With Purpose Knit
Author: lilacsigil
Title: With Purpose Knit
Recipient: ridesandruns
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel Comics. No profit is being made.
Warnings/Rating: PG
Summary: After the accident that led Jean to become Phoenix, her powers have increased drastically and unpredictably, but Scott is always there to help her.
Recipient's request: Scott and Jean being domestic, mega-bonus points if you can include knitting
Notes: Set in comicsverse, after Uncanny X-Men #128, but the only background knowledge required is in the summary. Many thanks to hotelmontana and st_aurafina for beta reading at the speed of light.
"Jean? What's going on?" Scott stuck his head around the doorframe, but retreated quickly as a skein of wool flew in his direction.
"Don't distract me! Okay, come in now. Watch out for the needles."
Scott moved cautiously, alarmed at the thought of Jean with numerous sharp implements after what she'd accidentally done to the lab on Muir Island. Doctor MacTaggart had lectured him - at great length - about the shattered benches and broken bits of medical instruments lodged in the walls. In Jean's bedroom, though, Scott could see that the entire room was a mass of clicking, flicking knitting needles, with slightly lumpy panels of wool hanging off them.
Scott touched one of the panels, a soft and fluffy rectangle of pink, and looked over at Jean, who was sitting cross-legged on her bed, eyes closed.
"Jean? Is there something you're not telling me?" Scott asked, in his most serious voice.
She laughed and stilled the clacking needles with a flick of her hand, though all the pieces of knitting still hung in mid-air. "I'm not pregnant, if that's what you mean! I'm just trying to retrain myself to do little things with the TK. Since the shuttle, it's all gone crazy. I can throw trucks around with no problems, but I tried to dial Bobby's number this morning, from across the room, and I wrecked the phone."
"You've always been terrific at the complicated stuff - remember when the Professor would make you braid strings?"
"Or fly ball bearings through a maze?" Jean wiggled her fingers and a spare ball of wool flicked around the room like a pinball, until Scott snatched it out of the air and tossed it back into the basket from whence it came. "I know, and that's why I've got to get this, this power flare under control. I don't want to be carrying someone and pull their arm off. To be honest, I think I could do that and not even notice." Jean's voice was high and light.
Scott frowned. "I think the person missing an arm might notice."
"Oh, you're a big help. So I was knitting a hat for Sarah's kids - it's their third birthday next week, and I wanted to give them something practical, as well as toys. Twins are expensive! Then I thought that knitting might be a good training exercise. And voila!" Jean waved her hand, and the knitted panels performed a jerky dance on their needles.
"Jean, you're trying to knit eight things at once."
"Seven. The red one over there is crochet." She pointed to a bunched up little square with only one needle attached.
"Knit, crochet … either way, you're making eight things at once. Maybe you should be working up to that, rather than starting there." Scott could remember when Jean's telepathy had eventually developed - she had been far more confident then, but had the same tendency to immediately expect perfection of herself. Sometimes Scott thought that the two of them had the wrong powers - she was so direct with her variable abilities, while he liked to work carefully with his annoyingly unchanging power - but perhaps the other way around would have been a total disaster.
"The dropped stitches weren't really encouraging me, and the tension was all uneven, but look! The last ten lines or so are perfect." She waved a piece over to him.
Scott caught hold of the pink rectangle that fluttered close to his head. Indeed, the wobbliness was all at the bottom of the piece. He was no connoisseur of knitting, but he could certainly appreciate neatness, especially if it made Jean feel that she was less likely to hurt someone with her suddenly erratic powers.
"See? I can do it, Scott. I'm in control of this. Dr MacTaggart's tests couldn't read my powers properly, but you can see I'm in control now."
Scott sat down on the edge of the bed, careful to avoid sitting on anything sharp. "We all know you're working on it."
"Working on it isn't the same thing!" Jean, sitting perfectly still, used her powers to roll a handful of spare knitting needles across her bedside table then stabbed them firmly into the basket of wool. "You think I'm dangerous, don't you?"
Jean's brittle tone was starting to worry Scott, now. She may have broken the instruments at Muir Island, but she was hardly the first off-the-scale mutant that they'd met. Surely it just meant that Doctor MacTaggart's scale still didn't encompass the full range of mutant powers, and would have to be altered. He looked directly into Jean's face and spoke to reassure both of them. "If I thought you were dangerous, I wouldn't have you on the team. You're not going to get anyone hurt - you know your limitations."
"Oh, Scott. That's just what worries me. I don't think I have any limitations." Jean slid along the bed, closer to him.
"Of course you have limitations." Scott smiled. "Otherwise, Sarah's kids would be rolling in hats. They'd be hat millionaires."
Jean laughed, but it was shaky. "Come here."
"Put the knitting down. I don't want a needle ending up anywhere sensitive."
The wool and needles plummeted to the floor with a sharp clatter, and Jean reached up and grabbed Scott by his shirt. "Done. Now. Come here."
Her kiss was dry and hot, and Scott was about to ask her if she had a fever, but she started unbuckling his belt and, after that, the desire to talk fled entirely.
Scott had been awake for almost an hour, setting up the Danger Room, before the rest of the team started to assemble in the huge underground space. The more diligent of them warmed up, following Nightcrawler's lead, and Wolverine picked his teeth with a wooden barbecue skewer, making a rasping noise that Scott knew was specifically designed to irritate him.
"Hey!" Wolverine yelled up to the control booth. "Jeannie coming down this morning?"
Scott flicked on the microphone. "She didn't sleep well, so I didn't wake her up. Maybe you should worry about your own attendance record before you start asking about the rest of the team?"
"I'm here! I was even early this morning - how does that rock your socks, bub?"
Scott turned off the microphone before he said something back that would get the whole training session off to a bad start - Storm was already glaring at both of them - and finished his double-check of the Danger Room program he'd set up. He wasn't sure if Jean had slept much at all last night. Every time he woke up, still not used to sharing a bed, she'd been awake, and yet she'd managed to sleep straight through the alarm he'd set. He'd kissed her, and left her sleeping, sure that any benefit she gained from training would be less that what she gained from an extra few hours of rest.
Today's Danger Room exercise was a simple test in speed and agility - Colossus in particular was still not moving well, overly cautious about his great weight when anyone else was around - conducted by running long steel cables across the room at various heights and lightly electrifying them. The cables hung loosely, the ends attached to opposite walls, but when Scott started the program they would shake and flail randomly like mad skipping ropes, greatly increasing the need for speed and teamwork. Colossus would be the most vulnerable to the electricity, and would have to move swiftly in close quarters to his teammates - a first step in gaining the confidence to move freely around people more fragile than himself.
"It's a simple cross-the-room exercise," Scott announced over the loudspeaker. "Make it to the other end of the room and back with your team intact. One person fails, everyone fails."
"And then the Boy Scout sends you to bed without supper," Wolverine muttered out of sheer habit, but he, like everyone else, was focusing on the task at hand with unveiled interest. Scott hit the big green button, and the room erupted in movement as the long cables flicked back and forth.
"They're electrified!" Storm and Wolverine called out simultaneously.
"I can't teleport safely," Nightcrawler added, "But I think I see a clear path along the ceiling."
"Good - you head up there and look for any more surprises," Storm said, "I don't dare risk winds and rains in these close conditions."
Nightcrawler scampered up the wall, neatly avoiding the flailing cables, and clung to the roof. "I think it's just the cables, so far!"
"Hey, Storm, can you use just a bit of a breeze to push the cables back? Give us a bit more room?" Wolverine was sizing up the available space.
"Yes, but you're not going to get a great deal more space."
"Okay, I've got an idea. Fastball Special."
Colossus frowned. "I do not see how that will help. Won't you just be thrown straight into the cables?"
"Watch this," Wolverine stepped out of their safe corner and extended his claws. Scott watched closely from the control room, but even he was surprised when Wolverine reached out and tried to cut through a cable. The electricity jolted Wolverine off his feet and threw him back into Colossus. "Muscle reflex. You get hit with electricity, everything contracts, and I can't hold position to chop the cable."
"If I throw you, won't you hit many more cables?"
"Yeah, that's the point. I'll have the claws out, and I'll be moving so fast it won't matter what my muscles are doing. I'll chop a whole lot of cables, then it'll be easy to get through."
Scott frowned. This certainly wasn't what he had planned, but it was nonetheless an interesting idea, and, if Wolverine really could lock his claws in place, it might even work.
The door to the control booth opened and Jean, in her green Phoenix costume, came in to sit by Scott. She yawned, the corners of her lips cracked and dry. "Why didn't you wake me up?"
"I only have to say 'yawn' and you'll be incapacitated. Not a good condition for training."
Jean yawned widely, and brushed back her messy hair with her fingers. "Good point. Are they doing another Fastball Special down there?"
"Oh yes," Scott replied, and turned his attention back to the Danger Room.
Storm had summoned a light wind, not enough to carry a person, but certainly enough to help guide Wolverine's flight, and Colossus, with Nightcrawler's help, had worked out a helpful trajectory.
"Even if you only cut one third of the cables, it will be much easier," Colossus said to Wolverine as he picked him up with one hand. Then he pulled his arm back and hurled Wolverine through the air, straight into the writhing cables. Wolverine flicked out both sets of claws, extending his reach by a good ten inches each side, and the first cable fell, severed.
The second and third cables fell in turn as Wolverine flew across the room, the current automatically cutting out on each. Instead of the usual deadly flight of a Fastball Special, however, Wolverine's muscle spasms as he hit each cable were throwing him drastically and uncontrollably off course. Scott could see him gritting his teeth as each shock hit, and would have quite admired the man's tenacity, were he not more attentive to Jean's soft gasps of sympathy, which Scott was pretty sure Wolverine would be able to hear.
On the fifth cable, Wolverine's back arched and one of his legs kicked a lower cable, radically changing his direction without warning - straight for the control booth. Neither Scott nor Jean blinked, having seen people thrown at this particular window many times before, but Wolverine was not just heavy - he hit the window with his impossibly sharp claws leading the way. The claws punched straight through the heavily reinforced viewing window and when Wolverine's full weight hit the weakened panel, he crashed straight through into the control booth in a shower of debris.
Scott dropped to the ground on instinct, and Jean followed, shielding them both from the flying debris with her telekinesis, and managing to grab Wolverine at the same time, before he flew right through the room and out the far doors. Scott reached a hand up and slapped the emergency stop button, cutting power to the room below.
"All secure," Jean said, standing up and pulling Scott after her, then lowering Wolverine safely to the floor. The room was a mess, with three claw marks cutting deeply through the control panel that had been directly in front of Scott. Wires were sparking, and Scott could smell burnt plastic. Debris was spread everywhere, except in the small radius of Jean's shield, and the three video screens that replayed taped Danger Room sessions were shattered.
Wolverine shrugged. "Guess that didn't work too well."
Scott spared a moment to wish the man splattered across the wall, then stuck his head out the jagged hole in the window. "Everyone okay down there?"
"We're fine," Storm called back, "Are you?"
"Yes, but the control room's a mess! It's going to be weeks before we can get this up and running again."
"No, I think I can fix it." Jean was floating slightly off the ground, standing in the middle of the messy room, biting on her dry lower lip. "I can put it all back together."
Wolverine took a step forward, saying "Jeannie," and it was that proprietary action that made Scott cease his objections.
"No, it's all right. Jean's been practising. Let her do it." In all honesty, he was not at all sure of what she could or would do, but he wasn't going to let that uncertainty show. Not in front of Wolverine, and especially not in front of Jean.
"It's all the same," Jean said, her voice faint, "All the molecules. They all knit together, each thread holding the next." The sparking in the panel stopped, and Scott could see severed wires sliding blindly towards each other, their ends jostling into position. "Hold it all together. Find the thread." The fragments of the window leapt up from the floor, sparkling in the air like a cloud of mirrors, then rushing past Scott's head to fill the hole they had left behind. The heavy window rippled like a liquid, and was whole again. Pieces of plastic twitched their way across the floor and crept back into place on the panel, and Scott felt a little ill, like he was watching the last five minutes run in reverse.
Within ninety seconds, everything was as it had been, the panel and window pristine, the floor and walls free of debris. Wolverine looked queasier than Scott felt, which was some comfort, but Jean was positively alight.
"See, Scott? It's not just power. It's life. I don't have to destroy when I can create. Everything is just matter, and I can knit it together again." Her smile was so relieved that Scott had to smile in return, relaxing a little.
"It's wonderful, Jean. Like the Professor always said, it's a gift."
Jean leapt forward and kissed him, her arms around her neck and her wild hair tickling his chin, and, at that moment, Scott felt that connection between himself and everything else pulse alive and strong. Jean loved him, Jean was happy and strong, and that was a gift that could never be denied.
Title: With Purpose Knit
Recipient: ridesandruns
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel Comics. No profit is being made.
Warnings/Rating: PG
Summary: After the accident that led Jean to become Phoenix, her powers have increased drastically and unpredictably, but Scott is always there to help her.
Recipient's request: Scott and Jean being domestic, mega-bonus points if you can include knitting
Notes: Set in comicsverse, after Uncanny X-Men #128, but the only background knowledge required is in the summary. Many thanks to hotelmontana and st_aurafina for beta reading at the speed of light.
"Jean? What's going on?" Scott stuck his head around the doorframe, but retreated quickly as a skein of wool flew in his direction.
"Don't distract me! Okay, come in now. Watch out for the needles."
Scott moved cautiously, alarmed at the thought of Jean with numerous sharp implements after what she'd accidentally done to the lab on Muir Island. Doctor MacTaggart had lectured him - at great length - about the shattered benches and broken bits of medical instruments lodged in the walls. In Jean's bedroom, though, Scott could see that the entire room was a mass of clicking, flicking knitting needles, with slightly lumpy panels of wool hanging off them.
Scott touched one of the panels, a soft and fluffy rectangle of pink, and looked over at Jean, who was sitting cross-legged on her bed, eyes closed.
"Jean? Is there something you're not telling me?" Scott asked, in his most serious voice.
She laughed and stilled the clacking needles with a flick of her hand, though all the pieces of knitting still hung in mid-air. "I'm not pregnant, if that's what you mean! I'm just trying to retrain myself to do little things with the TK. Since the shuttle, it's all gone crazy. I can throw trucks around with no problems, but I tried to dial Bobby's number this morning, from across the room, and I wrecked the phone."
"You've always been terrific at the complicated stuff - remember when the Professor would make you braid strings?"
"Or fly ball bearings through a maze?" Jean wiggled her fingers and a spare ball of wool flicked around the room like a pinball, until Scott snatched it out of the air and tossed it back into the basket from whence it came. "I know, and that's why I've got to get this, this power flare under control. I don't want to be carrying someone and pull their arm off. To be honest, I think I could do that and not even notice." Jean's voice was high and light.
Scott frowned. "I think the person missing an arm might notice."
"Oh, you're a big help. So I was knitting a hat for Sarah's kids - it's their third birthday next week, and I wanted to give them something practical, as well as toys. Twins are expensive! Then I thought that knitting might be a good training exercise. And voila!" Jean waved her hand, and the knitted panels performed a jerky dance on their needles.
"Jean, you're trying to knit eight things at once."
"Seven. The red one over there is crochet." She pointed to a bunched up little square with only one needle attached.
"Knit, crochet … either way, you're making eight things at once. Maybe you should be working up to that, rather than starting there." Scott could remember when Jean's telepathy had eventually developed - she had been far more confident then, but had the same tendency to immediately expect perfection of herself. Sometimes Scott thought that the two of them had the wrong powers - she was so direct with her variable abilities, while he liked to work carefully with his annoyingly unchanging power - but perhaps the other way around would have been a total disaster.
"The dropped stitches weren't really encouraging me, and the tension was all uneven, but look! The last ten lines or so are perfect." She waved a piece over to him.
Scott caught hold of the pink rectangle that fluttered close to his head. Indeed, the wobbliness was all at the bottom of the piece. He was no connoisseur of knitting, but he could certainly appreciate neatness, especially if it made Jean feel that she was less likely to hurt someone with her suddenly erratic powers.
"See? I can do it, Scott. I'm in control of this. Dr MacTaggart's tests couldn't read my powers properly, but you can see I'm in control now."
Scott sat down on the edge of the bed, careful to avoid sitting on anything sharp. "We all know you're working on it."
"Working on it isn't the same thing!" Jean, sitting perfectly still, used her powers to roll a handful of spare knitting needles across her bedside table then stabbed them firmly into the basket of wool. "You think I'm dangerous, don't you?"
Jean's brittle tone was starting to worry Scott, now. She may have broken the instruments at Muir Island, but she was hardly the first off-the-scale mutant that they'd met. Surely it just meant that Doctor MacTaggart's scale still didn't encompass the full range of mutant powers, and would have to be altered. He looked directly into Jean's face and spoke to reassure both of them. "If I thought you were dangerous, I wouldn't have you on the team. You're not going to get anyone hurt - you know your limitations."
"Oh, Scott. That's just what worries me. I don't think I have any limitations." Jean slid along the bed, closer to him.
"Of course you have limitations." Scott smiled. "Otherwise, Sarah's kids would be rolling in hats. They'd be hat millionaires."
Jean laughed, but it was shaky. "Come here."
"Put the knitting down. I don't want a needle ending up anywhere sensitive."
The wool and needles plummeted to the floor with a sharp clatter, and Jean reached up and grabbed Scott by his shirt. "Done. Now. Come here."
Her kiss was dry and hot, and Scott was about to ask her if she had a fever, but she started unbuckling his belt and, after that, the desire to talk fled entirely.
Scott had been awake for almost an hour, setting up the Danger Room, before the rest of the team started to assemble in the huge underground space. The more diligent of them warmed up, following Nightcrawler's lead, and Wolverine picked his teeth with a wooden barbecue skewer, making a rasping noise that Scott knew was specifically designed to irritate him.
"Hey!" Wolverine yelled up to the control booth. "Jeannie coming down this morning?"
Scott flicked on the microphone. "She didn't sleep well, so I didn't wake her up. Maybe you should worry about your own attendance record before you start asking about the rest of the team?"
"I'm here! I was even early this morning - how does that rock your socks, bub?"
Scott turned off the microphone before he said something back that would get the whole training session off to a bad start - Storm was already glaring at both of them - and finished his double-check of the Danger Room program he'd set up. He wasn't sure if Jean had slept much at all last night. Every time he woke up, still not used to sharing a bed, she'd been awake, and yet she'd managed to sleep straight through the alarm he'd set. He'd kissed her, and left her sleeping, sure that any benefit she gained from training would be less that what she gained from an extra few hours of rest.
Today's Danger Room exercise was a simple test in speed and agility - Colossus in particular was still not moving well, overly cautious about his great weight when anyone else was around - conducted by running long steel cables across the room at various heights and lightly electrifying them. The cables hung loosely, the ends attached to opposite walls, but when Scott started the program they would shake and flail randomly like mad skipping ropes, greatly increasing the need for speed and teamwork. Colossus would be the most vulnerable to the electricity, and would have to move swiftly in close quarters to his teammates - a first step in gaining the confidence to move freely around people more fragile than himself.
"It's a simple cross-the-room exercise," Scott announced over the loudspeaker. "Make it to the other end of the room and back with your team intact. One person fails, everyone fails."
"And then the Boy Scout sends you to bed without supper," Wolverine muttered out of sheer habit, but he, like everyone else, was focusing on the task at hand with unveiled interest. Scott hit the big green button, and the room erupted in movement as the long cables flicked back and forth.
"They're electrified!" Storm and Wolverine called out simultaneously.
"I can't teleport safely," Nightcrawler added, "But I think I see a clear path along the ceiling."
"Good - you head up there and look for any more surprises," Storm said, "I don't dare risk winds and rains in these close conditions."
Nightcrawler scampered up the wall, neatly avoiding the flailing cables, and clung to the roof. "I think it's just the cables, so far!"
"Hey, Storm, can you use just a bit of a breeze to push the cables back? Give us a bit more room?" Wolverine was sizing up the available space.
"Yes, but you're not going to get a great deal more space."
"Okay, I've got an idea. Fastball Special."
Colossus frowned. "I do not see how that will help. Won't you just be thrown straight into the cables?"
"Watch this," Wolverine stepped out of their safe corner and extended his claws. Scott watched closely from the control room, but even he was surprised when Wolverine reached out and tried to cut through a cable. The electricity jolted Wolverine off his feet and threw him back into Colossus. "Muscle reflex. You get hit with electricity, everything contracts, and I can't hold position to chop the cable."
"If I throw you, won't you hit many more cables?"
"Yeah, that's the point. I'll have the claws out, and I'll be moving so fast it won't matter what my muscles are doing. I'll chop a whole lot of cables, then it'll be easy to get through."
Scott frowned. This certainly wasn't what he had planned, but it was nonetheless an interesting idea, and, if Wolverine really could lock his claws in place, it might even work.
The door to the control booth opened and Jean, in her green Phoenix costume, came in to sit by Scott. She yawned, the corners of her lips cracked and dry. "Why didn't you wake me up?"
"I only have to say 'yawn' and you'll be incapacitated. Not a good condition for training."
Jean yawned widely, and brushed back her messy hair with her fingers. "Good point. Are they doing another Fastball Special down there?"
"Oh yes," Scott replied, and turned his attention back to the Danger Room.
Storm had summoned a light wind, not enough to carry a person, but certainly enough to help guide Wolverine's flight, and Colossus, with Nightcrawler's help, had worked out a helpful trajectory.
"Even if you only cut one third of the cables, it will be much easier," Colossus said to Wolverine as he picked him up with one hand. Then he pulled his arm back and hurled Wolverine through the air, straight into the writhing cables. Wolverine flicked out both sets of claws, extending his reach by a good ten inches each side, and the first cable fell, severed.
The second and third cables fell in turn as Wolverine flew across the room, the current automatically cutting out on each. Instead of the usual deadly flight of a Fastball Special, however, Wolverine's muscle spasms as he hit each cable were throwing him drastically and uncontrollably off course. Scott could see him gritting his teeth as each shock hit, and would have quite admired the man's tenacity, were he not more attentive to Jean's soft gasps of sympathy, which Scott was pretty sure Wolverine would be able to hear.
On the fifth cable, Wolverine's back arched and one of his legs kicked a lower cable, radically changing his direction without warning - straight for the control booth. Neither Scott nor Jean blinked, having seen people thrown at this particular window many times before, but Wolverine was not just heavy - he hit the window with his impossibly sharp claws leading the way. The claws punched straight through the heavily reinforced viewing window and when Wolverine's full weight hit the weakened panel, he crashed straight through into the control booth in a shower of debris.
Scott dropped to the ground on instinct, and Jean followed, shielding them both from the flying debris with her telekinesis, and managing to grab Wolverine at the same time, before he flew right through the room and out the far doors. Scott reached a hand up and slapped the emergency stop button, cutting power to the room below.
"All secure," Jean said, standing up and pulling Scott after her, then lowering Wolverine safely to the floor. The room was a mess, with three claw marks cutting deeply through the control panel that had been directly in front of Scott. Wires were sparking, and Scott could smell burnt plastic. Debris was spread everywhere, except in the small radius of Jean's shield, and the three video screens that replayed taped Danger Room sessions were shattered.
Wolverine shrugged. "Guess that didn't work too well."
Scott spared a moment to wish the man splattered across the wall, then stuck his head out the jagged hole in the window. "Everyone okay down there?"
"We're fine," Storm called back, "Are you?"
"Yes, but the control room's a mess! It's going to be weeks before we can get this up and running again."
"No, I think I can fix it." Jean was floating slightly off the ground, standing in the middle of the messy room, biting on her dry lower lip. "I can put it all back together."
Wolverine took a step forward, saying "Jeannie," and it was that proprietary action that made Scott cease his objections.
"No, it's all right. Jean's been practising. Let her do it." In all honesty, he was not at all sure of what she could or would do, but he wasn't going to let that uncertainty show. Not in front of Wolverine, and especially not in front of Jean.
"It's all the same," Jean said, her voice faint, "All the molecules. They all knit together, each thread holding the next." The sparking in the panel stopped, and Scott could see severed wires sliding blindly towards each other, their ends jostling into position. "Hold it all together. Find the thread." The fragments of the window leapt up from the floor, sparkling in the air like a cloud of mirrors, then rushing past Scott's head to fill the hole they had left behind. The heavy window rippled like a liquid, and was whole again. Pieces of plastic twitched their way across the floor and crept back into place on the panel, and Scott felt a little ill, like he was watching the last five minutes run in reverse.
Within ninety seconds, everything was as it had been, the panel and window pristine, the floor and walls free of debris. Wolverine looked queasier than Scott felt, which was some comfort, but Jean was positively alight.
"See, Scott? It's not just power. It's life. I don't have to destroy when I can create. Everything is just matter, and I can knit it together again." Her smile was so relieved that Scott had to smile in return, relaxing a little.
"It's wonderful, Jean. Like the Professor always said, it's a gift."
Jean leapt forward and kissed him, her arms around her neck and her wild hair tickling his chin, and, at that moment, Scott felt that connection between himself and everything else pulse alive and strong. Jean loved him, Jean was happy and strong, and that was a gift that could never be denied.