Jean was already working on John by the time Logan got Mystique down there. Scott had dismissed Storm and Kitty and was in the process of dismissing Bobby and Peter.
"But could you stay for five minutes?" He said to Rogue as Logan got Mystique through the door. "You and Logan are probably the ones who can stop Mystique most easily at close quarters. Jean?"
"It's some sort of sedative, but I don't think it's rohypnol or anything else in that group. He's very, very pale."
"How long do you think he'll be out?"
"No idea. I need to identify the drug first."
"Okay." Scott said. Logan dumped Mystique unceremoniously on to the second bed. She'd turned in to Jean at some point on the way down and was giving him a 'come hither' look. He looked away. "I ask because if it's going to be ages, Logan and Rogue can swap out."
"I'll be fine." Logan said. "Just if someone could bring me some breakfast…"
"Jean, you okay with that?"
"Yes, could I have some too? This could be a long job."
"Sure. Do you want to keep Rogue or…"
"We should be okay."
Rogue nodded grimly. "Call me if…"
Logan laughed softly. "She's still pissed at you." He said to Mystique.
"We had a purpose." She replied, in Jean's voice. "At the cost of one life-"
"You'd have killed everyone on that island." The real Jean cut across her, as she stuck a cannula in to John's arm, without actually touching the cannula. "Your mutant-making machine was deadly. And wouldn't that have made them love us? Irony is, if Magneto had been willing to give his own life rather than take a teenage girl's, we probably wouldn't have known until it was too late." Jean stood up. "And stop it."
"Stop what?"
"Pretending to be me."
Mystique smiled. "Your friend seemed to like it the last time I did it."
"Shut up." Logan said quickly.
"Oh, does she not know?"
"Shut. Up." Logan repeated. He really didn't want Jean to know that that had happened.
"I don't need to." Jean said, holding out a hand so things flew to her from around the room. "Whatever it is, I don't need to know." Had she picked up some or all of it telepathically? Logan dearly hoped she hadn't.
"What are you ashamed of, Logan?" Mystique said, with Jean's voice. Logan put his claws out on his right hand and glared at her.
"Can you give her something to make her shut up?" He asked, looking round at Jean.
"Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind – Hey!" She straightened suddenly, looking at Mystique, who'd changed her form again. Logan looked away quickly. Colour was rising in Jean's face, and he could feel it rising in his. Mystique was still Jean, but she now wasn't wearing a shirt. "If you're going to be me, cover up."
"He didn't seem to mind last time."
Logan brought his claws down to Mystique's exposed neck. He had to keep his eyes on her face. For one thing, the real Jean was watching. "Don't think I won't."
Mystique smiled. "Your Xavier's. Both of you. You're far too tame to kill me for teasing you."
Logan scraped his claws across Mystique's shoulder. She shrieked in shock.
"Logan!" Jean shouted, striding over. Mystique's skin rippled and was blue again. She'd clamped her free arm across the injury. "Let me see." Jean pulled her arm out of the way.
,
Jean seemed to decide the wound wasn't serious. She didn't seem to want to stitch it. She just cleaned it and taped a dressing over it. Scott came back with food when she was half way through, then, to Logan's relief, left again. Mystique had passed out by the time Jean had finished with her shoulder.
"Logan," She said, as she cleared up what she'd used to deal with the wound. "I…" She sat down at the foot of Mystique's bed and took a piece of the toast Scott had left. "Why?"
Logan frowned. "Why what?"
"Why did you cut her? She was too weak to fight you."
Logan frowned again. Wasn't that obvious? "She didn't think we would, so she was…"
"Mocking me doesn't justify…"
"Doesn't it?" Logan asked. "She would have taken it further, once she knew you didn't like it."
"I was going to throw a blanket on her, and she wasn't far from passing out. And it wasn't only me that showed I didn't like it."
Logan felt himself colour.
Jean sighed and looked at her knees. "Logan, it's… What you feel for me isn't a problem, not in and of itself. We're not defined by our impulses. We're defined by what we do with them, the decisions we make. And…" She glanced up at him. "I don't believe you'd ever hurt me. I'm confident that as long as my answer doesn't change, you'll leave me alone." She had no idea how much self-restraint it cost him to do that, how much he wanted to chase her, to test her resolve.
Logan sighed. "It's not going to though, is it?"
"No." She said quietly. "I love him." She paused. "But… the fact that you respect that…"
Logan frowned at her. There was more to this. This was new. She hadn't spoken like this before, as though taking no for an answer wasn't something she could take for granted with him. He hadn't been pushier than… any other time with her. So not him, maybe. But someone else. Was Scott pressuring her, asking her for stuff she didn't want to do?
"Why wouldn't I?" Logan said carefully.
She glanced at him again. "It's nothing."
"No it's not. Who was it? Who did that?"
She hesitated for a long moment. "One of the truckers I hitched with. It's… it doesn't matter."
Logan frowned at her. "I don't believe you." She looked up at him. "I don't believe it doesn't matter. What did he do?"
"Nothing." He didn't believe that either. "Not really." He kept looking at her. It took him maybe ten minutes to coax it out of her. It was a little scary to think that she could do that, but he didn't blame her for what she'd done, given what she'd been faced with.
"What's his name?" Logan asked, once she'd finished.
"Why?" She asked.
"Because if I ever find him, I'll cut his balls off."
Jean smiled for a second. "You'll have to race Scott."
"Scott said he'd cut his balls off?"
"To tell you the truth, he said he'd kill him, but… I don't think I believe Scott. I'm not so sure about you."
Logan pushed his claws out. "Are you not sure?"
"Just… we could do without the police coming after us for murder."
"It was Scott who said he'd kill him."
"Bilateral orchidectomy with no haemostasis?" Jean said. "That'd probably kill him."
Logan blinked at her. "What?"
"Exactly what you said. Bilateral orchidectomy. Cut his balls off. He'd bleed out."
Logan smiled. Jean looked kind of concerned by that.
"You know," She said, after a couple of minutes. "There's a mutant-only bar in the City, Hellfire the Second. You ever been?"
"No."
"You should." She paused. "You have to display power or have a note from one of ten mutants they trust to get through the door, Professor Xavier's one of the ten."
"You telling me I need to get out more?"
She smiled. "No. I'm… not really. Just… it might…" Whatever she was trying to say, she was having some trouble working up the nerve.
"You telling me to go get laid?"
Jean laughed quietly. "No, I… I'm so much better at this when it's the kids. I'm saying that it might do you good to remind yourself that we're not the only mutants out there."
"Wasn't me trying to go for a quiet drink in a bar what started this mess?"
"In fairness, that bar wasn't Hellfire the Second. That should stay a safe space. I'm just saying you might enjoy some time away from the school."
,
About an hour later, John started to wake up. Jean called Scott back. Logan wasn't initially sure why. Scott just stood at the foot of John's bed, arms folded, looking sulky. When John was awake enough to start asking questions, Scott, not Jean for some reason, did the first bit.
"Do you know where you are?"
John looked around, he still looked doped, but under that he looked scared. He nodded. "Why did you take us?"
"We didn't." Scott said coldly. "She brought you here." He jerked his head at Mystique. John looked across at her.
"What?"
"What's the last thing you remember?"
John hesitated for a minute. "I was out in… I got darted. What do you want with us?"
"We didn't dart you, kid." Logan saw the anger flash in John's eyes when Scott called him a kid. "You heard our warnings? Not to go out on your own, not to take food or drink from strangers?" John didn't respond. "That'll be what this is."
"Catching gangs." John said. "Did they..."
"They're not eighties catching gangs, if that's what you're worried about." Jean said. "They're returning mutants unscathed."
"Mystique turned up carrying you, pretending to be Rogue of all people." Scott said. "We've always said if any mutant turns up here needing medical attention…"
"So now what?" John asked, looking contemptuously at Scott. "You going to put me in detention for choosing Magneto? For not becoming an X-man?"
In Scott's place, Logan might have been tempted to cuff the boy round the head for his tone. Scott didn't. But then again, he was Scott. "No." He said. "I've just got a couple of questions for you. First of all, did you sabotage the jet?"
John suddenly looked scared. "What?"
"At Alkali lake, before you ran off with Magneto. Did you sabotage the jet?"
Oh. Logan got this now. Jean was looking away, head buried in one of the books at the back of the room. John didn't know where this was going.
"No." He said. But he said it too fast after too long a gap.
"Did you tell Magneto how to sabotage it?" John didn't reply. "Come on. There are two telepaths in this place. Don't make this harder than it needs to be."
John looked down like a scolded schoolboy. He mumbled something.
"Didn't hear you." Scott said.
"You'd have chased us." John said defensively. "You'd have run us down, three of us eleven of you."
"Yeah, six of the 'us' being middleschoolers. Like we would have gone looking for a fight with them in tow, and how the hell would we have found you?"
"Xavier-"
"Not in the state he was in. Next question, did you notice the dam was damaged?"
John hesitated. Scott waited, staring at him, still eerily calm. Logan knew he was waiting for a storm to break. Presumably Jean did too. Only John didn't. "It was leaking." He said.
"Was Magneto worried by that?"
"He said we needed to get out fast."
"Because the dam was going to burst. Where was the blackbird when you sabotaged it?"
"By the lake."
"Which side of the dam?"
John paled. "Below." He seemed to rally again. "So what? You're upset with me because I put a hole in your precious jet?"
"The jet's inconsequential. What will happen if you put fuel on the outside of an element that heats, such as an engine?" John didn't reply. He seemed to have some idea now of just how angry Scott was. This was his anger over losing Jean, only for ten days, but they hadn't known that. Ten days was a long time to get angry at people for killing your woman. "You of all people should know this."
"It usually catches fire."
"What does The Blackbird have to prevent that?"
"They cut out. Vertical thrusters cut out if the pressure can't get high enough." John seemed to be compelled to answer. Was Jean doing that? Logan looked around. No, she seemed to be trying to ignore John and Scott.
"So if eleven of us, including six middleschoolers, are in the Blackbird, downstream of a bursting dam, trying to get in the air, what do you imagine happened?"
"It wouldn't – they wouldn't fire." Logan could feel the tension coming off Jean. Did she remember… drowning?
"So…" Scott prompted. John paled. "We were trapped. All eleven of us. Nowhere we could run, nothing we could do. We couldn't get the jet in the air." John's mouth was hanging slightly open. "And that very nearly killed us all. All the X-men, The Professor, Bobby, Rogue, and six middleschoolers." John said nothing. He wasn't looking at Scott now. He didn't seem to dare. "We took you in when you had nowhere left to run. You were with us three years, and still you left us to die." Logan looked away, almost in spite of himself. This was somehow scarier than Scott yelling.
"So how..?" John asked, his voice cracking. Man, Scott had done a number on him, without touching him, without raising his voice…
"Someone on our side was brave." And then he nearly lost it. His voice nearly cracked. John didn't ask any more. He seemed to get from Scott's tone that the conversation was over. "The next time Magneto tells you to smash something up, I hope you think about who might get hurt, or worse, if you do." Scott turned and walked out.
,
They got rid of John and Mystique half an hour later, Mystique still out cold and Rogue sitting next to Pyro in the car, with her gloves off.