[IC: Forward dated to Saturday 19 May]

[julienned]

[YEAH I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY YOU GUYS ARE IN HERE. it's a comatose teenager hooked up to a bunch of machines.

it's really boring.] 

Comments

[extremities]

[smiles, tiredly]

I didn't hear you complaining.

[julienned]

I will try harder to write on the walls telekinetically while in a coma in future.

[extremities]

Good on you.

How are you feeling?

[julienned]

Better than I should, given what happened?

[extremities]

I'll take that.

[julienned]

Foley must have healed the physical damage, anyway.

[extremities]

He did. Then I took you to the hospital.

[julienned]

Where I hear that Ms Grey ripped Vic's arm off with her telekinesis. And now we're in this stalemate where my team want to kill your wife and pretty much the only thing stopping them doing that is me.

[extremities]

X-Men don't kill. Either we repress it, which hasn't worked, or we find a way to transfer the Phoenix onto a zombie or something. Other than that, I'm out of ideas.

[julienned]

Funny that. Your wife asked me to join her to kill everyone.

Also repression is how we all ended up in this mess. Though I'm not surprised that's what you came up with.

[extremities]

The Phoenix did. Not Jean.

Which is why I prefaced it with "hasn't worked". I have no illusions about it, but it might buy time for a more concrete solution. I've never faced the Phoenix before. You guys have. So unless you have a solution in mind, I need to hear it now.

[julienned]

No. Your wife.

Your wife has managed to repress everything negative so much that it has ended up getting dumped onto a cosmic entity that has existed since the beginning of everything. Every time someone has thought how much they hate mutants and she's heard it, she's repressed the resulting thought of "I hate you". She repressed it so damned much that she doesn't even know she does it. That's bad when you're a telepath like she is.

So of course she's going to blame the Phoenix Force for that. It means that she doesn't have to look at how she resents how mutants are treated. It means that she doesn't have to acknowledge that she is so damned lonely that she tried to mindscrew me into joining her in killing everyone, because I'm pretty much the only one who also wants to use my powers to smash everything until it stops hurting.

You say that X-Men don't kill? She's going to. She is going to kill unless you stop letting her avoid looking hard at herself and realising that yes, she has these thoughts and that it's okay.

[extremities]

[looking straight at him, nodding]

I surmised as much. The problem is still time, though. Even if I get her to accept all of that, I doubt the Phoenix will simply vanish.

[julienned]

Of course not. She has to control it, and that means she has to control herself. Not repress herself.

Look, I'll show you. Take your glasses off.

[extremities]

Julian--[he swallows, and then he takes them off]

[julienned]

See, this is an example of repression.

Open your eyes, Mister Summers.

[extremities]

[digs his fingernails into his palms as he slowly opens them]

[julienned]

[as he opens them, he can see his optic blasts being directed down to the ground. Julian looks a strained, but not dangerously so]

And this is control.

You can put them back on.

[extremities]

[does so, pushing them back hard, and looking at the mini-crater in his room]

I'm going to get into trouble for that.

[julienned]

Blame it on the telekinetic. Everyone else does.

Anyway, the point is that that? Ms Grey doesn't have that kind of control. She has a lot of power and a whole ton of repression, but because she repressed her powers she has no control over what she could be.

That's what you got to work with if you have to fight her.

[extremities]

I rather not.

It's a lot to work with, but I'll see what I can do.

[julienned]

As for someone taking the Phoenix Force off her, there's ... three options? Four? Foley, Magneto, the Professor and me. They're all really bad choices.

[extremities]

Forget bad, they're not choices.

[julienned]

Gee, thanks.

But she has to control it. In our universe, she did. So did your and her daughter.

[extremities]

There's no need to take this the wrong way. It's not an inflection of your skills, it's that no one should have to live with the Phoenix.

[pauses over the word "daughter" before moving on] Do you remember any of the particulars?