Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men: Evolution!
Chapter One
Stumbling a few more feet, Lance collapsed to the ground again; the heat was getting to him. How long ago had it been, he wondered, that he had looked Magneto in the face and told him to get out of his life?
How long since he'd been forcefully thrown from a plane, landing in some sort of desert?
He didn't even know what part of the world he was in.
He didn't care anymore.
No one else cared; why should he?
Only the Brotherhood knew where he was, and with Pietro in charge now there was little they could do.
When he had first woken, his arm bent at a strange angle, his first thought had been that Kitty would soon notice him missing…but that was a hope soon dashed when he remember that she hated him now.
Not that he could blame her.
And hoping that the X-Men would notice was optimistic to the point of naivety.
Lance was not optimistic.
Some would say that he was, in fact, a pessimist, but he disagreed.
He liked to think of himself as a realist; it wasn't his fault that his life had always been of the 'glass half-empty' working.
The heat beat down on him, making him wish for some sort of shade, but there was nothing. No trees, no rocks, nothing.
Desperately, Lance pushed out with his powers – maybe he could create some sort of canopy – but all this did was make his headache worse and he gave up.
By now, he had ripped the bottoms of his pant-legs away and turned his shirt into a make-shift sling. But even this didn't help the searing heat; there wasn't even a breeze.
How it was this hot, he didn't know; dusk had fallen and stars were appearing in the sky.
It was time for him to really start moving; staying in one place too long during the night had been proved a bad idea when coyotes began prowling.
With great effort, Lance got to his feet and began walking, eyeing the stars for some sort of guidance.
The only thing he'd ever remembered about Astronomy was that the North Star was the brightest in the sky. At least if he was heading north, he wasn't going round in circles.
Finding the bright comforting light, he aimed towards it, trying to keep his mind off the fact that he hadn't had water or food in several days, possibly a week.
Then, suddenly, the sky lit up scarlet; his head shot up and he saw the remains of a red beam vanishing behind the sand dune up ahead.
Praying that he hadn't been hallucinating, even though at any other time he would having been praying for the opposite, Lance sped up, finally reaching the top of the dune and peered over.
Down below him, a young man his age was sprawled on the ground, shirt ripped and eyes tightly closed.
"Summers!" Lance sighed. "I never thought I'd say this, but am I glad to see you!"
Pushing himself to his feet, Scott turned to face him, but kept his eyes tightly shut. "Alvers? What are you doing here?"
"Well, to be completely blunt, about a week ago I told Magneto to bugger off." Lance answered, climbing down. "Next thing I know, I've been thrown out of a jet."
"A week?" Scott asked weakly. "You've been out here for a week?"
"Yeah, about that." Lance shrugged, forgetting momentarily that he couldn't be seen. "Why?"
"That explains why you weren't answering the phone!" Scott groaned. "Kitty's been worried sick and I told her not to worry about it."
"She's worried?" Lance raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah." Scott tested his weight on his leg. "She really cares about you. Don't ask me why."
Lance stiffened slightly, not at the slight against him, but at the call of a coyote not too far away from them. "Is your leg broken?"
"No." Scott answered. "Why?"
"We need to get moving." Lance told him. "There's no chance of being rescued in the middle of nowhere, but travelling during the day won't help us at all; the heat's too strong and there's no sense of direction."
"The heat seems pretty bad now." Scott commented.
Lance laughed humourlessly. "Believe me, you ain't seen nothing yet. I've been moving north; it's the one direction I can pinpoint."
"Fair enough." Scott shrugged. "You'll need to keep talking though; that way I'll know where you are."
"Makes sense. How's Kelly been since he kicked us out?" Lance asked.
Scott snorted. "I think you had the right idea. Between him and the football time, school's hell now. Most of the other students would have settled down if it wasn't for them."
"Ah, blackmail." Lance concluded, almost wistfully. "Those were the days."
"Why'd you tell Magneto to bugger off?" Scott asked curiously.
"I felt that someone should." Lance responded. "I hate the guy anyway. When the Brotherhood was gathered…well, it's not like anyone asked our opinion on mutant-kind. We were just told what to believe; none of us actually did."
"Then why'd you mess with us so much?" Scott frowned.
"Well," Lance sighed. "Sometimes because it was fun. Other times…other times, having you lot beat us up hurt a lot less than having Mystique do it." He glanced at Scott, whose expression was impassive. "I suppose you're wondering why I just told you that."
"Little bit, yeah." Scott confirmed.
"I'm too exhausted to do anything else." Lance stopped and scanned the sky. Finding what he was looking for, he readjusted their direction. "We need to bear left. A couple of weeks ago, I'd never have said all that. But now…I dunno, I haven't eaten in about a week, I'm stranded in the middle of nowhere, my arm's broken and I had my worse reality thrown in my face by the girl I love a couple of weeks ago. So, quite frankly, there is nothing you can say or do to make the situation any worse."
"Alvers, even if all of that wasn't true, I'd never stoop that low." Scott protested. "None of us would!"
"Well, maybe." Lance paused. "Normally, this is where there'd be an awkward silence, but that's not going to help us stick together, so I hope you've got another topic of conversation, because I'm out."
"You know, I was thinking," Scott complied, "we've got more in common than you'd think."
"Oh yeah?" Lance asked. "How's that? Ridge coming up."
"Thanks." Scott slowed his movements so he could navigate over it. "Well, we're both stubborn for one thing."
"Alright." Lance conceded. "I'll give you that. So we're both stubborn gits. Fair enough."
"No there is more." Scott insisted. "We both care about our teams; we both blame ourselves for everything that goes wrong."
"Alright." Lance amended. "We're both stubborn gits with a guilt complex."
"I'm serious." Scott told him as they reached the other side. "Do you even remember why we hate each other so much?"
"Er…" Lance cleared his throat. "No, as a matter of fact, no, I don't. Well…the Brotherhood didn't have much of a choice; Mystique would have murdered us."
Why did everything in his life come back to that?
He found himself grateful that Summers couldn't see the scars that adorned his chest and back. Even as the thought crossed his mind, pain shot through the deepest scar on his side, left from an attack by Sabretooth, who had regularly used the boys like a punching bag.
"What happened?"
Lance sighed. "How'd you know?"
"I spent a couple of years without sight before I joined the Institute." Scott told him. "My sense of hearing is better than most people's. What happened?"
"Nothing." Lance thought for a second and amended his answer. "Just an old scar, that's all."
"You gonna tell me where from?" Scott prompted.
"Nope." Lance answered abruptly. "So now Red's finally ditched Matthews, what's stopping you two from hooking up?"
"Well, I'm currently stuck in a desert." Scott responded dryly. "How do you know we haven't and why do you care?"
"Because you're both sickeningly oblivious." Lance snorted. "Everyone in Bayville knows you're crazy about her. Except her, of course." He added as an afterthought. "And we would have heard, believe me."
"What am I supposed to say?" Scott demanded. "She's my best friend! What if she doesn't feel the same way?"
Bursting into laughter, Lance had to stop to catch his breath. "Summers, if that thought's crossed your mind, you don't know her as well as you like to think."
"Why are we talking about this?" Scott groaned.
"Because you told me to keep talking." Lance reminded him. "And this is the only subject that doesn't come back to Mystique."
"It will." Scott predicted grimly. "Because I now have to turn the question back on you. What's going on with you and Kitty."
Only the continuous calling of the coyotes kept Lance walking. "I…"
"You said that you loved her earlier." Scott reminded him quietly.
"I do love her." Lance insisted. "Kitty means the world to me."
"Then why didn't you try and get her back?" Scott asked.
Lance snorted. "Because she's better off without me. I want her to be happy. And if that's not with me, so be it."
This time, the two really did fall into an awkward silence, broken only occasionally, when Lance gave warning of a change of direction, Scott able to hear the other boy's footsteps enough to follow them.
Finally, Scott took a deep breath.
"You're wrong."
AN: This idea popped into my head a couple days ago, so tell me what you think of it please! It will be a two-shot (maybe longer, I don't know yet), but I'm going away for a couple weeks, so updates for this and all my other fics are halted until I have a tan!