xp_logs | Scott and Jim, Saturday night

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While Charles is in with Jean, Scott is pacing the hall outside, suffering from some unexpected aftereffects of what happened in Jean's mind. Jim, at the Professor's request, comes down to talk to him. The conversation winds up helping Scott - eventually - but isn't quite such a good thing for Jim. Sometimes the parallels can be too close for comfort.

He needed to stop pacing. He really needed to stop pacing, because it wasn't going to mean that Charles finished with Jean any sooner, and he was possibly a disruption out here, pacing. But he couldn't. Even the steadily building headache wasn't enough to make him go and sit down somewhere. Scott swallowed and turned again. Maybe he'd go pace out in the hall.

He should have been touched. Flattered that Charles trusted him with this, gratified that the man thought his expertise could be of some use to one of his most cherished students. He knew those were the appropriate reactions. Then why, Jim wondered, could he feel only a dull, gnawing dread?

This was no different from any other case. He had to remember that. Let the specifics go, just long enough to get this done. Put it away. He could do that. He was good at that. Jim took a deep breath and brought himself fully into the corridor, calm and centered.

"Hello, Scott."

Scott half-whirled, a rather wild look in his real eye. "Jim," he said after a minute, not appreciably untensing. "Are you here to help Charles? He's in there with her. You should go in." Maybe that would mean they'd finish faster. Finish, so that he could get back in there where he belonged, because he couldn't figure out why he couldn't hear her, couldn't sense her...

"No, Charles doesn't need any help in there," Jim smiled, the familiarity of the response saving it from any outward sign of the bitter nausea Scott's suggestion had brought. "He has some experience with this. Actually, I thought you could use some company. If nothing else, it'll pass the time."

"I don't want company, I want her!" Scott said almost violently, and the tiny part of him that pointed out that he shouldn't be snapping at Jim was... well, a very tiny part. "I don't... she's not in my head where she should be. How am I supposed to help her if I can't feel her?" There was something close to outright hysteria in his voice by the last word, even if he'd managed to keep the volume down.

The sudden outburst evoked not even a blink. Jim kept his eyes on Scott's and his voice low and unaffected. "You mean without the link."

Scott stopped short, staring at him, his face gone utterly white. "He's got to put it back," was the response that finally came. "He's got to put it back now." He actually turned back towards the door before stopping again, remembering what was going on in there and why he couldn't interrupt. "It's just... it's just the shock or something," he said dazedly. "Or she's blocking it..."

The younger man shook his head slowly. "No, Scott. It's gone."

Maybe it was an invasion of Scott and Jean's privacy, but Charles had considered this information too essential not to share. Not when he'd known it would be eating away at Scott. The professor had known how difficult a thing he asked of Jim; he had not given him the burden of working in ignorance as well.

"He can't put it back, Scott," Jim continued, as gently as he could. "The reason the link shut down in the first place is because it posed a breach of psychic integrity at a time when your defenses were already compromised. Both of you. You were under enough stress just holding your own minds together -- how were you supposed to deal with another one, too? The damage would have been irreparable. A total dissolution of self, both for you and for her." Jim dropped his gaze for a moment, his hands seeking out his pockets. He gave Scott another slow shake of the head. "You . . . don't really survive something like that."

"But... but I'm not in her mind anymore, and she's not..." Scott stumbled over the words and to a stop, utter horror dawning on his features. "... I did this," he breathed. "I let go of Charles, and... I did this..."

Jim raised one hand in a placating gesture. "You saved her," he said, calm but firm. "However you did it, you brought her back. You're incredibly lucky the link collapsed the way it did; if it hadn't, you might have gotten pulled into the reintegration. You didn't. She's safe now." Amazing, he noted distantly, how he could say all this without showing or feeling a thing. David's DID, stepping in to cleave away a devastating emotional disturbance at the source. Jim recognized the numbness for what it was, and gave himself over to it gladly.

Jim's words weren't precisely comforting, but they did create a little distance between Scott and his realization of what his choice to let go of the link with Charles had done. However it had turned out. He took a staggering step backwards, leaning against the wall - and winced, hands to his temples, as the sudden cessation of nervous energy brought home how bad the headache was in fact getting.

"He can't... can't put it back, you said," he muttered dazedly. "Because it would hurt her?"

"Her, and you. You're both psychically raw right now. Prolonged telepathic contact -- especially anything as deceptively quiet as a constant link -- is only going to retraumatize both your wounds. And . . ." He was still reaching out to her, even now. Jim had lowered his shields enough to sensitize himself to the damage to Scott's mind, and he could feel the man scrabbling against the closed channel, straining to reconnect. The futile effort was taking its toll, but there was nothing Jim could do for him; his mind was too fragile to risk intervention. Perhaps Charles could do something for him later, but for now . . .

The telepath pinched the bridge of his nose, reordering his thoughts. "Okay," Jim said, lowering his hand, "I'll put this in context. Whenever we weren't working on the astral plane, Charles used to insist on keeping the content of our sessions verbal. I used to hate it. I knew he could hear what I was thinking. Why did he have to make me say it? It was so hard. Telepathy was more direct. Honest. I thought." Jim sighed, hands migrating back to his pockets. "What I came to learn, though, is that we're more than our thoughts. What we say, what we do -- it matters. That's what shows in the real world, that's the face other people see. A telepathic understanding can be wonderful and comforting, but it's also a cheat. Depend on it too often and all those 'real' things, the things that show the people around us we're alive, lapse. What you both went through -- it was wholy of the mind, of the inner. Now you need something real. Tangible. Just knowing isn't enough. You need something you can hold on to. Do you understand?"

Tears blurred his real eye, and Scott slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, huddled as if melting into the wall was a viable and desirable objective. He rested his head on his knees, not answering Jim, although he had absorbed the words.

She'd need something real. He had to pull himself together, to be able to give her that.

I'm sorry. Jim knelt next to Scott and lay a hand on his back, for all that he knew the comfort was empty. I'm sorry. This was a cruel thing to ask of the man after all he'd been through, but Jim couldn't relent for the sake of false platitudes. It was the only way to move forward, and part of him was suddenly furious at Charles for making him do this to another human being. Furious at Charles and at himself, for putting Scott in the same position he'd been in all those years ago.

Please forgive me, Scott. I'm going to have to ask you to be strong.

"Maybe when you've both had some time things will be different," Jim said softly, closing his hand on the other man's shoulder, "but right now . . . it's the only way. It's hard, but you'll get through this. Both of you. And you'll be stronger because of it."

Scott took one shaky breath, then another. Each grew steadier as he forced himself back to some semblance of emotional control in an act of pure will. "I have," he rasped, "to be able to help her. I have to be able to help her. Whatever... whatever needs to be done. If it's not the link, it'll be something else." Scott repeated that to himself over and over, willing the words to burn themselves into his mind, a constant litany that would keep him focused on what was important, no matter what else happened.

"You have to help yourself, too." There was no use refuting the almost pathological need to help. There was nothing Jim could say to that would be anything less than hypocritical. "Helping her and helping yourself . . . the two aren't mutually exclusive. If you build a house on a cracked foundation, sooner or later it's going to fall. It's not just about keeping it together for someone else's sake. You deserve something real, too. And I think Jean will feel the same."

"Cracked foundation..." Scott echoed hollowly, and everything was fraying again, falling to pieces. And I think Jean will feel the same... "She didn't. She doesn't. Everything she said, all of was true for part of her... the reasons she left were true." Part of him wanted to scream. Another part of him wanted to get up and go, get out of here, be the one who left because if she'd done it once, believed it all once, nothing was safe anymore, he couldn't really believe in any of it... No, dammit! Scott pressed the heels of both hands to his forehead, trying to slow his breathing down.

"No, Scott, listen." Stop fucking shoving my face in it! Something in him wanted to reach out and bash Scott's head against the wall, beat him until he was crushed and bleeding, hurt him so badly he would never say another word again. This was coming too close, dragging him right up against the thing he'd wanted nothing more than to avoid since that announcement Thursday, and there was no way out. For an instant Jim's jaw tightened against the rage, and then he was setting it aside, distancing himself. There is a time, and a place. But not now.

"Human beings are not unified," Jim continued gently. "Take it from a telepath: we're creatures of ambivalence. We all think and feel things we can't control. What matters, ultimately, is what we decide to be. Jean had that choice taken from her. Maybe the one who hurt you was a part of her, but it wasn't her. Not the total Jean Grey. She chose you. To love and marry you. That is who she is. Not the dark whisper in the back of her head. Not the little piece of anger and resentment that was twisted into a life of its own. The one who chose you."

Selfish, he was so selfish, Scott told himself with a savage sort of desperation, squeezing his eyes shut and going back to that same measuring breathing, one of the exercises Moira had taught him back in the fall when he'd been trying to get his optic blast back under control. What he felt shouldn't come into this, not now, not until she... until she... His mind didn't want to finish the sentence, but it didn't matter.

He opened his eyes, focusing on Jim. "I know that," he said faintly. Think, he told himself. Think. Don't feel, not yet. Not until you've got it straight in your head. "I do. I just... have to remember it, don't I?" Make himself remember it. He gazed at Jim, imagining a booted foot stomping on the pain trying to bubble up beneath the facade he was trying so hard to construct. Later. Much later...

An entirely different sort of pain hit all at once, pain that wasn't focused on Jean, as he realized something, his breath catching in his chest and his expression turning stricken. "Oh, God, Jim, I'm sorry..." The realization of what this conversation had to be doing to the other man was like a bucket of cold water in the face, and Scott straightened, wiping at his eye.

Jim gave him a small smile. Oh, he's sorry? Too late. "It's okay. Don't worry about it." It shouldn't have been like this. This was counseling. Maintaining his center was easy. If only he'd had more time . . . but life didn't wait. I was the best choice for this. The only choice. It's not his fault I'm compromised. Or Charles'. You know that.

Knew, but didn't care. He wanted to hurt Scott. Really hurt him. Scott and the professor and -- Jim tried to tell himself it was just anger, that there was nothing wrong with feeling selfish, irrational urges, but it did no good. He'd only been asked to do the job he'd chosen for himself and yet here he was, hating the one who needed his help. He felt sick.

The desperate need to switch almost took him right there, and Jim couldn't suppress the momentary shudder of tension as he wrenched himself back from the edge. It was a narrow escape. Right now all he wanted was to be someone free of all this anger, this ugliness, so much that it hurt to breathe. To be someone . . . clean.

No. We're not done. Jim's hand uncurled against Scott's back, the slight movement the only outward sign of the vicious struggle in his mind. We have a job, he told himself, forcing the reality of it to drive home. Wait. Until we're finished. Please. Not where people can see.

"It's easy to lose perspective when you're living so close to the problem you can barely see the edges," Jim said, bringing his odd-colored eyes up to meet Scott's. "Hold on to what you know. No matter how bad it seems, or how awful the doubt. Pain can blind you in the moment, but a fundamental truth never changes."

Scott quashed the little quiver of misery he felt at Jim's carefully measured - and false, he thought - reassurance, and tried to focus on the advice instead. But the pain in his head was still growing steadily, and although the sensation that he was disintegrating was fading, it was leaving in its wake cold, hollow exhaustion.

"I held onto... something, these last couple of days," Scott said dully, his voice hoarse as he sank his head into his hands, not moving to get up. Tears were stinging his eye again. "I don't know what. I just knew what I had to do and did it. Now she's back home, and Charles will h-help her, and-"

He was so terrified. And it was such a selfish terror, fear that had nothing to do with anything but himself. It had made him lash out at Jim here, speak without thinking. It would get in the way of doing what he needed to do. It wouldn't help Jean.

He was doing the breathing exercise again, almost without thinking. Let it go. Let it go, let it go, letitgo...

"I'll do it." He wasn't sure where the words were coming from, only that they sounded almost calm. Strained, but calm. "I won't... make the same mistakes. If she needs to... to kill me with guilt," he said, a slightly wild edge in his voice as he remembered his own words from the mindscape, "I won't be selfish. I promised her. Both of her. And that's why she let me open the door in the end."

Had Jim the luxury or the capacity, he would have wept -- although whether for himself or for Scott he no longer knew. Now he sat here on the carpet next to a man almost demolished, and from amidst the iron fortress of pure will that was the only thing still holding him together all Jim could feel was a distant, empty sorrow. Waves at the base of a vast cliff, acknowledged but remote. Untouchable. Jim raised his other hand to grasp Scott's arm, adding the second to the steady weight on his back.

"She let you because she loves you," Jim told him, reinforcing that one unequivocable truth. "You don't need to let her do anything. To take anything for her. All you have to do is be who you are. That's all she needs. If that wasn't true, neither of you would be standing here now."

Scott took a deeper, but still shaky breath, then let it out as he turned Jim's words over and over in his mind. Could he believe that was all she needed? If he could, if it was true, maybe he could do this. He wasn't sure he had a choice, because he felt like he'd used up the rest of Cyclops these last couple of days, drained that side of him down to the dregs.

Now it was just Scott. And he either believed that he could be what she needed, or he believed what she had told him - that he was too damaged, too broken. The voice from the part of him that wanted to give up and accept the latter was shockingly loud, and Scott shifted, not pulling away from Jim but rather straightening a little, reeling a bit internally at the realization.

"I don't know what to do." His voice was soft, echoes of despair beneath the surface of his words. "The only thing I know for sure is that she's in pain and it hurts, even if I can't feel it anymore. I want her to get better, even if... even if we don't. Is that enough for now? I don't know, Jim... I don't know how to be strong for her and honest with myself at the same time."

"Don't try to be anything. You know what you want. What it could mean, or how you're going to get there . . . that doesn't matter. Focus on what's in front of you. That, and only that. Everything else will follow, one step at a time." Jim closed his eyes, and even across the widening gulf of thought and word an old memory stretched out to reach him.

"First, let yourself be," Jim murmured. "That is the only lesson."

"So not me." Absurdly, Scott almost smiled, but it was a sad little near-smile. "I'm the long-term planner, remember. The strategist." He blinked, then rubbed at his good eye with a shaky sigh. "Suppose that's why I'm no good at times like this."

"You can learn. I did." Jim gave him a lopsided smile in return. Automatic, reassuring. All he could offer. "You'd be surprised what you can learn, if you have to."

The pattern of the breathing exercise was getting easier, maybe because the vice around his chest was loosening. "I'm beginning to wonder if there aren't a lot of things I should have learned and didn't." Scott sighed and rested his head on his knees for a moment. "I want Charles to come out here and I don't. Isn't that contradictory?"

Jim laughed. "I told you people are ambivalent, didn't I? Don't worry. Letting go is a hard habit to learn. It gets easier, though. There's really only so many hits you can take before you realize lying still isn't necessarily the coward's way out." The telepath gave Scott's arm a final rub and retracted his hand. Physical withdrawl, echo to the one that had occurred long before. "It'll be all right. The professor knows what he's doing. It's not going to be easy, but . . . you can get through this. Both of you."

"You're right, you know. I want something real," Scott said after a moment, almost inaudibly. "Or to believe that we will get through this, at least..." He closed his eyes and winced, rubbing at his temples. "I don't think I can believe that yet. Maybe I should just start with believing that she'll be here when I wake up tomorrow."

Jim shook his head slightly. "You're individuals first. You both need to find your own centers before you push yourselves too hard to rely on each other like that. Not having the link will help, in a sense . . . because without it you'll know that any connection you make from here on in will be earned. The hard way. The real way."

The logic of Jim's words was finally starting to penetrate, at least a little. Scott supposed that was progress. "These concepts are new and strange to me," he joked rather feebly, blinking not to blink back tears, but because his eye was forgetting how to focus. "I'll have to work on it..." He let his head rest against his knees again. "I need to get off the floor," he muttered. Get up, get out of the tuxedo... maybe try and rest, while Charles was with Jean.

He looked up at Jim. "I'll be okay," he said quietly. "Well. Not immediately. But you're right, and... thank you."

"Don't worry about it." David's answer to everything. Jim unfolded his long legs and half-rose, extending a hand to the shorter man. "Getting off the floor is a good start. They'll be a while in there yet. Go get cleaned up, maybe get something to eat. Charles will let you know when they're starting to wrap up. He won't let you miss anything."

Scott, as he let Jim help him to his feet, hesitated, taken aback by the younger man's choice of words. Won't let me miss anything... He smiled suddenly, a small, tired smile, but a real one. "Missing things... my big fear, you know. But I'd forgotten I wasn't doing this alone."

"That would be another thing not to lose sight of," Jim smiled. "But it's okay. It'll be all right. Just get some rest."

Jim turned to part ways with the other man, brushing Charles' mind to reappraise him of the situation. The older man had been aware of the entire exchange, of course, but most of his attention had to be devoted to the session. He'd been so worried for Scott. Jim had been able to tell, even through the professor's impeccable self-control.

It's okay, Jim thought as he made his way to the stairwell. We're done. I helped. Oh, thank god. He'll be okay. Okay. So we're going. Back to my room. I'm going.

We have to go be insane now.