A/N: I will do my best to be nice to Jean, particularly since I rather liked her in this episode. It was a much better demonstration of her inner strength than, say, "Walk on the Wild Side."
Jean Grey, Perfect Jean who made straight A's and won all the most coveted sports awards (that is, until the principal and most of her teammates accused her of cheating) and was considered by all to be Professor Xavier's prize pupil, had one terrible, secret shame: she could not for the life of her wake up without an alarm clock. Left to her own devices, she would have stayed wrapped up in her own bed until the Second Coming. There was something so seductive (not that she would have known seduction if she saw it) about the crisp sheets and the weight of the comforter and the heavy, apathetic state between awake and sleep.
But today, she was up at first light. Quietly, so as not to wake Rogue and Kitty (the latter had cried herself to sleep the night before; Jean herself had stayed awake wondering if it was her place to step in), she dressed and made her way outside.
It was cold and foggy, but she had no trouble making her way to the gazebo, her favorite "thinking spot." Sometimes she even did homework here. It was nice. Peaceful. She and Duncan had sat here after their first date; if memory served her correctly, they'd actually had a conversation. She'd believed that there was more to him than the dumb jock who just wanted to score the hot redheaded soccer player. More fool her.
He'd never physically hurt her. If he had, despite what Rogue and the others thought, she would have ended it in a hurry. But that didn't stop her from feeling ashamed. She'd acted the part of every emotionally abused girlfriend who sobbed on the talk shows, flattered by his jealousy of any other guy who looked at her cross-eyed and taking comfort in his constant attention. And, now that it was just her, alone in her thinking place on this chilly morning, why shouldn't she admit that she had taken advantage of him as surely as he'd taken advantage of her? She'd gone out with him for essentially the same reason that she'd pushed herself so hard in class and taken on so many extracurricular activities: to take some sort of smug joy in the fact that hey, I'm a mutant and look how well I fit in! Unlike Rogue and Kurt, and the Brotherhood, of course, she'd let herself be assimilated into the shiny chrome high-school world, thinking, There's no harm in it. I'm as human as they are. I deserve this.
And all of that was fine, as long as she kept concentrating on the fact that she was different and they accepted her which was technically true. But she hadn't let herself remember the tiny but crucial detail: they hadn't exactly known what she was. Okay, they hadn't known at all. Now they did, and now look. If you wanted to get metaphorical, she'd risen so high on wings of deceit.
Except was it really deceit or was it just showing them a different side of her than the one that the other X-Men saw? She wasn't sure. All she knew that no amount of speech-making or (if it came to that) mind-wiping was going to bring things back to how they once were.
"Morning."
She nearly fell off the bench. It was Scott, standing at the top of the steps, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. She hadn't given him a single thought since right after she'd broken up with Duncan. Well not a single waking thought. "Hi."
He scratched his head in what she'd come to think of as the Patented Summers Nervous Gesture. "You, um, sounded great last night."
She didn't look at him. "Thanks." Things had been so tense between them since when? It couldn't have been since their first days at the Institute together, when they'd been polar-opposite partners who'd eventually become semi-close friends. Maybe it was when she'd realized that he had feelings for Rogue? No, because she couldn't remember any sort of attraction to him then. Maybe it was after the battle on Asteroid M, when she'd been forced to think about how close she had come to never seeing him again, and then with the question, What does that mean? "It won't do any good, though."
"It's my fault if it's anyone's." He pointed to the space behind her. "Can I sit?"
"Sure." He did. "How is it your fault?" she asked him. "You didn't ask them to attack you."
"I shouldn't have egged them on."
"Shouldn't have what?" Boys were so weird sometimes.
"All the times I acted like the fearless leader in front of the Brotherhood." He held up one finger, then another. "Pretending I was better than them. Acting like they were the scum of the earth just 'cause they'd made a different choice. No wonder they hated me."
"You did make the better choice," she said firmly, but she didn't look at him.
He placed a hand on her shoulder. "Jean?"
"What?"
"Are you okay?"
Her hand moved upward to cover his before she could stop herself. "No. You?"
"Not really," he admitted. "We didn't do anything. That's what gets me. We didn't start a single fight, but we're the ones who get all of this. They think you're cheating, I'm Duncan's new punching bag, and Kurt's scared to talk to us. And because of their stupid — ass — fight-picking —" He pounded his leg for emphasis with each word. "We're not going to be able to even mix with them. I don't know if you're going to make any difference or not. But that doesn't stop me from being impressed, Jean. Really."
"Thanks." She swallowed. "I've been thinking about how I surrounded myself with normal friends, how I never hung out with you guys when we were at school. But now Sandy and Taryn" Oops, she shouldn't have mentioned Taryn's name. "They won't talk to me. Duncan called my gift a 'problem.' Principal Kelly treats me like a criminal." Now she looked at him. "But you and the others you're still here."
He grinned. Not for the first time, she wished she could see his eyes. "Where would I go?"
"I don't know." Could she smile back? Yes. "I guess I'm stuck with you. Scooter, I'm so sorry you had to go through all this."
"I'm sorry, too. Can I" He extended his arm, and she gratefully leaned against him. "Are you scared?"
Jean nodded against his shoulder. "You?"
"Uh-huh."
"Maybe it's easier for you. You've already lost everything, so it's easier for you now that"
With his other hand, he lifted her face toward his, smiling again, that sweet Scott-smile. "I haven't lost everything." And then she didn't feel the cold or the fear or anything, anything, except the kiss and the surrounding warmth. When they came up for air, he kept talking. "I don't know what damn it, I'm so not used to this."
"You don't have to say it, silly," she whispered, rapping his head gently, still a bit shaken.
"No, I want to. Here goes. I don't know if I could have made it through everything I had to go through if you hadn't been there, Jeannie." He said all of this very fast, as if he were afraid that he'd lose his nerve and go all stiff and efficient and, well, Cyclops.
But he showed no sign of doing so, and she was glad. Because if there was one thing she'd known right from the start, it was that none of them could forget that they were human. It was what separated them from the Brotherhood, who just didn't care how people saw them. They may have been a secret, super-powered missions team, but if they wanted to be treated like people, they had to act like they were. And being able to admit to having human emotions like guilt and fear — and love — that was the first step.
Nobody had called her "Jeannie" in ages.
She had a feeling she could get used to it.
She took Scott's hand and stood up. "Come on," she said. "We'd better go face the music."
