Gone
by Thyme In Her Eyes
Author's Note: Just to disclaim, I don't own the characters or fandom. Anyway, this ficlet is set during The Age of Apocalypse and basically focuses on Jean Grey's thoughts as she dies. Hope you guys like it!
-- GONE --
Being killed was a burning blindness, and death was something heavy and scorching and gaping as it snatched everything from her. Her powers fell away from her and she felt her struggling control over the warheads slip from her grasp, and then hope was done flirting with her and flickered out into the dead air. Cold blackness plummeted towards her like bombs. Jean fell to the ground, taking forever to reach it, and slumped against chunks of burnt dirt and gravel, her mouth tasting ash. Shuddering and bleeding, she never felt the burning agony of the blast, but instead felt stupid and clumsy – butterfingers, butterfingers – as her strength failed and her thoughts and control over body and mind became slippery and slid out of her desperate grip. Then the pain kicked in, hard. She was at a loss as she felt everything start to plunge down around her, and was scared mindless as she heard faint and furious screaming swirl outside her mind like a holocaust.
Jean didn't even have time to rationalise her death and find ennobling strength in Scott, and how he at least could find a way to save the others because he was good and strong – because in the next second, he was dead too. Jean reached, her mind screaming hopeless denial at the last slap to the face, but her fingertips met with cold, and it began spreading all over her. Even dying, she had outlived the good stranger, and outlived everything she'd found strength in. In a split second, the former prelate blinked out like a light, and was dead before she'd even finished dying herself, and that made her want to cry at how the unfairness of the world she lived in could still shock her so deeply and hit her where it hurt most. Everything she'd tried to hold on to for comfort, everything that had been Scott Summers, vanished into black. The thought-patterns she had found goodness, hope and redemption in, and the spirit she had come to believe in so strongly were snuffed out and turned into nothing. Scott was beyond gone, and so was all the goodness, hope and redemption she'd found. Everything she'd been focusing on so intensely was dead, all dead. Hollowness and darkness were falling and raining hard around her as Summers' charred body collapsed and landed across hers with a dull thud, empty of the man she'd found. Jean realised she was crying, all faith gone.
And then, she was looking up at Logan's face. Not imagined, but real, reaching out for her – more than warm, but blazing hot with hate and grief and bloodlust and vengeance and love, love for only her. He was holding her desperately, but knew he couldn't keep her. Jean was bewildered and awed. She saw him, saw the pain and grief there, and everything changed. There was no explanation for how he could be there or have found her out of the darkness, but he had, and he was at her side, like he'd always been. It was a miracle, a gift. Something to die for, to put one last smile on her face.
Not knowing how it could be, the cold was fought and destroyed and the emptiness was filled by the face she knew and loved so well. His face was cracking up, and her bitter tears were drying. He was torn by pain and she wanted to take it away and hold him to her, only she knew she was going somewhere where he couldn't – and shouldn't – follow yet. She had to go alone, she knew, but it had been made easier by many fractions, because she hadn't lost everything. Logan was alive, and with her.
Jean's mind was a mess of agonised delirium and her powers were a burning, outraged haze, and focus and concentration were a dead dream to her now, so in the tight clutch of her hand squeezing his, the pathetic trembling of her face and mouth, and in the choked sobs and gasps hiding in her throat, she tried to express a million words, apologies, secrets, endearments, explanations, and ways to tell him that he was forgiven and that part of him was going with her and had never left her. The scorching black burn of her wounds, her loss and the feeling of dying young and torn faded into nothing as she found countless thoughts and memories bright around her, and knew that he loved her and that he knew no matter what had happened, she'd never stopped loving him.
It didn't matter that she was in pain, that Scott Summers and hope were gone, that Logan would be alone once she died, that they'd both failed hopelessly, that their dreams had died and the bombs were coming now and tearing up both love and hate, and reducing the continent to nothing but bones and poison air. All that mattered was that in her last moment, Jean had remembered and rediscovered the only thing that would never leave her, and that she could never fall away from. Her fear, rage and bitterness melted like a ghost at sunrise. This was her last comfort, and with it she could go in peace.
She was coughing blood and choking on her last breaths and Logan's arms were tight and protective, tenderly cradling her keeping her clinging to life, his words soft and comforting and full of restrained heartbreak. Being killed was changed, and felt like a beautiful, flowing fire that would never hurt her. She wasn't losing everything, but taking something, taking a part of Logan into the place she was falling into. It was all she had in the world, and would light up that dark place and chase away any shadows that tried to harm her.
Bombs exploded like fireworks, getting so close now, almost on top of them, and Logan held her tight in his arms as he let her go.
And then there was light.
-- FIN --