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[Honestly, it was a terrible idea to do this through a message at all, but it's been done, and there's nothing to do for it now but to keep going. He frowns--to little avail except what she can sense--at all of it. His prior incarnation, as it were, and Logan leaving are the parts of this he knows. It seems like Logan has had a similar quick disappearance and homecoming, which is likely as little consolation as his own had been.]

I can only imagine how difficult that's been, Jean. I'm sorry.

[It's the appropriate place to bring back the apology, at least. He does know a little something about estranged friendships--even if back in his experience, Peter isn't particularly known to any of them, but if he's here, perhaps something changed? It's not unreasonable enough a conjecture.]

You don't...you don't have to get into this if you don't want to, but is there a particular reason for the estrangement?

[Obviously. But he's not remotely in a place to even try to piece that together.]

[ Peter hadn't known her when she arrived but they had been together the longest. Went through so much craziness together. It was difficult not to feel attached to him even now when they weren't even on speaking terms.

She sighs heavily, ]

He's mad I didn't tell him about Erik being his father. He was... so mad at him when I first arrived. And he was still from the past and I was from his future and I--I honestly thought keeping that kind of stuff to myself was the for the best, you know? Peter... he found out and he got really pissed at me and hasn't talked to me since.

Hold on. Erik's his--

[There is an insurmountable wall made up solely of how dragging Erik's son to the bloody Pentagon for a prison break is suddenly a terrible fucking idea left for him to cross over. It's fitting, in a way, if he were a firm believer in poetic irony given bone and flesh in a horrifying facsimile of reality: how does something like this even happen?

He's honestly left gaping for a moment over the fact itself, rather than the context. (Did Logan know about this?)

Eventually, that wears off, and he fumbles then to save his composure and address the matter at hand.]

God, it makes so much--ahem. Sorry. For what it's worth, Jean, I think you did the right thing. Time is a...tricky thing to play with, and any one small thing can change everything.

[Sometimes, they can only hope that's true.]

It's what I would have done. It's difficult, I know. Information like that always is. Sometimes all we can do is try to make it right and let them be. If he's as good a friend as you're implying, he'll come around.

Edited 2017-05-17 06:28 (UTC)

[ Now it's her turn to be left gaping because really. ]

Wait - you didn't know?

I've met Peter once. A decade ago. Even if he knew then, I...

[He isn't sure if he's actually told that story in length, or the too-long period of despair that precipitated it. He pulls back, a fraction. He had no way of knowing, even if someone else had.]

No one knew. [Erik couldn't have either. He'd looked just as mystified as Charles himself had felt. The flight to Paris alone would have been so much different.] But Erik does here, doesn't he?

[That's at least a piece of the explanation he's been left with when his friend had been so recalcitrant regarding his own situation (not...entirely without reason, perhaps).]

[ She knew about Peter breaking Erik out of the Pentagon and all that. She just thought Charles knew due to his powers. But she shrugs it off, ]

I think so. I don't know if it was Peter who told him or someone else, though. Peter... has a way of holding grudges.

[I wonder where he gets that? He may not mean to think that just loudly enough to be picked up on (that would be very unprofessional), but he does and it is.

But no, no powers. They'd very nearly not made it back out of the Pentagon precisely because he hadn't had them at the time. Maybe, some day, he'll even be comfortable enough to confess that to someone who hadn't known by virtue of present deduction. It isn't important now. Charles has a great deal to be grateful for when it comes to Peter, but this is...troubling, to say the least.]

For whatever it's worth, Jean, this isn't your fault.

[He knows how much it can feel that way, knowing things you shouldn't, especially like this. Sometimes, it just needs to be said. Especially when he knows how much he'd have benefitted from it himself at that age.]

Regardless of how it feels, or what's been said.

Edited (sorry, order was wonky.) 2017-05-18 04:04 (UTC)

[ She shrugs again, even when he can't see it. ]

I don't know, maybe it is. I just... didn't see the reason in telling him. I didn't think it would go over well at all and I didn't want him to stop talking to me when he was the only one on the ship I knew.

[ A pause. ]

Even if he didn't know me.

[ Softly, ]

Sounds pretty selfish when I say it out loud.

Knowing it would hurt him? That doesn't sound terribly selfish to me.

[~~The irony. It hurts us.~~]

[ She scoffs at that, ]

You're just saying that to make me feel better.

In part. Though we both know you're being harder on yourself than you deserve.

[Which is entirely true.]

I know it's...complicated. And he has his reasons for feeling the way he does, how justifiable they may or may not be. No one is particularly wrong. But if you're looking for forgiveness, Jean, you may want to start with forgiving yourself.

[ Jean listens to him and feels a smile play on her lips as she does. She's heard this before. Several times. She's... always been hard on herself when she feels she's messed up. Especially when she first came to the school.

Her smile falls away as she remembers that. And one of the memories of older Charles that still haunts her. The one she got from Laura. Of the night saw him die in her time.

This was, without a doubt, the most perfect night I've had in a very long time. And I don't deserve it, do I?

She rubs her eyes and swallows hard. ]

I know.

I'm sorry. I didn't have the intention of being overbearing, it's just--

[He knows there's something she's not saying. He may not be able to hear it, sense it, but that weight on her shoulders is so damned apparent that it hurts. He's been well aware for some time now that teenagers simply...don't always want to talk about everything, and he wants to respect that. But the way she keeps pushing away gives him a sense that the worry is more founded than all of that.

There's no sense in forcing it--he'd never--but it remains just as concerning now as it had when they'd first reunited.]

You're sure you're alright?

[ She nods to herself, wiping at a cheek as she feels water start to run. ]

Yeah, I just--the past few weeks have been rough, you know? A lot to deal with. You know it can be for me.

[ Because it took her a long time to deal with other people's emotions as well as her own. And even now, when she's feeling a lot herself, it will be hard to keep herself guarded from others. It happened when she first arrived on the ship all those months ago. ]

You're not overbearing.

[ A long beat, closing her eyes. ]

I've missed you.

I know.

[And he does. He's well-acquainted with the unique Hell that is experiencing so many more lives than one's own. He would be the first to admit it as bias, but he still understands this level of telepathy as one of the harsher psychological burdens when it comes to the manifestation of their varied mutations. It isn't to say that being mutated at all doesn't carry its own problems, or that more obvious, physical mutations don't present their own unique set of terrible problems.

But he knows what it's like to not be able to shut this out. To have to hear every opinion that mental illnesses do well enough on their own to exacerbate in their doubt. Invisible as it may be, to understand all of that pain, and doubt, and all of those secrets that people rarely speak aloud (right down to all of those vitriolic thoughts slung as though they might have been actually spoken) is as much as curse as any other mutation with a notable downside.

Charles will give her a pass on that, though he knows it would be just as easy to give that explanation as an excuse. If Peter has his reasons for his anger, she undoubtedly has her own for her guarding. So, it may be a pass, but it isn't forgotten by any means.]

Oh, now you're just saying that to make me feel better. [He'll just bring that right back around, down to a similar laugh.] But I will remember you said that.

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goodbye planet goodbye

flings self into the sun

he's the worst i'm sorry