sixthiterationlogs | i've fallen out of favour and i've fallen from grace

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i've fallen out of favour and i've fallen from grace

WHO: Jean Grey
WHERE: The fountain, the village roads
WHEN: 2 December
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Jean is a telepath - her powers are diminished but she can feel strong emotions and loud thoughts/surface thoughts. If there's something you would like her to pick up in specific, let me know on Plurk. She also has the ice power, so as she's coming out of the fountain she is freezing things around her. This isn't normally what happens in the fountain and she's not freezing over the surface of the fountain itself, just the lip of it.
STATUS: Open to new threads.

Everything was black. It was black and cold, bone chillingly cold, and Jean couldn't understand why she felt like she was being pushed upward through a passage when she'd just been in Egypt where the heat was dry and hot. None of it made sense, really, but did anything make sense lately? There were people out to kill them because they were mutants, there were mutants out to kill them because they weren't the right kind of mutants. Down was up and up was down and she was currently swimming in an abyss she didn't recognize.

She reached out with her mind first. Charles had always said that her mind was her greatest gift and her finest asset and not feeling him, not feeling that familiar answer back shook her to the core; had he died? He'd been there. He'd told her to unleash her full power, to fight back, to be everything she was capable of and to stop restraining herself from fear in order to save them all. Why wasn't he answering? She tried again, harder, and then out loud. Surely he'd hear her if he screamed, wouldn't he, even if he couldn't hear her in his head?

"Charles!" she screamed, choking down water in exchange for her troubles. She scrabbled up through the water and bumped up against what felt like solid rock and then, only then, did she chance opening her eyes. It was a fountain, similar to a fountain at a school or a museum, and she had no idea why she'd be half-drowning in a fountain with snow on the ground when she'd just been in Egypt with hot, dry air swirling around her and searing her lungs.

"Charles! Professor! Charles, please!" she screamed again, fingers slipping on the edge of the fountain. She kept trying to clear the snow away but there was more and more, almost as if her efforts to get rid of it were multiplying it instead. What was happening? How was this happening? She'd always been a telepath, had always had this ability and this gift? How was she suddenly locked away from hearing anything but a low, faint buzz and making snow pile up beneath her fingertips?

"Answer me! Someone! Anyone!?"

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One of the downsides to Ren's insistence in keeping an eye on the source of all new 'arrivals' to the town was his penchant for ending up near or at the fountain whenever someone decided to come sputtering to the surface like a half drowned womp rat.

More often than not he observed and let someone else play the roll of welcome wagon. The choking shouts, however, drew him in this time. He was out in the cold too much and too often, but his numbing fingers grabbed her wrist where she struggled, and he helped to pull her out of the fountain, a dark black contrast of clothing against the white of the snow.

"Shouting in the water is a good way to drown yourself. Or attract hungry animals." Her screaming had been hard on his ears and there was a rough and slightly irritated tone to his voice, but he was not rough in his grip, only firm.

"There's an inn down this path. If you want answers, you can ask for them inside. Not that anyone will have them for you." A touch of bitter tipped his last few words and his thoughts mirrored it, irritated tendrils reflecting on his own need for answers and loss of power.

"Can you walk better than you swim?"

Jean felt the irritation on him, the frustration and she also felt a little something else that made her think that he might be like her. He might be a mutant and, more than that, he might also be a telepath. She decided to test it a little and just push, thinking her name as loudly as she could. If it didn't work, maybe he'd just think she was giving him a blank stare or something but if it did work, she would have a direction to go in.

Come on. I'm Jean Grey. I'm just like you. I'M JEAN ELAINE GREY. I'M JUST LIKE YOU.

One of the first things she'd learned about controlling her powers had been toning down how she 'sounded' to other telepaths, had been working on building up walls in her mind to keep errant thoughts from drifting in or out. She let all that go for a moment and decided to just leave her mind open; if this didn't work, she had truly lost everything about her that made her a mutant and the Professor's protege.

Having another voice in his mind was not unfamiliar for Ren. In fact, it was an all too familiar feeling with both positive and negative connections, and one that made his mind abruptly lock down like a clamp on his thoughts. He took a step back once she was out of the water, his guard up and his posture tense. He had walls of his own, even if his own abilities were not quite the same as hers.

He pushed back, and followed the connection to her mind, as narrow and closed as it might now be. Was she a Jedi or just a force user? Her wild throw of her name and thought was both strong and almost desperate, and he leaned more toward another awakening in the force that he had missed somehow with his faded connection.

My name is Kylo Ren. At least with their connection he could try to get a sense of whether or not she responded to his name. His tie to the force had weakened so much, but he would hold onto his control and his memories as tightly as he could with every last ounce of his strength and that fierce determination was there at the front of his mind.

How awkward it would be for any who might see them as they stood face to face without a word between them. Only an intense staring contest in the cold snow.

It took so much more concentration than she was used to but when she heard him back in her head, Jean sighed in relief. She hadn't exchanged her powers for something else and she still had what made her her; it seemed she was still a telepath in spite of all of it. It was hard to concentrate, yes, but she was also freezing cold in a strange place and she'd just exhausted herself trying to swim out of a fountain. Maybe it would come back with some rest.

Jean focused for a moment and found her center, found her calm. It took a lot of doing because she was shivering cold and in a strange place but at least this was another mutant who could do the same thing she could do. That was a start.

Where are we, Kylo?

It was odd to be having a mental conversation. Ren was so used to these things being one sided, and after his encounter with Rey he was wary of letting her into his head too far. Especially given his weakened state. The potential of another force user was too tantalizing a possibility, though. He couldn't resist, and there was hardly a point in stopping now that he had begun.

Perhaps she would unknowingly have the answers he sought.

But she was soaked and the snow was thick. He pulled off his coat, something he had now done for others more in the last month than in his entire life, and offered it to the shivering young woman before him. H was more tolerant of the cold than some, though by no means immune to it. She had his interest and he needed to keep her alive.

A deserted village in a canyon. Far from anyone or anything you know. It has no name. His irritation had shifted to determination and something he refused to acknowledge as hope. You will die out here in the snow if we do not move. Come with me. He held out his other hand to her, watching her expectantly, waiting for her to take the coat and his hand and let him lead her inside to the warmth of a fire and the shelter of walls against the biting cold in the air.

Jean slid into the coat, grateful for the warmth of it even though she knew she wouldn't be truly warm until she got inside and out of her wet clothes. She had no idea what happened to her flight suit or any of the others she'd been with; any attempts to find their minds in the mass around her was futile. All she could tune in on was Kylo, really, and only because he was close. Everything else was a buzz, static like from a radio out of range, and no matter what she did she couldn't tune the dial.

She slid her hand into his and squeezed it tight, her thoughts sending out a brief thanks as she started to walk. Moving made her feel warmer, at least, and she managed to force a smile.

"Sorry about...back there," she said, after they'd walked a little. "I just wasn't expecting to be there."

"No one ever is. It's where whoever trapped us here likes to deposit their prisoners." Not exactly the phrasing or tact needed to set someone at ease, but Ren didn't believe in doing that to begin with. Anyone who let their guard down was a fool for doing so.

It's odd to be leading someone to the inn in the way he was. He didn't exactly return Jean's smile, but Ren wasn't antagonistic, and even seemed to have found something worth holding his attention and putting actual effort into. He was trying to be friendly, even if he failed at reassuring. If she was a force user, the two of them could try and work together. Maybe then he could get in contact with Snoke and find out why no one had come for him. Had his master moved on to someone else after Ren's failures? Maybe he had proven too weak to be useful. If his loss of so much of his power was anything to go by, that was likely a part of it.

"Most of this place is empty of answers. I will try to help you where I can." The offer is genuine. Ren wanted another force user like him. He needed that familiarity, and he wanted someone to train, or at least to understand. He failed to convince Rey. Maybe he had pushed too strongly or gotten to her too late. But this young woman could be different.

"I appreciate the help," Jean said, nodding once to confirm her understanding that this place was apparently one where answers weren't forthcoming and readily available. Things had mostly come easily to her over the course of her life. Sure, it was difficult to be a mutant and she felt isolated from her peers due to the nature and degree of her abilities but this was something else entirely.

Jean had never felt out of control before, had never felt like she had no plan and no direction to go in. She usually had the professor as a touchstone and the school to guide her; here in this place, she would have neither. Kylo, at least, was someone who shared abilities with her and could understand her gifts. This was something to be respected.

"I guess it would be stupid to ask if anyone knows a way out, wouldn't it? Since you would have already taken it if you did? I have to ask even if I know you're probably going to say no."

"It would but we all do it and no one with a mind should listen when someone else tells them there isn't." Ren certainly didn't believe it. And even if he spent the next five years searching he wouldn't believe it. He couldn't afford to accept that as a possibility.

He never stops moving while they talk, wanting to get her inside quickly. He didn't need people here at odds with him because he let someone freeze to death, and in his head he reasoned that was what put urgency to his step and nothing else.

"The snow and ice make it difficult to get far from the village, and even more difficult to try and scale the canyon. If the weather doesn't change it will take some work to get together the tools necessary, but I've been told it isn't always snowing here." And not killing himself trying to get out was preferable to facing the rocky walls of their prison for now.

"You will have dry clothes you can change into in the pack on your back."

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