X-Men: The Gifted Ones

13. JANE'S BEDROOM, XAVIER MANSION, WEST CHESTER, NY

Jane hated storms. She remembered when she used to be scared of them as a girl, but had grown to love them once her mother held her and soothed her fears. "Oh Jane," her mother had said, many times, "thunder is just the sky talking back. It can't hurt you, it just wants to scare you...but if it can't hurt you, it can't scare you, right". Jane would try to understand. Then she had read Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum and read about the terrifying Wheelers who would screech and scare little Dorothy, until Dorothy realized the Wheelers were quite helpless, and couldn't hurt her at all. The Wheelers even became Dorothy's friends. She thought of thunder as the Wheelers living in the clouds and it would make her laugh, recalling the characters she grew to both pity and love. She enjoyed storms after that. She used to anticipate the sound of thunder that would crash or boom after a lightning flash. She loved counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder. It was a game. It was such a reassuring sound once she knew it could never hurt her. She used to sleep peacefully through a storm.

Then she went to war.

Thunder and lightning never quite seemed like her innocent, harmless Wheelers anymore. In Vietnam, the booms and crashes could kill you, flashes meant harm was imminent, flashes of light meant to get down and pray that whatever was about to crash down on you would spare you.

Jane could never sleep through the storms now.

She wrapped herself up in the blankets and pulled a pillow over her face to keep out the flashes that managed to seep through the shutters she had closed tight. She tried remembering her mother's reassurances, tried remembering her Wheelers up in the clouds. It was to no avail. She tried telling herself that she was safe now, safe in a large mansion in the countryside of New York. She muttered this to herself over and over again, hoping sleep would come to her as the storm continued to crash around her.

Then she heard a man's voice cry out in pain.

She knew it, she knew she was back in Vietnam.

No, she told herself. I'm not. I'm in New York and...someone is in pain! She bolted upright and listened for the voice again.

Professor!

She jumped out of bed and ran to his bedroom.

"Professor," she knocked. "Professor? Are you alright?"

There was no answer, only more screaming. She was sure he couldn't hear her over the screams or the sounds of the storm. It was clear he was in pain, something- or, she was afraid to think about it- someone, was clearly hurting him. "Professor?" she called through the door. "Professor, I'm coming in!" She figured she would open the door now and deal with the fallout later.

She was relieved when she found him alone but alarmed when she found him writhing on his bed, clutching his middle back, and howling in agony. She rushed to his bed and kneeled next to him, putting her hands on his back and forgetting all she had learned, all he had taught her, and absorbed his pain. She forgot to block it. A piercing sensation permeated her spine and she felt as if someone had rammed a harpoon through her. She found herself nauseated, her body wracked with pain beyond imagining. Sweat streamed out of every pore in her body.

She realized she could no longer feel her legs.

But Charles was feeling better, he had stopped thrashing, had stopped screaming. He rolled over and woke up. He was horrified to see Jane kneeling at his side, her body shaking in spasms of unbearable pain. He pulled away from her as quickly as he could, hoping the broken connection would help her body regain control. He wanted to chide her but realized this was not the time. "You can't heal it, you know," he whispered.