The Mind Is Virgin Territory finale (Patreon)

Kitty felt a faint tingle in the back of her head, then it graduated to a painful throb, like someone yelling her name from inside her skull. She usually got a psychic twinge when Jean was thinking of her, like a cool breeze across her face, but this was the five-alarm fire version. For lack of her own telepathic abilities, Kitty took out her phone and called Jean. There was no answer. Kitty was about to go all APB when Rachel barged into her room.

“You heard?” 

Kitty rubbed her temples and dug into a desk drawer for some Excedrin. “More like felt. What exactly is going on?”

“Scott. He’s announced it to everyone; the O5 are going back.”

“Oh,” Kitty said softly.

Rachel took it as a question. “He says things are as settled as they’re going to get, so he wants them out of here before another crisis threatens the timeline.”

Kitty thought about it. She’d always been good at thinking. This came rushing in on her, a thread unraveling, thought after thought after thought. “He’s right. Of course he’s right. We’re risking the timeline, and for what? So Hank can remember what it’s like to be clean-shaven? Just so everyone can leech off all that old youth and optimism?”

“But Kitty,” Rachel said, “Jean—“

“She belongs with someone her own age. And so do I. Rachel, we can’t keep her… they all have to go back. I can’t keep being in this relationship that, I don’t know—feels good and nothing else. Keeping her from who she’s supposed to be.”

“What about who you’re supposed to be?”

Kitty reached out her hand and Rachel took it. It felt good. Real.

“Does she want to talk to me?” Kitty asked.

“No. She wants to be alone.” Rachel smiled ruefully. Kitty guessed she’d done a surface scan of her thoughts, gleaned no ulterior motives, seen all of Kitty’s reasoning laid out as bare as could be. That was the only way to argue with a psychic. Just be hella smart. “I guess we went a little too far. But I’m not sorry about it. Any of it.”

“I’m not either.” Kitty phased out of Rachel’s grip and went to her desk, digging into another drawer. This time she pulled out a bottle of scotch. “Drink?”

“Since when do you keep single-malt around?”

“Gift from Emma.”

“That woman needs to get over her crush.”

***

Jean did come to see Kitty before they left. Kitty didn’t think she could not, even sensing that Kitty approved of her leaving. They both knew that if Kitty wanted it, Jean would stay. And they both knew Kitty didn’t want it. Couldn’t.

“Don’t say anything,” Jean said, hanging in Kitty’s door. “There’s no point; we’re mutants. Let me show you…”

Kitty nodded. Jean came to her, took her in her arms, and didn’t kiss her, but rested her forehead against Kitty’s. Then emotions flooded in, a sense of distance giving them a timely weight. Kitty felt how scared and alone and confused Jean had been, the brave face she’d tried to put on. Then Kitty felt the reassurance she herself had given Jean, the support, the affection, the love. The tingling beginnings of lust, the bittersweet anxiety over whether Kitty returned her feelings, then the love affair. An incandescent, sublime satisfaction, even the suffering enjoyable, the romance as tinged with pain as the sex had become, but that only lent it intensity, a contrast that made the highs higher, the lows lower, the tension greater before the tension broke—

Kitty pulled away from Jean and Jean let the contact in. It was a lot to take in, seeing all of how Jean felt about her. Almost orgasmic, in a way. Kitty was left breathless.

“I know I have to forget,” Jean said. “But you won’t forget, will you? I’ll know, on some level, that you’re still out there in the time-stream—loving me.”

“Yes,” Kitty said. “And that you’re coming to meet me.”

***

Two years passed. Kitty didn’t try to forget, exactly, but she tried to stop thinking. That had never been her strong suit. With the young Jean gone, Kitty started seeing her as part and parcel with the other Jean she had known—two ends of a spectrum. Their commonalities came to dominate Kitty’s memories of her. Whoever she was, whenever she was, Jean was gentle, kind, strong, always willing, always eager to try new things—it was strange to think that Kitty had a hand in bringing about the qualities that she would then come to fall in love with. The same qualities that she herself would try to embody and live up to. 

It made her think in cosmic terms. Fate and destiny and the universe, even G-d. Maybe the fixed loop of their relationship was some sci-fi version of soulmates. They endlessly circled around each other, making themselves better and making each other better, but never able to stop in place. The thought made Kitty sad, but a good kind of sad. She felt proud of Jean, just for being the woman she remembered.

Then Jean came back to life.

It was cause for alarm, certainly, but not the biggest drama at the moment. Crises seemed to come in six-packs now, the Avengers and the cosmic and New York City all with their own pots on the stove, so it was for Jean to get lost in the confusion. Everyone wanted to leave her for another day; a sixth sense that they had some leeway before her story truly got underway. Jean seemed benignly understanding, especially of how Scott was with Emma now. Once burned, twice shy, and he liked being burned by the White Queen better.

Kitty couldn’t relate. It was like once Jean had dropped out of the dynamic, Emma had lost all interest in Kitty.

But for all the crisis, Kitty couldn’t call herself much of a hero if she didn’t put Jean above a little more running and fighting. 

Jean seemed familiar and unruffled with being put on a friendly lockdown, somewhere between a threat and a medical patient. It was like this was all routine. She had a sense of the evanescent to her. That vast gulf that had separated the child from the grown-up when Kitty had been young now separated them even further. Jean was unknowably vast, unthinkably ancient, and when Kitty looked at her, she was so aware that she was looking at a tiny piece of the whole, a facet of a universe beyond her comprehension.

Then Jean smiled at her and all Kitty could see was the girl she had known.

“Kitty. It’s good to see you again.”

“Again?” Kitty laughed a little. “You make it sound so normal.”

“At this point, it is to me,” Jean said. She reconstituted a chair out of air molecules, and Kitty thought she knew that blatant display of powers would set her on edge. Or at least make her well aware that the Jean she had known was only one fragment of… this. “Sit.”

Kitty sat.

“How long has it been for you?” Jean asked. “Two yours?”

“From one perspective,” Kitty replied.

Jean smiled. Still seeming like her younger self, but also like… more. “You’re learning.”

“I do live in a school.”

“For me, it’s been a lifetime. But I’d still wager I remember better than you.” 

“Remember what?”

“How kind you were. How giving. But also how much you enjoyed it.” Jean folded her hands under her chin. “Humans are a very complicated tangle. They feel bad when they feel good. They feel good about being bad.”

“And you don’t?”

“I’m more pure. I don’t regret what happened. I enjoyed it. I see the harm it caused—don’t blanch, everything causes some harm—and that harm is particulate next to the happiness it brought. There’s very little happiness in the universe, Kitty. Space is cold and empty, and it presses in on all sides. You should let your happiness be happiness. Don’t try to change it into something else.”

Kitty could only cross her legs. She could feel the heat coming off of Jean, and it felt like thoughts boiling in her mind, racing back and forth. So much more than Kitty could ever know, so many more reference points, everything thought out on a scale that reduced her to a mote of dust. Maybe that was the problem. “I’m sure everything looks the same from up there. Down here, it’s messy. My happiness isn’t just happy, it’s sad and angry and defiant. I’m okay with that.”

“I wonder… knowing me the way you have… do you see a little of how I see things? Not just the now, but the beginnings and the endings? I see the girl you were, Kitty. I see the woman, the leader you’re still becoming. And I have feelings for all the yous there are. I remember you loving every aspect of me. There’s nothing sad or angry or defiant about that. I’m just happy. And grateful.”

Kitty laughed to herself and shook her head. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay—I’m trying to put myself in your shoes, and I can’t! Do you see the future or the past? Is it all circular to you? Has all this happened, or is it going to happen? If it is, if everything’s a cycle, then nothing we do matters and we’re all locked into this path, so why are you so happy? And it’s giving me a headache, knowing you as a teenager and as a woman and as—this.”

“Did you stop loving me?” Jean asked.

“No.”

“Did you start?” Jean pressed. “Or did you miss me before you met me? Waiting for me to complete you? A match needs a flame. Smoke needs a fire. I need you. You need me. We make each other and we come from each other. The balance is chaotic, it’s messy, but when it’s done, all that’s left is ash. You wouldn’t believe what can grow from ash.”

Jean got up off the exam table where she’d be lolling. She was wearing the green and gold outfit, like Rachel had worn sometimes. Only Rachel usually had it in red and gold, making herself out to be such a monster, such a killer—play-acting. Jean wore the lighter, softer colors, but she was still deadly. And she was still Jean. 

Kitty wondered if Jean’s relationship with the Phoenix was anything like it was with her. Dominant and submissive. Loving and… what else? What did she feel for Jean besides love? Wariness? Fear of being hurt? Even thinking she didn’t deserve to be happy, for some reason, for no reason—just because she was an X-Man?

Her body was much the same as it had been when she was a teenager—Jean had aged exceptionally well. She was still long-legged, small-breasted, svelte, but her bearing had become more confident and more tempestuous. There was a little in there of what had attracted Kitty to Emma, made sex with her so satisfying; probably what attracted Emma to Jean as well. Her crimson hair draped wickedly just shy of her eyes, Jean came closer to Kitty. Closer.

“Burn with me,” she said. The Adult Jean was ordering. The Young Jean was begging.

And maybe to Jean it was burning, but to Kitty it was like falling. She let go of everything else in the world and let herself be sucked down by Jean: the old, the new, who she had always been. Her tongue shot into Jean’s mouth, flicking through the parting lips and pressing against the heated length of her own tongue. Kitty sucked on it, slowly drawing it into her own mouth like it belonged there, their lips clinging to each other, before Kitty fell further—Jean pushing her to her knees, a supplicant, and Kitty eager to kneel before her. 

Jean pulled her sash to the side; its length had fallen over her groin, which Kitty hadn’t thought anything of until it was out of the way and she could see that Jean’s costume was crotchless, her bare pussy taunting Kitty’s hungry eyes. Had her costume been that way since she got back, or had Jean changed it for Kitty? It didn’t matter. Nothing had to matter when she was with Jean.

Jean’s pussy was beautiful, of course. Its gloss almost red, matching her hair and fire. The pubic hair trimmed back so that only a narrow strip remained to guard her neat pink slit. The lips were full and pouting, aroused, and the pearly pink button of Jean’s clit leapt up on top of her labia like the flame on a matchstick.

Kitty fell again. She kissed her tongue as deep as she could into Jean, plunging it inside of her as her hands dug into the lithe, girlish cheeks of Jean’s buttocks—pert and small but just right to fill her hands. She slipped one hand underneath the opening in Jean’s skintight suit, feeling the satiny flesh of her groin and thighs and hips, while the other stayed outside, feeling Jean’s ass through the paint-thin material, as crisp and cool as leather. 

Kitty was overwhelmed; all she could think about was the taste of Jean’s cunt, the heated pressure of it around her tongue. The feel of her, warm flesh and liquid latex, was overkill. It was frosting. It was having your cake and eating it too. Kitty was being a glutton, getting this much Jean, and she loved it. She indulged. She overindulged. She ate the ripe wet cunt and felt the soft, silky skin and listened to the high, sharp moans and knew it was all what Jean wanted, what she wanted, maybe even what the universe wanted. She was submitting to all of them; she’d obey anyone who let her have this.

“Mine,” Jean growled, holding Kitty’s head to her crotch, tongue in her pussy, eyes up at her face. “I’m yours, this pussy is yours, but you’re mine, mine, mine!”

Kitty didn’t answer her. She was much too busy eating Jean’s cunt. But she wrapped her arms around Jean’s thighs, hugging the woman’s legs to her body, wrapping her legs around Jean’s ankles too in an almost childish gesture. I’m yours, she thought, all yours. Just let me have you too.

But Jean wanted more. The fire always did. She picked Kitty up—not with her power, with her hands—and slammed her down on the table and mounted her, upside-down, straddling Kitty’s face and lowering herself to her sex.

As Kitty felt Jean returning the favor—cycles, everything came in cycles—she knew she was going to come and recognized the same signs in Jean. The redhead quivered from on high, her hot cunt swelling and gushing against Kitty’s tongue, her own mouth never letting go of Kitty’s needfully clenched pussy.

Kitty felt the familiar pressure—that Jean pressure—filling up her body, waiting for the last release, and Jean supplied it. Teeth gnashing at her clit, the moist heat of her breath, the wet flame of her tongue, all hitting her, delighting her, refusing to let her deny her pleasure.

Kitty’s back arched in completion, but she couldn’t stop from pleasing Jean, it was unthinkable. She gripped Jean’s hips tightly and bodily held herself against Jean’s wet pussy, eating voraciously. As Kitty felt herself going higher and higher—gravity pulling harder and harder—she felt Jean shudder, sex contracting, a sudden rush of warm honey that marked Kitty’s face like a brand. They writhed and jerked together, moaning out what they’d done to each other, before they fell into an exhausted heap together. End to end. A circle.

There were no more words, but Jean sent Kitty an image. Something Kitty had shown her, a long time ago. Snuffing out the flame of a candle, then touching a lit match to the smoke. The candle flared up again. Like magic.

A fire that’d been put out was just a fire waiting to happen again.

“My little ember,” Jean whispered, with just enough of her breath regained to say it.

“As long as I’m yours.”