Xaviers!

After getting back and running to the med center to have her arm tended to and bandaged so it would stay clean while the help the mutant healer had given her did its work. She promised to take it easy for a few days so she started by going straight back to her room. She sighed as she looked at the bed that should be occupied by Sam, patting it gently. "You need to get back soon, Sam," she said quietly in what almost sounded like a prayer.

She yawned then. Some of the healers she'd met over time really took it out of you when they helped your body along. She stripped everything off, turned out the light and flopped on the bed, not even bothering with the covers. It wasn't like she would get cold. She fell asleep quickly and, for some reason, began to dream of classroom hallways again.

There's snow piling on the bottom of the window panes, silhouetted by moonlight. It's after curfew, but try as she might she can't get to sleep. She knows she'll pay for that the next day. They'll drill her harder, make an example out of her.

Rules never overly concerned her anyways. They were boundaries to be pushed, but she hated missing out on sleep. She looked out the window and frowned, her powers coaxing her to play with the snow.

By now it's child's play to move it this way and that, but it feels... unfair somehow that she can't be out there with it. The walls of her room loom close around her, almost suffocating.

She could break the window and get some snow in here, but that would just make them super angry. She paced and the snow paced with her as she gave some thought to the matter. Simple enough to undo the lock on her door with some ice and then she could wander the halls again so long as she watched out for the cameras. She turned and began to work on the door.

It takes a few moments to feel out the tumblers, but soon a satisfying click sounds from the door. Nobody seems to be doing rounds at the moment as the door opens a crack, which only leaves the cameras she knows nearly all the locations of by now. The feeling of impending freedom, no matter how small, is positively giddy.

She peered through the door and then slipped out, sliding quietly down the hallways using the skills they'd taught her.

As she walks, she hears the tinny sound of a radio. One of the guards had smuggled it in, and she could hear several of them whispering in Russian to each other around it. FIFA again, an important enough game that none of them wanted to miss it.

The whole complex just felt... small, lately. It wasn't like they could teach her much anymore. She'd learned more practicing in secret than they knew. They couldn't stop her from roaming the halls. Could they even stop her from getting outside?

Maybe she could go outside. It involved going past the guard station, but she could do that. She crouched and approached the guard station slowly, keeping out of sight in the shadows that always seemed to linger in the hallway.

As she sneaks by the guard room, the doors out loom large. It strikes her that this is the far she's ever gotten. The farthest she's ever dared.

The next realization that hits her is that beyond those doors...

...there's no walls.

There's no fences.

There's nothing to hold her in, just snow-covered forests as far as her eyes can see.

Were there ever? It's hard to remember...

She stops at the doors, suddenly afraid and a little confused. If she runs, they'll just bring her to ground. They have ways of finding her. She would never get far and part of her knows it. But the world... the world just looks so inviting. She glances back at the guard station. They're the ones keeping her here, the ones who will be sent to hunt her down if she runs. Ice forms in her hand and she toys with it, weighing her options.

It sounds like they're almost all there, the idiots. It's an opportunity...

"No one holds me," she thought, turning back towards the guard station. The ice in her hand wraps around it, shifting into claws, but in dream logic it makes perfect sense. Anger at these people wells up again, an old hatred that she's still not completely over.

They still haven't noticed her yet, laughing and cheering over the game, clapping each other on the back and cheering at the goals.

Huddled around the radio, they seem somehow less than her. Soft. Weak.

It would be sooo easy to kill them all... which is something she'd never thought while she was in this place. She shakes her head, flexing her fingers and the ice with it as she backs away, wrestling with that part of herself that's telling her she's better than this.

And there, still temptingly close, were the doors. Freedom.

At the treeline, she sees movement. A familiar blonde steps out from behind a tree without a stitch of clothing on, no more bothered by the cold than she is.

"You're not supposed to be here, Glacier."

Another, identical to her, emerges from behind a different tree.

"Not yet. You were supposed to wait for us."

A third is heard from the opposite direction, stepping out into the snow with a sly grin on her face.

"After all, you can't save yourself. You'd only mess it up..."

That seems to stun her, the ice on her hand turning into an undetailed gauntlet. "No, no. You can't be here. You tried to sell me to these people."

"Well we're not here," the first one says.

"Not yet." The second continues.

"So go back to your room like a good girl, and wait."

Something about that breaks through the confusion and a smirk crosses her face, "See, that's the thing. I'm not a good girl." She takes a step through the door.

The air outside is crisp and cold, the snow gently falling. It feels right out here, like nothing could stop her. The three blondes start retreating into the trees, until only one is left.

"Don't be silly. You've always needed someone to save you. Under all the leather and ink, you weren't anything but the princess waiting to be rescued, whether it was by me,"

"...or by me," another voice continued deeper into the trees, this time older. A shock of blonde hair among dark bangs, but still with nothing but bare skin against the winter air.

"...and now you want to hang all that on me, don't you?" Another voice further into the forest. A brogue, a drifting of red hair. Pale skin with freckles before passing out of sight.

Her brain tries to rationalize these people being in the same place at the same time and fails miserably. "You were one of my favorite mistakes," she said, gesturing at Trinity, "but a mistake is *still* a mistake. I've moved on."

"Of course you have," the remaining Trinity says, stepping behind a tree.

"You were hoping to make new mistakes," a new voice says, an entirely different blonde emerging on the other side of the tree, her skin shimmering blue-green.

There's that anger again. "No, you know what? Fuck. You. I wasn't the one who had to run off for some 'quest'." Her dream self actually makes the air quotes.

"Maybe you should be asking why I didn't take you with me."

"I don't care why you didn't take me with you. You didn't. The outcome is the important bit of that, not the why."

"The truth is, you were never going to hold my interest for long. You know that, right?"

The anger continues to roil around and it's getting more difficult to contain. "You were content to leave me alone before. So leave me alone now." She begins to wall herself off with snow, dragging the material with her power up into a fort like a child might build.

"Suit yourself," she says with a smirk, heading into the woods.

"But you should know, we're here in the forest. All of us."

She disappears into the trees.

Once the wall is high enough to block out everything but the sky, Tereza sits hard on the ground, burying her face in her arms. She was existing in that weird state between anger and sadness where they seemed to feed on each other in a relentless cycle. The snow around her rippled in response to her emotions, sprouting spikes or occasionally quivering like it might collapse.

A tower around her.

Like a princess.

Who was she expecting to come get her, this time?

Hermitage. That's what they called it when you cut off contact from the rest of the world. Maybe it would be best for the world if she did that. England had some nice... well, okay not nice islands, but they were certainly islands. She could do that, she could go there. Stop being a burden to everyone. Cut off the pain, cut off the potential for pain.

But she couldn't do that. Part of her wouldn't allow it. It was the part she'd been trying to listen to with varying degrees of success since she'd had that fight with Trinity that had eventually spelled the end of their association. She picked at the ground, idly tracing lines in the snow and the tears slowly subsided and froze to her face. I'm the only one who's going to save me this time. Certainly not any of them. She stands, running her hand through the snow of the wall, which parts at her touch.

As she runs her hand through the wall, the ice creeps back onto it, forming into the same claws she'd shaped it into back in the hallway.

Except...

...the hallway doesn't seem to be back there anymore. None of the buildings are. Just a snowy field behind her...

...and the forest in front.

The lack of buildings surprises her dreaming mind and confuses her for a bit. Then she turns back to the forest. Whatever is going on in this place, the forest seems to be the center of it. Brandishing her new dream-ice claws, she sets off into the forest at a run.

Running feels glorious, the snowy trees welcoming her into their embrace. Her nostrils flare as she becomes aware of scents. Snow. Pine. Easy enough to identify, but soon she figures out other scents. Deer...

...Trinity. Brand. Sam. Vivienne.

All there. Some stronger than others if she turns her head this way or that.

Brand and Sam were friends, not... well, whatever Trinity and Vivienne qualified as. She pondered as she moved deeper into the woods. Trinity... was a friend, a lover even, but now she was the enemy. She'd betrayed Tereza and tried to sell her to the Russians. That cemented what that relationship had become. Vivienne... was complicated and she forced the faerie princess out of her mind as she moved, eyes alert for threats. The fact that she's *smelling" all of these things doesn't seem to bother her. It is just a dream after all.

There's a faint scent on the cold wind. Something like... wet dog? It certainly seems more distant than the other scents.

No movement catches her eyes, in spite of all she knows must be in this forest. It seems if she's going to find something, she'll have to chase it down.

She changes directions by springing off the side of a tree in a way that only works in dreams. Any old business? Of course there's old business, stupid. We deal with Trinity first.

It isn't hard to find Trinity's scent as Tereza bounds through the forest. After all, there are three of her. After following a few trails, Tereza finds that all of them converge on one snowy grove bordering on the mountainside. A spring flows from a cleft in the rocks, pooling in the center of the grove.

There she finds all three of Trinity relaxing. One lounging at the edge of the water, while the other two splash each other playfully.

"Well well," the unoccupied one says. "Look who's 'moved on.'"

"Oh, I have. I just realized I never paid you back," she said as she skidded to a stop.

"Really, now? Abandoning the cause wasn't betrayal enough?"