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Jean shoves open the door to the diner, in too sour a mood to be graceful. She marches right up to the counter and drops the newspaper in front of the woman working the register. “Are you still looking for a waitress?” she asks, tapping the ad in the paper. “I wanted to apply. I’ve got— I bussed tables for a little bit, um, once. I’ve got… well, it’s a sushi place now and not a coffee shop anymore. But—”
The woman snorts, amused. Jean’s eyes catch on the big, bold earrings jutting out from beneath her short red hair. “Yeah, we’re still after another waitress,” she says. “I wanna be able to sleep more than ten hours a week.” She stretches her hand out. “I’m Hilda.”
“Jean.” She shakes Hilda’s hand.
“Go to the kitchen,” Hilda tells her. “Fry cook’ll grill you.”
The patties sizzling on the grill remind Jean she hasn’t had lunch yet. “So,” the fry cook says, splitting his attention between her and the burgers. “Why do you want to work here?”
“I need to get out of the house,” Jean admits. “I mean, the money, too. I can’t keep leeching off my friend forever, and I’ve sort of been unemployed for… a really long time. It’d be good to start building up my savings?”
His mouth quirks up. “Are you asking me?”
“But the main thing is I just… need some time away from my friends,” Jean says. “I just came back from… Um, I had moved away, and now I’m back. And all my high school friends and I are living together again, which is great, but sometimes it gets so overwhelming and the pressure is so intense that, hell, I might as well be back at the bottom of the— Never mind.” Jean smooths her hands over her skirt. “I just… I think it would be really good for me. To come work here. And I think I would be good at it.”
The fry cook nods, thoughtful.
She watches him reach for a stack of papers, running his fingers over the one on top before handing it to her. “Just fill out that application, name, phone number, references. I’ll pass it onto Otto and Bertha, and we can get back to you as soon as possible.”
“Thank you,” she says, clutching the paper. “I’m Jean, by the way.”
“People call me Red,” he says.
She laughs. “Might get confusing.”
“Mm?” She flips her own red hair over one shoulder. “Oh! Yeah, well, you could always just call me Matt.”
“Nice to meet you, Red. Matt.”
He smiles and then shovels some hash browns and sausage onto a plate. “Here,” he says, giving it to her. “Eat. I’ll go find you a pen.”
When the phone rings, Skids gets to it before Jean can. “Hello?” she says. The phone isn’t actually touching her ear or her hand, just held there precariously by her slippery forcefield. “Jean Munroe? Um, do you mean— ?”
“I’ve got it, it’s for me,” Jean says quickly, running down the stairs. She takes the phone from Skids. “Hello, hi, this is she.”
“You applied for the waitress position?” She doesn’t recognize the voice of the man on the phone and realizes he must be the owner of the diner, Otto.
“Mm-hm, yes.”
“You got it,” the owner says. Jean shoots a thumbs-up toward Skids, who just looks confused. “Your first shift’s tomorrow morning at 10. We can get payment sorted out then. And wear comfortable shoes.”
“Of course, I’ll be there,” Jean says. “Thank you!”
“Yep.” The man hangs up, and Jean returns the phone to its cradle feeling relieved. No more slipping out to sulk in the public library or the nearest coffee shop. Now she actually has a reason to go somewhere.
Skids is staring at her. “You’re so famous you need to use a fake name?”
“Well, when somebody else runs around using your name and picking fights with the Avengers and the X-Men,” Jean sighs, “you get a little paranoid.”
“I’m still not exactly sure how that whole Phoenix thing went down.”
“Neither am I,” Jean says. “Ask Cyclops.”
“So always remember to rinse out the coffee cups as soon as you get them back, don’t want coffee rings forming,” Hilda explains to her. “Oh, and don’t fall in love with the devastatingly handsome fry cook. He’s gorgeous, but he’s spoken for.”
“Oh,” Jean says. “Is he attractive? I hadn’t noticed—”
“Girl, a blind man would notice,” Hilda says, rolling her eyes. “He’s a good guy, though. Matt can’t help being pretty.”
Jean rushes into the diner one day five minutes late for her shift, head buzzing with worries about Warren and her sister Sara and of course, always, Scott. She ties her apron quickly and gets to work, refilling coffees for a few of the patrons.
As soon as she gets a moment to stand still, Matt sticks a plate in front of her face. It’s loaded with fresh fries and a delicious smelling burger. “Who’s this for?” she asks, taking the plate.
“You,” he says. “Could hear your stomach rumbling from the kitchen.”
“Oh.” She picks up a French fry. “Thanks.”
Maybe it’s that she’s so frazzled that day, or she’s getting sloppy. Whatever the reason, later on when Matt asks for the salt she passes it the way she would back home. That is, telekinetically.
It’s a split-second before Jean realizes what she’s done, with the canister of Morton salt hovering in midair. She drops it and it thuds on the countertop. “I can explain,” she says quickly.
Matt just reaches for the salt. “Explain what?”
Which is the moment she realizes that Matt can’t see.
Nobody said anything, and he certainly doesn’t act like she’d expect a blind man to behave. He always knows where everything is, fries eggs and cooks bacon with perfect precision. Jean’s never even seen the guy stub his toe. No, he never made eye contact with her, but she’s used to that. It never occurred to her that he might be blind.
But she realizes, watching him sprinkle salt on the fresh batch of fries, that it must be true. Because she just levitated a canister of salt right here in the kitchen and he didn’t notice.
Jean’s bad day only gets worse. On her way home from the diner, she becomes aware of a shadowy figure following her along the rooftops above. Whoever he is, he’s moving with grace and skill in a way that would impress Jean, were the guy not creeping her out. She watches him leap across alleyways and stick landings about as good as Spider-Man.
About two blocks away from Cameron Hodge’s building, Jean stops walking and looks up at her pursuer, who’s perched atop a bodega. “I know you’re there,” she calls out. “You mind telling me why you’re following me?”
There’s a pause, and then the guy drops down, swinging off a lamppost and bouncing off an awning to land in front of her. It’s that Hell’s Kitchen hero, whatshisname. Daredevil. “Just curious,” he says.
“Yeah, well, go sate that curiosity elsewhere,” Jean groans. “I’ve got enough going on. And so do you, I’m pretty sure. Didn’t you just have some guy with a flag on his face tearing up your neighborhood?”
“Didn’t you just have a sewer full of serial killers to deal with?” he retorts. “Missed one, by the way. I had to take Sabretooth down.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re X-Factor, right?” Daredevil says. “Or the X-Terminators. Same thing. I heard about you on the news, you’re that mutant who can move stuff with her mind.”
“Oh, we’re just making stuff up now?” Jean shoots back, but there’s no salvaging it. She’s been made. “Whoever you think I am, I’m not her.”
“Right.” Daredevil throws a billy club at her and she catches it reflexively, using her powers to freeze it in midair and hold it there. She doesn’t need to see under the guy’s mask to know that he looks smug as hell. Jerk.
“Well, you got me,” Jean sighs. “Dangerous mutant running around. Maybe you should call X-Factor.” She sends the billy club flying back toward Daredevil, who snatches it out of the air easily. “Are we done here?”
He looks like he’s enjoying pissing her off, like it’s a game. But he says, “Sure,” and tucks his billy club back into the pouch at his side. “Have a good night, Marvel Girl.”