Location: Two Sisters
Skills: Enhanced Reflexes (Passive)
Andy was on high alert now. Ready to fight if she needed to. She was tense and looking around watching for threats. April was introducing herself to some skater chick, she was valid for that.
Someone else caught her eye, and Danni was yelling at her. Another someone with a silly nickname. She smiled. Andy had no idea who the new girl was, but she was about their age. They didn’t seem like a threat.
Andy nodded at the whispered thank you from Dorian. She glanced over her shoulder when she heard Percy move. She saw that his body was slumped over. Andy knew that Dorian had possessed him and took Percy into the astral then. She nodded to herself and decided she’d keep watch over him. America would be fine if she kept Percy safe for a bit. She had her whole team here to vibe with. She’d hopefully understand, if not... well good to know that now.
”Hey Ben. He is chatting with Percy. That guy,” She nodded in Chase’s direction,
”I don’t know who he is or anything but Percy does not like him. The guy got into his personal space, touched him, and Percy’s face...” She trailed off for a moment and then quietly, just loud enough that Ben would be able to hear her.
”He had that look that kids get in the homes where the foster parents beat them. Like someone who had been hit and was flinching, ready for it to happen again. I don’t know how he did it but all the dishes flew at the guy. I’ve never seen him do that. Normally he just teleports around or speaks Greek.” Ben kept his composure, but his heart sank. He knew exactly the look Andy was describing. After his resurrection, he had wanted to find a way to help folks meaningfully - to be more than just a mildly strong guy with tentacles. He’d earned his GED and then his bachelor’s in social work.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said quietly. He then looked across the room, and motioned to catch the eye of one of his partners, before nodding in Chase’s direction and tapping underneath his eye.
Gideon had come over and joined her. Andy smiled and bumped her shoulder.
”Thanks for joining me. Probably best to not risk it. I’m gonna keep an eye on him while they are gone. Do you want to order food?” It was then that she noticed someone else that had appeared out of nowhere. She knew that face, it was older, but Andy wasn’t surprised by her being here. Especially since Andy knew a lot of the MU were still friends. Veil wasn’t alone. Harry was there too, and the guy Harry had started dating on Genosha. She didn’t remember his name. Something with a D?
She sat up straighter.
”Veil.” She whispered. When Andy thought of her time back at the MU Veil was who she thought of first. Veil was who pulled her out of a fight, literally, and got her into a safe building, and a warm bed. Veil was the leader of the MU. She was the one who had asked Andy for help. Had told her she didn’t need to, but if she wanted to she could stay and help. Veil had risked her life for Andy’s. They hadn’t even known each other for twenty four hours yet. Veil was... The first person who treated her as a hero.
“Go on, I’ll protect him.”Val turned and made eye contact with one of her biggest regrets, one of her greatest questions, as she was called a name she had not gone by in a long time. A name she had left in the past alongside that life - or at least, she had tried to do so. She shouldn’t have been that person anymore - the mutant terrorist or liberator, another protege Xavier had discarded, tossed aside to run a project he didn’t believe in, and one she desperately did. She had seen the worst of humanity, had given her life to see her people safe, to see her people free. It had devoured her own personhood, her identity, her personality and sense of self.
And as she looked at Andy, it was like she’d never left that life behind. She cloaked the two of them in invisibility, immediately assuming that Andy wanted to speak to her privately, hence the whispers. And then she motioned her head towards the dance floor, towards the musicians whose instruments would cover their words.
Eva winced. She was proud of the steps that Val had made, but concern passed through her. She knew that the girl who had just disappeared with her wife was someone important from the past. But she hadn’t gotten details yet. It wouldn’t be until they could be alone that Eva would ask. She could get details from the others, from Harry, or Max (not Casper) about this kid, but that wouldn’t tell her what was going through Val’s mind.
”Thanks Ben. Sorry to leave again, Gideon. This is someone from my past. I should talk to her for a bit. Get me some gumbo. I’ll be right back.” Andy stood up and joined Veil. Andy had never considered herself a hugger, but becoming friends with Dorian and Danni had sort of forced it upon her. She held back. She wanted to hug Veil. Thank her. But Veil had never come across as the hugging type. She had been so strong. So much had been going on that was insanely overwhelming but she had done everything to keep the MU together. Andy had felt bad when moving out of the MU apartments and into Magneto’s place because she didn’t want to disappoint Veil. She had taken Selene because she didn’t want to disappoint Veil.
“Hey,” Andy had been riding a bit of a high from the Contest and ‘kissing’ Gideon. She felt all of that drop away. Nerves started to take over. That fear of being rejected. She had left without a word and sure Max and Magento both said they weren’t mad, but would Veil be?
”Sorry about leaving without saying anything. It was just that, Zari’s watch, it told her she had stopped the thing she had gone back in time to stop and she had to go back right then and there. I had a choice. Go with her... See what my future could be. Or stay and...” She trailed off. What had staying meant? She remembered Magento once telling her to finish her sentence.
“Struggle to find peace.” She admitted. Staying meant she’d struggle. Running away meant that she’d leave all of that behind and she could start again.
Andy couldn’t look her in the face. She was so scared to see disappointment or anger there. So scared that Veil, who had been ready to get Andy out of there and to safety when they had been overwhelmed by the M-Pox that Andy had been one of the few capable of fighting left, would treat her as the child she still technically was.
Veil hadn’t known what to expect from Andy - but in no universe did she feel she deserved an apology. She had done her best to protect Andy, to keep her safe and alive, but at the very end, she’d failed her. She’d given her a burden she never should have had to bear. She’d forgotten that Andy was just a child, and instead saddled her with Selene, with an immortal mutant they had barely managed to defeat. She’d been no better than Xavier in the end. And Andy wasn’t the only one present she had hurt. Her gaze flickered to Ben. To Max and James and Casper. To their children. How could they forgive her when she couldn’t even forgive herself? When she had been the one to advocate for the person that hurt them so dearly?
“You don’t owe me any apologies, Andy,” Veil said quietly.
“I’m the one that owes them to you. I never should have asked you to take Selene. I treated you the same way X treated me. As a soldier, instead of as a person.” She shut her eyes, feeling the swell of a force field growing around her skin.
“I’m so, so sorry. I only ever wanted to do right by you, by our people.”“She's my mom. I have to protect people from her. But Max has her right now. I needed to be able to focus.” Andy smiled, it was a small nervous smile, as she finally looked up at Veil.
“You saved me. If you hadn't been there I would have never survived to make it to Genosha in the first place. And without Genosha I wouldn't have found my family. I wouldn't have made it here. I was fighting for my life already and you gave me direction, focus. If not for you I would have broken. Things were rough the last couple of months, but that's been in a relatively safe world. Look,” She gestured around them.
”Seventeen years ago, this could never have happened. These people are all here in one place celebrating a game. Hell, I've been in school. I don't even think in the last several months I have even talked to someone who wasn’t a mutant or something ‘non-standard.’ Until today. Where we got brand offers. If anyone is exploitive it is those suits. Not you. It was probably dumb of me to skip the last seventeen years, but I got to go to a future where this can happen.” She gestured around again.
”I wouldn't be here if you hadn't been there. So thank you. And yeah I am sorry I left the way I did. It was a dick move. You all thought I was dead or something. When really Zari was a time traveler and I just basically ran away because I was scared.”Andy didn't fully believe the world was perfect or safe. But it was safer than it had ever been before for her. She would be ready, always ready, for when things shifted. But for this shining moment she had a bit of hope. And even if things did go badly in the future she'd have this day to remember that the world could be safe.
Veil shook her head. Maybe once, she would have believed that - that it was the child’s responsibility to deal with their megalomaniacal mother. Not anymore. Andy had been through more than she ever should have had to, but she was still a child. And her only responsibility was to live. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Andy, I want you to hear this and promise me that you will remember it. You are responsible for no one but yourself. Your only sins are your own,” Veil said firmly. It was a lesson she herself had struggled to accept - one she still grappled with. She didn’t always believe it. Right now, she certainly didn’t. But she didn’t want Andy to turn out like her - to suffocate under the weight of other people’s actions, to claim them as her own.
What she said, though, about how the world had changed - it made her eyes misty. It was an incredibly different one from a few decades past. But it wasn’t like this everywhere. There were still places where mutants were hated and feared, still places where Purifiers and the Friends of Humanity and Orchis and Coven Akkaba and so many more gathered, plotting to undo them. Even entire realms were devoted to their hatred of mutants - Otherworld was particularly nasty. It was safe here in the United States - but for how long? How long until being pro-mutant fell out of fashion, and facism rose again in its place? How long would Andy and Danni and Dorian and Millie and countless others be safe to just be children?
How long until mutant suffering became profitable again?
They couldn’t stop fighting, even now. And it was a fight Veil longed to rejoin, one that her abstinence from threatened to drown her in guilt. She was in her forties, with a beautiful wife and an amazing life, and she still wondered about if she had made the right choice - if it was right to leave Veil behind and just be Valerie.
But these weren’t thoughts she wanted to put on Andy. They were her burden to bear and hers alone.
“I’m still going to be here for you,” Veil promised. She reached into her pocket, and pulled out her two phones - one personal, one for… other purposes.
“This is my main number,” she said, reciting the personal one.
“And this one is for if things get bad,” she added, saying the second one.
“If you need anything, any time of night or day, any place, let me know. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You deserve to be safe and free, Andy. I wish it could have happened on Genosha. But I’m glad it’s happening here, now.” Even if she didn’t know for how long.
Andy had a lot of her own sins. That was something she did have to carry. But she tried to keep her smile up and nod.
“I will.” She told Veil seriously. She pulled out her own phone and entered the two numbers, the second one she put an E next to to indicate ‘emergency.’
“Thank you. I appreciate that. I wish it could have been on Genosha too.” She paused for a moment.
”I was scared the whole time it would fall apart. That something bad would happen. That that little bit of safety would be ripped away.” She looked away, her eyes burning.
”That feeling hasn’t left. I’m trying to not let it consume me this time. I can’t let it. Everytime I have had this feeling it has happened. But I realized that it doesn’t matter because right now I am happy.” She took a deep breath.
”I have friends and I am happy. Right now. I can’t let tomorrow’s woes suffocate me before I ever face them. I’ll be prepared for them, but tonight, I will be happy. I’m going to keep grasping onto those things that make me happy. I’ll drown myself in people that are good. Because I have them right now. Fear made me so unwilling to trust or love people for so long. It took me too long every time. But I lost them anyway. I loved them and I lost them. So now I will love them harder and sooner. This little slice of happiness is where I will go when they are gone. I won’t forget them, no matter what. And no matter what I will fight to keep this.” She had promised Magneto ‘Never again,’ in a way she was making that promise again to Veil. Andy refused to let the world become what it had been. She would be ready for it. She’d fight it. Because days like today were worth it.
“When did you become so wise?” Veil asked, her heart breaking. She knew exactly what Andy meant - felt exactly what she was feeling. It was the only way they could carry on. It was the only way they could live, knowing that tomorrow was never promised. Her gaze flickered over towards the people she loved, the people who were not promised to her - the people she would fight until her last breath to protect. Eva. Harry. Davie. Millie. James. Casper. Ben. Max. Danni. Dorian. Andy. Magneto. Her family. She wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve.
“Come on, there’s someone I’d like you to meet - my wife.” Valerie dropped the invisibility on the two of them.
”Therapy.” She shrugged.
”And Danni, and Dorian.” She paused and gasped.
”You got married! Yes, I must meet her.” Andy grinned. She didn’t react to the tears, she had them in her eyes too.
Val couldn’t help but laugh slightly.
“You two? Harry dragged me kicking and screaming to therapy a few years after Genosha,” she admitted. She put an arm around Andy, and pulled her in close for a moment, before leading her on over to her wife - to Eva.
“Eva, this is Andy - she was part of the Mutant Underground cell I led. Andy, this is my wife, the incredible Eva Moore.””Good.” Andy said. She leaned into the hug. Thankful for it in a way she couldn’t entirely express. A sense of relief washed through her. Things with Veil would be okay.
”Hi,” Andy offered her hand out to Eva who shook it.
”Nice to meet you.” Andy had no clue who Eva Moore was. But she did see that Eva looked surprised.
”Hello. Nice to meet you too. I saw you during the Contest. You were impressive. The others mentioned you were part of their group. It is wonderful to meet someone else from Val’s past.” Eva was smiling, she had given Val a worried glance at first, but relaxed.
”Thank you. It was fun.” Andy had fought for her life. During the Contest she had known she wasn’t in any true danger so she had never been worried. Andy did look at Val, she had never known her real name.
”Is Val... That’s your name?” She didn’t want to ask if it was her real name, or if it was just what she went by now.
“Oh!” Val was surprised for a moment - she’d gotten so used to folks using that name with her, she’d almost forgotten Andy hadn’t known it. She had exclusively gone by Veil back in the days of the Underground, and whenever a human name was needed, she would pick an alias. Andy was more likely to know her as Kayley Webber than Valerie.
“Yeah. It’s short for Valerie. I don’t really go by Veil anymore, it’s a… it’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it another time.” She gave her a bit of a pained smile.
“But the short version is, I crashed out in a major way, got help, and left my life as a domestic terrorist behind.””I like Valerie.” Andy smiled.
”I’m glad you got help. We all need it. Sorry for calling you Veil, not that I knew better. But I saw you and it was like... Well six months ago or so. Time travel is kind of a bitch.” 
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