Dancing in the Flames

Part 3

The clouds outside were unmistakably bright glowy white ships and the sky was a bright blue sea they were floating it. The sky herself seemed to gleam with golden beam of light reflecting everywhere-small prisms of rainbows off glass surfaces. Little rainbows were like little wishes that never come true, just staying bright and friendly too long and disappearing when the ship clouds come to claim their spot again. Something was calling her faintly she could hear it in the back of her mind.

"Jean? Jean are you listening?"

She looked up from the window; they ere all looking at her again. As she had lately she said nothing. Her mood was growing foul as she thought over things, not sure how to feel.

"Jean, Honey, are you okay?"

That was Scott. At her side taking her hand, wanting to make everything right, right away before it could get worse. She let go of his hand rather detachedly and stood up, faint mummer not sure if anyone heard her.

"I need some air."

With that and a last look around at her closest friends she walked out the room silently. Knowing their concern without feeling it and her heart's pain by acting this way she didn't looks back as she walked to the door silently. Not once, because they were her heart and one backward glance would be her undoing. One backward glance and the unwanted tears that plagued her heart and soul would fall and everything would spill out.

Sympathy would be abounding but soon with truth would turn to confusion as glances were cast in different directions at other people, silent and very unsilent accusations being made that would for a point tear the team apart in places. Jean shook her head, being torn apart inside was enough, these people were the one thing keep her still whole. She didn't want them to be this way, too.

She opened the front door slipping out into the cool, crisp March air. A bit nippy for her clothing which were only pair of spandex black pants the came to just below her knees, the short sleeve royal blue sweater and a pair of sandals. She let her hair blow in the wind as she stood on the porch. The barriers she placed around her thoughts were still there so no one but perhaps the Professor could get in and he would still have to take down those to hear, but he wouldn't.

He never pried into her thoughts uninvited when he had been here.

((Am I okay, Scott? Darling? Sure, what would you like me to say???? I went at it like- like an animal with Wolverine on our bedroom floor and I'm feeling fine now; How are you? Sure, yeah silence not bothering me anymore. You wanted the truth? Well, It's burns the same as the emptiness and you'll never understand either.))

But she also knew that it had been more than that and it was a cruel way to phrase what had happened. It had been nothing like that. She'd given in to something inside herself she'd buried deep inside her heart and soul too long. Something that had been the only thing that quenched the silence. She'd usually never acted like this- but a few times before it had happened, too. Not as far as this one had gone but there had been other times she'd given into the temptation and attraction between her and Logan.

She had given in. She'd wanted it. She'd liked it. It had been thoughtless, feral- wild in ways she couldn't understand in her thoughts, which was a place in least she had control. But it had released her of her grasp of time and thought. Her thumb turned the band of wedding ring behind her engagement ring as she though on that night again. She had been laying in their bed while Scott was trying to get her to talk and she was half there, half in her silence inside. She'd let slip a few things she just plain shouldn't have said and she knew it, but it had been her anger and hurt speaking. He'd taken it personally, gotten hurt and left after telling her maybe that she needed time apart from him angrily and soon after Logan had showed up.

It had all been one big blessing and curse. She'd never meant to kiss him when she'd seen him in the doorway. Faintest curiosity struck suddenly as she brushed away a curl of fire bright hair walking towards the forest silently.

What had Logan originally come to Scott and her room for anyway?

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"I am worried about her;" Ororo said to the others standing near the open sliding door where she could feel the breeze, her eyes on the door that Jean had just since closed.

Remy cast her a consoling look from the couch next to Rogue and said; "I t'ink we all second dat der, Cher."

"Has anyone seen her even smile in days for even a little second?" That would be Bobby Drake lounged across another chair like Jeans had been.

Silence abounded a second. They all knew it wasn't looking good and it didn't look like it was getting any better. She was becoming withdrawn and she wouldn't talk to almost anyone about it taking revere in the silence she would only mention she couldn't stand. No, things didn't seem to be getting brighter. Quite the opposite.

********************************************

"They're worried about you, Jeanie."

Jean cast her emerald eye towards the steam silently a second, one arm lightly across her ribs under her chest clasp to the other. The sound of the bubbling, churning, running water gave her a slight moment of relief that she truly didn't understand. But she wasn't about to push the relief away.

"I know they are; but they don't understand. None of them know what I'm going through."

"Your not talking to them won't help the situation any either. You realize that don't you?"

She frowned sitting down on the bank of the steam quietly looking at the mirad reflection in the water, her feet a few inches from the water. The light was like the glow powers or even a single lamp might give off.

"They wouldn't understand. It would be like expecting a small child understand Trigonometry or Calculus. You don't expect it of them in the least."

"And about that one try, Jeanie? What about that one?"

*********************************

Jubilee had her fingers in upward motions playing with the sparkled-light paffs above her fingertips. She knew she was in trouble and the light worry played on her expression from where she sat back in the sun chair behind the house in front of the pool.

They couldn't blame her. She was only here to get away from him.

He was a loon. The others hadn't believed her she'd tried to tell them, but they seemed to think she was imagining it, too; but she wasn't. He was not going to leave her alone. Not even for a day.

Atleast she was back here, she told herself as the light's disappeared and she started to undo the bands on her roller-skates. She slipped them out pulling up to her on the edge of the chair. They'd help. They were the X-Men. Her friends, her family. They had to.

Jubilee'd never get turned away by them. They'd never not been here for her since the beginning in

Australia. They'd help. They'd help her get away from him.

If he didn't get her first.

Again.