1. Fall

Ororo hated the fall. While the Xavier Institute for Gifted Children accepted new students year-round, fall always saw the largest influx. Every year, she stood at the dropoff point, watching the buses roll through. She saw every student -- the ones who stepped warily, the ones who laughed, and the ones who cried. She looked especially for the ones with shuttered eyes and closed expressions, so sure they already knew everything the world had to offer them; and the ones who looked so hopeful, like just being there would somehow make everything all right. She smiled and greeted and hugged and shook hands, and when it was all over, she found Hank in his lab, and he held her while she cried. She never felt more powerless than she did on arrival day. Charles had always believed, and his faith had never wavered. Ororo believed ... most of the time ... that continuing his dream was the right thing to do. But every year in the fall, she wondered.

2. Winter

Winters were harsh in upstate New York, and even harsher in Canada. It was the perfect time to hole up in the mansion for a couple months -- except for Scott's stupid rule. "Anyone residing at the mansion for more than four weeks must either be enrolled as a student or signed up to teach classes." Logan grinned as he found his "course syllabus" and send it off to Scott's office. "Advanced Wilderness Survival Seminar" -- it met outdoors, and included several long overnight trips into the mountains, with minimal gear. In the three years that the school had offered the class, there hadn't been a single student. Logan grinned again. The Rule didn't say there had to be students.

3. Spring

The spring quarter always passed too slowly for Bobby. Summer was fun, full of field trips and all the things they were never allowed to get away with during the official school year. In the fall there were friends to reunite with, new people to meet -- he was usually kept a little too busy with his role as unofficial counselor for what seemed like every homesick kid in the school. Sometimes it was one of the only things he felt good at, though; so much easier than the fighting he did as an X-Man, and not wound so tightly with guilt and fear. Winter was his favorite, of course -- he was in his element, and every cold snap and fresh snowfall filled him with energy and an odd sense of peace. Spring, though -- it seemed like everything bad in his life had happened during the spring. Spring meant losing his family, then his best friend, then his girlfriend. Spring was days getting longer, and less to do to fill them. Spring always left him with too much time for thinking.

4. Summer

The problem with running a year-round residential school was that you couldn't assume that parents were covering basic life skills in the off months. There were no off months, which meant that somehow Scott had to find a way to include all that life training stuff into the yearly curriculum. Money management, sex ed, shopping, cooking, laundry. Scott groaned. Driving. That's what the summer quarter was for, and he'd done his damnedest to combine multiple problems into a single solution. In the summer, everyone could be a teacher, and anyone who taught got paid a stipend. Younger kids took classes like "Separating Your Whites 101," while the older kids could sign up for offerings including "Travelling for Mutants: Do You Need a Passport to Teleport to Canada?" It did tend to blur the lines between student and teacher, but Scott had always argued that pulling team members from the student body had the same effect, and so far he was winning. As he looked at the morass of syllabi, course ideas, and field trip requests on his desk, and then at the blank schedule file open on his computer, Scott sighed. Maybe winning was the wrong word.