ax_main | Jean and Ororo

Jean breaks down after rescuing Nick.

Jean managed to hold it together while she explained to her parents that there had been an accident concerning one of the students. How she hated to cut the visit short, but she and Scott and Ororo really wanted to be there for them in the aftermath. Of course she'd call once they got back to the school, but now she had to go pack.

She held it together until she was in her room, staring at her empty suitcase. Then she was face-down on her bed, sobbing as quietly as she could manage.

Ororo slipped inside Jean's room as soon as she heard her friend walk in there, and only stopped for a second when she saw her break down. Just a second, and then she was moving to her bed, sitting beside Jean and putting a hand on her back, keeping her emotions as steady as she could. "I'm here. Tell me if I'm making it worse, but I'm here."

Jean sat up and hugged her friend tightly, hiding against her neck. "You're not. You couldn't."

"Okay." Ororo simply accepted that, arms wrapping warmly around her friend. She blinked tears out of her eyes and focused on how much she cared for Jean, rather than her own grief. She couldn't afford to think of Nick right then, not if she wanted to help Jean. "I've got you."

"They enjoyed it," Jean gasped, unable to pull herself away from the sanctuary of her friend's embrace. "I saw it in their minds, Ororo. T-they were smiling when they...when they..."

Of course they had. Ororo struggled with her anger for a moment, mind flashing back to other men like them. Even as she forced herself to focus back on Jean, the anger still bubbled beneath the surface. "They're despicable human beings," she told her friend. "I'm so sorry you had to feel what they felt."

"It's not that..." Not just that. "Is it going to be like that every time? Is that what it's going to mean to be a mutant?"

"No," Ororo replied quietly, thinking of the tribe she had left behind. She stroked her friend's hair gently. "No, Jean. This is the worst of what being a mutant is like. But there is also the best. And all the in-between. Tonight was... a bad night." On so many levels. Poor Nick.

"God..." Jean lifted her head and wiped at her eyes. "What are we going to do for Nick?"

"Be there for him, as much as he needs us," Ororo replied, trailing her hands off of Jean, one of them ending up on her friend's knee. She was still so angry, but it wasn't what she was focusing on, for both their sakes. "There isn't much else we can do."