A\N: I dunno, I was writing and...well, if you can understand what the hell this is, let me know. :/

A\N 2: Well, I came back a few weeks later and found this. I actually liked it, so I decided to post. Enjoy! :)

Repression.

I stare at the TV and at Jean and the word rings in my head, repression, freaking repression-

And then the thought cuts itself off.

When I was eleven, my powers manifested. My parents had me exorcised. I was tied to a bed, tortured, and molested by a priest, and the whole time I could hear him thinking, why isn't this working, why won't the Devil leave this poor girl alone?

So they decided that it wasn't the Devil after all. Just me.

Then they sent me to therapy, and that was worse, and I slowly stopped speaking, and every chance I got I wrote something down, even just a snippet of poetry, until one day in session I wanted to write a poem and all I had was my arm and a pen.

But that wasn't enough. I wanted to write it under my skin, etch the words on my soul. So I stood up, grabbed the compass the leader was using to illustrate some point or other, went off into the woods, and used the compass edge to scratch the words into my skin.

Then I walked away.

I hitchiked everywhere until I heard the name Xavier's and I still wasn't brave enough to go, I was wrong-bad-stupid-sin-demoness, so I stayed in Washington, homeless, until a redheaded woman marched up to me and told me her name was Jean Grey and she was taking me home.

She liked me.

She gave me notebooks with plain colors. Mom had always bought me kitten covers, but I liked plain better. It was like me; you only saw what was inside. Jean let me follow her around when I wasn't in class. She told me about her research, how to splint a broken bone, when someone needed a band-aid and when they needed to be in the hospital.

Jean taught me about the bigots.

I remember that I was sitting with her in the lab, writing down what she found. The news was on, and they were talking about a protest.

"...Tens of thousands of people appeared, all demanding that mutants register with the government. Does this mean that the American public does not support the choice to become a mutant? Have the answer tonight, at eight, with Amy Colbert."

Jean shook her head.

"That's going to change." She told me. "Remember. It's going to change..." She paused, then smiled. "What is your name?"

It was our joke, so I smiled back.

Now, staring at the TV, at Jean's dead body, I hear it again.

And I look at my hand.

For a moment, nothing, the silence inside my mind that always meant a thought that was not a thought, a choice made by my most fundamental being.

And then I turn and walk away.

When Wolverine walks into Jean's lab, it's two days later.

"J...Jean?" He whispers.

I smile.

I'm sitting at her desk. I'm in her lab coat. My hair is red.

"What is your name?"

"I'm Micha."

Wolverine stares.

"Repression isn't what people think it is." I say quietly, continuing to study the sample under the microscope. "It's a lock. One built into your mind. And it keeps everything broken." I turn and jot down the number of mitochondria. "But then you unlock it. And you're free."

"Micha." Wolverine whispers.

I turn.

Finally he sees it; my hair is down, I don't wear glasses, I'm not Jean. And it hits him, and he's found his own closure. "Wh..what the hell are you doing here!" He snarls.

"Finishing her work. Starting my own." I say.

Wolverine is silent.

"I can't cry yet, Logan." I say quietly. "She saved me. She loved me, more than my own mother. And I can't even cry for her." I laugh bitterly, and I know why Jean did. "But I will. Because it's not forever."

I turn and look at him. Let him see me.

"She died. But I don't have to."

For a moment, I wonder if he understood.

Then a tear trickles down his face.

I turn back to Jean's work.

A tear is beginning to fall down mine, too.