[i][color=#DAA06D]"...instead I [u]took[/u] something from her."[/color]

[color=#0096FF]"What do you mean?"[/color]

[color=#DAA06D]"I could feel her mind starting to. . .I think disconnect from what she's known, in some small way. . .maybe start to see what we're trying to show her."[/color] Jean closed her eyes regretfully, reproachfully, [color=#DAA06D]"then I brought her right back to that place."[/color]

[color=#0096FF]"You didn't intend to."[/color]

[color=#DAA06D]"That doesn't matter. I should've realized in time to stop myself -and I should've known something was going on at Umbra."[/color]

Scott didn't agree Jean should be so hard on herself; this was clear in his manner as he responded: [color=#0096FF]"Umbra had been keeping the child of Charles Xavier in their sub-basement for a decade and a half. Those people knew what they were doing in the psi-defense department."[/color]

[color=#DAA06D]"This goes beyond telepathy, Scott. . .I haven't felt like myself in other ways."[/color]

At this he only looked at her, before taking her hand.

[color=#DAA06D]"This pregnancy is affecting me in ways I couldn't have anticipated. . .and still with several months to go."[/color]

He looked down...this was a problem he couldn't solve.[/i]

The conversation, the realities of it, played back through Jean's mind the night of that first day Ryder was properly awake.

Subsequent nights her mind filtered through different recent events...like finding Scott gasping for life in the levelled forest...the X-rays, Ryder's, and actually Logan's from years ago, as a piece of another recent conversation filtered through her mind [i][color=#0096FF]"she's unlike anyone else who's ever been brought here. The closest comparison would be Logan and even he was only too happy to have you connect with him."[/color][/i]

Jean hadn't actively made another attempt to connect with Ryder since that moment on the Grounds. . .Just tried to remain open to her. Remembering, in fact, how Xavier was with [i]her[/i] when he had first brought Jean to the school. She'd had her own reasons to be afraid. Not of him or the environment, but of her own powers. He didn't push her into feeling comfortable with them...just supplied her with what she needed and let her come to a "relationship" more or less on her own.

With Ryder, it came to be agreed to take an even more hands-off approach than they had been. . .just keep her supplied with what she needed.

Her refusal of further medical treatment felt like a step back, though Jean could understand. . .Ryder [i]had[/i] to give herself over to them when her body was too damaged. In a way it was like her "receptors flattened" to allow her to tolerate this. But once strong enough, all her alert systems dialed up again.

The most that was extended in way of further connection, was when Storm had gifted her with a couple of plants -a tabletop size and one for the floor- from her greenhouse, for Ryder to keep in her room: "[color=#D3D3D3]So you may keep the outdoors with you, even when you must be inside."[/color] They were a hardy variety, which Storm had selected both so Ryder wouldn't have to worry with particular plant care, and because they reminded Storm of her; surviving in unideal conditions. This latter aspect of the gift went unsaid.

Ryder was also invited to visit Storm's greenhouse [color=#D3D3D3]"I find nature more agreeable company at times"[/color].
And that was that.

Keep her supplied with what she needed, be it means of sustenance, self-care or space.

Interestingly, it was the very man whose example Jean thought back to that was having the hardest time with that last point.

[i][color=yellow]"Look, either the kid is gonna' see value in you and all this or she isn't. You understood that with me."[/color]

[color=#7393B3]"This is a different matter, Logan, and you know that."[/color]

[color=yellow]"Yeah, because she's yours. . .She isn't."[/color][/i]

And so it was fact that Ryder wasn't the only one with an affected sleep schedule.

Xavier, too, found himself awake. There were questions, many questions without answers...without even places to find them...If he had known Ryder was awake too, perhaps some encounter would've followed. As it was, she truly was a ghost to the two other telepaths in the mansion; her locked-down mind even enough to cause the great ones of Charles Xavier and Jean Grey to only just be aware that she was still on the property.

Xavier spent his late-waking hours in his own room.

Jean Grey, however, spent hers more like Ryder. Not to the same degree -Jean still got an adequate amount of hours once she found something to focus on that did the trick in settling her mind; a book, or a train of thought decidedly removed from the constrains of reality; what a family with Scott [i]could[/i] be like.

Though some nights had her feeling like her brain was a radio station with no adjustor knob.

[i][color=#0096FF]"you know I never thought I'd wish we had someplace else to go, but if Ryder is going to keep affecting you maybe we should find something."[/color][/i]

They actually had tried. Home though the Mansion was, it was akin to a home one associated positively with growing-up in; you always hope it'll be there. You never exactly want to leave it. Yet life may dictate you do.

[i]"This is a very [u]traditional[/u] neighborhood. A community you can really [u]trust[/u]."[/i]
The words from a couple of months ago, spoken by a realtor showing Jean and Scott a prospective place. 

The vibe behind those words had been transmitted loud and clear to them.

[i][color=#0096FF]"'Traditional'. A community we can 'trust','[/color] Scott had repeated once he and Jean were alone. [color=#0096FF]"Not us."[/color][/i]


Presently, Jean used her telekinesis to shift herself out of bed so as not to disturb Scott with any additional movement. For one thing, it took him longer to drop off with the state of his ribs, and Jean didn't want to interrupt his rest for his sake. For another, she didn't feel like attention.

Quietly she left the room.

She'd actually noticed Ryder a few times recently. At first Jean thought [i]she[/i] was getting paranoid, thinking she heard things and saw movement, until finally she actually recognized Ryder's form going down a crossing hallway.

Jean didn't delude herself into thinking Ryder wasn't aware of her. . .She was probably "watching" everyone in some way or another, like blips on a radar screen.

In the beginning Jean had no thought to engage and it was a mutually agreeable arrangement, each ignoring the other.
But then...

It could be said Jean's telepathy was an extension of her empathy--

[i]a girl, the life leaving her as she lay on the side of the road. . .Jean feeling her pain; then as if she were dying [u]herself[/u] as she unconsciously [u]connected[/u]. The end of a best friend's life, marking the beginning of hers as a mutant . .[/i]

--As such, Jean hadn't needed her telepathy to be able to feel the state Ryder was in; the paranoia, the high alert.
To feel the toll.

She had missed it the first couple of "crossings", but then every time after it swept over her like a shadow,
and something about this night prompted her...So when Jean noticed Ryder exiting the Mansion, this time, she followed. 

There was a vague similarity to their last conversation on the grounds, in that here Ryder was, standing facing the free-span of the outdoors, and Jean was walking into that.

Though here there would be no talk meant to convince her of anything. 
Here there would be only a meeting.

A meeting only telepaths could have, though Jean spoke with her voice.
Hesitating at first, as she had no direct answer to Ryder's question. 
So she didn't give one.

[color=#DAA06D]". . .It's hard to feel safe when you see what others don't. When you know what they [i]can't[/i]."[/color]
Jean had seen glimpses of what at the time had been the future; things she couldn't stop. 
Things she couldn't say. 

Ryder, no one could see the world as she did. No one could properly understand reality as she knew it.
To an extent this was true of any one. But it was a heightened truth when your mind connected beyond its own walls, and when it was a mind hijacked.

[color=#DAA06D]"A mind as a place of refuge and a place of torment. . ."[/color] Jean paused by one of the stone pillars supporting the entryway, eyes closing as she lay her hand upon it, [color=#DAA06D]"peace at your fingertips. . .and too far away to see."[/color] She opened her eyes, staring out. Her eyes appearing focused despite landing on nothing in particular. Her mind at once distant yet present.