The next morning, Clarice wakes up to find John sitting on the couch, and a tray with breakfast on the coffee table. She just turned over and went back to sleep an hour ago when John got up, but he's apparently been busy, since he's fully dressed and typing on his phone.

"You went to get that?" she asks, standing up in her pajamas.

"I thought it was better than eating breakfast with the kids," John answers as she leans down to kiss him.

"Breakfast in bed. I could get used to it."

"It's not in bed if you're standing up," John remarks.

"Close enough," Clarice sits down beside him. "So what's the plan for today?"

"I don't have one. We'll give you a tour, but we're here to relax, not exhaust ourselves."

"I'm glad. You need it."

John doesn't even try to deny it. "So do you," he says. "I hope you can have a good time even if you don't already know this place. Last night stressed you out."

"A bit, but I think the traveling contributed too. Don't worry, I'm sure it will be great."

They were both too exhausted after dinner to do anything but go to bed and sleep.

"I like that you want to show me things that matter to you," Clarice adds. "I'm glad to be here."

John beams at her. "Coming here always feels like coming home," he says.

Clarice smiles back, "Then I want to know your home."

Once she is showered and ready for the day, John takes her hand in his and leads her out onto the front lawn.

"I won't try to show you the grounds without my chair, it's truly huge," he says. "But the weather's nice and almost everyone is outside already."

He's telling the truth. The basketball field is full of running children, while more sedate teenagers sit in the shade around trees. Several of the adults Clarice that met last night are out as well, likely supervising. She doesn't spot Marcos and Lorna, or the Professor, but Scott and Jean are sitting on a bench by the fountain.

"There's someone I want you to meet," John says. "He wasn't here last night at dinner, but you two have a few things in common. Is that okay?"

"I think so," Clarice nods, truly touched that John is taking the time to ask her. She doesn't think she could have handled another unexpected meeting well, but now that she's warned she can steel herself.

"Kurt!" John calls toward a mixed group of adults−among them Storm and Kitty−and schoolchildren.

Clarice jumps when she feels the fabric of space she uses to make portals suddenly rip and then reform just as quickly. She blinks, shocked, and finds herself face to face with a blue-skinned man.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," the man says with a light German accent. Clarice notices the spiked tail swishing behind him, and his three-fingered hands. Now that must be a mutation difficult to live with.

"How did you do that?" she asks, still agape.

"Teleporting? Easy. It's my power."

"No, I mean how did you tear through the−" Clarice tries to find a word for it, but she comes up blank. She's never been asked to describe how her own power works exactly before. She has no words for it.

The blue man looks over at John, lost. John shakes his head.

"Uh, Clarice, this is Kurt, also known as Nightcrawler," he says. "Kurt, my girlfriend Clarice."

"Or Blink," Clarice says, feeling that it's a good place and time to own up to her new nickname. "It's nice to meet you."

"Gleichfalls. Why do you think I tore something? I just teleported."

"Because−" Clarice starts, but words fail her again. Frustrated, she decides to just show him what she means and opens a small portal between her hands.

"Oh!" Kurt says in surprise. "This is beautiful!"

He seems to understand how the portal works instantaneously, and only needs a second to spot the second portal a hundred feet away. He has the same instincts as her then, the same constant sense of direction across space.

"Can you go through?" he asks.

"If I make it large enough," Clarice answers. She pulls on the portal's edges carefully, slowly, until it reaches their height.

"That was pretty fast," John murmurs in her ear, pride evident in his voice. Clarice beams up a him−and nearly loses her concentration. She saves the portal just in time, stabilizing it between her hands again.

Kurt is still exploring the portal, blinking himself from one side to the other, and then all the way to the second portal.

"Step through," Clarice tells him when she sees him through the portal. He comes through back to their side.

"It feels different," he says.

"From what you do? Different how?"

"Want to see?" Kurt extends a hand.

A little hesitantly, Clarice takes it. "It can be disorienting the first time," Kurt warns.

Before she's even had time to understand how it happened, she's suddenly fifty feet away from John, on the grass. "Wow," she says. "I agree, it's different." There's the overpowering smell of sulfur, for one. She's not disoriented, because her brain instantaneously adapted to the new location, but she's never teleported with other means than her own before. She's never met someone with a similar power.

"Your portal feels like a door," Kurt says. "You just step through. You bring the places together. I bring us to a different place."

"Yes. We're the one moving. I could feel that."

"Most people don't feel it, but they get nauseous," Kurt says. "The Professor says it's some kind of motion sickness."

Clarice starts moving back toward John, on foot. She doesn't have the energy for a second large portal. "I can bring us back," Kurt says.

"Sure," Clarice takes the proffered hand.

This time she can analyze the jump better. That's what it is, a jump through space. It uses the same fabric of space as she does, but instead of opening a hole and bridging two places together, Kurt simply throws himself and her at the fabric and it rips to let him through, reforming itself behind them.

"How many people can you bring with you?" Clarice asks when they're back beside John.

"More than five, it gets hard," Kurt answers. "I've done six or seven, but it is very tiring. You?"

"There's no real limit to what goes through while the portal is open, but I can't hold it for very long. I've been getting better, though."

"Having fun?" John smirks at them.

Clarice hesitates briefly, suddenly realizing how fast she got pulled into this discussion−into teleporting with a near stranger, no less. She trusts Kurt's power almost instinctively, and she's fairly sure she could redirect the move if she needed to, and Kurt himself seems kind and accepting. "It's fascinating," she replies to John, planting a kiss on his cheek.

"I have no doubt." John frowns minutely and turns. "Oh, here comes," he mutters.

"What is it?" Clarice asks, but he just shakes his head. He slips an arm around her waist. Clarice doesn't know if the gesture is meant to reassure her or to give him a measure of stability.

Seconds later, she sees Marcos and Lorna approaching them, accompanied by a muscular man. He gives off an air of barely-tamed violence, yet every single student he passes waves at him enthusiastically. Clarice can see him nod back, though he remains on course.

"Morning!" Lorna greets them as enthusiastically as last night. She's really radiant, better than Clarice has seen her in months−perhaps since meeting her. This trip is good for her. Marcos watches her with a slight smile on his face, like he can't help it.

The stranger steps forward to shake John's hand, his face hesitant. "John Proudstar. Looking good."

"Logan," John answers soberly.

Clarice feels, once again, pulled into a world that isn't hers. She's tried to observe everything since they arrived, eager to meet John's friends and learn about this place, but it feel like the people here have some sort of secret handshake that she's missing. A history with John and Lorna. She wonders if John felt like this when he saw her with Denise.

This man is careful and ill at ease with John, but comfortable with Lorna. Everyone else than Clarice and maybe Kurt seem to know what it's about, though.

"This is Logan, or Wolverine," John introduces him. "Clarice, my girlfriend."

Logan shakes her hand as well, his grip controlled. "Pleasure," Clarice tries to smile naturally. She doesn't insist on her nickname this time.

"I'm glad you're...recovering," Logan tells John, with a hesitant glance at his cane.

John nods. "Thank you," he says−heartfelt, this time, like his tension has gone away. "I'm not up for a rematch just yet, though."

"You gonna let me go out on a win, Muscle Boy?"

John laughs, and Clarice takes a step back, feeling out of place in a conversation whose pieces she's missing. She feels Marcos as her shoulder and turns to him instead.

"You alright?" he asks in a low voice.

"I think so. This place is amazing, but it's also−" Clarice hesitates.

"A bit much? My first visit here was quite the shock too," Marcos says. "We come from places where we've never known this kind of open acceptance. It can be disorienting at first."

"Yes, I guess it is. I mean, the center is very accepting too, but this feels like a whole other level."

Marcos nods. "The school dates back to the late seventies at least, maybe even before that. It was probably the first safe haven for mutants in the country, and it's still standing. That's a lot of history."

"It feels a bit like the people who have come through here have left a trace. I can almost see it."

"Yeah, I know the feeling. It's intimidating."

Clarice eyes the mansion. "It is. It's incredible too, if feels like...like we belong here. Like we're not just tolerated, but we're actually welcome."

Marcos's smile widens, and he raises his hand to show Clarice that it's glowing. "I've always felt it, too," he says. His other hand, clasped with Lorna's, is surrounded by rings of green and pink light, dancing in the air. "That's the aurora," Marcos adds when he follows her gaze.

"It's beautiful," Clarice murmurs. "Do you control it?"

"Not really, but it only happens when we feel safe. Though recently it's almost every time we touch when we're alone. I think the baby may be affecting it."

Clarice smiles back, happy to see her friends so content.

Lorna catches on to John's increased discomfort, shifting his weight from one leg to the other in hopes of relieving the pain, seconds before Clarice does. "I need to go sit down," she announces loudly with a hand on her belly, cutting Logan off.

John gives her a half-relieved, half-guilty look when he realizes what she's doing. Lorna firmly leads them to a bench, and Logan leaves them to it with a wave, citing classes to prepare. Clarice wonders what kind of classes this man teaches. Kurt has wandered away sometime while Clarice wasn't paying attention, because she can't see him anywhere.

"What's his deal?" she nods toward Logan's retreating back, sitting down next to John.

John sets his cane between his legs, extending them with relief, and slips an arm behind her back. "Logan? His mutation is healing. Where I'm hard to hurt, he gets injured and heals immediately. He's also very strong."

"I meant with you. You didn't seem to happy to see him."

John shrugs. "Because of the similarities in our mutations, we trained together a lot when I was here. Our personalities, however, are not a match. Logan's very laid-back, he hates any kind of authority, he'll disobey orders just to make a point. He was supposed to mentor me, but we had too many issues, and the role mostly fell back to Scott. He wasn't happy about that."

"And now?" Clarice asks.

John sighs. "We didn't talk much while I was a Marine, but I think my injury shocked him, because it's so...foreign, to him. He's been having a hard time interacting with me since. I guess he doesn't know what to say."

"I could see he was walking on eggshells. And the rematch? What was that about?"

"Oh, we used to have these...self-defense demonstrations, whenever I came home. Bare-handed fighting. We kept a tally, the kids loved it." John's face turns wistful. "It would be nice to get to a point where I can fight again. Not win against Logan, but just...fight."

Clarice nods. "I'm sure you will," she says.

She isn't sure what John's little grimace means, but he tenses again against her. "We'll see," he says non-concomitantly.

The Professor offers them lunch in his office in a small group, just the guests and Scott and Jean. Lunches are otherwise taken in the dining room with the students, he explains to Clarice.

An older woman brings them the main dish−the human cook, Lorna whispers−and the table is quickly set for the seven of them. Clarice hesitantly sits down beside John, and she stays quiet for most of the meal. The morning she's had tired her more than she thought, perhaps because of the human-size portal she made. Instead, she listens to the conversation around her, gathering snippets of what John and Lorna's life must have been like here through the three older mutants' tales about their students.

John is in his element, and where he's usually the quiet one, here he overshadows both Clarice and Marcos, who tend to hover at the edges of the discussion. Jean is fairly quiet as well, but Clarice can feel her piercing, though kind, eyes on her several times.

When dessert is served, Lorna takes one look at the strawberry cake and pales. "Uh, I usually love strawberries, but I can't even stand the smell," she says, looking queasy.

"I can get you something else, dear," the cook immediately offers. "Fruit?"

"Do you have bananas?"

The woman comes back withing a minute with two bananas in her hands. Relieved, Lorna immediately starts peeling one and wolfing it down. Marcos laughs. "The food cravings still surprise me," he says.

Lorna raises an eyebrow at him. "Believe me, me too."

"On that topic, have you talked about the baby yet?" John asks, gesturing to encompass all of them.

"Yes, the Professor and Jean are going to come down for the birth."

"Really?" John looks at the Professor. "You rarely ever leaves this place these days, especially during school time."

"My powers are…changing," Lorna answers. "Growing. Giving birth is likely to get rocky, possibly dangerous. They both have the power to stop my mutation before it hurts anyone if needed."

"And Lorna would rather give birth at home," Jean adds.

"Fair enough," John nods.

Clarice looks between them. "How do you know it will be dangerous though?" she asks. "Don't mutants give birth pretty routinely?"

"My control is already slipping and we're still three months away," Lorna answers. "Given the strength of my father's power−"

"Your father?" Clarice frowns. Everyone else seems to be familiar with the matter, she's the only one surprised. Of course, they've all known Lorna far longer than Clarice has.

"Oh, right, I forgot you don't know yet," Lorna says.

"What do you mean? Who is he?"

Lorna hesitates. "Er, it's...kinda complicated. I was raised by my aunt because my parents died in a plane crash when I was little, but it turns out that my birth father is still alive."

She seems to be struggling to find the words, something that Clarice has rarely seen happen before. Marcos comes to her rescue.

"Lorna's father is Magneto," he says.

"What?" Clarice exclaims. "Magneto as in−"

"The leader of the Brotherhood, yes."

Clarice gapes.

"His real name is Erik Lensherr. He is...I don't really know him, and he is what he is, but he's my father. I know he keeps tabs on me, he got me out of tight spots a couple of times, but I only found out about him a few years ago. I mean, I had my suspicions, but my aunt wouldn't tell me."

"That's...quite the inheritance," Clarice hesitates.

"It's not widely known, but Erik was once a teacher in this school," the Professor says. "And a dear friend. He went down his own path, and we do not see eye-to-eye anymore, but he's the one who asked me to take Lorna in."

"When I was diagnosed with bipolar," Lorna explains. "I was thirteen, and I really needed some guidance. He saw to that, I guess. It doesn't make him a good father, but he's not really the monster the media makes him out to be."

Clarice feels like she's getting whiplash from all the information, that contradicts so widely with what she's been told before. For most of the newspapers and TV, Magneto is the worst kind of terrorist−the non-human kind. He's the example politicians use when they want to propose anti-mutant policies, the proof that mutants are dangerous. Clarice has watched videos of some of his speeches over the years, and despite herself, she couldn't help but agree with some of the points he made in his earlier ones, back when mutants were still a new discovery. It still makes her skin crawl, that she agrees with anything a mass murderer like Magneto says.

But knowing him like the Professor, being related to him like Lorna…

Suddenly, she understands what has been puzzling her about this school. It's not just that it's seeped in the history of her people. It's seeped in its blood, too. It has seen, and been the theater of fights Clarice has spent her whole life trying to stay out of. The X-Men and the Brotherhood are the face of mutant movements that have shaped politics for the better part of fifty years, and they're spearheaded not by unreachable superheroes and supervillains, but by the people she's having lunch with. The Professor, good-natured and gentle in his wheelchair. Scott and his careful smile and laid-back posture, eyes hidden by his shades. Lorna's father, who abandoned her and yet has kept an eye on her all her life.

It's overwhelming.

"Come with me," Lorna taps her shoulder suddenly, shaking Clarice out of her thoughts.

"What? Why?" Clarice frowns. They've all finished their dessert and coffee, and John is engrossed talking with the Professor, while Scott and Jean seem ready to take off.

Lorna nods toward John. "I think he needs some time alone with the Professor, and this is the perfect opportunity to give you the full tour."

5