Unspoken: The Taming

The Taming
by Shana

Rating: PG

Summary: Warren offers words, needed comfort, and stirs the proveribal pot.

Notes: It's all Warren's fault. Seriously. Don't hate him cause he flies. ;-)

Date: September 26, 2001

Her life was a serious jumble, a series of events that catalysed each other and yet seemed incredibly mysterious and unexplainable. A perfectly normal childhood, a typical set of years in higher education, teenage angst and all, and hell-- even a degree in medicine.

Right before the fall.

God, how she had fallen.

Staring at the wall, her feet brushing the floor as she tried to distract herself from the thoughts eating at her, the darkness of the room was only making her feel worse.

Scott's touch. Logan's reaching out. Xavier's offer of help.

They were all so damned kind.

Rogue's words to her a few hours ago.

She owed the woman an apology... maybe more.

If it had been a few years ago, a few very controlled few years ago, she would have never gone so far, never made such trivial mistakes as to interfere in lives she had just barely walked into.

That one moment, that few seconds of life shattering pain had destroyed everything, and now it was even effecting people she barely knew.

Dammit.

Closing her eyes and taking a shaky breath, inhaling the musty sweetness of a long faded perfume used by the former occupant, Jean set her jaw, slid off the edge of the bed and made her way back out of the mansion before her thoughts wandered too much further down the guilt ridden path.

She had made it all the way across the lawn, nearly to her haven the boat dock before she was noticed.

"Your name is Jean, right?"

She should have heard the presence behind her, she should have recognised another living being coming into her range of senses, even mundane ones, but somehow she had missed the man behind her. Recalling a moonless night not too long ago when she listened to the footfalls of a Saskatchewan hunter seeking his prize buck less than ten feet away from her position, her fear for the animal as real as the presence of the hunter, she swallowed, kept her back to the mutant and mustered her strength.

"That's me. Who're you?"

The wind fluttered at her back briefly before ceasing entirely, her walled powers warning her that whomever it was, her interloper was now much closer to her. When the hand set on her shoulder, she shrieked and jumped forward.

"Whoah! Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you! Just-- just calm down and look at me, I'm really rather harmless. My name is Warren."

The urge to run-- so enhanced by the time in the forest-- tore at her instincts, but biting her lip and trying to act like the woman she used to be, Jean turned around slowly, raised her eyes and obliged her interloper's request of a look.

And let her mouth fall open despite her once intact sense of tact. Clad in dark sweatpants and a loose shirt that HAD to be custom made, the figure behind the voice was tall and lean, his wavy blonde hair falling just above his shoulders as he cocked his head curiously at her, his blue eyes observing her half-clinical, half-animal regard of him. What caught her attention, however, were the nearly seven foot tall, pearly white wings curled behind the man's back like a great, living cape.

"Not used to seeing a guy with feathers?"

Blinking and dropping her head down in embarrassment, Jean nodded. "I'm sorry, I'm just not used to seeing mutants so--"

"Open about what we are?"

She nodded slightly and bit her lip. "I always knew I was different, but I... are they really feathers?"

Warren Worthington let the smile slip over his face and nodded. Taking a few steps forward and extending a hand out to the cautious telepath, he resisted the urge to show just how fantastic the wings really were. "Walk with me?"

The wariness returned to her eyes as she stepped back. "Where?"

Warren clucked his tongue and held his hand out even further. "I know I'm not the boy scout or that feral thing of a man that rescued you from the Canadian wilds like a lost doe, but I promise I won't hurt you."

Hesitant to reach out-- touch had become her enemy since the accident three weeks ago-- she waited until the hand was drawn back to step forward, casting a quick look back to the dock he was leading her away from.

A tick of a frown darkened the playboy's face. "Someone hurt you."

"No-- no. No, no one's touched me. I'm not an assault victim or anything..."

Warren shook his head and turned, offering a safe bit of open space between them as she followed his gesture towards the estate's gardens. "Then tell me about yourself. Why would a pretty--" He stopped himself before he risked an angry response with the use of a pet name, "AND professional person like you take to the woods... literally? What could be so bad?"

Surveying the increasingly larger layout of hedges and well-trimmed trees looming up in front of them, Jean offered a little shrug and mentally observed the way the winged man came up behind her, his right hand still partially extended in a friendly gesture.

He really didn't seem the type to cross the line. Hell, Logan, the guy she had let take her back into the US and into the presence of people again was rougher looking than the blonde behind her, the air of breeding and high class morality affecting his mental signature enough to secure his likely arrogant reputation. "It's complex. I've already done enough damage here, I should just lay low and leave you all to your lives."

"Oh, nonsense," Warren scoffed, running a hand through his hair and watching the way the telepath walked as she entered the hedge maze, "If there's one thing X-Men have going for them, it's complex lives. We thrive on them. So what's yours?"

"My complex life?" She sighed and turned to the left, noticing the bench set back in towards a large willow, happy for the shelter of the tree. "Everything fell apart... three weeks ago. I was fine. I really was. I knew I had something going on," she brushed her temple, watching Warren settle in comfortably and regard her, "up here, but it was never so loud, so overwhelming. I was used to it; it was like a quiet sixth sense they talk about in movies. I could ignore it. But then that man came into the ER I used to work at one night, and when he started crashing, he reached out for my arm and it just HIT me."

Warren leaned in a little, gaining precious inches on his proximity to her. "What?"

She shuddered, hugging herself as the memory played back in her mind with crystal clarity. "He died on my table, and in my head. Oh, God, I could feel it ALL. He was in so much pain; he wanted to see his wife one last time, to hug his kids again, to see another Dodgers game and I got all those wants and all the pain in one screaming second. Uugh."

Warren didn't even realise his arm had slid-- instinctively, perhaps?-- around her shoulder as she fought back the brunt of the memory, biting back a fresh bout of despair. "That's when you ran?"

"I left work like always, but I couldn't... I couldn't stay. I lived on the fourth floor of an apartment complex and neighbours I didn't know existed were whispering in my head like they were old friends, all their intimate thoughts and emotions washing over me and I couldn't stop them. I didn't know how else to make it stop, so I bought a ticket to any place smaller than New York," she laughed bitterly, the sound startling Warren as he urged her closer to him, "and wound up in Ontario. The 'hairy woods' were actually a national forest that I found my lost quiet in, so I opted to stay there whenever I could. From there on, it's a blur. I think I pushed deeper. Less people."

He studied her eyes, the light brown deep with a familiar sentiment of longing. Longing that he knew, but buried deep in the cloisters of a "good" life. "You didn't eat there, that much is obvious."

"I did," Jean corrected, "but not enough to keep a city girl like me taken care of."

He shook his head sternly. He almost hated listening to her story, confirming his half-joke to Scott. Drowned kitten parallels aside, he was beginning to realise why one lost woman was having such an effect on a closely knit group of people. Rubbing his hand along her back, fingers touching the length of braided red trailing down her spine, he sighed. "Logan..."

"He won't hurt me. He's rude, short tempered and I'll be damned if those claws sliding free of his skin don't scare me, but he's a good guy."

"No, he won't hurt you. We all noticed that; though he seems to have forgotten his protection deal on you."

Close enough to smell the cologne wafting off the shirt, Jean allowed herself to enjoy the soft touch at her back. This Warren meant well. Like the others, like Scott had said they did here, he was shielding himself inside, offering a slightly closed door to observe rather than a flung open mind of thoughts to drown in, and she was grateful for it. She could almost sit on the bench in the middle of the serene garden and forget what had brought her here... and enjoy the warmth another living person offered. "Warren?"

The errant musing that Scott would be perturbed over the current scene-- even if it was just subconsciously-- occurred to him. "Hmm?"

"I-- I need to apologise to Rogue. Badly."

He nearly coughed in surprise. Yeah, he hadn't seen that coming. "No, no you don't. She's a spitfire, she always has been. I have no idea what she said to you, but she'll cool down and realise she freaked out again."

"No, she won't."

"Yes, she will," he reprimanded firmly. Her groan of frustration hit his ears and he growled to himself. What a set of friends he had. Lacing his other hand around her waist, pulling her half-willingly against him to nestle her head against his shoulder and offer the only real support he realised she might get, he tried to find the words, fully aware that, as a telepath, she could sense the inner struggle. "Look, Jean, I know it looks bad, but if Scott and Rogue are meant to be they'll happen. I know my friend, if he wants something, he'll move a mountain to achieve it. Your role is... incidental."

"No, it's not."

"Why is it no one ever listens to me?" Warren laughed at himself and met the startled eyes leveling with his. "Look at it this way, babe, even if Scott marries that Mississippi belle and has a happy middle class life with her, you'll still have a role SOMEWHERE. At the least as teammate. Connect to him that way."

"You..." there was a pause as she recalled just how deep that one touch went between her and the enigmatic man with the red glasses. Trying to scoot back and getting resistance from the strong male arms, the wings that she didn't realise curling around her fluttering slightly, she blew out a quick breath. "You know?"

"How could I not? Scott's smart and a great leader, but not the best in the romance department. Eh, part of his charm. He's following his heart-- his own words-- and where that leads him... we can only stand back and watch, and pull his head up out of the mud when he falls into it. And he will, believe me."

"You're a strange friend, you realise that?"

"Yes, and warm too. Aren't you cold? That sweater's damn thin for the air."

Jean took in a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly. The walls so gratefully erected around her wild powers were still intact but somehow, she felt the echo of a thought, one that mirrored her wondering about what the next few days would hold. She wanted to help Scott, but she couldn't lest the gesture be misinterpreted... and she wasn't the only one realising this.

Then there was the fact that she was curled up in the arms of another man at the moment, enjoying the simple gesture of comfort being offered in her direction. It was such a precious thing to her anymore after losing the rest of her life in the space of moments.

But again, up for serious misinterpretation by the right-- or wrong, more accurately-- person.

"I'm fine now," she murmured, closing her eyes and scooting closer, a hand almost curiously reaching out to touch a patch of feathers by his shoulder.

The gesture returned his image of a kitten, though slightly less drowned now. "You sure? You're suddenly not so touch phobic."

Her voice was soft. "The arms of an angel must be good for wild ones like me. Taming."

Warren laughed and tangled his hands through the braid, shaking his head at the irony of clutching a redheaded woman near him and making no sexual advance towards her. He used to be so predictable, but now? Huh. Maybe he had been more serious than he thought in that conversation with Scott on the jet. Extending his broad wings and curling them around the feminine form, the downy warmth of mutant feathers better than the night air, he smiled in self-amusement. "No taming allowed, not while I'm around."

~*~

Barricades by Andariel

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Disclaimer: All X-Men characters belong to Marvel and Fox; this piece of fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.