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  • pphillips914
    Title: Ice Cream Author: Pat Phillips Summary: Marie is having one of her bad nights. Mike doesn t have a cure, but he s pretty sure that ice cream can make
    Message 1 of 1 , Sep 19, 2003
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      Title: Ice Cream

      Author: Pat Phillips

      Summary: Marie is having one of her bad
      nights. Mike doesn't have a cure, but
      he's pretty sure that ice cream can
      make anybody feel better -- even an
      outcast among outcasts.

      Rating/warning & pairing/characters:
      Rated G,
      Marie, OC(Mike)

      With the exception of Mike McWhirter,
      I do not own these characters. Instead,
      they are the property of Marvel Comics.

      As a firm believer in property rights,
      it's only reasonable that I specify that
      my use of these characters should in no
      way be interpreted as a threat to Marvel's
      ownership of them.

      All of my fan fiction, including this story,
      you get down to it, who would pay for this

      Readers of my other fiction may notice that
      Mike is a minor character in "A Sacrifice
      of Flowers". Note that this story assumes
      that there was significant period of time
      between the defeat of Magneto and the
      Brotherhood at the Statue of Liberty and
      Logan's leaving to investigate the Alkali Lake
      facility. During that time Jean, Scott, Ororo,
      and Logan conducted missions for the Professor.
      That may not be exactly canon, but it allows
      for some interesting stories.\


      It was another restless night. I'd been having a hard time sleeping
      ever since I came to Professor Xavier's school. This was the first
      time I'd been away from home. I'd been here for a couple of weeks
      and I was still getting used to the place.

      I'd taken to roaming whenever I couldn't sleep. It wasn't against
      the rules or anything. I just had to stay inside the building and
      out of the girl's section once it was after hours. Oh, and there
      was also a bunch of places that only the Professor and the X-Men
      could go. Places like the hanger and such. But the mansion is a
      big place, with plenty of room to wander around in.

      I headed down to the TV room.

      Someone was already there.

      Nuts. So much for my plan of seeing if HBO was doing any late-night

      Then I heard crying. It was Marie. She was curled up on one of the
      couches, covered with a blanket. The TV was on and one of the news
      channels was showing. The sound was so low that you couldn't hear
      it. But you could hear Marie crying.

      Marie has a lot of bad nights. She has this really strange power.
      If she touches anyone, she absorbs their memories and personality.
      If whoever she touched has any mutant powers, she gets them too. If
      she touches anyone long enough, she can kill them.

      The powers and memories fade away after a while. But some of the
      memories never go away.

      So Marie has a lot of people running around in her head. People
      like that Magneto guy that I've heard about. And she has really
      bad dreams.

      I thought about saying something to her. But I'm not exactly
      Marie's favorite person in the school. The first time I met her, I
      asked her why she had those stripes in her hair. Hey, I thought it
      was a dye job. No one tells you anything when you're the new guy

      Still, Marie was having a bad time. I couldn't just stand around and
      do nothing.

      I turned and went to the kitchen. I dug out two bowls and filled
      them with ice cream. Vanilla for me. Vanilla with chocolate syrup
      and sprinkles for her. On the way out, I grabbed a couple of

      Back in the TV room, I set her bowl in front of her. Then I grabbed
      a seat on another couch. Marie likes you to keep your distance.

      "Mike, what are you doing here?" she asked after wiping her eyes on
      her blanket.

      "Eating my ice cream. If you don't want yours, I'll take it."

      She sat up.

      "Hey. That's just how I like it," she said in surprise.

      "Yeah. I noticed."

      She gave me the look pretty girls give you when you're paying a lot
      of attention to them and you're not a movie star.

      "Why are you memorizing how I like my ice cream?" she asked.

      "I know how everyone likes their ice cream."

      She cocked her head to one side, still looking at me.

      "OK, how does Jubes like her ice cream?"

      "Chocolate with chocolate sauce and topped with a broken up
      chocolate bar. That girl needs help."


      "Strawberry and sprinkles."


      "Vanilla and chocolate with strawberry syrup and sprinkles. Bobby's
      a nice guy, but he has no class when it comes to ice cream."

      She laughed at that.


      "Chocolate with butterscotch."


      "Vanilla with butterscotch. I think he used to be a plain vanilla
      like me, but Dr. Grey brought him over to the dark side."


      "Plain vanilla. That's kind of surprising, until you realize that
      ice cream is still a new thing to her."


      "I don't think he knows what ice cream is. If he's in the
      refrigerator, he's grabbing a beer."

      Marie shook her head and picked up her bowl. She was quiet while
      she ate her ice cream.

      "Thanks," she said once she finished.

      Both of our bowls were empty. I reached for hers so I could bring
      them back to the kitchen.

      Marie put her hand over the bowl. She was wearing gloves. Marie
      wears a long nightgown, gloves, a scarf, and socks to bed. I know
      that sounds crazy, but she's really scared of touching someone. And
      everyone is scared of touching her.

      I almost touched her hand while reaching for the bowl. Even though
      she was wearing gloves, for a scary second I felt my stomach turn
      over. But I didn't flinch. At least, I don't think I did.

      "I'll clean up," she said.

      I handed her my bowl.

      After a few minutes she was back. She sat back down on her couch.

      We watched a movie on TV. It was "Saving Private Ryan" -- one of my

      "Mike, do you like this place?" she suddenly asked me.

      "Yeah," I said without hesitating. "It took me a while to get used
      to the school. And I guess I get homesick sometimes. But I like it


      I thought about that for a while. Then I answered, "Nice people.
      Pretty girls. A pool in the backyard. And Miss Munroe teaches a
      dynamite history class. What's not to like?"

      She looked at me for a long time.

      "Kitty told me that some people here are giving you a hard time,"
      she finally said.

      "What do you mean?" I asked.

      "They call you names."

      "Stuff like that happens," I said with a shrug, hoping she would
      drop it.

      "I's not supposed to happen here," she said quietly.

      "It's not as bad as it was back home in Denver, Marie. Nowhere near
      as bad."

      We watched the movie some more.

      Suddenly, I heard myself ask, "How do people treat you?"

      "Usually pretty good," she answered thoughtfully. "But some folks
      have a problem with me. Some think I'm crazy -- they figure that
      having other people's memories is a lot like "hearing voices", I
      guess. Some are jealous because I'm tighter with the X-Men than the
      average student. And a lot of them are scared of me. Every day, I
      see other students walk out of their way to avoid passing me in the
      hallway. Or they hurry up and leave the room when I enter. They're
      scared that we might accidentally touch."

      I winced. When I first got there, I did that. It took me a few
      days to get over it.

      Marie was quiet, then she said softly, "But most of the people here
      try to be better. We've got to remember that, Mike. Both of us
      have to remember that."


      "OK, Mike. So what's this about people calling you names? I showed
      you mine. Now show me yours."

      I couldn't help but smile at that. I also had to derail a sudden
      and really interesting fantasy in order to keep talking.

      "There's not a lot to say, Marie. I'm not as smart as everyone
      else. So some guys call me names."

      "What kind of names?"

      "Look, it doesn't matter..."

      "What kind of names?" When Marie decides on something, she can be
      pretty stubborn.

      "Well, 'retard' is pretty popular."

      "Who calls you that!?"

      I figured that Marie probably didn't want to know that one of her
      best friends calls me that all the time.

      "Forget it," I sighed. "Look, Marie, I've been a disaster in school
      as long as I can remember. Mr. Summers got careless with some
      paperwork the other day and I got a look at the IQ scores for the
      students. Kitty's the smartest kid here. She's almost two hundred
      freaking points ahead of me. The second dumbest kid here is thirty
      points higher ahead of me. Mutants are usually pretty smart. But
      I'm one of the exceptions -- and I'm going to have to live with
      that. And like I said, this place is nothing compared to back
      home. That fight that almost got me sent to jail was a part of all

      "Stop talking like that, Mike. You're not dumb."

      "If I stop saying it. That doesn't make it not true, Marie."

      She didn't have any way to respond to that.

      We watched the movie for a while.

      "I'm sorry about asking you about your hair. I didn't know." Until
      tonight I had been scared to talk to her about that.

      "Thas' hokay. Y're tryin'. Ah like that..."

      She was getting sleepy.

      I was getting tired, too. I clicked off the TV set, tucked Marie's
      blanket around her, and then lay back down on my couch. Marie
      stirred a bit and moaned something in another language -- German, I
      think. Then she said something in English that I didn't
      understand. Something about her parents and a big chimney.

      A couple of hours later I woke-up from a really bad nightmare. I
      had figured out in my sleep what Marie had been talking about.