"Scott?"
Scott Summers was dying. It was a feeling he'd had a thousand times before, each from a thousand different forms. He coughed, a deep rasp coming from deep in his lungs. He'd survived Brood Eggs, the Retribution Virus, being infected by the soul of En Sabah Nur, Scott couldn't begin to think of them all. But this… this was different.
A cloud of Terrigen mist had swept across Muir Island, leaving dozens of mutants dead in its wake. Friends and acquaintances, all dead. Cut short before their time. He should have worn a hazmat suit, should have made everyone wear one. But he'd been too concerned with helping the injured, if anyone had survived. And now it was too late.
"E-Emma!" Cyclops cried out, his voice breaking as his legs fell out beneath him. His mask felt suffocating, and he could feel his body shutting down.
She was at his side in seconds, cradling him. The Ice Queen of the Hellfire Club, Emma Frost. Scott suppressed a laugh, thinking that the Emma of back then would have found this hilarious somehow.
"Go! Get away!" he warned her, ineffectively, "The Terrigen…" his voice failed him, words failed him for a few seconds. Scott could swear Emma said something, but it was so hard to hear anything but the slowing rush of his own blood. Summoning his strength, he rasped, "We… we can't end like this. Don't let it end, Emma!"
He could feel her inside his mind, holding onto what little of him remained. It seemed like she agreed, and he could feel his body fading and falling away. Like he'd thought earlier, it wasn't death like he'd experienced it before. In the distance, a bright light began to grow. Scott Summers wasn't afraid, though. He'd faced death before, and it wasn't like he was about to be afraid once the actual thing was happening.
Silently, he pushed himself towards the light.
"E-Emma!" Scott Summers screamed at the top of his lungs, shooting awake and lurching forward his seat.
Wait. Seat? He was just on the floor.
Many, many things occurred to Scott at the same time, but they all summed up under one category: Everything is wrong. His vision was incredibly fuzzy, like the world itself was out of focus. As his breathing slowed, his senses also began to align. It was… different, like he was a stranger in his own body. And it had to be his own body, seeing how it was his hands he was using. Hands in yellow gloves.
"I haven't used yellow in years…" Scott mumbled to himself, looking at his hands like it was the first time he'd seen them, "Not that I could se-"
He blinked.
He could see in color. No visor. His costume was a much older variant, and one that he hadn't worn since he'd left the X-Men with Madely-
Oh.
Things snapped into clear focus. It had been many years since any of this, and the jet he was in was before the X-Men ever had the Blackbird jet. The… Strato-Jet. That was it. The autopilot was jammed on, and set for Westchester, New York.
"Krakoa."
It held a lot of meaning for Scott. Not only was it the final mission of the original X-Men, a team he'd been on since he was but a boy, but also the first mission of his All-New X-Men. And, of course, where a third team of X-Men had been sent on a suicide mission, lead by him, and subsequently mind-wiped by his mentor when they had failed and it had grown… inconvenient for Scott. A cold fury burned in Cyclops' chest at the memory of the Professor that day. But that could be pushed aside.
Maybe this was Emma's final gift to him, he mused internally. Sitting down in one of the passenger seats of the Strato-Jet, Scott frowned. Either he was reliving his memories in the weirdest possible way, or he'd been somehow sent back in time. To be honest, it was actually more likely time travel was the culprit, seeing how crossed timelines and convoluted continuity seemed to be a constant for anyone with or sharing Summers' blood.
If it was all just a dream in a dying mind, it wouldn't hurt to just… change a few things.
And if it was real? If Scott Summers had somehow lucked into a second chance, one to make things right? Then he owed it to everyone to fix this.
A dark chuckle escaped Scott's lips as he closed his eyes and smiled, thinking to himself. Well, you only live once, right?
The engines of the Strato-Jet disturbed Scott from his reveries and planning as it reached the destination pre-programmed into the computer. The low whine as the craft shuddered slightly meant that the autopilot was slowing down and adjusting itself for landing with the VTOL jets. He waited, calm, as the plane landed in the backyard of the Xavier School for Gifted Children.
As the plane began retracting back into the underground lair of the X-Men, beneath the mansion and school, Cyclops unbuckled himself and stood up. Scott had to admit his memories were suspect when it came to literally this event, but only because the Professor had also decided to mess with his mind to make him forget that second team. Darwin, Sway, Petra, and… Vulcan. Yes, they had been a team assembled hastily from Moira McTaggart's own students. Yes, they had freed him from Krakoa, the Island that Walked Like A- No. The mindless beast, made out to be a fearsome fiend by the Professor himself. It was mere luck that his brother Vulcan had survived, absorbing the mutant Darwin into himself to survive.
Darwin's powers had also absorbed the remnants of the other two who had died, allowing them both to survive in the fragment of Krakoa that had been hurled into space. Scott wasn't about to let them remain there, if he could help it. But… the problem was, the Professor could just stop him with a thought. Make him forget. And considering what Vulcan had became, was it better if he hadn't been found at all?
Moving fast down the ramp of the Strato-Jet, Scott pushed those thoughts from his mind. Second-guessing himself would just make it worse.
"You've got your chance, Slim," Cyclops muttered to himself as he came to the Professor's command center, "If you can save, do."
That would be his mantra. If you can save someone, if your actions can make the world better, it was nothing short of his duty to do so. However, the X-Men and time as he knew it would still come before Vulcan, especially after what he'd heard from his brother Alex about what happened in space with the Shi'ar after Vulcan had been awakened a few years ago.
Years from now.
A grim grin slid across Scott's face as he realized he now understood his son Nathan way more than he ever had before. Time Travel only hurt the brain the more you tried to process it.
Winzeldorf, Germany. What would normally have been a peaceful and quiet night had been broken hours ago with screams of phrases in German and the rattling of pitchforks and crosses. The scent of smoke was thick from the rooftops, and the night was light up with the flicker of hundreds of makeshift torches. Kurt Wagner had never been a fan of mobs, even when he'd watched Frankenstein when he was a child. His bruised and battered body from thrown stones and mad pitchfork swipes made him sympathize with Frankenstein's Monster all the more. Kurt curled against one of the rooftops, blending in with the shadows as best he could, feeling much like a monster himself. It just wasn't fair.
Minutes turned to hours, and the people still never gave up. However, someone with keen eyes noticed Kurt finally and, in a fit of mad desperation, hurled his still-burning torch up onto the thatch roof alongside Kurt. Not wanting to die, the mutant known as Nightcrawler bunched up his courage and stood on the burning roof.
I came among them to learn, but all they chose to teach me is blind panic, discrimination, and violence. He thought to himself, frowning at the jeering and yelling humans below, Well. If that is all they choose to teach me, I will show them the same lessons in kind!
Kurt lept from the rooftops, plowing into a gathering of burly men and knocking them to the cobblestone street with momentum alone. The men, frightened more than angry, scattered as Kurt's yellow eyes and fangs glinted in the torchlight. However, it didn't stop the rest of the entire town from closing in on Kurt.
"Well, then." the Nightcrawler growled at the people closing in, "Who wishes to strike down the mon-"
Kurt never finished. A bright stream of pink energy lanced down from the sky, crushing cobbled streets in a slow circle around the former circus star. The crowd ran back, screaming before they suddenly froze in place.
"Scott," a cultured bald gentleman chided as he rolled his wheelchair into Kurt's view, weaving between frozen panicked citizens, "I had this. You didn't need to take such a drastic action."
Kurt turned up to where the hairless man had been looking, and saw a person leap off the roof of a non-burning building to land a few feet away. He was clothed in a mostly-blue costume, but with yellow outerwear, gloves, and boots. A streak of red across the yellow visor hiding his eyes hinted at where the energy might have come from. He approached Kurt, an unreadable expression on what little of his face Kurt could see.
"Vas… what happened?" Kurt spoke to the two newcomers in front of him, "That blast, the people… why are they all frozen?"
"I happened to the people, Mr. Wagner." the bald man spoke up, holding out a hand to Kurt in introduction, "I am Professor Charles Xavier."
Kurt eyed the hand warily, his eyes darting to the other man who was allowed to move, not sure what to do.
"The pink energy was my fault," the slim man in blue and yellow admitted, holding up both gloved hands in a shrug, "I call it an Optic Blast, and it comes from my eyes."
Kurt didn't relax, but Xavier continued, "I couldn't help but overhear your thoughts about how you came to learn." He never retracted his hand, but continued with a soft smile, "I am a teacher. I run a school for gifted youngster such as you." Charles nodded to the other man, "He is one of my older students, Cyclops."
"Scott," Cyclops corrected as he stopped a few paces away from Nightcrawler. An odd smile quirked across his face as he looked Kurt up and down briefly, "And I'm not sorry, Professor. I'm not about to let an innocent get hurt."
"I-I can agree with that," Kurt nodded at Cyclops, a thankful smile spreading across his face.
"Regardless," the professor shook his head, giving up on the subject for now, "I can help you reach your potential, Kurt Wagner. Your true potential."
Kurt shied away from the Professor, looking much like the demon the crowd had feared him being, "And… normal?"
"Overrated." Scott cut off the professor, "I can… understand why they feared you, Kurt," Cyclops' voice was soft with emotion, as he took a step closer, "But you can rise above this, and help prove that the way you were born doesn't mean you're any better or worse than them."
"Scott." Professor Xavier cut off his student, frowning.
"You… are right, mein freund," Kurt finally said, "I do not want normal. But I want to be a whole man, I want to be Kurt Wagner. If you can help with that, Professor, I will go with you and Scott."
Scott's smile almost looked wistful, "I think we can do that."
On the Strato-Jet, Kurt Wagner lay sleeping in one of the smaller compartments left aside for overnight flights or emergency bunking. The Professor had replaced the co-pilot's seat with anchors for his own wheelchair instead, providing directions to his pilot and student. Scott was silent as he steered the plane through the skies towards Canada.
"Scott," the Professor finally spoke up as they flew over the Atlantic, "We need to talk."
"Oh?" Scott was stone-faced.
"Whatever happened on Krakoa," The professor continued, frowning deeper than before as he turned to look at Scott, "I can no longer see into your mind. I know we can still communicate, that you can hear me… but it's as if there's a wall between us."
Scott didn't look Charles in the eyes, "Oh." he paused for a moment, as if in thought, "Maybe it's some remnants of the Island messing with my head and draining my powers. If the island itself is a mutant, as you suspect… it's hard to guess what kind of effects its own powers could have had on me."
Scott internally sighed. He didn't like lying. Never did. But it looked like whatever luck had sent him back in time had also kept up all the subsequent shoring up of and added mental defenses he'd had done over the years. When he'd confronted the Professor at home, it had been incredibly easy to keep up the pretense that he'd just come back from a failed expedition on the island of Krakoa.
Sure, it was suspicious that he didn't bring up Vulcan and the others. But without Charles seeing in his mind, Scott could just brush it off as a coping mechanism that he didn't acknowledge it happening. After all, with the bullshit that life had thrown his way in the past? Future? Whichever. A mental break was entirely understandable.
The Professor didn't seem to buy it, but it didn't entirely matter, either.
"If there are any changes in your condition, Scott," The professor simply sighed.
"I'll let you know, sir." Scott allowed himself a smile as the shore of Canada came into view, "I promise."
Author's Note
I've had this idea rattling around for quite a while, actually. It began with "young" Scott Summers somehow keeping his memories as he was sent back in time in the inevitable return of the time-lost Original 5 X-Men. However, I've recently come to really enjoy the "Peggy Sue" kind of stories recently, and I began to realize that Scott Summers could really do some damage to canon if he wanted to. After all, he's a tactical genius, and angst with a side of hindsight must be a secondary mutation for the poor guy.
Yeah, it's a cheap shortcut to have the Professor unable to break into Scott's thoughts... but it's about the only way I can think of preventing the Professor from shutting this down in under three seconds.
Thoughts? Please let me know. I'd love to have any and all feedback and/or ideas.