Oh, to have her gifts. Even for a moment. If he could peer into her mind and see what thoughts were swirling there, it would be beautiful. Her ‘mindscape’ as Charles and the others called them, must have been filled with power and potential, and he hoped one day to walk across the halls of her mind. If he had Charles’ gifts, perhaps he could’ve even persuaded her to return to his side.
But even as the thought occurred to him, he knew he would never follow through. The choices each Mutant made defined them, and to take that away from one who mattered so much to him – it was nearly unthinkable. It would’ve made things simpler, to be sure, but it would dull the true glory of counting her among his ranks. Even if she didn’t fight for him, her company alone would lift the spirits of the entire Brotherhood. Jean had a way of doing that, a light about her. Erik hoped one day she would release that light, purify the world in flames and fury, but if she could only provide a warmth and light for now, that was far from insignificant. “The truth can be complicated,” he mused. “But it is finite. It’s only our perspectives that differ, but the facts remain the same. The wrongs of the world do not change, only our view of them.” He paused a moment, felt the fury she spoke of simmering in his veins, never far from the surface of his skin. It fueled his passion, his drive, his determination. He could no longer imagine a life without anger – it felt too much like complacency. “Charles believes he can shelter everyone if he simply loves hard enough,” he said softly, keeping every trace of ire from his voice. “I am angry, yes. And anger has led me to action, but that anger is fueled by the same love Charles feels,” he said, his eyes locked on hers. “The same truth, different expressions. They are not afraid of us,” he said, arching a brow. “They are afraid of their own inadequacy. And I love my people enough to acknowledge that the humans are correct to have such a fear – we are gods living among insects, and yet we are made to feel as nothing. I love my people too much to allow it to continue.”
She was young yet, no matter how much she had grown. She still believed in Charles’ utopian vision, the peace that could be achieved between Sapeins and Superiors. But Erik knew the truth – that ‘peace’ would be nothing more than a farce, a half-baked compromise that would never turn in favor of the Mutants, not while humans still existed. Perhaps one day, she would understand that.
He could see how begrudging she was to admit that, the same way she had been when she was his student. It pulled a chuckle to his lips, but he swallowed it back down. “I believe they are a real enough threat to induce caution,” he said slowly, glancing around the wasteland. The desert that stretched on for miles, the smell of smoke thick in the air, the screeches of strange and fantastical creatures. “But there are many other forces at work here. After all, it was not the demons who brought us here, simply to trespass on their home. But tell me, what do you make of it?” he asked, as if he were still her teacher. It was so easy to slip into old habits.
But just as easy to remember all that was separating them. Sentiment was one of her greatest weakness, but it was not one he was unfamiliar with. Each loss of a follower hurt him deeply. Too often Mutant lives were cut tragically short. “Too many,” he agreed, perhaps to her surprise. “But they died with honor and pride in what they are. May we all be so lucky.” For death was unavoidable – unless, it seemed, you were Jean Grey.
Possibly her greatest weakness had been a fear of death. That unavoidable tyrant that marched with time and took no quarter, showed no mercy. But Erik had accepted his death as a boy, when he was marched into those gates for the first time and he could smell the burning flesh still in the air. The scent lingered for weeks, never truly went away. Jean knew so much of fire, but did she know what that smell was like? Of course, her flames had spread far and wide while the Phoenix raged inside her, consuming friend and foe alike, so perhaps she was not as ignorant of the stench as he hoped for her. “Safest for them, yes,” Erik said, still admiring the shield. “But it has put yourself at risk. If you were to exert yourself beyond exhaustion, you would be stuck here, my dear. Perhaps it is best I stumbled upon you – or at least, not the worst,” he said, chuckling lowly.
He stepped back, the metal shard hovering just above his head. “We will begin slowly,” he said, waving a hand forward. The metal crept towards Jean’s shield, and he could feel the resistance as soon as it hit the light. “Good,” he said, amplifying the pressure, but the shield held. He called the metal back to position. “Now, faster. More momentum means it will hit your shield with more force – you can conserve your energy if you wait until the last possible moment to increase the power of your field. Do it too quickly, and your enemy may have time to adjust their attack.” He felt more like a teacher than he had in months, despite what he said to her. “Don’t forget to breathe,” he warned, and then he launched the metal towards the center of her forcefield.
Telepaths, so Xavier had said and continued to repeat, had more of a weight on them than other mutants did. What mattered most to every single person, whether they were human or mutant, whether they placed weight on it in their daily lives or not, was their freedom. Even if it wasn’t in their everyday lives, even if their physical bodies had to follow orders, their minds were free to think what they wanted. People couldn’t police thoughts. In their own heads, every single person could do what they wanted, could live the lives they wanted.
Telepaths threatened that. There had been more than one person who had risen up, a critic of the Institute, and questioned whether Xavier was recruiting students to his cause, or brainwashing soldiers for his army. Xavier had never refuted those claims, had never given them the light of day or the respect to fight back against them, and Jean knew her Professor well enough to realise that he would never do such a thing. Every single telepath had forced their will on another person unwillingly, and because of that, every single telepath knew the power they were fighting against. Some, like Emma, embraced that, remained confident in the fact that they were holding all the cards. Others, like Jean, were terrified of it. When she was a child, she had questioned whether she was projecting her feelings towards Scott onto him, whether their relationship was as true and honest as it appeared on the surface. Time proved that not to be the case, but the self doubt, the panic, remained.
“That sounds a lot like justification of the wrongs that you have committed,” Jean said. She paused for a moment, and then added, “That we have all committed.” To say that the truth was finite but perspectives were so easily changed … it didn’t sit right with her, for a reason that she couldn't quite understand. Perhaps it was because the Phoenix had always made things such as that so easy to understand, so uncomplicated. The truth was the truth was the truth, and that was all that they had to judge on. Perspective mattered for nothing. “There’s something to be said for love,” Jean said. “It’s what makes life worth living. A fight counts for something, but when you win, you need to have something to return to. Something behind you that encourages you to keep going, and that it’s worth it at the end.”
That, as far as Jean was concerned, what Erik lacked. His morality had been shifted so many times, his mission consuming him entirely. It was almost tragic to look at him now, to see how thoroughly he had embraced the anger inside of him, how he had ignored the good that she could still see deep in his mind when she searched hard enough.
“I don’t see humans as insects,” Jean said, anger welling up in her chest, despite her best intentions. “They have treated our kind poorly for centuries. If we do the same thing, we are no different than the species you hate. They might be afraid of our power, yes, but anybody with a brain would be. People lash out because of fear and anger, and we shouldn’t punish those that haven’t just because there are many who have. Innocent still means something.”
No one was completely innocent, she knew that, and she knew that Erik would not take her words to mean so. Jean had seen through everyone, saw the darkest thoughts in their minds, and still she adored them. She still fought every single day to protect them, even if they thought about horrific things, because people deserved to be saved. They deserved to have a second chance. The fact that Erik could not see that was something she wished to change, but doubted she ever could.
“I think someone has a much larger plan than anyone has considered yet,” Jean said. “Someone put us here, for a reason we don’t know. Someone is protecting us, too. They don’t want us to be here to destroy us. If they did, they would’ve done it by now. They are keeping us here for power, to bask in what they have achieved.” Either that, or they were truly monsters, watching people squirm in their seats, cry to their parents at night because they were terrified. Jean liked to believe that there were people preoccupied with power rather than consider the ultimate evil that could exist.
Jean swallowed thickly. Death still held a sting that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, perhaps because she couldn’t remember what came after the moment when the world went to white around her. She could never say for certain what came next, whether she was safe or not. All she knew was the Phoenix, the White Hot Room, and those in themselves were like hell. She still feared death, even now, even when she bested it.
Luckily, the conversation moved on quickly to more physical tasks, which Jean had always found great comfort in. They acted as distractions, but distractions with a purpose. “I would retreat before I got in over my head,” Jean argued, but in this case Erik was showing how well he knew her. She had a tendency to be stubborn, to fight back for far longer than she should.
She took a breath, nodding when Erik spoke. The metal did not break through, but she could feel something of a prodding on the edges of her mind, the peripheries of her power. The shard pulled back, and Jean focused entirely on it, maintaining the fire in her chest, remembering the anger and the protective instinct that ran deep within her. Jean took one deep breath, and the shard came hurtling towards her. She waited, waited, waited, and then as the shard was only a metre away, she formed a shield, strengthening it a second before it hit the centre. She felt something like a shockwave, but other than that, the shield remained strong, never flickering. “That was …” She paused, trying to think of a word. “A lot easier than burning everything,” she settled on. “It felt like me.”
