strange oneshot that i had to get out of my head. unedited, bare bones. i'm not as happy with the ending as i could be, but theirs is not a relationship for description.

i in no way think i own anyone but ianthe.

He had been gone for a long time. He wondered if he even had a room available to him, he had been gone for so long. Not that anyone would think he was dead—just that he wasn't coming back. Who knew, maybe he got hit with another round of amnesia. Though, if his discoveries are correct, that round of amnesia that "hit" him was actually a special bullet just for him. Oh well, too late to fix that, he thought.

But sure enough, Xavier was the same as ever and still had a room set aside just for him. There were still random items in there (including a mini-fridge full of his favorite beer) from his last visit all those years ago, but it was clear that someone had been in and cleaned the sheets. Still, it had been long enough ago that he couldn't really smell them, and the scent of the fabric softener in the sheets had worn away enough to be tolerable.

It was strange being back after so long. The kids—they'll always be kids to him—were in charge now. Ice Cube had grown up and become a major player in Xavier's team, even. There were new kids, many of which apparently had not heard of him. He couldn't really blame their teachers for not mentioning him, of course, but they would learn quickly that he was not a man to be messed with.

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. It was so easy to terrify teenagers.

While waiting for his beer fridge to chill (it had been unplugged all these years) he went into the kitchen for whatever they had there. Soda was better than nothing after a couple hours on the motorcycle.

It was cloudy out, but Storm was not around to make the sun come out. Not that she would just for him, but he might have been able to convince her. She had become more amiable with age, but no less powerful. She was a mutant he respected down to the last metal bone.

Little Rogue—who wasn't really little anymore, but he just couldn't think of her any other way—wandered into the kitchen. They had already said their hellos, but the smile on her face told him that she was still pleasantly surprised to see him. She grabbed a soda and sat next to him at the counter in silence.

"I would ask if you drove the whole way here in the rain, but it's not like it would matter for you," she said finally. Thunder rumbled softly in the distance, as if the weather was irritated at its own harmlessness in his case.

"It wasn't raining the whole way. Just the last day or so."

Silence.

"It's been raining here for two whole weeks now." She was frowning now.

"What?" he asked, clearly seeing worry on her now aged features.

She shook her head. "It's nothing. When Storm gets back, it will be fine." Then she smiled half-heartedly and left. But Storm didn't seem to be coming back anytime soon. Every time she was supposed to arrive, something would happen that would either keep her where she was or draw her somewhere else, and it just kept raining.

He started noticing a figure out in the lawn sometimes, a person who just stood in the rain for a time without an umbrella, their long, red-brown hair dripping down their back. He assumed the person was a girl, but no one would tell him who she was and he never saw her inside. She seemed to slouch more and more as the days passed, and he began noticing a smell in the hallways similar to that of the forest floor after seeing her.

Still, he received nothing in the way of answers. Rogue would only smile before changing the subject, usually to how long it had been raining. It was approaching three and a half weeks before Storm finally came home. After making a few comments to Rogue she walked out onto a balcony and immediately cleared away some of the clouds. The rain stopped.

Glad that the annoying noise of the rain falling had finally ceased, he went into the kitchen—with its large bay windows—to sit in the sun and have a private celebration with himself. He sat there for a good long while, his eyes closed and his beer slowly warming in his hand. When he opened his eyes, he was assaulted with color.

There, standing on the lawn in the exact spot the mystery figure always chose, there was a woman standing in a bikini. Her hair was a deep burgundy color, and seemed to grow brighter the longer he watched. Her arms were stretched out on either side of her, her skin gradually turning into a flashing green color. What had once been a woman of various shades of brown had become a woman of as much color as a flower. She had blossomed…

He must have been staring, because he did not hear Rogue walk up. "Ah," she said, noting what he gazed at. "I see you've finally met Flora." He gave her one demanding glance before staring again at the colors before him. "Her real name is Ianthe Blomst. She photosynthesizes, like a plant. She's been literally withering the last few weeks, and yesterday it got to the point where she couldn't get out to the lawn to absorb what little light was coming through the rain. We couldn't wait any longer."

"So… she gets energy… from the sun?" he asked, amazed.

"Yeah."

"…Like Superman?"

She chuckled. "Not quite. She actually has chloroplasts in her cells. Her mutation somehow makes her cells into an odd mixture between a plant cell and an animal cell. This is the result."

The woman—Ianthe?—spun on the spot, her hair puffing up around her like petals. When she stood still again, her face turn up towards the sun and away from them, her hair didn't quite seem to rest on her shoulders so heavily any more.

"It's beautiful," he said.

"I'm sure she would love to meet you once she's recuperated some. She'll soak in as much as she can, but she needs sleep too." And with that the woman fell backwards onto the lawn, her laughter ringing through the window to his ears. Rogue was smiling as she walked away.

It wasn't until several days later—several days of smelling the most intoxicating flower scent he had ever smelled in his memory—that they were finally introduced. Students watched from around the corner as the new scary guy met the new-ish green lady. Even they noticed the odd but strong connection the two immediately shared, and it wasn't long before jokes were being made about the animal falling for the plant.

The animal quickly quieted those jokes, but everyone was still thinking them. They were true, after all.