Sorry this took so long – again, school. I used to write in Physics, but suddenly we started actually learning physics and I had pay attention or Professor Summers would've been ashamed of me, wouldn't he? (Hmm, now I'm taking this too far...) If someone set up Fanfiction College with X-Men as a major, I could drop everything and write, I guess... ;;
I am very pleased with how this chapter turned out. Xavier is a little off, but I'm happy I got some action in!
How many times I have used the word 'Jean'? It's like the comics, when Jean's only line was "Scott!" for decades. By the way, I'm aware Scott would probably never say 'specious prevarication', especially when losing his temper, but lo, such a mellifluous phrase!
Finally, as I type this, I'm about to hit ONE HUNDRED REVIEWS! I never dreamed of this when I was first planning this as a one-shot vignette...You guys are the BEST:D
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jean awoke, shivering, and jumped as she saw her own face staring back at her. She was in her bathroom, almost to her ankles in cold water, looking into the mirror – she'd fallen asleep on her feet. A stream of water was running from the tap upwards in an arc over her head onto the floor, looping in midair. Water droplets from the shower were bouncing gently off the walls.
Everything else was levitating – her toothbrush, comb, soap, and a few palettes of makeup that were being ruined by the water, bleeding streams of red and black and blue onto the floor.
Jean took a deep breath and the objects fell back down to earth. Other than her numb feet, the rest of her was perfectly dry. Maybe she was dreaming. Still dreaming.
--
In his own room, Scott was turning in his sleep. If he'd been awake, he would have heard the sound of running water from Jean's room down the hall and gone to check on her, but he was deep in a dream of his own.
In his dream, he was in the infirmary, standing behind Jean. Jean opened a drawer and studied the labels of a particolored wall of medications. Eventually she took down a bottle and shook six sleeping pills into her palm.
Scott put out a hand. "Jean, you need to stop. This is the third time this week..."
Jean ignored him. The pills were shaped like diamonds.
He tried to speak again, "If there's something wrong, Jean..."
Small blue diamonds. She put four back into the bottle. "Hmm?"
"Jean..." His voice cracked. "I care about you."
She turned unhurriedly to face him. "I'm just tired. I haven't been sleeping well. Dreams."
Scott hesitated. "Nightmares?"
Jean shook her head slowly, smiling. "Ambitions."
--
Jean opened her eyes again. She didn't know she'd closed them.
The tap was still running. She didn't even remember turning that on – it was as though someone else entirely had done it. Jean was reaching forward to shut it off, but as she caught sight of her reflection, she felt suddenly curious.
"I can only manipulate the metal in this..." Magneto had begun. Yes, he'd been there, he'd always been there to witness what she could do...
"...but you, you can do anything. Anything you can imagine."
To make her feel powerful.
So where was he? He'd always been there, and she wanted him to be there again when she executed the plan that had suddenly come to mind:
Mutation. It is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, normally taking thousands of years. But every few hundred millenia...
Let's see if we can't speed that up a bit.
Phoenix has risen.
--
Still dreaming, Scott was trying to speak again, but the words wouldn't come out. Jean was twitchy, and she wouldn't look him in the eye. Abruptly, Jean said, "You don't remember Annie. I'm not surprised. No one remembers Annie. No one remembers the ones who don't survive." She turned on her heel and left the infirmary.
"Only the strongest survive," Scott called after her. His voice echoed down the empty hallway.
Scott ran to the wall of bottles and began sweeping them off their shelves. When the bottles touched the floor, they burst open, and pills of all shapes and sizes flew out and swarmed around his head like hornets as he screamed, "Jean! Jean! Jean!"
"Jean!"
Scott bolted awake, alone in his bed, screaming. Scott heard the water running in Jean's room, and suddenly knew she was gone.
--
"Logan, wake up. Listen to me carefully."
"Wha- what?" Logan sat up in bed, looking around wildly. Moonlight streamed through the shutters in his room. "Professor?"
The voice coursed through his brain again. "No time to explain. Logan, run as fast as you can and fetch Leech. His room is on the second floor, the east corridor. Go, now!"
His body acted on instinct. Logan swung his legs out of bed and flung his door open – it slammed against the wall, surely waking up half the school – and he ran.
"Second floor, east corridor... third door on your left. Hurry!"
Third door on the left, third door on the left...
"Carry the boy – run down to Cerebro. Take the back stairs!"
He was giving further instructions, but Logan barely heard them. Cold dread clenched and knotted his stomach. He banged open the third door and without breaking his stride, scooped up the sleeping boy.
Other room doors were opening, and students were pouring into the hallways. Marie was standing in his path. "Logan, what's going on?"
"Move!" he yelled hoarsely, shoving students aside clumsily with the boy held in his arms. Some of the younger children were screaming and crying. Leech was waking up and squirming in his grip. Time slowed to a crawl, and the only thing Logan could think of was, Jean...
"Auugghh!"
He was facing down the corridor leading to Cerebro, still carrying Leech. A tight pain was shooting up his left leg. He saw spots.
"Professor Logan?" Leech gasped.
Down the end of the hall, the reinforced steel doors of Cerebro slid open. Jean stood in the doorway, half smiling to herself. "Logan."
"Jean?"
Not a flicker in her expression. Not Jean.
"Hold onto the boy, Logan. Don't come any closer."
Logan took a step forward, and the pain in his leg became so excruciating that it buckled beneath him.
"Don't disobey me, Logan. Any closer, and the boy will be the next to have a torn tendon. And right now he hasn't got a healing factor either."
Logan gasped for breath, clutching his leg. "Jean, stop. You're not yourself. You don't realize what you're doing..."
"Don't stand in her way, Logan," Xavier's voice rang out in his mind again.
Phoenix tilted her head slightly. Listening in.
"I'm sorry, Logan. It's too late. Let her go."
"Professor!"
"Logan, you can't stop her now. She will hurt you and Leech if you try. Let her go."
Logan gritted his teeth. "No!"
He lifted his leg to venture shaky step forward, but found his body turning, so that he took a step in the opposite direction. "Stop... controlling me..." he gasped, sweat beading on his forehead with the effort of trying to resist.
Phoenix raised a hand carelessly. Farewell.
And then without warning, a pair of hands wrapped around Logan's throat, throttling him. The hands were his own, he dimly realized, before he passed out.
--
When Leech ran downstairs with Moira MacTaggert hot on his heels, Scott was already kneeling by Logan's prone body, shaking him roughly awake.
"Where is she? Where did she go?" Scott yelled hoarsely, throat too dry to cry out, as Logan came to.
Moira laid a hand on Scott's shoulder. Hers eyes were closed as Xavier spoke through her, "Scott, calm down."
Logan whirled on Moira. "What did you do this time, Xavier? She was fine, she was herself again until tonight!"
"I... I let her go. I couldn't stop her. None of us could."
Scott lost it. "I've had it with your specious prevarication, Xavier! You tell us what's going on right now, or - " Logan restrained him.
Moira-as-Xavier spoke rapidly. "I think I've figured it out. Jean naturally fights against the other side of her personality, but when she's asleep, the Phoenix exerts greater control. Tonight, the Phoenix broke out again."
"But you can't stop a person from sleeping," Logan argued.
"No," said Moira-Xavier, "but you can keep her from waking up again. The Phoenix is the preponderant – "
With a strangled yell, Scott slammed his fist against a wall. "If you knew it was going to happen again, why didn't you make a plan earlier?"
"She broke the code of telepathy – that's trust. Jean would never have done that – she wanted to change, she promised not to test the boundaries. I knew I was not capable of stopping the Phoenix's revolt, but as long as Jean herself could hold it back... You fight fire with fire, but now we aren't dealing with Jean anymore."
"She came out of Cerebro. Who was she looking for?" Scott burst out, unable to keep a sob out of his voice.
Moira concentrated. "I picked up her thoughts. Erik... Magneto. I assume he's been in hiding. He and Jean were very close."
"I'll go after her," Logan said immediately. Scott exchanged a look with him and for the first time, the two were united in their resolve. "There must be some way..."
"No. I don't know where Magneto is, and I need to physically be in contact with Cerebro in order to run a search."
With his next words, Xavier's voice went directly to Logan and Scott, bypassing Moira so she wouldn't hear him. "But what troubles me, is that I'm certain we'll see him and Jean very soon."
--
Please keep reading and reviewing! I do this for all of you. :D