Thanks to hippiechick2112 for reviewing!

Chris and Katherine laugh often now.

Much about their life is hard, but that doesn't matter when they are together.

Katherine doesn't fit in with the other wives. Chris is something of an up-and-comer, well enough liked that others are suspicious of the girl he brought home already near-baked, just browning the crust. They don't trust her and she does spot-on impressions of their disapproval.

The days have little light, so she makes their home as bright as possible. She paints flowers all down the hall. She finds the tiny local library and resolves to read every book in it.

All she wants to do for the rest of her life is lie beside him.

They talk about names, but neither of them seems able to be serious about it:

"Hortense."

"Jereboam."

"Hiram."

"Hezekiah."

"Reuben."

"Reuben?"

"I like that one."

"Why don't we call him Turkey on Rye?"

"Oh, he's a him today? Yesterday he was a her."

"Yesterday I was trying out hers, today I'm trying out hims. I want to be ready for either."

"Great, can you pick up some mustard tomorrow in case it's a turkey on rye?"

Chris loves his wife more than his planes, but she has over a month left when he is assigned to test a plane's solo-flight long distance capabilities. He promises to think seriously about baby names while he flies and have a suggestion better than Macaroni and Cheese. (Because, as Katherine points out, they are not having twins.)

"Wake up."

Scott vaguely heard the words, but he did not respond to them.

"Wake up!"

A shake accompanied the command. This time he did react, groaning in objection to the time. He felt how early the hour was.

He sat up and put on his glasses.

The light through the window was weak and gray, but enough for him to make out the form standing over him. Not that he needed details: there was only one person so small and slight in the house. The outline showed him—unnervingly—curves. Did Ororo always have curves? Where did she find those?

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing. Why do you assume something's wrong?"

"Because it's…" Scott reached for the clock, squinted at it, turned on the light and squinted again. "Five in the morning. You don't like mornings." That was no secret to anybody!

"Remember I asked you to go somewhere with me?"

Scott nodded and covered his mouth while he yawned. She woke him up to ask if he remembered a promise? He did—and wanted to go back to sleep now, please.

"Let's go."

"What—now?"

Ororo nodded. "Now."

Scott groaned and flopped back onto the pillows. He was definitely not going anywhere now except back to sleep. Already he was dreading getting up in an hour and a half to go running.

Ororo hopped onto the bed. "It's perfect!" she insisted. "Scott, it's perfect!" She said it while she nudged him, too close. Ororo had never much cared for personal space and it was only in the context of that previous evening's conversation that Scott was uncomfortable with the closeness.

"'S not, go to sleep," he mumbled.

"Listen, no one else is awake! So we can go now and it'll still be a secret, but we're on the grounds, so no one gets in trouble. Scott, please!"

Scott still didn't want to… but he heard in her voice how badly Ororo wanted this. No, not wanted—she needed it. He didn't know why, but he knew that he couldn't say no. He had sort of promised.

"Okay. Just give me five minutes to get dressed."

"You're the best!" she said. She hopped off the bed and hurried for the door while Scott once more managed to sit up, bunching the covers over his lap.

"Actually… fifteen minutes?"

"Ten. And don't go back to sleep!"

Scott promised he would do no such thing.

When Ororo knocked on the door eight and a half minutes later (ten had been too much to ask), Scott was just buttoning his jeans. Whatever she had in mind, he assumed he should dress for easy laundering.

"Aren't you ready?" Ororo asked.

Scott gave her what was meant to be a withering look. "How are you this perky?" he asked. He had to smile, though.

Ororo could act bossy and superior sometimes. Right now she was a fourteen-year-old girl sporting a cast, a too-big t-shirt, and the worst bedhead he had ever seen. In her hand was the emergency flashlight from the kitchen. She was just herself and Scott loved her for it. She was straightforward when she wanted something and she didn't want to talk about the things he wanted left unsaid.

So he shook his head to his own question, smiled, and said, "Forget it. Let's go check out this mystery place."

Neither of them spoke as they crept out of the mansion and into the twilight. They knew there was no true hiding. If Professor Xavier wanted to find them, it was the work of a second. They pretended anyway.

Ororo led the way to the outbuildings she had discovered a few days before.

"I don't know what it is," she explained. "Is this an American thing? Like a storm shelter?"

"No… a storm shelter is underneath the house, sort of like the bomb shelter is. You want to get there quickly if a storm hits."

"Oh." She sounded disappointed, but wasted no time on that: "Well, it's not to store your extra grain…" she speculated as she fumbled with her lock-picks. Scott could not pick a lock at the best of times and could not help being awed when Ororo worked the rusty padlock free in under two minutes, broken arm and all.

He chewed his lip when she heaved the door open. When she turned to him, the look on her face was one of absolute joy.

He couldn't ruin that.

"Nice," he said, indicating the padlock.

Ororo rolled her eyes, downplaying the compliment, but she was pleased. They both knew it.

She picked up the flashlight again and switched it on. Scott could not bring himself to tell her that not only did he know where they were, the thought of it made his stomach knot. How could he? She seemed so thrilled. So when she stepped down to the first stair, Scott prepared to follow her.

The morning was warm even without the sun risen, but as they made their way into the dim room, the temperature dropped. Scott felt nerves tangling up inside of him. Unlike Ororo, he knew where they were: somewhere he did not want to be, somewhere unexciting, and somewhere he worried would disappoint her.

There were only a few stairs. When she reached the floor, Ororo paused and shone the flashlight around her.

Scott nudged her. "You're blocking me."

She took a step forward.

"Remember the day I broke my arm?"

He had made his way to the wall and was reaching blindly for something.

"Yes," he remembered that day. It was hard to forget. Scott had been so worried about her. It wasn't the broken arm—he knew that was a fairly minor injury. It was the hospital.

"What if," she began, sounding very young, "what if it wasn't how everyone thought?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if I didn't fall off the ship?"

Scott found what he had been looking for: the light switch. He had known there would be one. Now he flipped it and let light flood the room.

"What do you mean?"

"What is this place?" Ororo asked, marveling at racks of countless bottles.

"It's a wine cellar. What do you mean, you didn't fall?"

"There's so much here!"

It was true. The cellar probably had hundreds of bottles, maybe even a thousand. Maybe more than that.

"Ororo."

She stepped forward and grabbed a bottle at random. "Hey—there are so many. Who would miss just one?"

"What is it with you and booze lately?"

She shrugged.

Scott strode over and took the bottle out of her hands, placing it carefully on the rack. "You don't need alcohol. It makes you sick and takes away your humanity, it's like… Jekyll's potion."

Even before she asked, he knew what the question would be: "Who?"

"Never mind. Just don't think drinking makes you cool, okay? It makes you stupid."

"Maybe I want to be stupid."

"You think stupid is the worst someone can be."

It was true. Ororo knew she was clever and was proud of that fact—not at all subtly so. She liked being the smartest person in the room (as she currently was) and liked reminding him of that fact. Scott didn't mind because he knew she was trying to make up for how he understood American society and she often did not.

It remained so: Ororo did not want to be stupid.

She sighed and crossed her arms, scowling at him.

"Did someone push you off the ship?"

"No!" she yelped, frustrated. "No, nobody pushed me, I just… I just… do you know the Oz stories?"

He didn't understand how that was relevant, but Scott nodded. "I know The Wizard of Oz," he said. He knew there were other books but had never read any of them. He knew that one because he had seen the movie.

Ororo started down a row of wine bottles. Scott followed, worried about what she might do if he didn't. The place seemed pretty boring to him. It was filled with wine bottles and nothing else, and Scott had meant what he said to Ororo. Alcohol made people their worst and dumbest selves.

Nevertheless, he wound through the shelves with her. Had it not been stacked with wine, this would have been a great place to be. It was nice and cool, almost cave-like but not in an unpleasant way.

"So you've heard of tornadoes," Ororo said, re-starting their conversation quite suddenly.

"Sure. We get them in Nebraska—not a lot, and Omaha's pretty far east which I think means we're less likely to—but yes, I know about tornadoes."

"And they're real?"

"Yes."

They had reached the stairs again. Having the sense that they were leaving now, Scott went to turn off the lights again. They would probably not be in trouble for this, but he wanted to leave the place as they found it, anyway.

"Do you think I could make a tornado?"

"Sure you could. You don't really use your power anymore," Scott observed, following Ororo out of the wine cellar. He pulled the door closed and slipped the padlock into place.

Ororo shrugged. "Not so much."

It was a simple question: "Why?"

"Because."

"Okay."

They started back toward the mansion.

"Are you gonna run?" Ororo asked.

Scott shook his head. "Not enough time. Besides, taking a day off sometimes is okay. Are you liking that book Mae sent home for you?"

"Kon-Tiki," Ororo recounted. "Yes. It's interesting. I like that it's true."

"I'll tell Mae."

"Smug bastard."

Scott only chuckled, perhaps the most infuriating thing he could have done. Even with her cast, Ororo was not above hitting him—or maybe it was because she had forgotten about the cast. If so, she remembered when it connected with his shoulder and yelped.

Scott was less than sympathetic. "You knew better," he told her. He'd had broken bones and knew that Ororo was hurting just then, but she had hit him. "Do you want pancakes for breakfast?"

"No," Ororo grouched. "Yes."

"No or yes?"

She sighed. "Yes."

They made their way into the kitchen together. Ororo took out a mixing bowl and wooden spoon while Scott put together the ingredients they would need. The last thing Ororo did to help was take out a pan and place it on the unlit stovetop. Then she hopped onto the counter.

Cooking was very much not her forte. The best thing Ororo could do was stay out of the way and they both knew it!

"When I'm un-grounded, can I walk you home again sometime?" Ororo asked.

That was what got her grounded in the first place and Scott was secretly pleased she had not blamed him for that.

"If you ask permission first, that would be nice."

Ororo rolled her eyes. "Of course if I ask permission!"

"Then, yes. That would be nice."

"Stupid."

He gave her a warning look.

She stuck out her tongue.

When he didn't give in, she changed the subject to, "But, a tornado. It could really pick up houses?"

Scott nodded. He focused on the half-cup measure in his hand, carefully leveling off the flour before dropping it into the bowl. "They're really dangerous, Ororo, but we're lucky. Nobody has more experience helping people learn to use their mutations than Professor Xavier." He did not know that for a fact, but stated it with certainty nonetheless.

She watched him finish with the flour and move on to the salt. Only when he was dumping sugar into the bowl did she blurt, "I want to fly."

Scott looked up sharply. He was quiet for a moment, working through this. Then he said, "In a tornado." It was only half a question.

Ororo nodded.

"And when you broke your arm, you were trying…?"

"Yes."

Scott considered that for a moment. On one hand, tornadoes were frightening and very dangerous, and he wasn't certain Ororo knew that. On the other hand, he had yet to see her lose control of her powers… even though she rarely used them these days.

Finally, he concluded, "I bet you could do it."

She grinned at him and Scott knew it had been the right thing to say.