Storm thought she'd remember the days after Magneto's visit as some of the craziest in her life as a teacher at the school. Classes were unremitting, report writing was going on, and Scott was pushing them really, really hard in training. Being coordinated by The Professor using Cerebro across a wide area was entirely new to them, and it took a bit of adjusting. They trained using something like a version of The Wide Game, split in to two groups, one group trying to get to the main building without being caught by the second, The Professor assisting one side or the other. It didn't take them long to find out that if one side had The Professor and Kurt, the other side was doomed. That made Storm feel confident. If they were actually attacked and fought together as eight X-men plus Kurt and The Professor, they'd be really, really hard to stop.

They expected to face bullets, so they planned for it. Bobby started to figure out how much ice was needed to stop a bullet, and what sort of ice worked best. They established that, yes, Peter actually was bullet proof, but not immune to Logan's claws (Jean hadn't been happy when she'd found out that Peter and Logan had tested that). Kitty honed her reflexes; the hope was that when fired on, she'd let bullets pass right through her. Storm and Scott had always been vulnerable to bullets, they were too small and too fast for Scott to shoot down. Jean, however, now seemed to be able to erect telekinetic shields through which nothing – not even Scott's blasts on full power – could pass. And Rogue had joined them. She and Bobby had meticulously worked out the time between her touching someone, her acquiring their power, and her starting to sap the life from them. Storm suspected that that hadn't been just for scientific reasons.

They were rehearsing evacuations with the kids too. Kitty had had the bright idea of making a score board by class, to see who was making it to the gather points and how fast. The kids had got competitive about it, to the point of trying to bribe Kurt with marzipan to help them. Kurt, of course, was far too honourable to take bribes.

From a combat point of view, Storm was confident. They couldn't get complacent, Scott was right, there were only two of them who could actually afford to be shot, and they would be facing guns, but they ought to be okay. What was worrying her, actually, was Jean and Scott. Jean had been very quiet since Magneto's visit. She felt guilty, and she rightly should, but it really seemed to be eating her from the inside. And they couldn't afford that right now. She needed to learn from it, move on, and do the next thing. Scott looked exhausted. She was tired with the workload, but he was doing more than her. He was memorizing battle plans, planning training sessions, sparring one to one with Bobby, Peter and Kitty, working on power sharing with Rogue… She'd offered to take some of the work off him, she was his second, but he'd refused. Something was wrong between him and Jean, she was sure of it. Was it just Jean's abuse of power? She had no idea, and no way of finding out. Scott would only say he was tired and worried, Jean was insisting nothing was wrong, but retreating in to herself. She only hoped that, when the time came, she'd be functional enough to fight.

,

Rogue had learned that more or less whenever Doctor Grey asked to talk to her on her own, it would be something awkward. Something she didn't want to talk to her teacher about. So when Doctor Grey told Rogue to come with her, about five days after Magneto had turned up (Rogue had really, really wanted to go and grab him with no gloves on, but she hadn't quite dared), Rogue went with her with more dread than anything else. Doctor Grey opened the door of an unlocked closet under the main stairs and backed half a pace in to it.

"This is the upstairs first aid store." She said, reaching across for something. "In here, you find these." She pulled out a pair of cardboard boxes with oval holes in the top. "Exam gloves." Rogue looked. Both boxes were full of disposable blue rubber gloves. "The function of an exam glove is to prevent direct contact between the patient and the medic, but leave the medic dexterous enough to feel and manipulate whatever they need to." And there was the awkward. Rogue felt herself colour slightly. Doctor Grey was pointing the gloves out to her because she thought Rogue would find them… This was not a conversation you had with teachers. "There are always exam gloves in here, you're welcome to take them, I'm not keeping score."

Rogue nodded. "Thanks." She said. Maybe Doctor Grey would take that as a sign to stop the conversation here.

,

Scott set down his pen, stood up, and left his classroom. He'd had enough of being… like this with Jean. He'd decided half an hour ago that as soon as he'd finished marking the eight graders' homework, he'd summon his courage and go.

They still slept side by side, they hadn't really talked about anything significant, there had been no physical intimacy between them. But there had been that moment last night. He'd woken from one of the Alkali Lake dreams, shouting and shaking. He'd reached out for her, barely awake, to reassure himself she was there, safe, alive. She'd woken almost at once and rolled over to cradle him against her chest, his head, his eyes, one thin piece of cloth away from her skin. No visor. No means of saving herself if he twitched. If he'd opened his eyes, even for a second, she'd have been dead before she'd known anything about it. And she knew that. It was a gesture of trust. It was time for him to return that trust. It might not be easy, but he was going to do it anyway.

He knocked on her office door.

"Jean?"

She stood up as he came in, thumb still in the book she was reading, Tintinalli's Emergency Medicine. Well that was encouraging. "Scott."

"We're not under attack." He said quickly. She relaxed slightly. He shut the door behind himself. "Look, I'm… I've had enough of this. Just… living round each other. I hate feeling like I'm fighting with you." She set her book down. He hadn't finished yet. "I came down at you like a ton of bricks, which isn't my job. You already felt bad for it, so there was no reason for me to do that. I can get that through my head when it's the kids."

"You had a reason to be angry," She said quietly. "after what Stryker did to you."

Scott sighed. "I'm done being angry. I know you won't ever do it, or anything like it, again, I know you'd never have done it to one of us." She shook her head in assent. "Then let's just leave it now. We can't change what we did, either of us-"

"I'm sorry." Jean said, cutting him off. And he knew she was, genuinely and deeply.

"I know." He said. "So am I."

She took a step towards him. He pulled her in to his arms. He settled the back of his head against the back of hers. This was a relic, a hangover from the time he'd been afraid to even look at her. When they pulled back, she leant in again to kiss him. He didn't object. Not until the way she was kissing him changed. He pulled back.

"Ah, I'm on call tonight. That wasn't my motive."

"It's only…" She glanced up at the clock. "half six."

"If I lay down, I'm not going to want to get back up again. And I've got to round the middle schoolers up in twenty minutes." He was smiling.

"What?"

"Nothing." She'd got it wrong. She'd misunderstood. And because she'd misunderstood, she couldn't be reading him. She'd got it back in the box. "And anyway, I think I'm still too wound up to…"

"About…"

"Yeah." That wasn't reading. That was just on everyone's mind. It was obvious.

She sighed. "Waiting for a bomb that might never go off."

He nodded. "Wanna wander up with me?"

,

They walked together back towards the main student areas of the school, the common rooms. Even before they got there, Scott could hear a piano. Kitty. Nobody else played that well, except The Professor, and that was very rare. A few girls' voices were singing over the piano, in harmony. The music stopped abruptly.

"Theresa, you repeat that first note, every time it comes up." Kitty said, then played a snatch of fast, high pitched music. Theresa echoed it. "Like that. From the second 'but youth of course?'" Then they started up again. Scott glanced in as they walked past. Kitty was sitting at the piano, Theresa and Paige either side of her. Scott saw Jean smile.

"It's just…" She breathed. "whenever I hear her playing happy songs…" Scott nodded. Kitty'd been very deep in grief when she'd arrived at the school. That was what had made her manifest her powers.

It sounded like there was a film on in the next room. When Scott poked his head round the door, the screen showed a man with an impressive white beard sitting next to the bed of a small boy with glasses, and a mark on his head. Harry Potter. Someone had mentioned watching Harry Potter at dinner earlier. Logan was sitting on the end of one of the sofas, Aurielle was crouched off the end of the sofa, meticulously painting Logan's exposed claws with glittery nail varnish.

Scott felt his mouth fall slightly open. Logan looked round at him and Jean.

"Don't say a damn word!" He said, pointing at them with the hand Aurielle wasn't painting.

"He lost a bet." Aurielle said coolly.

"What bet?" Jean asked.

"He said Snape would be in league with Voldemort." Aurielle replied.

"Ah, you fell for it." Jean said.

"He was swooping around with a creepy British accent." Logan said. "And it was the nerd with a stupid hat! How was I supposed to see that coming?"

"Read the book?" Scott suggested. "Also, don't bet against students. It almost never ends well. Storm did this to Beast when she was a freshman."

"Ms Munroe painted Senator McCoy's nails?" Aurielle asked, face splitting in to a broad grin.

"Yep." Jean said. "Bright red. He wore it for about a week."

"How do you even get this stuff off?"

"I'll take it off you in a week." Aurielle said.

"Don't feel bad." Jean said. "Happens to everyone once."

"What? Getting got by a bet?"

"No, I meant the nail painting. There seems to be an unwritten rule that every man who passes through here has to have his nails painted by the girls at least once. Usually some sort of bet or some sort of bribery is involved."

Aurielle looked up at Scott, her mouth opening to ask.

"Yes, including me."

"Was it Doctor Grey?"

"No." Jean looked across at him, asking. "Teresa without an H."

"What colour?" Aurielle asked.

"I don't know." Scott said, honestly. "I can't see colour."

"How long ago was that?" Jean asked

"Eleven years? You were in college."

"Bribe or bet?" Logan asked, less innocently, Scott suspected.

"Bet." Scott replied. "It had something to do with Captain Picard."

"Was this the lights joke?" Jean asked.

Something beeped in his pocket.