Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You are slow to anger. Slow to breathe and stretch your body in a sigh that crumbles mountains and sloshes the tides against your flesh. Life skitters and bounds away from the changes and damage and you breathe on. You curl inward with laughter that echoes across millennia and croon at the pitter-patter of things moving, of things changing. Your giggling sloughs 30 miles of cliffs off into an ocean and changes the course of 8 rivers and starts 4 natural disasters. But it’s okay. You are alive and you are changing and everything tastes of life.

There has always been life on the flesh, life within the flesh. Beetles and viruses and humans and grasses that meander and build colonies and lives upon the flesh. They live and they die. And they are ever changing. The humans are sometimes interesting though their voices are unintelligible to you. Not that this perturbs you. Only one person’s voice matters to you, and it is far from you now.

It’ll return to you. Just as it always does.

And then your life is not as it always is.

The humans find the pores of your flesh and hide from the storms that protect you from the void beyond your senses. They take plants, trees and roots and rocks, and paint pictures of their stories on those walls of your gut. Their voices mean nothing, but you can feel their words on your flesh. You pause when you find the same repeated over and over. From shoreline to desert and deep in forests.

You hold your breath for them because they have painted you a name. You cannot tell what it is, only that it is yours. Something shifts behind the void, and the universe tallies up what you’re willing to give up for them.

You wonder what would require you to die for them.

Because dying for them? You would do so easily.

You hand them shining pieces of your flesh. You watch in amazement as they thrive. You pull close the ashes of gifts painted with your name. Beads and food and bones and cloth. You cherish them.

They die upon your flesh just as everything does. They wrap their dead and mourn them. They carve rocks with the names of their love, the stories of their lives, and hand them to you to remember. And you bring their dead close as they are buried or burned. You protect them. And they trust you.

The flesh is often unkind to them. The nature of your being is unkind to them. Their lives are short and nearly meaningless in the time that they last. The flesh floods and storms rage and the food dies.

Yet still the humans hand you their dead. Trust you with their names. They starve and they drown and they die in the night. Unspecial and forgotten. And still they remember you. Sing your name and return to you the gifts you gave them; glorified a dozen times over. Gifts that have belonged to their sisters and uncles and children. Life that lingers mundane and half forgotten in objects.

They call you a goddess. They call you her. And sometimes, they call you mother.

And the humans. Oh the humans.

The humans and inhumans and mutants and aliens and there’s so many WORDS for them. They fight over the words and far too often the names in story, the markers of who they were, do not seem to match the body that crumbles in your hold. They are made of secrets and lies. Falsehoods because they believe that they can fool you. They fight wars and disease and the humans die like everything else.

But they have become smart and no longer wait for gifts from you. They change a river's course and you praise their ingenuity. They plant and change their food and they die a little slower. You flinch when you feel them decide to dig for the shining part of your flesh. And that is only the beginning.

The humans, these PEOPLE, that walk your flesh, are pests unto your being. Rats that scuttle in the corners of your eyes and eat the bottoms of your feet while you sleep. They have handed you death that glitters and skewered you with gifts from your own flesh. They do not die like they should.

There is pain inside of you.

You miss the gifts and questions heavy with your name. The quiet pleas for safety and shelter and food. They asked you once and once again for tools, and you guided them to what they sought. You gave them glass and steel for tools. You showed them beautiful stone for their homes and their tombs. They handed you their dead, dressed in cloth that took lifetimes to make, a handful of human comforts to use in your care, and their name with yours. You handed them shiny things because it made your forests and plains and hills ring with happy sounds. But that was then.

In the twist of a hell, they have decided to take.

Your gifts were not enough and their work, even amongst themselves, became not enough. You clutch their dead closer. They took your gifts, your treasures, your body and stabbed it into your sides. They poured terrifying creations into your water and cut down your forests. They became rats upon you.

And you cried. You cannot relinquish their bodies.

You broke their mines and flooded their cities. You screamed to the universe and asked for help. You waited. The universe . . . the multiverse is vast and timeless. But your friend.

Surely your friend will come for you. It has always come for you.

There is dynamite shoved into cracks of your skin and water wielded by the humans that washes yourself away. Everything frays and falls apart, and the dead slip through your fingers.

And your friend comes back to you.

There are few beings that qualify as your peer. There is another planet far far off who’s tired voice sometimes reaches you. Its song slows and warps with age, and its voice mangles the words. A couple stars can hear you, a couple travelers between planes and galaxies. Quite often lonely.

The Phoenix Force has always been your friend. You barely remember a time without its excitement tangling in your thoughts. It looks to you with wide, wide eyes and gives happy shrees about how exciting your future is, about the things your life will eventually become. All of your life, in this dimension and others, it trills.

It compliments your oceans and forests and bumps against your consciousness time and again. There is so much you can do; so much to become, it whispers. And then it is gone. It is your best friend. It always returns to you. Time and again. Picks a life from your body and wanders around in it's skin and marvels at the world which you are. It laughs and pushes a cliff into a plain ,and you move it back.

Your power is slower, it reminds you, be careful with your strength. And then it is called away from you as it always is.

You do not often call for the Phoenix to come to you. It does not always hear you when you do. Some gaps never allow your voice across, and sometimes, it is kept away from you by force.

When you call this time, it hears, and it heeds. The Phoenix Force looks across you, and its wrath is almost comforting compared to the sick swoop of your gut. It lays a burning mark on your flesh, a remind of when and where its next host will be. And the Phoenix gathers you close. Heavy wings herd your consciousness together. Your friend pulls and winds your mind and your soul close. It shoves burning light between you and the flesh, and the cold stone of your body is beyond your reach.

You curl into it and wail. You cannot feel the explosions and rot of the flesh, but it aches in you and you scream. The flesh doesn’t tremble with your cries. There’s no sudden ocean storms nor quakes across the surface. No sudden space where human lives used to be. Just flesh and life on the flesh and distance from you.

Your friend’s voice is soft when it holds you. Safe and warm. You cannot stay like this, it murmurs You must be awake. There’s a hard edge of anger that is not directed at you.

It draws back, skims you over with burning eyes. I will walk this with you. I will help you make yourself a champion. it says. A host, a self to speak with you, for you. I will protect you.

You trust your friend, even though you cling just a moment longer than when it lets you go. You stretch back into yourself. Feeling the strip mine that weeps and aches with infection and regrowing forests across your flesh that itch. But it’s okay. it’s okay, it’s okay, it’ll be over soon, you whisper to yourself in a hot wind. I am alive.

And you carve yourself a human life.

His name is Julio, and when he wakes up for the first time, he screams. It is thrilling, you think, to hold him close and to sing to him. Your voice low and soft in his ears while your flesh lives on and now your champion lives also. His legs are short with youth, and he wavers when he runs, but you are absolutely delighted when his human parents take him outside. Julio promptly puts a fistful of grass and dirt in his mouth, and he is perfect.

The Phoenix snickers at you from its lurking point, chirps that the first host is always exciting. You catch glimpses now and then of how your friend nudges against its host. How it shapes her and whispers that she can do more. To try again. The Phoenix Force has a different style of care for its host than you think you do.

You sneer back at it in jest and return your attention to your boy, to your little human self who has sand in his hair and mud under his nails and 43 pebbles lined up on his window sill. Julio runs barefoot outside, and you match his gait step for step. He sleeps on your flesh under the stars beyond your skies, and you press warmth against him. You wonder if he knows who you are yet.

You want him to know.

He is perfect.

You want him to know who he is.

On all your flesh in all your ages, you have not loved a human like you love him, not since those first people trusted you with their dead and painted their names in your gut. And even then, not like this. You whisper to Julio that you love him, that he is home.

There’s 2 new pebbles in his pocket when he runs home in the morning to feed the chickens.

He loves you too, you think.

Chapter Text

You cannot control him. Not without cramming your consciousness inside Julio’s human body and soul alongside him. You cannot control his life.

The Phoenix watches you stagger beside Julio. Laughs when you rattle doorframes in annoyance that he is learning. And learning by making MISTAKES.

You cannot control him, it reminds you, nor should you.

It is right. Like usual. The irritating fuckforce.

So you walk and you listen and you learn.

Through him, you learn the words of humans, their ways, and you are appalled.

You cannot control that his family uses your gifts to make things which kill other humans. You cannot control or affect the drop of fear in Julio’s gut when that device is pointed at him, when it is given to him. You learn fear in so many flavors, and it is new. It hurts.

You pull yourself back into your body, still tethered to you champion, but aware of the things about yourself. You let your hands fuzz their edges until they’re just swamps again, until your soul is a spinning ball of iron deep inside the flesh. Until you are almost not Julio.

You see the differences in the humans. See their red blood and names carved for you to hold. Heavy bodies with only names to be returned to you. You cradle them and they sleep. You cry.
This far from Julio, the human words make no sense. This deep in your body, pain blisters. You miss him.

It is okay, the Phoenix chirps. It presses fire against your side, and you welcome the burn. You are okay. Your champion is alive! My champion is alive! We shall have fun in these human bodies! We will save people with these bodies! It will be good. Just wait; just wait, it chuffs. Just wait.

You do not wait. How can you wait? How can the Phoenix Force dare to ask you to wait when suddenly a day is much more than just the time it takes for a specific cliffside to go from light to dark and back to light? Julio fidgets, and you move in time with him.

You shudder and shake in your body. Mines collapse and grass grows and the dead turn from flesh to dust to dirt. There is too much time and yet not enough. You bounce your feet in time with Julio’s running and feel atmosphere whistling through fingertips when he jumps. It’s exhilarating. It’s tiring.

You have never slept so well. And even in your sleep, you protect Julio.

But you cannot save him, not from everything.

There are laws that cannot be broken. Laws you’d never dare to break. Some that you have seen the Phoenix brush with wingtip and those that it’s swallowed down without hesitation. But even this daring, there exist laws to bind both you and the Phoenix. Things that would devour you given the chance and to snuff out the Phoenix’s light.

You find it better that the laws be broken as exceptions.

So you leave him in control of his hands.

Julio falls down the stairs in a race with his cousins and breaks a wrist. You hold your own body and try to imagine where a wrist might be on your flesh but come up blank.

You scream when you look through his eyes and see his father killed by the same machine other humans have used your gifts to make. His father is given to you. A rock carved with his name, and the heat of your sun on the space where he is. You close a fist around him, vow to hold him.

There’s change in the air that reminds you of those promises you made to the dead.

Reminds you to stay aware.

You miss when the Phoenix leaves you to hang around its host’s shoulders.

You are too busy.

Julio knows about you when you swallow part of Guadalajara and rattle the rest of it to pieces. Julio is afraid. You are afraid.

And his boots are on the hard packed dirt with his hands stretched out towards you. Begging. Pleading with you to stop. To please please please stop.

He’s crying.

It feels like screaming.

You don’t know what’s happening, and you aren’t in control any more.

He’s part of you. He can feel at least that much, you think. There’s panic sticky in his ribs and it builds and builds and it’s raw like subduction. For a moment, it was your panic and your body shook in time with his. He gasped for air, and you mirrored.

And part of the city fell through your flesh.

You pull far back, aftershocks in your body and an acrid fear from Julio.

It’s not supposed to be like this.

It’s not

You’re not

He

He isn’t supposed to be afraid of you.

But he is.

When Julio is taken from his human mother, you push close to him. He knows. Your name is unfamiliar. The tangled way it is his is foreign to him. But there is no way that he cannot feel the heavy reassurance you lay on his shoulders. The strength you lend him. He knows. But it is very little.

Julio does not know how much of you he is made from. What you would do if he asked. You made him, yes. You sculpted the idea of your champion, but in every way he is still human, still Julio. Still your boy with pebbles and dirt and bare feet. But, there is no still in his relationship with you. He knows about you, but Julio does not know you.

Not yet at least.

Still, you hang close around him. His body shakes and try as you might, yours does also. While these strangers hold him and talk about him like a weapon, a thing to harm people with, you and he try to shove the shaking back and away.

Hide from them how quickly the flesh, the . . . ground, responds.

Julio’s body goes stiff and the rattles bang around inside of him.

Meanwhile you shove yours to the other side of your flesh and cringe at the mudslide in Ukraine.

You have much to learn.

Julio is small for the power he has, for the power you have, and neither of you know how to manage it.

So you rattle.

There’s floods of weird and exciting emotions, and you don’t know what you’re feeling and what he’s feeling.

So you shake.

And you doubt.

Not Julio, never Julio. This was your choice.

But you doubt.

You sift through the mud in Ukraine and take note of bodies. You shift so that when the rains and winds come, they will be found. You doubt that you can ever tame your flesh enough to not destroy everything in the process.

You scoop Guadalajara in one hand and make note of the dead who have unmarked stones made of rubble. You doubt that you can forgive yourself.

The Phoenix had taught you to do this. To guide a human champion. To teach someone to speak for you.

You do not doubt that the Phoenix has suffered through all of this and more.

It is much different than you’d have thought.

It is not a pleasant feeling.

Hanging close around Julio’s shoulders is almost second nature by the time he meets Cable. The schooling has helped. The friendships and tutelage ease the stress of everything. You are less likely to hurt him, and he is more precise in what he asks of you.

The X-Men treat his connection to you like a powerful mutation. You offer no correction, and neither does Julio. It is somewhat easier to be close, to walk with him like you are him.

You thought you’d seen Phoenix once or twice,

But Jean Grey is just a very powerful telepath.

And you move on.

Julio does not like Cable and you cannot fault him for this. Cable walks on the flesh, and his footprints itch. There’s something innately wrong about him that makes you want to grab Julio’s wrists and clap his hands together, let him pull the flesh together in a slap with Cable in the middle.

He commands Julio’s team and grates on your nerves.

His telepathy scrapes against Julio’s mind and against you.

You flip him off and drag up a wall of dirt and anger around Julio’s mind. You snarl at him with Julio’s face and half dare him to test you. Nobody notices the difference. Not even Julio.

Julio still shakes. Some of it is his communication back and forth with you, but not all. He trembles and looks too long at windows. Thoughts flash at you, gone in an instant but leaving a scar nonetheless.

You notice him watching Shatterstar, another person out of time, someone who walks so differently and is immediately identifiable. You grin at Shatterstar and his off jokes. You support his footsteps and try to help him land well.

He flinches in a restrained way that reminds you of children who died of exposure when they flee danger.

He’s not yours. But you’ll be destroyed if you’re not going to welcome him.

There’s a voice in the back of your mind that feels like fire and asks you what the difference is between Shatterstar and Cable. You elect to ignore the voice and continue on your petty dislike of Cable.

You’re beginning to hate time travel.

Chapter Text

Time passes. Life ends and returns and everything you’ve ever taken for average is turned on its head.

The mutants suck.

You love them. They’re exciting. They have incredible abilities. Absolutely thrilling.

They also suck.

And are bitter drama bitches.

Who are hunted.

And everything is a mess.

You learn, through trial and successes, about how everything occurs in the world and existence bound by your flesh. You learn that all things come at a cost, and the cost of your champion is that he will never understand the depth of your connection. On his end at least.

On your end, the cost is to watch him hate himself just as deeply as you love yourself, as you love him.

You watch him. You love him.

When he asks you to move mountains, you do.

When you ask him to stand, he tries, and you lend him the strength.

Julio flees and you trace his steps. Change does not come easily. Julio accepts change slowly. You want him to be happy. Much stands in the way of that.

Fate has other plans, and there are laws which cannot be broken.

You watch the mutants be killed. You feel the Phoenix tremble against your side as it is hunted. It cries when you ask about the other timelines. You ask about Jean Grey and are given radio silence.

The Phoenix sticks close for a time, quiet and waiting, unwilling to give insight to its change in behavior and voice. You wait, and you turn your attention back to now, while the Phoenix slips away again.

What have you gotten yourself into?

For a moment, Julio takes Shatterstar to Mexico. You watch them travel lazily across flesh. It is better they drive than the popping teleportation that Shatterstar can do sometimes. You know that Julio carries his home in his chest. It is about time that Julio brought Shatterstar here.

There is and has always been a physicality to having a body. To knowing pain that bleeds and fear that freezes limbs and joy that urges you to jump with hands overhead. The way the Phoenix spoke of having a host, was nothing like this. You wouldn’t trade it for anything though.

Julio learns and fumbles with matching rhythms to other people. To relate and be open. To belong in the community the way he’s meant to and comfortable doing so. You feel that you are intruding. It has been a long time since you wondered how well he knew you. You don’t quite have an answer.

But Julio and Shatterstar sit on the hood of a truck and watch a lightning storm on the Arizona border. Shatterstar’s head is on Julio’s shoulder. A lot of times, it is the other way around, with Julio sagging into his side and sleep creeping around both of them on a broken couch. But this is the desert and the storm glows bright in the setting sun.

Shatterstar turns his head, nose almost against Julio’s collarbone and his lips against his shoulder. The hair on the back of Julio’s neck prickles in dread that someone might see. But there is no one. No team of superpowered humans. No mindreaders or futuremen. Just you and Julio and Shatterstar.
Shatterstar doesn’t move, eyes open and breath held. You are reminded again of how alien he is compared to the other humans.

Julio presses the edge of his cheek against the top of Shatterstar’s head before rolling his shoulders, urging the other man to sit up. Even though he doesn’t really want that. You’re hollow and annoyed, but you cheer a bit when Shatterstar sits up in a way that bumps his nose against Julio’s neck and his jaw, before the crackling memory of touch drags you out of that small victory. It feels like the first hits of a pickaxe now that Julio and Shatterstar aren’t in contact. You cannot tell if it’s your emotions or Julio’s, but you miss the Phoenix force more than you ever have.

You wonder if this is disappointment or regret.

Shatterstar continues pushing. You are not sure what has changed, nor when he chose to change. Perhaps it is only the fact that Julio and Shatterstar are peers and equals; something that’s only clear now that it is only them. But Shatterstar no longer takes Julio’s rejections and hesitations as unshakeable, permanent rules. You laugh that he ever thought anything with Julio was ever unshakeable.

It’s a conditioning that you see sharper and sharper, the more he falls in sync with Julio. The more human he is allowed to become. And you would happily drop a mountain range and an ocean upon whomever built those original responses in him. You plot of these things, but Shatterstar just pushes and tries again.

You have yet to feel another lingering kiss on Julio’s shoulder, but Shatterstar almost often bumps his face against Julio’s neck, nose to throat and forehead against jaw. You are not a mindreader, but you share space with Julio. There’s a great many thoughts and feelings that you leave untouched, but sometimes you eavesdrop on plotting ways to pull Shatterstar close and kiss him breathless or until he laughs. You love Shatterstar’s laugh.

It is a marching band, trained and controlled and melodious. Something rare if you don’t know how to find it, and something thrilling to be a part of. He makes Julio laugh plenty, and you are constantly seeking to return the favor.

You let them be their own people for most of this adventure.

It’s nice to rest.

If you could speak human words that Julio would understand, you would tell him that he is big. That he is a giant upon this world. Julio is shorter than so many mutants, and his muscles rope and cord like a runner instead of looking like strength and heft. And still he does not see it.

You bring a thunderstorm across your flesh, and Julio and Shatterstar spend the night pressed close and tangled in the bench seat of the cab. Shatterstar makes himself small when it is just them, and you wonder if he knows and trusts your strength. Julio pulls him closer, tucking arms and face against Julio's chest and putting himself between Shatterstar and danger.

It is the one inkling that you have that Julio might fully understand who he is. That with his arms full of a man made of stardust and the future and brainwashed in violence, that you think Julio knows. You are not a weight on his shoulders; you are his friend who has his back, his army to call upon, himself.

It clicks for you during this time, that you would imagine your flesh’s heart here. And it is no coincidence that you urged Julio to bring Shatterstar here.

Julio is asleep, and then he is gone.

You freeze. You check again.

And Julio is still gone.

He is nowhere upon the flesh, and you cannot sense him anywhere. You drag your soul as close to the surface as you dare; concrete and asphalt closer than glue dried on skin and you look for Julio. There's hundreds of thousands of nameless faces and people that you do not recognize that walk upon your flesh, and the humans all feel the same whether they are sitting in the dirt of India or Argentina or Niger or Oklahoma or Greece. It all feels the same and none of the humans feels familiar.

You'd never even considered needing to know what Julio's face looked like.

There are humans that dig their fingers into the flesh and with yourself so close to it, its raw and violating in a way you can't explain. You want to open sinkholes underneath all of the humans touching you. It's wrong; it's so wrong. You can feel every footstep and fall and automobile and digging project. And you are too much. And you want to be sick.

But you must find Julio.

If you can find Julio, it'll make sense.

If you find Julio, there's an explanation.

You are trapped in the flesh without words or a voice or movement and you are suffocating. You have no lungs and no need to breathe but the very idea that you cannot is crushing. You sprint and drag yourself through the flesh, checking every crevice, rereading every stone, pinging everything, looking for the frequency that talks back to you, for the frequency that IS you.

The Phoenix force hadn't told you it would be like this. It has lost so many hosts, and it hadn’t thought to give you any warning. It hadn't said you'd feel your soul shoved away because you alone are not enough to keep a body running. You wonder what else the Phoenix hasn’t told you.

If you were human, maybe, you would curl small. Place your hands over your mouth and bite at the fingers of that body like you've seen Shatterstar do. But you are in the flesh and it is too painful to draw close and together so you keep yourself spread thin under every continent and city and street. In your panic you have forgotten where he was last you saw, so now you must be ready for when they give him back to you. For when they dig a hole in your flesh to be his home and write Julio's name into you for safe keeping.

You cannot cry tears while you wait and the heaving sensation of your sobs isn't breathing but is storms battering coasts and flatlands while you let the oceans claim space. You don’t breathe or move like humans do but your body trembles and you whisper apologies to the humans and animals and plants that live and die as you mourn.

You are trembling and making thin sliding groans while you whisper scream for your friend.

Everything is falling apart; you most of all.

You miss Julio.

Chapter Text

The mutants give you their names.

One of the first ones was the language boy who you were certain could hear how Amara could convince the flesh that she was part of it. He is buried far from the school. They buried his alien friend with him, even though the alien is not written on the stone. Even though the alien is long since gone.

You were mistaken when you looked at Jean Grey with Julio’s eyes, and her body has slipped from your protection more than once.

You will do better. The mutants deserve that much at least.

You are still spread thin, still waiting and watching when they begin to dig in the grass behind the mansion. So many are given back to you.

You run what might have been fingertips over the etchings in the stones. You’ve held pencils and shadowed Julio when he scrawled his name enough to know what it looks like. Even if you didn’t. You’re certain you’d recognize his body however they chose to hand it back to you.

There are so many holes in your flesh behind the mutant school. It aches.

You give them their privacy.

You will protect the dead afterwards.

Their bodies are incomplete.

That revelation is jarring in and of itself.

To an extent, you know when life is lost upon the flesh. Sometimes you know how. Sometimes you tell them it’s okay.

Yet this has blindsided you.

You drag yourself close and small around the mutant school, settle the fresh gravedirt, and you try to focus enough to understand. It still feels like too much. The sorrow soaked grass where the services had taken place doesn't want you near.

No Julio to have attended and translated the words for you.

So you make due with the fragments of bone and burned human flesh. You turn them over and cringe at the taste of dynamite and gasoline. Mourn how they are tainted with human warped metals.

And their powers are gone.

You freeze and nudge against the bodies again.

Their powers are gone.

And the knowledge of what has happened batters you worse than any meteor or solar storm.

Everything that you are aches.

You howl, and it doesn’t feel like your voice. You poke at the traces of magic in the dead mutants, murmuring comfort to still bodies that you are trying to fix this. That they will not be forgotten. That they are special, and you will protect them.

There’s red magic tangled in their identities, whispered behind their names. It burns and spells a name for you, even if you cannot read it.

When you get Julio back, because you WILL get him back, you will show him this name and ask that you rattle them or capsize them in your flesh. Or anything.

There’s a mean part of you that’s happy to not find Julio’s name nor body among these dead.

It is not as comforting as it should be.

The Phoenix comes back to you, even though you didn’t ask. It finds you curled up deep towards the core of your being, nothing but the heavy swoosh of molten metal to be heard. There’s no humans. No inhumans. No mutants. No dead.

Just you.

And now the Phoenix force.

Why didn’t you warn me? you wail. Why does it have to hurt like this?

Because it must. The words are soft and still. A single star in your sky. The Phoenix sits beside you. You do not invite it to touch you; it does not try to.

I failed your host, you whisper. I couldn't hold her.

I failed you hangs unspoken between the two of you.

The Phoenix makes a click of disagreement. There's a nebulous objection at the forefront of your thoughts. Shaking, you let it into your mind. Let it close again. Let it see the broken places it has seen so many many times before.

With little preamble, the Phoenix settles in a nest of tenderness you hold only for it. It nudges your mind again and spins memories that taste the same as your ones of Julio.

There's wind against your hand when you ride in an automobile.

Looking in the mirror and the girl smiling back is missing both her bottom teeth.

Swinging in the twilight with a boy whose smile you know reaches his eyes even though you cannot see it.

There's a quiet place inside that boy's mind and it makes the telepathy a little easier.

There's a girl who smiles like it's the last instance of happiness before her world comes crashing down and the thrill of living beside her.

And finally a stillness surrounded by the earth.

And you know you failed to hold her.

You reach out and guide the phoenix's hand over the stone they gave you in contract to hold Jean Grey.

There's a thin noise between you.

The Phoenix presses its face against you, the idea of you, that nest only for it, and hums in words older than you. Older than the star you orbit.

Possibly.

Possibly older than Phoenix.

And the words sing like forgiveness and apology. They rise and fall and tangle your sadness up in a neat little package.

They are only human.

Something you are not and never really have been.

You have made them immortal in your memories.

Inevitably they will return to you.

You nudge against the phoenix and ask it what looks like. How it sees itself outside of a host. It chuckles and whispers of a huge bird of fire, half a galaxy across and taller than a star system with thrice as many planets as yours.

You hum at its words, and your soul feels hollow and thin. Maybe, just, just maybe. You ask the phoenix what it might see itself as if it were a human, not a host, just a human. Maybe if the phoenix will teach you how to drag up an illusion of a body, you can walk enough to find Julio.

Maybe it will fill you up enough to recover.

There’s a long moment, and even though time means very little to you so far from the surface and happenings of days, the moment drags on. Phoenix shudders and leans heavy against your consciousness before spinning itself into a human shape.

There’s vibrant red hair that trails off and never lies still. The phoenix wears its face stern, but mischief colors the smile. You’ve seen someone like it a thousand times; you’ve never seen a human like this. There’s an illusion of space when the phoenix walks back towards you, and you might’ve mistaken it for a human woman.

Phoenix leans in close to you and smiles sharper. And it is nothing like humans. Psyonic energy leaks from the corners of its eyes and spills from it mouth when it speaks. When it speaks there’s no words that could be heard with human ears, just thoughts that don’t feel like your own.

It trembles under the strain of the illusion. Flares of fire and light arc and leap across the phoenix, and your friend tries to reign its power close to its body. You reach what might’ve been hands out against its face, and the phoenix dissipates under your touch.

There’s a laugh/cough/cry before your friend curls close around your thoughts, bleeding into the gaps of your identity. You are hollow and the phoenix is messy and together you feel almost right.

You press atmosphere against the phoenix’s wounds that you can cover, and in return it throws words in the spaces that it can’t fill any other way.

You will be okay. I will be okay. We will get through this just as we have every thing else. We are STILL whole. The phoenix’s voice shudders against you, and for the first time, you suspect that it is lying to you.

You leave it be, and you sleep a fitful rest in the warmth.