Author's note: I want to thank everyone who left comments on chapter one and who has put the story/me on favorites and alerts. It's a bit daunting to dive back into this fan writing thing after being away so long and the warm reception is great. For those who are a bit confused about what's going on with Scott, I promise explanations are coming. Please continue to tell me what you like, and what you don't. All feedback is helpful. Thanks again.
As to updates: I expect to put up a new chapter every weekend at least, though it's difficult for me to predict which day of the weekend that will happen on. This weekend, I'm early.
Chapter Two
"I'm sorry Rogue, I can't discuss it now. Come by my office tomorrow." Professor Xavier barely paused to address Marie.
She didn't follow him down the corridor. What was the point? It had been stupid to even ask when he was so distracted with… well, with whatever had sent the entire population of the school into panic two hours ago. He's probably got something way more important than my problems to deal with. I shouldn't be mad.
She wasn't mad, not really. But, she'd been not-really-mad so often the past few months that her frustration was at the explosion point. All she'd wanted was a truly honest assessment of whether she would ever learn to control her power. It shouldn't have taken that long to say, 'Yes, Rogue, I'm sure you'll learn if you just keep practicing' or 'I'm sorry, I think you'll be this way the rest of your life.'
Just an opinion. It hadn't seemed like too much a moment ago. Apparently, it was.
The cure was on the news every hour now, and the television downstairs was on news channel continuously. Every student in the school was talking about it. Everyone on staff was too. Marie was tired of being bombarded by it, tired of being told that she had to take a side right now and, of course, that side had to be against the cure.
Some of the arguments made sense. Was it possible to trust a drug company and the government to be altruistic? Given what she knew about prior government-sanctioned plans for mutants -- Senator Kelly's registration bills, and Stryker's labs -- it was hard to believe there wouldn't be control drugs in the shot, or even poison. But, Marie thought there was some hope that there were still good people out there who just wanted to help mutants who were suffering from, rather than enjoying, their powers.
She straightened her shoulders and headed back toward her room. Once there, she closed her door and sat on her bed. She ripped off her gloves.
I can't believe I'm going to do this again. It's so stupid. It never helps. She crossed her arms and pressed her hands to her face, thumbs toward her lips. She willed herself to not feel through her fingers, to only feel through her face. Pretend they're someone else's hands.
The palms were warm, the fingers slightly damp, like her mother's hands. Marie let her mind drift back to a time when she could still feel her mother's hands on her face. That memory usually brought her comfort. She smiled briefly, but the mother-image wouldn't last. She needed the other fantasy now.
Her mind drifted to the boy she'd first kissed, and his voice screamed terror in her mind before she could even begin to enjoy that fantasy. She couldn't think of Bobby either, or Logan. They were inside her too, in pain from her power.
She let thumbs brush her mouth and conjured her shadow lover, the indistinct and imagined man who could touch her safely. His hands were strong. If he were real, his fingers would be slightly rough, more male than her own. But, she had to make due with what she had, so she discarded that thought.
He smelled of spice, not quite cologne, maybe just the soap he used -- her soap. She imagined he'd showered in her bathroom and used her soap. It was as good an explanation as any to keep the illusion going. A nail stroked her lips -- a subtle pain. Then the fingers moved down to trace her jaw. Her throat. Lower.
She felt her body relaxing. He didn't need to kiss her. He just wanted contact. Touching her made him alive the same way it made her alive. If only he wasn't an illusion.
The monster twitched occasionally, but showed no sign of real discomfort or even concern about whatever Charles was doing to Jean as she lay on the examining table. The creature seemed primarily interested in hunting Scott. It let out a thin sonic whine and its eyes swiveled slowly as it searched the infirmary.
Scott's every instinct said, 'attack.' But, instinct worked best when tempered with planning and reason. He couldn't merely want to kill it. He had to know he would kill it when he tried.
He already knew his eyes were no longer a weapon. Jean had sealed that power away in his head somehow. He could still feel the burning at the back of his skull if he concentrated, but it stayed there, never touching his eyes.
He flexed his fingers into a fist and then released it slowly. His flesh felt as solid and strong as ever. Was that an illusion? Would he be able to crush the thing in his fist if he got hold? Or was he a wraith, insubstantial and unable to help Jean again? What if, in this strange state of non-reality, he simply didn't have the means to destroy anything?
If Charles, working deep in Jean's mind, were aware of the monster, he showed no sign.
Briefly, Scott considered making himself a target in hopes that would show the monster to Charles. But, if the tactic failed, he might lose his own chance to kill it. He watched the creature until warning fear tickled his spine, then leaned back against the glossy, dark infirmary wall, out of its view.
Logan prowled the infirmary room. Twice he'd asked the professor to explain what was going on. Twice he'd been told to be patient. Scott suspected another dismissal would cause Logan to extend those deadly claws in frustration.
"Just wait, Logan," Scott chided, grinding his fist against his palm. "Wait for the professor to give us direction. Wait."
Trust. Charles has never truly failed me. Then, he gave up and ran both hands over his face before crossing his arms and looking away from the scene before him. Forget Logan's impatience. Scott wasn't sure how much longer he could follow his own advice.
In the year since they lost Jean, he'd learned just how dangerous inactivity was. His mind drifted easily. Some paths took him to morbid places, others to joyful memories. But, every trail was dangerous. He lost himself for hours in the morass of pleasure and despair that filled his mind.
In the first months after she died, he'd tried keeping busy. But, he'd only managed to exhaust himself so that he fell into a sleep too deep and filled with violent dreams. In the end, he'd given in to the drifting because that form of agony didn't cause him to wake with both hands on his night visor preparing to blow the whole school to pieces.
Now, however, he needed to stay alert and focused. He was, apparently, the only one who could see the real threat. Charles, for all his mental prowess, remained oblivious.
Charles began explaining things to Logan, then. He talked about Jean having near limitless power. And fear tinged his every word.
"Charles is afraid of Jean?" Even the words sounded absurd. Scott understood the professor's had to be worried about what had happened up at Alkali Lake. After all, Logan had recovered Scott's bike. They knew he'd been there. They didn't know what happened to him. But, could anyone actually think Jean was would harm him? Apparently, Charles could.
"When she was a girl, I created a series of psychic barriers to isolate her powers from her conscious mind, and as a result, Jean developed a dual personality," The professor was saying.
Charles knew about Phoenix? Scott should have guessed, given the frequency with which he worked with Jean to improve her powers. Improve? From what Charles was now saying, he must have used those sessions to make sure Jean's powers remained permanently dampened. Scott's jaw clenched at that thought.
Logan was circling the examining table like a caged wolf. Again, Scott felt an unsettling kinship of purpose with the man. Logan's words echoed the restless anger his body showed. "She knew all this?"
"She knew, Logan, " Scott answered, though he knew he wouldn't be heard. He needed to hear the truth aloud, for himself. "She knew about Phoenix, at least."
So did Scott. Phoenix had introduced herself two weeks after Liberty Island, in the school's kitchen while the staff was on a break.
One moment, Scott was standing with Jean as she folded slices of ham precisely over a neatly trimmed piece of bread. She smelled of exercise and sunshine. He teased her about the care she took in preparing her sandwich.
Then she tilted her head, and someone else stared up at him from behind Jean's lowered lashes. The temperature in the room couldn't have increased faster if all the ovens turned on at once.
"I would have thought you liked careful?" She stuck her finger in the mayonnaise and spread a thick layer over the meat. Several globs landed on the counter. Then she smeared the rest on his lips. "How about messy?"
"Not that messy." He reached for a napkin.
She licked him clean instead. "How about that messy?"
The next moment they were sprawling on top of the counter, smashing bread and meat and mayonnaise under them. She tore his shirt, then raked him with her nails, bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. Right about then they heard the cooks coming down the corridor from their break.
Before Scott could even think about stopping, she rushed him into the walk-in pantry. The door slammed shut on its own. Scott had never been ravished before, especially on the floor of the pantry with canned goods rattling off the shelves all around them. Climax accompanied a geyser of tomato sauce and canned pears.
Phoenix didn't stay past the drenching, though. She didn't like to face the consequences of her actions. It was Jean, soaked red in sauce and embarrassment, who had to exit the pantry under his arm. Scott fixed the head cook with a 'don't-dare-say-anything' stare and managed not to chuckle as all three of the cook's chins dropped to her chest. He knew if he laughed he'd be a dead man.
But, he'd expected Jean to get over the mortification eventually. Hell, the sex had been fun, hadn't it? She didn't get over it. The more Phoenix showed herself, the more Jean wanted to destroy her other self.
Maybe if he hadn't pushed her to accept rather than fight -- Scott shook the thought away. He knew where those mind games lead. Pain and endless despair.
"It's unclear how much she knew," the professor told Logan.
"So, she never went to you about destroying Phoenix?" Scott asked, even knowing he'd get no reply. He had told her Charles would never agree to kill part of her the way she wanted. Listening to Charles now, he realized he'd been wrong in that. Charles would have happily locked Phoenix away permanently. If he had, maybe Jean wouldn't have broken the dam and wouldn't have needed to go outside the jet -- and Scott would have killed her while under Stryker's control. "There never was a path that ends with us all alive, was there?"
Except there was -- this one. Jean was alive and breathing right in front of him. Wasn't she? She had a monster clinging to her no one else could see, but she was here with them, not drowned beneath a freezing, crushing lake. And, in some small part at least, Charles' machinations were responsible for that miracle.
"Far more critical is whether the woman in front of us is the Jean Grey we know, or The Phoenix, furiously struggling to be free," Charles concluded.
Jean. It had to be Jean. Or both. Scott concentrated on those moments on the rocky beach at Alkali Lake. Which woman had greeted him? He would swear it had been Jean. Her voice, her stance, the love in her eyes were all Jean. But, later, when she locked his power away, she may have been Phoenix. He couldn't be sure. He wouldn't forgive himself if it was only Phoenix who lived.
"What have you done to her?" If possible, Logan looked even more tense than he had before.
Scott found himself crossing the distance between them putting a hand Logan couldn't possibly feel on the man's shoulder. "She would have wanted Charles to control Phoenix."
Logan shrugged as if he sensed the weight on his shoulder, but he didn't turn around. He didn't hear Scott's words. Not that it mattered. Logan wouldn't have wanted to hear what Jean had to say about Phoenix. Scott wished he didn't have to remember it.
"I hate her," Jean had finally said as she crawled beneath the covers of their bed. It was a few days before Logan returned, before Stryker and the disaster. She'd never voiced her hatred before, though Scott knew that's how she felt. He thought that was the greatest tragedy -- Jean was afraid of a whole part of herself, a part she should have embraced, enjoyed, and trained.
She coaxed him onto his back so she could rest her head on his chest in her 'I need to talk' position. He must have sighed a bit too loudly because he felt her stiffen. "You'd rather it was her here with you, wouldn't you?"
"No." He answered too quickly and was misinterpreted for it. Amazing how often a telepath could misread the man closest to her. Jean rolled away from him. He tried to entice her back and was rebuffed.
"She wants to sleep with Logan when he comes back. Do you know that? She told me about it in detail while I was trying to grade papers this afternoon." Jean tucked her pillow stubbornly under her head. "She loves him, Scott. Only I love you."
Even now, the declaration punched him harder than any fist. He pulled his hand away from Logan's shoulder. He still wanted to believe Jean only said that to hurt him, because she was angry and jealous herself. "It hurts, Jean. It still hurts. But, not as bad as the rest."
Logan's argument with Charles escalated. "Sometimes when you cage the beast, the beast gets angry."
"You have no idea." The fear in Charles voice nearly vibrated. "You have no idea of what she's capable."
Charles meant her power, but for Scott the statement carried other meanings. It wasn't telekinesis and telepathy that made Phoenix dangerous. It was her indifference to the cost of her actions. She told Jean about her love because she felt it, not caring that it would hurt someone else. Worse, he saw her face when she closed the jet's hatch on him at Alkali Lake.
It wasn't Jean out there. Jean would have understood the risks and taken the escape that Kurt Wagner offered. But, Phoenix, reckless soul that she was, didn't think about death. And it was Phoenix closing the hatch on him, struggling with the jet, preparing to hold back the water just long enough for them to escape. He saw it all in her eyes -- she would prove love by dying because it was dramatic and romantic rather than necessary. Love for him, for Logan, it didn't matter. She chose wildly, as she always did. And she took Jean with her.
"It sounds to me like Jean had no choice at all," Logan shot at the professor, before storming out. He couldn't know how right he was. Jean had no choice, despite the professor's quietly earnest insistence after the disaster that choice made her death right.
The chill of that lie froze Scott to the core. He might have punched Charles if it would have done more than break his own hand. "You knew. You blocked her and broke her and then you sat there and told me she made a choice."
Something dark and cold took hold of him then. Scott could feel its claw reach out and grab him. His strength and will drained away. There had never been any hope Charles would find the monster. He wasn't looking for monsters. He thought he already found one. And he hadn't helped that day at Alkali Lake because he believed death was best for that beautiful monster called Phoenix who took Jean with her. "You killed her."
Scott retreated to the corner of the room again and put his hands over his face. He was sweating, shaking. Maybe that was the result of not eating all day, or maybe it was the guilt that still swamped him a year later. Maybe it was Charles's betrayal. Whatever it was, it defeated him. He couldn't fight the memories anymore.
"I killed you." No amount of logic or reason could burn that thought away. He hadn't been able to separate Jean and Phoenix in his mind -- he'd loved them both. And because he couldn't choose the woman who loved him back over the one that didn't, Jean had died. "Maybe Charles let you die, but I killed you."
Note: I realize that in the movie Jean closed the hatch on the Blackbird before turning enough for Scott to see her eyes, but I still liked the image.