Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel. The plot and story belong to me. Please don't steal them.
Author's Note: This story was based off of a panel in Generation X 19, I think, where Emma is making canned goods levitate while sleeping. It's a "what if Emma really did have telekinesis powers she couldn't access?" sort of story. It takes place after Emma starts teaching at Xavier's, but before the whole fiasco in New X-Men 138 and 139.
Black and White"Try again." Her voice was commanding, so that I could not interpret it as anything but an order.
I faked a yawn so that she would not see how irritated I was. "I thought I was to be the teacher here, Jean darling."
Jean folded her arms and glared down at me, a drill sergeant staring down her lowly foot soldier. "Try again," she repeated, more formidably.
"I have mentioned, haven't I," I said, "that my telekinesis is erratic at best? I don't believe I've ever used it consciously."
"You did mention that, several times," Jean said disapprovingly. "The only reason your telekinesis is so erratic is because when your powers were developing, you focused on your telepathy. Just as I focused on my telekinesis. But with proper training, I was shown how to use my telepathy to my advantage. The same applies to you if you'll only concentrate."
I crossed my legs, wondering if I was still young enough to throw tantrums. I had been concentrating for nearly four hours, sitting in a chair in a room alone with Jean Grey-Summers, and attempting to focus my miniscule telekinesis powers until my head throbbed. I wanted more than anything to choke Ms. Grey-Summers on her own words.
"I don't believe it's quite that black-and-white," I said, crossing my right leg over the left.
"It can be," Jean said, "if you'll try again."
I sighed. How had I managed to get myself into this mess? Jean had approached me this morning and asked if I would work with her on a project. She somehow badgered me into reluctantly saying yes. On our way to the plain room where we were training, she had informed me of just what her "project" was: teaching me to develop my telekinesis. Why had I not just turned around and left? Now I sat here on an uncomfortable chair, trying to focus because I had promised Jean I would, and she would know if I was not trying.
I flipped my hair over my shoulders and put my elbows on my knees. Resting my chin on my hands, I tried to focus. I stared at the pen that sat on the other chair in the room. I tried to find the telekinesis, hidden away somewhere in my mind. After a few minutes, I closed my eyes and sat back in my chair.
I would not say that I couldn't. "You're asking something impossible, Jean darling."
"No, I'm not," Jean said. "You've said it yourself before--you have telekinesis, and you've used it. If you used it once, you can use it again."
"I use it in my sleep," I told her. "Even then, it isn't much to drool about." I paused, looking her up and down. She, scowling at me, did not seem to notice. She did not seem to understand. Telepathy had been her stronger power, but it had been "turned off" for her by Xavier. She had grown up in a school, learning how best to use both of her powers.
And I? Instead of a healthy, nuturing environment, I had an insane asylum. I had taught myself how to use my powers, and suffered great headaches from them. Oh, how I envied her. She was perfectly in control of all of her abilities, using them with grace that came from great practice. Next to her, I felt clumsy and awkward.
I would not show it, though. I examined my nails, unpainted but showing small signs of wear. "It's a gray issue," I said. "There are no lines, no boundaries, no limits. As I said, the power is there, but inaccessible."
Jean hesitated for a moment. "I could turn it on for you," she offered, softly. "I could go into your head and find if for you."
"I don't think so," I said. "I'm sure you'd enjoy it, though."
"Look, Emma," Jean said, "stop fighting me. I am not your enemy. I am trying to help you, all right?"
"Help me what?" I snapped. "Find my telekinesis? Then what? I'll use it to be a better X-Woman?"
Jean folded her arms again and fixed me with a bland stare. "If you like," she said.
I looked away from her. I could remember when she had been young and...different. I scarcely knew what to think of her anymore. She was a strange person, a den mother at first sight, but underneath the den mother lived a raptor. It seemed unfair to me that such power could come to a woman younger than I, who had worked hard for it my entire life.
"Emma, please," Jean said. "Why are you being so difficult? Don't you want this?"
"No, I don't," I said shortly. "You tricked me into doing this."
"I want to help you!" Jean cried, out of her own anger and irritation.
That bitch has everything. The thought shocked me even as I thought it. What more could she possibly want?
I jumped, startled, and Jean flinched. "You read my mind?" I shouted, rising to my feet. "You--"
"I didn't," Jean interrupted hastily. "I've been lightly monitoring your thought patterns so that I knew what you were doing. What were you thinking just now, Emma? I've never felt anything like that from you..."
I gathered my shields around myself again, nervous and guilty. What she had felt from me was jealousy, strong and intense, raging inside of me like a volcano. It had been strong enough for that instant that it had slipped beyond my shields. My mistake. It would not happen again. I would not let it.
"It's nothing," I said quickly. I could hear how uncertain I sounded, though, and settled back into my chair, so that I would have a moment to compose myself. Brushing my hair away from my face, I looked up at Jean. "Are you ready to impart your wisdom, Ms. Grey-Summers?"
Jean hesitated, clearly still unnerved by my mental outburst that she thankfully hadn't heard. "Very well," she said a moment later. "Try again, Emma, and please focus a little more this time."
I leaned forward, anxious for anything to take her mind off of my display. As I concentrated, I thought. While teaching the students of Generation X, Jean Grey-Summers had always struck me as a soft woman. She had touched power and death and had come back from it. She had been a homemaker, a housewife, a kind and gentle young woman who rarely used force to get her way. It had confused me, at first. She had been the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. How did she just walk away from that?
Now that I worked side-by-side with her, I was beginning to understand her. She was no more a housewife than I was. The phoenix was a raptor, and that was part of her now. She was tough, talented, and managed to hide it all under a beautiful, red-haired, smiling exterior. Her true self, the part with beak and claws, only showed itself in battle. Since joining with the X-Men, I had found a common ground with her, and it made me angry. I was even angrier that she was beginning to notice it too. Yet she didn't seem to realize it.
It was difficult to hide my scowl. We both harbored the same powers. We had both been in the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club. How could she not see it?
And yet--I was glad that she stayed blind to our similarities. Though I had long since determined how alike we were, I was only just beginning to realize how differently she had been treated. She had been the most powerful woman ever to rule in the Hellfire Club. As Phoenix, she had been the Bitch, the one everyone obeyed, while I was left sulking in the background. She had come back from that (or perhaps, not been there at all) easily, while I stayed in the club even to this day.
I told myself often, childishly, that it was unfair. She was better at being good. She was better at being evil. She'd had a well-rounded education of her powers. She had parents who loved her and wanted to help her instead of "fix" her. She even had the perfect husband.
It was a sad, immature vendetta I held against her, but one I kept close to my heart, where no one would notice it. Since I realized that I carried it, I made certain that my shields never slipped. Certainly Jean would want to try to make things right between us. I would have none of that. The truth was that there was nothing she could do to make things right.
Perhaps the problem lay with me, for never striving to be more. Yet, even as I thought this, I contradicted myself. I did strive to be more. My entire life, all I had ever done was strive for more. First, it had been power, an understanding of my telepathy. Then it had been money--at first, just enough to keep me on my feet, but once I had realized all I could do, then I wanted more money. And with the money came the power: Frost Enterprises. And then came the Hellfire Club, and it had been all I had ever wanted.
But Jean--she simply sat there and smiled and wore her pretty smiling mask, while the raptor that she truly was waited for things to come to her. It made me furious--
"Emma," Jean interrupted me. "Your thoughts are wandering."
"So would yours," I said, "if you tried to reach something that was not there."
"It is there," Jean insisted. "Try again, Emma."
With a weary sigh, not feeling like arguing, I stared at the pen and tried again.
I had once thought that Jean accomplished so much so effortlessly because of her telepathy. After all, it was how I had achieved my goals; why should it not be hers? But soon it became clear to me that it was something simpler, more human: charisma, perhaps. She was beautiful, and she had been the first woman in their ranks, and so they all held special places for her in their hearts. She was the Mother, the Maiden, and the Crone, all wrapped into one. She harbored the love and care of one, the youth and beauty of another, and the depth and experience of the last. How did she do it?
What made her so different from me? Why should I have to work for everything while she does nothing and it all falls into her lap?
Even with men, she had succeeded when I had failed. I drew the attention of men as easily as I could blink, but nothing had ever come of it. A few flings, a few physical relationships, but beyond that, nothing. There were a few men I cared for--Bobby Drake, sometimes, and Sean Cassidy, of course. But Bobby had never done anything, and Sean had been involved with Moira MacTaggart. Scott had taken one look at Jean and belonged to her forever. And he was an amazing man: strong, brave, and handsome, the perfect man to have in a crisis. Why did she have to have everything?
Perhaps it was me, after all. Since being put in an asylum by my parents, I had had one personal goal: survival. I had learned that on the streets of New York. Before everything else must come survival. And I learned that lesson so well that I feared it had become a deeper instinct in me than anything else I knew. I sometimes wondered if perhaps I was so wrapped up in the idea of my own survival that I blocked everything and everyone else out, repelling men.
The very idea disgusted me. Me, repelling men.
I couldn't help myself. When I saw the problems that Scott and Jean were going through, I acted without thinking. I provided myself. Jean never seemed to care that much, aside from the principal that a woman shouldn't mess with another woman's man. At least I'm satisfying Scott in some way that Jean couldn't.
And oh, how that makes me glow with pride.
Jean sighed. "Do you want some coffee or something?"
"Why do you ask?" I said.
"You look tired," she said.
"You would be too, if you had been trying to do something with nothing for five hours," I said.
She fixed me with her sharp, green-eyed glare, the one that cowed me more than I liked to admit. "We can take a break if you want, but we're going to keep working on this for at least the rest of the day."
I stifled a groan. Instead, I sat back and crossed my legs again. "This is your project, not mine, Jean darling," I said. "Aren't you the one who calls the shots?"
Jean gave a small smile. "If you say so," she said. "I just don't understand how someone so powerful in telepathy can't develops her telekinesis at all. Don't you ever wonder about it?"
"I'm perfectly happy with the telepathy," I said. "It's been a lovely companion all these years."
Jean grinned at me. "It is great," she admitted.
I gave her the coldest stare I could muster under the circumstances, trying to recall when I had been the White Queen with the iciest stare known to man. One eyebrow raised, and I stared with the ease of an expert. The last thing I wanted was for Jean to start treating me as a friend. That would be the last straw.
She didn't seem fazed by my stare. She only looked amused. "Whenever you're ready, start again," she said.
I did not think I would ever be ready, but nevertheless, I leaned forward once more to focus on the pen. Jean stood above me and watched, her arms folded, her eyes watching closely for some sign of success.
As I sat there, staring at the pen, something occurred to me harshly. Though she wore the black-and-yellow of the current X-Men uniform and I wore white, we were no longer those things. I had said that my telekinesis was not a "black-and-white" situation, but it delved deeper than that. Jean and I were no longer black and white either. Once we had been on the same side, practically the same person. We were not even that anymore. We were both the same and yet both different, but we were not black and white. Not anymore.
The X-Men were often referred to as a family. Perhaps they were that, but I saw them as a military, or—better yet—a government. A hierarchy. Xavier was the king, perhaps, ruling over us all ultimately, but Jean was most definitely the queen. She was the hidden power, strong and steadfast but very dangerous.
She was the queen. I was not. And I never would be again. Not here.
It was a devastating thing to realize. I, who had always felt that I was in control of my own future and environment. If things began to turn in someone else's favor, telepathy could fix it, and I would stay on top. But here, I was just part of the team, and Jean was in charge. She would always be in charge. Perhaps they would think that they did as she asked because she was beautiful, or kind, or that she was their smiling, loving "mother," but I saw otherwise. They did as she asked because of her power. They did as she asked for the same reason that people had done as I asked for years--they feared her. Perhaps they did not realize it, but it was true. She was the strongest there--the alpha male, in a way--and they all unconsciously deferred to her.
All efforts of telekinesis left my mind and I stared blankly at the pen. A wave of bitterness swept over me. Oh, how that realization stung. I had no chance of being the Queen again, because Jean was firmly rooted in that place.
Well. For now, I would have to revert to my former mode of existence: survival. That was easy enough. At least here, I was taken care of, and people admired me if they still refused to take an extra step towards friendship.
"Emma," Jean said. There was a hint of threat in her voice, her patience beginning to wear thin, irritated by how easily my thoughts wandered.
It rubbed on me harshly, like a knife's edge scraping my skin, but I obeyed her. I gritted my teeth and focused on the pen once more, promising myself that later I would get my revenge on her for this.