Mid-morning of the next day, Bobby stirred and started to come around. Jean stopped her paperwork and came over to the side of his bed. His eyelids fluttered then opened all the way. He stared up at Jean, relief mixing with confusion on his young face.
Jean smiled at him and said "Good morning."
Bobby blinked and tried to speak but the oxygen mask got in the way and he did not have the strength to move it.
Jean removed the mask for him and asked "How are you feeling?"
Bobby licked his lips and whispered "Cold." He blinked again and said "Kinda weird for me to be saying that."
"Not really. Just because you can freeze things doesn't mean you can't freeze yourself."
Bobby smiled at Jean's comment. "How long have I have been here?" he asked.
"Not long." Jean replied. She checked his vital signs and took his temperature. It was almost back to normal. Bobby would be just fine.
He licked his lips again and tried to swallow.
"Thirsty?" she asked.
"Yeah." he said
Jean held out her hand and a glass slid across a small table next to the bed. She picked it up and held it to his lips, holding his head with one hand and the glass with the other.
He sipped at the warm liquid but made a face at the sweet taste. After few sips, he was done and Jean set the glass down on the table. His eyes moved around the room, touching on an object here and there, like he was trying to convince himself that he really was safe.
"You're a popular guy. You've already had visitors." Jean told him.
"Rogue?"
"No, Micah. Rogue will be here just as soon as classes are over for the day."
Bobbie blinked. "Micah?"
Jean nodded. "He's very concerned."
"He's a good kid." Bobby's voice faded as sleep claimed him again.
True to Jean's word, Bobby's first visitor of the afternoon was Rogue. She came straight to the Med-Lab, books in hand. Jean sat her at a small table near Bobby where she could work on her homework and be near him. His second visitor was Micah, minus his school books. Again, he paused in the doorway, then slowly walked into the room.
"Hey, Micah." Rogue said to him.
"Hi." Micah said, looking surprised that Rogue spoke to him.
"Good afternoon, Micah." Jean said to him. "You'll be pleased to know that when Bobby woke up this morning, I told him you were here to see him."
Micah darted a glance at Rogue, who did not look up from her work, then, visibly, relaxed enough to say "Really?"
Jean repeated Bobby's words and got a genuine smile from Micah. "You're most welcome to stay but you will need your schoolwork. You're not just going to sit here."
Micah shook his head and darted another look at Rogue. "I...I...wouldn't want to...get in the way."
"You're not in the way." Rogue said. She still smarted from how Micah had seemingly wandered in to the Med-Lab when she had been kept from the same place but she couldn't really blame him. He was worried about Bobby too. Plus, he was younger than her, so, she had to be the bigger person, no matter how much it sucked.
Micah shook his head. "I...I can come back." He turned and practically ran from the Med-Lab.
Rogue looked after him, then looked at Jean. "Did I do that?"
Jean shook her head and said "No, you didn't. He upset about Bobby that's all."
Rogue shrugged her shoulders and went back to her schoolwork.
Bobby woke up just after Micah's hasty departure. He looked over and saw Rogue standing next to him.
"Hey." he whispered.
"Hey. Everyone's askin' about you." Rogue replied.
"Yeah?" Bobby said.
"Feeling a little better?" Jean asked, joining Rogue at Bobby's bedside.
Bobby nodded and said "Can I get some water?"
A glass levitated from a plate warmer near him and settled into Jean's hand.
"That is not water." Rogue said, looking at the green liquid.
"It's warm, diluted, Jell-O. Believe it or not, this is better for him than water, at the moment. You want to try this on your own?" She asked Bobby.
Bobby nodded and, after raising the bed up, Jean handed him the glass, then went back to the ever-present paperwork waiting on her desk.
"Sip slowly, don't gulp." Jean instructed.
Bobby nodded and did as he was told.
"Micah was here." Rogue said. "He's really freaked out about you."
"Jean said he'd been in here last night." Bobby replied. The Jell-O felt so good sliding down his throat that he wanted to empty the whole glass at once but didn't have the strength to do so.
"What happened? How'd you wind up where you did?" Rogue asked Bobby.
Bobby shook his head and said "I don't really remember. About all I do remember is walking down a road and wishing I had a cellphone. That and I needed to find a place out of the wind but it gets kinda fuzzy after that." He sipped at the Jell-O, surprised that such a simple conversation could wear him out.
Rogue nodded and let him be. There was plenty of time for finding out what happened, later.
"I didn't freak you out too much, did I?" Bobby asked her.
She shrugged. "Stuff happens. I'm just glad that you're going to be all right."
"Like you could get rid of me that easily." he said.
She smacked him on the shoulder. "Just be happy you're sick, if you weren't..."
"Children..." Jean said, not looking up from her paperwork.
Bobby and Rogue smiled at each other and Rogue felt a weight lift from her heart.
It was all fault and he didn't know how to fix it. It was his fault that Bobby was so sick and stuck down in the Med-Lab. It was his fault that Rogue had been so upset and that Logan was in a bad mood. It was all his fault. He wanted to apologize to Bobby and Rogue and Logan, really, he did. But he didn't. He couldn't. He was too afraid. Afraid of being throw out of the school. Afraid that Bobby and Rogue and anyone else would never speak to him again. Afraid of being dropped back into an ugly, ugly life he'd thought he had left behind. So, he said nothing and retreated further from the rest of the school. That way, it wouldn't hurt as much when he was found out and thrown out.
As his strength returned, Bobby grew restless and bored. Especially after Jean shooed Rogue out around dinner time and he couldn't even have a conversation with another teenager.
"I can get your schoolwork down here, if you need something to do." Jean told him. She made her hourly check of his vital signs and was pleased with his rapid recovery. The boundless recuperative powers of teenagers never failed to amaze her.
He made a face and said "That's okay. It's not going anywhere."
"I might even be able to get a tv down here but the schoolwork would come with it." Jean said. She bit her lip and hoped that Bobby didn't see the grin she was trying to hide.
He made another face. "You just don't want to have to wait on me when I get back to the classroom."
"Truer words were never spoken. Of course, I'm quite happy to still have you, period." Jean said. She slid a stool over and sat down next to Bobby. "You scared everyone silly. Even Logan was speechless."
"Sorry." Bobby muttered, his eyes cast downward. "I thought I was doing something nice for another student, one of the new guys. Guess not."
Something in the back of Jean's mind stirred to life and, suddenly, she had a horrible suspicion of who was behind Bobby's near freezing.
"You want to talk about it?"
He shrugged. "There's not much to say."
"Try me." Jean said. At the same time, she sent a mental message to both Scott and Professor Xavier to come down to the Med-Lab.
"I don't want to get the kid in trouble. He doesn't know you guys the way I do. He might freak and run away" Bobby said, his eyes still downcast.
"Bobby, look at me." Jean said. When he did, she said "We need to know what happened so we can keep it from happening again. Whoever it is, they need to know that this kind of behavior is unacceptable but that mistakes can and do happen."
The Med-Lab's doors slid open and admitted Scott and Professor Xavier.
Bobby looked at Jean and asked "You brought in reinforcements, huh?"
Jean smiled and replied "Do you really want to have to repeat this story?"
"Where's Rogue?" Bobby asked Scott.
"Upstairs, watching a movie. Logan and the other kids are keeping her occupied." Scott replied.
He nodded. "If I tell you, don't be too hard on him. You gotta promise you're not gonna get too mad. He's new here and..."
"Bobby, we are not about to discipline another student without cause." Professor Xavier said. "You will have to trust us on that."
"I do." He sighed and said "All right. The whole thing started out as an errand I told one of the new kids I'd run for him."
So, Bobby laid out the whole ugly story. How he'd headed for the bookstore but never made it because he had been grabbed by unknown hands, dragged into an alleyway and drugged into unconsciousness. How he'd woken up, gagged and bound with voices talking over him and how he had escaped by freezing the bindings around him and scaring away his captors. After that, it was easy to get out of the dilapidated factory where he'd been held and run as far and as fast as he could.
"They took my jacket and my shoes. Like that was going to stop me." Bobby said. He watched the adult's faces for some sort of reaction to his tale. "Don't get too mad at him. He didn't know any better. Neither did I." he added.
"It's admirable for you to want to take on all the responsibility but you're both at fault." Professor Xavier said.
"You know we don't have a problem with any of you going into town but you're supposed to tell one of us. Or did you forget that part?" Scott asked.
Bobby shrugged. "I didn't know it was a trap until I heard one of them muttering 'That kid better be right about his family'. I wouldn't have gone if I did."
Professor Xavier shook his head and said more to himself "Of all the reasons, why didn't I see this?"
"Because even you're not perfect, Charles." Jean said to him. She looked at Bobby and switched back into doctor mode. "I think that's enough excitement for one evening. He needs his rest."
Bobby didn't argue. He might have felt a 1,000 percent better than that morning but he still felt like someone had run over him with a truck.
"I'll be back in a moment." Jean said to Bobby.
She walked out into the hallway with Scott and Professor Xavier.
"Unbelievable. I'm assuming you'll want to talk to him immediately." Scott said to Professor Xavier.
Professor Xavier nodded. "Bring him to my office."
After Professor Xavier left, Jean looked at Scott and said "You're not going to like what I'm going to say but go easy on him, okay? "
Scott quirked an eyebrow at her, his question unspoken.
"Humor me." Jean replied. She kissed him on the cheek and sent Scott on his way before returning to the Med-Lab.
Twilight was spreading across the grounds of the Xavier School as Scott hiked up the stairs to leading the student bedrooms. Darkness came quickly in the winter and it with a multitude of places to hide. It would be better for all concerned to end this matter before darkness fell and they spent another evening searching for another student in the cold and the dark.
He knocked on a half-closed bedroom door and poked his head around it.
"Daniel, where's your roommate?" he asked.
Daniel, a skinny 15 year-old with a mop of dark hair, looked up from his homework and shrugged. "Don't know. I haven't seen him since dinner. What'd he do?"
"Disappeared on me." Scott replied, turning and walking away from the bedroom. He walked back downstairs and headed for Professor Xavier's office. There was a much faster way to find the errant student then physically searching the mansion but he never got that far. The object of his search came out of the library, right in front of him, book in hand.
"Micah." Scott called to the boy "I've been looking for you."
Micah's head snapped up, his eyes grew wide, then he turned and bolted down the hallway, the book dropping from his fingers.
"Oh, hell." Scott muttered. Why do they always have to run? He broke into a run himself and chased after Micah.
/Jean, Micah's run off on me, he's got a good head start. Get Kurt. We're in the lower hallway near the front door./
Micah ran as fast as he could down the hallway, looking for the first door leading to the outside. So what if it was cold and dark? He didn't deserve to be warm and dry with what he'd done. The hallway curved to the left,then emptied into a sunroom with a door leading to a porch and the outside. If he could get to the porch, he'd get away. He did not see nor did he hear Kurt appear in the sunroom, then reappear at the porch door, blocking his escape.
Micah charged into Kurt at full speed knocking him backwards into the door, which popped open, spilling both of them onto the porch. Micah, terrified, fought against Kurt but the teleporter was stronger and more agile and simply wrapped Micah up in his arms, holding him tight. Scott came puffing up and looked down at Kurt sprawled on the floor with Micah in his grip.
"Micah, why did you run?" Scott asked, crouching down next to him.
Micah's response was lost in the sobs that started to shake his body. Kurt looked up at Scott as if to ask 'What is going on?'
"Long story." Scott said to Kurt. "It has to do with Bobby being in the Med-Lab, doesn't it, Micah?" Scott asked him.
Micah shook his head. "It's my fault." he wailed. "I'm the reason Bobby's so sick."
Behind him, Scott could sense the growing crowd of curious students and he just knew that Rogue was in the crowd somewhere. If Rogue found out what was going on, things would get ugly, quickly. Fortunately, Logan had followed the students and was now herding them away.
"C'mon, guys, ya' don't need to be here. Yer just gettin' in the way. The excitement's over." Logan said to the kids.
Thank you. Scott sent a silent thank-you to whichever saint was listening.
"All right, Micah. We can do this one of two ways. You can get up, come with me and talk to Professor Xavier or you can be carried and you'll wind up talking to him anyway." Scott said.
"I'm not a baby. I don't need to be carried." Micah said, through his tears.
"Scott, may I have a moment?" Kurt softly asked Scott.
Scott thought for a moment then nodded and stepped back.
"I do not know what this is about, but I can see you are afraid of something," Kurt said to Micah. He moved to a bench, sat down and coaxed Micah to join him. Kurt put an arm around the boy's shoulder and tried to comfort him.
"I did something bad," Micah sobbed. "I nearly got a friend killed!"
Kurt did not respond immediately, like Scott, he had seen the fear in Micah's eyes and on his face and knew he had to tread carefully.
"Have faith, child. Sometimes we are tempted by evil to sin. Look at me - these marks are angelic symbols - one drawn for every sin I have made,"
"That's a lot of sins," Micah replied, staring at the markings on Kurt's face and body.
"Yes, it is. One mark for every sin. Each time I sinned, I prayed to God for forgiveness. We are not perfect. We make mistakes. The only one who is perfect is the Creator. He has already forgiven you."
"But, will the Professor forgive me?"
"Do not be afraid, mein liebes Kind. Herr Xavier is a good man, he will not hurt you." Kurt smiled gently.
Micah nodded, stood up and hugged Kurt. He sniffled away the rest of his tears and turned to face Scott.
"Okay, Mr. Summers, I'm ready."
Scott held out his hand to Micah and nodded at Kurt. "Thanks, Kurt."
Kurt nodded in return. "You are welcome." He said to Scott.
Kurt watched Scott and Micah head back down the hallway, then shook his head. How could someone so young, be so unhappy?