Jean and Chris, backdated to Monday

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Backdated to Monday afternoon. Jean gets to know her father-in-law.


Jean didn't normally spend a lot of time in the staff lounge - in between classes she usually had office hours or things to take care of down in the medlab, so it wasn't a frequent haunt for her. Today, though, she was feeling social enough that the idea of sitting in her office marking papers all on her lonesome didn't appeal and she'd come and co-opted the sofa in the lounge.

The appearance of her father-in-law at the door was soundless enough that if she hadn't been a telepath, Chris wouldn't have given away his presence. "Afternoon, Jean," he said, giving her a long, speculative look. "I don't suppose you could answer a question for me...?"

"Chris," Jean said, nodding slightly in acknowledgment but not looking up from the paper she was working on for a moment. Wanting to finish her thought she underlined a section in red and wrote a short note off to the side, then caped her pen. "Depends on the question," she finally answered, glancing up.

The lop-sided smile was uncannily reminiscent of his eldest son as he ambled forward into the room. "Is it that I'm unfamiliar with the house and thus keep going around in circles," he said, "or is Scott actually avoiding me?"

"Well," she said, giving him an inscrutable look and tapping the pen against her lips, "I can answer that question, yes, but I don't think you're going to like it. And am really not going to be able to help that..."

"I see." He was still smiling, though, as he sank into the chair opposite hers. "That would explain all the kids who keep going 'Yes, of course! Mr. Summers is right - well, he was right there.' I was beginning to wonder if they were all in on it." He gazed at her, the smile growing, and the look in his eyes was almost mischievous.

Jean arched an eyebrow. "They are, of course. An elaborate screen to run interference. If you start getting too close they've got instructions to direct you out into the middle of the woods and leave you there for the wolves. Luckily for you, the only wolf on campus is quite a pleasant young lady."

"Well, that's a relief. I'll have to work on staying out of the woods, though - not used to them, after this long in Madripoor." Chris leaned back in his chair, eyeing her in open amusement. "Tell me something else, Jean - do the boys around here get into regular small accidents so that they wind up in your infirmary?"

Jean managed, barely, not to snort in amusement. So this was where Scott and Alex got it - here's to nature over nurture. She smiled and said, "It's been known to happen, I admit. Less often now that they run the risk of having to deal with Dr. Voght... have you met Amelia?"

Chris shuddered slightly. "Very attractive woman, but one gets the sense she thicks men's blood with cold. I'm not sure what to make of the Scotswoman and her levitating toddler, but they seemed fairly good-natured. Is there some rule that your Professor only employs red-haired medical personnel, though?"

"Yes," Jean said, absolutely straight faced. "Red or blue, those are the only options, and you can only get away with blue if you're male and furry. It's actually in the contract. We had an applicant once who was blond, but she decided she couldn't deal with the dying."

"Yours is a strange little world," Chris said, and although there was a great deal of amusement in his voice, there was a glimmer of something more serious in his eyes. "Very educational, thus far."

"It is," she agreed, eyes shifting away from his for a second. "It's strange, but it's ours. Maybe it only makes sense to us because we've been in it so long." Looking back she smiled faintly. "Rather like becoming a pirate, I suspect."

"I'll have you know that some of my business lately is actually legitimate," Chris said, still sounding entertained. "I did most of the outright piracy in my early years."

"I have to tell you, it really doesn't get any less weird, no matter how often you say it." Jean grinned brightly at him.

"I'm sorry, is this my daughter-in-law who's telling me that my life is weird? I've heard some interesting stories about your history as well," Chris said dryly, but the repressive tone was obviously a put-on.

"There's nothing at all strange about my life," Jean said, lifting her nose into the air with a haughty sniff. "I teach in a school, practice medicine, and occasionally attempt to save the world, wearing black leather, using my God given ability to lift airplanes with my mind."

"Saving the world. I think I'm having more trouble wrapping my mind around that than just about everything else. And I saw several of you drop in out of nowhere."

"Like they said in that movie - with great power, and all that..." Jean shrugged. "Truthfully, some days even I'm not sure how we got here, but we're here. Mostly I don't question it. I tend to go crazy when I do that." She paused, then smiled again and added, "More crazy."

"So indulge my curiosity... when did you and Scott meet?" Chris asked lightly. "Mom told me the two of you got married up in Alaska. You know, Kate and I eloped, too. Funnily enough, my parents were in on it too."

"Somehow, that does not surprise me. That Philip and Deborah were in on it, I mean. Scott and I actually met here - I was home on a break from college and he'd just come to the school." And she wasn't going to tell her father-in-law that her husband had fallen down the stairs the first time they met, but her eyes still sparkled in amusement at the thought, even after all these years.

"I note the slight age difference," Chris said idly.

"Yes, well," Jean said, biting at her lower lip and somehow managing not to blush even the slightest. "We were decidedly not dating then, or even for several years after that." Although it had had far more to do with the fact that they were both emotional nitwits at the time than the age issue.

"Oh, I didn't mean it that way," Chris said, picking up on her reaction. His smile was warm, almost reassuring. "And even if I had, I distinctly remember Scott being twelve going on forty, so I doubt at this point the age difference is really an issue."

"Well, I did get a certain amount of grief from our friends about robbing the cradle when we did finally start dating," Jean admitted. "But since it was mostly from the same people who'd been telling both of us we were insane for not having gone out before, it didn't really seem to matter."

"So did the two of you start dating before or after you started jumping out of planes with each other?" It was an innocent-sounding question, but there was a suspicious gleam in Chris's eyes.

Jean rolled her eyes slightly and said, "Before. Well before," Although she forbore to elaborate that they hadn't even been jumping out of planes for years after the X-Men formed, owing to a lack of ability to survive such a stunt at the time, or any spare team members to fly the plane even if they could have.

"Ah, good. Must be a little nervewracking at times, though," Chris said, sounding thoughtful. "Going into these situations together... I took idiotic risks as a test pilot, and I know Kate always worried. But I don't know if I'd have taken those risks with her in the back seat."

Jean considered Christopher seriously for a moment, then finally set the pen she'd still been fiddling with down on the pile of papers and sat up a little straighter. "There was... One of the reasons Scott gets so very protective of people, is that there was a mission. I don't know if you'll have heard this or not, but, there was a mission. It didn't go wrong. It actually... we stopped a madman from killing every mutant on the planet, and then had to stop another one from killing every human. You, actually, would have felt the effects of the attempt - that massive, planet-wide headache about five years ago." Jean took a deep breath. "We stopped the disaster, and in the process started a second, much smaller and more localized. The damn holding back a local lake broke, right above where the plane was parked, and it wouldn't start. I... I had to hold back the lake and get the 'Bird up to safety. And I couldn't do it from inside. Scott watched me die that day."

Chris's eyes had widened very slightly as he listened, but it was his only outward reaction for a long moment. "That's what Alex meant," he said at last, softly. "Good God. Clearly you're here, right now... what happened?"

"I... Obviously, the plane got to safety or this conversation wouldn't ever have happened. But I couldn't hold back the entire lake forever. I..." She took a deep breath. "I lost consciousness from the powers exertion, with the last thought on my mind being, essentially, that I was dead. My subconscious seemed to have other ideas. I... It turns out my reserves of power are... rather phenomenal." Not the time to mention the tsunami, or the landing a portion of the space station. "At the time, I didn't really have a handle on them - they'd ramped up fairly significantly fairly quickly and we didn't understand. But my subconscious tapped into that remaining power and kept me from drowning, kept me above water. Unfortunately, I seem to have hit my head at least once on debris in the river. I woke up a few months later in a hospital with complete amnesia, and spent almost two years living as 'Jane Smith'. I was, of course, still a mutant, and now I had no memory of my training. It took that portion of my mind a while to recover from the trauma, but eventually my powers came back and I, looking for answers and help, came here. And more or less accidentally re-learned who I was."

The rest of the story seemed to quite literally strike Chris dumb, at least briefly. He looked away almost involuntarily, staring at the view of the lawn visible through the window, his fingers tapping out a restless, unconscious rhythm on the arm of his chair. "It's hard to wrap my mind around a story like that," he finally said, his attention coming back to Jean at last. There was both sympathy and respect in the way that he looked at her. "You've been through a lot."

And coming back from the dead had actually been comparatively easy, given the things that had happened in the years after, but all Jean said was, "Yes, we have."

Chris smiled slightly at the 'we', but there was something almost wistful about his tone as he went on. "Just tell me... are the two of you happy? It's hard to tell, when he's so angry whenever I'm in the same room with him. And dear God, but Alex's personal life seems to be a confused one..."

She snorted slightly at the vast understatement, then smiled. "We are, yes. Aside the odd interpersonal crisis, we're very happy."

"Good to know." The warm smile was back. "Dad seems to be immensely fond of you. I figured that was a good indicator."

Jean sniffed. "I'm charming and wonderful and everybody loves me."

"Speaking for myself, I think I can safely say that my son has stunning taste in women," Chris said. It was a playful comment, but there was a gleam in his eye that suggested he'd enjoyed making it, in any case.

Jean laughed out loud at that. "What is it with Summers men and far too much charm? The whole bunch of you."

"Evolutionary adaptation," Chris said with a perfectly straight face. "We're attracted to formidable potential mates. Hence we develop the charm as a defensive mechanism, so that we don't get eaten alive after... I should stop right there, shouldn't I?"

"You really, really should." Jean gave Chris a Look.

"Don't tease the woman who lifts planes and lakes with her mind. Sounds like an even better survival mechanism." The grin was uncanny in how similar it was to the same grin Scott gave when he knew he was dancing on verbal thin ice. It made the resemblance between father and son almost overwhelming.

Jean stuck her tongue out at him - something she'd probably not have done if he didn't remind her so strongly of Scott. "So, your current plan is to never let me finish my grading, isn't it?"

Chris rose, still smiling. "Not in the cards, no," he said, but the smile was less teasing and more heartfelt now. "Thanks for the conversation, Jean."

"I'll see you around, Chris."