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Katherine groans.

She screams.

It's too soon!

"Almost there, sweetie."

Through the haze of pain and exhaustion she feels embarrassed. When she dropped her dress and gave herself to Chris, it felt right. Yes, she felt cold and a twist of nerves and he tried to be gentle but it still hurt some, but this was what she wanted. She knows she should be more mature, but now she is sharing intimate pieces of herself with indifferent doctors and nurses with nametags she can barely read.

The nurse says something about a few more centimeters and pats her knee.

—just tell us you said no—

Her parents offered her a deal. All she had to do was admit that she said no and get rid of the baby and they could pretend this never happened. It wasn't her fault: she was young and weak. She had been mistreated, overpowered.

Her body betrays her again. She grabs the rail at the side of the bed and tries to "breathe through it", as the nurse told her, but all she can do is pant and whimper.

—you won't be alone. There are places for girls like you—

She says his name. Over and over, she tells herself that he will walk through that door just in time. He found her in Akron, in the city they both know she fled to in that tiny hope not that he would see her, but that she would see him. Just one more time.

"Please," she begs, "it's killing me, I need him. Please."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Summers. Your husband isn't back from his assignment yet."

She trusts this nurse, the one with the scar through her eyebrow. She's right to. Katherine has been here all day, crying and screaming and begging for her husband, so twisted up inside the nurse used her lunch break to ask after Chris Summers.

So Katherine looks into her eyes and begs instead for honesty: "Am I going to lose my baby?"

Scott volunteered to clean the kitchen, insisting he wanted the time to think. No one questioned this—Scott had volunteered to do the same and for the same reason before. Cleaning helped him find a sense of calm. It was the instillation of order on chaos. It took a bad situation and made it good.

What could be better?

He had a system for this. Scott actually preferred cleaning the kitchen alone. The only person he liked working with was Doug, who had an uncanny knack for working together with someone else. On his own, Scott started by scrubbing the dishes. Then countertops, cutting board, and a check of the fridge—not everyone remembered to dust the top of the fridge doors and they collected a lot of dust.

The one chore he skipped was taking out the trash. He would claim, if asked, that he was being lazy because of the oppressive heat. It was bad in the kitchen, but walking outside was like stepping into a sauna. (He had read that somewhere. What he lacked was practical sauna experience. It sounded unpleasant—like it would fog his glasses.)

The truth was that he did not want to go past the ship. He didn't want to see Alex or Chris.

"Scott."

He preferred to clean alone. There were three people who wouldn't try to help: Alex, who would try to hinder; Ororo, who would prefer to perch on the counter and snack; and Charles, who knew that cleaning was simply not his forte.

"About what happened at dinner?" Scott guessed. He stood at the cupboard, putting away the now-dry plates.

"What happened at dinner was…" Charles sighed, apparently giving up on summarizing what happened at dinner. There really were not words for such things.

"Look, I think I have a solution," Scott said.

"Oh?"

He placed the last of the plates in the cupboard and turned to face Charles.

"But Mom won't like it. I'll need your help convincing her."

The look on Charles's face was difficult to read. There was reserve there and uncertainty, too, but not without the desire to trust. He was in as difficult a situation as Scott.

Scott took a deep breath. "I think I need to leave."

"Scott—"

"I can't be here anymore. What I'm doing to Alex—it has to stop. I talked to Doug a while ago, I know if I need to, he'll let me visit him. It's just for a little while," Scott hurried, seeing an objection brewing. Charles would see it like Ruth did. Charles wouldn't understand, either.

Charles shook his head. "You're not a prisoner here. If you want to visit Doug, you may. But I think it would be a mistake. You're capable of much more. Part of becoming a good man is not acting based on what you think you're limited to but what you wish you were capable of."

Scott thought about that. Becoming a man was a rather strange idea and one he struggled to reconcile with the boy he felt like. Had most people told him he was becoming a man, he wouldn't have been able to agree—but Charles seemed to be implying that, and he trusted Charles.

"If I can't," Scott began. "If I'm… limited. Does it make me a bad man?"

"Of course not. Most people go through life never differentiating themselves as good or bad, simply being, and that's fine for them. I doubt it will be so for you. You are capable of so much more."

They looked at one another for a moment. Scott was the first to look away. He took the cutlery from the drainer and began putting it away, spoons first.

"Can I get better?" he asked, softly, more to the silverware drawer than anything else.

"Better?"

"What happened before, in the orphanage."

"What is it you want, Scott? Tell me precisely."

"To… to be able to think about it without flinching, I guess. Not to be afraid of remembering anymore. Not to hear his voice in my head every time I make a mistake. I know it's okay to make mistakes, Dad. But every time I do I feel worthless, even knowing that I'm not."

"It's possible," Charles promised.

"Umm. There's just one more thing…"

The following afternoon, Ororo stood on a stepladder, a ruler in one hand, chalk in the other. Heat bore down on her, but she didn't mind it. No, she liked a sunny day. Snow had been fun. She would still take sunlight any day.

She sighed and tilted her head back, eyes closed, letting the sun shine on her face.

"Ororo?"

A few seconds enjoying the sunshine was one thing. Too long and she started to seem crazy. She knew Charles only asked out of concern, but nonetheless grumbled, "Yeah, yeah," as she returned to work.

There was still construction going on at the mansion. Luckily it was big enough that they could easily be shielded from any human eyes. Of course, normally she would be hanging around the site anyway…

Ororo finished her markings, moved the footstool, and went to stand by Charles. Now the wall was marked in one-foot increments, each labeled with a chalk number, from one foot off the ground to a shaky seven that was a bit too high for her, really.

Beside Charles was a bucket full of wet sponges.

"Now, I want you to pick up a sponge."

Ororo did.

"Pass it to the wind. Only that sponge, mind."

That was more difficult. Her eyes went milky white as she created a tiny twister. At first it only tugged, picking up the liquid that had pooled in her palm. The sponge began to shake. The wind lifted it… and plopped it into the grass.

Ororo picked up the sponge again.

The second time, she created a strong enough wind to pick it up. The sponge hovered, wobbling, in mid-air.

"It should hit the wall between three and five feet off the ground."

"That's kinda specific, Professor."

"On the contrary, it's a quite broad range."

Ororo was silenced by that for one contemplative moment, then she said, "It's a specific broad range."

The sponge zoomed toward the wall and hit the top of a window, above and to the left of the chalk marks.

Ororo had not been training her powers much the past few weeks and today felt very much unexpected. Whatever made Charles decide she needed the training, she didn't mind. It had been a while since she felt so challenged.

Her eyes narrowed as she picked up another sponge.

By the time she gathered all of them up and dumped the lot back into the bucket, determination was giving way to frustration. A dozen sponges had taken wind-rides to the wall and her chalk lines were nearly intact. They had only been marred where a few drops rolled down from a hit almost two feet too high.

"This isn't fair," she announced, letting the sponges splash into the bucket. Three fell onto the grass. "I can't do this."

"I'm quite certain you can, Ororo. It's going to take practice, that's all," Charles replied. He was an aggravatingly calm man.

"But right now I can't," she retorted. "I just missed twelve times! Why can't we call that enough?"

"Because all twelve missed. You are quite capable of this, I assure you. You need only to focus and keep trying."

With a frustrated sigh, Ororo grabbed a sponge from the bucket and hurled it at the wall. It hit the grass nearby.

"I'm off balance!" she cried, raising her cast as evidence. "I have a busted arm!"

"Ororo, has Alex ever told you about his initial training?"

She pouted a moment before admitting, "No…"

"We set up mannequins in the bunker and told him to blast the one in the middle. I was new to training young mutants at that time and I stood outside the door absolutely certain that despite his doubts, Alex had succeeded. I would step into that room—"

"Step?"

"Yes, I was walking then. And I believed Alex would have achieved it. I actually looked forward to the chagrined look on his cocky little face when he realized what he had achieved."

It was true, but the 'cocky little face' remark had been thrown in to make her laugh. Ororo pressed a hand to her mouth to smother giggles.

"He hadn't, in fact, and had a rather different look of superiority that he had managed to light the room on fire."

Ororo snickered.

"Yes, you've seen the char marks on the floor, haven't you? But while Alex was right on that day and destroyed quite a lot of mannequins before he managed it, he did in time learn to control his ability. You have seen for yourself the mastery he has now and I know you are capable of the same."

She sighed. "Why? Why do I even need to be?"

"Because Alex, in that moment, had access to all of his power. You have access to only a little of yours. What you can do now is extraordinary, but if you want to summon a tornado or tame a blizzard, it's going to take much more work. Greater control is the first step."

Ororo hesitated a moment longer, giving Charles a hard, defiant look. Then she picked up a sponge. The wind began to gather… then it died.

"Professor, why did you have so many mannequins?"

"A story for another time, Ororo."