of human hearing, like a pained admission of guilt, "Yes. He really is an Angel..."
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Random Musing 1:
so ending, kinda cheesy. Would be great if Emma Frost existed in movie-verse because that is kinda o-of-c and I think that would foreshadow. However.
The daughter, Warren's sister: she's older than Warren, at this point hadn't decided how old but old enough to be at school and impressed by Luke Skywalker (weren't we all). Originally she was named Cheyenne, a delightfully posh French name, but then changed for the not-so posh and not-so French name of Amelia, because I liked it better. And I had also the time to develop her character more, and Amelia fits better because it can be shortened to Amie but also has that aristocratic feel about it.
Miss Frost herself: okay, so probably she wouldn't be condoning experimentation on mutants but i don't care about the original Miss Frost so much as using her as a plot device. So, tried to make her a little ... evil, i guess... can't think of the word... but anyway its shown how she uses telepathy for her own means and is trying to freak out the good doctor
The good doctor: trying to make him a brilliant researcher but a rather baffled father. Fondness, to show that he does care about his son but doesn't know how to deal, a factor later compounded with the whole mutation thing.
Please R & R. Feed the plot bunnies, for they are hungry