Thoughts, dreams, scatterings of nightmares, all blew against her and clung, like old, wet newspapers, imprinting her with the perceptions of others.  Mostly, she wrapped herself in women's reveries.  Men's minds alarmed her, too aggressive, too sexual, too seductive in their alienness.  But she tried on the minds of women like a little girl let loose in her grandmother's attic, decked out in the antique lace of others' memories.

She didn't want to come down, to end playtime, and resisted being called.  Jean.  Come back, Jean.  Instead, she fled into mental corners and hid.  Sometimes, when he found her, she resisted, kicking out and rattling everything in the room with her telekinetic rage, like a cosseted poltergeist.  But other times . . . other times she responded like a succubus.  I'll be anyone you want -- Amelia, Moira . . . Erik.  She whispered into his mind.  I'll dress up in your memories of them.  Only love me, love me, love me best of all.  She was an actress with an audience of one, a telepathic chameleon, adopting the verbal patterns, mannerisms, and body language of his ghosts.  Who would know? she asked, tempting him.  It would be our secret.

I would know.  Those temptations were easy to resist.  However perfect her Mynah mimicry, she wasn't Amelia or Moira or Erik, and her imitation was mildly revolting, like a reflection in oily bilge water.  He left her when she resorted to those tricks, and she, desperate, reached deeper, dug to the bottom of his mental attic chests and unfolded what he'd concealed even from himself.  Then she came to him not as others, but as Jean-Grey-who-had-been.  The innocent, barely pubescent girl with the burning fire in her mind who'd called to him twenty years ago, the trapped Rapunzel in her doorless tower, seeking her rescuer.  Teach me.  Tutor me.  Save me.  She laid herself bare to him like a whore on her back with her legs spread.

And sweating, he fled.  She laughed, delighted with her power, flexing the fire wings of it, burning him.

It saved her from facing herself. 

Only EJ and Lee were there to see Scott off when he finally climbed into the Ryder truck to leave California on a Wednesday morning, three weeks after Valentine's Day, and three and a half years after his initial arrival.  Everyone else had class, or work.  They'd said their goodbyes to Scott the night before, and now it was down to EJ and Lee to help him load his belongings into the truck and tie them down.  It took them until mid-morning.

EJ kept silent about his reservations.  Lee didn't.  Neither made a dint in Scott's resolution.  "Summers," Lee told him finally, "you make me want to pink-belly you to death."

Laughing, he hugged her, lifting her off the ground to spin her around.  "You keep an eye on EJ for me, okay?"

"Yeah, like he listens to me."

Scott let her go and turned to face EJ -- and here at the end, found nothing to say.  In all his years, he'd never had a friend like this man and there really wasn't anything that could express either his gratitude for the friendship, or the depth of his affection.  They embraced, fierce like a contest, mute with emotion.  "I'm gonna miss you, man," EJ said finally.  Scott simply nodded, glad his eyes were open and the beams blew away his tears.  He needed to get back to New York, but that didn't make this leave-taking easier.

Pushing away, he said, "I've gotta go, or I'm not going to get anywhere today."  And he climbed into the truck to start the engine, rolling down the window so he could wave as he put the truck in gear and pulled away.  EJ chased along beside it a little way until the truck hit the street, then EJ slapped the side as Scott drove away.  Scott watched in the rearview mirror for as long he could see the figures of EJ and Lee, still waving.

Choosing a route had been a gamble in early March when snows tended to come heavy and temperatures could go from mild to blizzard conditions overnight.  He could make better time taking I-80 due east, but if he hit bad snow in the Rockies between Salt Lake City and Cheyenne, he could be stranded for days.  Listening to the weather the night before, the casters predicted a stretch of mild days, so he'd decided to try the northern route.  If he swung south, he'd add as much as a day to a trip that would already take at least four and a half.  The first night, he got as far as Winnemucca in central Nevada and checked into a Super 8 Motel.  There, he sat by the window of his second story guestroom and stared out at the desert night sky, black above black.  He held his cell phone in his hand, but didn't use it.  It wasn't even on.  No one in New York knew he was on the way.  He'd learned years ago that it was easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Sometimes the cold, rational part of his mind asserted itself to ask why he'd just thrown away his graduate career.  He had no illusions that withdrawing from Berkeley and abandoning an assistantship mid-semester would net him recommendation letters later for a school transfer.  Jean was not sister, wife, nor even girlfriend, and her situation wasn't terminal.  Most damning of all -- there was nothing he could do for her.  Yet he'd abandoned all his commitments without a second thought.

Weren't there times, though, when common sense had to be chucked in favor of integrity?  Had he just committed the most irresponsible act of his life, or the most steadfast?  He supposed it depended on one's perspective, but even if there were nothing he could do, he couldn't bear living forever with the knowledge that he hadn't gone to be with her.  Maybe that was love, or maybe it was just obsession, but it drove him.

It drove him for four more days and almost three thousand miles.  One dream lay discarded behind, but his whole life lay ahead.  He pursued it with cyclopean vision.
 

She was a shadow of herself, gray like wolves slipping in and out of trees, fragmented into a pack.  This wolf was the lead hunter, that too shy.  This wolf challenged for dominance, that fought to keep it.  She was the alpha female and the cub, whichever she needed to be, and she hid among the trunks of others' personalities, refusing to be driven from her wood.

He called; she fled.  He pursued; she turned to attack, vicious in her desperation, driving him off so she could fade away again into the forest of others' individuality.  It was safe here, living others' dreams instead of her own.  Had she ever had a dream of her own, or had they always been someone else's?  Would she even know herself in the mirror?
 
 
 
 

Scott's return to Westchester was quiet.  He'd made a final push of fifteen and a half hours in one day and arrived after eleven in the evening, stupid with exhaustion.  The mansion was mostly dark and he left the Ryder truck parked on the driveway before grabbing his suitcase and his guitar and heading upstairs to the room that had used to be his, and would be again if the professor let him stay.  One of his realizations on the long drive back was that there might be no welcome for him at the end of it.  He wasn't Xavier's real son; there was no reason that the professor had to take him in again.

And what would he do then, he wondered?  At the root of it, and despite his clashes with his father, he was not a boy much given to rebellion; it upset him to let others down and as tired as he was, he found it hard to get to sleep.  The limbo of the road was over, and in the morning, he would face the consequences of his choices.

Morning came sooner than he might have wished, although he didn't wake until nearly noon.  He showered and dressed in a wrinkled t-shirt and dirty jeans, and made his way downstairs.  He was sure that someone had noticed the moving truck by now.

Ororo was the first person he ran into.  She stopped dead in the main hall as she spotted him coming down the stairs.  Her hands were on her hips, her head tipped curiously.  "Frank said the truck was yours."  Scott didn't reply, merely made his way down to the landing.  "The professor is in the sub-basement," she said.  "He could not wait all morning for you to wake."

"How's Jean?"

"The same, so far as I know."  

"Is Xavier going to let me stay?"

Ororo's expression was startled.  "Why wouldn't he?"

"He told me not to come back.  I did anyway."  

"I think that he is angry with you, yes, but Scott, why would he not permit you to stay?"

Scott shrugged and looked off, his expression drawn with misery.  "Everything I have is due to him, but I defied him."  

Walking over, Ororo slipped her arm through his and drew him towards the kitchen.  "Why did you come back?"

Helplessly, he shrugged.  "I had to."  

"You will need a better reason than that.  If you can defend yourself as a man, Scott, then the professor will treat you as one.  If you act only as a boy, then that is how he will treat you."

It was perfectly reasonable, but he still wasn't sure how to explain himself.  Maybe his reasons were those of a boy, personal and selfish.  "I felt like I should be here," he said finally.  "I wasn't going to stay in Berkeley, not after this past year . . . ."  He sighed.  "I decided I should come back and help."  He wasn't sure what he had to offer, but he'd do what he could.  "Where are the students?"

"Probably with Henry in the arboretum; he has taken over the teaching for the past week."  

They'd reached the kitchen and Scott helped himself to a mug of coffee.  It had been stewing for hours and smelled ripe and wretched, but he needed the caffeine.  "You and Frank want to help me unload that truck so I can get it back to a rental place?  It's not very full.  The only reason I rented a truck instead of a trailer is that I didn't have a car."

So Ororo, Frank and Scott unloaded thirty-four boxes (half of them books), a papazan chair, his bass equipment, a bike, a filing cabinet, a computer desk, and his stereo.  He'd left the rest of his furniture behind.  Coming back to Westchester, he didn't need it.  He then went with Ororo to return the truck and she drove him back to the mansion.  It was nearly suppertime by then, classes were over for the day, and the professor had emerged from the sub-basement.  He came motoring out of his office to meet Scott in the main hall and everyone else fled for cover, or was hastily shepherded away.

If Xavier appreciated the unexpected privacy, he found disturbing the obvious perception that what was to come between himself and Scott qualified as a clash of ground troops.  He found even more dismaying the apprehension in Scott's own mind regarding his welcome at the mansion.  Charles would have thought Scott realized by now that he rated higher in Xavier's affections.  Wounded by that doubt, Xavier indicated the open office door behind him and spoke more sharply than he might have otherwise.  "I gather you are unpacked and caught up on sleep?"

Entering the professor's sanctum, Scott shifted nervously and replied, "Yes, sir.  Or rather, the boxes are unloaded off the truck.  I put most of them in the room I had and some in the room next door until I can get them unpacked.  If that's okay, I mean."

Letting out his breath in frustration, Xavier almost slammed his office door.  "'Okay?'  Hardly, Scott.  None of this is 'okay.'"

And panic flashed all through the boy, as strong as iodine and bruised in color.  "Please, don't make me leave until I know she'll be all right."  It was desperate like a child's pleading, and Xavier turned his chair away in anger, motoring towards the long window in his office to stare out at the shriveled, brown grass of early March.  Was this truly the edge of spring?

"I have no intension of making you leave.  But if you think that I can approve of this rash course of action, you are sadly mistaken.  I gather -- as you have returned to New York with all your belongings -- that you have withdrawn from the university and left your roommate in the lurch?"

And it was this alchemy of accusation that altered Scott's inner mood from fear to anger.  "No, I didn't leave him in the lurch.  I used my part of our band earnings to cover rent and utilities until the lease ran out, and the rest to rent the truck.  I knew you wouldn't approve of me coming back, so I didn't use your money, sir."

Xavier turned the chair so fast, its motor protested with a whine.  "How many times do I have to tell you it is not about the money?" he thundered both aloud and telepathically.  Scott put a hand to his head and winced, but his jaw was set in a way Xavier recognized as pure Summers stubbornness.  And -- in all honesty -- he had to admit that a part of him was pleased Scott had taken fiscal responsibility for his own choices, even while he was irritated at the waste of Scott's savings for what was, by Xavier's own reckoning, a pittance.

"Scott, sit down," he said finally.  The boy obeyed, his expression a cross between obstinate and uncertain.  "It seems that somewhere in the past five years, a few crucial matters have escaped your attention.  Listen closely because I do not intend to repeat this."  Charles sat up straighter in his chair and -- because personal revelations made him even more uncomfortable than they made Scott -- focused on a point above Scott's shoulder.  "Short of a profound personality change that would lead you to commit atrocities of which I know you're otherwise incapable," his voice was dry, "nothing will ever cause me to reject you.  As long as I am living, you will have a place in my house.  As I have said before, I do not have a son, I will never have a son" -- his gaze shifted for a moment to catch Scott's eyes behind the glasses -- "you are my son."

He felt that strike the boy like a sucker punch, hard and low, knocking the breath out of him.  Painful gratitude bloomed in Scott's chest.  "Sir -- "

Xavier held up a hand.  "I am not finished."  Scott subsided.  "I am angry with you because you made a rash and unconsidered decision, and did it based on sentiment."  Scott started to speak again, but Xavier simply held up the same hand.  "I am well aware that you were planning to transfer from Berkeley at the end of the semester, nor would I debate your reasons for doing so.  But that was not why you left; it simply made your departure easier to excuse to yourself."  The sudden flush in Scott's cheeks told Charles that he'd struck a nerve.  "What purpose, I ask, do you think your presence here will serve?"

There was a long silence, then Scott replied quietly, "Ororo said you've been spending most of each day with Jean, and Hank's taken over the teaching.  I do have an education degree.  That's what I originally went to Berkeley for.  I could substitute in a pinch, help Hank out with math."

It was, Xavier thought, rather good for a cobbled-together excuse.  It was even a reasonable suggestion.  "I'll see to it that Henry is notified of your offer.  I'm quite sure he'll be delighted to turn over some responsibility to you for the duration.  But that is not anything you knew when you left California.  So I ask again -- what purpose do you think your presence can serve?"

Scott was well aware that a person's motives were transparent to Xavier, and not only because he was a telepath.  Yet Scott remembered Ororo's advice not to seem like a boy, so he mulled over what answer to give that might convince the professor he hadn't acted like a flighty child.  The silence stretched.  Xavier broke it to prod, "Surely, Mr. Summers, you had something in mind?"

Scott sighed, and unable to produce anything especially clever, he settled on something honest.  "I'd like to see her.  I want her know someone's out here waiting for her."

"I told you once already, that's impossible; she can't filter out the thoughts of an unshielded mind."  

"I know, sir.  But I'm not just any mind."  He swallowed, then put forth the idea he'd been mulling since about Des Moines.  "She's got to learn to shield, right?  And she'll have to start with someone who can't do it for her, like you, but who she knows and trusts.  She told me once that I was like a Redwood to her.  Steady."  He shrugged.  It was artless.  "So I volunteer."

Charles Xavier was stunned.  Not because Scott apparently had no idea of the depth of Jean's mental dissolution; that, he would have expected.  He was stunned by Scott's offer.  "Do you have any idea what you're suggesting?" he asked.  "She cannot filter out thoughts, Scott.  She would know everything about you."

But the boy only nodded once, decisively.  He'd worked that out for himself.  "I know."

"You'd still volunteer?"

"Yes, sir.  I have nothing to hide from her.  Well, nothing beyond stupid stuff."

Far more deeply private, Xavier shook his head in mute wonder.  "When it comes time for that . . . perhaps.  But we are some way yet from such a stage."  He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and steepled his hands, but decided Scott deserved to know the full extent of the situation.  "Jean is still fragmented within her own mind, son.  She cannot work on shielding until there is a 'Jean' again to shield."

Surprised, Scott sat back a little.  "But I thought you'd isolated her in the Danger Room?  She can't hear other minds down there, can she?"

"No, she can't.  But she heard quite enough of them before we could get her there.  Imagine being opened to hundreds of thoughts, memories, sensations -- like the floodgates of heaven -- until you no longer know which are yours and which are borrowed?  Working with her is rather like a papyrologist who must sift through thousands of mixed up scroll fragments to find only those belonging to one scroll called 'Jean.' That is, I think, a metaphor the archaeologist in you can appreciate."

Scott's jaw had dropped.  "But that could take -- "

"Months, quite likely."  He deliberately refrained from 'years' -- he wasn't (yet) so pessimistic as that.  But he had no illusions that this would be quick or easy.

Scott had looked away.  He was only now beginning to grasp the enormity of what Jean had suffered.  What he understood less was why Xavier hadn't suffered similarly, all those years ago.  "How did you manage?  When you were a boy, I mean?  How did you get through it?"

"My telepathy is different."  Xavier picked up a globe from his desk, a copy of the earth done in lapis and malachite with gold wire to mark the boundaries of countries.  "Yes, Jean and I are both telepaths, but how that expresses itself isn't the same.  For whatever reason, I have stronger natural shields."  In fact, Xavier had a very good idea why that was the case, but he didn't intend to share it with Scott.  "When I first realized that I could 'read' the minds of others, even influence them, the scope of my reach was actually rather limited.  Now, of course, I can read multiple minds at once, but I had to learn to overcome my own shields.  Jean has the opposite problem.  She cannot block out other minds, nor sort them.  The end result is that she has been drowned by other's thoughts."  He shook his head.  "Unfortunately, she doesn't seem terribly interested in finding her way back to us, either."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that, up to this point, she's largely resisted my attempts to reach her.  I could reassemble her mind without her assistance -- I did so once before -- but it takes far longer, and she has many more memories now than when she was a child."

Scott chewed on that.  "Why's she resisting?" he asked softly, more to himself than the professor, but Xavier answered anyway.

"I think that she -- like any of us -- needs a reason to continue.  Unfortunately, since it's stress that caused this collapse, it's also stress that makes escape that much more appealing."

"So basically you're saying she needs a reason to come back?"

"Correct.  If she wished to return, the process would be far easier -- and far faster."

Mental gears turned and clicked, and Scott tilted his head to the side.  "I can make her come back, sir.  You say she can't keep out somebody's else's thoughts, so put me in there with her.  I know her.  She's my best friend.  I can make her come back."

It was, Xavier thought, quite astonishingly arrogant -- and utterly innocent in that.

It was also quite possibly correct.  

Early necessity had taught Charles to work alone.  He rarely accepted, or even considered, assistance from others, and he knew Jean far better than Scott did, in any case -- but she knew his dark sides, too, and could exploit them.  He could not allow passion to act as his lure.  He had to remain detached, pedagogical.

Scott had no dark sides that she could exploit in the same way, and he would willingly bare all, use his passion to bring her back.  He had that luxury.  In short, Scott Summers was exactly the bait that Xavier needed.  He was Percival, the Fisher King who guarded the grail stone that would allow the phoenix to rise from her ashes.

It just might work.  Or it might drive her further into her borrowed memories and drive Scott around the bend in the process.  But that was the nature of 'calculated risk,' and frankly, Xavier found the latter far less likely than the former.  Scott's psyche had never been weak.  Nonetheless, fairness required him to say, "You do realize there is some risk to yourself?  She could push all those memories onto you.  Even if she did not, you would still be . . . wading . . . through them."  Scott merely shrugged with one shoulder.  "It isn't something to make light of," Xavier warned.

"I'm not making light of it.  But I'm not afraid."  He gave the professor a small smile.  "You know I'm the best chance she has to come out of this quickly or you wouldn't even be telling me the risks."  He stood up, hands clasped behind his back.  "I'm ready when you are."

At that, Xavier snorted.  "Well, I won't be ready again until tomorrow morning.  I've had a very long day and very little lunch.  I need both food and sleep.  I suggest that you avail yourself of the same."

Scott might have protested but he was both pragmatic and reasonable by temperament.  Now that he knew he'd get what he wanted -- to see Jean -- he could bide his time and bow to common sense.  Supper and sleep it would be.

"Remember, Scott," Xavier said when they had reached the sub-basement and stood outside the Danger Room door, "Jean has been here for a week and a half, and her unique situation makes it impossible to permit just anyone to see her.  Even Henry has been in only three times."  Xavier paused, and Scott just frowned.  He wasn't sure what point the professor was trying to make, but it was clear from his unhappy expression that he was trying to make one and his New England reticence prevented him from elaborating on it clearly.  Then he punched in the key-code to open the first door and they waited for the light to switch to ready and passed inside the short hallway leading to the inner chamber.  Scott glanced down at himself.  He was dressed in a plain t-shirt and jeans.  The professor had warned him not to wear any jewelry that Jean could energize, even a watch, or a shirt with buttons, and he wore lace-less sandals on his feet.  "She is far from a passive victim," Xavier had warned.

The inner door slid aside and Scott looked in on a mini-hurricane.  There weren't that many items inside the room, but what wasn't nailed down had been lifted into the air.  She'd obviously heard them coming and was backed into a corner, arms wrapped protectively around her chest.  Scott's jaw dropped.  Though dressed in (clean) hospital scrubs, it was clear she hadn't had a bath in some time and Scott understood now to what Xavier had been alluding earlier.  But it wasn't just a failure in hygiene that shocked him.  She'd yanked out clumps of her hair, and her face and forearms had been scored by her own nails.  "Goddamn!" he muttered, and took three hurried steps forward, but she shrank back, whimpering, and the flying objects spun faster.  He stopped cold.  "Jean," he said softly, "I'm not going to hurt you.  Please put the stuff down.  It's me.  It's Scott.  I'd never hurt you.  I'd never, ever let anything hurt you."

Some moments passed in silence as the plastic water bottle, comb, toilet paper, and the pillow and blanket from the cot continued to circle through the air.  Even the cot itself remained raised, and the little table, and the small portable toilet, but none of it threatened him directly.  Scott waited, not moving a muscle.  He could feel her mind brushing against his, dancing around him, tasting him.  It was the strangest sensation, utterly different from when Xavier read his thoughts.  Jean's touch was close, intimate, almost erotic.  He studied her across the distance and the confused fragility he found in her expression made him sick.  It was Jean's face but not Jean, and both distraught and disheartened he brought his most recent memories of her to the forefront of his mind and thrust them at her.  "Scott --" Xavier hissed in a whisper, and perhaps his act had been the wrong thing to do, overly rash, but Scott's heart was breaking.

She didn't react hostilely.  Instead, the objects she'd raised settled back into place and her head tilted sideways, as if curious.  Then her mind reached out and grabbed his.  This wasn't a tasting.  This was a crushing embrace, pressing him into her -- then she slid inside him, slicing, and he was vivisected.  He might have screamed but he'd lost touch with his physical self, and it wasn't pain of any kind he was used to; it wasn't properly pain at all.  He simply had no words to describe such utter nakedness.

Jean!  Stop it!

She stopped.  

From her perspective, the Teacher had brought her a present.  She'd licked him all over, sampling his flavor, sharp and bright like cinnamon and apples.  She'd peered inside, finding a reflection that had wavered like water when breathed on -- a redheaded girl, and she'd wondered if she should know her?  Curiosity had pulled her closer, sliding around him and through, weaving her weft into his warp.  So many desires, dreams, angers, joys, all checked by a bridled aggression, yet he didn't frighten her like most men.  Or perhaps she'd simply grown more daring in her curiosity.  She pressed deeper.

He resisted.  Jean, stop it!  And she could feel his struggle against a sense of terrible pressure.

She withdrew a little.  She didn't want to break her apples-and-cinnamon present.  Instead of piercing him with her shuttle, she stroked his thoughts, twining around him in an ivy investigation, digging in with little probing roots, cracking the concrete of his control.  She moved towards him physically as well, her eyes half-lidded and her fingers worming into his.  His skin was warm, like his memories, and she let her palms travel up to his cheeks.  His erection lay hard between them and she stroked it, too, with mental fingers, squeezing in the right places, rubbing, using his own body-knowledge to arouse him painfully within moments.  His muscles quivered and he rose up on his toes.  "Jean!  Quit!"  He was embarrassed, excited, confused and put off -- all at once.

Who's this Jean? she asked.  Voices were so awkward.  

You are.  

If you want.  I can be anyone you want.  We'll play pretend.  

I don't want 'anyone.'  I don't want pretend; I want Jean -- you, the you you used to be.  

Show me who she was and I'll be her if you'll love me.  

I loved you already.  Look inside yourself and I'll show you who you are.  

She twisted away; he reached for her but she slid out of his grasp.  I don't want to look inside.  

Why not?  

There's nothing in there.  

Yes, there is.  There's you.  

Who am I?  What's in a name?  Who's Jean?  I am who I choose to be, or who others want me to be.  That's all I was anyway.  

Not true!  

How would you know?  

Scott's thoughts grew sly.  And how do you know?  If you can claim to know, then Jean's still in there.  And I love that Jean.  

You never knew that Jean.  You made up a fantasy in your mind.  

No, I didn't.  

Yes, you did.  And vicious in her anger, she vomited the distorted images she'd taken from his own thoughts.  That was never Jean.  

But they were old images, mostly, and he replied, I know.  And he did know.  He could recognize the distortions, and he could see the truth.  It flickered in front of him now, fragile but angry, and no longer an echo of others' echoes, no longer the ash of others' fire.  She was fire of her own.  I love the real Jean.

You love a frightened, temperamental, egotistic hypocrite?  

I love a woman who's curious and intelligent, gracious -- who wants others to love her, sometimes too much.  If that's a fault, it's one a lot of us share.  I don't want a perfect woman.  I just want my Jean back.

She felt around the edges of his mind for the cracks of falsehood, but found none.  He meant it.  You could love that Jean?

I do love that Jean.  I need a friend who screws up sometimes, so I don't feel so stupid when I do.  I need someone who'll forgive me, and who sometimes needs to be forgiven.  I need someone I can tell my secrets to, and who won't laugh even when they're laughable.  I need someone to protect, and someone who'll protect me.  I need someone who won't always let me be right, but who doesn't always have to be right, either.  I need somebody who wants to fuck my brains out, and who'll talk to me about philosophy afterwards.

She was a bit startled by the last, and he felt her mental bubble of laughter, but there was no room here for concealing a part of the truth.  Not his truth, and not hers, either.  She was turned on by the thought of fucking him.  Not making love, nothing so controlled.  She wanted to fuck him; it ran deep in her, burning like magma, a little wild.  It belonged to her body, not her mind, and she'd never been entirely comfortable with her body.  Wasn't her gift all about the psychic?  Mind over matter and mental communication.  She existed in the realm of thought, but she had a body and she'd never been too sure what to do with it.  And in that, Xavier couldn't help her.  He'd never been sure what to do with his, either.  Scott knew; Scott wasn't afraid of his body even while he wasn't ruled by it.  Maybe she'd let him teach her.

But not just now.  She was curious, but timid, inclined to circle something and watch before committing herself, even while a more primal part of her would have liked to leap in with both feet.  But that primal part had been forced into submission for too many years.  Scott sensed as much and didn't press.  He could be a patient hunter, and he'd woo her if that's what she wanted.  Acquiescing to her other curiosity -- about herself -- he let her use his recollections as an entry point to sort through the swamp in her head, deciding which memories were hers, and which couldn't be.  She'd never been a mother, or a hooker, or a secretary, or an athlete.  She'd never lived outside New York; she'd never been poor; she wasn't a minority.  Yet she gave up those parts of 'herself' reluctantly.  They offered views of the world from a new paradigm that fascinated her scientist's curiosity, or sometimes moved her gut.  She'd explored the upstairs of many different houses, laughing and weeping and aching right along with those who lived there.

He was harder, more detached, and he observed her struggle with both protectiveness and horror.  She'd seen things -- had as good as lived through them -- that he'd have kept from her forever, if he could.  And then there were events he'd never thought to experience from the inside himself -- the act of giving birth, of nursing, or of being on the woman's end during sex.  It was seductive in its insight, and he recalled his long-ago conversation with Lee, about men and women and gender curiosity.  He also recalled Jean's remark that she didn't have to wonder; she knew -- and he finally understood what she'd meant.  Women no longer seemed such a mystery to him, even while they remained fundamentally Other, and if he'd ever received a gift he hadn't asked for but valued more highly, he couldn't name it.

Her personal reconstruction was leading her further inside herself, and her hold on his mind loosened until he could swim up to a clearer consciousness of the room around them.  At some point, they'd sat down in the middle of the metal floor with Jean resting between his knees, one of her shoulders propped against his chest and both his arms around her body.  It was intimate, but easy.  He lifted a hand to press her head into his shoulder and slipped fingers through her greasy hair, lightly brushing the patches where she'd ripped it out by the roots.  She needed a bath.  Between shock and her appropriation of his awareness, he hadn't registered it before, but her body odor pressed on him now.  This was rather different than the subtle scent of her on his sheets.  A woman had a smell as strong in its own way as any man's, heavy with musk and sharply sour, and he hated it that he noticed, but olfactory senses were primal and difficult to disregard.  He listened to her breathe and felt her mind shift in his, but lightly.  He was her center, her stabilization, her Redwood.

Xavier was no longer in the room and he wondered where the professor had gone, and for how long he'd watched before departing.  For that matter, he wondered how long they'd been in there.  Hours, apparently.  His bladder was demanding to be emptied.  He ignored it and waited until he simply couldn't wait any more.  Whatever the mind did, the body continued to function and he'd had three cups of coffee that morning.  He didn't, though, need to be touching Jean to remain present for her telepathically, so he unwound himself from her embrace and stood up.  His joints popped.  She didn't remain sitting but slumped over to the floor, apparently unaware.  He made his way to the plastic portable toilet, white and antiseptic, and raised the lid, unzipping.  Jean was too out of it to see.  But as he relieved himself, he became aware that she was observing -- mentally -- and it startled him so much, the stream of yellow stopped for a moment.  Yet wasn't this simply the reverse of his own curiosity about women earlier?  How did his body feel to her?

Not so different, she sent, amused.  It's the same physical function, after all.  Finish please; it's my turn next.

He glanced over his shoulder to see her sitting up now, her arms wrapped around her drawn up knees.  Her eyes were open, but her head was turned politely away, a small smile playing across her face.  It was a silly gesture, considering, but it was evidence of her manners.  He finished and zipped up, crossing to kneel beside her and run a thumb down her cheek.  She still appeared frail, and slightly cloudy-headed, and he knew the process was far from resolved, but this was her sweet face, animated by her thoughts.  "Welcome back," he said softly, then helped her to stand, waiting politely with his own back turned while she made use of the toilet.  He could still feel the touch of her mind, but only as mental fingers on skin overlaying the lineament of his thoughts.

"I need a shower," she said, her voice hoarse.  He politely refrained from comment, but she could sense his silent agreement anyway and shook her head, amused.  "You don't have to be coy, Scott.  I stink."

"Do you want me to go get some things from your room for you?  Clothes, I mean."

"That would be kind, yes, but I'm not sure I can safely leave to shower."  

"Not even in the locker room next door?" he asked.  

"I don't know.  I'm not sure how shielded the sub-basement is."  

"I'll find the professor and ask."  But when he saw faint alarm cross her features, he added, "Is that okay?"

"I, um -- I guess so."  

"I won't leave if you don't want me to."  

Her eyes crinkled with an amusement that was mostly self-directed.  "I'm all right, Scott.  You're just very . . . solid, to lean against."

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

Her smile widened at his earnestness.  "I know you will.  Go on."
 
 
 

When Scott had delivered his news to an astonished Xavier, he hurried upstairs to Jean's room to fetch her clothing.  Passing the antique grandfather clock in the second-floor hallway, he noted that the hands read almost two in the afternoon and he understood then why he was famished.  Reaching Jean's room, he slipped inside and glanced around.  He wasn't sure what she might want and decided to assemble a small collection, letting her choose for herself.  A small bag sat on the bottom of her closet for her nights on call; he grabbed that to pack jeans and khakis, loose, comfortable shirts, socks, and moccasins.  She'd been barefoot when he'd seen her, but the sub-basement could be frigid.  Once he had three-days-worth of clothes, he collected underwear.  That made him blush, even alone in her room.  God knew he'd fantasized about Jean's underwear often enough, but had never expected to get his hands on it (if not necessarily in it).  He was surprised and a bit disappointed to find the drawer contained mostly sensible cotton rather than fashionable nylon and lace, and then was amused at himself for his reaction.  Nonetheless, a few sexy pieces were stashed in the back, and he couldn't resist fingering the silky fabric.  "Fetish, Summers?" he muttered but didn't dare put those in her suitcase, selecting cotton instead, then he studied the bras.  There weren't nearly so many of those, and he wondered -- did a woman not change her bra every day, or did Jean just have fewer of them?  Befuddled, he finally packed three anyway, just in case.  

Next came toiletries and makeup; Jean was testy about the latter.  He'd never seen her without makeup even before her visit, and during it, she'd refused to come out after a shower before her "face" was on.  He'd thought that silly, but after being inside her head, he had a better appreciation for her deeply rooted fear that no one could like the 'real' Jean.  And what on earth had caused that, he wondered?  

There were a lot of things he wondered, but now wasn't the time to dwell on them; it was easier to focus on smaller matters.  He finished packing.  

In the sub-basement below, Xavier faced a Jean solitary for the first time in two weeks.  He was pleased, and astounded, but also deeply disturbed by what had occurred between her and Scott.  He'd hoped that bringing Scott along would encourage and accelerate her recovery, but he'd never dreamed she'd regain her senses (however tenuously) so fast.  This, however, pleased him.  What troubled him was the increasing depth of Jean's attachment to the boy.  He'd known for some time that their "friendship" had crossed any traditional boundaries, and he'd offered what he'd hoped were sufficient admonitions to keep it in check, but apparently, not admonitions enough.  Jean had bonded to Scott, created a permanent psychic link -- though he wondered if even she realized that yet.  In any case, he couldn't but see it as a development mal à propos.  

"It'll be safe for me to come out?" she asked now when he entered the room.  

"For this, quite safe.  I can shield you."  A shower would do her a world of good, and he escorted her from the room, guarded by the bulwark of his own mind.  "Scott has gone to fetch you some clothing," he said.  

"I know," she replied, smiling softly.  It was the secret smile of a woman in love, and he sighed.  

"Jean -- please recall what I said to you on the phone about Scott when you were in California.  None of that has changed in the past month.  Scott is twenty-two.  You are thirty.  That is a generational gap, and I fear that the emotional needs driving the two of you together are not entirely healthy."  

He felt both her shame and her resistance flare powerfully, but she didn't reply, merely turned away with thinned lips to enter the showers.  In fact, she wasn't at all sure what to think.  On the one hand, playing by social convention hadn't made her parents' marriage happy.  She was convinced that her father had taken the chairship of the Bard history department as an excuse to spend as little time at home with her mother as possible.  

And yet, and yet, and yet . . . she was loathe to defy the professor.  Moreover, he was right.  She knew there was an age gap, and if Scott might no longer be a boy, he hadn't so long been a man, either.  She saw elements of the boy in him still and thought that perhaps they should wait.  If this thing between them was real, it would still be there in a couple years.  
 
 
 

When Scott arrived back downstairs with Jean's suitcase, he found the professor waiting in the locker area outside the women and men's showers, brows drawn in concentration.  Scott didn't disturb him but slipped past into the women's shower area.  Entering, he kept his eyes on the floor.  He could hear the rush of water, and moved cautiously around the tiled privacy wall, but the dressing area was empty.  Along two walls were benches -- her hospital-green clothes discarded in a heap on one -- and a third had sinks with mirrors and a little alcove with a few bathroom stalls.  Off to the left was the shower area.  Steam rolled out, fogging his glasses and preventing him from seeing anything even if he'd wanted to, and he didn't want to.  After that morning, he was confident he'd get his chance, but right now, what she needed most was privacy, not his prurient intrusion.  

He set down the suitcase on a bench and she heard the thud even over the pound of water.  Alarmed, she called, "Who's there?"

"It's just me.  I brought your stuff, including shampoo if you need it.  And clothes.  I didn't know what you'd want, so I threw in different things.  If you don't like them, or want something else, I can go back . . ."

He trailed off.  He was babbling; she was laughing.  "It's fine," she called.  "I'm sure it's fine, Scott.  Thank you."  

"Okay.  I'll . . . go on outside and, y'know, wait."  

Oh, even better, Summers, he thought and slapped his forehead; even an unseen naked woman could render him imbecilic.  Jean herself remained amused.  Under Xavier's telepathic umbrella, she couldn't swim like a fish through his thoughts, but she could sense the edge of his emotions and his embarrassment was palpable, as was the tickle of mild arousal overlaid by a tender concern -- altogether a complex blend of emotional spices.  She could also pick up the buzz of plain old physical hunger.  Scott still had a young man's metabolism, and with the demands of his mutation, he couldn't afford to miss meals.  "Scott," she called, "I'll likely be a while.  Go upstairs, please, and eat lunch."  She could feel that he was going to protest.  "Don't argue.  Doctor's orders.  I'll still be here when you're done, trust me."  Her voice was wry.  

And while he did, in fact, want to protest, his body was telling him to acquiesce, so he left again, heading upstairs to duck into the kitchen where Valeria Placido, Frank's mother, was cleaning up from lunch.  "And where were you all day?" she asked him in Italian.  

"Busy," he replied in the same language.  He'd brushed up on it in college, using Frank and his mom for practice.  Sticking his head in one of the industrial refrigerators, he searched for a quick snack.  

"No, no, no!" she said, "You Americans!  You eat like uncivilized beasts!"  And she hustled him over to a table, where she stuffed him on soup, bread with olive oil and cheese, and meat ravioli.  While he didn't appreciate the delay, with Valeria watching, he could hardly grab his food and run.  Italians took meals seriously in the same way that Americans took sports.  (For that matter, Italians took sports seriously, too, when it came to soccer.)  And Valeria seemed to think it her own brand of cultural education to teach the silly Americans to eat right.  He could no more get out of a two-course lunch, and conversation with it -- half in English, half in Italian -- than he could fly.  So almost an hour passed before he was free to return to the sub-basement.  Being dreadfully late already, he swung by the rec room to see what he could find to entertain Jean during her exile to the nether regions.  

While Scott was thus occupied, Jean had finished her shower, emerging -- arms wrapped around herself, hands clasping elbows -- to survey the damage of her dementia in the long mirrors of the dressing area.  She'd grown so painfully thin, she could count her ribs, and the bones of her hips protruded like a sweep of boat hulls.  Her breasts were even smaller than usual while her kneecaps and collarbones and wrists looked huge; her face was hollow-cheeked and lantern-jawed, and her eyes were shadowed and sunken.  Worse yet, she'd yanked out chunks of hair at both temples and there were scratches on the skin of her face and neck and arms.  Her skin was sallow.  

Scott had said he loved her, looking like this?  She was astonished.  

Turning, she went to see what he'd packed for her, and was amused by his choices.  Comfort clothes, almost unisex -- he still thought like a college boy, but under the circumstances, she didn't mind, and slipped on khakis and an Old Navy sweatshirt.  It was, in fact, one of his, and she wondered if he'd recognized it.  She chose it because she wanted to be surrounded by him.  

When she finally emerged, clean again with teeth brushed and face painted, Scott still wasn't back.  Xavier led her into the Danger Room and shut the door.  "Scott -- " she began.  

" -- can knock," Xavier replied, though he'd covertly engaged the 'occupied' light and hoped the boy would see it and return upstairs.  However much Scott might provide Jean with a point of stabilization, the longer they remained in one another's company during this critical period, the deeper the bonding would run.  It was a dangerous game he played, and a ruthless one, using the attachment between the two in order to heal Jean more quickly, but preventing it from following its logical course to an end he couldn't condone, for either Jean or Scott's sake.  This wasn't, he realized, quite ethical, but it was necessary, and when pushed, Xavier was a pragmatist.  

"Although your self-awareness has returned," Xavier began now, "you and I both know that the reassembly of memories is not complete, and may not be for some time . . . "  And thus, the next stage in her healing began.  

When Scott did arrive downstairs, he did exactly what Xavier had expected:  he found the door shut, the occupied light on, and assumed he'd be intruding.  So he left his offering of games and puzzles outside the door and went back upstairs, whiling away the afternoon by unpacking some of his boxes, talking to Hank about the various students' mathematics placements, and cycling on the path around the lake until supper.  For the first time since his return, he ate with the rest in a dining hall setting that emphasized for him the mansion's shift from intimate circle to something more institutional and organized.  The hall's long oak tables had acquired benches instead of chairs, and the sideboard was stuffed with various dishes for students to help themselves, buffet style.  An antique tapestry had been replaced by white boards, one listing student duty areas and another announcing stable riding schedules and when the bus would leave on Saturday for a trip into White Plains to the Westchester Mall.  Scott thought the boards horridly out of place in a room of dark-wood moldings, heavy velvet drapes and a coffered ceiling with decorative medallions.  The eleven current students sat at one table while the handful of former students -- now 'grown ups' -- occupied another.  He found it all rather disconcerting, a sentiment only heightened when the thirteen-year-old Jubilee addressed him as "Mr. Summers."  For a moment, he'd honestly not realized she'd been speaking to him.  

At least Bobby treated him no differently, and just to prove he wasn't an antique, Scott engaged the boy on an unoccupied bench in a game of table football with a folded napkin.  They became so engrossed that Scott almost missed Warren's arrival until a puff of wind from a wing swept the paper 'ball' onto the floor.  "Hey, man!" Scott greeted his friend, rising to offer Warren the customary embrace -- but Warren backed away.  His face was stiffly polite.  

"Ororo said you've come back.  Permanently."  

Sitting down again, Scott eyed Warren.  At the other tables, chatter had quieted; Hank, Ororo and Frank observed with polite discretion while the eleven students stared unabashedly.  "Yeah," Scott replied, unsure where this was going.  "I told you at Christmas about some of the sh-, some of the stuff going down in the Berkeley anthro department.  It got worse.  I'm outta there."  

Warren's head tilted, his sharp, aristocratic, falcon-features faintly derisive.  "And Jean's condition had nothing to do with that decision."  

All too aware of their audience, Scott glanced around the room.  It was plain that Warren considered Scott's return to be a betrayal, but Scott had no idea why.  "She's my friend, War.  I didn't see much point in sticking around out there a few more months when she needed me here."  

"Needed you?  She doesn't need anyone but the professor.  She's down in the sub-basement, mentally unglued."  

"Not anymore."  

"What?"

That came from more throats than Warren's, but it was Hank who smoothly inserted himself into the conversation.  "It was reported to me earlier" -- he didn't say it had been reported by Scott -- "that Dr. Grey has returned to consciousness.  It may yet be some time before a full recovery, but she's definitely on the mend."  

"I'm going down to see her," Warren said, heading out of the hall.  

"You can't!"  Scott called after, standing once more.  "The professor wouldn't even let me back in."  

"Scott," Hank warned.  "Warren -- "

Both young men ignored him.  "What do you mean 'back in'?  Warren asked, swinging around, blue eyes narrow, wings slightly arched.  "And why should you get in, in the first place?  You're not her boyfriend."  

A mixture of prudence and distracted irritation led Scott to ignore the first question in favor of the second.  "I'm her best friend," he said.  "You're not her boyfriend, either."  

At the adults' table, Ororo rolled her eyes while Hank palmed his face.  The students, though, watched with open-mouthed fascination.  To them, this was better than an episode of Survivor.  "She's going out with me," Warren said, voice crisp.  

"Not according to her," Scott replied, then immediately regretted it.  It wasn't in him to publicly embarrass a friend.  "Look," he began, taking a few steps closer in an effort to mend the damage, but Warren's wings snapped out to their full extension and his face warned Scott off.  Warren was proud, and wouldn't bear coddling.  

"At Christmas," he spat, "you told me you weren't interested."  

Embarrassed, Scott glanced away.  He'd forgotten all about that.  "I kinda changed my mind."  

"I asked in good faith!  You said you weren't interested anymore!"

"Okay, I lied!" Scott snapped back.  They'd almost forgotten their audience, even while being painfully aware of it.  "I was . . . trying to let her go.  Things changed, okay?  He made another bid for a peaceful end.  "Come on, man.  You know I've been crazy about her forever."  

"And you think I haven't?"

Warren's admission confounded Scott.  He'd dismissed his friend's flirting as trivial, another of Warren's dalliances, and had been more worried about Jean's possible interest in Warren than any sincerity on Warren's part, but the expression on Warren's face now wasn't regret over a missed date.  Scott took a few more steps forward, speaking in a voice he hoped only Warren could hear.  "Look, War, it's mutual.  I can't stop how I feel, and neither can she.  I didn't realize you were actually serious about her."  

And that, for Warren, was the deepest betrayal of all; it dug claws into his gut and disemboweled him.  "I thought you, of all people, knew me better.  I thought you were my friend.  But you really are plebeian, aren't you?  And childish -- a little boy trying to be a man.  In fact, you're eight years younger than Jean."  He pointed to Jubilee, who sat gaping at this very public feud.  "That girl is as many years younger than you, as you are younger than Jean!  Never mind that you're not her equal.  You think a sophisticated woman like Jean Grey wants to bring home a military brat like you?"

Equally betrayed, Scott struck back equally hard.  "My father was an officer and a test pilot -- which takes skill and talent, not just an accident of birth.  This is America, Warren, not Europe.  Nobody gives a fuck who your parents were or how many Roman numerals you slap after your name.  As for the age thing, I hear the pot calling the kettle black -- you're younger than her, too, and not by one or two years."  

Warren's lips pursed.  "I'm twenty-five, I have an MBA from Harvard, and I'm CEO of several companies.  What are you?  You can't even finish a year of grad school.  You have nothing to offer her, no inheritance, and don't even qualify to teach high school in the State of New York.  If she's interested in you, it's because you've got a pretty face.  You're her boy toy.  She'll get bored eventually and go looking for a real man."  

Shocked silence smothered the dining hall.  Those listening instinctively understood that a friendship had just shattered beyond repair.  Glancing around, face flaming, Scott muttered, "This is a stupid conversation."  

"Yes, it is!" Ororo echoed, rising to intervene, but Scott had stalked out of the room.  He didn't run, but when she called after him, he didn't look back, either.  Furious, Ororo grabbed Warren's arm to propel him out, too.  "Are you proud of yourself?" she snapped.  

"I didn't tell him anything but the truth."  Disinclined either to remorse or repentance, Warren's chin went up.  "He got what he deserved.  He stabbed me in the back!"

"Only because you turned it," Frank said without heat.  He'd joined the two of them in the back hallway.  "You chose not to see."  

"He told me he wasn't interested!  I fucking asked, Frank.  I played by the damn rules!"

"You chose not to see," Frank said again.  "It was plain to the rest of us."  

"Scott said he wasn't interested!  You don't go back on your word!"

"You had your chance," Ororo pointed out, "but Jean was not interested.  Or does her opinion not count?  Why men think women are territories to be divvied up, I will never know.  'You take this one, I shall take that one' -- and what if 'this one' and 'that one' have other ideas?"

And at the base of it, the fact that Jean did have other ideas was what Warren found impossible to bear.  He was always the chosen one, except to those he cared about most.  To them, he was the imperfect angel, rejected, and he might have withstood the blow better, had Jean not chosen instead one of the few men he'd considered a true friend.  

"As far as I'm concerned, you can all go to hell," he said now, turning and retreating back through the mansion to the garage where he'd just left his orange Lamborghini.  Scott might have yielded the battlefield, but Warren now fled the theater.  

Concerned, Ororo glanced at Frank, who just shook his head.  "He will be back," he said.  "Let his pride mend a little."  

"And he and Scott?"

"They may patch things up."  

"Or they may not."  

"Or they may not," Frank admitted.  

Scott escaped first to his room only to face the unpacked boxes and (again) the rashness of his choice to leave Berkeley.  Yet hadn't he brought Jean back to them?  And that was more than Warren could claim -- more than Warren could do.  Still angry and distraught, Scott returned to the sub-basement.  He hadn't seen the professor at supper, and half-thought to find him with Jean yet, but the occupied light was off, and the games had been removed from outside the Danger Room door.  Scott hesitated only a moment before engaging the outer lock and entering the little hall.  The light above the inner door wasn't on either, so he knocked.  

Jean opened it and he stumbled in.  Indeed Xavier wasn't there and Scott was relieved for that, but his otherwise-vivid upset battered at Jean after her long afternoon working with the professor.  Her hands flew up to her temples and alarmed, Scott gripped her upper arms.  "Are you okay?  Do I need to get Professor Xavier?"

No!  She replied.  You need to quit shouting at me!  

"Huh?"

Calm down, please.  Calm down.  You're hurting me.  

Unfortunately, he wasn't at all sure how to stop 'shouting' and aware of his confusion, she reiterated, "Please just try to calm down," then pointed.  "Go sit.  Over there."  

He glanced across to where the little table had acquired two chairs since his last visit, and meekly obeyed her order.  She'd had dinner sent down by Valeria, but had eaten only half of it, the wild rice and asparagus.  Cold chicken cacciatore remained, trapped in congealed red sauce.  Her tea was mostly gone, ice left to melt at the bottom of the glass, and he picked it up to shake a stray cube into his mouth, crunching it.  He tried not to think about what Warren had said.  

But what Warren had said was as clear as a bell to Jean -- clearer, in fact, than if Scott had been projecting as he had when he'd first arrived.  She stood on the other side of the Danger Room and struggled to sort through her own mixed emotions.  She was seething, at Scott as much as at Warren.  They'd behaved like toddlers fighting over a favorite toy and she didn't appreciate being treated like a prize -- even while she was utterly amazed that she, Jean Grey, might be regarded thus by two young men who could so easily have their pick of girls.  She was also irritated with them for parceling her out -- 'If you don't want her, I'll take her' -- though that was closer to what she'd come to expect.  

Yet what Warren had said to Scott at the end upset her most of all.  It'd been a less polite, less psychological version of what Xavier had told her -- and it reflected what others would say behind her back, if not to her face.  She wasn't sure if she were ready for that.  

She approached him slowly.  He had calmed down, and she no longer felt overwhelmed.  Taking the other chair at the small table, she said, "First, I am not a prize in a car race, Scott Summers.  I will not display a big victory cup for you while wearing a skimpy bikini."  

He was still holding her tea glass, and his lips quirked up.  "I know."  

"Do you?"  He had the good grace to blush, and took another mouthful of ice.  "Second," she went on, "I decide who I'll date, and I'm not dating either you or Warren.  Understood?"

His expression was startled.  "But, Jean -- !"

"No, Scott.  I'm not."  

Ambushed, he wasn't sure how to respond to that.  "But we both feel the same thing!"

"How a person feels does not necessarily determine how a person chooses to act.  Do I love you?  Absolutely.  Do I think this is a good time to date you?  No, I do not."  

Mute but frowning, Scott leaned back in his chair and Jean took advantage of his silence.  "Third, you are not a failure.  So Warren has a degree from Harvard.  You have one from Berkeley.  You earned it on a scholarship, no less, which Warren did not.  And you received a graduate assistantship for your masters work -- which Warren also did not.  We both know the reason why you didn't finish the latter, and it has nothing to do with any deficiencies on your part.  I respect Warren, and he is an intelligent man.  But so are you, and if intelligence is measured in speed of comprehension, ability to recognize patterns and analogies, and ability to draw valid conclusions from divergent data, then you exceed him in all three areas."  

Scott was blushing, but she could feel his confidence seeping back.  Like her, he responded better to a rational approach than to emotional declarations, and while he might have appreciated her cheerleading, he wouldn't have believed it, and she was more interested in having him believe it.  

"As for being 'plebeian'" -- she sat forward in her chair -- "you know Warren doesn't really buy into the myth of blue blood."  Although, in fact, she wasn't so sure.  Children learned what they lived, and Warren harbored his share of assumptions and prejudices just like anyone else.  

"I think it rather impressive that your father was a test pilot, though I'm less impressed by how he and the rest of your family have treated you."  When Scott started to protest, she barreled on.  "It's going to take more than him showing up at your graduation for me to forgive him, Scott.  

"And last, yes, there are those who'll look at your face, look at me, consider our ages, and decide you're my boy toy.  All that says is they don't know you, they don't know me, and they don't understand our friendship."  

She glanced away.  "Besides, it's not usually the woman who loses interest.  How do I know you won't get tired of your old woman in ten years and dump me for a younger model?  I'll be forty and you'll be only thirty-two.  Some pretty, young twenty-something might look a whole lot better than me."  

Scott's sense of insult was sharp and sudden.  "I'm not that fickle!  And it's not about looks!"

She glanced down at herself with a wry smile.  "Obviously."  

"Stop it!"  His affront was turning into anger.  "I really hate it when you put yourself down!  You're not an ugly woman, all right?  And I told you -- it's not about looks."  

"It's not about looks, but I'm not an ugly woman?  I know perfectly well what kind of image you had of me when we first met, Scott Summers.  I was your own personal Venus."  

His rage was pulsing now.  "I can't win with you on this!  You get upset if I think you're pretty and you get upset if I think you aren't!  Which is it, Jean?  And what the hell does any of that have to do with loving you?  That's attraction.  That's all.  Attraction is what gets two people on the same playing field.  It doesn't mean you finish the game.  Most of the time, you don't.  As for looks, how do I know you're not going to stop being interested in me when I lose my hair and get a middle-aged paunch?  You have to trust that the other person really loves you, no matter what you look like."  

And ashamed, Jean stared down into her lap.  This, she thought, was why they were evenly matched.  Sometimes she told him things; sometimes he told her.  

"All right," she said softly.  "I'm sorry for doubting you.  I guess it's just that, for most of my life, I've been the ugly duckling."  

"And you know how that story ends, don't you?  Take a look at your reflection in the lake, Jean.  You're a swan."  

"Looks seem to matter more to men."  

"Yeah?  Well, we're hot-wired eyes to dick.  That doesn't mean we're hot-wired eyes to heart.  Sex isn't love.  But when sex and love go together, it's pretty terrific."  

And Jean could pick up on what he didn't say -- she had him coming and going, and why did she so doubt his love that she couldn't accept his desire?  Rising, she walked away a few steps, hugging her upper body again.  "I want to believe," she said to him.  

"So believe."  

"It's hard.  It may take me a while."  

"I'll wait."  

"I don't want that kind of power over you.  If you decide you'd like to date someone else -- "

"I won't.  I'm in love with you, dammit.  Don't you get it?  I'll wait.  Just don't yank me around, okay?  If the answer's going to be 'no,' don't string me along."  She heard the unspoken addition, like you did to Ted.  He hadn't intended to hurt her, but it hurt her anyway.  

She shook her head.  "I'd never do that to you.  I didn't intend to do it to him.  It's a definite maybe, even a probable yes -- just not right now."  

"Fine.  I'll ask you again next week."  

"Scott, I wasn't kidding when I said it'd take time.  You're still so young -- "

His jaw hardened.  "I wasn't kidding about asking you next week, either."  

"God!  You are so stubborn!" she said, exasperated.  

But that just won a sudden, dimpled smile.  "You know what Alexander the Great said to the island city of Tyre when they refused to surrender, don't you?"

Suspicious but intrigued, she asked cautiously, "No, what'd he say?"

"'You may be an island now, but I'll make you part of the mainland.'  And he did.  It took him ten months, but he did it."  

Standing, he crossed his arms and continued to grin like a maniac.  "Consider yourself under siege, Dr. Grey."  

And he walked out.