(Backdated) Collective Soul: Jean, Mending

[xp_legion]

After Hope and Quentin's successful retrieval mission, it's up to Jean to put the pieces back together again.


It had been a city.

Enough of the buildings still stood that the basic layout was clear: one city, but sharply delineated into three districts. Perhaps when the mindscape had been intact these borders might have been defined by age of the buildings or socio-economic class, but without these identifiers what remained was style. There was an unreal quality to each area, as if they had been painted by a different hand. One sector was rendered in hyper-realistic hatched inks, which then bled into a psychedelic style more like graffiti than paint. The third zone was little more than the colorful crayola-scrawl of a child's drawing. Distinct, but coexisting.

Before it had been destroyed, anyway.

What had been a thriving city was now in ruins. Murky water half-flooded the streets, and what few structures remained were near collapse, chunks blasted from them as if they'd endured heavy shelling. Nothing stirred. It had been razed to the ground.

Crouching down, Jean picked up a leaf. It was dead and crunchy, but looked like it would if she had taken acid. A gust of wind yanked it away, bringing with it the eerie sound of singing. Jean followed the sound to a subway entrance, which looked completely normal compared to the other zones. As she made her way down, the world shifted to the regular sights (and smells) of the subway.

Except for the damn singing.

At least most buskers tried not to sound like something out of a horror movie.

The subway was little better than the city above. The tiles, illuminated only by faltering fluorescence, were cracked and stained. Every station on the map was too smudged and faded to read. However, it was at least structurally sound, and had the feel of a bunker that had survived a bombing. And it was occupied.

A strange woman was singing into the darkness. She was tall and willowy, with dark hair that spilled halfway down her back and a professional singer's smoky alto. At Jean's footsteps she broke off and turned.

The woman smiled radiantly, and in her face was something of both David Haller and Radha Dastoor.

"Dr. Grey. So nice of you to join us."

Jean blinked at the new figure, and carefully kept her distance for a moment. "You know me, but I don't believe we've met."

"I'm new. Someone had to mind the shop." The woman extended a hand.

"I'm Tami," she said, pronouncing the two syllables like 'Tommy'. Her eyes crinkled, one blue, one green. "I guess you could say I'm what's left behind."

Jean slowly nodded, taking the news in before shaking the other woman's hand. She glanced around. "Nice to meet you. I'm here to help try to put the pieces back together. Do you have an idea of where I should start?"

Tami swept her hands beneath her long hair with practiced nonchalance. "Aren't you the doctor? But I suppose I can help. It's no fun living in this mess." Fanning out her hair, the alter turned to gesture towards the tunnels. "This is the substrata of David's mind. The personality structures have been destroyed, but the pathways between them still exist. If it's a guide you need, I can take you to the major landmarks."

"Doctors still need patients to tell them where it hurts," Jean said. She then nodded. "Landmarks are good, if they're still recognizable. Hopefully we can use them like magnets to draw in and repair some of the pieces in disarray." It didn't work like that in real life but this was the Astral Plane. As long as there was a basic idea of order, it helped.

Tami clicked her tongue thoughtfully. "Well, then, we might as well start where it all began."

The woman dropped herself off the side of the platform to land lightly beside the tracks. Without waiting to be sure if Jean was following, she began to walk. The eerie singing started again, soft and sad. It had no words in the same way speech in dreams often did not, yet, like dream speech, it seemed to leave meaning behind nonetheless.

Jean followed, awkwardly folding her arms as the sound reverberated through the subway tunnel. "So is the singing...symbolic of something?" It was definitely giving her a bit of the heebie jeebies.

The woman laughed. "You mean am I Orpheus to your Eurydice, singing you into the Underworld instead of out of it? No. But song can express things words cannot. And he's beyond words now."

The alter led Jean on, picking her way through the rubble with ease. Above them something purple and luminous flickered near the ceiling; Tami glanced up, but said nothing. She stopped only when they came to a ladder embedded in the wall of the tunnels. It was bright, primary yellow with red steps: a child's toy, but scaled for an adult.

"Our first stop," said the alter with a flourish. "After you."

Jean listened quietly in consideration. What she said made sense. Sometimes there were no words that could describe a feeling after trauma. The fact that Tami even existed at all was impressive. Lost in thought, Jean only managed to catch a glimpse of movement, but it was gone before she could really see it. Turning back to the ladder, Jean reached out and ran her fingers along the ladder before grasping on to the rung and pulling herself up into this new world.

It was like she'd stepped into a child's drawing. Everything was textured as if it had been drawn in crayon, and with a child's simplicity of form and vague proportion. What trees remained were straight brown trunks crowned with undifferentiated green blobs, and the flowers were bright and round-petaled. Here, too, the landscape had been destroyed, but it was clear the buildings had been little more than boxes with uniformly spaced square windows.

"This was Davey's place," Tami said, emerging behind her. "He's the oldest, funnily enough."

Jean slipped her hands into her pockets, glancing around. "The innocence of a child is the best way to face the world sometimes," she said quietly, pulling a box of crayons out from her coat. She grabbed a grey crayon from the box, then fixed her attention on one of the broken buildings, drawing something new on to the damaged structure to make it a whole new building.

"Broken but not gone."

"That's a pretty thought, but Davey was born because nobody wanted to deal with David. His mother gave him away, his guardians died. He went to parents grieving the death of their daughter. People with no time for a sad child who wasn't even their blood. People who taught him his pain was nothing but a burden to them. So he put it away and became a normal child. Someone who could smile. He didn't expect their love; just some acknowledgement would have been enough. And even that was too much to ask." Tami snorted. "In the end, it wasn't even his mother who came for him. It was her friend. David's never been a priority in anyone's life, not even his own parents." Her voice turned bitter.
"Not even the great Charles Xavier, who had time for every mutant child who crossed his doorstep but his own."

Jean studied Tami, taking a seat on what used to be a tree stump. "It would be difficult for him to help a child he didn't know about. I know Jim told me how Charles helped bring him out of the coma. Surely that counts for something?"

Tami stooped to pluck one of the cartoonish flowers. "It's easy to say better late than never, but 'late' was still three years lost. All so understandable. All so unavoidable. But what does that matter to a child who'd already lost everyone he's ever depended upon?"

Silent for a moment, Jean heard the pain in Tami's voice. It was a deep, dark pain that was normally kept to the recesses. She nodded. "I'm sorry that he had to feel that way," she said.

"But I'm glad that he found people to protect him." She met her eyes.

Tami met Jean's gaze with her own. She didn't wilt, but nor did she escalate. Instead she merely shrugged and tucked the flower behind her ear.

"What's done is done," said the alter. "He let you in here. I guess that counts for something."

Jean smiled, turning back to the damaged world. "We both know what it's like to be messed up. Except right now...he's a little more wrecked than I am," she said. Plucking out another crayon, she started on coloring in some of the broken apart world.

"Let's see what we can do about that."

The cracked street was replaced with new shiny black asphalt, and the park nearby got a tree with a tire swing.

"Well, you've increased the property value," Tami allowed grudgingly. She paused, then cocked her head. "Do you hear that? That sound . . . like something's off-key."

Quirking an eyebrow, Jean turned to look where the other woman was looking. "I don't--" she took a few steps forward, something shiny catching her attention.

"What is that?"

There, nestled in the flowers, was a bracelet. It wasn't drawn in the same style as the rest of the zone's childish scrawl; it looked solid and, for lack of a better word, real.

It was also leather, and studded with silver spikes. It definitely did not fit the vibe of an area where bumble bees were the size of footballs, and just as detailed.

"Not something that belongs here," remarked Tami, crouching to get a better look.

"Unless Davey's gone pun--" Against her better judgment Jean reached out to pick up the bracelet and felt the world collapse under her feet, like spinning on a merry-go-round, except downward.

She landed hard on the ground, letting out a quiet groan.

"Ow."

They were in a new area. This, too, had a distinctly animated look to it, but of a different style than Davey's. Now it was all bold lines and vivid colors, almost airbrushed. It was as if someone had graffitied an entire cityscape.

"Cyndi's zone," Tami said, climbing to her feet. She dusted off her slacks and absently offered Jean a hand.

Groaning in thanks, Jean pulled herself up. Had it not been for the circumstances, it would have been interesting to see these worlds when they weren't smashed to smithereens.

"Judging by the bracelet, I'm guessing we should look for the thing that doesn't look done by Banksy."

"Good luck finding anything through all this neon," said Tami with a wrinkle of her nose. "Are you sure we're not keeping you from your very important work? You must have better things to do than traipse through David's head."

"Helping people to heal is my very important work," Jean said, reaching into her coat pocket to pull out a spray can. "I'm right where I need to be."

Glancing up toward a busted lightbulb on a street lamp, she spray painted out the cracked bulb with a bright yellow and it came to life, illuminating their path.

"Do you hear anything out of place here?"

Tami paused, tilting her head. "This way," she said, and set out down the street.

"David spent his whole life trying to help people," the alter remarked as they walked through wild sprays of color and abstract form. "Nobody thinks about what that costs. People only care what he can do for them. They just take and take until he's used up. Even when he tries to leave he can't escape. People in the next place just end up using him, too. Look at what's left of him now." She slid her eyes back to Jean. "If you're not careful they'll burn through you, too."
Jean met her gaze sympathetically. "Guess we both have to learn how to establish our boundaries a little better moving forward," she said, turning to survey the landscape quietly with a bit of her own self reflection.

"Come on. He's waiting for us."

The other woman's mouth tightened a little, as if she was considering a response, but said nothing. Tami strode on.

They arrived at what looked like an abandoned skate-park. Clicking her tongue in contemplation, Tami surveyed the area for a moment before pointing to the mass of rubble collected in the flat of the half-pipe.

"Something over there," she said.

"One of these things is not like the other..." Jean said quietly to herself, carefully getting closer as she spied a shiny metal hammer with a nicely carved wooden handle.

"Brace yourself," she said, drawing in a breath as she reached out to pick up the hammer.

"Jack . . .  hammer," Tami muttered as the women picked themselves up from the subsequent transition. She rubbed her hip sourly. "Well, he wasn't made to be creative."

Jean dusted herself off, gently placing the hammer on a nearby table where it blended right in.  "Nothing wrong with that. Though...I'd prefer to not have to fight my way out of this one if his world thinks we're intruding," she said.

Tami shrugged. "Nobody's left but me. Like I said, someone had to mind the shop."

They were now in what appeared to be a ruined townhouse. In contrast to the previous two zones, this area was entirely monochrome. The lines were as tight and precise as pen-strokes, with shadows that fell in ragged slices of cross-hatching. Technical. Contained. Tami nudged a piece of broken furniture with one foot.

"I'm not sure why we're doing this," Tami remarked. "Say you put him back together. Then what? He goes back out there and this happens all over again."

"I know you're trying to protect him, but what's the alternative? His body wastes away in a coma while you sit here, singing alone to yourself? That's not a life to live. You know he wouldn't want that," Jean said.

"None of them would. At least he has the power of choice out there. To make different choices...or not. But it's better than just ending here."

Tami laughed. It was an ugly sound from such a pleasant voice.

"You're going to talk to me about having a life?" she asked incredulously. "Working at the Claremont fell through. Now you're tethered to the Medlab, stuck cleaning up after the next person who breaks themself apart -- just like you're doing now. You're just as bad as he is. Without the work, you're nothing. When it's just you and your nightmares, who do you have to turn to?"

Jean folded her arms. "Jim, actually. Because we've both been through it. And Garrison. Terry. Wanda. Marie. Kitty..." she said. She tilted her head.

"Are you done? This isn't anything new that I haven't thought about before. I do have a life, and friends. And so does Jim. He was there for me, and I'm here for him now. So you can be a bitch, but I'm not going away."

Tami's face twisted. "And where were you all when I was made? I'm here to keep him safe. That's my only job. And now I'm supposed to let you take him back with nothing more than an 'it'll be all right'? From someone who can't even take her own advice?" She spun on her heel and stomped out, long hair fanning around her.

"Fix him yourself, if you're good enough."

Letting out a breath, Jean sighed as Tami departed. It was fear, Jean knew it. But she couldn't let him just waste away. She had to help. "I've got to try," she said, not knowing if anyone would hear it, but hoping they would.

The easy thing about exploring a monochrome world is it made things easier if something was out of place. At least, if hopefully that thing had color. It took her longer without Tami there to help, but Jean used a sharp marker to fix what she could along the way until she saw it...a glimpse of brown, standing out against the black and white. It was a stuffed rabbit, a toy. Davey's from the looks of it.

They'd come full circle. Crouching down, Jean reached out to pick up the rabbit, not quite sure what she'd find.

The scene jumped again. Abruptly, Jean found herself back in the tunnels where they'd begun -- but almost pitch black. Without Tami not even the safety lights were illuminated.

Without Tami's singing, the silence was suffocating.

Jean's quickened breath was the only thing she could hear. "Hello?" she said, just to listen to something.

A hazy light caught her eye, something faint in the distance, lazily coming toward her. A purple butterfly. She blinked curiously, reaching out. The butterfly landed on her hand.

It was a delicate thing, its wings crafted of soft, violet light. It settled on her skin gently as a whisper.

And stung.

Images shot through her like a stiletto through the brainstem.

The warm press of body to body and mind to mind. Purple hair tangled between fingers, wry laughter over one drink too many. A cutting joke. A gentle touch. Moments stolen between their other commitments, but an affection there, strong and steady. Someone who knew him. Someone who needed him.

Someone who understood.

Then--

Eyes without recognition staring back from a familiar face. A carved diamond shining in blood. Shadows that shifted and crawled. Her face, pale as a ghost, disappearing, reappearing, slipping farther away every time. 
Their last meeting, when she had been cold.

So cold.

Then gone.

The tunnels rang with a rush of footsteps, and suddenly warm hands were around Jean's wrist. It was Tami, now on her knees beside her, babbling something Jean couldn't make out. The alter pressed her lips to Jean's hand to suck, and something came free -- the stinger that had lodged there, releasing the memories like a slow poison into Jean's system. 

"Jean! Jean, can you hear me?"

Jean turned on her side, trying to pull herself up into a sitting position. Her stomach lurched, and she sank back down. "What was---who was that?"

"Betsy. His Betsy, anyway." Tami crouched over Jean, her face flushed with exertion and worry. The woman's arrival had brought the weak fluorescent lights of the tunnel with her. Her grimace was pained.

"He doesn't talk about her," Tami explained. "She was . . . lost."

Finally sitting up, Jean took deep breaths to try to push back the feeling and clear her head. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, a slow realization setting in, punctuated with a small flutter of guilt.

"During the...In the other universe?"

"Yes." Tami brushed a strand of Jean's hair from her forehead in an oddly tender gesture. Gently, she took the flower from her hair and placed it in Jean's. "He lost her before then, really. She thought there was something she needed to do, and she left him rather than drag him down with her. But when the old world broke down that door shut for good." Something crossed her face, and in that moment the alter looked almost like the man she'd been made from.

"There's not even a grave to visit."

Jean didn't know what to say. It was an understandable, comfortable grief, something to sink down into when he was in his lowest of lows. Something to fall back on, yet another failure, ripped away from him like the patients he lost. Another chapter of agony.

"Thank you...for coming back for me."

The other woman smiled. "Of course I did. We've never been angry at you. Not really. Just the world you live in." She offered Jean her hands to pull her back to her feet. "So . . . are we done? Is that it?"

Jean was pretty mad at the world they lived in too. She couldn't fault them there. "Not quite," she said.

"Something doesn't feel right. I--" She squinted. "What am I laying on?"

Reaching down, she pulled a paintbrush from beneath her.

"We're missing Jim. This must be his."

Tami touched two fingers to her lips, considering. "No. Jim is a composite. This is David."

The alter hesitated.

"I'll . . . take you to Jim."

Tami climbed to her feet and turned to face the wall. Placing one hand against the tile, she hummed a wordless tune and a simple, weathered maintenance door appeared beneath her touch.

"Through here," she said, softly.

"Thank you," Jean repeated, meeting Tami's eyes. "For trusting me to see him. I know it's been a lot for all of you."

The alter gave her a smile like heartbreak.

"Thank you for caring enough to try."

Tami took Jean by the hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Come on."  

Unlike the other areas, the door led to nothing. It was only a black void.

In it was a man.

He hung suspended in space like a plastinated anatomical model -- and, like an anatomical model, appeared to be in the process of dissection. One arm had been parred to nothing but a nervous system, while the right half of his face and skull were entirely absent. Muscles, bones, and organs were exposed or missing. The whole scene was oddly bloodless. He wasn't maimed, just . . . incomplete.

"This used to be Jemail Karami," Tami said as she walked up to the figure. "He's been a part of Jim for a long time. Longer than he was ever alive. When the system disintegrated the parts that were Jemail survived where David crumbled. If he hadn't given me something to cling to I would've been swept away with the others."

She touched his ruined cheek. Again Tami's face took on the far-away look of someone speaking for another.

"I'm sorry, Jem," she murmured. "You keep holding on for us."

The Professor had told Jean about another mind interwoven within Jim's. Not a personality, but someone else entirely. The goal was to prepare her in case of running into him.

She was not entirely prepared. Not with the actual sight.

Jean stared at what was left of the person, a swell of sympathy welling up within her. "I--" she took a step forward.

"It takes a lot of strength to withstand something like that."

Tami nodded, her eyes still on the figure. "He was a strong person. But he's part of Jim now. Without David, survive is all he can do." Tami withdrew her hand and wiped her eyes on her sleeve before turning back to Jean. "Can you help them?"

"I'll do what I can," Jean promised, putting her hand on Tami's shoulder. "But healing is a partnership between the doctor and patient. It'll take all of us to make the next step."

Tami chewed her lip, then nodded. "Okay. Tell me what I need to do."

Jean held up the paintbrush, as an artist's paint palette appeared in her other hand, complete with a variety of colors.

"We finish the picture," she said. Dabbing a bit of paint on the palette with the brush, she used the paint to color in the right half of Jemail's missing face.

"I'm not a painter," Tami said doubtfully. She appeared to think for a moment, then extended a hand. The hammer appeared in her grip.

"But I can do this."

Softly, Tami began to sing.

The wood and metal of the hammer began to vibrate, then unfold. The wood stretched and twisted into something like a string of bones.

Stepping around Jean, Tami began to press the bones into the incomplete figure. They sank beneath the painted surface and into the body, completing the partial skeleton. The alter held out her hand again and the studded bracelet appeared. Tami drew the leather into muscle and studs into shining veins, and, still singing, aligned them carefully with the strokes of Jean's brush, using the woman's portrait as a guide.

Finally, she unrolled the rabbit into a sheath of skin and hair to drape over the figure like a shroud. Giving the painting substance. Making it real.

Jean moved back to admire their work. "Not bad, if I do say so, myself," she said, turning to glance at Tami.

But the other woman was gone.  

"M . . . me, too."

Jim stood behind her, a hand pressed to his forehead as he tried to reorient himself. Here in the core of his own mind his astral form was an unmasked patchwork: the same visible fusion of two psyches that had emerged beneath Jean's brush as she painted the pieces of David into the gaps of Jemail. However, the joins were smooth, organic, like long-healed scars. Slowly, he lowered his hand and gave Jean a shaky smile.

"This . . . isn't a dream?" he asked, and there was uncertainty in the question.

"No," Jean said, letting him take his time. "Well, we're in your mind so...yes, technically. But I'm really here. Was it a dream for you before?"

"I don't know what it was." The smile faltered. A spasm passed across his face.

"It . . . hurt."  

The man took a deep breath and looked around the blackness. Rather than worrying him, he seemed to regard the void as an old friend. "They let you through the gate, huh?" he asked, his voice a little stronger now. "I can remember pieces. I'm sorry we gave you a hard time."

Jean smiled softly. "I only had the one. And she was fine. Except for...a little crankiness, but I'm used to that with patients. Quentin and Hope are the ones you might need to have a talk with," she said.

She studied him. "Are you okay?"

Jim laughed. "Honestly? Not really."

He pulled out a cigarette and lighter and lit up. The affectation was instinctual, his movements growing more confident as he worked through the familiar posture. He took a long drag and held it, concentrating on the sensation of warmth settling into his lungs as his mind slowly settled into itself.

At last, Jim exhaled.

"But we're getting there."

Two simple black chairs appeared, and Jean took a seat. "I'd say take your time but...Charles is on the outside waiting. He was trying to keep the pieces that Quentin and Hope found together. But now that they are...I'll let you decide when you want to go back," she said.

The end of the cigarette glowed as Jim took another drag. He exhaled again, and for a long time he just watched the smoke curl into the darkness.

"Charles is here?" he said at last.

"He's been here off and on from Muir since you went catatonic. It's been...about a month. He wanted to bring you there but you wouldn't have it. Not sure why the Medlab had to get wrecked as a statement but...he let you stay. Luckily enough things got better and your alters started coming back," Jean said. She shrugged.

"And then, here you are."

"I guess I just never got used to the idea people would bother to show up for me." Jim flicked his eyes to meet Jean's, one blue, one brown -- obvious artifacts of the two men he'd been made from.

"Thank you."

Jean smiled. "You're welcome. And welcome back. We all missed you."

The other man returned the smile. "Me, too."

Jim took one final drag on the cigarette, then ground it out beneath his heel.

"Okay. I'm ready."