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They’re back at Jean and Misty’s place, Ororo dressed in one of the new outfits she managed to salvage from the thunderstorm. It’s clear she’s embarrassed about her outburst earlier, but she’s admirably trying to muscle past it.
Jean’s embarrassed, too. She likes Ororo, wants to get to know her better— but “getting to know her” doesn’t mean dragging her worst traumas out with telepathy. Ororo could have told her about her claustrophobia on her own terms— or not at all, ever. There was no need for Jean to dip into her mind to get that information. Jean’s better than that, she’s supposed to be better than that. It frightens her, how much her abilities can hurt people without her even trying.
It makes her wonder whether leaving the X-Men was the right decision. On the one hand, without better control of her mindreading, she could wind up recreating today’s catastrophe with Kurt or Wolverine or Piotr. But on the other hand— is she getting rustier, less precise, less controlled, the more time she spends away from her responsibilities as Marvel Girl?
Ororo shakes her out of her worrying. “Who’s that?” she asks, pointing to one of the pictures pinned to Jean’s corkboard.
Jean smiles. “Millie,” she says. “Old… friend.”
“Friend?”
“We dated for a while, a little over a year ago,” Jean explains. “It didn’t last long.”
“You still have her picture up.”
“Well, yeah, we’re still friends,” Jean says. “And I like having pictures of my friends up in my room.”
The rest of the corkboard is filled with photos of her and the X-Men as well as Misty and Colleen, Maddie, her sister Sara, the friends she made during her brief stint at Metro U, Zelda and Vera, Candy Southern.
“In fact…” Jean grabs her camera and turns it around so she can snap a pic of the two of them together. “Smile, Ororo.”
Ororo’s grin is dazzling. Jean takes the picture. Once it prints, she shakes the photo back and forth until the picture comes through.
“Perfect,” Jean says, tacking the picture to an empty spot on her corkboard.
“Can we take another one?” Ororo asks. “For my room at the mansion.”
“Of course.” Jean wraps an arm around her friend and holds the camera up. “Say cheese.”
“Why?”
“You know, I don’t really know,” Jean admits.
Living in the city, Jean finally starts to feel like she’s growing up. The thing about running with the X-Men was you were forced to grow up fast, and at the same time somehow stuck being an eternal teenager. She can’t imagine the Professor looking at her and seeing an adult, even now. (It’s a big part of, she’s sure, why Bobby and Warren and Hank all left the team.)
Growing closer with Misty is a big deal for Jean, too. She maybe had a crush on the other woman for about a day, but she quickly got over it after watching Misty interact with Colleen. What she has with Misty is special in its own way, though. She so rarely has friends that aren’t somehow attached to the X-Men.
Zelda and Vera knew her through Bobby and Hank, and Candy knew her through Warren. Misty Knight is just someone she knows. Her friend, her roommate. No six-degrees-of-Cyclops about it.
“Misty, this is my sister Sara,” Jean says, parading her sister into the apartment. She hasn’t seen Sara in ages.
“Nice to meet you,” Misty says, waving at her from the kitchen counter, where she’s been cutting up fruit almost as fast as Danny Rand can consume it. He’s a somewhat frequent presence in the apartment. Jean’s fine with it. Really.
“Hi,” Sara says, blinking. “Is— is that Iron Fist?”
“No,” the guy says through a full mouth of strawberries and cantaloupe.
“Alright, well, we gotta get going,” Jean says, ushering Sara back toward the door. “Before the restaurant gets too crowded!”
She can’t just not talk about it. When she was a kid, Jean kept Maddie’s existence a secret for about a year. And then her mutation emerged and suddenly she was keeping everybody’s secrets. The Greys’ neighbors used to invite the mailman into their bedroom. The kid across the street was stealing from his mom’s purse. Sara spent the night with a boy and told Mom and Dad she was at her friend Gracie’s.
In the strange period of time between the hospital and Xavier’s, Jean felt like she knew way too much. She also felt like she hardly knew anything at all. Everything was so loud, so confusing. She scared her parents by responding to their thoughts instead of their words, because she so often couldn’t tell the two apart.
Sara had been somewhat distant during that time. Looking back, Jean doesn’t hold it against her. After all, she knew exactly how Sara felt. Because she could hear it. Sara wasn’t scared of Jean, but scared for her.
Plus, she had her own stuff going on— college applications, growing pains, car payments. Jean turned 18 in the middle of a mission on an island full of monsters. She lost a lot the year her powers manifested— the most significant, of course, being Annie. But she still has sympathy for her sister, whose senior year of high school was filled with hospital visits and tense family meetings.
Jean had received John and Elaine Grey’s undivided attention that year. Which was great, for her, but she can remember being quietly impressed by the way Sara handled it. Never resentful, never angry, just a little more tired and quiet than normal. Jean loves her so much.
Sara’s hand hovers over Jean’s plate. “Are you gonna eat your pickle?”
“You know I’m not.”
Sara swipes it and flashes a big grin at Jean.
Jean braces herself. “You remember the last summer I went to camp?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And I met that girl Maddie.”
“Your penpal! Sure, I remember,” Sara says. “I had to buy you the stamps.”
“Right,” Jean says. “Well, there's something I never told you about Maddie.” Her sister nods, encouraging her to continue. "She, um. She's not just my friend." Sara's gaze softens. "She's actually, um. She's actually my identical twin sister? We were sort of. Separated at birth."
Sara's fork clatters to the table. Her eyes are wide and bewildered, but she doesn't say anything.
“... Sara?”
"You, um, that is not what I thought you were gonna say," Sara says finally, raking her fingers through her hair. "I mean, I thought—"
"Oh, well, that too, I'm a lesbian," Jean says. "I was gonna build up to that."
"You STARTED with the surprise twin sister?"
"Well she came first. Chronologically. I mean, I was born the way I am but also I didn't realize it until I was like 16 and—"
"I had a whole speech ready about how I love you and I wanna be a good ally," Sara says, voice strained. "Um. Okay. Okay." She looks down. "What happened to that pickle?"
"You ate it."
"Right." Sara gulps down half her glass of water. "Right. Okay. First of all— I love you, Jeannie. Thank you for trusting me with this. I've always been so proud of you for being like. Authentically yourself. And I'm so happy that you chose to share this part of yourself with me. Second of all. What the fuck do you mean, 'identical'?"
"Like this," Jean says, pointing to her own face. "But twice."
" How ?"
"Her dad— my biological father— he basically picked one of us to raise in Nebraska and left the other one at the hospital in New York."
"That's cold."
"He's… not nice." Jean sighs. "He was, um. He was hurting Maddie, and so a few years ago Scott and I went to Nebraska to get her out of there. And now she lives in Westchester. At the mansion."
"This is insane," Sara says. "I wanna think you're joking but you suck so bad at pranks."
Jean reaches into her pocket and pulls out two photographs. One is the picture she took at camp, creased and bent over time, and the other is a more recent picture of herself and Maddie lounging on the mansion grounds. She passes the pictures silently to Sara, whose eyes only get wider.
"Jesus," she says, fingertip tracing Maddie's face in the photograph. "I'm getting goosebumps."
"I was hoping one of these days you two could meet—"
"Shut up, of course I want to meet her," Sara says, still mesmerized by the pictures. "This is insane. How did you keep this quiet for so long? Why did you?"
"Well, at first I was just. Twelve and thought I would get in trouble, or that Maddie would be mad at me," Jean says. "I don't know. And then after Annie, and the Professor… I hardly saw you or Mom or Dad anymore. It just made sense to keep Maddie a secret." Sara sighs, looking down at the photos in awe. “So,” Jean says. “What's new with you?”
"NOT FAIR, Jean."
"C'mon, I want to hear about you ."
"No, because my thing is nowhere on the same level as secret twin sister.”
"C'mooooon," Jean whines, poking her in the arm. "Tell me. Tell meeee."
"Alright. Alright! I met a guy," she says. "His name's Paul."
The Rink at Rockefeller Center is crowded the day that Scott and Maddie arrive to meet up with Jean and Sara. As soon as Jean spots them she yells their names, hurrying past a hot cocoa vendor to wrap Maddie in a big hug. “Scott, you remember my sister Sara,” Jean says, hugging him and kissing him on the cheek. “Sara… this is Maddie. My sister.”
Maddie offers a little half-wave.
Sara’s staring at her. “My god,” she says. “I saw the pictures but… wow. It’s uncanny.”
“Well, that’s us,” Maddie says, spreading her arms to gesture to herself and Scott. “The uncanny X-Men.”
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Sara says, moving in for an awkward hug. “Um. Listen, I know I’m not your sister, I mean, not like I am Jean’s or Jean is yours. But I just… I’m so glad you and Jeannie found each other? And I wanted you to know that if you ever need anything, I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Maddie looks incredibly touched— and is then startled when Sara lets out a little yelp and reaches into her tote bag.
“I almost forgot, I made you these,” Sara says, yanking a pair of hand-knitted mittens. “I figured, you know, same hand size as Jean, right?”
“Um, yeah,” Maddie says, taking the mittens carefully and holding them in her hands like a priceless artifact. She blinks rapidly and sniffs before going to hug Sara again. “I love them. Thank you.” She puts them on and then turns excitedly to show them off to Scott, who nods appreciatively.
“Alright, good times, good times,” Sara says. “Shall we hit the ice?”
Maddie’s not very good at ice skating, and Sara eagerly jumps into the role of helping her learn. That leaves Scott and Jean to skate wide ovals around the rink together, catching up and admiring the towering Christmas tree above them.
“Heard Maddie’s almost logged as many hours in the air as you,” Jean says. Maddie talked Scott into teaching her to fly the Stratojet back when they were all 17, and she’s been flying ever since. “Friends in flight.”
“Yeah…” There’s something there, something in the way he looks down at his skates instead of at her, something about the way his face softens. It only confirms something Jean’s suspected for a few months now. She knows both Scott and Maddie too well, well enough that she doesn’t even need telepathy to see the sparks between them.
“You like her, don’t you?”
“You get that out of my mind?”
“Out of your smile,” Jean says.
Scott bobs his head, not disagreeing. “Is that weird?”
Jean shrugs. “It’s kind of funny, honestly.”
“Funny ha-ha or funny ‘what the hell is wrong with this guy’?” Scott asks.
Jean kicks some ice toward him. “You’re two of my favorite people in the whole world,” she says. “If you two are… y’know. I mean, it’s kind of adorable.”
Scott flushes, but he looks pleased. “I didn’t want it to be weird for you two,” he says. “Or for us two. You’re… you’re my best friend, Jean.”
“I’m going to call Bobby and tell him you said that.”
“And on an ice rink no less,” Scott tuts. “The ultimate betrayal.”
Later that night, Jean calls Ororo while Misty sits nearby snacking on popcorn and helping Jean finish off a bottle of wine. “So,” Jean says, because while she may be scrupulous enough not to read Scott and Maddie’s minds without permission, those scruples don’t extend to good old-fashioned gossip. “Scott and Maddie.”
On the other end of the line, Ororo laughs. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
“Nooo,” Jean whines.
“I will say something. The ethics of dating your friend or sister’s ex-boyfriend—”
“It’s totally fine,” Jean says. “Like, as long as no one’s sneaking around before the relationship ended, and everyone’s cool with everything, which I am… It’s totally fine! Now give me details.”
“It’s fine?” Ororo repeats, amused. “So let’s say I wanted to date Scott.”
“ ORORO .”
“Just kidding. He’s too uptight,” Ororo says. “Kurt, on the other hand—”
Jean sits straight up. “Do you have a thing for Kurt?”
“Not a big thing.”
“ Ororo ,” she says. Misty glances at her and mouths, Which one’s Kurt? “The blue guy who sometimes looks like Errol Flynn,” Jean whispers back, and then returns her attention to the phone. “’Ro, if you’re into Kurt you have to tell me.”
“Didn’t you call about Scott and Madelyne?”
“Madelyne schmadelyne, I’ve moved on,” Jean says, telekinetically tossing some popcorn in her mouth. “Tell me everything .”