Author's Note:

I'm sorry I've made loyal readers (if any remain) wait so long for the end of this fic. Yes, this is the end. Only recently did I receive that fateful 56th review and finally have time to start writing small ficlets like this. I hate leaving fics unfinished, primarily because I hate reading fics that end abruptly because the writer got bored. For this reason, I feel I have the responsibility to finish the story.

This is the end. I'm sorry if it is not as satisfying as you would wish; I did have greater plans for this story. I've lost touch with Jean, with the X-Men. I only hope to provide a bit of closure to this story (if not to lead you to a jumping off point, to where it might have continued, to where someone might decide to start from some other day).

Please enjoy, review, and thank you, thank you, thank you to all those who have read, enjoyed and reviewed—or simply enjoyed.

And of course, thank you to the X-Men.


Months pass, boundaries are established and life continues. After her muddled and emotional meeting with the Professor, Jean grows stronger. To most, she becomes a different person; to some, she is simply herself or something she used to be and should've been. Jean has stopped doubting the conundrums inherent in her personality and psyche and now simply accepts them. After she stormed from the Professor's office, after Logan tried to comfort her in the hallway and she could only repeat "I'm sorry" in sobs as she collapsed, she stopped apologizing. She woke up, Logan curled up behind her, and in the dark night storm (undoubtedly the result of a very angry Storm) she reached a calm and decided she was who she was, and she no longer cared what anyone else thought.

Jean was tired of crying, tired of thinking about things that could have been. Jean was exhausted from trying to separate her personalities, before and after and now. She realizes she is not immortal and wants to believe in some sort of fate. So Jean accepts that she is alive, she is changed, and stops trying to analyze herself.

She morphs into something the Professor can only analyze by saying she is half "old Jean" and half "the Phoenix personality." Jean thinks this is who she should've been all along.

Scott…Jean still doesn't understand why she destroyed Scott. Maybe it was to save him from this—from her true awareness, from the reality that when she was finally whole, she would choose Logan over him. She loved Scott and still loves him. But it's over, done with—she is still here, as is Logan.

Months after her confrontation with the Professor, Jean lies awake in bed, limbs tangled with Logan's. The humid summer night seeps in through the open window; Logan rises and falls with the breath at the nape of her neck. She hasn't broken down since that meeting and rarely thinks of Alkali Lake. She does not swim and does not leave the mansion. It is an unconscious choice, and from an analytical perspective, she has dealt with her new reality simply by not thinking about her life and past. Jean isn't simply ignoring life—she's living every day to the fullest extent she can think of, she is calm and she is poised…she is even truly happy on occasion. Her mind is simply elsewhere, in a place she does not actively seek out. It's difficult to explain, but Logan does not ask questions. He only laughs and smiles, trails kisses down her neck as she giggles and tries to return the favor.


The Professor looks at her with perplexing eyes and she must suppress the strange impulse to laugh.

They do not speak now; their conversations and words are used sparingly, pointlessly. She does not attend his classes or lectures. Jean does not attend X-Meetings. She teaches her own classes, does her own research. A part of her misses their old chats, but for the most part, she is content to let him stare at her, puzzling over what lies in her psyche, in the snap changes in her personality (ies). In their occasional chats, in the empty spaces between the Professor's false affability and the end to her sparse answers and cryptic questions, she is content to smile like a sphinx or Cheshire cat while his eyes sparkle with curiosity and maddening urge to reach out and just touch…to probe for only a microsecond and understand what this woman is. But he doesn't, for even though Jean lacks all power of genes, he has no idea what his gentle probing might unlock.


The mansion tolerates her. Children see her as a kindly doctor, the older inhabitants smile and make conversation. Many actually like and/or respect her. Sure, they find her slightly odd—she is kind, thoughtful, but there is a biting wit and sarcasm few remember, Jean has an edge to her words and actions and when she speaks the listener can't help but feel she knows something no one else can perceive or understand. Jean is still sweet, but now she flows and ebbs around the day. People can't help notice when she walks and speaks. Jean is hypnotic in an imperceptible way.

There still lingers that old fear, that knowledge that once she did something terrible, she murdered so many—but her state of mind extends to those who surround her.

If there is something terrible in this, they are not the ones to know.


In warm fields, cicadas buzzing in the summer air, plain grasses waving in the wind, Jean leans back into Logan's embrace. They sit against an oak tree, out in the field beyond easy sight of the mansion. He murmurs into her ear and she chuckles back, squirming in his grasp as he jokes and she laughs and he smiles.

The field hums with life, the breeze cooling the sun-baked small expanse. To Jean, this place is glowing. To Logan, this is all he's ever wanted.


Jean and Logan left in the morning, picnic basket in hand. It is late afternoon when Marie arrives at the dusk-burnt oak, tired but pale, shifting from foot to foot.

Her face is bloodless, her mouth soundlessly opening and closing, barely enough to be seen. It is unclear whether she is gasping for breath or the ability to speak.

Logan can feel fear and apprehension, confusion and slowly forming hysteria ebbing off Marie in waves. He looks her up and down, alarmed now too, his face knit and perplexed.

"Marie, what's wrong?" Logan asks loudly, all business, still holding Jean who is similarly troubled.

Marie's wearing a white lacy shirt and a pale red skirt; her outfit contrasts with her dusty black gloves.

She gapes; the words tumble out in strange, uncontrollable tongue. "The news…it's all over the news. We were just watching—but—but the serum…they're saying. I was afraid!" Her voice starts to falter, but she continues on.

"I was afraid…Bobby, I mean, I could've…we don't know…they're testing everybody but I thought I should let you guys know because of Jean and—and—and—"

At this point, Marie's voice completely breaks and she sinks to her knees in the twilight, words fading to sobs as she shakes, tears falling in the field. Logan immediately moves to comfort her and remembers, Jean is sitting on my lap as an afterthought, and realizes suddenly why it did not occur to him sooner. Jean is already gone; she's at the edge of the field, sprinting away from him towards the mansion.

As the sun fades, Jean is gone, and Logan is alone in the field with Marie, who wears gloves. Marie wears gloves. He does not know how to comfort her, but is so sorry.


The entire mansion is gathered in the living room, the news networks are bursting with pundits and reporters and reports of the serum failing, mutants reasserting their powers, high security prison breaks and the need to reestablish control and so much pandemonium. Everyone in the mansion stands in fear as different mutants everywhere are shepherded off to confinement and bedrooms and told don't come down to dinner just stay where you are!

And in the future, there will be chaos like never before. In the near future, they will find Jean locked in the Med Bay, numerous drained needles jammed in to her arms and legs, sobbing hysterically, "It doesn't work…Nothing works!"

And in the future, everything will change and become as it once was. In the spirit of Jean's initial transformation, society returns to hating mutants, the Brotherhood returns to hating everyone, and the Mansion returns to a high security fortress school.

Nobody touches Jean anymore—they say she's unstable and she stays in isolation with Logan as her only comfort and the Professor's voice from another room as her only outside contact. Strange how she could find him and rip him to shreds easily despite the separation.

She has no wish to do so, no wish to hear Ororo's screamed arguments with mansion dwellers about putting her down! Jean hears these things unbidden, and screams because she doesn't want to bear this and doesn't want to worry about destroying everything she cares about.

In the future, planes and army bases aim missiles and rockets toward the mansion, and only Jean knows.

And in the future, ironically, only Jean, the most unstable and damaged, can in her infinite awareness save them all.

But in the present, at the edge of darkened field, Jean crumples to the ground, silent torrents of tears hitting the dusty ground as she glimpses the rest of time. And as waves of unbidden power surge through her veins, she can see these pictures of the future and in her infinite power, feels only as if she is drowning.


Fin.