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I Wanna Be Sedated; 5/23 morning (Quentin/Rachel)
Topic Started: Jun 16 2013, 10:19 PM (383 Views)
Quentin Quire
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That's MR. Arrogant Shit Stirring Asshole, thank you!
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*Sort of like being in the sewer on the Death Star. With - oh, about 25% less stink. On a good day.*

Quentin groaned and pulled the pillow over his head. Man, didn't these people ever sleep? Last night it was former damn Avengers playing drinking games or some shit. Or the Maker having sex with what's her face, the purple chick, which yeah, old guy sex? Not on the list of things he wanted to hear. Or...

*Oh, dry your arse!* Impatience mixed with irritation, now, from someone who actually thought in an Irish accent. Fun. *There’s no reason to hang about just on the word of someone who doesn’t even know we’re here.*

*"Except, y'know, that he told us to,* someone else countered, apparently seriously annoyed about something - broken elevator? Hell, didn't these people believe in regular maintenance, either? What next, was the helicarrier going to lose power and crash into Queens or something?

Fuck it. Quentin opened one eye and moved the pillow just enough to see the alarm clock on the nightstand. Way too fucking early for fights about elevators. Who the hell was that, anyway? And how was he supposed to sleep when people insisted on pushing their thoughts into his head?

Grumbling, he tossed the pillow aside and got to his feet, idly scratching at his ass. His head was pounding - it seemed like it'd been pounding for days, and he figured that wasn't too far off. Couldn't people just stop thinking for a while? It wasn't as if they ever thought about anything interesting.

Well, other than Reed Richards. He'd picked up some seriously intense shit about quantum computing the night before. Wasn't sure he agreed with it all, but still. Definitely an improvement over Storm obsessing over his car.

Using the wall for support, he made his way to the bathroom attached to his room and grabbed for the bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol. Crappy stuff, and it didn't seem to do a whole lot, but maybe it'd take the edge off long enough for him to get some more sleep. He was going to have to break down and go talk to Betsy at this point, but considering she hadn't even picked up on the fact that "Nate" wasn't a real person he didn't have much hope she'd actually be able to help. Still, she had to know how to filter some of this shit out or she'd have gone nuts by now, right?

Bits of memory from Nate surfaced, supplying images of Betsy bloody and bruised after starting fights with the guards. Maybe not all that sane, after all.

Three Tylenol (screw the recommended dosage, the morons making the things didn't have his headache) and a stop at the can later, and Quentin staggered back into his room and plopped down on the edge of his bed to rub at his temples. There had to be a reason why the shields that did a decent job of keeping people out wouldn't do the same thing for their inane thought processes. He just had to figure out what the fuck it was.
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Well, she’d been able to make someone happy today, at least. A very very shiny, yellow, odd-sounding someone, who’d been transformed from a statue of anxious depression cast in gold into a bubbling, grateful, overly huggy animated blow-up doll person by the restoration of her younger brother to an un-Hounded state. Rachel had let ‘Lifeguard’ do it without protest, maybe hoping - partly, at least - that physical contact would somehow infect her with a little of the gold-skinned woman’s happiness to make a start on papering up some of her own cracks.

It hadn’t worked out quite like that, but at least it hadn’t lasted long, the Australian moving on quickly to begin hugging her brother in a way that suggested she wasn’t planning to let him go in the forseeable future, while he did very much the same thing then.

Two people made happy today, then.

Harder to tell whether there would be anyone made happy in the long run by the other restoration of the other two newly-former Hounds. But even those two, with all the years of evil crap that still seemed well-entrenched in their minds even after she’d reversed His process, deserved better than the fate they’d been tricked into, even if better in this case only went as far as another inhibitor collar and a trip down to some other part of the brig.

He wouldn’t be able to use them to reverse engineer his tracking to the Resistance, either. So there was that. Two people made happy, and a little extra security for the interim period before Kiwi Black was ready to take his group on the raid he’d promised yesterday.

There was that too. But that one, Rachel wasn’t sure she was really ready to start thinking about too hard just yet. She’d be on it, though, when it happened. She hadn’t given the tattooed man an option about that. Hone Heke wanted to cast this as the Mutiny on the Pequod on a captain who’d lost his mind and needed ending, then he’d be doing it with a mystical white whale substitute.

Yeah. Still not ready to start thinking about that yet. And with Mom and Dad visited, and the three Hounds that had been in the brig seen to, there was just one person still to go on the list of people she’d needed to see this morning.

Another former Hound. Another Hound - the first she’d ever heard about - who’d also managed to beat his programming. And one who Mom - broken, grieving Mom who’d unhinged her mind from what was real and what wasn’t - had over-written to make him think he was someone else. To make him think he was her dead baby half-brother, all grown up.

Odds weren’t looking great that this was going to an addition to that list of two happy people for the day. But it had to be done all the same.

Finding the right room was easy enough with just a little judicious use of her powers, and once she’d arrived Rachel didn’t bother to wait before knocking softly on the door frame. Trying to steel herself for whatever the hell she might be getting herself into wasn’t going to help, she was pretty sure. Neither was waiting to see if she’d get blown off. Just knock, and then use TK to release the door mechanism so that it slid open to reveal a skinny, pink-mohawked (pink-mohawked???) kid with Hound markings on his face sitting on the bed rubbing at his temples in a way that Rachel recognised instantly.

“It won’t work, sorry,” Rachel said, folding her arms across her chest and leaning up against the side of the doorframe as she looked past him to the open bottle of tylenol that was just visible on the counter of the little adjoining bathroom. “That stuff never does on a psionic headache.”

Which you would have thought someone here could have told him. Probably beneath the notice of Emma Frost to sully her hands with something that prosaic and actually potentially useful, though. And Mom...

...well, yeah. Mom and overly old children who appeared suddenly and claimed to be hers. Still not a good combo.
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Quentin Quire
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This sucked ass, Quentin decided, half-wishing he was still as fucked up as he'd been on Monday so he could just believe he was hallucinating the whole thing. Headache would not stop, people kept thinking utterly inane thoughts at him, and pretty much everyone was still looking at him as if he were a psycho who might snap and turn them over to the Sentinels every time he left his room. Or maybe that was Nate's memory from a few days back - damned if he could keep them straight in his head half the time, but it didn't change anything. This sucked ass. Maybe if he asked nice they'd give him back the damn inhibitor collar? Just so he could get some sleep without having to listen to everyone else on the carrier having sex?

It wouldn't have been half so bad, he mused, if there'd been any prospects of actually having sex himself.

There was a knock at the door, and Quentin's eyes jerked up, mouth opening to protest that whoever the hell it was should just go away. Before he got a chance, though, the door opened all on its own. More fucked up mechanical systems, or did they just not trust him enough to give him a door he could actually keep closed?

It wasn't Forge or Betsy or anyone he recognized, though. Or even one of the Ponies. Instead, a hot redhead was standing in his doorway, looking at him. Huh. Maybe he was hallucinating after all?

“It won’t work, sorry,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and pretty much blowing the idea that it was going to be that kind of hallucination. Which didn't explain who she was, why she was here, or why she looked...

Quentin's eyes widened a little as she continued. “That stuff never does on a psionic headache.”

"Yeah, figured that out for myself, thanks," he replied snarkily, realizing she was referring to the Tylenol he'd been choking down for the past twelve hours and trying to block out the thoughts spinning around in his head. "Apparently SHIELD doesn't stock the good stuff, though - why bother when they're going to throw the 'paths in collars and camps anyway?"

Jean. She looked like Jean. Not enough to be her twin or clone or anything stupid, but...a lot like, anyway. Except Jean was off somewhere, probably with Ahab, and - damnit, whatever "Nate" remembered didn't mean shit anyway. He'd gotten that much sorted out, if not much else. But whatever, it wasn't her, which raised the question, "So, who are you anyway? The welcoming committee? Or someone new they sent to check out my brain for subconscious triggers or whatever, in case Bets missed those being there, too?"

Which he'd pass on, thanks anyway. There'd been enough fucking around in his head to last him a lifetime. And if there was one thing he was sure of, he didn't want anyone who looked like "Mom" giving him a new personality. He was still trying to sort out the two he had.
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Oh god, this kid’s thoughts...

...he really needed to get ‘Not Projecting 101’ lessons, that was for sure. Ew. That kind of hallucination?

Or maybe it had just been a while since she’d spent too much time around teenage boys. At least ones that weren’t Feron, who couldn’t stop projecting for crap, but at least didn’t seem to have ever gone through puberty, so those types of thoughts weren’t usually so much of an issue.

Ew. Ah well. Teenage boys. She remembered that. At least he was quick enough on the uptake to figure out she was talking about the tylenol, if apparently not quick enough to actually figure out it wouldn’t work after 12 hours of mainlining it, if his thoughts were accurate.

"Yeah, figured that out for myself, thanks," he snarked back at her from the bed as he made an old college try (what did that even mean?) at throwing up some mental shields. Not so well, by the looks of things, but never mind that, they could work on it. "Apparently SHIELD doesn't stock the good stuff, though - why bother when they're going to throw the 'paths in collars and camps anyway?"

Amused at this attempt at world-wise cynicism in spite of her best intentions, Rachel cocked at eyebrow back at the kid. “You don’t even know what the good stuff is for a telepath, do you?” she asked, only half-rhetorically, but never mind, because... yeah... okay, he’d recognized the resemblance to Mom, so they were probably about to have to go there.

Probably better sooner than later, probably. And potentially just as awkward either way, but at least it had cleared the X-rated part of his thoughts up extra quickly.

"So, who are you anyway? The welcoming committee? Or someone new they sent to check out my brain for subconscious triggers or whatever, in case Bets missed those being there, too?"

He didn’t seem that keen on that particular idea, which wasn’t really all that surprising, but all the same, Rachel just shrugged, wrinkling her nose a little as she replied, “Little from Column A, little from Column B, I guess.” One didn’t discount the other after all, and though she’d had some theories ever since she’d heard about his existence, and even more since they’d passed on the twist to the plot that had been uncovered back on Monday, mostly... yeah. The first other Hound she’d ever heard of to break their programming for themselves? And someone who might have kind of at one point been her little brother? Damn straight she wanted to know what was in his brain.

But they’d get to that. First things first, introductions. “My name’s Rachel Summers. And I guess you might say I know something about what it’s like to be you,” she told him, and as she did, Rachel suspended the projections she usually maintained to keep people seeing her set of tattoos that were a match for his.

And they could officially declare the Ahab Class Reunion open. Yay.
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Quentin Quire
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So, hot redhead in his room? Not a bad thing. Hot redheaded telepath who looked uncomfortably like "Mom" in his room, commenting about how the Tylenol wouldn't work? Yeah, that he could live without. He'd already figured that out, but it wasn't as if someone had handed him a bottle of wonder pills upon arrival. Probably, he figured, because SHIELD didn't stock them. Why bother, when they weren't going to keep telepaths around and empowered anyway?

Hot redhead quicked an eyebrow at that. “You don’t even know what the good stuff is for a telepath, do you?”

Quentin rolled his eyes. "I've heard," he replied, rattling off the names of a couple of meds that "Nate" had picked up from Jean. Unfortunately, no one had presented him with a bottle in his Welcome Aboard kit, and while he'd been introduced to some blonde lingerie model who was supposedly a telepath the next day, he didn't want her poking around in his head any more than he did Betsy.

Which raised the question of just what the redhead was doing in his room asking about pills to begin with. If she was the latest person to come and poke around in his head for his own good, he wasn't interested. His brain still hurt from the last one in Florida.

“Little from Column A, little from Column B, I guess," she admitted, wrinkling her nose as if the idea of mucking around in his brain was as distasteful to her as it was to him. Great. He wondered who he had to thank for this one. Forge? Calvin? That green woman in Florida who'd seen too many movies with fortune tellers?

“My name’s Rachel Summers, she said, apparently figuring introductions were in order before they got down to business. "Summers" sounded familiar, but didn't have a chance to pin down why before she continued, "And I guess you might say I know something about what it’s like to be you,”

"Why, did someone..." his voice drifted off as hound marks appeared on her face, serving only to strengthen her resemblance to Jean as he'd last seen her. Or Nate had. Or...fuck, he couldn't keep it all straight, especially with Nate's memories belatedly supplying the knowledge that Summers was the visored boyscout who'd gotten Jean pregnant. Or Madelyn pregnant. Or...fuck, probably neither of them and it was all in Jean's head, so what did it matter?

Except...

"Jean really did have a kid?" he blurted out, curious despite his confusion. "I thought..." Well, he'd thought he was hers. Or that Nate was, whatever, pretty much one and the same considering "Nate"'d had control of the brain and body, taking him along for the ride. Except...

Man, was there really a forced maturation thing too? Because he'd actually kind of like to see how that worked...

"Umm, yeah. I'm Na -" he shook his head. He wasn't, and he seriously needed to get that much straight if nothing else. He held out a hand, forced a grin and pretended the aborted introduction hadn't occurred, hoping she'd just ignore it. "Quentin. Quentin Quire. And yeah, I already know it's a stupid name."

But whatever. It was his.
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Alright, so they’d established that he at least had learned the names of some drugs that might help a little, and didn’t like to have it suggested he might not already know everything. Also that he wasn’t all that keen on the idea of having his head poked through again, but since that was at least part of the reason why she was here, Rachel didn’t spend too much time dwelling on that part.

It was probably time for introductions, anyhow, and in this particular case, there were two parts to that. Her name, which looked like it had confused the boy more, if anything, and her face, which would probably speak for itself well enough, though she still had to go and fill up the silence by adding - as she dropped the the telepathic projections that kept people from seeing her matching version of his tattoos - that she might know something about what it was like to be him.

"Why, did someone..." the pink-haired boy had started to say, but then his eyes caught up with his mouth, and shut it off. Yeah, there it went, his mind starting to whirr with a rapid fire series of thoughts, some connecting the dots, some trailing off into what had the feeling of swirling loose ends. Not too surprising, given that he’d got thrown right off into the deep end of the mental piranha pool as far as introductions to the family went.

"Jean really did have a kid?" he blurted out, curious despite his confusion.

“Yeah-” Rachel said briefly, though then again, the answer to the question the boy had actually been asking was yes for different reasons than that automatic one, and also no, at the same time. Before she’d figured out how to put that into words, though, he’d spoken again. "I thought..."

Like her, he didn’t seem to have fully gotten into the hang of complete sentences just now, and that one also petered out into the midst of a squirming mass of thoughts that, while Rachel watched, seemed to get shrugged aside a few seconds later. "Umm, yeah. I'm Na -" he shook his head, apparently quashing this first impulse, then holding out his hand like it hadn’t happened. "Quentin. Quentin Quire. And yeah, I already know it's a stupid name."

“Pretty sure there are worse out there,” Rachel pointed out, half a grin crossing her lips as she stepped into the room and shook the hand on offer. Not that anything worse than Quentin Quire was necessarily jumping right to the front of her mind just now, but in theory, she was pretty sure she’d met worse somewhere along the way. Maybe.

Never mind, anyway. It was his name, and it seemed to fit him okay, even if he’d leaned toward the other, not to be mentioned just yet one, first.

Finding a convenient piece of the utilitarian furniture that seemed to be pretty much identical from room to room in this helicarrier to lean against, and crossing her arms over her chest, Rachel looked him back over again, just quickly. “And to get back to your other question, it’s a yes and a no,” she added a second later. “Mom did have a kid here, but it wasn’t me. I’m due to be born in about nine months, four universes over from this one.” And back in the universe that was home now too, as long as she could keep things from going wrong - or rather, from going more wrong - but never mind that right now.

She shrugged again - what was that thing that had been stuck in Quentin’s head, that he’d been wondering about again just now? Oh yeah. “No forced maturation, just time travel,” Rachel explained briefly, with about half a smile that disappeared just as quickly as she got back to the point that might have been closer to the actual question Quentin had been asking, looking him in the eye with nothing but seriousness as she finished, “And here, He killed Mom’s daughter the day she was born.”

A fellow ex-Hound - the first she’d ever known to have also beaten the programming - shouldn’t have any problems knowing who she meant by that stressed pronoun.
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Quentin Quire
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Fuck. Jean really did have a kid by the boyscout, apparently. They'd apparently lied to him about that, which really shouldn't surprise him though he hadn't expected it from The Maker. Unless Forge hadn't known? The part of him that was still answering to "Nate" balked at the idea that there was anything the old man didn't know, but the rest of him wasn't so sure. Still, he wasn't sure how he felt about the idea. He'd thought...

Well, what he'd thought didn't much matter, really, and he supposed he should probably introduce himself, even though Rachel'd probably already been briefed on who he was and his fucked up claims that he was Jean's kid, himself. Even the introduction went wrong, though, as he screwed up on his own name. Fuck, he seriously needed to get that sorted out. Quentin Quire might be the stupidest name on Earth, but it was his. Nate was...

Well, Nate didn't fucking exist, did he?

Rachel, for what it was worth, seemed willing to ignore his slip of the brain and half grinned at him as she came in and shook his hand. “Pretty sure there are worse out there,” she acknowledged, and he let out an amused snort as he picked up a faint trace of a thought that she couldn't think of any.

"Yeah, me either," he admitted, though the full version was even worse. Still, if she'd never heard anything worse than Quentin, Quintavius Quirinius was completely out of the running.

Introductions over, she moved over to lean against the funiture, crossing her arms over her chest.“And to get back to your other question, it’s a yes and a no,” she added a second later. “Mom did have a kid here, but it wasn’t me. I’m due to be born in about nine months, four universes over from this one.”

Huh? She wasn't...his mind started spinning as he processed all that. Another universe - yeah, he'd heard there were people here from somewhere else, had tried to pump the old fart mad scientist for details about how but he'd been told to fuck off. Or at least, he was pretty sure that's what the asshat had meant; he'd stopped listening when the demented idiot had started talking about World War II and the Nazis. But the bits he'd picked up since by prying around in people's heads hadn't indicated anything about a time differential, other than some vague references to some girl who'd returned from the dead two years younger than she should've been.

He was still considering the possibilities of interdimensional time displacement when she shrugged again. “No forced maturation, just time travel,” she explained with a half smile, and he blinked. Had he said that aloud? He didn't think so, but with the way his head was pounding he wasn't sure. In any case, her smile disappeared before he could call her out on it, replaced by a cold, serious expression as she met his eyes.

“And here, He killed Mom’s daughter the day she was born.”

He. All thoughts of time travel, alternate universes, and telepathic nosiness faded away abruptly as a mental image formed in their place. Given the markings on her face, she couldn't mean anyone else - not with that tone. Not who'd have been able to take Jean's daughter at birth. His face paled, the hound tattoos standing out in stark contrast as he swallowed, fighting an urge to look around for the psycho who couldn't possibly be here, but whose presence he could practically feel. Ahab was real, even if the rest of the crap hadn't been. Even if...

"Did they kill him yet?" the part of him that was still Nate blurted out before he could rein him in. It was a valid question, though, so Quentin didn't do more than roll his eyes a little and take a breath as he tried to push away the feeling of panic the reference had summoned. That's what these Resistance people were doing, right? Turning the hunting around, and tracking down the ones responsible. Totally valid question. "Anyway, she's not my mom," he pointed out, feigning disinterest in the whole thing. "It was all bullshit, they said. All in my head."

Knowing that, somehow, didn't erase the mental image of another redheaded hound, or the sense of belonging that he'd never felt with his own mother, who'd proudly trotted out his science fair trophies for the neighbors while never once asking him anything about how he'd won them.
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The single pronoun brought everything slamming to a sudden halt. Just like Rachel had known it would. Him. If you’d been a Hound, there was only one person that could mean, and now she had the unhappy confirmation that that was true for more than just her. Quentin’s face paling, adam’s apple moving quickly in his throat as he swallowed, and in his mind, thoughts vanishing and melding into a single, familiar image painted in rising panic.

Him.

Rachel was still considering the odds that reaching out - mentally, physically or both - in a comforting gesture would help when the pink-haired kid collected himself enough to blurt out, "Did they kill him yet?"

A roll of his eyes followed quickly, but there was still some panic in the way he was breathing as Rachel forced her own face into the best job she could manage of expressionless calm. Did they kill him? After everything he’d done - and she’d let him go, knowing that he knew he was beaten, once and for all, in her own Universe, but when it came down to it, in this world there were others with a better claim to the rights of casting vote. But he was... once, he’d been the Doc. There, she could think that thought - carefully walled up behind every shield she had so that the kid wouldn’t get a sniff of it - without wanting to throw up. Nearly, anyway. It’d do. “Not yet,” she said after a moment, voice still and simple.

There were plans afoot though, and plans that she ought to tell Quentin, or Nate, or both of them, about at some point. Before she could figure out the way to get into that though, the teenager spoke again.

"Anyway, she's not my mom," he pointed out, feigning disinterest in the whole thing. "It was all bullshit, they said. All in my head."

Back onto safer territory, at least. In an odd way. All in your head bullshit, and having had your memories, and your brain, and your personality scrubbed by someone who had something in the ballpark (well... at least the parking lot) of good intentions. And if Rachel was picking up what she thought she was from his mind as she fixed him with a sympathetic, if somewhat detached scrutinizing look, Quentin Quire wasn’t exactly complete and accurate there, and knew he wasn’t, too.

“Nothing more real than the bullshit that’s in your head,” Rachel pointed out with a shrug, adding as an after-thought, “Most of the time, anyway.” There was the kind of bullshit an asshole like Mastermind would put in your head, and there wasn’t all that much that was real about that. But this? This was something different.

She watched him a moment longer, arms still crossed loosely over her chest, weighing choice of words and choice of whether this was the time to say them at all. Could go either way, but in the end, the decision made itself in the space of a heartbeat, and nodding once, Rachel pulled one hand free, the better to gesture with. “Here’s how it is,” she said matter-of-factly. Only way to do this, really, was head first and straightforward. “Far as I’m concerned, however fucked up it was, you’re part of the family now,” she said, and waited another brief moment, eyes on him, before adding the major obvious caveat. “If you want to be.”

She couldn’t speak for Mom or Dad, the ones that were here, and as far as anyone knew there wasn’t anyone else left of family in this world, but she meant it, all the same. If he wanted in, he was Family.
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It was the part of him that was still Nate who answered - Nate, who'd lived through the pens, for whom He had only one possible meaning, and Quentin rolled his eyes despite the lingering feeling of terror that the mention of Ahab summoned up. Yeah, it was real, but it wasn't him, right? Just moronic Nate, who wasn't even a real alternate personality but a construct that "Mom" had created for reasons he still couldn't figure out. Company, maybe - misery loved company and all that crap, right?

Still, he couldn't help but hope someone'd killed the bastard already. Maybe if he heard he was dead, he could lose the feeling that he should keep looking over his shoulder.

Rachel seemed weirdly calm about the whole thing for someone who'd survived the pens, and he felt himself tense as she replied, “Not yet,”.

Not yet. Quentin swallowed again, trying to hide his reaction to that, and floundered around for what they'd been talking about before she'd brought up Ahab. Jean's daughter, right. Mom's, she'd said. Except Jean wasn't his mom, however much bits of his memory might insist otherwise, however much seeing the other version of her around the helicarrier made him want to run to her.

She wasn't his mom. The rest was all mental bullshit, just like they'd explained to him after the crap in Florida. Not real.

That prompted a strange look from his new redheaded not-sister, one that seemed to combine sympathy with detachment that reminded him of his favorite teacher's regard for the lizard he was conducting experiments on. “Nothing more real than the bullshit that’s in your head,” she said with a shrug, then added, “Most of the time, anyway.”

Quentin snorted softly, then shrugged. Because yeah, she had a point in a way. It felt real, and so did the weird ache every time he remembered it wasn't, that the only parts of those four years that were were the bits that had sucked. Still, he wasn't going to come out and admit that. Not to anyone.

Rachel was still looking at him, her arms crossed over her chest, and he fought an urge to squirm a little under her scrutiny. What the hell was the matter with him, anyway? Just because she was some other dimensional daughter of some other Jean didn't mean she should mean anything to him, or vice versa. Hell, she'd said herself she was here at least partially to check his brain for booby traps or whatever. Maybe she should just get on with it. His head was pounding anyway.

“Here’s how it is,” she said abruptly, pulling one arm loose to gesture. Quentin looked up at her face once again, wondering if she'd heard him and was going to get on with the mind-reaming, but she seemed to have something else in mind. “Far as I’m concerned, however fucked up it was, you’re part of the family now,” she said, and waited another brief moment, eyes on him, before adding the major obvious caveat. “If you want to be.”

Quentin's jaw dropped. Literally, and he stared at her for a long moment before remembering to close his mouth. That...she meant it, he was pretty sure, and a quick tap into her surface thoughts confirmed that much, at least. The question was, did he want it?

He swallowed, eyes darting away from hers as he considered the question. It was bullshit. He knew it was bullshit. He wasn't Jean's kid, never had been, however many of Nate's memories might have taken up residence in his head. But still...he looked up at Rachel, standing there, looking a lot like the real Jean had the last time he'd seen her. Who apparently considered the other one Mom, despite her being from another dimension and time. So...maybe for this family, having relatives who were only related in their own heads wasn't so weird after all.

"Yeah," he said finally, deliberately trying to hide how he felt about the offer, which could probably be described as touched. Except...yeah, not. Because it totally wasn't a big deal to him, at all. "I mean, if you want." He frowned a little, then looked up at her curiously. "Is there other family around?" he asked curiously, not exactly relying on Nate's memories for accuracy, considering that Jean had invented a son she'd never had to begin with. "Other than Jean?"

Who...yeah, wasn't exactly around, was she? But she was out there somewhere, still. He figured she counted.
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And his mouth fell open.

Actually open, like he’d forgotten what to do with it, right up till the point where he caught himself and began to try to poke in her head as if to check whether she meant what she’d said. Rachel let him do that, or at least let him do it enough to see the part of her mind she didn’t bother to shield, since there was nothing to hide, and nothing to see in there except that she’d only said exactly what she meant.

Where it came to her? He was family now, if he wanted to be.

He needed to think about it, that much was obvious, and Rachel let him. She watched him, sure, from her vantage point over against the dresser, but for once she made an effort to keep her own mind out of someone else’s thoughts enough to give him the privacy to do whatever thinking he thought he needed to do. Lot of crap swirled up in something like this, with everything that had been done to him, by Him and by Mom. It wasn’t a decision anyone else could make for you, or that anyone else needed to see in the blow-by-blow.

"Yeah," he said finally, like a teenage boy trying to hide the fact that he wanted something, in case someone took it away again. Which... well, that wasn’t much of a metaphor, was it? Anyway.

"I mean, if you want," he qualified then, as if she hadn’t just told him exactly that, and let him read it in her head too. So this was having a brother? It wasn’t exactly what she’d imagined - that had mostly been based off the only person who was someone’s brother that she’d known, and that was Scrapper - but it wasn’t actually bad, either.

Actually, in an odd way, it was more like having a Val again. Huh.

“You know that answer already, Little Bro,” Rachel told him after a moment, with a smile that was somewhat askew. And she pushed her butt off the dresser, and took the couple of steps so that she could take a seat on the bed. Not too far away from him, but not crowding him yet either, since if he was like Val, she was probably going to have work on baby steps up to things like hugging. Instead, Rachel just made sure she was facing him, and arranged herself cross-legged on the mattress.

"Is there other family around?" he asked curiously. "Other than Jean?"

That made it Rachel’s turn to pause, and think for a couple of seconds before she’d found an answer for what was never going to be a simple question. “Depends what you mean,” she said finally, turning her eyes back up from a consideration of the pattern of the bedspread back to her new ‘brother’s’ tattooed face. “There’s Dad - from the Universe I call home now, but I don’t know if that’ll count for you. Or for him.” Dad was odd about family, and not always in ways she’d ever gotten good at predicting. And here it wasn’t just blood or not that could come into it, so...

Rachel left that hanging, without going further, because she didn’t have anything more of an answer there. “Here, in this world?” she continued instead, tipping her head a little to one side, expression sobering further, even though it had started fairly serious to begin with, then shaking it once. “No. All of Mom’s family died during Inferno.” Grandma and Grandpa Grey, Aunt Sarra, the twins. “The Summers are all gone too,” she added, very quietly.

All gone, and of the uncles and aunts she’d grown up with... well, there, there was maybe just about a reason to smile, and Rachel managed a small one, just a hint of upward tilt around the corners of her mouth. Not all gone, after all. “Uncle Bobby is here though,” she said. “The one at home’s always been good to me about being part of the family.”

And with everything here, and everything she’d heard from Kitty, and picked up from other bits and pieces over the last few days? The one here might need a little more family in his life, too.
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Quentin Quire
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She was offering him a family.

Not a fake, crappy, just in his fucked up memories one, but a chance for that to be real. To actually be Jean's son, at least as far as she was concerned. She meant it, too - a quick check of her thoughts confirmed that readily enough. The question was, did he want that?

Maybe he shouldn't. Maybe he should just accept that the mom he remembered was nothing of the kind, should chalk it all up to mind control and His manipulations and go on. But even knowing that, it didn't take him long to make the decision.

He wanted that.

Of course, he couldn't sound needy about it; not in front of his brand-new, former hound, time travelling big sister. So instead, he tried to make it sound as if he were the one doing her a favor. If she wanted more family, he could do that. If not...

Well, he'd deal, right? Not like he was out anything he'd ever had to begin with.

“You know that answer already, Little Bro,” she said with a crooked smile. Pushing herself away from the dresser, she came over and sat down near him on the bed, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged. Turning, he pulled his legs up, unconsciously mirroring her pose, and asked her what he figured was the next obvious question.

Just what had he gotten himself into, family-wise? Considering that it seemed like her family spanned at least three dimensions, he figured he'd better know the grand total straight off.

Rachel paused, and he wondered if she was trying to make up an answer or actually trying to figure one out. “Depends what you mean,” she finally said, lifting her eyes back up from the bedspread in a way that made it seem like she'd actually done some rapid math computations or something. Or was maybe just trying to figure out how much of the family she knew would count him as part of it. Hard to tell, and he resisted the urge to look, instead waiting for her to continue. “There’s Dad - from the Universe I call home now, but I don’t know if that’ll count for you. Or for him.”

Dad. He dad - well, his too, he guessed, just one dimension removed or something. The picture-boy for the Resistance movement, the great American boyscout of mutantdom. Except he'd picked up enough from Jean's head to know that dad - the one here, not the one they were parading around like some kind of second coming - hadn't been such a boyscout, had he? And from the sounds of it, Rachel wasn't all that sure the one she counted as hers would be all that thrilled about having a seventeen year old former hound not-quite-son dumped on him out of nowhere.

"Yeaaaah, let's skip Dad for now," he hedged, making a face. He'd figure out how he felt about that one, later.

“Here, in this world?” she continued, much to his relief, tilting her head to one side as if thinking it over. “No. All of Mom’s family died during Inferno. The Summers are all gone too,” she added, very quietly.

He swallowed hard and nodded. So, she was it, then. Not that he was complaining, exactly - at least he knew she'd meant the offer, and as sisters went, she seemed like she'd be pretty legit. But he had a feeling she probably wasn't going to be sticking around forever.

Yeaah. Not thinking about that, right now.

Her mouth quirked upward, just a little, apparently in response to some thought of her own, because he was pretty sure he hadn't been thinking anything amusing. “Uncle Bobby is here though,” she said. “The one at home’s always been good to me about being part of the family.”

Uncle Bobby? His forehead creased, and he reached out mentally, trying to pick up a picture of who she meant. Once he had one, his eyebrows climbed and he stared at her, incredulous. "The crazy ice guy with the not-dead girlfriend?" he asked, just to confirm he'd gotten it right. He hadn't seen either of them around since he'd gotten here, but he'd picked up bits and pieces.

Of course, given his own introduction to the Grey family (or Summers family, or whatever it was supposed to be and who really cared anyway) he didn't suppose it was all that weird having an uncle who wasn't in any way related to him and whose brain, from what he'd heard, was even more fucked up than his own. The not-dead girlfriend was probably just some kind of bonus.
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Yeah, Little Bro’s face said it all, behind the tats, when she discussed Dad. Skipping that right now, because if she were going to be honest? And she was only going to do that behind a few private shields - Rachel suspected that Dad probably wasn’t going to be counting Quentin Quire as close to family, or even anything beyond an awkward disturbance for Mom that she didn’t need.

Better to stay away from that entirely, but then once you got past Dad, in this universe? There wasn’t really a lot of family left to choose from. None of Mom’s - everything that had happened around Inferno had apparently taken care of that. And probably none of the Summers left either, with New Baby Uncle Gabe over in her own new home universe, and apparently planning to stay there, unless she’d been right in keeping on a little hope that Grandpa Chris and Grandpa X (still not quite easy to think about him, but she could deal) were somewhere out in space still.

For now though, easiest to just explain that as far as anyone knew, they were all gone, and so many - too many - of her uncles and aunts were the same. But there was one name that she could think of, and it brought something of a smile back to Rachel’s face as she looked back over to her new Little Brother (of sorts, but since when did of sorts matter?) where he sat facing her, cross-legged on this bed.

There was still Uncle Bobby, and even with what she’d picked up about him here from other people, the two Uncle Bobby’s she’d known had been good about family. Plus this one? Probably needed a little more of that for his own.

Her suggestion didn’t exactly go and put a matching smile on the teenager’s face though. More of a puzzled frown, which became a frankly quizzical expression when the redhead obligingly pushed a mental image, complete with at least the sense of a few memories to the front of her mind where his attempts to pick them out from there would go more smoothly. "The crazy ice guy with the not-dead girlfriend?" he asked, staring at her like she’d lost her mind.

Being well used to looks just like that from any number of people, Rachel’s own expression didn’t dim, so much as turn over into a kind of wryly amused crooked smile. Those were the only three things he could think to name about Uncle Bobby? Powers, misbehaving brain, and a girlfriend who wasn’t dead? Totally missing the fun parts, not to mention the point, though she supposed that having any kind of girlfriend at all, especially one who was breathing, and not a cloud or a plant, was a fact worth mentioning when it came to her youngest uncle.

Still, that incredulous look? Totally kind of cute, in its own way, but definitely deserving of an amused, but good-natured grin. “Little Bro, you’re a kid with two people in his head, powers you only half know how to use, and some pretty darn odd preferences in hair color,” Rachel pointed out, softening her grin with an understanding that invited him to see the humor there without being offended, but throwing in a conspiratorial wink all the same as she added, “You’re being picky here about other people, why again? Plus you’re talking to a wacky crazed cosmic avatar with a twice-dead boyfriend already, so hey. Uncle Bobby totally isn’t a stretch.”

Turning up his nose at that, it’d totally be missing out, at least in her opinion. Which admittedly was a little peculiar at times, but that was also just part of the family thing, and he’d get used to it, or at least Rachel was hoping he would.

Though, seriously, pink hair? Serious fashion faux-pas, for any member - however extended - of the Grey-Summers tribe of ginger and green. They’d have to work on that, definitely.
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Welcome to the Grey-Summers family. Unfortunately, it sounded as if the family reunion was going to be pretty small. Assuming Mom wasn't going to show and the green haired version of her was going to keep blowing him off (okay, so he hadn't actually tried to talk to her, but it wasn't like she'd been knocking on the door either), it sounded as if he had a choice between some other-dimensional version of "Dad" (and yeah, he wasn't all that sure how comfortable he was with that) and a not-really related ice guy he hadn't met and who, based on the bits he'd picked up poking around in people's heads, was best known for being crazy, blowing shit up, and having a girlfriend who every had thought was dead but who wasn't.

Of course, that might just be normal around here. It didn't sound far off, anyway.

Given the way Rachel was grinning, the irony hadn't escaped her, either. “Little Bro, you’re a kid with two people in his head, powers you only half know how to use, and some pretty darn odd preferences in hair color,”

He opened his mouth to protest the last (he figured there wasn't much he could object to in the first two, but the hair was totally cool), but Rachel's grin softened a little and she winked to let him know she was kidding, so he just grinned back crookedly. “You’re being picky here about other people, why again? Plus you’re talking to a wacky crazed cosmic avatar with a twice-dead boyfriend already, so hey. Uncle Bobby totally isn’t a stretch.”

"Yeah okay, point made," he acknowledged. One ice guy uncle, who might or might not blow him off. Based on the bits Rachel'd shared out, the guy at least had a sense of humor, or at least, the ones she'd known had. He could hope. It did raise an important question, though, but it was one that it sounded like Rachel might have some suggestions about.

Just how did he introduce himself as Jean's not-kid to this not-quite-uncle without the guy calling for a psychiatric evaluation? Unfortunately, he couldn't quite figure out how to ask that one without it sounding lame, so he skipped over it for now. The rest of what she'd said, though...

He let the hair comment go. Partially because Rachel'd been kidding, partially because he wasn't sure how to explain that when your not-mom was sporting green hair, dyeing yours pink instead sounded like the better way to go if you didn't want to seem like a creepy stalker. But the rest?

"So, umm...the two people in my head, and the powers I don't know how to use?" he began, then shrugged. "Got any suggestions? Because the noise is driving me nuts, and Ali threatened to make me think I was Brittany Spears if I pumped any more music into people's heads to make them shut up."

Not something he'd willingly admit to just anyone, but...well, she'd been a hound, and she was his sister, right? From what he'd heard, this sort of thing was what big sisters were for.
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Two-personalitied boy calling the memory-challenged depressed Uncle crazy? Definitely the strobe light calling the disco ball sparkly (when was the last time pots and kettles had actually been black, right?). Plus if he didn’t have a problem chatting with her, Little Bro totally should be able to handle an Uncle Bobby, however not-dead his girlfriend might be (and Rachel could vouch for her having been most definitely not-dead the other night with Lockheed).

At least the gentle dig about the hair and the powers memories crazy had busted out a little smile, over top of that teenage-boy just has to argue with everything thing. "Yeah okay, point made," he acknowledged, when she’d finished, and Rachel grinned, an expression which dimmed only a little as she watched the next set of thoughts get to flickering high speed across his mind.

Worrying about introducing himself, and to Uncle Bobby? What was wrong with just putting out with the straight up truth, anyhow? Never mind that, or the excuses about the hair, because however sensible they might have seemed to him (or apparently Ali) at the time, you couldn’t claim to be related to Jean Grey if you also wanted pink hair. Totally unpossible.

But they could work that later, and see if something like a nice purple might not be an acceptable compromise, or something. Whatever, they’d figure it out. For now, her little bro was getting a little of that look about him, like he had more questions.

"So, umm...the two people in my head, and the powers I don't know how to use?" he began, then shrugged. "Got any suggestions? Because the noise is driving me nuts, and Ali threatened to make me think I was Brittany Spears if I pumped any more music into people's heads to make them shut up."

Extending her hands a little way behind her, the better to lean back a little on the bed, and regard him from that partly reclined position, Rachel raised one sceptical eyebrow at her new little sibling. He was totally a Val, wasn’t he? Which couldn’t help but feel like a good thing, because she’d forgotten how much she missed her, and theoccasional tendencies into amoral megalomania. “Er, yeah,” Rachel said all the same, putting aside most of the fond smirk in favr of getting the all-important point across, “Hell, try that where I can feel it, I’ll do you one better and raise that to Hannah Montana. Twerking included.”

Or... wait - had she mixed up the name there? She always mixed up the name there.

Right, okay, not the point, except that maybe the not-entirely serious threat was sufficiently ominous to get the point across that trying to drown people’s brains for thinking thoughts was not even in the same country as cool.

“Here’s the thing, Little Bro,” added Rachel a moment, shifting to balance her weight on one hand while lifting the other to gesture semi-randomly for emphasis. “Telepathy probably feels like the shittiest deal in the history of shitty deals right now, huh?” She could totally stop and offer a sympathetic look there, because she could definitely see how it might feel that way, especially if you got it all dumped on you at once, even if she’d never actually felt that way about her powers herself. Flipping her hand back the other way, to signal an impending qualifier, she let her expression turn back more serious for a second. “But it’s not other people’s fault you can hear them, and it’s not their problem, either. Start down thinking that way, and you’ll end up as the crazy psycho who wants to lobotomize the entire world for a little peace and quiet.”

It was a thing.

“But anyhow!” Rachel added then, brightening again and dismissing that possibility in a confident flick of her wrist, because she didn’t actually see her new Little Bro ever actually going there. “Consider Mental Noise Coping Strategies 101 officially open for business.” This was totally how she’d pictured having a little sibling, even if they were both supposed to be at least fifteen years younger when she had imagined it. Advice! Strategies! Teaching all the things! They could totally make this work.

“There’s two ways of dealing, mostly. My way, and everyone else’s. Preference over which to try first?” she asked, turning that back over to him.
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Quentin Quire
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Okay, so he had a brand new big sister, and an uncle who wasn't and who might or might not remember having met him when they'd arrived from the camp (something he'd all but forgotten himself, seeing as Nate'd been busy kicking himself over the whole thing in munitions and not much paying attention to anything else). He wasn't sure exactly how he'd go about introducing himself to the guy anyway, but he'd figure that out later.

Huh. Did that make the not-dead-girlfriend his aunt? That'd be kind of cool...

Anyway, there were more important questions to ask, and the cool thing about having a sister was that he was pretty sure he wouldn't seem totally lame asking the big one. Advice was what big sisters were for, right? Well, Glob's had been more about the harassment and less about the advice, but then no one would've wanted advice from her unless they were looking for the best way to overapply eye make up anyway, so he figured she wasn't exactly representative. Anyway, Rachel was obviously a telepath. Maybe she'd know a better way to keep people's thoughts out of his head than beaming music into theirs.

He still maintained it'd been educational, though. Definitely a step up from what most of them had been thinking, at least.

Rachel leaned back on her hands, one eyebrow quirking up. “Er, yeah,” she said, looking none too pleased with his foray into wireless, equipmentless radio service. “Hell, try that where I can feel it, I’ll do you one better and raise that to Hannah Montana. Twerking included.”

"It worked," he pointed out a little sulkily, then sighed and nodded. Right. No more radio service. It hadn't worked all that great anyway; he was definitely open to other suggestions.

“Here’s the thing, Little Bro,” she said, shifting so she could wave one hand for emphasis or something. “Telepathy probably feels like the shittiest deal in the history of shitty deals right now, huh?”

Mmm, yeah, that pretty much summed it up, and he nodded, noting as he did that she looked as if she could sympathize with the sentiment, at least. Her expression gew more seriously, though, and he figured there was a definite "but" coming.

“But{/i] (Ha! there it was!) "it’s not other people’s fault you can hear them, and it’s not their problem, either. Start down thinking that way, and you’ll end up as the crazy psycho who wants to lobotomize the entire world for a little peace and quiet.”

His eyebrows shot up at that. "There was a crazy psycho who tried to lobotomize the entire world?" he asked incredulously. "Did it work?" Well, no, it obviously hadn't, and he winced and waved that aside. "Nevermind," he mumbled. Man, he seriously needed to think before he blurted shit out. If asked, he was definitely blaming Nate.

In any case, she'd made her point, and he nodded acknowledgement as he waved for her to continue. No more trying to drown out the morons, or he'd find himself thinking he was a blonde former Disney idol. Got it.

“But anyhow!” Rachel continued, apparently willing to let that go (thank God), “Consider Mental Noise Coping Strategies 101 officially open for business.”

Looking relieved, Quentin straightened up a little, prepared to pay attention. Not something he did often, granted, but this was Rachel. And important, unlike most of the non-science related crap they'd tried to cram into his head in school.

“There’s two ways of dealing, mostly, she began. My way, and everyone else’s. Preference over which to try first?”

"Your way," he answered without hesitation. After all, she was pretty obviously not fighting a migraine, nor was she an incompetent purple haired telepath or a Victoria's Secret wantabe. It was pretty much a no brainer.
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