AN: Okay, wow I started this as a one shot to add to a series of one shots in my other 1 shot, Fear and Loving, but then I got distracted and reviewed some of what I can gather from the new Uncanny X-Men and New X-Men series about the Original 5 coming back to fix things after AVX, and Scott and Emma working on the same team in Uncanny, and continuing their goal and dealing with the consequences. I actually really didn't like what I know of AVX, and I'm just pretending it never happened, but my 1 shot got kinda out of hand and I came up with this based on my reactions to what Marvel has done to the X-Men now. It's kind of rushed and vague and twisted, but the plots are there.
I REALLY DON'T LIKE HOW BADLY MARVEL TREATS SCOTT. WHY DID THEY HAVE TO RETURN EMMA TO BEING THE ADULTEROUS 1 DIMENSIONAL HOE AND DISGRACE SCOTT WITH AN AFFAIR WITH NAMOR?! IM LIVID IF YOU CAN'T TELL! SO MAD. Point me to a forumn JK.
But all I can do is complain and write FF about it. Anyway, I'm not to learned in the comic series and different verses, but I just pick up on basic things, so if there are mistakes, there will be mistakes.
Since the days following their escape from prison, and the Phoenix 5 leaving them, things have been...different when the dust settled for a bit, while the X-men with the rest of the world, waited for what was to come.
Emma Frost felt a void, when the Phoenix power left her body, and it had not been filled.
It was strange, it was like the Phoenix had robbed a piece of her soul. She closed her eyes, not wanting to look at the man sitting across from her with his face in his hand, seeming fine, normal, not like he had just escaped from a high tech prison, and choked the Phoenix entity out of his former girlfriend within the past several months. He wore civilian clothes, his sunglasses in place on his handsome face. He looked human.
This was one of the first times they were left alone together, after the mutants had banded back together, dividing into teams and preparing for the aftermath.
It was their new young team of outlaws now that was picking the pieces back up. As a team, they worked well together, and other than respectful, yet snide remarks and neutral back and forth, Scott did not give Emma even the satisfaction of resentment.
Things were at a standstill, and threatened to go back to normal, almost.
He didn't want to look at her, she could feel the burning around his heart, what he did not allow himself to even think about her.
She could feel it, as if a meteor had burned a hole into her own heart, taking the impact of what this man felt, what she felt.
He deliberately stared sternly down at his feet, trying to emit nothing, no feelings, no thoughts, no opinions, no care.
It was becoming unbearable, and she wanted something from him, anything to show her he was alive, or maybe to validate that she was alive. Because he did not seem to even take notice of her.
She knows he would never ever choke her, or a woman ever, it would never cross his mind. But it had, and he did. And she tauntingly reminded him of it with the bitchy way she had when they were out with the team.
And in some ways it may have been the necessary thing to do. She wishes it could have been one of her secretive games, that she lied to him about Namor in order to push him to take the Phoenix force all for himself, that it was all in an elaborate plan.
But it had not been a manipulating lie, and she had an in-explainable weakness of heart, like watching herself deliberately destroy something good without wanting to at all, yet doing it anyway.
If she knew him any better, she knows that he is in silent pain, deep suffering, self-loathing. But she thought she knew him better and thought, that as cruel as she could be to him, as much as she broke him, that he would never give in to the pressure, the hurt, and do what he had done. He was far too noble, everybody's whipping boy, the martyr of the mutant and human world. He was valiant, good, and strongest against temptation, but in the end he was a man, and she had cut too deep this time.
She had also thought she would never...
But she had.
And now neither of them can escape it, and neither wants to look at the others' face again, for different reasons.
It's been a while for her, she can hardly remember the times before the Avengers conflict arose, being happy in his arms, feeling his genuine affections.
Now he can hardly think of her.
After the fiery phoenix force had been sucked out of her, she lay crumpled and exhausted, dumbfounded with disbelief, and so weak. All her human emotions came back and battered down on her, worse than when Jean had ripped her old mental wounds open.
The overwhelming aftermath and fact of what she had done, what had happened, what would happen, weighed down on her as if making up for the absence of the otherworldly power the Phoenix had filled her with.
"I don't even want to look at you." He growls low, under his breath, monotonous, but a low, vibrating venom pulsing from his very core.
Calm, steadfast, and logical like Cyclops always is, but the venom is there, and it permeates the room, Emma has never seen him this affected, yet so even at the surface.
She is afraid, although she knows that there is nothing to fear.
She is at a loss, her diamond composure is crumbling, she cannot remain cold and imperceptible or airy like she always opts for.
She truly does not know what to do. She almost wishes she could just throw herself upon him and beg for forgiveness, reinstate how much she loves him, and be forgiven, for Scott was always forgiving and rational, and held his love dear. But she knows this time she can't, and that he wouldn't take her back and say they could move on, push forward together.
She couldn't forgive herself either, it was an insult to the man she loved. Engaging in a fling with a fish king, who she could hardly even say she was attracted to.
At a slight break of his stoic mannerism, where all the weakness rushed at him, Scott looked up and pierced into her blue eyes, mesmerizing her. "Why do the women I tended to fall for always have wandering eyes? Is it me? Am I boring, too complacent, too rational, too distracted with saving mutant kind? Am I not attentive enough or not affectionate enough?"
He had laughed it out, sounding canned, sardonic, and bitter, but at the end his breathing grew rapid, and emotion verged on his last sentence.
He knew she did not like to be compared to Jean, did not like to think about Jean, yet he had to comment detached, "Jean loved me, I know that, but there was always Logan, he was always after her. Why can't I just find someone who loves me, who I can be selfish with and have just for me? Who can have me just for herself."
Each word is a lash not to her, but on him, and she bites her lip and tries to hold back tears, she knows what he is doing to himself, and can only listen, feeling his pain with each burning statement. Tears, such a trivial function of the human body. She detested them, but after all that they had survived, she is too worn and too indignant to even put up her self-defense mechanism of saying something frivolous and bitchy like, "A little bit too invested in the business of the world, but I wouldn't expect otherwise from a persistent superhero who seems to adore pain and complexity more than I did in my S&M days."
They both knew none of this was exactly true or relevant, that it did not matter in the face of the more universal things that were going on, but it had be let out.
She's not the same, and he is not either, but as she looks at him in his tucked in button up shirt, she can't help but feel a deep sadness, at the simplicity of how human he was dressed, how he still remembered to tuck his starched shirt in, still could sit before her looking like a good man.
Her desires are to reach out, to mend this man, to kiss his pain away, but she knows it is her kisses that drove him away this time. She doesn't want to do any more harm.
She wants to tell him that she's been abstaining and single since the whole ordeal, but she holds back, knowing its of no use, and it would only aggravate him.
She knows he can be the most understanding, compassionate man when she has him to herself, that she can share anything with him, but now he is looking at her like she is a stranger, and she hardly recognizes him or his expressions anymore.
She cant even think about if she still has feelings for him, it's been so long, so much unsaid, and so much vehemence between them.
For the first time, she says it out loud in his presence, "I am sorry."
His immediate thought hurts her, stings her head physically. It is wrath, from him, but no words come out, and he merely closes his eyes again, and she is gone from his mind. He doesn't say sorry back.
They are paying the Jean Grey Institute a visit today.
Despite her work driven mind, Emma flees from her former lover, unable to stay composed, and feeling hurt and rejected from utter silence.
She finds comfort in a nearby mart, where she purchases chocolate.
She stands behind a slim, young boy who is frowning at his hand and complaining about the outrageous cost of a magazine.
Emma recognizes him, yet she doesn't think she knows him.
He turns around, and Emma sighs, realizing that she has bumped into a young Scott, one who does not know her yet.
He is a slim boy, lanky, yet reaching up to only her height now, perhaps even shorter than her when she is wearing heels, rather than the taller man Emma had been with. His short brown hair is cropped in an attractive and neat haircut, bangs flaring up slightly, boyishly. She looks closer and her lips curl irresistibly. He is cute!
He hunches his shoulders awkwardly underneath his retro, old-fashioned yellow team jacket, and that familiar frown settling on his brows and the corners of his mouth form in a more juvenile and distraught, clueless version rather than the solemn, calculative and tense version that she had often seen on the older man's face.
He has a flattering pair of ruby sunglasses on, and fumbles with the change in his pocket. Her dormant heart that has been frozen over in her shell, melts just a little. Oh, he is so cute!
She feels an almost maternal instinct come over her, watching the youth who would become the man she loved and hated. He turns around to leave, and sees her out the corner of his eye, not paying attention, and grins at her lopsidedly. She wipes a cold tear from the corner of her eye, he was so friendly and that smile was so kind, unlike the cold treatment she had received from the same, but older face moments ago.
She smirks casually, "Something troubling you?"
He obliviously replies, "It's just...do you really pay this much for magazines, every issue? How do people live and pay for anything these days?"
She acts like the stranger in the market he takes her for, and stretches her arm around his back, slinging it over his shoulders, "You talk like an old man, you must not be from around here."
He laughs, "heh", and pushes his glasses up his nose with a finger and confirms, "I guess you could say that."
He tries to hold the magazine cover against him, hiding it. Emma looks over, "Is that someone you know? You look an awful lot like him." It's Scott the man today, with Magik behind him.
The boy shrugs, "I get that a lot. I don't know this person though, I don't think I ever would be able to understand..." Emma actually looks sympathetically at him, and she leaves it alone when he does not finish his sentence.
The boy looks up at her, and she can hear his thoughts, startled at how much skin she is showing in her black leather jacket with barely anything underneath. It's a new look she's trying, and she hasn't heard the present Scott say or think anything of it, but she continues to wear it. This young Scott though can hardly contain his surprise at what she is wearing or not wearing, and Emma grins, feeling the old spark, that part in the male brain, specifically Scott's, that could not fathom what on earth she was wearing.
She guides him outside, and leads the clueless, fumbling boy for a stroll down the sidewalk. He unabashedly mutters, "Thanks, by the way, I know it's strange to thank a stranger for small talk, but you've been the only friendly face I've seen all day."
Emma did not release his shoulders, and continued to walk next to him, "Having a rough day?" She purrs as soothingly as she can, milking it for all its worth, she cannot help it, her charms begins to uncurl its claws.
She massages his shoulders slightly and murmurs hypnotically, "You are so young, you shouldn't be worrying about so much."
He laughed bitterly and shook his head, and in his boyish voice, said, "Lady, you don't know the half of it."
She finds it amusing and kind of offensive that he calls her lady, like she's some old lady who doesn't know his every secret and desire. Who doesn't know what he looks like without clothes on. Well, technically, she didn't know what a naked teenage Scott looked like, but she could imagine.
His thoughts, his mind is so innocent, so clean, so teen aged! She picks up on Jean Grey in his thoughts, interesting...
Emma fills herself in, letting herself into his defensive mind.
Scott had stormed off angry, when a rather menacing and possessive young Jean entered his thoughts without her permission, and asked to know who Mystique, the blue woman in his thoughts was.
The truth tumbled out after Emma asked the right questions.
"Everyone where I'm from, hates me, and she can't even look at me...Jean I mean, my friend. They won't talk to me, and I need to make things right, that's what Mystique said. Now, even Kitty, or-Ms. Pryde is mad at me for not telling her about talking to Mystique, and she was actually kind of a neat girl."
Emma urged, "You like this Jean?"
Scott shrugged, and admitted, "I thought I did, but ever since we've been here, I was pretty torn up about her hating me, but now I'm kind of annoyed with her. She's being different, and she's not the girl I liked back home. I don't even know what I saw in her, come to it, she's showing her true colors I guess. I care about her more than I care about anything though."
They come to the entrance of the Jean Grey Institute.
Cyclops, suited up now and with the rest of the new team, is standing outside talking to Kitty and the New X-Men. He calls out, "Emma, where have you been?"
As Emma gets better acquainted with the time traveling original 5, she catches an uneasy glare from the young hot headed Jean Grey who had recently taken in a whole couple lifetimes' worth of memories and information. Emma merely smirks and looks to Cyclops who is speaking with the youngsters.
As Kitty packs up the new X-Men's uniforms, and prepares for a training course for the next day, a young Scott slips in behind her and taps her shoulder.
She jumps up, but then sighs in relief, "Oh, it's you." She's not quite sure how to handle interactions with the shy, serious young teenager, who is so different from the man she looked up to and trained under in her own teen years. It's weird, she used to take his directions, but now she was retraining his baby self.
Scott takes in her long brown ponytail and smiles cutely, "I wanted to apologize for not letting you know about the whole Mystique thing...She just...told me a lot to think about and I couldn't say anything. Also, thank you, for defending me when Jean badgered me." She stops and looks at the young boy, who is looking at her with an unexpected admiration. She awkwardly mumbled, "No problem, Scott! What she was doing wasn't fair, she can't just look at peoples' privates thoughts... But that doesn't mean you should hide those things from me, either."
He grins again, but he looks so helpless and lost and confused. Kitty sighs and holds him close to her, patting his back reassuringly as he stiffens in her outburst of affection.
As she squeezed him tightly, she realized she must have been wanting to do this a long time, having admired Cyclops the leader, and seen what he had gone through, even if he had made some of the worst mistakes in history, she had always wanted to hug the stone hard man who took so many beatings and criticism, and now she full filled that by hugging his naive, younger, and untainted self.
She sends Scott off, and nearly has a heart attack when he reappears, stepping out of shadows, only much taller and changed.
Cyclops approaches her, with a new stylish red X visor, and she finds herself at a loss for words, it's been a while since she's seen him, and she's not sure how she's supposed to be around him anymore.
He looks different, but he looks good, as good as man recovering from a worldwide catastrophe could.
His mouth is in a grim, tight line, but then he grins at her lopsidedly, just like the young Scott had, and quietly says, "Thank you, Kitty. I can see you've warmed up to me as a kid. The kid's not so bad, he didn't do what I did yet, I appreciate you looking out for him, and doing that for him... Hear it from me, he does need a hug every now and then. Wish I hadn't been so hardheaded to not admit it back then. Yup... Afraid, he didn't have much of a backbone with Jeannie back then, has she been good?"
Kitty likes this, falling easily into conversation with the man she had grown up timid around, who is now talking to her like a fully matured adult and leader, he is so pleasant now, less silent and brooding in a way, although he still has the endearing brooding look.
She gives him an exasperated expression, "Jean? Good? She's a lot harder to handle at this age, than she was as the Phoenix, so I'd say it's not easy right now, but, we'll get there, they're bright kids, I just have to keep an eye out for that one... Can I be honest with you for a second, Scott?"
She calls him by his first name, despite Cyclops' mask covering his face.
He nods, she confesses, "I don't like the way she treated you...how the teenage Jean is treating teenage you right now. There's something worrisome about how she's adjusting here, and it seems that not only is Scott getting the blunt end from everyone else, but Jean seems to take it all out on him, like some emotional punching bag."
That lopsided grin, "He's a good boy now, he can handle it though, I did. I'll have to let him in on a few secrets that will unload years worth of pain and yearning."
Kitty laughs, "It's...good to see you Scott. Despite the circumstances, I really am glad to see you."
He reaches over and shakes her hand, "Me too, Kitty." Then he adds almost inaudibly in a rough grunt, "You look good."
Shadowcat blushes, thinking had this not been the wrong time in the wrong universe...
As Cyclops goes back to his old room, the one he had stayed at during his last years as headmaster at the still functioning school, he reflects on how much all of them had grown, and seeing the original 5 only emphasize that. Kitty too, had grown so much from the girl he had taught, become an independent woman who had survived death and being lost in space, she was now leading the Original 5, shaping them up much better than Scott could even ask for. He had yet to see Ororo, as she was hiding away somewhere, swamped with some official work.
Closing his bedroom door, his keen senses pick up on another presence in the room.
Spinning to confront the intruder and holding his hand up to his visor, he calmly declared, "Emma, if it's you, now's really not the time to come surprise me in my bedroom."
His heart leaps a beat when he sees young Jean Grey standing before him, a dervish and youthful smirk on her face.
"You were expecting her? It's over though, isn't it?"
Scott knows that Jean has been filled in on everything that has happened in the future. She must have seen what happened with Emma, since it was prior to her first...or maybe, second death.
He says, "Over, and done with. I know it's still all fresh to you and new...but I want you to know now, before any of that even happened for you, that I am sorry. Standing here before you now, I am sorry, Jean. For everything that ever happened, and for what happened to you."
Jean laughs, "Things will probably be a bit different from now on. So...you and I finally got together in the future? I can't imagine...Scotty turning into you. You're like two completely different people."
"In a sense, we are not the same people right now. Be gentle to him, if you can. He really cares about you, but you knew that all along didn't you?"
"Well, now I do. He's so difficult sometimes, doesn't like to talk about stuff. He's frustrating."
Scott bemusedly smirked, "You were frustrating to him too. Whatever happens though, even if you decide to prevent giving him a chance and letting all that happen, I just want you to know, he will always care about you. He still does, I'm proof of that."
Jean closed the gap between them, and reached up to touch Scott's X-shaped visor. She was shorter than he remembered, but that could be because of his added, mature height.
She murmured, "Your head, it has a lock on it. I can't read it."
Scott laughed, endearingly at this little girl, "Years living with you trained me to put up mental shields. Don't try to pry into my thoughts, little girl. Look, try to take it slow with your new powers, okay? I know you just found out a lot and know better, but with your overwhelming power, I would try to take it day by day, don't try to force it."
She curled her lower lip over her upper lip, her shoulder length red hair flipped at the bottom in the way he had loved as a kid, "You almost sound like how Scotty would, always so considerate and responsible. Mister, who are you calling little girl? We're the same age, you just have some time on me. You're so different now...Scott...Can I call you that? No, it feels wrong. Cyclops? Mr. Summers? You're so dangerous...tall, dark...handsome...and stern...so mature and standoffish..."
She had a dark, reckless look in her eye, he had seen it before, on her face, but never when she was this young.
Scott put a fatherly hand on her arm, "Careful...Jeannie." Those wide, youthful emerald eyes twinkled, it had been so long since he had seen her...Talked to her.
She leaned up and kissed him.
It was sweet and tender and inexperienced from her.
She wore the watermelon flavored lip balm she had loved back then.
There had been one Valentines Day, when Scott had bought her a whole pack of them for her, blushing when he gave it to her, saying he just wanted to be her Valentine even if she wasn't his. She had kissed him on the cheek for that, and he had thought he was the luckiest boy ever. How simple times were back then.
But then Scott remembered he had daughters, several with her that were probably older than her and lost in time somewhere.
He gently pushed her away.
Taking her shoulders, she sat him down on the bed with him, to explain some things about time and physics.
Breathing into his ear, she giggled with flushed cheeks, "That was my first kiss...I can't believe it was with a man. I've never done anything like that before! I'm not usually this bold!"
Scott inwardly punched himself.
That was supposed to be his first kiss, as a boy, but he already messed things up in the time and space continuum.
"I want to be with you, Cyclops. And I'll do anything to help Scotty not become everything he despises...but I like the way you turned out! It's not anything I would have predicted, but it's exciting and what you did was very bad, but you're not a bad person, Mr. Cyclops. You're just misunderstood, and I'm sorry I gave Scotty such a hard time about it. I'm still so mad at him though!"
Scott contradicted, "Then you should be mad at me. He hasn't done anything, yet. I'm the evildoer."
"Oh you're not evil! You're just a strong man who made a few mistakes." She runs her hands over his muscles, eyes shining, "Wow, you sure do fill out later, Slym! I thought Scotty had a good body for a boy our age, but boy, does he grow! But don't ever tell him I said that, kay?"
He tried to make her sit still, "Jean, listen, you don't know me anymore, a lot changed and took place"
Her face darkened, "I saw what happens...and I know about you and that woman that came here with you, that you hate now. Do you regret it? If you could start over, would you take it all back?"
He only thought for a second before giving her an honest answer. "Yes. I thought I wouldn't, but after some more recent situations, I now regret a lot, and if you asked me a year ago, I would have said no. But today, I can say yes, I would take it all back. But I'm not so sure I would do things the same with you again."
The young girl threw her slender arms around his neck and cried out in joy, "That's all I need, Slymm. I only just met this, you, but I know I want to spend the rest of my life with a man like you...that is if I don't...you know."
She covered him in a flurry of kisses, before Scott could defend himself against the teen girl.
A slam of the door disrupted them though, and Scott saw the flash of his own ruby shades for a split second before it was gone.
Emma followed a young and distraught Scott back to his bedroom, he had not noticed her come in, as he fell face down in his bed.
Emma licked her lips, this hormonal, awkward and unbridled mind of adolescent Scott Summers was shooting his thoughts out left and right, unlike the guarded and disciplined mind of the man she knew.
She saw what he had just witnessed, in the present Scott's bedroom, how the cunning little Jean Grey had snagged her first kiss with the man that was Cyclops. She almost had to laugh at the ludicrousness of it.
Then she saw the second it had only taken, for Scott to renounce his history and love with Emma, and Emma watched the delicious young boy brooding in his bed, oh two can play at this game, Cyclops.
She knelt down next to his head and turned him towards her. "Aw, upset again?"
She coaxed him to her with her luring eyes.
He lifted his face and groaned, "Please leave me alone. I don't want to talk about it."
Emma smoothed the worry on his face out with a comforting hand, "I know you better than you think. You need to talk about it."
He leashed out in a mixture of anger and confusion and wounded feelings, "He-he knows I liked her, and he stole her from me! And he didn't even have to do anything! I've been waiting around forever, she doesn't even notice me sometimes! I've had it with girls! I hate her, I hate Jean!"
Emma rubbed his soft, glossy brown hair, loving how it felt, and smirked, good.
The trusting, pure, and clueless pretty boy face watching her can't choke her even if she held a gun to his head and pleaded him to do it.
She knows, despite the facts of the present, that he would never, even though he doesn't know about their relationship yet.
Laying beside him, she cradled her head in her arms against her chest and whispered reassuring words and sweet nothings into his ears, and eventually they fell asleep, her holding a distressed young boy against herself, rubbing the back of his head in a caring manner, giving him the love and touch he was starved of, as an orphan, and withdrawn boy.
She couldn't believe what a nice and sweet kid Scott was, how pure his intentions were.
She made sure to give him plenty of good dreams to cheer him up as he slept deeply.
She kissed his forehead when his breathing grew soft and even, soaking in all his angst with her telepathy.
She had to remind herself, that this was not the same man that she now felt ambiguously towards. Sometimes she wanted to annoy him with her bitchy retorts, but sometimes she wished things hadn't changed so.