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Learn Me Right; Cyclops
Topic Started: Dec 8 2014, 04:27 AM (437 Views)
Cannonball
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Dec. 1, 2014

-Morning-

Sam had learned to stop complaining about the cold long ago. It had happened when he stood somewhere on the threshold between boy and man, not too long after his Pa had died, and the visitors with their pot lucks and flowers and condolences had all packed up and headed home. He had to work. The family needed the money there was simply no way around it. He had sounded all confident, self assured, man of the house now, as he carefully explained to his mother why doing the same thing that had gotten his Pa nothin' more then a set of dirty lungs and a casket was the best thing for everyone especially him. It was the first time he could remember lying to his mother. Oh sure, there had been times he had stretched the truth, been caught cutting class, or hanging out with old man wheeler's granddaughter past what would have been considered a respectable hour, but those had been slights, the trailings of a little wild and maybe a little rough but still a respectable youth.

No, this lie was bigger somehow. No silly fib for skipping Sunday school to go mud bogging with the boys this was the sort of lie on which a soul died a little inside. It was the lie of an adult, like how someone could say they were happy when really they weren't, like how the bank owner who held the deed to their farm could stop by not two days after his Pa was laid in the ground and say he was sure sorry for their loss but that they were two months late on their payment and arrangements needed to be made soon or else they'd simply be forced to foreclose on the place. It was the lie of fallacies and fakeness and looking someone he loved most in the world straight in the eyes and assuring her this was what he wanted.

He never was sure who felt worse that night. Him, for lying to the only parent he had left or his mother, who knew with every intuition that only a mother could have, who had every dream and every wish for her child, who had watched her young, vibrant, life loving husband wither with sickness and struggle in the end to simply breathe, an irony of ironies because that was supposed to be the one thing that was free, and now she was sentencing her eldest son to the same fate because the bills were pilling up, and there were more mouths to feed then hands to go around and because it had to be done. She had said little that evening, just a stated "If it's what you want Sam."

"Aw Ma." he had said desperate in that moment for a strength that was supposed to elude his young age, desperate to be a 'Man" when he was still really just a kid.

"Ya know me Ah'm only happy when ah'm busy. And the pay is steady. Mr. Stevens even said Ah can have Pa's same shift. It's the ..... right thing. I've done signed the papers and ah'm on the schedule. It's done" he had finally said and Lucinda Guthrie had said nothing in reply just stood up and walked to her bedroom. Inherited from her Sam too understood the price of pride. She would not let him see her cry. He had clocked in at the Cumberland County mines before sunrise the next morning, on what had to have been the coldest morning he could ever recall, a chill that came not from a low temperature but from the resignation of a soul and as he made the slow descent into the mouth of the caves, formatted like the jowls of some decaying beast desperate to swallow them all whole he found himself repeating the mantra of all those who had ever striven for that elusive "more" but in the end been forced to settle for what was available to them.

Ah gotta do what ah gotta do

Many days and an entire world of realities removed from that day Sam focused on his breathing as he completed his second lap around the school. Early morning workouts like this were great because the majority of the students and other X-men were still inside asleep or gearing up to start their days. This time, these moments, with only his self and God to talk to were probably some of the most sincere he had anymore and they were definitely the closest he would becoming to any kind of service or worship. He had had a falling out of sorts with organized religion. When you watched you home and the people you love get blown up and nearly killed by people practicing a type of religious zealotry it tended to paint the whole affair in a bad light. No one, Sam thought, would be making anymore decisions for him but him; not about what was right or what was wrong or fair or just or what was or was not a sin. No one should have that much power he thought, a power so strong, you could command someone to die for you or worse to kill. No God, could be proud of behavior like that.

Deep in his own head he almost didn't heed that he was no longer alone in the school's yard. Someone else was up early as well. He pondered just jogging by them, giving a simple wave hello and trotting off. Most likely anyone outside this early was of the opinion same as Sam that they would be a lone and maybe best if he let it stay that way, but when he realized that the person outside was his old mentor and X-man leader Scott Summers he stopped.

"Ain't nobody supposed to be up this early 'cept ants and assholes." He joked to the senior X-man.

"And since neither one of got antenna Ah'm guessing' we fit in with the latter. Somethin' keeping you awake, Scott? Ah get that too sometimes it's like things are the same but not. Ever since we rebuilt the place, started all over, Ah keep waiting for that feelin' ta come back. The one that says 'this is your bed same as it ever was and this is your room same as it was. Only it aint. Doug tells me ah'm crazy and I'll get used to things, but ah don't know if ah'll ever sleep soundly again, Guess ah don't trust myself to let things be on their own. That, or there's just too many damn ghosts. So what does got you up and out so bright and early. Somethin' comin' down the line?"

Sam supposed it said a lot to his nature anymore that he was suspicious of the calm. Trouble and threats he could deal with, had a plan for, it was this, he thought, being still that eluded him.
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They had been home for a couple months, getting accustomed to the routine again, allowing themselves to remember what it was that they were here for, why this school was their home. Scott had attempted to present himself as having recovered from his ordeal and the insecurity that came from it, and for the most part, he felt that he was doing a good job. He felt like he was about 95% back to normal, or what passed for normal to a man with as many eccentricities as Scott Summers. He was unfriendly, micro-managing, particular, insular and demanding... so, pretty much Scott. But the bad seemed to be enough outweighed by Scott's good points (of which he did not easily list or recognize) that people seemed to be happy that he was back, even with that missing 5% of normalcy.

But, he was trying to regain that, so that he could be the 100% that he felt the school deserved. For all the pain and sacrifice being here had caused, it had given so so much more.

The hardest thing though for him to get over was the memory of his attack and murder here on the school grounds, and even though he knew now that he had not been killed, but had been poisoned into a deathlike state that left him susceptible to mental and physical manipulation, it was still a horrific and nightmare inducing memory. As such, Scott had not yet returned to his old habit of jogging through the woods every morning, to keep his body fit and his mind clear, but he was slowly working on that.

He was never a man to be enslaved by fear.

Sam's greeting startled him, and he ceased his grim stare at the wooded area across the lawn. Without forcing a smile because that would, of course, be a sure sign that something was amiss, Scott nodded to Sam and his questions, "Falling back into old habits, Sam, or trying to, at least. Just haven't worked up the courage to go back there, you know? Where it happened..."
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Cannonball
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It was a sad (or triumphant depending on how you chose to take it) statement on how many "it's" they had endured as both X-men and members of Xavier's that it took Sam a moment to register just what particular "it" Scott was mentioning. When memory sorted the most logical answer into place Sam knew there could really be only one "it" that Scott could be referring too; the one that had starting with the ending of his life.

Of course they knew different now, It had all been explained in big words and scientific quantification that had went way over Sam's head but as Doug later when asked simplified by saying "He was only mostly dead Sam There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead, and mostly dead means slightly alive." It was later on that Sam found out that Doug's explanation was a quote from a movie but at that point he figured he knew enough to grasp basically what had happened and finding a translator to translate the translator just seemed really complicated, so he just grabbed a bag of pork rhinds and decided to only think about what he did understand:
Scott had been dead, now he wasn't. Scott had been bad and now he wasn't. Pulling at all the threads to find out how the whole mess had been weaved would be maddening and was probably a job best suited for others.

Yet as he spoke to Cyclops in the cold early light of morning he saw something in the man he had never seen before, a hesitation, a proverbial chink in the armor. Scott Summers had been the greatest of mentors, the one Sam had wanted to be most like in terms of being a dedicated and exemplary X-man, but it was easy to mistake dedication with uniformity and exemplary with coldness. Scott Summers had never worn his emotions outward and it had never bothered to Sam to wonder why not. His Pa had always said you could always tell the quality of a man by how he looked you straight in the eye, but that was an impossibility with Scott; his eyes like the deepest of his emotions were always covered it seemed. Cyclops had already been a myth by the time Cannonball had found his way to Xaviers and it had been easier to just believe the stories, the hype, the legend. Nobody ever wants to grow up and be just like Joe Everybody and Sam had wanted to be a leader just like Scott. He had wanted the glory, and the satisfaction, and the respect.

Heavy is the crown he thought, but how weak is the neck.

The stories may have still stood but Sam wondered now if Scott could ever match them, maybe he never had. That hadn't been his fault. Scott Summers had just been doing the best he could. He had probably never asked to be an example same as Sam had never asked to be left responsible for a bunch of kids with no strong male figure to look up to but him when his father had died.

It's never a choice is it? he thought as Scott looked from Sam to the place that had forever altered his life.

We like ta think it is. That's what makes it bearable but really it's never a choice. Telling ourselves that we can choose is probably the biggest lie we ever tell

It wasn't sympathy that washed over Sam in that moment for Cyclops but rather an understanding. It was no shattering of myth, no undoing of a God made by stories and legends now turned bailable by truth but rather it was seeing someone as they had always been perhaps for the first time, perhaps for the last, but in seeing them you saw something of yourself and a truth that should be universal but isn't.

We are all breakable. We can be rebuilt, but the cracks are always there. There is no winning; only surviving

"It's hard not to dwell on it ain't it?" Sam asked Scott.

"I remember after that cave in when Ah nearly died and my mutation bursted through to save my ass in the last minute. Ah thought it was a miracle. God giving me something special when ah needed it most and then Ah remember after Pierce had tricked me, used me to do his dirty work all the while me thinking ah'm serving some higher purpose how it felt after. Dirty."

Turning his head to the side Sam spat unsure if because he needed to or just in saying the words and the names he had to curse it somehow.

"Ah spent the earliest part of my life in a coal mining town and ah thought nothing could be dirtier then that, the way it covers everything, seeps into your very skin and no matter how hard you clean you never really get it all out, but that....."

He paused and continued.

"Well that ain't nothing to the feeling of being used of having your mind played with, your emotions, your beliefs. It stays with you and aint no baptism out there can wash it all way. Took me a while to learn that. Ah kept thinking if ah could just do enough ya know, be better, do good, somehow it'd erase that bad. Make me forget how stupid Ah was, How easily Ah let myself get played. Ah carried that guilt for a long time till someone taught me better."

Sam turned his eyes back from the place he had been looking off into the distance and back directly on Scott.

"What they done ta you? Ah can't even imagine the hell and Ah don't wanna but they can't take nothing from you now that you won't give 'em. It's still life, even if its going through the motions. You play at it long enough ya get fine. Well numb, but fine and numb are pretty much the same thing. Your life is still here waiting on you Scott, that is, if you still want it back?"
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Scott listened to Sam's story, and advice, a small smile on his lips, not really more than a quirk upwards at one corner of his mouth. "Yes, Sam, I want it back, but for a while I wasn't sure I could get it back." He thrust his hands in his pockets, "I came back from this more shaken than I have ever been, because this... this was just the last in a series of events that showed me as... well, something less than I thought I was. I've spent most of my life, ever since coming here, believing that I was a good man that the Professor gave direction too. But ShadowX, the Eye of the Hand... Ruby showed that when removed from his teachings... I'm not naturally... I'm not a good man. I'm selfish, cold... self righteous. Without the school, I'm not what I want to be, and I'm tired of that being true. I went out to find myself out there with my father, and instead, I found more questions, just more evidence that my life as I knew it was just a lie."

He turned his head to look at Sam and he said, "What I am is, I think, that angry eleven year old who woke up brain damaged and different, missing parts of what I was, new parts in their place. I don't know that everything I've done since then, everything I've tried to be since I woke up, hasn't been a result of what happened to be while I was still asleep."

Falling silent for a moment, Scott looked back at the forest and said, "I need to go back, I need to go back to trusting myself, to deciding for myself who I am and why I am that thing. Never asked to be a leader, Sam, I just sort of decided I couldn't be a follower."

Setting off, his feet found the path that would lead to the place where he had met his death and he called over his shoulder, "You coming?"
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Cannonball
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It was probably the deepest conversation the two of them had ever shared in their joined history at Xaviers as both were more often taciturn then not. Sam could ramble on with his friends about college football games and sports drafts days or silly stories, friendly failing and triumphs, but he never much liked to get into the deep stuff. He had his opinions but he didn't like to get political and at this point in life (though it would probably break his Ma's heart) he was far from religious so that took care of that.. He tended to steer away from things that were divisive as growing up in Cumberland Kentucky arguments were settled with fists not words.

He could be anyone's friend because he was easy to get a long with, but those kind of friendships were often like pie crusts easily made and easily broken. Only a select few of people ever knew the turmoil Sam kept inside, the old wounds, the hurts over family and lost lives and the guilt oh the ever present the guilt that was his best friend. Nary a night past that it did not g o to sleep beside him reminding him that for everything he got right there was so much more he got wrong.

Sam had never thought Cyclops could be like that too and he realized how amazingly stupid that sentiment was. Which was harder he wondered following orders or having to be the one to give them and live with the consequences. They had all been at war a long time. Oh, sure they called it something different, an armageddon here an rise up there but when all things were piled up into their proper places they were a people at war and Scott had been a general to an army of children. That had to be it's own kind of hell, Sam thought as he listened to Scott talk about being lost, being found, and trying to find the balance n between. It was as open and as human as Sam had ever seen Cyclops and the younger X-man didn't know whether to be proud that the elder was confiding in such a way or to be terrified. No one really wanted to see their hero's battle scars.

If they're not better then us they're just like us he thought solemnly. God's only had the might that people gave them and when they fell they fell hard. So heavy was his thinking that Sam almost misunderstood Scott's intention when he spoke it of going back and his request for Sam to join him. Was it a request, a command? Sam wasn't sure but he went anyway, partly out of curiosity, partly out of the need to see it himself. It seemed so macabre to go visit the sight of you worst moment, you're own 'death', but if it was reversed Sam knew he'd need to see it too. Maybe to show to himself that it had had happened ; maybe to show to something else that it had not won, but he would need to see it. So he nodded and followed Scott as he went to what had been his Golgotha.

Soldiers died all the time Sam knew on strange lands, in strange places, foreign soil and grass, but when someone falls on their own land, in their own home. Sam imagines it had to something similar to a rape. It took away your security, your belief that on your own land you can not be harmed. Maybe thats what had made it so hard for Scott?


If it had happened at any other place Sam thought, it wouldn't have been so bad. There was more then just a physical life lost here. It stole everything THEY stole everything

It made Sam angry that infamous they that they that grew everyday like weeds and called them elves different things The Hand, Brotherhood, Hellfire, Purifiers, and so on. Only the titles and players ever changed never the game.

As they walked Sam wanted to say something poetic. He thought of his friend Cypher who would surely have a quote or turn of phrase something articulate and sentimental and perfect for the moment, but Sam wasn't Doug, words were not his gift, but he respected the man in front of him enough to be honest. So he just started talking, maybe to fill the silence because silence was always scary or maybe because when you walked over battlefields you needed to fill the air with something less the ghost get you.

"When my Pa died Ah never cried, not a single tear wouldn't let myself. Told myself only babies and pussies cried not men and then Ah'd get in bed at night and I'd sob like a baby 'cause I was scared to death. Life was one way and suddenly it was another and it never asked me or gave me a chance it just took it and I think thats when I learned that it didn't matter about fairness or justice cause there was no such thing."

He sighed as they walked a bit farther.

"It aint right what was took from you from any of us, and ah know you aint feeling sorry for yourself cause Ah know what it is just to have to do whats gotta be done, but you'll go mad asking yourself what's a lie and what aint. So Ah'm just gonna tell you what ah know is true. You've been a damn good leader, still are. You know how ah know that."

They had gotten to the spot where Scott had been found believed murdered though later it was revealed to be a well executed farce, but around the spot something of a makeshift memorial had been made; nothing too elaborate most had saved the flowers and cards and condolences for the grave he had been buried in or thought to have been buried in, but still like all scenes of great tragedies people had come to see and pay respect or maybe maybe just to confirm with their own eyes. Sam had never had the guts for it. The thought of earth soaked with his mentor's blood was just too much for him to take. He could deal with a gravestone, there was a disconnect there that allowed grief but also the ability to compartmentalize your emotions. This place, it did not allow for sorrow, it had screamed out injustice and the need for retribution; Some had watered it with their tears others with small mementos and even more with promises; maybe of retribution maybe of just injustice maybe of just goodbye.

"Funny, huh," Sam said though it wasn't funny at all

"Everybody in the country has a pice of paper saying where they were born, when, what very spot, but we sure as don't often get to see the place where we died, and Ah know ya weren't really dead but it sure seemed like it. Maybe thats the problem. Maybe something of you really did die right here question is which part?"




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Nodding at Sam's revelations about his feelings when his father died, how unfair it all was, "When I woke up," Scott said, "my doctor, a man named Essex... a man I believed was helping me... told me that my parents were dead, and my brother had forgotten me. Alex was only four when we were orphaned, and I wasn't a good brother to him before. I was a bully, a brat, and he was such a pest. When I was told he forgot about me, that he had a home and new family, I thought it was so unfair, I hated him for it... found out, years later, Essex had told him I died, and he hated me for dying. Manipulations. From him. From ourselves. Life, never easy, never simple, not for people like us..."

Scott and Sam walked through the woods, down paths that he had not forgotten though it had been almost two years since he walked them. He didn't know Sam's thoughts about who he was or what this conversation was doing to his thoughts about him, and he would not have been likely to understand them if he did. Scott never thought of himself as anyone special. He had only wanted to do what he could do to make the world a better place. That's why he was surprised when he got to the site where he'd been attacked by the Dark Beast to find trinkets, little displays... faded from nearly two years of sun and rain and snow, but recognizable.

"I went to my grave," Scott said, "When I came back, when I trusted myself again... Jean and I went to my grave, destroyed it, the headstone. I remember so little of what I was as the Eye after Emma's protection was taken from us. Fearlessness. Ruthlessness." He glanced over at Sam, "Alex and Warren said that they still feel it sometimes... what they were as Horsemen, but when I came back, when the drugs were purged and I stopped thinking his thoughts, I didn't feel it anymore. I don't feel the need to be that thing again... but I admit, it's been hard being me again."

He crouched down, and plucked a small cross out of the ground, roughly made by childish hands, his name painted on it in what looked like nail polish that retained a small amount of glitter. "What this stands for, what all of this stands for is a promise I made these kids to protect them, to educate them, and to give them the ability to thrive in a harsh world that hates and fears them. You want to know what died here, Sam? It was that promise, and, like I did, it needs to come back to life."
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Let he amongst you that is without sin cast the first stone

Another by product of his southern heritage, along with eating habits that would probably lead to diabetes if not for his strong metabolism and good work out regimen, was Sam's knowledge of scripture and though his heart was no longer in organized religion shaking out the pieces of the bible that had been read and repeated so often they had seared into his mind was something of an impossibility. It was hard, he thought, to unlearn something and the mind had a way with phrases same as song lyrics they embedded in places you couldn't dig out with a scalpel.

So many of the X-men had been touched, used in one form or another as a weapon or soldier, that if not for the selective process of forgiveness and the belief that they did more good then their capable harm Sam could almost see the other side of the argument against mutant kind. They were powerful, and dangerous, and deadly and when taken advantage of and stripped of conscience and humanity perhaps the worst of the worst. No, that wasn't true. The worst of the worst were those that knew everything and chose to inflict harm, to take a life, to pursue any agenda besides peace.

Maybe no court of law would convict Scott Summers of his crimes while under the influence of that hand but in the trial of self judgement it was clear to Sam that the X-man leader had found himself guilty. As they both looked at the this last place where Scott could remember being Scott as he had been before Sam thought about how hard Scott had rallied for Warren after Apocalypse had turned him into Death or even when his brother Alex Summers had been charged by the government for what he had done when he had been War.

He's got forgiveness for everyone but himself

Sam thought as Scott explained what it had been like in the after and what it was now.

He don't know how to just be. Probably never did

Cyclops spoke of promises and oaths and taking back lost things, all heavy and heady things and a part of Sam could feel the old rally cry and was ready to rise to it because after all Cannonball's by nature weren't exactly known for their subtlety. Still he found himself saying.

"Ah think that's where the problem starts Scott you can't make those kinda promises nobody can or well they can but they sure as hell can't keep 'em. You can only give the best a what you got, lead by example, but ah always thought ya win by just living your life ya know. Didn't see myself here five years ago don't know where Ah'll be five years from now, but ah know why ah stay. This place, this team, it aint just you, or just the Professor or just Jean or just me or just the kids; it's a bit of all of us all messed up together. It's accepting all the bad cause, well, there's good too. Ah aint no smart man, hell I aint even the smartest Guthrie, that's Paige, but ah think maybe the first step you gotta take to finding your way back is letting go of who you were. You'll never be him again and that's okay. You can be more, hell you can be less, you can be whatever. Life don't give many chances Scott. Some people get lucky to get second ones, some people lucky to seventy seven ones. I've always thought it was a flip of a coin. My ma always said whenever you feel lost you gotta stop and ask yourself why. Why did I do this in the first place, there's more to it then that I'll spare you the world according to Lucinda Guthrie cause believe me it's a book all it's own"

He cracked a small smile at the jape ta his mother and continued.

"After the Professor found you when you found your way back to normal why did you wanna be an X-man? What does that mean to you?"
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Others had said the same things to him that Sam said, usually not as colorfully, but Scott understood the sentiment and he nodded, though it wasn't as easy as people seemed to think. He knew he was not responsible for his crimes as the Eye of the Hand the way Alex hadn't been responsible for his as War. Mental manipulation was a slippery slope though and it became too easy to blame stray sins on 'the devil made me do it.' Scott, after all, was a pilot because the boy that was thrown out of a plane may have had his life changed, but he would never let that fear control him. It might have been one of the reasons he took tot he Dark Beast's instructions so readily. There had been no fear. Not of pain, not of loss, not of injury. There had only been control or be controlled, and he had too easily mistaken compliance with taking control. That was the greatest shame of it.

So lost was he in his thoughts that he almost missed Sam's question, "After the Professor found you when you found your way back to normal why did you wanna be an X-man? What does that mean to you?"

"The Professor found me robbing the Federal Reserve of Nebraska with Jack Winter," Scott said, still looking at the cross in his hand, "When my powers manifested, I almost killed people, and Jack saved me, took me in, worked to figure out my glasses... he could make crystals, that was his power... He taught me what I was, and showed me what I could do with it, and I owed him. I was fourteen and he fed me, clothed me, hell, he gave me drugs and beer, and told me when I was sixteen, he'd get me... a... a girl... well, it seemed like good stuff at the time. No one had ever wanted me before, so I owed him, wanted to make him happy so he'd keep me around. But then, he started demanding I use my powers for the wrong things. Breaking open ATMs, bank vaults, vandalism, armed robbery, and if I refused, he'd beat me, lock me in the storeroom for days without food or water, threaten to take my glasses and leave me blind. Broke my arm once. I dropped out of school, because the bruises were being noticed, and I didn't want to go back to the State Home. He'd always apologize though, get us both drunk and stoned, and promise that after the Reserve, we'd quit. We'd split the money and just retire. I could take my share and find Alex, and get back to Alaska, just the two of us, just family, me and my brother."

Scott's voice had not changed though his words were emotional. He was telling a story he had told before, maybe not to Sam, but to others, and though every moment was relived as he spoke, Scott had always been a man to choke back his feelings.

"Jack planned it for weeks, and we thought we knew everything perfectly. Where the guards were, how to shut down the alarm, how much money we could fit in the duffels, but when we got there, everything went to hell. This guard, this one old guard, had gone back to his locker to get his coat, and he ran right into us. Jack ordered me to blast him, but I'd never used my powers on a person before. I was fifteen years old, scared out of my mind, and sure that it would break this old guy into bits. I refused and Jack split my cheek open with the side of his gun, telling me I owed him everything. Then, suddenly, the world froze and the Professor was there, telling me exactly the opposite, that I had more to offer than destruction, and lawlessness. There was a fight, and I was knocked out, and when I woke up, I didn't remember Jack, or the Reserve, or anything. It was all part of that manipulation I mentioned before, Dr. Essex's attempt to make me something he wanted me to be. The Professor knew my memories of that year had been erased, but he took me in anyhow, kept that from me, and brought me to the school."

He glanced over his shoulder as if he could see the school through the trees, though from this deep into the property he could not. "Xavier knew I had nowhere else to go but he didn't take advantage of me in that way. He gave me an education because he said I deserved one, he taught me to fly because it was useful and I was interested in it. He showed me how to use my powers because it was necessary. But most importantly, he explained to me that what I could do did not make me a monster, that this thing in my head could be used to better the world, to make it so that no one ever had to be as lost and alone as I was. I became an X-Man, Sam, the first X-Man, not to lead an army but to help the world, and I thought... still think that there is a time when we won't have to fight for our freedoms. We will always be at war, because that's what man does, peace will never be absolute, but I do believe that my grandchildren will be able to be who they are without fear, and really, that's all I want in the end."

Scott spread his hands and then stabbed the little popsicle stick cross back into the ground, "I became an X-Man because I had never been given a choice before, and I wanted to make sure that no one else ended up without the ability to make their own."
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It was strange how you could know a person and yet not know them at all. Sam had spent years at Xaviers, hours with Scott training or just sharing time in the home they all shared, but he had never known the man behind the visor, not like this, so open and honest, so telling. There was a part of Sam that wanted to stop Scott that didn't want to think of the X-man as anything other then the man he had been, but then wasn't that what this was all about?

Pieces Sam thought We are all just puzzle pieces footage in the water. If we don't touch them they break away and of we do they do the same

He told Sam about his life, his life before Xavier. No one came into the world fully grown and yet somehow Sam had never thought that there could be another Scott Summers. Yes there had been the stuff with Ruby in that parreoll colliding reality but all of that had been such a mind fuck Sam had chose to block it out. He had never realized he and Scott had been so alike, both found by people who wanted to exploit their mutant abilities for their own selfish greed and reasons. Pierce had never played hands on Sam, rather he had played on the young country boy's naivety and good nature. Scott, however, had been exploited in afar deeper, far more invasive way.

Love Sam thought. You could love someone even if they were cruel to you, even if they hurt you. Abusive relationships were not unheard of and when you were so alone so desperate.

But for the grace of God he thought. Everything that Scott said could have happened to him if not for his family. They may have never had much in terms of the material things, but they had always had enough and love, well, some cups runneth over. He had always thought, perhaps stupidly, that everyone made their way to Xaviers same as he had. Sure some had more bumps in the road then other but the Professor offered a neutral zone, a place to grow into yourself as yourself mutation and all. Being an X-man was a choice some took but not everyone because it was always just that a choice.

He never had one. Sam realized. This life was built around him.

The reality of that notion gave Sam a deeper understanding of the difference between Cyclops and Scott Summers and that was the point there was a difference. He wondered if that was what the X-man leader was wrestling with now. Maybe that was the whole problem after all.

"I hope for that too. God, knows I pray for it. I want peace Scott same as you. Ah just want a piece of land one day with a nice view from my front porch and a woman ah love beside me and as many kids as ah can handle. Ah think we'll get there it's why I'm here too."

"But ah gotta ask"

He hesitated for a moment. They had entered into a dangerous area for men who did not often share their feelings especially with other men and the Kentuckian doubted they would end this talk in some Oprah style man hug weeping on each others shoulders. No, life had made them harder than that both by its loses and gifts. Sam had had his family, his upbringing to always cling to in the worst of times or darkest moments. There had been people to fight for and respects to a dead father to keep. Scott, well, Scott had had nothing, not really, till he had Jean.

"Where does it end, ah mean?"

He struggled to get out what he was saying. Damn he wished he was better with words like Doug or easier at expressing his feelings like Dani. It seemed almost a shame that in this moment of openness it was a bumbling bud from the coal mines of Kentucky around instead of someone more wise and sage.

"Cyclops and Scott Summers? You could leave ya know. Not that ah want you too or anyone would, but, damn, you've suffered enough for two lifetimes. No one would blame ya if you just swept Jean up and out of here and settled down somewhere made a life. No one would blame you and well..."

He rubbed the back of his neck nervously it was hard talking like this for him.

"You've sorta already seen that this place is gonna survive without you. So maybe that's what you're struggling with. You're so good at being Cyclops that you don't know how to be Scott Summers again? Maybe thats what you've been dreading out here. Not the place but the ghost left behind. It aint wrong to want both but ya can't ride two horses with one ass can ya? I mean.... Ah guess what I'm trying ta say...."

The words were drying up now, tumbling less like pouring sand and more like slated rock.

"You're free. Ya don't owe nobody nothin' You gave your life for a cause. Ya don't gotta give it another one ."

Sam straightened up and looked Scott more directly in the face.

"Unless you want to."
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"Where does it end, ah mean?" Sam asked and Scott frowned, his eyes squinting behind his glasses, unseen, unreadable.

"It doesn't, Sam," he said, simply, as if that was the only answer there was to give. "Not for me, and not for Jean. You say no one would blame us if we left, but we would blame us. We would feel wasted and irresponsible, negligent and ungrateful. This is our home, this school, and what we do here is more than the X-Men, more than Cyclops and Phoenix. Jean and I want to give back to the Professor, to the school, to the students, to our people, and if we end up having to sacrifice our own... well, that's sort of something we've made our peace with."

Scott turned to look back at the place where he'd been attacked and remembered his mad and desperate dash towards the school. "Sam, when the Dark Beast told me what he had done, told me my time on this planet was suddenly measured in minutes, I ran for the school, not because I hoped to reach help. It was clear from what was happening to me that there was nothing to be done. I ran for the school because my life began here, the life that I want to live began here. This place is responsible for giving me the one thing that no other place gave me. I could have found Alex without it, or my father. I would have had friends, maybe, a real job. I might even have found someone else to love and marry, though I can't imagine loving anyone but Jean... But what this place gave me, what I am willing to spend the rest of my life defending, no matter the pain, or the danger, or the darkness to come... is the one thing I hope to pass on to you, to the other X-Men, staff, students... to our people who are out there in the world just trying to survive."

Spreading his hands, Scott said, "Hope, Sam, this place gave me hope. The day I leave it, for good, is the day that I've lost hope. I pray that day doesn't come because without hope... I'm not a very good man."
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There was more to being a mutant then just a few wonky strips of genomes and chromosomes same as their was more to a person then debts and deeds and gratitudes. While many others might ask themselves when was enough enough it was obvious to Sam as Scott explained why he chose to stay at Xaviers and why he would continue to stay that Scott Summers was just as much a part of this place as it was him. He spoke of hope, of the need for it, and how it was as much a guiding force as any hand (no pun intended) ever had been or ever would be.

Scott would see the dream through or become a martyr trying and such sentiment was inspiring and devastating and empowering and disappointing and so many contradictory things if the Kentuckian thought too long on it he'd give himself a headache. Still he understood things about Cyclops that he never had before and even a little bit more about himself in the process. Sam wasn't sure he would or could endure all that Scott had and still continue on the so called "path" but then he had never been tested in such a way either. Faith, it was always said could move mountains but hope Sam now realized could lift them.

"It gives us all hope Scott and more then that a home and a family. Maybe that's what makes the good so good and the bad so bearable is no matter what we aint in it alone. We just gotta keep choosing it and remembering that we get lucky enough to have a choice."

He looked back to the school catching it in a light that as it shimmered off of bits of frost almost gave it a holographic look. For a second he saw past all the new visage to how it had looked that first day, when he had arrived at the rod iron gates, with a duffel bag full of clothes and not many clues about life. How much it ad changed since then. How much he had.

"I don't know if ah know of any 'good' people. I know people that do Good things and Ah guess ah've known some innocent people, but we all got the potential in us for either / or aint it all, what's the word, subjective? We're here and we are fighting the good fight. Maybe that can be enough. Guess we'll have to see what tomorrow brings. For now."

Sam said stretching.

"There's a might good breakfast set up in there waiting and while ah aint one to name no names if ya sort of don't get in there before somebody else makes his way to the bagels you find yourself picking off bits of fur of 'em it being being blue just makes it that much harder to overlook."

"Race ya back?"
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