Work Text:
06/30/2018
„Hey, mon capitaine, what’s your First Lady doing? If you two are doing mental strategies again, mind to let the rest of us in?”
At first, Scott hardly even paid attention to Remy’s nagging quip on the com. He was a little too busy for neglectable complaints, trying to make sure none of his team was getting themselves killed right now, seeing as the confrontation on the outskirts of the besieged city was every bit as ruthless as expected.
Mystique was sending an unambiguous message to the world and any superhero team hostile to the Brotherhood, mutant or not, this day, by unleashing her full defenses on the X-Men. Someone was definitely deadset on not letting anyone take her newfound position of power away from her again.
For the moment, Scott was grudgingly willing to accept that, ironically enough. Figuring out how the fuck the X-Men should even start to make this disaster that was New York being in their enemies’ hands right, he wasn’t any closer to than when this blue-skinned bitch had first deactivated the energy dome surrounding her new domicile from all sides. Scott wasn’t here to get into this damn place by force. He was here to extract from it what was his, preferably without any collateral damage on his team or accidentally starting World War III.
That it wasn’t his interference, Mystique would have to fend off on this day though, he only realized when he did reluctantly manage for a few seconds to tear his gaze from the coastline where dozens of tanks and heavily armored mutants had stepped outside the Field, to throw missiles made of lead, silver, energy, chitin, poison and other delightful little gifts the way of Scott’s team. Anything that helped these bastards keeping the X-Men from taking even a single step toward the brightly glowing border, on the other side of which, arduously slowly, a certain motorboat with a most precious freight was creeping toward the city limit. An escape route right through the line of fire, with only the far too fragmentary protection of Ororo’s and Katja’s storms and flashes from afar, supposed to stop no less than three similarly heavily armed vessels from heading it off in the last moment before Mystique could lose one of her most valuable prisoners …
Only one of these lightning fronts by the hands of a weather-witch suddenly had been wiped from the sky without warning, leaving Ororo alone with the not inconsiderable task of keeping the teenagers safe from the accumulated wrath of an army of their own kind. Katja was no longer next to her mentor on the Blackbird’s roof.
Ororo’s and Scott’s alarmed gazes met for just a second before Ororo had to unleash another twister toward that swimming tank in the distance that Pyro was throned upon, keeping the asshole at the last moment from setting the prisoner’s escape vehicle on fire. An agitated gesture toward the energy dome both of her hands and Remy’s sent Scott’s hectically wandering gaze the right way, Ororo having spotted from her elevated position what he’d not been able to immediately make out, simply not even considering the unlikely possibility that his wife would be leaving this so crucial position of hers.
Not when she was supposed to ensure their daughter’s safety on this nerve-wracking flight from the enemy base, and not for the sake of a completely pointless and highly hazardous attempt of breaking through the enemy’s main shield, behind which the X-Men for the moment hadn’t any place being anyway …
How very wrong Scott was about both these assumptions, he only finally realized when he stopped firing his blasts at the new group of tanks emerging on the foot of the statue, headed for where Logan and Hank, Marie and Remy were busy fighting the ones already trying to pulverize both the X-Men and their jet, in order to take an irritated look at his wife’s small-built, dark-clad figure in the distance. An annoyed shout about her unsanctioned solo outing via their link was already on the edge of his thoughts, in fact.
It never came.
Scott’s mouth was suddenly bone dry when he had to watch with wide eyes, as Katja raised a trembling hand to the Field’s destructive glow and the blinding intensity of the latter suddenly began to wane under the influence of her still so freshly discovered secondary mutation.
Well, fuck.
The wry, guilty thought flashed through Scott’s mind just for a moment that under different circumstances, that frightening sight would have been kind of hot. At least if it hadn’t been suited to let the explosive mood between their kind and normal people explode at last, should Katja succeed with whatever the fuck was suddenly going on in her head.
Then he didn’t waste any more time, aiming his blasts at the ground right before the edge of the Field again, ripping a huge trench into it that would at least keep the enemy vehicles off his team’s back for a moment before he ran off towards Katja, a rude curse both on his lips and in their mental connection.
The latter, she ignored, much to his annoyance, just as much as his shout, and at first, he thought, she just couldn’t hear over the noise of fired guns and the angry screams and powers unleashed and explosions all around …
Then Katja suddenly turned around to him when he was no more than a few steps from her, and the aggression on her pale face as much as the glow of a flash surrounding her highly raised hand had him stop on the spot. Whatever had suddenly gotten into her – the desperate worry for Saskia, probably, the irrational wish to help from up close though that damn boat was as good as in the X-Men’s reach by now anyway –, she obviously wasn’t about to let him hold her back.
Scott suddenly had to wonder with a twinge of discomfort if he had any means to anyway.
‘Scott. Look out.’
He froze before he’d done as much as open his mouth to try and talk sense into Katja. They had no fucking time, not a second, the increasing bangs in the distance letting him know, Logan’s team was already facing a new wave of attack.
But his voice failed him because there was suddenly a foreign one talking to him in his head that definitely wasn’t his wife’s. It didn’t belong to anyone with mental powers on his side that he knew of either … at least to no one alive.
Nonsense, that was impossible, of course, though it had been long since Scott had last wished so badly to have his former partner’s power and support by his side as on this horrible day. But for a moment, it was a really pleasant illusion, albeit one he needed to shake off this instant before he could catch a damn bullet himself due to his focus failing him …
‘Scott.’
This time, he winced so hard, he could swear he could feel his team’s disapproving glances about his sudden standing still in his back.
Not an illusion. For some reason, in some way, in this so very perilous moment for his family, for his people, the world, someone that he’d lost almost 20 years ago managed to make contact with him from wherever she’d ended up after her last demise, getting through to him the only thing he needed to understand right now before in his emotional blindness, he could have ended up on the receiving end of the power of the sky at his wife’s hands himself.
‘Watch out. Look inside her. Understand.‘
Wherever that advice was coming from, whether it was truly real or not … Scott had rarely ever known Jean to be wrong when she’d tried to make him see something.
Most reluctantly, he did something that might very well get you killed in the middle of a battlefield if he hadn’t had so many capable people watching out for him even in a second of carelessness. Closing his eyes for a far too long moment, he concentrated on that very bond to his wife that Dark Phoenix had created between them back then, and this time for a real, deep connection of their souls instead of just a grumpy occasional instruction thrown her way as earlier.
What he could see – or rather not – in that dark blue and red, vast ocean of mental energy connecting their minds sent ice-cold shivers down his spine.
Katja’s true self, all her clear thinking, every ability to wield her own body and will, was drowned out by a blinding white force of a foreign mental influence the owner of which wasn’t hard to guess. And it was a wall almost as impenetrable as that damn field surrounding New York, nothing Scott could have hoped to get through with any well-meant word of rationality or affection immediately. Someone who’d had to watch one of his closest friends and former lovers being possessed by an all-powerful cosmic demon more than once before, helpless to support her in any way, knew that better than anyone.
Whatever was happening here exactly, whatever the fuck that bitch in Frost Ltd. was doing to his wife from afar, and for whatever reason, Scott would not be able to make it right. Not here, not in the few seconds he could only afford to stay away from the battle zone a few feet over.
Even from the corner of his eyes, he could see, with growing relief at least in that regard, that the teenagers had finally made it past the Field and that Marie was already helping them climb inside the jet, Saskia looking in spite of her still compromised condition alive and well enough for the moment, and with that, what the X-Men had come here for was taken care of. Meaning they had to get the fuck out of here right now before Mystique could send even more reinforcements.
If that meant, Scott had to carry his wife out of this place by force before Emma could use her against her will to make this whole conflict even far, far worse, then he couldn’t have any scruples about that.
With gritted teeth, he raised his hand to his VISOR, ready to adjust the wheel to the smallest setting possible. Hesitate, he could no longer afford, not even for a moment lest Katja – or her mental captor – would realize she’d been found out and his wife might either continue with her destructive task or aim that damn lightning surrounding her body at him at last.
At the last moment, he thought better though. He had no fucking idea how the hell these newly found powers of his wife would affect his powers, his energy. How could he have when Katja had never even bothered to let him know that she’d apparently gone to Emma for help with them, after denying for so long they even existed? They would definitely clear that up in the bedroom once his wife would no longer be under the mental leash of a psychopathic telepath. Until then, Scott had only a very marginal interest in possibly cutting through that damn field behind Katja accidentally personally, making the way free for the forces of men who would only be too happy for that chance to finally try and conquer this city back, at the cost of the last shaky remnants of world peace.
Not as long as Scott had anything to say about that. “Remy, you need to stop Flashwind, right now. She’s not in control of what she’s doing.”
“On it, mon capitaine.” No questions this time, no stupid comment, Remy didn‘t even bother making sure, the others would be able to hold the lines without him to secure the X-Men’s leave. After all these years he, too, was trusting people like his own wife and Logan about fully being able to hold their own even in the face of hundreds of enhanced enemies if necessary. And not least thanks to his own mutation, Remy was perfectly aware, just like Scott was, that no weapon or tool running on any form of energy would be helping here right now.
Something tiny but sturdy whizzed by Scott, at the last moment, before the growing suspicion in Katja’s otherwise entirely empty eyes could turn to wrath, the power of the bolt on her wrist already sparking his way before it abruptly fizzled out as a narcotics-coated wooden dart pierced her bare upper arm. Blood dripped down over her skin immediately which stung in Scott’s heart in spite of the dire situation. With a quiet yelp on her lips, she went to her knees, her heavily trembling hand ripping the missile from her flesh even while her sight was already starting to blur ...
Then she raised her good arm again with a hateful hiss before Scott could really understand that she wasn’t half as out of it yet as hoped.
Pain from his com watch going up in sparks and overheating metal and plastic on his left arm exploded against his skin and drew a quiet scream from his lips now, before he could rip that damn thing off, from the corner of his eyes seeing Remy do the same. Now his hand wandered to his VISOR for a possibly necessary, risky defense after all …
Remy was faster, in spite of the pain in his arm, passing Scott by with a double flip, foreseeing one of Katja’s floor routine maneuvers with which she was trying, wobbly on her feet but still awake, to get away from both of them. Probably to start another attempt at fulfilling the job that had been forced upon her by a person whom Katja and the others had been very right not to trust fully in all these years, as it had just turned out.
Before Katja, with her increasingly sluggish movements, could dodge, Remy had pulled her in from behind with the help of his staff in front of her chest and rammed his elbow against her temple without hesitation.
In a movement of pure instinct that he didn‘t even need to think about, Scott caught his wife as she went down like a tree, slinging her body over his shoulder with his jaw grinding, suppressing his growing hurt and worry best as he could as he headed for the jet by Remy’s side where the rest of their team was already waiting for them.
“Scott, what in the …?” Her eyes wide with incomprehension, Ororo was the last to enter through the ceiling hatch, her eyes still glowing faintly as with merely an afterthought, she let strong winds and lightning around the Blackbird secure their departure, Logan and Marie getting them into the air in an instant, under the angry yelling and another salvo from the countless enemies on the ground.
Scott ignored her for now, just like his growing wish to tell his second in command to steer this jet towards Frost Ltd. instead of Westchester to kick a certain bitch there in her luxury ass. Just so.
Cautiously enough for more than one reason, he put Katja down on one of the stretchers in the passenger area instead, his heart and fist clenching. “Hank, tranquilizer, give it all you got. Do not let her wake up again or she’ll fry the controls, and we’ll go down like a rock.”
„What the fuck is going on here?” Hank, just like the rest of his team, knew after all this time, fortunately, when to not question orders from Scott. He already had his bag open and was rummaging for the same needles he’d tortured Scott so often with in the last few months … But his narrowrd predator eyes were on Scott’s face.
And only now that he actually had to say it out loud, this atrocity of which Charles had so often assured them back then that it would never ever happen, his strength left him. He collapsed on the ground next to Katja’s bed, the hand not singing the national anthem in three voices at once buried in his hair as he tried in vain to get a grip on himself, keep on functioning the way his wife and the others would need him to, right now, to make this catastrophe and everything else so fucked up on this planet recently right.
“Emma.”
The sudden shocked silence in the jet was deafening in his ears, and he knew it wouldn’t last long, not with everything they had to clear up and plan right now, about how to proceed, about what to tell Washington, about what the fuck to do to help the latest victim of a certain telepath’s mad lust for power …
But in the first few seconds of this crucial revelation, no one even remembered how to breathe. Only the hostile silence in Katja’s and Scott’s link was being even louder, even more hurtful.
Only a faint burning and tingling on his lower arm had Scott realize how out of it he’d been for a moment, not even realizing that his second in command had come to cower next to him, leaving the stick to Marie for now, already busy cutting off Scott’s uniform off his blistered skin with one of his claw tips.
Which Scott was grateful for not only because he didn’t want Hank’s attention anywhere but on his wife right now, and in spite of the not-exactly pleasant sensation as the thin latex was cautiously peeled from the fortunately only superficial blisters covering his wrist. Maybe just because of it. Physical discomfort had always been a lot easier for him to deal with than that dangerous animal inside, tearing on its leash harder than ever right now, threatening to shatter the self-control so crucial to Scott, leaving everyone around him and the world at risk.
There were few people in his life who would understand that notion better than Logan, or what he needed to hear in such moments of threatening, lethal weakness. “Eyes open, Slim. We need you more than ever right now. Cat will be fine. Should know you married a pit bull by now.”
Scott forced a deep, trembling breath from his lips, panting out what had sat so unsettlingly close to the surface for a moment, and finally turned his gaze to the others while Logan started to disinfect and bandage the traces Remy and Scott had taken away from that cruel conflict. Harmless ones, fortunately, just like the scratches the others had earned as he saw with relief … Including the ones on Saskia’s still lifeless but breathing and very stable shape over there in Bastian’s arms. Rarely anything else could have driven that casual, unquestionable assurance in Logan’s voice home better even in this dark hour: Scott had the best team possible around him to weather all storms, not least because these guys had long become family to him.
They’d be alright. Somehow.