Snapshots and Screencaps (1/1, standalone)
by LJ
Smallville/X-Men movieverse crossover
Chimmy, future!Clois, Bobby/Rogue
SV spoilers through "Phantom"; spoilers for X-Men 3. The scene from "Zod" has been slightly manipulated because I couldn't find my copy of the episode at the time. One scene stolen directly from Superman: The Movie. Inspired by watching the three X-Men movies all in a row.
Takes place circa Season 9. Not intended as part of the Reunion'verse.
Snapshots and Screencaps
When it first started happening, Jimmy thought of them as snapshots; he'd gotten a camera for his twelfth birthday a few weeks earlier and had been busy taking pictures of everything that caught his eye. So many pictures that even at just twelve years old he was starting to worry that he was going to bankrupt his grandparents with the film and developing the pictures at the drugstore at One Hundred Thirty-First Street and Kensington. But his grandma just shook her head and said, "Don't worry, Jimmy. We'll take care of it." She had a little sad smile and sounded strangely guilty, though at twelve Jimmy didn't really pick up on it.
Grandma Olsen was like that a lot.
His entire life, it was just him and his grandparents. They lived in a little old house in Metropolis, in one of the nicer but fading neighborhoods called Roman Bridge. Supposedly the name came from all the Italian families that had settled there just before World War One, but the name predated that. Once upon a time a bridge crossed the Hobbs River not far from the neighborhood, designed by some architect who'd had a thing for some bridge in Rome and recreated it here in what would be swallowed up by Metropolis before long. The bridge itself was torn down in the Eighties and replaced, but Jimmy saw a picture once and thought it was kind of cool.
It was the only picture of his mom as a teenager where he could tell she's smiling, and it made him sad to think about that.
They never talked about it much, not really, and Jimmy figured he was lucky that his grandparents raised him. He didn't have any memories of his mom, of course – how could he when she died when he was born? – and he doesn't remember the weeks he spent in a foster home while they tried to find his grandparents, but his grandparents were pretty cool, as grandparents go (though Grandpa could be kind of stern and quietly angry), and he never really thinks about it. He knew it was kind of like being adopted, but not the same, and it never really occurred to him to wonder who his dad was. Grandpa Olsen once said something like "that damn German" in an argument with Grandma Olsen that he wasn't supposed to hear, so the most he'd ever thought about it was to assume it was someone she knew from high school. Grandpa Olsen and his parents were one of the last Danish immigrant families to arrive in Roman Bridge, just before the US entered World War II. The Danes weren't the only ones in Roman Bridge – there were the Italians, of course, and right after the War there were a few Germans, too. There were three elementary schools, all the same students from kindergarten to eighth grade, but the high school took in everyone.
Old people have surprisingly good memories. Grandpa Olsen still called his vegetable patch in the back a victory garden.
Jimmy's best friend when he was twelve was Donnie Vestergard, who lived three houses down from the Olsens. He and Donnie used to bike around the neighborhood together, and play catch, and after Jimmy's birthday Donnie made a point of finding cool things for Jimmy to take pictures of with his new camera. Most of the boys in their class thought that the camera wasn't anything special – not even close to cool – but Donnie was different.
They were riding their bikes eastward – to the park where Roman Bridge used to stand – and Donnie told him to stop. "Look!" he said, pointing across the street to the front yard of house freshly painted in bright colors – red, and yellow, and green. It was spring and the rain had kept them home for weeks, even when the rain let up, because Grandma Olsen kept saying, "It looks like rain, Jimmy." And Jimmy usually listened.
"Cool," Jimmy said and took a picture of it. It was one of the older houses, one of the ones with a historical marker next to the door, and he always thought those ones were cool, fresh paint or not. There were a few houses that were that old on their street, but the Olsens didn't live in one. Theirs was a bungalow.
"Hey, let me try," Donnie said and reached for the camera. Jimmy handed it to him, but Donnie fumbled a little and he had to secure it in Donnie's hands. His hand lingered on Donnie's for a moment and that was when it happened: a snapshot in his head, a picture he'd never seen before. It was Donnie, and Donnie's birthday – which wasn't for another two weeks, but he knew because of the cake on the table behind Donnie – and Donnie was happy, really happy, holding a freshly unwrapped gift. The image was frozen – just a picture, but like it was real, right in front of him.
"Are you okay?" Donnie asked and Jimmy snapped out of it. "Yeah," he said, frowning. "I'm fine."
Donnie shrugged and took his picture of the house.
It took a while to figure out what was happening. It was always a still image in his mind, like a picture from his camera, and so calling them 'snapshots' in his head made sense. There were rules: a casual touch didn't do it; it had to be full-contact, hand-to-hand. He never figured out why it had to be hands – it never happened if he touched their arm, or their leg, or face, or anything else – or why it had to be a significant touch, but he was glad it worked out that way. He was sixteen before he gave any thought to learning to control it, applying for jobs at the shopping center on One Hundred Twentieth, and realized that it could be distracting after shaking hands with the grocery store manager. After that interview, as he went from store to store, he concentrated on keeping the image away as he shook hands and by the end of the afternoon, it was done. The images were there, saved in the back of his mind, but he only had to look at them if he wanted to. And he usually did, after a while.
That was the other big rule: they were always images of happy things. They might be years off, or happening in the next ten minutes, but they were always happy.
The things he saw when he met Chloe Sullivan were a little different. Each time he touched someone and looked at their snapshot, it could be a different moment in their future, or it could be the same one each time, until it actually happened. There wasn't a rule about that. With Chloe, it was almost always something different, but the first one was of her in a hospital bed, talking to a tall, dark-haired guy. He couldn't imagine what would be happy about anyone being in a hospital bed, but sometimes he just didn't know enough about the person, or the situation, to understand what he was seeing. It always turned out to be something that made the person happy, so whatever it was, he knew Chloe was going to like the outcome of it.
There were other things that him question the 'always happy things' rule – Chloe crying over the body of a dark-haired girl was one of them – and that dark-haired guy was in a lot of them. But Jimmy saw himself, too, in some of Chloe's snapshots, and even when they parted and Chloe went back to Smallville, he saw himself in that final snapshot, and knew this wasn't the last time he'd be happy with Chloe Sullivan.
One of the rules was that the snapshots were just that – a moment frozen in time, a still image, something he could conceivably capture with his camera. Meeting Clark Kent in the basement of the Daily Planet building on Dark Thursday changed that.
At first, he was just surprised to finally see the dark-haired guy from Chloe's snapshots and to realize that he was the infamous Clark Kent from Smallville. "Hey, CK," Jimmy said. "Nice to meetcha." They shook hands, a smiling Chloe looking on, and Jimmy let the snapshot come. What made people happy could tell him a lot about a person, and he wanted to know who this Clark Kent guy really was.
Only it wasn't a snapshot. It was video, clean and crisp and clear, and wired for sound as well, and Jimmy didn't know what to make of it. He saw Chloe's cousin Lois, falling from a tall building, and a man – CK – catching her in midair. "Don't worry," CK told her. "I've got you."
"You've got me?" Lois said in surprise. "Who's got you?"
CK just smiled. And then they flew.
It ended then and Jimmy just shook his head. That had never happened before: there were rules, and the big one was always that it was a snapshot, not a video clip or a sound bite. He stepped back, a little nervously, and just said the first thing that came to mind: "Wow. They sure grow 'em big in Kansas."
Looking back, it was a stupid thing to say, and didn't reflect well on him, but he's long since forgiven himself for it. It's not every day you see some guy from Kansas wearing spandex and flying in a psychic vision.
After that, he started thinking of people's snapshots as screencaps. Not very many people ever triggered the video feed, but there were enough of them that a couple of years down the line, he knew CK wasn't the only one with a secret identity. The day Chloe's pictures started moving, he hid out in a stall in the men's bathroom in the basement of the Daily Planet for half an hour and tried not to cry, having known for a little while what a moving picture generally meant. He might have been Jimmy Olsen, goofy sidekick type, jumping to wrong conclusions more often than prudent, but he wasn't a complete idiot.
He'd gotten the girl after all, hadn't he?
Even though people had been talking about mutants for years, it wasn't something Jimmy thought about much. He didn't think of himself as a mutant – of the genetic variety, what the media called X-mutants, or the Smallville variety – and the snapshots thing was something that wasn't obvious, so no one ever thought of him as a mutant, to be certain.
A little more than two years after Dark Thursday, things changed.
CK wasn't hanging around Chloe anymore – she'd said something about him and his birthparents and being out of town for a while, which was how Jimmy found out CK was adopted – and Chloe's screencaps had been animated for a long time. He still didn't know exactly what her Smallville-variety mutation was – he thought it had something to do with crying, but he wasn't sure. He was trying hard to be patient (definitely not one of James Bartholomew Olsen's more recognizable traits), but it was difficult. Being an idiot, he didn't realize until later that if he'd given her the 411 on what he could do, she might have returned the favor. But in the long run, it was just as well that he didn't rock the boat with that news just then: all the news about the "mutant cure" was bothering her – apparently the company that was making it was somehow linked to Luthorcorp, and anything to do with the Luthors made her cranky – and the brief "mutant war" in San Francisco was enough to depress anyone. Finding out that her boyfriend had an active X-mutation might have been a bit much just then.
And he had his own discoveries to deal with.
He was just messing around, googling and following links at random, when something came up that caught his attention: a "mutant watch-list", the website called itself, and it had pictures of suspected mutants and their supposed 'powers'.
Halfway down the list, he found a guy who could be his twin.
The guy's name was Bobby Drake and he could freeze things. The website went on and on – the word 'abomination' was a big hit with these people – but Jimmy didn't really pay attention. It was more than just the idea that this guy Bobby looked just like him – Jimmy was smart enough to know about doppelgangers – but the fact that the guy had something special he could do, too, that made Jimmy pause. A doppelganger was one thing, but he could do something…mutant-y, too? That was just too weird.
That evening, riding the 62 bus back to Roman Bridge from downtown Metropolis, Jimmy Olsen thought of himself as a mutant for the first time.
He had trouble falling asleep.
When he woke up the next morning, he stayed in bed a while, staring at the ceiling. It was good, right, to realize that there was a name for what you were, wasn't it? That it was actually kind of normal, rather than a random, inexplicable thing? And mutants were people, too – that hadn't changed. Even the ones from Smallville were still people, and not all of them went crazy, either. And Chloe's videos were still, well, normal. It wasn't like she was getting her kicks committing crimes or anything.
He heard the soft knock on his door and the creak of the hinges as it opened. "Jimmy?" his grandmother called from the doorway. "Are you up yet, dear?"
He rolled over on his side and looked at her. "Yeah, Grandma. I'm up."
She frowned. "Are you all right? It isn't like you to lie abed like this. Are you sick?"
Actually, he'd been pretty healthy growing up and hadn't been sick very often, and even less so since he'd finished high school. He wondered if that was a mutant thing. "No, I'm fine. I'm getting up now."
She looked at him a little oddly, making him wonder if she knew anything, anything at all – about him being a mutant, or having a long-lost twin, but she should know, right? She was his grandmother, his mom's mom – she had to know something.
But he didn't say anything, and all she said was, "All right, dear. Breakfast's ready," and closed the door.
Looking in the mirror as he combed his hair, he sought signs of his mutation. Lots of mutants looked…different, he knew, but all he saw was the same face he'd always seen: crooked teeth, crooked smile; pale eyes, pale Scandinavian skin with the requisite hint of sunburn on his neck; unruly, indiscriminately colored hair with that hint of auburn in the morning light that came through the window.
In a word, himself. The same old Jimmy Olsen he'd always been.
He could live with that.
It took him a while to save up the money, but once he had, he was on the first bus out of Metropolis. He arrived in upstate New York the next afternoon, and from the first moment he stepped into the Greyhound station, he got weird looks.
There were a lot of people with blue skin in that town.
And a lot of people giving him double-takes. But assuming that that picture of this Bobby Drake guy wasn't a fluke – a weird angle, lighting, abuse of Photoshop – then it made sense. He looked like Bobby Drake but didn't know anyone. Yeah, he'd be weirded out by it, too, if he was one of Bobby Drake's buddies.
He shelled out some cash for a taxi and tried to relax as the driver took him up the winding country road. This place was isolated, but at least it was a nice kind of isolated, through a thick forest and brushing the edges of farmland. Soon enough they arrived and Jimmy saw Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters for the first time.
It was a cool brick building – old and classy, and he would have taken a picture just for that if his camera hadn't been buried in his bag – and though it was surprisingly quiet, it wasn't still. There were children running around in the nearby sports fields, and coming and going out of the main building itself. "This is it," the driver said.
Jimmy snapped out of it and gave the driver a nervous grin. "Yeah, I guess it is," he replied and climbed out of the taxi. The driver winked at him before he drove off and Jimmy realized that he had cat eyes. Is anyone normal around here? he wondered before giving himself a mental slap. You're not exactly normal, either, you know. Just because folks can't see it…
He shook his head and picked up his bag off the asphalt and walked towards the front door.
The lawn was manicured, the flowerbeds perfectly landscaped; he wasn't much for taking pictures of flowers and stuff these days, but like the building itself, it all made him wish that his camera wasn't deep down in his bag, wrapped up in clothes to keep it safe and padded. A few kids ran past him, tossing a soccer ball back and forth – one wasn't even touching the ball, just waving her hand around when it came near and it would start going back like it had bounced off a wall. Another said, "Hey, Mr. Drake!" as he ran by and then stuck his tongue out at one of his companions.
A lizard-like tongue. Forked.
Jimmy just shook his head and kept going, finally reaching the front door of the brick building. He stepped inside, only to be met by a large man with strange hair. "Bobby," the man said – and then narrowed his eyes, sniffed the air, and growled. "You're not Bobby Drake."
Metal…things popped out of the guy's hands, not quite but almost like the stainless-steel kebab skewers Grandma Olsen used when they made seafood skewers (which Grandma Olsen claimed were an authentic Danish recipe but Jimmy always figured were a really bad interpretation of shish kebabs), only flat and wide rather than round and thin. There was more growling, at least Jimmy thought there was. It could have been his imagination.
Jimmy had issues with that sort of thing from time to time.
He gulped. "Um, no, um, I'm Jimmy Olsen, and, um, I think I'm, um, a mutant?" With each 'um' he had shuffled backwards towards the door and his voice went higher, until it was practically breaking on that last word.
The shish kebab guy narrowed his eyes even more. If there wasn't growling, there should have been.
"And, um, I might be, um, that Bobby guy's, um, long-lost twin?" Jimmy managed to get out, near-falsetto.
"Logan, what's going on?" That was a woman's voice, soft and concerned, and a black woman with white hair emerged from the hallway. She frowned. "Logan, I'm sure whatever Bobby said wasn't that bad."
"It's not Bobby," the shish kebab guy – Logan – replied, his nose twitching slightly, but the skewers went back in.
That should have been reassuring. It wasn't. Jimmy gulped again.
"What?" the woman said, sounding surprised – and then turned suspicious. "Shapeshifter?"
The guy growled again – Jimmy knew it really happened that time – and raised his hand over his head. A moment later, everything turned black.
He woke up in a very bright, very white room and for a few seconds he thought he was dead. But then he realized he was freezing his butt off and he knew he was alive. He panicked a little – his grandparents didn't know where he was; they thought he was off with Chloe in Smallville. ('Good boy, Jimmy,' Grandpa Olsen had said when they'd gotten back together after Dark Thursday. 'Your ancestors have known the value of a good Irishwoman for a thousand years, at least.' Grandpa Olsen had also been known to spout off on the supremacy of his Viking genes, as evidenced by Jimmy's hair looking slightly ruddy in the right light.) Hell, Chloe didn't know where he was, and if she didn't know where he was, how could she send CK off to save him (he could get over the stabs to his masculinity that being saved by Clark would cause if he just lived) – oh, wait. CK was off to Timbuktu, incommunicado.
Crap. What did you get yourself into here, James?
There was murmuring somewhere nearby – that Logan skewer guy, and the lady with the white hair, and some other girl, another guy with a rumbly voice, and…. He frowned, straining to hear the fifth voice. It sounded an awful lot like him.
He blinked and sat up, pulling a blanket up around him as he did. At least they left me my boxers! That was enough to catch their attention and he soon discovered that the new guy with the deep voice was yet another blue dude, only he was furry as well. "Hello, young man," the furry blue guy said. "How are you feeling?"
"Um, okay, I guess?" Jimmy replied, a little nervous. He glanced over at the scary guy from earlier – Logan – who was watching him cautiously. Jimmy gulped again. The white-haired woman was smiling, at least, and the girl…the girl tilted her head and looked at him. Hello. I'm Emma Frost. What's your name?
"Jimmy Olsen," he replied aloud – and then realized she hadn't opened her mouth. "Wait–"
The blue furry guy gave a little chuckle. "It's all right, son. You're among friends." Jimmy's eyes flickered over to Logan, half-expecting a growl from him, before looking back at the furry guy. "Um, okay," Jimmy replied slowly.
"I'm Dr. Hank McCoy," the furry guy said, "and you've met Logan and Ms. Monroe, and of course Emma just introduced herself in her own unique way. And rounding out our little welcoming committee is the person I think you probably came here to see – Bobby Drake."
He hadn't seen the person the fifth voice had belonged to until now; the guy had been, well, hiding behind the scary skewers guy, but now he stepped forward and Jimmy couldn't do anything but stare. Looking at Bobby Drake was like a mirror. Bobby did his hair differently, all spiky with gel and stuff, and he was a little tanned, and he looked like he was in better shape than Jimmy was (not a difficult feat, really, given the donuts-and-coffee addiction you got working in the basement of the Daily Planet), but otherwise…identical. Spooky, freaking-out-worthy, unsettlingly identical.
"Holy crap." The words came out before he could stop them. He really needed to work on that.
"Wow," Bobby echoed.
After a moment, Jimmy stuck his hand out. "James Olsen. Nice to meet you."
Bobby stepped forward and shook his hand. "Robert Drake. Back at you."
The moment Bobby's hand touched his, there was frost on his skin and Bobby's hand was covered with ice, like a challenge, but it didn't matter: the snapshot still came. But like when he met CK, and when he met a few other folks the last two years, it wasn't a snapshot, or a screencap. It was video, and it made him blush. Bobby – and it had to be Bobby, because it wasn't him – was in a bed with a girl, and it was pretty obvious what had been going on before this moment. "I told you we'd figure it out," Bobby told her.
"I know," the girl replied, tucking a strand of pure-white hair behind her ear. She had a strange accent – southern, but that was as good as Jimmy could do in trying to place it. "I'm sorry I doubted that."
They kissed, and it was clear where this was going, so Jimmy forced himself out of the vision, pulling his hand away. Bobby was frowning at him, and Emma was giggling. "Um," Jimmy managed. "Your girlfriend's cute?"
"The hell was that?" Bobby demanded, scowling and yanking his hand back like he'd been burned.
"You saw that?" Jimmy asked in surprise. As far as he knew, he was the only one who saw what he saw, no matter what the deal was with the other person, mutant or meteor-infected or whatever. He glanced down at his hand, the hand he'd shook Bobby's with, and realized it wasn't just frosted. There was ice all over it now, but it didn't feel bad – in fact, it kind of felt natural, like it was part of him, and after a moment it actually stopped freaking him out.
Of course that was the moment it started to disappear. It almost felt like his skin was absorbing it – it definitely wasn't melting off and forming a puddle on the floor.
Ms. Monroe tilted her head, Emma frowned, and Logan narrowed his eyes again. Bobby just stared. The only one who didn't look confused or suspicious was the furry guy, Jimmy realized. And he himself was confused, too, his eyes wide. It was like that day with Donnie Vestergard and meeting CK all smooshed together into one. A chuckle from the furry blue guy drew his attention away from his hand and he looked over to where the doctor stood. There was an almost manic grin on his face that was a little scary. It vaguely reminded him of Lois.
"I've often wondered about twins," Dr. McCoy said gleefully.
"So," Jimmy said.
"So," Bobby said.
"Wow," Marie said.
Dr. McCoy had taken his blood and let him get dressed, finally, and the privacy of those few minutes had been like heaven. He wasn't used to being stared at – he was more the quirky nice guy that didn't attract a lot of attention – but he supposed that he should have been prepared for that, walking into the situation the way he did, just showing up out of the blue. And now here he was, sitting with his long-lost twin brother (Dr. McCoy was confirming this as they sat there) and his girlfriend.
A girlfriend he had seen partially naked in a vision half an hour earlier. He was blushing. A lot.
"So, you don't freeze things like Bobby?" Marie asked, frowning. "What can you do then?"
Jimmy shook his head. "Give me your hand," he told her. He'd never done it like this, where the person knew to expect him to do something. Sometimes he felt a little guilty, poking into people's privacy without them knowing, but given that there was rarely nudity involved – thank God the first time that had happened, it was after he and Chloe had had their own fling in high school; he would have been afraid to touch people for the rest of his life if it had happened any earlier than that! – he could usually shake off the guilt. Other people's happy moments kept him pretty upbeat himself.
Marie reached out towards him, still wearing the elbow-length gloves she'd had on the whole time. He hadn't asked about it, just assuming it was part of some weird kind of fashion sense, but he had to say something now. He'd tried it before, on people wearing all kinds of gloves and mittens and things, and it always had to be skin-to-skin. Even with Bobby, it had started out that way, though the ice hadn't killed it. "Could you take off the glove?" he asked. "It doesn't work through fabric. At least, it never has so far."
She snatched her hand back and Jimmy wondered what he had said to upset her.
Bobby frowned. "Does it have to be a full handshake? Does it work if it's just a second or two?" he asked. Jimmy wondered what the fuss was all about, but he answered the question anyway. "Sure, just a moment or two should work," he replied.
"No," Marie said. "I won't hurt him."
"Marie," Bobby said softly, "it'll be okay. Just a second or two. That's not long enough to hurt him."
She gave him a dubious look, and Jimmy was tempted to ask just what the heck the problem was. It was pretty obvious she had to be a mutant, too, but so far he hadn't been able to figure out what her special ability was. He wasn't going to ask – not until he explained what he could do. He figured that was fair; he was the stranger, after all. "It's fine," he said, trying to reassure her. "If Bobby says it's fine, then it has to be, right? And it just takes a moment, really."
The side of her mouth quirked up, almost a smile. "It's scary how much you two look alike," she said. "All right."
"Rogue–"
Jimmy hadn't heard Logan – the scary shish kebab dude – come in, but damn, he was scary. Jimmy froze in place – figuratively, not literally – when he spoke.
"It's okay, Logan," Marie told him – 'Rogue' must have been her super-secret superhero name. Jimmy made a mental note to find some way to get Chloe to remind Clark he'd need one figured out before he started wearing spandex and pulling Lois out of danger at the last second on a regular basis. "Bobby's right – it'll be okay if we're careful." She gave Jimmy a little grin. "He's kind of like the overprotective big brother I never wanted."
"Yeah," Jimmy replied, "my girlfriend's got one of those, too." But Clark Kent had stopped being scary the moment he'd met Logan. He preferred splatting from cloud-level or being incinerated for having done Chloe wrong over becoming a Jimmy-kebab any day.
Marie took a deep breath and slowly slipped off her glove, revealing long, pale fingers and sparkly nail polish before reaching her hand out towards him. Everything was fine for the first moment he was touching her – she was giving him video, too, but he'd kind of expected that, and at least it was tamer than what he'd gotten from Bobby – but then it turned painful, like she was pulling his very soul out through his fingertips. He gasped – and then it ended as she broke the connection. They both breathed heavily for a moment. "I like your girlfriend's hair," she finally said, almost like a peace offering.
"Um, thanks?" he replied, starting to feel normal again. "So, I guess you saw something."
"Yeah. You, and a blonde girl – your girlfriend? – and you were hugging her. She'd just told you something important, and you were happy because she'd finally told you. And then you said that you needed to tell her something, too." She frowned. "I think you were about to tell her about your power."
Power. He hadn't thought of it like that. Clark had powers. Chloe had a power, he was pretty sure. Clark's friends Bart and AC had powers. Bobby had a power. Whatever the heck it was that Marie had done was a power. But Jimmy never thought about his snapshots as a power. It wasn't good for much – what could you do with knowing about some future event that was going to make someone happy? It was a gift, a quirk, maybe an ability, but 'power' implied something that he didn't think it was. Unless there was something about what he could do that he didn't know about…
Jimmy shook his head. There'd be time to figure that out later. There was a question he wanted to ask right now. "How did you see it?" he asked. "Bobby saw what I saw earlier–" A few careful words had confirmed that, which helped explain why he'd been so upset; most guys didn't like other guys seeing their girlfriend naked. "–But you saw something else – something about me. That's never happened before."
She fiddled with a strand of her hair – a bit of the snow-white stripe, which he was starting to think was as much a fashion choice as the gloves were. "I kind of absorb people's life force when I touch them. When the person is another mutant, I get their power for a little while. So it was like I had your power for a minute there." She fidgeted, pulling the glove back on. "That's why I wear these," she added shyly.
"Oh." He felt a pang of sympathy for her. It had hurt to have her 'get his power', even for those few seconds; no wonder she wore the gloves.
No wonder the, um, moment of nakedness was going to make Bobby happy. Marie hadn't been wearing gloves.
(She hadn't been wearing anything, actually, but he refused to let his brain go in that direction, and instead concentrated for a moment on the fact that one of these days Chloe was going to tell him her secret. He was still working on the patience thing, but he could wait.)
A giggle broke him out of that moment of uncharacteristic introspection. It was Emma, the girl from earlier who had introduced herself telepathically. And he'd almost forgotten that Logan was there, too, despite the scariness of the dude, until Emma spoke. "It's okay, Mr. Logan," Emma said. "He's been telling the truth. He's a friend. And he's friends with other mutants." She frowned a little, but kept going before Jimmy could say anything. "But he doesn't really think of them like that, either. But his girlfriend can do something, and her best friend can do all sorts of things–"
"Emma–" Logan started, but Jimmy jumped in and took over for once, realizing where the girl was going with all of this. Incineration might be preferred over being shish kebabbed, but he'd still rather avoid it. "Hey! That's private stuff. That's their business and it's not any of yours. They're not my secrets to share." He took a deep breath and directed what he said next to Logan, who was apparently still suspicious of him. "Look, I just came here for some answers, that's all. You see a picture of a guy who looks just like you, you might wonder about it, but maybe it's just a coincidence. You see a picture of that guy, and he's supposed to have some kind of…of special ability, that normal people don't have, just like you, then there's something more to it. You wonder if there's something you don't know, but should know. You get curious. You check it out. That's all I was trying to do."
Logan's eye twitched.
The room was silent.
Finally, Logan spoke. "Dinner's in an hour," he said and then turned and walked out the room. Emma followed him out.
Jimmy turned back to Marie and Bobby. "Don't worry, Jimmy," Marie told him with a small smile. "I think he's starting to like you."
"As I suspected," Dr. McCoy said happily, passing the string beans, "twins. Identical genetically, though naturally there is some variation on the epigenetic level. It helps explain why your abilities are different. Even the most similar twins are not perfectly identical. Though I am surprised at the great dissimilarity in your powers – not simply that Robert has a physical ability and James a metaphysical one, but also that there doesn't seem to be anything to tie the two of them together. Astonishing."
Jimmy had no idea what "epigenetic" meant, but he got the gist of it. He looked across the table at Bobby, who wore an uncertain expression that probably matched his own, before turning back to the doctor. "So we're really brothers?" he asked.
It was just dumb luck that Bobby said, at the exact same time, "So he's really my brother?"
The table fell silent. The only sounds were the ticking of a grandfather clock here in the teachers' room, and the faint murmurs from the neighboring students' dining room.
"That was creepy, even for us," Logan finally said, stabbing something on his plate with a vicious flourish.
Ms. Monroe laughed. Marie giggled. Piotr smirked.
"Yes, yes, it's quite true, boys," Dr. McCoy said after a moment. "Not simply brothers, but twins." He took a bite of his pork chop. "I have a number of theories regarding twins – we haven't encountered enough to really understand it all, and mutant genetics being what they are…well, this is the first time I've encountered a pair that hadn't grown up together. That points rather glaringly to the idea that our mutations are not entirely nature, though they certainly wouldn't happen without Mother Nature having her way. Nurture has a role, too, and I think that's pretty clear in the fact that your abilities seem to have no connection whatsoever: they're neither opposing forces nor linked by similarity. It's quite fascinating, actually." An almost frightening expression of glee covered his entire blue face.
"Um, not to change the subject or anything," Jimmy ventured a little nervously, "but doesn't it usually take a couple of weeks to get DNA tests back? Months, even? Not that I don't think you're right – I mean, look at us!" He gestured between him and Bobby. "It's kind of obvious."
Ms. Monroe gave him an indulgent smile. "We have very…special resources, Mr. Olsen," she said. "And Dr. McCoy is the best in the field." She patted his hand, but Jimmy kept
what he saw to himself. She'd get along with CK. Once Clark figured out how to fly, he was going to enjoy it too, and he wasn't going to have to manipulate the wind to do it.
"So did your parents not give you their name, or what?" Bobby asked the next morning.
Jimmy frowned over his cereal. "What do you mean?"
"I pretty much always knew I was adopted," Bobby explained. "So I know that my birth name wasn't Drake – it was Olsen, like you."
"No, my grandparents raised me. Our grandparents, I mean."
Bobby went stiff for a moment, and really Jimmy wished he hadn't asked that question. He didn't want to lie – that definitely wasn't the way to get on his long-lost twin's good side – but that didn't mean he didn't know that Bobby was probably not going to like it. Apparently, this was a conversation that was going to pull out all the stops on his dorkhood. "You sure they're really our, uh, our grandparents? They didn't just tell you that because they were old?" Bobby asked after a moment.
Jimmy winced a little, though he tried not to show it. "They have pictures of our mom," he explained, "and we look just like her. Only, you know, guys."
"Oh," Bobby said and took a bite of cereal, chewing slowly like it was an excuse for not saying anything else. Jimmy took the hint and reached into his pocket for his wallet and pulled out the insert. "That's her," he said, sliding it across the table.
Bobby swallowed and looked at him before looking at the picture, setting his spoon down and using both hands to pick up the plastic insert. "She's pretty," he said softly, and Jimmy couldn't disagree. Bobby continued: "You're right. She does look like us." He flipped through the pages of the insert, pausing at the obvious picture of their grandparents – Jimmy'd known from day one that he took after Grandpa Olsen's side of the family, but Bobby had obviously never seen a picture of Henrik Edvard before – and later the cut-down shot of Chloe with its uneven edges where he'd sliced away Lois and Clark and Senator Kent from the picture. "Marie's right," Bobby said. "Your girlfriend's pretty."
"Thanks," Jimmy said. Chloe and Lois would've pummeled him for it – well, mostly Lois; Chloe could be a little old-fashioned when it suited her – but what was he supposed to say?
There was silence as they stared at each other again.
"Well, at least neither one of us is an evil twin," Bobby finally joked.
"Boston."
Jimmy gestured at himself. "Metropolis."
"Cool." Bobby chewed thoughtfully. "Isn't that where that guy ran around in a Robin Hood costume a year or two ago? Is he a mutant, too?"
Jimmy shook his head. "Nah, he's just a normal guy. Weird, but normal."
"How do you know?"
"I've met him when he was himself," Jimmy explained and then paused to take another spoonful of his breakfast. "We shook hands and you can guess what happened next. I only get the full-on live-action, surround-sound visions with, well, 'special people'. Mutants. Both kinds." Actually, judging from CK's circle of friends, there were a couple of different kinds. That Bart guy definitely hadn't been meteor infected, and something about him didn't scream X-mutation. "He's not like us, and he isn't one of the other kinds."
"Other kinds?" Bobby asking, frowning.
Jimmy swallowed another spoonful of cereal. "Ever been to Smallville, Kansas?"
Jimmy was tired of buses by the time he got back to Roman Bridge – it had been four in all, two between New York and Metropolis, and two to get from the Greyhound station to the stop on Ostaagard Street, two blocks from his grandparents' house on Fynbo Lane – but at the same time, he dreaded stepping inside. He hesitated there on the front porch, his keys in hand. What should he say to them if they asked about his supposed trip with Chloe? He was a crappy liar – yet another example of the dork within.
Come on, James, he told himself. Rip off the bandaid.
If he hadn't been angsting so much, he would have noticed how dark the house was for eight o'clock at night, but he didn't realize this until he was inside. Luckily, there was a note on the fridge:
Jimmy,
At dinner & games with Poulsens. Back by 10.30PM. Help yourself to anything in the fridge.
Love, Grandma
PS Hope you had fun with Chloe!
Nervousness had made eating an impossibility – strange, because normally he was a nervous eater, in part a source of the slight pudge that made a difference between him and Bobby. Was it because this was suddenly so important to him? Grandma, Grandpa, why didn't I know I had a twin out there? Did you know we're mutants? Is that the real reason you never talk about my father?
He unpacked and went to bed. He never heard his grandparents come home, or how they peeked into his room and frowned at each other.
He was up with the sun – unusual for him – and got out of the house as quickly as he could to avoid his grandparents. Silently, he gathered everything together into his bag and tiptoed out the door. Reaching the corner of Fynbo and One Hundred Twenty-Fifth, he breathed.
The drugstore at One Hundred Thirty-First and Kensington opened at seven and he was at the doors at five til, a roll of film warming in his hand, ready for processing. Right after he'd graduated from high school, they'd finally introduced one-hour developing there, to reclaim customers from the new shopping center on One Hundred Twentieth, but Jimmy had never made use of it before today. Most of the time, if he used actual film, he developed it himself, and a lot of his photography was digital the last few years. But there was something special about actual, physical film and printed pages of Kodak paper.
And today he wanted something tangible, something real, before he went to the Planet.
"Jimmy! My goodness, son!"
He had known Mr. Carlotti all his life, and seeing him open the doors was something of a relief: a familiar, steadfast face. "Hey, Mr. Carlotti," Jimmy said, shoving himself off of the brick wall he'd been leaning against. "Do you develop film this early?"
He spent the time wandering the store. He browsed the paperbacks and magazines – he needed something new; he'd finally finished the last book he bought for fun on the Greyhound buses – and gave the greeting cards due attention. His birthday – their birthday – was coming up in a month and a half, and he should really send Bobby something, a card at the very least, but it didn't seem like Hallmark made anything in the secret, long-lost twin brother line of stationary needs. He looked at the kitschy tourist knickknacks (not that many tourists made it out as far as the Hundreds) and marveled at all the different ways that you could design bumperstickers that said "Keep Metropolis Weird!", "I heart the Big Apricot", and "I left my heart in Hobbs Bay".
It occurred to him that one day some of the stickers and figurines would bear the likeness of a certain girlfriend's best friend. Knowing Clark, this would be a detractor rather than a perk of the superhero business.
It had been years since he simply wandered the store like that and by the time he was done, Mr. Carlotti was waving him over and there was a line of elderly women at the pharmacy counter between him and the photo department – none of whom was his grandmother, thank god. "You have such talent, Jimmy-boy," Mr. Carlotti said, bundling up the pictures into the envelope. "Such a gift with a camera."
"Um, thanks, Mr. Carlotti," Jimmy replied, reaching for his wallet. He still had a couple of twenties leftover from his trip.
"Your mom would be so proud, kid, so proud," Mr. Carlotti continued, punching the antiquated cash register buttons.
Jimmy paused. "You knew my mom?"
"She was such a nice girl, just nice to everyone, she was," Mr. Carlotti said absentmindedly, frowning at the cash register. "Everyone liked her. Real shame. Never did catch that driver, I think. Probably drunk, and such a shame. Your dad was real nice, too. Didn't know him very well – everyone's folks frowned on making friends with the new Germans, you know, and it wasn't like I had classes with either of them since they were younger, but they were always nice. He was a little weird, everyone always said, but nice."
Jimmy stood stock still, a twenty-dollar bill in his hand.
Mr. Carlotti shook his head and grabbed the twenty. "That's a pretty girl you took pictures of, Jimmy. Can't say I understand the white stripe, but you kids do the darnedest things these days and call it fashion, and sometimes they buy the dyes and the colors and everything here, so who am I to complain? Could have sworn your grandma said your girlfriend was blonde, though," he said, as casual as could be, silently counting out the change. "Of course, these days you can't tell unless they grow it out a bit." He dropped the coins and dollar bills into Jimmy's outstretched hand.
Jimmy shivered.
Mr. Carlotti looked beyond him, apparently unaware that anything he had said had upset him at all, and called out, "Next in line, please!"
The pictures Mr. Carlotti had been referring to were at the bottom of the stack of single prints, but Jimmy knew, even without looking, that the young man hugging Marie in the first one was Bobby. He could remember taking the picture, remembered wanting something to stand as proof of his trip and the discoveries he'd made during those few days. Bobby had been a little hesitant, a little stiff at first, but Marie had posed readily, as if she understood how important this was for Jimmy. Maybe it was because Marie understood how important family – any kind of family – was, no matter where you found it, but Bobby hadn't been distanced from his adoptive family for as long and was still dealing with that. They had been close, once upon a time, he'd come to understand between the two of them, and while everyone had known that Bobby was adopted back in Boston, that had never been a problem. The Drakes had been a pretty happy family.
Bobby's little brother Ronnie had started seeing things differently.
'The fact that I was special enough to get a scholarship to go to a special boarding school always bugged him, you know?' Bobby had confided after Marie had told Jimmy some things about the Drakes behind Bobby's back. 'I was special because I was adopted, I was special because I was the oldest, I was special because I was on the up-and-up popularity-wise at school, and then I was special enough to be invited to come here to Xavier's. He and my parents didn't know that I was here because I'm a mutant and I needed to learn how to control my powers. Ronnie was jealous about a lot of things before I came here and it was never a big deal because that's just how siblings are, especially at that age. I never though it was a big deal. But Marie told you why we were there at the house and they found out we were mutants. That was just the last straw with him, I guess. He was the one who called the cops. And my parents were just so in shock that they…they didn't do anything. They couldn't deal. And I think at this point they're just trying to forget I ever existed.'
He was so absorbed in the pictures that he almost missed his stop in downtown Metropolis.
The Planet was bustling when he arrived, more so than usual, but it was a Monday in summer, and the basement and lowest levels were gorged with interns. He'd been one, once upon a time. That was how he'd met Chloe.
He would have given almost anything for those simpler days, when mutants were something other people talked about, and Smallville simply had a high urban legend quotient and was a source of amusement while grabbing a hot dog or a can of soda with Chloe.
He ran into her between her desk and the copy machine. "Jimmy! I've been looking for you!" she said, jerking her head a little to throw a stand of hair out of her face.
"Hey, bright eyes," he said automatically. "Well, here I am." He took the papers from her arms and walked her back to her desk.
"Thanks," she said, smiling. "Anyway, Lois has invited us out to dinner tomorrow, if you're available. She got the internship at the Post and wants to celebrate her impending poverty. Turns out they're not going to pay after all. Yet more proof that the Planet rules the world."
"Uh, yeah, sure," he told her. "I can do that. Hey, listen, are you free for lunch? Later, I mean?" The inner dork was out in full force today, it seemed.
"Okay. Yeah. Is one-thirty good? I have to cover the phone for Angie until then." She gave him one of her evaluating looks. "What's going on?"
"It's okay," he told her. The freaking out could be put off until later – though if Marie was right, things were going to be just fine. "I just – I just want to talk to you about some things."
"Is this about your mysterious trip?" she asked.
It was, of course, but he didn't answer the question. Instead he just gave her a little kiss on the cheek, said, "I'll see you later," and winked before he left.
Bobby might have been the suaver twin, but Jimmy knew the way to Chloe's heart was a good mystery to stew over – if only for a couple of hours.
Chloe was nervous at one-thirty, he could tell, and he wondered if he had given her too much of a mystery. She'd seemed just fine before.
They grabbed sandwiches and walked to Siegel Park. "I know you wanted to talk to me about something," Chloe said as they sat down at one of the multitudinous picnic tables, "but I've been thinking it over while you were gone this weekend, and I need to tell you something myself."
Jimmy sat down beside her – all the better for kissing his girlfriend – and nodded. "Do you want to go first?" he asked.
"Do you mind? It's – it's important."
"Go ahead, bright eyes."
She took a deep breath, staring at her sandwich. Finally, she looked up and met his eyes. "Jimmy, I'm a mutant."
Oh. That. Marie could have warned him that it seemed like something soon.
And then he gave himself a mental slap to the head. Duh. Of course it was soon. He tells her after she tells him.
You are an idiot, James.
Out loud, all he said was, "Okay."
"Okay?" Chloe squeaked. "What do you mean, okay? You're supposed to be freaking out!"
He set down his sandwich and put his arm around her. "Chlo, I love you. All of you, no matter what."
"Jimmy, I'm not a normal mutant, god, if there is such a thing. I'm a meteor mutant. I heal people with my tears. I could go psycho and evil and hurt someone. I'm not an x-mutant."
Well, that would be why crying made her happy. Mystery solved. He put his hands on her shoulders and made her look at him. "Chloe, it's fine. This doesn't change anything." She was crying a little – the normal kind of crying, he hoped – but when he hugged her, she returned it wholeheartedly.
When the embrace finally ended, he decided to plunge right in: "Besides, it would be hypocritical of me since it turns out I'm a mutant, too."
Chloe's sniffles paused. "What?"
He wasn't much of a storyteller: he was all about the pictures. Words were Chloe's thing. But the whole tale tumbled out of him and she listened. He had promised her the story of his long weekend, and that was nothing without his visions. He told her everything.
There was no doubt in his mind that Chloe believed him, but she wouldn't have been his girl if she hadn't asked, when he was done, "Prove it."
It was a little silly and one-sided – was he asking her to prove her ability? – but he went with it. This was Chloe after all. "Okay," he said and took her hand. Her fingers were curled up a little into a fist, so he kissed her knuckles before unfolding it and pressing their hands palm to palm. The video came readily, but he missed the still images. Photographs, captionless, were like a mystery, a little puzzle to figure out. Film felt like cheating.
He released her hand. "Has Clark always had a predilection for red and blue spandex?" he asked. "I mean, the hero thing – that's been there since I met him. But the costume?" The costume had been there, too, as Clark had rescued Lois in that first video, but he still had trouble believing it sometimes.
She stared. "What?"
"You know, the whole superhero costume, secret identity thing. I don't know how he manages to pull it off, but somehow it works for him," Jimmy told her. "Well, Lois seems to like it, and I guess if his wife is okay with him running around the planet in spandex and hooker boots, then who am I to judge?" He shrugged. "Never thought Lois would go for a nerdy guy with glasses, either, but if it works as a secret identity…"
Chloe turned pale.
He never did find out if that was (a) the Clark-Lois couplehood, (b) the superheroing reveal, or (c) the costume choice.
If someone had asked him, he could have said it was the hooker boots.
Chloe was beside him when he confronted his grandparents. He almost wished Bobby – or Clark – was there. They knew what it was like to – well, Chloe had made jokes about coming out of the mutant closet to try to get him to relax, but he wasn't sure he was comfortable with the analogy. His grandparents had raised him a little old-fashioned. But whatever the in-vogue term for disclosing mutant abilities was, his only real practice had been with Chloe. Going to New York state had been more like walking into a sci-fi convention: they assume you belong until you prove you don't. Jimmy had been to all but one comic book convention in Metropolis in the four years he was in high school. (He'd been doing more important things with Chloe that one weekend. Like sex. Not that his grandparents knew that.)
He set one of the pictures Mr. Carlotti had developed for him the previous Monday on the dining room table. "Do you know who that is?" he asked his grandparents.
Grandma Olsen picked it up and squinted at it a little. Her eyesight was getting bad. "I've never seen you do your hair like that, dear," she said, tapping a nail at Bobby's hair. "Does this girl work at the newspaper with you?"
"Hmph. Such a waste of money," Grandpa said, his words tinged with the remnants of his accent as always. "Such color for the hair, such clothes." This seemed to be directed at Marie. The Olsens had lost their business when the Germans had invaded and came to America with very little. Grandpa Olsen had always been a pennypincher. He hadn't entirely approved of Jimmy's photographic aspirations but after the internship at the Planet in high school, he'd relented. The steady paycheck now had kept him quiet on the subject for three years.
Jimmy hesitated long enough that Chloe jumped in. "Mr. and Mrs. Olsen, that isn't Jimmy. That's his twin brother, Robert. Bobby."
Grandma went pale. Grandpa pushed himself away from the table and stomped into the kitchen, the door separating the two slamming shut.
"Jimmy, I don't understand," his grandmother said. "Where did you get this?"
He took a deep breath and answered her. "I took that picture last weekend. I didn't go to Smallville with Chloe. I took the Greyhound to New York and found Bobby."
His grandmother stared at him. "Jimmy–"
Jimmy grabbed a hold of as much courage as he could. "Did you know I had a brother, Grandma? I know you weren't there when I was born – when we were born – but it didn't take that long for social services to find you and Grandpa after our mom died. And our dad." He bravely met her eyes. "They weren't married, but we had a dad before that car crash, too. We found the newspaper articles, Chloe and me."
Grandma Olsen began to cry, a quiet kind of crying – tears falling, her face scrunching up, but silent.
There was a thud and the sound of shattering glass. The door swung open again. Grandpa Olsen was livid. "Svar ham ikke, Margrete," he ordered Grandma Olsen. "Ellers gudhjælpemig–"
"Henrik – " Grandma Olsen replied. Grandma might have been born here in Metropolis, but she hadn't learned a word of English until she was five and in school. "Vore børnebørn…"
Don't answer him, Margarete, or God help me –
Henrik, our grandchildren…
It had been hard not to pick up a few words here and there growing up in their house.
"No, Henrik," Grandma said suddenly, drawing herself up tall in her seat. She wasn't a big woman, but she had an imposing countenance when she was upset – like now. She wiped the tears from her eyes. "No, it was never my idea, Henrik, to lie to him. It wasn't my idea to separate the boys. I'm not the one who hated Anneliese's boyfriend so much. Berndt didn't choose his parents anymore than he chose to be different." She turned back to Jimmy and Chloe. "Your father, Berndt, and his parents escaped from East Germany when he was a small child. No one said it at the time, but they say now that they weren't much kinder to mutants than the Nazis had been. And I never found out how he was different, but I think Berndt was a mutant."
Jimmy swallowed. "He must have been, because…because Bobby and I are, too."
Chloe squeezed his hand.
Grandpa's eyes turned cold. "It is expensive, rødskæg, but we will buy you the cure."
Rødskæg. Red beard. Grandpa's old nickname for him, from the days of bedtime stories. His had always had Vikings in them, and Rødskæg had been one of them.
"Henrik! That's hardly the solution for the wrong we've done to Anneliese's boys!" Grandma Olsen admonished.
"And, um, tomorrow's front page on the Planet," Chloe interrupted a little nervously. "The mutant cure doesn't work, not permanently at least."
Jimmy looked at her. "Really?" he whispered.
"Yeah. Exclusive by Perry White," she whispered back.
"Forbandede tysker!"
Everyone ignored Grandpa Olsen.
"I didn't want to split you up, Jimmy," Grandma Olsen continued, tear tracks drying on her cheeks. "But we weren't getting any younger, and your mother never knew this, but I had a bit of a scare with cancer the year before you boys were born, so it wasn't just your grandfather not caring for your father that made things difficult. We had to compromise, Jimmy, to raise up one of you boys. I could have fallen ill again, you see, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I held each of you and your grandfather made me choose. You reminded me the most of your mother, Jimmy, bright and alert and happy. Robert was sweet and happy, too, of course, but he was quieter. I think he took after Berndt like that." She sighed. "And Eric – so fussy; he kept crying, like he was mad at the world…" She looked at Grandpa. "Perhaps he got that from you, Henrik."
Jimmy was sure, looking back on it, that his grandfather had said something to that, but he didn't notice it at the time. He was too busy puzzling over what his grandmother had been saying and making a face like a fish, his mouth opening and closing without any sound escaping. Chloe recovered more quickly and finally asked, "Who's Eric?"
Grandpa Olsen made another noise of disgust and left the table.
Grandma Olsen frowned. "I thought you knew," she said, sounding confused. "I guess I thought if you'd found Robert, you knew about Eric, too – that maybe you just hadn't found him yet…" She reached across the table and took his hands. He hadn't had a chance to explain his mutation to his grandmother yet and he was a little startled when he got her snapshot: she was hugging an uncertain Bobby (the hair gel proved it) while Marie looked on.
"Jimmy," she said gently. "Anneliese and Berndt – your parents – had three little boys: James, Robert and Eric. Triplets."
In an alleyway in Suicide Slums, a young man crouched in the dark recess of a doorway as a police cruiser drove by. He didn't look much like himself – scruffy facial hair was a surprisingly good disguise. It wouldn't do to be picked up for shoplifting or vagrancy before he succeeded in his revenge.
Clark Kent was going to pay for what had happened to him.
It had taken some time but he'd pieced it all together. There had been little else to do under Lex Luthor's genial care. It wasn't the first time the Luthors had made his life hell; he still didn't know all the details, but Lionel had been involved in his adoption.
But first – before he could do anything else – he had to find his brothers. There was safety – and strength – in numbers. It had taken time – years – to work out the details, to fill in the missing pieces, but he was ready now.
Eric Olsen Summers stepped into the light and began walking towards Roman Bridge.
END