Thanks to Foreststar of WindClan, Ficwriter356, and Guest E for reviewing! I'm glad you liked the love triangle aspect. As for the basement...


The students waited for a moment in the hallway outside their bedrooms.

"Do you know what this is about?" Jean asked.

She had been happy to have Scott home. He didn't talk much about Massachusetts, but it didn't seem like a bad not talking. He answered her question and the rest was still processing. Jean understood. It wasn't easy to deal with tragedy.

Mostly she had liked having him there and sitting with him, just being nearby.

It was Saturday now. They were going to do something different today, though none of the students knew what that 'something different' would be. Just that gym clothes were recommended. And for the first time in a long time, Jean had butterflies in her stomach that were not a proximity issue about the boy with the red glasses.

Scott and Ororo shook their heads.

"Training," Scott guessed.

"Probably," Ororo agreed. "We used to train much more than we do now."

As they went to meet up with Professor Xavier and Hank, Jean nudged Ororo. "Hey—I totally thought this was a sports bra thing." Jean was wearing one, but she could tell Ororo was not. Which, had she known, she would have done the same. She rather liked the way Scott tried to pretend he hadn't noticed.

"What?" Ororo asked.

"Like… active?"

"Sports bra?"

Ah.

Jean tried not to make assumptions on what Ororo did and didn't know. It seemed demeaning—but the truth was it had nothing to do with Ororo being African. Cairo was a major city, after all! It was about the time travel situation, and the fact that Ruth wasn't around to teach her these things anymore.

"We'll go shopping," Jean promised.

They met Hank and Professor Xavier in a hallway near the front door. One of the walls was open.

"That's… is that a panic room?" Jean had always known Professor Xavier was eccentric, but this usually wasn't the sort of eccentricity she meant!

"It's an elevator," Scott said. "I remember when it was built. Are we going down to the bomb shelter?"

"In a way," Professor Xavier said.

Scott shrugged and stepped into the elevator. The others did likewise.

"As some of you will recall, in the summer of 1964 there were some rather major renovations."

"We never saw it finished," Ororo recalled softly. They hadn't seen it finished, because the work was still in progress when she and Scott disappeared.

But she remembered watching as the work was done. She had liked to peer into the great hole in the ground, to look down at dusk when she couldn't see the bottom and could only sense it from the way the winds curled.

"You're going to," Professor Xavier told her.

The elevator door opened into a metal-lined corridor. It was well-lit but very odd, mildly industrial. Professor Xavier led them out and although Scott didn't say anything, this place made him suddenly nauseous. Hank understood and patted his shoulder reassuringly. He had never had a good experience with a secret underground facility.

"When we were first starting up, Scott trained in the bomb shelter," Charles told Jean. "It was the safest part of the school. Safe from him, that is! Built to withstand nuclear war. Since then we've made a few improvements."

The door slid open, revealing how much of an understatement that was. The room was huge, shiny metal.

"You okay?" Jean asked Scott. She couldn't help noticing that he seemed a little off and while she meant to whisper, the sound carried.

He nodded. "Fine."

"We brought you all down here because this is where we trained the X-Men. More and more mutant 'rumor' stories are making the news. Soon we won't be a rumor anymore. They'll know we're real. Some mutants will need to be protected from humans and some humans will be protected from humans. You're here because you have extraordinary abilities, each of you is capable of great things. You're still young and we won't make this decision for you. Do you want to be X-Men?"

Ororo and Scott answered immediately, both affirmatives. They had wanted to be X-Men for year, had just been waiting for the offer.

Jean was less sure. She looked around the room, looked at the others. The truth was… Jean was normal. All of them, for whatever reason, would get a second glance. They didn't get a choice, especially Hank—they just were mutants.

Jean did not have to be.

She looked normal. She came from a regular family. Her powers were under control now, mostly. She could walk away from this.

But then, she could've walked away for the new semester and gone home. She chose not to do that. She chose to stay, because she belonged here without having to hide even though she could.

She nodded. "Yeah. Me too."

"So are we here to train?" Scott asked.

Hank grinned. "New and improved training room," he said. "Wait until you see what she can do."