Free X-Men: The Last Stand by Chris Claremont Page A

happening around her.
    “Ororo,” Xavier called quietly, when he’d approached close enough for her to hear him and not be startled. Taking Storm by surprise at moments like this, he risked a close encounter with one of her lightning bolts. Not a happy experience. “The forecast was for
sunny
skies.”
    She blinked, pulling back to herself, reintegrating both halves of her mind. Storm glanced upwards, her shoulders twitching with the sudden realization of what she’d unwittingly done.
    “Oh,” she said, and then, underneath her breath,
“Shit.”
And finally, “I’m sorry.”
    She turned to face him, a courtesy, acknowledgment that movement wasn’t easy for him. Her eyes had turned as silver as her hair, no sign of iris or pupil, indicating that her power was under her active control.
    As smoothly as it had arrived, but far more quickly, the supercell above the mansion went away, restoring the lovely day that had been before.
    “I needn’t be a psychic to see that something’s bothering you,” he said.
    There was a stone bench nearby, and she sat down so they could converse more as equals.
    “In the village where I grew up,” she said, referring to the wilds of northern Kenya, among the Masai, although Ororo herself was no part of that tribe, “when droughts were at their worst, I brought the rain. My powers were seen as a gift.”
    “As I remember, they were worshipped.”
    There was much left unsaid between them, although Charles knew the story. Ororo’d had no one to teach her, and she’d learned the use and extent—and the price—of her abilities the hard way, with the toll exacted on the very people she sought to help. She’d had to learn through experience that when she generated rain in one place, she ran the risk of taking it from somewhere else; a drought easily ended might as a consequence
trigger
one elsewhere, and ultimately do far more harm than good. Such a harsh lesson for such a young child!
    “Yes, they were.” Unspoken:
and so was
I. “And yet, here, Charles, in what calls itself the most advanced and enlightened society on the planet, ‘home of the brave, land of the
free
’”—she’d clearly reversed the order deliberately—“we keep our gifts a secret.”
    “Why don’t we go inside?” Xavier suggested.
    She nodded, stood and followed, and both of them noticed—far off in the distance—the faintest ripple of thunder across a clear and cloudless sky.
    “Magneto’s a fugitive,” she said as they crossed the threshold into the main foyer. “We have a mutant in the cabinet, a president who campaigned on mutant understanding and tolerance—so why are we still hiding?”
    “We are
not
hiding.”
    “Professor,” Ororo objected, “we live behind stone walls, we keep our true identities a secret!”
    “As a precaution, Ororo. I have to protect my students.” Unspoken, reflexive, came another thought from Ororo:
“Protect them” from
what
? Why must we be so
afraid
?
“You know that.”
    She looked at a couple of passing students, then back at her mentor and friend.
    “Charles,” she said, “we can’t be students forever.”
We have to learn
—
we have to be
trusted—
to protect ourselves.
    “Ororo, I haven’t thought of you as my ‘student’ for years. In fact…”
    They reached his office.
    “…I’ve been considering that you might take my place someday.”
     
     
    Storm wondered if she had heard him correctly.
    “But I thought Scott…”
    Xavier shook his head. “Scott has taken Jean’s death so hard.” His thoughts now came through to Ororo as plain as if he were speaking aloud:
Some are tempered by adversity, others are broken, no matter how much we may wish otherwise. Time has not healed this wound. Despite
all
our efforts, it’s as though Scott himself had died with her.
    “As for Logan”—and they both smiled, simpatico in both their affection for the man and their mutual awareness of his shortcomings—“well, Logan is a loner. He