Don't You Care Anymore?

"Nothing, Logan. Just enjoying my privacy." The tall redhead answered pointedly, smiling.

"Sorry, Red. If ya'd like me ta leave-"

Jean Grey-Summers shifted absently, shaking her head. "Nah. It doesn't matter, really."

Logan glanced at her doubtfully. It wasn't like her to be so absent or... flippant. "Somethin' wrong, darlin'?"

Jean took a deep breath, surging to her feet in one motion. "Of course not," she answered quickly. Too quickly. "What could be wrong? I'm a happily married woman with a house full of friends and people I love. It's a beautiful day, and so far, nobody has tried to kill me, clone me, or inhabit my body. What could be wrong?" she repeated, already walking away.

Logan stared after her, debating whether or not to follow.

He stayed where he was. When dealing with Jean, it was always the best choice.





Jean stalked through the garden, then the kitchen, the dining room, her bedroom. She couldn't seem to stay in one place, and she was determined to ignore the quizzical stares that followed her everywhere she went. Finally, she decided on the bathroom.

She shut the door and leaned against it, sliding to the floor. She leaned her head back against the panel and closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed, and for a moment there was peace. There was no one to beg her help, no one to look at her with hate-filled eyes, no one to fill her with pain and the memories of a force too destructive for any human to bear. There was no Phoenix; there was only Jean Grey, the little girl who's life had changed the day she lay on the warm asphalt of the road and watched her best friend die in her arms. For a moment, there was nothing, and there was no one to keep her from it...





"Jean!"

Jean. Was that who she was? Someone was calling her, pulling her away from the darkness she wanted more than anything in the world.

"Jean! Wake up, please, Jean!"

Whoever it was, he sounded desperate. She would have to choose. Again, she would have to choose between this one person, and her own wishes.

"Oh, God, Jean! Jean, can you hear me? Please, Jean, open your eyes!"

This person apparently wanted her. And she was nothing, if she was not an X-man. She would always choose to help those in need. After all, that was the way it had always been.

Her eyes opened, slowly focusing on the faces above her. The one who had been calling her, he sat next to her, his eyes shielded by a gleaming red visor. There were the others, too. Of course she knew them. They were her friends, her teammates... her family. It was that simple, really.

"Jean!" Scott said her name again, this time with relief, and pulled her into his arms.

She startled him by pulling back almost immediately.

"I'm fine."

She pressed one hand to her forehead, shaking her head as though to clear it.

"What... happened?"

This time, Storm answered. Her eyes were worried and her manner was agitated as she replied, "I found you sprawled on the floor of the bathroom. You were not breathing. We had to restart your heart before Scott began to talk to you, hoping to... bring you out of it."

"Oh. Well, I'm fine now. Thank you."

So saying, she hopped off the examination table's cold, hard surface and beat a hasty retreat from the Med Lab.

This time, Logan followed.





Jean walked slowly across the grounds, heading for the treeline and the pond hidden there.

She gazed dispassionately at the things around her; the trees, flowers, grasshoppers humming through the grass, butterflies fluttering through the sunlight. It was a beautiful day, and it had lost all meaning for her. Everything was washed in gray. She saw the insects as geometric figures, cold, impersonal shapes that had no color or beauty. Lately, she saw people the same way. Theirs were only minds waiting to cry out, to lash out; to hurt her and everything she stood for.

They would do it, and they would succeed, because she was only a "mutie" to them, nothing but a genetic mistake waiting for correction.

Theirs were the voices that crowded her mind when she tried to sleep at night.

Jean stopped and sank to her knees at the base of an oak tree, leaning her head against it. Her throat vibrated with cries unvoiced, and she began to hum. It was a soft, haunting melody. For the past few days, she had heard it echoing in the gilded corridors of her mind, like the pure, sweet tones of a flute forged by a master musician. She hummed for a few minutes, losing herself in the rhythm of the music. It made that tight, frustrated part that burned in the center of her go quiet, at rest. It made her notice the wind that blew her hair against her face and made her sneeze.

She stopped for a moment, and then looked up.

Logan was leaning against the nearest tree, arms crossed over his chest. His attention was focused on her.

"That's pretty. What is it?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. It just came to me."

He nodded, as though considering it. But he didn't waste time. "What's the problem, Jean?"

"I don't know." His look was skeptical, at best. "I just... It isn't that I don't... Sometimes... " She trailed off without saying anything significant.

"You just what?"

"I just feel... closed in. Trapped. All I want to do lately is kill someone. I want to lash out; make them hurt like I hurt... I hurt so much, Logan. I hurt so much... " Her voice trailed off, becoming small and meek, nothing like the woman the voice belonged to.

"I know."

The unwavering certainty in his voice made her glance up sharply. For a moment, neither one breathed, neither blinked. Logan took one step, Jean surged to her feet and then she stood within the circle of his arms.

She didn't pull back. She didn't say no. She had no desire to do either.

Jean watched him with wide green eyes, finally dropping her gaze to his lips. Both suddenly realized that they had forgotten how to breathe, and their breath sighed together, mingling in the small space that separated them from the touch that both of them craved and neither wanted.

Her eyes slid closed, and his mouth lowered toward hers. All chance of refusal was gone, and Jean wouldn't have had it any other way...





"Jean!"

Jean's eyes popped open, searching his in the instant before they sprang apart. They regarded each other guiltily, like a couple caught groping in the backseat of a car. They understood that nothing had happened... yet.

And it was the 'yet' that separated Jean from adultery.

"Jean! Logan! We're on alert! Let's go!"

With a final, furtive glance in Logan's direction, Jean stormed out of the underbrush. Bobby reached out to catch her before she sent him sprawling in the dirt.

"Whoa, Jean. Wait up. Where's Logan?"

"Somewhere behind me. What's your point?"

He blinked at her defensiveness. "Uh, nothing. He'll catch up."

They started back toward the mansion with Bobby casting nervous glances toward her.





... "Okay, team. There's some new renegade anti-mutant group out there stealing supplies from a government science lab. Beast isn't sure what they're building yet, but we're not going to wait around to find out. Let's get to the Blackbird and get to Norfolk before they make off with the good stuff. I'll tell you the plan when we're in the air."

Everyone went into action, getting into their outfits with minimal fuss. They piled into the Blackbird and took off, scarcely regaining congius thought until they were airborne.

After calling up a diagram of the building in question, Cyclops addressed them again. "I want everybody to take the defensive on this one. The last thing we need is to shred a couple of good ol' boys-"he paused to shoot a pointed look at Wolverine, "-and get ourselves involved in another Operation:Zero Tolerance."

Nobody was about to disagree with that.

"Can I kill them?"

At first, Jean didn't realize that she'd spoken aloud, but when she raised her head from her hands, she found several people staring at her with deeply disturbed expressions.

Cyclops knelt down beside her and took her hands. "That's not what 'taking the defensive' means, Jean. We have to be careful with this one. We don't know what they're after, and that makes them extremely dangerous."

"We know what they're after, Scott. You know it, I know it," she motioned to the occupants of the Blackbird, "they know it. They're after something to kill all of us. And this time I want things to be different. I want to adopt jungle warfare. 'Kill or be killed' makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?"

Nobody could disagree with that, either.

"Jean, what is this? Why are you so troubled, babe?" He rubbed her arms in a comforting gesture. "What is it?"

She shook her head. "It's nothing. It's just that, lately, I feel this... urge inside of me to strike out at people. To destroy something indestructible, just because it is within my power. Like the Dark Phoenix destroyed that star system."

The last statement was made in a hushed whisper. Jean bore the knowledge that she had inadvertently obliterated thousands of living beings harshly. It was a difficult thing, accepting that the blood of so many would stain your hands for all your life.

Cyclops' brows drew together in an alarmed frown. "Do you mean that you can feel the Phoenix... or the Dark Phoenix returning?"

"No, no. This need is solely based on me, and my instincts." She paused to let that sink in before saying the rest. "And that makes it all the more dangerous."





There was silence in the Blackbird until it landed in a field just beside the government base.

Getting in was the easy part. Jean and Rogue lifted everyone over the electrified fences that surrounded the area; Storm and Bobby worked together to destroy the surveillance cameras.

Cyclops blasted the key pad and the doors slid open without protest. Alarms were already going off; someone had obviously gotten a clue. Since they had seen the layout of the building, the X-men avoided the teams of security men running through the corridors with primed weapons and itchy trigger fingers.

They were even able to locate the vigilante men before the so-called "professionals" got to them, down in the lower chambers of the base. Another blessing was given.

And then it all went wrong.





The men had seen them coming. Logan attacked one, and blood sprayed the metallic keyboards of the central computer in a thick wash.

"I *told* you to take the defensive!" Cyclops shouted, already dealing with his own opponent.

"It don't get more defensive than that!" Wolverine shot back, spinning around to crack another man's head on the monitor.

All at once, two of the men dropped the wooden box marked 'Prototype' they had been carrying, and opened it. Two guns appeared in their hands, and they fired before anyone was ready. An odd greenish gas enveloped Rogue, who was closest, and she fell to the floor in a nerveless heap.

Beast bellowed. "Nerve gas!" above the chaos. Storm lifted Rogue, who was now seizuring slightly, and held her high above the rest. Bobby got reckless in his haste and went down next.

Out of the corner of his eye, Cyclops saw his wife's eyes narrow before her hands began to glow with green energy. "N-!"

"Too late for you." She spoke to the man facing her before clenching her hand in a tight fist.

At her mental command, the man's heart contracted in his chest. Pain shot up the walls of his chest cavity in burning sparks. He screamed and fell to his knees, dropping the gun. A green field surrounded the weapon before it melted into a grotesque bit of metal and bad intentions.

"Jean, no!"

Jean flicked a glance at her husband before sending her open palm slamming across the man's face. He fell to he floor, unconscious, his only keepsake from the confrontation being a tiny scratch along his right cheekbone. The sharp edge of her wedding band had caught his cheek as she slapped him.

The men were down, the weapons were both lying on the floor, never to be used again, and Rogue and Bobby were being spirited away from the scene.

"Hey, Red!" Wolverine's shout reached her before she cleared the doorway. "Get in here!"

Jean did an about-face and ran through the sliding doorway at the back of the room, behind the computer.

Wolverine was standing there, staring at the ceiling-high shelves lining the walls. Every one of them was filled with glass jars and vials of the pale green gas that had so effortlessly defeated Rogue. "We can't just leave 'em here. All they have ta do is lift the blueprints from the computer and make themselves another one of those guns. We would be sittin' around just waitin' fer somethin' ta happen."

"Your right." Phoenix jerked Logan off his feet, into the air. There they hovered, surrounded by a faint pink shield while the room beyond filled with light. Logan would only realize later that it was the nerve gas reacting violently to exposure to the air as the jars exploded.

He dropped to his feet, staring at the empty room.

"We don't have time to take pictures, Logan. Let's go."

Jean and Wolverine ran for the exit, a convenient hole in the wall, put there by Cyke himself.

Just as they turned the corner of the computer console, it burst into psionic flames. The plastic keys and metal wires melted quickly, leaving a mercurial lump of scrap metal in its place.

"I hope they recycle that," Logan mumbled before taking a hefty leap over the electric fence around the base.





Beast looked up from his notes and told the group what they'd been waiting to hear. "They'll both be fine. I expect a quick recovery, as neither was exposed to the gas for more than a few seconds."

"What was that stuff?" Logan asked.

"An extremely advanced form of nerve gas. I can't be sure, as I don't have enough of a sample to test it, but I think it must be specifically formulated to neutralize the mutated factor in a mutant's blood. It would reduce them to a normal human's level, and then neutralize the brain in a matter of moments. It would be fascinating, really. If it wasn't so deadly."

Logan appeared to take this in stride. "So that's why those guys weren't bothered, even when they were standin' in the middle of a mushroom cloud of that stuff. Huh."

"So all we have to do is wait for somebody else to invent something else like it," Jean muttered bitterly.

Storm glanced at her sharply. "We shall deal with that if and when the time comes." We are X-men, she finished silently, that is what we do. But Jean knew what she meant. She looked down at her hands then, biting her lip, ashamed.

She looked down at her hands and saw nothing but a faint tan line. Where her wedding ring should have been.

"Oh, no." she gasped softly, shocked to find it gone. She hadn't taken it off since the day Scott had slid it on her finger, promising to love, honor, and cherish her, till death do them part.

And then it came back to her; she had slapped that man, and felt a small scrape across her knuckle. She hadn't been able to identify it then, but she knew now that it had been the ring sliding from her hand.

"What's wrong?" Scott asked, coming up behind her.

Jean spun around and held up her hand silently, her breath trapped in her throat.

Scott looked obtusely, seeing nothing but her hand; there were no cuts or scratches on it, no reason to be feeling the pain he sensed through their bond.

Her eyes filled with tears; then, he understood.

When she spun and fled to their bedroom, he followed her.

"No, Scott!" she begged. "Please! Just let me be alone... for now."

Scott looked at his wife, seeing the deep frustration and fierce weariness in her eyes. He nodded, and the door slammed in his face. He stood in the middle of the hall, staring after her for a long time.





Jean stood in her bedroom, staring at her face in the mirror on the wall for many minutes. It was the same face, she had seen it reflected there every day of her adult life. Those were the same intelligent green eyes, the high cheekbones, the straight nose; it was the same face. Her face.

For the first time in her life, she wished with everything in her that it belonged to someone else. She had survived horrors unsurpassed and dangers untold, she had discovered what it was to hate, and the joy of true love.

Her life was perfectly imperfect, the way it had always been. Now she wanted it to be different.

Jean sighed and reached out to touch the cool surface of the mirror, almost wishing she could reach through it and disappear.

She turned away from the glass and flopped down on the bed, closing her eyes in defeat.





It was the music that woke Jean from a deep, dreamless sleep. She knew immediately that she was having a dream, because she was no longer in the world she was used to. She was somewhere in the canals of her own mind.

And if anyone knew her own mind, it was Jean Grey.

She followed the music through the shifting hallways of thought, drifting past one doorway after another.

When she found one that suited her, she turned the knob. The music stopped. Jean stood in a green field, filled with sunlight and warmth. A small stream flowed past her, but Jean took no notice. For seated on a large boulder next to the clear, rushing water, was a figure in a gauzy white dress.

As though the person sensed her scrutiny, she turned to face Jean.

There was nothing for her to say. Jean said the first thing that came to mind. "Sarah!"

Sarah Grey, long deceased, lay the silver flute down on the rock and slid to the ground, crossing the short distance between them.

They embraced, and, when they drew apart, neither said anything.

"You're not real." Jean said honestly.

Sarah smiled and shook her head. "No. But I could say the same thing about you, Jeannie. Lately, you've become a figment of your own imagination."

"I know."

"Don't do this to yourself, Jeannie. You have to take things as they come. You have to deal with things as they are, not as you want them to be. It just doesn't work any other way."

"I know."

"Stop *saying* that. You *don't* know. If you did, you wouldn't be so anxious to give up what precious things you have!"

Jean started at her sister's angry tone, but Sarah continued. "I exist only in your memory. Things happened that were beyond my control; and yours. But this is the way things are! Don't waste what little you have wishing you had something else! *I* thought I had forever, and I was wrong!"

"I won't."

"If you don't stop this, you *will*! Don't you care anymore? Don't you care what happens to other people? People like me?"

There it was the whole problem reduced to a simple yes or no question. Trust Sarah to do that for her. Did she care? Had Jean Grey, the first X-woman, the Phoenix, lost her compassion? Didn't she care enough about humanity to try to save it, whether it wanted to be saved or not?

Phoenix raised glittering eyes to her sister. "Yes, I do."

Sarah paused, as though judging her resolve, and then smiled in a wide grin. "Good."

Jean smiled back and ran toward the doorway. Sarah called her back, and for a moment, she paused on the threshold. "Don't forget this," she called out. Something small flashed in the sunlight as it spun through the air. Jean caught it one-handed.





And then she opened her eyes. She lay curled up under the covers, staring at her hands. Her wedding ring was back, firmly in place. She started laughing, just because she couldn't think of a better way to express herself. She leaped out of bed, full of energy for the first time in longer than she cared to remember. She twirled around the room a few times, experimentally, before gliding into the bathroom. Jean burst into the shower, grabbing for a washcloth to wash her face, surprising Cyclops out of his early-morning coma.

Still dripping, he followed her out, watching her as she waltzed around the room, pulling on clothing.

"Are you okay?' he finally asked.

She slanted him an odd glance. "If I'm upset, you think something's wrong, and now that I'm happy, you think it's worse. Make up your mind, will you?"

"No, no. It's not that, it's just... what happened?"

He seemed so stunned at her transformation that she laughed again.

"Somebody just had to knock some sense into me, I guess."

She stopped dancing around long enough to catch him in a tight hug.

She looked into his eyes and said, quietly, "I'm fine." When he saw that she was serious, she smiled and spun away from him, bouncing onto the bed.

"So you're sure you're all right?" he asked cautiously.

Jean smiled at her wickedly husband. "C'mere and I'll prove it to ya."

Scott didn't have to be told twice. He'd been called many things, but 'stupid' wasn't one of them.





Nobody in the mansion saw either of the pair before noon that day. And when the two were spotted at dinner, holding hands and gazing at each other like young lovers, nobody had to ask why.