"I had fun today," the goddess-turned-thief-turned-student muttered to her friend, licking the last of the ice cream from her fingers, "better than the previous date I had. Way better."

"Who'd ya go with?" James asked her, sounding curious as he too ate the last of his ice cream.

"Forge."

"Who?" Curiously confused hazel-green eyes met cerulean blue.

"The Indian boy. 'Sides, it wasn't even a date- more like a," Ororo cleared her throat, ""let's sit down and get to know each other.""

"Did you want to go?"

"Not really," she sighed, "Jean made me. Blackmailed me is more like it. Said I was the only single teen in the mansion and it "really wasn't doing me any good not getting out enough and not having a boyfriend.""

James's knowing eyes assessed her, before his lips lifted up in a small grin. "You're a contradicting person."

"Am I?"

"Yeah. Where I come from, it's you act like you're expected to. If you don't, you get punished or isolated.' He shivered. 'I hated getting paddled."

"Paddled?"

His hand gently smacked her chin sideways. "That."

"Ah," she said, rubbing her cheek as the residue warmth of his touch made her repress a shiver. "Harder than that?"

"Definitely."

"You still haven't explained why I'm a contradicting person yet."

The pair paused in front of a small bench leaning against the balcony, James frowning at her. "I mean, well you... God, how can I explain it." He sat down, and Ororo followed suit next to him. "You act like you want to do something, then you don't do it. You're cold, then you're friendly again in the blink of an eye." He sounded frustrated as he floundered for words to describe her. "I dunno, you just... are."

"I can think of one thing I want to do," she murmured softly, not quite sure how he managed to hear her above all the noise, but not caring, "and I'm not opposed to doing it."

James still seemed blissfully unaware of what she wanted to do, but she restrained herself from jumping the boy and kissing him to death, instead settling for inching closer till their legs touched. Their lips were an inch apart when they were interrupted.

"Hey! 'RORO!"

Jerking backwards, Ororo cursed every god and goddess she could think of in that second. She'd been so close to him! A few centimetres more and she could have... could have... KISSED HIM.

UGH! She mentally screamed. WHY NOW JEAN!

Skidding to a stop before them, Jean Grey shot the two a dazzling smile. "Hey you two," she teased, "we've been looking all over- the bus is waiting."

James and Ororo shared equally irritated looks, which caused Ororo to feel grateful that he too hated the interruption. "Is it time to go already?" she asked innocently. At Jean's nod she sent her friend a fake smile. "Damn, we must have lost track of time."

As the trio walked to the white marble stairs, Ororo blushed when James's hand found hers and squeezed.

Professor Henry McCoy was shaken. Shaken, shocked and somewhat afraid.

It's impossible! Just damn right impossible! There's no way that man could have been James!

They looked pretty much the same, save for the man having some lines on his face, a deeper tan, more muscles, height and age on his side. Save for that, the two could have been twins.

It's just damn impossible! IMPOSSIBLE, IMPOSSIBLE, IMPOSSIBLE! Stop making theories- no one, I repeat, no one, can live for well over a century!

Yet even as he drove on, James's laughter resounding in the background of the bus, he shivered as he thought that if that man had indeed been James in the current time, what happened to him to make his eyes appear so... haunted?