Leaving on a jet plane

Chapter 1

“You're what?” her mother's voice filled her skull like the reverberations of a church bell.

Her father did not sit down with weak knees and a befuddled expression on his face “ instead, she was greeted with squared shoulders and jutting jaw. She could hear his teeth gnashing and grounding together as his hackles rose. The ropey cords of his neck stood out, and Kendall hadn't lived nineteen years under this roof to miss a warning sign when she saw one.

'You may meet ideological resistance and emotion-based reluctance' seemed like such a petty, frivolous phrase in the face of this sight, but nevertheless she straightened her spine, clenched her jaw and took a measured breath.

“I'm joining S.H.I.E.L.D,” Kendall repeated, forcing her voice to evenness, noting absently that Dylan had gone absolutely still, his hand resting on the open refrigerator door.

“The fuck ya are,” her father ground out, voice like gravel, and planted his knuckles on the table.

“I am,” Kendall growled back and mirrored his position, locking blue eyes on blue. Same blue of deep wintry lakes, not the wild, bright azure of her mother's and brother's gaze, and same bloody-minded stubbornness and flammable temper behind them.

For a while, the only sound in the kitchen was growling as father and daughter glared at each other.

Then there was a bang as her mother straight-armed the 'fridge door shut and forcibly planted Lux in her brother's arms, extracting the toddler's starfish hands from white hair with a pickpocket's deftness.

“Dylan, take this child upstairs at once,” Ororo commanded and turned Kendall's little brother door-wards by the shoulders.

“But Mom...”

Now, Dylan.” There was a note in her mother's voice Kendall seldom heard outside the battlefield and her kid brother wisely took his leave before the shouting really started. All the same “ his sensitive ears would catch the 'conversation' anyway.

Logan pushed himself up and paced to the window, not breaking eye contact. “Ya wanna play with guns and things that go boom an' beep, ya go to the Danger Room.”

“It's not about playing, Dad,” Kendall said, turning to follow him. “It's work. Real work, and a chance for me to do something good with my life.”

“Savin' the world not good enough for ya any more, kiddo?” He lit up, blowing an irate stream of smoke in her face.

“I'm gonna do that at S.H.I.E.L.D, too! They asked me, got a position tailored for someone just like me.”

“What, someone who heals fast and can take a bullet in the chest before breakfast?” her mother entered the conversation, eyebrow already up.

There should really be a law against that damned eyebrow. Kendall bit back a groan.

“Very funny. The people I spoke to said they'd been 'following my progress for a while' and were impressed with my abilities. My non-mutant abilities.” A note of bitter pride had made its way into Kendall's voice and she didn't bother masking it.

“Really.” Her father sounded more than a bit offended, and sceptical. “Bet they didn't make a fuss outta ya usin' them, though.”

“They said they were impressed with my problem-solving skills and with my mechanical prowess. Eclectic was the word they used.”

“So? Can'tcha see they want another tool in their pocket?” Logan snarled. “Yer fuckin' handy for their purposes.! And willin' ta be used!”

“They asked me, Dad. Me!” Kendall shouted and jabbed her fingertips into her chest hard enough to bruise. “Not because of my claws or my looks or my connections or traditions or even my powers, but what I am. My goddamned brain! They want me to come and work in a new rapid reaction force, maybe even lead my own team.”

“And you with scores of years in service experience,” Ororo said sarcastically and crossed her arms. Storm's accent always got thicker with negative emotion, and right now it was deep enough for Kendall to wade in. “Do you have any idea what you're getting into, girl?”

“I've seen my share of battle, Mother, and led my own team,” she snapped. “I'll be overseeing basic combat training and taking part in guerilla action as well as LRRPs. Subterfuge and reversing it.”

“Yer talkin' like ya already enlisted.”

“I leave at first light.”

Her father spared her a sharp glance, gnashed his teeth and stalked out of the house in the general direction of the forest, banging the kitchen's back door almost off its hinges in one neat, forceful slam.

Ororo and her daughter watched his retreating back through the window above the sink until it disappeared into the woods. Then Kendall had the dubious pleasure of having her mother's full attention.

It was hard to keep calm, to keep from squirming under that blue gaze that seemed to see right through her, but Kendall held her mother's eyes until the silence in the kitchen became too heavy.

“Aren't you gonna lecture me? Ask questions, put a guilt trip on me?”

“Would it change anything?”

“Nope.”

“Then you have decided, and I must honour that decision.” There was something cold and snippy in her mother's voice. “How does your boyfriend feel about this?”

“I don't have a boyfriend.” Kendall's stomach lurched nastily when the memory of that morning's argument with Stephen, but those thoughts were quickly shoved aside. Not the time to get mushy and weepy.

“Ah, so that's how it is, then,” Ororo said softly and suddenly there was sadness in her eyes. She set one warm hand on Kendall's shoulder and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her daughter's ear.

“It's a big change, child, and you'll be on your own in a large organization full of people who do not know you and do not care about you. Are you sure you are ready for this?”

Part of Kendall wanted nothing more than to step forward into her mother's arms to be embraced and coddled like a baby “ to accept the comfort and understanding that had always waited her there, regardless of what she had done or where she had been.

Her mother had a way of calming everyone around her, some of her inner tranquility and equilibrium rubbed off on people, seeped through her skin and shot through people's veins like some marvelous sedative.

It would be easy. She could take that step forward and stay here, call her contact at S.H.I.E.L.D, apologize to Stephen, let herself be lulled back into the ebb and flow of life at the Institute, tread the paths her feet knew so well and accept the lot of life that had fallen in her lap almost as a birthright.

Stay, save the world some more, follow the footsteps of your parents. Reap praise and admiration for doing the right thing, for making the choice that really never was a choice, be the good daughter and the fearless team leader they all want her to be.

Oh, hell no.

“I'm not a baby anymore, so stop mother-henning me,” Kendall spat and pushed her mother's hand off her shoulder. “I make my own damned choices and you know where you can stuff your fussing!”

The words were out in the open before she noticed them, but Kendall was too riled up to care even as her mother visibly flinched. There was a look of hurt in Ororo's eyes and then something changed, shifted, and suddenly it was Storm standing before Kendall, staring at her through a mask of marble. This wasn't her mother, but someone haughty and terribly proud.

Suddenly their sunny kitchen, the setting of so many happy memories and a perennial haven from the evils of the world seemed frighteningly small and desolate. Light seemed to bend and arc wrong around Ororo, and when she spoke, there was little warmth in her voice.

“Very well, Kendall. I will not baby you around since it troubles you so, but a mother cannot but worry when her child is about to do something splendidly stupid.”

“What's so stupid about joining S.H.I.E.L.D?” Kendall asked, careful now.

“That was not my main concern. You are blazing a trail through people that care about you with little thought on how they fare once you've moved on. It's selfish, making leaving easier for yourself by kicking up conflict and driving wedges between your loved ones and yourself.”

“I'm not - - “

“Oh yes, you are!” Ororo snapped and a wall of rain lashed the kitchen windows like tsunami wave. The retort of a thunderclap rang over the lake. “Are you burning bridges to make leaving seem like the best and only alternative to yourself, or to others?”

Kendall could not find an answer and was left to watch dumbly as the wind rider turned on her heel and made her way to the same door through which her father had stormed out. A gust of wind flapped it open before Storm, making the blinds on its window rattle like a viper's tail.

“I will say this to you in lieu of maternal fussing,” she said quietly, almost too quietly to be heard over the rain's rapid rat-tat-tat against the roof. “For someone who resents being treated like a child, you seem to have taken people's lives and emotions as playthings to be cast aside when they do not suit your game any more.”

“Mother...”

“No. Get on your plane, go play James Bond. Come back when you're done with games.”

The door shut nearly soundlessly as her mother made her way into the woods, wind dancing at her heels like a concerned family dog, howling, wailing around the boathouse like a banshee.

Well, that went well...



A/N: Here is John Denver singing 'Leaving on a jet plane', which is more than a soundtrack to this fic. If you're like me, you may prefer this version by Me First and The Gimme Gimmes.





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