A/N: So it's 3am and I get the urge to write this story. I kind of just keep writing and writing and it does get to be quite lengthy but I'm really proud of it. Some points I was actually crying when I wrote it and I'd really appreciate if you would review and tell me if you feel any where near the same way that I did about this.
Summary:
Midnight talks with unfamiliar best friends.
Sometimes when Jean couldn't talk to anyone else, she would talk to her.
Jean stretched her body as she lay in bed, her red hair pooling around her head, her sight adjusting to the light as she had just opened her eyes for the first time today. This light however was a harsh orange, unnatural but still something about it was so familiar as it blared through her white curtains that, at the moment, horribly shielded her eyes from the assault.
Jean sighed a she scratched at her neck and swallowed dryly. Making quite the effort she finally managed to sit up in her bed. Sitting straight up however she found herself not looking at the farthest wall of room but rather out over the mansion. Jean looked down, only slightly confused as she was wearing her favorite pair of dark blue Levi skinny jeans and a pair of black Doc Marten boots that she didn't remember buying. The sun still covered everything a harsh orange and the mansion grounds looked so big and so far away from her place atop of the roof now. With a sigh Jean closed her eyes and rubbed the back of her neck, opening them slowly as she turned her head to the left already knowing what it is that she would see there.
"I thought you'd be happier to see me." Jean didn't say anything back to the girl who stared out before her. Brown curly hair that just touched her shoulders blowing in a breeze that Jean didn't feel.
"Yeah well..." Jean pushed a hand through red hair as she observed the girl before her, her same age and height but not build. No, normal 19 year old girls don't have the perfectly sculpted body that Jean did.
They after all didn't have to save the world on weekends.
"You know you never told me how AP Calculus went. I know it's been over for a while now but I don't exactly get to see you everyday you know." Jean didn't say anything but let out another sigh. She used to hate AP Calc, but she was glad she had gotten the college credit for it now.
"What's the matter Jean, nothing to say?" Jean shook her head as the almond shaped brown eyes of the girl met Jean's own set of gorgeous greens.
"Not exactly how I want to spend my nights you know…" Jean turned and hoisted herself up to the ledge of the roof and took a seat. Her posture slouched as she played with her hands in her lap.
"Hey don't get mad at me, it's your subconscious that created me." The brown haired girl leaned on her elbow placed on the ledge of the roof and smiled. "So what's bugging you my ill tempered best friend? It's obviously the only reason I'm here." Jean looked over to the teenager.
"Shouldn't you know!? You are only in my head after all!" Jean snapped but was only waved off by the girl.
"Yeah yeah, and so are a lot of other people you schizo. Those are just minor details." Jean set up straight with a glaring look at the name and then turned away from the girl. She didn't appreciate being teased about something that was so real for her.
When her powers first emerged it was far too much for Jean to handle. She sunk into a cocoon of depression and misery. Voices flooding her mind no matter how hard she tried not to listen. After a while the doctors had diagnosed her as schizophrenic, almost catatonic at that, and when therapy couldn't help her, they used every pill they could get their hands on to shove down her throat. It wasn't long until Jean lapsed into a coma, a prisoner inside her own mind. She supposed if she hadn't been thrown into a coma she would have thrown herself off of a building.
Now Jean would like to say it was a point in her life that she'd rather leave in the past, but how much in the past is it really. There were still hints of various personalities hiding in the folds of her mind, not all hers. She still heard the voices. Hell, now was proof that she even still talked to them. Conceptualized them into something that was real and not just a faint memory or a murmur of a voice that use to be familiar way back when. Familiar before best friends became strangers at the silence that ensnared them.
But what else was left when one stood 6 feet above the other?
"What, are you mad now?" The brown haired girl mocked Jean now with a feigned pout of sadness. Jean actually kind of liked that about her, the fact that she didn't care when Jean insisted on acting like a child or when she closed herself off if only not to hear the truth. Everyone else in the mansion would just play into her reactions. Not knowing that maybe she really did need to be pushed into talking about whatever was eating her up inside. They would go right past the talking and into the consoling but it did no good. She knew they wouldn't ask if she never told them and she wouldn't tell them if they never asked.
Oh the circles that she locked herself in.
Jean did like having this though, someone who would pressure her and annoy her into submission...but then again it didn't really count did it? This person wasn't real, they were just a figment of her imagination. They would never be able to be this person for Jean, who they were is gone and so Jean could never know who they would be. So she still had no one. She'd just like to imagine that this is how it would have been if the girl that stood before her had ever been given a chance.
Maybe she would have had one if Jean could have been faster.
Jean turned her head at the loud sigh from the brown haired girl in front of her, her hands on her hips as she studied Jean. She reached up and placed a hand on Jean's shoulder and Jean could have sworn that she'd never felt something so real and warm in her life. She closed her eyes again at the thought as her eyes began to sting and tears swelled behind her eyelids. The moment of sadness was short lived though as Jean felt a sudden pressure on her arm and suddenly found herself falling backwards.
"Ahh!" She screamed out as she fell back first off of the ledge of the mansion. Right before hitting the ground below she hit something else with a soft thud. Opening her eyes again Jean was met with the white insides of something that seemed familiar but she couldn't put her hands on. She once again turned to her left and saw the smiling face of the brown haired girl lying close next to her.
Panic over took her as she realized where she was at.
"I don't want to be here!" Jean protested as she pushed at the top of the casket but it wouldn't budge.
"Oh you get use to it, lord knows I have." Suddenly there was more room in the casket and the girl was able to turn on her side and prop her head up on her hand as she talked aimlessly but didn't seem to notice how desperate Jean was.
"Annie!" Jean yelled as a tear slipped down the side of her face and into her hair and Annie stopped talking to look at Jean. Only after a second did she sigh and then blink, her and Jean both finding themselves now above ground. Jean stood before a tombstone that Annie now casually sat on, her legs crossed at her knees as she surveyed Jean who had started to calm down. "Why'd you have to do that?!" Jean yelled as she wiped angrily at tears that stained her face.
"Like I said Red, it's your mind, I just live here." Annie took a second and looked up into the now dark sky. "So does that mean you're actively talking to yourself? 'Cause if it does then you are officially bat shit crazy my friend. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised." Annie gave a loud laugh as she held her sides and pushed out the rest of her sentence. "Jean Grey never has been nor will ever be mentally stable."
"Shut up!" Jean yelled again an Annie stopped laughing though the smile never left her face. She shifted her position atop of the tombstone.
"Sheesh, who peed in your Cheerios?"
"This isn't funny!" Annie scratched at her hairline where curly smooth brown baby hair layed.
"You know we use to have fun Jean, what happened to you?"
"Nothing happened to me! You died and nothing happened to me!" Annie's face had suddenly become serious as she glanced down at the disturbed dirt that led down to her casket. There was silence for what seemed like a long time before Annie's small voice spoke up again
"That was ten years ago Jean. You're in college, you have great friends, a great life...why are you thinking about me now?" Annie's voice wasn't accusing, it was sympathetic as she watched her best friend sink to the ground. Jean sat with her legs crossed and her elbows resting on her thighs as she grabbed at handfuls of red hair. "Oh...right." Understanding dawned on Annie's face. "My birthday was today wasn't it?" It was true.
Today Jean had walked around the mansion like a zombie. Avoiding eye contact with everyone and retreating to her room as often as possible to sit alone in the dark and think about her best friend and who she use to be. Jean would remember all that she could about her. The way she laughed, the way her shoulders shook when she cried, the light mess of freckles that lay strewn across the bridge of her nose that no one would ever notice. The exact same way no one had ever noticed the same set of freckles that rested on Jean's face. Most of the time she would forget about them as well, they only ever appeared when color rushed from Jean's face at her fright or surprise.
"It's funny how you forget things like your birthday when you don't need them anymore."
"Annie..." Jean breathed out as tears flowed freely down her cheeks.
"You use to come visit me Jean. I miss that, you know. And my parents miss your calls." Annie played with her hands as she swung her feet back and forth on the tombstone. Jean looked up at the tombstone and then away again.
She did use to visit.
Even as she got older she promised herself she would never forget her best friend. After all Annie had meant the world to her. And though she was never in good enough shape mentally or physically after her powers emerged and before the coma to go and visit Annie's grave she could never stop thinking about her. Her death was the reason her powers had emerged anyway. As soon as Jean had a handle on things though and her parents would send for her to visit them she always made it to Annie's side.
She would sit and talk with her for hours about all of the things in her life. Telling her how much she missed her. Crying silent tears to soak the ground and find their way down to her. Not minding so much that she couldn't speak back to her but still wishing that she could. As much as Jean hated being assaulted by everyone else's thoughts at times, she still would have given anything to hear that familiar voice in her head and not just have that familiar ache in her heart.
And even if Jean couldn't always find the time to make it back home or the will since her and her parents' relationship had begun to deteriorate, she would always pick up the phone. The number to her parents house was etched in her brain as she never had it written down but always remembered it, maybe that was credited more to her telepathy though. Every year on Annie's birthday since she had died Jean would always call Annie's parents. Sometimes she would just ask endless questions about how they were doing now and sometimes they would just talk about Annie.
At the end of each call Jean would listen to her mother say a prayer in her daughters name, she would wish Annie a happy birthday, and then she would tell her best-friend's parents she loved them, because she did. They had been so good to her since the day Annie and Jean had first met, they had always been a second family to her and sometimes it felt like they loved Jean more than her own parents did.
After hanging up the phone Jean would look up to the sky and cover her eyes in the nook of her elbow. Take a deep breath in and out through her nose and then she would cry. Feeling the same sting of fighting back tears that she felt now. In the past two years though Jean hadn't called. And now she was sorry that she hadn't. She knew that Annie's parents loved hearing from her, loved getting those calls.
If only because it helped them remember a happier time in their daughter's short life.
"I'm sorry." Was all Jean could manage to say.
"Come here." Annie offered out her hand to Jean who for a second only stared at it. She then pressed her palms to the dirt and pushed herself to her feet, walking slowly over to Annie, arm outstretched. Jean hooked her fingers into Annie's and she pulled her the rest of the way, turning her to sit with her.
As Jean turned and sat she found herself no longer in the dark cemetery but in her old neighborhood. Sitting next to Emily on the hood of a car, the light shining normally and the neighborhood absent of all people as well. Jean looked down at the car. It was an awful shade of green, something that she didn't have to observe now to know. Looking to the front bumper Jean saw the dent and the speck of blood but quickly turned away. She never forgot this moment, she didn't need to see it again.
"You've got to stop tearing yourself apart over me Jean." Annie spoke as she tossed a familiar red ball up and down, the same ball that Annie had gone running into the street for all those years ago. "You've got to know that I don't blame you Jean, that I was never mad at you." Annie turned to face Jean, a single tear of hers sliding down her cheek. "Sure, I lived a short life but it was a good life. Good because I had Jean Grey as my best friend." Jean wished she would stop, she didn't know how fast she could wipe away the tears that were now more frequently falling. "And I always knew that I could count on you no matter what Jean, and you don't know how much just knowing that made my life better." Annie dropped the ball to the ground and it rolled back to the sidewalk as she turned and pulled Jean into her arms. Jean clung at her back, sobs shaking her body as Annie stroked her red hair, resting her chin atop of her head. Jean couldn't hear her heart beating as she pressed her ear to Annie's chest and it only made her cry harder and squeeze tighter. "It kills me to know that you're hurting Jean." Annie gave a snicker at that.
"I miss you so much all the time." Jean breathed out. "I just want you back." Annie sighed as she kissed the top of Jeans head.
"I know Jean, and I miss you more than anything. But you have to be as strong as you always are. And you have to know that while I'm not really around anymore," Annie let Jean go so that she could face her. "I will always be alive in here." Annie placed a hand palm down over Jean's chest where her heart would be and Jean reached up with her left hand to hold onto it. "And you will always be here." Annie grabbed Jeans right hand and placed it over her chest, holding it there the same way Jean did and this time Jean could feel a heartbeat. "I live through you Jean, so if you don't I can't." The two girls sat in silence for a minute before Annie spoke again. "Close your eyes." Jean shook her head no as her face contorted once again. "It's okay Jean."
Jeans eyes pleaded with Annie but she eventually closed her eyes. She felt Annie take her left hand off of Jean's hand that rested over her heart and gently wipe away the tears that made her face glisten. "You're beautiful Jean, and I couldn't be more proud to call you my best friend. And I will always be proud of you. And I will always love you." Jean felt the warmth disappear from her body and her eyes shot open, hoping to steal one last glance at her best friend before it was too late. But when her eyes opened she was staring up at the dark ceiling of her room, still wrapped in blankets.
Jean set up in bed, she touched her face that was soaked in tears and then she placed a hand over her heart where Annie's had rested. Nothing had ever felt so real to Jean in her life and now she couldn't believe that it was gone. She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around herself as she sat in darkness, the knees of her pajama pants becoming wet with tears.
"Happy birthday Annie, I love you too."