Heyoka: THE ADVENT OF GRACE
by Minisinoo
Summary: A new arrival at Westchester sets Scott Summer´s well-ordered life all a pother. And I don´t mean the return of Logan. The school gets a secretary, Rogue gets a big sister, Jean Grey gets what she wants for Christmas, and Cyclops gets a grace note in his days. And everybody gets a little fry bread on the side. The first in a series of short novels under the general title Heyoka.
Warning: This story contains adult situations, and deals with the games people play in relationships. It pulls no punches, and the level of graphic description is on a par with published adult mainstream fiction. All the usual suspects will appear; Logan fans be patient.
Feedback not only welcome, but craved. Or to quote a certain ill-behaved plant from another movie: FEED ME! Writing a full-scale novel (not just a short story) is a significant investment of time. If you read it, let me know. minisinoo@yahoo.com
Chapter One
Notes: Although this is movieverse, I do use some knowledge of the comics: we met a younger Bobby Drake, saw Kitty Pryde, Jubilee, John Allerdyce and (probably) John Proudstar. A few other familiar-from-the-comics names appear here, too. Different backstories for all, including Scott's. In the novelization, his parents are apparently alive and his power manifested while he was at his senior prom. Yet actor James Marsden didn't look the thirty-something required to have been seventeen in '86 (thus the book), so I cheerfully ignored that date. Assume he was a teen in the '90s. Even if fanfic authors often make him an English teacher, most of what we've seen him do suggests that he has good math skills. English teachers don't usually fly jet aircraft. ;>
Finally, one of the protags is an original character but as I detest Mary Sues, Gracie doesn't save the universe single-handedly, isn't a mega-powerful mutant, a brilliant scientist, or a kick-ass fighter. She's not even beautiful, much less always right. Perfect characters are dull that includes superheros. Scott has his faults, but I loved the dry humor Marsden (and the script) gave to Cyclops, so I took that and ran with it. He is definitely not a dweeb here. (PETS people applaud me, please.) I´ve introduced an original character for a reason. She's a catalyst. I´ve read a good deal of filmfic which presents Jean and Scott as breaking up, broken up, or about to break up, and most of it seems to gloss over the break-up part. But it´s the break-up part that interests me. Why do relationships fall apart? How do the small silences and little dishonesties breed in the dark until they kill love? That's what this story is really about.
Does that make this angst-fic? I don´t know. Parts of it are painful, to be sure. But other parts are meant to be funny. Native people have known for a long time that the best way to heal pain is by laughing at it. That´s one of the purposes of the heyoka – the sacred clown. He (or she) keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously. Seems to me that Scott Summers could use a heyoka around sometimes.
"The storm child will come for you today."
Gracie glanced around to where her grandmother was methodically filling beading trays with myriad bright dots of color. Blood red, water blue, yellow like the sun at noon, and a black as deep as a crow's wing. Black like her mood. She turned back to the window, stared out at swirling snow. A near-blizzard in mid-September. Strange weather, but not unheard of. These were the plains. "She will have to be a storm child, to get through this, Unchi."
The woman shrugged. "Come hold these new ropes while I slip the beads off."
Gracie obeyed. Wind sang across the tin roof, off-tune with the hum of the space heater near her grandmother's feet. She could almost forget the future, exist in the now. As far as she was concerned, the future could wait indefinitely. At one point, the old woman's hand slipped and she sliced paper-thin old skin on the sharp plastic edge of a bead tray. Blood bright pain. Gracie reached across to lay a hand on the cut. It closed, left a small red streak on wrinkled brown. "Thank you, takoja," the old woman said.
Less than five minutes later, there was a knock on the door. "I told you," the old woman said. Gracie simply stood and went to answer the knock.
Outside, the snow had parted to form a jagged circle around a white haired woman. Despite the hair, her skin was as dark as Gracie's own and she wore a black leather uniform of some kind, silver-lined cape straining in blizzard winds. Either those clothes were warmer than they looked, or she was vain to the point of foolishness. Little Xs adorned her collar like lopsided medicine wheels. Gracie opened the door wider and gestured her in, closed it behind. The strange woman was smoothing snarls from her hair with a brown hand, letting that action cover an examination of the five-room HUD house with its cracks in wall plaster, yellowed linoleum flooring, boards over a broken window, and duc-tape mended furniture. The woman was young, maybe a year or so older than Gracie. Victor's age. Uncertainty radiated off her in waves. Gracie's grandmother had disappeared into the small kitchen and now re-emerged with black coffee, a bowl of chili and the ubiquitous fry bread, placed it on the table, spoke in English. "Sit down and eat, storm child."
The stranger gave the old woman a double-take, but did as instructed. She didn't speak until she was done; the setting must have thrown her. This wasn't a woman accustomed to poverty, Gracie decided. She held herself stiff in the chair, awkward. When she had finished her soup, she said, "That was incredibly good. Thank you. My name is Storm."
"No, it's not," Gracie replied.
The stranger blinked. "Well, my real name is Ororo Munroe. But I'm called Storm." She had the slight accent of one whose native language wasn't English, but there was no hesitation in her speech, no mental search for words. She'd been speaking English a long time. "I'm a mutant," she added softly, "Like you."
Gracie sat down at the table and folded her hands together on the formica top. "I'm a healer."
The woman's features were delicate with wide dark eyes, her expression pulled now into schooled sympathy. "I know it is a lot to take in "
"Hush." Gracie's grandmother came forward to lay a hand on Gracie's shoulder. "In your world, our Grace is a mutant. A freak. In ours, she is lila wakan. More than human. Holy. We do not fear this as the white man does."
"It is not just white men. I was born in Kenya, but when my powers manifested, my tribe would have killed me. There is a place Grace can go where she'll be accepted, not have to live in fear."
"I don't live in fear. This is my home; I don't want to leave it. Indians do not do well away from home." But she wasn't really talking to Ororo. She glanced around at her grandmother.
The old woman gave her back a small shove. "It is time for the eaglet to fly. My dreams say so, Hal Mad Dog's dreams say so. She is ours; she will always be ours. But for a time, we loan her to you. An act of wolakota. Peace and friendship. And hope. Your professor is always speaking of hope, ain't he? Wovoka taught us that, too. Mata sitomni ukiye the whole world is coming, he said. Or maybe a new world. We danced for it. Now we send our Grace to you. She will teach you how to dance. Our people don't know much, maybe, but we know how to pray and we know how to dance."
Ororo's mood was oscillating between orange astonishment and powder-blue confusion. "Are you both mutants? How do you know these things about Professor Xavier?"
"I'm a dreamer and a namer," the old woman said, smiling. She had sat down again and returned to separating beads. "The spirits speak to me because I listen."
Ororo blinked; she was buying every word of it. Gracie bit her cheek to stop a laugh. "Unchi "
Her grandmother went on smoothly over top of Gracie's pleading, "Your professor also called us before he sent you to fetch Grace."
Two blinks from Ororo this time. She slowly realized that she'd been had, struggled to decide if she was more amused by that or more angry, settled on amused.
"We know all about this Westchester school," Gracie's grandmother finished. "You can sleep here tonight and take Gracie in the morning. She will be ready then."
"But the rental And we have tickets for a flight out of Rapid City."
"Even you won't get nowhere in this. Airports will be closed. The Grandfather of the North speaks tonight and he is stronger than you, storm child. Fetch your things and sleep in Margie's bed Gracie's little sister. She works late. I have lots of soup and the dogs'll keep you warm."
Ororo seemed reluctant but finally nodded, rose up and went out. "You're wicked," Gracie said, when Ororo was gone. She had fallen back into Lakota again.
Her grandmother shrugged, smiled. They were silent a while, then the frustration that had been building in Gracie for two weeks finally burst out. "Why are you sending me away?"
"I am not. The Creator is. Nothing happens without a reason. These people need you."
"It's more than that. Whatever you told Ororo, the tribe doesn't want me here. I scare them."
Her grandmother started to protest but Gracie did a rude thing: she kept going. "Oh, it's not like mutants scare the white man. I know that. But I'm pejuta win and I still bleed once a month. I had a baby. They don't know what to make of that. I might change the Old Ways."
"You're a contrary, takoja. An upside-down, forward-backward girl. Hejoka."
Gracie smiled, but not with humor. "I'll keep that in mind, Unchi."
In fact, airports from Wyoming to Montana to the Dakotas were closed for two days due to the inclement weather, and Gracie and Ororo Munroe finally had to take a red-eye flight on Monday evening to arrive at that insane ring-around-the-rosie called JFK airport an hour after sunrise on Tuesday. A black limo picked them up and ferried them to Westchester outside the City. Gracie tried to appear unfazed by both the urban sprawl of New York and by the transport, even while she secretly ran fingers over smooth leather seats. If Ororo noticed, she didn't comment. They turned on Greymalkin Lane, drove through an open iron-spike gate with its placard that read, 'Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters." Beyond stretched acres of hardwood and green rolling lawns. Unlike the plains, weather here was mild, tarrying in "Indian Summer." How appropriate; Gracie laughed to herself. Chrysanthemums in rust and mustard lined the driveway up towards an enormous mansion and apple trees stitched a line along a pasture fence with a dozen horses out grazing. But all tame. Unnatural. White man made.
The limo let them out at the front door and they went immediately to the professor's study where he was waiting for them. Gracie didn't expect to like him much. He was a white man and he had money. Such men had never been the Indians' friend, even when they had thought they were. "In this, he is no wasicun, ain't it?" her grandmother had told her. "He is a mutant, and so are you."
In fact, he was unremarkable at first glance. A bald elderly fellow of sharp features, pinned in a leather-upholstered wheelchair. The part that mattered was a blank; she could get absolutely no sense of him at all, like staring into a mirror and seeing only herself. "Ms. Kills-his-Horse," he said in cultured British vowels. "Welcome to Westchester. I understand you had a long flight."
She nodded but kept her eyes on her feet. It was rude to stare at an Elder. Even if she didn't like him, she minded her manners.
Grace, look at me. The words echoed in her head. Involuntarily, she glanced up. His gaze held hers a moment, hazel eyes crinkled at the corners in lazy amusement and she felt his mind open for her in a way no one's ever had. A moment of contact that moved them beyond Brit and Sioux, rich and poor, conflicting roads and contrasting cultures, red blood on white snow at Cankpe Opi, the cries of the betrayed and the dying, the government agencies and the policies of assimilation, the despair and the alcohol and the boarding schools where they had tried to beat the Indian out of children. There would be none of that here. He had a stature of spirit like the old war chiefs. And honesty. He released her.
She took a startled breath as he turned to Ororo. "Storm, please show Ms. Kills-his-Horse to her room." Then to her, "We didn't know what you might need, so I'm afraid it's a bit bare. If you want for anything, tell Storm, or myself. This afternoon, I'll have someone come to show you around Westchester."
"I don't need much," she said. "But thank you, Tunkashila." Grandfather. Ororo led her out.
The halls all seemed the same: oak-wood paneling, imported marble floors, paintings in expensive heavy frames, lamps on lowboys instead of overhead institution lights. Tasteful but conspicuous wealth on a scale she had seen only in repeat episodes of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, never quite believed to be real. To her, a person's wealth was counted in relatives. Within three minutes, she was thoroughly turned around. The myth that Indians could always find their way was just that: a myth. She got lost if someone took her outside her own door and spun her about three times. As they walked, they passed young people coming and going. Students? All stared at Gracie like dogs appraising the newest bitch on the block. "How many people live here?" she asked Ororo.
The white-haired woman considered. "I'm not entirely sure. About seventy of us? That doesn't count the help, just the ones who live here. Scott or Jean could tell you how many for certain. Or the professor, of course."
"Who are Scott and Jean?"
"Dr. Jean Grey is our resident physician. She'll examine you late this afternoon. Scott Summers, called Cyclops, was the professor's first protégé. He is now one of the teachers here, along with Jean, the professor, Henry and myself. I teach history and humanities; Jean teaches biology and social sciences; Henry teaches chemistry and physics though at the moment, he is on sabbatical and the professor has been taking his classes. Normally, the professor teaches English; and Scott teaches math, applied sciences, and serves as our coach." The woman's pride in her fellows glowed gold like a rising sun, but a little mustard reservation muddied it. "Scott isn't long on patience, though. The students respect him, but walk carefully around him."
"I'll make all my questions short and sweet, then."
Glancing over, Ororo frowned. "It was a joke," Gracie said. Good lord, were they all so deadly serious? Maybe it was Ororo's fate to work at a constant language disadvantage, but she hadn't laughed much on the long trip back here, either. "That's not a lot of teachers," Grace added after a minute.
"This isn't a large school," Ororo explained. "But we do offer some small seminars, especially in languages. The professor teaches German, I do French, Scott does Italian, and Hank does Latin."
The two stopped finally outside an unremarkable wooden door, oak like the rest, five from the hall's end. Ororo slipped a card through the key lock, then handed the card to Gracie as the door snicked open. "Your room."
Gracie blinked. She could have fit her family's entire kitchen and living room in here. It held a bed big enough for four by Indian counting, a flat-screen TV and stereo, and a desk complete with computer system. She barely knew how to turn on a computer much less operate one.
Now, she walked in to drop her bag on the couch along one wall upholstered in tasteful-but-dull tan and looked in drawers. Ororo watched her pace around. She ended by the computer, touched the screen. "The professor said that if I needed anything, I should ask."
"Yes."
"Can I have a couple yellow legal pads and a pair of pens? You can get rid of this thing. Give it to somebody who knows what to do with it."
Bright flash of surprise from Ororo. "Well, I suppose I mean, I'll be sure that you get the paper. But someone will be happy to teach you to use a comp "
"I don't want to learn to use it."
"Oh. Umm. I'll talk to Dr. Xavier." She backed up a few steps. "I'll leave you to settle in, nap if you wish. In a couple hours, someone will come by to take you on a tour."
When Ororo was gone, Gracie flung herself down spread-eagled on the oversized bed. It rocked beneath her. Box springs! What a concept. There was air conditioning and central heat and a whole closet just for her. She bet the toilet didn't back up once a week and the shower had enough water pressure to get all the soap out of her hair, too.
She had availed herself of that shower which did indeed have water pressure and changed into clean clothes, even napped before anyone came for her. The knock was tentative. She opened the door. Outside stood a teenaged Indian boy. She covered her surprise with words. "Come in, Little Cousin."
He stood up straight, hands behind his back. When he got his full height, he'd be tall and broad in the shoulder. Now, he was just gangly. "John Proudstar. I'm supposed to show you around."
"I gathered that. I'm Grace Kills-his-Horse. Oglala Sioux and Osage. What tribe are you?"
"Yavapai-Apache! I was born at Camp Verde."
Gracie was amused. "And what's your name here? Geronimo-Rides-Again?"
He blushed. "We don't all have codenames. Only the X Men do. And Geronimo's people are at Fort Sill."
"The Who-Men?"
"The X Men. Dr. X's men. They protect us from the norms who hate us, protect the norms, too, though they don't know it. The X men are Dr. X's oldest students, from back before there was even a real school. Cyclops and Storm "
"Ororo? Yes, she brought me here. And Cyclops is this Scott S-something?"
"Mr. Summers, yeah. He has a kick-ass Harley but he's a bastard in math. Dr. Grey is an X-Man, too or X-Woman, I guess and now there's Wolverine. But he took off somewhere for a while; Rogue told Bobby he'll be back. He's so cool! He has nine-inch knives in his hands!" Proudstar shadow-boxed the air.
Clear as mud. Aloud, Gracie said, "Ah." No one had said anything to her about 'X men.' She'd been asked to come here to allow the professor's pet geneticist apparently Dr Grey to run tests on her in order to find out how she healed others. In truth, it had all been rather vague. Xavier had asked for her, and her grandmother had insisted that she agree. They were paying her, generously, so she had.
"Are you going to be an X-Man, too?" the boy asked her now. "You're not here to go to school."
"No, I'm a bit old for that." Gracie stepped aside. "Come in, Little Cousin. I am not ready to go anywhere yet and you look silly standing in the hallway."
A smile threatened to escape; he bit it back. What was this place? Had they cut off his sense of humor along with his hair? He entered and looked around. "Nice! It's all yours? I have to share with Jake and Warren. Better than sharing with five, though, like at home."
"It needs about six dogs, three broken chairs, and ten relatives before it'll be a real Ind'n room."
Finally he laughed a good belly laugh.
"It is about time," she said. "I was wondering if you'd forgotten how to do that, ain't it?"
"Of course not." He turned abruptly serious, all the ease slid out of his body and he stiffened up like silver steel. "But things are serious here. There was a bill before Congress, backed by that Republican jackass from Indiana, Senator Kelly. They wanted to try to register us all."
"Mmm. And they would no doubt assign us passports that we would have to show before they let us off our new, neat little reservations for mutants, Ind'n or otherwise."
"So you did hear about it."
"I live on Pine Ridge, Little Cousin, not Mars. We have a TV and radio, too. They even work most of the time. I heard about the bill. I also heard that it got defeated."
"Barely. That's why it's tense here." He looked at her with such a mixture of hope and heroic adoration that she almost broke out laughing. He didn't even know her. "So are you going to join the X-Men and fight Magneto's mutants? You didn't really answer me."
"I am not joining anything that makes me wear a silly black leather catsuit like Ororo has." She turned away before he could respond, dropped down on the couch along one wall and stretched out her legs to dig brown toes into brown carpet. The third on each foot bent inward to tuck itself up under the second. "I'm not a fighter, Little Cousin. I'm pejuta win, a medicine woman."
"Then you're not a mutant? You don't have powers?"
"Yes, I am a 'mutant,' as you call it. But I heal bruises, I don't give them." She cocked her head. "What's your power?"
"Speed and strength and heightened senses. I can track like a panther. Smell like one, too."
"If you smell like a panther, maybe you should take a bath."
That stopped him cold. His jaw hung open an instant, then he burst out laughing, held his belly and collapsed on her bed. "Oh, god! You're terrible!"
The words made her smile, remembering her own to her grandmother just a few days before. "I come by it honestly. A contrary from a family of them."
He got hold of himself finally and sighed, wiped his eyes. "I'll be a warrior one day. I've got the gifts for it. We Apache are good fighters."
She propped her feet on a stray ottoman. "Brave little Brave. Will they give you an eagle feather? Draw a lightening bolt on your cheek like Crazy Horse?"
He hopped up, stood rigid. "Don't make fun of me."
"I'm not. But they will teach you to fight in their way, cousin, not ours. They will teach you to kill for the sake of killing, wear their uniform, use their machines. They took our pride, our culture, our language, and our children. They wanted us to be white, until they needed us to fight their wars. Then they talked to us about our native 'warrior spirit,' signed us up, put us in khaki green, and harnessed us to their tanks and helicopters. When it was over, they forgot us again like Ira Hayes. Human flotsam. There are better ways off the res than the white man's military. Even for a mutant. Live in the Indian way. Fight in the Indian way. Or don't fight at all like me. I won't let them make me into their mascot or their noble savage."
"The professor isn't like that. You met him."
It was true, she had. And it was true that he wasn't like that. But she didn't know about the rest of them, so she didn't reply.
"If I join the X-Men," Proudstar went on, "I'll be part of the team. It's like a tribe. They look out for each other." Conviction radiated off of him in strobe bursts and Gracie could tell that nothing she might say would temper it. She hoped he was right, but feared he wasn't.
"Okay, fine. I'm the stranger here. You know these people, but don't forget my warning. Inyanka yo, ska wichasha kin auwelo. Run, Indian boy the white man is coming." She stood up. "You ready to take me out and get me lost in this maze of a place?"
"You need shoes."
Gracie dredged up shoes, then followed John Proudstar out.
An hour later, their tour ended at an elevator tastefully concealed behind wood wainscoting. Proudstar had been checking his watch throughout, hurrying her along. He'd been here too long if he lived by the damn clock. "It's time for your appointment with Dr. Grey," he said now. "Somebody will come to take you to her. I'm due in history class." He headed off, waved absently behind him. "Later, Sioux Woman."
She waved back. "Later, Geronimo-Rides-Again."
"Geronimo-Rides-Again?" said a voice behind, thick with amusement and a British accent.
She spun, found herself looking down at the professor in his wheelchair. "I didn't hear you."
"You mean you didn't feel me. That must be an odd experience for you."
"Yes, Tunkashila."
Dr. Xavier smiled at her. A young man was with him, stood a little behind, assurance in his posture, if not quite arrogance. He wore a grey turtleneck under a navy button-down, loafers, chinos very preppy and a pair of reflective sunglasses like a film star attempting incognito. He certainly had the looks for it, all sleek dark hair and strong-jaw with sculpted cheekbones and flawless skin. Was it a requirement for mutants to be above average in looks? If so, she failed on that qualification. He was watching her curiously or so she interpreted it. With his eyes covered, she couldn't read his expression, and with the professor present, she couldn't sense him, either. Xavier was a wall. "Shall we go?" the professor asked. "The doctor is waiting for you."
At a nod from Xavier, the young man touched a panel in the wall and it parted, admitting them to the elevator which in turn deposited them in a long corridor, illumined blue-white up each side like something out of Star Wars. Gracie followed a pace behind Xavier; the young man matched her on the left. "Forgive me, I should have introduced you," Xavier said. "Grace, this is Scott Summers, a teacher here and my assistant."
Ah. Mr. Impatient himself. But he didn't walk like he had an iron bar shoved up his ass.
"Scott," the professor continued, "meet Grace Kills-his-Horse, late of Upper Cut Meat, South Dakota."
Summers' lips had twitched. "Upper Cut Meat ?"
" is a town. More or less. If you sneeze, you'll miss it."
"Is there a Lower Cut Meat, too?"
His response startled a laugh out of her, more because it was unexpected than because it was funny. They'd reached the far door and stopped, stood a moment just grinning at each other. "Scott?" the professor said. Summers jumped slightly, like a schoolboy caught daydreaming, then reached out to trigger the lock. Metal X doors parted to reveal an examination room decorated in institutional steel; a tall woman with auburn hair pursued busy-work as people will when waiting. "Jean our newest guest," Xavier said. "This is Grace Kills-his-Horse. Grace, Dr. Jean Grey, our physician and genetic research specialist. She's also a telepath, like me."
"Not so powerful, though," the woman said, looking up to smile. Ororo had been delicate and striking, Proudstar handsome in the way of budding young men, and Summers, well If he ever got tired of his day job, he could probably find work as a Chippendale's dancer. This woman had a different quality altogether. Beauty certainly. But something older, sharper, more clever . . . .
Gracie moved away from Dr. Xavier. Instinct rather than deliberate choice. Like a child who smells something she can't quite place and would follow the scent to its source. Out of the chair-bound professor's immediate sphere and concentrating as she was, her senses flared up strong as burning sage. A swirl of impressions from the other woman washed over Gracie; she picked them apart seeking the one thread that interested her.
Wildness. White-grey wildness, like a coyote's coat, like the woman's own name. That was what Gracie had sensed in her. Not cruelty, or passion, or even arrogance. Nothing so simple. Under that polished, educated exterior and despite the lab coat and fancy equipment all around her, Jean Grey was not a tame thing. She longed to run free even as she longed for safety and concealment. Coyote lived by her wits and her caution. A wise person didn't trust her. She would turn and bite if threatened. Or flee and never look back.
Jean Grey stared back at Gracie for two seconds, then sucked in started breath. "An empath?"
Behind Gracie, Xavier chuckled. "Indeed. An empath and healer both. She can do for others what Logan does for himself."
"How strong?"
"We don't know. That's your job, my dear."
From Xavier's other side, Summers was measuring her. His humor had shifted into an expression that seemed to say, How can I use you? But still in the shadow of the telepathic professor, she could get no real feeling for him: his impulses, his fears, his motivations. She hadn't realized how much she relied on her extra sense to understand people. The professor couldn't be read unless he permitted it, as he had permitted it at their first meeting that morning. But she had seen enough then that she trusted him now implicitly. Just as she was leery of Grey. Summers, she simply couldn't judge, and that bothered her. Instincts and experience told her to doubt attractive men. They were too accustomed to having people give them things they hadn't earned. But there had been that moment of communion in the corridor, a communion which for once in her life hadn't depended on her own ability to pick up another's mood and reflect it back at him. They had simply taken an accidental step in unison, the sort of thing that happened to normal people all the time without any assistance from mutated senses.
"Will you permit the doctor to give you a physical, Grace? I know that you were raised in a traditional manner."
It was the professor. She glanced back at him. "We're a practical people, Tunkashila, and we live in the modern world. I drive a Honda, not a horse, and I heat soup on the stove only because I don't own a microwave. But thank you for thinking to ask." She walked over to hop up on an exam table. "Prod all you want, doctor."
Grey had glanced around to focus a smile on Summers as he approached and propped himself against an empty exam table, hip shot towards her. Gracie needed no extra senses to interpret that posture. The good doctor and the professor's protégé were lovers. Old lovers, too, though Grey must be near ten years his senior. They shared that sense of oneness without touching which came from a long time of sleeping butt to butt. They didn't need to touch any more.
Grace focused on him. Now out of the professor's blocking shadow, Summers radiated as clear as the heat of the season whose name he bore, and she probed him with impunity. He knew she was doing it met her eyes calmly and let her. Maybe this was the first part of her exam.
Her knowledge of people had always come to her in colors. Scott Summers was brown and blue, pink and rust and deep violet. Calm colors, mesa cliff colors. Responsibility and dignity and underneath, a kindheartedness half afraid of itself. Unexpected shyness, an impish sense of humor that he seemed to think inappropriate most of the time. But above all, he possessed centeredness. The circle center. All directions radiated out from him. Inyan: the rock on which the professor had built his house. Every wolf in the world could huff and puff and not blow that house down.
Gracie understood the May-September romance then. Summers was everything Grey felt safe with. Pure power of potential leadership, steady, dependable, if not always exciting. And his attraction to her? She was every teenage boy's fantasy come to life the smart, leggy older woman who he'd sweated over with his hand at night when eighteen. By twenty-two, back from college and filled out in shoulder and chest, he hadn't needed the hand anymore. She'd taken him to her bed. Shouldn't that prove his manhood at last?
She slipped free of him, back into her own skin, and realized abruptly that the room had gone very quiet. Summers' perfect complexion was as red as his glasses and Grey had turned away, her face stark. They'd been listening to her thoughts. For a moment Gracie felt badly, then reconsidered. This was their exam; she'd just played along.
Behind them, the professor cleared his throat. "Scott, Jean will do fine without you hovering. We need to check the navigational computer in the Blackbird. Jean can give us her report later." His glance included Gracie. "You're invited of course, since it will concern you."
"So I'm not just the lab rat?"
"We don't keep lab rats here," Summers said, face still averted. He fled in the professor's wake.
The doctor finally turned back when the men were gone. "Tact isn't your strong point, is it?"
"I'm an Indian."
"Is that a reason or an excuse?"
"Your culture is not mine, white woman. I was taught to tell the truth as I see it. If you don't want to hear it, don't ask."
"We didn't ask. You probed him and he let you. He doesn't usually; he was being gracious. But you then interpreted what you thought you saw there without knowing a damn thing about either of us. You can't read his thoughts. Or mine. There's more going on here than insecurity or testosterone-drunk lust."
A bit ashamed, Gracie didn't reply. The doctor was right. Tact wasn't her strong point. But Grace was right, too, in what she'd seen and Grey was on the run now like Coyote, twisting and snapping in panic. Gracie understood that. It wasn't a blessing, to know others' intimacies, either of thought or emotion. Grey had spoken of Summers' graciousness, but it was easy to be gracious if one didn't live under a constant battery of Otherness. "I didn't say there wasn't more," Gracie told her now.
Grey had turned away to work angrily at the protective plastic covering on a needle. "We've been together almost three years and were friends before that. Scott is . . . an amazing man. Thoughtful, brave, kind, highly intelligent "
" impatient. Or so I hear."
"He has his faults. But compared to other men I've dated in my life, he's a saint. What woman wouldn't love him?"
"What woman could love him until she stops heroizing him?"
Grey's eyes had narrowed. "Why, you have a crush on my fiancé."
It was the predictable sucker punch. Gracie smiled. "Not a crush, no. But I do like him; he has a sense of humor something you left off your list. I make up my mind very quickly about people, Dr. Grey. Just like you do."
"I feel like I'm fighting a hydra. You have an answer for everything, don't you?" Grey held up a syringe. "Please roll up your sleeve, Ms. Kills-his-Horse; I need to take a blood sample. You've had quite enough of my blood today already. My turn."