Chapter Text
Jean Grey only cared about one person; her sister, Sarah Grey. Whenever she looked in the mirror, it was her sister’s face that would stare back, the shape of her sister’s eyes and the little scrunch of her nose as she took in her own appearance. It was Sarah Grey’s freckles that dusted her face, and Sarah Grey’s smile that lit up her eyes as she laughed. Jean had never needed to consider herself as one singular person; Sarah had always been there as someone to rely on, Jean’s other half and older sister. So when she was taken from under Jean’s nose, in broad daylight, in the middle of a park, all that had run through Jean’s mind as she stared at the trunk of a tree she had no recollection of walking to was;
’Shit.’
She had raced back through the woods, batting branches away from her face as she desperately scanned her surroundings, searching for a glint of blond in the early afternoon sunlight. She’d burst back into the park. Almost everyone was gone, except for a small child hiding behind a slide, shaking and trembling as he looked around.
Jean had kneeled in front of him. “Where’s my sister?” She’d demanded. Maybe she would’ve been more gentle, if it weren’t for the fact the only true remaining member of her family had disappeared, and Jean had done nothing to save her.
All he did was point towards the road where the army of black cars had swept in, taken Jean’s whole life away with them, and made their merry way out as if they had any right to the dearest part of Jean’s world. She had stood, vision reddening and narrowing in on the trees that tilted and shadowed the paved road, as if protecting its secrets from her furious gaze.
She didn’t look as she jumped into the kid behind her. Her sister was taken. Snatched from right under her face.
They had just been practicing their jumps. Sarah was going to help her refine her distance jumping. They were going to move away from this cursed city and start a new life, memories of foster care and raised voices and beating fists all forgotten. They were finally going to live instead of survive, and not spend every day of theirs in fear for their lives.
Until the fucking government or whoever the hell those people were stole her.
Jean clenched her fists as the boy instantly stilled, face going robotically blank as he turned to face her.
“Go,” she spat, pointing down the road. The child immediately ran, but not fast enough. Not fast enough to catch up to whoever had taken Jean’s sister. A taxi cab passed, and she hopped into the driver as she stalked in the direction the kid had run. Scanning the streets through the driver’s eyes, she saw no sign of the convoy of black cars. Desperately, she hopped into the next car. And the next, and the next, each with no sign of her sister.
“Shit!” She yelled, threading her hands through her hair and yanking. “Shit shit shit. Okay Jean. Think.”
She wouldn’t be fast enough to catch up to Sarah; hell, she had no idea where she’d even gone. She could go on the rooftops, but her vision would be blocked by the endless, towering buildings everywhere. Hacking the cameras would take too long and would require skills Jean didn’t have at the moment, and jumping so frequently would tire her out.
She set her face determinedly and raced toward the sagging, dreary apartment she and Sarah lived in. Scrambling up the stairs, she jotted down everything she remembered about the cars before her mind had blanked.
Black. Government-looking. Official. Damage Control. SUVs, maybe?
She scanned through her list again and dragged her hands down her face, a sigh with a sharp edge of urgency escaping. Fear began to wrap its claws around her heart. This was almost impossible; if the government had taken Sarah, they would have hidden her somewhere with high security and covered their tracks. Cameras were definitely out of the question, as signals could be tracked, and none of the words she’d jotted down were helpful.
She’d paced and gone through ideas, immediately contradicting each one with a burning problem as frustration and, buried deeper, hopelessness burned within her. She reread the list over and over again, burning the words into her mind.
Black. Government, possibly? Damage Control logo? SUV-
She had stopped and stared down at the paper. Damage Control. Of course. She laughed bitterly before taking the paper and tearing it in half, tears pouring over her mouth that was open wide in a cackle.
“Of course it was you bastards!” She sang, sobs erupting from her chest. “You could never be satisfied.”
A memory bubbled to the front of her mind as Jean continued her odd laughing-crying, grief settling heavy on her shoulders until her knees gave out and she collapsed into full-on sobs.
She had been ten and Sarah had been twelve when a strange man had come to the foster house they lived in.
It had been a worse day than usual. They had gone outside to a park, standing and watching the other kids play while their foster parents, Lois and Ralph, stood over them sternly.
“Get used to disappointment. You see these children playing?” Ralph had commented, gesturing towards the field where the other kids were currently playing tag. “You will never have that freedom, because you are freaks. No one will want to play with you - the only reason we took you in was because of the fat check we’d get.” With this, he motioned to him and Lois, who stood beside him with her head tilted so far back and her mouth pulled so tight it looked like someone had tied her hair to a post behind her.
Jean had squeezed Sarah’s hand. Jean had argued before, and had quickly learned that talking back to an adult only led to a swift slap across the face and a barbed reprimand along with a look of pure disdain while her sister fretted over her swollen cheek. Sarah had made Jean promise to wait to get revenge until she wouldn’t be hurt doing so, but the rage in Jean’s stomach continued to bubble as Ralph blabbered on.
“We took you to the park today and wasted our resources and energy because CPS does welfare checks every now and then, and you need to tell them you’ve gone outside without lying. I’m sure you’re both horrible liars, based on all the other failures you’ve accomplished in the past.”
With this, he turned his eye to Sarah as Lois sniffed primly beside him.
“And you, girl! Your face says too much about how you really feel. Shut up and put it away. Wenches like you shouldn’t express their feelings. Do you understand me?” Sarah wordlessly nodded, staring at the ground. Ralph stepped closer, grabbed her hair, and yanked her head back until she stared him in the eyes. “I said, do you understand me?”
Tears of pain and fury had gathered in Sarah’s eyes as she whispered, “Yes, sir,” fists clenching in her jeans as she looked down, Ralph finally releasing her hair and stepping back while looking pleased with himself. Jean gritted her teeth. ‘Just a little longer. Hold on,’ she thought to both herself and Sarah next to her, who was beginning to shake in an effort to control her anger as Ralph continued.
“Gross little bitches like you shouldn’t even have the right to speak. I mean, look at ya!” He sneered, gesturing to Sarah. “Nothin’ there at all! I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if you-“
He stopped dead in the middle of his sentence, rigidly glaring at nothing. Lois gasped, dropping her head from its uncomfortable-looking position as she shook his shoulder and tried to get his attention in vain. She snapped her head around and stared the two sisters down.
“She-devils,” Lois snarled. “We should’ve dumped you when we had the chance!”
Jean’s fists clenched, nails pressing into the skin of her palm. “Shut. Up,” she had gritted, already using a large portion of her energy to keep Ralph from regaining control. His thoughts felt like silt; dirty and sticky, sucking her into the darkness. She planted her feet more firmly and forced the command of silence into his head.
Lois took a rapid step forward. “Why you-!”
She was interrupted by another voice, and she too went rigid as Sarah snapped.
“We don’t have to listen to you! You’re horrible people. Jean and I are fine without you!”
“Yeah!” Jean had cried, clenching tighter onto her Dora the Explorer themed backpack, one of the only things the system had let her keep. “You’re horrible. We hate you!” She had run up and punched both Lois and Ralph in the stomach before grabbing the keys from Ralph’s pocket, taking Sarah’s hand, and tugging her away. A surge of power rippled through the air as Sarah focused extra hard on confusing Lois and sent her stumbling into Ralph.
“Run!” She’d gasped, now taking the lead and half-leading half-pulling Jean away.
They’d raced all the way back to the house and kicked the door shut, quickly packing their meager items up and shoving them in cartoon-themed bags. Jean had just finished putting her stuffed animal in her bag when she spotted Sarah’s favorite scrunchie strewn across the floor. She grabbed it and shoved it in her bag right as a knock at the door sounded throughout the house.
Sarah had arrived in the doorway, fear in her face and voice shaking but colored in determination as she said; “We’re leaving now, Jean.”
Jean nodded, legs trembling as she swept her bag on with shaky hands and reached forward, taking Sarah’s outstretched palm. They snuck down the stairs, pausing at the bottom as the doorknob rattled, deep voices coming from behind the white paint job. Sarah put a finger to her lips and motioned to the back door. They both flinched as a thud echoed against the front, and Sarah squeezed Jean’s hand tighter before leading her around the stairwell towards the other exit. Sarah twisted the doorknob, both of them wincing when it squeaked, and eased open the door, breath catching as it caught on the frame.
“Open it!” Jean hissed, the thuds at the front door becoming louder and more frequent.
“I can’t,” Sarah whispered back, “not without thudding it and they’d hear it! You know how loud this door is!”
Jean pulled Sarah roughly away from the door and put her own small hands against the wood. A shove, and the door peeled from the frame with a terrible screeching noise. They froze as the noise at the front door came to a sudden halt, voices sharpening in pitch.
“Go, go, go,” Sarah had cried, shoving Jean through the door first and racing after her. They ran down the yard and hopped the chain link fence right as the sound of heavy footsteps rounded the back corner of the house. Sarah had yanked Jean behind a dying hydrangea bush as the heavy thuds stopped, replaced with the careful steps of someone who didn’t want their presence to be known. Tears welled in Jane’s eyes, but she stubbornly clenched her sister’s hand tighter as her other hand wound around her backpack strap. All they had to do was make it to the city. It was close, only a ten minute walk to the subway line that ran by their foster house.
The two sisters locked eyes and Sarah nodded before they continued their creep around the bushes to the front of the house. Government cars lined the street, DAMAGE CONTROL painted on their hoods in capital, bold lettering. Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve heard of them,” she’d hissed. “They hate us. Mutants, I mean. People who are different.”
“Why?” Jean had asked, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer. Ralph and Lois and all the other crappy people who’d come before them had installed it into them; the belief that being other made them inhuman.
Sarah bit her lip and shook her head. “You know why.” A swell of sadness surged through Jean.
“Why can’t they just be nice? We have feelings too! It’s like they’re purposely being mean!”
Sarah smiled sadly. “That’s what Mom used to call prejudice.”
Jean looked at her in surprise. Sarah rarely talked about their mother, always giving some kind of excuse whenever Jean had asked about her. Their parents had died when Jean was too little to remember them. The only reason she and Sarah were still together was because Sarah had jumped into the mind of a social worker at five years old and made him sign the form that made sure they would stick together.
“What’s prejoodis?”
Sarah shook her head and put a finger to her lips. “Not now.”
The man with the heavy steps had returned to his car and spoke into a walkie-talkie radio device. He was too far away to make out the words, but Sarah’s face hardened anyway and she tightened her grip on Jean’s hand.
“Come on. Let’s go while he’s distracted.”
The sisters made their way through the suburbs before finally coming to the subway train that would take them to the city. As they waited for their subway, Sarah turned and took Jean’s shoulders in her hands, adjusting one of her straps from where it was falling off her shoulder.
“Jean. People are bad. People killed mom and dad. Never trust anyone who’s not me - they will always, always let you down.” Jean stared into the eyes of her sister, shadowed by things no twelve-year-old should ever have to go through. “The only people we can trust are us. I’ll protect you, okay? No matter what, I will always protect you. It’s you and me against the world.”
She released Jean’s shoulders and held up a pinky finger as their train rolled into the station. “Promise it.”
Jean latched her pinky onto her sister’s and intertwined them as the doors to the subway opened and people began to pour out. “I promise.”
As the subway pulled away from the station with them safely inside, hands interlocked, Jean had locked eyes with a man in a suit and a hat that covered part of his face watching them depart from the station. A chill went down her though it was the middle of summer without any air conditioning in the packed train, and she tightened her hold on Sarah’s hand as the man took out a cigarette directly next to a no-smoking sign and lit it, staring directly at her, before taking a drag and crushing the smoky stick under his foot right as the tunnel obscured Jean’s vision of him.
She turned and bit her lip. ‘We’re out,’ she reminded herself, thoughts whirling. ‘We’re safe. We’ll make it.’
She had cleared her thoughts of the man, shaking the uneasy feeling he gave her before turning to Sarah.
“What are we doing next?”
Her sister had looked at her, a smirk growing on her face.
“Whatever the hell we want.”
Jean sobbed again at the memory. She turned and threw the necklace she’d gotten for Sarah’s birthday at the wall. She had been so excited - she’d saved up enough money, and Sarah had always talked about having something that was purely her treasure. The necklace was a cheap, fake silver color that flaked when you scratched it. It had a jewel that sparkled like the stars, however, and it had instantly reminded Jean of her sister’s eyes when she talked about the future, and about getting into college in a year or so. Jean had gotten it from a thrift store she’d stopped by. As soon as she’d seen it, she’d known it would be perfect.
She’d bought it with her ten dollars of money and raced home, carrying it in a little gift bag as excitement welled in her. She’d stashed it behind her bed, waiting for Sarah to get back so she could surprise her.
Now that might never happen.
The necklace clattered to the floor as Jean pressed her forehead to the cold concrete, a chorus of curses and wailing echoing through her mind in a symphony of pain. Her breathing came quickly and erratically, heart pounding and breaking and reshaping, trying to adjust to the hole in her heart where her sister used to occupy.
Jean pounded a fist on the floor as she wept. She swept her hands out, searching desperately for something to ground her, when something soft brushed against her finger. She lifted her head, tears dripping onto the concrete, and came face-to-face with the bright blue of one of Sarah’s favorite scrunchies.
She remembered getting that one for her at their second foster home, two before Lois and Ralph. Eight-year old Sarah had loved it and tied her hair up with it immediately. Warmth rushed through Jean at the memory. As she stared at the electric blue, her sobs dwindled and her breaths calmed and caught in her throat. Something dark and thorny twisted inside of her, scratching her chest and burning as it made its way to her heart. She clenched the scrunchie in her fist and brought it to her chest as rage like she’d never felt coursed through her veins.
She felt alive, powerful, like she could control the whole world. She would, if that’s what it took to reach her sister. She crawled to her knees, breath freezing in her lungs as her eyes settled on the words written on torn white paper.
Damage Control.
She knew where to start.
“I will find you, Sarah,” she vowed. “And I will protect you like you’ve always protected me.”
-_-_-_-
Jean wiped the sweat from her brow as she stared, frustrated, at the limp body of the guard she’d controlled to walk away from the Damage Control car. She’d grilled him about Sarah and about anything he knew. The weakling didn’t even last more than five minutes before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he crumpled to the ground. Scoffing, Jean kicked the hand that had reached toward her in a desperate display of begging for mercy away from her scuffed red converse.
It had been two months since that day when her sister had vanished without a trace. Jean had searched through records, mind-controlled a bunch of guards, threatened, bribed, and gotten absolutely nowhere. She had even tried begging in one completely mortifying moment when hopelessness threatened to consume her. The aftermath was so embarrassing she had had to make the guy walk off a skyscraper so no one would know what had happened.
She might have felt a little bad hearing about his wife’s and mother’s grief, but the fact that he was a Damage Control guard quickly assuaged the unwanted sympathy and replaced it with a cool apathy.
No one mattered until her sister was found. Not even her. The best parts of her had disappeared in a black car on a summer afternoon.
Jean stared down her nose at the man laying in front of her, blood trickling from one nostril. Her nose wrinkled (Sarah’s nose) and she adjusted the blue scrunchie on her wrist as she stepped over the immobile form. At least the guard she’d interrogated before him had put up a bit of a fight.
“They’ll just hire anyone these days, huh?” She mused, pressing the button for the elevator as she glanced over her shoulder at the view of the city from the rooftop she was standing on. The city that had swallowed her sister in its concrete depths. Disgust coursed through her and she turned her back on the skyline, pulling her sweatshirt hood further over her head and stepping into the elevator.
Soft music filled the silence as she mentally checked off another lead to be nothing. Two whole fucking months had passed, and there was still no sign of her sister. The elevator clattered to a halt, doors jankily jumbling open, and Jean stepped out into the lobby of a sketchy hotel. She passed the clerk’s desk and slipped him a fifty-dollar bill for him to forget that she came with someone and left without them.
Stepping onto the city street, she made her way through traffic, horns honking and blasting as the line of cars crawled through the intersections. Loud thuds echoed off the buildings in the distance, and she sighed. Another day, another villain with weird superpowers. She just hoped it hadn’t brought her apartment down. That would be hell to clean up.
She walked toward the noise, hands shoved in her hoodie pocket and face obscured by her hood. No one gave her a second glance in the rush of civilians, and she pulled her phone out, grimacing at the notification that read; DANGEROUS VILLAIN. TAKE CAUTION. SPIDER-MAN ON SCENE.
She scoffed and shoved the device back in her pocket. Spider-Man. Where was he when her sister was forced into a car? He probably didn’t even understand what real pain felt like. She bit her lip, the scrunchie on her wrist suddenly seeming constricting. No superhero had ever come to save her. What was the point in believing in something you know wouldn’t give a second thought to you if you weren’t another headline they could use to make themselves feel good?
She would rather die before being saved by a masked vigilante. People were fools for trusting someone whose identity they didn’t even know.
A web suddenly shot in front of her face, and she jerked back as a red-and-blue blur whizzed overhead.
“Sorry!” Jean heard a voice call in the distance, and she rolled her eyes and pushed her headphones in, letting music drown out the chaos in the world around her.
Luckily, the fight seemed to have moved past her apartment, and she sank gladly into her raggedy couch, consulting her list of possible leads and crossing out the fortress she had taken the guard from.
“Had to go and be kidnapped by the most secretive company, didn’t you, Sarah?” She murmured, eyes sliding to a picture she had had framed over her and Sarah, arms slung over each other’s shoulders and big toothy smiles. It had been the day that they had bought their crappy, dirty, messy apartment with the money they made from working odd jobs, and the landlord had offered to take a picture. Though their phones were old models and barely worked, they had still agreed and posed happily.
Jean’s eyes lingered on her sister’s smile, happy in a way she hadn’t seen in a while. That was the day where they truly believed they would be okay. Their hopes for the future had risen, and dreams once thought unreachable were achievable.
Jean scoffed and tore her gaze away. They were two fools, thinking that way. Life dangled blessings in front of you and yanked them away just as fast. Dusk darkened the cluttered room as Jean yanked a blanket over her cold form. Sarah had always been sure to keep it clean. She’d said that if they lived in a crappy place, the least they could do was fix it so it felt cleaner.
Looking at the food wrappers and clothes scattered everywhere, Jean highly doubted that Sarah would be proud of her cleaning skills. “Too bad,” she muttered. “That was always your talent. To make bad things a little better.”
It was ironic, Jean thought, that when Sarah left, her whole life would go downhill. Sarah was the one solid thing; had been the one solid thing since the day Jean was taken home and placed in her sister’s arms. They’d always gone through hardships together. They’d faced everything bad together. And now Sarah was all alone.
Jean thinned her lips, refusing to let the burning in her eyes take over her face. She hadn’t cried since the day she’d vowed to save Sarah. Crying meant taking time to grieve, and there was no way in hell she was grieving her sister when Sarah still lived. She would know if Sarah died. She would feel it. They wouldn’t have gone through everything they’d gone through just for Sarah to die without Jean there.
Thoughts spiraled in Jean’s head as she lay awake, staring at the darkening sky. Laughter echoed from the street; it was probably someone celebrating the fact that their house hadn’t been destroyed in the fight earlier.
Jean’s mind drifted to her and Sarah’s first time witnessing Spider-Man in action. She had been eleven when a masked figure flew over their heads, whooping and soaring through the sky. She’d been in awe, staring at the figure with no cares in the world, until Sarah had grabbed her hand and moved her along.
“Don’t stare. It’s rude,” she had chided in that tone that revealed there was more to what she was worried about. Jean, of course, had to know. She had hated it when Sarah kept things from her; after all they’d been through, she wanted to believe Sarah trusted her as much as she trusted her big sister. So she’d asked, and she still remembered the expression of desperateness that overtook her sister’s face.
“Just don’t. He’s involved in things that you and I will never be part of. He’s an idiot, flaunting his powers for the world to see. He’s going to draw attention, and it won’t be the right kind. Just wait, Jean. If you act like you can crush the world in your hand, the world will crush you first.”
Despite her sister’s words of warning, Jean spent hours fantasizing on what it would be like to be that free. To escape reality and soar through the maze of buildings and concrete. She’d savor the moments Spider-Man waved to her or acknowledged her, and secretly doodle her own hero costume in her sketchbook Sarah had bought for a few cents at a pawn shop.
Now, Jean thought that if she could, she would go back to her younger self and beat her with the truth. Because it was that dreams were for ditzes. Getting lost in the clouds means a harder fall, and Jean had had enough of those.
She turned her back on the fading light and waited for sleep to claim her.
-_-_-_-
Several months later found Jean staring at a newspaper clipping, titled; POWER OUTAGE NEAR CORPORATION. The surge of power had caught her attention; she’d recognized the intensity and immediately linked it to whenever Sarah pushed extra power into her control.
Jean wanted to run to the factory immediately and examine every inch for clues, but a voice in her mind that sounded suspiciously like her older sister warned her to be more careful. She couldn’t help Sarah if she was caught, and she knew that she was Sarah’s last hope.
Along with the power, the phrase V-Max had been pushed into her brain. She recognized the way her sister’s power felt in her mind (refused to acknowledge how she felt it the day Sarah had been taken) and it was undoubtedly her. The question was, what was V-Max?
As soon as she got home, she raced to her janky computer and searched it up. The only things that came up were some YouTuber called Vsauce or some random cleaning brand she’d never heard of before that must’ve been local.
Jean planted the word into all the files accessible to her, and waited for the results, slumping in her chair when nothing came up. Bangs falling into her eyes, she blew them up and out of the way, pushing them off her forehead in frustration. Sarah couldn’t have given anything more helpful? She was sure that her sister had done the best she could and exuded more energy than normal. It would be a while before she would build up enough again, but Jean knew that Sarah could do it. Her sister was the strongest person she knew.
Her heart ached as she thought about Sarah’s laugh, their pinkies linked together in that metro station on the day their lives changed for good. She couldn’t wait to see her sister again.
Steadfastly ignoring the niggle in her brain that warned her something wasn’t right, she dove into her research more fervently than she had in weeks. She finally had a lead. She needed to find her sister, and this was the best chance she had.
‘I’m coming, Sarah,’ she vowed, clicking on the article that talked about a new experiment being conducted by William Metzger. ‘I’ve got you. I promise.’