Work Text:
06/15/2018
Ororo had made it a policy, ever since entering this classroom no longer as a pupil but with that role reversed for the first time back then, to not bring her personal problems into teaching hours. You couldn't be an anchor for traumatized kids seeking purchase in a world that hated and feared them when you radiated nothing but depression and hopelessness yourself. The last time she'd spectacularly failed about these ambitious resolutions had been the long period of drama and loss between Liberty Island and the last Phoenix crisis, during which there'd been days when Charles had friendly but unmistakably told her he'd take over for her the day because not even a thick layer of make-up had been able to hide the greyish circles under her eyes, or because she'd brought a World War II essay to a biology test by accident without even realizing.
After Charles left his allegedly most trusted pupils alone without as much as a goodbye … Things had changed. Ororo could simply no longer afford a single day of not functioning because there was no one to substitute for her subjects in school, for her spot on the team, for her occasional speeches in public. If there was one thing she'd become really excellent at after all this time, it was letting that equivalent of a well-programmed bot in her head take over on mornings after especially burdening nightmares and drowning the last of her dejection at the latest in her second coffee cup.
The other X-Men and she had tried to uneasily smile that away for almost two weeks now, but the fact that today marked the third time for Ororo already, after the devastating news about New York II had hit at the beginning of the month, that she'd honest to god forgotten to prepare the holo file for the kids' current genetic studies last night … That was probably the most alarming proof that the long convenience of living mostly in peace for a couple of years had indeed ended in the shape of an aggressive mutant-killing virus for good. And with the Brotherhood's takeover over one of the most beloved cities of the US, of course.
After browsing her personal files in the network in vain for the third time, Ororo leaned back in her chair, tiredly rubbing her forehead, showing an apologetic little headshake to the rows of chairs in the class hall. She briefly considered popping an ibuprofen before trying to come up with a sufficiently interesting replacement to talk about, if only she hadn’t made the children and teenagers wait for far too long already for a detour to the sick bay. Gods. She wasn’t sure if it was her team's so unbelievably difficult choice to leave one of their youngest in the hands of the leaders of a hostile city for medical treatment that was gnawing so much on her overworked brain, or the rising numbers in the daily news about mutants moving to a city that wasn’t even theirs. Or maybe the ongoing cluelessness not only among her own team about what the fuck to do about this whole shit without making it inevitably worse. But Ororo suddenly did very much wish she'd have asked Logan or Remy to chase the pupils across the basketball court a couple of laps for her.
The hurtful sight of more than one chair in this room being yawningly empty, even many minutes after school had started, making it clear that there was no point in waiting, did nothing to help her mood.
It turned out, at least one of these chairs didn't belong to one of those children who'd – often without a word, their heads bowed in shame – packed their things in the course of the last few days, some sneaking away in the middle of the night though the X-Men had made it very clear to everyone from the start there was no reason to.
Just as Ororo, embarrassingly listlessly, with her eyes mostly on some file on her monitor that she knew by heart anyway, was in the middle of refreshing the pupils on some older subject which had quickly turned into a monologue because the kids clearly weren’t any more in the mood for dull studies today than she was, a young man with deeply tanned skin and huge wings on his back stormed into the class hall.
"Morning."
Ororo turned her chair toward the teenager with one brow raised high. "Look, I know the internals in here obviously have the longest way to school, Worthington, but half an hour? Really?"
"Why, did I miss anything?" Andréo made no move to even step away from the entrance corridor, unapologetic about his increasingly waning ambitions with regard to the proper grades needed for his surgeon job dream. The way his dark eyes went up to the huge mosaic ceiling longingly made it clear he'd much rather have used the morning for another air combat training with Marie.
It reminded Ororo so hilariously much of the time when she'd sat in one of these chairs there next to Andréo's father, including the same bored, slightly arrogant grimace on the boy's attractive face, that she had to shake herself for a moment, reminding herself that it was for good reason, Warren and Betsy had left their offspring in this place while they were off to their numerous busy jobs. And that she should do her best not to disappoint her old friends.
And as little as the young man might like that: That included not only making sure he'd not get his stupid behind killed in battle up there if he'd continue to keep his spot on the X-Men's successors' team. But that he'd also be prepared for far less obvious and therefore all the more sinister threats awaiting mutants out there.
"You mean, except for long-term effects of mutation inhibitor rays on the cell structure of the Homo Superior?"
"Got you covered, Professor Munroe. Those bounce off my wings, drip off my cute feather ass, and radiate on. Anything else?
"Sit, Worthington. Now. Unless you feel the need to catch up with what you missed in private with me later, instead of doing your assistance shift with Doctor McCoy."
That did the job, as so often. As little love as Andréo had for all the theory he'd still have to knock into his stubborn head until he could become Hank's right hand one day, the mere threat that until then, he wouldn’t even be allowed to get as much practical training as possible yet, smothered every teenage rebellion before it had begun.
Noemi shook her head in disapproval at the boy when he dropped on the chair next to her with a pout. "Someone poisoned your dog or something?"
Only she and Ororo both did have a pretty good idea why the guy was in such a shitty mood, just waving Noemi off with a huff now too, and demonstratively turning his gaze to the window again. Saskia's ex had taken that heavy explanation by the X-Men almost even worse than the girl's father, that as long as Saskia's condition was critical, it was the best choice to accept Mystique's offer to let her doctors care for her, ever until a transport would no longer endanger her life. It was very possible Andréo was only late because he'd advocated with Scott in vain for a trip to New York right after waking up, to get the girl he still very obviously cared a lot for out of there by force if necessary.
Still at odds with this so uncertain, hazardous situation herself and at a loss about anything comforting to tell the boy, Ororo was almost glad when another kid spoke up unexpectedly before she'd have had to. Only that boy was addressing a subject not much more pleasant for anyone, his nagging voice slightly too high and shrieking from the changes his body was going through thanks to a yet undefined gift that had turned his skin an iridescent turquoise already.
"He's right though. What do we need biology for? Why don't we talk about New York? Doesn’t anyone here care about that?"
"I don't think there's anyone who doesn't," Ororo answered as gently as possible, again needing a lot more effort than she'd been used to in the last few years to shove her own conflicted emotions about this catastrophe to the back of her mind. To offer the children a ground as neutral as possible to voice their own thoughts and feelings on. "And hardly an hour a day in which you don't hear and discuss about this anyway. That's exactly why we're trying to bring a bit of normalcy back into your everyday life right now. As long as the US government has not decided upon any steps to solve this situation, we can't do even less about it. And especially if there's an armed conflict on the horizon soon, I want you guys to be prepared for possible dangerous situations involving the Brotherhood. Who, among other means, use such mutation neutralizing weapons on members of their own species."
"Why would they still attack us now?" another girl with dispersed diamond sharp scales covering her whole body asked in a combination of disbelief, irritation, and confusion. "I mean, these people have given us all a whole city to live in. They say every mutant is welcome there, didn’t they?"
Again, Ororo's eyes inevitably wandered to Noemi as the only person in here who'd been both present and awake when the X-Men had had to make that terrible decision that night to watch and wait while Mystique had made her historical move. She wasn’t surprised to see the girl visibly shiver and sink lower into her chair, her thin arms crossed in front of her chest at the memory of that heated discussion in the jet. Back then they'd known already that they would have to face many debates like this, right here, if they turned their backs on this battlefield that had simply been too big for them in more than one regard on that fateful day. And that not everyone would easily come to the same conclusions as the X-Men and their successors, especially not people who had not suffered losses by the Brotherhood their whole life yet.
"Did they?" Feeling Ororo's gaze on her apparently, maybe in the weak mental link even that had instinctively already formed between them back then when Ororo had had to take a certain red-haired, desperately wailing baby from its dying mother's arms, Noemi gave herself a push and cleared her throat before turning to the younger children. In spite of her own gloom, she fell into her role as a future X-Men and role model in this house without even the need for an order. When it came to how to put yourself together and do your job when people around you lacked the strength for, Logan had taught his daughter a lot. "So why are you two not there right now?"
The girl promptly started to paw at the linoleum ground with one foot claw, leaving unsightly scratches that prompted Ororo to take a mental note about how it was about high time to call in the carpenters again. If they could find anyone in the world of humans right now with the guts to approach a mutant sanctuary, that was, which was ironic enough seeing as Mutant High had always been one of those places where normal people without hostile intentions had nothing to fear.
"My parents aren’t mutants. They're not allowed to come."
"See?" Ororo finally found her voice again, after a grateful nod Noemi's way for giving her the necessary needed second to catch herself.
"Does any of you really want to live in a place where the rest of the world is excluded from the start?"
"But we no longer want to be excluded either," the boy protested, not that easily swayed.
"Here, you never are," Ororo reminded him softly, kneeling down next to him to take his hand for a long moment. "And us, we'll keep fighting for things to change for the better for us out there, too."
"How much longer will that take though, Professor Munroe?" Only now the sadness, the usual frustration, and hopelessness sounded through the kid's slightly trembling voice, the memory of his own parents' disgusted reaction to the changes in his body far too present still to have such high hopes. Only too gladly, he accepted it when Ororo pulled him close for a firm hug so he could hide his tears against her shoulder. "When we finally be like everyone else?"
"Ew, you want to be like them?" Someone chimed in of whom Ororo would have expected it last, with how defiantly the boy had acted upon his arrival. When she turned her head in surprise, Bastian even had a wry grin on his lips as he pointed at the painting of the ruling President on the wall, showing the picture a huge bubble gum bubble. "Don't know about you but I really, really would hate that nose. Besides, I mean, I can only speak for myself but not to mention that you wouldn’t give these people's medical laboratories even half a star on Yelp… You ever sat through a whole season of American Idol or the Kardashians, Scales?"
Ororo threw the boy a grateful smile that only deepened when it was answered with a teasing wink. As much as the boy's snotty attitude sometimes tested her nerves, right now it was perfect to bring some laughter back to this room where there had been far too little of it in the last few days.
"No one ever claimed, life is perfect. Not here, not with normal people, and certainly not in New York, no matter what Mystique is trying to tell you. But which one you choose, in the end, that's only up to you. Us, we can only prepare you guys as well as possible for all options."
'Maybe that's what we should be doing then though, Auntie,' Noemi unexpectedly spoke up in her mind when Ororo turned back to her desk, relieved that the critical voices in the room had died down for now and that even those unsettled two children and Andréo finally had on their laptops for taking the usual class notes ... Only Ororo suddenly had a funny feeling those indeed wouldn't have to do anything with inhibitors for the rest of the morning. 'Not letting them in on what would await them if they followed the Brotherhood's call isn’t gonna help anyone.'
'I'll talk about it to the others at lunch.' Ororo lovingly tousled the girl's red curls when she passed her by and dropped down on her chair again to browse for some old mission report files about the Brotherhood in the network that were PG-rated enough for a few recaps.