It's been ages since I've read any new comics, but two days ago I started All New X-Men, and tonight this happened. So enjoy.

Jean was crying. Scott could hear it through the door.

Headmistress Kitty - that was her name, right? - had given Jean her bedroom while the rest of them shared one of the dorms on the floor below. Scott hadn't been able to sleep, and somehow he had just known that Jean would still be awake as well. He hadn't counted on the crying thing, but if anything that only provided a greater incentive to knock on her door.

She didn't answer right away, but she did stop crying. He knocked again, and a strangled sob followed almost immediately. It reminded him of trying to force back a cough as to not interrupt the professor - it just made things worse when it inevitably erupted.

Without warning, the door swung open.

Scott stepped inside, finding, instead of Jean, a Jean-shaped lump hiding under the blankets. He sat down gingerly on the edge of the mattress and his hand hovered unsurely for a moment over the place where her shoulder would be, before he let it rest lightly on the trembling mass.

It briefly crossed his mind that she might not wear any clothes to bed, and that even that simple, meant-to-be-comforting gesture might be stepping over a line that was not meant to be crossed.

"I'm not naked." Jean's voice was muffled by the blankets covering her head, and Scott blanched. He doubted for a second that he had heard her correctly, then realisation dawned on him.

"Oh," he blushed, "Well... that'll take some getting used to."

Jean shifted under the blankets and the top of her head peaked out, adding a splash of slightly brighter red to the already red-washed interior of the room. Her back was to him, and Scott could have sworn she was pressing back against his leg on purpose. He allowed himself to stroke down her arm, and was relieved when she didn't shy away from him.

"You're telling me," Jean sighed.

"Are you okay?"

Another sigh, then Jean was abruptly rolling over and shoving the blankets off her head. She stared at Scott like she could see right through him.

"I'm going to die. Heaps. How are you?" Her tone was somewhat bitter, but under the puffiness surrounding her eyes, he could see genuine concern on her face.

"I'm going to kill the professor and join up with Magneto."

"I'm going to go crazy."

"Me too."

"We get married."

Scott's face lit up like a Christmas tree on New Years Eve. Despite everything that had gone on that day, despite everything they had learned about their future selves, Jean and Scott found themselves beaming at each other. If only for a split second.

"Lay down with me?" Jean asked in a quiet voice, shifting over on the bed to make room.

Scott didn't dare go under the covers, but he maneuvered himself into a comfortable position on the bed beside Jean, stretching one arm out to cushion her head and the other to rest lightly on her side.

"You cheat on me. You kiss her on my grave. And then, for some weird reason, I have a clone and you have a baby with her while I'm dead. His name is Nathanial, I think, and when I come back we raise him together. But there's all this other stuff as well and it doesn't really make sense. It's all a big mess in my head," Jean closed her eyes for a moment to rub the bridge of her nose. When she looked at him again, her eyes were so sad that it seemed to drive an ice-cold dagger through his chest.

"Scott, we go through so much. How can so much awful stuff happen to us? It's like, yesterday we were in our world and now we're here and it feels like no time at all to us but so much has happened. I don't understand how we can still be us. But we're not even us anymore. I mean, I'm dead and you're..."

Jean's eyes were the size of saucers. She was frowning in that adorable way of hers and rubbing her head and looking at him as if he held all the answers. Silently begging him to understand.

"I know." He said simply, at once causing the furrows in her forehead to become shallower, easing the tension that he could see in her shoulders and her jaw. "But that's why we're staying, isn't it? So we can fix it."

"When we go back, we'll have to convince the professor not to wipe our minds. I don't care if it breaks the time-stream continuum or whatever. We could stop everything before it even happens."

"As long as we still get married."

"And I still get a school named after me."

"And I'm still famous."

The teens grinned at each other.