She's young when you meet her. So young, and so weighed down by something too large for her. And still you know, in those first few moments, that she's one of the most powerful things you've ever seen.
But what do you say to a little girl with hair as red as blood when she tells you she knows what it feels like to die?
You aren't sure you'll be able to do it. You know you can teach her, you know you can help her, but can you fix her? She flickers like a flame under the pressing love of her parents, and you're afraid their smothering might extinguish her altogether.
"Would you like to come and live at my school, Jean?" you ask in the patient way a grown man talks to a child.
"All I would like, Sir, is to forget." she answers, a spark of a thing, and in her burning tone you find the hope you are looking for.
"Ah, that is something I can help with," she glances up, her eyes steely, and you know she is reading your thoughts. "But only if you're sure."
There's the tiniest moment of hesitation, and that's it, you know you've got her. Then, with the detail of someone highly-trained or highly-passionate, she projects to you the image of a little girl's face. "Her name was Annie."
And even though she said it out loud, for weeks those quiet words don't leave your head.
She's sharp, this little girl, all bright eyes and hair and mind, but she's broken in several places and such raw power leaks from those cracks it astounds you. She's dangerous.
You keep true to your word. You teach her, and she flourishes, consuming knowledge like nothing you've ever seen. It only makes sense, you suppose, that with the world's thoughts and emotions pouring into her mind from all directions she holds onto solid facts like an anchor. You help her, train with her for numerous hours every day. You make a hard decision and block her telepathy for the time being. You tell yourself that it's for her own good, and yours, too, because little Annie's face has been making far too many appearances.
Still, there are times when you doubt your choices, and you look back on the hot summer's day when she told you "All I would like, Sir, is to forget." You think of the fire she lit under those words, how she sent them searing toward you, and then you feel that maybe you are right. For now. And it lets you sleep.
So she's taught and helped, but you don't believe she can be fully fixed until she and the boy, Scott Summers, meet.
She is your first pupil but he is your first real student, and you don't realize you are holding your breath until after dinner the first night when you think, "This could really work."
You watch as these two lost children find something in each other; the boy with no family and the girl who carries too many thoughts inside her, and you realize this is what you want to do for the rest of your life. Teach children like this, and help children like this, and watch them fix each other.
Later on, when the kids come filing into your school one after the other, searching for a place of solace, you will be glad. You will be confident in what you can offer them at the Institute, and thankful for the opportunity to shield them, just a bit (as much as you can) from the persecution they may face beyond your gates.
But when the school is new, just getting started, you are a younger man, and you are scared in the way a younger man fears the years to come. They are your first two, little Jean and Scott, and you are terrified to fail them.
The lives you lead those first few years are the quietest the school will ever see.
Scott is determined and Jean is scared. You aren't sure if it's a product of the homes they grew up in; the difference between leaving the tragedy of an orphanage or the comfort of two loving parents, but you think it's because the boy knows the limits of what he can do, for now, and the girl is grappling with a power to great to harness.
But Scott is patient with her, and gentle in the way he talks, and slowly and shyly the two seem to realize that if they have to pave this path for your future students, it is easier to do so together rather than alone.
The two begin to trust each other with a ferocity you do not try and understand, and they build a sturdy friendship with the easy grace of children. You stand back and let their bond strengthen through the burden you unintentionally placed upon young shoulders, a load they carry diligently between them: your dream of the future.
And in their capable hands it never slips.
"Jean," you say one session, "do you know why you are the way you are?"
"A mutant, you mean?" she asks, and the word seams to scorch her tongue. "Well, I was just born that way."
"Indeed you were. You possess the X-gene, which is responsible for giving you your mutant abilities."
"Like treasure," she says.
"Treasure?" you implore.
Very simply, using her finger, she draws two lines across her skin. "You know, X marks the spot."
Despite all of her power, the realization comes to you in the most unexpected of ways: she's only twelve years old.
Your little pupil grows like fire, her hair blazing a pathway down her back and her telepathy and telekinesis licking the sides of her skull. She suffers from burning headaches and an emerging beauty; strong and striking features working against her painful desire to fade into the background. Her powers strengthen rapidly, and your sessions increase.
Scott grows dependably, at a steady rate. His powers are maintainable if not fully controllable, and you begin to trust him more and more on his own.
So comes the time that you make another difficult decision. This one is kept solely to yourself, where it floats in the back of your mind, hidden. It is a guilty choice, the likes of choosing one child over another, but you deem it necessary. You look between your two students and weigh all of the possibilities, eventually deciding who, when the school grows and the time comes, you should properly designate to be the leader of the new group you're forming.
You care deeply for Jean, you trust her and are proud of her progress, but she is a risk. And Scott, he is level-headed and strong-willed and such a natural leader that you're sure had you done nothing at all the job would have eventually fallen to him anyway. You train him up to be great.
This choice is never spoken out loud (it never needs to be, it is clear to everyone from the start) but it eats away at you. You are a professor, an instructor and not a father, and such decisions should not have an emotional consequence. And yet you love your students as children first and X-men second. But you are a mind reader and Jean is not stupid, she knows that Scott was rightly chosen, so you probe her mind in secret and find that, of all things, she is relieved.
She does not want to lead. And it lets you sleep.
Your school becomes larger and others students (and sometimes faculty) demand your focus. You are proud of the way your original two make the transition from isolation to chaos, and happy to see that their bond remains as if they were still the only students enrolled.
The realization washes over you slowly that your dream of the X-men isn't yours alone anymore. It's a dream now belonging to Ororo and even Logan, and still carried out dutifully by Scott and Jean. "Perhaps," you think, "Perhaps this is lasting. Perhaps when I am gone, this school will not be."
This time there is no difficult decision to make. You never lose sleep over the worry of who to choose as a successor. You know with a certainty that Scott and Jean will run the school together, as equals, the same way they've done everything else. But that is only when the time comes.
"How have you been feeling lately?" you ask her as gently as possible.
"Like I'm eleven again." she replies with the same spark she had then.
"It's my fault. I instilled mental blocks against your telepathy in order to train your telekinesis. It was the only way. To try and train both at the same time would have been too much for you to handle. But I'm afraid you've grown out of those blocks, and I thought you were ready... It was too much at one time."
"And I lost control," she finishes.
"Yes. We are lucky Scott was able to... bring your mind back to focus," you say, half teasing and half truly grateful.
"Very lucky." she agrees quietly, in the same soft voice that she and the boy used to converse in, heads bend together in the sunshine, those first few months of learning to understand each other.
You try your best to never pick favorites. You try your best to treat every student fairly. You try your best to put each student's safety above anything else.
But your best is not without exceptions, and in this case, there are two.
You love Scott and Jean no more than you love all the rest. But for them it is, admittedly, different. Perhaps because you had to trust them so much from the start. Perhaps because Scott had no father and Jean had no control and you were left to play those parts. Perhaps because, if you're honest, you don't treat these two fairly, expecting too much from them. And maybe you do let them know too much, let them work too hard, let them go too many places without the rest of the team because you need them. And for those reasons, they might be your favorites. Because they are the proof of the school, of your work.
There is another reason, one you've come to terms with long ago, and it is a large part of why Jean is so special to you. It's despicable, you know, to show favoritism when it comes to powers, but you cannot help that you and the girl speak the same language. Her powers are the closest to yours at the Institute. You can relate to each other, and she learns the inner workings of Cerebro and all of your mind tricks without complaint in hopes to shoulder some of your burden. Although she is young, her abilities are limitless, and you are quite relieved that, if anything were to happen to you, all you've worked for would not go up in smoke.
In a greedier part of your heart you raise up the hope that she is your likeness, your chance to pass down all you know so that when you are finally gone beyond the school and the students and the memories, you will not be lost to this world.
Your pupil is no longer a little girl. You find this out the night Scott goes missing, when she comes to you with a smoldering look and insists she is not dreaming.
"He's hurt," she pleads, and you brush her off at first because, honestly, it scares you to think that you are not able to sense when a student, especially one you know as well as Scott, is in danger. But the risk is too great, and the look in her eye is the same one she used to get when she spoke of Annie, so you believe her.
She simmers in the back of the jet, fluctuating from fear to pain to frustration, and you know she is not feeling her emotions alone. She's slipping into his mind, just like she did seven years ago when her powers first manifested, but this time something is different. You try to enter her mind and block some of the emotions to ease the pain of being two people in one body, but her eyes burst open and she tells you, "Stop. Leave them; they're our best chance at finding him. I can handle it."
Her words are ablaze when she speaks them out loud, and she tells you "I will not lose another best friend."
She's still young, so young, and so weighed down. But you know in those few moments that you are no longer teaching children.
You watch your X-Men in the Danger Room with a full heart. The first team is the most mismatched, all different ages and personalities. You could treat them like a math equation; analyze which powers work best with each other and spilt the students into age groups, but you never do. Not with this group.
Because they are the originals. Watching them fight together is unbelievable. Kurt is brave, nearing reckless. Kitty is the greatest defense, sprinting straight for the teammate that's in trouble. Evan is reckless, something that comes with being the youngest, but his daring pushes the others forward. Rouge is sensible, biding her time until she is most needed. Scott and Jean are seamless, leading and protecting, one set of eyes looking forward, one looking back.
No, you could never split them up. With each next generation you will do what you must, but you owe it to these original students. You will keep them together for as long as you possibly can. You will give them that, you have to, because they've given you everything else without ever looking back.
Only once do you ask Jean for a favor that is too much for her.
"Make me walk," you tell her one training session. You justify this instruction by claiming it is simply another exercise in levitation, same as all the rest.
She stares at you for a long while, the blank look of a girl with no fire behind her eyes. Finally, painstakingly slowly, she begs, "Professor, please."
"Mind communication only, Jean," you remind her, and she looks sadly at the floor.
"I can't."
"You can. You can do this and more, Jean. You must only learn control."
You sit with her in silence for a long while. As your session draws to a close you tell her, "That's alright. You don't have to. As long as you've tried your best, you know I will not ask any more of you."
You turn to face the window, signaling that she is free to go.
Your arms float first. Then your legs. You feel your body straighten out until you are standing upright, feet on the ground. Your reflection floats a few feet away in the window in front of you. You had forgotten that you were tall.
She moves one of your feet forward, and then the other. It is a hollow movement; the steps of a puppet on strings. You sense her presence in your brain, and you know that she is feeling your emotions on accident. It doesn't even surprise you when you fall, watching your reflection in the window the whole time. There, curled on the ground, you look familiar to yourself.
She flees the room in tears, leaving you to crawl into your chair on your own. The moment feels personal, and you are glad to have your thoughts to yourself, because it is the first time you realize you made an irrevocable mistake with her: you showed her you can be weak.
You hear the girls talking over bowls of ice cream one night. You nearly chide them for being up so late on a school night, but the brokenness in Kitty's usually cheerful voice stops you.
"It's just... I'm just like, so tired of being picked on. It happened enough back at home, I thought I finally got away from that when I came here."
"I know, Kitty," Jean sympathizes. "My other friends don't even talk to me any more, now that they know."
"And you want to know the worst part of all? We can't even go to like the mall or someplace for some retail therapy because they hate us there, too." Kitty flops her head onto the table dramatically, right through her empty bowl.
"It'll be alright, Kitty. It's better to stay in, anyway. I like it when we're all together. It's more fun than going to the movies or the mall or some soccer game- it's..." Jean burns through her sentences and then pauses, searching for the right word, "...safer."
That night, through eyes full of tears and mouths full of ice cream, you catch a glimpse of what it must be like to be eighteen and hunted.
Even when your first two students are officially "together", things don't seem all that different. It feels like you've been waiting for it to happen for a long time, watching their relationship unfold and never putting anything in its way.
But now that they have this title it all seems a little silly. All that time spent, watching them grow up and grow closer, watching them with their heads bent together in the garden while Jean made a small flower open and close; it's so obvious to you now. They were together from the moment they met. Really, they've never been apart.
You remember the very first few Danger Room sessions with Jean. She sat, terrified, next to you in the control room watching as you threw obstacle after obstacle at her new friend. When he chanced a glance up at you and the little girl, you caught him off guard by sneaking a beam at his turned back. Jean saw this and gasped, her hair flying straight up like the flame of a candle. Your clothes began to ripple, and when she screeched his name the laser exploded before he could turn around.
During dinners they would sit at the opposite end of the table from you, Logan, and Ororo, talking to each other with their hands in the secret language of childhood. At times they would bicker but never tease, and Ororo would lean over to you and say, "One day, you know..." and you would smile knowingly back.
And all this time you thought the most important part of your work were the lessons you taught, the sessions you gave, the abilities you helped students master. But really, looking at these two students in the garden, heads bent together and foreheads touching, having watched the evolution of their relationship you know that if somehow, some way they end up with a happily ever after that will be the thing you are most proud of.
The most painful thing you ever see is the future.
You glimpse it; just barely, just enough, when you dip into Apocalypse's mind. The things you find are enough to break your heart.
You've always known the school would go through changes; that you would lose and gain students and deal with it as best you could. But there are certain things you (foolishly) always counted on. Jean was one of them.
It's a great irony of fate, you suppose, that she is the one you never truly worried about losing. In the future she is loyal for as long as she can be. It is the one thing she never loses.
But everything else, all her friends, her control, her body, her mind, her powers, her name... everything else she doesn't get to keep.
It makes you sick. It makes you sick when she fights for both of your lives and wins, when she hugs you (not as a student, but as an equal) after Apocalypse is defeated. It makes you sick to speak to all of these students, all of these children that you have come to love, and tell them you know what will happen. It kills you to watch Scott hold on to Jean's hand.
She is a mind reader. She can feel your uneasiness, easily read your thoughts and find out what exactly the future holds. But she never does, because she has always been bright, and only a fool would want to know so much.
You suffer quietly.
Seven years before you learn of the future, you sit at your desk and look at the small girl across from you. The chair she sits in swallows her and she stares at her toes, blood red hair dripping over her shoulder.
"Why don't you tell me exactly what it feels like, Jean? To die?"
She looks at you sharply. "For Annie?" she asks.
You nod.
She ponders for a moment, lips drawn together in a childish pout. There is a quiver in her voice when she whispers, "Scary."
"How so?" you ask calmly.
She frowns and shakes her head the tiniest bit. "You're afraid... you don't want to be alone."
"Is that how you felt when Annie was passing?"
Jean fiddles with her hands. She stares at them with wide, round eyes, and then firmly tells you, "She wanted me to go with her."
You nod solemnly, hands together in front of your face. "And what did you do?"
"I stayed behind." she says, so small. The light inside her is blown out, and she sits with her back to the chair like a torch without flame. Just a little girl.
"Ah, staying behind. I'd say that's the hardest thing to do, wouldn't you?"
Author's Note: Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men, and this was not written for profit.
Thank you all so much for reading! Since this is my first time writing for X-Men: Evolution I'd love to hear from all of you so I can see what the fandom is like. :) Reviews are greatly appreciated.