1973.
"Auntie Min-ji?" Roxanne Shin pleads from her spot on the couch. Tock is squirming in her arms, trying desperately to lick her face. "I really gotta go meet Charles and Hank. You know how Hank gets!"
Though the woman in front of her did know how Hank got, she just smiles and keeps pruning one of her many plants. (Honestly how did she keep them all alive? Roxy didn't know the last time either one of them had watered any of these.)
"It would do that young man some good to wait. If you wait long enough, it will be good weather."
Roxy makes an exasperated noise, setting her dog down on the floor. "Why are we talking about weather, Auntie? I'm gonna be late!"
Aunt Min ji gives her a look. "Will you?"
Roxy pouts and drops the act. "Okay, fine, I'm not supposed to go until tomorrow. But I used to go there everyday, and it's been forever. I get restless when I'm in one place for too long."
Min ji sighs. "Just help me put away my work stuff, and then you're free to go." She smiles as Roxy fist pumps and jumps up from the couch.
Her aunt worked as a nurse and was apparently exceedingly good at her job. All Roxy knew was that the hospital didn't have enough room for Min ji to store her things (Assholes) so she had to bring it all home each morning at the end of her night shift. If Roxy was her, she'd just leave it all in a bag in her car, but her aunt liked things to be dealt with care and precision, not haste.
Roxy began counting the disposable gloves and cotton balls to see if she needed to pack more.
"Do you know what the liquid metal in this thermometer is, Roxy?" Min ji tapped on the thin glass thermometer from her bag and glanced at her niece nonchalantly. That couldn't fool Roxy though; she easily recognized her aunt's lesson-telling tone.
"Mercury, right?" She guessed.
"Yes. I believe they named it after the planet Mercury because, while it's the fastest moving planet, this is the fastest moving liquid."
"That's cool," Roxy says carefully.
"People also call it quicksilver, for its startling molten silver color." Min ji explains, pausing from wrapping her stethoscope to look Roxy directly in her silver eyes. Before the girl can interrupt again, she continues. "Quicksilver can describe something that moves or changes quickly or unpredictably, or that's difficult to hold or contain. Or protect..."
Her aunt resumes her organizing. "Or a quicksilver wit." She grins. "Or a quicksilver temper. But did you know it's also one of the deadliest poisons? People once used it for cures, but it's also toxic." Min ji zips the bag shut and turns to face Roxy with a kind look. "I just want you to be careful. Sometimes the things that you think will heal you are actually hurting you, and vice versa... But make sure you don't deny yourself quicksilver if that's your cure. Do you understand me, Roxanne?"
"I don't know. Are we still talking about thermometers?" Roxy grins and dodges a playful swat. "Kidding! Yes, Auntie. I got it."
"If you say so," Min ji chuckles. "I guess you're free to go now."
"Great! Bye! Not sure when I'll be back!" Roxy yelled as she gave Tock a scratch between the ears, snatched her car keys off the counter, and ran out the front door, glitching like an old television program.
Min ji sighed. She worried about that girl.
• • • •
Roxy shoves her car keys into the back pocket of her jeans as she approaches the front doors of the mansion. There had been a car parked out front, and she was itching to find out who it was. Charles and Hank's only visitor was her, now that the school had been shut down, but maybe it was a new student! Maybe -
The front door was open.
Roxanne frowned. Hank was a very particular man - the type to never accidentally leave a door open - so this was strange.
"Whoa!" A unfamiliar man's voice cried out front within the foyer, and Roxy hears Hank growl. Uh oh.
She immediately grabs the pocket watch hanging around her neck and clicks the dial on top, freezing the ticking hands and stopping time around her.
It was a sensation difficult to describe to others: the impenetrable silence that immediately follows as all noises cut out, even the ones you normally tune out like leaves rustling and birds chirping and the wind blowing. The girl often wondered if this was how astronauts felt; walking around like you're the only person in the world. It was peaceful almost. But lonely.
Roxanne darted up the front steps and carefully pushed the door opened further (she had to be careful how much strength she used during a Freeze because every action she carried out would occur a thousand times faster and thus with more force. She'd already had to repair several windows and get her car door unstuck).
The scene in front of her was almost humorous. Hank McCoy dangling by his feet from the chandelier over a clearly shocked man who Roxy didn't recognize.
No threat, she decided, and clicked her pocket watch again, setting the hands back in motion. She decided to hold back for a moment though.
"Hank? What's going on here?" Charles called out as he walked into the foyer.
"Professor?" The stranger asked making Roxy frown. Was he an old student?
"Please don't call me that." Charles grumbled, rubbing at his face.
"What - you know this guy?" Hank sputtered.
"He looks.. slightly familiar. Get off the bloody chandelier, Hank."
Hank jumps down as Charles walks down the stairs looking like the front page of Homeless Junkie Magazine.
"You can walk..." The stranger says in apparent amazement.
"Good observation, Detective Sideburns." Roxy calls out, deciding now as good a time as any to announce herself.
Three pairs of eyes turn to her. Charles slumps further into his robe. Roxy grins until she catches sight of the stranger's face. He's staring at her like she's a ghost.
"Roxy? I thought we weren't expecting you until tomorrow." Hank says, adjusting his glasses.
"Maybe you weren't, but here I am." Roxy sneaks a peek at the man sitting on the stairs and is unsettled to see him still looking.
"It's slightly perplexing that you managed to miss our sign on the way in." Charles says to the stranger who finally tears his gaze away from Roxy. "This is private property, my friend. I'm going to have to ask him to ask you to leave."
"Well, I'm afraid I can't do that because uh.. Well I was sent here for you."
"Well, tell whoever it was that sent you that I'm... busy."
Busy, my ass, Roxy thinks & rolls her eyes.
The man grimaces. "That's gonna be a bit tricky. Because the person who sent me was you."
"...Damn. Time travel twist? This is like some Planet of the Apes shit!"
• • • •
"So you're saying that they took Raven's power and what? They weaponized it?
"Yep." The man that Roxy now knows to be Logan affirms.
"She is unique."
"Yeah she is, Hank." Roxy rolls her eyes.
"In the beginning, the Sentinels were just targeting mutants. Then they began to identify the genetics in non-mutants.. those who would eventually have mutant children or grandchildren. Many of the humans tried to help us, but it was a slaughter. Leaving only the worst of humanity in charge. I've been in a lot of wars... I've never seen anything like this."
A shiver passes down Roxy's spine. A war to end all wars. A mutant holocaust.
Logan glances back to Charles. "And it all starts with Raven."
"Okay, let's just say for the sake of..." Charles gestures vaguely and rubs his eyes. "...The sake that I choose to believe you, that I choose to help you. Raven won't listen to me." He chuckles sadly. "No, her heart and soul belong to someone else now." His smile disappears, and Hank looks down.
Roxy had never met Charles' sort of adopted sister, but she'd heard stories. Clearly she'd left behind people who cared about her. A part of Roxy wondered who would tell people about her if she was the one to disappear off the face of the earth.
"I know." Logan stands. "That's why we're gonna need Magneto too." Both other men exchange wide eyed glances. Roxy blinks in surprise. Hank and Charles knew Magneto? She'd only seen him on the news once... where he sort of seemed like the bad guy.
"Erik?" Hank asks as Charles laughs. "You do know where he is, right?"
"Yeah."
"No, where is he? What am I missing?" Roxy demanded.
Charles ignores her and stands, still laughing like Logan had just told them they were going to need the help of a unicorn.
"He's where he belongs." Charles states bitterly as he passes Logan.
"That's it? You're just gonna walk out?" Logan shouted.
"Ooh, top marks. Very perceptive."
"The professor I know would never turn his back on someone who lost their path. 'Specially someone he loved."
Charles pauses at the foot of the stairs and turns back around. "You know.. I think I do remember you now. Yeah, we came to you a long time ago seeking your help. And I'm gonna say to you what you said to us then. Fuck off."
Logan growls and roughly grabs the front of Charles' jacket. Hank stands, ready to get in the middle, and Roxy subconsciously grabs the pocket watch on her chain. "Listen to me, you little shit." Logan spits. "I've come a long way, and I've watched a lot of people die. Good people. Friends. People you know. If you wanna wallow in self pity and do nothing, then you're gonna watch the same thing, you understand?!"
Charles looks up at him in disbelief as Logan lets him go. "We all have to die sometime." He mutters and walks away up the stairs. Melodramatic bitch, Roxy scowls.
"I told you there was no professor here." Hank murmurs.
"What the hell happened to him?" Logan asked.
"He lost everything. Erik. Raven. His legs." Hank sighs. "We built the school, the labs, this whole place. Then, just after the first semester.. the war in Vietnam got worse. Many of the teachers and older students were drafted, and now Roxy is the only one who comes back. It broke him." He shook his head. " I wanted to help so I designed a serum to treat his spine derived from the same formula that helps me.. control my mutation. I take just enough to keep myself balanced, but... he takes too much. I tried easing him back, but he just couldn't bear the pain, the voices. The treatment gives him his legs, but it's not enough. He's... He's just lost too much." Hank sighs.
"Oh, shut up, Hank." Roxy grins at Hank's shoots affronted look and ignores how Logan startles at her voice. "Seriously. He'll be back in a minute. He's gonna go upstairs, feel bad for himself, look at his framed picture of Raven, and then slouch his way back down."
Hank frowns. "You have too much faith in him."
"Well that's what he gets for having too much faith in me," Roxy says matter-of-factly.
"I'll help you get her." Charles calls out from the stairs. "Not for any of your future shit, but for her."
"Fair enough." Logan shrugs. Hanks smiles. Roxy looks smug. "You psychic or somethin'?" Logan mutters to the teenager... Well not exactly to her, but in her direction.
She eyes him carefully. "You tell me."
"But I'll tell you this: You don't know Erik." Charles continues. "That man is a monster, a murderer. You think you can convince Raven to change? To come home? That's splendid. But what makes you think you can change him?"
"Because you and Erik sent me back here together."
~~
A/N: Peter & Roxy meet in the next one! I'm excited to see what you think (: