An: Carin: I'm going to put a quick list of trigger warnings here at the beginning, but if any other ones come up I'll try to put those in at the beginning of other chapters, and I'll try to put major trigger warnings for certain chapters at the beginning of any chapters that get especially bad. Please tell me if there are any other ones that should be added or if I make any mistakes when it comes to cultures and religions featured in the story I will add the warning in the next chapter or fix that detail of the story.
Trigger warnings: childhood trauma, past childhood trauma, past child death, religion, past negative experiences with Christianity mentioned, eating mentioned, divorce mentioned, childhood mental illness, adult mental illness (there are adults with mental illness in the story,)
Chapter one- the normal drama
"Okay if you don't stop squirming the hair dye will get all over and your mom will murder each and every one of us," Rachel hissed as Pheobe shifted her head again. The large group of teen girls were sitting in one of the Summers-Frost house's bathrooms trying to dye Phoebe's hair red. TJ was in charge of the actual hair dye since she dyed the two silver strips at the front of her hair often but Rachel was sitting on the counter trying to make sure that the mess stayed limited considering TJ didn't always do things in the most practical fashion.
"Don't worry, this stuff comes out of the sink if you use bleach," TJ responded.
"Yeah, do you know how much bleach we have Ray? Everything we own is white," Pheobe added, her smooth British accent just the slightest bit condescending, she adjusted her head slightly one more time, clearly just to articulate her point. The majority of the Frost/Summers family home was decorated white, but Rachel still wondered if bleach would fix the mess they were making. She cringed and gritted her teeth.
"Ray is probably right," Celeste complained from the corner, "Mum's going to kill us if this gets all over, and I bet you'll regret red hair anyway,"
"I don't regret brown hair." Mindee twirled a strand of her hair.
"Ick!" Celeste hissed, TJ rolled her eyes.
"It's semi-permanent, it only lasts like a month, so if you don't like it we don't have to dye it again." She squirted more dye on the roots of Pheobe's head causing Rachel to flinch again and Celeste to let out a small growl.
Footsteps started up the stairs and Rachel flinched once again, those were her dad's footsteps--probably coming to ask them to stop fighting-- and when he saw the mess… Rachel was going to be grounded for a week, unless Pheobe really could clean this up, and it was only the first week of summer.
"Ray, can I talk to you for a minute?" He half-yelled from the hallway.
"Oooh!" Mindee teased, "text us what you did later," Rachel stuck out her tongue before leaving the bathroom.
As far as she knew she hadn't done anything, well other than the bathroom mess and arguing with her stepsisters and TJ.
"Your grandfather wants to see you in his office Rachel," he said very abruptly. Rachel paused. By "grandfather" he meant Professor X. He had taught her parents everything they knew, and both her parents had lived in and around the academy for the majority of their lives. Plus the Professor had no children or grandchildren as far as Rachel knew, and her only living grandparent hung out in space most of the time. So it made sense that he acted as family member to her and her brother.
"In his office?" Rachel asked. Usually, meetings between the Professor and his "grandchildren" were less formal, at least since he had given up his role as principal nearly ten years ago and Auntie Ororo now ran the majority of the school.
"It's clearly something important, but he didn't seem upset," her dad assured. Rachel nodded, trying to put on the stoic face she had learned from her father despite her fear. He nodded back at her using the same expression.
"Be careful on your way there, Ruby is playing soccer in the yard," he yelled as Rachel climbed down the stairs,
"Thanks!" she yelled on the way. Her seven-year-old sister with a soccer ball was kind of comparable to a Canon.
Rachel ended up making it all of three minutes on her walk before it ended up flying by her head, narrowly missing her nose in the process. She stopped the ball with her telekinesis and dropped it on the ground before looking over at her sister, who was playing on the lawn.
"Sorry!" yelled Ruby running forward with their cousin Katie just on her trail. Ruby was bright red and shiny, hence the name. She did have another form-- one she had been born in-- but her non-ruby form couldn't sustain her for more than a few hours without machines. Ruby was what most people would call a miracle baby. She had been born nearly three months early, with most of her organs shutting down. It had seemed like she wasn't going to make it. Then, as if by some twist of fate, the baby had turned to ruby and her vital signs had stabilized… and in addition, the dark black beams that shot out of her eyes without the goggles she now wore had caused Ruby's first broken window at two days old. Which really probably set a record.
"Shouldn't someone be watching you?" Rachel asked, not noticing any adults in eyesight. Ruby adjusted the black aviator goggles up a bit and then shrugged,
"Someone's probably around,"
Rachel sighed, she was probably right.
"Okay well, I have to go, just try and find uncle Logan," she suggested running off to try to make up for the time she'd wasted, suddenly she thought of her non-mutant little cousin with a soccer ball whirling towards her head and added, "try not to kill Katie!"
Rachel made it the rest of the way to the school without interruption and was very glad for the mostly empty halls. During the school year, the whole thing would be crowded and it would be a nightmare for Rachel's brain. Plus she'd get stopped at least three times. Today, however, barely anyone was inside unless they were cooking for today's barbeque to celebrate the end of school.
Usually, only two people were cooking since most people chose to ignore the kitchen arguments between Rachel's mom and uncle Remy. However, Rachel had to walk right past the kitchen of hell.
As she moved towards the kitchen her mother's head stuck out the door.
"Rachel, could you settle an argument please?"
Rachel sighed,
"I have to meet Grandfather in his office," she explained, hoping that she could somehow get out of the mess she would surely be dragged into.
"It'll just take a minute, and you get to eat food,"
Rachel sighed again and followed her mom into the kitchen. "Okay just try these both and tell us which is better,"
Rachel looked at the two containers of chicken salad. It was already clear which was her mom's and which was uncle Remy's but if she said that he would accuse her of bias when she chose her mom's. She had always preferred her mom's cooking, just a bit, but spicy food hurt her mouth.
She took a bit of the one clearly filled with more spices and scrunched up her face as it hit her tongue. It was good, but without the bread, it was way too much flavour. Rachel quickly took a bite of the other one to cool down her taste buds and pointed at the second container.
"I like this better, but they're both good," she quickly fled the room before the fighting started.
"Okay yeah your daughter likes your cooking, let's get someone less partial," she heard her uncle Remy say as Rachel ran off. In all fairness, TJ would probably like the other one, as would Ruby, and the Cuckoos would be split on the matter.
Rachel once again started moving towards the old wing of the school. Despite all the times they had rebuilt the house, the old wing was mostly the same as it had been since the beginning. Some of the rooms had never even been torn down. Her grandfather liked it this way. This was where her parents and the other original X-Men had stayed during their teen-aged years. No one actually lived in this hall anymore but the rooms were still set up a bit like they did. Some doors open and others closed, from what she knew they were accurate to how the original five had kept their doors. She had asked her uncle Hank why this was once and he said he thought that the Professor probably just liked to remember simpler times. He had said it with a tinge of bitterness but she hadn't pried any further. She knew when to stop asking questions.
Rachel walked to the end of the hall and knocked on the last door.
"Come in Rachel Anne," said her grandfather's voice telepathically. Rachel opened the door.
"My dad said you wanted to talk to me," Rachel said, her grandfather nodded.
"I'd like to see you try a danger room trial," he said abruptly. Rachel froze. She had been in the danger room before, that was standard for mutant kids above seven, but a trial was different than training. In training there was a goal, get to the other side of the room, kill this monster, cross this river, but in a trial, the room just loaded up challenge after challenge until you lost, and then gave you a score.
Rachel had never attempted a trial before, let alone attempted one without her team.
"You mean a training session?" she asked. He shook his head,
"I'd like you to try out trial," he told her. Rachel nodded, feeling nervousness and excitement rise in her chest. Danger room trials were something she had been looking forward to her entire life.
"Okay, do we have extra suits?" Rachel asked. Usually, for training, she just wore work out clothes, but the suits were made out of stronger material that wouldn't rip,
"That's why we're in this section of the school actually, your mother's room is full of old costumes, and they're still in great condition," he told her.
"Okay." Her mood dropped a bit, already anticipating the "compliments" on what a young lady she looked like in her mother's old clothes, and the questions on if she'd be wearing one of the outfits he got her for Christmas to the barbeque. Her grandfather bought her clothes that looked like something her mother would have worn as a teen for every holiday. She sometimes wondered if he saw any difference between Rachel and her mother.
Still, almost nothing could ruin this for her, and those old school X-Men costumes weren't the worst she'd seen. Some of Emma Frost's old costumes didn't even have pants.
Rachel and her grandfather walked to the hall where he waited for her as she walked into the pale pink bedroom and closed the door. Her mother's clothes had been held in a fancy Armoire during her teenage years and Rachel felt out of place opening it, like it was something from a part of her mother's life she just wasn't supposed to be in. Half of it was dresses, and the other half superhero costumes, with a small third portion dedicated to superhero costume dresses, which even Rachel's mom now agreed, were completely pointless. She shoved all the dresses aside and looked at the remaining costumes. This was a small fraction of all the costumes that her mom had ever worn and was essentially just a few versions of the original yellow costume. Rachel smiled, these were a little bit neat. She grabbed a selection of masks from the shelf above. She placed the pointy mask on her face but immediately found that it didn't necessarily work unless you had the patience to style your hair as her mom did, and that her curly red hair was falling in her face. Rachel grabbed the next one. This was one of the original masks, it covered half her face but it did do the job of keeping her hair back. Rachel took it off and grabbed one of the yellow and black costumes from the closet before taking off her jeans and jacket and pulling the costume up and putting the mask on. She looked in the mirror quickly and adjusted a strand of hair, she could definitely see why people thought she looked so much like her mom when she was wearing this costume.
Rachel walked back to the hallway,
"Lovely!" her grandfather exclaimed. Rachel smiled weakly and walked behind his wheelchair. The walk to the danger room was pretty long and she didn't want him to have to push himself there, she didn't know exactly how old her grandfather was but he had to be at least eighty.
The walk to the danger room was slowed down a bit from how long it would usually take Rachel to walk since the wheelchair was kind of heavy but Rachel didn't mind.
"Rachel Anne, have you thought about what codename you'll take yet?"
"Uh not yet, I think I'll probably just use something simple," Rachel told him. It wasn't exactly true, she had considered using Marvel Girl, but if she told her grandfather this he would get much too excited and she'd be stuck with it.
"Alright, we can just use your name for today." He articulated his point with a nod. They finally arrived at the danger room and Rachel felt like sighing with relief since the conversation was getting awkward. Her grandfather moved towards the control room and Rachel walked into the danger room itself. The first challenge loaded up and Rachel moved into a fighting position. She took a deep breath, she could handle this.
"You did fantastically!" Exclaimed her grand- or the Professor, sincr she was in the danger room.
"Thanks," Rachel huffed, hands on her knees. Rachel had made it through about ten scenarios before she got pounced on from behind by a tiger in a replica of the savage lands.
"You made it through eleven scenarios and we're halfway through the next one. Nearly your mother's scores at that age actually," he told her. That would have been exciting if she hadn't started in the danger room four years younger than her mom had. Rachel straightened her posture and tried to return to her normal breath pattern.
"What'd my dad have when he was my age?" Rachel asked.
"Your father had different scenarios than you at his age, the same simulations wouldn't challenge all power sets," he explained. Rachel was still curious to know what her father had scored but knew that this was the end of the conversation.
"Is it okay if I go now? TJ and I wanted to get ready for the barbeque together," she asked. She didn't want to seem rude but that had taken at least an hour and she and TJ tended to "doddle" as Aunt Wanda put it
"Go ahead." He gestured "go" with a flick of his wrist and Rachel smiled before running off. TJ's house wasn't too far from the main building but she had to get back to the old wing to change, and then she had to grab her party outfit from her room. Rachel changed quickly in her mother's old room and hung up the costume before sprinting to her family's apartment. Rachel lived with her mom and her little brother Nathan in the main building most of the time. She stayed with her dad sometimes but it wasn't very practical for her to walk all the way there and back for school just to spend maybe five minutes more with her dad than she would anyway since he was at the school lots anyways.
Rachel opened the door to the apartment and found her brother sitting on the couch reading a book about something lame and stuck up her middle finger at him, he did it back in return and Rachel moved to her room. Rachel's room was a grey colour, something that made TJ laugh because of Rachel's last name. Her bed was pushed against the wall and her dresser was on the opposite side, with a small desk in the corner holding her laptop and a few stacks of paper.
Rachel looked at the clothes she had spread across her bed. She was not wearing the calf-length dress her grandfather had gotten her for Christmas, just a nice pair of jeans and her nice red leather jacket over a t-shirt. She grabbed all the outfits and went to her jewelry box to pick out a few pieces. She grabbed her planet shaped earrings and her Pheonix Force necklace and tossed them in her make-up bag before heading out of her room.
"See you later," she said to her brother as she walked out the door. He gave no response.