Private.

[nola_cyclops]

Samuel Scott's Private E-Journal.
Entry 6.

My name is Samuel Scott. It’s also Scott Summers. And I can’t get Scott Summers off my mind. That isn’t surprising: my life as Scott has always been exhausting and all-consuming. It’s full of loss, and violence, and fear, and grim determination. But it’s also full of purpose, and a set of ideals that I would –and have- killed for, and a community. An identity. That doesn’t even exist anymore.

When you’ve spent your entire life, for right or wrong, fighting for the life and rights of mutants to exist in a country and a world that wants to destroy you, what do you do when you come to awareness in the life of a young man who isn’t a mutant at all? In a world where mutants don’t exist – maybe for real this time?
Everything about my life is in conflict with some idea, or belief, or habit, that I have always held.

What do you do when things are easy? When you are privileged? When you have never died? When people stay dead? When you are confused, and worried, and unable to protect the people you love?

I feel like every minute I’m waiting for concussive force to stream out of my eyes, non-stop and painful. I'm dreading it and craving it. It’s idiotically ironic that I wore rose-colored glasses my whole life, as people I loved, and me, and these dreams of something better, died all around me. An optimistic metaphor on for a life that has no optimism left.

I don’t know how to order my thoughts. Let’s try.

1. Scott’s life.
What is happening there? Has it ceased to exist? Am I still there? What about my people? They’re so vulnerable, and nothing is okay, and we are facing significant threats. Have we been attacked and pulled here? Are we all here, scattered across the world in new lives? Are we all here in New Orleans? Were we chosen for some particular reason? Is everything the same there, except I am here?

Has everything I have ever done as Sam been engineered for me?

My whole life, Scott's life, people have engineered it. The plane crash that ruined my family was engineered. The birth of my son was engineered by an evil geneticist. My first wife, too. My entire skill set as a tactician and leader was engineered by a benevolent despot who I still, still can’t stop feeling guilty about and grieving for and feeling furious about things he has done. He is still the closest thing I ever had to a loving family for a very long time.

I don’t know who I would have been without those things, but it also doesn’t matter: those are the things that have made me who I am. And who I am – who Scott Summers is, right now – is a man who only trusts his people. Who only cares about mutants. And who knows that he’s probably the wrong person to save or protect those people. Who probably should have stayed dead.

And as I remember this life, Scott's life, it’s like it’s happening all over again. All the wounds are fresh. All the darkness – the things that have ripped my soul apart – feel real and close to me. I am not as good as repressing these things as Scott was. I know that’s a good thing, but it hurts. So much.

2. Sam’s life.
Sam’s life hasn’t changed. It has been a good and quiet life. He’s a pilot who has always wanted to be a pilot (a little like young Scott, before everything changed). He’s new to New Orleans and a devoted son to the people who raised him, his mother and his aunt. (Scott barely remembers his mother and misses her dearly). He is an only child. (Now, I miss Alex more than ever – even though I know him here).

He has hobbies and interests and he’s still stiff and awkward and not very good at being a person, but he’s starting to laugh more, enjoy himself more. He’s in love, dizzyingly, perfectly, thrillingly in love.

2b. Oliver
The man I am in love with is Oliver. AKA Pietro Maximoff. AKA Quicksilver. My boyfriend has seen me marry other people. He has married someone else. We knew each other as nemeses, then allies. Not friends, no, but closely aligned. Nearly family sometimes, via The Professor, and Alex and Lorna. Nearly part of a group of friends, via Jean and Wanda. But never friends. We always rubbed each other the wrong way. He was impatient, hot-headed. I was unmovable. I was an asshole, probably. In service of the cause, of my role. But still.

And yet he is Oliver: the artist, the flirt, the man who slid a note under my door on Valentine’s Day. Who drew my initials into the shape of a jet and left the picture on my desk. Who teases me and encourages me. Who looks at me like I’m not an enemy, like I’m not despicable. Who respects me. Who loves me. He really does. This odd couple roommate love that’s completely transformed our lives.

God, it’s so good it’s unreal. I still remember the moment, with shocking clarity, that I looked at him again and saw him as Pietro. And the terror of losing this very good, very precious love. The shock of recognition. Even the pleasure of it: of finally understanding him in a new, essential way.

God, I love him.

I look at him now and see all of those identities together and I love him even more. I don’t understand it, and sometimes I am afraid of it. I am afraid that it is a manipulation, that later this love will be used against us, to devastate us. I am afraid it’s a tactic by a power I don’t understand. And I think I am also afraid that it’s real, and that we will go back to our broken lives as our broken selves, and that we won’t be able to find the grace and hope required to stay together. Because it takes hope to build a relationship back there, where everything is gone and I have nothing left.

If we do go back there, is there any chance we could make it? Maybe if we retired. Maybe if we found some place to live, removed from the fight. Where I could just be a mutant that wasn’t a murderer, terrorist, outlaw, threat. That had been all of those things, yes, but now just wanted to live honestly and humbly with someone he loves. Maybe try again to live quietly in Alaska. Open the doors to old friends with fresh wounds who need a break. I don’t know. I’ve never been able to make that happen before. It doesn’t account for Magneto or the school or whatever threats are coming. It doesn’t account for my end goal back there of cleaning up mutant mess so the X-Men can finally go away.

But I know if I go back that “one last mission” is never one last mission. And could I go back and in good conscience leave Logan and Alex and the others with my insane plan, that they’ve agreed to, that we’re trying to do? I don’t know. I am very afraid of when this holding pattern breaks, because it might break us. And that would break me.

3. Jean.
Jean is here, but she isn’t my Jean. This is probably for the best. She comes from the beginning of our love story (from a very different universe), not from beyond the twisted end of us. She remembers good things about me and us. She isn’t interested in being with me. She’s dating, of all people, Wanda Maximoff. It’s... it would be very funny if it wasn’t happening to us.

It’s been so long since Jean and I belonged together, and I’m not desperately in love with her or missing her. But I can’t erase from my mind how Jean represents so much: so much of who I wanted to be, and what we wanted life to be, is there every time I look at this young, amazing Jean. I thought I would love her my whole life. And I do love her, though not in the way I had expected.

But the Scott who loved her first believed in a lot of things I don’t believe in anymore: that we could make the world better. That we could make a relationship work in all that horror. That the woman I fell in love with the second I saw her would be the person I loved my whole life. That we would have children and build lives in The Professor’s legacy, running the school and the X-Men and everyone would be safe. Even that I could overcome the things Apocalypse did to me and find my way back to a Scott that fought darkness and wasn’t part of it.

But mostly when I look at her I see my wife, and someone I’ve lost in devastating ways, and I now can’t even engage with too closely because I know we’ll lose each other again. It's who we are.

I hope we can find some way to exist together, with our different histories. I am glad that she knows me as someone who never let her down. I wish I could make that true in every universe.

4. Alex.
The relief I feel at knowing Alex is here and safe is immense. The discomfort and sorrow I feel at knowing Alex and I can’t ever catch an easy break as a family is also immense.

I hate knowing that this life has been hard for him, harder than mine. I admire him for rising above his terrible family, but I’m also not surprised: he rose above being a Summers, too. He always saw a better way and chased it wherever he could go. He's a survivor.

And I love that he’s a father here, because I know he’s great at it. I haven’t seen him with his daughter, but I just know there’s so much in Alex that makes a good man and a good father. I’m so proud of him for making something good out of a difficult life. And giving someone the kind of childhood he never got to have. The kind of childhood I could never give my children, which he didn’t hesitate to point out the second he saw me.

Which still hurts, because I know he’s right.

I wish I knew how to take this chance, right now when we’re not about to die all the time, to make our relationship less fraught. I know that no matter what, Alex and I love each other. I just wish I could figure out how to show it. It feels like he trusts me less now we’re here than he does at “home”, as Scott and Alex. I know that’s fair – more than fair. I just need to figure out what to do about it. Which probably means accepting it, doesn’t it? But I’ve never been good at accepting things in any universe.

If this world isn’t an elaborate threat, if we are just here now for some karmic do-over, it would have been perfect if we could have at least been raised together. Still, we’ve built a family bond before. And we have those memories. Maybe we can do it again. Sam is a little more fun than Scott. A little. Maybe that will help.

4b. The rest of Scott’s family.
I can’t help but feel like my absent father – Sam’s absent father – is still my dad, Scott’s dad, Christopher. But he’s probably just some land-locked criminal here. I don’t know. I don’t even know if that’s what I want.

I wouldn’t change my mother for anything, but I still wish she were Scott’s mother, Katherine.

I keep expecting to see Nathan and Rachel. I feel like I’m looking for them out of the corner of my eye. I don’t know why. Well, I do know: because they’re children of the multiverse; if anyone could be here, it’s them. It’s because I hope and wish they could have normal lives, with better parents than I ever was. It’s because Nathan did so much to save me, so recently, because sometimes our bond is so strong we both detest the feelings that come with it. And I miss him. Both of them. And because they both deserve a hundred times more of the little moments of happiness I’ve been able to have here. They deserve it far more than I do. So too do Nate and Hope deserve it.

I keep expecting to see Emma, too. Maybe it’s just because I think she would understand Sam and like him. Because I think she would understand better than anyone else here what I have with Oliver, because sometimes it reminds me of the best parts of me and Emma: when we were completely open with each other. But wherever she is, I hope she’s okay. Ruling whatever her world looks like. And I hope she never has to remember me. I’d wish that on a lot of people, but unfortunately, they’re already here and know me. I still would sort of wish it on Oliver, if I wasn’t so unable to wrench myself away.

5. The X-Men and Earth-616 in general. And life here. Now and in the future.
It bothers me that Logan isn’t here. It bothers me that no threat has revealed itself. It bothers me that Captain America and Bucky Barnes are here. It bothers me that I can’t see the full playing field. It bothers me that we could attacked at any time and we’re still extremely vulnerable. It bothers me that I can’t protect Jean, and Hank, and Alex, and everybody else.

I’m expecting a Sentinel, a spaceship, a mob around every corner. I’m half-waiting every minute for bad news or a body. I’m dreading the threat. I’m dreading defeating it and returning back to our old lives. I’m holding onto my identity as an X-Man when somewhere inside I know that as a team and ideology we’re flawed. The way we were isn't working. But it's all I know. I don’t know what the play is here.

I feel impatient. I feel like I should quit my job and walk through major cities and look for refugees from our world. I feel like I should be starting an underground movement. I feel like I’m neglecting my identity as Cyclops by flying commercial routes and making dinner for my boyfriend and letting crime and threats to the vulnerable continue without my stopping it. I miss my optic blasts. I miss my uniforms. I miss the family I’ve fought with and fought for.

I miss understanding myself. And yet I never understood myself. I miss my place in the world. And yet my place in that world was built on lies and deception and a lot of stubborn pride. I am so tired of burying people. I am so tired of endings. I am anticipating another one. I don't know if I can survive it.

6. So what is the play here, Sam/Scott?
TBD.

Not good enough, Sam/Scott. They need you to have more than that. Think.

TBD.
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Fuck.