Chapter Text
You are adrift.
The void around you is dark, all-consuming. Space. The abyss. Pure and utter emptiness. By all rights, it should be cold. You should be frozen solid and the chill should creep down to the depths of your soul.
Instead, it is blazing. For before you is nothing less than an almighty sun. A burning star. A great and terrible flame, so brilliant that it bleaches the deep darkness white-hot.
Its wings are blinding.
“Jean Grey,” it speaks in a voice you feel more than hear.
That is your name, you suddenly realize. You raise your voice to speak and find a choked gasp is all you can muster. Your voice does not work here, and so your thoughts will have to suffice.
“W-what...” you manage, your mind fraying and twisting and melting. A single word and it is like you are being ripped apart atom by atom. The pain is agonizing.
“Speak not, Jean Grey. Think not, Jean Grey. Feel not, Jean Grey. Only listen. You are here for no other reason than to listen. The time destined for you to speak to me has not yet arrived.”
‘What?’ you wish to say again. What am I doing here? What is this place? What are you? All questions you wish to ask it. All questions that would be reasonable to ponder. This is not a reasonable place.
It continues.
“Your questions will be answered in time. Not soon, but in a future beyond the furthest end. When it comes, you will remember this moment, and it will feel as if no time has passed at all. The Jean Grey you are now will become the Jean Grey you are destined to be, and these questions you wish nothing more than to have answered will be as pointless stardust.”
These words mean nothing to you, but a voice from within you urges you to trust the flame. You do not know if you trust this voice.
“But therein lies the problem, and it is a problem that I cannot ignore,” it booms as its heat intensifies. You did not think that was possible. “Destiny. Fate. A sure thing, as surely as the universe was born and as surely as all the lights in the sky will wither and die. There are things in this world that are written in the cosmos, things that must come to pass and things that will come to pass. And Jean Grey, you are a child of fate.”
The title seems heavy-handed to you. You are powerful, that is undeniable… but a child of fate? Something so grand seems a more fitting epithet for the heroes that have saved the world countless times over. Instantly you think of one more fitting to be bestowed that title, and instantly an unbearable pain courses through your mind once again. It is as if the flame does not approve of who your thoughts wandered to. The flame does not approve of the spider.
“The spider was never fated to cross your path. No… the spider was fated to die.”
…
You push past the pain, push past your own mind begging you to stop and to simply allow the flame to speak. You drown out the voice that does not feel like your own. The flame would hear these words if they killed you.
“What…” you burn.
“… the hell…” you cry.
“… are you talking about?!” you rage.
The flame, shifting and unending, emotionless and unfathomable, seems almost taken aback. Could it be that you have defied what it knew of you? Could it be that you are more than what it believed? A foolish thought, or a fateful one.
“Exactly as I said,” it responds. “The spider was to be pierced by the steel arrow. His light was destined to fade, slowly and in pain. It would have been a good death. He would have been loved by all who knew him, and they would have erected statues in his honor.”
“Screw your statues! He had no one!” you scream through the pain. “If he died then, he would have died sad and alone!”
“He would have died a savior, his final act a testament to his very being. Alas… you stole that fate from him. The story upon his pages was meant to end, yet through an act of misguided defiance, you breathed new words onto the parchment. Words that were not meant to be there, a story with no ink left to write.”
It stares with its white-hot eyes, threatening to stamp out your wrathful embers with a fear otherworldly.
“And that was a mistake, Jean Grey. For by chaining his fate to yours, your pages… are now blank. Days that you were fated to live have been destroyed. Paths that you were destined to walk have been eroded…
… Perhaps never will you find the eye of the storm…
… perhaps never will you meet the ruby-eyed man…
… perhaps never will your flame be stoked…
… and perhaps never will you become the Jean Grey you were destined to be. Never will you become the Phoenix.”
The Phoenix. The word echoes through your mind endlessly, somehow louder and ever louder each time. That, it would have you believe, is who you are meant to be. That is what this flame is, imperishable, furious, beautiful, and brimming with life and destruction everlasting.
You defy it.
“I don’t care who you say I am. My choices are my own, and I chose to save his life like he chose to save mine. That is my destiny.” Your words are spoken with such resolve that the pain becomes almost unnoticeable, and the fear it summons with every flap of its wings struggles to rattle you.
If flame could laugh, it would.
“Foolish girl!” it roars, and so too does the fire roar even brighter. “Powerful though your mind may be, it is yet too small to grasp the scale of what you shall accomplish! The death you weave and the life that shall spring forth from the ashes! These are things that must occur! These are things that will occur! Heed my words, Jean Grey: in the coming days, I will ensure that you return to the proper course, and no amount of childish defiance will be enough to prevent your story from being rewritten into what it was always meant to be! You shall be fire and life incarnate! Now and forever, you shall become the Phoenix!”
“Try me,” you wish to say as one final retort, but it does not give you the chance. You awaken to the dark and lonely motel room that you had fallen asleep in, the moon still high in the sky.
Two things happen then.
The first, a light flashes from your phone screen. You know who it is before you even read his name. Peter could not initiate a telepathic communication on his own, so he had to rely on the more classic methods if he wished to speak to you without your engagement. A smile lights up on your face as you go to read his text, until the second thing happens and your smile fades as quickly as it appeared.
Your eyes adjust to the darkness, drifting to the door as you slowly trace down until you can barely make out what appears to be a letter on the floor right by the entrance to your room. It’s as if someone had slipped it beneath the door.
You stand and walk over to the light switch, flipping it on so that you can get a better view of the thing. Emblazoned on the front, unmistakable, is the letter X.