Nightmares
Part 9: A Bond

There was something infinitely embarrassing, mortifying beyond all of Jean's wildest beliefs (and she her imagination could be quite extensive, having had the opportunity to see into other people's minds) about being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and brought down to the Professor's office without having the chance to even change out of her pyjamas.

Especially when factoring in the part where it wasn't her bed she had been pulled out of.

Scott was also there. Jean didn't dare to look at him, but imagined that he was studying the patterns on the office's carpet just as intently as she was.

Professor Xavier still hadn't said anything when Ororo and Logan entered, an urgency to their steps.

"What's going on, Chuck?" Logan demanded.

"I caught Jean in Scott's bed!" the professor exclaimed.

The Wolverine caught them all by surprise when he bluntly said, "So?"

"Logan!" Professor Xavier chided.

"It was harmless. They're good kids."

"But—"

"They're good kids, Chuck," Logan repeated, a little more forcefully. "Red and Cyke wouldn't do anything like that."

"But—" Professor Xavier tried to protest again.

"They didn't do anything."

He sounded so sure of it, which confused Jean. They had broken the rules, she knew that. Even if it was never explicitly said, it was understood that once you went to bed, you were supposed to stay in your own room, not go into another student's bedroom, especially not someone of the opposite sex.

But there was something else, an undercurrent to Logan's words that Jean couldn't quite place at first. Then a fragmented memory, a whisper that hadn't made sense at the time, some giggling girls, the fact that Logan had a keen sense of smell…

Jean did the impossible when she put together what Logan was implying—or rather, not implying—and blushed even more deeply. She now she felt as if she'd spontaneously developed a second mutation: the ability to set her face on fire without doing any damage.

Scott worked it out about the same time she did. "Professor, we didn't—"

"We wouldn't—" Jean joined in at about the same time.

"I mean it wasn't—"

"Scott just—"

"Jean only—"

Now Professor Xavier joined in, almost as flustered as Jean and Scott were. "I wasn't implying—"

"Perhaps," Ororo's voice cut in over the babble, easily heard even though she did not raise her voice, "we should let them explain. Without accusations. I'm know there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for Jean being in Scott's room tonight and I'm sure they will be more than happy to tell to us what it is."

There was another awkward silence in which both Jean and Scott tried to decide which of them was going to start. It didn't quite stretch into the awkward phase, the only thing that Jean could feel grateful for so far tonight. Things had already gone too far past her comfort zone and further embarrassment would be entirely too much for her to cope with. Luckily, Scott spoke just before the silence became unbearable.

"It's my fault, not Jean's," he said, straightening his back. He looked Professor Xavier in the eyes, willing to accept responsibility for the entire fiasco. Part of her Jean's mind was currently screaming at her not to let Scott take all the blame and play the martyr again. It wasn't completely his fault. In fact, it wasn't his fault at all.

Unfortunately, those thoughts were drowned out by a louder, more urgent part of her that insisted she stay quiet, keep out of trouble.

"I had a nightmare," Scott said.

Jean closed her eyes, wincing. Silence overtook the room again.

Eventually, the professor said, "Yes, I know. That's why I was checking on you. But that still doesn't explain what Jean was doing there."

Jean realized that they had been waiting for him to explain further. Like Scott, apparently, she had forgotten that admitting to a nightmare wasn't an explanation enough—they had never got around to mentioning their problem.

"She obviously heard him, just like you, Charles," Ororo said, jumping to conclusions in her attempt to smooth things over. "I'm sure she went in just to see what the matter was."

"But I didn't hear Scott," Professor Xavier said. "Not with my ears, at least."

"Red's a mind reader, too," Logan reminded them.

"Is that what happened?" the professor asked, his gaze swinging over to Jean.

"I didn't mean to." Her voice, as much as she tried to prevent it, came out as a hoarse whisper. "It was an accident."

Professor Xavier sighed, his head dropping down to his hands. He massaged his forehead slightly, suddenly looking very tired. "I'm sure it was, Jean," he started to say, "but—"

"I was trying not to listen. Really, I was. But I couldn't help it."

"That may be the case, but—" the professor tried again.

"It just happened. I just… heard him. And then he heard me. And then it kept happening and we didn't want to tell Ororo or Logan because they couldn't do anything and it would only worry them and you weren't here so we couldn't tell you and it just kept happening and I couldn't stop it."

Jean couldn't help herself. Once she started talking, the words just flowed, refusing to stop. She knew she was a disappointment to the professor; she could hear it in his words. And he'd been so proud of her earlier, boasting about her achievements to Logan, allowing her to join the others in training, cutting back on the number of private sessions they needed together to control her powers.

And now she was letting him down. Now she was letting him know that she wasn't as good with her gifts as he thought her to be. She wasn't in control; she couldn't be in control. It was a simple thing, keeping up a mind shield. Even non-psis, like Scott, Ororo and Logan could manage it.

But she couldn't.

Jean, whose primary mutation was telepathy, couldn't do anything as simple as keep a shield up around her mind to keep her dreams and Scott's dreams from mixing. Jean was a mutant who couldn't control her powers. How pathetic was that? All the others could. All the others did. And here she was, supposedly with this great and powerful gift and she couldn't even control herself enough to use it properly. It controlled her when she should be controlling it.

Finally, Professor Xavier was able to cut through the waves of self-recrimination. "Jean."

It was a double-whammy, heard inside her head as well as in her ears, aimed to make certain she sat up and listened.

Jean felt the professor's calming influence in the back of her head, telling her to settle down, relax. Just listen, it told her.

She took a long, steady breath and was amazed how much calmer that simple act made her feel. Then she waited for him to speak.

"Jean," Professor Xavier began awkwardly. "If I may? Do you mind?"

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to mind, but didn't try to ask or speak again. At this point, she knew that even if started, she wouldn't be able to stop again.

The professor tried again. "If I understand correctly, this is not the first time this has happened, is it?"

Still not daring to talk, Jean nodded her head. There was some movement out of the corner of her eye; Scott shaking his head, too. In all honesty, she'd just about forgotten that he was still in the room with her and Professor Xavier. A quick look around showed that Logan and Ororo had left without her noticing, probably when she was having one of her freak outs.

"Yes, it is the first time, or yes, it has happened before?"

"It's happened before, sir," Scott told him.

"More than once?"

"A few times, sir. Umm, a lot of times, I guess."

"Which is—never mind. It doesn't matter how often it's happened before, just that it has happened." Professor Xavier paused. "And what exactly is it? What happened?"

Again, Scott answered the question. "It really wasn't Jean's fault, sir. It just kinda… happened."

Professor Xavier cut him off, raising his hand, palm outwards in a "stop" action. "I'm not looking to blame this on Jean—or you, Scott. I simply want to know what happened. The facts. Not who's to blame, just what happened. To begin with, when did this start?"

"A couple weeks ago," Scott said. "I, well, I woke up one night. And I just knew that I had to go see Jean. Something was wrong. When I got there, she was having a nightmare. She was still asleep, but… well… things were floating. She was making things move about in her sleep. So I woke her up."

"And you didn't think to tell anyone? Myself? Ororo? Logan?" the professor asked.

Scott shrugged. "We didn't want to bother anyone. It was the middle of the night."

The professor sighed, a long suffering sigh. His hands were at his temples again and Jean thought he was wondering why he had ever believed that running a school was a good idea.

"Next time, bother us. This not the sort of thing you should keep hidden."

He closed his eyes before continuing. "So you had a feeling that Jean was having a bad dream. You went to her room and discovered that it was true. This happened not just once, but 'lots of' times over the past few weeks. Correct?"

"Yes," Scott mumbled. "Well, sort of."

Opening his eyes again, Professor Xavier raised his brows. At this point there was little left that could surprise him. "Sort of?" he repeated.

Jean finally recovered use of her tongue. "It wasn't just my nightmares, it was Scott's, too. I woke up because I'd be having a nightmare about—" She paused, slightly, wondering if she should share Scott's nightmares or if she should keep them as private. At least as private as they could be, considering she had already eavesdropped into his mind on more than one occasion, however accidental it may have been.

She compromised. "They weren't mine. I could tell. So I went into Scott's room to wake him up. Because he woke me up when I had them, and nightmares are no fun, so I wanted to do the same for him."

"Which explains tonight and why you were in Scott's room," the professor concluded.

"Yes."

"So when Scott was having a nightmare you actually had it as well?" the professor asked rhetorically. "I suppose that with the heightened emotions that come from nightmares he would be more prone to projecting, and if you were asleep as well, your mental shields would not have been as strong as they would normally are when awake.

"What troubles me more is that when Jean was the one with the nightmares, she was projecting as well, albeit a sense of danger, or unease. But only, it seems, to Scott. Certainly, I never picked up anything myself and I'm certain that had Ororo or Logan felt the same sense of danger, they would have told me earlier."

There was one small, but important, flaw in the professor's summary. Jean bit her lip, wondering if she could interrupt yet.

"Umm, sir?" Scott said, deciding the matter for her.

"Yes, Scott?" Professor Xavier said.

"That's… not exactly right."

Once again, the professor was forced to repeat his student's words with dread. "Not right?"

"It wasn't exactly unease…"

"He saw my dreams, too," Jean blurted out.

Professor Xavier looked to Scott for confirmation. Scott was looking down at his hands in his lap again. "You saw her dreams, as well."

"Yessir."

"I suppose if Jean's nightmares upset her, it would only be natural for her grip on her shields to fail. Shields dropped naturally when asleep, causing thoughts to be louder. Add to that the distress of a nightmare, and I suppose she could have projected her own dreams onto a nearby mind. It has been known to happen

As he trailed off, steepling his fingers thoughtfully, Jean tried to tell herself that he was the expert and was more likely to know about these things than she did, even if it did sound like he was thinking out loud and not very sure of what he was saying at all. There was one too many "suppose"s in his speech for her liking. But he was the professor and he was probably right, even if the explanation didn't seem to explain why it was only Scott and Jean who had been affected by this, not anyone else.

Jean felt something tickle at the edges of her mind. The Professor looked up sharply.

"There is something there. There's—" He cut off abruptly, which only made Jean even more nervous.

She could feel the shock leaking out of Professor Xavier, whose control over his shields was normally so perfect that even on her worst days, Jean had never seen behind them before now. Beside her, Scott seemed to be picking up on their mentor's concern, sitting up a little straighter on his chair.

Professor Xavier abruptly remembered himself, tightening his shields so Jean no longer felt the concern seeping from them. Then he spoke to assuage their fears.

"Nothing's wrong. Nothing that can't be fixed," he started, the words obviously meant to be more comforting than they were. "It's my own fault, really. I should have noticed long before now, especially since, as you were saying, this has been going on for some time now.

"You've formed a bond with each other, a telepathic bond. It's faint, but it's there. Thankfully, because you were both trying so hard to perfect your shielding, it didn't progress too far, nor interfere with your life while you were awake. But while you slept, you were more vulnerable, particularly when you had nightmares. After the first time Jean's mind reached out and formed a bond, it was easier to connect subsequent times."

He had been addressing both of them, but now he turned to Jean. "I don't know why you latched onto Scott the first time instead of someone else. Maybe it was the proximity."

He hesitated here, slightly, and Jean might have realized he wasn't convinced of that explanation, if she weren't too busy berating herself for forming a bond with Scott without his permission. While she wasn't entirely sure what a bond entailed, she was sure that it was considered rude in the telepathic circles.

Sometimes she wished that there was a book of rules for telepaths. Her mother was a big fan of etiquette books, and although Jean had never enjoyed reading them, there were some circumstances when it would be helpful.

That was, of course, provided she could ever gain the slightest iota of control over her abilities.

But as usual, Professor Xavier continued on instead of waiting for Jean to get past her self-criminations.

"Since the bond is still faint, it should be easy to break."

"Break?" Scott asked sharply.

"Yes, Scott, break," Professor Xavier repeated. "I'm afraid it's the only option. It won't hurt," he added, deducing Scott's cause of concern. "You won't feel a thing."

Jean felt the professor's presence in her mind.

And then it was over.

End Part Nine