Jean, Xavier, and Amelia: The Return

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Jean asks the Professor for help after realizing Amelia is still alive.



Steam was heavy in the air as Jean wrapped a towel around herself and stared into the mirror, wiping the condensation away.

The feeling of something touching her arm made flinch as she let out a startled yelp and she quickly glanced around, catching a flicker of something in the mirror that wasn't really there. She'd been feeling it for days now. Something was not right, something she knew.

Something missing.

As the haze lingered, Jean found herself looking back at the mirror, transfixed for a few long moments. Her breath quickened as a familiar sensation brushed against her mind. It was too faint to be anything concrete, and it was entirely possible she was imagining things, hoping for the best, but something told her she wasn't. It had to be true.

Jean got dressed and opened the door to the bedroom, walking down the hall. She stopped in front of one of the other suite doors, staring at the word 'Voght' emblazoned on the door. No one had cleaned out her room yet, not even Charles. It was still too soon, even with the funeral.

She tried to turn the door handle, but found it locked. Staring at the door a moment, a click was heard as she turned the door unlocking mechanism from the inside and opened up the room.

The light from the hall lit up a patch of carpet in the shape of a shard as wide as the door as she flicked on the light and walked in, taking a seat on the ground. All that was Amelia still resided there. Her presence remained, and Jean knew why: because she was still alive, somewhere.

Jean closed her eyes, reaching out with her mind. She'd been told it wasn't a good idea, that she still needed to mend after all she'd done to bring herself back, but if it meant finding Amelia, she'd take that risk.

So she pushed on. Most of it felt normal, though it was more of a strain to search, like trying to run again the next day after doing a marathon. Still, it seemed like the regular patterns, nothing like the hint of life she'd felt earlier.

Minutes turned into almost half an hour, and it seemed like she were grasping at strings in the darkness, searching for a glimpse.

She clenched her eyes shut, tighter, reaching more, farther, until, despite the shooting headache that came with it, she could sense a glimmer of the thoughts of the passengers on the cars passing on the highway nearby. But not who she wanted.

Letting out a cry of frustration, Jean put her hands against her face and pitched forward as she pressed her head against the ground like she were praying at Mecca. She then turned over on her side and curled up, pulling herself into a ball.

There was only one other option. It was something she had hoped to avoid, to give false hope just in case, but she didn't know what else to do. Especially if she was right. She couldn't just leave Amelia that way.

~Professor...~

His response was immediate, concerned: ~Yes, Jean? What is it?~

Now faced with telling him, her words felt heavy, even in thought. Oh the happiness it would bring...but also the pain, if she were wrong.

~I need...I need your help. Where are you?~

~In my office. Jean, are you all right? Is something wrong?~ His worry coloured his thoughts, upsetting his usually-calm mind.

Jean opened her eyes.

~I'm okay...Hopefully it won't be wrong for much longer. Can you come up to Amelia's room?~

She felt like it would help for them to do it there, surrounded by somewhere Amelia felt most comfortable and would want to come back to.

There was a pause, Charles' curiosity clear even without empathy. ~Of course. I'll be there in a moment,~ he replied, even as he directed his chair out of his office and towards the elevator downstairs.

The door opened even before he knocked. Jean sat against the foot of Amelia's bed, staring up at him.

She drew in a breath. "I think she's alive," she said, the words expelled airily on the release of that breath.

"I felt...something...a glimmer....that felt like her..."

He stared at her, shocked out of his usual composure. "Are you sure?" he asked, and then shook his head. "No, you aren't, that is why you called me." Hope flared in his expression. "Could it possible?"

It was strange, Charles asking her such a thing, his typical serene confidence absent. Clearly the loss of Amelia had hit him hard.

Jean had to look away. He seemed too happy. She didn't want him to be too happy, in case this didn't work. She shook her head.

"I hope so. I don't know. I've been trying but...I just...I can't focus. Maybe I'm trying too hard."

"Or maybe you've got an actual connection with her. I've been searching the astral plane for any signs of her, but up until now, I thought it was hopeless." He directed his chair closer to the woman sitting on the floor. "We could try together."

Jean pulled herself up onto Amelia's bed so they'd be eye level and he wouldn't have to strain to look down at her.

She looked down at her hands, almost imagining a pair of scissors in them.

"Before I....severed my connection with Matthews I had access to his mind. I saw all he'd been through, and what he'd done to everyone with my abilities...including what he did to Amelia. For a moment I could feel what he felt....her mind...before he pulled it apart. I think...maybe I recognized part of her...somehow...that way."

She glanced up at him with a mixture of hope and hesitation.

"What if it doesn't work?"

"If we discover her mind is still active, we will do everything we can to bring her back. If it is not..." He took a breath. "If she is indeed dead, then we will continue to mourn her loss. But we must try, if only to satisfy ourselves that she isn't caught in the astral plane somehow, trapped. Even if it means killing that hope."

Jean nodded simply. It was the perspective she needed. And if she was alive, then it would be a victory. Then at least one thing could've been reversed.

"And you'll have two red-haired doctors who've come back from the dead."

He chuckled then, a relieved sound that did much to ease the weariness from his face. Charles, previously always ageless, looked tired and worn these days, an old man burdened almost beyond his ability. "Indeed." He shifted himself slightly in the chair. "Shall we?"

Jean reached out , squeezing his hand a moment before she nodded.

"Ready when you are," she said.

***

The astral plane had healed considerably over the years since the Shadow King incident, but there were still pockets of disturbance here and there, patches of darkness, blank spots where anything could be hiding. Here be monsters. But Charles was a master of the plane, especially so close to 'home', and he was determined to find their quarry, if it existed. He skimmed over the 'surface', gliding effortlessly through the collective unconscious of humanity. ~Anything?~

Jean's gaze flickered around as she searched for a hint of anything on the horizon, anything out of the ordinary. She shook her head.

~Amelia.~ she finally called, closing her eyes. ~It's okay. It's over. He's gone. Charles and I are here to help you. Listen to my voice. Follow it.~

If they had breath on the plane, Charles would have been holding his. He let his mind touch Jean's, amplifying her psychic senses with his powers. The plane shifted, expanded, but no sign of Amelia.

The memory was little more than a puff of crisp air. It was little more than a glimpse into the past, a brisk handshake from a begowned professor and a starched piece of parchment given to waiting hands and with the puff of air, an echo that congratulated the newly graduated young medical students.

Jean blinked rapidly, reflexively glancing about. ~Did you see...?~

At first it almost felt like her own, but she didn't know why she would be thinking of medical school. An idle thought perhaps, since they were working in the capacity to try to heal someone?

~I'm not sure. There was something, but I thought perhaps it was something of yours?~ Charles shook his head. The touch had been so brief, it could have come from either of them.

Jean paused, going back over the memory in her mind. ~No.~ the reply was but a hopeful breath.

~The man who presented me with my diploma was black. The man in this memory was white. ~

She spun around, swallowing. ~Amelia?~ she repeated.

~That was good...we felt you. Just...keep trying. Concentrate.~

The memory was tinged acid green, and it bobbled along and solidified and became a flash of a red-skinned girl climbing the wall and disappearing into the vents, and then a curly-haired boy with strange hands, and then a tall blond whose stomach was healing away slash marks even as they set his leg into a cast and then the curly-haired boy again, sickly and gasping for breath. The students, even the polite ones were destructive and sneaky and kept leaving her care before she had deemed them healthy.

~That's her!~ Charles exclaimed with uncharacteristic excitement, hope making his astral form flare brighter, a beacon to guide the lost. ~Amelia, we're here, we came to find you. It's safe now.~

~safe?~ That brought another memory, cynical and dry and yet oddly proud, of the team she wasn't part of and yet kept sewing back together as they came in and out of the plane, sometimes tossed around like rag dolls or coming back barely conscious or with wounds only barely imagined in the worst emergency room trauma centers. She kept them whole, not the other way around.

Jean found a ghost of a smile affixed upon her lips, not at what the woman was thinking, but the fact that she was thinking at all.

~It's over.~ she repeated, this time with an audience to hear it. Her own astral form flaring up to help light the darkness, tinged with a warm orange glow.

~Do you see a light?~

If the thought that followed had been in words, it would've been something like "Do not be ridiculous." Instead it was the emotional equivalent of rolled eyes and a stern expression, and a memory of bright lights overhead as she stitched a wound or set a bone. Brilliant harsh light that made the contrast between clean surgical garb and blood and pus and bile all the more apparent.

Despite himself - or perhaps because of the relief - Charles chuckled. ~Amelia, old friend, we've come to take you home.~ His astral form was cool blues and greens, mixing with Jean's golden orange. ~Can you focus on us?~

Gas could not focus - but it could adhere and misty green steamed in, clinging to Jean and Charles' astral forms. The gas ebbed, shrinking into itself and briefly becoming not a person, but the suggestion of a person, the cloud forming shapes that could have been hands or legs or even a face.

Jean reached out her hand toward the mist, then smiled.

~Good. We see you. But we'd like to see the real you. Like this. ~

She stirred up one of her own memories of a regular night in the medlab. She handed a cup of coffee to a stern red-haired woman sitting behind a desk. It was a night where she even got a smile for once, probably because she actually remembered how she liked her coffee.

Jean concentrated on Amelia's appearance in the memory: the light, precise movements of her hand, the waves of her hair, the bright, alertness of her eyes, the soft curl of her lips.

~Do you remember? ~

Coffee, even when it was bad was good. The rich earthy smell and the heat of the mug in her heads, and the bitter taste, it was all pure sensation. She didn't need it, but she enjoyed it. Coffee as she reviewed medical files with the other doctors, coffee with Charles when he first met her, the first cup of the day out of Moira's pot with all the tastes and smells that made coffee raised to the tenth power. Bitter. Strong. Earthy.

The green mist became semi-solid, the shape of a woman, but transparent and misty around the edges, but definitely and decidedly Amelia. "Charles. Jean." Her mental voice was not strong, but it was steady. "How long have I been gone?"

~Long enough,~ Charles replied with a smile. ~We've missed you.~ He held out one hand to the misty form, the other to Jean. ~And I've missed my late-night chess partner.~

Jean looked down for a moment, quelling a flare up of guilt as she listened to the two speak, but finally glanced up and smiled along with Charles. It was a genuine one. She was back. Alive. That was the important thing. She took Charles's hand and held out her own for Amelia to take.

~Let's go home, shall we?~

Amelia took their hands, almost seeming a little... irritated at the necessity of contact despite what was a clear sense that she was grateful and nodded once. "Yes, I am sure the work is piling up on my desk and Henry cannot do all of our jobs."

~"He's started sporting mad scientist hair and overdosing on coffee and Twinkies. I'm pretty sure he's at maximum capacity."~ Jean said with a smile as the astral world started to fade and Amelia's room came into focus around them.

"Welcome home," she said.