Thanks to hippiechick2112, savedbygrace94, and feathered moon wings for reviewing! As for whether the letters are written by Scott or Ororo... yes, yes they are.
Annie curled in an uncomfortable chair made of something part-vinyl, part-plastic, all-suck. She had a beanie pulled over her head despite the itchy heat it caused. She still needed to re-dye her hair and the blond roots were painfully obvious.
She was going to use a bandanna, but that seemed tactless.
Her phone buzzed with an IM — hey, what's up?
What was up? How could she even begin to explain this? Her great-uncle had returned and he was apparently all but her age. And there had been that awkward moment, before her grandpa introduced them, that Annie thought he was kind of cute. Nerdy, but cute.
That wasn't awkward or anything.
You're never around.
Yeah, that was true. She hadn't much felt like hanging out lately. Disappointingly, only one person had mentioned it.
Family stuff, she sent back.
She hadn't mentioned, either, that she was switching schools. It hadn't happened yet and maybe they would move back over the summer. Somehow.
Lame.
Yeah.
No—even Annie knew that.
Her grandma started puking. Annie winced and looked back to her phone.
She hadn't wanted to come here today. It was her grandpa's idea and she knew it was still about what she had in her desk drawer; he hadn't taken away her weed or told her mom, but he wasn't a big fan of giving her time to herself, either. This was too far, though.
Alex stood next to his wife, stroking her hair back and holding a basin for her to throw up into. Annie knew she should do something, too. She should help. But she didn't know what to do and it made her feel like throwing up, too.
"Therapy" was a euphemistic term. She knew it was shortened to just "chemo" because that was, well, shorter. But she thought maybe it was also because "therapy" was a really odd and ill-fitting name for slowly dripping poison into someone's arm.
"Oh, God…"
"I know, darling," Alex soothed.
"You can't imagine," she groaned.
"You've stitched me up from worse."
"That bullet was nothing."
"You drained the infection in a tent!"
"It was never infected," she murmured.
"I remember the pain. The bugs."
She shook her head weakly. "That was normal. Healing. I just wanted to see you again."
"Lucky for you where I was shot."
Annie groaned. This was hard enough without having to hear her grandparents flirt. Grandpa was a war hero, her mom raised her knowing that for a fact, and Annie knew he once got shot in the butt. She knew Grandma was the nurse who patched him up and they fell in love.
There limits to what she could hear!
Alex, apparently sympathetic, scooped change out of his pocket. "Why don't you go find a vending machine?" he suggested. "Get me anything but Snickers."
Annie leapt to retrieve the change, but hesitated. She truly did love her grandma and she didn't mean to seem cold. It just hurt, more than she knew how to handle.
"Grandma?" she whispered.
Her grandma looked at her and smiled weakly—then vomited again.
Annie bolted.
She had assumed chemo happened in hospitals, and had been surprised when they went to a clinic instead. It still smelled of antiseptic in a way that coated her throat and she knew her grandma was getting good treatment. Of course she would; Annie's grandmother had served as a nurse in Vietnam. She was a war hero, too.
She stood in front of the vending machines for a while, scanning the snacks and not seeing anything.
Her grandma had always been a part of her life. She was there when Annie was born (Annie was told), at holidays and school concerts. And sure, Annie knew that people died, but there was knowing people died and watching it happen to her grandma.
She was so numb she fumbled with a wrapper all the way back to her grandma. The doctor was talking to her grandparents. Annie couldn't watch when he pulled the needle out. She just stood aside and waited for them to be okay.
Her grandpa noticed her long before reaching 'okay'.
"Annie!"
Alex snatched the candy out of her hands.
"I think you got yourself chips."
"Huh?" She realized she had—and the candy she had been struggling to open was peanut butter cups. No wonder her grandpa grabbed it like that. She was allergic to peanuts.
"Are you okay? No, I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to say."
"No, it's fine. I'm, uh… I'm really not, Scott. It's not a death sentence." Alex brushed a tear off his cheek, unwilling to let himself lose control. He couldn't. His wife's illness, Daisy and Annie staying here—no, breaking down was not a question. And now every time he talked to Scott he was leaking.
"Alex…"
"Are you pressing your palm to the screen?"
After a moment, Scott admitted, "Yes. Is that dorky?"
"It's nice. And dorky. I can't actually see it from here, but I know what you're doing."
Alex had spent a long time in a pre-computer era and although he accepted communication via computer, it still seemed to lack something. He understood Scott's impulse to reach out. It would have been nice to share a physical proximity.
Of course, from his perspective, all Alex saw was Scott leaning forward slightly and the way his shoulder was held.
"Did you get your GED?"
"Almost."
"Almost? I passed mine on the first try."
"No you didn't. And tests are way harder than they used to be! You should see the SAT prep guides. Anyway, I need to retake math. Ororo has to redo science and language arts. Professor Xavier has another student."
"You mean a patient."
"I don't think so," Scott replied.
Alex didn't look down on Charles's profession. He had seen how counseling helped some of the men he served with, not to mention other mutants. But it was what it was. Being a student and a patient were different things.
Then again, they were calling him 'Professor', although that might be habit. They knew him by that name back in the sixties.
"What's he like?"
"She seems nice. She's telekinetic. She seemed excited to meet us, I think we were… rude."
"Rude?" Alex asked. "That's not like you."
Did he know what was like Scott anymore? It had only been a few months for Scott. He looked just like he did in Hank's old Polaroids.
"We're not good at being around new people," Scott explained. "It's been so long. We can slip into our own world around Professor Xavier or Hank, they understand, but we didn't mean to shut out Jean and we did. And… it's hard to talk to girls."
"You always did have a hard time with the fairer sex."
"Yep."
As he was decades ago, Alex never would have understood what Scott was asking him. Times changed people, though; he had raised two kids and was the nearest Annie had to a father as well. He knew when someone was trying to put together a question about advice.
"Does Ororo like her?"
"Yes," Scott said, sounding relieved. "I was worried about that, she sometimes, um…"
"Women are like that," Alex told him. "Competitive or something, I don't know. She already goes by the mansion, right? You should invite her to stay over."
"How did you know she comes to the mansion?"
"It's Charles, of course he meets her there. Ask her to stay for dinner."
"Yeah, but what if that seems forward?"
Alex laughed. "Then she'll say no," he said. "Modern girls aren't quite what you're used to, Scott. Ask her to stay."
Scott thought about it for a moment, silent, and Alex hoped he would follow through. The Scott he knew all those years ago had a hard time making friends, but Alex saw the difference. He still thought of Scott as he had been when they first met, volatile and mousy. The boy in front of him was different.
He was easier to focus on. It was the same when Alex found the pot in Annie's room or the time he found Daisy about to light her canvas on fire. Daisy was human, like her mother, but she had Alex's disposition. It was easier. He wasn't happy about their struggles, of course he wasn't, but he preferred having something else to focus on.
There were nights he prayed for a pipe to burst…
"I wish I could be there for you, Alex."
Alex waved it off. "When she's in remission," he said. "This isn't how I want you to meet your sister-in-law."
"Alex…" Scott began, but he seemed to have changed his mind when he next spoke. "She's okay with this? With, well, having a brother-in-law who could be her grandson?"
Alex smiled. He really had been lucky to find such an understanding woman. It wasn't just the struggles after the war or the number of times Charles called and Alex went running. It wasn't just his mutation and his temper—he had never hurt her, but he would storm out of the house. And she put up with him until he learned to be a real man.
He hadn't talked much about Scott to anyone else. He told the story that made sense: he never saw his brother again after the plane crashed. Just like Charles had to tell the story that his foster-children had run away.
"She married a mutant," Alex said. "It's unexpected, but she's faced down weirder things. Besides, we only have the one grandchild. She wouldn't mind a grandson."
"You're not funny."
"Yes I am."