Chapter Text
LORNA AND THE STARS
T - 8 HOURS
Lorna hung in the air, suspended by the iron in her blood and the metal soles of her shoes. She spread her arms like a radio receiver and listened to the soft singing of the world as it spun on its axis. Since becoming Polaris, she had learned so much about her powers – how strong they truly were and how far her reach really was. How heavy a burden the word ‘Class-5’ truly was.
Her troubled eyes flicked back and forth across the firmament, feeling the distant pull of satellites, meteoroids, and even the full moon. She was in-tune to the call of the tides below the cliffs just as much as the shifting of the gargantuan magnet beneath her feet. The heartbeat of the world had grown familiar; a whirring engine so vast that it had almost buckled her mind from the strain of understanding it.
The Professor’s counsel had been her lifeline, and Rogue’s experience her guiding light. She was happy to count them as friends and confidants, even if it was Scott’s word and Remy’s love that she trusted above all else, these days.
In any case, the gentle pressure of the world had shifted. Its waves were erratic, like the frantic pulses of a star about to explode.
The trapdoor that led to the roof slammed open with a rusted shriek. “Honey, I’m home,” Remy sing-songed as he made his way up the ladder and onto the roof. “Sorry I took so long, chéri , traffic was awful.”
Lorna didn’t reply, but instead floated down to greet him. When she was only hovering a few inches above the roof, she dropped her hands on his shoulders and pressed her lips to his. Remy hummed as they separated. “I dunno what I did to earn such a lovely greeting, chéri , but there’s nothin’ in the world I’d prefer than to earn more.”
She smiled, a bit halfheartedly, and set herself down. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Oh this li’l ol’ thing?” Remy replied, gesturing to the wicker picnic basket on his opposite arm. “Just what I spent all day tryin’ to procure. Did you know there ain’t no farmer’s markets open on a Tuesday?”
“All day?” Lorna asked. “For a picnic?”
“Oh yeah,” Remy replied as he set the basket down and drew the checkered blanket from the top. “A picnic, oui , but not just any picnic.” He threw the blanket out with a swish and a snap and it settled down on the flat surface. “A very romantic starlit rooftop picnic, for my beloved – that’s you – ‘n’ me to enjoy.” Lorna smiled a little fuller at his showmanship. The dork.
Remy then grimaced. “Earthquakes ‘n’ tsunamis notwithstandin’.”
Lorna sat on the blanket and Remy settled next to her, sliding the basket in front of them. “Behold,” he said, “The finest spread of charcuterie ever assembled.” He excitedly dug through the basket, withdrawing a cutting board onto which he placed an array of cheeses, fruits, sliced and sliceable meats, a bowl of honey, a pile of bread rolls, and three knives of varying sharpness. He placed a bottle of red wine nearby with a pair of tin cups in lieu of real glasses, and turned to look at her expectantly.
“It’s so beautiful, Remy,” she murmured, though her heart really wasn’t in it. “Thank you.”
He evidently noticed her distress. “Is – is somethin’ wrong? Oh, don’t tell me I forgot you was allergic to somethin’-”
“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. It’s just – I dunno, I just feel off today.”
She scooted a little closer to him and leaned against his side. His arm closed around her shoulders and he pressed a soft kiss to her temple. “We don’t gotta do this now, chéri . It’ll keep for a few days.”
“No,” Lorna repeated, turning and nuzzling into his shoulder. “I think I might need it.”
“Okay then,” he said. “Where do you wanna start?”
“Have you ever heard of sympathetic resonance?” Lorna asked.
“I was talkin’ about the spread, but I guess we can talk about music stuff too,” he said. “Can we eat and talk? I ain’t eaten jack since about noon.”
“Oh my god, Remy, it’s eleven P.M.!” Lorna squawked, grabbing a slice of salami from the board and aiming it at his face. “Eat!”
“You’re a peach, chéri,” he said. He reached for the board when he’d finished it. “Continue, amour. Y’know I love to hear you talk.”
Lorna huffed, even as the complement soothed some small bit of the troubled whirling in her chest. “Sympathetic resonance,” she repeated. “It’s when something’s vibrating and makes other things vibrate at the same frequency.”
“Oh,” Remy said, swallowing the cheese and bread he’d been chewing on. “Like how my grandpappy’s bass fiddle used to make the walls shake whenever he played the A note.”
“Yeah, actually,” Lorna replied, finally deciding that she needed to eat, too, and not just threaten Remy with the salami. “Exactly like that. Anyway, lots of stuff vibrates at specific frequencies, and most stuff likes to start vibrating together.” She settled on a slice of bread, and dolloped a chunk of French brie on it.
“How ‘bout cheese ‘n’ bread, that got a frequency?” Remy asked, passing her the honey. “Give this a try on that. Promise it’ll change your life.”
“You’ve already changed my life,” she replied, but upon taking a bite of the bread-cheese-honey combo, she could say with certainty that he had been correct. She let out a sigh of pure ecstasy at the tastes, and Remy chuckled deep in his chest.
“Anyway,” he said. “Frequencies. Vibrating. Resonance.”
“Right,” she continued. “The Earth likes to vibrate a specific way, and that’s why the magnetic field is the way it is, because the different layers–” she demonstrated by smacking an even larger chunk of cheese on her next slice of bread– “Shove against each other. And they all turn at different speeds.”
“Right, okay,” said Remy. “So the whole Earth has got these layers, and these layers all move and vibrate at their own speed. And that’s got you down? Am I gonna have to fight the whole Earth?”
Lorna giggled a little as the mass that had bound her down all day really began to lift away. “Leave the mountain-moving to me,” she said. She ate the next slice of cheese-bread-honey and could not contain her joy at the repeated experience.
“I’m so glad you’re enjoyin’ this,” Remy said, and Lorna leaned more of her weight into his side with a true smile.
“Anyway,” she said, “The point is, something in that rhythm is out of whack.” She took a slice of apple. “It’s like– I dunno, it’s like a band is playing, but the– the low part, what’s that called?”
“The bass. Like my grandpappy.”
“Right, the bass,” she said. “It’s like the bass player can’t play, and now all the rest of the band aren’t playing in sync anymore.”
He squeezed her round the shoulders and she sniffled, despite herself. “I’m scared, Remy,” she said, leaning back up to meet his eyes. “Between that and Jean’s crazy headaches, and Lance and Ororo’s nature stuff, it feels like the world’s gonna come apart.”
At the sight of her face, Remy teared up too. Resonance, indeed. “I’m scared too,” he admitted, voice quiet as though someone could hear. They wept together for a moment before he continued, “But the way I see it, come what may, there ain’t nothin’ we can do about it right now. It feels like we’re gonna have some problems in the next few minutes?”
“No,” Lorna replied. “Soon, but not yet.”
“Then I say right now we drink all of this wine and eat all of this food and think happy thoughts,” he said, and gave her a watery smile. “If the world ends tomorrow, I’ll be happier knowin’ I spent my night with you.”
“Remy,” she murmured, a little overwhelmed, before leaning in and kissing his cheek. He held her for a moment, before she spun herself away and looked back to the food. “What type of cheese is that?” she asked.
“The orange one? Gouda,” Remy said as he uncorked the bottle with a gentle application of explosive force. He poured the wine. “Goes real good with the salami.”
“Why don’t we make a toast?” Lorna asked once the tin cup was in her hand.
“To what?” Remy replied. “The end of the world?”
“Happy thoughts, remember?” Lorna said. “I’m gonna toast–” she hummed, rubbing her chin with her free hand as she thought– “Henry Ford, for starting the company that gave us the 1954 Shelby Cobra.”
Remy looked up at the sky in thought. “Wasn’t he a racist?”
“Probably,” Lorna confessed. “In that case, this toast goes to Scott Summers and Pietro Maximoff-Lensherr, for bringing you and I together.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Remy agreed, clinking their cups together.
Lorna rubbed at her lip after she drank in lieu of a napkin. “I’ll become a wine aunt someday,” she said, forcing her train of thought onto a different track. “Pietro or Wanda can have kids, and I’ll just have wine, and maybe a cat.”
“What, you don’t want kids?” Remy asked, the question coloring his cheeks even as it left his mouth.
Lorna giggled softly. “Why?” she asked. “You thinking of helping me do that?”
“Maybe,” he replied, his face darkening as he stretched his legs out. “I dunno, I never thought I’d be a decent dad.”
“You’d figure it out,” Lorna said with some confidence. “Sure, you’re a little awkward around the students, but so am I! We could totally figure it out.”
“I worry, though,” Remy replied. “My pops wasn’t too great at bein’ my pops. Why d’you think I got so much to say ‘bout my grandpappy?”
“The first official meeting of the All-Mutant Bad Dad support group is go!” Lorna declared, floating on the joke for the barest of moments before she came back to earth. Figuratively this time. Remy refilled their cups and they clinked them together before they drank. “I dunno why my dad – why he did what he did. I wish he hadn’t.”
“He’s your pops,” Remy replied. “You love him. You want him to love you the same way, but that ain’t how it goes sometimes.”
“He stabbed me in the stomach,” she said, abandoning all tact and discretion.
“He did do that,” Remy replied with a grim tone and a deathly serious expression. “And for that I want him dead.”
Lorna leaned into him again, sagging gently against his frame. He hugged her with both arms and kissed her hair. “I don’t want him dead,” she said miserably. “I just wanna look at him and not hurt.”
“Oh, Lorna, chéri, ” Remy murmured, tightening his arms.
“I think I’m going to change my name!” Lorna declared, before the thought even solidified. “Maybe I’ll change it to Maximoff. Or Dane. That’s my – my mother’s name.”
“Maybe one day you can change it to LeBeau,” Remy said, and he had said the words so softly she thought she was hearing things for a split second.
“Did – did you just ask me–”
“I’m askin’ you about askin’ you,” he interjected. “Is that what you want? I tell you, I could see that in my future. I never would’a, before, but now – If you’ll have me, I wanna stick around. But that ain’t gonna be for a while.”
“I want that,” Lorna agreed. “I dunno about a big wedding. I wanted one before, and then my dad stabbed me in the stomach, and that changes you.”
“That it does,” he said, running a hand through her hair.
“Maybe we could do it here,” Lorna suggested. “Prof could officiate. Scott could be your best man, or my man of honor, or whatever. Or maybe he should officiate. And witness. And it could just be that, just you, me, and the guy who brought us together.”
“I’d love that, chéri,” Remy murmured. “And then we could take a honeymoon out to my family’s old place in the bayou, and grandpappy can teach you how to hunt an alligator.”
“Does he know how to do that?” Lorna asked, and she knew her eyes were wide with curiosity just from the soft way that Remy looked at her.
“He knows how to do everythin’,” he replied. “Man’s a wizard. He says all grandpappies ‘round the world gotta know how to do a little bit o’ everythin’.” Remy chuckled, and the vibration of it lulled Lorna into a soft comfort. “Ninety-three years old and still walkin’ around, shakin’ his cane ‘n’ yellin’ at the river gangs.”
Lorna laughed with him, softly but secure in the haze of alcohol and food and his embrace. “I don’t know what I want, really,” she said after a moment. “I never got to ask. I learned how to lead a people. I learned diplomacy, tactics.” She fisted a hand in Remy’s lapel. “I learned to fight with my powers.”
“Well, I look forward to bein’ here while you find out,” he said.
“I love you,” she murmured, and he froze, because for all that Lorna had thought it and he had likely thought it in return, neither one had ever actually said the words.
“I – I love you, too,” he said. “ Je t’aime, I love you.” A thrill shot through her at the sound, his voice echoing inside her skull.
“Oh, oh no, I’m crying again,” Lorna lamented. And just like that, so was he, but it was okay, because they were happy, not afraid.