Envisionings (2nd Edition) Part 3☄️🔄

The weather master selects leaves from a particular plant. "I have recently cultivated this one. I think you will find the tea it produces somehow invigorating yet relaxing, like inviting a fresh breeze in to clear out old air."

Jean: "Sounds like just the thing I need to clear my mind, right now. . .or anytime, I guess," she reflects. "Even when my telepathy's fully modulated, so often I still have more going on in it than what's comfortable."

Ororo: "For that reason, I actually came to think of this as 'Jean's Plant'."

While Ororo goes about brewing the tea, Jean takes a closer look at the plant.

It's obviously been treated with tenderest care.

Ororo continues: "I would feel closer to you when I would tend it or drink its tea, yet regretful. Could a simple thing have made any difference two years ago? Was there something I missed."

Jean turns, laying a comforting hand on her friend's arm, and giving a subtle, significant nod.

Ororo lays her hand over hers. "I know. But the mind goes where it will, and it felt like an avenue not to avoid entirely."

"I can understand that." Jean glances around the space. "A lot has grown since I've been away, hasn't it?"

Ororo watches while her soul sister takes in more of the plants, coming to pause at a blighted one.

"One of the students brought that to me, hoping I could revive it. The blight is stubborn." Jean moves her hand through the air around the leaves, as if trying to work magic. Of course, the leaves remain in the state they were.

Ororo: "So what avenues has your mind taken you?"

Jean smiles somewhat: "Big question."

"Is home feeling like the alien plain?"

Jean has moved on to other plants, presently touching the leaves of one.

She smiles deeply. "No. Home feels just the same." Though gradually, her expression shifts. "Mostly."

Ororo regards her with interest: "What is different?"

". . .I don't know -it's hard to explain. Sometimes I think I'm not seeing what's really here."

Even as she says it, are the plants turning alien before her eyes?

"Wanting things to be more unchanged than you've found them?"

Jean comes back to attention. "Silly, right? Considering I've come back to make change."

"So much about living exists outside of harmony," Ororo reflects as she goes about pouring the tea, "which is why I try to cultivate it in any way I can."

Jean smiles again, stepping away from the plants to join her. "You've always had a good head, Ororo." She sits down opposite her with her tea: "So enough about me for a while. Spill it."

At the close of their visit.

Jean: "Thanks for this, Ororo. It was just what I needed."

Storm: "No matter what else may be going on in our lives, let us not be strangers to such moments."

In complete agreement, Jean hugs her "sister" before heading for the staircase.

Back on the dormitory floor, Jean soon comes on Bobby and Rogue sharing a moment -and a laugh- down one of the halls. She's about to move on another way when they do, and Jean observes an odd sight as Bobby walks past a window in which sunlight streams.

It's as though his body's suddenly become made out of the light, or. . . Some sort of trick of it off his ice powers? Had he even just used any?

Distortions of the hallways follow.

Down the hall Jean had been about to go, we see Scott now walking up. Noticing her at the junction, he closes the distance. He's been looking for her.

"Jean. What happened before?"

Just ahead of his speech, Jean turns her head at the movement. She sees him yet almost not recognizably -his appearance is off. When his voice comes, it's like an auditory kaleidoscope, akin to the visual one from before -Split, yet not mirrored; the patterns don't line up:

"Jean. 'Jean! What is it?' What happened before?" 'What's happening to you, Jean?' 'Jean -what's wrong?!'

When Jean makes the effort to speak through the mire, her own voice rings in her ears likewise:

"I need to see Xavier." ' ... But I'm afraid-' 'Scott- help me. I can't stop it.'

Medical Bay Jean is laying on the examination table while Xavier finishes his telepathic probe.

"We can all rest assured, no one else has been in your mind. What you've been experiencing are a kind of sensory seizure."

Scott: "What's causing them?"

"At this time, I can't be certain. I suspect they're a side-effect of Jean's return. Your mind needing to reacclimatize to living-"

Jean (air of irony): "-a regular life?" She sighs. "So long as my mind isn't being infiltrated I can deal with this. But if the seizures grow any more frequent I won't be able to function."

Xavier: "You've been back not even a week. Perhaps you'll only have to consider yourself a convalescent for a few days for this to sort itself out. If not, you could try anti-seizure medication, though given the mutational origins that might not be effective."

By now sitting up on the exam table, Jean takes that in; perturbed.

"If I'm going to be convalescing, I think I'd prefer to in my own room."

She shifts off the table.

Scott: "I'll walk you there."

Jean seems about to decline, but accepts.

Outside Jean's room.

"Thanks." She reaches for the handle of the door, but her hand pauses on it. Jean sighs again; bothered. ". . .trouble is the last thing I wanted to bring back with me."

Scott regards her quietly for a moment, before tentatively bringing his hand to hers.

Jean slips it into his with an appreciative squeeze, and smile. "I'll see you later."

She lets go and heads in, leaving Scott on the other side of the door with his own troubled look.

Following day, Ororo joins Jean in her room with breakfast.

Jean: "If I'm being honest, after how I've been living. . .free from the confines of any physical space. . .the thought of limiting myself to this room for even a few hours has me feeling stir crazy. Of course, I'll try anything to get on top of the seizures."

Ororo: "I have always thought 'recouping' should not involve being 'couped up'. Why not free yourself of what confines you can?"

The remainder of their breakfast is taken on the grounds, where afterward a walk is enjoyed. First together, then Jean on her own as Ororo goes off to her tasks for the day. Spending nearly all of hers in the fresh air, and seizure free, Jean returns to the Mansion at night feeling more optimistic, and quite ready for sleep.

However. . . .

She wakes in the night, seeming disoriented in her own room.

In Scott's, he's awoken by semi-distant sounds of clunking. Instinctively, he goes to check on Jean.

Pausing outside her door, it takes less then a minute for him to hear something else clearly coming from inside -something sounding like a collapse.

He goes in at once: "Jean?"

"Scott?"

He's found and turned on the light switch, though Jean -down on the floor next to an overturned piece of furniture- looks around as though she can't see, speaking in a moaning tone: "I don't know where I am -I don't know what's solid ground."

"I'm here, I've got you," he's gotten down with her, holding her openly.

Jean at once looks at and past him, eyes wide: ". . .What is this place. . ?"

Back in the Medical Bay

Once again Jean is laying on the exam table; eyes closed.

She opens them for only a second before shutting them again. When she speaks, at least she sounds back to herself: "Every time I open my eyes it's like I'm seeing through someone else's, though it's not like I'm not in another's mind. . . what could be going on?"

Even before the question Xavier reacts as though something's been set into place for him.

Scott: "What are you thinking, Professor?"

"I have been building a theory. With your current experience, Jean, I feel it has now been confirmed."

Xavier begins to explain:

"In going beyond this world, namely as a mutant rising to something celestial, your mind was expanded across a vast space. . .far more worlds, more minds, even possibly, more realities. . .You said you left your higher power behind, yet I believe you are still connected, and that residual connection is causing a fragmentation."

Jean (still laying with eyes closed): "So how can I make my separation complete? At least complete enough to stop this."

"I believe with the aid of Cerebro, I can go in and defragment your mind. In essence, untangle and collate the pieces of your proper reality, while pruning away the branched awarenesses. But such a procedure will be intense. Less for my mind, being only the operator, than for yours through which everything will run. Years cycling through in moments, the contrast and volume of your life dialed up as they go. . .It may well be too much for one mind to bear."

"Is there a chance it could still level off just with time?" Jean tries opening her eyes again, though it's clear she's still working to see straight.

". . .there's more likely a chance, given it's pattern thus far, that time will result in severing the connection to your singular awareness. . ."

Scott looks between them, heavily disturbed. He grasps- "a chance, so waiting it out is still an option."

"It is. Though reinstalling would be a different matter than resetting. The line between these matters could be crossed suddenly, and at full disclosure, Jean, I feel less confident of success with the former."

Jean (frayed): "So I risk losing myself completely, meanwhile being a disruption. No, Scott- I don't like those odds or circumstance. I'll have to trust my mind can handle the reset procedure."

Some graveness giving way to encouragement, Xavier just starts to say "If any mind can-"

when Scott -his own concern giving way to thought- cuts in: "-what if you had a second mind to run the process through?"

Jean catches on: "Like a second engine."

"Exactly."

Xavier turns this idea over in his mind. He sees the possibility (yes): "That could work."

"But wait- what would the risk be to Scott's mind?"

Scott looks like that isn't his priority, though he doesn't cut-in.

"Technically the same as to yours. In fact if it were almost anyone else, I wouldn't consider it. But given your history. . .your unique psychic rapport and what amount of your life you've shared, I feel strongly that risk would be negated."

So we begin. A second exam table has been placed beside Jean's, on which Scott now lies.

Apparatus like electrodes on each of their temples. Jean reaches across the short distance, finding Scott's hand.

Xavier has moved to where he'll be conducting the procedure - Cerebro.

We see the process as a splash panel. We see Jean, her mind: there are "bubbles" of moments, events, timelines, of her past -their past, her present -theirs, the future?  On Earth, in the cosmos, it's just as Xavier described: bold colours, some bubbles fade away while others come into sharper relief.

Focus-on/closer-on Jean in a series of inset panels various micro expressions intermittently cross her face,

Discordant mixture of sounds -- flashes like electricity

gradually the sounds subside, the electrical activity falls into a natural rhythm,

until finally....

finally...

..Presentness

Jean opens her eyes.

Sitting up she looks around. Not like she's waiting for distortions to appear; she knows she can trust the stillness now. Even in this limited space, she's seeing her world anew.

She shifts her attention to Scott, their hands still linked.

Scott (somewhat groggy): ". . .okay?"

"Are you?"

He sits up carefully. "Only a really bad headache. I've still had worse."

Xavier rolls in, smiling: "I have a tea that can help with that."

"Thanks. If no monitoring needs to happen, I'd just prefer to lie down-"

Jean: "-in your own room?" She sports a soft, knowing look.

Xavier: "No monitoring necessary. I observed no damage before I came out. By all accounts the procedure was a success."

They remove the electrodes from the sides of their heads and get off the tables.

Jean reciprocates Scott's care from earlier: "I'll walk you there."

Unlike Jean had been, Scott isn't reluctant to accept.

As they pass Xavier, Jean bends down to embrace him. "Thank you, Professor."

Hallway - Outside Scott's Room.

"I'm positive I'll be fine."

"That's a relief."

"I'm glad the procedure worked."

"It might've gone differently without you. . ." Jean looks at him directly, speaking in a soft, meaningful tone of voice, "your devotion's always meant so much to me, Scott. I hope you've known that." There's something in her disposition. She's treading carefully.

It takes Scott a moment to respond. Slowed perhaps by his headache, or something else weighing on his mind. . .Then, only a small smile before he turns towards door.

Jean looks like she'd been anticipating something else. Just as well. "Good night. Or good morning, I guess."

"Right. You too."

Jean turns to leave.

One step inside, his hand still on the handle, Scott's paused. ". . .Jean." He steps back to look at her. "Later, when this headache's subsided, can we talk?"

". . .Sure. I'll see you then."

On that, he goes in. While Jean goes on.

The new dawn comes with a refreshing rain.

Taking up Xavier's offer of tea, we see Jean's joined him in his office.

"I returned by choice, but also from. . ."

Xavier (lightly): "A magnetic pull?"

Jean gives a hum of a laugh. "Maybe if I was Magneto."

She finds her wording: "In some way, I feel there's some purpose to my being here. Beyond my own, I mean."

"I always knew you would become more than you ever saw yourself being."

Another hum, thinking back: "More than mutant?"

Xavier turns more sober: ". . .on a basic level, I can understand why so many fear us.

We are living reminders that anything is possible, and 'anything' can be intimidating."

"When I stop to think of our potential, even I feel afraid. . .I think most of us do."

Xavier (renewed content): "I would feel more afraid if you didn't."

Transition to. . .

Scott laying on his bed, the window partially opened to the cleansing air.

We ease-in on his ruby-quartz glasses. . .easing-out on his visor. No longer do we see him laying in repose in a familiar room, but suspended and enervated in one unseen --he, and us, kept in the dark.

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The story continues in Part 4 a.k.a. eXperiemnt ⛓👁 !