I miss her infectious laughter; the way she threw her head back and played with her hair. I miss her compassion; her enduring empathy that was totally unrelated to her powerful telepathic mind.
I'm watching her husbands mistress spar in the danger room and while by X-Men standards Emma's prowess as an martial artist is below par, her brute strength more than makes up for it. For weeks she's been pushing her training into overdrive, mainly trying to access her telepathy in diamond form.
I can't take my eyes off of the Danger Room controls. The impulse is like a heart beating outside of me; and I have to clench my hands to control myself.
"You're better than that."
Betsy stands in the doorway smiling at me.
It's easy to underestimate my relationship with Psylocke, she's been one of the most absent X-Men but she's seen me through darker times than these. She knows me better than most.
"I mean, I won't be joining the slappers fan club anytime soon but …" She squints and smiles at me, "I guess there's no but huh? Ok, go ahead and do it."
I smile at her and turn back to Emma's blitzkrieg.
Betsy's beside me now and locks her right arm into mine.
"She smashes stuff good huh?" Betsy says, pulling me closer to her.
Emma has no clue that she has an audience; she's "head blind" when accessing her secondary mutation.
"You need to talk to someone Storm," She looks at me, considering her words, "you can't spend the rest of your life gardening."
"What would I say?"
"Storm." Her voice is soft and all of the humor is bled out. "When I first met you, you were rebelling against the pedestals you were on; Ororo, the goddess or Ororo, the windrider. Your emotions were still arrested and you were more inaccessible then than you ever were."
"I won't go back to the Mohawk Betsy."
"I would hope not; unless you're going to carry a boom box on your shoulder."
"But I do need something; some change. I guess it will be clearer when whatever it is presents itself."
With the limited atmosphere of the Danger Room my powers do have their limits, but the limits are finite. The compact monsoon rages and I feel my powers quaking within me, contesting my wrested control over the elements. Usually, I'm free in the eye of my storms; there's a certain sense of nirvana but now I have tunnel vision and I'm enamored by my dauntless anger.
The program stops.
"You're looking demure Emma," I say, smiling.
"Not the look I was going for. Scotty like me trashy," She says, looking uninterested. "Alas I haven't come here to talk couture; I want to spar with you."
Instinct tells me to object.
"Why?" I ask.
"Four times a week you're in the Danger Room, fighting me, among others." She approaches me, the effect isn't much different from when Colossus armors up.
"Yes, but Emma we've been through this; new powers and old, and you've never bested me … well not without ambush."
"I guess I'll just have to give it the old college try then."
She tackles me with her arms around my waist, her weight is suffocating. She picks me up in a bear hug and squeezes me; it pushes the air from my lungs.
My body produces some electricity, it's nothing in comparison to lightning but I don't have the time or concentration to wait for a bolt from on high nor create the atmosphere that could produce it.
The jolt is almost negligible for her in armored form, only just enough for me to use wind to throw her, giving myself breathing room.
I only get a gasp.
I can see the energy patterns in the musculature of her armored body and the blow she throws isn't pulled.
I don't mind because she's as slow as she is clumsy.
Another jolt of electricity buys me the time call lightning from thin air.
Properly harnessed, this bolt could power the mansion briefly, it slaps Emma to her back.
The wind pushes me up and back. The strain is enormous, to pull this off in the Danger Room, but I'm able to call on hail the size of golf balls and I use gale force winds to pound her with them while she lay on the ground.
Suddenly, it's like my powers are turned off.
"You see Windrider," Emma says, standing right behind me, so close that her hair touches mine and I can't move. "You've never been this easy, how do you lead the team with this consuming rage."
She made me believe that I was fighting her, using my anger to mask the use of her psychic powers. It only took a few minutes for her to paralyze me.
"Tip-top Storm would have felt my telepathy before I could scour one thought. Your powers give you natural psychic defenses while Charles taught you how to combat telepaths but you're slipping Stormy." She says, walking around to face me.
"I get it. You don't think I do but I get it. We're not going to braid each others hair and there will never be a slumber party, but Storm these temper tantrums in the Danger Room won't resurrect anyone and at this rate the mortality of the team that counts on you will be on the serious increase."
She turns and walks away and I feel her hold on me lower.
I sob.