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His time in Alaska was beautiful.
But he couldn't help thinking about it in terms of Katherine. The opposite of Katherine. That she was small and soft and warm, while the wilderness was jagged and harsh and his breath puffed white clouds in the morning.
Both stole his breath. Katherine and Alaska were the most astounding visions, concepts Chris knew. Both were larger than life, though only one literally.
He enjoyed the time, enjoyed his work with the planes, but he missed her. Other men made for enjoyable company. He liked the laughter. The booze wasn't bad either, and plenty free-flowing—wild Alaska was a bit unlike Dayton!
Six months and he steps off the plane back in Ohio. His family is here and he is genuinely happy to see his brother and sisters, his mom and dad. That's nothing compared to how he felt at the thought of seeing Katherine again.
He waits for her outside the hangar.
The first day he misses her.
The second day he arrives earlier.
By the third day, even his military training can't stretch his patience. He calls over one of the girls, the plumpish one with the dark curls.
"Have you seen Kate?"
"Kate?" the girl repeats. She looks around, looks uncomfortable. "Excuse me, I need to…"
Chris tries to stop her, but she ignores him.
He takes the bus back to Akron. He stays with his parents. Akron isn't easy. Nowhere is easy. The base is one thing; the level of discipline can be a challenge, but the level of poverty simply does not exist. Everyone has clothes even if they are rough, food even if it tastes like someone else ate it first and you rather not guess which end it came out of to land on your tray.
The real world makes him miss Alaska.
"Oh shit, are we really out of tomatoes?"
"Alex, language," Charles said mildly.
The kitchen was its usually sensible location on July the 4th. Charles sat at the table with tea and toast he would not be allowed to enjoy with any semblance of peaceful reflection, but some days he would take familial closeness over quiet.
Which was lucky, because Ororo had discovered strange, thin products in the fridge that seemed vaguely laminated and unnervingly orange. She held a square up and was wriggling it like a flag in a tornado. What a strange sort of nonsense this was! But what had it been doing in the fridge?
"But how are we out of tomatoes?" Alex insisted. He stood with one hand on the fridge door, the other raking through his hair, as it did when he was nervous.
Hank was enjoying it immensely.
Alex caught his smirk. "You're behind this," he accused.
"No."
"What other nerd snacks on tomatoes?"
"It wasn't me."
"What the hell, Hank!"
"For pity's sake," Charles interrupted, "they're tomatoes, Alex. There's no shortage."
"I could go get more," Ororo offered without taking her eyes off the wriggling orange square.
"You will not," Charles replied, reminding her that he actually did know that she was grounded—and that she really was grounded. "Matthew can—oh. Alex…" Charles took out his wallet and offered a note to Alex. "Buy more tomatoes."
Alex took the cash—"Thanks"—and gave Hank an evil look.
"It wasn't Hank," Charles added. When Alex gave him a questioning look, Charles explained, "Ruth. It was beautiful."
"Sweet," Alex said, chuckling.
"Gross," Ororo commented.
"Alex, you wouldn't happen to know where Matthew is, would you?" Charles asked.
Alex shook his head. "Haven't seen him since last night."
Charles began to comment on that, then read something that made him stop. He didn't need to read it telepathically. Hank's body language was not subtle.
"Ah," Charles said. "Go on, then. Get your tomatoes."
Alex nodded. "And you, don't eat all my cheese!" he said, tapping Ororo on the head.
"This is cheese?" She took a small bite. "Eew! Get real cheese. Get the stuff with the holes."
"Jarlsberg," Charles supplied.
"You want jarlsburgers?" Alex asked. "Dude, it's Independence Day."
"There's something wrong with this," Ororo said. She spat the not-cheese into the trash. "Gross. Get the cheese-holes!" she called at Alex's back as he headed out of the room.
"You're a cheese-hole," Alex retorted.
"Jerk!"
"Gnat!" Then the sound of a door shutting as Alex had the most last of words.
Charles, more solemnly, turned to Hank.
"Where's Scott?"
He shrugged in a poor mockery of innocence. "Probably went for a run."
"He doesn't leave the property when he runs, on the property I could sense him!"
Charles heard the snap in his voice and he truly regretted it. Generally, he trusted Scott. Lately, with what the boy was going through, Charles had no choice but to give him a shorter leash. He was still so young and his judgment was imperfect. So the fact the Hank knew where Scott was and refused to say was frustrating.
Nevertheless, an apology was due. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to speak to you that way, Hank."
Hank shrugged again. "It's okay."
"No, it isn't. You both do that, you dismiss apologies."
"I guess you're the cheese-hole," Ororo offered. When Charles gave her a look, she affected innocence—as poorly as Hank, but not seriously. "I don't dismiss apologies. I thought that was what you wanted!"
Charles sighed, wanting to respond to that but knowing he hadn't the grounds. It was strange how he wavered between opinions on Ororo's intelligence. Either he was wishing she would apply it more when she was studying, or he was wishing she would apply it less when she was being a smart-aleck. He would settle for an average of that two.
She changed the subject to, "How's the, um, all the building… stuff… going?"
"The renovations are coming along nicely," Hank said, delivering the word 'renovations' like it was dipping in chocolate. For Ororo, it might as well have been.
"What are you doing down there, anyway?"
"We're using Chris's hard light technology to update the shelter into a better, safer training room and building a room for Cerebro."
"Cerebro already has a room," Ororo pointed out.
"Cerebro needs a better power source and the cabling is beyond unwieldy."
"Why is it called that?"
"Unwieldy?"
"Cerebro."
Charles and Hank answered together, "It's Spanish for 'brain'."
"Oh." Ororo considered that for a moment. "I thought Spanish sounded just like English," she said. "Like 'delicioso' and 'distancia' and 'tree-o'."
Hank looked puzzled. "The Spanish word for tree is árbol."
"But it was a reasonable thing to guess," Ororo argued. She had a point. There were quite a lot of English and Spanish cognates, but they were still separate languages.
"What are we guessing?" Ruth asked, stepping into the kitchen. She was slick with sweat, her hair in a tight braid. Like Scott, Ruth tended to run on the Xavier estate. Unlike Scott, she did so because otherwise she worried her superhuman speeds would attract unwanted attention. The brick wall protected against that, although it had not been the best protection the time she ran into it. Besides a few wiggly bricks, there was no harm done.
Charles answered her, "Ororo is guessing how to say things in Spanish. I am guessing where my son has gone."
"Hank knows," Ruth offered. She took a packet of cheese slices out of the fridge, gave it a distasteful look, and continued rummaging.
"What do you mean, Hank knows? How do you know?"
"I do not know, Hank does. Because Hank knows everything. Also, because Scott told me Hank knows where he will be."
"Did either of you plan on telling me?" Charles asked.
"No," Hank replied honestly.
"I intended to," Ruth said. "I was… distracted."
The looks they gave each other suggested precisely what she had found so distracting.
"Gross!" Ororo groaned.
"I thought you weren't Puritanical about sex," Hank said.
"I am when my parents are doing it!" she objected. Alex wasn't there, but Ororo knew what he would have said: At least they're not actually doin' it right now. That was deeply unfair. How could Alex make his comments when he wasn't even in the room!
Later that morning she wandered into the garage. Usually Alex and Scott used the garage most and she was not particularly interested in cars, but Ororo liked looking through the bits and pieces that existed in the gap between what the Xaviers would throw away and what they would keep in the house. There were random things, like an old, ornate birdcage and wheels to a vehicle so old it barely qualified as a car.
There was her, too. The girl in the gap. The girl who lived in this country but didn't feel right celebrating it. She was an American citizen and her dad had been American. Her pre-Charles dad had been American.
She didn't think that really made her American. She didn't consider herself Egyptian because her pre-Ruth mom was Egyptian but because she knew the country.
She didn't know America. She was crashing its birthday party as Alex's unwelcome plus-one.
Ororo found a bunch of old paint cans and shook them. Something sloshed around inside the lot. She picked one and tried to pry off the lid with her fingers. When that didn't work, she found a tool chest and took out the screwdriver. She used it to pop the lids, stir up the goop inside, and paint streaks of it like red, white, and blue racing stripes on her legs.
On second thought, she considered, maybe she should have done black and white. After all… she was. Right?
Ororo shook her head. Was this supposed to make her feel better? She looked at her striped legs and wondered why she thought this was a good idea. Plus—noting the design on her shorts—she was pretty sure you were not supposed to wear stripes with plaids.
A sudden noise startled her. The garage door was opening. Ororo looked at her legs and considered hiding. It beat trying to explain to someone why she was painted. Instead she plunked herself down on the stairs leading into the house.
Alex pulled his junker into the garage and parked.
"Hey, Gnat!" he called. "I got your Jarlsberg, you commie. Oh decided to show your stripes, I see. Groovy."
She nodded.
"You okay?" he asked when he got close.
She nodded again. "Yeah…" She showed him her hands, smeared with red, white, and blue paint.
Alex nodded back. He grabbed a squarish metal bottle and poured some onto a rag.
"Hey, Ororo, does this rag smell like chloroform to you?"
He clearly thought this was funny, but she frowned in confusion.
"What's chaloroform?" she tried to repeat the word.
"It's a—never mind. Just give me your hand."
"Why?"
"Just gimme."
Ororo did. Alex wiped the foul-smelling rag over her hands, using Turpentine to clear off the red, white, and blue. He left her stripes, though.
"C'mon. Let's chill the 'berg and wait for the twerp. Maybe he'll be late."
"Late means grounded," Ororo reminded him.
Alex grinned like a lion. "Other people watch football."
He started into the mansion and Ororo tagged after him. The football comment reminded her: "Hey, Alex? Are you sure I should be there, at the July thing?"
"Fourth of July," he corrected.
"Fourth of July thing."
"'Course you should. I said so."
"Yeah," she admitted, "but… I'm not really American."
"You're not Christian, you still did Christmas."
"I did, but…"
She supposed it was difficult to explain to someone like Alex. She liked him and all, but he was a blond-haired, fair-skinned man and—not that she would tell him to his face—he was handsome. There were challenges in this world that he would never understand.
"How about be there 'cause we want you there?" Alex suggested. "I mean, Ruth and Charles aren't exactly American, either. They still feel like family."