Cutting the Cord
Posted on Sat Jul 6th, 2024 @ 10:41pm by Scott Summers & Aurora Summers & Jean Grey
Mission:
Episode 4: The Savage ConneXion
Location: X-Mansion Grounds
Timeline: September 20, 1990
It was the day after the X-Men returned from the Savage Land. In keeping with Professor Xavier's wishes, Scott was keeping his distance. Things would never be the same. But perhaps, with enough courage and resolve and grace under fire, they could be made better.
Scott leaned against the willow tree pondering his rueful yet optimistic thoughts with arms folded while staring out over the lake. His Jeep was parked near the front of the mansion about half way between the front door and the willow tree where he now stood.
~Aurora...~ His thoughts went out to her like a summons. Although he wasn't a telepath himself, he knew the awareness was a sensitive one. If she didn't know he was on campus before, she definitely did now. Scott contented himself to watch the wind push gentle waves across the lake until she arrived.
Aurora had indeed sensed Scott’s presence, his call confirmed her sense. No sooner did his voice call to her she was rushing to his side. Just seeing Scott in the distance as she approached him made Aurora quicken her pace. “Scott!!” She practically threw herself at him, kissing him with all the passion and fire she had saved up since their wedding night.
"Hi, Aurora." The tackle hug was no surprise. Scott's mouth quirked to one side. Nobody could fully withstand such blatant, overt affection. But he stood to his full height and subtly shuffled Aurora away before her kisses could reach his mouth. "It's good to see you looking well." He turned his head to the side, looking away before adding, "We need to talk."
Scott returned her embrace with a quick hug before releasing her and taking a step back. "I'm sorry you were left in the lurch all this time," he said, looking her in the face again. "It took me a few days to figure out the essentials. But... then... something incredible happened." Though his eyes weren't visible through his glasses, his unreadable face still emanated the intensity he felt inside. "I found Jean."
There were so many details to that revelation that were left unsaid while it hung in the air. His travels out of the country. Navigating the obstacles of international diplomacy, death-defying adventures into an unknown past, surviving unspeakable horrors, and coming away with the most precious thing in the world that he'd feared was lost forever.
"And then..." Scott braced himself for her reaction to what he had to say next. "I found myself."
As he delivered that loaded statement, he pulled out a legal envelope from behind his back. It was stuffed thick enough to strain the metal clasp at the top. "I'm so sorry, Aurora. For everything."
Aurora was suddenly worried, a lot worried in fact, she looked at the envelope then at Scott. “Wait, what?...” She looked at him uncertain whether this was a good reunion, or if Scott was about to deliver some unhappy news where their relationship was concerned. The worry showed in her misty eyes.
After pressing the legal envelope into her chest for her to accept, Scott rubbed his chin with his hand. It was his left hand. The ring finger was conspicuously bare.
"I've filed an annulment, Aurora. The judge granted it a few days ago. In the eyes of the state, our marriage never was." Seeing her tear filled eyes, he softened a bit. "Promises were made between us. I will be there for the baby. I will do everything for you that I can... just not as your husband. That promise wasn't free to give. It already belonged to another."
Aurora was horrified, as much as others had said it she’d refused to believe that Scott would do this to her. The tears flowed, but inside she was numb. “Then I won’t be needing this!” She pulled the ring off her finger thrusting it into his hand. “Call it something to remember us by!” She thrust the legal pack back at him. “Don’t bother being there for me!” Tears ran down her face, slowly evaporating as she tried to keep flames at bay. “You go be with your precious Jean! You don’t need us anymore!!” She turned to walk away but didn’t get far before she suddenly collapsed.
Scott had been ready to reply, to renew his commitment to being a father, to apologizing for everything once more. But then Aurora fell.
"Shit!"
Dropping the legal packet and the ring along with it in the grass, Scott rushed to her side. "Aurora! Aurora, are you okay?! Aurora!"
Scott had hoped to avoid this but matters were rapidly spinning out of his control.
~Jean!~ he called out in his mind. ~We need help! Aurora is unconscious!~
With the mere mention of her name, Jean’s presence was felt between them. A strong telepathic yank moved through Aurora’s subconscious and rather than being allowed to withdraw and hide she was brought back to the present. Reality returned to her senses, the cool grass below her and the sun shimmering through the willow tree’s leaves along with the stunned and awful realization of what had just happened.
~* ‘She’ll be fine. Rather than face what’s happening, she’s trying to hide. Thankfully, I know a thing or two about hiding from the world within your mind and just how detrimental it can be.’ *~ Jean replied to Scott as she made her way from the mansion and across the yard to the dramatic scene below the willow tree.
“You can’t do that Aurora.” A stern female voice could be heard from a short distance away. Aurora instantly knew it was Jean from that moment of telepathic contact made weeks ago. “You are pregnant and reverting into that state will be hazardous to the child. To withdraw and become catatonic, you may very well lose the baby. For that child’s sake you must remain present.”
A psychic veil had been lifted when Scott reached out to Jean and Aurora could feel the mental bond between them. An unbreakable tether between their minds, it was a connection where their thoughts and feelings flowed freely between one another, an intimate connection for any telepath to have and a testament to the current state of their relationship. Along with that bond, a sensation of powerful and steadfast love emanated from them. The kind of love that caused miracles to happen, the kind of love that restored a person, the kind of love that occurred when two people spent a decade wholeheartedly committed to the one other. It would have been a beautiful and awe inspiring sensation had it not been between Scott and Jean.
“Collect yourself Aurora.” Jean spoke again, an icy tone of anger in her voice. “Because you and I need to have a talk before Scott and I go home. We need to talk about the unethical things you’ve done so you don’t do them ever again.”
Aurora opened her eyes, taking a moment to sit up and get to her feet. Her anger at Scott had momentarily subsided at the sound of Jean’s voice, their connection bypassing the raw emotion. “Jean? But...how!? Last time we connected you were...” she didn’t say it, but what she’d felt back then wasn’t good.
“How?” Her eyes drifted towards Scott. “He saved me. Scott risked everything to bring me back. Where I’ve been and what was done to me is a conversation for another time. We need to talk about what has happened here, while I was abducted. Because I can’t move forward… we can’t move forward and heal until it is addressed.”
Jean sat down in the grass on her knees, the full skirt of her yellow dress creating a corona around her. Aurora was finally able to look at Jean now, her hair a brilliant scarlet red as opposed to copper, her eyes a verdant green with such a biting intelligence behind them. She was taller and her figure lithe compared to Aurora’s which was growing rounder from pregnancy. Jean was this radiant and vivacious presence that filled a room, whose legacy and good graces Aurora had been masquerading in, the woman whose bed she had slept in. It was easy to see how out of the corner of your eye there might be confusion between them but when really looking at her, the differences were stark.
“Telepathy makes us some of the most feared mutants, not just with the general population, but even amongst other mutants. We are feared for what we can do to someone’s memories and thoughts, we can destroy a person from the inside out. To travel into someone’s mind, to force yourself upon them without their knowledge or consent, to insert yourself into their thoughts for personal gain, it’s abhorrent and manipulative. The things you have done to Scott…” Jean shook her head. “The Professor and I are in agreement that you have abused your abilities.”
“When you first heard my voice, when I spoke through you, I was trying to ask for help. I was being tortured and brutalized, that was a whisper of my screams for help. You took my agony and twisted it into something to your advantage. Why would I ever want you to touch him? He is the love of my life. All I ever wanted was to come home to him.”
Aurora’s own words moved through their shared thoughts, a tactic Jean had learned from Xavier. The memories Scott had shared with her caused Jean’s jaw to clench.
"Jean..." he whispered as the air fled his lungs in a sullen gasp. Before he knew it, his hands had cupped the face of the young woman before him and pressed his lips against hers. Realization set in, though, once contact had been made. This was not Jean. This was a young woman he held a position of authority over. The age difference was negligible but still did not make it any less wrong. And to say nothing of kissing one person while thinking of another.
"Oh, God..." Scott dropped his hands and took a step back. "I am so sorry. I... I should never have..." He started shaking his head. "Aurora, I... I should go... I..."
Aurora stood in shock at what had just occurred, she knew Scott was confused, but she hadn’t expected that to happen. “No, Scott... don’t regret what just happened. Maybe... just maybe it’s meant to be. Jean chose me for a reason, maybe this is it...” She knew she shouldn’t but she stood in the open doorway. “You don’t have to leave...”
Jean continued despite the choking emotions that overwhelmed her, moving on to the next offense Aurora had committed. The first tremor of anger appeared in Jean’s voice at the idea of Scott being taken advantage of.
“Xavier told you to leave Scott alone, that his mental health was so poor that he had been deemed unfit for duty. He needed space and time to heal. And you ignored him, you continued down your path of personal gain knowing that the man you pursued was broken and unwell. You decided the ache between your thighs was more important than his well being.”
"Aurora, my dear, the pain you're feeling from Scott predates your arrival here." The Professor's tone softened a bit. "He has been in utter internal agony which he has done his best to hide. What we're looking at right now is a couple of intertwining trauma responses that could form a trauma bond between you two. On the one hand, Scott is suffering from survivor's guilt. His depression, his mercurial behavior in the way his temperament is hot and cold, his isolating himself—they're all textbook symptoms. He blames himself for coming back from that ill-fated mission when no one else did, and it's exacerbated by the fact that none of us can remember what happened for some inexplicable reason. It gives his pain and suffering no outlet, which is a dangerous mix for a natural melancholy personality such as himself."
Pausing for a moment, the Professor went deeper. "As for you, Aurora, your feelings are what is described as transference. Whenever we receive assistance from a person, be it protection or rescue or life-saving treatment, it's only natural to develop romantic feelings toward them. Especially if that person is in a uniform or holds some sort of professional status. Realize that the infatuation from transference may be intense but it's also only temporary. Making long-term or even permanent decisions based off those feelings is not a good idea."
“Always listen to Charles Xavier, he is a good and wise man, he will never take you down the wrong path. That was the biggest mistake you could have made.” Jean hissed her warning as her anger continued to boil. “And then you walked in his dream. An act so incredibly personal and powerful, a place where real damage can be done to a person. You entered that space without his consent, you pushed yourself into his dreams and replaced my face with your own.”
Aurora nodded and smiled as her figure stepped closer. “You’re not alone, Scott, you have so many people here that care for you. I care, Scott, and I’m not going anywhere!” She held out her hand for him to hold. “Jean wouldn’t want you to be alone, Scott, she’d want you to be happy.”
"Jean..." At the mention of her name, Scott's glasses fell away along with his outer clothing. The dark castle-like setting of the mansion turned a crimson red as flames erupted everywhere, their heat burning away the darkness. And clothing. Scott stood before Aurora barefoot and shirtless, wearing only his slacks. "Jean, I've missed you."
From there, the distance between them closed as if by gravity pulling them together. The flames grew higher into a blazing inferno, but they were unburned. Scott's hands cupped Aurora on both sides of her face and drew her in for a soft and tender kiss, like he was afraid she would vanish if he weren't gentle enough. When nobody disappeared, Scott kissed again more firmly. "I'm sorry," he managed to mumble. "I'm so sorry. I won't leave you again."
Aurora closed her eyes, she so wanted Scott to be seeing her for who she was not for who he wanted her to be. She drew back for a moment. “Scott...I’m not Jean!” She pulled all the way back, suddenly feeling the heartache of the fact that Scott may never see her for who she was.
“And then it was so easy to slip into his bed… into OUR bed. To insert yourself into my place and to take the thing you wanted from him all along. How many times was my name mentioned as you offered yourself to him?! How many times did you LIE and tell him I wanted this for him.” Jean clenched her fists as sharp and dangerous rage filled her.
“Was he confused when you crawled into our bed!?”
They all knew the answer to that question - yes.
“How dare you! How dare you exploit a person that way. He wasn’t in his right mind, he wasn’t himself. But you didn’t care - you manipulated him until you selfishly took what you wanted from him and whispered words of false love into his ear.”
Jean’s lower lip trembled and Aurora got to see how much she had hurt someone, how she was not a victim but a predator in Jean’s eyes.
“What do you know of love!? How dare you say you love a man after three weeks! How dare you think that you deserve him! How dare you think what you had was real when you used your telepathy to corrupt a desperate and broken man’s mind!”
Aurora looked worriedly up into Scott’s eyes, she had no idea that if Xavier found out he’d send Scott away. “But you...didn’t do this! I came to you! I started it!” She shook her head.
That anger inside of Jean shifted from ice to fire and the trembling voice of something cosmic and omnipotent spoke through her.
“I could make you drown yourself in that lake right now, I could make you take step after step into that freezing water until your head was covered…and I could plaster a smile across your face while you did it.”
Scott silently reached out for Jean, his touch immediately soothed whatever rage festered inside of her and Jean regained her composure, the horrifying power inside of her quickly winked itself out.
“But I won’t, because I’m not that person. I know that my telepathy is an awesome power but I never forget that people and this world are not mine for the taking. That my telepathy is a gift that should be used for a greater good not for my personal whims and desires. You knew what you did was wrong Aurora, you hid it from the Professor and you continued down this terrible path.”
Aurora’s smile faded somewhat as she nodded and looked away. She knew deep down that what happened between them wouldn’t lead to the relationship she was looking for with Scott. It hurt more than she was expecting it to, but she wasn’t going to let Scott see how much. She wasn’t going to break down in tears like the naive young woman she truly was. She looked up at him, but the sparkle that had been there before was missing now. “You’re right, I shouldn’t be expecting more. I shouldn’t even have been with you last night, we were doomed before we even started.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I should go.”
“You’re lucky that you’re pregnant, that an innocent life grows inside of you.” Jean shook her head in disgust. “You made the choice to place your own needs and desires over the welfare of another. An act that goes against everything Charles Xavier has worked for, that the X-Men have bled and fought for. It should be you expelled from this place, not him.”
“Scott and I will be present for that baby, we’ll love him and care for him. You cannot make the choice to run from him and deny him access to his child because the destructive relationship between you two has ended.” In that moment it became clear that Scott and Jean were a united force, that she would have to share custody of her child with both of them.
“Now the preservation of that life supersedes whatever selfish acts you performed. I pray for your sake and for that child’s sake that you learn to control yourself. To realize that you have gifts that could make life so very easy for you but you choose the harder choices because they are the right choices. Work with Xavier, find solace with your friends, take this loss one day at a time and it will get easier.” Jean stood up from her kneeling position and she smoothed out the wrinkles of her dress.
“Would you like some help back to the mansion?” An offer of assistance after Jean’s brutal soliloquy.
Aurora gazed between Jean and Scott, then back at Jean. “No, thank you. You already seem to have made up your mind that my ‘so called’ love for Scott was false, or fake.” She gazed at Scott. “Maybe I made the mistake of believing that you loved me. After all what does someone whose never truly loved before know about love?” Her eyes twinkled with tears but she didn’t allow herself to cry.
Aurora looked back at Jean once again. “I wasn’t trying to replace you, I wasn’t even trying to poach your man from you. What I feel...felt...for Scott felt real.” She paused. “Hate me, and my son all you want, you have it all now. All I have left is my son, and I will dedicate myself to his welfare. I’m not sure yet where that’ll be.”
Jean shook her head in disappointment, Aurora had missed the point, but heated emotions had a way of dulling a message. She admittedly provided her own charged emotions, as level headed as Jean could be there were some topics that she would defend fiercely and Scott was definitely one of them. Hopefully with time, Aurora would listen and learn, when all of this hurt less Jean hoped she would reflect. There was comfort and shelter in this school, guidance and direction. Xavier wouldn’t let Aurora or the child slip through the cracks, time would heal these wounds hopefully with minimal scars.
Jean’s gaze left Aurora and turned towards Scott. While he had been silent, a storm of emotions had been thundering and crashing against him. ~* ‘Are you alright? Are you ready to go home?’ *~
~Almost~
Looking back at Aurora, Scott said, "That's enough, Aurora. Nobody hates you or the baby. I know this hurts. But it had to be done. What we had... it wasn't real." His head shook ever so slightly in emphasis. "It was two broken people seeking solace together in a way that never should have been."
Scott paused, his voice turning more solemn. "I will do everything I can to provide for you and our child. Nothing will stop that. Deal with this however you need to. In the end, though, you will still find me here, ready to do my part."
With that being said, Scott gave a parting nod.
~Now I'm ready~
Aurora gave the two of them a blank look, her emotions buried deep. "Goodbye, Scott, Jean." With that she headed for the mansion, trying to keep warring emotions buried deep inside.
~* 'I hope she learns from this.' *~ Jean reached out for Scott as they stood for a moment and watched Aurora's departure. ~* 'If not... all this heartache will have been in vain.' *~
"Yeah," Scott agreed aloud. "Why don't you prepare some moving boxes in the garage while I pull the Jeep around? Might be best if we keep our distance for a little while."
Lost was one way of putting it, scared, afraid, even terrified was another. As Aurora ventured lost through the grounds of the Mansion she couldn’t believe that her life had taken such a turn. She’d been eagerly awaiting Scott’s return to tell her about their home, now Jean was back and everything was gone! Everything except her son, right now he was the only thing keeping her alive. The only thing giving her hope for the future.
Walking into the Mansion she headed straight to her room, the photograph she had of Scott and herself from their wedding was unceremoniously, telekinetically, swept against the wall where the frame crashed to the floor, smashing the glass. Moments later with another thought it was in the bin, as was any other memento of Scott, he was nothing to her anymore, as for Jean...right now she hated the sight of her.
Right now she needed some time away from the Mansion, if only for the evening. Time to clear her head, to get used to the fact that everyone had been right, that Scott hadn’t been in love with her at all. Picking up her small backpack she put enough things in for just the night, if she decided not to stay at the Mansion she’d at least need to return to explain to the Professor why not. Right now the emotions were raw, and she was hurting... badly.
Taking a long look around her room she turned her back and headed out.
