Chapter Text
Chapter 1
The boom of the gunshot was still echoing between the concrete walls when Peter Parker felt the impact.
It wasn't the pain that hit him first — that came later, like a delayed wave spreading from his chest to the rest of his body. The first thing he felt was the sensation of losing his balance.
Then came the heat.
A liquid warmth spreading beneath his suit, hot and wrong. Completely wrong.
His knees gave way. The concrete rushed up to meet him.
"Peter!"
Jean's voice reached him muffled, as if she were speaking through a thick sheet of glass. He saw her lean over him, her red hair falling forward, framing a face twisted with panic.
How strange, Peter thought in that suspended moment of clarity.
Just a few minutes earlier, this same girl had been ready to kill Bill Metzger. And he had stopped her — not with force, but with a memory... The memory of May.
He had let her into his mind, had shown her what May had taught him... and she had understood... She had understood that she didn't have to be the monster everyone expected, but that she could choose her own path.
And then Frank had pulled the trigger.
"Peter, don't close your eyes! Look at me!"
He tried to do as Jean said, but his eyelids felt like boulders. His chest was burning, and breathing was becoming harder and harder.
The bullet must have punctured a lung. Maybe both.
His suit was soaked with blood, and this wasn't the kind of injury you could ignore with a joke and some duct tape.
"Why did you do it? Why did you get in the way?"
Peter wanted to answer. He wanted to explain that this was what Spider-Man did. Ever since he'd been recruited by Iron Man. Ever since he'd lost Aunt May... Ever since he'd given up everything and everyone to protect the people he loved.
But the words didn't come.
Instead, a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
Jean looked at him, and something inside her broke.
She had just been inside his mind. She had seen everything.
Not just the big events — the battles, the losses, the sacrifices — but also the small moments.
The lonely dinners in an empty flat. The nights spent watching over a city that didn't even know his name.
The chats with Aunt May. The afternoons with Ned. The dates with MJ.
Peter's habit of going to the paediatric ward to make the sickest children smile.
All of it submerged in the dull, constant pain of having been erased from the existence of everyone he loved.
And despite all of this, Peter Parker had chosen to help her.
Not for any ulterior motive. Not because he wanted something from her. But because he had seen a person who was suffering and had decided that no one deserved that suffering.
And, apparently, Jean above all didn't deserve any of what had happened to her.
That thought struck her deep.
He didn't know her. He knew practically nothing about her. And yet his desire to help and protect her was genuine.
And now that man — that boy, really, because Peter Parker wasn't even thirty yet and had already lived enough for ten lifetimes — was dying in her arms.
To save her.
"No," Jean whispered.
Then she said it again, louder.
"No. No! It's not going to happen. Not today. Not because of me."
She closed her eyes and opened herself to the power.
The fierce force she had felt awakening inside her during the Damage Control experiments, the presence she felt boiling in the depths of her mind.
It was as if every cell in her body had been asleep her whole life and was only now waking up.
She could feel everything.
Every single molecule of air vibrating around her. Every atom of concrete in the walls. Every beat of Peter's heart, growing weaker, growing slower.
And she could feel the wound.
The torn lung tissue. The severed blood vessels. The internal bleeding spreading like a dark stain.
It was a picture of microscopic devastation, and for a moment, Jean felt completely helpless.
She had all this power. A power that screamed at her that it could bend reality to her will. And yet she didn't know how to use it.
She had the knowledge necessary to keep Peter alive. She could make his punctured lungs breathe and stop them from collapsing. She could make his heart beat and stop it from failing.
But she couldn't heal him.
She didn't know how.
The doctors.
There must be doctors in the Damage Control facility, with the knowledge that would allow her to save Peter. But to reach their minds, she would have to stop concentrating on him. And if she did that, he would die before she could find a way to help him.
There had to be something else she could do.
It was then that something whispered to her in the depths of her mind.
Not in words. The power didn't truly speak.
It was more like an intuition, an instinct rising from the depths of her being.
A simple idea.
Terrifying in its simplicity.
Rewind it.
Jean didn't fully understand what it meant.
But the power did.
The power knew what to do, even when she didn't.
So she surrendered to it.
She let it guide her.
She began to radiate Peter with her energy.
It wasn't telekinesis. It wasn't telepathy. It was something completely new, something she had never done before.
Her mind enveloped the boy's body and imposed a silent command on it.
Go back.
Return to the state before the bullet. Before the pain.
Before everything broke.
And it worked.
Jean felt it happening at a cellular level.
The blood reversed its flow, returning to the vessels from which it had escaped. The lung tissue re-formed, fibre by fibre, like a film rewound frame by frame. The walls of the blood vessels closed back up, sealing the breaches as if they had never existed.
It was the most perfect and unnatural healing process one could imagine.
And it was working.
Peter would be fine.
But then something changed.
The power accelerated.
It was no longer under her control. Perhaps it had never truly been.
Jean felt the force inside her expand beyond the boundaries of Peter's body, beyond the walls of the room, beyond everything she could comprehend.
She was no longer just healing a wound.
She was rewinding everything.
She felt that she had touched something immense. Something that not even her power could fully understand.
And that force bent to a fierce and primordial entity that responded to her call with an enthusiasm that terrified her.
It was like trying to ride a hurricane.
An image forced its way into her mind.
Strong.
Powerful.
Indomitable.
Blazing.
A phoenix.
Jean couldn't stop it.
She couldn't even slow it down.
The only thing she could perceive was Peter's body beneath her hands, the only fixed point in a universe that was collapsing and being reborn around her.
Then, suddenly, she felt that fixed point slip away.
Peter was slipping from her grasp, dragged away by the current.
No.
Not this.
Jean lunged forward. She grabbed Peter by the shoulders, pulled him close and wrapped him in a desperate embrace.
Whatever was happening, wherever that power was taking them, she would not let him go.
Not after everything he had done for her.
Not after seeing in his mind how special he was, how good he was.
She clung to him with every fibre of her being as the world dissolved into a whirlwind of light and chaos.
Somehow she found herself immersed in Peter's mind again.
But this time she saw everything. Not just the recent years.
Jean saw Peter Parker's entire life through his eyes, feeling his emotions.
Right up to the moment of the gunshot.
Then, nothing.
The first thing she perceived was a voice.
"Jean! Jean, wake up!"
Peter's voice.
He was alive.
The relief that flooded through her was so intense it hurt.
She opened her eyes.
And found herself looking at Spider-Man.
Peter had his mask back on. He must have put it back while she was unconscious.
But that wasn't what caught her attention.
What struck her was the environment around them.
They were no longer in the Damage Control facility.
They were outdoors, in what looked like an airport.
An airport at war.
She saw figures moving in the sky: a man in black and grey armour streaking between the planes, and what looked like Iron Man flying alongside him.
And then, impossible to miss, a giant.
A man as big as a building, moving and making the ground tremble with every step.
"What the..." Jean began, but Peter didn't give her time to finish.
He scooped her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing and shot a web towards a nearby structure.
The flight was short but intense. Jean felt the air whistling in her ears as Peter pulled them to safety behind a pile of containers, away from the chaos of the battle.
They landed with a muffled thud.
Peter set her down on the ground, pulled off his mask immediately, and it was then that Jean noticed something strange about his face.
He looked... younger.
His features were less defined, his jaw less sharp.
He still had the same eyes, but the rest of his face belonged to an adolescent.
"What the hell is happening?" Peter spoke in rapid bursts, the words pouring out in an uncontrolled stream. "Is this a dream? Are you making me relive this in my mind? Is it an illusion? Jean! What's happening?!"
She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts.
The exhaustion was profound, but she had to answer him.
Cautiously, and with the terror of losing control again, she let her powers reach out just enough to feel the surrounding environment.
It was real.
The airport, the battle, Peter. All real.
Bloody, undeniably real.
She could feel the minds of the combatants, dozens of consciousnesses clashing in a conflict she still didn't understand.
"I... I don't know," she stammered. "One moment I was trying to keep you alive after you'd been shot. Then I tried to fix you, to... rewind you, but my powers went out of control. I don't know how to explain it, but I know all of this is real... very real!"
Peter stared at her for a long moment.
Then he looked around.
He looked at the giant man fighting in the distance. He looked at Iron Man flying around him, trying to contain him.
Leipzig.
The realisation hit him like a punch to the gut.
He knew this place.
He knew this battle.
He had lived through it before, years ago, when he was just a fourteen-year-old kid Tony Stark had brought to Germany to fight Captain America.
Leipzig Airport.
The Avengers' split.
The day everything changed.
"Time..." he murmured, his voice cracking. "Are you telling me you rewound time? To save my life?"
Jean reflected on the question.
She thought back to what she had felt as the power surged through her. That sensation of having touched something much deeper than the mere flow of minutes and hours.
"I... I think so. Or maybe not. I don't know for sure." She ran a hand through her hair, frustrated by her own inability to explain herself. "I only know that I didn't just rewind your body to before you were injured... But... I felt that I touched something deeper. I don't know what it was, but... it was as if the universe itself was obeying me. And it was terrifying."
A deafening roar interrupted the conversation.
Ant-Man, still giant, had just grabbed the wing of a cargo plane and was using it to block an attack, raining debris across half the runway.
Both of them spun towards the chaos.
It was at that moment that something clicked in Peter's eyes.
"Then stop them."
"What?"
"Stop them!"
Peter grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye.
There was a fervour in his voice that Jean had never heard from him, an urgency that went beyond simple fear.
"If we've gone back in time, then we can change things. We can stop this madness from going any further. Do what you did in New York, Jean! Stop them all!"
The intensity of his plea overwhelmed her.
His hands on her shoulders were warm, his gaze piercing.
Jean felt the power inside her respond to that urgency, awakening despite her exhaustion.
She didn't want to disappoint him.
Not after everything he had done for her.
She closed her eyes and let the wave spread.
She didn't need to expand it as she had done in New York, when she'd rebelled against Metzger's experiments.
She only needed a few dozen metres, just enough to reach all the combatants on the field.
Telepathy gripped their minds and enveloped them in a gentle but immovable hold.
Telekinesis supported the bodies of those in the air, stopping them from falling.
In an instant, the entire battle froze.
Steve Rogers stopped mid-shield throw.
Falcon hung suspended in mid-air, wings spread in a perpetual glide.
Hawkeye had an arrow nocked that would never be loosed.
Ant-Man, still giant, stopped moving like a twenty-metre-tall statue.
Iron Man and War Machine floated motionless like insects in amber, their suits humming uselessly.
"Yes! Yes, okay, I did it!" Jean exclaimed, her breath ragged from the effort.
Then she frowned.
"Wait. Someone wasn't affected."
Peter tensed.
"Who?"
"One... I think it's Scarlet Witch. I can feel the chaos stirring inside her. She's different from the others. It's as if her own power is protecting her from mine. She's... furious, Peter. I've never felt anyone so angry. And there's another one. I'm not sure who it is, but it's not human. It doesn't have a mind like the others. And it's coming towards us."
She hadn't even finished speaking when a figure passed through the ceiling of their shelter.
He was tall, red, with a flowing cape and a yellow gem set in his forehead.
Vision.
He floated in mid-air, his impassive gaze fixed on Jean with an intensity that promised nothing good.
His hands were raised in a position that could be defensive or offensive. With Vision, you could never tell.
Peter immediately moved between them.
One hand outstretched towards Vision, the other towards Jean to keep her sheltered behind him.
"Stop! Wait, Vision. I asked her to do this. This is madness, and I had to stop it before someone got killed."
Vision stopped in mid-air.
His head tilted slightly to the side.
His eyes moved from Peter to Jean and back to Peter again, weighing them both.
"A being of immense power appeared on the battlefield, capable of neutralising all the Avengers — minus two — with the power of the mind alone."
Vision's voice was calm, measured, but there was a note of distrust that didn't escape either of them.
"I know Stark recruited you personally, Spider-Man. But why should I trust you?"
Peter stepped forward.
"Use the Mind Stone."
Jean's eyes widened.
Peter didn't look away from Vision.
"Read my mind. It'll be faster than any explanation, more reliable than any speech, and definitely less confusing. You'll see everything. What happened today, what will happen in the future, what Jean did to save me. And you'll understand why you need to trust us."
Vision observed him for a long moment.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
Jean would have wanted to protest.
She didn't like the idea of anyone rummaging through Peter's memories, through the memories she herself had just seen and that had changed her forever.
But in that moment, she had to keep some of the strongest-willed humans she had ever encountered pinned down.
Captain America was already struggling to break free from the mental hold, his determination pressing against Jean's barriers like a battering ram.
Iron Man and War Machine's suits creaked, their servomotors fighting against the telekinesis holding them still.
And she also had to keep Scarlet Witch at bay, who was pressing against her defences with a fury that felt personal.
That woman considered her a threat and would stop at nothing to neutralise her.
She wasn't at her best.
In fact, she was exhausted.
And she didn't know how much longer she could hold on.
Vision approached Peter.
The Mind Stone on his forehead began to glow with a golden light, projecting a thin beam that touched the boy's forehead.
Peter didn't flinch.
He stood still, his gaze fixed on Vision's, as the synthetic being immersed himself in his memories.
The silence that followed was deafening.
An eternity compressed into a blink.
Then Vision recoiled sharply.
The connection broke, and his expression had completely changed.
There was no more distrust in his eyes.
There was pure astonishment.
"Incredible."
Vision looked at Peter, then turned his gaze towards Jean.
His voice had lost all trace of hostility.
"You. Your power. You are incredible. You bent time to your will to save someone who, until moments before, was your enemy."
Then he turned back to Peter, and his tone became softer.
More human.
"And you... In you, I saw an amount of pain that should have corrupted any human mind... and yet your moral compass remained intact. You are a remarkable anomaly, Peter Parker."
Peter blushed furiously.
He turned to Jean as if seeking support, and she couldn't help a small smile.
After everything they'd been through — the hatred, the fear, the chaos — seeing Peter Parker blush at a sincere compliment felt... right.
Because he truly deserved it.
"Okay, great, fantastic!" Peter clapped his hands, deliberately breaking the moment of intensity. "So here's what we do: maybe you and Jean could combine your mental powers to put everyone to sleep. Then we disarm them, tie them up with webbing, and when they wake up, we force them to talk. No more fighting, no more people getting hurt. Just... words. What do you say?"
Vision smiled — a real smile, however measured and composed.
Even Jean found herself chuckling.
The situation was so absurd that laughing was the only possible reaction.
"An extreme solution," Vision commented, "but necessary, given the... hot heads involved. Most of those present aren't exactly inclined towards diplomacy at the moment."
"Yeah," Peter agreed. "I know that well."
Jean drew the attention of the two again.
The exhaustion was making itself felt more and more, a weight crushing her mind and clouding her vision.
"Okay, I'll gladly accept a hand, because I'm exhausted and I don't think I can keep everyone under control on my own. Especially with the witch pressing against my defences like a jackhammer. But when I release the hold, you'll have to stop her, because she'll throw herself at me like a fury. I can feel her anger. It's... remarkable. And frightening."
Vision nodded, solemn.
"I'll take care of interceding with Wanda."
And so they did.
Jean closed her eyes and focused on the minds she was holding.
For the ordinary humans, it was simple: a gentle touch, a command to sleep, and those consciousnesses went out like candles under a breath of wind.
For the enhanced humans or those with mental resistance training, it was more complex.
Steve Rogers fought until the very last moment. His will was like a besieged fortress.
Bucky Barnes had a fragmented mind, full of cracks and scars, but also a resilience that made it hard to silence.
Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton had training that allowed them to recognise mental intrusion and fight it.
Vision watched Jean work and, in a few moments, learned from her how to act upon the human mind without damaging it.
He joined his power to Jean's, and together they succeeded where she alone would have failed.
The minds of Steve, Bucky, Natasha and Clint surrendered to sleep.
The suits of Iron Man and War Machine were powered down after their occupants had fallen asleep.
Their bodies were gently brought back to the ground, set down on the runway concrete with the same care as one would lay a sleeping child in their bed.
Then Jean released her hold on Wanda.
The explosion of crimson energy that followed was immediate and violent.
Scarlet Witch lunged to within a few metres of them, her hands wreathed in spirals of chaotic power that crackled in the air with the sound of an approaching fire.
Her eyes blazed with an unnatural red, full of the anger and paranoia of someone tired of being hunted, judged and locked up.
"It was you!" Wanda snarled.
The pressure of her magic made the crates and debris around them tremble.
"What did you do to them?!"
Vision immediately interposed himself between her and Jean, his hands open in a gesture of pure surrender.
"Wanda, please. Look at the situation. She's not harming us."
"She froze everyone with her power, Vision!" Wanda shouted, not lowering her fingers.
The crimson filaments stretched towards Jean, seeking a breach in her defences.
"And she's manipulating you! I can feel it... Hers is mental power, she wants to control everyone!"
"No one wants to control you, Wanda," Peter intervened, stepping forward to shield Jean with his own body. "We're here to stop this fight. No one needs to get hurt today. No one needs to fight any more."
Wanda's jaw tightened, her magical grip wavering dangerously.
Then her gaze passed over Peter's shoulder and fixed directly on Jean.
Jean was standing with difficulty.
The tremors in her hands weren't from concentration, but from terror and her strength draining quickly.
On her face was that same tired and bewildered expression that Wanda knew all too well.
The crimson filaments on Wanda's fingers hesitated, fading to a faint hiss.
"Your eyes..." Wanda murmured, her voice suddenly losing its attacking edge and becoming darker, almost broken.
"What did they do to you?"
Jean swallowed hard.
Her throat was dry from the effort, and she couldn't speak, so Peter did it for her.
"I saved her from a lab, where they were torturing her to force her to use her powers and figure out how to steal them. A lab where her sister had already died."
A tense silence fell between them.
Wanda stared at the girl for a few more seconds. In Wanda's mind, the memories of HYDRA's labs in Sokovia echoed...
Pietro.
She recognised the exact same shadow in Jean's eyes.
Slowly, with an almost painful reluctance, Wanda lowered her hands.
The crimson energy reabsorbed into her skin, leaving only a faint trail of smoke between her fingers.
"Speak, Vision," Wanda said, without taking her eyes off Jean, but in a markedly different tone, devoid of the blind hostility from before. "Explain to me what's happening."
Vision spoke.
He told her what he had seen in Peter's mind. Not everything, not the most painful details, but enough to make her understand.
He told her about two young people who had come from the future, and a power that had rewound time.
He told her that Jean was not an enemy, but an unwilling ally, another lost soul who had only tried to do the right thing.
When he finished, Wanda was silent for a long moment.
Then she looked at Jean.
"I'm sorry," Jean said, breaking the silence.
The words poured out in an uncontrollable stream.
"For the mental intrusion, for attacking you, for... everything. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to hurt anyone. But first Peter was dying, and then everything went out of control, then I found myself in the middle of a battlefield and... I'm sorry. I probably gave you the worst headache of your life. I know it's not an excuse, but..."
Wanda raised a hand to stop her.
She massaged her temple with two fingers, a gesture of weariness that was also a gesture of surrender.
"I've felt worse pain," she said, and there was a hint of irony in her voice.
Then she looked at Peter, then back at Jean.
"You say you're here to help us. That you stopped us from hurting each other."
A sigh.
"If that's true... then my headache was worth it."
Jean looked at her, surprised.
She hadn't expected forgiveness so quickly.
But perhaps Wanda Maximoff understood more than she let on.
Perhaps she knew what it meant to be considered a monster.
Vision approached Wanda and gently placed a hand on her temple.
A golden glow, a gentle touch, and the remnants of Jean's power that had clung to Wanda's mind dispersed like mist in the sun, making her sigh with relief.
"Thank you," she murmured.
Then the four of them got to work.
They transported the Avengers to a nearby hangar.
It was large enough to hold them all, isolated enough to muffle the shouts when they woke up, and sturdy enough to withstand any escape attempts.
Peter and Vision locked the door with a key and webbing.
They disarmed the sleeping Avengers.
Captain America's shield was carefully propped against a crate and secured with webbing.
Hawkeye's arrows were removed along with his quiver and bow, which were placed like the shield.
Iron Man and War Machine's suits were checked to make sure they couldn't reactivate on their own.
Natasha's guns and Bucky's knives were collected and deposited in a far corner, also wrapped in webbing.
Peter used his webbing to gently bind each person's wrists and ankles, enough to hold them without hurting them.
It was at that moment, with all the adrenaline fading, that Jean's body decided it had had enough.
Her legs gave way without warning.
The world swayed dangerously.
If Peter hadn't caught her in time, she would have crumpled to the concrete like an empty sack.
"Hey! Hey, Jean, are you okay?"
She looked up at him.
Her vision was already blurring at the edges, the darkness claiming her exhausted body.
She managed to put together a few words, just enough to express her last conscious thought.
"Could you make sure they don't lock me up somewhere... while I take a nap?"
She didn't wait for an answer.
She didn't have the strength.
The darkness enveloped her like a blanket, and Jean Grey fell asleep in Peter Parker's arms.
Peter, who had picked her up like a bride without even realising it, looked at her for a long moment.
Her sleeping face was relaxed, finally at peace after everything that had happened.
She looked so vulnerable, yet serene.
"No one will lay a finger on you," Peter murmured, almost to himself.
His voice was soft, but beneath that softness was an iron determination.
"As long as I'm here, no one will take you away from me. I promise."
---
Wanda and Vision finished arranging the sleeping figures in a neat semicircle, their backs against the metal crates that filled the hangar.
Then Vision turned to Peter, noticing the girl in his arms.
"Her condition is stable," he said, and there was a note of gentleness in his voice that was rarely heard. "She only needs rest. What she did today..." He shook his head. "I doubt anyone on this planet has ever seen anything like it."
Peter nodded, but didn't answer immediately.
He found a crate large enough to serve as a makeshift bed and laid Jean on it with a care that was almost reverent.
Then he sat down beside her, gently lifted her head and placed it on his lap, so she wouldn't have to rest against the hard metal.
It was an instinctive gesture, almost unconscious.
After taking off his gloves, Peter's fingers found Jean's hair and began to stroke it with slow, steady movements.
"Rest," he whispered to Jean, even though he knew she couldn't hear him. "You've earned it."