The Search for Phoenix

Author: Jenskott

Summary: Mirror of 'The Search for Cyclops' series. Scott is having very weird dreams by the Jean's grave. What may they mean?

Notes: I quitted the X-Men comics after the 'E is for Extinction' saga. I've been keeping slightly abreast of current facts, which sound like utter crap to me. The last straw was hearing about the third Jean's 'death' and the 'relationship' between Scott and Emma. The White Queen was a good villain (powerful, smart and ruthless), and a good character in Generation-X, but I hate what Morrison did. This is my try to fix some bad things of the comics.

Rating: PG-13, at least.

Disclaimer: They were created by Stan 'The Man' Lee and Jack 'The King' Kirby. They don't belong to me, but they don't belong to their creators either. A pity, isn't it?

Feedback: To Opinions, reviews and advice will be VERY appreciated. English isn't my first language so I really need someone points me mistakes.

Part One. Delusions-

A frosty, gelid wind blew across the graveyard, rustling tree branches and streaming among the numerous slabs of dull grey marble. In the oldest ones the weather had eroded the stone and nearly erased the name, and the moss and the lichens and the weeds menaced with carpeting the marker.

Still there was one tombstone stood out on the cemetery, lonely amidst a crowd. The ground was fresh and bare, having been removed and exposed to erosion recently. The marble was polished and glossy, and the words chiseled were clearly readable. A name, two dates and one sentence. She Will Arise Again.

Sudden footsteps disturbed the forlorn and gloomy silence enveloped the graves as a shroud. The sod muffled the noise of the shoes, but that faint sound echoed as a thunder in that dead stillness.

The mourner navigated among the slabs with easiness born of experience, and reached the lonely and bleak tomb. His fingers caressed gingerly the rough surface, memorizing each ridge on the rock, and he kneeled next to it. Onto a circular patch of squashed grass. He sat always down there during his visits. It was his spot.

He remained drawn in mute and awkward silence for a long while. Simply feeling air gusts whipping his face. His eyes were firmly trained on the letters carved on the flint.

"I don't know anymore what I'm doing or why." His lips whispered at last. "You asked me -forced me- to return. You begged me live. But it's so hard."

A slight twister flayed his face and body with leaves, twigs and pebbles. The rubbish prickled and scratched its cheeks, but it crashed harmlessly on the hard, silent, inalterable stone. He rubbed his face with a gesture mixed annoy and despair.

"Everybody are always looking at me. I don't think someone trusts whole-heartily on me. They see me with Emma and only... assume. And judge. Hank, Warren, Bobby... neither of them knows how dealing with me. Rachel... just ignores me, or speaks me with an aloof, plain tone I'm sure my counterpart taught her unconsciously. It's funny. Nobody trusts in me, but they still need me."

He didn't understand it. Did they believe he had forgotten her? Like if it was possible.

His forefinger traced wistfully the borders of every letter. Slowly. Pinning a stare of bottomless sorrow and grief on each symbol. "After Apocalypse I was fed-up of the boy-scout act. Sick of pretending being someone I'm not. Sick of the assumptions the team did. And now I've shattered that image at last, I'm not sure of it be a good thing. Ironical, isn't it?"

Sudden shivers rocked his body and he folded his knees and embraced himself tightly. He was feeling progressively colder. "I was deranged, screwed up, but you paid for my troubles. I ran away, and when I'd made up my mind at last, you.... you... were dead before I said you that..."

An unbearable agony weighed on his chest and he buried the head between his knees. Choked, muffled weeps echoed through the desolate graveyard, as his body writhed and quivered, shaken by powerful sobs. "My life has always been controlled by someone's else since the plane crash. Sinister, Jack, even the Professor. The more I fight against it, the more entangled I'm in. Every time I've wanted giving up my responsibility and starting my own life I've ended up returning. Nowadays the Academy is packed with children we have to protect, the teams are broken and demoralized, and each member keeps a feud or grudge with someone. And I'm stuck on leading them. But I've lost my footing." His solid land. His anchor.

Arctic frostbite began to seep in his blood and to freeze his bones. "I'd be able of putting up with it, of grinning and bearing it if you were with me. But you're gone. Gone before we got any chance of making up. When I think of the wasted opportunities, of the lost time... God, I miss you."

Another long silence started. He raised sluggishly his head, gazing at the name written and at the promise etched below it. "Do you remember our honeymoon? When Nate and us traveled across an alien land, being a family? We were so free then, even if we were fleeing all the time, fighting Nur's armies or taming Nathan. We made our own decisions and got our own lives. Now my family is broken. Again."

His hand stroked his face in hopelessness. Yearning for all there had been, mourning for all would never be and ruing all should never have been. His eyes shut in intense suffering. "I miss you." He repeated stubbornly.

His mind began to review the blurry images of a time at once past and future that now existed only in his memory. Pictures of his life with his wife and his son, traveling through the eroded and polluted wastelands of the thirty-eight century. A tough and harsh life, but happy. And now it'd vanished in smoke along with his dreams. It'd been like that since Apocalypse wrecked his soul and ruined his life.

And then the scene shifted abruptly. The conic hut of organic structure had warped in a room. His bedroom when he was a student in the old mansion. There even was furniture shattered the first time the mansion was destroyed.

He stared at his hands. Golden gloves. He palpated his clothes. Dark blue spandex instead of black leather.

He blinked at the person lounging lazily on one chair. Piercing emerald pupils behind a yellow mask gazed amusedly at his bewilderment. Glossy cherry lips split in a wanton, mischievous smirk.

Scott stiffened, narrowed dangerously his eyes and glared at the intruder and her green-and-yellow uniform. She had worn that outfit after the Factor Three downfall. "Who are you?" He hissed with hostility.

Her lips broadened the smile. "Who do you believe?" She chirped challengingly.

He shook his head in angry denial. "What I believe or I want believing are different matters. If you're Emma, or any other telepath, stop it. It wasn't funny then, and it is sick now."

Her roguish grin evolved gradually in a curious, sad glance. "Unless Emma has been rummaging in your brain or you've told her, I don't think she -or someone else for that matter- knows I dye my hair."

He blinked, nonplused. It was right. Jean was natural redhead, but her hair was a bright orange she hated. She dyed her tresses in a darker, duller hue of crimson. But only he could know that.

"Neither I think Frost knows where I get freckles." The woman of painfully familiar face tugged from her gloves and dropped them on the floor. After she yanked her tight green shirt upwards, and unzipped her short yellow skirt, letting it slip along her slender legs. Very soon her undergarments joined the pile of discarded clothes. And when she was naked, showing bare her ravishing beauty, she took slowly her mask off.

Scott gulped. He was going crazy. All his instincts and wits were screaming him that woman was Jean. Her body was perfect. Same stature, same volume, same creamy skin, same blemishes. Even marks and nicks he'd previously forgotten how she had done. But mainly, her eyes. Two sparkling pools of compassion radiating an immeasurable sadness, an aching melancholy as she gazed at him.

She shook her head with grief. "Scott, my best friend. All I've even done is dying on you."

How did she know those words? He'd never repeated them to someone.

"It can't be." He breathed faintly. His voice was a strangled whine. "It isn't possible. You're dead."

"Yes. I get that a lot." She muttered sarcastically. For first time, bitterness and anger colored her words and twisted her countenance. With a dejected headshake she strode towards him, tossing backwards her long mane.

When she was within his arms' reach, he couldn't repress himself longer. He drew her in him and squeezed her lean and athletic frame with a crushing embrace. As he got her in his arms, smelling her musk and feeling the soft stroke of stray red locks on his cheek, he began to moan.

As he grieved, the woman stroked soothingly his taut back. Steadily his sobs subsided and he stepped backwards, regarding her entire self. "H-how? Why?"

Her gloomy stare shifted in a bittersweet smile. "The how is irrelevant. As for your second question... let's say the White Queen isn't the only capable of playing that game."

"Jean, I-"

Her hand cupped his stubby chin firmly. "Talk later. Now kiss me, idiot!"

Such flaring temper might only belong to one person. Emma was terrible when she was furious, but her ire frightened him only. On the other hand, when Jean was incensed, her dreadful and revengeful choler frightened him and drew him like a moth dazzled by a flame.

Their lips touched. A brief brush grew in an intense merge. He relished on the flavor, on the taste, on the soft texture of that mouth he knew so well.

Often his brain told him one thing and his heart another. When he was with Emma, one part of him wanted the releasing but other yelled him that was wrong. But this felt right. Absolutely right.

His clever hands roamed up and down her body as she stripped him from his outfit.

And he believed. With no doubts, no questions, no regrets. Because he needed believing.

A long while later, when the blistering desire and the sheer need drowning him had been quenched, he lay over the bed, utterly drained and exhausted. Worn off the lust had driven him, he rested lazily atop Jean, letting his body cooled down. They were whiling away in blissful relax, with their limbs entangled with each other, enjoying with the mere touch and the presence of the loved one.

The Scott's lips were kissing and nipping eagerly Jean's collarbone, drawing a purple trail went from the shoulder to the jowl. "Christ, Jean" He breathed "I love you. Now and forever. My heart belongs you."

Part of he felt so hypocrite saying that... But no. It was true. Regardless the foolish mistakes he had committed, his heart was hers now and forever. He had never stopping love her. He couldn't.

He held her and squeezed her with excruciating strength born of panic. He was scared of she pushed him away, or rubbed on his face his betrayal, burning him with her hatred and rancor.

Instead of that she just stroked his cheek, giving him a sorrow, inquiring gaze. "Then, why?"

He shuddered. How the hell could he explain his actions without looking he was giving petty excuses to placate her? "I was confused. I didn't know who or what I was. I was scared from the awful shit in my head, and I didn't want anybody saw it. For that I pushed you away. However, when I needed help, or advice, or closure, you pushed me away. You'd turned as cold with me as I with you. I was afraid of the things had changed and you didn't love me anymore. I didn't know what doing. Emma seemed wishing aiding me, so that I turned to her for advice..."

"And you allowed she messed with your head, albeit had little job left to do." Jean nodded. "I'm angry and upset, but... I'm as guilty as you are. Perhaps if I had been more understanding and less demanding, if I hadn't lashed out at you the few times you sought me, if I had told you 'I love you' more often, if I hadn't used the job to run away from you..." She trailed off. "But we fled from each other instead confronting and fixing the trouble, permitted our bond strained, used other parties' feelings to seek solace... and now we're screwed up."

He nodded mutely, unable of rebuking it. "But now you're here... may you answer me a question?"

She peered at him. Scott rubbed his eyelids on her cheek. "Am I going crazy? Or are you really here?"

"Neither in fact" But before she was able to explain her somber face blanched, fully drained of color, and her eyes widened showing intense dread. "I've to go now." She mused with a panicked voice.

Scott choked, aghast. "No, please! At least tell me-"

"I'm sorry, Scott. But she's coming now. If I stay longer, she'll find me and lock me down. See you later!"

With those frightened, queasy words, an incandescent orange fire blazed in his mind. After a blinding, hot-glowing brightness, the mindscape turned jet-black.

Scott snapped awake as his body lurched onwards. He panted slowly with a labored breath, trying to regain his bearings. The glowing solar disc was sinking in the skyline, dying as the dusk was born and its bright light bathed the Earth. The sky was a flare streaked of red, pink, orange and amber slowly turned a rainbow of dark blues, purples and indigos. Dots of stars glittered on the celestial dome.

He'd stood in that exact posture for hours straight. He winced, feeling his muscles sore and numb. With each motion his joints creaked slightly, forcing him to repress pangs of hurt.

Swiftly he checked his pants. A mess, of course. With a grimace of self-loathing, he stood up and strolled towards the mansion. Maybe someone had got worried about him, and wondered where he was.

However a question lingered on his mind. What the hell was that? A warning of rampaging senility and mental illness? An erotic fantasy? Or it was anything else?

The idea of Jean dyeing her hair comes from some fics of Minisinoo, an excellent writer with highly recommendable tales. It seemed a funny detail to me.

To be continued...