Chapter One...Scott

One in two marriages end in divorce.

I look at that statistic a lot lately. Why? I'm still trying to fathom that since it's not very likely you and I will ever go anywhere. I mean, how can I put this back together again when I can't even get the pieces of my soul to work in one consistant whole again? Since I lost Nathan...I haven't been the same man I was before. I have guilt eating a hole through my soul for what I've done and for those that I've failed. How can I love you, Jean, when in your eyes I've failed you as well? I sit on the steps of the Blackbird and I contemplate this when I should be working. Working has always helped me to cope in the past, but now all I have is a stupid little statistic running rampat through my brain over and over again.

One in two marriages end in divorce.

I've always loved statistics. Like strategy, statistics is just based on facts that can't be disputed later on. You either win or you don't. Statistics either work or they don't. There is no in between there. No grey zones. No emotions...just hard core numbers or thinking. Battlefields, out-thinking the enemy who is trying to do the same thing with you...aggregate losses...all of it is just cold. No emotions involved. I like that about it. Because when it comes to emotions with me things fall apart like a crumble cake so fast that it's almost funny.

One in two marriages end in divorce

For as long as I can remember I've loved you. The moment you walked into Xavier's I found you to be the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. And I knew that with Warren and Hank in there -- or heck, if you went for younger guys, one day Bobby -- that I didn't stand a chance. I wasn't the handsome one like Warren who also came from money, I wasn't the brainy one like Hank, or the jock, and I sure as heck wasn't the funny one like Bobby. I was just a screwed up orphan and street kid who had done what a lot of people would consider "wrong" to survive on my own. I made a point, as soon as I saw you, to run away as far and as fast as I could. Because I KNEW that you could make me fall for you without even trying and that would give you power over me. And that scared me to death. Because if you had power over me, you beautiful redhead, you could screw with me and screw with me and I would let you. And I'd never even look at another woman the same way I looked at you or love her the same way. All the more reason to run as far and as fast as I could.

Yet, damn you to Hell, Jean, you slipped through somehow. You with those soul deep eyes and that passionate soul like the one I would never have near the surface of my entire being...you managed to get through every damn wall I put up against you. You didn't even have to smash them down. You talked your way through them. You tore through them with such a gentleness that when they were gone I didn't miss them and didn't even notice that they were gone. And when you finally reached me and I realized they were down there was nothing I could do. I was already in love with you and so I tried...for you...to learn. I never knew what love WAS until I met you and you melted down the ice I'd encased myself in so I wouldn't be hurt. I didn't know what it was to trust someone until I told you about my nightmares one night after you'd had that horrible date...you remember? And you never told anyone, not even Charles that I know of, about those nightmares...those nightmares of me being all alone and in the middle of nothing, not feeling anything and not caring. And you told me of your nightmares about the dark and how you'd wish there was some light on nights of the dark of the moon because it was too dark. You were too much of a grown up, you said, to beg for a night light, but you wished there was a way to get light into the room somehow without coming across as weak.

The next night you slept in your bed you awoke to the glow in the dark stars that I had stuck on your ceiling. So you'd never have to face the dark of the moon alone again without light to help guide you home. Your nightmares stopped after that. Mine didn't, but they did grow further apart because I felt you near me even when we were apart. When you said thank you for those stars, even though I never admitted it was me who put them there, I felt like I'd been given the world. I wanted to dance and sing and most of all hold you in my arms and never let you go.

Oh for those days again. When we were just two screwed up kids muddling through life as best we could and finding our feelings for one another. Things got so damn complicated, Jean...when did they become so complicated? Xavier went off and left us, as he does everytime things get the least bit difficult...people wonder where I get it from...and suddenly you met Logan. The man who holds the other half of your heart. I respect Logan. I'd never admit it to him, but I also hate him. I did from the first moment I met him and seeing the passion and the life in him realized that I was, to put it quite simply in the old street slang I slip into upon occasion, fucked. He was and is everything I will never be. He's got a aura of LIFE to him, while I...things that I love tend to die around me like a curse someone put on me a long while ago or something. Logan came with no attachments while I come with so much baggage you'd never be able to sort through it all. I realized that he could be for you what I could never be and so I thought...maybe I should let you go and let you make your own choice.

You have to understand, Jean. Before you all I ever knew was from the television set. True love forever, mom and dad and two point five kids working through things, love overcame all and roll those credits. I didn't know how to cope with the real deal until you taught me how and maybe...just maybe you were too good of a teacher? Because lately I have found myself so confused. I let you be yourself, Jean. I let you flirt with Warren and Logan and let you make your choices. And was always and truly amazed when you came back to Slim screwed-up-man-who-was-flubbing-his-way-through-life Summers. The only constant in my life sometimes was that you loved me, Jean. And since you came back from the dead...I've just...it's been hard because I'm wondering if you loved ME or some ideal you held of me.

One in two marriages end in divorce

I proved that statistic right with Maddie. When you died I figured I had died with you. Lee helped to heal some of that wound, but I realized a normal life would never work for me...hell I didn't even know what that word meant -- "normal"...and so we went our separate ways still good friends. And then I met Maddie and fell like a ton of bricks. She reminded me of you in the beginning and it was scary because I thought she might BE you and then I later realized she wasn't. But, I loved Maddie for Maddie. And then there was Nathan and I realized in one whamming 2x4 that I now had a child to screw up and that scared the everlasting hell out of me. I left the X-men and tried the whole "Father Knows Best" routine, but it didn't work. The real world is a hell of a lot different from the one you learn about from the TV and Charles's books, you know that? I went ahead with real life and real marriage...and it kicked my ass. I was absolutely and positively a failure at doing the normal life routine. I felt like I was running out on all of my friends and the cause and the dream the entire time I was working in my grandfather's office. I had to do SOMETHING for society or for the better good because all I ever knew was how to fight and be a soldier. By abandoning the X-men I was helping the enemy. I even fooled with the idea of being a cop or a fireman, but Maddie freaked when I talked about that because I could still get myself killed. I realize now how many mistakes we both made in that marriage and that when I left for New York it was dead. But I would have worked it out with her if I could have. I ran away but I came back to her. And when it was all said and done and Inferno was over...I came back. To you. And to the dream.

Maybe it was being inside yours and Nathan's mind so deep and feeling him slip away from me when I realized how far you were away from me as well. You turned to Logan in Genosha, Jean...I got a glimpse of that but I don't know how deep that connection went since he was on death's door. But I also realize how much you do love him underneath all the love you have for me. Lately it seems you have been trying to change me. Ever since Nathan died you have expected me to act like Cyclops and not Scott Summers because you don't want to have to deal with the emotional mess I've become. You instead want to worry about Charles losing HIS son and losing the use of his legs again. I might be able to walk, but sometimes I wonder if I have a leg to stand on anymore. I need SOMEONE to talk to me and let me talk to them about Nathan, but you pretend that it didn't happen. Maybe the son of me and your clone doesn't count to you, or something. Okay, I reflect, that's cold, but true really. You didn't care about Rachel and treated her like an unwanted insect even though she was an orphan like me, so what was to make Nathan any different? Although I know you're loving by nature. I just wonder what makes children of my genes so repulsive to you that you pretend I don't have any. Rachel is still my genetic daughter and Nathan is, or was, my son so why, Jean? Why?

You are such a loving creature and yet...yet sometimes that love extends to so many except the one man that you said you'd love forever more than once. How can you love me when you love Logan? You wanted only a part of me and you want to change the other parts of me and fix what can't be fixed within me. I'm screwed up, Jean...when will you realize and accept that about me? And just love me for, or despite, that? And then lately, the last couple of months anyway, I've found a woman who does want all of me. Every little screwed up piece and corner. And yet...how is it that I can't let you go and still love you so much? Do I even know what love is if I'm so attracted to her? Confusion is nothing new with you, Jean, but lately it's gotten a lot more complicated.

She's beautiful, you know. Inside and out. She's like you and yet nothing like you. She's more like me in some ways and maybe that is why I've found that I can open up to her lately where I can't with you. She's repressed, just like me, and has had her soul ripped apart and her life ripped apart by so many different events. Just like me. Her brother has even tried to kill her, just like me. What first attracted me to Betsy? Maybe it was the fact that she drew me out of my shell instead of getting mad at me for being in it like you do lately. Or maybe it was because we were on the same team and she just got to know me, not Cyclops, ME. I don't know, Jean...I just don't know. I pick up one of the Shi'ar instruments and start to work on the engine I'm determined I'm going to get done by the time dawn rises over the horizon. I don't sleep anymore and I'm going on about three days without sleep, but the last time I was in a room with you and you were sleeping you called out a name. It wasn't mine.

One in two marriages end in divorce

With that one line going through my head, I wonder how much I've been giving away of my insecurities about us when I sleep. So, I don't sleep anymore. That, and the nightmares about Nathan that I so desperately want to talk about...no, I don't sleep anymore.

When the oil squirts out at me I am taken by complete surprise due to where my thoughts have been and letting out a sound of surprise I know that I'm going to hit hard. I'm not disappointed as the breath leaves my body with a rush. But, I don't lie there long, my body having been in too many battles to be down for long, and so I'm able to rebound pretty quickly. She takes me by surprise though, and I feel the breath leave my body for a different reason as I look up to see Betsy in a dress I've never seen her in before.

"Scott...are you hurt?" The worry in her voice is a surprise to me in a way, since she's seen me get taken down by more mutants than I can count. But it would be just our luck as X-men to get taken down by something stupid like a fall from a four foot height or so, and so I assure her I'm okay. She leans in closer and I smell her unique fragrance of European perfume mixed with just that natural scent of hers and feel my heart beat quicker. I never expect her to lick the oil from my skin or to look at me with that type of attraction. I almost laugh at my own naivete...I never knew that she was attracted physically to me. I just knew that we enjoyed each other's company and that I was falling for her a little at a time because of our common interests. I can't help it as she says something that really doesn't mean anything to me as I try to express my torment, my confusion, my NEED for contact with another human being who would understand in a kiss. The arousal is immediate and for the first time in forever I feel alive again. But then, floating into my mind is you and our life together...all the laughter and the tears and how you showed me what life WAS and what your mind is like. All beautiful fire and passion and LIFE and love for me and I just...can't. I've always pointed true North, Jubilee would say, and this time is no different. Betsy, you're so beautiful, but I'm sorry...you're not Jean.

I don't know if she picks up the thoughts or not, but she doesn't seem to mind if she did. She just looks at me softly, puts her hand along my face and locks eyes with mine. I wouldn't have needed the telepathic message, but I got it anyway, "Figure out what you want, Scott, without blinders, alright? I will be here one way or another, as a possible lover or as a friend, when you figure it all out. I care too deeply for you to watch you go through this with Jean. I will give you something with no attachments if you want and maybe we can heal each other a bit?" With that slight thought full of flying butterflies of purple steel and lace I just can't handle it anymore. I'm torn between two women. One owns my soul and doesn't seem to really want it or anything to do with me. The other wants everything I have to offer, but I can't give it all to her because it's not all mine to give. For the first time ever I think I know how Logan felt everytime he looked between Mariko and Jean and I don't handle it as well. Instead I do what I've always done. I bolt to my feet and run for the far horizion. I'm not really caring where I'm going as I bolt by Jean, but I feel her confusion and pain as she smells Betsy on me and for the first time in my life I actually take malicious satisfaction out of another person's pain and confusion becuase it's only fair, Jean...you've done it to me so many times.

One in two marriages end in divorce

I'm not going to make the same mistake twice, Jean. I need to be sure of us before I continue this. And that means I need to get away from here...I need to run away. I'm sorry.

I pack in record time, leaving your picture on the dresser when normally I carry one with me wherever I go when I'm away from you. Maybe I've outgrown that little bit of romanticism. I don't know anymore. And I call for a taxi and head for the door. I'm going to get away from this place and go where I will be able to think without lots of deep emotion getting in my way to figuring out where to go from here. It's my only option if I'm going to survive.

I meet up with you in the front hallway as I'm talking to Ororo, who seems sadly resigned to the fact I'm leaving but is asking me to stay because it's the only way that things will work out for the better. What the Hell does she know anyway? I've run farther and faster than anyone in life and you know what? I'm still relatively sane and I don't run half as much as Charles does. My habits could be much worse, thanks, and running away has saved my life and my sanity more than once. This time will hopefully be no different because I'm coming apart at the seams. I need time. And I need space. I'm claiming both. Scott Summers goes on a vacation, I reflect -- it just doesn't sound right.

I look up when I hear your words and I see the pain and the anger on your face and reverberating through my head and even as you speak angrily to me I feel a foolish moment of...hope? Speak to me, Jean, beg me to stay, ask me to stay. Start with "I love you" and end with "please don't go". Just show me for the first time in months that you love me and that you care about me PLEASE! I love you too much to not listen. Throw me a lifeline, Jean...I'm drowning! The thoughts are running through my head, the near begging tone to them not lost on me, but I just can't care anymore.

If it was a test you would have failed it, love. I begged you with my soul and you stood there resolutely silent. That was a good enough answer in itself, I guess. I should be glad that you're not trying to stop me from going. I should feel relieved because it makes my leaving all the easier, but for some odd reason I just feel disappointment as I turn around, nod calmly to Ororo, and walk out the door.