Title: "Tears of the Earth and Sky"
Author: Pirate Turner
Rating: PG-13
Summary: An attack brings memories back to Ororo on her way home to T'Challa, memories that she finds she can keep at bay no longer . . .
Warnings: Femme Slash
Spoilers: References to Ororo and Kitty's status in the comics as well as their past time in Australia and Excalibur. All are rather brief spoilers, nothing major.
Word Count (excluding heading): 481
Challenge: Turner's Quickie X-Men style for 7-4-10
Disclaimer: Ororo "Storm" Munroe, Katheryne "Kitty" "Shadowcat" Pryde, T'Challa, Excalibur, and the X-Men are & TM Marvel comics and Disney, not the author, and are used without permission. Count Dracula is & TM himself, no one else. (Got a problem with that, take it up with him! Don't look at me, and don't look into his eyes!) Everything else is & TM the author. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.

The tall, beautiful woman's eyes were sad and downcast as she walked the lonely pathway to her new home. Her thoughts were a thousand miles from where her booted feet were carrying her, but still she took the steps, knowing that her future must lay within the arms of her current husband and partner. A pair of strong, muscular arms suddenly reached from the dark alley, snaked around her lithe body, and swiftly pulled her into the deep shadows.

Ororo did not scream. Her blue eyes flashed in response as she took in the creature who kept her arms wrapped around her body and one hand covering her mouth. The woman who held her was no more a woman than she was the African Princess whose role she was struggling to fill. As the Vampiress bared her fangs, lightning raced from Ororo's body to fill the monster's. The Vampiress screamed as the lightning exploded along every inch of her nerves. She fell to the ground, thrashing and trembling in pain, and Ororo took to the skies.

Thoughts and memories she'd tried but failed to bury raced through her mind as she remembered another night that seemed like a lifetime ago, although it was only years, when she had fallen under the control of the Master Vampire himself, Count Dracula. Only one woman had been able to break the spell that had held Ororo prisoner, and the young girl had filled Ororo with feelings she'd never thought she could possibly feel, feelings that she knew she should not have for any child, especially not a girl child.

Ororo longed for those touches again as lightning struck the night sky like primitive cries from her soul. She was not the woman she was trying to be, but she also could not be the woman she ached to be. She could not allow herself to love a woman who had only ever looked at her with the trusting eyes of a child who gazed upon her older best friend who was far more, to her, like a mother than she could ever be a lover.

"Ah, Kitten," Ororo cried, her words lost in the rising winds of the storm that her anguished emotions conjured. "Where fore art thou? Why did you leave me?" Kitty had proven to her how little she loved her in the same way that Ororo loved her when she had chosen to stay with Excalibur after discovering that the X-Men were alive. "I was only trying to protect you," she whispered as hot tears fell down her face.

"But you failed," a tiny voice from deep within the Earth cried. "You failed, and I paid the price. You left me." Tears streaked down both women's faces as Ororo heard the call but knew she was powerless to answer, and so it was that the earth and the sky cried together.

The End