Out of the children's suffering came a terrible silence. They scarcely moved except to go to classes, and even then they just sat with their textbooks and their assignments and their confusion. Just three days ago, Dr. Grey had been among them. There had been laughter to go with their learning. Now the whole building was wrapped in an eerie stillness as if the very walls felt Jean's absence.
Marie was grateful for the smooth comfort of Professor Xavier's voice as he spoke to the children about the memorial service the following day. She sat in the front row, with the rest of the students who had been aboard the Blackbird when Jean died, her head resting on Bobby's shoulder.
"This is called a memorial service. We will gather to share our memories and to help one another with the loss of our dear friend."
Artie raised his hand. "What's the difference between a funeral and a memorial?" he asked.
"Well, a funeral is usually a service that precedes - that means 'goes before,'" Xavier clarified, "the burial of the body. Ms. Munroe has already explained about the force and energy of the water at Alkali Lake, so most of you will understand that we...could not recover Dr. Grey's body."
Cyclops put up one hand to shield his face for a moment before regaining his impossible composure. The beloved Mr. Summers had been the children's focus, for his silent, ghostlike presence was a constant reminder of the agony he was holding at bay. He hadn't eaten, and rumor had it that he hadn't slept. Any tears he shed for Jean were shed in private. Even so, there was no doubt in the mind of anyone who saw his pale, lean face and the minute trembling of his lips. This was a man in deep mourning.
The other adults were deep in mourning as well. Jubilee had caught the Professor sobbing over an old book Jean had given him, and Storm could often be found sitting on the floor with the smallest children, weeping with them. An old Ally, Dr. Hank McCoy, was called in to talk with the ones who had been on the Blackbird. Marie was impressed with the tremendous compassion Hank showed even though his own sadness was palpable.
The Beast, as he was known, made suggestions about keeping the kids who'd witnessed Jean's sacrifice in one place rather than leaving them spread amongst the dormitories. Newly minted X-Men Marie and Bobby were given private rooms on the "adult" floor, while the other boys and girls were placed nearby. Sure enough, they had all ended up in Marie's room that first night, huddled together, whispering memories of Jean Grey and taking comfort in their shared pain.
The only one who showed no emotion was Wolverine. He strode up and down the hallways with military posture and dry eyes, and the students hated him for it.
The children shared their anger at Logan with Marie. She knew what they could not comprehend, that Logan was masking his inner torment with an outward show of composure. From the first moments on the jet, when Logan's had been the unwilling shoulder on which Scott had poured out his agony, Marie had understood the depth of Logan's anguish. She had shared enough of his energy to intuit what the others were missing, Logan's surprisingly deep love for this woman he had barely known. Marie was painfully aware of the almost imperceptible flicker of his eyelids and the silken shudder of steel just beneath his knuckles.
She approached him long after the Professor had called them all together for his announcement about the service, when she expected everyone else to be asleep. As she had expected, Logan stood like a sentry in the hall, an unlit cigar between his fingers. "You should be in bed," he said without looking at her.
"I was. But guess who's right below me? Nightcrawler. He's stuck to the ceiling, sayin' a rosary about every fifteen minutes. What woke you up?"
"Him." Logan indicated the door at the end of the hallway, the room Scott had shared with Jean.
Marie cocked her head to one side. Nothing. She frowned. "I can't hear anything," she said.
Logan leaned against the wall. "I wish I couldn't."
"Why? What's he doing?"
It was the Wolverine she saw when he looked at her with ferocious, haunted eyes. "He's crying."
Oh. She pressed her lips together tightly.
"From the nightmares. That's why he's not getting much sleep - he wakes up crying. He's real quiet about it, but I can still hear him." Logan continued. "Sometimes he cries so much I can even smell the salt."
That was more than she could endure. Marie's eyes filled in sympathy. "Poor Scott," she murmured.
"Yeah." Logan put the cigar between his teeth, biting down hard. "Poor Scott."
Marie slipped her gloved hand through the crook of Logan's elbow and leaned her cheek carefully against the warm cotton of his sleeve. Before either of them could say anything else, Ororo passed them and knocked on the door of Scott's room. He let her in, glancing briefly at Marie and Logan. His face was covered in three days' growth of beard and his glasses could not conceal the dark circles beneath his eyes. Both Logan and Marie averted their gazes, respecting Scott's privacy.
"I wish you could just grieve for her like he does," said Marie after a few silent moments had gone by. "Except for a few seconds on the Blackbird I haven't once seen you cry, Logan."
His eyes fluttered shut. "It's not my place," he replied curtly, but Marie could feel the tremor going through his body.
More than anything, Marie wanted to pull him to her, consequences and Bobby be damned, and let him cry or put his fist through a wall or whatever would unbend the ramrod-straight spine he affected. Logan disentangled her, leaning over to kiss the top of her head. "You're a good kid," he murmured, staring at Scott's door as if he could see through it. "Ask Nightcrawler to pray for you to get some sleep."
She nodded. "Or, I could grab him by the arm and hold on until he shuts up and I turn all holy and stuff."
Logan flashed her a tight smile that didn't do anything to brighten his eyes. He walked softly to his own door and paused with his hand on the knob. "Night," he murmured.
"G'night." Marie watched Logan go into his room, then stretched with her arms high above her head. A tight muscle next to her her shoulder blade relaxed, making her sigh loudly. For a moment she thought about taking Bobby into her own room, but suddenly his wasn't the body she wanted next to hers, after all.
The next morning dawned with a sickly, pale light that did nothing to change the somber mood at the mansion. After a breakfast that went cold on their plates, the students and their teachers gathered in the little chapel where Jean and Scott had planned to be married.
This should have been a wedding, not a memorial service, Marie thought as she and Bobby paused at the entrance to a pew. Jubilee and Kitty, both uncharacteristically quiet, scooted over to give Bobby more room and to let Marie sit near the aisle. It wasn't like her grandma's funeral. There wasn't a body to look at, all wizened and greenish. There was no casket. Atop the altar was a picture Ororo had taken of Scott and Jean at the Professor's birthday party a few weeks ago. So, so happy.
A few weeks ago, Marie thought with a shudder. They were all so happy that day, throwing confetti and getting little sips of champagne. John had taken someone else's glass as well as his own and had nearly set the birthday cake on fire when he came too close with his lighter. Pyro was gone, now, too. Not dead, but as good as dead.
He had been Bobby's friend. Marie wished with all her heart that she could take off her gloves and stroke Bobby's face. He was sitting next to her, utterly still, setting his jaw as if determined to live up to his "manhood" by being as stone-faced as Wolverine.
Logan didn't sit in the front with Scott, the Professor, and Ororo, but all by himself in the row behind. He looked so forbidding - covering the pain, Marie reminded herself, still stinging from his rebuff when she'd tried to take a seat near him - that no one would have dared take a seat in his pew. God only knows where he'd scared up the dark suit, and he must have cut the hell out of himself shaving because the little marks weren't completely faded.
There were a couple of prayers in Kurt's broken English. A hymn sung by the youngest children. The one thing they had all expected, a eulogy from the Professor, didn't take place. Marie knew that Xavier had loved Jean like a daughter, that he was closer to her, emotionally, than to anyone else in the world. She also knew that the strain of speaking would have been more than he could bear.
It was Scott who got up in the Professor's place. He walked slowly but with his head held high, shaking off Kurt's proffered hand.
His voice had never been so dark, so devoid of feeling, as when he said, "Jean was my life." Xavier stiffened in his wheelchair and Ororo put her hand over her heart. Scott pulled himself together for a few more sentences. "I was just a scared kid when I met her - like so many of you. And like so many of you, she took me under her wing and made me realize that I wasn't a freak. That I was gifted. But the greatest gift in my life was Jean." He took a deep, shuddering breath that went through Marie like a knife. "It should've been me. I should have crushed enough rock to divert the waters, I should've blown a hole in the back of the plane so I could go and get her. But in the end, she was stronger than I was. And we've lost her because of me."
"Oh, no," she whispered, trying to blink back her tears.
"I was planning to marry Jean in this room. I wanted to see her dressed in white, I wanted to put a ring on her finger and kiss her. How can I say goodbye to that dream?" At that moment, Marie lost all semblance of control. Bobby had to hold her in her seat as she tried to wriggle away and throw her arms around her teacher and friend.
Ororo began to get up, but Logan beat her to it and stopped her with a look. He climbed the stairs as if his body were filled with lead rather than adamantium. "Scott," he admonished softly, using Cyclops' birth name for the first time. "Don't do this."
Scott set the picture down and reached for Logan's hand. For an instant Marie thought it was a handshake, something simple and quiet between two men who shared a loss. Then Scott started to press Logan's hand, his thumbs working up and down the claw sheaths. "C'mon," he breathed. "Where are they?"
"What the hell?" Logan fought him off, but despite the sleepless nights and the days without food, Scott was surprisingly strong and absolutely determined to get Logan's claws to come out. "Cyclops, stop!"
"I want to be with her!" he cried, twisting Logan's upper arm so hard that the claws unsheathed after all, probably as a subconscious response to the pain.
"For the love of God, my friend, do not do this!" Kurt tugged at Scott's shoulders. "Jean would not want you to take your own life."
Scott turned around and sent the Nightcrawler flying with one blow. The delay bought enough time for Logan to sheath his claws again. Marie winced as she saw him cradle his hand against his chest. When Scott turned around, Logan grabbed his forearms and shook him. "Not here, not now. You want to go crazy, you go to the Danger Room and I'll show you crazy." As Scott's exhausted body sagged in his arms, Logan said, "You think I don't understand exactly what you're feeling right now? Buddy, if I could kill myself, I would."
Marie heard the collective gasp, her own intake of breath like a knife through the heart.
"It's too hard," Scott whispered against his shoulder. "It's too hard to go on without her."
"The hardest part of recovering from the death of a loved one," Xavier said softly from the front pew, "is to go on living."
"She sacrificed herself for you. For all of us," Logan added. "We have to honor that. You understand? We have to honor what she did."
Marie and all the others were completely focused on Scott, watching as he straightened up, still letting Logan support him. His glasses glinted as sunlight struck them. "Jean," he murmured in a terrifyingly calm voice.
"Don't, don't," Logan warned. "You can't lose it here, not in front of the kids."
Scott just shook his head, a smile creeping across his waxen features. "Jean."
"What do I do?" Logan half shouted. "He's hallucinating, he's--"
The light in the chapel grew brighter, not the rising of the sun but some other illumination, something not of this world. Logan turned around and gasped, then Marie followed his line of sight.
Oh, holy God, they were all hallucinating.
It was Jean.
Not a bedraggled corpse, not some wraith come to haunt them, but a fiery, living presence with copper eyes and flowing red robes that matched her hair. Marie thought she was losing her mind until Bobby sputtered something unintelligible as the apparition walked slowly forward.
"Oh, my God," Ororo whispered.
Nightcrawler was on his knees, holding his rosary next to his heart. Logan still held on to Scott, who extended his arms and cried out, "Jean! Jean!" He struggled and fought his way free, racing up the aisle until he stumbled and landed at Jean's feet.
She leaned over and touched the side of his face. "Scott," she murmured in a voice that sounded like a chorus. Her lover pulled himself up onto his knees and threw his arms around her, burying his face in the curve of her waist. He looked up at her as if she were the very light of heaven. With one hand she absently stroked his hair.
With the other, she gestured to Logan.
He stumbled down the stairs like a man possessed and his steps faltered as he came closer. Marie leaned out into the aisle, forcing him to meet her imploring gaze. Why can't I be a telepath? Don't do this! Logan, don't do this!
He looked at her for an instant, his eyes full of unshed tears. And madness. He turned back to Jean. "We thought we'd lost you." Choking on the words.
"You did. But I came back."
"Jean, Jean, welcome home!" Professor Xavier called as he wheeled himself up to her. Of course. He couldn't see Logan's face, he didn't know what Marie could see coming a mile off. Xavier looked so happy. "My dearest girl, I can't begin to tell you--"
Even as he spoke, Jean was tugging Wolverine's forearm, pulling him closer until she could reach the back of his head and drag him in for a kiss. Not sisterly, not welcoming, but full of untapped desire.
Even through the panicked rush of blood past her ears, Marie could hear the children gasping aloud. Scott looked up at Jean. "What are you doing?" he cried, rising unsteadily, too stunned to pull Logan away, too stunned to do anything but repeat the question. "Jean, what are you doing?"
She pulled back from her conquest and opened her piercing eyes, lips swollen and slightly moist. "Living," she replied.
It was Ororo who pulled them all apart. "Jean, you're exhausted. Let me take you to your room." When Scott rose shakily to follow them, Ororo shook her head. "Let her rest. I'll get you when she's ready to see you."
Seemingly obedient, Jean let Ororo lead her away. Scott slumped to his knees in the middle of the aisle, his mouth open wide.
Logan hung his head.
Marie scrambled out of her seat and forced her way through the crowd until she was at Logan's side. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Bobby and some of the other boys dragging Scott to his feet and leading him away. No one looked at Logan; it was as if he had become invisible. He was too poleaxed to notice.
She cupped his elbow in her hand. "C'mon," she murmured. "Let's get out of here."
Logan stood riveted to the spot. "She's alive. Jean's not dead, she's alive, she's alive."
"I know that, I saw," Marie said, becoming agitated. "Didja have to let her kiss you like that?" Fortunately, Logan was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to sense the sudden rise of jealousy in her voice. She was disgusted enough with herself, envying Jean for not being dead. "Jesus," she muttered.
Behind them, Nightcrawler was finishing yet another Hail Mary. "It vass a miracle," he said to them in between prayers. "Gott is truly gracious."
At that moment, Logan snapped back to himself. "Where's Cyclops?" he asked breathlessly. "Shit, he must be ready to kill me."
"Bobby has him. I'm sure they went into the main house."
Logan straightened his shoulders. "Let's go."
Maybe Logan wanted to get his ass kicked, but Marie wasn't looking forward to this. They made their way through the excited throng of children to Professor Xavier's private study. Logan burst through without knocking and Marie peered around his large frame to see Scott slumped in a high-backed chair, a glass of something amber dangling precariously from his shaking fingers. Whatever he was drinking, the Professor was already pouring another glass for himself and even Bobby had a splash of it.
This was so screwed up.
"Ah, Marie," Xavier said gently. "It's been quite a day, hasn't it?"
She nodded, her mouth suddenly gone dry. "Yes, sir."
The Professor poured another brandy and pushed it toward Bobby, who handed it to Marie. His hand was shaking, and when Marie brought the brandy to her lips, it was ice-cold. But it was worth it for the sting of alcohol, grounding her, reminding her that this might be impossible but it was certainly real.
Logan stepped over to Scott. Tentatively, he put one hand on the other man's shoulder only to have it shaken off with a grunt of displeasure. "Listen to me."
"Fuck you," Scott slurred.
Not deterred, Logan stood his ground. "I'm glad she came back to you," he said quietly.
His choked laughter was even more painful than his tears had been. "You have got to be kidding me."
"She was confused, she wasn't thinking straight, she caught me off guard," Logan said, ticking each aspect off on his fingers. "She's alive, man. You gotta accept that gift."
For someone who was malnourished, exhausted, and well on his way to being drunk, Scott moved with surprising speed. He leapt out of the chair and threw himself into Logan full-on, knocking them both against a barrister's case. Marie shrieked as Logan's shoulder went through the glass, shedding shirt and flesh.
Of course, Logan could have done any number of things to stop Scott's attack. Instead he let his opponent rain blows on him, curse him, flail at him so hard that Scott's glasses went flying across the room. Scott's flash of energy didn't last long enough for anyone to attempt an intervention. With a low, despairing moan he sank to the floor with his back to the bookcase. "Oh, God," he whispered. He pulled his knees toward his chest and wrapped his arms around them. His hands were swollen, the knuckles raw. Marie was pretty sure he had a broken finger or two. Then her own tears started, and she couldn't remember a time when she hadn't felt like ten miles of bad road at the end of the world.
Logan tilted his head from side to side and his neck popped like a string of firecrackers going off. He glanced at his shoulder, which was already mended, then down to the pathetic man huddled at his feet.
"I'd better go," he said. He was talking to Xavier but looking at the floor.
"That might be for the best," Xavier began, but Scott stopped him.
"Wait. Can...can someone help me? My glasses?" Slowly he got to his feet, his eyes squeezed shut to prevent devastation, an irony Marie felt in the marrow of her bones. Scott reached out blindly, breathing in shallow gasps. Logan retrieved the glasses and placed them in Scott's outstretched hand.
"I think you hurt yourself," he said, exchanging a glance with Marie. Shit, did he think she knew about wound care just because she was a girl?
Scott struggled to get his glasses on straight. Blood trickled from a gash on his left hand and his right was already swollen to almost twice its normal size.
Still looking at Marie, Logan extended his hand and raised his eyebrows.
"That won't work," she said quietly. "I can't make it...flow outwards."
"I saw you give some of Pyro's power back after you grabbed him. You can do this. Just...try."
Tugging the fingers of her glove between her teeth, she bared one hand and wrapped her fingers around Logan's wrist. She hung on until she knew he was about to keel over, then she walked up to Scott and touched his shoulder. "I'm going to touch you for a second, okay?"
He nodded, gritting his teeth as Marie put her fingers on his temple. She wasn't sure how to do this, how to redirect the surge, but when she foced on Scott's mangled hands, it just happened. Powerful. Visceral. Almost sexual. Logan's regenerative strength flowed out of her even as she absorbed some of Scott's mutation. It was enough for her to put a hole through volumes six through nine of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica in the bookshelf before she remembered to close her eyes.
Scott brushed her hand away, then gently put his glasses on her face. "Keep the seal tight," he said.
When she opened her eyes, the room had a weird tone to it, as if the colors had been muted to a dull sepia. "Turn the knob over your left temple," Scott instructed. "It'll put the colors back in balance."
Marie did so, and looked at Scott. His eyes were open. Normal. Sky-blue, almost silver, both beautiful and heartbreakingly sad. "Oh," she whispered, then again, "Oh," as she looked down and saw that his hands were completely healed. She felt a surge of pride, the only one she had felt since the first time she realized she was a mutant.
"Thank you," Scott said simply and warmly. He put his arms carefully around her, not touching her flesh, just cradling her to his chest. He was slim and strong and oh, God, it felt good.
"I'm sorry," he said, both to her and to Logan. "That was...out of line. Out of control. Whatever. I'm sorry."
"We've all been amazed at how much control you have shown the past few days," Xavier said. "You're exhausted, Scott. It's understandable."
He nodded slowly, stroking Marie's hair for a moment then releasing her. "Keep those on until you're sure my mutation is gone. I can feel it starting to come back." Scott closed his eyes. "Bobby, could you go to the Ready Room and pick up a visor?"
As Bobby bolted out of the room. Scott felt the air with his hand. "Logan? You okay?"
"Will be in a minute." His voice sounded strangely distant and weak. "She took the stuffing out of me. Plus, you got in a couple of good shots, there."
Scott shuffled slowly in the direction of Logan's voice. It was awful to see this man, this leader, stumbling blindly across the room. "Let me help you," Marie offered, slipping her hand through his arm and guiding him carefully. "He's right here."
His head lowered, Scott extended his right hand. Logan shook it, not as roughly as Marie had expected. Even through the filter of the glasses she could see empathy in Logan's expression. "Don't worry about it," Logan said. "Important thing is that Jean's come home."
A little smile tugged at the corner of Scott's mouth. Bobby came back in, visor in hand, and Scott set it carefully on the bridge of his nose. "Thanks."
"Sure. Uh, Storm said to tell you that Jean's changing clothes and she's about to come downstairs." Bobby rubbed his hands together nervously. "She's pretty pissed that you got rid of her stuff."
Marie and Scott both flinched. With the help of Kitty and Jubilee, they had gone through the closet and given everything to Goodwill, everything but the evening gown she'd worn to the Professor's party. And she could hardly wear that.
"Crap," Marie mumbled under her breath.
Xavier lead them into the foyer, where they peered anxiously up the staircase. Jean began her descent. She was wearing something of Ororo's, something black with long, flowing sleeves. Like birds' wings, Marie thought.
"Did you get some rest?" asked Xavier.
Jean nodded. Her eyes were still brighter than they had been, but they lacked the crackle of energy. "I guess I owe everyone an apology," she said in a voice much more like her own. "I haven't been like...this...very long. When I'm having an emotional response, I can't really control myself." She glanced around, cocking her head when she saw Scott's glasses on Marie. "What happened?"
"Nothing," Logan said, but not before Scott replied, "We had a...disagreement."
Jean closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "A fist fight. Marie took Logan's power to heal--" She opened her eyes again. "Scott, you're hurt!"
"Nah." He held up his hands. "Good as new." He took a step forward. "Jean, this is...I mean, I dreamed that you'd somehow be alive...I just..."
"Storm told me everything," Jean said. "And even if she hadn't, I'd be able to sense what you've been through. All of you." She smiled at last, looking the way Marie remembered her, and crouched down at Xavier's side. "I'm going to need your help to find my way back," she said. Xavier put his hand on the side of her face, then at the back of her head. She leaned into the caress, resting her forehead on his arm with a long sigh. "I'm so tired, Charles," she whispered.
"I can only begin to imagine." He stroked her hair. "We can have all these conversations later. In the meanwhile, you should go back to your room."
"Yes." She lifted her head and smiled shyly at Scott. "Come with me?"
"Oh, God, yes, of course." He helped her to her feet and slipped his arm around her waist. HIs face radiated joy. "I can't believe you're really here."
She laid her head on his shoulder as they slowly walked up the stairs. Marie felt Logan stiffen behind her, reining in whatever he was feeling right at that moment.
Xavier's voice broke the stillness. "Storm, did she tell you how it happened?"
Storm waited until Scott and Jean were out of earshot. "She said she doesn't remember much but there was a kind of bubble around her. Energy that hadn't been expended, that's what she's guessing. She said she must have been knocked completely out. That's why you couldn't 'feel' her in your mind, Professor."
Marie couldn't imagine the kind of energy it would take to repel all that rushing water. "What about the clothes?" she asked. "Where did they come from?"
Ororo pursed her lips. "Jean says she woke up in them."
"Whoa." That was Bobby, who had run his hand through his hair so many times that he looked like a chia pet. "I'm not the physics master or anything--"
Xavier hid his chuckle behind a cough.
"--but clothes can't just appear out of nowhere."
"I'm just telling you what she said to me. Then I told her she looked like a bird made out of fire, and she laughed and told me she was now the Phoenix."
"Risen from the ashes," Xavier said, nodding sagely.
Marie felt a sudden chill and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Bobby came up behind her, placing his palms well within the safe boundary of her sleeves, but that only made her feel colder. She didn't need an Iceman. She was too fond of him to tell him to go away, so she stayed cold as she went back to her room to forget about the day's events. Especially that kiss. Even in the solitude of her bedroom, whispers floated around her. The children's silence changed to a muted susurrence. Dr. Grey is alive. She's alive.
And she kissed the Wolverine.
As if doing penance for being annoyed with him earlier, Marie stayed close to Bobby for the rest of the day. The youngest children pelted them with questions that they couldn't answer. The adults just looked shellshocked. Finally, after hours of having both Logan and Scott in her head, Marie pleaded exhaustion and went to her room with Bobby. She closed her eyes, hoping that she could feign sleep so he would leave her alone with her chaotic thoughts. After a while, Bobby stopped stroking her hair. Marie felt his weight leave the bed and heard the door open and close again.
She didn't expect a hand on her shoulder. Leaping upright, Marie gasped in shock.
"Take it easy, it's just me."
Just Jean, who must have slipped in as Bobby slipped out.
She was still wearing Ororo's black outfit, which accentuated her pallor. Marie noticed that Jean was wearing gloves. "Precaution," Jean said, flexing her hands. "I didn't know how you'd react."
Marie sat up and leaned against the headboard. "Well, considering that I was just wakened by someone who died four days ago, I think I'm holding it together just fine."
"You weren't asleep," Jean said softly. "I don't imagine you could be, not with two other people inside your head."
Of course Jean would understand what it was like to have a mind crowded with thoughts that weren't her own. There were still remnants of Erik Lensherr in her head, but they were faint, smoky tendrils compared to the pulsing life forces of Scott and Logan. Marie tucked her scarf more securely around her neck, then pointed to her temple. "They're fighting, even in here. Over you."
"I'm sorry."
Marie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The white hairs were coarser and tickled the soft flesh. "How's Scott?"
Jean cocked her head. "You were in the chapel a couple hours ago, crying at my funeral, and you're asking how's Scott?"
"You hurt him," Marie said, wanting to accuse Jean but at the same time feeling such relief to be able to speak to her at all.
"I'm sorry." Jean hung her head. For someone who had managed to bring herself back from the dead, Jean was sure apologizing a lot. "I know you care a great deal for him. And he for you. But there's also Logan. What I feel for Scott is not the same as..." Her voice drifted away on a somber note.
"As what you feel for Logan?" Marie offered, the words sticking in her throat. Despite herself, she began to cry silently, tears streaking down her face.
Jean wiped them away with her gloved hand, then sat beside Marie on the bed and drew the girl into her arms. "I know, I know."
"I don't understand. You have a bond with Scott. And he loves you. I mean, more than I've ever known anyone to love another person. What else could you possibly--"
"Need?" The embrace tightened, and not pleasantly. Jean's voice began to take on more and more overtones. "I'm a phoenix back from the dead, Rogue. I want to change my life."
Marie tried to wrestle free, but Jean held her fast. "What about your fiance?"
"My fiance," Jean said coldly, "didn't try to save me. Didn't even try to find my body. Just gave up and ran away."
She couldn't know, of course, about those first desperate minutes on the Blackbird when Scott had screamed and railed about going back, while it was Logan who had held his arms and shaken him back to reality.
"He wanted to," Marie said, hoping to convey some of that anguish to Jean. "But Logan held him back. He'd have crashed the plane into the water to find you. Hell, he'd have jumped in the water and swum every inch. He'd have done anything." When Jean didn't answer, Marie leaned toward her. "Go in here. I'll show you what I remember, what I saw that day."
Long, slender, strong hands hovered over Marie's temple, then pulled back. Of course, Jean's expanded power meant she cold read minds from a distance, like the Professor. Marie didn't feel invaded, the way she did when she was touched. It was more like a gentle nudge. They were just sitting side by side in a theater and the movie was about to begin.
I can't see through the window, I'm too far back and Scott's blocking my view. He looks like he's trying to press himself through the glass. The plane starts to lift off and I think you'll be back any second, but instead he starts to shake all over, like he's having his own personal earthquake. Logan starts saying, "She's gone, she's gone," then Scott rushes over to him.
I can't believe that Scott's doing this, he's BEATING on him, yelling, "You don't get to say that! We have to go back!" But Logan's holding him back, just saying, "She's gone" like a parrot. He has his back to me so I can't see his face, but Scott collapses against his shoulder, and oh, God, Jean, the look on his face, he's so white, it's like he died right there with you...
Without warning, Marie was alone in her own mind again. She trembled with a sudden fear as she looked into Jean's eyes. They were the same glowing copper as before, when she'd acted so strangely in the chapel. They were fire-hot but somehow still cold. Nothing of Jean's kindness or humor remained in those burning eyes.
Neither one of them said anything for almost a minute. Marie kept her gaze on Jean's eyes, watching in fascination as they dimmed to a nearly normal shade of brown, as something of Jean's essence returned to them. "I didn't understand, before."
"Do you understand now?" Marie hated how tight and needful her voice was.
Jean nodded. "He felt so much pain. All that pain, and there was nothing he could do." Rising slowly from the bed, Jean continued talking. Marie realized with a start that the conversation was one-sided. "There was nothing he could do," Jean murmured as she walked toward the door.
Well, at least Jean was coming around--
"Oh, poor Logan."
Good God.
This wasn't over.
Any other day, any other situation, and Marie would have been thrilled to be included in the meeting. But she went into the room knowing something the others did not: they didn't really have Jean back, after all.
The Professor sat at the head of the table with Scott on his right and Ororo on his left. Logan sat uneasily next to Ororo while the seat next to Scott was vacant. Neither Marie nor Bobby took that seat. It was meant for Jean.
Marie considered telling someone about the encounter she'd had with Jean earlier. But who would listen? Not Scott, the wounded hero, nor Logan, punch-drunk with Jean's return. Ororo...maybe. But Marie never felt a connection with her and wasn't sure she would be taken seriously. And the Professor? He was so happy to have his golden girl back that Marie would be wasting her sweetness on the desert air.
She entered last, draped in red and black. Scott rose and pulled back her chair, but she took a seat at the foot of the table, opposite the Professor. Leaning on her elbows, she smiled at the Professor. It wasn't a warm smile. "I assume we're not going on a mission," she said. "I assume we're here to talk about me."
"We do want to welcome you home, Jean," Xavier said mildly. "In the midst of the confusion, it's entirely possible that we may have expressed our joy in some...rather unconventional ways. But we are relieved, and overjoyed."
From her seat next to Logan, Marie could see how tight Scott's face was, how his hands shook even though they were folded directly in front of him. She was grateful that she couldn't see his eyes. There was no way she could have borne the pain that surely was written across their depths.
"What is it that you need?" Ororo asked gently.
"Time," was Jean's sharp answer. "This was an enormous thing that happened to me. I need time to process it."
"But you will rejoin the team," Xavier said without a hint of doubt in his voice.
Scott turned to stare at her, beseeching.
Jean shook her head. "I was never really part of the team." Over the combined protests of the others, she kept talking. "I never had a set function. I never even had a name the way the rest of you do." She smiled at Marie, but it wasn't warm, wasn't pleasant. "Even Rogue walked in the door with her mutant identity intact. I was only ever Jean."
Scott started to get to his feet, but Xavier stopped him. "Let her finish," he murmured.
Everyone was staring at Jean. Even the ends of her hair seemed alive, crackling with electricity, and the glow in her eyes was back in full force. "Most of Jean Grey died that day, even though the force of the water didn't completely kill her. I'm a phoenix, and I'm alive, but I'm a Dark Phoenix and that's going to be my name." She took a sip of water from the glass in front of her. "Just as my name has changed, so has my life."
Scott slumped in his seat as if shying away from a blow.
Jean delivered it. "I do love you, Scott. But love changes. It mutates. You're all I've ever known." The look she fixed on Logan was predatory. Dangerous. "I need time to discover all the things I missed."
"I'm sorry you feel as if being here with us has deprived you." Xavier's voice was deep and sorrowful. "That was never our intent. Nor was it our intent to shelter you to the point where you felt excluded from the team."
"I've always been the good girl. My whole life I've been perfect little Jean, the perfect scholar, the perfect mutant, the perfect lady, the perfect girl engaged to the perfect boy. I'm done with perfect now. I want a man, not a boy." Again, her gaze went to Logan, so full of desire that Marie felt her own cheeks flushing in response. "I want Logan."
Even though Marie saw the punch before it was delivered, she still reeled with the emotional force.
Logan just stared at Jean as if he were trying to read something inside her head. He turned toward Scott. Marie saw Scott go white, his lips compressed, his entire body utterly stiff. He looked down at his hands.
"On the Blackbird, on the way home, I said I'd give anything if I could see you just once more," he said slowly. When he lifted his face, the pain was so evident that not even Logan could look at him. Only Jean kept her eyes fixed on him, observing with a calm Marie could not imagine.
"I said I'd give anything," Scott repeated. "And I have to honor that."
"I think," the Professor put in after an agonizing silence, "that part of this discussion rightfully belongs to Logan."
"I'd say," Logan began slowly, "that this should be a private discussion. But since there are telepaths involved..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "What am I supposed to say right now?"
"I'm not one of the telepaths," Scott snapped, "but I've got a pretty good idea what you'd like to say."
"You got no idea." Logan stood up and leaned over the table toward Scott, who stood up as well. So much power, so scarcely controlled. The remnants of Logan inside Marie's head were almost howling in shared rage. Marie put a gloved hand on his arm only to have it immediately shaken off. "This doesn't involve you, kid," he snarled.
Stung, Marie pulled away and slumped in the chair. She put her elbows on the table and rested her forehead in her hands. They were clammy with sweat until a little puff of air cooled them. Bobby. He always knew.
Marie didn't have time to express any gratitude because Logan was already speaking again, his voice a rough growl as he stared Scott down. "If I agree to this - and there's no guarantee that I will - we need to make something clear." He turned to Jean, and the change in his tone made Marie's soul ache. "I never got the chance to grieve for you because I never got the chance to love you. If I'm what you want, I'm not gonna say no."
"Son of a--" Scott began.
Logan cut him off. "But there are conditions."
Smiling contentedly, Jean leaned back in her chair. "How many conditions?"
"Three. Number one: this is temporary. When you come back to your senses, it's over. Number two: you're gonna work with the Professor, here, because the sooner that happens, the better."
"What's number three?" Scott asked between clenched teeth.
Logan faced him and squared his shoulders. "I won't do this here, in this house."
"Afraid I might kick your ass?"
Never breaking his gaze, Logan shook his head. "I know what you think I am, Cyclops, and right now I don't give a shit except to tell you that you're dead wrong. If being with me will help Jean, then I'll do it, but no way am I gonna cuckold a man in his own house."
The room was so still that Marie could hear Scott's shallow breathing as an embarrassed flush stole across his chiseled features. Slowly he loosened his grip on the edge of the table and melted down into his chair. "Is this what you really want, Jean?" he whispered brokenly.
Jean sounded almost sad. "It's what I need right now, Scott." She got up and took brisk steps to where he was seated, then put the palm of one hand on top of his head. A benediction. "Thank you for understanding," she added.
Logan walked to the door and held it open for her. Even after she left, he stood in the doorway, looking sorrowfully back at Scott. "I'll help her get her things out."
"Don't worry. I won't stay in that room anymore. You can burn the damn thing to the ground if it makes you feel any better."
"Logan," the Professor said as Ororo reached across the table to take Scott's hand in hers. He looked the way he did when they'd all thought Jean was dead, as if he were enduring her loss a second time. "Don't take her far. There's a carriage house by the lake. She can come here to see me, or I can go to you. But don't separate us until I know for certain what her new powers are and how much of Jean is...recoverable."
Nodding, Logan turned his attention to Marie. The connection between them crackled, like a tiny electrical current. "You gonna be okay?"
The hell? How could he ask her that, with her heart breaking and with Scott about to either turn into stone or implode? But that wasn't his question. He wasn't stupid; he knew she was far from being anything close to okay. But would she be close enough to keep watch over Scott?
"Yeah," she breathed, trying to sound steady. "I'm good."
Again, Logan nodded. His face looked...older. Maybe it was the fading light, or maybe he was just incredibly sad. "Cy...Scott. I'm sorry."
This time Scott didn't bother to turn around. His jaw was set and his hands were folded neatly in his lap. Control. "Just get out." As Logan went out the door, Scott flinched.
"Take care of her," he whispered, and Marie couldn't help but wonder if Logan's remarkable ears had picked up the words.
A few weeks passed, then a month, then two months. During that time whatever Jean and the Professor talked about on his daily visits to the carriage house remained a secret between the two of them. Silence between telepaths.
Marie struggled with her schoolwork. Never fond of sitting still for extended periods of time, she found it agonizing to stare for an hour at the empty chair where John used to sit. Even more difficult were the days when Bobby became clingy and needful, his offers to help her with her calculus simply transparent ploys to be close to her.
The worst, though, were Scott's lectures.
He had always tended toward the pedantic. The Professor called him "focused." The kids called him "Tight-assed." They had all tried to cut him some slack in the weeks after Alkali Lake - a lot of it, considering that he'd been through his fiancee's "death" and her subsequent abandonment of him. But he'd come to a physics class with notes for motorcycle repair, given them a test on something they hadn't covered yet, and called Colossus "Flea" by accident.
Once in a while they'd hear Jean or Logan outside, talking to one another or the Professor, and those were the times Scott just gave up and told them to take a walk.
About a month after Jean had moved out, on the day of Marie and Bobby's graduation, Scott had come to the ceremony with stitches on his chin and a swollen cheekbone. No one knew exactly what had happened to him, but Marie noticed that the RX-8 was no longer in the garage and that the Professor's driver tended to take Scott on errands.
In other words, Scott Summers was a walking time bomb.
That bomb went off a few weeks after the suspected car accident, when Scott took ten kids to the Danger Room and two of them ended up in the clinic with broken legs. In both cases it was because their leader had been, as Kitty and Flea put it while Peter drew on their brand-new casts, "spaced out."
Hank McCoy had been visiting the mansion that day and he stayed to help with the injured children. Marie found herself drawn to the strange man with the amazing vocabulary, and he certainly didn't seem to mind an audience. At Marie's suggestion, Hank had tried a transfer of powers from Logan to Marie in an attempt to heal the broken bones, but Marie could not pass the regeneration along the way she had with Scott. No one really understood why until Marie mentioned that she had been worried about Scott on the flight back from Alkali Lake and had inadvertently put her bare hand on the back of his neck.
"Then that certainly is the key - despite all you have learned about controlling your powers, you must have had prior contact with the patient before a transfer of power will be efficacious." Hank was fairly bubbling at having solved the mystery. "Perhaps it might be best to 'inoculate' all of the children, as it were, by your touch."
Even though he was still winded from the transfer, Logan stood up straight and fixed Hank with a glare. "That's a great idea, Doc, except that everyone Rogue touches, she keeps up here." He pointed to her temple.
Grateful not to have to bring it up herself, Marie sighed as Hank processed the information. "Ah, I didn't realize that -my apologies for the suggestion."
"It's a good idea," Marie said weakly, "but there's only so much room in there, you know?"
Hank patted her on the head. "I believe that there is an infinite capacity in your mind, my dear. But, to be on the safe side, let us endeavor to keep the population under control."
Logan rolled his eyes. Marie knew there was only so much of Hank's prose he could listen to before he wanted to beat the crap out of the guy. Still, he lingered a little by the exam table where Marie was resting. "You gonna be okay, kid?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'm good. Thanks for tryin' this, Logan."
"I'm sorry it didn't help." He flicked a glance at Hank. "Don't let her get up and run around for a while - last thing we need is for her to crack her skull open."
"I wouldn't mind if it'd let all the people out," Marie complained. She sat up quickly and put her hands over her mouth as if to stuff the words back in. "I didn't mean that!" she cried.
At the first sign of tears Logan was at her side, but Hank was faster. The protective coat of blue fur along with his medical gloves made him impervious to her deadly skin and he held her tightly in his arms. "There, there, child, of course you want to be alone in your own mind."
Through the haze of tears Marie could see Logan standing nearby with his hands still outstretched, and for a moment his face was unschooled enough that she could read his expression even without their mental bond.
He did love her. Maybe not the same as he loved Jean, but he loved her nonetheless, and he was hurt that she sought comfort from someone else.
Then his eyes hardened again and he nodded curtly before leaving the lab.
Marie allowed herself the luxury of being held while she cried herself out over Logan, over Scott, over Jean. Over everything. Her father used to do that, used to hold her while she sobbed. Before. "I'm getting your fur wet," Marie whimpered.
"As long as I don't begin smell like a dog, I don't mind," Hank said mildly, patting her cheek.
That made her laugh, and she sat up again while Hank handed her some tissues. She dabbed delicately at the skin under her eyes, although she suspected her makeup was a dead loss at this point. Hank went into the other room to give pain medications to his patients, and to give Marie some privacy.
She studied her reflection in the mirrored tray that held some of the instruments. Not too terrible, although the tip of her nose was red and her eyes were swollen. She could go to dinner and pass for normal, maybe, with some eye drops and foundation. Otherwise, Bobby would hover.
Bobby.
Marie sighed heavily. Poor guy. Now that the infatuation stage was over, Marie found herself strangely uninterested in him. He was funny, sure, and smart, but there was an essential spark missing. "Maybe I just need a bad boy," Marie murmured.
"So many young women feel that they do," Hank said mildly. His feet, though huge, were padded, and he had an alarming tendency to sneak up on people and just start talking. "Sometimes the very best women have an urge to try a man with a wild side - like an itch they feel they must scratch." His eyes twinkled. It wasn't a judgment on her, just an observation. "Then, they either find they no longer have the itch--"
"Or they have a big ol' scar."
Hank's laugh was an infectious bark. "Precisely!"
Tracing a design on the tray with one finger, Marie tried to make her voice sound casual. "Like Jean, with Logan."
In the reflection she could see Hank's face fall. "Perhaps. Although with Jean, it may be symptomatic of another underlying pathology altogether."
Marie scrunched up her face. "Smaller words?"
"Smaller words, longer paragraphs. Perhaps you would like to sit down before we begin." He waited for her to take a seat before he perched on the exam stool. A blue, fuzzy gentleman. "Jean and I were the first two 'pupils' Charles brought here. We were both bright and inquisitive, both interested in medicine. But that is where our similarities ended."
"Because you were interested in developing your powers and Jean was more interested in controlling hers?"
"Thank you for your succinct rendering of the situation," Hank said. "When Ororo and Cyclops came, I freely competed with them but Jean always held back. Always kept something of herself in reserve. Once in a while we would get a brief glimpse into what abilities she truly possessed, but most of the time she would be content to pass the salt without touching it."
"She strikes me as having been pretty much content, period," Marie commented.
"One would think that, judging from all outward appearances. She was content to develop her powers a little at a time, content to attend medical school while passing for human. Content to choose a stable man who could pass for human, as well - only with very cool shades."
She blinked rapidly. "Choose a stable man? She made...a choice? Like from among several?"
Hank lowered his eyes. "Between two," he said softly.
Of course. She'd heard about this, about how Hank had been normal in appearance until just a few years ago, when an experiment left him with the additional mutation. He had slight control over it, enough to do a shopping trip or an interview, but most of the time he was "The Beast."
"Crap," she whistled. "Is there any man in this whole building who isn't in love with Jean Grey?" Then, mortified, "Oh, my God, did I say that out loud?"
She felt guilty when Hank laughed and ruffled her hair. "You did, indeed, and thank you for that, else I might have become maudlin with the remembrance of things past."
"That's a book," Marie said, mostly to cover her humiliation. "Bobby was reading it. In French, because he liked to show off."
"He's not the only student at this school to have been captivated by a pretty face." Hank got up and gathered some of his instruments together. "Nor the only man. And, I would imagine, the same is true for our young women here. Being a mutant can be a...separating experience. We're set apart in a small community, and it's only natural that our fancies turn to love now and again. There's eros, of course, as in the case with Jean and Scott, romantic love. Then there's agape, a more familial love, as we see between Jean and the Professor."
"Is that why he's having so much trouble separating Jean from the Phoenix?" Marie asked.
Hank touched her cheek without flinching, something Marie appreciated than anything she could imagine. Yes, my dear, as much as I love the Professor I must confess that he has a blind spot where Jean is concerned. He sees only the best parts of her, the purest and noblest essentials. He has never delved into the troubled parts of her psyche, never encouraged her to bring them to the surface so they could be analyzed and understood." He smiled at her. "I can see that you are astonished to think of our Professor as anything less than perfect. He is assuredly the finest man I have ever had the privilege to have encountered. Yet what is he but sinew and bone, and a heart just like yours or mine?"
She needed time to process that thought. She slid down from the exam table, keeping her face averted when she asked, "Do you think Jean will ever be Jean again?"
"It would be folly for me to offer an opinion on that. But I do know one thing - Jean may not be Jean right now, but Scott is most certainly Scott. I believe he would benefit greatly from a sympathetic ear. In many ways, I fear for him more than for anyone else involved in this contretemps."
That was all Marie needed to hear. She ran at top speed, breathlessly pausing in every room in the mansion until finally she realized that Scott would probably be outside.
She found him under a tree, lying on his back with his arm thrown over his eyes. His glasses were on the ground within easy reach. She didn't know whether he was awake or asleep, so she knelt beside him and put one hand on his arm.
It happened so fast that she had no time to register what was going on. One second she was poking Scott in the arm, the next she was lying on the ground and Scott was picking leaves out of her hair. She tried to focus her eyes on him. "What happened?"
"I got...startled. I forgot I didn't have on my glasses."
"You opened your eyes?" Marie looked up and saw the tree was denuded of quite a few of its branches. Huh. She seemed to be wearing one, more or less, on her head. Huh, again.
"I don't think it hit you, just grazed you, You're more a wood sprite than anything else right now. Hold still." He pulled some more leaves out of her hair. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be, I'm fine," Marie assured him. She really was fine, just startled, and she held out her hands. "Give me a hand up, I'll walk you back."
He didn't look as if he wanted to go back, but he smiled graciously as he pulled her to her feet. "How are Kitty and Flea?"
"Peter's waiting on Kitty hand and foot. She couldn't be better, the little princess. And you know the Flea, he'll be out of bed in no time."
Scott's steps slowed. "I shouldn't have let them go in there. I should've been more alert."
"It's hard to be alert when you haven't been sleeping," Marie commented. Scott glared down at her, the effect magnified by the reflection from his glasses. "Well, I get up in the morning and look for the pecan waffles I got the day before, but they're not in the freezer. And since you and I are the only people who like 'em..."
"Maybe I just eat breakfast earlier than you."
"Maybe you just eat breakfast at three in the morning because you can't sleep."
He snorted. "You're just not going to let that go, are you?"
"Nope. A man who takes my pecan waffles is just sniffin' around for a fight." She felt Scott stiffen alongside her. "Sorry, bad choice of person to imitate," she mumbled.
Then, surprise of surprises, Scott's arm was around her shoulders, holding loosely. "Don't be sorry. It's about time someone treated me like my glasses are quartz instead of nitroglycerin."
By the time she finished laughing, they were back in the house. Ororo was standing by the stairs, talking to a couple of girls. Her eyes widened when she saw Marie. "What do you have growing out of your head? And why?"
Marie caught sight of herself in the mirror and gasped. Scott lowered his head. "My fault. I knocked down a tree limb and she was under it. Won't happen again, boss," he said.
Ororo smiled. "You're both a mess. Don't come down to dinner like that or people will think you've taken up wrestling in dirt." She shooed them upstairs.
Scott's new room was the first on the left and he paused with his hand on the doorknob. "You're really okay, then?"
She nodded. "Some shampoo and a rake and I'm good as new."
His laughter was a welcome relief. "I don't know whether to send you to a hairdresser or a gardener." He leaned forward and took another stray piece of greenery from behind her ear.
"Scott," Marie said softly, indicating the room where Logan had stayed, "I can tell that Logan feels terrible about this. He feels awful, and guilty."
"But not guilty enough to stop," Scott said, just as softly. He backed into his room and Marie followed as if his warm, soft sorrow were lapping at her like an undertow.
They stood like that for a long time, Scott with his hand in Marie's hair as she looked up at him, waiting for something she knew would either save them or damn them.
"You're a girl," Scott whispered at last.
"I'm glad you noticed."
His smile was achingly sad. "There's not a sentient being in the hemisphere who hasn't noticed. I meant, you're a young girl."
"I'm eighteen!" she cried indignantly.
"And I'm twenty-six."
"And Jean's thirty-four." She hadn't intended it to be mean, just a statement of fact. "It's a decade, not a lifetime, and I have you in my head and it hurts, Scott, it's fucking killing me because I hurt just the way you hurt!"
He reeled as if from a blow. "I didn't know. I'm sorry."
"Not your fault," she said, unable to endure both his guilt and his sadness. "I'm tired of hurting, that's all."
"We all are. And I'm tired of being the cause of it." He rubbed his temple below the earpiece of his glasses. Headaches were a constant reminder that his mutation was closer to a curse than a blessing. Jean had once explained it to Marie when she'd seen Scott lying down with a wet washcloth over his beautiful, deadly eyes.
Marie put her cool hand on Scott's warm forehead and immediately felt a residual stirring of the power she had gleaned from Logan. Standing on tiptoe, she tugged at his hair and made him bend over enough for her to press her lips to his cheek. Only a second lapsed, but she felt a dull throbbing behind her eyes just as Scott sighed in relaxation. Logan was healing Scott through her. How ironic.
Immediately, Scott shielded Marie's eyes. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Do you need my glasses?"
"No, I'm fine, it was just for a second." She shook his hand off before she could leech any more of his power away, then she took it between her gloved hands and pressed it quickly to her lips.
There it was again, the heaviness she always felt when the Professor stopped the world around them. Maybe it had stopped on its own this time. She didn't know. But Scott was staring down at her with a tear streaking its way beneath his glasses, and Marie felt a yearning stronger than any she had ever known, and when she held her arms up to him it was just...inevitable.
He balanced above her, his lean, supple body rubbing against the sheet that separated them. Always a quick thinker, Scott had made one little rent in the material. Always a teacher, Scott had started to tell her about some Central American wedding-night customs before Marie had kissed him into silence.
The kissing part was good. Better than the original flurry of nerves, all this tasting and sampling and experimenting. Better than the sharp pain she couldn't conceal.
Marie wanted to pretend, but it was no use; even with her eyes closed she knew damn well the difference between Bobby's gangly body and Scott's sinewy one. No, fantasizing wouldn't help, because there could be no substitute for Logan's muscular bulk. Because Scott had the visor on, Marie couldn't tell if he was looking at her or not, but judging from the difficulty he was having, he probably was.
It didn't help that she was scared, that she was tightening herself in all the wrong places, making the discomfort last far longer than it needed to. It wasn't discomfort, it was pain, dammit, and she could tell that it hurt Scott to cause her pain, and this was so very much not the way she'd imagined this moment would be.
But she wanted him inside her, so she tamped down the fear and made herself relax enough to let him in. Another jolt of pain, and another, sharper one, and it was done.
I'm fucking Mr. Summers, she thought, knowing she was living out a fantasy for the girls and maybe even a couple of the guys. However, visualizing the imaginary reaction of her classmates wasn't going to make this any more pleasurable.
"You don't have to do this," Scott gasped as Marie winced in discomfort. "I can stop. I can stop."
His voice didn't have the desperate edge she knew all too well from Bobby's well-intentioned fumblings. Thing was, he could stop, and she could stop, and they'd probably never have to mention it again.
Hell, that would be too easy.
"Don't stop," she breathed into his open mouth. "Please...please..." Erase it all, she thought as Scott moved inside her. Just erase it all.
It took an eternity for Scott to reach orgasm. For a moment, Marie thought he might have faked it, but the condom sounded heavy when he threw it into the wastebasket. He wrapped her in the sheet and cradled her in his arms, her back against his chest, careful not to touch bare skin. "I'm so sorry," he whispered.
"Yeah, that's what you want to hear your first time," Marie groaned. As tired as she was, her body still pinged with need. Scott stroked her, his capable hands - experienced, she reminded herself, experienced with Jean, Jean, always Jean - stroking everywhere it was safe and even flicking over unsafe, uncovered skin.
He tugged at the fingers of her left glove. "I need this," he said softly. "Or another one."
Marie held out her hands and let Scott pull off her left glove. "I do this left-handed," he murmured.
"Do what?" she began to ask, but it turned into a ragged intake of breath when his gloved fingers reached between her thighs. "Jesus Christ, Mary, Joseph, five saints, and three LAMBS!"
This part was good. It was amazing, brilliant, confounding, delightful... She didn't remember the alphabet anymore, didn't remember anything but this feeling that washed away anything related to conscious thought. She liked that he didn't always know exactly what she needed; the element of surprise when he connected with the right speed or the right spot was sheer heaven.
And he got the timing and the spot right more and more often as he kept going, kept going...
"Scott!" she shrieked. He put his bare hand over her mouth to quiet her and she felt the first tickle of his powers. For a second she understood everything that was going through his complex mind - the lust, of course, and his genuine delight at her pleasure. His embarrassment at having kept condoms in his nightstand in case Jean changed her mind and returned to him. But most of all, she knew he was deeply ashamed.
Whatever was happening behind his visor would always be a mystery to Marie, but she could see by the set of his jaw and the twitching of his lips that he was about to spiral down into self-loathing.
"I wanted this as much as you did," Marie said, hoping to forestall Scott's inevitable gloom.
"But I'm older. I should know better." He pulled her closer, wincing at the bloodstains on the bed and on their shared glove. "Oh, my God."
"I'm fine," Marie insisted. She turned around to give him a quick kiss, enough to tingle but not enough to sap his strength any further. "I need to get cleaned up before dinner or Ororo will roast me."
"Wait, I'll put on some clothes and make sure the coast is clear." He looked somehow more naked, more vulnerable, because of the glasses. He slipped into sweatpants, keeping his back to Marie. She admired the sleekness of his body, no matter the angle. It was too bad he kept it covered with loose shirts and pants all the time.
Scott opened the door a little and looked up and down the hall. "Go. Fast."
Marie bolted off the bed and raced into her own room. Quickly turning the shower up full blast, she let the bedsheet fall to her feet and turned toward the mirror.
Not much different. Her lips were a little puffy and she had flushed cheeks, but the Big Traumatic Change, the neon sign saying "I've just had sex" - those were nowhere in evidence. By the time she had showered and dressed again, she looked no different than she had before. Before.
Scott, on the other hand, looked like hammered hell when he came down to dinner. To be sure, not a hair was out of place and his clothing was immaculate, but he was white as a sheet. Marie had to stifle a giggle when she remembered how they had used his sheet, then she had to suppress the whole memory because she was eating dinner with not one but two telepaths.
Logan and Jean were joining them.
This was going to be worse than the Thanksgiving when her dog got into the turkey.
It didn't start off too badly. Jean seemed to be mostly Jean, although she was very much on edge. Logan almost smiled at her when he went past, although she nearly had a heart attack when he stopped near Scott's chair and sniffed lightly. Surely, surely Scott had taken a shower at least as scalding as her own. Whatever Logan learned from his olfactory sampling, he didn't let it show on his face.
Hank and Jean provided most of the chatter as they talked about medicine in terms that went over everyone else's heads. Something about tissue regeneration and the changes in Jean's eyes. Marie didn't understand it. She kept focusing on her plate and trying not to look at Scott.
The Professor, Hank, and Jean were fascinated by Marie's ability to transfer Logan's healing power to someone who had been exposed to her touch. Particularly Jean, who positively beamed at Marie. There was a time when Jean's admiring smile would have made Marie feel like an empress, but tonight it just made her feel cheap. Cheap and guilty. She reached for her glass and it spilled, just as her blood had spilled on the sheets.
"Marie, are you all right?" Scott asked. Too quickly, too protectively. And had he ever called her by her real name before? Logan's eyes widened. Oh, holy hell.
He looked from her to Scott and back again. Of course he could smell her blood, and he was probably smelling some remnant of her on Scott. She felt a presence in her mind, like before, and suddenly Jean was watching Scott's face as he watched Marie slip out of her clothes...
"Jean," the Professor said sternly. "Don't invade the girl's privacy."
Her eyes glowed copper as Jean remarked, "Especially since the girl is now a woman."
It was like a comedy - forks dropping into plates, Ororo half-choking on a piece of bread, Jean simpering as Scott turned blood-red. Bobby getting up so abruptly that his chair hit the floor with a loud crush of wood on wood. Yes, a dining-room comedy with her as the unwitting star.
Bobby turned toward Logan with fury, but Logan was looking at Scott.
Marie felt the jolt of disgust that wracked Bobby's entire body. Felt the betrayal and the surge of icy anger. But she wasn't prepared for Bobby to shove Scott hard into the wall, screaming, "I am gonna freeze your fucking balls off, you son of a bitch!"
"Bobby!" shrieked Marie. "Stop!"
He did, ironically frozen in mid-gesture with Xavier's green eyes focused on him. "Let him go. Sit down," Xavier said as if inviting him to tea.
Bobby obeyed, his face blank except for spots of color on his cheeks. His hands were still tinged blue with ice.
Xavier sighed. "It's not unheard of for people placed in close quarters to develop affection for one another. After all, that's what originally brought Scott and Jean together."
"Marie and I were talking about that just a few hours ago It did not occur to me in any way, shape, or form that she would misinterpret my words," Hank said. Marie could endure the Professor's coldness and Jean's snide abuse, but Hank's disappointment felt like acid dripping on her soul. "She may be of legal age now, Scott, but older and wiser heads should have prevailed."
"I don't disagree with you," Scott said. He looked miserable as he slumped in his seat and put his head in his hands.
"Chaos theory," Hank murmured. "Change one thing, change the entire world."
"Chaos theory, my ass! How could you do it?" Logan, now, turning on Scott. Scowling. Claws emerging, ready to eviscerate him. "You sick bastard, how could you do it?"
No longer passive, Scott stared Logan down. "Why do you care? Jean wasn't enough? You want her, too?"
"I promised to protect her. Hell of a job I'm doing," Logan growled. He glanced at her, making her face flush with shame. "I oughtta open your fucking intestines, Cyclops."
"Why, so you can go after her next? How much of what I care about will you try to take from me? How much of my life are you going to destroy?"
It was the same uncontrolled fury they had seen in Xavier's study the day Jean had come back to them. Scott was normally so correct, so in command of everything in his mind and heart. When the emotions behind them were unleashed...
"It's my fault." Jean's eyes were closed, tears darkening her lashes. "The Phoenix - there's a link that she uses to strengthen herself."
"Who, Jean," the Professor asked urgently, reaching out to stroke her hand. "Is it Scott?"
"No." Jean shook her head and opened her eyes. "It's Rogue."
Marie started to shake all over. "Why me? Why is she linked to me?"
"Because you slept with her fiance," Bobby snapped. Marie slapped him, a glancing blow that left her palm cold and stiff.
Jean reached toward them with her free hand. "No. It was like that from the start. It was when she - we - got close to Marie that I started to lose control of myself. Maybe it's the bond she has with both Logan and Scott, I don't know, but I can't make it stop when I'm around her! She's the catalyst!" With that, she ran out of the room.
Scott tried to follow her out, only to be stopped by Logan's outstretched arm. "Let her go. Let her think it out."
"He's right," Xavier added. "This is the first breakthrough in months. If she gets enough of herself back to talk to me - really talk to me, this time - then perhaps we can put an end to this whole disaster."
Scott broke free of Logan and stood with his legs slightly apart and his hands on his hips. It was his leader pose, and even though he was a couple of inches shorter than Logan, it was effective. "You got what you wanted. Now get out of my way."
"Scott--"
"Don't!" He put his hand up, palm outward. Maybe it was only Marie who saw the slight tremor. "Don't ever call me by that name."
"Okay," Logan mumbled. "Cyclops. Whatever, whoever, it's just a matter of time before we get Jean back and YOU get Jean back. If you want to spend the time in between with a woman, I can't say as I blame you. Just not HER." He inclined his head toward Marie, who flinched at the absolute fury she saw in his eyes. "Or if it's her, then let me tell you this: you hurt her, I kill you, is that clear?"
Scott's laughter was a shock. "Death, killing, it's all you think care about. Life is just something to pass the time until you can kill someone else." He put his hand at Logan's throat. "You can only juggle life and death so many times," he hissed. "I just hope I get to be there when you finally fuck it up."
"Maybe I already have," Logan said quietly. He moved Scott's hand without much effort, then walked over to Marie and knelt by her side. "Marie. Marie, look at me."
She did, and what she saw in his deep hazel eyes made her breath catch in her throat. "What?" she asked, trying to sound sullen instead of mesmerized.
"I told you I'd take care of you, that day on the train with Magneto. And I meant it. It's been crazy, kid, I won't lie to you, and I got swept up in all the craziness right along with you. But this is something I can't help you with. You have to decide if this is what you want. If he's what you want. If he is, then I won't say another word to you or anyone else about it."
Marie looked around the table. At Bobby, so desperately hurt. At the Professor and Hank, profoundly disappointed, and Ororo, deeply shocked. Then at Scott, imagining his eyes behind the inscrutable ruby quartz, remembering the feel of his body next to hers, how much he wanted her. Needed her.
She put her gloved hands on either side of Logan's face. "He needs me," she whispered brokenly. Leaning closer, she whispered into his ear, "I think he'd die without me."
Giving Logan up forever. Right here, right now, this second, she was telling him she was giving him up forever. It should hurt more, she thought, but I'm so damn tired.
Logan whispered back, his breath laced with coffee and cigars. "I think you're right." He pulled away and spoke to everyone, even though he was looking at the Professor. "Marie's had to pick up a lot of pieces lately. Between all the people marchin' around in her head and women returning from watery graves and such, she's probably more stressed than we know. So if Cyclops don't mean her no harm, then I don't see that it's any worse him being twenty-six and sleeping with her when she's eighteen than when Jean was twenty-six and Cyclops was eighteen."
Hank's face was twisted into a grimace that he was unsuccessfully trying to hide with a smile. "Come see me about protection," he said to Marie as he abruptly left the room.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," Marie sobbed. "I didn't mean for anything like this to happen. We've just been so...so lonely." She rested her head on her folded arms and wept as much as she had for Jean's death. This was her death, the death of the last vestige of her innocence, and probably the death of the X-Men.
"It is not, my child," Xavier said, reading her thoughts unobtrusively. "We are not a shattered remnant standing on a distant shore. We are together and we have a common goal. That is what will get us through until a solution is found. I promise you that the X-Men will not dissolve in the acid of our own self-destruction." He turned to Bobby. "I understand your heartache better than you know. Nothing heals that affliction better than absence. You can try and reconnect with your parents, or you can travel to distant lands so you can use all those languages you've learned. If that is what you want, then I will take care of the arrangements. Then, when you are ready to return to us, you will be welcome."
Bobby nodded. He gave Marie one last bleak, longing look. "Can't you?" he asked.
She shook her head. "No, I can't. I'm so sorry, Bobby."
He looked a little like Scott as he rose slowly and straightened himself up. "Then I'll go pack." Without waiting for an answer, he walked between Logan and Scott and left the dining room.
"I think," Ororo said, her melodious voice breaking some of the tension, "that Marie should get some rest. We can talk with Jean and see how much better her 'control' is once she's not involved in a link with Marie."
"You're right," Scott said. He put his hand at the small of Marie's back. "I'll walk her to her room. Her. Room," he said, enunciating the words so Logan would back away. "I'll be right back."
The other students gave them a wide berth. Jean gave them a quizzical look as they passed her at the foot of the stairs. "We're going to meet in the Professor's study," Scott said. "Marie is going to lie down for a while."
Jean said nothing, but Marie saw a simpering smile she longed to wipe away with her fists. If only she weren't so tired, she thought as Scott lifted one edge of her scarf and kissed her through it. If only she weren't so tired, she thought again as she lay down on her bed.
If only the world weren't coming to an end, she thought as restless sleep took hold of her and pulled her under its dark, churning waters.
The sun kept coming up every morning.
Even after Bobby packed and moved out without a word. Even when the students whispered about Marie, or, worse, shunned her. Even when Jean became so irrational that the Professor asked her not to visit the mansion but let him come to her.
The sun kept coming up every morning.
This morning it snuck around the place where the curtains had pulled back a little, and a stream of it hit Marie in the eyes. She grumbled and curled up in a tighter ball, her head on Scott's chest. His navy blue t-shirt had been washed a thousand times and its fabric was soft against Marie's cheek. She could feel the soft rise and fall of Scott's chest as he slept on and on. Perhaps he was dreaming of something nice, because there was a little smile on his lips.
She hadn't seen much of that smile in the last few weeks. Most of the time Scott was sullen and withdrawn, shut off from almost everyone. He had been talking to the Professor a lot, and Hank, but little by little he spent more of his time alone. Most days found him working on his motorcycle or reading in the shade of the enormous maple tree by the pond.
Marie spent a lot of time in the Danger Room. Ororo had said that losing weight was fine but losing muscle tone was inexcusable, so Marie found solace in working out. Many times Hank would join her. He was surprisingly agile for a man his size, landing on his feet without the thump and grunt that accompanied Marie's stunts. He also had a habit of quoting poetry while pinning her to the mat, which she found charming in a completely surreal way.
Scott moaned slightly in his sleep and Marie put her arm around him, holding him close in hopes of quelling the nightmares that came more and more frequently. "Hush, Scott, it's okay," she whispered in his ear, and he became quiet again although his muscles were still rigid. Marie wondered if she should talk to Hank about it.
Hank had become a good friend since the day she had swallowed her embarrassment and asked him to prescribe birth control pills and also inquired, terrified of the answer, if condoms would be necessary for protection from her powers if Scott were "clean." They weren't, Hank explained in the most genteel language possible when discussing the differences between skin and mucus membranes. He cheered her up by adding, "I believe that Scott will find that news to be invigorating. He may even choose to act upon it with alacrity."
When she had gone to Scott with the good news about being able to have physical contact without a barrier between them, Scott had smiled absently and said, "That sounds good," as if she had been discussing the weather or a recipe for chocolate souffle. Not only had he not "acted upon it with alacrity,", but he also forgot he'd had the conversation. When he reached for the condoms that night, when they were making love, Marie had begun to cry and didn't stop until the next morning.
He was sorry.
He was always sorry. He was also always a little bit absent-minded, a little bit distracted. A little bit humorless. Almost the only thing that made him laugh anymore was the continually changing designs Marie drew around the slits in his sheets. The ones that really made him chuckle were the ones Marie later made permanent with embroidery. God knows it was hard enough to get Scott to laugh these days, so it was worth the pricked fingers.
Scott was beginning to wake up now, struggling against the current until he broke through the surface. He even woke up predictably: a stretch, a yawn, then his hand on his sleep glasses to ensure they were fastened properly. Then he turned over and put his gloved hand on Marie's face. She rubbed her cheek against his palm, almost purring. "Morning," Scott said in the sleep-roughened voice that always made Marie's insides turn to jelly. Sometimes he'd ask if she'd had sweet dreams. She always jumped him when he did that. Once he made the connection between the words and the sex, Scott used them more frequently.
"Did you have sweet dreams?" he whispered into her ear, and within minutes they were making use of the sheet with the atom diagram surrounding the slit.
She decided at that moment that it was worth whatever cruel form of limbo they were all existing in, just to have the opportunity to make love to Scott Summers.
He wasn't Logan, and she wasn't Jean, but they found solace in one another and, in time, the solace had become genuine pleasure. Mutated, if you wanted to put it that way. Whatever the cause, Marie was content to let Scott pour out his affection on her and delighted to be able to do the same for him. Body and soul and mind, all flowing like liquid.
She was damned, she thought as Scott collapsed against her and told her she was beautiful, if she knew why they were both so fucking miserable.
As Marie stood at the stove, scrambling eggs - she loved their cook, but didn't anyone understand that scrambled eggs should be kept on the fire until they weren't shiny anymore? - she heard the Professor's wheelchair coming up from behind.
"Good morning, Marie. Burning some eggs?" Xavier inquired.
"Making a civilized breakfast, yes. You know, actually cooking my food?" She stirred the eggs more vigorously. "Care to join me?"
"Thank you, no, I've had my breakfast already." He liked soft-boiled eggs, served in porcelain cups. Her first week at the mansion, Marie had thought they were votive candle holders and the children had laughed at her for it until Jean sent a mental warning that embarrassed them all into respectful silence.
"One of the cups still smells like a vanilla candle," the Professor remarked mildly. When Marie blushed, he put his hand on her arm, resting it on the sleeve. "I'm reading your face, my dear, not your mind. Actually, I quite like that cup. It reminds me of a less complicated time."
"I'd think," Marie said, speaking slowly and keeping her gaze on the contents of the frying pan, "that the best times were the ones before I came."
His sharp eyes opened wide. "Marie, that is simply not true. We have had challenges, to be sure, but I can no more imagine this place without you than without Scott."
She refused to let herself cry. There had been too much of that these last few months. In the moments that lapsed before she regained control, she turned away from both the Professor and the stove, and a few seconds later she realized that the eggs were burning. "Dammit!" She scooped them up with the spatula and tilted her head to look underneath. Almost black.
"I'd say they were done enough even for you," Xavier chuckled.
Afterwards, Marie wouldn't remember what made her throw the eggs against the wall. Or the frying pan, which landed on the rug and nearly set it on fire. All she knew was that suddenly she was on the floor, shaking from head to foot while the Professor tried to soothe her. She sensed his voice in her mind even though she could not make out the words. The sound was so comforting that she drew herself up on her knees and put her head down on his lap.
"Marie, Marie," he murmured as he stroked her hair.
Still holding her tears at bay, Marie relaxed a little, willing her breathing to even out, forcing down the lump in her throat. She could smell the fine wool of the Professor's trousers mixed with the acrid, sulphuric smell of the burnt eggs. She kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut the way Scott did when he thought his glasses might have slipped. Somewhere in the maelstrom in her brain she wondered if her powers might mutate to where her tears became as deadly as her skin.
"Marie," the Professor said again, "may I ask you to do me a favor?"
She sat up, sniffling a little, and opened her eyes. No acid rain here, just the Professor's serene face. "Stop trying to cook?" she asked.
"No, indeed. But the reason I came in was to ask you to take a look at a young man who came to us yesterday."
"That's kind of unusual," Marie said. Actually, it had never happened before. It was always Ororo or Hank who checked on the new arrivals. "Does he have a mutation like mine?"
"Hardly," Xavier replied. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "The boy's name is Rafe, and his 'special power' seems to be seeing through plastic."
Marie stared at him. Was this a joke? "That's it?"
"Pretty much. I think he might benefit from a little conversation with you. He feels that his 'gift' isn't adequate, a self-diagnosis based on the way the other children are shunning him. Rather the way you felt when you first came and had the incident with Logan's claws."
Okay, so maybe this Rafe kid wasn't going to be a special needs mutant after all. "I get it, Professor. I really do."
"I knew you would. Now pick up the mess and I'll have Angie make you a proper breakfast. Even if you do insist on eating carbonized eggs."
She got up, straightened her clothes, and brushed her hair back from her face. "At least I won't have chickens coming out of my breakfast," she retorted as she leaned over and kissed him on the top of his head. "I'll go talk to Rafe the Wonder Boy. What are you doing today?"
"Giving a lecture. Seeing Jean and Logan."
Cold knife deep in the heart.
Marie shrugged it off, or tried to. "Any progress there?" she asked. Neither of them had returned to the mansion since the unfortunate dinner. Suddenly, the task of scraping eggs off the floor and cleaning up after herself took on an unexpected benefit: the Professor could not see her face.
But he could sense her, of course. Not only a telepath but a damn good judge of human - or mutant - nature. "Some," Xavier said cautiously. "It's very odd that Jean is usually quite subdued, even loving, when she's in the carriage house. It's when she comes here that the problems manifest themselves." He sighed. "She misses Scott terribly."
"Having an affair with Logan is a funny way of showing it," Marie snapped.
"Yes. Finding solace in the arms of a surrogate does make one wonder about many, many things."
Her cheeks burned but she kept her voice level. "And how's Logan?"
"You can ask him yourself. He's coming up here so I can talk to Jean in private. He is very concerned about you."
"He's not going to try and give Scott an ass-kicking or anything, is he?"
"No, no. Not only have I expressly forbidden it--"
"Like that'd stop him," Marie said under her breath.
"Not only have I expressly forbidden it, but he is unwilling to do anything to cause you further suffering. The last time we spoke, it was all about the things he's done, real and imagined, that have caused you pain. He said that if you truly love Scott, then the rest is none of his business. If you truly love Scott."
She knew that he expected a response from her, a quick and complete avowal of a love as pure as...some pure thing. She couldn't think, and she knew that with every second that passed, the Professor would have more cause to doubt her. "I do love him. He's good to me, he's kind to me, and he's strong and he's sensitive and he's honorable."
"Those are words you could also use to describe Logan."
"Kind? Sensitive?" Marie snorted.
The Professor wheeled around in front of her and forced her to meet his stern gaze. "Kinder than you give him credit for, Marie, and more sensitive than he would ever admit. A heart like his, once won, is easily broken."
I'll look after you.
You promise?
Yeah. I promise.
"That night, on Liberty Island, those stab wounds - they were from his own claws," the Professor said. "Magneto had him pinned with his hands across his chest, and the only way he could get free was to use the force of his claws to push himself away from the copper wall. He stabbed himself because he couldn't bear to hear your screams. He let his wounds return to bring you back to life. These aren't the actions of a casual bystander."
She remembered seeing him in the Blackbird on the way home, nearly lifeless, blood pumping from gashes in his chest and on his back. She took off one glove and wiped her sweating palm on her jeans. "I thought it was Sabretooth," she murmured. "That's what he wanted me to think, wasn't it?"
"Logan came to for a few moments when we were getting ready to transport him. He made it absolutely plain that you were not to know. I think even then he knew he would have to earn your respect and your love by more mortal means than those."
Both of them jumped slightly when they heard someone clearing his throat. Logan, as if on cue. For an instant, before he had time to harden his features, he looked at Marie with an expression of pure longing, enough to make her whole body feel a surge of warmth.
"I must go to Jean now," the Professor said quietly. "And the two of you must talk." He paused in front of Logan and the men exchanged understanding looks. Then he was gone and Marie was alone with Logan.
"How much did you hear?" she asked, busying herself with more of the egg mess on the wall so she wouldn't have to look at him.
"He ratted me out about Liberty Island. That's when I came in." Through her peripheral vision Marie could see Logan lean against the refrigerator door, which gave slightly under his bulk. "I wish he hadn't."
She made herself turn around and meet his eyes. "I'm glad he did."
"Okay, then." He folded his arms across his chest. "Did your eggs just explode or something?"
"I threw them."
"Why?"
Marie couldn't think of a suitable answer. Logan took the towel out of her hands and wrapped his palms around her wrists. He was wearing gloves. Premeditated touching. Marie looked from his hands back up to his face but she simply could not speak.
"Marie, if you want to be with Scott, then I'm not going to say or do anything to get in the way. But you have to tell me."
She took a deep breath. Of course she loved Scott, she could do this. She could look Logan in the eye and tell him.
"I don't know," is what came out of her mouth before she could stop it.
"Marie--"
"But he needs me, Logan. You never needed me, you were just killing time until you could come back and sweep Jean off her feet. Well, she came back and swept you off your feet instead, but it's the same difference." She pulled herself free from his grasp. "You got what you wanted. Don't you dare come in here and try to confuse me, try to divide my loyalty, because I'm not gonna do it, do you hear me? I will not betray him!"
"You betray him," Logan hissed, "every time you fuck him and wish it was me."
"I don't!" A lie, but she put her hand over her heart like the heroine in a Victorian melodrama.
Maybe his senses were so keen that he could smell how blatant the lie was. He leaned over her, so close that she could feel the heat coming off him in waves. "I know you do, because it's the same for me and Jean. And I'm willin' to bet that Scott's said the wrong name more than once. Maybe he turns it into 'Je-jesus' the way I say 'Ma-My God,' but he does it. He's a guy, Marie, he screws up even if he is the almighty great leader Cyclops."
She couldn't remember. Had he done that this morning? Had she, come to think of it, bitten back the name of the man who hovered over her now, staring her down?
"Stop it," she whispered sharply. "Just...stop it. I can't talk to you right now, you make me crazy."
"I'm sorry." Truly penitent now. She almost expected him to go down on his knees. What he did was worse. He took her ungloved hand between his and brought it to his lips, then a single tear dropped onto her bare skin.
His. That heart the Professor said could be so easily broken - she had shattered it.
Marie stood on tiptoe, bringing herself close enough for him to kiss her, but instead he let go of her hand, turned, and strode out of the room. Marie's hand stayed in the air for a long time, then she brought it to her own lips and kissed the place where the tear had fallen.
It was the Nightcrawler's company Marie found herself craving once she had gotten done with Rafe the Non-Wonder Boy. Kurt had set up his home in the robing room behind the chapel, since he had taken the role of priest upon himself and no one seemed to mind. In fact, everyone from the littlest child to the Professor himself ended up in that chapel at one time or another, seeking a confessor or just quiet sympathy. No one could have predicted the quiet sympathy part, but there it was.
The best thing about Nightcrawler was that once he stopped introducing himself every ten seconds, he turned out to be a very good listener. When people got him to drop the circus act, when they drew Kurt out from beneath the veneer, he was as wise and gentle as Hank, only without the six million dollar vocabulary.
Kurt was singing something in German while arranging candles in neat rows, when Marie slipped into the chapel. She noticed that his tail swung back and forth in time with the music. "That's pretty," she said quietly, so as to keep from startling him. "What is it?"
"Ein Deutshces Requiem," he said in his heavy accent. "A German Requiem. Johannes Brahms, you haf heard of him, yes?"
Her mouth twitched. "My mama used to play the lullaby to me when I was a little girl. On the piano."
"Very nice. Do you play?" he asked, indicating the baby grand with its dust cover partially pulled back.
"No. Scott does, and a couple of the kids. I never learned." She shrugged. "Too busy planning my little adventures. Do you play?"
Immediately, Kurt drew his three-fingered hands under the baggy sleeves of his jacket.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, I can't believe..." She hung her head, then slipped her hand into his sleeve and took the blue flesh firmly in her grasp. "I apologize."
"No need. Sometimes it is good when someone forgets, for a while, what I am." He patted her head and ushered her to a seat in the first pew. He sat beside her, his tail mildly moving back and forth like a cat's. "There is something you need?"
"Just a little peace and quiet. It's nice here. You don't have to sit with me, you can do whatever you were doing." She smiled at him. "Especially if you sing some more."
His grin was delightful, once you got past the scars and the pointy teeth. And the blue thing. "You flatter me, madchen, but I will finish if that is your pleasure." Again his voice rose, reflected back in the marble and the wood, ending so softly that Marie could scarcely hear him.
"It's beautiful. What does it mean?"
"It's the thirty-ninth Psalm: 'Lord, make me to know the measure of my days on earth, to consider my frailty, that I must perish.'"
Marie shivered even though the chapel was not cold. "That's...food for thought."
"It is a reminder to every day live as if it is the most important one of your life."
"Or the last," Marie whispered.
"Not for many, many years," Kurt insisted. "It is not a time for gloom, it is for the rejoicing. We thought Jean was lost to us, but she returned and, Gott willing, her mind will be restored as it once was." He looked down and away. "Of course, the jealousy is bad when it is of the dead, and worse when it is of the dead come back like Lazarus from the grave."
She couldn't help blurting out, "Do you think Scott and I are sinners?"
Kurt took a few seconds before responding. "Ve are all sinners in one way or another. But if you ask me, Kurt, is my love for dese two men a sin, or theirs for you and Jean, then I say no."
"How do you--"
"The Nightcrawler knows all," Kurt said with a grand wave that made Marie giggle in spite of herself. "I haf eyes and ears, and also a brain. It takes no genius to see that you are all unsure."
Sighing, Marie hunched her shoulders and looked at the floor. "I wish there was a clear right and wrong, you know?"
"But then there would be no free will to choose the best path." He patted her on the shoulder. "I cannot choose for you. But I will be here when the choice is made. No more can I offer."
"No more can I want," Marie said sincerely. She glanced at her watch. "The Professor should be back by now."
"If there is anything I can do..." Kurt said eagerly.
"Thanks. Thank you very much." Marie left the chapel and headed back to the main house. The Professor's study was empty, as were the classrooms, making Marie even more anxious to locate him. Something prickled in her mind. I'm here. She bolted up the stairs to her room, almost knocking Kitty off her crutches, and found the Professor looking at the mystery novels she had on her shelf.
She was too winded to speak, so the Professor did it for her. "I have just had a very illuminating session with Dark Phoenix. I believe I have a solution to our problem."
"That's wonderful," Marie breathed.
"It's taken me far too long to piece together the clues. I am not half so clever as your Chief Inspector Wexford."
Marie chuckled. The first Ruth Rendell book had been a gift from Ororo when Marie was recovering from the Liberty Island incident, and she had been hooked ever since.
Xavier continued. "In any event, my first theory was that the Dark Phoenix takes Jean's energy and subverts it. Then Jean - or the Phoenix herself - theorized that it was proximity to you that caused the problems, since you're so attuned to both Scott and Logan."
"What do you think now?"
He took a deep breath. "I believe that it wasn't Jean's will to live that brought her back from Alkali Lake. I couldn't tell you how it happened, but from everything I've been able to discern, the link is between the Phoenix and Scott."
Marie turned this over in her mind. "You mean, Scott brought her back? The bond, the psi-bond or whatever they called it, that's what saved her?"
"Think about it." The Professor sounded almost jubilant, like Hank with a new cure for something. "It took Jean almost four days to rejoin us, without contacting anyone. But she did contact someone. Scott. He was pulling her in: I'm convinced that was the source of the nightmares. On a subconscious level he was doing what he only wished for when he was awake."
"Calling Jean back to him." It hurt, far more than she had anticipated, and she had to take a few slow breaths to calm herself. "So it's not the Scott in my head that's setting her off. It's Scott himself."
"I believe that to be the case. Once faced with the flesh and blood image of the man who had called her back, the psychotic break began and Dark Phoenix emerged to...how shall I put this...?"
"To explore the wilder side of Jean?"
"Exactly. The source of Dark Phoenix's energy is actually Scott's self-loathing, the guilt he feels over her death and his subsequent actions." Marie's face must have shown her horror, because Xavier immediately added, "This has nothing to do with you, Marie, you must understand that. The emergence of Phoenix had already occurred long before you and Scott began your...arrangement."
Marie wanted to deflect the subject. "Did Jean tell you these things?"
"No." He was firm. "She did not. I doubt that even the Phoenix herself understands how Jean was saved from the waters. After all, how can pure hatred understand pure love?"
It sounded so simple when the Professor said it. Marie studied her fingernails carefully. "So, what do we do now?"
"I believe it will be possible to sever the psychic link Jean has with Scott, without doing any damage to either of them. I have an idea about how that can be done, but it will require your cooperation."
Her mouth was dry. "What's your plan?"
"Dark Phoenix believes that you are the catalyst and that you are actually blocking her from finishing her takeover of Jean's personality. I intend to lure her into Cerebro, ostensibly to remove the bond between the two of you - but, in actuality, to sever the bond between Phoenix and Cyclops."
Marie picked up a heavy bookend and turned it over and over in her hands. It was marble, and its smooth, cool surface reminded her of Bobby. She grimaced and set the bookend down with a dull thump. "Who knows about this?"
"No one except Jean. Or the Phoenix. Her telepathic powers are remarkable now, Marie, and I do not want to divulge any more information than is absolutely necessary. I will ask Scott and Logan to be there and I'll tell them the truth at that time - Phoenix will find nothing odd about their presence."
"Logan?" Marie asked. "I understand that you need Scott for the actual event and me for a decoy, but why Logan?"
The Professor's eyes were dark and troubled. "When I said that the procedure would probably cause little damage to Scott or Jean, I was telling the truth. What I left out is that you also have a link with Scott, and it may cause you...it may be difficult for you. That is why I want Logan present, so that if anything goes wrong, he can 'lend' you some of his healing energy."
"Oh." What else could she possibly say?
"If you agree, then we shall begin shortly. Only the four of us will know the truth about what is going on. I will shield my thoughts, and I will help you shield yours. I promise to protect you to the best of my ability."
She knew that, of course. But it was nice to hear the words, to have it spelled out so clearly for her. She gave him a grim little smile and nodded. "When do you want me there?"
"Give me half an hour. Jean is coming then, and by that time I will have contacted Scott and Logan." As he wheeled past her, he looked up at her with admiration. "You are an extraordinary young woman, Marie."
"Just you remember that," she replied with false cheerfulness.
Marie wondered if she should fill her half hour with another trip to the chapel. To be shriven, perhaps, in the inevitable event something went wrong. Then she remembered that the Professor wasn't even going to talk to Ororo. This really was just a family thing. A great big dysfunctional family thing.
She put on long gloves and brushed her hair so hard it crackled with static electricity. She looked in the mirror, looking at her own face as if were that of a stranger. Older. Sadder. Probably not wiser, just older and sadder, because, hell, a wise woman would not be headed for Cerebro and almost certain disaster.
It started simply enough, with the Professor, Scott, Logan, and Jean waiting near her as the door opened.
It ended with Jean grabbing Marie and Scott and dragging them inside, then sealing the door so that not even Cyclops' blasts could open it.
"I know that the Professor isn't telling the truth about needing to sever the bond between us," Jean said to Marie. Phoenix's voice was strong, resonating through the parabolic chamber. "He has something else in mind."
Damn, so much for shielding their thoughts.
"Don't hurt her." Scott, speaking with the soft, reasonable tones of someone speaking with the insane. "She just wants to help. If you need something, if you need powers, take mine, not hers."
Jean - or the Phoenix, Marie wasn't sure how to think of this strange amalgam of the two - gave Scott a sickening, evil smile. "I wouldn't dream of hurting Marie," she said mildly. She's going to be my new home."
"What?" Scott and Marie cried together.
"The only bond I need severed is the one here." She touched her temple. "I need to be free of the body of Jean Grey. So, my sweet girl, you will touch her until you take all her power. Until she dies. And at that moment, I'll enter your mind. And there I will stay, right there with the source of all my power."
"I won't do it!" Marie cried. "I won't touch you, I won't..."
She didn't get to finish the sentence. Phoenix raised her hand and Marie was unable to move. She was immobile, like rock, except that she could feel and hear everything. The pounding of her heart. The shrill laughter of the Phoenix. Logan on the other side of the door, adamantium claws shrieking against adamantium doors.
Scott's words, gentle and sad. "You know I won't let you do this. Whatever it takes, I'll stop you, even if I have to kill you."
Phoenix's arms lowered and her eyes turned from copper to soft brown. Confused. Pleading. "Scott, no, don't do it."
Marie could not close her eyes, so she had to watch as Scott put a hand on his visor and shot Jean with a thin pulse of red light. She grunted and fell backwards, nearly sliding over the edge of the catwalk.
"Is she dead?" Marie tried to whisper, but her mouth wouldn't move. So Phoenix-Jean wasn't dead, was still clinging to enough consciousness to keep Marie frozen.
Scott's steps faltered as he reached for the control of his visor once more and pointed his face toward Jean's limp body. "I have to break the link," he murmured in a voice choked with tears. "She can't be linked to me anymore, she's too dangerous." He leaned over and stroked Jean's face. "Jean. God, forgive me."
Oh, God, he was going to kill her to break the link...
Only he didn't. He sank to his knees, sobbing helplessly. He pulled Jean's body close to his and held it just as he had held Marie's. That morning. Only that morning.
She was still processing this when she saw Scott stand up and walk over to her. "And I need you to forgive me, too, Marie. My darling, beautiful Marie, forgive me."
He shed his gloves and put his hands on her bare face. She struggled against the invisible force holding her in place, but to no avail, and she felt the first surges behind her eyelids. Scott pulled back one hand and removed his visor, placing it on Marie's face with fingers almost too weak to perform even that simple task. His eyes were closed, but lightly, as he continued to cup her face, and just as Marie's vision swam crimson, he slid to the ground.
Jean's own voice overpowered the fading Phoenix, thin and frightened. "Scott! Scott!" She turned to Marie as if seeing her for the first time, and Marie collapsed, convulsing with the full force of Scott's powers.
"He's not trying...to come back," Marie croaked. "Get the door...get...Logan..."
Jean turned toward the door, screaming for help, trying to pry it open by sheer force of will even though the Phoenix power that had sealed it was far greater than her own. The Phoenix took hold of her mind again, sending her sprawling, her hands scrabbling toward Scott's. "Let me go!" she cried. "Let me go!"
"Jean," Scott said softly. "Look at me."
She turned to him, tears streaming down her face. Scott opened his eyes then, those beautiful, tormented blue eyes.
"I love you, Jean," he whispered.
Then his face went slack, and Marie could no longer sense his presence in her mind.
The Phoenix's laugh turned into Jean's scream as that link was severed. Marie focused her waning strength on Jean. "Door! Logan! He can save Scott!"
Jean hauled herself to her feet, her body shaking with sobs. She held her arms open wide, and the doors slid open. Logan ran up to her, his face nearly as pale as hers as he looked over her shoulder and saw Marie lying on the floor.
And Scott's dead body.
"Marie," he gasped, racing to her and putting his hand on her forehead. "Marie, is he...?"
"He's dead," Marie answered, hardly believing that she was saying the words. "I want him back, Logan, I want him back!"
He wasted no time peeling off his gloves and putting his hands on her, one on her forehead and the other at her carotid artery. He shuddered, the veins in his face and hands standing out, but he kept contact until Marie pulled away from him.
She couldn't rise, couldn't move her legs. She began to crawl to where Scott's body lay, then Logan lifted her in his strong arms and carried her to Scott's side. Marie put her hands on his flesh. Nothing.
"It took a while with you," Logan murmured. "Don't give up, Marie!"
Jean knelt on the other side of Scott. Her hair was plastered to her face and she was crying and praying all at once. "Please, please..."
"Reach out with your mind, Marie," Xavier said from his vantage point behind Logan. "Find him and bring him back."
She tried. Oh, God, she tried so hard, but he wasn't there, he was too far away to find. "He wanted to go," she sobbed. "That's the difference, he wanted to go, and he's too far, I can't find him, oh, my God, I can't find him!"
"Hold on!" Jean and Xavier cried out in unison, and hold on she did until Logan's power was spent and she could do nothing more than weep for him along with the others.
Four days passed, and the children were silent yet again.
Marie stood by the window in Scott's room, feeling the afternoon sun on her face, breathing in the last remnants of his scent. With her eyes closed, she could almost feel him with her.
Jean was in the room as well, sitting on the bed she had never shared with him. She was talking softly, almost to herself, saying the same things Scott had said a few months earlier.
"It's my fault. I should have been stronger. I should have stopped him."
"There was nothing you could have done." Marie had used those words before, too, and they were no less poisonous to her soul. "Jean, you didn't ask for the Dark Phoenix power. And you can't bring Scott back by starving yourself to death." She reached out to Jean and took her gaunt, fragile hand.
"I don't deserve to live," Jean said without a trace of self-pity. When Marie squeezed her hand a little tighter, she added, "I won't kill myself, Marie."
Marie relaxed her hold and exhaled.
As Jean rose, she let go of Marie's hand and whispered, "I don't deserve that kind of peace."
"Oh, Jean--"
"Are you coming down?" Jean interrupted. "Kurt said he was going to begin the service at three o'clock."
Marie shook her head. "I've already seen him dead. I can't do it again."
"I understand." Jean started for the door, then turned around. Her heel squeaked against the wood floor. "Marie, you're not going to go away, are you?"
"No," she replied, softly but firmly. "The Professor told me that he couldn't imagine this place without me any more than he could imagine it without Scott. He's lost Scott. I can't leave him now."
"I'm glad," Jean said. "I'll put a flower in the coffin from you. A red rose. He liked them, he could see the color so clearly."
"Thanks." Marie turned her face back to the window.
She would not look at Scott's waxen face in the coffin, nor at her own reflection in the mirror. She did open her eyes at last, after she had put on Scott's visor to cut back on the lingering effects of his mutation. Hank had assured her that it would fade in time. He had meant it kindly. But once the mutation was gone, Scott would be gone.
Marie looked out of Scott's window, through Scott's glasses, and saw Logan getting on Scott's motorcycle. He looked up at her, once, his eyes full of anguish. Marie was not leaving, but Logan was, never to return.
She put her hand over her lips, then pressed her fingertips to the windowpane as Logan started the engine.
END
End Notes:
Yes, there was a character death. No, I didn't warn anyone beforehand (including the beta readers). There were two warnings about "disturbing subject matter." A word to the wise is sufficient, and surely we are all wise.
Hank's backstory was something I invented to reconcile the blue, furry character from the comics with the human-looking interviewee in XM2.
This story was written in response to "Fan the Vote," an LJ community where authors volunteer to write stories for readers willing to contribute to the Kerry campaign or other good causes in exchange for stories of the donor's choosing. Macha "bespoke" my services, and her request was fic in which Jean returns and chooses Logan over Scott, with tragic consequences ensuing. In other words: if this story disturbed you, blame her. :)
Actually, don't blame her TOO much - she had to beta-read her own story, for which I thank her profusely. Also, many thanks to Emily Meredith, crack...uh, movie dealer extraordinaire for introducing me to these characters and demanding...uh, inspiring my participation in the fandom, and for beta reading a story that squicked her pretty badly.
Ruth Rendell, especially Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine, rocks.
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Story Notes:
Header information that "spoils" fic? Not for me. I will, however, reiterate that there is "disturbing subject matter." Please read responsibly.