Chapter Text
Some people have a moment, a crystalline burst of clarity that tells them they’re different and that the world everyone else takes for granted doesn’t quite apply to them, that the opportunities or the promise or the pain of the world won’t be quite the same no matter how hard they try. Some people look different, sound different, stand differently right from the first moment and never have any doubts, because the world won’t let them forget for a moment that They Are Not Like Everybody Else. Some people bury their difference in a hole so deep and so dark that nobody ever finds them, not even them, and sneak through the world like ghosts with a part of themselves missing but unmissed.
It’s not like that for a telepath. It’s not like that for Jean Grey.
Telepaths, Mister Xavier will tell her when she’s older, when she’s fourteen and full of certainty that she wants to know everything there is to know about their mutual ‘condition,’ often develop their mutant powers - the symptoms of their mutation, if you will - at a very early age. I suspect that it has to do with how integrated our powers are to our neurology, that when the brain finishes developing past a certain level our talents can’t help but wake up. My own abilities manifested for the first time when I was eight years old, but there were flashes before that - moments of insight, of knowing, that I cannot account for without the possibility that my telepathy was active even then.
Jean will nod her understanding, as if that all makes perfect sense, and try not to think about this moment that is happening here, and now, and for the rest of her life.
Sasha, who likes ponies and telescopes and wants to be a pirate when she grows up because she doesn’t know that pirates aren’t real, darts out into the street for the ball just as a shiny red sedan careens around the corner. She doesn’t have time to scream. Jean hears the car’s engine, the screech of its tires, and the terrible dull wet thump of impact. Sasha cries out silently in her head because the bone and muscle that should let her speak is gone, pouring agony out into the world like molten metal that only Jean can touch, and it is the loudest sound Jean’s ever heard. It’s coming from inside, like Jean’s blood and bones are screaming, and no matter how hard she presses her palms to her ears it won’t stop.
Sasha’s mother comes running, and Jean can hear her too, this scream tearing her chest down the middle, NO NO NO NO NO pulsing out in torrents of heart’s blood that nobody can see. Neighbors start to look out of windows, turn around in the street, and their small horrified vibrations are harmony and descant to the pain that’s filling up Jean’s world.
The high school kid behind the wheel gets out, hands to his face, and his prayers stab back and forth through Jean’s body: Oh God please save her, please take me instead, let me die let me die not her let me die.
Sasha’s sounds coalesce, become a single bright note too piercing to bear, and then she’s gone. That sound is replaced by another from her mother, and more neighbors, Sasha’s brother, the paramedics. There’s no room in Jean’s head for herself anymore.
She feels the brush of someone moving past her left arm from behind, and then she’s watching herself and everything from far away. It’s all quiet where Jean is now, and she sobs in relief as she sinks into blackness.
Sometimes, Jean isn’t sure that she actually woke up from that blackness. Sometimes she thinks that everything since then, Miss Lehnsherr and Mister Xavier and Scott and the big house in Westchester, must be a dream the nine year old girl in a coma who didn’t know telepathy could hurt until her best friend died has been having ever since.
When she has that thought, though, she tells herself it can’t be true. Her imagination isn’t good enough for a dream this big. Not strange enough, mutant that she is, for all the human strangeness she hears on a daily basis, like how Scott will recite the batting and slugging percentages of the Dodgers to himself when he starts to get angry. Or the way that Ororo hates wearing skirts but still wears them instead of trousers because she doesn’t want people to think she isn’t respectable, or that Heather sometimes stops time just so she can sneak in on Mister Xavier and Miss Lehnsherr and try to figure out how kissing boys is supposed to work.
Or that Miss Lehnsherr keeps a ten-day supply of matzo crackers and a pot of horseradish in a locked metal box under her bed just in case there’s no other food in the house. Yuck.
So the mansion in Westchester is real, and the people in it are real, and Jean is real, but something else about Jean still isn’t normal, not even for a house full of mutants.
She was ten when she first realized that there were minutes, hours, days she didn’t remember, that Mister Xavier would talk to her about conversations they’d had that she didn’t remember having and Heather would ask her to return things she didn’t remember borrowing and Scott would talk about swimming in the river down in the woods behind the mansion that she didn’t remember doing.
Then Scott ran away for a day or two and the kitchen was all torn up, and nobody would talk to her about how it happened except to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, except that she had this terrible feeling that it was her fault somehow because she’d been standing in the kitchen washing dishes with Heather and then she was sitting out in the hall outside with Miss Lehnsherr, who had that look on her face she only got when something was wrong and she didn’t want to talk about it.
It made Jean afraid that there was something wrong with her, a secret so alarming that her new teachers wouldn’t tell her and so terrible that they couldn’t fix it.
She couldn’t do anything about that. She’d just learn and try to be good and hope that the secret went away. She hoped that if it didn’t disappear she’d be strong enough to stay safe and not hurt anyone when they had to ask her to leave.
Two years go by, and nobody asks her to leave. She has days when she hardly loses any time at all and days she doesn’t even remember, but people mostly stop talking about the time she doesn’t remember like she should. She doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but it makes the secret easier to ignore and so she does. She learns how to filter her telepathy better, how to hear what she wants from farther away and not hear what she doesn’t want to hear nearly as often, and she practices with her telekinesis until she can float a pencil and make it do tricks like a pet dog.
She’s stronger and knows it. It’s a good feeling, one she reminds herself of when she can’t lift her backpack with her mind or say goodnight to Mister Xavier when he’s across town at one of his fundraiser parties or when Miss Lehnsherr can’t be there to tuck her in at night because she’s away and she has to go to sleep in the dark by herself. Well, not really by herself - there’s always someone in the house she can reach out and touch with her mind when she needs not to be lonely - but without someone right there to help her fall asleep.
Then Ororo tried to climb the biggest tree on the estate, the old oak down by the river that looked like it had been there forever,and Jean had brought a book and snuck after her so she could peek through Ororo’s eyes when she got to the top. But Ororo missed a branch at the very top of the tree, lost her grip on the trunk and came tumbling down out of the sky. She was terrified and Jean could feel it, but then Ororo caught a breeze and started to fly and for a few seconds the nineteen year old girl who could call down storms like a pagan goddess of old was laughing in delight as she swooped down toward the ground in the arms of the wind. Jean was on her feet and laughing with Ororo’s joy and they were maybe ten feet apart when Ororo clipped the low, heavy branch of the old pine Jean had been reading under and plowed into the ground like a busted helicopter on TV.
Something popped in Ororo’s shoulder, and the world went hot and white with pain.
Shit! rang briefly but firmly in both their minds, and then Ororo was wincing and cradling her limp arm in her good one. “Sorry, Jean,” she ground out between clenched teeth, “Didn’t mean to project. Ow. Shit fuck damn ow. Fuck, language. Sorry.”
Jean tried to breathe around Ororo’s pain, tried not to go away in her head, because Ororo was hurt and Miss Lehnsherr’s first aid training said you should never leave a hurt person alone except to go and get help, and going to her black place was not getting help, so she didn’t. It was hard and terrifying and strange and it felt like her head was trying to unravel from the inside, but she didn’t and she was proud of that.
“It’s okay,” she said, voice shaking with the fraction of Ororo’s pain that was still leaking all over her. “Good... um... good flying.”
Shame about the landing, though. That sucked, a voice in her head that wasn’t Ororo’s said.
Blinking, Jean looked to her left and saw another girl kneeling on the ground next to her and Ororo. Her hair and face and body all looked exactly like Jean’s did, but somehow all together the girl looked entirely different.
Even while hissing in pain, Ororo rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I noticed that myself, thanks. Maybe less criticism and more calling for help, not-Jean? This really, really hurts.”
“Baby,” Jean’s mouth said without consulting her. “Just hold still, and I’ll fix it as long as you don’t call me that ever again.”
Not-Jean? Baby?! Jean frowned in confusion, but her hands were doing helpful things like checking Ororo’s arm for breaks and doing unhelpful things like completely ignoring her fellow mutant’s pain at being manhandled.
Now the girl was standing behind Ororo, resting one hand on the out-of-joint shoulder and the other on Ororo’s collarbone, and she made a face like she was kind of excited even if she was a little sorry. “This is gonna hurt, I bet. So don’t, y’know, cry or anything. That would be weird.”
Whatever Ororo was going to say back to that was drowned out by another blast of white-hot pain that rolled over Jean like seeing fire through thick, clear glass - something she could see and feel the echo of, but not really touch. The girl gritted her teeth and held very still, and then Ororo’s arm was straight again. The weather-goddess took very deliberate breaths until only a dull ache was left behind in her shoulder, and Jean could relax, now that the trouble had passed.
“Ugh. Thanks, Phoenix.” Ororo sounded like she’d just finished one of Miss Lehnsherr’s marathon training sessions, quiet and worn-out.
“No problem. Just look out for branches next time, okay? If that had been your head, we would have had to tell somebody.” The girl with Jean’s face sounded like the idea of telling was right up there with hot irons and fried lima beans.
“Yes. Looking out for objects,” Ororo nodded in wide-eyed agreement. She sighed. “Why couldn’t I have developed some invulnerability, too? Flying is really going to suck if I go splat like everyone else.”
“Doctor Lehnsherr says that pain keeps us humble,” the girl intoned with a cheerful malice that made Jean want to cover her mouth with both hands. “I guess you just need more humility, huh?”
“Stop!” Jean shouted. She was tired of only watching as her mouth spoke to her friends. It was too weird.
“But I didn’t...” Ororo started, wide-eyed and startled.
“Not you,” the other girl said with Jean’s mouth, looking to her (Jean’s?) right and rolling her eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping? You’re always sleeping when I’m around.”
“You’re not supposed to leave hurt people alone,” Jean said, her firm conviction wavering under the dismissal of the other girl. “I wanted to help.”
“You wanted to help.” The girl with her face raised an eyebrow in a way that reminded Jean of Miss Lehnsherr and made her want to slap the girl at the same time. “Seriously? This is the time you decide you want to help, when Ororo falls out of a tree? This is the time you decide to get your pampered butt out of bed and help out, when I get to do something cool like reset a shoulder with my brain? You are so lame, Jean.”
Tears began to sting Jean’s eyes, tears that appeared in the other girl’s -- Phoenix’s -- eyes. “You thought that was cool? Ororo fell out of a tree and dislocated her shoulder! She could have broken her neck! And you’re making fun of her and yelling at me and why are you so mean?” Now both girls began to sob.
“This is officially setting my personal record for weird, you... um... two.” Ororo cleared her throat, and Jean suddenly got a crystal-clear image of herself - her own body - through Ororo’s eyes, standing there arguing with itself and crying. “I think we’re going to have to maybe tell somebody about this after all.”
“No!” The other girl stamped her (their?) feet and glared down at Ororo. “We’ll so get grounded for this, and if I have to spend another afternoon stuck in our room watching her read and daydream about...”
Stop! Jean thought, very loudly, and their mouth obediently stopped moving. Inside her head, she could feel the other girl glaring, and then Phoenix went on in a very loud mental stage-whisper that at least Ororo couldn’t hear. I said, the other girl in her head enunciated with relish, that if I have to spend another afternoon stuck in our room watching you read and daydream about SCOTT KISSING US without doing anything about it, I’m going to go crazy!
The shock of the tirade and the fact that, apparently, Phoenix agreed with her about Scott turned Jean’s sobs into swallowing hiccups. “Um. We could leave the part about the shoulder out? I’d like to talk to someone about suddenly meeting the other girl in my head. Please.”
“Fine,” Phoenix sighed like one of those annoying teenage girls on television, “but talk to Doctor Lehnsherr. Charles will start sending us warm and fuzzy vibes to make himself feel paternal, and I’ll just want to beat him in the head with his chess set.”
Jean was again shocked at how mean Phoenix was, but wound up giggling at the image of the chessmen floating around Mister Xavier’s head and taking turns rapping on his skull. “Okay. Miss Lehnsherr.”
Ororo stood up very carefully and smiled a little at Jean - or maybe Phoenix, or maybe both of them - and shook her head like she was trying not to laugh. “Are you two always going to fight like this? Because I think I would find it very distracting to be stuck in a small room with Heather all the time and even then I wouldn’t have to talk to her about what we were wearing.”
“Oh, God. You’re not serious, are you?” Phoenix groaned and pressed their face into their hands. “Because if I really have to have Miss Goody Two Shoes looking over my shoulder like the world’s most little lost guardian angel, I’m never going to get a boyfriend and my life will go from being annoyingly interrupted to totally not worth living.”
“Like I want to listen to you being mean to everyone,” Jean snapped. “Who invited you into my body, anyway?”
“Why, you little....”
Ororo sighed and started for the house without them, which neither of them noticed for about ten minutes. That part was a little embarrassing to explain to Miss Lensherr, especially when they couldn’t stop blaming each other for it long enough to actually explain that they hadn’t meant to let Ororo walk off on her own like that after she’d hurt her shoulder.
“Meinen schätzchen,” Miss Lehnsherr finally cut them both off, her lips curved up at the edges in the smile that wasn’t really so much a smile as a warning, “if you do not learn to be quiet and speak in turns, nobody will ever understand another word either of you says. As much as that seems to me to be a possibility with some merit at this moment, it would be best if you did not carry on so, yes?”
Their mouth worked open and closed for a moment while they fought with each other and themselves. Then Jean nodded, and Phoenix answered. “Yes, Doctor Lehnsherr.”
“Good.” Miss Lehnsherr did not - quite - sag with relief when she sat back in her chair. She had too much dignity for that. She only wanted to very, very badly. “Now, Phoenix, may I speak with Jean aloud first so that I can help her understand what is happening? Then I wish to speak with you.” It was amazing how Miss Lehnsherr could make seemingly voluntary requests sound like orders without raising her voice. Someday, Jean could hear Phoenix promising herself while they nodded, she was going to learn to do that.
Then her head was quiet, and Jean let out a long breath.
“Miss Lehnsherr,” she asked, the confusion and desperation she felt finally coloring her voice, “why is Phoenix in my head?” Her words dropped to a quieter tone, plaintive. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Miss Lehnsherr sighed softly and reached for Jean’s hand, taking it between both of hers, and they sat in silence for a few long heartbeats while Jean could feel Miss Lehnsherr’s mind probing and pulling at the problem, as if looking for just the right way to start explaining a mathematics problem or the function of an engine. No flash of relief or understanding illuminated her, and finally she began in a more halting voice than Jean had ever heard her use with anyone but Mister Xavier. “We first - I first - realized that you were having blackouts not long after you came to stay with us, Jean. At first we thought it was only your memory - that you were removing things that happened from your mind so that you would not have to deal with them, the way that you shut yourself off in your head after the accident that brought you to us - but then I began to notice how differently you behaved during the periods which you didn’t remember. Eventually, when I called you by name and you did not answer, I realized that it was not you I was speaking to at all. It was a very frightening moment for me, but more frightening for Charles, because when he had looked into your mind before he had only seen the dark places you had sealed up in your memory. Now he knew that there was something he had missed, something he had not seen. It disturbed him.”
Jean swallowed, and Miss Lehnsherr held her hand more tightly. There was more there behind those words, the aftertaste of long and bitter arguments that Miss Lehnsherr and Mister Xavier must have sealed behind the locked doors of his mind, but Miss Lehnsherr did not explain and Jean didn’t ask. After a little while, Miss Lehnsherr went on. “At first she did not have a name, did not really even know herself - she was an elemental anger, a child lashing out to protect another against anything and everything that might threaten either of you - but eventually she came to know us as she came to know herself. To see herself as something separate from you, and yet something that was still somehow a part of you. Charles thinks that perhaps when Sasha had her accident and you felt her die, you were too young - your mind needed a defense, and so you hid and created for yourself a protector. I am not so sure, but however it is that she came to be, Phoenix has always been with you and yet you seemed not to know her. Charles felt that if your mind had kept that knowledge from you, there must be a reason, and that it might harm you if we told you of her before you discovered her for yourself. So we have said nothing, and taught Heather and Scott and Ororo to say nothing, and waited for this day. For you to discover her.”
“Oh.” Memories crashed through Jean’s mind in a torrent. The missing time, the things she didn’t remember, all the things that didn’t match up. It was so obvious now that Phoenix was the secret. “I feel kinda dumb now.”
“Charles says that our minds have ways of keeping us from finding the things we aren’t ready for until we are ready for them.” Miss Lehnsherr’s mouth quirked up at the corner, and Jean could taste the warm edge of her silent laughter. “Of course, he often tells me this when I wonder why I did not fall in love with another man before him, so perhaps you should take it with a tablet of salt.”
A tentative smile spread across Jean’s face. “Okay.” A moment later, her eyes drifted into the distance, and she looked troubled once more. “Is she...will she always be in my head?”
“I do not know, truly,” her teacher - the closest thing she had had for three years to a mother - told her softly, voice rich and weary with the hard weight of experience. “But I think yes. She is as much a part of you as your telepathy or the color of your eyes, and you would not be you without her, yes? So it will be up to you and to her to decide how to live with what you are together.”
She knew it was childish, but Jean couldn’t help her bottom lip sticking out. “It’s not fair.”
“Ah, meine schatz, the world has never been overrun with fairness.” Miss Lehnsherr leaned over to kiss her gently on the forehead, smoothing a stray lock of red hair from her face with fingertips textured by time and laboratory chemicals and the tiny scars that come from working sharp metal with one’s hands. “But at least you will never have to be alone, yes?”
“I guess,” Jean answered, leaning into those hands.
It could be worse, Phoenix murmured in her head, and she had the impression of her other self leaning into Miss Lehnsherr’s hands with that same longing trust but trying to be sneaky about it. Though I can’t think how off-hand.
Love you too, Jean answered sarcastically. “Phoenix wants to talk now,” she said aloud to Miss Lehnsherr.
“Are you ready for her to talk to me?” Miss Lehnsherr smiled very gently, with that patience that said she would wait out the heat death of the universe if that turned out to be necessary.
Wrapping her arms around her teacher one last time, Jean nodded, and let herself go to sleep.
As she drifted into the familiar warm fog, she felt the other girl stepping forward, and this time she wasn’t afraid.