Thanks to Melissa hearts fiction and hippiechick2112 for reviewing! The redhead comment was indeed meant as a call forward. I couldn't resist ;)

Chris Summers knew he had never been a perfect parent. He had lost his temper with the boys sometimes, raised his voice… and, yes, what he did to Scott. He hadn't spent much time with them. In the 1940s, a man worried about other things—and Chris had. His family was housed, fed, and clothed. And the boys were so young, they were really Katherine's domain.

He had been excited to be a daddy. He thought once the boys were old enough for school, he would have more to do with them. But things came up. Life interfered. Then…

But he loved the boys. He had the better part of five years with Scott and, failings aside, loved him.

The first time he looked at that tiny, squishy-faced half-octopus thing that had slid out of his wife, it was absolute love.

He came to appreciate tiny footsteps waking him up on his day off, remembered swinging that tiny body into bed for a cuddle and—if he was lucky—a couple more hours of sleep.

Scott had been an anxious child, but loving. And, yes, he had favored his mother, but he still loved his dad. He used to love his dad.

That was not the child Chris looked at now.

He stood with his head down, unable to even look at Chris. There was no hate in him, no fight, no overwhelming emotion even. He just looked beaten.

Chris reached out to him. He saw that Scott was uncomfortable. To Chris, at least in part, Scott was still the toddler who spent thunderstorms clinging to his hand. So he reached out, because it had been effective at one time, because Katherine had always pushed him to…

Scott flinched his head lower and his shoulders up.

Chris dropped his hand. "Go," he said. "Go inside, Scott. I'll be here when you're ready to talk."

Scott looked toward the mansion and Chris followed his gaze. Ororo had just reached the door; she leaned his bike against the wall and disappeared inside.

Scott shook his head. "Let's get it over with."

Every second around this boy broke his heart a little more. Chris knew there was more to Scott's history, something both Alex and Charles alluded to but never stated. He didn't know what it was, but it couldn't all be his fault. Could it?

Scott didn't want to be around him. Chris was torn. He still wanted to hug the boy and make this go away, and he wanted to excuse Scott from this sense of obligation that caused him such trouble. Seeing no way to do either, he stepped back toward the ship.

"Would you like to come in?"

Scott jammed his hands in his pockets, ducked his head down to his shoulders, and slipped through the small doorway.

In the small space, Chris generally chose to sit in the pilot's chair. (Rather optimistically named with only a pilot and copilot's seat, but a pilot was a pilot regardless of ship size.) Scott had chosen to take a seat on the floor, so Chris sat opposite him.

Scott hugged his knees and looked away from Chris. He glanced over, then away again.

Seeing that he would not start this conversation, Chris asked, "How was the library?"

"It was nice. How's Alex?"

"He's doing well."

Scott looked at Chris and scowled. "So we're just going to sit here and bullshit each other?" he asked.

"If you want the truth, Scott, your brother's still figuring out where he fits in the world and that's not an easy thing to do. He's struggling, but he'll get there."

There was something innately wrong about a big brother being younger than his little brother, and it wasn't the semantic issue. A big brother was not only a protector but a guide and Scott had not yet become an adult. He didn't need to think yet about careers, didn't need to worry about jobs and bosses. He couldn't be the guide Alex needed.

"And you?" Scott asked. "Where do you fit in this world?"

"I didn't think I fit here at all anymore," Chris said.

"Didn't."

"I never intended to leave you behind. To abandon you. I… I thought you were dead," he explained, the words catching in his throat. Something else Scott seemed not to understand, the pain of it, and Chris didn't want to revisit that horrible day.

He didn't see a choice.

"I thought I watched you die. The last thing I saw was the parachute catching fire. You think I never came back because I didn't care. I never came back because I couldn't bear it. To think of you like that, to visit the graves—if there were graves."

For years, Chris woke up in a panic. He was prone to nightmares—probably where Scott got it—but he didn't scream himself awake. Just woke, pained and wary. Night after night, he watched his sons die, and the pain and stress were clear even speaking about it now. The fact that he mourned for nothing, for two living children, did not change the fact that he mourned.

"You should have come back," Scott insisted, determined but soft. He needed to believe it. His voice, too, was ragged. For Chris? For Alex? Or for himself?

"Yes."

It was true. If Chris knew they were alive, nothing would have kept him from his children. Nothing. But believing they were gone made thinking of going back pointless. It was farming salt flats.

"Do you hate me, Scott?"

The first thing Scott began to say, the shape his mouth formed but didn't follow through on, was yes. Then he paused. He thought about it. Chris watched him closely. Charles had claimed that Scott was a thoughtful boy with a good heart—too good to hate his father, surely. Unless his father deserved it.

"No," Scott admitted, his shoulders sagging. "No, I don't, but I don't like you being here. You're going to leave us again. There's no other way this works out, right? You go back to your life, to your ship?"

Chris considered how to answer that. Yes, he planned to go back—or he could stay, but what would he stay to? He had his son, but no job, no true home. He was legally dead.

He wanted Alex to come with him when he went. The only reason he didn't want the same for Scott was that Scott had so much going for him here. He had a family, a better father.

"Did you love us?" Scott asked, leaving his previous question unanswered.

"More than you can imagine."

"Me, too?"

"I didn't know it was possible to be as happy as I was the day you were born. Your mother was asleep. I held you in the hospital and I wept." It wasn't a word Chris usually used, 'wept'. But it hadn't been crying, had it, not really. "You were so beautiful. You were ugly, all newborns are, but you were mine. I loved you from that moment."

"But it wasn't me, was it? That's the difference. It wasn't me as a person, just a baby."

Chris regarded him evenly for a moment. Scott was a challenge, he saw that. He wasn't an outright defiant kid—Chris knew Alex had that wildness in him—but earning his trust would be a steep uphill battle.

"You know your mom and I… you know you were conceived before we married?"

Scott nodded.

"Do you know what people think about women who become pregnant before they're married?"

Again he nodded, his jaw tight. Good. Chris was inclined to agree when he realized what people thought about Katherine. He knew they had.

"I came home from leave with a new, very pregnant wife. People talked about her. Until you were born, there were rumors." It was worse than that. Katherine hadn't let on and it was only looking back that Chris realized how lonely she had been and how badly she had needed a friend. Seventeen years old, heavily pregnant and newly married, in a new place where sometimes the sun didn't set all day long… how isolated she had been! "Babies' eyes change for the first year. You were different. From the day you were born, you had my eyes."

Scott's fingers went to his glasses, but it didn't feel like an argument. Chris had to admit, he had a point. He assumed his eyes were still under there, but he had never been able to shoot lasers from them.

"We weren't a family until you. I loved you for what you were at first. Later, when you started to be a person, I loved you for who you were."

Chris watched the way Scott's forehead wrinkled, how he turned just slightly away. He had his arms around his knees but his hold had loosened. He wasn't at ease, but he was much less defensive now.

Slowly, he said, "You hit me."

It stung, but Chris had to tell the truth. "Yes."

"I was six."

"Five," Chris corrected. "You were five."

Scott nodded.

He had been almost six. So very nearly six. That wouldn't have made this less horrible.

Chris expected any manner of insults. He would not have been surprised then if Scott got up and walked out of the ship, if hearing Chris admit to it was enough to end what remained of their relationship. Already he braced himself for the pain it would cause. He deserved it, he had no question of that.

Puzzled and tense, Scott asked, "Was it… did I deserve it?"

Rejection would have been easier. That was like a slap in the face. No, Chris had been slapped in the face, this was worse. It made him feel sick. He realized that this was what Charles was so angry with him for.

He reached out to Scott. Scott flinched again.

"Scott—how can you—no. No. I was wrong. I use the drinking for an excuse, but it isn't. It was me. I hurt you."

"But there must have been a reason," Scott insisted. Curious, because he had shown no loyalty to Chris before. Why did he try so hard to justify this? "You wouldn't've, didn't do it just for fun."

For fun? How broken was this boy's mind?

No, this was not all on Chris. Some of it, yes, but he had never hurt a child because it was fun. He never taught Scott that such a person existed.

"How much do you remember?" Chris asked.

"All of it."

"You were so young."

"I remember how you held my shirt, right here." He touched the back of his collar. "You kept telling me to shut up. Alex hiding his face. Hiding behind the couch. And—after—when, um, Katherine put me in the bath and how the hot water hurt. You don't do that to someone for no reason. I said some mean things, but…"

"Scott, no. Nothing like that. It wasn't your fault. I was unhappy and drunk. I lost control. Fathers aren't supposed to hurt their children and if they do, the child is never to blame."

Scott nodded. "Okay." He didn't sound convinced, just out of arguments.

"You call her Katherine? Is that how you think of her?"

He shrugged. "I still love her, but I have a mom. And a dad. That doesn't change just because you came back. I think she would like Mom. Ruth."

Chris accepted that. He appreciated that his son was loyal and that someone had loved him. Cared for him.

"Where did you grow up?"

"Hell."

"I think I've earned an honest word from you."

"Omaha," Scott muttered. "Hell."

Chris did not read too far into that, aware that Alex, too, had been keen to get out of Omaha. He had not been terribly different as a young man, a fire under his feet getting him out of Akron.

"You do okay in school?"

Scott nodded.

"Is there any chance of this, Scott? I'm not trying to replace… your dad." It wasn't easy to say. Chris still thought of Scott as his son. Could he be Chris's son and have a different dad? "I'd still like to know you and be a part of your life."

"While you're here."

"While I'm here," he admitted.

Scott considered it. Two weeks ago, he wouldn't have done even that.

"I don't know how to do that," he said, more apology than rejection.

"We could try."

Slowly, he nodded. "Okay."