Holidays tripped me up. Oops. Here, have a happy new year chapter.
Chapter 8 : Space Princess
Ariel was all but bouncing in her seat in the Marvel as they approached Hala. Melody and E'tann had reached out just before the school year to invite the family to the official betrothal ceremony, and that meant it was Ariel's first time going to her grandfather's home planet. Until that time, Krissy had left her with her parents or stayed behind with her just because something had always come up — a cold or ear infection or something.
Now, all of three years old, she was ready to take Hala by storm.
"Baby, you're going to wear yourself out before we get there," Krissy said, trying to get Ariel to settle down — though that definitely wasn't going to happen.
"My Auntie Melody gon' be a princess!" Ariel sang out happily, her tail waving behind her as she climbed into K's lap. "Princess Melody!" she sang.
"What do you think of that, powder puff?" K asked, tickling the little girl.
Ariel giggled delightedly as she squirmed to try to get away. "It's 'cause it's her name!" she said. "I'm a princess too! Ariel and Melody!"
"Oh, is that how it works?" K asked. "I thought there was more to it than that."
"Well, you gotta be really nice and really pretty to be a princess," Ariel informed her. "So you could be a princess too, Grammy K!"
"Oh, no," she said, shaking her head. "I'd never make it."
"But you're really, really pretty," Ariel insisted.
"And not even remotely nice," she said in a growl.
Ariel giggled at that and leaned forward to whisper, "But that's a secret! Shhh."
"Which part?" she said. "Because if it's the not nice thing? These guys already know."
Ariel scrunched up her nose. "O-kay, but I still think you can be a princess," she said. "We can be princesses together."
"I'd rather not," K said. "You be a princess with the girls. I like what they call me here."
Ariel let out a dramatic sigh and leaned all the way back until she was almost falling into Logan's lap beside K. "Grammy K is so silly," she told him upside-down.
"I like what they call her here too," Logan said, raising an eyebrow at Ariel.
"That's 'cause you like her," she told him with a crooked sort of smile. "That's okay, 'cause you're 'posed to like her."
"Good. I want to."
Ariel giggled at that before she righted herself and slipped down from K's lap to go find Jubilee and Noh so she could sit on Jubilee's shoulders to see the landing.
"Gramma, Grammy K says she can't be a princess," Ariel told Jubilee once she was up on her shoulders. "I told her she's silly. She's pretty!" She leaned over to look Jubilee in the face upside down. "Do you think she's like Auntie Elin and doesn't think she's pretty even when you say so?"
"Where do you think Aunt Elin learned that?" Jubilee said quietly.
"I thought she learned it because she was silly," Ariel said.
"No, believing it makes her silly."
"Oh, okay," Ariel said, though she got distracted again when they finally landed - and she got to lead the way off of the Marvel to where Sinta and his family — and Melody — were waiting to greet them.
Melody couldn't help but laugh when she was almost attacked by the little white fluffball with shouts of "Auntie Melody!" over and over again that clearly entertained not just Melody but Sinta's whole family, including E'tann's new baby sister, who was watching Ariel with an expression that said she had no idea what to do with the fluffy little girl.
"And who is this?" Sinta asked, unable to hide the smile as the rest of the family followed in Ariel's wake.
"My granddaughter," Noh said. "Sying's daughter, Ariel."
"She's delightful," Sinta's wife said with a smile to match as she watched Melody hoist Ariel up onto her shoulders so that she could see everything that she wanted to see.
"Of course she is," Sying said. "She's ours."
Sinta smirked at that and then turned back to Noh. "We'll be making the official announcement at the palace, and of course, you and your wife will be seated in places of honor, with the rest of your family nearby." He tipped his head K's way. "Some of my cabinet would like me to ask you to please not kill anyone if Melody changes her mind."
"I guess we'll have to see how it goes," she replied with a smirk.
Melody rolled her eyes at that as she set Ariel down and pulled her arm through E'tann's. "I'm not going to change my mind, Grammy K," she promised, which had E'tann smiling widely. The crown prince looked like he couldn't figure out what to do with himself except to smile ahead of the ceremony itself.
"Then I guess the cabinet has nothing to worry about," Logan said.
Melody grinned over at him for that, shrugged, and then waved for the family to follow them. "You should see the grand hall. It's gorgeous," she told them, clearly excited the closer they got to the palace.
The whole way there, Noh held Ariel's hand and pointed out different new things to her that she wouldn't have seen on Earth. Everything from the buildings to the sky was new to her, and she was trying to take it all in at once with wide eyes from her mother's shoulders. Eventually, they did get to the palace, which was lavishly decorated, as Melody had said. It was clear the Kree were actually thrilled to have something to celebrate and to see the line of succession better secured.
The other cabinet members all knew Noh and his family well by that point, though even after all this time of peace, a fair few of them were still more than a little wary of K in particular, even if, this time, she was there as a guest of honor. But K didn't see any reason to get riled — yet. Melody was right; she wasn't changing her mind, so there wasn't any reason to stab anyone, even if she didn't give as much away and made sure to keep her expression inscrutable.
Which was the exact opposite of what Melody was doing. She wasn't even pretending to have a poker face. At all. Instead, she was grinning widely and projecting loudly to her sister and her mother just how thrilled she was. Three months on Hala only had her falling in love with the planet and the way E'tann was on his home turf.
All that sweetness had turned him into a great leader, because people trusted him on a personal level to try to do his best. And Melody was obviously proud of him — and proud to be beside him.
Once everyone was in place, E'tann and Melody came forward to the center of the room. E'tann stepped forward, and the room went silent as he presented Melody to his parents and asked them to accept her into their family. When they did, Melody stepped forward and asked her parents to do the same, and the two of them then each bowed to the emperor to have their hands marked before they came together.
They stood in the grand hall, their hands clasped together, and even though it was a solemn occasion, Melody absolutely cheated partway through Sinta's words on the importance of their union and projected to E'tann, We're going to be pretty amazing together, huh?
Yes, we are, but you're going to make us miss our cue, E'tann said, though he couldn't quite stop the smile.
Finally, Sinta presented the two of them to the cabinet, and after a solid round of applause, the ceremony was through, and they were all able to sit down to a feast.
"It's so wonderful to see our daughter so happy," Noh whispered to Jubilee as they dug into the feast. It was obvious he was flying high, too — proud to see Melody engaged to the crown prince of Hala. And Jubilee knew he wasn't going to get over that anytime soon.
She couldn't help but shake her head at him and then lean over to kiss him — just because he was so thrilled.
And while they were mooning over how well things were going, Ariel was doing all she could to sit still with her mother, sitting still for a moment and then whipping around and getting very, very close to her to grab a hold of both sides of her face and inform her about something new she saw. Or ask what something was. One or the other.
"Baby, I don't know," she said when Ariel asked her about one of the decorations. "You need to ask your father."
"Okay," Ariel said, settling back in on her lap and snuggling in only to look at the offerings on her plate and once again whip around with a gasp. "Mama! Mama! Wha's that!"
Sying was highly entertained by the whole thing and kept laughing at every question, though he leaned over to explain what each thing was and tried to compare it to other Earth foods.
"No, no," she said, pushing her dad away. "I want Mama to tell me."
Sying laughed even harder at that, especially when Krissy had to shake her head. "Sweetheart, I don't know a lot of these things," she said. "I'm an Elf, not a Kree."
K leaned over to Krissy and whispered in her ear. "Make it up."
Krissy snorted out a little laugh at that, though when Ariel asked her about her drink, she tried it — "It's a special juice just for people whose aunties are princesses" — and that seemed to start a whole new game of Sying trying his best not to laugh as Krissy came up with increasingly, creatively specific explanations for each of the Kree foods and decorations.
It did, however, get Ariel to try every single one of the foods on her plate, so when Ariel was happily munching away on her fruits, Krissy leaned over to K to whisper out a soft, "Thanks."
K smirked her way. "Any time," she said. "Kids are fun."
"She's hilarious. She wants me to do everything now that she knows I'm expecting," Krissy said. "One minute, she's Daddy's Little Girl, and the next, Dad doesn't even exist."
"Well, she's just growing up," K teased, though that had Logan reaching over to take her hand with a little look. "She'll quit waffling and realize the truth soon enough."
Krissy smirked at that and shook her head, though she got distracted by another question from Ariel and didn't get to do much more than that.
Ael, meanwhile, was having the opposite problem and was trying not to draw any attention. He was getting old enough now that he'd drawn the attention of a few of the Kree girls — and more than a few boys — and it was clear he didn't know what to do about it when some court family members were so obviously trying to catch his gaze.
Logan was watching, of course. He and K didn't miss much, if anything, between the two of them, and when he saw how Ael was so clearly trying to look smaller, he turned toward the young man. "You decide if you're staying in Westchester?" he asked quietly.
Ael glanced up at Logan and seemed to relax at the chance for some conversation that wasn't about the pomp and circumstance around them. "Yeah, I think I'll stay until college and then try to find something on the beach."
"So you're not in a rush to get out of the harder classes, then," he had to tease. "Or are you hoping to have K teach you how to sweep the girls off their feet?"
Ael pulled a face. "No thank you."
"What about self defense? If you're going into biology, I know you're not gonna need combat. Can you keep up with the regular class?"
"Yeah, I can do that," Ael said with a nod. "Not like I'm going to need it much unless you have a class for frisky dolphins," he added with a small smirk.
"Dolphins leave me alone," Logan said with a smirk of his own. "And like it or not, I stab sharks."
"You stab anything, Grampa Wolvie."
"Anything that's asking for it, yeah," Logan agreed.
Ael smirked and shook his head. "I really want to get a higher degree so I can be part of deep sea exploration," he admitted, sitting up a little straighter and getting more excited at the prospect of talking about his passion. "Dad reckons I can handle the deep sea conditions better than humans anyway."
"Probably," Logan agreed. "Probably get a kick out of some of the undiscovered stuff down there too."
Ael nodded. "That's why I want to do it. We're still finding new stuff down there. We know more about space than we do about the bottom of the ocean!" He threw up his hands. "I mean, Mom's let me talk to Namor a few times, but even he doesn't know much about the really deep stuff."
"That's because he's probably scared of it," Logan said with a smirk.
"It can be pretty freaky," Ael admitted. "Some of those things are weird, even by my standards." He grinned. "That's what makes them worth studying! And you can't do it anywhere but in a deep sea dive, because they won't make it to the surface to study them."
"So you're gonna go and show the fish king how it's done," Logan said, nodding.
Ael grinned. "Yeah, I guess so."
"Shouldn't be too hard," he said, smirking a little wider.
"I really just want to be able to find something new," Ael said. "I want to explore, like Dad… but not space."
Logan put his hand on Ael's shoulder. "You can explore whatever you want."
"Yeah, that's what Mom said," Ael agreed. "But it's nice to have the reminder."
The two of them chatted quietly for a little while, though with Logan's arm around Ael's back and obviously putting it out there that Ael was with him, the obvious interest seemed to back off. Not that they were any less interested — they just didn't want to cross Wolverine.
The event from there really went more or less without incident, since most of the pomp and circumstance had been in presenting the betrothed couple — though the group of X-Men didn't go straight home afterward, not when they had been invited to stay the night at the palace.
Which meant that Melody was gleefully showing her twin sister around her future home — and Ariel was trying hard to keep up with the girls, tripping over her own feet on occasion for how hard she was trying to run until Sying scooped her up and ran her past the girls, getting her to laugh delightedly.
And Noh was completely delighted as he draped an arm over Jubilee's shoulders. "Our children are nothing less than wonderful," he told her, still smiling widely. "All of them."
"I'm not surprised," she said loftily before she stood up on her toes and took her time kissing Noh as soon as they got to their room, still highly entertained by how thrilled he was over the whole match.
Although Kari was still touring with her art, she had made it a point to take some time to email her friends and family with updates of the tour, as was pretty much customary at this point.
The pictures included plenty of her and Lucas, and he was grinning at her over her shoulder as she composed the email and picked out the best ones, stealing kisses and generally making it hard to concentrate on what she was doing.
"You can't be patient for five minutes?" she asked at last in a giggle that was only pretending to be exasperated as he kept up with the little kisses until she couldn't help but turn his way.
"I really can't," he replied and pulled her into a long kiss that probably would have gone a lot longer if she wasn't just a few sentences away from being finished.
She let out a laugh and pushed him back at the shoulders. "Thirty seconds," she promised, quickly finishing up the message:
The sights and sounds are amazing, as always. We tried to get pictures with some of the touristy spots just to add to our collection, though we also got plenty of pictures of a sweet old lady's thumb when she tried to take pictures of us that weren't selfies.
Clearly, we need our photographer.
Anyway, I feel like something always comes up as soon as I think I'm going to get done being busy, and that's definitely the case here. I can't say anything for publishing reasons, but I'll probably be doing this all over again almost as soon as I'm home if things fall together right.
But in the meantime, I miss you all, of course.
Please don't stop sending pictures! I'm missing my niece and my baby sister awfully, and that picture of Chelsea and Ariel is my phone background now. Thanks, Krissy.
Love you all!
~Kari
With that, Kari sent off the email, and Lucas took that as an invitation to pull her into a kiss, muttering to her about how he didn't want to have to share her as she just laughed at him.
James hadn't been able to check in with Kari quite as quickly as the rest of the group — and as a result, the group back-and-forth email had been chock-full of baby pictures and ultrasound pictures and all things kid related. So, by the time he got around to breaking free from the lab and the team practices and runs … he made sure to reply to her privately rather than in the group. He decided when he sat down that she'd appreciate it more if she was the only one that saw the photos he'd managed to take off the cuff.
Sorry I'm late to the party. I don't even have a decent excuse outside of the simple fact that I've been stupid busy. I'll have to check your schedule, but it looks like I'm actually going to tear myself from the lab for a weekend-ish by the end of August. I'll send pics, of course. Though compared to your snapshot from 'Hawkeye Point, Iowa,' I'm pretty sure my behind-the-scenes portraits of the Avengers won't interest you.
In the meantime, I'll just send the worst ones. Edits and crops on the good ones will be where they always are if you decide you need something halfway workable to mess with for Uncle Steve.
James smirked to himself and attached a few small-sized black and white shots in the message itself that he'd taken after a particularly nasty clash with Hydra where the uniforms parts that obstructed their faces were removed along with any capes or other unnecessary accessories. In them, Cody was carefully patching up Leslie Ann and Zoe, but there was also a shot of Steve and Tony helping each other toward a spot to sit down, both of them fairly battered. In every shot, they looked battle weary, but the focus, as always, was perfect.
Just in case you needed a reminder of where you're from. - James