Heyoka: Chapter 9
by Minisinoo

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Notes: They're Marvel's (mostly), not mine. "Deacon Blues" belongs to Steely Dan off Aja. I also want to take a moment to acknowledge here where I got the images used throughout the site. They've come from a variety of sources, including official sites for 20th Century Fox, print media and my own scanner, and the X-Men fan sites One Art and Disquieting Muses (both far more design-impressive; how do they do that? I'm jealous <g>). The images of Gracie are in fact, Irene Bedard, one of the premiere American Indian actresses working today. Thanks to Naomi for making an observation about continuity, which I've tried to fix. Other disclaimers in part 1.

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Thump, thump, thump, tha-da-dump-dump.
He was at it again. Stuck on the other side of plaster and dry-wall, all Gracie could hear clearly were the bass line and Scott's fine voice. He didn't play late, and he didn't play at the crack of dawn (he did nothing at the crack of dawn if he could avoid it) ­ but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that she heard only half a song and it drove her to distraction. The other problem concerned his choice in music, or rather, his lack of choice.

"I'll learn to work the saxophone, I­ I'll play just what I feel. Drink scotch whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel."

She liked Steely Dan fine, but enough was enough.

Scott was grieving. For two weeks after he'd moved out of Jean's room, he'd cried himself to sleep at night and jacked off in the shower in the morning. She never told him that she knew these things, that she felt his sorrow, and his need, through plaster and dry-wall as well as she could hear his singing; she'd learned to keep other people's intimacies to herself. Whatever he felt for Gracie, however frustrated he'd become with his previous relationship, he did still love Jean Grey. Human feelings were rarely simple and he suffered now from an ambivalent mourning. He'd lost so many things in his life that he clung tightly to what remained, even past the point of wanting it.

"They got a name for the winners in the world; I want a name when I lose. They call Alabama the Crimson Tide. Call me Deacon Blues."

Baby Mania in the Mansion didn't help. Jean had bought What to Expect When You're Expecting and spent hours pouring over maternity fashion and baby supply catalogues with Ororo or the girls ­ though it hadn't been two months and she no more needed a maternity dress than she needed a hole in the head. If Scott was in a room when they started in on the catalogues, he invariably disappeared as quickly as he could without being overly conspicuous.

The baby coming into her life gave Jean Grey something on which to focus as Scott left it. He didn't have that. Intellectually, he knew he was going to be a father, but he lacked body knowledge. It wasn't happening to him. In fact, he seemed to be avoiding the whole notion. Gracie decided to press him on it, went out to find him in the stables which, like everything else about Westchester, were almost too clean and wood-rich to believe. She knew Indians who'd trade places with Xavier's horses. Scott was grooming his gelding after riding out earlier with a few students. The students were a row over and ten stalls up, chattering like crows. Well out of ear-shot. "Why do you always leave as soon as the baby catalogues come out?"

He'd been squatting to work the animal's legs with a soft curry brush over sensitive joints. Now, he glanced up at her where she lounged against the stall door. "The baby isn't due until mid-July. It's a little early to fit out a nursery."

He was right, but Gracie knew that wasn't the real reason, so she just continued to stare at him, holding the eyes she couldn't see behind ruby quartz. Finally he looked away and confessed, "She's excited. I'm not. I don't feel like pretending."

Although the stable adjoined the mansion directly, it wasn't kept heated. Scott was working up a sweat but Grace, chilled to the bone, pulled her jacket more tightly around herself, looked off out the door to the stableyard. It was starting to snow, a dust of white over hoof-beaten ground. The sun disappeared for weeks, here in the East, and the skybowl was cut off by soft humps of old hills. Her heart ached for a wide sky and the jagged black line of the Paha Sapa. Wind over the plains. "I understand," she told him now. "I was pretty much scared shitless for nine months."

She hadn't tried to hide the fact she'd been a mother, but they'd never talked about it and she didn't know what he thought, if he even knew. But the color flow of his mood didn't register surprise. Instead, he asked, "What's it like to be a parent?"

"It changes everything in your life."

"That's what people keep saying to me. 'Scott, it's going to change your whole life!' Maybe I don't want my life changed, dammit." He stood up abruptly and glanced around to see if any of the students might have overheard him, but they were on their way out. It left Grace and Scott alone in the stable. "I guess that sounds selfish."

"It's not selfish," she said. "It's realistic. Babies are selfish ­ the most selfish creatures in the world. You never get to sleep late in the morning and sometimes you can't even go pee because they need something right now and it can't wait. Your clothes smell like sour milk and I won't even go into projectile vomiting." His smile at that was so brief, she almost missed it. "You wipe their nose and clean their ass and love them more than you can possibly imagine. I used to wake in the middle of the night just to go check on her in her crib, see if she was breathing. It seemed silly." Eyes still averted, she put a hand to her mouth. "But one night, she wasn't breathing."

He dropped the curry comb and came to hug her. "I'm so sorry, Gracie." He hesitated, then said, "The professor told us, the first night you were here. He didn't say much about it, though."

She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of horse and man, wood and hay, let her fingers climb his solid back for what comfort he could give her. "I used to tell myself I was being paranoid, getting up to check on her three times in a night. The night she died, I knew something was wrong but I laid in bed until it was too late." She bit her lip. He stroked her hair. "I tried to make her breathe, but I couldn't. You see your baby not breathing and your mind just . . . stops. My brother ran all the way into town, to find a phone. It took almost an hour and a half before they got her into an emergency room; she was already cold by that point. They told me there wasn't nothing I could have done, and nothing I did wrong. It was just SIDS. That don't matter, ain't it? My baby's dead and I couldn't save her."

"Shhh. You couldn't have known."

"But I did know. I didn't listen to my heart."

He put his hand over her lips, gentle. "Shhh." Then he just held her a while, rocked her. She cried, because it was six years ago and it still hurt. Maybe he cried, too, but behind his glasses it was hard to tell. Her remembered sorrow had woken his own fresh, and he was all awash in blue grief. She rubbed his back and thought that it probably helped him to be able to comfort her and be held himself in turn. He wouldn't ask for it, but he needed it. His fingers slid through her hair. "What was her name?" he asked after awhile.

She smiled against his soft shirt. "Jean."

The fingers stilled a moment, then he resumed stroking her hair. "Is that why you fought so hard, two weeks ago?"

"No. I fought because I'm pejuta win ­ a medicine woman ­ and the spirits called on me to heal, gave me a gift." She could sense his doubt of her denial, pulled back to look up at him. "My Jean wasn't yours."

"She's not my Jean any more."

"Yes, she is. She will always be your Jean here." She reached up to tap his forehead. "The past doesn't go away because the present is different."

He pulled away from her. "Some things in the past are better left there."

"So they can haunt you like bad spirits? You think you let go of things, forget them, but you clutch them so tight. They shadow you. I don't think you've ever let go of anything in your life."

"Not for lack of trying," he said, voice sardonic as he returned to currying his black-bay. The horse's name was Bucephalas, a name that had meant nothing to her but which had made him blush a little when he'd told her. So she'd looked it up later. It was the name of Alexander the Great's horse. He had his arrogancies. She'd known that. At least he could also recognize and laugh at them.

"You try the wrong way," she said now. "You try to let go by forgetting. That don't work."

"Is that why you never let me forget that I'm a white man?" Black bitterness beneath that, and his strokes on the black horsehide were harsh.

"Yes," she answered. He stopped abruptly and turned to face her. He hadn't expected that answer. Orange surprise. "The past is in the present, Scott. I am my ancestors. Until you understand that, you can't understand me. I wish you would quit trying forget that you are a white man. You feel so guilty, and so you try to forget. But I don't want you to forget."

"Why? So we can play white man and Indian? You want me to dress up in a cowboy hat so you can wear beads and feathers?"

"You know better than that."

"No, I don't! I don't know what you want from me! I am so tired of being a 'white man' with you! I am sick and tired of being blamed for everything fucking wrong in the world! I didn't do it! I'd change it if I could, but I can't! So quit blaming me!"

He hadn't raised his voice, but the force of the words and his anger and his pain still cut through. She sighed and sat down on the cold ground, wrapped a piece of hay around her fingers. He continued to glare down at her; she couldn't see his eyes but she could feel the glare. He'd been holding back his anger for a while. And she had been holding back hers. It was time to end it. "I don't blame you, Scott."

"Coulda fooled me."

"Shut up and listen. White men never listen to us! That's part of the problem!"

His jaw hardened and he squatted down so that they were hidden from anyone who might chance to look in the stables. "Okay, fine. I'm listening."

"You are your ancestors. I am my ancestors. Sioux people got long memories."

He held up a hand. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but let me say one thing. I am not my ancestors. I am me ­ Scott Summers. Please see me."

Such a predictable answer. She smiled and reached out to grip the hand, pull him down onto his knees. She didn't let go. "Tell me again, how you learned to speak Italian? Tell me again, why your Jewish-Catholic grandmother still talks to her mutant grandson? And I bet it pisses you off when you hear someone say, 'They bargain like a Jew.'"

That stopped him cold.

"See?"

"It's not the same. I don't consider myself Jewish or Italian, either one, I just had some Jewish Italian forebears. It gave me wavy dark hair. I am an American. And I don't approve of what was done to your people, Grace. It was terrible, and it was wrong. But I didn't do it."

She sighed again. "Where is this place?"

"Huh?"

"Westchester ­ where is it?"

"Salem Center, New York."

She shook her head. "A white name on a white map. You're standing ­ or kneeling just now ­ on Iroquois land. Before it was Salem Center, native feet walked here, native bones are buried here. It's Iroquois land and the people and the land are one. But the Iroquois are not here any more, ain't it? The only Ind'ns here are an Apache and a Lakota, and we're the guests. A white mans owns it. A single person, not a people. Don't ­ !" She could see him start to protest in defense of Xavier. "I am not blaming the professor. He knows. He understands. That's why I stayed here, or one of the reasons. I like him. He has a good soul ­ not selfish. He opened this place to a hundred relatives of his, called mutants. Just like an Ind'n. I honor that. It took me a while to see it, or really, to believe it, but I do now. I honor him. I think that maybe, even, I want to be a part of his vision.

"But what I'm trying to get across is this: when the white man came, we shared the land. We didn't need it all, to live, so we offered to share. It's the Ind'n way. We made treaties because the white man wanted pieces of paper to hold onto, sometimes we fought wars. But mostly, the wars came later, after the treaties. Did you know, not one treaty signed by the United States has been honored in full? Broken treaties, every one. The Indian givers where never the Indians. They lied, and lied and lied. They took and they took. They carved white faces on a mountain in our sacred land. Paha Sapa. The Black Hills. You think Mount Rushmore was an accident? It was a deliberate slap in the face to remind us who won and who lost. They lied and they took and they crushed us, and the white man ranchers still hate us, hate the little 'prairie niggers' whose land they stole and cheated away. We make them feel guilty, so some of them kill us for sport. Saturday night fun. Go beat up some old Indian man, rape some red girl. It still happens. Right now. In the Twenty-First Century. Read Custer Died for Your Sins, Scott; read In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. I'll loan you my copies. Then you won't wonder why I have such a hard time believing you speak the truth. I wouldn't believe at all, except that I can feel it in you. You're a good man, a kind man, like Xavier. You're honest. And as I told you the first night I was here ­ I like you because you have a sense of humor, and you can feel guilt."

"I'm tired of feeling guilt, Gracie."

"Then quit."

"You won't let me."

"Yes, I will. What I won't let you do is forget that you're a wasicun. That's not the same thing. I need to forgive your ancestors in you so we can get past it. I want to love you, but I can't until I can quit seeing your white skin and hating it. I don't hate you, though. You asked me to see you, and I do. I've learned to see you. I've learned to remember what wasicun first meant. It's a complicated word, in Lakota. It means white man ­ and it's not a compliment. But it means holy man, too, power being. Wakan means holy. White is a holy color, and when the white man first came to us, we called him wakan because his skin was white. But he wasn't holy. He lied and he cheated and he butchered us."

He shook his head. "The worst devils come with angel faces." Then he looked at her again, head tilted sideways. "I told you, Grace. I'm sorry for what my people did to yours."

She smiled and cupped his cheek with her hand. "Close your eyes, white man." Then she reached up to remove his glasses, fold them and place them in his fingers. She knew it made him nervous to have his glasses out of reach. He knelt patient, trusting, and let her run light palms over his skin. His pale, white skin. "The worst devils may come with angel faces, but sometimes so do angels. Wakan man. Wasicun. Bearer of powers. You have lightening in your eyes, like the Thunderbirds. There are four great Thunderbirds: black, red, blue and yellow. But you are white. Wakinyan ska. And maybe I am witko ­ crazy ­ but I trust you, Thunderbird Eyes. I believe in you."

He smiled, shy, and went from white man to red. "I like the sound of that better than Cyclops. Thunderbird Eyes."

"What? Going to change your code name?"

"Nah. 'Thunderbird Eyes' is too long." They laughed, then she kissed him ­ not passionate, not full of desire, like that evening in the garage. She kissed him gentle, with lips closed, because touch was strong medicine too, like laughter. They touched lips and bare faces, white skin to copper, and healed. That night, he didn't cry himself to sleep. Instead, she wound up on his side of the wall with Jean's baby pictures. They went through them together, then she listened to him play while she read a book off his stack on the floor. She got him to play "Josie" instead of "Deacon Blues," and it was much better to hear bass and voice along with the CD. But she slept in her own bed, and he slept in his.
  
  
  

When Gracie's room had become hub-central for the older students, she wasn't sure. It had probably been Rogue and John Proudstar who had begun it, but now it seemed they all trooped through at odd hours. She didn't mind. As she had told John, the place had needed three broken chairs, six dogs and a dozen relatives before it was a real Ind'n room. She doubted she could find three broken chairs in the whole mansion and the dogs were a lost cause, but she had a dozen little cousins. When Scott had first moved in next door, the traffic had tapered off for a few days. They weren't too sure what to make of having Mr. Summers a wall away, especially when they had crawled up the trellis (or just flown) to get into Gracie's window with their contraband. She kept it for them: Warren's copies of Maxim, cigars St. John had pilfered from Logan, Rogue's adult romance novels, Jubilee's Red Hot Chili Peppers CD that shouldn't have been sold to a minor in the first place. But no alcohol. The one time Bobby had tried to bring beer into her room, she'd taken the pack of Coors and thrown it out the window as far as she could. That had ended that.

Scott knew about it. The kids weren't the only ones who hung out in her room, though he was less obvious about it, partly to spare Jean, partly for his own reasons. He'd discovered the copies of Maxim and leafed through them, half laughing and more than half interested in the half-dressed women (something he tried to hide and failed). But he hadn't said a word, hadn't asked to whom they belonged, just like he never said anything about her sitting in the windowsill to smoke with the glass open. She wasn't supposed to, but it was too cold to go out. And the Coors she'd thrown out the window had disappeared from the lawn before she'd had a chance to fetch and throw it away herself. The kids thought he was a bit dense perhaps, but he let them, because Gracie and Scott shared a theory on the contraband. In his words, "It's good that someone knows what they're up to." He trusted her with their secrets, just as the kids did, trusted her to know when to put her foot down. But he never showed up in her room when the kids were there. "Why don't you come over?" she asked him once. "Hang out with us. It might be good for them to see you 'off duty.'"

He'd been reading a book ­ Dune ­ for, he said, the fifth time, lying on his back on her bed, while she sat beside him and watched. She liked just to watch him sometimes. Now, he moved the book a bit so he could see her face. "They talk to you. Me being here would spoil that. They think I'm a dork."

"And you're not?"

He hit her with the book, then returned his attention to it. "They listen to you because they think you might actually know something about sex, drugs and rock-n-roll."

"And you are afraid that if they realized how much you know about it, it would ruin your reputation."

He grinned without looking away from the page. "Something like that. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt ­ but I'd rather they didn't know. Otherwise, they might work harder at hiding things and I couldn't catch them as quick. Now, they think it's just dumb luck on my part."

She laughed and stretched out beside him, "They don't really think you're a dork, you know. No man who flies a black jet and drives a black Harley is a 'dork' to a male under twenty, ain't it?" He poked her in the side but didn't otherwise reply. Smiling, she rolled away and went to sleep. She wasn't even sure when he left, but he turned out the bedside light for her.

The weekend before fall finals, the kids had gathered in her room for their usual Saturday afternoon kibitz: both Johns, Warren, Kitty, Jubilee and Rogue ­ Logan, too, though he usually had better things to do than 'mingle with the monkeys' as he put it (not in their hearing). His presence, in fact, explained Bobby's absence. Bobby wasn't at all sure that Logan approved of his interest in Rogue. Gracie thought that Logan wasn't sure himself.

Jubilee flipped through an issue of Cosmo, checking out holiday fashions for the school Christmas party (fashions she couldn't afford), Rogue was painting her toenails, and Kitty studied history. The three boys were sitting in a circle on the floor, attempting to catch up on math homework before the final. "I said I'd pay you seventy bucks for your answers, Jube." That from Warren. "Then you could buy that awful black leather dress you keep oogling."

"Kiss off, flyboy," was her answer and the Johns, in concert: "Do your own homework, Warren."

"Where's Mr. Summers anyway?" Warren asked. He kept reaching behind himself to scratch his wings, dislodge a few more contour feathers each time. Worse than a shedding cat. She'd never expected to vacuum up after molting angels.

"Danger Room," Logan answered him. He was sitting in Gracie's usual spot on the window sill so he could have a cigar. "Flight simulator, last I checked, blasting out his eardrums with ZZ Top while he tries to keep from getting shot out of the virtual sky."

"He listens to ZZ Top?" Jubilee asked, raising her head. "That is so un-Mr. Summers."

"No, it's not," Rogue said. "He listens to everything. Have you seen his collection of CDs?"

"When were you in his room to see his collections of CDs?" Kitty asked, wide-eyed. "What were you doing in his room to see his collection of CDs?" Rogue didn't reply, just raised a finger.

"If he's in the Danger Room," Warren said, "I could fly out Gracie's window and into his, to look for the test."

"You gotta get past me first," Logan replied, mildly. Despite his reputation for trouble, Logan had little patience for cheating, at least when cheating was the result of laziness.

Warren sighed and went back to his homework. "I am so dead," he muttered. "I don't see why I shouldn't go look for the test. He'd never know."

"Angels rush in when even fools know better," Logan told him. "First, I doubt you could get in. He ain't Gracie. He locks his doors and latches his windows because he's anal. Second, you'd probably leave your goddamn feathers all over his furniture and he'd have to be even dimmer than he is, not to figure that one out. And three, do you really think he's got the friggin' test in his bedroom? Don't be an ass. It's locked up in his office, probably in the bottom of a desk drawer with something else on top of it."

Warren was staring at him in astonishment. "How do you know all that?"

Logan just shook his head. "Because I ain't stupid, and neither's One-Eye.

The spectre of a Logan complimenting Scott ­ however backhanded ­ left all the kids with open mouths. Logan finished his smoke calmly, flicked the butt out the window, then sauntered out with a casual, "Later, Marie, Gracie. The rest of you uns, study hard, eh?"

Gracie stifled a laugh, and after the kids finally left, spent fifteen minutes picking up feathers. She started to throw them away, but then got a better idea and collected them all in a little baggie.
  
  
  

There was to be a party on Thursday night, after the last test was given. Then the kids who had families would vamoose to the four corners of the country, and some of the kids who didn't have families would go with them. John Proudstar was going home with Warren, of all people. Bobby had offered to take Rogue, but she'd declined politely, gentle on his heart, and chose to remain at the mansion. Where Logan was. Gracie found that funny, said something to Scott about it. He'd smiled and shrugged with one shoulder. But Gracie didn't think he minded the fact that Logan might have someone around to distract him from his pursuit of Jean ­ such as it was.

Logan hadn't counted on a Jean-with-child, and he vacillated now between approach and repel. Gracie could feel it. He was more considerate than people would have expected. It was Logan who had driven to the grocery store at ten one evening, in the rain, to fetch Jean the kale greens that she'd desperately wanted when none were found in Valeria's stores. He made her camomile tea for her 'morning' sickness (which invariably struck around four in the afternoon), and he showed up in the lab after lunch to make her go lay down and take a nap. It was clear that he knew something about pregnancy, though how he knew, even he didn't seem to recall. Grace watched his strong protective reaction to Rogue, and his knowledge of what would help Jean, and wondered what age his own children were now. She had little doubt that he had them. When she made a passing remark to the professor, Xavier had simply nodded and smiled faintly.

But beyond that, Logan made no overtures. And Jean didn't seem entirely certain if she wanted a wolverine, now that she could have him. Coyote Woman was shy and skittish. But coyotes and wolverines were both predators, and as much as Jean Grey might find comfort in Scott ­ strong and young and powerful like an elk, protector of women ­ she was looking for another predator. Her education and upper class background should have put her in a completely different world. It didn't. Logan was better educated than he pretended, and exhibited far less intimidation in her company than Scott ever had. Grace had heard him say once, "I'm damn good at what I do. It's just that what I do ain't very nice." He had a bone-deep confidence in himself that came from age and experience. One day, Scott would, too. But he didn't yet. And maybe it made sense that the living weapon should lay his heart in the hands of a doctor. The power of opposites, as Gracie had told Scott once.

Scott gave his finals on Tuesday, showed up in the school office at ten on Wednesday morning, dressed in his riding leathers, and tossed her a spare leather jacket of his own. "I need to get out of here. I'm going stir-crazy. Come on."

She stared at him. She'd been in the midst of running off copies for Ororo. "I can't leave now. Ro has a test in an hour." She held up the test in question.

He came over and looked through the stack. "She's doing these now? Why didn't she do them yesterday?"

"Probably because she did not have it written?"

Had she been able to see his eyes, she was sure he'd have rolled them. "A failure to plan ahead on her part does not constitute an emergency on yours. Let her run her own damn copies."

"You want me to let Ro run copies so you can play hooky? Do you have a fever?" She put the back of her hand up to his head.

He pulled away. "I planned ahead."

"You're such a white man."

He started to snap, but saw she was grinning. He grinned back. "You told me to be more spontaneous. Okay, I'm being spontaneous."

"You planned ahead to be spontaneous? Well, be spontaneous in half an hour. Where are we going anyway?"

"My secret. And I'll remember you said that. Irresponsible white man meets responsible Indian woman." She laughed and chased him out, finished Ororo's copies and met him in the garage. He had the bike. She climbed on back and they took off, her arms wrapped around his chest. He made her wear a helmet.

It was a pleasant drive at first, despite the cold, but after a while, her arms tired and she needed to pee. It was taking them a long time to get wherever it was they were going. She made him take a break at a truck-stop complex off I-95. They ate lunch in the Wendys and while he got gas, she bought cigarettes at the convenience store beside it, smoked one and hid the rest in the pocket of her shirt. These days, she tried not to smoke around him. When they'd been only friends, he'd put up with it. Now, it had become the wedge between. Never did he say a word; he knew her culture wasn't his, her view of tobacco wasn't his. She'd been smoking since she was thirteen. Everyone in her family did. But he couldn't hide his reactions from her any more than he could keep from coughing a little. Seeing her light up repelled him at some fundamental level. It was the one thing about her that he really couldn't take, and Gracie knew, better than most, how much gut reaction undercut intellectual rationalizations. He loved her, but he hated her smoking, and he hated even more the fact that he couldn't get past it.

Something was going to have to give. While in the convenience store, she picked up a pack of nicotine-gum and considered buying it, then saw the price tag and put it back. Maybe later.

They wound up at the beach. He pulled into a public parking lot and cut the engine. She could see down the bank to a thin strip of sand, and then blue-grey, white caps and gulls and the low arc of a pelican. She could smell the salt even from here. "My god," she whispered. He looked around and smiled at her.

"You like?"

She didn't bother to reply, didn't take her eyes off the ocean as she took the helm off her hair and handed it to him, so he could secure their belongings. She had no idea where they were and even had he told her the name, it would have meant nothing. But it was somewhere in the amoebic urban sprawl called New York and he wasn't leaving their stuff for anybody to walk off with. When he was done, they walked down to the water and sat on the sand. It was freezing and a little snow hid in the shadows cast by the embankment rise. Yet even in mid-December, the public strip wasn't deserted. A few other people walked by. One elderly man with a little mop dog was flying a kite; she smiled to see it.

"Do you like your Christmas present?" he said after a while.

"Yes. Thank you."

After a long time, he spoke. "I went to high school in Southern California so in the summer, I was at the beach at least every other weekend. Lots of yellow sand. Lots of girls." He grinned. "But you know, I like New York beaches better, at least ones like this that are off the beaten track. I don't know why."

"Because it's still wild. Or more wild."

"Maybe that's it."

"Where in Southern California?"

"San Deigo. My father retired there after SAC closed."

"SAC?"

"Strategic Air Command. He was Air Force. I was born in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, while he was stationed at Eglin."

"You're a rare breed ­ a real Florida native."

"No, a military brat. Where you're born doesn't mean much. We moved five times before I was ten, wound up in Omaha, at Offut, then out to San Deigo after SAC closed in '92 and he retired."

"Do you still talk to him?"

"Not if I can help it. Not if he can help it. I think we've said maybe ten words to each other since I left home to come here ­ after I turned from Mister All-Star Volleyball into laser-shooting mutant at my senior prom. Talk about a night to remember." He snorted. "I still talk to my mom sometimes, at holidays. My brother pretends I don't exist, hopes that if he sticks his head far enough in the sand, I'll go away. Or maybe he just thinks he can see out his ass, I don't know."

Gracie laughed a little, though his humor was vicious and full of his pain. "Your brother's not a mutant, too?"

"Christ! That would be priceless." He laughed without humor. "No, Alex isn't a mutant. Not to my knowledge. If he is, he hides it well."

"My brother is."

He glanced at her sharply. "There are two of you? Why didn't he come here with you?"

"Because he's in prison."

That stopped him. He looked back out to sea, tried to figure out what to say. "He was arrested for manslaughter," she explained so he didn't have to ask. "Victor can't kill a squirrel; he sure as hell didn't kill a man. But he's Indian, and they tried him for it in South Dakota. He didn't have a prayer."

"What's his power?" Scott asked instead.

"He's a Red Doctor Doolittle."

"What?"

"He talks to animals. Sorta. What the professor and Jean do with people, he does with animals."

"Cool."

Having lived so long in the normal world, it still took her a little aback to hear someone accept her and Victor's gifts with such offhanded aplomb. They stayed at the beach another hour until their fingers and noses were frozen, then headed back, ate dinner at a Cuban restaurant he knew in Spanish Harlem, called L'Bamba. The food wasn't nearly as bad as the name and the patrons were all as brown as her. Even without his glasses, he stood out like a sore thumb, didn't seem to mind. It was, she supposed later, their first real date.
  
  
  

Xavier's Christmas party was the kids' excuse to dress up once a year. Grace hadn't thought to bring anything that would qualify as evening wear, even if she'd owned something. But part of being secretary did include a paycheck, and Ororo, Jubilee and Rogue had dragged her shopping, played dress-up with her like a Barbie doll, or maybe kachina doll would be closer to it. But no kachina doll she'd ever seen wore a red washcloth that passed for a dress. She spent three days beading something for herself, for a change. Scarlet beads on elastic string to go around her neck, and inch-long bugle beads on the bottom of the dress' skimpy hem. The night of the party she combed her hair with sage to scent it but left it down ­ an Indian's pride was her hair ­ and put on liner to make her long Sioux cat eyes longer. She wore nothing but the dress, the little scarlet-bead choker, and red velvet strap shoes that Ororo had insisted she buy and which Gracie thought might break her ankle.

Scott spilt punch when she walked into the ballroom with Ororo, luckily not on his nice suit. It was such a cliche it was funny, and Logan laughed at him. But it was Jean's double-take that Grace had played for. Silly and juvenile, but there it was. She smiled to herself. It might be worth a broken ankle to prove that one didn't have to be tall and leggy to stop traffic. No self-respecting Lakota girl showed this much shoulder and knee; the rag-of-a-dress made her feel deliciously slutty. Scott brought her a glass of punch and leaned in to whisper in her ear. "What the hell are you trying to do? Give me a heart attack? Where'd you get that?"

"Ororo. She took me shopping."

"Ah." That was all she'd needed to say. The kids called Ororo part-time Storm Goddess, part time Fashion Queen. He sat down beside her on the foot of the spiral staircase, out of the way where they could student-watch. He looked every inch Xavier's protégé and heir, tonight. Old money sheen, except for the high-tech shades. He even had cuff links. Little Xs, of course ­ gold. She'd never seen a man actually wear cuff links. The mansion ballroom was the sort of grand old New England affair with red carpet, imported marble floors, crystal chandeliers and an ambient temperature about equal to the Great Plains in January. With the heating on. Gracie's nipples poked through thin scarlet silk and she damned his glasses since he could stare at her chest all night and she wouldn't know it. But she could feel the blood roaring in his head, wondered if he'd get around to doing anything about it or play the gentleman. She decided that if he didn't try, she'd scalp him.

"God, I'm freezing."

"Want my jacket?"

"Then you'll freeze."

"No, I won't." He took it off and draped it around her shoulders.

"When are you going to do your little presentation?" she asked after a bit.

"About half an hour. Before the DJ shows up." He glanced over at her. "You like to dance?"

She just howled. Not very lady-like, but honest. "You're asking an Indian if she likes to dance?"

"Dumb question?"

"Just a little."

"Shows what I know."

"I'll teach you."

"I expect you to, Sioux Woman." At some point, he'd picked up John Proudstar's nickname for her. She liked it better on his lips.

He checked his pocket watch periodically and (maybe) stole glances at her chest. She studied his fine profile and the mill of students. Momentary excitement buzzed when Jubilee the Sparkler somehow managed to catch the corner of a white tablecloth on fire. Before Scott could even move, Bobby had put it out with his ice-touch. "You know," she said to Scott from their vista on the stairs, "you can put a opposum in gold lame, but it's still going to hiss like a opposum."

He spit punch out his nose, got red dots all over his white shirt sleeves and stood up. "I've got to get away from you before you make me ruin my clothes."

She grinned up at him and handed him his jacket. "Put it back on. It'll hide the stains."

He did as she said, tugged his sleeves straight, and fled to Xavier. Logan, Ororo and Jean joined them, and they all consulted in low voices, grinning, prepared to unveil their surprise.

The X-Men stepped back and Xavier clapped his hands to get the students' attention. They quieted down with admirable alacrity. "For some time now," he began, "this school has offered a haven for our kind. Also for some time now, the hostility against our kind has been rising. A man who was once my friend spoke to me of war. I spoke to him of peace." They were all very quiet. This wasn't the usual Christmas speech. "Unfortunately, peace sometimes requires at least the threat of force, and you all know that your teachers here do more than teach. They risk their lives in the protection of us all." He glanced at Scott, who was staring at the floor. All the students here knew about the X-Men, but Xavier rarely spoke of it in public, even at the school. Silence was sometimes the best protection. But that was going to have to change, Scott had told Gracie.

"If, indeed, a war is coming, as Magneto threatened, we shall need more than a few to stand for peace. For the most part, our graduates have gone out into the world to fight quieter battles. Hearts and minds cannot be changed by legislation, or by armed force. They are changed by human beings. By human stories. By friendship, and love. In no way do I want to lessen the importance of the ones who choose the quiet battle. They may have it hardest, in the trenches of the mundane.

"But it has been brought to my attention that several of our graduating students have expressed an interest in joining Cyclops' team of ­ as you yourselves named them ­ X-Men. Cyclops? Storm?"

Scott and Ororo were pulling out a small wheeled wardrobe. Gracie watched John Proudstar and his crowd of friends. All of them were sitting up straighter. Anticipation flowed like quicksilver. Xavier continued, and a smile played now around his mouth. "The X-Men are not a team meant to fight a war. They are a team meant to prevent one. Thus, it seems appropriate to induct our newest trainees at that time of year when, at least here in the West, we speak of 'Peace on Earth.' That is your job, my young friends. The X-Men exist to bring peace on earth.

"Now, will the following please stand? St. John Allerdyce. Robert Drake. Jubilation Lee . . . ."

They hopped up like popcorn, grinning madly.

". . . . John Proudstar. Katherine Pryde. Marie called Rogue. And Warren Worthington, III."

More popcorn. Grace put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile. They were so eager.

"Will you seven please come forward. Cyclops?" Scott opened the wardrobe. X-Men uniforms. Black leather but with a white stripe around the mandarin collar and down the front beside the zipper, marking them trainees. There was a great buzz in the room now as the seven chosen ones trooped to the front, trying not to trip each other in their haste. Bobby and St. John shared a high five.

"You're not X-Men yet," Scott told them as they eyed the uniforms with a mixture of glee and plain longing. "Don't get cocky. You've got a lot of work to do before the white stripe comes off and I take you on any missions. And I'm not going to be your teacher."

They glanced at each other, glanced at Storm, who was ostensibly Scott's second. "Not Storm, either," he said, watched them figure it out as eyes swivelled to Logan. Grace could almost see St. John mutter, Oh, shit. Scott was trying very hard not to laugh. He was enjoying this entirely too much. There was something shining in him tonight. It was his vision, too, not just Xavier's. He might one day have to watch one of them, or even all of them, die in pursuit of that vision. Or they might lose him to it. But for now, death seemed very far away, and there would be a better time to remind them all just how close it was. Before the braves had used to go to war, they had danced and sung and called down the help of the spirits. And it was a Lakota saying: "Today is a good day to die." Or to live, and hope, and dream.

"We're putting you together to train as pairs," Scott went on now, warming to the nuts and bolts. Xavier made inspiring speeches like the old war chiefs. Scott got the job done. "You won't be getting out of classwork for this. You'll be starting your training in January, in addition to your classwork. Capisci? Now." He turned, took two uniforms from Ororo and checked the names in the back. "Drake and Allerdyce." They stepped forward to be handed black leather. Ororo offered two more. "Proudstar and Worthington." The one meant for Warren was obvious; it had an X strap instead of a back. The one for John looked like the others ­ until one saw the Xs on the collar. Gracie had added that touch. The colors of the Apache directions at each compass point: black, white, yellow, blue. He grinned when he saw that.

The girls were next. "Kitty Pryde and Jubilee." They took their uniforms. That left Rogue standing alone. Scott grinned at her. "You're a little bit of a problem." But it was said with the kind of humor that turned her handicap into an inside joke.

She blushed and glanced at Logan. "I guess I'll have to train by myself?"

"That wasn't what we had in mind," Logan told her. And he had hold of two uniforms. One he handed to Rogue. "We got only one person around here able to train with you, Marie."

Gracie understood. She understood even before Logan had raised his eyes to find her sitting on the staircase sidelines. "Winchinchala, get your little red ass in your little red dress over here and take your uniform."

There was a burst of shocked giggles at his language as much as, no doubt, at the look on her face. Scott was laughing and Ororo was trying not to. Even Jean Grey looked surprisingly placid about it all ­ more so than Scott had once felt about Logan's addition.

She didn't know what to do. She'd intended to stay here, but not to join the X-Men. She wasn't a fighter. She was just the secretary, dammit. And she liked it that way. But they'd all plotted this ­ every single one of them had known it was coming, she could tell. And they'd known better than to let Scott be the one to rope her in. She'd have told him to go to hell. But she had to listen to Logan. He was an elder, in a manner of speaking. So she stalked over and took her uniform. "I heal bruises," she snapped. "I don't give them."

"We know," Logan said mildly. "We don't intend for you to really fight, Winchinchala. But we need you as a healer, and the Boy Scout wants to be sure you know how to defend yourself."

"Let him try to touch my ass tonight after this," she hissed back, "and he'll see how well I can defend myself."

Logan roared, which baffled the rest but served them right, as far as Gracie was concerned.