A/N: People asked last chapter if it was going to continue as one shots. And the answer is yes, but there is going to be some continuity. Like, I am planning, eventually, on an overall plot taking shape, and on there being an end to the whole thing. It's like episodes of a TV show: independent storylines that link together to create one larger story line.
Scott couldn't believe how easy it had been to settle down inside his blaring world of darkness. Most days he would sit in bed, allowing his brother and his sister-in-law to bring him everything and to help him take care of himself. The solitude was both a burden and a relief at the same time. There was no more worrying about the material things in life; there was only his own mind and the stories that it fabricated to keep him occupied. His wife… oh God, how he missed her. He could understand what she was going through: the wishful thinking that tried to distort reality. But she had let herself loose touch, while he remained sufficiently grounded.
Still, he had to admit that his favorite daydreams were those fueled by his wife's insistences. And, to be honest, there were times when he let his mind be fully taken in by the lies. It wasn't totally unheard of, these superheroes. There was Spiderman and Daredevil and Captain America; they were real. And so were Red Skull and Dr. Doom. There were extraordinary people in the world.
And then there were the times, in the morning, after dreaming of a world of mutants, when Scott would trick himself into thinking that he could see again, but through a red haze. It was so real the first time, that he had tried to get out of bed, guided by sight which he had not known for months now. Then Madelyne came into the room and gave him his medicine, and his vision evaporated.
Alex, his hand sweaty every time he took Scott's, explained that it was his brain playing tricks on him, giving him phantom vision much in the same way that amputees had phantom limbs. It was because his eyes were the ones that had been destroyed in the accident, and not the receptors in his brain, and, every now and then, they would fire, thinking that the eyes had sent them a message. It was all an allusion, though. All an allusion.
Scotty, Scott's nephew, would come into the room every now and then to sit in Scott's lap and read. They were familiar books: Dr. Seuss, so Scott was able to help teach his nephew to read. Scott came to cherish the time he spent with Scotty because, as the weeks passed and he spent more and more time with his nephew, it became clear to Scott that the one night in which he had given in to temptation had resulted in more than a guilty conscience on Scott's part.
Madelyne had hinted of the truth to Scott before, but he had never believed her, content with his life with Jean and Rachel, who was born 6 months before Scotty. But now, now that Jean and Rachel had been torn from him, now that Madelyne had become too cold, now that Alex had become a contradiction of sympathy and detachment, there was Scotty, and Scott knew. He would have named him Nathan.
Now, Scott led his mind wander, thinking of all the fantastic powers that he would have in Jean's reality. Super strength, super speed, super flight… he knew it must be something truly glorious, if it was the product of his doting wife's mind.
"Uncle Scott?" Scotty stuck his head into the room, not phased by the familiar sight of his disabled uncle.
Torn from his daydreams, Scott turned his head toward the sound of his nephew's voice. Yes Nathan? "Yes Scotty?"
"There's a limousine here." Scott could hear the excitement in Scotty's voice, despite the fact that the boy was being careful to just relay the message he had been given. "Some people want to take you to Xavier's Institute. They say it's important. Mom and Dad went straight from work." Scotty stopped abruptly, finished. Sighing, Scott rose from the bed, knowing that this could not be good news. Something must have happened; Jean must have done something in her madness.
"Run and let your grandfather know that he needs to watch you," Scott told his nephew, then felt his way down the hall to the front door, where a waiting chauffeur took to the limousine and loaded him in the back. Scott knew instantly that he wasn't alone in the car.
"Good afternoon, Scott," the familiar voice of Doctor Charles Xavier greeted him. Scott felt at once both reassured and unsettled. Xavier always took care of whatever he set out to take care of, but in an Institute like his own, the demanding cases were many, and he only really devoted any time to those he felt were especially pressing.
"Xavier," Scott responded, reaching his hand out in an automatic gesture of familiarity. Before his hand met with Xavier's, however, it was caught by another, smaller hand. "Jean," he breathed, nearly melting. "What… you're so thin." Scott made the comment without thinking, and without pausing to wonder how he knew.
Xavier breathed in sharply before answering, while Jean's face remained glowingly turned toward that of her husband. "Yes, Scott. She and another girl have been causing quite a lot of problems back at the Institute."
"Problems?" Scott turned inquisitively toward Xavier.
"They both became very thin," Xavier continued, looking between Scott and a spot on the rug of the limousine. "I thought that maybe some medication was having an adverse effect on their appetites, so a assigned some nurses to watch them more closely. Imagine my surprise when I found that both she and the girl had become bulimic."
"Bulimic?" Scott was even more confused now, and he felt Jean's hand being pulled away from his, a sign of her embarrassment and guilt, but he would not let go.
"Yes, bulimic. But in quite an intriguing way." Xavier pressed his fingers together. "You see, both of them purged only just after receiving any type of medication. They would take it, without fuss, and then excuse themselves first chance they had. I also discovered that they have been swallowing, without chewing, their chewable vitamin tablets. It's obvious to me that she is trying to avoid all medication…" he trailed off there, waiting to hear what Scott would have to say.
"But… why?" was all Scott could manage.
"Because-" Xavier began, before Jean cut him off.
"Because it's holding us back, Scott. They've always been holding us back; they-"
"Jean!" Xavier exclaimed, rising. "You promised! I allowed you to come on the condition that you would not speak of this nonsense!"
"But-"
"SILENCE!"
Both Scott and Jean ceased breathing, and their hands fell to their own sides. Pausing for a moment to let his power sink in, Xavier continued. "I drove out here, Scott, because I decided, after contacting your brother and his wife, that the situation was even more urgent than I thought. Others are beginning to be infected by Jean and Rogue's rebelliousness, and I need to stop this now. The Institute is already the legal guardian of Rogue, so measures have been taken to control her. Jean, on the other hand… she's in your hands…"
My hands? Scott thought. Reaching out, he found Jean, and pulled her gently across the limousine toward him. Feeling her face softly, he felt the tears, and his insides quaked. Jean…
Scott…
Scott thought. Reaching out, he found Jean, and pulled her gently across the limousine toward him. Feeling her face softly, he felt the tears, and his insides quaked.It was a faint echo in his mind, a reminder of all that he owed to her and all that he had promised her that day on the alter. "If she's causing problems," he said, his voice shaking slightly. "Then she can come home."
"Scott," Xavier replied calmly, "I don't think you realize-"
"She's coming home!" Scott cradled his unseen wife in his arms. "She belongs with me."
Xavier stewed for a moment in his anger, then opened the door to the limousine, which had never left the front of the Summers house. "Fine. Call me when you can't handle her anymore."
Holding hands, Jean and Scott climbed out into the dull sunlight.
"I know, Scott," Jean said as they neared the house. "I know Rachel's dead. I know that Madelyne is just my sister. I know that the Institute is for insane people. I also know that most of the people there aren't insane. Scott, I know so much."
A/N: so maybe it's not really going to be one-shots. Now that I have an actual plot in mind. This is going to be just another chapter story. Expect the chapters slowly until summer. Then I can let loose.
