Chapter 6: Ali
It wasn't long before Andi finally sat back against the couch, looking white and drained, but to her watchers it seemed like forever. She didn't have a lot in her stomach to begin with; she'd barely eaten anything all day. It was mostly dry heaves.
"Andi," Xavier said, as gently as he could, "Why don't you get some sleep? This is exhausting you, and it's quite distressing for us too. We need time to assimilate what you told us, and I think you need to rest a bit before you continue. Why don't we do this tomorrow?"
"No! Please, don't make me leave, please!"
"Andi, we'll be right here. Nothing's going to hurt you."
"It's not that." She swallowed and said in a low voice, "I can't get my shields up when I'm this upset."
Xavier said, "Andi. Let me tell you something. You don't have shields. Do you feel the shield around your mind right now?" The girl nodded. "That is a shield. Does yours feel like this?" He got a negative headshake. "You were never taught how to shield properly. This is what a shield should feel like. I'm going to teach you to do this too, and how to make it instinctive, but not tonight. Tonight I'll put one around your mind to keep you from feeling anyone else's dream, so you can sleep comfortably."
Andi nodded weakly, and held still while Xavier 'locked' it into place. She smiled wanly when he withdrew from her mind, and said, "Thank you, you have no idea how much it helps. One night, without having to play music in my head until I fall asleep, one night without hearing someone else's dream…Oh, god, I wish it could be like this every night!" And tears started falling again.
"It will be," Xavier said. "Shielding is a bit difficult to learn, but once you've got it, it's easy. It's like learning to ride a bike." He took in her blank look, and said, "You never…" he sighed. "Never mind. Good night, Andi."
Jean bit her lip as the girl wrestled herself to a sitting position, and Ororo removed the now-warm ice pack from her foot. Andi stood on it, testing the ankle, and gave them a weak, watery smile. "It does feel better," she said. "Thank you."
Jean shook her head as the girl started to limp out of Xavier's study. "It might feel better, but you still shouldn't put too much weight on it," she said. "'Ro, will you take Andi up to her room?"
Andi was doing okay on the floor, but sighed when she saw the stairs. Ororo didn't give her time to try it. She swept the girl up in her arms and started to ascend the staircase.
Andi gave a startled yelp. "Miss Munroe!"
Ororo smiled. "You do not weigh much, child. You are not a burden. Please, just relax."
Andi did. She couldn't remember ever being carried to bed, even when she was a child. She leaned her head against Ororo's shoulder and closed her eyes as the older woman reached the landing and started to climb to the third floor rooms. She was feeling a lot better than she could ever remember feeling in a while; maybe it was the prospect of a good night's sleep, instead of the uneasy light doze she always took; waking up as soon as she felt the touch of another's emotions on her own so she could start playing the music in her head again. Or maybe it was the suddenly light feeling she had, as if she had been carrying a very heavy load for a long time, and someone had just told her she could put it down. The last thought in her head as she fell asleep was that even if she couldn't learn how to shield, this one night of peace was going to be worth spending the rest of her life in misery. Just one night…
Ororo felt the tension go out of the body she held, and looked down. The poor child was asleep. She nudged the room door open with her toe, and walked into the darkened room. There was just enough light from the hall for her to twitch the tousled covers back with a light breeze, lay Andi out on the bed, and pull the covers back up. The girl sighed in her sleep and curled up on her side, arms wrapped around her body. Ororo reached out and tenderly swept the brown bangs off the forehead, studying the white, taut scar that started an inch above the left eyebrow and continued back into the hair for four inches. It was bare; no hair grew on it. She replaced the bangs and got up.
She was at the door when the girl in bed stirred, muttered a bit, and hugged herself tighter. Ororo's heart ached. Poor, poor child,, carrying a burden too heavy for someone so young. And she didn't have friends to talk to, and Ororo knew somehow that Andi wouldn't have a diary either. Her parents would never have let her keep one that they didn't have access to, and Andi wouldn't have kept one that she would have to lie into. On a sudden impulse, she went upstairs to the attic where she slept, crossing the cool floorboards awash in moonlight. Her hands searched in the shadowy corner of her room where her desk was, and lighted on the soft object she sought.
She retraced her steps to Andi's room, entered, and stood by the bed for long moments, watching the child sleep. Then she reached down and grasped a wrist. There was a bit of resistance, and a soft whimper from the girl, but Ororo took advantage of the momentary relaxation of the arm muscles and slipped the object into it.
Andi's hand fell on the soft, worn brown fur of the small teddy bear Ororo had had for years. She had stolen it in a bazaar in Egypt so many years ago she no longer remembered how much he had cost. Ororo had named him Ali later, both for the shopkeeper who had seen the ragged little girl steal the bear and let her keep it, and for the boxing star she had seen fighting in a TV in a shop window one night when she was thirsty, hungry, and alone. She had felt a strange kinship with the boxer getting punched, and had stopped to watch until the match was over and Muhammad Ali had won. She had vowed to the bear then and there that she would win too, someday, against a world that didn't care about the throwaway lives that were born unwillingly and unknowingly into it.
And she had kept that promise. Through the years of being on the street, of fighting for everything she needed and wanted, and later, for control of the powers the Goddess had granted her. Ali had been with her through all of those years, comforting her when she was so hungry she could cry, so frustrated she could scream, so hurt she wanted to give up. She had re-stuffed him many times, re-sewn the ripped seams, and many times she had gone to throw the little stuffed bear away but never could. Now here was another child who needed him. Andi was rich; she had parents, she had a fancy home and more clothes than she could possibly wear, and as much food and drink, and much fancier kinds than Ororo had had at her age.
But Andi needed him. She was soul-starved for love, for the approval and acceptance of the people around her; thirsty for the knowledge and control of her powers that had thus far eluded her frantic searching; and more alone than Ororo had ever been.
"You are not alone anymore," she said softly to the sleeping girl, falling to her knees beside the bed and addressing the button eyes of the bear (they had once been glass, but those had fallen away, and Ororo had replaced them with buttons.) "Take care of her, Ali. I know I swore I was going to keep you forever; but Andi needs you, probably more than I ever did. I had the other street children; she truly has no one. Take care of her." She reached out and touched the bear one last time, pressed her forehead against the brown fur and the hand of the desperate child who now clutched him tightly, then got up and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.
Moonlight gleamed serenely on a single fat tear resting atop the thin hand. It finally rolled off, to soak into the bear's nose. Not the first tear Ali had ever absorbed, and definitely not the last.
* * *
Jean looked up as Ororo re-entered the study, cradling another cup of hot tea. "I thought you would have gone to bed too," she said. "Is Andi asleep?"
"She fell asleep on the way up," Ororo said, sitting back down on the couch, shedding her slippers and tucking her feet up under her. She arranged her nightgown and robe to cover her feet, and took a sip of her tea. "I do not believe she will waken soon. She was exhausted, emotionally and physically. And I could not go back to bed. I cannot get the image out of my mind of the poor child locked in a closet without food or drink for days."
"I can't, either, " Xavier said, shaking his head as if to get the image out of his mind. "I can't believe the Sandersons went to the hospital without her. I can't believe her mother left the scene before she knew if her daughter was going to make it out alive."
"I saw the scar," Ororo said. "On her forehead, under her hair. It starts just over her eyebrow and disappears four inches into her hair. The bleeding must have been terrible. And then to have the wound reopened by a fall down the stairs…" she sighed. "Charles, have you considered the possibility that maybe Andi cannot learn to shield, that perhaps her injury 'broke' something in her mind that prevents her from being able to control it?"
He shook his head. "I think I'll have Hank do some scans," he said heavily. "I hadn't considered the possibility."
"What will you do if that is the case?" Jean stood behind Xavier's wheelchair and began to rub the tight, knotted muscles in his shoulders.
"Oh, that feels good…down a little bit, Jean…thank you…I don't know," Xavier sighed. "Probably erect a permanent barrier around her empathy and block it off entirely. I doubt that the 'off switch' is broken, but it certainly is possible that the injury may have increased her sensitivity level." He buried his face in his hands for a moment, then rubbed at his aching temples. "She picked up on Logan's nightmare a floor and one entire wing away. If she is indeed physically incapable of learning how to shield, leaving her with her empathy intact would be condemning her to eventual insanity. I can't do that to her. I can't hurt her by ignoring her, as her parents seem to have done." He sighed. "I am trying to resist the urge to call them up and scream at them and at this Dr. Hebron Andi keeps mentioning. If he truly was a psychiatrist, he should have recognized Andi was empathic, not mentally ill. I'm almost dreading tomorrow; I don't think I really want to know what she went through, but I have to hear it if I hope to help her. Thank you, Jean." He absently picked up the sandwich, then looked at it, grimaced, and put it down. His eyes traveled to the wastebasket.
Jean sighed. "Let me take care of it, Charles." She telekinetically picked it up, opened the window, and upended the contents into the bushes outside. Then she closed the window. "I'll put it back after I rinse it out." And she left the room.
Ororo was quiet for a moment, her eyes fastened to the window, looking at the lightening sky in the east. Birds started to chirp in the bushes outside the window. "I gave Ali to Andi," she said.
Xavier's head snapped up. He knew all about the bear, and how much it meant to her. "Ororo, it wasn't necessary," he said as gently as he could, studying the tear that collected in Ororo's eye at the loss of her stuffed friend. "There are a number of Jubilee's old things in the storage room in the basement. I'm sure she wouldn't have minded the donation of one of her stuffed animals for Andi."
"I know," Ororo said quietly. "But somehow it felt right. Andi doesn't need a toy, Charles, she needs a friend, someone to talk to, to cry and scream at, and let her emotions out on. Granted, he's only a stuffed animal, but all those years I carried him around, it somehow felt he was watching over me and he sympathized with me. And I hope Andi feels the same thing. She's so lonely, Charles. In a houseful of people, with parents and servants and other students in all those schools, she's lonely. More alone than I ever was…and I never thought that was possible." She sniffed, and reached for a tissue from the box on Xavier's desk.
He took one too, wiping at eyes that weren't quite dry, and smiled at her. "You're a wonderful woman, Ororo," he said. "I don't think anyone else would have done that."
"Oh, come on," she said lightly, standing and shoving her feet into her slippers, walking over to the window as the first rays of sun turned her silver hair to gold. "You would, if it were you. In many ways, you have, over and over again."
He joined her at the window, curious. "How?"
Ororo turned her back to the sunrise, leaning against the window and studying him. "You have told us that when you first came here to your ancestral home, you found peace and quiet and contentment here. Coming here helped you come to grips with the fact that you would never walk again. And so what did you do? You opened your home to others who had their own issues to come to grips with, mutants who had to face their irreversible state and live with permanent changes. In effect, you gave us your 'teddy bear' so we could learn to live and cope with what happened to us. It is not an easy thing to do." She drank down the last of her tea and walked to the door as the sound of the mansion's inhabitants waking and going about their business intruded. "You set the example. I followed." She opened the door. "Should I bring your breakfast in here?"
"No," he said. "I believe I'll go lie down for a while. Catch up on my sleep before Andi wakes up. I'll eat later, but thank you for the offer, Ororo."
"It is not a problem. Sleep well, Charles."
He sat for a moment at the desk, thinking about what Ororo had said. He supposed he should be flattered, being a role model for a grown woman, but there was a curiously hollow feeling inside him because he knew it wasn't true. How often, in the years since he had brought his first students here and egotistically named them 'his' X-Men, had he wished that he could take it all back, rewind the clock so that the mansion would be what it was again? They had been tumultuous years. Very few parts of the building were original, the mansion having been rebuilt many times when their opponents had torn it down in an effort to vanquish his X-Men and his dream. Yet he knew it would always be here for him, in some form or another, as long as he had the money to have it rebuilt. And money, thanks to wise investments, copyrighted patents, student tuition, and donations from certain friends, was something he would never be short of.
He reached into his desk drawer, took a small key out, and unlocked the last drawer of his desk. His own mascot stared back at him, plastic eyes still in place, acrylic fur as glossy as it had been the day Moira had given it to him, the little cross-in-the-circle emblem fresh on its sweater, embroidered there by a woman he loved.
Charles lifted 'Little Xavier' out of the drawer, staring at it for a while as tears pricked his eyes at the memory of his love for Moira. He could never give up the little stuffed bulldog. Never. "It's not the same, Ororo," he said quietly. He leaned back in his wheelchair, hugging the little dog to his chest as tears ran silently down his face.
"It's not the same at all."