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[greyate]

"This is Jean. I can't answer right now. Leave a message and I'll get back to you."

( text | audio | action )

Comments

text; same day as Charles's network post

[petridish]

Charles Xavier gave me your name as someone with telekinesis. I have biotics, which can have a similar effect to telekinesis. Could you teach me how to do it?

[... great (abrupt) lack of greeting there.]

text; sorry for the slow!

[greyate]

[ It's not a number she recognizes but if the Professor gave her name out, he must have trusted them. ]

Sure. I can try. It'll take a lot of practice.

text;

[shadowblends]

hello, jean.

uhm

i have a question?

text;

[greyate]

Hey, Kurt. What's up?

video; after immediate drama dies down

[seeingscarlet]

[It would be easier, in a way, if she could just follow Peter's lead and be mad at Jean. But Jean is so like her and the X-Men have given her a kind of home that even the Avengers couldn't match. She didn't feel so weird or out of place living with them and for the first time in years she'd been able to fully relax.

Perhaps it's selfish, but she doesn't want to lose it just as she was starting to rely on it.]

We need to talk.

[At least Wanda doesn't look or sound angry? Just emotionally worn-out.]

audio;

[greyate]

[ Considering she'd been crying for a bit after the conversation with Peter, she really doesn't feel like showing her face right now. Though her voice comes through a little hoarse all the same. She's so tired. She just wants to go to sleep and wake up back in her old life. ]

Look, he already yelled at me enough, okay?

audio; backdated to Sunday

[el_paso]

Hey Jeanie, you got a minute?

[greyate]

[ There's silence for a moment on her end but she answers with a simple, ]

Yeah. What is it?

[ Like in most situations, her anger has ebbed off over time. And befriending Laura has gone a long way to helping that process. ]

audio; (for now w/e; actually definitely backdate this to last weekish)

[welcomeprofessor]

Jean...can we talk?

[He's spent too long trying to figure out how to approach this, and he still sounds like he doesn't know what he's doing. Whoops?]

[greyate]

[ She's rarely heard that kind of uncertainty in his voice before. It makes her frown a little. ]

Sure. What's up?

[action; backdate to mid last week] 1/2

[welcomeprofessor]

[He spends that entire first day and the subsequent evening, after the long and tedious talk with Kurt and Laura, back at the Ingress Complex. The mansion itself is both too big and far too small for the worry he's trying desperately to bottle up. Kurt will be, he assumes, fine, properly chastized for the time being to be too much trouble (and back home, he's much easier to keep mental track of.

But if he were to be honest--in that open, hurtful way in which most people never are--Jean is at the forefront of his mind, and negligent or no, he would be making this trip regardless.

He isn't sure what he expects to see as he enters the room, as every heartbeat seems liable to break through his ribcage in its deafening ferocity. What he sees is worse than he imagines. A little hurt, an injury, a scar would be preferable to how broken the girl before him is now, and for a short moment, the pitch of the equipment in the room sounds too shrill, and he can't breathe.

That worry working its insidious way into despair has nothing on the sheer terror in that single moment where the whole world seems to fall away.]

Jean.

[It's said breathless and desperately, an invocation more than it has ever been her name. With it, the world rights itself, and that silent--oh, too silent--hospital room rights itself and his lungs with it. One breath, then another, and soon, his own heaving falls into the pace of Jean's regulated breathing.

God, this is so much worse. Worse than he could have imagined, and everything he's been told. The manifesto on responsibility and critical thinking feels so far away, useless now in the face of everything breaking those guidelines as wrought.

The motorized chair's soft whir is drowned out by the steady hum and beep of the heart-monitor (and additional equipment he doesn't recognize enough to discern their use) as he moves from that place in the middle of the room to her bedside. Charles chokes back a sob that settles awkwardly in his throat, uncomfortable and still forgotten as he reaches to brush a lock of hair from her face. The pain runs deep, moreso than even the bruises and exhaustion he can still see underneath her skin, and he's not sure he's ever hated anything more than this feeling.

Failure. Hopelessness. Such despair he doesn't have the right words in an entire library for.

His fingers linger at her temple, the thought contemplated only for a moment before he decides he has to try. The other hand joins in, placed gently at the other side of her head, careful enough to not disturb her enough to find a nurse trying to interrupt.

Charles closes his eyes. His body seems to lift, giving the sense of weightlessness for a moment before he's met by a formless dark in that space unseen between them, an unoccupied psychic plane not unlike a pathway. He reaches, reaches for that feeling of light that he recognizes as Jean, and in a moment...

He's met with water. The currents rage and swirl, too violent to traverse. He stands on a shore--here, he always can--peering down into the deep. At first, it reveals nothing but endless angry waves. But after a moment of time stretching into an abyss that makes it all but meaningless, the color of the waves change. Under them, a flash of bright copper.

Jean.

He plunges a hand into the rapids without a second care, reaching down and down and down until he topples right in himself. Underneath the surface is calmer, but darker, and easier to get lost. And as his fingers seem to almost brush her own, she's pulled down deeper. Above the waves, through an unreal, crystaline clarity, he sees the world awash in its own sea: of flame. At that the center of it, such heat it's almost too bright to look at, and the image of a bird.

Jean. Jean!

He pushes for the surface--

And finds himself back in that cold, clinical little hospital room, Jean still...still and unresponsive. He moves his hands away with a small, tired sigh, and instead sets the braking lock on his chair. He's going to be here when she wakes up.

However long that takes.]

[action; +today!] 2/2

[welcomeprofessor]

[Thoughout the week, he moves back and forth from the medical bay to the mansion in a frantic wash and repeat that leaves little time or care for much anything else. After a few days, Charles looks as haggard as the schedule feels, his hair mussed and unkempt, and even sporting the slight beard he's kept at bay for near a decade now. Days are spent at home--if he can spare the thought--running minor upkeep at the mansion and the burgeoning school he's still trying to find time to properly settle. Most nights, if he hasn't already, he sneaks away, opting to spend the time at Jean's unresponsive bedside.

He keeps his TAB on him, but thus far--perhaps a little too fortuitously--there's been little response or beckoning him back home.

This morning, almost too late to still be called as much, finds him still at her bedside. His head is settled in one hand, temple to his forefingers and chin settled precariously atop his thumb. The other is curled around Jean's slight hand underneath. This morning, it would seem, that schedule has caught up with him, and his daughter ward isn't the only one asleep.]

[literal inbox; dated sometime after 6/8 (or the return from evacuation)]

[welcomeprofessor]

[Charles is well-versed in the mind of teenagers, by now. How they work, how they must come to their own independent terms. He isn't always the best at this--Jean would likely be the first one to tell him so--but there are times when even he, in all his optimistic obstinance, can't argue with it.

So, after some time passed as the fog rolls away and the evacuation ends, when they're back in the house establishing a routine, there will appear an unannounced package on Jean's bed. It's a book she's seen before--one all of Charles' students have--but it's been conspicuously marked to a page in chapter eight with a note, scrawled in very-unprofessor-like precise script, highlighting a particular passage:]

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you."

oh charles

[greyate]

[ She's surprised and yet not to see the book there. It's a common book in the mansion and a favorite of the Professor's. But she sits on the edge of the bed and reads the passage, feeling her lips turn up some. Only some as she tries to stop herself from smiling. He would to this.

Well, one good turn deserves another.

He will find, later that evening as he returns to his own quarters, a thin book with a marker of its own. And the page marked read: ]

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

[text; bckdt to 7/21ish, after the shadow event]

[welcomeprofessor]

I never did get the chance to thank you properly.

[ After weeks of constant back and forth in terms of stability, and her soldiering through all of it (as well as the year or so he's seemingly missed), she deserves a good deal more than that, but he's not entirely sure how to put all of what's happened this month into words quite yet. There's...a lot to address. ]

[greyate]

For what?

[ Jean has been trying to deal with a lot of the aftermath of what she did on the out post. Her memory of events isn't complete but it seems like the more her body heals, the memories start to fall back into place. ]

text; backdated to the mini event

[el_paso]

Have you been by the Music Hall yet?

[greyate]

Not yet. What's up?

text; (not backdated for once this is a miracle)

[welcomeprofessor]

Jean, we need to talk.

About Cairo.

praise jeebus

[greyate]

[ oh

shit. ]

Why?

[quickfingers]

Yo, I hope I'm doing this right. [Somebody's first time inboxing people.]

Is there some chart glued to a wall explaining what timeline everybody's from because every time I turn a corner I'm getting majorly confused here. My sister with an accent, Charles not knowing about Cairo - what gives? What am I gonna get awkwardly in the middle of next?

[greyate]

[ Seeing this after the text she got from Charles, it's not hard to put 2 and 2 together.

Oh my fucking god. ]

What did you say to him Peter?

[quickfingers]

Why am I always in your inbox after I say things I could've gotten away with not saying?

cries

[greyate]

[ ..... ]

What happened?

action;

[el_paso]

[ Once the excitement has wrapped and Logan has had the shower he needed, he's rapping his knuckles on her door. ]

Hey, uh.

[ he clears his throat. ]

You up for a walk?

[greyate]

[ She's retreated to her room after that, headphones back on and debating how long she has to stay in here to avoid everyone for the next several days. It doesn't last long, clearly.

She sighs and pulls her headphones off, ]

Pretty sure I should stay in here for the next month or so.

late night | not that it matters in space

[quickfingers]

[So they just stopped having sweet, sweet access to fresh water and clear skies and promptly got haunted by something that's picking people off for fun. It's amazing, right? Space is fucking amazing. Peter's less than impressed with it and feels obliged to try and keep tabs on a few people who are close to him - the X-Fam for sure. After seeing what happened to Kels, he's still wary even if he thinks his mutant family can take on pretty much anything after Apocalypse.]

Hey. You up?