Three years ago, she came back. It seemed that the being they had fought was just the Phoenix taking Jean's form, he wondered if it even knew it was a copy. It seems that Jean was kept in a stasis from right after the Apocalypse fight until now deep underwater to be found by the Avengers.
Everyone thought that Scott would be overjoyed and run to her with open arms.
Everyone was surprised a few days later when she left alone to search for Logan and Charles.
It was a good thing that the world wasn't in danger for the next little while. Scott taught his every class and attended every X-team meeting and training session but when he wasn't required Scott was a ghost. Everyone else seemed to be wrapped up in their own thing or thought it best to just leave him alone, soon it would pass, they thought.
Wanda saw the pain in his face and knew exactly what it was. Scott Summers was coming apart at the seams and was doing nothing to stop himself from being torn apart . Scott was angry at the world but even angrier at himself. That look was the reason Wanda found herself in some seedy dive bar at ten pm on a Wednesday night. She asked the bartender the man in the corner's poison, bought an entire bottle , and the strolled over, sitting down without him even acknowledging her . They sat in silence , both glancing off lost in thought, until three quarters of the bottle was gone.
" I still hate them, you know," her words broke through the silence and even though he did not look towards her , his clenched jaw seemed to ease up. " My father and brother, I mean. They stuffed me in a cell when I was a child because they couldn't handle me and then wiped my memory when they thought I couldn't handle that. They thought they were helping me but really they didn't stop to think what I really needed was them." He quickly glanced her for a split second as her throat tightened with her words, she fought the urge to run away. "It's a hell of a thing … loving someone so much but not liking them one bit"
With that , her eyes started nervously wandering again and she slipped back into the silence that existed in the booth.
"Love makes fools of us all" he said. It came out rough and uneven, his vocal cords strained from emotion and liquor. "It wasn't that long ago that I thought I had the perfect life. I thought everything was in place and was as it should be."
He swallowed the remnants or his glass and gave a sickened chuckle.
"That was the problem wasn't it . I thought I had every piece of the puzzle but now I see it wasn't my puzzle in the end . It was what was expected. Then it all came crashing down around me. I lost the girl I love, a girl that loved me , and the man who was the only family I knew for the longest time and I was lost... Even though I still had me I was lost without them because it WAS them. My entire sense of self was based on perception and not me. And I didn't even understand it until a month ago."
He poured himself another glass and greedily sucked it back.
" Do you know how it is to get something back only to realize you never really had it in the first place. To realize that you were never really in love, but in love with the idea of it? In love with the idea of being the best you can be , being the golden couple , being in love with an ideal ? To tell another that you love her as she dies in your arms ? And to loose a father because he damned them both? To loose your entire sense of self and then realizing your sense of self was nothing but what you thought was expected ?"
His voice had been steadily raising and her heart was racing with it and almost stopped as his grip exploded the glass in his hand. His hand bled and as it dripped on the table his voice returned to that rough whisper.
"To wake up one morning and realize that all you are is a husk of routine?"
She quickly poured some on the bottle on his wound and stole a bar rag to cover it. She knew what he needed.
"Get your head out of your ass, Summers!" his eye shot up to hers for the first time and his face flashed a little anger. " Seriously, if I had known the leader of the team that beat mine so soundly was deep down an emo kid, I would have offed myself a long time ago"
She grabbed him by the chin and looked him square in the eye, " You are best damn leader of the best damn team in the world, You are a powerful mutant and one smart guy . But most importantly, you are Scott Mother-Effin Summers" She grinned and smacked him in the cheek lightly " And if you don't know who he is then your gonna crawl out of this bottle and damn well find his ass ! "
