24

Sunday, August 26, 1990

The courts were closed. It was a Sunday, so the courts were closed. At least, on paper.

But they were open. They were still hard at work. Everybody in the legal system was still hard at work, even on a Sunday. Even Judge Doyle, the most devout Irish Catholic in the city, was still at work.

Because there was just too much to do. Too much paperwork to file. Too many estates to handle. Too many bodies to bury, lives to ruin, worlds to shatter, dollars to transfer. It was just too much.

It was all too, too much.

I could probably get to the probate court with my eyes closed, now. Only, I could never get in, with how small I was, and how crowded the building became. I needed somebody with me every time, and that slowed things down. Which just made more work, because I wasn't getting done in time. And it just kept piling on.

But really, what did I expect? What did any of us expect?

We were not alone in the universe. We never had been, not really.

And in New York City, that great and terrible truth left behind a death toll of one-hundred and two thousand, nine-hundred and seventy five people.

And counting.

What happens when people die? They leave behind their stuff. And somebody has to handle that stuff. Make sure it gets where it needs to go, make sure it goes into the hands that are supposed to have it. But most of those people? They didn't expect to die. They never expected some great abomination from the depths of the cosmos to show up and stop their heart, or shock them so much they drove their bus full of tourists straight into the Hudson, or just outright drop dead because their minds couldn't handle it, because some quirk of neurology meant that they just saw more than they were supposed to, that the veil of reality had peeled back just enough to show just how horrible it really—

No! I closed my eyes and reached down into my purse, hands closing around the mezuzah I held in there, one that still shone with a simple, dull light even almost two months after That Day. I pulled it out and held it close, eyes closed as I muttered, half-spoken Hebrew as I tried to focus on it. I was here, I was in the here and now, I was in my office, I was here and HE was not.

Deep breaths. In… out. In… hold… out. In… out.

I focused on my breathing, let everything else drop away. Just focused on my breathing, on the feel of the mezuzah beneath my fingertips. Traced the Hebrew characters inscribed upon its surface. Calm, Noa. Calm.

I was here. I was still here.

A few more minutes passed, the stack of papers on my desk utterly forgotten as I pulled myself back together. Everything still felt too hot, and my heart was racing a mile a minute. But my hands weren't shaking any more, and I could breathe without it being ragged.

I opened my eyes. I was back in the present. I was in the office on a Sunday, because everybody had to be or we would never get anything done, and the whole system had gone to hell with its head in a handbasket. I had a pile of documents in front of me, all of which needed signing, and some of which needed proofreading — green post-it pile was good to just sign, yellow was read-then-sign, red was read and toss back for edits.

The blue post-it pile was for "everything that wasn't probate court, at least for right now".

With a sigh, and a reminder that it was now, not then, I pulled the first paperclipped packet off the top of the green post-it pile, did a quick skim, and signed. Then the next.

Then the next.

Twenty-one documents later, and I had just gotten started on the yellow pile when I heard a soft tap at my office door. When the door didn't open, I sighed.

"Come in," I said, not looking up from my paper. From the waiting, I could tell it wasn't Sophie or Joshua – both of them knocked as a courtesy before just barging right in, assuming it wasn't within thirty minutes of a scheduled phone call. They knew to check the calendar properly. My (hopefully still temporary) new hire, on the other hand…

The frosted glass door swung open, and a tall young blonde woman walked in, a massive pile of papers in her arms. I could see red sticky notes sticking out from between each set.

"I, uh, have all of these," Karen Page said as she bustled over, and set the pile down on my desk. "They uh, I think these all need to be in by tomorrow morning?"

I set the paper I was reading down, stood up, and walked around my desk to the stack of papers. The one on top would do, so I picked it up, flipped to the back, and checked the dates.

"Not August 27," I said, showing Karen where I was looking. "September 27. Which is a Thursday." I sighed, wrote in 'Thurs. Sep.27" on top of a pink sticky note, and slapped it on top of the pile. "There's enough stuff that needs fast-tracking that this can wait. For these motions, just check the second to last page for the date, and if it's more than three weeks out, just put it with the others that also need filing that week, okay?"

"O-oh." Karen sounded downcast, and her posture supported that. I walked back behind my desk and sat down as she hefted the pile again. "I'll just, get these back—"

"Karen." She stopped, and let the papers drop. She looked tense and nervous. "Calm down. You've been doing this for barely a few weeks, and you got tossed into the deep end. You're new to the legal side of things, mistakes are to be expected. Just learn from them."

"Right, o-okay." Once again, Karen hefted her stack of papers. "I'll just, get these back to the boys, yeah…"

A moment's struggle with the door later, and Karen was heading back down the hall to the conference room. Or at least, what was supposed to be the conference room, and had instead turned into the document storage room. Due dates were arranged in clockwise order from the door, with the imminent being right when you walked in, and the furthest out being on the other end. The entire table wasn't being used, though. Only two-thirds of it.

The other third was for a massive calendar, large enough to pencil things in as they came up.

And that calendar was filled to the fucking brim. Hence, why Miss Page was even here.

Once the totality of the workload assigned by the Court became apparent, Sophie lasted maybe six hours before having a small breakdown, not helped in the least by more private matters. I put out an urgent hiring call for secretaries later that day. Four had good enough resumes for interviews.

One walked in, saw my horns, and turned right around.

The other three all passed. Karen… had not impressed, but I'd been in desperate need.

Three secretaries started the next day.

By the end of the week, only Karen remained. Clearly some people just didn't do well in interviews, because as self-conscious as the young woman was, she was quick on the uptake and had done a bang-up job so far. I could only hope things stayed that way, and she didn't get as buried under the work as—

Shaking myself out of my thoughts, I pushed my glasses back up the bridge of my nose and turned my attention back to the papers in front of me. The green pile, I shoved to the opposite side of my desk and turned it away from me, just so it was out of the way. Then I dug back into the yellow pile, and started working my way through it.

About an hour and two-thirds of the pile later, another knock sounded on the door. This time, the door just pushed right open, and Joshua walked in, a blue sticky-note pile in his hands.

"Got another dozen," he said, holding them up. I used a pencil to save my place in the memo I'd been reading, and reached a hand out to take the pile from Joshua.

"Sophie still out?" I asked as I started signing the documents. Motions to continue, the lot of them. There wasn't a judge in the city that wouldn't sign off on a continuance right now, not when all of them were just as overworked as we were. If not more, really.

"Yeah," he said with a sigh. "And no word, either."

I sighed.

"We just have to hope," I said, but even I didn't believe it.

Sophie's eldest triplet, Michael, had been driving when IT happened. When he didn't come home after the eleven to twelve hour ordeal had passed, Sophie had panicked. When her husband found her son's car wrapped around a lamppost, the driver's seat empty and bloodied…

And then when she found Michael two days later at Memorial Sloan Kettering of all places, a full thirty blocks from the accident? When she saw her son laying there unconscious, with the doctors not knowing when he'd wake?

What made it all the more galling was that I wasn't able to even try to help. Stephen was busy putting out all the fires that an extragalactic abomination caused, and would probably be incommunicado for the next three to four months at a minimum, so I couldn't ask him if my magic would even do anything here, or just make things worse.

But just the fact that there might be something I could do, and couldn't, because I just didn't know for certain?

"You want me to grab some of those?"

"Hm?" I looked up at Joshua, pulled back out of my thoughts when he spoke. "Some of what?"

"Those," he said, pointing at the pile under the red sticky note. "I can do a preliminary proofread, have some ready for edits by the time the kids get in from classes."

"Matthew and Franklin are only two years younger than you are," I admonished Joshua. "And no skiving off from your classes. You are on your last semester, Joshua, it's time to buckle down. Pass some things off to the student attorneys. It'll be good experience for them."

"You wanna take some of that advice for yourself?" Joshua asked.

I paused. Then I put down my pen, clasped my hands, and simply looked at him.

"I beg your pardon?" I asked.

"Do you really think we can't see it?" Joshua sat down in one of the chairs on the other side of my desk. "You haven't worn your contacts in three weeks. You're using your power instead of makeup, yes I can tell the difference. Your blouse is wrinkled, your nails are chipped and ruined, you have too many split ends, and you look like you haven't slept in a week. You haven't been to Temple since 'That' happened. And most tellingly of all, you're over-steeping your tea."

I opened my mouth to reply and… nothing. I couldn't think of a single thing to say. Of all the things he could have possibly said, this one left me at a complete loss for words.

"Noa, when was the last time you slept through the night?" Joshua asked, concern writ large on his features. "Look, we can call some people, get stuff to slow down a bit — I asked Dad, he says our caseload is way larger than any other single attorney firm, so—"

"Joshua, stop. Get out and get back to work."

"Noa—"

"Out!" I slammed my hand on the desk.

Joshua didn't say anything else. He just gave me this sad frown, took the papers I'd signed (and the red sticky note stack, even though I… actually hadn't told him not to, now that I thought about it), and walked back to his office.

I slumped down in my chair.

He was right. Damn it all, but he was right. But there was so much to do. There was too much.

Just too much.

Monday, August 27, 1990

It was just past midnight. The bathroom light was on. The hall light was on.

I held the mezuzah in my hands, still glowing with that soft, dim light.

I couldn't fall asleep, not that that was anything unusual for the past too long. Chamomile tea did nothing. Benadryl to make me drowsy did nothing. Trying to do exercise until I was utterly exhausted did nothing.

Every time I closed my eyes, and got close to sleep, I saw HIM. That, that thing was long gone, farther out than anything we had could detect – the UN had put out a notice to the effect of "it's gone, we're safe now" about a week after the Arrival. I knew the monster was gone, I knew that, I knew it so well that I found myself repeating it under my breath at night.

But I still couldn't sleep. Because while the threat was so far away as to be nonexistent, part of me still felt that it was here.

I laid in bed, tossing and turning for about two hours. Another pillow was relegated to the "throw it away" bin because I tore it open with my horns, even through the little knitted 'socks' I put on the points – the third this month.

And then I found myself in the living room, listening to reruns of General Hospital and lightly drifting in and out of unconsciousness.

As per usual.

I'd tried sleeping with the lights on. I'd tried sleeping with music. It didn't work.

The TV did. The sofa did.

I felt myself drifting off, knowing that when I woke up in the morning, my neck would hurt, my tail would be killing me, and the less said about my back the better. But at least it was sleep. At least a few hours of rest. God, I was so tired—

My phone rang.

I practically leapt off of the sofa, yelling in fright before I realized it was the phone. The adrenaline was still in my veins, and all that fright and terror and "RUN!" turned into anger. I looked at the clock — 1:47am. I walked over to the phone, took a deep breath to make sure I didn't immediately explode at whoever thought it was just fucking peachy to call someone at this time of night, and answered.

"Noa Schaefer speaking," I said in my best client-facing voice.

"M-miss Schaefer? Noa?"

I recognized that voice, I thought with a frown. The caller was young, male… it wasn't St. John, Erik wouldn't let him call me for fear of being tracked. And if it wasn't him, then…

"Peter?" I asked. "What are you doing up this late — are you okay?"

"I-I, no." I heard hiccuping, sniffling. Something else over the phone that part of my mind filed away as a sob. "It, I, I don't—"

"Not over the phone," I said, feeling some alertness creep in. It was an emergency, clearly — and of the sort he'd rather call a lawyer than his uncle. "I was already up. Swing by. Do you need my address?"

The phone clicked dead.

I looked at the handset in confusion and hung it up. I knew I'd given the Parkers my business card on more than one occasion, and they'd gotten mailings with my letterhead, but that was my office address. I didn't think I'd given them my personal address? Had I done that when Osborn tried to toss my place—

Someone knocked on my front door.

My hand clenched tighter on my mezuzah. I looked down at myself — I was wearing an overly large sweatshirt over a sleep shirt, and not much else beside that. I was in no way presentable.

Something told me it didn't matter.

I opened the door, and looked up at Peter Parker.

He was, put simply, a wreck. Hair and face dirty, eyes red, puffy and bloodshot, and a couple cuts and bruises already forming. A sweatshirt and track pants hid what I knew had to be his Spider-Man costume well enough, but there were spots starting to darken, and quickly enough that I was growing concerned.

"What in the hell…" I found myself murmuring.

Then I found my focus, tugged Peter inside by a sleeve, and locked the door behind me.

"Go in the kitchen, sit on the counter," I ordered. "Turn on every light switch, get those sweats off, I'll be right back."

I ran back to my bedroom (yes, literally), shucked the sweatshirt, threw on some sweatpants instead, then dipped into the bathroom to grab my first aid kit. It was a hefty thing, probably a good fifteen pounds — way more than the homeowner standard, but I also had some goodies courtesy of the good Sorcerer.

Peter sat on the counter. His shoulders were hunched, and he was practically pulling in on himself, dejection and something else practically wafting off of the poor boy. More importantly, he'd stripped to just the bottoms of his costume, and I could see just how much of a beating he'd taken.

Peter's entire upper body was already developing into a patchwork of bruises and contusions. Yellow and green, blue and purple, all of them warred for space along an upper body that frankly had too much muscle and too little fat. He was barely moving, and the muscle under his skin still rippled — it was honestly a little disturbing, really.

More worrying were the cuts, lacerations on his arms and torso, a few more on his legs, and some small ones on his face. The bleeding had stopped, but I was still worried.

"Alright, washcloths…"

I turned on the faucet and flipped the water to hot. It would take almost a minute to heat up, so I washed my hands and got started.

"Okay, skipping all the rigamarole." I dried my hands, grabbed a washcloth, and put it under the now-warm water. "I'm your lawyer until you say otherwise. Nothing you say leaves."

I handed him a washcloth. His hand shook as he took it, so I grabbed his hand and turned it over to inspect.

His knuckles were bloodied and swollen.

"Talk to me, Peter. What happened?"

Peter didn't answer immediately.

Instead, he took the washcloth and started wiping the blood off. I got out some cotton balls and disinfectant, and once he'd wiped an area free of blood, I went over it. Despite the stinging, he didn't flinch, he didn't hiss, he didn't make any noise whatsoever.

"It was Osborn," he whispered after a minute or two.

I bit back a curse. Of course. Of course he wouldn't be able to leave well enough alone. I made a mental reminder to contact Erik after this. Whatever happened to the bastard, it was out of my hands.

"Was on a date," Peter said. God… he sounded so, so hollow. "With my g—with G-Gwen. Central Park. Osborn, the Goblin, he… he took her."

Peter's cuts were disinfected. I was on autopilot at this point, just focusing on what I had to do so I didn't react. Reacting badly was the worst thing I could do right now, and the more Peter said, the worse that sinking feeling I'd been having became. I had a very bad feeling about how this story ended, but I needed him to say it.

For his own sake, he needed to say it.

"He took G-, Gw—her to the bridge." Peter sniffed and wiped his eyes. My mezuzah, still glowing with that same light it had held for the past month and a half plus, floated just in front of my hand as I brought it up to Peter's face.

"Which one," I prompted, even as I focused. A thin stream of light flowed from my fingertips into the mezuzah, and came out the other end far brighter. The light streamed over Peter's face, and the cuts closed up, his bruises fading as I watched. I cast my senses inward – I wasn't able to do much for all the bruising, that was just too much.

But I could at least close up his cuts, make sure he didn't get infected.

"George Washington Bridge," Peter said. I moved lower, and started working on the gash in his right arm. "Osborn, he… he held Gwen by the throat. Then threw her off the bridge. I, I tried to… I, I…"

Peter shuddered. A sob tore itself from his throat, and shaking hands started moving towards his face.

"I c-couldn't, I, she!"

I let the mezuzah fall, and laid a hand on Peter's arm.

He grabbed me with the fervor of a drowning man. Peter pulled me in for a hug, and held tight. Dust, dirt, and dried blood probably ruined this sweatshirt forever, and I hadn't managed to finish closing all his cuts, but that didn't matter.

There were only two people who knew Peter was Spider-Man: Ben Parker and myself. And right now, in this moment, I could tell. Peter had failed to save someone close to him. He'd failed to do it again.

In the face of that failure, of that shame, how was he supposed to face his Uncle Ben?

"I c-couldn't save her, she's—"

"Shh…" I whispered. I shifted slightly so my horn wasn't jabbing Peter in the arm, and despite my discomfort, let him cry.

"I'm sorry Gwen, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

Wednesday, August 29, 1990

Monday and Tuesday were both a wash. I didn't get a lick of sleep that Sunday-into-Monday, especially since I was busy minding a wounded, emotionally-wrecked Peter Parker while I looked into a few options. A call to the office had Joshua give me a very well-deserved 'I told you so', and when I told Sophie as much as I could realistically share, she understood immediately.

Luckily for everyone involved, Monday and Tuesday were the days we had both Matthew and Franklin full-time, and those two were terrifyingly efficient. All Joshua had to do was give them more samples of my work to plagiarize – ahem, I mean make boilerplate from – and things were handled.

That, and Joshua was… right. I called into Jeremy, my man in the Clerk's office, and confirmed that I was, in fact, getting more than I was supposed to be. Why? Because some brilliant asshole decided to base how many cases a non-Big Law firm received off of how much money it had received in court payments.

A month and a half. A month and a half of drowning in work, because I'd had too much pride to pick up the phone and ask around.

Joshua got a bonus for that one.

Regardless. Back on topic.

Peter Parker.

What happened… I could have turned Peter away that night. Part of me still felt like I should've ignored the phone and just kept trying to go to sleep. But I think Peter knew I was awake. He called, got permission to come by, didn't ask my address… and was at my door less than a minute later.

He'd probably used the payphone on my block.

Regardless, I'd taken responsibility. A call to Jonah led him to where Peter and Osborn had had their final confrontation, and after he cursed me out for calling him at half past four in the morning, he managed to be the first journalist on the scene. Which meant the Monday news got an emergency edition loudly proclaiming that Norman Osborn was the Green Goblin and was also dead.

Cate called asking if I knew anything about this. I cited attorney-client privilege, apologized, and told her I'd pay for her drinks by the time we all stopped sleeping under our desks.

And lastly, Ben Parker called the school to let them know Peter would be out for the first week.

With the fires put out, this brought me back to Peter.

Peter didn't want to go home yet. I understood, and informed his uncle that I knew where he was, and he was safe… but I was seeing red flags.

He didn't eat breakfast. I brought home carry out from Kaplan's, and he barely had some soup. Dinner he barely ate.

And then he demolished the leftovers in the middle of the night.

If I hadn't forced him to bathe, he probably would've just sat there. As it was, he'd slept on an air mattress on the floor of my home office (aka the second bedroom) for most of the day.

He was listless, depressed, anxious, uncertain… he destroyed one of my spoons by bending it completely out of shape. By accident.

Peter needed help. Help I couldn't give.

But that I knew where to find.

A phone call had everything set up. Ben offered to drive. When Peter nearly broke down at the idea of being stuck in a car with his uncle for a few hours, even with me there as a buffer. Given Peter had just become a legal adult, and it was within his right to refuse now, I put the kibosh on that idea. Then Ben offered to let me his car.

Which lasted exactly as long as it took to realize I couldn't comfortably reach the pedals.

A rental car and several hours of driving later, Peter and I arrived in Westchester, New York. Another twenty minutes of driving through town, and I pulled the rental car into the long driveway of the Xavier Institute. I parked the car on the outer edge of the long driveway's loop, per instructions, and nudged Peter.

"We're here," I said, gently tapping him awake. Normally this would be a bad idea, as traumatized people tended to react badly to being woken up — there was a reason I didn't try to wake my father up when he fell asleep in his armchair, after all.

Peter was the exception, because his Spider-Sense meant he would know if it was a threat or not.

The teen opened his eyes and blinked, looking around at the academy around us.

"Where are we?" he asked, stretching and yawning before unbuckling his seatbelt.

"Where we're supposed to be," I said, deliberately not giving him an answer. A brief flex of will and my glamour fell away, which surprised Peter, if the way his eyes went wide were any indication. "I don't need that here. Now, Peter."

I got the teen's attention and looked him in the eyes.

"Listen to me carefully. The person we're here to see is under the same confidentiality oaths I am. Whatever you tell him, he cannot repeat. But if he says something that surprises you, I want you to understand that I did not tell him anything."

"W-wait, what do you mean by that?" Peter asked, drawing back from me, shoulders squaring. "Does, does he know—"

"Probably," I said, to which Peter gasped. "Let me be clear, Peter. Yours doesn't even make the top ten most dangerous secrets this man knows, and has kept. You can trust him, I promise."

Peter looked to be thinking about what to say for a few moments, but eventually gave up and just opened the car door. I swapped my flats for my heels (because there was no way in hell I was trying to drive while wearing heels, especially not in an unfamiliar car!) and grabbed my purse before doing the same, and stood with him on the curb.

At my gesture, we walked up to the building. I pressed the doorbell to the manor turned school building, and waited.

Not five seconds later, one of the double doors opened, and I had to look… very far up to meet a pair of eyes.

"Ms. Schaefer?" the great, lumbering blue behemoth behind the door asked, looking down at me.

"Yes," I said, taking a step forward and offering a hand. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Peter just gaping at the obvious mutant in front of him. "Noa Schaefer. A pleasure to meet you, mister…?"

"McCoy," the mutant said, opening the other door before offering me a hand. "Dr. Henry McCoy. But feel free to call me Hank." Trying to give Dr. McCoy a handshake was an awkward affair, as his hand completely enveloped mine, but we managed. Then the good doctor's eyes turned to my current companion. "And you must be Mr. Parker!" Dr. McCoy offered a handshake to Peter as well, who took it numbly. "Please, come in!"

Dr. McCoy stepped to the side, letting the two of us in.

Once we did, it became obvious that despite starting as a manor, this was a school building. Even just in the entry hall here, I could see a few students lounging around, and another half dozen or so going from one place to another. The part that had Peter's jaw dropping was that several of the students were quite obviously using their mutant powers as they did.

A student floated up to the second floor, his bulging backpack bouncing off of the opposing stairway headed to the third and nearly sending him careening down into the floor. Another was walking upside down on the ceiling, her ponytail falling straight down in rather amusing fashion as she held her tote bag out over her head. Another, a girl with green hair, sat on a small suitcase as it floated along the hallway, hurriedly scribbling notes into the margins of a textbook as she did.

"Welcome to the Xavier Institute, or as many of us in the faculty like to call it, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters," Dr. McCoy said with a chuckle. "We operate on a trimester system, so the school 'year' isn't set to start until next week, actually. There are extra credit opportunities and optional seminars between trimesters though, and since most of our students board, there's typically always somebody doing schoolwork at some point in here."

"Are, are they all…?" Peter trailed off, and I suddenly got the impression that he didn't want to say something wrong.

"Mutants?" Dr. McCoy asked. "Many of us are, but no, not all. The split is about 70/30 in favor of mutants, though, so believe me when I say the question was in no way unwarranted!" The doctor favored us with a smile, and adjusted the (comically small, almost) glasses on his face. "Our mutant students are offered extracurriculars to teach them safe use of their powers, as well as more ways to utilize them in their day to day lives."

"They are well within their rights to refuse, however," a new voice joined, and I turned to see the man of the hour approaching in his electric wheelchair. "Ms. Schaefer, a pleasure to see you again." He turned to Peter. "And this must be Mister Parker. Professor Charles Xavier, at your service."

Charles offered a hand to Peter, who took it, but I could tell that he still wasn't all there, mentally. Something told me that he was starting to get what I meant when I said he could trust the professor.

"A-and are you—"

"A mutant?" Charles asked with a smile. "I am indeed, young man. Though I would not recommend asking everybody here if they are or not. I fear you would grow tired of hearing such marvelous answers as, 'duh', 'of course', and a perennial favorite, swear words."

"Peter," I said, taking this as a good time to step in. "Professor Xavier is the founder and head of this school. On top of that, he is a world-renowned psychologist, a humanitarian, and a veteran."

"I do not expect your trust to be given freely," Charles said. "However, from painful experience, I know that some things are best put to words, lest they be left to fester."

"I," Peter stammered, eyes glancing towards the door. "I, I'm not sure, um."

"Nobody is going to force you to do anything," I said, taking a step so I was in between Peter and the Professor. "I know I'm asking a lot of you right now, Peter. But I wouldn't have so much as thought about this if I didn't think it would help."

It took another couple minutes of waffling back and forth, by which point all of the students milling about had cleared out. But Peter did, eventually, choose to go with Professor Xavier.

Which left me alone with the big blue doctor.

"He's not a mutant."

Those were the first words out of Dr. McCoy's mouth the moment the small elevator doors finished closing on Peter and Charles.

"No," I said, feeling the first stirrings of irritation. "No he isn't."

"Then it's curious why you thought to bring him here to find somebody to shrink his head, as it were," Dr. McCoy said. His posture and demeanor were substantially different now that nobody was around to see him. "There's more than enough psychologists in the City, and ones that would require far less of an imposition."

"And are you suggesting that the imposition is upon the patient, who had to schlepp all the way out here, or on the professional?" I asked as I crossed my arms, one eyebrow raised. "The one who specifically carved time out of his day for us before I managed to finish one sentence?"

Dr. McCoy didn't have an immediate answer to that. We simply stared one another down briefly, before he eventually huffed, cracked a smile, and turned away.

"I suppose Charles doesn't make his choices lightly," he said with a shrug. My arms remained crossed, but I also offered a slight shrug.

"You'd know better than I," I said. "So, I assume you are faculty here. Care to give me a rundown, Dr. McCoy?"

"It would be my pleasure," he said. "And please. Call me Hank."

"If you insist," I replied. "Hank."

"Mister Parker is a remarkable young man," Charles said as I took a seat opposite him in his office, in between a sip of tea. "I understand well his desire for secrecy, and commend you on your decision to approach me – I dare say anybody you could have found in New York City would have been hard pressed to maintain their secrecy in his case."

"That is part of the reason I reached out to you," I said, nursing my own cup of black tea. English Breakfast, it tasted like. "That, and you have a unique perspective, close enough to match Peter's." I looked up. "Speaking of, where is he now?"

"In our discussion, it was clear that he has long been lacking a safe source of catharsis," Charles began. "To that end, I had one of my students accompany him to the basement training facility for those with more powerful or advanced abilities. The 'Danger Room', as we like to call it."

I frowned. That was not a name I wanted to hear with regards to a school.

"Have no fear," Charles said. "The 'Danger Room' cannot be made actually dangerous in any way without a password. I personally randomize and input the password myself every day. There is no threat in the 'Danger Room' without my explicit knowledge and consent."

"Peter may not be a minor anymore," I said warningly, "but if anything happens to him, he is still my client."

"Which is why he is accompanied by one of my more capable students," Charles said. "A fine young man, by the name of Robert Drake. Although he prefers Bobby."

"Hmm." I took a sip of my tea to marshal my thoughts. "I know you can't share much due to confidentiality, but in as broad terms as possible, how is he?" I asked.

"Mister Parker?" Charles asked. I nodded. "He is… hurt. So very, very deeply hurt. All of it wrapped tightly around a seed of guilt." He looked me in the eye. "You know what the source is?"

"I do." The death of his Aunt May… even though the choices and actions of another man weren't ultimately his fault, I couldn't blame Peter for constantly running it over in his mind. What if he had stopped that man? What if he'd gotten home sooner? Been home when it happened?

But that was the problem with what ifs. They never really came true. You could agonize over them all day long, ask yourself about this or that or the other thing. But at the end of the day, the past was the past. You couldn't change it.

Looking forward was the only option.

"I'm not his parent," I said. "Nor am I much of anything to him, really. I'm just somebody who knows a secret. And that puts me in a place of confidence, yes, but… it's not the same as being close."

"And yet, when he was hurting, when he had nowhere to turn, you chose to act," Charles said. "It is a good deed, a… hm." He frowned. "What was the word for it in your faith? A matzah?"

"A mitzvah," I corrected, smiling slightly at the error. "A good deed. Though there's some connotation that it's out of religious duty, or religious guilt. I prefer to believe it's a conscious choice made between what is right and what is easy."

"Indeed. And on that note." Charles set down his teacup, clasped his hands, and looked at me with utmost severity. "Mr. Parker is not the only one in need of assistance today. You are not well, Ms. Schaefer, and it is plain to see."

I couldn't stop the hitch in my breath when he said that.

"No, I am not reading your thoughts. I am simply analyzing your posture, your expression, and your actions. You are blinking rather slowly," he said, raising his fingers in a direct mirror of how I tended to when counting things off. "Your shoulders and hands shake ever so slightly. You have winced when looking at bright light. Your movements are sluggish, your steps heavy. When last we met, you had your hair in a more elaborate styling, whereas today you tie it back, to not deal with it."

Charles looked me in the eye.

"My dear, when was the last time you slept?"

The tight hold I'd kept on my thoughts and emotions came loose. I felt the tears come, and instead of pushing them back, I finally let them fall.

"I keep seeing it." It was barely a whisper. "E-every time I try to sleep, whenever I'm about to d-dream, HE is there, and, and—!"

"Come."

Charles wheeled himself out from behind the desk and took my hand, then used the other to direct us towards the couch on the other end of his office.

"Mister Drake has young Mister Parker well in hand for now," he said as I took off my shoes and lay down on his couch. A cheap pillow found its way beneath my head, and I winced when my horns pierced straight into it. "Worry not. Now. Close your eyes. Relax."

"B-but—"

"I shall assist. Simply relax."

Part of me was mortified. I was supposed to be better than this.

But I was exhausted. I was so tired. I was tired of having to soldier on, of having to just… force myself through every day.

So I closed my eyes. I dried my tears with a tissue, courtesy of Charles' consideration, ignored that I'd ruined his pillow, and let myself relax. Charles' fingers rested on my temples, and I closed my eyes, letting my breathing become slow and deep.

That moment between wakefulness and sleep came quickly, and part of me was terrified – because that was where HE lay waiting, at that boundary between awake and asleep.

Allow me to help, I… didn't quite hear a voice say. I shall keep the nightmare away.

That shadowy apparition that forced me out of sleep, that monstrous HE waiting for me… vanished. It fell away like dust in an imaginary wind.

And for the first time since the Arrival, I slept.

Charles woke me at half past six. A restroom let me fix my utterly ruined makeup (and my skin care routine would punish me for this later…) before heading back out.

Peter had apparently made a new friend, and he and Bobby Drake traded phone numbers. I overheard some nebulous thing about 'plans' for the coming Saturday, but I wasn't paying attention.

It took until Peter and I got in the car for me to realize just how much less tense I felt.

"Did it help?" I asked.

Peter didn't answer immediately. I shrugged, started the car, and got us headed back to the City.

After about an hour, and in between songs from the radio station, Peter broke his silence.

"It helped," he said. "It's… thanks."

"A lesson to be learned for all of us today, Peter," I said without looking at him, eyes focused on the road. "Nobody is ever too afraid, or too proud, to reach out for help."