A.N.: Hehe I derived a lot of info and backstory about Scott's verrryyy verryyy twisted origins...(this guy seriously deserves more credit than given to his present Cyclops image) from a pretty funny/witty blog: h t t p:/ kalinara. blogspot. com /2009_12_01_archive. html (delete the spaces)
it's under Reasons why Scott Needs Therapy. Worth a read and has some interesting retro old school comic panels. I also learned that the Phoenix was a part of Scott before he even formally met Jean! Explaining a lot of his fixation on her, and also, the author of this blog points out agreeably that the Phoenix is a bit pedophile-ish with Scott, but I guess that's okay if you're a cosmic firebird and your life is infinite and you are beyond time? Hope I'm not plagiarizing too much, was just inspired and will probably distort a lot of this...flames will be eaten by the Phoenix!
Anyway this is a very long chapter, and sure this story is kind of twisted and stuff, but I really think the end is worth reading through to, and if you have other opinions I respect that! I just like the end of this particular chappie in my own fanficcy mind. Anyway references to Wuthering Heights and yadda yadda yadda.
R&R please! Any opinion is a valid one if it is YOURS.
Wuthering Heights
X
Okay, so Scott was cute. He was charming, he was courageous, and yeah...he was very hot. But...what?
Emma furiously nibbled at her finger as she waited for her one and only friend to show up in home room, where they sat in the back together, huddled and quoting and highlighting Shakespeare sonnets to each other sarcastically, laughing quietly at some of the ridiculous ye olde English stuff this guy came up with.
And he was well-rounded, well-educated, and had a very literary mind like hers, which she realized was the only thing that actually connected her attraction to her English teacher.
She became anxious as the seat next to hers stayed empty as the class session began, and hushed giggles, whispers, and stares were amplified in her head, she was so alone again.
She began to wonder if he was real. It was almost too good to be true. Her mundane life, living in cold aristocracy and being isolated her whole life by her family members, the societal girls and boys who looked at her with disdain, was suddenly shifted gloriously, and a white knight had come striding in to save her.
But where was he? She had been hearing voices, she admitted to herself, that were not hers...
Those were the signs of psychological disorders she only read about.
Could it be that maybe Scott was just a figment of all these strange afflictions?
Panic struck when suddenly the class was over and he still was not there. It was the second day that he had not come to class, and she was worried. He had told her once that school was the only thing he had to look forward to, when it used to be a Hell for him due to nagging bullies. Why? Because, he declared, she was there to look forward to and he had fun with her, something he had been denied for a long time, just like her.
Doubt jabbed at her head, had he been lying? Was it all just a silly game to him? Another prank being pulled by the popular kids?
But she knew him, she knew him well enough to know his thoughts in intimate ways she did not think possible. He was genuine, caring, and honest. Everything she looked for in the ideal heroes of her favorite stories.
She knew those beatings he took, the punches and shoves he threw that were futile when a worse consequence would ensue, were very real and very painful.
He was far more mature than any boy she knew of. But then again...in an unexplained way, their thoughts often mingled and she often felt as if he was indeed in her head. Or she in his.
Echoes of strange voices warbled and hauntingly began to amplify louder in her head, resonating painfully as if her brain was twisting itself.
Her paranoia intensified and everyone was against her. Out to get her. Her body numbed and tingled, her breath ran short and blood ran to her head.
As class let out, she ran from the school grounds, and on a desperate whim, walked briskly but uncertainly to a part of town she had never set foot in, having no reason to.
It was not necessarily the worst of slums, but in a snobby place like Snow Valley, it was considered shabby on the wrong side of the tracks.
Holding a small piece of paper with a scrawled out address on it in front of her, and her leather backpack strapped to her back, Emma stopped in front of a small Cape Cod styled home that would have been nice had it not been so wasted and not well taken care of.
Skinny legs trembling in knee high socks due to anxiety and uncertainty, Emma made her way up a gravelly path to the peeling door.
Distinct shouts, made her jump back in fright as she reached it.
A man's roar that made her ears ring and the crashing of things breaking, being thrown, and a loud thump against a hollow wall made Emma wonder if she was at the right address.
She gulped, and not knowing what else to do, having gotten to her destination, she rang the door bell gingerly.
The noise quieted, there was a pause, and then heavy shuffling of feet.
Emma drew back, eyes frozen on a large working-class man who stood before her, having thrown the door wide open.
He looked down at her, cocking his head and grinned a large wide smile.
"Yes, girlie, how might I help you? Selling girl scout cookies?"
Emma shook uncontrollably, and stammered, "I-i-is S-Scott Winters...here?"
The man laughed harshly and jovially at the same time, "Why, are you a friend of Scotty's? I see you're wearing the Academy uniform...Such prestige...Must come from a lotta wealth, eh?"
Emma could not respond.
The man stepped back and turned his head over his shoulder and thundered, "OH SUMMERS! Got a lady caller here to see you."
There was indistinct scraping, a sound like someone picking themselves up and dropping back down, and slow mumbling.
The man furrowed his brow and without looking back at Emma, said, "Wait here."
Emma's heart leapt a mile up when she heard the rambling of Scott's tender boyish voice, she could hear some more scrambling, and then out of the shadows of the small house, his lanky form appeared, with the man over him, dragging him forth.
Emma gasped when she saw them both come into the light.
Large and strong hands were forcefully gripped on Scott's shoulders, and they bedazzled her eyes brilliantly, she was unable to look away.
They seemed to be made of some clear, shining, sparkling crystal substance.
Growing up in wealth and affluence, and a mother's taste for gems, Emma recognized it to be diamond.
She vaguely mused if this man wore diamond gloves, but from the transparency of the solid hands, they could only have been diamond hands.
However, that was not what caught her attention the most.
Scott stood before her, limp in the man's diamond grasp, his head hanging, face hidden in shadows.
This was not how she knew him, she had never seen him look so submissive, down, and defeated.
For her sake, he was usually making light of situations, reassuring her. He would not meet her eyes. She wondered if he was embarassed of his humble abode compared to her mansion, thinking that was irrelevant and the least of her concerns when it came to him.
The man chuckled, "So, you a school friend huh? You're a Frost? Pretty weighty name I'd say. Your dad still in business?"
Emma was stung, how did this man know who she was? She could tell already that Scott had never said anything about her to this man, or it seemed anything at all. A sense of violation crept upon her.
The heavy diamond hands patted Scott's quavering back with such force that he was bumped forwards.
"Well, my name is Jack Winters. Thought it'd be fair you know mine since I know yours. Like these hands? I bet your mummy likes diamonds too. I bet you want diamond hands like this. Well maybe if you and Scottie get better acquainted you can get in on some diamond parts."
The man's face hardened, literally and his entire body burst into diamonds unexpectedly, causing the petrified girl to jolt back even more.
He roared in laughter at her reaction, the air around him foul with the smell and taste of liquor.
Scott pried himself out of the man's hard and heavy grasp and shoved off of him with some effort, jogging a few steps away from him.
That was when Emma saw Scott's face as he raised his eyes slightly to meet hers.
She cowered, tottering back on the heels of her feet.
Blood dripped from his hairline, almost as if it were red sweat.
A jagged red line was dragged across the bridge of his nose, and his clothes had been ripped from his slim athletic frame, hanging in shreds so that his taut arm and chest were exposed with more red lines acutely cut crossing them.
It dawned on her that this was why Scott had not been as frightened or disturbed by the large amounts of blood and beatings he had received at school.
Ceramic dust covered his entire left side, as if objects had shattered on him. Against him.
His lip, still split from Charlie Husman and his friends, was split even more.
Jack Winters, still shining in his strange diamond form, slurred, "If that damn nurse ax again, you-you tell her, Jack O'Diamonds had nothin' to do with these bruises. He was jus' visiting tha' orphanage again, they use do that stuff to him, an' I jus' gave him a nice home."
Emma, at a loss for words, hung her mouth open helplessly and backed away further, her mind reeling, and heart racing at the sight of Scott in a mix of fear, sadness, shock, compassion, and confusion.
Casting wary eyes to the side, Scott then took off, running as fast as he could from the house and Emma.
Emma needn't look back twice at Jack, and she too ran off, and chased Scott about a mile down the road and through a series of trees from the roadside woods.
She found him bent over, hands pushing against a skinny tree, panting and quivering shamefully.
She approached him, soft marshy earth beneath her feet, twigs snapping and put a suddenly calm hand on his shoulder.
He flinched but she firmly took his shoulder and turned him towards her.
He leashed out, "What do you want? Go away, I don't want to see you right now."
Emma bowed her head sorrowfully and then gently hugged him, awkwardly at first since both of them were not used to embraces.
He trembled against her, but would not cry. She shed tears for him instead, for the both of them.
She said with conviction, "Whoever or whatever that...that thing, that monster is, he won't hurt you anymore."
The voices in her head came back though, and Scott withdrew as Emma's face fell, she could hear a distant voice but felt it was from his head, not hers. It was calling him back.
Scott looked her in the eyes to see if she heard it too and whispered, "I have to go."
Before she could stop him, he was sprinting away from her, back from whence he came.
Tossing and turning in bed that midnight, Emma found it hard to blink or even close her eyes, as she thought about everything that the week had hurtled at her, especially of what she found at Scott's home.
A tap tap broke her out of her reverie, and she scrambled to her window where pebbles tapped against her window. She looked down and opened it when she made out the figure of Scott standing underneath.
He quickly climbed the thick ivy vines hanging on her mansion walls and entered her room clumsily, hands smelling of the damp moss from her stone walls.
He was wearing a fresh sleeping shirt and boxers, shivering from the cold night.
To her relief, Scott had efficiently cleaned his wounds sufficiently and had wrapped white gauze around his head and taped a band aid to the bridge of his nose.
He had a smile on his face at the sight of her and told her, "I thought you might want some company."
Emma returned his smile, despite all that had happened, and replied, "You thought right."
She clambered into her too-big bed and lifted the cold sheets for him to get in with her.
They made a cave of the expensive linens and she felt warmth and comfort for the first time in her normally cold bed.
He whispered, "Don't worry about Jack, he's just my foster dad, he's insane and doesn't know what he's saying sometimes. I'm not sure how he can be a living diamond, but I'd rather not know, let's just keep it at that."
Emma nodded, too afraid to wonder and also too happy to have Scott in one piece at her side.
Afraid of the silence, and glad to be in each others company, the two talked and things seemed to almost be back to normal, and nothing could touch them until morning came.
When Emma awoke, her bed was cold again, empty, but she heard a shuffling sound and looked to her window as Scott had lifted it, one leg out. He looked around at her in the bed and grinned cheerfully before climbing back down.
At breakfast, as Emma turned the toast with marmalade over and over on her plate with a knife, a dream still resounded in her head from the night before. She had dreamt about Scott, but it was as if he was telling it to her in her sleep, however that might have been.
She saw him, a handsome boy of twelve in a bleak orphanage, sinister in her dream. Menageries of distorted nights in a cramped room with another blond orphan boy his age, yet there was something strange about him. Something that set off some woman named Robyn Hanover, the nurse who worked there. She had confided in blurry figures that the boy whose name was Nate, frightened her unreasonably. He taunted Scott at nights and his strange interest in him was almost inappropriate.
Robyn, a young brunette woman pretty and kind, nurtured Scott, tended to the wounds his bully and roommate Nate placed upon him, and became suspicious of the strange facility and all the boys who were menacingly threatening in their bullying. She had burst into his room one night when she heard his cry over a nightmare, and the other boys looked in teasing, and a boy Emma knew in the dream was called Toby Rails, commented, "Nate and Scottie sittin' in a tree..." Next, Scott's hand was over Toby's as Toby had jumped from a rooftop after haunting intrusions in his head telling him to kill himself. Emma's dream was omnipotent.
However, Toby slipped and was gone.
As Robyn leaves a room presumably Scott's, she is approached by the creepy administrator of the orphanage who disapproves of the short length of her skirt and her skirt, which Emma's semi-consciousness thinks is unnecessary.
Robyn again but she was cold and unfeeling this time, hair tied tightly back into a bun and ignorant of Scott.
She recalled mini dreams of Scott talking to a nice couple looking to adopt, the man of the two a pilot, but like in the sense of dreams, Scott's talk was warbled, mixed up and made absolutely no sense. He spoke of his family fluently, and other impossible things he doesn't remember, but then forgets the next moment. He then revealed as if to humor himself that he was damaged goods with brain damage so his memories and speech were mostly blank or affected.
Then everything disappeared and she dreamed a separate dream where everything was yellow, and Scott was in a dream within a dream and a young woman entity approached him, glowing and made of fire, and Scott too was on fire. Emma knew somehow in her dream that Scott had an unearthly fear of fires, yet he was calm and not afraid and so Emma was not either. In her opinion relative of her dream, the red headed woman on fire who called to him and embraced him, joining together into one flame, seemed to have no propensity about age just as much as this Robyn woman did not seem to either, as she often held the young boy a bit too close for comfort.
In the nonsensical scheme of dreams, Emma in her head found this hilarious and also uncomfortably disturbing.
Just as the fire disappeared and they were suddenly in an empty space as if Scott had just run from the orphanage but this time he looked like how Emma knew him, as the 16 year old boy sleeping next to her and that man Jack was in view, but Emma had woken, to the soft shuffling of Scott's bare feet before she could dream further.
As she contemplated her toast disinterestedly, the dream's unrealistic and yet influential ambivalence stayed with her.
Putting aside this feeling, Emma made her way towards school, almost collapsing in relief at the sight of her beloved friend saving a spot for her in the back of class. Keeping her eyes on his, she made the daunting walk past the other students who stared and snickered, sticking their feet out.
When she tripped, she was only glad to fall against warm and reassuring arms that caught her, for once, ignoring the humiliation and worry of what others might think or do.
He was here, and the dream remained unspoken, as if understood in a dream state far away. Her look into his distorted dream-like memories only bringing them closer beyond words.
It was not until their 8th night together, him sneaking in through her window at midnight becoming tradition, that she realized ecstatically that she, Emma Grace Frost, was now one of those people she used to envy or yearn for on T.V. and in books, a beholder of puppy love. They had an instant, familiar and natural position in which he draped his arm behind her back and neck in a friendly, carefully platonic manner, and her head fitted perfectly on the groove of his warm shoulder between his neck, and her hands on his lap, mingling with his free hand, sheets over them, wrapping them in a safe cocoon where it was just them.
Morning did break the illusion, and they did have to go to school and deal with the teasings, but the secret and tentative smiles and looks they shared, the reminder of each night of escape got them through the days together.
The way she looked at him now changed, consciously and in class while he doodled for her funny little cartoons on lined paper, her eyes were dreamily adoring him sitting next to her, instead of on Mr. Kendall. No longer did she hang on to every word her teacher said, instead, she had become absent-minded and if it hurt her grades, it was okay because in the strange way things were beginning to work, she automatically knew the answers to important questions and tests, the answers coming to her, voices in her head telling her.
Maybe she should not have trusted these voices, or maybe it was unethical and cheating, they did sound like the classmates around her, but the results ended with A's instead of her "mediocre" B's, which did not displease her father.
Underneath the tree where it seemed like forever ago that Emma had watched Mr. Kendall from, Scott sprawled out on the grass, his glossy brown-haired head resting on Emma's lap which was covered with the fabric of her plaid skirt. He held a hard-backed book up in front of him, over his chest with both hands and read from it determinedly, while murmuring soft quotes once in a while aloud to himself and her. Earning him caresses and shy giggles.
"'It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.' How do you read this deplorable stuff Em? Those Bronte sisters sound a lot like yours. Anyway, think Mr. Kendall will give you credit for knowing the speaker? Pay attention I thought you wanted to impress him with your literacy...This is gonna be on the quiz."
This earned him a pinch to the cheeks and a tug of his hair for his comment about her and her sisters and Mr. Kendall, to which he winced and hissed, "Ow!"
Emma could not forget the words escaping his sensuous lips as if he were reading her, to herself about himself. The thoughts that transpired were hidden by her annoyed pinches, she could not let on to her best friend how she was starting to feel. However, immediately feeling guilt over her hidden fondness, she went back to stroking his head.
To his annoyance, Scott retorted fussily from the book, flipping pages, burying his nose into it, "He had ceased to express his fondness for her in words, and recoiled with angry suspicion from her girlish caresses, as if conscious there could be no gratification in lavishing such marks of affection on him."
She intermittently petted his hair back on his head, curling the soft brown locks around her fingers and smiled down at him serenely.
Scott fidgeted and wiggled a little, comfortably adjusting his head and grinned back, all white teeth and asked, "What?"
"Nothing. Can't I smile if I just want to smile?" Emma tried to straighten her lips but failed miserably as the corners of them kept curling up like disobedient ribbons tying a gift package.
The boy grunted, "No. You cannot, Emma." She replied pointlessly, "Well you're smiling, for no reason, why can't I?"
He smirked, "'Cause I just can. And I do have reason, actually. And I plan on wiping that smile off your face if you don't do it yourself."
He tried his best to sound stern and stiff but also failed. Emma deliriously hoped, anticipated what his explanation would be for why he was smiling so, just as her true reason was...
The boy interrupted her expectations and answered, "You look silly from down here."
Emma's smile immediately evaporated, and she nervously brushed her straight shoulder-length brown hair behind an ear, wondering if he could see up her nose or something.
Closing the book, "Wuthering Heights" with a sharp snap, Scott growled, "Great, now I have to make you smile again. You look silly and pretty when you smile, I was just joking. Your smile is silly."
She snapped, "Well so is yours, you look like a fool."
He grinned widely again, "No, I meant...I mean. Your smile is silly, like...how I feel. Silly. We're silly. I feel silly. For you. And your smiling at me like you feel silly."
Emma raised an eyebrow, "Uh...huh? I don't follow..."
He sighed melodramatically, "You silly, silly girl. Do I have to make you smile again?"
Emma huffed, "I think lying down like that is making the blood rush to your head and making you incomprehensible. Silly boy. Maybe you should get up, your fat head is starting to hurt my legs."
He smiled at her deliriously, making her feel...delirious.
Still grinning, he leaned up, lifting his head from her lap, his brown hair flipping over his head and without meaning to, Emma lowered her head over his in reciprocation, lowering her thick dark lashes over her wet blue eyes that reflected his amber irises, and her straight brown hair curtaining them in. Emma heard the thump of an abandoned book as Scott threw it carelessly to the grass.
When they kissed, a tingle shot through her body and through his, and she felt his warm strong yet tender hand reach up to the side of her face, and they remained like that for the rest of the lunch period.
A small still conscious part of Emma that had not been overwhelmed by the silly feeling causing her to abandon all control, danced a little- what she thought as something that would never ever happen to her...had happened!
As Scott Winters forced her lips to smile with his, against his, Emma Frost had her first kiss!
Unbeknownst to the two silly teens, a shadow loomed behind the tree, wavering.
Perfect to his reputation, Scott Summers came just on time, only 15 minutes after Emma Frost had sent him thoughts of sun and warmth and tanning.
She heard his hollow whistle before she felt his presence, breaking her out of her absent reverie, and causing her to uncharacteristically and self-consciously brush a blonde lock behind her bejeweled ear.
He was whistling in solitude, no doubt trying to cheer himself up or distract from whatever melancholy hung on his mind.
She opened her eyes in contentment, leering at the shining tan muscles of his lean calves coming into view as he walked off a path to his favorite tanning spot where she "happened" to be tanning.
He was wearing leather flip flop sandals and the shorter retro swim shorts popular in the 70's and making a comeback now, graced his chiseled hips as she eyed up, peering from underneath the wide brim of her glamorous sun hat.
They were a nice shade of light green, and complimented his bronze skin.
Lifting her face fully so that she was free of the censor of her hat, she watched languidly as he dropped a blanket down and a car magazine on the vivid grass.
Unbuttoning his flannel shirt, she heard a sharp intake of breath as he noticed her, and froze, halfway down his shirt, only his pecs revealed and the top of his beautiful abs.
She lowered her Dior sunglasses down and purred, "Mr. Summers, about time somebody joined me under these U.V. rays. Beautiful...day isn't it?"
She stretched her legs out, bending one so that it propped as a triangle over her straight one.
His eyes did not follow them as she had expected, instead they were glued to her eyes, and he faltered, "Ms. Frost! Um. Yeah...I was just...indoors actually watching the game and I was struck with the inspiration to come out and take advantage of this day. I haven't really been outside for a while with all the paperwork and stuff...I noticed the sun and just felt the urge to um...sunbathe I suppose,maybe Ororo is to blame for today's sunshine. I didn't mean to bother you though, I actually should really get back to that paperwork."
As he bent to pick up his things hastily, Emma laughed like he was the silliest thing in the world, "Oh Scott, don't be silly. I know you have no intentions of being inside now, set up next to me, I was...oh so lonely. Come, we're both adults, let's not play charades now." She simpered the last part, pouting delicately at him.
He blushed, and pushed his red glasses up his nose nervously, "Well...The charade is up...Emma. Um, I decided...Well I did...try to tell my wife...About everything."
Emma patted the grass next to her, not taking her mesmerizing cool blue eyes off of him, "Now, why would you do a thing like that? What happened? You must tell me about it. After all, we are meant to be friends now aren't we? Let's...patch things up so our relationship...on the team isn't so stifled and..let's say awkward. No harm in sunbathing with a peer right? Unless...you should give reason for there to be."
Scott slowly settled down next to her and ruffled the back of his head, "Uh, I guess...you're right. I do owe you an explanation, huh?"
That's it, thought Emma, like wasps sticking to honey. Except, as he sat and his open shirt gave her a peek of his bronze torso, shining gloriously against the sun, she wasn't sure whether it was she who was the wasp after all. In oh so many ways.
A.N.:...Soooo...what'd you think? Let me know please! I value your reviews! I literally go crazy without them...as you can tell from my spiraling writing. Also, next up: Emma eases Scott to open up on a "professional" and "psychological" level and he tells her from his point of view, how fusing minds with Apocalypse was an opening of perspective, not merely an affected personality disorder...
And, also staying true to the history of Jean and Scott's tedious, passionate, and hectic (Logan, Goblin Queen, Stryfe, Mister Sinister, BETSY BRADDOCk, conflict with HAVOC) catastrophic relationship, he talks about his own feelings of his marriage to Jean Grey and whether it was hasty in decision or not...Anyway TBC! Review please! Even if you think it's far-fetched or whatever, just let me know!
ALSSOOOO does anyone else think it coincidental that Jack Winters AKA Jack O'Diamonds has basically the same powers as Emma Frost? Living diamond...telepathy...whatnot.
However, FLAMES WILL be eaten up by the Phoenix. Also, I mean no disregard or disrespect to true X-Men fans, I am still fairly new to all the different AUs and histories, and still am learning about the entire series step by step via its original badass leader!
