Complex: Part One

by Indigo

The sky was filled with clouds already; through no doing of Ororo's. The Goddess was the arbiter of what the weather did, except on the occasions when Ororo begged Her indulgence and took matters into her own hands. Ororo could banish the scudding clouds with a thought, but she did not. It would be the *height* of arrogance to act against the Goddess' wishes for the evening's display of acclimatory finesse.

The mansion was quiet. It was late. Jean and Scott were gone, to Alaska. Warren, Robert and Henry had gone to visit them. Logan was in Manhattan. Only Maggott, Rogue, Sam, Cecelia and Joseph remained in the house besides herself. Betsy Braddock had gone back to Warren Worthington after her heroic sacrifice in Africa to stop the Shadow King had resulted in her being effectively non-telepathic. Ororo and the others had assured Elizabeth that her ninja skills and her Undercloak abilities would make her as effective an X-Man as ever, but Betsy said she would prefer to avoid the whole thing.

"Think of it this way, luv," she had said to Ororo, "If I'm ever in a row with the team, we could be in a spot where my telepathy's needed. I can't succumb to that temptation, or we'll have the entire bloody mess with the Shadow King all over again. It's too big a risk. It's about time Warren and I went sailing 'round the world anyway."

The mutant formerly known as Psylocke had had a point, Ororo had to admit.

Now Ororo padded restlessly, barefoot, through the mansion, unable to sleep -- as usual. So her mind, sharp even in the lack of sleep, wandered as restlessly as her body.

Cecilia had asked on the day she had gone back hoping to reclaim her mundane life as a doctor, why Ororo was up so early. Ororo had evaded the question, instead wishing the doctor luck in her quest. The woman was uncomfortable enough as it was; it would have done her no good to discover that the outwardly serene Ororo was a habitual insomniac.

Logan no longer asked Ororo what she was doing up at the odd hours of the night, though he encountered her frequently, prowling the house like a restless panther. Of course, he would never need to -- the man was perceptive to a fault. She had asked him, once, "How do you cope with *your* nightmares, Logan? How do you endure the echoes of your pain?"

Logan's answer had been to shrug and gnaw on the stogie in his teeth; out of deference to Ororo, he tried not to light up in her presence. "I just cope, 'Ro," he had told her in response. "Not like the alternative's any bed of roses. Ya do what ya gotta do, darlin'."

The alternative? Being sucked down into madness in the center of a maelstrom of grief, remorse, and failure? Indeed, that was worse. She already had her claustrophobia, her dread of closed-in places, as a hallmark of the first failure she could remember ... and harbinger of failures that would overshadow her life.

In her realistic, rational, adult mind, Ororo knew it was insane on some level that she should hold herself responsible for her inability to rescue her mother, her father. She also knew that on some level -- she did so anyway. It had been the beginning of her lifelong inability to forgive herself -- for anything. ~Damn him,~ Ororo thought. ~Damn Farouk and his mind games!~ It had been the cruel, savage mistreatment she had received at his ethereal hands that had her mind whirling in such turmoil tonight.

The other X-Men had suffered as well. Logan and Maggott were fairly inseperable now. Sam had gone quiet as well, although Storm frequently heard him murmuring fretfully in his sleep. To Ororo's horror, she had actually seen Marrow shed a tear. Worse still, telepaths all over the world were suffering ill effects from the Shadow King's malevolent actions.

Their victory had been won at a dear price, she knew; the scars from this battle were too deep to be seen by any but the mind's eye.

And Ororo considered it another failure that her X-Men were suffering so because she had led them into the Shadow King's trap.

Her claustrophobia was a liability to herself, to the X-Men even now. ~Oh, look: they've sent in the wind-rider! Anyone who's done their homework knows she can't stand being confined. Fire the amber-goop-gun, reduce her body to immobility and her mind to helpless gibbering. Look how easily Farouk diminished you in Africa, leaving you sobbing and begging, unable to do aught for the others -- for the world.~

How often had her failure to reconcile her claustrophobia cost her and her teammates? Proteus had trapped her in amber with his reality warping. Doom had turned her into a *statue* -- a trophy with which to drape in queenly raiment.

~Oh yes, and let us not forget the Morlock Massacre,~ Ororo reminded herself with a brutal burst of thought. She had gone in, certain she knew what to do, even without her weather-controlling powers. Armed only with her fists, she had broken Scrambler's jaw. But the truth of the failure was different. The moment she'd gone underground, despite the vastness of the tunnels, her claustrophobia had begun knocking around her psyche, scrabbling with tiny claws at the edges of her psyche, tearing away filmy little threads of her control, her composure, her sanity. Her *leadership abilities.*

Instead of keeping the X-Men together as the fighting team they should have been -- she ordered them apart. Why all of them had obeyed without question, she did not know. But they had. ~Perhaps Wolverine had his own beserker rage to stave off. Rogue was confident in her invulnerability.~ As a result, Sinister's Marauders had decimated the Morlocks and dealt deep wounds to the X-Men ... wounds that were, in some cases, beyond mending.

Kitty Pryde was, even today, a living ghost -- who had to learn to exist all over again from the ground up, now that her natural state was phased rather than solid. Harpoon's weapon had done that. Ororo's fault for letting the least experienced X-Man act without someone else at her side. For a short time, Kitty had been much akin to a daughter to her. What had Ororo been able to do for her? Nothing. It had been Doom who had helped her.

Kurt Wagner was, it would appear, fully recovered. But Ororo knew that beneath the blue fur covering his skin, he bore a thousand thousand scars from Riptide's blades. How had Ororo handled his injury? She had run blindly into the woods, torn off her leathers and flung herself in the lake, trying to wash his blood and that of the Morlocks off her hands. It had taken Callisto's having mercilessly refused to let Ororo be, pounding some sense quite literally into Storm's head, before she had been able to come to herself again.

Piotr -- the one she called little brother -- had suffered wounds seeping energy rather than blood. Had it not been for Magneto and his subtle, careful, painstaking and exhaustive manipulations of Colossus' metal form, he would have joined the scores of Morlocks in the arms of the Goddess.

They had recovered, all of them; yet they were not the people they once were. Piotr was a less joyous man. His sweet, gentle temperament was now something he had to work toward -- lately he was easily prone to rage. Kurt, although he still played the part of the swashbuckler, had a much more serious side that strived to be as infallible as Ororo herself strived to be.

Her relationship with Kitty had been irreparably changed. They were still friends, but that bond they had forged was broken.

Ororo found herself out on the back veranda. Rising on the caress of the cool pre-dawn breezes, Ororo flew out into the false dawn. She alighted on the cliff overlooking the lake, and tossed a pebble into the water, watching it ripple out -- like her failures rippled out to affect the lives of the other X-Men, for the worse. This had been the cliff from which she'd leapt before her battle with Callisto. It was practically a monument to her failure. She sat, thinking.

She was a leader now, for better or worse. ~Often for the worse,~ she told herself. But the X-Men permitted her to lead still. Even knowing she could and would fail again, slip again.

Her failure to control her claustrophobia had threatened the earth -- when Doom's machinations had made her a statue. Being free had been wonderful, but her mind was not ... intact. It was a maelstrom to match that which had been generated by a desperate, subconscious use of her powers.

Her failures always came back to haunt her. Letting the world believe the X-Men dead after Dallas, when they lived in Australia was another. Bad blood had flowed between X-Factor, Excalibur, the New Mutants, and the X-Men for some time after that. And still, no one had questioned her. ~Australia. What was I *thinking*?~ She had even admitted that as a mistake -- to Stevie Hunter. Not as if that was like admitting it to the X-Men themselves.

But this last -- this last failure was the one that decided her. Farouk had played her like his personal harp. He'd flung her into her worst nightmare -- buried alive, surrounded by the corpses of everyone she'd ever loved.

The next stone Ororo threw at the lake skipped across the surface, and the sky rumbled uneasily, muttering thunder at her sudden darkening of mood. She knew she could banish it with a thought. But it was summer, and thunderstorms commonplace.

Ororo looped through her failures, over and over and over -- including the one when she was a so-called goddess. ~A goddess? Hardly. A child with powers and dreams too big for her ability. A child, without the sense to realize she could not possibly hope to live up to the pressures desperate people were heaping upon her.~

~How were you to convince them with your abilities that you were anything else but an agent of the Goddess?~ part of her demanded, the part that was tired of her constant need to berate herself, the part of her that feared allowing herself to live a little, like an ordinary woman, lest she not be there when the team needed her -- the part which refused to permit her emotions free rein, lest she release the rogue storm again in a moment of weakness.

~How, indeed?~ Ororo answered her own question. ~Telling them was not sufficient once they'd seen me fly, seen me call the rain. What would you have me do? Strike them down with lightning as I shouted "I am no goddess!" to them? What would that have served to do but fill them with fear? At best, they would have believed 'the Goddess is angry.' At worst, they would have declared me no goddess, but a demon, and hunted me to death.~

~Another question, then,~ that restless, querolous part of her mind demanded. ~How long can you go on pretending, denying?~

~Denying? Pretending?~ Ororo wondered whether she was dreaming again. ~I'm dreaming. Talking to myself.~

~Yes, Denying. Denying you're a woman who needs to let herself *be* a woman, by trying to act as much like a man as possible -- striking with violence and fury, lightning and wind, rather than the subtlety which should come natural to a woman.~

~Pretending your fear of failure doesn't freeze your heart each time you fly into battle. Do you really think your Shakespearian prattle impresses the opponents against which the X-Men must test their mettle? Do you truly believe it *intimidates* them?~

Ororo looked up and saw herself, laughing down at herself. "Lightning?!" quoted the Ororo above to the Ororo on the ground, "You dare to call your puny weapon lightning? Your paltry display is as nothing against the true elemental fury wielded by Storm!"

Ororo's eyes widened at the dramatic pose her dream-self had stricken.

~Sounds silly, doesn't it?~

Ororo looked away.

~Sounds arrogant, too.~

"What *should* I say, then?" Ororo demanded of the avatar of herself hovering above her, mocking her.

~"Why say *anything*?" Now the avatar spoke, pointed in her face, rather than merely reflecting her thoughts back. "Why not let your 'elemental fury' do your talking for you? Does Logan yammer on ad infinitum about the rage of the Wolverine, or does he simply do what he does best? Does Cyclops go on at length to his opponents about 'the solar-charged might of my optic blasts?'"

"N-No..."

~"NO! Very good, Ororo! You *can* be taught. You appear to be as insecure as that English headcase, Braddock. Never content to be who she was, use her strengths, she had to dye her hair purple, and constantly inform any foe of the 'focused totality of her psionic might!' At least *she* dresses in practically nothing to take advantage of all the testosterone in the air when fighting enemies."~

Lightning flashed overhead, and the thunder rumbled heavier.

~"If the scores of faceless henchmen you face in battle had any sense whatsoever, they would not be in the service of the likes of Shaw, Hydra, the Hand! You *waste* your overeducated hyperbole on them."~

Ororo hung her head.

~"And your friends -- if truly that is what they are ... what you want them to be -- need it no more than your enemies do. Try speaking to them like they speak to each other."~

"But --"

~"But what? You'll stumble, you'll fall, you'll be laughed at? Like anyone else? Ororo, you have said you were no goddess. Yet you cling so desperately to that image nonetheless, for you fear living like anyone else does. You fear failing, so you wrap your fears in this iron fist-velvet glove facade. To what end?

~"You distance those who care about you, you give the newcomers an impression of you that could not be further from the truth. Why do you *think* Sarah has such envy and hatred of you? She *believes* that you were worshipped and that you look down on anyone who does not meet your standards."~

"She is a would-be murderer," Ororo protested to the skydancing avatar of herself.

~"True,"~ the dream-Storm conceded. "But you have done little but threaten her to assuage your own fear, rather than reaching out to her. Is that the way of peace? The way of the Goddess?"~

"No," Ororo admitted in a small voice.

The lightning struck bright, turning night into day, and overloading the Salem Center transformer. The power went out, plunging upper Westchester into the dark. "~Your lack of ability to forgive yourself is poisoning your soul, wind-rider. You are becoming unwilling to forgive others. First Gambit, and now Marrow."~

Ororo flinched as her dream-self showed her an image of Remy. Remy who had rescued her from the Shadow King. Remy who had taken care of her when she had been amnesiac, trapped in the body of a child, and unable to control her then-burgeoning powers. "I *am* forgiving him," Ororo protested.

"Oh? Then you have sought him out to speak with him? To find out why the good man you knew could have been involved with such carnage? You have let him know that where there is forgiveness, there is welcome -- and that he has a home here again?"

Ororo was silent. But the thunder rumbled like the laughter of God.

*****

The window rattled, and Joseph awakened, white hair matted down with sweat. ~Another nightmare.~

He left his blue eyes open, staring into the darkness and listening to the rain, hoping the patter of the water on the roof would calm the frantic pounding of his heart. If he closed his eyes again, the vision out of his dream loomed right back into his forebrain -- the violet and the crimson -- blood and steel and rage. Mad laughter, lacking sanity or even the faintest spark of human compassion.

Joseph shivered, although the room was warm. Nightmares of Magneto always left him feeling like something cold had settled at the base of his spine and was reaching for his heart. Since the X-Men's encounter in Africa with the Shadow King, the nightmares had become progressively worse, as though the world's most feared mutant menace was trying to claw and shred his way back to life by grinding Joseph's amnesiac psyche under his boots.

"I'm *not* that monster," he whispered to himself. "I'm *not*. I'm an X-Man."

Still, the laughter echoed in his head. Still the visions of electromagnetic pulses and the dance of electricity lingered like the scent of ozone just on the edge of his conscious mind.

Throwing the blanket off, he lurched out of bed and to the window. The wind had taken to howling like a tormented soul, and the rhythm of the rain was accompanied on destructive percussion by hailstones the size of his little fingernail.

Frowning, he turned to the radio, but found it would not come on. Neither the lights. ~Blacked out, then,~ he thought, and with a simple gesture activated his personal magnetic field. It glowed bluely around him, with some small luminance. The rain was of little importance to him. But he was certain that he recalled seeing a generator off the house grounds. Joseph stepped into a pair of sneakers and walked, bare-chested, toward the door. Joseph vaulted the bannister and hurtled down the stairs, then pulled out the front door and raced into the night, chased by his personal terrors.

~The weather here must customarily be this ferocious,~ Joseph thought as the wind whipped his hair like a silver banner behind him. ~Else Ororo would surely be in the midst of this tempest, seeking to quell it at its heart.~

The magnetism kept the main body of the wind and the rain away from him. Visibility was minimal, but this posed no problem for Joseph, a man whose natural sense of direction was oriented on the magnetic poles of the earth itself. He simply set his jaw and stepped off the porch, heading unnerringly toward the shed.

*****

~"Think, Ororo -- remember what failing to forgive can result in! Madelyne Pryor would not forgive Scott for returning to Jean. It drove her mad, and she sought out the demon Nastir'h! She became the Goblin Queen!

~"Rogue does not forgive herself for what she did to her first love, to Carol Danvers, or anyone whose life she has taken for more than a moment -- and she will *never* regain control of her mutant ability unless she does!

~"Even Charles Xavier did not forgive himself for the brutal shutdown of Erik Lensherr's mind on Avalon. Look upon what resulted from that festering wound on his soul!"~ Lightning flashed behind the Ororo-avatar, and Onslaught loomed menacingly out of the night.

~"The Goddess forgave you for going into space. She forgave you purging the evil Broodling life from your body. If you would serve her, then you must forgive as she forgives!"~

"HOW?" Ororo screamed in return to her avatar, the rain pattering in her face.

Then, she was awake. It had been a nightmare -- a frightening, realistic nightmare. And to her horror, she realized the distress of the dream had been mirrored in the waking world. The simple ring of thunderstorms which had been showering off and on all night had been whipped into a hurricane by the internal conflict between Ororo and her subconscious. ~Another failure. I allowed my control to slip!~

"Goddess!" she breathed, and flung herself into the night, seeking the calm eye of the storm -- from whence she could slowly unravel the wild chaos she'd knitted in her nightmare. Nightgown clinging to her skin from the sheer volume of water, Ororo -- no, Storm -- rode the wind to tame the tempest.

*****

"Ow...damn."

Sam Guthrie stubbed a toe in the dark. ~Times like this ah wish ah'd developed a more versatile mutant power. Logan c'n see in th' dark. 'Celia's forcefield lights up whenever she bumps inta somethin'. Bet Marrow c'n see in th' dark too.~ He fumbled for the lightswitch then gave a disappointed groan as there was no response. ~Power's out.~ He briefly considered Cannonball-blasting over to the shed and firing up the generator, but he knew in that mess he'd definitely lose his way and end up canting head first into a tree.

He made it to the window with a minimum of injury, although his foot still throbbed from where he'd run up on the bed. ~Might've even broken a toe,~ he mused, staring out at the sky.

The storm, for all that it was a raging monster of a meteorological display, was beautiful. The lightning streaked white through the rain-washed blues and greys of the sky. Sam found himself reminded of when his father had been alive and the two of them had stood out on the porch watching thunderstorms. ~If this's your doin', 'Roro -- ah owe ya one.~

*****

There was no joy in Ororo's flight now; only determination. She knew the nightmare had caused this, and part of her wanted to wail in abject sorrow. But that part of her that had scolded, scorned and laughed at her for being so fearful still was with her ... and that part wanted to laugh for joy that she had finally slipped free of her own self-imposed mental bondage.

Her hair stood on end -- the air was ionized around her. ~There is some good come of this after all,~ she thought. ~The ozone created by the lightning will be good for the atmosphere.~

The last wisp of the dream nodded approvingly. ~"See? Even in this loss of control you were so ready to throw yourself into angst over -- there is a good side. Nothing happens without a reason, Storm."~

To her delighted surprise, she found there was the faintest hint of a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth. ~Perhaps this dream was a message of sorts.~

*****

Below, Joseph had reached the shed. The generator was safe to start. It was not rusted. Nor was there a hint of trash around it. Joseph suspected this was Maggott's doing. He extended his fingers in a languid movement, and the metal can of kerosene floated down to his waiting hand.

The lightning flashed outside, and Joseph heard himself cry out, startled. ~Foolish man,~ he chided himself. ~Jumping at shadows. There has been no sign of you returning to be the monster you once were. As long as you realize that you must be better than that -- and work diligently to *be* better than that -- Magneto will never threaten the earth again.~

He poured the kerosene into the tank, then stepped back, bracing one foot on the generator as he pulled the cord to start it. It coughed once, as if in protest, then rumbled to life. It sputtered for a moment, but Joseph could sense the metal in the machinery was not dangerously unlubricated. It settled into a hum, and Joseph permitted himself a smile of satisfaction.

He looked out the window and noticed the storm seemed to be letting up. While he could not see the house with his eyes, he still had his perfect sense of direction to lead him home. He stepped out of the shed and extended his arms. ~The rain in my face, the cool air -- they'll clear my head and banish the last of the specters from my mind.~

With that, he rose into the air, micro-arcs of electricity racing along his bare chest and outspread arms.

*****

Ororo hung suspended in the center of a sphere of lightning. Ozone crackled in the air around her, ionizing her hair into a crazed electric cloud around her. What remained of her nightgown was in tatters, hanging off her -- the silk whipped away from her body by the careless fingers of the wind, and the shards of the tiny hailstones.

The lightning was quickening in her grasp, as if it insisted on being the final element of the storm to succumb to her wishes. The wind already was dying down. The hailstones too had petered out. The rain had gone from blinding sheets to a gentle shower. But the lightning remained, as if some other force were coaxing and teasing it to remain.

*****

Joseph rose, riding the thermal at his back toward the place where the clouds were breaking. He could see the dawn approaching, and wanted to get high enough to see the sunrise. ~A sight like that,~ Joseph thought, ~can fill any man's heart with hope -- and banish the fear from mine.~

That was his last thought before the blue-white arcs of electricity jumping across his skin called to their elder sibling in the sky.

Lightning, arcing from the ground toward the sky veered toward Joseph as if he were a lightning rod.

He had no time to react -- the electricity touched him from earth and sky, sending a shock through him that was very nearly as ecstatic as it was painful.

*****

"GODDESS!" Ororo gasped, feeling a lightning bolt that had not been one she held -- a rogue, as it were. Dread descended on her mood, and she swooped through the last of the stormclouds to find Joseph, sweatpants aflame, crackling with electricity and ozone, falling.

It was simplicity for her to call a gentle wind to arrest his fall until she could gather him into her arms and land on the dewy grass. ~Goddess, please, let him be all right.~

He had Magneto's powers, and Magneto had thrown lightning with less trouble than this, Ororo knew. But Joseph was a young man who knew only of Magneto as a monster on the edge of his memories -- a figure almost mythologically imposing, and an enemy to the X-Men who had called him friend. Whether he could wield his magnetic abilities with Magneto's skill remained to be seen. Magneto had survived lightning before; would Joseph be able to do the same?

*****

Ororo gasped and actually laughed with relief when Joseph opened his ice-blue eyes and gazed up at her. One hand reached for hers, and squeezed it gently. "I am all right," he said. His voice was vaguely wispy -- breathy and husky. But his words were clear. "That was," he admitted, "...exhilarating. I thank you, Ororo. Perhaps we can have this experience again when we are both prepared. I did not realize you were sculpting the storm."

"I am glad you are safe, Joseph," Ororo replied, gazing down into his face. Though the gown was mostly gone, leaving her nearly nude, she was without concern.

Joseph frowned at her in puzzlement. He blinked, once, twice, then shook his head slowly. "Joseph," he said, as if testing the name on his tongue. He sat up, then rose completely to his feet, moving with an unconsciously sinuous, sensuous grace.

Ororo's blue eyes widened. Joseph had been elegant in his motions as well, but far more tentative than this. There was a greater confidence in his motion. A fluidity that had not been there before.

"Joseph?" Ororo asked, feeling a frisson of uncertainty even as she felt the word pass her lips.

"Yes," he answered, throwing back his head to flip the alben waterfall of his hair out of his face. The trail of water glimmered in the first light of morning. "...and no."

When he turned to look at her again, Ororo knew. "Magnus." There was no question in her voice.

The man who had, until only moments ago, answered to Joseph nodded. "Yes, Ororo."

The last of the storm clouds dissipated, and the sun, as if it had been waiting some cue from the Goddess, broke over the horizon, backlighting him in glorious golden-orange light.

Ororo stared. Soaking wet, naked to the waist, and wearing nothing but a tattered pair of sweatpants, he was still a regal figure; majestic in a way that the awkward Joseph had not been. He looked a bit lost, vaguely confused. But, with aplomb that could never be mistaken for anyone other than the Master of Magnetism, he remained silent until he was certain of his surroundings. "Westchester, then," he intoned.

If the movement had not been sufficient proof, the voice was. That resonant, throaty, silk-over-smoke tenor, heavy with the burden of a life thrice as long as it ought to have been, was proof beyond reproach.

The X-Men -- and Joseph himself -- now had the answer to the question that they had almost been afraid to ask.

Magneto was back.

~The man does know how to make an entrance,~ Ororo thought, and couldn't help laughing.

Magneto raised both eyebrows, clearly surprised. ~Of all the reactions I might have expected from one of the X-Men on finding me standing sopping wet on their lawn -- musical laughter like that was *not* among them.~

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