AN: Okay, this is another chapter that features more Emma than Rogue and Pietro, I'm sorry, I'm having fun with her. I swear I'll get back to the plot soon. Thanks for all the reviews; Shadow, all my sources say that Destiny's name is spelled Irene, but I haven't checked any primary sources. Whether or not I do will depend entirely on how obsessive-compulsive I'm feeling, in any case, I'm glad you like the story and thanks for your review. In this chapter, which picks up in the midst of the same conversation where the last chapter left off, we follow Emma around for a little while, and see what life is like for a teenage Queen.
you got a way
of saying anything
you get away with saying to me
when you want to
and i let you
and you can
play the game
like i never could
and even i am
not such a goody good
like a weakness for chocolate
i cave
in you and you think that i'm numb to it all
but i'm not so innocent baby
-Splendid, "Less than Zero"
"No, for real, you're lying," Rogue said, looking vaguely queasy.
"Sweetheart, it's all right. It's what men do, they get crushes on girls."
"Not girls half their age."
"Oh please, Logan doesn't have the slightest idea how old he is and neither do you," Emma said, turning on her side and striking a very pin-up pose. "He could be twenty-three."
"He could be fifty," Rogue replied, her skin taking on a greenish cast. "Besides, we all called him Mister Logan the whole time I was at the Institute, and thought of him as an old guy. A totally dangerous old guy, but still."
"Fine, fine. Would you like to hear my theory?"
"Probably not."
"And yet, I think you do. You see, Logan is convinced that he will hurt or destroy anyone he touches. But if he touches you, he'll be knocked unconscious, and you'll know he didn't mean to hurt you. You're the ultimate in safe for him. He considers you some sort of misunderstood kindred spirit."
"Oh… wow," Rogue said.
"He also imagines you nude about twice as often as Scott Summers imagines me au natural, which is very frequently thank you."
Rogue stood up, put down the clipboard, put her finger in her ears and started to sing.
"Oh now you're just being childish," Emma said.
"Am not," Rogue said. "Pour some sugar on me! In the name of luvv!"
"Besides, I'm in your mind, you can't block me out." A mischievous grin spread across Emma's face. "He dreams about you. Almost every night."
Rogue gave up on singing, since not even Def Leopard could block out Emma if she wanted to be heard.
"You spy on people's dreams?"
"Like going to the cinema," Emma answered. "It's actually very romantic. The most common one he has is of a cabin up in Canada, just below the tree line. He goes out and hunts and provides, and every time he comes in from the cold he comes home to warm little you."
"He actually thinks that way about me?" Rogue said, shocked and disturbed.
Emma nodded seriously, then cracked a huge smile.
"And then he tears of your clothes and ravages you on a lambs wool rug in front of the fire, watching the flames play in your jade green eyes as you look up at him with passion and lust and-"
"LA LA LA LA!!!" Rogue roared, plugging her ears again, thinking as loudly as possible.
She was jarred out off sleep by a pair of hands shaking her shoulders.
"LA la…la?"
A very tired looking Pietro was sitting on top of her. Freddy, Wanda, Todd and Lance all stood in the hallway, glaring into the room with bags under their eyes.
"Muffin? Sugar? Light of my life, fire of my loins?" Pietro said.
"Um… yes?"
"Think you could sleep a little quieter?"
"Yeah… sorry. Nightmare."
The others left grumbling.
"Emma visiting again?" Pietro asked, taking his weight off Rogue and pulling the covers over them both.
"Yeah," Rogue said as he snuggled his face into her hair. "There are some things that a person was just not meant to know."
"Try to get some sleep," Pietro mumbled. As Rogue drifted off, she heard one final word from the blonde telepath in her head.
Spoilsport.
Emma was not having fun. There were machines taking pot shots at her, she had worked up so much perspiration that even the most generous of critics would be hard pressed to refer to her as "glowing."
For the love of god, Xavier, I was forced to remain in a sitting position for months! They only let me walk around every two days so that my legs didn't fall off!
Part of being an X-Man is physical exertion, Emma. No one expects you to run any marathons yet, but you'll never know unless you try, Xavier replied in her head. Emma rolled her eyes.
"Objective completed," Jean called out, holding a brass ring in her hands.
"A brass ring. How trite," Emma muttered out loud, stalking towards the exit.
"Wait, Emma, we have to be de-briefed," Scott called out. Emma leaned against the doorframe.
"Scott, I will gladly de-brief or de-boxer you at a moment's notice. But if you mean blathering on about how we could have better outwitted the big bad computer to get at the pretty shiny thing, I'll listen in from the confines of a shower stall, thank you. Feel free to join me."
She left the room as elegantly as possible.
Jean was not having fun. Emma may not have been half the telekinetic that Jean was, but the blonde's natural psychic talents put Jean's to shame. The professor was teaching her all sorts of advanced techniques, she was a whiz-kid with Cerebro. What bothered Jean much, much more was that this leggy blonde snob had just about everyone eating out of the palm of her hand. Everyone except Jean and Scott that is. In regards to Scott, this was far from lack of trying. The phrase 'brazen hussy' leapt to mind.
"That girl has a serious attitude problem," Jean growled.
"She sure does," Scott said. Jean did not care for his vague undertone of appreciation.
Emma stood in the shower and tried not to admit that she was miserable, but things were stacking up worse by the day. That anal retentive red-head, Jean. The annoying valley girl. Xavier's moral posturing. Logan's insistence upon physical activity. Scott's puritanical state of arrested development. Public school. Indignity upon indignity. She was starting to wonder if the real estate was really worth it. After all, she could have a contractor at the Brotherhood House in seven minutes, and there was some reasonable Victorian architecture to work with- no. She was not leaving until she had Scott Summers sitting on her knee telling her everything he wanted done to him for Christmas. It wasn't even about hormones anymore, it was a matter of principle. No anal-retentive red-head was going to show up Emma Grace Frost.
She put on a blue silk bathrobe of a rather risqué length and honed in on the location of the others. On her way to her room, she walked by the room Kitty and Amara shared to see them packing suitcases.
"What's the occasion?" she asked. She knew very well that she made Kitty profoundly uncomfortable, and that Amara was still considering her a candidate for friendship.
"Doctor McCoy and Mister Logan are organizing a retreat," Amara replied.
"What on earth for?"
"Rogue left, Spyke left, Bobby and I got promoted, you turned up, so the team isn't as tight-knit as it used to be. He's concerned about our teamwork."
"I see. Where is this delightful little jaunt going to take us?"
"The Everglades," Amara said.
"I see," Emma replied again. "I suppose I'll see you bright and early tomorrow, then."
"Wow," Kitty said, as soon as she thought Emma was out of earshot. "That was entirely not the reaction I was expecting."
Little did Kitty know that the expected reaction was going on down the hall, in silence.
The Everglades, Emma thought. A swamp. They want to send me to a swamp to learn how to be a team player. A team player with an anal retentive red head who's the thrift store knock off of me. Children. The only person on that team I'd care to play with is the Summers boy.
She walked into her room and picked up the phone, and called up her favorite contractor, while taking her clothes out of her closet and placing the articles carefully in stunningly designed luggage.
"Klaus?" Emma said. "It's Emma Frost. Of course, dear, it's been far too long. But I need you to get right over to Bayville first thing in the morning. I have a Victorian mansion which is just pleading for renovations, and I wouldn't trust it to anyone but you."
"This doesn't make any sense," Scott said on the porch.
"Hey, is that a limo?" Kurt asked, poking his head out the door.
"That is, in fact, a white stretch Rolls Royce," Scott replied, squinting at the gleaming car.
"We're going to the Everglades in a limo?"
"That's the part that doesn't make any sense," Scott said, walking down the steps. "Excuse me," he said, tapping on the opaque black window. The driver rolled it down, a very dignified man in mirrored sunglasses replied,
"Yes?"
"Can I help you?"
"I'm here for Miss Frost."
"Are you a friend of hers?" Scott asked. The driver burst out laughing.
"Yes. The sort of friend who gets paid a thousand dollars to sit and wait for her and then drive her three-quarters of a mile."
Scott looked perplexed and stepped away from the car. The Professor was on the porch now, along with the rest of the main team, Logan, Henry and Ororo, all gawking.
"I didn't request a limousine," Xavier said.
"I got twenty bucks on who did," Logan sneered.
"We're taking a limo to the Everglades?" Kitty said.
"Actually," a voice came from behind her. "That's my ride."
Emma stepped through their small crowd as the driver emerged from the car.
"Miss Frost! It's lovely to see you again," he said, kissing her hand.
"Marcus, you're far too good to me," she replied.
"Do you have any luggage?"
"It's right in the lobby, you dear man." The driver excused himself into the mansion and began bringing Emma's suitcases out into the car.
"Emma, this seems a bit excessive for a trip to the Everglades," the Professor said.
"I'm not going to the Everglades, Professor Xavier. No stint in a swamp is going to make me a team player here."
"Well Emma, if that's your decision, I guess we have to respect that," Jean said too quickly. Emma rolled her eyes.
"I've seen diamonds less transparent than you, sweetheart, and I certainly wouldn't have bought any of them. You're so insecure about anyone taking Scott away from you that it taints everything you do, and one day it will very likely bring this team to the brink of destruction, if not over it. Scott, you're so tremendously whipped by this girl that you can barely floss without her express permission, and it's dragging your leadership down. Miss Pryde is up to the top of her vacant little head in the waters of rebounding, so much so that she's liable to drown the rest of you in an MTV-eque adolescent soap opera. Mister Wagner wants so desperately to be anything other than what he is, in spite of the fact that he's actually in a stable relationship. Amara is so fixated on proving herself as a member of the main team that she's become quite myopic. Bobby is busy trying desperately to pretend that nothing is wrong, that everything is fine.
"As for you, Professor Xavier, what can I say. You picked them."
Emma turned to go, and Logan spat on the ground.
"At least this traitor didn't hang around for months before she turned," he growled. Emma stopped in her tracks, and turned with a slight smile.
"I'd intended to leave you be, Mister Logan, but since you insist of being noticed: You're drunk. You've been drinking for weeks. You're trying to kill the pain, but it just doesn't go away, does it Logan?"
"What are you talking about?" Jean snapped. Logan looked gray.
"He knows what I'm talking about. She's so happy, Logan, with her delinquent friends and her maniac lover. He kisses the scars you left over her heart every night and thanks every god that ever was that she is alive and his. She will never pick a life of wasting away of sorrow in the cold with you over any kind of life with him, no matter how drunk you get, no matter how many times you stab her. You could kill her, kill him, kill yourself, and it wouldn't change a thing. If you were kinder-hearted, I'd advise you to leave her alone, give up, and quit drinking, but I know you'll try anyway. She left a big gaping void where your heart used to be. But let me tell you something: if you try to force her back here again, if you come near her or the boy, I'll leave a big gaping void where your brain used to be."
"You're joining the Brotherhood?" Kitty exclaimed, then covered her mouth in fear. Emma smiled, sliding in through the door which Marcus opened for her.
"I am a polished, gorgeous and classy delinquent, Katherine, but I am a delinquent nonetheless. Have fun playing in the swamps."
"Charles," Henry said. "Do you think perhaps we should address our sharp increase in turnover?"
"Hey! Excuse me! Hey!" Pietro kept saying to every person who passed by him on the lawn, but all of them just smiled at him and kept on walking. He sighed and walked back inside to the very sleepy group seated around the kitchen table, each with a cup of coffee steaming in front of them.
"What the hell is going on?" Lance asked. Pietro sat down.
"I have no fucking clue. Magneto maybe?"
"Doesn't really seem like Mister-the-Man's style," Todd said. "He seems more like the aluminum siding type."
Wanda snorted with laughter and Todd beamed.
"You're only funny because I'm stupid tired," she said. "But you have a point."
"Mystique doesn't have the bank roll for this, that's for sure," Rogue said.
"Maybe they've got the wrong house," Pietro grumbled, emptying half the sugar bowl into his mug.
At eight o'clock sharp, the trucks had arrived, ladders had emerged, and a scrawny but manicured man had set up a drafting table in their driveway and gotten to sketching. It had been only thirty minutes, but there were people swarming everywhere with triangles and levels and tape measures. One woman had even taken out a ball bearing, and kept putting it down on various spots on the floor and taking notes on whether or not it rolled. Everyone's belongings had been carefully covered in drop cloths and tarps, pushed to the center of the room, and intensive sanding and repainting had begun. Finally, blessed with a fairly warm morning, the Brotherhood of Mutants had retreated from their paint-fuming house as someone walked in and took away the two side-by-side card tables that served as their kitchen table. They barely escaped with their collective coffee. They reconvened on the porch, where all jaws dropped.
Standing over the shoulder of the man at the drafting table was Emma Frost.
AN2: Ah, whatever Emma wants, Emma gets, to paraphrase. In the next chapters, we see how the Brotherhood changes now that they have the finances and telepathic clout to rival the X-Men. And I promise I'll get back to the main plot and quit making this a fictional window-shopping trip.