For the past few years, Nathan has adhered to a strict no-contact policy with most of the X-Men– specifically, Scott Summers and Jean Grey, known to him as Slym and Redd Dayspring… Some 2000 years from now. It was complicated. He had allowed himself, sometimes, to think how that conversation would go. “I’m your son. It’s me. It’s Christopher.” But it was easier – and better, he tells himself, for the timeline- if he just stayed away.
And it’s gone well, until today.
Trouble just had a way of finding him. He heading back to his safehouse, minding his own business, when the sound of screeching tires and blaring horns caught his attention. A traffic jam quickly formed. It didn’t take him long to find out why– a tree had sprung forth from the concrete in the middle of the road. People are leaving their cars, leaving the sidewalk, to gawk. He can feel the prickling of unrest beginning to form. He doesn’t think. He just acts, using his telepathy to quell the rising tensions, a soothing balm on the minds of the gathering crowd.
His relief when the “cavalry” arrives is short-lived. That corona of fiery red hair? He’d recognize it anywhere. It’s Jean. There’s an ache somewhere in the pit of his stomach when he sees her, the kind of longing that only a child can have for their mother. He stays longer than he should. Watching. Committing her to memory before he tries to slip back into the crowd and make his escape.
Oath. His lips press together into a thin line when Jean catches up to him, displeased not at her but at himself.
“Hey.” Nathan replies shortly, turning and staring down at her hand before tentatively taking it. His techno-organic hand whirrs softly as he wraps his gloved fingers around hers, eye glowing softly as he mentally erects barriers around his mind. He laments losing his telepathy blocker in Transia the week prior. “Call me Cable… Didn’t want the situation to escalate before the X-Men or somebody got there.”
“Nice to meet you, Cable.” He seems standoffish, but that isn’t exactly an irregular trait in mutants, especially those around his age. When Jean was younger she spent several years feeling like the stares and the gestures and the comments could all be chalked up to something wrong with her. It was only when she grew up all the way, found her tribe, so to speak, that she realized it was the rest of the world that required changing.
“Yeah, it was definitely necessary,” Jean nods, mouth pursed in a tight smile. She’s had more than a few distrustful looks thrown her way since arriving, and while that stuff rolls off her back, she’s acutely aware of how difficult it can be for the mutant who caused the ‘disturbance’ in the first place. “It doesn’t take a lot for situations like that to go way south. It’s nice for the kid, too -- just to see someone other than us is on their side. So, thank you, again.”
The longer Jean looks at Cable, the stranger she feels. He’s familiar, but not in any concrete way, almost as if she recognizes him from a dream. Telepathy isn’t a toy or a cheat or an easy way out -- a lesson Charles has taught her a thousand and one times -- but Jean still finds herself barely resisting the temptation to peek into this stranger’s head. “I’m sorry, have you been in town for very long? I can’t quite shake the feeling that we’ve met before.”
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