X-Men One-Shots and Preferences

Ice Queen- Bobby Drake

My first Bobby Drake one-shot, apparently these are hard to come by, so I decided to try my hand at it.

I actually took this inspiration from this analysis from The Take that talks about the Ice Queen Trope.

The reader is a mutant with powers similar to Bobby's, but she doesn't quite have a good grasp on it so Bobby tries to show her the ropes.

Enjoy.

"Alright, (y/n)," you say to yourself taking deep breaths, staring at the glass of water before you, "You can do this. All you have to do is focus."
You stretch your hand out towards the glass and close your eyes, concentrating on turning the liquid inside it into a solid.

"You won't be able to get the hang of your powers doing that," you hear a familiar voice, breaking your concentration. "What do you want, Bobby?" you ask, annoyed that your concentration was broken.
"Sorry," Bobby says, having noticed your tone of voice, "I thought I might try and offer some advice for your mutation, you know, it being similar to mine." "I appreciate that, Bobby, but I think I should try and figure it out on my own," you insist. "(y/n)." "Bobby, just go!" you raise your voice. Realizing you were serious, the icy mutant only nods, "You know, for someone who has no idea to summon ice, you can be a real Ice Queen," he says before taking off.
You look his way in shock as he left.

You've been at this manor for months now, and you haven't been able to so much as create an icicle since you got here. You know you can create and control ice, you've done it before...well you've created ice before but you weren't exactly in control when it first happened. 

When your mutation first manifested, it was when you and your family were on a family outing and had rented a boat to take to the middle of the local lake. You accidentally fell off the boat when it made contact with one particularly choppy wave. In the midst of your panic and fear, that was when your powers came to and you froze the entire lake.
It wasn't long after that the professor came and brought you to the school where you could learn to better harness and control your ice power.

Only problem with that was you haven't been able to summon any kind of ice since that day. You weren't sure why, though Charles had some underlying theories, most of them believing that your powers were linked to your emotions. Expressing emotions is not something you were all good at. In your old household, you were mostly discouraged from expressing them as doing so was considered a sign of weakness.

In the present, you've been spending every waking hour trying to create ice, any kind of ice, a crystal, an icicle, a droplet, anything would do.
So far nothing.
It was an already frustrating situation, but it didn't help that there was already one ice mutant in the school that already had a hand on his powers before he even enrolled.
You started to distance yourself from others in the manor as your obsession to summon ice again grew.

You heard people whisper about your so-called icy personality, even going so far as to refer to you as the Ice Queen, but up until this point, nobody ever said that to your face. It was a bit sexist, if you were honest, as nobody in the manor ever called Bobby icy. 

You focused on the glass of water once more, but the moment was already gone. Sighing in frustration, you stand and head outside, hoping to clear your head with some fresh air.

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You sit by the edge of the pond, closing your eyes, breathing in the fresh air. You try to think back to when you were at the lake, when you were in the boat, the emotions that were stirring when your powers first came to.

Staring into the pond, you wondered how it had all came to that moment when you froze the lake. You focus on the water, mesmerized as you imagined the pond slowly forming crystals of ice. You were so focused in that particular imagination you didn't even feel yourself getting up and walking into the water.

As you got in deeper, your world turned blue...and then everything slowly became dark.

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It was all a blur, but by the time your world cleared up, you were coughing and gasping and spurting out water.

"What the hell were you thinking?" you hear someone ask you in a stern yet worried tone. You shake your head and wring out your soaked hair. "What?" you say, still not quite coherent.

I said, what the hell were you thinking just walking into the pond like that?" Bobby asks again, "Were you trying to drown yourself or something?" "I, uh," you try to come up with an explanation, "I guess I was thinking back to when my powers first came up, when I fell off that boat at the lake. I guess if I was able to get as close as I could to try replicating the events of that day, I would be able to create ice again."
"What, is trying to summon ice so damn important to you, you'll kill yourself trying to get there?!"

"You wouldn't understand," you mutter. "What?" "You don't get it!" you say a little louder, "You can create ice whenever you want, without even thinking about it, and I haven't been able to summon ice since I first got here! It's all I want, it's all I've been wanting to do since I got here, but I can't, and I don't know why."

"(y/n)," Bobby was about to speak but you stop him. "You know I resent what you called me earlier today," you say, standing up, "Who do you think you are to call me an Ice Queen? It's sexist and insulting, and it doesn't even begin to describe who I am as a person." "(y/n)." "You can turn into ice yourself, and you have a tendency to brood on more than one occasion, I don't see anyone else calling you Ice King, instead they call you Ice Man, and not in a condescending manner." "(y/n), do you think you-" "And another thing," you continue, "I was in no way trying to purposefully kill myself, and I don't think trying to get the hang of my ice powers is all that important, and the more I think about the more I think ice is a stupid power to begin with. Why not control water or fire or maybe earth instead, those are more useful powers, if you ask me-" 

"(y/n), will you shut up and take a look at what you're doing!" Bobby shouts, turning you around so you could see for yourself.
Sure enough, you look at the pond and see the whole thing was covered in ice.

"Did...did I do that?" you ask, pointing at the frozen pond in disbelief. "Yeah, you did," Bobby nods, "You manage to freeze the entire pond all by yourself." "I...I did," you say, still having a feeling this was an illusion. You close your eyes tight and open them again just to make sure. "I did it," you say, a smile on your face, "I did it! I made ice! Wait, wait, hang on."

Still giddy and excited, you close your eyes and hold out your palms, and sure enough, spirilaing fractals of ice came directly from your palms. "So this is what the Professor was talking about," you realize, "My powers are tied to my emotions."

"Guess the Ice Queen has finally thawed," Bobby jokes, which you glare at him, "It's a joke," he amends, "don't be so sensitive." You huff and cross your arms. "Yeah, I am an Ice Queen," you nod, "It's not a bad thing, but the situation's a little more nuanced than that. I grew up in a household and a society that told me that expressing any kind of emotion was seen as feminine and therefore a sign of weakness. I was always told if you want to be taken seriously, you need to suppress your feelings, you can't afford to show em, or people will think you crazy. But at the same time, I withhold my feelings and people think me cold or frigid or something along those lines. In other words, no matter what I do with my emotions, I get punished for it."

"Oh...wow..." was all Bobby could say, "I didn't think about it that way. I'm sorry for calling you an Ice Queen then. You're not an Ice Queen you're...well you're you. You're (y/n). You're smart and strong, and resilient. And now, you have the power to create ice."

"You know," you say, thinking about it, "Maybe I should take it as my new mutant name. Ice Queen. A sort of way to reclaim the label if you will. Like I said, it's not a bad thing. I'm going to show people it doesn't have to be a bad thing. In fact..."

You concentrate and summon some ice to your shows, turning them into ice skates, "What say we have a little fun on the frozen pond before the Professor finds out and makes me thaw it out?"

"I like the sound of that," Bobby nods, following your lead with the make-shift ice skates.