2013.05.30 - Trip Down Memory Lane

It's a place that TJ wasn't sure she would ever get to see again, even from the outside. Xavier's. The idea of setting foot inside of the building doesn't sit so well with her, but the grounds remain secluded and peaceful, and above all else, safe.

They're also within easy reach of Jean Grey.

Introductions are simple. TJ has to fight back the urge to give the other woman a flying blue hug (thank goodness this version of Jean is a friendly, well-adjusted one!) Then there's the business of the matter, now just the two of them out of respect for TJ's privacy.

"I'm not sure how I got here. Well--I got here because Kurt teleported me, but first I wound up in the Brimstone Dimension, and before that I was somewhere else altogether, and I suspect destined for somewhere other than where I ended up."

Confused yet?

She takes a quick breath and tries to collect her thoughts, three-fingered hands pressing together over her mouth as if willing the words to stay put until they've more fully congealed into something comprehensible. "Can you take a look inside of my memory and try to help me make sense of what happened? I need to know how I ended up here by myself."

Jean gives the girl a wry smile, chuckling softly. "Trust me, you're not the first." A beat. "Alternate reality time traveller, I mean." Another beat. "Or, okay. You. Take your pick." Her eyes crunch a little with her smile. "Though, as far as I know, you're the only you here, now."

At the request, however, the redhead cants her head. "You want me to scan you?" she asks, a brow arching. Most people don't like that. But, she can sense the girl's confusion and need to know, so, after a moment's pause, she nods. "Okay. Let's see if we can sort you out."

She gestures to a shady spot by the water and moves to settle comfortably there. It's much easier to do this when everyone's as comfortable as the circumstances allow.

"Yeah," TJ confirms. It seems as though she's given this a lot of thought before seeking help with it. "I can't sort my own memories but I know that something unusual happened. And, I trust you." That alone might normally be dangerous but she's got Kurt's bamf of approval on this version of Jean, too.

Besides! Most people aren't nearly as fun or outgoing as Talia is.

Down by the lake, shrouded within the natural shade, TJ settles upon the grass with legs crossed rather than hunkered down in the usual gargoyline posture. Matters of the mind are more delicate in nature, she knows that much about it.

"It should still be pretty 'fresh,' hopefully that makes it easier to pick apart," she says through a long exhale. Breathe, relax, open the mind. She's done it before, though never with another's guiding hand being involved. "Oh, and uh..quick disclaimer. I did kinda wind up in Hell. It was not fun. Just so you aren't blindsided by the memories."

Jean nods in response to the warning. "Okay. Well. Take a deep breath and relax. I'll be as gentle as I can be." It's nice to know Kurt trusts her enough to let the girl trust her. She'd sooner not let them down.

Reaching out to lay her fingertips lightly on Nocturne's temples, she closes her own eyes and adjusts her shields to allow her to let the blue girl's thoughts in. She starts with her most recent memories and works backwards, skimming quickly until she finds the point of TJ's arrival out of hell into New York.

Getting out of the Brimstone level, that was the easy part. Kurt found her. They did a little running then they bamfed right on out of there, nice and easy.

Before that TJ had been stuck in the place for hours, running and hiding, doing battle with a hostile environment and some of the creatures that inhabit it. A pack of hellhounds had tracked her for nearly half of the time she had been there, resulting in one very worried and very worn out mutant.

The combined experience has been flashed back to with some of her dreams. Nightmares coalescing out of actual memories, coming back to haunt her. She's manipulated this environment before with her hex bolts, though she was never meant to be there.

The problem with nightmares, instead of regular dreams, is that they always confuse the issue. They draw on primal emotions and fears, mix imagination and real-world fact together, and spit it all out in a typically less-than-coherent manner.

The hex bolts seem key, however, so Jean carefully begins to sort through the nightmarish images in an attempt to isolate What Is from What Was and What Should Be. And, of course, What Never Was. It's definitely a confusing mess. The girl's obviously been through the ringer a time or two.

But, haven't they all?

Those 'hex-bolts' are a lot more simple than what their name might suggest. Focused projections of energy, ripped right out of the construction of that dimension as a whole. Weaponizing the abyss. Tiny amounts of temporal manipulation allow the energy to burst forth at TJ's fingertips, almost a form of telepathy. Yet not quite. The ability came right from Nightcrawler's genes, the one from her reality. Even the accompanying noise isn't that far off from the *bamf* that can be heard when he jumps through.

That power is also only one-way. It only affects the raw energy from that plane of existence. Nothing else should go through, and certainly nothing should ever get sucked back the other way.

It does turn out to be an interesting starting point, however. TJ may not realize it but the neural highway has other connections branching off of this cluster of memories. Between her trick and having rode along for so many of Kurt's teleports, she's experienced quite a lot from passing through. Somewhere within her thoughts there lurks an unknown trigger. A bigger event, happening recently and exactly one time. The experience brought some level of personal trauma with it but the memory remains imprinted upon her mind, surrounded by the dark, murky cloud of anger.

Something had made TJ really, really upset.

Jean turns her attention to that upset and to sorting out what exactly happened to break the pattern. She works to understand TJ's powers as well as the girl herself does, informed by her own knowledge of how Kurt's, in this dimension, work. She knows all too well, however, how emotions can trigger things you didn't think possible. And the damage they can wreak in its wake.

So, it's that trauma she has to see. The trick, however, is to do it gently enough that TJ doesn't end up having fit or is unduly harmed by reliving it. Thus, she carefully erects a little bit of psychic "padding" to lessen the impact of the replay but still allow her to see the full effect of that initial impact.

The Timebroker. That's the name that comes forth from TJ's mind. He's a pudgy figure with black hair, having retreated from the top and relocated along the chin and jawline. His eyes are solid black orbs, though there's nothing particularly menacing about him. He just is. A construct of the minds of several people all brought together for the initial meeting, the image had lingered with her because that's how she first saw him. Or it. Or whatever. It's not really a person though the message it bears can definitely trigger emotions within others.

No! You told me I was -done,- my part in this has been played, my world is supposed to be fixed!

The memory of her world flashes, another timeline, her timeline, vanishing like so many others as she's sent somewhere else. Before she had traveled alongside another teleporter going by the name of Blink, she had made the transitions smooth and painless. This jump had been TJ, alone, without such a buffer.

Within that flash there's the scent of sulfur, thick enough to have stamped itself into her memory. Accompanying it, seemingly quite out of place, is a momentary rush of displaced air.

-Foomp!-

White turns to darkness and red, the swirling skies of the abyss. As the details come into clarity there's a powerful sense of displacement, manifesting as nausea and a headache so acute that they, too, linger within her memory.

The wrenching, the nausea, the displaced air... It reminds Jean of the first time Kurt bamfed her anywhere. Though her eyes are still closed externally, internally, she blinks.

~ Do you teleport, TJ? ~ she asks, her surprise colouring her words, the reflection of her own experiences with the Blue Bamfer something of a glyph overlay.

Jean's not entirely sure, but if she were a betting woman, she'd be inclined to lay odds the girl's emotional upset caused her to bamf -- her psyche's desperate bid to try to return home.

From behind that soft psychic barrier, TJ's becoming increasingly confused.

~ I don't. That's my father's trick. ~

There's no Nightcrawler anywhere near her, according to her memories. Not any version of him, not at any of the steps along the way. Only hours later once he shows up and frees her from Hell did he come into play. Besides, he has his own signature teleport sound. Foomp is not it.

~ You don't think I somehow managed to... ~

A slow playback of the jump would put a lot of evidence toward such a theory. Flash of light, wall of air, nausea. Pulled in a lateral direction from where she was supposed to end up. TJ somehow teleported herself right out of the timeline. Kurt should be so proud!

Jean obliges, reviewing the memory again. ~ I do, ~ she tells the girl. ~ I think you teleported. ~

She's slows down the events, so TJ can see them in greater detail and clarity. It's something like watching a silent movie in slow motion, but without the interscene titles. (Not that she needs them, anyway.) But, it's all there... all very easy to see and to feel.

~ You wanted to go home. ~ It's such a small bit of comfort.

It's a small comfort, alright. It's also at least equal parts depressing. The moment when everything had been torn away from her one more time, frequent enough when she was fighting alongside the Exiles but even harder to take after her time with them was supposed to be done.

~ I did want to go home... ~

Leave it up to borrowing one of her father's tricks to try and make it happen, too.

~ I don't understand, I thought that all of my powers should have been known by now. That's kind of a big one to miss! ~

The proof is there, for a time. TJ's mind is starting to bug out. Jean's found the answer to the displaced girl's question but she's not ready to come to terms with it just yet. Sometimes the truth can be a tough pill to swallow, though if she somehow wasn't finished with her tasks, repairing other timelines while being unstuck from her own? Her reality would never be healed.

~ I've just killed my father. ~

~ You don't know that, ~ Jean sends swiftly, opening her eyes and cupping the girl's face as she looks at her. ~ Not for certain, you don't. ~ She gives her a small smile, though her eyes remain serious. ~ That's the thing about time-travel, Talia. There's always time. ~ Her smile twists wryly. ~ Trust me. I know. My family is full of time travellers. ~ Or so she's come to discover. ~ And, well... <> Hi. Phoeni--iiiiiiixx-augh!!!~

Abruptly, Jean breaks the link with TJ, shielding her from the worst of the psychic shockwaves that hit her mind. Though, to be sure, the girl must have felt some of it. A thousand minds, violently snuffed out.

Jean clutches her head, her eyes squeezed tight, throwing all her energy at her shields until the wave has passed. When she open her eyes, and her hands drop, her face is grey. A thousand souls gone... most of them human.

"Oh, God..."

TJ manages to open her own eyes to look back at the psychic. So familiar, yet different. The similarities with the Jean Grey from her time are more than the differences, it's a feeling like discovering a kindred spirit or a long-lost friend. It feels right, even if the memories and the actions charging them all feel so very, very wrong.

The smile that is offered in response is genuine, a little sad around the edges but still with a foundation made up of good natured Talia Josephine energy.

Before any reply can be forthcoming, whether thought or voiced, the backlash hits. TJ was born with a small amount of psychic ability. The weight of this strike is sufficient to have reached her even without the help of a master of the mind. The connection is severed, yellow eyes pinched shut as a pained yelp is torn from her lips.

Hands clamped onto the sides of her head, TJ slowly looks back to the other woman with an expression purely of worry and fear. "That one wasn't me."

Dad.

"Oh god," she repeats. "I gotta find Kurt. Jean--. Thank you."