Ororo is roused from her sleep by thunder, as something within her responds gleefully. She is reminded of the day she first controlled a storm, clinging to the top of a slippery-wet tree. But then lightning sneaks in the small cracks in the blinds, like a camera's flash, and leaves Ororo with a picture of the room. The room that is decidedly not her room at Xavier's.
The room is dark again, and she lets the sound of the raindrops overwhelm her. Tentatively, hoping to end this nightmare, she reaches out with her power. Pause, she tells the rain. Stop. Oh, please, stop for me. Nothing. It is not a nightmare; it is reality. The only rain she's changed is the tear rolling down her cheek as she fingers the scar from the dart, pulls her blankets—scratchy, unfamiliar blankets—tighter around her, and tries to sleep.
She dreams. She clings to the tree again, but the lightening finds her, and she falls. The rain stings her as she lies in the mud. The missiles comes racing towards the jet—her friends are in it, she has to do something—tornadoes dot the sky, but the jet is drawn in and ripped apart. She is again falling, her friends and students falling around her.
"Why did she do it?" the students ask. "Why? Why did Professor Storm take it? Why would the Headmistress do such a thing? Take the cure? Abandon the school? Why?"
"I thought about taking it once, and she knew. She talked to me. She comforted me. She said that we didn't need a cure, because it wasn't a disease. She said it was a gift. So I stayed. But she took it."
Logan stares at the empty bottle, daring it to move now that its contents are all in his stomach. It doesn't take the offer. So in one swift motion, he draws his arm back, extends his claws, releases. The beer bottle shatters. A shard of glass hits his arm, opening a bright cut. But the skin quickly regrows, and not a trace is left.
He hates feeling indebted to anyone, and all he can see, over and over, is one image. Spinning around just as a dart filled with the Cure strikes Storm in the shoulder, Storm, who moments ago was feet away, who must have lunged forward lest the dart strike Wolverine.
He knows he would have been miserable had the dart hit him, had he been "Cured," one of the ranks of pussy ex-mutants. But he knows just as well that Storm is miserable, that Ororo loves her power, that Ororo would never give it up. He knows that Storm knows that he loves Jean.
But Ororo sacrificed her powers for his, and Logan doesn't understand why. And he doesn't like debt, so with one last glare at the beer bottle, he grabs his coat and sets off for the lonely hotel room that Storm has found.
He knocks on the door. No answer. Well, he knows this is the correct room, and he is not one for patience. He is also slightly inebriated, so he extends one claw, and breaks into the lock. He leaves the door open, and the light from the hallway illuminates his friend, who sits up in bed, hair tousled, eyes unfocused.
"Logan?" she asks. "Why are you here?"
"Because," he responds. He almost takes a step towards her, but hesitates, one hand on the door-frame. "Why'd you do it?"
Ororo says nothing. She is rubbing her eyes, trying to clear her head.
"Why?" he repeats. "I could have taken the loss of my powers as well as you are."
"Logan," she says.
"I don't need you to save my dignity at your own expense." A touch of anger grows in his voice.
She echoes it in her own. "Logan, you idiot, you would have died."
"What?"
"I'd like to see even you live with adamantium-coated bones and no healing power."
Wolverine pauses. "Oh."
She makes a noise of exasperation, lies back, and turns away from him, to settle into sleep again.
"Well, are you gonna come back to the school? The kids miss you."
"Eventually," she says. "Maybe in the morni…" Her voice trails off.
Logan glances at his watch. 3:18. It's raining out, and his head hurts. So he closes the door, kicks off his boots, and lies down next to Ororo on the double bed.
This time, her dreams are of shared meals and laughter with her friends.