Be Who God Meant You To Be

It's a nice day for an outing in Montreal, which is beautiful in the summer, but not so hot that a journey undertaken on the Metro and on foot gets unpleasantly hot. They make their way largely unnoticed or remarked upon, just two couples out and about, though Alain stops once to help some gloriously lost Belgian tourists find their location and that of their hotel on the map they are fighting over.

It's a bit of an adjustment, going from bright summer sunlight to the coolness of the indoor ice rink. "Of course, it's better in winter," Alain says, as they wait to rent skates. "Then you can skate outdoors."

"Colder, too," Meg puts in.

"But better."

It's probably to no one's surprise, not even really Alain's, that X picks up ice skating pretty quickly. It's a functional, practical sort of skating -- she's in no danger of scoring a 6.0 in artistic impression -- but it gets her easily around the rink. And if she and Bruce spend much of the outing holding hands, it's certainly not because either of them is having any trouble with keeping their balance.

No, Meg is the one who gets to suffer the indignity of finding herself somewhat sprawled on the ice, when she loses her footing trying to avoid a collision with a particularly oblivious boy of about thirteen.

"I'm fine," she tells the others, as Alain helps her up. "I think I mostly bruised my pride." (And while this is largely true, she will discover later that her right knee is giving her pride a run for its money.) "I'm fine, honey," she repeats, as Alain frowns in the direction of the boy, who is halfway around the rink and by all appearances hasn't noticed that Meg fell at all.

It's probably also to no one's surprise that Alain suggests leaving not long after that, or that he does a fair bit of fussing over Meg while Bruce returns their skates to the rental counter, or that they take a taxi back to the apartment, rather than deal with walking and Metro and people who don't watch where they are going.

Alain waves off various offers of help with dinner when they get home. "It shouldn't take long," he promises. Any preparations that could be done ahead -- prepping crepes ingredients, putting together the salad, even setting the table -- were done ahead. Alain takes himself off to the kitchen (not that this is far, as the kitchen is separated from the living room/dining room by only a counter-island), and Meg waves the others over to the sofa and armchairs.

"Would you like something to drink before dinner? Laura? Bruce?"

"How many shades of lipstick do I have on my cheek?" Meg asks.

The last of the guests has finally made it through the receiving line, and the bridal party has taken a moment to catch its collective breath after the whirl of thank you for being here and it was a lovely ceremony (and, from Laura to Alain, do not be a jerk).

Kim smiles. "A few," she allows. "Do you want help with that before your grand entrance?"

"And all the pictured thereof?" Meg asks. "Yes, definitely. Thank you. We'll be right back," she tells Alain.

He reaches out and catches her hand. "Hurry back. You owe me a dance."

The dance in question is to The Beatles' "Michelle." It may not exactly be a traditional choice, but it's in both English and French and includes Alain's nickname for her, and they like it. Alain is fond of humming it while they do things like fix dinner. (And it's certainly a better choice than that silly Bryan Adams Robin Hood movie song that the radio stations won't stop playing.)

There are other people Meg "owes" dances to as well: her father and Alain's father, Luc and Oncle Sylvain. And Carlisle, who asks her for what would probably be a very proper waltz if Meg knew how to dance a very proper waltz. She's quite sure that Carlisle does, but he's very gracious about leading her through steps she's not exactly getting right, and is probably doing a great deal of compensating for her missteps. When the song ends he returns her to Alain, and thanks them both. "Now you get to spend the rest of your lives realizing how lucky you are," he tells them before he goes.

"I think your friend is having fun," Alain says, wrapping an arm around her waist, and Meg looks over her shoulder to see what he's looking at, and then laughs. On the far side of the dance floor, Castiel appears to have been adopted by three of Alain's young cousins. (Meg knows their names are Hélène, Laetitia, and Virginie, though she doesn't know which name goes with which cousin). The four of them are dancing in the unself-conscious and fairly ridiculous manner of ten-year-olds and (apparently) Angels of the Lord.

There's no sit-down meal, though there's also no shortage of food. Not for most people, anyway, though Meg and Alain can't quite seem to get enough of a break from talking to people and dancing and photographs to actually get any of it themselves. Meg is starting to wonder how to go about remedying that when Parker arrives with a very full plate and hands it to Alain.

"You two need to eat something," she says. "Can't have the bride and groom fainting at the reception. I'm ninety-nine percent sure that's considered bad luck. And those little puff things by your thumb are excellent."

"Thank you," Meg says.

"Eat," Parker repeats. "I'm going to go say hi to the cute boy over in the corner."

Alain looks over to the corner. "That's my cousin Thierry. He doesn't speak English."

"Pfft," Parker says as she goes, with a wave of her hand that implies a common language is far from necessary.

Then again, this is Parker, so it may not be.

Several minutes later, when Parker is dancing with Thierry, and Alain has gone to get rid of the now-empty plate, Meg takes a moment to just look around the room and try to fix all this in her memory. It's all going by so fast.

"Hello, Meg," someone says from just behind her shoulder.

Hello, Edward. Meg turns around, and smiles. I suppose if I forget anything, I can always ask you to remind me.

Edward's smile has the edge of a smirk. "How thorough you like me to be? Should I prepare a journal with all the things you've missed?"

Meg smiles. No. Not all of them. Only the good ones.

When the DJ takes his break, Luc takes the microphone to make the toast. In addition to being the best man, the groom's brother is, after all, an actor and a performer. He is also fluent in English, and he essentially provides his own simultaneous translation throughout, moving easily from one language to the other, so no one will be left out.

"Mesdames et monsieurs, ladies and gentlemen, a moment of your time, please. Thank you," he says, as the the chatter in the room falls away. "My brother's first girlfriend was a girl called Anastasie." Beside her, Meg hears Alain groan, faintly and without anything much like sincerity. "She had long blonde braids and somewhat crooked teeth, and Alain talked about her all the time. They were six."

Luc pauses, and then continues. "After Anastasie, when he was older, Alain tended to be a little . . . cooler, about his girlfriends. Not quite so effusive. Until one evening, when he he showed up at a bar with this redhead he'd met in the audience of a play I had been in at university. And the next day, did he have anything to say what way, I must say, a rather performance by his only brother? Oh, no. All he wanted to talk about was this girl. How beautiful and intelligent and charming and kind and wonderful she was.

"And as far as I can tell, he has not shut up about her since, though he has decided she is even more beautiful and intelligent and charming and kind and wonderful than he initially thought.

"So, Meg, thank you, for giving my brother someone to talk about the way he talks about you, and welcome to the family. And Alain, I hope that you will always have as much to say about Meg as you do now. Just perhaps not always to me."

Luc raises his glass. "To the bride and groom. May you have every happiness."

"Merci, Luc," Meg says, reaching up to kiss her brother-in-law's cheek when he joins them a moment later. "That was lovely."

"You're welcome. Did you get lipstick on my cheek?"

"Only a little," Meg promises.

There's a small bouquet of roses that the florist has provided for Meg to throw, as she didn't carry one in the ceremony. There's a great deal of good-natured jostling and laughing, but Meg throws it quite deliberately to Kim.

The flowers from the prayer book she carried down the aisle, though, she gives to Laura, quietly and away from the main bustle of the party. "I want you to have these."

"Oh. I -- thank you. They are very pretty," Laura says. After a second, she adds, "I am sorry they will die." There's a longer pause, and then she says, "You will tell me what I am supposed to do with them?"

"Take them home, and keep them as long as you like," Meg says. "There's a superstition that whoever catches the bride's bouquet will be the next person to get married, but I didn't throw them and you didn't catch them. I just want you to have them. Because you're a good friend, and you've come a very long way to be here."

"You helped. It is important," Laura says. And, being very careful with the flowers, she hugs Meg.

All in all, it's everything Meg could have asked of her wedding day, with the possible exception of its refusal to slow down.

"Do you feel a little like this whole day has passed in twenty minutes?" she asks Alain, when the cake has been cut (and most decidedly not smashed into anyone's face) and they've made their farewells and left in a flurry of birdseed and confetti and cans rattling on the back of Alain's car.

"More like fifteen," Alain says. "But it was perfect."

"It was, yes," Meg agrees.

In every way.

After flipping through several bridal magazines, and walking past a shop with a dress in the window that looked rather like it could double as the big top should the circus come into town, Meg has decided that Parker's advice to think about looking for a vintage wedding dress is very sound indeed.

(Besides, if she doesn't find a vintage dress, the new ones will all still be there.)

So she's done her research, asked around about shops people would recommend (and not recommend) and come up with a list of places that might be worth checking out.

Now all she needs is moral support and fashion advice.

Which is why she has asked Parker and Laura to come to Montreal today.

Well, that and because she really can't imagine not making them part of her wedding, even though there's no practical way to ask them to be bridesmaids without inviting a slew of awkward questions. So instead, she will ask them to help her find a dress.

Besides, they have an excellent track record for finding the right dress.

Laura is a good person to ask for self-defense lessons. She's careful and thorough and she's going to make sure you know what you need to know.

(It's just that after one of the lessons in question, Meg occasionally has to remind herself in general, and whatever muscle group is sorest today in particular, of that fact.)

She follows Laura back into the bar, still stretching feeling back into her arms.

It's actually a little terrifying, in Meg's opinion, how quickly Parker Lee gets things done.

One minute, they're standing down in the bar, having all just run into each other for the first time in ages.

The next, they're at the door to Laura's fairly utilitarian room in Milliways, because Parker has decided this calls for an impromptu Christmas party.

And ten minutes later, Parker has decorated that room almost past the point of recognition. She's thrown a bright red cloth over the crates against the back wall and laid out an array of Christmas cookies, a tray of sandwiches, funnel cakes ("funnel cake is totally festive," Parker tells them), pitchers of egg nog and some kind of green punch. She's got Christmas music playing on a CD player, she's spread cushions on the floor for them to sit on, and she's festooned the whole room with red and green tinsel-like garland and Christmas lights.

Given another twenty minutes, Meg is pretty sure Parker could have set up a tree, built a fireplace for marshmallow toasting, and possibly ordered up just the right amount of snow to have falling past the windows.

Actually, for all Meg knows, Parker may yet do all that.

And who knows what else.

It's a pretty low-key party, all things considered, and not significantly different than the one Parker or Meg would have thrown in a dorm room for a friend at home, not-exactly-traditional menu not withstanding.

There's music, low enough to talk over (and maybe with a little more folk in the mix than one expects to find a party). Balloons and streamers in purple and blue and red. A place to leave presents. People to meet or catch up with.

And, most importantly, a chance to wish X-23 (or Laura) a very happy birthday.