And the Stars Look Very Different Today (RP for summers_grey)
*OOC -- Zoiks, that 'week' took a month, but Jean and Rachel are FINALLY going to space.
Jean wishes that she felt better about dying.
It isn't exactly that her brain is telling her one thing, and her heart is telling her another. During that conversation among her and Rachel and the Phoenix, Jean had instantly, intuitively grasped what she needed to do, and her determination never wavered. As long as she and her daughter were both alive, as long as the Phoenix Force was shared between them, there would never be a proper balance. Something had happened, years ago, when Jean first invited the Phoenix in. It had allowed her to live, had saved all of her friends, but the price was too great. Since then, everyone had been paying and paying for Jean's choice. It wasn't guilt telling her this; it wasn't a death-wish or a martyr complex; it wasn't hot emotion or cold logic. It was just the truth, as every part of her understood it.
Jean is going to the mooon, so that she can finish her death -- the way she always should have -- and pass her power on to her daughter, who shouldn't exist in this reality. She hasn't once questioned whether this is the right choice. She just wishes she could stop thinking about all the things she is leaving behind. Everything is so unsettled, all the people she loves, and even the ones she hates, knowing that they will keep going and she will not.
She remembers a poem she read, years ago, in school:
Dying,
is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
Jean knows she doesn't, though. For someone who does so much dying, she thinks, carefully shielding the thought from Rachel, I sure do suck at it.
*
Looking over from the passenger seat of Tony Stark's favorite Quinjet, as they approach lunar orbit, she watches Rachel concentrating on the instruments, and whistles a bar from David Bowie. Ground control to Major Tom. . .. "So, all systems go?" she asks out loud.
Jean wishes that she felt better about dying.
It isn't exactly that her brain is telling her one thing, and her heart is telling her another. During that conversation among her and Rachel and the Phoenix, Jean had instantly, intuitively grasped what she needed to do, and her determination never wavered. As long as she and her daughter were both alive, as long as the Phoenix Force was shared between them, there would never be a proper balance. Something had happened, years ago, when Jean first invited the Phoenix in. It had allowed her to live, had saved all of her friends, but the price was too great. Since then, everyone had been paying and paying for Jean's choice. It wasn't guilt telling her this; it wasn't a death-wish or a martyr complex; it wasn't hot emotion or cold logic. It was just the truth, as every part of her understood it.
Jean is going to the mooon, so that she can finish her death -- the way she always should have -- and pass her power on to her daughter, who shouldn't exist in this reality. She hasn't once questioned whether this is the right choice. She just wishes she could stop thinking about all the things she is leaving behind. Everything is so unsettled, all the people she loves, and even the ones she hates, knowing that they will keep going and she will not.
She remembers a poem she read, years ago, in school:
Dying,
is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
Jean knows she doesn't, though. For someone who does so much dying, she thinks, carefully shielding the thought from Rachel, I sure do suck at it.
*
Looking over from the passenger seat of Tony Stark's favorite Quinjet, as they approach lunar orbit, she watches Rachel concentrating on the instruments, and whistles a bar from David Bowie. Ground control to Major Tom. . .. "So, all systems go?" she asks out loud.