Who'll give you time to cry? Who'll give you time to find yourself?
TITLE: Before The Storm Begins
FANDOM: Wolverine and the X-Men
CHARACTERS: Scott Summers, Emma Frost
RATING: Pre-Teen [Mentions of violence, nothing on-screen.]
SUMMARY: Scott, the X-Men’s prodigal son, may be down upon his return to the mansion, but there’s no way he's out. Emma Frost, the latest addition to the team, is about to find out how true this is.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: This piece began a long time ago. Back while writing “Somewhere On The Outside (This Close To Hell)”, I decided that as much fun as I had wallowing with Scott in his self-pity, it was a little unfair to leave him wallowing in his squalor, even with the hints at future awesome that I gave. I wanted to actually show his badassery, and so I started this. It ended up getting abandoned due to a lack of muse co-operation. Then, in the andthexmen Christmas exchange, potter_lover456 's wish list included badass!Scott and badass!Emma. The Muses decided to make their return, and so I began re-writing, finishing, and polishing. Thanks for the excuse. :)
Merry Chrismas, potter_lover456 . Merry Christmas to all of you. Enjoy.
When Scott steps out of his (and Jean’s) bathroom into his (and Jean’s) bedroom after showering, the last thing he expects to find is a woman sitting on his bed. Considering it’s Emma Frost though, he wonders if he should be at all surprised.
“What are you doing in here?”
“The door was open.”
“No it wasn’t.”
Emma shrugs, perched neatly with one leg crossed over the other in a posture that wouldn’t look out of place at high tea. She’s seated on the side of the bed that Jean used to sleep on, and deep in his stomach, something burns low and hot.
The towel slung low about Scott’s hips suddenly feels like insufficient covering; he makes up for it by refusing to believe that Emma has caught him off guard at all.
That’s the trick to hiding things from most telepaths, after all: believing -- all-out Peter Pan I-do-believe-in-fairies believing - in what you’re doing. If you do it just right, nine out of ten can’t tell the difference. The fact that there is no visible change in Emma’s expression, be it a goading smirk or a laugh, tells Scott that for all Emma’s skill, she’s more than likely one of the nine.
(Jean had been the one, most of the time.)
“What are you doing here Emma?”
“Just familiarizing myself with my new home. That’s all.”
The next question out of his mouth should be why she needs to be familiar with his (and Jean’s) room. There is a part of him, the part that used to lead the X-Men, that ends up taking the lead and decides that’s not the information he needs most right now. This part has him standing a little straighter, narrowing his eyes, and deciding on a different line of interrogation.
“Since when is this your home?”
“Since this morning. Logan’s decided that I proved myself worthy of an X back in Africa.” She pauses, glancing offhandedly out the window across the room. “It’s either that, or he simply wants to keep a close eye on me. I don’t think he’s even sure himself, but either way, he offered me room, board, and an official place on the team.”
Scott barely bites back the instinctual Logan isn’t in charge here that he wants to say. Emma hears it anyways, and quirks a smile.
“Why, Scott, is that jealousy I’m sensing?”
“Why, Emma,” he retorts, “is it any of your business?”
“It’s absolutely precious how you can’t seem to let the past go.”
Scott resists the urge to grind his teeth.
“As if you don’t have some skeletons in your closet.”
“Of course I do, darling - they’re right next to my favourite Dior jacket. I’m not the one sporting them for the world to see though, am I?”
If it’s the ‘darling’ or the insult that smarts, Scott still tenses up.
“You mean The Massachusetts Academy? Your so-called ‘Academy of Tomorrow’? Because that one isn’t exactly tucked away.”
He walks on forbidden ground, and knows it.
The unflappable Emma inhales sharply, and Scott enjoys the small victory a little more than he figures he ought to. He pushes on. “I still remember cleaning up the mess your Hellions made. Do you?”
She is silent.
“How many families are now missing sons? Daughters? Do you even know?”
Silence still.
“Forty-two. Forty-two families.”
Emma appears as nonplused as the delivery of her next words.
“And you know because I disappeared, and you ended up making the phone calls. I’m aware.”
“I don’t think you are.”
He brings to the forefront of his mind the memories of all those crying parents, screaming siblings, hurting families. Scott has gotten very good at keeping these memories tamped down, but he has never grown numb to them. They ache freshly as he recalls them, bringing them to life in mental HD so there is no way Emma can miss it, or misunderstand.
“Your legacy, Miss Frost,” he says quietly, though vague disdain seeps through. “Congratulations.”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking I didn’t care for those children, Scott,” Emma snipes, each world a weapon. Though her body looks relaxed, Scott can feel both the physical and psychic tension in the room. “And don’t you dare think that I didn’t care about the collateral damage as well.”
“I’m curious as to what dictionary your definition of ‘care’ comes from.”
She opens her mouth, eyes narrowed, looking for all the world as though she is about to release a particularly vitriolic response. She pauses, only long enough for it to be noticed, and tilts her head to the side as her smile returns.
“Tell me, do you still sleep on the left side of the bed? Because while certainly charming, I would hope you do know that Jean doesn’t need the right half to herself anymore.”
First instinct says to lift his glasses and let his optic beams take care of this for him, but Scott realizes quickly that Emma’s change of subject is an attempt at redirection, her way of trying to keep him from pursuing this line of verbal attack. Now that he knows this, odds are she does too. Fist tightening on his towel, his speech changes. Every word is carefully enunciated, and probably dropped down a key or two. It is purposeful, as much a reply as a warning.
“I’ve lived with two telepaths for nearly as long as I remember, Emma. You can try to play your mind games, but I promise you I’ve seen better.”
If she’s at all taken aback by the brashness of this statement, she doesn’t show it. Her own tone and presence remains every bit the ice queen she takes such pride in being.
“Trust me, Scott. I’m very aware of your circumstances. And as to my ‘mind games’, as you so delicately refer to them? That remains to be seen.”
He walks to the door of his room, and opens it.
“You can leave now.”
Emma rises, but there is no air of concession about it.
“You know I’ll be back.”
“But not today. Leave.”
Their eyes lock again, and Scott wonders why he didn’t even bother with denying Emma’s presumptuous statement. This time Scott comes out the victor in what he’s guessing will end up being a series of staring contests between the two of them. She brushes past him with a cold smile. As she does so, there’s a tiny tickle at the back of his head that he recognizes as psychic probing.
“Until then, Four Eyes.”
Emma leaves with Jean’s affectionate nickname for him on her lips, and though fresh out of the shower, Scott decides to get into uniform and head down to the Danger Room to go break things for a little while.
-FIN-
Just a few closing notes:
Firstly, in ‘Hindsight: Part 3”, upon Scott first seeing Emma, there’s a brief exchange between him and Logan:
“And she is?”
“Temporary.”
At first blush, that sequence comes off like Scott not actually knowing who she is. I’ve always heard that question being more like “And she is here why?”, but Logan simply cutting Scott off. Logan knew who Emma was and about the Massachusetts Academy, so why the hell wouldn’t Scott? I approached this fic with that understanding. Just so we all know.
Secondly, ‘Four Eyes’ as Jean’s nickname for Scott is canon; I can’t point to where in comics, but in X-Men: TAS, part three of the Dark Phoenix saga, she uses it. I felt like Scott ended up winning that round, as it were, and so for Emma to exit with a jab like that just made sense.
Thirdly, I do ship these two. Honest. I also love them at odds with one another in this universe, seeing as it lends itself to badassery in both of their characters...especially when they end up falling back on their defence mechanisms: snark, sarcasm, and deflection.