Chapter Nine
Ororo had woken to the usual sound of chaos in the kitchen down the hall from the lounge she had fallen asleep in, and had found herself covered by a warm blanket. Confused and wondering who had done that, she stumbled into the kitchen without commenting on the students' activities, her clothes unchanged and her hair still a mess. Most of the students had seen her in a similar state often enough recently not to react too much to her presence aside from quieting down automatically before she could tell them off, but Ororo had barely sat down at the table before Rahne pulled up a chair beside her.
"Storm?" the teenager asked, practically radiating concern. "What happened? Are you all right? You look..."
Ororo ran a hand through her unruly hair, smiling tiredly at her student. "Like I fell asleep on the sofa, and haven't changed or brushed my hair yet? I just felt like being around people right now, I'm all right."
Rahne bit her lip, nervous about bringing up difficult subjects with her headmistress. "Is it about the Phoenix?" she asked quietly, barely audible over the general chaos.
"Yes, partly. I haven't been sleeping well with the Phoenix in my head, but I'm learning to ignore it now." She hesitated over whether to tell Rahne about the real reason she had stayed so late, but decided against it at the last moment. "There's another reason I was up so late, but I wish to discuss it with Logan first," she said simply, deciding on honesty while leaving out her maybe-returning powers.
Rahne nodded quietly, not looking too convinced, and Ororo put a comforting hand on her arm. "Rahne, things are getting better," she said as sincerely as she could manage. "School's starting soon, and I promise you everything will be all right."
The other students may have been used to seeing Ororo tired and dishevelled, but their concern was made clear by the way the group of normally loud teenagers had quietened, and by the way Ororo found a plate containing her usual breakfast of eggs on toast phasing through her and depositing itself in front of her. She caught a cup of tea as it floated towards her with a grateful smile, and the students resumed their activities while eavesdropping as unobtrusively as possible.
Rahne stood momentarily to retrieve her own toast while Ororo ate, before sitting back beside her headmistress awkwardly. "I guess this isn't really what I'm used to in a school..."
"Tell me about it. It's very different from the schools I went to back in Egypt, certainly." Ororo took a sip of her tea, feeling better with some food in her stomach and a distraction from the Phoenix's whispers. "I'm sure things will settle down a little once the rest of the new students arrive and the semester starts properly." At least, that was what she desperately hoped...
"Logan, can we talk for a minute?" Ororo couldn't quite keep her voice steady as she hurried after him, spotting him on his way to the garage. She had spent most of the day running from one task to another, including warning Rogue about her powers, and already looked forward to locking her bedroom door and collapsing in bed. "Before you leave... something happened you need to know about."
Logan sighed. He was sorely tempted to tell her to save it for later and just go, get very drunk on something a lot stronger than beer and maybe find distraction in the arms of another woman. After a few moments, he pocketed his keys against his better judgement. "What happened, 'Roro?"
She smiled gratefully and held out a hand, conjuring a two-inch cloud over it with clear difficulty. "I don't know how or why, but... I can do this now..."
Logan's eyes widened in shock as the pair wandered aimlessly through the grounds. He was silent for a few moments, watching as the tiny cloud dissolved into nothing. "Looks like you need to start practicing with your students again," he said in what for him passed as a light-hearted tone. Something in his expression, however, betrayed a strong feeling of relief at the news.
"I haven't told anyone except Raven and Rogue, but Wanda saw when I worked it out myself. I'm sure the news will spread quickly." She sighed, running a hand through her hair in frustration. "I just don't want anyone to get too hopeful, in case this is as good as it gets."
"Ororo." Logan folded his arms, his voice practically a growl. "You tell them, or those three do and the rest think your powers have returned properly, meaning you have to let them down."
She sighed. "Good point. I'll tell them tomorrow morning, all right?" she muttered as they rounded a tall hedge, finding themselves face to face with the three gravestones. They stood in silence for a moment, then Ororo's eyes followed Logan's to Jean's grave. He had buried his heart in that grave, she knew, and she needed to stop wasting her time with him. She bit her lip before she could confront him again; especially with the possibility of Jean's survival, she would never stand a chance of being noticed. "I'll leave you to... whatever you were doing," she said quietly, leaving before she could say anything she would regret.
Ororo had barely rounded the corner when she heard the metallic snikt of his claws unsheathing. "Storm!"
She span on her heel and ran back, not caring that her powers were barely a party trick against whatever threat had arrived. She stopped in surprise when she saw the graves - small flames were licking at the base of Jean's, and as she saw it Jean's presence washed over her. "Logan, it's the Phoenix," she said quietly, deliberately staying out of immediate disintegration range.
"Yeah, worked that out." Logan sniffed the air, taking a moment to decipher the various scents. The most obvious smell was that of the burning grass, and Ororo standing behind him. He could easily pick out the scent of fear from her, fear that she would have hidden if not for his enhanced senses. He sniffed again, searching for Jean's familiar smell but finding nothing except the faint smell of pepperoni pizza wafting from Bobby's open bedroom window. "She's not here," he said eventually, almost relieved. If she had somehow come back, the Jean he had lost to Cyclops would still be gone, and the Phoenix would have taken back over. Then, he would have been forced to kill her again - and he was not sure he could do that again, no matter the consequences.
Ororo stepped forward warily, feeling the heat from the flames as she did so. "Psychically, she is," she said, conjuring the strongest wind she could manage and sending it at the flames with a wave of her hand. Even considering how weak her powers were, it should have blown the flames out with ease, but they barely flickered. "And those are a bad sign," she added, knowing she was stating the obvious.
Logan poked the flames with a finger, and watched as the burn healed over in moments. "Feels normal enough," he shrugged. "You got a plan, Storm?" His worry was clear in the name he used - he always called her 'Roro, only using Ororo when he was angry with her, and only using Storm when on serious X-Men business.
Ororo was silent for a long moment, thinking through her options before she spoke. "Aside from Iceman?" she replied, defaulting to using code-names as Logan had. "We'll need to keep a constant watch on this from a safe distance, and make sure the younger students stay away at all costs. I don't want anyone close to it, in case the Phoenix gains more power." Obeying her own instructions, she walked back some way and sat on a bench overlooking the area, joined after a moment by Logan.
The flames had persisted overnight under Ororo and Logan's watch, ignoring all attempts to extinguish them. Over the hours, they had tried buckets of water, normal fire extinguishers, and even a solid half-hour of ice courtesy of Bobby. Each time, the flames had barely flickered before continuing unabated. By dawn, they had grown steadily from barely larger than the grass to obscuring the gravestone itself, the heat strong enough to force even Logan to retreat. For the first time in a while, Ororo had found her mind free of the Phoenix for the whole night - considering the vengeful presence's absence a bad thing was certainly unusual, but if it was not bothering her, they worried for Jean's safety in the Astral Plane.
Finally, in the early hours of the morning, Ororo left the task of watching the grave to Warren and Rogue, heading to the kitchen with Logan to get a snack - or in his case, alcohol - before heading to bed. The sight that greeted her as she entered the kitchen would have made most people stop and question their sanity, but Ororo had had one too many brushes with that question to do anything other than take the situation at face value: a muffin, perfectly intact, sitting inside a muffin-sized hole in a shattered floor tile. She sighed and delicately stepped over the evidence of Kitty's latest attempt at cookery.
Logan picked up the muffin and sniffed it curiously before rapping it hard against the wall. Frowning as it utterly failed to behave as a muffin should, he extended a claw through it with difficulty. It cracked in half, and both pieces fell to the floor with a loud crunch. "I'm starting to think this is one of her powers," he growled, picking it up and tossing it into the bin.
Ororo laughed. "You're not the only one. We could probably classify that as a curse, though. Has she made you eat one?"
"Yeah, only that time they bounced. I think even my stomach never recovered from that." He leaned past her with an exaggerated shudder and pulled a bottle from the fridge.
Trapped between Logan and the fridge door even for just a few seconds, Ororo found herself freezing up in fear, struggling to breathe as the walls closed in on her. Then he stepped backwards and she could take a breath as the claustrophobia left her. She took a moment to steady herself before speaking, once again scolding herself for the reaction. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she said quickly, waving off his concern before he could say anything. "I'm just being... silly."
"Hmm." Logan considered for a moment whether to bother trying to comfort her, but considering he was infamously bad at that sort of thing, he quickly decided a complete subject change was in order. He looked at the block of cheese and loaf of bread she was holding, and smirked. "You gonna make me a sandwich too, 'Roro?"
Ororo managed a shaky laugh. "Only if you deal with the hole in the floor and talk to Kitty about her cooking tomorrow," she said in a tone that was almost normal.
Logan winced. "You drive a hard bargain, but fine. I'll talk to her." He shook his head as she shot him a sweet smile. "You owe me more than a sandwich for that, you know."
"I know," she said, handing him a sandwich before making one of her own. "I'm sure I'll find a way to make it up to you eventually, as long as you stop her killing us all."