Not So Plain Jane - Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Jane meets Terry as the girl finishes up her audition in the city. When they idolize you, it's so easy to hurt them.



With confident, natural gestures, Terry coaxed the last notes out of the beautiful harp. It was actually better than the one at school much beloved though that one was. She felt like she could have played anything on it. She let the sound melt away then eased the harp back and stood to take a bow. Three impassive faces looked back at her, giving no sign of their opinions on the performance. After a long moment and some quiet conferencing the woman in the center gave her a half-smile and a nod. "Thank you, Miss Cassidy. That will be all for today. We'll be in touch." Terry's nerves doubled but she just nodded and gathered her sheet music, hurrying off the stage so that the next hopeful musician could try his hand at winning the scholarship.

Outside the wind whipped through the skyscrapers, dropping the temperature further and reddening Terry's pale skin. She shivered and adjusted her scarf, then checked her watch. Not quite time to meet up with her ride again.

Spotting Terry on her way to her audition had been almost as much luck as planning - even for a powerful telepath, there were just too many people in New York City to cope with at once and Jane disliked the feeling of all these strangers' brains pushing in on hers. But she had spotted the girl and followed her into the auditorium. She'd played well and the judges had been impressed despite their poker faces. Not that Jane was going to tell the girl that. Let her stew.

Slipping out the door a few seconds behind Terry, Jane smiled to see her shivering, waiting in the cold. Well, it would give her a little time to have some fun, at least. "Terry," she said quietly from behind the girl. "Hello."

Terry jumped and turned, her face lighting up. "Jean! I mean, Dr. Grey!" She flung herself forward and wrapped her arms around the other redhead's neck, clinging tightly. "I've missed you! Where have you been? What happened?" As it always did when she was emotional, Terry's accent wavered and thinned, more of her native lilt sliding in. "No one could tell us anything!"

Jane didn't have to act the sudden stiffening as Terry launched herself into a hug, although in retrospect there was probably no reaction that could have hurt the girl more. Reaching up to detatch the girl's arms from around her neck Jane stepped back, holding the girl at arm's length for a moment before letting go. "No one could tell you anything because I don't want anything told. I'm done with Xavier's."

Confusion slid across Terry's face, fading to hurt. "But why? What happened? All they said was that you weren't on the faculty anymore. And Mr. Summers has been so upset...I don't understand why you would leave us."

Jane's voice was cold as she said, "Because I'm tired of it, and there was nothing there that made all the work and the effort worth it. Hell, most of the time nobody even says 'thank you'. And I just got tired of pouring my life into a place where I wasn't appreciated when the work was so unrewarding."

Terry's lower lip quivered until she bit it hard, using the physical pain to counteract the betrayal. "I thought you loved teaching. You always said you did. You've been at Xavier's longer than any of us."

Getting Terry to cry probably wouldn't be that hard, not much of a statement of Jane's skill, but that didn't mean she'd give it a shot anyways. "Too long," she said shortly. "That school has sucked up my life for too long. I will save you the diatriabe any teacher can give you about uniterested, unappreciateive, disrespectful students, too much marking, too long nights for too little reward and simply say that teaching? Not all it's cracked up to be. And that's when you can't even complain about making public school wages.

Terry was shaking and stepped back even more from her teacher, her blue eyes wide and anguished. "Why are you acting like this? Even if you were tired, I don't understand why you're being so mean."

"Is telling the truth mean?" Jane asked in a tone which was all but a verbal slap. "You were the one who wanted to know, Terry. You wanted to know what happened. Well, that's what happened. I got tired of you all." The hesitation before the last word would have taken a stopwatch clocked in nanoseconds to measure, but for someone with Terry's ears it was probably clear as day. Which was rather the point.

Judging by Terry's flinch the message had been received. "But why?" Terry asked softly, "What did I do wrong?"

Hmmm, time for subtlety. "Oh, Terry," Jane said, carefully walking a fine line between 'gentle' and 'exasperated', "it wasn't any one thing anyone did, it was everything building up." But even as she said it she was very, very carefully sifting through the girl's mind. It wasn't hard to find out what she thought Jean sounded like - memories of things she'd said before - and to subtly slide thoughts forward, as though Terry herself was offering up examples of the things that had built up.

"Always underfoot.... sneaky little... stupid mistakes... condom... didn't want the baby... the baby... didn't want the... want the baby..."

The first tears that spilled down Terry's face surprised even her, hot then freezing in the space of a breath. "It was an accident. I didn't mean to..." She stopped talking, choking as she realized she was responding only to her own thoughts and not to anything Jean had said. "Was it because I killed the baby? ...or didn't want the baby?" There had never been a baby. Right?

Nope, not at all hard to make her cry. But the pain in her eyes was absolutely worth the effort. "There was no baby, Terry. You made a mistake with the pregnancy test and scared everybody for no reason, but there was no baby. And that was for the best."

The words were harsh but Terry had lived with Jean for too many years not to take them as absolute truth. And though they cut her, they pierced a festering wound in her. The fear that somehow her will had destroyed a life. "I know," she murmured mostly to herself. "I know." It was pain, but it was a clean pain at least. "Dr. Grey, I'm sorry. Please come back. We all miss you."

Her anger at herself made Jane incautious and she answered without thinking, "Well, when I miss you all, maybe I will. But I wouldn't hold your breath."

Terry wiped her eyes and swallowed hard against further tears, "I can hold my breath a long time, Dr. Grey. I'll pray that it's long enough." Despite the way she'd been treating her, this was still one of the people she'd loved longest in the world and she moved forward to give her another tight hug.

Jane stepped back out of her reach, managing to keep from swearing mainly by biting her own tongue. What the fuck was wrong with this girl? Why the hell would anyone, even a pathetic little sop-rag of a girl like this, think that fucking Jean Grey was worth all this. She wasn't worth it. Jaw clenched, Jane spun around on her heel and stormed off, a mental, #Everyone always stifling me,# that she didn't quite manage to keep to herself the only goodbye.

Terry leaned against the side of the build and wept, trying hard to have some hope that this was all just a mistake or maybe a bad dream. This was Jean. Jean wouldn't do this to them. There had to be some other explanation. Terry just didn't kow what it could be.