Scott and Jean, Wednesday afternoon

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott goes to Jean to make a confession about something else that happened during the two years that she was gone. (Yes, that something else.) It goes rather better than he expected and the two of them wind up saying a number of other things that needed to be said.


There were any number of other things he could have been doing. Should
have been doing. After what had happened on the weekend... Scott
winced, thinking of the look on Alison's face the first time he'd seen
her upon her team's return, but stomped hard on the flash of guilt.
Self-indulgence. Nothing but self-indulgence.

As delaying this particular conversation for so long had been. Scott
paused in front of Jean's door, balancing himself on his crutches and
raising his hand to knock.

Jean was curled up on her couch with a book open in her lap, enjoying
the relative quiet - the noise in her mind wasn't lessening, but
between the exposure and her training with Charles she was at least
getting slightly more used to it. And possibly more aware of it, she
realized as she looked up as the pressence in her mind that was Scott
came closer. "Come in," she called, pushing her reading glasses up on
her head. She didn't even quite realize that she'd called out before
he knocked.

Outside the door, Scott hesitated, his hand poised to knock, but then
lowered it to the doorknob and opened the door. "Hi," he said, his
voice a bit rough with weariness as he hobbled in, managing to get the
door shut behind him as Jean straightened on the couch. She looked
mildly inquisitive, and he managed a very tight little smile. "Jean,
we've got to... mind if I sit down?" He gave the crutches a quick,
aggravated look.

The phrase we've got to... only had so many possible endings
and very few of them were good ones, especially given the uncertainty
she was feeling from him. "Not at all," she said, gesturing to the
armchair. "Want anything? I've got coffee and tea - no earl grey, I
promise."

He lowered himself into the armchair carefully. "Coffee would be good.
I feel the burning desire for caffeine," he said, more lightly than he
really felt. "I'm still not sleeping very well. I hope I haven't been
keeping you awake?"

"No," she said as she stood up to get him some coffee. "I've been
sleeping with an inhibitor as a precaution against my tk turning on
with a nightmare - mine or anybody else's. Why haven't you been
sleeping well? Just the leg or is it something more?"

The laugh that came out was almost painful-sounding. "Oh, God, where
would I start..." The fear flooded back up, and it took an extreme act
of willpower to push it back down where it belonged. "The leg's not
helping. I keep dreaming about warped versions of the Youra mission.
The... situation with Manuel's father..." She came back with a cup of
coffee, and he took it, trying not to notice how unsteady his hands
were. "Other things. Kids wanting to join the team, which just doesn't
seem to sit well with me for some reason. Ironic, no? Given how young
I was when I started training..." And now he was babbling.

Jean rested a hand on his shoulder, kneeling down to look at him
better. "Scott, you were more responsible and dedicated at fifteen
than most of these kids will be at twenty. But yes, a tad ironic." She
smiled slightly, then backed away, going back to the couch. "So, do I
want to ask what brings you by?"

His hands clenched around the coffee cup. "We need to talk," he said,
his voice a bit hollow. "There's something I probably should have told
you before this. Something you need to know. But it's just..." He
stopped, gave an uneasy laugh. "It's been so hectic. As usual. Plenty
of excuses for me not to show up to your door to have this
conversation."

"Ah," she said softly. "So then the answer is 'no, probably not'.
What's up?" She steeled herself, mind flipping through all sorts of
things he might be about to say.

He swallowed and set the coffee aside. Caffeine could wait. "While I
thought you were... while you were gone," he said. Not allowing
himself that way out. "I was involved with someone."

... Not allowing himself... Jean blinked, startled both at his
complete lack of preamble and at the feelings flowing through the link
and it took her a few seconds to find her mental feet. That had not
been anywhere near what she had been expecting, and it hurt,
but... "Scott, I wasn't gone, I was, for all intents and purposes,
dead. Two years that no one had any reason to think wouldn't
have been forever. I'd have been worried if you hadn't moved on." It
was such a blatent lie. If she'd never woken up she never would have
known to worry, and, coming back, she would have been perfectly happy
to never, ever think of her Scott so much as
looking at another woman.

"But you weren't. You weren't dead." He took a deep, slightly unsteady
breath. Control. His reaction wasn't the important one here. "And you
need to know. Before you find out from someone else." Hank had been
right, too; she would. Whether from the journals, or one of the
students. "Jean, it was Betsy."

"I was..." she started, but stopped as he went on. Now was not
the time for this argument... Discussion. Whatever it would be. Her
mind flitted about, trying it's damnedest not to hear what he
had just said. Of course, it was not going to work, and the image of
the purple haired telepath filled her mind, along with the fury their
last encounter had inspired. Well, at least know she knew what
that had been about. She didn't say a word, worried that she'd
start screaming if she opened her mouth.

She was projecting. Projecting very loudly, and when you had a
telepath trying so hard not to scream at the top of her mental lungs,
it didn't matter if your link with her was dampened or not. Scott
flinched, but straightened in the chair, forcing himself to go on. "A
lot happened," he said, his voice hoarse but more steady than he would
have imagined it would be. "You've read her medical file by now, I'd
think. You'll know about her surgery... what happened. Kwannon. It
didn't..." He swallowed, fighting doggedly for control. The memory of
that conversation with Kwannon came flooding back suddenly, the
remembered feeling of helplessness as she pushed her way into his
mind. "I didn't handle it very well. Didn't help her, like she
needed... and then in the fall..." He went on, telling her about
Magneto's attack on the mall, about the backlash from Alison that had
sent Betsy into a coma. About how... altered she'd been, when she woke
up.

"I felt like such a failure," he muttered. "After she did her best to
help me through my... problems, in the fall. But it was putting
pressure on her, and I didn't have any right..." He stopped. "It's
been... over for a while now," he finally said.

'Good' was probably not the appropriate response. Jean closed her
eyes, running through some of her breathing exercises to get back at
least a little bit of control. She wanted to tell Scott he wasn't a
failure, but then, she also wanted to go and find Betsy Braddock and
rip her eyes out, so there was a pretty good chance she still wasn't
quite in her right mind. Or maybe she was - the woman had slept with
Jean's fiance. But Jean had been dead. And now would be a good time to
get back to actually speaking out loud. "Thank you for telling me..."
Well, it had come out rather more strangled than she'd have liked, but
it was better than a lot of the other options. "You shouldn't... you
don't need to... Look," she said, sounding more firm at last, "there
is to be no self flagellating yourself on my account. Moving on was...
healthy." And she was back to that worryingly strained voice.

The quiet little voice in the back of her mind pointed out that she
was being hypocritical, or at least disingenuous and she took a deep
breath. "And, as long as we're being" painfully "honest here...
there was someone in Canada, as well. Ironically, he was the one who
convinced me I needed to come to see Charles and get help." There was
something very bitter in her mind that had leaked into her tone, but
she wasn't currently in a state to wonder what it was about.

There had been... "Oh," Scott said, rather inanely. Then he caught the
bitterness in her tone. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her...
no. He didn't have any right. She hadn't remembered, but he'd had no
such excuse.

"Yeah," she said, her syntax starting to shift as she thought back to
her time in Canada. "Just a normal guy.He was... he never left, you
see? Everybody else left me, when I'd start flipping out and things
started flying around, but he just wanted to help. And I haven't even
told him yet what all's happened." As though realizing something was
off, Jean pulled her legs up onto the couch, wrapping her arms around
them the way she always did, and pushed the other voice in her mind
farther away. "I owe him that much, I guess, but every time I sit down
to write an email it... never quite goes the way I want." Possibly
because that other voice seemed to want something different than what
she wanted, but that was just crazy and she wasn't ready to admit to
it.

"I'm glad you had someone that helped." And he was. Honestly glad. The
thought of her having been alone had haunted him. "Is there... maybe
the Professor can at least let him know you're all right, and will get
in touch with him when you can?"

"That would probably be best," she said, sighing. "It just... feels
like cheating, like taking the easy way out. But then, I asked him to
let Sarah and my parents know gently, so I'm not sure how this is any
different." She had, at least, managed quite throughly to distract
herself from thinking about the purple haired bitch. Or, no, possibly
not.

This really wasn't what he'd expected out of this conversation. At
all. Scott swallowed. "I'm sorry," he said, a bit unevenly. "I...
didn't do this very kindly."

"Is there a kind way to tell your returned from the dead..." Fiancee?
Ex-fiancee? They had not established what they were to each other now
and now was really not the time. "I mean to say, it's... it's
one of thoes things. There's no good way to say it, but not saying it
is always the worst choice." She swallowed. "At least now I... we both
know."

"I didn't want you to find out from someone other than me." He
couldn't help but think that would have made it worse. He looked up at
her, making himself meet her eyes. "It's such a mess," he said
faintly. "It was one of the reasons I was so shaken up when you came
back." Not the most important reason - no, that had been reserved for
the fact that she was alive and that had meant that he had left her,
and he hoped she didn't ever wind up witnessing his nightmares on the
subject - but one of them. "I felt like I'd betrayed you... part of me
always felt like that." He hesitated, then decided he had to tell her.

"Back in the fall, when I... well, call a spade a spade. Had my
nervous breakdown. Betsy went into my mind, trying to figure out what
was wrong." He took a deep breath, then let it out. "She claims I was
still convinced you were alive. That I was chasing you, in my mind."

Another thing Betsy had said clicked and Jean nodded slowly. "She...
she said something to the effect, although I didn't understand it."

"And there were the headaches," Scott went on reluctantly. "Madelyn
tried and tried to find some kind of physiological reason for them...
we thought at first they were from the radiation poisoning, back in
August. But they didn't go away. They just got worse..." He trailed
off, staring down at his hands. "So I should have known," he said
heavily. "There was no good reason for a dead link to be flaring up
like that. I should have realized, and I should have..." There wasn't
much to say. 'I should have' kind of covered it.

Jean slowly started counting the months - the unconsiousness in the
hospital, slowly finding her feet in Vancouver, and then the fits had
started late last summer... It could very well be. Almost certainly
was. "I managed to hurt you even more without even knowing who either
of us was," she said softly. "I'm sorry. There was still no way you
could have known, though. I had no idea what was going on, either."

Scott looked back up at her, weariness pressing down on him like a
physical weight. What came out of his mouth next was a total surprise,
even to him. "Jean, I think... I think I need to leave for a little
while."

"The Mansion or...?" She trailed off. He wasn't with her now,
so he couldn't exactly leave her. Although it sure as hell felt that
way. Of course, that was unreasonable, but she was getting really good
at unreasonable. Which was not a good thing.

"The Mansion." Oh, he felt like such a coward, he thought wretchedly.
"It's not just you," he said, and hoped to hell she believed him.
Because it wasn't just her. It was her and Betsy and Youra and the
Hellfire Club and all of it. "I can't risk trying to... get my head on
straight when I'm trying to do my job at the same time. I'm rapidly
approaching the point again where I'm going to be no good at my job,
and to be honest, being sedated and dumped in the medlab once is
enough."

He couldn't leave now, of course. Not until the consequences of what
had happened with Pete and de la Rocha worked themselves out, for
better or for worse. But once they did, once he could in good
conscience go for a little while... it would be to Alaska, most
likely, he thought. The idea of staying for a while with Phillip and
Deborah, having the time and space to think...

"You're not a coward, Scott. I know how hard this all is,
really. And I am sorry about it all. If you need space then you need
space and if you need time then you need time, and if you need both
then take them. I just wish... I just wish I could help you." Instead
of always seeming to make things worse. "I... I love you, Scott, and
maybe it is massively unfair of me to say it and I don't expect
anything of you. I just want... I just want you to be ok." Well, that
wasn't just what she wanted, but him being ok and not with her
was better than him being not ok and not with her, which was all she
had right now.

"I love you too, Jean." It didn't even occur to him not to say it. "I
don't think I ever stopped." He reached out for the coffee again,
taking a careful sip. Just to buy himself a moment. "I know we weren't
perfectly blissful 24/7," he said a bit awkwardly, "but I could
always... you knew me, and I knew you, and I didn't have to hide
behind the Cyclops-mask. I think that's what makes it so hard now. I'm
not... the Scott you knew. And I think I've forgotten how to trust
like I trusted you."

Hearing him say it was like all the fear and worry just vanished. In
truth, there were still many things to worry about, but if he still
loved her she could face them all. The rush of relief was almost
overpowering and she uncurled from the little ball she'd worked
herself into. "Maybe you're not the Scott I knew but I'm so glad I've
been given the chance to know the Scott you've become."

Scott's lips twitched, briefly and almost reluctantly. "Feel free to
whap that Scott upside the head on a regular basis. He tends to need
it frequently." He sipped at his coffee again. The bad case of nerves
he'd had when he'd walked in was starting, oh so slowly, to settle. He
had been so terrified of this conversation...

Jean caught the hint of a smile and smiled in return. "I promise,
should it seem he's in need of it, to deliever a firm whap or two."
She was very glad to feel his mind start to calm - she might have been
upset at what he told her, but not at him. The purple haired one, on
the other hand... But no, Jean was not going to think about that now.

"I keep feeling..." Scott stopped, sighing. "That I should be able to
do more for you. To help. Instead of just making things harder for
you." He gazed at her, his expression pained, but calmer. "I want you
to be all right, Jean. More than anything."

"I don't think you realize how much just saying that helps," she said
pushing a lose strand of hair away from her face. "Knowing that you
still care... Most everything I have to deal with is, well, problems
in my own head." She offered him a wry smile. "Stuff I have to work
out on my own, or with Charles. But...it's another reason to fight,
you see? You and Hank and Ororo and everyone."

Maybe he wasn't making such a mess of this after all. Scott sipped at
his coffee again. "When I do go," he said, "I'll go to my grandparents
in Alaska. I hadn't gotten the chance to tell you about them yet.
Charles found them, back around Christmas. Alex and I spent the
holidays there."

Jean blinked then her smile widened into a grin. "Scott, you found
your grandparents? That's wonderful. What are they like? What do they
do? Alaska, you said? I'd love to meet them, sometime."

"Phillip and Deborah own a charter air service outside of Anchorage.
They're... well, they're wonderful," Scott said, relaxing a little
more and smiling as he thought about them. "I did a bit of flying for
Phillip while we were up there in December." That brought back to mind
the standing job offer, and he sighed, half-ruefully.

"Why am I not surprised that your love of flying is hereditary? It
sounds lovely, really."

"You'll have to come up there at some point," Scott said, and meant
it. "It's so peaceful. And I know Phillip and Deborah would love to
meet you." He stopped, shaking his head a bit quizzically at just how
much the conversation had turned around, and met her eyes as levelly
as he could. Trying to let her see, even if he couldn't quite find the
words, how grateful he was. For so many things.

"I would love to," she said, feeling the gratitude and calmness that
had seeped into his thoughts. She wished once more that she had the
control to project at all anymore - she could feel the link in her
mind but not touch it with intent. Instead she just smiled softly at
him, joy suffusing her heart.

It was hard to breathe for a moment, with the way she was smiling at
him. Not all his dreams about her over the last two years had been
nightmares. There had been times he'd just dreamed that she was there,
simple dreams about sitting beside her, seeing her smile...

If getting up and moving over to the couch wouldn't have been such a
production, with the damned crutches, he would have done it.

But even if Jean couldn't consiously use her powers, no more could she
consiously not use them to know what he was thinking, and she had no
such impediment. She moved off the couch and sat down on the table
where she could catch hold of his hand.

"We're a hell of a pair, you know," Scott said a bit wryly, squeezing
her hand gently. "Then again, we always were, weren't we?"

"There is that, yes," Jean agreed. "Between us we always managed to
take on the world, and now we've got even more help." She grinned.
"I'm not sure I want to imagine the sort of trouble you lot can get up
to these days - you, me, Ororo and Hank were a dangerous enough
combination."

"Thirteen X-Men on the plane to Youra," Scott murmured, thinking about
it. "And four... five more in training. It is alarming, in some ways."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "You're telling me." Thirteen from four
in the space of two years was not all that shocking, but thirteen from
four in the space of a relative instant was enough to make you crazy.
And Jean should know.

"It's a good balance," Scott said, "the team as it stands, I mean.
Between experience and youthful enthusiasm. Although I still
occasionally feel like the biggest fake in the world giving orders to
people like Sean and Nathan." He gave her a subdued grin.

"I can understand that, yes, but you should also realize they must
trust you pretty much or they wouldn't listen. And you've always been
older and more serious than you really are."

Scott opened his mouth to reply to that - and then closed it again,
gazing at her, troubled. "Jean," he said slowly, "I could... so easily
do this for hours, you realize. There have been so many times..." His
voice wavered a little; he forced it steady and went on. "So many
times over the last two years I wished I could just sit and talk to
you, whether it was about serious things or frivolous things..."

She nodded slowly. "I'd like that, you know, always have. But that
sounds remarkably like the preamble to remembering that there are
other claims on our time."

He smiled. "Oh," he said wryly, "there are always things I should be
doing. But that's not what I meant." He didn't let go of her hand. "I
just don't want to presume..."

Her eyes brightened. "Presume away. There is nothing on earth I would
rather be doing, no where I would rather be. I've missed you." They
were such simple words but they covered so much ground.

Tension ebbed away a little more, and Scott's smile turned hesitant,
yet oddly hopeful. "Now I don't know where to start."

"Why not start at the beginning - how was your day?" It was such a
mundane question, and being able to just sit and talk with him felt
more like truly coming home than anything short of Charles' Earl Grey
had yet managed.

Comments

[x-sanfuaiyaa.livejournal.com]

*melts* I'm such a sucker for anything Scott/Jean.

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

Aww. Poor Scott and Jean. *loves them both madly*

Excellent job, you two.

[x-psylocke.livejournal.com]

She wanted to tell Scott he wasn't a
failure, but then, she also wanted to go and find Betsy Braddock and
rip her eyes out,

*blows kiss* And here I thought I wouldn't be missed. Silly me. Can't wait to see you again, Jeanie. Really. I can't.

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

-rips your eyes out-