Title: Where were you?
Genre: Fix-it (or break it?), Angst, Canon Divergence
Rating: K
Note: Spoilers for Ultimate X-Men and Avengers Vs X-Men. Use of backstory from Ultimate X-Men for... a kind of epilogue for AvX, I guess. Damn, this actually is kind of weird, but the idea wouldn't leave my head. ^^;
WHERE WERE YOU?
With Banshee, he had gotten the control he had dreamed of so many times before, and that was so freeing that he chose to keep himself from thinking about it after that. Jean had pulled him back, drowned him in her love, and it was good. Right. It was what counted.
When he feels the brush of the Phoenix's strength in him, his first thought is not of control or power or victory. It's anger and rage and death, it's suffering, it's no, please, no, because while the Phoenix has given him what he needed, it has also taken, taken her from him. Cyclops is not Scott Summers, though; Cyclops does what he has to. His feelings don't matter, only the battle; the battle, the survival and the war and the innocents and those who weren't and the thousands of things he thought about when he felt himself crumbling, torn in a multitude of directions. It gave him courage. It gave him heart. It killed him.
He knows Scott Summers died a long time ago (he remembers the taste of ash in his mouth, the exact moment), and he wonders about what would have happened if he had chosen to stay in the Savage Land, long before that. If he had kissed Wanda more than once. If he could have been more. If I could have been better. He wonders, he thinks and he sleeps because that's all that's left for him now, that and time. Mutants are not safe, but they're not on the brink of extinction anymore either, and it's something, at least. He doesn't think often of the price, because he knows, deep down, that the fact that he believes that it was worth it when he does tells something ugly about him. Professor, he calls sometimes, and Jean, even Emma and it hurts, just not enough to make him anything but some kind of monster because there is no regret to be found, even in the deep recesses on his mind, only grief.
He has accepted this, much like Magneto did, he realizes one day. Everything is red and he's alone and there are barriers and nowhere to hide, and he thinks of Erik, and he smiles and wants to hurl, howl and cry at the same time. Maybe he always had it in him, this grim determination, this will and this pool of black; maybe it was what the other man had seen in him that wasn't in Pietro, and as Scott thinks maybe he murmurs yes, it was and he smiles a broken smile and closes his eyes behind the visor. He tastes peace.
Steve Rogers comes see him one day. He tells him that there's going to be a summit, a reunion of sort, with mutant leaders, the Avengers, Fury, government officials. They're going to talk about the future, going to try and adapt to the world Scott dreamed and Cyclops carved in blood. There are new mutants all across the world, not all happy with what he did, sometimes miserable because of their mutation, actually, much like before. It's his fault, Captain America says as if it would change anything, his fault if some poor soul has to leave his family or live with the guilt that comes with a deadly power that can't be mastered. He talks and tells Scott of how he knows his story, thanks to Nick, and how he doesn't understand how he could choose to submit others to what he's been through, how there's going to be innocent deaths, maybe it's going to be worse than before, and if Scott hadn't —
It's colder than ice, this feeling. It burns and it stings and it gnaws but he doesn't flinch from it, he takes it in and he makes it his and he smiles and he asks: "Where were you?".
There is no mirth in the curve of his lips.
— "Where were you when the Sentinels hunted? Children, some of them, and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, friends, loved ones. Where were you when a man said that some kids had to fight for their right to be? Where were you when they threw people in camps, made them less than animals? Where were you then? Where were you when they tried to erase us—"
He doesn't wait for Rogers to stop spluttering or start explaining himself. He has time, just not for this man (for his dreams and his dead and he takes it all, the responsibility, everything, everything but this).
— "You know the answer. And you, you — you know that as long as I live and long after that, you will never be able to forget it."
Truth is that there are many other things that Scott would like to tell him. Murderer is one. Monster is another. He wants to ask him how he could stand by and do nothing. Ask him why he didn't think they were worth saving. Ask him why he didn't protect and serve them like he would have anyone else, probe him until he confesses something horrible, terrible, something that would make him more than a fucking coward, more than whatever he is. He doesn't, though, because, when all is said and done, it really doesn't matter (and he doesn't think of how Hope was so quick to betray him to go to this people and what it tells about her, and, worst of all, himself). He's dying the death of a man too tired to do anything else but wait, and all his thinking is only a conclusion, him looking back one last time. He knows this.
It doesn't matter.