⚜️ Saga 0: The Ash Years
📍 Location: Devil May Cry → Upper East Side transit zone, NYC
🕯️ Year: 2007, Spring Waning
🎯 POV: Jean Grey, Dante (Split)
🛡 Sin System Status: Active Thread Separation Logged
⚠ Rival Thread Activity: Reactivated (Silent Phase) | Dante Integration at 71.1%
—
She didn't leave with fire.
Just quiet shoes and a jacket that smelled like his old cologne.
Jean stepped out past midnight—no door slam, no flare. Just vanished in the blue shadow folded between two sleeping lights. The street swallowed her without protest.
None of them stopped her.
Not Wanda, who sensed it.
Not Dante, who *woke the second* she crossed the threshold.
▫▫▫
She walked until the taxis stopped running.
Until the rain lifted.
Until her anger froze into something harder.
Not jealousy. **Grief.**
▫▫▫
At 3:53 AM, Dante's burner phone buzzed once.
The screen blinked without flare or glow.
> ✦ Incoming: JEAN
> — Status: On-line
> — Trace: Half-a-city away
> — Destination: Unknown
He stepped out onto the fire escape, breath curling in the cold.
The call connected.
He didn't speak first.
Jean did.
She sounded steady.
But her voice cracked anyway.
> "If I brought her into the world…"
Pause.
> "If I *found a way*. If I took that piece of Phoenix, and chaos, and dream-echo, and… made her real—"
Her voice caught.
> "Would you stay?"
Dante didn't answer.
Because anything said too fast might've sounded like guilt.
But she waited.
One beat.
Two.
Gone cars squealing below.
Then—
> "Yes," he whispered.
> "I don't know who I'd become.
> But I wouldn't run."
Jean swallowed audibly.
> "Even if she didn't call me first?"
> "She wouldn't have to," Dante said gently.
> "I'd know who kissed her nightmares away... even if no one else could see it."
▫▫▫
On the other end, Jean covered her eyes.
The Phoenix *didn't cry with her*… but it made room.
And she whispered finally:
> "Then I'll wait a little longer.
> But not forever."
▫▫▫
> [System Alert — Emotional Dialogue Log Captured]
> Jean Grey → Sync: 73.0% → 74.6%
> Dante Anchor Integration: 71.1% → 72.5%
> Rival State Update: Jean → Phase: "Conditional Forwarding"
> System Tag: "Maternal Imprint Activated Without Manifestation"
>
> ❖ Predictive Thread Drift: "If she *calls*, she will call both. But the *first to believe*… stays."
Later that morning?
Jean returned.
Quiet again.
She walked inside and made tea for Wanda.
No questions asked.
No victory claimed.
And when Dante passed her in the hallway?
She didn't touch him.
She just looked him in the eye—and nodded.
And Dante understood what she'd done.
She had asked him if he'd stay…
…but she'd stayed first.
—