Commentary meme: Xavier/Jean

[xmm_jeangrey]

Log:
Characters: Jean and Xavier
Commentary For: xmm_xavier


I never really quite know how my commentaries are going to turn out -- Like Creed's player, I'm much more of an in-the-moment, unconscious sort of roleplayer, where I pose what feels right, and then later realize that there's sense being made, that it fits a pattern, etc. So commentaries are useful in that they're a chance for me to stop and analyze why it actually is that think a scene's awesome, or what, precisely, had me going "OMG!!" to whatever poor soul was subjected to me in full squealy fangirl mode.

Of course, in this scene, as in pretty much all scenes I've had with Rossi/Xaver/Yuriko, the 'what made this cool' boils down quite simply: It's Rossi/Xavier/Yuriko. I am the moon to their sun, I shine because they do!

Anyways, enough raving, now the commentary. This particular scene takes place one evening in the days after Lowe's assassination, and the weeks after the school's been. Charles had gone and shut himself up in Cerebro for his own reasons on hearing the news about Lowe, leaving Jean to take questions she had no answers for. Questions she's wanted answers for herself. She's had a fight with Logan, an almost-fight with Rogue, and is very much wondering just what the hell she's doing as Headmistress of Xavier's School if she can't answer those questions with any real authority. She's feeling a figurehead, because while she's got the responsibility, Xavier has the real power of what happens -- this is still his school, even if he's handed her the title because he wants or needs to spend more time away from it. What he says goes, and what he's said lately hasn't been... anything, really.

Jean is tired. Jean is frustrated. And Jean is no longer the sort of person to sit and let her frustration build in the hopes that it works out in the end. Jean, her psyche no longer artifically constrained, wants action. And thus, she takes it.

=XS= The Roof - Xavier's School
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. Over by the gardens, a tall oak tree boasts a treehouse in its branches. Someone feeling adventurous could probably jump and make it...

Night, and quiet, and a steady wind outside the windows sets tree branches to scratching eerily against the panes. Finished driving back the beast of paperwork as far as she can for another day, Jean is at last free to roam the school for her own purposes, and up to the roof she goes as a result. Whether it's some subconscious draw to the other telepath in the mansion, whether it's a conscious search, or whether it's simply wandering feet on familiar paths, the end is the same: the heavy door down to the attic is thrown open against the wind, and Jean steps out onto the flat of the widow's walk, bundled in a wool coat and a knit scarf, and with a steaming mug of tea in her hands. She walks with a focused weariness, fatigue mastered and measured, and stowed in shoulders hunched forward against more than just the wind.

Unfortunately, while Jean would like to take action immediately, she's got enough responsibilities that she can't just drop them all and suit herself. Well, she -could-, but that, to Jean, would be treading just a bit too close to Dark Phoenix's patterns of immediate gratification for her liking. Charles put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, but Humpty's not sure how much of her current state of sanity is that fixing, and how much of it is her own personal willpower. Let's not test this one way or the other, shall we?

So instead of nailing a declaration to the church doors, (Or Xavier's office) Jean sits in her office and does marking and catches up on some pleas from the accounting department, drafts a few emails to angry or concerned parents, and plays the no-comment game with reporters enterprising enough to get past the school's voicemail system and find her. Having achieved a suitable level of penance or karmic balance or whatever standard she's measuring herself against, she's now going to face Xavier, and to hell with the fact that her body is telling her that food and sleep is the better option. She's waited and worked and put this off so that not even she can say she's neglecting others for herself, and so she's taking time for herself, dammit!

This is an improvement on how Jean used to be, where she wouldn't get to the 'time for herself' part at all. Now, she must learn about things like -balance-. So she's tired. She's grim. She's trembling because she's cold from not taking time to eat. And she's not looking forward to how things are going to go, if her history of arguing with Xavier is any indication. Charles is going to win, somehow, she knows it. Charles always wins, even if Jean thinks she's got a Very Good Point going into things. Charles... is kind've a bastard sometimes. A noble, caring, kind, and visionary bastard that she loves very much.

He is already there in the wind, though it parts somewhat around the buttress that shields them: a solitary figure in his wheeled throne, silhouetted against the far lawn's lights. His suit blends with shadow, a somber black that might by day prove a different color -- like the night a blend of a thousand other shades that, seen through a painter's eyes, are more rainbow than solid. Professor Xavier watches the distant gates and the vans parked like hungry wolves at the entrance. Fewer now. Silent. Like him.

And behind him, Charles Xavier's hunting hawk comes to a silent roost, weary from bating madly in her jesses. << Charles. >> Jean announces herself, a single word spoken mind to mind before her thoughts withdraw back to herself. Anger and frustration still lurk, but are dragged below the mental surface now by growing and bleak chains of thought that grow longer as her own eyes turn to the lights of the news vans. Aloud, half-stolen by the wind, she continues that "I think I may have to resign as headmistress of the school."

Charles Xavier on the roof of his mansion, brooding like a gargoyle in a good London suit. Damn, the man even -broods- stylishly. I like this pose, of the quiet, isolation enveloping both mind and body. And, as always as it's been for these past few weeks, the vultures down at the gates.

Continuing avian metaphors, I throw in a reference I've used way too many times because I like it. Jean as a trained hawk, Xavier as her master. She's a wild thing, fierce and powerful, but she'll still fly from his hand, chase the rabbits he sets her after, and then return to roost until he calls her to the hunt again. She's not his creature in the sense of Ellen to his Magneto -- that reverent devotion Ellen shows ended some years back. Even very well trained hawks can be pushed too far -- they're not domestic animals by any stretch of the word -- and Jean's been all too acutely aware of the limits of her jesses, these past few days, building on layers of subconsciously-felt limits ever since she picked up the Headmistress spot. Also, I wanted to use the word 'bating' because it's a neat one. I like the random old archaic words that invariably follow very old sports like hunting and hawking around.

But Jean has an advantage that hawks do not. Jean can say 'I quit'. Jean's uneasy saying it -- Headmistress is something he asked of her, but she's not so sure it's something she can refuse without sounding like a teenager informing her father that no, Dad, she's not going to be doing the dishes any more, thanks, or worse, like a teenager ungratefully refusing a real chance at life because it's too hard, too much work. She and Xavier are both adults now, she's proved more than once that she can live her own life and follow her own pursuits... but he's still the father-figure, still the savior of a little girl lost in her own mind. And, more recently, more uncomfortably, the savior of a grown woman turned mad murderer. She's expecting to be challenged, or worse, to be talked down into being reasonable like she's not really serious to begin with.

The impassive figure by the roof's edge does not stir; the mind held captive in the failed body likewise, the echoes of that name swallowed whole by silence. There is nothing. No reply. No acknowledgment, save for the sense beyond senses that something powerful -- something aware, something intelligent, something vital for all its weariness -- considers the spoken words and weighs them against a feather.

"Do you know who John M. Ford is, Jean?"

Jean sighs, not so much weary as resigned to another round of following the meanderings of an old man's mind, and rounds the corner of a chimney stack to take a seat beside Xavier's feet, head bowed over her tea. "No," she admits. "What's his story?"

See? It's starting. Jean has made her ultimatum. Xavier has responded with the sort of tangential answer that completely derails the fact that she's just made an ultimatum. John M. who, now?

Entertainingly enough, I wrote the above sentence last night, and now I've just read the Xavier/Rogue commentary, where Xavier-player discusses derailment.

Anyways, that trick of answering an ultimatum with an apparently completely unrelated question is the sort of thing my grandfather pulled all the time, before he developed Alzheimer's. He'd probably still pull it if he hadn't quite cheerfully decided everyone else could solve their own problems sometime last year. Possibly, it's a powerful old white paterfamilias thing, but I quite often find parallels between Rin's Xavier and my grandfather. And parallels between Moira MacTaggart and my nana, entertainingly enough. People wonder why I identify well with Jean Grey...

Jean is somewhat at a loss here -- being a telepath, she normall gets a clue as to meaning just from what surface thoughts and emotions are colouring a person's mind. She doesn't consider it invasive -- she's not digging, it's just using telepathy as the sixth sense that it is. The sort of awareness that a very skilled judge of body language could pick up from other cues. Xavier's closed himself off mentally as well as physically. All Jean's getting is the sense that, at the very least, he's heard what she's said and is thinking about it.

It's not all that much, but at least it's better than immediate dismissal. So Jean sits, and Jean waits, and Jean plays the game and asks, because she knows that way is the way that answers will come. Charles Xavier will answer when and how he wills it.

"A man of some genius," Xavier says, his profile revealing nothing though his voice flexes through strata: from dry to wry in the space of a sentence. "Though not in any arena that usually comes within my purview. I understand his primary claim to popular fame was that he once wrote two Star Trek novels."

"Original series or Next Generation?" Jean wonders, in a sudden, unbearable, and completely reflexive descent into geekery before she catches herself. There's a short laugh, rough and self-mocking, before she shakes her head and looks over her shoulder at Xavier, loose hair slashing across her face and obscuring it in turns of the fickle wind's fancy. "Go on,"

My Jean is somewhat geekier than any comics Jean ever written. This is because my Jean isn't just a doctor, she's a scientist, and I've yet to meet a single scientist that's completely geek-free. It's just the way we are. So Jean's an SF fan. She knows why the students snicker when Charles Xavier orders Earl Grey tea.

She also knows that the books aren't the point, even if she can't help asking the question.

I also love the sheer random facts that Xavier knows, and the 'from dry to wry in the space of a sentence'. Wordplay and alliteration please me.

Xavier's glance aside is quizzical, and an eyebrow arches in question -- rhetorical, pardon? -- before he shakes his head in dismissal. "A man of some genius," he says again. Lips twist. "When a friend mentioned that she would, if she were a better writer, tie the inevitabilities of death and database error by means of a rhetorical figure involving worms, he created a poem on the spot and gave it to her as a gift."

Jean looks rather blank at this -- briefly appreciative of the imagery, mind, but soon lost in a search for meaning that's clearly run into worms of its own. Jerking her head sharply to clear her hair from her eyes, she wonders, just a touch too sharp, "What's your point in this, Charles?"

Jean is irritated. The answers that seem to have been coming have just instead turned into worms and database errors. She just told you she was resigning, Charles, do get on with acknowledging it!

Something like a sigh flutters across the wind of minds. << 'Regret, by definition, comes too late; say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.' >> The Professor's mouth moves -- in a smile, perhaps, or not. The long, lean hands close around the chair's arms. "The universe winds down for some of us, Jean. Why do you wish to step down?"

Naturally, she got freshly irritated right before Xavier was planning to get to his point anyways. I love Xavier's sigh. One part Magneto's favourite utterance of 'young people', and one part regret.

"Because I've never been able to step -up-," Jean answers in a sudden rush, simply put and swiftly said, a surgeon's incision rather than a renegade stab. Silence follows this, averaging out the speaking until it matches the measured, muffled pace she continues at. "I do the paperwork, I organize the class schedules, discipline the miscreants, counsel the academically unsure... but the assassination's reminded me pretty clearly of just where my hands are tied. How am I supposed to answer the students when they want to know why we didn't stop Magneto? Especially when I have those questions myself?"

That's really the crux of it -- she may have the responsibilities, but she doesn't have the power, and she's not willing to seize it for herself, even if Xavier was willing to relinquish it. For the first, she'd consider it a betrayal, some sort of Hellfire-style strike at the breast that's nurtured and raised her. For the second, Jean knows full well she's not Xavier's equal when it comes to making his dream of a better world a reality. She's a newly-minted thirty six, and she's split her energies and developments between what would be enough careers for five people. Doctor, researcher, activist, teacher, X-Man, and she's not nearly far enough along in any of them to think about a drive to chance the world whole cloth, undirected.

And, deep down, there's the fact that Jean isn't so sure she wants to spend her life the way Charles has spent his. There's still a part of her that dreams of some hybrid of her father's life and Moira MacTaggart's, academia and research, and seeing if she can't just save her son's life through science, or unlock the cure to cancer and the secrets of longevity through a study of Logan's biochemistry.

Jean hasn't been comfortable from the beginning moving from deputy headmistress to the actual headmistress spot -- Magneto and Lowe's assassination just brought it so sharply into focus she couldn't ignore it.

Eyes glimmer darkly in the night. Xavier looks down at Jean and once more the eyebrows lift. "'Say what you mean,'" he quotes once more, England's accents ancient on the neutral baritone. "'Why, foolish old man, didn't you stop Magneto when you had the chance?'"

"Exactly." Far from neutral, something gleams in Jean's eyes, wildness subsumed and sat upon, restraint made easier by spending it on Logan the night before. "Oh, I know the why for when he's been at the mansion -- don't bother explaining that. Amnesia, repairs to Cerebro, hell, even I've snuck him in for medical attention when he's shown up bleeding. But what about the rest of the time, Charles? It's not like we can't find where he lives."

Not -quite- exactly. But the worst swear Jean will use around Charles Xavier except under extreme duress is 'damn' or 'hell', so 'foolish old man' will suffice. The wildness in her eyes is renewed frustration as he voices what's been lying unsaid. Logan voiced what was lying unsaid and got shoved into a door as Jean stomped out on the heels of a fight. (Logan is shove_ok because he's Logan. It's a thing. I may have to commentary the Jean/Logan fight to explain why she's not actually an abusive girlfriend!)

The frustration is, admittedly, compounded by the fact that Magneto does keep turning up in all kinds of fashions where they can't do anything about it for this reason or that. It highlights the fact that he's free and running around to turn up when they can't capture him, because they're not getting him when they can.

The old Jean either wouldn't show or feel frustration at all, or would show it shortly before the Phoenix would say hi and all hell would break loose. Integrated, she's learning she can feel the emotion, even let it drive her to action, but without letting it dominate her entirely. Sometimes this works. Sometimes, Logan gets shoved telekinetically into a door. It's a learning process.

"No," Xavier says, and the voice is deceptively free and easy, absent the strain that tightens shadow in the deep-set eyes. Behind them, the telepath's mind closes tight, furling into its shell to leave nothing exposed. "The easy route is gone. It will be harder now that he has perfected his telepathic dampener. He has left his base. His new location will take some finding."

"Are you even going to try?" Harsh words, tone sharp, Jean doesn't look to meet aged eyes as she says them, instead hunkering down further into the long wool of her coat with a mind spiking frustration anew. "That's why I can't be headmistress, Charles. I can't be the voice of authority when I don't even have an answer to -that-. I've been trying, and all it's done is left me looking like a hypocrite mouthing comforting -lies-."

Jean's also learning that she can express the frustration she feels, and is learning that, once you start, it's easier to let it continue. She's a bit cruel here, 'are you even going to try', as a response to Xavier's admission, despite the fact that she can read the strain in his face, and feel his mind closing off even more, protectively. But is he? Xavier is very good at platitudes and promises. He's often less good at following through on them any time soon. Jean deliberately goads him here, with loaded words like hypocrite and lies. Get angry, Charles. React! Be something other than remote, weary, sad... reasonable.

"I presume you think I have been simply hiding my shame in Cerebro these past few days," Xavier says, and the words are remote as the baritone is, warmth bleeding away to leave chill behind. Above her, the Professor turns his gaze to the horizon, seen in memory where invisible in night. "It seems that Erik has learned new tricks. It will require something more subtle than simple searching to unearth him now."

"I don't -think- anything at this point, Charles." Chill meets chill, and as Xavier's eyes turn away, Jean's eyes turn towards him, her own diction crisping and firming. "Mushrooms generally don't."

Remote again. Of course, it's the sort of remote that speaks of a point scored, of a reaction hidden, but it's not enough. Jean presses more. Mushrooms aren't for thinking. They're kept in the dark and fed on horseshit, and so far, it seems that Charles is just breaking out the shovel again. 'New tricks', 'something more subtle'. Vague answers, which have been enough in the past, and might be enough just for herself now, but aren't enough if she has to speak to, and for, others.

There is silence once more. The presence of Charles Xavier withdraws though the body remains. It says nothing.

Jean waits. She waits all of ten whole seconds before rising to her feet. "I'll have a formal letter of resignation on your desk in the morning, Charles. I will, of course, keep teaching where needed and stay on in my capacity as chief medical officer, unless you'd prefer I resign free and clear."

"It is your choice, Jean," says Professor Xavier, quiet. "As it has always been. You must follow your conscience."

And now he turns away again, withdrawing and distancing himself. She reiterates her point, and is met with further withdrawl. You must follow your own conscience, my child. I'll sit up here and brood with quiet and mournful dignity on the roof of my ancestral home, and not favour you with an open emotional response, or a straight answer.

"Dammit!" Jean whirls at this, the quiet acceptance and the closed mind spurring one last flare of temper. "Are you ever going to actually treat this as anything more than a goddamned chess game? Or some sort of experiment you can watch over like a benevolent god? My -conscience- has questions. The students have questions. And all you're doing is keeping your own counsel as you always do."

And Jean stops with the goading and the pressing and her own calculated attempts to get him to open up and just goes straight for the throat. She's no longer just resigned that Charles Xavier is good man, but keeps his own counsel, she's actively angry with him. He's got them all chasing his dream, he's raised her to follow it from the age of eleven, and does he actually give a damn? What she's saying ought to have some impact, but all he does is turn away. Does all this that he's created mean anything to him, or is it just about winning some messed-up prize?

She's wondered it before, half-joking, but now, this instant, she's wondering for real. Are the whispers in her ear that Magneto and the Hellfire Club put there actually true?

The mute back is stiff and straight; the shoulders, stooped with age, set in their carapace of silk. "A /game/," says Xavier, and the air crackles with that word, catching it up in a tangle of echoes. The world shudders and shifts: colors reel, losing cohesion; shadows deepen, fracturing past black into spiderwebs of blue. "A game," he says again, more gently. "I would beggar myself for all of you. I would sacrifice anything and everything. What would you have me do, Jean?"

I love this pose. I seriously started trembling and hugging myself and said "Eee!" really loudly when it came through. It's perfect. That sense of control finally cracking, like lake ice thundering and roaring apart when the spring heat's crossed that final threshhold and the first weak spot gives way. And then things calm, the ripples begin to smooth out, the violent transition slowly settling into a new order.

It's also perfect in that it's the one response that could bring Jean back to his side, in that moment. For the past couple years, Jean's faith in the old man has been slowly eroding as the blind devotion of a girl transfers over to the understanding of a mature woman that here is another human being like her, with flaws and errors in judgement like every other human being, sometimes with those errors magnified because of the power that he wields. But instead of blind faith being replaced in equal measure by a more adult view of him, there hasn't been as much coming in as there's been going out. When she's needed him to be open with her, he's been reserved. When she's needed to be in the know, he's kept his counsel to himself. She hasn't pushed like this before, she's just been content to wait, until it was no longer enough to wait for him to open up.

But here, she's finally pushed, and he's finally given way. Just a little bit. but it's enough to let her see that, if needed, she can, and he will.

Jean turns, hands clutching at her plastic mug with knuckles an unseen white within the leather gloves she wears. Standing now, looking on Xavier as equal rather than mentor, she nods once at that crack in the dam walls, that ominous swell of power lurking behind. "I would have you," she clips out, copying that high and fine British polish of diction. "Do something. Say something. -Share- something. I can be your public face, Charles," she assures, with an odd flash of softness melting the precision, loosening her grip. There's a feeling of risk, of pusing too far, accompanying this frankness, clearly palpable on the surface of Jean's mind. "But... I can't be your private one, and we need you now. We need to know where this ship's headed."

I think I actually metaposed most of what I'd want to explain here, and hooray for a scene between telepaths where that's doable. The hesitancy at the end there, well, Jean's giving Xavier frank advice. She may have just assured herself that yes, she can push him, but there's still some caution and hesitancy in not wanting to overdo it. Charles Xavier is a proud man, and he's a proud man from an older era, well used to being in charge. Jean's name is not Moira MacTaggart, so... caution. But she's definitely calmed down wonderfully quickly.

Jean tends to do that. Flare up, cool down. I think Emma Frost is one of the few people who've managed to get a sustained and simmering grrrrr out of her, and even she sometimes gets a less-grarful Jean (Admittedly, it takes her being stuck in Storm's body, cut off from her powers, and acting like a half-drowned kitten to do it, but still!) Charles is about the antithesis of Emma -- even if she thinks he's dead wrong on something, she still loves him like a father, and that tends to let the fire burn down fairly quickly as soon as he's not immediately doing whatever it is that's got her ruffled. If he's actually bent a bit, well, then the anger vanishes just like that.

Xavier's mouth curls. It is a smile shared only with the last stubborn autumn insects, the mercurial, ephemeral life falling towards swift winter. There is nothing of joy about it. "I waited too long," he says, and his voice -- flat, meditative -- gains in sonority, deepening as he amends, "It's a hard thing, to give up the past. He's one of the only ones left. There are so few. The only one besides Moira who remembers. I hoped too long, and yet -- we need him, Jean. He still has a part to play."

Jean has turned fully from the door now, setting the tea undrunk and rapidly cooling on the narrow ledge beside it. Shoulders still hunched against the wind, stance still weary, she nevertheless seems content to stay. And to listen. "Does he?" she questions, querulous as a child facing a painful incongruity in their world. "I remember him the way he was too... not like you do," she admits, clarifying the obvious. "But what he's become? Would the man he was thank us for letting him run free to be the man he is now?"

And now they're talking like they used to, but about topics Jean never got to hear about directly before. Xavier's always been good about keeping his personal longings and fears to himself. For all she's still asking questions, she's not goading any more. Now, she's encouraging. This open discussion feels oddly precious, somehow.

"The man he was," Charles says aloud, more to himself than to his demanding audience. "He has always thought I was too compassionate to do what was necessary. He knows me better than any man alive, and still he continues to be so blind--" He trails off. The night, stretched too taut, too thin across an unreadable skeleton, shivers and exhales to return to normalcy. "Jean."

"It's time the world knew about the X-Men."

Whatever conclusion Jean was expecting, it certainly wasn't that. Taking a few steps forwards, off the flat platform and onto the slope of the roof, she whips her head around in surprise, and steps unwisely as a result. Xavier's answer from her comes first in the form of a muffled thump, and a sharp curse word as she lands unceremoniously on her tailbone.

And because the scene needed a little levity, and because rooftops are slippery in late autumn, and because wow, that's a hell of a bombshell to drop on someone, Jean slips and falls on her ass.

There is a smile for that -- a true smile -- sensed through the unfurling of one great and aging mind. A touch brushes against the younger one, assuring itself that no serious injury has been done, and then withdraws again to a courteous distance. Not remote this time. Simply nearby. Waiting.

Jean's mind is full of the bright startled flare of physical pain (There will be bruising. Oh, will there be bruising. And likely snickering speculation from students.) and her rich vocabulary's store of curse words that she's not saying aloud. Rubbing away with one hand, she tries, metaphorically, to grab a little dignity with the other. "That's... a bold move," she ventures.

And the characters needed a little levity too. I love the little mental check-up, and the fact that Xavier gets a smile out of Jean's tumble. I also love the sheer range of inflections that telepathy can give, that the same action as earlier can have a completely different meaning behind it, one that's easily apparent to the both of them, familiar as they are with the patterns of each other's thoughts after twenty years. Telepath RP = win.

Also, I stole the idea of Jean knowing A Lot Of Swear Words from the X2 novelization, where Claremont informs us that she swears like a trooper if she's stuck trying to repair the Blackbird. The image amused me, so I took it. It makes sense, too.

"Too many secrets," Charles says aloud, warming the darkness with the rich cadence of his voice. "Some battles need to be fought in the open. The Brotherhood has been too long in the public eye without competition for public opinion. Wishing for peace does not mean that we need be passive -- and Erik has given the world its villain. He invites us to give the world heroes. So be it."

Gingerly, Jean abandons her attempt at sitting on the slope for a time when there's more daylight and less sudden surprises. Meticulously careful about her feet this time, she returns to the platform and leans against the side of the closed in access back down. "It's not that I don't think this is a good idea..." she replies, measuring her words with equal care. "But..." One hand waves towards the news vans and their lights. "Timing?"

"So, the Brotherhood assassinated the president, but don't worry! We're a bunch of good guy mutants here to help! ...wait, what do you mean 'why didn't we stop it?'"

But I like Xavier's speech. It reminds me of Scott's speech in the first issue of Astonishing X-Men, when he's explaining why the team's going very public and wearing spandex again. Fortunately, Xavier has better fashion sense than Astonishing Scott.

Xavier turns his head at last, a faint blur of light limning the skull beneath the skin. An ancient hand carved him out of marble, shaping him of strong lines and hollows. "Something to consider," he says. The dark eyes glimmer. "Things to arrange -- the President wishes to have a word with 'X.'"

"I guess Langley finally found a moment to brief him, then," Jean assesses, nibbling on her lower lip in thought. "Will you need a ride to the airport? I kind've need an excuse to be in the city to go look up Rogue," she admits, eyeing her left foot intently. Her shoulders hunch still more.

'X' so gets the coolest codename. Jean's just glad she's got 'Phoenix' to replace 'Marvel Girl' now, which Jean will swear never existed. Nope.

Oh god, codenames. When the X-Men go public, Dr. Jean Grey is going to walk into a medical or scientific conference one day. A conference which will have -geeks- at it. Somewhere in my head, Jean is a little ball of embarassed cringe. "So, our next paper is presented by our eminent colleague the Phoenix, who's taken the time off of saving the world to honour us with her presence..."

Also, I really love the word 'limning'. I use it myself when I can.

"If you wish." The wheelchair finishes turning; the master of Xavier House faces his erstwhile pupil, hands resting at peace on the seat's arms. He regards her gravely, patience biding old and canny behind the face. "And what of the school? Will I still find a resignation letter on my desk in the morning?"

"I think so," Jean says, firmly, but with frustration's fire back down to banked embers, and a more general focus. Nodding to herself, she repeats it, this time with eyes on Xavier. "Yeah, I think so. I need to pull back -- between teaching, medicine, research, activism, training... I haven't been able to read Nate a bedtime story in a month."

Jean no longer feels the initial need to quit because Xavier won't be open with her, but the idea of resigning brought up other benefits to her. The idea of being able to actually spend some time with her son is a big one -- Jean's forever feeling guilty that she doesn't spend enough time with him as it is, no matter how happy he is to get the time with her that he does get, and no matter that he doesn't have any yardsticks to compare his life against. So even though she could do the job now, if he goes ahead and follows through with the progress that's happened tonight... well, she's already got the letter typed. Why not? Make Storm do it or something!

There's also the thought that, if she follows through, then he's got to step up and follow through himself. He's come to the conclusion that he needs to open up, but it's leaving a comfort zone, and one he's been in for a while. Jean trusts Charles to follow through, but she's not above making it easier for him to do so.

Xavier inclines his head. "It is your choice," he says as he did before, this time adding, "I regret the necessity, but you must do as you feel best. And the rest?"

"The rest?" Jean echoes, mentally recounting the conversation in the time the question buys her. A distinct mental wince is appended to more than one part, and she drops her gaze from Xavier to pick up her mug of tea, completely undrinkable now.

Jean doesn't regret the results that being harsh bought, but she does regret being harsh to someone she loves. The problem with flaring up and cooling down as a style of anger is that the flareups do invariably end up a little less targeted than one would like.

This time the 'It is your choice' isn't the problem it was earlier -- he doesn't just stop there and refuse to say what he feels about it, while turning his mind away so that she can't see how he feels about it either.

"The X-Men." If there is uncertainty in the man, there is none in his voice, qualms bored helically through the mind's wood. "What of the X-Men?"

"Talk to us, Charles," is Jean's advice, the pronoun placing very clear limits on just how far that resignation's going. "Scott would probably follow you blindly into hell, for what you've done for him. Ororo's always been stronger than I am. The rest of us... I hate to say it, but we need answers as much as any of the kids. Logan's not happy, but the idea of doing something should help. Hank's too intelligent not to have questions, but too polite to ask them. I don't know what Kurt's thinking. The junior members... mostly have midterms and rent."

Jean as Charles' window to the emotional wellbeing of the team. It's not that he can't take a look himself, but he's been drawn away by other concerns, either against his will or because of it. Throughout many a version of canon, Jean's been the touchy-feely center of the X-Men. She's a little more Dr. Crusher and a little less Deanna Troi in the movieverse (Because I, too, am an SF geek, and also in love with odd metaphors), but she's still quite well equipped to answer the question put to her.

There is silence then, of a different sort than before; a tired one, with a quality of time ticking on, inexorable and ruthless. "Every day, you choose to stay with the X-Men," Xavier says at last. "Every day. All of you. It is not the only thing I have tried to give you, but it is the most precious. The power to choose, without restriction or the burden of debt and affection."

"If it's a burden, it's one we choose to bear, Charles." Jean murmurs. Mental tallying done, a thought for offering apology flickers across her mind before being discarded. Instead, she peers critically at the old man in the wheelchair, shields dropping enough to let her mind brush briefly against his, better indicator than what she can see in the dim light streaming upwards from school windows. "When was the last time you got some proper sleep?"

Jean, taking a page from Moira and from her mother Elaine, tends to be happiest showing her concern by fussing over the wellbeing of those she cares about. Have you eaten? When did you sleep last? When did you last take a break? They all mean 'I love you'.

Charles gestures, sweeping aside the relevance of the question; there is more than one resemblance between two old, contrary men. "Answers," he says instead, and the wheelchair crunches forward across gravel. "The President and I will speak. And when I return -- perhaps we will have answers. A plan. And then we will talk."

"Then let me know what time your flight leaves," Jean bids, nodding towards the door. "In the meantime... I think I'd better figure out what to tell the students."

The wheelchair stops. "Jean."

Jean stops too. "Yes, Charles?"

"I could not do this without you."

A ripple across the psyche, a half-laugh escaped into the cold night air. A flash of memory: Jean as a young girl, irrepressably eager to please. Jean the adult woman steps quickly back over to the wheelchair, dropping one knee to give the dignified Charles Xavier a hug.

Professor Xavier endures it with dignity, resigned to such displays of affection. One liver-spotted hand pats her elbow, affection conferred in the brief caress. "Yes, well. I believe it is time to go indoors," he says, a hint of discomfiture creeping across the baritone. "The season is too far advanced for us to remain out of doors at this hour."

This exchange here actually made me very slightly misty-eyed. If I recall correctly it was mostly because it was 3 AM by the time it happened, mind you, but it's just such a Jean/Xavier moment. They may disagree, they may both be weary and tired, Jean may run to the edge of her ability to trust him, and back again, and yet they remain as they are: father and daughter.

The hug is a repeat of all the times over all the years that Jean from the age of eleven on has just run up and vulnerably and impulsively given him a hug or a kiss on the cheek, or dropped a Santa hat on his head, because she loves this man so very much, and she's a creature that thrives so much on being loved in return that she just has to react when given a glimpse of how much she's truly cared for. And Xavier puts up with it every time, despite the physical reserve that's both a product of his raising and the fact that telepaths, given the nature of their powers, prefer to keep some physical distance. And he gives what physical gesture he can in return. Because he loves her, too.

I the player am a total daddy's girl, I admit it.

"How -did- you manage to get the wheelchair up here?" Jean wonders, at last giving voice to a back of her mind question. But she waves a hand, dismissing an answer to -that- particular question as optional, and instead retrieves her tea before taking her place at Xavier's right hand for the return back downstairs. "Hear, hear. I think I'm definitely going to tempt fate and try and make hot chocolate. Do you want some?" she offers, one glucose-thirsty brain to another. "I have little marshmallows."

Whatever answer Xavier has to make is lost to the door's closure behind the two figures. Silence falls over the roof, peaceful night filled only with the murmur of passing insects.

And thus the scene ends, as they return to the rest of the mansion, and the rest of their lives. The mystery of how to get a wheelchair up a staircase and onto a roof shall never be revealed.

Have I mentioned that I <3 Xavier RP?