Okie! Hello, everyone. Firstly, thanks to Guest for the amazing words of encouragement! Just the morale boost I needed. Gracias! I do indeed love these characters and I do hope I am representing them well.
Next, here is the character guide as promised, characters that have made an appearance so far. I will update this character guide as the story progresses.
Have fun and if you read, PLEASE REVIEW! Feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!
Children/Grandchildren of the X-Men:
*Megan Katherine Summers - daughter of Cyclops and Emma Frost
*Ruby Grace Summers - daughter of Cyclops and Emma Frost
* Peregrine Rebecca Worthington - granddaughter of Angel and Psylocke
* Griffin Cassidy Worthington - grandson of Angel and Psylocke
* Sparrowhawk Warren Worthington - grandson of Angel and Psylocke
* Tom Warren Worthington IV - son of Angel and Psylocke
* Irene Theresa Cassidy Worthington - daughter of Banshee and Moira MacTaggert
* Dream Jeanie Richards - daughter of Rachel Summers (Phoenix) and Franklin Richards
* Jonathan Reed Richards - son of Rachel Summers (Phoenix) and Franklin Richards
* Raven "Ray" LeBeau - daughter of Rogue and Gambit
* Olivier "Oli" Etienne LeBeau - son of Rogue and Gambit
* Talia Josephine Wagner - daughter of Nightcrawler and the Scarlet Witch
* Nightshade Amanda Wagner - daughter of Nightcrawler and Amanda Sefton
* Oliza Jimaine Wagner - daughter of Nightcrawler and Amanda Sefton
* Stefan/Sophie Wagner - son/daughter of Nightcrawler and Amanda Sefton
* Simon Alvers - son of Avalanche
* Hecktor Alvers - son of Avalanche
* Mattie Jones - daughter of Firestar
* Merle Szardos - granddaughter of Nightcrawler
* Kymri Szardos - granddaughter of Nightcrawler
Chapter XXI: Meet Me on the Astral Plane
Emma had made a promise. Not that that mattered, she thought cynically. How many promises had she broken in her lifetime? Well, how many didn't really matter compared to who she had broken them to and for. Yes, it was unfair, but the world was unfair. No one knew that better than the White Queen.
She knew where Jonathan was – on the Astral Plane. There were two problems, however. The first being Emma didn't have much experience on or about the Astral Plane. And like many things she didn't naturally excel at (especially something that seemed to come so easily to most telepaths), Emma Frost was very self-conscious about that. Rachel, for example, had been accessing the Plane since she was a small child. Emma, however, had visited the Astral Plane only once before and then under dire circumstances – when her loved ones were in mortal danger. Well, she mused with a humorless smirk, now might be a good time to consider a revisit to the alternate dimension.
The second problem was Jon himself. Scott believed his grandson had been infected by Apocalypse and Emma agreed. Rachel, the poor girl, had argued ferociously with her father over the matter; father and daughter had almost come to blows over it. Emma couldn't really fault Rachel. Emma had lost so many children under her care, one her own biological son. She couldn't really blame a woman for fighting to save her child.
Now, however, Phoenix seemed to have accepted her son was gone. Emma remembered that feeling well – that miserable sense of loss that comes over a mother when she truly understands her child will never again see life. It was a wound that didn't ever truly heal and reopened at every memory of the dead child. But life still cruelly continued. It didn't even pause to mourn a life lost so early and, eventually, even a grieving mother knew there were other children to care for and work to be done.
So why had Emma so recklessly promised Jeanie that her twin brother could be saved? Well, it wasn't reckless, because Emma had a possible solution – a plan. Those possessed by the evil being Apocalypse could be purged of his influence. Emma had seen it done before. In fact, she had helped to do it. Could she do it again to save Jonathan Richards?
The beautiful telepath was pacing in the upstairs boathouse bedroom she shared with Scott. It gave her a commanding view of the snow-covered front yard and the sparkling lake beyond. The snowflakes were coming down thick now, sticking to every surface as the temperature dropped steadily spreading a pretty white blanket over everything, transforming the dull and mundane into something marvelous and new.
She thought of Jon and shuddered.
Not that the pristine snowfall stood much of a chance, Emma mused with a smile. Most of the children, even little Jeanie, were out in the front yard – shrieking, screaming, shouting and hurling snowballs in all directions. Emma noticed Rogue and Rachel playing just as enthusiastically with the kids. She winced when Rogue uprooted a tree, an oak well into its second century, to bat away a van-sized snowball Ray threw her way. Ray's snow-boulder flew into the lake, causing a mini-tidal-wave that temporarily submerged the front yard.
There were times Emma wondered how Rogue's children had survived to adolescence – or how everyone they knew had survived the boisterous LeBeau family.
Emma's ice-blue eyes widened slightly as she sensed and then saw her little Megan trotting out to the battlefield from the direction of the School campus. It was the first time Emma had seen her eldest daughter out of bed in the past 72 hours. The White Queen had strongly sensed her daughter's agitation at being cooped up in Beast's med lab for the last three days and Emma had been 'round to inspect her girl – before that plagued Dr. McCoy chased her out.
Now, the child was out playing in the snow like she hadn't caused two psychic storms in three days, something no other person Emma knew of had done before.
Hank, drat the man, had an annoying habit allowing the kids to do whatever they pleased so long as they followed his word to the letter – their parents' orders be damned. Emma shook her head. Meg could siphon energy off the Astral Plane and emit enormous psionic bursts. That was a power that demanded honing before Meg could harm anyone or herself.
Emma felt the frantic pull at her heart she always experienced when she thought about her daughters – especially Megan. Her little psychic was growing more powerful by the day. Meg should be training, not frolicking in the snow with her friends.
She was about to send a telepathic command to Meg when Emma noticed Jeanie and Megan patting snow around Olivier LeBeau to root him to the ground, his head sticking out of the top of the gigantic snowball the girls had made as he struggled and shouted uselessly at them. As awful as circumstances were, Emma just had to chuckle aloud at the kids' antics.
OK, a few minutes play in the snow couldn't hurt Meg. After all, play was a luxury Emma could scarcely afford when she was a girl and didn't parents aspire to give their children the things they couldn't have?
The children's play seemed innocent, but Emma noticed how attentively Oli watched Jeanie, following her every move and hanging on her every action. Jeanie flounced around the trapped boy. Emma could never read Oli's thoughts, but she didn't have to it this case, she thought, rolling her eyes. The boy was flirting outrageously with the pretty redhead. Meg, meanwhile, was trying her best to ignore their exchange, but Emma could sense her daughter's jealousy and disappointment.
Emma knew well Olivier's flirtatious ways and exploits. (Rogue and Ray-Ray, who spoiled him terribly, were only too eager to brag about the male in their life.) But she also was aware of her little daughter's fondness for the boy who Meg had been as close to as Jeanie since they were babies. Emma didn't really like Oli and she certainly didn't trust him. But, secretly, she had nursed the hope in her heart that her little Meggie would find love with this boy she so adored.
Everyone else in the family – Rogue first and foremost, who valued power above all else, and longed for an alliance between the powerful LeBeau and Summers tribes – paired them together as future mates. The grownups also secretly hoped Meg's serious grounded nature would help reign in wild young LeBeau.
Now with his eye, which Emma nor anybody else could see, on pretty Jeanie, Emma's hopes wavered and she felt crushed for poor Megan – not because Olivier might not fit into the family scheme to get him and Meg together, but because he was causing his best little girl-friend such terrible emotional pain. Emma could feel it potently and the protective beast inside her roared.
If I could get in that boy's head for two minutes … Emma thought, her "Mama Bear" side roused and angry. I'd made the little cad's worst nightmares come true!
The White Queen's eyes narrowed at her step-granddaughter, however, and Emma suddenly gasped as a realization hit her. She couldn't get a mental reading on Jeanie! That had never happened before. Emma closed her eyes to concentrate. Yes, she could sense the adults and children's mental signatures (with the obvious exception of Oli) like little bright lights inside her mind.
Her instincts immediately put the White Queen on guard. Something was very wrong here … Well, she thought wearily, something else was wrong.
"You need to get in on the action!" Cyclops called cheerfully as he entered their bedroom. He had thoughtfully removed his boots on the enclosed back porch, but his hair was wet and as tousled as ever from the snowball fight. "Rachel and Rogue have teamed up with Ruby. But Ray's on our side. Damn, that girl can throw almost as well as her mom. I think with you we could put the odds in our favor."
Like all the Summers, Scott was very competitive and even took a snowball fight seriously as an opportunity to display his skills as tactician. To be fair, when snowballs were thrown with super-strength and telekinesis, things could get out of hand and required a referee.
Scott stopped at his wife's stricken expression. He immediately walked over to her and took Emma in his arms. She closed her eyes, sighing. It felt so good to be held by the man she loved with every fiber of her being. For several moments, she just listened to his strong heartbeat. It was slightly elevated out of concern for her. It had never mattered she couldn't read his thoughts; they knew each other so well as husband and wife.
"Scott …" she murmured finally. "If I traveled to the Astral Plane, we could purge Jon's mind of Apocalypse."
Scott pulled away from her, holding her at arm's length. His incredulous expression told her everything.
"Absolutely not," he said. "Not even Rachel would agree to that desperate plan."
"We did it once!" Emma pleaded, her blue eyes huge with worry. "Rachel and I exorcised Warren's mind on the Astral Plane."
"You had Tom and Rebecca," Scott replied. "Psylocke's children. They had a special connection with Warren."
Emma's thoughts flitted to her former students, Becky and Tom, the twin children of the X-Men Angel and Psylocke. She bit her lip as tears formed in her eyes. Those old wounds reopened painfully in her mind. The White Queen winced with almost physical agony.
"And Becky died doing it …" Scott said hoarsely.
He was such a stern leader and some might say callous, but when Emma placed her hand gently on her husband's cheek, she knew the leader of the X-Men was fighting back tears too. Tom and Rebecca were the kids of Warren Worthington, his close childhood friend and teammate. Emma knew Cyclops took each and every loss of a follower, especially such a young one, personally, no matter what Rachel said. (Though the poor girl, in Emma's opinion, certainly had reason to take her fury out on Scott's cruel but necessary reasoning over Jonathan.) The loss of Becky, his boyhood friend's daughter, was especially hard on Cyclops.
"Perhaps Becky is on the Astral Plane as well?" Emma murmured, burying her face in his chest.
Scott took her beautiful face in his calloused hands, gently massaging her smooth cheeks with his thumbs, dabbing the tears away.
"You didn't hesitate to send Becky or Tom into battle against Apocalypse, lover," Emma said to him, though she knew that was a cutting remark and a trifle unfair. Becky had gone only too willingly into battle to rescue the father she had never known … but Cyclops had permitted it and Emma knew he felt personally responsibility for her death. "Megan isn't much younger than they were at the time."
"Meg is my kid!" Scott hissed, his grip on her tightening. Emma sensed he'd snapped reflexively.
"You saw Becky as your own as well!" Emma growled right back, not intimidated.
Scott was without a doubt the head of his family and the X-Men, but Emma was still very much the heart of their family, the team and, most importantly, the School. She and her husband had always viewed each other as equals. "She was Warren's; she might as well have been yours! Megan has displayed power more incredible in the past four weeks alone than I've seen in my entire life. And Jeanie …" Emma trailed off, troubled. She couldn't track the girl. Why? The psychic dampers Rachel placed in the girl's mind shouldn't have affected Emma's ability to detect Jeanie. "Jeanie might be more powerful than we ever realized."
Scott seemed to look a question at his mate, but he carried on in an angry voice. "None of that matters, Emma," he said to her.
"Megan and Jeanie could be warriors, Scott!" Emma snarled. "Ruby too if you gave her a chance! If you gave them all the chance they deserve!"
"To what?! Die on the battlefield?" he replied, gently shaking her shoulders. "Something we watched so many children we loved do? Something we swore we'd prevent for our own children?"
"So I suppose Jon doesn't figure into that equation?" Emma spat ruthlessly.
Instead of anger, Scott's voice, usually so even and calm, was filled with deep hurt and despair.
"Emma, I love Jon. You know that. I am deeply disappointed if you don't."
"Yet you leave him to die … to save the others you love." Scott's silence was enough of a confirmation. Emma sighed sadly. "You do not change, my love," she added with a laugh devoid of humor. "It's comforting … in a twisted way, I suppose."
Emma sank down on the bed, feeling exhausted, dizzy and nauseated. She was so, so tired. Her shoulders sagged. Scott must have sensed her distress because he brought her the wastebasket and held back her straight blond hair as she vomited into it. He gently massaged her back with the other hand.
Emma coughed briefly, wiping her mouth with one hand. Yes, it was Scott, her lover, leader and mate, but she still felt a keen sense of embarrassment – though she had been violently ill almost every day with Ruby …
"Scott …" she murmured. When he seemed to feel secure she wouldn't be sick any longer, Cyclops sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. The kids' screams grew louder outside as Rogue laughed in triumph. The room trembled as the muffled thud of another tree hitting the ground shook the house.
"Do I need to get Hank?" he asked.
"No, of course not, darling," she replied.
He was such an attentive husband, such a good father to Megan and Ruby. Was it unfair of her to judge him over Jonathan? Emma thought of her step-grandson, the boy she loved. He would have grown up and found love of his own, perhaps. He was such a handsome thing, though he didn't interact well with other kids, not even his own cousins except for Oli – the two boys were always getting up to trouble. Jon, however, very unlike his sly friend Olivier had never shown any interest in girls, except his sister to which he was fiercely devoted.
Her thoughts moved nervously to Jeanie. How ironic, the headmistress of the Jean Grey School, a rallying place for tolerance and open-mindedness. But Emma Frost had a deep instinctive fear of what she did not understand.
"Scott … y-you were apprehensive when Rachel announced her pregnancy," Emma murmured, her head resting on his shoulder.
"Not as apprehensive as you were," he said in reply. Even during an argument, he couldn't resist teasing his beautiful wife. "You were very concerned – about becoming a grandmother!" he laughed.
She smiled, nuzzling his neck. "No, I mean, you seemed more worried about her choice for the twins' father instead of her actually carrying or birthing them," Emma stated.
Scott had never liked Franklin Richards. To Franklin's credit, Scott didn't really "like" anyone who hadn't proved their devotion and friendship to him for years on end. Scott didn't exactly hand out his trust to just anybody. When Franklin and Rachel, two lifelong best friends, had decided to procreate, Scott's contempt towards the boy had grown to mistrust and intense dislike.
Scott was silent for a few contemplative moments. Emma could hear Ruby's puppy barking in excitable high-pitched yaps as the snowballs flew thick outside.
"I knew Franklin Richards was very powerful – perhaps the most powerful of us all. And Rachel …" he trailed off. There was no need to even describe Rachel's sheer psychic energy. "I knew their children would be supremely powerful. We all did, I think."
Scott was a man of few words, but Emma could sense that instinctive protectiveness he still felt for his eldest daughter despite he and Rachel's past tumultuous relationship. It was still there … that initial love he felt for her when she was a baby and he was a much younger man, before resentment and anger buried it over time. But it never died; it never completely went away. It still remained in spite of all the long years of estrangement between father and daughter.
"But you never interfered?" Emma asked him.
Scott shrugged. "What was the use?" he said, tucking a strand of straight blond hair behind her ear. "Would I go back in time to stop Rachel being born to me and Jean?" Emma stiffened somewhat. Scott rarely talked about the past; he almost never mentioned his first wife – the White Queen's rival. "Besides, I love Jeanie and Jonathan. Looking back, if I had the chance to reverse time, I wouldn't try to stand between Rachel and Franklin."
"But you won't fight now to save Jon?" Emma murmured softly. Her question wasn't venomous or angry, just gentle with resignation.
"And neither will you," he replied.
Emma felt the anger come surging back, white-hot and blinding like sunlight on a sweltering day. No one – Cyclops or otherwise – told the White Queen what to do. She respected him as her leader, but she did exactly as she pleased. She always had. As her husband, Scott understood this; he had never ordered her around.
Emma snapped, her eyes blazing: "Rachel is twice as powerful as when we last faced Apocalypse. If we had Megan and Jeanie on our side …"
"Emma, I don't worry about what you don't have to confront Jon," Scott said firmly. "I'm thinking about what you do have now as opposed to last time when you helped Warren. It's the same reason Rachel hasn't asked you to face Jonathan on the Astral Plane. At the end of the day, Rachel isn't going to put her smallest siblings in harm's way any more than she would Ruby or Meg."
Emma just stared at Scott. Her face suddenly burned. She placed a hand on her belly. Twins. Yes, she could sense them already. Rachel could as well. Emma didn't know how she did it, but her stepdaughter was keenly aware of the children Emma carried almost as soon as she conceived. Rachel had been the same with Megan. And Ruby. It was only the beginning of the close bond Phoenix would share with her little half-sisters.
No doubt Rachel would share the same close bond with Emma's youngest children. Rachel was as protective of Scott and Emma's kids, if not more so, as their own parents.
"I'm not sending my pregnant wife into battle. Rachel isn't risking her little sisters … any of them," Scott said, a note of finality in his voice.
No argument, his tone implied. He was a father defending his unborn children. Nothing – not even the formidable White Queen, his venerable psychic love – would deter him.
"You can't stop me, Scott," Emma said, meeting his concussive-beam-generating eyes with her own equally determined icy stare.
"I can't. But Rachel can," he replied softly. "And she will."
Emma's blue eyes flashed. It chaffed horribly at her pride that Rachel's psychic power would soon eclipse her own. But what should she expect from Jean Grey's daughter? she thought, the heat rising to her face. If Emma ventured on the Astral Plane, was the White Queen pushing her stepdaughter to put her full telepathic powers to the test?
Emotionally and physically exhausted, she leaned her head on her husband's shoulder. He put his arms around her and held her gently. "They're twins, you know," Emma whispered into his ear. "Girls."
There newest daughters were like the eye of a hurricane, a gentle touch of comfort in this storm of chaos and sadness. Scott smiled delightedly at his wife, brushing her forehead with that perpetual stubble on his chin that seemed to appear no matter how often he shaved.
"I love it," he said, the enthusiasm and pride so apparent in his usually reserved tone that Emma had to grin. In that moment, the stern and formidable Cyclops sounded so much like his little Ruby, she thought. "Meg and Rube are going to flip."
Emma laughed softly. "Your tone implies perhaps not in the best way," she said. "Megan doesn't seem to think much of babies and Ruby …"
"Rube can be gentle when she tries," Scott said, a bit defensively.
He was an excellent father to both Megan and Ruby, but there were moments Emma wondered if Ruby was indeed his favorite child. In her way, she was so much like Cyclops – with his energy, precision, ambition and take-charge attitude. And every thought she had aspired to be like her dad. But there was something else too. When Emma mused over Scott's troubled past, she sometimes thought Ruby made him think of the happy childhood he could have had … if everything in his life hadn't gone to hell when he was a boy. The boisterous, enthusiastic child Ruby was could have been Scott Summers in a happier life.
"Yes, she can. Just look at her and her precious puppy Mister Darcy," Emma said and both parents laughed indulgently.
What would these new children be like? she wondered. Rambunctious and loud or sedate and thoughtful? So many possibilities. So much hope. It made even a cynic like Emma Frost smile. Life – new life – was irrepressible. Despite her misgivings and grief over Jeanie and Jon, the White Queen felt so honored to help usher these new little lives into the world.
"I've been thinking of names – Esme or Celeste?" she said.
"Suppose we're surprised with a boy?" Scott replied with a devilish smile. "Those would be odd names for our son."
Then he chuckled heartily at his wife's expression before kissing her tenderly on the forehead.
Suddenly, a snowball half the size of the Summers' home crashed thru the boathouse, leaving a gaping hole in the family room, allowing Scott and Emma to peer down from the new crater Ray and Ruby had put in their bedroom floor down to where Ray hovered meekly below them.
"Uhh … t-there were ducks, see?" Ray said timidly.
"And a bagel! Darcy was almost crushed!" Ruby added sticking her head inside the new door Ray had created into the family room. "It was Oli's fault!"
"Dammit, I just remodeled the den!" Scott groaned. He had labored hard to reconstruct the south wall of the family room after Ruby had "accidentally" disintegrated the back porch when she was twelve, including a new enclosed mudroom with mosquito screen. "New crown molding and everything! Young lady, you are rebuilding the back porch again!" he shouted at his youngest daughter – wait a minute, no-longer-youngest daughter.
"But I gotta redo Mamma's gazebo!" Ruby whined. "Ray-Ray made the snowball and Oli caused all the trouble!"
"Are you sure our children are safer here than on the Astral Plane?" Emma asked her husband, deadpan.
###
Jeanie, striding away from Olivier with Megan by her side, suddenly took her best friend's hand in her own. Because of her new psychic dampers, she couldn't sense Meg's confusion, jealousy or disappointment at Oli's flirting with Jeanie, but she didn't have to. Meg's own emotions were written all over her face like words in a book. She was as transparent as spring water and had always assumed the same in others.
Poor Meggie. And she adored Oli. He was a bit of an ass, to be sure, but Jeanie honestly enjoyed the handsome boy's attention. Was it her fault for being prettier than Meg and attracting her little boyfriend? Yes, that was a vain thought, but it was true.
Was it Jeanie's fault for Meg just assuming the best in others? she thought with a stab of frustration.
Was it Jeanie's fault for being more powerful than Meg? More powerful than anyone else besides her mother? More powerful than the White Queen?
Jeanie had gone inside Emma's mind - of course, that had been before the psychic dampers, but she had! Nobody had ever breeched Emma's mind ... And Emma couldn't even recall it?
True, Emma sensed something was up. Jeanie could feel her step-grandmother's ice-blue eyes following her from the upstairs bedroom window of the boathouse as Jeanie and Meg trotted towards the lake. Again, Jeanie didn't need her empathic powers to sense Emma's suspicion. A rock could feel that icy stare burning on it. Nobody duped the White Queen for very long. Jeanie wondered if it was pure luck that had allowed her to get the upper-hand psychically with her step-grandmother.
No. Not even coincidence could usurp Emma Frost. She was too good ...
And pregnant. Jeanie glanced up at the boathouse bedroom Emma shared with Grandpa Scott. Richards' blue eyes met Frost's icy stare as their gazes collided. Jeanie knew Emma carried more little aunties for her. Twins. She had known almost as soon as she arrived here for Winter Break. She vaguely wondered what they would look like. More little Ice Queen clones running around.
Jeanie knew she was being resentful and unfair. She knew Emma loved her and Jon - in some ways more than Meg and Ruby. Grandpa Scott too. They were sympathetic and kind, but the grownups couldn't help them anymore, plain and simple. Perhaps they wanted to, but what did Mama Laura always say? "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride."
Time to help myself ... and Jon, Jeanie thought. She didn't care who "heard" her thoughts anymore, Emma or Mama Rachel. Or even Meg, if she could, but Jeanie knew her best friend never would do something so awful as invade someone else's mind. Not little Meggie Summers. Not Cyclops' perfect daughter.
But Jeanie could and she would. And she had. And she would do it again if she could. Who the hell said she couldn't? Not even luck could best Emma Frost, but Jeanie had. She was the daughter of Franklin Richards and the granddaughter of Jean Grey. She had invaded the White Queen's mind; who was to say she couldn't break down the psychic dampers Phoenix had placed in her mind? Jeanie could feel them like a heavy mental collar she wanted to bite and scratch at like a tethered animal.
I can beat them down! I can break free! I can try! she thought. I can save Jon on my own or die trying! She couldn't project telepathically or even sense those around her - she was existing, not living, and if she didn't go to another dimension soon she would die anyway. She may as well die trying to save her brother instead of uselessly here. What the hell did she have to lose?
She glanced at the young girl walking beside her and her heart gave a painful throb of love for Meg. The weak winter sunlight was shining thru Meg's spun-gold hair like a fairy-princess in one of the silly storybooks Meg read to her when they were little kids. She had Meggie to lose. Her best friend.
They were walking along the lake now hand-in-hand just like they did when they were small. Meg had to trot a bit to keep up with Jeanie's long strides. The plummeting temperature caused the girls' breath to cluster in clouds around their faces. Some geese, snowbirds from the tundra lands far North of the boreal forests, were hanging out on the lake, gabbling loudly. They were famously grumpy, nothing like Ray-Ray's gregarious Mrs. Duck, especially this time of year when snows kept the springtime away.
If the temperature kept dropping this way the lake would freeze and the geese would be left flat-footed on the ice. The fowl's loss was the children's gain. Then there would be laughter and fun sliding, skating, or (in Meg's case) falling on the lake ice. Jeanie's thoughts flew to years past, skating delicately across the smooth surface of the lake as fish swam in the dark water beneath the thick scum of translucent ice under her skates. Of course, being a true Northern girl, Jeanie had been able to ski and skate skillfully almost since she could walk. Laura had taught her.
Rachel, Ruby and Ray were pretty good too - though nothing like Laura - unlike Meg who was abysmally bad. Meg would cling to a chair for dear life, pushing it across the ice and staggering behind it as Jon and Jeanie gracefully skated circles around her and Oli teased his pretty friend by tugging her blond hair and gliding away, laughing, because Megan couldn't catch him.
Later, Oli would fall in the freezing lake thru a patch of ice that was suddenly mysteriously thin under Jeanie's telekinetic gaze.
Of course, Rachel would fetch Oli out immediately and wrap him, with his teeth chattering, in fleece blankets, allowing him to warm himself by the flames her power generated. Jeanie's Mama would glare at her daughter, but she couldn't prove anything. Rachel wouldn't go inside Jeanie's mind anymore than Meg would to expose her guilt.
But she'd go in my mind to put dampers there ... Jeanie thought bitterly. To protect everyone else from me. Mama doesn't care about me - or Jon ... So long as the team is safe.
Rachel preferred flying to skating, of course, like Rogue. Jeanie, like the other kids, couldn't think of anything more wonderful than flying. All the cousins (except Ray, of course) were envious of this Gift. Skating was a bit like flying, but you were still attached to the Earth - or water, frozen water. Flying was freedom, sheer untethered joy and Rachel reveled in it. It had taken her years to master it. Jeanie was just learning and it was hard going, like a wobbly little fledgling bird, ready to be buffeted over by the first stiff wind. Jeanie had hoped someday she could fly as well as her mother.
But those aspirations seemed childish and faraway now. Jeanie's thoughts were consumed with her twin brother on the Astral Plane. Playing in the snow and sliding on the ice seemed so distant.
These things were supposed to make her feel better and help Megan, like Grandpa Scott said, but they only did for a little while. And all Jeanie's selfless devotion and bravery didn't bring Jonathan back.
"Why don't we go ice skating?" Meg suddenly suggested. "You know how awful I am." Meg was soaking up Jeanie's hellish emotions like a sponge. Jeanie never thought she'd be this bad off to deserve Meggie's pity.
Jeanie suddenly grabbed both Meg's hands which felt so warm in hers. Meg's blue eyes widened a bit. Jeanie knew her friend's family wasn't very demonstrative. Usually, the girls would have communicated telepathically, but now Jeanie had to get her point across by other means.
"M-Meggie," she stuttered. Argh! How she hated using the damn words. She was a psychic. Verbal communication was clumsy and archaic to her. She was embarrassed in front of pretty Meg. Jeanie knew she sounded like a stupid fool talking this way. "M-Me, no, I go to Astral Plane," she said, stringing the words together in a broken chain. "I break d-dampers. I break free!"
Meg's eyes were huge blue saucers. A slight wind ruffled her blond hair.
"W-What?! No!" she yelped. "Absolutely not! You can't!"
"Can't!" Jeanie laughed in a humorless bark. "Who say I can't?"
"Um, our parents!" Meg exclaimed. "All the grownups! It's dangerous! Jon is dangerous, Jeanie!"
Apocalypse ... the word was there, but Megan didn't say it. No one did. They were scared. Fear made them all helpless as baby birds.
Well, Jeanie was done cowering down and accepting Jonathan's fate.
"A-And your mom put the dampers in your mind for a reason ..."
The redhead just shook her head at her best friend. Little Meggie - so much power, but no imagination. "To hold me down. Hold me back, Mama did!" Jeanie growled thru gritted teeth. "Grownups say let them help Jon. Emma say she help Jon. Did she? No! My turn to help Jon!"
Meg winced. Jeanie hadn't realized she was squeezing her hands, but when Jeanie loosened her grip on the girl, Meg didn't run away. Meg had courage under all that mousiness, Jeanie would hand her that.
The girls - one short and blond, the other tall with flaming hair - standing face-to-face were reflected exactly in the lake's mirror. Jeanie couldn't know that her grandfather Scott had held her grandmother Jean's hands in this way in this exact spot decades ago. Meg was doing the same, tethering her beautiful best friend who possessed an enormous power and reminding her that she was still a person, not just a force.
An image suddenly popped into Meg's brain - the same image she had had at the convenience store - of a beautiful red-haired woman saying: "Don't let this happen, Meg; don't let history repeat itself!"
Meg grasped at her throbbing temples.
"You feel it too!" Jeanie said. "Meggie!" she grasped her friend's arm and gazed imploringly into her blue eyes. "Look how powerful we are. You cause storms - two in one week - more powerful than Emma even now and you just little girl! And me ..." Jeanie trailed off with a pang of guilt.
She couldn't tell Meg how she had invaded her mother's mind.
"But our powers need tempering!" Meg said, equally pleading with Jeanie and echoing her mother's lectures. "We need training before we can realize our full potentials. There are reasons for rules and limitations. The grownups -"
"Grownups!" Jeanie spat. "And what they do for us, Meggie? What Emma do for your storms? What grownups do for Jon? Nothing! What Mama do for me? Make me into a-a ..." Jeanie groped for the right word. A creature half-alive, an animated corpse. "Zombie! I can't live! I go now! Break dampers. Go to Jon!"
Jeanie tried to pull away, but Meg tightened her grip on her best friend. She remembered hiding here in the rushes by the lake, looking for Mrs. Duck's eggs in the tall reeds. "B-But what about me, Jeanie Bean? What about Rach? Ruby and Ray? Dad and Mom? What about us? Don't you care anymore?" Meg pleaded in a whisper.
Tears blurred Jeanie's vision as she glanced down at the slick icy lake-shore banks. "I ... love you, Meg, but ..." She gazed at her best friend with a tortured expression. "What if it was Ruby?"
For the first time since their argument began, Meg drew back. Jeanie couldn't read her thoughts now, but this was exactly what Meg had been pondering since she learned of Jonathan's fate. However, this was the first time the dark thought had confronted her head-on. And it petrified her.
Yes, Meg cherished her entire family. Her parents, Rachel, Jeanie especially.
But Ruby ...?
Meg's tortured thoughts turned to her wayward sibling. Everything, every sacrifice, was worth her precious sister.
She knew exactly how Jeanie felt for her brother. She knew because she would do the exact same to save Ruby. And that right there won the argument.
Meg bowed her head, but her expression was still defiant.
"You can't stop me," Jeanie said. "If I can break free Mama's dampers, nobody can."
"I'm not going to try to stop you," Meg murmured. She pulled Jeanie into an embrace. Jeanie's eyes widened and she stiffened a bit. Megan Summers didn't exactly hug folks right and left. "But I'm going with you, Jeanie Bean. Count on that! I won't let you go alone."
Meg was thinking of the red-haired woman who was inexplicably in her thoughts telling her to protect Jeanie, but she was also thinking of Jeanie Richards, her best friend in the whole wide world. Yes, Ruby was her sister, but Jeanie was irreplaceable in her own way too.
And Meg had a super power of her own - a massive one. She'd always had Jeanie Bean's back; she wasn't going to stop now.
"But I gotta tell Mom," she said resolutely. "She can go with us to the Astral Plane. You, me and her can save Jonathan. Together, we'll be powerful enough to do it!"
"No!" Jeanie snapped, her blue eyes flashing. Meg winced a bit at her tone and, to her credit, Jeanie's sharp voice softened up a bit when she added: "Your Mama's pregnant, Meggie. She can't face off with Jon. Your little baby sisters won't get hurt on my watch."
Meg's eyes only had time to widen as big as plates. Pregnant?! Sisters?
Oh, Mom is going to pay for this ... a furious thought seeped thru her shock. Really, was it like she wasn't even a member of this family? And Mom hadn't even breathed a word of this to her and Ruby.
Dad hadn't either. Wait, did Dad know? Of course Dad knew. He was Dad.
That brought up a whole new crop of thoughts in Meg's brain that made her freckles run together into one big blush. Parents have sex ... No. No. Nope. The stork brings babies! she cheerfully/manically ordered her brain. Or they come out of a foul-smelling thistle plant. That's what Olivier had told her when she was five.
And that is exactly what happens! Meg silently shouted at the crowd of thoughts clamoring in her head.
Jeanie spread her arms and reached up to the heavens. Her eyes and hands began to glow with a pinkish aura the way Rachel's did when she was agitated. The form of a huge raptor-like bird was beginning to take shape around the girl. Phoenix ... Meg thought, enraptured. She'd seen Rach do it since she could remember. Seeing Jeanie do it was ... awe-inspiring. Like watching a rock burst into flame.
But the Phoenix couldn't take form completely. Jeanie could not unleash this incredible power within her. The dampers! Meg thought.
"G-Go inside my mind, Meggie, do it!" Jeanie hissed, her teeth clenched, sweat beading on her forehead and rolling down her chin."Remove the dampers! Please!"
Meg stood there, her blond hair swirling around her in the whirlwind made by Jeanie's Phoenix Force and she felt she stood on a threshold between childhood and adulthood - or that's how she would look back on this moment in her life. She'd been told what to do and when to do it her entire life. Now, she really, really, REALLY wanted someone to tell her what to do. But her mom was ... preggo ... So sending her to the Astral Plane to face an evil entity was not an option. Sending Jeanie there alone wasn't an option either.
Oh, God, I want someone to tell me what to do! she thought, but there was no one there but Jeanie and she was about to recklessly go headlong into the Astral Plane. And there was nothing, not one thing, Meggie could do about it, but follow her. If Meg didn't break the chains of Jeanie's psychic dampers, Jeanie would bang her head, metaphorically, against the ground until they were gone or she was dead.
That Summers stubbornness ...
"L-Let me ... get RACHEL!" Meg suddenly cried. Yes! Ha, she was a genius! Why hadn't she thought of her big half-sister? Of course the leader of the X-Men would have the solution. And I won't have to take charge ... Meg thought with a dizzying mixture of guilt and relief.
"NOOOO!" Jeanie bellowed, her eyes glowing ferociously, in a voice that wasn't her own. It didn't sound like one voice, but thousands. Meg clapped her hands to her ears as it seemed the sound would explode inside her brain.
Jeanie suddenly grasped Meg's forefinger and thumb. She stabbed it to her forehead and Meg felt an electric shock rocket thru her body as Jeanie forced Meg into her best friend's mind and thoughts ...
Inside Jeanie's thoughts, Meg found herself standing before a roaring fireplace, the boathouse fireplace the girls' would play Pretty Ponies by when they were little. But the fire had died down to a tiny dying flicker. Jeanie was sitting hunched before the dying flame. She looked up at Meg.
Megan gasped. Jeanie's face was shrunken and sallow, her eyes sunken and sick, like the face of a dying person. She held out a greying hand pleadingly to her best friend.
I have to remove the dampers ... Or she'll die. Megan thought, Jeanie's suffering taking over her friend's empathic powers.
Jeanie knew Meg, as an empath, could not deny her when she saw her friend's torment for herself. Meg could no more stifle her drive to end someone's suffering - let alone her best friend's - than stop her own heart beating. Meg was acting purely on instinct when she crept to the fire and stirred it up with a poker. The fire exploded into a blazing inferno, almost engulfing the room, as it took the shape of a fiery raptor and wrapped its flaming wings around both Jeanie and Megan.
Meg opened her eyes. She and Jeanie were still by the lake, but they were - floating! And an enormous fire-bird had engulfed both of them, flapping its massive wings and making the lake's surface ripple from its fiery feathers. Was Meg emanating the power herself to levitate or was Jeanie lifting her with the power of the Phoenix Force?
Meg had no idea. She was just too freaked out to try to understand it all.
Jeanie grasped her best friend's hand. Thank you! Com'on, Meggie, Jeanie's telepathic "voice" spoke strongly inside Megan's head. No more verbal communication for Jeanie Bean; with her dampers removed, her psychic abilities were as powerful as ever. Let's go to the Astral Plane! Let's get Jon and end this! We're more powerful than the X-Men. So we're more powerful than Apocalypse. Let's show the bastard what comes of messing with us!
And in a blinding flash, holding hands, encased in a bird of fire, the girls flew away to another dimension.