Swallowing the lump in his throat, he replaced the portrait on the table next to his bed before sitting in his comfortable armchair by the window. The sky was a fresh blue, like a thrush's egg, speckled with the grey and white of cirrus clouds.

"Piotr?"

Colossus ignored Storm's knock on his door, staring out of the window at the supple silver birch. Pale-green leaves were beginning to sprout from the grey branches, promising a lovely spring. The artist in him responded to its natural beauty, wanting to capture it on canvas, pin it down for posterity.

"Piotr? Are you in there?"

"Yes," he yelled, becoming annoyed, "Come in."

Storm entered the room, bringing with her the scent of flowers. He turned to face her, hating her lithe body. Her willowy limbs and slender figure were perfectly formed. Golden bracelets set off her wrists and ankles, jingling musically as she walked towards him.

"How are you today?"

"What do you think, Ororo?" he snapped, "Unlike Logan, my condition has no hope of improving. Ever."

Her face was shocked, hurt - an expression with which he was all too familiar. Piotr persevered, ashamed-glad to be wounding her.

"Perhaps my family is dogged by bad luck. Perhaps it is the curse of some ancient Russian magician who hated the Rasputins. My parents and sister are dead, and I am half a man."

"Piotr . . . ." she touched his shoulder gently, her hand smooth and brown against his pale shirt.

"Life has cruel sense of humor, Ororo. I have spent years fighting against villains, never knowing whether I would return unscathed, on a stretcher or on a bier. I was never hurt, although I placed myself in danger's path," his voice became bitter, "It was a freak accident that cost me my right hand. A malfunction of the Danger Room's computer that changed the intensity of the work-out to deadly."

Memories flooded back to him. He had been engaged in a mild workout with a simulacrum of Spiral. Her six arms made her a formidable opponent, even without the swords for which she was famous. He had not been in armored form, preferring to test his combat skills without his mutant powers.

Everything had happened so suddenly. Swords had appeared in Spiral's hands and she had begun slashing at him. Silver-blue blades that hummed and whirred in the air. He had been unable to convert into techno-organic form in time. . . .

Then all had been pain; dizzying, white-hot agony. The hum and buzz of voices on the periphery of perception. The blurred forms of his team-mates standing over him as he lay on the icy floor. A warm, crimson pool forming slowly around his right arm.

"Petey?"

"Gawd, it looks bad."

"Stand back! Ohmi . . . .!"

An amorphous, blue blob had approached, holding a silver object that sparkled with sharpness. He had felt a firm hand take his wrist, and insert a needle into his forearm. The hand had tightened a tourniquet around his lower forearm and the scarlet flow had ebbed gradually.

Woozy from the narcotic, and loss of blood, and content to let the haze continue its minstrations, he had subsided into cool, black unconsciousness.

Piotr looked at Storm, gauging her reaction to his speech. Her eyes were filled with hopeless pity, as they stared at the smooth stump in which his one arm terminated.

"When I awoke, five hours later, I could not believe what had happened; that I was crippled, that I would never draw again."

"Little brother," Ororo spoke the endearment fondly, "I refuse to allow you to believe that. You are strong . . . perhaps the strongest of us all. You have endured the death of your sister and parents. You have returned to us, despite your disillusionment with the dream. You *are* a survivor."

She stood, making her way to the exit in a series of silvery peals.

"Do not allow this setback to come in the way of your Goddess-given talent for art."

Bitterness welled up in Colossus. Glib words could never compensate for the loss of his right hand; the loss of his talent. Storm was wrong. It was his art that had allowed him to survive in the past. He had painted his pain onto his canvases with strokes of blue and red, sketched it with dark charcoal and pale chalk, until it had taken human shape. The face of a golden-haired girl with the bluest eyes in the world. Art was the only form of catharsis he knew, and it too had seemingly been denied to him.

"Oh, Piotr," Ororo paused in the doorway, stooping to retrieve a parcel hidden behind the dividing wall, "I bought you a gift. It is up to you whether you use it or not."

She handed him a purple giftbag, crackling with overflowing, pink crepe-paper. Curiously, he felt inside it with his left hand, extracting a drawing-book and a thick, lead pencil.

"It would be a pity to waste your gifts, little brother," she smiled, as she walked away, "And I am not only referring to those which I gave you."

Once Storm had left the room, his eyes went of their own accord to the picture of Illyana. She grinned at him, brilliant with laughter. A snowflake frozen in time.

"Little sister, what must I do?" he whispered in soft Russian, tears coursing down his cheeks, falling onto the thick, soft paper of the sketchpad.

Then, as if he had held the secret the entire time, he knew.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, he grasped the lead pencil in his left hand and slowly, clumsily began to draw a birch tree; faint green buds breaking through the silver bark after a long winter.