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Jay’s mutations came in in fits and starts.
First, it was their voice, at thirteen. Easily hidden. Then, it was their hair—getting lighter and darker, going from blond to black overnight, until finally they shaved it all off and it grew in a dark, unnatural red. Then came the wings—around the time Melody first jumped off a diving block and didn’t hit the water, Jay stopped swimming at all.
And then the healing.
They still die on the floor of a church, trying to hold on long enough to finish one fucking word in their own blood. Trying to hold on.
Jay figured Mama didn’t just mean that mutant school was better equipped to deal with mutant kids when she said it. She also meant that they had more money, that they had a house and a car that hadn’t been blown to hell by Chester Cabot.
Problem was, Jay hadn’t been a kid since sometime in between the day that Sam left and the day Paige did. They didn’t want to put Lizzie through that (and Joelle, in her own way, but she’d fall apart and run away again to join another cult before she ever stepped up).
Melody didn’t think twice about wrapping Mama and Ray in a hug and rushing into the school to explore, but Jay hung back to argue. To make their case one last time.
It didn’t work, of course, and they still had the better part of a year before they turned eighteen. So in they went, Mama’s bullshit line of It’s time you did something for you still ringing in their ears.
The first thing they did was tell their roommate to call them Jay.
Jay traced the scar on their chest, studying its ridges.
They wondered if maybe it would fade one day. The day when they were just finally… done. Done fighting to want to be here.
Julia’s photo sat on the nightstand in its new frame—Nori had said it was from Jeffrey to replace the one he broke, but Jay figured she’d bought it herself. Maybe the day it faded would be the day they let go of her.
“I carried you around forever,” Jay said softly. “The two of us and that summer were my favorite memories. And they were just mine.”
It didn’t matter if they talked to a photograph, not now that Sammy was gone.
Their own room, for the first time ever, and they got it because their roommate was murdered.
Jay sighed, quietly, and rose to go find a shirt.
Jay comes back to life whole.
They can feel them, there again, a gift from God, and the instinct is overwhelming. Their wings flex, their knees bend, and they launch towards the sky.
Jay’s alive, alive and flying, soaring into the light and warmth of the sun.
The songs bubble up, tumble out in one great mass as they look over this foreign paradise, Dolly Parton and Elvis and Gwen Stefani and Johnny Cash and Pearl Jam, all the things they could think to sing singing through them. And then, somehow, like a little kid, they’re singing, “I’ve got joy like a fountain, I’ve got joy like a fountain, I’ve got joy like a fountain in my soul!”
Someone laughs, and they turn to see—Sam. But not Sam, too old to be Sam, even if it’s his blue-gray eyes and his strong nose and his rocket power keeping the man afloat.
Too old.
Oh, God.
Sam offers out a… towel? Sheet?
They abruptly realize that they’re naked and snatch for it, curling their body awkwardly to hide themself at the same time.
Sam laughs again, wetly, and wipes at his eyes. “Welcome back.”
Lord have mercy, Jay thinks, I’m alive.
Jay sat on the hillside and watched the basketball game starting below, arms draped casually over their guitar.
“Do you play?”
They startled, jerking their head around.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to scare you!” Laurie took a nervous step back, putting her hands up in surrender.
“No, uh, no, it’s okay.” Jay swallowed. “I just got lost in my head.”
She bit her lip. “I can go, if you want to be alone.”
It took longer than it probably should’ve for Jay to convince themself to gesture for her to sit down, to smile easily and say, “It’s totally fine.”
“So… do you play?” she asked. “I heard you singing during field day, but…”
“Yeah,” they said. “Yeah, I play.”
And Laurie smiled, a goofy but real kind of thing that they thought they might’ve seen her give Josh once, far away from her usual closemouthed kind. Like she was forgetting to be shy. “Cool.”
“…What kind of music d’you like?” Jay asked.
Paige had told them all about Emma Frost. Mostly in her letters—Ms. Frost had us working with our powers today, finally! slowly becoming Emma let me get us a new computer system—but she hadn’t shied away from talking about the school when she’d come home, either, not seeming to notice the way Jay snapped and snarled at mentions of how happy she was to be out of Kentucky.
Frost hadn’t seemed to even notice them when they’d first seen her, too busy with the X-Men. Now, sitting at a desk instead of inside the giant, hollow dome of Cerebra, she was still scary.
(Scary, apparently, and definitely able to back it up, but a good teacher. At least to Paige.)
She shuffled a folder on her desk. “Hello, Mr. Guthrie.”
“Hi,” they said, crossing their arms over their chest.
Frost cast a look over them, the kind they thought might end with pursed lips and a biting comment about sitting up straight, them being written right off as a redneck. The kind that used to make a hot, shame-fueled ball of anger settle in their chest.
But whatever she saw, she kept to herself. “Welcome to the Xavier Institute. You should have already been given your room assignment and found your class schedule there, but if you need another copy, I have one.”
This time, she didn’t bother keeping her expression from saying that they were an idiot if they’d already lost the schedule. Jay shook their head a little.
“As an advisor, it’s my responsibility to supervise you academically and in the training of your abilities. I’m also here to provide support in any other realms you might need.” She paused, then, just for a beat, and they saw the moment she went off-script. “Students are assigned codenames for the training of their abilities. I allow my students to choose their own names.”
(And Jay wondered, a little later, if maybe that was what she’d seen, seen with her telepathy. If they’d done some kind of psychic flinch at being called Mister.)
“Jay,” they blurted, before they could think twice. If they had to live, they might as well be happy while they did. “Not Joshua. I don’t know about a codename yet but my name is Jay.”
Frost nodded, flipping open the file—they saw their driver’s license photo in the top left—and scratching a note into it. “Jay. Do you want me to make sure the other faculty know about this or keep it between us for now?”
Just like that.
They swallowed. “I—you can tell them about my name but I—I haven’t told anyone I’m nonbinary yet. Before. My siblings, I mean, my family doesn’t know.”
Paige is waiting on the ground, and she’s too old, too.
Fuck, but what about everyone else?
Paige crushes them in a hug before they can really study her features, and Jay’s left to reflect on the fact that her shampoo smells wrong, of all things.
(Everyone else, though, they’ll be worse, because Jay’s supposed to be older than them. Jay just spent a night holding Melody as she sobbed over her lost powers and tried not to say I nearly killed myself while talking about jumping out a window, just in case it triggered them.
And then they went to church and lit a candle for her, alongside the one for Julia.)
“I missed you, Jay,” she says, finally, as they let each other go.
“I know,” Jay says. “I’m sorry.”
“You got murdered,” Paige points out, immediately. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Sorry,” they say again (some part of them wondering if anyone ever figured out why they were at that church, if they decided to lie about what Jay had done) and Sam thumps them on the shoulder.
Melody showed up at their room to drag them outside a few hours after their arrival, practically floating down the halls with excitement.
“There’s a music room, even,” she said, spinning to face them, in that overeager, you’re-fragile-I’m-scared-please-smile way, “I can show you.”
Jay shoved their hands in their pockets. “I already saw it.”
“Oh.” Melody dimmed momentarily, and then made another attempt. “Did you see the flying courses too?”
Jay shook their head.
“Oh, Josh, they’re so cool!” She squealed, arching up towards the high, vaulted ceiling. “Come on!”
Jay watched her open a window, checking to make sure they had enough room to spread their wings before following.
“Apparently Northstar teaches flying,” she said, “which is a little weird because I thought he was Canadian and all.”
“It’s not like we’re from New York,” Jay said, pumping their wings a few times before finding a current to coast on.
Melody flushed a little, conceding the point, and then ducked into their wingspan to tug them towards the range of rings and bars set up near one of the treelines.
It was strange to fly with someone else. Jay had gone far enough up in the mountains that anyone who saw would think they were a bird, before, when they absolutely had to stretch their wings. Manuelo had driven once or twice, but he was human as they came.
“I bet I can do these faster than you,” Melody called.
Jay snorted. “I’ve got wings. I can’t get through half those rings.”
“You’re so lame.” She spun and slid towards the bars nonetheless, weaving under and over, hair trailing her like a banner.
They smiled.
She needed to see it, after all.
Paige was the one who cut everybody’s hair, even before Sam left.
Mama and Sam both just weren’t any good at it, so she figured it out.
She learned to do her own hair, first, clipping it in the bathroom sink and then getting yelled at by Mama because it ran the risk of the drain getting clogged.
But Paige cut their hair nonetheless.
She was nice about it, too—respected how Jeb always wanted his head basically shaved and Sam liked his clipped and Cissie wanted to be Rapunzel.
It was one of the things Jay forgot to make her teach them, before she left. They watched as Joelle’s hair grew past her shoulders and tried to brush out Lewis’s inch and a half of increasingly matted tangles only once or twice.
Finally, Mama noticed.
“You look like a hoodlum,” she said. “Let me cut your hair.”
“No thanks,” they said. “I like it long.”
Mama frowned. “Is this really the example you want to set for your siblings? Lewis’ll throw a tantrum if he’s gotta get his hair cut and you don’t, and his is getting unsalvageable.”
Guilt bubbled up, and anger, and tiredness, and why didn’t they get one thing that was just theirs? Just one?
And Jay said, “Okay. After school today?”
“We are late,” someone groans, and Jay turns to see a cluster of people bursting into the clearing—they recognize Dani first, and then David, then Sooraya and Josh is ushering them in and—
“Welcome back!” Nori whoops, racing across the clearing, and then Jay sees Laurie.
The girl you call Wallflower once stood where the Muslim now stands.
They turn and start trying to heave up their nonexistent stomach contents.
“Whoa,” Nori yelps, skidding to a stop.
“Jay?” There’s a hand on their back, close to the shoulder where someone can touch without being right in the way of an unexpected wing-flare.
“I’m sorry,” Jay mutters to the bile. The sour taste burns at their mouth.
Somehow they ended up on their knees.
“What’d we just say?” Sam says, offering out a hand to help them up.
They ignore it, turning to look at Laurie. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—I’m sorry.”
“…You didn’t pull the trigger,” she says, eventually. “And those things are in the past.”
Sam takes them by the arm this time, doesn’t give them a choice, and Jay rises.