A/N: Thank you! Love reviews, keep them coming. J.
Professor Xavier and Magneto looked over from the desk, where they were intent on studying a computer screen. "Did your...voices speak to you, just moments ago? Possibly in three separate statements? And did Jean speak to you, also?"
"Yes. They did and she did." Grace replied.
"Of course." Erik said, with some satisfaction. "You'll want to have a look at this." She and Jean crossed the carpet to join them. Erik stepped back so she could fit in beside the Professor, and then leaned in to look over her shoulder, intimately close.
"These sensors operate rather differently from a normal EEG machine," explained the professor. "Those register five basic states of mind—alertness, rest, sleep, abstract thought, and dreaming. They map what is going on in the brain, and where. This machine measures rather more. Do you recall what the classic four elements are?"
"Earth, air, fire and water." Grace recited.
"An ordinary EEG operates on about that level of sophistication. Just as we know that our world has over a hundred elements, which in combination make up such things as earth, air and water—air being a mix of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and traces of other gases, water being two atoms of hydrogen bonded to one of oxygen, the mind is likewise more sophisticated. This machine is calibrated to pinpoint the periodic table of thought, including the known range of mutant powers."
"You never stop teaching, do you, Charles?" chuckled Erik. He laid his hand lightly on hers, where it rested on the desk, and her pulse jumped at the contact. On the screen, a line went from a meandering wave into a scribble.
"I saw that." said the Professor. "Whatever you're doing to her, Erik, please stop. We already know everything we need to about the processes of attraction and bonding."
Grace couldn't help it; she snorted with laughter. My feelings and my mind seem disconnected somehow—he's here, so I'm happy. This makes no sense…
"Your mind works rather differently than others." Erik took over.
He did not, however, move away, but leaned against her as he pointed to the screen. His warmth soaked into her like the sun's rays. "There. That bandwidth. In most, mutant and human alike, that line is a mere waver. If you're alive, you have that going at all times, awake and asleep. It is a psychic function, a baseline that serves no known purpose but to simply say, 'I'm here.'—and to receive that message in return. If you've ever gone into a seemingly empty room, only to have a nagging feeling that you were not alone, and discovered someone was concealed there, it is because you sensed that."
"It's been postulated that is the connection to Jung's collective unconscious—the shared reservoir of human experience, those things which we are born knowing, to which we are always attuned, but never directly conscious of." Xavier added.
"Except her. Whatever it is, Grace is conscious of it." Jean said, looking at it. "It may be only a thin pencil line in everybody else, but in her, it's drawn with a thick black magic marker."
"Rather than the collective unconscious, I prefer to think of it as the genetic umbilical cord which links us all to the genetic Eve." commented Erik. "If you'll call back the record—thank you."
There were three wide pulses along the brainwave line. "So that's what he said." Grace mused. "Are those my responses?" She pointed to a line above it, which showed a brain reaction to the 'communications'.
"Yes, up in the highest centers of thought—what you use when you do mathematics in your head, or imagine something which doesn't yet exist." replied Xavier.
"So what does it mean?" She looked from one man to the other.
"That you aren't receiving these messages on the same wavelength as a telepathic communication. That's Jean speaking in your mind—there." Erik pointed to another scribble. "It's as if you could hear outside the range of normal hearing, only with your telepathic ear—you're receiving on a wavelength most people can't."
"Tell her your theory." Xavier prompted.
"Very well. I spoke of a genetic umbilical cord, an unsevered genetic link back to our common female ancestor, through thousands upon thousands of generations. Why should there not be an unsevered genetic link leading forward from you?"
She turned to face Erik, as he went on. "There is no single individual now living whose powers could account for not only what you are seeing and hearing, but the degree of knowledge and awareness of the past, present and future on a near omniscient level. At the same time, they seem unable to directly influence more than a piece or two of paper." He explained about his fall, and the messages he and Professor Xavier had received.
"That sounds like them," Grace acknowledged. "Opinionated, open to interpretation, and raising more questions than they answer."
"Quite. I theorize that one or more of your future descendants is transcending time through a genetic link to you. They can observe but not affect events to any greater extent than that which they displayed here, with these messages—except through you.
"You are their hands and feet in this time and place. They are your eyes, your map through the darkness and danger."
"If you had explained it that way before, instead of waxing poetic about it, I would have taken your theory more seriously," commented Xavier.
"You were the one who asked if I believed it was God speaking to her." retorted Magneto. "All along, the tone and form of these communications has had a juvenile aspect to it—the badgering, the way in which they speak—through toys and cartoon-like illustrations. These voices are your children, however many generations removed."
"That's a thought! Plus, they're not disagreeing with you," noted Grace, "as they did the Professor, earlier. But then, they're not saying anything at all. I asked them if they were God, the Devil, my own subconscious, an extraterrestrial, or the baby, and they neither claimed or denied any of them. By the way, did the Toad have an abusive childhood?"
"As it happens, yes. Why? Has he been bothering you?" Erik asked her.
"Not in the least. If anything, I was bothering him. He has a miserable cold, and the dog in the portrait above the parlor fireplace insisted I do something about it. Then she told me his mother used to put cigarettes out on him, and he's severely traumatized as a result. I gave him the tissues I had in my purse, and a dose of cold medicine. It put him out like a light."
"He's very sensitive to medications." frowned Magneto. "Was it a time-release formula?"
"Yes."
"Well, Charles, I'm afraid you'll have to put us up for the night. Mystique's not here, and he's my only other pilot."
"I imagine we can find room for you somewhere. Ms. Engstrom, that was very kind of you." said the professor. "One forgets, sometimes, that foes are also people." For some reason that seemed to be aimed at Jean, who squirmed.
"I don't deserve such praise." Grace replied. "I didn't notice his cold. All I did was listen."
"Listening is the hard part." Xavier's brow creased as he looked down at the messages on his desk. "Thank you, Jean. The conversation is about to become intensely private. Do you mind?"
"Not at all. I'll see you later, Grace. I'm going to go see about getting the Toad into a real bed, or he'll wake up feeling worse than he did when he fell asleep."
The doctor left, and Professor Xavier turned to Grace. "Won't the two of you please take a seat? Talking with you like this is rather awkward." He paused while they took seats across from him—and next to each other. "I'm afraid I can't share Erik's faith in your voices—."
"How much more of a sign can you need?" protested that individual.
"I don't know." The professor confessed.
"Tell him to read your file." said the monkey. "It's all in the file." He pointed to a familiar folder—the one from her former doctor's office.
"The monkey says it's in my file." Grace said.
"What is?"
"Your sign. I don't know what it is, but you'll probably know it the moment you come across it."
"What am I to do with it once I find it? This is all so vague." complained Xavier.
"That's because you're making it so. I'm disappointed in you, Charles. I would have thought you would have jumped at the chance to make the bargain I offered you."
"Put your foot down," said the lion.
"Literally or figuratively?" Grace asked.
"Put your foot down!" it repeated.
"They're not hounding me." She pointed out. "They're needling each other." She turned to them. "The lion says you should stop fighting."
"Put it down!" it practically shouted.
"I wish she wouldn't do that out loud." The professor rubbed his forehead. "It doesn't help her case."
"Why on earth should you object?" Erik snapped at him. "It's her power—or they're her voices. No one here questions your ability to read minds."
"Put your foot down!"
"No, but I do so unobtrusively." retorted Xavier.
"Put your foot down!"
"Gentlemen, enough with the arguing." Grace tried.
"Why force her to be other than she is?" Erik demanded.
"Put your foot down!"
"I'm trying—Okay. I'll try it literally." Grace sprang to her feet, and brought one heel down hard on the floorboards, which made a crack like a pistol shot. It had the immediate effect of quieting the two men.
"Sorry. The wood seems to have split." She bent over and picked up the sliver which had broken off. "Oh—." Something sparkled in the gritty dust in the space under the floor. She could just fit her thumb and forefinger in the hole. "It's your house and your office—does this look familiar?" It was a woman's ring, set with five stones—three sapphires of peerless blue separated by two diamonds.
"That—was my mother's." Charles Xavier whispered, and reached out for it. "My father gave it to her when I was born. My initials should be inside it, along with theirs, and the date…"
Grace put it in his hand. "This was lost over fifty years ago. I always thought my stepfather had stolen it. I—I am going to go over to the far corner of the room and look at your file, Ms. Engstrom. In the meantime, your things have been removed from our plane, but not from our hangar. I believe Erik has something he wants to say to you concerning that."
