I do not own the lyrics of "Love is in the Air", though I don't have the
slightest idea who does. For the third time, I don't own X-men characters
either. They own themselves, and nobody may say Spirit, Spy, or Jim belongs
to them, cause they don't.
*********************************************
"What's going on, Spy?"
I tried to look innocent. "What are you talking about?" We were sitting on a bench on the lawn outside, in a brisk Autumn afternoon. Other students were running around, the fortunate ones playing basketball and jumping into leaf piles, the unfortunate ones had been assigned to rake up leaves. A few of the older students had promised to make sure nobody injured anybody else.
Jim groaned in irritation. "Come off it. When the teachers came back from their mission, they said that classes would resume the next day. For the past four days there have been NO classes, none of us have seen ANY if the teachers, and I think I've glimpsed Silent Spirit one and a half times during this time period."
"One and a half?"
"The second time I wasn't sure if it was really her."
"And why do you assume that I know the reasons for this?"
"You're psychic, and she also happens to be your roommate and your best friend. You wouldn't hang out with me this much if she was available."
"That's not true," I spluttered, "you're my best GUY friend."
His ears assumed a crimson tint, and his voice sank to an apologetic grovel. "Wow. Gee, thanks."
"How many times have I told you to stop turning red at compliments?" I hoped that I could change the subject. The matter of Stryker's revenge was not announced to the school, since the staff didn't want to cause panic among the students. Spirit had assured the Professor none of the students, except most likely herself, would be in danger until Stryker's ghost finished with the adult X-Men. It was difficult for me to keep it in, though, because I was immensely worried about my friend and my teachers, and was ready to burst with anxiety and fear.
Unfortunately, Jim was rather determined. His shyness had worn off quite a bit after he had found his niche at the school, even though he still wasn't completely confident in himself. "That's not the point," he said, "Spy, I want answers."
Exasperated, I protested, "I'm not a blabbermouth. It's a secret."
"Did you specifically promise to not tell anyone?"
He had me there. "Jeremy James Withers," I said, "you would make a heck of a lawyer someday. No, I did not promise to not tell anyone. But I did agree to not let the entire school know."
An eager look crossed his face. "So are you going to tell me?"
"How do I know that you're not going to tell all your friends, who'll tell all their friends..."
"I don't have any good friends besides you and Spirit. I mean, Arty's okay, but I don't discuss anything important with him. He's too annoying."
I blinked a few times. "Oh."
"Case in point," commented Jim, as Arty ran up to where we were sitting.
Arty sighed melodramatically. "Don't you two look great together? When's the wedding?"
"Arty," said Jim with his teeth clenched, "do you know that Iceman owes me a favor?"
The cold-blooded midget (the name I privately called Arty) ignored Jim, singing, "Love is in the air..."
Jim continued, "And I could ask him to encase you in a block of ice that would take a week to melt."
"Everywhere you look around..."
"Drop dead, Arty," I growled.
"Love is in the air..."
"I'll have Iceman leave a hole for you to breathe through, if I'm in a forgiving mood," added Jim.
"In every sight and every sound..."
I gave up. "Let's go to somewhere that's more pest-free, Jim," I suggested. We moved off towards the patio in the back of the mansion, next to the covered swimming pool that was now too cold to use.
"LOVE IS IN THE AIRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" warbled Arty.
"SHUT UP!" I screamed back.
"ICE ARTY! THINK ABOUT ICE!" yelled Jim.
"The immature reptile," I said to Jim once we were out of Arty's earshot, "one of those people who think that if boy and a girl enjoy talking to each other than they MUST be in love. I hate people like that. Does Iceman really owe you a favor?"
He smiled. "Yes, I fixed his Game Boy. And his digital watch. And his alarm clock. I told him to try not letting them get damaged by frost." I grinned at the thought of the new Ice Age, taking place in the dorm of Bobby Drake. Jim added, "See? I tell the truth."
"So you still want me to tell you what's going on."
"Uh huh. Don't you trust me?"
"For some strange unearthly reason, I do. If you call me a liar, though, I'll never speak to you again. I swear that this is the truth."
"On my honor, I will not make fun of or doubt your explanation."
"I better do it telepathically though, in case anyone might be eavesdropping." I recreated the events of four days ago in his mind. Once I finished, I asked, "Do you think I've gone nuts?"
With great emphasis, Jim solemnly shook his head. "If I didn't know you better, I would think that you were reading too many horror novels. But you wouldn't make up something like that, and it's no more unbelievable than the fact that I can make machines do whatever I want by just concentrating in the right way. It also fits as a reason for why the teachers aren't showing themselves. But why has Wolverine disappeared too? I mean, he heals every time, right?"
"Yes, but he still feels just as much pain as anyone else, maybe more, because all his healing and the pain that comes with it is condensed into a few seconds. So he tries to not have the dreams. Which means trying not to fall asleep, which means consuming industrial quantities of coffee and becoming very irritable. Then when the teachers finally do fall asleep because they can't help it anymore, they wake up with the screaming horrors and have to go to the infirmary again to patch up the new injuries!" I was beginning to hyperventilate, and my vision started to blur. All my worries had been building up for those four days, and I just couldn't hold them back any longer.
"Hey, calm down, relax, it's okay," Jim tried to reassure me.
"And when they do f-f-fall asleep, Spirit has to go help rescue them, so she has to be on the alert all the time! And she herself is afraid to close her eyes, because she knows that HE is out to get her too, since she's trying to fight him. Though she's learned how to save the teacher's from their nightmares, she doesn't know how to save herself. So she has me wake her up every two hours, because you have to sleep for more than two hours before you start having dreams. But Spirit's so worried about all this that she can hardly ever FALL asleep, and besides when your sleep is interrupted it doesn't do you much good. When she's awake she spends all her time talking to the dead, to see if they know what to do. Or she ransacks my horror stories to see if any contain some clue about how to defeat a ghost. She'll lock herself in the bathroom and refuse to come out. I can't talk to her at all, her mind is so full of this obsession to save everyone. Except some nights I'll here her playing her clarinet, very softly, and it breaks my heart how sad it is. SAD!"
"Spy," Jim said, "you're turning blue. Stop talking, let all the tears out, and just breathe. Try to get your breathing back to normal. Then you can tell me the rest."
Feebly I said, "What I hate the most is that I can't help her." Then a fresh group of sobs took me.
"I know, I know. Here, have a tissue." He withdrew a packet of Kleenexes from his pocket.
I took a few and blew my nose. Quietly, I said, "How do you happen to be carrying around a bunch of tissues?"
"My dad's a diplomat, and we spent some years in Asia. A lot public bathrooms don't have toilet paper. You get into the habit of it after a while." I continued sniffling and blowing my nose, along with wiping away the tears. I tried to smile in thanks, though. Jim continued, "I also have two sisters. My younger one's a bit of a crybaby, and my older sister seems to break up with a lot of boyfriends. They cry on my shoulder a lot."
It was unusual for most mutant kids at that time to be able to talk about their families without bitterness. "Does your family still love you?" I asked, still sniffling.
"Well, my powers manifested by making all the mechanical devices in the house go haywire. It freaked my parents out quite a bit. I'm not sure how they feel about it. Though they never told me to never come back, only my older sister e-mails me. I think they can't decide whether to disown me or not."
"(Sniff) Lucky. My parents and little sister MOVED and didn't tell me their new address, though I soon found it out. (Sniff)" There was a minute of silence, then I said, "Poor Spirit. She didn't have a family from age 5 until age 13."
"Yeah," agreed Jim. "Hey, how about you move over to me a bit..."
"Why?" I blew my nose again.
"You're probably really tense, having to keep all that information in for the past few days. I would've never known that something was wrong. Usually stress accumulates, I think, about here." He put a hand on each shoulder and began kneading the muscles between my neck and shoulders. Now, in sixth and seventh grade I had been repulsed by the idea a boy touching me, even at school dances. I was that sort of girl. But I really didn't mind Jim doing this. In fact, it did relieve a great deal of my tension. "That okay with you?" he asked quietly.
"Yes."
"Now, what was the rest of what you wanted to tell me?"
I sighed heavily. "Spirit won't talk to me. When I try to help her, or encourage her, she shuts me out. If I bring her some food, since she won't leave the room, she smiles politely, but later only a few bites have been taken. She'll write a little note saying, "Thanks, but I'm not really hungry." Spirit has been "not very hungry" for four days. I wish I could think of some way to help her in her struggle. I wish I could show her how concerned I was for her. I promised her that I'd be there for her," my voice shrank to a whisper, " but I feel like she's pushing me away."
"How does she shut her mind to you?"
"Apparently it's the same process that she uses to shut out the voices that she doesn't want to hear."
Jim stopped the massaging, saying, "She knows that you want to help her. It's just that, well, some things have to be gone through alone."
I shook my head. "She's gone through way too much alone."
"Well, I'm not the best at this type of thing. Give me a computer with a virus, or something."
"You're doing really well! I feel miles better."
"I know who is good at advice, though," Jim said, acting as if he hadn't heard the compliment, "the Professor."
"But I don't want to bother him! He has enough on his mind already."
"Silent Spirit is not going to be able to handle this alone, Spy. Would Professor Xavier send the teachers out on a mission without helping them figure out their strategy? How is this different? Maybe he knows some way that you can get through to her and help. The sooner Spirit thinks up a solution, the sooner he'll be okay."
That was how I ended up knocking on Professor Xavier's office door the next day. Though he was always tired, he had decided that he better have something to occupy him, and there was plenty of paperwork for him to do. I was on the verge of turning back when I felt his familiar thoughts in my head again.
~Yes, Spy? What is it?~
~I'm worried about Spirit. I thought that maybe you could...~
~Certainly I could talk to you. There's nothing pressing for me to accomplish just now. Come in.~
I opened the door, remembering the first time I had come in to this office. Then I had been dreadfully scared, with my nervously hostile parents at my side. But when I saw him, heard his voice, felt his thoughts in my mind, I felt that everything would be okay. Even when I saw the bandages that covered three-quarters of his head, I still felt better than before I had walked in the door, and his smashed face didn't shock me anymore, since I had seen it before. I was relieved to see that there were no new injuries.
"Take a seat," Professor Xavier said. He wheeled over to his desk, having previously been facing the other way, looking out of the large windows.
"I'm sorry to trouble you..." I began.
"Not at all. I have actually missed all of you these past few days." His warm, cultured words put me at ease.
"Spirit won't let me into her mind. She locks herself in the bathroom or sits in a corner all day. I-I-I'm very anxious about her."
"And Jeremy suggested that you talk to me about her."
"What?!"
The Professor smiled kindly. "I won't tell anyone, don't worry. But the view from my office does encompass the patio."
"I'm really sorry, but I was cracking under the strain. I had to tell someone," I apologized.
"As he pointed out to you, you never promised to not tell a single person about this matter. It seemed to help you a great deal."
"It did," I confirmed, relieved once more. "Do you know of any way that I could help Spirit?"
"I'm afraid that you will have to let her sort this out by herself, Spy. She feels that this is her responsibility, and it is true that she is the only one of us equipped to fight such an enemy."
I looked down at the table, pretending to be fascinated by a scrap of paper on it. "So can't I do anything?"
Professor Xavier thought for a moment. "The difficulty that Silent Spirit currently has," he said, "is that she has to learn to be able to depend on someone. Her life has required her to take care of herself. The people she has depended upon have always been taken away from her. Even though she now is able to communicate with her parents, they still can only give her whispered assurance and comfort. I think that she subconsciously believes that if she relies too much upon someone, they will disappear from her life."
~The poor girl,~ I thought.
~She is remarkable, isn't she?~ the Professor thought back. In words he asked me, "Did she ever tell you how her arm was broken?"
"No. She'd always change the subject."
"Once I asked her if it would be all right with her for me to tell anyone the story, and she told me that I could tell you if I thought you needed to know. I think that it might help you understand her a bit more, and perhaps lead you to some ideas. It was because of this event that she her powers became apparent.
"You know that the abilities of mutants usually awaken during adolescents, in response to very strong emotion. For Spirit, it was fear. I learned from her that during her aimless travels through Washington, D.C, people whose hatred of mutants had been recently awoken often attacked her. She told you that she traveled at night. Unfortunately, the actual city of Washington, D.C, is not known for being a safe place for a young girl to travel alone after dark."
"Ugh," I interjected.
"This was in the inner city, not government-dominated area with the White House and memorials and such. I greatly regret that it took us so long to repair Cerebro, or else we could have saved Spirit a great deal of hardship. One night, exactly one week before Storm and Mr. Summers found her, she ran into a man in a back alley. Apparently he was drunk, with the remains of his smashed bottle with him. He broke her arm, among other things."
I was shocked, though it wasn't any different than what you saw in the newspaper every day. But this was about someone I knew and cared for, which made all the difference.
"Eventually it reached the point when Spirit was absolutely certain that she was going to be killed. When her fear had reached a peak point, beyond screaming and beyond any terror she had ever felt before, he suddenly slumped to the ground. He was dead."
I managed to bring my jaw back up again with some effort.
"She told me that she felt a mixture of relief, guilt, and more fear. For she considered herself a murderer, even though it was self-defense. Spirit wondered what kind of power this was, having known that she had the mutant gene all her life. Then she began to hear voices, whispering to her all around. It seems to be like having uncontrolled telepathy, feeling like you hear millions of people at a time, but you can only hear fragments of everyone. When she heard her mother for the first time and her father for the first time in years, it was an immense comfort among all this strangeness. Later she discovered that she could no longer hear the cars rush by, or the birds in the morning, or the rain, or any other of those sounds that she had taken for granted all her life. She moved from despair to exultation continually until we found her." He took a deep breath, and continued, "I am not sure how the initial feat of hers was accomplished. The only theory that I have developed is that, being so close to death continually, she can force others to make the transition immediately, if she wants enough them to die. It was completely by accident. All of Spirit's abilities depend greatly upon her emotions. Who she hears is dependent upon how she feels at the time."
"Is that why she forces herself to stop being angry?"
"Yes, for when she is furious she will hear the voice of the man she killed."
"Oh," I said quietly.
He looked at me with complete understanding. "Does that help any?"
"I understand what she's going through more, if that's what you mean."
Professor Xavier nodded, then handed me a folded bit of paper. "You're not the only one who's been worried about Spirit. Mr. Wagner gave me this earlier this morning. He said it was especially for her, but it was for you as well. Why don't you give it to her?"
~Thank you!~ my thought came as I left his office, a hope rising in my heart that I had not felt for days. Why hope, when I had just heard a very depressing story? Somehow I knew that things would improve from that point on. It just HAD to.
*********************************************
"What's going on, Spy?"
I tried to look innocent. "What are you talking about?" We were sitting on a bench on the lawn outside, in a brisk Autumn afternoon. Other students were running around, the fortunate ones playing basketball and jumping into leaf piles, the unfortunate ones had been assigned to rake up leaves. A few of the older students had promised to make sure nobody injured anybody else.
Jim groaned in irritation. "Come off it. When the teachers came back from their mission, they said that classes would resume the next day. For the past four days there have been NO classes, none of us have seen ANY if the teachers, and I think I've glimpsed Silent Spirit one and a half times during this time period."
"One and a half?"
"The second time I wasn't sure if it was really her."
"And why do you assume that I know the reasons for this?"
"You're psychic, and she also happens to be your roommate and your best friend. You wouldn't hang out with me this much if she was available."
"That's not true," I spluttered, "you're my best GUY friend."
His ears assumed a crimson tint, and his voice sank to an apologetic grovel. "Wow. Gee, thanks."
"How many times have I told you to stop turning red at compliments?" I hoped that I could change the subject. The matter of Stryker's revenge was not announced to the school, since the staff didn't want to cause panic among the students. Spirit had assured the Professor none of the students, except most likely herself, would be in danger until Stryker's ghost finished with the adult X-Men. It was difficult for me to keep it in, though, because I was immensely worried about my friend and my teachers, and was ready to burst with anxiety and fear.
Unfortunately, Jim was rather determined. His shyness had worn off quite a bit after he had found his niche at the school, even though he still wasn't completely confident in himself. "That's not the point," he said, "Spy, I want answers."
Exasperated, I protested, "I'm not a blabbermouth. It's a secret."
"Did you specifically promise to not tell anyone?"
He had me there. "Jeremy James Withers," I said, "you would make a heck of a lawyer someday. No, I did not promise to not tell anyone. But I did agree to not let the entire school know."
An eager look crossed his face. "So are you going to tell me?"
"How do I know that you're not going to tell all your friends, who'll tell all their friends..."
"I don't have any good friends besides you and Spirit. I mean, Arty's okay, but I don't discuss anything important with him. He's too annoying."
I blinked a few times. "Oh."
"Case in point," commented Jim, as Arty ran up to where we were sitting.
Arty sighed melodramatically. "Don't you two look great together? When's the wedding?"
"Arty," said Jim with his teeth clenched, "do you know that Iceman owes me a favor?"
The cold-blooded midget (the name I privately called Arty) ignored Jim, singing, "Love is in the air..."
Jim continued, "And I could ask him to encase you in a block of ice that would take a week to melt."
"Everywhere you look around..."
"Drop dead, Arty," I growled.
"Love is in the air..."
"I'll have Iceman leave a hole for you to breathe through, if I'm in a forgiving mood," added Jim.
"In every sight and every sound..."
I gave up. "Let's go to somewhere that's more pest-free, Jim," I suggested. We moved off towards the patio in the back of the mansion, next to the covered swimming pool that was now too cold to use.
"LOVE IS IN THE AIRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" warbled Arty.
"SHUT UP!" I screamed back.
"ICE ARTY! THINK ABOUT ICE!" yelled Jim.
"The immature reptile," I said to Jim once we were out of Arty's earshot, "one of those people who think that if boy and a girl enjoy talking to each other than they MUST be in love. I hate people like that. Does Iceman really owe you a favor?"
He smiled. "Yes, I fixed his Game Boy. And his digital watch. And his alarm clock. I told him to try not letting them get damaged by frost." I grinned at the thought of the new Ice Age, taking place in the dorm of Bobby Drake. Jim added, "See? I tell the truth."
"So you still want me to tell you what's going on."
"Uh huh. Don't you trust me?"
"For some strange unearthly reason, I do. If you call me a liar, though, I'll never speak to you again. I swear that this is the truth."
"On my honor, I will not make fun of or doubt your explanation."
"I better do it telepathically though, in case anyone might be eavesdropping." I recreated the events of four days ago in his mind. Once I finished, I asked, "Do you think I've gone nuts?"
With great emphasis, Jim solemnly shook his head. "If I didn't know you better, I would think that you were reading too many horror novels. But you wouldn't make up something like that, and it's no more unbelievable than the fact that I can make machines do whatever I want by just concentrating in the right way. It also fits as a reason for why the teachers aren't showing themselves. But why has Wolverine disappeared too? I mean, he heals every time, right?"
"Yes, but he still feels just as much pain as anyone else, maybe more, because all his healing and the pain that comes with it is condensed into a few seconds. So he tries to not have the dreams. Which means trying not to fall asleep, which means consuming industrial quantities of coffee and becoming very irritable. Then when the teachers finally do fall asleep because they can't help it anymore, they wake up with the screaming horrors and have to go to the infirmary again to patch up the new injuries!" I was beginning to hyperventilate, and my vision started to blur. All my worries had been building up for those four days, and I just couldn't hold them back any longer.
"Hey, calm down, relax, it's okay," Jim tried to reassure me.
"And when they do f-f-fall asleep, Spirit has to go help rescue them, so she has to be on the alert all the time! And she herself is afraid to close her eyes, because she knows that HE is out to get her too, since she's trying to fight him. Though she's learned how to save the teacher's from their nightmares, she doesn't know how to save herself. So she has me wake her up every two hours, because you have to sleep for more than two hours before you start having dreams. But Spirit's so worried about all this that she can hardly ever FALL asleep, and besides when your sleep is interrupted it doesn't do you much good. When she's awake she spends all her time talking to the dead, to see if they know what to do. Or she ransacks my horror stories to see if any contain some clue about how to defeat a ghost. She'll lock herself in the bathroom and refuse to come out. I can't talk to her at all, her mind is so full of this obsession to save everyone. Except some nights I'll here her playing her clarinet, very softly, and it breaks my heart how sad it is. SAD!"
"Spy," Jim said, "you're turning blue. Stop talking, let all the tears out, and just breathe. Try to get your breathing back to normal. Then you can tell me the rest."
Feebly I said, "What I hate the most is that I can't help her." Then a fresh group of sobs took me.
"I know, I know. Here, have a tissue." He withdrew a packet of Kleenexes from his pocket.
I took a few and blew my nose. Quietly, I said, "How do you happen to be carrying around a bunch of tissues?"
"My dad's a diplomat, and we spent some years in Asia. A lot public bathrooms don't have toilet paper. You get into the habit of it after a while." I continued sniffling and blowing my nose, along with wiping away the tears. I tried to smile in thanks, though. Jim continued, "I also have two sisters. My younger one's a bit of a crybaby, and my older sister seems to break up with a lot of boyfriends. They cry on my shoulder a lot."
It was unusual for most mutant kids at that time to be able to talk about their families without bitterness. "Does your family still love you?" I asked, still sniffling.
"Well, my powers manifested by making all the mechanical devices in the house go haywire. It freaked my parents out quite a bit. I'm not sure how they feel about it. Though they never told me to never come back, only my older sister e-mails me. I think they can't decide whether to disown me or not."
"(Sniff) Lucky. My parents and little sister MOVED and didn't tell me their new address, though I soon found it out. (Sniff)" There was a minute of silence, then I said, "Poor Spirit. She didn't have a family from age 5 until age 13."
"Yeah," agreed Jim. "Hey, how about you move over to me a bit..."
"Why?" I blew my nose again.
"You're probably really tense, having to keep all that information in for the past few days. I would've never known that something was wrong. Usually stress accumulates, I think, about here." He put a hand on each shoulder and began kneading the muscles between my neck and shoulders. Now, in sixth and seventh grade I had been repulsed by the idea a boy touching me, even at school dances. I was that sort of girl. But I really didn't mind Jim doing this. In fact, it did relieve a great deal of my tension. "That okay with you?" he asked quietly.
"Yes."
"Now, what was the rest of what you wanted to tell me?"
I sighed heavily. "Spirit won't talk to me. When I try to help her, or encourage her, she shuts me out. If I bring her some food, since she won't leave the room, she smiles politely, but later only a few bites have been taken. She'll write a little note saying, "Thanks, but I'm not really hungry." Spirit has been "not very hungry" for four days. I wish I could think of some way to help her in her struggle. I wish I could show her how concerned I was for her. I promised her that I'd be there for her," my voice shrank to a whisper, " but I feel like she's pushing me away."
"How does she shut her mind to you?"
"Apparently it's the same process that she uses to shut out the voices that she doesn't want to hear."
Jim stopped the massaging, saying, "She knows that you want to help her. It's just that, well, some things have to be gone through alone."
I shook my head. "She's gone through way too much alone."
"Well, I'm not the best at this type of thing. Give me a computer with a virus, or something."
"You're doing really well! I feel miles better."
"I know who is good at advice, though," Jim said, acting as if he hadn't heard the compliment, "the Professor."
"But I don't want to bother him! He has enough on his mind already."
"Silent Spirit is not going to be able to handle this alone, Spy. Would Professor Xavier send the teachers out on a mission without helping them figure out their strategy? How is this different? Maybe he knows some way that you can get through to her and help. The sooner Spirit thinks up a solution, the sooner he'll be okay."
That was how I ended up knocking on Professor Xavier's office door the next day. Though he was always tired, he had decided that he better have something to occupy him, and there was plenty of paperwork for him to do. I was on the verge of turning back when I felt his familiar thoughts in my head again.
~Yes, Spy? What is it?~
~I'm worried about Spirit. I thought that maybe you could...~
~Certainly I could talk to you. There's nothing pressing for me to accomplish just now. Come in.~
I opened the door, remembering the first time I had come in to this office. Then I had been dreadfully scared, with my nervously hostile parents at my side. But when I saw him, heard his voice, felt his thoughts in my mind, I felt that everything would be okay. Even when I saw the bandages that covered three-quarters of his head, I still felt better than before I had walked in the door, and his smashed face didn't shock me anymore, since I had seen it before. I was relieved to see that there were no new injuries.
"Take a seat," Professor Xavier said. He wheeled over to his desk, having previously been facing the other way, looking out of the large windows.
"I'm sorry to trouble you..." I began.
"Not at all. I have actually missed all of you these past few days." His warm, cultured words put me at ease.
"Spirit won't let me into her mind. She locks herself in the bathroom or sits in a corner all day. I-I-I'm very anxious about her."
"And Jeremy suggested that you talk to me about her."
"What?!"
The Professor smiled kindly. "I won't tell anyone, don't worry. But the view from my office does encompass the patio."
"I'm really sorry, but I was cracking under the strain. I had to tell someone," I apologized.
"As he pointed out to you, you never promised to not tell a single person about this matter. It seemed to help you a great deal."
"It did," I confirmed, relieved once more. "Do you know of any way that I could help Spirit?"
"I'm afraid that you will have to let her sort this out by herself, Spy. She feels that this is her responsibility, and it is true that she is the only one of us equipped to fight such an enemy."
I looked down at the table, pretending to be fascinated by a scrap of paper on it. "So can't I do anything?"
Professor Xavier thought for a moment. "The difficulty that Silent Spirit currently has," he said, "is that she has to learn to be able to depend on someone. Her life has required her to take care of herself. The people she has depended upon have always been taken away from her. Even though she now is able to communicate with her parents, they still can only give her whispered assurance and comfort. I think that she subconsciously believes that if she relies too much upon someone, they will disappear from her life."
~The poor girl,~ I thought.
~She is remarkable, isn't she?~ the Professor thought back. In words he asked me, "Did she ever tell you how her arm was broken?"
"No. She'd always change the subject."
"Once I asked her if it would be all right with her for me to tell anyone the story, and she told me that I could tell you if I thought you needed to know. I think that it might help you understand her a bit more, and perhaps lead you to some ideas. It was because of this event that she her powers became apparent.
"You know that the abilities of mutants usually awaken during adolescents, in response to very strong emotion. For Spirit, it was fear. I learned from her that during her aimless travels through Washington, D.C, people whose hatred of mutants had been recently awoken often attacked her. She told you that she traveled at night. Unfortunately, the actual city of Washington, D.C, is not known for being a safe place for a young girl to travel alone after dark."
"Ugh," I interjected.
"This was in the inner city, not government-dominated area with the White House and memorials and such. I greatly regret that it took us so long to repair Cerebro, or else we could have saved Spirit a great deal of hardship. One night, exactly one week before Storm and Mr. Summers found her, she ran into a man in a back alley. Apparently he was drunk, with the remains of his smashed bottle with him. He broke her arm, among other things."
I was shocked, though it wasn't any different than what you saw in the newspaper every day. But this was about someone I knew and cared for, which made all the difference.
"Eventually it reached the point when Spirit was absolutely certain that she was going to be killed. When her fear had reached a peak point, beyond screaming and beyond any terror she had ever felt before, he suddenly slumped to the ground. He was dead."
I managed to bring my jaw back up again with some effort.
"She told me that she felt a mixture of relief, guilt, and more fear. For she considered herself a murderer, even though it was self-defense. Spirit wondered what kind of power this was, having known that she had the mutant gene all her life. Then she began to hear voices, whispering to her all around. It seems to be like having uncontrolled telepathy, feeling like you hear millions of people at a time, but you can only hear fragments of everyone. When she heard her mother for the first time and her father for the first time in years, it was an immense comfort among all this strangeness. Later she discovered that she could no longer hear the cars rush by, or the birds in the morning, or the rain, or any other of those sounds that she had taken for granted all her life. She moved from despair to exultation continually until we found her." He took a deep breath, and continued, "I am not sure how the initial feat of hers was accomplished. The only theory that I have developed is that, being so close to death continually, she can force others to make the transition immediately, if she wants enough them to die. It was completely by accident. All of Spirit's abilities depend greatly upon her emotions. Who she hears is dependent upon how she feels at the time."
"Is that why she forces herself to stop being angry?"
"Yes, for when she is furious she will hear the voice of the man she killed."
"Oh," I said quietly.
He looked at me with complete understanding. "Does that help any?"
"I understand what she's going through more, if that's what you mean."
Professor Xavier nodded, then handed me a folded bit of paper. "You're not the only one who's been worried about Spirit. Mr. Wagner gave me this earlier this morning. He said it was especially for her, but it was for you as well. Why don't you give it to her?"
~Thank you!~ my thought came as I left his office, a hope rising in my heart that I had not felt for days. Why hope, when I had just heard a very depressing story? Somehow I knew that things would improve from that point on. It just HAD to.