[ She opens her mouth, and then closes it. Both of those are good questions.

As she thinks, her shoelaces start unweaving again, but she doesn't look away this time.

By the time she speaks, she's onto the other boot. ]

I don't think I ever really understood what it was like. You thinking I was dead, and having to live with that. Having to move on with your life, to...redefine what that meant. [ She reaches up, slowly, to trace the line of his jaw. ] It was like someone had ripped my heart out and I had to just...just keep going without it, somehow.

[ She managed, more or less; took six months to herself, learning to breathe through it, before rejoining the X-Men because of course she did. But she never quite felt whole; not as Jean, not as Phoenix. ]

I thought having you back would mean...knowing how to be happy again. Like when were kids, and we had the whole world in front of us. Like when we got married, because we believed in a future we could share together.

[ Jean and Scott, Cyclops and Phoenix, heart of the X-Men. ]

But then - there you were, right next to me, and I still couldn't reach you.