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Chapter Twenty-Three: Ororo Wakes


There was silence in her room for a long time, broken only by the nurse she had heard Logan refer to as “Erica” moving about. She had a soft voice and whenever she spoke, Ororo felt as though she were listening to Jean prattle on about things, as she always did.

She could remember the terror of the accident. The SUV had swerved so suddenly, bearing down on her. She had managed to control her Mini, but the SUV deftly bumped her. The only option had been to try to make it down the slope.

It had been dark, the slope so steep she had lost control rather easily. The entire time, she wondered if Logan was close behind her. She knew him, he would have come after her, wanting to scream at her for being stupid.

The crash had nearly killed her. Crunching metal, hissing valves, the echoing silence. She had bashed her forehead on the steering wheel, feeling blood ooze from the open wound. Trying to get her bearings, locate her car phone to call for help, she’d never heard them coming.

The deafening shot would forever be burned into her memory. Pain had zinged through her back. She’d screamed against it, falling back in her seat. It was then she saw the face of her attacker. Breathing erratic, she knew the injury was bad. It was the boy from the parking lot of the mall, the same in that clearing with Logan…and he had a firearm aimed at her chest.

Unable to move, or even draw on her psionic control of the elements, she had watched with horror as he opened the door calmly. His lips curled into a malicious sneer as he unloaded four more shots into her chest.

The door was pushed back slowly. Delirious with the pain, she had reached to the man standing behind the boy, gasping for help as she weakened. She knew, without a doubt that she was dying.

All because she wanted to show them that she was a big girl.

The thought made her want to cry. She remembered darkness consuming her, an echo of a broken scream. Warm arms lifting her, holding her before she lost all thought to black.

She could hear now, but her eyes would not open, her limbs seemingly dead. She was wounded, badly. Thinking she was dying, she had inwardly wept.

And then Logan was there. He held her hand, whispered to her. She knew she was in some kind of coma, from the way he begged her to wake. Ororo wanted to reach for him, to tell him she was here. She simply lacked the strength.

The door opened again.

“Miss?”

“Ah know, but there was an emergency back home and Logan had tah leave. Can I sit with her? She’s closer than mah aunt.”

Rogue.

A sigh.

“All right, I suppose. Just talk to her, try to get her to wake up. Call me if something changes, ok?”

“Ah promise.”

Someone patted her bed. Footsteps. The door closed.

Familiar footfalls told her Rogue was approaching. The girl took her hand in hers, squeezing it gently.

“Ah suppose Ah should go ahead and tell yah,” Rogue began in a whisper. “We know where they are, the ones that hurt yah so bad, ‘Roro.”

NO! Rogue, tell him to come back!

“Yeah, Logan went back to the mansion. Cyclops doesn’t want him tah kill ‘em, but…Ah think there won’t be any stoppin’ him.”

Logan…my Logan.

“Ah know yah probably don’t want him tah do it, but…Ah think it’s because he blames himself.”

Goddess above…Rogue, stop him. He’ll never forgive himself.

“Don’t worry,” a gloved hand touched her brow. “You’ll wake up an’ he’ll be here. He has tah do this, ‘Roro.”

She felt the blackness returning, taking her to a place with no pain, no matter how she tried to hold on. She wanted to move, to scream at Rogue that she was there, that Logan had to return. She knew what would happen.

Beserker rage would overtake him, in defense of her, he would evoke a reckoning on those that had harmed her. There would be nothing, no force of nature strong enough to pull him back.

And when he returned to himself, with more death on his hands, he would doubt himself again. She had to wake. She had to get to him.

She had to wake.

~@~

She twitched.

With an inward gasp, Ororo’s mind came awake. She tried again, succeeding in moving her fingers just slightly on the coarse bed sheets.

All right, Ororo. Now, open your eyes.

She concentrated as hard as she could, but her eyelids refused to budge. Wanting to scream at the top of her voice, she tried again.

And it worked.

Ororo blinked once more, tears swelling behind her eyes as the pain overcame her. There was something in her throat…a tube. A breathing tube. Calmly allowing the machine to breathe for her, she winced against the harsh light, looking about her for some sign as to where Rogue had gone.

A white streak in a mass of dark brown lay beside her arm. Wanting to smile, Ororo twitched her fingers, coming into contact with more of that silky hair. Wrapping a lock about her finger took several seconds, but once it was done, she gave it a small tug.

The sleeping girl did not move, so Ororo tried again, tugging harder.

Rogue popped up like one of Henry’s apple turnovers, blinking as she scratched her head in confusion.

Her eyes met Ororo’s and hands flew up to cover her mouth.

“You’re awake!” she breathed.

Ororo nodded gently, wincing against the pain. With a gentle motion, she indicated to the tube in her throat.

“Oh! Oh, hang on, ‘Roro. Hang on!” Rogue jumped up, rushing for the door.

“Nurse! Nurse, she’s awake!”

There was commotion outside. Ororo waited patiently as Rogue sounded the alarms. A few moments of lonesomeness later, the girl returned, flanked by an older female doctor and two nurses.

“Hello, Miss Munroe. Can you hear me?” the doctor asked, shining a light into her eyes.

Ororo nodded.

“Good. Want me to take the tube out?”

Ororo nodded more emphatically.

“All right, hold on there, love.”

Rogue took her hand, making Ororo look at her. The pretty Southern girl had tears in her eyes. Ororo squeezed her hand gently, wishing they would take the infernal tube from her throat so she could speak.

“Miss Munroe,” the doctor took her attention once more. “I’m going to count to three. On two, I want you to take a deep breath. And on three, blow it out as hard as you can, all right?”

Ororo nodded, motioning weakly for Rogue to stand away. She had seen this done a number of times and it would no doubt frighten her poor companion. The doctor pulled the tape from her face and Ororo closed her eyes.

“One, two, three!”

She felt the tube wrenched from her throat and turned to vomit. A pretty young nurse held her hair back, catching the contents of Ororo’s stomach neatly in a basin. Rogue was crying as Ororo hoarsely cried out against the pain in her chest.

“It’s all right,” the doctor was saying. “She’ll be fine, sweetie.”

Rogue inched back up to Ororo, leaning down to kiss her hair.

“L-Logan?” she croaked, reaching for Rogue’s hand.

“He had tah get back home, ‘Roro. He’ll be back soon,” she whispered as the nurse and doctor began looking over Ororo.

“Miss Munroe, would you tell me if you can feel this?”

The doctor was at the foot of her bed, holding the blanket up with one hand. A moment later, Ororo felt something cold slide up her instep. She giggled weakly.

“Tickles.”

It may have been her imagination, but she could hear several sighs of relief from the occupants of her room. Raising a brow made her entire forehead hurt. With a shaking hand she reached up, touching the long line of stitches across her previously flawless skin.

The doctor moved to her with a sad smile.

“Perhaps I should explain…”

~@~

“Oh my dear child, it is good to hear your voice,” the Professor’s voice was filled with tears as she smiled into the telephone receiver Rogue was holding to her parched lips.

“Are the children listening?” she asked, her voice still scratchy from her intubation.

“Yes, every room can hear you now. I believe you have their full attention.”

Ororo cleared her throat harshly. “Hello, everyone. I know I must sound terrible, but I assure you, I will be home before you know it. Until I do, please listen to Miss Marie in all of your classes.”

A beep told her someone wanted to reply and a moment later, Artie’s voice echoed to her.

“Miss Munroe! We were so worried.”

“I know, Artie, but please do not worry. I will be home soon,” she winced, it still hurt terribly to move.

“We made cards for you,” Artie said quickly, as though someone was rushing him. “We put them in your classroom like Mr. Logan told us to. He said you’d want to see them when you came home.”

The sound of his name made Ororo’s heart clench. They had not heard anything from the team as of yet and she fretted constantly. She had been awake only a few hours, during which she had been poked and prodded and looked over by half a dozen doctors.

Rogue had not left her side, but she desperately wanted Logan. She knew he would hate himself for being gone when she awoke, among other things.

“Artie, I am afraid I must go. I need to rest. Be good children, Miss Munroe will be home soon,” she said quietly, nodding to Rogue.

“All right, now, you guys get on tah bed.”

“Goodnight, Miss Munroe,” came the chorus of familiar voice just before the receiver clicked.

“Rogue?”

Ororo noted Charles’ voice and looked away, allowing him to speak to her self-appointed sentinel as she toyed with the sleeve of Logan’s coat. He had left it by her bed in his haste to join the mission. She held it as close as she could, inhaling his scent from the tattered leather.

He was out there somewhere in the Rockies, avenging her. Of course she was flattered that he would go to such lengths, and she knew that she would have done the same for him. But she missed him. She wanted to see his face, to show him that she was alive.

“Goodnight, Professor.”

Rogue cradled the phone, coming over to sit on the edge of the bed, a slice of pizza in her hands.

“They’re on strict radio silence,” she explained. “Even the mental kind.”

Ororo sighed. “Goddess protect them all.”

The girl didn’t respond for a long time, munching on her pizza as Ororo received her nutrition via a catheter in her arm. She shifted on the bed, sighing again when she noted her bandages would need to be changed soon.

“He’s comin’, back,” Rogue assured her. “An’ when he does, he’ll have a few choice words for yah bout runnin’ off that way.”

“No,” she disagreed. “He’ll not mention it. He told me so.”

“Well, then. Allow me tah tell yah how stupid that was,” Rogue said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “Yah almost died!”

“I know, darling one,” Ororo nodded. “And it will not happen again.”

Rogue narrowed her eyes playfully. “Are yah a magnet for bullets or somethin’?”

Shrugging slightly, Ororo pulled Logan’s coat closer, burying her nose in it. She could smell the cigar smoke and salty tang of his sweat. Goddess, she missed him. She wanted to hold him, to be held so much that it hurt. All of her loved ones were on a mission right now, one she could not follow them to.

“What’s that?”

Rogue leaned over her body, pulling two items from the bedspread. Ororo frowned at them, wondering where they had come from.

Taking them from Rogue, Ororo was surprised to note that one was a long strip of leather from her destroyed uniform. Possibly from where Logan had cut open her clothing to tend her gunshot wound. The worn edges told her he had had it since that day. Though why was a mystery.

The other was a thick cigar. Gasping, Ororo noted it as the one she had purchased for him on that shopping trip before Kitty went off to NYU, her second encounter with the Friends of Humanity. He had never smoked it.

“Came from his pocket,” Rogue said softly. “Mean somethin’ tah yah?”

Ororo nodded, tears stinging her eyes. “Yes. They mean something very dear to me, darling.”

“Yah love him, doncha?” Rogue asked, watching her closely.

She could only nod, wrapping his cigar in the worn bit of leather before slipping both back into his inside pocket and buttoning it closed. She wanted him to come home. She did not want to be in so much pain all alone. Yes, Rogue was there and that was a part of him, but this time it was not enough.

“How do yah know?” her companion asked gently.

Ororo smiled faintly, remembering that sly smile when he’d come upon her holding Tunza the first time, the playful way he had not wanted to admit where the dog had come from.

“It is difficult to describe, Rogue,” she said quietly, running her fingertips over a hole in his coat.

“When did yah know?”

She smiled. “That I can answer. I knew I loved him the moment he made me cry.”

Rogue rolled her eyes. “What?”

Looking up at the pristine ceiling, Ororo shifted slightly in her bed, trying to not get Logan’s coat wrapped up in her IV.

“No one has ever made me cry, Rogue. I have done so only five times in my life. Once, when my parents died, when I left New Orleans, and when we thought Jean had left us.”

She paused, inhaling the scent of Logan’s coat. “The second to last time was the night we brought Jean back to the mansion. Logan held me in his arms and told me to “Let it rain.”

“Aww,” the younger woman crooned.

“And the last time was the night Logan left after his nightmare. No one’s direct action had ever hurt me so. I knew then that I loved him.”

“That’s sweet, in a weird sorta way.”

“Rogue, my time with Logan does everything love is supposed to. And that is how I knew, it was.”

Her friend was quiet for a moment, picking at the sheets. Ororo watched her even as the door opened, revealing a nurse she had not seen before.

“Hello, Miss Munroe. It’s time for your pain medication,” she said cheerily.

“Oh, I did not know it was so late,” Ororo blushed, beckoning her closer.

“Ah thought they were movin’ her to the Surgical Ward before they gave her anythin’ more,” Rogue interjected, looking from Ororo to the nurse.

“There has been a change of plans.”

Warning bells sounded in her head. Gripping the nurse call button beneath Logan’s jacket, Ororo watched the portly nurse move to the IV unit, Rogue right beside her. Something was not right with this. The nurse was carefully concealing the syringe in her hands.

“Wait, that’s not...”

Rogue’s exclamation was cut off when the nurse turned on her with surprising speed, knocking her to the floor.

Pressing the call button quickly, Ororo grabbed the catheter in her arm and yanked it out, yelping against the pain. The nurse growled low in her throat, bearing down on Ororo with the needle, obviously intent on simply shoving it into her flesh.

But Rogue was not as weak as she appeared. The girl popped up onto her feet. With a karate yell, she slammed her forearm onto the nurse’s causing the needle to fall to the bed.

Taking the would-be murder weapon, Ororo placed it on the bedside table. The quick motion tore open at least one suture in her chest and pain wracked through her. Her back seemed to seize up as Rogue threw the attacker onto the floor and sat astride her, reeling back a fist and punching the woman solidly in the face.

The hospital room door flung open, revealing Erica and another nurse Ororo recognized.

“Help,” she gasped through the pain.

There was another stabbing pain as Erica screamed for a guard. The other nurse moved quickly to Ororo, hushing her and settling her back as she checked the now-crimson bandage on the bedridden woman’s chest.

Guards arrived a moment later, helping Rogue with the attacker and thanking her for protecting the patient. Ororo continued to gasp, clutching Logan’s coat as though it would anchor her as blackness overwhelmed her completely.

~@~

Ororo awoke with a start, shocked to find she was in her own bedroom. Fearing it was merely a telepathic attack, she turned to the bedside, surprised to find Jean speaking over something that looked like her medical chart with the doctor she had seen often in the Intensive Care Unit.

“Jean?” she gasped.

“There she is,” Jean grinned, coming over to her. “Welcome home.”

“How did I get here? Where is Rogue?” she demanded quickly.

“Doctor Sanz here thought you would be safer at home and had you transferred to a “private facility”,” Jean said with a small smile. “Rogue is speaking with the Professor.”

Wanting to believe she was safely at home, but unable to wrap her mind around the concept, Ororo shook her head, wanting to cry.

“It’s home, sweetie,” Jean said taking her hand. “I love you, dear, I’ll love you til the sky falls down and the clouds dance in the street…”

“I love you, dear,” Ororo continued, her voice cracking. “I’ll love you til the oceans wash over the earth and the waters lap at our feet.”

She was home. Looking to the kindly doctor, she smiled, squeezing Jean’s hand.

“You weren’t there when we took in little Jasmine,” Jean explained. “This is her mother.”

“Oh!” Ororo gasped, cringing when the gesture made her entire chest hurt. “I did not know you.”

Doctor Sanz walked over, taking her free hand as she sat on the bed opposite of Jean.

“Jasmine speaks of you so often, I made sure I was assigned to your case. Had I known there was an anti-mutant group after you, I would have moved you much sooner. I know Doctor Grey can care for you,” she explained with a fond smile.

“The nurse?” Ororo croaked.

Jean lifted a glass of cool water to her lips. A small sip preceded a large gulp as the icy fluid soothed her throat.

“A Friend of Humanity,” Sanz spat. “She is in the hospital now. Your young friend broke her jaw.”

Ororo smiled. “Logan will be proud.”

The two women chuckled at her quip. Jean smoothed her sheets as Doctor Sanz explained the extent of her reopened injuries.

Luckily, her spinal cord’s swelling had not flared again, though she had managed to tear a suture there as well as three in the highest wound in her chest. Ororo was to be bedridden for at least another week. It would be months before she was allowed back to full X-Men duty, perhaps even a year. The knowledge hurt Ororo deeply, mainly because it was her fault for leaving the mansion in the first place.

Rogue had broken a finger during the fight and would wear a splint for a few weeks. Both Jean and Sanz seemed rather proud of the girl for protecting Ororo during the would-be assassination.

“Oh and I brought this. Your “fiancée” left this on the IV stand,” Sanz said before taking her leave, handing Ororo her lightning bolt necklace.

She took it, waving goodbye to the kind doctor. When she opened her hand to look at the gift from her lover, she noted it was stained with blood. The realization of all that had happened finally hit her.

“Goddess...” she broke into harsh sobs even as the heavens opened up, spilling heavy rain onto the world.

Jean was at her side in a moment, wrapping her arms around her friend as best she could. Ororo sobbed her heart out, letting herself drown in the pain. Logan was hundreds of miles away and she had nearly died. Twice. She would be confined to a bed for weeks, if not months simply because she was a mutant whom refused to listen to good advice.

“Jean...so afraid,” she whimpered into her friend’s shoulder.

“I know,” Jean’s voice betrayed her own tears. “I know, sweetie. Go on and cry.”

The sounds of her sobbing tears ripped through the otherwise quiet room for nearly an hour, until Jean’s white lab coat was sopping and she had nothing left in her to cry. The rain sloshed against the window, covering the grounds of Xavier’s school with Ororo’s tears.

When she finally lacked the strength to even move, she allowed Jean to lay her against the pillows and tuck her in as though she were a child. Jean took the necklace, but handed her Logan’s coat, and one of his cigars from the case he’d left in his pocket.

Something akin to a hospital room had been set up in her bedroom, complete with monitoring equipment. Looking to the clock on her chest of drawers, Ororo noted it was three in the afternoon.

Logan had been gone nearly twenty-four hours.

“Has there been any news?” she asked Jean in a tired voice.

Jean shook her head from the IV stand. “No.”

“Goddess above.”

“He’ll come home, Ororo. And he’ll bring everyone with him.”

Somehow, Ororo could hear the hope in Jean’s voice and drew strength from that, even as the heavens wept for her.





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