Jean let him go with a quick kiss to the side of his fuzzy cheek and chuckled as she turned back towards her room. Scott was still at the Treehouse; Jean had begun slipping through the Krakoan gate before what was typically dinner time. Schedules were hectic as ever, Logan and X-Force, she and the X-Men, and everyone else in the house with various endeavors: Rachel was off with the Red Queen's Marauders, the young Cable was either trying at whichever Cuckoo girl was nearest or doing something stupid and dangerous (but doing it well), while Scott's brothers...kept busy. Vulcan was a powerhouse, with no memory of his mad ascent to the Shi'ar. Havok was a different kind of situation.

And then there was the wild one: "Jamie!"

The blur was a child, dark-haired and sharp-featured, dressed in blue shorts and yellow tee, and orange shoes with the lights that blinked in the sole of the shoe. Thankfully the Treehouse in Manhattan got Amazon Prime deliveries. Enough that Jean knew their regular Amazon driver by name; and Gus was a very nice grouch of a man. Jean tried to stay firm, but laughter was infectious, her eyes a brighter kind of green when she laughed and looked back at Logan. "Your child. Yours. My baby, your child. Think he's excited to spend the day doing 'Wolverine' things around the island with Daddy? Can't tell." A long yawn caught her by surprise as her body leaned back into his, her eyes catching the horizon.

And the sun. "Why is the sun so bri--"

[b]ENOUGH![/b]

It all vaporized, the energy of it so sudden and absolute that even in cosmic terms there was nothing left. Just Logan, an infinite white expanse, and...the bird. A semi-sentient construct of flame and the omniverse. For once it met someone in an unusual state; though it need not it gently flapped wings of flame as it hovered there before the man, no bigger than a large crow. Its eyes were flame that flickered and flared, but the unmistakable feeling was present: there was something very much alive in those eyes. Something was definitely home. It had the voice of a collective, a harmony that peaked mid-speech but frayed towards the end, allowing more layers of an endless number and types of voices.

[b]"She is happy. We are one. Life thrives across infinity, death consumes all that it must and none more. She is present at all. We cannot be, no others have ever been. The White Crown must stay. She is happy. We are one. Would you deny this? Would you see infinity a darker place?"[/b]

The claws came, and the Phoenix Force echoed itself: [b]"She is happy."[/b] When Logan reached out, the very tip of his bladed claw went lightless black, and everything else followed as James 'Logan' Howlett began to die, and resurrect, and die so many times that time itself would become just another star in the lightless expanse to what remained of his mind. Memories would be sporadic, and more intense than anything ever induced by any of the countless narcotics that he had turned to over the years. A circle of glowing and flaring energy, surrounded by the haze and greed of black nothingness. In the middle? The real secret, but his mind had bent upon itself again, as he dies and lives again, die and live again, the same moments, the same bird.

[i]Shink.[/i]

The claws were gone, the never-ending bright white returned, and the bird stared the same.

[b]"We have summoned you. Go."[/b]

Flame feather tips began to melt like molten metal, the liquid fire that spilled just before his feet and slowly filled a line before him, before turning upwards in a steep curve, meeting at the top with another straight line across, marrying the two sides at the perfect center. The golden doorknob appeared, the door to the White Hot Room now waiting for him.