Work Text:
09/02/2018
So I was right about you all along.
With the hateful hiss of her daughter's formerly so warm and gentle voice still ringing in her ears, Jean's mood had already dropped below the average asteroid surface inside a black hole before the latest apocalyptic mission had even truly begun. Therefore, it didn’t need a lot of effort to keep up the coldness of rejection reflected in her eyes, her warningly grinding jaw when the sick bay room door opened right again before it had even really closed, a painfully familiar twinge of orange and dark green briefly throbbing in the most hidden, locked up part of her unconsciousness that had once been reserved for the link to her husband.
Gods, when had living in this goddamn house started to come with the basic requirement of being a masochist?
"What's so hard to get about Stay the fuck away from me?"
Entirely unfazed, just like in all these hours since she'd opened her eyes again in a once more renewed shape, Logan dropped onto the same chair Hank had vacated only minutes ago, never even bothering to pluck his smoke from between his lips.
"You can send her away all you want if you insist on your own daughter to keep on despising you. But if you think I'm buying this lame performance, you might find I had a lot of patience training, doing your mutant kids babysitting job here for 15 years or so. This is not you."
She did consider arguing for a moment – there had been a time when Logan hadn’t exactly be the most emotionally perceptive resident of this mansion. But not to mention, she wouldn’t have needed to watch him from her silent retreat for all those very years every chance she'd gotten, to know, that had changed with the birth of their daughter at the latest … That beautiful, terrifying throb of affection and longing was already drumming through her soul again like a song stuck in her damn head – like some dramatic Enya hymn maybe, fuck, one day she would kill whoever had chosen that one for her last funeral –, no matter how arduously she tried to suppress it. And if she could feel it, that it was all still there, everything that had once been them and the love that had survived death and distance before, then so could he. Which also meant, just cutting that damn soul connection with a lazy wave of a mental hand as her Phoenix-enhanced gift would have allowed her to do, would have been pretty equal to sinking a bullet in Logan's brain.
Figured she'd ended up with the most loyal and stubborn feral on this whole fucking planet of all people.
If she wanted to stop hurting the man, finally freeing him of the curse that was her sheer existence, she had to ease him into it, at least if she didn’t want to make the pain even worse that she'd already caused him.
"Don't you get it, Logan? I can't break your heart again. I can't. What if Dark Phoenix is still after me badly enough to break her chains? You're gonna forgive that I have trust issues about the promises of someone who's used me to ruin your life three times already. What if I have to leave you again in a year? A month? A week? Are you really that desperate to see this planet burn or watch me die in your arms all over?"
For some reason increasingly unfathomable, Logan was smiling when she could finally bring herself to look his way.
"I’m kinda getting used to it."
The warning flashing in her eyes, maybe underlined by a spark or two, not unlike the destructive light of her ex-boyfriend's mutation, must have gotten the message across just how serious she was about wanting him to get out of this room, right now ... before she would no longer find the strength to make him.
"So am I, red. I’ve lost you to her too often already. I’m not gonna let that happen again. If it does, if I fail you again … Then there won't be a lot of me left to grieve. Then I gotta feeling, I'll join you up there in the Further for the next ride." Another of these eerie, long drags from his cigar without the slightest tremble in his fingertips. Only a few lines deeper than she could remember under his wild beard revealed that he, too, was clinging to a façade of rationality that would fall at the latest when they would inevitably both be facing the same demon again, standing together on different sides.
"Thinking about it, might be nice to rest for a change."
"Yeah, you can forget about that, James," Jean snapped, without even thinking about it really how she was addressing him as if in truth not a day had passed since they'd exchanged their vows in the woods behind this house and he'd admitted to her with an abashed grin that she was the only one he didn’t mind hearing this name from another life, another past from because she was the only one who got it.
Maybe she still did. Which was exactly why she couldn’t put him in the line of this fire once more. Not as long as this shitty world needed people like him to hold the center. "I won't lose you to her either. Not happening."
"You already did, Red." She was beginning to wish he would scream at her or at least let that grief and anger and loneliness slip through his voice that she'd been able to feel in him all these years, waiting every day in vain for their intensity to wane. All that hurt – gone up in smoke the moment she'd showed up at this place again that was so much better off without her, as if they hadn’t already been in this very situation all these years back and knew how this could only end. As if he didn’t even care.
"Ever since I knew you, every day over. She's part of you even if she's dormant forever, and you're part of me. It makes no difference whether you can keep a lid on her this time or not. I’d rather enjoy the time that is given to us, no matter how short it might be, instead of nonstop wondering if and when it will end. Having you by my side again is all that matters to me. Everything else, I had enough time to learn how to deal with. I’ve never stopped loving you, Jeannie. Not for a day." And only now, for a split second of that thick wall crumbling that his thickheaded ignorance built around all anxiety and uncertainty, his eyes closed, hiding a treacherous shine in them that Jean didn’t need feral enhanced senses for to taste it in the air.
It was this sight, so devastating in someone who had to keep such an iron grip on his deeper emotions to keep his instincts in check most of the time, that tore down her shields, pulverizing them like a Phoenix wing wrecking through a dead galaxy.
She'd never stood a chance of calling this quits from the start.
"Neither have I." Bracing herself heavily on the bed as a last bastion between them on both arms, she let the tremor of dread wash over her that Logan so easily seemed to be able to shut out, blinking away a veil before her vision that she'd never wanted more to hide against that unnaturally broad shoulder. But that one last rebellious voice in the back of her mind that had kept her in her self-chosen exile all these years was still louder, warning her that she was once more about to let her selfish wishes destroy other people's lives.
"Is that enough? Will that keep us going, Logan?"
"It has kept Noemi and me on our feet while you were up there, hanging with the other ghosts of our past," Logan replied flatly, still without a trace of blame or real anger … But he didn’t make a move yet to reach out for a touch of comfort that her weak heart wanted so badly either. Not while she still failed to signal him, she even wanted him to. "And just look what a pride she's become. Once you're done trying to bite her away too, that is."
That was a reproach now, one she fully deserved, and with the memory of that aggression on her daughter's face aimed at her a moment ago, Jean could no longer fight the sudden weakness in her knees, crouching down next to the stretcher with her head firmly buried in her arms. "I’m afraid, James, why can't you two see that? Afraid that family portrait will fall apart before we were ever really in it."
When it was finally there, just a strong, soft touch of that beloved strong hand on her back for the moment, she held on to it like a lifeline, a first sob finally breaking from her lips.
"You need to stop living your life in fear, Jeannie. Noemi never did that, not for a day. Maybe that’s why she’s stronger than you were able to at the time. That and Emma's teachings before Emma lost her marbles again. That's how she keeps Dark Phoenix at bay. And if she ever fails … Then it won’t make a difference if Dark Phoenix comes for you again, too. Then we’re all dead already. We always knew that. We knew that when we decided to have this kid. She’s done her part in protecting this world ever since. Did a pretty damn good job at it, too. And from what you're saying, she'll be in the front row again when whatever Darkholme is up to this time starts, too. So, maybe not such a bad choice we made back then after all."
There was a weird kind of tingling tugging on her lips that Jean only belatedly recognized as a shadow of a smile herself because that gesture hadn’t shown on this reconstructed face since she'd awoken yet. But it grew when she somehow could bring herself to turn her head, to look back at where Logan was cowering behind her now, still with that last bit of distance she'd demanded of him of which she suddenly was pretty sure she wanted it gone, right this second. "Phoenix knew. She told you guys, on the Scapels Moon. About our place in the wheel of fate. We just didn’t know yet at that point what it was that she'd seen."
"Now we do." At last, that almost painful looking tension fell from Logan's shoulders when Jean finally fell into his arms, defeated, surrendering to the so badly missed sensations of his beloved earthy scent in her nose, of the unshakable steadiness and safety immediately washing over her soul with as little as his arm around her, no matter how fleeting it might prove in the end.
Maybe he was right. Maybe that didn’t matter if they made the best of what they had right now.
"And just when we find out, she bring you back again. You really think that's got no meaning at all, Jeannie?"
Jean tiredly raised her shoulder against the heavy weight of his on it, then dropped it again. Contemplating that question, as long as the most recent threat hadn’t even shown their face yet, was about as moot as hoping to see one Scott Summers wearing a tee in class. "You’ll keep an eye on me though, right? Like you did back then, after the moon?"
"Two, Doctor Grey. Always."
She was pretty sure it had been more than a decade since she'd last felt something as wonderful as that slightly rough but unbelievably tender touch of a broad pair of lips on her forehead, her temple, sneaking its way down lower to where she really wanted to feel it …
Or at least would have if, after shaking off the last lamenting and sniffling her airways clean, Jean hadn’t suddenly had a very different fragrance in her nose that she'd also known for far too many years to not immediately recognize it again in a thousand, one usually regarded with a friendly, appreciative smile … if it didn’t happen to cling to her husband's clothes.
"You smell of her, you know."
"Hey, Red, you ever heard me complain when you shared a bed with your ex back before Alkali Lake? You know his aftershave is on the index, right?"
Logan good-naturedly brushed a slightly messy strand of her fringe from her eyes when she lowered her head inevitably, all that stupid jealousy and irritation and drama that had made the time right before her first death so difficult stabbing into her heart again with at least a little less hurt than back then, with so many others, so much bigger tragedies having wrecked them both ever since. Logan apparently thought so too, because his smile was genuine this time, and teasing in a way she'd missed to pieces.
It was home.
"And just for the record: You still smell of six feet under."
Finally giving in to what had been useless to fight from the start anyway, Jean overcame the last few inches between them, capturing those beautiful broad lips with hers, one hand reaching down to give Logan's firm, round behind a nice good squeeze. "So how about we both take a shower and then see what else hasn’t changed while I was gone?"
Logan nipped her lower lip in a way that had a whole different kind of warmth spread in her core this time. "See you in the bedroom in five, doc."