Otahi: Part One

by queenB

There was no denying it. Jean Grey loved to drive.

After all the action she'd seen over the years as an X-Man, after all the different lands she had visited and foes she had fought, after all the victories great and small, nothing quite measured up to a fast car on an empty road. There was just something about wrapping her hands around a steering wheel, putting her foot to the floor and racing into the horizon. It felt like she could almost run away from all her cares, her worries... as if her life was growing smaller and smaller behind her, transforming into a tiny, almost invisible dot in her rear-view mirror while she sped head first into a new one. It was a lovely fantasy, one that tugged at the corners of her mouth and made her heart hum in delight... but that's all it ever was.

Reality was never that easy to escape.

Jean leaned back in the driver's seat as she fiddled with the radio dial of the rented Mustang convertible, trying to find a clear station after the last one had faded. Tuning from one end of the dial to the other, she found her only choice was a twangy country-western station on the AM dial. It was old school and melancholy, nasal but honest. It would have to do.

After ten hours in the car, stopping in northern Virginia for a nap and a few cups of coffee, she'd left behind most of the heavily populated areas of the east coast and was only two hours away from her destination on the Carolina Outer Banks. Jean was headed to a small fishing village Logan had recommended to her as the perfect place for some peace and quiet. He had said it was the perfect spot to be alone with her thoughts.

The last six months had taken their toll on Jean. It had all begun with Scott's passing, which left a hole in her life she knew could never be completely filled. Her grief had threatened plunge her into insanity, so her teammates sent her away with Betsy Braddock, aka Psylocke, to the sunny Pacific to recover. There, the two telepaths battled her husband-turned-Apocalypse on the astral plane, accidentally awakening the Shadow King who lurked in a prison of Psylocke's creation. The outcome lead to both Jean and Betsy mingling not only their powers, but their very selves... an occurrence that left both of them physically and mentally changed. Jean's telekinesis became a part of Betsy and Jean's own telepathy grew in power, rivaling even that of Professor Xavier himself.

But Jean's extended and changed gifts were only a fraction of what was exchanged between them... an unnamable bond which drove Betsy and her lover, Warren Worthington, apart and sent Betsy seeking the shelter of the English countryside, far away from the X-Men and from Jean. It stung more than Jean had imagined it could. She had never expected to need Betsy's companionship as much as she did... to need or want anyone after Scott. But it had happened and coping with it had almost driven her over the edge. In a moment of weakness, she had trouble with her heightened telepathy and nearly lost herself as Logan watched helplessly. Needless to say, when he had suggested a vacation to get her bearings, she couldn't help but agree.

As Hank Williams Sr. droned away on the radio, Jean tapped her finger on the dash. She was nearly out of gas. So she pulled over at the next service station to refuel.

She eased the blue Mustang into the dusty parking lot and stepped out of the driver's side door as she stretched her aching muscles. As she pumped the gas, she leaned against the car and pulled her windbreaker tightly against her skin. It was spring, but there was still a nip in the morning air. She pushed her hair out of her face and stared up into the sky as she adjusted her sunglasses. Tiny wisps of clouds floated lazily across the blue sky, and the sun shone bright and yellow. It was going to be a good day. Jean could feel it in her bones.

When she went inside to pay and freshen up, she smiled at the attendant, a girl in her early twenties... the owner's daughter, the buzz of her thoughts told her, dreaming of a bigger life in a bigger place far away from the monotonous life of rural bliss. When she handed her back her change, Jean asked, "How much farther is it to the Swan Quarter ferry?"

She tilted her head and studied Jean, seemingly amused and befuddled for a few seconds, even though Jean was sure she had been asked that very question many times before. "Well, about an hour more down the road. You should just catch the ten o'clock boat if you go straight away."

Jean smiled and left two copper coins in the tray next to the cash register labeled 'Take a Penny, Leave a Penny'. "Thanks."

As she grabbed her fruit juice and turned to leave, the young woman asked in a dull voice, "So you're going out to the islands?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"It's pretty boring out there this time of year. No tourists, really."

Jean grinned. "That's what I hear."

"Going out there all alone?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Yes, I am."

The girl snickered to herself as she began filling a display behind the counter with packs of cigarettes. "Them old salts will just love the sight of you. You be careful. They might think you're a mirage or one of them mermaids they claim they seen when fishing too long."

Jean winked at her as she opened the door and a cowbell clanged against the glass. "I will."

A town of fishermen and their families would definitely be a change of pace. She was looking forward to it. Jean shook her head.

Mermaid, indeed.

The girl at the gas station had been correct. As she turned the car into the docking area, the small line of cars had just started moving onto the boat. She smiled as she rolled the car onto the large, flat boat. It seems her timing was perfect.

Once the ferry started moving, she got out of her car and walked to the front, resting a foot on a small pylon as a gentle wind kissed her face. As they chugged deeper into the Pamlico Sound and the mainland disappeared behind them, she leaned her arms against the ferry's railing and listened to the urgent squawks of seagulls as they trailed behind the boat, hoping for a meal from the smattering of tourists and locals.

The place she was going to was only accessible by boats like this and she was looking forward to the isolation. There would be fewer minds whispering at the perimeter of her thoughts and fewer worries and strains among them. As the gentle waves licked against the side of the ferry, she took a deep breath of salty air and let it soak into her thoughts. A person's soul is really a sum of many parts, Xavier had told her long ago. She just needed some time to see what she added up to. Alone.

After two and a half hours, the boat finally arrived at the barren shore of Ocracoke Island, supposedly the final resting place of Blackbeard the Pirate according to a pamphlet she skimmed in the lounge area of the ferry. It seems over the years more than a few people had used the island to escape the prying eyes of the world around them... though Jean was sure her excursion would end on a lighter note than Edward Teach's watery demise at the hands of the Royal Navy.

Disembarking from the ferry, she made a right onto the twelve mile highway which led to the island's only village, sand dunes dipping gracefully on both sides of the road, the only protection the island had between the rough Atlantic on the northeast and the hungry Pamlico Sound on the southwest. From her first few minutes on the island with thirsty sea oats bobbing their elegant, reedy necks at her from over the dunes, she glimpsed a seashore strewn with the ancient carcasses of boats, timbers gray with age and cracked open by an angry sea. It quickly became obvious that life on the island was hard for those who stayed year-round. Ocracoke was worn and fickle, both hard and weak, with enough character to make it unforgettable. Jean adjusted her sunglasses and thought it appropriate Logan would send her here. It was a place after his own heart.

She slowed down as she entered the small village, its size barely a square mile, and found the realty office. As she entered the small establishment, a small set of bells tinkled on the door behind her and an elderly woman popped up from behind the counter, an old-fashioned, green clerk's visor separating her wrinkled face from her helmet of blue and silver hair.

"What can I do for ya?" asked the woman, her accent sparkling somewhere between a southern drawl and something Jean couldn't quite place.

Pushing a handful of wind-blown hair behind her ear, she said with a smile, "I have a reservation. Jean Grey?"

"Ah yes." The woman turned to hover over a milk crate of manila file folders. "You're the Yankee gal I talked to on the phone. We've got lots of spots still open. Where you want?"

Jean raised an eyebrow. "Pardon me?"

The woman scratched her head and adjusted her visor. "Well, we've got soundside and lightside."

Jean grinned, realizing the island manner of speech was going to take some getting used to. "Which one is better?"

"Well, the lightside gets better sunsets and ain't as crowded if that's what your looking for."

Jean nodded. "Sounds perfect."

The woman smiled as she wiped her palms on her old, printed dress. "I thought it might."

As Jean began to fill out the paperwork the woman placed on the counter, she said, "We've got bikes for rent, too, if you're interested. It's the best way to get 'round the island."

Pursing her lips, Jean agreed. She could already tell it would be easier to navigate the island's narrow roads and sandy trails without her car. And it was a long way to the beach from the village on foot. A bicycle sounded like just what she needed.

"How many you need, ma'am?"

Jean placed the worn fountain pen on the counter. "Just one."

The woman winked at her. "Getting away from it all, then?"

Winking back as she took a key and a map from the woman, Jean said, "Something like that."

"Good for you, sweetie."

Jean shouldered the backpack she brought in with her. "Thanks."

She hesitated at the door and the woman seemed to read her thoughts, "Bikes are down there by the gate. Pick whichever one you want. If'n ya need one, I can send Jack around for to put a rack on your car."

"No, no. I can put it in the back seat of my convertible. I don't need any help."

"Okay, then. You take care. Come back here if you need anything. Poles, nets, boat rental's down by O'Neals. But I wouldn't recommend fishing today... water fires last night. And it's fixing to breeze up here in a smidget."

Jean just smiled and nodded and shut the door behind her, not really understanding much of what the woman had said to her and refraining from probing her telepathically. She wasn't interested in much more than finding something to eat and spending the rest of the day reading on the porch. Fishing definitely wasn't on the agenda.

The cottage she was staying in was just off Silver Lake, the village's main harbor, not far from Styron's Store and the lighthouse. When she first entered the small, slope-roofed cottage, she noticed there was no television and no telephone and smiled at the rustic charm of the old home. After she unpacked her car, she visited Styron's for a few provisions, picking up a collection of local ghost stories, having forgotten to bring any the mystery books she so enjoyed with her on her rush to get on the road. In the store, Jean once again marveled at the dialect of the locals and then stopped to gaze at the Ocracoke Light. It was older than any other lighthouse she'd seen and the tall but squat conical structure jutted up defiantly between the gnarled cedars that clung tightly to the sandy soil.

Later that night as the sun set and the wind chimes tinkled gently in the Atlantic breeze, Jean curled up in an Adirondack chair on the front porch of her small, two bedroom cottage as she read the thin volume of local ghost tales. The light faded as she read the last of a story set in post-Colonial Wilmington, North Carolina, which was a few hundred miles down the shore from where she was staying. It was a gripping if not gristly story of two young friends, Alexander Hostler and Samuel Jocelyn.

Jocelyn had died tragically in a riding accident and Hostler, wracked with grief had shut himself away from his friends and family, mourning silently in his home. One night he was visited by Jocelyn's ghost who asked him forlornly, "How could you bury me when I was not yet dead?" Though he was startled by the apparition and the frightening news he brought, he waved it off as a side effect of fatigue and grief and paid it no mind... until his friend visited him again, and again.

At his wits' end, Hostler convinced another friend to help him exhume the body under the cover of night and they found Jocelyn lying dead in his grave, face down in his casket instead of face up as he had been buried. It seemed his friend had been buried alive, only knocked unconscious when he had been thrown from his horse and not struck dead.

Jean suppressed a shudder as the story ended with a historian's account of how the mistake could have been made, explaining that a state of catalepsy associated with head and spine trauma might have appeared as rigormortis to colonial-era physicians.

She blinked as she wished the store had instead been stocked with novels by the likes of Agatha Christie or Patricia Wentworth. She was used to a bit less personal horror in her fiction.

In the distance she could hear the sound of children playing flash-light tag and the bells of buoys clanging off toward the what a gentlemen in Styron's called the ditch, which was in all actuality a wide creek which ran through much of the village toward the soundside. She sighed as she took a deep lungful of salt air into her lungs, closed her book and headed to bed.

Sleep came easy for her, but did not remain so. The old nightmares had returned, unsilenced by her change of locale. Like she had more than a hundred nights since Scott's passing, the events in Akkaba replayed before her and she watched again in horror as her husband merged with the essence of their greatest enemy, Apocalypse.

"No," she whispered in her dream as her fellow X-Men fell beside her like limp dolls and her husband lunged toward Apocalypse and the young Nate Grey. "I can't watch this. Not again."

And then she did something she didn't do on that fateful day; she did something she'd never done in her nightmares before. She ran.

The shocked gasps of her teammates and the cries of a newly born Apocalypse faded from her ears as her feet pounded down the stone corridors of the fortress and carried her towards the white-hot desert sun. But before she could reach the outside, a familiar form emerged from the shadows and clutched her wrist tightly, a cold grip searing her skin.

Jean turned to face her challenger and said quietly, "Betsy. Let me go."

Shadows dripped off her skin like oil as the dream version of Betsy Braddock stepped clear of the thick, stone wall. "No, Jean. You can't run away."

Psylocke then turned Jean in her grip, holding her head firmly between her strong hands as she forced her to look back down the corridor and the scene of Scott's merging appeared once again in front of her, louder and more vivid than it ever was in Egypt. Jean whispered, "Betsy, please."

She looked around at the faces of the X-Men that filled the chamber. Ororo, Xavier, Nathan, even Magneto were all focused on her and then everyone began to laugh. She covered her ears as their voices turned shrill and spiteful.

Before she had another chance to plead with Betsy to let her go, she retreated into the shadows as Apocalypse's inner chamber suddenly grew silent and empty save for the lone figure of her husband wearing the blue and yellow of Xavier's school as he asked quietly, "Why, Jean? Why did you let them bury me when I wasn't dead?"

Jean's voice echoed off the crumbling walls as she shrieked, "Betsy?!"

She spun around as darkness filled the large space and she heard Psylocke laughing from the shadows that licked at her feet. "Don't leave me alone! I can't do this! I can't!"

And as the dream faded from her mind and she fell into a deeper, dreamless stage of sleep, she whispered quietly into her pillow, "Please."

The next morning Jean rose early as she pushed her turbulent dreams into the back of her thoughts, instead spending a few hours relaxing on the lonely beach away from the village. She left her volume of ghost stories at home and had stopped at a small bookshop, picking up a copy of _The Chinese Shawl_, a harmless but hard-to-find novel depicting the adventures of Miss Maud Silver, a spinster private eye living in London.

Alone on the beach, she slathered on a thick coat of spf 30 to guard her pale skin from the sun and reclined in the sand with her book. Maud Silver wasn't enough to keep her attention as the seagulls squawked lazily down the beach and the waves crashed on the shore and she soon found herself drifting off into a lucid sleep, an almost trance-like state she'd often entered to meditate or relax as her book dropped to her chest. Around her she could hear the faint whispers the island-dwellers' thoughts as she let herself relax and dig her painted toenails into the white sand. She took a series of slow, cleansing breaths and winked the voices out one by one, attempting to completely isolate herself from the minds in the vicinity.

Finally completely alone in her mind, she stretched out in the sun and smiled like a cheshire cat, her eyes still closed as she turned onto her stomach and attempted to take a quick nap. But before sleep came, she heard someone whisper her name with a lilting, British accent. "Jean."

She pushed the sensation out of her thoughts but it came back louder than before. "Jean!"

Sleepily, she muttered into her towel, "Leave me alone."

She felt a handful of sand pelt her on the back as the voice said, "Sorry, dear. Rise and shine."

Jean opened her eyes and saw Betsy Braddock dressed in full Psylocke regalia crouching in the sand next to her, a sly grin on her face. Scrambling to a sitting position, Jean declared, "Betsy! What are you doing here?"

Psylocke winked. "I'm not really here. I'm actually grabbing a nap in the sitting room at Braddock Manor. In fact, I don't even know I'm here."

She reached out and tapped Jean's forehead with two manicured fingernails. "You've brought me here through what's left of our psychic rapport. Though honestly what you're seeing is the parts of me we shared after our experience on the astral plane. In short, I'm a hallucination... an astral hobgoblin with just enough Betsy behind me to make me almost her."

Jean sat open-mouthed as Betsy jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "But him? I don't know what his story is."

Looking farther down the beach, she saw a familiar form striding toward her. The posture, the tilt of his head, the flowered swim-trunks only he would have the lack of fashion-sense to wear... "Scott," she breathed as her heart leapt into her throat.

She turned to Betsy, "What's he doing here?"

Betsy smiled as she got to her feet and sprinted playfully towards the surf and said over her shoulder. "I don't know. Why don't you ask him?"

Just as Scott was about to reach her small encampment on the beach, Jean heard a southern drawl speaking quietly but urgently, "Miss. Miss?"

Jean blinked her eyes open as she wiped sand from her cheek and sat up from her towel. Standing over her was a pair of elderly women and from their dress and accent she could tell they were fellow tourists like herself. "Sorry to disturb you, but we thought it was best to wake you. Didn't want you to burn to any more of crisp than you already have."

She looked down at her left shoulder, which had turned a bright shade of pink, and got stiffly to her feet, every inch of her back feeling as if it were simultaneously on fire and being pricked by tiny needles.

One of the women tugged on her straw hat and said with a smile, "I saw that Styron's sells that fancy ice-blue aloe cream. I'd recommend getting a few tubes of it."

Jean winced as she gathered her things. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

They smiled as they walked back toward the shore, obviously intent on collecting shells. "No trouble, miss," said the taller woman with a frizzy main of white hair. "Just sorry you'll have to spend the rest of your vacation half-baked. Literally."

"Midge!" Her friend with the straw hat slapped her lightly on the wrist and the joke was wasted on Jean as she walked back up the beach toward her bicycle, wondering exactly what kind of mind games she was playing with herself.

Later that evening, after she stopped by Styron's and purchased two tubes of the aloe ointment the elderly ladies had suggested as well as a local oatmeal remedy for sunburn, Jean sat down in the small kitchen for dinner at the small linoleum-topped table in the equally small kitchen inside her bungalow. As she pushed her carrots around her plate and cut at a slightly over-cooked chicken breast, bought frozen at said Styron's, she blew a stray strand of hair away from her face and looked at the walls around her, decorated in typical tourist cottage decor. There were wooden seagull and pelican statues on the shelves and every wall seemed to have a picture of a local lighthouse hung on it.

Jean had always found lighthouses inviting, their proud, single lights sweeping the shore, warning sailors away from perilous rocks and guiding them to safe harbor. As she chewed on the last of her meal, she decided what she needed was a lighthouse. Too many times she had tried to find her way by the light of another. Charles, Scott, even Logan. Was Betsy to be the next guide through the fog of her life? She wasn't sure. Jean hoped that at last she'd find the strength to be her own guide, the power to be her own island.

She rinsed her dishes off in the sink and poured herself a glass of cheap wine. A storm was rolling in across the sound and she hoped to watch the clouds move in on the porch as the sun set behind them. But as she put the bottle away, she heard a voice behind her.

"How does it go? John Donne, I believe? '...no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

Jean raised an eyebrow as she took a deep drink of her wine and then continued the lyric Psylocke began, "...If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were..."

Betsy smirked as she circled Jean and placed her katana on the table Jean had eaten her dinner at. "... any man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Setting her glass down, Jean crossed her arms. "How very Hank of you, Betsy. I thought he was the only one that quoted poetry. A tad on the morbid side, but a noble effort."

Stepping toward Jean, the apparition of Psylocke said with a smile, "You're the one putting words in my mouth."

Jean raised an eyebrow and took her glass in hand again as she turned her back on the figment of Betsy, "So I am."

Betsy reached out and put her hands lightly on her shoulders and Jean sank into her touch, her skin suddenly no longer burning from her sunburn, reminding her that the moment she was caught in was entirely unreal. "You must really be going off the deep end to conjure me here."

Releasing a sigh, Jean tilted back her glass, mouth puckering slightly at the sweetness of the white zinfandel. "It's completely unconscious, I assure you."

Behind her, she could feel Betsy's fingers digging into her back, massaging away all the tension in her muscles. "Of course it is. But you will have to face your ghosts on your own this time, Jean."

She turned in Betsy's grip as she pushed her hands off her shoulders. "I know."

They smiled at each other for a brief moment and Betsy said, "On your own two feet."

Jean nodded. "I know."

Betsy's eyes drifted downward and Jean stepped closer to her. "All this power and the damage Apocalypse did to your memories when he left your mind. You've barely had a chance to deal with it... With your grief... It might drive you mad. Like it did... when she... was you."

"For the last time, I know."

The apparition reached out and touched Jean's lips. She was so real. She spoke like her, she smelled like her. Jean tilted her face up and pressed her lips against the still mouth of her own imagination.

She even tasted like her.

A clap of thunder broke their embrace and startled, Jean dropped her wine glass on the floor. It shattered into a hundred tiny fragments as the lights flickered.

When she opened her eyes, Betsy was no longer there and the katana was gone from the table. She hugged her arms around herself as she realized she was all alone as the storm finally arrived on its journey across the Pamlico Sound.

After the worst of the storm passed, Jean drew a bath and emptied the contents of the oatmeal mixture into the tub. While shabbily decorated, the bungalow wasn't without charm and the bathroom was proof of that with it's four clawed-tub and etched windows. A family must have lived in it before, through all the hurricanes and the hardships of isolation. No doubt the property became much more valuable to them as a tourist rental than a home as the modern world crept steadily towards their island.

Jean took off her dressing gown and eased herself into the tub, letting the cooling effect of the oatmeal powder spread over the back of her calves and up toward her neck. It was stupid of her to fall asleep for so long on the beach, knowing how sensitive her pale skin was to the sun, but she was much more concerned with the turbulent thoughts running through her subconscious and the hallucinations which were growing more frequent with her further isolation. She couldn't help but wonder if they'd been there all along and if she was just too busy to notice.

The minutes ticked by as the last few drops of the thunderstorm tinkled on the tin roof over her head. Her bathwater was beginning to grow cold and her fingers were thoroughly pruned. So Jean got out of the bath and put on a coat of aloe gel, glad that her bikini had shielded her skin from the places on her back she couldn't quite reach.

As she got dressed, Jean studied herself in the mirror. She knew that when she fell asleep he would be waiting for her. If anything, the hallucination of Psylocke in the kitchen was a sign of that. Perhaps she had summoned Betsy as a sort of warning device... a guide through her own turbulent thoughts. Again, she was projecting her own neuroses onto the guise of another. But this time it was all in her head. This time she was the puppet master of her own mental drama. She just had to remember to be in control, that speaking to herself through the mouth of an unrequited lover and a dead husband was far from normal, even for the world's most powerful telepath... even for an X-Man.

Still, she put off sleep as long as she could, finally climbing into bed when she could keep her eyes open no longer. Through the beginning of the night, her dreams were fairly unexciting... a picnic on her parent's lawn with a giant, walking teddy bear melted into a trip to the grocery store where the isles were filled with the same flavor of rice-o-roni over and over when she was looking for tuna helper instead.

Though slightly eerie, there was nothing to be alarmed about until in frustration, she found a clerk dressed in a red and white striped shirt pushing a broom down yet another rice-o-roni-filled aisle. She tapped the man on the shoulder and when he turned to face her, she saw he was wearing a pair of ruby-quartz glasses. She gasped as he wiped his hands on his dingy apron and asked, "Ma'am, can I ask you why you let them bury me alive?"

She dropped the basket she had been carrying and stood her ground when all she wanted to do was run back down the aisle as far away from him as possible. But she could find no words and he asked, "Jean? Why?"

Breathing heavily, she said, "They didn't bury you. There was no body!"

He stepped towards her, dropping his broom with a clatter. "Why did you let them?"

She stammered, "I... I..."

She turned to walk away, but remembered Psylocke's words. She had to face her grief. "You're dead, Scott. Apocalypse has destroyed everything that was you. You're nothing but a ghost."

Turning on her heel, she walked past him and out the doors of the grocery store and into a parking lot. It was raining and she looked up into a black void of a sky as the rain soaked her hair and clothes. Behind her she heard someone clapping their hands and she turned to see Psylocke crouched on a pylon, the shadows of the Crimson Dawn licking at her feet.

She called out to her over the wet asphalt, "Why are you still here?!"

Betsy disappeared as the storm enveloped them both and they both sunk into shadow, but she could hear her words as she cycled out of REM sleep.

"Because it's just beginning, Jean. You know it could never be this easy."

[next part]

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