Thanks to Ellie, hippiechick2112, bugs74, and savedbygrace94 for reviewing! And no, Annie is not Jean Grey's friend whose death activates her powers, so not to worry there :)


Sunday passed quickly.

Ororo had spent most of it on Hank's computer, learning about the GED, the test she was meant to be studying for. She had assumed it would be easy, but the practice questions knocked her down a few pegs. Instead of spending the afternoon gloating, she spent it making an e-mail account (Hank helped) and signing up for a website he said could teach her math.

Between tackling math challenges (and not-so-challenges, like the early level counting exercises!), she asked Charles about the past decades.

"Are you still a professor?"

"Not exactly," Charles admitted. "I've done plenty of teaching, but no, I'm currently… well, when I work more regularly, it's as a psychologist. The past couple of years have been difficult."

Ororo chose not to remark upon that last bit. He looked away when he mentioned it and lowered his voice, obviously not a subject of choice for discussions. That was okay. Instead, she wondered, "What's a psychologist?"

"It means people come to me when they need to talk things through. I help them understand how they think and make the changes they need to make."

She considered that for a while, then smiled. "That's a good job for you."

"Thank you."

"You still talk to Ruth?"

"Sometimes. We've been able to remain friends. Ruth is very dedicated to her work, it's not always possible to speak with her. She'll be back soon enough. Her powers seem to have given her more strength later in life than most people."

That made sense. Part of Ruth's abilities had always been a heightened vitality. Ororo used to think it was just something special in Ruth's personality that made her seem more alive. She supposed both could possibly be true.

"You don't seem that old, either," she said. "You seem older, but not as old as you should be."

"There was a time, in the sixties and early seventies, that Hank had made a serum designed to suppress mutation. It was never permanent, but it did cure my paralysis. He needed aspects of Scott's blood to make it work. The same process that slowed his aging impacted mine. Albeit not to the same extent."

Ororo had been listening with one year, scratching math into her notebook, but she paused when that settled in. They basically injected themselves with Scott's blood. That was… odd. She couldn't imagine someone doing the same with her blood, nor doing such a thing herself. Granted, she was no fan of needles, but this was stranger than just an injection.

More to the point, Hank could cure paralysis?

She shook her head. "How is it possible that I've been to outer space, and you can still surprise me?"

"I can't," Charles replied. "Hank can."


Before, Ororo used to love dinner. It wasn't the routine and it wasn't the food (although with Ruth cooking, the food had been a bonus), it was feeling like a family. Sometimes there were up to nine of them here. It was all noise and elbows. Even after Doug and Laurie left, and even after Sean died, they still sat together, ate, and talked.

Now there was a gap between them. Scott wouldn't sit at his usual spot, which put Ororo there next to Charles, who was at the head of the table—or the foot—and opposite Hank. Not that she minded. But there were awkward quiet moments, and there was Scott not talking.

"So people know about mutants now?" Ororo asked.

"They do, though not everyone believes we exist," Hank replied.

"Even though you're blue?"

"Most people who know me know that mutation is real."

Which made sense, she had to admit. "And you absolutely have to go back tonight?"

Hank nodded. "I have a class to teach tomorrow. I'll be back next weekend. You'll need an understanding of technology to get by in today's world and we can't have Charles explaining iPods!"

"Glorified file storage," Charles replied.

"You see, you can't do that to children!" Hank cried.

"I'm not a child!" Ororo objected. "I'm sixteen!"

"You're fifteen, Ororo."

"I could be sixteen. No one knows. You have it in your power to make this happen. Think about it, Charles… I could be eighteen."

Hank and Charles both burst out laughing.

"I could!" she insisted. "What… I could!" she just kept insisting, but she was laughing, too. She knew she wasn't eighteen. Fifteen was the closest they had to an accurate guess. It didn't feel too wrong to her and she didn't mind being fifteen, but she wanted to more than that. She wanted to be an adult.

Forty-five years and all she'd done was six months! Honestly!

The conversation turned to Charles's history again, about the school. It had been open, on and off, he said, when it was called for. "But it's been difficult to maintain," he continued, "the number of mutants seems to grow and then it proves to be a blip, the numbers decrease again—and there was an incident in the 1980s, since then it's mostly been quiet."

"What about the girl?" Hank asked.

Charles shook his head. "I don't think so, Hank. Not yet."

Ororo glanced between the two of them. "Who's the girl?"

"A young mutant I've been working with," Charles explained, "but she's in a very different situation to the two of you. Any mutant struggles to accept and control their gift, but…"

"She's not an orphan," Ororo concluded, "right? It's okay," she assured him.

"Perhaps that was tactless of me," Charles offered.

Ororo shrugged. "It's true. It's okay."

Hank did leave that night, once more promising he would be back the following weekend, and saying he was so happy to see them again, and finally Ororo had to all but shove him out the door or he would have missed his morning class, after all!

Which left the three of them.

Scott occupied himself with the dishes, and Ororo sure wasn't going to fight him for that task.

Instead, she decided, "I'm going to go wash my hair."

"You've already had a shower today," Scott pointed out.

Ororo rolled her eyes. "It's what girls say, Scott. It means I'm going to leave you alone for a while. Don't get into too much trouble."

She noted the baffled look on his face and managed not to roll her eyes again. She just headed for the doorway. A moment before walking away, she caught the shift as Scott realized what she was really doing. It wasn't about her hair.

She had left Scott and Charles alone to talk.