"Truthfully, I was about mad enough to do it. I loved you, had fallen for you. But the X-Men? I was so burnt out by that moment..." He sighed and kissed her hands. "And The Phoenix... like I told her, the Phoenix is line-sighted. All it said was I left, and that someone else tried to hold it together. For all we know, we were both killed a day later in that timeline."
He nodded. "But as far as how I feel about you, or even Jean, this doesn't change anything. The Phoenix force, on the other hand? Owes me yet more blood and tears."
He shivered. "I hate having my mind altered. I hate it."
The words were a hiss, that, for all their quietness, were still full of the intensity of a man whose eyes blasted mountains to dust. His worst nightmares began with him mindbent and hurting those he loved. To know the Phoenix Force, who had stolen his first love and fooled them all so well, was responsible for doing something like that to him? That made him furious.