The Lyngen Alps, Norway:
A green glowing corpse calls Phoenix a witch and boasts she will not keep him from her. Glowing with fire herself, she orders him to stop. She doesn’t want to hurt him. Angrily, she orders, enough. When he doesn’t comply, she notes she is trying to save them from an avalanche here!
She flies upwards and vaporizes the avalanche, then turns back to the green glowing being. He is no ghost, she decides, but a psychic residue. An accretion of old pain reactivates by a powerful catalyst like… Like the Phoenix, she realizes.
The being kneels and asks for forgiveness. She isn’t a witch, she is a goddess! She calls him a little echo and hushes him. She wants to see what is driving him on.
Memories:
She sees his memories: his wife Solveig, who was a mountaineer long before she met him. She wanted to lead an eighty-kilometer traverse of the Lyngen Alps but he, Axel, forbade it. So, she went away in the dead of night, burdened with unearned shame. And Axel followed, intent on disciplining Solveig for her small act of rebellion, but he got turned around in a blizzard, got lost, fell and died alone.
Present:
He knew Solveig would lose her way! Axel claims. He came for love! Is that what they used to call it in those days? Jean asks disgusted. He rants, it is no business of hers. Accusingly, she orders him to let his prisoners go. They are dying! He refuses. He cannot search for Solveig alone - he needs them! She sighs that she just wanted to give him a chance, before he hears the truth. She stops him in his tracks, telekinetically.
She reveals that Solveig made it. She died peacefully, surrounded by her grandchildren 13 years ago. Axel accuses her of lying. She obliterates him with her powers, then shakes Scott trying to reach him.
She mentally tears off the door to his Black Bug Room and tells him she will always find him. They hug and he asks what was that thing. An echo activated by her psychic aura, she explains. She has her own gravitas now. Everywhere she goes, she changes things.
She looks around. So, this is where he keeps all his secrets and stuff, she muses. Better than giant bugs. He tells her that she needs to see something, then shows her a photo: an image of the two of them sitting in front of her parents’ home, both of them old.
They enter the image. He tells her, when she came back, he thought if they could just get rid of the damn bird, everything would work out. Somehow, they would find a way to have grandchildren and yard sales and trips to the farmers’ market. They would be happy! That’s not going to happen though, is it? Carefully, Jean replies. There is no her without the bird. There is no bird without her. He knows.
As she changes to her youthful Phoenix-self, he explains he will love her till he is dust. But, when that day comes, she will still be this. Ageless, eternal, aflame. One day, she will forget his name. Then Rachel’s, then Nathan’s, then Hope’s. It’s not her fault. She’s just part of something bigger than all of them.
She realizes that’s why he brought her to this hotel. Why he’s been so jittery the whole time. He’s been trying to make one last indelible memory, before she left for space.
They are back in their hotel room and she is patching him up. He explains that they haven’t made many good ones lately. She asks if that is really the thread that binds them - good memories. He can’t help thinking, if they were better, she would stay.
She explains it is all precious: the blood, the loss, the anguish… the bird chose her, but Jean and Scott passed through the fire together. Even the bad memories turn to gold. As they kiss, she tells him to remember, she is always only a thought away…
