The Friendship She Yearns For.
Chapter 1: A Leaders Responsibility.
Outside the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, after darkness had fallen upon the city and all the necessary time had passed, everyone had eventually calmed down from the departure of Warren Worthington-AKA-Angel, and Jean Grey's mental freak-out. Everyone, except that is for said X-Man.
Jean sat in the basketball court, solemn, stoic, and feeling so sorry for herself in a way she'd never imagined herself feeling in her entire life. She'd hoped to make a difference by staying in this timeline in order to right the wrongs their futures were shown to lead. With Scott going rogue, leading the X-Men into a conflict with the Avengers, and potentially leading mutants into a war with all of humanity from the way she'd overheard the thoughts of staff and students at the school. She also had to deal with the visions of how she, her parents, her entire family and Charles Xavier had died. How the Phoenix Force had made her into a vessel that harboured enough destructive potential to annihilate entire planets.
So desperately had Jean desired nothing more than to make a difference that she felt would matter in this absolute mistake of a timeline she'd been pulled into. But instead, she'd felt like she had only made yet another stupid mistake that would have the direst of outcomes for herself, her friends, her mentor Charles Xavier's vision… and, what was most unexpected and new to her, was knowing that the school whose grounds she now sat silently in bore her name, she had felt that she had let down all of the current generation of students attending a school she had named I her honour. She felt she'd let down the poor soul who'd felt she deserved a name in the mutant community on par with Charles Xavier. As well as that, she felt she'd let down Kitty, who claimed to admire her when she was younger too.
Jean just sat there and contemplated all that had happened, and how all that anger she'd felt had manifested into something she didn't recognise at all. Something she didn't want to imagine, something that she never thought in her right mind she'd ever be…
"Why?" she asked herself in a timid voice. "Why am I acting like this?
"You have a lot of anger in you and I-" Jean looked to her left and saw it was Kitty. Her heart sank lower still. "-I can understand why. If I found out about myself what you found out about yourself… I would never stop screaming. But you really have to stop using your powers like that every time something happens that you don't." The headmistress didn't look her happiest that Jean had seen her in the short time she'd been here. How long had she even been there? "You have to stop." Jean allowed the older woman's words to sink into her. They didn't exactly feel pleasant on her ears, but she had it coming, and knowing as much made it somehow more bearable than it would be otherwise.
"I know." Jean said, still in a timid voice. Kitty bent down next to the red-headed teenager.
"Have you ever met Spiderman?" she asked.
"Spiderman?" Jean looked at Kitty, perplexed by her question.
"Full body stocking. Never stops talking…"she said. It didn't ring any bells that the red-head would say she could hear.
"No." Jean said. Kitty leaned in slightly with a suddenly more stern expression. Jean felt this was going to lead to a life lesson of some sort. She turned her head slightly to the right, and let her eyes face the opposite direction of Kitty.
"He told me something-" and, she-was -right. "-something about with great power, comes great responsibility. One comes with the other. That's what makes us different from everybody else. You know what I mean by that?"
"I know. I know that. I-I didn't mean to-" Jean felt her face pulled back into focus on Kitty's own by the other woman's thumb and index finger clenched together around her chin.
"Hey. You are an X-Man. You are Jean Grey. And you need to pull it together. If you want to talk about your feelings I will listen to you all day long. But I will not tolerate the way you've been acting." Kitty said all this, with a somewhat kinder and more sympathetic expression on her face. "I can't do it. I can't put you before the school. Even the school that's named after you." She stated. Jean allowed her eyes to roll to right.
I'm really embarrassed. Jean thought these words aloud, projected them so Kitty was able to hear them herself.
Good. Kitty thought aloud in response. Now go and find your teammates and apologise to them for the way you've been acting because they are scared of you. And they should be.
Jean raised half-clenched hands on the side of her head. She didn't know what else to do about the situation. The pressure of now being the default leader of the original X-Men was reaching an almost unbearable level for her. Her knuckles pressed in against her throbbing head.
"What are we going to do to get Warren back?" she asked Kitty.
"What you have me do?" Kitty asked back. Jean lowered her arms to the ground.
"In my memories- in the ones that Hank showed me. Our future…" she trailed off for a few seconds, before she found the rest of her words. "I didn't- I couldn't imagine us breaking up. We stay together. Even when other mutants became the X-Men we stay together and become X-Factor. I-I-I thought no matter what happened we stay together."
"But by coming here you changed the dynamic of the group," said Kitty. "Everything is different. We don't know how things are going to play out because- you're not the same person you were when you got here. Clearly." She added. Jean held her head in recollection of what had triggered her impulses. The truth was that the older woman was right about everything that she was saying, and she had the right to be angry with Jean for the way she'd been acting.
"I'm angry at myself for being angry," she spoke her feelings.
"Well, if Wolverine has taught us anything…" said Kitty. "It's that it's okay to be angry… just find something that deserves to have you take out your anger out on it and take it out on that."
"Like whatever we just heard about this shape-shifter Mystique…" asked Jean.
"That sounds perfect. That's something we should be working on."
"And Warren?" said Jean, wiping more tears from her eyes.
"I spent a great deal of time with everyone on that other team and I could tell you that if I was a 16-year old Warren Worthington the Third… I would last about four hours over there before I came running back here. Jean mulled over her instructors words. "Jean, I need you to promise me you will get yourself under control." Kitty stated.
"I promise." Jean said, with a sincere bow of her head.
"I'll be honest with you…" Kitty said with her voice and facial expression becoming their strictest yet. "I'm this close to trying to trying to find a way to send you home without you figuring out what I'm up to. That's how upset I am by all of this." Jean turned her head quickly toward Kitty, and saw how she really meant what she just said.
"I know. Please—please don't. I promise." Jean stressed to the older woman as best she could. With that, Kitty stood up.
"Apology accepted and promise duly noted. But if you break the promise, you and I are done." She lent the red-headed teenager a hand in getting to her feat. Jean stood still hesitantly mulling over everything her instructor had told her in the past few minutes out here in the basketball court. It hadn't been pleasant on her ears, but she knew in her heart that she'd needed to hear what Kitty had said to her. Also, pleasant or not, she felt Kitty was probably the best person to slap some sense into her. Given the way she'd claimed to admire from when she was younger, Jean guessed that Kitty was probably only saying to her, what she'd expect her to say if their positions were vice-versa. The way, she probably even imagined that Kitty wished things still were for herself, and not they'd become.
Jean turned her head to look at the headmistress. "I think I'm going to hug you now." Kitty looked taken-a-back.
"Oh, okay." She said, and her voice fell softer than before. With that the two X-Men embraced, both glad that they could get their loads off their chests. With both Jean and Kitty feeling good to be back on friendlier terms, they decided to head inside.
"Mystique, the same one that came looking for Scott Summers," Jean asked?
"Same one," replied Kitty. When they got inside they found Scott sitting by the window looking lost in his own train of thought as well as Bobby and Hank conversing with their older selves in a way you'd only imagine they could pull off. With both Icemen laughing at each other's jokes, and both Beast from the past talking to Beast of the present in their science/Shakespeare oriented language of never-ending complexity. When they saw Jean, they all looked somewhat hesitant and understandably so. Jean didn't expect it to be any easier, and chose not to allow it discomfort her from apologising to all of her teammates. Once she'd got it over with, and her teammates could see how sincere she was, they all managed to ease up ad were able to converse as friends normally.
Well… Jean thought. It's a start for me as leader, in living up to my responsibility.
Well… Kitty thought. She's making a start as leader, in living up to her responsibility.