"Think carefully about the next move and don't let Erik's all-knowing smile distract you." Charles watered down voice came as a result of rolling his wheelchair beside Daisy, on her side of the small round table in the backyard of a much smaller home, serving as their afternoon delight. A chess game was being guarded from above by a saturated, cloudless sky, preparing for an undeniably blurred sunset of fire hues. 

Though their house had been shrunk to an old cottage which held cracks in brinks blooming with climbing plants and life of ladybugs dancing with butterflies, the backyard, further from their game, was bustling with chatter and joy. A lot of people have been invited to the peaceful afternoon, not just the mutants Peter corrupted into a rigged game of tag Wade was ready to literally cut short, considering retrieving his blades from under the cooler shadow of a tall tree.

Their home was hidden, safely, in the midst of a thicket of trees, belonging to a larger forest. Daisy guessed, in some deep acknowledgement, that there must have been, somewhere far away, a city, though she could not recall which, nor did she care enough to strain her mind away from the concentration on the game. 

If Erik's intimidation techniques didn't pose a distraction danger to her, then surely the noise of jokes from the party on their cottage's field would. Tony's stories have always had their flare of humor to them and Daisy was ready to slip away from the warmth tickling her nose in the moment, as soon as she made her move in the chess game. Erik anticipated her choice and followed along with a quick and brave counter-attack.

"Maybe I should leave you two to this game instead...," her shoulders dropped in the uncertain headache beginning to thrive in the hopelessness Daisy faced against opponents like her parents in this game. Anyone else would be easier to beat but her two fathers with an undying passion for chess.

"Nonsense," Erik disagreed. He has been studying their game very little, his eyes much rather resting in pride on Daisy, who brought to him only one surface thought, louder than any other: they've earned this peace. "We are making up for lost time."

"And chess has many benefits for your young mind," Charles immediately added, far less cryptic and emotional. He was silently criticizing in a glare his partner for bringing a snail-like slowness to a bright and happy day like theirs. 

"Because I am a telepath?"

"Because we raised you to be a leader," Erik laughed his correction to Daisy's assumption. He did not pester her to hurry with her next move, but knowing without a little push he will be waiting quite a bit, he leant back in his chair and crossed his arms upon his chest. This movement has brought his forehead into the sun their umbrella has been shielding them from; those last rays of light in the day were warmly shading his hair almost auburn, no longer defining the white streaks old age has brought between his wrinkles.

"Is this what leaders do then, Daisy?" Jean Grey has approached their table, unnoticed, soundlessly, standing now still and staring down the girl sitting with her hand hovering over a piece which moved, would have ended the game with Erik's win. "Do leaders hide?" Jean's voice was hoarse and cold, nothing like the thrill of a bird song carried through the winds roaring the forest in their own hymns of rustling leaves.

However, Daisy found it normal. She greeted Jean with a smile and got up herself, to some extent relieved she did not yet need to accept her defeat to the game of chess she has been sabotaging since the start for herself. "Scott again? I'll help you find him, don't worry. Dad," her hand propped on Charles' shoulder before guiding Jean onto the path going around the small house, "how about some tea later?"

"Chamomile is your favorite," Charles agreed to the idea she insinuated he should get started on now that she left them and the game. Only three steps away though, when her smile was still on her lips, Jean stopped walking.

"We've been doing this one too many times already and my patience is running thin."

With her back to the disruption of peace, Daisy's smile faltered and flinched into the lack of expression at least twice before returning its brightness and allowing her to turn around towards the glaring woman. "Whatever you are talking about, Jean?"

Sound was cut off outside their conversation with the twitch on the edge of Jean's right eye. Her pupils flared red with the Phoenix in her veins, but it was how everything around them froze which angered Daisy. She allowed herself the little moment of denial by looking around, seeing ladybugs frozen in time, her friends stopped and silence like a paused movie which has defeated even forces of natures like the wind or the fall of leaves and bending of grass hairs. 

Her smile had no return.

"This is my mind," Daisy reminded her. She kept her gaze on the fields; one glance at the Phoenix and she guessed there would be no avoiding the tension of pure rage building her heart to trepidation and the ghost of a pain. "With what you did, you have no right to be here and unless you want me to kick you out, I advice you to leave on your own."

"It may be your mind, mortal, but were it not for Jean's preferences, I would have torn you apart from inside out until your ashes-" Jean coughed away the sudden dark echoes of her voice, before they had the chance to take over her hardly contained body and float her off the imagined concrete at which she stared. Granulated, colored... She was impressed by the living proof Daisy was indeed their way out of their prisons, if only she was pushed into owning up to their situation, past their disagreement.

"I did what I had to do," Jean spoke over the Phoenix Force in her, much calmer and steady, still feeling like she could get to the reasonable side of Daisy without hurting her any further.

"You kidnapped me from Earth and I didn't even know what was happening when a bunch of aliens, insanely powerful by the way, attacked me!" Daisy's fuse was lit and she turned around gritting her teeth and clenching her jaw at the end of the raise in her tone. Her glowing yellow gaze faded away, but her glare remained, just like the whiteness of her knuckles, "Your stupid plans almost got me killed."

"Are you dead?" Jean motioned with one hand at Daisy, watching it get slapped away by the girl.

"As if being trapped in these chains meant to contain your kind is not worse than death," bitter in poisonous sarcasm, Daisy's comment culminated in the roll of her eyes. It reset a certain level of control on her own being, bottled up anger. "Some of us actually need our mutations fully functional in order to not permanently be almost dead in the depths of the universe void..."

"One would think you would be eager to get out under such conditions." Jean showcased a merciless emotionless approach which stroke all the wrong nerves on the sensitive topic for Daisy.

"What do you think I've been doing before you contacted me?" Daisy fired back, once again shouting. The closer she was to losing her temper entirely, the fainter her grip on the illusion world she created for herself as a shelter in her mind turned. The saturated colors began dimming to black and white first, flickering as dying light bulbs.

"You weren't even in the emptiness they tossed me, this... ruin of a star system," Daisy grimaced, feeling, without looking, that some of the friendly people she remembered and placed in her illusion were disappearing. "I tried to break the chains..." Instinct closed her eyes and in that blackness, she remembered the feeling of having no air reach her lungs, no light warming her skin or bringing comfort to her eyes. 

"And I tried calling for help telepathically but because of you," opening her eyes, rage reinstituted and she pushed her hand into Jean's chest, getting her away from her, though the woman was unmoved, "I am trapped in the middle of nowhere! There is no life form in the range of my mental reach, which is constrained by this chains either way."

"I heard you," Jean noted. "That's how I found you in this... sanctuary you built yourself formidably. It's a fortified and detailed world you were able to put together to escape from your own reality."

"Not thanks to you."

"No telepath, not even the greatest we both know, are able to construct and deconstruct, control and bend their own mind the way you have here. This is the living proof you are able to escape, were you to put the same concentration into it like you did in your fantasy. Time is not on our side and we have already been wasting precious seconds crucial to the fate of the universe!"

"Jean," a laugh unexpectedly joined in with the slow shake of Daisy's head. Her real body was healing too slow to stop the outer decaying in space, but in her mind, nothing about her aspect changed. In fact, she was wearing the same clothes as the night of her birthday, when that damn portal opened. Though much time has passed for sure, she kept the image of her hair intact too, no dark roots consuming her freshly dyed orange and cut style. It were her eyes and emotions which kept changing, no matter how hard she constrained herself to feel her illusion and relax. 

"Oh, Jean," that bitter sarcasm made her smile almost cruel at the end of her low laugh, "I don't care."

"You can't possibly mean that...," Jean watched Daisy, bewildered, while she began walking back to her parents, and the chess game.

"But I do," she shook her head and shivered her shoulders back into a straightened stance. Chills of permanent cold were reminded to her skin and Daisy was becoming eager to return to her warm illusion. "Five years I've been helping on Earth and keeping everyone from fighting, but on the one day when I was supposed to be with my family, you stole that peaceful moment from me entirely, not even warning me about what I was about to be dragged into."

"Thanos is a threat for the whole universe, Daisy!"

"There are more heroes out there," Daisy sat back in her chair and sighed with settling there, back in a world still frozen on the black and white hues amongst which herself and Jean did not fit in with their golden and auburn glows.

"They don't know what's happening unless we warn them."

"Then," she looked up at Jean, "you better go escape your chains, mighty Phoenix Force." Daisy's eyes glowed yellow and a beam of that light brought color to her own world, turned back time in it and restored all the missing people to their activities. The warmth of the sun grazed her skin again and the calm of Charles' hushed voice returned with the memory of home.

"Think carefully about the next move and don't let Erik's all-knowing smile distract you."

With a deep breath, her eyes returned to their normal color and she smiled, relaxed away from the stress of reality, mixed with troublesome emotions she was too tired of battling at last. The loneliness and pain needed a cure, even if as puerile and tedious as a perfect illusion to keep her mind immersed into while her body was bound to a slow death. Perhaps, if she tried hard enough to keep this world together for herself, then she would die without even having forgotten the faces of those she loved, the people before her, those she scattered into her world.

A flame plunged from the sky in a battle cry, shattering the perfect blue into a fragmented mosaic of fire and television static. With meteor-like speed, Jean, half manifested into her true energy form, clashed into Daisy, grabbed her by the neck and flew her through the cottage. Brick, wood, plants and household furniture shattered in their way, collapsing alit.

"I wish there was another way, but I need you to cooperate," Jean's voice got darker, much like the flames around her, making her humanoid body. 

Daisy's world stopped and its inhabitants, like before, seemed frozen by the grace of the Phoenix Force, being present and interrupting. Daisy has been grimacing, feeling Jean's hands burn on her throat, but once she blocked out the imagined feelings, all products of her own mind, she opened her eyes, iridescent gold, and her world moved again, in her favor. 

Erik got up first, his hand movement throwing all the pipes beneath their cottage into Jean, until she came off Daisy and gave her the space to push herself up. "You may be whatever the fuck you are, but this is my mind. Do well and remember that."

"You may be strong, Daisy Vince," Jean got up without ever feeling the graze of a true hit, "but I am life incarnate, what was, is and will be." Her arms raised beside her body with her voice and the souls of her torching feet lifted off the ground. With the end of her threat, a reminder of having transcended into being one with the Phoenix Force, fire burst through her chest and circularly all around her, shockwave through Daisy's illusion.

Everything her mind created and was met with the Phoenix fire turned to ash and left behind nothing but the structural infinite of light connections an unfiltered mind should be. Bit by bit everything and everyone was getting destroyed, but Daisy did not move away from the approaching shockwave, instead, bracing herself to meet it with her wide open palms and merciless glint of yellow glare.

The Phoenix fire was met with a mental barrier they could not penetrate with a single blast, therefore, they could destroy no bit of Daisy's world which stood behind her. Before Jean could catch up and send a second shockwave of her Phoenix Force, Daisy pushed the mental barrier ahead, forcing the flames to roll back to their sources as waves of water rain, getting gathered with a broom. 

Behind that broom swipe, centimeter by centimeter and static flicker with static flicker, Daisy's illusion rebuilt itself. That mind defense went through Jean, putting her back on the ground and sealing the reality. However, the Phoenix did not sit still for long and in a bird like shape, it flew towards Daisy, regardless of puerile interventions from people she conjured from memories, so very vivid to her mutation's perk.

Daisy was risking getting pinned once more by Jean. When the latter's hands came out of the flames, she met them with her own and held back the acceleration across the field and the forest, by the mutant's will, moving aside. Daisy's heels dug into the earth which helped its creator and stopped the propulsion of the Phoenix. 

Through her hands, cracks of fire were transferred from Jean into Daisy. They crawled, pinching her veins open, from her wrist, up her arms, aiming to reach her temples and succeeding, even if now, she shook her head and struggled to escape standing so close to the fire. "I'm sorry I didn't warn you, but this is the way things were supposed to happen. I just hoped you'd understand without having to show you this first."

With the echo of her words dipped in light and darkness alike, the burn reached Daisy's throat and from there, it climbed rapidly to her temples and deep into her mind, where it had access to altering completely the vision of the illusion world, morphing its saturation into hues of red and purple and nuances of absolute destruction.

What was around them changed to the desolation of a battlefield. It was Earth, Daisy realized once the pain dimmed down and shock built up at how unrecognizable her own home planet seemed. Then she started recognizing what was happening too: Steve Rogers and Tony Stark were charging towards Thanos, whose gauntlet glowed all stones but one.

In a slightly deteriorated Iron Suit, Tony flew at him, but the Mad Titan's reflex did not fail him, catching the human from the air and ripping him in half above his head with the Power Stone shining.

"No-!" Daisy flinched, eyes widening at the carnage. Tony's violent death let her look around at all the dead littering the battlefields in so many horrifying ways. Rayna Kline herself, the girl she helped away from Anchor during her five year period, was decapitated beside Clint, with a hole through his chest.

"Humans never stood a chance," Jean whispered, knowing every second of what Daisy was watching, heartbroken. "We never warned them and in two years time, they were caught unprepared by Thanos, his army and his war. He tortured and forced Loki into sealing all dimensions from interrupting and though help is on the way, the war would be lost before they even arrive."

She narrated over the moment when Thanos smashed the shield into Captain America's head. The last hero on the battlefield was dead and the Mad Titan turned to his children holding Joanna put. She was the last stone he needed, by Daisy's knowledge.

"Your mutants died first, just so you know," Jean added while Thanos plunged his hand through the chest of the hopeless and alone host of the Infinity Stone. "After meeting you, Thanos sent spies on this planet to figure out that he should annihilate your kind before proceeding invasion and decimating anyone who'd stand against him here. Anchor provided him all the information he needed in your absence."

Jean released Daisy before Thanos snapped his fingers in the vision of the possible future, so probable in that moment to take place. Daisy collapsed on her knees, floating through her mind, with no illusion around them anymore, just the weak energy pulses and lights, trapped in darkness. "Before you ask," Jean's flames flickered quieter, "there is no other way to alert them anymore. It had to be you and it still has to be you. The chain were built to contain me and I am weaker just by reaching my mind to you so far across the space, but with my guidance... you are just a mutant, so you will be able to escape it."

"But first I have to wake up, right?" Daisy didn't look up at Jean. She was disgusted by the dreadful guilt, as much as she was fearful of returning to her current moribund state of existence. 

"Not necessarily," Jean caught her attention and returned to her humane form to greet Daisy's finally lifting gaze. "We have to strengthen and expand your telepathic waves first if we want to send any messages to pertinent receivers, so we can stay here for now."

( closing gif made by Raichia.. )

author's note:   AND HERE WE FREAKING GOOOO WOOOO !!!

Yes, the future they were heading to was morbid, but did you notice how I was comic accurate with how Thanos was going to kill the Avengers????? I SCREAMED INTERNALLY

Also... Wanda's false reality hurting people? Nahhh, lame.
Daisy building her reality from her memories, into her own mind, not hurting anyone, that's the real deal 👏👏👏👏👏👏

THIS CHAPTER is dedicated to the one and only capmxrvel for literally being the number one fan of this series !! The hype you have shown for this has truly inspired and raised my mood considerably today 💖 Thank you, sweetie