Part I: If Only

The office door was closed and Jean stared at it, screwing up her courage. [He's nice enough,] she tried telling herself sternly. [Trust him.]

Instead she just chewed her lip for a moment, then turned and walked away. She could hear the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking against the tile floors. The new boy in the government work program, Robert, was at the end of the hall, staring at the floor as he pushed a mop. He was wearing bulky sweaters, as always, even in the heat of mid-July.

He worried her, but Dr. Xavier said he was okay. There was always a reason when they wound up on the work rolls instead of being admitted. He's strong, Dr. Xavier had said, and can maintain control and sanity all at once.

He still made her nervous. She heard what he thought about if she got too close, and his thoughts were dark; they always whispered about snow and dying in the cold.

He terrified her.

Missy had the med cups all ready to go when she got to her station, and she returned Jean's weak smile slowly. Every once in awhile, Jean thought Missy could be nice, but it was hard to look her in the eye. She hated her job because she hated this place, all the patients, what they could do if they weren't all stark raving mad. What they would do because they were all stark raving mad. There but for the grace of doping them to the gills, Missy thought to herself every morning. Jean never talked to her.

Then again, Jean barely talked to anyone. It was too dangerous, because if people noticed her, she usually heard them.

Sometimes she thought it would be better if everyone just denied mutation altogether, said people were imagining things and locked the afflicted away in places like this. Put each and every mutant in a white room and handed out pills by the handful, and let humans live peacefully in their denial. It was getting to be close enough to the truth, anyway.

But usually when she thought that, she just remembered why she'd been avoiding a talk with Dr. Xavier. She tried not to think about it too often.

---

When she was very young, her grandfather whittled. In 1983 she went to stay at his cabin in Virginia for three weeks. Her mother was sick, as she would be for several years to come; when Jean arrived he gave her a small figurine of her mother, made of oak. He said people used to believe that a carved representation stores a piece of the person's soul within it, so now Jean would always have a part of her.

When her mother died, Jean had more than she wanted. Hers was the first voice, and hers was the one that lingered. She had been in pain, and she had been frightened, and Jean could always hear her sobbing prayers when she went to sleep.

Her mother hadn't believed in God or souls, but she had said her silent prayers and then she had died, and Jean never forgot. She burned the figurine. Her mother would have understood.

---

Scott was first up for the med rounds on her ward. He was slumped in the plastic chair by the window, facing away, but when he heard Jean's soft footsteps he twisted and held out his hands for the small cups she always pressed into his palms. Tipping the pills into his mouth, he grimaced slightly and washed it down with the water from the other cup.

She always tried hard not to look at him. The puckered slashes that used to be his eyes, set deep into his young face, made her ill. He'd arrived a year ago, after the emergency room was finished cleaning up the mess he'd made of himself. Back before the budget cuts, a specialist used to come to try and teach him how to live without sight, but he refused to talk to her. Jean remembered him saying her hair was the wrong color.

And now, he waited until she took the cups away and then smiled. "You're the one with the red hair. You told me, red, right?"

//Natural red, natural... natural and maybe I could see it someday--//

She was the only redhead working here, and the only nurse to whom he'd say more than a word. They all got asked when he first met them, and they all answered wrong. Brunette, blond, there was no difference. Except in red.

"Right. Jean, remember?"

"I remember. It's morning, isn't it? I can feel the sun on my face."

"Late morning, yes." Sometimes she felt like she could sit and talk to him all day; she could remind him what the world looked like. But the world got uglier every time the sun came up, and he didn't want to hear about sights and colors anyway. Only the things that were truly red even before his mutation kicked in and destroyed every other shade of meaning for him.

"How are you feeling today, Scott?"

"I'm okay. I had a dream last night."

"Did you?"

"Yeah. I can still see, in my head, even if it looks fuzzy. You were there."

Jean pushed a tiny smile into her voice and told him, without need, "You've never seen me."

"I knew it was you." He turned back to the window. "Some things you just know, Jean. You can't run from it forever. I tried, but you were there."

She touched his hand and went to gather the med tray. "I'll be back later to check on you, Scott. Maybe you should work on reading some more."

She saw him bow his head and wished, irrationally, that she knew the kinds of things he needed to learn, like Braille. He would let her teach him, but she had nothing real to offer. Still, he seemed to make her encouragement a gift in itself. "I will," he said, so softly she could barely hear.

Encouragement wasn't enough. He gave up more and more each day. He had the blues, but it was all red for Scott. And it was destroying him.

---

When it started with her mother, she told herself it was... something else. Imagination, sympathy pains, a slight but understandable emotional breakdown.

She heard her grandfather at the funeral, though. Soft weeping and even softer regrets, but when she tilted her head up to look at him he stood straight and silent, face twisted with grief but eyes perfectly dry.

Everyone chalked her suddenly anguished sobs up to losing her mother. Realizing it, hearing their thoughts of //poor girl// and //whatever will she do now?// while only the priest spoke about ashes and dust, just made her cry harder.

---

Marie was next in the isolation ward, and unlike Scott, who only needed his own room so that he had a secure environment, they had no choice with her. Nobody would go near her, including most of the medical staff. When she was admitted, there was a mistake in the paperwork, and she was put in a double room.

That mistake wasn't made again. She was put in permanent isolation practically before they'd even determined the other girl was actually dead.

When Jean unlocked the door and slipped inside, Marie was curled into the far corner, trembling slightly and rubbing her hands roughly over bare knees. She refused to keep any clothes on; sometimes they could hear her shrieking that she couldn't breathe through all the layers.

"Marie?" Jean asked softly, hesitating to approach.

"Yeah, sure," but she didn't look up. "Marie, just like Momma wanted."

She was one of the many transfers from Canada, which didn't want them either and sent every American citizen back. According to her history, she was found in the woods in British Columbia, half-frozen and half-starved, bloody and beaten and they didn't realize then what she could do.

They did, after a paramedic collapsed while readjusting the heated blankets. After she was stabilized and evaluated, they classified her. Primary diagnosis: Mutant, Class A, non-control. Secondary diagnosis: paranoid schizophrenia. Nobody ever seemed to make the connection between the two.

Her personalities were real, but nobody was listening. Jean wished she didn't have to.

"It's time for your pills, Marie."

//Shut up, shut up, you're not me, stop it//

She looked up at Jean and her eyes were swollen and tired. "Will they help?"

Jean tried not to wince at the barrage of voices. Scared, angry, bored, and each one distinct. Among them all, Marie, lonely in the crowd. There were doctors and nurses and the girl she lived with here for all of a day, and then there were the softer voices, of the fading truckers and waitresses and from the beginning, the accidents.

They actually once were accidents. Somewhere along the line, she broke, and started looking for someone strong enough to make them all settle down. Someone stronger than she was. Jean supposed it was lucky that Marie didn't suspect her of being strong. She didn't know how to control the voices any more than Marie did; only difference was, Jean's were on the outside.

"I doubt it," Jean finally answered wearily. "But we talk about this every day. You have to take them."

Marie's face screwed up into a sudden sneer. "Filthy!" she shrieked. "How can you take care of these filthy rodents? They should all die!"

"Marie," Jean hissed, but she was gone, and in her place one of the many that attacked her. One of the many that didn't survive that mistake. "Lawrence?" Jean tried. "I have some medicine I need you to take."

Marie's eyebrow lifted and she smiled coldly. "All-rightey," (s)he drawled, abruptly calm. "They won't help her get away from me."

"Just take the pills," Jean snapped, and left the tiny wax cups on the floor. She was starting to get a headache.

---

She thought nursing was a good choice. She thought she could learn how to control what she heard; she thought she could go into private care and work in homes, in controlled environments.

She was wrong. Any and all study on mutants was confined to how to prevent it at birth, and with all the state hospitals opening, jobs in the regular medical sector were scarce. Unless you knew someone, you wound up working in one.

Jean didn't know anyone.

---

After a few pretty routine stops, she got to Logan's room. It used to be that she couldn't go into his room without three orderlies on hand, and even that was dangerous. He broke through all restraints; if they put him in a padded room he shredded the padding; if anyone made a move he considered threatening, he attacked. If the death penalty were still an option, he would be gone, insanity or not.

If anyone could be certain of a way to kill him, that is.

She went in alone now because... because Logan broke, somewhere along the line. He never did anything anymore-- didn't prowl, didn't attack, didn't try to leave... didn't even move. He just hurt himself.

He was slumped on the floor, very similar to Marie, when Jean went in. The claws were out, a remnant of the days when the government gave a damn about mutant potential, and he was jabbing several inches worth of metal into his thighs.

He didn't even flinch. He stopped feeling the pain, little by little, and the day he went totally numb to it all was the day he just-- stopped. Shifted from offense to defense to nothing in the space of hours, and now he wasn't even aware of much besides his own welling blood and the sight of his rapidly healing flesh.

Jean wasn't worried about getting too close to him; it had been months since he made any sort of motion towards anyone. She took his hand, which went limp, and pressed the cup of pills into it. "Go ahead," she told him. "You know this."

//Don't know, nothing knows, nobody knows, someday there will be a scar, I'll see it//

He tossed the pills back without water and crumpled the cup in one fist, flinging it across the room. She picked it up on the way out, and he was the last one on her rounds.

---

Part II: What If

Accidents are what allow the world to fix itself. Sometimes, when she didn't hate what she was, she thought that maybe mutation was the answer to all the mistakes humanity had made. And if it wasn't, even if it wasn't, accidents still happened. They forced the careful plans into disarray and everyone had to live with the outcomes. And sometimes the outcome made you smile, a reflex so rare you can only smile some more.

The accident happened in the hallway, because of Jean, because she forgot to double-check the movement schedules before she convinced Marie to slip into a loose hospital gown and shuffle along beside her to get her monthly scans. They were trying so hard to pinpoint what caused it; every patient was routinely tested, poked, prodded, examined in every way and scientists who would never know what made them crazy analyzed their data in labs, trying to make it all stop.

Jean didn't think they'd ever succeed. Mutation was a freight train of a thing. The world was trying to fix something, but they kept right on trying to fix the world.

Marie was quiet and subdued from the sedatives mixed in with her morning meds, and she mumbled to herself as they walked. The personalities continued to slip in and out of control, but she was too lethargic to act out. Still, Jean wore gloves and was always waiting for the moment she might have to jerk her bare face away.

Another factor in an accident. A butterfly flapped its wings and she made mistakes left and right. She was too focused on watching the hand that might grab for her to watch the other one; she was too distracted to notice the orderlies leading Logan, restrained as always when out of seclusion, towards and past them on their way back from the same scans. She was too slow to stop it when Marie reached out and grasped his arm.

It was an interesting thing to watch. Logan's eyes flew open and he was feeling again, and Marie just tightened her hold. The orderlies were trying to jerk Logan away but they wouldn't touch her, couldn't dislodge her grip -- until Jean came back to her senses and yanked on her with gloved hands.

Marie swayed. Logan collapsed. The orderlies stared and Jean didn't like any of it.

---

It was serious enough to page Dr. Xavier, who immediately ordered both to be returned to their rooms. Nobody would go anywhere near Marie, who had curled up against one wall of the hallway and was staring fixedly at absolutely nothing. Jean, wondering if she would soon be out of this job entirely, reached gently for the girl's arm and pulled her to her feet. "Come on, Marie. It's okay. You're okay."

Dr. Xavier looked over at her, from his place checking Logan's vitals. "Jean Grey, correct?"

"Y-yes, Doctor."

He smiled at her, gently. Knowingly. "You seem well-equipped to handle her. Would you mind staying with her until we get Logan stabilized?"

"Of course." Ducking her head, Jean smoothed a calming, gloved hand over Marie's arm and drew the girl down the hall. "Let's go, Marie. Just a short walk."

---

Marie's eyes wouldn't leave her, and there was never any use in trying to escape anything in these small white rooms. Jean sank into a corner and stared back at the small, disturbingly still form.

The smile that suddenly curved Marie's lips was nothing less than frightening. Jean frowned, trying to figure out what was bothering her; something shifted in her concentration and--

//kill them, can't kill yourself, kill them, they did this to you, fucking white coats//

-- she gasped, thought about getting up and running. But Marie was relaxing, settling against the wall, and her smile softened. "Don't be scared of me," she said softly. Something rumbled in her voice, almost a growl. Jean thought of the dog her grandfather once had, a creature that looked fearsome but curled up on her bed at night, resting a possessive paw on her stomach. "It's a circus in here, ya know. She's pretty fucked up."

"She's a little girl." She hated how her voice trembled, hated how she wanted -- almost-- to *try* and reach out and hear what wasn't being said.

"Not so little. Real doped up, but she got old when nobody was looking."

Jean suddenly realized what was wrong. Marie's eyes, completely clear, utterly focused, no sign of being as heavily drugged as she was ten minutes ago. Jean should have remembered, should have known. Should have connected the dots. "Logan," she whispered. "His mutation, too."

And the eyes flicked away, scanned the room without sight, and Marie sniffed. "Scared?"

"Usually," she admitted, answering the question in its real meaning. "Is she?"

"Always." Marie scowled, snarled, sneered, so many expressions Jean had never seen when the real girl was flickering through all the interference. "You even know how many people have hurt he... hurt." Jean could see the realization sparking to life, and she *knew*, and she tried to move fast enough, faster than her fear, but Marie, Logan, somebody was faster. Short nails scratched with desperate intent, and when Jean grabbed Marie's arm there were shallow streaks of blood welling up.

"Stop," the body they called Marie said. She stared, and Jean stared, and the cuts closed before their eyes. The cry that sounded should never have been able to come from a young girl's throat, and Jean heard it with more than her ears. She scrambled back, shocked, and when she dared look at Marie again they were both shaking.

But Marie smiled. Marie, and no one else. Jean couldn't remember ever seeing that particular smile before; she couldn't help but return it. "He'll get over it," Marie said softly. "It's only the thoughts that last. Soon I'll get a bruise, and he'll be happy."

"Marie?"

Marie's head tipped forward, letting her hair fall and obscure her face. "Yeah." Soft southern syrup of an accent that Jean could only place because of the Mississippi birth certificate in Marie's chart. Sent courtesy of Canada, proof that she had to be taken back. "What's your name?"

"Jean, honey. You know that. I come every day, remember?"

"S'hard to remember anything, s'hard to keep inside and outside straight." She lifted her head and looked right at Jean. "Ever had trouble remembering who you are when so many other people are settin' up camp in your head?"

Had she ever. She closed her eyes and felt herself shudder and she liked Marie; she liked this girl so much because she was quiet when she was just herself. "I understand, Marie. You may not believe me, but I do."

"I believe you. You're -- you were willing to touch me."

"I had to."

"Not every time. Not to bring me back here. Not my arm, just now... I believe you. He believes you."

"He's there?"

"He's... I was looking for him, you know? He's letting me talk to you. They can't stop him."

Somehow it all makes sense to Jean. "Everyone is afraid of him."

Marie laughed softly, and Jean opened her eyes again. Marie's were bright and clear, fixed on her. "They should be. He's... ever had an obsession, Jean? Have you ever been so determined to achieve something that seems impossible, that you become willing to hurt people to do it?"

"Maybe."

"We're so alike, the two of us. This... Jean, how old am I?"

"You don't know?"

"Stopped countin' the days a long time ago. Stopped being able to when I got here."

"You're eighteen, Marie. Your next birthday is in three months."

"Does eighteen mean I get to choose? Used to mean you could choose..." Marie's voice cracked from hope and hope alone, and then trailed off.

And Jean's heart broke for her. "Not you, honey. They're not going to let you choose."

Jean watched grief flash and then fade, and a gently weary smile spread. "It's okay, I guess. But Jean... will you do me a favor? Just once, just to see? Will you-- can we only pretend to take the pills tomorrow? You could come, and say hello, and the cup could be empty, just the once..."

There was that hope again. Jean stared at a girl who was too young to be so old, too crazy to sound so sane, too different to be the same. She thought about years of trying to keep her distance, and of a morning of being drawn close, and she thought of Mississippi growing an accent so gentle but being apparently brutal enough to drive a little girl into a small white room. She thought about mistakes, and about Logan, and for some reason she thought about Scott. She thought about getting in trouble, about being found out, being put in a room herself, and she thought about it not being worth it at all.

And then she opened her mouth and she said, "This is the kind of place that forces us to pretend. Tomorrow, Marie. I'll come and say hello."

A small sigh was the only direct response she got. What Marie said, though, was telling enough. "He thinks you're so beautiful," she murmured. "I think he's right."

---

Dr. Xavier came soon after. Watching him kneel beside Marie and check her vitals, and then smooth a bare hand over her dirty hair, Jean realized she'd never seen him examining patients before today. She wasn't sure she would have believed any doctor could be so gentle and so trusting with these patients without seeing it like this. He spoke softly to Marie, soothing words that Jean couldn't quite make out, and then he looked up. "She'll be fine, I believe. Perhaps even a little more than that. Ms. Grey, would you care to accompany me to my office?"

She died a little inside, in that moment. With a curt nod, she followed him out and through the corridors to his office, where she stood for a moment and simply looked. There was the expected clutter of file cabinets, folders and charts and papers on every surface, but there was also something calming, something intangible but orderly and controlled in a way she'd never experienced inside a doctor's office. "I understand if you wish to relieve me of my duties," she said suddenly. "What happened today was my fault-- "

"Ms. Grey," he broke in. "May I call you Jean?"

"I... yes."

"Please relax, Jean. Your job is secure. No blame will be assigned for today's... incident. As secure as this facility is intended to be, none of us can maintain perfect order and predictability. We are no more perfect than those for whom we care."

"I... thank you, Doctor." She swallowed hard; she felt off-balance and confused and for a brief moment she felt brushes of hundreds of minds: agony and fear and hopelessness, and she felt a rising urge to scream.

Just as abruptly, it stopped. Xavier was watching her silently. "Logan is still unconscious, will likely remain so for some time. He will recover fully, though, I have no doubt. Jean, I am correct in my understanding that you see Marie each morning?"

"Y-yes. I do the morning med rounds."

"And you spoke to her, just now?"

"Yes."

"How did she seem to you?"

Jean hesitated. Something more than she could figure out was going on, and she couldn't help but *distrust* her trust of this man. "Different," she finally said. "I was speaking to Marie, for most of the time. It's usually... not her."

Xavier smiled slightly. "A quite accurate way of phrasing it. Do you understand the specifics of her mutation?"

Jean's eyes narrowed. "The charts that I'm authorized to access list her as Class A, non-control. Precautionary measures to be taken at all times to prevent contact with deadly skin surface. There is a secondary diagnosis of acute paranoid schizophrenia."

He smiled even more. "Yes, yes. But what I'd like to know is if you, personally, understand the specifics. Not what is in the charts, Jean, but what you interpret her situation to be."

"I have my suspicions," she admitted.

"As I thought. And those would be?"

"She's misdiagnosed, psychologically speaking. She does have multiple personalities, yes, but I-- I believe they're connected to her mutation, rather than a mental disorder. To call her skin deadly, while accurate, does not convey that direct contact allows her to... to absorb the personalities of those she touches."

"Very good, Jean. Anything else?"

"She... she scratched herself, Doctor. After touching Logan. The wounds healed immediately, like Logan's always do."

"Yes." He moved behind his desk and sat down, looking thoughtful. "Jean, I have been meaning to ask you in here for some time. But time... it is always short, it seems. Regardless, you are here now, and I am confident that my assessment of you has been correct. Might I ask a small... service of you?"

"Forgive me, Doctor, but your 'assessment' of me?"

"Has anyone ever known about you?" he asked in reply. "About what you are?"

She had the sudden irrational thought that she never should have gotten up that morning. The world has a tendency to continue seeming stable if you sleep through every disaster. But now she was awake, and she was certain, as she should have been much earlier, that this was her own particular day of reckoning. "I don't know what you mean," she bit out, every muscle in her body taut to the point of pain.

"I believe my colleagues might categorize you as Class C. I prefer to just come out and say that you're a low-level telepath. The question, then, is one of control. Which are you, Ms. Grey? Control, or non-control?"

Wrong side of the bed, wrong side of Marie, wrong side of everything that had ever presented a dividing line between normal and not, crazy and not, identified and not. "Non," she whispered, the tears she'd needed to spill for years finally welling up in her eyes.

"Yes," he said softly. "Are you aware that this need not be the case?"

"I don't understand."

//I think you do, Jean.//

She gasped. She blinked, and the tears spilled over. She stared at him, and she wanted desperately to believe what she was thinking, that she didn't have to fend for herself anymore. "You... you're..."

"Class A, Jean. High-level telepath, unregistered. Very few people know. As nobody need know about you, unless you choose to tell them. What I am trying to do here is offer my help to you. There are ways to control when and what you hear."

"I thought..." She sank to the floor and she cried in front of a man she'd feared out of instinctual respect. "Sometimes I think I'll go crazy. That maybe I already am, and it really is just all in my head." She laughed brokenly. "I'm so afraid of those rooms, Doctor. I don't want to be in one for good."

She heard him get up and move to her, and she felt a warm, soft hand on her shoulder and a comforting, soothing presence in her mind. "You won't, Jean. I won't allow it." He sighed. "There are so many already who could be so much more, and so little time in which to help them. Even now... my presence is required elsewhere, I'm afraid, so we must get back to work. But I'd like you to do something for me. When you start hearing thoughts, just concentrate. Think about blocking it out. That's the first step, Jean, believing it's possible and putting the energy into an attempt. Can you try that?"

She wiped her eyes and managed to nod. "Was that what you were going to ask earlier?"

"Ah. No, actually. I would like you to spend time with Marie, when you have spare moments. I believe... I believe she has a chance, after today, to make real progress. A friend might be of great use to her. Do you mind?"

"No," she replied quietly. "No, I don't. She's... she's a good person, I'm sure of it. She wants to be."

"Most of us do, my dear. Sadly, many of us lack the help needed to succeed."

---

Part III: Just Maybe

She went home that night and she spent hours wondering about fate and accident and order proceeding to chaos proceeding to order again. She slept and when she woke it seemed like she remembered dreaming about being happy. That happened sometimes, but the dreams were always in the past, in her childhood. Before the end of her mother's life, and the start of everything else.

That night, she dreamed about the future. She went to work the next day without dread for the first time ever.

She went with hope, which is a curious thing. It arises from little more than the notion of possibility, of potential, and it can illuminate paths that once went unseen. It can inspire; it can provoke; it can be a basis for change on a whim and a dream.

And it can destroy, because it eventually rests on chance, and chance is not curious at all. Chance goes one way or the other. Succeed or fail, and she tried to keep that in mind. Xavier told her: none of them were perfect. None of them were impervious to the ways of the world.

None of them were guaranteed a happy ending.

But she still had hope. Nothing she could explain, like so much else.

---

Marie was stalking the length of her small room when Jean slipped in that morning, an empty paper cup in one hand and a cup of water in the other. "Good morning," Jean said cautiously.

"Hey," came the gruff reply. And right behind it a softer, "Mornin'."

"How are you today, Marie?"

The girl sighed, sank down against a wall and hugged her knees, clasping her hands tight in front of her shins. "Not so good. It's not gonna last, wasn't enough. They'll wear him down."

Jean saw fatigue in the small, huddled form that had built up over far more than eighteen years, however long they had been, and she felt overwhelmed by weary desperation. She wasn't sure if she was picking it up from Marie or if it was purely hers.

It could be either. It could be both. It really didn't matter, not in here. Jean crouched slowly a few feet from Marie, then sighed and sat down altogether. "Why do you think that?"

"I've gotten pretty good at figuring out who will stick around," Marie said with a tiny spark of bitter amusement. "It's a little funny, don't you think? That I probably tried too many times to find him for finding him to do any good?"

"I think it depends on what you define as 'any good'." Jean hesitated, leaning forward and toward this shell of a girl who once dreamed of simple things like adventurous trips and true love. "I'm finally getting more than glimpses of you. I would call that good."

"So it's all relative, then?" A soft and shaky laugh erupted, bubbling up just like lava.

It burned, and it burned deep. Jean flinched from a sudden barrage of rage, long drowned and given new air to breathe at last, and she took a moment to do as Dr. Xavier suggested and concentrated on blocking it out. It worked, for the time being.

"Maybe," she tried. "But maybe not. In case of not... tell me something about you. Tell me a story about Marie, and nobody else."

Marie smiled. "They're all about somebody else."

"No. Tell me something from before. From when you were young."

"Same problem. Did you know that you can -- can relearn yourself?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

And Marie shrugged, an almost careless movement of her shoulders that made her arms slide against her legs and her interlocked fingers pull at each other for the barest of instants. "Just seems like you spend your whole life learning who you are. Then something happens and... you're looking in the fat mirror at the carnival all of a sudden. You know it's you but you isn't what you see, so you have to shift a little bit inside to help that make sense. Long as you're lookin' in that mirror, you gotta be able to call a stranger 'me'. And you stay there long enough, that's the only you you're gonna know."

"What does the you in the new mirror look like, then?"

"Like someone who's never been anyone all on her own. Jean, if I tell you a story about me, it will be about me in relation to other people. That's all there is anymore."

"All right." Jean watched her carefully, tried to decide how to proceed. "All right, then -- then tell me anyway. Tell me about *life* before all this. Please?"

Marie hesitated, then nodded. "Okay. I was spoiled near to the point of rotten, you know? My parents gave me everything a girl could ever want. And I hate them for that more than anything else."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't understand," Marie said quietly, sadly, staring at one of the identical walls. Jean knew that only one wall ever mattered, the one with the door. "They never really explained things about real life to me. Shelter, and privilege... they wanted to protect me. They wanted me to be happy, I think, never having to know how cruel the world could be."

"And then they turned you out in it."

"No warning, none at all." Sharp, bitter laugh, indicating the quick switch to Logan's influence. "Love is nice and fickle, doncha think?"

"Not always," Jean said, though she wasn't entirely sure she believed it.

"Better without attachments."

"Do you really think so?" She thought of Scott, longing for someone who could blend in with the visions in his head, and she thought of Robert, scared that always cold would mean always alone. She thought of herself, and the fact that she hadn't let herself love anyone since her grandfather died.

She wouldn't classify that as better, exactly.

But Marie shrugged. "You never get attached, you never get unattached."

"Unwillingly, you mean?" Slightly arched brow of a response. "Then who do you trust?"

"Yourself," Marie said softly, herself again. "Just yourself."

"And if -- if you can't trust yourself?" Something about picking the brains of a patient for some hint of guidance felt.... oddly right. Jean watched Marie's expression draw in even further, shadowed by something that might have been better forgotten, and she could *feel* the change happen this time.

"Take a good look around, Jeannie." It was a low growl this time. "All the ifs are right in this room."

Jean frowned. Exactly what she'd feared for so long.

The door opening kept her from dwelling on it; Dr. Xavier stepped in and smiled a greeting at both she and Marie. "Jean, may I see you for a moment?"

---

Dr. Xavier spoke in a clipped tone that matched his pace, and Jean had to hurry to keep up with him as he walked. "We seem to have a small situation," he explained. "Logan has... returned to some of his old ways."

"Which ways?"

"The more aggressive ones, I'm afraid. He's rather agitated, and I believe with good cause. There were traces of several bruises on his arm this morning."

"Logan doesn't bruise," Jean said slowly. "Unless -- Doctor, were they left by fingers?"

"They were. I take it you know something about this?"

"Well, when Marie scratched herself yesterday, she healed immediately. The orderlies... they grabbed him pretty hard."

"Ah." The doctor laughed softly, stopping outside Logan's room. "That confirms my suspicions, then."

"Your suspicions?"

"And Logan's, of just how Marie's touch works when mutations are involved. He's rather insistent that he be allowed to see Marie again. Jean, how do you feel about assisting me in a somewhat unconventional experiment?"

With a start she realized that she knew his plan, that he had put it in her mind along with precise instructions as to her role. And she nodded slowly. "I think --"

"Wait, Jean. Tell me without speaking."

"I don't -- I don't know how."

"Then just try. There is no harm in failure of this kind, Jean."

So she tried, and he smiled. "I hope we're both right," he said softly. "Would you please bring Marie to Observation Room 3?"

---

What she told Marie was that some wishes do come true, and that maybe Logan wouldn't fade so fast, after all. And Marie went willingly to the observation room, walking with barely restrained eagerness through the halls. They met Dr. Xavier at their destination, waiting. "Hello, Marie. Jean has explained matters to you?"

Marie nodded. "We've been looking for each other, Doctor. Answer to each other's problems."

"I believe you may be right, my dear. We'll see how it goes."

At his nod, Jean opened the door for Marie, shut it softly behind the girl, and slipped into the adjacent room to watch.

What she saw looked a little bit like accident and a little bit like fate. It looked like two people who could kill each other, understanding that they didn't need to be afraid. It looked like the kind of thing that could make Jean believe there was hope for them all, after all.

Marie stood by the door, and Logan stood against the opposite wall, and they both took a minute to watch each other. Jean thought of church when she was a child and the way the older women would gaze up at the crucifix; she'd never quite understood what they were seeing until now.

Salvation, right before their very eyes.

Logan spoke first, almost an accusation. "You're just a kid."

And when Marie replied, her voice was stronger than Jean had ever heard it when nobody else was interfering. "Don't let the face fool you," she said. "I'm sorry, you know. I never really gave you a choice about all this."

"No harm no foul, right?"

"But there is harm." She took a few steps forward, lifted her hand slightly to indicate bruises that had already disappeared by the time she got there. "From what I hear, you got hurt."

"From what I hear, kid, you already understand that it wasn't harm for me."

Marie nodded slowly. "Yeah. But I didn't know that then, so I'm still sorry. And it's Marie, by the way."

"Logan."

"Well." Marie fell silent; she glanced at the mirror behind which she knew Jean and Dr. Xavier stood, then stared down at the floor for long seconds. Finally, she finished the trip across the room she had started, and she sat on the floor by Logan's feet. At her beckoning, he lowered himself next to her. "This is weird, isn't it?"

"A bit," Logan admitted. He glanced down as Marie reached and skimmed her fingers quickly across his knuckles. "So how does this work? You know everything about me?"

"Not everything. General things, but not... not the smaller details. I mean... I don't know what it feels like, when they come out."

Logan actually smiled. Rueful, perhaps, but still something Jean had never seen before. "Hurts, kid. Anything that cuts is gonna cause some pain."

"And things that don't cut? Did it hurt, when I... I never had the opportunity to ask anyone."

"Never?"

"Sometimes I did it because I needed to run. And sometimes... let's just say that you're the first person who ever wanted to see me again, after. Of those who survived, at least."

"Ah. It didn't hurt, no. It... pulled. Everything slowed down, like being out in the cold."

Marie looked down at her bare fingers, flexed them a bit. "Jean said it couldn't be much. Just a few seconds."

Logan looked up at the mirror and frowned. "Won't last long that way."

"They're tryin' to help, Logan. Maybe... maybe you can be okay with how you are, if you can hurt just some of the time, and maybe I can learn to be me even when you're not helping. Shouldn't we at least try it their way?"

"Guess so. Then you want to..."

Jean missed it; she looked over at Dr. Xavier and saw him watching intently, his expression concerned, and when she turned back Marie's hand was resting on top of Logan's. Marie did as she had promised and pulled away before too long, and though Logan was slumped and breathing raggedly, he was still conscious.

"Christ," he muttered. He angled his hand away from Marie and the blades extended from his knuckles, and when he drew them back in Jean could see blood sliding down the back of his hand. "Shit."

"If you'd be so kind as to take Marie back to her room," Dr. Xavier said, breaking his silence at last, "I'll see to Logan's hand."

"Of course. Doctor, should we... are you sure we should be doing this?" Jean bit her lip and glanced at Marie, who was smiling happily at Logan. "It seems like -- like we're dangling addiction in front of them as the solution to all their problems."

"To the contrary, Jean. Marie and Logan were already quite addicted to their own personal attempts to overcome their problems. I believe what we're doing is... I would liken it to detoxification. I believe that after a time, they will find they need each other less and less to remain functional."

"Is there a point, though? Neither of them will ever be allowed to leave this place."

"I hope we're both wrong in that belief, my dear." Xavier suddenly stared at her sharply, and his next words chilled her to the bone. "But Jean, if *you* were to be here for the rest of your life, wouldn't you rather be able to retain your sense of identity? Your rationality? Your very sanity?"

Jean only bowed her head and turned to go collect Marie. She just didn't know the answer to his question. If she were going to be locked in a little room, she wasn't sure she'd want to be aware.

---

"You didn't come this morning." Scott spoke quietly, his voice clear of accusation. Simply stating the facts; Jean understood that sometimes that was all that was necessary.

"I'm sorry. I -- I was needed elsewhere."

"I know. I just... missed you."

Jean frowned and wondered how she had affected this man without doing anything important for him at all. She had never meant to make a difference, had never wanted to, and now that she did want to, she had no idea how to proceed. She wished things were different, wished she were more than just a faceless filler for one of Scott's voids. She wished a lot of things, not the least of which was that she were capable of changing anything at all.

But Scott suddenly countered her frown with a slight smile, a curious tilt to his head. "What?"

"I -- I didn't say anything."

"You sound different today."

"I do?"

"Yes. Almost... happier. You always sound so sad."

"I do?" Jean repeated, feeling stupid. "Oh. I suppose I do. It's been a strange day, though. Things must change."

Scott didn't reply, and she looked out the window for a moment, where the sun had long since passed over to the western wings and left a not-bright, not-dark expanse of grass and trees, a few budding wildflowers, and the crosshatch of three sidewalks. She remembered Dr. Xavier telling her just to try, and she remembered too many times of wishing she could do something for Scott. She remembered telling Marie that some wishes come true, and she decided to try and change something else.

She closed her eyes, held the image from the window in her mind, and she... pushed. And when she turned around to look, Scott had a puzzled smile on his face. "Jean," he said hesitantly. "Did you do that?"

"Do -- do what?"

Her voice gave her away. Scott's smile widened into a delighted grin. "That's what it looks like? I never even tried to imagine... Jean, how did you...?"

Jean sighed. "I'm not entirely sure yet, Scott. Please... don't ever tell anyone that I can?"

"I wouldn't," he said. "What if they didn't let you come anymore?"

"Right," Jean said. "What if."

"Could you -- could you do it just once more? I'd like to see what --"

"What, Scott? What can I show you?"

"You could show me you."

Jean hesitated before thinking back to the morning, to the cracked mirror in her tiny little bathroom. And this time she didn't close her eyes, so she saw it all as Scott's expression relaxed into something like...

Something like content. "Your hair isn't as red as I thought," he murmured, causing a familiar sense of worry to coil in Jean's stomach. "But it's... it's perfect. Thank you."

Jean couldn't help but smile as tears filled her eyes. "No, Scott. Thank you."

---

She stopped outside Dr. Xavier's office at the end of the day and paused. Two days after so many years, and suddenly she was ready to take this step. It seemed, somehow, like risking everything on the barest glimmer of possibility.

She knocked anyway. Because the world wasn't a happy place, but she believed for once that she could maybe be happy in it.

Maybe, with a little trust and some help.

*end*