"…Where am I?"

Scott Summers woke up – regained consciousness was probably more accurate – and immediately began a self-assessment without moving, or indeed even opening his eyes. Professor Xavier had always praised Scott's inclination toward strategy. It's what made him a shark at games like Stratego or Risk. Even Billiards, though that was more to do with a practical application of spatial Geometry. He was very good at Geometry.

He was in no pain; not even so much as a headache. He was laying on his stomach, head cradled in his arms. He was hot, but that wasn't necessarily injury. Just annoyance. And man, was it hot as Hell. Literally. Not Figuratively. Well, figurative in the sense that he'd never actually visited Hell, more than heard less-than-charming things about its alleged uncomfortably high temperature, not in the figurative sense wherein 'hot' meant 'attractive.' But hey, what did he know? He could have looked damn fine, right now, languishing in some…what? Desert? High temperature, dusty; it even smelled hot, though that acrid taste in his mouth hardly said anything – he sat up suddenly.

"Where am I?!"

Mystique.

How could he have forgotten about Mystique? The taste in his mouth was from inhaling knockout gas from her nifty pen-thing. He had noticed the absence of the weight he'd grown used to having on his nose; no goggles or glasses. That seemed deliberate.

He patted his jacket pockets. No spares.

Shit.

A quick search of any and all other pockets on his person did not produce a visor, either.

Shit.

He wasn't even wearing his costume under his civvies. Not that it would have helped in his situation, the visor was separate from the costume. But it might have made him feel better. And probably made him even more hot, to be fair.

As if Mystique hadn't done enough already. He had already been beating himself up for the last few months after the part she'd played in Magneto's disastrous 'coming out' party. Of the students, Scott had known Professor Xavier the longest. He should have known Mystique had been impersonating him. But he hadn't figured it out until she'd been at it for weeks. Logan had told him not to feel bad; he'd known Xavier longer than Scott had, and he was supposed to be this suspicious, cantankerous, animal-instincts guy. Logan hadn't cottoned on, either.

Scott knew, logically, that he didn't need to blame himself. He'd been assured multiple times by the Professor, by Jean, by Kurt, even, that he was in no way responsible for Mystique's actions. She had gained access to their files, somehow, giving her just enough information to escape suspicion, even from Logan and Ororo. Deep down, though, Scott couldn't help but think that if he had been more accepting of the paternal role that the Professor had slowly started to take on in Scott's life; if he'd been more trusting of the man he knew the Professor was, instead of expecting to be let down by yet another adult in his life….then maybe Mystique wouldn't have fooled him as easily as she had.

Mystique, playing Xavier, had known Scott's powers. She'd known, likely, a little personal information about him as well, if not from the intel she'd read in his file, then from her stint as his High School Principal. It was a far cry from what Xavier knew about Scott. Any buttons that "Xavier" had pushed with Scott, all that talk about how he didn't lose graciously, or how he wasn't a good leader had fed into his own deep fears and insecurities. Fears and insecurities the real Xavier knew about, and would have addressed, in private. The Professor would have been a good parent, in short. And Mystique, clearly, was not.

Scott got up, assessing again. No injuries. No cuts, broken bones, aches, or bruises. Mystique was petty, but apparently not petty enough to beat him up while he was unconscious. She'd said this was payback? Maybe she'd abstained from harming him because he'd never beat her up while she was unconscious, either. They'd encountered before; she'd almost killed him sophomore year, back when they'd first been recruiting, and Rogue hadn't become an X-Man yet; before Mystique and Magneto had gone separate ways. Then there was the matter of a few weeks ago, when she had sabotaged the mansion, sentencing Scott and eight other students to death by fiery explosion just cover her tracks, and probably continue her façade as Professor Xavier.

He'd never tried to kill her, even though she'd tried multiple times to kill him. As much as he probably deserved retribution, he wasn't that guy. He wouldn't be that guy. He'd lived under the thumb of that guy, and hated it. The worst Scott had done was leave Mystique at Area 51. So…it made sense, in a way. An eye for an eye. An abandonment for an abandonment.

He started walking. The skin on his face felt hot, but not sunburned. He hadn't been laying here long. Maybe there was a vehicle nearby. After a thought, he removed his jacket. He'd do better without overheating and getting sunstroke, but if he couldn't find help before nightfall, he'd be grateful for the warmth once the sun stopped heating the dusty ground below his shoes.

Dust. Dirt. Not sand. Interesting. He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious, but he suspected the knockout gas wouldn't have held him under for too long. Not with a dose containable in a tube as thin as a pen. He wouldn't be, say, in the Sahara. Mystique was good, but probably not so good that she could appropriate transportation of an unconscious guy – and Scott was tall! He was not a small man – the countless hours it would take to get him halfway across the world. No…she'd made Scott come to her. If he had to hazard a guess, he would say he was probably still pretty close to Mexico City. Too bad he didn't remember more of Mexican topography, to make himself a map of where any desert areas would be, within, say, fifty miles of the airport.

He walked with his hand outstretched in front of him, taking long strides to cover more ground, hoping he wasn't striding confidently away from civilization. "Hello?" he called hopefully. "Hello? Anybody there?" When there was no forthcoming answer, he chanced a peek: Red-hazed desert, as far as the eye could see in any direction. No buildings, cars, or people. He demolished a sturdy-looking cactus before he closed his eyes again. "The good news? No one was there," he murmured. "The bad news?...no one was there."

He hadn't seen any trees or branches from which he could fashion a cane, and so he continued to walk as he had been; hand stretched in front of him to help him avoid walking into a cactus. Or a rattlesnake. In addition to his long strides, he started kicking up dust unnecessarily as he walked, the better to find hidden rattlesnakes, and give himself at least a warning if he was about to step on one.

And nightfall was sooner than he wanted, which would bring fun new dangers. Nocturnal animals were more dangerous than rattlesnakes. The sun hadn't been beating on him from overhead, but rather to his side: he was walking due north, then, with the sun at his left. The damned flight had taken all of six hours, not counting the arduous wade through security for two hours before that. It had already been noon when he'd left New York, and even factoring in the time difference that was on his side, he knew that all too soon the sun would set.

He did these things automatically, a lot of the time. Part of his strategic thinking, he supposed. The other students could tease him – he was "stiff" or "straight-laced" or "uptight." But he was cautious and prepared. And his life had once depended on it.

When Scott's parents had died, he had been made a ward of the state – Alaska – and when his mutation started manifesting, a burst of red at a time, marking the different homes with unique destruction – a destroyed bathroom here, a hole in the wall there – it became harder and harder for his social worker to place him.

So he'd bailed. Lived on the streets for a few months. It was easier than he thought it would be. And harder. He'd only been thirteen at the time. Then he'd been taken in by Jack. It was great in Scott's mind at the time; he didn't have to hide his powers. Jack knew Scott was a mutant, and didn't care. Jack himself was a mutant. A career criminal, sure, but he kept Scott in school, and warm in the winter, cool in the summer. Better than the streets.

For a while.

Jack started asking Scott to use his powers for him. For his group of associates. And he could usually coerce Scott into agreeing to do it. And when he couldn't use his words, he'd use his fists. They were often quite persuading.

Scott had developed a certain paranoia. He lived with the constant fear that whatever he did would set Jack off. He'd developed a stutter. Jack had tried his damndest to beat the stutter out of him. He suffered with constant headaches, which would be relieved when he used his powers, and so Jack could convince him to use them for him.

Scott realized later that Jack had been a telepath. And after being around the Professor, and even Jean, when she wasn't in full control of her powers, he had found a noted difference in abilities, and come to know that Jack was a lousy telepath. But he'd been good enough at planting doubt and fear and helplessness into Scott's mind that it had never occurred to him to defy Jack – not until their association ended, and it had ultimately led to Xavier finding him.

Scott had been able to find strength in stubbornness, then, when stamina didn't cut it. He might have given in and used his powers to do what Jack wanted, like destroying safes or breaking into buildings – but he did it his way. He wouldn't hurt people. And if he heard people who might be remotely in his line of sight, he wouldn't open his eyes, no matter if Jack beat the shit out of him for it.

It was an endurance game, now. He might be playing Mystique's game, and suffering in the desert, but he wasn't delirious with sunstroke, and he had gathered enough information to kind of know how to get help, if he was able to get to some form of civilization. He was stubborn. He had nothing else to do, so he just let his thoughts keep running. He'd glean information. He always did. The Professor had only been able to beat him at Stratego because he was a mind-reading cheat.

He grinned. His spirit hadn't broken yet, if that was Mystique's intent. What then, was it to be?

She'd taken his sunglasses, and his spares. Of course she knew he couldn't control whether his eyes emitted the beam or not when they were open. She had known as much as Principal Darkholme. She'd called him in Alex's guise –it chafed him anew that he'd fallen for that trick, too. He could only blame Jean. She'd been distracting him. With her stupid existence and her damn beauty. 'I'm lost in a foreign country and have no money, wire me some.' – that was more recent intel. That wasn't something she'd known as Principal Darkholme. She had recent information, likely gathered from the files she'd gotten ahold of.

Still, it was just surface information. If she'd known more in-depth information, it would likely have changed her locale; Professor Xavier, along with Jean, had long since surmised that the headaches he used to get when he didn't use his powers were due to his self-imposed blindness; that the ruby quartz that made up the lenses of his sunglasses actually absorbed the beams, it didn't block them. Additionally, the energy of his optic blasts was powered by the sun. He would fatigue slower in full view of the sun than somewhere in equal isolation, but dark. By trapping him in the desert, she was giving him extra energy for the endurance game.

Also, though she could hardly know this, her blowing up the Institute had served to force him to take up running again, in lieu of his normal activities of billiards or movie-watching, and he'd been slowly building distance over the past few weeks. It meant that even as he felt the sun at his back, and he was hot, and thirsty, he wasn't exhausted.

He used to run, in the beginning of his time at the Institute. The Professor didn't have leisure activities set up for young people yet, and Scott had just come from rocky circumstances, cutting ties with Jack, being hospitalized, accidentally destroying part of the hospital; Scott had needed a healthy coping skill, and all the Professor could offer in the moment were a pair of running shoes.

Scott had marveled that he had the same size feet as the Professor at the time; he'd never thought about the life the Professor had lived before his legs had been taken from him. The Professor had only commented that the shoes were lightly used, and needed a purpose.

Jean wasn't a runner, though she had offered to go running with him on a few occasions; she loved sports, and had signed up for everything she could their freshman year, just so she could feel involved. She had isolated herself after her mutation manifested, and it had been hard for her. As she got better control of her powers, and learned to tune out the thoughts of others, she was eager to join the human race again. She was different from Scott. From how Scott had been.

Well, no. He hadn't changed all that much. Jean had been in Soccer, Photography, Geology club, and Field Hockey. She had at least one friend from each circle, and would likely find her own photo dotting the yearbook continually.

Scott would be lucky if he'd remembered to come on School Picture day. He had tried the patience of many a photographer with his "eye condition" that required he never take his sunglasses off. The only non-mutant friend he had was Paul Haits, who had been conveniently scarce at school since the big fiasco of Magneto's. It had been lonely.

"Anybody?" he called again. How long had it been? How long had he been walking? He hadn't noticed, but he wasn't as hot. Had the sun set already?

As if in answer to his question, he heard, not far off, the distinct howl of a wolf. No. Desert. A Coyote, then. Shit.

They hunted in packs, and had likely locked his scent.

Shit.

He listened hard, trying to determine where the howl had come from, but all too soon, he heard growling. Much, much too close.

Shittyshittyshit.

He could hear more growling, and in firing a shot in the general direction earned him a moment's clarity, awash in red. There were more of them than he'd thought. And they were closer than he'd thought. And they weren't scared off by his blast. They just kept a cautious distance. They knew their numbers could overwhelm him.

Superior numbers don't win fights. Work smarter, not harder.

Scott wasn't sure if it was his own thought; it almost felt like when Jean spoke to him in his mind, though this was different, somehow. But it did ring true, whether from his many games of strategy planning, or his time as field commander for the X-Men; and it did calm him, somewhat.

Run, he thought. Force them to chase. Some would be faster, some would be slower, but it would allow him to engage them in lesser numbers. The alpha would probably lead the pack, as well, and if Scott were able to defeat him, the others might get scared off.

It wasn't much of a plan; the coyotes were fresh, and ready to kill him, and he had been walking for hours in the hot sun, and was more fatigued. It cost him speed. But it was the only plan he had, so he ran.

Every once in a while, he would glance back, following the progress of their panting breath, and fire at random. It was enough to startle their formation, but it also kept them chasing him. He was probably making them angry. A few times, they got too close. He lost a whole sleeve of his shirt when he bodily threw a coyote as it leaped at his throat.

It was his own stupidity that almost killed him. He found himself tumbling down, down, realizing he'd neglected to pay heed to his surroundings. He'd wandered off some kind of precipice, and it was a long way to fall. He smacked his head but good, and then it was lights out.

Shit.

….

AUTHORS NOTE

When I'm blocked, I seem to write Scott. I like him. He's a dork. Too bad I'm so mean to him. Too bad canon is so mean to him. Too bad he's so easy to be mean to.

Fun fact: Did you know my huge story began this way? Unstable Origins? I wrote Scott because I was blocked writing anything else: homework, original pieces, what-have-you. And I realized I had written 21,000 words in a rough draft. And I was intrigued.

Scott can get me writing if nothing else can. This will be a three-shot, methinks. Blind Alley is my favorite episode, and my sister hates it, and I've seen it 13 billion times. :)

~Angeladex