Thanks to hippiechick2112 and Feathered moon wings for reviewing! While it was Ororo getting grounded last chapter, Scott has been grounded before... and I think it's fairly low-spoiler to say he will be again.

She sneaks him in after her shift and for once he is not the center of her attention. With no one here to stop her, she climbs into the plane, into the cockpit. He stands on the wing, leans over her shoulder as he shows her how to fly, his breath against her cheek.

She smells like candy. It's all he can do not to fall off the plane.

They talk about flying. They talk about their lives. She tells him about history.

He never did care for reading at school, nor the dreary verses at Sunday school, but she brings him books from the library in Dayton. She reads to him. He likes words much more when she reads them.

Their stolen moments eclipse the sun, eclipse country and orders. Nearly all his life is military but the most important moments are hers. But the military doesn't care and when he learns he's to be transferred, the words devastate him.

They seem to have so little time to part, Katherine and Chris, and suddenly a light shines on the little time they have spent together.

She surprises him one dimming evening in the hangar.

They have cried together. They have held tight to one another. They have kissed and cuddled and touched but never this. He looks at her, all of her, so perfectly placed beside a freshly-painted Boeing monoplane.

He uses up all his self-control on a single question: "Are you certain?"

She is.

"I've never loved anyone the way I love you, Chris. I never will… I never want to."

The interior of Chris's ship tended to become uncomfortably hot and stuffy during the day, so Chris and Alex spent most afternoons working the ship's exterior. They worked in a good rhythm now, familiar with each other.

Alex had come home from the drug store today. When he worked at the garage he could continue on with whatever clothes he was wearing. The drug store he left a dress shirt over one of the spacecraft's wings, his dad's suggestion after he left the shirt lying on the grass. (His dad told him not to do that.)

"Something on your mind?" Chris asked. "Needle-nosed pliers."

Alex handed over the pliers. "Nah, nothing. Enjoying the work."

"Hm. Likewise. Good company."

Alex smiled to himself.

"The plane, I mean," Chris continued. A few seconds and he grinned.

Alex laughed and shoved him, acknowledging that it had been clever and funny but not appreciated.

"'S how I got to be a pilot. When I was in the Army, I loved the planes, loved to fly. It was knowing how the plane worked that made flight make any sense." Chris stopped working and caught Alex's eye. "Educating yourself is everything, Alex."

The look on Alex's face was less than appreciative. "How'd you know?"

"You're still my kid. I know you're happier here, working with me, than you are at your other job."

He could claim it was the uniform. He was a lot more comfortable in an undershirt than the white collar required at the drug store. Could claim it was the waning sunshine.

"When I leave, you can come with me. Maybe you and your brother—but whatever you do, you keep learning. If you come with me, I'll teach you everything I know. If you stay here, you'll stay in school until you graduate from college. At least."

A part of Alex wanted to insist on doing otherwise. He never did take well to authority figures and even though this authority figure was his dad, Alex instinctively wanted to rebel. To say he'd stay in school if he liked it.

To say that he already had one big brother, thanks.

"I, um… I don't know about—Dad, I—"

"You don't have to make a decision yet. Just tell me you'll graduate."

"If I stay here, I'll graduate. I promise."

"Good. Do we have a wire stripper?"

"Um… yeah, here you go."

Chris took it and handed Alex the pliers. "You know, your mother and I, we didn't have that option. Schooling. It was the Depression. Then you and your brother came along, and…"

"Didn't you plan on us?" Alex wondered.

He always assumed children were deliberate. Perhaps, he reasoned, that was because so many people he knew were fostered or adopted, and those things didn't happen on accident. Sean's parents were Catholic, as were Alex's adoptive parents. As for Charles, well, it was strange to think that he had parents and didn't just suddenly appear, fully grown, like magic.

"Well, we knew you were a possibility."

There was something in Chris's tone, a suggestion Alex did not quite catch—then, suddenly, he did. "Ugh!"

Alex knew where babies came from, of course, but nonetheless, it wasn't a reminder he needed. Not about his own mother.

"In fact I'm surprise you don't have more sibl—"

"Chrissakes, Dad!"

He was almost relieved when Ororo called to them that it was time for dinner. Chris was still amused with his awful, awful joke.

Just awful.

Alex forgot about that the second he saw what was on the table.

"Ooh, pizza!"

He reached for a slice. Ruth slapped his hand. "You can wait thirty seconds!"

"But what if I can't?" Alex appealed. "Ruth. Please. I'm suffering."

Ruth rolled her eyes in response.

"Can't help myself. Ruth's pizza is better than regular pizza," he told Chris. "It's actually addictive on a physical level."

"Chemical."

"Thanks, Hank."

Alex did not have an unreasonable wait before everyone was sitting around the table, taking slices of pizza.

Asking about Alex's childhood had become something of a tradition since Chris's arrival. Although Alex was only three years old the last time Chris saw him, there were plenty of stories. Alex colored on the walls. Alex ran around the house shouting "Aleps Aleps Aleps!" Alex learned to take his diaper off…

"So," Ororo asked, "what was Alex's brother like?"

Alex's immediate reaction was relief. For once they could hear a story about someone else spitting mashed peas all over the table or shouting "Mommy me walk!" in the middle of the library.

Then he realized an uncomfortableness passed around the table. Charles and Ruth exchanged glances. Ororo was up to something, but she had not actually crossed a line. Alex's brother wasn't forbidden territory, just something they had all implicitly agreed not to discuss.

"Scott," Chris said. "He, uh… he was a very serious child. Quiet but affectionate."

He began hesitantly, but any difficulty evaporated by the end of the sentence. Ruth and Charles both visibly shifted in posture. They had been worried and that worry drained.

Chris could do this.

"The boys' mother, Katherine, was very smart and she loved to read. Alex always needed to be in motion but Scott would sit for hours while his mother read to him."

It was easy to imagine. Even now, studiousness was not Alex's strong suit. He worked very hard at it, but it wasn't his nature to be steady and quiet.

"That's how I imagine he might be today, that if he's out there. Sitting quietly, reading."

He was right at that. Alex was sure everyone else was thinking the same thing, that Scott was exactly what Chris imagined. But—with a burst of anger toward his brother—no one could say so.

For a moment, they were quiet.

"That's a very beautiful sentiment, Chris," Charles said. "Thank you for sharing, I can't imagine—"

"Why's she dead?" Scott asked. "Your wife. I mean, if you love her so much, why did you let her die?"

"Hey!" Alex objected.

"And where have you been? You play at being this loving dad—"

"That's enough," Charles warned.

"—but Katherine is dead and you left Alex for twenty years! You didn't care! For twenty! Fucking! Years!"

"Matthew!"

Alex had been in trouble a fair amount in his life. He got in trouble a lot at school and, as he grew older, at home. He picked fights with cops, usually when he was buzzed. But hearing Charles shout was enough to make him snap back in his seat.

"Take a walk."

The words were hard more than sharp, warning that argument would be fruitless. Alex glanced at Scott, watched him get up and walk away.

Chris's head had drooped. He excused himself and left, too.

Alex followed him outside. "Dad, wait." It was July, days so long nights passed in a blink. Nearly twilight and the bugs were working up to a frenzy. "Dad, it's not true."

A statement.

A plea: please tell me it's not true.

"Not now," Chris replied. He continued toward his ship and Alex continued after him.

It was frustrating, but it was also the brush-off parents gave children. Even those moments were good ones in Alex's book.

"Look, it's not true, okay?"

Chris paused and turned to face Alex. "It is true, Alex. I couldn't save your mother. I left you alone. That is true and it's something I have to live with for the rest of my life."

"Well…" He couldn't argue the facts. Yes, his mother was dead. And yes, for twenty years, he thought his father was, too. The reasoning sounded pathetic even to Alex: "I still want you to be my dad."

Chris's expression shifted. "I am your dad. I just need a moment to myself, all right?"

Alex preferred not to push people on personal matters. He preferred not to let on that they could hurt him.

"Yeah. Of course."

"Am I grounded?"

Ruth had updated Charles on that afternoon, so he supposed he should not have been surprised to hear that when he arrived in Ororo's room.

"I'm afraid so. But chin up, it's only for a week."

Ororo did not put her chin up, metaphorically or physically. Instead she asked, "Is Scott grounded?"

Charles wasn't sure he followed the logic there. He wanted the children to have the same opportunities to one another. He wanted them both to learn and to play and to have. He wanted them to be comfortable—and those things were happening.

But treating them equally did not mean grounding them equally any more than it meant giving them the same marks in their classes.

"There will be consequences for his actions at dinner—"

"He was out all day!" she insisted.

Ah. This wasn't about Scott mouthing off.

"I was only out for a little while. Why am I being punished?"

"Consequences, Ororo. Actions have consequences. In this case it was not an action you took but the one you did not take. You aren't grounded because you left the grounds but because you did so without telling us. We know where Scott goes and that is why he is not grounded."

"He stopped at the gas station."

"That's enough." He said it tolerantly, but with a hint of impatience. He had allowed her to complain about being grounded. She was approaching unacceptable territory.

Ororo went quiet for a moment. "Why would someone have a scar like this?" she asked. She drew a line across her chest, then across her waist, then down her front.

She knew that was not an adequate explanation, which explained why Charles looked so uncertain. "It sounds," he said, after a moment, "like a vivisection. In some sciences, to experiment or better understand how our bodies work, much smaller animals may be used—mice, frogs. It's not something you would see on a person."

"What if I did?" she asked.

"Well, you—" Charles began. He stopped abruptly and his expression became much more serious. "Have you seen a person with an autopsy scar? A body?" he asked. "Sometimes if someone dies and we don't know why—"

"You're condescending," Ororo interrupted.

She tried to sound annoyed, but came off sounding hurt. She and Charles looked at one another. It was new ground for both of them, the acknowledgment that Ororo was not just smart. She needed to be smart.

Looking into her eyes, Charles realized that they were very much the same. He used his intellect to survive a crushing cold house. When there was no affection in his life—he was comfortable, but the maid knew him far better than his own mother did—he had the warmth of learning. It made him feel alive.

Ororo did not live in a home without affection. Ruth was demonstrative. Scott could be reserved sometimes, but he loved her, that was very clear. And Charles was not particularly keen to express emotions with any regularity, but what he lacked in expression he made up for in dedication. Ororo had a weird family who loved her.

This world was different from what she knew and although she had a safe and loving home, there was more to the United States than the mansion. The rest of it was foreign. Even here there were cultural misunderstandings from time to time. Ororo's intellect was her safety from that. She might not understand American culture (not that Charles blamed her, neither did he half the time), but she could do American schooling.

An outsider, not an idiot.

"Yes," he agreed, "I was condescending. I apologize. Now, shall we?" he asked, indicating the book.