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And now what you've been waiting for...
"Good afternoon, Jean."
"Hi, Professor."
Jean had been coming here for five years now. She had been skeptical at first, eleven years old and a mix of brash and scared. She had known there was something wrong, and a meeting with someone her father knew in college seemed unlikely to help.
She could now honestly say that she had been wrong. Her parents didn't even need to give her a ride anymore. She had driven herself here today and was proud of that.
It was entirely possible the car jumped the curb on the way over, but that was beside the point!
"How have you been this week?" Professor Xavier always began with that question.
Jean smiled tightly. "Mostly it was pretty good."
She smoothed her skirt as she took a seat. The office was familiar now and she always chose the same seat. Before Professor Xavier, her parents sent her to see several shrinks; any time one of them told her to choose a seat, she had took the shrink's.
Obviously, that hadn't been an option here.
"Mostly?"
"Well…"
At sixteen, Jean was a high school sophomore. They had spent weeks discussing strategies for the inevitable: finals week. Like most mutants, she had a strong connection between her emotions and her gifts. The stress of exams was always a challenge.
Professor Xavier gave her a sympathetic look.
"It happened again," Jean said, clutching her hands together. "Once my powers get started, it's harder and harder to get back under control. It started out as some papers rustling, but I panicked."
"What happened next?"
She looked away, shaking her head.
"It's all right, Jean."
She sighed. "I messed up."
"You're still learning. You slipped."
"I don't understand why we have to talk about it. It happened, it was an accident, it won't happen again."
Even she knew the flaw in that logic. It would happen again. Although her control over her power was improving, the 'slip' indicated that she still had work to do. She didn't want to talk about it, though.
The explanation Professor Xavier gave, albeit kindly, was one she had heard before. "It's okay to make mistakes, but you must be able to accept them. Accepting your gifts is the only way you can learn to control them. You don't need to be ashamed of losing control."
Yeah, but she was.
She shook her head and forced herself to say it, like it didn't matter, "The papers got swept off the desks, some books fell of the shelves. A couple of lightbulbs burst." Knowing what came next, "Nobody got hurt. I mean somebody's cheek was cut." By the end of her explanation she had wrapped her braid around her fingers and was breathing differently.
"What are you feeling right now, Jean?"
"Fine."
"Jean."
"I'm fine!" she snapped.
The curtains trembled.
She shook her head.
"Deep breath."
That would be a problem. She was having a hard time getting any breath; her powers reached out to the world around her and her telekinesis was easier to use with things she could see but now, when she lost control she could feel everything in the room.
"It's not—I'm okay."
"You're not okay."
He was right. He was usually right and nine times in ten Jean appreciated it, liked having access to an expert on the craziness her life her become.
She would have liked him to be wrong now.
The chess piece scattered.
"Jean."
When the lights started to flicker, she felt her mood change and knew what had happened. Most of the time, Professor Xavier worked with her to teach her to control both her gifts and her emotions. Sometimes, in bad moments, he used his powers to calm her mind.
For a moment, she simply caught her breath. The lights were off, but natural light from the windows was sufficient and far more pleasant. She heard the unevenness, though. The way her lungs felt uneven. It was like coming down from a migraine: her body felt wrung and her head raw.
She pressed her hands over her eyes.
"It was so embarrassing," she moaned. "The whole class saw." They hadn't known it was her, but they saw. They knew that someone in their class was a mutant.
She continued, "Everyone was talking about it the next day. They whispered all through our AP Euro exam. And I had to do it, too, I wanted to seem normal and some of the girls was actually pretty freaked out and I don't even remembered who got defenestrated in Prague."
That had been her last day of school. Jean was surprised to find how long she could talk about it, but by the end of the conversation she really did feel better.
The scattered chess pieces turned into a practice exercise as she raised them back to the board. Jean sat up straight and focused on breathing to gather her focus. Then the first piece shakily lifted itself onto the board. It landed with a series of taps in the second-farthest row.
Jean smiled. It was an unsteady smile, but a smile nonetheless.
She chose to fix the entire board. It took a little over half an hour and there were sweat trails on her face when she finished, but she was proud. She looked to Professor Xavier for confirmation.
"Well done," he told her, though he did move closer to the table and switch the rooks and the bishops.
Whoops. She was still pleased with what she had done—and he appeared to be, as well.
"Your precision has come such a long way. You're doing wonderfully."
She had to laugh: "Do you remember the test with the sponges?"
Professor Xavier laughed, too. "I remember someone pouring a bucket of water over my head."
"It was too hard!"
"You had two-foot ranges. Compared to where you are today, it's child's play."
Jean smiled, even though she knew she had behaved like a child. Then she tilted her head as it listening and changed the subject:
"Who's here?"
"I'm sorry?"
He sounded surprised. It was rare she actually surprised him.
"When I was… um… disheveling your office, when my powers were out of control, I could feel other minds. Not just you and me. You knew about that… right?"