The X-Project

Scott and Terry head into New York to pick up a potential new student. It's shaping up to be a nice afternoon - until they get there, and the situation becomes much more complicated than they ever anticipated.


Scott knocked on the half-open suite door. "Would anyone in this suite like to accompany me on a bit of a trip to New York this afternoon?" he called whimsically, without looking in. "Anyone with the last name of Cassidy, that is..."

"Sure you know you're going to break Yana's heart with that kind of talk. She probably was all excited just now and look what you've done." Terry came bounding out of her room, her hands tangled in her half-braided hair. She smiled broadly at Scott then glanced around, "If Yana's even around, that is. She may have dashed off to Russia again. What's the occasion, Mr. Summers? Should I change?" She looked down at her bright blue halter and dark blue capri jeans.

Scott smiled, giving her a quick up and down look. "No, you're fine. I have to go pick up a potential new student, who's coming here for evaluation of her mutation," he said, watching Terry finish braiding her hair. "Her parents were a little sketchy on precisely what was going on, but apparently she's developed enhanced hearing. So when I was thinking of someone who might be able to keep her company on the way back and understand a little of what she's going through, you came right to mind." He chuckled softly. "Besides, it's been a while since you and I went for a drive, hasn't it?"

Terry grinned at him, "Aye, that it has. Let me grab some shoes and I'll be right with you." She dashed back into her room, letting go of her hair as she rummaged for something to slip on. She was back in a heartbeat, wallet slipped into her pocket and a CD case in her hands. "Nice soothing music," she explained, "Nothing too jarring. I like to listen to it when I'm studying."

"Good idea," Scott said as they headed towards the stairs. "I gather she's anxious, from what her parents have said." He reached out and gave her braid a gentle tug. "Just be your usual ingratiating self, and she'll be too busy relaxing to fret about what she's going to find when she gets here. Her name's Miriam, by the way."

"That's probably because she's hearing her parents whisper to each other when they're all the way across the house. It's a strange sensation when you first get it." She hopped down the last three steps like she was seven not seventeen. "Did you see Marius the first time he had my powers? Funniest thing ever." Tilting her head to the side so she could look up at him, she eyed him carefully, "Do I get to drive?"

Scott gave her a long, faux-serious look. "On the way there," he finally said, then smiled. "Not on the way back. I'll drive, and you two can sit in the back and chat."

She clapped with utter glee, "Can we take the red car? And put the top down? Please?" Terry's love affair with fast cars she'd gotten directly from the headmaster and thus he had only himself to blame as she latched onto his arm and gave him a wide-eyed pleading look.

"Well, it is a gorgeous day out there..."

--

"Terry," Scott said steadily, telling himself that he did not indeed need to cover his eye, "please slow down." She wasn't going ridiculously fast, just... a little faster than she should be, heading into New York in the middle of the day. "We don't want to get pulled over, do we?"

With the wind whipping past her ears, it was like having the hearing of any other person and she raised her voice slightly to compensate as she laughed, "We're not going to get pulled over. We're just taking a leisurely drive." But because it was Scott, she eased off on the gas pedal and let the car slow to something just bending the speed limit instead of out right mocking it.

"When precisely did you turn evil? ... oh, right, you came that way." Scott gave her a baleful look that was about ninety-eight percent faux-baleful. "I suppose I have to cut you a little slack based on the fact that you do have fast enough reflexes to correct, even at that speed. Not like your boyfriend the murderer of traffic cones." Had he just made a joke about Bobby? Huh.

"I liked when we had the funeral for the first one. And then you gave up because it turned into the beaches of Normandy." If Terry noticed at all that Scott had just talked about Bobby, she didn't show it, merely adjusting her grip on the steering wheel, hands perhaps just a little too tense.

Scott sighed, half-wistfully, half-quizzically. "Whatever happened to my sense of humor," he mused, intending it to be quiet enough that Terry wouldn't be able to hear it over the noise of the wind and traffic.

Terry glanced at him but said nothing. Even if she could hear it, there were some things you just pretended not to hear. Instead she reached over and twisted the volume on the stereo up to see what was playing. "You should sing more," Terry claimed decisively at Clapton blared, "No one can resist Layla."

"More of an instrumental music person, me," Scott confessed easily, resting his chin on his hand and smiling a bit quizzically as he thought about that. "Used to be really into jazz, actually..."

"Oh, aye?" He had most of her attention now, driving by rote. "What kind of jazz? The new stuff or the classic or…"

"Charlie Parker was my hero when I was eighteen. I even played the sax." Scott laughed a little wistfully, shaking his head. "Then the team started up and I decided that I had to prioritize."

"The sax, really?" She eyed him, then grinned impishly, "I'd have taken you for the triangle type." She hummed along with the radio for a moment, giving the music room a mental scan and coming up short the obvious. "So what happened to your sax? Did it just get abandoned or sold or what?"

Scott stared out at the passing traffic. "It's in a storeroom somewhere in the basement, I think. Or maybe in the attic, I'm not sure." He looked around at her with a sudden, wry smile. "Triangle, huh? That's flattering to the old ego."

"It takes great skill and rhythm to play the triangle. Not everyone can pull off the right combination of force and timing required by the triangle." Terry giggled. "You should go looking for your sax. What's his name?"

He was turning a very interesting shade of red, he imagined. "... Bird," he muttered sheepishly, slouching in the seat. Why was he confessing all of this? "I was a very weird and obsessive eighteen year-old."

"Drag him out and Patience and I will play with you guys." Terry let the comment about him being weird pass. The name made perfect sense to her after all. "Hey, is this our exit?"

Scott checked the piece of paper with the directions. "Yeah, that's it," he said, and was pleased to see that she did slow down properly to take the exit. "Have you thought of what you might tell Miriam about the school on the way back?"

"Oh, the usual. I'll leave out the bits about the leather and the demons and focus on our great electives and excellent college acceptance rate. Also the lake, everyone loves living at a school with a lake." Terry grinned, "Did I tell you that I sent in my acceptance to Pace? Left or right?"

"Left," Scott said, then smiled at her. "You hadn't, but I heard it through the grapevine. That's great, Terry. You'll do well there." He had looked over that program, when he'd first become aware of where all she was applying.

"I thought about Westchester but I wanted something a little smaller. I'm used to having lots of attention from my teachers. I'm spoiled that way." She grinned back at him. "With any luck all these tests I've suffered through will save me a few semesters and I can double major before the scholarship runs out." They paused at a stop light and Terry frowned, rubbing at her ear. "I hope this place doesn't sound this way all the time. Power lines should come with mufflers. Is it much further?"

Scott frowned at her grimace. "Three more blocks," he said, looking up at the upscale apartment buildings surrounding them. "If you're finding this unpleasant, I imagine she is, too. Gah, I hate it when environmental factors make manifestation more unpleasant..." As if the experience needed to be any harder.

"It's really dreadful." Terry turned up the radio a bit more, though that didn't actually help and hoped that three blocks on would be a quieter neighborhood. "She'll be glad to get out of her, I can guarantee it."

"I'll take your word for it," Scott said, peering ahead. "They do say that the semi-rural life is..." He trailed off, his expression going just the slightest bit flat as he saw the flash of lights up ahead. Police? No, ambulance, he realized as they got closer.

And they were stopping right in front of the building where the Crosses lived. Scott shifted in his seat, his forehead furrowing. Coincidence? Surely coincidence...

--

"We should never have called you!"

Leah Cross was understandably distraught, Scott told himself. Her daughter had, after all, attempted to kill herself this afternoon. It was too much to expect a mother to be at all rational when her daughter was in the room behind them having her stomach pumped, and had, according to the doctor, stopped breathing in the ambulance on the way over. It was even reasonable that Mrs. Cross would lash out at the nearest target.

It didn't make bearing the brunt of it any more pleasant. Scott straightened, taking a deep breath, and answered calmly. "Mrs. Cross," he said, even managing a soothing tone. "You did the right thing by calling us. We've had a lot of experience helping young people through difficult manifestations-"

"A hell of a lot of good you did my daughter!" She wiped furiously at her eyes, another sob escaping. Her husband was over speaking to the nurse at the front desk - barking, more like, Scott thought bleakly. Stressful conditions, he told himself. No judging them.

"Mrs. Cross, what's happened-" He paused, his jaw clenching, and amazingly, she didn't seize on the opportunity to interrupt him. "I am so very sorry," he said, almost gently as he saw more pain and confusion than anger in her expression. "She's in the best of hands here, you know that." They were standing in one of the best hospitals in New York. The staff would do everything they could, and their best was very good indeed.

It was a platitude, and she tuned it out. He could see it in her eyes. The problem was, there wasn't much to say that wasn't a platitude. Not right now.

"Can I get you anything?" Scott asked, taking refuge in the mundane. Sometimes it was the only thing that made any sense at times like this.

Leah sat down, or rather collapsed into one of the chairs and looked up at him, her eyes full of tears and panic and anger that he thought seemed self-directed, more than anything else.

Scott sat down more slowly in the chair next to hers. "It's happened before," he said softly, swallowing past the tightness in his throat. "In my time at the school. It's so... hard for teenagers to cope with such violent change in their lives." Leah gave another sob, and Scott reached out tentatively, taking her hand. "But we have people at the school who can help her, who specialize in these situations-"

"My daughter is not a situation!" she cried out and pulled her hand away, wrapping her arms around herself, trying to choke back sobs.

Wrong choice of words. Very, very wrong. "Mrs. Cross, I-" Scott stopped as the doors in front of them opened and the doctor stepped out.

The doctor wasn't quite smiling, but the quiet relief in his eyes was unmistakable. As Leah jolted forward out of her chair, hands to her mouth, Scott let the air in his lungs out on a sigh.

Thank God.

--

The little boy was sitting alone in the corner of the waiting room, his eyes on the floor and his feet swinging a few inches off the ground. He was clearly despondent, and just as clearly not willing to point that out to his parents. It would have been very easy to overlook his quiet presence entirely.

Terry had been hovering out of…well, not out of earshot since she wasn't standing outside wearing headphones but at least far enough away to pretend that she couldn't hear. She noticed the small boy after a little bit and his resemblance to his father was enough to confirm his identity for her so she crossed to his side and sat in the hard plastic chair next to him.

"Hi," she said softly, "I'm Terry. Is Miriam your sister?"

The boy looked up at her, then nodded. "Is she okay?" he asked, sounding very much like he was trying to sound as grown-up as humanly possible. It wasn't working all that well.

Terry sighed, "I don't know. The doctors haven't told me anything. I'm sure they'll tell your mom and da as soon as they know how she's doing. What's your name?"

"Daniel." He looked away, his feet swinging again. "I found her on the floor. In the bathroom."

"And you called your parents? That was exactly the right thing to do. I bet you were really scared." Terry watched him for a moment, at a loss for how to console the little boy without lying to him that everything would be okay. She just didn't know.

"They suck." Daniel sounded almost fierce for a moment. "My mom and dad. Miriam was so scared but they didn't do anything. Just told her she was going away to get fixed."

Terry winced. It was so hard for parents to understand that there was nothing wrong with their kids because they were mutants. Still, they'd agreed to send her to Xavier's so that was a good sign. "Oh, lad. There was nothing wrong with your sister. That's the first thing you learn at school. But I'm sure your parents were just doing their best." She hesitated, looking at him, "Were you scared too?"

"Not of her!" The fierceness was still there, but there were tears in Daniel's eyes, too. "Whatever the other kids said. It's not her fault she couldn't s-see anymore." He rubbed at his eyes. "She heard everything but her eyes wouldn't open anymore. She used to lie in her room with a pillow over her head crying. Is that going to happen to me too?"

Wouldn't open? What had happened to her? Terry wrapped an arm around the boy's shoulders. "A lot of times, it's just the one kid who is a mutant but...no, even if you are I don't think it will be the same for you. Most siblings don't have the same mutation." Terry took a slow breath, trying to sort out what she could say here that would help the boy. "I...my da and I have sort of the same powers. But we're not exactly the same. ...what do you mean that her eyes wouldn't open?"

There were tears leaking silently down Daniel's cheeks. "Her eyelids grew over and wouldn't open anymore. She said her head hurt so much all the time, before it happened. Mom and Dad just told her to take aspirin. They thought she was faking or something..." He sniffled, rubbing at his nose. "Then it happened and they started talking about sending her away and she was really scared."

...Mother of God, the poor girl. "I'm sure she was. And I know you were probably scared for her too, huh? Because you didn't know what was happening or how you could help her?" Terry glanced over Daniel's head to where Scott was still talking to the parents and swallowed hard. "When she's better, she can come to school. We can help."

The boy was silent for a long moment, then leaned against Terry, sniffling. "I want her to wake up," he said, sounding more like his apparent age finally. "Will she?"

She hugged him tightly, "I don't know, lad. They're doing their best right now. When she does, it'll be because you did exactly the right thing when you found her. You're a good brother."

"It's not fair," he muttered, but seemed to be finding the hug comforting. "The school's not someplace scary? People wouldn't make fun of her or anything?"

"No way. I've lived at the school for six years. It's a really great place and she wouldn't look weird at all to us." Terry smiled, "I know that I don't look any different really but lots of the students don't look 'normal'. My roommate is purple and one of my teachers is blue and has a tail. We're all just regular people though."

"It sounds kind of cool."

"Terry?" Scott appeared beside them, looking strained, but managed a smile for the little boy. "Hey there," he said softly.

"Hey," Daniel said, looking up at him.

"I've... talked to Miriam's parents," Scott said to Terry quietly. "We should probably head back out. There's not much we can do here." He gave Daniel another look, as if doubting the truth of that statement suddenly.

"All right. Mr Summers, this is Daniel. He's Miriam's brother." Terry nodded then gave Daniel another hug. "If you need to talk or anything, you can call me, okay? Your parents should have the number for the school."

"Okay. Bye, Terry." Daniel hugged her back, then slipped down off the chair and headed in the direction of his parents.

Scott watched him go, repressing a sigh, and then looked back down at Terry. "There should be a chaplain or a member of the counseling staff down to see them soon," he said. "I hope it's soon, at least. The parents aren't coping very well with all of this, and I hate to see a kid that young caught in the middle."

"He's terrified and he blames them for her being here." Terry looked worriedly after him, "I can't really blame him. They told her she was going to be fixed." She shuddered, "As if there was anything wrong with her. Mother Mary, that poor girl. Do you know how's she's doing? Is she going to be okay?"

"They think she's going to make it." Scott's voice was low, and he didn't quite meet Terry's eyes as he continued. "There might be complications - they were sleeping pills, and an overdose of those is particularly dangerous." There was a cry of what sounded like relief from down the hall - Miriam's mother, Scott realized, as he watched her and her husband led into the room where their daughter was. Leaving Daniel standing out in the hall, of course. "Come on," he said to Terry.

Terry cocked her head, trying not to pry but unable to filter out the voices entirely. "They're..." She sighed and shook her head, standing. "It won't matter, will it? Even if she lives, it's not going to matter. None of them are going to get over this."

"We can hope." It was a hollow, stupid thing to say. Just like putting his arm around her shoulders was a hollow gesture - or maybe a selfish one. Scott felt like he needed it as much or more than she did. "If they get the help they need, all of them, maybe..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "We'll be there," he said, and the words sounded so empty.

Enough of this. He led her down the hall, intending to head towards the front doors of the emergency room and then out. Scott gave Daniel another small, hopefully reassuring smile as they passed him. Then, almost involuntarily, he paused, looking in the direction of the doors separating them from where Miriam was being treated.

Her parents and the doctor were standing around the bed, a nurse doing something on the other side. Scott watched as Miriam's father moved aside, stepping around his wife, and for the first time, he got a glimpse of the girl in the bed.

She was small and dark-haired, like her mother. Visible despite the tubes, however, was the fact that the mutation to her hearing hadn't been the only physical change she'd undergone. Scott, who'd never reacted with anything other than acceptance to some of the more bizarre physical mutations he'd encountered, stopped dead, the color draining from his face as he saw what had once been Miriam's eyes.

Terry knew from the second that Scott stopped that he hadn't known what had happened to Miriam. She looked over then closed her own eyes at the sight. Delicate eyebrows still curved along the bone but below there was nothing but smooth skin, like there was never anything there at all. "Please, Mr. Summers." She tugged on his hand, wanting to keep moving, not wanting to say anything else. Right now Miriam would be able to hear them. And Terry couldn't imagine anything would be a comfort to her now.

Blind. The hallway felt very hot suddenly, as if someone had just dialed the temperature up ten degrees. Scott dragged his gaze away from Miriam, and saw Terry looking up at him, lips tightly pressed together. He realized suddenly why she wasn't saying anything else.

"Right," he said in a voice that hardly sounded like his own. "Let's go."

--

Scott had gotten into the driver's seat without comment. Terry was... not as visibly rattled as he might have expected, but he wasn't willing to risk the chance that she was just putting on a particularly convincing show. Of course, Scott thought dimly, he was being something of a hypocrite. How rattled was he?

But his hands were steady on the steering wheel, and he'd already crashed one car this year. He'd reached his quota. To be sure, though, he was keeping well within the speed limit and driving carefully. He wasn't the only one in the car, after all.

Terry maintained her silence almost superstitiously until they were out of the city and onto the interstate, letting the radio fill in the chatter. She snuck occasional glances at Scott, trying to determine what he was thinking, what he was feeling but for all that she'd known him for years, he was still hard to read. Bizarrely, she thought the lack of visor or glasses made it harder. Before you watched for quirks in his mouth, the faint wrinkles on his forehead. Now, the signs were more spread out.

"He told me." She spoke without preamble, not bothering to clarify which he. "Her eyes closed and she couldn't open them anymore. Before that, her parents thought she was just faking her headaches."

"It's unusual. A physical mutation that dramatic emerging at puberty." Not unheard of, though. Headaches, Scott thought. The headaches must have been horrific, with that much going on. Her optic nerve, her inner ear, her brain...

"Karolina started glowing three months ago," Terry reminded him. Glowing was very dramatic. She sighed. She'd already thought about how much pain the girl must have gone through. Just because loud noises didn't hurt her that didn't mean she didn't understand exactly how badly it affected other people. Alison had drilled it into her while they trained, made sure she knew just how badly she could hurt people just through residual noise. "I think he's afraid it'll happen to him now. Not just her manifestation but...being a mutant."

"It's possible. One hopes that their parents might have gotten their act together by then, if it does." He sounded so cold. That wasn't fair to Terry, but he couldn't... Scott's jaw clenched, and he was glad that he was looking at the road and not at her. "We'll... the Professor, probably, will call them again in a few days. Check up on things. Hopefully this won't change their mind about letting us help." Although he was terribly afraid that it would.

"I didn't know what to do." Her voice was almost lost, so quietly did she speak. "I didn't know what to tell him to make him not scared anymore."

"He... seemed like whatever you were saying was helping," Scott said, thinking about the body language, the little boy's expression as he'd looked up at Terry. "Sometimes there's nothing we can do except... try and be comforting."

Terry sighed and stared into the distance. "She can't stay there, Mr. Summers. You couldn't hear it but...that would have driven me mad." One hand dug into her hair, fingers tangling in the curls. "What's the point of being...us...if we can't help people?"

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. "We help..." Scott trailed off, his voice fainter than it should be. "We help because sometimes we can. It doesn't always... happen like this." It sounded wholly and absolutely unconvincing. How could he sit here and mouth platitudes to her, after something like this?

"It shouldn't ever happen like this." It wasn't that Terry didn't know that bad things happened. It just seemed to her like they were there--not just as X-Men but as mutants who had themselves been taught and protected--they were there to make the bad things happen less often. "We should be able to stop it." It was more of a plea than a firm statement. A wish, not reality.

"I know. We should." Scott swallowed, telling himself to come up with something to say here, something that would be reassuring. She was too young to have her idealism bruised. It wasn't fair. "Sometimes, the help has to come after things like this happen. It doesn't make it any less important that we do what we're here to do."

She bit her lip and continued to watch the scenery fly by. She'd never felt particularly lucky in her mutation. It was like being lucky to have red hair as far as she was concerned, not at all. But she could see. And there wasn't a thing about her that made her stand out among non-mutants. "I guess."

"We just... have to focus on doing what we can, when we can," he persevered, hating himself for what he was saying. You're a hypocrite, Summers. But maybe she'd take a better approach to situations like this than he did. Maybe that was worth mouthing the platitudes, if she took them to heart. "One day at a time," he murmured faintly.