by LadyObie33
Frances Kane returned to her old home in Blue Valley, Nebraska, to take care of one final order of business. Todd Rice and Jennie-Lynn Hayden had wanted to come with her to lend their support, but Frankie declined. She knew they had their own busy lives with Infinity Inc. to attend to, and this was something she wanted to handle alone.
Her life over the past year had taken such a strange turn. Being impersonated by an alien creature called the Phoenix and being led to believe that she was the daughter of the legendary hero Green Lantern, all while she lived a half-life dreaming while in a coma in a Kansas City hospital, was too strange to comprehend.
However, despite her not being related by blood to the Scotts, she was touched that they still considered her a member of the family, and she promised to stay in touch. Molly had already invited her for the next family Christmas months in advance, and to every other family outing they had planned in the near future.
She was happy to have this adopted family of sorts, since she’d lost the only semblance of family she had known and grown up with when her mother passed away. As she thought of her mother, she whispered a brief prayer of thanks, because she and her mother had been able to make peace not long before her passing, even if it had really been the Phoenix doing everything exactly as Frances would have done had she been there herself.
Still, she had to return to close out the sale of her family’s old home. It was hard. She recalled how she and her older brother used to run around the house playing and laughing when they were young, how pleased they’d all be when their father returned from work, and she fondly remembered the aromas of the wonderful meals that their mother was preparing in the kitchen.
But, as with most things too good to be true, it had all fallen apart. When Frankie was nineteen, she manifested her magnetic powers for the first time. They raged out of her like a scream of fear during a nightmare. The car she was driving then ran off a cliff and crashed, killing her beloved father and older brother, who had been riding with her. Her magnetic powers did save her from perishing, but for a long time she carried a large degree of survivor’s guilt, wondering why her powers couldn’t — why they wouldn’t — save the other members of her family, too.
Frankie’s mother was extremely angered. She truly believed her daughter had been possessed by the devil and that the deaths of her husband and son were the sign of a dark era approaching. She tried prayer and other things to snap her daughter back to normal, but that was not to be. Now Frances knew, thanks to Green Lantern, that a magnetically powered super-villain called Nuclear the Magnetic Marauder had been responsible for her magnetic outburst that caused the deaths of her father and big brother. What she didn’t know, and might possibly never know, was why.
Even though Frankie’s magnetic powers were not yet in her control, they were something she was born with. They were as much a part of her as her arms and her hair. With time and persistent practice, she did learn how to manage her powers much less awkwardly. She learned she could use her powers to fly, and she really enjoyed doing just that.
Her reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door.
Frankie opened it and found a young family standing there — Bert and Julia Madison, with their two young children, four-year-old Alicia and two-year-old Carl. She had arranged to sell her home to the Madisons. She relished the prospect of a bustling, happy family living there again.
The children played while she and the other adults talked. They were only a few years older than Frankie, but they reflected an important dream she’d had since childhood.
She wanted to fall in love, marry, and have children of her own one day. Julia patted her on the shoulder and told her she was a wonderful young woman and that one day a young man would be lucky to find her. Frankie was tempted to cry at that point but opted not to. She didn’t want to upset the parents or especially their children. Frances knew, deep down, that the Kane house, soon to become the Madison house, would be left in good hands.
They finished their final arrangements to buy the house, and then Frances departed, taking the few remaining mementos that were left to remind her of her old home and the happy family that had once lived there.
As she walked toward her car, she sighed as she started to head back to her new life in Kansas City. It would be a new step for her, but she was ready to finally live her life once more.
Only one thing still tugged at the back of her mind. She’d earlier accepted that Alan Scott was her real father instead of the man who had raised her as her own, but now that it was impossible that Alan was her father, the question still remained: who was her real father? She wondered if she would ever find out.
The End