Chapter 9: Rainfall

The sudden shower of rain was not a coincidence. Since that afternoon, when she and Beast had closed themselves off in her room for a Serious Discussion that had slowly but surely turned into One Hell Of A Fight, Storm's emotional outbursts had spurred a downpour that was currently drenching most of the campus and might extend over half of Salem Center if the two of them didn't go their separate ways and cool off.

Jean was doing her best to concentrate more Dr. Armand's reply to her email and less on her friend's accusations or Henry's protests, but the scene in the next room was becoming murder on her attention span.

…It is still a highly controversial practice to seek help from mutants…

"Damn it, Henry, you said you were going to give it up, now give it up!"

…Desperate is too strong a word, but nevertheless…

"Why are you getting angry at me, Ororo. All I said was that…"

"I know what you said. You can stop explaining it to me. You don't need to explain. You're so frigging patronizing sometimes, did you know that? What, do you feel so small that you have to make other people feel like the village idiot once in a while?"

"I said, no more psychoanalyzing me!"

…I am interested in the opinion of someone who can literally enter the mind of a mental patient in a case where my years of trying to do so figuratively have not paid off…

Jean removed her glasses, polished them on her shirt, and replaced them. She considered sending a mental call out to the feuding lovebirds, Hey, guys, some people are trying to launch their next assignment, but doubted that they'd even care at this point. Should she tell the professor? No, it put her too much in the position of the second-grade tattletale. Ororo and Henry were adults. They could take care of this one themselves. She returned her attention to the computer screen.

…I would appreciate it if you would arrange a meeting time.

Score, she thought. Ironic — herself a former head case, and Professor Xavier had had her working with the mentally unbalanced before her first year at the Institute was up. There would always be the minds that were too damaged for her to heal, the souls lost to darkness that she couldn't penetrate, but her failures lost her neither class points nor the gratitude of her — clients? connections? — for her efforts, and they were far outweighed by her successes. Each time she stopped a psyche poised at the brink from sailing off into the edge, her spirits were lifted as well, and she had to give firm internal instructions not to look to pleased with herself.

This is the ideal area for you, Marvel Girl, the professor had told her after her first major breakthrough. Not only does it give you a chance to help those who are beyond the reach of human psychiatry, but it also gives you a chance to re-confront the way your own past… issues have shaped who you are now.

You don't know the half of it, Jean thought now. Of course, he undoubtedly did know the half of it, at least. But once in a while, when she gazed at the faint scars on her knuckles and was reminded once again that she had been the one to put them there, the thought But he wasn't there crept back into her mind.

"You cannot push me away and push me away like you've been doing for the past couple of days, and then come crawling back to me and think that —"

"Ororo —"

"I'm talking! And think that your same old half-assed conspiracy theory is some sort of excuse!"

True, it was almost like he'd been there. The day she'd arrived here, he'd been the one to enter her memories and examine each one and help her build a wall between herself and the pain of her past while she had tried to obey his orders to breathe slowly and concentrate and, above all, to stay calm. And she'd kept thinking things like, How can I stay calm, you're in my mind and I can't make you leave, don't listen don't touch don't look, I won't let you see. And he'd told her that there was nothing she could show him that would shock him too badly, that trust was an important part of the end that he was trying to achieve. But if she could rise above her panic and listen, she would know how to build her own shields to keep other people's thoughts out and, more importantly, keep herself in. At that moment, that idea had seemed almost too good to be true. When she had been able to build a suitable mental screen, he had released her and let her cry for as long as she needed to.

"First of all, you weren't talking. You were yelling. And second of all, I don't think it's fair to accuse me of patronizing you when you treat my concerns like signs of a neurosis just because they don't go along with what you've been brainwashed to believe!"

When she was taken to meet Scott, then the only other student at the school, the only thoughts she'd heard from him were the ones he'd voiced out loud. He was polite enough not to ask what had happened to her hands.

In the months that had followed, she had built another kind of wall, except this one was between the girl who had burst into tears while Xavier had watched, and the one who tried to believe that no mountain wasn't worth climbing. It was the only way she could survive, the only way she could set foot in one of those hospitals now and project the confidence that would get the job done. Another one healed, another one saved.

"I am so sick of this!" Ororo screamed suddenly. Then both voices lowered. A few minutes later, there came a rapid knocking on the door.

Jean clicked Print on her computer and went to answer it. Eyes wide, arms hugging herself tightly, Ororo looked about half her age and a far cry from the self-assured super-heroine that Jean had come to know. "What's wrong?" Even though she didn't need to ask, and both of them knew it.

"Henry and I just broke up," Ororo said flatly, but tears were spilling from her eyes. "Goddess, look at me. I can't be — I'm not supposed to —"

All Jean could do was stand there. Even with all I've done for humanity as we've known it, I can't comfort my friend when she's falling apart.

"I'm supposed to be cool," the weather witch choked out. "I'm supposed to be cool, and bad-ass, and a superhero, we're always supposed to know what to do…" She broke down completely, sinking onto the bed as if her legs could no longer hold her.

Finding her voice again, Jean sat down beside her. "Hey," she said. "Hey. We're the only ones here. You don't have to be anything. I don't even have to know what happened. You can tell me whenever you're ready." She wrapped her arm around Ororo's shoulders, smoothed the ivory locks back from her teammate's streaming eyes. "Shh, girlfriend. It's okay. Nobody's watching us. Nobody." She kept repeating this over and over again until Ororo sat up, shedding her last tears and attempting a smile in a visible attempt to return to her old sassy self.

And not once when Jean was saying those words did it occur to her how very wrong she was.

Outside, the rain gradually slowed and stopped.