Scott Summers (slymshady) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2017-06-24 22:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, emma frost (616), scott summers / cyclops (616) |
Who Scott Summers & Emma Frost
What: A pickup from the base
When Monday June 19 2017
Where Outside the Army base
Status / Ratings
Scott Summers was many things. Frequently criticized for rigidity and a meticulousness bordering on obsession. It was how he anchored himself through the storm of estrangements, extinction, and evolutions that populated his existence. But even as genetics looked to the future, Scott only knew how to process new phases of his life by looking backwards. That was why he patterned his terrorism after Magneto, continually returned to school-building, and how he wound up chasing his childhood love in his adolescent home with the mentor he still struggled to see as an adult.
But Emma Frost represented a different side of Cyclops. Adult, intellectual, and evolving, she had had infiltrated the team, his family, and his heart, and like a Cuckoo, pushed him from the nest. It was impossible to blame her for his fall, but they had faced extinction and come out mutually tarnished for it.
Wherever they stood as lovers, partners, friends, or soldiers, you didn't abandon someone through that.
Scott was there to pick her up, as anticipated, half an hour before they would let her out. He had sat in the used blue pickup truck with the windows cracked and Hank Williams drawling with a crackling background over the radio. It wasn't their normal. It hadn't even really been normal for him. But it made sense for a Texas summer.
It had been the longest forty-eight hours of Emma’s life and as soon as the quarantine had ended, she’d smiled politely at the nice military men, thanked them for their service, and bolted from the building without casting a glance backward. The combination of having nothing to do but catch up on movies and television, combined with the fact that she’d been taken to task for what was quite possibly the worst thing she'd ever done had taken a toll and left Emma desperate for fresh air.
She hadn't stopped walking until she was outside of the facility, past a chain link fence, and then she'd paused, taking a second to breathe and take in her surroundings. The sun was very nearly setting and the sky was a burnt orange while the air was thick and humid. Emma had a large boho bag hanging from the crook of her arm that held all the possessions she owned in this world and an unlit cigarette, her last of the pack Rogue had fetched her, was poised between two fingers of her free hand. She brought it to her mouth with the intention to light it before stopping as she felt a familiar mental presence.
Her eyes swept the street before settling on a blue pickup truck. “Oh hell,” Emma murmured quietly to herself, taking the cigarette back and putting it in her bag. She was unprepared to face Scott and, at the same time, entirely relieved to feel his mind active in the small distance between them. It meant that there was no longer any room to doubt the fact that he was alive and that the conversation they'd shared Saturday night hadn't been something she'd just made up to keep herself grounded.
But she hesitated in her spot, not entirely prepared to see him, in a way that was rather unlike herself. There were a lot of things that Emma was unsure of these days and she felt untethered to what was normally a strong sense of confidence. The last time she'd seen a Scott Summers unprepared, she'd started crying and that wouldn't do here. Emma’s jaw set as she told herself to keep it together. And then, not wanting to look like some shy lost lamb, Emma took a deep breath before heading toward the truck. Her heels clicked on concrete and didn't stop until she was at the passenger side window. In spite of her best intentions at seeming strong, there was something soft in her eyes as she looked him over. “A pickup truck?” she asked, trying to sound appropriately appalled, but coming off slightly breathless.
"You can ride in the back if you like" He offered a smile and gestured to the back of the truck. It didn't reach beyond the opaque red glasses. He was too busy studying her the same way he could feel her studying him.
He didn't wait for her response to pop the lock on the door. He held no illusions that Emma would ride in the bed of the truck, just like he had no belief she actually wanted to have a conversation about a truck. But even with their experiences with wacky timelines, Scott knew this was a lot to take in, and that sometimes took a while. "I was working at a ranch for a while. It fit in. Now it's just useful to haul the inevitable construction gear rebuilding the mansion quarterly requires."
He stretched over to pull the latch to open the door for her.
Emma only wrinkled her nose at Scott’s suggestion to ride in the back. The back of a truck was for moving furniture or wild animals. She happened to be neither. She looked Scott over before getting into the seat, an unusual straightness to her movements that telegraphed her discomfort. She sat, back straight, shutting the door, and stared straight ahead at the blazing sky. She steeled herself before turning to look at him. “You know, I can handle being labeled as a genocidal maniac, but I don't think my reputation will ever recover from a ride in a truck,” she said dryly, smiling at him. Emma wasn't one for a soft touch, preferring that the band-aid be ripped off all at once. The thought of exchanging pleasantries while heaviness hung over them seemed distasteful.
But she needed some humor to lighten to blow. “Especially,” she added, smirking, “without a pair of daisy dukes to wear.”
As much of a skill as he had for anticipating hypothetical situations, he wasn't sure he could exactly imagine Emma Frost in daisy dukes.
--Although actually. Scott shook his head, not exactly losing the image, but moving on from it. "You look good, Emma." He offered. Even if he could feel her tension as readily as see it. Emma held herself at a distance, many of the X-men did. But Scott was experienced enough to see the cracks in her veneer. And he had perceptively noticed how she she had unloaded on him the other night.
"Feeling any more settled?" He turned down the radio, and before she responded, gave a reflexive reminder before kicking the car to life. "Seat belt."
“I always look good,” Emma said in the sort of quick and dismissive and fond way she might have if they’d been at home together and he’d happened to compliment her for no reason. Emma loved praise, but she wasn’t as used to it as she once had been.
“What do you think?” she asked, scoffing quietly as he told her to put on her seatbelt. It was just so Scott a thing to do, even knowing that she could turn into a diamond at a second’s notice, he wanted to follow the rules. It was pathetic and it made her turn her face away to blink rapidly in the direction of her window. “God,” she murmured to herself.
Scott was dead. And he wasn’t. Emma was sitting next to Schrodinger’s Cyclops. Because even if he was here in the flesh, she might go home at any time and return to a world where he wasn’t. It put things in a sharp perspective. Before he started to drive, she turned back to him and leaned in. Not letting the petty little voices in her head that demanded she constantly be aloof and high handed take over, she embraced him, hiding her face in his shoulder. It took all the self control she had to not cry and the urge to go diamond was strong enough that for a brief moment he might have felt her skin go cold and hard.
She sighed audibly before letting go, sitting back, and putting on her belt. “You’re pathetic,” she said, an old fondness to her tone. “Seatbelts. Honestly.” She rolled her eyes and looked out her window again.
"I'm worried for my windshield." He realized she likely didn't much need a seatbelt for safety reasons--hell, she'd survived starship crashes with fewer safety equipment--but it had always been Scott's responsibility as leader to remember that sort of detail. It was hard to not feel the crushing weight of duty even for those he knew could protect themselves.
The hug was a form of raw and vulnerable affection that wasn't Emma's typical. But a great deal had happened since they had last seen one another and the feelings between them had always run deeper than either publically left on. Emma had watched him die, but Scott had watched himself die piece by piece in the years leading up to that. Even as strange as things had become between the ex lovers turned co-conspirators turned comrades alone together, she'd understood him enough to give his death meaning and legacy, and he understood her desperate fight for survival. His arm drew around her as she buried herself against him, grip tightening as he felt her harden under his grip. When she pulled away he kept his right hand on the seat between them.
"So where do you want me to take you?"
It took Emma a moment to regain her composure, the world going blurry around the edges. As much ugliness as they’d thrown at one another after the Phoenix Five, and as much as their romance had cooled, Emma had never really stopped loving Scott. Beyond that, once their relationship had gone serious, he’d turned from lover to real, genuine friend in a way that Emma wasn’t with most others. After he’d died, she’d felt lost, like he’d been the bond holding her to the people she’d (possibly mistakenly) considered family.
It was a rare thing for her to let her facade slip so much and it almost felt embarrassing that she was crying in front of her ex in a pickup truck in the middle of Nowhere, Texas. Emma was pretty certain that this was the sort of scenario people wrote country songs about. “I hear,” she swallowed and turned to see his hand there between them, “the airport’s to the west.” She let her left hand rest beside his, near but not touching.
He let out a long-suffering sigh, though any real surprise was put upon. He knew the situation Emma was walking into because he had been there himself a year ago. The X-men were a group that held grudges, even as they were at the same time forgiving of megalomaniacal tendencies. But you could never really tell which they'd go with first.
Scott had arrived still reeling from the aftermaths of killing the X-men's dream, in a world where there was no guarantee even their survival was assured, though at least he'd survival gear the group had needed. It was probably more daunting for her to confront a fully equipped team. But since when did Emma Frost let that deter her?
"You know," He offered. "I don't think it has any flights after six"
“Well isn’t it convenient, then, that I can make them have flights after six?” Emma asked, lips curling into a little smirk. She’d never been one to under utilize her powers, skilled enough to not typically get caught abusing them when it counted. Hijacking some pilot’s brain for a few hours didn’t even register as something she might not ought to do.
Emma was pushing, fishing for a response that wasn’t him just trying to play coy to keep her from running away, and he could probably tell. They knew each other well enough to see through each other’s bullshit. That was half of what made their relationship work so well. And also partially how each could push the other’s buttons fairly easy. Eyes narrowing, she read his mind and heard him think some trite line about second chances. She scoffed.
"Jesus Christ, Emma. You've been here two days, you can't hijack a plane."
He knew that she could--and had in the past. However, even since becoming terrorists-in-arms, they hadn't had to resort to that, if perhaps only because the X-men had international caches of resources including stealth jets. But Scott liked to believe it was more or less some type of morality.
He felt her enter his mind and browse, and while he was extraordinarily quick to shut that sort of thing down, Emma had always been the sort to test limits. And Scott was usually the sort who took it. He watched her there, not really needing to ask what sort of information she was seeking.
"You know, I'd like you to stay." He supplemented aloud.
Emma made a face because they both knew that she could and would hijack a plane if the urge to go shopping overcame her, let alone to get away from very large and overwhelming problems, but she didn’t argue. Her jaw went tight when he said what she’d wanted to hear and she looked out the window for a moment to think. She’d longed for the opportunity to hear him to say such things after he’d died. But it was easier to fantasize about than to actually be here. Easier to pretend that they could forgive and forget and move on from everything that had happened. From what she’d done.
“It’s-” she began and stopped suddenly, exhaling. “You want me to… what, exactly? Come home and teach at a school named after a girl who was murdered by Sentinels? Pretend I didn’t just sic a few on our enemies? Even I think that’s a little gauche, Scott.”
Despite the broad and unspoken agreement to not read other people's canons, Scott had been unable to resist with most--particularly his own, but when that stopped being available, "I taught at the New Charles Xavier School a year after murdering him, Emma. I think we're in a post-irony world."
"You're defined by more than just using Sentinels against the Inhumans--which" he paused, dropping any commentary on that. Of all Scott had been keeping up with, that was news he had only picked up secondhand. Not surprising, in a horrifying way, but as alarming as anything he'd done. "You know, the name was your idea."
“Of course it was,” Emma murmured thoughtfully. She sounded tired and it might have shown a little on her face. She didn’t think there were many other mutants alive who remembered Ellie, but Emma hadn’t ever forgotten the girl who’d warned of the Sentinels a few moments before Genosha’s end. Years after the traumatic event, Emma still woke from dreams about her.
Emma sighed and looked Scott over, considering her options. She might have been able to push him into taking her to the airport, but she doubted he’d do so without some sort of argument that she didn’t think she’d have the energy for. But she still wasn’t convinced that staying was the right thing. “We should just go,” she said, because she wasn’t one to give up easily. “Retire on some beach. See the world, maybe. Take a well-deserved break.” Before he could respond, she continued, “But I get the feeling you’re just going to lecture at me about purpose and responsibility like I’m one of the children.” She shook her head, a wry smile on her face. Emma was an idiot when it came to Scott Summers and though she hadn’t always seen it, she suspected it had always been true. “So spare me and take me to the damn Mansion.”