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Eye of the
Storm Fandom: X-Men movieverse The wall of the storm rises up in front of them, a sheer cliff face of roiling blackness. Instinct makes Ororo try to reach into it, to sense and shape nature's fury as she has been able to for as long as she can remember. But the storm rolls on, crushing her will with its power. It feels to her like something with a life and a will of its own, an appetite to consume and destroy on an apocalyptic scale. For the first time, Ororo understands what it is to fear nature, and she shudders. Kurt takes her hand. Did she betray her fear? No - he is only trying to attract her attention, since they have to shout to make themselves heard over the wind's howl. It is as if, Ororo thinks, the earth is screaming. Kurt points into the black chaos directly in front of them. The wind snatches away his words, and Ororo has to piece together the fragments of sentences that make it to her ears. "-- cannot walk -- must teleport -- ja?" And then, clearly: "Hold on!" Ororo holds on. - bamf! - "They're saying it's the end of the world," Rogue said. The television in the corner flashed images of the destruction. Ororo supposed it must a measure of the seriousness of the situation, that the students were willingly watching CNN. Logan shrugged. "People've been sayin' that a long time." "Yes, but - " Rogue began. She didn't finish, but Ororo heard the unvoiced question nevertheless. What if they're right this time? Outside the mansion, rain pelted down, crushing the spring flowers in the garden and washing away the gravel in the drive. There was a dull pain behind Ororo's eyes from the effort of raising the temperature above the school buildings enough to melt golfball-sized hailstones before they hit. No one had asked her why she didn't make it stop raining. She guessed they'd figured out by now she couldn't. - bamf! - A billion snowflakes is a different proposition altogether. - bamf! - "It's okay," Bobby said, shaking his head as Ororo offered him a blanket. "Someone else can have an extra one. I don't feel the cold." His breath was misting as he spoke, proof that in spite of his mutation, his blood was as warm as anyone else's. His heart, Ororo thought, even more so. "I just wish there was something I could do," he blurted as she was about to leave. "I hate feeling like this. I hate feeling useless." Outside, the rain had turned to snow. Ororo's influence was no longer enough to prevent it freezing. "Some of the younger children are scared," she said. "The professor needs someone to keep them occupied --" "Right," Bobby said quickly. His expression was grateful. "I'm on it." She watched him hurry away, and wished that someone would give her a job. One she could do. - bamf! - She went looking for the Professor, and found him in Cerebro. Here, in the chamber deep underground, the noise of the storm was reduced to a dull roar. The dome above Ororo twinkled with a million points of light, human lives clustered in constellations. She stood behind Xavier and watched with him as the points of light quietly went out in their thousands. When he finally turned off the machine, she held his hand and squeezed it tightly. She had never heard him cry before. - bamf! - The last pictures CNN broadcast were of New York, drowning. When the signal turned to static, Ororo only felt relief. "Been a while since I read my Bible," Logan said, flipping the television off for the last time, "but wasn't there something in Genesis about a rainbow and a promise not to flood the world again?" "I do not think God is responsible for this," Kurt said, "so much as we are." "But he could stop it if he chose to," Ororo said. "Couldn't he?" Kurt was silent, his face grave. "He chose instead to give us the power to stop it. We did not." - bamf! - Later she asked Kurt, "What's it like, to have faith?" He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, his tail tucked beneath him. The dog-eared, well-thumbed Bible in his hands was open at the psalms. "It is not so different to what it is like to be a mutant." She sat down next to him. "I don't understand." "To be a mutant is to have power, but also to be powerless. I can travel from here to there without crossing the space between, but I cannot attend mass without being stared at. So it is with faith. To believe is to surrender oneself without reservation to a higher power and, in doing so, to become powerful." "I can't surrender," she said. "I can't give up. I have to keep fighting." "Ach," Kurt said, his voice heavy with sadness, "then I am afraid you have already lost." - bamf! - There is harsh comfort in the knowledge that she is not the only one whose power is useless now. Telepathy, strength, healing, teleportation, control of ice or fire or electricity -- all ineffective when the earth itself is mutating, changing, becoming strange and unrecognisable. There are no longer mutants and non-mutants, there are only frightened people, clustered together, desperate for warmth and reassurance. And the encroaching cold is stealing both away. - bamf! - "Chicago," Scott said, his voice grim. "Jesus," Logan said. "They'll never evacuate before it hits." Ororo said, "I could change its course. Divert it." The silence was awkward. At last, the Professor said gently, "Ororo, the magnitude of these phenomena are -- well, it's clear they are beyond your ability to control." The boards in the windows of his study rattled with the impact of football-sized hailstones, a chorus of agreement. "I could do it," she insisted. "If I could get to the eye of the storm, push it just a degree or two off course -- it would be enough." She raised her chin defiantly and met their doubtful gazes. "Unless anyone has a better idea." There was a moment of silence. Then Logan said, "How exactly are you planning on getting in there?" - bamf! - - bamf! - - bamf! - She is still holding on to Kurt -- she must be, or she couldn't be teleporting. Her world consists of blasts of noise and pain broken up by spells of nothingness as Nightcrawler leaps through the maelstrom. After a while, the storm also becomes like a state of non-being to Ororo, the physical equivalent of white noise. Rain and wind and lightning batter her skin until she feels that the storm is penetrating her, devouring her, claiming her as its own. Then, all at once, it stops. She has reached the eye of the storm. Mutated genes hum within her; her entire body has become a lightning rod, a channel for this unrestrained, uncontrollable energy. It is magnificent, terrifying and exhilarating, all at once. This is the seat of her power, its root and source: she is poised at the very heart of all that she is, and finally she understands that to claim it she must sacrifice herself to it completely. Surrender and accept powerlessness. She turns to Kurt to tell him he was right, and suddenly realises he is no longer with her. He sacrificed himself to a greater power, too. She's sorry she'll never get the chance to thank him. I am Storm, she whispers, and she is. |