Family Reunion: Part 1
by Siarade
All characters herein belong to Marvel, except Thomas, who doesn't belong to much of anybody. Well, me, but I ain't _that_ fond of him. Done for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended. No profit being made from this story.
This is my little version of the future.
Many thanks to Lynxie, Ali McK, Duey, BJ, Pebbs and the #plotting crew. Many apologize to Sparks -- I'm so sorry for the whole mixup!
And I'm sorry for the mud-boring title. It couldn't be helped.
This is the family reunion. I should say "family" reunion, because it really has nothing to do with names or blood, but it's hard to talk in quotes. And really, these people are family. I see them more often, know them better and get better Christmas presents from these non-blood relations than most of my friends from school get from their tried-and-true surnamesakes.
See, over there, that's Mom and Dad, by the grill. Dad always handles the grill -- it's part of his controlling nature, I think. He doesn't have any desire to relax and just hang -- even if he did, I don't think he has the ability. To just hang, just sit, just relax, just watch a sunset and be, is like nails on a chalkboard to my father.
Well, okay, I'm not telling the truth. He's hung out with me a bunch of times -- we've done the father-son movie/video game/shopping trip thing, and most of the time, we end up leaning back against whatever we're sitting on and idly commenting on whatever's passing by, either the mall pedestrians or the end game credits or the TV show -- although, once Mom caught us kinda drooling over some bikini beach show and I swear to God, Dad's never even gone near that channel since.
Mom's the one with the red hair, next to him. Yeah, the one laughing. It's been that shade of red ever since I can remember -- never darkened or lightened or gone laced with silver. I don't know if she dyes it or what, but I don't think so, because when I hug her, it still smells the same, like a mix of peaches and laundry detergent. Well, that kinda makes it seem like a bad smell, which it isn't. It smells clean and soft and sweet all at once. I know all of us Summers kids have caught Dad smelling her hair. I'm sure you'll see him do it today, if you watch. When he hugs her, he leans in, turns his cheek against her temple and breathes in. Ororo told me once, when I was really little and asked her why he always did that, that it was his way of making sure she was real, because he felt so lucky that sometimes he couldn't believe it.
My sister, Rachel, well she just goes all gooey when she hears that explanation. She's ten now and very into the gooey aspects of romance and love, yada yada. At 15, I can kind of appreciate it. Of course, I will set myself on fire and do a jig in hell before I admit that. It does nothing for the macho image of an 15 year-old male to admit to anything gooey about his parents being in love.
Which they are. Really. You can see it. I mean, c'mon, he smells her hair.
Rachel has her hair. She's got it cut shorter, barely shoulder length, and lots of times she'll sweep it up into a ponytail under a baseball cap, but she can't hide that hair. No one could. Neither of them would even try. My sister has my mother's looks -- I've done enough glowering at strangers in the mall when she drags me shopping to know. I may be pretty ordinary and she may be the future mother of a powerful culture, but I'm still an older brother. And I'm a Summers. If that makes me overprotective, I'll blame it on my genes.
See, now, there's proof standing right over there, with the silver hair. Next to the brunette that looks ready to pop, talking to the scruffy guy. You think I'm protective? I'm nothing compared to that Summers. Nathan, disparity of years or not, disparity of names or not, is my much much older brother. More like an uncle -- subtly affectionate, familiar looking (the Summers jaw!) but too far apart in years to feel like a sibling. See how he's standing, relaxed in the shoulders, weight on his left leg -- now on his right, as he grins at the brunette -- the absence of tension in his back? Fifteen years ago, from what I've come to understand, that would be Nathan after about two dozen beers. Well, okay, from what I also understand, at that point he would have been much more morose and much less approachable, and probably no longer speaking in English. As it is now, he looks like he's got the world on a plate.
Fifteen years ago, he could never have gone through a party like this with a grin. No barbecue could have made him smile, and the more beer, the less he smiled -- from what I'm told, anyway. Hell, ten years ago, he wouldn't have come. He couldn't have come. As long as I've known him, my brother has been one moody son of a bitch. And I'm talking the Star Wars Dark Side of moody. Like the "look upon me and tremble" kind of moody.
I really didn't like him as a kid, I mean, he's HUGE. Back then, being short and skinny, I would hide in my room when he came over, just because he intimidated everything. Chairs shuddered in the man's presence. I mean, muscle-y, yeah, but it was more than that -- Logan's muscle-y, abrasive, with this low-rumble voice that I always figured would be how a bear would sound if it could talk, but I wasn't intimidated by him. Awed, but never intimidated. There was just something about Nathan.
Then, of course, everything changed after that war, and he moved into this groove mode -- these laid back, face-encompassing smiles suddenly appeared on his face when he talked to you, and he would laugh, I mean full-on, belly-rolling laughs that could make the floor shake. After Sam's son was born, I actually caught Nathan, my millenniums-older brother, giggling. He was bouncing the kid on his knee, two sets of tiny fists wrapped around his thumbs, giggling right along as the kid squealed and smiled.
You think I didn't stop and ask what dimension/altered reality/dreamworld I'd fallen into? Hell, I asked Hank to drug test me, bugged him about getting a CAT scan machine so I could have one. Delusional. But the smiles stayed, and I wasn't hallucinating.
After that, things weren't so weird for me, for us. He looked at me funny for a second, holding little Tyler on his knee, and then gave me this sort of brotherly grin, and for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid of him.
Nowadays, I carry a bit of guilt about how I felt back then. I look at my mother, who has loved Nathan all his life without reserve, without resentment, despite the factual reality that he is not her son. And my father, clumsy with expressing feelings, whom I heard one day call Logan a "cocksucking bastard" to his face for something that Logan said about my brother. Then there's me, bitter at age 8, jealous enough to not love him, letting my conscience hide it under the guise of intimidation.
I could have been bitter for a long time, I think, if it wasn't for my parents. Nathan's hard to forget -- impossible. I mean, look at his name: it's a legacy kind in itself. Nathan Christopher Charles Summers. Or, if you like, Nathan Dayspring Askani'son. Those aren't the kind of names you forget; they've got the whole future wrapped up in them. Named after my grandfather, named after the man who brought my parents together and pretty much made them what they are. Named after an entire culture of people that hasn't been born yet -- named as the savior of mankind. Named after the past, named for the future.
It wouldn't be hard to resent that. He's the fucking messiah, for chrissake.
But after Apocalypse died, the messiah, injured, half-dead as he was, turned into a regular man. With a girlfriend, with a sense of humor, with goals that didn't ruin his personal life. I still could have resented him, if it wasn't for my parents. I'm an easy-to-forget kind of person -- no one ever seems to remember my name on the first or fifth meeting. Dean Thomas Summers. No history, no great premonitions for the future in that name. Just a name. Not a bad one -- but just a name.
Sometimes, I do wonder if my mother isn't prescient. She said she had my named picked out at about 6 months -- like she knew. She knew I was going to be ordinary, and gave me a name to fit. If you're ordinary, you need an ordinary name, so you don't have some weighty un-live-up-able title hanging over you from birth. At least, that's how I figure it.
I am. Ordinary, that is. With all of the high-powered genetics my parents and siblings have going for them, all I turned out as was ordinary. No powers, no special abilities, just 10 fingers, 10 toes, average intelligence, average brown hair and brown eyes, average weight, height and average of about 156 when I bowl.
I'm even the middle child. I've got the great Askani'son himself above -- way above, above so much it's not really like being brothers, but even that's circumnavigated by my only slightly older brother, Christopher Alexander Summers. He's not here today -- I think he may be the only Summers who isn't. At college, actually. He did the whole pre-requisite Generation X thing, the mandatory seven years training, then hopped over to Loyola University. Oh, he's an Alpha-level psi, too. Working through the break, asserting his independence. Well, doing pretty good, actually. Dad got an email last night about the date he went on. Yeah, it'll probably break Katie Logan's heart. Hell, it breaks Logan's heart that his daughter is in love with a Summers.
Of course, below, there's the future Mother Askani. She's going to build the future -- Nathan saved it, she built it. I, of course, still don't know what I'm going to major in in college.
And even then, one rung lower on the age ladder, is the youngest and newest Summers -- until Dom has hers, that is -- my kid sister Sarah. Sarah Katherine Summers. She may have a pretty ordinary name -- if you notice, we all have very clean-cut, WASP names -- but she's only five years old and already she's starting to display her powers. I know, usually they don't show up until adolescence, but Sarah, well, she's the first to not be a psi. She takes after Dad: she's got some sort of optic power, we're not sure what exactly, but she's starting to fry stuff if she focuses. Dad made her a pair of sunglasses, just like his, and she wears them with inordinate pride.
See, you're looking at the middlest of the middle child. It would be really, really easy to forget me. I'm not an attention-grabbing sort of person, in ability or personality. Mom always calls me her "laid back boy" because I take everything pretty much in stride, and I don't get worked up much. Oh, I probably could, but I have three -- four -- siblings who can do it much more flamboyantly than I.
They never did forget me, though. I remember, on that last night before Apocalypse died, when it really looked like there was no hope, the way my father picked my brother and I up -- he just scooped Chris and I in his arms, squeezing hard. He set us down, looked Chris in the eye and said, "don't follow me. Stay here. I'll come back." Then he looked at me, and I could almost see his eyes through the red of his blast visor, and said, "take care of your mother. Don't let anything happen to her. Or you."
I believed him, and was suddenly very afraid and very proud -- I was only five, and he was trusting me to take care of my mother, to be able to protect her. I know that had anything happened, my brother would have had to have done most of the work, I would have been pretty useless, but it meant the world to me that he would trust me like that. Although, as injured and incoherent as my mother was, I think she still could have taken just about anybody. She is one of the most powerful mutants in the world, you know.
Apparently, a lot of people I'm related to get that said about them.
Look, there's Remy. He'll probably let me have a beer. C'mon.
Rule number 2,603 in the Unabridged Laws of Being a Child of a Psychic Parent: never try to sneak beer unless your mother is engaged in a telepathic battle with an archenemy somewhere on the other side of the universe. And even then, try to get a telepathic buddy to shield you, and be prepared for her to kick your ass when she gets home.
Yeah, well, it was worth a shot. Besides, Gambit's cool -- he and Rogue finally got it right. It took 'em a while, even after Apocalypse. They got married here, too.
Oh, I dunno. Since the war, since we rebuilt, probably...oh, maybe half a dozen. We can go inside, look at the picture wall. It'll have all the weddings. C'mon. Nature's calling on auto-redial, anyway.
to be continued....