Chapter Text
(][][)
The end of the line was a bowling alley.
Jean thought that maybe there would be some…sign waiting for her when she climbed from the bus for the final time, a portent of the next leg of whatever awaited her. Granted, she wasn’t entirely sure there even was anything waiting for her, aside from a padded cell, a straitjacket, and a sedative drip for the rest of her days.
She hoped that she might be able to wrangle something a bit cozier out of the universe, however. Even if she wasn’t fully convinced that she deserved more.
There wasn’t even a bus stop, just a depressing sign (not the fateful kind) in a depressing podunk town. The bus pulled away in a wash of exhaust, revealing a rundown parking lot across from some manner of mill or barn, and Jean was left at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. It was an unfortunately familiar feeling; she was quite used to this, accustomed to dead ends and disappointment.
Unlike before, however, there was no burning revenge quest to fuel her, no rage to spur her forward and out of the doldrums. There was only something hollow and burned out where the hate had been, and nothing to replace it with.
This left the crippling feeling of grief, the raw and visceral awareness of how very much was gone, far too apparent for her comfort. The yearning absence of Mom, the fresh grief of Sara, the bleak and unknowable emptiness lying ahead.
But there wasn’t time to dwell. Keep moving. Figure out what’s needed. Get it.
Well, bowling alley pizza was better than nothing.
Crossing the parking lot, Jean stuck a hand into her pocket, running a finger over the roll of bills she’d had Gargan hand over to her. Apparently, he’d been a busy bee during the few hours she’d let him off his leash before Peter’s mini crashout.
Well, it wasn’t like she could figure out how to return the money to its rightful owners, after all.
Still, a bowling alley pizza was sure to be expensive, along with a drink. And there was the matter of where she’d be sleeping tonight. This town was small enough that a vagrant girl curled up behind the laundromat was sure to bring unwanted attention and find her drawn back into the system. A hotel? Or maybe implant a suggestion into the bowling alley owner that she was to be allowed to use the back room as a place to crash?
As she neared the building, she reached out, skimming the brains inside.
A cluster of kids near the entrance—probably a birthday party—easily identifiable by the innocent joy of being another year older, the simplicity of spending time with friends, eating food, and bumper bowling.
Nearby, a young couple was out for a date in a small town where a bowling alley was the only remotely date-like activity that didn’t involve a half-hour drive. The guy was trying to play off the fact that he was a garbage bowler while inwardly growing increasingly irate as he racked up gutter ball after gutter ball.
At least the girl seemed to be having a nice time.
No one seemed dangerous, Jean found. The owner was deeply invested in some Spanish soap opera, a group of teenagers were thinking of the most ridiculous names possible to put up on the scoreboard, and the owner’s wife had just taken a pizza out of the oven for the partygoers.
Well, she didn’t have a gift, but Jean wasn’t above crashing a party for free food.
Pushing through the front door, she stepped into a wash of sound and smell. Some dated dad-rock song played overhead, mingling with the unsteady staccato of thudding bowling balls hitting the lanes and the distant trill of idle arcade machines. The air was close without feeling overly claustrophobic, the latent linger of decades of cigarette smoke still pushing through the scent of fresh pizza and nacho cheese-product.
To her right, a bar area sat dark and unoccupied as it waited for the evening crowd, and to her left was a dining area that seemed to be some sort of retreat for the parents of the birthday crowd. Jean made her way to an empty table and tried to look like she belonged, an easy enough feat when one was able to actually project a sense of belonging to the surrounding minds.
Nothing to see here, she mentally insisted, just a cousin in town for the birthday.
‘Is that so, Miss Grey?’
The voice was sudden, playing in her head like someone else’s thought using her brain as a speaker. Jean didn’t startle—outward tells had been a big no-no during her brief foray into supervillainy—but she did sit up and glance around, looking for the source.
But unless one of the dead-eyed parents nursing an overpriced soda and munching distastefully at cardboard pizza was secretly a telepath, the “visitor” wasn’t in the room with her.
‘Oh, no, you won’t find me anywhere near a bowling alley, I assure you,’ the voice spoke, and then one of the parents came to settle in the chair next to hers, a balding man with a paunch who reminded Jean of her Math teacher back home.
“Good afternoon, Miss Grey,” he said, pushing a plate of pizza and a cup of ice water toward her. “You look quite hungry. Have some pizza. The crust is terrible, but they’re rather onto something with the sauce, I think.”
Jean peered up to see the guy looking at her with a calm, almost piercing expression that didn’t belong on his round and sweaty face. She had a feeling that the person she was talking to and the one sitting next to her weren’t quite the same person.
“Who are you?” Jean asked, picking up a slice and taking a bite.
Damn it, the sauce was incredible.
“My name is Charles Xavier,” the man said. “I’m a telepath, like yourself.”
“Where are you?” Jean asked. “This isn’t you. I can feel your presence.”
“Can you?” Xavier said, looking pleasantly surprised. “I am quite far from here, using a device of my own design to amplify my powers. I use it to find people like us, people like you, those with powers and nowhere to go. I noticed your little trick, and imagine my surprise when I saw you here.”
“Imagine,” Jean said, taking another slightly ravenous bite. “Are you here to try and stop me?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Xavier said. “I’m here to offer you a home, a place to belong, where you don’t have to worry about when your next meal will be or where you’ll sleep at night. A place where your gifts will not only be accepted but celebrated. You’ll spend your days learning to control and refine your powers, to use them to benefit man and mutant alike.”
“Mutant?” Jean asked, and Xavier nodded.
“That is the term we’ve been workshopping,” he said. “Not quite a baseline human anymore but something rather adjacent. I founded the Xavier Institute to champion the cause of mutants, to encourage cooperation with humans, and to assure humans that we are not to be feared.”
“Well, you’re doing kind of a shit job,” Jean said with a raised eyebrow. “So far, I’ve been rejected, chased, abducted, and experimented on. Oh, and my sister was killed.”
To his credit, Xavier’s expression turned grim, the round-faced man he’d occupied looking almost comically serious in the midst of a birthday party at a bowling alley.
“You’ve met the worst mankind has to offer,” he agreed. “And your experience cannot simply be brushed aside, that’s true. But I assure you, for every Bill Metzger you’ll meet, there are so many more wonderful and compassionate humans who see mutants not as freaks or liabilities or something to weaponize. You’ll meet people who value and respect your gifts, who understand that being born ever so slightly different doesn’t rob you of your humanity. In many ways, it amplifies it.”
“Wow,” Jean said. “You have that one in your pocket just waiting?”
Xavier chuckled, sipping at his beverage.
“I’ve met a number of youngsters just like yourself,” he said. “Jaded and beaten down by a cynical and reactionary society. So often, their journey to my school begins at the lowest point in their lives. I’ve had to pull a number of them away from a dark place.”
“Well, I’ve got that part covered,” Jean said with a plain look up at him. “Where is this school?”
“A taxi will be waiting outside,” Xavier told her. “When you’ve finished your pizza, I would be honored if you’d join us. It will be a rather short trip, I assure you.”
“…And how do I know I can trust you?” Jean asked. “I can’t see your mind, just this guy’s.”
And then the world changed around her, as sudden as a blink. Gone was the bowling alley, and in its place was a beautiful patch of green, surrounded by trees and distant mountains. Ahead sat a large colonial mansion of faded brownstone and casting and tall windows. It was the sort of house a girl like Jean could never set foot in, the home of a Kennedy or a Baldwin—or an Xavier, it seemed.
“This is my home,” Xavier said quite needlessly. “The Xavier Institute for Mutants. And I know anyone can show you a pretty picture, but I implore you to also look into my mind. I don’t intend you any harm, my dear. Quite the opposite, I would love to give you somewhere safe to rest, to finally feel secure and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet.”
Jean frowned, but she took a breath and reached out, pressing at Xavier’s mental presence in her head.
There was a sense of genuine care, she found—an undeniably true compassion for man and mutant alike—albeit steeped in just a bit of self-righteousness. Charles Xavier truly wanted to see mutantkind united, though he had his own ideas on the best way to do so and no compunctions about enforcing those ideas. Joining up with his cause meant playing nice, staying in line, and definitely not going on any rage-fueled vengeance quests.
While would definitely miss those, she had no other apparent prospects.
And this was far from the worst one.
“Fine.”
(][][)
The taxi drove her through an idyllic summer afternoon, the driver seemingly content to spend the trip in silence or perhaps instructed to.
Normally, Jean would be profoundly grateful; she abhorred small talk.
Presently, however, silence wasn’t so restful as it had been. In the past, silence at least had meant movement, had meant the pursuit of a goal, a quiet wait for the next step of the plan to come to fruition. Jean’s mind had been too full of schemes and what-ifs and so many attempts to calm her hammering heart in order to play it cool while dealing with actual Spider-Man; she hadn’t had time to stop and really consider the implications of her actions.
Now, though…
Now she just wanted to curl up into a ball of regret and spend the next several years yelling at herself.
She’d been in Peter’s head, seen how good he was. Pure, kind, utterly unselfish in his desire to be a hero. Charles Xavier wished he was as wonderful as Peter Parker. But that only made the harsh reality of her actions seem so much more monstrous by comparison. His words at the time had landed as empty and high-handed, the arrogant chiding of someone convinced of his own moral superiority. But Peter wasn’t some government lapdog; the second he’d realized the truth of the matter, he’d flipped completely and rescued Jean from Metzger’s hellhole, rescued her from herself.
And then taken a bullet for her, because all that hadn’t been enough, apparently.
To know that someone like him had ever looked at her and called her a monster, tried so desperately to stop her not because she was threatening the DODC but because he felt compelled to do so to save innocent people…
That hurt.
She had to become something better, something that Peter Parker could admire, before she could face him again. Peter would look at her not with pity or that endless compassion that stole her words away. He would smile, he would tell her how proud he was, he would…
She shook herself from such musings; there was no time for any of that. Xavier would hopefully help her in her goal, and that was the focus right now.
The Xavier Institute was the sort of mansion that had its own road, a winding lane featuring a few small houses that had likely once belonged to staff members—servants, maids, chefs. At the very end, the mansion itself sat exactly as Xavier had shown her. She wondered if he’d been sitting on the lawn when he’d contacted her, beamed a live feed into her head.
A wrought-iron gate opened to allow the taxi past a brick wall that enclosed the grounds, and the tires crunched under a packed-dirt path that made its lazy way to the grand entrance.
There, on the porch, awaited Charles Xavier.
He was not a paunchy and round-faced dad with grease-stains on his shirt; Charles Xavier radiated the sort of put-together ease that spoke of old money, a man who had lived a life of privilege and propriety. Slim and in his thirties (or so), he wore tailored slacks, a pressed button-down tucked in, and a charcoal blazer. His head was bald and gleaming in the sun, and he wore thick-framed glasses that ever so slightly magnified his eyes. He had a handsome, leonine face that bore the faintest stubble across the jaw, which pulled into a grin when he saw Jean emerge from the taxi.
“Miss Grey,” he said. “It’s wonderful to finally meet face-to-face. Erm, do you have any luggage? I would help, but…”
He gestured to the wheelchair in which he sat, and Jean let a quiet noise of amusement.
“No luggage,” she said, shutting her door behind her, and the taxi pulled away almost immediately. “Just this.”
She hitched her backpack up, and Xavier nodded.
“Of course,” he said. “I imagine your former line of work necessitated light travel.”
Jean rolled her eyes.
“Okay, I haven’t even made it in the front door and I’m getting a lecture?” she asked, and Xavier chuckled.
“Not a lecture, my dear,” he said in that posh accent of his. “An observation. Bobby would call it a ‘flex’ of my abilities. Please, come in. Here at the Xavier institute, a person’s past is their past. So long as the more unsavory elements remain there, we’ll be just fine.”
He steered a small joystick on the arm of his wheelchair, which wheeled around with a quiet whir and eased toward the door. A press of a button on the other arm, and the front door gave a solid click before swinging inward.
“Fancy,” Jean observed, and Xavier chuckled.
Inside, a massive foyer greeted her, her footsteps clunking softly on a hardwood floor that matched the paneling on the walls. High windows let sunlight spill into the place, gleaming off a chandelier overhead. To Jean’s left, a long dining table was set for dinner already, and to her right, a hallway led away into the distance. A sweeping staircase lay ahead and to the right, but Xavier bypassed it and led her straight ahead, to a small anteroom. On the opposite wall, a small archway led into a large and modern-looking kitchen, white-tiled and glinting with stainless steel appliances.
A ding sounded to Jean’s right, and she caught her hagard reflection in a brushed brass door before it slid open to reveal an actual elevator.
“Couldn’t settle for a chair lift, huh?” Jean asked.
“There are no half-measures in this house,” Xavier said with a chuckle, motioning to the lift. “After you.”
Climbing on, Jean leaned against the wall while Xavier rolled in after, tapping a button on the wall.
“Is this your house?” she asked, and Xavier seemed pleased at the question.
“It is,” he said. “I grew up here, spent my youth dashing through these very hallways and breaking more than a few very expensive vases. Mother eventually learned to store them on more stable surfaces.”
Jean let an amused hum, and Xavier smiled at her.
“And she didn’t care when you…” Jean tapped her head.
“…No, she did not,” he said, his smile waning a bit. “She believed it was a gift, something quite special. I got extremely lucky to have her as a mother. Others…weren’t so fortunate.”
“That’s the truth,” Jean muttered. The elevator dinged again and deposited them on the second floor. Up here, the hallway was plushly carpeted in a deep royal blue that muffled Jean’s footsteps and made her wince when she remembered how dirty her shoes had to be. Xavier didn’t seem bothered, leading the way right, and they drifted past pictures of old family members, landscapes of the surrounding countryside, and even a painting of Xavier himself, surrounded by five kids.
“Where is everyone?” Jean asked.
“Oh, most of the children have gone home for the summer,” Xavier told her, leading her into a small but well-furnished room. A small table had already been set with an ornate tea tray and a tiered platter of cakes. “The year-rounders are down in town, watching a movie. I wanted to have a…private chat with you.”
“Over fancy tea,” Jean observed, and Xavier favored her with a smile that squinted his eyes.
“I have always been fond of afternoon tea,” he said. “I’m aware it is a luxury not everyone can afford, perhaps my ‘privilege’ showing, as it were. But it’s a delightful way to spend time with someone and get to know them.”
“I suppose,” Jean said as he rolled up to the empty side, motioning to the lone empty chair. She sat, and Xavier poured two cups, pressing a tray of sugar cubes and a small pitcher of milk toward her. “Thanks.”
“Of course,” Xavier said. “Now, I did want to ask you…just a few questions, if you’ll permit me.”
“What, like…interview questions for your institute?” Jean asked him.
“Of a sort,” Xavier hedged. “Miss Grey, what do you remember about…the day that Sara was taken?”
Jean paused in the middle of adding a fifth cube of sugar to her tea, peering up at him.
“It was the worst day of my life,” she said flatly. “One minute, it was…the two of us, like always. Then she went to…to get ice cream, and she was…gone.”
“And after that?” Xavier asked. “You got away?”
“…It’s a blur, honestly,” Jean said. “I got away, and for a while, I…I just traveled. I didn’t know where to even start looking for her. I couldn’t…do anything. So I got better. I pushed myself, I psyched myself up for taking them on.”
“That must have been frightening,” Xavier observed, and Jean let a wry laugh.
“It was,” she said. “I’m a theater girl, I never fought someone before. And I’m going up against…guards and cops and-and Spider-Man.”
“What’s he like?” Xavier asked with an indulgent smile, and Jean felt her face heat up.
“He’s…a hero,” she said. “A real one. I wasn’t ready for—I could never have planned for him. I’m just…so glad he was there.”
“I am as well,” Xavier said. “He saved you from the sort of place that’s exceedingly hard to come back from.”
They fell into silence after that, Xavier sipping his tea and peering contemplatively over at her. His mind, Jean noted, was a wall, though not in the same way as Peter’s. Peter’s thoughts were shielded by a solid and unyielding barrier like a cliff face, something naturally occurring and inimitable. Xavier’s barrier was a construct, built brick by brick and likely able to be broken through with enough effort.
Nothing Jean could have mustered in the moment, but theoretically.
“Miss Grey,” Xavier finally spoke up, and Jean shook her head with a small smirk.
“You can call me Jean, you know,” she said, and Xavier let a single breath, his lips thinning in a small frown.
“I’m afraid, dear, that I can’t,” he said in regretful tones. “…What I’m about to tell you might be…quite shocking, perhaps entirely unbelievable. But I’d like you to understand that no matter what, you have a home here. You are among your people, and that won’t change.”
“I’m sensing a fairly massive ‘however’, here,” Jean muttered.
“However,” Xavier agreed, “some time ago, a young woman was released into my custody by the DODC, after rather a bit of convincing. She had been apprehended in a park in New Jersey, along with her older sister.”
Jean felt her breath quicken, and she placed her teacup down with shaking hands.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“The young woman’s name,” Xavier said, “is Jean Grey. And she has been living here at the institute for over a year now.”
“…Is this some kind of joke?” Jean asked. “A…test, of my self-control or-or my gullibility or something? Did you watch Multiplicity and decide to prank the new girl?”
“It’s no prank, dear,” Xavier said with a grim shake of his head. “It would be in quite poor taste.”
“But…are you saying she’s me?” Jean asked, feeling a strange well of panic at the seriousness in his expression. “I’m me, Charles.”
“I won’t deny that,” Xavier said. “But I don’t believe that you are Jean Grey, dear.”
Jean’s teacup exploded.
“I am Jean Grey,” she insisted as lukewarm tea splashed and soaked into to the white tablecloth, an Earl Grey stain which bloomed outward. “I don’t understand, where is this coming from? You invite me to your school, sit me down for tea, and you tell me I’m—what? A fake version of myself? Because you have a Jean Grey already? Where even is she? I wanna meet her before I buy into any of this.”
“You will meet her,” Xavier said. “I just wanted to try to understand the situation a bit more, to learn more about you.”
“And what’s the situation?” Jean asked. “Supposedly? Am I a clone or something?”
“I believe you are,” Xavier said. “When Jean and Sara Grey were first sent for testing, blood samples were taken from them for study. It’s my belief that those samples were then sent to some less-than-scrupulous labs for some less-than-ethical experimentation.”
Jean felt a heavy and unpleasant thud in her chest, a dizzy wave hitting as her palms went clammy.
An experiment. Not Jean Grey, not herself; an experiment, a subject, a copy.
“I want to meet her,” she said. “I want to meet Jean Grey.”
(][][)
Jean was shown to a room while she waited for her supposed real self to arrive. Past generations of the Xavier family had evidently adored entertaining guests, and as such, the mansion boasted a number of guest rooms. Jean’s was small but just as opulent as the rest of the place, the bed high and made with silken sheets, the windows sporting gossamer curtains and heavy drapes. A small but solid writing desk sat along the wall next to a heavy wooden wardrobe, the basics but with that costly private-school touch.
Empty, waiting for an occupant.
Naturally, she didn’t linger, instead making her way out and down the hall, where she found a different room, but one which felt curiously familiar. A Bluetooth speaker sat on the dresser, and Jean found she quite liked it. Not only that, it was perched in exactly the spot she might have put one. The same held true of the rest of the room, she discovered. The bedclothes were a design that greatly appealed to her. The posters on the wall featured some of her favorite Eurodance bands, her most beloved old movies, and even a cast photo of Wicked that reminded her of the weekend Mom had taken her and Sara to see it at the Gershwin Theater.
This was her room, she realized. Not Jean’s, but…but the other one’s…
It was so bizarre a thought that it didn’t even land at first, didn’t register as anything but a logical conclusion. This room felt like a space she would have designed, so it had to belong to the girl that she was supposedly cloned from.
Cloned from…
Cloned…
Clone…
Was she? For the first time, a niggling of doubt wormed its way into her head, a brief moment not of acceptance but of at least contemplation. A mirror hung on the closet door in front of her, and in it, there she was, road-weary and worn and in dire need of a good night’s sleep. She looked real, she felt real, she was real. But Xavier would have her believe she’d been…grown in a lab or something, somehow implanted with memories of the last nineteen years of her life.
The thought was…incomprehensible. It felt too big for even a mind as powerful as hers to truly wrap around and contend with. That there was another Jean, another of her that was somehow the real one, the valid one, the one this room belonged to while she was relegated to emptiness waiting to be filled with an identity that she didn’t possess anymore.
But she scarcely had time to process even the possibility of this all being real and not some nightmare when the door creaked behind her, the sound followed by a soft gasp and a horribly familiar voice.
“Oh my god,” Jean Grey breathed.
Straightening, Jean took a breath. In the mirror, she could now see the both of them—herself and…her in the doorway. Two reflections. One looking like a homeless bag lady, the other dressed in perfect high-waisted jeans, a cute halter top, and a cardigan that Jean thought was a little too preppy for her tastes.
Had they already diverged so much? The thought emerged unbidden, her subconscious already operating under the new premise of being some copy, some tangential Jean that wasn’t the real thing anymore.
And the real one was staring at her in wide-eyed shock, like some ghost wearing her face had manifested in front of her. Turning, Jean raised her hand in a small wave.
“…Nice room.”