Snakes had friendlier eyes than Jude. He caught the almost hair touch, approved of his recovery, but still. He was looking for things to dislike here. Jude shook his hand like a proper man... that meant squeezing just about as hard as he could muster.

"I am ze man of ze house when Sebastian iz away." Nathan's smile meant he perceived Jude as no threat... he might have even seen him as cute. Cute. That was entirely condescending. He was no threat. Not as he was now. It made him more bitter feeling than an 11 year old should have been.

Ghost cleared her throat and Jude let go of Nathan's hand. "You'll have to excuse Jude. He—"

"I was older zan you once."

Erm. Well that was one way to put it. "He's had some... psychic adventures. The future dream? Do you know of it?" Ghost went to stand behind Jude. She put a hand on his shoulder and then drew him back against her in a sort of hug. It was much harder for him to be threatening with his mother figure hovering.

Ghost mouthed an apology to Svetlana over Jude's head. Everyone was still getting used to the idea of re-living ten years of their lives. Some were just more excited than others.

Don't ruffle him don't ruffle him don't ruffle him...
Thank God he didn't ruffle him.

Sveta bit back a grin as Jude and Nathan shook hands; it was everything but the beginning of a friendship. Jude glared, and Nathan apparently was not quite comfortable with being stared down by an eleven-year-old.

>>"I was older zan you once."

Oh great. That was a fun topic. Explaning how some mutants spent some time years in the future, and now they had to relive that part of their lives. Sveta was glad she didn't have that dream. Her future looked a bit brighter right now, but she was still not sure she wanted to know.

"Why don't we sit down and chat like that?" Sveta suggested, grabbing Nathan's hand and pulling him to the kitchen. She trusted Jude and Maya to follow. "I make tea." she wouldn't offer coffee. Last thing Jude needed was a caffeine buzz to top the effects of her powers.

Well wasn’t this lovely and awkward?

Nathan had been in the house for less than two minutes, his shoes were freshly dusted and he’d been placed on the wrong end of a staring contest with a retro-aged bellicose French stripling. Good times. Jude had a firmer handshake than he'd expected, which Nathan thought said something about his character. He was probably a good guy. Boy. Dude. Dude worked. Apparently he’d been older than Nathan, and at this point Nathan was prepared to go along with that. If you’d tried that on him a month ago, he’d have been more than a little sceptical, but he’d met sound wave emitters, people that could turn into dinosaurs and discovered that he himself could become a man composed entirely of metal. Someone that used to be older than him but was now eleven? Fine. Maybe he’d been something other than French before, too. Certainly that made sense if he was perpetually regressing from sophistication to immaturity…

“Sebastian?” Nathan managed to reply to Jude’s comment, before the rest of his sentence was cruelly snatched away. Sveta chose this moment to extricate him from the prickly situation by dragging him over to the kitchen. This placed him second in the marching order, behind her, leaving Jude to pick up the rear as they proceeded from the front door. Nathan was happy to be led anywhere by his girlfriend (even thinking the word sent a little shiver of pleasure down his spine) and felt a swell of gratitude towards her, as the tension that had been mounting between him and Jude dissipated. A temporary respite, granted, but Nathan welcomed the break. There’d be time enough to sort out Nathan’s relationship with the kid (…adult?...kidult?) later.

Entering the kitchen first, Nathan gave Sveta a smile and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, mouthing a quick “Thank you.” as he heard the others approaching. He sat down at the table and turned to the rest of the flat. “A psychic dream, huh? That sounds interesting. What happened, exactly?” There was tea on the way. Until then, Nathan was running on good manners and a terrifying fear of committing some grievous social faux pas which would forever mar his relationship with Sveta’s family. He decided to play it safe, picking up on Ghost’s Maya’s cues.

"Sebastian is my husband." The words fell blandly from Ghost's lips. "Jude is our adopted son." Despite the fact that they were somewhere around 10 year apart in age... Ghost acted much more mature then she was. Living ten extra years in a dream didn't account for the half of it.

"Don't talk down to me because I am a child now." Nathan's tone was still condescending. It always unnerved Ghost a bit when Jude got all grown up for his age even though she had known him more as an adult than as a child.

"He's just curious. Explain it to him better so he can understand." Ghost shuffled the boys to opposite ends of the table. Jude frowned all the way at no one in particular. Ghost didn't even seem to notice.

"Thank you for making tea, Svetlana." Her voice was lyrical and appreciative as if there were no sparks flying when Jude looked at Nathan. Ghost was glad that Svetlana was at home enough to use the kitchen and to know where things were now. Of course, that didn't stop Ghost from helping. She had a tea service just about always ready to go. A pot of honey, sugar cubes and alternate sugar forms, milk from the fridge, spoons, napkins and a tin of bite-size assorted cookies.

"In my future, I waz a powerful psychic able to remotely activate the mutant powerz of other. Despite world war sree, Ghost and I were able to work toward a remedy for zhe world's failing climate." Jude sat very still and calm. The expression on his face very clearly challenged Nathan. 'And what have you done?' Though the 11 year old never said a word in that vein.

Ghost didn't talk about the future much... so she let the kid tell his tale.

>>"In my future, I waz a powerful psychic able to remotely activate the mutant powerz of other. Despite world war sree, Ghost and I were able to work toward a remedy for zhe world's failing climate."

Svetlana made tea, put the rose in a vase full of fresh water, put some cookies on the table, and listened to Jude explaining what he did... was going to do... have done... will have done... darn English tenses... dreamed about in the future. He used words she was not sure of, but it sounded very serious. World War Three? Holy crap.

When she ran out of things to do, she sat down at the table too, pouring tea for everyone. She glanced at Nathan. He seemed to be holding up just fine. She stood up again, and pulled out a pack of plastic spoons from one of the cupboards. She handed one to Nathan, winking a him.

"Is it going to happen like you saw it?" she asked curiously, momentarily forgetting about the tension between the boys.

Nathan read the expression on Jude’s face like a tabloid headline. Hostile, unnecessarily aggressive and challenging. He wondered how the article would read. Probably misspelled. The kid was barely past ten. And what was his problem? Nathan had come into the house being nothing if not respectful. He’d treated Jude like a grown man and been mindful of his feelings. Was it too much to expect reciprocal treatment?
Apparently.

Well fine. He’d tried diplomacy and that had worked about as well as a chocolate hammer. Time to change tack: If Jude wanted war, he was on. “So, you’re going to prove your emotional maturity by engaging in puerile semantics with an eleven year old?” his inner monologue asked him. He paused for a second, formulating a reply, but it overrode him and carried on: “I wouldn’t bring it up, but don’t you think you’re punching above your weight? You might want to up your game on toddlers first to avoid matching wits with a child. You’re a little outclassed.” Nathan pushed the mute button on his inner monologue. Not helping him right now. Or ever, come to think of it. Maybe he had issues.

>> "Is it going to happen like you saw it?"

If Nathan had been thinking the same question (which he had) he made no mention of it. Instead: “Wow. That sounds like some dream!” Nathan said enthusiastically, if a little patronising, taking the plastic spoon from Sveta, stirring his cup and giving her a warm smile. “It must have been hard to wake up and realise that none of it was real.” Nathan took a sip of tea, watching Jude’s eyes over the rim of the cup as the warmth from the drink mingled with the smug sense of accomplishment¹ that washed through him. “So, tell me. Where do you go to school? And how do the grades here work?” Nathan asked, the picture of an interested guest.


¹ Yes, he’s thrilling over taking a child on in a battle of insults.<sup>2

2</sup> No, this isn’t his finest hour.

>> "Is it going to happen like you saw it?"

"It won't be like that, Svetlana. Already things have changed." Like her marrying Sebastian, like Jude being here... a lot of things, but hopefully enough... living through that once was plenty.

Distracted by imagining Nathan's head twisting off like the lid of a tube of toothpaste, he didn't entirely catch what Nathan had said. He got the tone, though. Over cheery. Snarky. Young (and old) and full of surety that he had the upper hand. Jude swung his feet almost sure that Nathan's knees would be in his range. Oops.

Jude reached for his own cup of tea and sipped, the perfect image of an angel.

"Some of it had to be real. Otherwise I would not be here."

He didn't want to be distracted by questions about school, but Ghost was practically bubbling with pride. "After language tutoring, Jude's been placed in the 9th grade at the Mansion. We're very proud he's skipped years ahead and... the grading system goes to 12, I think. Or did you mean actual assignments?" Having not attended high school in America herself, she wasn't entirely sure, but someone had to fumble through an answer. From the looks of it, it wasn't going to be Jude.

>>"It won't be like that, Svetlana. Already things have changed."
>>"Some of it had to be real. Otherwise I would not be here."

Sveta nodded as she listened to the conversation; the idea of a future that had happened once before, and all the ever-changing possibilities momentarily distracted her from the problems of the present, namely, Jude and Nathan having some kind of manly showdown over their cups of tea. Sveta's lips twitched into a smirk as she looked at them. Jude was such a cute overprotective baby stepbrother.
Maybe, in another future, he would have been her real stepbrother.
... nope, that didn't make sense.

>>"After language tutoring, Jude's been placed in the 9th grade at the Mansion. We're very proud he's skipped years ahead and... the grading system goes to 12, I think. Or did you mean actual assignments?"

"He go to the Mansion" Sveta echoed, then smiled "It is a good place, for kids." she did like the Mansion. She didn't have many friends there, but it was a good place. A safe place. And, lucky for Jude, he didn't even have to learn how to deal with having mutant classmates. He was good at that.

With those comments made, she sat back. Her feminine instincts told her she couldn't do much to ease the tension between the boys; they would have to deal with that on their own. Maya and Sveta could... well, sit back, and watch.