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xp_logsAs she picks up the mask, Jean is tempted with what she truly wants.
The Sunset Diner claimed to have the best coffee in Upstate New York. Jean knew that wasn't true, however, since she'd been making it for as long as she could remember. It was a half and half mix of Folgers and Maxwell House but the customers didn't care because it was fast, cheap, and hot. Most people were either passing through or had come with the building anyway.
The doorbell gave a half-hearted jingle as Jean stepped inside. She paused a moment to tie her tennis shoe and stomp out the slurry of snow and muck from the street on a fading welcome mat.
It was a little too early for the morning rush to come in yet. A couple of the night owls remained, one nursing a hangover, and another prepping for a long haul truck run.
"Annie, you have got to take down the lights today. Mr. Costa is going to kill you," Jean said, furrowing her brow at the rainbow of lights that still surrounded each window.
A brunette woman about Jean's age finished wiping off the counter and gave Jean a laugh.
"Well good morning to you too, Ebeneezer. Where's your Christmas spirit?"
Jean slipped off coat, hanging it on a coat rack. "Back in December."
Annie let out a snort. "Whatever. Mr. C loves me. I'll get to it. Besides, I think it makes the place cheery."
"Mmmhmm," Jean said, topping off the coffee cup for a guy at the end of the counter. She made a face at the smell, then added quietly to Annie.
"Roger's really outdone himself with the Jim Beam. How many times has he fallen asleep so far?"
Annie squinted. "2...no, 3 times? Better than last time. I'll wake him up before the rush."
Jean nodded, letting out a breath as she got into the rhythm of the day. The morning passed by in a blur, and before she knew it noon had rolled around.
The breakfast crowd turned into the lunch crowd and its flurry of workaholics and people on their lunch breaks.
After having her shoe puked on by a small child, an angry couple that almost turned into a food fight, and an impromptu birthday lunch, Jean had taken refuge in the alley in the back of the diner for her break.
"Those things will kill you, you know," she said to the other person outside as she folded her arms against the biting cold air.
Annie took a drag from her cigarette. "Thank you, Dr. Grey. Besides, there are worse ways to go," she said with a smirk, dropping the butt on the ground and smashing it with her shoe.
Jean merely grunted, watching the cars pass beyond the alleyways with a frown.
Letting out a laugh, Annie nudged her with her shoulder. "What's the deal?" she said
"You've been off all day. Even to Mrs. Myers and you love Mrs. Myers."
Jean shook her head. "I don't know. It's nothing," she said.
Annie shrugged, waving the cigarette smoke away from her. "I can cover you for another five minutes if you need a little longer," she said.
"Thanks, Annie," Jean said. She heard the door open and close as Annie went back inside.
Nothing was out of place. It was just another day. But Jean couldn't shake this sense that something wasn't right. Closing her eyes, Jean let out another breath as she headed in.
The door closed with a thud, and Jean once again stomped her shoes to get the snow out. But on the last stomp when she looked down she saw a spot of red. A single red droplet.
Crouching down, she reached out to touch it. It felt sticky in her hand. She rose to stand, but her attention remained focused on the red droplet. Taking a step forward, she saw another droplet, then another, then another, until it became a pool. The hum and din of the diner had disappeared.
She stared at the pool of blood. A soft breeze went through her hair. Somewhere a bird sang softly. The red pool was a stark contrast against the yellow and sun-bleached asphalt.
She didn't know there could be that much blood.
"Jean," a voice cut through her thoughts.
Jean looked up. Annie stared back at her in a haze, the life slowly draining from her eyes.Two brown eyes, one with a spiderweb of red. Her lightly tanned skin was pallid.
Letting out a piercing gasp, Jean tore her gaze away, but when she looked up, Annie blinked at her curiously, slowly lowering the cake she had been holding, completely normal.
"Jean?" she said.
Jean glanced around, searching for the blood, searching Annie's face. "What--what is...No. This isn't..."
"20 years. It's been 20 years since you walked out of graduation and drove until you stopped here. There was a sign on the door that said 'Help Wanted'. And you always wanted to help, Jean." The figure sitting at the counter was the only thing defined, the rest of the customers suddenly out of focus and blurred. It was her, but as if all the colour had been drained out of her; pale skin, white blonde hair, impossibly dark eyes. "Medical school had too many chances to fail. To hurt. Instead, Sunset on the Seneca turnpike. Safe little Kirkland. A job impossible to fail. A fiance that you love just enough to say yes, but not enough to really let him in where he can really cause you pain."
Jean's breath quickened as she focused on the woman at the counter. "Who are you?" she said with a hushed breath. In the back of the mind was a creeping realization, something right along the edges of familiarity. Beyond simply the idea of a bad dream.
Somehow she knew. Somehow she knew something was wrong. Something she had done was wrong.
"I'm what you gave up. All the pain. All the failures. All the loss." She sipped from her mug. "The Jean that no one wanted. The one they blamed. The one you lacked the strength to be."
Jean started to ask what she was talking about, but the moment the question came to her lips the memories of the real world hit her like an avalanche. She stumbled backward, colliding with the counter behind her. The guilt welled up within her, and she felt her stomach churn at the sight of herself.
"This isn't what I wanted," she said softly. "I didn't---I didn't mean to..."
"You said yes." The woman hissed.
***
As Jean pulled the mask from the flames, a voice resonated in her head; accommodating and friendly.
"Everything you faced can be undone, as if the pain never happened.."
A moment or two after Jean grabbed the mask, she noticed the lights had all turned out. The chamber had disappeared, leaving a void and empty hands where the mask had been.
"Fantastic," she muttered.
"No hurt." Images flickered in the haze around her. Her treatment in Costa's hands. The burning of her other self she'd witnessed as she destroyed Roma. The looks in the eyes of those her alternate self had brutalized and the shadows that remained. "No pain."
Startled, Jean searched for a way to escape. Everywhere she turned was a glimpse of the person she was and could be. It pierced through the heart and soul of her. She just wanted it to stop. The burn of tears formed in the corners of Jean's eyes.
"No...I--I shouldn't," she said softly, her voice cracked and uncertain.
"Of course." The words were cloying sweet in her mind. "Go back with them. Sacrifice a little more everyday for people who miss someone you never were and in their eyes, can never match. Go back to your empty rooms. Your long nights alone where all you can think about is what you lost and what you are judged to have never had."
There was a long pause. "...or."
Jean swallowed, remembering Gabriel's words, the look in his eyes.
"But...he'll win. I can't hurt them."
"You already did the second you weren't her."
Jean's heart sank. It was one thing to think something but another to be told it so. Part of her knew this wasn't right, but the other part, wounded and worn, held a flicker of hope.
"That doesn't mean they should suffer because of it. I need them to be okay."
"This means none of this has ever happened. For you and for them."
Falling silent for a few moments. Jean let out a quiet breath. The flicker of hope swelled. A chance for things to be put right seemed almost too good to be true, but she desperately needed for it to be.
"If you promise....then yes."
***
"Do you see what is coming?" The film negative version of herself pointed to the windows. The customers were starting to talk, alarmed, as dark clouds swept in. "I promised you no pain. A respite from what you experienced. But now we're past that. Now you're the Jean that wasn't there and the end is coming. You got twenty years of a safe existence, as pointless and tiny as it was."
Her hand gripped her throat, and Jean stared into her duplicate's eyes as she was lifted from the floor. "But now it is time to end it. For all of you."
Shame and guilt washed over Jean as she looked away. A tear slipped down her cheek.
"I'm so sorry..." she said, even though she knew no one would hear it. It was too late. And now, in her blindness and pain, she had doomed them all.
But something deep inside her began to stir. Something just below the surface. Time slowed. She smelled something burning and felt a sizzle as the tear started to evaporate, then slowly looked up as a glint caught her eye. It belonged to the diamond ring of one of the customers, a blonde-haired woman wearing a crisp white blazer.
"We all make imperfect choices. In grief, in despair, in rage. Believe me, I've made many imperfect choices. But you chose again. And again. And again. Each choice you made showed that all you wanted was what was best for everyone." Emma's words whispered softly in her memory.
Jean's attention then flickered to a man with pink hair a booth over. He wore a black sports coat with epaulets and chains, bow tie, ripped skinny jeans, and platform boots. But his hands were bloody, and he clutched a box of medical supplies. Where most of the other customers had run, he stayed. Even if she wanted all of them to go. " Trust me, for anyone else, I would. But I'd never hear the end of it if I let you die."
At another booth sat a man with perfect hair dressed positively casually, wearing a light sweater under his blazer, no tie, and a pair of brown brogues. He looked like the young English teacher who turned a stuffy private school upside down from a film.
" You know why people try to make you feel helpless? Because they make you feel like them. You're not. That fear isn't better than you," Kevin's words echoed in her mind.
Other times, other places, other situations. It wasn't really them, just reminders. Words remembered when caught deep down in the dark.
"You're a hero Jean, and I need you to be a hero."
“Choose life. Choose beauty. And sorrow. And pain. Because they are all life. And if you do, I promise that you will be magnificent."
The fake Quentin rolled his eyes. "Oh, don't let it get to your head," he said, constitutionally unable to let a nice moment pass for too long.
The three figures stood up, joined by others...Terry, Kitty, Wanda, Garrison, more, all sent as a reminder by something. And at that moment Jean knew who, or rather what.
Time moved forward again as the people disappeared and a blinding orange light flooded the windows, cutting through the dark clouds. The windows exploded, and a fire rushed in, engulfing a willing Jean in flame.
The Phoenix stared down at her other self, her waitress uniform burned away to reveal her astral armor. This was her mind, after all. The thing across from her was just an intruder within it.
"You're wrong."
"Am I?" The simulacrum sneered at her. "Trying to dress in mother's clothes? You've never been worthy of it, you know. Not like her. Not like them." It hissed.
"We all have, in different ways. We're all her," Jean said. The diner, and everything around it burned away to reveal a white hot room. The Phoenix unfurled its wings, enveloping her alternate self in fire. It ripped the previously unseen mask off the woman's face, causing the form to disappear.
"And you're done. I reject you."
Holding the mask in her hands, she crumbled it to dust.
The Sunset Diner claimed to have the best coffee in Upstate New York. Jean knew that wasn't true, however, since she'd been making it for as long as she could remember. It was a half and half mix of Folgers and Maxwell House but the customers didn't care because it was fast, cheap, and hot. Most people were either passing through or had come with the building anyway.
The doorbell gave a half-hearted jingle as Jean stepped inside. She paused a moment to tie her tennis shoe and stomp out the slurry of snow and muck from the street on a fading welcome mat.
It was a little too early for the morning rush to come in yet. A couple of the night owls remained, one nursing a hangover, and another prepping for a long haul truck run.
"Annie, you have got to take down the lights today. Mr. Costa is going to kill you," Jean said, furrowing her brow at the rainbow of lights that still surrounded each window.
A brunette woman about Jean's age finished wiping off the counter and gave Jean a laugh.
"Well good morning to you too, Ebeneezer. Where's your Christmas spirit?"
Jean slipped off coat, hanging it on a coat rack. "Back in December."
Annie let out a snort. "Whatever. Mr. C loves me. I'll get to it. Besides, I think it makes the place cheery."
"Mmmhmm," Jean said, topping off the coffee cup for a guy at the end of the counter. She made a face at the smell, then added quietly to Annie.
"Roger's really outdone himself with the Jim Beam. How many times has he fallen asleep so far?"
Annie squinted. "2...no, 3 times? Better than last time. I'll wake him up before the rush."
Jean nodded, letting out a breath as she got into the rhythm of the day. The morning passed by in a blur, and before she knew it noon had rolled around.
The breakfast crowd turned into the lunch crowd and its flurry of workaholics and people on their lunch breaks.
After having her shoe puked on by a small child, an angry couple that almost turned into a food fight, and an impromptu birthday lunch, Jean had taken refuge in the alley in the back of the diner for her break.
"Those things will kill you, you know," she said to the other person outside as she folded her arms against the biting cold air.
Annie took a drag from her cigarette. "Thank you, Dr. Grey. Besides, there are worse ways to go," she said with a smirk, dropping the butt on the ground and smashing it with her shoe.
Jean merely grunted, watching the cars pass beyond the alleyways with a frown.
Letting out a laugh, Annie nudged her with her shoulder. "What's the deal?" she said
"You've been off all day. Even to Mrs. Myers and you love Mrs. Myers."
Jean shook her head. "I don't know. It's nothing," she said.
Annie shrugged, waving the cigarette smoke away from her. "I can cover you for another five minutes if you need a little longer," she said.
"Thanks, Annie," Jean said. She heard the door open and close as Annie went back inside.
Nothing was out of place. It was just another day. But Jean couldn't shake this sense that something wasn't right. Closing her eyes, Jean let out another breath as she headed in.
The door closed with a thud, and Jean once again stomped her shoes to get the snow out. But on the last stomp when she looked down she saw a spot of red. A single red droplet.
Crouching down, she reached out to touch it. It felt sticky in her hand. She rose to stand, but her attention remained focused on the red droplet. Taking a step forward, she saw another droplet, then another, then another, until it became a pool. The hum and din of the diner had disappeared.
She stared at the pool of blood. A soft breeze went through her hair. Somewhere a bird sang softly. The red pool was a stark contrast against the yellow and sun-bleached asphalt.
She didn't know there could be that much blood.
"Jean," a voice cut through her thoughts.
Jean looked up. Annie stared back at her in a haze, the life slowly draining from her eyes.Two brown eyes, one with a spiderweb of red. Her lightly tanned skin was pallid.
Letting out a piercing gasp, Jean tore her gaze away, but when she looked up, Annie blinked at her curiously, slowly lowering the cake she had been holding, completely normal.
"Jean?" she said.
Jean glanced around, searching for the blood, searching Annie's face. "What--what is...No. This isn't..."
"20 years. It's been 20 years since you walked out of graduation and drove until you stopped here. There was a sign on the door that said 'Help Wanted'. And you always wanted to help, Jean." The figure sitting at the counter was the only thing defined, the rest of the customers suddenly out of focus and blurred. It was her, but as if all the colour had been drained out of her; pale skin, white blonde hair, impossibly dark eyes. "Medical school had too many chances to fail. To hurt. Instead, Sunset on the Seneca turnpike. Safe little Kirkland. A job impossible to fail. A fiance that you love just enough to say yes, but not enough to really let him in where he can really cause you pain."
Jean's breath quickened as she focused on the woman at the counter. "Who are you?" she said with a hushed breath. In the back of the mind was a creeping realization, something right along the edges of familiarity. Beyond simply the idea of a bad dream.
Somehow she knew. Somehow she knew something was wrong. Something she had done was wrong.
"I'm what you gave up. All the pain. All the failures. All the loss." She sipped from her mug. "The Jean that no one wanted. The one they blamed. The one you lacked the strength to be."
Jean started to ask what she was talking about, but the moment the question came to her lips the memories of the real world hit her like an avalanche. She stumbled backward, colliding with the counter behind her. The guilt welled up within her, and she felt her stomach churn at the sight of herself.
"This isn't what I wanted," she said softly. "I didn't---I didn't mean to..."
"You said yes." The woman hissed.
***
As Jean pulled the mask from the flames, a voice resonated in her head; accommodating and friendly.
"Everything you faced can be undone, as if the pain never happened.."
A moment or two after Jean grabbed the mask, she noticed the lights had all turned out. The chamber had disappeared, leaving a void and empty hands where the mask had been.
"Fantastic," she muttered.
"No hurt." Images flickered in the haze around her. Her treatment in Costa's hands. The burning of her other self she'd witnessed as she destroyed Roma. The looks in the eyes of those her alternate self had brutalized and the shadows that remained. "No pain."
Startled, Jean searched for a way to escape. Everywhere she turned was a glimpse of the person she was and could be. It pierced through the heart and soul of her. She just wanted it to stop. The burn of tears formed in the corners of Jean's eyes.
"No...I--I shouldn't," she said softly, her voice cracked and uncertain.
"Of course." The words were cloying sweet in her mind. "Go back with them. Sacrifice a little more everyday for people who miss someone you never were and in their eyes, can never match. Go back to your empty rooms. Your long nights alone where all you can think about is what you lost and what you are judged to have never had."
There was a long pause. "...or."
Jean swallowed, remembering Gabriel's words, the look in his eyes.
"But...he'll win. I can't hurt them."
"You already did the second you weren't her."
Jean's heart sank. It was one thing to think something but another to be told it so. Part of her knew this wasn't right, but the other part, wounded and worn, held a flicker of hope.
"That doesn't mean they should suffer because of it. I need them to be okay."
"This means none of this has ever happened. For you and for them."
Falling silent for a few moments. Jean let out a quiet breath. The flicker of hope swelled. A chance for things to be put right seemed almost too good to be true, but she desperately needed for it to be.
"If you promise....then yes."
***
"Do you see what is coming?" The film negative version of herself pointed to the windows. The customers were starting to talk, alarmed, as dark clouds swept in. "I promised you no pain. A respite from what you experienced. But now we're past that. Now you're the Jean that wasn't there and the end is coming. You got twenty years of a safe existence, as pointless and tiny as it was."
Her hand gripped her throat, and Jean stared into her duplicate's eyes as she was lifted from the floor. "But now it is time to end it. For all of you."
Shame and guilt washed over Jean as she looked away. A tear slipped down her cheek.
"I'm so sorry..." she said, even though she knew no one would hear it. It was too late. And now, in her blindness and pain, she had doomed them all.
But something deep inside her began to stir. Something just below the surface. Time slowed. She smelled something burning and felt a sizzle as the tear started to evaporate, then slowly looked up as a glint caught her eye. It belonged to the diamond ring of one of the customers, a blonde-haired woman wearing a crisp white blazer.
"We all make imperfect choices. In grief, in despair, in rage. Believe me, I've made many imperfect choices. But you chose again. And again. And again. Each choice you made showed that all you wanted was what was best for everyone." Emma's words whispered softly in her memory.
Jean's attention then flickered to a man with pink hair a booth over. He wore a black sports coat with epaulets and chains, bow tie, ripped skinny jeans, and platform boots. But his hands were bloody, and he clutched a box of medical supplies. Where most of the other customers had run, he stayed. Even if she wanted all of them to go. " Trust me, for anyone else, I would. But I'd never hear the end of it if I let you die."
At another booth sat a man with perfect hair dressed positively casually, wearing a light sweater under his blazer, no tie, and a pair of brown brogues. He looked like the young English teacher who turned a stuffy private school upside down from a film.
" You know why people try to make you feel helpless? Because they make you feel like them. You're not. That fear isn't better than you," Kevin's words echoed in her mind.
Other times, other places, other situations. It wasn't really them, just reminders. Words remembered when caught deep down in the dark.
"You're a hero Jean, and I need you to be a hero."
“Choose life. Choose beauty. And sorrow. And pain. Because they are all life. And if you do, I promise that you will be magnificent."
The fake Quentin rolled his eyes. "Oh, don't let it get to your head," he said, constitutionally unable to let a nice moment pass for too long.
The three figures stood up, joined by others...Terry, Kitty, Wanda, Garrison, more, all sent as a reminder by something. And at that moment Jean knew who, or rather what.
Time moved forward again as the people disappeared and a blinding orange light flooded the windows, cutting through the dark clouds. The windows exploded, and a fire rushed in, engulfing a willing Jean in flame.
The Phoenix stared down at her other self, her waitress uniform burned away to reveal her astral armor. This was her mind, after all. The thing across from her was just an intruder within it.
"You're wrong."
"Am I?" The simulacrum sneered at her. "Trying to dress in mother's clothes? You've never been worthy of it, you know. Not like her. Not like them." It hissed.
"We all have, in different ways. We're all her," Jean said. The diner, and everything around it burned away to reveal a white hot room. The Phoenix unfurled its wings, enveloping her alternate self in fire. It ripped the previously unseen mask off the woman's face, causing the form to disappear.
"And you're done. I reject you."
Holding the mask in her hands, she crumbled it to dust.
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Date: 2022-01-22 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-22 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-22 01:43 pm (UTC)