![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Letters To No One
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Peter Parker, Jean Grey, Scott/Jean
Word Count: 3,259
Acknowledgments: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lonelywalker as part of the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
xmenfirstclass comm. likeadeuce betaed this literally at the last moment, so props on helping me avoid some embarrassing mistakes.
Summary: The Professor has a pen pal for Jean to write to.
I don’t know who I’m writing this to Peter wrote in his plain, bold hand. He wrote just to write and in the hope that putting his puzzle-piece thoughts on paper would let him fit them together into a solution. Just the smell of ink on Uncle Ben’s stationary lulled his frazzled spider-senses to a firm rest after the supervillain battle royale du jour.
I know this is the biggest teen cliché since Degrassi, but it’s like there’s no one I can talk to. My friends obviously can’t be trusted with what’s going on, since half the time I’m not sure I can be trusted with what’s going on. Aunt May is so frail these days, not at all like Uncle Ben. If he were still around, he’d understand. He was always so strong, stronger than me or May, like he was the heart of our cobbled-together family. I miss him. That goes without – I have no right to mourn him. It hurts every time I think of him, but I can’t want it not to hurt, because I don’t deserve his good memories. It doesn’t make sense, even to me. I don’t know how I feel.
Seems… weird to segue into talking about my love life after that. But since I don’t have one, I’m really talking about nothing. Not so weird to segue from talking about something to talking about nothing. Michael Crichton does it all the time.
Me and Betty broke things off. We just don’t belong together. Sheer luck I found that out before I told her my secret. How do I even find out if a girl can accept that danger without putting her in danger? I know cops and firefighters have wives who are okay with danger; do they meet at a special bar or something?
Okay, put having a girlfriend on hold, it’d be nice to have any friend I could really talk to. Can’t talk to Harry cuz his dad is crazy… of course, who am I to talk, given my evening activities… can’t talk to Flash because he’s Flash… can’t talk to Gwen because she would freak out… maybe this Mary-Jane lady I keep getting set up with (abortively more often than not, thank God) is a licensed psychiatrist. She’d have a field day with me.
I guess I’d just really like to know when the ride’s going to stop being so bumpy. When the turbulence is going to end. The Fantastic Four are all incorporated and Daredevil seems to have his business together and the Avengers have a mansion. And a butler. I could use a butler. If I have to explain one more set of bloodstains to my aunt…
Peter stopped. His cell-phone was buzzing. He had a Twitter friend who obsessively sent out tweets on every disaster in New York… really didn’t want to know what the story was on that… but it came in handy. He snatched the cell and checked it out. Three-alarm fire in Hell’s Kitchen. Hornhead could probably handle it, but…
Peter grabbed his costume out of the closet (it was hanging from a makeshift clothesline, being dried by an electric fan) and threw it into his backpack, along with the letter. “Aunt May, I’m going out!”
“Be home by nine!” was the not-quite-shouted response from downstairs.
Peter nodded and was out the window before he remembered she couldn’t hear that. He dropped down to the back porch and shouted “Sure thing!” through the screen door, then ran for it before she could change her mind.
***
Jean was in her room, surrounded by her cocoon of posters, bookshelves, and her Captain America cardboard cutout, just enjoying some time off from class and/or saving the world. She was doodling. Jean wasn’t really the artist type, mostly picking up low-key creative inclinations from the psychic sub-environment, but the Professor said it strengthened her abilities to try to process and absorb those free-floating “art bunnies.” She was drawing a face, which always vexed her. It was so easy when she mimicked one of the comic book pages from that nice Mr. Kirby down the lane, but when she tried to do something original…
She erased the jaw and started over. Stronger now. More… heroic. But something was still wrong with that face. It was the eyes. The face looked weird with eyes. Maybe if she added sunglasses.
And brown hair.
And the most darling little smirk, just for her…
See, girl, this is what comes from spending all day long having Scott Summers correct your martial arts stance while you’re both wearing skintight spandex.
She started to erase the sketch, then stopped and added a quick pair of sunglasses.
“That’s not half-bad,” Jean said, looking it over with a self-critic’s eye.
“It’d be better if you sketched someone handsomer.” Warren backed up out of her room as she spun on him. “Moi, just for instance…”
“Out! Now!”
“Okay, okay… would you like me to get Scott? See if he thinks you’ve captured his innate Scott-ness?” he added peevishly.
Jean plucked out one of his feathers with telekinesis.
Jean, Warren, if you wish to ‘roughhouse’ there’s always room in the Danger Room.
“Sorry, Professor,” Jean said.
Warren made to step inside. “We were just…”
Jean telekinetically slammed the door in his face.
Jean, come see me in my office. I have an extra-credit assignment for you.
Jean sent back her acknowledgment and stepped outside. Warren was rubbing his sore nose. Jean apologetically floated him his feather back. He grabbed it and stomped away.
***
The professor’s study was not as worn and lived-in as the rest of the mansion. Its psychic imprint still bore the hustle and bustle of being moved into, with little of the Professor’s presence warming it except for the man himself. The Professor was behind his father’s antique writing desk, which he fit better than he cared to admit. Especially now, with his stern headmaster act relaxed, dressed in a robin-egg-blue sweater instead of the usual business suit. His mind was equally relaxed, letting out calm perfume-clouds of pride in Miss Grey. Jean basked in it the tiniest bit.
“Jean, have you ever put much thought into post-human psychology?” the Professor asked.
“Only the origins of the field. A significant proportion of the post-human population reports feelings of stress, isolation, depression… of those who take on costumed identities, many seem to be motivated by a traumatic incident, something that literally pushed them out of normal society.”
The Professor leaned back in his chair. “Well-spoken, Jean. Sounds like the beginning of an article in a psychology journal.”
“I’ve been hanging around Hank lately,” Jean said defensively.
“There’s no need to apologize for your intellect here. Now, tell me about superheroes.”
“Like us?”
“Like ourselves.”
Jean clutched a lock of her long hair and moved her fingers down it. “Well, uh, we’re not the first. There were superheroes in World War 2 and even now we’re not alone. There’s, umm, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four and the Avengers… you’re not worried about them, are you Professor?”
The Professor, seemingly growing ever more unconcerned, folded his hands in his lap. “Evolution is not merely a biological process, dear child, but a societal one. The pressures these men and women face, though their powers derive from sources other than mutation, could provide valuable insight into how to counsel young mutants.”
“Ooh!” Jean’s pointed finger shot up like a rocket. “Plus, you wouldn’t want people with superpowers going insane.”
“Precisely. After your experience with Miss Storm, I was hoping you would consider entering into a correspondence with another superhero your own age, one who is experiencing some growing pains.”
Jean’s heart leapt into her throat, and only a genuine act of will kept her from broadcasting excitement to every telepath in the tristate area. Who could it be? Thor, with those long luscious golden locks? Daredevil, wrapped tight as a Christmas present in red spandex while he flew around Hell’s Kitchen? But the Professor had said someone her own age. Did that mean Johnny Storm? He was awful handsome, and could definitely use a woman in his life, but he was just so flighty and frivolous. Not at all mature like Scott.
“You’ve heard of the Spider-Man, I trust?”
Jean winced. She couldn’t help it. No matter how Hank pointed out that both mutant and spider were tarred with the same brush, or how Bobby practically crushed on him, she couldn’t get past that creepy fright-mask and the way he moved exactly like a man-shaped bug
Jean almost spoke out before she stopped herself. Took a deep breath. And thought about what it must be like to have everyone thinking of you as a freak in a Halloween costume.
“How do I contact him?”
“He’s taken care of that for us. After I detected him with Cerebro, I noticed him write and drop off a letter with no return address. With a little persuasion, the postal service handed it over to me.” He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a letter, which he set down before Jean. “I convinced them it was addressed to you.”
***
“It can’t be for me!” Peter said, even as he tried to pilfer the letter from Aunt May’s hand. “I’m a kid. Nobody writes me anything.”
May fended him off to check the envelope, as if someone might have bothered to fill it with anthrax. Satisfied, she relinquished it to him. Peter’s name and address were written in a loopy, feminine hand. His spider-sense wasn’t warning for so much as paper cut, so he ran it upstairs and opened it. It could’ve been Gwen, Betty, Liz, any woman whose handwriting he didn’t know. Which was all of them.
He caught a brief whiff of perfume as he unfolded the letter and read.
Dear Peter,
do not be alarmed. I don’t mean you any harm. I read the letter you wrote and I know how much you want a confidante. I think you’ll find I’m uniquely qualified for that, because I have a secret too.
I’m Marvel Girl, and I know that if you’re the man I think you are, you don’t believe the lies the media tells about me and my friends. I know I can’t ask you to trust me just yet, but as proof of my good intentions, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone but my fellow mutants.
My name is Jean Grey and I can move things with my brain.
Peter stopped reading them. Those terrifying, liberating words. There was more… introductions, questions, platitudes… but he couldn’t read another line. He’d been found out, his identity exposed. Aunt May was in danger, everyone he loved was in danger. He wanted to do more than run. He wanted to dive out the window and taste true freedom, maybe never come back.
He forced himself to calm down. Took some of the sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed him. He’d sleep on it. That’s what he would do. He’d sleep on it. As he drifted off, he thought of the X-Men. They seemed like good people. Jolly Jonah hated them, so they couldn’t be all bad.
When he woke up, his heart was still palpitating, but a heady sense of relief was here too. Someone knew. Someone knew and it wasn’t the end of the world. But it wasn’t until after school that he wrote back. Flash had been his usual charming self. It left Peter on the verge of frenzy. As bad as it was to not have the power to fight back, it sucked even worse to have the power and not be able to use it.
He ripped open his uncle’s stationary set and spilled his thoughts out onto paper.
It all went more or less smoothly after that. Peter ranted and raved as much as any teenager would when given the opportunity to, but Jean was patient and good-humored and understanding. After a few exchanges, Peter came out of his shell and told her some of the nicer parts of being Spider-Man. She empathized, even got some ideas. They lasted each other through Magneto and Electro, Erik the Red and the Green Goblin, and that other redhead and brown-haired man. Then one day Peter stopped writing.
By then Jean could fly to New York and back under her own power, but she let Scott drive her. It’d been Peter who’d divined that Scott was interested in her, not that it hadn’t been totally obvious since two minutes after they met. But having someone tell her insecure teenage self that it was okay to make the first move…
“So, spy-der-man,” Scott said, a little playful, a little loosened up, a little irresponsible even. “Didn’t we tussle with him in Central Park?”
“Tussle?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes. Plus Iceman tried to arrest him. If you ever wondered why I never let Bobby hear the end of that…”
“Spider-Man turned you against your own teammate?” Scott asked, bemused.
“Da,” Jean said in what could’ve passed for Wanda’s exotic accent. She smiled to herself, but all too soon it was drowned in a wave of melancholy.
For Scott, it was like looking into a mirror. He touched her hand, feeling acutely that sometimes her slender, delicate fingers didn’t belie her inner strength. She could be as weak as any of them.
“He’ll be fine,” Scott assured her. “He’s Spider-Man.”
“No, he’s Peter Parker.”
She found him on one of the towers of the George Washington Bridge. His mind was a black star, radiating sorrow like an open wound leaking blood into water. She floated up the tower on the side facing away from traffic. When she reached the top, she found he was wearing simple clothes. Denim, buttondown, no mask.
Peter was sitting on the edge, his legs trailing down the side. He didn’t seem to either notice or care about the harsh wind. Jean created a telekinetic bubble to shelter them. If Peter knew that the breeze was no longer stirring his hair, he gave no sign.
“Gwen,” she said.
Peter turned to look at her. He was handsomer than she’d imagined, and older. But on second look, it wasn’t that he had aged, but that he’d been eroded and worn down and scarred until what was left was young only in years. Maybe under happier circumstances, he could fool the naked eye. But not today and not to her.
After a long, soulless look at her, Peter turned back to the river. ”I don’t want to talk.”
“How about listening?”
He grunted.
“Things at the institute are… different. Lorna and Alex are having some trouble getting used to life in the mansion. Bobby won’t stop carving ice sculptures of Lorna, and Alex has trouble taking orders from Scott…”
“Do you love him?” Peter said it so suddenly it was like a cough. Not something he could stifle.
“Yes. Yeah, I guess so.”
“You guess?”
Jean bit her lip. “I don’t want to jinx it.”
“Heh. That’s good.” Peter scooted back until he was at her feet, and could look up to see her. “Does he love you?”
Jean thought of his smile, his protectiveness, and the way his mind flickered with concern whenever he placed her in danger, though that never stopped him. Because he knew she could handle it. She thought of how he was the only one who didn’t hedge his mind when she walked into the room. She thought of how he let her delve progressively deeper and deeper into his consciousness, into the parts of himself even he didn’t know exist, and there they built a bridge between their souls. She thought of Scott Summers.
“Yes.”
“Then don’t die on him. Don’t do this to him. Don’t make him alone.”
“You’re not alone.” Jean sprawled down next to him. “You have friends. Family. And one day, maybe—“
“No,” Peter said it flatly and without anger, but quickly. “I won’t betray her memory. We never… it wouldn’t be right.”
Impulsively, Jean took his hand and hugged it between her palms. “If it were me, I’d want Scott to move on.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d want him to live for you. You’d want him to think of you every day. You’d want him to compare you to every other woman. You’d want the next lover he took to have to share him with you.”
“For part of me, that’s true,” Jean confessed. “There’s… bad blood in me. Call it a shadow self, call it a dark side, call it the evil men do. But that’s not how I’d want to be remembered. I’m sure Gwen had things she wasn’t proud of either. But is that the part you want to honor?”
The question hung in the air, unanswered. Peter slowly took his hand away from her to rub the back of his neck in languid motions. He closed his eyes and breathed out. “She’d want me to be happy.”
“She loved you. And you loved her. And a week of having that is worth eons without it.”
She ruffled his hair a moment later, and he let a small smile enter the orbit of his lips. “I hope Scott knows how…” his voice cracked like a little boy’s, “fortunate he is.”
“I won’t let him forget.” And even though he was broadcasting keep your distance with both mind and body, she hugged him because that was what she did. “You’re a good person. You deserve to be happy again and you will be.”
Peter smiled wanly against her shoulder. “That’s not the way the world works, Grey.”
“It should. Maybe one day it even will. If someone makes it.”
Peter broke away. “Nah. Then they call you a villain and shoot at you. Bleh.”
“Hey, those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” She held up a hand to quell Peter’s slightly-grinning protest. “Yes, I know, Dr. Seuss. Hey, let’s go down to sea level. I’ll buy you a pizza, you can meet Cyclops…”
“Nah, I’m going to stay up here for a while,” Peter said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
She kissed his cheek and felt, with a slight shudder, the remembrance of Gwen bloom across Peter’s mind. There was so much she could do to ease his pain, but only after telling him, and she knew that even the offer would offend him. It was masochistic, but part of mourning was the pain. For millions of years, people had come to terms without telepaths to serve as painkiller.
Nonetheless, Jean made one final stop before she left the city with Scott. Mary-Jane’s apartment wasn’t half as glamorous as she probably pretended, which would explain why she never let Peter in. And, although careful not to really invade her privacy, Jean delved a little into the girl’s surface thoughts. They were full of confusion, but there was a genuine pain over the loss of Gwen and concern for Peter. A selfless desire to ease his suffering. And something deeper, something Jean couldn’t get at without digging further than she was comfortable with.
Still, it was enough to reassure her that Peter was in good hands.
“Everything okay?” Scott asked when she came back to the car, having never even rung Mary-Jane’s doorbell.
“No.” Jean climbed in and leaned against Scott, letting the devotion and compassion of his thoughts massage the tension from her mind. “But it will be.
“Let’s go home.”
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Peter Parker, Jean Grey, Scott/Jean
Word Count: 3,259
Acknowledgments: Written for
lonelywalker as part of the xmenfirstclass comm. likeadeuce betaed this literally at the last moment, so props on helping me avoid some embarrassing mistakes.Summary: The Professor has a pen pal for Jean to write to.
I don’t know who I’m writing this to Peter wrote in his plain, bold hand. He wrote just to write and in the hope that putting his puzzle-piece thoughts on paper would let him fit them together into a solution. Just the smell of ink on Uncle Ben’s stationary lulled his frazzled spider-senses to a firm rest after the supervillain battle royale du jour.
I know this is the biggest teen cliché since Degrassi, but it’s like there’s no one I can talk to. My friends obviously can’t be trusted with what’s going on, since half the time I’m not sure I can be trusted with what’s going on. Aunt May is so frail these days, not at all like Uncle Ben. If he were still around, he’d understand. He was always so strong, stronger than me or May, like he was the heart of our cobbled-together family. I miss him. That goes without – I have no right to mourn him. It hurts every time I think of him, but I can’t want it not to hurt, because I don’t deserve his good memories. It doesn’t make sense, even to me. I don’t know how I feel.
Seems… weird to segue into talking about my love life after that. But since I don’t have one, I’m really talking about nothing. Not so weird to segue from talking about something to talking about nothing. Michael Crichton does it all the time.
Me and Betty broke things off. We just don’t belong together. Sheer luck I found that out before I told her my secret. How do I even find out if a girl can accept that danger without putting her in danger? I know cops and firefighters have wives who are okay with danger; do they meet at a special bar or something?
Okay, put having a girlfriend on hold, it’d be nice to have any friend I could really talk to. Can’t talk to Harry cuz his dad is crazy… of course, who am I to talk, given my evening activities… can’t talk to Flash because he’s Flash… can’t talk to Gwen because she would freak out… maybe this Mary-Jane lady I keep getting set up with (abortively more often than not, thank God) is a licensed psychiatrist. She’d have a field day with me.
I guess I’d just really like to know when the ride’s going to stop being so bumpy. When the turbulence is going to end. The Fantastic Four are all incorporated and Daredevil seems to have his business together and the Avengers have a mansion. And a butler. I could use a butler. If I have to explain one more set of bloodstains to my aunt…
Peter stopped. His cell-phone was buzzing. He had a Twitter friend who obsessively sent out tweets on every disaster in New York… really didn’t want to know what the story was on that… but it came in handy. He snatched the cell and checked it out. Three-alarm fire in Hell’s Kitchen. Hornhead could probably handle it, but…
Peter grabbed his costume out of the closet (it was hanging from a makeshift clothesline, being dried by an electric fan) and threw it into his backpack, along with the letter. “Aunt May, I’m going out!”
“Be home by nine!” was the not-quite-shouted response from downstairs.
Peter nodded and was out the window before he remembered she couldn’t hear that. He dropped down to the back porch and shouted “Sure thing!” through the screen door, then ran for it before she could change her mind.
***
Jean was in her room, surrounded by her cocoon of posters, bookshelves, and her Captain America cardboard cutout, just enjoying some time off from class and/or saving the world. She was doodling. Jean wasn’t really the artist type, mostly picking up low-key creative inclinations from the psychic sub-environment, but the Professor said it strengthened her abilities to try to process and absorb those free-floating “art bunnies.” She was drawing a face, which always vexed her. It was so easy when she mimicked one of the comic book pages from that nice Mr. Kirby down the lane, but when she tried to do something original…
She erased the jaw and started over. Stronger now. More… heroic. But something was still wrong with that face. It was the eyes. The face looked weird with eyes. Maybe if she added sunglasses.
And brown hair.
And the most darling little smirk, just for her…
See, girl, this is what comes from spending all day long having Scott Summers correct your martial arts stance while you’re both wearing skintight spandex.
She started to erase the sketch, then stopped and added a quick pair of sunglasses.
“That’s not half-bad,” Jean said, looking it over with a self-critic’s eye.
“It’d be better if you sketched someone handsomer.” Warren backed up out of her room as she spun on him. “Moi, just for instance…”
“Out! Now!”
“Okay, okay… would you like me to get Scott? See if he thinks you’ve captured his innate Scott-ness?” he added peevishly.
Jean plucked out one of his feathers with telekinesis.
Jean, Warren, if you wish to ‘roughhouse’ there’s always room in the Danger Room.
“Sorry, Professor,” Jean said.
Warren made to step inside. “We were just…”
Jean telekinetically slammed the door in his face.
Jean, come see me in my office. I have an extra-credit assignment for you.
Jean sent back her acknowledgment and stepped outside. Warren was rubbing his sore nose. Jean apologetically floated him his feather back. He grabbed it and stomped away.
***
The professor’s study was not as worn and lived-in as the rest of the mansion. Its psychic imprint still bore the hustle and bustle of being moved into, with little of the Professor’s presence warming it except for the man himself. The Professor was behind his father’s antique writing desk, which he fit better than he cared to admit. Especially now, with his stern headmaster act relaxed, dressed in a robin-egg-blue sweater instead of the usual business suit. His mind was equally relaxed, letting out calm perfume-clouds of pride in Miss Grey. Jean basked in it the tiniest bit.
“Jean, have you ever put much thought into post-human psychology?” the Professor asked.
“Only the origins of the field. A significant proportion of the post-human population reports feelings of stress, isolation, depression… of those who take on costumed identities, many seem to be motivated by a traumatic incident, something that literally pushed them out of normal society.”
The Professor leaned back in his chair. “Well-spoken, Jean. Sounds like the beginning of an article in a psychology journal.”
“I’ve been hanging around Hank lately,” Jean said defensively.
“There’s no need to apologize for your intellect here. Now, tell me about superheroes.”
“Like us?”
“Like ourselves.”
Jean clutched a lock of her long hair and moved her fingers down it. “Well, uh, we’re not the first. There were superheroes in World War 2 and even now we’re not alone. There’s, umm, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four and the Avengers… you’re not worried about them, are you Professor?”
The Professor, seemingly growing ever more unconcerned, folded his hands in his lap. “Evolution is not merely a biological process, dear child, but a societal one. The pressures these men and women face, though their powers derive from sources other than mutation, could provide valuable insight into how to counsel young mutants.”
“Ooh!” Jean’s pointed finger shot up like a rocket. “Plus, you wouldn’t want people with superpowers going insane.”
“Precisely. After your experience with Miss Storm, I was hoping you would consider entering into a correspondence with another superhero your own age, one who is experiencing some growing pains.”
Jean’s heart leapt into her throat, and only a genuine act of will kept her from broadcasting excitement to every telepath in the tristate area. Who could it be? Thor, with those long luscious golden locks? Daredevil, wrapped tight as a Christmas present in red spandex while he flew around Hell’s Kitchen? But the Professor had said someone her own age. Did that mean Johnny Storm? He was awful handsome, and could definitely use a woman in his life, but he was just so flighty and frivolous. Not at all mature like Scott.
“You’ve heard of the Spider-Man, I trust?”
Jean winced. She couldn’t help it. No matter how Hank pointed out that both mutant and spider were tarred with the same brush, or how Bobby practically crushed on him, she couldn’t get past that creepy fright-mask and the way he moved exactly like a man-shaped bug
Jean almost spoke out before she stopped herself. Took a deep breath. And thought about what it must be like to have everyone thinking of you as a freak in a Halloween costume.
“How do I contact him?”
“He’s taken care of that for us. After I detected him with Cerebro, I noticed him write and drop off a letter with no return address. With a little persuasion, the postal service handed it over to me.” He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a letter, which he set down before Jean. “I convinced them it was addressed to you.”
***
“It can’t be for me!” Peter said, even as he tried to pilfer the letter from Aunt May’s hand. “I’m a kid. Nobody writes me anything.”
May fended him off to check the envelope, as if someone might have bothered to fill it with anthrax. Satisfied, she relinquished it to him. Peter’s name and address were written in a loopy, feminine hand. His spider-sense wasn’t warning for so much as paper cut, so he ran it upstairs and opened it. It could’ve been Gwen, Betty, Liz, any woman whose handwriting he didn’t know. Which was all of them.
He caught a brief whiff of perfume as he unfolded the letter and read.
Dear Peter,
do not be alarmed. I don’t mean you any harm. I read the letter you wrote and I know how much you want a confidante. I think you’ll find I’m uniquely qualified for that, because I have a secret too.
I’m Marvel Girl, and I know that if you’re the man I think you are, you don’t believe the lies the media tells about me and my friends. I know I can’t ask you to trust me just yet, but as proof of my good intentions, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone but my fellow mutants.
My name is Jean Grey and I can move things with my brain.
Peter stopped reading them. Those terrifying, liberating words. There was more… introductions, questions, platitudes… but he couldn’t read another line. He’d been found out, his identity exposed. Aunt May was in danger, everyone he loved was in danger. He wanted to do more than run. He wanted to dive out the window and taste true freedom, maybe never come back.
He forced himself to calm down. Took some of the sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed him. He’d sleep on it. That’s what he would do. He’d sleep on it. As he drifted off, he thought of the X-Men. They seemed like good people. Jolly Jonah hated them, so they couldn’t be all bad.
When he woke up, his heart was still palpitating, but a heady sense of relief was here too. Someone knew. Someone knew and it wasn’t the end of the world. But it wasn’t until after school that he wrote back. Flash had been his usual charming self. It left Peter on the verge of frenzy. As bad as it was to not have the power to fight back, it sucked even worse to have the power and not be able to use it.
He ripped open his uncle’s stationary set and spilled his thoughts out onto paper.
It all went more or less smoothly after that. Peter ranted and raved as much as any teenager would when given the opportunity to, but Jean was patient and good-humored and understanding. After a few exchanges, Peter came out of his shell and told her some of the nicer parts of being Spider-Man. She empathized, even got some ideas. They lasted each other through Magneto and Electro, Erik the Red and the Green Goblin, and that other redhead and brown-haired man. Then one day Peter stopped writing.
By then Jean could fly to New York and back under her own power, but she let Scott drive her. It’d been Peter who’d divined that Scott was interested in her, not that it hadn’t been totally obvious since two minutes after they met. But having someone tell her insecure teenage self that it was okay to make the first move…
“So, spy-der-man,” Scott said, a little playful, a little loosened up, a little irresponsible even. “Didn’t we tussle with him in Central Park?”
“Tussle?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes. Plus Iceman tried to arrest him. If you ever wondered why I never let Bobby hear the end of that…”
“Spider-Man turned you against your own teammate?” Scott asked, bemused.
“Da,” Jean said in what could’ve passed for Wanda’s exotic accent. She smiled to herself, but all too soon it was drowned in a wave of melancholy.
For Scott, it was like looking into a mirror. He touched her hand, feeling acutely that sometimes her slender, delicate fingers didn’t belie her inner strength. She could be as weak as any of them.
“He’ll be fine,” Scott assured her. “He’s Spider-Man.”
“No, he’s Peter Parker.”
She found him on one of the towers of the George Washington Bridge. His mind was a black star, radiating sorrow like an open wound leaking blood into water. She floated up the tower on the side facing away from traffic. When she reached the top, she found he was wearing simple clothes. Denim, buttondown, no mask.
Peter was sitting on the edge, his legs trailing down the side. He didn’t seem to either notice or care about the harsh wind. Jean created a telekinetic bubble to shelter them. If Peter knew that the breeze was no longer stirring his hair, he gave no sign.
“Gwen,” she said.
Peter turned to look at her. He was handsomer than she’d imagined, and older. But on second look, it wasn’t that he had aged, but that he’d been eroded and worn down and scarred until what was left was young only in years. Maybe under happier circumstances, he could fool the naked eye. But not today and not to her.
After a long, soulless look at her, Peter turned back to the river. ”I don’t want to talk.”
“How about listening?”
He grunted.
“Things at the institute are… different. Lorna and Alex are having some trouble getting used to life in the mansion. Bobby won’t stop carving ice sculptures of Lorna, and Alex has trouble taking orders from Scott…”
“Do you love him?” Peter said it so suddenly it was like a cough. Not something he could stifle.
“Yes. Yeah, I guess so.”
“You guess?”
Jean bit her lip. “I don’t want to jinx it.”
“Heh. That’s good.” Peter scooted back until he was at her feet, and could look up to see her. “Does he love you?”
Jean thought of his smile, his protectiveness, and the way his mind flickered with concern whenever he placed her in danger, though that never stopped him. Because he knew she could handle it. She thought of how he was the only one who didn’t hedge his mind when she walked into the room. She thought of how he let her delve progressively deeper and deeper into his consciousness, into the parts of himself even he didn’t know exist, and there they built a bridge between their souls. She thought of Scott Summers.
“Yes.”
“Then don’t die on him. Don’t do this to him. Don’t make him alone.”
“You’re not alone.” Jean sprawled down next to him. “You have friends. Family. And one day, maybe—“
“No,” Peter said it flatly and without anger, but quickly. “I won’t betray her memory. We never… it wouldn’t be right.”
Impulsively, Jean took his hand and hugged it between her palms. “If it were me, I’d want Scott to move on.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d want him to live for you. You’d want him to think of you every day. You’d want him to compare you to every other woman. You’d want the next lover he took to have to share him with you.”
“For part of me, that’s true,” Jean confessed. “There’s… bad blood in me. Call it a shadow self, call it a dark side, call it the evil men do. But that’s not how I’d want to be remembered. I’m sure Gwen had things she wasn’t proud of either. But is that the part you want to honor?”
The question hung in the air, unanswered. Peter slowly took his hand away from her to rub the back of his neck in languid motions. He closed his eyes and breathed out. “She’d want me to be happy.”
“She loved you. And you loved her. And a week of having that is worth eons without it.”
She ruffled his hair a moment later, and he let a small smile enter the orbit of his lips. “I hope Scott knows how…” his voice cracked like a little boy’s, “fortunate he is.”
“I won’t let him forget.” And even though he was broadcasting keep your distance with both mind and body, she hugged him because that was what she did. “You’re a good person. You deserve to be happy again and you will be.”
Peter smiled wanly against her shoulder. “That’s not the way the world works, Grey.”
“It should. Maybe one day it even will. If someone makes it.”
Peter broke away. “Nah. Then they call you a villain and shoot at you. Bleh.”
“Hey, those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” She held up a hand to quell Peter’s slightly-grinning protest. “Yes, I know, Dr. Seuss. Hey, let’s go down to sea level. I’ll buy you a pizza, you can meet Cyclops…”
“Nah, I’m going to stay up here for a while,” Peter said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
She kissed his cheek and felt, with a slight shudder, the remembrance of Gwen bloom across Peter’s mind. There was so much she could do to ease his pain, but only after telling him, and she knew that even the offer would offend him. It was masochistic, but part of mourning was the pain. For millions of years, people had come to terms without telepaths to serve as painkiller.
Nonetheless, Jean made one final stop before she left the city with Scott. Mary-Jane’s apartment wasn’t half as glamorous as she probably pretended, which would explain why she never let Peter in. And, although careful not to really invade her privacy, Jean delved a little into the girl’s surface thoughts. They were full of confusion, but there was a genuine pain over the loss of Gwen and concern for Peter. A selfless desire to ease his suffering. And something deeper, something Jean couldn’t get at without digging further than she was comfortable with.
Still, it was enough to reassure her that Peter was in good hands.
“Everything okay?” Scott asked when she came back to the car, having never even rung Mary-Jane’s doorbell.
“No.” Jean climbed in and leaned against Scott, letting the devotion and compassion of his thoughts massage the tension from her mind. “But it will be.
“Let’s go home.”
