InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Trust thyself."

Not THAT Jean Grey (theotherjean) wrote in snapthread,
@ 2019-05-26 22:32:00

Entry tags:

!partner thread, jean grey (trn240), tony stark (mcu)

Who: Jean Grey and Tony Stark (MCU)
What: Talking about birds (fire birds)
Where: Tony's workshop
When: After this
Warnings: Low

This was probably the absolute last thing on Jean's list of things she wanted to do. But the cat (bird?) was out of the bag (cage?) and honestly it was better to face it than not. Face it, just like she had last time.

Yeah Jean. Because that ended so well.

So, at Carol's insistence, Jean threw on a pair of leggings and her X-Men jacket over her t-shirt, laced up her high tops, and left her house. She had plenty of time to mull it over in her brain as she walked over to Grandpa's. It was the right thing to do, she knew, because it put the community in danger. She couldn't be selfish about this. It would be an easier pill to swallow if it wasn't Tony. Even if this wasn't that Tony (which, again, Jean got that more than most), he had the tendency to be trigger happy. And even if this Tony hadn't shattered the Phoenix, did his behavior as a person change that much from reality to parallel reality?

It would have been easier to do this on the comms. But she had to do this in person, because if Jean was going to lay bare something so personal and traumatic to her, then she needed the collateral of Tony's authentic thoughts. Nobody else knew the whole story. She wanted to hear in his head what he wanted to do to her, whether it was shoot her, lock her up, or leave her alone. She wanted the assurance, and it was her and her body. It was only fair, right? Thankfully Kitty wasn't there to say otherwise.

The lights were on Tony's workshop, so Jean went that way. Crossing that last stretch of grass, she worked on her approach. No need to start aggressive. Roll into it. Have boundaries, but don't draw a line in the sand. The last thing this place needed was rehashing AvX.

"Tony, hey. I'm sure you've been keeping on the comm network." She slowed her approach when she came up on the workshop, happy to keep a few yards between them. Her hands hit her hips and she looked at him dead on, no longer one of those kids from the 60s that was afraid to make eye contact with adults. "I know you don't know me that well, and I don't know really know you, either. Do you have a minute to talk?"

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theotherjean
2019-05-29 05:46 pm UTC (link)

"Great, thanks."

She thought about standing, like one of those moments in the movies where the main character is about to launch into a speech and they say I'm going to stand, thanks. But maybe that was too aggressive, so Jean figured she'd take a seat. For now.

The stool became enveloped by a bright pink energy and jumped across the workshop over to where she stood. Then Jean sat on it and hitched her heels on the circular metal bar.

"So, Sam's proposal about keeping a watch. It turned into, like, a thing." She waved a hand. "I think it's important to consider some additional factors. Possible threats. And I don't mean possible in, like, a highly hypothetical kind of way, like 'oh, this thing could happen, maybe.' More, like, this thing has happened before, multiple times, and it's always catastrophic."

"So." Jean lifted up her hands and tucked some red hair behind her ears. "After talking about it, Carol and I think that this possible threat is worth watching for. It's called the Phoenix Force. And it is hunting me."

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allaboutego
2019-05-30 12:45 am UTC (link)

Okay. Well. The show of power was also a little aggressive, but Tony was weirdly used to it -- or had been once. Back when Wanda had lived with them, when Vision had made it his life's mission to just phase into rooms through walls with zero warning.

He'd watched Captain America tear a log in half once. God, he missed those days. And how sad and nostalgic was he for thinking about all that when there was only a moving chair in question here? Tony frowned more to himself than anything and busied himself looking around his desk for a cup of coffee that was even remotely recent.

And he listened. Because he did that now, okay? It was a thing he'd been working on more. Had been since that show down in Siberia. Because going off the rails just didn't work for anyone, particularly not him. Neither did planning, admittedly. It certainly hadn't helped them on Titan. Hadn't helped Peter. Just another thing to not think about. Luckily for them both, Tony was always thinking about at least a dozen things at once and could still focus up enough to be listening.

"Okay," he said after a beat. He knew the proposal had turned into a thing. He wasn't getting into that. Not right now. But the rest -- "Have you ever been lifted to an outside dimension that there was literally no way out of before?" He asked, because yes, a terrible inevitable force hunting someone sounded awful, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to put some critical thinking and science into this. He had questions. "Tell me more about it?"

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theotherjean
2019-05-30 07:08 pm UTC (link)

Focus, Jean wanted to yell as his thoughts went every which way.

Her eyes shifted up to the ceiling and she said, "I've been to, uh, about ten different timelines and about four alternate dimensions. There's always a way out, we just have to find it. But that's another conversation."

Leaning forward, Jean placed her hands on her knees and refocused her attention on him as he rooted around for coffee.

"The Phoenix is the cosmic force of life, the sum total of all the psionic energy in every universe that ever was, is, and could be. A lot of civilizations believe it is the Guardian of Creation, and probably inspired the mythology bird of rebirth that is its namesake. In the purest sense, its purpose is to cut away and regrow pieces of a universe that aren't working or have grown stagnant, like what a natural wildfire does to a dry forest. Lots of different mythologies include this idea of cosmic rebirth and recycling the world, like Hinduism, for example. It's not like an evil apocalypse, it's a cycle of renewal. Does that make sense so far?"

"So, the Phoenix Force is inextricably drawn to life, specifically sentient life. Which is relatively uncomplicated when you're talking about dogs, cats, birds, and natural ecosystems. But when you bring something like humans into the equation, something capable of higher thought and complex emotion and irrational logic and decision-making, things get really messy. And the Phoenix Force is drawn to that, too. Since it is made up of psionic, mental energy, it wants to experience those things."

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allaboutego
2019-06-02 05:14 pm UTC (link)

This was focused. If he was any more so than that, that's when Tony got to be something of a problem. When he rerouted all of his thoughts and energies to one singular thing or goal, that was when things were bad, dire beyond reason. Singular focus had been for getting out of Afghanistan alive, for building Ultron, for the way he'd feverishly built and built and built and planned after Steve had gone off to the other side of the world, the rest of the avengers in tow, and he'd been forced to prepare for Thanos alone.

He found a cup of coffee that was probably from today, and sipped from it, despite it very clearly being cold and not as great as it could have been. But it was something - both in terms of caffeination and having something to do with his hands.

"Okay," he said, considering. The conversation that had been put to the side by Jean a bit more on the scale of importance to him than her apparently, but that wasn't the point. "I'm following, but only to a point." Not because he was stupid -- he wasn't. But because her explanation lacked significant details. "So it's there for creation. Renewal. And it's drawn to life? From your description, it sounds like it only wants to change things that aren't working properly? Tell me how these things work in tandem for it, and what you have to do with it."

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theotherjean
2019-06-03 08:23 pm UTC (link)

"Like I said, it's drawn to complex emotions and thoughts. And people are full of irrational, illogical, messy feelings and thoughts. The kinds of things that other living creatures don't experience. It wants to experience those kinds of passions, and so as it travels from galaxy to galaxy, dimension to dimension, sometimes it comes across someone that piques its interests. And the Phoenix fuses itself with that person. Possesses them. And for a time, it's a nice thing. Wow, you suddenly have godlike powers to make the world a great place and eliminate hunger and drought and freaking climate change. But the Phoenix can't handle the full range of human emotions, especially the illogical ones. The kind that makes you punch a hole in the wall or chuck your coffee cup across the room. Those feelings don't make sense. And the Phoenix goes insane. And then it destroys everything."

Pause for dramatic effect, pause for dramatic effect, pause for dramatic effect.

"I'm the one that the Phoenix wants. We have a very long, very, very complicated history that goes beyond my teenage capacity to deal with. The kind of history that crosses timelines, crosses realities. Cliff notes version, it has found and possessed my future self multiple times, used my future self to consume entire planets in rage. Different timelines of me have died and been reborn and died again because of this thing more times than I can count." Jean let out a big breath and closed her eyes for a second, because this was always really fucking difficult to explain. "It's like the worst, possessive and abusive boyfriend you can imagine and I am trapped in this cycle with it. I've felt myself get lost to this thing and die again and again over a span of fifty years and I'm only nineteen."

Of course he couldn't get it. Who would? Not even Jean could think about it. The only reason she got it was because she was forcefully given all these memories and images and emotions of dying and dying and dying and dying and dying and-- what kind normal person could ever really get that kind of nightmare?

Jean swallowed hard and opened her eyes again, hardened by pain and anger.

"Look. This thing always comes. And it always ends the same way. Lots of fire. Lots of death. And the last thing I remember before I came here was that it came for me. This version of me. Not my future self, not some alternate dimension self. Me. And there's no reason to believe that it can't follow me here when it finds out where I am. Or, at the very least, it would be stupid not to prepare for it to come for me again."

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