SHADES OF GREY

chapter two: my wife wrote it

Dear Journal,

I woke up next to my husband today.
My husband.
That skinny little man in the glasses, so unsure of himself... (although why wouldn't he have been, wearing that skull cap?) has become my husband.
I should say that I woke up next to my husband in our bed. Our timeline.
It's funny. I wonder how many of these journals are bought by people who write about "honeymoons" in alternate timelines, raising and nurturing a child thousands of years in the future.
Nathan...
Twelve years. We were there for twelve. years.
And yet...

Cyclops placed the ribbon originally tied around Jean's journal through the page he'd been reading, closing the book and looking up at Hank McCoy.

"A little two-thirty in the morning reading, Scottie?"

"...catching up, Hank," Scott looked uneasy. "Spending some time with an old... friend."

"That's Jean's, isn't it?"

Summers stared blankly through his visor.

"I bought it for her," Hank took a seat next to him on the couch stationed in the middle of what had been deemed the Rec Room. "Had no idea it had survived the years."

"You... bought this for her?"

"I did," McCoy smiled somewhat proudly, if not distantly, staring away from Scott as if he were gazing into Jean's grateful green eyes again. "She'd been having a lot of problems -- still coming to terms with the Phoenix, with Madelyne, X-Factor, the love of her life having a child and a wife..."

"I was there."

McCoy sipped his coffee.

"Charles thought it would be good for Jean to... get everything out. There were some things she couldn't tell us. And all those voices... you know, I don't think it was just being a telepath. I think it was dealing with all of the other people she'd been. The things she'd done, felt... no woman should have to..."

"I said I was there, Hank."

"You shouldn't read it."

"It's mine."

"Yours?" McCoy's eyebrow slid up. "I would hardly call it yours, Scott."

"My wife wrote it. She died. It belongs to me now."

"She's only your wife when it's convenient, isn't she?" Hank thrashed himself upward. "You're a widow, Scott. Read it if you'd like, it certainly isn't my place to tell you not to... but don't let Emma hear you call Jean your wife. You do remember the affair you had with Emma before Jean's--"

"I think it's best that you leave," Scott stood, stiff as ever, his visor flaring to match his temper.

McCoy's eyes became slits. "Agreed. Though I've just recalled why it's best to pretend that Jean never lived at all."

Cyclops watched as his friend, though he had other words for Henry McCoy at the moment, ascended a nearby staircase. He wondered if there was something invasive, something wrong, about what he was doing.

It wasn't his journal. Did the fact that Jean had died really make it his? Widow or not, things weren't exactly smooth before her death...

Scott yearned for a simpler time. A time when he'd never question something of Jean's belonging to him... never have to hide in spaces, pretend he weren't reading the love of his life's notes on her life while his girlfriend was sleeping.

"This is ridiculous," Scott said as he sat back down, pulled the journal open and skipped a few pages. It somehow made him feel better -- if he were only skimming, well, it wasn't really reading.

No. He had every right to read it. He loved Jean and reminded himself -- yet again --that they shared a psychic rapport. The journal was a refresher course; a trip down memory lane. He'd known it all, at least at one point.

His name caught his eye.

I told Scott today that he's the one who should be keeping a journal. I know his every thought; every fear, every desire, every triumph... better than he knows them. He's still so unsure of himself.
I look at Alex, I feel Alex's insecurity and pain over his older brother's threatening shadow... and I wonder sometimes -- if he really knew that his brother were just as insecure... just as hard on himself...
I don't know. I suppose it all goes back to...

Cyclops flipped through a few more pages.

We've been in Anchorage for two weeks now. It's beautiful. Silent. Except for that... thing... with the birds. Why is it that Scott and I can sit here for days and days -- eating normal dinners, watching Jeopardy (which isn't very fun for a psychic) and holding one another -- and yet as soon as Bobby, Hank and Warren show up -- bam! Something horrific happens.
I think we've made the right choice moving here... leaving the X-Men, at least for now. After what Bastion managed to accomplish, after what he did to Scott, after everything with the Professor... oh, Charles...
It was time. Time to be husband and wife.
Time to make love at any given hour, not slap on some tights and save the world.
Speaking of tights, I slipped on the Phoenix costume a few days ago -- while the boys were here... and I could feel the terror in Scott's lungs. I could feel the fire. The pain, the memories...

But it was refreshing.
It almost terrified me -- but at the same time it was so very exhilarating. Liberating. Like facing one of your fears and winning.
Something's changing inside of me and I can feel it. It isn't bad, not this time... that Jean Grey, that Phoenix -- she wasn't me.
She was...

Summers felt his stomach turn for the fifth time. Had that really been the start of it all? The start of Jean's... ascension? Her return to the flames? All those years ago, sitting in Anchorage and pulling out an old costume... he'd witnessed it.

She was right: he had been terrified. She'd told him there was no cause for alarm, that it was only a symbol. But things had happened so quickly after that -- the Professor had called them back, they'd battled Apocalypse, he had (for lack of a better term) died.

"Just be thankful it isn't a green mini-skirt and those yellow... things I wore on my head," she'd mused. He remembered her comparing it to one of Jennifer Lopez's dresses -- how had she gotten those things to stay on, anyway?

"COME TO BED, DARLING," Emma interrupted his thoughts. Scott winced.

"You don't need to yell, Emma," he thought as he closed the journal. He was in no hurry to argue -- and he had a feeling he wouldn't want to sleep if he'd read what was coming next.