Bad Day
By Cat Price aka SuperherogirlCat
Summary: Storm has a bad day and Nightcrawler comforts her.
German Words For All Those People who Don't know Them: Liebchen- darling; Mien Gott- My God; Ungaublich- No literal English translation, sort of tantamount to an exclamation of surprise, or I this case, resignation.
Warning: Contains X2 spoilers for all y'all losers who haven't seen it yet and wish to remain unscathed by foreknowledge of the ending of the movie where Jean Grey dies. Um…I mean…oops.
Ororo Munroe, also known as Storm, was a member-in-good-standing of the X-men, and, as a weather controller, one of the most powerful mutants in existence. She was a teacher at Xavier's school for gifted youngsters, a job that unfortunately left her little time to herself. Normally, she didn't mind the long hours, but this morning she was feeling unusually fatigued. It was the kind of day where you wake up in the morning, take one look out the window, realize that you're in a very foul mood, you're tired, and you got no sleep last night because a certain adamantium-skeletoned mutant who has the room above you was having nightmares again and was tearing the place apart and you have to get up and tell the Professor so he can use his telepathic powers to put Logan back to sleep, then finally you get in bed and then Siryn has a nightmare and starts screaming at the top of her lungs over many different sound frequencies and shatters the expensive silver mirror that you had specially commissioned and handmade in Egypt and then you have to go calm her down and your eardrums nearly explode and then you finally get to your bedroom at 1:30 in the morning, only to step on one of the shards of your mirror and have to limp to the infirmary to get stitches before you finally get to sleep for exactly two hours and fifteen minutes and now you're late because your alarm clock didn't go off and you have an art history class to be at in fifteen minutes. Yep, that kind of day.
Ororo let out a groan of exhaustion and exasperation and a steady stream of expletives as she carefully navigated herself around the shards of her beloved mirror, across the room to her closet. She found a light blue sleeveless blouse and a pair of straight-legged capris that looked fairly good together and ran a comb through her cloud-colored hair, which naturally looked horrible.
She jammed her feet into a pair of Birkenstocks and made her way downstairs to the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of her specially imported Pumpkin Spice-flavored coffee. She inhaled deeply, getting ready for her morning fix, when suddenly…
"Boo!" One of the younger students, Kitty Pryde, had phased through the wall behind her and yelled. Ororo jumped three feet on the air and spilled coffee down the front of her shirt. Kitty almost fell over laughing. Ororo almost fried the kid with a lightning bolt right then and there, but then thought better of it.
Using years and years of discipline to master her temper, she turned and stomped out of the room without generating so much as a crackle of electricity. Little did she know, her day was barely beginning.
***
Fifteen minutes later, she arrived late to the class in a fresh shirt, a white peasant blouse that she rather liked.
A roomfull of fourteen-to-sixteen-year-old mutants, each with enough power in their little finger to maim or kill any number of normal humans, awaited her. Recognizing the beginnings of total chaos, Ororo rapped on her desk until the previously perilously loud talking and laughter faded into silence.
"All right" She began, "Now that I have your attention, please turn to page 274 in your textbooks. We'll be discussing the Pre-Raphaelites and their influence over modern art…"
***
Three and a half excruciating hours later Ororo emerged from the infirmary, smoke all but coming out of her ears.
She had handed a pile of test papers to Bobby Drake to pass out to the class, and he had accidentally- or so he claimed – frozen them in a block of ice. John Allerdyce had offered to thaw them and, before she could protest, had flicked open his ever-present lighter and incinerated the papers. The fire had caught on her desk and she had tried to keep the students calm while she put it out, but you try keeping a room full of hormone-crazy teenagers with mutant powers calm in the face of a crisis—it doesn't work.
It had taken the rest of the class period to straighten the mess out, and by then several people had minor burns and much of the room was reduced to ash. Then, Storm had to take everyone to the infirmary to have their burns treated. She was tired, frazzled, pissed off, and ready to either break down crying or kill someone. She found some measure in the fact that the two weren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
She made her way to the cafeteria for lunch, thinking that things couldn't possibly get any worse.
***
"Food fight!" John Allerdyce yelled at the top of his lungs, hurling a large bowl of pudding at Marie (Rogue), who ducked, causing the pudding to hit Piotr Rasputin, the 18-year-old Russian mutant who was sometimes called Colossus directly in the face. Almost simultaneously, students around the cafeteria began to hurl food at one another, some of them using mutant powers to give them an edge. Bobby Drake lightly froze his drink and formed it into slush-balls, which he threw with surprising accuracy at his fellow students. Kitty Pryde rendered herself intangible with a thought, so that the food simply passed through her.
Storm put her head in her hands, moaning hopelessly. Dear God, what next? She glanced hopefully around, but she was the only adult in the cafeteria. Sighing angrily, she began to concentrate. She was trying to create a lightning bolt big enough to be seen and to startle everyone into stillness, but not big enough to hurt anyone. She almost had it…
SPLAT! What felt like Jell-O hit the side of Ororo's head and began dribbling down her shoulder. The cafeteria grew still very suddenly. Throwing food at another student was one thing, but hitting a teacher was an entirely different story. Storm grabbed her napkin and swiped it across her face, growling as she realized that the red Jell-O had gotten on and undoubtedly stained her shirt. Second one ruined today, dammit!
"Who. Threw. That?" The hissed, infuriated. Rahne Sinclair, a Werewolf-like little girl stepped forward shakily.
"Sorry," She mumbled. "I was aiming for Kitty, but she--"
"Be quiet!" Ororo snapped. Rahne shut up. Ororo looked around the silent cafeteria, her eyes blazing silver. The students felt the air around them grow uncomfortably frigid.
"No one leaves this cafeteria…" She hissed, her tone borderline psychotic, "…until this room is spotless! I want every breadcrumb cleared. And so help me, if my instructions are not followed TO THE LETTER…!"
A lightning bolt crashed through an open window, hitting the floor, making everyone jump.
"You will be very sorry indeed." Storm promised in a menacing hiss. With that, she whirled and stalked out of the door.
***
Oh, dear God she was having a horrible day. Whenever she had felt like this in the past she had simply talked to Jean…but now Jean was dead. It was all just too much.
She sank onto one of the benches outside the grounds and burying her face in her hands, shaking with uncontrollable sobs. She was so wrapped in grief an overwhelming emotion that she did not hear the faint bamf that signaled the arrival of Kurt Wagner, known in the Munich Circus and to most who walked the halls of the Xavier School as, incredible or otherwise, Nightcrawler.
"Oh, Ororo, I am sorry I did not notice you sitting zhere…" He trailed off as she looked up at him through tear-filled eyes. "Mien Gott, Ororo, are you all right?"
Storm sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. "No," she whispered, sounding rather small and slightly pathetic.
To her surprise, Kurt sat next to her and gently put one arm around her shoulder, his tail curling about her waist, pulling her closer.
"Ororo.." he told her in his soft, mellow voice, heavy with his German accent, soothing in it's own right. "Liebchen, come here…vhat has happened zhat you are so upset?"
"Everything," Storm sobbed, suddenly unable to control herself in the face of this soulful, serene friend who so obviously wanted to comfort her. "Oh, Kurt, just…everything…"In a rush, the whole story spilled out, from the stitches in her foot to the food-fight to the ruined shirt to grieving over Jean. By the time she was finished, she was somewhat embarrassed to realize that she was leaning agaist him, sobbing into his shoulder.
"I'm sorry," she sniffed, pulling back, slightly. "Oh, god, you must think I'm so pathetic…"
His emphatic, "Nein!" startled her. She watched him swallow and speak again, "Nein, liebchen, never could I think you pathetic. You are only having a bad day. Ungaublich! If I had a dime for every vone of zhose zhat I have ever had… Believe me, Ororo, I know how you feel."
"Storm managed a smile and wiped her eyes.
"Thank you, Kurt," she sniffed.
"Any time, liebchen," The blue mutant smiled, reassuringly. How anyone could smile with fangs and make it look reassuring was beyond her. Kurt could do it, though. "I am alvays here for you to talk to, vhenever you are needing me."
Ororo smiled and, to Nightcrawler's surprise, leaned over and kissed his cheek. While he sat there, shell-shocked, she got up and walked back to the mansion.
***
Ororo sighed as she walked back to her room. The rest of her day had been fairly uneventful, due to the fact that all of the kids were scared out of their wits of her and avoided making themselves noticed. Thankfully, there had not been any further disasters. She opened her door, ready to clean up the glass from her mirror, and gasped. Her room was immaculate.
Someone had painstakingly picked up every shard of glass and placed it back into its proper position, so that she now had a whole, albeit cracked mirror. Her bed had been made, the nightshirt that had been carelessly tossed on the floor had been picked up and folded, and sat neatly on her dresser. Sitting at the foot of her newly-made four poster was a bouquet of twelve Egyptian locuses, a brown-paper package, and an envelope.
Ororo picked up the flowers and inhaled deeply, savoring their scent, before placing them in a vase by he bed. Then she opened the envelope. Inside was a hand-written note.
"Dear Ororo," it read. "I hope you don't mind too terribly my coming into your room. I was delivering the flowers and a small gift to make you feel better, but I saw the glass shards and the disarray and I could not help but clean up a bit. I promised I touched nothing that was not necessary and I put your mirror back together, though I fear it is now unusable.
"I considered getting you roses, but the locuses are so much more beautiful and fitting, it seems. I hope you like them.
"Sincerely, Kurt Wagner."
Ororo smiled and set the note aside, tearing the paper off of the package. Once that was done, she gasped. Inside the package was the most beautiful piece of clothing she'd ever seen. It was a batik blouse, in splashing patterns of varying shades of blue and purple. It reminded her of the sky during a storm. As she ran her fingers across it she could all but hear the rumble of thunder. Under the shirt was a note.
"To make up for the ones that were ruined. –K"
Storm smiled and hung the batik blouse in her closet. Perhaps it had not been such a bad day after all.
The End