apachefirecat

Title: Why
Fandom: X-Men
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: OFC, Jubilee, Wolfsbane, and Moonstar with cameos from Chamber,
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: One of the young mutants placed underneath Jubilee's charge has a lesson to learn. Jubilee knows just how to handle it, although her methods may not be exactly conventional.
Word Count: 2198
Written For: Not only is this written for and in response to 1_million_words Slice of Life Bingo Challenge: Dentist Visit and Monday Flash Challenge: Sparkly and... Orange, but it's actually based off an idea I had MANY YEARS ago, way back when I myself was a teenager.
Warnings: AU, Future Fic
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.










"I cannae believe ye did that!"

"What?" The teenager before her sprawled lazily on the chair. She was in major trouble, looking at being punished far worse than being grounded for an entire month, but she could obviously care less.

Rahne threw up her hands. "Och! Ye are definitely yuir father's chile!"

"Yeah." Moira tossed her head back and opened her mouth in a fang-filled grin. "But not just my Daddy's girl. I get my best talents from you, Mom."

Dani's eyebrows shot up as she entered the kitchen just in time to hear Rahne screech. "I haven't heard a cry like that since Terry."

Rahne threw a hand out toward her direction. "Ye try dealin' wit' an ornery teenager who does nae understand why she cannae be attackin' humans!"

"He attacked me first -- "

"NAE!" Rahne whirled on her daughter. "HE DID NAE SUCH T'ING!"

Danielle's dark eyes darted back and forth between the mother and daughter, her hand frozen on the sparkly, orange juice bottle she'd started to pull out of the fridge. She was not at all certain she had wanted to be involved in this conversation and truly wished she had not been as hungry as she was upon arriving home.

"Anybody else wanna call for pizza?" Sam asked, rubbing the back of his neck and rolling his shoulders.

"Ah could cook -- " Paige started to offer, but her voice trailed off as she made a face.

"No way. We're all too exhausted, Paige."

"Oh. Just order a couple pizzas and charge it to the school's account."

"That's mighty fair o' you, Jubilee, what with -- "

Jubilee cut him off. She did not want to be reminded tonight of all nights, after the mission they'd just endured, that she could not eat like a normal human being or even mutant. She could not eat like a normal teenager, or like an adult who wished with every fiber of her being that she could still be a mostly carefree teenager. How she'd ever managed to be so reckless and enthusiastic all those years ago while still constantly going on missions to save the world was now far beyond her. "Dani, if you're just gonna stand there in the fridge, let me get pass you -- "

Danielle Moonstar was one of very few people who did not even flinch as Jubilee grabbed a bag of blood and brought it out pass her. Even Sam looked away still as Jubilee ripped open the bag with her fangs. Moira, however, grinned at the headmistress. "Get it, Jubilee!"

Jubes paused, the corner of the plastic bag still between her fangs. Her red eyes darted from Danielle to Moira to Rahne and then back again to Moira. "Okay," she said, but did pause to remove the plastic and take a sip of the life-nourishing blood. "What'd I miss this time?"

"I'm not sure you want to know," Danielle whispered behind her.

Jubilee's eyes flicked to Rahne, who never acted with such raw anger. "What's wrong, Rahne?" She grabbed the chair at the head of the table, flipped it around, and straddled her. "Tell me." It was still sometimes comforting to feel like the oldest and most mature adult in the room.

"Pizza'd take too long," Sam muttered, spying leftover fried chicken in the fridge. Danielle stepped to the side as the Guthrie siblings started raiding the refrigerator.

"This... This... " Flustered, Rahne waved a hand at Moira.

"Your daughter," Jubilee supplied, barely able to hide her grin.

"Me daughter! Och, aye, me child's th' one who attacks a bloody dentist! Leaves him bloody 'cause he removed a fang! I tol' ye, bairn, ye cannae jest be attackin' th' humans!"

Moira grinned. Her wild, green eyes flickered challengingly up at her mother. "But I told you, Mom, he attacked me first!"

Rahne threw up both her hands. A partial howl escaped her. Sam and Paige scooted out of the kitchen, their arms full of chicken and sodas. Danielle's wise eyes followed them, but then she looked back to one of her oldest friends. She couldn't just abandon Rahne in her time of need. Slowly she sank into a chair. Eyeing Moira, who seemed determined to make up for every calm thing her mother had ever done and every opportunity she had ever missed to be wild and rebellious, she questioned softly, "So the dentist had to remove one of your teeth today and you attacked him in retaliation?"

"It hurt!" Moira exclaimed. She ran her pierced tongue -- another act that had horrified her poor mother -- over her bared fangs. "And I'm a wolf! I'm not supposed to just let some human snatch a fang out of my mouth!" She laughed aloud when her mother's face turned red.

"Moira," Jubilee spoke up in a voice that Danielle had rarely heard and Rahne and Moira had never before heard. It was a low, guttural growl that she had picked up from Wolverine and his temper. It was a warning growl. Most people paled when they heard it emitting from a known Vampire, but Moira steadily met her gaze and did not flinch in the slightest. "How old are you?"

"What? You must've gotten that from your old man. I've never heard you sound like that before." She stood up suddenly. "You know what? Watching those Hayseeds going after that chicken has got me hungry again." She walked over to the fridge and took out a package of raw hamburger meat.

Rahne blustered. Her mouth opened, shut, and opened again. Danielle warily watched Jubilee, but to her friend, she held up a hand. Her fingers pointed toward the ceiling, and her palm toward Rahne. Rahne caught Dani's message, and her green eyes cut back to Jubilee, who was leaning back and calmly watching the angry teenager. "Oh poor you! Poor Moira Gordon! The girl trying so hard to act like she doesn't miss the rest of her family! Like she doesn't miss her father!"

"And now -- now," Jubilee continued, her voice returning to the low and dangerous growl she'd imitated many a time growing up and wanting to be like her own father figure, "you got for a dentist appointment because you've had a recurring toothache, and you give the humans another reason to hate mutants."

Moira had already ripped into the package with her fangs, but now she stopped and looked up at Jubilee. Her very eyes seemed to raise upwards in question. She swallowed a bite of the hamburger, and every woman noted the soft but telltale gulping sound. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you're a fucking idiot!"

"Jubilation -- " Rahne started to protest her language, but Dani held up her hand again and shook her head.

"Lady Moira would nae approve -- "

"'Course she wouldn't," Jubilee retorted, her eyes steadfastly holding Moira's gaze. "Prof wouldn't approve. Heck, I don't even think Wolverine would approve anymore. Matter of fact, I know he wouldn't, and he used to not care about retaliating against the humans. The thing is, Moira, you went to the dentist for help. Yeah, he hurt you. Oh, don't look so surprised! I know why you snapped! We all know why you snapped! It hurt. He extracted your tooth before you were numb, and it hurt."

"We've all been to a dentist before." She shrugged. "Heck, I'd be pissed if I had to lose one of my fangs! But fact of the matter is, he hurt you, and you retaliated before you could think. Did you kill him?" She got to her feet as she snarled those four words. Rahne shivered; Danielle stood and moved to stand beside her friend.

"Well," Jubilee persisted, walking up to Moira, "did you? You were so quick to hurt a human who hurt you because he hurt you trying to help you. You were so quick to disregard everything we stand here for at Xavier's. Everything your mother and her foster mother before her have worked their entire lives for!" She was snarling now, her red eyes glowing in the dim light of the old kitchen. "Did you kill him? Did you give him, his family, all the humans who know him, work for him, and who he helped before you slit his throat even more reason to hate our kind? Even more reason to kill our kind?!"

Without warning, Jubilee ripped the hamburger meat out of Moira's hands and tossed it into the empty kitchen sink. "You're so damn quick to act with your anger and your oh-I-can-do-anything-I-want-to-get-my-point-across-because-my-Father-is-a-rich-hero-and-racecar-driver-it-doesn't-matter-what-my-Mommy-thinks-because-I'm-a-daddy's-girl-anyway attitude? You're not fooling anybody! You don't want to be here, and you know what?! You don't deserve to be here! The only reason why you're here isn't because you're a mutant! It's because of that woman right over there!" She pointed at Rahne.

"Jubilee -- "

"Not now, Rahne," Dani whispered, reassuringly rubbing Rahne's furry shoulders. She dropped her voice to a whisper she hoped the other two didn't hear, "I'm sure Jubilee knows what she's doing."

I hope so, Rahne thought, but she swallowed her words of uncertainty. Her daughter was out of hand, and she knew it. She also knew that Jubilee had once been a wild child herself, had been forced to embrace the darkness herself, and had been trained by Mister Logan, who she had witnessed tame many a wild child over the years. She fervently prayed her leader knew what she was doing with her daughter.

But Moira had actually fallen back into a defensive stature. "Kick me out," she growled. "Go ahead! You're right! I don't want to be here anyway!"

"Oh, you're not getting off that easy!" Jubilee's glowing, red eyes flicked to the leatherclad man standing silently in the doorway. "Jono, let her have it. Then when you pull yourself together, come meet me in the Danger Grotto. If you dare." Moira snapped as Jubilee strode pass her, the tails of her yellow, trench coat flapping with her swift movements.

Jubilee was faster than the Werewolf, but even more so, the telepath who she had called for assistance was faster as well. And the images he was steadily flooding into Moira's brain made the teenager, for the first time in a long time, stop and hold still. Slowly her knees began to buckle. The fur that had started to bristle across her white skin faded away, and she gave a soft, sorrowful howl.

"Remember," Jubilee called behind her as the images of mutants being terrorized, hurt, and even killed by humans and the overwhelming fear the humans felt that drove them to commit such horrendous actions made Moira start to tremble. "This is why we do what we do! This is why we protect the humans! This is why we don't just go out and use our powers to kill or hurt others who aren't asking for it! And no, he didn't ask you for pain, Moira! He may have given you pain, but he was trying to help you!"

"I -- " Moira trembled. Rahne raced to her daughter, and the teen actually let her mother hold her as tears streamed down her face. "I did nae kill 'im. I only hurt 'im."

"Enough so that he had tae gi tae th' hospital!" Rahne snapped. Although it hurt her to see her daughter cry, she also knew that she could not allow her actions to simply go unaccounted for. She had to stop her now before she continued to give in to the wolf's beastial impulses and became everything Rahne herself had fought against her entire life, not just to keep herself from becoming but also to prevent her precious daughter from becoming.

"Those were the actions of an evil mutant!" Jubilee snapped. "Not a X-Man! Come get your ass whupping in the Danger Grotto when you pull yourself together, you spoiled brat!"

Jono finished the display of images he had planned when Jubilee had first reached out to him telepathically and then slipped as silently from the room as he had come. It hurt him, too, to see the girl cry, but Jubilee was right. It had to stop now.

Moira struggled to pull herself together. Wiping the tears from her cheeks with her sharp fingernails, she whispered, "I'm surry, Mum."

Rahne hugged her and kissed the top of her blonde head. "Be sorry, dear, fer ye should be, but din't let it taint ye. Din't let th' beastie taint ye. Learn from this experience. Jubilee's right. We cannae gi wielding th' beast tae anyone who hurts us jest because they hurt us, an' especially nae when they hurt us tryin' tae help us." She tried to hug her daughter again, but Moira pulled away from her. She had been challenged by one of the most renowned mutants, and she never backed away from a challenge. Even if the images that mutant's friend had put into her head would haunt her forever.

Wordlessly, Danielle walked over and embraced Rahne. Rahne shook her head. "I di nae knae how Lady Moira did it fer so long!"

"Because she was strong," Danielle spoke wisely, "and we all can only hope to become as strong as she and the Professor always were."




The End