Basically, I extended the lake scene from X3, rewriting a few minor parts to fit my version. I hope you like it! This is it, I just felt like extending this scene. Dunno why. Just did.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own X-Men in any way.
X3: Extended
One Found, One Lost
The jet landed on the shore of the lake. It was extremely foggy. Logan and Ororo walk down the ramp and step onto the rocky beach.
Ororo takes a quick look around then asks Logan, "You wanna be here?"
"No. Do you?" Logan responded.
They walk a little further down the beach.
"I can't see a damn thing," Logan said, squinting to try and see past the fog.
"I'll take care of it," Ororo assured him. Her eyes went completely white and the fog cleared off in just a few seconds.
What they saw confused them. Rocks of all sizes and other objects were floating in mid-air all by themselves.
"What the –?" Logan said, wondering what was going on. Ororo was thinking the exact same thing.
Ororo headed off down the beach. Logan made to follow her, but something caught his attention. Something floating in mid-air, only it wasn't a rock. It was a pair of sunglasses. Logan walked over to the glasses and picked them right out of the air with his hand and looked at them. There was no mistaking these sunglasses. They were Scott's.
At the same time Ororo headed further down the beach, eyes alert for anything that seemed out-of-the-ordinary. What she found laying next to a boulder was out-of-the-ordinary. It was a woman, but not just any woman. She knew her.
"Logan!" Ororo screamed, and Logan ran over to her. She was kneeling over a woman's body...a woman he recognized immediately as Jean Grey, lying on her back on the ground with her X-Men suit on, her hair deep red and long.
Logan crouched down beside them, thunderstruck. Bewilderment showing very obviously in his face. He couldn't take his eyes off her.
"She's alive," Ororo said, looking over at him.
"Jean..." Logan said softly. "How...?"
"I don't know, but we need to get her back to the Professor." Ororo noticed something in Logan's hand. "What are you holding?" she asked, looking down at what Logan was holding, then it hit her and her eyes grew wide. "Are those Scott's glasses?" She looked back up at Logan with fearful and knowing eyes as though she knew something bad had happened to him.
Logan looked down at Scott's glasses. Ororo just stared at him, afraid of the answer even though she already knew what it was. Sadness started to creep into her heart, and as she tried to keep it out Logan held up Scott's glasses. He looked at Storm and met her gaze. No words were needed. He gave her the answer she had feared was coming.
"Do you think he's okay?" she asked him quietly.
"I don't know. I just found his glasses floating around back there." Logan motioned behind him with his hand.
"Do you think he's around here somewhere?" Ororo asked, straightening her back from kneeling over Jean and peering around them as though hoping for Scott to just appear out of thin air.
"I didn't see him, but that doesn't mean anything," Logan responded, also searching the forest of trees a little ways from them, then returned to Jean. "Let's get Jean back to the jet and then we'll have a look around."
"Okay," Ororo agreed as Logan put Scott's glasses into his jacket pocket and picked Jean up and headed back for the jet. Ororo followed behind. Then she stopped and said, "If you don't need any help, I'll just start looking for Scott."
"Yeah, go ahead. I'll be right back," Logan told her, not stopping.
Ororo turned around and scanned the stone beach of the lake. There was no sign of any kind of human life to be seen. Only rocks floating around on the air and covering the ground. "Where are you Scott?" Ororo muttered under her breath. Next she turned toward the trees. There was no sign of Scott there either that she could see. She started walking toward them, looking all around her, desperate to find him alive. She reached the edge of the forest and, squinting, searched as far as her eyes would allow her without going into the forest, but saw nothing. She took a step inside the forest and looked around her before taking a few more steps. Several hundred feet into the forest and still no sign of Scott. Ororo was starting to lose hope. It seemed that Scott was gone forever.
At the same time Logan had gotten Jean back to the ship and carefully laid her on one of the seats after repositioning the back of the seat so it was lying fairly flat. He sighed and looked at Jean, not believing that she was lying right in front of him and that she was alive. He crouched down beside her and slowly brought his hand up level with her face to touch her, but he froze. He'd heard something. Forgetting Jean, he stood straight up, listening carefully, but the sound did not come again. Logan stepped quietly toward the door, ears still alert, the metal claws sticking out from his hands.
Then he stopped dead. There it was again. He got to the door and slowly craned his head around the doorway, looking out at the rocky beach, the forest and lake on either side. There was no one in sight, not even Ororo.
"Ororo?" he said, breaking the eerie silence surrounding him. No one responded.
Then he heard a sound coming from the forest that sounded like footsteps heading toward the beach. Logan took a deep breath and then came out from his hiding place and quickly but quietly made his way down the ramp and then over to a boulder about 20 feet from the edge of the forest and crouched behind it. He peered over the top of it toward the forest, waiting for the person to emerge. The person, most likely mutant, was getting closer and Logan could make out the outline of their body against the surrounding trees. He got ready to strike. They were getting closer...and closer...Finally a woman with short white hair stepped out of the forest and Logan relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief and stood up.
"Oh, Ororo, it's you," Logan said, his claws retracting back into his hands.
"Of course it's me. Who were you expecting?" Ororo asked, walking over to him.
"I don't know..." Logan remembered what she'd been doing. "Any sign of Scott?"
"No," she responded, concern in her voice. "Logan, I'm really starting to get worried."
"Don't worry. It's Scott. I'm sure he's fine. Why wouldn't he be? He had to've found Jean."
"Well, yeah, but that's what's weird," Ororo said. "If Scott did find Jean, why would he have went off somewhere and left her unless something happened?"
Logan knew this was true but didn't want to say so. He looked at Ororo, who was staring out at the lake, despair creasing her face.
"Don't worry," he put a hand on her shoulder. "We'll find him."
She looked at him and he gave her an encouraging sort of half-smile and she nodded slightly.
"Let's keep looking," Logan said, taking his hand off her shoulder and taking a few steps forward past her down the beach. "I'm sure he's around here."
"Okay. We'll meet back up here in half an hour," Ororo said, and headed down the beach in the opposite direction past the jet toward the ruins of the building from the battle that had killed Jean in the first place. Logan watched her go for a few seconds before turning back with a heavy sigh. Despite his words to Ororo, he didn't hold much hope in finding Scott at all, dead or alive.
Half an hour later they met back up at the jet.
"Anything?" Ororo asked, walking towards him. She desperate for some good news.
"I found his motorcycle back by the road," Logan said, motioning back toward the road, "but no Scott."
Ororo let out an exasperated sigh. She was so furious with herself, though she didn't really even know why. Why didn't I find him? I should've found him! I know he's around here. He just has to be... she thought to herself. She felt that same sadness creeping back into her, but she didn't bother to stop it this time.
"I'm guessing that you didn't find him either," Logan said. It wasn't a question. He knew it was true already or Ororo wouldn't look so sad and frustrated.
Ororo just shook her head no. Logan didn't say anything else. He knew that Ororo had just been trying to be strong after Jean died to make everyone feel better themselves. She had eventually recovered enough that she was more her normal self. Now that Scott had disappeared Ororo would be twice as worse. She knew that it would only be a matter of time till Magneto or someone else was back with another battle for them and she was trying to keep the X-team together because if they fell apart they would have no chance at all at survival unless they surrendered.
"Ororo...?" Logan asked hesitantly, but she did not respond. She was not listening to him.
Why? Why Scott? she was thinking silently to herself, letting the crushing sadness surround her. First Jean...and now Scott? And just because we found Jean doesn't mean she's the Jean we remember. She could be completely changed. And Jean and Scott are only the beginning. So who's next? Who's next...? She felt tears stinging her eyes and a single tear fell down her face.
She stood there for several moments until she finally became aware of Logan watching her. She quickly wiped the tear off her face and looked over at him.
"We better get back," Ororo said, and turned and walked up the ramp and into the jet. Logan followed her. When he was at the top of the ramp he turned his head for one last look of the beach before letting the ramp retract and the door slide shut behind him.
R&R please!
