TITLE: Ombrophobia
AUTHOR: Beth/CG
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: n. an abnormal and persistent fear of rain. The end of the world comes to Westchester County.
PAIRING: Very vague Kurt/Ororo
ARCHIVE: Ask and ye shall receive.
NOTES: Written for the Day After Tomorrow Fanfic Challenge (basically, take the premise of The Day After Tomorrow - that a massive global storm is sparking the end of the world - and apply it to any fandom). Muchas gracias a Jeff for the beta.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. 'Nuff said.
DATE COMPLETED: 5-24-04
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This is how you were born: on a Kenyan desert, the Whirlwind rising and spinning within you, steady as the seasons' turn, violent as the thunderhead. Hail plummets to the sand and melts in a wide circle around you.
This is how you will die:
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On the first day, when the rains begin to fall, Ororo becomes the subject of many uncomfortable glances from students and X-Men alike. Halfway through the history lesson, she overhears Jubilation Lee mutter to Katherine Pryde, "Man, whaddya think's gotten her in such a bad mood?" as the downpour hammers the broad windows. Kitty only shrugs and rolls her eyes, then puts on a studiously innocent expression as Ororo raises an eyebrow her way.
Over lunch, Kurt gives her a nervous smile. "I hope I have not done anything to upset you," he says, tail curling and uncurling around the leg of his chair. "I do not mean to pry, but...." He nods to the rain. Lightning flashes blind-bright for a moment, and his tail tightens its grip.
"You haven't," she assures him, one gentle hand reaching to briefly touch against his. "I'm fine, Kurt. Not every stray thunderstorm is my doing, you know."
"Ah. Yes. Of course." The tail relaxes. "I only - "
"I know." A chuckle. "It's a valid assumption." And she speaks of how the Professor pressed a mental inquiry her way that morning, how even Logan has given her a wide berth for most of the day.
She does not speak of how the earth's axis, stretched straight through her and turning in a smooth, gentle hum to the beat of her very heart, gave a sharp wobble as if struck off-kilter. She does not speak of how it has never done that, not ever, since she manifested.
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On the second day, the complaints begin.
"Come on, Ms. Munroe, could we please have a little sunshine?"
"Seriously. I mean, I know the rain's important, and it can't be sunny twenty-four seven unless we want the planet to fry up or something, but I'm sick of sitting around inside!"
"I know! I wanna go out and play baseball! I - "
"She's not your personal climate control system, Madrox." Bobby cuffs Jamie over the back of the head, lightly enough so as not to spawn any more copies of the child, and gives Ororo a bright grin. "Sorry, ma'am. You know how it is with kids these days."
But the guarded, uneasy look that flickers across his face does not go unnoticed. She rests a hand on his shoulder, murmurs, "I shall do what I can," and walks away before he can stammer out an embarrassed apology.
She must not control, she learned long ago; she must cooperate. In exchange for allowing her to call upon its strength in times of need, she knows she must let the natural storms churn and thunder until they are spent. Only in an emergency may she raise her hands to defy their winds.
Perhaps that is why she feels ill when she does try that night, standing on the roof of the mansion with her face upraised to the pounding water, fingers spread wide as she shouts for it to cease. The axis wobbles once more, and she nearly collapses; it is only a hurriedly-conjured swirl of wind that keeps her aloft.
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The ones with families have left by the tenth day. The ones without push on as best they can; the staff continues to teach until they can no longer be heard over the winds.
Upstairs, her plants have bloated and died. The attic holds more overflowing buckets than vases nowadays, and the lights stammer and strobe in time with the lightning.
Ororo continues returning to the roof each night. Each time, it ends the same way. The thunder has become a steady, constant pressure at her temples now; the rain, the sweat that slips across her brow; the lightning, the jagged pains that slice at her gut. She cannot distinguish between what is hers and what is Ala's, the Earth Mother's - a mother who is striking her children, she thinks, a mother screaming in fury at their disobedience. Yet maybe if she reaches out once more tomorrow, tries to soothe, to placate....
There is the claustrophobia of closets that she knows too well: the slow constriction, the shaking, the crushing weight that comes with no escape. Then there is the claustrophobia that comes on the fifteenth day: of reaching out along the sweeping currents and finding she cannot - of touching the lightning and finding, inexplicably, a cry of pain gushing from her lungs. Ororo holds her burned hands beneath the faucet and trembles. Outside, the rain tumbles on.
She does not go back to the roof after that night.
She no longer knows what will be her undoing.
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On day eighteen, she finds a leatherbound Bible on the kitchen table. A ragged slip of paper, torn from a page of the New York Times ("we've ever seen,' said chief meteorologist Allen Walters. 'All we can say is we are in the midst of a global pheno") marks its place in the eighth chapter of the Book of Genesis. Underlined in badly smudged pencil is a section of verse twenty-one: Ich will hinfort nicht mehr die Erde verfluchen um der Menschen willen; denn das Dichten und Trachten des menschlichen Herzens ist böse von Jugend auf. Und ich will hinfort nicht mehr schlagen alles, was da lebt, wie ich getan habe.
"I believe this is yours?" she says quietly to Kurt the next morning, pressing the book into his grasp. Her own hands waver and tremble against her will. He flushes purple and accepts it with a gracious, "Danke, Fraulein," and neither of them mention it again.
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All the roads leading in and out of Salem Center have washed away by day nineteen.
The mansion's power, both primary and backup, is gone by day twenty.
By day twenty-two, the Danger Room is under nine feet of water. A bucket chain stretches through the open doors of Cerebro, where waves lick at the edges of the platform and inch over the slick chrome. In the dining room, the students are pelted with fist-sized hail and have to overturn their cereal bowls to use as shields as they run, screaming, for cover.
In the attic, huddled among the corpses of horticulture, thin coils of electricity twitch between Ororo's still fingers. Her eyes are the permanent milky white of the blind, and stare at nothing, and everything.
Sixty miles away, under the roiling clouds, a wall of water heaves itself upon Manhattan.
.
[finis]