Hello, yes, I know. Yet another project when I should be working on other things. Fight me, I'm pretty excited about this one :P
So as you may know, I'm a HUGE fan of Scott Summers, but not a huge fan of the way he has been portrayed by Marvel lately. It seems like they're just trying to tear him down as much as possible. To that end, my friend Canucklehead Cowgirl and I created our own Marvel universe (the 714) in which we're fixing a lot of the stupid that is Marvel right now.
Technically, this story is part of that universe, though you could read it on your own and be fine. The whole premise is when Scott meets Annie, the woman he's married to in the 714 Universe. In that main storyline, we just introduced her as his fiance, but we didn't really bridge the gap between when Scott stopped being with Emma Frost and that faction of X-Men and when he met and fell in love with her. So really, this is new ground, so you need ZERO background in the 714 to read it. All of it takes place before that universe starts up in the main line anyway.
(Seriously. X-Men are so complicated.)
So, I present to you: A love story for Scott Summers that does not involve a Phoenix or a manipulative blonde psycho- I mean telepath. *cough cough* Well... aside from this first chapter. But you know... Sorry, but Scott's at a low point to start this off. I'll make sure he's happy by the end, I promise.
And as always, thanks to CC for reading through this and giving comments and suggestions and little tweaks where needed. :)
Chapter 1: Farewell to Frost
"You're not leaving."
It wasn't a question, and the way Emma said it honestly just had Scott madder. It was more of a command than anything like a please or a question. But then, that was how it always went. She told him how it was going to be — and he was tired of listening.
He didn't turn her way fully as he gestured to the bag slung over his shoulder with one eyebrow raised over the top of his ruby quartz glasses. "Yeah, I am."
She looked absolutely livid, and he recognized the expression from so many years of watching her look down her nose at so many other people — even him. It was the anger, the feeling that she had been wronged because she didn't get what she wanted. Forget the fact that he had stopped feeling good about what they were trying to do, forget that he felt ashamed every time he watched the news broadcasts, forget that every time he got a second to think — to really think — he knew he'd screwed up, betrayed everything he was supposed to stand for.
But never mind any of that. Emma Frost wanted what she wanted — and what she wanted was to run this faction of X-Men with Scott.
She shifted the way she was standing, her eyes still narrowed but her stance a little more… open. It was a trick she'd pulled on him enough times that he knew what it was, and if he'd been in a little more of a forgiving mood, it might even have worked. There was no denying that Emma was attractive. He couldn't deny it, not when she knew it. She knew exactly what he liked about her, too, and on more occasions than he could count, she would do exactly this — an open invitation.
A distraction.
"Are you going to stop me?" he asked, still not fully turned her way, and she dropped her shoulders, annoyance flashing in her eyes when she saw that he wasn't going to give her the kind of attention she wanted. He could feel her pricking at the corners of his mind already, since her attempt to pull his gaze on her own clearly needed a little extra help.
She recoiled her telepathic touch from his mind when she felt the raw anger there. He wasn't going to hide it; he hated when she did this, when she pressed into his mind without asking, when she tried to make him fall at her feet. He'd had enough, and he was done letting her get away with it.
She met his gaze, and he honestly wasn't sure how much of the hurt he saw there was an act. He never knew. It was impossible to tell. She knew he couldn't stand to see her hurt — at least, that had been the case for so long that she had long ago learned to take advantage of it. But if she expected him to come rushing to her, hold her in his arms and promise he wouldn't go — like he'd done every other time before — she didn't understand at all.
He was done.
He glared her way once more before he finally turned on his heel, slamming the door behind him as he went.
Where will you go?
He let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He'd been waiting for that. He didn't know what took her so long — if it was just the shock that her usual tricks weren't working or if she thought she'd wait until he was a little less angry. But he could hear it all the way through her telepathic message: the accusation. The sneer she tried to hide but never could, not entirely.
That's none of your business, he told her, his hands in fists at his side as he stalked toward the front door, past a few X-Men who were at least smart enough to stay out of the way of any argument between Scott and Emma. There had been plenty lately. He was so done with all of it.
They won't take you back, she projected out to him.
And there it was.
He knew she was probably right. He couldn't take back any of what he'd done, the stupidity that had split his friends — his family — apart. He couldn't even blame it entirely on her, no matter how badly he wanted to. He couldn't blame the Phoenix, couldn't blame anything but himself and his own pig-headed stupidity. If he went back to Westchester, he wouldn't be surprised at all if the only thing waiting for him there was a fight.
But Westchester was more home than this place was.
Doesn't matter, he projected back to her, pulling on his coat on the way out the door. I'm not staying here.
Her response wasn't much in the way of words — it was more a feeling that filled his mind as he got into his car. Rage, betrayal, hurt, disbelief. It all washed over him at once and actually staggered him, and he had to grip the steering wheel to keep himself upright until it passed. "Emma," he all but growled under his breath. "Stop this."
It took a moment, but the feeling finally lifted, and in its place was this simple message: You'll be back.
No, I won't.
He floored it out of the driveway as soon as he was turned around, driving with the top down despite the chill in the air — because the chill would keep him a little more awake and aware. He simply didn't trust Emma not to try to pull something, and while telepathic defenses were good to have, sometimes, it was just as helpful to have something physical and bracing to counteract the mental penetration.
He made the drive down to Westchester in, surprisingly, relative quiet. He listened to the radio the whole way down and even stopped to grab a bite to eat, and there still wasn't nearly the expected pushback. There was the residual anger, betrayal, hurt — and all of that weighed heavily on him. But he'd tried to leave before — it had never been this easy.
He was honestly a little suspicious of the whole thing, but all the same, he made it to Westchester without anything major in his way… and found himself staring at the doorknocker to the mansion's front door.
Any time before, Scott wouldn't have hesitated. He'd always been welcome here — his whole life, this was the closest thing to 'home' he had. And now… now his own stupidity, his own ego and pride left him standing there on the doorstep feeling like a stray begging for scraps.
He very nearly turned around, his cheeks burning with shame and guilt. He had killed the man whose dream built this school. He didn't deserve to be there.
But he knocked anyway, halfway holding his breath, just waiting.
There was a part of him that still expected it to be Logan that opened the door, though he didn't know why. Logan was gone, and there was no way to change that. But it would be fitting, after everything he'd done, if that short, angry, no-holds-barred man was the one to open the door and chew him up and down for everything he'd done.
Instead, it was Storm at the door, and her lips parted in surprise when she saw him standing there, hesitating on the doorstep. Then, suddenly, a spark of anger caught just behind her eyes, and she narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you doing here?"
It felt like a slap in the face to hear that tone from Storm, and he took a full three seconds to recover enough to clear his throat. "Ororo," he said, trying for a reasonable tone, "I'm not here to cause trouble."
"Then why are you here?" she asked, still with that same tone, one eyebrow raised.
He swallowed and nodded. He deserved this kind of treatment, and he knew it. "I … left," he said, haltingly, suddenly unable to put to words all the many, many reasons he just wanted to be done, wanted to start over, come home.
"And came here," Storm finished for him. Her arms were crossed over her chest as she looked him over, and it didn't look like she was going to move from her spot in the doorway.
"Yeah." He felt his mouth go dry as he saw the way she was standing. He'd hurt her — it was written all over her face and her body language. "Listen, Ororo—"
"Scott, some of us have schools to run," Storm said abruptly, still watching him through narrowed eyes.
"Right." He straightened up and stiffened, recognizing the dismissal for what it was. And if Storm, out of everyone else in the mansion, was still that mad at him… He really didn't have a prayer with anyone else inside.
He walked back down the long driveway, his hands in fists at his sides and his jaw tightly clenched. He absolutely should have seen this coming. What had he been thinking, coming to the mansion? As if anyone there could ever trust him again, as if he deserved….
He didn't bother turning back to glance Storm's way, already knowing that she had closed the door, and he climbed back into his car, driving into town before he pulled to a stop in the parking lot of the nearest hotel and leaned forward, his forehead resting against the steering wheel of the car.
It wasn't like he exactly had a backup plan. He had hoped, maybe a little naively, that he could just… go back. Now, it was abundantly clear that his own stupidity, his own reckless choices, had ruined that for him. And he had no one to blame but himself.
He sat there for a moment before he cleared his throat and straightened up. Enough feeling sorry for himself. So he couldn't go to the mansion — he had other options, surely. He just had to sit down and think it through.
He checked into his room for the night and then grabbed a booth at the hotel restaurant, sketching out a few ideas on a napkin while he waited for his order… or at least, that was the plan. He probably would have done that… if he had ideas.
It was a body blow — the mansion had really been his first and only choice. The school, the students, the X-Men… Scott honestly wasn't sure who he was without them.
"Hey, don't I know you?"
Scott looked up in surprise when the waiter paused at his table. It wasn't the waiter who was assigned to serve that table, but he had stopped all the same, his eyes narrowed as he looked Scott over. Scott already recognized the look — he'd seen it a thousand times over on a hundred other faces.
"I used to live here," Scott offered. "Scott Summers," he said, extending his hand. He wasn't going to shy away from who he was — he'd take whatever the consequences were of his own choices, and if this guy wanted to get mad at him about it, Scott at least wanted to know what he had to say, so he could gauge whether it was the justified kind of anger… or just the usual anti-mutant nonsense that came with being a high-profile X-Man.
The waiter glared at him hard and didn't take the outstretched hand. Slowly, his lips curled back into a sneer before he wordlessly stalked away, and Scott let his shoulders slump as he let out a sigh. He could already see where this was going to go.
By the time the waiter returned with the manager, Scott was half prepared for an honest fight, already standing and on his way out the door anyway, since he knew what was coming.
"You've got no business in my establishment," the manager sneered his way, following Scott even as he was already leaving.
"There's no need to cause a scene—"
"If I ever see your face in here again…!"
Scott let out a long and weary sigh. "You won't," he promised with his hand on the doorknob.
"Good."
Scott frowned but held his tongue. He was too tired to put up with any of this, but even as he left the restaurant, he had to wonder if things were this bad for the kids up at Xavier's Institute — or if it was just him. If it was just him, that was his own fault — but if it was a problem for the others, he'd like to help if he could.
If they'd let him.
He passed a hand through his hair as he headed back to the hotel. He figured he would just order some room service and look through the local news archives while he ate. If this was a continuing problem in Westchester, he wanted to know about it, even if the X-Men didn't want his help.
But when Scott got to his room, he stopped short in the doorway, shocked and angry when he saw the state of things.
The whole place was absolutely trashed — furniture overturned, stuffing torn out of the pillows, obscenities spray-painted on the walls, the works.
He was just started to get mad when he saw that underneath one particularly graphic bit of graffiti — the gist of which was that he should 'go home' along with a few other suggestions for what he could do with himself — was a newspaper article tacked to the wall with a kitchen butcher knife. He could see his own picture there already, and after a few steps forward, he saw the date, and the headline.
Professor…
He stopped cold, staring at the article about Charles Xavier's death… There were a lot of things that he could fix, that he wanted to fix, but that….
He backed out of the room slowly, his mouth dry and his heart pounding in his ears. He ended up having to pay the hotel for the damages — typical — but it was hard to argue when he felt the way he did. It wasn't just the usual ant-mutant crap. These people, in the place he'd always considered home — they hated him. Specifically. Personally.
He couldn't come back.
When he climbed into his car in the parking lot, he rested both hands on the wheel but didn't start it, just staring for a long moment as he tried to work out his next move. He didn't actually have one, he quickly realized — but the hotel manager had warned him to leave the premises, so he ended up driving aimlessly out of Westchester.
He drove through somewhere to eat — at least he'd get something that way — and kept going west, back the direction he'd come. It wasn't that he was necessarily planning to go back; there was just more road that way — the other way was the beach if he kept going.
By the time he realized that he was driving up to the X-Men headquarters that he had literally just left, it was an ungodly hour of the night, and he was tired. Not physically, but emotionally as well, his ears ringing with the accusations, said and unsaid, that had faced him when he tried to go home. Maybe it was the distraction of the guilt, maybe it was how late it was, maybe it was just that he didn't think there was any other place that would take him in and let him keep fighting the good fight…
He honestly didn't know. Maybe it was some combination of all those things that had his guard down. But he was sure he hadn't meant to drive right back to the place he'd just left. He just… wasn't sure how much Emma had pulled him back — he could feel her presence back in his mind like a rush of cool water — and how much was simply him going back to the only thing left.
He stared at the house for a long moment, even though he could feel Emma's insistent pull — You're exhausted; come inside — as he took his time sitting in his car, his forehead resting against the steering wheel.
He'd meant to go back home, meant to try to fix what he could….
He must have been out there too long, because it looked like Emma had gotten impatient waiting. She came out to the driveway in white silk that clung to her when she moved and let out a long and understanding sort of sigh when she saw him. "I did try to warn you," she said gently.
"I really don't want to hear it right now, Emma," he grumbled.
"Of course not," she agreed with a little smirk as she leaned over the car door, the silk falling off of her shoulders as she did so. "Come inside — you've been out all night."
Honestly, he wanted to stay where he was and be miserable for a little while longer — he deserved to feel guilty — but he couldn't do that now that Emma was there anyway, so he let out a sigh and climbed out of the car as Emma seized hold of his arm and laid her head on his shoulder, filling his mind with, I'm sorry; they just don't understand.
He shook his head lightly but didn't project back what he was thinking, though he was sure she knew it all the same. He was sure everyone back in Westchester understood just fine.
When they got back to their room, the evidence of everything he'd rifled through and packed up was neat and tidy and nowhere to be found. Scott turned Emma's way to tell her something — what, he wasn't sure, but he still had half a mind to leave in the morning all the same — but didn't get there at all. Instead, she had hooked one hand around his neck to pull him into a kiss, the other hand finding his to guide him on where to put his hands on her waist.
Talk later, darling, she told him as she caught her teeth on his bottom lip and pressed closer, and he was just too tired to tell her 'no.'
Scott slept in a little later than he usually did the next morning, simply because he was tired, but he was still up earlier than most of the rest of the crew. Emma was still asleep, her head on his chest and one arm around him as she slept soundly on.
He watched her for a moment, trying to figure out how he'd ended up back here. How he always ended up back here.
He couldn't answer that question, though — he never could — and finally, he just let out a long sigh and very gently got out from underneath her. She protested slightly, a little moan of displeasure when the bed was suddenly empty, but she didn't wake up the rest of the way and went back to sleep soon enough.
He picked up the discarded clothes strewn around the room to toss them in the laundry and stepped into the shower, operating mostly on routine more than anything else. When he came out again, Emma was a little more awake and wearing a pleased sort of smile as she watched him, the towel folded around his waist, looking through the bag he had packed the night before for a fresh shirt and jeans.
So, did the drive clear your head?
He turned her way with one eyebrow raised over the top of the glasses. "Emma."
She grinned at him, knowing exactly what the look was for as she shifted so that she was propped up with her elbows at the end of the bed, still watching him with that same little smile. "Really, darling, there's nothing wrong with needing to get out of the house every once in a while. There's no need to be so dramatic about it."
"That's not…" He trailed off and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Never mind. I'm going down for coffee — do you want anything?"
She smiled easily at him as she finally pulled herself out of the bed, all silks as the sheets fell off of her and she pulled on a long, white robe. He could feel the stop in his throat when she did things like that, and it only made her smile that much wider. "Mmm, no," she said as she slipped behind him, long arms wrapping around his for a moment before she kissed his shoulder. "Maybe later."
He turned toward her, but already she'd moved on to slip out of the robe and into the shower, and he shook his head. He still wasn't sure he'd found his footing, but at least here, he wasn't getting run out of town. He could take a little while to come up with a different plan, some way to just… start over. He got dressed quickly and headed down to start the coffee, still tired out from the previous night.
He wasn't entirely sure when he had decided it was time to leave. Maybe it was when he realized people were no longer happy to see him — not just the other X-Men but civilians. Maybe it was his own younger self doing so well with the other heroes out there and reminding him why he'd gotten into this in the first place. Maybe it was just something that had been building until he couldn't ignore it.
Maybe it was Emma.
Actually, now that he thought about it, he was sure that it was Emma. The way she ran things… and she ran things, not him; he wasn't going to fool himself in that regard anymore… it had finally gotten to him. Maybe it was one too many orders. One too many intrusions into his mind and everyone else's. He was just tired of it — and he was sure he could be doing so much more somewhere else. Not with Emma, not with Magneto, just… somewhere else. He was still trying to figure it out, especially since it had just never occurred to him that he could just… leave.
And go where?
That was the real problem, and he knew it. Too many bridges burned. He wasn't going to shy away from being recognized, but if every place was going to be like Westchester…
He sighed heavily as he found a seat at the table, grabbing his laptop from the nearby desk so he could get a little housekeeping done while he waited for the coffee to finish. Balance the checkbook… pay off the credit cards… he knew there was going to be a big charge from the hotel after last night…
He frowned when he pulled up the banking website and checked it with the spreadsheet. He should have been down a fair amount of money from the hotel, but… the numbers weren't quite right. He remembered the charge for the destruction to the room alone being $1653. But here, it was reading $133 — just the charge for the room.
Maybe it hasn't posted yet. He put his cell phone in the crook of his shoulder as he got to his feet and got started on some eggs for breakfast — he could never sit still through a phone call when he could be getting other things done while he was on hold, after all. When he finally got through to the hotel manager, he was surprised when there was no angry response to "This is Scott Summers" as he tried to explain the problem. "I was just balancing my account and saw that the charges from last night haven't posted," he said politely.
He could hear the clattering of keys on the other end as he poured the freshly scrambled eggs onto his plate and snagged a couple pieces of toast from the toaster before he sat down and waited for the response.
"There must be some mistake, Mr. Summers," the hotel manager said, still entirely cordial and not at all as angry as he had been the night before. "Our records show that you purchased a room in advance but never checked in or out. The only charge you should have is the charge for the night, since you didn't call ahead to cancel."
Scott paused when he heard it, his lips pressed together and his eyebrows knit together. Emma, he realized, rubbing a spot on his forehead just above his eyes. "Thank you for your time," he told the hotel manager before he hung up — and then blasted the phone for good measure.
Emma, he thought to himself, already on his way out the door as he grabbed the keys to his car. It was just like her to do something like this, to show him something that never happened. And he was sure if he talked to her about it, if he confronted her with what he knew, she would play it off as simply showing him what would happen, protecting him…
It wasn't, though. What she was doing was not protecting him but hemming him in, keeping him where she wanted him to be. He let out a noise of frustration as he threw the car into reverse and sped out of the driveway, more than ready to put this place in the rearview mirror.
He didn't care where he was going. He didn't know where he would go. Not Westchester — and not just because of what Emma had shown him. If he went there… he wasn't entirely convinced that it would be a warm welcome, true enough, but he was sure that Emma would expect him to go there as well.
He wanted — no — he needed to go somewhere she wouldn't think to show him. Somewhere he could be sure of what was real. So he could be sure of his own choices.
He turned up the radio and turned up the speed and simply pointed his car toward the interstate.
