While You Were Sleeping

by Lise and River

She's in the tub when she feels it, flicking at the bubbles on her skin distractedly.

Jean wonders what to make for dinner, and if today is her turn at all, or tomorrow. Whether she needs a new blouse instead of her favorite, the one that got torn yesterday.

It's so residual, it takes a while before she realizes it's even there. Later, she'll remember the moment it started -- a flare of emotion, distant enough to only register on her mental shields, not be completely realized --she'll remember her hand on the edge of the tub, just then, and her shields turning to discard it, immediately, unconsciously, well trained.

The intensity of it, though, is residual, and by the time she really realizes it's there, he's passing on the other side of the door. She can hear him, and that's strange, because Logan usually moves quietly enough that it's hard to know he's there even without a thin wooden door separating you.

And then he's gone, but she's aware of him now, and the scent of suspicion -- that's how she's always thought about Logan's emotions, like things you could smell, fleeting and secretive, and then so strong you could almost taste them -- the scent of suspicion is close and intense enough that it takes a conscious effort of concentration to turn away.

She looks at the clusters of bubbles on her knees, raised just a few inches above the water, focuses on them, one of the first tricks Charles had ever taught her and still one of the most efficient for short-term blocking. But Logan has always been a weak spot, the kind that acknowledgment doesn't completely make better, and it only works halfway. The tiny reflection of light on the edge of a bubble shows her the ravine in the woods, a shadowed spot by a huge tree, and the recent rains must have affected the ground, because the side of the bank seems to have moved with the rains from last week, seems to be a lot more eroded than before. But then, years and years of rain have eaten away at this little ravine, moving the mud bit by bit.

She can see this sort of a strange lump where the water has shifted the red clay, sticking out of the steep bank. Curiosity, and half-realized wariness.

She blocks, and the bubbles are only reflecting the light in shivering colors. And then the Professor's face, frowning, and she's startled enough that she sits up straight and her knees dip beyond the water. And then his voice booms in her mind, almost a growl, like hearing your own voice through your own head, Logan's growl but distorted, and don't lie to me, don't lie to me, Chuck, don't don't don't lie to me.

She shoves it out with an effort, and stands up, and grabs the towel. Takes out the plug and stares at the water spinning down. She's uneasy, all of a sudden, and her head hurts, and the tiny whirlpool isn't offering anything more.

Usually, she would have gone to the Professor, asked him what has happened. But this is Logan, who values privacy above all else, who never even shares a look with her when someone uses a small unimportant lie and scent and mind means they both know it. And -- her head hurts, and strangely, she thinks maybe some of this hard and angry suspicion is in her head still, affecting her own thoughts, in a way that should be wrong, should be near impossible. But this is Logan.

But that feels almost like a betrayal of Charles, somehow, this shapeless, aimless suspicion, and she discards it fast. She's good with shutting out thoughts, has plenty of experience.

~*~

She knows he's in the woods, and since you can't always make your mind see only what you want it to, she knows he's peaceful. That should have made her feel better, but instead, it makes her head hurt worse.

He's digging when she finds him -- but, no, he's piling ground, spreading it around evenly. He's good, and the patches he has already pressed down look almost natural, in a way that wouldn't draw your eye unless you really looked. She really looks, and sees it's the same corner his mind had showed her earlier, shadowed and cool, a little further from the bank, and the huge tree hanging precariously over it, than what she remembers.

"Logan," she says. He looks up and smiles.

"Hey, Jeannie."

She says, "What are you doing?"

He tilts his head, just a little, a gesture oddly reminiscent of a large animal regarding her; a silent recognition of her crossing of the bounds, and the allowance. "Burying some stuff. Private things. Figured -- it's time to put them to rest."

It's so easy, natural, and so unrelated to what her mind's been filled with for the last twenty minutes, that she blinks, once, again. Then she nods, a little, and feels silly for having barreled forward like that. She knows this is forbidden ground, even to her.

But that still doesn't explain the Professor's frown, the flash of this ground, the suspicion burning almost palpable on her tongue -- "Logan, I don't want to intrude, but I felt a little of your conversation with Charles, before. Not a lot, but I didn't manage to block it out completely. You were very -- angry." Somehow, she can't say what she really thought he was. "I was -- worried. Could you tell me what it was about? Or should I butt out?"

The look he levels on her is honest, and as open as Logan gets, and completely bewildered. "What are ya talkin' about, Jeannie?"

She should be confused, but somehow, she's -- yes, she's confused. But she also feels like she's been kicked in the stomach. "You weren't talking to the Professor, just now?"

When he shakes his head, and gives her a look that is vaguely curious, she wants to open her mouth and -- say something, something, gasp or --something. The world doesn't seem right, all of a sudden, and she knows Logan wouldn't lie to her. Not to her, not with that honest look in his eyes. And she never would have looked into his head intentionally, Charles would think it was horrible, but that's exactly what she does now. And after all, if her powers are going -- cracking, if maybe there's someone responsible, she should know. Her powers are important. The-X Men have a lot of enemies.

He had been in the woods for the last forty-five minutes, smoking and looking at a box by his side and thinking. She can't completely catch what he was thinking, it feels -- blurry, somehow, slippery, but the box is very real and precise and normal-looking. It's old, and wooden, and she wonders where he's kept it. It's too big to have been in his room without her seeing it, maybe five feet long. No one but Logan would have been able to carry it down here by himself -- no one but Rogue, of course, and maybe Hank. She can remember him carrying it, and it's heavy and reassuring.

She almost stumbles back when Logan frowns at her, when she realizes where she is and what is going on. "Somethin' wrong, Jeannie?"

"No." She shakes her head, and she doesn't know exactly why, except Logan wouldn't lie to her and he isn't, his mind says he isn't, and her powers haven't shown any other signs of going out of order. "No. Nothing at all."

She walks away, and his gaze is thoughtful on her back, and she knows he can smell her lying and that he can smell her being afraid. And she is, but goddamned if she isn't even sure why.

~*~

That night she dreams about a shipwreck, and a little girl that knows the past and how to change little teeny bits of it, and the way the splinters dug into everyone's palms as they clung to the life rafts. As dreams go, this one's a pretty bad nightmare, but not as bad as some; Scott's had worse, and they've bled into her mind while she lay sleeping. This one rates maybe a five.

Scott starts tossing and turning, and Jean wakes up, bathed in cold sweat and remembering phantom timbers trying to drown her. The fear is out of proportion to a number-five nightmare.

Something feels like it's prowling around the house.

She shakes Scott, gently. "Wake up, honey, please."

He mumbles, and wraps arms around her, and that's good enough for now-- she settles into them. Frowns, as the last traces of sleep creep away, and the idea of getting on a boat is less frightening than before, but still apprehensive. Boats.

Where did she pick up an unconscious fear of the sea?

Something yelps outside, some coyote, and she shivers. A howl, maybe a wolf, and there's no moon out the window. It has to be around the other side of the house.

She mutters to herself, "Don't be silly, Jean. You're a grown woman."

She's picked up another fright from somewhere, too, and it's unfamiliar, alien, to have to tell herself, You've got no reason to be afraid of the dark.

~*~

It's the next day and breakfast, and she still hasn't talked to the Professor.

She doesn't know why, really, why she didn't go to him straight away from Logan, asked for help and answers. Why she hasn't said anything to Scott, not even after the dream last night. Something is sitting in the bottom of her stomach, and it feels wary and bitter-tasting and wrong, and it cringes at the thought of --

But she's good at blocking out thoughts, better every year, and her cereal is good and wholesome in her mouth.

Scott is peering at her from across the table, and he gives her a funny little smile, as though he's going to ask what's wrong. She wants to kick him under the table. Too many feet to stumble into.

#Not now, honey.# And that somehow lacks the satisfaction factor.

Betsy and Warren are doing their own version of public flirtation, as close to cutesy talk as Betsy's capable of, which isn't a whole lot, and far easier with the far less veiled sexual hints than most couples would go for in the midst of their friends and family. She fights down a smile.

Bobby raises a hand when Warren, mid-sentence, something about bananas that sends Betsy into intense eye-rolling, stretches an arm and apparently invades his personal space. "Hey, now, buddy. You know I love you. Keep your dirty mind away from me."

A few people laugh; Ororo's eyes twinkle. Hank, on a short break from the latest twelve-hour-long lab shift, wakes up enough to chuckle.

Jean isn't laughing. She's staring at her bowl, clean clean milk splashing a little around her spoon, dipped down a little too fast, a little too suddenly. Dirt and dirt and Logan, Logan who like usual isn't around by the time most of them would call morning, Logan piling the ground, spreading it around evenly, a corner of the woods hidden far enough away that no one is too likely to go there and find his secret, private things of the past, to realize the ground was rearranged to cover it. Private things, and none of them are likely to intrude on that anyway, they all have things in their pasts they'd rather no one looked too hard at. And a flash of a corner cast in shadow, a strange lump the rains found, curiousity and wariness. And why would he be.

She finishes eating third, maybe fourth, and her hands are confident and easy lifting the spoon to her mouth, taking the bowl to the sink. They tremble a little when she rinses it, water spinning down, but no one is looking, and that's okay.

Betsy doesn't give her any kind of look when she goes back to the table and tells Scott she's going out for a walk, and that's okay too.

~*~

Here, and here, and here again, yeah.

And then here, and there where the little azaelea bush was planted last year, and 'Ro tried to keep it growing but couldn't, so it's dead, still rooted in a slippery kind of mud.

Muddy ground. Here, and here, and--

She should have brought a shovel. But something told her, when she left the house, she wouldn't need it. Now that Jean's out here, getting clumps of mud stuck between the hobnails in her boots, and in her hair, and on her face, she kind of wishes she had.

The bushes kind of rustle in the wind.

She sits up on her haunches, scanning the underbrush, and realizes that, she thought to bring a shovel, but didn't.

This should be important, but everything's a little fuzzy as to why.

Fingers thump against something more solid than freshly slimy mud, something solid, and Jean chips a nail.

Something nibbles at the air, maybe, at the air around her ear. She snorts, and brushes her hair back from her face. "I'm a good enough telepath to know when I'm being watched," she says.

Except she doesn't know who's watching. Hesitant, she calls out, "Logan?"

The wind rustles things a bit, and Jean feels brave enough to let out a nervous chuckle. "Okay, Scott. You can come out now."

"...Betsy?" when nothing answers. " 'Ro?"

When Jean Grey was a child, she used to love sailing. So there's no explanation why, in the middle of the grounds of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, she suddenly remembers drowning with such clarity that she clutches her throat, gasping. It leaves muddy tract marks along her neck, and her eyes fill with tears.

Someone she knows saw someone they knew drown. The body's name was Harriet.

Her knees are sinking into mud three, four feet deep. Maybe more. She just spent almost twenty minutes digging the soft brown sludge up with her hands, and now it's slowly sliding back into her hole, sucking at her jeans and burying her legs.

Her knees hit that something solid, and Jean closes her eyes, feels her mind contracting in fear and-- encouragement.

Someone thought it best she didn't have a shovel out here. And it wasn't her.

~*~

She's still sitting on the ground when the footsteps come. Her ass is soaking through, and there's more mud touching her clothes than skin, and she's staring at the ground, the place she has dug up, now covered.

Footsteps -- but the ground is muddy and soft, and with some relief she realizes this time, she can feel the presence approaching, can tell who it is, still far enough that she's probably hidden behind the bushes but near enough that she should have sensed it sooner. She must have been deeper in confusing, kaleidoscope thoughts than she realized.

She waits for it to draw closer.

"Hello, Ororo."

Silver white hair drawn back straight and orderly, body graceful on slippery ground. Ororo's boots are muddy, but not nearly as much as hers. "Hello, Jean. I thought I'd see if the rains had helped any with the azalea bush --I had tried to save it last year, but it hasn't been very productive."

Jean nods.

She thinks about Logan, about remembering him carrying the box, the box that had been somewhere in the house, in the attic or the cellar, maybe. His slippery, unreadable thoughts. That hadn't been any box her knee had sunk into.

She thinks about Logan spreading the ground evenly, covering what the rains had done.

She had gone out and decided it wasn't a good idea to take the shovel. She's a telepath, and she is good, and it hurts to think it, hurts all the way deep down, but there aren't many that are better than her. Not many of those who are good enough to slip in almost unnoticed.

The ground is spread around evenly again. Her mother had taught her, and then her mentor had, when you finish something, put it away and clean up after yourself.

She isn't as good as Logan, but it still looks natural if you refuse to look.

She stands up to smile at Ororo. The something in the bottom of her stomach is back, sickly and aching. She doesn't think the smile comes out right.

Ororo is looking at her strangely. The azalea bush has been dead for a year now.

She says, "I'm going inside. Do you want to come with me?" And her voice sounds right.

Her shields feel strong, and safe. But she doesn't know if she can make another person strong and safe enough to ask them what they know. She still doesn't know what is going on, she tells herself that, repeatedly, but the thing in her stomach knows, and it wants to huddle in fear, wants to go to the source of safety and all things good and hugs in the night, and doesn't dare to.

She's a grown woman, and her life is well defined. She has built it so it includes many people to trust, and many ways to forgive when that trust fails, but only two people to turn to. She doesn't know who she can trust now, she doesn't know enough to forgive. She's too afraid to turn anywhere.

"Yes," Storm says, and smiles. Her eyes don't linger on the place where the ground is less even than it could be, nor on the azalea bush.

~*~

Later that night, she feels them talking, hears them as clear as bells or choirs. Charles, worried for his student. Scott --and his love is plain through their link, his worry unclouded by guilt and so unlike Charles --

Her knees, clasped to her chest, and her chin resting on them.

Jean hid her boots earlier that day, stuffed them the first place she could find, threw her clothes in the washing machine. 'Ro saw her, but no evidence is a start.

Quietly, slowly, her mind reaches out to see more of what they're talking about. But she finds a wall, and is immediately shut out.

Startled, hurt. Takes a sip of water from the glass beside her bed, fist clutching it as an onrush hits. "Harriet. Why do I know you?"

Room silent. Head silent.

Jean has a headache. It's dark outside.

~*~

The kettle boils, whistling insistently, and she takes it off the stove, burning her hand on the handle. "Oh, damn!" and she runs it under cold water.

Her tea gets forgotten about as she sucks on her finger. It stings. Betsy comes into the kitchen, and grabs the teabags. "What are you doing up, Jean? Can't sleep?"

She smiles ruefully. "I think it's the weather. It gets to everyone, this time of year."

When Betsy hands her the cup, she doesn't know why, but her mental shields tighten. The tea tastes off. She focuses on the sting on her thumb, the way you'd turn to a small hurt to protect you from a bigger one -- but really, nothing at all is wrong, and the insomnia's fading already.

~*~

"What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure. I have this-- dream. And I know that dreams are nothing important, but this one seems to be telling me something important. I can't seem to shake it. Meditation isn't working, and relaxation. We've hardly been going out on missions at all and yet I'm more stressed than when we were lost in space."

"Can you tell me about your dream?"

She laughs, embarrassed. "No, that's the worst part. I know it's a nightmare, but as soon as I wake up, it all just... it races from view. I can't remember what it's about."

She takes a sip of water. Her mouth is dry.

Jean continues, in a mostly reflective voice, "And the strangest part is... it feels like I'm lying." She looks at him, troubled. "I'm worried that it might affect my powers, Charles."

"Well," says Professor Xavier, "There's a chance that something or other is affecting you emotionally, and that could have an adverse reaction on your abilities. But I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just stay on top of it, and let me know." His voice is warm. "I'm always here to help."

She smiles at him. She knew, when she woke up this morning, that she had to talk to Charles. He'd know what to say to her. "Thanks."

Her hands drop the glass of water without her brain's awareness.

It shatters on his floor, and she yelps. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I swear, I'm such a klutz lately... It's terrible. Condensation, I guess... The glass was so slippery..."

He's already moving around the desk, and watching her with a cool look. "It's fine, Jean. I'll clean it up."

~*~

Mud. Brown mud, common, every day mud.

Not the best of clues. "Scott, darling, did you do some gardening yesterday?"

"No, Jean." Amused. "Why?"

Jean gets off her hands and knees to squat, holding her boot upside-down and frowning at it with a puzzled look. There is something there, something tugging, and, but. "I-- don't know."

Brown mud. Like in the back, by the lake... or maybe up in the woods, where the rainstorms lately would have turned the compact dirt into something looser, more flowing. Stickier. The rich kind of clay, like the stuff by the ravine, and right by that mound-- that was rich, dark brown soil-- the stream bed. She nods to herself, forehead wrinkling. This mud was from up by the stream, and it got there because she hiked up the sides, with a trowel.

It's a nice time of year for walking in the woods... but she doesn't remember doing it.

And why did she shove dirty hiking boots under an end-table? Hunkered over, on the floor, and holding brown leather in one hand, Jean feels a prickle on the back of her neck.

Scott interrupts it, calls from the kitchen, "I'm going to cook some dinner, and then we've got a training session, remember, love?"

Training. Something snakes into her stomach, and she tosses the boot aside, stands up, wipes her hands clean. Not afraid. Nothing to be afraid *of*. "Coming."

Voice calm. Does she remember dinner yesterday? --only vaguely. "Scott, what did we have for dinner yesterday? I feel so silly, but... I don't remember."

His eyes glaze over a little, as if in thought. "Spaghetti, I think. Rogue cooked."

"Oh." Fear draining away, quietly, and her boots sit in the closet now, unthreatening in their dirtiness. Laces knotted--why did she notice that?

She's sure that last night, she went to bed without dinner and hungry, because today she woke up hungry. Three pieces of toast. Rogue cooked spaghetti, did she.

Scott stares at her, eyes unreadable with the light from the window reflecting in his glasses, mind-link quiet and calm and happy.

Traipsing around in the mud. What the fuck could Jean have been doing?

~*~

It's Friday, and Jean hasn't been sleeping well all week. Nightmares, coupled with the debilitating fear that she's not as capable, powers wise, as normal. She's been crabby and she's had a headache non-stop, and nothing she can think of seems to help.

So, now that she's got some quiet time at lunch, Jean decides to try and meditate, take the edge off her brain.

Unfortunate choice of phrasing, that.

Normal lotus position, six feet in the air, and Jean's feeling a lot better. She closes her eyes, and feels the world drop away as her mind starts to soar. Now, the part that never comes easy: the patience to let her mind go blank, empty, and calm...

She just can't do it. Instead, her mind starts to wander, every which way, and--

Much later, the world becomes a kaleidescope of pictures. Jean can hear the Professor and Scott talking in low voices in the other room. She can just picture Scott's worried frown, and the Professor's thoughtful answer.

The vague, drowsy peace is shattered when she hears Scott say, "I'm not sure what's wrong with her, but she's acting so strangely..."

Her telepathy isn't registering, and Jean panics for a second or two, blind and deaf, before she regains control and prevents herself from falling on her head. Irrationally, she keeps her eyes closed tightly, trying to pierce the fog that everything is wrapped in solely with her mind.

There's, something, not, right.

Scott shakes her shoulder, gently, and her eyes flutter open. The first thing that swims into focus is Scott's face. The second thing is, her neck hurts like hell. Jean feels groggy, and stiff. His voice is amused, a little soothing. "Jean, you fell asleep on the couch."

"I--did?"

Satisfied that she's awake and all right, he picks up his grocery bags. "Yeah. It's dinner time. Do you want chicken, or steak?"

Dinner time. She rubs her eyes. "Scott, what time is it?"

He frowns, glancing at his watch. "Almost seven. I'm sorry I was a while at the grocery store, but the line-ups were awful. Took me over an hour to get in and out."

He's putting away things like milk, and bread, and bleach. She rubs her eyes, and her headache's back, twice as bad. "What time did you leave?"

"Uh, around one?"

"Oh." And she stretches her legs, rubs a bit of dirt off her cheek. "Steak, I think, please."

"Coming up, love." He gets things ready on the stove. "Oh, and by the way, I turned the dryer on again."

She blinks again, as she stands up. Bare feet. "Dryer?"

Scott nods. She can sense no lie, no teasing. "You had a load in."

Jean's uneasy... doesn't remember putting any laundry in, but there are so many little warning signs of getting older, and a telepath's mind is an untrustworthy thing. That's something Logan said.

She gets to work peeling carrots and potatoes.

Scott asks, suddenly, "Jean, are you all right?"

She chuckles, and rubs her eyes, trying to ward off sleep. "You know, I have the funniest feeling I've forgotten something."

~*~

They sleep. Jean's never sleep-walked, but for the first time in her life, she finds herself waking up outside, jeans on and boots laced up, still knotted. She was sleeping peacefully on a wooden bench, outside the boathouse, just a minute ago.

There's a piece of paper in her pocket, and when she reads it, her jaw falls open.

The moon is just rising, and the wolves up in the hills howl.

~*~

--wakes up from a nightmare and reaches for the glass of water on the night stand.

Expects to knock a pen off, and finds it gone.

~*~

He finds her around midnight, sitting in a puddle, with a white sheen from the moonlight, and whiter bones in her lap like something she's already seen in a dream. A skull, female. Those are tears down her cheeks.

He comes in his wheelchair; she has mental shields up so tight she can barely breathe.

Harsh whisper. "Who is she?"

Her mind whispers, 'who are you?'

Xavier's thoughts are easy to read, open. "Do you know her name?"

Jean's tongue trips over it, uneasy about pronouncing such a foreign concept. "Ha-- Harriet, right?" Xavier nods. She doesn't ask the burning question, the one that's tearing up everything she knows inside and tossing it around, like the mast of a ship--

"She was one of my students, Jean."

"Did you do this to--" She coughs, and rubs the back of her neck, not noticing the little trails of mud that slither down her collar and into her shirt. "No, you didn't."

He's quiet. "I did."

She can't believe it. Doesn't believe it.

The night is cold, and Jean's sitting in a puddle. Her knees are shivering, her jeans stiff and brown. The bones fell off her lap a while ago-- she didn't notice that, either.

Full moon. Her head's tilted down, red hair in a pony-tail. The rain stopped a while ago. She's soaked and freezing to the bone. She's got Scott's sweatshirt on, and those thick hiking boots, because the path was muddy and slippery. Is muddy.

The trees drip water all around.

He starts speaking, low voice. "She was one of my students, Jean."

Her mind whispers, 'he said that already.'

"So you--"

"No." Mild horror at the thought. "But I put her on that mission, I was responsible for her, and she died."

Jean's lips are rubbery, and her feet are numb from the cold and damp. Dark branches are above her head, and between them, the moon peeks through. "What's going *on*, Charles?"

"Harriet was a student, right before you came to the school." He settles into his Storyteller mode. Voice is heavy, leaden. Jean doesn't look at him. "She was a very talented girl. One day, on a mission, she-- I--" Jean hears pain. "She didn't make it."

Her eyes are staring at the shiny white skull, without her permission. "Why is she buried all the way up here? Why not the graveyard?"

"It was her favorite place," he says simply. "She used to sit on that log. And the-- others, agreed."

"Scott and Bobby and Hank and Warren and-- me?"

Her voice is wooden. The log stinks like rotten wood.

His voice is calm. She catches a faintly wary tone. "Yes."

"So, I knew-- her."

"You met a few times, yes. She died about a week after you arrived here."

"Why isn't there a headstone?"

Jean jumps in her skin, dizzy, nauseous, as she knows the answer before he replies. "Bobby kept knocking it down. He-- didn't take it well."

And a scene flashes back into her memory, as easily as blinking-- she shivers again, from the cold. Hands flopping in her lap, spine bent over her lap. Xavier, finding a 15-year old Bobby Drake kicking and screaming, icicles growing off the simple stone slab. Xavier murmuring, stroking his head, saying it'd be alright, calming him with a few subtle telepathic signals. Nothing serious, just a tendril here, a gentle, soothing touch there.

His whispering is right by her ear, and Jean didn't notice him get any closer. "The five of you took it rather-- hard."

Warren, threatening to tell the press, tell his parents.

Scott not eating.

Her voice is dreamy. "Teenagers can be so melodramatic."

The rain starts again, barely a drizzle. One little droplet drips off her nose, and into her listless palms. The woods smell like pine.

Moonlight, in the puddle beside her, and suddenly, a flash, a wall of water caving in on her. Jean finds herself asking, "How did she die?"

Xavier's hand is on her shoulder, and it feels like ants crawling in her hair.

He says, "There was a mission, and a boat-- a storm."

"Show me."

A wolf howls. Jean's teeth chatter, her hair hangs limp in stringy wet bits. Xavier opens his mind, and closes his eyes against pain and memory and, remembering.

Jean gasps, and clutches at her throat, as her mind remembers--

--water, everywhere, the boat breaking apart; the mast falling down like some giant--

--Warren, flailing, screaming that Harriet's going under, and he can barely keep afloat under those huge weights of wings, Hank and Bobby desperately trying to keep him up--

--panic, as Scott bobs in and out of view, powers still young enough that with his visor off, he's just wiping saltwater from his eyes--

--a wall of water. Jean gasps. Sinks further into the mud. This is Xavier's memory. She wasn't on this mission; too green, inexperienced, but god, Xavier fought to the surface and they made it to shore, and had to wait three days for the body to wash up, oh, lord, it washed up *blue*...

Drowning was *loud*. Crashing, banging.

His voice is soft and out of tune, odd against all the noise. "She didn't tell me, you see."

Jean knows what he's about to say before he opens his lips. He doesn't need to say it. She knows everything, everything, with a certainty that comes from dreaming.

'She couldn't swim.'

~*~

There's a sound, like someone screaming-- then a gurgle--

And then Jean wakes up, crying.

"Scott, Scott-- please. Wake up, please."

He grunts, and rolls over, trying to rub sleep out of his brain and a concerned voice as he says, "What's wrong, Jean, what do you--"

"We have to get out of here. Someone's eating babies, and I can't, I don't know-- I can't breath, can't-- someone's choking me--"

--Her eyes fly open, and she grunts, muffled in the pillow. She slept on her stomach again. The sheets are tangled all around her, nightmare racing away, panic subduing. Scott's already up.

Of course.

#Love, where are you?#

She can feel him, sweating a bit, out for his morning jog. #I'm just coming up the track to the boathouse. Would you make some coffee, dear?#

She grins, and gets out of bed. #All right, all right.#

She doesn't mind making coffee for Scott, or dinner for the gang, or gardening for.

Her thoughts cut off abruptly, and Scott comes in, sweaty and smiling. Jean kisses him fondly. "How was the run?"

It's Sunday morning. Jean's lazy, drinking a mocha and reading the weekend paper. Relaxing. Scott, being one to never waste spare time, decides to clean the house.

"Honey, what's this?"

"Garbage--" automatically, before Jean thinks about it. Her lips move without her. "Wait."

Scott eyes the little notebook. "Yours?"

"I-- think so, yeah. Where did you find it?"

He looks puzzled. "Under a couch cushion. You must have lost it. I've always said that this couch eats things."

Jean starts thumbing through the pages. It's a little fat book; most of the pages are blank. One says, '1978'. One says, 'check the library for birth certificates?'

Jean feels like she's dreaming. Scott peers over her shoulder, snorts at the random page of text. 'Orange juice, bananas, bread.' "Honey, why do you have three jugs of bleach on your shopping list?"

She peers down at her hands, which hold the little notebook. The pages wrinkle, crackle, as her fingers make a fist around it. Ragged nails bite into her palm.

She answers honestly. "I don't know."

"Well," and his voice is indulging and content, "Do you want it?"

Jean flips a few more pages, catching nothing that's written, focusing on the blank space between words. Headache's coming back. Says, "No, it's not important."

She scratches the back of her neck, mutters something about going to get an aspirin.

Wonders why it feels so cold.

Scott throws out the paper, and doesn't ask why it said, could there be more of them?

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