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A Diamond in the Rough	By : DrunkenScotsman Category: X-Men - Animated Series (all) > General Views: 3907 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 16
- 17
Chapter 17: Diamonds, Girls, (Best?) Friends

With the door to her dorm room closed, Jean smiled at Emma. “Sorry, I only have the one chair – as you might imagine, I don’t get a lot of company. Do you want to sit on the bed? It’s more comf—”
“Too kind, darling,” interjected Emma as the unnamed feeling inside her crystallized into an intense discomfort, “but it’d feel like you were my shrink.”
“Such a derogatory term for a therapist,” Jean tutted with a shake of her head, but her tone remained light. With a series of gestures, she telekinetically unzipped her boots and floated herself up and out of them before drifting down onto her bed, tucking her feet under her and a lock of red hair behind her ear. “Did I tell you I’m majoring in psychology to become one?” asked the redhead.
Emma shook her head, both in answer to the question and to refocus herself after having witnessed Jean’s other power for the first time. “Still, I’d rather have a friend than a therapist.”
Jean laughed. “Fair enough.” Her tongue peeked briefly between her lips in a most distracting fashion. “I had an idea for how to proceed.”
Emma sat in the chair by the desk, her interest piqued. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve noticed over our training sessions that you have a superb memory – nearly eidetic, in fact. I thought we might try reliving what happened via a mind-link.” Emma started to ask, but Jean pre-empted her: “I’d be seeing the whole thing through your eyes.”
Emma shifted in her seat. “No offense, Jean darling, but that sounds quite invasive.”
Jean hummed. “I won’t go snooping around, I promise.”
“Have you done this with anyone else before?”
The other telepath nodded. “Professor Xavier taught me, of course. I did also try it with my ex. Not the Neanderthal,” she added, again pre-empting Emma’s question. “It’s admittedly more difficult with non-telepaths, but I think it helped that Scott and I have always been close, so there was a level of trust there that made it much easier.”
“What’s it feel like?”
Jean didn’t respond for a long moment, though her furrowed brow and pursed lips indicated she was searching for the words. “The best word I can come up with is ‘intense,’ but even that feels inadequate.”
A spike of jealousy caught Emma by surprise. She gestured to the prom photo. “Is that him?”
“That’s him,” she answered, with an odd mixture of warmth and wistfulness.
Do I trust her? How much do I trust her? She says she’s my friend, but if I let her in, there are so many ways she could hurt me…
“We’re not as close as you were with your professor, or your boyfriend,” Emma pointed out. “A compromise – instead of looking through my eyes, you can come with me, stand beside me.”
Jean sat up a bit straighter. “Okay, I think I can do that.” She took a few deep breaths, probably to center herself. “Whenever you’re ready, reach out with your mind, and I’ll establish the link.”
Emma pursed her lips for a moment but forced herself to relax. From across the room, she looked right into Jean’s green eyes, and her mind reached out. As on that first day of class, a great fiery raptor blazed forth, spreading her burning wings. Unlike that day, the flames didn’t blind, didn’t burn. Instead, they felt warm and inviting, like the hearth-fire on a cold winter’s night, a feeling that intensified when the incandescent wings wrapped around her.
Jean’s dorm room vanished in fire and ash. In its place, the flames solidified into the familiar grounds of Frost Manor, populated by the partygoers, all frozen in tableau. Emma found herself in the dress she’d worn to the party, and Jean stood beside her in the same dress tailored to her much curvier figure.
“Cute dress,” Jean commented as she admired her outfit. “If I haven’t told you before, I really like your style.”
“Why, thank you, darling,” preened Emma.
“… Is that your house?”
“Frost Manor. Not technically mine. Yet.”
Jean shook her head with a playful smirk. “It reminds me a lot of the Institute.”
Emma scoffed. “The Xavier family has a pedigree almost as prestigious as ours. Almost.”
“Strange coincidence that both lineages would produce powerful telepaths,” Jean noted as she continued looking around.
“I don’t plan on converting it to a mutant school, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” sniffed Emma in mock pique.
Jean laughed but changed the subject. “This doesn’t seem so bad. Is this one of those situations where ‘there are daggers in men’s smiles’?”
“Something like that,” Emma replied, recognizing the line from Macbeth, which her Snow Valley English teacher had assigned earlier that year. “Why don’t I show you?”
The memory unfroze, and the party roared to live as Emma remembered it. Emma pointed out her parents to Jean, as well as “the lesser branch of the Frost family.” Emma understood – whether instinctively or through Jean’s knowledge coming subtly through the link – that everyone would as phantoms within Emma’s memory, ignore Jean’s presence since she wasn’t there during the events being remembered.
The mediocre boys enacted their pathetic, pitiful pageant once more for Emma’s displeasure, and for Jean’s. Emma took a perverse solace in watching, out of the corner of her eye, Jean’s expression curdle more and more with each one. A few of their attempts drew a disbelieving “oh my God” from the redhead.
“That’s what passes for flirtation among your set?” asked Jean after the last one moved on when he realized he wasn’t getting anywhere with Emma, seeking out instead the much easier mark of Adrienne.
“Apparently.”
Jean shook her head in utter disbelief. “I’m shocked you didn’t come back to campus with a ring on your finger. Then again, you had so many gems to choose from.”
Emma snorted with a smile at the sarcasm dripping from her friend’s voice. “Decisions, decisions.”
Jean’s smile faded. “There’s more to this than a parade of pitiable pickup lines.”
Emma sighed. The memory-world around them shifted, configuring the partygoers into new positions. In a moment, the two telepaths stood in front of Winston Frost and Sebastian Shaw. The conversations – among all three, between Emma and Father, between Emma and Shaw – played themselves out.
As Shaw strode away, the world around the two telepaths froze once more. Jean placed a hand on Emma’s shoulder. “I’m sensing a lot of conflicting emotions from you.”
The unfamiliar touch remained quite light; nevertheless, Emma pulled away. “I… I don’t know how to feel about Shaw. He is, by far, the most intriguing person I met that day – powerful, certainly intelligent, and rather handsome. Charming, too, after a fashion.”
Jean raised an eyebrow. “Emma. He’s the same age as your father, or close to it.”
“I know, but…” Emma frowned and sighed. “You heard what he said: I’m sophisticated for my age.”
“Gross.”
“Excuse me?”
Jean pulled her hand away to pinch the bridge of her nose. “That’s what older men usually say when making passes at young women barely beyond girlhood, ones who might not recognize them for what they are.” She fixed Emma with a pointed look. “Creeps and predators.”
Emma folded her arms and turned away. “I don’t think it was like that at all.”
“Not to mention that your father encouraged you to… indulge him! Disgusting.”
Emma frowned deeper, and the memory world started to flicker around them. “Father did nothing wrong. He didn’t say I had to let anything happen. Just the opposite, in fact – you heard what he said!”
“It was heavily implied, and you know it,” argued Jean, further disrupting the mindscape around them.
Fury surging inside her, Emma glared. “This isn’t about Father, anyway! It’s about Shaw!”
“It’s about both. Shaw wanted to seduce you, and your father, at minimum, gave it his tacit permission.”
Emma shook her head. “Father was right: everyone has an agenda. I don’t know what yours is, but I should’ve known this was a mistake.” With that, she pushed Jean away from her.
The sky around them shifted from a bright, clear blue to a latticework of facets. The blue shifted hues, lighter and lighter until it became a scintillating multicolored panorama. When that transformation finished, Jean vanished, and Emma could no longer feel her presence.
The memory-world vanished, and Emma found herself once more in Jean’s desk chair in her dorm room. She shot to her feet, collected her things, and made for the door.
“Emma… wait,” pled Jean. “Don’t leave.”
Unheeding, Emma turned the knob and pulled…
… but the door wouldn’t budge.
She pulled harder.
This time, the door cracked open a tad before shutting again.
A grunt from Jean drew Emma’s attention. Her head whipped to one side to see the redhead still sitting on her bed, brows furrowed in concentration. One hand seemed to be reaching for Emma as if to beg her not to go.
Or for the door, Emma realized.
It is completely unfair how gorgeous she is even when she’s concentrating.
Emma folded her arms and glowered. “Let me out of here, Jean.”
The redhead’s green eyes – those dazzling green eyes – met Emma’s gaze. “I can’t let you leave. Emma. I’m sorry.”
Panic seeped in, further fueling Emma’s fury. “Whyever not?” she hissed. She didn’t shout – a lady doesn’t shout.
“If I let you leave, your secret will be out.”
Dread crept in, joining the panic and anger to form a potent cocktail of emotions. “What do you mean?” asked Emma, fearing some horrific answer.
“I’m… not sure how to describe it,” replied Jean. “There’s a mirror on the inside of my closet door. See for yourself.”
With a gesture from the redhead, the door beside Emma eased open. The mirror, as it turned out, was tall enough to show Emma most of herself, down to about mid-shin. The long-sleeved lavender blouse and black pencil skirt with vertical silver pinstripes, she’d expected to see. What shocked her was the rest of her – every bit of her that should have been exposed skin instead presented as a clear whitish crystalline substance that seemed to glitter with subtle colors and shapes; yet her hair remained unchanged.
Emma stared at her reflection in disbelief. “No. No-no-no-no. That… that can’t be me.” She held up one sparkling hand and wiggled her fingers, the glittering diamond coating like a second skin. “What’s going on? What is this?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Jean replied, her tone soft and warm, comforting like a favorite quilt. “Whatever it is, it’s blocking my telepathy completely.”
Emma turned towards the other telepath and tried to reach out with her mind, but at first all she got was a strange, sharp, discordant noise. The more she tried, the more the noise coalesced into a series of distorted echoes of her own thoughts. Finally, she had to admit defeat: “Mine too.”
Jean pursed her lips. “Has this happened before? I don’t recall you mentioning it.”
Emma shrugged. “One night, a week ago or so, I was shaving my legs, and a noise outside my apartment startled me. I found out later that two cars collided. The part of my leg I was shaving had changed, breaking my razor; but it changed back so soon, I thought it might have been a trick of the light.”
Jean hummed. “There’s only other mutant I know of who transforms like that; he sheathes himself in metal, but he isn’t a telepath.”
She suddenly sat up straighter. “Hold on… Professor Xavier is contacting me. Just, um… sit down and try to relax. Maybe relaxing will help you shift back.”
Lacking any better idea, Emma complied. She started to cross her legs, but she remembered that diamond could cut and scratch itself; she didn’t want any unsightly scars when her skin returned to normal.
Or whatever passes for normal anymore.
“Emma? The Professor says he detected our psychic signatures, but now he can’t sense you at all, even with Cerebro.”
Roused from her thoughts, Emma snapped, “What’s Cerebro?”
“A device that amplifies psychic powers,” replied Jean. “The Professor mostly uses it to look for mutants, although he’s occasionally used it to battle foes with strong mental defenses.” She shuddered. “When Apocalypse bested him and temporarily controlled him, I had to use it just to keep up with him.”
Emma looked around, but she didn’t see or otherwise sense anything. “That sounds… unpleasant. Why is he contacting you now?”
Jean tucked her hand behind her ear. “Our mind-link caught his attention,” she explained, looking sheepish. “He describes it as ‘a flaming raptor with its wings wrapped around a diamond’ at first. When you ended the link, apparently you glowed from within ‘as if fluorescent’ before vanishing. Now you register as multiple phantom signatures.” She made air-quotes to denote the Professor’s wording.
“Fascinating,” replied Emma, flatly to underscore her sarcasm. “Any ideas on how to change back?”
“I’ll ask.” Jean’s eyes drifted half-shut. “The Professor says that, since you transformed while agitated, you should try to relax.”
“Relax?” Emma bit out. “How am I supposed to relax while an invisible stranger watches me from the next state over?”
Jean blinked her eyes open. “Now, Emma, I trust the Professor. He’s always helped me control my powers better. The others too. That’s the whole point of the Institute.”
“I don’t know him,” Emma reminded her, “so I don’t trust him.”
Jean frowned for a long moment. “Okay, he’s gone now. Do you trust me?”
Emma mulled over her response, long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable. She drummed her fingers on the desk. Wearing an expectant look, Jean tucked her hair behind her ear again and shifted so her legs now hung off the side of her bed.
“I want to,” Emma finally replied. Even if Father would think me weak for doing so.
Jean’s tongue darted momentarily between her lips. “I swear I didn’t mean to upset you, Emma, but I won’t apologize for my opinion of what your father said. You yourself felt he was implying for you to seduce that Shaw creep.” Emma started to object, but Jean cut her off. “Don’t deny it; I could sense your discomfort through our link.”
“Can you blame me?” Emma snapped. “With no preparation whatsoever, I suddenly had to engage in a flirtation with one of Father’s most important business partners, with potentially catastrophic consequences if I failed.”
She stood up to pace, feeling like a tiger in a cage. “At dinner afterward, Adreinne pointed out that I had failed, since I hadn’t maintained his interest sufficiently to warrant an invitation out after the party.”
“I’d say you dodged a bullet,” Jean interjected.
“Failure isn’t the Frost way,” insisted Emma, still pacing.
“Your father never should’ve put you in such a position,” Jean replied, her voice edged with growing impatience. “That wasn’t fair to you.”
“Life isn’t fair, Jean darling, Otherwise, our fellow students would have posters of you on their wall,” Emma argued, pointing at the soccer star on Jean’s closet door, “after you helped save the world. Instead, as thanks, the American public wants you to lock you and your friends away.”
“I consider you a friend too, you know,” the redhead countered, “so you’d be right there with me.”
“Is that supposed to comfort me?”
“Yes, actually,” Jean insisted, standing up for emphasis. “Whether it’s family drama, or navigating mutant mayhem, or anything else that’s important to you, you don’t have to face it alone. That’s what friendship is, Emma.”
Jean’s impassioned sincerity brought Emma to a standstill. She held up her hand, which sparkled orange in the late-afternoon sun streaming through the window. Polygonal planes of translucent crystal matrix abutted in myriad shapes, rough and unpolished yet nonetheless glittering with diamond’s characteristic fire. “What if I’m stuck like this?”
“I have a friend who looks like a blue demon, tail and fangs and all. We don’t care what people look like.”
“I suppose it could be worse,” Emma harrumphed, still admiring her diamond hand. “Still, it’s not you I’m concerned about.”
Jean sighed. “True. I know your dad’s opinion of you carries a lot of weight for you. More than is ideal, perhaps.” After a pointed glare from Emma, she added, “But that’s a discussion for another time.”
A long silence settled over the two young women, this one much less uncomfortable than before. Finally, Emma shook her head. “It’s more than that. I want to prove to him that I’m capable enough to succeed him as CEO of Frost Enterprises. Christian, my older brother, should have inherited, but he…” She frowned. “I haven’t heard from him since he left for UCLA two years ago.”
“Were you two close?”
Emma nodded. “He was kind, but unfortunately too soft to take over for Father. If I also prove… inadequate” – she held up her diamond hand meaningfully – “the next most obvious candidate is my cousin Adrienne. She’s quite frivolous, like Mother, but smarter and much crueler.”
Jean nodded in return. “Thank you, Emma. I think I understand you better now.” She bit her lip and took a step closer. “I’m curious… Does that feel like diamond, or skin?”
“I can’t tell,” answered Emma. “I’m concerned about diamond cutting itself.”
“May I?”
Emma rolled up one of her blouse sleeves and waited with bated breath.
Gingerly, Jean reached out one hand. “It’s definitely diamond, but also smoother than I expected.”
Emma’s breath hitched at the contact, as she could feel the warmth of the other’s fingertips along the crystal surface. “I… I didn’t expect to feel anything,” she whispered. “It’s muted, but it’s there.”
Jean smiled, still stroking Emma’s forearm. “Now that I’m seeing it up close… it’s beautiful. Simply breathtaking.”
Hearing Jean say that filled Emma with a warmth unlike anything she’d ever felt before. A shuddering breath escaped Emma, and she felt herself relax. Immediately, her skin shifted back to its default state.
A beat later, Jean pulled her hands away.
A strange, silent tension hung in the air between them for a long moment. Emma acutely felt Jean’s proximity. That unnamed feeling rose within her once more, and more intensely. Her mind spun, and she didn’t know what to say, especially when Jean’s glorious green eyes met her own.
In unison, both young women took a half-step backward, creating just enough space to break whatever enchantment had fallen over them. Jean tucked her hair behind her ear. Emma rolled her sleeve down, still unsure what to say; her forearm seemed to still tingle with the fiery phantoms of Jean’s fingers.
“Emma—”
“I should go,” interjected Emma. “All of this… has been a lot all at once.” She gathered her things once more. “I need some time to think.”
“About?” Jean’s eyes belied her placid expression.
Emma emitted an exasperated sigh. “All of this,” she repeated.
To her surprise, her counterpart responded with a soft, kind smile. “Now that you say it like that, it makes perfect sense.” Telepathically, she added, Being a mutant, there’s never a dull moment.

XXXXX

On the way back to her apartment, Emma’s thoughts lingered on what had happened with Jean. The memory of the redhead’s hand on her arm filled her with warmth, but also a profound sadness. No one has touched me with any degree of affection since Christian left, she recalled. He gave the best hugs.
I didn’t realize how much I missed a kind touch.
How much I needed such a thing.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
A/N: As per usual, please leave feedback on this chapter via review.
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A Diamond in the Rough