Subject: [OTL]: Mark II (PG) [Rachel Summers] Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 22:29:05 +0100 (BST) From: Dyce-Elihara Disclaimer: The named characters do not belong to me. Except Chrissy. But all the others belong to Marvel, even though they're not using them properly. These particular interpretations of the characters belong in my as-yet-unfinished Rising Sun/Dammed Time and Damned Time storyverse. Warming: Some bad language, a few in-story references, and a bit of rebellious teenage behaviour. Mark II By Dyce People say it's hard living up to a famous or incredibly talented parent, and I can pretty much swear to that. People say it's hard living up to a famous or incredibly talented sibling, and I know dad and Uncle Alex have pretty much proven that one. But neither of them could ever be as hard as having a famous AND incredibly talented AND heroic pre-minted version of yourself. I'm Rachel Summers, Mark II. Before me came Rachel Summers Mark I, who was Phoenix Mark II. Our mom was... maybe still is... Phoenix Mark I. Confusing, yes? We don't know yet if I'm going to be Phoenix Mark III. Not if I have anything to say about it. Rachel Mk I was a superhero. Member of the X-Men, then Excalibur. Then she sacrificed herself for a teammate and went off into the future to start some sort of religious cult focused on our brother Nate, and how he was going to kill some supervillain guy. Oh, and when she was young, she was brainwashed into hunting down other mutants and killing them. And she had this fetish thing for red leather. And I think she liked girls in That Special Way. Yet, for some reason, everyone who knew her seems to want me to be just like her. Okay, now I have nothing against red leather. Or the girls. More power to her, I say. But that's not ME. I mean, I hardly ever even wear short skirts. Not because I don't think I look good in them - I do - but I like jeans better. Mom says I dress like Grampa Logan, and I guess I do. SHE always dresses like a supermodel. Rachel Mk I always dressed like a cross between a biker and a... well, I'm too polite to use words like that, but she did. The fact that I like baggy jeans, flannel shirts, scuffed Docs and dressing for comfort seems to bug people. Not that they SAY anything. Oh, no. We're the X-Men. We don't go around just SAYING if something bothers us, because that would be too easy. No, Mom and Dad and Kitty and all just sort of moon around reminiscing about MK I's 'outrageous' outfits, how 'rebellious' she was, and offering to take me shopping. I've learned never to let anyone but Aunt Cecelia or Aunt Jubilee to take me shopping. Neither of them knew Mk I - although I think Aunt Jubilee mighta met her once or twice - and they both think that comfy is just fine. Cece because SHE likes comfy, and Aunt J 'cause Uncle Ange (who she's married to) and Grampa Logan (who's kinda her dad, which is why all us kids call him Grampa) both love the baggy-jeans-and-flannel look, so she likes it too. Anyway, they're both big on individuality, so as long as I've covered up the really crucial bits, they don't care what I'm wearing. Grampa Logan's pretty cool... he's the only one who knew Mk I well who doesn't treat me like I'm some sort of failure for not being just like her. He always messes up my hair - which is long and usually in a messy braid, because I've seen pictures of Mk I and her hair was always short - and tells me that as long as I'm comfortable with it, it's fine with him. I don't think he always liked Mk I a whole lot. Mom and Dad, though, always seem to expect that I'll be just like her. And then I'm not, and they're disappointed without quite knowing why, and they don't want to let me know that they're disappointed, so they try extra hard to be approving but of course I'm a telepath and I end up getting these very weird mixed messages. It's not that they don't LOVE me... I know they do. It's just that I confuse them a lot. And they both have kind of issues with Having And Losing Offspring, which makes it hard for them to get close to me. And Dad's busy running the X-Men, 'cause Grampa Xavier's getting kind of vague and he mostly just sits in a sunny spot somewhere and reminisces about the old days. And Mom's always busy... well, it used to be with Chrissy, but she died, and now it's with Causes, mostly. So neither of them have ever spent a whole lot of time with me. I had this huge bust-up with them when I told them I wanted to be Confirmed. Neither of them are Catholic, you see. Or even religious at all. And Mk I was, as previously mentioned, into all-girl death-cultage. But I've been going to Mass and stuff with Uncle Angelo and Aunt Cecilia since I was a kid, because... I dunno... they make it easy to believe. They have a lot of faith, and they have reasons for believing. So I went, and I sort of grew up into being Catholic, and I was kinda pissed that A) Uncle Angelo refused to arrange my Confirmation unless I at least mentioned it to my parents, and B) that my parents hadn't actually noticed that I'd been going missing every Sunday for the last six years. They did let me, though, eventually, although they were both secretly hoping it was something I'd grow out of. It still bugs me that they didn't notice I wasn't there, though. There's a lot of stuff they don't know about me. Dad tries, I know he does, because he knows that he's not very good at being a parent, so he puts in extra effort. He usually just asks me what I want for my birthday, for example, instead of trying to guess, and he always buys me lunch or takes me out to a movie or something, which is nice, even though I know he has to write my birthday in his organizer so he won't forget it. Absent-minded is okay. At least he's trying. Mom, on the other hand, has this problem. See, she's a telepath, and she's kind of used to knowing how everyone feels and what they want and stuff. So she assumes that she knows this stuff about me, because she's my Mom and of course she would. For Christmas last year, she bought me a copy of 'The Lord Of The Rings'. Which is a great book, don't get me wrong, but if she'd been in my room at any point in the last eight years she should have noticed the really nice, printed-on-ricepaper version that Grampa Logan gave me for my tenth birthday. Aunt Jubilee, on the other hand, knows everything about me, including all my sizes, even my underwear-sizes. She can buy me stuff before I even know I want it. Aunt J is very cool that way. Mind you, she knows absolutely zip-all about what kinds of books I like, 'cause she's dyslexic and doesn't like reading much. But she knows my favourite colour (peacock blue) and my favourite food (chocolate icecream with whipped cream and lots of pecans) and my favourite hobbies (juggling and hiking). It's kind of sad, I guess, that she knows me better than Mom, but it's also kind of inevitable. See, Aunt J damaged her knee badly before I was born, so she's been off active duty for a long time. Mom, on the other hand, is STILL on active reserve. So all those times that Mom and Dad were away on missions, Aunt J and Uncle Angelo (who's still the only guy to successfully quit any X-team permanently), used to babysit me. We got close. Uncle Angelo is probably my favourite person in the whole world. I had a huge crush on him when I was six, and he was really nice about it. (I actually proposed to him at one point, and he very diplomatically pointed out that he was already married, but that it was very sweet of me to offer and he'd never been proposed to by such a pretty girl. I ask you, WHO would not love this guy?) Anyway, I've always told him everything, except the really embarrassing girl-stuff, and he always listens. And talks to me like I'm a real person, with thoughts and opinions. And I've always listened to HIS thoughts and opinions, too. Which leads me to my current dilemma. Uncle Angelo has very decided opinions on the Spandex Set, and most of them are bad. 'Put some clothes on and get a real job' is one of his favourite sayings. So is 'I'm not an X-Man, I work for a living', which he snaps out whenever some visiting hero-type mistakenly asks him what his codename is or something. It's not that he doesn't LIKE the X-Men, most of them, and he does agree that the World Needs Heroes, although he tends to mutter 'otherwise the construction industry would go bankrupt' under his breath when people bring it up. He just think it's a fall-back occupation for people who can't survive in the real world. I don't want to be someone who can't survive in the real world. And I don't like spandex much, either. Which is why I'm about to have a pretty nasty confrontation with my parents. See, they're all in favour of me going to college. Uncle Hank has been super-useful over the years, and since they know I'm planning to go into medicine, they've been painting rosy little mental pictures in which I fight the baddies in my new Phoenix uniform, then go home and operate on my wounded comrades with such blinding skill that they're up and about again by tomorrow. They're not going to be happy to find out that what I'm actually going to study is physiotherapy. They're going to be even less happy to find out that I plan to work at the Snowflake Center for sick and handicapped kids. Linc (who's green, and the resident pediatrician), and Artie (who's pink, mute, and the Center's director) both think it'll be great to have me aboard. I know without even saying anything that Aunt J, Uncle Ange, Aunt Cece, and Uncle Hank are all going to be majorly proud of me. Mom and Dad are going to hate it. They won't ADMIT to hating such a PC career choice, of course, but they'll hate it. Especially when I tell them that even if I bomb at college, I'm never going to be an X-Man. Or a superhero. 'Cause I've lived with these people my whole life, and the average teenage dropout working at Burger King and living in a roach motel has a better life than they do. I don't want to get beaten up all the time. I don't want to risk my life for a world that, forget hating and fearing, probably won't even NOTICE. And I don't give a flying fuck about the Dream. The Dream is STUPID. Mk I believed in the Dream, and look what it got her. Timelost, emotionally warped, completely delusional, and DEAD. And now everyone worships her goddamn memory and they somehow can't SEE what a screwed-up, selfish BITCH she was. She manipulated EVERYONE to make history fit the way she wanted it too. She made a clone of our own brother and left him to DIE. She said 'Sorry has no meaning'. Sorry does have a meaning. It might not make everything better, but it still has a fucking MEANING. It means that you regret that you screwed up, that you wish it hadn't happened, that you'd like to fix it. It means admitting that you were wrong. Mk I would've chewed her own arm off rather than admit she was wrong about anything. She had that weird thing, like Xavier and Magneto and Uncle Warren, about how she HAD to be right all the time. Whatever she decided was 'right' or 'true' or 'important', that's what it was, because she'd said so. She screwed up my whole life. Not on purpose, but she did. Because she was me, on the outside, but in every way that counts, we're nothing alike. I'm never going to be like Rachel Mk I. I don't even like her. And anyone who doesn't like that... well, screw them. This is MY life. Not hers. Not anymore. fin