A/N: A little piece from Scott's point of view after the second movie, after Jean's death. My first X-Men piece. It could be based on almost anything, comics or movies.

Sometimes I feel worse for them than I do for me. Anyone who thinks childhood brings with it immediate resiliency, the instant ability to bounce back from any problem, hasn't looked at those kids lately. Rogue, Jubilee, Bobby, Peter, Kitty… I worry about them.

Professor Xavier's the expert on matters of the mind of course, and he says they're all "healing." But then, he says I am to, and I certainly know I'd like to contradict that often enough. I know these kids try to go about their business in a normal way, act like they usually do. I don't know if they even know how to deal with Jean's death. I know I don't.

It isn't fair that they have to live in a world like this. I wasn't there when Bobby told his parents - I didn't have to be. I know what it's like, I've seen it before. These kids: they live in a world where they can't be mutants without being outcasts, and without being threatened with harm, even death. The things they've seen have only confirmed that for them. I wish they didn't have to see those things.

I was in an orphanage for my entire childhood, but sometimes I think it was almost a better alternative than having to tell my parents (whoever they were) that I was…different. And it feels like it just keeps getting worse and worse, the prejudice against mutants. More and more, this school is the only place these kids can come for actual teaching and understanding. Sounds a little mushy maybe, a little sentimental, a little corny, but it's the truth.

It isn't fair for them to be so young and faced with something this harsh, even if it is reality.These are kids I've taught - kids Jean taught - who've been faced with this harsh reality. Bubbly, happy-go-lucky, often pain-in-the-butt kids, but they're only kids. Rogue and Bobby were actually there, and so many of the others were captured by Stryker.

Some of them, like John, will get a little older and want to fight the world. They'll throw their fists and their powers at the walls that confine them as mutants, and they'll do their best to break them. They'll do their best to break the human race.

That's what this school is here for - so that they don't make that choice. But even I've wondered sometimes, on my rainy days, if it isn't the right one?

I know it's not. But I also know that we can't protect these kids forever. This whole incident, that only proves it. We can try, but we can't succeed, not in that particular goal. They have to see the facts, all of them, and then decide for themselves, and I know that ultimately, everything we've said, and taught, is going to vanish into that moment. They'll make that choice for themselves.

So many of them have such dark backgrounds, such difficult pasts, such impossible futures.

When I got into a mood like this - doom, gloom, destruction - Jean used to pull me out of it. Now she's not here to do that. One less person to tell these kids that we have to try to save the world - even if we know it's a frighteningly lofty goal. Jean is dead, and she's just another number on a sheet now. Another number, a statistic that these kids can look up. Another statistic that proves to them that the world is against them.

Jean wouldn't want that.

That's why I have to stay here, stay teaching, that's why I have to keep trying. That's why, on any given day, when the world is impossible and I'm on the verge of telling the kids that, that's why I have to bite my tongue.

The kids may not have much of a hope in some ways. And on some days, they may not have a hope at all. But at this school, we have to instill a hope in them for those days when they can't get it from anywhere else. We have to help them see how important it is that, even if the world is in shambles, we keep trying to save it.

It's quite a dream we have, and I know it may never be realized. But that's not something we can tell these guys. We have to let them figure out it mayn't be a realized dream for themselves someday. And if we've done our job right, when they do figure it out, they won't give up on it.

A/N: Please review and let me know what you thought! Thanks!