Even if Warren's plane had left Anchorage at 11:06 on Friday night, it was almost an eight-hour flight back to New York. With time zone changes and the drive from the airport, they didn't expect to make it to the mansion much before noon.
Jean used the time to study printouts of the data Hank had emailed to Warren (encoded) before they'd checked out of the hotel. Scott and Warren used the time to sleep: Warren sprawled on a bench near the plane's tail, his wings sliding out to cover most of the cabin floor, and Scott with his head in her lap. She didn't think Scott was really asleep - he hated to fly if he wasn't in the pilot seat - but at least he was dozing.
Warren's staff mostly slept, too, though Aaron Mayfield was pretending to read one of Ludlum's Bourne books while he watched her over the top of it. Of the three men, he was the only one who knew her on sight, and she'd sifted through his mind enough to know he doubted she really was (the formerly dead) Jean Grey, but if it turned out she was, then her resurrection scared the bejesus out of him. She didn't like the flavor of either thought, but wasn't sure what to do about it. After a while, tired of his covert observation, she slipped tendrils into his mind, tweaking here and there, until he slid into sleep himself, book spread across his chest. That left quiet minds on the plane, just herself and the pilot - and Scott who'd start awake, hear the dull roar of the engines, then drift off again.
About five-thirty Alaska time (nine-thirty Eastern), Scott abruptly sat up and ran fingers through his hair. "I'm going to relieve the pilot, let him stretch his legs a little." Rising, he crossed to the cockpit door, opened it, said something, then disappeared inside. Five minutes later, the pilot emerged, gave her a brief grin, and sprawled on the bench opposite, chin sagging on his chest as he took the opportunity to nap. Jean wondered if Scott were truly being thoughtful, or if he just couldn't stand not having his hands on the controls anymore. She suspected the latter, and, in fact, he flew the rest of the way to New York.
Waking as the plane landed, Warren moved forward through the cabin, his wing rack half on, to request her assistance securing it. As she did so, he asked, "Scott in the cockpit?"
"Where else? The pilot went back up there about forty-five minutes ago, to assist, but I'd bet a whole half-gallon of ice cream that Scott landed us."
He smiled and tapped one temple. "You didn't check?"
Frustrated, she tugged on the rack. "No, Warren. I did not check."
His smile fell away and he turned to look at her. "I was kidding."
"I know. But I'm not. I could have checked, yes - but I didn't."
She held his eyes for ten seconds before he dropped his gaze. "Touché," was all he said.
Warren's limousine was waiting at the airport, just as it had been nine months before when he'd flown into Westchester after receiving news of Jean's death. Now, Jean was with him, and the three of them all piled into the limo's rear. (His staff was returning to the city.) As they rode, he watched Jean stare out at the passing countryside, and thought about what she'd said on the plane. He had to admit that a great deal of his anxiety stemmed less from anything she'd done than from what she could do - which he knew to be unfair. Jean was a doctor, compassionate and deeply moral. She was hardly going to mutate into a super-powered villain. There were worse things, he thought, than having someone that strong on the side of the angels (pun intended).
Warren, he heard suddenly in his head and suppressed a start.
What?
Your assistant, Mr. Mayfield - I'm not sure what to do about him.
Tendrils of alarm snuck back in. What do you mean?
He knows who I am, and was watching me on the plane for a long time. He doesn't believe I'm really me, and doesn't trust me. I'm not sure if we can trust him.
What would you suggest? He resisted narrowing his eyes.
I don't know. She frowned as she kept looking out the window, and he wondered why she didn't want Scott to hear this exchange. He's your employee - what would you suggest?
He's been with me five years. He knows a lot of secrets.
Do you think he'll keep this one?
She sounded worried, and he shoved down his own anxiety to consider the matter more objectively. If he didn't have any fears about Mayfield under normal circumstances - the man was loyal to a fault - this wasn't a "normal" circumstance. He also recalled Xavier's more aggressive approach to security of late. Could you make him forget?
Easily, but the other two saw me as well, not to mention the pilot.
Could you make them all forget? Or make them all remember a generic hiree?
I could do either, but if so, I need to do it now, before there are too many threads.
Warren thought about it. Xavier had wanted Jean brought back and kept under wraps to re-emerge at the right time. That suggested a need for special caution. Okay - make them forget entirely; that's probably safest.
She just nodded. There was no outward sign, no waving of hands or wiggling of noses, like Bewitched, not even a closing of eyes.
Is it done? he asked.
Done, she replied.
"Welcome home."
Scott opened the mansion's big front door, and Jean entered, Warren behind. The columned main hall was empty except for two figures, sitting on a bench near the door to the professor's office - Jean's parents. They hurried forward even as she ran to meet them. All three embraced, clinging tightly, then Jean drew back to glance about. "Where is everyone?" When they'd set down at the airport, she'd notified the professor that they were on the way.
"The kids are waiting in the dining hall," her father said. "Charles wanted the three of you to get in the door before you were ambushed. Plus, it's lunchtime."
The professor had probably wanted to give her a few moments alone with her parents, as well, Jean thought. She'd called them yesterday after talking to the professor. She would have called the first morning she'd remembered herself, but had known if she'd done so, they'd have headed straight to Alaska, no matter what she might have said to dissuade them, and it would only have complicated things.
"I'll take the bags upstairs," Warren said now from behind, and Jean turned.
"You don't have to -"
"I'll be back down in a minute."
"Warren -"
"I'll be back down. I'm not running off; I'm just taking the bags up." And he walked away, dragging their rolling luggage draped with suitbags.
Frowning, Jean watched him go. "He didn't have to do that."
"Well, it only takes one person," her mother said, oblivious to the dynamics. "You and Scott go on now; the kids are waiting. Then come upstairs. We're in our usual room on the third floor."
She glanced at them both. "Don't you want to eat lunch?"
"We already ate."
"Okay." She kissed their cheeks. "I'll see you in a little while, but then I need to go down to the lab with Hank. Something really important has come up."
"We understand. Charles told us."
Steeling her mind to face a crowd, Jean turned to where Scott waited. He drew her hand up to rest in the crook of his elbow, like a knight with his lady, and led her down the central hallway towards the dining room doors. Opening them revealed the usual boisterous chaos of lunch and nostalgia pierced Jean so that she stood a moment, watching, gripping Scott's arm tightly. Then Terry saw her, and stopped talking in mid-sentence. Silence caught, and conversations stuttered to a stop as heads swiveled. For three beats, no one moved. Then the students did a surprising thing. Almost as one, they rose to their feet and applauded her.
It wasn't what she'd expected, or been prepared for, and even if obviously rehearsed, it was no less sincere for that. "Why are they doing this?" she whispered, but Scott, just as surprised, had no answer.
You saved their lives. It was the professor in her head. Or at least, you saved the lives of some of them, at the cost of your own.
But I'm not dead.
No - but you didn't know it wouldn't be permanent when you walked off that plane, did you?
Tears sprang hot in the corners of her eyes and trickled down beside her nose. She wiped at them surreptitiously, unable to speak. There were no words to contain what she felt in that moment. Letting go of Scott, she moved forward a few steps, and that released something. Children surged forward, ringing her, reaching out to touch her arm, her hand, her shoulder, her back, assuring themselves she was really there. Bursting bright in the minds of everyone present were images of fireworks, courtesy of Artie - the first time he'd used his telepathic imaging since Jean had died. Now, he wiggled his way through the crowd to Jean's side, arms thrown around her and head pressed to her body as if he were four, not fourteen. She hugged him back, still tearing up, but laughing now, too. "I'm home," she kept saying, over and over. "I'm home."
After dropping off Scott's luggage (Jean didn't have any), Warren returned to his own usual suite, opening windows to air it out and fetching towels from the hall closet. It hadn't been prepared for him, as he hadn't originally planned to return here. The advent of Jean had changed things.
But even after the room was ready for an occupant, and despite what he'd said to Jean, he didn't hurry back downstairs. Standing at the large windows that overlooked the balcony below, he stared up at the sky. He needed the open air; it always helped him to clear his head, but even night flights hadn't been possible from their downtown Anchorage hotel. Here, though, he had sufficient privacy to risk flying. So he shed his jacket and undid the wing rack (much more difficult when he was by himself), then stretched out his wings, flexing the pectoral and deltoid muscles before taking to the sky. The last thing he needed was cramping at two-thousand feet.
Climbing up on the extended ledge (the room had been modified for his sake), he extended his wings, balancing lightly, then launched himself into the blue summer sky, spiraling upward. His wings were constructed for soaring, albeit with an extra joint that bird wings lacked. Hank had once called him a strange cross between a bat and an eagle. Now, he flapped strongly to gain altitude, but glanced down before he got very high - and spotted a distinctive indigo blob crouched on the mansion's eastern gable, near Ororo's attic. Kurt.
Warren considered flying on - Kurt was probably seeking solitude, too - but his curiosity got the better of him. Why was Kurt up there instead of down in the dining hall to greet Jean? Spiraling, he came in to land lightly. "Can I join the party, or would you rather be alone?"
Kurt made a welcoming gesture. "Bitte. We shall again be the angel and the gargoyle on the roof."
Warren grinned and settled his wings, crouching down by Kurt. "What brings you to the roof anyway? I figured you'd be downstairs with Ro and everyone else."
"I am not an old friend of dem Fräulein Doktor, and this is the coming home for her." Kurt shook his head, then eyed Warren shrewdly. "What brings you to the roof? You are an old friend, nicht wahr?"
"I carried up the luggage."
"To the roof?" Kurt seemed amused by this, and was looping his tail.
Warren rolled his eyes. "No, you goose. I carried the luggage upstairs, then thought I'd have a fly before going back down to eat."
Kurt nodded and they sat in silence a minute before Warren asked, point blank, "Are you really up here because you don't think you know Jean well enough, or for other reasons?"
"Are you really up here to return the luggage and fly, or for other reasons?" Kurt's expression was sly.
"That's a polite way of telling me I'm being nosey." Germans, Warren had learned, were less informal and familiar than Americans.
Kurt just grinned. "A little nosey, but it is all right."
"She's not a ghost, you know."
"Nein. But what is she?"
That was the real question. "She's Jean." It was all he could say.
"You are certain of this?"
"Yes. The rest of it, I don't know. But she is Jean. And she's not dangerous, or doesn't mean to be. She died to save you, Kurt - all of you."
"Ja, it is true. And she was kind to me, from the first."
"But she scares you." Warren felt surprisingly defensive of her, considering.
"And she scares you."
It wasn't a question, and Warren couldn't deny it. Instead, he said again, "She's not dangerous."
Kurt didn't reply for a while, then he asked a question. "Have you read the Bible, Warren? The story of the Garden of Eden in the Genesis?"
Warren blinked, unsure what that had to do with anything. "Yeah, sure, but it was a while ago."
"Do you remember why Adam and Eve had to leave?"
"They ate an apple?" Warren couldn't fathom where this was going.
"They ate the fruit, genau. Apple, pear - they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Do you know why?"
"Wasn't there a snake involved somewhere?"
"Ja - the Tempter. But that is not why they ate, not really."
Warren found himself curious. "Why then?"
"They wanted to know the good from the evil. It was not just the Tree of Knowledge, but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you see. There are many ways to read that story, but I like the one I was told by an old priest. Adam and Eve fell not because they wanted to be bad. They fell because they wanted to be good - like unto gods. That is how the Serpent tempted them. They wanted the knowledge of God, but did not have the wisdom to use it wisely. We do not do our greatest evil to be evil. Even Herr Hitler did not think he was evil - nor Herr Stryker. We do our greatest evil when we try to do good, but forget we are mortal and lose the humility, nickt wahr?"
That interpretation wasn't one Warren had ever heard before. "So you're saying people are bad because they want to be good?"
Kurt smiled. "In a manner of speaking. We do bad for many reasons, but I think the greatest evils come from those who try to do what they think is the right thing. The others, they are small evils - of selfishness, of fear, of the idle cruelty. But the worst evils, the great evils, they are done in the name of good, or what the one doing them thinks is good."
Kurt turned his lambent eyes on Warren. "The true devils are thinking they are angels - pardon the pun."
Things in New York's Mutieville were worse than Mystique had feared. A lot of the sick simply weren't going to the hospital. "There ain't nothing anyone can do, and they'll just stick us in isolation. I don't wanna die alone," she was told on more than one occasion.
"You selfish fool," Mystique snarled back at one woman. "Did it never occur to you that you're spreading the disease? Maybe they can't do anything for you, but at least you could show some consideration for the rest of the mutant community and take your infected self off the street!"
The woman's response was to spit. Fortunately, Mystique was wearing clothes - real clothes - as well as a face mask and latex gloves, which she fully intended to burn as soon as she got out of the area. "Bitch," the woman said. "What's 'the mutant community' ever done for me? Don't you get it? There ain't no 'mutant community.' This place is just a junkyard for human rejects."
Mystique resisted arguing; it wouldn't have mattered, anyway. "Come, John," she said, turning to leave the dreadful, hot, dirty building with its spray-paint artwork on the exterior, and neither running water nor electricity. John rose, too, from where he'd been squatting down to talk to some girl; his gloves were off. Seeing that, Mystique snapped, "Did you touch anything?"
"I don't know - I don't think so."
"Good. Put your gloves back on - now. And follow me."
"Why? Where are we going?" he asked, following her up the old basement stairs and out through the door onto the street. "Aren't we going to do anything for them? I thought we came here to do something?"
"We did. We came to gather information. What do you think I did all yesterday at St. Luke's?"
Removing her face mask and gloves, she placed them in a plastic bag she'd brought, then held the bag open for John to do the same while she glanced around, taking note of the traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular. Not much of either at only 9:38 in the morning - past rush hour, but the shops (however few there were) hadn't yet opened. Excellent; she hadn't missed her window.
The building behind them was being used by the local mutant population as a makeshift clinic for the living; the dead - numbering twenty-seven now - were being stacked in another abandoned building a block over and down one street. She understood they moved new bodies at night. That the locals should have called the morgue to take those bodies away and incinerate them seemed obvious to Mystique, but these people were terrified of calling anyone lest they reveal the extent of infection still in the neighborhood. It might result in a raid by Public Health to find the sick still hiding. It probably would, but Mystique thought matters past intervention by the authorities. This had to be brought to an immediate halt.
"Since you so desperately want to 'do' something," she said to John, "you're about to get your chance." She turned to look at him. "I hope you're tough enough."
He threw out his chest, as she'd fully expected him to, and said, "I'm plenty tough. I can do whatever I have to."
She permitted him a smile. "Good." In fact, she wasn't at all convinced he could do it, but ego stroking might help, and she needed St. John Allerdyce's very unique power. "Come with me."
She led him down and over to the building where the dead bodies had been concealed. She'd lit a cigarette - an old habit, a waste of money she no longer pursued, but it was also unremarkable. Now she smoked as they walked, and when they passed the informal morgue, she tossed the butt near a wooden door lintel.
"So what am I supposed to do?" John asked her, baffled.
"Patience," she said. They crossed back over the street, but she was sure the butt would still be burning. She said to John, almost casually, "I want you to use the flame in that cigarette to burn the building to the ground."
He gaped at her. "You . . . what?"
"You heard me. It's full of dead bodies - an absolute breeding ground for further infection. Give our fallen brothers and sisters a proper pyre, Pyro."
It was just the kind of inspiring, martial language to appeal to a boy. His jaw firmed and his eyes narrowed. A street behind, she heard a distinctive whoosh, then a loud burst as the (remaining) building windows exploded outward, fueled by extreme heat. She already had a cell phone out (an old one with no GPS) and was calling the fire department. It was a call of barely 30 seconds - no time to trace, even had they thought to. The experts might expect arson, but John's mutant power would leave them with no concrete evidence of it.
Inside a minute, she could hear the far-away scream of fire engines as she and John moved on, circling back towards the building full of sick mutants. "You did well," she said. "You gave our friends a better funeral than anything the city would provide." She'd pulled another cigarette from the pack in her purse and lit it. At this point, she needed it. "But we're not done yet."
"What next?" he asked, encouraged by her praise - proud.
"The next part is why I asked if you could be tough. What we just did? That was the easy half. What comes next isn't easy - but it is necessary."
They'd drawn even with the unofficial infirmary they'd left fifteen minutes ago, and she paused. "Do you know how many mutants have died of this disease already?"
He shook his head.
"If we include not only the official count - now at twenty, I understand - but also the twenty-seven we just cremated, that's almost fifty, John. And it's spreading faster. We face a mutant plague - and the mutants here know it. That's why they won't go to the hospital. The first who did were put in isolation, but those who fell ill after - seeing what had happened to their fellows - have gone to ground. And while it's true we can't trust the government, in this case, the choice to hide is endangering other mutants. But the mutants here - they're too selfish and short-sighted to care. They can't be saved, John. They're going to die. Horribly."
Well, from what she'd seen, that wasn't strictly true, but odds were not in anyone's favor. Most of them would die, maybe all of them without the treatment and fluids a hospital could provide.
"This is a terrible disease. Those who contract it suffer from internal hemorrhaging, extreme diarrhea, and retching. Some choke on their own vomit. Others dehydrate in less than a day." Mystique watched John, who listened intently, still unaware quite where she was going. Taking a final drag, she flicked the cigarette near a wooden column holding up the building's ancient awning. It was canvas, and would catch quickly. "Would you want to die like that?" she asked, and obediently, he shook his head. "I didn't think so. Not even a dog should die like that."
She glanced over her shoulder. She could hear the approach of the fire engines; they'd arrive soon at the burning building one block over. Then she turned back to John, holding his eyes a moment, finally glancing aside to the cigarette butt that she'd discarded. "Don't make them suffer, John," she said, and walked away, crossing the street, headed for the subway.
Behind her, John stood for ten breaths before rushing after. "Wait a minute!" he demanded, catching her up. "Did you - do you mean what I think you meant?"
The fire trucks were screaming into Mutieville now. They'd be nearby, able to stop the blaze before it went further than the buildings that had to burn. "John," she said. "Those people aren't going to the hospital, and they will pass on the infection. There's no hope for them. But you - you have the ability to put a stop to that."
"You're asking me to kill them," he hissed.
"Kill them? They're already dead. And you didn't seem any too reluctant to kill the police officers who tried to arrest you at Bobby Drake's house."
"Those were flatlines. These are mutants."
"Yes, I know. And like I said, they're already dead mutants. I'm asking you to keep them from suffering even more than they already are - and to keep them from giving it to anyone else." She glanced sideways at him. She could feel hot wind from the fire a block away, blowing her hair. It was blonde and curly in her current form.
"You're horrible," he said now.
"Am I? You just said yourself that you wouldn't want to die like they will. Am I horrible for suggesting that you save them from that - or are you horrible for refusing?"
He shook his head, grunting in wordless protest. But she could see him thinking about it. She disliked using him this way, but it was an important step in his development, and utterly essential that they slow the spread of this plague. She had no illusions this act would stop it, but anything would help. And if she could help him to feel easier about the necessity, then so be it. "John," she said, letting her voice take on a pleading tone. "Think of that young girl you were talking to. She's already nearing the disease's final stages. By tomorrow morning, she'll be unable to keep down even water, retching convulsively until she tears the lining of her stomach. That bleeding will weaken her further. At the same time, she'll begin to suffer terrible diarrhea - also full of blood. She'll be too weak to move, at the end. Do you really want her to die in a pool of her own vomit, shit, and blood?"
And that did it; she could see both the horror and disgust twist his features. Once again, his jaw firmed and eyes narrowed, and behind them, she heard another whoosh and explosion of glass.
"Make it fast," she said. "They shouldn't suffer any more than absolutely necessary."
She led him away then towards the subway station, and pretended not to notice the wetness in his eyes. Let him weep for them. She'd forgotten how.
"So right now we're waiting for samples of the virus to grow so we can start sequencing it?"
"So the CDC can start sequencing it."
"Yes, yes - we're all working on this thing, Hank."
"Jean, you know they can't know you're involved -"
"I'm aware of that! Believe me, I'm aware of that!" Frustrated, she threw up her hands and stalked about the lab while he watched. He still felt as if he should be pinching himself. If genuinely happy she was alive, he was also hyperconscious of the fortunate chance of it all. No sooner had a complicated, deadly virus appeared on the world stage, threatening a mutant epidemic, than the world's (previous) leading expert on the mutant genome returned from the dead to help unravel the puzzle.
Hollywood couldn't have planned it better.
He also realized how unduly skeptical that sounded. Neither Scott, Warren, nor even Charles appeared to doubt this was Jean. She certainly looked like Jean, talked like Jean, and lost her temper like Jean. But why had she stayed dead for eight months only to resurrect now, at the very time the virus had been released? No one else had asked that question, or hadn't thought to ask it, but Hank hadn't been able to stop asking it since the previous evening.
He didn't want to doubt her, but it all seemed very . . . convenient, and Hank, a man of science, was skeptical of convenient serendipity. He wasn't sure there was a connection between Jean's return and the emergence of the virus - or what that connection might be, if it existed - but he wondered.
Now she paced around, picking things up and putting them back down. She was dressed in slacks and a white, darted cotton shirt beneath a lab coat with "Dr. Grey" stitched on the left breast. The lab coat had been hanging in her office, which still had her name on the door. No one had had the heart to remove either, even after so long. "What's the current status of the infected patients?" she was saying.
Shifting a little so he could perch more comfortably on the lab table, he said, "As of this morning when I checked in, there were twenty dead, another likely to die soon, and three recovered - two more since the girl Blink. They're all still in isolation, of course. Oh - and our sole non-mutant case? Turns out Agent Larry Trask was a mutant, after all."
"Three survivors and twenty dead makes crappy odds for the infected," she muttered. Abruptly, she stopped pacing and looked up at him. "I think the best place for me to start is with the DNA of those who've died, and the three survivors - see if I can pinpoint anything that connects those within each groups. How much DNA is sequenced already?"
"None. Right now, the hospital's only run PCRs on patients they weren't sure were mutants - some of whom are still alive. The others, alive or dead, were rather obvious - mostly inhabitants of Mutieville."
She frowned briefly, then shook her head. "Okay, let's get busy with the sequencing. I'll need you either to get me the data or bring me samples to run myself. It may save everyone time if I just run the samples here."
"Jean, I can't turn up mysterious data that doesn't seem to have come from anywhere if I'm going to use it later to support any theories."
"Ahrr!" She literally tore at her hair. "I hate this!" Then she rubbed her forehead. "All right, the simple solution is for you to show up with me at the hospital - say I'm a lab assistant the CDC sent in - and I can pitch in to help. I'll prep the DNA samples myself and run them."
"There's this little problem of restricted access . . . ."
She held up a hand and the air before it vibrated, then she was holding an ID card just like the one he was wearing on a lanyard about his neck.
"You were on TV and in the papers less than a year ago when you spoke before the Senate," he said. "You can't count on people failing to recognize you."
Now, her whole form seemed to melt, and when it solidified, it wasn't Jean. "Meet Madelyne Pryor, Hank."
For four seconds, he was simply too stunned to speak. Then he said, "Madelyne Pryor died in Alaska."
"But nobody here knows that, and nobody here will recognize her face. I wore it for almost six weeks; I can wear it again for this."
"Is that . . . right?" he asked.
Jean-Madelyne sighed. "I feel better about borrowing this form than some stranger's who I don't know. Madelyne wouldn't mind, not with lives at stake. She was in the air force because she believed in protecting people."
Yet Hank wondered if Madelyne would have felt the same about protecting mutants? Perhaps it was wrong to assume bigotry of a stranger, but Jean's blithe assumption that her accidental alter ego wouldn't have minded contributing her form to Jean's masquerade as a CDC lab tech bugged him. It created layer upon layer of fabrication, and if he understood Xavier's reasons for keeping Jean's return a secret, he thought the professor had meant she should stay at the mansion. "Can't I just tap one of the lab techs at St. Luke's to run the DNA, then send you the data?"
She eyed him. "Hank, if you were in my shoes, would you sit twiddling your thumbs in the sub-basement?"
And he frowned, because she had a point. "All right - but not today . . . or tomorrow, either." Her mouth opened but he raised one big hand. "Today is mostly over, and when I go back down there, I'll mention I might have someone coming in to help - so they're not surprised. Besides, the CDC isn't likely to fly up a lab tech on the weekend." In point of fact, he hoped the DNA samples could be finished before then so she didn't have to go down there at all. "And don't you think it a good idea to spend some time with Scott, Warren, and your parents? The urgency is real, yes. But so is taking time to settle back in."
Sighing, she crossed her arms and blew upward to stir Madelyne's bright orange-red bangs. "Okay. Point made." Then she shifted again, and it was Jean before him once more. He resisted shaking his head the way one might with an optical illusion.
Whatever expression his face showed, it caused her to smile, and she crossed to give him a bear hug. "Poor Hank. You'll get used to it, maybe faster than anyone else." Then she pulled back to look at him. "Speaking of which, Scott told me about the DNA sequences you ran on all of them, and on the samples I took of myself."
"The data's in the computer."
"Good. I want to look at that." And she wandered off to sit down at the SUN station, despite his admonition of a moment before that she ought to spend time settling in. He wasn't sure if she were just distracted, or if she'd forgotten.
"What about your parents -?"
"We're all having dinner together later, upstairs in my and Scott's suite. I had lunch with the kids and staff earlier." She glanced over her shoulder. "Hank, don't worry." She turned back to the monitor, waiting for the machine to boot.
"All right," Hank said, hesitated, then asked, "Have you seen Logan yet?"
He caught the slight stiffening of her spine and lift of her shoulders. "No. He wasn't at lunch. I'm sure I'll run into him eventually." There was a pause while she entered her ID and password, making a rapid clack-clack of keys. "I'm more interested in having dinner with my fiancé, my friend, and my parents than in looking for Wolverine."
"I wasn't implying anything, Jean."
"Then you're the only one in the mansion who hasn't at some point."
"Has someone said something to you since you got -"
"No. Logan wasn't in the dining room earlier, and I didn't ask where he was." She hesitated, then added, "I'm not in a hurry to see him, Hank. I'm not sure I want to, though I don't suppose I can avoid it."
Hank walked over to prop himself on a corner of the computer table. "Why not?" She didn't reply, instead clicked through menus with her computer's mouse, not looking at him. "Jean, you can talk to me. I may not be Warren, but -"
"I don't really have answers, but I can't say I liked what I saw of myself in the minds of others, how I acted when Logan was around. But I don't remember it. I don't remember how it felt, what I felt. But I love Scott. That, I remember. I remembered it so hard I came back for him." She looked up at Hank finally.
"You're afraid to find out what you felt for Logan, aren't you?"
"Not afraid - I don't want to. I've been with Scott over a decade. I'm happy with that; I don't want anything else - anyone else."
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
Her face flushed and Hank could all but feel the pinprick of agitated molecules in the air, raising the temperature. Jean's eyes were practically glowing. And Hank was alarmed. He got down off the computer table. "Are you saying you don't think I really love Scott?" she asked.
"No," he replied quietly. "I know you do. But love's complicated sometimes. Jean, calm down." The room temperature was still going up. "What are you doing?"
She seemed to realize then what was happening, and blinked. The room cooled and her eyes were plain brown once more. "Sorry. I guess I give 'hothead' a whole new meaning now." She laughed, and so did he, but it was strained on both sides. "I'll get the hang of it," she said.
"You're going to have to be careful."
"I know. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone. 'Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief . . . .'" she trailed off in her recitation of the Hippocratic Oath.
He snorted. "I notice you left out the bit about not having sexual intercourse with anyone in the house."
She grinned at that. "Might be a bit hypocritical, considering."
He plopped himself down on the table corner again. "All right - I get what you're saying. But I also prefer not to have my hair singed when you're ticked off - since you're ticked off a lot." He poked her in the side and she winced away, mostly on reflex, still grinning.
"Scott's good for me - all that control as an example . . . ."
"Except when he's ticked off."
And she burst out laughing. "It's true! But he doesn't blast holes in things."
"Not usually. And as for Logan - I don't think you need to worry about that. The simple fact you can't remember suggests it's not significant, compared to what you feel for Scott."
"Maybe," she said, but seemed slightly troubled as she returned to her computer. Rising, he left her to her work. "I'm headed back to the hospital in half an hour. I probably won't return here till tomorrow night, but I'll keep you up to date."
"All right," she said, distracted by her files.
He glanced back at her before exiting the lab. She was fully absorbed now, chewing on a lock of hair - which was a very Jean gesture. He wondered why Logan hadn't been in the dining hall earlier, and where he was now.
Logan was on Scott's bike, headed out of Westchester for the Canadian border. Xavier was the only one who knew (yet) of his departure.
He'd made the decision to leave sometime that morning, after Xavier's public announcement of Jean's imminent return. He hadn't, originally, meant to go anywhere, and he'd stuck around to talk to the trainees about Hank's damn virus, just as he'd promised. But then he'd got to thinking, and wasn't sure he wanted to be there when Jean got back. The remembered loss of Mariko was too new - even if seventy years old - for him to stick around and watch Jean re-enter mansion life on the arm of another man. It wasn't that he thought she belonged on his arm, but that didn't make it hurt less.
So he'd packed a bag, grabbed some cash and the fake IDs Xavier had made for him, and headed out. He thought he might have passed Worthington's limo coming in, but wasn't sure.
"How long will you be gone?" Xavier had asked when he'd dropped by the man's office before departing.
"Not that long. Week - maybe less. Need some fresh air."
He'd be back; Westchester was home now. Yet he preferred to approach this in his own way, sideways and circuitous, not be trapped to face the inevitable. Wolverines never were pack animals.
Warren hadn't expected to be invited to dinner with Jean's parents in Scott and Jean's suite. So when Jean showed up at his door to tell him the food had arrived, only to find him in sweatpants and no shirt, answering email and messages he'd put off while in Alaska, she was aghast. "For heaven's sake, get dressed!" she ordered, slipping under his arm to snatch a nice vest and some slacks from his suitbag, dropping them on his bed while he sputtered about her family time and his backed-up business mail.
She eyed him. "Warren - you are family. Now get dressed." And she left him to it.
At dinner, Jean filled in her parents on all the things Xavier hadn't had time to tell, while Warren and Scott related the dumb luck of finding her. No one made recriminations for Jean's choice at Alkali, or for her decision not to tell her parents immediately that she was back. There was also no talk of weddings. It was as if they'd all conspired subconsciously to play nice, and it made a sharp contrast to that ugly meeting in Xavier's office the previous fall. Not until later did it occur to Warren to wonder if Jean had telepathically managed the mood, but he had no reason to think so, and was reminded again of how easily suspicion could poison friendship.
The Greys finally retired to their own guestroom, but Scott, Jean and Warren were still operating on Alaska-time. Nevertheless, curfew had arrived for the younger kids. "I should go do Roomcheck," Scott said, stretching.
"No need," Jean replied, looking distracted for a moment. "There's still a pool game going in the billiards room in the basement, some older kids are watching movies in the den, and there's a little making out in a library niche" - she grinned at that - "but everyone supposed to be in their rooms is."
Mute, Warren and Scott stared at her. "What?" she asked them. "There's no need to go tramping through the hallways every night - twice - when I can do it faster."
Yet even the professor, who could do telepathic headcounts as easily as Jean, had always allowed Scott his nighttime perambulations. Warren thought it gave Scott a sense of safeguarding the kids, and gave the kids a sense of being safeguarded by the predictable sound of his steps in the hallway. They might plot strategies to escape Scott's dragnet, but really, Warren believed they'd have felt less secure if they couldn't rely on his presence.
Perhaps Scott was thinking the same thing, as he shook his head. "I'll go. They expect it." Jean didn't try to stop him as he headed out the door.
When he was gone, she turned her gaze to Warren. They were still sitting at the portable table that had been carried into the suite's sitting room for their private dinner. It was, Warren realized, the first time they'd been alone together since her resurrection, and Jean lost no time in broaching a difficult topic. "Hank asked, this afternoon, if I'd seen Logan yet. They're all wondering what I'm going to do when I see him again, aren't they? Even Scott."
It was like the start of one of their old phone calls. If Jean could sometimes be frustratingly circumspect, the two of them had developed a history of diving headfirst into conversations. Warren thought she was probably more honest with him than even with Scott, at least about some things. And he was honest back. "Are you wondering what you'll do?"
"Yes. No. I don't - I don't remember, War. Like I told Hank, I don't really remember what I felt for Logan, if I felt anything, really. I remember you, I remember Scott - Charles, Hank, my family, of course, even Ro. But not Logan. My only memories of Logan are what I see in other's memories." She paused, tilting her chin. "I don't like what I see, either."
"And you want me to tell you what you felt."
It wasn't a question, but she grinned. "I guess."
"Couldn't you see it in my head?"
"I have, a little." Blushing, she dropped her eyes. "It wasn't intentional, War, but like I told Scott, it's actually harder now for me not to look into minds. And when I first saw you both again, there was so much . . . Everything spilled over and I picked up a lot, all at once."
"I remember you told me that you weren't sure you had any memories left to recover."
Frowning, she admitted, "I do seem to remember some things all on my own. But no, I don't think I'll ever get it all back."
He steepled his hands in front of his mouth and asked the hard question. "Do you not remember Logan because you lost those memories - or because you don't want to remember?"
Her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
"You've never been a grand fan of emotional conflict, Jean. Instead, you do what you can to smooth things over. You don't like upsetting people and you don't like hurting people - at least not until you lose your temper. Maybe it's easier to forget Logan than to set all that in motion again."
"You're saying I hurt Scott by what I did."
"And he hurt you. You're not the bitch here. I love Scott, but I know he's not easy to live with at times. We talked, you and I, right before . . . before Alkali."
"Before I died. It's okay to say it, you know." She smiled, a bit impish. "And I . . . remember. But mostly because I saw that in your mind, that we'd talked. I don't remember what was said." Her eyes drifted out of focus a little. "I was unhappy." Then her eyes refocused, sharp like a hawk's. "I turn to you a lot when I'm unhappy or confused, don't I?" She sounded apologetic. It made him smile.
"It's okay. I've done the same with you."
"Scott's my lover, but you're my best friend. That's how this triangle worked before, isn't it?"
"Something like that. I'm yours, you're mine."
"Who's Scott's?"
"No one. Both of us. Charles sometimes. Colleen sometimes. Scott's a hard nut to crack. I don't think he ever tells anyone everything."
"I'm still . . . recovering things. I will be for a while." Warren just nodded, waiting for her to arrange thoughts. "So - Logan?"
"What do you think it was?"
"Warren - don't. Just tell me."
"What if what I thought it was isn't what it was?"
"Disclaimer noted. Spill."
Sighing, Warren dropped his steepled hands to sit up, wings fanning slightly so that her hair stirred. "Okay, the way I figured it, from what you told me back then, is that you were getting frustrated with Scott - frustrated because he wouldn't get married, frustrated because he's not always the most demonstrative person. Then along came Logan, who made you feel pretty and special, and who made it clear he was interested. Way back when, you chased Scott. He didn't chase you. It took shoving from both of us before he made any move. By contrast, Logan wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, the first time he was here. You and Scott were going through - not problems, really, but there was some conflict about where your relationship was headed. Logan showed up in the midst of that."
Her jaw hardened. "I love Scott."
"Of course you do - and did. But you've been sleeping with him for eleven years. The shine wears off after a while. It wore off for me, too. I still love him, but I don't have a crush on him anymore. No relationship stays the same forever."
"And I had a crush on Logan."
"I'm not even sure I'd call it a crush, so much as that you liked being chased."
Her cheeks had paled. "You make me sound awful."
"Why? What's wrong with wanting to be wanted?" He sat forward. "Jean - you didn't do anything, okay? Logan came, he chased your ass, you wiggled it a little harder, Scott was suitably jealous, then Logan went away and you weren't interested in following. The last conversation we had on the phone you spent the whole time bitching because Scott was still putting off getting married. Logan's name didn't even come up."
She sighed out a little, as if relieved of a burden. Then she dropped her eyes and played with the napkin on the table. "What about you? Can you forgive me for coming back?"
He hadn't expected that turn of the conversation, and his face must have shown it. "Jean - honestly, I'd rather have you back than have you dead."
"You're allowed to be mad, you know. And just for the record, I'd have wanted Scott with no one more than you."
"We never had sex, Jean -"
"I know - he said so - but I wouldn't have cared if you had." Warren just nodded at that, taking her at face value. Jean went on. "I think maybe some good things happened while I was away, and just because I'm back, it doesn't mean those good things have to disappear. The way it was before wasn't very good. Scott and I, we felt guilty - even after so long - and you felt excluded."
He resisted trying to deny it, and she barreled on. "I think maybe we had it right in the first place, all those years ago. We're a trio, not a pair with one extra. That may not work for most people, but there are exceptions to everything. Maybe we're special, or maybe we're just weird, but none of us were really happy with things the way they were. Scott and I need you, for balance. And you need us. We're better in three than we are in two-plus-one."
She stopped abruptly, her head turning towards the door. "He's back."
The door opened and Scott paused in it, glancing from one of them to the other. Warren wondered what his face showed. "Should my ears be burning?" Scott asked.
Jean smiled sweetly. "Of course. We always talk about you when you're not around." It was just cheeky enough for Scott to eye her, unsure if she were pulling his leg or not.
Still trying to absorb what Jean had said (Had she really just proposed a ménage-à-trois?), Warren kept his face carefully blank. "Whatever," Scott said finally, crossing to the table to pick up empty plates, stacking them on the serving dolly. Warren hadn't even thought to do it, but when he rose to help, Jean just waved a hand so that all the dishes lifted as one, assembling themselves neatly on the dolly in less than a minute, while Scott and Warren watched, astonished.
"I'm better than a busboy," she said.
"Or busgirl," Scott corrected.
"Nitpicker. Do you have to go back out again?"
"Not tonight. Just the oldest ones are still up, and Piotr said he'd see to it that they got to bed."
Abruptly, Warren stood, taking advantage of the disturbance caused by Scott's return. "I'll head back to my room. I've still got a few things to do - some mail to answer - before I hit the sack." And he turned for the door, hoping to get out it before Jean said anything. A nice, quiet exit. Low-key, unremarkable.
Jean let him go. He even made it all the way to his suite door before he heard in his head, I'm not trying to push you into something, War. Just think about what I said. You know as well as I do that I'm right. The three of us were never meant be separate.
Society doesn't look kindly on threesomes, Jean, and we don't live in Greenwich Village where it might be regarded as merely eccentric, not immoral and perverse.
Perversity is in the eye of the beholder.
And we're all high profile enough to be beheld. Not to mention your fiancé isn't interested in sex with me.
Sex is the least of it. I'm talking about love, not sex - and you're wrong about Scott, anyway. He's been attracted to you for a long time; he just can't admit it to himself for reasons we both know too well. He needs to get over it, but that'll take time. Meanwhile, we all need to get past this preoccupation we have with conforming.
Warren couldn't formulate a clear mental response to that, but finally said, Appearances aren't always a bad thing. I ought to know. And the public can be remarkably shallow when it comes to anything shocking or atypical.
Maybe less than you think. But I'm not concerned with the public, and I didn't mean public appearances. I meant our own self-perception.
If you want us all to be honest with one another, why are you having this conversation only with me?
Because Scott isn't ready yet. You know that.
I'm not sure I'm ready.
You're ready. You've known this all along, just as I have - we just didn't want to look at what we knew.
Why now?
Dying gives you a new perspective on things.
And the touch of her mind disappeared from his. Ensconced now in his own room, he peeled off his vest and slacks to collapse on his bed in his underwear. His head was spinning, and he was tired. Tonight, he just wasn't going to think about it.
Notes: Jean is quoting from the old version of the Hippocratic oath, not the modern version - just to be clear. The note about wolverines is true. I've always been bemused by the tendency to make "Wolverine" into "Wolf-erine." The wolverine is a small, strong, cunning, solitary, famously aggressive but protective and territorial member of the weasel family. The wolf is a canine pack animal, also loyal but not aggressive unless hungry or threatened. Don't confuse them; they act very differently - and Wolverine suits Logan far better than "Wolf-erine." Many thanks to Melanie for some corrections on German, and especially Bavarian German.