Summary:   Finding a safe place to rest . . . .

Warning:  Some discussion of difficult matters; no rougher than anything seen already.

Notes:  And thus The Golden Goose round-robin finally draws to a close. One more epilogue, and we'll be done. The universe remains open if anyone wishes to do a one-shot story, either to fill in blanks or to write something in this AU's future, but more along the lines of Shadowlands, than an RR; I won't be coordinating it. Feel free to play if the spirit moves you. :-)

The breakup of Storm and Hank shook the mansion for days, and we all walked softly. Their affair had been winding down to this -- or maybe winding up to it -- for weeks since we'd escaped Weapon X, and now it had blown sky high like beans in a pressure cooker. Part of me felt sorry for Hank, part of me was annoyed at the Sturm and Drang (pun intended), and part of me was worried -- which was weird. Mostly, I don't give a shit about the little dramas of other's lives; I've got enough of my own crap to deal with. But this was different. Ororo . . . I'm not sure I'd call her a friend. Well, I'm not sure she'd call me a friend, but I was worried about her. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to people, but I'm not always as dense as I'm taken for. Everyone had come back from Weapon-X freaked out -- we all jumped more at noises than we had before, and didn't sleep well. Yet Ororo had spiraled down into outright antisocial behavior. I recognized it because I'm already there. Antisocial R Us, or that's what Jean tells me -- says I don't like people, and mostly, she's right. I don't. Or rather, I don't like "people" in the generic plural because, often as not, they act stupid. But individual people . . . there are some I like a lot -- including Ororo. Just don't expect me to be Party Guy.

For which reason I must have shocked the hell out of her when I asked if she'd like to go to the local Renn Faire in Tuxedo Park, west and a little north of Westchester, across the Hudson River. Don't ask me why I enjoy those things. They're kind of geeky, but I'm a closet geek, and people stare at me less there. A guy in red sunglasses is the least of Weird. So I go to watch people make asses out of themselves wearing clothes that should be put on a restraining order, and to see the jousting, and human chess, and the sword and knife shops, and some of the art. Dragons are seriously cool. Bite me.

Besides, this time, my brother had talked me into it. They don't have Renn Faires near Albuquerque -- it's the freakin' desert -- and he wanted to hear the musicians. Imagine: my brother the cellist. He's pretty good, too. He plays Bach Cello Suites and listens to a guy named Yo-Yo Ma. Sounds like a new toy from Hasbro, not a person. (I know, I know; I shouldn't be so snide, but I can't help it. "Yo-Yo"?) Anyway, I guess that's what happens when you get adopted by a rich doctor. His grades are good, too. I may razz him, but I'm proud of him. The professor wants him for the X-Men, but I put my foot down. No damn way. The boy's going to college; he's going to be somebody and I'll kick the ass of anyone who tries to mess with that, even if it's his ass.

So I'd agreed to take him to the Faire, as long as he didn't plan to make a fool out of himself by dressing up. He's a lot more inclined to play along with that stuff, and probably thought the idea of wearing tights amusing. Of course, he doesn't have enough hair on his legs to think otherwise. Dani was going with him (they're joined at the hip even if they won't admit it), and I figured they'd take off on their own as soon as they could ditch Big Brother. So as I didn't want to hang out by myself -- and wasn't too comfortable with Jean these days -- I asked Ororo. At first, she looked at me like I'd lost my mind, then said, "Okay."

And that's how I wound up standing next to her, watching a "gypsy" show and listening to her gripe about belly dancers. As I'd predicted, Alex and Dani had gone off on their own already, leaving Ro and I to peruse stalls and catch a few shows, and now she was off on a tear about belly dancers, but not in the way Jean would have. Ororo wasn't bitching over the idea. She was bitching about their technique. I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised that she might know something, since she's from Morocco, but I was. To her, it's not sex on legs with bells on (literally); it's an art form. I still think it's sex on legs with bells on, but I'll humor her.

"So what, exactly, is wrong with what they're doing?"

"They have no technique! They're just . . . shaking stuff! That is not Middle-Eastern dancing!"

I laughed. "What do you want? Ballet?"

"Scott, there are forms." Her tone verged on long-suffering patience. "You have Raks Sharki, Sherezzah Bint al-Wah, Meisssoun, old Ouled Nail, and the Zar, or trance dance -- "

"Okay, okay already! Jesus!"

"What they're doing is some kind of weird . . . fusion . . . that winds up being nothing at all."

"So? It's a Renn Faire! Some of the stuff here is pretty accurate, but it's still entertainment. Man, they're just playing to the audience. This stuff is a guy's wet dream."

"There are still forms. And they're not that good, either. I could do better."

"Oh, really? Storm the belly dancer and part-time weather goddess? Okay -- go show them up."

"You're kidding, right?"

"Not really. Put your money where your mouth is, woman." I was grinning, but also half-serious. I felt like yanking her chain. Plus, I have to admit the idea of seeing Ororo belly dance was . . . intriguing.

She looked down at herself, in jeans and a surprisingly loose (for Ro) t-shirt of the type she wears these days. Shapeless. Decidedly non-sexual. "I'm not exactly dressed for it." Then something passed over her face. "I don't want to be ogled, either, thank you."

"You were the one talking about art forms. I never said it was anything but fantasy fodder."

She turned away and I bit my tongue. I can be a real ass, but for a minute, I'd had a peek at the old Ororo: skeptical, sometimes catty but frank, and full of unpredictable trivia that took you by surprise. It had made me forget this wasn't the old Ororo.

"Hey -- " Reaching out, I set a palm on her shoulder, a little tentatively. I wasn't sure if she'd accept it or slap me silly. "Let's go get something to eat."

"Again?"

"I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry!" But she didn't hit me, and she didn't yell at me for being crass, so I supposed it okay.

We wound up at a covered area with picnic tables, and as it wasn't the lunch hour, we had a table to ourselves. I ate a gyro and she watched, drinking Mountain Dew. She snitched some of my fries and I let her while I watched the kaleidoscope of people pass: goths, old hippies, Renn Faire staffers, a lesbian couple with three kids and a big yellow dog, three yuppy guys who'd had way too much beer and were weaving on their feet and eating pickles, and three college girls in sweat-run face paint and tight hip-huggers. Two of them wore little tops with leather bustiers -- one with a rose stuffed down her cleavage -- while the third had on what amounted to a chain-mail bra, and nothing underneath. Anywhere else, she'd have been picked up for indecent exposure. Also, improbably, she wore a high, pointed "damsel" hat with a fluttering scarf attached. All three were little too . . . fleshy . . . for the garb. "Man, there are some things people shouldn't be let out of the house in."

Ororo glanced around to follow my line of sight. "Prude."

"That's not it. It's just . . . gross. Fat rolls don't do anything for me."

"Oh, I see. We're not a prude, just a fitness elitist."

"Not that either. Well, not really. I'd just like to think I have a little more common sense and some taste. You tell me why you think how they're dressed is attractive."

"I didn't say it was. But why does it always matter so much to guys, how a girl looks? Maybe they're perfectly nice girls, but you don't know that. You just sit there making fun of them because of how they look!"

And whoa -- that was a lot more heated than I'd bargained on. Swallowing the food in my mouth, I considered how to answer without really putting my foot in it. Finally, I ventured, "Okay, maybe they're perfectly nice girls, but that doesn't mean they're wearing something that looks good. I wasn't judging them, just how they're dressed. I'd look pretty stupid, too, if I went strutting around in a Speedo and greasepaint. Or something."

And that, at least, succeeded in making her grin. "Well, Cyclops, your uniform may as well be spray-painted on, so I'm not sure it's too different. And it doesn't change the fact that guys judge women too much on looks."

I swallowed the last bite of gyro and cleaned my fingers with a damp napkin. I dislike being messy; I was the kid who hated finger paints, too. "I don't think that's true," I told her. "I mean, okay, yeah, I look. But that's not the same thing as actually, you know, caring about someone."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really." Yet I felt as if I were blundering into a box canyon with an ambush waiting.

"So if looks don't mean anything to you, you want to explain to me why you're so hot for that red-headed chick with the peaches-and-cream complexion and big boobs?"

Ticked off more than I'd have expected by that crack, I balled up the gyro's foil wrapper, shoved it in my empty plastic cup and rose from the bench to stalk off. I threw the trash in a bin and then just kept going. After a few minutes, I heard her scurrying to catch up. She didn't apologize, just said, "You didn't answer my question, Cyclops."

"Fuck you."

"Already done, by a pair of furry shitheads who only cared what I looked like. And one called himself my boyfriend."

I stopped walking to stare, a lot of things suddenly a lot clearer in my head, and maybe I should've figured it all out earlier, but like I said, I'm not always the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to people. And Jesus, how did I even begin to answer her? For starters, putting Henry in the same category as Sabretooth -- however good the cat bastard had been to Maddie -- wasn't even close to fair, but this wasn't about logic, and I think she'd said it half to shock me, anyway. Well, I know she'd said it to shock me. I used the same tactic sometimes: drive somebody off so they quit asking dangerous questions. But I was the wrong person to pull that on; two could tango. Moving in close enough to speak in an undertone meant only for her ears and not everybody else who was passing (we were standing in the middle of a pathway), I said, "Sabretooth didn't give a shit what you looked like. You had a hole he could stick it in and that was all that mattered to him. Rape has nothing to do with looks. As for Henry, I think he cared about more than how you filled out your clothes."

Ororo is a tall girl, almost as tall as me, so we stood glaring eye-to-eye, and I'm sure everyone else thought we were having a little lovers' spat. People gave us a wide berth. This wasn't the arena I'd have chosen to get at what was bugging Storm, but she'd picked the battlefield and I've never been known to turn down a challenge. So we faced off near the kiddie rides and prepared to duke it out verbally with children squealing in the background.

Except she surrendered the field even before the charge. Straightening her back, she turned around and walked away from me, and now it was my turn to chase her. She was headed across something dubbed "The Kissing Bridge," and the irony wasn't lost on me. I felt more like socking her in the jaw. Catching her up on the other side near the peacock pavilion, I slung an arm around her shoulders as if she really were by girlfriend and steered her off down the path. There were just way too many people around to have this conversation, so I looked for a place that was as private as we could get without stomping off through the underbrush. She didn't fight me -- much.

Spotting a 2D billboard painting of a medieval fort that looked like a cheap stage backdrop, I angled her off the path behind it, not really caring what anybody watching assumed. There in the shadow of the billboard and the trees, I turned her to face me and slipped a hand under her chin, tilting it up. "Look at me, Ro." She did. It wasn't friendly, but this was too important to be put off by a pair of narrowed white eyes.

"What happened to you in Weapon-X wasn't your fault," I said, "either because of how you look, or anything you did. Got it? I'll keep telling you that until you get it through your thick skull."

"I didn't think it was my fault. I'm not that stupid, and I've heard the whole rape-crisis schpiel before. Don't play psychologist. You suck at it."

"I'm not playing psychologist and I know exactly jack shit about rape crisis. I'm just telling you how I see it. Ever since we got out of Finland, you've done everything in your power to play down your looks, and you kept shoving Henry away, like you thought you're not worth it, until you finally just broke up with him. Why? Was he getting too close?"

Ororo had yanked free to dig fingers into her hair and pull, frustrated. "Breaking up had nothing to do with that! I just . . . I can't take care of him, too, Scott! Everything was about Henry! He didn't mean it to be, but I didn't want to be touched and he thought it was all about him, that I couldn't stand to look at him anymore! It had nothing to do with him! Not like he thought! I just . . . he's furry and he'd put an arm around me and . . . it made me freak out. It was like Sabretooth."

"Yeah," I said, mostly to keep her talking. Maybe I was playing psychologist. A little. But she'd done it to me on the mission to India.

"I told him I needed time," she went on, "but he took it personally. I understand why, but I just . . . I can't deal with that right now. I feel like a bitch, but he's always been so . . . He says stuff like, 'Ro, you're so pretty, and I'm such a dog!' 'Ro, I don't know why you go out with me!' 'Ro, you're a goddess!' I mean, come on! It was starting to get on my nerves anyway, even without the new blue shit."

Stopping, she rubbed at her forehead. I could hear, on the path beyond, somebody laughing over something. A female voice, high and strident. I just waited. Finally, she continued, "I need some space, and I don't want somebody I have to take care of all the time. He doesn't really love me. He loves the idea of me. I was flattered for a while, but it gets old. And then the whole . . . The shit that happened in Weapon-X, and that motherfucker Sabretooth told me he was protecting me. Can you believe it?"

In a weird way, I could. Sabretooth had his own peculiar logic, as I'd discovered since dealing with him over Maddie. But I wasn't going to tell Ororo that; it would just upset her. And it didn't excuse what he'd done to her, either. The whole idea of rape -- of a guy doing that to a girl -- punches me somewhere low in the gut and I just want to kill something. It's not rational.

In any case, she seemed to have run out of words, or she was waiting for me to say something because she was watching me. Unsure what to say, I settled for, "I'm really sorry, Ro." It was simple, but the best I could think of, and maybe it was okay, because she leaned forward until her forehead pressed into my shoulder - not flirtatious, nor even grief-stricken, but as if she were tired and I was the pole she could lean on. Feeling a little awkward, I petted her hair. She really had the most amazing hair. Then I felt immediately guilty for the thought -- God, I was paranoid.

"Can I ask you a question?" she said finally.

"Sure."

"It's a little . . . personal."

I hesitated, then said, "Okay."

"When you fantasize about Jean now, do you think of Maddie's body?"

Full mental stop. Then my brain stumbled around like it had been broad sided. "I don't . . . ah . . . it's not -- " I sounded like an idiot. "No, actually." And it was true. Ever since my little "mating experience" in Weapon-X, I'd found the idea of sex with Jean off-putting because it reminded me too much of being treated like a stud bull. It wasn't as if the sex had been bad, precisely, but it hadn't been great, or -- more to the point -- anything I'd chosen. I'm not just a pair of convenient balls with a dick attached, and maybe there's more than one kind of rape. Finally, I said, "I'm not really interested in Jean the same way anymore." Telling Logan that I'd step aside and let him pursue Jean hadn't been entirely selfless, now that I thought about it. "It's too . . . weird." Gee. How articulate.

But she seemed to follow what I was getting at. "Yeah." Leaning back from me then, she studied my face. I studied hers. "So that's why you asked me today? Because Jean freaks you out now?"

"No, not entirely." Honesty compelled me to explain, "I don't think Jean would have wanted to come, if I had asked her, but that's not why I asked you."

"Pity date?"

"Quit being so damn defensive, Ro. It's not pity. And this isn't a date. Maybe I just thought you might like the Faire and I didn't want to come hang out by myself."

"Didn't want to play chaperone and trail the lovebirds around, you mean."

I smirked at that; I couldn't help it. "Well, that, too."

She laughed. "Okay then, come on. Let's go look for that dragon statue you want." And taking my hand in hers, she dragged me off. It was just the grip of a friend, safe and platonic, but she didn't let me go, and I didn't try to get free. When we ran into my brother and Dani half an hour later, we were still holding hands. He gave me a weird look, but grinned; I shot him the bird where Ro couldn't see.

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