Chapter Two: Jeannie
In the sunlight or the rain
Brightest nights or darkest days
I’ll always feel the same way
Whatever road you may be on
No you're never too far-gone
My love is there where ever you may be
Just remember that you'll always be my baby
~Sara Evans
When Little Blue Beast landed smoothly on the lake behind the house she loved, Ororo mentally prepared for battle. Though it was nearly dinnertime, the sun was high and shining merrily, a peculiarity of living so far north. In the winter, darkness replaced the light, giving the snow-blanketed world a feeling of perpetual peace.
Jumping from the plane, Ororo spotted her daughter on the edge of the dock, glaring moodily down at the water. She had a fishing pole in her hands, a cold Pepsi between slim thighs, and an expression that made Ororo habitually check the sky for shifts in the weather.
Sensing that Jean wanted to be alone, Ororo touched her shoulder briefly. The girl shrugged her hand off, closing her eyes. Stung, though she should have expected it, Ororo squared her shoulders and marched toward the house.
Just as finding Jean brooding on the dock was commonplace, her husband was snarling and swearing in their garage, fondly called “Dad’s Cave”. Instead of a fishing pole, he wielded a planer. Pepsi was Molson. The expression nearly identical.
She knew her husband, so Ororo knew better than to laugh. Jean’s behavior, while appalling, was so typically teenage that she could deal with it. Hadn’t the famous Storm raised herds of teenagers at Xavier’s New York school? Though it was different, more difficult when those children were your own, she could draw on that wealth of experience in handling her teenagers.
As though measuring their father’s mood, her sons obviously deserted the field. Her boys were clever and had the instincts of survivors; they weren’t leaving the X-box in their bedroom until the storm passed. Ororo almost envied them.
In the hours it took to finish her deliveries and drop tourists off in Anchorage, Logan worked up a full head of steam. Her husband, a doting father, went absolutely ballistic when one of their children did something he could not understand. There was nothing in him that recalled his adolescent years, making his sons and daughter alien as beings from another world.
At times, she was sure, he envied her.
Gauging his mood, factoring in twenty years of intimate knowledge and the dangerously low level of his lukewarm Molson, Ororo ducked into the house and swept through the kitchen. Sounds of pitched battle, of juvenile oaths raged from the boys’ bedroom. Ororo grinned. She was right on the money.
Taking two fresh beers from the refrigerator, Ororo dutifully moved back into the garage. Logan was working on the armoire as though it would give him the answers to life, if only he sanded it down to a nub. Confusion, she knew, was not something Logan was accustomed to.
“Here,” she said, dropping a kiss to his whiskered cheek.
“Thanks, darlin’,” Logan said, stepping back from his work and opening his bottle.
Ororo sipped slowly, jumping up to sit on the weathered tool bench to watch her husband. He downed half the bottle in one go, his throat working almost angrily as he downed the contents.
Oh, he was still so damned appealing. Rough and rugged exterior with that wonderful heart of gold. There were lines around his mouth and eyes now, the veins on his hands protruding as time worked her magic. Silver streaked that dark, coarse hair, but he was still as fit as any young man in his prime.
He shouldn’t be aging at all, she thought for the millionth time. For some reason, Logan’s natural healing mutation was allowing him to age at nearly the same pace as she. Though they had many theories as to why this could be, nothing was proven. All their beloved geneticist, Hank McCoy, could tell them that it was happening and he could not say for sure why.
Ororo hoped, in that giddy, feminine part of her soul that Logan was doing it subconsciously. He wanted, as he said so often, for them to grow old together. Perhaps, just maybe, his mutation was such that it would give him that wish.
“She’s yer daughter, ain’t no denying it.”
Knowing him well enough to not be offended, Ororo arched a brow and sipped from her bottle. “You think she gets this from me?”
“Gotta be,” he said with a snarl as he picked up the planer once more.
“Because you are so very pure,” Ororo shot back at him, biting back a grin when he turned to her.
“She…she’s been kissin’ boys, ‘Ro!” He roared, throwing his hands up in disgust. “At fifteen!”
“My first kiss was at about that age,” she replied calmly. “It’s perfectly normal.”
“Normal?” Logan turned, paced, ran his free hand through unruly hair.
With nearly inhuman patience, Ororo watched her husband rant. He swore often, flailed his arms to emphasize, pointed as though the child in question was standing in the room. A long list of their children’s trespasses tumbled from his mouth, most of it carried away on that sweet, spring breeze.
She let him carry on, knowing a slightly more rational man would emerge. No matter what he said, Logan loved his children. He spent not a full twenty-four hours away from them since the day they were born. Any time their parents’ tempers flared in one of the children, he was baffled. Ororo found it endearing, the comfort of knowing both parents imprinted themselves on those wild children.
Sipping at her beer, she let Logan loose. It was years since he released his claws in one of these rages, longer since that dark look of violence crept into his midnight eyes. He was in control, aware, even at the height of it all. She knew, above all else, the pride he carried because of it.
When, at last, he turned to her with that lost expression, she took her cue.
“I dunno what to do with her, ‘Ro,” he admitted quietly. “Seems just yesterday she’d come home with pictures, park her little butt on that cooler with a grape Popsicle with a ‘Hi, Daddy’. Where’d that little girl go?”
Ororo mourned for him, knowing how often she herself looked around expecting to see babies only to find young adults. “Logan…”
“I don’t even know who she is anymore.” His quiet voice was rough with emotion.
“Neither does she,” Ororo offered with a smile. “That’s the problem. She’s lost, like every teenager. Worse? She’s the youngest, the only girl, so she’s fighting harder to one-up her brothers.”
Logan sighed, shaking his head.
“They’ve never been suspended.”
“No, but I believe that only means they haven’t been caught.” She waited a beat, tilting her head at him. “And wasn’t it you who congratulated Henry for necking in the back of your truck two years ago?”
His smile was immediate and telling. Ororo scowled.
“That’s different,” he replied without thinking. “Henry’s a boy.”
“Oh, really?”
He caught her tone, sensed the shift, and immediately backpedaled. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“I don’t think I do,” Ororo said archly. “Why don’t you explain it?”
Logan gulped. Just the fact that she could make him nervous was a source of pride for Ororo. The mighty Wolverine, cowed in the face of his wife’s temper.
“I’m male,” he said as though that explained everything. “And my sons are male.”
“So you completely understand their fervent need to get their hands on as many sets of breasts as they can?”
Her icy tone made him wince. “Well, something like that.”
“Your daughter is a girl, Logan,” Ororo explained. “And us girls like to get our hands on certain parts of anatomy as well.”
Beer sprayed the unfinished armoire at her carefully timed comment. She took another draw from her bottle, mentally adding a mark in her win column.
“Jesus, Ororo!”
She blinked innocently. “You never complained when I had my hands on yours, before we were married.”
His smile immediately turned charming. “That’s different.”
Primly, though she flushed with the pleasure that she could still kick-start his libido with one carefully implanted mental image, she brushed at her worn Levis. He stalked to her and she opened to him, allowing her husband to step between her thighs.
The placement of the table put her eye to eye with him, even as he planted his hands on either side of her to lean close.
“Yer evil.”
“Oh, I know.” Batting her lashes again, she leaned up for a quick kiss. “But I do have a daughter to deal with.”
Logan sighed, capturing her lips once more before he stepped back. “Better you than me.”
~**~
After changing out of her work clothing into a tea-length sundress of pale, pale yellow, Ororo made her way out to the dock once more. Her sons were busily whooping one another at the X-box, which only meant Logan would join them when he finished clocking his work time.
On the dock, Jean was still staring moodily at the water, but the ice chest beside her was filled with wriggling fish. If there was one thing Jean loved, it was sitting on this dock with a fishing pole in her hands. There was a time when her father sat beside her, silence stretching between them as they provided the family with dinner.
Now, Jean was so far away.
“Jean?”
A sigh. “Yes, Mama?”
To this day, hearing one of her children say “Mama” made her heart skip.
Ororo folded herself onto the dock, her bare feet swinging beside her daughter’s. The girl did not turn to her, but re-baited her hook with Brie and dropped the line back into the water.
“Smoking?”
Jean scowled at the water. “Stupid Tim. He brought them, said I might like it.”
“Did you?” Ororo cast her own gaze to the water, peering at the fish swimming beneath their feet.
“Not really,” replied the girl with a one-shoulder shrug. “Takes like I stuck my mouth on Daddy’s belt sander.”
Ororo smiled softly. “Then why do it?”
Silence broken only by the long-off caw of a hawk. “I dunno.”
Sensing her guard was coming down, Ororo shifted closer to her child. Leaning slightly over the dock, she flattened her palms to the aging wood, turning to face the beauty beside her.
She looks like Mother, Ororo thought with a pang. Grief could be so much like a virus, living and writhing inside until it was forgotten, only to strike back when one least expected it. Jean’s noble brow and the long, unbroken line from it to the tip of her nose was classic N’Dare Munroe. The deep, clear blue of Jean’s eyes were more her grandmother than mother.
The scowl, however, was all Logan.
Testing the waters, Ororo reached up to tuck an errant white lock behind her daughter’s ridiculously pierced ear. “Talk to me, Jean.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” the girl said at last. “I feel so wrong half the time, so off center. I hate that Daddy wants me to be this prim, proper little girl. I’m not! I’m…”
“Just like him.” Ororo supplied easily. “I know.”
When those bottomless navy eyes met Ororo’s, she smiled. “Yeah. I guess.”
Ororo lapsed into silence for several seconds before she continued. “Your father wanted a daughter, very much. I think he might have been slightly disappointed when the twins were born.”
Jean snorted. “Yeah? Who wasn’t?”
Smirking at the intricacies of sibling relationships, Ororo nodded. “You were so precious to him and still are. But I doubt he’ll ever see you as a woman, Jean. Especially when you are hell-bent on making yourself as much of a pain in the ass as possible.”
Jean looked up at the sharpness in Ororo’s last comment. Mother gave daughter an imperious glance and just as well as Jean knew her father’s one-word sentences, she knew that look.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“No you’re not,” Ororo laughed. “You’re sorry you got caught.”
Heat and color crept into her daughter’s cheeks. “You’re good.”
“I’ve had practice.” Ororo dipped a toe into the water.
After several long seconds, Jean set her pole down and faced her mother. “Mama?”
“Yes, my darling?”
“How do handle it?” Jean’s brow furrowed and her chin dimpled with emotion.
Concerned, Ororo looked back at the child she loved, frowning slightly. It was rare that Jean was candid, more so that she asked her mother for advice.
“Handle what?”
Jean closed those deep, soulful eyes and the clouds rolled in the heavens. Feeling the call of it, the song of nature in her own veins, Ororo breathed deeply. It was like Lorelei calling to a hapless sailor, she mused. The pull to go off into the skies, to flood the world with nature’s turmoil was as sharp as ever.
In that moment, Ororo felt Jean revealed some of the root of her problem.
“Restraint,” the mother replied cautiously. “It is never easy or welcome, but restraint is important with gifts such as ours.”
When lids came up over glowing white orbs, Ororo felt pain kick at her heart.
“Mama, its so hard. I feel like my head’s going to explode sometimes. Like, if I don’t let it out, just let it go, I’ll break into a million pieces. I don’t know how you do it.”
Ororo regarded her only daughter thoughtfully for several seconds. She knew what her child was talking about, had lived in that same trapped hell for her first year under Charles’ charge. She buckled, unlike her child, and set loose a raging storm that destroyed a dozen homes in Westchester.
It was then that Charles understood her need to let go. Ororo thought, finally, that her daughter was ready for that lesson. She had control, but never pleasure when dealing with her mutation.
“Come,” Ororo said, her own eyes turning from blue to white as the winds kicked up around her. “Fly with me.”
Hope jumped onto Jean’s face, even as the girl called her own mini-cyclone to lift her into the air. Mother and Daughter bolted for the sky, climbing higher and higher until the house and mountains were nothing but spots on the far-away earth.
“Up here,” Ororo commanded, thankful that both she and Jean were immune to the cold. “Your storms cannot harm. This, my little Windrider, is how I handle it.”
Without explaining, without warning, Ororo let her worry, fear, and all-encompassing love rend the heavens in two. Jean’s cry of pure undiluted joy echoed as her mother spun a massive thunderstorm out of still air.
Watching as her baby twisted and swirled in the winds, Ororo could not hold back a smile. “Come, Jean! Let’s see what my little one can do.”
The force with which Jean released her mental restraints was staggering.
Aided by hormonal glands and turbulent emotions she could not contain, the storm bent and coiled until it formed a field of harmless tornados. Thrown several yards back by the force, the mutant once known as Storm blinked at her daughter.
Keeping herself in place with a small current of warm air, she stood back to let Jean have her say. Wind howled, rain drove without mercy, and thunder boomed loudly enough she could swear the mountains trembled. The pleasure on Jean’s face was unmatched, the calm serenity soothing the part of Ororo that feared she would never be close to her daughter again.
As lightning slashed through the smoky black sky, Ororo let the singing in her blood revel in it. Oh, Jean might have Logan’s personality, but she and Ororo alone shared this single gift.
“Mama!” Jean cried with childlike joy. “Mama, it’s wonderful!”
That pang of grief came back as Ororo wondered if she and N’Dare would have shared a moment such as this. Glancing to the heavens, she felt her mother’s warm, kind smile and laughed. Three generations of African goddesses flew together, even if the eldest was without physical representation.
Giving herself over to it, to the love of family and nature, Ororo released the steadying air around her and fell into the might of her daughter’s storm.
~**~
Logan poked his head into his sons’ room, not surprised to see they were locked in a mêlée for greatness in front of the television that broadcasted their Mortal Kombat game. Hearing the thunder, Logan shrugged one shoulder and stepped into the room.
Obviously, Jean and ‘Ro would be gone a while.
Henry and James were cross-legged on the floor of their bedroom, battling it out as though the fate of the world depended on the outcome. They nudged one another constantly, sometimes with sadistic delight, others with mild annoyance. A unit, Logan mused as he watched them. More a unit than anything he’d ever seen.
When he entered the room, they were completely oblivious.
“Die, die you foolish mortal!” Henry jeered as Eeyore barked happily from his bed.
“Never! Surrender, jackass!” James cried in return, his face screwed into a scowl of concentration.
“You’re going down, butthead!” Henry tossed back.
“Bow down!” James jumped to his feet in an unholy jig of glee. “Bow down, bitch!”
Henry, in response to being beaten, leapt on his brother and wrestled him to the ground. Both boys were howling with laughter as they tried to one up each other, rolling around on the floor in a flurry of fists and dopey, less-than-manly giggles.
They would never know the pain that their parents did, Logan mused as he lounged in the doorway. Thank God for that. Crossing his arms over his chest as Eeyore jumped into the fray, barking merrily as the boys wrestled.
At seventeen, no one was permitted to see them this way. It might damage their ever-tender reputation. Logan, however, was glad for these glimpses. It reminded him that no matter how old they got, how much they pissed him off, they were still the little boys fighting on the drive and writing comic books about their parents.
Though he didn’t want to admit it, he missed the years of little boy laughter and muddy clothes. They used to look at him like a hero, but now saw their father as a terribly uncool cramp in their style. Sometimes, though, he could find them like this and still feel as though they were his boys.
“It’s nothin’, Ro!” He called over his shoulder. “They’re just foolin’ around.”
The effect was immediate. Both boys rolled apart, breathing heavily with all laughter gone. Logan grinned at them, waggling his eyebrows.
“Dad!” James said, shaking his head. “That was so not cool.”
“Give me a heart attack, why don’t you!” Henry fumed stomping back to the game controllers.
Logan stretched and scratched his belly. It was only right that the mere thought of their mother terrified them, as she scared Logan boneless.
“All right, boys,” he clapped his hands together. “The time has come. There will be a new king of Munroe-land and that king shall be me!”
Both boys snorted, glancing at each other with amusement.
“Get real, Pops. You couldn’t beat us with Mama’s help.”
He merely gave his eldest child a grin. “Lets see, shall we. I’m gonna take you boys out.”
James laughed. “You couldn’t take us out if you brought home chocolate and flowers.”
Logan had to admit, he’d raised a bunch of wiseasses. It was the sort of thing that did a man proud.
As his sons reset the game, he glanced out of their window, noting that the sky was still blackened with his wife and daughter’s mutations. He remembered, clearly, the first time he appreciated this place, when Ororo was just a mutant he wanted to help.
Serenity. Peace. He recalled that feeling, revisited it every time he stepped outside in the morning. Alaska, wild enough to be free, civilized enough to be human. He loved that his family could be who they were, without the pressures that society could give them. They were raised knowing their parents loved them no matter what.
It was a damn good thing, he thought as his eyes wandered to James.
When Henry mutated before their twelfth birthday, everyone simply assumed James wouldn’t be far behind him. Days. Weeks. Months. Nothing. Logan and Ororo worried every day that nothing happened, even while James patiently helped his brother deal with his own gifts.
A year later, Ororo gave up. The fact that their twins were not so identical any longer took Jeannie “powering up” before Logan could let it go. Henry’s ability to create and manipulate water molecules never showed its face in James. Nothing did.
In a house filled with mutants, James was as normal as any human.
He’d brooded about it a little, Logan recalled, but never lashed out. He told his father, some years ago, that it was all right if he wasn’t a mutant. He knew they still loved him. You’re all rebels, he said in that thoughtful tone. Only way to be a rebel around here is to be stupidly normal.
Kid had a good handle on things. James was wickedly intelligent, unfailingly loyal, and infinitely patient. His smile was slow, but always warm. It might take ten minutes for his lips to fully form the expression…every second was worth it.
That was his gift, Ororo told him to live in this house and still have patience aplenty.
A moment later, all thought fled as father and sons battled for conquest via a well-loved X-box.
~**~
Hurricane Mary was in full swing at the Gates family home. She swept through the living room, scooping up basketballs, shoes, and various bottles with curses flying out of her mouth. Items were tossed with force, those who could not evacuate in time were forced to duck for cover or get beaned by Pepsi cans.
Her men, those that survived, were looking for escape, but they knew better. Six Gates males were prepared and shaking when she rounded on each of them in turn. Even, Kenny mused, the man of the house.
“I can’t believe what an idiot you are, Timothy Michael!” Mary Gates said at the top of her voice.
Kenny scratched at his red beard before pushing a hand through his hair. He should have followed his first instinct and hidden at Logan’s. At least there, they could duck under an engine and become conveniently deaf.
Five teenage boys, armed filled with their “crap” left lying all over the house, were staring at their mother in a mixture of shock, awe, and pure terror. It was no stretch to wonder if one of them would piss himself.
Mary in full rage was like one of ‘Roro’s hurricanes. Quickly, deadly, and oddly beautiful.
With her long, sleek raven hair whipping around her, Mary darted into the kitchen to rescue the peanut-oil fries left sizzling when Tim finally meandered in from his evening chores. They all knew it was coming, but for some reason were late to escape the damage path.
“Making out! At school! WITH A CIGARETTE and Jean Munroe. Jean-fucking-Munroe!” Mary was spitting the words out and Kenny was certain he heard Tim whimper.
“Mom…”
“Don’t start with me, William Thomas, or you’ll be next. A “D” on your math test? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Kenny sighed and gave a quick hand signal to four of his sons, excusing them from the might of the Gates Matriarch. Poor Tim was left to face the music. Kenny wasn’t stupid enough to let him go, not when his wife’s legendary temper could rebound back on him.
“Ororo probably thinks my boys are all humping everything that’ll move.” Mary fumed as she checked on the chicken in the oven. “Jean’s only fifteen and I know she’s gorgeous but, Jesus!”
Tim stood in the doorway to the kitchen, accepting his mother’s biting lecture and hoping she wasn’t going to bean him with anything else. He’d already taken the basketball to the forehead. Kenny gave his son a small smile, hiding the gesture from his wife.
They were married just shy of twenty years, having celebrated their nineteenth anniversary two months ago. He loved his wife, adored the five sons she gave him, and wanted nothing more to have his grandkids visit them in this house someday.
If he lived that long.
“Logan must have gone through the ceiling,” Mary continued, her dark eyes almost branding her son. “Are you crazy? Have a death wish?”
“I thought you liked Jean,” Tim attempted in a lame mutter.
“I adore Jean,” his mother grumbled. “I love her like she’s my own, but that’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?” Tim mumbled before clamping his mouth closed.
“Men.” Mary said to the ceiling, closing her eyes and praying for strength. “Men don’t understand a damn thing. Why? Why have I been plagued with a herd of them? I couldn’t have just one girl? Just one?”
Kenny, not bothering to be offended, dismissed his son with a nod. When she started talking to the ceiling, the storm passed. Tim bolted from the room and Kenny distinctly heard snickering from his older and younger brothers upstairs.
His wife shook her head in despair as she took fries from the pan, laying them on a paper towel-covered plate to cool. Outnumbered as she was, Mary learned quickly to instill the fear of Mom into her sons from the outset. She ruled their roost with an iron fist, though each boy knew she loved them more than life itself.
Judging it safe to come into the room, Kenny touched her arm cautiously.
“And you!”
Damn, miscalculation.
“What did I do?”
“You did that” “ she indicated to hall where Tim escaped to “ “To me.”
“Mary, it’s not that bad.” Kenny defended. “They weren’t stripped at the waist and fucking against the building.”
“How do you know?” Mary sniffled suddenly, thinking of her sons as men. With girls as women. God, how could it be happening already? “You thought everything was dandy after we caught Mike in his bedroom with Cecilia Tyler!”
Kenny avoided the smile he could feel tugging at his lips. Cecilia Tyler was a lovely young girl, one he thought his eldest might bring into the family.
“Mary, they’re growing up, there’s nothing we can do about that.”
She slammed the oven door after checking on her chicken again, facing her husband with fury written all over her beautiful face. The boys favored her, he thought. All alabaster skin and deep ebony eyes. At least they’d escaped his fire-red hair. It was a measure of comfort. Shorter and broader than the Munroe twins, all five were athletic, lived outdoors no matter the weather. All five were intimately connected to the Munroe twins.
And now, it seemed, one of them was connected to the Munroe daughter.
He expected it would be one of his sons to get his arms around that lovely girl. Tim was a bit surprising. Gabriel nursed a monster crush on her just last year and Trevor gave her the Eye whenever they were in the same room. Gates and Munroe were close after all these years; Logan and Ororo’s daughter was bound to take a tumble with one of his boys eventually.
Still, he was certain Logan was through the ceiling and calm as Ororo could be, she had to be pissed off. He would much prefer a round with adamantium-laced Logan than face Hurricane Mary any day of the week.
When Mary seemed content to rant to herself, he grabbed the phone, a beer, and stepped onto the porch to call his best friend. Hitting speed dial, he called the house and winced when a loud bellow answered the phone.
“What?”
Henry.
“Hey, Hank. Where’s your dad?”
“Oh, hey, Mr. Gates. I thought it was Gabe again. That boy talks more than my sister. Hang on, he’s right here. DAD!”
Logan’s signature growl answered after the line clicked several times.
“Sup, Ken?”
“My dear God,” Kenny said with a laugh. “I thought Mary was gonna bust a blood vessel.”
His friend grunted, but decades as buddies afforded Kenny the ability to detect the humor there. Obviously, Logan was calm now.
“Come down from the ceiling?” He questioned while lighting a cigar.
“Just barely.” Kenny heard a door close and surmised Logan was outside. “How bad Tim get it?”
“Bad,” he shuddered. “Mary was flipping.”
“Think it’s more than a kiss and a smoke at lunch?”
“For our sakes, man, I hope not.”
Before Logan could reply, Kenny heard the sound of a twig snap. Alert and suddenly silent, he cast a quick look to the thick, dark woods surrounding his home. Light was fading now, giving Alaska’s children a reprieve from constant daylight. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stiffen and gripped the phone.
“Ken? What’s goin’ on?”
“Dunno.”
He saw something move in the woods, something too tall for a coyote and too slender for a bear. A human. There was someone out there in the woods.
“Lo? How fast can you get here?”
But Logan had already hung up.
