Liberty & Justice for All

by Carrie Harris

  She jumped out of bed and pulled on her pants, hurrying toward the door. Although there wasn’t enough time for a shower, she had to get cleaned up. She couldn’t go to class looking like she’d styled her hair with a hand mixer. This room didn’t have a mirror, but she didn’t need one to know that her hair stuck out in seven different directions simultaneously. She’d faced enough mornings to know what her head looked like after a night of tossing and turning.

  With little time to spare before her first class, she flung open the door and ran down the hallway toward the bathrooms. Inside the girls’ bathroom, she found Jean standing at the sinks, the handle of a toothbrush jutting out from between her lips. As always, the sight of her roommate short-circuited Eva’s brain for a split second.

  She’d grown up idolizing Jean, watching her on TV and reading about her in the papers. She’d had a Jean Grey poster on her bedroom wall, in a super hero display that also featured the Avengers and members of the Fantastic Four. Her dad hadn’t liked it; he’d been worried about her so-called mutant sympathies, but she hadn’t understood the difference. Why was Captain America one of the good guys but mutants were automatically bad? That made no sense. The source of someone’s power didn’t inevitably doom them to a life of evil things. Your choices made you good or bad, from the strongest person to the weakest. That was what made Captain America so amazing. He’d always made good choices, even when he’d been so terribly weak. She’d always been his biggest fan.

  As she thought of all this, she realized she was staring at Jean like an idiot. Again. Jean gazed right back, the toothbrush frozen in its place. Eva flushed, her cheeks going scarlet with embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll stop doing this eventually.”

  Jean took out the toothbrush. “It’s OK. This is as weird for you as it is for me,” she replied.

  Eva could believe it. The Jean that stood before her was in her mid-teens, a bit younger than Eva herself. She was pretty too, with long red hair and a pale cameo of a face. A light smattering of freckles covered her nose, to Eva’s surprise. Poster-Jean hadn’t had any. It thrilled Eva to know that she knew things about Jean Grey that no one else ever would, like the fact that she had freckles and talked in her sleep.

  Jean had traveled forward through time along with a few other mutants, including a younger Cyclops and Angel, only to be stranded in the present after an altercation with evil mutants from the future. The older Cyclops had been working on a way to help them, but in the meantime they’d enrolled as students in the school. That had to be awkward. Eva didn’t think she could enroll in a school run by her future husband, in a future where she’d died and most people wouldn’t even speak her name. Jean seemed to be managing, but she hadn’t exactly opened up about her emotions either, and Eva had been too intimidated to ask.

  Instead, she’d been trying to play it cool. Emphasis on trying. She usually had no problem with people, but she’d had Jean up on a pedestal for so long that it was hard to remember to chill. She forced herself to approach the sink calmly, like it was perfectly normal to brush one’s teeth with the likes of Jean Grey.

  “I bet,” said Eva, loading up her toothbrush. “I freeze time, and even I think it’s weird.”

  Jean snorted. “Yeah.”

  “You doing OK?”

  “Peachy keen.”

  It didn’t take a sharp eye for falsehoods to know that Jean was lying through her teeth, and her exasperation made Eva forget her nerves for a moment.

  “No, really,” she said. “I know we barely know each other, and I don’t want to pry into your private stuff, but who else do you have to talk to? You’ve got young Scott, I guess. But he’s got his own problems to deal with. He’s got to go face-to-face with his future self, which must be creepy. I’d just stare the entire time, right? So, you can’t really unload on him. And it sounds like Angel is new. He doesn’t quite have the… uh…” Eva trailed off and then stuck her toothbrush in her mouth, because otherwise she’d end up sticking her foot in it.

  Jean’s eyes met hers in the mirror. “It’s OK,” she said softly. “You can say it.”

  Eva looked down at the sink. “Baggage. You’ve got baggage to deal with in this time period, and it’s not even your fault. It comes from decisions you haven’t even made yet. If you need a mate to help you deal with that, I’m here, OK?”

  It took a moment for Jean to respond, and Eva wondered if maybe she’d gone too far. It was one thing to try and treat the time-traveling psychic like a normal person, but another thing entirely to accuse her of having excess baggage.

  Then Jean said, “You know, that would be really nice. You want to grab breakfast together?”

  “I’d love to, but I’m late for my first class. I don’t even have time to shower. I’ve got to stick my head in the sink and run.”

  Eva turned the faucet on full blast and shoved her head under it. She gave her face a rinse while she was at it. When she came up for air, Jean handed her a towel. Good thing too, because she’d forgotten to grab one.

  “Thanks,” she said, examining herself in the mirror.

  She wouldn’t win any style awards, but for a day of training she’d do just fine. Her short black hair stuck out in wild, chaotic spikes. One strip at the front had begun to bleach out, growing whiter and whiter for some reason she didn’t understand. It had started at about the same time when she’d first exhibited her mutant abilities. Hopefully she wouldn’t go completely white-haired, although she could probably pull the look off if she had to.

  Jean watched her stare at herself with a look of bemusement. Eva snickered, her cheeks flushing bright red.

  “Yesterday, I spent half of the day with toothpaste on my face. Did anyone tell me? No, of course they didn’t. So now I’m paranoid. You would be too, in my shoes.”

  “I would,” Jean said with mock seriousness. “Can’t be taken seriously as an X-Man with toothpaste on your face.”

  “See? You get me. Anyway, I’ll catch you later. We’ll hang out, OK?”

  Rushing, Eva swept up all of her bathroom supplies and managed to knock half of them off the vanity. Her hairbrush went skittering into the toilet stall, her toothbrush came to rest against her foot, and her toothpaste was nowhere to be seen.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” she exclaimed. “This is positively ace. Why is it that things like this only happen when you’re late?”

  Jean snagged the hairbrush and offered it with an expression of sympathy. “Here. I’m not sure I’d use it on my head, though. That tile is gross.”

  “No kidding.”

  Eva stared at it for a moment before using two fingers to put it on the vanity, trying to minimize her contact with it. Then she leaned down to look for her toothpaste. For the first three days at the school, she hadn’t had luxuries like toothpaste. It had felt like her teeth were growing fur, which sounded like a neat new mutant power but most certainly wasn’t. She’d fought for this toothpaste, and she wasn’t about to give up on it so easily. Who knew when she might get another tube? She didn’t take such things for granted any more.

  She didn’t see it anywhere near the toilets or in the showers. It wasn’t in the corners under the towel racks or the ill-fitting recess underneath the door. That left one place–under the vanity. Under the row of sinks, a set of heavy cabinets held a lone roll of paper towels that looked like it had been immersed in some mystery liquid at some point in the distant past and an ancient ant trap. The cabinets ended approximately six inches from the floor, leaving a gap where the toothpaste could have slid. She reached in and flailed around blindly, unable to see what she was doing and hoping to luck out.

  “Here,” said Jean. “Let me.”

  Jean stared at the gap between the cabinet and the floor for a long time. So long that Eva started to get restless. The morning session teacher would be so mad. None of the students had
been late yet, and Eva didn’t know what the penalty would be. She didn’t want to be the example for everyone else. How embarrassing.

  “I’ve got it,” Jean said, her jaw clenched with effort.

  Slowly, Jean’s telekinesis edged the toothpaste out from underneath the vanity. She relaxed, smiling in pleased self-satisfaction.

  “Thank you!” Relieved, Eva threw her arms around Jean. After a shocked moment, Jean hugged her back, and any last vestiges of hero worship Eva had harbored slowly faded away. “I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Oh, but I do.” Eva looked at her thoughtfully. “Maybe I can help you get back home. My powers have to do with time manipulation, you know. I’ll work on them as hard as I can.”

  Jean shrugged. “You really think you could help?”

  “I think it’s worth trying for a friend.”

  The corner of Jean’s mouth twitched, but she didn’t argue with the terminology. Instead, she said, “Well, as your friend, I ought to remind you that you’re so late that you just stuck your head in the sink. You should probably get to class, don’t you think?”

  “Crap. You’re right.” Eva grabbed her things and rushed out, her hair still dripping. “Thanks!”

  Chapter 3

  Eva raced through the empty halls, hoping against hope that Magneto wasn’t teaching this morning’s class. He began every session promptly at nine, and if she was going to be completely honest, he scared the living daylights out of her. Sure, he’d changed. After the dramatic events of M-Day, when a vast majority of the mutant population had died, and the remaining mutants had lost most, if not all, of their abilities, Magneto had joined the X-Men, leaving behind the Brotherhood of Mutants and their terrorist ways. With so few mutants left and anti-mutant sentiment growing to a fever-pitch, they had to band together for protection, and he had a deep survival instinct.

  But something in his glittering eyes still gave her the creeps. As she got to know them, most mutants felt like regular people behind the impressive facades, but not him. She wouldn’t dream of chatting with him the way she had with Jean. He just wasn’t the kind of person you could treat with casual familiarity, no matter how much he’d changed.

  He also wouldn’t tolerate lateness, so when she charged into the Danger Room for morning class, her knees went weak with relief when she didn’t see him. Actually, she’d lucked out, because none of the instructors had arrived yet. Instead, the rest of the students milled around the large chamber. She saw Christopher Muse in his crisp suit and dreadlocks, deep in conversation with David Bond. A few feet away, the Stepford triplets stood, their heads bowed and their arms linked together, locking out the rest of the world. Fabio Medina sucked down a sports drink as Benjamin Deeds told him a joke. After the punchline, Fabio roared with laughter and clapped Benjamin on the back, sending the much smaller boy staggering.

  Eva slid to a stop and looked at them. Every time she saw their class, she marveled at its small size. It seemed like there ought to be more of them, but they didn’t even fill a quarter of the seats around the big circular table at the center of the room. They were so wildly different, though, with such a vast array of personalities and powers. Maybe that’s what made it feel like their group contained multitudes. That, and the fact that Fabio shot about a billion gold balls out of his body when he got nervous. Eva wouldn’t admit it out loud because she didn’t want to embarrass the guy, but secretly, she found it hilarious. They went “poink!”

  Now Fabio approached her, holding out a plastic bottle. “You want some, Eva?” he asked. “They say it’s orange flavored.”

  “Thanks,” she replied. “I got up too late for breakfast, so I’ll bite.”

  He tossed her the bottle, an easy underhand that she caught with her left and twirled just to show off.

  “Nice!” he said appreciatively.

  “I played girls’ softball six years running,” she said, striking a melodramatic pose to show that she didn’t take herself too seriously. “I was going to play in uni, but it turns out that I can control time, so my plans changed.”

  Fabio chuckled. “I know how that feels. What position did you play?”

  “Shortstop. And if you make a crack about my height, I’ll peg you with this bottle.”

  He held up his hands disarmingly, a grin stretching his lips. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “If you’ll all take a seat please.”

  Emma Frost’s icy contralto pierced the room. Eva hadn’t even seen her enter, but she sat at the table as if she’d been there all along, poised and contained. People used to call her the White Queen, and the nickname suited her. Her pale hair, icy blue eyes, and perfect blonde bob gave her a cold, beautiful perfection. But at some point in the past, something must have changed, because she’d abandoned her old all-white getup for a black one. Funny how she’d dressed in white when she worked for the bad guys and now that she’d switched sides, she’d switched colors too. Maybe she’d gotten them backwards, and no one had ever had the guts to correct her. Eva certainly didn’t. Instead, she took her spot at the table, where the seats had been bolted to the floor at equal intervals.

  She sat between Fabio and Christopher. She hadn’t been here long enough to make friends unless you counted Jean. Oh, she was nice to everyone, but it took her a while to really trust people. There were exceptions, of course. It had only taken her a few days to break the ice with Jean, but her difficult situation had bypassed Eva’s defenses.

  All of the time travelers had been assigned to a different group this morning, but Eva reminded herself that she needed to talk to one of the instructors about helping to send them home at the first possible opportunity. But for now, she needed to concentrate or risk getting lost. Classes here tended to move quickly, and even fifteen minutes’ worth of woolgathering could spell serious danger. They’d all learned that the hard way over the past couple of weeks.

  “Before we start class today, I’d like to talk a bit,” Emma said. She looked around at the semi-circle of rapt students. “I think you all deserve some updates on what’s going on as well as some feedback on how you’re doing, so these updates will become a regular thing in the mornings. I advise you to show up on time from here on out.” Her gaze paused on Eva, and a ghost of a smile flitted over her face before she moved on. Eva’s cheeks flared. Somehow she’d been busted, and the subtle rebuke felt worse than whatever Magneto would have done to her. Christopher reached over and squeezed her arm, a gentle and reassuring pressure. It shouldn’t have made her feel better, but for some reason, it did.

  “I’m not going to blow sunshine up your skirts,” Emma continued. “The last couple of weeks have been rough. We’ve thrown some difficult challenges at you. Some of them were well beyond your pay grade. I want to be clear: there is no shame in failing them. We didn’t intend for you to succeed. We simply wanted you to see what you were getting into early on, rather than playing it easy on you and letting you think there would be no actual danger. The danger is real. If you stay, you will face it. We don’t intend to sugarcoat that fact for a minute.”

  As she spoke, Eva wanted to cheer. She’d begun to regret coming to this school, with its grimy hallways and awful food. For a while, all she’d done was follow the instructors around while they picked up more students. She wanted desperately to learn how to be an X-Man, and at times, she’d felt like it might never happen. The fact that classes were finally moving forward delighted her, but a glance around the table suggested that her classmates didn’t feel the same. Fabio had broken out in a cold sweat. Eva began to wonder if he might faint. If he fell in her direction, she wasn’t sure if she had enough strength to catch him. She caught Christopher’s eye and tried to communicate her worry to him, but there was no way of knowing whether the message got through or not. He smiled at her reassuringly, but that could mean anything.

  Emma continued on. “We
could have done a better job of explaining that from day one. Quite frankly, we could have done a better job at a lot of things. We’d been talking about starting a school, but we hadn’t even begun any legwork when we found the first of you. We’ve been playing catch up ever since. Although I probably don’t need to tell you that.”

  A faint smile played on her face, but it faded when one of the Stepford sisters – Eva still had trouble telling them apart – said, “No, you definitely don’t. We spent the first two nights sharing a bed.”

  “And a blanket,” added another.

  The three of them glared at Emma. Eva didn’t know what their problem was. Given Emma’s reputation, she thought the White Queen had been unexpectedly nice. Then again, the triplets didn’t seem to like anyone. Now all three of them shifted their glares to her. She knew they had psychic abilities, but that didn’t give them the right to snoop on her thoughts and hold them against her. It just wasn’t in good taste to use your abilities on your fellow mutants. That would be like her freezing them when they were adjusting their bra straps and then waiting until someone else was in the room to pop the bubble. Did they want her to do that? She thought the question at them hard and was rewarded with nonplussed looks in response.

  “Is there a problem?” Emma asked, looking from the Stepfords to Eva and back again.

  Eva wondered if the X-Men teams of the past ever had ridiculous squabbles like this. Did Wolverine and Nightcrawler ever fight over missing snack food? Or did Storm and Rogue ever start tossing lightning bolts at each other because they were tired and grouchy? During infamous battles against the Brotherhood and the Hellfire Club, did Professor X ever have to tell the X-Men to quit squabbling like toddlers, or they’d be grounded? The more Eva thought about it, the more amused she got. She snickered under her breath.

  “Care to share with the rest of the class?” asked Emma.

  Eva glanced around, a little embarrassed. “Well,” she said, screwing up her courage, “I was thinking about some of our screw-ups, and then I was thinking about some of the other X-Men. You know, the good ones. And I was imagining them doing some of the dumb stuff we’ve done.”