Chapter Text
Nobody Else But You (Ruby Summers - I)
Nobody else but you,
It's just our luck, we're stuck together
Nobody else but you,
Is crazy enough
To believe we'll come through
Scott’s Apartment – Present Day
It started with a knock on her door, followed by an uncomfortably cheerful voice.
“Get dressed. We’re going out.”
Ruby Summers blinked. “Unless we’re storming a bastion of anti-mutant fanatics or attending a funeral, I’m not going anywhere before coffee.”
Scott Summers—Cyclops to the world, “Dad” to an increasingly confused part of her psyche—stood in the doorway with a thermos in one hand and two tickets in the other. His uniform was swapped for civilian clothes: old jeans, white t-shirt under a windbreaker, and a casual-looking visor.
Not his battle-worn visor.
She eyed the thermos.
“…is that bribe coffee?”
“No. It’s survival coffee. You get your own once we’re en route.” He held up the tickets as if she was supposed to know what they were for. “We’re going to the Steel Pier. I figured—while you’re staying with me and looking for a permanent residence, we could go have fun like you kids do.”
Ruby snorted and dropped her feet to the floor. “I’m over eighty.”
Scott hesitated. Not visibly—but she’d known him long enough to read the half-second pause. That tiny breath where sentiment threatened to push through his neatly folded words.
She stood anyway, scratching her scalp and running her hand through unruly blonde hair. “You know I locked myself in ruby form for decades, right? I didn’t age so I’m just—just this.” She gestured at her unchanged body. “So, unless your idea of fun involves napping in ruby quartz for seventy years—”
Scott chuckled, a faint smile spreading across his lips. “This must be what I sounded like to everyone growing up.”
That earned him a side glance, wry and almost amused. “Is that your way of saying, ‘you used to be a buzzkill too’?”
“I’m saying I’d like to give you something resembling a day off. From – well, everything.”
She crossed her arms, expression unreadable. “You know I’ve been to the Steel Pier before.”
“I do,” he said quietly. “But I also know it wasn’t like this.”
Wasn’t like this was putting it mildly.
In her world, the Steel Pier had been half-collapsed into the sea, its neon signage rusted and screaming in silence. Her father had taken her there anyway, every year, because it was one of the last places left where she could laugh and no one shot at them.
Still, Scott’s offer was kind and she wasn’t totally opposed to the idea of a day in the sun.
“Let me pack my gear.” Ruby finally said.
Scott smirked, then showed his duffel bag. “I’m already way ahead of you.”
Of course he was.
-0-0-0-
Steel Pier, Mid-Morning
As they arrived, Atlantic City shone beneath a clear sky, with the Pier towering above the boardwalk, far more vibrant than she had ever imagined.
High-tech kinetic sculptures lined the entrance. Drone-mounted ride arms swept guests into the air. And an entire section was marked “Mutant-Friendly Zone” with subtle X-logos built into the signage.
This was most definitely not the Steel Pier she remembered.
Ruby stared at the entrance.
“Well,” she muttered, “he must’ve hated how corporate this was.”
Scott took it in stride, knowing who she was referring to.
“He’d have made fun of the font, but still bought you cotton candy.” Scott looked over at her with a knowing half-smile.
She didn’t smile back, but the tension in her shoulders eased a little.
They stepped inside.
The first ride was a vertical-drop anti-gravity tower called Pulse Plunge, designed with repulsor-field cushions and optional “levitation boosts.” It shimmered with Stark-grade plating and flickering mutant-safe shielding, and promised “2.4 seconds of simulated freefall” in glowing letters no doubt designed to trigger primal fear.
Ruby raised an eyebrow. “Did you ride this last time?”
“I did. With Emma and Illyana.”
“And let me guess—Illyana teleported to the top and screamed ‘Cowards!’”
“Close. She shouted, ‘I can fly better than this glorified lamp post,’ then hijacked the ride controls.” Scott shrugged, adding, “She’s banned from here for the next five years. Not that it stops her from sneaking in.”
Ruby exhaled through her nose. It was not a laugh, but something close.
She stared up at the tower, eyes narrowing slightly. The ride loomed, sleek and ridiculous, wrapped in lights and theatrical sound effects—utterly out of place in the world she came from.
In her time, gravity was never this playful.
You fell, and you hoped you survived.
And yet here she was, scanning her wristband and letting the ride’s padded harness slide down over her shoulders with a soft hiss.
Scott glanced at her as he buckled in. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer right away. Just tilted her head back to look up at the apex of the tower, then at the horizon beyond it. “If this thing breaks, I’m blaming you and your taste in nostalgia.”
“That’s fair,” he said.
Then the world dropped out beneath her.
The Pulse Plunge lived up to its name.
There was a split-second where the ground vanished, and with it, everything Ruby had prepared herself for—no warning, no countdown, just a violent upward thrust into open sky, a moment of weightlessness, and then—
The fall.
Her heart launched into her throat. Her hair snapped upward. The noise of the world fell away until there was only the rush of air in her ears and the disorienting reality of not being in control.
And against every instinct in her well-trained, trauma-forged body… she laughed.
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t polished or bitter or sardonic. It broke from her like a lightning crack—sharp, startled, and leaving her breathless.
She heard herself, and it startled her.
That sound hadn’t come out of her in years. Decades, even. Maybe not since her father lifted her onto his shoulders in a collapsed arcade and let her scream with joy over scavenged cotton candy.
As they slowed at the bottom and gently hissed to a stop, she realized her fingers were still white-knuckled against the restraint bar. Her heart was hammering, and her lips were set in a wide grin. Her face was flushed – and she wasn’t even in her ruby skin.
The ride clicked open.
She didn’t move – not immediately.
Scott gave her a quiet, patient look. “You okay? You sounded like –”
“I didn’t scream,” she muttered, fending off any possible teasing.
Scott nodded, once. “You laughed.”
“I… I might have.”
She stood on shaky legs, stepping off the platform like someone adjusting to Earth’s gravity for the first time. Her knees weren’t exactly jelly—but they were less stable than she liked. Scott handed her a bottle of water and didn’t further comment on the sound she made on the descent.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, weaving through boardwalk traffic, past food stalls and souvenir carts and a holographic map pulsing over a central plaza. Ruby was still processing.
“Why this place?” she asked finally.
Scott took his time answering. “Because I wanted you to see it again. And I thought maybe… if you saw it in color, not in ruins, it might not just remind you of what you lost.”
Her throat tightened, and she hated that it did.
“Was that a Summers-style emotional trap?” she said, deflecting.
He grinned. “It’s genetic.”
Just then, a familiar mental voice chimed in—warm, clipped, and eternally unimpressed.
“Tell her to hydrate. She forgets she’s not quartz anymore.”
Ruby rolled her eyes. “Hi, Mom.”
Scott blinked. “Did she just—?”
“Psychic voicemail. She’s lurking.”
Scott winced. “Of course she is.”
Ruby took a sip of her water. “You tried too hard with this.”
“I always do.”
She looked around at the rides, the people, the world she never got. The world her father tried to give her.
She flexed her fingers once. They weren’t trembling anymore.
“…Okay,” she said. “Let’s see how this place handles force beams and snark.”
Scott smiled and gestured to the next ride.
Ruby followed.
And for now, she let herself pretend it was just another summer day.
-0-0-0-
Steel Pier – Midday
Scott insisted they do the water ride next – to escape the midday heat.
“You’ll love it,” he said, entirely too smug. “It’s a classic log ride—only this one uses Stark-grade repulsors and microgravity paddling. They call it Tidal Cataclysm now.”
Ruby squinted at the towering ride structure, its fiberglass cliffs and fake tidal waves glowing with LED surf effects. “Why are mutant-friendly amusement parks always secretly weapons tests?”
“Because we’re clearly built different,” Scott said, humorously.
Their log-shaped craft groaned along a hovering magnetic track, drifting smoothly at first through faux river bends. Spray jets misted the air like morning dew. Children shrieked somewhere two crafts ahead. Tourists waved from the queue with giant lemonades and sunscreen-slick smiles.
Ruby leaned back in her seat, arms crossed. “You’re suspiciously confident this won’t go horribly wrong.”
“I am not suspiciously confident,” Scott replied. “I am entirely, irrationally confident.”
The log craft began to climb.
It wasn’t a slow incline. This wasn’t a lazy, wooden coaster. The Tidal Cataclysm fired them upward on repulsor boosters, the kind used to keep Sentinel boots from pulverizing the ground. They zipped up a chrome tunnel, blue lights streaking past them like they were entering hyperspace.
Ruby blinked, startled by the G-force.
Then came the summit. For a brief moment, the craft stopped.
They hovered – actually hovered, and Ruby thought whoever designed this ride definitely skipped several safety clauses.
The ocean glittered in the distance. The city skyline curved gently to the west. Seagulls circled like drones in idle patrol.
And then—the drop.
They plummeted, twisting into a sharp spiral as high-pressure jets flung water up on either side of them. Ruby’s stomach flipped. Her eyes went wide. Her balance disintegrated—and somewhere in that chaos, Scott’s visor snapped loose.
It clattered onto the floor of the craft.
“Wait, wait—!” Scott’s hand shot toward his face, squeezing his eyelids shut. A thin flicker of red light shimmered through the gaps in his lashes.
Ruby didn’t think.
She launched sideways, slamming her shoulder into him and throwing her arms across his eyes just as the craft hit the final slope and crashed into the splash zone.
Water exploded.
When they emerged, soaked to the bone and gasping, Ruby had Scott’s head tucked under her chin, both arms clamped around his temples. His face was half-shielded, half-submerged.
They drifted to a gentle stop, still tangled.
Ruby blinked against the cascade of hair sticking to her face that managed to get past her own obsidian goggles.
Scott coughed, eyes still shut tight. “You tackled me.”
“I saved Atlantic City. You’re welcome”
“You bent my nose.”
She pulled away, eyes darting to his visor on the floor of the water craft. She handed it back with a soggy glare. “You’re lucky I didn’t blast you.”
“Correction,” he said, sliding the visor back into place and adjusting the dial. “I’m lucky you’re me, but faster.”
There was a pause.
Then Ruby—unthinking, unguarded—laughed.
It was short and sudden and just a little wild. The kind of laugh that burst out like it had nowhere else to go. She clapped a hand over her mouth as if embarrassed, like the sound might betray her.
Scott said nothing.
He simply climbed out of the craft and held a hand out to her.
She took it.
Their shoes squelched across the soaked boardwalk as they walked toward the drying booths. Tourists gawked. A little girl pointed at Ruby and whispered something about her hair.
“I think I just coughed up a gallon of brine,” Scott muttered.
“That’s not brine,” Ruby replied, wringing out her shirt. “No one knows what’s in the waters of Atlantic City, but it’s definitely not brine.”
A voice chimed into both of their heads—precise, clipped, and dry as ever.
“She’s laughing. Alert the press.”
Ruby rolled her eyes. “Hi, Mom.”
Scott pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do you monitor all psychic bandwidth or just ours?”
“You tagged your thoughts with her signature. I assumed it was an invitation.”
Ruby exhaled. “She’s going to run a SWOT analysis on this bonding activity, isn’t she?”
“She’s probably already got a spreadsheet,” Scott said, stepping into a warm air-drying booth.
“You’re both insufferable,” Emma said, and signed off with the emotional equivalent of an exasperated sigh.
They emerged mostly dry, clothes ruffled, shoes still squishy. Scott handed Ruby a funnel cake dusted in powdered sugar.
“Don’t say I never bought you anything.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I thought we weren’t bribing each other today. Apart from coffee.”
“This is a reward. For quick reflexes and public restraint.”
Ruby accepted the funnel cake with a small smirk and leaned against a shaded railing overlooking the ocean.
“You know,” she said, voice quieter, “we used to come here. The other you and me. Every year. Even when the pier was half gone.”
Scott didn’t speak.
She didn’t look at him.
“He used to carry me on his shoulders. Said I deserved the view from up high, even if the world was on fire.”
She took a bite of the funnel cake and chewed in silence for a moment.
Then, casually, Ruby added, her gaze set on her sugary prize, “You’re not too bad at this.”
Scott smiled.
-0-0-0-
Steel Pier – Late Afternoon
By the time they reached the midway, the heat was settling into a heavy haze. The scent of fryer oil, seawater, and synthetic sugar filled the air as music blared from every direction. Lights blinked, projectors danced, and holograms of cartoon mascots waved at families as they passed.
Ruby walked ahead, half-marching, half-meandering like someone scanning for something she couldn’t name. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Not frowning either—just thoughtful.
Scott kept pace, hands in his pockets, trying not to press. He had no idea what the rules were anymore—how to be present without being invasive.
Fatherhood didn’t come with a manual, and the one person he might’ve asked for advice was someone that could never be reached.
Ruby’s presence was a reminder of that fact.
They turned a corner and reached the Force Toss booth: a gleaming, state-of-the-art precision challenge where contestants used force-based powers—telekinesis, concussive blasts, kinetic punches—to hit targets across a dynamically shifting field.
It was popular, crowded, and loud – a way for children to view superpowers without all the destruction.
Ruby’s eyes lit up.
Scott’s stomach dipped.
“Standard or Advanced?” asked the booth operator, an old-looking telekinetic with silver gloves and a neck full of medals.
“Advanced,” Ruby said immediately.
“Ruby—” Scott started, but she was already stepping up to the platform.
The crowd stepped back, murmurs rising as her name pinged on the leaderboard.
The booth shimmered with a containment field.
Bullseyes appeared in the air—glowing, moving, bobbing up and down with variable trajectories.
A tone sounded.
She raised her hand.
The first blast of obsidian came clean and controlled. The blast whistled through the air like a whipcrack, striking a bullseye dead center.
An applause rang through the crowd.
Scott exhaled slowly, folding his arms.
The second blast was just as sharp, but with just a hair more force. The target exploded into digital fragments.
More applause. Ruby gave a slight nod of acknowledgment, but the smirk on her lips showed she was getting fired up by the crowd.
Next came the third wave of obsidian, a triple-tap in under two seconds. The blasts echoed off the booth walls.
A few spectators flinched at the sound.
Scott shifted his stance. “Okay, that’s enough.”
Ruby didn’t respond, instead waving once like a bull-fighter having the time of her life.
In her fourth shot, she adjusted her aim mid-fire, twisting her palm. The blast curved. It struck the edge of a moving target and ricocheted.
The safety field buzzed audibly.
Scott took a step forward. “Ruby.”
She smiled back at him.
Smugly.
Then came her fifth blast, full-force.
She drew her arm back, legs planted like a batter stepping up to a pitch. The blast cracked through the air like a gunshot, slamming into the central target and obliterating it.
But the energy didn’t stop.
The feedback loop bounced off the booth’s containment system and blew backward into the upper shielding. The support beam on the left side sparked and bent—not broken, but dented.
The crowd gasped. A child yelped. The booth's alarms chirped in warning.
Scott moved.
Before her next blast could fire—before her follow-through fully committed—Scott released a narrow, measured optic blast from his visor, angling the red beam precisely. It sliced across her blast path in the air, dispersing the obsidian energy with a harmless flash.
Ruby’s shot fizzled out mid-air in a controlled burst, neatly neutralized.
The silence that followed was deafening – before the crowd began to roar again at the unexpected display – none wise to the fact that an accident was incredibly close to happening.
Ruby turned, slowly, as if she couldn’t believe what just happened.
Her hand dropped. Her eyes narrowed. “Did you just cancel my shot?”
“I did,” Scott said evenly. “Before you injured someone.”
“No one was hurt.”
“Yet.”
She stepped down from the platform, dripping with quiet fury. Her voice was low. “I had it under control.”
Scott didn’t back down. “You were losing precision. You were escalating.”
“I was winning.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
She shoved past him, boots slamming into the pavement. “You just can’t stand it when I don’t need your help.”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh, really?” she snapped, whirling to face him. “Because you sure didn’t complain when I saved your ass on that log ride earlier.”
Scott blinked. “That was different. That was an accident—”
“And I handled it,” she cut in, voice rising. “You lost your visor mid-descent, and I handled it. You didn’t cancel my instincts then.”
“That was a crisis. Not a performance.”
Ruby scoffed. “So, what, you trust me to be a hero but not a person?”
Scott's jaw clenched. “I trusted you to make a good decision. Not to put people at risk because you wanted applause.”
She stared at him, stunned, like he'd slapped her.
“You think that’s what that was?” Her voice trembled, low and sharp. “You think I was showing off?”
He didn’t answer fast enough.
She took a step back.
“This whole day,” she said, voice breaking through her teeth, “has been you trying to give me a life you think I missed out on. Like it’s your duty. Like you’re patching over someone else’s mistakes.”
“I wanted you to have something good,” he said quietly. “Something you didn’t have to fight for.”
“I don’t regret the life I lived.”
“I didn’t say—”
“I chose it,” she snapped. “I chose to stay with him. I chose to lock myself in ruby form to be with him. Because I knew how much time we didn’t have.” She huffed, her eyes darkening behind her obsidian goggles. “I wasn’t a victim. I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t someone waiting to be saved.”
“I know that—”
“No, you don’t,” she cut him off, throwing an accusatory finger at him. “Because you’re not him.”
Scott froze.
And she said it again—clear, cold, and with finality.
“You’re not my real dad.”
The silence after that wasn’t peaceful.
It was sharp.
The kind of silence that sucked all the air out of your lungs and made your heartbeat feel like a betrayal.
Scott didn’t try to argue. He didn’t correct her. He didn’t offer some hollow reassurance. He just stood there, visor dim, hands trembling ever so slightly at his sides.
Around them, life went on.
Children screamed with joy on nearby rides. A mutant firebreather exhaled a controlled jet of blue flame for a round of applause. The booth operator quietly rebooted the Force Toss field. No one noticed the Summers fracture playing out like a fault line cracking open.
Ruby turned away.
She marched.
Scott didn’t follow.
He just stood there, in the shadow of a ride built to test control, wondering how he’d lost hers.
The noise of the midway grew distant and indistinct, like it had been dropped underwater. Kids laughed. Machines whirred. Lights flashed.
None of it reached him.
You’re not my real dad.
The words hit harder than any punch he'd ever taken.
Because she hadn’t said them with cruelty. She’d said them with certainty. Not to wound, but to define. To remind him—and maybe herself—that the line between love and legacy wasn’t as simple as biology.
Scott closed his eyes.
Of course he wasn’t her real dad.
He was not the one who raised her through the wasteland.
He was not the one who taught her to hunt for supplies between sniper towers.
He was not the man who built a childhood from sand and wreckage and stubborn, unconditional devotion.
But he wanted to be something.
Not a replacement.
Not a substitute.
Just—something.
Someone who could carry her pain when it was too much. Someone who didn’t flinch when she pushed back, or crumble when she told the truth.
He’d tried so hard to give her a good day. A clean memory. A stupid, sunlit, overpriced afternoon where the world didn’t need saving and no one expected her to be indestructible.
But maybe he hadn’t done it for her.
Maybe—just maybe—he’d done it for himself.
To prove he could still be a father to a daughter who already had one.
He exhaled slowly, quietly.
The funnel cake was still in his hand, cooling and forgotten. The powdered sugar had melted against his fingers. He looked down at it like it was a punchline he didn’t understand.
Behind him, the Force Toss booth fully rebooted with a cheerful chime. A new contestant stepped onto the platform. The crowd reset, unaware of the emotional fault line still trembling beneath their feet.
Scott wiped his hand on his jeans.
Then he turned away from the crowd, from the noise, from the booth still sparking with residual energy.
He didn’t know where Ruby had gone.
But he knew she wouldn’t want to be chased.
So, he walked—slowly, deliberately—toward the quieter part of the pier. Toward the older rides. The ones people didn’t flock to. The ones that stayed still, even when the world didn’t.
Because sometimes, if you really loved someone, you didn’t follow them with answers.
You waited where they might return with their grief.
And you made sure, when they did, you were still there.
-0-0-0-
He found the old penny arcade near the far end of the pier—closed, mostly. The kind of place that smelled like dust and salt even with the sea breeze cutting through it.
Rows of unplugged machines stood like relics waiting for purpose: skee-ball lanes with warped edges, a claw game filled with yellowed plush toys, a fortune-teller automaton whose eyes flickered and then dimmed.
Scott sat on the bench beside it. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
It was quiet here.
The kind of quiet that invited ghosts.
He knew better than to expect solace from silence, but it was still better than trying to talk over the roaring storm inside him.
You’re not my real dad.
He could still hear it. Not the bitterness—because there hadn’t been much. Just finality. Like a verdict delivered not in rage, but resignation.
He rested his elbows on his knees and let his head hang between them.
And then—she arrived.
Not in body, of course. Not in stilettos and diamonds and exasperated sighs. Just a voice in his mind, cool as crystal and sharp as ever.
“You're sulking, Scott. Don’t lie to yourself. It doesn’t suit you.”
He closed his eyes. “You were listening.”
“I always am. You’re the world’s loudest repressor. You practically scream in italics.”
A pause. He didn’t respond. He didn’t have it in him to spar.
“She didn’t mean it the way it sounded, you know.”
“She meant it exactly the way it sounded,” he murmured.
“Oh, please.” Emma’s tone lilted. “If she truly meant to hurt you, you’d be bleeding from the ears and wondering where your spleen went.”
That earned him a dry, hollow laugh.
“She was angry and sad. And twenty and eighty at the same time. That makes people confusing.”
“She’s not wrong,” he said. “I’m not the one who raised her. I’m not the one who—”
“You’re not the one who died in her arms, no.”
The words cut. But they were clean, surgical.
Removing a cancerous thought in the precise way only she could.
“You’re not him, Scott. But you’re not not-him either. You are a version of the man she trusted with everything. The man she grieved for. So maybe stop measuring yourself against a ghost and start being the man who’s here.”
He didn’t answer. He just stared at the warped skee-ball ramp like it might hold wisdom.
Emma softened—barely.
“She doesn’t need a replacement. She needs someone who can look her in the eye and not flinch at the pieces she carries.”
“She’s better at being me than I am.”
“That’s because you trained her. Whether you remember it or not.”
Scott blinked at that. “She said the other me taught her to track, to plan, to shoot—”
“He taught her how to hope, darling.”
Silence stretched.
“You’re doing fine, by the way,” she added, voice silk with daggers. “Aside from the part where you let her eat funnel cake for lunch. That was unforgivable.”
“She saved my life,” he muttered.
“And then you canceled one of her power displays in front of a crowd. She’s probably sulking on a rooftop somewhere, eating guilt and hot fries.”
He sighed. “I just didn’t want her to get hurt.”
“And she just didn’t want to be treated like a child. Imagine that.”
There was no venom. Only the truth.
“You don’t have to fix it,” Emma continued. “Just… wait where she can find you. Be the one who doesn’t leave. It’s more than most versions of us have ever managed, as it seems.”
Scott’s voice was soft. “You really think she’ll come around?”
Emma’s answer came not as words, but as a memory—warm, amber-hued, and quiet.
A moment from years ago, far into another future.
Ruby, small and glitter-eyed, curled up in another Emma’s lap after a long day hiding underground, holding onto her diamond arm like it was the most solid thing left in the world. Falling asleep, fearless of the world crumbling around her.
Trusting.
The other Emma whispered softly as the memory drew closer to sleep, “You can break when you need to. Your father and I will always catch the pieces.”
Scott stilled, feeling the memory Ruby’s emotions wash over him in its closing.
It wasn’t a message he could reply to.
But it was something he could feel.
As the memory, pilfered from Ruby’s mind, faded, Emma’s voice returned.
“She always comes back, Scott. She’s yours. Our daughter. And we know Summers don’t quit.”
The link faded. Not severed—just quieted. Emma knew when to let silence speak again.
Scott looked up.
Far across the midway, the lights on the antique carousel flickered to life.
And he stood.
Because maybe she hadn’t come back yet.
But she would.
And when she did, he’d be there.
-0-0-0-
Steel Pier – Near Dusk
Ruby found the carousel by accident.
Or maybe it found her.
It was tucked at the far end of the pier—quieter and clearly older than the rest of the attractions. The crowd had thinned with the falling sun, drawn toward louder rides and neon-lit vendors. Here, there were only a few parents with tired toddlers, a bored operator leaning against the booth, and the gentle music playing a tune so old it had outlived its composer.
The carousel spun slowly, its horses etched with careful craftsmanship—brushed metal, aged wood, small painted details that no one noticed unless they were looking for them.
Some of them had battle scarring. Literal ones. Old mutant memorabilia retrofitted into a theme park ride. If she looked hard enough, maybe she could even find pieces of Scott’s visor somewhere in the alloy.
She didn’t ride.
She sat on a nearby bench, knees pulled up slightly, arms resting across them, and watching as the world went by while she remained still.
Unmoving.
It felt like breathing underwater.
She didn’t know how long she’d been there before she heard footsteps. Measured footsteps that were all-too familiar in just the right way, but clearly missing the distinct clank of metal that signified hers. His footfalls were quiet not because he was hiding—but because he wasn’t.
Scott stood a few feet away, hands in his jacket pockets.
He didn’t speak.
Didn’t demand.
He just waited.
She didn’t look at him – not at first. She just continued staring at the carousel, watching a metal unicorn make its lazy revolution past them.
After a while, she took a deep breath – as if it was the first breath after drowning.
“I was ten the first time I saw one of these,” she said. “In my timeline, I mean.”
Scott said nothing, and she appreciated him immensely for that.
“It was buried under a collapsed shelter in what used to be upstate New York. Dad pried the gate open with a crowbar. Said if it still turned, it still counted.” A faint smile tugged at her lips, bitter but not cruel. “He boosted me up on one of the horses and made engine noises with his mouth. He told me to ride like I meant it… and I did.”
Scott let out a quiet breath through his nose. “Sounds like something I’d do.”
“It was.” Her voice broke a little. “He was ridiculous. And brilliant. And reckless and stubborn. And so stupid sometimes.”
She swallowed.
“And he was the best damn father I ever had.”
Scott moved slowly—sat down on the bench beside her, not too close, not too far.
“He taught me how to hold a weapon.” Ruby continued, grateful for Scott’s silence. “How to disarm a landmine. How to sneak past a Purifier patrol when your power could level a building. But he also…” Her eyes welled, but she didn’t blink. “He learned how to braid my hair. Read me bad novels under candlelight. Spent three hours making me a birthday cake out of protein bars and scavenged icing mix.”
She let out a breath that trembled at the edges. “And I never told him. Not really. Not the way I should’ve. Not before he—”
Her voice faltered. She stopped.
Scott said nothing.
He didn’t reach for her. Didn’t tell her it was okay. He just sat there, still and steady, like a harbor waiting for a ship that didn’t know how to dock.
Ruby looked down at her hands.
For a while, there was only the sound of the ride turning. Soft metal creaks and wind bustling through the spokes. The carousel music looping again.
Scott could feel Ruby was still tense – but she couldn’t trust herself to speak further. She couldn’t trust herself not to break down if she opened her mouth one more time.
And so, without warning, it came.
Not words. Not aloud.
A gentle inward pull—not invasive, not forceful, just… an offer.
And Scott accepted it.
Ruby’s thoughts slid into his like oil across glass, images folding into memory—
—Blanket forts built from ration cloth and old banners, stitched together with makeshift poles and cardboard signage that still read “MUTIE FREE ZONE” flipped upside-down in irony.
Inside, ten-year-old Ruby clutched a flashlight while the other Scott read her an old, tattered novel.
She was smiling.
He was doing voices.
—Empty parking lots, cracked with vines and rusted car skeletons, where father and daughter danced in the silence between patrols. No music.
Just rhythm in their breath, and the glint of joy like starlight on asphalt.
—Strong arms, wrapped around her like armor, one made of flesh and another of warm metal. Her head pressed to his chest, his heartbeat steady even when the night was full of gunfire.
His hand brushing through her hair, and he whispered, “You don’t have to be scared. You’re my world. And you’re going to survive it.”
He held her like the future still had something worth dreaming of.
These were the memories she cherished.
The memories that helped her fight nearly a century’s worth of bigotry and oppression to stay by her father’s side.
And now, years later, she gave that back to this Scott.
No defenses.
No performance.
Just transmission—the purest trust she knew how to offer.
Scott’s eyes stung behind his visor. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t question.
When the link faded, Ruby pulled her arms tighter around herself and stared ahead again.
“I don’t regret it,” she said softly. “The life I lived. I chose it. I knew how it would end.”
She turned to him at last, eyes shadowed by the gold light of the sinking sun.
“But I didn’t choose this.”
Scott nodded slowly, the ache blooming in his chest. “I know.”
She looked away. “It’s not your fault. I know that. I really do. But when you try so hard to replace it—to replace him—it just makes me feel like the life I lived doesn’t count. Like I made the wrong choice loving him.”
“You didn’t.”
The reply came fast—filled with a stalwart certainty.
She turned, startled by the conviction in his voice.
Scott’s expression didn’t falter.
“I wouldn’t trade what you had,” he said. “What he gave you. I don’t want to overwrite it, Ruby. I just want to be here – for you. However much of me you’ll let in.”
She studied him silently.
And then, finally, she leaned sideways—just enough for her shoulder to press against his, just enough to tuck her head under the crook of his neck – so familiar and yet so different from the one she knew for eighty years.
It was not a hug, nor was it forgiveness.
It was simply just that.
Contact.
“I asked you before – when you first let me stay at your place,” she murmured, “if you thought you ever held me like you held Cable. When I was a baby.”
Scott nodded again, softer now. “I remember.”
“I still think the answer is no.”
She paused.
“But I wouldn’t mind if you held me right now.”
The carousel creaked as it spun, the unicorn making another pass.
Scott wrapped one arm around her shoulder and drew her closer.
-0-0-0-
Steel Pier – Twilight
They didn’t speak again until the lights came on.
The sun had all but vanished beneath the ocean line, and the pier’s glow shifted from gold to neon. Rides lit up like constellations—warm, artificial stars blinking into place along the spine of the boardwalk. Music faded into softer tones. Everything felt suspended, like the last breath before the world resumed spinning.
The Skyspire, Steel Pier’s signature Ferris wheel, loomed ahead in gleaming arcs of soft blue and gold, its circular path glowing against the darkening sky. It was bigger than Ruby remembered, cleaner than anything in her timeline.
For a moment, it didn’t even look like a ride.
It looked like an invitation.
They accepted it in silence.
The carriage was roomy, fully enclosed in translucent shielding. It hummed faintly with stabilizers—smooth, quiet, weightless as it ascended.
Ruby pressed her fingers lightly to the glass.
Below them, the boardwalk shrank into soft lights and distant laughter.
She could see the ghost of the carousel’s top spinning slowly in the distance. People had returned to it. That was good.
It deserved to be lived in.
Scott sat across from her. He hadn’t looked away from her since they boarded.
Halfway to the top, she finally spoke—quietly, like it was easier to say up here, where no one could overhear.
“Would you have fought to keep me?”
Scott didn’t ask for clarification. He didn’t need it.
“If I’d been born here,” she continued, “if I’d been raised here. Would you have fought to keep me from being taken, from being weaponized? Would you have fought for me the way you fought for Emma? For Cable? For… for everything else?”
Her voice wasn’t bitter. Just unsure.
Scott leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.
“I would’ve moved heaven and hell,” he said, not softly, but with certainty. “I would’ve broken the world if I had to – if it meant you wouldn’t have to sleep through gunfire and ash.”
He paused, letting the words hang between them.
“But you weren’t born here,” he added, “and I didn’t get to be your father the way he did. I wasn’t there when you needed someone to hold the door, or the line, or your hand.”
He looked up.
“But I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Ruby looked down at her lap, then out at the ocean again.
“You’re not him,” she said, not cruelly this time.
“I know.”
She leaned back, head thudding gently against the transparent wall of the gondola.
“I think I could try again. With you. If you’ll stop treating me like I’m broken.”
Scott smiled, faint and warm. “Only if you stop pretending you have to be hard all the time.”
She smirked. “So what, we’re negotiating terms now?”
“We’re Summers,” he said. “We sign peace treaties after every family gathering.”
That got a real laugh from her—soft and brief, but true.
They sat in companionable silence as the carriage reached the topmost point.
The city stretched out behind them in steel and shadow. The ocean rolled forever on the other side. The air up here was just a bit cooler, a bit thinner. More honest.
Scott looked at her.
“Ruby.”
She turned to him.
“Whatever timeline you come from. Whatever memories you carry. I want you to know—he was right.”
She blinked. “About what?”
He smiled. “You were worth it.”
Her breath caught.
For a second, she couldn’t find any words. So, she nodded. Just once.
And that was enough.
As the wheel began its slow descent, Ruby reached out her hand.
Scott took it.
They didn’t squeeze.
They didn’t let go.
Not this time.
-0-0-0-
Scott’s Apartment – A Few Days Later
The photo arrived two days after the pier.
Scott wasn’t even sure when it had been taken. Maybe during the drop. Or the splash. Or the immediate aftermath when Ruby had declared herself Atlantic City’s savior with her arms still wrapped around his face. Either way, it caught them both mid-yell, soaked through, mouths open in identical “oh shit” expressions.
They looked ridiculous.
They looked related.
The picture came printed on glossy boardwalk paper, crammed inside a paper envelope that had been aggressively folded to fit through the apartment’s mail slot.
Scott stared at it in his hand for a long moment.
Then he heard it—light footsteps, and the soft whir of the fridge door opening.
Ruby was already in the kitchen.
She didn’t say anything. Just peeled the magnet off the top corner of the fridge—a little novelty diamond he didn’t remember buying—and stuck the photo underneath it.
Her handwriting was messier than he expected.
A sticky note pressed just beneath the photo read: This day was stupid. I’m free next weekend.
Scott leaned against the doorway, arms folded.
“I thought you said you were leaving next week,” he said.
“I am,” she replied. “I’m just… not in a hurry.”
She grabbed a bottle of water, sipped, then glanced at him.
“You okay?”
He smiled. “You’re asking?”
“Just making sure you didn’t pull a muscle from all the emotional growth.”
He chuckled. “I’ll recover.”
She turned back to the fridge, squinting at the note.
Then, almost offhandedly, she added, “Oh. You left your sunglasses on the bathroom sink again.”
Scott blinked. “I have one in every room.”
Ruby groaned and walked away, muttering to herself half-heartedly, “You’re a real menace.”
He followed her into the living room, pausing just long enough to grab a pen.
Back at the fridge, he scrawled a response under her note: I’ll bring the sunscreen.
He looked up at the photo one more time.
Two Summers. Caught mid-chaos. Laughing like they weren’t carrying the weight of alternate histories and worlds undone.
Just father and daughter.
Learning.
Trying.
Still here.
And that was enough.
-0-0-0-
Upper Manhattan – Late Afternoon
Brunch was her idea.
Naturally.
Emma Frost didn’t make requests. She made reservations, psychically cleared a waiting list of people she didn’t like, and sent Ruby a one-line message through the astral plane:
“We’re rebuilding wardrobe morale. Wear something that can handle both espresso and unsolicited praise.”
Ruby had replied, “If you make me try on shoes, I’m torching the boutique.”
Now they were seated at an outdoor terrace of an obnoxiously exclusive café that was three parts glass, two parts minimalist, and somehow still managed to smell like imported lavender.
Emma, of course, was stunning in ivory silk and diamond cufflinks that hadn’t hit the market yet. Ruby wore a black t-shirt graffitied with "Daddy's Girl", weathered jeans, and boots heavy enough to kick down a barricade.
They looked like afterparty and an apocalypse.
Their server was terrified of both of them.
Emma sipped her elderflower cocktail like she hadn’t just mentally browbeaten a CEO twenty minutes ago.
“Darling,” she said, eyeing Ruby’s boots, “you know I love when you dress like a walking rebellion, but you do have funds now. Resources. Designer access." She sniffed theatrically. "Even laundry detergent.”
Ruby raised an eyebrow. “You trying to make me into your doll?”
“Mhm, you do have my build.” Emma sipped a rose-hued cocktail with mild disapproval. “Too sweet.”
Ruby stabbed her arugula with the subtle fury of someone raised in resistance cells. “Why am I here, again?”
“I told you.” Emma gave a small, impeccable shrug. “Wardrobe morale. You’ve been living with your father too long. His idea of fashion is ‘How many pockets does this thing have?’”
Ruby smirked. “You realize I spent most of my life in a black bodysuit and my ruby skin.”
“And it still had more shape than that t-shirt.” Emma arched a brow. “Honestly, darling, you’re built like a genetically perfect Valkyrie. My genes, of course. Why waste it on sarcasm and loose cotton?”
“I’m not trying to seduce a city.”
“You say that like it’s a virtue.”
They lapsed into silence for a moment—comfortable, almost amused.
Ruby twirled her fork.
“Did you ever…” she started, then stopped. “Would you have done anything differently? If we’d all had more time?”
Emma didn’t hesitate.
“I wouldn’t have let the world steal so much of you.”
That stopped Ruby cold.
Emma continued, voice calm, but not soft.
“You shouldn’t have had to learn how to field-strip a plasma rifle before you learned what mascara was for. No version of me would ever dream that for you.”
Ruby looked down.
“I chose it,” she murmured. “I don’t regret it.”
“I know you don’t. That’s what makes it worse.” Emma set down her drink, interlacing her fingers. “Everything I know about you… I’ve seen in fragments. Echoes, mirroring an unknown. Memory-threads you shared—sometimes without meaning to. I’ve watched your version of me in your head—her tone, her perfume, the way she stood behind you when you spoke too loudly at command briefings.”
“I didn’t mean to share those,” Ruby muttered.
Emma smiled, razor-thin and wistful. “You never do. But I held onto them anyway.”
Silence settled between them—not heavy, but real.
“I’ve seen enough to know you are mine.” Emma said with finality. “And if you want to do more than echo your father’s battles or chase ghosts of timelines long behind you—then you’ll need to decide what your future actually looks like.”
Ruby met her eyes. “You’re saying I need therapy.”
“I’m saying,” Emma said smoothly, “you need to build a legacy. You need to dream more than just being your parents.”
Ruby looked down at her half-empty glass. “What does that make us, then?”
Emma lifted her gaze, meeting Ruby’s without hesitation. “It makes us two women who understand each other more than the world would find reasonable.”
Then, after a beat, she added, “And, as I have said, it makes you mine. Maybe not by the conventional sense. Not by memory. But by declaration.”
Ruby narrowed her eyes, lips twitching. “That’s not how motherhood works.”
“Oh, but it is,” Emma said coolly. “You’re thinking too legally. I’m claiming you the same way diamonds are made. You'll be mine through pressure, heat, and time.”
Ruby snorted into her drink.
Emma leaned forward.
“You are Summers by name. And I won’t take that from you. But make no mistake, darling—you’re a Frost in the ways that matter. You walk like me. Speak like me. And you survived like me—too elegant for the world to fully appreciate, and far too dangerous for it to ignore.”
For once, Ruby didn’t deflect.
She just nodded. Once.
“I see her in you,” Emma added. “My other self. The one you knew. She’d be proud. I think that’s enough to claim you, don’t you?”
Ruby exhaled. “It’s weird having two parents who think adoption is just a psychic handshake.”
Emma smirked. “You’re welcome. And when the world tries to burn you, you don’t scream.”
Ruby’s jaw tightened.
“You shine.”
Silence settled. This time, neither of them tried to break it.
Finally, Ruby exhaled.
“So what now? Am I supposed to become a CEO? Open a mutant etiquette school?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Emma said, waving a hand. “You’d murder half the boardroom before the first quarter. And I’d be proud of you for it, but no.”
She smirked.
“Do whatever you want. Fight. Rest. Fall in love. Stay angry. Just don’t become a ghost of either of us. You weren’t made to haunt things.”
Ruby looked away, blinking hard. She didn’t want to cry in public.
She also didn’t want to admit how much of her own mother she saw in this version of her.
So instead, she said, softly, “You know I love you, right?”
Emma smiled like it hurt.
“Of course you do.”
They sat a while longer, just watching the city pulse and unfold around them.
Before they left, Emma slid a small black box across the table.
Ruby opened it to reveal a thin belt of diamond-threaded combat weave.
The wardrobe morale, it seemed.
“It's a new design with reinforced crystal interlace." Emma explained, "It goes with everything - including patented Summers emotional baggage.”
“You bribed me with tactical couture.”
“I reminded you that you’re loved in ways that occasionally come with high-end accessories.”
Ruby rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth lifted.
And for the first time since the pier, the weight between them felt like something they could both carry.
Ruby smirked at her. “It’s still a bribe.”
Emma turned, walking toward the elevator, heels clicking like punctuation.
“No, darling." Emma smiled.
"It’s a reminder that you’re still mine.”