Heyoka: Chapter 3
by Minisinoo
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Notes: They're Marvel's (mostly), not mine. To forewarn the squeamish, there's blood in this one. See Part I for other disclaimers. Final note: I refuse to employ bad spelling as a way to convey dialect in speech. It's impossible to read. There are better ways to get across Rogue's accent, or anyone else's for that matter.
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For a week, Gracie played guinea pig to Jean Grey. A tense week. She wasn't sure what came after this. Home, probably; she missed her family. Xavier had said she could call whenever she liked and she did, every night. Her elder sister's place had a phone. She told Charlene all about the school Professor Xavier, Ororo, Jean Grey . . . Scott. She hadn't seen Scott Summers much after that first morning, but whenever she did, he always had a smile for her, a brief exchange, some joke, a query about how she was. She found that she looked for him. Just his voice heard at a distance down an elegant oak-paneled hall was enough to turn her mouth dry.
"You like him, ain't it?" Charlene said.
"Of course I do. He's a nice guy."
"That ain't what I meant."
"He has a girlfriend."
"Miss I-hate-your-guts?"
"Yeah. I don't know what he sees in her."
"If she looks like you described, I do."
Gracie laughed.
"You like him," Charlene said.
"Yeah, sure, but like I said, he has a girlfriend."
"Why a white man?"
"I don't know." Gracie twisted the phone cord around her finger. "He don't talk down to me. He don't drink. Much. He's not loud. And he has a sense of humor."
"In that order?"
"No. I think the sense of humor comes first."
Charlene had laughed and hung up.
Gracie sighed and leaned back against the wall, knocked her head a few times into plaster. "Idiot. You have a crush on a Berkeley boy scout." Just as Jean Grey had accused her of at the outset. Yet she hadn't lied that first day when she'd told Grey that she didn't have one; at the time, she hadn't. It had stolen up on her slowly over the past week, snuck in the window of her heart and curled up around her cynicism, muffling it. A single one of his lips-curled-at-the-corners smiles could send the blood running through her veins like a night thief.
But she genuinely liked him, too, and therein lay the rub. Had it been a plain crush, it would have been easier to ignore. It wasn't. He got her backhanded humor. And she got his. Just last night they'd spent an entire dinner waging an escalating war with very bad puns over chicken parmesan, to the amusement of Ororo, the appreciation of the professor, the shock of a few students, and the disgust of Jean Grey. In fact, had Grey not watched their every move with such evident hostility, Gracie would have found more excuses to look up Scott. As it was, she settled for the accidental, could have sworn that he arranged a few of those accidents. He liked her, too but it was only friendship. He still felt guilt for it, a shade of jaundiced yellow, as if their affinity betrayed Jean Grey. Gracie knew better. She'd seen how his ruby gaze followed the doctor. Adoration and devotion as keen as a dog's, lust too. Colors in deep reds, maroon and violet. Grey had only to snap her fingers and he asked how high he should jump. When he looked at Grace, it was with pink affection only. He enjoyed her company.
She lingered another week after the doctor had finished her tests. No one suggested she go back to South Dakota, so she didn't. Although she missed her family, there was a seductive attraction to this place and not for the conspicuous wealth. She was not different here, even to be lila wakan. Besides, Scott was here. He held her with the same magnetism by which he held the rest of them. A wasicun Crazy Horse with a vision of freedom that set him apart and made them honor him. And fear him, too, a little. He'd been born for this. The bullets of the enemy be they of words or steel couldn't pierce his heart, kill that dream. The school belonged to Xavier. It rotated on the old man's axis, and the vision had ultimately been his. Yet Gracie didn't see him much. He taught his classes and spent the rest of his time on the phone or in meetings with the wealthy and influential, raising funds and working for the protection of all their kind. Mutants, not Indians. Scott, by contrast, was everywhere. Toilet in the boy's wing backed up? Call Mr. Summers. Jubilee and Bobby fighting again over the Playstation in the den? Call Mr. Summers. St. John had burned a hole in his dorm room carpet? Call Mr. Summers, then get lost. Fast.
Ororo had been right that the kids were a bit nervous of him, considered him strict and weren't always sure when he was kidding and when serious. But he still had a cloud of them that orbited him, in the dining room or den, in the gym or on the PE field outside. They asked him to play ball with them, or table hockey or pool; they asked him for help with their homework. They were teens, and needed someone to heroize. Scott made an admirable hero. Some of the boys even mimicked his straight-backed walk without being aware they were doing so. They wanted to be him, from Warren-of-the-white-wings to John Proudstar. And the girls
"What color do you think his eyes really are behind those glasses?"
Jubilee. Gracie stopped outside the door to one the girls' rooms. Eavesdropping.
"You've asked that before," said Kitty. "About nine-hundred times. They have to be black. Black dreamboat eyes like Ashton Kutcher's."
"Who's that?" Rogue.
"Remember Kelso from That 70s Show? He's on Baker Street now, Tuesday nights, plays the geeky bartender."
"Yuk. He was such a ditz. Is such a ditz."
"He is not!"
"Yeah, he is. Don't insult Mr. Summers. And I bet Mr. Summer's eyes are blue, like Tom Cruise."
"Tom Cruise got hazel eyes, girlfriend," said another girl whose voice Gracie couldn't place.
"No, they ain't. They're blue."
"Whatever." Kitty. "I'm sure Dr. Grey knows."
"Nobody knows," Jubliee replied. "He'd fry you."
"Like Zeus and Semele," said Kitty.
"Zeus and who?" Jubilee.
"Dionysus' parents. You know as in the Greek god? Don't you pay attention in Miss Munroe's class? And I'm sure Dr. Grey has asked, and I'm sure he told her. So she knows."
"It's not the same thing as seeing," Jubilee retorted.
Grace smiled and went on. Later that day, she ran into Scott. It was lunch. Jean Grey was no where to be seen and for once, none of the boys were hanging on him. He stood in front of the kitchen window teasing Valeria the cook. They weren't speaking English. "Pazienza! Pazienza!" Valeria was yelling at him. Gracie stopped at his elbow and the cook reached over the counter to pat her cheek. The woman couldn't get inside a foot of anyone without grabbing them. Even Rogue. She just made sure to touch cloth. Very Italian. Not very Indian. "Ciao, ciao, bambola! This man has no patience. Un grande ragazzo! He wants his pizza right now, just like a little boy!" It was Friday and Grace had been told that Friday meant pizza day. Real Italian pizza. "E come va, bambola?"
She blinked. "What?"
"How are you?" Scott translated. "Say 'Bene, grazie, e tu?'"
"Bene, grazie, e tu?" she repeated.
"Non c'è male. Not bad, not bad." And Valeria handed her a plate with a pizza slice.
"Hey!" Summers yelled. "I was in line first! Ti faccio vedere io!"
She smacked him on the back of his hand. "E dove è la tua gentilezza? She's a lady, ragazzo! Ladies first, no?" And Valeria went back to the cutting board, fetched him his pizza and handed the plate over. Three slices. "Va', va'! Va' a farti friggere!" She made shooing motions at him and turned to the two other students who'd approached for their lunch.
"What'd she say?" Gracie asked.
"Get lost. Essentially." He swung a leg over a bench to sit down.
"Ororo told me that you teach Italian here. Don't seem to be on the same ballcourt as algebra. You learn it when you went to Italy?"
"I knew it already learned some as a kid and then took it in college." Picking up the restaurant-style jar of grated parmesan, he sprinkled his pizza. "My grandmother was born in Turin. Angela Momigliano. She fled to the States when Mussolini let in the Germans to round up Jews in '43, met an Irishman in New York and married him."
"I didn't know there were Italian Jews."
"Not a lot, but some."
"An Italian grandmother and a Jewish grandmother all rolled up in one. How'd you survive?"
"Very well, actually. She spoiled me rotten. Still does."
"She don't care that you're a mutant?"
He glanced down at his plate, frowned and spoke quietly. "She's knows what it means to be persecuted, Grace."
Grace just nodded, said after a minute, "So you do Chanukah instead of Christmas?"
"No, she converted when she married my grandfather. I'm a lapsed Catholic who still crosses himself by habit in a cathedral and genuflects to the altar, but that's about it. Oh," he gestured absently with a slice, "I remember the rosary, too. God knows I had to say enough of them when I was a kid." He took a bite.
"Good altar boy."
"No, very naughty altar boy."
"I can see it. There was a Catholic priest on the res. My grandmother never let him get near me. She didn't want me messed up. She barely even let me go to school." She poked at her lunch. "What kind of pizza is this anyway? There ain't no sauce on it."
"White pizza. Sun-dried tomato and roasted garlic. Try it. And why wouldn't your grandmother want you in school?"
"She was afraid it would spoil me. She raised me Ind'n."
"How would going to school change that?"
The question was genuinely curious, not mocking, so she answered. "White education is not like ours. The things you think are important aren't things we think are."
"Reading and writing and arithmetic aren't important?"
"No."
He snorted but didn't reply, took several bites of pizza instead, finally asked, "So what do Indians teach at school?"
"It is not school like you think. We learn from our Elders. Stories and practical things how to listen, how to see, how to do what is right. How to walk the red road."
"Ethics and observation and applied common sense. There's nothing wrong with that. I try to teach that, too."
"I'm glad you approve!"
He set his pizza down, raised both hands. "It wasn't an insult, Grace. I'm not a very good teacher if all I teach them is math. That's what I meant."
She nodded. "Sorry. But it's an old story, for Indians. White man coming in to tell us what we should know. What matters. My people and yours have different ideas of what matters in life."
"Maybe not as much as you think."
She met his eyes behind his glasses, or as much of them as she could see. Dim red points. The light actually came from his eyes; it disappeared when he blinked. Right now, he was doing his level best to hear her, not just listen to her words.
Something buzzed in her jaw and chest and gut like the wings of a hummingbird. Powerful. Fragile. A bright thing arrowing between the sky world and mother earth, bearer of hope and luck, healer of her spirit. "Maybe not," she echoed.
They didn't say anything else for a while. She listened to the students talk around them, suddenly remembered the conversation she'd eavesdropped on earlier. "What color are your eyes?"
He stared at her a moment, then that quirky grin. "Why?"
"Some of the girls want to know."
He didn't reply for a full minute. "Which girls?"
"Jubilee, Kitty, Rogue, another whose name I can't remember."
"Jen, most like." He shook his head. "Why do you want to know?"
"Curiosity killed the Indian. Though in this case, I'd rather that weren't literal, so keep the shades down, Mr. Risky Business."
He lost it, laid his forehead down on his folded hands and just howled. It got everyone's attention as students glanced around at this remarkable apparition of Mr. Summers laughing his head off though perhaps with less surprise than they would have a week ago. Then they returned to their previous conversations. "They're blue," Scott said finally, raising his head. "Were blue. They're red now. Everything I see is red."
That took her by surprise. "Everything?"
"Red and black."
"Don't your eyes adjust? To the color of the glasses?"
"It's not the glasses. It's my eyes. I see in dual tone, like film noir. Or film rosso, I guess."
"Oh."
Jean Grey picked that moment to walk in, spotted them talking together and frowned. Finished with her pizza, Gracie made a hasty goodbye and took off, passed Grey on her way out. "All yours, Coyote Woman."
Outside, she pulled her cigarettes from her pocket and lit one, blew smoke up at a blue sky.
Red and black. Robbed of colors. Robbed of the sky. Gracie pondered that. His flip tone might have told anyone else that he didn't care, that he'd adjusted to it. Gracie knew otherwise.
It was that same Friday afternoon on which two important events occurred. The first was that she picked up the phone in the office.
She'd walked by the place a dozen times, a door with a long glass window beside it. No one was ever there. Files had been stacked haphazardly on expensive wood filing cabinets; there was a computer with a fancy printer, a fax-phone, mailboxes along one wall, and the desk supplies matched in maroon. Stacked on the desk's hutch were boxes of pens and dry-erase markers, post-it notes and pink slips for taking messages, stationary, a yellow and black book entitled Word Perfect for Dummies and various other software reference guides, some brochures about the school. Outside, stenciled in black on the glass: "Xavier's School for the Gifted. Main Office." Sometimes the phone was ringing. Once, she'd seen Ororo sprint down the hall to yank open the door and snatch up the receiver, give a breatheless delivery: "Xavier's School for the Gifted. This is Ororo Munroe. How may I help you?"
So this day, when she walked by and the phone was ringing yet again, she entered to lift the receiver. "Xavier's School for the Gifted. This is Gracie. How may I help you?"
A mother. A mutant daughter. A distraught tale and a message for Professor Xavier. Gracie took it down on pink pad and tucked it in the upper corner of the desk blotter. Then she turned to survey the Leaning Tower of Files with student names under plastic tabs. Anybody could walk in here and access sensitive information. Grades, medical reports, behavioral records written up by the teachers. She shook her head. This was probably not the truly sensitive stuff, but sloppy nonetheless. She opened the filing drawers and got to work.
The second important thing occurred a few hours later when someone stopped by the office. Gracie was still there, sorting mail and cleaning out cabinets. She'd taken two more messages, as well. One for the professor and one for Scott. How did anything get done here if there was never anybody in the office? And people accused Indians of poor organization.
Now at the sound of feet, she looked up to find the girl called Rogue watching her from the doorway. Marie, Scott had named her. Untouchable. Her 'gift' was to drain the life force and powers out of anyone unlucky enough to contact her bare skin. The office lights shown down on her hair, brown with a startling white streak in the front. "Watcha doing?" she asked.
"Fixing the office. Don't the school have a secretary?"
"Not that I ever seen. Mr. Summers does most of it, or Miss Munroe." She came inside a little further. "Can I ask you a question?"
Gracie stopped her work, turned. Strobe hope and fear in Rogue, who was literally wringing her hands together. "What is it?"
"They say you're a healer. Might could you heal me?"
Grace left the cabinet open and came around the desk until she was face-to-face with the girl. They were almost of a height. Plains genes or not, Gracie had never been tall. "Being a mutant ain't a disease. Not something to fix. I can only work with what your body thinks is natural. For you, 'natural' includes your gift."
"It's not my gift!" In distress, Rogue bit the back of her wrist, spoke around it. "It's my fucking curse!"
Gracie didn't know what to say. Rogue's pain beat at her. Reaching out, she wrapped a hand around Rogue's upper arm enclosed in its thin body suit. "I'm sorry, Little Sister. Life is shitty sometimes." Rogue wasn't looking at her. Her face had turned away. She was all grey and black and the wide winter-quartz sky of vacant grief, like the voices in the wind at Wounded Knee.
Gracie reached out with her other hand on instinct. No thought. The hand connected with the side of Rogue's face, cupped the girl's cheek. For a moment, nothing. Then a sting, bee-like, or maybe a wasp grasped in the palm. Burn, burn. Growing more intense. A weakness behind Gracie's knees, a knotting at her jaw, a pain under her sternum. Her heart skipped once, twice, three times. Wakan Tanka, she prayed. Give me strength. She didn't let go of Rogue, didn't let the girl pull away despite shocked brown eyes and lips parted in protest.
And then the burning drained away. All that was left was the feel of Rogue's young skin under Gracie's palm. Grace smiled. Rogue's mouth closed. Tears sprang. "You healed me."
"No, Little Sister. I just touched you."
In that moment, the people came. Jean Grey first, racing through the door, expecting What? To find Gracie dead on the floor? Grace was aware of the professor's mind-touch. He'd sensed what she'd done, the surge of her power, the cause of it, and sent a lightening mental call to Grey. Scott was right behind his doctor fiancee. Seeing her, seeing Rogue, his jaw dropped. Students had followed him. Bobby Drake, who had a crush on Rogue. Jubilee and Kitty, eyes wide at the spectacle of A Rogue Touched. Ororo, too, as stunned as Scott. Gracie didn't let go of Rogue, who wept openly now. Instead, she put up her other hand to hold both sides of the girl's face, pulled her forehead to meet Grace's own. "Hey, Little Sister. You'll be okay."
There were more examinations, experiments. Gracie was starting to feel like Jean Grey's personal pincushion. At least Rogue suffered through it with her this time. It was never easy touching the girl, but each time, it grew easier, the moment of adjustment faster.
"I'm still not sure how she does it," Grey confessed Sunday afternoon when they'd all gathered in the underground med lab for consultation, all the adults anyway: Xavier, Grey, Summers, Grace, Ororo and Rogue and Bobby Drake, too. As this concerned Rogue, she was present, and it seemed that wherever Rogue went, Bobby was soon to follow. "But I can say that what she does is to take Rogue's gift and neutralize it, like a base to an acid."
"But nobody else can do it," Rogue said, voice whipped. Beside her, Bobby took her gloved hand, squeezed.
"No, I'm sorry." Grey looked down at their joined hands. "It's non-transferrable."
"Like a discount plane ticket," Gracie said. "I'm sorry, Little Sister."
There was more discussion, but the essential point had been made at the outset. Gracie alone could touch Rogue, no one else, even if Gracie was there as a dampener. Later that afternoon while she was sitting out by the ball court smoking and watching the boys shoot hoops, Scott joined her on the bench, offered her two cookies from the stack of four in his hand. Homemade chocolate chip.
She shook her head. "Can't. Sorry." She stubbed out her cigarette in a streak of black on white concrete, then buried it in the earth. Tobacco for the spirits. He watched. She knew he wished she wouldn't smoke in front of the students, but had never said anything to her about it. She persisted not from callousness, but because it seemed hypocritical not to. They all knew she smoked. If they asked her about it, she'd tell them the truth. Health issues aside, the sacredness of tobacco aside, it was a stupid, expensive, addictive habit that ruined the voice, left her clothes smelling stale, and made some white jackass in Carolina rich. Better they hear that from her. They might listen better.
Now, he said only, "Why no cookies? Diet?"
"No, diabetic. Or as close as makes no difference. The great Indian genetic curse, along with alcoholism."
"Oh. Sorry, I forgot."
He sounded so guilty, she smiled and nudged his side. "Cookie Monster gets all the cookies for himself."
He shoved a whole cookie in his mouth and grinned at her around it. How the hell did he do that? After a minute and a large swallow, he asked, "Do you miss them? Cookies?"
"Nah. I miss ice cream."
"Not in this weather."
A chill day in October, frost had edged the grass and window panes at dawn. "Not in this weather," she agreed. After a minute, she asked, "You miss colors?" She knew he did, but wanted to hear him say it.
He didn't answer immediately, ate two more cookies. "Sometimes."
"Only sometimes?"
"If you don't have them, you don't miss them. Not as much. I see fine. Some things I see better, like movement. I can track movement better now. I just don't see colors. I guess I've gotten used to it."
"Like no cookies."
"Like no cookies."
They had a habit of profound conversations made up of sentences with six words or less.
"I miss green the most," he said after a minute.
"Your favorite?"
"Yeah. The grass looks funny in fuchsia." She laughed. He changed the subject. "It was kind, what you did for Rogue."
"Not kind enough."
He shook his head, toyed with the last cookie, turning it in his long fingers. Around and around. Out on the court, the boys continued to play, oblivious. Drumbeat of a ball on asphalt. Breathy shouts of encouragement, protest. "The blond is good," she said.
"That's Warren your Gabriel. And yeah, he is, even without wings." He was looking at her but she could see only herself, reflected in red. "You're not a miracle worker," he told her.
"I'm just a mutant and not a very strong one, at that."
"Strong enough to do what no one else can."
"Unfortunately, I am not at the top of Rogue's touch list. I'm the wrong gender and my name ain't Bobby."
"Don't, Gracie. You're beating yourself up for no reason. As far as Marie is concerned, you hung the stars."
"Bobby Drake hung the stars. I just shined them a bit."
He smiled, ate the last cookie and said nothing else until he rose to go. "Marie told me that you were the one who caught up on our filing." At her blank look, he elaborated, "In the office."
"Oh, yeah. Stuff was laying out everywhere where anybody could get at it. I hope you don't mind."
"Mind?" He laughed. "I should throw you a party!"
"Jean would not like that."
He just looked off. The wind tossed his hair and ruffled his shirt a little. It was flannel, but not like men wore on a res. This was expensive combed cotton, soft to the touch, stripes in brown on deep heather blue. Very L. L. Bean. "I wish you two would quit the cat fight," he said. "It's getting old."
"I don't like her; she don't like me. It is not something to quit. It just is."
"Goddammit." He stalked off.
Monday morning, Gracie was at the office bright and early with beads and loom spread on the desk. She answered the phone, made coffee, beaded, and stopped counting the heads that swivelled to stare as people walked by. Ororo wandered in at one point to plop down in a maroon-upholstered chair across from the big oak desk and gesture at the beading loom. "Watcha making?" On certain phrases, one couldn't hear her accent at all.
"Bead strips for my jingle dress. I do the beadwork by loom, then sew it on fabric later."
"What is a jingle dress?"
"It's a dress for a particular type of Indian dance. I'd show you mine, but the actual dress is back in my closet on the res." Silence a moment. "I guess I should send for it."
What hung unspoken was that she was beginning to think she might be around long enough to want it.
After a tense pause, Ororo just asked bluntly, "Did you appoint yourself as our secretary or did the professor ask you?" Then she hastened to add, "Not that I mind. It saves me running for the phone. I was just curious."
"I'm no secretary. Can't type worth crap. And I don't do dictation or faxes, or windows either, while we're at it. I make coffee if you like it strong, answer the phone, and run copies if someone will show me how to tame that alien entity in the back room pretending to be a copy machine."
Ororo's lips curled up. "I'll have Scott show you how to operate it. He is the only one who knows the bells and whistles because he is the only one inclined to read the manual."
"Techno-geek boys and their toys. Rogue says he is the school's garage mechanic, too. It must be connected to the Y chromosome."
Still smiling, Ororo rose. "I am glad you are here, Grace. I don't know if anyone else has told you that yet, but someone should."
Gracie looked up from her loom, smiled back. "Thanks, Ro."
The next day, when she arrived in the office, she found a wooden name plate sitting on the desk:
Grace Kills-his-Horse
administrative assistant
Ororo. Avoiding 'secretary.' Laughing, Gracie ran a finger over the top. Around eleven, Scott showed up to teach her the basics of the copy machine and explain his rather peculiar filing system, then handed over the keys to the wooden cabinets that were never locked anyway. "All yours. Have fun."
When he was gone, she surveyed her posh domain with its oak desk and all-matching accessories, dull abstract art mounted behind. She'd have to fix that. Maroon leather chairs bookended a low table with a big spider plant and a seventy-gallon fish tank mounted in the wall above and behind. Empty tank, missing both water or fish. There was never anyone here to feed them.
"I need some fish," she said to the air.
In a school full of teenagers, it was perhaps inevitable that at some point, someone would get hurt. The accident occurred in the kitchen. A pair of boys horsing around when they were supposed to be helping Valeria. One spilled boiling hot water on the other's sleeved arm. Gracie was in the office when she heard the first shout, more startled than pained. Someone yelled for Dr. Grey. Then the pain. An arrow of red-white pain. Burn pain.
She was out of her seat and running down the hall before she knew what she was doing. A second wave of pain, far worse, knocked her to her knees and a wild shriek from the dining hall echoed it. "You pulled his skin off! You pulled his skin off!" Repeated over and over, high and frightened.
She pushed the pain back, scrambled to her feet and ran again. Grey got there a little before her, shot in door, Ororo behind. Where was Scott? Gracie barely had time to wonder. She propelled herself through the door on Ororo's heels.
In the kitchen, chaos. Kids screaming. Valeria wringing her hands and shouting in Italian. The focus of the cyclone was a young boy, curly hair, thin face, glasses, and just now, bare-chested. He shrieked in pain, held up an arm that looked as if he'd been flayed from mid-bicep down to his forearm. Another boy face a study in shock gripped a rugby shirt, half inside out, bloody skin fused to one sleeve. Kitty Pryde was throwing up in a corner, along with two boys whose names Gracie didn't know. John Proudstar physically held down the curly-haired boy, yelling, "Don't flail, Jake!"
Grey had gone to her knees beside the wounded boy, was issuing orders. Cool, professional. Her very presence calmed them all and Gracie had to admit herself impressed as she dropped beside Grey. The doctor glanced at her. In Gracie's head, she heard, Hot liquid melted his skin to the shirt; when they ripped it off they took the skin with it.
Gracie gagged, very aware of the sweet smell of vomit. Barely held-off pain had already made her stomach weak but she kept the nausea down. With one hand she reached out, halted above the writhing boy. If she thought she felt his pain now . . . .
"Storm," Grey said, "Can you get down to my lab and bring up my emergency kit?"
"Already here." Scott's voice. Gracie glanced around. They thought fast, this team.
He tossed it to Grey, who caught it and delved inside; she spoke to Grace but with a glance that took in John, too. "I need Jake's other arm to be still. Absolutely still. Sit on it if you must." She had a syringe, filling it with a clear liquid that was probably anesthesia of some sort.
Proudstar tightened his embrace, strength like a mountain lion pinning Jake's unwounded arm for Grey's needle. Gracie took a breath. What was pain? She was a Sioux woman. She let her hand fall to Jake's wounded wrist.
She may have cried out, wasn't sure. Jake's agony took away thought, memory, consciousness. She clung stubbornly to the last; it would do him no good if she passed out. Reach, reach past the pain. Wakan Tanka take the pain . . . . This was her Sundance. Close off the nerves, sooth them, rebuild the veins, the skin. At least there had been no muscle damage. But all that skin. She gasped, felt herself falling. Then someone was holding her up. "Use me if you can."
Gracie was no Rogue, but she knew how to do that. Borrowed strength seeped off like a trickling stream. Blue-brown-purple-pink mesa cliffs. Inyan. Xavier's rock. Scott. Another touch on her arm. And me. Jean Grey. Shadows in black and white and coyote grey, brilliant flash of silver like a trout leaping upstream against the current.
The pain was lessening, freeing her to concentrate on what she was doing. She could feel the skin reknitting itself over raw muscle and fat. Indrawn breath all around them. She opened her eyes on startled faces. But they weren't looking at her. She followed their gaze. The last of the healing process was smoothing a final layer of epidermis on the boy's arm, regenerating his pores and light body hair.
"Not even a scar," John Proudstar whispered, then looked up at her. "Holy woman."
The boy named Jake was gaping at his arm, marred now only by slick blood and a vivid memory of tendons beneath. Gracie let his wrist go. That was the last thing she remembered.