TFW your child is the jabberwock but neither you nor they know it yet
Beta'd by Firstselector, SpytheEngineer, and Kinsfire.
As it turns out, spending most of a week straight crafting two magic items is not something that the human body is made to do, especially when one has to recreate a divine blessing from scratch, and I spent the better part of the next eighteen hours dead to the world.
The achievement of having done so was worth celebrating, to me, at least, and I spent yet more of my limited funds on coffee and a pancake breakfast from a local diner.
That done, I made the trek back to where I left the van- outside city limits, still, back where I had made the Golden Dagger and Speed Ring, and let Castform out in a flash of reddish light.
Then, the Forge flared up.
It died down further, but at the same time the flame expanded, swelling beyond me, out into the world, looking for something. It apparently found it, eventually, since it rebounded back down, and for an instant there's a silhouette of flame standing on the side of the road with me, like those old wartime reels of the first Human Torch.
Then, it was just a person.
She was short, coming up to maybe my collarbone, and her hair was just a shade or two off from Maddie's, so close that it hurt a little. She had my coloration, or maybe a little lighter, and she was draped in a big ol' gilt-edged purple coat that's clearly made for someone bigger than her, from how it almost brushed the ground with the hem and her hands just barely poked out of the sleeves.
She blinked, at once owlish and razor sharp, and those eyes- the same color as Maddie's, too, but the strands of hair coming down to obscure them wavier, like mine- focused in on me, and for a moment, I froze, convinced down to my hindbrain that something bigger than me was eyeing me and wondering how I would taste.
Then, she smiled, all sunshine and rainbows (and teeth too sharp to be human), and the spine-chilling, muscle-freezing terror vanished like so much dry ice in the Sonora. "Hi, Mom! Where's Mama?"
The confusion only lasted a second, a wave of what's-she-talking-about meeting the flame that the Forge left burning inside me, searing it away in an instant of that's-our-daughter-Morgan that has the ring of truth as well as of the Forge.
Our daughter.
Ours, me and Maddie.
Fuck.
My palm pressed into my eye, as if it could smother the headache building behind it.
"No idea." Something about her seemed to expand, pressing outwards upon the world with terrible weight even as her face fell. "Some jackass named Nathaniel Essex kidnapped her, then tried to burn the house down with me in it."
Morgan looked more like a statue than a person- wholly unmoving, rigid, and furious, like some of the statues of the Greek gods that I'd seen at one point or another.
"Do you know where he is?" asked Morgan, in a flat voice that somehow carried an echo of a massive dragon's roar. Dimly, I was aware of my body's fear response to her voice, of how Castform was butting her head against my cheekbone, but only in a distant, muted capacity.
"No, but I have at least an idea of where to go, assuming he's actually a doctor like he said." I ran a hand through my hair, hoping that the sensation of fingers tugging against knots would help ground me in my body. It didn't. "I'm sorry about this, I'm not- I should be doing better, I'm sorry, it's just-"
Her eyes softened, and I found myself being drawn into a hug by deceptively strong arms.
She smelled like dusty books, like petrichor, like ozone and steel and some floral scent I couldn't place, a combination of odors that shouldn't have come together half as well as it should, and I didn't care to stop myself from burying my face in her hair, tears leaking down into it.
"Don't worry, Mom. We're gonna get her back, together."
"Together," I said, closing my eyes and shutting out the world.
Actually executing on the prospect, making steps towards getting Maddie back, that could wait until I finished luxuriating in the touch of another human being that didn't make me want to grind my teeth down to nubs for the first time since I lost any pretense at safety, since Essex tried to burn down the home I'd finally managed to find for myself around me.
"Sorry about that," I said, once we'd gotten the van started and gotten a decent way along the highway. "I know you're in… kind of a new place, and you don't need me dumping all my problems on you, even setting aside the fact that parents shouldn't rely on their children to solve their problems."
Morgan chuckled self-consciously. "Don't worry about it, Mom. Besides, it's not like Mama wasn't worse off, when you died."
I blinked. "What."
"Yeah, the Sentinels attacked you first…" Morgan took one look at whatever blank look was on my face and smacked herself in the forehead. "Duh, right, you don't know about that yet. Yeah, so, uh, right, quick run down of the universe I come from. Some of the mutants who wanted to work with non-mutants most were assassinated when they were visiting the Senate in… 1980 or 1981, I think, and uh, things went to shit not too long afterwards. You were one of the first ones that they sent Sentinels after because you were building… something that interfered with the Sentinel systems they were using, I'm not sure what exactly, and Mama and I were lucky to be out getting groceries when they attacked." Morgan sniffed. "I was nine when we came back home to a bunch of robots sifting through the ashes of our home and had to learn that no, you weren't coming back. Mama didn't take it well, she fell apart crying after she tore apart all the Sentinels with her mind."
I rubbed at my face with one hand, then reached out and grabbed Morgan's hand. "I'm not going anywhere if I can help it, and I think things have already worked out- I don't think we've had a serious assassination attempt in DC since that one back before I moved to Alaska, in 1980, I think, the one that the X-Men stopped, so I think that kind of issue is off the table."
Morgan deflated, and she squeezed my fingers. "Thanks, Mom, that… that helps, knowing it won't happen here."
"Even if it tried," I said, feeling my daughter- and what a strange thought that was, having a daughter only a handful of years younger than I was, at my age, but she was mine, mine and Maddie's, and I wouldn't- couldn't- let it go- as a warm presence, making the van feel less alone. "Even if it tried, I wouldn't let it. I wouldn't let you lose us, not now."
Both of us paused as the Forge flared up, dying down to where it had been before but leaving another flame, one that siphoned into the Blacksmith's Forge.
Morgan opened her hand, and in it, a fountain pen appeared. It blurred, shifting in Morgan's hand as it changed between a normal pen and something more suited to carving into stone, then metal.
"Wait, you can use them too?" I asked.
Morgan frowned. "Kind of? The tools, yes, but the knowledge… it's fuzzy, not like it is for you. If I tried, I could probably recreate…" She rummaged around in her coat, then pulled out a sword, sparking with lightning along the jagged zig-zags of the blade. "I could probably recreate this, or if you gave me your ring, I could probably create some of the similar rings, maybe a Mage Ring or a Coral Ring, if I had the time to practice, but the Angel Ring or the Ancient Ring… I'd need you to show me how."
I nodded. "Okay. Okay, here's what we'll do: when we stop, I'll see about starting the process of forging new rings, and tomorrow we can see about giving you a trial run at putting together another ring." I pressed my palm over my eye again, something that was quickly starting to become a habit with all the headaches I was getting. "Maybe one of these days a combat trainer is gonna fall in my lap, I can't afford to just keep running away if I want to find Maddie."
"Oh, you want to learn to fight?" I glanced away from the road to see Morgan looking at me, caught halfway between sad and starry-eyed. "I can help with that, when we stop."
Right, yeah. Sentinel 1984 hell timeline. Fuck.
Instead of letting my dismay show on my face, I smiled and ruffled her hair. "Sounds like a plan, stan."
"Ack! Mom, stoooop!"
Some part of me was certain that this wasn't going to last, but for now… for now, I would take what I could get. I'd take the moment with my impossible future daughter, and even if I didn't get any more, I'd treasure this one.
Mom was… soft.
Both in the literal sense- she was squishy, where Morgan's arms had closed around her to hug, in a way that none of the other survivors had been able to afford for years- and in the figurative sense, like she was being pressed out of shape and who knew if she'd be able to spring back after.
Part of Morgan was having trouble reconciling that with her memories of who she'd been before the Sentinels came, this impossible inventor who taught Morgan bits and pieces of her knowledge when she could, who had forged the Levin Sword and the Shockstick, and even the mighty Bolt Axe for Thor when Mjölnir was lost for a time. She kept all three close, in the same folded-space pocket of her coat that she kept her grimoire in.
Another part of her, though, thought it made sense. As much as she hated to even think it, in some ways, Mom dying early on in the rise of the Sentinels was a mercy, in that she hadn't been able to see how living on the edge would have carved away at her until nothing was left.
Everyone reacted differently, in the end. Mama… she hadn't taken it well at all. She'd lost a part of herself, after Mom had died, and she'd never really healed from it, just… festered. She was about as soft as a deathcap, especially once she dove into Limbo to try and fill in the missing piece of her, and by the end Morgan couldn't even recognize her as her mother, not until she burned herself out and was apologizing with her last words, pressing her forehead to Morgan's as she gave her all the knowledge, all the power, that she dared.
Sometimes she felt the power of- well, not Limbo, it was from farther afield, but something- coiling under her skin like an angry lizard. Sometimes, it reared its head, like when Rachel- like when Morgan had first cast that spell that had damaged all those Sentinels, when she'd needed just a moment longer to escape, and when she had first started breathing fire.
She didn't like it.
But then, thought Morgan, looking over to where Mom was reforging the rings she'd said she would, she had something worth using them for, now, something she hadn't since… well, since she'd lost track of Rachel and Kate and the rest after Mama died.
For Mom, for the prospect of getting Mama back, Morgan would do a lot.
She felt the stone that she'd taken to wearing on a necklace, under her shirt, pulse with power, as if agreeing with her, that family was worth fighting from, then she reached into the expanded space pocket in her coat and pulled out the box, scrunching up her nose at the reek that wafted off of it.
Mom needed practice fighting, and Morgan had the tools to offer her that experience. She'd be damned if she lost her Mom again over such a minor concern as being too squeamish to help her out.
She might be a little less soft, in the end, but Morgan would prefer that to dead.
And that's that!
Perks Gained:
One Sword and a World of Troubles (Fire Emblem Awakening, 200 CP): How odd, your child has arrived. And yet, I don't seem to recall them being anything more than a babe. It would seem someone is mucking with time. Much like the Shepherds of Ylisse, of which you may very well be a member, your future child has arrived to undo the bad end of tomorrow. They receive every perk you did at a lower level of skill/power, as well as 300 additional cp to buy an origin (and perks/items) of their own. Additionally, they get one copy of 'Second Gen Unit' for free, even if they already had it from you. (Doubled up for authorial fiat reasons)
Etching Pen (A 'Happy' Harry Potter Fanfiction, 100 CP): A specialized etching tool that can carve stone, wood, metal, or other hardened surfaces like a hot knife through butter or switch to a regular pen that can write on any softer surfaces such as rice paper. The tool is capable of erasing any damages it causes, reversing inked mistakes, and even absorbing certain fluids like blood, acid, ink, or venom to write with. The tool will always be sharp and never run out of whatever fluid it has currently Absorbed.
I promise I didn't actually pick both perks (I will admit to picking the first perk but the second one was a coincidence).
Morgan has separate perks from May- I'm not listing them here for space reasons but they will be in the perk masterpost on SB/SV (sorry ffn/ao3 readers). The perks and Morgan are also somewhat integrated into the Marvel world, coming from Days of Future Past as a doomed future timeline instead of Ylisse under threat from Grima.
She's also a mutant, not that her X-gene's popped yet.
If you want to support me as a writer, I got me a Ko (fi) (https (:/) (/) ko (-) fi (/) lucifra) and a Pa tre on (https (:/) pa tre on .com (/) Lucifra), and you can see chapters a week early if you become a patron. (remove spaces and parentheses)
Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin, Mtron, AntaeusTheGiant, Starfall20, Danielle, Ultama Omega, Asuran Fun, Bailey Matutine, Mr Phantom, Thomas Vernet, Conor Cooney, and Ember for being patrons!
I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct, that's another option: https (:/) (/) dis co rd dot com (/) NHRUKz8jyy (remove spaces and parentheses, dot to period)
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
