Ever Growing, Ever Learning

Posted on Mon Feb 23rd, 2026 @ 10:14am by Jean Grey-Summers & Hayden Davis

2,323 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 7: Pathogens and Contagions
Location: X-Mansion - Jean's Office
Timeline: March 7, 1992

Hayden had crossed a line. Not in theory. Not in training. But in practicality. She had chosen to stop a life. She carried it quietly, the way she carried most things; folded inward, pressed deep, hoping the weight would settle. But it hadn’t. It lingered. Followed her back to the mansion. Sat with her through the briefing.

She knew grief. Knew its shape, the way it hollowed you out like a pumpkin at Halloween. What she didn’t know, what frightened her, was how to keep it from becoming who she was. And that was why she stood here. Why her hand hovered in front of Jean Grey’s office door.

Jean wouldn’t say you did what you had to do, end of discussion and close the book on it. She wouldn’t turn this into a clean answer or a necessary evil. She would help Hayden sit with it. Unravel it. Learn how to carry it without letting it turn her into a jack-o'-lantern. Because the school wasn’t just a battle training facility. It was a place for healing, too.

She had paused before knocking, knuckles hovering for a moment. "I don’t want to be this person," she whispered to no one. "I don't want to be defined by that moment." Then she knocked and waited.

~* ‘Then don’t be.’*~ Jean’s voice whispered through Hayden’s mind as a feeling of welcome and acceptance filled her mind ~* ‘Please come in, Hayden.’ *~ The door to the office clicked open for her and inside she found Jean standing by the lit fireplace. A bird made of flame, no bigger than a sparrow sat on the redhead’s shoulder but it swiftly departed from its perch and flew into the fire as Hayden stepped into the room.

“Have a seat, Calypso and we can talk.” Jean looked up from the fire that she was watching as it burned as she offered the young woman a small smile in invitation. “I’m sorry your heart is so heavy because of the work we do.”

Hayden smiled at Jean’s welcoming voice in her mind and stepped through the open door, pausing as she watched the small fire-bird vanish into the flames of the fireplace. "Thank you," she said softly, settling into the comfortable chair.

She glanced up at Jean, then back to the fire. "I get the work we do. At least… I think I do. But I wasn’t ready for the emotional overflow. Or how far I’d have to go to stop them. The vampires." Her voice shook a little at the memory. And the confession. "I could feel the water in their blood as it flowed. I..." She inhaled. "I stopped the flow."

Her hands curled together in her lap as the guilt pressed. "I didn’t just use my powers, Jean," she said quietly. "I made a choice. And I don’t know what to do with that." She swallowed hard. "I’m scared that if I let myself be okay with it, even a little, then it gets easier next time. And I don’t want to be that person."

When she finally looked up and met Jean's eyes, the Headmistress could see a weight behind them. "I don’t want this to harden me. I don’t want to lose the part of myself that wanted to help people in the first place." She exhaled, shoulders dipping. "Can you help me?"

“Feeling guilty and worried about becoming desensitized to suffering is actually a sign of moral awareness, not moral failure. It means you still care, and caring is the opposite of numbness.” Jean said as she sat down in the other armchair across from Hayden. The warmth of the fire beside them was a welcoming feeling thanks to the winter chill that still managed to linger outside.

“I’m glad you came to talk to me about this and it is a subject many X-Men have struggled with, myself included. I think talking about it will help you.” Jean admitted to her own doubts and fears as a reminder that none of them had to be alone with their burdens. “Let’s start by separating the guilt from shame. Guilt says ‘I did something that conflicts with my values.’ Shame says ‘I am a bad person.’ Guilt can guide growth; shame tends to freeze it. If you can name the specific action you regret without defining yourself by it you’ve already taken the first step toward staying human and responsive. You mentioned a choice you made, can you elaborate on that and why it is creating doubt inside of you?”

She sat there a few seconds, absorbing what Jean had said so far. Then came the inevitable question. "The choice... the choice to take a life, or what was left of one." She said simply. "The vampires, you couldn't reason with them, but I don't know if they could have been saved. To save myself and help the team...I...I did that." She couldn't even bring herself to say it again.

“It sounds like you are struggling with the ‘what ifs’ that happen after a mission.” Jean nodded her head in agreement, Hayden’s concerns were very real and also so common. For a moment she wished Scott was here, he doubted his choices more than anyone else she knew.

“The ‘what ifs’ often show up not because you chose poorly, but because you cared deeply and something meaningful was at stake. It helps to remember that you didn’t make the decision with today’s hindsight. You made it with the information, capacity, emotions, and limits you had in that moment, and that matters greatly. The alternate outcomes your mind replays are imagined timelines, not proven realities, and every path carries its own costs, even the ones you didn’t take. Feeling regret doesn’t automatically mean the choice was wrong; often it’s just grief for what had to be left behind.”

“You don’t have to prove the choice was perfect, very few decisions are. A gentler way to ground yourself is to ask, why the decision made sense at the time? What were you protecting? What would you say to someone you love if they were in your place?”

She first grounded herself in the facts and not the emotions as she was processing. "I guess it made sense at the time because they were a clear danger to the team. And I guess that's who I was protecting....the others, the team." She paused, considering the next question.

"Gosh, to someone I love...." She trailed off, searching, as her thoughts landed on her family. What would she say to them if they were in her place? It was true that she loved them, but could they truly understand her position as a mutant, as an X-Men? Then she thought of Bobby and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

"I guess I'd tell him that he did the best he could." She paused and chuckled, "That protecting people doesn't always feel good afterward, but it's still matters. That he's still a good person, even if the choice stays heavy."

Hayden started to "unfold" a bit. She sat up a little straighter and rested her arms on the chair instead of wrapped around her stomach. She was still a long way from healing and absolving herself, but at least she was no longer spiraling.

“Yes, exactly.” Jean said with a smile as she watched Hayden relax a little, her heart hurt at the idea that it was Bobby that had been her mental confidant, none of them deserved such heartbreak. “The worry and concern you feel is normal and healthy, it means you care and you take your work and your choices seriously. Sit with it and acknowledge it, learn from it and grow as an X-Men, but also need to understand that you are doing the best you can and to allow yourself some grace in hindsight.”

Jean looked at the fireplace for a moment as she thought about the past and how they all struggled with regret, sometimes even over small, silly things.

“One summer, Scott and Alex had found and repaired an old soda machine to keep in the garage. They wanted to have something cold to drink while they worked on cars in the heat. Bobby took offense to them getting the machine and he froze the entire soda machine solid because he really wanted to show them how good of a grape slushie he could make without waiting for the machine to chill. Unfortunately, the ice spread too fast and too far. One minute it was a frosty button panel, the next minute the entire machine was a glittering blue monument to poor impulse control, the grape sodas stored inside exploded from the freezing and when they could finally open it, the whole entire machine was internally bathed in foamy frozen grape soda slush.

The regret hit almost immediately because it was obvious that the machine was ruined. Bobby stood there staring at his handiwork, arms crossed, mouth twisted, muttering, before he said “Okay, but technically this is very pretty.” It didn’t help that when Hank arrived and sighed the sigh of a man who had lived with Bobby Drake for far too long, before calmly informing him that the machine was now “structurally unsound and emotionally disappointed.” Word spread fast. Lorna laughed so hard she snorted. Scott pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration and Alex was furious with him.

Later, Bobby sat on the mansion roof, feeling foolish and a little icy as he replayed the moment over and over. I joined him and reminded him that no one was hurt, the machine was replaceable, and honestly, it had been kind of funny. I told him that he had invented snow-cone sodas, and Lorna said that they were fantastic.

Messing up didn’t make him a failure; it just made him Bobby. He helped clean up, apologized, and later that night used his powers responsibly to chill a tray of sodas for everyone.”

“Forgiveness doesn’t have to be a big dramatic thing. Sometimes it could just be a laugh, a lesson learned, or a grape soda that was finally cold enough.” Jean said as her focus returned back towards Hayden and the present.

Hayden was quiet for a moment after Jean finished. The fire continued popping softly between them. Her story had done its job. "That sounds…exactly like Bobby," she said softly. She shook her head a little, eyes dropping to her hands. "He always finds a way to turn a mess into something kind of beautiful. Or at least funny."

She inhaled, then let the breath out slowly as she looked back to Jean.

"I think I forget sometimes that mistakes don’t have to mean failure. Maybe just the lesson learned. Forgiveness. But...I don't know..." She trailed off for a moment. "I guess I can start forgiving by not punishing myself for it." Her smile this time was small, but sincere. "Maybe that’s my version of cleaning up the grape soda."

There was a quiet resolve under the softness that wasn't finished, but gentler than before.

"Speaking of Bobby, I, uh, haven't been down there to visit him since they were put in stasis," she said. "I mean, I miss him, but I want to remember him how he was. Not like he is now. Is that wrong? Should I go see him and tell about stuff? Like with coma patients?"

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Jean said gently. “I don’t think anyone, inside or outside those stasis pods, would fault you for that choice.” She tried to reassure her, to make it clear there was no correct script for grief, no single way one was expected to behave. “And if it helps at all,” Jean added, “I talk to all of them whenever I do my safety checks.”

In truth, Jean had slept in the stasis room for weeks after everyone went under. Like a war widow lingering at her husband’s grave, she had struggled more than most to let them go. Even now, those so-called safety checks were unnecessary, Cerebro’s constant vigilance made sure of that. Where Hayden preferred to remember everyone as they had been, alive and vibrant, Jean needed to hold on with both hands, afraid that letting go meant losing them entirely.

“But the point is still the same,” Jean continued softly. “There’s no right or wrong way to wrestle with self-doubt, just as there’s no right way to mourn. You have to trust yourself. Sit with what you’re feeling. Learn from it.” Her gaze was steady, compassionate. “Just don’t let it consume you.”

"Okay," she said quietly, "two different situations to sit with and learn from. And I think I know the perfect place to set aside some time to do that."

Her thoughts drifted to the attic, the spot Bobby had taken her to once on New Year’s Day. It was quiet and out of the way. That could be her roof.

She sat there a moment longer, listening to the fire. "I think I'd like to keep the memories for now. Maybe in a few months, I'll go down there. Or after I've sat with this for a while."

“Of course Hayden, there is no rush.” Jean replied along with a soft smile, the X-Men went through a lot and she was happy to see that Hayden was making the effort to understand and grow from her experiences. “Just don’t bring any grape soda.”

Hayden grinned a little, "Not a chance. Though I don't think I'll be able to look at grape soda the same now."

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