Fanfic Experimentation: X-Men Canon AU: Miles to Go Before I Sleep - Cyclops-centered
So I've been writing. Mostly my original fic but finally I've been writing. I had this dream about Cyclops and I just had to make it into a story. It's an experiment I'm doing. i don't know if its any good and it's very raw but I wanted to see if anyone liked it. Also I'm not too sure about the timeline of the prologue. I might change it.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
by Robert Frost
There was an old newspaper sitting on the table. Its yellowing pages brittle and rough. It sat on the table that was too fancy for a place like that. A place that was worn and torn by years of neglect and human decadence.
The walls were fractured. Spiderweb indentations spreading from one wall to another to another until the room looked like a jagged jigsaw puzzle, or a cracked mirror. The floors were cheap laminate over cheaper wood over watered-down concrete. It was the same on all ten floors with the outside looking even worse. Brittle bricks and worn metallic beams and nothing else holding up the entire structure.
That it hadn’t crumbled to the ground baffled most of its neighbors. That it stayed upright despite the hard rains and hurricane level winds mystified onlookers. Most avoided the building like one would the plague or Jehovah Witnesses. They never passed by the sidewalk, simply went across the street despite the inconvenience. Cars never parked anywhere near it even though parking was at a premium anywhere in the city.
It was an old building dating back to the industrial revolution, and some thought it went even farther than that. Historical those in the know would say, but no one had tried to tear it down so it was a moot point.
Who lived there? People would wonder. Surely someone had to since lights came on at night and the noise of television drifted past its thin walls and onto the surrounding buildings. And while no one from the neighborhood ever parked in front of it, every once in a while a battered blue chevy would appear, almost from one moment to the next, and be gone just as suddenly.
No strangers were ever spotted on this side of town. No sane person wanted anything to do with that neighborhood if given a choice. No person who wasn’t one of their was seen anywhere were people could be seen: like the corner store were everyone bought their groceries and necessities, or the only bar in a three block ratio that didn’t have strippers where most went to wind down after a tough day at work.
There were tales of course. Whispers tossed around like a ball in a school yard: the ghosts of a dead someones, a disfigured hermit that hid his/her scars from the world, a conspiracy nut that spent his/her days and nights with aluminum foil hats and booby traps set up to keep the government away.
But the truth was no one really knew. And so time passed and days turned into weeks turned into years and the building came alight at the oddest moments and slunk back into stillness.
Once a group of teens tried breaking into the building. They never succeeded and the stories they told were another page added to the mystery. Of rooms that stretched on forever. Windowless, doorless, warped like twizzlers, mirages where they thought they’d gotten inside only to find themselves staring at the alley where they’d come from.
No one tried a second time.
But like all things even stories fade. Within two years the entire neighborhood would get a facelift. People would be chased out of their homes by greedy developers and solicitous politicians.
Three years buildings would be torn by the dozens and apartments and parking lots and boutiques would sprout up like flowering annuals. And even as that building fell, the yellowing paper that once laid on that fancy table floated through the air and onto the street as though a hand had guided it down. Gently, so the pages wouldn’t tear, gently, so the paper wouldn’t fly in a dozen different directions. It landed, perhaps by coincidence, perhaps by happenstance at the feet of an old man with an eye for antiques.
The old man carefully picked up the paper. It was in perfect, mint condition. Not even the flight from the crumbling building, not even the dust or debris had damaged it. The man smiled, ran his fingers carefully over the front page.
He tucked it into his jacket, glancing around to make sure was watching him. Then he walked away. Back to his part of town. To his antique store filled with classic books and historic documents. In his hands he held a treasure, he knew. Of a time long ago when the world lay on the brink of change. But it was more than that. For the paper held the headline that would change the course of many lives and forge a new dawn for many others.
On the front page, letters bold and two inches tall read:
Murder at Columbia: Famed Geneticists Dr. Charles Xavier Slain While Giving Lecture
A photograph followed the headline: Charles Xavier in a wheelchair accompanied by a young man with eyes the color of the clearest oceans.
The footnote read: Dr. Charles Xavier and adopted son Scott Summers at Columbia University hours before shooting.
That wasn’t what made the paper unique. The news spread internationally and millions of copies sold in just the continental US. Nor was it the unique circumstances surrounding the death. Whispers of murder for hire and assassination ran rampant. Conspiracy theorists coming out in hordes.
But while interesting, none of that was what mattered in this particular paper. No, what made this paper special was pages inside, where hand written notes marred the pristine state of the paper. Arrows pointed and faces circled in red, all of them crossed off with a single exception. A photo of a young man dressed in black, dark glasses covering his eyes. The footnote reading: Scott Summers grieves for adopted father.
A/N: So what do you guys think?
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
by Robert Frost
There was an old newspaper sitting on the table. Its yellowing pages brittle and rough. It sat on the table that was too fancy for a place like that. A place that was worn and torn by years of neglect and human decadence.
The walls were fractured. Spiderweb indentations spreading from one wall to another to another until the room looked like a jagged jigsaw puzzle, or a cracked mirror. The floors were cheap laminate over cheaper wood over watered-down concrete. It was the same on all ten floors with the outside looking even worse. Brittle bricks and worn metallic beams and nothing else holding up the entire structure.
That it hadn’t crumbled to the ground baffled most of its neighbors. That it stayed upright despite the hard rains and hurricane level winds mystified onlookers. Most avoided the building like one would the plague or Jehovah Witnesses. They never passed by the sidewalk, simply went across the street despite the inconvenience. Cars never parked anywhere near it even though parking was at a premium anywhere in the city.
It was an old building dating back to the industrial revolution, and some thought it went even farther than that. Historical those in the know would say, but no one had tried to tear it down so it was a moot point.
Who lived there? People would wonder. Surely someone had to since lights came on at night and the noise of television drifted past its thin walls and onto the surrounding buildings. And while no one from the neighborhood ever parked in front of it, every once in a while a battered blue chevy would appear, almost from one moment to the next, and be gone just as suddenly.
No strangers were ever spotted on this side of town. No sane person wanted anything to do with that neighborhood if given a choice. No person who wasn’t one of their was seen anywhere were people could be seen: like the corner store were everyone bought their groceries and necessities, or the only bar in a three block ratio that didn’t have strippers where most went to wind down after a tough day at work.
There were tales of course. Whispers tossed around like a ball in a school yard: the ghosts of a dead someones, a disfigured hermit that hid his/her scars from the world, a conspiracy nut that spent his/her days and nights with aluminum foil hats and booby traps set up to keep the government away.
But the truth was no one really knew. And so time passed and days turned into weeks turned into years and the building came alight at the oddest moments and slunk back into stillness.
Once a group of teens tried breaking into the building. They never succeeded and the stories they told were another page added to the mystery. Of rooms that stretched on forever. Windowless, doorless, warped like twizzlers, mirages where they thought they’d gotten inside only to find themselves staring at the alley where they’d come from.
No one tried a second time.
But like all things even stories fade. Within two years the entire neighborhood would get a facelift. People would be chased out of their homes by greedy developers and solicitous politicians.
Three years buildings would be torn by the dozens and apartments and parking lots and boutiques would sprout up like flowering annuals. And even as that building fell, the yellowing paper that once laid on that fancy table floated through the air and onto the street as though a hand had guided it down. Gently, so the pages wouldn’t tear, gently, so the paper wouldn’t fly in a dozen different directions. It landed, perhaps by coincidence, perhaps by happenstance at the feet of an old man with an eye for antiques.
The old man carefully picked up the paper. It was in perfect, mint condition. Not even the flight from the crumbling building, not even the dust or debris had damaged it. The man smiled, ran his fingers carefully over the front page.
He tucked it into his jacket, glancing around to make sure was watching him. Then he walked away. Back to his part of town. To his antique store filled with classic books and historic documents. In his hands he held a treasure, he knew. Of a time long ago when the world lay on the brink of change. But it was more than that. For the paper held the headline that would change the course of many lives and forge a new dawn for many others.
On the front page, letters bold and two inches tall read:
Murder at Columbia: Famed Geneticists Dr. Charles Xavier Slain While Giving Lecture
A photograph followed the headline: Charles Xavier in a wheelchair accompanied by a young man with eyes the color of the clearest oceans.
The footnote read: Dr. Charles Xavier and adopted son Scott Summers at Columbia University hours before shooting.
That wasn’t what made the paper unique. The news spread internationally and millions of copies sold in just the continental US. Nor was it the unique circumstances surrounding the death. Whispers of murder for hire and assassination ran rampant. Conspiracy theorists coming out in hordes.
But while interesting, none of that was what mattered in this particular paper. No, what made this paper special was pages inside, where hand written notes marred the pristine state of the paper. Arrows pointed and faces circled in red, all of them crossed off with a single exception. A photo of a young man dressed in black, dark glasses covering his eyes. The footnote reading: Scott Summers grieves for adopted father.
A/N: So what do you guys think?