Psi War: Obscura | Jean, Haller, & Emma
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xp_logsAn old enemy thought lost returns: the Shadow King, freed from its host, parasitizes Jean in hopes of consuming her power. Haller and Emma pull out all the stops to fight.
Jean walked beside the bed as she telekinetically wheeled it down the hall, along with Parker's IV and other pertinent equipment. Part of her felt tense. From the moment Jean brought Parker in, a few people seemed on edge. Emma and Haller wanted an exam. It wasn't something that they did for some of the younger telepaths, like the Cuckoos, or Quentin. Perhaps it was a new precaution, due to the nature of Parker's illness.
But right now that wasn't really something she could worry about.
"When you were a kid, did you ever want to shut your powers off?" she said with a faint smile, determined not to let her concern show.
"The Box is our way of doing that. It's basically like a giant pair of mufflers."
She scribbled down a few notes in the chart.
"I'm hoping that if your powers are causing you illness, temporarily cutting them off will perhaps help stop the symptoms."
"I never knew I had powers until that HeliX event. And then I spent the rest of the time trying to make sure they weren't used. So, it figures that I'm going to die of mutant cancer or something."
Jean shook her head. "While I don't THINK it's mutant cancer, I'm keeping my diagnosis open for every possibility," she said. She let out a breath as the door to the Box neared.
"How are you feeling?"
"Like I've been rolled down a rocky hill in a barrel. A metal barrel. A metal barrel with spikes inside." He managed a weak smile for her. "Should I go on?"
Jean found herself laughing despite herself. Sometimes dark humor was needed.
"Nah," she held up her hand. "I think I got it."
The door opened to the Box. "You might feel a little strange when you first go in. I did. The abrupt silence can be a little disconcerting at first, but you get used to it."
"If I do okay will you make me a mixtape?" He said lamely, trying to mask his fears. He'd been running away from his powers for years, and now he was being shoved in a box that eliminated them. He had no gauge of what would be a normal reaction.
"Now I know you're old school," Jean said, leaning in to kiss him on the forehead. She smiled.
"You got it."
"Take care, Doc Jean. I'll be... uh." He looked around. "Here. Apparently."
"I'm not going anywhere," Jean said as she wheeled him into the room. The door closed behind them.
"At least for a while. I'll wheel in a TV so we can catch up on some Netflix."
"We aren't watching it on our phones? What is this, the Dark Ages?"
Jean grinned. "You can watch it on that tiny screen if you want, but I'm going with flat screen. Especially if's an action scene."
Parker watched the door closed with a slight feeling of dread. It wasn't like he needed his powers, but what would happen without them? He tried to settle back.
It didn't work.
"Delicious."
The Box had been cleared for its new inhabitant. Jean now set to plugging in the machines.
"Hmmm?" she said, glancing up. Not exactly the word she was going for with action.
His reaction was to roll his eyes up into his head. His arms and legs started to twitch uncontrollably and drool spilled from the corner of his mouth as he crashed violently against the bed rails before he went completely still.
It was the clanging that caught Jean's attention. She immediately shot up, ripping the plug out of it's socket.
"Shit."
Scrambling toward the door, she yanked it open and began pulling his bed down the hall, all the while fumbling for her comm unit.
But she didn't make it far.
"You.... huuuuurt me." His fist connected with the point of her nose, forcing her back and bouncing the back of her head off of the wall. "You did this! You.... did this."
Parker's hands found her throat as her mentalscape exploded. Shadow enveloped her, fighting and tearing at her shields. It was like a thousand fingers tapped with talons striking her shield, running over and diving into every crack to try and tear her open. "You burned ME!"
The comm unit flew out of Jean's hands before she could speak a word and skid across the floor. She gasped for breath, blood pouring down her face as her mind and body both fought against the surprise attack. It was like trying to outrun the ash cloud from a volcano. Had she been prepared, maybe, maybe she would have had a chance. But power like this....it was nothing she had ever felt.
As the shadows started to rip their way through, Jean's panicked mind reached out like a foghorn, searching for anyone who could hear it.
The psychic cry split Jim's mind with such force the notes he was making in the computer turned into a row of "SSSSSSSSS" under his spasming hands. He almost never sensed things without effort: this was a scream.
He shoved away from the desk, almost falling out of his chair, and became aware of Charles' steadying presence in his mind. Both men recognized the source. An instant of wordless communication passed between them, and it was understood. Charles' presence redirected to calm the mansion's other sensitives; Jim sprinted for the Medlab.
Though Jean tried desperately to keep a hold on her shields, the massive psionic power was too much and she soon felt herself succumb, devoured by the darkness.
~Jean’s gone dark,~ Emma sent to Haller, from where she, too, was running for The Box. ~And I can’t find Parker at all. There’s just darkness. Psionic darkness.~ It felt familiar, she thought to herself, but didn’t send. She had accepted that the prohibition on mentioning things that had happened before the world ended was so necessary that she wasn’t willing to mention it even on the tightest psychic band.
Jim tried to cast his mind ahead only as long as it took him to confirm Emma's assessment. He couldn't place what caused the twitch of recognition and he didn't have time to ponder it. All he knew was that it was vast, and it was blotting out all trace of Jean and Matthews.
He didn't bother with the elevator; he simply headed directly for the emergency stairwell and vaulted the railing. A quick burst of telekinesis broke his fall. The instant his feet touched the tiles Jim crushed it down and reinforced his telepathic shields to maximum capacity.
"Jean?" he called into the hallway. "Jean, can you hear me?"
Parker's hospital bed was overturned in the hallway. Parker himself was sprawled near the bed, awkwardly angled like a tossed-aside doll.
The unforgiving florescent lights overhead were a spotlight on Jean she stood in the middle of the hallway. She slowly turned around, revealing the blood that had dripped down her nose to stain her lips, lab coat and scrubs. Her breathing was ragged as she took in gulps of air. Her neck had started turn red and purple from hand-shaped bruises. Her hair was a mess, eyes blood shot, too much so. It was almost as if they glowed.
"Of course I can," she said, regarding Haller with an almost amused expression. Come to think of it, the expression was rather amused. It didn't fit the state of her body.
She slowly grinned, revealing blood stained teeth.
"I'm not Jean, though," she said, lashing out with a telekinetic blast aimed to slam him into the wall with enough force to dent it. Her eyebrows rose with delight, like a kid trying out a new toy.
"I think I'm going to enjoy this."
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
Everyone is afraid of something. For some people, it's snakes...or spiders, or public speaking. All logical things tied into a primal need for survival.
For others, it's something a little more complicated.
It comes down to control. The mind is a terrible thing to lose. And for Jean, sometimes she wondered if it would ever come to the point where she be one of the lost. Would her powers take her just as far as she could go? Would she break? Would she lose control?
She feared a four walled room with no windows, and a barred door.
And it was that nightmare that she woke up in.
Somehow, she was here. She knew she shouldn't have been. That this wasn't real. She knew where she'd been. She felt the darkness. But this felt real, down to the cold, cracked ground of the cell.
She couldn't move. There was a straight jacket wrapped around her body, and she was chained to the floor. The smell of urine, mold, and body odor hung in the air.
Of course, being a doctor, she knew the true state of psychiatric hospitals. They were meant to help. But she had read enough to know of the past, and how low some facilities had gotten before they came to that point. The filthy places where someone could live their life, forgotten.
This wasn't real, right?
"HELLO?" she screamed, yanking herself to her feet and feeling the chain pull her back. "Is someone there?!"
~I'm here. I've always been here, Jean.~ The voice in her mind was oily, dripping with dark promise. ~In every doubt. Every hesitation. Every time you thought you weren't a good person and was proved right.~
It was like a black fog growing around her, tendrils picking at her skin. ~There is an easy way to finish this, you know. No more doubts, no more fears, no more failures. I will treat you like a jewel in the centrepiece of a crown.~
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
The blow came without a shred of restraint. The only thing that prevented a fatal impact was a telekinetic cocoon that barely manifested in time to prevent Haller's spine from shattering.
Flight was not option. As Haller slid to the floor the unrestrained Fight instinct that was Jack surged to the fore. He raked his eyes up to meet the woman's mad green gaze, and as he did the tile exploded beneath her like an IED.
Though she anticipated retaliation, telekinesis was still much harder to use more precisely. It'd take a small bit of time the ropes again. But the power...such power. It was delicious.
She was able to use a shield to protect herself from most of the debris, save from a few lacerations and tiny fragments of tile embedded in the flesh as the shockwave slammed her against the ceiling. One of the lights exploded from the tile explosion as well, sending sparks everywhere.
Her landing was a bit more graceful, however, as she tempered her descent, floating down to the ground.
"Still capable of being vicious, boy. Good." She studied Haller, licking the blood from her mouth as the grin returned, this time with a bit of pride.
"I suppose I was wrong to think you wouldn't damage this body. Touche. Look at that darkness," she said.
This time she decided to go for her strong suit and reached out telepathically as spiked black ropes surrounded his telepathic shield, squeezing hard, aiming to puncture, to rend and tear.
"Here's mine."
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
The words made Jean flinch, both startled and repulsed, but the straight jacket held her steadfast. It dug in. It was then she realized that it wasn't really a straight jacket. She was on the astral plane. This wasn't real. No matter how much it felt.
"No....," she said, taking a deep, shuddered breath to try to calm herself. She clenched her jaw.
"I know my own demons. You're not one of them. Who--what are you?"
It wasn't a straight jacket. It was the darkness itself, coiled around her, trying to dig its way in.
~No one knows their demons. They think they do, but they don't.~ The words trickled into her brain. ~I can give you everything you want, Jean. Without the pain or the uncertainty. I can help you make a real difference.~ There was an odd resonance in the air around her when it said that; a flash of fire and the smell of smoke.
Jean blinked rapidly, glancing around with a gasp. She pressed herself against the wall. The world seemed blurry, darker all of a sudden. The pale, barred light bulb had gone dimmer.
"For who? Usually my demons don't offer the world," she said, her voice trying, and eventually finding purchase as she tried to pull herself up to her feet, even with the chain around her leg.
"They usually want to break it. Tell me what you are!"
~Show me yours and I'll show you mine.~ It almost licked her ear. ~Tell me about what Jean really wants?~
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
The ropes sliced at his shields like razor-wire, and Haller could feel Jean's touch in them -- but wrong, somehow, like a glove-covered hand that looked normal at first glance but moved with too many joints. The psychic pressure beyond his shields was crushing, a deep-sea kind of pressure that would rush into the smallest crack in his defenses. He couldn't telepathically retaliate without leaving himself open to whatever lay beyond. Instead, Jim braced himself against his lacerated shields and closed his eyes.
A column of flame erupted around Jean. Volcanic heat blasted her skin, chewing through the oxygen around her. Haller looked up at his teammate through the fire, now-green eyes glowing.
"Yeah, well," panted Cyndi's distinct voice, sweat streaming down her face as the alter struggled to maintain the inferno, "have a nightlight."
The-one-who-wasn't-Jean was surprised by the sudden flame, causing the tendrils to retreat. She struggled to suck in breath, hitting her knees. Surprise quickly turned to pain-laced rage, as her blood shot eyes soon bled through to become entirely red and her own telekinetic cocoon appeared around her.
Noticing a red, 'pull in case of fire' box nearby, she yanked it down telekinetically. The sprinkler system came to life, soaking the hallway, and most of the lower levels.
In all the confusion, she ripped out two of the IV cords from Parker's arm and IV bag and telekinetically try to wrap them around Haller's neck and string him from the ceiling.
"I wanted another pawn. I'll settle for a corpse."
Cyndi kicked futilely, trying to work her fingers beneath the cords and failing. She tried to grasp at the water molecules with her mind, but she was weak from sustaining so much flame for so long, and the growing panic of strangulation left her concentration shattered.
Her vision started to grey at the edges. Pressure was building behind her eyes as the the small vessels burst. Her only recourse was to boil Jean's blood in their veins, but even as she looked into the cold glee of the woman's eyes she knew that was something she could never do. Not even if something else was wearing her body like a suit.
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
Jean clenched her jaw. The tendrils dug deeper, the barbs piercing the skin, or at least the skin of her astral form, already ripped and bloodied by the initial attack. Around her, the cell continued to darken. The walls seemed to move, slithering into shadow. It was as pure evil lived there.
"You really don't want to see mine," she said, narrowing her eyes. She could feel the panic start to give way to anger. This thing had taken root in her mind. She had to keep her focus.
"Jean wants you to leave."
~I can't leave you, Jean. I'm part of you. The part of you that you've always denied.~ The voice was so unctuous. ~You want a community so much. A family. You work so hard and yet... and yet...~
There was a flash of Warren naked with another girl. ~He chose someone else, didn't he?~
Jean closed her eyes, shaking her head. She opened her eyes. "He chose a lot of someone elses. I'm not the right person for him. I accepted that a long time ago," she said.
She clenched her fists, trying to use the scientific method to work backward and figure out what was going on.
"You were in Parker, weren't you? You were what was making him sick. But we cut you off somehow by putting you in the Box." The theory had been that it was something to do with his powers creating the illness...Perhaps they were only half right.
~Oh, blaming it on that poor boy? It's a shame. His self-hate was so keen it was like it had been forged.~ A dark chuckle rumbled across her mind. ~His fantasies were rather intense. Would you like to see them? He imagines you to be very flexible.~
"You're changing the subject," she said. She glanced around, trying to shut out the thing's words.
"And if you're trying to get me to give in or demoralize me...pissing me off is really not the best plan. But you're welcome to try."
~Of course. The only man that has been interested in you in ages has some kind of mental issue. Is that coincidence... or wish fulfillment?~ Waves of darkness skipped over her. ~Or maybe that can be made easier?~
Jean narrowed her eyes, feeling another shudder move through her. She clenched her teeth.
"Shut up," she growled.
"Just tell me what you are! Stop playing games."
~I'm the part of you that thought you should have been hit by the car. I'm the part of you that let him inside you despite knowing he was with others. I'm the part of you that hates your boring, micro-managing parents and their love of your uncomplicated sister. I'm all the reasons you look at certain people and then convince yourself that going to your cold bed alone is right and yet desperate.~ The darkness drew closer. ~I'm the freedom that comes after the first and most important yes.~
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
Once Emma had felt that familiar aura, then the first moves in the fight between what-had-been-Jean and Haller, she hadn't put up shields or had the slightest illusion that she could win this fight telepathically, Instead, she had continued to run towards the Box in diamond form, psychically invisible. So she had no idea what she would see when she arrived. From her peripheral vision, she saw Haller hanging from the ceiling, hands futilely clutching at the cords, feebly struggling. But she discarded that sight, focused instead on Jean, Jean's face, Jean's nose. Emma didn't slow from her dead run, but instead cocked back her arm and, with all the momentum she thought safe, drove her diamond fist hard into the bridge of Jean's nose.
The not-quite Jean seemed distracted by something, long enough to not see Emma running toward her. But it was the glint of diamond that eventually caught her eye and she turned toward it at the moment fist hit flesh, the blow glancing off her cheekbone instead. She felt a crack as the force of the punch drove her backward, causing her to stagger.
Glancing up, she immediately reached out her mind to try to wreak havoc, but caught a wall. She let out a growl that didn't quite sound human, narrowing her eyes (one of which was starting to swell shut).
"You," she said.
At this point, she knew the best option was to regroup. The more damage to the body, the longer it'd take to heal. Especially when she was still trying to gather her own strength. So she telekinetically gathered up some of the water that was pooling on the ground from the sprinkler system and tried to surround Emma's head with it.
She still had to breathe, didn't she?
Emma’s expression was almost a smirk as the globe – well, sort of globe, it was definitely somewhat wobbly – of water settled around her head. To think that people thought breath play was only for fun and kinks, when it could turn out to be so very useful in a fight. Without the globe even slowing her down, Emma drove her fist forward again, aiming for the nose she had been deflected from the last time.
The intruder barely had time to narrow her eyes in surprised annoyance and raise a shield to block the blow. She could hear the crack of diamond against it.
The follow-up punch from Emma was immediate and came from below, an uppercut that the Jean-that-wasn’t hadn’t been expecting. It slipped beneath the telekinetic shield that had been raised to protect Jean’s face and instead landed square in her diaphragm. The sudden shocked gasp from Jean, as the air rushed out of her body, was followed by Emma’s sharp intake of breath as the telekinetic bubble of water fell away from her face.
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
The shadows felt like searing cold on Jean's skin, burrowing, trying to get in. She closed her eyes, at first trying to shut the voice out.
A sudden burst of pain shot through her body, giving her focus. Apparently things were going on in the real world.
The pain, both emotional and literal, gave her a realization: she knew she didn't want to hear his words because they hurt. But she also knew what the words could do: fuel the rage. So she let herself take them in.
Her muscles suddenly went slack, and she opened her eyes, giving the darkness a hard stare.
"Thank you," she said.
~Not yet. I have so many things for you to thank me for.~
Jean continued to stare. "You don't understand," she said. Her voice was remarkably, dangerously calm. There was almost a hint of a smile there.
The air had started to turn. It was turning warm. White smoke had started to billow up from under the tendrils.
"I want to thank you...for helping me see that you're only kindling."
~Oh poor, sweet child. You think your idealism will protect you? The Shadow King never needed to make him a rapist. He did that himself. I never needed to make you wet for the attentions of murders and killers. I never needed to pretend that the soft, weak men you wanted to like were people you held in contempt.~
The faint smile Jean had died on her face, ripped away by a blank, unyielding stare.
There was a moment where she'd considered trapping it. Perhaps it was the idealism he mocked within her. But she quickly knew this was something that could no longer exist in this world, or any other world.
Even knowing his name didn't save him. In fact, it only sealed his fate.
She felt something stirring within her. It'd been there before, released by pain and rage. It was there in the library of Topaz's mind. Of course it would be here again.
In the recesses of her mind,her green eyes quickly caught fire.
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
Jean stumbled, weak on her feet, reflexively clutching her stomach. Pain radiated through her body, and she struggled once again to suck in air. Her eyes fixed on Emma, brows furrowing. "Incessant bi--" A moment, flickering, like she struggling with an important decision. Then, the decision was made.
All around her, the doors in the hallway began to rattle before being ripped off their hinges with a hideous shriek and crack of wood and metal, barreling for the other woman.
But Jean's eyes glossed over and the projectiles lost their guidance, left only to momentum. She clutched her head, her face contorting in pain at first before a twisted pleasure became mixed in. She began to laugh.
"Magnificent."
A hissing noise was heard as the water around her turned into steam. The hissing noise grew louder, turning into smoke. Jean's twisted face turned from gleeful agony, to rage.
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
"I think you should burn," Jean said, cinders pouring from her lips as the smoke turned to flames, a brilliant fire bursting through the tendrils, igniting every inch of darkness in its wake.
~Burn me! You fucking whore, burn me!~ There was an uncomfortable wiggle, like it enjoyed it. ~Burn me so I can make you lick the scars. I know what you want and the more I hurt, the more you'll crawl to me...~
Jean's face twisted as she felt the real world rushing back to her. The pain, the anger, the shock of being taken over overwhelmed her and she poured herself into razing the creature to the ground.
The laughter turned into a scream in one breath and her hands abruptly dropped to her sides. The smoke billowed, and she abruptly burst into flames.
It's screams followed the fire, rising as the pyre did, broken-throated and vicious. They were the pain of every atom being engulfed and burned, a pain so complete and comprehensive that it could only exist outside of reality. And yet... yet... for every wave of pain and torment that poured back over her, the justice was less. It became vicious joy, grimy and charred, ashes in her mouth and sharp in her ears. It was gloating over pain, the specialty of all the people she'd ever aligned herself against.
~Oh Jean. Oh... that-~ The voice paused. ~hurt. Oh that hurt... it hurt like nothing else. Did it make you happy? Did it scratch that itch? Quench that thirst?~
There was a long pause.
~No, it didn't. Because you want more.~ The shadow began to fade, whether burnt away, worn out or of its own accord, she couldn't tell. All she could think of was his last words as they faded away. ~And I, dear Jean... am more.~
Her sightless, glowing eyes shot toward the ceiling, and her mouth dropped open. A black, almost tar-like smoke and shadow quickly poured from her eyes, lips, nose, and ears, burning away as it met the fire. The flames around lingered for a moment before being extinguished.
Jean wavered dangerously, then glanced behind Emma toward Haller. The IV cords wrapped around his neck snapped.
And Jean herself dropped like dead weight, hitting the ground with a heavy splash against the hallway floor.
Emma stood for a moment amongst a smallish pile of doors that had either bounced off her diamond form or fallen to the floor before reaching her. Without changing back, she quickly strode to Jean and used felt for pulse and breath. Finding both, she pinched hard at the small mound of flesh between Jean's thumb and first finger, but there was no response. Taking a deep breath, and ready to change back into diamond form instantly, Emma shifted back to flesh and flicked out the quickest probe with her telepathy. The mind that met hers was definitely unconscious and felt both very singular and very much Jean.
Feeling somewhat safer, Emma backed away from Jean, until she could kneel down next to Haller, her eyes still on the redhead. "Are you okay?" she asked.
Jim replied with a strangled cough. His vision had returned to the extent he was no longer viewing the hallway through a tunnel, but his head still swam from hypoxia; the highest he could raise himself was to his elbows. The skin burned where the plastic tubing had torn at his neck.
"Getting . . . there," he managed to rasp. He coughed again. ~Thank you.~
Emma nodded. "I think it's Jean back in there." She scanned quickly to check no-one was in hearing range. "The Shadow King?" She murmured the question.
"The Shadow King." Psychic parasite, a lead weight in the sheet of the astral plane. For an instant Jim's fingers curled against the raw skin of his throat. He glanced at Jean's crumpled form, remembering fire he'd seen with sightless eyes.
His mind flicked out and back like a snake's tongue. The oppressive nothingness from before was gone. Instead the astral plane around them felt thin and scorched, like the aftermath of a wildfire. His mismatched eyes returned to Jean.
"She . . . killed it?"
Emma flicked out a probe again, a light brush against the mind that met her, quickly withdrawn. A bolder, stronger probe followed, as the first met only unconsciousness. This time Emma explored more fully, still wary, but no matter where she looked all she could find was Jean. Jean and the faint smell of psychic scorching that was making Emma vaguely nauseated with memory.
"He's not there." she confirmed. "Not that I can find here and now and I'm not willing to try and find him." She rocked back on her heels, found the acerbity she wore as armour. "Maybe she killed it with fire."
Jim levered himself to his feet. Down the hall he could see a portable hospital bed laying on its side, and beside it a gowned figure spilled onto the floor.
"Matthews." Jim rushed over to check the man's pulse. The man's heartbeat was slow but steady, as if he was in a deep sleep.
"It was in him," he said as he felt around the other man's mind. "His shields are blown open from the inside." The scar tissue Emma had found . . it hadn't been scarring been the Shadow King's camouflage, allowing it to hide within Matthews until the moment it was ready to strike. Damn, damn, damn.
He turned back to Emma, fully focused once more. "First thing's first: we'd better call Dr. Reyes."
Jean walked beside the bed as she telekinetically wheeled it down the hall, along with Parker's IV and other pertinent equipment. Part of her felt tense. From the moment Jean brought Parker in, a few people seemed on edge. Emma and Haller wanted an exam. It wasn't something that they did for some of the younger telepaths, like the Cuckoos, or Quentin. Perhaps it was a new precaution, due to the nature of Parker's illness.
But right now that wasn't really something she could worry about.
"When you were a kid, did you ever want to shut your powers off?" she said with a faint smile, determined not to let her concern show.
"The Box is our way of doing that. It's basically like a giant pair of mufflers."
She scribbled down a few notes in the chart.
"I'm hoping that if your powers are causing you illness, temporarily cutting them off will perhaps help stop the symptoms."
"I never knew I had powers until that HeliX event. And then I spent the rest of the time trying to make sure they weren't used. So, it figures that I'm going to die of mutant cancer or something."
Jean shook her head. "While I don't THINK it's mutant cancer, I'm keeping my diagnosis open for every possibility," she said. She let out a breath as the door to the Box neared.
"How are you feeling?"
"Like I've been rolled down a rocky hill in a barrel. A metal barrel. A metal barrel with spikes inside." He managed a weak smile for her. "Should I go on?"
Jean found herself laughing despite herself. Sometimes dark humor was needed.
"Nah," she held up her hand. "I think I got it."
The door opened to the Box. "You might feel a little strange when you first go in. I did. The abrupt silence can be a little disconcerting at first, but you get used to it."
"If I do okay will you make me a mixtape?" He said lamely, trying to mask his fears. He'd been running away from his powers for years, and now he was being shoved in a box that eliminated them. He had no gauge of what would be a normal reaction.
"Now I know you're old school," Jean said, leaning in to kiss him on the forehead. She smiled.
"You got it."
"Take care, Doc Jean. I'll be... uh." He looked around. "Here. Apparently."
"I'm not going anywhere," Jean said as she wheeled him into the room. The door closed behind them.
"At least for a while. I'll wheel in a TV so we can catch up on some Netflix."
"We aren't watching it on our phones? What is this, the Dark Ages?"
Jean grinned. "You can watch it on that tiny screen if you want, but I'm going with flat screen. Especially if's an action scene."
Parker watched the door closed with a slight feeling of dread. It wasn't like he needed his powers, but what would happen without them? He tried to settle back.
It didn't work.
"Delicious."
The Box had been cleared for its new inhabitant. Jean now set to plugging in the machines.
"Hmmm?" she said, glancing up. Not exactly the word she was going for with action.
His reaction was to roll his eyes up into his head. His arms and legs started to twitch uncontrollably and drool spilled from the corner of his mouth as he crashed violently against the bed rails before he went completely still.
It was the clanging that caught Jean's attention. She immediately shot up, ripping the plug out of it's socket.
"Shit."
Scrambling toward the door, she yanked it open and began pulling his bed down the hall, all the while fumbling for her comm unit.
But she didn't make it far.
"You.... huuuuurt me." His fist connected with the point of her nose, forcing her back and bouncing the back of her head off of the wall. "You did this! You.... did this."
Parker's hands found her throat as her mentalscape exploded. Shadow enveloped her, fighting and tearing at her shields. It was like a thousand fingers tapped with talons striking her shield, running over and diving into every crack to try and tear her open. "You burned ME!"
The comm unit flew out of Jean's hands before she could speak a word and skid across the floor. She gasped for breath, blood pouring down her face as her mind and body both fought against the surprise attack. It was like trying to outrun the ash cloud from a volcano. Had she been prepared, maybe, maybe she would have had a chance. But power like this....it was nothing she had ever felt.
As the shadows started to rip their way through, Jean's panicked mind reached out like a foghorn, searching for anyone who could hear it.
The psychic cry split Jim's mind with such force the notes he was making in the computer turned into a row of "SSSSSSSSS" under his spasming hands. He almost never sensed things without effort: this was a scream.
He shoved away from the desk, almost falling out of his chair, and became aware of Charles' steadying presence in his mind. Both men recognized the source. An instant of wordless communication passed between them, and it was understood. Charles' presence redirected to calm the mansion's other sensitives; Jim sprinted for the Medlab.
Though Jean tried desperately to keep a hold on her shields, the massive psionic power was too much and she soon felt herself succumb, devoured by the darkness.
~Jean’s gone dark,~ Emma sent to Haller, from where she, too, was running for The Box. ~And I can’t find Parker at all. There’s just darkness. Psionic darkness.~ It felt familiar, she thought to herself, but didn’t send. She had accepted that the prohibition on mentioning things that had happened before the world ended was so necessary that she wasn’t willing to mention it even on the tightest psychic band.
Jim tried to cast his mind ahead only as long as it took him to confirm Emma's assessment. He couldn't place what caused the twitch of recognition and he didn't have time to ponder it. All he knew was that it was vast, and it was blotting out all trace of Jean and Matthews.
He didn't bother with the elevator; he simply headed directly for the emergency stairwell and vaulted the railing. A quick burst of telekinesis broke his fall. The instant his feet touched the tiles Jim crushed it down and reinforced his telepathic shields to maximum capacity.
"Jean?" he called into the hallway. "Jean, can you hear me?"
Parker's hospital bed was overturned in the hallway. Parker himself was sprawled near the bed, awkwardly angled like a tossed-aside doll.
The unforgiving florescent lights overhead were a spotlight on Jean she stood in the middle of the hallway. She slowly turned around, revealing the blood that had dripped down her nose to stain her lips, lab coat and scrubs. Her breathing was ragged as she took in gulps of air. Her neck had started turn red and purple from hand-shaped bruises. Her hair was a mess, eyes blood shot, too much so. It was almost as if they glowed.
"Of course I can," she said, regarding Haller with an almost amused expression. Come to think of it, the expression was rather amused. It didn't fit the state of her body.
She slowly grinned, revealing blood stained teeth.
"I'm not Jean, though," she said, lashing out with a telekinetic blast aimed to slam him into the wall with enough force to dent it. Her eyebrows rose with delight, like a kid trying out a new toy.
"I think I'm going to enjoy this."
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
Everyone is afraid of something. For some people, it's snakes...or spiders, or public speaking. All logical things tied into a primal need for survival.
For others, it's something a little more complicated.
It comes down to control. The mind is a terrible thing to lose. And for Jean, sometimes she wondered if it would ever come to the point where she be one of the lost. Would her powers take her just as far as she could go? Would she break? Would she lose control?
She feared a four walled room with no windows, and a barred door.
And it was that nightmare that she woke up in.
Somehow, she was here. She knew she shouldn't have been. That this wasn't real. She knew where she'd been. She felt the darkness. But this felt real, down to the cold, cracked ground of the cell.
She couldn't move. There was a straight jacket wrapped around her body, and she was chained to the floor. The smell of urine, mold, and body odor hung in the air.
Of course, being a doctor, she knew the true state of psychiatric hospitals. They were meant to help. But she had read enough to know of the past, and how low some facilities had gotten before they came to that point. The filthy places where someone could live their life, forgotten.
This wasn't real, right?
"HELLO?" she screamed, yanking herself to her feet and feeling the chain pull her back. "Is someone there?!"
~I'm here. I've always been here, Jean.~ The voice in her mind was oily, dripping with dark promise. ~In every doubt. Every hesitation. Every time you thought you weren't a good person and was proved right.~
It was like a black fog growing around her, tendrils picking at her skin. ~There is an easy way to finish this, you know. No more doubts, no more fears, no more failures. I will treat you like a jewel in the centrepiece of a crown.~
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
The blow came without a shred of restraint. The only thing that prevented a fatal impact was a telekinetic cocoon that barely manifested in time to prevent Haller's spine from shattering.
Flight was not option. As Haller slid to the floor the unrestrained Fight instinct that was Jack surged to the fore. He raked his eyes up to meet the woman's mad green gaze, and as he did the tile exploded beneath her like an IED.
Though she anticipated retaliation, telekinesis was still much harder to use more precisely. It'd take a small bit of time the ropes again. But the power...such power. It was delicious.
She was able to use a shield to protect herself from most of the debris, save from a few lacerations and tiny fragments of tile embedded in the flesh as the shockwave slammed her against the ceiling. One of the lights exploded from the tile explosion as well, sending sparks everywhere.
Her landing was a bit more graceful, however, as she tempered her descent, floating down to the ground.
"Still capable of being vicious, boy. Good." She studied Haller, licking the blood from her mouth as the grin returned, this time with a bit of pride.
"I suppose I was wrong to think you wouldn't damage this body. Touche. Look at that darkness," she said.
This time she decided to go for her strong suit and reached out telepathically as spiked black ropes surrounded his telepathic shield, squeezing hard, aiming to puncture, to rend and tear.
"Here's mine."
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
The words made Jean flinch, both startled and repulsed, but the straight jacket held her steadfast. It dug in. It was then she realized that it wasn't really a straight jacket. She was on the astral plane. This wasn't real. No matter how much it felt.
"No....," she said, taking a deep, shuddered breath to try to calm herself. She clenched her jaw.
"I know my own demons. You're not one of them. Who--what are you?"
It wasn't a straight jacket. It was the darkness itself, coiled around her, trying to dig its way in.
~No one knows their demons. They think they do, but they don't.~ The words trickled into her brain. ~I can give you everything you want, Jean. Without the pain or the uncertainty. I can help you make a real difference.~ There was an odd resonance in the air around her when it said that; a flash of fire and the smell of smoke.
Jean blinked rapidly, glancing around with a gasp. She pressed herself against the wall. The world seemed blurry, darker all of a sudden. The pale, barred light bulb had gone dimmer.
"For who? Usually my demons don't offer the world," she said, her voice trying, and eventually finding purchase as she tried to pull herself up to her feet, even with the chain around her leg.
"They usually want to break it. Tell me what you are!"
~Show me yours and I'll show you mine.~ It almost licked her ear. ~Tell me about what Jean really wants?~
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
The ropes sliced at his shields like razor-wire, and Haller could feel Jean's touch in them -- but wrong, somehow, like a glove-covered hand that looked normal at first glance but moved with too many joints. The psychic pressure beyond his shields was crushing, a deep-sea kind of pressure that would rush into the smallest crack in his defenses. He couldn't telepathically retaliate without leaving himself open to whatever lay beyond. Instead, Jim braced himself against his lacerated shields and closed his eyes.
A column of flame erupted around Jean. Volcanic heat blasted her skin, chewing through the oxygen around her. Haller looked up at his teammate through the fire, now-green eyes glowing.
"Yeah, well," panted Cyndi's distinct voice, sweat streaming down her face as the alter struggled to maintain the inferno, "have a nightlight."
The-one-who-wasn't-Jean was surprised by the sudden flame, causing the tendrils to retreat. She struggled to suck in breath, hitting her knees. Surprise quickly turned to pain-laced rage, as her blood shot eyes soon bled through to become entirely red and her own telekinetic cocoon appeared around her.
Noticing a red, 'pull in case of fire' box nearby, she yanked it down telekinetically. The sprinkler system came to life, soaking the hallway, and most of the lower levels.
In all the confusion, she ripped out two of the IV cords from Parker's arm and IV bag and telekinetically try to wrap them around Haller's neck and string him from the ceiling.
"I wanted another pawn. I'll settle for a corpse."
Cyndi kicked futilely, trying to work her fingers beneath the cords and failing. She tried to grasp at the water molecules with her mind, but she was weak from sustaining so much flame for so long, and the growing panic of strangulation left her concentration shattered.
Her vision started to grey at the edges. Pressure was building behind her eyes as the the small vessels burst. Her only recourse was to boil Jean's blood in their veins, but even as she looked into the cold glee of the woman's eyes she knew that was something she could never do. Not even if something else was wearing her body like a suit.
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
Jean clenched her jaw. The tendrils dug deeper, the barbs piercing the skin, or at least the skin of her astral form, already ripped and bloodied by the initial attack. Around her, the cell continued to darken. The walls seemed to move, slithering into shadow. It was as pure evil lived there.
"You really don't want to see mine," she said, narrowing her eyes. She could feel the panic start to give way to anger. This thing had taken root in her mind. She had to keep her focus.
"Jean wants you to leave."
~I can't leave you, Jean. I'm part of you. The part of you that you've always denied.~ The voice was so unctuous. ~You want a community so much. A family. You work so hard and yet... and yet...~
There was a flash of Warren naked with another girl. ~He chose someone else, didn't he?~
Jean closed her eyes, shaking her head. She opened her eyes. "He chose a lot of someone elses. I'm not the right person for him. I accepted that a long time ago," she said.
She clenched her fists, trying to use the scientific method to work backward and figure out what was going on.
"You were in Parker, weren't you? You were what was making him sick. But we cut you off somehow by putting you in the Box." The theory had been that it was something to do with his powers creating the illness...Perhaps they were only half right.
~Oh, blaming it on that poor boy? It's a shame. His self-hate was so keen it was like it had been forged.~ A dark chuckle rumbled across her mind. ~His fantasies were rather intense. Would you like to see them? He imagines you to be very flexible.~
"You're changing the subject," she said. She glanced around, trying to shut out the thing's words.
"And if you're trying to get me to give in or demoralize me...pissing me off is really not the best plan. But you're welcome to try."
~Of course. The only man that has been interested in you in ages has some kind of mental issue. Is that coincidence... or wish fulfillment?~ Waves of darkness skipped over her. ~Or maybe that can be made easier?~
Jean narrowed her eyes, feeling another shudder move through her. She clenched her teeth.
"Shut up," she growled.
"Just tell me what you are! Stop playing games."
~I'm the part of you that thought you should have been hit by the car. I'm the part of you that let him inside you despite knowing he was with others. I'm the part of you that hates your boring, micro-managing parents and their love of your uncomplicated sister. I'm all the reasons you look at certain people and then convince yourself that going to your cold bed alone is right and yet desperate.~ The darkness drew closer. ~I'm the freedom that comes after the first and most important yes.~
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
Once Emma had felt that familiar aura, then the first moves in the fight between what-had-been-Jean and Haller, she hadn't put up shields or had the slightest illusion that she could win this fight telepathically, Instead, she had continued to run towards the Box in diamond form, psychically invisible. So she had no idea what she would see when she arrived. From her peripheral vision, she saw Haller hanging from the ceiling, hands futilely clutching at the cords, feebly struggling. But she discarded that sight, focused instead on Jean, Jean's face, Jean's nose. Emma didn't slow from her dead run, but instead cocked back her arm and, with all the momentum she thought safe, drove her diamond fist hard into the bridge of Jean's nose.
The not-quite Jean seemed distracted by something, long enough to not see Emma running toward her. But it was the glint of diamond that eventually caught her eye and she turned toward it at the moment fist hit flesh, the blow glancing off her cheekbone instead. She felt a crack as the force of the punch drove her backward, causing her to stagger.
Glancing up, she immediately reached out her mind to try to wreak havoc, but caught a wall. She let out a growl that didn't quite sound human, narrowing her eyes (one of which was starting to swell shut).
"You," she said.
At this point, she knew the best option was to regroup. The more damage to the body, the longer it'd take to heal. Especially when she was still trying to gather her own strength. So she telekinetically gathered up some of the water that was pooling on the ground from the sprinkler system and tried to surround Emma's head with it.
She still had to breathe, didn't she?
Emma’s expression was almost a smirk as the globe – well, sort of globe, it was definitely somewhat wobbly – of water settled around her head. To think that people thought breath play was only for fun and kinks, when it could turn out to be so very useful in a fight. Without the globe even slowing her down, Emma drove her fist forward again, aiming for the nose she had been deflected from the last time.
The intruder barely had time to narrow her eyes in surprised annoyance and raise a shield to block the blow. She could hear the crack of diamond against it.
The follow-up punch from Emma was immediate and came from below, an uppercut that the Jean-that-wasn’t hadn’t been expecting. It slipped beneath the telekinetic shield that had been raised to protect Jean’s face and instead landed square in her diaphragm. The sudden shocked gasp from Jean, as the air rushed out of her body, was followed by Emma’s sharp intake of breath as the telekinetic bubble of water fell away from her face.
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
The shadows felt like searing cold on Jean's skin, burrowing, trying to get in. She closed her eyes, at first trying to shut the voice out.
A sudden burst of pain shot through her body, giving her focus. Apparently things were going on in the real world.
The pain, both emotional and literal, gave her a realization: she knew she didn't want to hear his words because they hurt. But she also knew what the words could do: fuel the rage. So she let herself take them in.
Her muscles suddenly went slack, and she opened her eyes, giving the darkness a hard stare.
"Thank you," she said.
~Not yet. I have so many things for you to thank me for.~
Jean continued to stare. "You don't understand," she said. Her voice was remarkably, dangerously calm. There was almost a hint of a smile there.
The air had started to turn. It was turning warm. White smoke had started to billow up from under the tendrils.
"I want to thank you...for helping me see that you're only kindling."
~Oh poor, sweet child. You think your idealism will protect you? The Shadow King never needed to make him a rapist. He did that himself. I never needed to make you wet for the attentions of murders and killers. I never needed to pretend that the soft, weak men you wanted to like were people you held in contempt.~
The faint smile Jean had died on her face, ripped away by a blank, unyielding stare.
There was a moment where she'd considered trapping it. Perhaps it was the idealism he mocked within her. But she quickly knew this was something that could no longer exist in this world, or any other world.
Even knowing his name didn't save him. In fact, it only sealed his fate.
She felt something stirring within her. It'd been there before, released by pain and rage. It was there in the library of Topaz's mind. Of course it would be here again.
In the recesses of her mind,her green eyes quickly caught fire.
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
Jean stumbled, weak on her feet, reflexively clutching her stomach. Pain radiated through her body, and she struggled once again to suck in air. Her eyes fixed on Emma, brows furrowing. "Incessant bi--" A moment, flickering, like she struggling with an important decision. Then, the decision was made.
All around her, the doors in the hallway began to rattle before being ripped off their hinges with a hideous shriek and crack of wood and metal, barreling for the other woman.
But Jean's eyes glossed over and the projectiles lost their guidance, left only to momentum. She clutched her head, her face contorting in pain at first before a twisted pleasure became mixed in. She began to laugh.
"Magnificent."
A hissing noise was heard as the water around her turned into steam. The hissing noise grew louder, turning into smoke. Jean's twisted face turned from gleeful agony, to rage.
~(X)~ ~(X)~~(X)~~(X)~
"I think you should burn," Jean said, cinders pouring from her lips as the smoke turned to flames, a brilliant fire bursting through the tendrils, igniting every inch of darkness in its wake.
~Burn me! You fucking whore, burn me!~ There was an uncomfortable wiggle, like it enjoyed it. ~Burn me so I can make you lick the scars. I know what you want and the more I hurt, the more you'll crawl to me...~
Jean's face twisted as she felt the real world rushing back to her. The pain, the anger, the shock of being taken over overwhelmed her and she poured herself into razing the creature to the ground.
The laughter turned into a scream in one breath and her hands abruptly dropped to her sides. The smoke billowed, and she abruptly burst into flames.
It's screams followed the fire, rising as the pyre did, broken-throated and vicious. They were the pain of every atom being engulfed and burned, a pain so complete and comprehensive that it could only exist outside of reality. And yet... yet... for every wave of pain and torment that poured back over her, the justice was less. It became vicious joy, grimy and charred, ashes in her mouth and sharp in her ears. It was gloating over pain, the specialty of all the people she'd ever aligned herself against.
~Oh Jean. Oh... that-~ The voice paused. ~hurt. Oh that hurt... it hurt like nothing else. Did it make you happy? Did it scratch that itch? Quench that thirst?~
There was a long pause.
~No, it didn't. Because you want more.~ The shadow began to fade, whether burnt away, worn out or of its own accord, she couldn't tell. All she could think of was his last words as they faded away. ~And I, dear Jean... am more.~
Her sightless, glowing eyes shot toward the ceiling, and her mouth dropped open. A black, almost tar-like smoke and shadow quickly poured from her eyes, lips, nose, and ears, burning away as it met the fire. The flames around lingered for a moment before being extinguished.
Jean wavered dangerously, then glanced behind Emma toward Haller. The IV cords wrapped around his neck snapped.
And Jean herself dropped like dead weight, hitting the ground with a heavy splash against the hallway floor.
Emma stood for a moment amongst a smallish pile of doors that had either bounced off her diamond form or fallen to the floor before reaching her. Without changing back, she quickly strode to Jean and used felt for pulse and breath. Finding both, she pinched hard at the small mound of flesh between Jean's thumb and first finger, but there was no response. Taking a deep breath, and ready to change back into diamond form instantly, Emma shifted back to flesh and flicked out the quickest probe with her telepathy. The mind that met hers was definitely unconscious and felt both very singular and very much Jean.
Feeling somewhat safer, Emma backed away from Jean, until she could kneel down next to Haller, her eyes still on the redhead. "Are you okay?" she asked.
Jim replied with a strangled cough. His vision had returned to the extent he was no longer viewing the hallway through a tunnel, but his head still swam from hypoxia; the highest he could raise himself was to his elbows. The skin burned where the plastic tubing had torn at his neck.
"Getting . . . there," he managed to rasp. He coughed again. ~Thank you.~
Emma nodded. "I think it's Jean back in there." She scanned quickly to check no-one was in hearing range. "The Shadow King?" She murmured the question.
"The Shadow King." Psychic parasite, a lead weight in the sheet of the astral plane. For an instant Jim's fingers curled against the raw skin of his throat. He glanced at Jean's crumpled form, remembering fire he'd seen with sightless eyes.
His mind flicked out and back like a snake's tongue. The oppressive nothingness from before was gone. Instead the astral plane around them felt thin and scorched, like the aftermath of a wildfire. His mismatched eyes returned to Jean.
"She . . . killed it?"
Emma flicked out a probe again, a light brush against the mind that met her, quickly withdrawn. A bolder, stronger probe followed, as the first met only unconsciousness. This time Emma explored more fully, still wary, but no matter where she looked all she could find was Jean. Jean and the faint smell of psychic scorching that was making Emma vaguely nauseated with memory.
"He's not there." she confirmed. "Not that I can find here and now and I'm not willing to try and find him." She rocked back on her heels, found the acerbity she wore as armour. "Maybe she killed it with fire."
Jim levered himself to his feet. Down the hall he could see a portable hospital bed laying on its side, and beside it a gowned figure spilled onto the floor.
"Matthews." Jim rushed over to check the man's pulse. The man's heartbeat was slow but steady, as if he was in a deep sleep.
"It was in him," he said as he felt around the other man's mind. "His shields are blown open from the inside." The scar tissue Emma had found . . it hadn't been scarring been the Shadow King's camouflage, allowing it to hide within Matthews until the moment it was ready to strike. Damn, damn, damn.
He turned back to Emma, fully focused once more. "First thing's first: we'd better call Dr. Reyes."
