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Title: The New Mutants II, Volume IX: Garden
Author: kanedax
Fandom: X-Men Movieverse, post X3
Rating: R for language, nudity, and situations
Spoilers: The new Mutants I & II (see above)
Summary: Alison gets ready for showtime in truly Alison fashion.
Notes: If anyone wants to write this song, feel free. I'm definitely not a poet nor a songwriter, so I'm leaving it to the imagination. As usual, I don't own the X-Men, Marvel Comics, 20th Century Fox, or Gollum Juice, although I've known theatre folks who swear by it.
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"ID."
"Excuse me?"
The huge, shaved security guard crossed his arms over his chest. "ID."
Alison Blaire looked at her bandmate, Rick Jones, with confusion. "We were just outside getting a smoke. You know who I am, right?"
"ID."
"Jesus Christ," she muttered, she and Rick both pulling out their backstage passes. She handed hers to the security guard, expecting to receive a stumbling apology from the man her studio had hired.
Instead, she received "Thank you, Miss Blaire," as the guard flatly handed the passes back. "You can never be too sure."
"Whatever you say, Goliath," Alison smirked, saluting as she and Rick passed by.
"Security wasn't this tight on our last tour," Alison muttered to Rick as they entered the dressing room.
"We didn't have a mutant as the headliner on our last tour," Rick replied, patting her on the back.
"Yeah we did," she said, "we just didn't know it. But still..."
Rick shrugged, pushing aside the hung shirts to take down his first outfit. "Big man was right," he said. "You can never be too sure."
"Well, at least it's not too bad now that we're in," she said. "That guy who was watching when we came in looked like he was ready to whip out a plastic glove and dig around till he could feel the back of my teeth.
"Not," she continued with a smile, "that you'd complain or anything."
"Go to Hell, Stern," Rick, a tall brunette man of Alison's age, said jokingly. He and Alison had been friends since middle school, when she was just simple old Alison Stern of Albuquerque. When she first caught the eye of talent scouts, it was during a local talent show in which she was the lead vocalist of the band Angry German Mother-In-Law. Rick, who to this day couldn't say the name without cracking a smile, had been lead guitar, and she had been able to convince her studio to give him an audition for the tour after she hit it big.
"I should probably let you get changed," Rick said, pulling a shirt from the rack.
"Nah, I think I'm good," Alison replied, and pulled her t-shirt off just as soon as Rick happened to turn around. He yelled, then spun back around again.
"Jesus Christ, woman, warn me when you're doing that!"
"What?" she said, looking down at her bare breasts. "It's a dressing room, right?"
"Yeah, but..." He turned around again, then quickly returned to his original position. "Could you at least put a shirt on before you take your pants off?"
"Oh, don't be such a big baby," she snickered, throwing her grubby sweatpants over the back of her chair. She smiled and, grabbing both of her breasts, jiggled them in front of Rick. "Oooooh, look out for the nipples!!"
"Hey, you know I've never been that comfortable with, you know, naked stuff," he said, waving her off.
"What's the big deal?" she said. "You're gay, right?"
Rick turned around, then covered his eyes with his hands when he noticed that her panties had gone the way of her sweatpants. "Well, yes," he said, his voice muffled by the palms, "but that's not the point..."
"Wuss," she said, pulling on her tight leather pants. "I don't complain when you change in front of me."
"Well, that's because I don't change in front of you."
"Alright, I'll re-phrase that," Alison said, slumping topless in the chair. "I wouldn't complain if you change in front of me."
"You wouldn't," Rick smiled. "I know you too well, you'd be too busy storing the images in your head for whatever it is you do before you go to sleep."
"You're right," Alison said, "You do know me too well. Not that you haven't shown up in a few buzz sessions already."
"I really didn't need to know that."
"You were getting a handjob from Ewan McGregor," Alison said. "Moulin Rouge era."
"Well, that softens the blow," Rick shrugged. "But still, okay, let's put it this way. What if it were a woman changing in front of you instead of a man?"
"Michelle Trachtenberg, Emma Watson, or Anna Popplewell?"
"Rosie O'Donnell."
"Ghuh," Alison said. "I think I just threw up in my mouth a little."
"Point taken?"
She sighed, taking her low-cut, rhinestoned white tanktop from the hanger and pulled it on. "There, now I'm decent. Happy?"
"For now," Rick replied just as a knock came from the door. A large man, balding with a ponytail, poked his head in.
"Fifteen minutes, Miss Blaire," he said.
"Thanks," she said, pulling on her thigh-high heels.
"See?" Rick said as the door closed. "Now Louie didn't get a show."
"Yeah, thanks to you he's going away all frustrated," Alison said, smirking. "How could you ruin his night like that?"
"I'm a man who exudes disappointment," he said, standing and walking to the door. Before he left, he turned around. "You going to be all right?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"It's your first night back in front of a crowd," Rick said.
"Honey, I don't get jitters anymore."
"I know," he said, walking back to her and sitting down. "It's just, well, you know there's a reason for all the extra security."
"Yeah, I know, the hate mail," she said, shrugging it off. "What's the big deal? I was already getting hate mail from Christian fundamentalists and family advocacy groups. What's a few mutant-haters added to the mix?"
"Because Christian fundamentalists and family advocacy groups aren't dangerous."
"Define 'dangerous.'"
"Things are a lot different now," Rick said carefully. "You disappear for a year. Now you're back, and everyone has a lot of questions. A lot of concerns."
"I did an interview," Alison said. "I figured that would answer a lot of questions."
"Not for me," he replied. "I'm your best friend, and there's still things I know you haven't told me."
"I know," Alison said quietly. "And I would if I could."
"It's things you don't know?" Rick said. "Things you were told not to tell anyone?"
"Things I'm not ready to talk about yet," Alison said.
"Things like the song," Rick said. "That incredible one that the studio was pushing to be your first single?"
"Things like that," she said, nodding.
"It's not about you, is it?" he asked.
Alison shook her head, and took his hand. He noticed that she was close to crying. "It's not about me," she said. "But when I'm ready to talk about everything, you're the first one who gets to hear, okay?"
"I can take that for now," Rick said, nodding.
"Ten minutes," Louie said from the door.
"I'll let you re-adjust," Rick said, noticing that some mascara had dribbled down her cheek.
"Thanks, hon," she said. He kissed her on the forehead and started towards the door.
"Be good out there," he said from the door, "I have family in the crowd tonight."
She smiled, thinking of the front row. "So do I."
He nodded, and closed the door behind him. As she wiped the makeup from her cheek, Alison glanced at the set list attached to the mirror. Halfway down, marked as "Acoustic, Blaire & Jones," was the song "Amends." It was a vast departure for her, stylistically. No thumping bass, no sample track blaring in the background. Definitely not a song that was written for the dance clubs. The performance tonight would be just like the performance in the studio: Her, Rick, and one Fender CD-60 acoustic guitar.
The execs fell all over it when they heard the track. "An instant Billboard topper," they said. "The best song you've ever written." "Soulful, heartfelt." "It'll sell ten million albums alone." "iTunes will eat it up." They were ready to sell it to all of the Top 40 stations, and they had a list of teenage TV drama stars a mile long who they said could take the main role in the music video.
As all these accolades washed over her, she became extremely protective of the song. Eventually she realized why: it was the first song that she had ever written from the heart. It meant something to her, and she felt that using the song to line the pockets of the studio cheapened it, exploited it.
"Amends" had been written in the girls' dorm room and on the grounds of Xavier Academy within days of the X-Men's battle with the Phoenix. It had not been written about her, but about her friend Clarice Ferguson. After that day in the kitchen, when Claire had broken down and broken that glass, she and Alison had begun to talk. Alison was sure that a lot of the reason Claire had been able to confide in her was because, in all honestly, she was a fan. A lot of the mail she received was hate mail from angry mothers and from priests commanding her to throw off the shackles of sin. But more came from people who enjoyed her music, and decided that they knew her enough to confide things in her that they wouldn't in others.
Clarice was one of those fans. As the celebrity infatuation grew into a genuine friendship, Clarice had been able to tell her about what had happened to her leading up to the attack on the school. She told Alison about her relationship with John Allerdyce, a guy who had apparently once been a student at the Academy, and had been enough of a teammate where Rogue held his mutant power and his personality in her head. Despite all that, she, Bobby, Kitty, and the others were loathe to ever talk about him. Clarice had met him while he was re-forming the Brotherhood, and fallen for him hard. She eventually, cathartically, poured out to Alison what she had gone through with the new Brotherhood, and what her relationship with Allerdyce was like: at times backhandedly caring, at times violently abusive.
This was what "Amends" was about. Alison changed names and situations, but the story was the same. Girl falls for the wrong guy, and falls into the wrong crowd because of it. She does many bad things in the name of love, and eventually puts others in danger because of it. At the end of the song, the girl, recognizing her mistakes, makes amends by sacrificing herself to save her real friends.
As the weeks went by after the recording, Alison's feelings for the song changed. "Don't make it a single" changed to "Don't put it on the album." "Don't put it on the album" changed to "Don't make it a b-side, either." She was prepared to back out of the contract completely, but a compromise was eventually found. The song would be played on tour, and would be released on Healing Minds, a compilation charity album. All proceeds from its sale, as well as from downloads, would go towards Psychic Helpline, a non-profit organization formed to help families affected by the Great Pulse.
"Miss Blaire?"
A voice from the door pulled her from her thoughts.
"Two minutes."
Alison jerked, looking at the clock. "What happened to five?"
"I called it three minutes ago," Louie said, leaving the doorway before she could yell.
"Fuck," she spit. She grabbed her mug of Gollum Juice (a drink Lucas had told her about after watching Lord of the Rings commentary) and headed for the hall.
As she walked down the hall, she was surrounded by people. A woman began prodding her hair. Another reached out and began playing with her breasts, adjusting them to get maximum cleavage out of her small, braless chest. A man with a pair of headphones approached from the end of the hall.
"Where have you been?" he asked. "We're ready to start."
"Well, you're not starting without me, are you, Bucky?" she said, taking the microphone from his hand.
"Crowd's getting restless," he said as she approached the proscenium. Rick stood among a dozen scantily-clad dancers, guitar in hand.
"That's what makes it more fun," she smiled. Looking up at the monitor, she smiled as she got a look at the front of the stage. There were a dozen faces in the front row that she knew very well.
"Ready to knock em dead?" Rick asked.
"Give em something to scream about, baby," she said, slapping him on the rear. He grinned broadly, and jogged out to the stage along with the rest of the band and dancers as pyrotechnics lit up behind them.
Alison Blaire took a deep breath.
"Showtime," she whispered, running out to a deafening roar.
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