Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I don’t want to,” Gabby says, stomping her foot for emphasis. She’s aware that she sounds like a two-year-old, but she’s pissed . Laura and her are supposed to be a team! They’re supposed to work together. This isn’t working together.

“Gabby, come on, please,” Laura says, looking desperate as she pauses from frantically tossing her clothes into a duffel bag. “Hey, we’re still family. We’re still sisters. Just not—”

“Not teammates?” Gabby says, glaring daggers across the room. “It’s not fair for you to say you want me at your side and then just… just ditch me.” At her foot, Jonathan the Wolverine snorts in agreement.

“No, no, Gabby, what’s not fair is me dragging a kid to Madripoor,” Laura sighs, crossing the room and kneeling in front of her. She wraps her hands around Gabby’s wrists, and Gabby can tell she’s really asking for help here, help making this easier.

Well. Gabby’s never been one for making things easier. “I can go to Madripoor.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I’ll be fine!” she insists stubbornly. “No one will even know it’s me. I’ll wear an eyepatch.”

“Ha ha.”

“I’ve been there before,” Gabby reminds her. “I can defend myself.”

“I know you can but you shouldn’t have to,” Laura says, jostling her a little. “You should be in school, with other kids like you.”

“I’m a clone,” Gabby reminds her, pouting. “With claws. I was raised in a lab to be a weapon. There aren’t any other kids like me.”

Laura lets go of her wrists and leans back on the floor, looking up at her. “There’s one,” she says, giving her a pointed look. “And after Weapon X, I was part of X-Force. And then I got thrown into Hero Hunger Games. I just… I want more for you, Gabby. I want you to have a better childhood than I did. Or just… a childhood.”

Gabby sighs, looking down at her feet. At her wolverine. “Can I bring Jonathan?”

The corners of Laura’s mouth turn up. “Yeah, probably,” she says. “I mean, Beast is allowed on the campus, and he sheds way more than Jonathan.” She scratches the wolverine behind the ears and then looks back up at her sister. “So go finish packing.”

At the Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach, Jubilee leads them down a hall on the second floor, chatting the whole way about Shogo and Carly Rae Jepsen and Queer Eye . “Aaaand, here you are,” she announces at the end of the hall, jiggling a master key in the lock until the bedroom door opens. “Ta-da!”

The room has two twin beds spaced evenly apart. One’s clearly been slept in recently, the sheets rumpled in a half-hearted attempt to make the bed. There are books and video games stacked up on that half of the room, along with several sweaters and hair ties tossed around.

The other half of the room— Gabby’s half— is bare except for bed linens. “I’ll talk to Kitty about getting you your own key for the room. You don’t even need to lock it if you don’t want, but you know, we want to give everyone the option. But really, you don’t need to worry about kids stealing stuff. WIth so many telepaths hanging around, nobody really tries anything.”

While she babbles, Gabby steps into her new dorm room, feeling it out. She tries to get a sense of her roommate just from the stuff lying around, but all she can really tell is that whoever she is, she’s just a normal amount of messy with a normal taste in books and video games. Gabby recognizes a couple titles on the shelves.

“Why don’t you start unpacking?” Laura says, dropping Gabby’s suitcase next to the closet. “I’m going to go catch up with Jubes. Are you alright?”

Gabby scowls and hops up on her new bed, Jonathan joining her. “I’ll be fine,” she says coldly.

Laura scratches the back of her neck, frowns, but decides to let it go. “Okay. I’ll see you in a bit. Unpack!”

Downstairs, Jubilee scoops Shogo up from his playpen and gives him some Cheerios in a cup. She glances over at Laura. “They grow up so fast, don’t they?” she says, nodding upward to indicate Gabby.

Laura laughs a little, looking at the photos on Jubilee’s wall. There’s one of her with Jean and Ororo looking absolutely tiny. There’s one taken in Paris of the two of them with Logan and Remy. That one makes Laura smile. “Gabby’s mad at me,” she says.

“Yeah, I know,” Jubilee replies, not bothering to be delicate about it. “I get it, too. She’s exactly how I was when I was her age.”

Laura spins around, surprised. “Really?” She’s always felt like Jubes was just so… upbeat. It’s hard to picture her being sour or mopey.

“Hell yes,” Jubilee says, pausing to get Shogo a juice box. “All I wanted back then was to go on missions with Storm and Logan and Cyke. ‘Put me in, Coach! Put me in!’ I had a one-track mind— I was gonna be an X-Man.”

“What’d they do?” Laura asks, thinking about the other X-Men.

“Shipped me off to Massachusetts,” Jubilee says. “With Paige and Jono and…” Her eyes linger over something on the mantel, and Laura turns to see an urn with a wooden cross strung over it. “And, uh, and Monet. And all the rest,” Jubilee goes on. “I was so pissed at first. But you know what? It was totally the right decision.” She gives Laura a meaningful look. “You’re making the right decision, X.”

Gabby sits in her new room, refusing to unpack out of spite. Maybe this is all some bad dream, and she’ll wake up and Laura will be ready to take her out on some exciting new mission where they can jump out of exploding planes and fight robots and bad guys.

She’s interrupted from her moping by the door being flung open. “Hi there!” her visitor says brightly. She’s got warm brown eyes and long hair— and, more prominently, big antlers sticking out of her head.

“Hi—” Gabby starts, before realizing that the stranger isn’t talking to her at all. She crosses the room to Jonathan and leans down to look him in the eyes.

“Hello, I’m Lin,” she says. “What’s your name?” Gabby opens her mouth to tell her, but the girl’s still looking at Jonathan, who hmphs. “Jonathan? That’s a wonderful name. I know someone named Jonothan but he’s not at all as handsome as you. And what’s your friend’s name?” Miraculously, she actually looks like she’s listening to the wolverine. And he doesn’t even have his universal translator anymore. “Gabby? Gabby!” The girl looks up at Gabby. “Hi, Gabby. I’m Lin.” She sticks out her hand.

Gabby looks down at Jonathan and then back up at Lin. “Uh. Hi,” she says, shaking her hand. “So you… talk to animals?”

“I listen to animals,” Lin says sagely. “They listen to me.”

“Uh, cool,” Gabby says, holding out her hands and extending her bone claws. “I have these.”

“Amazing,” Lin says, reaching for Gabby’s hand. She suddenly catches herself. “Sorry, may I?” Gabby nods and holds her right hand out so Lin can look at the jagged claw. “Wow,” she murmurs, running a finger along the claw.

At this point, Gabby’s kind of used to non-Wolverine-clones being grossed out by her claws. They aren’t sleek adamantium like Laura’s and Logan’s, but yellowed bone protruding from between her fingers. Lin doesn’t seem grossed out at all, though, just fascinated.

Looking up, Gabby wonders if anyone ever thought Lin’s antlers were gross. She doesn’t think so. She thinks they look awesome.

“Very neat,” Lin declares, withdrawing from Gabby’s claws. “Well, welcome to the Institute. We’re making stone soup later.” When Gabby shoots her a questioning look, she explains, “Jubilee came up with it one night when she didn’t want to cook. Everyone grabs stuff from the pantry and refrigerator and throws it in a pot. Then whoever manages to eat the most doesn’t have to do dishes for a week.”

Gabby’s eyebrows shoot upward. “I bet I could win that.”

“You would think,” Lin says. “But we’ve put some disgusting stuff in the soup. Like wet cat food and chicken fat. And — ugh — olives.” She shakes her head.

“I’m up for the challenge,” Gabby says.

“Well, good luck,” Lin says, smiling and waving. “Trevor always makes me one that doesn’t have any animal or root products in it. If you want, you can share that with me. I’ll see you later. It was nice to meet you, Jonathan. You too, Gabby.”

Gabby ventures from the room after about half an hour of sulking, leaving Jonathan curled up asleep at the foot of her bed. She’s been in the Institute before, but she was always in a hurry, never had time to look around like this. There are framed photographs covering most of the walls.

This is a public school and outreach facility now, so she would’ve expected a bunch of professionally posed photographs, pictures from the news, maybe the occasional portrait of Charles Xavier (who, apparently, is a big deal. Gabby never met him and doesn’t think she’d care to.) The photos on the walls aren’t professional or formal, though.

Every single one of them is some kind of goofy picture from generations of X-Men and students. They look like they might have all been taken on Jean Grey’s Polaroid. She sees Angel, blue and beaming with his arms slung around Nightcrawler and Beast. She sees Rogue having an arm-wrestling match with Colossus. She sees a group of X-Men sharing milkshakes. She sees Cyclops standing with Bishop, and Jubilee in the back giving them both bunny ears.

Wandering down the hallway and inspecting each photograph, she almost doesn’t notice Laura making her way toward her. “Hey, HB,” Laura says, ruffling her hair.

Gabby pouts. “It’s just Gabby now,” she corrects her sister. “The Honey Badger is being forced into early retirement.”

“Oh, of course,” Laura sighs, resting her hand on Gabby’s shoulder. She looks up at the photo nearest them— it’s one of her, looking just as sour as Gabby looks now, flanked by Julian and Cessily. “Don’t worry. You’ll get a pension in the form of frequent care packages with cookies and candy.”

Gabby isn’t in the mood for playing along. “You promised you’d never leave,” she reminds Laura, breaking out the big guns.

Laura sighs and leans down, kneeling so she’s at eye level with Gabby. She reaches around and grabs Gabby’s phone, waving it in front of her face. “I will call you every single day,” she says. “And we’ll text, and we’ll Facetime, and I will come see you as often as I can.”

“Could see me every day if you took me with you,” Gabby mumbles.

Laura pushes Gabby’s hair out of her face and tucks it behind her ear. “What if we made a deal?” she says. “A month. You stay here a month, you go to class, you make some friends. And then if you still hate it, I’ll come get you and we can go beat the crap out of some child traffickers in Madripoor.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart.” Laura uses her finger to trace an X over her chest. “Hug?” Gabby practically launches herself at Laura and squeezes her tight, burying her face in Laura’s neck. With her big sister hugging her, Gabby wonders suddenly if maybe Laura’s right. Maybe she really is too young to be doing everything she’s been doing. Because right now, she just feels like a little kid who doesn’t want to say goodbye to her sister. “I have to go,” Laura says eventually. “I’ll call you as soon as I land, okay? And… and if you’re asleep, I’ll leave a message.”

“Alright,” Gabby says. “Bye. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Laura says, heading down the hallway, away.

Just before she turns the corner, Gabby calls out, “Be careful, okay?”

Laura turns around, smirking. “You’re going to a school where one of the teachers is Jubilee,” she points out. “ You be careful.” And then she’s gone.

Chapter Text

Dinner seems about as chaotic as Lin Li described it. Gabby finds her way to the kitchen and almost gets trampled by a girl with a shark head sprinting past. For a moment, she feels a little overwhelmed, but then Lin spots her. “Gabby! Gabby, over here,” she says, waving her toward the counter where she’s standing in a cluster of other students.

Gabby makes her way over, scoping out Lin’s friends— a boy covered in eyes, a blue-haired girl wearing gauntlets and a boy with pale blue skin and black lines tracing his jawline. “Everyone, this is Gabby,” Lin says, prompting an awkward wave from Gabby. “Gabby, this is Trevor, Nori and Evan.”

“Nice to meet you,” Evan says kindly, holding out a hand to shake. “You’re a clone of Wolverine, right?”

“I’m Laura’s clone,” Gabby clarifies. Laura is Wolverine, but sometimes people call Logan that and she’s never sure which they’re talking about, her sister or her sort-of dad/grandpa.

Evan nods. “I was cloned from Apocalypse.”

“Cool,” Gabby says, though she’s not sure if that’s the appropriate thing to say. Evan smiles, though, so it must’ve been okay. “Clone power.”

Gabby finally meets her roommate that evening, after dinner (which ultimately, wasn’t actually that terrible. Whatever concoction Evan had ladled out for her just tasted like pineapples and olives. She wouldn’t eat it again , but it wasn’t totally awful.)

“Oh, hi,” the other girl says, brushing a curtain of dark hair out of her eyes. “I’m Nga. Looks likes we’re roommates.”

“Hi,” Gabby says, waving awkwardly. Do they hug? Do they shake hands? She hasn’t been around girls her age since… well, she’s never been around girls her age. Her sisters all saw her as the baby, and even the students at the Institute are older. “Um. How long have you been here?”

Nga leans back on her bed, dogearing the book she’d been reading and tossing it on her nightstand. “I was out having dinner with my older sister, just got back half an hour ago.”

“No, like, how long have you been at the school?”

“Oh!” The girl laughs, but not in a mean way. “Well… sort of forever. My older sister went here, and she raised me and my brother. We used to go to a normal school in Westchester, but—”

She’s interrupted by a loud pop from Gabby’s side of the room. Gabby turns, throwing her claws up instinctively. Jonathan makes a perturbed noise and runs into the wardrobe.

Their visitor is a boy who looks a lot like Nga, his dark brown eyes wide and alarmed at the sight of Gabby’s claws. “ Pardon !” he says, slipping off of Gabby’s bed. “I didn’t realize my sister’s new roommate would be here.”

“Hello, Leong,” Nga groans, plunging as much annoyance as she can into her twin brother’s name. “Gabby, this is Leong. Leong, this is Gabby. Stop trying to give her a heart attack.”

“I swear! I didn’t know she’d be here,” he says, actually sounding genuine. “But now that I see. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He takes an exaggerated bow. Nga rolls her eyes. “The claws? Impressive.”

“What’s your thing?” Gabby asks, hand on her hip. She’s spent enough time around Daken. She knows Typical Girl Behavior around annoying brothers. “Popping up where you’re least expected?”

“Teleportation bubbles,” Leong exclaims. “I can jaunt from place to place, instantly. It’s awesome.”

“And loud,” Nga says, hurling a pillow at Leong. He “pops” across the room, smirking at his sister with some measure of superiority.

“Anyway,” Leong says, “I’m just here to see if you have the DS charger.”

“Ugh. Here,” Nga says, brandishing a long black cord.

Leong takes it gleefully and salutes to Gabby. “Pleasure meeting you, Gabby. Nga… comb your hair.” Nga yells and throws her book at him, but he’s already vanished with another pop .

“He’s… interesting,” Gabby remarks.

“He’s a pain in the neck,” Nga says. “You have no idea how happy I am that I finally get to room with someone besides my brother. Like I was saying, once he started doing— that— we got transferred to Xavier’s. Big league mutants now.”

“Hm,” Gabby says. “So he’s a teleporter. What do you do?”

Nga looks down, toying with the hem of her shirt. “Well I… I mean, I’m not… I haven’t exactly… manifested… yet.”

“But…?”

“Yeah, I know,” Nga sighs, looking thoroughly embarrassed. “He’s my twin brother. We’re the same age. But he got his powers almost a year ago and I’ve still got… squat.”

“Then why are you here?” As soon as she says it, Gabby wishes she could take it back. “I mean, I mean… why stay at the school, if you’re not a mutant?”

“I am a mutant,” Nga asserts, her tone hardening. “Leong’s a mutant, Xi’an’s a mutant. There’s no way I’m not. I talked to Dr. McCoy about it. It would be a ‘genetic improbability.’ I’m sure I’m a mutant. I’m just… I’m just a late bloomer, is all.”

“Oh,” Gabby says. “Well that’s okay. It’s kind of cool, actually.” Nga stares at her. “No, think about it. You’re just waiting for your powers to show up. They could be anything . Anything you can think of might be your mutant powers. How cool is that?”

“Yeah, I mean… I guess I never thought of it like that.”

Gabby puts her balled-up socks in a dresser drawer, finally accepting that she will be staying here. Nga picks up her book from where she threw it and goes back to reading it, and Gabby moves quietly, happily around the little dorm room, unpacking her few possessions. Jonathan snoozes on the foot of her bed.

Gabby has made friends with other students, and she is getting along with her new roommate. The feeling of abandonment is still there, sharp in her chest, but she has more to focus on now. She is doing a good job.