Jean & Jay

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

Jean and Jay talk, but difficulties rise and Jean gets her first real glimpse into what landscape Jay's mind has turned into.

His feet dangled off the side of the bed, stripped right down to the boxers he'd been regularly wearing since he could remember. No more red power ranger underwear that was lined with white, only to turn pink in the wash. No, these were plain boxers, but not plaid because he hated plaid but couldn't recall why. His fingers were linked together on his lap and he seemed perfectly still, like the perfect patience, except for the metal wings that loomed overhead. Like they were watching. Breathing when he breathed, moving despite the still, upright posture of Jay's body, only his yellow eyes followed her around the room.

"Do you think he left before mah birthday or after?" Jay asked. Kevin, of course. He had missed his birthday. The pewter necklace from Kevin was gone, the one of the guitar, lost the day they were attacked, either removed by someone or fallen off. Just another strip off his memory with Kevin. Did he have anything left?


"He was still here," Jean said, settling into one of the chairs in the private room; they'd finished the physical part of his exam, but Jay's problems were much more than physical just now. "And the importance of the day was marked." She personally thought Kevin's post had been beautiful, in a tragic way, but she wasn't sure Jay was stable enough right now for her to show it to him.

The importance of the day was marked. By who, he wanted to ask. His mother? His family? Jeb? His gaze levelled with Jean and he studied her for a long moment, unsure if she was scanning his mind, uncaring. The wings hesitated, shifted and slide together, feathers slipping away until they closed, disappeared into his external spine away from view. Typical of his hair, a strand of hair strayed down to his cheekbone, red against a clashing blue and with the yellow eyes staring at her, it seemed Jay harboured all the primary colours to make a palette of his own.

"What was it like?"

"What was what..." Jean started, but her shields were dialled down so low to be able to help him, and he was practically screaming in her mind, albeit in the most detached way possible. And that didn't make sense, but people so rarely did in their own heads. "Oh. That. Dying. Dying was... Dying was terrifying. Closing your eyes and knowing to the depths of your soul that they will never open again. On top of that, the lake's worth of water crushing me was almost redundant in the fear factor." Which was true and not true, but all of it was complicated in ways that Jay, unfortunately, probably understood far too well. "But," she added, "if knowing I was dead was bad, finding out I wasn't was worse, at least at times."

He nodded, surprised that he would get this from her, that she would tell him anything at all about it. But then, she must have come to terms with it in her own way. "Ah was okay with dying. Lying there, it was different from Tommy. Ah was fine with it. Could have died and not regret." He wondered if she regretted anything. He was sure that she did.

"It was worse cause you didn't know who you were, who you were gonna be, if you could go back to being what you were before. Ah saw you that day, remember? You put us out good. Real good." He smiled at the memory. "Wouldn't ever forget something like that, you'd think. But Ah did. Ah forgot what you was going through. What you went through. Did you ever get over it?"

Jean's eyes were dark as she regarded him. "Two years," she said softly. "I spent two years of my life not knowing who I was. No idea where I came from or who my friends were. I forgot the day my sister's children were born, and the day Scott proposed, and all the small miracles of a life. For two years I was a new person, someone who had no past and precious little future but who, nonetheless, lived. And then I remembered, but I wanted to forget. Forget what I'd become because of what I'd lost." Her voice was deadly serious as she caught his gaze and said, "If you're looking for advice, Jay, don't try to forget who you were. Find who that person was, and who you are, and where you meet and join and what you become together. And if we find a cure, still don't forget. History defines us. Even when we have none."

"You was happy cause you forgot. Because you didn't remember." Well I remember, he screamed to her. Everything I lost. It had taken him years to accept his wings. Years to accept the changes within him and find his identity. It was all meaningless now. Everything. He couldn't say who he was then because he didn't know now. He could only listen to Jean and attempt to piece together what she told him, to remember who he was. It seemed like such an overwhelming task, a burden placed over him that weighed down over his shoulders and he wasn't sure where to start, where to look, or what to look at. His indecision festered frustration and he placed his hands over his temples, dragging his knuckles over his brow. "Ah remember.. Ah remember it all, but--" he held his breath, exhaled sharply and took in another. "-- There's .. Somethin' else... somethin'--" he swallowed, unable to talk anymore and trying to calm his frustrations. He didn't feel like himself, nothing felt like it should and it only confused him further.

She didn't flinch even as he began screaming at her in his mind. "You mistake my meaning, Jay. Forgetting doesn't make you happy. And no, you don't know who you are know - it's not easy, and I'm sorry that I can't make it easy for you to learn who you are. But that's the way to balance. Peace." There was something else. Something... lurking in the back of his mind, and his thoughts kept skittering around it. She wasn't sure if she should push or not, so for the moment Jean held her tongue, waiting to see where he would go.

"Ah just wanna sleep. Ah feel like Ah havn't slept. Like Ah can't sleep. Like Ah'm going to bed and the second Ah close mah eyes, Ah'm being drilled--" he took in a sharp breath and slowly exhaled. Inhale. Exhale. Patience. No, he needed peace.PATIENCE. He needed-- "--Somethin'... It's.. Somethin'.." Jay repeated. "Patience," he echoed and pulled his hair back, determined eyes fixed on her. "Ah need Peace Jean. Can't you gimmie somethin', Patience?" he said when he meant to say 'Peace'. He could feel himself being all over, unable to focus on one thing. He was fighting with himself and his confusion that strayed into frustrations. "You shoulda forg-g-gotten."

The confusion in his mind, the arguing back and forth, it was familiar. Alarmingly familiar, in a way, but for now Jean shoved those worries to the side - symptoms had to be under control before you could treat the disease. "I can put you to sleep if you want - dreamless sleep, even, at least for now. Give you some time to recover."

He knew he wasn't making sense, he could hear himself jabber on, trying to form something coherent when all he felt he could stammer out was random thoughts. "Ah don't want sleep," he contradicted himself. "Ah want.... Ah want this... how did you do this? Did he leave you too?"Jay asked, his fingers dragging down his neck, pulling on his shoulders. "Did he leave you this?"

"Did he... D-d-d-did he?" Jay stuttered, clutching as his biceps and rockin slightly. "Ah can't.. Can't you just.. d-do somethin'?"

He was lost and he was hurting and she had to do something. There had to be some way to help him, and she didn't know what it was, couldn't see the answer, but it had to be there. And so Jean closed her eyes and the world melted away from her.

---

It was definitely a young American boy's view of what the African plains looked like, the overly simplified stark menace jarring with Jean's own memories of Wakanda and, even more, with the Wakandan people's imagining of their land, and it would have been funny if it weren't so horrifying that this was how Jay best represented his internal mindspace. The seared landscape was starkly barren in a way so foreign to the brilliant creativity which had filled him before and everything screamed of pain, right down to the jagged edges of the mountains in the distance - so far away that one felt utterly hopeless at the sight of them, no way, no path that was safe enough to get one there, no escape from this burning airless hell with its grasses so sharp and dry they could cut you, and you couldn't get away, but there in the distance the mountains taunted you.

The sounds were terrifying - there were lions nearby, fighting over the carcass of some recent kill, and the shrill cry of the hyenas waiting their turn with less than perfect patience - but it was the smell that brought on the true horror. The whole world seemed to reek of blood. Not the modern scent of blood, no ER washed with antiseptic before the blood comes and doused in it again, no childhood scrapes and the smell of clean grass and dirt threading through the coppery tang of blood seeping from playground cuts. This was a primal, backbrain stench of a body bleeding out, gore and ichor and bodily wastes spilled in terror.

And, throughout it all, humming through the mental space in a way which could never be explained in terms of the physical world, was a predator’s lust for the blood and the thrill of the hunt.