A/N: This story takes place around New X-Men #150, after the psychic affair between Cyclops and the White Queen. The difference is that here, Phoenix resurrected Jean Grey after Xorn's strike (thanks a lot, Morrison), and now she has to deal with being the School's headmistress while her marriage falls apart.
These characters are Disney's, not mine. I'll appreciate if you leave a review.
" " means regular conversation.
' ' means thoughts or telepathic conversation.
First mission
Chapter 1.
"Scott, I really wish you'd talk to me. Apocalypse's been gone for months, and you still haven't opened up to me."
"There's nothing to say. I'm fine, Jean."
"Then show me what happened. You know that I can-"
"Stay out of my head!"
Jean Grey-Summers tried to concentrate on the assay before her, she really did; but grading fifteen-year-olds' tests wasn't so easy when her marriage was falling apart. Her mind, usually so focused, kept drifting to her husband's words a few days ago.
He said he was finally able to choose between her and Emma… between his wife of more than a decade (considering all the time they had spent in the future) and his plastic, ex-nemesis mistress. Of course, hell had broken loose after their fight against Cassandra Nova; Xorn had killed her, and once again she had been resurrected by the Phoenix Force; the X-Men had been needed somewhere else, and so far Cyclops hadn't found the time -or courage- to tell her what his choice was.
It didn't matter, though. To Jean, the fact that he had to make a choice revealed a lot about the person Scott Summers had become after merging with Apocalypse – a cold, self-centered, hedonist man so lost in his own troubles and insecurities that he couldn't see how his inconsequential actions were affecting others – affecting her in particular.
They were married, for Christ's sake! And before that, they had dated for almost as long as Jean had been around. Together, they had gone through hell and beyond. Like during all those early years as X-Men, fighting menaces like Magneto, Juggernaut, and the sentinels. She had tried to connect with him from the beginning, and even though Scott had also been in love with her, it took Marvel Girl a lot of time and effort to prove to him that he could lay his weapons down and trust in their love.
Years later, in space, she had yielded to the Phoenix Force in order to save her friends -save him- and as a consequence spent the next years recovering alone in a cocoon in the bottom of Jamaica Bay while the Phoenix lived her life; eager and uncontrolled, the entity killed an entire solar system, then ended up sacrificing itself in guilt. Eventually, the Avengers rescued the real Jean Grey, and she decided to join her former teammates in a new mutant group called the X-Factor. At first, she couldn't understand why Scott was keeping her at arm's length, but eventually found out that the man she had always loved had married a woman that resembled her in many ways, and who had also given him a son, Nathan Christopher. She was devastated.
Still, she remained in the X-Factor under Cyclops' leadership, and they soon fell into old habits and rekindled their romance. As Marvel Girl, she helped Scott to find his lost baby, and after they had learned about Madelyne's tragic death with the X-Men, she gladly took over the role of surrogate mother.
Months later, Apocalypse infected Nathan with a deadly techno-organic virus and Cyclops was forced to send him to the future where the Askani sisterhood promised to save him. Of course, losing the boy broke her heart, but she tried to remain strong and supportive for her lover. Soon after, they rejoined the X-Men in separate teams, and despite a few more mishaps (mainly the shameless flirting between Psylocke and her boyfriend), she decided to put all of Scott's past behind her and marry him.
They got married in a beautiful ceremony in the X-mansion's gardens and flew to Saint Barths. On the first day of their honeymoon, their minds were inadvertently taken two-thousand years to the future and placed in strange bodies so that they could raise young Nathan and train him to defeat Apocalypse. Not that Jean was complaining – that had been the happiest time of her life, regardless of the hardships her family had endured during that glum decade. And as abruptly as Scott and her had been thrown into the future, they were pulled back to the twenty-first century to deal with more X-Men craziness, barely having the chance to say goodbye to their son.
It didn't take long for some anti-mutant maniac to kidnap them and plant a nano bomb inside of her husband's chest. Against all odds, the X-Men managed to save him, but the experience proved to be too overwhelming; as soon as Cyclops was able to walk again, the two of them moved to Alaska to settle down and start a family. At the time, her mental powers had been augmenting exponentially, and for once she opted to embrace them as well as the name Phoenix. But instead of being happy for his wife, Scott freaked out because of an old costume and a few meaningless firebird manifestations – he never understood what it was like to hold such power.
They had been in Alaska for only a few weeks when the Shadow King tricked Psylocke into striking him in the psi-plane, their battle generating a psionic backlash that tore through every psychic's mind and prompted Jean to lose her telepathy… to lose the feeling of her husband in her mind. She felt like a big part of her had been ripped away, while Scott just seemed relieved that the specter of Dark Phoenix and her horrors were gone. He had always doubted her capacity of controlling her powers, she was aware of that.
Their retirement from superhero activities didn't last long; duty called, and the dream of having a child had once again to be postponed. Back in Westchester, Jean's powers slowly returned, as did Apocalypse. His horsemen took twelve mutants to Egypt, she and Cyclops included, and in the most fateful battle of their lives, Scott sacrificed himself to save Nate Grey -their son from an alternate reality- merging with En Sabah Nur in the process. She blamed herself, and cried, and mourned, and cried and mourned a bit more… but at the first sign that her husband might be alive, she and Cable went in search of him, and thanks in part to the same Phoenix's powers that Cyclops despised, she was able to separate him from that monster and get him back.
And all of that, for what? So that Scott could go back to his previous coldness and introspection, completely ignore her for months, and start a psychic affair with Emma freaking Frost.
God only knew how many times Jean had tried to reach him in the previous months and had instead been faced with a shut door. It had hurt a lot to realize that her husband wasn't willing to share his emotions, feelings, and fears with her… apparently, the White Queen was more capable of making him talk, among other things.
'Screw this', she thought, wiping away an angry tear before it could fall on the sheet of paper in her hands. Resolute, she took off her wedding ring and telekinetically threw it in the nightstand drawer. If Scott didn't want her, well… that was his loss.
It had been three days since he had left the boathouse to move back to their old room in the mansion, cowardly leaving her with all the memories and ghosts of their life together. Jean had tried to busy herself in the meantime, which wasn't really hard seeing as she was the School's headmistress now, and it was the end of June – there were tons of assays and tests waiting to be graded. She looked at the pile of papers on her desk, suddenly feeling very tired; one glance at her watch told her it was past one in the morning. The paper she was holding found its way onto the top of the pile; then the lights were turned off and she lied on her bed, alone, not bothering to pull the covers.
Five minutes passed, Jean still very much awake, when she heard a familiar voice.
"Re-Redd? Slym?"
She shot up in bed, green eyes scanning the dark bedroom. No one was there, of course, but that voice… she knew that voice like the back of her hand.
"Nathan?" The woman asked quietly and waited. Since no one responded, she chuckled to herself. The recent lack of sleep was probably getting to her.
"Redd?" She suddenly heard again.
Leaping out of bed, Jean bolted towards the voice, simultaneously using her telekinesis to turn on the lights and her telepathy to scan the house for his presence. When she entered the kitchen, her heart was almost exploding in her chest.
She halted at the sight in front of her. "Na-Nate? Is that really you?"
It couldn't be him, right? The boy standing barefoot on the kitchen floor looked no older than five or six, while the son she had left two thousand years in the future was nearly twelve. As for his older version current living in the present -Cable- he was much older than her, and nowhere near New York as far as she was concerned.
The boy seemed to be just as confused as he studied her figure. "Re-Redd? Is that you? You look… different."
'Oh God,' the redhead thought, holding back the urge to cry. The little boy had Nate's voice, and Nate's posture, and Nate's scar around the left eye, and Nate's techno-organic infested arm – which, by the way, looked kind of uncontrolled at the moment. Jean's first instinct was to run to him and hug him and never, never let go of him again. But years of wearing blue and gold (black and gold, nowadays) had taught her that things hardly were what they seemed. It could be a trap; heck, it probably was a trap. As much as she wanted that boy to be the real Nathan Dayspring, her child son was in the future, not standing in front of her wearing ragged pajamas and a frightened look on his face.
And then Jean realized that, no matter what, the boy standing before her was exactly that – a frightened child. She had seen those same scared eyes more times than she could count, every time Slym and Redd Dayspring told their son they had to move again in order to outwit Apocalypse's hordes.
It took her less than a second to scan the boy's mind, but she might as well not have done it – in her heart, she already knew it was not a trap.
That was Nate. Her Nate.
Before Jean could realize it, she was kneeling in front of him, her psychic defenses as shattered as her marriage.
"Nate, sweetheart… How did you get here?"
The woman could sense relief emanating from the child as they hugged.
"Redd, w-where are we? Where's Slym?" He asked in return, head buried in her hair.
"Slym, he is uh… he's busy, baby."
Not a complete lie since Scott was currently away on a mission with Logan and Emma. What she opted not to tell Nathan was that, in this timeline, Slym was called Cyclops, Redd was called Phoenix, and the Daysprings were actually the Summers – though she wasn't sure for how long.
The boy finally broke the embrace and, suspicious, took his time to inspect the kitchen. Sensing his apprehension at the unfamiliar surroundings, Jean tried to soothe him. "It's alright, Nate, we're safe here," she said, moving away so she could look him over. "Are you hurt?"
The boy shook his head negatively.
The redhead didn't quite believe him. "Isn't your arm hurting?"
"Not much," he responded. Yet, Jean remembered that Nathan hadn't learned to fully control the techno-organic virus in his body until the age of eight. Ignoring his stubbornness, she used her telekinesis to put the virus at bay and smiled as she felt him relax once the pain was gone.
"Not hurt then, I see… What about hungry?"
Nathan bit the inside of his right cheek for a moment. "I could eat."
"I bet you could," she said and winked at him. She knew her son, and also happened to know how tall and strong he would eventually become – he would be more willing to talk with a full stomach.
So Jean took Nate in her arms and sat him on one of the tall stools by the counter, warning him to be careful so he wouldn't fall. Then she grabbed some bread, eggs and ham and began to prepare them a past-midnight meal.
They ate together and talked, but Nathan didn't seem to know how he had ended up in that kitchen. Digging a little deeper in his mind, Jean learned that the last thing he remembered was Redd and Slym tucking him into bed in their home in Crestcoast, two thousand years in the future. The redhead smiled, recalling that was something she and Scott usually did for him every night.
But even if Nate couldn't remember how he had abruptly appeared in the past, Jean was certain someone had brought him there. And the only person she could think of right now was Rachel. She casted her telepathy around in an attempt to find her alternate reality daughter, to no avail; not Rachel, not any other Askani sister seemed to be nearby.
Always the curious boy, Nathan kept asking between spoons of the tastiest scrambled eggs of his life what all those curious utensils placed around the room were. Jean tried to explain what mixers and air friers were for, but she couldn't say much without revealing to him that he was in the past; and revealing that he was in the past would mean revealing that Redd and Slym were not his adoptive parents, but his real folks from the twenty-first century who had let their arch-nemesis infect him with a terrible virus and then allowed a stranger to take him to the future – she didn't think that any five-year-old could take that kind of information lightly.
The redhead noticed that her son was beyond tired and figured that she could try to understand what was happening in the morning. She was about to tell him it was time to go to bed when she sensed another presence entering the boathouse.
"Jean, I wasn't expecting you to be awake. I just came for-"
Cyclops stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the boy.
"Slym!" Nathan jumped out of the stool and sprinted towards the man, hugging his uniform-clad legs. "Redd said you were busy. She made me eggs, they're really good. You want some? What's with the glasses?"
Scott didn't dare to touch him. Motionless, he looked at his estranged wife, his face suddenly devoid of all color, and sent into her mind, 'What kind of sick game is this?'
'Not a game, at least not that I know of,' she replied, hiding her hurt at his assumption.
The man tried not to tremble. 'What… w-who is this?'
'That's Nate. Our Nate. I don't know how or why, but he just appeared in the kitchen half-a-hour ago.'
Cyclops looked down at the boy at the same time that the boy looked up at him and asked. "Why are you wearing those funny glasses?"
'I didn't tell him we're in his past, nor that Redd and Slym are his real parents,' Jean explained telepathically.
'This could be a trap.'
'It's not. That is Nate. Answer him.'
Scott blinked. "W-What?"
"The glasses, Slym, why are you wearing them? You didn't have them last night."
"Oh," Cyclops hesitated. "I, uh… I hurt my eyes. Doctor's orders," he lied.
'Doctor's orders? Really?' Jean snorted into her husband's mind.
"What's a doctor?" Nathan asked.
"It's uh… it's like a… like a healer."
"Oh," the boy said, letting go of his adoptive father's legs. "Are you hurt?"
Jean intervened before Scott could respond. "Nathan, it's late. You and Slym can talk in the morning. Come on, let's go to bed."
She took his small hand in hers and moved to the door.
"Wait Je-" Cyclops shut his mouth. The redhead halted and turned around to look at his face. The boy yawned. 'Where are you taking him?'
'To bed. He needs a good night of sleep.'
'With you?'
'In my bed, yes. Where else?'
'It could be dangerous, Jean. We don't know if this is the real Nathan Christopher, or how did he-'
'This is our son, Scott,' she interrupted him, 'and in case you haven't noticed, he's just a child. He's scared, confused, and beyond tired. To tell you the truth, so am I. We can figure what's going on in the morning.'
'You can't just go to sleep; we need to think this through first. What if something happens during the night? He could be another clone sent by Apocalypse to hurt us," Cyclops tried to reason.
Jean glanced at the sleepy boy holding her hand and all she could feel towards him was love. She wasn't afraid.
'I'll take my chances with him,' she replied, picking Nathan up in her arms. 'By the way, your spare goggles are in the paper box on the coffee table with some of your other stuff. Good night, Scott.'
Jean walked to the bedroom and telekinetically closed the door behind her. She placed Nathan on Scott's side of the bed, lying beside him and pulling the covers over them. The boy turned to face her and grabbed one of her hands, immediately falling into slumber.
She closed her eyes and mind. For the first time in months, she was able to find a peaceful sleep.
