-2-

Of the many who had shown up at the viewing, Alpha Flight was especially trying. Heather Hudson, also known as Vindicator, was about the only one of the Canadian superheroes who managed to address Jean as Jean instead of "Mad - umm, Mrs Summers". Which was part of the reason Jean found herself drifting down the back stairs and out of the mansion after having excused herself to get some sleep and began undressing for bed.

The winter air was brisk but Jean didn't feel it through her short-- sleeved shirt and rayon pants. Nor did she realize that she walked over frozen ground and through snowdrifts for all that her feet were bare.

Her key still worked in the boathouse door. Trailing melting snow and mud, she pushed open the drapes. Hazy moonlight filmed the darkness, gentling it. In her former home it was easier to let her thoughts seek their level.

The cloth-covered shapes of the furniture went together well in the darkness, white fading into grey falling into black, much better than they had in the light of day. She threw herself on the couch, raising some dust and rubbed her cheek against the dropcloth beneath her. Her fingers tapped the oaken floor, making a plain thin sound, like wild tiny horses.

She sniffed at the dropcloth, uncertain if Scott's scent was-- no, not was-- had been a musky floral because he was squeaky clean but spicy to begin with and preferred her Secret deodorant over anything marketed for men, or like that of healthy skin burnt in the sun.

Skin lathered with liquid Ivory soap in the morning, spritzed with the slightly plastic scent of sunscreen and cut by the metallic bite of insect repellant by midday. The crease of his bent arm, the curve of his neck, those were the places where her favorite scents had been particularly strong. On his days off duty, he'd spend the morning outdoors working on the house or some extracurricular vehicle. He'd wipe himself down with the first shirt of the day and some wet-wipes before joining her for lunch. She wouldn't let him touch her otherwise. no matter how winning his smile. Her telepathy gave her extraordinary recall. Why then couldn't she remember Scott's smell, the scent that underlay everything else?

Jean heaved herself off the couch. She rooted through old plastic shopping bags and slippery Hefty sacks in the unfinished storage closet, but the bag of Scott's Reeking Workout Clothes was in none of them. With brutal efficiency, Jean yanked open drawers and closet doors. The towels hanging in the bathroom were relatively fresh and the linen closet was full. She hadn't done that. Most likely some helpful X-man /bastard/ had done her laundry. She found it unevenly folded and stowed in the wrong drawers--her shirts and trackpants in the top two drawers. The bottom drawer slid open slowly. It held Scott's shirts. Size 18 collars. Weight-lifting had made a joke out of the nick-name of Scott's teens. His friends and teammates had called him 'Slim' and he had been. Rail-thin with a speed-bump bottom. Then he'd begun to fill out, and out and out-- she'd begged, cajoled and nagged at him to find another way to keep in top-form when finding shirts for him had become too difficult.

Her hands ran along button seams and traced discretely stitched logos. Knowing it was useless, she pulled his favorite red chamois from the drawer. The weave smoothed between her hands the way softening butter gave on toast. She shook out the folds of the shirt, held it up by the shoulders and tried to imagine how the breadth and depth of Scott had filled it completely /filled her completely/. She pressed the shirt to her face and inhaled. Cotton dried in a drier. Detergent too long in the box. Fabric softener. No sense of Scott.

In the narrow, white tiled bathroom, Jean avoided her reflection. Her head throbbed. Her eyes ached, rubbing against their lids like fine sand. Her mouth was so dried out that her gums stuck to her teeth. Even to her, her own breath was offensive.

Long, drawn-out crying jags were hell on her. Her white-knuckled hands gripped the cap of the bottle of green mouthwash too tightly for her to open it. She didn't like a mouthwash that was too sweet, but her Cepacol was mostly evaporated. Frowning, she flipped her hair off her shoulders with a hard toss, reset her hands on the cap and twisted it off. She took a slug of the green liquid before the sickly scent of distilled impurities hit her.

"Gah!" she exclaimed, retreating from the taste with her entire body. She spat green into the sink and turned on the tap, flushing away the peppermint schnapps-laced Scope.

Scott insisted on Scope. Cepacol was for old people.

He'd been dependent on alcohol for a little while, but he'd gotten better. He had. The schnapps taste-- that didn't mean he'd still been drinking. He may have forgotten. He may have overlooked it. But they'd shared a psychic link since they were kids that had only grown clearer over the years, she shouldn't have missed spiked mouthwash in any case, at any time.

Jean turned from her reflection. Her hand covered her face. The other unclawed from the neck of the Scope bottle. It landed in the sink. Jean slid down the wall until her butt rested on the floor; her legs bunched the bathmat against the wall.

She put her hands on; or perhaps, her face in her hands, her face and moan seeped its way past the narrowed confines of her throat.

The bedroom was dark. The people lying alongside one another in the near dark enjoyed a friendship remarkable for its candor and understanding. One lay on her back, studying the bandaged feet of the other. The one with the bandaged feet, Jean, lay on her side and breathed like one asleep. Her eyes were open. Ororo had escaped the wake somewhat early, as had most of the X-Men who weren't keenly aware of their social duties, or didn't care. Only Ororo had reason, and the reason was the woman stretched on her side alongside her.

Ororo sat up. The aging futon shifted. Everything on it moved accordingly except for Jean, who bobbed as stiffly as driftwood. Ororo cleared her throat and leaned over, her hand hovering over Jean's shoulder.

"How did you injure your feet?" Ororo asked, her voice hesitant.

"It doesn't matter."

Answering suspicion lanced out of Ororo's mind and through Jean's shields. Jean winced. Her lips thinned and she enunciated, "It was accidental. I went for a walk and forgot to wear shoes."

"You went to the boathouse?" Ororo asked, blinking quizzically.

"Yes."

"Were you sleepwalking?"

"No." Momentary relief eased Ororo's concentration until Jean said, "I don't think so."

"You could have gotten frostbite."

"It's okay."

"It is not okay. What's happened is terrible. What it's doing to you is terrible."

Jean glared sidewise at Ororo. Her expression was hard to read, even with Ororo's preternatural nightsight. "Yes, it is not okay. It is not okay that my husband died fighting some immortal madman who decided to call himself Apocalypse and then bring it on."

"You haven't been sleeping."

"Hank can prescribe something."

"You do not eat enough."

"You can always hook me up to an IV."

"This does not sound like you. You are not yourself." Ororo lay her hand on Jean's shoulder. Her voice was as soft and light, "What have been thinking?"

"'Your head is a dangerous place. Don't go in it alone.'" Jean said, quoting from a source unfamiliar to Ororo. Ororo's fist touched lightly on Jean's shoulder. Jean shrugged it off then turned on her back. Her eyes were shining, with tears about to overflow. Her broken voice issued from the shadow that was her mouth, "How am I supposed to be myself, Storm? There's this echo in my head and it doesn't have a source."

"Could another telepath help you?"

Exasperated, Jean turned onto her side. "I don't need help, I need Scott."

"Nevertheless."

"You'd have to sedate me before another telepath got in here."

"I am afraid for you, Jean."

Jean blinked. A tear ran down her cheek. "So am I."

And not at all of her own volition, Ororo rose from the bed--"Jean?" --and was propelled gently towards the door. "Release me!"-- crossed the threshold-- "Jean, put me down this instant!" She was set just as gently on her feet inside the greenhouse. Thunderheads built in the sky above Westchester. The bedroom door slid shut. "How dare you!" Ororo called, and immediately her cheeks warmed with embarrassment. Scott was dead. But for Jean to toss her bodily outside of her own bedroom-- outrageous! Ororo shouldered the door. Scott was dead. It remained closed. Jean was widowed and she was acting strangely, and the last time Jean had thought she'd lost Scott the Phoenix Force had happened. No matter how hard she pulled the door would not open. Scott was dead and Jean had shared a psychic link with him from when they were children.

What was it like for Jean all alone in her head?

Shakily, mind whirling, Ororo made her way to the kitchen.

In the kitchen, bare hands on her hips, Rogue stood over the sink, cursing it.

"Rogue?" Ororo asked, concern for the younger woman erasing her anger with Jean.

The woman in question turned her head, displaying her wan face. She looked slightly off-color. Her green eyes smiled slightly.

"Hey, Storm."

"What is the matter?"

"Dadblatted thing won't work. Ah twisted off the handle tryin' to get water outta it. Been at this too long not ta know my own strength." Rogue held up the twisted off knob in a hand that shook a little. "Damn."

"Give it to me," said Ororo. Rogue dropped the spigot into her outstretched hand.

"Perhaps you haven't stripped it."

Rogue sniffed loudly, snagged a paper towel from the dispenser and blew her reddened nose.

"Gangway," announced Bobby as he came through the double doors, laden down with plates, "comin' through, more dishes for the galleys-- O! Where have you been? Everyone's been asking for you."

"Good evening, Robert." Ororo assembled a smile, which brightened when she properly fit the handle onto the spigot. "We are solving a minor difficulty."

He looked from woman to woman.

"Plumbing problems?" Bobby asked, his eyebrows raised a little.

Rogue punched him in the shoulder, playfully. Which meant less hard than an aluminum bat. "You better quit with them puns, sugar, or Ah'm gonna have to punish you."

"Blast!" said Ororo softly. "Blastblastblast."

"What is it, boss lady?" Rogue asked, going to her side.

Ororo had her hand on the spigot and had twisted it hard open. Bobby peeped around Ororo's shoulder from the side. The pipe coughed and spluttered. A single drop plopped out and vanished down the drain. "The water bill," Ororo said.

"Y'all forgot the water bill? How are we gonna do all these dishes?"

"No prob. Rain lady can rain us some water, I can make us and melt us some ice."

"Water for dishes, we have. But our facilities will not be operating at peak efficiency."

"And a whole lot of guests," Rogue said. "This stinks."

Bobby grinned. "There's always Port-a-pottys."

Rogue was back-stepping out, her boot heels clicking on the linoleum. She snatched her fawn-colored gloves off the table and jerking a thumb over her shoulder, said "Ah'm a gonna get on the phone, see what Ah can arrange."

Ororo stood in the middle of the kitchen. "There used to be curtains on these windows, potted plants, pictures."

"African violets on that window sill," Bobby added, moving his head to indicate where the purple flowers once sat.

"We put in tile after Sabertooth came here-- the first time. Put up new wallpaper."

"I didn't like the new wallpaper. Didn't have the heart to tell Peter. Between you and me, I'm glad it's gone."

"Since Bastion, oh, since the massacre in the Morlock tunnels, nothing has been right. And this poor home has taken the brunt of the blows."

Thinking of Jean, probably asleep in Ororo's bed, and his own hurt, Bobby disagreed, but not aloud. "How's Jean holding up?" he asked.

Ororo rubbed her temples at the familiar refrain.

Seeing she wasn't going to answer, Bobby went on, "I mean, you seem to spend the most time with her.

"I don't suppose you could convince her to come down to see me 'n' Hank 'n' Warren at Wolverine's cabin? I mean, if it wouldn't cause her to go Dark Phoenix to be surrounded by the other people who loved him."

And Logan. Who at least respected him, Ororo thought.

Charles Xavier watched through the security camera as Jean Grey-Summers methodically searched his desk. He exited the surveillance room.

He pushed the door open and waited for her to notice him. Her head was bowed over his desk, and she was scanning his files.

"If there was anything you needed to know, you could have asked."

Jean's eyes cut towards him. She pursed her lips and scratched the back of her neck. Inhaling noisily through her nostrils, she opened another file.

"I must ask that you leave my office. This is a viol--"

"Where is he?" Jean said. Most of her face was lost in shadow, but the hollows above and below her eyes lent her irises a purple glow, almost red.

"I don't care what it is. I don't care what you told him, how you convinced him to follow whatever harebrained, ill-advised scheme you've come up with, but you call him back from whatever fool's mission you've sent him on."

"You know I can't do that, Jean."

He lowered his shields, partially. You have only to look.

Ignoring his invitation, Jean stood. "You bring him back. You tell him he has to come back. I need him!"

"Scott is dead."

"Bull! He's, he's..."

"My dear. I wish I had a body to show you, but to the best of my knowledge and ability, and that of our colleagues and even Dr. Strange, Scott is nowhere to be found."

Biting her lip, Jean grimaced. "You keep saying that. But haven't you done this to us before?"

Xavier had no response to that.

Jean smashed her hand against the stack of paper files on his desk, scattering them to the floor. "Such is my life," she hissed, her anger and sharpened thoughts deafening as she cleared the room.

Ororo walked to the cliff, unfastening her clothing along the way. At the edge she looked down, and shrugged out of robe she had slipped on. Setting down her jewelry where she could be sure to find it again, she stared down at the moonlit pool of water many feet below.

Moonlight on the water. Starshine above an amphitheater of clouds. Wind sliding along her skin and through her hair. Arms an extension of the moment. Heart keeping time with the pulse of the earth, the slow exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide in her lungs in sync with the turn of the earth. Caught between ground and the starry deep, for a moment Ororo was weightless.

Her body tilted forward and she tumbled from low to low and fell closer to the earth, brought her arms forward, lengthened her spine and arced into a dive.

Bobby, reclining on the banks of the pool, heard the rushing of wind. He saw a silver-white streak of her long hair and heard the tiny splash made by her body.

"Hey Storm," said Bobby when she came up. "S'me."

"Robert?" she asked, recognizing his bluff tenor. Then her eyes adjusted to darkness immediately and she saw that his fair hair wavered in a slight breeze. His light-colored eyes were enormous with sorrow. He looked so much the way he had when they'd held vigil over his father and her heart squeezed.

"Who else'd be out by the lake when it's cold enough to freeze?"

"Any number of us. I did not see you, here," Storm said, swimming to where he sat. "Do you wish me to leave?"

"No. Not really."

She held onto the overhang and kicked up until she could lean her upper body on her arms and her arms on the ground. He did look, but her flowing hair and the uncertain light made him uncertain as to how much of her was actually exposed to his eyes. Anyway, it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before. You weren't an X-Men until you'd seen Storm naked.

"I did not see you at the wake."

"Was talking to my parents. And you took off, too, before I did."

"Hmm." Ororo said noncommittally.

"Saw you and Forge in the hallway outside the rec room."

There was a long pause. "Funerals make the familiar strange," said Ororo.

"Oh yeah.

"Storm, you believe in a Heaven?"

"I--"

"No don't!" Bobby interrupted, "Tell me. I--" he sighed. "How Scott died was really fucked up, but really appropriate. I hope there's a Valhalla for us."

Had the moon been brighter, Bobby would have seen the animation drain from Ororo's features at his words.

Bobby unfolded his legs from their crossed position, ignoring his aching ankles as he did so. "I'm gonna go inside," he said, and before Ororo could respond, did.

Bobby Drake didn't look as if this was one of the saddest days of his life. It helped that he was the cutest X-Man as well as the most baby-faced, even if he hadn't been sleeping much. Remembering Scott and holding Wings' hand when no one was looking was taking up much of his free time.

He entered the men's communal bathroom, managing to walk quietly even though his dress shoes were very new, their soles dangerously slick on the exposed concrete floor. Hands in his pockets, he strolled to the wall of showerheads. He approached a showerhead and stared at it. Lips together in a soundless whistle, he looked over his shoulder, bent at the knees and the waist and looked under the stall doors. Not willing to let anything go to chance, he reached out with his water sense and checked for the warm salinity of human/mutant bodies. Verified that he was alone and reached for a showerhead he'd loosened that morning. It came apart easily and he shoved a bouillon cube (Knorr, nothing quite so greasy as warm Knorr in the morning) into the cap and screwed the cap back on.

This one's for you Scott, Bobby thought. Just as soon as the hot water gets back on.

The common room was filled to capacity. Guests weren't going home, many of them not having seen Jean until she made her appearance at the internment. She'd vanished after tossing the first handful of dirt onto the grave but had preceded Storm into the room. She wished she'd taken something to dull her responses to everyone's thoughts, but she needed her full faculties.

She'd taken a drink, and ended up between Cable and Hank. Big blue to the right of her grizzled, time traveling and borne by her clone, the first Mrs. Summers, Madelyne Pryor, to her left. She clung to Hank, pressing her cheek into his serge covered arm. Her hand was enveloped by Cable's massive paw.

She was finishing up a sneaky-Scott story involving a filthy rich egotist who wanted Scott to fly him and his latest wife (v.5) to Denali. The snow warnings had been in effect, and Scott hadn't wanted to do it. He'd taken the man up three times before, with three different brides. "You'd think with his track record and ego he'd think to blame me," Scott had said.

Scott kept referring to the latest wife by the name of her predecessor, apologizing profusely each time.

People had to laugh. Especially Heather Hudson, Alpha Flight's Vindicator, she understood the pointed remarks for what they were and took no offense on behalf of her rapidly uncomfortable teammates.

Much drinking to the memory of Scott, and Charles, who stayed by one of Betsy's bamboo plants, drank quietly (water) and didn't say a word, his mind tightly shuttered against all telepathic queries, which was just as well, since Jean's was, too.

When all was quiet, and people's attention off of her, Jean excused herself and escaped up to Charles' office.

She unlocked the door to Cerebro's room and entered.

Her pulse was steady, her mind clear. The helmet had been modified and was lighter and larger. The small smooth globes of the sensors weren't even a prickle against her scalp. She could do this. Xavier kept ranking her as one of the premier telepaths on the planet. She hoped so. She'd shared a psionic link with Scott for most of her adult life but hadn't been able to find him.

She'd die without him.

Her searching heart was shutting off areas where it was sure that Scott no longer lived, leaving Jean to consciously pay attention to her mind. That she hummed 'hold onto your love' only disturbed her partially. That her self was slipping through her grasp would have terrified her if she hadn't been so tired.

She wanted to sleep. She couldn't afford to. Every time she woke up more of her was missing.

Cable suspected, and Hank's tactful intrusions on her solitude had much to do with his suspicions. Big Blue missed nothing.

This was her last effort to find her husband, seek him out on the astral plane, enter the dark places of human thought if need be. She wanted her husband and she wanted to live.

Jean's love for Scott had attracted the Phoenix Force to her when she was first dying on the shuttle above the earth. Moved by love, the Phoenix Force had offered Jean safe haven in a shell. The Force took Jean's place, piloting the X-men and most importantly Scott, through a solar storm back to Earth. Love kept Jean alive at the bottom of Jamaica Bay. Love taught the Phoenix, the original, humanity's glories and shame. Love brought the Phoenix back from the dark side and compelled it to lay down its life so that no other sentient being would suffer for its passions. Love set it free from the shackles imposed on it by Xavier and Jean, and lit up Cerebro's control panel like Dawn.

The shadow it cast on Jean's previous psionic feats was utter and complete. Jean searched like a powerful, but slow computer, more detail than she could quickly process entering her mind. The search was for Scott, and the Phoenix Force in Jean and her mind power, knew Scott, his aspects, his temperament, his ways. But he'd loved life, and everything Jean sensed reminded Jean of him.

At first her search was scattered, as she sought out pain that matched his when Apocalypse's blast struck him instead of Nate Grey. So much hurt in the world, even extraordinary, supernatural pain like that Apocalypse brought to bear on Scott. She'd bitten her inner cheek, and blood reddened her lips were they met. Mucous shone on her upper lip, and the whites of her eyes were red.

Telepathically, she increased the magnitude of power employed by Cerebro, opening up as slowly and as far as she could stand.

To say it was agony was groundless. It was giving birth through her pores. The muscles in her back and along her spine jumped and twitched and her poor head twitched within the light casing of Cerebro.

Jean's nails broke off in the leather arms of the chair and she spasmed once, twice, dislocating a shoulder when opposing contractions wracked her. She tried to hold herself down with her tk, and just managed it, but tears were leaking out the corners of her eyes and she could not find Scott. Could not find him.

Psylocke, voluntarily mind blind, sensed the chaos first, coming to alert before the first non-telepathic psi-sensitive went into a seizure.

Intuiting the cause, Psylocke raised her arm and summoned a shadow. As she sank into the shadow-portal. Ororo dove behind her and into the floor, narrowly missing the floor. The portal closed behind her vanishing feet, snipping off a portion of the hem of her gown.

Ororo had always held onto Psylocke when shadow-walking with her. The vivid darkness swarmed and ate at her senses. It was luck that closed Ororo's hand around Psylocke's ankle, and luck that allowed her to tumble out of the shadow place and onto the floor of the Professor's office right before the portal closed. Psylocke was slamming on the door with her flattened hand, the other digging into her scalp, screaming for Jean to "Stop it, Ican't fight him, for God'ssakeyousillybitch stopit!"

Ororo hadn't been so messy in years. Winds accompanying the ball lightning she summoned, whipping papers off of Xavier's desk and shredding the leaves from his one remaining potted plant-- a ficus. The lighting broke through the lock, and Psylocke kicked the door open.

Meanwhile Hank followed Cable out the door and up the stairs, Cable bellowing 'JEAN! JEAN! DON'T."

"Shadowcat!" Xavier commanded, grabbing the confused young woman, Kitty Pryde, by the arm. "Phase through Cerebro's power source!"

Suddenly immaterial, Pryde dropped through the floor. The shielding had been meant to withstand anything, even her, but Hank had already ripped off the casing. Kitty zipped through him and into the power source, and for a moment she was the premier telepath on the planet, screaming as Jean's agony, energy not quite electronic nor quite telepathic crackling through Kitty's phased body. Kitty was flipped out back into the chamber, knocking straight into Hank. He remained standing, but the impact was another insult to Kitty's battered body, and she fluttered like cloth, phased and unconscious, partially in and out of the floor.

A quick glance at Xavier confirmed that he was thinking the same thing as Hank- the only help that the intangible Shadowcat could benefit from right now was telepathic. Hank left Xavier to care for her, and bounded past the newly-opened door, sizzling and swaying uncertainly, as if it didn't know what it had done to merit such treatment. He stopped abruptly beside Jean's chair. "Oh my stars and garters," he whispered, mainly for continuity, since the phrase, or any other phrase for that matter, didn't seem up to covering the scene before him. Jean's body was seemed to have suddenly collapsed. Her lips and nose were flowing with blood. Her sightless eyes pointed upward, partially opened legs twisted at unnatural angles and from beneath Cerebro's helmet smoke curled from her singed hair. But her hands still gripped the chair's arms as if her life depended on it.