Most Important Job
Mar. 11th, 2022 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apachefirecatTitle: Most Important Job
Fandom: X-Men
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Jubilee, Shogo, mentions past Skin/Jubilee and Synch/Jubilee
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: The heroes didn't always make it in time. But they always had to find a way to survive.
Word Count: 1707
Written For:![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
1_million_words Slice of Life Bingo: Making the Bed
Warnings: Future AUin which I'd definitely like to play again
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.
"There are some days," Jubilee carefully started the speech she'd been running around her head in circles since she'd heard Shogo had not shown up for his first class that morning, "that you're not going to want to make the bed." She looked pointedly at the blankets that had been tossed every which way on her now-teenaged son's bed.
It still seemed so impossible sometimes that Shogo was now a teen boy full of his own ideas, hormones, and emotions! Heck, there were still some days that it seemed impossible that she was no longer a teenager. She was an adult woman trying to lead a school full of crazy teenagers whose hormones and powers were causing them all to go, on occasion more than a little, nuts! There were still some mornings when she didn't want to make her own! Or leave it for that matter... She caught herself admitting that very thing as she mumbled, "Some days you won't want to get up. Some days I don't want to get up."
"Was today one of them, Mom?" he asked. She missed the days he had called her Momma and Mommy. She missed the little boy he had been, and the freedom they'd seemed to have during that time of his life when it had only been her and him. Now she had so many responsibilities. There was rarely a day that passed that she didn't want to call Kitty up and tell her to just shuck this whole damn school! How had Emma and Sean ever done it, especially with Emma's patience or rather lack thereof? How had the Professor or Magneto for that matter? Things couldn't have been that much easier back in the '60s or the '80s.
"Mom?" Shogo's persistent plea broke into Jubilee's abrupt reverie.
She rapidly blinked her red eyes. She'd already sat down on her son's bed, and now she wrapped her arms around him and tenderly kissed the side of his head. "No," she admitted, "but only because I knew I was needed. We were needed yesterday," she added gently, knowing what was bothering him.
"We were, but we didn't do a good job."
"Bull." She let him glimpse her fangs as her stubbornness flared. "We save the world again."
"Yeah, but we didn't save her -- "
"You kinda liked her, didn't you?"
"I didn't even know her!" He'd already drawn his knees up to his shoulders and wrapped his arms around them. She'd seen Kitty sit like that many times over the years. Heck, she herself had sat like that a bunch! She knew what he was doing, even if he remained unaware: He was trying, as hard as he could, to make himself as small and unnoticeable as he could. He was hurting, and he wanted to hide from the world and the pain it caused.
She began to gently rock him; for a change, he didn't protest the tenderness of their shared moment. "You can't hide, baby. Let me tell you a little secret. You know I've always told you, every time you've mentioned how I found and adopted you, how that isn't true, how you found me?"
He nodded glumly. "That's because that time of my life was one of the darkest times I've ever experienced. I hadn't been too long turned. I was used to being hated by humans, but not by my own kind. I definitely wasn't used to being told by the mutants and even the X-Men I'd grown up around that I didn't belong there or with them! That I was evil because I was a Vampire! That's the same kind of prejudiced thinking we'd always fought against!"
Shogo tucked a loose strand of his long, dark hair behind his ear. "I know," he recognized. When she looked curiously down at him, he hurried to explain, "Aunt Pixie used to tell me about that. She said it was a very bad time in your life and that even most of the X-Men were being very mean to you."
"Yeah, they were, but you were not supposed to know about that." She made a face. "At least not yet." She'd wanted to keep that part of her past hidden from him at least until he was older. But Shogo was older now. He was older, and death had remained a constant part of their lives. Even with the Resurrection Machine the X-Men had once cooked up on Krakoa, death had still remained seemingly unavoidable. There were always rescues that didn't work, missions that failed, lives that were lost even if they were humans... She'd heard some of the X-Men during that time say that human lives didn't matter as much as mutant ones, and that was the very why, as much as it had hurt, the core X-Men had eventually agreed to let the Resurrection Machine go. It wasn't their place, after all, to play God, and the X-Men had always been about saving everybody, regardless of species, and striving for a peaceful coexistence for all.
"What happened, Mom?" he asked, and his suddenly tiny voice surprised her. Jubilee held her son tighter without even realizing she was doing so.
"It's easy to get lost, baby. People fear what they don't understand. It's always been the way it is, and Vamps do have a certain reputation -- "
"No. I know they were stupid. Anybody who fears you and isn't evil is stupid. But yesterday... What happened? Why didn't we make it in time?" A lone tear trailed down his sorrowful face, further breaking Jubilee's heart. She'd lost so many people she'd loved over the years and still thought of many of them, including her parents, Angie, and Ev every single damned day of her Immortal life, which was exactly why she hated the fact that Kitty had still ended up picking this very building for the "new" school. She needed to talk her -- again -- about moving Xavier's Elementary, as she'd coined it behind the kids' back. These halls held far too many memories. Why, this very room was where she and Ev had first --
"Why couldn't we save her?!" Shogo cried suddenly. Surging forward, he buried his weeping face in his mother's yellow jacket and cried like he had not since he'd been a very small boy.
Jubilee wrapped her arms tightly around him, hugged him, clung to him just as hard, and rocked him back and forth as he wept. "It hurts, baby. I know. But some people we're just not meant to save. Some people, no matter how much we want to, we're not meant to save." Tears began to trail down her own face. She'd never once sat down with her son and told him about all the people she'd loved before him. Maybe it was time to now. The school could run for one day without her, especially since she had Paige, Dani, Sam, and Jono all also teaching classes.
She reached out to Jono with her mind. If there was anyone else at this damn place who could actually understand her level of hurt, it was the old "freak with only half a face". Jono --
His reaction surprised her. You get t' him finally, Jubes?
Yeah, I've got him.
Don't worry about your school. I've got it.
Our school, Jono, she thought, the revelation surprising herself. The place really was theirs, and not because this was where, for the most part, she, Jono, and Paige had all grown up. They had shared their teenage years in these very dormitories, but beyond that, there were so many memories of both the living and the dead... She began to rock with her son. It was time, she realized. It was time she told him everything, and hopefully, along the way, she could find a way to ease his pain, at least for tonight. At least, she thought, he hadn't had a chance to come to love the girl like she had Angie and Ev. He was weeping now also in part over the lost of what could have been, but he'd come to understand one day, no matter what she did or how hard she tried to protect her baby boy, that losing someone he'd actually had the chance to love hurt so incredibly much more.
Jubilee kissed the side of her son's head. He really was her baby boy no matter what anybody dared to say, and he really had saved her. At least when she'd lost her parents, vengeance had fueled her. Her yearning to avenge their deaths had led her to finding the family that had stayed with her almost ever since, her beloved X-Men, but when they had turned against her... Her tongue instinctively touched her fangs even as she shuddered inwardly at the memories. That had almost killed her.
She hadn't cared that she'd no longer had to breathe. In fact, it had been just the opposite. She had not wanted to do anything any longer, and it had taken the combined efforts of Logan, Remy, Laura, and Pixie all just to keep her living. Even then she hadn't really been living. She'd only been surviving, until this very boy who she now held in her arms. He had given her strength to get up again, not just to rise and make her bed, or make at it, but to go beyond her room and beyond the team. He had given her the strength to actually want to live again. As she held him, consoled him, stroked him, rocked him, and shared her life with him, such as it was, Jubilee could only hope and pray she could always return that favor to him.
If she could make her son want to live, and keep him living, no matter the other horrors the world threw at her, she'd always have a reason to live and keep fighting. And keep teaching, by experience and in the classroom. She stopped Sam before he could start speaking to her about the fight he'd just broken up. Take it to Jono, Hayseed. I'm busy. I've got the most important job in the world.
The End
Fandom: X-Men
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Jubilee, Shogo, mentions past Skin/Jubilee and Synch/Jubilee
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: The heroes didn't always make it in time. But they always had to find a way to survive.
Word Count: 1707
Written For:
1_million_words Slice of Life Bingo: Making the BedWarnings: Future AU
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.
"There are some days," Jubilee carefully started the speech she'd been running around her head in circles since she'd heard Shogo had not shown up for his first class that morning, "that you're not going to want to make the bed." She looked pointedly at the blankets that had been tossed every which way on her now-teenaged son's bed.
It still seemed so impossible sometimes that Shogo was now a teen boy full of his own ideas, hormones, and emotions! Heck, there were still some days that it seemed impossible that she was no longer a teenager. She was an adult woman trying to lead a school full of crazy teenagers whose hormones and powers were causing them all to go, on occasion more than a little, nuts! There were still some mornings when she didn't want to make her own! Or leave it for that matter... She caught herself admitting that very thing as she mumbled, "Some days you won't want to get up. Some days I don't want to get up."
"Was today one of them, Mom?" he asked. She missed the days he had called her Momma and Mommy. She missed the little boy he had been, and the freedom they'd seemed to have during that time of his life when it had only been her and him. Now she had so many responsibilities. There was rarely a day that passed that she didn't want to call Kitty up and tell her to just shuck this whole damn school! How had Emma and Sean ever done it, especially with Emma's patience or rather lack thereof? How had the Professor or Magneto for that matter? Things couldn't have been that much easier back in the '60s or the '80s.
"Mom?" Shogo's persistent plea broke into Jubilee's abrupt reverie.
She rapidly blinked her red eyes. She'd already sat down on her son's bed, and now she wrapped her arms around him and tenderly kissed the side of his head. "No," she admitted, "but only because I knew I was needed. We were needed yesterday," she added gently, knowing what was bothering him.
"We were, but we didn't do a good job."
"Bull." She let him glimpse her fangs as her stubbornness flared. "We save the world again."
"Yeah, but we didn't save her -- "
"You kinda liked her, didn't you?"
"I didn't even know her!" He'd already drawn his knees up to his shoulders and wrapped his arms around them. She'd seen Kitty sit like that many times over the years. Heck, she herself had sat like that a bunch! She knew what he was doing, even if he remained unaware: He was trying, as hard as he could, to make himself as small and unnoticeable as he could. He was hurting, and he wanted to hide from the world and the pain it caused.
She began to gently rock him; for a change, he didn't protest the tenderness of their shared moment. "You can't hide, baby. Let me tell you a little secret. You know I've always told you, every time you've mentioned how I found and adopted you, how that isn't true, how you found me?"
He nodded glumly. "That's because that time of my life was one of the darkest times I've ever experienced. I hadn't been too long turned. I was used to being hated by humans, but not by my own kind. I definitely wasn't used to being told by the mutants and even the X-Men I'd grown up around that I didn't belong there or with them! That I was evil because I was a Vampire! That's the same kind of prejudiced thinking we'd always fought against!"
Shogo tucked a loose strand of his long, dark hair behind his ear. "I know," he recognized. When she looked curiously down at him, he hurried to explain, "Aunt Pixie used to tell me about that. She said it was a very bad time in your life and that even most of the X-Men were being very mean to you."
"Yeah, they were, but you were not supposed to know about that." She made a face. "At least not yet." She'd wanted to keep that part of her past hidden from him at least until he was older. But Shogo was older now. He was older, and death had remained a constant part of their lives. Even with the Resurrection Machine the X-Men had once cooked up on Krakoa, death had still remained seemingly unavoidable. There were always rescues that didn't work, missions that failed, lives that were lost even if they were humans... She'd heard some of the X-Men during that time say that human lives didn't matter as much as mutant ones, and that was the very why, as much as it had hurt, the core X-Men had eventually agreed to let the Resurrection Machine go. It wasn't their place, after all, to play God, and the X-Men had always been about saving everybody, regardless of species, and striving for a peaceful coexistence for all.
"What happened, Mom?" he asked, and his suddenly tiny voice surprised her. Jubilee held her son tighter without even realizing she was doing so.
"It's easy to get lost, baby. People fear what they don't understand. It's always been the way it is, and Vamps do have a certain reputation -- "
"No. I know they were stupid. Anybody who fears you and isn't evil is stupid. But yesterday... What happened? Why didn't we make it in time?" A lone tear trailed down his sorrowful face, further breaking Jubilee's heart. She'd lost so many people she'd loved over the years and still thought of many of them, including her parents, Angie, and Ev every single damned day of her Immortal life, which was exactly why she hated the fact that Kitty had still ended up picking this very building for the "new" school. She needed to talk her -- again -- about moving Xavier's Elementary, as she'd coined it behind the kids' back. These halls held far too many memories. Why, this very room was where she and Ev had first --
"Why couldn't we save her?!" Shogo cried suddenly. Surging forward, he buried his weeping face in his mother's yellow jacket and cried like he had not since he'd been a very small boy.
Jubilee wrapped her arms tightly around him, hugged him, clung to him just as hard, and rocked him back and forth as he wept. "It hurts, baby. I know. But some people we're just not meant to save. Some people, no matter how much we want to, we're not meant to save." Tears began to trail down her own face. She'd never once sat down with her son and told him about all the people she'd loved before him. Maybe it was time to now. The school could run for one day without her, especially since she had Paige, Dani, Sam, and Jono all also teaching classes.
She reached out to Jono with her mind. If there was anyone else at this damn place who could actually understand her level of hurt, it was the old "freak with only half a face". Jono --
His reaction surprised her. You get t' him finally, Jubes?
Yeah, I've got him.
Don't worry about your school. I've got it.
Our school, Jono, she thought, the revelation surprising herself. The place really was theirs, and not because this was where, for the most part, she, Jono, and Paige had all grown up. They had shared their teenage years in these very dormitories, but beyond that, there were so many memories of both the living and the dead... She began to rock with her son. It was time, she realized. It was time she told him everything, and hopefully, along the way, she could find a way to ease his pain, at least for tonight. At least, she thought, he hadn't had a chance to come to love the girl like she had Angie and Ev. He was weeping now also in part over the lost of what could have been, but he'd come to understand one day, no matter what she did or how hard she tried to protect her baby boy, that losing someone he'd actually had the chance to love hurt so incredibly much more.
Jubilee kissed the side of her son's head. He really was her baby boy no matter what anybody dared to say, and he really had saved her. At least when she'd lost her parents, vengeance had fueled her. Her yearning to avenge their deaths had led her to finding the family that had stayed with her almost ever since, her beloved X-Men, but when they had turned against her... Her tongue instinctively touched her fangs even as she shuddered inwardly at the memories. That had almost killed her.
She hadn't cared that she'd no longer had to breathe. In fact, it had been just the opposite. She had not wanted to do anything any longer, and it had taken the combined efforts of Logan, Remy, Laura, and Pixie all just to keep her living. Even then she hadn't really been living. She'd only been surviving, until this very boy who she now held in her arms. He had given her strength to get up again, not just to rise and make her bed, or make at it, but to go beyond her room and beyond the team. He had given her the strength to actually want to live again. As she held him, consoled him, stroked him, rocked him, and shared her life with him, such as it was, Jubilee could only hope and pray she could always return that favor to him.
If she could make her son want to live, and keep him living, no matter the other horrors the world threw at her, she'd always have a reason to live and keep fighting. And keep teaching, by experience and in the classroom. She stopped Sam before he could start speaking to her about the fight he'd just broken up. Take it to Jono, Hayseed. I'm busy. I've got the most important job in the world.
The End
