"That's not a bad thing. It's strategy. You don't want to let the wrong people know everything." She knew that if Kurt could hear them, he'd be livid, but this was perhaps the least terrible lesson she could teach someone.

Oh, if Kurt could see her now, he'd probably be blowing every gasket trying to prevent the conversation from going any further. After all, TJ knew he wouldn't much care for the idea that this little apple did not, in fact, fall that far from the proverbial tree when it came to the way she handled certain situations. That she could be, at times, as skillful a pretender as the grandmother she bore a striking, if tangential, resemblance toward.

After all, possessing someone and becoming them for a short time wasn't all that different from what Mystique did, was it?

@kimteejay​

[ i am so sorry i completely forgot this was here ]

"Hmm..." TJ pondered the question, hands stalling from folding the ever-present pile of laundry that her son produced (between sleepers and socks and mittens and cloth diapers, it never seemed to end!). "I hadn't really thought about it to be honest." Which meant she had been agonizing about it for weeks, especially since her little man was turning two on Christmas this year. A momentous milestone, and also a reminder that she had to figure out how to jam a crowbar between the two so her son didn't feel like his birthday was being forgotten in the holiday hustle. "Dad's already insisting on having us over for dinner before mass... I wasn't planning on Jack going until he's at least five but you know Dad." She sighed, smiled up at Tyson. "Maybe some sort of climbing structure... if we can convince him there are places he's allowed to climb maybe he'll stop trying to crawl up in doorways." She paused, snickered softly. "Not that it ever stopped me. I used to just drop on people until Auntie Kate got spooked and phased -- she felt so bad about the bonk on my noggin that she fed me nothing but ice cream for a week."

Had she disappeared without a word? Yes. Had she meant to disappear without a trace? Of course not. But it wasn't exactly easy being a refugee from a defunct timeline, and when your best friend calls and says "I need you to help me protect timelines" and you get a chance to get back in the saddle and prove you're still the hero you were trained to be -- you go.

Her apartment was long gone, somewhere in the rubble of District X. With it had gone all of her stuff. The notes she'd taken when she was trying to get her memory back in order after her stroke, the photos she'd taken nearly obsessively because she didn't want to forget things again... her phone...

"Daddy, that's the same thing," she huffed, scowling at him. "God, it's like you don't even trust me..."

And sure, she had been sneaking off the property to hang out with some of the other teenagers in town, singing karaoke and generally being nuisances. But she wasn't up to no good, she didn't go out drinking or do drugs or anything. Just annoying teenagers getting up to annoying teenage shenanigans.

It was easy to get lost in the shuffle around the Institute, and TJ was well acquainted with that feeling. Having to share a birthday with the biggest holiday of the year was going to be hard enough for Jack, but she was going to make sure that not only was his birthday special, but not simply rolled into the other Christmas festivities. It wasn't going to be easy, but she was going to make it work. Another thing she had a lifetime of experience in.

She wasn't planning anything big, of course, because people had their own plans and ideas on what to do, where to be. She wouldn't start making demands of people who hadn't known her that long, it was all fine. but Talia Josephine was, at least, going to make her son's first birthday special to herself. He probably wouldn't remember anyway -- but she would. And there was one particular person she wanted to share it with.

"Birthday boy coming through," she announced, strolling in with her son perched on her hip; she had a cheeky grin on her face and Jack, absolutely oblivious, had his tail tightly wound around her arm where it poked from the buttonhole she'd sewn into his little onesie. A custom onesie, made up to look like her father's iconic suit. She had to, could anyone blame her?