Wildfire II Fire's Price

by EGrace

This story is the second in the Wildfire Trilogy. It follows Fire's Rising.

Title: Fire's Price, Book II of The Wildfire Trilogy

Author: Elizabeth Grace

Dated: May 2007

Environ: X2: X-Men United

Categories: English / 42,100 words / Adventure; Angst; Drama; Sci Fi

Rating: "M" This story is intended for mature audiences age 16 and over. It contains scenes of explicit sexuality and includes some mild language.

Disclaimer: The Wildfire Trilogy is written by a fan for fans for the sole purpose of enjoyment. It is not intended to infringe upon copyrights held by 20th Century Fox, Marvel Enterprises, X-Men creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, authors and screenwriters Tom DeSanto, Bryan Singer, David Hayter, Zak Penn, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, and Simon Kinberg, or any other licensed holders of copyrights to the X-Men comic books or movies.

Distribution: I'd be honored if fellow fans create links on their sites to this story or share it with even more fans via distribution lists. I would ask only that you give credit (or blame, as the case may be) to the author. A little advance warning of your intentions would also be nice.

Feedback: Definitely welcome, whether good, bad, or indifferent. "That which does not kill me will only make me stronger."

Spoilers: The Wildfire Trilogy (Fire's Rising, Fire's Price, Fire's Promise) is meticulously threaded through the three X-Men movies. You can't read these stories without at least a passing recollection of the movies, nor can you read these stories without learning what happens in the movies.

Acknowledgements: I never would have written this if I hadn't fallen in love with the X-Men comic books when I was a kid. The characters inspired me, the stories enthralled me, and to this day, Storm remains one of my favorite characters of all time.

Premise: I hated X3. I hated that Scott was marginalized and no one seemed to care what was happening to him; I hated that Jean was so obviously open to Logan's advances; and I hated that she killed Scott and did whatever to the Professor. So what if there had been someone else there all along, another mutant going through trials and tribulations of her own, who could put a different spin on things?

Notes: I only saw X3 once and have no plans to see it again. So if there's anything in The Wildfire Trilogy which conflicts with X3, that's why.

One last thing: Try not to get too worked up over how far I roamed from X-Men canon with Scott. First of all, the movie screenwriters went off the page long before I did. But mostly, I figured the guy got such a raw deal in X3, he deserved a little bit of fun and undivided attention.

X2 One

Another clear night. Lili leaned back against the soft leather seat and simply stared at the shining blanket of stars that wrapped the skies above Nellis Air Force Base. The wind whipped her hair furiously about--she'd have another snarled mess to comb out--but Lili didn't care. The cool night air, still a surprize to her, felt wonderful against her skin and lifting her hair. With the top down and the skies alight and that smooth sound of the engine as Scott pushed his prized Boxter S to its limits, this half hour drive to the bunker smack in the middle of the Tonopah Test Range was her absolute favorite part of the day. When she could let her mind go blank. When the flames lay quiet and sultry and almost unnoticed within her. When Scott was focused on his driving and Lili no longer had to worry that with one careless word or gesture she would ruin everything.

Scott down-shifted, took the last turn, and Lili closed her eyes. Five more minutes of peace and silence, tops, and then they'd be back at it. She didn't know how much more of this she could take. Those first few days, on the road and then getting settled at the hotel and finding their way around Amargosa Valley, had been so much fun they'd passed in a blur of discovery and easy laughter and Scott's infectious optimism. But they'd been at this now for two weeks, for hours at a time every night, and almost from the first Lili'd been fighting to control not her power, as she'd expected, but the desperate, aching arousal that hammered through her every time she looked at the very pattern she was trying to help Scott see.

Just relax, she admonished herself, as she did every night. Relax, breathe, focus on the flames and why you're here and how incredibly important this is to Scott. And don't let him see.

She didn't dare. This was her problem, not his, and she just couldn't let his struggle for control end because of hers. It would have been one thing if she'd been unable to control her power, but not because of this.

The car came to a stop and the engine cut out, and Lili sighed deeply and opened her eyes. The bunker didn't look like much from the outside, but then, she assumed that was the point. She reached for the seatbelt.

"Lili?"

Something in Scott's voice, in his stillness, made her pause and look up at him. He was giving her that look again, watching her so intensely it felt like he could see every thought in her head. Could he see that? Did he already know?

"I just wanted to thank you," he said, soft and low in the desert night. "I know you're frustrated--I am, too. But it means a lot to me that you're willing to keep trying."

She didn't think they were frustrated in quite the same way, but she appreciated the thought. "Until we can prove this one way or the other, I'm not going anywhere, Scott. I know how important this is to you."

His lips tightened. "I wish I could make Jean understand."

She wasn't sure he expected an answer, but she had one anyway. "She will," Lili said calmly, unbuckling her seatbelt and getting out of the car.

He laughed as he got out as well, but it wasn't a happy sound. "What makes you so sure?"

Lili wasn't really used to touching people yet, but she was getting better at understanding Scott Summers. He was so controlled in everything he did that the best way to reassure him was, quite simply, a touch. Lili rounded the hood of the Porsche and laid her hand lightly on his arm--a safe enough spot, especially with his X-Men uniform and her heat-resistant clothing between them--as she looked up at him. "I've seen how deeply you love each other, Scott, and I just can't imagine anything that two people who feel like that wouldn't be able to work out."

"I don't know," he said, shifting uneasily to stare blankly past her. "We talk every day, but Jean's become… distant. Distracted. Like something's going on but she can't--or won't--talk to me about it. Not even when I ask her point blank. She just shrugs it off and changes the subject."

"Maybe whatever's going on isn't as important as you think, and Jean just doesn't want to distract you," Lili pointed out. "What we're doing here does take a fair amount of concentration."

"What we're trying to do here," he sighed.

"Hey," she waved her finger at him. "We started at the low end of my powers and took our time for more than one reason, and they were all very good ones." Thank God, or she might not have been able to keep that pulsing need under wraps. But Scott didn't need to know that. At least, not if she could help it. Lili made herself smile. "Where's your visor, Cyclops? We've got work to do."

This time his laugh was light, his smile easy, and Scott held up his visor in one hand and grabbed at hers with the other and together they entered the bunker.

Sergeant Nichols had left everything ready for them. Another of the Professor's "contacts." Lili didn't know if he had a mutation or not, and she didn't really care. He'd given them the passes that got them on base and the key card that got them into the bunker and the numeric code that opened the doors to the hardened chamber where they worked. Every night he looped the security cameras and opened the external vents so she'd have somewhere to send the heat, and every night he left them alone, nothing more than the daily base newspaper left behind in the chamber's anteroom to prove to them that he'd been there.

They left their things on the table with the paper, Scott swapped his glasses for his visor, and just like that it was time. Scott closed the door behind them, and Lili led the way to the center of the spartan room and its only furniture, two cold, uncomfortable metal chairs. She sat, breathed deeply, and slowly turned her focus inward.

Heat. Locked in the embers that smoldered and shimmered deep within her. She'd hated them, she'd feared them, she'd never had much use for them. Until now. For the first time in her life, the fires that lay at the heart of her might be able to do something, namely help her first, best friend in the entire world control the power that filled him. Lili stirred the embers to life, flames sparking in the darkness, then rising and dancing, higher and higher, until she reached the exact point where they'd stopped the night before.

Now the hard part.

Lili braced herself and opened her eyes. How beautiful, that dazzling, complicated, intensely sensual pattern that existed at the core of the power that pulsed within Scott Summers. Now that she knew it was there, she could barely pull her eyes from it. It sang to her, it called to her, it wrapped her in its searing crimson light and rocked her with its wildly exciting beat and lashed her with wave after wave of throbbing, aching desire.

Focus, Lili. Dear God, you've got to focus.

She blinked, blinked again, dragged cool, dry air into her lungs and drew herself back from that seductive brilliance inch by inch until she found that delicate balancing point--close enough to see the pattern, far enough away not to lose herself in it. Then, finally, she offered her hands to Scott.

He didn't hesitate, his gloved hands settling firmly over hers, the warmth of the leather a mere match in comparison to the conflagration inside her.

Degree by single, exact degree, Lili stoked her powers higher. And higher. And ever, slowly, higher. Scott's power twisted and flashed and crackled, louder in her ears and more radiant in her sight with each moment, that throbbing, incandescent crimson glow rising to match the intensity of the burning heat she commanded no matter how far back she tried to stay, the ache within her matching it and growing to a blazing intensity. Rampant desire pulled at her, howling, demanding--

She stopped, holding at a temperature that would have melted steel if she'd loosed it, and carefully backed herself off that knife's edge of blinding, shuddering, breathtaking need.

Be strong. Be strong. You must stay in control. Focus on why you're here, Lili. Focus!

With infinite care Lili reached farther into the flames burning high and hard within her, enfolding herself in their brilliance, strengthening herself with their heat and their power. She braced herself again, she looked again, and trembled under a fresh onslaught of searing desire.

But she held. She held.

Carefully, slowly, she stoked the flames another degree, held there for an endless moment to make sure she still had control. And then another--just that one degree hotter--once more tightening her control against that endless, aching need. And in a single, swelling, heart-stopping instant a fiery tendril of her power rippled and flared and arced toward Scott.

Lili snatched her hands away from his and slammed her eyes shut and threw herself backwards. Flames roaring within her, she felt herself falling, felt the impact of her back against the chair as she hit the floor, but there was nothing in her ears but the snarling crackle of wildfire. Twisting flames rolled her to her feet and shimmered violently behind her closed eyes, but she still had control. She still had control. She'd pulled away in time.

She opened her eyes to a world glowing red and orange and gold and found Scott's glittering form, pressed to the far wall to put as much distance between them as possible. He hadn't left her. She'd known he wouldn't. But from that far away, the siren's pull of his powers to hers was only softly, teasingly seductive. And from that far away, her powers wouldn't ignite his. They were still safe. For now.

But there was no backing down easily from this much power. Lili gathered the heat within and stretched her arms wide and discharged everything in two blazing fireballs. They scorched the cement walls and buckled the vents and screamed down the tubes and blew out into the night a half mile away on either side of the bunker.

Abruptly Lili could hear her own harsh breathing, could feel the cement floor beneath her feet and her hands fisting with the desire that still sizzled through her entire body, and as the flames faded, she could finally see the two chairs upended in the middle of the room and the shock and concern on Scott's face.

He straightened when he realized she was looking back at him, but he didn't come closer. "Are you all right?"

It still shook her, to hear him asking after her before anything else. "I'm fine, Scott," she nodded.

"What happened?"

"My powers almost ignited yours again. Did you feel it?"

"I did," he said, his voice tight not with fear, but with something else. "A second after I realized I could actually see the pattern."

It took a long, breathless moment for his words to penetrate, for the look of wonder dawning on his face to make sense. In that next, stunned instant she wanted to dance and cry and laugh out loud as his words exploded in her mind like a triumphant display of fireworks and drenched her heart with joy. He'd seen it--he'd actually seen the pattern. She'd done it. She knew the exact length, width, and breadth of the heat it took within her to show him his power. Lili was half way across the room to him before the rest of the implications made her feet falter, dread roiling in her belly with all that sexual tension she simply didn't know how to release.

Scott hadn't noticed. Grinning, shaking, he didn't stop, reaching for her and sweeping her off her feet and holding her so fiercely that she could feel him from the top of her head pressed to his shoulder to her knees brushing against his.

All that hard, rippling strength, the rich laughter and sweet breath in her ear, the lush male scent of him filling her nostrils-- This was wanting, so bad she couldn't breathe any more, so wild she couldn't think or speak or even remember her name.

No, no, no-- Panicked, overwhelmed, she pushed violently against his chest and stumbled away from his hands, from his heat, even--especially--from the confusion and care for her coming off him in waves. She turned away, desperate for distance and time alone, and tripped, falling hard to her hands and knees and shrinking away from the hands still stretched out to help her. Scott froze, and the realization pummeled her heart and soul that she'd just hurt him beyond words with her complete lack of control. No. Oh, no.She'd tried so hard, all this time, but she'd ruined everything anyway. He'd seen--he knew--and he'd hate her for it. She turned away from him and wondered where she'd find the strength to face him again. Would she have to leave now? What on earth was she going to do?

"Just breathe, Lili," Scott quietly begged. "Breathe. I won't touch you again. I'm all the way over here, all right?"

Dully, numbly, Lili nodded and closed her eyes and sank back on her heels and just breathed. For long, painful moments, it was all she could do.

She had no idea how long they sat there. She knew to the degree what she was doing in that room, but every single night she lost all sense of time. Burning was instants and eternities to her. Every single night, she'd relied on Scott to keep track of the time. So all she did, long after she'd gotten her breathing under control and stopped shaking, was sit there in that endless, aching silence, until Scott shifted with that first hint of restlessness and Lili knew he'd waited long enough. Her time was up.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. It was pitiful, but it was true, and it was all she had.

"I don't understand," Scott admitted. "What just happened? What are you sorry for?"

He hadn't put it together after all. She'd have to tell him. She'd have to actually say the words. The shaking started again, deep inside, where she couldn't stop it. Lili pressed her eyes closed more tightly and drew a ragged breath into her lungs, but it didn't help. She wanted to hide in the darkness behind her closed eyes, didn't think she could bear to see his faith in her shatter, but this was Scott. He was the one person in the world she'd happily die for. Could leaving for him be any worse? Disappointing him might be. But no matter what it meant for her, she owed Scott the truth. She would never lie to him, and she'd just proven that she couldn't keep this to herself any more. She couldn't handle this alone. But maybe he'd know how… Maybe together, they'd have the strength. How many times had he told her she wasn't alone any more? Lili raised her head and looked him straight in his ruby red eyes. But where to begin?

He saw her hesitation. "Just tell me the truth, Lili. Whatever it is, we'll deal with it. Don't you trust me enough yet to believe that?"

"I do," she insisted, raw and as open as she knew how to be. At least she could give him that much. "The one I can't trust any more is myself."

"For what? Lili, will you please just tell me what the hell is going on?"

She opened her mouth, but the words stuck in her throat. God, she was such a coward. But… maybe she could work her way up to it. Lili cleared her throat and tried again.

"I know how much heat I have to generate in me for you to see the pattern now. It's a lot. Not the highest I've gone, but less than a degree away from the level of heat that will ignite your powers."

"I know--I told you I felt it. But that's why we're here, in the middle of nowhere in the hottest part of the country. So you have a means and a place to release the heat without incinerating either of us. We knew we might burn together when we came out here, Lili. I thought you were all right with trying this, at least once. It scares me, too, but we pulled out of it before--and that was when we weren't expecting it and when we hadn't had two weeks to build up your strength. Are you saying you've changed your mind? That you don't want to risk it now?"

It was all she could do to stay where she was, to ignore the need still echoing in her entire body and the naked longing in his eyes, his voice, in his very posture. But he didn't want her. He never would. He loved Jean. And what he longed for, what he did want from her, was control. If only she could control herself and give him that. "If it was just the risks of burning together, I'd gladly take them," she swore to him. "But… that's not the only problem."

Frowning, he crouched tensely on the floor half way across the room. "Are you going to tell me now why you just jerked away from me like I've got the plague?"

"I told you, Scott. It's not you, it's me."

God, how could she say this? How could she tell him? What words would make her not feel and be so stupidly, miserably weak? She'd always been in control before, but ever since that first day at the school… Who'd have thought that becoming more powerful and breaking free of Max would turn her into a wreck now, shaking on the floor, unable to deny something so shameful in herself that she couldn't even put it into words.

"I shouldn't have hugged you like that, should I?" Scott softly, gently asked. "Is this still about Max? Did he… Lili, did he do more than hit you?"

"No," she shook her head. "No. Max never touched me like that. You forget he always knew what was inside of me. I wasn't even human to him, much less a woman he could do that to."

"Then it is me, isn't it?" She couldn't believe he'd say that, couldn't believe he was sitting there, generously ready to take the blame for a weakness in her that he didn't even understand. "I'm really sorry, Lili. I've gotten so comfortable around you that I forget you don't like to be touched. From now on I promise I'll remem--"

"Please stop," she whispered hoarsely, finally turning away, her heart breaking with sadness. He was such a wonderful friend, the best person she'd ever met, and she didn't deserve him. She didn't think she could bear this. "Scott, it's not you."

The silence this time felt like burning--instants and eternities, flickering one to another to the next. She didn't hear him cross the room to her, had no idea how long he sat next to her, but it felt like only a moment later that the gentle pressure of his gloved fingertips at her chin was lifting her face and her eyes back to his.

"Lili, please. What aren't you telling me?"

She owed him everything. She had to tell him. Even if he hated her for her weakness. Better that than to betray his trust. Lili swallowed, hard.

"When I'm burning… and I look at your power…"

"You see that pattern," he prompted when she faltered.

Lili nodded. "It's so beautiful. Like nothing else in the world. When I look at your power it dazzles me, until I can't look away from it. I hear it, too, like some kind of primal drumming. And I feel it, like this massive wave of--of heat, crashing against me over and over. It gets in my blood and my body and my head and every single breath and I… Scott, I…"

She couldn't do it after all. She couldn't bear to look him in those clear, trusting red eyes. Lili dropped her gaze, until she was staring at some stupid, safe patch of bare cement just past his shoulder. "What I feel when I look at your power is wanting," she managed, her voice so soft he had to lean closer to hear, "for you, so wild and so desperate I'm afraid of losing myself in it."

"Wanting?" he repeated, stunned. He really hadn't seen it. "It makes you want me? Has this-- Has this been going on since we first came out here?"

She nodded, shame rising over her in a sharp, staggering wave.

He stood, drawing her gaze. She watched him pace, absurdly relieved and abjectly hungry for him with every single step he took away from her. She followed his hands as he ran them through his hair, as he absently reached to right the chairs, her mouth going dry with need, her soul shredding just a little bit more to realize exactly how badly she wanted those hands on her. She had to look away. She had to. She clenched her fists and ignored every other impulse in her mind and body except the one that would force her head to turn away.

For God's sake, Lili, get yourself under control.

She was still a long way away when she realized he'd stopped pacing, that he'd returned to stand next to her. "Lili, why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"

She needed more space. She couldn't have him looming over her like that. "Because this is so important to you," she stammered, standing, sucking in air and rubbing her arms and carefully sidling a few steps away. "Because you were counting on me and I wanted to do this for you. Because it's wrong for me to feel this way about you and I didn't want you to know. Because up until now… Scott, it just didn't matter. Not as long as I was in control."

"Until now? You mean, when I touched you?"

"I'm so sorry," she said again, clutching at her arms now. "Once we're done each night it still takes me hours to get myself under control. When you touched me I just wasn't ready. I didn't mean--"

"I'm not offended, Lili," he reassured her. "I wasn't even before you explained. I was far more afraid that I'd upset you in some way."

She hadn't hurt him that way. She tried to smile--one less burden she'd have to bear--but there was an ever greater hurt she was about to give him. One more step he had to take. Scott stiffened, and Lili knew he'd figured it out. His gaze jerked to hers.

"But I have to touch you to see…"

Miserably she nodded. "It's so much worse when I'm burning, and controlling it gets harder with every degree hotter we go. If I lose control of it at those temperatures… If I lose control of myself when we're burning together…"

"Anything could happen," he finished for her, disappointment edging the words and cutting through her like a knife. She would rather have taken the worst beating of her life from Max himself than put those awful, painful longings and her utter failure into words and destroy Scott's hopes.

There was no going back now. And she had no idea how to go forward. The only thing she did know was that killing Scott's dream of control once and for all hurt a thousand times worse than she ever could have imagined. It was too much, too damned much, welling inside her and shaking her and burning in her lungs with each breath she took. She couldn't even stand still with it any more.

"Lili?"

Keep moving. She heard the concern in his voice, knew she would see it in his face and his eyes if she stopped long enough to look at him. Except she didn't dare.

"I just need a minute," she gasped, her chest aching, her hands shaking so hard it took three tries to open the door. She broke into a run, desperate for air, for space, for the wide open desert, for heat--

She was already burning when she hit the outer door at a dead run. With a thought she blew the door off its hinges, metal screaming as the heat buckled the door and ripped the hinges apart. The door whistled through the air and with a desperate twist of heat she pushed the falling door past Scott's Porsche, even kept the air close to the car cool and untouched. But that was the last of her control.

She let everything go then, feet pounding against the hard desert ground, dragging air into her lungs and running into darkness and loosing the roiling, crackling heat and fueling it with everything churning inside her until it burst and shrieked and burned like wildfire through her.

Burning-- Burning! Nothing but flames and fire and this glorious HEAT. Luminous in her eyes--dancing down her body--lancing through her fears--lashing her heart and searing her very soul and lifting-- Lifting--

She was BURNING. She was crackling HEAT rising through the darkness and molten, twisting FLAMES writhing and shrieking and climbing higher and higher and ever higher in the air. She was power. She was freedom. She was purifying, exultant FIRE. She was… flying…

X2 Two

Wanting.

Wanting.

The word had been ricocheting around his brain, behind his eyes, with that flowing, pulsing, crimson power for hours now. Restlessly Scott pulled his gloves off and tossed them into the Porsche's back seat, then drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, but nothing he'd done had helped, and that certainly didn't. It wasn't any easier to think about, to feel, than it had been when Lili had first said that stunning word.

What I feel when I look at your power is wanting, for you, so wild and so desperate I'm afraid of losing myself in it.

He knew exactly what she meant. He'd only tasted it that one time, for just those few minutes when they'd accidentally burned together, but it was something he knew he'd never forget. It had taken serious effort to bury that memory and those feelings far enough that Jean and the Professor would hopefully never pick up on them. He'd planned to ignore that part of the experience for the rest of his life, thought that it was some momentary aberration, especially since they'd been at this now for two weeks and he hadn't felt it again. Hour after hour, night after night, he'd sat there and watched her burning eyes and focused on his own power with every last scrap of his being. He'd learned to feel the movement of his power more keenly than ever before--he'd heard it, he'd finally seen it within him--but he hadn't felt so much as the first stirring of that insanely wild, burning desire again.

But Lili had. So badly that she'd run from it. He couldn't believe she'd been fighting those feelings for two weeks and he'd never even suspected that anything at all was wrong. Why hadn't she told him?

She was ashamed of feeling that way, you idiot. And desperate to prove herself to you.

He wished she hadn't run from him. That she'd stayed and given him the chance to reassure her that everything was still fine between them… and even that he understood. Maybe if he'd mentioned what he'd felt before, she would have said something sooner. Or maybe not. One thing he had realized in the last few weeks was that, as desperately as he wanted organic control over his powers, Lili wanted just as badly to give that to him. She'd looked even more disappointed than he'd felt, perhaps because he'd recognized this as a long shot from the beginning. Of course, he hadn't expected wanting to be what brought this experiment to a crashing stop.

Wanting. Damn it. How the hell were they going to deal with wanting between them?

He needed to talk to Lili. They needed to clear the air and move past this. But where was she? She'd burned her way out of that bunker and been gone for hours. He'd propped the ruined door up until he and Sergeant Nichols could replace it. He'd paced, he'd sat in the bunker, he'd sat in the car when he couldn't take those four cement walls another second, he'd tried to be patient, tried to give her whatever time she felt she needed to get herself back under control. But it was already four thirty in the morning, already an hour after when they normally would have called it a night and left the bunker. Dawn was no more than another hour away. They needed to go.

Scott pushed himself up and out of the Porsche and headed into the desert, following the faint trail of Lili's footprints. She'd probably just lost track of the time, like she did when she was burning. He hoped she wasn't sitting out there somewhere because she couldn't bear to see him. Or that she'd been so distracted by everything that she'd gotten herself hurt. Whatever the reason she hadn't come back yet, he needed to find her now.

And then her trail simply disappeared. He stopped and adjusted his visor, but there was nothing else in the hard ground to tell him which way she'd gone. Slowly Scott turned all the way around, scanning the ground at his feet to the horizon and back again, but there was nothing in sight except the dark void in the shape of the bunker several hundred feet behind him.

Now what? He didn't have too many options. Lili hadn't had her communicator on, and he couldn't exactly drive the Porsche out into the desert to search for her. Maybe the Professor could reach her using Cerebro. Except he didn't really want to have to explain this to the Professor. Not yet, at any rate. Sighing, Scott made sure the bunker was at his back again and just started walking in the same direction Lili's footprints had been headed before they'd disappeared.

He'd only gone a half mile or so when a heat signature caught his eye. Scott adjusted his visor, frowning. That was definitely a heat trail, but either there was a mountain out there he didn't know about, or that couldn't possibly be Lili--it was at least a thousand feet in the air. But if that wasn't Lili, who was shooting what on a test ground that was supposed to be deserted for another six weeks?

It dropped in altitude and changed direction, heading for him, and Scott began to wonder if he was going to have to shoot down whatever it was. He tensed, hand to his visor as he tracked the heat trail. Except it leveled, roaring past him two hundred feet or so overhead before looping back around in a twisting, spiraling ascent and… laughing.

Laughing? No, he couldn't possibly be hearing what he thought he was hearing. That couldn't possibly be Lili. Lili couldn't fly. She couldn't. She'd never…

But what did "never" mean to a mutant? He started running after her.

Lili had never made anything at all burn, until one day something at that circus had scared her as a child. And she'd never burned out of control before, until that day in the warehouse, when Max had beaten her so badly and she'd been so terribly afraid. Two traumas, two leaps forward in her power. Now she was flying… Obviously she'd reached another level of her power. Had it happened because she was afraid of what his power made her feel? No, she'd put up with that for two weeks. She'd only run from him when he'd realized she wasn't going to be able to continue with their experiment. She'd been afraid of letting him down.

He tracked her for nearly another mile, patiently zigzagging beneath her as she tested her wings, understanding that whatever had happened in that bunker, whatever her reason for running away, this was why she hadn't returned yet. His first flight had been a long time ago, with a nice, solid plane around him, but he hadn't wanted it to end, either. He was finally closing on her when she blazed so high he could barely make her out and just as suddenly plummeted, spinning and twisting as gracefully as an Olympic diver. Scott stumbled to a stop and watched, spellbound, as she slowed, righting herself, and descended at last, the shimmering heat ebbing as she effortlessly pulled it back into her until she landed lightly on her feet. Half turned away from him, she reached to smooth her hair behind her ears, then wrapped her arms around herself and took several deep, calming breaths.

She didn't know he was there. Softly he called her name.

She spun to him, her face alight with joy, so wrapped up in the elation of her new ability that she started toward him without thinking. "Scott! Did you see--can you believe this? I know how to fly! It was so amazing up there, nothing but the burning and the sky and this freedom--I could do anything I wanted! God, I wish I could show you, but I can't even begin to describe it. What do you--"

And then memory reared up and belted her square in the stomach and she stopped cold, horror and pain and shame and even a little bit of fear chasing the joy away. He didn't think he could stand it.

For two weeks she'd sat and prepared herself and offered her hands to him. He'd never hesitated to take them. Now he smiled and offered his. "I saw, Lili. I've been watching you for the last fifteen minutes or so. You looked fantastic up there. Congratulations."

Slowly, her eyes searching his, she came the rest of the way to him until her fingers settled light as air on his hands. "You're not angry with me?"

"How could I be?" he gently admonished her, his fingers closing on hers. "You struggled every night for two weeks to show me the pattern to my power--and you did it. I can't thank you enough for that, Lili, especially now that I know how difficult it was for you. It's not your fault if there's something in me that makes it too dangerous for us to do anything more than that."

"I wanted to help you," she protested. "I still do. This trip was supposed to be about you, not me."

"I know. But it's all right. Look, I've got the visor and the glasses--it's like Jean said, I already have control. I already know I can live like this. More than that, I can be happy and live quite well, just the way I am."

"I know you're disappointed," she whispered, "and it's all my fault. I hate that I did that to you."

He had to take a deep breath to ease the tightening in his chest. "Of course I'm disappointed. I'd be lying if I said otherwise. But it's not with you--not in any way. I know you did everything you could. There is no fault here--no blame to be placed. This simply won't work. Maybe it's just time for me to face facts and give up on this particular dream and move on. You know better than most that we don't always get what we want."

"No, but--"

"Look, I'd rather go home and be with Jean and continue our work and enjoy and appreciate that you've discovered something wonderful about your powers than spend any more time chasing after something I simply won't ever be able to have."

It hurt, putting the death of his dream into words like that, but it was a familiar ache. He'd lived with it before, and he would again. Because maybe, someday… But right now, it was time to go. "Come on," he said, pulling gently at her hands. "We don't have much time until dawn now. Why don't we--"

"Wait," she said, suddenly breathless, shifting to grip his arms. "I think we should try again."

He shook his head. "You were right the first time, Lili. Even if I was willing to let you go through what looking at my power makes you feel--which I'm not--it's too dangerous to risk your control at that high a temperature."

"You don't understand," she insisted, her expression clearing until she was beaming up at him. "It's not that high--not any more. Flying happens at a whole new level of burning. I can't even tell you how much higher the temperature, because it's so much more."

"Then we really shouldn't be risking your control."

"But that's just it--my control is at a whole new level, too. Scott, I'm not afraid of burning together any more. Didn't you see me up there? I know I have complete control of my power now. No matter what the temperature."

"And the other?" he reminded her, hope stirring painfully in his chest again, but warring with the caution he'd always exercised when it came to his power. "What about the wanting, Lili? I can't put you through that again."

"Look at me," she said, stepping back and showing him her hands. They were rock steady. "Flying burned it all away. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in over a week."

"That doesn't mean you won't feel it again. Or that I--"

"Then let's find out," she said, the sound of wildfire in her voice, her eyes already burning. He stared, awed, realizing she'd just brought herself to power in no more than a heartbeat. She reached for him, and too late he understood what she was doing and tried to pull his hands away. She touched him anyway and he sucked in a startled breath, ready to yank his bare hands back, but Lili smiled and her fingers twined calmly through his.

"I still feel it," she acknowledged, "but it's all right, Scott. I'm strong enough now not to let it overwhelm me."

He couldn't doubt her--the frightened girl who'd been too ashamed to even look at him in that bunker now met his eye with confidence and strength. She was completely, almost eerily still and serene, so self-assured she was positively radiant with it.

"I can do this," she breathed, her eyes going unfocused and suddenly looking through him, and he heard the first hiss of rising flames.

"Wait--Lili--" He hadn't told her yet that he'd felt that wanting, too. But her lips parted and her grip tightened, their hands searing together palm to palm, and his vision began flickering between Lili's face in the darkness and a glittering ruby red pattern. His power…

"Can you see it?" she asked him, her voice oddly distant then right in his ear an instant later.

"Almost," he managed, stunned by the ease of her success. "It flashes in and out."

For the barest moment nothing happened, but in the next his vision shimmered and steadied until he was blind to everything but the crimson light of his power.

"Now?" he thought she said.

"I see it!" he shouted, hoping she could hear him. "I see it…"

He truly could see it, could hear it sizzling through him, could even sort of feel it, like a tingling humming in his blood. He reached with mind and heart and soul… but he couldn't touch it. He gathered himself and tried again, steeled himself and almost physically threw himself at it, but his power remained distant, as indifferent as it ever had been to his control.

"This isn't going to work," he admitted. He wasn't sure she could hear him, but he tried anyway to keep the crushing disappointment from his voice. But to finally come so insanely close--to see, with such perfect, startling clarity, what coiled within him--and not be able to touch it after all… It was a struggle to take his next breath.

"Hold on tight," he heard, like a moaning wind cutting through the desert brush, and his vision flared with the heat and white light of fire.

The crimson pattern of his power rose up to meet it, ablaze and roaring, that shockingly fierce excitement searing back into his consciousness. He was suddenly, stunningly burning, afire with heat and need, buffeted by howling flames that sang in his ears and scorched the very air in his lungs and pummeled relentlessly against the confines of his visor.

Dear God, were his eyes open? Lili! He recoiled--

And just like before she was there, her heat wrapping sensually around him as they burned together. But this time she steadied him, pulling and shaping the power and its driving needs, releasing them in steady bursts, shining shock waves that he felt and saw and heard as they radiated away from where he somehow knew he and Lili still stood.

I have control, the fires groaned and crackled in his head. Focus on the pattern. Learn it, then reach for it. Don't worry about the heat.

There was only truth in this all-encompassing fire, only heat and the simple, honest need to burn. He let go, trusting her, some part of him aware and in sync with each time she discharged another blast of the heat they were generating, and focused only on his power, on the intricacies of the design, tracing each layer with his eyes, letting each part of the pattern sear itself into his consciousness until he knew beyond doubt where it started and ended in its deadly, relentless circling within him.

It was time. He was ready. He tried to warn her, thought that he said her name, but he couldn't hear anything but the pulsing beat of his power riding the crackling song of hers, saw only the searing ruby light dancing rhythmically across white-hot flames. Need rose in him, an aching desire to touch and absorb and conquer, and he reached for the core of his power.

He touched blinding incandescence, reeled with deafening, rushing thunder, breathed in searing lightning and shattered beneath a surging tidal wave of endless, throbbing, fiery crimson need.

Lili!

He tried, but he couldn't let go of her, and she wouldn't let go of him, and he screamed as he dragged her under with him.

X2 Three

She heard Scott's warning, knew what he was about to do, and with the speed of burning thought she gathered as much blazing heat and light and swelling desire as she could and flung them safely away. He reached, and she braced herself, holding firm and steady in the center of the inferno they'd created. Her power and his, aflame and resonating in brilliant harmony, completely engulfing them, yet completely under her control.

And then the sun exploded, night turned to searing scarlet daylight inside her, rampant craving crashing over her and threatening to smash her mind to pieces. She tried to pull them out, clinging to the part of her that was Scott's presence in her mind and to what little remained of her control, but he couldn't hold on and she wouldn't let him face the firestorm alone.

She let go and plunged with him into a molten river of wild, raging desire. Together they breathed it and drank it, ached uncontrollably with it, until thought and consciousness and identity burned away on the wisp and flicker of flames, until there was nothing left but the need and the heat and the driving, mercurial rhythms of wildfire.

Wildfire… It dipped and they swayed with it. It flared, and they shuddered. It throbbed and they writhed, desperate to satisfy its heated demand. They tasted it, they stroked it, they clawed at it and pulsed with it and twisted and tore and thrust with its every capricious beat. It ground them into its scorching depths and lifted them to dizzying, breathless, white-hot heights, fusing them together in a cataclysm of explosive, radiant fury that burned for an instant--an eternity--that consumed every howling flame, every crimson ray, every last, searing ache of need-- The wildfire ebbed, finally sated--flickered lower and finally blew out with a last, quivering twist and--

She blinked in the cool darkness, gasping for breath, and wondered. At the weight on top of her, and the roughness at her back. At the sweat slicking her body and the fullness deep within. She reached with her mind and found… nothing. Trembling, bewildered, she reached with her hands and found--someone else--clinging to her, as shaken and as stunned as she. Instinct rested her hands lightly on his back and held her still beneath him, until memory trickled in and she knew her name. Lili. She was Lili.

That single word unlocked sense and meaning and dawning, horrified realization.

"Lili?" Scott rasped, raising his head. His body shifted with that one small movement and he felt what she had, that there was nothing but skin between them… and that he was still inside her. He sucked in a startled breath and froze, and Lili watched the pieces crash together in the eyes locked behind his ruby quartz visor--where they were, what they'd been trying to do, how it had all gone drastically, irreparably wrong.

"Oh my God," he whispered, but she heard the devastation, the anger, the disgust.

It was no less than she deserved.

Slowly, carefully, not looking at her, he eased his body off hers, and Lili rolled away and closed her eyes and dug her fingers into the dirt and let the bitter, scalding tears fall. This was what her choices had gotten her. This was where that wretched, God-forsaken heat smoldering within had brought her.

"You're nothing!"

How many times had Max told her that? She should have believed him.

The sudden sound of a zipper grated loud and harsh down her spine and jolted her half up. He was dressing. She swiped at her tears and groped frantically for what she could reach of her clothes. She couldn't be like this, couldn't be naked on the ground while he climbed into that imposing black uniform. But the tears wouldn't stop spilling hotly down her cheeks, and her body felt slow and thick and bruised from head to toe, and her hands were trembling so badly that she couldn't quite grasp the slick heat-resistant fabric. She yanked the top on any old way and somehow lurched to her feet and scrambled into the pants and shoved the boots on and couldn't even remember if there had been socks.

She didn't know what to do next. She could hear her breath, hitching in her throat, but she didn't know how to stop that sound. She could still feel wetness on her face, could taste its saltiness on her lips, but she couldn't stop crying. She blinked at dawn's first rays climbing over the horizon and didn't understand what was happening, could only watch stupidly as the light skimmed over blackened earth, pulverized stones, scorched brush, ashen dirt on her hands, as it glinted off what was left of the delicate scraps of fabric at her feet that had once been her-- She spun away from them, from everything the sun made her see--

Scott. Implacable and untouchable behind black armor and glinting, ruby red quartz. He clenched his fists and looked away and she flinched, staring across the gaping gulf between them, the shattering loss of his friendship and regard howling within her and igniting her exhausted, aching soul. He couldn't even bear to look at her. She'd destroyed everything.

"This is my fault," he said, the words a staccato beat of anger and bitter regret that pulsed beneath the whispering rush of mounting flames. She saw sheer, raw agony in his stiffness and clenched fists and the deep, flexing rise and fall of his chest as he struggled for breath, but the flames rose higher, a solid wall between them, until all she could see was glittering red and orange and gold, until his words burned away like the lie they were. She had done this to them. The lancing pain of that admission was extraordinary.

She stepped blindly back and reached for the heat. She wanted to burn, needed to burn, until there was nothing left of her to hurt any more.

She triggered the inferno and brought it to life, using her pain and fear and humiliation to stoke the flames into a roaring conflagration. It wanted freedom, longed for flight, but she shaped its molten fury and opened herself to it, held herself steady and still as it scalded her weakness and cauterized every gaping wound in her soul and purified the need until there was nothing left but the heart of her, locked safely behind shimmering, tempered walls of fire.

She was alone. And she was nothing but the fires. She forced the howling maelstrom down and poured it into the walls. And left them burning.

She blinked, and breathed again, and watched impassively as Scott slowly, cautiously lowered his hands from his face and straightened.

"Lili? What did you just do?"

She could look at him, hear his voice, and not hurt. The fiery walls she held deep within kept her safe. The distance between them now felt almost like comfort. She could do this. Her mind cleared until there was something after all, one thing left for her, one need that the fires hadn't burned away. She wanted to go home. She just didn't know where that was.

"Lili, please… I'm so sorry," Scott said, his voice low and thick with regret. "We have to talk about this. I just… I'd have done anything not to hurt you." The words hit the burning walls and crisped and disappeared in an instant. What he felt--what had happened--couldn't touch her any more.

She started walking. "I want to go home." That was all that mattered. She glanced around, finally spotting a dot on the horizon that just might be the bunker, and angled her steps across the scorched earth in that direction.

"Maybe you're right," he sighed heavily, running his hand through his hair as he turned to walk next to her. "This isn't the place for us to have this conversation."

She didn't want to have any conversation. All she wanted to do now was find her way home.

X2 Four

Scott didn't think he'd ever been this tired before in his entire life. And he hadn't felt this… lost since those first, shocked days after his power had manifested. Wearily he rubbed at his bristly jaw as another mile marker flashed past. Another mile, on a three-plus-day endurance test of his stamina behind the wheel. He'd really pushed himself, and now he was another mile closer to home. To Jean. But no closer to figuring out what to do.

He glanced aside, but Lili was sleeping again. Curled away from him in the seat, her long, chestnut hair burnished by the late afternoon sun and lifting gently about in the breeze from the open windows, her eyes hidden from him. But he didn't have to see her eyes to know she was really sleeping, as she had been for most of the trip. One more thing he was worried about.

She wouldn't talk to him. At all. She'd simply shut down, staring through him, not speaking unless it was an absolute necessity, not connecting to anyone or anything, sleeping all day long in the car and so hard at night that he'd had problems waking her each morning. Not that he blamed her. Not at all. He knew exactly what he'd put her through, and could definitely recognize a reaction to trauma when he saw one. He just didn't know how to get past it, not if she wouldn't even talk to him.

Not to mention he was down to his last two hours or so before he had to face the love of his life and tell her he'd had sex with another woman. Mind and body, he'd been completely overwhelmed--he hadn't had the first clue what was happening--but that didn't change the cold, stark fact that in his quest for control of his power he'd done something truly vile. What he didn't know was whether either of the women he'd hurt would ever be able to forgive him. Or if he could ever forgive himself.

God, he was exhausted. He hadn't slept well. His stomach had been churning for days. And he hadn't been able to get rid of a truly miserable headache. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. What the hell was he going to do?

REST STOP 2 MILES

He took it as a literal and a figurative sign. He'd talk to the Professor. Now.

They were two of the longest miles of his life, despite the speed he was doing. Scott forced himself to slow, taking the exit for the rest stop and circling until he found a spot in the shade and pulling the Boxter to an easy stop so he wouldn't wake Lili. He grabbed his cell phone and climbed quietly out of the car, walking over to a picnic table far enough away that Lili wouldn't hear, but close enough that he could keep an eye on her. Finally he sat, flipped the phone open, and punched in the speed dial for the Professor's private line.

He answered on the first ring. "Hello, Scott." Just hearing that warm voice full of welcome made it a little easier to breathe. "I thought I might be hearing from you today. Where are you?"

"Not far, Professor. A couple hours away yet."

"I assume you're ready to tell me what happened? An emailed 'It didn't work, we're coming home,' wasn't exactly helpful."

"I'm sorry," he softly replied, his throat tightening as he stared at Lili's sleeping form in the Porsche. "I couldn't… I didn't know what to say. I still don't. I just know I have to."

"Then start at the beginning. I'm here."

It was as if he'd been waiting to hear exactly those words, in exactly that gentle, soothing tone brimming with unqualified support. Everything spilled out of him, bare and raw and jagged. Everything he'd thought, everything they'd said and done, chosen and not chosen, everything.

When he finally ran out of words and stumbled to a stop, his mouth dry and his throat hoarse, he felt… lighter, like he could take a full breath again. Like maybe he could move without the awful fear that with one wrong gesture he would shatter.

"I'm so sorry, Scott," the Professor said, his voice heavy with regret. "I expected a lot of things to come out of this experiment, but… not this."

"I don't know what to do," Scott admitted, pleading, but he wasn't ashamed of that. Not with the Professor. And not with a problem this huge.

Xavier sighed. "Whatever happens next must be at Liliana's pace, when and where and how she's ready. You're doing the right thing, Scott, giving her time and space and not insisting that she speak with you. Just bring her straight to me when you arrive. I'll reassure her of her place with us and see if there's anything more I can do at this point."

"Thanks, Professor," he sighed. "Now all I have to do is figure out how to tell Jean."

"Actually," the Professor mused, "that might not be wise just now."

"I can't keep this from her," Scott protested. "Even if she wasn't a telepath. I won't lie to her like that."

"That's not what I mean. I know the kind of man you are, Scott, and lying about this would never sit well on your shoulders. All I'm saying is that, considering the nature of what happened, you have to respect and take care for how telling Jean will affect both her and Liliana."

"This will tear Jean up," Scott said flatly. "And I'm scared to death it'll destroy what we have, that we'll never be able to come back from what this will do to her."

"I seem to recall a discussion, not all that long ago, about not letting our reactions to our fears provoke us into doing the wrong thing. And while telling Jean isn't wrong, this may be the wrong time, for both her and Liliana."

"You're saying if I could get Lili to talk about this at all, she'd tell me she doesn't want anyone to know. All right, I can understand that much, at least for now. I don't want to hurt her any more than I already have, even though technically I've probably just broken that by telling you. But Professor, why would this be the wrong time for Jean, too? She wouldn't say, but there is something going on with her--isn't there? Is she all right?"

"Jean has responsibilities to her own power just as you do, and right now that's where her attention needs to be."

"Professor, what's happening?" he pressed.

"I believe she's growing stronger."

That made him pause. "After all this time? Why now?"

"Think of her telepathic and telekinetic abilities as a set of muscles. She pushed herself that night, with Cerebro and then again on Liberty Island, and now those muscles are stronger. You know Jean tends to doubt her ability, so assimilating this greater strength has to happen slowly. She needs time to ensure it's under her conscious control."

"And you think I'll make things harder for her--and for Lili--if I tell Jean now. But how am I supposed to live with it in the meantime, Professor, much less keep this from a telepath? This happened to me, too, you know--it's all I can think about."

"I haven't forgotten that you're in the middle of this, not for a moment, and we'll talk about it as much as you need. If you'll agree, I can even put a block around those memories so we're certain Jean won't find out accidentally. Just be patient, Scott. Give yourself and Liliana time to heal, and give Jean the time she needs to stabilize her control. It won't be easy, but I believe in you, and you know I'll be here to help."

Movement caught his eye--Lili, shifting in her sleep, closed up again, miserable again, probably feeling more used than she ever had with Max, all because she'd trusted him and tried to help. And Jean, loving him so much that she'd put his needs ahead of her fears and let him go to try this. The Professor was right. Lili and Jean had to come first now. They'd counted on him, and he'd failed both of them. Whatever the price he had to pay, he wouldn't let them down again.

"Come home, Scott," Xavier softly ordered.

"We're on our way," he nodded, and hung up.

He pushed up from the picnic table, still tired, but at least feeling more settled and ready to go again, and realized an SUV was pulling up near the Porsche. They were several spaces down, but they were on Lili's side. And her window was open. He hurried, just in case, but it was a loud, boisterous family that spilled out of the SUV and when doors started slamming shut, Lili bolted awake as if she'd been shot. Damn it, she was traumatized, hair-triggered, and there was no telling what she'd do if she felt confused or in any way threatened.

"I'm here, Lili," he shouted, smiling and waving as if nothing was wrong, and broke into a slow, easy trot across the lawn.

Lili gripped the car door as if her life depended on it, her head swiveling frantically around until she spotted him. Then she froze, her eyes locked on him, and his heart contracted in painful relief when he realized that, somewhere deep inside, Lili still felt safe with him--it was the first time she'd truly looked at him in four obscenely long days, and she was looking at him now for reassurance. He didn't spare so much as a glance for the family, for the sudden influx of traffic, not for anything or anyone except her.

He dropped to a walk as he neared the car and finally stopped a few feet away, grateful beyond words that she hadn't completely shut him out again. If he looked hard enough, he knew he'd be able to see the flames flickering deep in her eyes, as they had been ever since. But he didn't. The expression on her face--even if it was one of fearful surprize--was too welcome.

Slowly, casually, he held up his phone. "I was just calling the Professor to let him know we'll be home in a couple of hours."

He didn't know which part she reacted to, but something in what he'd said made her shudder and close her eyes.

Damn it. Well, one step at a time. He took a deep, calming breath.

"Can I get you something to drink before we go?" he offered. "Or would you--"

She pushed violently on the door and shot out of the car and he stepped back, but just as suddenly she stopped cold, breathing hard, staring at the pavement, one hand still clutching the car door hanging open between them.

"That's not my home." Her voice was somewhere between a sob and a moan, and it was full of more pain than he'd ever heard in his life. "I can't go back there."

The Professor's advice to take things slowly was still ringing in his ears, but she was talking to him for the first time in days, and he simply couldn't let her think that. "No matter what," he said, as simply and as straightforward as he could, "you will always be welcome at the school, just as I am."

She was shaking now--badly--but as much as he wanted to go to her, he wasn't foolish enough to move. Instead he waited, while cars and people of all kinds came and went, hope growing in his chest with every moment she didn't reject him and the school outright.

"They'll know," she finally groaned, so softly he almost missed it.

"No," he swore. "They'll know there was an accident and it was my fault and that you got hurt when you saved my life, that's all. I promise you, I won't even tell Jean if you--"

She stiffened, and when her eyes came up to meet his all he could see in that closed, cold face was those twin infernos raging in her eyes. "Why would you lie?" she demanded, the words low and rough.

He shook his head and carefully held up his hands. He had no idea what she meant and had to take this easy. "I wouldn't, Lili--I didn't."

She didn't move, didn't speak--but she didn't leave or even turn away. Those eyes still burned into his. What was she looking for? What did she want from him? Was she actually ready to talk about it? Start slow, Summers.

"I meant everything I said. I thought we'd done it," he began, remembering those heady moments of triumph. "Once we were burning together, I could see my power with this extraordinary clarity, right there for the taking. You had all the heat under control, but when I reached for my power…"

Such stupid arrogance. He paused, swallowing hard against bitter disgust with himself, his stomach plummeting when Lili turned sharply away after all. But… she didn't leave. He hoped to God that meant she was still listening.

"It was too strong," he admitted hoarsely. "Strong--what an understatement. It was overwhelming. I didn't have a chance in hell of breaking out of it, let alone controlling it. If you hadn't stayed with me I would have burned to ashes. But you did and…"

He wasn't sure he was ready to go there himself, must less make her think about it. But she hadn't run away yet, and she hadn't shut him down, and if she was going to give him the chance, then there was something he needed to say. He just prayed she was ready to hear it.

"I don't remember hurting you, Lili, but I know I did, and I'm so very sorry. I didn't want… that to happen. Whatever you want, whatever you need, I'll do anything to make this right for you. If you'll just give me the chance…"

Life moved on around them--more cars, other people, some of them staring--but Scott stood, and he waited, knowing only that he had to give her whatever time she needed. He'd pushed as far as he dared.

Finally the shoulders she'd held so tensely dropped a little, and she turned her head enough that he could see a little of her profile. "I thought you hated me."

"Never." Dear God. No wonder she'd shut him out. "How could I? You risked everything for me."

She turned all the way around, her face wet with tears. She looked fragile, and as tired as he despite nearly four days of sleep. But the fires in her eyes had finally ebbed.

"I told you I could control the burning, but I wasn't strong enough," she said, so sadly his heart ached. "What happened was my fault, Scott. You and the Professor and Jean--you trusted me, but I didn't deserve it. I'm sorry."

"Lili," he protested softly. "The only thing you did was believe in me. Things didn't go wrong until I lost control, and then I betrayed your trust in the worst way. I don't know if I'll ever be able to make that up to you. All I can hope for is that you'll let me try."

She shook her head. "You don't owe me a thing. Just… please don't tell Jean until after I've gone."

"Gone?" he echoed thickly.

For the first time she looked around them, at all the people coming and going, and what he saw in her face then was pain and naked longing. "I need to find my mother. I want to go home."

"Of course," he nodded. He'd always intended to give that part of her life back to her. It was the least he could do, now. "We'll find your family, Lili. I promise. Please, can I take you back to the school in the meantime?"

She hesitated, not quite convinced, as if she didn't believe she belonged there. Or maybe she thought she didn't deserve it.

"We're your family, too, Lili. No matter what."

"This was a pretty big 'what,'" she scoffed, darkly, disbelieving.

He smiled for her. "That's what families should be--the people you can always turn to."

With a long, heavy sigh, Lili turned back to the car and absently rubbed at her eyes, and this time as he waited he allowed himself to hope that they would come through this after all.

"Scott?"

"I'm still here."

"Are we friends?"

"Without a doubt."

"Even though we…" Her breath hitched, her hands falling to grip the edge of the soft top.

"Neither of us wanted that, Lili. We didn't even know it was happening."

Something eased in her, and slowly Lili dropped back down into the car and pulled her door quietly shut. For a moment he was so relieved he couldn't trust himself to move. This was obviously far from over--he wasn't naïve enough to think everything was all right, despite all the progress they'd just made. But for now, Lili was waiting, and he didn't dare give her the chance to change her mind. Scott made sure they were miles down the road in minutes, each mile bringing both of them closer to home.

X2 Five

Lili raised her head as Scott made the last turn onto Graymalkin Lane, and there it was… Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

A school, just as the name of the place proclaimed, though not everyone knew the full curriculum. A sanctuary. A shelter. A sprawling, imposing mansion, representing more wealth than she could imagine. The base for the X-Men, some of the most powerful mutants in the world. The place was obviously many things to many people. Probably even more than she knew.

Scott called it home. She'd let herself hope that she might, too. One day.

She shouldn't have let her guard down. Because now she couldn't allow this place to be anything more than a building to her. She couldn't stay. Not after what she'd done. Scott said he didn't hate her, that he didn't even blame her, and she chose to believe him because believing the alternative had nearly destroyed her. But that didn't change the fact that her failure had already hurt him and would, one day soon, devastate Jean. Others might be able to make mistakes at Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and simply get up and brush themselves off and try again, but she didn't dare. Not when she wasn't the only one paying the extraordinarily high price of her mistakes.

Scott sighed deeply as he turned the Porsche into the long, winding driveway. Lili didn't have to be a telepath to know he was happy to be home. Home… She blinked hard against another wretched spate of tears, turning her face to the window as the garage closed around them and hastily wiping away the ones she hadn't been able to keep from falling. Damn it, what had happened to her control?

She winced. What control?

"I know you don't think so right now, but everything's going to be all right, Lili. We'll get through this."

That beautiful voice had once soothed her, and not so long ago. She'd believed all the lovely things he'd told her, about this place and her life after Max and even about her. But now there was too much between them. Now she couldn't hear him without remembering those harsh, clipped words oh my God. She couldn't look at him without seeing him standing there in the middle of the desert at dawn, the earth blackened and crisped all around him. And whenever he touched her, however fleeting and impersonal… all she could feel was the touch of his body, deep inside her.

"Lili?"

She blinked. He'd parked in the same space they'd left from, three short weeks ago. Too bad she couldn't slide into whatever tenuous place she might have made for herself at this school with the same ease. Everything just felt so horribly, irreversibly different. But… what was she supposed to do now?

Lili stiffened, appalled to realize she'd asked the question out loud. As if she had any right whatsoever to still lean on Scott Summers for anything.

"We try to forgive ourselves," Scott said softly, something in his voice making her turn back to him. He was looking down, staring at nothing, absently fingering the keys in his hand, and Lili couldn't be sure if he was answering her question, or one of his own.

Coward that she was, she couldn't help leaning on him one more time. "How do we do that?"

He glanced at her and shrugged, a small, sad smile shaping his lips. "Get back to work? Keep moving? We're still needed here, Liliana. We're still even loved."

Her chest tightened. "They don't know what we did."

He hesitated, and Lili went cold. "You told them?"

"Just the Professor," he said quickly. "I had to."

Of course. Scott leaned on the Professor the way she leaned on him, and this had happened to Scott, too. But how could she face the Professor now?

"He wants to speak with you," Scott added, gently.

Lili shuddered, the taste of ashes rising in her throat. He must be so disappointed in her…

"Go talk to him, Lili," he urged. "I promise you, he doesn't think any less of either one of us. He can help. And… he might know something about your mother by now."

Her mother. She'd do anything to find her mother. Especially now. She'd even face Max again. Even… go to the Professor. And Scott knew that, damn him. She sighed.

Scott cleared his throat. "Too obvious?"

She snorted, the little bubble of laughter taking her completely by surprize. She was going to miss him, she realized sadly. She was going to miss his friendship so very, very much. This time, she managed not to cry. "You are usually a lot more subtle than that," she agreed, somehow managing to keep her voice light.

"Talking to him today helped me so much. I just want the same for you."

Simple words, simply spoken, brimming with the honesty she'd actually, despite everything she was, grown to rely on. She couldn't not do what he wanted. Not after everything she'd cost him. "All right, Scott. I'll go."

Now, before she could talk herself out of it. Lili got out of the car, not waiting for Scott to answer.

They must have arrived during dinner, she realized, enormously grateful that the halls were mostly empty and she didn't have to speak to anyone she knew on the way to the Professor's office, using each step to wind her courage tighter, until she might have enough of it left to actually knock on his door.

But when she finally got there, the huge door was standing wide open. She stumbled to a stop, trembling, still not sure despite what Scott had said if that open door meant welcome or condemnation. Either way, though, she had to do this. She owed the Professor that much, at the very least.

"Please come in, Liliana," she heard Charles Xavier say, so kindly that she almost couldn't breathe, so gently compelling that she forced her feet to carry her into his office. She couldn't go any farther, though, shutting the door behind her and leaning against it, her hand still clutching the knob. He was sitting behind his desk, but his chair whispered around the massive piece of furniture and brought him half way across the room to her.

"I apologize," he continued firmly, stopping there, shocking her so completely her jaw dropped. "If I'd had any idea that this might happen, I never would have allowed you to try."

She hadn't thought of that. But she had to be honest, had to place the blame squarely where it belonged. "This was my fault, Professor. I'm sorry I let all of you down."

He shook his head. "I'll allow that you and Scott both made some mistakes, but mistakes happen all the time when we're learning to control our powers. No, the--"

"Not like mine," she blurted. "I nearly killed him. I'd have burned him alive if we hadn't-- If the burning hadn't--" Manifested as physical sex. If they hadn't actually, physically climaxed and unconsciously given all that raging power a release. She couldn't say the words, but they burned shamefully in her thoughts, and she knew the Professor had heard her.

He sighed, his eyes going dark. "When I was very young, I ignorantly placed a suggestion in a man's mind. It took me a long time to forgive myself for the heart attack he suffered as a result."

"You--" she gasped. "You--"

"I nearly killed him," he said flatly, giving her own words back to her. "But he survived, and I found a way to live with what I'd done, by never allowing myself to abuse my abilities or underestimate the consequences of so much as a single thought again."

He'd nearly killed a man. Just like her. And none of it would have happened if they hadn't been mutants. "Why does this happen to us?" she whispered, shaken to her core. "Why?"

He raised an eyebrow at her, his eyes sparking and his lips twisting with a wry, sharp amusement she could almost understand, and a burning pain she knew all too well. "Cosmologically speaking, I don't know. Genetically speaking, I still don't know, not with any certainty, not even after years of study. Mutations simply happen, without warning or apparent reason, pushing humanity in new directions whether we're ready to go there or not."

Or not. Definitely not.

"What I do know, Liliana, is that we either learn to control our powers or we let them consume us, and that accidents happen either way. What happened between you and Scott was an accident. The reason I sent you out there instead of finding a way to conduct those experiments here, however, was not."

She blinked at him, frowning at something in his voice, feeling her body tensing and somehow knowing that there was more going on here than she understood--and that she wasn't going to like it. "We went there so I'd have a safe place to release the heat," she said cautiously. "You said--"

"That wasn't a lie," he replied. And then Professor Charles Xavier looked away. "It just wasn't all of the truth."

She needed to sit down. Lili pushed away from the door, shocked and relieved that her legs still worked enough to carry her to the nearest chair. She nearly fell into it, gripping the armrests with hands that felt as numb and detached from the rest of her as her legs, staring at the Professor and wondering how she was going to live with whatever came next. She was already having a hard enough time with her own mistakes.

Finally his eyes sought hers again, fierce and resigned and incomprehensibly powerful. "I had two mutants unexpectedly facing critical points in their struggles for control, Scott and another. I couldn't have both of them here, splitting my focus and distracting one another, and neither of them was going to wait. The obvious solution was to send one of them away. I chose to send Scott, believing that if he failed without me there to help mitigate the consequences, those consequences would still be far, far less destructive than if the other failed. As harsh as this is going to sound to you, I still believe that, Liliana. Even knowing what happened to you. So if you need someone to blame, it must be me."

For a long moment she could only stare at him, struggling to breathe as the tiny little corner of the world that she'd thought was hers crumbled all around her yet again, her thoughts circling with feverish intensity. Until finally it dawned on her…

"Worse than… this, Professor?"

"Incalculably so."

Well. She'd known his world was huge. She just hadn't expected to be lost in it quite so quickly. "It was easier, before you came to get me," she softly confessed.

"Perhaps. Unfortunately, the price and pains of freedom can cut just as deeply as the joys and triumphs of it can heal."

"And you have to take them all," Lili sighed, suddenly deeply tired. Would she give up the extraordinary feeling of flying, if it meant she wouldn't have felt this shattering pain, either? She didn't know. And she didn't want to think about it any more. She just wanted to go home, wanted to find the one person in the world who'd always--as far as she could remember--put her first. Maybe there she'd find some solid ground to stand on.

"I know this is a lot for you to think about," the Professor gently interjected. "I want you to know I'm here, any time you want to talk. Or if you'd rather speak to a woman, I'm sure Ororo would--"

"No," Lili shuddered. "Please don't tell anyone else. I couldn't bear it."

"Then no one else will know unless you choose to tell them."

Lili nodded her understanding and wearily pushed to her feet. She'd had enough of this. "Have you found my mother, Professor?"

If he was startled by the change in subject, he didn't show it. "I'm afraid the agency I hired is still narrowing things down. But I'm expecting another update from them in two or three days."

Two or three more days? Lili turned away. How could she stay in this place even that much longer?

"Rest," Xavier said. "Just rest for now. And we'll talk again later."

She wasn't sure she wanted that. But Lili couldn't ignore the Professor's gentle sincerity. She nodded again, and gratefully retreated to the relative sanctuary of "her" room.

Her paisley suitcases were there. Scott must have brought them up. She couldn't remember packing them. And she couldn't bring herself to unpack them now. She stepped around them, lying down despite the early hour, and closed her eyes.

She tried. She truly tried to sleep. But the only times her brain stopped buzzing long enough for her to doze off, she dreamed horrible dreams of burning. She finally rolled over to stare at the beautiful old clock by her bed and realized it was just after midnight. She didn't think she was going to be getting to sleep again any time soon. And… she was hungry. For the first time in weeks, she was truly hungry, not just sitting down to a meal because Scott expected it and she needed to keep up appearances. How long ago that felt.

She climbed off the bed, running her hands through her hair, then frowned at herself--just who was she trying to impress? Lili yanked her door open and headed straight for the kitchen. The one student she met on the way took one look at her face and kept walking, and for once Lili didn't care. There was nothing he could do for her, and nothing in her to give to him or anyone else right now.

She stumbled into the kitchen, not bothering with the lights, and headed for the freezer.

And the lights went on anyway.

Lili whipped around, power surging in her--

Ororo. Just as startled to see her, but not about to burn down the entire house. Gasping, ashamed, Lili closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her stomach and silently banked the heat once more.

Ororo waited, patient and still, until Lili opened her eyes again. And then she did the one thing Lili would never have expected… she walked slowly over and opened her arms. Lili stared, stunned to realize she wanted to walk into that embrace just as fiercely and as desperately and as hopelessly as she wanted to run from it.

"Welcome home, honey."

The dam inside her burst and she flung herself into Ororo's waiting arms. She clung to her warmth and her strength and she cried herself out for the first time in as long as she could remember. She cried for her mother, she cried for every beating she'd taken from Max, she cried for failing Scott and betraying Jean and losing control of her body and she even cried to know that the Professor had been right to put another mutant before her and Scott, if it meant anyone in the world would feel even worse than she did.

And through it all Ororo held her tightly, smoothing her hand down Lili's hair, murmuring soft, senseless words over her head, patiently waiting out the firestorm of Lili's grief. Even after, when Lili managed to stop crying, but couldn't quite bring herself to let go of the other woman, Ororo didn't rush her. She just stood there, her support and acceptance washing over Lili in wave after wave of gentle, soothing serenity.

"Feel better?" Ororo finally asked.

Lili nodded into her damp shoulder.

"Want to talk about it?"

"No," Lili whispered hoarsely. "Please."

"Then how about some ice cream?"

That made Lili laugh, and finally she pulled away, rubbing at her wet face and wishing for a tissue.

"Go clean yourself up in the hall bathroom," Ororo gently ordered, "and I'll get us that ice cream. Any preferences?"

Lili shook her head, too tired to care, and found her way to the bathroom. By the time she got back there were two dishes in the center of the kitchen island, piled high with bananas, cherries, whipped cream, syrup, and at least four different kinds of ice cream.

"I couldn't decide," Ororo shrugged, completely unrepentant for the extravagance of their midnight snack. Lili sat, grabbed her spoon, and dug in. After a few minutes of companionable silence Ororo started talking. It was all unimportant things, little bits of what had happened at the school while Lili had been gone, and Lili let it wash over her without really listening. It just felt good to sit there and hear someone else's voice and not have them demand or expect anything from her. It was lovely, and she began to think that maybe she'd get to sleep tonight after all.

And then Scott walked in. Tousled and warm from sleep, shuffling his feet, yawning and rubbing at his whiskered jaw. Only she would have ever noticed the little hitch in his step as he spotted her.

"Hey," he smiled, as it all came crashing back down on her.

"Hey, yourself," Ororo smiled back. She waved her spoon at him. "If you're after ice cream, pal, I'm afraid you're a little late."

He laughed. "The two of you ate it all?" He shook his head at Ororo's exaggerated shrug of innocence. "It's a good thing I came down to make some tea, then."

Ororo raised an eyebrow.

"Jean had a nightmare," Scott replied. There was more to it--Lili could have figured that out with her eyes closed--but he didn't elaborate, and neither Lili nor Ororo asked.

Ororo started back in on her chatty monologue then, filling the silence, but Lili heard even less of it than before. Everything was swirling around in her head again, and she just didn't know how to make it stop. She wasn't even sure how long Scott had been gone before she finally noticed.

"Storm?" she interrupted some story about a game called dodge ball. "Have you ever lost control of your powers?"

"Haven't we all?" Storm sighed. "Most of it was pretty early on, before the Professor found me. At my worst I destroyed an entire village. I… hurt a lot of people that day."

Absently Lili stirred the cool, soupy remains in the bottom of her dish. How many stories like that would she find, if she asked every mutant in the school? Was she really as alone as she felt? "Would you give it back?"

"Give what back? My powers?"

Lili nodded, finally raising her eyes to Ororo's. "Never," Storm said, simply, flatly, beyond all doubt. "It's part of me, sometimes the best part of me. It's who I am. And you know what?" She leaned in closely. "It took me a long time, but I like who I am."

Ororo stood, grabbing both of their dishes and quickly, easily washing them out. "Sure you don't want to talk about it?" she offered over her shoulder.

"Positive," Lili replied. "But thanks for offering. And… everything."

Ororo dried her hands on the dish towel and laid it across the edge of the sink. "Any time, Lili. And I mean that--any time. Now I don't know about you, but I think it's time for bed. Are you coming to the museum with us tomorrow? The whole school is going."

Any other time Lili would have jumped at the chance. But too much had happened, and she had far too much to think about, and having "the whole school" around her was simply beyond her. She shook her head.

"Well, we aren't leaving until nine, if you change your mind."

Impulsively Lili reached out as she stood, squeezing Ororo's hand and hoping the other woman would hear all the things in the gesture that Lili couldn't bring herself to say. It felt good, not feeling so alone.

When she finally fell asleep, this time there weren't any dreams.

X2 Six

"Breaking news. We're coming to you live from Washington where there's been an attack in the Oval Office of the White House. Details are still coming in, but we have been informed that the President and Vice President were not harmed. Sources say the attack involved one or more mutants."

Wonderful, Scott thought, anger tightening his body to battle readiness and sharpening his senses. Just wonderful. Every last student in public, in the midst of a museum full of frozen humanity, as vulnerable as they'd ever been, just in time for an attack on the President by mutants. "I think it's time to leave, Professor."

"I think you're right."

"Storm, take the first bus," Scott said. "Don't wait, just go when you're loaded. Jean, stay with the Professor in the car. I'll take the second bus. Stay alert."

The kids weren't stupid. As powerful as some of them were--as arrogant as the one or two of them like Pyro were--none of them wanted to be caught in public in what could become a terrible backlash against mutants. They were on the buses and safely on their way home to the school in minutes.

And Scott realized, as his busload of students pulled out of the parking lot and the Professor released his hold on everyone in the museum, that for a little while, he'd forgotten about everything else. About everything with Lili, looming over him. About Jean's sudden strength and equally sudden sense of impending doom. Was she getting that from him, sensing his fear despite the block he'd let the Professor place in his mind? He was so happy to be home, to be holding her in his arms at night and waking next to her and simply holding her hand as they walked together to breakfast. But he was so afraid of what would happen between them when he told her the truth…

The students were quiet all the way back, but Scott knew the quiet wasn't going to last. Not between him and Jean, or him and Lili, and certainly not in this war that someone, somewhere, was intent on starting between humanity and mutants. About all he needed now was for Logan to return.

:Scott, Ororo, Jean. I'm going to see if I can find the mutant who actually attacked the President. Stay with the students through lunch and get them back into classes, then wait for me in my office.:

No, the quiet wasn't going to last long at all. He just had to hope--to believe--that whatever happened, they were ready.

X2 Seven

Noise.

In circus after circus, Lili had sat behind locked doors for hours, with little to do but listen to the rest of the world. She'd learned to read the noise of the lives going on around her as easily as she'd learned to read their faces and gestures whenever she'd been allowed out. Her door wasn't locked any more, but curled up now in the corner of the window seat in her room at Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, she sat and listened as hard as she ever had, wondering what was happening out there. Wondering if she still had even a temporary place in it. First were the sounds of their rising and getting ready and finally leaving for the museum--some students bored already, others excited--then those small sounds in the relative silence of a massive building with only a few staff members left behind. When the students returned, though, the sounds were quite different. Edgier. Darker. Even a little fearful.

Something was going on. She didn't think it had anything to do with what had happened in Nevada, but the only way to know for sure was to get out there and see.

Lili thought about waiting until later, after lights out, when maybe she could cross the hall to Rogue's room and talk to her without half the school standing around, watching and listening. The sounds seemed to calm--they were going back to class, back to their normal routine, and she wondered if whatever had happened had already blown over. If maybe she didn't have to worry. But then someone knocked on her door and Lili tensed, pushing farther back into the corner.

"Lili?"

Rogue. And she didn't sound angry or afraid at all. In fact, she sounded happy.

Rogue and Bobby had promised to keep a place for her at their table. Lili didn't know if that spot would still be there once they knew what had happened, but a sudden ache in her chest made Lili realize that she wanted that spot, for as long as it was offered. She rose and hurried to answer the door.

"You're really back," Rogue smiled. "Awesome. How'd everything go?"

She should have expected to be asked right away. Lili settled for part of the truth. "Not well," she said softly. "I couldn't help him."

"I'm sorry," Rogue sighed, her face darkening after all as she stared at her gloved hands. "It's not easy, not having the kind of control you want."

She thought Lili didn't understand. She was talking about herself, and Scott, but Lili felt the words like a knife in her heart. All she managed was a nod in reply.

As quickly as her mood had changed before, Rogue brightened again. "But at least you're back. Logan is, too. Makes up for having to cut the field trip short."

Logan was back? Scott was not going to be happy--as if he needed something else to worry about. Then it dawned on her that Rogue had missed her. "Thanks," she smiled. "But why'd you have to come back early?"

"You didn't hear? They're saying that mutants attacked the President." Rogue waved vaguely in the direction of the living room. "It's all over the news."

Mutants attacked the President? No wonder everyone had sounded so anxious.

"Welcome back, Lili," Kitty called. She tugged at Rogue's sleeve as she darted past. "Hurry up, Rogue. We're late."

Rogue started backing away. "I'll talk to you later, all right?" With a nod and a cheery wave she was gone, and Lili was left standing there in the hall, a dozen other students likewise rushing to class. Some of them said hello. None of them even looked at her darkly, much less condemned her for what she'd done.

Lili breathed a deep sigh of relief. They might all one day hate her, but for now at least she didn't have to worry. She didn't have to hide in her room. Lili frowned. Apparently, though, she'd missed more than a field trip with her cowardice--she'd missed an attack on the President. Would the X-Men be doing something? Of course they would be.

Should she offer to help?

She didn't know if the Professor still wanted her, didn't even know what she might be able to do. But she definitely owed them. If she could help, she should, no matter how she felt or what any of them thought of her. Lili headed for the Professor's office, slowing as she neared the side entrance and realized that Jean and Scott were talking to Logan.

She saw it all in one searing glance. The tension in Scott's mouth, his hands, his breathing. Logan's deceptively casual posture, an animal's stillness just before action, his eyes on Scott's, but his focus on Jean. And most shocking of all, the way Jean stood next to Scott, but leaned subtly toward Logan.

What was going on?

"Liliana?"

Lili turned, staring blankly at Ororo, her thoughts still whirling with everything she'd just seen in that entryway, her body flexing deep within with the subtle, distant echo of sexual tension.

Ororo glanced back. "I'm staying out of it."

Lili only just kept her jaw from dropping. "What does Logan think he's doing?" she sputtered. "Can't he see Jean's with Scott? He has no right to pursue her like that--and why would she let him?"

"Logan feels what he feels, without apology." Ororo shrugged. "I don't know about Jean. I just know I'm not getting in the middle of it. It's already crowded enough between the three of them."

Lili felt herself pale--she already was in the middle of it, however unintentionally.

Ororo laid a gentle hand on her arm. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said automatically, pushing all of it as far away as she could. Part of it she had to forget. The rest of it she was all too willing to let Scott handle. Belatedly Lili remembered why she'd ventured outside the relative safety of her room in the first place. "Rogue told me about the President. I wanted to see if there's anything you need me to do."

Ororo smiled, but shook her head. "Jean and I are going to Boston to try to bring back the assassin, and Scott's taking the Professor to see Magneto. Logan's in charge of the school tonight, so you're off the hook."

She wasn't needed. Awkwardly Lili nodded, not sure if she was relieved or disappointed.

"Stay close, all right?" Ororo softly added. "Things change pretty quickly around here."

Stay close. She could do that. Lili smiled, grateful for something even that small to do. But what exactly did "stay close" mean she should do? Well, one thing was certain--it didn't mean hiding in her room any more.

Lili gathered the shredded remains of her courage and started with a late lunch, going down to the cafeteria to eat with the staff. For the rest of the afternoon, while everyone was in class, she wandered the building, busying herself with learning it as she hadn't taken the time to do before. When classes let out and the students began converging on the cafeteria again for dinner, Lili headed back down and made herself walk into the raucous, crowded room. Rogue and Bobby waved to her, but Lili spotted a group of students she hadn't seen before. They were really young--no more than seven or eight at the absolute oldest. She stopped at Rogue and Bobby's table, self-consciously accepting their welcome, and nodded toward the others.

"I didn't know the school took kids that young."

Rogue turned to look, but Bobby shrugged. "Sometimes the mutation hits early."

"I know," she said.

Rogue heard what she hadn't said. "You?"

"For as long as I can remember," Lili nodded. The children, five in all, looked happy, sitting there at what had to be their table, undersized as it was. But they also looked just that little bit lost. She'd seen that look more than once at the circus. It wasn't anything obvious. A tiny hesitation in their smiles, the way they glanced around a lot. They didn't know it, but they were just uneasy enough with what had happened to be looking for reassurance from an adult. She hoped she would do. Lili walked over and asked if she could join them.

They made room for her without question, and Lili couldn't help but smile as she pulled a normal chair up for herself and sat down. She loved children. She'd performed for them, for all those years in circus after circus, the pleasure she gave them one of the few joys she'd had. She decided on the spot to spend the evening with these children, making them laugh until they completely forget there might be anything at all to worry about. If she was very, very lucky, they'd help her forget, too.

Thomas, the oldest, was in fact seven. Incredibly bright, out-going, a born performer if ever she'd seen one. His mutation allowed him to change the color, the pattern, even the texture of his skin to match his surroundings. Petra was six, the unusual shape of her eyes and a boneless quality to her movements reminding Lili of a small, sleek, black cat. Julian, also six, could control sound waves, his hearing so acute that he could listen to the heartbeat of a person at the other end of the school if he wanted to. Carrie and Christie announced proudly that they were twins, which was obvious, that at five they were the youngest in the school, which Lili also would have guessed, and that they could control electricity. Lili didn't have to pretend to be awed by that part. When Julian finally asked what she could do, she set the air above the middle of the table alight and put on a little show just for them. It was the first time in her life that she wholly enjoyed performing.

She didn't have to ask. After dinner they would have dragged her back to the large room they shared whether she wanted to go or not. She made sure they did their homework, promising to stay and play games with them once they were done, and the spelling and math and reading were quickly and cheerfully accomplished. They were just finishing a game of Parcheesi--played so aggressively it shocked her--when Petra asked quietly if they could have some ice cream.

A girl after her own heart. They filed merrily down to the kitchen, and Lili had more fun eating ice cream with five children she'd only just met than she'd ever had at any other meal in her life. Lili sat back, taking the time to memorize their faces and the moment and the simple joy in that kitchen. She had no idea what her future held, but she hoped with all her heart it included many more moments like that. Finally Lili gathered their dishes and sent them back upstairs with orders to set up one more game before bed. Lili cleaned up, placing the last dish in the cabinet as Bobby walked in.

"There's still some vanilla," she offered.

He actually winked at her. "I've got a gallon of pistachio stashed way in the back."

She was laughing when she left the kitchen, but she turned the corner and saw Logan, and all the laughter in her died.

Logan glanced at her, and Lili saw recognition flicker across his eyes. "Lili, right?"

She nodded, hesitating, impressed despite herself when he paused to see what she wanted. Except… what did she want?

"You okay?" he pressed.

And somehow, standing there in the darkened hallway with this intense, lethal, brooding stranger, Lili could be honest. "No," she admitted softly. "No, I'm not."

Logan raised an eyebrow at her. It was all the encouragement he was going to offer, she realized. It was also all she needed.

"There was an accident. Scott and I… we were both hurt."

He looked her over and shifted, confused. "You look all right. So did Wonder Boy. When was this accident?"

"Don't call him that," she admonished. "He saved my life--he saved yours, too. He deserves better than that."

"Then you call him 'Hero,'" Logan snorted.

She ignored the jab. "So does Jean."

"So does Jean what?" he sighed with exaggerated patience.

"She deserves your respect, too."

His eyes narrowed, but she was no one to Logan, and he wasn't going to get into an argument over her opinion. In a blink of those hard eyes his expression and entire posture went all satisfied male. "She's got that and a whole lot more, honey," he drawled.

Logan moved to step around her. Lili stepped squarely into his way, more than a little surprized when he let her. "If you really respect Jean, then you've got to respect all of her, Logan--and that includes the way she feels about Scott."

"What makes you think this is any of your business?" he asked, a sliver of anger finally edging his voice.

"Maybe it's not," she shrugged. "Or maybe, I'm the one person who can make you see that there's a whole lot more between Scott and Jean than you're giving either of them credit for."

He took a deep, quick, impatient breath and walked away. "Jean makes her own decisions, sweetheart."

"I know that," she called softly after him. "Maybe you think you know it, too. What you don't seem to realize or respect is that she might not choose you."

He waved at her, a mocking little gesture, and disappeared around the corner. Lili had no idea if she'd done any good, but she felt better for trying. She'd already hurt Scott and Jean enough. For now, she felt like she might have done a little bit to make that up to them.

The kids were waiting, with something called Sorry all laid out. They were still explaining the rules when the room went starkly, suddenly cold.

Lili opened the door and looked out. "Bobby?" But no one was in sight. And it was freezing in the hallway, too. She felt a tug on her shirt and looked down.

"I heard a gun," Julian whispered, his small face white. "And people. Lots of people."

A gun? "Where, Julian?"

An unearthly shriek lanced through her brain and she gasped with the utter shock of it. Poor Julian crumpled, his eyes rolling up, and Lili abandoned any thought of trying to cover her ears to catch him.

"That's Siryn!" Thomas yelled. "Sometimes she--"

The sound died. Lili had only a moment, to check Julian, to look the others over, to wonder what--

Gunfire.

Spotlights, cutting through the darkened hallway from the window.

Students spilled out of their rooms, and in a shower of shattered glass the world exploded.

X2 Eight

Scott dreamed of cold. Bitter, aching cold. He couldn't move, couldn't escape it, couldn't even breathe with it. It covered him, tightening, suffocating, and he gasped for Jean with what he was positive was his last sip of air.

Pain shot through his shoulders, echoing in his jaw, and as the cold receded he thought she'd come, that Jean was somehow pulling him out of the darkness like she had so many times before.

"Hold his head," she said, only Jean never sounded like that. Cold as ice. Dead.

Hard, rough hands grabbed his head and Scott came fully awake in a blind, staggering rush. "Don't!" he shouted, trying to twist away from the hands, his eyes tightly shut. "No!"

The hands at his head tightened and the hands on his wrists pulled them high and hard behind him, molten pain erupting in his shoulders and snaking down his back and up his neck and dropping him forward, sagging with the stunning force of it.

He was on his knees, his bound arms pulled behind him, blind and alone, and someone was in front of him, trying to take his visor. Memory surged--the woman at the prison--the Professor--

So be it. Scott opened his eyes.

Except they weren't trying to take the visor, they were pulling something over his head and locking the visor into place, nearly twisting his arms off to keep his hands from the controls. And he couldn't do a thing about it.

Professor! He howled the word in his mind.

And suddenly she was standing in front of him, watching him struggle with eyes as cold and as dead as her voice. He heard her knuckles pop, saw her arm rise, tried to flinch away from the blow--

Impact cracked his head around and shot ruby red fireworks behind his eyes and hurled him mercilessly back down into the cold.

X2 Nine

Lili ducked, shielding Julian from the worst of the flying glass, spinning round with him still in her arms when she heard a hiss-- Gas, spewing from two canisters rolling down the hall. Students ran past, eerily silent in the midst of the pop and screech and whirring hum of--

Dear God, they were under attack.

For one searing second, wildfire blazing high and hot through her, she thought about fighting back. And then Julian stirred in her arms.

"We have to get out," she gasped, rising with him.

"This way!" Thomas shouted from behind, and Lili whirled back around to see the others clustered around him as he pushed at a section of the paneling. It slid smoothly away to reveal a dark, narrow hall.

And the relative calm of the students suddenly made sense. Lili darted for the opening. "Thomas, are there more of these escape routes?"

"All over the school," he nodded.

Julian grabbed at her, blinking, awake again, and Lili set him on his feet. "All of the students know?"

Thomas nodded again.

"Where do they lead?"

"Mostly out, away from the school. Ours goes half way to the lake."

"Then go. Wait for me there. I need--"

"No!" the twins wailed, clinging to her, suddenly as young as five-year-olds could be.

Lili soothed them with her touch, glancing back, but already the hall had cleared of students--and was filling with gas. There was no time, and these children needed her. She had to trust the evacuation plans the Professor already had in place, had to leave the fighting to Wolverine and get these children out and to safety.

"Let's go," she said grimly, and herded them in ahead of her.

Thomas pressed a button and the door closed, cutting the chaotic sounds of battle off as it settled back into place and apparently triggering emergency lights set in the baseboards. And then five pairs of painfully young eyes looked up to her in the closed, hushed silence.

Lili dropped to her knees. "If there's any fighting to do, you leave it to me. Just stay together and keep running and if things start burning, get down. Now go."

They ran. Down the hall, then round and round a tightly winding staircase that had to be taking them all the way underground. The stairs spilled out into a cold cement hall only a little wider than the one they'd just left. Which way? But the children didn't hesitate, turning right.

It felt like they ran for miles.

Lili slowed and motioned for quiet when they finally reached a grate covering an opening to the grounds. "Julian, what do you hear out there?" she whispered.

He pressed his face to the grate. "Helicopters," he panted. "And people running."

Cautiously Lili unlatched the grate and pushed it open, wincing when the metal protested loudly. "Can you tell the difference between students and the men coming after us?"

"I can tell the difference between bare feet and boots."

"Then you're in the lead, Julian. Listen hard. Just run from the boots, and let me know if you hear them ahead of us."

He nodded, and Lili picked up a twin in each arm and they plunged into the night. But Julian warned almost immediately that a helicopter had changed direction, and her heart sank with the fear that they were somehow being tracked. They hadn't gone far before the boots changed direction as well, heading straight for them.

They topped a small rise, darting down the other side and heading back into another pocket of trees. But a helicopter rose suddenly behind them, a spotlight cutting through darkness to find them, and Julian screamed for them to duck.

With the girls in her arms she wasn't fast enough, something piercing her shoulder two steps away from the nearest cover. "Get down," she gasped, the world tilting sideways as they slid down her. But the flames flared within, burning the drugs away, and Lili twisted round as she turned and pulled the darts from her shoulder.

"Keep going," she yelled, and reached, melting the odd hand gun already being fired again from the helicopter and throwing up a wall of heat that caught and incinerated the darts already in the air. Lili backed into the woods, but the children hadn't gone far.

"They're all around us," Julian explained, his eyes darting to follow the sounds. With the heat burning within, she realized as the soldiers closed that she could see the heat of their bodies. Six--no, seven of them.

"Time to follow me," she said. "Just be ready to drop."

She kept walking and ignited the air, blinding the gunmen's goggle-augmented vision, using their grunts and gasps of pain to further pinpoint them and flinging spears of heat into every weapon the fires warned her of. But that wasn't going to be enough. All they had to do was get close enough to pick one of her charges up. Grimly, praying she wasn't about to start a forest fire she didn't have the time to put out, Lili stoked the flames higher and kindled the air once more, feeding the fires with her strength and shaping them into a maze of burning walls, shifting them as she and the children started running again to keep the flames always between the kids and their attackers.

They broke suddenly out in a clearing and Julian shouted, a wordless cry of fear, and Lili whirled as the children all dropped to the ground. The helicopter screamed overhead and she heard the unmistakable ping of real, deadly gunfire. NO! Impact staggered her, the pain in her leg burning with a heat all its own, and Lili screamed in a fury of fire and gathered the full force of the blaze within and detonated a fire ball. Power rushed out from her in a snarling, searing wave, igniting uniforms and trees and knocking the gunmen head over heels and thrusting the helicopter nearly on its side. It swerved drunkenly in the sky, the pilot fighting to right the craft, but Lili couldn't afford to let him. Not with the lives of five innocent children in her hands. Not when these soldiers were now shooting to kill.

She had no choice.

Lili reached again, focused again, and blew off the tail rotor.

She followed the heat of the burning aircraft all the way to the ground, flinched as the fuel tanks exploded. And closed her eyes for one long, fiery moment as the heat consumed the lives of the four men still on board.

Dear God in heaven. She'd killed.

She couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't think--

But two small bodies threw themselves at her and another grabbed her hand and pain flared in her leg as she stumbled, and Lili snapped back to Thomas and Petra and Julian and Carrie and Christie in the woods and the only thing that mattered, getting them out, whatever the price.

"Everything's burning," Thomas stammered, his teeth chattering in shock.

Including, she realized, a couple of the gunmen who'd been knocked unconscious. Lili stretched her arms wide and called the heat back to her in a howling rush--from the soldiers' clothing, from the trees and brush, even from the burning aircraft just beyond that cluster of trees. It filled her with strength and light and cauterized her injury and kept the cold in her soul at bay.

She'd killed.

"Lili?" Petra whimpered.

"It's all right," she breathed, praying it would be, and knelt, gently reaching out to each child in turn, whispering her praise of how smart and strong and brave they'd been, smoothing their hair and wiping their tears away and running her hands over them until she was sure none of them had been hurt. Then she gathered the twins in her arms again and told the others to hold hands and together they started walking.

When they found other homes she kept them to the edge of the forest and went around. When the forest thinned for good and sidewalks emerged, she kept them to the darkest shadows. When streetlights appeared, she looked down at the tired faces of five very young children and realized she was going to have to find somewhere to hide so she could figure out what to do next and they could rest.

She had no idea where. No idea for how long. And worst of all, no idea who had come after them or why, or what had happened to any of the others.

X2 Ten

He woke to a pulsing ache in his head, to a hot, tingling tightness in his shoulders, and couldn't understand. He tried to check his visor and realized his arms were behind him, stretched impossibly high--and that he couldn't really feel them. Confused, he kept his eyes closed and drew breath to call for Jean, but gasped with the sudden nausea that would have staggered him if he hadn't been on his knees.

Why was he on his knees?

He tried to focus on the question, absurd as it was, but everything hurt now and with his eyes closed the nausea was a throbbing misery that just wouldn't go away long enough for him to take a decent breath and think. But he knew this was all wrong. He was definitely in trouble.

So he listened. "Jean?" The hushed, echoing silence told him he was alone, the room small.

He took a small, careful breath, smelling a musty dampness. The air against his face was cool, almost a relief with the heat in his shoulders, his face, his stiff, cramped legs.

Where the hell was he?

He might have to risk opening his eyes. There was pressure at his nose, his temples, and his forehead that felt familiar, like he was wearing his visor. But everything was too tight, the tightness extending all the way around his head… because she'd locked the visor in place.

Sense and memory crashed over him in swift, sharp images--that woman--the fight at the prison--the fear on the Professor's face--and Scott opened his eyes and raised his head, anger clearing his mind and pushing all the pain and discomfort to the edges of awareness.

Seeing the room didn't help. It was just as small and damp and empty as he'd thought. If there was a door, it was behind him. No, not much help at all. Whatever this room was, wherever they'd taken him--whoever they were--he had to get out if he wanted to figure this out, find the Professor, and stop whatever they were trying to do. That meant getting the use of his arms. And that meant standing.

Scott shifted his weight to his right leg and slowly scooted his left foot back under him, ignoring how much it hurt. Just how long had he been like that? He breathed deeply against the nausea and tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't cooperate and he sank back to the floor as a bolt clanked and the door swung open.

Her again. Damn it. If she wanted to give him another beating, he wasn't going to be able to do a damned thing but take it. "Who are you?" Scott demanded, not really expecting an answer, but if he could learn just one or two things before she started in on him again, it might make a difference later.

"Her name isn't important," an arrogant, extremely satisfied voice said. "But I'll tell you mine."

The little room was suddenly crowded, men holding Scott on either side and one rather hefty guy coming round to stand next to the woman. But where her eyes were dead, his burned with self-righteous fanaticism, and Scott knew he'd found whoever was trying to start the war between mutants and humanity.

Or rather, they'd found him.

The man smiled, and it was an ugly thing to see. "The name is William Stryker--ring any bells?"

No, but Scott wasn't about to play any of this man's games. "What have you done with the Professor?"

"He's busy, Cyclops," Stryker said softly. "Or would you prefer I call you Scott?"

It didn't surprize him that they knew both of his names. Not with the precision they'd used to come after him and contain him. "Busy doing what?" Scott pressed.

Stryker shrugged, a mocking, exaggerated gesture. "Why, he's helping me, of course. As you will."

Helping--

She moved and Scott tried to pull back, but the men on either side kept him still and she easily shoved his head down and all he could do was stare, helpless fury a bitter taste in his mouth, as Stryker's booted feet came into view.

"Now this won't hurt a bit," Stryker practically sang, and Scott knew he was in for it and braced himself.

The back of his neck tingled, and he blinked in confusion. "What are you--"

Molten pain seared into his neck and exploded in his brain and he gasped and jerked with wave after wave of blinding, breath-stealing agony. He tried to ride them out, but they shook him and shredded him and all he could do was huddle there on the floor and burn. He moaned with another brutal surge, but this time when the pain ebbed cold followed hard on its heels, rushing over him and sinking into his muscles. At first he welcomed it, his breath hitching in his throat and his body twitching with the simple relief of it. But the cold reached insidiously into his very thoughts, thickening, hardening, and he was suddenly, violently afraid. He shrank away from the cold and shook his head, then sluggishly realized he hadn't moved an inch. Instead he felt his body sag and his breathing even, distantly, as if it was happening to someone else.

"That's better," Stryker said, but Scott heard the words as if he listened from a thousand miles away. "You can release him now."

Fools. Tactics and techniques flashed in his head--he was ready, waiting, for that first moment of freedom. It came and went, and he didn't move. He couldn't move.

The men released his arms, they helped him stand, and then they left the room, the woman going with them. It was just him and this odious little man he should have been able to knock down with one fist. But try as he might he couldn't lift so much as a finger against him.

One of the men came back long enough to leave a chair behind. Stryker motioned for Scott to sit.

No, he thought. No, he wanted to say. Horrified, silent, he felt his body sit.

"Excellent," Stryker said, smiling again. "Wait here, Cyclops. So I know where you are if I need you."

They all left him then. Scott tried to move. He tried to yell. He fought the growing terror and tried with every fiber of his being to move his hand, his foot, anything, but the wall of ice didn't even crack. It just kept getting harder, thicker, colder, inexorably pushing him into a smaller and smaller corner of his mind, no matter how hard he threw himself at it.

What had they done to him? He couldn't move a muscle without Stryker's approval. Not a single, wretched…

He couldn't even close his eyes.

He'd always had at least that much control, had stupidly taken it for granted and risked everything with Lili to try for more. And now he'd give anything to have even that small bit of control back. He wanted to wail with frustration and the bitter irony, but he couldn't make a sound. All he could do was sit there, hopelessly, uselessly beating at the ice encasing him. But he couldn't even chip it.

He was trapped, with Stryker's hand the one controlling his power. He couldn't even close his eyes. In almost any other situation he'd trust Jean and Storm and even Wolverine and Lili, too, to find him and get him out, but sitting there in that room he dreaded seeing them.

Stryker would kill them, and he'd use Scott and his power to do it.

His own teammates. His friends. The woman he loved more than his own life.

Relentlessly he flung himself at the ice, over and over, prowling inside the small space left to him for any weakness, any tiny way out. But hour after hour passed, and his body just sat there, silent and still, in that God-forsaken little room.

He was lost. Alone. At the mercy of a fanatic, with one of the most deadly and destructive powers in the world circling endlessly within him.

And he couldn't even close his eyes…

X2 Eleven

It was a beautiful street, full of huge, beautiful homes with driveways and garages and expensive cars, well kept lawns and trees and beds brimming with carefully pruned flowers and bushes, every last mansion screaming its owners' wealth and power for all to see. But none of these places meant safety, because Lili didn't know who had attacked the school. Not that she expected the people behind it to be in one of these homes. But for all she knew, they were already on the news, billed as escaped lunatics or--worse--dangerous mutants. She didn't dare ask any of these people for help.

She couldn't risk a hotel, either, even if she had known where one was. For one thing, she didn't have a cent on her. And what if she ran into a sharp-eyed desk clerk who noticed most of them were in pajamas and bare feet, who remembered a disheveled young woman with five dirty, exhausted children clearly not her own?

"Lili?" Thomas whispered, looking up at her with huge, weary eyes, and Lili realized she'd been standing there too long.

"Come on," she said, nodding at the nearest tree and the inviting pool of darkness under its branches. "Let's sit down for a minute."

The grass was cool, and recently cut, and the tree felt wonderfully solid at her back as Lili sat down, the children all crowding close to her and Christie even burrowing into her side under her arm.

"All right," Lili said softly, hugging Christie closer and making herself smile for them. "All of you knew to use the tunnel to get out if something happened. What were you supposed to do once you were out?"

Thomas answered for them. "Get to a phone and call our parents, or someone we could stay with. Except I came from foster care--and so did Petra."

"We can't call my parents," Julian shrugged, his eyes going blank. "They're never home. I think they're in Africa again."

"Oh," Lili said, gently, recognizing that look. No, she wasn't going to get much help from people who made their son feel abandoned. "How about you two?"

"Daddy's stationed in Virginia," Carrie announced.

Stationed? Even with him as far away as Virginia, Lili didn't think a military man was their best bet, considering how well armed and trained those men had been. But she wasn't about to remind the children of that. "Gosh, that's pretty far away," she said instead. "What about your mom?"

Carrie looked at Christie, and Christie stared sadly back at her twin. "She left us with Daddy after the accident. We kind of started a fire."

"Oh," Lili said again, her heart going out to them. "Well, electricity can do that when you're still learning how to control it."

Except that left her squarely on her own. They needed shelter for the night, then food, clothes, a place to hide, and a way to pay for it all. Hopefully for no more than the next day or two, but considering she had no way to reach Scott or the Professor or anyone else, that was a pretty tall order.

Lili looked down the street again. She hated to do it, but these people all had plenty to spare, and she'd make sure she paid them back once this was over and they were safely back at the school. Assuming that was an option for them now.

Ooo, best keep that little thought to herself.

"Thomas, you're in charge. I want all of you to wait here for me," she said, gently disengaging herself from the twins. "I won't be long. I'm just going to find us a place to sleep tonight."

It only took a few minutes to find a big, dark house with a yard full of toys and a garage too full of stuff to also fit a car. But every house she'd checked so far sported the sign or sticker of a security company. How was she going to break in?

Oh, hell.

Praying the Professor would forgive her for dragging five-year-old twins into a life of crime with her, Lili returned to the children. Silently they stood, ready to go, reaching for each other's hands without prompting, and Lili felt her smile slip a little as she realized these kids were already far older than their actual ages.

She knelt and gathered all of them close. "We're going to walk down to the third house there," she said softly, "the one with the little pond in the lawn, and then we're going to follow the driveway back to the garage. I think we'll find what we need there, and it'll be a good place to hide for tonight. The only thing is, they've got a security system. I need you girls to tell me, honestly, if I can open the door, can you keep the alarm from going off?"

"That's easy," Christie said, and Carrie nodded.

Well. Lili had to laugh. "Done this before, have you? All right, then--let's go."

And it was easy. They walked back, and Lili didn't think anyone saw them. The twins did something Lili didn't understand with the electric, she melted the dead bolt away, and just like that, they were in.

"Wow," Thomas breathed. "They've got a lot of stuff."

"We're only going to take what we need," Lili cautioned, "and we're going to apologize and pay it all back later."

The children nodded, clearly intrigued and just as clearly on the last of their little legs. Lili quietly tore into a case of bottled water stacked close to the inner door and used the water and paper towels from the workbench to clean the children up, then sent them to "bed" on the wadded up canvas drop cloth, covering them with the old blanket that had been thrown over some kind of table top drill in the corner. She sat next to them on the cold cement floor, just in case, but they were asleep in minutes.

Lili pressed her hands to her eyes and sighed deeply. What a hellish night this had turned out to be. She'd fought. She'd killed. She'd sworn never to do that, but she had the blood of four deaths on her hands. Worse, to protect these children she knew she'd do it again. Now she'd broken into someone's home and would, before the night was over, steal.

And she'd thought things had been bad before.

She didn't want to think about it. She couldn't afford to anyway. These children were depending on her. They were all that mattered now.

Lili pushed to her feet and headed for the front corner of the garage and as the children slept she methodically went through everything. The home belonged to Eve and Paul Coulter, their children were Sarah and Will, and if the yard sale wasn't any day now, it should be. She found clothes and shoes for all of the children, and even a couple of tops that would do for her. There were old kitchen towels, a set of utensils and dishes for four for camping, an umbrella that still worked, and lots and lots of bags. She dug out two of the largest, one to carry the clothing, the other for everything else, finally adding the first aid kit she found by the workbench once she'd finally cleaned and wrapped what was left of the wounds on her leg. Thank goodness the heat had already almost healed her. And thank goodness for the Coulters, who couldn't seem to throw anything away. Including newspapers.

Lili grabbed another bottle of water, snagged the latest papers from the top of the recycling stack, and wearily dropped down next to the children to read them. Maybe somewhere in those pages she'd find a way to feed and hide them all for a few days. She kindled the air above her for light and opened the first one. She scanned every page, not knowing what would trigger an idea. And then she opened the Life section, and there was the answer to everything.

A circus was coming to town.

Just a little one, more a carnival than a circus. No big animal acts or trapeze artists or anything. But plenty of opportunities for day jobs if you knew who to talk to and what words to use. She may not have spent much time outside her trailer, but that much even she knew. And in a carnival there were always so many children running around, no one would notice if five more were suddenly in the midst of things. All the kids had to do was play and explore the carnival for a few days while she worked. If she was lucky, she'd find someone willing to let them sleep on their floor. If not, well, she'd figure something out.

The first shows were in two days, which meant they must already be setting up at this park the paper mentioned. So how did she get there? Start walking and ask directions?

She was still mulling that over when she realized the sky had started to lighten. They had to be on their way before the Coulters were up and about. Gently she roused the children. They washed up again and took the clothes she handed them and changed without a word, then stood there, watching her pack their pajamas with so much confidence and expectation that she had to breathe carefully around the sudden lump in her throat. They weren't just depending on her to take care of them--they already believed she would.

"Thomas, there's a box of ice cream sandwiches in that big freezer," she managed, grateful once more for the Coulters. She had no idea what made them need to stockpile frozen food in their garage with everything else, but she'd never laugh at the notion after this.

Thomas darted for the freezer and came back with the box, and on the run from gunmen in the middle of someone else's garage the children thought it was a blast to have ice cream sandwiches for breakfast. Lili tried to enjoy hers, too, but all she could think about was making sure she'd be able to feed them something for lunch and then for dinner, and then--

One thing at a time. She showed them the newspaper.

"I lived in a lot of different circuses," Lili told them. "I should be able to get a job with these people that'll make us enough money to get by for a couple of days."

"Days?" She should have known Thomas would catch that.

"I'm sure it won't be long. The Professor will find us when it's safe for us to go back to the school," she said firmly. "All we have to do is stick together and take care of each other until then, all right?"

"What about us?" Julian pressed. "Will we get jobs, too?"

"No," she smiled. "All I want you to do while we're there is have fun running around the carnival. I've only got two rules for you guys: stay together, and don't use your powers unless I say. We don't want anyone to know who we are or what we can do. Think you can remember that for me?"

"Stay together," Carrie and Christie chorused. "And don't use our powers."

"Then let's go."

It only took half an hour of walking to find a strip mall. Lili left the children outside the coffee shop at one end and went inside to ask for directions, struggling to hide her dismay when she realized they'd be walking most of the day. While these were five extraordinary children, that was a lot to ask of them. Not to mention there might not be any day jobs left by the time they got there.

What to do?

Start walking. The circus was the only plan she'd been able to come up with that wouldn't involve stealing anything else. And maybe they'd get lucky and a way to get there would present itself. Right.

Lili took the directions and thanked the girl, then went back outside to the children. "It's going to be a long walk," she warned them.

"We can do it," Julian said. The others all nodded.

They walked all morning, playing counting and word games the children knew, before the first complaints of tired feet and empty bellies arose. Lili stopped at the next corner and looked around, praying for inspiration, but all she saw were more nice houses, though not half as grand as the Coulters', with a dry cleaner, a salon, and a little sandwich shop half way down the street.

And an ATM.

An ATM full of cash.

Cash that would feed them whatever happened at the circus and pay for transportation to that park.

Damn it.

Petra slipped her small hand into Lili's. "It's all right. We're ready to keep walking now. Right guys?"

They weren't half as energetic as they had been that morning, but none of them were going to give her a hard time. Young as they were, they knew what was happening. They understood that they were all in big trouble. That decided her. She didn't like stealing, but she already knew she'd do just about anything to keep these children safe. She'd just have to pay the bank back later, too.

"Wait for me under that tree," Lili said. "I'll only be a few minutes."

She blackened the glass protecting the camera before she was anywhere near the machine and stoked the fires higher as she safely walked the rest of the way to it. She had no idea what was behind the ATM's cover, so she melted the slot where the cash came out, stirring the heat to keep most of it on the outside. The top few bills were still a little singed, once they were exposed, but no matter. Lili reached carefully past the hot metal and plastic, grabbed a handful of bills, and shoved them into the pocket of her jeans.

She bought sandwiches and drinks at the shop, making the children walk another few blocks before she found a spot for them to sit and eat, just in case they came to fix the ATM right away. A few blocks farther got them to a bus stop. They sat to wait, five small bodies sticking as close to her as they could. Julian thought up another game, and as they started counting different color cars that drove past, Lili finally dared to wonder about the others.

Had Jean and Storm gone back to the mansion yet? Were Scott and the Professor still at that prison? Surely they all knew something had happened by now. And what of Logan? He would have fought the soldiers, but had he gotten out? Had Rogue and Bobby, Pyro, Kitty and Peter?

The first bus that pulled up was going the wrong way, but the driver told them which bus to look for. They had to wait another fifteen minutes, but there it was, just like he'd said. They clambered on, the children dragging her all the way to the single long row of seats in the back. As they settled themselves and the bus pulled away, Lili could only hope that this bus was taking them to shelter and safety. And that all of the others, students and teachers alike of Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, were making their way as well.

X2 Twelve

Scott didn't believe in hatred. It was senseless and destructive and close-minded, little more than an excuse for people to do horrific things. But when Stryker came back hours later and dosed him again, he couldn't find any other word for the torrent of fury and fear that was all he had left in that cold little corner of his mind: he hated the man.

"Follow me," William Stryker said, in his oily little voice, and Scott felt himself stand and do exactly that, and then he hated himself. For falling into the trap. For not being strong enough now to break out of it.

He screamed and he ranted, but never made a sound.

He reached over and over for the man's throat, yet all his body did was walk calmly and quietly behind him.

And when they brought him to a room and showed him the screen and he saw some of the students in another cell, molten, roiling horror fed his hatred and redoubled it.

The school. Holy God, what had Stryker done? Where was everyone else? What had happened? Were these students the only ones captured, or the only ones left?

Jean? Wait--she'd been in Boston with Storm, he finally remembered. They'd left… they'd left Logan at the school, and Lili. If Stryker had gotten these kids out past Logan and Lili…

Oh, no. No…

"Don't worry, boy," Stryker finally said, and as his body turned sickly, obediently to face the man, Scott wondered that the man didn't choke on that much false sincerity. "I won't hurt these creatures. No, you're Professor will do that for me."

Never.

"You're mine now, Cyclops, and so is your Professor." Stryker waved a vial of yellow fluid at him and winked. "Some of you mutants can be very helpful."

His heart sank. If Stryker could do this to him, what had he done to the Professor? He'd never felt so alone, never truly understood helplessness before.

"Follow Yuriko back to your cell," Stryker cavalierly dismissed him. "And get some rest. I may not need you after all, but some of your friends could still show up, and it certainly never hurts to be prepared."

Scott had never hated before, either. But there was always a first time for everything.

X2 Thirteen

The cook's name was Jinnee, and she was seventy-five if she was a day. But she ran the kitchen and the dining tent with a kind, cheerful smile and the energy and efficiency of a woman half her age, and Lili liked her from the start.

Lili washed dishes, she chopped and diced and stirred, she served, she washed more dishes, and she listened to Jinnee and the performers and workers of this little carnival as they came and went. They were a family. A family. Max had taken her from her biological family, and he'd kept her isolated from all those circus families, and she'd never truly understood what she was missing until now. He'd made her afraid and closed and distrusting, mixing her up so badly that she didn't know how to be a friend and worried that she wasn't ever going to be able to love anyone. She hated him. She hated him. So fiercely it scared her.

She didn't want to be what he'd made her any more.

She wanted to be open, wanted to trust and love and be a part of something wonderful like the school and maybe even the X-Men. More than anything she wanted to share that with her mother, with Scott and the Professor, wanted to sit down and have that talk with Ororo, even wanted to explain everything to Jean and beg her forgiveness. But she had no idea where any of them were. She didn't even know if her mother was still alive or if there was still a school to go back to. She'd have to wait for all that, and just hope that she hadn't figured things out too late.

Until then, there was this circus, this family, and five children she'd do anything for.

And Jinnee had a soft spot for children. Especially Petra. The kids checked in with Jinnee as often as they did her, thriving under Jinnee's treats and grandmotherly caresses, having so much fun running around the rapidly rising carnival that for awhile that day, they could forget they were mutants who'd been abandoned and attacked. That was when Lili knew she'd done the right thing, bringing all of them there.

Despite everything, it was a really good day.

So good that she wasn't afraid to ask Jinnee if she and the kids could sleep in a corner of the dining tent. And when Jinnee didn't ask any questions, just smiled and started talking about which movie the kids wanted to watch that night with her in her trailer, Lili actually trusted her and climbed in with them.

It had been a long day, too. Carrie and Christie were asleep before Nemo even made it to his first day of school, and by the time Marlin and Dorie were talking to the sharks, Thomas and Julian were both out as well. Curled up next to Jinnee, Petra managed to keep herself awake the longest, but only by another few minutes.

"They're great kids," Jinnee said softly.

"Yes," Lili agreed, sighing. "They are. I think they're one of the best things that's ever happened to me."

"Are you all right? I mean--have you got a plan, somewhere to go?"

Was she all right? After the week she'd just had? "Not even close," Lili admitted, "but I'm getting there, Jinnee. We all are. And please, don't worry about us. I think we'll be able to go home in a few days. At least, that's what I'm hoping."

"How bad is it?" Jinnee was nothing if not blunt.

Lili wished she knew. "Bad."

"Well don't you worry, child," Jinnee said firmly. "You can stay and work with me this week, and if you're still here when we're ready to move on, we'll figure something else out."

"Thank you, Jinnee," she managed, her heart full.

"Now get some rest. You'll be working hard again tomorrow."

"Yes, ma'am," Lili grinned.

She tried to settle herself for sleep, listening to the movie with her eyes closed, but something was tickling at the back of her mind. Something that wasn't, she realized, easing herself off the bed to stand, right. But what…

…heat. Somewhere, there was heat where there shouldn't be.

Had the soldiers found them?

Lili looked within and stirred the embers to life. Whatever was happening now, she had to be ready for it.

"Lili?" Jinnee softly called, sitting up. "Is something wrong?"

Lili didn't dare look at her. Not with the fire burning in her eyes. "I don't know. Could you please stay with the children?"

"Of course," Jinnee replied, and Lili didn't wait any longer. She left the trailer, letting the door fall closed behind her and pausing to stand just outside. She looked through the flames, listened with them, sensed with them…

The power trailer. Something in one of the control panels was smoldering. She started for it, reached for it, and pulled the heat to her before the fire could spark to life.

There was still a danger, though. Lili grabbed a fire extinguisher from the side of the trailer, pried the box open, and doused the hot spot.

The door swung open. "What the hell are you doing?"

"You had a fire," Lili told him, quickly banking the one within her. She gave the control panel one last squirt with the extinguisher and handed it to him--was this guy's name Danny?--when he came to stand next to her. "Lucky I saw it before it could go anywhere."

"I'll say," he said. "Thanks. John, get your butt out here!"

John poked his head out, and Lili retreated to Jinnee's trailer as they got to work.

"Everything all right?" Jinnee asked sleepily.

"Just fine," Lili sighed, wiggling back into the sliver of space the children had left her on the bed. At least, as fine as it could be, under the circumstances. So much was out of her control. But she couldn't worry about any of that. It would drive her crazy. For now, all that mattered was that she'd found a safe place for her charges.

Lili watched them sleeping for as long as she could keep her eyes open. But that wasn't terribly long, not with being up all night the night before. The last thing she remembered was the sea turtles, sending Marlin and Dorie on their way.

X2 Fourteen

Scott lost all track of time, adrift in the cold that separated him from his own body. The only thing he knew for sure was that, with each passing moment that he sat in that cell, he wasn't being used against the X-Men or anyone else. It was the only thing keeping him sane as the hours stretched one into the next.

When the door opened and all they did was dose him again, he was actually relieved. But the next time the door opened the soldiers removed the device locking his visor into place, and Scott knew with a sinking heart that his reprieve was over.

"I've got a job for you, Cyclops," Stryker announced as he stepped into view. He waved, and one of the soldiers held a flat screen PDA in Scott's line of vision. It was showing a map of part of the complex.

"We have intruders. Your job is to neutralize them before they can get to this point. Understood?"

His body nodded.

"Then get yourself in position, Cyclops."

They actually allowed him to leave the room on his own, and Scott struggled all the way there, hoping and worrying at the same time that the intruders were the X-Men. But there was no way out of the cold, no way to stop himself. Stryker's control was complete.

He had no idea how long he waited, standing silently in the generator room, dread like a lead weight in his belly, until he finally heard footsteps. When Magneto spoke, Scott honestly didn't know if he was relieved or not. A fair fight with the man was one thing, but this…

And then he heard Jean, and his heart shattered.

No, no, no, no, NO! He couldn't hurt her--he'd promised to keep her safe--this was Jean, and he could not let himself do this! But his arm rose, and his fingers keyed the visor, and he screamed with heart, mind, and soul as he fired.

He'd missed. She'd known--somehow she'd known-- Of course. She'd sensed him telepathically. He just couldn't feel her through all the ice.

He started beating at it again, shouting for her, sparing nothing more than glances as his body fought her. This was Jean. They'd trained together for years. She knew his tactics, how he'd maximize his shots, everything he'd think and do. She'd hold him off for a while, there was still time. Except she'd never beaten him in a full sparring session. Not once. Not ever. Scott clawed frantically at thick, slick ice, fighting with every fiber of his being to get out, to reach himself, for control, sobbing with his fear that he would kill the woman he loved.

But he couldn't get any closer to the surface. The cold held him down and it choked him and it sucked the heat from his fury until he was hopelessly lost in frozen whiteness.

Jean. He couldn't reach her. He couldn't save her. He couldn't even tell her one last time how deeply he loved her. Despair took the last of his strength, left him sitting there numbly waiting for the end. The ice sparkled with crimson, and Scott screamed as the power within him crackled and burned and poured from his eyes.

She stopped it. He had no idea how, but Jean was holding back the full, devastating force of his optic blasts. He died a hundred times in each moment she held his power at bay, awed by her sudden strength, praying it would last, knowing in his soul that it wouldn't.

She was magnificent. She was love itself. And he was going to kill her.

And then the world detonated. And the ice cracked. And he could hear her, a whisper in the distance, reaching for him with all the love in her soul.

Jean!

The force of the shock wave carried his body, flailing and breathless and stunned, the length of the massive room. Impact knocked all the air from his lungs, pain searing the length and breadth of him and thrusting him toward darkness. But he heard her, he heard her, and he clung to one shining thought.

Jean was still alive. And she loved him.

And the ice had cracked. He scrabbled at the jagged, frozen edges, flinging himself against the unbearable pressure over and over until he couldn't feel anything anymore but ice and pain, until there was nothing left of him but the desperate, aching hope of freedom and control and Jean. She was his life. He'd be nothing, have nothing, without her. He reached again…

… and broke through.

Into light and warmth and love. Into Jean, into her love and regard and need and support. She loved him, no matter what, and Scott's mind opened to her love and embraced it and gloried in it and clung to it as his body lay gasping and trembling on the floor.

Please, he thought, and tried… and moved his hand.

He rolled to his back, sobbing for air, exhausted, so weak with relief he wasn't sure he could stand.

:Scott?:

He heard her voice in his mind and wanted to shout with the joy of it. And then he felt her pain and knew he'd hurt her. Panic heaved him to his feet and he ran to her. The sight of her reaching for him healed his heart. The feel of her in his arms and the touch of her mind to his soothed his soul.

"I'm sorry," he gasped, shaking again--he'd almost lost her. "I'm so sorry." He'd nearly killed her. He pressed frantic kisses to her cheek, her mouth, her jaw. "I could see what I was doing but I couldn't stop myself, Jean--"

"I know, I know," she sang breathlessly, pulling him fiercely back to her. "It's all right, I know. I'm here."

God, yes.

She kissed him, and everything in her heart was in that kiss. He let her feel and know everything in him, giving himself over to that endless moment of unity and reveling in the raw emotion and sheer power and glorious light that was their love.

Reality crashed into them far too soon.

"We have to go," Jean gasped, thinking faster than him, and he trusted her so completely he didn't stop to remember or ask her why or what or who, he simply reached to help her to her feet.

He felt it like a burning, deep in his mind, making him pause and look around for Lili.

"Something's wrong," Jean gasped.

Searing agony erupted in his brain and knocked him, writhing, back to the floor, and Scott remembered--Stryker, the Professor--

But the pain swelled with blinding, breathtaking violence, shattering him, shredding him, until he couldn't think, couldn't feel anything else but the pain, couldn't even remember a time without it.

And still, the pain grew.

X2 Fifteen

The first bolt of pain lanced through her head and jerked her around so fiercely and so unexpectedly that the plates in her hands went flying, clattering distantly to the table and splattering lunch all over the carnival owner. Gasping, clutching at her head, Lili backed unsteadily away. She heard Jinnee say something, saw her reach for an equally distressed Petra, but when the lightning struck her mind a second time it ripped sight and sound from her and crushed her to the ground. Excruciating pain burned through her like wildfire, seizing every muscle, searing every nerve, blackening her vision and roaring in her ears and slashing all sense and reason into fiery ribbons. It went on forever, building and building to a fever pitch, saturating her, drowning her, consuming her--

--and then it simply stopped.

And Lili could only lie there, her face pressed to the grass, shaking in stunned disbelief as her body slowly remembered what sight and sound and touch and thought were like without pain.

The world shifted and turned, and she realized someone was helping her sit up. The rumbling in her ears slowed and softened into words, and she understood that everyone was talking about her and Petra, wondering what had happened.

Petra. The children.

But before she could gather herself enough to stand Jinnee was there, placing a sobbing Petra in her arms. "Lili, can you hear me?"

Lili clutched at Petra as the little girl threw her arms around her neck and tried to nod.

"Oh thank God. I've never seen anyone-- Listen, I'm going to check on the others, all right? Just stay here. The rest of you give them some room!"

Lili nodded again and ran shaking hands down Petra's back. "It's all right," she finally managed, gently rocking her. "It's all right."

But was it? What the hell had just happened?

Lili forced her trembling legs under her and tried to stand, but there was no way Petra was going to let go long enough for Lili to get up on her own. Before she could even ask, the hands that had helped her sit were there again, this time helping her to her feet.

"Thank you," she said. And then she realized it was Fly Dargon himself, the carnival owner. And that he was covered with spaghetti sauce. "I'm so sorry," she gaped stupidly at him.

He didn't even look at the mess. "Don't you worry about a thing," he smiled. "It'll wash out. You and the little one feeling any better?"

Petra had stopped crying. Lili smoothed the child's hair back and wiped at her tears, relieved beyond words when Petra looked back at her with clear eyes. "We're okay, sir."

"Just call me Fly like everyone else," he said. "Jinnee said you're going by Lili now? Sarkaroff was calling you 'Fire Princess' the last time I saw you perform. Must've been eight or nine years ago. Max sure was glad you turned up all right. Said he'd looked all over hell and creation for you."

She stared at him, frozen, her skin tingling and her stomach plummeting.

"I thought you looked familiar," he went cheerfully on, as if he hadn't just pulled the ground out from under her. "Finally put two and two together when Donny came to tell me about the fire last night. Said you'd stopped a short from blowing up his entire trailer. Thanks, by the way." He looked over her shoulder. "Looks like the rest of your kids are okay."

Lili turned, suddenly desperate to have all five of them in her sight, stunned to see practically the entire carnival converging on the dining tent. But there at the front of the pack Jinnee had Julian, Donny-not-Danny was carrying both twins, and someone she didn't know was helping a staggering Thomas. The children all looked haunted, shaken, like they'd just taken the worst beating of their lives--which they had, if they felt anything like she did. But they were all right. They were all right.

And now they'd have to go. They weren't safe there any more.

Wordlessly Lili knelt, setting Petra on her feet and reaching for all of them, needing to touch them and look at them closely and convince herself they really were all right.

"They're fine, now," Jinnee smiled, as the children all clung to her, but Lili could see the woman was almost as shaken as they were.

"Never seen anything like it," Fly shook his head. "What the hell happened?"

"I don't know," Lili admitted.

"What is this?"

Max.

Fire roared to life inside her and Lili stood and turned, her heart thudding in her chest, carefully angling herself to keep the children behind her. It felt like forever since she'd last seen him in that warehouse, but Max hadn't changed at all.

She, however, had. "I told you to leave me alone," she snarled. "Didn't you get my message?"

He glowered at her, furious, glancing around, and Lili wondered if he wasn't happy about having this conversation in front of a crowd. One that had gathered, she finally realized, out of concern for the five amazing children in her care. And maybe even a little bit for her.

Beside her Fly slowly straightened. "What are you doing here, Sarkaroff? I told you she was fine."

Max opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Instead he gasped, his hands shooting up to clutch at his head, and as Lili stood there blinking in shock he doubled over, in obvious pain. And so did everyone else… except her and the children.

"Lili?" Thomas gasped.

Her first instinct was to run, right then and there--to be gone before Max could hurt her or the kids. But then Jinnee sobbed and fell to the ground and Fly staggered, groaning, and she couldn't go. These people had helped her, sheltered her, and she had to try to help them now. If it meant dealing with Max, then so be it.

"Kids, stay with Jinnee," she said, trying to steady Fly, as the minutes crawled slowly by and around them one by one everyone sank to the ground. Finally the big man himself tumbled, trembling, his eyes rolling up into his head. Lili managed to keep him from hitting his shoulder on the bench as he fell, but that was all she could do. It was the most unnerving sight she could imagine, all those people in awful, soul-shattering pain, and she couldn't do a thing to help them or to stop it.

And just as abruptly as before, it was over, the gasps and groans of pain changing to ones of shocked relief.

"Holy God," Fly groaned. "Is everyone all right?"

Lili glanced around. Everywhere people were climbing slowly back to their feet, even Jinnee. And unfortunately, that included Max. "I think so. Should I call someone--a doctor, or…"

Fly rolled carefully to his hands and knees. "We should check the news first. See if this only happened here, or if they know what--"

"It's obvious, is it not?" Max snapped. "Another attack on humans by those freaks."

Anger sparked in her belly, but before Lili could get a coherent word out, Fly lurched to his feet and turned on Max.

"Freaks?" he hissed, softly, but with such fury that Lili paused, staring at him. "Careful with that word, Sarkaroff. Everyone in this carnival has been called that or worse for most of their lives. But you never really understood that--did you?"

"You cannot be serious," Max sneered. "Siding with mutants like the one standing next to you?"

He glanced at her, contemptuous, but the fires were burning high and hot now, and he paused, a flicker of fear crossing his face as he saw the flames in her eyes for the very first time.

"The way I hear it, mutant or not, she made you a very rich man," Fly sharply replied.

"That thing is mine to use as I wish," Max smirked, his eyes darting behind her, and too late Lili realized she wasn't his target. Jinnee gasped and the twins screamed and Lili spun around--

Max's two friends, wearing the raw, angry scars she'd given them, each grasping a twin, each holding a boy to him by his hair. Only Petra had managed to elude them. She clung to Jinnee, while around them the crowd muttered in angry surprize and deep within, Lili's anger and fear turned into white-hot fury.

Fly spun back to face Max. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Taking what is mine."

"You can't just--" Fly sputtered, but Lili put her hand on his arm as she, too, turned back to Max.

"You shouldn't have done that," she said, softly, the crackle of flames in her voice. "That's the one thing you shouldn't have done. Fly, get your people back."

"Lili," he cautioned.

She smiled at him, even took the tiniest bit of pleasure in watching his eyes go wide when he saw what burned in hers. "Thank you, Fly, but this isn't your fight."

He surprized her by straightening and actually stepping closer to her. "You're part of our family, Lili. You always were."

How she wished he'd been the one to find her that day so long ago, instead of Max. She touched his face in wordless thanks. And then she brought herself to power, the air shimmering around her as the heat rolled off her in waves.

"You're a fool, Sarkaroff," Fly managed, finally backing slowly away and motioning for everyone else to do the same.

"Lili?" Jinnee protested.

"You, too, Jinnee," Fly added. "Just hold on to that little one and give our Lili some room."

Our Lili. It made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. They'd known her personally less than a day, and already they were treating her a thousand times better than Max ever had. It was time to teach him a lesson, once and for all, and get him out of her life for good. He'd done enough to her.

She didn't even need to look at him. The heat told her everything she needed to know. Lili flicked her fingers at Max, and a wall of fire seared into the grass around him, trapping him where he stood. Max being Max, he started shouting obscenities. With a tightening of her fist Lili moved the fires closer in a sizzling rush, winking at Fly when Max abruptly quieted.

She turned to Max's friends. But she didn't look at them, either. Thomas, Julian, Carrie and Christie--she found them one by one with her eyes, calming them with her smile. When she finally held out her hand, all eyes in the tent followed the gesture except for the children. They were all watching her eyes, trusting her, waiting for her to tell them what to do.

Lili stirred the air with her finger as if she was stirring the water in a glass, and the fiery wall around Max began to spin.

"Let them go," she said, quietly, raising her other hand, glowing with molten heat, "or I'll do more than mark you this time."

Cautiously, their gazes swiveling between her hands, they let the boys go, and they set the girls down, and a dozen people reached to offer them safety. But the children ran to her, Petra wiggling out of Jinnee's embrace as well, and as they looked up at her Lili suddenly felt like laughing. Instead she smiled and reached to tousle Thomas' hair, to stroke Petra's cheek. Trusting her, they let her. But she heard the gasps. After all, that hand had been white with heat only moments before.

Lili sighed, deeply, understanding as she never truly had before that she was a mutant. And that she had a home with them, even more than the one she'd apparently earned with circus folk. It was time, then, to face the one man she'd never wanted to belong to. Lili let the flames around Max die and slowly turned to him.

"I don't belong to you, Max," she glared. "I never did. You're a snake and a sorry excuse for a man and I want you to leave me the hell alone."

She may have cowed his men, but Max would never think of her as anything but something to be owned and disciplined and controlled--by him.

He yanked a gun from his back. She flung so much heat into the weapon that when he dropped it, it melted into a sizzling pool of metal and ignited the grass.

His face red with fury, he backed away from the small fire and pulled a cell phone from his pocket, flipped it open, and snarled something in Russian.

"In the trees, Lili," Julian gasped. "I heard--"

She hurled a bolt of heat sizzling and snarling into the trees, wrapping it around the man and his weapon and wrenching them both to the ground. And then she knew she'd had enough--she didn't dare give Max any more chances. Words alone would never convince him.

Lili sent the heat for him, lifting him off his feet and pulling him inexorably to her as she walked, slowly, to meet him. She drove the heat into his clothes until he writhed in pain, let the dancing flames eat at his thick, black beard until he finally shook with fear, held him helplessly in the air before her until understanding unwillingly dawned. Then she took that final step to him and raised her blazing hands to his heart.

"You're nothing, Max," she told him, fiercely. "While I've become so much more than you made me. Now get out and never come back and never hurt anyone again. Or I'll forget the kind of person I've become long enough to burn you to ashes."

She didn't give him a chance to say another word. She jerked him and all three of his friends high into the air with the fire and heaved them with all her strength and all her power as far away from her as she could.

Carrie and Christie were the first to move, raising their hands to her in a silent demand to be held. And as Lili knelt to pick them up, Thomas was the first to speak.

"They won't come for us again?"

"No, Thomas," Lili sighed, holding the twins close. "I don't think they will."

Fly snorted. "Not if they know what's good for them, eh? Donny, go check the news. And Jinnee--where's my lunch?"

And as Fly Dargon's carnival enveloped Lili and the children and returned slowly to normal, Lili found herself wishing that Scott and the Professor--and Ororo and Jean and even Logan--could have been there to see.

She missed them, she realized. Allof them. If only she knew what was happening…

X2 Sixteen

He was alone. A fiery, gaping hole screamed in his soul where Jean had always been, and now he was alone.

What had she done? What the hell had she done?

He cried out for her, he staggered drunkenly after her, he shook his head in useless denial. But she didn't answer. He couldn't see her or hear her or touch her or feel her in his mind, and

he never would again. The emptiness within him swelled in an icy rush and he sagged with the weight of it, shattered by its totality, stunned by its finality…

Alone.

"S-Scott?" Logan stammered, and distantly Scott wondered why Logan would bother to hold him up.

"Storm," the Professor softly called. "Take us home."

Home?

"No," he snarled, lunging for the ramp again, pushing Logan another step back but not escaping his hold. "We can't leave without her."

"There's nothing--" The Professor's voice broke, and he cleared his throat. "We have work to do, and there's nothing here for us now."

Nothing but Jean, nothing but his heart and his soul and his life--

:I'm so sorry, Scott.:

The words settled into his mind with extraordinary tenderness, but they cut to the bone and there was no escaping it then, no more room to deny what he already knew. Jean was gone, and he was alone.

Scott felt the jet shift and knew Storm was maneuvering them to leave. He felt Logan help him into a seat, even buckle him in, and understood they were actually going. But he couldn't really breathe, and he couldn't really think, and this time when the cold swept over him, he couldn't even find the strength to care.

X2 Seventeen

The carnival swirled with the frenetic activity of the night before opening, and for once, Lili was squarely in the middle of things. Carefully she balanced the huge tray of sandwiches that she and all of the children had helped Jinnee prepare. Beside her Thomas and Julian pushed the cart of bottled water and cans of soda, while the girls ran to each cluster of workers and performers and shyly told them that dinner was on its way.

It was extraordinary. The day's events had exhausted her, and after those mass migraines she was getting more worried with each passing hour about the Professor and his X-Men and his students. But there in Fly Dargon's carnival everyone was smiling and talking and including them, and Lili hadn't felt this energized since the night she'd discovered she could fly.

"Thanks, Lili," one of the barkers said, smiling at Thomas and patting Julian on the back.

Lili nodded, absently counting sandwiches and wondering if they'd made enough, when she felt a tickle in her mind. She froze, bracing herself, clutching at the tray--

:Liliana?:

The relief was so sweet she nearly shouted with it, and so jagged she nearly fell to her knees. "Wait," she gasped to the children, and sliding the tray onto the counter, she leaned against the edge for support and closed her eyes.

I'm here, Professor. And I've got Thomas, Julian, Petra, and Carrie and Christie with me.

:We were especially worried about them--no one else had seen them get out. You're all right then? You're all safe?:

We're fine. I've got a lot to tell you, though. But what about everyone else--and the school? Can we come home?

:Please. You're needed, Liliana. All of you. We've a lot to do to set things right. Or as right as they can be at this point. Things… didn't go well, and I want everyone home and together as soon as possible. I'll send a car. Expect it in… two hours.:

We'll be ready, Professor.

She felt that tingle, light as air, and knew he'd left her mind. Lili blinked and slowly straightened. They were going home. But what would they find when they got there?

"The Professor?" Thomas shrewdly guessed.

They were going home. Lili grinned. "Let's get these sandwiches passed out. Then we'll have to say good-bye to everyone--the Professor said it's time to go home."

The children cheered, but the good-byes over the next couple of hours weren't easy for them. They'd made a lot of fast friends. Finally Lili left them to spend some time with Jinnee and went to talk to Fly. She found him in his trailer, leaning precariously back in a massive chair, feet propped on the table, papers strewn about, and a phone to his ear. With a few final words he clicked the cell phone closed and waved her in.

"Heard you were leaving us already."

Lili nodded. "It's safe for us to go home now."

"Well, we'll be sorry to see you go. It was a pleasure having you and those kids around."

"There was a time not so long ago when I never wanted to see another circus again for as long as I lived," Lili confided. "But you stood up for me, and you made me feel welcome, and you helped me keep the children safe and fed and sheltered. They even had fun and made friends in the middle of everything. And so did I. I'll never be able to thank you enough."

Fly shook his head and dropped his feet and the chair to the floor. "You might not want to be thanking me, Lili. It was my fault Sarkaroff showed up. Everyone always knew he was a hard man, and particularly protective of you, but as far as anyone could tell his hands were clean. When he put the word out that you'd been taken, it never occurred to me that you might have left on your own two feet. Not with how popular an act you were."

"It's all right, Fly. I'm not angry." Lili shrugged. "I was going to have to face him sooner or later. This way, it's over already, and I'm finally free of him."

"Yeah," he sighed heavily. "About that. Finally put two and two together there, as well. Max wasn't just protective of you, was he? How long had you been trying to leave him?"

Before Scott, she'd never talked about Max. And even with him, she hadn't said much. But with someone else from the circus world, someone who'd known Max, it was unexpectedly easier. Maybe because it was finally over. "He took me from my family when I was six or so," Lili admitted. "I don't even know my real name or if my family's still alive. By the time I was old enough to understand what had happened, Max already had too tight a hold on me."

"And none of us saw," Fly said, his mouth tightening in disgust. "I'm sorry, Lili. We let you down."

"I never said a word to anyone, Fly--no one knew."

"But we should have," he pressed. Fly stood, filling the space of the small trailer and looming protectively over her, his hand gentle on her shoulder. "I've been on the phone most of the afternoon, talking to the owners you worked for. Give me a week or so and I think we'll be able to get something together to make it up to you."

She blinked at him. Make it up to her? "But--it wasn't your fault, Fly. You didn't--"

"I didn't see," he said again, harshly this time. "If anyone had done something like that to one of my performers, I'd make it right for them. I know you never worked for me, but let me do this, Lili. Let me make this right--at least, as much as I can, after all this time."

She'd never expected anything like this, and had no idea what he thought he could do. But whatever he meant, she couldn't turn down the gesture. It was simply too kind and generous a thing. "Thank you," she said. "That means a lot to me."

He relaxed a little bit. "This might mean more--the word's out about Sarkaroff now. I'll be very surprized if he has a single reputable act willing to perform for him by week's end, and he's going to find it pretty damned difficult to get a venue after this."

She could only stare at him. The circus world turning against Max? Just like that? Because of what he'd done to her? God, she'd wasted so much time being afraid of him…

"I don't know what to say," she finally managed.

Fly Dargon leaned down and enveloped her in a warm, surprizingly gentle hug. Or maybe it wasn't as surprizing as all that.

"Just be happy, Lili," he said. "And keep in touch, all right?"

"I promise," she murmured into his chest.

"By the way," he rumbled, "if you ever want to perform again…"

Lili was laughing when she left his trailer, grateful most of all for that parting gift, because when the car pulled up and it was finally time to leave, it was shockingly difficult.

The children were too keyed up to be sad for long, though, so they filled the two hour drive back with more games. Lili tried to prepare them as they got closer--she had no idea what state the school was in or what "things didn't go well" meant--but it wouldn't have been enough, no matter what. The car turned onto Graymalkin Lane and the signs of battle were all too clearly seared across stone and ground. It brought everything back to them--to her--and when the car rolled gently to a stop at the side entrance and all five of the children pressed themselves to her, she didn't mind at all.

The driver came around and opened the door, but none of them were ready to move. Not even Lili. Then Storm crossed to the car and leaned in, and the sorrow on her face sucked the breath from Lili's lungs and nailed her to the seat.

What had happened? The Professor was all right, and Storm clearly had survived, too. But what about Scott, Jean, Logan… and everyone else?

"Welcome back," Storm said, forcing a smile. "We missed you guys."

She wasn't fooling anyone, not even the twins. Lili realized this was going to be up to her. Gently she wrapped her arms around all of the children. "This is our home," she reminded them. "No matter what. We can't let anyone take that from us. So let's go see what we can do to help, all right?"

One by one the children nodded and climbed out of the car, but they didn't go far before they stopped and turned back to wait for her. Lili couldn't let them down. She got out of the car herself and would have followed, but Storm put a hand on her arm and held her back.

"The mansion is a wreck," she said tightly. "I'm putting you in charge of the children's floor. Most of the kids there are already back. For tonight just get your five up to their room and help them set things right there. Check in on everyone, let them know you're there if they need to talk or have a nightmare or need a glass of water--anything. You should probably sleep up there tonight, too--can you do that?"

"Of course," Lili nodded. "But Storm--what happened?"

"We'll talk tomorrow--" Storm's hand tightened on her arm, her voice breaking, and this time Lili found herself the one to open her arms and offer comfort without knowing why.

Storm was shaking. That completely unnerved her, to feel a woman as confident and powerful and smart as Storm, shaking. Maybe she didn't want to know. Maybe she wasn't ready to deal with everything else any more than she was ready to admit out loud that she'd killed four men. "Storm," Lili breathed. "It's all right. If you don't want to talk until tomorrow, that's--"

"It's Jean," Storm gasped. "She-- She didn't make it."

Oh dear God.

Lili didn't know what to say. The ground shifted on her again, sharply, suddenly, and she couldn't seem to find her balance anymore. Jean was gone? But--how could that be? Scott would never allow…

No. Oh, no. What about Scott? Did he know yet? This would destroy him.

Lili felt a touch at her knee. "Lili?" Thomas, coming back to check on her, reminding her that she had responsibilities, five wonderful children here and who knew how many more upstairs who'd had their lives upended just as badly and who were counting on her to help them get through it. They had to come first.

"I'll be there in a minute, Thomas. Go wait with the others, please."

Storm pulled away, surreptitiously wiping her eyes as she watched Thomas trot back. "You're really good with them."

"They're good with me. Oh, Storm, I'm so sorry. I… I guess I have to go. But I have a lot to tell you, too. Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," Storm nodded.

"You'll come get me if I'm needed?"

"You already are." Storm tried again to smile.

She was needed. In the middle of all the pain and fear and devastation, it warmed Lili straight through to know she was needed. She really could call this place home. Lili joined the kids, wordlessly bending to pick up Carrie and Christie when they held their arms up to her, settling the twins on her hips as Thomas and Petra and Julian took each other's hands. Together they entered the place that had somehow become a home for all of them.

But it was a very long night.

X2 Eighteen

They'd gotten him back to the mansion, but it was just a building to him now. Scott had unbuckled his harness when everyone else had, and he'd stepped off the jet when everyone else had, and he'd walked down the hall and rode the elevator into the mansion and he'd looked around with them at the ruin that Stryker had left behind. But he hadn't felt anything. Which had been odd, because the place was supposed to be his home.

Home…

Scott had left them all behind, just walked away from the Professor and Storm and their planning and assessments. He'd stepped on bullet casings, kicked a smoke canister, but he hadn't connected with what they meant any more than he'd connected with the building itself. They simply weren't important. No, the important thing had been to see. He'd simply had to see if she… He got to their room and threw the door open with a hand that shook.

The room had been empty. So horribly, coldly empty.

He'd sat on his side of the bed, waiting, for hours. But no one had come to tell him it was all a mistake, that Jean was fine after all. She hadn't walked into the room, smiling just for him, chiding him for worrying. No one had come.

Finally he'd stretched out, across the bed, burying his face in Jean's pillow and letting sleep take him. But all night long he'd chased her elusive scent through his dreams, waking even more exhausted than when he'd laid down.

And still, Jean wasn't there. The room was as empty as he was, a shell just as cold and as heavy and as thick as the one he'd been trapped in. Jean had helped him break out of that one. This time, he knew, he wouldn't be so lucky.

So all he did when he woke was roll over to stare blankly at the ceiling. And all he did as the hours passed was stay that way. He had no reason to do anything else.

When he heard the knock, he knew it wasn't Jean. Jean wouldn't have knocked on her own door. So he stayed where he was. But then he heard the Professor's wheelchair approaching and Storm came to sit next to him on the bed. He saw her uniform, and that, finally, he understood. Caring about it, though, was another thing entirely.

And then he realized that Storm was crying. For Jean.

Grief flattened him all over again, and he raised trembling hands and covered his face.

"We need you, Scott," Xavier said, gently, but there was steel behind the words as well. "There's work to be done, and no one to do it but us."

He didn't care.

"Please," Storm whispered. "I don't know how to do this without her. We need you."

Without Jean… What did any of this matter?

"William Stryker attacked this home and forced us to play out his own personal war," the Professor said, his voice sharp with so much anger that Scott dropped his hands and turned his head to look at him. "People need to know what he did--the lives he destroyed with his prejudice and his hatred. Scott, we have to stop this war now. Before anyone else gets hurt."

Before anyone else died. And before anyone else was left behind, so alone that they wouldn't ever be able to take a full breath again.

Wordlessly Scott rose, feeling like he'd aged fifty years in a single night.

It helped, for a while, having something to do. Helping Storm fly the jet. Monitoring what was left of Stryker's security while Kitty retrieved the file the Professor wanted. Landing on the White House lawn. But he stood in the Oval Office and he listened to the Professor and all he knew was that Jean should have been standing there with them, next to him, her hand in his, loving him as he loved her.

This was his fault. He'd let Jean down when he'd left, and he'd let her down when he'd come back. He'd said he wouldn't let anything happen to her, but it had. She'd needed him, but he hadn't been strong enough or fast enough or smart enough to save her. And now she was gone, and it was all his fault, and he didn't know what he was doing any more.

The Professor said it was time to leave, so Scott followed him out. He took his seat in the jet, feeling old, worn, empty, and just blinked at the controls until Storm asked him to check the vertical stabilizers. Right. Vertical stabilizers.

She lifted the jet into the air, and Scott dropped his hands to his lap and let her fly. Storm didn't really need him. Not to fly, not for anything. And she dare not depend on him. Or he'd let her down, too, just like he had Jean.

X2 Nineteen

It didn't seem real. Lili heard everything from Rogue and Kitty at breakfast, but she couldn't wrap her head around Stryker, Boston, Alkali Lake… Jean's incredible sacrifice. She worked all morning around the mansion helping students get settled as they returned, and everywhere, with everyone, she felt Scott's and Jean's influence so heavily that she couldn't make herself truly accept that Jean wasn't still there somewhere, as Scott was. It just… wasn't real. It couldn't be.

The damage to the building, the grounds, and the students' feelings of safety, however, was far too real. When the X-Men took off, the tension in that building skyrocketed. It didn't matter that the man responsible for the attack had been killed. All the students knew was that they were vulnerable again. So Lili got them all to go down to the living room, got them working together to put the large room back to rights. She put a movie in, she started some games, she had lunch served there, and she made sure that everyone was involved in some way. When the jet finally came into view and everyone swarmed to the windows, Lili was the only one not watching it descend gracefully into the landing bay. She was too busy watching the students--they breathed a little easier, their shoulders relaxed a little, their smiles weren't quite so shaky around the edges any more.

"Wait here," Lili said as the basketball court slid closed, just in case the Professor wanted to address them. Then she went below.

The engines were still cycling down when she got to the landing bay, but the craft had settled and a moment later the ramp lowered and the X-Men began filing out.

Lili smiled at Kitty and Rogue as they walked past, and reached out to squeeze Bobby's hand as well, wordlessly offering her support. As far as she knew her family and her roommate hadn't either abandoned or betrayed her, and she hoped she'd never know what that felt like, as he now did.

Logan walked straight to her. He was grieving, too, she realized, and that reminded her of what she'd said to him. Had she done what she'd accused him of? Had she not given his feelings her respect, as he had disregarded Scott and Jean's love?

"Logan, I'm sorry for what I said the other night. I didn't mean--"

He waved off her concern, staring at her intently with those dark, brooding eyes. "I'm worried about Scott."

Lili blinked at him. She really had underestimated him. For Logan to be concerned about Scott now, when the only person truly linking them was gone… What had Storm said? He felt what he felt without apology.

"He's not gonna let me do anything for him," Logan quietly pressed, "and losing her just might break him. You need to watch out for him. You hear me? He trusts you."

Maybe. Lili didn't really know any more. But… Scott had said they were still friends. She had to try. Lili nodded. "I'll watch out for him," she promised.

Logan pressed his hand warmly to her shoulder, then without a backward glance he continued down the hall. Lili turned to see the Professor and Storm.

"I'm so sorry, Professor."

"Thank you, Liliana," he sighed, grimacing in very real pain and rubbing absently at his temple. "How were the students? Not too distressed at our absence, I hope?"

"Well, things did get a little tense when you left," Lili admitted. "But I got everyone together in the living room. We cleaned up and had lunch, and they're still waiting there for you, just in case you want to talk to them."

He nodded. "I believe I will. If you'll both excuse me?"

Storm stepped up to hug Lili as Xavier wheeled past, and Lili found herself smiling at how easy it had become to let people touch her. "How are you doing?" Lili softly asked.

Storm pulled back and shook her head, her lips tightening. "Not so good. How about you?"

Lili shrugged. "It's all so unbelievable--none of it has really sunk in yet. I still feel like Jean is here somewhere, like it wasn't even really me fighting back when that Stryker attacked--what, three nights ago?"

Storm's lips parted in surprize. "You fought back?"

Her stomach tightened and Lili nodded, frowning. "It was bad," she admitted. "I… Storm, I--"

"Breathe, honey," Storm encouraged, gently rubbing Lili's shoulders. "You don't have to talk about it yet if you're not ready."

"No--I don't want this inside me anymore," Lili explained, and when Storm nodded in understanding she took a deep breath and started at the beginning. "The children showed me the tunnel and we made it all the way out. But they came after us on the grounds, and when they shot me--"

Storm's hands tightened. "They shot you? Lili, where--why didn't you say someth--"

"I'm all right," Lili reassured her. "Remember? It was just my leg, and I was already using my power, so the heat burned the injury away almost immediately. It's just… when I realized they were actually shooting at us, I… I destroyed the helicopter, Storm. Four of the soldiers died in the crash. I felt it, through the heat."

"Oh, Lili," Storm sighed, taking Lili's hands. "I know you didn't want to hurt anyone. But there wasn't anything else you could have done--you had five children depending on you. And when men like that are coming after us, well, sometimes the only choice we have is to play by their rules."

"That's what I told myself," Lili managed, her throat tight. "But it doesn't really make it any easier."

"No. And I don't think it should. Because if it ever becomes easier…"

"We'd be like Stryker," Lili sadly finished.

"Exactly."

:Excuse me, ladies, but could you please join me in my office? We've quite a bit to discuss.:

Storm straightened, visibly gathering herself. "With men like Stryker out there, I sometimes wonder if we'll ever get things back to normal around here. But the Professor's right--we have to try. Let's go."

Lili hesitated. "What about Scott?"

:He's still in the jet. Kurt offered to sit with him, but Liliana, if you think you can get through to him…:

"I'll try, Professor."

:At least see if you can get him to eat. As far as I can tell, he hasn't eaten anything since Stryker took us at the prison. Just--be careful with him.:

"I will," Lili nodded.

"Good luck," Storm said, and then Lili was alone in that massive, silent hangar.

She stared at the ramp, hesitating, trying to think what to say, but she didn't have a clue what Scott needed to hear. Or maybe, he didn't really need to hear anything. Maybe he just needed to know he wasn't alone, that he still had family and friends to turn to. Keep moving, he'd said. Believe that they were still needed, and even still loved. That much, at least, she could give back to him.

Lili climbed into the cold, silent jet. Curled in one of the rear seats sat a fellow circus performer, one of the most startling she'd ever seen. Lili hoped she would have the chance to speak with Kurt before he left, but now definitely wasn't the time. She smiled at him. "It's all right," she said. "I'll stay with him."

Wordlessly he nodded and left, moving in that strangely sinuous way that would have marked him as different, even without blue skin and a tail, and Lili was alone with Scott. She'd always sensed his power as heat, but now as he sat in the right hand pilot's seat it was muted, almost cool. Like he'd retreated so far into himself that not even his power could keep him warm.

Slowly she went to her knee next to his chair. "Scott?"

He didn't react. Had he even heard her? Hesitantly she reached out and gently touched the back of his hand, grateful when she realized that there was more between them than what had happened in Nevada, that she could be a friend to him, could even touch him without feeling that all over again. Except he still didn't react, and his skin was like ice. She settled her hand lightly over his. "Scott?"

He didn't answer, but the brightness of his visor dimmed, and she knew he'd closed his eyes.

"We're all here, Scott," she softly pressed, sending a soothing warmth into his hand. "You know we're all here for you."

His breath caught in his throat, and his hand trembled under hers. "I can't… Jean."

"I know," she said, her voice thick with sorrow. "We don't have to talk now, Scott. You don't have to say a word. Just trust me--please?"

Scott shuddered and looked away, but he didn't pull his hand from hers.

"Come on," she encouraged, tugging carefully at his fingers. "You've always taken care of me, Scott. Let me take care of you now."

He didn't move, one minute stretching into the next, and the next, but Lili knew how to wait. She held his hand and kept sending warmth into him and resigned herself to kneeling there for hours if that was what he needed. But it didn't take that long. He finally sighed, nodding brokenly, and when he turned to her and stood, the exhaustion and the emptiness and the hollow, shattered look on his face drove it home to her and made it real as nothing else could have.

Jean was gone.

Lili bit her lip and blinked hard to keep the tears at bay. Later. She would mourn later. Right now, Scott came first.

"Come on," she said again, and led him out of the jet. He followed without question until she opened the door to his and Jean's room. Then he stopped cold, his grip on her hand tightening.

"She's not there," he said hoarsely.

"No," Lili gently agreed. "She's not. Would you rather use one of the guest rooms?"

Torn, uncertain, he hesitated, then helplessly shook his head.

"Then trust me, Scott," Lili soothed, and pulled him inside. Her heart contracted at the cozy warmth of the room, at the sight of Jean's belongings scattered and arranged and mixed with Scott's. Would it help Scott to be around her things right now, or hurt him? Would their room be a haven, or the worst kind of reminder of what he'd lost? Once inside, though, he seemed to relax a little, and Lili breathed a bit easier as she led him to the bathroom.

She finally let go of his hand then, reaching instead to start the water running. When it was hot enough she pulled the knob for the shower, turning back to Scott as steam began to fill the room. But he hadn't moved. He was still just… standing there. Waiting for someone to tell him what to do? Or so numb that he just didn't care?

Lili reached up and took his face in her hands. His cheeks were rough with a couple days' growth, his lips dry, and somehow he felt frail, hollow, as if all the life had been sucked out of him at Alkali Lake. Was there anything in the world she could do to help? Lili was very afraid there wasn't. But one thing at a time.

"Scott, you're exhausted. I want you to get out of that uniform and into the shower. I'll come back with something warm for you to wear. All right?"

Maybe it was her tone, or that she wasn't pushing him to talk about how he felt, but Scott actually nodded, actually straightened and turned away and reached for the zipper of his uniform.

"I'll be back," Lili said again, relief making her knees shaky, and stumbled out and closed the door behind her. She gave him nearly a half hour, would have given him longer, but she could feel the heat of the water lessening, and the last thing he needed was for her to let him get cold again.

She knocked. "Scott?"

He didn't answer. She gave him another minute and tried again, but this time when the water kept running Lili opened the door and went in.

Through the leafy pattern on the plastic shower curtain she could see him, leaning against the wall, simply standing there and letting the water sluice over him, his eyes tightly closed. He wasn't wearing his visor. It was the first time she'd ever seen his face without anything covering his eyes. He looked like a completely different man. Except he was still Cyclops. Lili chewed at her lip. Well that certainly changed things--how was she supposed to get him out of the shower now? She didn't dare risk startling him with nothing whatsoever covering his eyes. She looked around for his visor and found it on the counter. But maybe there was a reason he hadn't gotten it wet. Wait--hadn't there been a pair of his glasses on the dresser? She snagged them and returned, hesitating, but Scott shivered under the cooling water and that decided her.

Lili pushed the shower curtain back just enough, stretched up, and gently slid the glasses onto his face. Scott sighed, coming slowly back from wherever he'd gone. When he reached to turn off the water, Lili left a t-shirt and pajama bottoms on the sink and went back into his bedroom to call down to the kitchen. The head chef herself brought the soup just as Scott finally emerged from the bathroom.

"Come eat," Lili said, carrying the tray to the table for two in front of the window.

Scott grimaced, standing uncertainly in the doorway.

Lili put the soup down and went to him, taking his hand in hers again. "Please, Scott. You need to eat."

For the first time he looked at her--really looked at her--and though he didn't say a word, she could hear the Why? as clear as day.

"Because I'm asking you to," she said, simply.

His shoulders sagged, and he let her lead him back to the table. Once he picked up the spoon and started eating, he retreated from everything again, but Lili didn't try to draw him back. All that mattered was that if he didn't stop to think about what he was doing anymore, maybe he would finish the meal. It worked, and Scott ate the entire bowl without protest while she sat and watched, and when he was done he even let her tuck him back into his bed. When she would have left, though, he sat back up and reached for her, grasping so tightly at her wrist that she froze.

His mouth opened, and his throat muscles worked, and her heart broke to see him so lost that he couldn't even find the words he wanted. "I can't--" he finally choked, clutching at her arm, and then whatever tenuous hold he'd had on himself simply shattered, and Scott fell apart.

"I can't," he sobbed again. "Not without Jean…"

This was love. She'd seen the joy between Scott and Jean, wondered at it, at how strong they both had to be to open themselves to that deep and true a connection. And now that it had been severed, she looked at the awful reality of love's loss and didn't know how Scott had even survived this long.

What could she possibly do to help heal a wound like this? She had no idea. She didn't even know how to get him through the next five minutes. But she had to try. Scott had always stayed with her, even when he hadn't known what she needed. She couldn't do anything less for him now.

Lili knelt next to him on the bed and pulled him close, letting her own tears fall as Scott buried his face in her shoulder and finally gave voice to the grief and the anguished pain that were ripping him apart. He shook and sobbed, and she held him and cried with him, absorbing each jagged tremor that wracked him and wishing with all her heart that she could have spared him this, that failing that, there was something--anything--she could do to right his world as he'd tried over and over to right hers.

When the storm finally passed and Scott quieted, she remembered those precious extra moments Ororo had given her, holding her until she was ready to let go, that generous gesture telling Lili unequivocally that she wasn't alone. If that was the only thing she could do--if she could just make sure that Scott knew he wasn't alone, either…

So she held him long after he'd relaxed against her, giving him as much time as he needed and hoping that at least for a little while, he could remember and believe that he wasn't alone. And when he didn't pull away, but finally fell into an exhausted sleep, she leaned back against the headboard with him still in her arms and she stayed with him, kindling a gentle fire deep within to keep him warm and comforted even in his sleep.

For this one time, at least, Scott wouldn't wake alone. And maybe, that would be enough to help him keep going.

X2 Twenty

Scott woke knowing everything was wrong… but not knowing why.

He felt warm, which vaguely surprized him. He'd been expecting the cold again. Hadn't he been cold?

He reached automatically to check his visor, knowing it would be there--but instead of the visor's reassuringly familiar lines and shape, he felt his glasses. His glasses? He never slept with just his glasses. Why had he gone to sleep with only his glasses?

Uneasily he shifted, stilling when he realized it was a woman's softness holding him. Except… he had the oddest notion that he should be alone. Which was ridiculous. Wasn't it? Why would he be alone?

Damn it, why did everything feel so wrong?

Jean would know. Scott opened his eyes and he turned to her. But it wasn't Jean holding him, and as Scott stared at a sleeping Lili in shock the awful memories rose up and a jagged, aching emptiness opened inside him, and even before the truth had completely settled he'd pushed himself away and off the bed and staggered back.

Lili woke in a startled rush, there in his and Jean's bed where she shouldn't be, looking warm and rumpled and more than a little bit surprized. Absently she rubbed at her neck. "Scott?"

"What are you doing here?" he asked, his throat tight.

She paused, looking closely at him, her eyes searching his, and finally he remembered the rest of it--sitting in the jet, too raw and tired and ragged to even get up, much less decide what to do next--and Lili, making all those decisions for him. Getting him cleaned up. Making him eat. Taking care of him. Just like Jean would have… And he'd allowed it. He'd even, God help him, wanted it.

He couldn't stop it. He didn't even try. He didn't deserve comfort when Jean had died because of him and he didn't want Lili in his bed, he wanted Jean, but he would never have her again, and when fury boiled over inside him he couldn't make himself care if Lili saw or what she thought.

Something shuttered closed in her eyes and wordlessly she got off the bed to stand there uncertainly, and part of him knew he was being unfair to her. But the rest of him shouted back that there'd been nothing fair about Jean's death, so why should anything else be?

"You always stayed with me," Lili finally said. "I thought you might…"

"No," he said, starkly. He didn't care what she'd thought, and he didn't care if he was making her uncomfortable now. He shouldn't have leaned on her like that. And she shouldn't have let him. Not her. Especially not in his bed.

"I'm sorry," she breathed, looking away. "I just thought you shouldn't be alone."

The words lanced through his heart and left him shaking. "You're not Jean," he said roughly. "Jean should…"

"I know," Lili whispered. "I'm so sorry, Scott."

And then she was gone, the door closing softly behind her, and the room felt even colder than before. The anger died as quickly as it had started and Scott shivered and rubbed at his arms, trying to get warm again, wondering vaguely why he was still so tired. The bed beckoned, but he couldn't get back into that bed. He couldn't. Whatever warmth he'd found there last night hadn't been right. So he dressed, layering on the clothing, and when that wasn't enough he left the mansion, sitting for hours in the sunshine.

That didn't help, either. Nothing did. And the realization crept over him as he sat there that nothing ever would.

So he simply got used to the cold. It was there in his dreams when he slept, and he breathed it when he woke. It filled him so that he rarely ate, and it roared in his ears so that he rarely spoke. Some mornings he couldn't get out of bed with the weight of it, and other times its jagged edges were like knives, spurring him into hours and hours of work. Around the house, on the cars, the jet, the systems below grounds, anything at all to keep him from thinking about everything he'd lost.

And then he'd see Logan, and it would all shear through him again. Scott had no doubts that Jean had loved him. But he also knew, now, that he hadn't been the only man in her heart. He'd seen the attraction between them and tried to lay it all on Logan, but in that stunning moment of unity in the generator room when Jean had kissed him, when she'd opened her mind to him completely, there had been a part of her he still hadn't touched, because it had belonged to Logan. Scott wanted him gone so badly he could taste it. Logan was nothing but living, breathing proof that once again, on some basic, primal level, Scott hadn't been enough. Seeing Logan flayed him alive and made him so furious that it scared him. One wrong word out of the man, and Scott knew he'd blast him to kingdom come. And if he ever allowed himself to go that far, there'd be no turning back. So he did everything in his power to avoid the man.

But he couldn't avoid Lili. She was suddenly all over the place, every time he turned around. Helping Ororo with the students, running errands for the Professor, just walking and talking and living and making him feel so damned guilty he couldn't breathe with it. He'd hear her laughter and his stomach would clench. He'd see her playing a game with the youngest students and have to look away from the happiness in her face. Or worse, he'd catch her watching him, concern written all over her, and he'd have to walk away. He didn't want her concern. He couldn't even be her friend. It wasn't her fault, and he'd hurt her, he knew that, but every time he thought about apologizing he'd remember the feel of her in his arms--twice--and the guilt would roil up and eat him alive. He'd betrayed Jean once, unknowing, and sworn it would never happen again. To know that he'd spent an entire night with Lili, however innocently, had actually taken comfort, from her, was just more than he could handle.

Especially since he couldn't shake the feeling that Jean had known. That somehow, in that moment of unity between them, she'd seen straight through the Professor's block and known what he'd done in Nevada. And that made him feel even worse. That made him wonder if she'd left the jet to get away from him, if she'd let the waters crush her because he'd betrayed her so badly she just couldn't live with it.

Either he hadn't been enough of a man to save her, or he'd been so unworthy of her love that he'd killed her. He didn't think he could live with himself, either way.

He didn't know what to do. So one morning he crawled out of his cold bed and finally went to see the man who'd taught him almost everything in his life worth knowing. He found the Professor in his office and knocked hesitantly on the open door.

"Scott," Xavier sighed, grief etched starkly into his face, but relief lighting his eyes and lifting his mouth in a warm smile as he waved Scott in. It was the first time it mattered that anyone else might be worried about him, and it made Scott feel even worse.

"I'm sorry, Professor," Scott managed, his throat tight. "I don't mean to worry you."

The Professor's eyes darkened. "We all handle our grief differently, and you've lost far more than any of us. I'm just happy to see you now."

And then Scott finally noticed Logan in the corner. He faltered, staring at him, emotions crashing through him in blazing succession--that hot, familiar edge of jealousy--bitter resentment that even here, now, with the Professor, the man just kept intruding-- But then for the first time he looked--really looked--at Logan's face, and what he saw there pulled him up short, because the look on Logan's face was nearly identical to the one the Professor wore. Logan grieved for Jean, but he'd been worried about Scott, too. The only difference was the wariness. Logan knew full well to keep his distance.

It was too much. Scott had just gotten out of bed, but the thought of dealing with Logan made him feel tired beyond words. He couldn't even dredge up the energy to be angry with him any more. Scott turned away and walked to the windows.

"I should go," Logan said.

There it was, what Scott had thought he wanted. Except hearing Logan actually say the words out loud made Scott feel small, and petty. Yes, the man had shoved his interest in Jean in Scott's face, had belittled him and challenged him and would have pushed him aside in a heartbeat. But he'd also taken Scott's lead on Liberty Island, had given him at least that much respect. And on some level--God, how it hurt to admit it--Jean had welcomed Logan's interest. Scott knew she'd never acted on it--would never have acted on it--but if there'd been nothing there at all in her for Logan to see and respond to, he would have simply walked away from her. He couldn't believe he was doing it, but Scott sighed and glanced over his shoulder, catching Logan's eye and waving at him to stay.

Logan hesitated, cautious and uncertain. "You're sure?"

Scott nodded and turned back to the window. But now that he was there, now that he'd made some sort of peace with Logan's presence, he had no idea what to say.

He wasn't surprized that the Professor did.

"Jean wanted us to live, and made certain we would," Xavier said, his voice full of pride, but heavy with sadness, too. "She just had no idea how difficult it would be for us to go on without her."

A fresh surge of sorrow welled up in Scott, and he closed his eyes for a long moment and tasted the full, bittersweet flavors of that elemental truth. "Why?" he rasped, raw and hurting and lost, finally giving voice to the single, most burning question in his soul.

"Why did she want us to live? Because she loved us," the Professor gently replied. "But why didn't she know how lost we'd be without her? That, I don't know."

"She had to know how everyone felt about her," Logan protested, "what she meant to all of us."

"She did," Scott said. That much, at least, he knew. He'd felt it in her, had heard it in her thoughts, unequivocally, in that one, searing moment. "I know it."

"Then how… Son of a-- I have no idea what I'm saying," Logan muttered.

Scott almost smiled. He knew that feeling. Far too painfully well.

The Professor sighed heavily. "You know, even when Jean was a student, she was always hesitant about her powers, always looking to others. Feeling that in some way, she was left behind."

Left behind… Is that what he'd done in the end? He'd left her behind to search for control. He'd even kept her at arm's length from the full truth when he'd returned. He'd told himself it was to protect her, and that might even have been true, but whatever the reason, the result had been the same. She'd left the jet, alone, to save them, and once again… he'd left her behind. Everything that had happened raced in his mind, and he wondered at a hundred different points, if he'd done something differently…

"Do you…" His throat closed, and his stomach clenched, but he had to ask. "Could we have done more to save her?"

"In the past, she may have let us," the Professor mused.

"There had to be another way," Logan insisted. "Why did she leave the plane?"

Scott shuddered, the words a painful, bewildered echo of the ones in his head.

"Because she made a choice."

Maybe--but which choice? Had Jean chosen to save them? Had she chosen to leave?

Had she chosen to leave him?

The knock on the door startled Scott.

"Yes," Xavier called. "Come on in."

Classes continued, Scott thought wearily. Life continued. He just didn't know how to continue with it. And for the first time, he didn't think the Professor had the answers. He was going to have to figure this out on his own. If he could. Wordlessly Scott left the room.

"Hey." Logan stopped him. Scott half turned, finally giving at least that much respect to the fact that Logan was hurting, too.

"Listen," Logan continued. "She did make a choice. It was you."

He'd already known that. Hearing Logan acknowledge it wasn't in any way as satisfying as he might once have thought it would be. There wasn't really anything to say about it, either. Jean was gone because of her love, for him, for them all. She'd paid too high a price for it. The cold closed in on him again.

Scott walked away, his heart heavy, his thoughts whirling with Jean. He wandered the school for hours, seeing her everywhere, remembering hundreds of moments, of looks, of words, gestures, thoughts, and feelings. Every memory was precious, and every single one of them hurt with a stunning ferocity. By the time he got to Jean's office, he was nothing but icy loneliness and a jagged, shearing ache of loss.

When he saw Lili at Jean's desk he simply exploded.

"What do you think you're doing?" he hissed at her, shuddering with the fury burning coldly through him. Distantly he realized his fists were clenched.

Her head shot up and she stilled, her hands frozen on the laptop keyboard. And then he watched her retreat from him, saw her eyes go dead and her face close up, until she sat there as remote and unreadable as she'd been in the beginning. The fury inside him clawed its way higher.

"Thomas twisted his ankle this morning, and Siryn seems to be coming down with something," she quietly explained, her hands dropping to her lap. "Obviously they can't just go to any doctor. But Jean had a lot of contacts, and one of them has agreed to fit them in tonight. I was emailing him back to confirm the appointments."

She was doing Jean's job. She was sitting at Jean's desk and rifling through Jean's data and emailing Jean's contacts and probably using Jean's name to play doctor. The world tilted slowly, redly sideways and slid straight into crimson fire.

"You can't take her place," Scott snarled, advancing on her until he planted his hands on Jean's desk and loomed over Lili. "Not in her office or her duties, not in the school or the lab, and not in my bed. Do you hear me?"

By the time he finished he realized he was shouting. And by the time he finished, he already knew he'd never said anything more hurtful to anyone in his life.

"Lili," he shuddered.

"I hear you," Lili whispered, her eyes huge and shattered in her pale, pale face.

"So did I," Storm said, coldly, and Scott jerked around to see her standing in the doorway between her office and Jean's. "Who do you think asked Lili to make the arrangements? Who do you think gave her permission to use Jean's office? Me. Damn it, Scott, I know you're hurting, but that doesn't give you the right to--"

"No," Lili said, softly, but it stopped Storm in her tracks. "He has every right to his feelings, Ororo. Without apology."

"You didn't do anything wrong," Storm pressed.

Lili stood, and she was shaking. "But I did. Every time I tried to help."

Scott shook his head. "No--Lili--I didn't mean--"

"I'm sorry, Scott," she cut him off as if she hadn't heard a word he was trying to say. "I wouldn't have hurt you for the world. I never meant for you to pay so high a price for everything you've done for me. I never even would have asked it of you if I'd known."

"Oh, God," he groaned, turning away, at a total loss for words and unable to even look at her any more. What had he done? "Lili, I--"

"She's gone," Storm said, pulling him sharply around. They were the only two people left in the room. "She was only trying to be your friend, Scott. She didn't deserve that. Not from you, of all people, especially not after everything she tried to do for you in Nevada."

He had to swallow hard against the bitter regret clogging his throat. "I know."

Her grip on his arm eased, and her eyes softened. "Jean loved us--loved you--so much that she lifted us out of harm's way. We all loved her, too, Scott. We all miss her now, we're all struggling to keep going with this huge hole she left in our lives. But at least the rest of us are leaning on each other to get through this. Why do you insist on being alone? We're all here for you. We all need you. Please let us in. Please… come back to us."

He slouched against the desk. "I don't know what I'm doing any more," he admitted. "How can I help anyone else, when I don't know what I'm doing?"

"Do you think I have any answers?" Storm tried to smile. "I just remember how great a friend she was. And I think about what she'd want me to do."

"Does it help?"

"There are some moments when remembering how much Jean loved us is the only thing keeping me going."

"Jean loved us," he repeated, and for a moment he could feel it again, that shining light in his heart and soul, as if she was somewhere in the mansion and simply thinking about him. This time when that light faded, though, the cold wasn't quite as bad, because now he could hold the absolute knowledge of how deeply he'd been loved against it. Jean had saved them because she loved them, and loved him most of all. Maybe he had let her down, and maybe she had known that. But there would have been nothing except forgiveness for him in that love, and the unwavering support that had always been there. The choice she'd made had simply been to love them, which hadn't really been a choice at all. Not for her. In Jean's eyes, there would have been no price at all for that love.

How could he possibly have forgotten that?

"I'm such an idiot," he said.

This time Storm's smile was for real. "No, Scott. You're just hurting--and as human as the rest of us. But if you don't go find Lili right now and apologize, I will call you far worse than an idiot."

"I'm going." Scott straightened. "Thanks, Storm."

She touched her hand lightly to his cheek. "Any time. I hope you know that."

He nodded, and pressed her hand to his face for a long moment as the weight of some of that awful loneliness lifted. Then he hurried from the room to find Lili.

He really was an idiot. He simply hadn't done enough to save Jean, no matter what anyone else thought or said, and now in his grief and selfishness he may have destroyed a friend who'd gone to the wall for him. Somehow, he had to be strong enough to live with his failures and keep going without the love of his life. He had no idea how, wasn't even sure he could, but Jean would have wanted him to do that, would have wanted him to continue their work and take care of all their friends and students and everyone they loved. He had to be strong for them. For Jean. He couldn't imagine any more fitting a memorial for her.

First, then, he had to make things right with Lili. She'd trusted him, believed in him, and he'd turned around and hurt her and betrayed that trust--again--and this time with his eyes wide open. He had to find her and apologize. More, he had to beg her forgiveness. He owed her at least that much.

But where had she gone?

X2 Twenty-One

Lili made it all the way across the back lawn and into the trees before she realized there were tears tracking down her cheeks. She stumbled to a stop and swiped at them, staring dumbly at the moisture on her fingers. She felt it then, the ache in her chest, the tightness in her throat, the trembling in her knees. She was crying. Again. What was happening to her?

She had no idea who she was anymore, no clue what she was doing in this huge, frightening, completely unforgiving world. For the first time she wondered if it might not have been better for everyone if they'd never come to get her that day. Since then she'd destroyed Scott's dream of control, she'd destroyed Scott's friendship and trust, and she'd killed four men.

What the hell was she doing? She'd told herself she didn't want to be what Max had made of her, but what had she made of herself?

Nothing. Worse than nothing. She never should have stayed. She was ruining everything, and others kept paying the price.

Maybe they should have let her burn.

Lili closed her eyes, focusing, and deep within, her power sparked to life. There was no going back to that day, though. She knew this beast now. Alone, it would never be out of her control again. It was more familiar to her than anyone or anything. Burning. It had always been inside her. Always. And that was who she was. She still didn't know what she could be, but at least she knew, now, that everything would start and end with the heat inside. Lili poured all of the pain in her heart and the confusion in her soul into the fires, until the flames licked high and howled fiercely in her ears. She opened her eyes to a world gone molten and let wildfire lift her into the air.

Instants and eternities, burning. Flying. She soared. It was a freedom, a joy like no other, and the purity of it soothed her soul. If this was all she was, then so be it.

By the time she landed, the sun was lowering in a late afternoon sky, and Lili finally knew what to do. She had to leave, before she did any more damage to these people. To Scott, to Ororo and the children. They deserved far better than what little she had to give.

That left only one other place to go, one last person who might be able to take her as she was and not expect or make her hope for anything more. If that didn't work, well… There had to be more than one way to get lost in this immensely complicated world. But first, she simply had to find her mother. Lili walked back to the mansion and headed straight for the Professor's office.

That massive door was open again, but this time Lili wasn't scared. She finally knew what she was doing. Not surprizingly, she didn't have to knock. The Professor called for her to come in before she'd even raised her hand to the door.

Scott was with him. He rose as she entered, and Lili stopped cold. "I didn't meant to interrupt," she said, and took a quick step back toward the door. The last thing she wanted was to make matter worse.

"Please don't go," Scott begged.

Lili could only stare at him. He looked horribly upset. What had she done now?

"Liliana," Xavier gently interceded, and gratefully Lili turned to him. "Scott came to me when he couldn't find you. We waited for you together when I realized you were… flying."

Why? She nearly blurted it out loud, but of course the Professor heard it anyway.

So, apparently, had Scott. "I wanted to apologize for what I said to you, today and before, when I… when I woke up and you were still there. I didn't mean it, not any of it. Losing Jean just hurts so much, and I shouldn't have, but I kept taking it out on you. I'm sorry, Lili, so very sorry. I said some truly horrible things to you, and I… Please forgive me."

She listened to him in stunned silence. With each word out of his mouth her world tipped a little closer to upright again, and when he finally fell silent as well and her world settled, she could only stare at him for a long moment, overwhelmed. What a gift he'd just given her, again, when she'd been the one to make the mistakes. She'd never met anyone like him. And she didn't think she ever would again. Lili realized, then, that there was one gift she could give him, the one thing he actually needed from her.

"There's nothing to forgive," she said, simply. "You were just being honest. You said what you felt. I was making things worse and you--"

"No," he interrupted, crossing the room to her. "I was completely out of line. You were just trying to help and you didn't deserve the way I treated you. Storm was right--you didn't do anything wrong. I did."

He was her first friend, and he was giving that friendship back to her when she thought she'd ruined it. The relief washed over her in one huge swell. "It's all right," she said softly, feeling a little shaky but smiling up at him. "I'm sorry, too."

Scott smiled back, breathing deeply, some of the tension falling away from him, and Lili realized she could breathe a little easier, too.

"There's more, though," the Professor said into the silence. "Isn't there, Liliana?"

She nodded. Her decision hadn't changed. She might be able to leave now knowing that Scott wasn't angry with her any more, but she still had to go.

"Lili?" Scott prompted.

Except it was astonishingly difficult to tell him when he was looking at her so uncertainly. She hesitated, trying to find the right words, to explain better this time. She even glanced at the Professor, but he was oddly silent, and finally Scott looked away.

"It's all right for you to just say it, whatever it is. I promise I won't jump down your throat this time," he offered, his voice thick with sadness and his face lined with the weight of everything he'd endured. She couldn't add to that. She just couldn't. She had to tread carefully here. And then she knew how.

"Before you came to get me I was always alone. Always, even performing in front of thousands," Lili began, shifting to catch and hold Scott's gaze. "But you took me away from that and you told me I wasn't alone any more, and you kept that promise. I've made so many mistakes and lost my footing so many times, but with you, with being here, there's always been someone reaching out to steady me."

His jaw tightened. "I let you down the last couple of days."

"No, you just needed to be alone," Lili pressed. "I had Ororo and the Professor to lean on, and Rogue, and even five very young children who mean the world to me now. The rest of us just had to give you some time, to find your way in this suddenly crazy world where the military attacks schools and parents choose their normal son over their mutant one and… and the X-Men don't always come back. And that's… that's what I'm asking for now."

He stilled. "What are you saying?"

She had to swallow, hard, her stomach suddenly tight with knots. "I'm saying that you don't have to be alone to get lost, but sometimes, you do have to stand on your own two feet to find your way."

"Your way?" he repeated. "To where? I don't underst--"

"I don't know who I am any more," she said roughly. "I don't know what I'm doing. I thought I could figure it out here, but the stakes are too high. I've hurt you so much, Scott. And I nearly burned you alive--twice. I did burn…"

She faltered, but Scott was there, his touch to her arm fleeting, but his support as strong and as deep as it had ever been. She was really going to miss him. But before she could go, she had to make him understand. And that meant telling him everything.

"That night," she shuddered, "when they attacked, they followed me and the children and I had to fight back. I… had to kill."

"Oh, Lili," Scott sighed. "I didn't know."

"Nor I," the Professor finally spoke. "I'm certain you did all you could, Liliana."

"I hope so," she softly replied, shifting to speak to them both. "The point is, I don't know, and I should. Especially here. I understand what this place is now. And I wish I could help. But I can't stay. You need--you deserve--so much more than I have to give."

"But I've seen you," Scott protested, "helping Storm, the students--helping me. You always give everything you are. What more could we possibly ask than that?"

"That part is easy," Lili smiled sadly. "I'm just not sure how to live with the consequences. Especially when I'm not the only one paying the price for my mistakes."

Scott stiffened, his jaw tightening, and Lili wished she'd been able to explain without reminding him at all of the consequences he was struggling to live with.

"You must do what you feel is best," Xavier said. "But I hope you know that you'll always be welcome here."

"This is the only home I remember, Professor. I won't forget."

"But where will you… Your mother," Scott said, understanding dawning in his eyes. But then he frowned, shaking his head. "God, Lili, I'm sorry. I promised to help you find her, but I let that slide just like everything else. Will you let me help now?"

"You belong here, Scott," she said, as gently as she could. "I know it doesn't feel right any more, but it will. You just need some time. And I need to do this alone. Please?"

"You're sure?" he pressed, and Lili wondered if he meant about himself, or about her.

"As sure as I can be," Lili managed. Because things could certainly still end badly for both of them. But one thing she had learned was that she couldn't go back. Neither of them could. All she could do now was try to move forward. If, that is, she could figure out where she was going. "Professor?"

"I have the agency's final report here," he replied, crossing to his desk and pulling three folders from one of the drawers. Lili couldn't take her eyes off them as he wheeled back across the room to her. Was her mother in one of those files? "They've narrowed it down to three possibilities. Obviously there hasn't been enough time for DNA tests, and we haven't finished restoring Cerebro yet. But if I were you, Liliana, I would start with the woman in this first file."

She took the files from him with trembling hands, staring at the agency logos and feeling the weight of the folders and hoping that finally she would know where she came from, that she would meet her mother. That she would find at least a little of what she needed with one of these families.

Scott's fingers ghosted across the back of her hand. "Good luck, Lili. I hope you find what you're looking for."

"You, too," she murmured, her throat tight with sorrow as Scott turned and slowly walked away. The weight of his new, lonely world pressed down on him, and Lili wished she had the magic words to make everything all right again for him. But she'd learned a long time ago that magic wasn't real. And the lesson now was that she had to find her own way before she could risk trying to help anyone else. Especially him.

"He'll be all right," the Professor softly broke the silence. "Eventually."

Lili closed her eyes, clutching the folders to her chest and breathing carefully around the lump in her throat and the sudden, burning ache in her chest. "He has to be, Professor. He's such a good man, and he deserves to be happy."

"If only it were that simple."

Lili shook her head. "Even I know it isn't."

"No," the Professor sighed. "But sometimes, against all odds, we actually do get what we deserve, Liliana. Speaking of which, I have something else here for you."

Lili turned wearily back to him, not sure she could handle any more surprizes, and gingerly accepted the small, thick envelope he held out to her. "What is it?"

He smiled at her. "I suppose you could say it's an apology. Or perhaps it's a little bit of faith restored, and even some hope for the future."

She eyed the neat little package dubiously. "You're scaring me. That's an awful lot to expect from one envelope."

"Let's just say then that I believe in you, Liliana August, no matter what you find at the end of your search. And so does Fly Dargon."

"Fly?" Lili tucked the folders under her arm and carefully pulled the envelope open. Inside was a bundle of cash, a bank book, a Mac card, and a note in Fly's small, distinctive scrawl. Lili opened the note.

Lili,

It's not everything Max owes you in back wages, but it's a start. The cash is just a little something from all of us. Jinnee said you wouldn't let her pay you for the work you did while you were here.

Be happy,

Fly

The cash was several hundred dollars--she couldn't have earned that much in a week just helping Jinnee. And back wages? Lili opened the bank book, and the starting balance made her jaw drop.

She looked up at the Professor in shock. "What am I supposed to do with all of this?"

"Whatever you wish," he replied. "Perhaps you should start by buying a train ticket?"

Fly Dargon and Charles Xavier. They were so completely unexpected. Putting her old life into perspective… and trying to give her what she needed for whatever new life she might build. They were two of the best people in the world to have in her corner, no matter what. Lili tucked the envelope and its contents carefully in her arms with the folders. "Thank you, Professor. For everything."

"It was my pleasure. Now if memory serves, there's a train leaving in two hours that you'll want to be on if you're going to Texas first. I'll have a car waiting for you, whenever you're ready."

She nearly said no--it was too quick, too soon--she was supposed to take Thomas and Siryn to the doctor and help Ororo plan the Labor Day picnic and go shopping with Rogue for that new fabric she'd read about and…

Except she had to go, for them as much as for herself. And putting it off would only make it harder to leave.

"Texas first," she softly agreed. "I won't need much time."

She was packed in ten minutes. She didn't have a lot. But as quick as she tried to make the good-byes, they all felt long and sad and like she was somehow letting everyone down, no matter how much she tried to explain or how understanding they all were. Especially the children. She was going to miss them terribly. By the time Lili pulled her paisley suitcases down to the garage, she had no idea what time it was or how she was ever going to make this up to everyone. All she knew was that she had to leave before she could hurt anyone else.

And then she saw Logan leaning against the car, waiting for her.

He pulled the cigar from his mouth. "You sure you want to do this now?"

Her throat tight, Lili nodded.

"He needs you."

Her heart contracted, but she couldn't blame Logan for thinking that. She still didn't think he'd ever really understood the depth of Scott and Jean's love, and he certainly didn't know what had happened in Nevada. Lili took a deep breath. "You're wrong, Logan. He needs Jean, and I can't fill even a little bit of that for him. No matter how much I might want to try."

Logan slowly straightened, absently flicking the ashes away as his gaze burrowed into hers. Even knowing she was right to go, Lili had to fight hard not to flinch away from that piercing regard. "Maybe so," he finally said. "But the rest of your life doesn't have to stop while you're looking for answers."

"For me it does," she managed. "At least, this part of it does."

He cocked his chin back at the school. "You think they're asking too much?"

"No," she shook her head. "I think they deserve more than I can give."

"Not from what I've seen. This place is a good fit for you."

"Maybe," Lili conceded. "But I can't do this any more. Not until I know who I am and what I want. And what price I'm willing to pay to stay here."

"Huh," he grunted. "Fair enough, I guess." Logan reached for her bags, and Lili gratefully relinquished them and got into the car while he loaded them into the trunk. She wanted to get going. Her last journey from this place had started well but ended disastrously. She could only hope that this abrupt and difficult a beginning meant that this journey would end a great deal better. She breathed a deep sigh of relief when Logan dropped down into the driver's seat and simply started the car and pulled away.

Lili leaned back and closed her eyes. Last time she'd been so excited to be leaving, so eager to see what would happen next. And so confident that she could do it. Now, though… What answers would she find? And what would she do when she had them? Her thoughts whirled, and she was glad when Logan finally pulled up at the train station and shut the car off. She was tired of thinking about this--now, she wanted to do something and finally, whatever they were, get some answers. It was the not knowing that was making everything so difficult. Lili reached for the door, but Logan stopped her with a light touch to her arm. She looked back at him.

"I didn't like the answers I found," he said, his gaze as frank and open as she'd ever seen it. "But it wasn't the end of the world. And it actually… feels kind of good, letting it go and throwing in with these people, knowing that they're counting on me. Look, whatever happens out there, just don't forget what's waiting for you back here. Or who."

"I could never forget," she softly replied. "But thanks, Logan."

He nodded at her, and without another word got out of the car. Minutes later, standing in the middle of the train station with nothing more than two bags, three folders, an envelope, and a stack of tickets that would get her to Sherman, Texas, she felt more alone than she ever had in her life.

Except being alone wasn't really a problem. She knew how to do that. Lili ran her fingers over the neat black lettering of the top ticket. It was being with others that was so difficult. Letting them in. Letting herself count on them. Most importantly, not letting them down when they needed her. She hadn't done such a good job of that at Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Would she do better when she got to Sherman?

God, was this it? The ache in her chest made her tremble with its intensity and she clutched at the tickets with shaking fingers. Would she finally find her family? Would they tell her who she was? Help her find the answers she needed? Or was she leaving her family--and all the answers--behind?

There was only one way to find out. Lili gathered her things and headed for the tracks. She had a train to catch.

X2 Timeline

Fire's Price begins two and a half weeks after the events of the first X-Men movie, while Logan returns to Alkali Lake.

Scenes One, Two, and Three happen late on the first night into dawn of the second day of the story. Scene Four begins three days later, towards late afternoon on the fifth day. Scene Five takes place that night.

Scene Six skips to the next day, the sixth of the story, and picks up the action of X2: X-Men United at the museum, just after news of the attack on the President breaks. The broadcast and some of the dialogue immediately following are the exact words of the movie. Scene Seven covers the entire sixth day, ending as Stryker attacks the school.

Scenes Eight through Eleven are continuous, following Scott at Alkali Lake and Lili during and after the attack on the school, all the way into the morning of the seventh day of the story. That's the same day that Logan gets Bobby, Rogue, and Pyro to Bobby's parents' home in Boston. Scenes Twelve and Thirteen occur that afternoon into that evening, as Jean, Storm, and Nightcrawler are picking up Logan et al, escaping the fighter jets, and camping with Magneto and Mystique.

Scenes Fourteen and Fifteen take place on the following day, late in the morning, when Magneto and the X-Men infiltrate Stryker's facility and Jason forces the Professor to use Cerebro. Scene Sixteen immediately follows Jean's sacrifice at Alkali Lake.

Scene Seventeen occurs later that night, still the eighth day of the story. Scenes Eighteen and Nineteen occur the following day, the same day that Xavier and all of the X-Men interrupt the President's broadcast.

Scene Twenty begins on the tenth day of the story and extends over the next several days until the last day portrayed in X2, specifically referencing the final scene of the movie and again using some of the exact dialogue. Scene Twenty-One immediately continues, occurring roughly two weeks after the first day of this story.