-3-
In the women's communal bath, an exhausted Emma peeled off her jacket. Still in her blouse, skirt, and hose Emma picked a shower, and turned the knob enough to produce a trickle. Nothing.
After Nightcrawler had teleported her into the power room below the mansion to tend to Katherine Pryde, Emma had lost track of time. Jean Grey's idiot stunt could have cost young Pryde her life, and she'd crippled herself in the process.
Grimly, Emma ran her fingers through her hair and turned the knob on another shower. That, too, was dry.
Her help had been unnecessary, though. Emma had told the others so after Pryde had informed her, mentally and in rather curt terms, that she neither wanted nor needed her help. Emma had shrugged, glanced around at the assembled X-Men and said drily, "She'll be fine."
After Katherine Pryde, Emma had tried to tend to Jean, who had mentally made just as plain that she wanted the former White Queen of the Hellfire Club nowhere near her mind.
When Emma had gone to physically put hands on Jean to she see what the woman had done to herself with her lovely little display of psychosis, she'd felt her hands catch fire.
Gritting her teeth, she'd withstood the illusion and had told the red-haired psi to stop it.
It was exhaustion, Jean's teary exhaustion, that caused the tactile illusion of flames to dissipate and not any effort on Emma's part.
"You couldn't push me away," Emma had said wonderingly as she rubbed her hands. "You've burned out your telekinesis, haven't you?"
Jean Grey had crippled herself out of need.
How disappointing.
Emma wanted to go back to her Massachusetts Academy, and though dead tired and now the 'premiere' telepath on the planet, she wanted nothing more than to return to her Academy, teach her charges to be shrewed and resilient, and by all means, practical and after that, maybe take over the world.
Emma chuckled, turning from the last of the shower head. That too was dry.
"The world is not enough," Emma said, not knowing why she said it. Groaning, she put her jacket back on, and went in search of Storm, or Bobby, to beg the privilege of a shower.
"Jean? Jean? Jeannie-baby? Hon?"
Jean could've listened to the soft southern voice for hours. Maybe if she waited long enough, the voice would get to something horrible like snuggle-bunny or cutie-pie. But the voice wouldn't go on forever; it was expecting an answer. She opened her eyes slightly and said, "Hey."
The relief in Rogue's green eyes would have been overwhelming if Jean hadn't expected it.
"It's okay if you're not up ta talking," said Rogue. "Ah just wanted to tell you how happy Ah am that you'll be okay. When Hank told me you'd recovered...well, it would've been too much, ya know?"
"I know," said Jean. She propped herself up on one elbow, "But tell me, how's Kitty?" The end of the sentence was swallowed up by her strained throat, but Rogue had no trouble understanding.
"She'll be fine," Rogue soothed, handing Jean a glass of water from the tray beside the bed. "You're the worst casualty."
A figure appeared in the doorway, and Jean added belatedly, "And how is Betsy?"
"Betsy is fine," said Psylocke. "But there's a score of X-Men wondering how you are. Are you up to seeing them? Blink once for yes, twice for no."
"What about I don't know?" asked Jean wearily.
"If you don't know that you're up to it, then you're not," said Rogue firmly. "Sleep. Ah'll go tell everyone that they'll have to wait."
Jean's purple-haired and skunk-striped helpers left the room. Jean was grateful for it, it being both their help and their leaving. With them gone, she could think about Scott in peace. Scott, and how he wasn't there. Scott and how he'd never be there again.
Whip-slim Kitty Pryde moved with the sinuous grace of a dancer and unconscious purpose of a martial-artist-- usually-- but her torrent of light brown curls, the obdurate set of her delicate jaw-- which was a trifle long for conventional prettiness-- and the snap of intelligence in her eyes were the only things usual about her physical appearance. There were bags under her enormous brown eyes and she limped a little as she walked alongside her towering companion. His codename, Colossus, fit him. Had she not been so focused on staying upright, she would have noticed that she'd renoticed his good looks.
The hall was empty except for her and Peter, which was probably a good thing since Kitty didn't feel quite up to maneuvering around people or through them. It was hard enough to stay solid without switching on and off, off and on.
"Head rush," said Kitty, and leaned against the wall with one arm. Peter took her other arm and compelled her to lean against him instead, and so they walked on, side by side, though she came less than half-way up his chest.
"Has Betsy's telepathy come back yet?" she asked, disoriented by his proximity. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been this close to him. She was entirely sure she disliked it.
Peter shook his head no, then his brows furrowed as he regarded her. "Are you sure you feel like doing this?" His concerned look always made him look like a puppy, or some equally adorable mammal, and Kitty laughed even though it hurt. "Definitely," she said. "We can't let Jean stew in her own guilt. She's gotta know that I'm..." Kitty's words were cut off as she stumbled slightly. Peter steadied her.
"That you are...?" he prompted.
"Fine," Kitty finished defiantly, her firm chin jutting. "I am fine. Here we are."
She peered around the infirmary doorway to see Storm, Logan, Bobby, and Jubilee were already gathered in the infirmary.
"It seems Jean already has enough company," murmured Peter.
Kitty had to agree. Not that Logan and Storm were really monopolizing Jean's time; Logan looked surly and Storm looked amused. But Bobby Drake was chattering non-stop and making wide gestures, his babble occasionally punctuated by comments from Jubilee.
Before Kitty could escape Storm waved her and Colossus in.
"We won't crowd the place too much?" Kitty asked, entering the room reluctantly.
"Not at all. Bobby and Jubilee were just about to leave."
This news seemed to surprise the Iceman, who glanced around questioningly. "We were?"
Storm nodded confirmation. Bobby looked about to argue, but Jubilee took his wrist firmly and said, "C'mon, Drake. Give the sick woman a break."
"Oh, was I talking too much?" Bobby said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "Sorry about that. But you won't have to hear me talking again for a while, so it's okay." Jubilee yanked him towards the door, and he added, "I'm gonna go pack now. I'll call sometimes, okay?" He was now halfway though the doorway, and he took hold of the doorframe as Jubilee put all her weight-- which wasn't much -- into unfastening him. "Get well soon, Jean! Don't do anything I wouldn't do! Don't forget to-- Hey!" he exclaimed, releasing the door abruptly as Jubilee bit his knuckles.
There was a sound of arguing as Bobby disappeared. Colossus, standing closest to the door, reached out and closed it softly, muffling the sounds coming from the hall.
Jean and Storm sighed in unison.
"My God," said Jean.
"He wanted to say goodbye," Storm said.
"Longest way of saying it I ever heard," muttered Logan.
"Bobby's leaving?" Kitty asked politely, taking the chair that Iceman had recently vacated.
"Going to his parents' place. Something to do with an audit."
Jean's eyes alighted on Kitty and they brightened slightly. "Kitty, you're really fine?"
"No permanent damage done. I'm more worried about you."
"No need," said Jean, with an attempt at a reassuring smile. Kitty suppressed a flinch at the expression-- sometimes it was uncanny how much Jean reminded her of Rachel. "I can already walk some," the redhead added, with mock pride.
"Yay you! You'll be back on your feet in...oh, wait, you've done that part, haven't you? You'll be back in your own bed in no time."
"Well, in one of Ororo's beds, anyhow. That's on today's agenda," said Jean. "I'm looking forward to getting out of here." But Kitty knew by Jean's expression that she wasn't looking forward to it at all, or anything else for that matter. Probably wasn't even looking forward to the next episode of a favorite TV show.
Oh, Jean, Kitty thought to her, knowing that the sickly telepath couldn't, or at least wouldn't, be monitoring her thoughts. How did you get to this point? And what can we do to bring you back?
Kitty exchanged a few more pleasantries with Jean, but Jean's weariness was palpable, so she and Peter at last left Jean to the less trying company of Ororo and Logan.
As the muffled sounds had indicated, Jubilee and Bobby were still in the hall. On the hall floor, actually. Bobby was on his back, laughing, hands in front of his face to shield it. Jubilee's knee was pressed into his sternum, and she alternated between trying to slap him and abortive attempts to gouge Bobby's eyes out. Peter shot them a look of disapproval. "Get off me," Bobby urged, his voice filled with laughter. "There are people here!"
"Not until you take it back!" said Jubilee, half-scowling, half-grinning. She broke past Bobby's guard to plant a neat punch to his nose and Bobby yelped in surprise.
Kitty stepped around the two and continued down the hallway, Pete stepped over them and followed suit.
"Wait, wait!" Pushing Jubilee off of him, Bobby Drake clambered to his feet and practically bounded after them. "Kitty... You'll be here for a while, right?"
Kitty cocked her head sideways, and said slowly, "Yes." Beside her, Peter shifted impatiently from foot to foot.
"And you have close bonds with basically everyone in the mansion. Except me. So you won't feel a need to protect me from any of the chaos which will inevitably manifest itself under our leaky roof, correct?"
Kitty inclined her head in hesitant agreement. Bobby nodded, satisfied, and dug into his pocket, pulling out a crumpled receipt with a phone number on the back.
"If things start going to hell...if Jean tries anything stupid-er, if Storm cracks and blows away the remains of this place with a tornado, if Rogue happens to absorb half the team's powers...call me, okay? I think the others might want to keep me out of it, but I don't want to be kept out."
Still on the floor, Jubilee rolled her eyes. "There's a reason they like to keep you out of it, Drake, and it's got nothing to do with protecting you."
"Shut up," he said, without turning his head. "So, will you? I mean, if you don't mind."
"No problem, Bobby. Though I don't quite anticipate any disasters of that magnitude."
Above them, Peter smiled briefly, glanced up at the ceiling and scratched the underside of his jaw.
Bobby shook his head. "Pryde, you were in Britain way too long." He gave her a half-salute, and turned to help Jubilee to her feet.
Kitty folded the receipt neatly and put it in her pocket. What an odd task to be charged with, and by Iceman of all people. She wasn't sure if it was flattering or just strange.
She was exhausted from all this standing. Before she said anything though, Peter took her arm and murmured, "Bed now. You need rest."
Kitty hadn't been aware it showed. To her amusement she found herself grinning up at him rather than removing her arm from his firm grasp.
Sunrise was the better part of an hour away when Jean sat up in bed. Oddly enough, she didn't disturb Ororo.
Jean left the bed without waking Ororo, slipped off her sleepwear and dressed in the dark, going about the room and picking up discarded piles of clothing and sniffing them for freshness.
She reached for her boots behind Ororo's recliner, carried one in each hand and sidled from the room, down the stairs, and to the rear of the house.
She made it outside without encountering anyone.
Most eyes would not have been able to see her once she cleared the porch lights. She was a phenomenal looking woman-- strong yet sloped shoulders, small waist and strong, curvy silhouette. Her hair was sleep mussed and the collar of her padded flannel jacked was tucked under her shirt at the neck. Her sweat pants were baggy, but they did nothing to hide how breathtaking was her form even in the dark of earliest morning. Not to those eyes. Standing on the porch, Jean looked up. Ever graceful, she trotted down the steps in a slight crouch, craned her neck and surveyed the sky before making for the trees. There was the sound of large wings beating and Jean disappeared from view, her path to the little cabin on the edge of the clearing hidden by the overhanging, overmeeting branches of trees.
She picked her way carefully to a small cabin in the woods. Carefully, but in the dark, as if she'd made her way there before. But that wasn't right. She moved silently, but Logan had the best hearing of the X-Men.
The cabin itself was silent.
Jean went to the woodpile, flexed her mittened hands, grabbed the frosty ax handle and wrested it from the stump. She held the ax blade down and took up a log. Set the log narrow side down on the stump, braced her feet and swung back up and down with the ax, cleaving the log in two.
Jean chopped and chopped until she ran out of wood. Then she stacked wood, brushed chips from the chopping block and leaned against it, pressing the back of her mittened hand to her forehead. She sat there for a long while. Eventually, the door opened, revealing a square of firelight and the silhouette of a short, powerfully built man. He was almost as wide across the shoulders as the doorway was wide.
"You 'bout ready for coffee, now?" Logan asked.
Her back to him, Jean sniffled. "In a minute," she said. "I'll be-- Thanks. In a minute-- Uhm."
Inside Logan's cabin it was warm and quiet. She didn't have the mind to pay attention to the layout but they were in the kitchen, somehow. She hadn't been paying attention to how she got there. She shivered in her clothes.
"Where you gonna go?" the voice belonged to arguably, one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
Jean sighed, shifted her seat across the counter edge, her shoulders rolling choppily as she shrugged.
"I don't know," she said. Her hair caught what little lantern light there was and held it. It was a trick of flame shimmering through oil, but to Logan's eyes Jean was aglow.
"You don't have to know, Jeannie."
"Away," Jean whispered. "Just away."
"Ain't nothin' wrong with that."
The blue stoneware mug was withstanding the abuse Jean's suddenly frantic hands were trying to do it well enough, but Logan calmed them with his gentle touch. His hands were rough all over the palm and color, bloodrush, assaulted the pallor of Jean's skin, making her flush along the column of her neck and over her ears.
Her lips darkened to the color of dried cherries, and bars of color appeared over her cheeks, right under her green eyes. Logan took the mug from her and set it on the counter.
"It's been rough on you, Jeannie."
"Where have you been?"
"Wanted to give you space, darlin'. Time to grieve and space to breathe."
"Logan, you've given me everything a woman could ever ask for."
That was it really.
Jean looked down and the stroked the skin over her third vertebrae with thumb and middle finger, her ring finger crooked in her hair.
"Thank you," she said miserably, having realized that she'd come here because she'd wanted to telepathically borrow his memory sense of Scott's scents. "Thank you."
"You don't got anything to thank me for."
He knew better, but he continued to stand in front of her anyway.
It was always the same kiss.
Every time.
His mouth slanting under hers, hot and wet and silky and soft, his stubbled skin satisfying, stimulating, exhilarating, her legs parting effortless noiselessly, his chest thrumming, hard and hot against hers. So much noise in that kiss, same one every time where she wanted in in in and he held her, held her tight but fan-fucking-tastic and her hands tugging at his hair, grazing his chin and him still as stone one moment, a gale force the next.
She sat up on the sink, he helped her up, stared at her. She stared back into his expressionless eyes.
She should go. She really should.
He'd given her everything a woman could ask for.
She was touching him, sliding her palms over his shoulders, over the worn flannel of his shirt, so thin she could feel the strap of an undershirt and the hair on his skin.
He licked his lip, unselfconsciously.
Blood rush, inexorable, gravity driven, everything in a working body and heart facilitated it. She went from sitting on the counter to clinging to him and he carried her out of the kitchen.
The kitchen area was quiet. The whole cabin was quiet. The window over the sink was shut. The gingham curtains over them showed no sign of having been smashed by Jean's back.
A single drop of water dripped from the faucet into the stainless steel sink.
The rag-rug in front of the sink was slightly mussed.
Outside the window the deep dark of night gave way to the beginnings of dawn.
That morning Peter made pancakes for breakfast.
All present pronounced them delicious. Except for Warren, who had very little appetite despite his pre-dawn flight and Jean, who wasn't there.
Kurt, while spooning some left-over fruit compote onto his muesli, asked Ororo if he could finish it and if she had already set some aside for Jean's breakfast.
Ororo smiled, and said that seeing as how Jean had probably gone for a walk that morning, she would be getting her own breakfast and that was no longer her concern.
That news was met with pleased surprise from those awake enough to note it - this excluded Rogue, who's curls were soaking in the milk of her breakfast cereal-- Jean had not left Ororo's attic rooms since being released from the infirmary three days before.
Warren, who was holding hands with Betsy beneath the table, clenched his free hand into a fist. Betsy noted the muscle jumping in his jaw, bent her head closer to him to hide it and joked that Peter had finally learned to make proper pancakes just in time to see if his -- which she'd tasted a forkful of-- compared with Jean's.
Jean forgot what she was looking for in the garage. With a sinking feeling she began to suspect it was Scott. She closed her eyes, inhaled the ghastly-thrilling odor of new car, old motor oil, stiff rags and LAVA. Opened them and saw that all trace of her husband was gone from what had been one of his most frequented spots. She went over to the locked tool drawer, touched what had been his tray. Scott had always had a tray of tools. There was a key dangling there, in the lock. She blinked. He'd kept that key on a ring. Scowling, Jean turned the key and pulled open the drawer. It was empty, Scott's personal things gone.
Jean slid it shut, gingerly, still scowling. There was probably a box of his tools waiting for her to sort through somewhere in the mansion, or maybe even in the boathouse. Wonderful.
She made her way outside amd she passed a shiny black two-door she'd never seen before. It looked a lot like a sneaker on wheels. Stuck to the trunk was a black and white Bavarian Motor Vehicle logo.
"Z3?" Jean read aloud, tracing the silver-color model number.
While Jean was standing beside the car the garage door swung open. Warren, a tall fair skinned man of patrician features, had been dealing with his own grief quietly. Scott had been his friend and his leader. Warren had spent all of his adult life listening to Scott, even when Scott wasn't physically present. As hollow as Warren felt, he was convinced that Jeannie was crazed with grief from the silence.
"Jeannie."
She looked up to see him lounging in the doorway, one arm raised above his head, leaned up against the frame. His hand dangled next to his face and his hair curled about it. His gorgeous wings were partially fanned open. He was a beautiful man. Beautiful in an otherworldy way even before his skin had turned blue like skim milk in shadows and she missed Scott.
War was long and well put together, immensely strong and fast. And graceful. Easily the most beautiful mutant. He had a way of getting her past too much funk, too much thinking about thoughts. When Scott was driving her crazy by not acting on his obvious love for her, Warren had helped keep her on the sensical side of nutty, but that wasn't any good now because there wasn't any Scott. Warren's hand lifted. He threw and Jean caught what he threw without thinking. Jean looked into her hand and saw the car key. She was frowning at the key while Warren strode down the stairs, slid across the hood of somebody else's car-- he didn't dent the hood he was so light-- and stood on the other side of the car.
She wanted Scott.
"What am I supposed to do with these?" she asked.
"You're taking me to breakfast."
Breakfast took place in a window booth of a chrome faced trailer with a red fluorescent sign that read 'DINE '.
Their pancakes were half eaten. The bumpy, clear brown plastic of the orange juice glasses were moist with condensation and Jean, of course, looked sad, across from Warren with her face turned to the window. She wasn't looking out, though.
Warren heaved a sigh and the sticking sound the vinyl cushions made as he scooted off of his seat and took the place next to her was noisy but Jean kept looking at nothing. Touching her elbow and nudging her with his hips, War made her move over.
He picked up a white paper wrapped straw and held it, folding his hands and placing his fingers along the straw. Jean's shoulders rose and she rubbed one hand with another.
"So," Warren said.
Jean hunched her shoulders, leaned her head against his arm.
"When are you leaving?" he said.
Jean wrapped an arm around his middle and almost smiled. "I wonder... I wonder what if."
"What if, what?"
"What if," if I had loved you instead of Scott. Would I still hurt this much? Instead she said. "I think I'm going back to Alaska. Pack up the house. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. I already bought the ticket."
"I figured." He took up a strand of her hair, and thought it was that same amazing color it had been when they'd first met. For the first time ever he wondered what it looked like through ruby quartz, and he was sick at heart.
"Warren?"
"Yeah?" He waved off the waitress.
"You're the best."
"That's why you bought me breakfast."
She smiled, that quick smile of her teens when she was less certain of herself and everybody else, much less wise and a tad more whimsical. Warren smiled back and began talking about something else, hoping to mask the sound of his heart breaking.
-0-