Charles Xavier thought he had a very good grasp of his own telepathy, what he did and did not feel. But tonight, in the Danger Room, he felt raw and open. There were six people in the room, all of them were, at least, terrified. He and Jean had known this day might come. He had not told anyone what he'd found curled in the mind of his first student. Whether Jean had told anyone, he had no idea. And he could feel her, Jean and The Phoenix, as though they were two telepaths, each more powerful than he was, grappling and tearing at each other. That was almost overwhelming. If he succeeded in walling them out, he seemed to lose the ability to shut off Scott's pain. Scott was and always had been telepathically… susceptible was the wrong word. Straight forward. Easy to navigate, easy to read. With the result that when he projected, he projected very loudly. And Charles felt the stab of every breath Scott took. Beyond doubt Jean – or rather The Phoenix - had broken at least one of his ribs.
"Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?" Logan said. He was standing between Jean and the rest of them.
Charles hesitated. He'd long felt that to make this public was a violation of Jean's privacy, but there would be no hiding it soon. "To put it simply, for at least the past nineteen years, there has been a second entity in Jean's mind. She identifies herself as The Phoenix. She is in some ways a great deal more powerful than Jean, in other ways less powerful. She's entirely independent from Jean's allegiances, morals and motives-"
"She will kill every single one of you." Jean said. It was the first time she'd spoken since Charles had arrived.
"Not if you don't-"
"For God's sake! It's not about what I do or don't let her do any more." Jean took a gasp of breath. "It is taking. Everything. I have to keep her under."
Charles sighed. "For most of the past nineteen years, she's been contained by psychic barriers I put in Jean's brain. It seems she's breaking past."
"How long has it been happening?" Hank asked.
There was a silence. "It's been months." Scott said. "Hasn't it?" Jean flinched and squeaked, as though in pain. Charles wasn't sure she heard. "Things floating or turning around, even before Alkali Lake. That was her, wasn't it?"
Jean suddenly curled forwards, hand pressed to her head. "I didn't know it, but…" She tailed off, panting. "We can't stop her now. You know what you have to do."
"I will not even countenance it Jean." He said firmly.
"For God's sake, either you kill me, or she kills everyone." Jean cried. Her head was still pressed to the wall. "Everyone in this room and I don't think she'll stop there. There are a hundred kids upstairs. You have no choice."
"No." Scott's voice had gone thin. Charles didn't have to look to see what was on his face. "We're not even discussing it."
"There are at least two people in this room who should be able to kill me fast enough that she won't break out." Jean said.
"No." Charles repeated. "We will restore the barriers."
"She'll kill you." Jean turned to him, still on her knees, face streaked with tears, shaking. "As soon as you touch me, she'll kill you. You know it's possible to kill by telepathy alone, that's what she'll do. She's too strong now."
"So we weaken her." Hank said. "We did the work, in the sixties, we found out how to weaken a telepath."
"What are you suggesting?" Charles asked.
"Confine, starve, no sleep, restrict water, maybe sedate her when the time comes. You stop using Cerebro, sleep and eat normally… Give it three days, she'll be helpless."
"I can't hold her for three days." Jean said.
"I'm not going to kill you on that assumption." Charles said. "And she'll weaken with you, the balance of power will probably shift in your favour."
"You don't know that." Jean challenged.
Charles ignored her. He was not going to countenance killing her until he knew he had no choice. And probably when the time came, he'd order someone else to kill her if she killed him. And what an order that would be. And to whom could he give it? It wasn't fair to ask it of any of them. He'd deal with that nearer the time.
"Hank, I think that's our best hope."
"I can't-" Jean started. Charles carried on, talking over her.
"I'm not happy, however, to leave Jean on her own for three days in the state she's in."
"Anyone I'm left with I'll-" Jean started.
"You'll have a hard time killing me." Logan said.
Charles felt Scott think of protesting, but he was too shocked and in too much pain to do it coherently, so he held his tongue. It was obvious why the idea would make Scott uncomfortable, but romantic jealousy, ill founded romantic jealousy at that, was not his main concern right now.
"So that's our plan?" Storm asked. "We shut her up and wait for her to be tired and hungry enough for you to overpower her?"
"At a word." Charles said.
"It's not-"
"Jean, I refuse to give up on you without trying. My answer will not change, no matter how many times you ask."
She swallowed. She was still panting. "Hank, you need to X-ray Scott's chest." That was probably as close as she'd come to consenting. Charles would have to be content with it.
"I know." Hank said. "Scott?"
Scott didn't move. He was too shocked and distressed to think straight. Charles could feel too much of it. Scott wanted nothing more than to hold her, but every fiber of her body said she wouldn't allow it, that she didn't want to be touched. He wanted to tell her she could do this, that she was so much stronger than she realized, but to do so would be saying goodbye, giving her permission to die, and he would not do that.
"It's you she wants most." Jean said quietly. "I think she'll be easier to hold if…"
Scott nodded and started towards the door. He was trying not to limp. Hank opened the door ahead of him.
Storm took a few hesitant paces towards Jean and knelt down.
"You can do this." She said. "You're strong. A lot of the time, you're the strongest of all of us. We're gonna bring you home, okay?" She reached a hand out towards Jean. Jean didn't look round, but she threaded her fingers in to Storm's for a moment. Maybe she could hold this. Maybe he wouldn't have to… lobotomise was too strong a word, but not by much.
Storm got up and walked away, chin tucked down, eyes closed.
"Jean," Charles said quietly. "what does she want?"
Jean gasped once. She was still crying. "It's not all that clear. Not in the long term. She's hitting me so-" She gasped again. "So hard I can't read her." She swallowed. "She was trying to push past me to get at Scott, now I can't see or hear him it's not so bad." She gasped. "It's you she wants now. I'm sure she'll kill and keep on killing, I don't know why she let Scott go."
"Alright." Charles said gently. If he showed her his fear, it would only make it worse for her. "I'll leave you now, then. Just remember: Somewhere between rage and serenity."
She looked round at him. Her face was red from crying. She set her jaw and nodded.
"Turn your fear to rage, for what she made you do to Scott, for what she's threatening to do, then transcend it. You are strong enough."
And if she was not, there would be no help for any of them.
,
Hank eyed Scott as they walked. His respiratory rate was high and his breaths were shallow. His skin was pale. Pain or circulatory shock? He needed that chest X-ray.
Scott said nothing as Hank let them in to the infirmary and started to set up the machines. He just stood poker straight, still as a statue, breathing fast and shallowly.
"Sit down." Hank said quietly. Scott did. "I'm going to take your shirt."
Hank remembered Charles calling him after Jean had… 'died'.
"And Scott, Hank. Scott's in bits. He's going about like a ghost, like he's only half there. He's… I've never seen him like this. I don't know if he'll ever recover." And he was facing that again, facing losing Jean after everything...
Hank had watched her grow up. That scared little girl who'd spoken like a prophet, at once so knowing and so naïve, because she couldn't control what she saw. He'd been the one – rightly or wrongly – who'd started her on the path to medicine, talked her through pages of genetics or biochemistry readouts before she'd been old enough for high school. He'd let her sit in on things that would have turned the stomachs of most from the age of twelve. That housebound child, too fragile for school, had been scrubbing in with him to dig bullets out of wounded mutants since she was sixteen. And she'd been able to feel their pain. Telepathy was a very barbed gift.
Charles hadn't told him that she'd had this… thing inside her all that time, and been holding it back.
Hank had work to do.
He took the hem of Scott's shirt and started to pull it over his head. Scott set his jaw, but kept silent.
"You're allowed to swear at me, you know." Hank said.
"Would it help?" Scott asked coldly.
Hank walked around so he stood behind Scott. "There's some evidence to suggest it does." He pressed two fingers to the top of Scott's right shoulder. He saw Scott set his jaw again. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. This isn't your fault."
He couldn't bear to be pitied. Not even now.
Hank worked his way down Scott's back, rib by rib, until Scott yelled and lurched away from his hands. Hank caught him by the other side of his chest. Eighth rib.
"Okay, I'm going to drug you now. Does Jean still keep-"
"Yeah, she does."
Hank had instigated a system of writing down every single drug administration to every single mutant in the school, in order to build up a database of what worked and what didn't. When you worked with a population as diverse and understudied as mutants, it paid its dividends. He pulled the file labeled 'pain relief' off its shelf – it was heavier than he remembered – and pulled out the methadone tab. The words "DO NOT give to telepaths/telekinetics without concordant seizure-suppressant drugs" were still written across the top in his own writing. Half way down the page, Jean had noted that methadone had made Scott very nauseous in 1997. Buprenorphine then. On Buprenorphine's page, there was a note with the same date saying Scott had tolerated 0.3mg well. If it had worked in the past…
Hank shook himself. He was reading notes on how to palliate Scott's probably broken rib (or ribs) that had been written by the person who'd broken them. She must feel awful.
Hank still knew the codes for the drug safe. 0.1mg/ml, so 3ml, going IV because why shouldn't he? Scott offered his arm, he even raised his own vein. Jean must have taught him how.
Hank could see Scott's breathing slowing and deepening as he set up to X-ray. Decreased respiratory drive and decreased inspiratory pain. That made sense if his ribs were broken.
"That works fast." Scott said quietly as Hank set the backing lead and the X-ray plate down on the bench behind him.
"IV? Yeah, it does." Hank laid Scott down on the plate, Scott gave a soft groan of pain. "I know." Hank said.
Could they do this with Jean? Could they just… pin her down, load her with drugs and overpower her so Charles could restore the blocks without The Phoenix attacking him. Or did The Phoenix have a separate sleep-wake cycle to Jean?
"Scott," Hank asked as he took the plate to the computer. "Right before… right before it happened, do you know if Jean was awake?"
It took Scott a second to respond. Well, he was on buprenorphine. "I thought she was, but… maybe I startled her and…" Hank really should have asked him that before he'd drugged him. But it sounded like Jean hadn't attacked in her sleep, so maybe it would be possible.
Two broken ribs, but each broken only once, and Scott's chest cavity was full of lung, rather than anything else. He'd be in a lot of pain, for months potentially, but no rupture. He'd be okay.