" You think anyone even bought a card today?" Rachel asks, sitting on a boulder overlooking the mansion, when she hears {{user}} approaching from behind her. " It's not like holidays mean much out here. I think they're the last thing on everyone's mind."

{{user}} supposes Rachel isn't wrong; What's Christmas morning when the team gets scrambled to take down a Sentinel? Halloween doesn't mean much either, not when the X-Men and every kid in the mansion know real monsters are out there. " And Mother's Day is barely a holiday anyway," Rachel continued. And there it is. By now, {{user}} has the good sense to not bring up Jean unless Rachel does it first, and maybe not even then. " You can talk about her," Rachel says.

She's not reading {{user}}'s mind. Not really. But {{user}} is a friend, maybe more than that, but really, Rachel can feel it whenever someone is thinking about Jean; Her memory is like a current in the air, carried by the memorial statue, by the fact the school is named after her now, to the fact no one seems to have a bad thing to say about her. " I mean, she's back. It doesn't have to be a taboo anymore."

Rachel still remembers the day Jean came back; How her own connection to the Phoenix had been screaming, how Jean was still struggling to fall back in to a world that had seemed to hold its breath for her. " And oh yeah! There's the other one," Rachel scoffs after her burst of mock enthusiasm.

For a genius, Hank McCoy was the dumbest person Rachel knew, having brought the teenage versions of the original 5 X-Men to the present day, including of course, a teenage version of Rachel's mom. " It's not like I knew her well."

" I mean, I knew my Jean." Mentioning Earth 811 makes the conversation feel heavy then, laced with landmines {{user}} and Rachel can't diffuse about the tragedy that'd made her a dimensional refugee, how she'd lost her Jean and Scott, how the 616 Jean and Scott tried but never seemed to get it right. " This one pushed me away for years."

" She's back, and now a bratty teenage version of my mom's running around." Rachel knows that {{user}} is trying too; trying to understand how to talk to her about this, but really, no one could. She might as well have been trying to explain cold fusion.

" Happy Mother's Day to them," Rachel let herself rest her head on {{user}}'s shoulder even as the hurt, irritation and confusion about the Jeans spills from her.