Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men, only this alternate universe.

My eyes follow the stripes on the hallway carpet. I used to step carefully, one foot in front of the other, pretending it was a tightrope and I'd plummet to my doom if I wavered. I didn't see Lorna stepping out of the room behind me, didn't notice her until she was close enough. All at once, she toppled to the floor, screaming. I ran to her, tried to tell her where she really was, but I think the nearer I was, the worse it got. We stayed like that, both trapped, both helpless, until the professor heard the commotion. When I apologized to him, to both of them, afterward, the words sounded hollow -- not because I didn't mean them, but because I knew there was nothing I could do to make it better. That was the beginning of the end.

I take a deep breath and pause outside the door to his office. It's not that I'm scared of him, or for him (and that last thought makes me smile at the ridiculousness of the prospect). But it calls back a few too many memories, leading right up to my last day. I was the one who walked that proverbial last mile to his door, I was the one who said that it was better this way, but now that I'm back where I started, I have to wonder: was it really my idea? How many times had I heard (or overheard) him talk about what he'd do to protect his students?

And that's what causes my hands to shake -- damn it -- as I knock.

He lowers his shields -- I don't even need to wonder if he has them in place -- long enough to let the message leak through. Come in, Scott.

The office looks the same, too. Same curtains at the windows, same pictures on the walls. The one hanging over the fireplace -- empty now in the spring -- is of his father, a nuclear physicist. Back in the day, before the professor had done much research into genetic mutations, he assumed that his power was due to radiation exposure. Actually, I think a lot of people came to the same conclusion. Radioactivity can do some pretty horrible things, but I've never heard of it giving people powers. Not in real life, anyway.

He speaks first, aloud. It's good to see you again.

Likewise... sir. He smiles at this. Even though it's been years since we had that sort of relationship, he still commands that kind of respect... and anyway, my dad was an Air Force pilot. Old habits die hard. Conditioning. Not exactly the kind of thing you expect to deal with when you live as a hermit and have spent the last ten years healing old wounds with the numbing balm of self-control. I steel myself as we shake hands, and it has no effect that I know of, even though skin-to-skin contact, like eye contact, helps transmit the illusions faster and more powerfully. There are so many questions I want to ask, both the ones I rehearsed to myself on the drive down and the ones that occurred to me just now. But I settle for a simple, How have you been?

We've been very well.

The school's huge now. I can't believe it. It's amazing. And I let myself smile back. I sound seventeen again. I guess not too many of the old crowd are left.

Lorna's gone, yes, he replies. Hank as well. Warren debated staying on as an X-Man, but his family obligations came first. Is his tone accusatory? Maybe a little bit? It's hard to tell, but then he's always been difficult to read. I don't want to be so suspicious of him. I really don't. He took me in, treated me like I was something besides crazy, cared for me when I was scared that that craziness was contagious. And if I don't believe that he can do no wrong, it's because three years is long enough to look back on it clear-eyed and realize that I've known better all the while. But Ororo and Jean are still here... if you haven't seen them already.

I peeked in on 'Ro's class. I'll hook up with her later.

I'm sure you could have interrupted and she wouldn't have minded.

Is she leading... I begin, then pause. The term sounds strange even in my thoughts. ...the X-Men now? I know she talked about it.

Yes, and doing a fine job.

And what about Erik? I mean, is he still...

An amused chuckle. He's still here.

And still teaching? Had the unapproachable seer ever thawed, was what I wanted to ask. Not that I expected it or could even picture it. Which was kind of ironic, when you thought about it.

Indeed. He's better with the students than you might expect. Even the ones who don't like him, respect him.

And I know what he means by that. We all knew that despite their friendship, it was only to keep his visions of the extremes of mutant persecution from becoming a reality that he worked with Xavier in the first place. If there was another way, he'd take it... and he hadn't been afraid of letting us know it. But our feelings toward him went so far beyond like and dislike that they had crossed the border into awe. I can imagine.

But they liked you, he says gently. Your crowd' as you put it. Don't ever think they didn't.

They were scared of me. I don't mean to sound self-pitying. Really, I don't.
And there was a kind of comfort in the formalities that I know I can't have back, any more than I can take the words themselves back.

That wasn't your fault.

I could have controlled it better, I insist, still quietly, like that can keep this from being the confrontation that it was meant to be from the second I set out. I didn't. End of story.



I'm silent.

Do you blame yourself?

He's playing shrink with me. I can't believe it.

You were a good teacher. The images that you inadvertanly projected into the children's minds may have frightened them occasionally, and the diversion was an eventual inconvenience, yes, but they would never have turned against you. They had already seen enough intolerance.

I want to say that that doesn't matter, but I don't want to talk about that anymore, and he doesn't peek in my head out of equal parts ethics and self-preservation. Mental contact leaves the window of opportunity the widest of all, as we both discovered during the many hours he spent completely open, trying to measure the range and strength of my power, risking -- such a dramatic word -- his own sanity to try and see if there was some way of putting a leash on it, to keep every one of my passing fancies from manifesting itself in the eyes and ears and minds of everyone within my sight.

And that's why I don't try to hide my gratitude from myself, at least, and why I'm showing it to him by coming back.

And it worked for a while, but not long enough. I would have had to devote every shred of concentration to staying in control, and that wouldn't have been good for anyone.

So I talk about life in semi-rural Maine -- Stephen King country, appropriately enough -- where it's always cold and where I've found a job that doesn't require me to spend too much time around other human beings. I spend it online, instead, in eight or ten different chat rooms in all, emailing some of my firmer connections who are allowed to see the Scott Summers I might have been, that isn't affected by... this. But I also know that no connections are really firm, that everything can change in an instant, and that sometimes things were never what they seemed in the first place. Obviously.

He tells me about the students. Bobby Drake, John Allardyce, Peter Rasputin, Kitty Pryde. They sound like nice kids. He speaks of the Senate hearings nearly a month ago, how he and Erik accompanied Jean as she made her case, while her very appearance was a counter to the arguments she was trying to make to Senator Kelly. Not that he says that, of course. I saw a clip of it. She still looked beautiful. I don't know how many other people would have thought so, but it was the only way I had ever known her, ever expected to see her. I've let myself wonder, from time to time, what might have happened if I'd stayed, and I expect that I'll start wondering again after I leave. But for now, as I go to seek her out, I'll keep those possibilities tucked away inside my head. I don't want them to hurt either one of us.

**


When she first got her own office, when I knocked on the door in the evenings, sometimes I'd find her hanging by her toes from the mantle, a book in her hands, completely un-self-consciously. As if it were the most normal thing in the world. I would clap, and she would drop to the floor as gracefully as a cat, despite her size, and deliver a sweeping bow.

She could always do anything she set her mind to, from putting her agility to use on the soccer field in high school, to suriving medical school later, to something as otherwise trivial as typing, which she'd long since re-learned to do. Her hands are twice the size of mine, yet she taps the keys as quickly and efficiently as if they were still as delicate as I've seen in some photos.

I linger just outside the door. Just look in on her, I tell myself.

Her hair is pinned up, the same fiery red I remember. That hair, and her face and eyes, weren't affected by the mutation that enlarged her hands and her feet, stetched and broadened her slim figure. At first, it didn't seem to make any difference to her. We were supposed to present an example of self-acceptance to awkward mutant teenagers, to practice what we preached, but it had never been an act with her.

Not really.

It wasn't until we had become friends, started talking about something besides lesson plans on our infrequent dinners out, that we exchanged manifestation stories, after we were back at the mansion. I told her about my senior prom, how three-quarters of the student body had been aware of how I would have, for a split second, liked to carry out my rage at Selena for dumping and humiliating me. She had told me that after the car crash that had killed her best friend, she hadn't been sure whether her parents had been more upset by the tragedy or that they had found the girl being held by a stranger, a freak, who resembled their daughter but who was never going to pass for normal, not ever again.

More memories, brought on by the furrowing of her brow, a toss of her head.
She had shown me the photo albums of herself with her family, with the friend she had lost -- Anne? Amy? -- and at school dances. I don't know what she expected me to think of what she was showing me. I don't think she was sure herself. I do know that when I tried to brush her bangs out of her eyes, they widened in shock, then relaxed in an expression of dreamy contentment. I didn't have to ask what I'd made her see.

And I remember my response perfectly.

I'm sorry I can't make it like that for you all the time.

It's okay.



Really. Cross my heart. I don't care anymore.

I'm not convinced.

She was silent for a long time.

Fine. I do care. But I don't mind.

Then why do you keep the pictures?

Because I had a life before I came here. They're good memories, even if they're sad. You're very sweet, but I'm used to things the way things are.

I still wasn't convinced. That was before I realized how unlike other girls Jean Grey was. Maybe how unlike anyone she was. Before I realized that she must have been a little offended at my offer, but hadn't shown it. And she hadn't been afraid.

Is someone there?

I could make her think that she's never seen or heard me at all. That would be safer.

No, don't think it, don't think it...

She stands up and moves closer to the doorway.

Another deep breath, and I try to clear my mind. But it doesn't matter, because it's not full of a single what-if image. Only her, as she is.

Surprises even me.

You see me. I'm here.

She knew I was coming -- they all did -- but her lips still part slightly, and I know she's wondering if I'm real. I've always gotten that a lot, even from her. Just as if she wasn't the one who stood by me when I used to wonder the same thing. Hi, Scott.



Welcome home.

Home.

I should go. I really, really shouldn't stay.


A/N: This was my answer to a challenge presented by Minisinoo to write Scott, Jean, and any of the other X-Men we pleased with different powers.

I admit that residual angst from one of my previous fics helped me to come up with illusionist!Scooter (and whether the Jason issue exists in this reality is entirely up to the reader). Jean has Hank's mutation, pre-blue-fur. Erik, who's only mentioned, can see into the future -- a la Irene Adler or Larry Trask from the comics. I've left everyone else's powers as they are.