Chapter 19
No longer having a job at the lab, Wanda had no choice but to channel her energy elsewhere. The necessity to find a new occupation made itself obvious when the girl took two days off to simply spent them in her room and discovered that the peace and quiet made her thoughts go unbearably loud. Already on day two, she plopped down on the armchair at the window with a notebook and a pen, scribbling down a few ideas.
However, a meeting with the Professor was not the priority for the following morning. It was Wednesday which meant the time to remove the stitches had finally come. Wanda could have handled it alone but Peter tagged along, even though he folded when they got to level one, explaining his hesitance in the doorway of the operation room as “an unwillingness to distract the doc from her important work”.
“It was gross,” the speedster complained on their way back to the elevator after the procedure was done.
The girl gave him a flat look. “You didn’t even see anything.”
“I heard the sound.” He made a squishy clicking noise, accompanying it with gestures that made him look like an old toothless man trying to unwrap a candy of his liking more than anything else.
“Stop it!” his sister exclaimed, scrunching up her face in disgust. “Don’t ruin breakfast for me!”
It only motivated Peter to keep going with it so when the elevator doors opened, the twins shot out of the cabin like two bullets, rushing up the stairs, then down after Wanda managed to perform a nice hit upside her brother’s head. Rosy-cheeked, they braked abruptly in the doorway to the cafeteria, pressing a pause to their game of tag to look like serious adults.
The girl strode across the spacious, still half-empty room to stop at the X-Men table occupied by one mutant.
“Greetings, Mr. Xavier,” she said with a radiant smile. The man only had time to look up from his newspaper. “I was thinking that you and I can instill in young minds the idea that education should not be boring. I know that the school curriculum you have here is already not quite standard but – Are you alright?”
What made Wanda worried was the expression on the telepath’s face. It was as if she woke him up in the middle of sleepwalking and he couldn’t parse who he was, who she was, and where they were.
“What’s taking you so long?” Peter whined, appearing right at his twin’s side with a poppy seed bun in his hand. The next second, he shot Charles a grin. “What’s up, Prof?”
And when that strange look fell to his lot, the speedster’s eyes darted to Wanda. “What? Do I have something in my teeth?”
He gave them both a strangled smile of a shark.
The girl successfully ignored it, leaning toward the Professor and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Xavier?” she asked gently, her brows drawn together.
The children that had just come into the cafeteria cast sidelong glances at the trio, guessing if Quicksilver’s sister was trying to put their favorite teacher under hypnosis.
Whatever the haze the man had been in, it seemed to subside, the look in those blue eyes gained sharpness though there still was some wonderment and overwhelming joy in it.
“My apologies,” he said with a smile, light pink hues tinging his cheeks. “It’s just…Now when I know, I cannot unsee the resemblance. How I didn’t parse it before is a mystery to me.”
The twins swapped a confused glance.
Wanda let go of the telepath but preserved a condescending kind of tone. “I beg your pardon?”
“Erik said that you are his children,” the Professor clarified.
Peter raised his brows, incredulous, and asked, “He did?”
Charles nodded. “I now understand why you agreed to go to the Pentagon so easily.”
“Erm...” The speedster scratched his head, sort of embarrassed. “I didn’t know it at that time.”
“Yeah, you are putting too much meaning into things,” the girl said to the Professor, chuckling lightly at the break in the chain of logic that he had experienced after her twin’s reply. “He is simply not a thoughtful type.”
The poppy seed bun was already on the runway, set to fly right into her face.
“You don’t throw it in your sister,” Erik’s calm voice came from behind.
There had never been anyone in the girl’s life who could stand up for her except her brother, and what the Master of Magnetism had just done, even if he only stopped a classical sibling’s mischief, filled her with immense delight. Her face beamed when she turned her head to him while Peter let out a tsk.
The man came to stand a foot away from the twins but his paternal aura enveloped them as if he put his arms around their shoulders, drawing them into a group hug. His gaze swept over their faces before it fell on the uncovered stretch of skin above Wanda’s collarbone. A narrow thread of red was carved there.
“You got your stitches removed?” he asked.
Wanda picked up on the note of disappointment in his voice that must have stemmed from the fact that he missed out everything in her and Peter’s lives and there they were, it happened again.
“Oh, it’s not a big deal. I just didn’t want to disturb your morning ritual so me and Peter went alone,” she said in an attempt to soothe her father. “Next time I will take you with me. I mean…” The girl paused, realizing the dubious nature of the promise but nothing better popped up in her mind. “You got the point.”
Erik left it uncommented, walking over to the table and settling on a seat across from Charles who was silently observing the dynamics of the newly formed family. There was something so soft, awe-like about his expression, it made the Lehnsherrs feel too seen.
“Join us for breakfast?” the Master of Magnetism offered, looking at Wanda and Peter. It doubled the guilt that had already begun to coil in his daughter’s chest.
“Sorry but we have to go over there,” the girl drawled with an apologetic grimace, gesturing toward the table at the large window, occupied by the still-in-the-making X-Men team. “We’ve been ghosting these guys for a week.”
Her brother added in a more waggish tone, “Ororo mentioned in passing that one cannot sustain a friendship this way,” and took a bite of the poppy seed bun.
Their father reached for a cup of black coffee the Professor must have taken in hopes his old friend would join him at breakfast. “I take it you are going to discuss your secret teambuilding project?”
While Wanda’s mouth was twisted in a plastic, thin-lipped smile, her bulged eyes screamed “What the fuck?” when she turned her face to her brother.
“I don’t remember saying anything,” the young man muttered to her, trying to exonerate himself.
“I fished out a couple of things from our talk the other day,” the Master of Magnetism casually supplied his son.
Charles took a chance to cut in, “What are we talking about now?”
“Don’t pay it any mind yet,” the girl addressed him with a charming smile of a fox, already pushing Peter to start retreating. She glanced at Erik, her expression more genuine. “See you later.”
As soon as the twins turned around, striding across the floor that looked like it was blooming, courtesy of the stained-glass windows that didn’t let the light go through uncolored, the speedster drawled pensively, “He is getting alarmingly good at it. Next thing I know, I’ll have to think over every word I say.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s horrible. You have my sympathies.”
It was either the bafflement working or Wanda overdid it with the sincerity of her tone but the young man didn’t recognize the sarcasm and replied, “Thank you,” without pulling a face.
With the exception of those two meetings where the plan on the revival of the youngster’s reputation was discussed, the twins have kind of dropped out of the life of the gang over the past two weeks and it was noticeable. Their flamboyant personalities were missed greatly and were wished to be back sooner. Therefore, when the brother and sister finally reached the table by the window, their friends greeted them with exclamations that seemed too cheerful for the early morning.
Amused, Wanda lifted her brows. “Are we pre-celebrating Ororo’s success on the test?”
She took a seat Kurt had previously allocated for her on the bench, putting a distance between himself and Jean. When the teleport’s eyes met with a pair of green ones with that heartwarming spark of mischief, a big smile lit up his face.
“I’m sure you’ll do great,” Peter crooned, putting his arm over the Storm Ruler’s shoulders as he plopped down onto the empty seat beside her.
Jean lifted her fork from the plate with the omelet and pointed it at the speedster in agreement. “That’s what I just said to her.”
On the other side of the table, Scott splayed his arms, silently resenting the lack of belief the gang expressed when he was preparing for the same exam a little over a month ago.
The speedster drew him in for a brotherly half-hug, shaking him slightly. “We were sending our prayers silently,” he teased.
Scott pushed his friend’s arm away as everyone giggled and smirked, not holding any grudges.
“Thank you for the cheer up, really,” Ororo said when the common amusement quieted down a bit. “But the less we talk about it the better.”
With that, she went back to tearing off the pieces from the same poppy seed bun Peter had already eaten.
Jean and Wanda exchanged a look, surprised to find their audacious friend in a state of anxiety before some test she wasn’t even obliged to take.
Kurt took the initiative to redirect the conversation. He allowed his gaze to slip down to Wanda’s bare shoulder for a brief moment before he asked, “So, the cut is completely healed?”
“I still can’t lift weights or do a jig but yeah, I’m back in business,” she replied, her voice light. “What you’ve been up to? What’s new?”
If truth be told, the teleporter was busy competing with her brother in the ability to cut through space with the highest efficiency. He was never a gambler and being the first in something was never his goal either, however, Peter managed to find and tug on some strings in Kurt’s nature that made him want to keep pushing his limits. The fact that so far, the young man achieved little success in it was something the girl didn’t necessarily need to know.
“Not much,” he answered and sipped the orange juice from his glass.
A complacent, lopsided grin twisted Peter’s mouth.
“Except for the fact that your super seniors club just expanded,” Scott amended impishly, eyeing the twentysomethings at the table.
“Who’s the new dude?” the speedster shot a question right away, taking a look around the cafeteria to search for a new face amongst the youngsters.
Wanda grimaced, questioning her twin’s deduction skills. “Why did you decide it’s a “dude”?”
“Because if it were a girl, I would’ve already known,” he replied matter-of-factly.
Scott nudged the silver-haired young man with his elbow, grinning. Jean gave them a flat stare, Ororo tsked and Wanda simply rolled her eyes at these two “macho” men.
“His name is Namor McKenzie,” the red-haired telepath said, returning to Peter’s question “I saw him only once, briefly, and I don’t think you will catch him in the hall or in classes.” She cut off a piece of the omelet and put it in her mouth, chewing casually under the intense gazes of her friends. “He and the Professor were negotiating over the phone for two weeks before he finally made it here.”
Peter narrowed his eyes. “Is he some big shot?”
“I feel like I heard this name before,” his sister drawled pensively. “But I can’t remember where.”
“I thought so too,” Scott said, nodding, “and then I remembered how once Alex got really pissed off by an article he had read in a newspaper. It was about a mutant and some fatal accident. I’m pretty sure that name was mentioned there.”
“Fatal accident?” Kurt reiterated.
With great power comes great responsibility and it often meant that along the way of learning this simple truth, people got hurt. Badly. Fatal accidents were nothing new when it came to mutants whose gift was more than wings or the ability to turn their body into an organic diamond so Ororo wasn’t going to dwell on it. Instead, she focused on the questions that were more relevant to the present time. “Why is he here if he is not going to attend classes? Is he, like, that old?”
“If I’m not mistaken, he’s Kurt’s age –” Jean glanced at the teleport “– or a year older.”
“So, his only goal is to learn control over his powers,” Wanda concluded.
“That will be one hell of a puzzle for the Professor to solve. Those feelings coiling inside him aren’t as bleak as in Erik, of course, but –” the red-haired telepath cut herself short, realizing that she shouldn’t have let that observation out in the open. Everyone at the table looked down, suddenly uncomfortable. “Sorry.”
Peter pursed his lips in a quick “don’t sweat it” smile while Wanda looked over her shoulder at their father, watching him having some sort of discussion with Charles and Raven who must have joined them at some point. His reddish hair had grown noticeably since the day she met him, curling around his forehead and ears and sticking out at all angles at the nape of his neck. He no longer wore a beard and the girl couldn’t decide if it made him look younger or gave away the lack of sleep and appetite.
“He will get better,” Jean said gently.
“No, he won’t,” Wanda replied with quiet certainty, her gaze still fixed on Erik. “Watching your child being killed is not something one can recover from.”
And she and Peter would never know what it was like to have a father unburdened by such grief. But those were selfish thoughts the girl shut down immediately.
Wanda turned her head back to her friends and, forcing lightness into her voice, asked, “How things are going with our project?”
A bit nonplussed from the sudden jump to another topic, Ororo glanced at Jean who in turn looked at Scott whose gaze was already fixed on Kurt. The teleport’s eyes darted between them all, his lips parted but there were no words formed in his mind for them to voice.
Peter let out a whistle. “Say no more.”
“Come on, you guys! There’s gotta be something!” his sister tried to prompt the gang. “A sketch to show?” Scott scratched his head. “A finished speech?” Ororo chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Any ideas on what we may say to convince Mr. Xavier that this project has great potential?” Jean pressed her lips. Wanda was on the verge of desperation when she exclaimed, “We need a powerful presentation!”
“You are unbelievable,” the speedster echoed her tone. “Wanda and I take the sketch. Ororo tunes into the right wave for her exam. Jean, Kurt, and Scott – the speech is on you. We meet in the parlor room at four.”
When nobody moved to go about their business, the young man leveled his best “Magneto” stare at them. Eyebrows were raised nonetheless the empty dishes were taken and after a moment it was only the twins who were sitting at the table.
“You do remember that my drawings are unintentional abstract art?” Wanda asked her brother. When that question put a knowing grin on his face, she posed another one, “Why not let me write a speech then?”
“Because it’s a presentation on building a treehouse, not a call for revolution,” Peter bantered, referring to one particular case from their school life.
He spun on the shiny wooden bench and got out of the table. His sister followed his suit though with more grace.
“They were trying to force us to wear this sexist, unhygienic uniform!” the girl fenced, knowing right away what the speedster meant. “Do you know how cold and uncomfortable these pleated skirts are in the winter? I was just fighting for our rights!”
Children were coming into the cafeteria in waves so the brother and sister had to maneuver skillfully in order to reach the serving counter instead of being washed to the opposite side of the room.
“See? You immediately get on the defensive and if it were our old man who ran the school this tactic might’ve worked out well, but the Prof…” the speedster said while his twin was deciding if she should take a vanilla cream croissant or a chocolate chips muffin to compliment her blueberry smoothie. “He is a gentle soul and needs a different, less combat-spirited approach.”
Some little girl shoved him unceremoniously in the leg on her way to the tray with cupcakes.
“Hey, there’s no need to be rude!” Peter exclaimed, indignant.
When his attention flickered to the tray again it was empty. From the corner of his eye the speedster saw the evil glare a hungry kid was giving him so he grabbed his sister’s arm and pulled her out of the shoal of these little piranhas.
“You didn’t give me the chance to choose!” Wanda complained, holding a croissant in one hand and a muffin in the other, her smoothy dangerously tucked between her lower arm and left side.
“It was taking you too long!” the young man countered. “That’s why they wanted you to wear the uniform, so you wouldn’t be late for classes because you can’t choose! Though prohibiting you to wear pants was like a decision that came to them straight from the 19th century.”
“Mh-hmm,” his twin hummed, pointing her finger at him in agreement since her mouth was full of the muffin she was devouring.
They walked out of the buzzing cafeteria, going upstairs to the young man’s quarter, switching from one topic to another so that the conversation they had made no sense to anyone else but them.
....
As agreed, at four o’clock in the afternoon, the gang gathered in the parlor room, despite the failed physics test that caused significant damage to Ororo’s mood. Jean and Wanda were about to throw a slumber party to cheer her up, and, to his own surprise, Scott found himself persuading the Storm Ruler to indulge in that idea, but she didn’t yield, preferring to finalize the theoretical part of their project.
When their brains were physically aching with exertion and their mouths dry as if they weren’t rehearsing a presentation but exploring the Sahara Desert, it was decided that there was no point for the whole gang to go to the Professor. Throughout this evening, the young mutants figured that oratory was not a skill each of them had, and every time anyone stuttered or made long, awkward pauses it created an unnecessary tension. Thus, Jean and Wanda were chosen as the representatives of the X-Men team. One because she had the closest relationship with the Professor and her emphatic abilities could be a nice guide throughout the conversation, and the latter was famous for her killer confidence and perseverance, both contagious. Peter was supposed to be on standby, staying close as a lighthouse of wit and positivity in case there would be a hitch or if the treehouse project didn’t get a green light.
The night had already settled when they finally parted ways. However, sleep did not seek the company of any of them as they were laying in their beds, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
Scott could see clearly Alex’s figure in front of him. The older brother who first helped to prevent a nuclear war, then went to Vietnam and even after his retirement of sorts kept being an activist, especially when it came down to mutants and their rights. The older brother who believed in him against all odds. There wasn’t a better way to honor his memory than following his steps and joining the X-Men team to help make a better world.
Ororo’s thoughts were a thousand miles away from Westchester where way too many children were abandoned to the mercy of fate, waiting just like she once waited under a starry sky for someone to land a helping hand.
Circus kept its magic strictly for the stage, behind the curtains there were only rehearsals, card games in the dim light of oil lamps, and instability in everything except the nagging feeling of being bound to a place Kurt couldn’t call home. However, it was nothing compared to those months that the teleport had to spend at the ultimate fighting club. There were still many mutants who were surviving and not living, holding to the bits and pieces of hope that were not dimmed in their souls.
Having the most powerful mind known gave Jean more trouble than advantages. What was the point of being able to read someone else’s mind or stop an object mid-fall with the power of thought if she was only learning to control it enough to seem ordinary?
It was only at the beginning that Peter tried to cover up his difference from his peers, but then he only began to emphasize it, own it. How many were there who needed to know that ‘weird’ didn’t mean ‘bad’, it meant having the willpower to go against the social norms and prejudices and staying true to yourself.
Humanity has always feared that which is different, Magneto once said from the TVs’ screens. It stuck with Wanda and if at first, it ignited resentment toward those who suppressed her people, it later made her think what could they do to, if not achieve equality, then at least come close to it. What if mutants and people working together in the public eye was a sure step to that kind of future?
A treehouse was a simple project with so many dreams imbued.
....
The next morning started quite late by Wanda’s standards yet she allowed herself to stay in bed, playing hide and seek with the sun rising from behind a tree near her window. With a lazy smile playing on the lips, she stretched her muscles and sat up, looking around. She never really gave her quarter attention, treating it like a room in a hotel where she only stayed to sleep, take a shower and change an outfit. In fact, some pieces of clothing were still stored in a suitcase, which was yawning right at the ornamented closet’s side. The girl put her feet on the floor, feeling the pleasantly rough Persian rug beneath her feet, and standing up, went over to the dresser. Her fingers ran across its lacquered lid as she surveyed the landscape, framed in wood and put on the wall, looking like it was another window in the room. The space around her did not feel like home but it did not seem alien either.
Wanda took her time in the shower, letting the cool streams of water invigorate her body and mind, and didn’t hurry to pick an outfit she wanted to put on today, slowly going through all the options she had. Eventually, her choice fell on a neon orange crop top with a corset design, black wide-legged trousers, and leather loafers. It was light enough for the summer heat but still inspired a business-like mood. She twisted her hair up in a tight bun, sprayed some perfume on her wrists and neck, and with a quick glance at herself in the mirror, went out of her quarter.
The girl walked along the hall of the second floor, the muffled stack of the heels of her shoes and the fuss of wakening children behind the doors to their rooms were her only companions. She had almost reached the stairs, in the mood for a light breakfast before she and Jean would have to go to the Professor with their presentation when she caught sight of Hank’s tall figure rounding the corner. Wanda hadn’t seen him since that ill-fated day in the lab and to some extent avoided meeting him by all means. Once she even had to resort to her brother’s supersonic speed to escape from the scientist unnoticed. The girl didn’t know whether he would start apologizing or pass by her wordlessly and what kind of option she would prefer herself, but she didn’t feel like finding it out now. So, abruptly, she turned around on her heels and aimed to go back to her quarter but it was too late.
“Wanda,” Hank called up to her. When she didn’t slower her pace, he caught up with her and grabbed her elbow, stalling her. “Wanda, wait. Let me explain.”
“Explain what?” Wanda flashed him a cold look and shook off his hand. “The concept of betrayal?”
“Betrayal?” the man reiterated as his glasses gleamed resentfully in the dim light of the hall. “You hid who you are on purpose. There were so many opportunities for you to open up, but even when the sentinel detected an energy flow, which I take is directly related to your powers, you blamed it on the kids upstairs. I spent a day looking for an error in the code and it didn’t even exist! You are one to talk about betrayal.”
There were a dozen ways how this conversation could have gone but in the girl’s head, none of them suggested that Hank would try to justify his actions. For a moment her jaw dropped and then, she scoffed. “Just because I didn’t tell you I’m a mutant doesn’t mean you worked with a different person all this time.”
“Your deceit does,” the scientist countered.
Irritation was building up somewhere in Wanda’s chest. She crossed her arms. “What if I didn’t feel safe to open up? Did you think about it?”
“So, I am the bad guy now?” the man said with a grimace of indignation. “You weren’t afraid to open up to Erik, even though you didn’t seem to trust him in the beginning.”
“What does it have to do with Erik?” Wanda groaned, looking heavenward. She seemed to have a moral epiphany right after because she stared at the man with her eyes narrowed and drawled, “Wait a minute.” Slowly her expression was smoothing out as if everything fell into place. “Jesus Christ. Does it all come down to jealousy?”
“What? Whom am I jealous of?” Hank asked with genuine confusion.
“Erik,” the girl replied in such a tone like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Charles. Raven. Me. We all lean toward Erik, not you.”
The scientist scoffed, averting his gaze with a shake of his head, and slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers.
So, I hit the nerve, Wanda thought, not yet truly believing that her close relationship with Erik pushed her friend to do such a dishonest, hurtful thing to her.
“You so fucked it all up,” she said quietly with a note of sorrow.
“He did it countless times!” Hank exploded at the same time a door opened at the end of the hall. A young man with a towel over his shoulder and a toothbrush in his hand showed up, his expression said: “I’m a shadow. You don’t see me.” as he walked past the “hot spot”.
From what Raven had told the twins it was obvious that the Master of Magnetism was not the best example of a friend, but as his daughter, Wanda felt the need to defend him.
“Maybe, but at least he had never pretended to be someone he is not.” Except for the seven years he was going by the name Henrik Gursky. But it wasn’t that kind of pretense, it was more like a new route Erik Lehnsherr had taken, dropping off his resentment toward humanity and living the life he would’ve lived if the war didn’t whisk away his parents. “You and I, we had this conversation,” Wanda went on, trying to keep her tone neutral, “You promised me to never bring up the topic of genetic tests. I thought we got it settled. For what it’s worth, you could have just been honest with me.” A crease formed between her brows. “When was the last time when you were truly honest, Hank? With the people around? With yourself?”
Silence met those questions.
“Look me in the eyes and say that when I walked into the lab that day, you considered to stop and just ask me.” Hank drew his lower lip between his teeth as his gaze was going every way but Wanda’s face. It was like a dagger in the heart all over again. The girl smirked bitterly. “If the roles were reversed, I would have never come that far. Now, if you excuse me, I’ll go spend time with the people I have confidence in.”
In this instance, Jean wounded up to be that person because the two now ex-colleagues were conversing right on the doorstep of her quarter. Wanda seized the opportunity and grabbed the doorknob, sliding into the room and slamming the door shut in front of Hank’s face. Jean, who was sitting crisscross on her bed, peered at the girl with her eyes wide, her hand with a comb froze over her red locks.
“Hello? Good morning?” she said unsurely, studying her friend’s uptight expression. “Or perhaps I should’ve kept my mouth shut.”
“I ran into Hank,” Wanda explained, crossing the room to plunk down into a chair at the dressing table.
The way the red-haired telepath pursed her lips said that she had already figured that out.
“Have you been eavesdropping, young lady?” Wanda asked, feigning a posh English accent and a disapproving frown.
A teddy bear was hurtled her way but it only smacked into the mirror behind and fell onto the white surface of the table. The girl reached out, picked the poor thing up, and sat it on her lap, straightening the red bow tie under its fluffy chin.
“Did you sort things out?” Jean asked. Her fingers were running through her hair, twisting the long strands into an effortless braid.
“We kinda did,” Wanda answered, nodding slowly. “I’m an imposter, and the blame lies solely with me.”
Her friend furrowed and the girl pulled a “Yep, you heard me right” face.
“I thought that all this tension coming from the hallway was because you were pouring your souls out to each other,” Jean said, seeming genuinely confused. Then, she added, serious, “I didn’t expect anything like that from Hank. I’m sorry about that. And he is sorry too, believe me.”
“Well, he didn’t seem eager to articulate that,” Wanda said flatly.
Even though the mental wards built around the girl didn’t allow Jean to read her emotions, she knew the whole thing with Hank hurt her more than she was letting on. The telepath herself was scandalized when Peter told the gang about what happened. She grew up around the scientist and there was no such occasion when she had to question his sense of right and wrong until now.
There was not much Jean could do but give her friend a distraction so she hopped down from her bed and came over to Wanda, saying, “We can’t go to the Professor like that. We need an optimistic vibe for the presentation,” and opened the drawer of the dressing table. Eyeshadow palettes, lipsticks, brushes, you name it, it was all there.
Wanda lifted her brows. “I never even saw you wearing make-up apart from lip balm or mascara. Or that time we sneaked out for the concert.”
Jean gave her a shrug. “I like to play with it but there are little occasions to go out like that and don’t look like a lost circus performer.”
“Oh, so your point is that if we both look like lost circus performers, we won’t look too much out of place?” Wanda teased. Actually, she got the point, that was why she set the teddy bear on the dressing table and snapped her fingers. The chair from the opposite corner of the room somersaulted to the spot behind Jean and even though she glanced over at it with her brows raised, surprised by the juggle the Energy Wilder demonstrated, she took a seat, compliant.
“Let’s get this party started,” Wanda crooned, getting her hands on all those pretty things in the drawer.
Choosing the products, she went for complementing shades of blue on Jean’s lids and sealed it with a bright, electric-colored eyeliner, making her eyes really pop. Lightly, the girl swept a blush brush in a line underneath her friend’s cheekbones and put matte nude lipstick on her lips.
Jean gave Wanda cat eyes, using a gel liner and some eyeshadow, then added a pop of orange to the inner corners, paying tribute to her nylon crop top, and made several sweeps across the top and bottom lashes with a mascara wand like a Fairy Godmother of makeup. As a finishing touch, she pulled out a couple of Wanda’s curls from that tight bun she was wearing. Voila, they were ready to take the world.
Attuned to the right wave for the presentation, the girls came downstairs, stopping at the door to the Professor’s office.
“Do you have it with you?” Jean asked Wanda in a lowered voice.
“Yep.” The girl reached in her bra and pulled out a piece of folded paper – a sketch she and Peter (mostly Peter) made the other day. “What?” she asked, catching her friend’s glance. “I don’t have any pockets.”
Wanda lifted her hand, about to knock on the door, and Jean was shaking her body to shoo away anxiety when a sudden gust hit them in their backs, fluttering their hair. Both girls turned around.
“Jesus!” Peter exclaimed, shrinking away. He looked back and forth between Wanda and Jean with his eyes wide open.
His twin gave him a flat look, folding her arms over her chest. “We haven’t even started yet. What are you doing here?”
“Prof is not in his office,” the speedster blubbered out an answer. “He is out back, at the ponds, with our old man and a new guy.”
“Namor?” the red-haired telepath asked and got a nod of confirmation. She turned her face to Wanda. “The Professor must have started giving him classes.”
A thing that truly captured the attention of all three youngsters was that Erik was present in this class. Mentoring didn’t seem like an aspiration he would harbor though he was once the leader of the Brotherhood and was known for his inspiring speeches so it wasn’t that hard to picture him taking on this role.
For Wanda, it was too late to backtrack. She craved to know if their project was destined to live or if they were branded as a bunch of unreliable kids in Charles’ eyes. The telepath had grown on her and since he was like a family to her father, she wanted to be in good standing with him.
“I believe a quick break won’t hurt them,” the girl declared with a smile. Jean opened her mouth to no doubt make a sound remark but Wanda took down that attempt. “We should present our project now or we are risking losing that spark within us.”
Peter seemed to think his sister’s insistence reasonable since he said, “Break a leg,” and followed those words of encouragement with a thumbs up.
The red-haired telepath stayed silent for a moment, pondering, then loosed a sigh of defeat. Wanda nodded as if saying, “That’s what we just have to get over with. You won’t regret it.”.
Armed with determination like it was a rapier, the three musketeers headed to the back door if the exit to the spacious patio with a balustrade could be considered such.
The way Jean kept fiddling with her chiffon kimono cardigan tied in a playful knot on the stomach made the speedster say in his usual lazily flirtatious manner, “You look cool, by the way. That thing on your eyelids –” he made a sweeping motion over the upper part of his own face “– like, really compliments your eyes.” He leaned closer to the girl and stage-whispered out of the corner of his mouth, “Unlike my sis with these yellow stains at the nose.”
One can imagine the young man’s confusion when that remark flushed out a blooming smile, putting an annoyed look on Jean’s face instead. She left his side, pacing forward. When Peter turned his face to his twin, she was grinning wickedly.
“We did each other’s make-up,” Wanda clued him in and patted his shoulder, mocking.
Her trousers swished and her front curls bounced as she jogged to catch up to her red-haired friend.
“Don’t mind him,” the girl said to Jean once they were walking in step. “He was just trying to keep the mood light. It’s just sometimes the harder you try, the worse the outcome.”
“But not in our case. Not in our case,” she hurried to add, sensing that the telepath’s thoughts began wrapping around those last words. Her friend’s expression also made it obvious that there were some doubts harbored but what about Wanda couldn’t fathom. “Where does this nervousness come from anyway? What is holding you back?”
Jean’s fingers ran along the wooden railing of the bridge they were now walking on. It was arching over a canal with water so clear every passerby had a chance to watch a dance of Koi fish. It was so peaceful there.
“I was a rescued orphan and since the very beginning my goal was to get better at controlling my powers so one day I won’t –” the girl stumbled, a crease forming between her brows “– won’t hurt anyone, you know?”
“More than you think,” Wanda said with a gentle smile. When your power is capable of splitting an object into atoms, you would know a thing or two about control and the risks of losing it.
“I’m not sure that the X-Men team is the future the Professor sees for me,” the red-haired telepath admitted quietly and stopped to look the girl in the eyes, seeking something different than a soothing word.
“He asked your help when Apocalypse threatened to change the world,” Wanda pointed out.
Jean shook her head. “That’s different. He didn’t have a choice.”
That was when it finally downed on Wanda. It wasn’t a hesitation regarding her friends becoming a good X-Men team or the fear of not living up to someone’s expectations. Jean was worried about going out into the world behind the school’s walls and using her power there, where everything seemed to be so fragile.
“There is always a choice. And he chose to ask you because he knows your potential and he believes in you.” Softly, Wanda took the girl’s hand and placed the folded sketch of the treehouse on her palm, closing her fingers around it. She lifted her gaze, dead serious. “Look, if at some point you decide that it’s too much for you, that this is not what you want, you can step away, alright?”
For a long moment, they were just standing in the middle of the bridge, silent in the basic meaning of this word. At last, Jean nodded. “Alright,” she said in a whisper.
“Alright,” Wanda echoed and gave her friend’s hand a light squeeze before letting go of her.
They resumed walking, getting to the other bank of the canal, and took a winding walkway, their steps leaving a slightly hollow sound behind until the wooden planks beneath their feet changed into pavers. That path led to the largest and deepest pond on the grounds. It was an area where Jean often trained her archery skills as well as telekinesis and where a long sharp cut ran through one of the banks – courtesy of Scott. The oak he had split in half had to be removed, but fortunately, there was still enough flora left: trees towered here and there, shading the benches from the sun, and in the thick of bushes a small waterfall gurgled, the water cascaded over its flat, sharp-edged stones, falling into the pond. Right there, in this idyll, the girls spotted a metallic gleam of a wheelchair and a stately figure dressed in plain shirt and dark blue jeans.
Dad, the word sparked in Wanda’s mind, bringing a warm and fuzzy feeling along.
As if the ability to read other people’s thoughts transferred to Erik from Charles, next to whom he was standing on the grassy bank, the Master of Magnetism met his daughter’s gaze. He watched her shrewdly, guessing that this steady walk toward him and the Professor meant something was coming up, yet curiosity wasn’t the only traceable thing in those bluish eyes. Fondness was there too and it shone brighter.
Suddenly, cold water splashed into Wanda’s face and chest, nearly knocking her off her feet.
“Oh my –” Jean exclaimed at her side, darting away, her arms pressed to her chest.
With her mouth opened from shock and her hair clumped to her face, Wanda blinked rapidly, struggling to see a clear picture in front of herself. Water was everywhere, it was running down her face and neck, leaving a musky scent on her skin, tickling unpleasantly the healing scar above her collarbone, rolling down her nylon top to soak into the fabric of her trousers. When at last the ability to see her surroundings came back to Wanda, her eyes blazed with outrage, shot toward the other bank of the pond and bumped into a young man. Unbothered, he raised his eyebrow at her.
“I’m waiting for an apology,” the girl prompted darkly.
“Apology?” he reiterated with a smirk. “I thought I saved you from those two caterpillars on your eyes.” He jerked his chin at the upper part of her face now smeared with black as if it were war paint.
A bunch of teenagers watching the unfolding scene from the blanket thrown on a lawn nearby giggled.
“Careful,” Erik said to the young man with enough bite to make it sound like a strong warning.
“Alright, things are unnecessarily escalating,” the Professor said in a placating tone.
Jean cut in, addressing her friend worriedly, “Wan, are you okay?”
“Oh, come on,” the young man drawled lazily. “I’m sure Ms. Wet Panties can take a joke.”
When he turned his face back to Wanda there wasn’t even a droplet of water on her. The winged liner and those intensely black lashes were intact, her orange nylon top that didn’t get wet anyway gleamed in the sunlight, and the creases on her trousers were immaculate. It raised the young man’s brows for a fracture of a second.
There was an impish uplift to the girl’s lips when she drawled, “Is this how you usually make friends?”
“Who said I’m looking for any?”
“Uh-huh. So, your name didn’t pop up in one of the Find a Friend Ad in the newspaper then.”
At those words he squared his shoulders, piquing Wanda’s curiosity. She delved in her memory, trying to figure out what accident this lad might have been linked to, that there was even an article written about it.
“It’s nice to finally put a face to the name, Namor McKenzie,” the girl said, playing into whatever image came about in the young man’s mind. She was slowly closing the distance between them, staring into his almond-shaped blue eyes. They were so bright against his tanned skin, it looked like they were glowing. “Though I can’t say the same about this encounter.”
The world around them seemed to remain the same – the lush greenness of the trees and lawns, the rippling pond, the mutants walking around at ease – and yet it was preternaturally still and somehow inexorable, creeping on Namor with every step the girl took toward him.
He jammed his hands in the front pockets of his khaki shorts and said, “I’m pretty sure front-page news never goes without a picture. You probably have that clipping somewhere.”
“Somebody has too high of an opinion of himself,” Wanda said with a slight tilt of her head as fragments of memories of spacious colonial-style houses, soft leather car interiors, and literal silver plates poured into her mind along with the feeling like the world revolves around her. “You don’t have a memorable face anyway.”
She thought of Jean’s words “Those feelings coiling inside him aren’t as bleak as in Erik” which now seemed unfair. Maybe the expression of the Master of Magnetism wasn’t rich in emotions and his gaze was sometimes cold and sharp like a knife blade, the girl had always been able to see past it, to where he was vulnerable and not bleak at all. In those eyes that belonged to Namor McKenzie, she saw nothing but a spoiled boy who had finally got a taste of real life.
“Did anyone tell you to lose that bitchy air of a Prom Queen of 1979?” Namor quipped when they were standing face to face.
“Nineteen seventy-seven, actually,” Wanda corrected him with a sweet smile. “Did anyone tell you to stop being an irresponsible asshole?”
A wickedly amused “Oi” escaped her lips when the young man’s face took on a look that said he had been told this fairly often.
“There is quite an ironic loophole in your powers,” the girl said suddenly, her eyes slightly narrowed. “A mutant whose gift, to put it really simply, is control over water is afraid of depths.”
“Where did you hear that?” Namor asked in a challenging tone Wanda knew was feigned. For once, there was something else besides the arrogance.
Her warm breath caressed the shell of his ear when she stepped closer and leaned toward him to whisper, “Watch out.” She pulled away and glanced down, pointedly, so he would follow her suit. Beneath them was no longer ground but murky waters of a pond and all that held them back from plunging down was air imbued with telekinetic forces.
The pupils in those blue eyes were two black holes of pure panic when the young man shot his gaze back to Wanda. Her irises went red when she winked at him and “the earth” was snatched from under his feet.
However, there is a fine line between reality and illusion, and only two were able to cross it, staying somewhere in between…
“Wan, are you okay?” Jean asked her friend, worry seeping through.
“I’m perfectly fine,” Wanda replied right away.
She wiped at her face, peeled off the strands of hair from her forehead and temples, twisting them around her fingers for the curls to spring back to their form. Having briskly put herself in order, the girl turned to the Professor who smiled at her sympathetically.
“Mr. Xavier, can we have a minute of your time, please?” she said, keeping her tone as light as possible so it wouldn’t alarm the man.
It hardly helped because a more serious expression settled on Charles’ face and he cast a quick glance at Erik, then at Namor. But the young man didn’t seem to mind the interruption of this class. In fact, he looked rather...distracted, if the odd look in his eyes could be called so.
The telepath’s attention drifted to Wanda and Jean, his shrewd but gentle gaze sweeping over them. “What is it?”
“I don’t really want to rehash this topic all over again, but I want you to know that our irresponsible behavior tackled a very important issue and left an impact more serious than meets the eye,” Wanda said in a manner as if she was a representative of the White House who was making an announcement on the national television. The Professor was all ears. As well as the Master of Magnetism. “We, and I speak on behalf of everyone involved in that childish shenanigan –” Jean was nodding, confirming those words “– we realized that there is a long way to go and that our energy and ingenuity can and should be directed at something beneficial for the people around. That is why we came up with one very special project.”
The girl nudged Jean with her elbow, prompting. Briskly, the red-haired telepath unfolded the scheme of the treehouse and handed it to Charles. He took that rather crumpled piece of paper without hesitation even though he kept looking at the girls as if everything he needed to know was written on their faces. Erik, meanwhile, tilted his head toward his old friend to take a peek at the idea he was convinced belonged mainly to his children.
“There are a lot of kids in the school who had to grow up quickly or who didn’t have a proper childhood at all and there are also the little ones who are just bored here,” Jean began, her voice quiet but soaked with genuine emotions. “So we figured that having a treehouse on the grounds could make them happier.”
“It would make a core memory,” Wanda put in. From the corner of her eye, she noticed a shock of silver lurking between the trees, eavesdropping.
It was hard to tell if this presentation resonated with Charles, because he was just blinking at the girls, still haven’t taken a single glance at the scheme in his hands. Determined to fix it, Jean came over to him and hunkered down at his side.
“Look,” she said, pointing at the materials listed in Wanda’s handwriting in the right corner of the paper, “we made an inventory of the building materials left after the school reconstruction and –”
The rest of it Wanda was listening in half an ear, smiling at her friend and her ardor and the way the Professor was taking it in, looking at the red-haired girl with so much warmth in his eyes. Wanda herself was not deprived of affection. Erik had thrown his plaid shirt over her wet shoulders and as if she were a six-year-old, he wiped her face with the sleeve, removing the remnants of Jean’s short-lived art.
“You looked like a ghost,” he said simply, meeting his daughter’s astonished gaze.
She scrunched up her face, pretending that her feelings were hurt. “I thought you would say like a baby panda.”
A small smile curved the man’s lips. “I’m not sure a baby panda would give this boy such a look.”
The Master of Magnetism glanced over at Namor, surprised to find him standing at the very edge of the bank. The noses of the young mutant’s sneakers were practically immersed in water. The look on his face raised a couple of questions Erik suspected his daughter had the answers to.
“What?” Wanda asked innocently when her father turned to her. “I just pulled a couple of mental strings, that is all.”
A gasp came out from somewhere nearby, probably the same teenagers that were giggling earlier were its source because Namor began to walk on the water. Step after step he made over the pond’s surface as if it were as dense as the ground, and while Charles and Jean were fully immersed in their discussion, overlooking the spectacle, Erik had a front-row ticket.
Wanda did not expect to hear her father say, “He is afraid of water,” in a tone like she wasn’t going to let the water guy go swimming but was pushing him to the edge of a cliff.
She wrapped herself tighter in Erik’s shirt, and asked, brows furrowed in confusion tinged with indignation, “Why are protecting him?”
“I am not,” the Master of Magnetism responded calmly. “I’m only saying that maybe it’s too much for his first class.”
“Or maybe I’m giving him a good lesson: show your worst side on the first meet so you don’t make false friends,” the girl parried.
“Or it’s as simple as it goes: you’re taking your grudge against Hank out on him,” Erik retorted.
Really? Did he decide to take up fatherhood now and teach her how to manage life? If anything, morality wasn’t his area of expertise.
Wanda’s irises spiked red.
“You don’t get to judge me on this,” she said flatly, and even though there was no bite in those words, her father’s stoic expression cracked a little.
The red in the girl’s eyes significantly subsided and she uttered, “I didn’t –” but Charles’ light voice cut her short, wedging into the father-daughter interaction with, “So, what do you think of that?” directed at the Master of Magnetism.
“You’ve already made up your mind, Charles,” Erik said on an exhale, turning away from his daughter. “Make the kids happy.”
“Well, you’ll have to show me the tree and –”
The Professor didn’t have the chance to finish the sentence because Jean launched herself at him, squeezing him in a hug he clearly didn’t anticipate but was glad to receive, patting her back gently. Right in that moment a loud splash echoed through the area. Everyone’s eyes turned to the point at which Wanda had already been peering. In the pond, Namor was kicking and trashing against the water, straggling to keep his head above the surface.
“Don’t you tell me he can’t swim,” Wanda muttered after a minute of collective stupor, rather annoyed than worried.
“Goodness gracious!” Charles exclaimed, moving his wheelchair to the bank of the pond in a hurry. His hand shot in the air, two fingers pressing against the temple. “Stop panicking, you’ll drown. Please, Namor, calm your mind.”
But the young man was nowhere near being calm, he kept gulping the water and scattering the water lilies away, attracting more and more onlookers. Small children and teenagers were staring unabashedly, some covered their mouths with their hands. In the chaos, the only bastion of equanimity was the Lehnsherrs.
“Just pull him out of there,” Erik said to Jean matter-of-factly.
It sobered her up, pressing a pause on her useless gaping and pushing her to spring to action. She held out her hand, resorting to the power of telekinesis, and the splashing-around-boy was pulled to the bank. Together with the Professor, she helped him to get out of the water, dragging him by his upper arms as Wanda and Erik glanced sideways at each other, standing passively right behind their backs.
Namor’s fingers dug deep into the soil as his dripping wet body was shaking from coughing and desperate attempts to fill his lungs with air. Jean kneeled before him, offering him his empathy but he shook her hand off his shoulder.
“So, did we get the green light?” Wanda asked in a light-hearted tone as if nobody was laying at her feet. When Charles’ baffled gaze drifted to her, she gave the cue, “The treehouse project.”
The man’s lips parted but then he probably decided that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in this case because he sighed and gave out a laconic “Yes.”
A big smile twisted the girl’s mouth and she chirped, “Great!” with a slap of her palms. Yet there was something of a predator lurking behind that joyful mask when she hauled Jean up by the hand and drawled to Namor, looking down her nose at him, “Welcome to the school for the gifted, Mr. Wet Panties,” so that Charles found himself asking, “Wanda, what is your score at the Professor Ratcliff’s class?”
A clever schemer understands the art of retreat, Wanda was familiar with that concept. Thus, on her way out of Namor’s mind, she veiled their tete-a-tete interaction, making it really hard for any telepath to read that piece of memory as well as for its owner to spread a word about it.
“Lower than yours, Professor,” the girl hedged, teasing the man at the same time. Answering Erik’s look and satisfying the curiosity sparked in the students still gather at the pond, she exclaimed, her face beaming, “Professor cheated on tests!”
With that, Wanda entwined her fingers with Jean’s, and under the surprised exclamations, the girls took off, eager to share the good news with their friends.
“Are you serious about the Professor?” the red-haired telepath asked, her braid swishing back and forth with the pace of the run.
“Oh, yeah. He admitted it to me a while ago,” Wanda replied, chuckling. As they crossed the bridge again, the plaid shirt fluttering around her, the girl turned her face briefly to her friend, asking, “Did you call me ‘Wan’ back there?”
For a brief second Jean seemed to be lost, then she replied, “Wow, that just slipped out.”
But for once Wanda didn't mind someone else besides her brother or sister to call her that way and she squeezed Jean’s hand, both laughing. They reached the lawn in front of the mansion, spotting Ororo, Kurt, Scott, and Peter in the shadow of a particularly big oak tree. The gang seemed to notice them too because they sprung to their feet, and as they realized the girls’ faces were lit with triumph, they didn’t wait any longer, rushing to meet them halfway.
“Did we get it?” Peter blasted out, eyes twinkling.
“Yes!” the girls answered in unison, a little breathless from the run, and the whole gang burst out with a loud exclamation of relief and victory. They all embraced each other, a tight clasp with cheeks touching, squealing, and jumping, feeling as united as never before.