Fic: X-men: All Fall Down (have to get up again)
Title: All Fall Down (have to get up again)
Author: fryadvocate
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, they belong to Marvel
Summary: The morning after Alcatraz, the weather was mild.
A/N: Thanks go out to my selfless beta antheia. Written for wizefics for Catchallathon.
The morning after Alcatraz, the weather was mild: Storm was still unconscious.
Later, they would gather in the Professor’s old office. Later, they would regroup. Later, later, later.
The sunrise after Alcatraz was brilliant reds and yellows. It was peaceful on the school grounds.
Such things couldn't last.
*****
There were ghosts haunting the halls of Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning. A phantom of Jean, age 14, ran down a hallway laughing until she disappeared around a corner.
Scott, blindfolded, found his way by touch to the shelf of Braille books in the library.
Xavier sat out on his balcony watching the property.
Kitty went pale the first time, and sunk halfway through the floor before climbing out and sprinting to her room.
Uncertain, Bobby reached out and tried to touch Scott only to have his hand pass through Scott's skin and stop at the bookshelf. He looked around, but he was alone. Scott continued searching for a specific book, and Bobby turned away until he was gone.
In the headmaster's office, Ororo sat opposite the small girl, trying to smile sympathetically as she saw shades of Charles and Eric play chess with each other. The girl hugged herself tighter and tighter, squeezing her eyes shut until the pair shriveled into nothing.
"You can stop doing that?" Ororo said. Her voice was harsh from tears and she tried again. "Can you control your powers?"
Ashamed the girl nodded once, jerkily. "Sometimes."
"All right," Ororo said. "Try."
At night, it was worse.
*****
The first time she tried working in the danger room without her powers, only stringent safety settings kept her from getting killed.
"I'm sorry," Ororo said, after Bobby and Kitty had already left. She looked just left of Rogue, the way she had since Rogue first walked down the hallway, hand-in-hand with Bobby.
She didn't touch Rogue if she could help it.
"You don't want me on the team," Rogue said. Gloves were part of her X-men uniform, but she hadn't worn them, wanted to be able to reach out and touch if she could.
"I want what's best for the team, and right now, you're a danger to us, Marie," Ororo's tone was firm, she crossed her arms and managed to look at Rogue straight in the eye.
"Ok," Rogue said. "Ok."
If it had been Scott, it would have been easier to hear, it would have been differently phrased, but the numbness would have been the same.
*****
Henry McCoy took over the medlab, and the high school math classes. For reasons unrelated to his mutation, his students began calling him, "The Beast." The seniors lived in fear of his tests; Kitty spent three straight days studying for his Calculus midterm. She didn't leave her room, and Bobby began bringing her meals to her.
He'd poke her until she ate and if that didn't work, he'd freeze her pencils until she'd look up, annoyed.
Marie would stand outside Kitty's room, watching. She didn't understand why, if she was cured, she felt worse than before.
*****
On Muir Island, a young man woke up with all the memories of Charles Xavier and none of Xavier's power.
In a park somewhere, an older gentleman pushed with his mind, and chess pieces didn't move.
They felt the same impotence.
*****
Hank was the first of Xavier's students, and Ororo wondered if he was jealous of her place, of the position she'd taken up. He'd been the first, and she'd been the last. By the time she joined, she'd had to work her way into old friendships, and he was gone to college before she even realized she could be a part of this strange family.
The kitchen was the lonliest late at night when she was used to finding adults up late, grading papers or just snacking. They were only allowed to be friends with each other when they weren't being grown-ups for the children. Scott's corner of the table still sat empty.
The first time, she made the tea and asked Hank the sort of awkward questions she always had when he'd appeared at holidays. How was he? How was his mother?
For a long moment, they sipped their tea and watched the tablecloth.
"Sometimes I regret that you and I did not share the intimate friendships we did with our classmates," Henry said, finally.
Ororo smiled, at last, and it felt like something warming after a long winter. It felt like the first break in a hurricane. "I'd like to try," she said.
He nodded, "As would I."
*****
Kurt took over the ethics class.
He was slightly manic and prone to climbing over furniture when distracted, but, somehow, even the quiet students loved him. Although he was always insightful in class, his homework assignments tended to be either too broad or too narrow.
They loved him anyway, because of the demon he wasn't.
Once, Ororo looked out to the boat dock and saw Kurt, crouched low on a piling, and Warren, wings spread wide in the sunlight. They appeared to be talking, and not for the first time, she wondered if only a telepath could do this job; if a telepath was needed to find that balance between teachers and students.
But Kurt and Warren were talking, not arguing, and the students tested up to standards in Kurt's class. She still felt a little like she was just stepping up to the plate, a pinch hitter that managed an accidental home run.
*****
Somewhere in Alaska, a man with blue eyes woke up, staring at the sky. Around him, the snow was white, and he winced away from the glare.
His jeans were soaked, and his jacket looked pretty bad.
He didn't know his name.
"Hey," someone called out, a football field away. "Hey, you need any help?"
*****
Down in the basement, Hank found himself falling into old patterns. It was an agoraphobic habit that he'd never cured as long as he'd lived at Xavier's. He ran tests, patched up the odd school child, managed to only go upstairs for class and meetings with Ororo.
It was a lonely existence, and one that he enjoyed after the strain that had been politics.
If he thought anyone could break the arrangement, it would have been Ororo, or maybe Logan. Instead it was Bobby.
Years later, when Bobby was old enough to be a colleague and not a student, Hank would laugh with him. But that would be years later. At the time, the imposition into his self-enforced exile was ill-met.
*****
Bobby was patient. He took food to Kitty, he worked with Ms. Munroe to keep the school together, he kept his door open for other students. He tried finding things to make Dr. McCoy come out of the basement: a new game system that'd he'd 'accidentally' broken, a special meal the cook had made.
It wasn't hard to balance his schoolwork with his other obligations unless he thought too hard about it. When he was living it, he just managed.
He didn't tell anyone that the ghosts he saw weren't Jean or Scott or the Professor anymore. It was just one ghost: John. Always John.
*****
In the end, Marie understood what everyone else had been trying to tell her for so long.
"You make time for everyone in the school," Marie said, her voice low.
The walls of Xavier's were thin; and some of the students could hear through them anyway.
"You're my girlfriend," Bobby argued. "I make time for you."
"You don't," Marie said. "You make sure Kitty eats every day. You talk with Doctor McCoy all the time. But I don't even talk to you when we have class together."
Bobby sighed, heavily. She watched his shoulders, watched his eyes. When did it get so hard to read her own boyfriend?
"Kitty's my teammate," Bobby said, finally.
Marie took one step back, her hands clenching. It was something she'd known for a while.
"And I'm not." Suddenly, she wrapped her hands around her elbows wanting to feel something, anything on her bare skin. "I'm not even a mutant any more."
Bobby stared at his own hands, and offered no reassurance.
Rogue left.
*****
In Alaska, the local doctor said he was fine, had no explanation for the amnesia.
"Maddie's going to take care of you?" the doctor asked. "Because the roads around here… Won't be good travel for at least a month or so."
"Yeah," the man said. They named him John Smith, and everyone thought that he and Madelyne Pryor would end up getting married. When he smiled at her, they said, it was like he was a kid.
And Maddie Pryor was about the sweetest girl in town. She deserved some happiness.
*****
Bobby was used to seeing John in the mansion. Usually, John would be having a conversation they'd already had, or watching Bobby at his desk.
Bobby hadn't noticed how much John watched him until he was gone.
Ms. Munroe said that the girl was getting better control of her powers, that it had been weeks since anyone had seen the Professor wheeling in and out of doorways. But Bobby knew that he saw John every night.
He didn't look up when someone settled onto John's bed, just closed his eyes and pressed his fingers hard against his eyelids until he saw sparks.
"I'm sorry," he said, eventually. "I'm really sorry."
"Yeah. Me, too," John said. "Whatever, though."
When Bobby reached out, John was still there, wrinkling the sheets Bobby washed once every couple of weeks with his own. He had a scar across his cheek and was gaunt, the way he'd been when Bobby first met him. John hadn't come from the happy home that Bobby had and it showed all over him, like fingerprints of the past.
"You're back," Bobby said, it sounded dumb. The mansion was quiet for once; he could hear the ticking of the hall clock distantly.
"Didn't have anywhere else to go," John said. There were bruises on his hands, and he flicked his lighter open and shut, without lighting it. Guilty, Bobby winced, remembering the sheer power John had possessed before.
"Did you talk to Ms. Munroe?" Bobby asked. He felt too slow, a little out of key with the conversaion.
"Yeah," John said. "She said... it was 'probation'."
The words were quoted, and Bobby remembered that the first time John had come to the mansion it had been a legal probation: the professor had picked him up from juvenile hall, talked his case worker into meeting once every two weeks instead of once a week, and managed to make John think he was doing them a favor
"I... missed you," Bobby said. It was so stupid, he blushed. He'd have time to do it right this time, to start over and get them right. He glanced at John's lips.
"Yeah, whatever," John said. "If you don't have a new roommate-"
"I don't," Bobby interrupted.
"-maybe I can stay here."
Already nodding, Bobby said, "Yeah, sure, of course."
"Cool." He flicked on the lighter, and said, "Lemme show you something."
The flame didn't quite mould to his hand the way it had easily once upon a time, but it flickered, danced towards his palm an inch before extinguishing.
*****
Of course, there'd always been a hierarchy, Marie knew. There'd always been the different cliques, even in a school as small as Xavier's.
But, before, she'd always been on the inside. She'd always been part of the BobbyJohnMarie clique, the cool kids compared to the KittyJubileePete clique who were the less cool ones. She remembered walking down the hall and knowing that anyone would talk to her because she was Rogue.
Now, it was different, something changed after Alcatraz, and all that was left was a solidarity in mutation. The older kids worked with the younger ones without complaint, and there were no fissions between the groups of upperclassmen. Even John, the prodigal son, returned with minimal waves: Bobby's obvious affection had made protest impossible.
The glass of her window was cool against her palm and she felt more the outsider than she had before she took the cure. It had been days since she touched anyone. She rapped her knuckles against the window pane, watching as outside Bobby and John tossed snow balls at each other. They were joyous.
This time, when she decided to leave, she told someone.
"I have to go," she said to Ms. Munroe. "I don't really belong here anymore."
She had dyed out the streak in her hair, cropped it shorter despite the cold weather. For the first time, she knew exactly what she wanted and that it was within her grasp.
"Alright," Ms. Munroe said. She looked sad, but understanding. Standing, she reached out to hug Marie, her arms tight. It was sad, and it was right and something loosened inside Marie, something that had been tight and hidden.
"We will miss you," Ms. Munroe said, her hand on Marie's shoulder.
"Ororo?" someone interrupted, knocking on the door as she opened it.
Ms. Munroe smiled, and said, "Carol, it's good to see you. I didn't know you were coming. Marie, this is Ms. Danvers, she's going to be taking over the high school English classes."
Smiling, Marie reached out, gloveless, to shake Ms. Danver's hand and her whole world went to hell again.
*****
A year after Alcatraz, and the weather was clear again; the school was still standing.
Ororo wished that could last forever.
*****
end
Author: fryadvocate
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, they belong to Marvel
Summary: The morning after Alcatraz, the weather was mild.
A/N: Thanks go out to my selfless beta antheia. Written for wizefics for Catchallathon.
The morning after Alcatraz, the weather was mild: Storm was still unconscious.
Later, they would gather in the Professor’s old office. Later, they would regroup. Later, later, later.
The sunrise after Alcatraz was brilliant reds and yellows. It was peaceful on the school grounds.
Such things couldn't last.
*****
There were ghosts haunting the halls of Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning. A phantom of Jean, age 14, ran down a hallway laughing until she disappeared around a corner.
Scott, blindfolded, found his way by touch to the shelf of Braille books in the library.
Xavier sat out on his balcony watching the property.
Kitty went pale the first time, and sunk halfway through the floor before climbing out and sprinting to her room.
Uncertain, Bobby reached out and tried to touch Scott only to have his hand pass through Scott's skin and stop at the bookshelf. He looked around, but he was alone. Scott continued searching for a specific book, and Bobby turned away until he was gone.
In the headmaster's office, Ororo sat opposite the small girl, trying to smile sympathetically as she saw shades of Charles and Eric play chess with each other. The girl hugged herself tighter and tighter, squeezing her eyes shut until the pair shriveled into nothing.
"You can stop doing that?" Ororo said. Her voice was harsh from tears and she tried again. "Can you control your powers?"
Ashamed the girl nodded once, jerkily. "Sometimes."
"All right," Ororo said. "Try."
At night, it was worse.
*****
The first time she tried working in the danger room without her powers, only stringent safety settings kept her from getting killed.
"I'm sorry," Ororo said, after Bobby and Kitty had already left. She looked just left of Rogue, the way she had since Rogue first walked down the hallway, hand-in-hand with Bobby.
She didn't touch Rogue if she could help it.
"You don't want me on the team," Rogue said. Gloves were part of her X-men uniform, but she hadn't worn them, wanted to be able to reach out and touch if she could.
"I want what's best for the team, and right now, you're a danger to us, Marie," Ororo's tone was firm, she crossed her arms and managed to look at Rogue straight in the eye.
"Ok," Rogue said. "Ok."
If it had been Scott, it would have been easier to hear, it would have been differently phrased, but the numbness would have been the same.
*****
Henry McCoy took over the medlab, and the high school math classes. For reasons unrelated to his mutation, his students began calling him, "The Beast." The seniors lived in fear of his tests; Kitty spent three straight days studying for his Calculus midterm. She didn't leave her room, and Bobby began bringing her meals to her.
He'd poke her until she ate and if that didn't work, he'd freeze her pencils until she'd look up, annoyed.
Marie would stand outside Kitty's room, watching. She didn't understand why, if she was cured, she felt worse than before.
*****
On Muir Island, a young man woke up with all the memories of Charles Xavier and none of Xavier's power.
In a park somewhere, an older gentleman pushed with his mind, and chess pieces didn't move.
They felt the same impotence.
*****
Hank was the first of Xavier's students, and Ororo wondered if he was jealous of her place, of the position she'd taken up. He'd been the first, and she'd been the last. By the time she joined, she'd had to work her way into old friendships, and he was gone to college before she even realized she could be a part of this strange family.
The kitchen was the lonliest late at night when she was used to finding adults up late, grading papers or just snacking. They were only allowed to be friends with each other when they weren't being grown-ups for the children. Scott's corner of the table still sat empty.
The first time, she made the tea and asked Hank the sort of awkward questions she always had when he'd appeared at holidays. How was he? How was his mother?
For a long moment, they sipped their tea and watched the tablecloth.
"Sometimes I regret that you and I did not share the intimate friendships we did with our classmates," Henry said, finally.
Ororo smiled, at last, and it felt like something warming after a long winter. It felt like the first break in a hurricane. "I'd like to try," she said.
He nodded, "As would I."
*****
Kurt took over the ethics class.
He was slightly manic and prone to climbing over furniture when distracted, but, somehow, even the quiet students loved him. Although he was always insightful in class, his homework assignments tended to be either too broad or too narrow.
They loved him anyway, because of the demon he wasn't.
Once, Ororo looked out to the boat dock and saw Kurt, crouched low on a piling, and Warren, wings spread wide in the sunlight. They appeared to be talking, and not for the first time, she wondered if only a telepath could do this job; if a telepath was needed to find that balance between teachers and students.
But Kurt and Warren were talking, not arguing, and the students tested up to standards in Kurt's class. She still felt a little like she was just stepping up to the plate, a pinch hitter that managed an accidental home run.
*****
Somewhere in Alaska, a man with blue eyes woke up, staring at the sky. Around him, the snow was white, and he winced away from the glare.
His jeans were soaked, and his jacket looked pretty bad.
He didn't know his name.
"Hey," someone called out, a football field away. "Hey, you need any help?"
*****
Down in the basement, Hank found himself falling into old patterns. It was an agoraphobic habit that he'd never cured as long as he'd lived at Xavier's. He ran tests, patched up the odd school child, managed to only go upstairs for class and meetings with Ororo.
It was a lonely existence, and one that he enjoyed after the strain that had been politics.
If he thought anyone could break the arrangement, it would have been Ororo, or maybe Logan. Instead it was Bobby.
Years later, when Bobby was old enough to be a colleague and not a student, Hank would laugh with him. But that would be years later. At the time, the imposition into his self-enforced exile was ill-met.
*****
Bobby was patient. He took food to Kitty, he worked with Ms. Munroe to keep the school together, he kept his door open for other students. He tried finding things to make Dr. McCoy come out of the basement: a new game system that'd he'd 'accidentally' broken, a special meal the cook had made.
It wasn't hard to balance his schoolwork with his other obligations unless he thought too hard about it. When he was living it, he just managed.
He didn't tell anyone that the ghosts he saw weren't Jean or Scott or the Professor anymore. It was just one ghost: John. Always John.
*****
In the end, Marie understood what everyone else had been trying to tell her for so long.
"You make time for everyone in the school," Marie said, her voice low.
The walls of Xavier's were thin; and some of the students could hear through them anyway.
"You're my girlfriend," Bobby argued. "I make time for you."
"You don't," Marie said. "You make sure Kitty eats every day. You talk with Doctor McCoy all the time. But I don't even talk to you when we have class together."
Bobby sighed, heavily. She watched his shoulders, watched his eyes. When did it get so hard to read her own boyfriend?
"Kitty's my teammate," Bobby said, finally.
Marie took one step back, her hands clenching. It was something she'd known for a while.
"And I'm not." Suddenly, she wrapped her hands around her elbows wanting to feel something, anything on her bare skin. "I'm not even a mutant any more."
Bobby stared at his own hands, and offered no reassurance.
Rogue left.
*****
In Alaska, the local doctor said he was fine, had no explanation for the amnesia.
"Maddie's going to take care of you?" the doctor asked. "Because the roads around here… Won't be good travel for at least a month or so."
"Yeah," the man said. They named him John Smith, and everyone thought that he and Madelyne Pryor would end up getting married. When he smiled at her, they said, it was like he was a kid.
And Maddie Pryor was about the sweetest girl in town. She deserved some happiness.
*****
Bobby was used to seeing John in the mansion. Usually, John would be having a conversation they'd already had, or watching Bobby at his desk.
Bobby hadn't noticed how much John watched him until he was gone.
Ms. Munroe said that the girl was getting better control of her powers, that it had been weeks since anyone had seen the Professor wheeling in and out of doorways. But Bobby knew that he saw John every night.
He didn't look up when someone settled onto John's bed, just closed his eyes and pressed his fingers hard against his eyelids until he saw sparks.
"I'm sorry," he said, eventually. "I'm really sorry."
"Yeah. Me, too," John said. "Whatever, though."
When Bobby reached out, John was still there, wrinkling the sheets Bobby washed once every couple of weeks with his own. He had a scar across his cheek and was gaunt, the way he'd been when Bobby first met him. John hadn't come from the happy home that Bobby had and it showed all over him, like fingerprints of the past.
"You're back," Bobby said, it sounded dumb. The mansion was quiet for once; he could hear the ticking of the hall clock distantly.
"Didn't have anywhere else to go," John said. There were bruises on his hands, and he flicked his lighter open and shut, without lighting it. Guilty, Bobby winced, remembering the sheer power John had possessed before.
"Did you talk to Ms. Munroe?" Bobby asked. He felt too slow, a little out of key with the conversaion.
"Yeah," John said. "She said... it was 'probation'."
The words were quoted, and Bobby remembered that the first time John had come to the mansion it had been a legal probation: the professor had picked him up from juvenile hall, talked his case worker into meeting once every two weeks instead of once a week, and managed to make John think he was doing them a favor
"I... missed you," Bobby said. It was so stupid, he blushed. He'd have time to do it right this time, to start over and get them right. He glanced at John's lips.
"Yeah, whatever," John said. "If you don't have a new roommate-"
"I don't," Bobby interrupted.
"-maybe I can stay here."
Already nodding, Bobby said, "Yeah, sure, of course."
"Cool." He flicked on the lighter, and said, "Lemme show you something."
The flame didn't quite mould to his hand the way it had easily once upon a time, but it flickered, danced towards his palm an inch before extinguishing.
*****
Of course, there'd always been a hierarchy, Marie knew. There'd always been the different cliques, even in a school as small as Xavier's.
But, before, she'd always been on the inside. She'd always been part of the BobbyJohnMarie clique, the cool kids compared to the KittyJubileePete clique who were the less cool ones. She remembered walking down the hall and knowing that anyone would talk to her because she was Rogue.
Now, it was different, something changed after Alcatraz, and all that was left was a solidarity in mutation. The older kids worked with the younger ones without complaint, and there were no fissions between the groups of upperclassmen. Even John, the prodigal son, returned with minimal waves: Bobby's obvious affection had made protest impossible.
The glass of her window was cool against her palm and she felt more the outsider than she had before she took the cure. It had been days since she touched anyone. She rapped her knuckles against the window pane, watching as outside Bobby and John tossed snow balls at each other. They were joyous.
This time, when she decided to leave, she told someone.
"I have to go," she said to Ms. Munroe. "I don't really belong here anymore."
She had dyed out the streak in her hair, cropped it shorter despite the cold weather. For the first time, she knew exactly what she wanted and that it was within her grasp.
"Alright," Ms. Munroe said. She looked sad, but understanding. Standing, she reached out to hug Marie, her arms tight. It was sad, and it was right and something loosened inside Marie, something that had been tight and hidden.
"We will miss you," Ms. Munroe said, her hand on Marie's shoulder.
"Ororo?" someone interrupted, knocking on the door as she opened it.
Ms. Munroe smiled, and said, "Carol, it's good to see you. I didn't know you were coming. Marie, this is Ms. Danvers, she's going to be taking over the high school English classes."
Smiling, Marie reached out, gloveless, to shake Ms. Danver's hand and her whole world went to hell again.
*****
A year after Alcatraz, and the weather was clear again; the school was still standing.
Ororo wished that could last forever.
*****
end