‘ ’ indicates thought
“ ” indicates spoken words
A cloud of gloom has descended over the mansion and its residents. Its been three days since the meeting and still no sighting of Wolverine.
He just disappeared.
‘Maybe he left again,’ had been the first thought on many of the students as well as the teachers’ minds….including the secluded Weather Goddess.
Why was she even bothering? The question has popped up several times in her private musings.
“Ororo,” a knock and the familiar voice of her teammate and current team-leader calls from across the closed door.
Pulling herself together, she moves to the door, opening it to allow Jean entry into her room.
“How are you doing Jean?” The detached-concern is an art she has perfected over time, and even in her current turmoil, she can put it up effortlessly.
“I should be the one asking that question,” the redhead tries in an effort to lift the mood. Failing to do so, she repeats her question, but with a serious tone, her hand grasping the corresponding dusky limb of her friend. “How are you doing Ororo?”
“I am well,” the Ice Queen makes an appearance…for a second, only to give way to the real Ororo. “Trying to come to terms with…” she trails off.
-----
“But, also to Ororo.”
The Professor’s words had jolted Storm into action. “To me? What do you mean Professor?”
“I am sorry child,” Xavier apologized as if the mistake had been his own.
“Cut the sorry shit Chuck,” Logan stepped in before Ororo had a chance to respond. “What the fuck did one-eye and the white bitch do to us?”
“Logan, Ororo,” the Professor’s grief-stricken eyes moved from the agitated Canadian to the worried African. “Emma Frost, she used her telepathic powers on you…on both of you.”
“What did she do?” Logan’s voice dropped down to Wolverine’s growl, the one he had just before his claws found home in someone’s soft innards or if that person was lucky enough….dealt a swift death.
“She,” it was Jean who spoke up this time. As a fellow telepath, she was feeling the shame from the abuse of power, which was what Emma had done. “She-she modified your memories.”
-SNIKT-
CRASSSSHHHHH!!!
There went the chair that Logan had been sitting on.
------
“Any sign of Logan?” Ororo flinches at her own inability to stop herself from asking the question.
“No,” Jean shakes her head in denial. “However, he is still in New York State.”
“How…?” deep blue eyes question dulled green ones.
“The Professor,” the answer implies that Xavier has been keeping an eye on the feral Logan, mostly for the sake of the people stupid enough to come in his way. So far there haven’t been any police reports of any *clawed* mutant attacks, meaning everyone, even strangers, has been keeping their distance from the boiling Wolverine.
“You knew,” Ororo’s words carry more of a statement than a question.
“Yes,” the telepathic-doctor nods her head. “The Professor and I….it was during the accident with Rogue.”
“Oh,” Ororo recalls the exact moment Emma and Sabertooth collided with the only exposed surface of Rogue’s body….her face. It was then that things started souring.
“Yes,” Jean nods again. “Her absorption got her the memory from Emma. Charles and I, we were connected telepathically to the team….”
“…and that is how the both of you came to know about it,” that gets a confirmatory nod. “That’s why on recovering Rogue attacked Scott and Emma,” another nod.
“But why me? Why did she attack me?”
-----
“What do you mean modified?” Ororo asked with a sense of foreboding. She knew what *memory-modification* meant, she just wanted to confirm it.
“She fucked with our head, that’s what it means,” Logan answered tightly. “What did she do Jean? What did she take away from me….from ‘Ro?” The look on Logan’s face was pure murder. “And what the fuck does Cyclops have to do with all this?” In his anger, he fell back on using Scott’s codename.
“We don’t know,” Xavier shook his head. “We just know that she…they did something. What it is, even they don’t seem to remember.”
“Then how can you be so sure that they did anything?” Ororo wasn’t as quick to judge her teammates, especially when, one of them was one of her oldest friends. “If they don’t even remember themselves, how can you know?”
“We know,” the Professor gave no further explanations. “And we are sure.”
Silence reigned in the room until Beast’s simple question ended it.
“How is Scott involved in this?”
-----
“Rogue attacked you because of the turmoil in her mind,” the redhead Phoenix answers with a sigh. “The anger and rage she had absorbed from Sabertooth, along the memories from Emma, allowed the sense of betrayal she felt on Logan’s behalf to resurface…with a vengeance.”
“Oh,” Ororo sighs. Things had been improving the girl. After months of being looked at like a murderer, things were finally improving, and even though ever since Logan’s return, Rogue had been anything but unsupportive, the attack and the time before that were too fresh to ignore.
“Ororo, it wasn’t Rogue that attacked you,” Jean catches her projected thoughts. “At least not the Rogue we know. The combined and simultaneous absorption released almost every personality ever imprinted on her psyche. Even she didn’t know who she was. That’s why we needed Logan. He seems to have a calming….a sort of symbiotic effect on her. Instead of attacking her core, his personality forms a sort of offensive shield around it, which allows him to both guard her and bolster her fighting power against the others.”
“Oh,” put like that, the weather mistress doesn’t know what to say. “How are you and….Scott?” She finally asks.
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
-----
“Scott….” Jean was the one to answer Beast’s question. “He was the one who asked Emma to make the changes. Although he….”
“I gonna kill him,” Logan slammed his fist into the wall, causing a sizeable chunk to fall off, along with three one foot deep holes to pierced into the concrete.
“Although he just asked her to make it in him…” Jean continued with her explanation. “….and maybe in Ororo.”
“Me?” Ororo asked in surprise, although after hearing that she had been abused mentally, it didn’t seem so shocking…..her mind had gone to numb for that. “Why me?”
Jean couldn’t even lift her eyes to face her friend, instead she sent a mental plea to the Professor to step in and save her from voicing the shame she felt for her husband’s actions.
“Ororo, something happened….” Xavier’s voice was filled with caution. He had seen the storm raging both inside the room and outside. Inside it was Wolverine, while outside…outside the elements were going crazy, a mixture of rain, hail and snow was pelting against the windows with the speed of a mid seized tropical hurricane…and was growing with each passing second. “Something happened between Scott and you….something that once he regained his senses, he wanted to forget.
“What happened?” A loud peal of thunderous lightening shook the very walls of the mansion.
“Ororo…”
“What happened Charles?” Gone was the Professor endearment and also gone was Ororo. It was Storm who was in the room now, her eyes glowing with electrical energy.
“We don’t know.”
----
“Did you find anything?” The question is a redundant one. Jean knows that, yet she asks it.
“No,” a shake of sliver locked hair and a sigh answers her. “Nothing.”
“I’m sorry Ororo,” Jean reaches forward and grasps her friend’s hand to give her support. “I wish I could do something to help you.”
“I know Jean. I know both you and the Professor have tried everything possible….everything humanely possible.”
She uses the word humane; because the only way to get the truth out of the conniving White Queen would be to tear through her mental shields and locks, she had placed around hundreds of thousands of her memories….including the one involving Ororo.
“She remembers doing it,” Ororo turns towards the open window, hoping the cool air flowing through it will help assuage the blaze in her heart, mind and soul. “But she doesn’t remember what it was….at least that’s what she says.”
----
The door to the infirmary slid open with a soft mechanical whine. Stepping through it, Ororo Monroe headed towards her destination….the room currently occupied by the recuperating White Queen.
“Ah Ororo darling,” Emma called out from her bed. “I was wondering when you would be coming over for a visit.”
“What did you do to me?” Were the first words out of Ororo’s mouth.
“Sorry dear,” the bedridden Emma answered with a sickeningly sweet smile. “Don’t remember. It seems I have forgotten it….or put it somewhere where no one can find it, not even me.”
Ororo had to clench her fists from lobbing a handful of ball lightening at the haired-dyed platinum blonde….or worse, throw a punch, or two…or more.
“Why did you do it?” She finally settled on as a question.
“As a favor,” the flippant tone of the reply indicated that there was no repentance on part of the telepath. “Both to Scott and to you.”
“What do you mean a favor to me?” Ororo’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, her anger still brimming under the surface.
“Of course my dear,” Emma pushed herself into a seated position, her back against the wall. “I wanted to save you from the pain of that memory.”
“What memory?” Storm’s eyes flashed threateningly.
“I don’t remember,” the other woman shrugged in an answer. “However whatever it was for your own good….I’m sure of that. Although in doing that, I did increase my own workload.”
“What do you mean?” Now there was confusion in the regal, slightly accented voice of the American born African bred Ororo.
“I took Scott off your hands,” the answer was easy enough….and just as surprising. “Or didn’t you ever think as to why he came to me for support, instead of going to you….as he did in the past.”
That silenced Storm into thinking, her quiet giving Emma a chance to twist the proverbial knife even further into her prey.
“And as for your little boyfriend, he was just acceptable collateral damage…..a poor bystander.” At the inquisitive look that greeted her revelation, she pushed on. “After all we couldn’t have his *enhanced* senses screwing things up, could we?”
‘Enhanced senses,’ the two words jarred Ororo’s very being. What had occurred between Scott and her? What had he done to her that warranted Emma’s use of her telepathic powers on Logan? What had happened?
“Do you know he was trying to *improve* himself for you?” The taunting continued as Emma seemed to be feeding off the other woman’s confusion and self-issues. “He really did. He even turned down sex for you…from Mystique of all people.”
“Mystique?” That was something that was new about Logan’s *non-betrayal* betrayal.
“Yes,” Emma’s eyes glinted in glee. “He and the ‘shifter, they had a thing going on quite sometime after dear old Jean’s departure from the mortal place. Nothing regular, just off and on, spur-of-the-moment thing….until you came into the picture. Hell, the last time they met, the poor thing tried to talk to her…as if. Good thing you dumped him, even though your current choice….not a big trade up. Too much boy in him, not enough man….not for a woman like you.”
Not knowing what to say in return….and not wanting to give into her increasing desire to electrocute…as Logan had called her, the bitch, Ororo turned around to leave, waiting long enough for one last warning.
“If you ever enter my mind,” she lifted her hand, lightening sizzling in it. “If I ever feel the slightest tinge of your presence in it…
….I will forget that I have vowed never to take a human life.”
-----
“Jean, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have some time alone to myself.”
Nodding her head in understanding, the redhead leans forward to hug her friend before leaving the room…..leaving her alone.
As soon as the door closes, so leaves Ororo, the woman, and so leave all her troubles, thoughts…regrets.
Only the Storm Goddess remains….and rising through the open sky window….
….she heads towards the heavens to join her mother.
Note: Now what happened...no one knows. Its up to your perusal to make up whatever you want. What do you think? An' don't go all freaky wierd with your overtly wild imaginations!!
As for Scooter fans, who will say that he would never do this....remember, it is a fanfic, MY fanfic, and I think he does, he will even do the macarena.....in the middle of a battle!!
BTW, the pic is from X-Treme X-Men #22.
And you know what to do with your thoughts and comments...write them down as Reviews!!
