A/N: Hey everyone! Again, sorry for the long wait between chapters. I'll try to do better in the future. Hopefully I'm making up for the long waits by offering really great chapters. Personally, I can say I've been very pleased by the last few chapters and am quite proud of them. I hope you like them as well. I should mention that this chapter takes place about 3 days after the X-Men's visit to Memphis, and it picks up right where the last chapter left off. Enjoy!
A muffled noise that sounded like moving air could be faintly heard as a thin line suddenly shot across the night sky in Memphis. The line traveled quickly until finally latching on to the side of a tall building in the downtown district. Soon after, a dark figure began flying across the sky following the same path as the thin line before. If anyone had seen the sight, they would have been completely confused. But it was 3:00 in the morning, still an hour and a half before the first citizens of Memphis would hit the streets, and no one was there to see Scott tuck his grappling hook back into his belt and begin running across the rooftops of Memphis.
He was just Scott now. Oculus was gone. Scott Fletcher was gone. Scott Summers had disappeared years before. And yet, Scott was aware that Scott Summers might soon reemerge. He was on his way to talk to a man named Ed Baker, who put Scott in jail for murder almost a decade before. Now a patient of Nate's, Baker had asked to speak to Oculus. Scott knew it had to be a trap. Baker had trailed him for years as Scott tried to start a new life. He was certain that Baker had finally caught up with him and was waiting for him to arrive in Baker's small apartment so he could be arrested and taken back to jail. Scott knew what was about to happen, but he didn't care. He was a failure. As Scott Summers, he had been a high school loser who now belonged in jail for murder. So he fled that life and formed a new one as Scott Fletcher and Oculus. In this life he had failed to cleanse the city he'd sworn to protect from the countless number of scum that lived in the city's dark alleys. He had killed men and seriously hurt others. Scott had lived as Oculus for nearly a year now and there was not one thing he could think of that might have been good enough to call his time in Memphis a success. In fact, he couldn't think of one single life he had changed for the better.
These thoughts were heavy on Scott's mind as he arrived at Baker's apartment. As he silently slid open a window, he knew he was about to walk into a trap, and he was glad to do it. His honor was gone. It was time to stop running and face the past. Quietly, he admitted to himself that he was glad to finally be able to turn himself in. It would all be over soon.
He slid through the window without making a sound. Scott could hear snoring coming through the open door into the bedroom. Baker was asleep. Scott walked into the room and stood over the man's bed. He was smaller than Scott remembered him being. He'd lost quite a bit of weight. It could have been the moonlight, but his skin looked pale, sickly even. It was then that Scott noticed the IV stand next to the bed. He followed the plastic tube from the drip bag and found that it led to Baker's left arm. Suddenly, Scott truly realized for the first time exactly what Nate had said to him, that Baker had cancer. Scott had assumed it was a story to draw Scott in to the trap, but maybe it had been true! Scott decided to wait for Baker to wake up and stepped back into the corner of the room. As he did so, he accidentally stepped on a creaky floorboard. He saw Baker's eyes slowly drift open.
"Someone there?" asked the old man.
Scott took a deep breath and stepped back into the moonlight. "Hello, Detective Baker. I was told you wanted to see me."
A look of confusion fell over Baker's face as he sat up in his bed. "I haven't been Detective Baker in years. How did you…" He shook his head with a smile. "Heh. I guess that just proves that you really are the man I need to talk to." His voice was gravelly and sounded weak.
Scott was still wearing his Oculus outfit, minus the chest belt. If Baker knew who he was, he didn't show it. Scott began putting this information together with Nate's words and the IV bag. All of a sudden, it was clear that Baker wasn't here looking for Scott Summers and he certainly had no idea that he was, in fact, talking to Scott Summers! So if this wasn't a trap, what was it?
"What did you want to see me about, Detective?"
"I've been followin' you," said Baker, his finger pointing at Scott. "You seem like a good detective. Newspapers keep sayin' how you're crackin' open cases that the police had nearly given up on, unofficially of course. I'm impressed. By the way, you figure out who that Sonance nut is yet?"
Scott sighed and began moving towards the bedroom door. "Is this what you wanted to talk about? Because I've got…"
"No, I'm not here to waste your time," said Baker, his hand raised towards Scott.
Scott turned back around. "Then what is it you want?"
Baker took a deep breath, which was immediately followed by a hacking cough that lasted nearly a full two minutes.
"You smoke?" he asked after he regained control of his voice.
"No."
"Well don't start."
There was a short moment as the two men just looked at each other. Finally, Baker began talking again.
"Y'know, us old-timers don't like change. Always been that way, I guess. My grandfather never did buy a car. Said his horses could get him anywhere he ever needed to go just fine. But the world changes whether we like it or not. It's changin' again right now in a big way. Guys like me, we don't like it, but we gotta deal with it.
"As I guess you already know, I used to be a cop. A detective, really, up in New York. An' I loved it, too. I didn't do a lot o' good in my life, but I can honestly say I helped people with my job. It's the one thing I'm most proud of. I was on the force for over twenty-five years, an' there was only one case I never closed. But guys like me are 'bout outdated nowadays. The world's changin' and the job I used to do is a lot different now. An' it's all thanks to guys like you."
"Like me?" asked Scott in surprise.
"Yeah, like you. Guys that put on those outfits and do real detective work. Y'know, up in New York they got at least two guys like you. Call themselves Spiderman an' Daredevil. I even heard somethin' the other day 'bout some guy called Iron Man. An' ya used to hear 'bout another one called Angel, though he's 'bout disappeared now I guess. Point is, this world belongs to guys like you now. Never thought I'd see the day when detectives were replaced by guys in colorful costumes, but it's happenin'! An' frankly, it needs to happen. You're what this new world needs. Let's face it, the police don't know how to handle those crazies like Sonance anymore. For better or worse, they let you handle those guys now.
"I gotta admit, I didn't like it when you an' those guys in New York hit the scene. Catchin' the bad guys was always my job. But I realize now that you're better at it than I ever was. I want ya to know how much I appreciate you an' the work you do."
"Uh, thanks," said Scott. He was completely confused by the whole situation now. Where was this going?
"Now, that's all a very roundabout way for an old man to ask you for a favor," said Baker finally.
"What is it?" asked Scott.
"Like I said, there was only one case in my time on the force that I never closed. Only one that I never could figure out. Now, I'm an old man an' I don't have much time left. I guess I'll never solve this case, but its one that needs to be solved anyway. I don't think it's solvable, though, by a guy like me. It needs someone like you to work on it. Someone who can go places I can't an' find answers to questions I'd never think to ask. I'm askin' you to take this case for me."
Scott wasn't sure of what to say, afraid of where he thought this might be headed now.
"I don't know if I can…"
"Please," interrupted Baker. "This case has grated on me for years. Its gotten to where it defines my life. I need it closed, but I can't close it. There's no one I trust more with this case than someone like you."
Scott sighed. "What's the case?"
"You're a mutant, right?" asked Baker.
"That's right," said Scott.
"Then you should know it. It's almost nine years old. Murder. Victim was a kid named Duncan Matthews."
"And Scott Summers was the murderer. I know the case," said Scott.
"Yeah, that's the one. Except I don't think Summers killed that boy."
Scott's eyes opened as wide as they could go and it took every bit of Scott's restraint to keep his jaw from dropping.
"Excuse me?" he asked.
"I don't think Summers did it. I think he was framed by someone else who wanted us to think Summers killed the kid."
"What makes you think that?" asked Scott. He was completely dumbfounded by Baker's revelation.
"Honestly, I thought he was guilty at first. Even spent a few years searching for him so I could bring him to justice. I interviewed just about everyone he ever knew. Found out as much as I could about the kid in hopes of catching him one day. It was during this time that I realized he couldn't have done it. Everyone I talked to told me what a good kid Summers was. How he was bright an' honest. 'A leader among his peers,' one guy told me."
Scott immediately knew that quote had to have come from the Professor.
"But I finally decided he was innocent while I was in Alaska a few years ago finding out about his childhood. The way I see it, there are moments in all of our lives that define who we are an' who we'll be. Those moments are usually tragedies. For Summers, his moment came when he was a kid. His parents and brother died in a plane crash and left him an orphan. He lived his childhood on the streets of Juneau just survivin' from day to day. Anyway, I talked to some doctors who treated him after that plane crash. At the time he didn't have to wear the glasses he's got now. His mutation hadn't appeared yet or somethin' like that. Anyway, that doctor told me he looked in the eyes of this kid who had just watched his parent's plane fall to the ground an' blow up. The doctor said that the kid's eyes were scary. He said he spent about five minutes jus' staring into the kid's eyes, tryin' to imagine what that sort o' thing could do to ya. He said he got a glimpse into that kid's soul that day, an' I'll never forget what that doctor said to me next. He said, 'Scott Summers was forever changed that day, but not into a murderer.' Now, I don't usually go in for that sort o' stuff, but if you coulda seen this guy's face when he said it, if you coulda heard the conviction in his voice…I believed that doctor. When I put that story with all the other stuff other folks told me, I just couldn't believe that Summers would up an' kill some kid from school just 'cause he didn't like him. I don't know who killed Duncan Matthews, but it wasn't Scott Summers."
Scott felt like he needed to sit down. He knew the doctor Baker was talking about. Dr. Sloan had been incredibly kind to Scott while he was in the hospital. He had even slipped him three hundred dollars when the hospital administration forced Scott to leave, dooming him to a life on the streets.
"So you want me to find the real killer?" asked Scott.
"That's right. If you look in the top drawer of the filing cabinet over there, you'll find all the evidence I've got. It's just copies of the actual paperwork, but it's all there except for the physical evidence. Couldn't take that with me," said Baker. "An' if you happen to find Summers, tell him I'm sorry, an', if ya can, help him get his life back together. He deserves that much. I feel awful for what I did to him."
"I'll pass that on," said Scott with a smile.
Baker sighed and leaned back onto his pillow. "I just feel like I let him down. I got focused on him an' I let myself an' the system railroad him. It was wrong. I see that now."
Scott opened the filing cabinet as Baker spoke and pulled out the stack of papers the man had mentioned. He thumbed through them quickly. Nothing he didn't already know, but then Baker wasn't expecting to give them to Scott Summers himself.
It suddenly occurred to Scott that Baker had stopped talking. He turned around. The old man was asleep again. Scott smiled.
"Thank you, Detective," he whispered softly.
Baker opened his eyes slowly again.
"Sorry. Drifted off for a sec. You say somethin'?"
He looked around and realized Oculus was gone. He just smiled and laid back down to go back to sleep.
As Scott made his way back to his apartment, his mind was ringing with a variety of sounds. Echoes from the past bounced through his head in a strange collaboration of voices belonging to all sorts of people. Baker. Jean. Kurt. Nate. The 911 operator. Duncan. Ridge. Wicks. Even Scott himself! They were all in his head tugging on him in every direction.
"…there are moments in all of our lives that define who we are an' who we'll be."
"I couldn't just let him hit her like that. I had to do something!"
"I'll be watching you, Dunc. I know what happened with you and Jean, and I'm very protective of my friends. Hurt her and you'll regret it."
"Yeah, that's the one. Except I don't think Summers killed that boy."
"Those moments are usually tragedies."
"Dude! What do you think you're doin' man? Put that thing down!"
"Sir? Sir! Somebody call homicide!"
"For Summers, his moment came when he was a kid."
"The whole mutant community despises you."
"…I've made a promise to protect this city. At this point, my word is about all I've got left. I'm not letting it go."
"Scott Summers was forever changed that day, but not into a murderer."
"…you're obviously someone who has a desire to help people. That's why you do what you do every night."
"I don't kill."
"…you don't kill for now. But accidents happen, Scott."
"I don't know who killed Duncan Matthews, but it wasn't Scott Summers."
"There's no life for me in Bayville anymore. I can't stay here, but I can't live in that hell of a prison anymore either. This is the only other option."
"The past is in the past, Scott. The invitation to come back will always stand."
"I don't believe for one second that you did this thing, Scott. I can't!"
"I've been waitin' a long time for this, Mut. Jus' stay still and it'll all be over real soon."
"I dare say there's not a mutant in this country that hasn't had the desire to wring the breath from your throat."
"An' if you happen to find Summers, tell him I'm sorry, an', if ya can, help him get his life back together. He deserves that much. I feel awful for what I did to him."
The voices kept echoing as he arrived at home and went to bed. That night, Scott barely slept. He rolled over all night as memories came back to haunt him as dreams. In his sleep, the past came back to Scott as more than just voices. He could see the images now. His parents ordering him and Alex to jump from the plane. The ball of fire from the crash. The night of the murder. The confrontation with the X-Men. The night he was stabbed. The fight with Sonance. Scott only slept a couple hours, but in that time his mind managed to replay everything. He finally woke up covered in sweat at 6:00 in the morning. He was still tired, but couldn't make himself lay back down to sleep again. He didn't want to face the memories that he had tried for years to suppress. Finally, he moved to the den and turned on the TV. The news was on.
"Police found the body of District Attorney Robert Wicks early this morning in a warehouse near the river. It seems Mr. Wicks was killed by Sonance and Oculus, who have apparently joined forces. Neither masked man has been taken into custody, but police say they will not rest until the two are behind bars."
Scott turned the TV off again. He was shaking as he moved to the kitchen to get a drink. He sat down at his table with a cup of coffee in his hand. As he took a sip, his eyes fell on the stack of papers lying on the other end of the table. Scott's eyes lingered on them as he drank his coffee.
"So you want me to find the real killer?"
"That's right. If you look in the top drawer of the filing cabinet over there, you'll find all the evidence I've got. It's just copies of the actual paperwork, but it's all there except for the physical evidence. Couldn't take that with me."
An angry knock on Scott's door caused him to look up. He knew what that knock meant. Scott took a deep breath and walked over to answer the door.
"Hi Nate," said Scott without looking to see who was in the doorway.
"What have you done, Scott?"
"Come on in. You want some coffee?"
Nate stepped inside Scott's apartment and quickly shut the door.
"No coffee, Scott, and don't try to change the subject. Tell me what happened last night."
Scott sat down at the table again and took a sip of his own coffee. "I talked to Baker. He seemed glad to meet me. Gave me some papers to look at for him."
"I'm talking about Wicks, Scott. The newspaper says you killed him. That true?"
Scott looked straight into Nate's eyes.
"I've told you before. I don't kill."
"I'm not asking you what you've told me before. I'm asking you what happened last night." There was a clear anger on Nate's face and in his voice, but Scott wasn't worried about it. This would be the last of Nate's lectures to him.
"Wicks was Sonance, and he killed himself."
"Can you prove that?"
Scott took another drink of his coffee. "Probably, but I don't think it'd matter to you."
Nate sighed angrily. "Scott, I told you once that if you ever killed anyone, it would be over. I can't live with this on my conscience. I'm giving you five hours. At noon today, I'm calling the police and telling them everything."
"You're turning me in?" asked Scott, his demeanor very nonchalant.
"Yes, Scott. I'm turning you in. If you're smart, you'll leave here before I tell the police to raid your apartment."
Scott stood up and began walking towards his bedroom. "I'm already in the middle of packing my things, Nate. I'll be gone soon."
Nate followed Scott and stood in the doorway to his bedroom as Scott began folding a shirt on the bed.
"I don't think you understand everything I'm saying Scott. I'm going to tell them who you are. You'll be down in their books as a wanted murderer. And they won't be looking for Oculus. I'm going to tell them to look for Scott Fletcher."
With his back to Nate, Scott let a smile cross his lips. "Nate, you do what you need to do."
Nate arrived at his clinic at 8:00 in the morning. At 12:30 the day before, the Memphis police had raided the apartment next to Nate's based on information given to them by Nate. No one answered the door when they knocked. They yelled through the door that it was the police, but still no one came. Finally, they had kicked the door down and a team of 7 cops spilled into the room. There they had found nothing, only a bare apartment except for the furniture that came with the room. They searched the room extensively, but there was no sign of Oculus, who they know to be a man named Scott Fletcher. Investigators covered the apartment, but there were no fingerprints anywhere. It had clearly been wiped clean that very morning. The only evidence that Scott Fletcher had ever existed was a typed note lying next to the gold belts from Oculus' uniform on the dining table. The note simply read, "Wicks was Sonance. I only did what had to be done. –Oculus"
Now, as Nate slid his key into the locked door to his clinic, he knew that Oculus and Scott Fletcher represented a portion of his life that had passed and would never return. Honestly, Nate would be amazed if he ever saw Scott again. He didn't really want Scott arrested and taken to jail. But he simply couldn't allow Scott to hurt and kill other people. Nate reminded himself that he had done what he had to do to clear his conscience, which is exactly what Scott had told him to do. As Nate opened the door and stepped into his clinic, he heard the voice of a young girl behind him.
"Dr. Reynolds?"
Nate turned around. The girl was a teenager, probably no older than 16, and looked as though she'd lived on the streets for at least a year.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"Dr. Reynolds, my name is Vicki. Can I come inside and talk to you?"
"Sure," said Nate with a smile as he stepped back to let the girl inside. "What did you want to see me about?" he asked once the door was locked behind them. The clinic didn't actually open for another 30 minutes.
"Well," she said nervously, "I'm looking for a job and I saw your ad in the paper."
Nate had decided a week before to hire a second receptionist. He'd been running a small ad in the Classifieds ever since.
"Sure," he said. "The open job is a receptionist position. Do you have any experience with something like that?"
The girl's eyes shot to the floor. "I…no."
"What's wrong?" asked Nate. The question didn't seem like one that would cause such a strange reaction.
"I've never had a real job before. I ran away from home two years ago. I've made a lot of bad decisions, Dr. Reynolds, but I'm trying to do better. A few months ago I finally realized that all the mess in my life is my own fault. So I've spent the last few months fixing my problems. I'm really getting back on the right track, but I need a real job with steady money."
Nate was worried about the girl now. Maybe he couldn't hire her after all. "Do you have a drug history?"
"No. I never touched any drugs."
Nate breathed a sigh of relief. "Criminal history?"
Vicki's eyes darted to the ground again. "I spent…On the streets, it's not easy getting money. You can steal it, but I never was any good at that. Thanks to a string of bad boyfriends, I managed to convince myself that there was only one thing I was any good at. So I spent some time working as a prostitute. I promise though, Doctor, that I don't do that anymore. I quit a few months ago when I realized what was wrong with my life. That was the first thing I quit after that realization."
Nate wasn't sure what to do now. It seemed like Vicki was a good girl at heart, but her sordid history made Nate more than a little wary of hiring her.
"Can you tell me what caused you to realize your problems?" he asked.
Vicki smiled. "Yeah, you might not believe it though. There was this guy who changed my life with one sentence. Pretty much everyone hates him these days, but I wish I could meet him so I could personally thank him for what he did for me. I was getting attacked by…well, he was a pimp. All of a sudden, Oculus came out of no where and grabbed him."
She definitely had Nate's attention now. Had Oculus actually been the guy who changed the girl's life so much? Nate listened closely as Vicki continued her story.
"He beat Billy up real bad and threw him to the ground. Then he pulled a wad of money out of Billy's jacked and gave it to me. But here's the part that changed my life. He talked to me. He looked into my eyes and said, 'You can do better, Vicki.' I don't know how he knew my name, but he did. And the way he said that sentence, it was like he knew me! It was like he knew everything about me and honestly believed I could do better. I ran away right after that, but I can still hear that voice when I go to sleep. It's like he's in my head now, always reminding me of what I can be if I only try. It wasn't long before I started believing it too. Just two weeks after that night, I made the decision to clean up my life and I've been working on that goal ever since. I don't know who Oculus really was, but I like to think he was an angel sent to this city to save people like me from themselves. I know he saved me."
The story both touched and hurt Nate. On the one hand, it was incredible to hear about what kind of good Oculus had done for the people of Memphis. But on the other hand, Nate had run Oculus away from the city just 24 hours before. Not for the first time, Nate began to wonder if he'd really done the right thing.
"So," said the girl, "do you think you can help me get back on the right track? I promise I'll work as hard as I can."
Nate smiled. Scott was the man who had begun to change the girl's life, but Nate was the man who could help her finish the transition.
"Can you start today?"