1. Passion
"-dangerous," Scott finishes and Jean and Phoenix resent him with a complete agreement that is becoming increasingly frequent.
It wouldn't do to say that the Phoenix is disgusted by Scott's touch as he removes her clothes in a precise order, perfectly planned like a Kama Sutra position, lips pressing against hers still tasting of the scotch he keeps hidden in the bed stand. That scotch is the height of his rebelliousness and, already drunk off their success at Liberty Island, he and Jean indulge while the Phoenix fumes and hisses.
i will rise again
No, it wouldn't do to say the Phoenix is disgusted by Scott's touch. It wouldn't do at all. The Phoenix wouldn't comprehend the nuance of disgust or repulsion. This isn't Three Faces of Jean, not that the Phoenix would understand the reference
what use have i for cinema
, but the Phoenix both loves and hates Scott, while Jean always loves and occasionally hates him. Not for big things, just for little things that make her feel guilty for even noticing them. The way he doesn't just squeeze his eyes shut when he cleans his sunglasses on his shirt, he clenches them shut. The way he shaves each morning, every morning, at precisely the same time, in precisely the same way, like his father was still barking orders at him from behind the shower curtain.
"Scott," she says in her quiet voice, almost a whisper, in sharp contrast to the Phoenix which wants to
scream until my throat is hoarse
but that would spoil the moment. "Why were you so worried when I went into Cerebro?"
His tone is almost chipper when he answers. "I thought you couldn't handle it. I was wrong." There's no pride in him admitting his error and he prides himself on that in the backburner of his brain, where she pokes around like a child putting a fork in an electrical socket, looking for where he loves her.
"So you don't have faith in me?" Jean is teasing, but the Phoenix wants to
know
"I believe in you, but I'm also the team leader. I have to be aware of everyone's limitations, including my own. Don't get me wrong, I wish Storm really was a goddess, I wish Wolverine really was the best there is at what he does, but there's a certain amount of immortality, of arrogance in this line of work that's not warranted."
"We're not dead yet, are we?"
"I want to keep it that way. Look, it's like this. If I were to take off my glasses and ask to look at you, both of us knowing that I would fry your head off… would you let me?"
"I would have trust in you. In us."
Scott smiles a bit sadly and is acutely aware of the thin strip of black cloth wrapped around his eyes that keeps him from seeing Jean's earnest expression. He reaches out and runs a hand along her cheek. "That's why you're a better person than me."
She kisses the skin between his thumb and forefinger. "Someday I'll look you in the eye."
Because sometimes the Phoenix
loves him back
2. Prudence
The hardest part isn't leaving behind everything he's ever known, all his friends and CDs and bed with the two pillows with just the right amount of fluff in them. The hardest part is getting used to people calling him Pyro all the time. Sure, sometimes Marie (Rogue) and Bobby (Iceman) called him that, like a nickname, but here it's his real name, who he is. For a bit he's uncomfortable with that, with his mutanthood being the whole of his identity, with his entire personality (Marie used to say he looked like a John) boiled down to a quirk of the X-gene, but Magneto says that's the way it should be.
On the helicopter ride "home," the others think it's airsickness, but as he's huddled up in the back, looking pale and trying not to look frightened, he feels his balls climb another foot up his throat with each mile he departs from us. But he's got a new us and the old us is now they.
Words are so important. Names are so important. Xavier tried to teach him that, a long time ago, and there were words like Derridean and deconstruction and other half-formed remnants of ideas with no real knowledge to them that can't do John a lick of good now.
No, not John. He's Pyro now. John died back at Alkali Lake.
3. Professionalism
Control.
It's not like the others don't get that he values it above most other things. In fact, they probably think he values it above everything, above even her. They're wrong, of course. Storm's wrong, with her rage just below the surface, her rage all the way from a continent where mutants were hacked up with machetes. Wolverine's wrong, with the faded old jacket even though he has a checking account to afford something that would at least make him look presentable enough to be a representative for the institute. Even the Professor and Rogue and Bobby are wrong, old and young alike, they think he doesn't care.
But Jean gets it right. She catches up Storm judging him in her head, thinking that because he doesn't care, he'll never be a natural leader like her. She doesn't say anything, just "accidentally" spills some hot chocolate on her blouse and laughs in that little space in her head where she lives sometimes.
Scott sits down beside her and tries not to think about how the dining hall is a little rowdier, a little noisier when he's not there. "That wasn't very nice."
"She wasn't being nice, why should I?"
Scott smiles and Jean does too, with her lips and with that special little place where she lives sometimes.
4. Perfunctory
Pyro is a little disappointed when he gets there. It's just a big campsite in the woods. But Magneto's gestures are grand and operative in their black leather gloves as he says that one day, there will be mutants as far as the eye can see. Pyro looks at the gloves and regrets for a moment that he traded in one skin for another.
That night, Rogue is waiting in his tent. It's far away from Magneto's, for privacy if nothing else. She looks at him with eyes that are the wrong color and tells him she loves him with an accent that's a bit too thick and he doesn't care. The next morning, he asks Mystique if Erik sent her.
Mystique just smiles.
5. Perfection
He knows it can't be real, but he doesn't care. He's finally gone crazy, snapped under the pressure, had a nervous breakdown. Because sane people don't see their dead wives standing in front of them, hale and healthy, like they just came back from buying some eggs at the stores.
But he barely even protests as she takes his glasses away, because optic blasts can't hurt ghosts. He's less sure if someone can fall in love with a ghost, all over again, but he still doesn't care as he kisses her and she looks in his brain for the part that loves her and finds it all lit up.
He loses himself in the kiss and thinks he could die happy.
6. Pride
He sees her in the line and hates her and hates himself. Soldiers with their plastic guns run between the two of them and she doesn't even notice him. He's easy to miss, now that he doesn't have his lighter anymore. Erik said it was time to put away childish things.
But still, she doesn't see him, but he can't help but wonder what would happen if she did. Some Nora Ephron bullshit (he and Bobby only watched Sleepless In Seattle because she made them), her giving up the Cure because she knows that if she takes it, she can't be one of us, she can't even be a them, she's an it, just like Erik said. Her giving up being normal so she can be with him.
Of course, that only happens in movies. He turns away and sees his old friend Bobby. Maybe he'll go say hi.