That tire screech was so loud.
Probably louder than it should have been, the loudest that she had ever heard anything in her entire life. It was like all of her senses had been shut off and channeled into her hearing. She couldn't see the blood that she couldn't feel running through her hands mixing into the black tire marks that she couldn't smell. All she could do was sit there and hear, hear so strongly that her head started to pound. Hear the tires smash into a young soul. Hear that young souls cry out for attention. It ringing through her ears like a great bell of warning. The footsteps were loud too, the way they echoed off of her eardrums told her that they must be her own, rushing to this lost soul. Hearing her pant, and cry, and take her last breaths of darkness.
Ultimately alone because you weren't enough.
And you never would be.
Never granted a chance to change that because you can only react, and hear her die. Suddenly you feel her; she is in your arms. You see her lying there, dying not for you but because of you. Her pain is great. Too great. You feel it, hear it, and see it.
It surrounds you and in this moment you know it always will. Her last gasp for air is a direct link to you, she gasp as you exhale. And while she begs for one more breath of air it flows from your lungs and to her. You grant her, her dying wish, your last one, and suddenly you are slumped over.
You are both dead.
Jean snaps awake again for the however many time in what was becoming too long a string of occurrences for her to keep count. Jean could feel the bed under her and knew she was not levitating in the air. Sweat causing sheets to adhere to skin; Jean looks up as a flash of light catches her eye. Her throat is caught in her chest as she ducks down into her sheets at the last possible second. Barely missing getting smashed in the face by the long spare mirror that she had brought out of her closet only three days ago. The mirror collides loudly and violently with the headboard and smashes into pieces. Quickly, Jean shields her eyes as all of the glass shards fall on her like a rainstorm. She feels a few pieces nick her face but she isn't given much time to think anything of it.
A groan escapes her lips and then another, moaning in pain Jean lets out a sharp breath as the glass shards that cover her bed begin to sink into her skin at every slight movement. Her moans turn into whimpers as she bites down on her lip, trying to keep quiet though the rational side of her knows that with that loud crash it would be a miracle if she hadn't already woken everyone up.
"Jean?!" A hushed but alarmed voice is on the other side of her door. She hears Ororo trying the knob but Jean locked the door before she went to bed. Ororo is pounding at the door and while usually Jean would use her TK to unlock it, she couldn't even muster enough concentration to do so as she focused on trying to get out of her painful bed with the least amount of blood loss possible.
Jean pressed her hand down on the bed to try and slide to the edge but she catches a rather large piece of glass that sinks deep into her skin. She shrieks out again and pulls her hand back in pain but as a result puts her weight on her other hand and feels smaller shards pushing into her palm. Suddenly the door exploded open and Hank was the first one through followed by Ororo then Scott then Warren and then Bobby. The sudden entrance startled Jean and she regrettably moved again, feeling multiple pieces rip through her calves.
Jean looked up at her friends in almost terror, her green eyes pleading for them to help her out of the mess she had created. Bobby tried to flick the light on but it was no use, looking up to where the light should have been he saw nothing. They all noted the same thing in that apparently the mirror wasn't the only glass Jean had unknowingly shattered into her bed.
"Don't move" Hank said softly as he approached the bed. He put a hand on the small of Jean's back and another under her legs and lifted her off of the bed, he turned to exit the room and take her to the infirmary, the eyes of her friends all on her.
The piece of glass in her calf had hurt the most.
Jean ripped into her bottom lip to stop from yelling out when Hank pulled that piece out. Ororo and Scott at both her sides, Ororo grabbing her right hand and Scott gabbing her left arm as Hank had not yet attended to the gash on her left hand. The two were both comforting her and holding her up so that Hank could remove the glass that was in the back of her legs. The large piece in her calf sent a decent flow of blood down her leg and had she not known better, she would have been sure she had nicked an artery. Bobby and Warren both sat in silence, avoiding her glance for they weren't sure what to do with it, she was glad for this though.
"What happened?" The professor had finally come into the infirmary, demanding to know what had happened and why Jean was standing before him bleeding from what seemed like a hundred little cuts and some quite impressive lacerations on her body. Everyone remained silent and just looked at the professor, not really being sure how to sum this all up, no one but Jean of course. She hesitated before speaking.
"I had a telekinetic fit in my sleep." Jean said it fast and pushed it out, as if had she not said it then she wouldn't have ever been able to admit it to herself. Another tear slid down her cheek, though this one not because of the glass being extracted from her skin.
Ororo squeezed her hand tighter and only for a second did the two girls make eye contact.
Hank had taken to patching up the bigger of her cuts but simply cleaned the lashes to her hand and her calf, as he knew they would need stitches.
"You all should go back to sleep." Charles stated calmly to Bobby and Warren who knew his suggestion was more of a command. With last looks to Jean who still watched the ground, they exited. "You as well Scott." Scott looked away from the professor and to Jean for confirmation. He didn't care what the professor was telling him to do; he wasn't going anywhere until he knew Jean would be fine. Jean nodded sadly to him; usually she was very good at finding his eyes but not so much when he was wearing his sleeping goggles that he hadn't had a chance to change out of. Scott let go off Jean's hand after a moment more of hesitation. As he walked past Ororo, he gave her a friendly squeeze on the shoulder and she nodded silently in response.
He understood why the professor wasn't asking her to leave.
Jean and Ororo were the closest to each other out of everyone in the house. They had a trust established within each other that he didn't think could ever be broken. At first thought, he credited it the fact that they were the only two girls in the house. But in an unintentionally insightful conversation with the professor, he had begun to believe that the two shared some deep understanding of each other's powers even though their powers didn't seem to get any more different. Scott didn't really understand them fully, the idea of them when they were together. But it did make him more comfortable with leaving Jean because he knew she had Ororo there with her and that could be the equivalent to having an army on your side.
Maybe that was it, Jean and Ororo's friendship was embedded in their unearthly tempers.
"Jean, you hadn't had this happen in years, why now?" The professor's words were more of an outward expression of shock at the fact that he didn't know. He was supposed to be helping these youngsters and yet he had no idea, and his ignorance had let this happen.
"I don't know." Jean stared blankly out in front of her as she talked, not really focusing on anything in particular.
"You can sit down now Jean." Without taking her eyes off of the nothing that she was fixed on in front of her, Jean slowly moved backwards and lifted herself gingerly atop of the metal examining table. The small cuts on her thighs stung as they came in contact with the cool metal. "This will numb your hand and help with the pain, but it may still hurt." Hank offered to her as he injected something into her hand through a needle.
Ororo found herself thinking that he was going to make a great doctor some day, or scientist, or...whatever he found to suit his intellectual appetite, probably all at once.
Jean had finally pulled her attention to the professor as she looks at him intently. He, regarding her with concern in his eyes, remained silent and Ororo knew they were engaging in a telepathic conversation. While she wasn't the only person in the house that hated when they did that, she completely understood why. Some things just don't need to be said aloud, and while they were her teammates and best friends, they didn't need to know everything. Especially not the painful and intimate details of Jean's ongoing struggle with her powers. It seemed like Jean had come the farthest in her training but still had the farthest to go, that in it of itself being a small glimpse into what she had to go through.
Though Ororo knew about these things not to pry, when Jean was ready she would tell her.
Hank had finished stitching Jean's hand and placed a bandage around the wound, moving on to her leg. Sitting in silence for a little longer Jean had finally nodded and turned away from the professor.
"Would you mind lying on your stomach Jean?" Hank asked and Jean moved, slowly lying on the table and turning onto her stomach. Ororo walked around the table so that she could still see Jean's face.
'I trust you'll watch over her tonight.' The familiar feeling of the professor inside Ororo's head disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared after she nodded in compliance. Only thinking that had she not backed down before, Jean wouldn't be here now.
Ororo and Hank helped Jean back up the to the bedrooms as her leg was causing her a bit of pain as she walked. Upon coming to the boys wing Ororo stopped.
"I've got her Hank, you should go to bed."
"Are you sure?" Hank didn't mind helping Jean all the way back.
"No, it's fine, really." Jean offered and Hank finally accepted.
"Alright, goodnight ladies." They both called back their goodnights and continued only a few more empty rooms down to Jean's room. Ororo stepped into the room first and tried to flick the lights on, forgetting that Bobby had already found them to be literally blown out. Jean sighed as she limped into the room, wincing a little with every step. Ororo looked at her in the darkness, her eyes, having not adjusted, could not fully read the expression on her face.
"Do you just want to sleep in my room?" Jean nodded, she was too tired to deal with this mess and Ororo's bed was not one that was foreign to her anyway.
They walked the two rooms down to Ororo's room and again, Ororo flipped the light switch on. Slowly Jean walked and sat on the edge of the bed that she had gotten somewhat accustomed to being in when she didn't want to be alone. Maybe after having a subtler nightmare she would come here, or when the spite of her parents overwhelmed her, or when she was just so distraught all she could think to ask for was a hug from her best friend. A hug to protect her from the memories and the fears and the doubts, a hug that Ororo was always ready to give.
But before she was received with arms of kindness and compassion, she had to confess something.
"I lied to the professor." Jean's voice took Ororo by surprise, as she hadn't expected her to say a word. But at what she said she was less surprised; Jean was probably the only person Ororo knew that could lie to the face and mind of Charles Xavier.
"About what?" Ororo asked as she sat on the other side of the bed looking at Jean's back. Jean let out a shaky breath before she continued, Ororo had no idea how immensely difficult what she was about to do was. But still Jean stood, gripping at the edges of the white long sleeve t-shirt she often wore to bed, Jean pulled it over her head.
Ororo's eyes widened in shock as she observed her friend's body. Bruises and scars littered her back, they all a sickly shade of purple that gave Ororo a chill. Jean turned to face her, tears swelled in her eyes as she stood there in nothing but a white sports bra and pajama shorts.
Her body painted dried blood red and sweet suffocation blue.
"God Jean..." Ororo could offer no words as Jean revealed the bruises on her chest and stomach that she could tell were fresher than those on her back. A brutal looking bruise lined her ribs and was so bad it not only was purple and black, but it also had a yellow center that Ororo knew had to cause Jean pain every time that she took a breath.
Reminding her every second of every day that she didn't have this under control.
"It wasn't just tonight." Jean glanced away from Ororo's shocked face and pulled the shirt that she still held in her hand back over her head, as if that shirt could protect her, as if Ororo could forget what she had just seen.
"Jean you have to tell the professor." Ororo wasn't sure how she could help Jean aside from her usual trades of a best friend. Somehow she didn't think that a tight hug and a few whispered words of a forgotten language could heal injuries of these sorts.
Maybe a broken heart, but not a broken rib.
"It's like my own powers are trying to kill me." Jean didn't understand it. Sure, when she became flustered in her nightmares her TK went crazy and she sent things flying, that she could get past. But why was it that her subconscious always brought things flying into her own body.
Did she have this deep seated hatred for herself beyond that of what she was use to?
So much so that her own mind was trying to put her out of her misery?
Maybe it was a form of self-mutilation, instead of playing the violin on her wrist with a razor blade; she would try and beat herself to death every night.
"I'm just so tired 'Ro." Perhaps it was time for Jean to listen. Perhaps it was time to leave her troubles behind and put her mind at ease. Perhaps it was time to really rest, give up her life and just rest. "And I don't want to do this anymore."
"Come here." Ororo flipped the lights back off really so that Jean didn't see her tears. She crawled over the bed and pulled Jean down into her embrace. It hurt her beyond words to hear her best friend talk like that. To be so distraught that she would consider taking her own life. Ororo stroked her hair and rocked her slightly in her arms.
"Jean, it gets better. It has to get better. And I know you're tired Jean, but tonight you're going to rest. And I am going to be here to watch over you okay?" Ororo's voice cracked and she took a shaky breath. "And we can wake up and start all over again tomorrow."
Ororo wasn't sure when she had fallen asleep nor was she sure when Jean had. But she was awaken in the middle of the night by a somewhat subtle bump and sat up in bed and looked around the room. Her face was ready for war, as if Jean's telekinesis was an entity on its own about to show itself and charge for Jean. And surely Ororo would be prepared; to shield Jean and do everything she could to make sure that she slept through the night.
There wasn't a single person or thing that was going to take Jean away from her, least of all not Jean herself.
Ororo wasn't afraid of the things that went bump in the night, but surely if those things had any need for self-preservation, they would be afraid of her.