LOST CONTROL.

you have never let me down, it plays in his head on repeat like a broken record yet somehow, the sound is harmonious. it’s what he wants to hear, her words digging deep into his heart and enveloping him a warm embrace. the way it shakes him to very his core is almost enough to spark tears, a familiar wetness beginning to sting his eyes. how long had he waited to hear that? how many times had he assured himself it would never happen? 

she’s too forgiving, he thinks, a saint among sinners and he, the biggest sinner of them all. perhaps it’s a fitting analogy for her, his guardian angel for all their years apart. an angel in white while he donned red –the white phoenix of the crown and the leader of a mutant revolution. even her hand against his cheek is a heavenly warmth, one he’s scared will slip away. ❛  jean i– ❜ he’s lost for words, biting back the emotion that threatens to spill over as he relishes the very moment he thought he’d never have again. 

he used to run this scene through his head, imagining all the things he’d say to her if he saw her again –all the things he should have said before she died. and now that the time is finally here, he’s lost, scrambling to find the words that convey the spectrum of emotions she brings out in him. ❛  you have always made me a better person. you say i’ve never disappointed you –that the man i am today is worth a damn. well, that’s your doing. because even when you were gone, your memory was what drove me to be better. i don’t know if i always was, but i do know that much. you are, and have always been, the biggest part of my soul.  ❜

——— THE WORDS THAT SHE HAD USED were ones that were true enough to how she felt. there is so much that scott had been through in the last handful of years because of her. he’d seen her die, had seen the world turned to dust, had watched her ascend to the white phoenix of the crown, and even  now she is barely here with him. She is left empty, perhaps oddly for the first time since she’d been resurrected. Jean does not think that she can truly give him what she wants too --there is still so much of herself that she is forced to think about over and over until her mind has become much like a broken record....and yet there is still so much that she truly wants to give him. 

For as much pain as she has caused him, she wants to return the joy to the face that has been a staple in her time. She has controlled realities, bent them to her whim, and it is all to provide him with a better life than she might have been able to do without the help of the phoenix. “that man was always there scott, I just always wanted you to see it too. From the beginning...I think I knew that I would love you. Out of all the minds I’ve heard....yours was the one that called to me. Even when I was overwhelmed...I could always find comfort in yours.” her honesty leaves no room for him to doubt her, her thumb brushing gently against the high of his cheekbone as she tentatively reaches out to brush against his consciousness. 

i don’t think you can…ever the realist, though she kind of had to be. he can remember a time when he was the one who looked at the world with a lens far too dour, preparing for the worst while she urged him to see the better. hope, she called it, though hope’s light had long since been squandered from her –he’ll carry that torch, keep it burning throughout the dark. he never could fight against the hands of fate, but when it came to her, he always tried –even though it ended with his heart in ruins. 

he’s ready to put on that armor of assurance, say that he’ll try no matter what, but she blindsides him with her request. how many years had they shared a psionic rapport? sharing every thought and feeling with one another, yet somehow, she still manages to surprise him all these years later. ❛  you always have me. ❜ she is, after all, the biggest part of him. ❛  no matter what happens you always have me. ❜ unthinking, unquestionably so at that. it was her he reached for when he became the phoenix, clinging to that last bit of humanity her memory brought out of him. and it was her who reached to him, appealing to his better nature in the face of ‘all powerful’ corruption. the guilt of the moment eats up at him, forcing him to reconcile those fears. ❛ –jean i’ve let you down so many times. even when you were gone i was afraid i’d disgraced your memory…i just wanted to be someone you’d be proud of and i failed. i always fail you. how are you so sure i won’t do it again? ❜ 

——— THERE IS SOME REASSURANCE in his words but there is still a worry that envelops his aura and jean looks at him almost knowingly. they have both changed so much but scott is forever a strong beacon, a pillar of both support and quick thinking. his intelligence is beyond compare and he has developed a compassion that is admirable in everything that he does....but beyond all of that, she knows that scott feels so much for those he considers close to him. he would bring you the moon if you asked it of him and she admires that, no matter the subject, his passion will always flash like a bright light and you will understand what it is he wants, what it is he thinks. 

              she is not surprised in the least by his fears when he voices them, her face still serene and open as she listens to him. “scott.” his name tastes like home -- the faint essence of love and joy that wrap around the sound as it linges in the space between them. she finally turns so she can look at him fully, vibrant eyes looking along his frame before she reaches to grasp his hand within hers. she wants to bleed a trust that she feels, a hope that has been diminished in her through the years of pain, distrust, and dying that have plagued her for such a long time. “you have never let me down. ever.” she emphasizes her words and she reaches so that her free hand can rest against his cheek --it is impossibly warm in her feverish hands and there is a comfort there that she cannot deny if she tried. “there is not a thing you could do to disgrace me....my memory...or make me think that you are a failure. you’ve tried your best for so long scott....you are so good in everything...even when I don’t have the energy to be hopeful or kind...or even be jeannie.” 

she’s struggling and as always, his first instinct is to reach out to her, fix it any way he can. but they’re long past the days where their problems were so easily fixed.  ❛ i wanna help. ❜  it’s instinctual, said before he even has the chance to think about it. she deserves this, a nice, simplistic lifestyle…a chance to relax. but the world has never been kind to jean grey, that much he’s well aware of. 

still his heart goes out to her, agonizing for the woman who lost years of her life yet again…years she watched unfold from the white hot room. funny, even when she’s alive and ok, she’s got his heart breaking in her hands. ❛  you’ve never lingered in the background –even when you were gone you were always on our mind –in our hearts. if there’s distance, let me help bridge the gap. ❜ a beat. ❛  tell me how i can fix it. ❜ 

——— AS IF ON CUE, SCOTT DOES WHAT he always does and he reaches out to jean to try and fix her problems. she thinks that it is admirable that he always wants to try and make her feel better about what has happened but she wishes that, sometimes, he would focus on how he feels as well. jean had long since come to the conclusion that this world would be one that beat her down until there was nothing left. the phoenix always came back to find her, she would always die, and she would always be revived....how could she fight against something she knew would happen? how could he?

❛  so, here we are. ❜ it’s less of a statement, more of him trying to fill the awkward silence, something that reminds him of when he was 16 and hopelessly in love with her. but he’s not a teenager with a crush anymore, he’s an adult with a whole world’s worth of problems on his shoulders –someone who already had a life with her. despite their rather messy end, their last meeting was intense, a subject they’ve both been tiptoeing around for months. it’s easier that way, not drudging up the past and dealing with unsavory memories –and maybe they deserve easy after all they’ve been through.

 ❛ how uh how are you doing? settling back in here and all i mean. ❜ because he still wants to help her, moving heaven and earth to make sure she’s ok if needed. because she still matters a great deal to him –she always would. / @igniteashes·

——— THERE IS A WEIGHT TO THE situation that jean cannot shake if she had tried too. she’d begged for time since the last moment they had met because she’d needed time to think, to figure out the complex web of her feelings, and deal with them. only when she’d decided on her course of action had she decided that she would rejoin her team and her friend and, thus, come face to face with him once again. the burn of embarrassment at her emotional moment still stung deep in her chest...but there was no pay off in being a coward. 

her answer slams into him, gong-shocked. his heart shatters against his chest, spins nauseatingly into his stomach with an unrelenting swirl. but his pulse leaps into his chest when she presses her hand to his cheek –how long had he been waiting for that comforting touch? he leans into it, savoring the closeness from a moment he was sure he’d never get. people don’t just come back from death –but jean grey was never just ‘people.’ she’s extraordinary, always has been. 

❛ then let me help you now –let me do everything i couldn’t do before. ❜ her heart is heavy, but he can carry it. if there’s anyone who knows what its like to feel powerless against their own uncontrollable power its him. it’s a kinship he never wanted her to know, one born from mutual suffering. powerlessness haunts him like a looming shadow, feeling afraid of himself and his capabilities. just one slip up –that’s all it takes– and he could level a building. he’s been scared of hurting her with it more times than he can count.

❛ that’s not true, jean you know that. ❜ he hates how desperate he sounds, choked emotions trickling up from the back of his throat. but the more she talks, the more those cracks on his heart deepen, bleeding red and raw with pain. ❛ look at me. i’ve never regretted you and you never took anything from me. if anything, you made my life worth living all those years –you remember how i was before. i was closed off, scared, and miserable. but you helped me become someone more…someone happy. i went from thinking my ‘future’ would end tomorrow to planning forever with you and i will always be grateful for what you’ve given me. ❜ 

——— THE SUDDEN DRYNESS OF HER THROAT IS vastly uncomforable but no matter how much she swallows she can’t seem to get rid of the hurt feeling in her chest.  Jean feels amazingly dizzy, as if she might fall over and cease to exist once more. She’d never thought that she would have a moment of face to face clarity -- when her soul was suspended in The White Hot Room and she was forced to relive memory after memory, she’d thought she’d finally found her personal hell. Though it seems almost underwhelming with how loudly her soul cried out for him right then. She wants to do as he has asked her too. She wants to rip her heart from her chest and burden his hands with the weight of it until he too, crumbles as if he were nothing. Perhaps then someone might truly understand the swirl of emotions that are constantly ravaging her. 

            “You did so much for me, you know that? I felt like a hollow shell of myself too before I met you --scared, perhaps. Out of place, unsure....You allowed me to remember that it was okay to be something other than a freak of nature.” She assures him, her eyes having reluctantly moved to his face as he asked of her. Yet they waver and she looks away for a moment as if the words were physically painful -- maybe they were. Maybe it was an admittance to him now that was going to finish cracking the fragile woman who could be blown away by the wind. What would be left of her then? What had ever been left of her but a lingering thought in the back of the minds of the people who had loved her? She was a harmful projection no matter what she chose to do...so perhaps she could be damned now.