Chapter 4
"Window to the Soul"
The dinner table was set with two white candles in the center, glowing with warm light. Flowered plates were neatly set for each person who was part of the X-men. The younger students already ate together in another room a little earlier. Now they were in their rooms studying for finals. The napkins were neatly placed on the right side of the plate with a knife over it and a fork on the other side. The smooth painted walls did not echo any sound coming from the people sitting around the table.
Bobby had not come down for dinner and Rogue had tried to talk to him earlier but it had not worked. He did not want to talk to anyone. Kurt and Storm were chatting before they began to eat and had abruptly stopped when everyone sat down. Logan had no sarcastic comments to say and Jean had been quiet all day, and was still quiet at the moment while she fiddled with her food. Nobody had seen Scott, until now. Which was why the table was so quiet. Not even Logan muttered a word.
As much as they all wanted to question why the hell Scott was not wearing his visor, they all felt weak. No one made eye contact and if they did they saw each other as lost in their own thoughts. Everyone had something on their mind that their mind was too afraid to speak out loud.
Until someone finally broke the silence. Someone who had caused ninety percent of the silence. "Why is everyone so quiet?" Scott questioned with disbelief as he looked to Jean and then to everyone else who had begun to fiddle with their food. "And why is everyone playing with their food? Come on. This is supposed to be a happy moment. I can finally see in color."
A piercing silence rung through the still air now. A painful aching ran through Jean's body. He seemed happy. Why shouldn't he be? But why is he not questioning any of this. Does he know why? If he did, why doesn't he speak? Jean wondered if he forgot about what he said earlier. About Pyrexia. It seemed as if he did not know what he was saying. Jean was confused. She was also carrying a load of worry on her back about the ring. She had not been able to tell him after the shock of seeing his eyes. But she began to realize it was for the better. He was already mad that she had accidentally dropped the ring at the office, how would he react to losing the engraving. He might think that it is not even her ring. But Jean decided to stay quiet. It helped with her confusion, anger, and sadness all at once. And tonight she was going to quietly sneak into cerebro and find this Pyrexia woman who seemed to capture her husband's attention.
"Does this mean that you're not goin' to be a part of us anymore?" Rogue asked with a hint of sadness in her voice from across the table. The sound in the silent room seemed to echo across the four walls in a piercing manner.
"Great!" Scott exclaimed. His voice seemed to change in tone and context altogether. Jean had known him almost all her life and never had she heard him be so bitter once in her life. It sounded as if he did not care. He sounded arrogant. "Now that I'm actually not a freak, everyone is feeling sympathetic towards me. Maybe I can finally live a normal life. I thought everyone would be happy. Now I realize that the only reason I fit in here is because I'm a freak. Does anyone really know me?" Jean winced at his words and then turned to Rogue to find tears in her brown eyes. Rogue did not like it when someone called her or anybody she cared about a freak. And now someone who she cared about was doing the thing that she hated most.
She shot up from her chair and put her gloved fists on the table top. She squinted her wet eyes towards Scott and pushed her head forward to see him from a closer angle. "Ah always wondered what it would be lahke to see your eyes. Somethin' that we all have. Somethin' that shows emotion. A window to the soul. At least that's what mah momma used to tell me," Rogue began as she felt all eyes on her. She pushed her chair back in frustration and pursed her lips in anger. "Now ah can finally see yours. And ah see nothing. Ah see emptiness."
"Rogue," Kurt interrupted, disturbed by her words. He believed that everyone had a soul. But he was somehow afraid to look at Scott. It was as if he did not know him.
"Scott," Storm began as she watched Rogue scurry out of the room. "Rogue's just confused. As are we all."
Scott creased his eyebrows in disbelief. He sucked his teeth for the first time since he was a teenager and looked Storm right in the eyes. He looked to Kurt and then Logan, who was surprisingly quiet. "I don't care. I am finally happy with myself for once in my life. I don't care what everyone else thinks."
One by one they all pushed their chairs back, leaving their plates on the table, and walked away. Scott just shrugged. There was still Jean. He reached over to cover her hand with his. "Can you believe them!" he exclaimed. Jean slipped it away. She got up, holding back the tears that were about to burst, and walked towards the exit. "Jean!" Scott exclaimed with rage as he hurried his pace towards her. But he was hit by an invisible shield. He watched Jean's back fade into the distance.
He blinked twice, finally feeling something stirring in his heart and mind. Some kind of emotion. Then he beckoned himself to the mirror to admire his eyes once more. He blinked twice, and the spark of feelings towards the woman who walked away and the family that did so also, was gone.
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Rogue sat on Bobby's bed. Bobby looked up at her, then laid back down. "Did I miss something important?" Bobby asked with a sigh as he made room for Rogue and she laid down next to him.
"Bobby, maybe we're lahke this for a reason," Rogue said lightly as she caressed his hand with her black gloves.
"What do you mean?" he asked as he turned to look at her with creased eyebrows. He wished he could kiss her again without being drained by her soft skin.
"If we didn't have these 'powers' as they call it, do you think we'd be together. Ah mean you and ah and all the X-men and X-kids," Rogue said as she gazed at him with wonder. She looked at his blue eyes. They seemed a little drained. A little weak. That was exactly how she felt.
"God does everything for a reason," Bobby said with a smile. He knew Rogue would understand what he meant. She was a believer with plenty of faith.
"God gave each and every one of us a soul," Rogue began, "mutant or human. Without a soul, do you think we would be mutants?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, without a soul, people wouldn't have basic human values or even deep feelings," Rogue said as she contorted her mouth into a frown. "So without a soul we wouldn't have 'triggers of heightened emotional stress' as Jean says. Therefore, we're left with no mutations."
Bobby kissed Rogue gloved hands that laid in his. He looked into her slightly weary eyes and nodded. "I guess I never thought about it that way."
A knock at the door sounded. "You kids better not be doing anything that needs parental super vision," Logan's voice spoke from the now cracked door. Rogue laughed at Logan's way of showing silliness. Logan nodded with the slightest smile and winked at Rogue as he left the room. Had he heard what they were saying? Of course, that what the wink was for. She knew Logan understood. She laid her head down on Bobby's chest and closed her eyes in hope for a better day tomorrow.
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Logan understood Rogue's words. Although he had gone through frustration of memory loss because of the experimentation done on him, he understood her words. Being mutant did not mean they did not have a soul and an operation could not take that away from him. He still had a soul, but he feared for Scott's. He felt as if Scott was so happy he could see his eyes that he forgot about feeling them. Was Jean satisfied with this? He had learned to move on from the woman he once admired, but he wondered if she was happy.
"Logan," Scott said through a whispered breath. He put his hand on Logan's shoulder as Logan turned around with knitted eyebrows. Did Scott actually have the guts to come and talk to him after the scene with everyone at dinner. Logan tried to ignore him and walk away, but something about Scott's words made him freeze.
"Are you still in love with her?" Scott asked through a light whisper. Logan turned around to look at Scott dead in the face. He held a solemn expression as he made eye contact. Rogue was right once again. Nothing. Emptiness.
"Who wants to know?" Logan asked gruffly.
"Are you?"
Silence.
"Good."
"What?!?"
"She's yours."
Logan wanted so badly to punch Scott. Many times. He had come to respect him but now he was way out of line. Punching him in the danger room after relieving stress because of Jean's death felt good to Logan. Now it would feel great. But contrary to his thoughts, he had been frozen in his place because his eyes seemed to be playing tricks on him. Or were they? Because he had just saw a sudden flash in Scott's eyes.
He was not really sure what he had just heard or even seen. He was sure his keen hearing abilities were working just fine. But he thought he needed to get a check-up for his eyes. What he had seen at the moment was as if he had been imagining. He watched the back of Scott's head turn the corner and disappear down the steps. Maybe what he saw was not his imagination.
Because he had seen Scott's eyes flash, for just an instance, bright red. As if fire sparked inside of them.
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"Admit it," the woman's low voice spoke roughly around the consonants of her words. "Now that your not a mutant anymore, something you thought you were all of your life--you would be one of those humans who protested outside the clinic, wouldn't you."
Scott looked up with a blank expression on his uncovered face. "I don't know."
"Liar," she spoke with force and nearly spat her words out.
"I don't know if I would be. I don't know who I am," Scott said helplessly as he got up from the sofa and walked around the room. His eyes grew darker by the second as the sun's shadow covered the living in which he was to sleep in. Scott looked out the window and did not allow the sun to wash over him with good feelings. He tightened his jaw and held the serious expression he had perfected to help him hold his feelings in. But right now all he was feeling was confusion. "I feel confused," he admitted, "like I was when Jean was attracted to Logan. I feel as confused as I was when I was lost and separated from my family. From the brother that I failed to save."
"From the people you injured at the train station because of your eyes," the woman spoke with a persuasive voice. "From the people you hurt before with your eyes and lack of being able to express your feelings. From the people you held back from. From the people you were afraid to hurt. The ones you kept your distance from."
"I'm not the only one with problems," Scott said with rising anger and a building rebellious feeling. "This whole world is full of people with problems. This whole world is full of people that have no idea of who they are."
"Yes," she said as she slid across the room. It looked as if her legs were painted away from her in a blur beneath her black dress. It was almost as if she was gliding or floating towards him. She came up behind him and hovered over his shoulder slightly. "But you have a chance to be unlike others. I am offering you a chance to find out who you really are." Her voice made him shudder, yet at the same time it made him feel warm. It made him have hope to actually find out who he really was beneath all the confusion. He hid his feelings away from everyone, including himself. He shut himself away from his feelings, in fear of what he would find if he went deep down into his soul. "Join me. Let you and your soul fall into my hands. We could divide and conquer the whole world, one soul at a time."
"My soul is not to be touched," Scott said strongly, holding a grudge against her ice words.
"Oh, sweet, enticing Cyclops, you are not realizing something," the woman spoke viciously as she placed her hands seductively on his shoulders and whispered in his ear. "You obviously don't know it, but you have already given me a little piece of your soul."
Scott's empty blue eyes widened with surprise. He felt empty, lost, confused. But he had one thing she could never take away from him: Jean. The woman's hands slid lightly down the middle of his back then retreated to sit on the arm of the sofa. She crossed her now visible, shapely legs and put her hands on her knee. Then she lifted one hand to her mouth and blew Scott a kiss.
"Who are you talking to Scott? What is wrong with you?!?" Jean said with disbelief as Scott turned to look at the woman he was talking to. He turned to Jean and Logan who stood in the doorway and realized that they can't see her. He turned back to the woman who had suddenly disappeared. His head jolted backwards and then lightly bobbed forward. He looked to Jean and Logan and smiled.
Jean looked at when he was talking lightly to himself. She thought she had seen the Scott she knew. But in a sudden instant he was back to the awkward and unorthodox way he had been acting. His empty blue eyes nodded at them lightly as he laid his body on the couch and closed his eyes. "Hope you two will be happy together."
Jean's jaw dropped as Logan looked to her and unsheathed his claws. She held him back from attacking Scott with her telekinesis, which came in handy this time. "Just go to sleep," she whispered to Logan who wanted to rip Scott into pieces although his idea would have been something he wanted long ago. But Logan obeyed and went to his room, knowing that he would wake up tomorrow with some action planned. Jean knew what he was thinking, but she was two steps ahead of him. She walked very quickly to the downstairs levels. No sleep tonight. No Professor here either, which made it easier to work cerebro with no objections but harder without the man who knew almost everything. She had to get into cerebro and find this woman who called herself Pyrexia. What kind of a name was Pyrexia? It sounded like some kind of drug.
She knew something was wrong with Scott. She knew something was wrong with the way he was acting and the sudden disappearance of his powers. And she definitely knew something was wrong with the woman who supposedly returned her wedding ring.
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Pyrexia slender fingers traced the red paint up and down until the image of shoulder length red hair was entirely filled in. She had drawn out the nose, the mouth, the cheeks and the eyebrows. They were all painted to the left of Pyrexia. The red rose in the middle of the painting glittered enormously. She filled in dark brown hair on the other side of the painting. The familiar face was painted to the right of Pyrexia and away from the rose. Pyrexia smiled as she looked at her painting sweetly.
"Hope you two will be happy together," she said smugly.
Now that she had Scott finally realizing what he really was, she was getting somewhere. Now that he has the woman who was once able to destroy the world as Phoenix all confused and depressed, he was finally opening a path for Pyrexia.
Pyrexia knew that Scott was finally giving in to his true self. His true, evil self.
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