X-Men 2

by Chris Claremont

  The eyes, so the saying goes, are the window to the soul. He didn’t like to think how that might apply to him.

  Aside from that, Scott Summers was a fair package. Good lines to his face, the kind of clean-shaven, handsome features that may have started out slightly pretty but which improved markedly with age. His hair was brown, with a hint of auburn, and when he spoke there was a faint echo of Nebraska in his voice. He was a natural leader, the sort of young man who would seem at home taming a frontier, although he himself would scoff at the description.

  He was hopelessly in love with the redhead, Jean Grey, and had been since the moment they’d first met.

  She saw him watching and flashed him a smile that made his heart sing and ache all at the same time, and wish they were alone. Then her eyes slipped past him and the students they were minding to a clutch of tourists just down the gallery, and her lips tightened, her smile quickly becoming a work of fiction and artifice. Scott immediately intuited what was happening. Once more her mental barriers had turned porous and Jean was finding herself caught in a rapidly rising tide of thoughts and emotions. That was how she described it to him, late at night, usually with wine, on the increasingly rare occasions when he could get her to relax. The hardest part about being a telepath, she explained, wasn’t “reading” other peoples’ thoughts, it was keeping them out of your own head. If your control slipped, if the shields failed, it was so easy to be overwhelmed, like standing in a puddle one second and being lost in the middle of a raging ocean the next.

  But Jean had another problem. She wasn’t simply a telepath, but a telekine. She could manipulate physical objects with the power of her thoughts and will. And when she was stressed, like now, that second aspect of her abilities as a mutant gave the conflict within her a tangible, material dimension.

  Just like now.

  The glass wall of the display behind her was trembling, displaying visible ripples like the surface of a pond being stirred by an autumn breeze. As Scott stepped forward, he could see the window warp in its frame, the metal creaking quietly in futile protest. In another moment it was sure to shatter—and Jean hadn’t noticed. The interactive display TV monitors flashed with static.

  “Hey,” he said gently, slipping his arm in hers.

  “Hey,” she said, visibly relaxing as she reacted to his presence, before her eyes widened, her mouth pursing in tired frustration, as she realized the reason. The glass behind her was still once more, and solid. The voices had silenced in her head. For a while.

  Scott didn’t need telepathy of his own to sense what she was thinking, although her face masked that fury superbly. She had an impressive temper and, from God knows where, a wealth of profanity that beat anything he’d ever heard. She was a doctor, and she was proud. She didn’t like being weak or vulnerable.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Her eyes were half-closed, which undercut what she told him in answer: “Yeah,” she said, giving him a reassuring squeeze. “I’m fine. It’s just a headache.”

  Scott felt a tug on his other sleeve and turned to see one of the students holding up a sketch she’d made of an iguanadon.

  “Scott,” she reminded him, “you were talking about the extinction of the dinosaurs. . . .”

  He nodded and indicated the tiger display. “I need to talk to Dr. Grey real quick. Can you draw me a picture of that big cat?”

  She sniffed, hugely uninterested. “It’s a saber-toothed tiger.”

  “Right.”

  She took his cue and scampered off to join the other kids. Scott looked back to Jean, who chose to look anywhere but at him.

  “It’s not just a headache, is it?” he challenged.

  She didn’t want to talk about it, but this time he found he didn’t want to hold back.

  “I wasn’t sure how to say this,” he began, and then he paused, concern vying for dominance with his prairie rectitude. He understood her desire for privacy. In the orphanage, growing up, you played every emotion, every thought, tighter to your chest than a winning poker hand. But she was in pain and it wasn’t getting any better and that was more than he could bear.

  “Look, Jean,” he began again, “ever since Liberty Island you’ve been—”

  “Scott,” she tried to interrupt. He didn’t let her.

  “—different.”

  “My telepathy’s been off lately,” she confessed. “I can’t seem to focus. I can hear . . . everything.”

  He shook his head, ruthlessly exploiting the opening she’d given him, hoping she’d understand, praying it would pay off. “A month ago you had to concentrate just to levitate a book across the room. Now when you have nightmares the entire bedroom shakes. It’s not just your telepathy.”

  She left her arm in his, her grip tightening around his fingers, while she splayed her other hand against the glass in front of her, as if to reassure herself that she hadn’t done it any lasting damage. At the same time, as she watched the room behind them both in the window’s reflection, he was reminded of how science teachers used to warn about looking at a solar eclipse. The only safe way to gaze at the sun was through a reflection; do it directly, you’ll go blind. Jean had that same apprehension about people. And it was growing.

  “The dreams are getting worse,” she told him. “I keep feeling that something terrible is about to happen.”

  She leaned her forehead against the glass and spoke so softly Scott couldn’t tell if the words came from her lips or from her thoughts.

  “I don’t want to lose you,” she said.

  He wrapped his free hand around her and pulled her close against him.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her.

  She relaxed against him, but only a little bit, leaning her head into the junction of his neck and shoulder but keeping her eyes open and on the glass, with a stare that seemed to go on forever, as though she was searching for something.

  He wondered, and hoped she had grace enough not to pry, if what she was searching for had a face. Handsome and hairy and Canadian, Logan had rolled into their lives like an avalanche and wreaked just about as much havoc. It drove Scott a little crazy to think that, only a few months ago, there’d been no Logan to complicate their lives—and yet, without Logan, he and Jean and Storm wouldn’t have stood a chance when Xavier’s former colleague and friend, who now called himself Magneto, had tried to reshape the face of the world. All as part of a misguided attempt to guarantee the future safety and prosperity of mutantkind.

  He believed as an article of absolute faith that Jean loved him. It was the keystone of his world, as he hoped his own love served for hers. But he could also see what happened when Jean and Logan came near each other. That kind of primal attraction was impossible to hide, and trust Logan not to even try.

  They hadn’t heard from him since he left the school, to follow some leads Professor Xavier had provided about his mysterious past. And Scott knew there hadn’t been a day since when Jean hadn’t thought of him. The questions he had were, how did she think of him? And what was she going to do about it?

  And when that moment came, what would Scott do?

  “Are we interrupting again?” Storm said softly as she came around the corner and into view.

  Because the two women were best friends, Jean didn’t react to her arrival as any sort of intrusion. She took a moment to gather wits and self-possession, gradually disengaging from Scott—her hand staying closed around his right to the last—using her telepathy to partially cloud the perceptions of the kids so they wouldn’t easily recall how vulnerable she looked.

  “So,” Storm continued cheerily, “how was the giant squid?”

  “The children liked it,” Jean replied. “Scott was bored.”

  “It was boring,” he agreed wholeheartedly. And then, taking refuge in responsibility, “Guys, if we don’t want to get stuck in rush-hour traffic—”

  “We should get moving,” Jean finished.

  Storm absently acknowledged their decision.
She wasn’t quite paying attention, though, as she finished a quick headcount of their charges. She didn’t look happy.

  “Wait,” she said in a tone that made clear she wasn’t really surprised, just disappointed. “We’re short.”

  Jean concentrated, and Scott know she was casting a mental net across the whole of the museum.

  “We should find the professor,” she said.

  In the museum’s basement was the food court, with seats galore and offering a surprisingly eclectic collection of items, ranging from burgers to sushi. Off in a corner all their own, polishing off the remains of a modest feast, were Xavier’s three missing students. Two boys and a girl, all in their midteens.

  One of the boys was slightly taller than the other, both their bodies built pretty much the same, both of them slightly taller than the girls. The taller boy had pleasant, regular features, with curly blondish hair that looked like he generally used his fingers in place of a comb, in a vain attempt to establish some kind of order. His companion’s face was sharper, a little more technically handsome, thick brown hair swept straight back from his face. He had a Zippo lighter in hand, and the way he kept snapping it open, igniting a flame, snapping it closed, to the beat of a doo-wop song only he could hear, went with the hair and manner to present him as a reincarnated fifties rebel.

  The girl was southern; that was obvious the minute she said a word. She was pretty, on her way to beautiful, with eyes green enough to put Jean Grey’s to shame. Her shoulder-length dark hair had a dramatic streak as purely white as Storm’s that rose from the peak of her forehead, in absolute contrast to the rich auburn that covered the rest of her skull. Unlike the others, she wore gloves at the table, and long sleeves and a high collar, and the coat that was slung back on her shoulders had a hood so that when it was pulled up the only part of her body that showed any skin was her face. She also sat a little apart from the others, as if she was wary of touching or being touched.

  “So I’m asking,” said the dark-haired boy with the lighter, John Allardyce, “what would be worse, to be burned to death or frozen?”

  The girl made an appropriately dismissive face, this was so not why they had snuck away from the crowd, but John could be worse than a mastiff with some topics. Try as you might, there was no way to get him to back off.

  In any event, Bobby Drake wasn’t in the mood. He looked intensely perplexed, facing a problem that taxed his obviously meager mental resources, while Marie fidgeted under John’s stare, and Kitty wondered how big a fight she’d start if she just snatched that damn lighter away. The boy loved that Zippo more than she did her stuffed snugglies! Too totally creepy for words.

  “Gosh,” Bobby began, which made John chuckle because only a lamoid straight would use a word like “gosh,” “I dunno, John. Seems like being burned would be awfully painful. . . .”

  John flicked the lighter again, his eyes momentarily caressing the flame before returning to Marie, who tried to look bored to tears as she met that gaze but knew she wasn’t quite pulling it off.

  “It is,” John said.

  Marie turned her eyes away and knew the moment she did that she’d made a mistake. There was another crowd of teens sitting at the next table, a little bit older, taking advantage of this out-of-the-way alcove to sneak some smokes. One of them looked up at exactly the same moment, and for that moment their gazes locked. He smiled, Marie let the edges of her mouth quirk in response, then she turned back to her friends in time to hear Bobby start to turn the verbal tables on John.

  “But you know,” Bobby said, “there’s something pretty agonizing about freezing to death. You don’t just drift off to sleep like most people think.”

  “Damn,” Marie muttered, “I was so hoping for a nap!”

  “Enlighten us, snowman,” John instructed.

  “It all starts with shivering. Just a little at first as the body struggles to keep warm. Your skin turns a pale blue.”

  “Guys, not again,” Marie pleaded. “Change of topic, okay?”

  Being guys, they ignored her.

  “Then,” Bobby continued, “the moisture in your lungs starts to freeze, so that even breathing is painful.”

  “This conversation,” she tried again, “is painful!”

  Marie snuck another sidelong glance at the other table, to find two pairs of eyes staring back. They looked nice, they looked interesting, they were a pleasant change to this pissing match she had heard too many times before. So when they smiled, she didn’t try to hide her response.

  Neither of the boys at her table even noticed.

  “Those shivers,” Bobby said, “turn into violent convulsions as your blood begins to crystallize.”

  The other boys got up from their table.

  “Wouldn’t you be, like, so dead by then, Bobby?” asked Marie in a tone that broadcast boredom.

  “Worse,” he replied. “Your brain starts to scream for oxygen and you can’t stop yourself slowly, inexorably sinking into complete and utter . . . insanity!”

  John looked wholly unimpressed. Marie actually yawned.

  “Insanity, huh? I s’pose that might be considered an improvement over this little colloquy.”

  “Hey,” said one of the boys from the next table.

  All three of Xavier’s students looked up. Marie turned around in her chair to find the boys standing over her. This was so not what she wanted. It had never occurred to her that they’d take a little bit of flirting as an outright invitation.

  “He said, ‘Hey,’ ” said one of the others, after an uncomfortable silence.

  “Hey,” Bobby replied with a grin, hoping to defuse the situation.

  But it didn’t work. The others had responded to what they thought were a set of definite cues. When Marie didn’t greet them enthusiastically, they weren’t happy to discover they’d perhaps made a mistake, and adolescent pride wouldn’t let them back down.

  The second boy spoke again, jabbing a thumb toward his friend, who took a drag on his cigarette—ostensibly to show how cool he was, but more likely to hide a sudden attack of nerves. “He was talking to her,” the boy said, meaning his friend and meaning Marie.

  “What’s your name?” the first boy asked.

  She had more than one, but the situation was making her a little bit nervous as well, and the boys were crowding her awfully close. So she answered with the name she’d chosen for herself, rather than the one with which she’d been born.

  “Rogue,” she said.

  That prompted a snort from the third newcomer.

  “Cool,” he said, meaning exactly the opposite, as in “look at these prep school jag-offs throwing off street names, figuring we’ll be impressed.” “This is Slash,” boy number one, “And I’m Bobcat! Nice ta meetcha!”

  He finished by reaching for Marie’s arm.

  Bobby intercepted him, placing his hand on the older teen’s wrist and speaking as easily as could be. “You really don’t want to touch her.”

  “Excuse me,” said Bobcat.

  “Or what?” echoed Slash, “you gonna hurt him?”

  Bobby shook his head. “Nope. But she might.”

  The two teens looked at him, looked at Marie, looked at each other—and burst out laughing. To them, it was such an outrageous idea, there was no other response, which was precisely what Bobby had in mind. It made the Xavier’s students look a little silly and gave these guys a way out without losing face. Crisis averted, no harm done.

  But John Allardyce wouldn’t let it go.

  “You know,” he said, his voice dripping unmistakably acid contempt, “there’s no smoking in here.”

  That was a challenge. No way would the others back down now.

  “No shit?” Slash sounded incredulous, returning an equal measure of insult. “Really? You got a problem with that?”

  John flicked his lighter—open, closed, open, closed—while never taking his eyes off Slash.

  Slash gestured toward John’s lighter with his cigarette. “
Got a light?” Challenge, served and returned. Another opportunity for all concerned to back off.

  John wasn’t interested. He was enjoying himself.

  “It’s a simple question,” Slash said, finishing with the silent but unmistakable comment “asshole.”

  John shrugged, so bored. “And I’ll give you a simple answer.” Suggesting, just as plainly, that these mooks were too damn dumb for anything better.

  Slash let his temper show, spacing his words for emphasis: “Do . . . you . . . have . . . a . . . light?”

  John kept flicking the cap of his lighter. “Sorry, pal,” he said, “can’t help ya.”

  Marie sighed.

  “Knock it off, John,” Marie hissed at him.

  “Please,” Bobby echoed in frustration, figuring that before this was through he was going to have to grab his friend and hustle him bodily out of here.

  “Yeah, John,” Shadow chimed in, “listen to your girlfriends.”

  John, not about to yield center stage, winked at Marie.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” he told them all. “Besides the fact that this is clearly marked as a nonsmoking environment”—he pointed to a sign—“I couldn’t bear knowing that I contributed to your collective slow, tumor-ridden deaths.”

  For final emphasis, he flicked his lighter shut. But he’d miscalculated as Slash snatched it away.

  “What’s this?” he demanded, spinning it between his own fingers. “A fashion accessory?”

  His pals laughed and smirked, enjoying how the tables had suddenly turned in their favor. John, all humor gone from his face, lunged for the lighter, only to be shoved hard by Bobcat back into his chair.