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The bus is quiet, the sun sinking behind the trees as Jean looks out the window. She wasn’t sure where she was going to go, she just knew that she couldn’t stay in the city. Maybe she’d go south. Her and Sara had always talked about that, going to see the sights in New Orleans, visiting the beach in Florida.
Jean closes her eyes and lets out a breath, her forehead resting against the window. She’s so exhausted. For the past week, she’s been so intent on making sure Peter stays alive that even when she’d slept, she’d set an alarm to wake her up periodically to check on him. But it had been important.
Peter Parker. There’s so much in her head about him, memories he has, love he feels, friendships, MJ. Jean shakes her head, trying to get rid of it. But she can’t. Something about it sticks with her.
Maybe it’s her new powers. Maybe it’s the trauma. She doesn’t know but she hates it. Hates all of it. Hates humanity.
Or at least, she wishes she did.
Jean yawns and winces as she thinks of everything she’d done. She’d do it again if it meant she could find her sister. The idea that she’s gone still hasn’t fully set in her mind. How could it be that she’d never see her sister again? Never feel her hug? Never eat ice cream together, never sit on a ratty blanket in the park and pretend they had a normal life, never hold hands and promise that nobody could ever tear them apart.
Breathe, she reminds herself as tears slip slowly down her cheeks. Breathe. Deep breaths.
Calmness slowly slides through her body as she focuses on breathing, on not causing a scene.
Breathe.
Jean feels her body getting heavy with pure exhaustion.
And then she’s aware of the room. She looks around. The glass. The poor imitation of a girl’s bedroom. The little touches that they’d given her sister to try to act as if they weren’t torturing her but working with her.
“Jean!”
Jean looks around, her body trembling. That chair. Sara. Her body is fuzzy, blurred. Tears streak down Jean’s cheeks and she shakes her head. She has to get to Sara, has to help her, has to get her sister free. But she’s trapped, can’t move from the spot that she stands. She watches as Sara’s body jerks, as blood runs down from her nose, from her eyes. As she sobs and begs.
Had she seen it? In that man’s mind? Or was it her imagination? Was this dream a memory or just a dream?
Breathe, she tells herself. Breathe.
And she does. Until she feels grass underneath her toes, until she feels a light breeze and the sun shines down on her.
Her sister is gone but Jean lets out a slow breath.
This is her place. A field, trees, flowers, the sun, the clouds. Jean bites her lip as she looks around. Her cheeks are still wet but she wipes them away, sits down slowly in the grass, tries to feel it. Her therapist, the one that two foster families ago had taken her to, had tried to give her coping mechanisms. She’d been screaming every night with nightmares of that moment, begging to be reunited with her sister. But there were no foster families willing to take two troubled girls.
But her therapist had told her to try new coping mechanisms. Had tried to help her sleep better. And Jean had managed it.
“I was hoping to see you.”
Jean turns her head. The boy who appears in her dreams is just as beautiful as she remembers him. Her therapist had told her that it was okay to have recurring dreams, that it was okay to make herself feel safe, that she had to do what she had to do.
The first time she’d seen him, she’d been unsure. He’d felt so real, had talked like a person, had smiled shyly in a way that felt so exceptionally human. Now, years later, he still feels the same way. Like the only safe place that Jean has left. If only he wasn’t just something her traumatized mind had made up to make her dreams feel nicer.
His eyes glow red, the same as they always do, although somehow she just knows that he has brown eyes underneath. Just how she knows that he has an older brother, that he grew up in foster homes. Just like she’s been told that he has a force that comes out of his eyes. What makes him different. Like her. Her therapist had told her she’d created somebody safe. Someone who understood her loneliness, someone who understood her.
Her perfect boy. It makes her think of Peter and MJ, the longing he felt for her, the urge to protect her. Jean looks away from Scott, the name she’s given her dream creation, as she remembers. It had almost embarrassed her, to feel the pure emotion that Peter had felt. She had tried to pretend the longing was simply his when she’d felt it herself. The desire to be protected, wanted, loved that way. Even if MJ didn’t care about him in that moment, he’d have died a thousand times over to protect her.
Jean swallows as she looks up at Scott again. “I’ve had a long few days,” she says conversationally.
It has always felt more natural to simply talk to him as if he’s not a part of her subconscious. It’s always made her feel less alone.
An imaginary friend, Sara had called him once. But when she’d seen how serious that Jean was, she’d backtracked, apologized.
Maybe it was a good description but it didn’t feel like enough. Her imaginary soulmate, perhaps.
The boy nods slowly as he moves to sit next to her. Her brow furrows. There’s something… different about him this time. She can’t quite put her finger on it. Maybe it’s her new trauma. Maybe that’s what her therapist would’ve said.
“I noticed,” he says as he looks over at her. Maybe it’s a new awareness in his eyes, something almost hesitant as he looks at her. “You haven’t been dreaming lately.”
Jean sighs and looks away from him. “I’ve been…” she hesitates. He should know but he often asks her questions, seems to want to know about her. Her therapist had told her that if Jean couldn’t talk to her then she could try to work through things in her dreams. So Jean had. She’d told him everything, things she’d never admit in the day. And he’d told her things too.
Or… her subconscious had come up with things for him to tell her.
“You don’t have to say,” he says and so she doesn’t.
The silence stretches. It doesn’t feel unnatural but warm and comforting. Safe. Jean feels tears fill her eyes again, stinging, hurting. Pain.
Scott looks over at her, his gaze searching. She doesn’t know what he’s looking for, though. Doesn’t know what he’s seeing. “I’m here,” he finally says and reaches out, resting a hand on top of hers.
The floodgates burst and Jean suddenly can’t breathe, great, gasping sobs shaking her body. Scott moves in a heartbeat, wrapping her up in strong arms, pulling her close. She hates this, hates the weakness, hates somebody seeing her this way.
She thinks of everybody she jumped through. Thinks of Sara, of Peter Parker, of MJ. Thinks of Frank Castle and the loss that shaped his life, the blonde woman he had locked behind a wall in his mind. She thinks of Scott Summers, created in her mind to be her safe place.
And she lets him be her safe place, burying her face in his chest and just crying.
“She’s dead,” Jean whispers and Scott makes a low sound in his throat, his hold on her tightening.
He knows about Sara. She’d told him she was going to try to find Sara, told him that she’d do anything. And she had. But it doesn’t feel good. Nothing about it feels good. She’d ruined people’s lives and some of them deserved it but some of them hadn’t. And now that the adrenaline is gone, now that she’s resting and safe and warm in her dream’s arms, she hates it.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” That’s all he can say. There’s nothing to say. Nothing that will make it okay. But he holds her and it’s maybe feeling better for just a moment. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Jean cries until she can’t cry anymore, until his shirt is wet and her body trembles with pure emotional exhaustion. It shouldn’t feel like this in a dream but it does. With Scott, it always has. There’s something about his presence, about the way he holds her hand, holds her, the way he caresses her cheek and looks in her eyes and cares for her.
When she’s done crying, she lifts her head and he cups her cheek, looking into her eyes with his own glowing ones.
“What?” she asks quietly, trying to figure out what exactly is causing the slight hesitation on his features.
Maybe it’s habit at this point, maybe it’s her newfound powers and the way she can’t control it completely. But she pushes, just a little bit. It’s ridiculous. He’s nothing more than a dream. He’s not real, doesn’t feel, doesn’t have thoughts. But she pushes and suddenly she can see it.
Scott stares at a computer screen, his hands clenched into fists at his side. The news is on, an image of her flashing on the split screen, destruction at Damage Control on the other side. There’s a man next to him sitting. She can feel the tension rolling off his body. “That’s her. The girl. From… my dreams.”
“I suspected,” the man says. His voice is warm, comforting, but… serious. The man looks up at Scott with bright blue eyes, a quiet sigh leaving his lips. “She needs help.”
Is it real? The concern that she feels? Is it his? Hers?
Jean jerks as she pushes herself back into her own mind, eyes wide. “What?”
Scott’s face has paled, just slightly. If she wasn’t watching him so closely she might not have noticed. “I was going to tell you. You’ve never… done that before. Pushed into my mind. I thought I had time to say it.”
“What’s going on?” Jean asks as she looks around. What is going on? Where is she? She scrambles to stand abruptly. It’s her dream, she knows it is. The same dream she’s been having since she was a little girl and first felt the intricate depths of somebody’s mind like it was her own. It’s not real.
It’s the same but different. And she realizes what’s different suddenly about Scott. His body. His frame. His… aura. He’s more solid than he normally is. He doesn’t look, feel, like a dream anymore.
“I’m not dreaming,” Scott says softly, voice slow, the way her therapists have always spoken to her. She clenches her jaw, her fists clenching at her sides. “I didn’t realize- I thought you were a dream. For years, I thought you were a dream. But then… I saw you on the news.”
Jean feels tears fill her eyes again as she looks around. Wake up, she tells herself. Not safe. Scott holds out a hand to her but she slaps it away, her nails digging into her palms as she desperately tries to wake herself. “Don’t! You- Get out of my head!”
“I was young when I first dreamed about you,” Scott says quickly, as if he’s trying to explain something to her. As if she’s supposed to listen and believe him. “I didn’t know you were real. I thought you were just a dream. Just this girl I dreamed up to play with and listen to me in my dream. And we grew up and I got to know you. But all along, I promise, I didn’t know you were real too.”
Her vision blurs but it’s tears, not the edges of her dream softening. Please wake up. She can’t. There’s no way.
“How- Why? I don’t understand!” she screams.
Maybe it’s actually just a dream. Maybe it’s not real. Maybe it’s the trauma or somebody messing with her. Peter Parker. Frank Castle. Damage Control.
Did they have her again? Is she back in that glass room? She’ll die. She’ll die!
She’ll kill them all.
“My… mentor,” Scott says quickly, concern and fear and is it real? What’s real? What isn’t? His mentor. He’s talked about the man who took him in when Scott had been lost, when Scott had nowhere to go. The kind of man who helped those who needed it. The kind of person that Jean had started doubting she’d ever meet. “He helped me find you, connect with you even though I’m not dreaming. I needed to…”
“To what?” she asks sharply. To find her? To experiment on her? Will he give her up to the government?
Is he even real? Is she? Is her mind fractured? The way Sara’s mind obviously broke.
“To see you. To make sure you were okay.”
Jean stills as she turns to look at him, her jaw working, her head shaking. Wake up, she begs herself. But she can’t. She’s stuck. Trapped.
Real? Not?
“Who are you?” Jean finally asks.
“Scott Summers. I live in New York, the same as you,” Scott whispers. And Jean breathes out, grits her teeth. “I’m still the same person. I just… am real. The same as you. I saw it all on the news. And I knew that you… that you were real. I didn’t think you were, Jean. I thought… I made you up. But I didn’t. And I need to… We want to… help you. You’re alone.”
Jean thinks of Peter Parker, thinks of the long months he spent alone. Thinks of him dreaming about MJ. In the hours she’d spent in his mind over this week, she’d learned so much about him. Had learned about his dreams and his hopes and his fears. She’d felt the loneliness, felt the warm press of his friend’s bodies against his own after his aunt had passed away, felt the comfort of friends, of having somebody at your back, always.
“Let me go. I want to wake up,” Jean says clearly, firmly. She can’t do this. She can’t handle this.
Scott opens and then closes his mouth as he looks at her. And then he takes another step forward, ignoring the way that she tenses. “I just… I need you to trust me, okay?” Scott whispers and he’s still hiding something. Still looking at her like he’s a liar, like he’s going to break her, like she’s fragile and he wants to fix her. Like the boy that she’s missed when she’s not dreaming. “I swear, I’m the same Scott I’ve always been.”
The dream finally starts to blur a little, a pinkish glow appearing around the edges of the grass.
“What are you talking about?” Jean asks coldly, wrapping her arms around herself. His body twitches, as if he’s going to move towards her again, as if he’s going to hold her, the way he so often has. She hates the way she wants to let him, wants to press close and pretend that she hasn’t realized she’s bared her soul to an actual person instead of a figment of her imagination.
Scott looks around, seeing the way the edges blur. His gaze turns panicked as he reaches out, his fingers just brushing along her shoulder. She shivers and so does he, the touch feeling so different now that she knows he’s real.
Is he? Is she? Is this?
“Trust me.”
Jean’s eyes snap open as the bus comes to a stop, her heart pounding in her chest. She stands abruptly, bumping her head, looking around sharply.
Real? It feels real. No sound waves coming at her. She tentatively jumps to the man two rows in front of her, to the woman asleep in the front row, to a man getting off the bus next to them. It feels real, it feels okay. She snaps back to her own body, biting her lip.
Was he real? Or was that just her subconscious? Her skin feels itchy, her body shaky. Her mind feels shattered.
She swallows, licks her lips, and grabs her small backpack, moves to get off the bus. She’ll have to get on another bus. She’ll have to do anything but this. Where can she go? Where is she safe?
Nowhere feels safe. She glances around, not even sure where she is. Westchester County, New York, a sign says.
Fine. She can go further. She looks around, tries to spot a bus going further south. Easy enough to get onto another bus. She’ll get a coffee first, keep herself awake so that she doesn’t risk dealing with that again. She doesn’t want to know whether that boy is real or not real. She just wants to be safe.
And right now, he doesn’t feel that safe. Not the way he always has. And that feels more tragic than the rest of her week has felt.
Jean goes to a little coffee shop inside the terminal and sits down at one of the tables. It’s an easy jump into one of the employee’s mind, making a strong coffee for herself. The employee brings it to the table for her and Jean snaps back, heading out to look at the schedule. She sips the coffee, a little too much sugar but the older woman’s hands had been shaky, and decides where to go.
“Jean Grey?”
Jean stiffens, wondering if somebody has really found her. From the wanted poster? She turns slowly, hands tight around her coffee cup, preparing to jump into whoever it is.
When she turns around, though, the coffee cup slips from her hand, splashing everywhere.
His eyes still look red but that must be the ruby-tinted glasses he’s wearing. The man from the memory in a dream is actually in a wheelchair, a few feet back. Letting Scott approach her.
She blinks, several times. She has to be dreaming. Hallucinating. Something’s happening. Something’s wrong. Experimentation. Psychics. Telepathy.
Scott Summers. Peter Parker.
Jean lets out a breath. “You’re not real.”
“I am,” Scott says and he looks younger in the real world. A handful of months younger than her, if she remembers the dreams correctly. He carries himself well, shoulders back, spine straight, more muscles than most boys her age have. But there’s something to him. Is it just because she knows him well? A sense of uncomfortableness, of lack of confidence. A show.
Just like her.
Safe. Not safe. Real. Not real.
Scott steps towards her again but she takes two steps back from him, breathing deeply. He stops, lets her retreat until her back is against the bus schedule. The man in the wheelchair watches them both closely.
“How did you find me?” Jean asks, trying hard to keep any emotion out of her voice.
Scott gestures towards the man. “My mentor. He’s a… professor. He can find… people.”
The halting way he speaks, the way he looks around. There’s things he’s not telling her. It makes her tense, makes her press her lips together, makes her eyes dart around to see if she has an escape route.
“We saw you on the news. They’re coming after you,” Scott says after a moment, when Jean doesn’t say anything. “We want to offer you a safe place to be.”
“And I’m supposed to just trust you?”
Scott looks at her, really looks at her, for a solid few moments. Then his shoulders seem to lose some of their rigidness, something gets softer in his body. And for a moment, she thinks of the boy in her dreams. The one with soft edges, soft eyes. This time there’s nowhere for her to back up as he steps close enough so that only she can hear his soft voice. “I asked you to trust me. I meant everything that I said.”
Jean bites the inside of her cheek, surprised by the tears that immediately fill her eyes. She’s so damn tired, so lost, so alone. Scott has represented safety to her for years and years and now she’s thrown into turmoil as she looks at him. “You saw what I did on the news.”
“I did,” Scott agrees.
Jean looks back at the man behind him then back into Scott’s eyes. “Do your eyes really glow red?”
For a moment, Scott looks startled by the question. Then his lips curve into a lopsided smile. “Yes. Come with us and I’ll show you.”
Jean rolls her eyes, looks away. Then she looks back and sighs quietly. “Do you really have an older brother?”
“I never lied to you,” Scott says slowly, quietly, meant for her ears only. Meant for her. He looks at her like he knows her.
Because he does. Because she knows him. God, the things she’s said to him. When she’d thought she’d just been shouting into the voice of her subconsciousness. But she never had been.
It had been him. All along. Every moment. Every dream. It had always been him. Had she reached out to him on purpose? Had she somehow known?
Jean thinks of Peter Parker. Thinks of Michelle Jones-Watson. MJ. Peter. Wanted. Longing. Love. Safety. Alone. Not alone.
Real. Not real. Broken. Safe.
“Fine,” Jean says, chewing on her lower lip as she looks up at the man in front of her. She steels her spine, lifts up her chin, looks into Scott’s brown eyes underneath those red glasses and glow. “But if I want to leave, I’ll leave. Whether you try to let me or not.”
“We’re not taking you to a prison.” The man in the wheelchair moves towards them finally, his voice quiet, comforting. Is everything Scott said about him true, Jean wonders? The man’s lips twitch and she frowns, wondering if he knows what she’d been thinking. “We’ll explain everything once we return home.”
Home. Jean looks over at Scott, who gives her a comforting look.
“You can trust me,” Scott murmurs, quiet enough that only she can hear.
And god, she wants so badly to believe him.