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Jean had learned long ago to shield her mind so that no stray thoughts crept in. In the day, it was second nature to keep her mind to herself, at least among her teammates. At night, dreaming, things were different. Asleep, Jean lacked her waking control, and she felt a kind of wanderlust that made it impossible to stay cloistered in her own dreams. Every night, Jean wandered aimlessly through her friends’ dreamscapes, never going very deep into any of them—she had that much control—but dancing and flying from the edges of one mind to another.
She had little power to influence what she saw, though sometimes she could wake someone up before a nightmare set in—or at least, she thought she had little control. Perhaps she abdicated it, while she dreamed: it was so hard to maintain control in the day, after all.
Each of her friends and allies was a world unto themselves at night: Piotr’s endless plains, the Professor’s abstract world, everything gleaming and unbound by concerns of gravity; Kurt’s wild adventures, all flying ships and swashbucklers. Even if she hadn’t known them in the day, those dreams would have made her love her friends all over again.
But Jean loved Ororo’s dreams the best.
Storm saw the world like no one else did, in waves of heat and motion layered on top of sight and sound, an awareness of the air’s currents and of the land and sea where they met it. That weather-sense was, to Jean’s mind, more like touch than any sense she had—but it was not all that much like touch, either. It was something unique to Ororo, and as precious for that as for the beauty it lent to the world. Her dreams were the same way, the land and weather that existed merging with fantastical geography and skies, and Jean could have spent a lifetime exploring them.
But that was not the only reason Jean was happy every time she found herself sharing Ororo’s dreams.
Other people dreamed of flying, sometimes, and that could be very strange to Jean, who could fly in truth. But Ororo dreamed of being a falcon, soaring endlessly, without the cape she’d once relied on to mimic wings and let her winds lift her up.
Sleeping, it seemed reasonable to accept those terms: if Ororo was a bird, then Jean must make herself one too. And if her wings sparked, if the heat that supported them was of her own making rather than one of the thermals Ororo dreamed up—well, that seemed reasonable too.
It didn’t occur to her that her fires might be frightening; nor were they. Ororo was not easily frightened, in dreams or awake. She soared to meet Jean, her feathers close to Jean’s blazing ones, but never burning. She flew and played in the heat that rose off of Jean, delighting in her strangeness as Jean did in the world her mind created.
They soared together until the dawn.
Waking, Jean remembered those shared dreams; she had no idea if Ororo did. It was something she had no idea how to ask, how to bring up.She knew Ororo did not want her to pry into her mind, and so she had not. But in dreams, she could not entirely control where she went.
She didn’t know if she could keep herself from her friends’ dreams; she knew that losing those long flights together would be a terrible grief.
And so she left the question unasked.
Until—as one might expect, in their line of work—a mission forced the matter.
They’d been fighting an illusion-caster—Jean hated villains who specialized in illusions—who could warp all the senses that he himself possessed: sight, hearing, touch, smell, even taste. Wolverine had been down from the beginning; the others hadn’t lasted long. One by one he’d tricked their teammates into incapacitating one another, until Jean desperately threw her mind into Ororo’s.
And Ororo had thrown down her shields and taken her in, sharing with her the wind-sense that had kept her from believing their enemy’s lie of enclosing stone.
Together, it had been easy enough to take down the villain’s robot henchmen—robots that weren’t Sentinels, that was a bit of an oddity—and, finally, him. He might be able to hide his mind even from Jean Grey, but he couldn’t hide his breath from Ororo Munroe.
Jean didn’t usually punch villains; her powers meant a fight seldom came to that. But this time, it’d been satisfying.
After, but before they went to find the others, Jean said, “The way you see the world… it’s beautiful. I wish…”
“I would be glad to share it with you again, tonight.” And linked as their minds still were from the battle, Jean had no doubt as to what she meant.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t just return to the mansion; the Blackbird was pretty well totaled. Jean and Ororo could fly the others home—but it would be easier with at least the shell of a plane. So they pitched a camp there, and while Rogue and the others worked on fixing what they could, they waited.
It was time to enjoy those dreams, at least. That night they soared over an alien planet—half of Jean’s making, half of Ororo’s, mapped in heat and motion, air and fire.
The next day, Jean noticed Ororo fingering one ear. The other had an earring—one of the eternal lightning bolts that it seemed everyone on the team had given her at some point—but this one was bare. She must have lost it in the battle.
Impulsively, Jean said, “I could make you another one.” Then, stumbling a bit, “Or a new pair.”
“I would like that.”
“Do you want another lightning bolt?”
“Make me whatever you want to,” Ororo said, and closed Jean’s hands around the remaining earring.
The warmth of Ororo’s touch distracted Jean from what she might have said, and she closed her eyes.
Jean didn’t have to start with metal; she could recombine molecules or even atoms as easily as move them around. But after Ororo made that gesture, she found she wanted to use nothing but this.
No red gems, then, even if they would match her broach. But something to suit Ororo, and—something to remember her by. Her fire, Ororo’s air, their shared dreams.
In the tight confines of her hands, she began to reshape the earring, divide it in two.
Thin as gossamer, stronger than steel, two graceful arcs of metal, the shafts and filaments of flight feathers. Not identical—no more than they were—but a pair.
“They’re different.”
So are we, Jean thought. Instead she said, “Do you like them?”
“Of course.” Ororo’s smile was as slow and bright as sunrise. “Would you like to fly together? I can show you the winds.”
Jean echoed her. “Of course.”