Chapter 6: The Power of a Prayer
Ororo stood in the empty, quiet conference room and said nothing, just held Kurt as he sobbed.
It touched her deeply. Kurt never cried. Well, neither did most of the other guys, but for some reason the break in Kurt's stoicism was harder to watch in him than it was in anyone else. Perhaps because he was normally so controlled.
"She will be all right," she told him finally. "Kurt, you must trust your God, just as I trust my Goddess. If it is Their will that she survive, she will. All that scarring on her body means she has been through ordeals we cannot even imagine. If whatever Power guides her way has kept her alive this long then surely that Power will continue to do so if she has not fulfilled her destiny. You must believe that, Kurt."
Kurt raised his head. "I know that, Ororo," he said, his voice broken. "It is just…she has come so close to death twice already. She told me so herself.
"I wanted to bring her here yesterday when I met her, but she resisted, and I did not push her. I wanted to help her. And instead, look at what has happened; she is dying because of my stupid promise. I thought I was being so honorable, but I was condemning her to death!" And he buried his face in his hands again.
Ororo sighed. "Kurt, you cannot blame yourself," she said as reasonably as she could. "You had no way of knowing that this storm would blow up today; you could not have prevented it. If you had tried to force her to come with you yesterday she may have become frightened and run further away, and if she did that she would definitely be dead now. You did what you could, and you may have saved her life today by bringing her here." She placed her hands over his clenched indigo fists. "Let it go, Kurt. Trust in your God, as I trust in my Goddess. Come. I shall pray to the Goddess for her recovery, and you should do the same with your God. Perhaps They will hear our prayers, and she will live if They will it."
Kurt tried to pray, but all he could think about was the limp figure lying alone on that camp mattress, coughing blood…oh, so much blood…and wondering what was happening, feeling terror and loneliness as the snow closed in and the temperature dropped. She had been on the final slide into a coma and death, he was sure of it.
Ororo? The gentle mindvoice intruded on Ororo's meditations.
Yes, Jean? Ororo answered quickly.
Jean's mindvoice was heavy with sorrow. Please bring Kurt here. Grace is dying. There's nothing we can do. He should get a chance to say goodbye.
Ororo looked up at Kurt, her face stricken, and Kurt knew what she had to say before she said it. With a harsh, strangled gasp he got up from the table and fled the conference room.
He exploded into the medlab at full speed and skidded to a stop. Hank had taken off his gloves and his blood-stained lab coat; Jean was coiling the wires on the defibrillator. Grace lay on the bed, her face pale. Her chest was still rising and falling, but Kurt's eyes traced the lines from the respirator to her mouth and realized the machine was keeping her breathing. The various pieces of machinery that were monitoring her heartbeat and brainwaves and other vitals were all emitting a low, flat monotone. As he watched, Jean turned off the respirator. Grace's thin, frail chest rose once more, fell, and didn't move again.
"Nein, nein, mein Gott, nein," Kurt cried out, bending over the bed. "Grace…" But Grace was gone. Hank quietly turned off the last monitor and pushed it aside, and Kurt bent over her still body, gripping one pale, limp hand, as he called her name frantically. She didn't answer. Kurt slumped to his knees, still gripping her hand in both of his, and began to pray. "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…"
He finished the prayer in English, then in Latin, and started it in German as tears flowed unchecked down his face. Jean and Hank stood there, watching but at a respectful distance, and Ororo joined them. Jean's shoulders bowed, and Ororo found herself hugging her friend as tears ran down her own face.
Kurt was just starting to pray the ancient words again in Latin when he felt a twitch, a slight flutter of a hand in his own. He paused, looked up, then flung himself wildly at the bed. "Grace! Grace, wake up, please wake up…"
Jean took his other arm. "Kurt, she's gone. Come on, please…"
"NO! She's alive!" He wrenched his arm out of Jean's grasp and clutched at her hand. 'Grace, Grace, it's Kurt, please open your eyes, open your eyes, liebchen…"
Hank took a step forward, to take Kurt's arm and draw him away from the body, but froze as he saw the eyelids flutter. "My stars and garters," he whispered, and was in action before the words had left his lips. Jean felt it, a heartbeat later; a faint psychic flicker that slowly grew brighter as Grace's eyes opened. She struggled to take a breath through the tubes that filled her mouth and nose, and started to choke on them when she couldn't get air into her lungs. Jean snapped out of her shocked paralysis, and quickly moved to reconnect the tubes and turn the respirator back on. Grace's panic eased somewhat as she got air into her lungs, and then she sighed and closed her eyes. For a second Kurt thought she'd died again, and let out an anguished sound of grief, but the reassuring beep of the monitors told him she was very much alive.
"I shall start praying myself," Hank said finally, hastily donning gloves. "Jean, if you would…" The redhead moved to the other side of the bed, and started handing things to him.
Kurt and Ororo stood there for a moment, watching, then Ororo said, "Come. Let's go." She patted his shoulder as they walked out of the medlab. Kurt didn't stop, but headed up the stairs. "I need to go to the chapel," he said softly when Ororo looked at him questioningly. She nodded understandingly, and headed up to the dining room where everyone was waiting for news.
Xavier had just finished telling the rest of the X-Men about Grace, and what Kurt had said she had told him, when Ororo pushed open the door to the dining room. 'She is alive," she said, leaning against the door wearily. "Jean says she thinks Grace will be all right. Grace died for several minutes," and she choked, thinking about Kurt's grief at the news, "but for some reason the Powers that be decided to send her back. Hank is confident that the danger is past, and she will live."
The tense, worried looks on all their faces dissolved, and they started murmuring among themselves. Xavier watched them for a moment, then turned to Ororo. Where is Kurt?
In the chapel, she said. I imagine he wishes to say thanks to his God that she is alive. I shall also say my thanks, but in my own way. Her eyes flicked upward to the ceiling, and Charles understood. Ororo was going to her room.
He left the dining room and went to the small chapel he had set up at the end of the east wing, off the first floor hallway. It had originally been in the main body of the house, but he had had its crucifix and altar removed to a storage room when the space in the mansion began to be taken up with his students. When Jean had 'died' he had a room set aside as a chapel and had the altar and crucifix put back up. It had stayed up since then, and had become a haven of quiet for various members of the X-Men over the years; a quiet place to come, sit, think, and let the peaceful atmosphere of the room soothe a troubled mind. He'd even seen Logan come in here, once. Kurt was a regular visitor; he also held services here on Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and religious holidays. Xavier tried to attend whenever he could.
He paused as the door to the chapel closed behind him. The room could be brightly lit with the flick of a switch, but when no one was here the only light on was the single floodlight highlighting the crucifix hanging over the altar.
Kurt had chosen not to turn on the lights. Instead, he'd lit candles. There were small votive candles in tiny glass holders on the side of the steps leading up to the altar, and Kurt had lit every single one of them. There was also a large white pillar candle resting on the floor before him, and his hands were clasped, his head bent. Xavier knew Kurt knew he was there; but Xavier didn't interrupt him. Instead, he directed his hoverchair to the open space in the front row of seats left there for it, and crossed himself before bowing his own head in prayer.
He didn't pray with the ritualized, formal words. He just poured out what was in his heart, mentally, sending his thoughts up to the One who ruled the universe. He didn't refer to the presence as God in his mind, although he did use the word in general conversation. Privately, though, he never referred to the One as anything but the One. He had traveled too widely in his youth and now, seen too many things in too many different countries from too many peoples who referred to the One in their own way, to believe in using any one designation. He firmly believed, though he would never tell Kurt this, that whether you called the One Power Allah, Yahweh, God or Goddess, the prayers were all still going to the same Deity. He was convinced that there was no 'one true way' to address the One Power.
Thank You for the gift of her life, he said to Whoever might be listening. Kurt would have blamed himself for her death for the rest of his life had she died on the table. And thank You for Hank, and for Jean. And for Ororo, who can reach out to one who doesn't follow her religion and still offer comfort. I am truly blessed to have such wonderful people around me, living here and constantly showing me every day the kindness and goodness inherent in human nature. It is so easy to look at the world around me, at all the horrors and ugly things happening in the world, and feel any kind of hope for the future I dream about. And yet, when I see my students, my friends, everyone I have come to care about, living here in peace with each other…and here his lips quirked; peaceful was not the word he would have used to describe Scott after yesterday's bout of shouting…I have hope that maybe someday all of humanity can live alongside each other. If not peacefully, human nature being what it is, at least tolerantly.
He stopped there, suddenly overwhelmed, as he usually was when in this room, by the feeling that Someone was listening. That Someone nodded tranquilly, and he felt a tiny ripple of amusement as that Presence leaned in close to him. When the feeling abruptly lessened, he found himself at peace. Grace was going to live; and she would be all right. He was certain of that now. He sat back and waited for Kurt to finish his prayers.
A smile twisted his lips. Suddenly, from here, the breaking of the antique table lamp in the formal receiving room wasn't as big a thing as it seemed yesterday. Bobby had sought refuge in the room from Rogue after he put black hair dye in her shampoo and hair whitening dye in her conditioner bottle. Rogue had gone tearing after him with a towel wrapped around her head; no one had seen her black-and-white-streaked hair until later at lunch. She had, however, found him by the trail of wet footprints he'd left on the carpets in his ice form; and had commenced beating her fists against his ice shell. Remy had arrived and tried to pull her off him; her struggles to escape Remy had caused a flailing foot to kick over a table and send the antique lamp crashing to the floor. Then Scott had come in, already irritable because of the hangover headache from drinking too much vodka-spiked punch. He'd promptly blown up at both Bobby and Rogue for the broken lamp and sent both of them scurrying for their rooms. Xavier had been tremendously dismayed with the loss; the lamp was an antique, and had been in his family for generations.
Now, though, he could see the humor. And he could get another lamp. Things could be replaced. The people he'd come to care about as his friends, his surrogate family, couldn't be replaced. The easy camaraderie among them, no matter how they occasionally drove each other crazy, couldn't be replaced either. He smiled, composed his thoughts, and watched as Kurt crossed himself and rose to his feet. Xavier smiled at him as he slipped into the seat beside him and said, "How do you feel?"
"Better," Kurt said. "Knowing that she will be all right helps." They sat in silence for a time, and then Xavier said very quietly, "Kurt…How did you manage to fall in love with her so quickly?"
Kurt shook his head vehemently in denial. "I am not in love, Charles. I…feel sorry for what she has endured, and I admire her will to live as well as her ability to survive. And I want to make her life easier, and bring back her belief in God. I want to show her that what the cult taught about God being a demanding, hateful, omnipotent, cold being isn't the real God." He fell silent.
You might deny it, Kurt, but I see it in your heart, and in your eyes, and in Ororo's memories of how you reacted to Grace's death in the medlabs, Xavier thought as he looked at Kurt's head, bowed over the hands clasped in his lap. But perhaps you don't yet realize it yourself. I will wait for you to realize it before I speak of it again. "Perhaps, if you are finished your reflections here, you might consider going upstairs to change before you return to her bedside," he said softly. "Jean will not like having to scrub dried blood from your clothes. If it sits too long, it will become harder to remove."
Kurt looked down at his sleeve, which was indeed stained with blood that had seeped through the woolen blanket as he carried Grace to the mansion. "I believe that might be wise,' he said. 'Perhaps I will try to get some sleep as well."
Xavier sent a thought tendril down to the medlabs, and received Jean's weary but satisfied answer. "Jean says Grace will be all right," he said. "And that she is heavily sedated and will not awaken for at least twelve hours. Sleep sounds like a good idea for you. And myself as well," he said with a glance at his watch.
Kurt stood. "I am tired. I shall say good night, then, Charles," And he nodded at the older man, genuflected as he reached the aisle, and then turned and left the chapel. Xavier sat for a little longer, looking at the burning votive candles, then sent his hoverchair forward and extinguished them before turning and leaving the chapel himself.