A general address: X-ID
From: drgrey@x-school.edu
To: GENERAL@listserv.x-school.edu
Subject: Our Response to X-ID
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This message is a bit too long in coming, and I'm sorry for that, but it's one where it's hard to find the words. I know many of you are worried about what X-ID means for us, as a school, as (for many of us) mutants, and as (for all of us) just people of the United States of America. What's our next move, Dr. Grey? Do I have to register? Will they close the school? These are all questions that have been asked of me lately, and they're questions I never wanted to hear, from any one, student or staff.
Professor Xavier and I have been spending long hours over the past couple years talking about what-ifs and contingencies. We've both put in our time lobbying and rallying and doing everything possible to impede the passage of these laws. Now that X-ID is passed and registration is mandatory, we're going to continue to fight, using the channels of law and government, of democracy. Magneto claims that his is the only way. In my opinion, his 'way' is what's helped give rise to the fears and the violence that saw these last few laws passed so quickly.
But there are other ways to fight an unjust and unconstitutional law, a middle besides dry political maneuvering and mass murder. It's some of those other ways that we want to suggest to you. Civil disobedience takes many forms, and some of the most effective are those that are the simplest. Simple way number one, you ask? Don't register. I won't be, neither will Professor Xavier, and many others of our staff. Any student who chooses to take this route for themselves will receive our full support, both moral and legal. We will take our cases to the Supreme Court, if they care to let it go on that long, and run that high. Mandatory registration and the X-ID program violate the fourteenth amendment, according to the lawyers I've been talking to, and there are other sections of the constitution that are down on it too. Professor Munroe would probably be happy to talk about the constitution with you in social studies this fall, or even in a couple weeks when she's feeling more up to a deluge of visitors.
If you want further inspiration as to what can be done, I'd recommend you take a look at the actions of Martin Luther King Jr. and others during the heydey of the Civil Rights movement. To help with this, I've asked my father, Dr. John Grey, to come up to the school one evening and give a talk about history, politics, and our current situation. I might see if I can get an old friend of mine who's a lawyer with the ACLU and currently up to his eyeballs in their anti X-ID/MRA efforts to do likewise. Mira, you might remember Steve.
Ultimately, though, the choice of what you do is yours to make. Professor Forge chose to voluntarily register himself, and the government has yet to come for him in the night. I encourage those of you who want to oppose X-ID to join me in refusing to register or be tested, but if you decide that breaking the law is not a step you want to take, then we will support you in that decision too. The true meaning of democracy is that all our individual voices have a chance to be heard, and dictating your choices based on what I think is right would make me no better than the thing I'm protesting.
Feel free to email me with any questions or concerns if you can't track me down in person,
Dr. Grey
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Backdated to Wednesday:
X-Men MUCK - Saturday, July 22, 2006, 1:08 PM
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<> Gymnasium - LvB3
Far more tame than the vexing challenges of the Danger Room, the school's Gymnasium is no less enormous. Although requiring permission to be accessed by students by themselves, classes are occasionally conducted down here under staff supervision. Some of the equipment is a bit unorthodox, but other than that it's a standard-issue gym, the floors mapped out with the designs for a basketball court (to suit the four hoops that flank every wall), although the walls are covered in hard rubber tiling. Small alterations to cater to the needs of occasionally out-of-control mutant powers.
[Exits : [P]ool and [W]eight Room, [S]torage, and [H]allway ]
"I -know- I shouldn't let Ann Coulter get to me like that," says a Jean in mid-warmup and currently with legs splayed out across a mat and back bent forward. Whump. A leg rotates up and over to slam into the matting again. "But honestly, saying that X-ID doesn't go far enough, and the only mutants who'd be afraid to show up to an internment camp are those actively plotting...?" Whump. Now, oneleg gets tucked up beneath her, and her face rises from the mats. "On top of everything else, I feel the sudden need to get caught up on hand-to-hand skills."
Logan rolls his shoulders, small popping sounds emerging from his tendons. "Stupid bitch," he replies evenly. His emotions simmer quietly at the thought of Ann Coulter within a hundred feet of himself. "Someone should lock her the fuck up, see what she thinks then." He moves out onto the mat and bounces on his balls of his feet, loosening his legs. "In the mean time...I guess a little bruising is in order."
"If Ann only knew just how many dangerous mutants were choosing to spar with each other instead of with her head, maybe she'd sleep better at night." Jean muses, a dark-humour attempt at sweetness and light crossing her expression before she rises to her feet and slides into a few katas to finish warming up, or at least what she remembers of them. "But I'll definitely trade some bruises for unkeying a little. When the nightmares come back, it's a bad sign -- sorry about your lamp, by the way."
Logan drops into a series of rolls taking him across the mat and then back. "Hah. Never liked that lamp much anyway." At least, he didn't much care about it; replacing it will be a minor inconvenience (like cleaning it up) but it isn't as if she bent his Japanese swords into pretzels. He pops up from a roll and takes a light stance on the balls of his feet, bouncing slightly. "Ready when you are, Red," he says, a gleam in the corner of his eye.
"Still." The lamp will likely be quietly replaced. But that's a matter for later and for trips to Pier One. In the here and now, Jean catches that gleam, and there's a flash of it shared in her own eyes, before she pivots on the ball of one foot and then advances in a swift sidestep, striking out with one foot to catch the seat of Logan's sweats. Testing.
Logan pivots as Jean moves, tracing her movements. As she lifts her foot, Logan moves, quick on his feet. His arm drops down to try and parry her leg, meeting with marginal success. As she hits him, in his side rather than his posterior, he lets himself drop, shooting out his own foot as he goes, driving out at her supporting leg.
The kicking foot arcs away, deflected, and with it Jean's center of balance shifts. She stumbles, arms flailing for support they fail to find, and then drops down into a breakfall once the supporting leg is kicked away from under her. Rolled out of it and back on her feet, she tries a different approach, one hand swiping hair out of her eyes before she drops a shoulder and charges, hands seeking to grapple at Logan's legs and take him down with her.
With Logan's fall to the mat, the big mutant cannot get to his feet fast enough to pursue Jean instantly. Instead, he finds a flying telekinetic arcing towards his legs. He shifts, but there is no time to evade. He drops his hands to get hold of her shoulders, but that does not prevent him from taking her impact and pitching backwards. As he topples, however, he pulls upwards, hard; if he manages to break Jean's grip, it is difficult to say exactly where she will end up, but it will almost certainly not be where she anticipated.
Jean may well be the most powerful telekinetic on the planet. This does absolutely nothing to help her keep a physical grip on things. It does even less than usual in this case. As a result, there's a surprises yelp of "Shit!", and Jean is soon airborne. She lands hard on her back, hands curled around her head to protect herself, and lies there with a loud wheeze as her lungs complain that they need -air- to work, damn it.
And so both Jean and Logan are on their backs; Logan, however, has not just had the wind knocked out of him. He rolls up out of his flat stance and leans over Jean, grinning as he cocks one fist back. "1-0?" he asks cheerfully, as his claws pop out of his hand for emphasis. This, however, is not an attack he has the least intention of carrying onwards.
Jean's answer takes the form of a sudden wheezy smirk and green eyes leaping to blazing life. Still physically incapacitated as she rolls fetal to curl around her poor lungs while they refil, telekinesis picks up Logan and tosses him hard at the nearest wall. << Not just yet. >> the Phoenix informs the Wolverine. Slightly smug.
Logan's claws retract as he flies, and his lips pull back in a bared-teeth smile even before he hits the wall and bounces. He hits with his back, then falls forward on his face. That impact /does/ knock the wind out of him and it takes him a moment to push back to his feet. "There's my girl," he says as eagerness and testosterone flashes through his brain. Then he takes off, bolting in Jean's direction at his considerable top speed.
Jean's amswering grin is brilliant, and as Logan rushes her, she changes the sparring match into a game of telekinetic keep-away. Considerate of Logan's oft-mashed nose, she throws up no shield walls, instead pushing herself up to rest leaned back against her elbows, and pushing out a low wave of force at shin level. << Have a nice trip? >> she suggests, proving that even without speaking, X-Men are rarely without a cheap and snappy quip or three.
And head over heels goes Wolverine, catching himself in an awkward roll. What the fall does not, do, however, is arrest Logan's forward moment. As he comes over he pushes himself onwards, scrabbling up on all fours to get upright. As soon as his hands come up, he launches himself from some twenty feet away into a flying tackle; this is a good tactic for intimidation, but gives Jean an unfortunately large window in which to react.
And react Jean does. Carefully, she gets to her feet while Logan's still airborne. This time, he doesn't go flying, he simply hovers, caught securely in a net of Jean's powers. She wanders over to him, breathing still ginger, but with a considering cant of her head. Bare feet are espied, and she tickles consideringly at the instep of one of them, the earlier irritation turned instead to heady speculation and a dash of mischief. "You," she informs, with pauses for heavy breathing, "Leave yourself wiiiiide open when you do that, mister."
Logan hovers obediently, his muscles twitching slightly and ineffectually at her tickling. Amusement flickers through his mind, mixed with just a bit of exasperation at Jean's tactics (and, if he's honest with himself, their effectiveness.) << Wide open? >> he projects at her. Then he focuses on a vivid, detailed, highly sensual image, drawn from memory and embellished for maximum effect. There are feathers (as a retalition for the tickling,) there are silk sheets, and there is a considerably detailed tactile sensation.
<< Oh yeah, >> Jean replies with a loose and lazy smile, caught in the wash of imagery and trailing her hand up and along the floating Wolverine, unstil she stands by his head and brushes warm skin. << -Just- like that. >> Steering him with her fingertips traced against the curve of his jaw, she finds a stack of mats to her liking, and lets her telekinetic hold drop. Whump. Leaning down herself this time, she wonders, innocently, "1-0?"
"Hah," Logan says wryly. Well, imagery is a pretty feeble weapon with which to combat telekinesis. "Fine," he acknowledges a palpable hit on Jean's part. "Feeling any better?"
"Lots," Jean assures with a smile just as easy as before, sinking down to a seat beside him and prodding thoughtfully at his chest with one big toe. Her arms wrap around her knees, rather girlishly, as she allows that "I might actually be able to sit down and write out a big address to the students without getting up to jitter every five seconds now." Her tone is wry as she admits this, and her eyes drop to stare at her right knee. "It's getting bad out there,"
Logan pushes himself up to a reclined sitting position, leaning back on his elbows. "Yeah," he agrees, grimacing. "We got instant communication around the entire frickin' world. How the fuck is it that our society is more ignorant and intolerant now than ten years ago?"
"It's like it's concentrating to either extreme, and nobody wants to see that the middle exists any more," Jean muses, still staring at her knees although she shuffles a little closer to Logan, seeking contact. "Charles and I agree that civil disobedience is the only response we can give to X-ID, and we'll send out messages to the school to that effect... but even if it's the right thing, it's probably going to bring things down on us. And in the middle of all this, Jareth has to go sleep with Alyssa," she concludes, in a sudden self-aware wild topic change. She does her best to fish up a crooked smile as she says it. "God, I could've made them both think they were potted petunias on the -spot-, when I heard."
Logan pushes slightly more upright and extends his arm to go around her back easily. "Well, if Native Americans were willing to name men 'Brain-in-penis' they'd never be able to tell each other apart," he says dryly. "I seriously wanna kick Jareth's ass up between his shoulderblades. But then you and Chuckie would probably have to yell at me, and I ain't gonna do that to you."
"If word of this ever gets out to Chris Rossi, you'd probably have a race on your hands," Jean admits, equally dry and not looking -especially- horrified at the notion of one-man ass relocation projects. Leaning back into his arm, she suggests that "For all I've got the formal chat left to have, if you wanted to have an informal one, I could understand that. It's not just the students' opinions of him that he's got to deal with, and he's not a kid for me to coddle. But...-god-." Exasperation rears its head in a brief flicker, too long past the initial incident to sustain itself, and soon replaced by dark humour and a sideways-slanted look. "Not that I've got a leg to stand on when it comes to relationships with older men."
Logan chuckles at Jean and gives her a little squeeze with his arm. "Hey...I only /remember/ like twenty years," he replies, eyes twinkling. "Maybe Chris and I can coordinate. Play bad cop, bad clawed-mutant-team-asskicking-prick."
"If you do, I don't want to hear about it," replies Jean, waving a hand to absolve herself from such matters of men. She has done her part, her beatific expression reads. "Although I'm not sure how much honour Alyssa has left for you two to defend. And please don't break the only hacker we've got. We need him-- but only twenty years, huh?" she wonders, dismissing the topic with a tip of her head, and one leg nestling up alongside Logan's. "Does that mean I'm the one cradle robbing?"
Logan chuckles at the thought. "Jareth will still survive. And if he really /does/ have a brain outside his pants, it'll still function." There is a distinct absence of promises about the other one, and mental images accompany the lack. "Hah. I don't think you woulda put me in a cradle as I busted outta Stryker's clutches and naked into the wilderness." There is a disturbing image that Logan mostly represses, instead supply a more photogenic image of Logan nakedness, which does not take into account the effect of the northern cold on his anatomy.
Catching the edges of that quickly-surpressed memory, Jean's hand tightens against Logan's back, mixed comfort with anger, always anger, at what was done to him. Her eyes initially sharp, although they're not focused on him, she forces herself to relax, to ease the tension in her clutching hand and, eventually, to reply with her own modifications to the photogenic image. A frilly pink baby bonnet incongruously appears on that manly, manly head of hair amidst the trees and snow. "I don't think they make cradles that size outside of fetish groups anyways." Half a beat later, her mind catches up to the flip comment, and there's a pronounced wince as an image is supplied. Jean keeps -that- one to herself. "Oh, God, I need coffee."
Jean doesn't really need to share anything telepathic to get Logan to a very similar image to the one Jean accidentally conjured. Logan smiles wryly. "Hah. Coffee'll do until you can get some better sleep. Which might be until we change administrations...or Alyssa settles down."
"I am," Jean announces, "Going to wake up one morning gone completely grey, at the age of thirty five. I just know it." But up to her feet she rises, offering Logan a hand in the process. "I think X-ID will have to be the last battleground of the MRA, at least. If it stays, we've lost, and I, for one am thinking either of moving the school to Martinique or Canada. If it's overturned, then the whole damn' opera falls apart."
"Well, then," Logan replies, accepting Jean's hand without putting too much weight on her arm, "I guess you better push this one pretty hard." He scratches in his sideburns briefly. "'Cause I dunno if I can spell Martinique."
"It's tropical, and there's rum." Thus is Martinique broken down into Logan terms, as Jean pads barefoot towards the doors out, and the cool metal plates of the subbasement floor. Her fingers find his, and she tugs encouragingly. "Coffee for two? And I might even consent to leave the school and go into town for it before I get back to fomenting civil disobedience, if I can get teenagers to understand what that means."
"Mmm. Rum." That turns Logan around on the idea of Martinique rather quickly. Really, though, tropical temperatures are not Logan's cup of t...stein of beer. "Shouting and flaunting authority oughta make 'em happy," he says dryly as he follows Jean toward the door. "Ah...yeah, coffee sounds good to me."
"Unfortunately, we're flaunting it the quiet way. Might be a harder sell." But Jean seems challenged rather than defeated by this notion, steps light as the door swooshes open to release them into the hallway. "Meet you by The Bike in ten minutes," she informs him, before turning in place to claim a promissory kiss, and any nearby students be damned.
Logan chuckles at Jean's target destination. There Can Only Be One: The Bike. Two teachers sucking face may make students grimace, but it beats the heck out of the gossiping about Alyssa and Jareth, so Logan has no scruples about returning the kiss thoroughly. "Deal," he agrees when his mouth is again free, and starts to head to his room to change.
X-Men MUCK - Saturday, July 22, 2006, 8:07 PM
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<> The Roof
Through a small little door accessed from the attic, one may stand or sit out here on a flat section of the mansion's roof on cool summer evenings, or anytime really, to think. Most of the mansion's grounds can be viewed from here as well as Westchester on, beautiful in the spring and fall when all things are blooming anew or the earthy, patchwork quilt of autumn lays across the land. Visible in the distance is the city skyline of New York.
[Exits : [Jump] to the Treehouse, and [In]side ]
No black cloud lingers of Monday's wrath. Nothing remains to savage distant lawmakers or the company they keep. Only something gray and diminished, curled in on itself, marks Jareth, beyond the movement of ascending steps. His fingers wait on the door, only for a moment before some lingering resolve pushes it open.
Jean's own thoughts are not really subdued, and not particularly diminished. Simply screened out of consideration for the other telepaths of the mansion, and kept firmly pointed to the task ahead of her. She doesn't turn at the sound of Jareth pushing the door open, instead keeping her eyes focused on the haze blurred New York City skyline in the distance as she stands on the edge of the roof. "Thank you for coming so quickly," is the greeting offered, careful and neutral. "I know if I were in your shoes, I'd probably be dragging my heels."
Conflicting propriety holds Jareth in the doorway, weighing directive and direction of movement. Soon enough, spurred by the propriety of punctuality, he moves to the edge himself - not entirely near. He stills, settling on some other point of that skyline, and a beat goes by. "Better that I come quickly."
A completely inopportune response to that flits through Jean's brain, but does no more damage than turning her expression odd for a moment, before the rogue thought is hunted down and summarily shot. There's no sense standing to remain imposing when you're up on a roof, and so she soon settles down with her legs over the edge and the eavestroughing digging into the bare skin of capri-clad legs. "It's appreciated, anyways. But I guess I have to ask you -- what would you do in my situation, Jareth?" One green eye peers up and over at him from over her shoulder, shrouded by windblown hair. "You're a friend, but I'm headmistress of the school, and I can't just give this a pass."
Only Jean and the distant skyline notice any such change. The skyline clearly reads every line on the chart. Movement beckons Jareth from the hazy buildings, to follow suit shortly after as his legs slowly fold and cross beneath him. Green meets blue-gray as the latter eyes slant to suitable angle, briefly, and then all the green he examines is the grass. A slow breath hoists his shoulders and lowers them again. "Do I get time to think? Ironic as it is to ask you to think."
"Think on your feet," Jean waves a hand, tone not unkind, but not granting that asked for privilege either. She's back to looking out at the city now, looming threat on the horizon. "A member of your staff, a person in a position of power, trust and responsibility, engages in sexual misconduct with a student barely a month graduated. No official rules have been broken, as the student is no longer a student, and isn't a minor, but it looks bad. The student may go, but other students and the rest of the faculty know too. What do you do?" she asks again. "How do you restore an environment where people feel they can trust faculty members to have pure intentions towards their stdents?"
Whatever rhythmic pressure Jareth's fingers exert on each other does not succeed in pressing answers from them. "I mean on my feet, just a minute to think." The gray indication of dispirited presence recoils further as mental images stir, pushed out to viewing. Students pointing, whispering. Teachers slightly refined in doing the same, but much the same. "I can think of some things I'll need to do. I'll start with the most accessible." No mention of easiest. He lifts from the grass again, waiting to meet that green regard again. "I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted." Jean's eyes do indeed find him again, steady and watchful, although her shoulders are eased somewhat by the lack of any bright ideas about defiance. Another inopportune thought arises (He only screws teenagers, he isn't one himself.) and once again sends her expression odd, before she once again exerts a telepath's rather scary level of self-control and stops thinking of the elephant in the room. "What now?"
Fractional and ephemerally brief, Jareth's brows pull down to puzzle over Jean's own display. Ephemeral as it is, he releases the clench of brows and looks skyward. Nor do answers fall from there. "Next, I think the students will need to hear something." He stares upward there until some small demon of recollection turns his attention to something scarcely older, no less pleasant. "How long do you think we have?"
"I'd advise an open letter to the general mailer," Jean murmurs, absent as she scans the evening sky for signs of the first star. "Apology, explanation... whatever. I don't envy you the writing of it. But I could require no less. And of course there will have to be a letter put in your file." But beyond that, Jean has nothing more to say. The spate of words ends in a sharp and hanging silence, inadequate. There are no stars out yet, and it's doubtful if they'd have answers if they were. The question asked of her likewise hangs for a bit, as Jean shifts her seat on the roof, hands between her knees. "Less than a month, now, probably." is the answer, given at last. "I won't be registering, 'nor a lot of the others. Given that some of us are outed... attention."
Teenagers mutter behind their hands once more, and Jareth's lowering of head from sky, when he does, is also a nod. "Don't envy classes at the start of the semester, either." He searches the sky only briefly this time, wisdom already proven absent from it. A glimmer of deeper dispiriting leaves a dark suggestion in the blue-gray eyes. "I'm not... Not just that." Blue-gray meets green again and holds this time. "Do you think we even have very long?"
"The law will be overturned," Murmured softly, absently, nearly lost to the eveing breeze, Jean stays with the new topic, turning possibilities over in her mind. "Tears the fourteenth amendment to shreds, for example. We just have to get a test case to the Supreme Court. And when X-ID dies, any dream of a functioning MRA dies with it. Making it work requires too much of the constitution to be ignored. But it's going to be an ugly little while 'til it does."
Fingers press to each other again over the fold of Jareth's legs, independent now of any relation to his companion but no less intent than before. "And until then, we move as though we're walking on ice thin as paper." Turned away for moments prior, he swings his attention to fix on Jean. "You saw what I thought already." As much question as statement. "Someone like me doesn't dare be found." His hands separate, moving in the air for some release of conviction, which is not there. "I could have every government on Earth hunting me to fill their own designs... or just hunting me." Rather than hands in air, his eyes seek in hers that means of unraveling conviction. "I can't stop a world, Jean."
"So don't try," Still absent, still staring up at the sky, Jean's words seem to be passing from brain to lips as a mere afterthought. "Just live your life. Draw your line in the sand, and walk it. Walk like you've got an army at your back," she suggests, before a snort of fey laughter escapes from her. "And don't look back -- they might be gaining on us."
Tension, in whatever portion, seems to drain with the words into the evening air - not entirely, but the bend of Jareth's shoulders now might be measured more loosely. The breath he releases comes easier, though perhaps only a tree below notices his wonder that it does. "I try. I just worry." What tension left empty abruptly fills with a blackened humor, caustic and biting. "Just wait until they start trying to make cybernetic supersoldiers, and I will. Fly, monkeys, fly."
"You've been watching Battlestar Galactica again, haven't you?" Jean wonders, meeting black humour with black humour of her own, and a wry, wry grin. With a sigh, she leans back against the tiles of the roof, head resting on folded hands, and continues her hopeful stargazing. "I'm thinking Gattaca myself. Which means we can play all sorts of shell games with vaccutainers of blood, if it comes to that."
Fortunate for the same tree that it lacks any true observation, target as it is of Jareth's darkly corrosive smile. "Maybe too much of the Borg or the Terminator movies." His own arrangement changes little, arms poised across knees and hands between. "I don't imagine that version would catch on so well among street performers." The smile droops away, but pitch-shaded mirth remains. "If it comes to that, should I just arrange for the systems to function like what equates to potheads?"
"...What?" Systems? Potheads? Jean is lost, and looks to Jareth for confirmation.
Back for an encore comes the smile, edged and honed. "Some system has to analyze the vials of blood, and it can't do it very well if it has no greater coherence than Cheech and Chong after a really good party."
"-Oh-." Enlightenment. "It's worth looking into, I'd say. Write up some initial investigations and turn them in," Jean suggests, in a measured tone and just a little less vague. Overhead, the first star of the night appears, and she awards it a small, secretive little smile. "Hopefully, it doesn't get that far," she murmurs, the smile sublimating away.
That edged smile stretches again. "I'll send something right to your desk." Jareth follows the indicative gaze and settles on that first of stars. "I hope not. The Founding Fathers will stomp out of their graves and hitchhike straight to Montreal." Images pass, of people in line, vials being drawn and line proceeding, until within the line appears to be... "Alyssa's leaving."
"I think it will be good for her if she does." Jean says, serious and almost silent. "We've done our best to try and keep her safe, teach her how to keep herself safe, and she--" But Jean doesn't finish that sentence, simply repeating "I think it will be good for her. We've been keeping a lot of the graduates here longer than we really should. Times like this," she muses, with a pause for a black laugh. "Can you blame us for wanting to keep the chicks near the nest?"
The smile now is faint, a wan shadow. "No. No, I can't. If I were a chick myself somewhere away, I'd probably fly back, make myself a nest nearby, and walk to the next branch over to ask mom and dad if I can borrow the laundry detergent." Jareth chuckles, equally wan, and turns back to Jean. "I hope she doesn't think we're just abandoning her or outright throwing her out, though."
"She's still a teenager," Jean murmurs, firmly, although her tone is free of accusation as she says it. "How she feels can change with the weather and the phases of the moon. But I'll make sure there's a housewarming for her, and see that there is Kraft Dinner in her cupboards."
A single exhale of dry laughter evaluates a concurrence. "Phases of the moon or angle on a sundial." Jareth evaluates further with a simple nod. "I think she'd appreciate feeling like she hasn't been cut off." Another beat goes by, and he begins drawing up a leg underneath him, another breath released. "I'd better get writing."
"The last thought flung in my direction from her was an 'Oh, fuck off'," Jean recounts, eyes tracking as a few more stars appear. She squints, and the Big Dipper is guessed at, finger pointing at where stars not yet bright enough to show will appear. "So I think I'll watch from a distance until the phases of the moon and the angle on the sundial align right. But I won't keep you further, Jareth."
Hands and Jareth himself rise nearly in unison, the former hoisting out to the sides. "She had a lot of emotion to handle. You know how well teenagers think when running on emotion. She still values you, though, I'm sure, and she'd rest more easy knowing your door is still open." The hands lower, and Jareth lingers a moment longer. "I'm glad it's still open for me." And he starts for the door.
"That was never in question." To what part of Jareth's statement Jean replies is left open-ended. The night is cool and quiet, and her eyes are for the stars. With a sigh, she shuts them for a moment, driving away outside thought, until she can resume her meditations on the infinite with greater peace.
To: GENERAL@listserv.x-school.edu
Subject: Our Response to X-ID
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This message is a bit too long in coming, and I'm sorry for that, but it's one where it's hard to find the words. I know many of you are worried about what X-ID means for us, as a school, as (for many of us) mutants, and as (for all of us) just people of the United States of America. What's our next move, Dr. Grey? Do I have to register? Will they close the school? These are all questions that have been asked of me lately, and they're questions I never wanted to hear, from any one, student or staff.
Professor Xavier and I have been spending long hours over the past couple years talking about what-ifs and contingencies. We've both put in our time lobbying and rallying and doing everything possible to impede the passage of these laws. Now that X-ID is passed and registration is mandatory, we're going to continue to fight, using the channels of law and government, of democracy. Magneto claims that his is the only way. In my opinion, his 'way' is what's helped give rise to the fears and the violence that saw these last few laws passed so quickly.
But there are other ways to fight an unjust and unconstitutional law, a middle besides dry political maneuvering and mass murder. It's some of those other ways that we want to suggest to you. Civil disobedience takes many forms, and some of the most effective are those that are the simplest. Simple way number one, you ask? Don't register. I won't be, neither will Professor Xavier, and many others of our staff. Any student who chooses to take this route for themselves will receive our full support, both moral and legal. We will take our cases to the Supreme Court, if they care to let it go on that long, and run that high. Mandatory registration and the X-ID program violate the fourteenth amendment, according to the lawyers I've been talking to, and there are other sections of the constitution that are down on it too. Professor Munroe would probably be happy to talk about the constitution with you in social studies this fall, or even in a couple weeks when she's feeling more up to a deluge of visitors.
If you want further inspiration as to what can be done, I'd recommend you take a look at the actions of Martin Luther King Jr. and others during the heydey of the Civil Rights movement. To help with this, I've asked my father, Dr. John Grey, to come up to the school one evening and give a talk about history, politics, and our current situation. I might see if I can get an old friend of mine who's a lawyer with the ACLU and currently up to his eyeballs in their anti X-ID/MRA efforts to do likewise. Mira, you might remember Steve.
Ultimately, though, the choice of what you do is yours to make. Professor Forge chose to voluntarily register himself, and the government has yet to come for him in the night. I encourage those of you who want to oppose X-ID to join me in refusing to register or be tested, but if you decide that breaking the law is not a step you want to take, then we will support you in that decision too. The true meaning of democracy is that all our individual voices have a chance to be heard, and dictating your choices based on what I think is right would make me no better than the thing I'm protesting.
Feel free to email me with any questions or concerns if you can't track me down in person,
Dr. Grey
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Backdated to Wednesday:
X-Men MUCK - Saturday, July 22, 2006, 1:08 PM
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<> Gymnasium - LvB3
Far more tame than the vexing challenges of the Danger Room, the school's Gymnasium is no less enormous. Although requiring permission to be accessed by students by themselves, classes are occasionally conducted down here under staff supervision. Some of the equipment is a bit unorthodox, but other than that it's a standard-issue gym, the floors mapped out with the designs for a basketball court (to suit the four hoops that flank every wall), although the walls are covered in hard rubber tiling. Small alterations to cater to the needs of occasionally out-of-control mutant powers.
[Exits : [P]ool and [W]eight Room, [S]torage, and [H]allway ]
"I -know- I shouldn't let Ann Coulter get to me like that," says a Jean in mid-warmup and currently with legs splayed out across a mat and back bent forward. Whump. A leg rotates up and over to slam into the matting again. "But honestly, saying that X-ID doesn't go far enough, and the only mutants who'd be afraid to show up to an internment camp are those actively plotting...?" Whump. Now, oneleg gets tucked up beneath her, and her face rises from the mats. "On top of everything else, I feel the sudden need to get caught up on hand-to-hand skills."
Logan rolls his shoulders, small popping sounds emerging from his tendons. "Stupid bitch," he replies evenly. His emotions simmer quietly at the thought of Ann Coulter within a hundred feet of himself. "Someone should lock her the fuck up, see what she thinks then." He moves out onto the mat and bounces on his balls of his feet, loosening his legs. "In the mean time...I guess a little bruising is in order."
"If Ann only knew just how many dangerous mutants were choosing to spar with each other instead of with her head, maybe she'd sleep better at night." Jean muses, a dark-humour attempt at sweetness and light crossing her expression before she rises to her feet and slides into a few katas to finish warming up, or at least what she remembers of them. "But I'll definitely trade some bruises for unkeying a little. When the nightmares come back, it's a bad sign -- sorry about your lamp, by the way."
Logan drops into a series of rolls taking him across the mat and then back. "Hah. Never liked that lamp much anyway." At least, he didn't much care about it; replacing it will be a minor inconvenience (like cleaning it up) but it isn't as if she bent his Japanese swords into pretzels. He pops up from a roll and takes a light stance on the balls of his feet, bouncing slightly. "Ready when you are, Red," he says, a gleam in the corner of his eye.
"Still." The lamp will likely be quietly replaced. But that's a matter for later and for trips to Pier One. In the here and now, Jean catches that gleam, and there's a flash of it shared in her own eyes, before she pivots on the ball of one foot and then advances in a swift sidestep, striking out with one foot to catch the seat of Logan's sweats. Testing.
Logan pivots as Jean moves, tracing her movements. As she lifts her foot, Logan moves, quick on his feet. His arm drops down to try and parry her leg, meeting with marginal success. As she hits him, in his side rather than his posterior, he lets himself drop, shooting out his own foot as he goes, driving out at her supporting leg.
The kicking foot arcs away, deflected, and with it Jean's center of balance shifts. She stumbles, arms flailing for support they fail to find, and then drops down into a breakfall once the supporting leg is kicked away from under her. Rolled out of it and back on her feet, she tries a different approach, one hand swiping hair out of her eyes before she drops a shoulder and charges, hands seeking to grapple at Logan's legs and take him down with her.
With Logan's fall to the mat, the big mutant cannot get to his feet fast enough to pursue Jean instantly. Instead, he finds a flying telekinetic arcing towards his legs. He shifts, but there is no time to evade. He drops his hands to get hold of her shoulders, but that does not prevent him from taking her impact and pitching backwards. As he topples, however, he pulls upwards, hard; if he manages to break Jean's grip, it is difficult to say exactly where she will end up, but it will almost certainly not be where she anticipated.
Jean may well be the most powerful telekinetic on the planet. This does absolutely nothing to help her keep a physical grip on things. It does even less than usual in this case. As a result, there's a surprises yelp of "Shit!", and Jean is soon airborne. She lands hard on her back, hands curled around her head to protect herself, and lies there with a loud wheeze as her lungs complain that they need -air- to work, damn it.
And so both Jean and Logan are on their backs; Logan, however, has not just had the wind knocked out of him. He rolls up out of his flat stance and leans over Jean, grinning as he cocks one fist back. "1-0?" he asks cheerfully, as his claws pop out of his hand for emphasis. This, however, is not an attack he has the least intention of carrying onwards.
Jean's answer takes the form of a sudden wheezy smirk and green eyes leaping to blazing life. Still physically incapacitated as she rolls fetal to curl around her poor lungs while they refil, telekinesis picks up Logan and tosses him hard at the nearest wall. << Not just yet. >> the Phoenix informs the Wolverine. Slightly smug.
Logan's claws retract as he flies, and his lips pull back in a bared-teeth smile even before he hits the wall and bounces. He hits with his back, then falls forward on his face. That impact /does/ knock the wind out of him and it takes him a moment to push back to his feet. "There's my girl," he says as eagerness and testosterone flashes through his brain. Then he takes off, bolting in Jean's direction at his considerable top speed.
Jean's amswering grin is brilliant, and as Logan rushes her, she changes the sparring match into a game of telekinetic keep-away. Considerate of Logan's oft-mashed nose, she throws up no shield walls, instead pushing herself up to rest leaned back against her elbows, and pushing out a low wave of force at shin level. << Have a nice trip? >> she suggests, proving that even without speaking, X-Men are rarely without a cheap and snappy quip or three.
And head over heels goes Wolverine, catching himself in an awkward roll. What the fall does not, do, however, is arrest Logan's forward moment. As he comes over he pushes himself onwards, scrabbling up on all fours to get upright. As soon as his hands come up, he launches himself from some twenty feet away into a flying tackle; this is a good tactic for intimidation, but gives Jean an unfortunately large window in which to react.
And react Jean does. Carefully, she gets to her feet while Logan's still airborne. This time, he doesn't go flying, he simply hovers, caught securely in a net of Jean's powers. She wanders over to him, breathing still ginger, but with a considering cant of her head. Bare feet are espied, and she tickles consideringly at the instep of one of them, the earlier irritation turned instead to heady speculation and a dash of mischief. "You," she informs, with pauses for heavy breathing, "Leave yourself wiiiiide open when you do that, mister."
Logan hovers obediently, his muscles twitching slightly and ineffectually at her tickling. Amusement flickers through his mind, mixed with just a bit of exasperation at Jean's tactics (and, if he's honest with himself, their effectiveness.) << Wide open? >> he projects at her. Then he focuses on a vivid, detailed, highly sensual image, drawn from memory and embellished for maximum effect. There are feathers (as a retalition for the tickling,) there are silk sheets, and there is a considerably detailed tactile sensation.
<< Oh yeah, >> Jean replies with a loose and lazy smile, caught in the wash of imagery and trailing her hand up and along the floating Wolverine, unstil she stands by his head and brushes warm skin. << -Just- like that. >> Steering him with her fingertips traced against the curve of his jaw, she finds a stack of mats to her liking, and lets her telekinetic hold drop. Whump. Leaning down herself this time, she wonders, innocently, "1-0?"
"Hah," Logan says wryly. Well, imagery is a pretty feeble weapon with which to combat telekinesis. "Fine," he acknowledges a palpable hit on Jean's part. "Feeling any better?"
"Lots," Jean assures with a smile just as easy as before, sinking down to a seat beside him and prodding thoughtfully at his chest with one big toe. Her arms wrap around her knees, rather girlishly, as she allows that "I might actually be able to sit down and write out a big address to the students without getting up to jitter every five seconds now." Her tone is wry as she admits this, and her eyes drop to stare at her right knee. "It's getting bad out there,"
Logan pushes himself up to a reclined sitting position, leaning back on his elbows. "Yeah," he agrees, grimacing. "We got instant communication around the entire frickin' world. How the fuck is it that our society is more ignorant and intolerant now than ten years ago?"
"It's like it's concentrating to either extreme, and nobody wants to see that the middle exists any more," Jean muses, still staring at her knees although she shuffles a little closer to Logan, seeking contact. "Charles and I agree that civil disobedience is the only response we can give to X-ID, and we'll send out messages to the school to that effect... but even if it's the right thing, it's probably going to bring things down on us. And in the middle of all this, Jareth has to go sleep with Alyssa," she concludes, in a sudden self-aware wild topic change. She does her best to fish up a crooked smile as she says it. "God, I could've made them both think they were potted petunias on the -spot-, when I heard."
Logan pushes slightly more upright and extends his arm to go around her back easily. "Well, if Native Americans were willing to name men 'Brain-in-penis' they'd never be able to tell each other apart," he says dryly. "I seriously wanna kick Jareth's ass up between his shoulderblades. But then you and Chuckie would probably have to yell at me, and I ain't gonna do that to you."
"If word of this ever gets out to Chris Rossi, you'd probably have a race on your hands," Jean admits, equally dry and not looking -especially- horrified at the notion of one-man ass relocation projects. Leaning back into his arm, she suggests that "For all I've got the formal chat left to have, if you wanted to have an informal one, I could understand that. It's not just the students' opinions of him that he's got to deal with, and he's not a kid for me to coddle. But...-god-." Exasperation rears its head in a brief flicker, too long past the initial incident to sustain itself, and soon replaced by dark humour and a sideways-slanted look. "Not that I've got a leg to stand on when it comes to relationships with older men."
Logan chuckles at Jean and gives her a little squeeze with his arm. "Hey...I only /remember/ like twenty years," he replies, eyes twinkling. "Maybe Chris and I can coordinate. Play bad cop, bad clawed-mutant-team-asskicking-prick."
"If you do, I don't want to hear about it," replies Jean, waving a hand to absolve herself from such matters of men. She has done her part, her beatific expression reads. "Although I'm not sure how much honour Alyssa has left for you two to defend. And please don't break the only hacker we've got. We need him-- but only twenty years, huh?" she wonders, dismissing the topic with a tip of her head, and one leg nestling up alongside Logan's. "Does that mean I'm the one cradle robbing?"
Logan chuckles at the thought. "Jareth will still survive. And if he really /does/ have a brain outside his pants, it'll still function." There is a distinct absence of promises about the other one, and mental images accompany the lack. "Hah. I don't think you woulda put me in a cradle as I busted outta Stryker's clutches and naked into the wilderness." There is a disturbing image that Logan mostly represses, instead supply a more photogenic image of Logan nakedness, which does not take into account the effect of the northern cold on his anatomy.
Catching the edges of that quickly-surpressed memory, Jean's hand tightens against Logan's back, mixed comfort with anger, always anger, at what was done to him. Her eyes initially sharp, although they're not focused on him, she forces herself to relax, to ease the tension in her clutching hand and, eventually, to reply with her own modifications to the photogenic image. A frilly pink baby bonnet incongruously appears on that manly, manly head of hair amidst the trees and snow. "I don't think they make cradles that size outside of fetish groups anyways." Half a beat later, her mind catches up to the flip comment, and there's a pronounced wince as an image is supplied. Jean keeps -that- one to herself. "Oh, God, I need coffee."
Jean doesn't really need to share anything telepathic to get Logan to a very similar image to the one Jean accidentally conjured. Logan smiles wryly. "Hah. Coffee'll do until you can get some better sleep. Which might be until we change administrations...or Alyssa settles down."
"I am," Jean announces, "Going to wake up one morning gone completely grey, at the age of thirty five. I just know it." But up to her feet she rises, offering Logan a hand in the process. "I think X-ID will have to be the last battleground of the MRA, at least. If it stays, we've lost, and I, for one am thinking either of moving the school to Martinique or Canada. If it's overturned, then the whole damn' opera falls apart."
"Well, then," Logan replies, accepting Jean's hand without putting too much weight on her arm, "I guess you better push this one pretty hard." He scratches in his sideburns briefly. "'Cause I dunno if I can spell Martinique."
"It's tropical, and there's rum." Thus is Martinique broken down into Logan terms, as Jean pads barefoot towards the doors out, and the cool metal plates of the subbasement floor. Her fingers find his, and she tugs encouragingly. "Coffee for two? And I might even consent to leave the school and go into town for it before I get back to fomenting civil disobedience, if I can get teenagers to understand what that means."
"Mmm. Rum." That turns Logan around on the idea of Martinique rather quickly. Really, though, tropical temperatures are not Logan's cup of t...stein of beer. "Shouting and flaunting authority oughta make 'em happy," he says dryly as he follows Jean toward the door. "Ah...yeah, coffee sounds good to me."
"Unfortunately, we're flaunting it the quiet way. Might be a harder sell." But Jean seems challenged rather than defeated by this notion, steps light as the door swooshes open to release them into the hallway. "Meet you by The Bike in ten minutes," she informs him, before turning in place to claim a promissory kiss, and any nearby students be damned.
Logan chuckles at Jean's target destination. There Can Only Be One: The Bike. Two teachers sucking face may make students grimace, but it beats the heck out of the gossiping about Alyssa and Jareth, so Logan has no scruples about returning the kiss thoroughly. "Deal," he agrees when his mouth is again free, and starts to head to his room to change.
X-Men MUCK - Saturday, July 22, 2006, 8:07 PM
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<> The Roof
Through a small little door accessed from the attic, one may stand or sit out here on a flat section of the mansion's roof on cool summer evenings, or anytime really, to think. Most of the mansion's grounds can be viewed from here as well as Westchester on, beautiful in the spring and fall when all things are blooming anew or the earthy, patchwork quilt of autumn lays across the land. Visible in the distance is the city skyline of New York.
[Exits : [Jump] to the Treehouse, and [In]side ]
No black cloud lingers of Monday's wrath. Nothing remains to savage distant lawmakers or the company they keep. Only something gray and diminished, curled in on itself, marks Jareth, beyond the movement of ascending steps. His fingers wait on the door, only for a moment before some lingering resolve pushes it open.
Jean's own thoughts are not really subdued, and not particularly diminished. Simply screened out of consideration for the other telepaths of the mansion, and kept firmly pointed to the task ahead of her. She doesn't turn at the sound of Jareth pushing the door open, instead keeping her eyes focused on the haze blurred New York City skyline in the distance as she stands on the edge of the roof. "Thank you for coming so quickly," is the greeting offered, careful and neutral. "I know if I were in your shoes, I'd probably be dragging my heels."
Conflicting propriety holds Jareth in the doorway, weighing directive and direction of movement. Soon enough, spurred by the propriety of punctuality, he moves to the edge himself - not entirely near. He stills, settling on some other point of that skyline, and a beat goes by. "Better that I come quickly."
A completely inopportune response to that flits through Jean's brain, but does no more damage than turning her expression odd for a moment, before the rogue thought is hunted down and summarily shot. There's no sense standing to remain imposing when you're up on a roof, and so she soon settles down with her legs over the edge and the eavestroughing digging into the bare skin of capri-clad legs. "It's appreciated, anyways. But I guess I have to ask you -- what would you do in my situation, Jareth?" One green eye peers up and over at him from over her shoulder, shrouded by windblown hair. "You're a friend, but I'm headmistress of the school, and I can't just give this a pass."
Only Jean and the distant skyline notice any such change. The skyline clearly reads every line on the chart. Movement beckons Jareth from the hazy buildings, to follow suit shortly after as his legs slowly fold and cross beneath him. Green meets blue-gray as the latter eyes slant to suitable angle, briefly, and then all the green he examines is the grass. A slow breath hoists his shoulders and lowers them again. "Do I get time to think? Ironic as it is to ask you to think."
"Think on your feet," Jean waves a hand, tone not unkind, but not granting that asked for privilege either. She's back to looking out at the city now, looming threat on the horizon. "A member of your staff, a person in a position of power, trust and responsibility, engages in sexual misconduct with a student barely a month graduated. No official rules have been broken, as the student is no longer a student, and isn't a minor, but it looks bad. The student may go, but other students and the rest of the faculty know too. What do you do?" she asks again. "How do you restore an environment where people feel they can trust faculty members to have pure intentions towards their stdents?"
Whatever rhythmic pressure Jareth's fingers exert on each other does not succeed in pressing answers from them. "I mean on my feet, just a minute to think." The gray indication of dispirited presence recoils further as mental images stir, pushed out to viewing. Students pointing, whispering. Teachers slightly refined in doing the same, but much the same. "I can think of some things I'll need to do. I'll start with the most accessible." No mention of easiest. He lifts from the grass again, waiting to meet that green regard again. "I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted." Jean's eyes do indeed find him again, steady and watchful, although her shoulders are eased somewhat by the lack of any bright ideas about defiance. Another inopportune thought arises (He only screws teenagers, he isn't one himself.) and once again sends her expression odd, before she once again exerts a telepath's rather scary level of self-control and stops thinking of the elephant in the room. "What now?"
Fractional and ephemerally brief, Jareth's brows pull down to puzzle over Jean's own display. Ephemeral as it is, he releases the clench of brows and looks skyward. Nor do answers fall from there. "Next, I think the students will need to hear something." He stares upward there until some small demon of recollection turns his attention to something scarcely older, no less pleasant. "How long do you think we have?"
"I'd advise an open letter to the general mailer," Jean murmurs, absent as she scans the evening sky for signs of the first star. "Apology, explanation... whatever. I don't envy you the writing of it. But I could require no less. And of course there will have to be a letter put in your file." But beyond that, Jean has nothing more to say. The spate of words ends in a sharp and hanging silence, inadequate. There are no stars out yet, and it's doubtful if they'd have answers if they were. The question asked of her likewise hangs for a bit, as Jean shifts her seat on the roof, hands between her knees. "Less than a month, now, probably." is the answer, given at last. "I won't be registering, 'nor a lot of the others. Given that some of us are outed... attention."
Teenagers mutter behind their hands once more, and Jareth's lowering of head from sky, when he does, is also a nod. "Don't envy classes at the start of the semester, either." He searches the sky only briefly this time, wisdom already proven absent from it. A glimmer of deeper dispiriting leaves a dark suggestion in the blue-gray eyes. "I'm not... Not just that." Blue-gray meets green again and holds this time. "Do you think we even have very long?"
"The law will be overturned," Murmured softly, absently, nearly lost to the eveing breeze, Jean stays with the new topic, turning possibilities over in her mind. "Tears the fourteenth amendment to shreds, for example. We just have to get a test case to the Supreme Court. And when X-ID dies, any dream of a functioning MRA dies with it. Making it work requires too much of the constitution to be ignored. But it's going to be an ugly little while 'til it does."
Fingers press to each other again over the fold of Jareth's legs, independent now of any relation to his companion but no less intent than before. "And until then, we move as though we're walking on ice thin as paper." Turned away for moments prior, he swings his attention to fix on Jean. "You saw what I thought already." As much question as statement. "Someone like me doesn't dare be found." His hands separate, moving in the air for some release of conviction, which is not there. "I could have every government on Earth hunting me to fill their own designs... or just hunting me." Rather than hands in air, his eyes seek in hers that means of unraveling conviction. "I can't stop a world, Jean."
"So don't try," Still absent, still staring up at the sky, Jean's words seem to be passing from brain to lips as a mere afterthought. "Just live your life. Draw your line in the sand, and walk it. Walk like you've got an army at your back," she suggests, before a snort of fey laughter escapes from her. "And don't look back -- they might be gaining on us."
Tension, in whatever portion, seems to drain with the words into the evening air - not entirely, but the bend of Jareth's shoulders now might be measured more loosely. The breath he releases comes easier, though perhaps only a tree below notices his wonder that it does. "I try. I just worry." What tension left empty abruptly fills with a blackened humor, caustic and biting. "Just wait until they start trying to make cybernetic supersoldiers, and I will. Fly, monkeys, fly."
"You've been watching Battlestar Galactica again, haven't you?" Jean wonders, meeting black humour with black humour of her own, and a wry, wry grin. With a sigh, she leans back against the tiles of the roof, head resting on folded hands, and continues her hopeful stargazing. "I'm thinking Gattaca myself. Which means we can play all sorts of shell games with vaccutainers of blood, if it comes to that."
Fortunate for the same tree that it lacks any true observation, target as it is of Jareth's darkly corrosive smile. "Maybe too much of the Borg or the Terminator movies." His own arrangement changes little, arms poised across knees and hands between. "I don't imagine that version would catch on so well among street performers." The smile droops away, but pitch-shaded mirth remains. "If it comes to that, should I just arrange for the systems to function like what equates to potheads?"
"...What?" Systems? Potheads? Jean is lost, and looks to Jareth for confirmation.
Back for an encore comes the smile, edged and honed. "Some system has to analyze the vials of blood, and it can't do it very well if it has no greater coherence than Cheech and Chong after a really good party."
"-Oh-." Enlightenment. "It's worth looking into, I'd say. Write up some initial investigations and turn them in," Jean suggests, in a measured tone and just a little less vague. Overhead, the first star of the night appears, and she awards it a small, secretive little smile. "Hopefully, it doesn't get that far," she murmurs, the smile sublimating away.
That edged smile stretches again. "I'll send something right to your desk." Jareth follows the indicative gaze and settles on that first of stars. "I hope not. The Founding Fathers will stomp out of their graves and hitchhike straight to Montreal." Images pass, of people in line, vials being drawn and line proceeding, until within the line appears to be... "Alyssa's leaving."
"I think it will be good for her if she does." Jean says, serious and almost silent. "We've done our best to try and keep her safe, teach her how to keep herself safe, and she--" But Jean doesn't finish that sentence, simply repeating "I think it will be good for her. We've been keeping a lot of the graduates here longer than we really should. Times like this," she muses, with a pause for a black laugh. "Can you blame us for wanting to keep the chicks near the nest?"
The smile now is faint, a wan shadow. "No. No, I can't. If I were a chick myself somewhere away, I'd probably fly back, make myself a nest nearby, and walk to the next branch over to ask mom and dad if I can borrow the laundry detergent." Jareth chuckles, equally wan, and turns back to Jean. "I hope she doesn't think we're just abandoning her or outright throwing her out, though."
"She's still a teenager," Jean murmurs, firmly, although her tone is free of accusation as she says it. "How she feels can change with the weather and the phases of the moon. But I'll make sure there's a housewarming for her, and see that there is Kraft Dinner in her cupboards."
A single exhale of dry laughter evaluates a concurrence. "Phases of the moon or angle on a sundial." Jareth evaluates further with a simple nod. "I think she'd appreciate feeling like she hasn't been cut off." Another beat goes by, and he begins drawing up a leg underneath him, another breath released. "I'd better get writing."
"The last thought flung in my direction from her was an 'Oh, fuck off'," Jean recounts, eyes tracking as a few more stars appear. She squints, and the Big Dipper is guessed at, finger pointing at where stars not yet bright enough to show will appear. "So I think I'll watch from a distance until the phases of the moon and the angle on the sundial align right. But I won't keep you further, Jareth."
Hands and Jareth himself rise nearly in unison, the former hoisting out to the sides. "She had a lot of emotion to handle. You know how well teenagers think when running on emotion. She still values you, though, I'm sure, and she'd rest more easy knowing your door is still open." The hands lower, and Jareth lingers a moment longer. "I'm glad it's still open for me." And he starts for the door.
"That was never in question." To what part of Jareth's statement Jean replies is left open-ended. The night is cool and quiet, and her eyes are for the stars. With a sigh, she shuts them for a moment, driving away outside thought, until she can resume her meditations on the infinite with greater peace.