Hope Springs Eternal
A/N: Wow. A post-X3, from me, of all people. Bet you never saw that one coming. After doing a search around LJ, I discovered a hysterical script of how Scott might make his way back home (alive and well, I might add), so I thought, yeah, let's make myself feel better about the third film- which I saw as a travesty.
I'm using a lot of comic influence in this one: Scott's background, for example. Oh, and the Tudor England reference is kind of a homage towards Scott's time walking thingie, which he picks up at one point or another in the comics. Also, the writers said that the case study Moira gives is actually Xavier's twin brother (is that not a pointer towards an X4?) Enjoy, and have a merry Christmas.
0-0-0-0-0
It was a week after the disastrous events with the Phoenix, and Logan suddenly realised that they'd missed something. Missed something major.
After thinking about it for a while, he waited for Storm to have finished her classes for the day before going to find her, and explaining the thing he'd just noticed.
"You know, we found Scott's glasses, but we didn't search the other side of the lake," he said thoughtfully, leaning against the doorframe. Storm looked up from the marking she was doing.
"Logan, Scott's gone. They're all gone. There's nothing we can do about it now. We can't go dwelling on the past."
But Logan stayed adamant. "I'm going back to look. You coming, or not?"
Ororo sighed. "I've got things to do, Logan; I can't go out on wild goose chases. Go if you want; I'm not going to stop you." Logan considered for a minute, and left the room.
Everyone had lost hope in Cyclops after Jean 'died'. Even the Professor saw him as changed, but the Cyke he knew had stayed underneath. He just needed time, and it seemed that all those who should have recognised that, didn't. What had happened to the Professor, too? After Jean died the first time, he'd taken more of a shift than One-Eye had. Both had obviously been hit hard by her passing, and now both were gone, seemingly. Both disintegrated. Or, he knew that the Professor had been, but they'd got no trace of Cyclops ever having died. Just supposition, a pair of glasses with no owner, and a tombstone in the graveyard, further down in the grounds.
However, Logan was determined to search the other side of the lake. It was respectful; to actually try and bury whatever remains were left, or maybe, he was still there, not dead. But then, how did he know? This was just wild speculation.
Going upstairs, he headed along the corridor, to 'their' room. With everything happening so fast, they hadn't had time to clear it out yet, and doing so was really concreting the fact that the pair was gone. On the bedside table lay Scott's visor, and so he took it, putting it securely in the top pocket of his leather jacket. After all, he could still hope. It might be fools hope, but he had a feeling about this. An odd feeling.
It was a choice between one of the bikes or a car, but Logan took a Bentley. Just in case he did find something, it'd be easier to carry it in a car than on a motorcycle.
This was a fool's errand, and he recognised that. He just needed to be sure.
Roaring down the drive (someone had obviously fooled around with turbo chargers on this car too; was there no exception?); he took the turn north, and started on the long drive to Canada.
0-0-0-0-0
It took him a day of driving to reach the lake. A day to try and convince himself that there was nothing there, and to stop jumping at the anticipation. After all, without Scott, it wasn't worth being at the mansion. No one to annoy especially, there wasn't any satisfaction in taking one of his bikes, and even Danger Room practice had lost its allure if you didn't have an uptight team leader to piss off.
After sleeping overnight in the car (not too hard, you just had to set the front seat back as far as it would go and get comfortable, as sleeping on the back seat never seemed to work), he took advantage of the early morning light to try and search. Probably search in vain, but have a look anyway. Then he might be able to go home in peace, and get on with life. They hadn't even held a funeral for him yet: according to Ro, there were no parents to inform, and his younger brother wouldn't remember him (he was five when the pair were separated), and Logan wasn't surprised, suddenly, why Scott had taken everything so hard. To lose another person you loved had to be tough, even for someone who'd had to cope with it before.
With renewed venom, he began to search. There had to something here. Anything. Anything to set his mind at ease.
There wasn't a scent of death around the lake, which he found somewhat comforting. He'd be able to tell instinctively- he knew the scent better than most. It didn't smell like someone had died here, and that alone gave him hope.
And then, half an hour later, he smelt it. Menthol and cardamom. Scott's scent. Although gravity was acting as it should again (how Jean had managed to defy physics, he didn't know, and even if told, he doubted he'd understand), he was easy to spot. The man on the rocky outcrop, lying stock still, as if dead. And yet, he wasn't. There was a faint pulse at his wrist, and, pulling out a claw, you could see his breath, faintly condensing on the metal. There was warmth inside him still, and that gave Logan more hope than ever before. Although obviously comatose, maybe he might wake up. Maybe.
0-0-0-0-0
He sped the journey home. One hundred and thirty down the highway, plus the turbo charger in action for as long as it could sustain itself. However, by the time he'd got to a place where they had bigger roads, it was 1 AM, so it didn't seem that bad. But then, having someone who seemed to be vegetating in your car was worse, and he was doing this all for him. He didn't want Scottie dead. No one did.
But then, when he finally reached the mansion (home, once more), it was six o'clock, and no one was awake. This was more important than beauty sleep though, so he carefully put his quarry over his shoulder, and tried to be a good pack horse as he went upstairs, to the third floor. Resting the man he'd been carrying on the double bed that he'd shared with Jean, Logan's next priority was to get Ororo.
Knocking on her door, he waited patiently outside until she emerged, pulling on a dressing gown as she went.
"Logan, it's early. Have you heard of sleep?" He pulled her by the wrist out of her room, and down the hall, steering her into the room at the end of the corridor.
She took one look at the figure lying motionless inside, and had to be caught as she fainted.
"My God," she said, looking at him intently after she awoke, around ten seconds later. "Where was he? We need to call Hank."
And so, Hank was called, and he rushed from Washington to Westchester. Making use of his medical degree, soon enough their unresponsive figure looked more like a cyborg than Cyclops, hooked up to machine after machine. They beeped quietly in the background, showing what I was told to be a regular heartbeat, but no brainwaves to speak of: or, at least, they were extremely faint.
"We can't afford to be slack with this," Hank said, sitting on an examination bed in the Med-bay. "Scott has been in a coma once before, and although he did come out of it after some time, he shouldn't have done. By all rights, he probably won't emerge this time. We'll have to be careful."
They made arrangements to keep watch over the patient- Hank decided to stay at the mansion for the future, at least for a month or so, to see if there were any developments, but he wasn't hopeful. But Logan kept hope up. After all, someone had to.
"We shouldn't tell the students," Storm said, considering the situation. "We can't get their hopes up." Although a highly serious, maths textbook wielding teacher, the younger population of the school respected (and liked) Cyclops. He was like their figurehead; many of the students not having family any more, he was the older brother, sometimes playing 'dad' to the youngest. He even apologised for having to give tests ("You hate doing them, and I hate marking them. We're even. You have forty minutes from… now") and Logan had seen witty comments written in Rogue's math notebook. You'd think he actually liked having to force kids to do a subject they hated (although he'd heard whispers that the only reason some of the girls enjoyed Calc was because he had to turn around to write on the board, and he had a nice ass), or that he was a naturally good teacher. Probably both.
However, when it was Logan's time to watch over him, rather than reading, he'd watch him, making sure that he was comfortable, even talk to him at times. He didn't quite know why; after all, he'd never believed that comatose patients could hear you. But he was clinging onto hope: even a month after, when it seemed impossible that he'd wake up now.
It wasn't that they were going to switch off the life support machine, as he wasn't on one. He could breathe by himself (no oxygen mask required) and, not as expected, he was still alive.
"Scooter, what are we going to do with you?" He said, almost absentmindedly, having just changed shifts with Hank. "Keep fighting, kid. Hang on in there for us." He briefly ran a finger down his cheek, and sat down in the customary armchair, watching the figure. He'd become almost fond of the vegetating man. It was the 'protect the pack' impulse he got- the face he was looking at wasn't somewhat obscured by the red glasses it normally wore, and looked young and vulnerable. How old was Cyclops? Definitely younger than Ororo, by the looks of it. When he'd asked, he got the answer '27 going on forty', almost as a joke, from Hank. If that was true, then he didn't act like it. Christ, if Summers was really 27, he should, by all rights, going out on the town and getting drunk, not composedly telling him that he didn't drink 'cat piss' any time he was offered beer.
However, as he watched, one of the machines began to beep faster, become more insistent, and he couldn't work out which one it was. His heart rate had got generally stronger over the last few weeks- a saving grace if nothing else.
Staring at the machine in horror, Logan followed the cord that attached it to Scott, and discovered it plugged into his temple. Shit.
Grabbing the walkie talkie that had been put in place for emergencies (it was three way to make things quicker), Logan held the button down. "Storm, get your ass down here. Something's happening and I don't know what." Scooting closer to the bed, he took Scott's hand and held it, hope upon hope. He didn't know how he'd handle a death-bed scene.
However, as he watched, Scott's shallow breathing became stronger, his chest rising and falling visibly. Behind him, he could just about hear someone in high heels hurtling down the stairs- to him; it was like someone was hammering on the floor loudly, and it rang through his head as he listened. His attention, however, was then diverted back to the person lying in front of him as his hand got crushed.
"Don't open the eyes, Cyke. I don't feel like getting crushed today."
"Logan? What the…. What happened?" Ah. Short term memory loss? "Where the fuck am I?"
"You're at the mansion, in the med-bay, kid. And calm down. Ro'll be here any sec-" Speak of the devil, the sliding doors retracted, revealing one flustered (not at all her normal, composed self) Ororo, who had obviously thought the worse.
"Oh, Scott," she breathed. "We thought you were dead."
"Well, that makes three of us," he said. "Found Jean, nearly got killed by her, then somehow ended up in Tudor England, for some reason, then everything went black, and now I'm here. Weird."
"We need to get Hank in here," Ororo said, taking the arm of the chair Logan had (by this time, he'd withdrawn his hand from Scott's), "and someone needs to get your glasses, or visor. Plus, telling the students that you're alive…"
"Good point," he replied. Eyes scrunched tightly shut (a reflex reaction by now), he propped himself up on his elbows and pulled off a machine sensor with disgust, seemingly. "Did you clear my room out?"
"No, we hadn't got around to it yet. Other things came up, and..." Ororo couldn't finish her sentence.
"She's gone, isn't she?" Scott said quietly. Storm nodded, for all the help it was (it wasn't like he could see the gesture), and Logan took his hand again, for support.
"Yeah, kid. She's gone." The reaction that he was given was much different from the one he'd expected.
"It wasn't Jean, you know. The Phoenix was an evil creature, completely out of control. It was kind of inevitable that this would happen, but Jean always said to blast her if she 'flipped out' on me again. It's time to get life back on track, and actually being allowed out of here would a good start." He tried to get up, but Storm pushed him back down again.
"You're not going anywhere until Hank's had a look at you. Logan, go and make the call, and get Scott some eyewear. Please." He left the room as Ororo took the chair he'd just been sitting in.
"What else has happened? Where's the professor?" Storm gulped, and began to fill him in.
0-0-0-0-0
Scott didn't continue in his previous mindset once Hank had let him out into the outside world. He was more like the old Mr Summers: just slightly quieter with the news that Professor Xavier had met the same fate as he almost had. The students had been somewhat confused: after all, they'd all been told that their maths teacher had been another casualty of Dr Grey going 'whacko', as Jubilee had once put it.
However, a phone call a week and a half after he'd been let out of the med-bay brought him back into higher spirits. Storm had taken many of the students out for a mall trip, Logan had been dragged with them by Rogue, and he'd been left in charge of the many pupils who were left.
He was sitting in his office, trying to catch up with a backload of marking that he'd had for quite some time (never mind the time when he'd been under) when Rahne came up, clutching the phone.
"It's someone who wanted Ms Munroe, Mr Summers, but I think you'll do, right?" She passed the phone to him as he rolled his eyes behind his glasses.
"Way to raise my self esteem, Rahne. Go on, go play with the others. I'll be out in a minute. He raised the phone to his ear and said in a business-like tone, "Good afternoon. Scott Summers here, who's speaking?"
It was an odd conversation, with a lot of accusations and the phrase 'but I was told that you were dead' popping up several times. It turned out the speaker was Dr. Moira McTaggart, who was phoning with the news that Professor Xavier wasn't dead, but had transferred his conscience into his twin brother, whom Moira had looked for years, as he had no higher conscience- something about Xavier having so much power in his mind yet the twin having none. Of course, finally, the phone on the other end of the line was passed to the posthumously deceased Professor, who was overjoyed to hear the news from the mansion, and said that he would be on the next flight home as soon as he could- walking, he assured, not in a wheelchair.
It had to be one of the strangest telephone calls you'd ever heard. Two men who were supposed to be deceased talking to each other, both alive and well.
"Well, I look forward to seeing you soon, Professor. Have a safe trip." He disconnected as soon as Storm and Logan popped their heads around the door.
"Well, guys, you're not going to believe this…"