Homeward Bound: Not So Happy Reunion

[x-volcanic.livejournal.com]

Amara meets her birth parents, and just as it looks like there is a break though, things turn ugly when they realise she's a mutant.

Amara was so nervous. She'd taken some sedatives so she'd slept most of the plane trip asleep, blissfully unaware. But now they were in the cab on the way to the Crestmere's, and she was making up for the anxiety she didn't work through on the plane. She was taking no notice of the city as it zoomed past, even though it was her first time here. No, she had other things on her mind.

"What if they don't remember me?" Amara asked, more thinking out loud than anything. She'd understand if they didn't believe her, but not remembering? That would be hard.

Amanda opened her eyes. She hadn't been asleep, rather concentrating on the city, letting her mutant power soak it in. New York might be where she lived and she had a definite connection there, but London would always be 'home', at least in a spiritual sense. However, she wasn't here for herself. Time to stop being distracted, and possibly wanky, with thoughts of 'spiritual homes'.

"They're your parents, 'Mara," she replied, as soothingly as she could. "Parents don't forget their kids. I was gone from mine for fourteen years and while things were weird, they hadn't forgotten me. Just remember, if you can't handle things, just let me know and we'll excuse ourselves, yeah?"

Amara nodded, twisting her fingers around anxiously. It was possible that she was worrying for nothing, that everything would be fine. But Amara was a worrier, and so she continued to fret.


"Should we have called first? Instead of just showing up?"

The witch scrunched up her nose a little. "...Maybe? But still, how the hell do you explain this over the phone? 'Hi, I'm your long-lost daughter that's been brought up in the middle of a South American jungle by a bunch of people who worshipped an energy vampire!' - somehow I don't think they'd let us past security with that one. 'S better this way - they get to see you first, then hear the story."


"That's true." Amara glanced out the window for a moment, still not noticing the scenary as she fretted. For a moment she was tempted to turn back, to not go through with this at all. But then the Crestmeres would never know what happened to their daughter - to her. No, she had to go through with it. She looked back at Amanda, attempting a smile.


"Thank you. For coming with me. And for all of your help. I really appreciate it."
Amanda snorted a laugh. "'Mara, if you keep thanking me, I'm gunna have to start charging you for every 'thank you'. No way in hell I'd let you do this on your own - your my mate, and mates watch each other's backs, right?" She nudged the taller girl with her shoulder as the taxi began to slow. "Looks like we're here."

Amara laughed a little, blushing a little. When the taxi came to a stop, she sobered up, paying the driver and tipping him well before they both got out, Amara spending a few long moments staring at the place. It was in one of the nicer parts of London, the building itself all white and very imposing. Taking a deep breath and flashing a nervous smile in Amanda's direction, she pulled in all of the courage and determination she could find, walking up to the doorbell and pressing it for a couple of moments.

The door opened, with a rather disapproving young man in a suit eying the pair like they were something the dog had dug up and left on the doorstep. "Can I help you?" he asked, somewhat doubtfully.

Amanda stepped up, her demeanour completely altered from her normal self. "Perhaps you can," she replied, voice crisp and her accent impeccably upper-class. "My name is Amanda Seaton and this is my client, Ms. Amara Aquilla. We have business of some importance with Mr. and Mrs. Crestmere."

"Do you have an appointment?" the man asked, attitude shifting a little, but still suspicious.

"No, but it's vital that we see them. We have information regarding their daughter, Alison." Amanda pulled a business card out of her purse - she'd dressed in a light grey business suit and white blouse for the occasion, looking nothing like her normal self - and handed it to him. "I represent an investigative firm that was commissioned to look into Alison's disappearance, among other matters."

The man - not really a butler, not in this day and age, but more of a personal assistant - took the card reluctantly and opened the door wider to let them in. "You can wait in the hall," he instructed dismissively, as if that was too much and they might rip off the silverware. "I'll inform Mr. Crestmere of your 'business'."

Amara did her best to hide her surprise (and admiration) of Amanda's sudden change, and also keep from looking around at the house too much. It was such a beautiful place, she couldn't help but wonder what it would have been like to grow up here.

She smiled a little at Amanda once the man walked away, before taking a deep breath. She was nervous about coming face to face with her birth parents, and she needed to be calm. Very calm.

Except that moment of calm was shattered by the sound of something else shattering, and a raised female voice.

After a moment a man appeared on the stairs, brushing aside the aide as he fixed his gaze on the two young women below. "I demand an explanation for this," he said firmly as he descended. "How dare you come in here and use my late daughter's name?"

"I --" Amara stared at him for a couple of moment, her eyes wide and her composure gone for a moment. There was something familiar about his face - it was one of the ones she'd been seeing in her dreams.

"I'm her." Amara paused, then hurried to explain. "Your late daughter. I mean, obviously I'm not late. But I'm Alison." It sounded strange, introducing herself like that.

He missed a step and grabbed onto the railing to steady himself, face white. "No..." he murmured, his voice breaking. Then he seemed to recover, even though his eyes bored into Amara's as if trying to read her mind. "Our daughter disappeared in Brazil many years ago. You cannot be her. Leave, before I call the police."

"Mr. Crestmere," Amanda cut in smoothly, placing her hand on Amara's shoulder to reassure her. "I know it's hard to believe after all this time, but we wouldn't come here if we weren't telling the truth. Please, can we sit down and discuss this? I can show you the proof my agency has been able to gather."

The man - Amara's father - paused, brow furrowed as he considered Amanda's proposal. Then he looked at Amara again, and a flicker of doubt appeared.

"Very well," he said. "Come in. My wife and I will hear you out." He turned to lead the way back up the stairs, and then looked back at them. "But if this is some kind of trick, you'll find out just how much trouble you've borrowed, young lady."

* * * * *

Perching on the edge of an armchair in the sitting room, Amara couldn't help but sneak a look at the pictures on the mantelpiece. They were family shots - the couple sitting opposite her, with two younger children. They were all blonde and blue eyed, and Amara couldn't help but feel a little pang of what she'd missed out on. Not that she would exchange her life in Nova Roma for it, but...

"You can't be our daughter," Marie Crestmere blurted out, as her husband looked through the paperwork Amanda had handed to him. Her gaze hadn't left Amara, unable to believe that this girl could be her daughter. It didn't matter that she had a similiar look to her siblings, or that she took after her parents. They'd put their daughter to rest years ago, had given up hope that they'd ever see her again.

"I understand how difficult this must be," Amanda began in her best reassuring tones. "But the evidence is all there. This is Alison. It's a bit hard to explain where she's been all this time, but I can promise you, this is your daughter."

Amara wasn't at all sure what to say. She'd known this was a possibility, that they wouldn't believe that she was their daughter. She could hardly believe it - and had wanted to ignore it, up until she'd started remembering the life she'd once had.

"I remember my eighth birthday," she said, looking over to the woman who had given birth to her. "We went to see Les Miserables. I didn't really understand most of it, but I really liked Gavroche. I thought he was really cute."

Mr. Crestmere glanced up from the papers, something akin to shock entering his expression. "You... remember?" he asked softly, then seemed to recall himself. "But if you are Alison, where have you been all this time? Why didn't you contact us?"

"I remember," Amara said with a bit of a smile. "I cried when he died." She looked down at her hands, fiddling for a moment. "It's... complicated. I couldn't, for a long time. I didn't..." Amara looked at Amanda, trying to figure out how to explain without sounding completely crazy.

"She was taken from you." Amanda have Amara a reassuring nod and slid into 'explaining the weird in a normal way' mode. "By... well, a cult is as good a word as any, and brainwashing is a good way of explaining what happened to her. Up until very recently, she believed she'd been born there, to other people. The effect has been reversed and she's starting to remember her actual identity, which is why she asked my associates and I to find out the truth."

"No!" Mrs Crestmere said suddenly, re-entering the conversation abruptly. She'd been listening to the conversation and getting more and more upset by the moment. "No. It's not possible. Anyone could know that story, you've been telling it for years Daniel. She can not possibly be Alison. Our daughter is dead. She's dead."

"Marie, please, calm yourself." Mr. Crestmere turned to his wife, desperate hope in his expression. "All the evidence points towards her being our daughter. We never found her body. Perhaps she survived. Perhaps she is sitting here in our house, returned to us. We can prove it. DNA tests..."

"No!" Mrs Crestmere burst out, sounding more and more hysterical the more she spoke. "I'm sorry, Daniel, no! I can't go through this again. Our daughter is dead! We agreed, everyone agreed! I don't know who this woman is, but she is not my daughter!"

She wasn't the only one getting upset. Amara had walked into the situation already anxious to the hilt, and Mrs Crestmere's hysterics weren't helping to allay those anxieties. The air around Amara started to heat up and she suddenly stood up, moving clear of the furniture. Tiny flames licked at her hands before she quickly balled them up, looking beseechingly at the Crestmeres.

"I'm truly sorry, I didn't intend to upset you. But I wanted you to know your daughter was alive and well, that's all, I'm sorry."

Amanda had risen as well, laying a calming hand on Amara's shoulder. "'S okay, 'Mara, we can come back later," she murmured to the other girl in her usual voice, before turning back to the Crestmeres. "Perhaps it would be better for us to go for now. If you want to pursue further tests..." She was cut off, however, by Daniel Crestmere:

"You're a mutant." His expression had gone flat as he looked at Amara's hands.

"I --" Amara looked from Amanda to her father, her face falling. She hadn't meant to reveal that as yet, waiting until after the Crestmeres had dealt with the fact that their daughter was alive. She looked down at her hands, relaxing them from the fists she'd been clutching.

"Yes, I am," she said a little defiantly. Amara wasn't one to hide what she was, even though she could. Being a mutant was part of who she was and she wasn't about to hide or deny that.
His face closed off. The hope that had been dawning was abruptly squelched, his eyes going cold. "You need to leave. Now." He slid his arm around his sobbing wife and patted her arm soothingly. "Don't come here again."

"Now wait a minute." Amanda looked from Mr. Crestmere to Amara, aware that something had dramatically gone wrong. "Two minutes ago you were ready to do DNA tests and prove Amara was your Alison. Now you want us out. What the hell is going on?"

"I thought it was obvious, Ms. Seaton. I want you and that mutant out of my house. Now. Or I'll call the police." Daniel Crestmere looked over to his aide. "Simon, if you would escort them out, please?"

Marie Crestmere didn't say anything in response to anyone, simply turning her face away from them all and burying it against Daniel. It was bad enough that someone was lying about being her daughter, and for that person to be a mutant? She didn't want to know.

"Mister Crestmere --" Amara began, distressed by his sudden change of heart. She'd thought she was getting through, at least to one of them, but apparently it was not the case. "Please, Mister Crestmere, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm your daughter, please." Amara wasn't even sure what she was saying at this point, tears welling in her eyes as she struggled to keep herself in check. This couldn't be happening.

Daiel refused to look at her. "No child of mine can be a mutant," he said flatly. "Go now. And don't contact us again."

Amanda was torn between arguing the point and getting Amara out of there before she lost control. "I think you're making a mistake, Mr. Crestmere," she said, deciding to opt for discretion over argument. "But we'll go."

Amara didn't argue, ignoring the aide as she fled the room. Tears streamed down her face, and once she made it out of the house her control snapped, flames quickly engulfing her. Her tears were gone, but her pain certainly wasn't. Amara knew such prejudice existed, but it hadn't ever hit home for her like this. She'd been somewhat dismissive of the prejudice against mutants -she had little respect for bigotry, though she did respect those who had reservations about mutants because of personal experience.

But this was different. Even after what had happened with her power manifestation, the people of Nova Roma hadn't turned on her. Her father had still loved her. But now that trick of genes had caused her birth parents to turn on her, just when they had finally reunited.

"I don't understand!" Amara cried out, more to get her frustrations out than anything. "He believed I was his daughter. Why would he turn like that?!"

"Easy, 'Mara." People on the street were staring and pointing at the burning girl, and fairly soon that would turn to panic and calls for the authorities. "It was a shock, that's all. Give them a bit of time to get used to the idea of you being alive and we'll try again."

"He wouldn't even look at me." Amara was only half hearing Amanda, still caught up in the hurt of being rejected. One of the problems of being in her fire form while she was so upset was that she couldn't cry it out - no, her release was far more dangerous than that, the road underneath her feet starting to melt at the intensity of the heat she was giving out. Things could only get worse from here, it would be far too easy for the distraught woman to turn the whole road into liquid, to start to call molten rock up from the earth's crust. Amara's power was fuelled by her pain, and she had plenty of it right now.

"Oh, bollocks." The road beneath Amanda's boots was getting uncomfortably warm and the witch's connection to the city was starting to buzz alarmingly. Given London's tendency to use Amanda to protect itself, they really didn't want a scene. "Amara, listen. I know you're upset right now, but you've got to pull yourself together," she tried again, a bit more forcefully.

Amanda's words got through, but they didn't really help. If nothing else, it made Amara panic even more. She knew she couldn't afford to react like this, to completely lose it. Otherwise... this happened. Instead of cooling everything down, the road beneath her melted even further, black tar starting to pool at her feet and spreading. Cracks started to appear further away from her, the heat proving too much for the stone.

'Fuck this.' Amanda wasn't sure if the thought came from her or from the city, but she reacted, clapping her hands together and creating her shield, but around the out-of-control Amara, containing the heat and flame within a neon-tined sphere. "Okay, 'Mara, time out. We need to get the fuck out of here, okay?" The witch's eyes were glowing faintly gold, and if you looked carefully at her, you'd realise she'd sunk up to her ankles into the road, partially melding with London in an effort to calm it as well as her friend.

"I--" Amara's eyes widened as the bubble encased her, her connection to the ground beneath her suddenly cut off. She could feel it under her feet, but the heat she'd been spreading just wasn't there anymore. Forced to stop and take a moment, to calm herself down, Amara finally powered down, the flames evaporating to leave Amara standing in the bubble, wearing nothing but her underwear.

"We're good?" It most rhetorical - Amanda clapped again, cancelling out the shield, and then realised that a) Amara was nearly naked and b) she was ankle-deep in the road. "Well, so much for low profile..." She stripped off the business jacket she was wearing and came forward to drape it over Amara's shoulders. "C'mon, we need to get out of here before someone calls the old bill. I've been arrested often enough."

Amara just nodded, pulling the jacket closer around herself. She couldn't trust herself to speak quite yet, just huddling in and letting Amanda guide her away. When she's shut down her powers she'd shut everything else down, not thinking, not feeling anything. She needed to be numb right now, she couldn't afford anything else.