Yvette, Nathan - Thanksgiving Day

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

During the football game, Yvette meets Nathan and Rachel. After an embarrassing misunderstanding, they get along just fine.



Rachel squealed derisively at the football game, and Nathan laughed, dropping a kiss on top of her head. "They're funny, aren't they, munchkin? Uncle Cain's going to flatten that Mountie, yes he is..."

It was all very confusing. Everyone was running first one way, then the other, and they were picking up the strangely shaped ball instead of kicking it along the ground... Then a baby's squeal caught her attention and she glanced over from her position, half crouched by the bushes, at the older man sitting on the bench on the sidelines. She recognised him from the journals, one of the teachers, the one who spoke Serbian. She hadn't realised he had a baby. Curious, she crept closer, eyes flaring brightly.

Rachel spotted the approaching girl first. Her gray eyes lively with curiosity, she waved a little hand. "Hi!" she proclaimed. "Hi!"

Nathan looked around - and smiled. "Hello, Yvette," he said with a warm smile. "Watching the football game too?"

Yvette nodded shyly. "Yes. It is being very... busy?" she suggested, using the best word she had to describe the chaos in front of them. "It is not like the football at home. Is this being your... grand-daughter? She is being very pretty." Yvette was very careful to stay out of reach of the flailing toddler hands - her face and hair were uncovered and still razor sharp, even if her skin had softened a little again since her arrival.

Granddaughter? Oh dear God. Nathan's smile only grew. "This is my daughter Rachel. And I think she's rather pretty myself," he said fondly, smoothing down Rachel's unruly red curls. The baby giggled and beamed at Yvette. "I'm Nathan... I know we haven't met. I was very glad to see that you were coming back to the school. You have a number of friends here who were missing you."

It was impossible to see a blush on Yvette's dark-red skin, but she ducked her head, aware of the social faux pax. Nathan was perhaps only a little younger than her own grandmother, but then again, her mother had been so young when Yvette was born... "I am being sorry, I am not meaning to be rude..." she began softly, eyes on the ground.

"Yvette, it's quite all right," Nathan said gently. "No offense meant, and no offense taken. Besides," he said, his grin returning and turning a bit mischievous, "there are mornings I very definitely feel like a grandfather. Would you like to sit down?" he asked, changing tacks abruptly. "With us, I mean. I'll make sure Rachel doesn't reach out unexpectedly."

"Thank you, I would be liking that..." Yvette was intrigued by Rachel, and perhaps Mr. Nate could explain this game to her. She took a perch on the other end of the bench, carefully out of arm's reach. "Rachel's mother, is she being at the school too?" she asked, turning bright eyes on Rachel as she squirmed and clapped.

"Rachel's mother is Doctor Moira," Nathan said thoughtfully, after a moment; he was fairly sure Yvette and Moira had met. "The nicer of the two redhaired doctors."

"Oh! Miss Doctor Moira!" Yvette clapped her hands together, the hard talons rattling against each other. "She is being talking to me, when I am being in the hospital place. She is helping me not be so upset, with Mr. Haller and Mr. Professor."

Rachel squealed happily and clapped in mimicry of Yvette. Nathan grinned down at her. "So, see?" he told Yvette kindly. "You've been introduced to my family already. We're only sort of strangers."

Yvette nodded, her eyes flaring brightly. "There is being so many people here, sometimes I am feeling..." She searched for the word and remembered it from Laurie. "Shy? But everyone is being very kind to me, and it is good being with my friends."

"A couple of your friends are friends of mine, too," Nathan pointed out, getting the sense that highlighting connections would help, here. "Angelo and Sooraya?"

She brightened at that. "You are being helping Sooraya, yes?" she asked, confirming what the older girl had told her. The two of them shared the bond of one of the more unusual ways to get to the mansion, from what Yvette had been able to surmise from overhead conversations and her own clouded memories. "And Angelo, he is saying he will take me to visit his mother some time, when I am ready to be going away from the school."

"I helped Sooraya come here, and I've been helping her with her English," Nathan confirmed with a nod and another smile. "And you'll have something to look forward to, then, if Angelo's going to take you to visit his mother. She's a lot like her son - a very good person."

"I am thinking she is having to be, to be having such a good son. He is being very kind to me. I am being worrying about him - he is working too hard. He is being tired," Yvette said, unwittingly ratting on her friend to his boss. "Sooraya is saying we will be making sure he is being okay."

Oh-ho. "Well," Nathan said very brightly, "thank you for telling me that. I'll keep an eye on him. I've always thought he works too hard, too." He glanced back out at the football game. "It is very confusing, isn't it?"

"Yes." Yvette tracked the ball, in Kyle's hands now, and tried to figure out what was happening. "Where is being the net for the goal?"

"Goal? Oh! This isn't like soccer, actually. They have to get the ball down to the end of the field for a touchdown..." Nathan tilted his head suddenly, frowning. "You know, I don't actually know the rules?" He laughed. "I'm more of a hockey fan myself."

"Hockey? That is the game being with the sticks?" Yvette winced as Kyle was dogpiled on. "It is being a very danger game, I am thinking."

"This, or hockey? People can get hurt doing both, although this is supposed to be non-contact football," Nathan said severely, his eyes narrowing as he sent a telepathic reminder to Scott of that out onto the field.

"Oh, this football. I am not knowing hockey very well." Yvette watched as Scott glanced at Nate, nodded and said a few words to the the students on Kyle. They sprang back, casting guilty looks at Nathan. She looked puzzled, and then remembered she wasn't the only mutant here. "You are being doing something? With your mutant?" she asked, hesitantly, still not sure if it was rude to or not.

"I'm like Mr. Haller and the Professor - I can touch other people's minds," Nathan said. "So, actually, can Rachel here... she's very young for that. Too talented for her age, actually," he said indulgently.

Yvette accepted Nathan's power with a nod, but his mentioning of Rachel's drew a soft noise of surprise from her and a startled look. "Mr. Haller is telling me most mutants are not knowing until they are, how you say... the teen-age?"

"Rachel's very special," he said, and laughed as his very special daughter tried to do a somersault in his lap. "We don't know for sure, but she might be the only baby like her in the whole world."

Laughing a little at said wonder baby's antics, Yvette nodded. "Then it is good she is being in a very special place, yes?"

"It's the best place in the world for her to be. And it'll be a very good place for you, too - I'm glad your mother decided to send you back to us," Nathan said, then smiled. "Maybe you could teach me to speak a little bit of your language?" he asked. "I've never learned Albanian."

"I would be liking that, yes," she agreed. "I am speaking some Serbian, which you are knowing, yes? But it is good, to be speaking to someone in your own language."

"~It makes the unfamiliar seem more familiar,~" Nathan said in Serbian, then switched back to English. "I've always thought that you shouldn't expect someone to master your language unless you're willing to put in at least some effort to learn theirs."

"~Especially when you are still feeling your way in a new tongue,~" she replied, her Serbian a little hesitant, but fluent. "Laurie, she is telling me you are speaking many languages. Is this meaning you have been to many places?"

Nathan nodded. "Especially in your part of the world," he said. "I've spent a lot of time there. I always thought it was very beautiful." He smiled down at Rachel. "Someday I'll take her and show her what real mountains look like."

"It is being very beautiful, yes." Yvette's face still didn't allow her much expression, but her voice sounded a little wistful.

Nathan smiled down at her. "I've seen a lot of-" He paused for a moment to grab the back of Rachel's coat as she made a break for it. She howled briefly, then folded her little arms and glared out sullenly at the field. "As I was saying, I've seen a lot of mountains. Climbed a lot of them, actually. That used to be what I did for fun."

"~Shh, little one. Bide your father,~" Yvette told the sulking child in Albanian, her soft voice soothing. "You are being a mountain climber too?" she asked. "Also a teacher and a father and..." A thought struck her, remembering Angelo's talks. "Oh, and you are being the Elpis person, yes? It seems to me you are being very busy too. Like Angelo."

"I'm Angelo's boss, yes. And I am occasionally too busy. I'm having a vacation this week, though." Enforced or not. Rachel squirmed and yelped, and Nathan sighed at her. "You're probably making a terrible impression on Yvette, Ray."

"Bad!" was the thunderous pronouncement.

"She is being, how you say... boring?" Yvette's eyes flared brighter blue in amusement. "It is not being easy to be still for so long when you are so small."

"No, it's not," Nathan said - and promptly tossed Rachel into the air. She levitated, squealing in pure glee, before lowering herself back into her father's arms.

"Up!"

"Your wish is my command."

"WHEE!" Rachel's shriek of glee was louder even than the football game.

Yvette's mouth was a perfect 'O' of surprise as she watched the floating toddler. When she could speak, it was a small, surprised squeak. "You are not being wrong about her being very special, Mr. Nate."

"Wait'll you see what she can do with a squirrel," Nathan said, and kept his face straight by a sheer act of will.