X:Men: A Diamond in the Rough - Chapter 2
Title: A Diamond in the Rough
Author: Silk
Email: katiepult@gmail.com
Fandom/Pairing: AU X-Men (Comic-verse), Emma Frost/OC Femslash
Disclaimers: Marvel & its characters aren't mine. The Original Character is mine however. I don't usually approve of disclaimers. Since books don't have them why should I?
Anyone who is familiar with the Marvel-verse knows there are many alternate Earths and this is my version. Beta'd by Whedonist (1shinyboat )- Thank you for the kick in the ass. Ratings will go up to NC17. Any special disclaimers will be posted with that chapter.
Chapter 1
Chapter Two
Sitting up in bed abruptly, Emma Frost barely held back the scream that threatened to spill out from her lips. She was breathing fast, panting so hard that the sound echoed off her bedroom walls but barely heard over the thunder of her own heart. Collapsing back onto her bed, she spent several minutes staring up at the ceiling, striving to calm her mind and body.
Not an easy task for her these past few days.
She knew that having the same nightmare night after night didn't take a therapist to understand something was plaguing her.
With a small unladylike grunt of annoyance, she threw back her soaked sheets and headed for the bathroom. Sweat dripped off her body, her white silk camisole and French cut underwear clinging to her like the soaked strands of platinum blonde hair that clung to her face and neck. Not a state she normally enjoyed.
Emma believed that if she was going to work up a sweat, it had better be for more pleasurable pursuits, not because her memories were haunting her.
Unfortunately for her, these days she slept alone but considering the company Emma was currently keeping. She wasn’t sure if the single occupancy of her bedchamber was a pro or con. Moving back on to the premises of the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters to be a teacher again wasn't the issue, it was the other teachers and resident adults that always left her with a bit of a headache after the end of the day.
Emma Grace Frost, also known as the White Queen, was a billionaire, mutant, ex-villain and bitch. She wasn’t a popular person to these people, but that was due more to the ex-villain and bitch attributes than anything else.
Nothing like using your formidable telepathy to ransack someone's brains, delving into their psyche without their permission or taking over their body in order to infiltrate the super-powered team that these people belonged to and then coming to live amongst them.
Stripping quickly, she tossed her sleepwear into the hamper and walked straight to her shower, not even bothering to look at herself in the mirror as was her usual. She'd be the first to admit that she was a tad narcissistic, but even she can't stand the sight of herself sweaty and in utter disrepair. Emma stepped into the spray before it even warmed up, wanting the cool water to help finish washing the dregs of her nightmares away.
Emma hated being out of control, especially since she was a telepath. In fact, the idea of waking up in a sweat due to nightmares and not due to more carnal reasons was anathema to her.
She'd been born and bred in Boston, Massachusetts. Privately schooled in the best money could offer, money that could buy almost anything on earth and doled out by a father lavishly in place of love. Get an A+ in a grade and you were rewarded. Get an A or lower and you were a disappointment to the family name. And it was all now coupled with a body that most would kill for, with some discrete surgical help when she became an adult and forcibly took over her father's business.
Top that off with mental powers that some would kill for, and several that had actually attempted to do so, and you had Emma Frost, the woman who had taken her father's empire and drove him away penniless and then proceeded to swell the companies coffers and enterprises to unfathomable bounds, only to find herself living and teaching at a school for mutants and fight for the plight of others as a member of the world famous, or infamous depending on whom you talked to, X-Men.
She was so many things, powerful and beautiful not the least amongst them, and yet here she was behaving like a scared child.
Leaning back into the spray, Emma closed her eyes and let the water run down her body, the heat beating down on her, slowly relaxing her.
Genosha.
Over sixteen million souls murdered in a few hours, nearly all of them like herself; mutants.
Homo sapiens superior. Hated by many for just being born. Feared by countless more.
In a mansion full of mutants, if anyone one of them even thought of the name Genosha the psychic landscape went from the normal untrained turbulence that usually surrounded any group of people, to an almost wild rapid with dangerous boulders and whirlpools strewn throughout.
Fate has a sick sense of humor, Emma mused to herself and lifted an arm and watched as her secondary mutation began to take over her body. It was the only good thing she had taken away from that haunted place.
Enjoying the feel of her fingertips hardening, Emma transformed slowly, her telepathic senses dulling to nothing.
Diamond.
Soon she was all smooth, flawless, shimmering organic diamond. Her eyes. Her normally sharp-witted tongue. Her hair. All of her organs. Her heart.
Especially her heart.
What had Hank called me? Oh yes... An exoskeleton of invulnerable organic jewelry, she snorted softly. I wonder how much my insurance premium with Lloyd's of London will go up? Emma thought to herself.
She hated the night lately. A handful of months had passed since her ordeal, and she thought she had a handle on what had happened to her. Yet, the night terrors had returned with a vengeance the last few evenings. It didn't matter that she was a world class telepath and extremely capable therapist; she was finding it hard to cure herself and that completely rankled her, making her more of a bitch during the days than usual.
Nothing really helped; not a glass of the best brandy money could buy, nor driving herself to exhaustion throughout the day. Visions of the blackened ash landscape. Half collapsed and burning buildings. The bones of millions. That was what woke her every night this week.
That and the screams.
With an annoyed hiss, Emma let her diamond form flow back to her normal, flawless skinned self and turned off the shower. She didn't bother drying her hair, not when she might get a few more hours sleep if she was lucky. Instead she dried off, slipped on a fresh set of white lace underwear and a satin top, grabbed her favorite short robe and padded quietly out of her room.
The mansion was quiet, a pleasant change from the normal tumultuous day of children running between classes and play.
Her mind reached out as she paced down the hall to the kitchen, brushing against the minds of her students, automatically soothing one or two that were having their own nightmares.
If only she had someone to sooth her own, she thought bitterly.
The light was on in the smaller faculty kitchen so she wasn't startled to see Jean Grey, another teacher and telepath, sitting quietly in the corner sipping what smelled like jasmine tea.
"There's a fresh pot of it, if you'd care for some," the tall, leggy red head offered politely, motioning towards the tea pot.
"Thank you, but I think I need something a bit stronger."
While Emma would rather be alone at the moment, she didn't truly mind the woman's company. Jean was one of the original X-Men, a foe of hers back when Emma believed gaining power was more important than anything else in the world. Tall with long coltish legs and gorgeous red hair that never needed to be curled. And with all of that she had a personable personality, not like Emma herself she admitted. But then Emma still believed that being feared was preferable to being coddled to. She preferred the frank hostility of her peers to the less desirable “sucking up to the powerful telepath” that most of her students attempted.
Opening the freezer, she proceeded to dig amongst the frozen peas and onions in the far back, dragging her prize out with satisfaction. Peter's stash wasn't as secret as he thought it was, Emma having gotten that tidbit from their resident Russian's mind almost as soon as she moved into the mansion.
Consciously prying into the minds of the people around her was a violation of course, not that that had ever stopped her, but she rarely had to resort to such measures when unshielded thoughts were always bombarding her. She could care less about who was dating whom and who was curious about what was for dinner. Idle thoughts were usually boring and an annoyance to her, but once in a while someone would think something interesting. Like Peter and his vodka.
Bringing the bottle and two glasses to the table, Emma graciously set the bottle between her and the other woman and slid a glass to her, just in case she wanted to join her.
A few long moments passed, each woman just enjoying the quiet and their choice of drinks. The window just behind Jean was still pitch dark, not even the faint trace of predawn light could be seen.
"You've been up this early for the last several nights. Care to share?" Jean asked quietly as she set aside her tea and poured herself some of the chilled vodka Emma had purloined.
"Ahh. So that's why you're here? Ambushing me. Clever, clever girl." Emma did her best not to grimace at her own inability to sleep. The fact that it had been noticed didn't sit well with her.
"It's mostly self-preservation. You've been rather... vocal on the psychic plain. None of the other telepaths have wanted to talk to you about it in fear that you'd make them all run screaming in fear," Jean smiled slightly to show she wasn't taking Emma's slightly cold tone and words to heart. "Genosha?"
It wasn't that she wanted to share with Jean, they were both telepaths and if not exactly friends, at least they weren't at each other throats anymore. In fact, Jean had been the first to set aside their differences and started to treat Emma, if not exactly like her bosom buddy, then not like an enemy of the X-Men anymore. Far better than some of the others, even the ones that like her with darker pasts.
"I'm not here to be your therapist, although God knows you need one," Jean smiled letting her know that the last was said in humor, "I’m just here as a friend."
"A friend?" The echoed words were said in almost bitter disbelief. Emma knew from long experience that anyone who said they were her friend always had ulterior motives. It was just another tool, just as sex was.
"Yes. Whether or not you like it."
"Oh very well. If it will keep you from ambushing me in the middle of the night again," Emma muttered in exasperation. Letting Jean believe she had her hooks in her couldn't hurt. She took another sip from her glass before continuing. "Yes, I've been having dreams of that dreadful place. I’m quite sure everyone on the team has."
"Anything specific or..."
Emma's thumb stroked along the lip of her tea cup as she spoke. "Oddly, the nightmares are slightly different than just after it happened. It starts out the same with the city gone but then it changes. I'm always searching for something... someone maybe. It ends in darkness with the smell… of something rotting. Quite disgusting actually.”
"It's been months, do you think subconsciously you believe there's another survivor?"
"I don't see how. We searched that island thoroughly and the Cuckoos were on Cerebra." The powerful machine under the school built by Xavier with alien and advanced technology was created to expand a telepath's power immensely. One of it's abilities was to search out the unique signature that each mutant had and compare it to the database. The machine was one of the ways that the staff at the mansion had known instantly of the fate of the people there. The rapidly declining mutant population had set off all the alarms and immediately a team had been dispatched. Although the machine wasn't infallible, the search for survivors after the fall of Genosha had been lead by Emma's three favorite students, three identical clones of Emma’s, once five, whose natural psychic gestalt was stronger than Emma or Jean herself when the three were together. They were nicknamed the Cuckoos, a name they had recently changed to the 3 in 1.
Jean sat her glass on the table, spinning it slowly. "I think we should have Cerebra take a look."
"This is ridiculous. It's just a dream," Emma shot back. "Besides, I don't want word of this getting back to Scott. That's all I need is that man breathing down my neck and accusing me of being mentally unstable. Again."
"More than usual?" the red head teased.
"We all have our quirks, Jean dear. At least I’m up front about mine."
Silence settled between them for several minutes with Emma eying the other telepath warily. She was fidgeting and Emma detested fidgeting. Something was obviously bothering the other woman and she didn’t think it had anything to do with nightmares.
"Have you noticed that he has taken to carrying around a telepathy blocker?" Jean asks nonchalantly, as if she was talking about the weather and not her ex-husband’s sudden need for mental privacy.
"Yes and isn't that just the most annoying sound? Like crickets mating with the sound of fingernails on a blackboard." The blonde telepath's cultured accent sounded odd through clenched teeth. She knew this was about the woman's ex-husband and it wasn't a subject she really wanted to talk about, but Emma supposed it was only fair since they'd discussed her sleeping habits. "I can't even walk within twenty feet of him without feeling as if some reptile is clawing at the inside of my cranium."
"He's become more reclusive, if that's even possible." Jean reached up, ran a hand through her red hair and twirled a lock absently around a finger. "He makes me so tired, Emma. I was always there for him, helping him. I never turned my back on his pain. And there's so much pain, especially since he lost his sight. To first have his vision handicapped by his mutation, never seeing the world as we do having to always use that visor or wind up blasting a hole through whatever he looks at. Then to be possessed by that monster Apocalypse and his eyes ripped out, to have even his mutation taken away along with his eyes... I don't think I could deal with it if it had happened to me.
"We've... We were," she corrected herself, with barely any hesitation Emma noticed, "together for so long, but he wasn't really there when I needed him. And since the attack, he turned completely away from me. In the end I was married more to marital aides than Scott."
Emma sighed internally, wondering what she had done this week to piss off God that he'd put her in this situation. If they were going to continue talking like this she was going to have to go to her office and break the good alcohol out.
Carefully refilling both their drinks, Emma sighed and bit the bullet. "I used to think that Scott was the ultimate Boy Scout. Hearing how you two were ‘made’ for each other, the perfect couple… well I’m sure you could imagine how nauseated I felt. I even flirted with the idea of seducing him under your very nose, Jean. Not physically, but I considered tempting him with a psychic affair.”
"What stopped you?" the other telepath asked curiously.
At least she didn't sound like the red head was going to rip her brain into confetti. That was a plus for the evening.
"Self-respect," Emma answered then rolled her eyes at Jean's obvious disbelief.
"Well self-respect was part of it. Part of it was you as well. I'm not sure if you know this, but your gifts... well, while I was tempted, I wasn't willing to be mentally torn apart by you. The Phoenix gets a bit out of hand when your emotions come into play," she said honestly, referring to the cosmic entity that had bonded with the other woman.
"Thank you Emma. I was aware," she said with some humor. Jean was not under any illusions when it came to her powers. "I'm surprised to hear you say that. You've always seemed so..."
"Jealous of the almighty Jean Grey?" Emma supplied easily and with a bit of a bite.
"Well, not of me, but perhaps of my gifts."
"My dear Jean, my telepathic abilities are as powerful as your own without that overgrown bird in your head. And while I do not have any active telekinetic power, I think I make up for it with being an oversized and flawless gem. If it weren't for that entity that you've bonded with, I'm sure I could take you." The blonde telepath's smile took any heat out of her words and to her surprise Jean laughed.
"We could sell tickets to the match."
"I could always use the extra spare change. There's this absolutely stunning diamond bracelet at Tiffani's that I've had my eye on."
"Emma, you're insanely wealthily. You don't need the extra money to buy it."
"No, you're quite right. But using another's money to purchase it gives it more sentimental value."
Jean's chuckle made Emma's own lips twitch. She was pleased that she had steered the conversation away from the woman's doomed marriage and into a more playful direction.
"Do you think he's hiding something?" the other woman asked making Emma cringe mentally. So much for changing the conversation.
"It's Scott Summers. Of course he's hiding something." Emma sighed and took a nice long sip of her drink, letting the sting of the alcohol absorb her attention for the moment. She hated this, this frail emotional wasteland that everyone seemed to want to take her through since she moved here. Looking out the window on the other side of Jean, she wished she was out there right now, away from all this 'talking about feelings' and the minefield that was Scott Summers, but she wasn't and a Frost was not raised to be a coward.
Fine, the woman wanted to know her opinion? She would get it.
"Scott is a crusader and the problem with being a crusader is that you have to continue to believe. Crusades are dangerous things and I think that since the accident he's found himself stuck halfway between continuing to be a follower of Xavier's dream and seeing that dream crushed time after time. I'm also sure Apocalypse making his rip out his own eyes before his son could pull out that monster’s astral form... well, we know what that ended up doing to a man like Scott," she looked into the other woman's eyes, speaking frankly.
The X-Men had run into Apocalypse many times and while they had always managed to drive him off, it was never really a victory. How could you beat the man who was born over five thousand years old and just kept coming back again and again. This latest run-in had found Apocalypse invading Scott Summer’s mind and even though he’d been defeated and drove out he had taken his revenge by making Scott tear out his eyes with his own hands.
"He's stuck. He can't get away from what Charles taught him; most of you original X-Men are like that to some degree, and being paranoid and disillusioned. It makes him dangerous. He's questioning every decision that's made here at the school and our decisions on missions, as if he knows better than any of us. We go off, leaving him and you know... you can feel it just as I do Jean; the frustration level he was putting out before he got that damn dampener was obvious.
"I don't know what he's up to. I don't know if he's a danger to us or the children, but that man is breaking. I just hope to God he doesn't take us with him," Emma tore her gaze from the window back to the volatile woman beside her.
The two women continued to look at each other in silence. Emma kept her shields tight but allowed her own feeling of sincerity to leak through. She wasn't entirely sure how the other woman would take what she'd said. Her own history of manipulation and deceit versus the X-Men worked against her most of the time and she knew Jean was considering that. She would be a fool not to.
Jean sighed and finally nodded in agreement with what she'd said. She had known Xavier since she was young, pulled out of a mental institution for 'hearing voices', trained alongside the first group of X-Men, all so young and full of hope with Xavier's dream of humans and mutant's living together to fuel them.
Life isn't a dream however and Jean had died and come back to life and seen so much, that the dream wasn't as alive anymore. She wasn't sixteen anymore and didn't believe in wishes coming true and peace on earth. Santa wasn’t real and mutants were hunted everywhere.
"A part of me still loves him and worries about him," she admitted before tilting her glass up and draining it all in one long swallow.
"He needs help," Emma replied softly.
"I’ll try to talk to him again," green eyes pleaded with her.
"Of course."
"So you really found Scott attractive?"
Jean's question came out of nowhere, surprising her. The idea that she shouldn't have gotten out of bed was looking like a smart one.
"Him? Well, he's not entirely hard to look at, even since the accident." She let her lips curl up in a smile. "I found him quite charming on occasion, in a Boy Scout kind of way. Fortunately, I found that time and a healthy amount of shopping cures anything, even a small infatuation with Scott Summers."
"Your sarcasm is unattractive," Jean shot back, returning her smile.
"You're a terrible liar. My acerbic wit is wonderfully attractive and one of the high points of your day. Denying it is what's unattractive. Saying exactly what you mean is rather freeing, my dear, you should try it more often."
"God, I hate you." The red-head rolled her eyes in mild annoyance, but still smiling.
"See? Just like that. Admit it, that felt good, didn't it?"
Onto Chapter 3
Author: Silk
Email: katiepult@gmail.com
Fandom/Pairing: AU X-Men (Comic-verse), Emma Frost/OC Femslash
Disclaimers: Marvel & its characters aren't mine. The Original Character is mine however. I don't usually approve of disclaimers. Since books don't have them why should I?
Anyone who is familiar with the Marvel-verse knows there are many alternate Earths and this is my version. Beta'd by Whedonist (1shinyboat )- Thank you for the kick in the ass. Ratings will go up to NC17. Any special disclaimers will be posted with that chapter.
Chapter 1
Chapter Two
Sitting up in bed abruptly, Emma Frost barely held back the scream that threatened to spill out from her lips. She was breathing fast, panting so hard that the sound echoed off her bedroom walls but barely heard over the thunder of her own heart. Collapsing back onto her bed, she spent several minutes staring up at the ceiling, striving to calm her mind and body.
Not an easy task for her these past few days.
She knew that having the same nightmare night after night didn't take a therapist to understand something was plaguing her.
With a small unladylike grunt of annoyance, she threw back her soaked sheets and headed for the bathroom. Sweat dripped off her body, her white silk camisole and French cut underwear clinging to her like the soaked strands of platinum blonde hair that clung to her face and neck. Not a state she normally enjoyed.
Emma believed that if she was going to work up a sweat, it had better be for more pleasurable pursuits, not because her memories were haunting her.
Unfortunately for her, these days she slept alone but considering the company Emma was currently keeping. She wasn’t sure if the single occupancy of her bedchamber was a pro or con. Moving back on to the premises of the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters to be a teacher again wasn't the issue, it was the other teachers and resident adults that always left her with a bit of a headache after the end of the day.
Emma Grace Frost, also known as the White Queen, was a billionaire, mutant, ex-villain and bitch. She wasn’t a popular person to these people, but that was due more to the ex-villain and bitch attributes than anything else.
Nothing like using your formidable telepathy to ransack someone's brains, delving into their psyche without their permission or taking over their body in order to infiltrate the super-powered team that these people belonged to and then coming to live amongst them.
Stripping quickly, she tossed her sleepwear into the hamper and walked straight to her shower, not even bothering to look at herself in the mirror as was her usual. She'd be the first to admit that she was a tad narcissistic, but even she can't stand the sight of herself sweaty and in utter disrepair. Emma stepped into the spray before it even warmed up, wanting the cool water to help finish washing the dregs of her nightmares away.
Emma hated being out of control, especially since she was a telepath. In fact, the idea of waking up in a sweat due to nightmares and not due to more carnal reasons was anathema to her.
She'd been born and bred in Boston, Massachusetts. Privately schooled in the best money could offer, money that could buy almost anything on earth and doled out by a father lavishly in place of love. Get an A+ in a grade and you were rewarded. Get an A or lower and you were a disappointment to the family name. And it was all now coupled with a body that most would kill for, with some discrete surgical help when she became an adult and forcibly took over her father's business.
Top that off with mental powers that some would kill for, and several that had actually attempted to do so, and you had Emma Frost, the woman who had taken her father's empire and drove him away penniless and then proceeded to swell the companies coffers and enterprises to unfathomable bounds, only to find herself living and teaching at a school for mutants and fight for the plight of others as a member of the world famous, or infamous depending on whom you talked to, X-Men.
She was so many things, powerful and beautiful not the least amongst them, and yet here she was behaving like a scared child.
Leaning back into the spray, Emma closed her eyes and let the water run down her body, the heat beating down on her, slowly relaxing her.
Genosha.
Over sixteen million souls murdered in a few hours, nearly all of them like herself; mutants.
Homo sapiens superior. Hated by many for just being born. Feared by countless more.
In a mansion full of mutants, if anyone one of them even thought of the name Genosha the psychic landscape went from the normal untrained turbulence that usually surrounded any group of people, to an almost wild rapid with dangerous boulders and whirlpools strewn throughout.
Fate has a sick sense of humor, Emma mused to herself and lifted an arm and watched as her secondary mutation began to take over her body. It was the only good thing she had taken away from that haunted place.
Enjoying the feel of her fingertips hardening, Emma transformed slowly, her telepathic senses dulling to nothing.
Diamond.
Soon she was all smooth, flawless, shimmering organic diamond. Her eyes. Her normally sharp-witted tongue. Her hair. All of her organs. Her heart.
Especially her heart.
What had Hank called me? Oh yes... An exoskeleton of invulnerable organic jewelry, she snorted softly. I wonder how much my insurance premium with Lloyd's of London will go up? Emma thought to herself.
She hated the night lately. A handful of months had passed since her ordeal, and she thought she had a handle on what had happened to her. Yet, the night terrors had returned with a vengeance the last few evenings. It didn't matter that she was a world class telepath and extremely capable therapist; she was finding it hard to cure herself and that completely rankled her, making her more of a bitch during the days than usual.
Nothing really helped; not a glass of the best brandy money could buy, nor driving herself to exhaustion throughout the day. Visions of the blackened ash landscape. Half collapsed and burning buildings. The bones of millions. That was what woke her every night this week.
That and the screams.
With an annoyed hiss, Emma let her diamond form flow back to her normal, flawless skinned self and turned off the shower. She didn't bother drying her hair, not when she might get a few more hours sleep if she was lucky. Instead she dried off, slipped on a fresh set of white lace underwear and a satin top, grabbed her favorite short robe and padded quietly out of her room.
The mansion was quiet, a pleasant change from the normal tumultuous day of children running between classes and play.
Her mind reached out as she paced down the hall to the kitchen, brushing against the minds of her students, automatically soothing one or two that were having their own nightmares.
If only she had someone to sooth her own, she thought bitterly.
The light was on in the smaller faculty kitchen so she wasn't startled to see Jean Grey, another teacher and telepath, sitting quietly in the corner sipping what smelled like jasmine tea.
"There's a fresh pot of it, if you'd care for some," the tall, leggy red head offered politely, motioning towards the tea pot.
"Thank you, but I think I need something a bit stronger."
While Emma would rather be alone at the moment, she didn't truly mind the woman's company. Jean was one of the original X-Men, a foe of hers back when Emma believed gaining power was more important than anything else in the world. Tall with long coltish legs and gorgeous red hair that never needed to be curled. And with all of that she had a personable personality, not like Emma herself she admitted. But then Emma still believed that being feared was preferable to being coddled to. She preferred the frank hostility of her peers to the less desirable “sucking up to the powerful telepath” that most of her students attempted.
Opening the freezer, she proceeded to dig amongst the frozen peas and onions in the far back, dragging her prize out with satisfaction. Peter's stash wasn't as secret as he thought it was, Emma having gotten that tidbit from their resident Russian's mind almost as soon as she moved into the mansion.
Consciously prying into the minds of the people around her was a violation of course, not that that had ever stopped her, but she rarely had to resort to such measures when unshielded thoughts were always bombarding her. She could care less about who was dating whom and who was curious about what was for dinner. Idle thoughts were usually boring and an annoyance to her, but once in a while someone would think something interesting. Like Peter and his vodka.
Bringing the bottle and two glasses to the table, Emma graciously set the bottle between her and the other woman and slid a glass to her, just in case she wanted to join her.
A few long moments passed, each woman just enjoying the quiet and their choice of drinks. The window just behind Jean was still pitch dark, not even the faint trace of predawn light could be seen.
"You've been up this early for the last several nights. Care to share?" Jean asked quietly as she set aside her tea and poured herself some of the chilled vodka Emma had purloined.
"Ahh. So that's why you're here? Ambushing me. Clever, clever girl." Emma did her best not to grimace at her own inability to sleep. The fact that it had been noticed didn't sit well with her.
"It's mostly self-preservation. You've been rather... vocal on the psychic plain. None of the other telepaths have wanted to talk to you about it in fear that you'd make them all run screaming in fear," Jean smiled slightly to show she wasn't taking Emma's slightly cold tone and words to heart. "Genosha?"
It wasn't that she wanted to share with Jean, they were both telepaths and if not exactly friends, at least they weren't at each other throats anymore. In fact, Jean had been the first to set aside their differences and started to treat Emma, if not exactly like her bosom buddy, then not like an enemy of the X-Men anymore. Far better than some of the others, even the ones that like her with darker pasts.
"I'm not here to be your therapist, although God knows you need one," Jean smiled letting her know that the last was said in humor, "I’m just here as a friend."
"A friend?" The echoed words were said in almost bitter disbelief. Emma knew from long experience that anyone who said they were her friend always had ulterior motives. It was just another tool, just as sex was.
"Yes. Whether or not you like it."
"Oh very well. If it will keep you from ambushing me in the middle of the night again," Emma muttered in exasperation. Letting Jean believe she had her hooks in her couldn't hurt. She took another sip from her glass before continuing. "Yes, I've been having dreams of that dreadful place. I’m quite sure everyone on the team has."
"Anything specific or..."
Emma's thumb stroked along the lip of her tea cup as she spoke. "Oddly, the nightmares are slightly different than just after it happened. It starts out the same with the city gone but then it changes. I'm always searching for something... someone maybe. It ends in darkness with the smell… of something rotting. Quite disgusting actually.”
"It's been months, do you think subconsciously you believe there's another survivor?"
"I don't see how. We searched that island thoroughly and the Cuckoos were on Cerebra." The powerful machine under the school built by Xavier with alien and advanced technology was created to expand a telepath's power immensely. One of it's abilities was to search out the unique signature that each mutant had and compare it to the database. The machine was one of the ways that the staff at the mansion had known instantly of the fate of the people there. The rapidly declining mutant population had set off all the alarms and immediately a team had been dispatched. Although the machine wasn't infallible, the search for survivors after the fall of Genosha had been lead by Emma's three favorite students, three identical clones of Emma’s, once five, whose natural psychic gestalt was stronger than Emma or Jean herself when the three were together. They were nicknamed the Cuckoos, a name they had recently changed to the 3 in 1.
Jean sat her glass on the table, spinning it slowly. "I think we should have Cerebra take a look."
"This is ridiculous. It's just a dream," Emma shot back. "Besides, I don't want word of this getting back to Scott. That's all I need is that man breathing down my neck and accusing me of being mentally unstable. Again."
"More than usual?" the red head teased.
"We all have our quirks, Jean dear. At least I’m up front about mine."
Silence settled between them for several minutes with Emma eying the other telepath warily. She was fidgeting and Emma detested fidgeting. Something was obviously bothering the other woman and she didn’t think it had anything to do with nightmares.
"Have you noticed that he has taken to carrying around a telepathy blocker?" Jean asks nonchalantly, as if she was talking about the weather and not her ex-husband’s sudden need for mental privacy.
"Yes and isn't that just the most annoying sound? Like crickets mating with the sound of fingernails on a blackboard." The blonde telepath's cultured accent sounded odd through clenched teeth. She knew this was about the woman's ex-husband and it wasn't a subject she really wanted to talk about, but Emma supposed it was only fair since they'd discussed her sleeping habits. "I can't even walk within twenty feet of him without feeling as if some reptile is clawing at the inside of my cranium."
"He's become more reclusive, if that's even possible." Jean reached up, ran a hand through her red hair and twirled a lock absently around a finger. "He makes me so tired, Emma. I was always there for him, helping him. I never turned my back on his pain. And there's so much pain, especially since he lost his sight. To first have his vision handicapped by his mutation, never seeing the world as we do having to always use that visor or wind up blasting a hole through whatever he looks at. Then to be possessed by that monster Apocalypse and his eyes ripped out, to have even his mutation taken away along with his eyes... I don't think I could deal with it if it had happened to me.
"We've... We were," she corrected herself, with barely any hesitation Emma noticed, "together for so long, but he wasn't really there when I needed him. And since the attack, he turned completely away from me. In the end I was married more to marital aides than Scott."
Emma sighed internally, wondering what she had done this week to piss off God that he'd put her in this situation. If they were going to continue talking like this she was going to have to go to her office and break the good alcohol out.
Carefully refilling both their drinks, Emma sighed and bit the bullet. "I used to think that Scott was the ultimate Boy Scout. Hearing how you two were ‘made’ for each other, the perfect couple… well I’m sure you could imagine how nauseated I felt. I even flirted with the idea of seducing him under your very nose, Jean. Not physically, but I considered tempting him with a psychic affair.”
"What stopped you?" the other telepath asked curiously.
At least she didn't sound like the red head was going to rip her brain into confetti. That was a plus for the evening.
"Self-respect," Emma answered then rolled her eyes at Jean's obvious disbelief.
"Well self-respect was part of it. Part of it was you as well. I'm not sure if you know this, but your gifts... well, while I was tempted, I wasn't willing to be mentally torn apart by you. The Phoenix gets a bit out of hand when your emotions come into play," she said honestly, referring to the cosmic entity that had bonded with the other woman.
"Thank you Emma. I was aware," she said with some humor. Jean was not under any illusions when it came to her powers. "I'm surprised to hear you say that. You've always seemed so..."
"Jealous of the almighty Jean Grey?" Emma supplied easily and with a bit of a bite.
"Well, not of me, but perhaps of my gifts."
"My dear Jean, my telepathic abilities are as powerful as your own without that overgrown bird in your head. And while I do not have any active telekinetic power, I think I make up for it with being an oversized and flawless gem. If it weren't for that entity that you've bonded with, I'm sure I could take you." The blonde telepath's smile took any heat out of her words and to her surprise Jean laughed.
"We could sell tickets to the match."
"I could always use the extra spare change. There's this absolutely stunning diamond bracelet at Tiffani's that I've had my eye on."
"Emma, you're insanely wealthily. You don't need the extra money to buy it."
"No, you're quite right. But using another's money to purchase it gives it more sentimental value."
Jean's chuckle made Emma's own lips twitch. She was pleased that she had steered the conversation away from the woman's doomed marriage and into a more playful direction.
"Do you think he's hiding something?" the other woman asked making Emma cringe mentally. So much for changing the conversation.
"It's Scott Summers. Of course he's hiding something." Emma sighed and took a nice long sip of her drink, letting the sting of the alcohol absorb her attention for the moment. She hated this, this frail emotional wasteland that everyone seemed to want to take her through since she moved here. Looking out the window on the other side of Jean, she wished she was out there right now, away from all this 'talking about feelings' and the minefield that was Scott Summers, but she wasn't and a Frost was not raised to be a coward.
Fine, the woman wanted to know her opinion? She would get it.
"Scott is a crusader and the problem with being a crusader is that you have to continue to believe. Crusades are dangerous things and I think that since the accident he's found himself stuck halfway between continuing to be a follower of Xavier's dream and seeing that dream crushed time after time. I'm also sure Apocalypse making his rip out his own eyes before his son could pull out that monster’s astral form... well, we know what that ended up doing to a man like Scott," she looked into the other woman's eyes, speaking frankly.
The X-Men had run into Apocalypse many times and while they had always managed to drive him off, it was never really a victory. How could you beat the man who was born over five thousand years old and just kept coming back again and again. This latest run-in had found Apocalypse invading Scott Summer’s mind and even though he’d been defeated and drove out he had taken his revenge by making Scott tear out his eyes with his own hands.
"He's stuck. He can't get away from what Charles taught him; most of you original X-Men are like that to some degree, and being paranoid and disillusioned. It makes him dangerous. He's questioning every decision that's made here at the school and our decisions on missions, as if he knows better than any of us. We go off, leaving him and you know... you can feel it just as I do Jean; the frustration level he was putting out before he got that damn dampener was obvious.
"I don't know what he's up to. I don't know if he's a danger to us or the children, but that man is breaking. I just hope to God he doesn't take us with him," Emma tore her gaze from the window back to the volatile woman beside her.
The two women continued to look at each other in silence. Emma kept her shields tight but allowed her own feeling of sincerity to leak through. She wasn't entirely sure how the other woman would take what she'd said. Her own history of manipulation and deceit versus the X-Men worked against her most of the time and she knew Jean was considering that. She would be a fool not to.
Jean sighed and finally nodded in agreement with what she'd said. She had known Xavier since she was young, pulled out of a mental institution for 'hearing voices', trained alongside the first group of X-Men, all so young and full of hope with Xavier's dream of humans and mutant's living together to fuel them.
Life isn't a dream however and Jean had died and come back to life and seen so much, that the dream wasn't as alive anymore. She wasn't sixteen anymore and didn't believe in wishes coming true and peace on earth. Santa wasn’t real and mutants were hunted everywhere.
"A part of me still loves him and worries about him," she admitted before tilting her glass up and draining it all in one long swallow.
"He needs help," Emma replied softly.
"I’ll try to talk to him again," green eyes pleaded with her.
"Of course."
"So you really found Scott attractive?"
Jean's question came out of nowhere, surprising her. The idea that she shouldn't have gotten out of bed was looking like a smart one.
"Him? Well, he's not entirely hard to look at, even since the accident." She let her lips curl up in a smile. "I found him quite charming on occasion, in a Boy Scout kind of way. Fortunately, I found that time and a healthy amount of shopping cures anything, even a small infatuation with Scott Summers."
"Your sarcasm is unattractive," Jean shot back, returning her smile.
"You're a terrible liar. My acerbic wit is wonderfully attractive and one of the high points of your day. Denying it is what's unattractive. Saying exactly what you mean is rather freeing, my dear, you should try it more often."
"God, I hate you." The red-head rolled her eyes in mild annoyance, but still smiling.
"See? Just like that. Admit it, that felt good, didn't it?"
Onto Chapter 3