TITLE: The Closed Mind

AUTHOR: Jos Mous

Email: wotan_anubis@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMER: Not owning characters, not making a profit.

UNIVERSE: X-Men: Evolution. Sort of.

RATING: R, bordering on NC-17

PAIRING: Kitty/Rogue(/Jean?)

NOTE: You know, I really think the time is coming to eventually bring this series to a close. Granted, this may take a while (possibly even a long while), but it needs to end somewhere. Where it’s going to end, though, I don’t know and in this statement you can probably find the very essence of this entire series.

It was a very short story and that’s why it had taken Jean more than half an hour to tell it. She had told it to Professor Xavier who was currently staring intently at her from behind his desk. After a while, the Professor spoke up.

“So they…”

“Yes.”

“And you…”

“Yes.”

Professor Xavier nodded. And then said, “So what, exactly, were Rogue and Kitty doing?”

“Ah,” said Jean, squirming uncomfortably in her seat. “Well… you see… they… Look it doesn’t matter. I’m a telepath, not an empath. I can’t sense other people’s emotions. And yet I did.”

Xavier was silent again as he thought about this. “And what do you expect me to do about this?” he asked.

“Oh I don’t know,” said Jean, exasperated. “Make it stop I guess.”

“I can’t do that, Jean, you know that.”

“You mean you won’t.”

“That’s right,” the Professor calmly admitted.

“Well… train me then,” Jean said. “I mean, you know about background noise, you know about screams, but they’re not… they’re not supposed to take over.”

“Take over? In what way?”

“Look, I told you…”

“You said you were… troubled,” the Professor said, “having difficulty keeping the mental noise down. You… implied… that Rogue and Kitty are involved somehow. You didn’t say much else.”

“It’s just that, sometimes, I don’t know who’s doing the thinking. Or the feeling. I can’t tell what’s me and what’s background.”

Xavier frowned. “That is worrying.”

“I know. And I tried everything you ever taught me to tone it down and none of it worked. Something’s… blocking.”

“Blocking…” Xavier said ponderously. Then, “Perhaps someone from the outside is… influencing you in some way. Or perhaps…”

The sentence was left hanging in the air.

“You wanna have a look inside?”

“I’d rather not actually. As a last resort possibly.”

“Do it.”

“It may not even be….”

“I said do it.”

Professor Xavier sighed. Teenagers could be so stubborn sometimes.

Professor Xavier felt rather let down as he walked down a street lined with decrepit, boarded up buildings. He’d expected more from a mind like Jean’s. Still it could’ve been worse. Some minds were worse than nightmares.

“Hey there stranger.” Xavier turned and saw Jean standing in the middle of the road, wearing a long trenchcoat. And it was Jean. There was no possible way she could be mistaken for anyone else. And yet…

“Hello Jean,” said Xavier.

A smile tugged briefly at Jean’s lips. “Looking for something are you?”

“I am.”

“Thought so. Follow me,” she said and, with a smile, disappeared into an alleyway.

Xavier followed the girl down the alley and through the door at the end. He stepped into a large, empty room where plush red carpeting covered the floor. There were windows, but they were all covered up in planks. Xavier felt uneasy here, but he couldn’t quite place why.

Jean shed her trenchcoat. She was wearing a silk night-gown with frilly lace around the edges. It was too short, falling right off the edge between decent and indecent.

“Ah, perhaps I should…” Xavier started.

“Stay right here,” Jean finished. A couch appeared in the middle of the room and Jean draped herself all over it, making sure her already insufficient gown was even more insufficient. “Please, have a seat.”

A very ordinary chair appeared out of nowhere.

“No thank you. I’d rather stand. This is one of the few the times I actually get that chance,” said Xavier.

Jean smiled lasciviously, even though she probably didn’t mean it like that. Lasciviousness seemed to be built into her very being.

“What part of Jean do you represent, exactly?”

“Bit of a redundant question don’t you think?” Jean said.

She stretched herself, the hem of her gown hiking up even more so that only the lace edge just barely covered up what really needed covering up in polite company. When she settled back, the silk covered her up again somewhat and Xavier let out a relieved breath.

“I’m supposed to be Jean’s sexual identity,” said the girl. “But with all the repressing she’s been doing you might as well label me Lust and be done with it.”

“What do you mean repressed?”

“I’m not a malevolent part of Jean you know,” she said. She had started stroking her own thigh. “I just determine who she likes and doesn’t like, what type she lusts after, what kind she falls in love with, what turns her own, what turns her off, what particular kinks she may have, how often she gets horny, little things like that. But I’m being denied,” Jean said. She sounded angry and that was strange. You didn’t expect anger from this Jean. “Do you know she doesn’t even masturbate? Heck, she doesn’t even fantasise. Occasionally, she might glance at a boy and then she instantly turns away thinking about Science or something like that. Although I admit, she was really good at faking things with Duncan. She almost paid a bit of attention to me then.” She sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind if she wants to save herself for marriage or anything, but this is going a bit far. She pushes me out of every conscious thought she has, denying that she’s flesh and blood, trying to be an it.”

“So that is why this area is boarded up,” said Xavier. “This is the… hah… Red Light District of Jean’s mind.”

“That’s right. And with any normal person, this place’d be filled with pretty girls and very nice customers. But as you can see, the prude isn’t giving me any kind of clientele. It’s very frustrating, to say the least.”

“And yet this place does have a back door. The subconscious?”

“Yes,” said Jean, closing her eyes. “Not a lot was happening here until one day Rogue got all worked up over Kitty and the resulting screams shocked Jean so much I could draw it all in.” The girl licked her lips and briefly stroked her breast. “It was delicious and I craved more.”

“Wait, Rogue and Kitty?”

“Oh yes,” Jean said. “Those girls are doing all kinds of naughty things to each other and the images they produce...” She moaned. “I didn’t even try to block them out, I welcomed them in, let them wash over me in tall heir splendour.” Jean was seriously rubbing her breasts now and her other hand had disappeared underneath the hem of her gown.

Xavier looked the other way. “And you were… satisfied?”

“Yes, and confused. Girls? Me? Surely not.” Jean paused as she gasped for breath. “But girls were all I got and by God I enjoyed it. And then I did something incredibly stupid.”

“Really?” said Xavier, trying to keep the irony out of his voice.

“Even I got scared of what I felt so I approached the girls and asked them to stop their shenanigans when I was around.” Xavier could hear Jean angrily thumping the couch. “And they did. And once again I was bereft of everything.”

“Did you… try anything then?” Xavier asked.

“I couldn’t. I’m still Jean and I can’t do anything to actually harm her.” There was a pause. “Unless she wants to, of course. I still don’t know what my… interests really are.”

“Jean, the real Jean, might argue that your… decision to draw in all these mental images is actually harming her.”

“Perhaps,” Jean conceded. “But then again, a part of her wants them more than anything.”

“You.”

“That’s right. I’m as valid a part of Jean as anything else.”

“But if it all stopped, then why did Jean come into my office visibly upset?”

“Ah but that’s because Christmas is a time to spend with your loved ones. So for this one time, Rogue and Kitty ignored my request.” Xavier, who was still politely looking away, could hear Jean’s breath going ragged again. He didn’t try to guess what she was doing. He didn’t want to guess. “They did it twice that evening. The first time wasn’t spectacular, in all honesty. A quick burst and a release of pent-up emotions. Intense, yes, but fleeting. But the second time… oh…”

“Yes?”

Jean gasped once, twice, then groaned deeply. When she spoke again her breathing was a little more under control. “I don’t know what they did, what changed, but whatever it was, it was better than everything I experienced so far put together. It was more than overwhelming, it was… it was… oh I don’t know, but it was enough to send me flying over the edge. I had my very first orgasm right there in the middle of the hallway.”

“Jean seems to think…”

“Jean doesn’t have a clue. No, she’d much rather blame someone else for her pleasure. But I assure you, that climax was all mine. And I wasn’t the only part of Jean who enjoyed it by far. I think that frightened her more than anything else.”

“And that brings us here today I gather.”

“Indeed it does. And now I suppose you have to work out how to deal with this. With me.”

“Hmm… I think you are fine, in your own way. A bit enthusiastic perhaps, but fine.”

Jean chuckled. “Thanks for the compliment. So are you agreeing with me that the rest of Jean is the problem?”

“Yes. I am. And that leads me to a new problem, doesn’t it?”

“Ah yes, you’re going to have to tell your teenage charge to be a more sexual creature. I’d love to see the look on my face, but unfortunately, I’m going to stop existing as an entity when you leave, aren’t I?”

“I’m afraid you’re right on both counts,” said Xavier. “But before I go, there’s just one more thing I’d like to know.”

“What’s that then?”

“Rogue and Kitty? Really?”

Jean chuckled. “Yes. Really. Now be gone. You have work to do and I feel like… reminiscing some more.”

Jean sat on her bed. She wasn’t aware of how she got there. She wasn’t aware of a lot of things. Most, if not all, of her higher brain functions had shut down and her body was running on automatic.

How had it all gone again? The Professor suggesting that perhaps she needed to know more about herself. But that was absurd, she knew everything there was to know about herself. That is, all the important things definitely.

Perhaps she needed to learn some more, the Professor had argued. Sometimes, the most meaningless things could be the most important.

Jean had feigned obliviousness.

Then perhaps it could be a good idea to think about the outside images that kept invading her mind and wonder how they related to her while the Professor would go and try to find some other solution.

Jean considered that she probably should’ve mentioned that everything she experienced had been definitely physical in nature. She didn’t like to think about that kind of thing, only sluts did that.

Well, and Rogue and Kitty, obviously. And possibly Rahne with all her wolfish instincts. Tabitha too, come to that.

OK, so maybe normal girls did that too. So perhaps she could sort of possibly think about it for a little bit. Not too much, obviously, but maybe a little couldn’t hurt.

Of course, she didn’t know a lot about it. The only sex ed she’d had had been on the lines of “don’t do it unless you really want to be a single teenage mom with no future”, which wasn’t very helpful right now.

So… Sex. What kind of thoughts did that subject conjure up? Well, there was the image of a naked Kitty really enjoying herself, she’d seen that one often enough. And it didn’t involve herself, which was a nice bonus. Of course, Kitty didn’t enjoy herself that much all on her own; Rogue had to figure in somehow. Normally, she was probably fully clothed, but Jean couldn’t figure out how that would figure into the whole picture. It was probably easier to have Rogue naked for now.

What would Rogue look like naked? Pale skin, of course. Very pale. Her nipples, on the other hand, would probably be dark, or at least, dark in contrast.

So how would they start out then? Assuming Rogue was harmless at the moment. A kiss, presumably. Probably not very chaste. Possibly even with a bit of tongue. And some groping, perhaps.

Without really knowing it, Jean lay down on her bed. Not long after, still unaware of her actions, her hand slipped down her waistline.

A couple of minutes later Jean experienced the second orgasm of her life.

And didn’t freak out for at least half an hour after that.