Interludes/Examinations

Sera felt like she was living in a fog. The only thing that felt real, anymore, was those three days in Xavier's mansion, with Terry and Hank and, in a totally different way, Wolverine. Her life had been perfect, damn it! She had had ever wanted in her old life, in the life before she met Xavier. She had moved from her small town, where her family had lived forever and had come to the city, where she could be herself, with no preconceived notions. She had met Charm and even if she had no desire to marry him, what she had with him was more than what any other Jannhanson she had ever heard of having had. She had a job she loved, the job she had always wanted. She even loved the school she taught at. Okay, so no one knew what she was. It wasn't really like lying; didn't everyone have some part of themselves that they shared only with themselves? She had never felt bad about hiding her gifts from others; they had no place in this life she had carved out for herself.

But after being with Xavier and his students as well as the X-men, she had begun feeling differently. These people put themselves on the line to protect not her, because she didn't need it, but those people who couldn't protect themselves, kids like Terry. For all Xavier's school looked like a posh private school, the kind she had never imagined teaching in, the students were a lot more like her city kids. Runaways and throwaways, a bunch of them, Xavier had told her, kids who had nowhere else to go, who had somehow found themselves there and protected. She thought of Terry's terror at being called a mutant, how the only thing that seemed to make the fear at all better was knowing an adult she trusted was the same way.

Everyday now, Sera sat on the stairs leading up to her building and watched the neighborhood kids play or head off to work if they were old enough. She had taught a bunch of them, and they were always coming up and chatting with her, telling her about their summer, their lives. She loved living around the kids she worked with, loved the feeling of knowing these kids could count on her. Like Terry counted on her, how Sera was maybe the only person she could trust with such a huge, dark secret.

And there she was again, right where she started. She couldn't seem to pull her thoughts out of this spiral. Where was she going to do the most good? All she had ever wanted was to do something good, to help people. She had never thought that she was going to have to sit down and decide which people needed the most help. Never thought she would ever even want a change from the perfect life that she had found. Everything had all seemed so clear cut, sharp-edged.

Charm had come by a couple of times. He knew now better than to ask what she was thinking; the first two answers had let him know she didn't intend to share. Sera didn't know what was going on with him either. Things had gone back to normal after their fight but normal now felt strangely... flat. She wanted to call up Wolverine and cuss him out for screwing things up with Charm but she knew it wasn't really his fault. It was just like with the school. It was seeing things she had never noticed before. Like how much more alive she felt when she wasn't trying to be calm, like how it felt to not have to hide anything. Now it seemed like the more she thought about things, the more she had to hide. She felt like she was suffocating under a mountain of words she had never said but they had never bothered her before.

The days felt too long and too short, all at the same time. She felt like she was on a countdown, four weeks now to make her choice. If the devil had appeared to her, right then, and offered her any wish, in exchange for her soul, she knew exactly what she would pick. She wanted that one choice back, the one decision to go to Xavier's, back. She wanted her old life, her perfect life, back again.

Except it would have been at the expense of Terry's.

Sera seemed to be spending a lot of time screaming, soundlessly, inside her head.

It was Wolverine Terry ran into when she and Jubilee were playing tag in the hallway after class.

"Ooff! Sorry, Mr. Logan!"

He grabbed her arm, mostly to steady her, partially to keep her from running off. He grabbed as gently as he could; the X-Men had noticed real fast you had to be careful touching Terry. She scared so easy. "Easy, don't wanna fall, do ya, kid?"

"No, sorry. We'll slow down."

"Nah, don't do that, just take it outside, huh? Leave an old man in peace."

Jubilee rolled her eyes. "You're not so old, Wolvie."

"Feel it, around you kids. Go on, out with you."

The girls were running, giggling, when he suddenly called out, "Hey, Terry-girl, you heard from that teacher of yours lately?"

Terry stopped, turned around. There was a surprised look on her face. "Sure, we just talked last night. She said she was getting ready for school. She's got sixth graders this year." Waving, Terry turned and chased Jubilee down the hall and out the door.

Getting ready for sixth graders. From listening to Jeannie and the others talk, he knew Xavier hadn't heard from Sera since she left. Sure sounded like she was planning to go on with her life like she had never met the X-Men. Well and why not? She had her job, she had that guy, Charm. Even thinking that guy's name made him sneer. Charm. What kind of a man was he for a woman like Sera? Not that he, Wolverine, cared. She was way better off there in her old life. For sure he didn't want her back at the mansion again. He'd be beating his head against the walls all the time, trying not to strangle her. It was better this way.

And if it was better this way, he was as blue as the Beast. In pretty much every way that mattered.

The shrill call of the phone woke Sera from a sound sleep. She was disoriented, like she always was when she had just woken up. Groggily, she grabbed for the phone, catching sight of the clock as she did so. 10:36 was not late enough for her to feel this groggy; she must have been more tired than she thought.

"Yeah?" she mumbled into the phone.

"Jay?" It was Terry, sounding strangely subdued. Sera forced herself into waking up.

"Who else? What's up, kiddo? You don't sound yourself."

"The court-case, y'know, for my folks. It was today." A soft whimper, barely audible, then silence.

"And..." prompted Sera, slowly beginning to pay attention to the conversation.

"The judge said that they had to go to these classes and see a caseworker and stuff before they could have me back." Terry sounded even more down, like it was hard to force the words past her throat.

"I agree," was Sera's prompt reply. "What, you want to go back to them? Aren't you happy at the school? You sounded happy, before."

"It's not that!" Terry's control had broken; now she was crying, yelling into the phone. "They don't want me, they don't want me back at all! They asked the judge how to put me up for adoption and Jay, they told my caseworker all about me, said they weren't going to raise no mutant! And Jay, my caseworker, he said... he said... Jay, he said no one was gonna want me, being a mutant and all. No one was going to want me! Jay, is that true? Is no one going to want me?"

Sera thought of Terry's face, the way it lit up when she found something she loved. She thought of Terry, at the field trip to the zoo last year, how she had loved all the animals but the big cats the most. On the way home, sitting by Sera on the bus, she had whispered her desire to study cats like that, like the lions, only in the wild. Her face had glowed then. She was a beautiful girl, so full of joy, even after all the hell she had been through, that it seemed to shine through her all the time. How could no one want a child like that, who would care that she started a fire or two, in the face of all that joy. No one would want her? Ha!

She wanted Terry. Twenty-eight was old in her family, not to have a child yet, but Sera had never wanted one before. She was suddenly realizing that the reason she had never wanted a kid before was because she wanted this kid, now. Fate knew it, Fate had been planning for it and that was why she had never had her own child. Raphie, her sister, she had a baby at eighteen and Sera had just rolled her eyes, determined to be different. Twelve years later and this talk with Terry was like a revelation; this girl, this was the child she was meant to have.

It was too soon to say anything like that. Who knew what Terry would say, what she would be thinking? Sera's eyes swam with tears. Her child. This was her child, no matter how long it took to prove it.

"Someone will want you," whispered Sera in a voice gone suddenly thick. "I promise, someone will want you."

Somehow, all those decisions suddenly seemed a lot easier to make. On one side, there was Terry. On the other side, there was everything else. She knew which side she wanted to be on.

Sera talked to Terry for only a little while longer. She had a lot to do the next day and she was going to need her sleep.

It was telling Charm that was the hardest. She had known it would be. All those unspoken words- c'mon, girl, face up to it, all those lies- catching up with her. He simply couldn't understand why she would be willing to give up so much for one girl.

"Surely someone will take her into foster care, Sera. There's no need for this."

"You don't understand. There are... there are extenuating circumstances in Terry's life, things that will make it difficult for her to be placed."

"And this makes you the ideal candidate why exactly? And why leave your old school? I thought you loved it there. Why go to that ritzy private school she's at now? You hate stuff like that. I just don't understand, Sera."

Sera could tell that Charm was trying as hard as he could not to lose his tempter. "Well, she couldn't blame him. This was pretty much coming out of the blue for the both of them. It's, just, those kids need me, Charm. They need what I can teach them."

"English?" There was a snort of disbelief. "Sera, you've said it yourself, English teachers are a dime a dozen. If this place was so cool, why can't they find, well, pretty much anyone they want?"

"It's not as easy as all that. They have... special considerations."

Charm had sat down by this point, his restless pacing almost stilled. It was almost like he knew what she was going to say. Well, points for him; she didn't have any idea of what she was going to say. "So what is it, Sera? What are these special considerations, these extenuating circumstances, that mean you have to leave your job, move up north and think about adopting a fourteen year old girl? Must be pretty damn special. Does this have anything to do with that Logan guy who followed you home?"

Sera rubbed her hands together nervously. It was one thing, saying this to Terry, who had needed to hear it, to know she wasn't alone. It was quite another to say it Charm, who didn't need to know, who would be happier not knowing. But after three years, the very least he deserved was the truth. "Charm. I love you. I do. But I'm not what you think I am."

"What is it I think you are?" Charm's voice was quiet. He had obviously caught on to the fact that whatever she had to say, it was important. "What do I think you are?"

Sera looked into his eyes; they were green with brown and gold flecks into them. They were more familiar to her than her own. If she concentrated, she could look past the whites, the irises and the pupils to the inner workings of his eyes, the delicate veins, the optic nerves all so perfectly put together. This was what she was. "Human, Charm. You think I'm human and I'm not."