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Jean gets the door open without needing a key, just uses her powers to slide the tumblers in the lock and unlatch the door. Misty was in the middle of watering the single houseplant she’s managed to keep alive, and she’d shifted into a fighting stance when she heard the lock.
But it’s just Jean Grey, miraculously back from the dead, looking scared and lost in the doorway. “Misty?” she says, eyes big and shadowed. “I… I… my stuff isn’t here. I’m— oh. Oh . I don’t live here anymore, do I?”
“No, honey,” Misty says, setting her watering can down and moving forward with her hands up, the way she might approach a wounded animal. “But that’s okay, you can come on in. It’s… it’s good to see you, Jean.”
“Hm? Oh.” She walks in, moving in stilted, halting little steps like she’s relearning how to exist in three-dimensional space. “Thanks. Yes. Thank you.”
Misty guides her to the couch and watches her worriedly for a moment. After the Fantastic Four dug Jean up from the bottom of Jamaica Bay, Jennifer told Patsy who told Dakota who told Misty. She wasn’t sure how long it would take for Jean to show up disoriented on her doorstep, but she’s not entirely surprised. “Can I get you anything? Coffee, something?”
Jean reaches out and clutches her hand. She tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach her haunted eyes. “Coffee would be great.”
“Okay.” Misty squeezes her hand and then lets go, making her way toward the kitchen. It feels like she should call someone, but she doesn’t know who. The Fantastic Four? The X-Men? Scott’s all the way in Alaska, married with a kid, and she does not want to think about how he’s going to react to the news that Jean is back.
She scoops coffee beans into her grinder, suddenly feeling guilty for getting to reunite with Jean before Scott Summers does. It’s been years— longer than it feels like, even, if she’s understanding Dakota’s jumbled game-of-telephone explanation right. The Jean that Misty visited in the hospital, hosted parties with, danced around the kitchen with— that was the Phoenix, not the original Jean Grey.
She knew the fake Jean a lot better than she knows the woman sitting on her couch right now, and that doesn’t seem fair. To either of them.
Misty lets the coffee pot do its thing while she heads back to the couch. “Is, um, is there somebody you want me to call?” she asks.
Jean takes a long time to think about her answer. Finally, she says, “Warren says he called Scott. I think Scott’s coming back to New York. And Hank, and Bobby, they’re, um…” She shudders, pulling her elbows in toward herself. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Everything’s changed and everyone got older and I was just trying to save my friends and I did , I really did, Misty, and I thought I died and that would have been fine, really, but I’m back and everyone’s looking at me like I did something awful and I don’t know what it was !”
Shouting about it is, Misty thinks, better than Jean’s quiet terror routine. She opens up her arms and Jean leans against her shoulder, lets Misty hold her. “Kinda like the worst hangover ever, huh?”
Jean lets out a watery laugh and sniffles. “She was here,” she realizes, plucking at a loose thread on the upholstery of the couch. “The Phoenix. She was here, in our home, wearing my clothes, talking to my friends.”
“... Yeah,” Misty says, because there’s no argument for that. She thought the Phoenix was Jean. Everyone did, even Charles Xavier. She’d been a perfect replica. Even now, Misty has trouble thinking of her as a “replica.” She was Jean, in so many ways. Just a different Jean from this one. Another version.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Jean says firmly. “I didn’t hurt anyone. Maybe she did, but I didn’t hurt anyone.”
“I know,” Misty says, moving a hand up and down along Jean’s back. “I know that.” The coffee pot beeps, and she disentangles herself from Jean to go pour them each a cup. The Phoenix liked it with a tiny bit of cream and a lot of sugar, and she’s really hoping Jean does, too.