Thanks to summers2004 and Darlin for reviewing! (fine. thank you Debs. xp)


4th

Hello? Is this thing working? Sage, Storm, come in! Hello?? Bishop will you shut up I'm trying to make this work! Why the hell doesn't this have a reset button? Stor- \/\/\/\/\/\ -age-/\/\/\

Wrrrrrrrr -klik-



Ororo violently kicked the step ladder away, and turned away from the window where she had seen Sage riding off on her bike, and began to cry more tears into her hands. Why was she so useless? The anger coursing through her words had now risen to form a lump at the back of her throat, risen to ask Why her, and risen to condemn and find away to let her slip into nothing again.

"Hello Storm."

She recognized that voice. He stood on her balcony, dark trench coat swaying like his hair in the wind. The morning light held half of his face in darkness, but still she knew who he was. He began to slowly trudge to where she stood in the middle of the room, eyes boring into her and trying to utter words of passion. The wrong kind of passion, as he reached his right arm across himself to his holt on the left side of his belt, letting his sword sound menacingly as he slid it against his belt buckle, making the point that he would not sheath it very clear. The wrong kind of passion.

Vargas.

Someone hadn't done a good job killing him, or someone hadn't even tried. But that someone was to die as well. Her as well. But she couldn't care, for maybe this was the release from the inadequacy, the hate, the desire, the incompletion, the yearning and the emptiness, and what else it was that she could not care to feel. She let him come.

"I hear it wasn't you I killed."

She let him swing his sword and let its tip cut into her arm. She let the blood gently trickle as she stood, looking down and clutching her covers to her chest.

He came up to her and reached for her throat, ramming her against the wall behind her and pinning her with his grip. She let him, still holding onto her covers as if that were all she cared about anymore. A blanket that would cover her, shield her, and keep her away from all she didn't bother about. One that would cover her when she cried so that no one would see her tears and pity her now, and be the emptiness she could scream into. The purity of whiteness that would cover her and allay her impurity, the person she couldn't be, every fault that was too late to change. A woman in a white blanket, nothing more to do with expectations, others' or her own, the person she was, the person she failed to be, no more with the shelter of ashen oblivion.

Vargas leant forward onto her, pressing even more against her neck. It was hard to breathe and it hurt, but not enough. Come on, hurt me some more. She didn't even know what she wanted to want anymore. It was all only emptiness. Nothing to feel, nothing she could do.

"Fight me Storm!"

But she only continued to look lifelessly into his eyes, indifferently countering his fervent rage. He brought his sword to level with her face, until its edge began to draw blood from her cheek. He came close to her, until they were almost lip to lip.

"Fight me." He said, breathing on to her face. "Blow me away." But all she could do was exhale onto his face.

He lifted her up and flung across the room, sending her flying through the air for half the journey and skidding across the floor for the rest until she slammed into the opposite wall. But all the while, Ororo didn't lift a finger to keep him away. She let him come, rhythmically, peacefully. Why fight him? He seemed to be having enough fun on his own.

He walked up to her again and placed the tip of his sword on the bare area of her chest, letting it's cool tip slide lazily back and forth, then he stopped, and bent down to stare at her.

She waited, not eagerly, not apprehensively, just waited.

Then she smiled at him, turning it into a taunting smirk.

"I have no lightning anymore," practically gleefully said.

He eyed her, then grabbed the sheets she held on to and flung her to the corner of the room.

"Then you are not worthy," he said, as he swung around, sheathed his sword and jumped from the balcony.


Unworthy.


----


That's not good, Sage thought, having heard Neal's message. Running back to the mansion. She couldn't go to their aid alone, what use was a super mind against a big shiny gun. It was then that she saw Vargas in Storm's room, through the window, and quickly ran up to her room.

She saw Ororo sitting on her bed, unscathed save a cut on her right cheek and arm. She did a quick analysis, and found her otherwise fine. Mentally fine? No.

"What happened?"

"Vargas" she said, looking at the floor, unemotional.

"Ororo… Neal just messaged in that he was in trouble, but the message got cut short. They need our help."

"Well then go help them! What do you expect me to do!!?" she yelled, still staring at the floor.

Jean came running from behind her, flustered and worried when she saw Sage bolting up the stairs to Ororo's room.

"Ororo please! You have to snap out of this. I hate seeing you like this! And we need your help, Sage and I can't just go and help them alone, because I don't think Vargas came only for you…"

"Well what do you want me to do Jean??" she yelled, still staring at the floor.

A silence started dancing in the middle of the three of them, along to a strange primordial rhythm of emptiness.

Then Sage bit her lip and looked at the both of them for a while. Was this her decision to make? Well she made it anyhow.

"Storm --" Ororo glared at her. "I… I can do for you what I did for Davis. But things are very much complicated with the effects of the neutralizer -- that's why I didn't bring it up before. All I can give you are extremely biased statistics, and the fact that there's also always Chance… Chance for failure."

Jean looked hopeful, thinking that finally this weight of guilt might be lifted off her own shoulders. How selfish to think that way, she thought, and now concerned herself with what Sage had meant with 'biased statistics'

Ororo didn't know what to think. It's peculiar how you can want something so much yet when you finally get it you deliberate. But did she actually want it back? Did she want to be alone again? To have to never cry again? Yet she wouldn't just let Neal die. Also she couldn't care about whatever it was that happened to her now, it was all just part of some long unending dream she couldn't find the strength to wake up from, all some walk through a fantastical unreality. She might as well play along.

"Go ahead and kill me," she said as she walked over to her bed and lay down.

Sage looked clearly surprised.

"Ororo are you sure you want to do this? I mean there could be a whole lot of complications to your powers after that, and you might not even --"

"Do I look like I care?" she said snidely, not caring much about anyone anymore.

Sage looked to Jean, then shrugged, and* put her hands on Ororo's temples.

"Hold still." And Ororo slipped into unconsciousness after a surge of a very unfamiliar tingle, at least it felt sort of like a tingle, but it was a tingle equipped with horns and all, that came scraping it's back hoof against the sand and charging at her with it's truckload of bulk, and didn't carry out its impact very gracefully.

----


Ororo tried to open her eyes. Well that was when she thought they were closed, but she couldn't be very sure now whether they were closed or not. Were they supposed to be? Who knows?

Whether her eyes were closed or not, she saw millions and millions of blue-white lights streaking back and forth. All over they ran across a white background, chasing each other, and being chased. Straight ahead was a tall column of the same blue-white lights, starkly standing out against the lateral running streaks behind it. Its blue-white lights were travelling faster than any others around it. Of these lights some were even faster, racing around the column incessantly and sending off gentle sparks in the wake of their launch. She had never seen anything so… beautiful before. All around her she only saw blue-white and streaks of it dancing back and forth across her vision, whether or not vision is supposed to mean what you see with your eyes open. She slowly sat up and reached her hand towards the column in front of her, and tried to come closer to touch it, willing herself to grab it. Suddenly the blue lights slowed down, and as she began to close her hand to try and hold it from a distance, they slowed to a halt and remained now as tiny glowing stars, linking together to make a constellation of the most breathtaking pulchritude.

Wow.

Then she saw the lights fall on each other and become a messy heap, as if they had to keep running to stay alive. Suddenly she began hearing voices, soft at first like sweet whispers, mumbling in the background like tender cacophony. They began to get louder and louder, but she was entranced, her mind was elsewhere so she did not hear the voices.

"ORORO!"

Suddenly the blue-white plane disappeared and she snapped back to proper reality, of the darkness that was what the view behind closed eyelids was supposed to be like. She opened her eyes wide, only to find Jean screaming at her, and Sage slumped over the edge of her bed. Her right arm was stretched out towards Sage, the fingers of her right hand curled together. Quickly she pulled her hand back, and Sage's eyes shot open. She lay on the foot of her bed, staring wide eyed at the ceiling, gasping for breath.

At this point Jean turned to look at Ororo, frowning though, looking completely confused and worried. Ororo lifted her right hand to look at it, turning it this way and that in an even greater amount of shock.

"Wow," she said, and as she did the breath she exhaled became tiny crystals of ice and dropped onto her lap.








*I never actually read the one where Sage was jumpstarting Davis but I'll just assume it went like this.