Chapter Two: One of the Girls (Jean)
Jean Grey bit her lip thoughtfully as she watched her new charge unpacking. Since they'd reached her room, the girl had been markedly more talkative. Well, answering questions with more than just a muttered oui or non, anyhow. But she couldn't shake the image of her in the X-Jet just yet. Eyes closed, clutching her arm hard. This was really the first time the girl had let her out of her grip in the past twelve hours, honestly.
She was furious, really. Furious that anyone, especially someone so sweet, so gifted, as Jeanne-Marie Beaubier had been forced to exist in that world. That hateful, cruel world the sisters had created there. Treating her like she was a demon. A demon now, and before, nothing more than a homeless child to be pitied.
Jean was, in general, a very level headed young woman. But at times, she really did feel like breaking things. She was a red head, after all.
"Your room is very beautiful, Jeanne," The girl told her, turning around to smile at her again. "Thank you for letting me… share it with you." Her accent tripped over the words a little, and she cocked her head thoughtfully at the pause. Her voice was soft, and her shoulders stooped.
She was too thin, Jean thought to herself. Long bones with not nearly enough muscle covering them. But she was so beautiful. A sweet, rosebud mouth, feminine face, surrounded by those raven locks. Even the silver stripe in her hair. Simply gorgeous. Especially when she smiled. Actually, it even gave her a small twinge of something, looking at her.
She knew it was jealousy, most likely. But she didn't really want to consider that.
"You're more than welcome, Jeanne-Marie," Jean assured her guest, returning the smile brightly. "So, do you want a tour of the Mansion?"
Blinking for just a moment, the other girl nodded. "Please. It's so beautiful. I can… I can hardly believe it's my new…"
"Home?" Jean finished, moving toward the door and waving for the darker girl to follow her. "It sure is. All the other students are probably dying to meet you, too."
Jeanne-Marie paused then, just for a moment.
But Jean just smiled, encouragingly, she hoped. "Come on, they'll love you."
Jeanne-Marie nodded, and followed her out of the room, without another moment's hesitation.
It was hard not to wonder, sometimes, how she let herself be talked into such things.
She glanced over at Scott, looking joyful as he always did when driving his beloved convertible on a nice sunny day. His head bobbed up and down to the music as he tried to sing along.
The boy could do a lot of things well. But singing was definitely not one of them.
A glance to the back seat now, where Kitty, Kurt, Jeanne-Marie, and Rogue were squeezed in, as her mother would've said, "like a pack of sardines." Kurt was busily chatting to the new girl about school in Bayville, conveniently leaving out the recent difficulties of their being well-known mutants, thankfully, and Rogue and Kitty were attempting to shout over the pair of them about a party at someone-or-other's next week.
Jeanne-Marie, she was happy to note, was laughing happily at every other sentence the exuberant Nightcrawler uttered, her mouth hidden behind one delicate, long fingered hand.
She'd oohed and ahhed over the entire mansion on their tour, and Jean practically had to pry 'Berto and Ray off her with a crowbar. And every passing minute, she seemed to lighten up more. Smiling. A sweet, sad kind of smile, like she was living in a dream. Happy, but thinking she'd wake up at any moment.
She felt a warm hand on hers, suddenly, and looked back to Scott. He was smiling, and spared her a quick glance, raising his eyebrows once, then turning back to the road. She locked her fingers into his and returned the smile happily.
And realized just why she let herself be talked into such things. Because sometimes, it felt good to be normal.
"So what do you do, anyhow?" Rogue asked around a mouthful of cheese fries, leaning her elbow on the table lazily.
Jean tried not to look too disapproving. The food court at the mall, she reminded herself, was hardly a proper dinner table anyhow.
Jeanne-Marie swallowed her own food, having placed her napkin in her lap immediately and eating demurely enough to satisfy even Jean's mother, then cocked her head at the other girl. "How do you mean, what do I do?"
"Ya know, like your powers," Rogue prompted, taking another fry on, "what makes you the latest recruit here at freak central."
Jean elbowed the goth girl under the table for that one.
The dark haired recruit looked undaunted. "I can fly," she decided, after a moment. "And move very fast. And sometimes, I can make light… but… I don't know the way I do it."
"Wow," Kurt was nodding enthusiastically, grinning under his image inducer, "Flying, that's really cool!"
Jeanne-Marie smiled at him, looking bashful again.
"Yeah!" Kitty added, "That's totally neat. How'd you figure that out anyhow?"
The smile fell from her face.
Jean sucked in a quick breath.
Everyone looked at Jeanne-Marie expectantly.
Slowly, the smile returned, this time mildly mischievous. Pale blue eyes found Kitty's again. "A very funny accident?" She made it into a question, her voice rising up at the end. Combined with the look on her face, it was so funny it was actually cute.
The rest of the table seemed to find it amusing too, as the girls giggled, and the boys smiled at the new girl stupidly.
They apparently agreed with her diagnosis of "cute."
"I can't imagine what kind of accident that would cause that," Kurt was obviously amusing himself with ideas.
Jeanne-Marie simply smiled at him again, and took another bite of her baked potato.
"So you speak French? Can you help me with my homework? I was totally thinking of picking it up as a subject," Kitty was sucking the last of the coke from the bottom of her glass. Irritatingly loud.
The dark-haired girl nodded, swallowed, and replied. "I can try. My French is a little different, but we studied it at Madame's."
"Oh girl," Kitty linked her arm with Jeanne-Marie's happily, "We are gonna be best friends!"
As the conversation continued, Jean allowed herself to lightly connect with the new girl's mind. Nothing deep of course. Just to get a sense of how she was feeling. Her face had fallen so quickly when they'd asked how she discovered her powers, it had honestly scared her. But now, as she squeezed Kitty's arm in her own, as her eyes looked less and less at her food and more and more at the other kids, she seemed happier than ever before.
A creeping confidence. That was what she felt. Like some kind of wall was breaking down inside the girl. Like she was waking up from a long sleep.
Jean felt a lump in her throat, thinking about it again. Seventeen years old. Repressed and hurt.
But what the hell had she been doing at that night club?
"Well if it isn't freaks on parade."
Just a nameless face in the crowd. A jock.
Jean cringed, thinking of Duncan.
Kitty, for her part, settled for flipping the offender the bird.
"Cute, Kit," Scott said, halfheartedly.
"Well, I'm sick of these jerk-offs," the girl was suddenly despondent, a huge switch after her lively display at the shoe store, bouncing from rack to rack with Jeanne-Marie looking for new tennis shoes for the girl. "They don't even care that if it weren't for us their asses would be fried."
"That's not the way to think about it—,"
Kurt held up a hand in Scott's face now, as he held the door for them, "Talk to the hand, man. No fearless leader allowed in the mall, thank you very much."
Scott just shook his head and shrugged at her, helpless.
Jeanne-Marie laughed outright.
Kurt looked immensely pleased.
"You guys have everything you need, or can we go home now? It's almost closing time."
Rogue shrugged, now walking beside Jeanne-Marie, looking a little listless. "Whatever. Ah'm done."
Jeanne-Marie clutched her bags, containing new shoes, two pair of jeans, soccer shorts, and a stack of extremely cute tank tops and little t-shirts the girls had fretted over while the boys looked in the video game store. "I think I have enough to last me years. Thank you so much… I don't know what to say."
The first time she'd spoken up without being spoken to directly.
Kurt draped an arm over her fragile shoulders, almost protectively. Perhaps remembering what it had been like, when he'd turned up. Wrapped in that cloak. Scared and… well, fuzzy. "Hey, you don't have to thank anyone around here. We're a family, right?"
Kitty took the girl's arm now, taking her bags and handing them to Scott, who was on her other side, rude jock utterly forgotten. "Right. So listen, how do you feel about parties?"
Scott took the bags immediately, without question.
Jean was impressed. He really didn't need a whole lot of training.
And he was one of the biggest reasons leaving Bayville was going to hurt so much, in September.
But she tried not to think about that, and to follow the happy chatter of her friends in front of her.
By eleven o'clock, she barely recognized the Jeanne-Marie trying on clothes for her as the one she'd scooped off the ground in a back alley in Montreal.
"Do you think it looks good?" She questioned, doing a quick spin for the girls in the room to model one of the adorable little tank tops they'd chosen for her.
Kitty nodded, with a low whistle Jean had only heard coming from very dirty, very old construction workers previous to that moment. "Very sexy, girl!"
Even Rogue was smiling at her, "Looks great. Black is a good color for you."
Yes. Rogue would think that.
"We could never wear this at Madame's," the Canadian girl raised her eyebrows at herself in Jean's full length mirror, putting a hand on her hip saucily.
"Well, there's always your clubbing clothes," Jean chuckled, thinking of the backless red shirt she'd been barely wearing when they found her.
The girl's cheeks went red. "I should not have worn the thing…"
Jean's stomach dropped. Wrong thing to say, apparently. "Oh no, I think it's pretty," she tried to cover.
"Let's see it!" Kitty insisted, bouncing down on the bed happily.
Jeanne-Marie turned to look at her, biting her lip, and hesitated for a moment. Then, very suddenly, smiled brightly and went to her dresser, pulling out the silky thing and holding it up to her chest.
"Whooooa," Rogue laughed, "bet you look like a million bucks in that, sugah."
The darker girl flushed again, but kept smiling. "You like it?"
"Sexy girl!" Kitty giggled. "Where'd you get that?"
Jeanne-Marie suddenly stopped flushing and simply grinned at them, throwing the shirt onto the bed, next to Kitty. "I got out, and used my powers to get me to the city. Once I was there… I can move so fast, no one ever noticed."
Jean repressed a need to scold her. The girl was clearly mentally abused by those sisters. If she wanted to become a petty thief, who could really fault her? Really.
"Oh wow, a life of danger too. You are all kinds of mysterious, Beaubier," Kitty butchered the last name. Particularly for someone who claimed to want to enroll in French next year.
"A girl has to do something for fun, non?" She smiled at them sweetly, and struck another pose.
Jean caught herself yawning about fifteen minutes into the conversation later.
"Alright Jean, we get the hint. We'll go so you can sleep," Rogue rolled her eyes and took Kitty by the arm, pulling her to standing.
Biting back a rude comment, Jean forced a smile at her. "It's fine Rogue. If you guys want to hang out some more—,"
"I'm feeling tired as well," Jeanne-Marie admitted. "I would like some sleep."
Kitty nodded sympathetically, "It's been a crazy couple of days for you. We'll hang out tomorrow though. God, summer is the best."
They talked a few more moments about freedom, and the possibility of overthrowing the school's fascist dictatorship, but Jean did, finally, get the satisfaction of locking the door behind them.
Without meaning to, she sighed.
"They are very nice girls," her new roommate commented, shifting out of her new tank top and into a night shirt quickly, while Jean searched for hers in the closet. "Very different from the girls I know. Thank you for… the shopping."
Absentmindedly, Jean noticed that her accent seemed less pronounced now that she was relaxed. Perhaps it was psychosomatic.
Or perhaps she was just really damn tired.
She changed into her night shirt without turning around, "Yeah, they are good girls. The boys are nice too, they just take getting used to."
The other girl giggled, the sound of her footsteps moving toward the bed, "I like the boys too."
"I think they like you too," Jean caught herself laughing, despite the utter exhaustion she felt in her limbs, in her head. And god, her back. She slid in beside the smaller girl and took a deep breath, resting on her back now.
Clean sheets. Nothing in the world felt as good as clean sheets, some times.
"Hope you don't mind sharing the bed," She commented offhand. It didn't matter much to her, the bed was big enough to fit three people comfortably. But considering the girl's mental state…
"I think I would be lonely if you weren't with me," Jeanne-Marie admitted, suddenly very close to her, on her side, facing her.
Jean froze. Was this the custom in Quebec or something…? "Uh… did you always have to share a bed before?"
The girl seemed utterly unaffected. Her tone was guileless, her words frank, and far more open than Jean had come to expect from her. "Oui¸ very often. So many girls and so little room. Sometimes, it feels like you will… die because there is no air. Do you understand?"
She could still feel Jeanne-Marie, unnecessarily close. But she reached out with her mind and found nothing to be concerned about in the other girl. Just an uncertain sort of contentment. And an affection for her. Confusion. Nothing to be alarmed about. Calm down, Grey. "Like you'll suffocate, you mean."
"Oui," she replied, now moving closer and draping one fragile arm over Jean's midsection.
Again, she froze. Stunned with the familiarity. With the shameless need for affection in the girl.
When she unfroze, she realized it was just that. Familiarity and affection. Two things Jeanne-Marie Beaubier probably had felt very few times in her life.
Jean forced herself to relax, and put her own hand on the other girl's arm, patting it gently. Maternally. "Yes, I understand."
"When I fly," she whispered, almost inaudible now, her breath gentle against Jean's ear, "I don't feel afraid."
Jean felt a lump form in her throat now. And felt very guilty for her recent suspicions involving this poor sweet girl's intentions. She gave her arm a squeeze, hoping it was reassuring, and looked over at her. Her eyes were closed. Her pretty face angelic.
It made her want to cry, for some reason. "You can fly all you like, here, Jeanne-Marie."
She smiled, slightly. "I would like that."
Jean watched her for a moment, and then looked back up at the ceiling. Heart heavy and full. Jeanne-Marie was half woman, the woman she'd seen in the night club, dancing with utterly random men, unafraid, uncaring, and half child. Her arm wrapped around Jean like she was a teddy bear. And that's all it was. She needed the warmth, the reassurance of another human being. An anchor.
Slowly, the other girl's breathing became regular, drawn out. The breath of someone fast asleep.
Jean closed her eyes, squeezing the trusting arm across her stomach once again. And fell asleep with her.