Scott and Jean, on the way back from Harry's

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Scott and Jean walk back from Harry's and reflect on the week.


It was a very quiet night, and for some obscure reason, Scott was glad that they'd chosen to walk back from Harry's. He had his arm around Jean, and was maybe leaning on her a little more than he ordinarily would have. They'd stayed for a time down at the bar with the others, but he'd known that neither of them were up for too much in the way of socialization right now.

Jean's arm around his waist was at least partly for his support, but mostly she was holding him close, reassuring herself that he was there. It had been an incredibly long few days, and the aftermath looked to be almost as hard, and all Jean wanted now was her bed and her husband. Even the cat was sounding good.

"So," Scott said quietly - and very calmly. He'd felt weirdly calm ever since they'd come back. He didn't think it was entirely shock. "How long until I lose you to all of the politicking that doubtless needs to be done?"

Jean closed her eyes, her arm tightening briefly around his waist. "I'm going to see what all I can do from here for now. I don't want to leave the kids, or you, and traveling right now will be a complete mess." Penn Station was gone, Amtrak probably wasn't even running most of their trains. "I need to find out how much this has hurt the mutant cause amongst our friends." Because it went without saying that even the moderates who'd been sitting on the fence of most mutant issues were probably lost causes now. Even if they personally didn't agree, supporting mutants right now would be political suicide in most parts of the country. "I don't even want to think about how this is going to change the dynamics of the national race."

"We can hope that there are enough cooler heads to minimize the worst of the backlash," Scott said. "It's going to affect the team, too, you know. I foresee a period of hands-off on the government's part coming at us... hopefully what we were able to do will keep it at that."

"Of course," Jean said, a touch of bitterness in her voice. "Cooper and Fury could come and ask us for help, but will we get any recognition of the fact that we put our lives on the line? No, we're the outsiders. The Other. For all that we'd have gone in anyway, even if they'd never asked, because this is our home, our country."

Scott pressed his lips to her temple for a moment. "You know," he said, and although he sounded weary, there was a touch of something close to humor in his tone, "I'm going to look at it positively, and see it as liberating. We've had to... behave ourselves with an unnecessary amount of precision at times. It's not going to hurt, to play things a little closer to the vest. Might let us get more done."

She turned and gave him a Look, although there was more than a touch of fondness to it, a hint of a smile playing around her lips. "I think you're just being perverse. Is there some rule I was unaware of that says only one of us can be pessimistic at once? Am I stealing your schtick?"

"I think you must be. I mean, listen to me. Terribly out of character." Something twisted in his chest as he said it; the optimism wasn't the only thing that he could say that about. "Did you wind up doing anything you regret out there?" he asked slowly.

Jean almost wondered if she would come to regret not lashing out at Apocalypse; getting out at least some of the anger now simmering in the back of her mind, and on an acceptable target, at that. But she just shook her head before laying it on his shoulder briefly. "No. We got lucky, for the most part. You...?"

Scott was silent for a moment. "Yeah," he said finally, and after another pause, offered the image of the scene on the street, him and Laurie and Zach and the mob. "... I wouldn't have done it if I'd known that as soon as Kyle and Creed took down War, his control over them would end. But I didn't." And there'd been a number of unmoving bodies on the street afterwards.

"No, you didn't," Jean agreed. "It wasn't even necessarily something you could have guessed; many mental control powers can linger on after the source is cut off." Not that that helped much - he would beat himself up over this, just as she knew she would, if it had been her.

His arm tightened around her. "I'll be waiting for the next trainee to laugh at me when I give the 'X-Men don't kill speech'," he said, but there was no edge to the comment. Just weariness. "Things have changed so much, you know," he said as they continued towards the mansion, their pace slow but steady. "Ten years. I have to wonder what we'll look like at twenty."

"And every step of the way has been so sensible. Often necessary." She remembered the shock of two years gone, and all that had changed, and how drastically, but Jean couldn't imagine what it would be like if she were returning now, if it had been five years instead of two. Would she even recognize her team in who they had become?

"It's strange. There is not one... single part of me that wants to do any debriefing, you know? I know I should, and I know I will... but I just don't want to think right now," Scott concluded tiredly. "About any of it."

"Tonight we don't. Most decidedly," Jean said, nodding her head firmly. "And if I get my way, the rest of the week is off limits, too. We all need recovery time. Doctor's orders."

Scott stopped, turning to face her and taking her face between his hands for a moment before leaning in and kissing her. "I love you," he said simply, pushing away thoughts of everyone he was worried about -just for now. "I'm so glad you're all right."

"Yes," Jean said, wrapping her arms around him and leaning into him for a moment. "That. Lots and lots of that."