Akira pressed her hands into the ground and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember that same pull she felt when she had removed all the ice from the trees in the valley she and John had been in. John was saying something to her but Akira wasn't listening.

I won't let them die. I won't let them die. I won't do this again.

"Yuki calm down. It's just on the outside of the building."

"It's inside." Her voice came out like a hiss and John watched as frost crept up her arms, wove through her hair and settled onto her clothes. Ice began to grow up and over her hands, interlocking and forcing Akira to keep her hands on the ground. John wondered if it was a result of her anxiety or if it was because she was shifting the focus of the ice from the Mutant Underground Base to herself.

Akira breathed out, and John could see her breath. Icy vapor flowed around her and slowly, John watched the building thaw. "Did it stop?" John asked as Akira stood. Ice was still inching up her skin, covering her arms.

"Yes." John headed down the rest of the way to the building just as Marcos and Lorna burst out off the side door.

"Wh-what th-e-e hell!" Lorna shouted. "What happ-" but her teeth were chattering so much she couldn't finish the sentence.

"Yuki was testing her powers and I guess the ice had a farther reach than either of us expected but..." John turned to look at Akira but she was no longer standing where he had left her. "Crap." John cursed. "Yuki!" He shouted. "Yuki where..." He looked back to Marcos and Lorna. "Everything's okay now. Just grab some blankets and tell everyone to stay warm."

"John!" Marcos shouted as he began to race back into the forest after Akira. When he was out of his friends sight, John crouched down, pressing one hand to the ground so he could listen for the sound of Akira's movements and track where she had gone. He could hear her labored breathing as she ran and he stood back up, going after her. Eventually, he didn't need to use his powers to know where Akira was, she was leaving a trail of permafrost in her wake. The ground was frozen solid, along with trunks of trees and dead leaves.

"Yuki!" John shouted, bursting into a small clearing. She was kneeling in the middle of everything, the grass around her black and curling in on itself. The air was filled with icy vapor that almost looks like fog but is much much colder and way denser. John watches as jagged ice begins to protrude up out of the ground, shifting and losing around Akira in a wave that seemed to roll with her shoulders as she cries. "Yuki, it's okay."

"It's not!" Yuki shouts, turning to look at him. Her eyes are ice blue again. "I could've killed them! All your friends, all those innocent people!"

"But that's not what happened." John says gently.

"I should've never let you convince me into staying. I was so stupid thinking I could come here and interrupt your lives. I'm making everything worse." John watched as a snow flurry began to fall.

"Yuki you haven't done anything like that. I know you're upset with yourself right now but you can't..."

"I need to go home!" Akira shouts, her hair whipping around violently. "I need to go home right now!" Akira doesn't hear John say anything else but suddenly, she feels his hands on her arms. They're warmer than she anticipated. In surprise, Akira opens her eyes. Snow is dusting his hair and his lips are tinting blue. She knows she'll kill him if she lowers the temperature anymore.

"Yuki you are home. You don't belong out there all by yourself. You need to be around other people. You need to learn to control this. I know your emotions are high right now but you can still be upset and not cause a snowstorm in the middle of summer." Hearing him talk so calmly surprised Akira. She's only ever met people who were afraid of her, afraid of what she could do. Nobody ever really believed in Akira. Even her own parents tried to get her to hide her powers. "You can do this." John said. Akira started to cry, tears running down her cheeks before she threw herself into John's arms. The snow stopped falling, the wind stopped howling and the ice around them slowly began to melt as Akira cries into his shoulder

----

"She's dangerous. There's no doubt about that." John sighed, running one hand through his wet hair. Snow and ice had caked it just moments ago and he started to tie of up to get it out of his face.

"She's not dangerous. She's scared and unsure of herself and..."

"She froze the whole building John. She wasn't even trying to." Marcos said lightly.

"I know but..."

"We should let her go home. It's what she wants anyways." Lorna interrupted John. John sighed. Akira wasn't here. She had opted to stay outside while she let everyone discuss her fate. Akira was still adamant that she should leave but John and several other people agreed that she should stay.

"If she doesn't learn to control her powers now, she never will."

"I remember how scared I was when I started training. I thought I would never gain control. She needs to stay so she can learn."

"So what if she nearly froze us to death. That's actually kind of cool just let her stay."

"She makes snowmen for me! I want her to stay."

But so far Lorna and Marcos weren't convinced that she should stay. "John, Yuki is a nice girl but if you can't help her.." Marcos said.

"I can." John interrupted. "She's never tried to control her powers before now. It's slow going but I can get her there. I've helped everyone else who has had trouble. Why shouldn't I be able to help her?" Marcos and Lorna gave each other a look and John knew they were caving in.

"She has until the end of the month." Lorna said.

"Lorna..." John said with a sigh. That was only 2 weeks away. John needed more than that to undo years of emotional fear and anxiety. Even Marcos gave her a funny look. "I'm serious. We cant have her risking the safety of everybody else here or compromising our position."

"Alright, 2 weeks. I can do that." John said.

----

"Does everyone want to drop me off at some mutant orphanage?" Akira asked, sensing John walking up behind her. The summer air was warmer and the clouds had all but disappeared now. The day was warming up as it should be. John smiled and snickered a little.

"I think you're too old for an orphanage." He said, moving to sit next to her in the grass. Akira shrugged.

"You could just drop me off somewhere, call Sentinel Services. I'm sure they'd be happy to have me back, put me on ice." John smirked again and shook his head.

"We're not going to do that either." Akira pursed her lips, not wanting to ask anymore questions because she was afraid of the answer. 

"They've given me 2 weeks to help you learn to control this." Akira blew icy air out of her mouth, her nerves getting the best of her. "It's not a lot of time, I know but I think we can do this." Akira said nothing, just licked her lips as cool air blew around them. 

"I don't know John. Maybe it's too risky. I've already screwed up and I don't want to hurt anyone. Especially not..." Akira paused. She had almost said, especially not you but she couldn't say that. Not only was it cheesy but it was embarrassing. Why did she have to fall for a guy she barely even knew? "There's just a lot that you would all be risking." Akira murmured, putting her hand in her arms on her knees. She felt John place her hand on her shoulder lightly.

"Our lives are at risk all the time."

"But I'm a different kind of risk John." Akira insists.

"I don't see how." Akira didn't want to argue with him. Half of her brain was screaming to shut up, to stay with the Mutant Underground but the other half was telling her it wasn't worth the risk. Their lives weren't worth the risk. 

"And I don't want to stick around long enough for you to see that." Akira said, looking over at John. He sighed. 

"It's your choice Yuki. I won't force you to stay." John stood, brushing the grass off his pants and with that, he turned and walked back into the building. 

----

"You're still here." Akira laughed a little, hearing Lorna say this. 

"Yeah... Did you ask Riley about the probability that I would leave?" She asked, glancing back at the other girl over her shoulder. Akira had hardly moved from her spot outside since John left her there. She had been battling with the idea of leaving for hours. There were pros and cons to leaving and staying and Akira still hadn't made up her mind.

"I did." Lorna said, moving to sit down in front of Akira. Akira pursed her lips as Lorna rubbed her hands together against the cold air that was circling them. "He said you were dead even at 50% which doesn't happen that often." Akira sighed.

"Damn, I was hoping for something more concrete." Lorna said nothing, just looked away. "Do you want me to leave? Be honest." Lorna didn't hesitate.

"Yes. I think you're dangerous, trouble but... That's what the rest of the world labels all of us so what do I even know." Akira looked at the ground.

"I am dangerous." Akira murmured. "But in the arctic I never felt that way." 

"You were... In your element." Akira laughed.

"Yeah, I was. It was one of the only places I felt free, really." Akira sighed, feeling the air around them settle back into the little humidity that was lingering in the dying sunlight. "Can... Can I ask you a question?" Akira asked Lorna.

"Depends on the question." She said. Akira pursed her lips,

"I was uhh.. I was just wondering when your powers manifested. What life was like for you without them." Lorna arched her eyebrows in surprise.

"Well like most mutants, my powers came during puberty and before them... Life was just about as shitty as it was without them. Why?" Akira sighed.

"I've never known life without my powers. I've just always had them and I always wonder what life would be like without them." Lorna opened her mouth to speak but Akira kept going. "My uhhh.. My father used to say that I was never supposed to be alive. That I was a miracle." Akira said with a sarcastic laugh. "My umbilical cord had been choking me, cutting my oxygen supply off. The doctors performed an emergency c-section but it was too late. I was dead." 

"So your X-Gene saved you." Lorna said. She had heard of kids being born with their mutations, they usually come about during situations with high stress levels. What Akira was describing sounded exactly like that. 

"Or just cursed me." Akira corrected. "They let my mother hold my cold, lifeless body and she was so warm, it made me uncomfortable apparently and I started to cry." Akira ran her hands through the blades of grass, feeling them curl and shrivel and blacken from her touch. "A frozen heart. That's what I have. Or that's what the doctors described it as at least. I'm cold-blooded but instead of adapting to my surroundings like most creatures, I make everything around me, ice cold." 

"Why are you telling me all of this?" Lorna interrupted. "Why not tell John? You two are closer than we are." Akira looked over at Lorna.

"I'm telling you because I want you to understand. I wasn't born thinking I was a monster Lorna. I loved my powers. I loved making people happy with them but very quickly I realized that everyone else believed that I was born a monster. So I tried to hide my powers. I tried to learn control. The fear of rejection, of abandonment, and of myself it... It overwhelms me. I don't want to be the monster everyone thinks I am but it's too hard to be anything else." Akira stood, brushing the grass off her pants. Lorna stood with her. 

"Will you be staying?" Akira glanced at Lorna over her shoulder and without another word, started to walk into the woods. From a window overlooking the field, John sighed heavily as he watched Akira walk away. 

A/N:
The picture is an aesthetic I made for Akira. I love making aesthetics lol