Standard disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just borrowing them for our entertainment.

Pasts Imperfect

Chapter 2

After dinner, Jean went back to the lab to check on an experiment she and Hank McCoy were running. As usual, she lost track of time and was startled to see it was already ten o'clock.

Swearing slightly, she took the elevator directly to the floor where she and Scott had their bedroom. Although they now owned the boathouse by the lake (a wedding present from Charles Xavier), it was still being renovated. Also, given Jean's condition, Scott didn't like the idea of leaving her alone in the house if he had to be on a "mission" during the night. So they agreed to stay in the main house until the baby was born.

When Jean entered the room, Scott was sitting on the bed, looking at the photograph albums the Masters had saved for him and Alex. It was something he rarely did; to look at photographs of a life he could not remember was painful for him, to say the least.

Jean joined him on the bed and looked at the pictures over his shoulder. "You were cute," she remarked.

Scott gave her a lopsided grin but said nothing. Jean decided on a frontal assault.

"What's bothering you?" she asked.

Scott sighed and shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. "I was hoping these would generate something, some memory. But there's nothing new. At dinner tonight, he talked about the model planes. I do remember those -- they were all over the house. It's one of my few real memories from before the crash. I always thought they were my Dad's. But they weren't. They were my mother's. They were the planes she designed."

"And?"

"It just brings home how little I know -- about my family, about my own past. And -- you promise not to hit me?" Scott asked anxiously. He knew his wife's temper.

"I promise."

"It was such a surprise," he admitted. "To find out my mother was an engineer. I always knew my father was a test pilot, but, well, I never really thought about my mother having a career of her own. That she might have been something other than -- my mother."

Jean thought about it for a moment before balling up her fist and socking him in the shoulder.

"Ow! That hurt," Scott protested.

"Good; you deserved it," she replied firmly.

"What, for blithely assuming for almost twenty years that my mother was a housewife?"

"Hmm," was Jean's only response.

"The thing is -- I don't remember," Scott said, his tone beginning to show the anguish he always felt when he considered his lost past. "I don't remember anything from when I was a child, really. I feel like I have some memories, but are they because of these photographs or do I really remember?"

Jean regarded her husband for a moment. "And does it bother you that characteristics you used to attribute to your father might actually be from your mother?" she asked pointedly.

Scott rubbed his aching shoulder. His wife still packed a solid punch. "Well, yeah, it throws me a little bit -- maybe they weren't the way I thought they were. She was my mother and I know -- nothing -- about her."

"What was your mother's maiden name?" she asked.

He had to think long and hard about that one. "O'Hanlon," he finally pronounced.

Jean nodded. "Okay," she said. "That's a place to start. Nick might be willing to get us her employment forms. And if your mother worked on a lot of government projects, she may have written articles for professional journals. If she published or co-published anything, we'll be able to find out. She might have belonged to an engineering association as well. I'll check." She smiled and stroked Scott's face. "We'll find her. You'll see."

x x x x x

The next day, Nick's secretary, Shelley, arrived. Her reaction to seeing Scott was far more vocal.

"Oh, DEAR GOD!" Shelley collapsed into nearby chair. "Nick, you might have told me."

"I did tell you," Nick replied defensively. "I said he looked like Chris."

"Looked like? Try 'carbon copy.' Try 'clone'."

"That bad?" Scott inquired sympathetically.

Shelley gave him a big hug in response. "Not bad at all," she said with a sniff.

x x x x x

Shelley had brought of box of things with her, which included several photo and postcard albums. The ones from Scott's parents began with Alaska.

Scott looked at the backs of the postcards with interest.

"Well, winter has arrived and IT'S COLD!!! I don't know how I'm going to survive. I guess Russians go to Siberia, and the Air Force goes to Alaska. I'm not sure which is worse.

We went to visit Chris's parents last week. That was -- interesting. I'll tell you more later.

Scott waves to his Aunt Shelley.

Your ice-bound friend,

Kathy"

"What's this about my grandparents?" Scott asked.

Shelley looked at Nick for guidance. He only shrugged, so she got no help from that quarter.

"Your father seemed to have a difficult relationship with his parents," she admitted. "That's really all Kathy would say about it."

"Oh." Scott tucked that piece of information away. Once he had turned eighteen, Scott tried to trace the Summers family back in Alaska, but he had made little headway and had eventually given up.

Kathy Summers had written to Shelley about every three to four months. Mostly, the cards contained views of Alaska and homey chit-chat. But there were oblique references to Nick. One card revealed more.

"Tell Nick to stop pestering me. He knows my price -- get my husband out of here, and we'll talk."

"I don't understand," Scott asked. "It's pretty obvious my mother didn't like living in Alaska much, but why would you be able to do something about it? She wasn't still working for you -- was she?"

"No," Nick admitted. "She quit and went with your father to Alaska. But I wanted her back to work on a project for me." He stopped for a moment and then continued. "Your father being in Alaska wasn't a standard reassignment -- it was more of a disciplinary action. Chris had a big mouth and didn't always know when to keep it shut. So he was sent to Alaska. To be an aerospace engineer and an Air Force wife is difficult enough in normal situations -- being in Alaska made it almost impossible."

"So my mother just quit, packed up and followed him there?"

"More or less. After you were born, and especially after your brother was born, Kathy put plane designing on hold. I did get your father out of Alaska --"

"We went to Florida and then Nebraska," Scott interrupted.

"But that was so Kathy could do some work for me," Nick continued. "But she would only do small projects that wouldn't take her away from home for more than a night or two. I was angling to get your father a transfer to my project base so your mother could work on the project full time when ... when the accident happened."

This was all news to Scott. "What was my father like?" he asked.

Nick shrugged. "He was a test pilot. Think "Top Gun" and you've got the blueprint. He was cocky, sure of himself, and he liked the ladies. But I have to admit, once he took up with Kathy, that ended. She wouldn't have put up with it, and I certainly never heard any rumors."

Scott wasn't sure how he felt about this disclosure. It must have showed on his face because Nick continued with a wry smile.

Nick smiled. "Your dad was human, son. He was the best in his field and he knew it. He had an ego a mile long. But it wasn't undeserved. He was the best pilot I ever saw. And he trusted your mother implicitly. If she said the plane would fly, he got into the cockpit. If she said it wouldn't, he'd point blank refuse and take all the other pilots out with him. They were a great team, your parents. Chris took Kathy up in a fighter jet because she had never been in one before --"

"I think that's when she fell in love with him," Shelley murmured.

"It was against the rules, but that was the kind of man your father was," Nick finished. "He wasn't a stickler for regulations. Far from it. Now your mother was the more serious of the two. But they complimented each other."

Scott digested that information turned the page of the album. The next group of postcards were from Florida. He picked up the first one.

"Here we are in sunny Florida! Thank Nick for me. Eglin AFB is HUGE -- Chris is going to love it here, I can tell. And, gee, it's only 5-6 hours from Huntsville. Fancy that! Don't worry, I'm not ungrateful. Tell Nick I'll call him. But we better get a move on -- I'm pregnant again!

Kathy"

"What was in Huntsville?" Scott asked with a smile.

"My project," Nick answered easily. "I was testing it at the NASA facility there. Sometimes you and your brother would come with her. I had a lot of draft drawings with your crayon marks on them."

Scott laughed and continued to look over the albums with Shelley. Nick left them for a few minutes. Scott wasn't sure if that was accident or design, but he decided to make the most of it.

"Tell me about my mother," Scott asked. "I don't ... remember much."

Shelley smiled. "I do know she loved you and your brother more than anything in the world. Nick wasn't lying when he said he got drafts from Kathy with your crayon marks on them. She'd give you her drawings to play with and if she decided the other draft was better, she'd just take it back and send it in.

"We met on the ZK-87 project," she continued. "We were the only two women involved, and I was Nick's secretary, but that didn't seem to matter to her. She was as brilliant as Nick said she was, but you wouldn't have known that from the way she acted. She gave the impression of being serious, even severe at times, but really, she didn't take herself seriously at all. She enjoyed life and had a great sense of humor. The oddest things could make her laugh. Once your father realized that, he was always trying to get her to laugh -- and he usually succeeded. Your father fell in love with your mother first, I think, but your mother loved him with all her heart and soul."

"Didn't she mind giving it all up? Being an engineer? I gather it was hard for her to keep working."

Surprisingly, Shelley shrugged. "Not as far as I could tell. For all of Nick's attempts to get her back to work, I think she enjoyed being "an Air Force wife." She always used to say to me "I like having the break," when I talked to her about missing engineering. She enjoyed doing Nick's projects part time, but I don't think she ever would have gone back to full time work. At least, not while the two of you were still in school. She said she had just as much fun building a rocket ship for a science class to play with as building the real thing."

Scott opened his mouth to ask another question when Nick returned, so he decided to lob a bomb towards him -- just to see what would happen. "How do you know Logan?" he asked Nick.

Nick blinked. "He worked for me," he replied carefully. "Not on anything with your parents, though; I ran a lot of different projects in those days."

"I see," Scott said as he turned a page in the album. He pretended to let it go, but he couldn't fight off the growing feeling of disquiet, as though there was something lurking just under the surface, something he couldn't see.

Yet.

x x x x x

That evening, alone in their room, Scott tried to verbalize his feelings to Jean.

"... I guess the more I find out, the more surprised I get," Scott admitted. "My mother must have been a real hot shot if Nick was willing to get the Air Force to reassign my father. It's kind of weird though -- she gave up everything for my father without so much as a backward glance."

"Well," Jean tempered. "Sometimes, that's what women do."

"Would you?"

"How do you know I didn't?" she countered.

Scott was floored. Jean laughed. "You wanted to come back here to teach. I came with you."

"I thought you wanted to come, too," he said. "Be a part of the school."

"Yes," Jean admitted. "I did and I probably would have come back on my own eventually. But I was also interested in the Genome project Hank was working on. I could have done that full time, and probably would have if you hadn't have wanted to come back here." She smiled at the memory. "We were a package deal, remember. The Professor wanted and needed you back, so he offered me a position as well. I came back -- because you did."

"Huh." Scott lay back and thought about that one. After a while, his wife's steady breathing assured him she was asleep. He tried to join her, but his mind kept him awake. Eventually, he gave up and headed for the kitchen.

x x x x x