Work Text:
Peter had been a full-time hero for four years and had never once had to guess what a telepath wanted for breakfast.
"Blueberry. Two. Actually, four. No, wait, two, Yeah let's go with 2" and then stood there sweating while she waited for him to commit. Two blueberry muffins in a paper bag. "Oh could you also include some coffee while you're at it. With sugar in it, no wait... Yeah with sugar please" The girl behind the counter did not look happy with the very very uncomitted Peter Parker.
He smiled awkwardly. How was he supposed to know what his very dangerous houseguest wanted for food?!
He climbed the stairs, balancing the cup, and nudged the door open with his shoulder.
"Hey," he called. "Hi. You're up."
Jean was sitting up on the sofa with the blanket around her knees, her hair sticking up on one side. She was wearing a faded gray T-shirt that was definitely his. He wasn't the tallest out there, but he was definitely buffer so the T-shirt definitely didn't belong to her.
She looked at him. Then at the bag in his hand.
"You know," Peter said, setting the tea down, "I didn't get a chance to say this yesterday, but do you think you could maybe not steal my T-shirts?"
"I don't have anything else."
"Right. Yeah. Okay." He looked at the ceiling. He sighed. "That's fair."
.
.
.
.
Yesterday, he'd been getting ready to go out on patrol, when a knock came from his door.
Nobody knocked on his door. The landlord had said, more than once, that nobody came up here unless they liked asbestos.
He'd opened it, and there she was, in the green jacket with the yellow hood pushed back, looking like she'd walked a very long way.
"Hi," Jean said. "I need a place to stay."
"I..." Peter said.
"I've got nowhere to go." She said it flatly. "And I was kind of hoping you'd be okay with harboring a very dangerous telepath."
It was not a sentence he'd ever had a plan for. For a second his brain went completely blank. He thought about Damage Control. He thought about the ten thousand ways this could go wrong....
"Ummm," he said. "Yeah. Yeah! Umm, come on in! Make yourself at home."
Jean walked in like she'd been there before. In a way, she had... broken in here before. She didn't even glance at the workstation or the free weights or the sad little kitchen. "It's exactly like I remember."
"That's... great. Didn't even invite you over, so, that's not creepy at all."
"Can I use your bath?" She was already unzipping the coat. "I haven't had one in weeks."
"Sure! Yeah, of course. Towels are in the, um. There are towels." He grabbed his mask off the counter. "I have to go on patrol, so, you know. Make yourself at home. Again."
He was at the window when he stopped.
"Weird question," he said. "Sorry. What's your favorite breakfast? Do you take tea or coffee? I just want to get something for the morning."
Jean paused with the coat halfway off her shoulders. She looked confused.
"I don't have one," she said. "That I can think of."
Peter didn't say anything. He sighed, quietly, pulled the mask on, and swung out the window.
When he got back, the apartment was too quiet.
Jean was on the sofa, and she wasn't asleep, exactly. The blanket had been kicked half onto the floor. Her hair was damp with sweat, and she was in his gray T-shirt, which was, honestly, the least of his concerns. She was turning her head from side to side, breathing fast, one hand reaching out into the empty air.
"Please," she was whispering. "Please don't let go. Don't... please, don't let me be alone."
He was across the room before he'd decided to move. He knelt by the sofa, peeled his gloves off, and took her hand.
Her fingers closed around his so hard it almost hurt. Then, slowly, her breathing evened out. The shaking stopped. Her face, which had been so tight, just went soft.
"Okay," Peter murmured. "I've got you. It's okay."
He'd meant to leave to not scare her in the morning. He'd sat down on the floor with his back against the sofa, and the sleepless night, the fight, and the whole insane week caught up with him at once.
When he woke up, it was morning. Sometime in the night, her hand had let go of his.
That was when he'd gone to get muffins.
.
.
Now he stood in the kitchen with the paper bag, feeling like he'd left something out. She was watching him. He hadn't said anything in about a minute.
"So," he said. He rubbed the back of his neck. "I hope nothing bad happens. Like, from having you around. I mean, that's not a knock. It's just, Damage Control, and Metzger's still missing, and..." He trailed off, muttering the last part into his sleeve. "I hope this doesn't blow up in my face."
[Don't worry. I'll get out of your hair soon enough.]
Peter froze.
The voice hadn't come from the sofa. It hadn't come from anywhere. It was just there, right behind his eyes, calm and dry and a little tired.
"How did you-" He spun around. "Did I say that out loud? How did you hear that?"
[My powers seem to be growing.] Jean tilted her head. She looked smug.
[Don't worry, I still had to actually try to get into your mind. Your ability is really confusing, you know that?]
"My-what, my spider-sense?"
[Whatever it is. It's like I keep getting shut out of your brain, like you have a wall in your mind.]
Peter sighed. "Okay. Great. Good to know."
"Don't worry," Jean said out loud this time, pulling the blanket up around her knees. "Like I said. I'll get out of here soon enough."
Peter blinked at her. "Wait. Hold on. You just did the mind thing. Why are you talking now? Why not just do it again?"
She shrugged. "Your mind kicked me out."
"It what?"
"Guess I'm not allowed in unless you've got your guard down." She said it lightly and shrugged.
Peter didn't bother questioning. He thought about telling her that he had no idea how to turn any of it off, that he'd never been able to, that nobody had gotten in before her, not really, not for long.
Instead he pulled the paper bag off the counter, walked over, and held out a blueberry muffin. He set the Coffee beside her on the sofa arm, with the little packet of honey balanced on the lid.
"I guessed," he said. "On the breakfast thing. If it's wrong, I'll get something different, I got us Blueberry Muffins"
Jean picked up the muffin and brought it to her mouth. She took a bite.
Then, for the first time since he'd seen her without a hood or a stranger's face, she smiled. It was small but cute.
"It's good," she said. "You guessed right."
.
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MONTAGE (Ok I'm gonna be so honest here, and yes this is an author's note. Can someone tell me if there's a way to write montages better? Montages I know are supposed to be pictures but... Well I want to write it better, and I have no idea where to begin finding something like that. Can someone recommend me a fanfic or book of some kind of kind to read how to write a montage? Cause this felt so scuffed)
July:
A stack of pizza boxes has grown into a small skyline on the counter. Peter eats a cold slice standing up, one hand on his laptop, still in half his suit. He looks awful. His eyes are red, and he's sitting on a web hammock he made.
On the sofa, Jean sits with her knees tucked up, watching him. Then she puts her finger up and quietly closes the laptop.
"Hey I was-" But before he could say anything else, he was thrown a mystery novel. She'd taken to reading more novels ever since she'd began living here. Most likely she didn't have any money nor the time to read books.
"Read this, and don't keep doing work, you're gonna burn out"
September:
Jean comes through the door with two paper bags. One has a grain bowl in it. The other has a salad, and a tea for her. She sets the bowl in front of Peter, closing the pizza box he was about to start eating.
Peter stares at it. "What is that?"
"Vegetables."
"I mean the pizza has tomatoes."
"You had ordered in pizza for lunch yesterday.... And the day before... And the day before that" She said very threateningly...
Peter picks up the fork, poking into the salad bowl.
Cut to:
Jean stands in front of the stove with a pan. Smoke pours out of it. A soft, cheerful voice from Peter's workstation says, "Smoke detected in the kitchen, Peter." Peter, on the ceiling, drops down and fans the smoke detector with his mask.
"Jean you don't know how to cook! Why don't you ask me to teach you"
"The day that I need your help in the kitchen is the day that I stop cooking"
"BUT YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO COOK!"
November
Rain on the window.
3:07 a.m. Peter swings through a wet downtown, tired and sloppy, there's no crime tonight bu-
[Peter come home, it's time to sleep]
He almost missed his next swing from the sudden interference.
"WOAH! Jean! I'm mid-swing."
[I can see the ground from here. It's very close. Come home.]
"I'm fine."
[Your guard is so down right now, it's basically a welcome mat. Listen if I can get into your mind this easily that means you don't have your guard up, you're vulnerable. Now get home now. Or do I have to come get you]
Peter groans out loud deciding to land on a rooftop, and turns for home.
Cut to:
Peter tries to sneak off to go patrol when Jean is already asleep. He may have limits but the city needs Spiderman!
Just as he's about to leave through the window he grabs at the table just outside his window to grab his mask, but he swipes at air. "Huh where is...."
"Ahem?" Jean's cough comes from the sofa. She's currently holding up the Spiderman mask he so desperately needs to complete his costume. "Don't think you can keep your secret identity without this right? How about you just go back to sleep?" She says rolling over, still holding onto his mask.
Peter sighs, he can't exactly hide his identity without a mask now can he...
.
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DECEMBER.
A row of small colored lights that Jean bought for the window. Peter stands on a stool, stringing them up. He's wearing a sweater with a reindeer on it. It's terrible looking... But it came from someone very dear and near to his heart. Someone who's no longer here.
Jean sits below him with her tea, directing. "You know if I used my powers we could get this done much faster."
"I'm sure we could, but I could also be sticking onto the side as well and doing this"
"I'm sure my powers would require severely less effort considering I can sit here and do it"
"Do you always need to get the last quip in?"
"Yes"
Cut to:
Peter's patrol is shorter now. Ned's phone, on a coffee table, shows a small red dot on a map. APP VOICE: "Spider-Man has returned home."
Ned squints at it. "He's home again? It's eight o'clock."
.
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JANUARY.
Ned and MJ are currently both sitting next to him. They've all become friends again, and thanks to them knowing the secret it's not hard for them all to be able to start talking again. They're currently not eating Pizza, instead going for a much healthier option!
They're eating some Filipino Food. As suggested by... Wait why did they suggest Filipino food? They should've just gotten Pizza?
"Wait remind me why did we get Filipino Food again?" Ned asked. He may come from the Philippines, but this is America Baby!
Why would they get Filipino food. Not to mention, looking at the food they bought.
"Is this also ridiculously healthy or is it just me?" Ned asked both MJ and Peter with only MJ being confused. Peter just looked downcast at his Pho and continued eating.
"Jean... What are you doing?" Peter thought
Ned points a banh mi at him. "Okay ignoring that though, but you have to explain what happens if you're mid-swing and-"
"No." MJ and Peter say it at the same time.
.
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FEBRUARY.
Jean stands on a rooftop, coat pulled tight, watching a small red-and-blue shape flip through the air far below. She sips her tea. When he lands beside her, he's out of breath, grinning under the mask.
"See! It was a quick patrol!" he pants. "Just two hours then I'm home."
"I know," she says. "You kept your promise. Thanks..."
He pulls off the mask and, without thinking about it, sits down beside her on the wet ledge.
Before Peter had ever realized it.
There is a second toothbrush in the bathroom. There is a second mug on the shelf, dark green. An old room that he had used for supplies was turned into an actual room with it's own bed! He'd even bought an actual wardrobe, not that she had many clothes to begin with, so they had gone shopping to get her some clothes.
.
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APRIL. Blossoms. The light is warm.
MJ and Ned's apartment, at dinner. The table is crowded with takeout containers, and there are way too many packets of chili that someone definitely didn't steal from the restaurant. Peter sits between them, relaxed, sleeves rolled up.
His phone buzzes against the table. He glances down, and a small, private smile crosses his face.
[No rush. I scanned the city there's no crime, at least not that I can see, so relax with your friends.]
MJ sees it and Ned sees her see it.
They look at each other and with devilish grins.
"Okay," Ned says. "Hold on."
"What?" Peter says.
"What's with that look?"
"What... What look? What uhhhh. What... What are you talking about?"
MJ sets down her glass. "Peter." A small pause. "Have you finally got somebody in your life?"
There's a pregnant pause. "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"
.
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.
.
The room is dark, and it is full of voices.
Charles Xavier sits at the center of Cerebro, wrapped in a thousand overlapping whispers. Thoughts, worries, and half-remembered songs spin around him like sparks in a storm. The great machine has connected him to every mind on Earth, and it shows him the world as a map: a slow, dark globe, dotted with tiny lights, one for each mutant.
Most of the lights are small and steady.
One is not.
It sits over New York City, where it began, months ago, as a faint, warm smudge no larger than a few city blocks. He noticed it then, but decided not to bring her in. A young mind, a frightened one but was clearly in control of their powers, he thought, and he had no right to pry them out of a life if there was no problems...
Now the smudge is a sun.
It has spread across Manhattan. It has spilled into Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx, pouring outward past the rivers and the bridges. It isn't stopping. Every night it grows.
Charles pulls the helmet off. His hands are not quite steady.
"Hank."
Beast is beside him at once, blue and huge, one hand hovering at the console. Beast had always been Charles's right hand man when it came to tracking down and helping Mutants. But even he'd never seen a power level like this.
"Six months ago, that was about a kilometer across," Hank says softly. "It's now the entire city. Charles... If the growth is linear, and I don't think it is, we're looking at..."
"A Mutant with enough power to one day destroy the entire planet... Maybe even more if this power has no limits" Charles says.
He looks at the light for a long time.
"I was hesitant to bring her here," he admits. "I told myself it was respect. A child, alone, trying to find her feet. But this is no longer something I can leave alone." A pause. "Call the others."
.
.
They arrive one by one.
Scott Summers (Cyclops), Ororo Munroe (Storm), Logan (Wolverine) [Till your 90!] Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler). They all appeared fast due to the urgency of Professor X's call.
"Professor," Scott says. "Is everything all right? It sounds serious."
"It is." Charles waves his hand. The wall display lights up. "This is New York, six months ago."
A small, warm glow sits over the city, no bigger than a couple Km across. Stronger than the average mutant, but as they know it, the incident had been calmed down.
"And this is New York now."
The glow fills the screen. It covers the whole island and everything around it.
They all gasp aloud.
Kurt is the first to speak, in a very small voice. "Mein Gott."
Logan tilts his head. "That's a mutant?"
"Yes, and this is their power" Hank says. "Measured in Raw output."
Storm walked closer to the glowing lights. She was the most powerful mutant in this room when it came to pure combat. But even she...
"I am an omega-level mutant. I can call storms across continents. Compared to this, I am a candle."
"Storm's the strongest mutant I've ever seen in my life" Logan mutters, and he sounds almost annoyed to be saying it. "That's bigger than her?"
"Much bigger," Charles says. "I am not certain I could contain her, and If she chose to hurt someone, I am not certain anyone could stop her."
Scott straightens. "Then who are we looking for?"
Hank taps a key. A photograph appears on the wall: a young woman with red hair, half in shadow, a yellow hood pushed back and a green jacket on her shoulders. Her expression is watchful and tired.
"Jean Grey," Hank says. "Telepath, and, apparently, much more than that. She was last seen leaving New York after an incident with Damage Control. It was scrubbed from the files and since the Professor hadn't asked for further investigation I didn't bother to check in on the incident until now... But ever since then, nothing. But the signal doesn't lie."
"You want us to fight her?" Logan says.
"No." Charles's voice is firm. "I want you to find her. And I want you to bring her back here, safely. She is a child with a great power and no teacher. She is no monster monster. I believe she is alone."
He looks at each of them in turn.
"Do not frighten her. Or god help us all"
.
.
The sun is going down over the city, and the wind up here has real teeth.
Peter is sitting on the side of a construction crane, sixty stories up, with his legs dangling over nothing. His mask is pushed up just letting his mouth hit the air. A carton of Chinese takeout is stuck to the metal beam beside him, held in place by a thin, translucent strand of web from his wrist.
Jean sits next to him with a pair of chopsticks and her own carton. She's wearing the a new yellow jacket, hood down, her hair whipping in the wind.
"I don't get it," he says. "How did you get me to give up pizza for Chinese food?"
"We had pizza yesterday."
"And technically... the day before that." Peter said guiltily
"That's my point." She points the chopsticks at him. "You have a superhuman metabolism. So do I, I think, Well I hope at least. That doesn't mean we can eat whatever we want."
Peter chews for a second. "But then what's the point of having superpowers?"
Jean laughs in to her hand.
Then she lifts her hand and waves.
Across the street, a window washer on a swing stage looks straight at them. He does a double take, sees Spiderman, and gives him a big thumbs-up. He doesn't seem to notice the girl beside him at all. Jean waves again, right at him. The man just keeps grinning at Spider-Man.
"That's why," Jean says.
Peter turns to look at her. He can see her perfectly: the freckles, the cold on her cheeks, the little smear of sauce at the corner of her mouth. But...
"You're invisible."
"Not exactly." She sets her chopsticks down. "It's the atoms. I've been trying it for a few weeks. If I push them around me just right, light can't bounce off. It goes around me. So nobody looks at me and sees anything."
"Except me."
"Except you." She glances sideways. "I think your senses just don't care what the light does. You see me anyway. Or maybe you're seeing me via your Spider-sense and your eyes are now connected to that sense?"
Peter nods. He tries to a poker face.
This isn't good...
Ever since she's come into his life, he's noticed that her powers are growing, almost exponentially. Her ability to hop between people was becoming more and more powerful, just today he'd learned her range had somehow spread to the otherside of New York!
Not to mention her telekinetic abilities had grown as well. He'd had to wake her up almost every day because when she did have a nightmare, her powers would break random items in their home and he was only glad they weren't being more obvious like her breaking the structure of their apartment.
The only thing that's kept her out of his head is that his own powers are growing just as fast, his senses sharpening every week. But even he isn't sure how long that will hold, there's probably a limit to the genetic mutation that the radioactive spider bit him with, but for a natural born mutant? Maybe not...
He looks down at the street at all the civilians, living their lives.
If this keeps up, somebody's going to notice.
Damage Control. Metzger, wherever he is. Whoever else has ever wanted someone like her. He isn't sure who, but he knows that sooner or later, someone will come looking.
"Hey," Jean says. "You went quiet."
"Yeah," Peter says. "Sorry. Just thinking."
"Come on! You know that I can't read your mind. It's weird for a Psychic whenever they can't hear what someone's thinking about, so say it out loud. What were you thinking about?"
He picks his noodles up again.
"How good this is, honestly might beat some New York Pizza places" he says.
"Told you" she says grinning moving back to her carton of chinese food.
The sun sinks behind the towers, and the lights of the city come on one at a time.
I'm going to be ready, Peter thinks. Whatever comes, I'm going to be ready to protect her.
.
.
.
Jean had not gotten any better at cooking.
She stood in front of the stove, looking down at a pan. In it sat what had once been an egg. It was black at the edges and raw in the middle. "How is that even possible..." She sighed. "This is why," she muttered to no one, "he does the cooking."
She scraped it into the trash and looked around the kitchen. The fridge was mostly leftover Chinese, a jar of pickles, and a single sad lemon. On the counter, under a salt shaker, was a small stack of crumpled bills.
She looked at the crumpled bills. Learning to cook was by far the toughest and most challenging thing she's ever had to endure in her life. I mean the torture at the hands of Metzger for a few minutes was tough, but at least her powers adapted and helped her out. Why couldn't her powers also give her the ability to not suck at cooking? Maybe if she hopped into Gordon Ramsay's memories she could steal some good recipes.
But that would be cheating. And Peter wouldn't like that. Jean sighs and picks up the crumpled bills. "Guess it's regular practice" she mutters to herself.
.
The grocery store was too bright. It hummed with lights, and the produce section stretched on forever.
Jean stood in front of a wall of tomatoes and had no idea what she was doing. Some were red and some were slightly redder. She picked one up and squeezed it. She put it down and picked up a different one. She sniffed it. Nothing.
Nobody had ever explained how to tell whether a tomato was good.
In the end, she went on instinct. Tomatoes, a bunch of bananas, an onion (she wasn't sure why), some green things that looked healthy, and a bag of flour. The whole time, she tried very hard not to think about the one thing she kept thinking about, which was:
Peter, standing at the stove in that ridiculous apron, humming something off-key, looking back over his shoulder at her with a lopsided smile. "So what did you do today?"
Jean stopped.
She was standing in the middle of the cereal aisle with a box in each hand. She could feel her face heating up.
She smacked herself in the cheek. Hard. A woman with a stroller stared at her.
How, she thought furiously, how could I fall in love with that self-sacrificing, reckless, stubborn, hopeless...
She sighed... Why did I have do fall for that Giant, Enormous, complete idio-
"Focus," she muttered to herself trying to cut off her own thoughts, and put both boxes in the basket without looking at either.
.
She paid, and the cashier didn't look at her twice before giving back a lot more money than was necessary. "Keep the change" The Cashier had said. She thought that was a little weird, but just assumed the cashier was just being nice or something. She pulled the green hood up and pushed through the doors with a bag in her arms.
The street was empty.
Jean stopped on the sidewalk.
It was raining. Not just raining. The sky had gone the color of a bruise, and thunder rolled overhead. The wind pushed against her, hard and strangely deliberate. There were no cars. No people. No open umbrellas or hurrying commuters. Every window on the block was dark.
The bag felt heavier in her arms.
There's something wrong with the weather. It didn't feel like weather at all. It felt like it was alive.
She reached out with her mind, and found nothing. Not one thought within four blocks. It was silent.
Somebody cleared the street.
Slowly, she looked across the road.
There were four of them, standing in the rain.
A tall man in a dark visor, upright and stiff. A woman with white hair, her eyes gone pale as lightning. A smaller figure with blue skin and a tail, half-shadowed in a doorway. And a broad man with sideburns and a scowl, his hands hanging loose at his sides.
She didn't know any of them. But she knew what they were... Dangerous
The white-haired woman hovered forward. Her voice carried across the street without effort, soft and even.
"Jean Grey."
Jean's grip tightened on the grocery bag.
"You need to come with us."
"I don't know who you are," Jean said. Rain ran off the edge of her hood. "So I'm going to say no."
"We are not here to hurt you," the woman said.
"That's the kind of thing people say right before they do."
The man in the visor spoke next, his voice tight and controlled. "You're a danger to yourself, and to everyone around you. We need you to come quietly."
"We can protect you," the blue one added, his voice gentle, almost pleading. "Bitte. We only want to make this safe."
"Safe," Jean repeated.
"You cannot stay out here," the woman said. "Not with what you are. Not with what you've become. We will take you somewhere where you can be... looked after. Where you cannot hurt anyone."
The words sat in the rain between them, and each one sounded worse than the last.
Jean took a step back. She felt her heart begin to pound. Where you can be looked after. Every hospital, every locked door, everybody in a suit who'd ever told her it was for her own good.
"Sorry, kid," said the broad man. "Nothing personal, but you're coming with us whether you like it or not. Professor's orders"
He moved slowly towards her.
Jean didn't think about it. She just pushed.
The air cracked. The man went backward like a ragdoll, straight across the street and through the asphalt, where he plowed a long furrow and landed in a crater with a heavy, wet thump. She turned the asphalt around his body and it coiled around him putting him down, if that wasn't enough the crack in the road had allowed the man to be stuck in between the cracks.
"Son of a-" said the crater.
For a moment, nobody moved.
"I know he's tough," she said, and her voice was steadier than she felt. "His skeleton isn't made of bones, I know he'll be fine. But now that you know what I can do..." She looked at the other three. "What are you going to do about it?"
The woman took a slow breath.
"We have been tasked," she said, "to take you away." Her powers began to surge even higher as the sky began to turn an even darker shade. "We'll bring you back by force if we need to"
It didn't sound any better the second time.
Jean began to back away, one step and then another. The wind pushed at her, and the rain fell harder. She could feel her power coiling up in her chest. She was strong. She knew she was strong. But there were three of them left, and one of them was controlling the sky.
I don't know if I can beat all of them.
The man in the visor raised a hand slowly. "Everyone please calm down. Jean. Please."
She tightened her hold on the bag.
And from somewhere above, a voice tore through the storm.
"JEAN!"
He came swinging down out of the clouds, a streak of red and blue against the gray, his webs snapping from wall to wall. He landed in a low, skidding crouch between her and the others. The rain streamed off his suit.
For half a second, Jean could only stare.
"Pe- Spiderman?"
He didn't answer. He turned, scooped her off her feet without breaking stride, and Jean grabbed on to him with her free arm, the grocery bag crushed between them, her face pressed against his chest. She felt the world drop away beneath her.
They were gone within seconds. Kurt was the first one to speak, blinking at the empty air. "Who was that...?"
"Not sure. Another mutant maybe?" Scott said flatly.
Logan dragged himself out of the crater, trailing chunks of pavement. "That kids got guts I'll give her that."
Ororo turned toward the sky. The thunder faded, and the rain thinned to a drizzle. She thought into her mind sending signals back to headquarters. "Professor. The streets were cleared. Everyone in this district was being kept away. How did he break through your control?"
There was a long pause. When Charles Xavier's voice finally came, it sounded in all four of their minds at once, low and puzzled.
I'm not sure.
A silence.
He's... seems to be immune to my powers.
.
.
.
Peter landed on a rooftop six blocks away, skidded to a stop, and set Jean down carefully on a puddled patch of tar and gravel. The rain had thinned to a cold drizzle. Somewhere across the river, thunder still muttered.
"Okay," he said. He pulled his mask up over his nose, breathing hard. "Okay, okay. Are you hurt? Did anyone... are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Jean was still holding the grocery bag. She looked at it, as if surprised it was there. "I don't know what's going on."
"Neither do I. I was on patrol, I felt something weird, and then I heard you. Who were those guys?"
"I don't know. They knew my name." She pulled her hood forward. Her voice dropped. "One of them said 'Professor.' They kept saying Professor, like they were taking me to school. Except..."
She didn't finish.
Peter watched her hands tighten around the bag. It took him a second to realize what she was thinking. Professor. Somewhere to be looked after. Somewhere to be studied.
"Hey," he said. He crouched in front of her, so their eyes were level. "Listen to me. Nobody's taking you anywhere."
"Peter..."
"I mean it. You're free. Nobody gets to decide that for you, not those guys, not Damage Control, not anyone. It's your life." He tried a small smile. "So. What do you want to do?"
Jean blinked. It seemed to take her a second to understand the question. Then she gave a long, tired breath.
"I just want to go home," she said. "And sleep."
"Yeah." Peter's smile got a little easier. "We can do that. We can absolutely do that. I'll make the, um, the good tea, and-"
His spider-sense went off like an alarm.
He was on his feet before he'd finished the thought, stepping in front of her, one arm out. Behind him, suddenly 4 figures emerged in a loose half-circle.
"Oh, come on," Peter said. "I was being nice about it. I even swung 6 blocks away so you all could ignore us"
Scott Summers stepped forward. There was water dripping off the edge of his glasses. "We're not here to fight you."
"Good. Same."
"Step aside."
"Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say no."
Scott's jaw tightened. He was also connected to the link Charles and the other's were all in. It allowed them all to work together better and to inform Beast and Charles on the status of their mossion.
Hank and I have reviewed what we saw. When she threw Logan, her energy output spiked, and then fell sharply. She's not able to use her abilities freely. She can only manage them very sparingly, perhaps in short bursts. It may be a limit.
A second voice, deeper, more clinical. Which means we can bring her back using more force, if we have to. But please, take care not to hurt her.
"Understood, Professor," Scott said.
Peter felt Jean go still behind him.
"Then here's what's going to happen," Scott went on. "You're going to step aside. We'll let you leave quietly. No trouble, no harm done. All we want is to help her."
"See, that's the thing." Peter tilted his head. "Help. Everyone keeps using that word. But when Damage Control grabbed her, where were you guys? Nobody came. Nobody called. Now, almost a year later, four of you show up in a thunderstorm and start using words like 'take her away.' What changed?"
The X-Men glanced at each other.
"We hadn't heard about it," Ororo said slowly. "The public reports said that a machine malfunctioned. No one mentioned a mutant."
"So you're telling me," Peter said, "that if it hadn't been in the news, you'd never have come."
"We're trying to help," Kurt said. He sounded nearly desperate. "Please, mein Freund. This isn't what it looks like."
"Right." Peter shifted his weight. "It's just that everything you've said so far is exactly what it looks like."
He was stalling. He knew it, and so did they. He could feel it in the set of their shoulders, and in the way Scott's fingers twitched at the side of his visor.
Very quietly, without turning his head, Peter murmured, "Jean."
Behind him, so softly it was barely a breath, she said, "Yeah?"
"Do the trick. The invisible thing. Go home. I'll distract them."
"Peter, I'm not going to leave you-"
"You're not leaving me. I'll be right behind you." He kept his voice light, almost cheerful. "I'll be there by the time the kettle's done. Promise."
There was a long, painful silence.
"You'd better be," Jean whispered.
The air shimmered. The rain seemed to bend around a small, green-jacketed shape, and then nothing at all was there, just a faint wet outline where a grocery bag hit the gravel.
That was when Logan finally lost it.
"Enough." He stepped forward, cracking his neck. His lip curled. "You think she's gonna get far? Kid's got a scent like a lightning strike. I don't need to see her. I can track her down from across the whole city, my sense of smell is better than any-"
Thwip.
A thick wad of web hit him square in the face. Another one followed, and another, sealing his nose and mouth in a white, sticky gag. Logan staggered, clawing at it, making an outraged muffled sound.
"Scaring a civilian," Peter said, dusting his hands, "isn't very hero-like, now, is it?"
"Logan," Scott snapped. "Stand down-"
"Mmmf! Mmmmfff!"
"Logan, no, wait-" Kurt began.
It was too late. Logan ripped the web off his face in one long, furious strip, and the claws came out with a hiss. He charged.
Peter's spider-sense sang. He jumped low and to the left, with the claws swinging through the empty air where his chest had been. He came up behind Logan with one leg already swinging. His foot connected squarely between Logan's shoulder blades, and the shorter man went flying across the rooftop like a shot from a cannon.
Straight into Ororo.
There was a crash and a yelp. The two of them ended up in a tangle of limbs and rainwater against the base of a chimney.
"I believe this is yours!" Peter called, clapping his hands.
Ororo shoved Logan off her with an expression of quiet fury. She rose slowly, the wind whipping her white hair around her shoulders. Her eyes went blank and white.
"That," she said, "was a mistake."
The sky cracked open.
A bolt of lightning came down in a solid white column, roaring, right where Peter was standing. He flipped, twisted, hit the wall, and ran up it as a second bolt struck the roof behind him. A third. A fourth. He danced between them like a man crossing a busy street.
Ororo lowered her hands.
She was staring at him. And to her own surprise, the tiniest hint of a smile crossed her face.
"He is dodging lightning," she said, half to herself. "His instincts are sharper than Logan's claws." She narrowed her eyes. "And he has held us here long enough for her to slip away."
"Kurt," Scott said. "The girl."
"Ja. I will find her." Kurt was already crouched on the ledge, his yellow eyes bright. "She can't have gone far."
There was a bamf of blue smoke and a smell of brimstone. The ledge was empty.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then a thread of web shot out of nowhere and snapped tight around a pair of blue ankles. Peter yanked, and Kurt materialized out of thin air about ten feet from the roof, tail flailing, cartwheeling backward in a spray of rain. He hit the gravel, rolled, and came up spluttering.
"How did you-"
"Spider-sense," Peter said, tapping his temple. "It tingles."
Kurt vanished again. Bamf.
Peter didn't even look. He simply turned to the left, raised his wrist, and fired a strand of web at empty air. It caught something in the middle of a puff of smoke, and a very confused Nightcrawler landed on the gravel at his feet, tangled in white line.
"How," Kurt gasped, "What sorcery is this?"
"Honestly? No clue." Peter shrugged.
A crimson beam of light cut a line across the rooftop.
Peter flipped over it with a yelp. Scott Summers stood at the far edge of the roof, one hand pressed to the side of his visor, breathing hard.
"I've never seen anyone predict Kurt's teleports," Scott said. "Not once. In all the years I've fought beside him."
"Yeah, well. New experience for all of us."
Logan had clawed his way back to his feet. Ororo drifted upward, the storm gathering above her like a crown. Kurt struggled out of the web, grinning despite himself.
Scott lowered his hand, and the visor glowed.
"He's dangerous," he said quietly. "All of you. Be careful."
Peter rolled his shoulders, and behind his mask, he grinned.
"Well," he said. "You were the ones who came to my city."
Then the whole roof exploded into motion.
Logan came first, and Peter went under his claws in a low slide, so close that they snipped a strand from the top of his mask. He came up behind Logan with an elbow between the shoulder blades, then jumped clear as a red beam sheared across the space where his legs had been. The gravel behind him turned to glass.
"Left!" Scott shouted.
Kurt appeared on Peter's left with a bamf. Peter caught his wrist without even looking, spun him, and tossed him at Logan. "URGH!" They both yelped.
"Ow," said Kurt, from the pile.
"You might want to try teleporting away!" Peter suggested, already dodging a wall of wind that took the antenna off a nearby vent.
Nothing was landing.
Ororo circled above them, her hair streaming, her voice thundering out of the clouds. Logan threw himself at Peter again and again, roaring. Scott turned the world red in short, precise bursts. Kurt danced in and out of nowhere. And every time, Peter just dodged, a blur of red and blue that hadn't been there half a second ago.
In Westchester, watching through Cerebro, Hank McCoy muttered a single word under his breath.
"Impossible."
"Report," Charles said.
"An omega-level mutant, an alpha, a beta, a gamma, and he's keeping pace with all of them. Charles, he isn't even breathing hard."
"He is a boy," Charles murmured. "How is he doing this... Not to mention... Why can't I read his mind?"
On the rooftop, Peter barrel-rolled over a crackling bolt of lightning, kicked off a chimney, and dove straight at Logan with a grin.
"You've got to be kidding me," Logan snarled.
"Nope! That's me!"
Logan lunged. Peter twisted. A set of claws missed his ribs by a whisker...
...and a red beam caught him square in the back.
Peter cried out. It felt like being dragged across a stove. He hit the roof rolling, and the smell of scorched fabric rose around him. When he pushed himself up on one arm, the back of his suit was smoking, and the skin underneath was raw and blistered.
"Got him," Scott said.
"Not... quite," Peter gritted out.
He got up. The pain came in waves, but he'd had worse. He'd had a lot worse.
He rolled aside as Logan slashed down. He pushed off the ground, and as he flew he caught sight of Kurt disappearing in a cloud of smoke, aiming for a spot above him. Peter grabbed a web-line out of thin air, yanked, and the teleporter came tumbling back to the ground.
That was when Ororo brought down the sky.
A bolt of white fire cracked across the roof. Peter twisted, but he'd been watching Kurt, not the storm. The lightning took a strip of skin from his ankle as it went past. He hissed, hopped, caught himself on a ventilation shaft, and felt the sting shoot right up his leg.
Okay. That one I felt.
But he didn't stop.
That was what none of them understood. The injuries kept piling up, one burn after another, a slash across the arm and a bruise on his ribs, and he just kept going. He caught a bolt of lightning on a metal panel and flung it back. He ducked under Logan's claws, and flipped over Scott's beam, and threw Kurt into a puddle. He hit and kicked and dodged in a wild, furious, joyful blur, and against every law of arithmetic, he was still standing.
The fight was ridiculously, impossibly close.
Then he finally made his mistake.
Kurt appeared right in front of him. For half a second, Peter wasn't thinking about the fight at all. He was thinking about a small green jacket, and a kettle, and a promise. He reached out, and caught Kurt's arm.
"Gotcha!" he said, and threw him.
He spun to follow up and realized he was in the air.
Peter froze, halfway through a leap, and everything clicked into place. Kurt had been bait.
Scott's visor blazed red, in a beam aimed exactly where his dodge would take him.
Ororo's hands were already coming down, her eyes burning white. A bolt of lightning sat ready above her palm, aimed at the same spot, from the other side.
X marks the spot.
And below him, low and grinning like a wolf, Logan was already bracing to pounce. Every route out was blocked. Laser. Lightning. Claws.
Okay, Peter thought. This is... going to hurt.
He had about half a second to think, and he spent it looking for a way out. There was a web, maybe, a rooftop, a wall...
Nope. Nothing. Nothing works.
Well, he thought, almost calmly. I did promise her tea.
"NOOOOOOOO!"
The world stopped.
The lightning went sideways. The clouds ripped apart. The red beam curled and twisted, and then it burned out in the middle of the air. Everything, all at once, was thrown away from him in a great silent shockwave. Logan flew back like a rag. Kurt and Scott slammed into the far wall. Ororo was hurled backward in a ring of dissolving storm.
Peter hit the roof and skidded to a stop on his stomach.
For a moment, all he could hear was the ringing in his ears.
Slowly, he raised his head.
The sun was out.
It shone straight down through a hole in the clouds, warm and bright, on a rooftop that had been all rain and thunder a second ago. The air shimmered. There was a smell of ozone and burnt metal, and something else, something that made his spider sense tingle.
He knew this feeling.
He'd felt it once before, back on the... island...
No. No, no, no.
He turned his head.
The X-Men were all still on their feet, but not one of them was moving. Scott, Ororo, Kurt, and Logan. They stood like statues, arms half-raised, frozen in place. Their eyes were wide. Their mouths were open, but no sound came out.
And every one of them was in agony.
In the middle of the roof, standing in a patch of golden sunlight, was Jean Grey.
She had dropped the invisibility. Her hair floated around her in a slow, weightless halo. Her green jacket fluttered. And there was fire in her eyes, literal flame, dancing behind the irises, red and gold.
"You were supposed to be home," Peter whispered.
She didn't seem to hear him.
"How does it feel?" she said. Her voice was very quiet, and it echoed. "To be helpless?"
Nobody answered. They couldn't.
"To come to somebody's home. To take somebody away." She began to walk slowly toward them, her bare feet not touching the gravel. "You tried to take him. The one person left in this whole world who ever made me feel like I was at home."
Scott's fingers twitched. His whole body shook. She stopped in front of him, and tilted her head.
"You're their leader," she said. "Aren't you?"
A pause.
"No." Her mouth curled. "No, you're not. Are you?"
She stared straight into Scott's Visor.
"Charles Xavier."
Every one of them flinched. All four sets of eyes were frozen in place but if they weren't they'd have widened. Behind each one, the same thought passed in a wave of terror.
Her powers weren't supposed to reach this far. How is she inside the link?!
Far away, in a dark room in Westchester, Charles Xavier gripped the arms of his chair.
Jean, he said. Even now, his voice was gentle. Jean, please listen to me. We made a mistake. This isn't what we wanted. We never meant to frighten you.
"Shh."
She put a finger to her lips, and the voice cut out like a cut string.
She turned away from Scott and walked toward the one in the cowl. Logan's whole body was rigid. His hands had curled into fists, and his claws were trembling trying to break free.
"You," Jean said. "This all started with you, didn't it? Nothing personal."
She reached up and pulled his mask off. It came away in her fingers, and she let it flutter to the roof. Under it, his face was gray with pain.
"I wonder," she said threateningly, "how strong that skeleton really is."
Suddenly there was a creak. It was a slow, terrible sound, like a bridge under too much weight. Logan's mouth quivered trying to move. He couldn't scream. His eyes were bulging. Every vein in his neck stood out, and it was very, very clear that he was in unimaginable pain.
The X-men could do nothing except watch as Wolverine's body slowly began to collapse in on itself the supernatural adamantium skeleton cracking and breaking under the pressure.
"Jean," Peter said.
She wouldn't turn around, her smile seemingly growing more and more malicious.
"Jean!"
Peter forced himself up. His back was on fire, and his ankle screamed. He didn't care. He crossed the roof in three shaky strides, and did the only thing he could think of.
He wrapped his arms around her from behind.
"I'm okay," he said into her hair. "I'm okay. I'm right here."
She stiffened.
"You saved me," he said. His voice cracked. "You saved me, Jean. You did. It's okay, I'm fine. You can stop. Please, you can stop now."
"NO! They were! They were going to... I WON'T LET ANYONE ELSE TAKE SOMEONE I LOVE EVER AGAIN!"
"I know." He held her tighter. "I know. But you're not a bad person. You're really not." His forehead touched the back of her shoulder. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to leave. I promise."
There was a long, wavering silence.
The floating hair began to drift down. The fire in her eyes flickered and died. The golden light thinned, and, one by one, the X-Men crumpled to their knees, gasping. Logan folded over on the gravel, coughing out blood onto the pavement.
Jean turned around.
Her eyes were wet. She looked at him, at the burns on his suit, and at the smoking hole in the back of it, and something broke in her face. She put both hands on his cheeks, over the mask, as if to make sure he was real.
Then she pulled him in and hugged him with her whole body.
"Please don't leave me," she whispered.
Peter closed his eyes. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand cradling the back of her head.
"I won't," he said. "I promise."