Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I making any money from, the X-Men movie-
verse. Duncan and Hana belong to Corrinth, as does Ilehana Xavier should
she be mentioned. Star owns Golan, should he be mentioned too. All other
OCs belong to me, especially Blaze and Jessie.
A/N: Post X2 spoilers, and spoilers for Corrinth's Guardians of Destiny, which incidentally is excellent so go read it! Thank you to my sister for a whole list of young-people type exclamations of which I am informed 'mint' is only slightly less impressive than 'beast'. No, I don't understand it either. Reviews always appreciated.
Scene 08
Storm was proved right, after the initial shock from the X-Men things did begin to settle down once again, and the Guardians of humanity realised each in their own ways that they had grown to love the simple routines of the school without surprises. Logan came and went as he had always done, Blaze and Gambit avoided Jessica as their child blended in seamlessly with the other pupils. The two old associates hesitantly found themselves able to talk to each other as friends again, and the other X-Men could approach both of them without fear of their lives. But most of all, Jessie was happy.
The child found acceptance with the other mutant children, who did not avoid her gaze or call her names. She had not lost control of her powers in weeks, and was relieved to receive a clean bill of health from Jean; she was not going blind after all. Jessie asked the doctor about why Dr McMahon would have said such a thing, but the only answer Jean could give the child was that even now human doctors found it hard to understand and diagnose mutant physiological changes. When Jessie's classmates scampered off to Blaze's beginners' languages class, Jessie went for her private tutor sessions with Jean and never considered she might be missed.
A few more weeks of term went by, and suddenly Jessie was not even the new kid anymore. A couple whose nephew had already been a pupil at the school brought in their own son. His name was Leon, a distracted and uncommunicative, dangerous child. His parents made it chillingly clear to Scott that they did not expect nor want their son home in the holidays. The fear Logan smelt from the boy whenever an adult was near him could only allude to some kind of abuse. Most of the faculty's worries about Jessica dissipated when faced with this new problem child.
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"Do you think that Alex will ever pluck up the courage to ask Kitty out then Ami, or are they going to keep dragging this out until we have to take matters into our own hands?" Blaze asked Remy, feeling for some reason in a more jovial mood than usual. It could be that as they left the mansion together, the sun was oozing golden and warm through the clouds, and there was a whiff of summer on the gentle breeze. Blaze had always been a summer kind of person...
"Gambit don't know," He smiled, obviously plotting some devious way of speeding up Alex's longwinded courtship. "Maybe a lil flirtin' in order, you know? There ain't nothin' like jealousy to give a guy motivation, non?"
"So that's where I've been going wrong all these years." Blaze joked back, eyes wandering over the grounds, the girls riding ponies across the grass, teenage boys playing American football with much shouting and joking. The new boy, Leon, was alone on the basketball court. The children were still avoiding him then? But no, as the ball bounced free of the eleven-year- old's unpractised hands, another child went to retrieve it for him. The scene hit Blaze in slow motion as she watched Jessica grab the ball and turn to offer it back boldly to Leon. In a fit of possessive madness, Leon's eyes flashed and rotated, pupils becoming slit-like reptilian monstrosities, giant hinged fangs dropping ominously in his gaping red mouth, hissing harsh in the back of his throat.
Blaze barely registered Gambit's shout of "Leon! No!" as both X-Men threw themselves across the distance. The boy struck with viper-like speed and agility, but Gambit tackled him to the ground just in time. Blaze barrelled into Jessica, barely feeling on the edges of her irrational terror the pulsing of Jessica's mutant attack flooding her muscles. Mother and child collapsed shaking to the floor, Jessie black as night in her terror.
"Mommy! I want my Mommy!" Jessie sobbed whilst it took all of Blaze's control not to answer, to just hold the child. At least the initial outburst of Jessie's mutant defences had been just that, an outburst. As Blaze felt her own heart beat slow, she pulled back from her daughter just a touch so she could look at her.
"Kurt, take this idiote to Principle Summers." Gambit demanded, pushing Leon before him to Nightcrawler. "I don't want to see him again no time soon."
"No problem." Kurt obliged, trusting that Leon would not turn on an adult seeing how much he feared them, he put a hand on the boy's shoulder and they both disappeared.
"Jessie?" Gambit threw himself to his knees beside his daughter and Blaze. "It okay Petite, he gone."
"Shush, Jessica, its alright." Blaze found her voice to back Remy up, stroking Jessica's curly red ponytail as it became visible again. The boys who had been playing football gathered around at a distance, watching. Some of them appeared on the verge of spotting something of colossal importance in the scene between Blaze, Gambit and Jessie, but none of them said anything.
"Thank you." The child sniffed, almost ashamed that she had been so scared. But if her teachers were shaking too, then maybe it didn't matter?
"You did very well to control your power." Blaze praised, trying to turn the experience into a positive lesson. "You hardly zapped me at all, well, not for long anyway."
"But if he'd bit me, then I wouldn't have been able to stop him." Jessie answered pragmatically. Gambit smiled.
"You thinkin' too much Petite. You did good, in fact better than Blaze here could manage when she got her powers." Jessie frowned up at him at that, a frown mirrored almost exactly by Blaze's. Did he want to terrify the child even more, bringing Blaze's past into this? Fortunately the boys had begun to go back to their game, break time was nearly over after all.
"How old were you?" Jessie turned her frown on Blaze.
"Fifteen when I got my powers." Blaze grimaced at the memories. "Sixteen when I met Prince Charming here. And about twenty-one before I could even begin to control my powers properly, when the school's founder Professor Charles Xavier took me in."
"Twenty-one!" Jessica exclaimed, pulling back from Blaze's grip to sit cross-legged on the ground. "That's ancient! What did you do in the mean time, before you came here? Bet you burnt down loads of stuff dincha? How long you been here anyway? And how long have you two known each other? And...?"
"Hey hey, let me answer a few questions before I forget where I'm up to!" Unlikely as that was with her stupendous photographic memory, Blaze held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. She shot an evil look at Gambit who shrugged and nodded to Jess' now rapt and unafraid expression. Blaze still wasn't sure this was such a good idea.
"Firstly little miss, twenty-one is not ancient, at least not in comparison with thirty-three, which is how old I am now. And that's absolutely nothing in comparison with Gambit's astounding, what, thirty-four years?" Gambit nodded, leaning back with one hand supporting his weight on the grass. "Astounding mostly because I would have bet someone would have put him out of his misery by now." Jessica giggled at that, and Blaze couldn't help but smile with her. Gambit only rolled his eyes, as if it hadn't been tried enough times. "And if you've paid any attention in Jubilee's maths lessons then you'd know how long that means I've been here, been an X-Man."
"Twelve years? Eek!" Jessie exclaimed. "That's longer than I've been born!"
"And how long have I had the dubious pleasure of knowing Gambit?"
"Wow, wait a minute..." To Gambit's obvious amusement Jess put out all ten dainty fingers, counting them off with a thoughtful expression on her face and tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth. "Mint, seventeen years!" Gambit realised he didn't actually know himself and was kinda glad when Blaze affirmed Jessie's answer. "You never thought of just marrying each other or somethin'?"
Before Blaze or Gambit could come up with a reply suitable enough for young ears, another voice cut across the discussion.
"What's going on here? Are you okay Jessica?" The child looked up at the gloomy silhouette of her Principle standing over them and nodded.
"Yeah, I'm fine Mr Summers. Gambit and Blaze were just telling me about themselves a bit, you know, being friendly." Blaze had to bite her tongue to stop herself from smiling at Jessica's almost innocent and completely unguarded insult to Cyclops. "But I guess I'm late for lessons again? New school, same complete lack of timekeeping." Jessie stood and dusted herself off, giving a startlingly good impression of Scott in disciplinarian headmaster mode. Even the stressed out team leader couldn't help but smile as the child scarpered.
"You think that was wise?" Scott didn't wait for his X-Men to stand up before he began his tirade. Gambit stood quickly and offered Blaze a hand, deliberately turning his broad-shouldered back on Cyclops. "I thought we'd covered this already?"
"T'ink of it as a maths lesson." Gambit smiled coolly. He put an arm round Blaze's waist as they both smiled innocently back at the fuming Scott and Remy steered his friend back into the school. Cyclops was left alone, never having felt such a lack of control over his team whilst he had been their sole leader. Couldn't Blaze and Gambit see how their actions regarding Jessica threw more than just the child's future into danger? They were undermining him so much he didn't know if he could even trust them anymore. And as X-Men, he needed to know he could trust them with his life...
A/N: Post X2 spoilers, and spoilers for Corrinth's Guardians of Destiny, which incidentally is excellent so go read it! Thank you to my sister for a whole list of young-people type exclamations of which I am informed 'mint' is only slightly less impressive than 'beast'. No, I don't understand it either. Reviews always appreciated.
Scene 08
Storm was proved right, after the initial shock from the X-Men things did begin to settle down once again, and the Guardians of humanity realised each in their own ways that they had grown to love the simple routines of the school without surprises. Logan came and went as he had always done, Blaze and Gambit avoided Jessica as their child blended in seamlessly with the other pupils. The two old associates hesitantly found themselves able to talk to each other as friends again, and the other X-Men could approach both of them without fear of their lives. But most of all, Jessie was happy.
The child found acceptance with the other mutant children, who did not avoid her gaze or call her names. She had not lost control of her powers in weeks, and was relieved to receive a clean bill of health from Jean; she was not going blind after all. Jessie asked the doctor about why Dr McMahon would have said such a thing, but the only answer Jean could give the child was that even now human doctors found it hard to understand and diagnose mutant physiological changes. When Jessie's classmates scampered off to Blaze's beginners' languages class, Jessie went for her private tutor sessions with Jean and never considered she might be missed.
A few more weeks of term went by, and suddenly Jessie was not even the new kid anymore. A couple whose nephew had already been a pupil at the school brought in their own son. His name was Leon, a distracted and uncommunicative, dangerous child. His parents made it chillingly clear to Scott that they did not expect nor want their son home in the holidays. The fear Logan smelt from the boy whenever an adult was near him could only allude to some kind of abuse. Most of the faculty's worries about Jessica dissipated when faced with this new problem child.
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"Do you think that Alex will ever pluck up the courage to ask Kitty out then Ami, or are they going to keep dragging this out until we have to take matters into our own hands?" Blaze asked Remy, feeling for some reason in a more jovial mood than usual. It could be that as they left the mansion together, the sun was oozing golden and warm through the clouds, and there was a whiff of summer on the gentle breeze. Blaze had always been a summer kind of person...
"Gambit don't know," He smiled, obviously plotting some devious way of speeding up Alex's longwinded courtship. "Maybe a lil flirtin' in order, you know? There ain't nothin' like jealousy to give a guy motivation, non?"
"So that's where I've been going wrong all these years." Blaze joked back, eyes wandering over the grounds, the girls riding ponies across the grass, teenage boys playing American football with much shouting and joking. The new boy, Leon, was alone on the basketball court. The children were still avoiding him then? But no, as the ball bounced free of the eleven-year- old's unpractised hands, another child went to retrieve it for him. The scene hit Blaze in slow motion as she watched Jessica grab the ball and turn to offer it back boldly to Leon. In a fit of possessive madness, Leon's eyes flashed and rotated, pupils becoming slit-like reptilian monstrosities, giant hinged fangs dropping ominously in his gaping red mouth, hissing harsh in the back of his throat.
Blaze barely registered Gambit's shout of "Leon! No!" as both X-Men threw themselves across the distance. The boy struck with viper-like speed and agility, but Gambit tackled him to the ground just in time. Blaze barrelled into Jessica, barely feeling on the edges of her irrational terror the pulsing of Jessica's mutant attack flooding her muscles. Mother and child collapsed shaking to the floor, Jessie black as night in her terror.
"Mommy! I want my Mommy!" Jessie sobbed whilst it took all of Blaze's control not to answer, to just hold the child. At least the initial outburst of Jessie's mutant defences had been just that, an outburst. As Blaze felt her own heart beat slow, she pulled back from her daughter just a touch so she could look at her.
"Kurt, take this idiote to Principle Summers." Gambit demanded, pushing Leon before him to Nightcrawler. "I don't want to see him again no time soon."
"No problem." Kurt obliged, trusting that Leon would not turn on an adult seeing how much he feared them, he put a hand on the boy's shoulder and they both disappeared.
"Jessie?" Gambit threw himself to his knees beside his daughter and Blaze. "It okay Petite, he gone."
"Shush, Jessica, its alright." Blaze found her voice to back Remy up, stroking Jessica's curly red ponytail as it became visible again. The boys who had been playing football gathered around at a distance, watching. Some of them appeared on the verge of spotting something of colossal importance in the scene between Blaze, Gambit and Jessie, but none of them said anything.
"Thank you." The child sniffed, almost ashamed that she had been so scared. But if her teachers were shaking too, then maybe it didn't matter?
"You did very well to control your power." Blaze praised, trying to turn the experience into a positive lesson. "You hardly zapped me at all, well, not for long anyway."
"But if he'd bit me, then I wouldn't have been able to stop him." Jessie answered pragmatically. Gambit smiled.
"You thinkin' too much Petite. You did good, in fact better than Blaze here could manage when she got her powers." Jessie frowned up at him at that, a frown mirrored almost exactly by Blaze's. Did he want to terrify the child even more, bringing Blaze's past into this? Fortunately the boys had begun to go back to their game, break time was nearly over after all.
"How old were you?" Jessie turned her frown on Blaze.
"Fifteen when I got my powers." Blaze grimaced at the memories. "Sixteen when I met Prince Charming here. And about twenty-one before I could even begin to control my powers properly, when the school's founder Professor Charles Xavier took me in."
"Twenty-one!" Jessica exclaimed, pulling back from Blaze's grip to sit cross-legged on the ground. "That's ancient! What did you do in the mean time, before you came here? Bet you burnt down loads of stuff dincha? How long you been here anyway? And how long have you two known each other? And...?"
"Hey hey, let me answer a few questions before I forget where I'm up to!" Unlikely as that was with her stupendous photographic memory, Blaze held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. She shot an evil look at Gambit who shrugged and nodded to Jess' now rapt and unafraid expression. Blaze still wasn't sure this was such a good idea.
"Firstly little miss, twenty-one is not ancient, at least not in comparison with thirty-three, which is how old I am now. And that's absolutely nothing in comparison with Gambit's astounding, what, thirty-four years?" Gambit nodded, leaning back with one hand supporting his weight on the grass. "Astounding mostly because I would have bet someone would have put him out of his misery by now." Jessica giggled at that, and Blaze couldn't help but smile with her. Gambit only rolled his eyes, as if it hadn't been tried enough times. "And if you've paid any attention in Jubilee's maths lessons then you'd know how long that means I've been here, been an X-Man."
"Twelve years? Eek!" Jessie exclaimed. "That's longer than I've been born!"
"And how long have I had the dubious pleasure of knowing Gambit?"
"Wow, wait a minute..." To Gambit's obvious amusement Jess put out all ten dainty fingers, counting them off with a thoughtful expression on her face and tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth. "Mint, seventeen years!" Gambit realised he didn't actually know himself and was kinda glad when Blaze affirmed Jessie's answer. "You never thought of just marrying each other or somethin'?"
Before Blaze or Gambit could come up with a reply suitable enough for young ears, another voice cut across the discussion.
"What's going on here? Are you okay Jessica?" The child looked up at the gloomy silhouette of her Principle standing over them and nodded.
"Yeah, I'm fine Mr Summers. Gambit and Blaze were just telling me about themselves a bit, you know, being friendly." Blaze had to bite her tongue to stop herself from smiling at Jessica's almost innocent and completely unguarded insult to Cyclops. "But I guess I'm late for lessons again? New school, same complete lack of timekeeping." Jessie stood and dusted herself off, giving a startlingly good impression of Scott in disciplinarian headmaster mode. Even the stressed out team leader couldn't help but smile as the child scarpered.
"You think that was wise?" Scott didn't wait for his X-Men to stand up before he began his tirade. Gambit stood quickly and offered Blaze a hand, deliberately turning his broad-shouldered back on Cyclops. "I thought we'd covered this already?"
"T'ink of it as a maths lesson." Gambit smiled coolly. He put an arm round Blaze's waist as they both smiled innocently back at the fuming Scott and Remy steered his friend back into the school. Cyclops was left alone, never having felt such a lack of control over his team whilst he had been their sole leader. Couldn't Blaze and Gambit see how their actions regarding Jessica threw more than just the child's future into danger? They were undermining him so much he didn't know if he could even trust them anymore. And as X-Men, he needed to know he could trust them with his life...