E.R./X-Men: Allegiance [3/8]
Title: Allegiance
Fandoms: E.R./X-Men Movieverse
Spoilers: Up to the end of E.R. season 13, rewriting "I don't," rewriting X2, and ignoring everything that came afterwards on both fronts, except for some backstory borrowed from X3
Characters: Ray, Neela, Jean, Xavier, Abby, Cyclops, Kovac, Gates & pretty much all the X2 ensemble
Pairings: Ray/Neela, canon pairings
Wordcount: ~ 33,000 words
Rating: teen (PTSD, discussion of child abuse, mutant hate, things going boom)
Summary: Ray doesn't need the Professor to tell him that you can't outrun your past. But that doesn't mean he'll stop trying - even when his mutant powers destroy the life he has built in Chicago, and William Stryker targets his old team.
AN: This fic is a reimagination of X2 (and parts of E.R.), pretty much like the story might have worked out if Ray Barnett was a central comicverse character who thus had to have been a part of the movie. I hope that many people will have fun reading it no matter the fandom combination is so obscure! Thanks to gabilar94 for answering questions about Boston, and to millari, who did a fabulous job betaing. She, BTW, doesn't know either fandom, so if you're considering reading this despite only knowing one of them, I think it's absolutely worth a shot. Plus, there are fandom cheat sheets.
Fandom Cheat Sheet for those who don't know E.R. -- Fandom Cheat Sheet for those who don't know the X-Men Movieverse
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2
Chapter 3
"I haven't thanked you yet for doing this for me," Jean said, pulling herself into a sitting position when the exam table retracted from the CAT scan tube. She did so with a grace that stood in a startling contrast to her height, nothing like the intern who still hadn't fully grown into her long limbs when Ray had lived in Westchester. "You know how it is - it's always a bad idea if a doctor tries to treat herself. Scott has been worried, and I didn't want to bother Hank..."
Ray shrugged. It hadn't been hard to learn how to use the machine that did any scan a doctor could wish for in one go; powering it down, he waited for the film to develop. The brave new world of money. "Might as well make use of the doctor while I'm here. It's not like I have anything to do."
She smiled. "You could accompany Storm and me to Boston if you get bored."
So you're not planning on staying for long? she projected.
I'm not planning on being an X-Man.
The Professor thinks he failed you, you know. We all feel like that about you sometimes, always busy leaving.
"So how long have you been having those headaches?"
The telepathic exchange had taken no more than a second, barely long enough for him to pick himself up when the scanner started rattling to produce the readouts. It had always been easier to just react to Jean - maybe because she'd never insisted on that form of communication in the first place, maybe because she wasn't a guy. She didn't insist on following the thread of conversation now, either, the fallen look on her face replaced by an expression of frustration when she answered his question.
"Ever since Magneto launched his machine at the Statue of Liberty..." She paused, distress coloring her voice. "It feels like my powers keep growing. It's like... something is trying to break through, a little voice in my heading telling me that I could do bigger things and better things if I just let myself reach out. I've been trying to ignore it." She gave him a contrite look. "I didn't want to worry Scott. It was easier to act like nothing is wrong."
Don't I know that, he thought - to himself. "Have you talked to the Professor?"
"I don't feel like I should rely on him for this." She looked away, looking strangely forlorn for a woman her age. "I tried talking to him about it, but he hasn't been too helpful. I'm not sure... I almost think he doesn't want my powers to grow. Maybe he doesn't think I'm ready."
"Well, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that." Carefully, Ray extracted the scans from the slot in the wall, trying to put them in a folder without leaving finger prints. It just came to show that he wasn't a lab technician; he should have put on gloves. "If the makeup of your mutation is changing, you better deal with it heads on. Let's wait for the labs and see what we have once you're back from your trip. We don't really know enough about mutations to make any guesses. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with Lehnsherr's machine."
She chuckled. "Is that what you tell your migraine patients in a busy E.R.? 'To hell with histories if we could be running every test I can think of'? I've been an E.R. resident, too, you know."
"Nah, I'd give them ibuprofen and send them home."
But for yourself, you have refused to explore your empathy for years. Jean spoke on without insisting the telepathic projection was acknowledged. "I would have thought you would advise me to just let it go."
Ray hardened his face under her admonishing look. "Duh," he said, because it should be obvious. "It's major psychic powers, Jean. We don't know anything about them. If you experiment with them just for the fun of it, it's like kids playing with fire." And he'd seen his fair share of how those worked out. "So maybe you'll be able to make a truck hover or influence a cop to not pull you over like the Professor, so what? It'll never be legal to do so for a really good reason. You don't get anything out of it except a pain in the ass and people who stare at you like you're a freak." He gave her a look. "Anyway. If it's giving you migraines, it's a medical problem. You're the mutant doctor, you know that these things don't just go away."
Jean crooked her head at him in thought. "You must have effectively blinded yourself to other people, refusing to access that part of your power." She possibly hadn't even noticed, breaking the unspoken rule and switching to the psychic thread of the conversation. "Aren't you ever curious what people are feeling about you? If patients are honest with you? You could help them better as a doctor if you knew the exact makeup of their discomfort."
"Yeah, 'cause incoming trauma always have really differentiated feelings about how they're in pain. From what I can see, it's always the same. Patients get better, they walk out happy. They don't, their relatives get you subpoenaed." Ray hadn't had that particular pleasure yet, but Kovac's ordeal last year had equipped all of them with a whole new level of nightmares. He was itching for Jean to feed him the line about all the good he could be doing with his powers, because that one had always been the frosting on the crap cake in his eyes. It wasn't his personal problem that the world sucked. Being a mutant didn't make you a better person, for fuck's sake.
It had always been easier not to know Neela's exact emotional responses to him; his illusions about it had always served him better than the truth. It had made the hopes that she might answer his feelings last a little longer.
"Well, you have always been different in that way." It was all Jean had to say about it. Gliding off the exam table, she delicately pulled her skirt into place. "I have to go change and get the jet ready. The Professor had been having trouble pointing down the location of the mutant who attacked the President, but he thinks he has finally settled down now."
"Just promise to be cautious, alright?" She paused to look at him on her way to the door. Searching for the right expression helplessly, Ray settled for a grimace. He'd never be able to convince her that growing mutant powers weren't a reason to celebrate, anyway. "It's nothing to tamper with, Jean. I'm telling you as a doctor. Promise you'll at least wait for the results and ask someone to monitor if you want to try something out. What's the use of the school if you ignore it as a resource?"
Jean gave him a calculating look. "I promise," she said readily. "I just wonder why you never take your own advice in the end." Her face softened. "There is nothing wrong with you, Ray. I wish you would start letting yourself believe that. We'd all be glad to listen, if you wanted to talk about what's troubling you. About what happened before... before."
Even that hesitant way of saying it sent a shiver down Ray's spine.
"Your powers could rival even that of Storm if you allowed them to grow." The Professor had said that on numerous occasions, apparently deciding to support Ray's training but not Jean's on the premise of what would be the least helpful to each of them. Like there was actually anything positive about learning to create crazy force fields the White House wanted to register and the FBI wanted to stop. But the door had fallen shut behind Jean, the conversation over in any case.
Nothing he had to think about if he didn't want to.
Holding the first film showing Jean's brain up against the light, Ray found himself facing a crazily lit bulb looking nothing like any other fMRI he'd ever seen.
His grimace died away, the conversation forgotten. It couldn't be right. There were rock festivals less blazing than Jean's frontal lobe.
---
"We need to talk."
"Ray." Xavier wheeled his chair around to him. "It's good to see you. I want to introduce you to Logan, also known as Wolverine, a more recent acquaintance of the school. Logan, this is Dr. Ray Barnett, a former student who has taken over for Jean in the infirmary so that she can focus on her research."
There were kinds of people who just didn't get along, their ways of life too jarring and too different on principle. It was immediately obvious that the tall man standing in Xavier's office would be one of them, although Ray couldn't quite pinpoint why that was just yet - leather jacket too worn and whiff of cigars too strong. A little like Joshua Barnett, truth be told. Ray forced a smile, stepping forward and shaking the man's hand.
"Pleasure to meet you."
"What, no 'also known as' for you?" Something about the quirk of Logan's lips stopped just short of mockery, his posture screaming aggression as a default. "No fancy superhero names for the medics?"
"Ray used to go by Threshold," Xavier said. "He has the ability to create psionic force fields."
Ray felt his smile turn into what had to be the thousandth grimace since he'd arrived. At least Xavier had left out the empathy. "Let's stick with Ray."
Wolverine's prominent eyebrows raised when the man gave both of them a quick look, taking in more than Ray was comfortable with. He looked at ease with himself physically in a way that made Ray cautious. And maybe it was his recent telepathic contact with Jean, but just before he let go of the other man's hand he caught something else - something haunted. Goddammit. That's what the school did to him. He hurried to retract his hand.
The Professor spoke on as if oblivious. "Logan had been helping us out in the fight against Magneto. He is a formidable martial arts fighter, and a protegé of his - Rogue - attends the school as a student. I am hoping Logan is here to stay with the X-Men."
"Uhm, great." It took an effort to shake the impression he had caught, unspecific but discomforting and more forceful than he had expected. Something about pain - terrible pain - nothing he wanted to know more about. "I should probably start a file on you if we don't have one already. Makes handling emergencies easier."
"Logan has the ability to heal himself, Ray. He won't be your patient often. However, you will find that Jean has done excessive research on his unique condition." Xavier directed the conversation with a smoothness that had always irked Ray as a teen. "Logan, how about we let you get settled. Your room is still available. Dinner starts at seven."
There was a round of fleeting goodbyes. Ray looked after the newcomer, moving with startling quiet for somebody his size. He suddenly understood what it was that bugged him about Logan - for all he could pass if he wanted to, Logan gave off the vibe of somebody who'd never hide - oozing differentness and danger in his ease with his powers, extending an invite to just try and find something wrong and give him an excuse to leash out.
Having learned from an experience he'd rather never have called upon ever again, Ray waited until even a mutant with the right powers would be out of range before he addressed the Professor. His face hardened when he refocused on the issue at hand. "We need to talk about Jean."
"Certainly." Professor Xavier didn't miss a beat. "What about Jean?"
"I've done some tests to check out her headaches, and compared them to the ones Hank did for his research through the years." It was too much like confronting asshole parents to not just cut to the chase. "I'm not a brain surgeon, or a mutant specialist, but I know how to read an MRI. You did something to tamper with her powers before she hit puberty, didn't you? Does Hank... no, of course he knows." If Ray could figure it out in an hour, Hank could do it while solving a crossword. "Why didn't you tell Jean? She thinks Lehnsherr's machine messed with her head."
"It is very likely that it did." A confrontation with an angry physician didn't seem to faze Xavier. He'd wheeled his chair behind his desk, starting to put away teaching material. "Psychic and telekinetic gifts are an incredibly strong combination in a mutation, Ray, as you especially should be well aware. As you know, Jean's powers awoke when she was a very small child. She would never have possessed the discipline of mind to not be at risk of hurting herself and everybody in her wake."
It was a line of reasoning Ray had never heard the Professor use. He couldn't decide if he should be angry or puzzled. "She hasn't been a child for a long time."
"My sessions with her have resulted in developments that have made it impossible to reverse the procedure now." Xavier held his gaze steadily. "Telling her about them would endanger all progress we have made."
Ray narrowed his eyes, not ready to buy into it. It sounded too much like the kind of bullshit the extremist parents of patients sometimes tried to give you. Informed consent had yet to hurt anybody. "We're taking care of it. Jesus will heal her." "What would happen if you told her?"
"Once able to access her full powers, I am afraid Jean would experience a severe break from reality."
"In what way? And why?" Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Ray resolved not to give an inch. "You could fight that with the right medication." Supposing Xavier's assessment even was right. Because how he'd come up with it, he had yet to disclose.
"I'm afraid that won't be possible."
"Have you ever even discussed this with Hank?"
"Of course. But Hank is not a telepath. He is trusting my judgment."
"And you are not a doctor!" Ray spread his arms in the universal gesture of what the fuck? "You've got a degree in psychology, but that doesn't make you a psychiatrist! Jean is a perfectly healthy adult, Professor. Her brain's already handling the double amount of neural activity of a normal one in the first place, it's what its meant to do. She's smart. There's absolutely nothing to indicate she couldn't at least give informed consent."
Something in there seemed to have hit home, because Xavier raised his voice to match Ray's. The Professor's full attention was on him. Yet again he'd read his mind, or known him insufferably well. "I would think you would be the first to applaud the approach, Ray. I remember you begging me to do the very same thing to you in this very room."
(Seventeen-year-old desperation, the walls of the office seeming to close in, the voice of a ghost blaring at him from a memory that wouldn't die down. "Just make me the fuck human again!")
A moment of tense silence, when Ray opened his mouth, and no answer came out at all. It was the last thing he'd expected the Professor to bring up, wrong on so many different levels. A perfectly professional conversation had turned personal - so fucking personal - just like that because Xavier thought he was petty.
His voice sounded too high even to his own ears. "I'm not Jean," he said. He'd never have thought he'd say it, particularly to Professor Xavier, but this was about ethics. I don't put my personal feelings above my patients' needs. Or my friends. I'm not you. What the hell did Xavier think would happen if he talked to Jean? What the hell had he done? "And anyway, it's too late. Her powers are active all over her brain, she just hasn't felt them out yet. Whatever it is that you did to her, it's just a matter of time until she'll want something desperately enough to get a handle of it." Anger welled up in him again. "You've already fucked it up. Now you better come up with a way of managing it, because from the way you're saying it, it doesn't sound like Hank or I will be enough to pick up the pieces."
For the first time since his arrival, Ray felt glad to be here. It looked like Jean was direly in need of a friend, somebody to have her back. Somebody other than Scott, whose abilities on this front probably didn't extend beyond bringing her aspirin, and who'd always been a daddy's boy more than Ray could ever be. It would be a conflict for Scott, but never for Ray.
Payback was a bitch, he thought unkindly. It looked like Xavier's long-lasting wish to have him back at the school as a doctor was about to bite him in the ass.
---
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
The small bronze sign next to the broad gates startled Neela into a halt. Her first instinct was to turn around and tell the cab driver it was the wrong address, but the man had already sped off, a shrinking smear of smoke down the long road in the middle of nowhere. He'd flat out refused to drive through the gate.
She took a deep breath, leaving the cell in her purse firmly untouched. She wouldn't call Abby and ask if she was crazy. Abby was finally off on her honeymoon. They'd still had that conversation twice since Neela had left.
Blinking against the blazing sun going down behind the mansion, she truly wasn't sure if she'd found the right place, though. No matter it had taken all tricks she knew to bribe the County’s HR clerk into giving her the information, the woman had never mentioned anything about a school. Nobody did research on genetics in a school.
Hesitant, Neela walked up the driveway, pebbles crunching delicately under every step. She felt like an intruder, showing up unannounced on the doorsteps of what wasn't a medical facility. Nobody was to be seen anywhere on the bright lawns left and right, though she could hear children screaming and laughing somewhere close. It was late afternoon; maybe classes were still taking place.
"I'll look so stupid if this is a lockbox," she muttered, ringing the bell.
Nothing happened for a moment, the bell reverberating deep in the guts of the building.
What the hell am I even doing here?
What was Ray doing here? He couldn't possibly have afforded a school like this.
The door swung open suddenly. A man wearing red sun glasses came into view, dressed in a comfy sweater and jeans and looking utterly at home. Looking her up and down behind the glasses, she could only presume, before his lips quirked into a smile.
Those glasses - he was obviously a mutant.
"Hello Dr. Rasgotra," he said. "The Professor told me to expect you. We're all more than excited that you're here."
on to the next part
Fandoms: E.R./X-Men Movieverse
Spoilers: Up to the end of E.R. season 13, rewriting "I don't," rewriting X2, and ignoring everything that came afterwards on both fronts, except for some backstory borrowed from X3
Characters: Ray, Neela, Jean, Xavier, Abby, Cyclops, Kovac, Gates & pretty much all the X2 ensemble
Pairings: Ray/Neela, canon pairings
Wordcount: ~ 33,000 words
Rating: teen (PTSD, discussion of child abuse, mutant hate, things going boom)
Summary: Ray doesn't need the Professor to tell him that you can't outrun your past. But that doesn't mean he'll stop trying - even when his mutant powers destroy the life he has built in Chicago, and William Stryker targets his old team.
AN: This fic is a reimagination of X2 (and parts of E.R.), pretty much like the story might have worked out if Ray Barnett was a central comicverse character who thus had to have been a part of the movie. I hope that many people will have fun reading it no matter the fandom combination is so obscure! Thanks to gabilar94 for answering questions about Boston, and to millari, who did a fabulous job betaing. She, BTW, doesn't know either fandom, so if you're considering reading this despite only knowing one of them, I think it's absolutely worth a shot. Plus, there are fandom cheat sheets.
Fandom Cheat Sheet for those who don't know E.R. -- Fandom Cheat Sheet for those who don't know the X-Men Movieverse
Prologue -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2
Chapter 3
"I haven't thanked you yet for doing this for me," Jean said, pulling herself into a sitting position when the exam table retracted from the CAT scan tube. She did so with a grace that stood in a startling contrast to her height, nothing like the intern who still hadn't fully grown into her long limbs when Ray had lived in Westchester. "You know how it is - it's always a bad idea if a doctor tries to treat herself. Scott has been worried, and I didn't want to bother Hank..."
Ray shrugged. It hadn't been hard to learn how to use the machine that did any scan a doctor could wish for in one go; powering it down, he waited for the film to develop. The brave new world of money. "Might as well make use of the doctor while I'm here. It's not like I have anything to do."
She smiled. "You could accompany Storm and me to Boston if you get bored."
So you're not planning on staying for long? she projected.
I'm not planning on being an X-Man.
The Professor thinks he failed you, you know. We all feel like that about you sometimes, always busy leaving.
"So how long have you been having those headaches?"
The telepathic exchange had taken no more than a second, barely long enough for him to pick himself up when the scanner started rattling to produce the readouts. It had always been easier to just react to Jean - maybe because she'd never insisted on that form of communication in the first place, maybe because she wasn't a guy. She didn't insist on following the thread of conversation now, either, the fallen look on her face replaced by an expression of frustration when she answered his question.
"Ever since Magneto launched his machine at the Statue of Liberty..." She paused, distress coloring her voice. "It feels like my powers keep growing. It's like... something is trying to break through, a little voice in my heading telling me that I could do bigger things and better things if I just let myself reach out. I've been trying to ignore it." She gave him a contrite look. "I didn't want to worry Scott. It was easier to act like nothing is wrong."
Don't I know that, he thought - to himself. "Have you talked to the Professor?"
"I don't feel like I should rely on him for this." She looked away, looking strangely forlorn for a woman her age. "I tried talking to him about it, but he hasn't been too helpful. I'm not sure... I almost think he doesn't want my powers to grow. Maybe he doesn't think I'm ready."
"Well, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that." Carefully, Ray extracted the scans from the slot in the wall, trying to put them in a folder without leaving finger prints. It just came to show that he wasn't a lab technician; he should have put on gloves. "If the makeup of your mutation is changing, you better deal with it heads on. Let's wait for the labs and see what we have once you're back from your trip. We don't really know enough about mutations to make any guesses. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with Lehnsherr's machine."
She chuckled. "Is that what you tell your migraine patients in a busy E.R.? 'To hell with histories if we could be running every test I can think of'? I've been an E.R. resident, too, you know."
"Nah, I'd give them ibuprofen and send them home."
But for yourself, you have refused to explore your empathy for years. Jean spoke on without insisting the telepathic projection was acknowledged. "I would have thought you would advise me to just let it go."
Ray hardened his face under her admonishing look. "Duh," he said, because it should be obvious. "It's major psychic powers, Jean. We don't know anything about them. If you experiment with them just for the fun of it, it's like kids playing with fire." And he'd seen his fair share of how those worked out. "So maybe you'll be able to make a truck hover or influence a cop to not pull you over like the Professor, so what? It'll never be legal to do so for a really good reason. You don't get anything out of it except a pain in the ass and people who stare at you like you're a freak." He gave her a look. "Anyway. If it's giving you migraines, it's a medical problem. You're the mutant doctor, you know that these things don't just go away."
Jean crooked her head at him in thought. "You must have effectively blinded yourself to other people, refusing to access that part of your power." She possibly hadn't even noticed, breaking the unspoken rule and switching to the psychic thread of the conversation. "Aren't you ever curious what people are feeling about you? If patients are honest with you? You could help them better as a doctor if you knew the exact makeup of their discomfort."
"Yeah, 'cause incoming trauma always have really differentiated feelings about how they're in pain. From what I can see, it's always the same. Patients get better, they walk out happy. They don't, their relatives get you subpoenaed." Ray hadn't had that particular pleasure yet, but Kovac's ordeal last year had equipped all of them with a whole new level of nightmares. He was itching for Jean to feed him the line about all the good he could be doing with his powers, because that one had always been the frosting on the crap cake in his eyes. It wasn't his personal problem that the world sucked. Being a mutant didn't make you a better person, for fuck's sake.
It had always been easier not to know Neela's exact emotional responses to him; his illusions about it had always served him better than the truth. It had made the hopes that she might answer his feelings last a little longer.
"Well, you have always been different in that way." It was all Jean had to say about it. Gliding off the exam table, she delicately pulled her skirt into place. "I have to go change and get the jet ready. The Professor had been having trouble pointing down the location of the mutant who attacked the President, but he thinks he has finally settled down now."
"Just promise to be cautious, alright?" She paused to look at him on her way to the door. Searching for the right expression helplessly, Ray settled for a grimace. He'd never be able to convince her that growing mutant powers weren't a reason to celebrate, anyway. "It's nothing to tamper with, Jean. I'm telling you as a doctor. Promise you'll at least wait for the results and ask someone to monitor if you want to try something out. What's the use of the school if you ignore it as a resource?"
Jean gave him a calculating look. "I promise," she said readily. "I just wonder why you never take your own advice in the end." Her face softened. "There is nothing wrong with you, Ray. I wish you would start letting yourself believe that. We'd all be glad to listen, if you wanted to talk about what's troubling you. About what happened before... before."
Even that hesitant way of saying it sent a shiver down Ray's spine.
"Your powers could rival even that of Storm if you allowed them to grow." The Professor had said that on numerous occasions, apparently deciding to support Ray's training but not Jean's on the premise of what would be the least helpful to each of them. Like there was actually anything positive about learning to create crazy force fields the White House wanted to register and the FBI wanted to stop. But the door had fallen shut behind Jean, the conversation over in any case.
Nothing he had to think about if he didn't want to.
Holding the first film showing Jean's brain up against the light, Ray found himself facing a crazily lit bulb looking nothing like any other fMRI he'd ever seen.
His grimace died away, the conversation forgotten. It couldn't be right. There were rock festivals less blazing than Jean's frontal lobe.
---
"We need to talk."
"Ray." Xavier wheeled his chair around to him. "It's good to see you. I want to introduce you to Logan, also known as Wolverine, a more recent acquaintance of the school. Logan, this is Dr. Ray Barnett, a former student who has taken over for Jean in the infirmary so that she can focus on her research."
There were kinds of people who just didn't get along, their ways of life too jarring and too different on principle. It was immediately obvious that the tall man standing in Xavier's office would be one of them, although Ray couldn't quite pinpoint why that was just yet - leather jacket too worn and whiff of cigars too strong. A little like Joshua Barnett, truth be told. Ray forced a smile, stepping forward and shaking the man's hand.
"Pleasure to meet you."
"What, no 'also known as' for you?" Something about the quirk of Logan's lips stopped just short of mockery, his posture screaming aggression as a default. "No fancy superhero names for the medics?"
"Ray used to go by Threshold," Xavier said. "He has the ability to create psionic force fields."
Ray felt his smile turn into what had to be the thousandth grimace since he'd arrived. At least Xavier had left out the empathy. "Let's stick with Ray."
Wolverine's prominent eyebrows raised when the man gave both of them a quick look, taking in more than Ray was comfortable with. He looked at ease with himself physically in a way that made Ray cautious. And maybe it was his recent telepathic contact with Jean, but just before he let go of the other man's hand he caught something else - something haunted. Goddammit. That's what the school did to him. He hurried to retract his hand.
The Professor spoke on as if oblivious. "Logan had been helping us out in the fight against Magneto. He is a formidable martial arts fighter, and a protegé of his - Rogue - attends the school as a student. I am hoping Logan is here to stay with the X-Men."
"Uhm, great." It took an effort to shake the impression he had caught, unspecific but discomforting and more forceful than he had expected. Something about pain - terrible pain - nothing he wanted to know more about. "I should probably start a file on you if we don't have one already. Makes handling emergencies easier."
"Logan has the ability to heal himself, Ray. He won't be your patient often. However, you will find that Jean has done excessive research on his unique condition." Xavier directed the conversation with a smoothness that had always irked Ray as a teen. "Logan, how about we let you get settled. Your room is still available. Dinner starts at seven."
There was a round of fleeting goodbyes. Ray looked after the newcomer, moving with startling quiet for somebody his size. He suddenly understood what it was that bugged him about Logan - for all he could pass if he wanted to, Logan gave off the vibe of somebody who'd never hide - oozing differentness and danger in his ease with his powers, extending an invite to just try and find something wrong and give him an excuse to leash out.
Having learned from an experience he'd rather never have called upon ever again, Ray waited until even a mutant with the right powers would be out of range before he addressed the Professor. His face hardened when he refocused on the issue at hand. "We need to talk about Jean."
"Certainly." Professor Xavier didn't miss a beat. "What about Jean?"
"I've done some tests to check out her headaches, and compared them to the ones Hank did for his research through the years." It was too much like confronting asshole parents to not just cut to the chase. "I'm not a brain surgeon, or a mutant specialist, but I know how to read an MRI. You did something to tamper with her powers before she hit puberty, didn't you? Does Hank... no, of course he knows." If Ray could figure it out in an hour, Hank could do it while solving a crossword. "Why didn't you tell Jean? She thinks Lehnsherr's machine messed with her head."
"It is very likely that it did." A confrontation with an angry physician didn't seem to faze Xavier. He'd wheeled his chair behind his desk, starting to put away teaching material. "Psychic and telekinetic gifts are an incredibly strong combination in a mutation, Ray, as you especially should be well aware. As you know, Jean's powers awoke when she was a very small child. She would never have possessed the discipline of mind to not be at risk of hurting herself and everybody in her wake."
It was a line of reasoning Ray had never heard the Professor use. He couldn't decide if he should be angry or puzzled. "She hasn't been a child for a long time."
"My sessions with her have resulted in developments that have made it impossible to reverse the procedure now." Xavier held his gaze steadily. "Telling her about them would endanger all progress we have made."
Ray narrowed his eyes, not ready to buy into it. It sounded too much like the kind of bullshit the extremist parents of patients sometimes tried to give you. Informed consent had yet to hurt anybody. "We're taking care of it. Jesus will heal her." "What would happen if you told her?"
"Once able to access her full powers, I am afraid Jean would experience a severe break from reality."
"In what way? And why?" Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Ray resolved not to give an inch. "You could fight that with the right medication." Supposing Xavier's assessment even was right. Because how he'd come up with it, he had yet to disclose.
"I'm afraid that won't be possible."
"Have you ever even discussed this with Hank?"
"Of course. But Hank is not a telepath. He is trusting my judgment."
"And you are not a doctor!" Ray spread his arms in the universal gesture of what the fuck? "You've got a degree in psychology, but that doesn't make you a psychiatrist! Jean is a perfectly healthy adult, Professor. Her brain's already handling the double amount of neural activity of a normal one in the first place, it's what its meant to do. She's smart. There's absolutely nothing to indicate she couldn't at least give informed consent."
Something in there seemed to have hit home, because Xavier raised his voice to match Ray's. The Professor's full attention was on him. Yet again he'd read his mind, or known him insufferably well. "I would think you would be the first to applaud the approach, Ray. I remember you begging me to do the very same thing to you in this very room."
(Seventeen-year-old desperation, the walls of the office seeming to close in, the voice of a ghost blaring at him from a memory that wouldn't die down. "Just make me the fuck human again!")
A moment of tense silence, when Ray opened his mouth, and no answer came out at all. It was the last thing he'd expected the Professor to bring up, wrong on so many different levels. A perfectly professional conversation had turned personal - so fucking personal - just like that because Xavier thought he was petty.
His voice sounded too high even to his own ears. "I'm not Jean," he said. He'd never have thought he'd say it, particularly to Professor Xavier, but this was about ethics. I don't put my personal feelings above my patients' needs. Or my friends. I'm not you. What the hell did Xavier think would happen if he talked to Jean? What the hell had he done? "And anyway, it's too late. Her powers are active all over her brain, she just hasn't felt them out yet. Whatever it is that you did to her, it's just a matter of time until she'll want something desperately enough to get a handle of it." Anger welled up in him again. "You've already fucked it up. Now you better come up with a way of managing it, because from the way you're saying it, it doesn't sound like Hank or I will be enough to pick up the pieces."
For the first time since his arrival, Ray felt glad to be here. It looked like Jean was direly in need of a friend, somebody to have her back. Somebody other than Scott, whose abilities on this front probably didn't extend beyond bringing her aspirin, and who'd always been a daddy's boy more than Ray could ever be. It would be a conflict for Scott, but never for Ray.
Payback was a bitch, he thought unkindly. It looked like Xavier's long-lasting wish to have him back at the school as a doctor was about to bite him in the ass.
---
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
The small bronze sign next to the broad gates startled Neela into a halt. Her first instinct was to turn around and tell the cab driver it was the wrong address, but the man had already sped off, a shrinking smear of smoke down the long road in the middle of nowhere. He'd flat out refused to drive through the gate.
She took a deep breath, leaving the cell in her purse firmly untouched. She wouldn't call Abby and ask if she was crazy. Abby was finally off on her honeymoon. They'd still had that conversation twice since Neela had left.
Blinking against the blazing sun going down behind the mansion, she truly wasn't sure if she'd found the right place, though. No matter it had taken all tricks she knew to bribe the County’s HR clerk into giving her the information, the woman had never mentioned anything about a school. Nobody did research on genetics in a school.
Hesitant, Neela walked up the driveway, pebbles crunching delicately under every step. She felt like an intruder, showing up unannounced on the doorsteps of what wasn't a medical facility. Nobody was to be seen anywhere on the bright lawns left and right, though she could hear children screaming and laughing somewhere close. It was late afternoon; maybe classes were still taking place.
"I'll look so stupid if this is a lockbox," she muttered, ringing the bell.
Nothing happened for a moment, the bell reverberating deep in the guts of the building.
What the hell am I even doing here?
What was Ray doing here? He couldn't possibly have afforded a school like this.
The door swung open suddenly. A man wearing red sun glasses came into view, dressed in a comfy sweater and jeans and looking utterly at home. Looking her up and down behind the glasses, she could only presume, before his lips quirked into a smile.
Those glasses - he was obviously a mutant.
"Hello Dr. Rasgotra," he said. "The Professor told me to expect you. We're all more than excited that you're here."
on to the next part