Dance practice turned out to be canceled that day. Scott missed the right exit not once but twice. When he noticed, he mumbled a lame apology ... and then abruptly turned to approach some tiny town Katja hadn't heard about before, even though she actually knew the New York area pretty well by now.
The place he was taking her to was unexpectedly romantic. A deserted little lake that seemed like an oasis between all the mid-sized and big cities around it. The area reminded Katja both of her own home village and of a simulation of Scott's birthplace in the Danger Room that he'd shown her not too long ago. With dusk slowly spreading, a beautiful orange glow was cast on the calm water. They were completely alone at that small pebble beach.
A charming picture, actually ... If it hadn't been for that incident at the college.
"What's wrong?" Katja put a hand on Scott's arm when he turned off the engine but kept on staring out the windshield unmoving. "No matter what went down there, I can deal with it."
It had long dawned on her that this whole thing couldn't be a harmless argument, like between two teenagers fighting over some girl. She had never seen Scott so absent-minded. And never had she seen his hands shaking like that. He was actually a relatively safe driver, though not exactly the slowest, but on the way here, Katja had itched to get behind the wheel herself.
Avery seemed to be a chapter in his life probably new to Katja for good reason. That the two men should have met again by pure chance in a metropolis, of all places, and then with Katja present not least, felt more unlikely with every passing minute.
She couldn't help but instantly imagine some paranoid scenario.
What if Magneto was behind this meeting? That the guy was currently trying to weaken the X-Men's team at every turn wasn't exactly news. And given how completely out of it Scott was right now ... That would have suited those Brotherhood bastards just fine.
"Come on." Instead of an answer, Scott left the car and got a blanket from the trunk.
Katja gladly accepted the silent invitation when Scott held out his hand to her right by the water and sat down in front of him, between his legs, leaning against his broad chest with a soft sigh. It took only seconds for the tension to fall away from her a little and for the usual serenity to settle in her soul that only her partner could bring out in her.
Her training for the X-Men, college, the pupils, Xavier's horses, the hostility from mankind ... All that was keeping her on her toes constantly in everyday life. Sometimes it seemed to Katja as if she was on full power nonstop since March. All the more she enjoyed those few minutes of relaxing in between when she could feel nothing but the warmth of Scott's lean body against hers, his deft caresses, and the deep feeling of affection whenever their lips met for a loving kiss.
The closeness seemed to do Scott good too. At least he didn't seem quite so agitated anymore. He kept his arms folded in front of Katja's stomach, with his chin resting on her shoulder, and let both the sight of the lonely landscape and her presence calm him down. For long minutes, they were doing nothing but enjoying that, in silence. They had been alone far too seldom lately.
"What do you know about me, Katja?" Scott asked unexpectedly.
"What?" Confused, she turned her head his way, a reflex, though with these glasses covering his eyes, she could never see them anyway. On days like these, that was harder than on others. Even though she was getting better at reading the rest of her partner's facial expressions ... Katja could never be sure one hundred percent what was going on inside him, how he was really doing, and how she could best help him. Sometimes she felt like she was the one whose vision was limited by Scott's uncontrollable optic blast mutation.
"I want you to tell me what you know about me. It's important for what I need to let you know. Although I don't know if I can really do that yet, to be honest. I'd rather not be forced to drag you into this thing." A hoarse snort accompanied these words, which worried Katja even more because she noticed exactly that Scott was about to retreat in on himself.
While he might be known as a strict teacher in school, always keeping the most necessary posture of control towards even his closest friends, too, to never endanger anyone with his gift ... While in the course of the X-Men's occasional public efforts, he might keep his distance especially towards normal people, who immediately labeled him as a dangerous freak because of his conspicuous glasses ... Towards Katja, Scott was actually always trying to be as open as possible since they'd started their relationship.
A mysterious stranger wouldn't be able to change anything about that if she could help it. "That's long yesterday's news, didn't we already accept that?"
But the little game seemed important to Scott, and right now he was definitely not doing well. That made it irrelevant that Katja felt a little uncomfortable about being all but tested in such a way here.
How to start, in any case, she didn't know at first.
There were things concerning Scott's life that could not exactly be told with cheerfulness. But whenever he had revealed any of them to Katja in the course of the last few months, he had seemed very composed, as if he had long come to terms with these many tragedies.
Perhaps it was best to try and soberly spell out these incidents as well, without a lot of hesitation.
She only closed her hands a little tighter around Scott's, stroking them gently. "What I've learned from you or your file since then is that you got your powers as a teenager. You and your brother almost died in a plane crash that killed your parents. You guys raced toward the ground because of a broken parachute, and you almost died. You've lived either in the streets alone then, where you got by with some drug stuff or in one shelter after the other. When Charles came along, Jean and Ororo were already in his house, but the three of you quickly were best friends. In your new X-Men team, you saved each other's lives countless times. And with your talent, you surpassed the two of them so quickly that they were the first to vote for you to become their leader. I know that despite these close ties, you miss Alex a lot because it's unclear what happened to him after the accident. You almost never talk about him, but I can tell every time Mom calls that there's a huge hole in your life."
Scott's surprised gasp, she only answered with a quick kiss on his neck. She didn't always say something, but there were certain things she could already tell quite well, despite the relatively short time this relationship had lasted so far.
"Three years after you came to Mutant High, you and Jean got close in other ways, too. In the end, you even were engaged. Ever until a new student of Charles destroyed all that."
"Katja ... don't." Scott immediately held her a little tighter, searching for words, but that evening, none of the appeasements he usually used to push that painful subject aside came to his mind.
"You asked," Katja reminded him as calmly as she could.
"So let's tell the truth and shame the devil. I believe you that your relationship wasn't happy when you and I fell in love, Scott. Otherwise, we wouldn't be sitting here right now. But Jean is also part of your past. How much you worry about her since she lost her heart to someone else as well, though Logan hardly takes his eyes off her when he doesn't happen to run off to chase his lost past ... That's pretty obvious. And this concern is something I don't want to be in the way of. But right now, I'm worried about you. Even though falling in love with you wasn't the original plan: You are more important to me than any man before in my life. That's what I know about you. And that you started looking like a zombie since you met someone named Avery Anderson earlier. That you've suddenly stopped talking to me, when actually so far, I was under the impression that we can face problems together."
"We do. Some of them, you just rather don't touch if it's not necessary because you don't have the strength to dig them from the bottom of your mental closet." Scott gave her a fleeting kiss on the temple.
"But this thing … is no longer only about me. The only possible reason this guy shows up in your class out of the blue is me probably catching his attention again with that accident with the train station roof before Liberty Island. The timing is too perfect. That was the first time in a while that my powers went public. That Avery immediately sees this as a reason to come back into my life can't be good. How quickly he found out about you and me scares me the most about that. And it makes it necessary for you to know what happened between Avery and me back then. How much this guy ..." He paused, trying to collect himself with a shaky breath.
"After that accident, Dad's business crashed faster than the damn machine did. Relatives wanting to have anything to do with me didn't exist. All I had left was the street if I didn't want to be forced to get in fights in shelters all the time. Living outside was not much easier though. I've seen a lot that haunts me to this day before Charles found me. It was luck more than brains that I didn't bite it myself at some point on the next best rent boy toilet with a needle in my arm. But nothing has been as bad as meeting the Andersons."
"You've known him that long?" Katja realized more and more how much this stranger had deceived her today. She'd actually thought of herself as being better at reading people. "Avery told Angelica and me that he was from Iowa and just moved here recently."
"Because he has enough to hide, of course." Scott's already stiff posture only grew tenser.
"No, Avery's family may have originated countryside, but he's spent most of his life in New York. I should know; I was there for years. He was industrial gentry but turned away from that life early on. His parents and he were fighting nonstop. He skipped school almost every day to rather spend time with my gang. That's where he manipulated his way into getting the respect and admiration school and home didn't grant him. Shortly before his fifteenth birthday, the three of them made amends then. There were no other family members, so it was a great relief for Avery when that trouble was finally over. His parents wanted to throw him that big party at their house. Avery made it a condition that he could invite our gang too. They didn't like it, but in the end, they agreed."
"You guys are the same age ... So that was right before you met Charles," Katja noted cautiously. Her arms were covered in goosebumps.
There was so much darkness in Scott's usually composed, deep voice ... She doubted many people knew about this thing, given how much it was throwing him off course. He seemed to be all but clinging to Katja right now.
"Exactly. But let me get there my own way. Or I won't have the balls to." An almost imperceptible shiver had started to go through Scott's body, though it was still anything but cold.
"What you need to know is ... Avery and I were very close at the time, more than it was healthy for either of us. That he's someone using other people mainly for his own advantage was something I simply didn't want to see. I never had such a good friend before, and when Alex then was gone, too ... At that point, I couldn't care less how many people in our environment with time started to warn me about him. It's not for nothing they say I'm loyal to a fault. Goddamnit, I should just have sent the guy away when he kept on showing up with us, and suddenly, there was trouble all the time. That would have spared us both a lot."
"After you'd just lost everything anyway? A bit much to ask, isn't it?" Katja let him know with a hard shake of her head that she, at least, saw no reason for Scott to blame himself in this regard, not for needing someone to turn to at a time when he had been more alone than ever before in his life. In such a state, a teenager could not make adult decisions.
"Probably." For seconds, Scott rested his forehead heavily on her shoulder, making the next arduous attempt to get to the point.
"So I willingly helped the guy get big in the gang, not realizing that he was actually planning to replace me there at some point, and he would punch others in the face for making fun of my glasses. I set him up with his girlfriend at the time, and he passed on to me the few things from school that he overheard when he was actually there. Sure, we'd fight a lot too, but as long as he got something out of it, he had my back. Others haven't been so lucky. Half the time, when we got busted with our deals and I had to swallow another crack package to at least have something left to sell for the next dinner for the gang, Avery simply hadn't been paying attention to who was following him when he came to us. If one of the others got beaten up or arrested, I could be sure, the guy hadn't been able to keep his mouth shut with the wrong people again. But these were all things I only realized when it was all over. I believed the guy until the end that he had been my biggest support in those years. To thank him for that, for his birthday, I wanted to give him a reenactment sword that I'd once taken from a parcel truck involved in some accident. He loved that thing. Martial arts was his big hobby. I was going to bring it to his home when he was in school. His parents were supposed to hide it for me." Scott spoke faster and faster, his voice breaking.
"If it's too difficult ..." Katja nestled even closer to Scott, tenderly trying to rub some warmth into his ice-cold hands. It didn't help.
"No ... I want to get this over with." With an agitated movement, her partner wiped his eyes under his glasses, then buried his hand firmly in his hair, increasingly upset with every second more.
"Avery's mother lost it when she saw me. I guess she wanted to take the chance to teach her son's shitty friends a lesson. She claimed I tried to attack her with that sword and yelled for her husband. He tried to forbid me from ever seeing Avery again. I tried to explain, to defend myself ... That's when he came at me with the baseball bat."
Katja felt something warm fall on her neck when Scott went silent once more and winced instinctively. Scott didn't cry easily; usually, he was simply far too much in control of himself for that. She was getting a better idea of how this story must have ended by the second.
As best as she could in this posture, she turned around and wrapped her arms around Scott's waist. "What happened?"
"The sunglasses I used as a teenager were simple. Whatever quartz-coated thing you could get away with stealing from some store, basically. Nothing like what Charles and I developed together later. What I'm wearing right now, I almost can't lose. But back then ... I hit my head against the terrace pillar. The glasses slipped up my eyes ... I couldn't close them in time ..." Now Scott was crying, silently, only his chest trembling from irregular panting.
"Did you hit them?" Katja wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer, and yet she had to. If she couldn't bear to support her partner regarding what might be the worst incident of his life, she would have been the wrong person by his side.
"Not his parents, but the house. Some gas line. While I was staggering out into the garden, a fire started. By the time I had my glasses back on right, the explosion had already happened. That's exactly what the newspaper said: an explosion. An accident." Self-loathing colored Scott's growl. It was obvious he was the one who blamed himself most for this.
"That building collapsed like a house of cards. These people died there before the fire department even got there. They could only recover their bodies. I stayed there the whole time. I couldn't bring myself to run. When Avery came home, he knew right away that it had been me. He never believed me about how that happened, though he never told anyone about it. He knew that I had always envied him for still having a family and no powers, and there'd just been trouble in the gang again, too. So he thought I'd snapped, not least because of everything that had happened between us. We fought until they separated us. After that, we went to different foster homes. The headmasters of mine wanted to get rid of me right away. They made me take off my glasses on the very first day, whereupon I accidentally destroyed half the house. There was a huge fuss in the media. They wanted to call in test labs and research centers. They probably would have loved to lock me away. As if they'd have been able to keep me anywhere."
Scott laughed bitterly, at least that, a sound Katja was quite familiar with. As far as anger toward uninformed people went, anger at those aggressive toward mutants, the X-Men and the Brotherhood often didn't differ all that much. "I would have run again immediately anyway if Charles hadn't shown up there at some point. Thanks to him, I finally found the home I had been looking for so long. I never told anyone what happened. Charles has scanned my mind so many times in the past that he may have picked up a few things ... But with Avery being gone completely from my life then, I was able to suppress everything to do with him so thoroughly that even Charles cannot know the full truth, and neither can Jean. But there is one thing I have never forgotten: Avery's promise to take revenge on me. If there was ever a fifteen-year-old taking a serious oath, you've just met him."
"He said that many years ago though, right? And he's never come back since?" Though a thought of this kind had entered Katja's mind, too, she didn't want to worry her partner any further. Not until they could be sure.
"With how that guy completely lost it and just left earlier ... Maybe he originally came back to town because he wanted to forgive you and now realized he just can't?"
Scott's resigned shake of his head had her shrug hopelessly, too. A nice but probably illusory hope. "In any case, I'll watch my back. If he wants to harm you, he'll have to get past me first. Let me find out what this guy wants. I'll run into him often enough now for that."
"That's not gonna happen, I'm afraid. Avery is an excellent actor, he always was. No matter what he's up to, he won't let it show. I'm sure he's been quietly making plans since Liberty Island already. I'd honestly rather you stay away from him altogether until we know what those are." Now Scott's voice had its usual determination back. "Promise me that, please."
What choice did Katja have?
Avery would hopefully understand if he didn't have ulterior motives after all, unlikely as that was. Probably it was best that way for everyone involved, at least while there were still such deep wounds raging away in the souls of both parties.
"Of course. I'm glad you told me, Scott." That came from the bottom of her heart. That her partner was already placing so much trust in her after such a relatively short time, she didn't take for granted, and Katja wanted to do her best not to disappoint him.
Scott bit his lower lip in an unusually discouraged gesture. "I was afraid if you found out ..."
Katja hurried to soothe the tormented little spot with a fleeting but very affectionate touch of her own lips, to hopefully banish those nonsensical thoughts from Scott's mind right away. "Then what? It was an accident. You didn't kill them on purpose."
A faint memory flashed in her mind. She saw herself sitting in the garden of Mutant High together with Jean, right after her arrival, distraught, crying. In her mind, she heard Jean say words similar to what Katja had just tried to make Scott see ... Now she knew they were true, no matter how hard it had been for her to accept that at the time herself. It was unbelievably cruel for every single mutant to whom such a thing happened, but no one was responsible for their powers or for not being able to control them immediately. Not that this made anything easier.
"That doesn't make a difference," Scott voiced their thoughts. "Neither for him nor for me." He had a grip on himself again, just as quickly as that usually happened. Only the trembling wouldn't quite go away.
With scattered raindrops falling on their heads, and soft thunder rolling in the distance, the unbearably heavy mood was broken for good. "Are you that mad now?" he asked, grinning wryly. "I knew I shouldn't have told you."
"Don't look at me like that." Somehow Katja managed a smile, too. "Wasn't me. For once. They said there would be thunderstorms today."
Scott gently pulled her up. "Then we better get home. It's amazing by the way, how quickly you got your powers under control compared to when you got here first."
"The mental training with Jean helped far more than I expected it to." That was all Katja had to say about that for the moment.
She felt like she should rather comment on that other story again before it would be swept under the rug again, but for such trauma, there simply was no simple treatment especially since the only doctor in the X-Men's mansion didn't even know it existed. "Maybe it's time for you to ask her for support too, Scott. I don't know if I can really do much yet to help you deal with this, no matter how much I want to."
"You already did." Scott took her in his arms once more, resting his forehead against hers. By now Katja was learning to ignore it, more and more, how the smooth, cool material of his glasses was accompanying every gesture of tenderness, no matter how simple. Especially now that she had learned why it was so difficult for her partner, to get himself to take them off at least for a moment. "You don't know how good it was to finally get the whole thing off my chest. I've been dealing with it for years. It's you I'm worried about."
"Don't be. I can take care of myself. If Avery feels he has to become a problem for me, I'll give him an answer he won't forget." Katja grinned mischievously. "I'm going to be one of the X-Men myself soon, you know."
"If that's supposed to make me feel better right now, you're doing a really lousy job there, babe." With that sentence, for Scott, that conversation was over for good. Neither of them said another word about it.
And yet, the conflict had in truth only just begun.
When Avery reached the small row house near Central Park that he'd found a place to stay in a few weeks ago, the old guy living in the apartment just across the hall from his waited at his front door. The man was easily past his 80s, and it showed. Every step he took, leaning heavily on a walking stick, he swayed noticeably.
"Excuse me, young friend ... Can I bother you for a moment? I'm trying to make a cake, and I'm afraid I'm out of sugar ..."
Avery slipped his house key back into his pants pocket before he'd even properly pulled them out, with a snort somewhere between amusement and irritation. "I didn't picture you as someone so polite, Mystique."
"The man paused noticeably. Shaking his head almost too light to see, he began to change into his true identity. His skin turned a vibrant blue, his sparse gray hair became bright red, thick and longer, and his eyes took on an eerie brown-yellow hue. "Secondary mutation? Enhanced senses?"
"None of that." Avery regarded the mutant with a condescending grin. "If that's all the acting you've got in you, your boss thinks way too highly of your talent. If you ever need to learn from a master, you can buy me a drink."
Mystique's lips were a thin line of anger, but she refrained from any insults for the moment, which strengthened Avery's vague suspicion that a certain mutant group was trying to get on his good side here. And the reason wasn't hard to guess. The mood regarding people of his kind in public was becoming rougher since Liberty Island – not that he could be bothered to care. But his visitor was obviously thinking feverishly about how to best voice her request without being vigorously denied like her leader once had.
It was best to not even let her get a word in edgewise; that would cut things considerably short. "But since I don't want to bruise your ego permanently: My neighbor is so demented, he can't even use a coffee maker by himself, let alone an oven. These are things you know when you scan your surroundings and all the people in it down to the last square inch before you settle down anywhere. Maybe next time."
Mystique cleared her throat briefly before he could turn away. Now that she had changed back, her voice had a metallic sound that sent a soft chill down Avery's spine, even though the woman spoke in a coaxing, soft manner. "Wait. Magneto would like to talk to you."
"He's wanted to for years. My answer hasn't changed. Do you want to repeat his mistake from back then?" Avery let his gaze wander teasingly over Mystique's fragile silhouette as if he was already planning which spot to use his powers on first.
The woman startled; admittedly, it was such a suppressed notion that you could only tell if you watched her closely. "Spare me your primitive threats. The last few years haven't exactly been your best, were they? At least hearing Magneto out, could change that quickly."
"If I cared about the ego of old men with too much power and delusions, I'd join the army," Avery explained dryly. "Besides, I've only just done time, as you do seem to be aware of thanks to your ever-so-perfect research. I don't need any more trouble right now."
Mystique laughed mirthlessly. "As a mutant, trouble will follow you all your life. Speaking of which, I saw you just met some of our kind whose criminal record is an easy match for yours ... So much for the quiet life."
"No idea what you're talking about." Avery tried hard not to reveal his displeasure at the revelation that, for a change, he was the one who must have been followed. But that encounter with Summers earlier, which had taken place far earlier than planned, had thrown him off more than he had originally hoped. The shields around his emotions were not very stable at the moment.
Which probably was the only reason why he hadn't slammed the door in Mystique's face yet. A little distraction was just what he needed to forget this scene, which, soberly seen, had gone anything but ideal.
The anger mainly at himself still gnawed at him. He had let himself be carried away when the opportunity had presented itself. He simply had had to see the asshole up close for a moment, instead of going with his plan of first giving his influence and backstory the necessary stability from the second row ... Now he probably had to start all over again. Impatience had never solved anything.
Magneto's repeated uninvited approach might at least bring him up to speed on a few things so that he wouldn't fuck it up again right away. This guy had had far more to do with Avery's nemesis in recent years than he had himself.
Mystique sauntered to a nearby stair railing with a casual swing of her hips and came to sit on it feather-lightly. "You don't? I for one prefer watching targets over civilians. Interesting, the kind of things you pick up on when you listen to people like you talking to someone like Cyclops."
For a moment, Avery was honestly confused. "Cyclops?"
"That's what they use to call Scott Summers in mutant circles." Mystique's disgusted voice at this explanation made her rise several unexpected degrees in Avery's favor, not to mention the fact that she was indeed already starting to talk. Some of these fanatics were so tiresomely predictable.
"Amazing you didn't catch that in spite of your legendary observation skills. That big-mouthed dwarf you didn't leave out of sight today is also known as Flashwind. These two are militant employees of Charles Xavier's mutant school in Westchester. I assume you've at least taken a look around there already. Somehow you must have stumbled into that lecture today, after all. Not to mention that pest they call Firestar, Angelica. Don't burn your fingers on that girl."
Now it was Avery who gasped, honestly caught off guard for the first time.
He was indeed familiar with the Institute of this Xavier guy, of course; that was where Avery had long suspected Summers to be before that outrageous episode at the train station in March had made him realize that he'd been hiding in idleness for far too long. Picking up that he'd better change majors at the last moment if he wanted to keep an easier eye on Summers' bed-warmer, had only been a matter of a few afternoons spent unseen in a certain schoolyard then, in the presence of passionately gossiping mutant children, and of another late-night trip to the faculty's administrative office.
That there might be a few more obstacles for him on his way to his declared goal than expected, he had not wanted to admit so far. More detailed research than a few hasty glances at the school's internal network over the shoulders of the residents of Xavier's mansion would have helped that. But Avery hadn't been able to risk spending that much time in a place he still knew so little about, the security systems of which could have thrown a wrench in his scheme at the wrong moment.
As much as he hated to admit it, a little outside help before he could set about implementing his plan might not be a bad idea. The last thing he needed, once the big day would come, was bystanders. "Firestar, huh? Any other faces on the side of these dumb idealists worth remembering?"
"More than you'll like it, believe me." Mystique crossed her legs, looking extremely satisfied. She knew she had won for the moment. "I think we have much to talk about ... if you'll let us."
Avery shrugged with a sigh. There was nothing interesting on TV today anyway. "Fine, but no promises. Move then. I don't have all day." He gallantly reached his hand out to Mystique.
Her hesitation drew a grin from him. "Don't worry, dear. Unlike certain of our common acquaintances, I have my powers under control ..."
Only now she did reach out, jumping off the railing with his help. "To the roof. I came by helicopter."
"Private pilot, only for me, really? Your lover must be truly desperate."
When Mystique turned away with a snort, Avery placed a hand heavily on her shoulder. "Oh, and: If you ever spy on me again, you will find out from up close what my mutation is about. At least your boss should remember vividly that this can end very unpleasantly."
His visitor didn't think it necessary to answer, but the color gradient of her scaly skin blurred for a moment, probably the shapeshifter equivalent of goosebumps. Mystique, at least, apparently had very clear ideas about whether she wanted Avery on her team or not ...