AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS
CIRCLE FIVE, ANGER: IRATENESS OR OASIS?
Jets whished out streams of air, puffing and buffeting against Scott's face, as the man slowly came to. His eyes blinked absently a couple of times, then resumed firing their regular red runs against the ruby quartz lenses positioned only an inch away.
You're awake again, Scott, said the ethereal Virgilistic voice of Nathan Christopher Summers, Cyclops's son and his spirit guide throughout this entire afterlife journey. That's good. I don't think they were expecting you to be back from oblivion this soon. You can get your thoughts together before it all starts up now.
What's going to start up? In the back of his mind, the man thought about how this was the hump Circle, how after this it was all going to be downhill from here.
Hopefully.
(Or actually, "Hope-less-ly" was the more desired kind of future for Scott, as he wished not to deal with anyone of the name-or anyone acting like her, of late…)
I can hear you in there, Dad…I can feel the wheels turning within your brain, wondering who it's going to be this time. You don't have to worry about any happenin' Hopes or joltin' Jeans here…
At this, Scott managed a deep breath of relief.
…there's just yet another redhead who's kind of been itching to get at you. In any case, you'll see her soon enough. Keep in mind that this part of your Infernal trip represents arguably the worst of the deadly sins which apply to the Circles: it's Anger, Dad. Something which runs pretty strongly within the Summers clan.
I mean, believe me: I've known my way around indignation too. And Mom, well…it was rage that had killed her, initially. All that time involving the demons way back when…her hunger for revenge, which she took out on so many people (many of whom deserved it, but still)…all that rage, it destroyed only herself in the end, and none of the people or other entities she targeted.
Ma knows all about that anger. Heh, I guess it's apropos, sort of given her name: You just can't spell "Madelyne" without "Mad," I suppose.
But she's certainly not "Mad" as in "Crazy," Dad. She's been dealing with a lot down here as well, particularly from the damage she caused in her own times of Anger. Mom's just as much in the trenches as you are.
Anyway…she wants to see you again, Scott. I want us all to reunite in the end, and I know the both of you feel the same way. In doing time down here, she made something nice, and she told me to give it to you. So here.
Although the form of Cable was basically holographic, what he was carrying was very tangible, and as Scott looked at the small booklet Nathan Christopher gave over, placed close to the man's face as he was still situated inside of some small, space-age pod, a few tears began to well up in his eyes.
It was a brochure for Reindeer Falls, a small resort in Alaska—the place where he and Maddy had their first date. Scott looked dorky but dapper in his dark shirt and blue tie; Madelyne might have appeared a bit too poofy in her puffy yellow dress…but that evening was the greatest fantasy the man had ever lived in his long, long existence. Nothing he and Jean ever did came anywhere close to matching it. To say nothing about anyone else with whom Mister Summers had ever had a bond with.
The pamphlet alternated in shades of tan, brown, and white, to reflect the hues of a reindeer's fur. On the very front, though, in the depiction of the sky above the lodge, a circle was drawn near the top that was bordered and shaded in red. The proverbial "Rudolph's Nose" of the Reindeer.
Inside the circle, written vividly in green: BE MINE.
Scott melted at this, a rivulet of tears escaping from both of his ruby lenses. He heard a sound from about twenty feet from his pod, and hastily placed the de facto valentine inside the navy-blue-and-gold-trim outfit he seemed to still have on in this Circle.
[KSSSHHHNNNNNN]
Just as he finished fitting the paper pleasure within his accoutrements, the shielding of his pod lifted open and the man beheld the one responsible for his placement within it.
"So you've finally come to…Scott."
The reddish triangles along the outer contours of her round face gave her away all too easily.
"…Rachel. It's good to see you again."
The scarlet-follicled spacefarer stared at Scott for a good several seconds, then looked down and nodded slightly. "Yeah…it's nice." She was all decked out in her tough red-and-yellow jacketsuit, the one which was most familiar to readers on the other side of the narrative's wall nowadays. One of her hands was curling up into a fist…but it was shaking too much for it to be taken as a threat.
Scott took a deliberate, careful breath before speaking again. "Look. I know where this is. I mean, first of all I know it's one of the Starjammer ships and all…but what I mean is, I know where I am, in the larger picture of things, and what I'm supposed to be doing here.
"All I have to say is…I don't want to fight. In any way imaginable. I know I caused you a limitless amount of hurt, with what I did regarding Jean so long ago. I am doing all I can now to set things right.
[TSSSHHHHHH]
"Rachel…if I have to go down on my knees to say it, I am endlessly sorry fo-uggh…"
Cyke tripped as he tried to take a step outside of the pod, which he just propped open a little more to let himself out most awkwardly. From all the years he had spent on Earth, in the latest periods of his life, and then especially from all the time he had spent in his own personal Limbo alone in Anchorage, the man had indeed been too anchored on solid ground to appreciate what it was like to be out in the void once again…it took him time to regain his space legs.
As he was doing so, Rachel: "I can't…I cannot begin to try to verbalize how much hurt you have caused m…"
"OH, SO BIG BROTHER'S FINALLY GONE AND AWAKENED, HAS HE?!"
A quick shot of a plasma blast spanged against a locker from the far doorway to the chamber.
Thus before Miss Grey could articulate a collected response, she was interrupted, in more ways than one, by her most uncouth uncle.
"Alex," she said, turning to the blazing blond bursting in, "let me talk to him. You can't…"
"God DAMN you, Scott," spat the younger Summers brother, as he ignored Rachel and shook a charging, clenched hand at his elder sibling. "You've really managed to WRECK every relation you've come into contact with. You messed with Madelyne to no end with your runaround escapades in the Eighties—which I've NEVER forgiven you for, ESPECIALLY because you KNOW you could have done FAR, FAR more for her…and then…"
"I DID ALL I COULD, AFTER…" Scott tried to mount a counterattack of a response, to meet his brother's assault…but he knew he was too guilty of the offense alleged him to be able to fight back effectively.
"You deserve all the pain and agony you're going through, Scott." Alex took a step towards his sibling, and the raucous, round bands of yellow energy intensified within him.
"You want to go through some CIRCLES in the afterlife…here: with my concentrically concentrated plasmic signature, I can send some circles to go through YOU…"
"That's ENOUGH, Alex!"
And the younger Summers brother indeed relented, once he witnessed the enflamed Phoenix emblem appear over Rachel's left eye.
"You've made your point. Now leave me, with your brother, to…drive it home."
Alex looked at his alternate-reality niece with simmering bitterness. Then he backed off. "Fine. But if there's anything left of him when you're through…I get dibs."
Rachel said nothing as she watched the Uncanny and later Avenging Havok haul his sorehead ass through the doorway he barreled through a moment ago. She then trained her eyes on Scott again.
"Scott," she started, squeezing her eyes shut tight, "I'm…I'm not going to give in to it. I'm not going to blow up at you…get all fierce and fiery like your brother did just now."
Cyclops just looked at the redoubtable redhead and nodded.
"I'm still pretty livid with you, though; can't deny that. I mean…why, Scott?
"Why did you hurt Jean, like you did? Why, too, with Madelyne…why do you hurt people, the way you do?
"I just can't get my hands around any kind of palpable, acceptable reason that you resort to such, stratagems as those. The great leader on the field that you are…and yet, to make such terrible decisions in other…arenas…"
Scott measured Rachel as the other fixed a lingering, accusatory glare upon him, her fists still shaking, more out of frustration than fury. He considered at length what he was going to say, and then he spoke. "Rachel; you're totally right. Of all the people to confront me here, in this place, and beyond the women with whom I had the actual relationships…I am completely without surprise that it would be you. I know that of everyone, you were the one who had expressed the greatest outcry when I hurt Jean, back a few years after the millennium. You were the most outspoken, with the most outrage.
"And you have always, always been one vigintillion percent correct about it. I was a complete ingrate, an imbecile who never knew the fabulous, magical boon that he had in the love of a magnificent woman, until he let it slip from his grasp. And for it to have happened to me twice!...it boggles the mind how much of a fucking idiot I was in my life."
"You need to understand, oh fearless leader, that you can't just hurt these ladies and just move on…there's gotta be some reckoning at some point."
"I've basically learned that lesson at least four times now, Rachel. Believe me. And after this, I've got another four to go.
"Believe me, when I get to where I'm going…I will take all the lumps that're coming to me. I will get on my knees and serve her till the end of time and beyond. For what I did to my wife…I will let her do whatever she wants to me, whatever punishment she wishes to visit upon me, for all time.
"And I know I got it coming to me…indeed, it is long overdue for the woman of my dreams to kick my optic ass."
Even though this was the place of Anger, Rachel let slip a small snicker at Scott's words. There was always that charm about this man who was her father, at least in some reality, and the lover of so many unbelievably earthshattering women.
"You know…and I'm trying, Rachel…it's still Rachel Grey as of now, isn't it?"
"Yeah…well, actually, I was so mad at you that I was thinking of cleaving to my last name to the point of even calling myself 'Ray Grey'…but then it's like, I've gone and reduced myself to fucking…Pig Latin or something…"
Scott smiled; shared a smile with his alternate-life-but-aligned-afterlife daughter. Maybe this steppe in Hell, as deep as it was, was some kind of weird oasis…even though it was arguably the deadliest of sins. The eye of the hurricane, perhaps?
"As I was saying a second ago, I'm trying, really hard now, down here…I'm doing all I can, making sacrifices of time and suffering, through so many trials, trying to make it up, to make it all right. The ones who I'm fighting for here…they love me, and they're pulling for me all the way. And I know I'm going to do them proud, and get there, and everything's going to be alright."
Rachel nodded. "But you CAN'T make any more mistakes, Scott. I won't let you. You'll have to answer to ME."
"I hear you; and the second I were to stray, I would come right up here, to answer to you. I swear on that. I will not abide anyone in my family—anyone at all—being hurt on account of what I do, ever again."
The daughter of another universe's Phoenix allowed herself again to grin in this miserable Circle. "Da…I mean, Scott…I'm sure that, when you get there…when you reach your wife finally, it's going to be wonderful."
"I think so."
"I mean…it'll be a real release. I'm sure your universe's Jean will receive you with the warmest of embraces, and things will go back to normal, once you've done all your time down here."
Scott just returned the statement with an empty look for a second; then he straightened himself up. "Umm…yes. It's going to be great. I plan to make my wife very happy…and I will give her all of my time and love, the rest of eternity."
At least the What of it was true, if not the Who that Rachel expected.
"Well…I don't want to keep you, then. You really have to be on your way."
"Thanks, Rachel."
And then the younger Phoenix got up and threw in arm in the direction of the doorway through which she and Alex had alighted, indicating that that was the direction in which Scott should be headed next. The man started along when he was suddenly clotheslined.
By a hug from the girl. The latter-day Marvel Girl held her father tightly, sobbed angry tears as she hammered on the sides of his arms lightly with loosely balled fists. "I'm still so fucking P.O.'d at you, Dad…"
Then she held him from a foot away. "But I still love you."
"And I love you, my daughter."
Cyclops and this later Phoenix looked into one another's kindred eyes for a beat longer, then embraced. Even the middle of Hell couldn't distort bonds of love that were that strong.
She guided her papa through to a teleporter which was supposed to take him to the next Circle.
Scott turned as he remembered something.
"Oh, Rachel…"
"Yes?"
"You see your mom anytime soon…tell her she needs to cut down on the dwarf and giant stars. She's been a wonderful lady…and she looks great…it's just that, well, I've heard those things can be bad to take down, long term."
"I'll tell her. I think those stars all go to her ass after a fashion, anyway."
Another beat.
"Hey Dad…what in this Hell's a 'vigintillion,' anyway?"
"It's ten to the sixty-third power. …I, uhh…spent a lot of time online…in my own personal First Circle. Looked up a lot of things. Useless ones for the most part, but…you know how it is up there."
Rachel sniffed a small laugh, then another as she thought about her mother, who was the Alien Clone Phoenix of another reality, and her father. Perhaps, if she were not to take the name Summers again…she would call herself Rachel S Grey, with the "S" an intriguing Scottish/Irish thing, used by some notable individuals such as Harry S Truman, the letter not necessarily connoting any one name but many, or none at all. Here it could be "Summers," but it could also be "Super" or "Spacey" or who knew. She had all the time in eternity to think about it.
Scott collected his thoughts as he started for the teleporter. He knew that lying to her alternate daughter wasn't the more straight-laced thing to do, and hopefully he wouldn't be penalized for it somehow…he just figured that since he was in Anger, he didn't want to rock any boats, or Starjammer ships for that matter, regarding who exactly the fair maiden was at the end he was going to rescue—or really, who was going to rescue him, given that Madelyne had done more than her fair share of helping with everything from scrapple platters to soothing pamphlets.
The man mused some more on all of this just as he was about to step into the matter transporting unit, and just as his brother Alex stepped once again into the chamber to raise his hands, charge up his own personal "circles" once more, and blast Scott straight through the far wall of the ship and abruptly into the bleak reaches of outer space.
TO BE CONTINUED