The day had already started on a sour note, and Emma Frost was not looking forward to the one appointment she had for the day.
As if it wasn't enough to awaken to find that a pipe had broken in her master bath-flooding it and the adjoining study, and rendering her shower unusable-she had been contacted at the last possible minute by Dr. McCoy to inform her of the location where she would have to give her assessment of Mr. Allerdyce.
"If I didn't know better, Henry, I might think you rather enjoy yanking me around like this."
"If I were a lesser man, Ms. Frost, I might say that I do."
Emma shook her head with the smallest of smiles. Unpleasant though she found it, a visit to Charles' school wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to her. It had been months since she'd seen her girls, and she would finally have her chance to pay her respects to the dead.
All her efforts to think positive were made null and void by the negativity emanating from the massive building before her. Pressing the fingertips of one hand lightly against her temple, Emma slid from the white limousine and strode up the steps to the mansion's front entrance, trying to maintain a professional veneer. Honestly, Charles, couldn't you have taught your people how to keep their minds to themselves?
Pressing the doorbell set off an elaborate chime and a small wave of nausea, the latter of which was explained when a petite dark-haired girl opened the door. Raking over Emma with the blackest of looks, she closed the door again without saying a word.
It was opened again a few moments later by a tall boy with bright blue eyes. "You must be Ms. Frost," he said warmly, extending his hand to shake hers. "I'm Bobby Drake, and this is-" Bobby glanced over his shoulder at the girl sulking behind him.
"Miss Pryde and I are already well acquainted. Bobby. Aren't we, Katherine?" She flashed a saccharine smile at Kitty, whose thoughts turned downright jagged.
He stepped aside and held the door open to allow her to enter, Kitty remaining at Bobby's side as she glared at the interloper. Resisting the impulse to give the girl a sudden migraine, Emma turned from her foul expression to follow Bobby to Ororo's office.
XXXX
"While I appreciate the pretense of hospitality, Ms. Munroe, I must tell you that I would much rather dispense with the pleasantries and get right down to business."
Some things never change, Ororo thought to herself as she appraised the woman in front of her. If there was anything she could admire about Emma Frost, it was her ability to cut straight to the heart of the matter. "Very well then. If you'll have a seat, I'll brief you on his case history and you can-"
"Patient is a post-adolescent male with high level pyrokinetic abilities that manifested at the age of 11. Ran away from an unstable home situation and was headed towards becoming a statistic before Professor Xavier intervened after a particularly gruesome episode involving a loss of control and a couple of most unfortunate 7-11 clerks. Intelligent but belligerent, with a very low tolerance for authority figures and those he perceives as controlling." Emma cocked her head, looking bored. "Shall I continue, or are you satisfied that I've done my homework?"
Ororo said nothing, but telepathy notwithstanding it wasn't hard to determine her mood from the tiny lines that formed around her mouth and between her eyes. "Logan will take you to his holding cell." Her eyes slid between the blond woman and the large, burly man who had stepped into the office sometime during Emma's tirade. "Behave. Please."
It was hard to say which of them she was addressing.
XXXX
At the sight of the woman in the short white skirt and tight white blouse left unbuttoned until it was just this side of decent, John let out a low whistle. "Does this mean I've been a good boy?"
"Can the snark, John, we have work to do." Sitting down in the chair on the other side of the conference nook in his cell, she opened her briefcase-John didn't even know Gucci made briefcases-and pulled out a legal pad, a pen and a small tape recorder. "My name is Emma Frost. I'm the therapist assigned to your case."
"So how much time do we get to spend together? 'Cause I think I feel a mental breakdown coming on." He winked at her, and Emma's lip curled just slightly.
"John, I of all people understand that you are a young human-" his twitch at the word was almost unperceivable- "male with healthy, normal urges, but let me warn you that I lack the compunction of the late Dr. Grey over making…adjustments."
"Oh. You're one of them." His eyes narrowed, and he turned away. "Session's over. I have the right to…refuse medical attention, or something."
"First things first-I am most certainly not one of 'them'," she stated crisply, surprising John, "and secondly, you don't get to refuse my services. Such is the beauty of your legal system." She flipped to an empty page on her legal pad and gestured to the chair opposite her. "Now please, have a seat and I promise I will make this as painless as possible for the both of us."
He wasn't sure why he believed her-maybe she was in his head already-but John sat down in front of the unflappable Ms. Frost.
XXXX
"You're gonna strain something if you keep carrying on with that look on your face," Logan said as he walked into Kitty's room without knocking. "What gives?"
Kitty looked up from her computer, where she was busy googling arsenic, cyanide and traceable amounts. In a voice she usually reserved for very small children and dogs, she explained; "A close friend of mine is a cured mutant, an ex-close friend of mine is a terrorist, and a woman who tried to kill all my teachers and turn me into an instrument of evil is downstairs, probably brainwashing the terrorist into killing us all while we sleep."
Logan raised an eyebrow in warning. "Keep it up. We haven't assigned anyone to washing the X-Jet for the next month."
She turned her attention back to the computer monitor. "Better that than playing waitress for Mr. Happypants."
Sighing, her teacher and friend crossed the room to sit on her bed, settling uncomfortably on the fuzzy pink throw that adorned the end. "That what's been bothering you?"
"The whole thing is what's bothering me, Logan! There isn't anything right now that doesn't bother me!" Throwing up her hands in exasperation, Kitty stood up and pushed her chair in with a flourish, then flopped down on her back on the bed next to him. "It's just…I just thought the whole thing would be over when we won."
"Guess we left that part out of the pep talk."
Kitty chuckled in spite of herself. "I guess so."
"Look." Even though Logan was starting to feel a sense of paternal protectiveness towards the younger members of the team, the parental voice still evaded him. "I'm not gonna lie to you, it's not like it's gonna be easy to deal with, and sometimes even when you think you've got it under control it kind of sneaks up on you and overwhelms you…" He looked down at Kitty. "I'm not helping, am I?" She shook her head. "You don't have to deal with it by yourself. Is what I'm trying to say."
"You haven't done this much, have you?"
"How'd you guess?" He reached up to scratch the back of his neck as he stood up. "Anyway, I didn't come in here to start soundin' like a Prozac commercial."
Smiling, Kitty got up off the bed and extended her arms in the international symbol for give me a hug, and he wrapped an arm around her as she squeezed his waist. "Thanks, Logan."
The sound of a feminine throat clearing drew their attention to the door, where Rogue stood, hands on hips and a small frown on her face. "Storm sent me to get you," she said, keeping her gaze on Logan. He nodded and left the room, both girls watching him leave.
Rogue looked back for a second, just a second, but it was long enough for Kitty to catch the expression of annoyance on her face before she flounced off. The small balloon of hope that had started to form in her chest deflated.
Kitty sat back down at her desk, maximizing her browser screen and typing in how to stop inadvertently pissing people off.
XXXX
"Idiots! Incompetent monkeys, the whole lot of them!" Emma paced the office in fury as she scrolled through the contacts in her cell phone. "How am I supposed to stay somewhere else for the night if I can't even enter the house for necessities?"
Giving the "send" button a vicious jab, she stopped by an end table and tapped a foot impatiently on the floor as she waited for someone to answer. "Yes. My name is Emma Frost, and some of your men were looking at my plumbing today-which is not a double entendre, you ignorant buffoon-and they've just called me to tell me I can't go back into my home for another two days at the soonest. I need you to call them and tell them to let me in long enough to get some of my-yes, I know what 'structural integrity' is, I'm not stupid-do you have any idea what-" Her eyes widened in shock, and she pulled the phone away from her ear to throw it on the sofa. "He hung up on me! Enough, I'm going back there and I'll make them bring out-"
"Emma, you're more than welcome to stay here," Ororo interrupted, contrary to the look in her eyes that implied the opposite. "We have plenty of toiletries, and you're close enough to my size that-"
"No offense, darling, but I wouldn't be caught dead in those ridiculous getups you call a wardrobe." Retrieving the phone off the sofa, Emma started going through her contacts again.
"Aunt Emma!" A trio of voices burst through the door just in front of the three blonde girls they belonged to.
The expression on Emma's face changed instantly, and she dropped the cell phone again. "Girls!" She hugged them each in turn, smiling and pecking them on each cheek. None of them spoke, but suddenly the group burst into laughter on some silent cue.
It wasn't quite the scene Logan had been expecting. "Why aren't they talking? I thought she hadn't seen them in a while."
"They are talking. Just not so we can hear them." Ororo tried not to feel paranoid, but couldn't help but wonder if their simultaneous glee had been at her expense.
"Oh. Just when I thought we were fresh out of telepaths."
Emma smiled one last time at the girls, who looked for all the world like miniature Emmas themselves, and then they left the room still giggling quietly to themselves.
Turning back to her reluctant hosts, Emma's mood was obviously improved from her snit of a few minutes earlier. "On second thought, picking up my belongings would take too much time to be worthwhile. I suppose I can survive for the time being."
"How very grand of you," Ororo mumbled dryly. "I'll show you to a room."