Notes: Pyrrhic is a squel of sorts to Awaken, which was written sometime last October thereabouts. I'd recommend reading Awaken before Pyrrhic, but it's not an essential requirement at all.

Enjoy, folks.

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Charcter(s): Jean/Phoenix, minor Scott
Rating: PG-13 for dark themes and disturbing imagery
Word Count: 2094 words
Timeline/Setting: Post X-2
Disclaimer: Insert ye olde standard disclaimer here. Don't own 'em, no sir. That's Marvel's job.
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Summary: Once upon another universe, there would be a Phoenix whose lust for power would condemn an entire race; but this Phoenix was corrupted by a mere human mind. What if - what if the Phoenix's flames were tainted before they ever reached the woman known as Jean Grey?

What if Dark Phoenix was the only Phoenix that ever was, or ever would be?

Pyrrhic

"Welcome, Doctor."

She walks in slowly. Weary, sleepless eyes try to mutiny and shut down, or at least find solace in the murky pitch black void stretching out into infinity all around her, but she wills himself to look forward. The door slides shut behind her, a soft whrrr followed by a rapid series of clicks and clanks as the locking mechanism takes over.

Her hands tremble when she reaches for the console and overrides most of the security presets, but they are firm when she lifts the silver headset. Her fingers tense at the feel of pure, cold metal. She leans forward on the platform, eyes half closed, fingers clasping the edges of the central display panel all awash with zeros and ones and other worthless technical data. She closes her eyes and utters a silent prayer to any Divinity who might care enough to listen.

"Initiate contact," she whispers a moment later.

And jerks forward, a ragged sharp breath escaping her mouth, lips parted in a silent scream, knuckles gleaming a deadly shade of white as her clasp on the panel becomes a death grip. Her lush mane haphazardly tumbles over her shoulders, falling over her face – vision clouds in a splintery haze of red. Her hands tremble now, her knees almost unable to bear the burden she has cast on her shoulders: gasping, she slides down, half-kneeling at the edge of the console. Her trembling hands find enough strength (adrenaline, she supposes) to pull her up – her legs hold up this time, but her head is still hung low, the red mane still clouding her face. Her eyes are open now and cast down gazing deep into the dark spherical abyss below: she stays like this for another long, long half minute, breathing slowly, breathing evenly. Her hands still tremble.

"Please," she whispers, trying to stand up straight, "Please, just go – go away."

"Leave me be," she says, pleadingly almost, taking off the headset, pressing her fingertips to the sides of her forehead. "I can't – won't – do this. You know I can't…please." she finishes with a low moaning hiss, desperation clouding reason, fear clouding hope.

The battle has already been lost, however, the decision made, victors decided and territories occupied. Jean Grey, woman, reborn from the cold icy depths of Alkali, has lost.

And what has won?

The same creature which takes control of her now: the same creature which charges the air inside Cerebro with its own fire-red luminescence; the same creature which creates a windborne maelstrom round the helpless woman, swirling her fiery mane into a dizzying blood-red flame, twisting, turning, churning; the same creature which burns a hot magma flame over her dazzling green catseyes and surrounds her slim figure with an ethereal halo, bright enough that to gaze upon her would be like gazing into the very heart of the sun.

It is that same creature which burns in the very soul of the woman, bound to her well before Time even existed and bound to her well after Time shall be a distant memory.

It is that same creature, the Phoenix Everlasting.

~~~

By the time Scott reaches Cerebro, she is almost in control of herself again. Her fingers are still trembling, and her knees are still jelly-weak, but she manages a weak grin at him, wincing at the swift tapping sounds his shoes are making on the walkway.

He is angry, confused, depressed, concerned, and swimming in a host of other feelings which will surely poison his next day. He lets her know of his anger and concern, but she merely leans into him, letting him vent and help her walk back; she knows he is right in assuming that Jean Grey is in no shape to be messing about with Cerebro a mere week after returning, but she doesn't tell him that Jean Grey died in Alkali, and whatever remains of her in this husk will soon be burnt to a crisp to make way for a creature whose hunger can never be denied nor ever fulfilled.

He warns her after they're both back inside their little corner of Xavier's that he won't let her stay up this late, not until she's recovered fully – and just look at her now, damnit, she looks like hell and he just won't stand for this anymore. She smiles tiredly in reply as she changes into her sleeping gear and tucks in beside him.

"I'm sorry about earlier," he whispers in her ear later that night, holding her gently from behind, as if she were made of glass, as if she would shatter were he to hold on any tighter, "I really am. Couldn't help it." He kisses the back of her neck, and she shivers. "…I was worried, you know? Couldn't help it, just couldn't," he repeats, like he's trying to convince himself.

"I know," she replies quietly, holding his palm to her cheek, savouring its feel against her skin.

"I know," she hears herself murmur later on. "Thanks, Scott."

But he's already asleep.

~~~

It's only been weeks since the dreams have started, but she feels like they've been with her since forever.

A furious hungry flame which knows nothing else save satiating its lust on her and everything and everyone she has ever held dear; primal and animalistic in how it ravages her world, mocking and deceitful and beautiful and terrible all at once, in its pure malevolence as alluring as it is hateful.

But there is always more to the tale then just fire, for the fire is but a prelude to the real nightmares. Always more than just fire: Always that deceptively sweet siren's melody calling to her, beckoning her through the dream, through the flame, and she helpless to follow –

(sheistheoneherflamescannotbeextinguishedsheisphoenixrisingsheisforever)

- and follow she does, dreading every step forward, dreading every breath and every beat of her erratic heart, dreading what lies beyond the burning veil,

(fireswhichburnedtoinfinityanendlesscirclerebirthfromtheashes)

…and always waking up gasping for breath, eyes wide and her pulse pounding away at her forehead at a thousand beats per second: Thor's hammer out to do her in. Bathed in the darkness she waits every time, pulling her knees close to herself that she might rest her weary head as the hammer's blows recede and fade away into the stillborn night; eyes squeezed shut, she tries to remember what it was terrified her so, and fails, every damn time.

Sometimes, the nightmares are different, and in the worst sort of way, and when she awakens, she awakens not with just a gasp or a sob or a choking moan, but screaming in the agony and pain of it all: a scream which leaves no sonic echo, but a mental one, the psionic equivalent of a fragmentation grenade. She hates herself for not being able to stop it, and hates herself even more for not being able to bear it, but end reaction is still the same – eyes shut tight and arms in a vice grip around herself, murmuring incoherencies brought back from the land of the burning dreams, words of icewater and despair and murky underwater gloom.

But tonight, tonight is different.

Tonight, when she awakens, eyes wide and lips parted in a silent, horrified 'o', she awakens with a forbidden knowledge; she awakens because the firebird's final revelation has been cast upon her; there are no more secrets.

She awakens with her mind reeling, her body numb, both entirely unwilling to accept what she has just learned. Her body will not, cannot accept what she has just come to know. She manages to stumble to the bathroom, bile rising to her throat and threatening to overflow. She doesn't deny her body that much.

Minutes – seemingly hours, or days – later, she sitting at the edge of their bed, one knee tucked under her, arms loosely folded round her stomach, hugging herself as she rocks back and forth ever so slowly. It is not a cold night, but she is shivering all the same: her hands are trembling, and her breaths are drawn deep and ragged.

She would deny everything if she could, but this truth will not stop, barrelling through the numbness and shadow creeping at the edges of her mind to poison her very core.

She is too tired to be angry, now. Too tired to be shocked or infuriated or fearful or terrified. There is simply the knowledge, a burden which will poison the rest of her waking days and cripple any dreams she may ever have had, and there is simply the numb horror that comes with the knowledge, and the solitude too – for this burden is hers, and hers alone. This burden she will bear till the hunger beckons the Phoenix rise once more.

Time passes.

Absently, she turns back to watch Scott sprawled under the sheet, keeps watching for a little longer, a sad smile lingering at the edge of her lips. Turning her body, she reaches for him, whispers a kiss on his lips before tucking herself in next to him.

She is tired, so very tired.

Tired enough to sleep: not, perhaps, to dream.

~~~

The Phoenix's flames have long been corrupted.

That is the first thing she sees, lost deep in the quagmire of the Dreaming.

The firebird has been tainted long, long before she ever found Jean Grey: and the Dreaming streams her on a path through the bleak shrouded heavens to prove this.

She sees fully now, what she has only been told in half glimpsed flashes and half whispered nightmares, what has only been hinted at before.

She sees a star, leeched dry of any energy it has to offer, and she sees the supernova that follows: unable to close her eyes, unable to turn away, she watches a world, then another, fall to the lone star's dying throes. She feels the final death cry of billions of lost souls resonating in her mind: countless lives forever damned simply to feed a wanton hunger.

Revulsion overtakes her, and a hate so powerful she feels she cannot bear any more.

Then, she sees herself, smiling almost benevolently at the chaos and the carnage and mindless destruction.

She sees what the firebird once was – and what she will soon become.

~~~

When she awakens a second time, she clutches Scott.

Poor Scott, dear Scott, with his blind eyes and blind heart: she holds on to her poor dear Scott, while tears stream down her face and the silent screaming of countless lost souls echo in her mind. She cries for the lost souls, for herself, and for all those she can never tell her secret to.

She cries for Scott, for Charles Xavier, for Ororo Munroe, for Logan, for everyone who calls the mansion home, and she cries for every living being on her good earth.

She cries because the firebird will never rest until its hunger is satiated, and to satiate its hunger she must do one of two things, both unthinkable: partake of her own sun and corrupt herself entirely, at the price of leaving nothing behind, or leave behind everything she has ever known, and seek the dying stars which may replenish her yet. To seek life and leech it dry, to bring down the reaper's scythe on just-planted crop, or to seek death, and leave behind a life never fully lived: with the firebird already whispering poisonous nothings in her ear, she cannot bring herself to choose yet.

Take no memories, leave nothing behind?

Or Remember everything, leave everything behind?

She cannot choose.

Even now, the firebird's energy will last her a century, maybe more (she hopes), and she does not want to choose. Not yet, not just yet. But time will catch up to her soon enough, she knows this, too, wishing desperately she didn't. The Phoenix is of infinite patience: the firebird has waited millennia for a suitable host, and now it has found its soulmate, it can wait a few centuries more, if need be. Time there's enough of.

Not quite enough for Jean Grey, woman, reborn from Alkali's icewater, baptised through the fires of infinity, bound to the Phoenix Everlasting. So she waits, weeping tears no one else must ever see, hiding a secret no one must ever suspect, she waits with her burden, and she sheds her tears in silence.

When she finally falls asleep, the only prayer on her lips is to be free for one night, oh, just one night, from the infinite flames.

Just one night.

One infinite night.

~fin~