Narrative following this.

She didn't have to follow road or obey speed limits or yield to pedestrians or pay bridge tolls. Ororo preferred to travel her way. It was always faster, cleaner and more relaxing than trying to get anywhere trapped in a car. She could see everything around her and plan her motions, her dips and rises, her turns, arches, curves and long stretches of soaring without having to worry about blinkers or panicked deer or police. Well. The police were occasionally a problem, but tonight, mercifully, she had the skies to herself.

Her first stop was just outside the city, but it wasn't at all what she was expecting. The entrance had been sealed off, a collection of chains, fence and steel just right to intimidate all but the most intrepid comers. Though she longed to slip in, and indeed, something in the dark seemed to indicate that there might be a way, but it was better this way. She couldn't face them knowing what she now knew. Perhaps in time, when she had a way to explain to them what she'd been told, what had happened, when she could make them understand that his part in it was written without him having any say, and that she would support him even in the face of that... when she could say to them, and to herself, that the divisions within herself, human and goddess, leader and supporter, vigilante and peacemaker, did not necessarily make her weaker. She couldn't face them until she could present a unified self.

Ororo stood for several minutes at the grate, though, running her fingers over the steel and moss. It should never have had to have come to this. None of it. There shouldn't be a need to hide like this, and especially not from their own kind. She had no idea if there was a guard or watchman on the other side. She could have easily known. One streak of lightning would have told her all she needed, in the reflection in an eye or the startled breath of a living thing. She didn't really want to know, though. If one of them saw her like this, repenting and silent, they deserved what they saw. It was futile being sad now, and she knew it. After all, they'd taken the steps they needed to protect themselves where she'd failed. On that account, there was little left that she could do.

She could do something else, though. When she finally left the grate, she didn't return to the mansion. It would have been too soon, and too easy. Instead, she flew high above the city, perching near the top of the Empire State Building. From here, she had a good view of most of the city as she called in clouds, thick with moisture, to blot out the stars. The rain was steady but not especially heavy. Just enough to rinse the streets clean of the excess salt and buildup long winters always leave behind.

The people of New York, human and mutant alike, were greeted the following morning by a brilliant sunrise, peach and red and gold streaking through fading clouds and reflecting with astonishing dazzle off rain-cleared glass and gathered puddles. Most of the remaining snow had been melted away and the moisture clinging to everything would burn off during an unseasonably warm midmorning. Around water coolers, morning radio mikes, and hopefully, makeshift steel gratings, people would gather and marvel over it, never knowing that their fresh morning had be brought to them courtesy of the only tears the local weather goddess could properly allow herself.