Work Text:
Title: "Love Returned"
Author: Kat Lee
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: They have grown old.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, names, codenames, places, items, fandoms, titles, and etc. are always © & TM their respective owners, not the author, and are used without permission. Any and all original characters and everything else is © & TM the author and may not be reproduced in any way without the author's express, written permission. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.
She stepped cautiously over the grounds where she had once taught. Not a soul in the world knew where she was, and she knew that, in truth, no one cared, not even her boyfriend. Emma's cold, blue lips twisted into a self-depreciating smile at that thought. She would not have thought, twenty years ago, that she would be this old and still referring to the man in her life as her boyfriend. She would have thought he would have been her husband or, at the very least, her fiance, but she was never going to have either of those things.
It was a wonder she was still with Scott, as surprising equally because he had not left her as she had not left him. God, if there was such a being, knew well the sacrifices she had made to stay with him. She had given him more than she'd ever given any other man in her life, more than she'd once vowed she would ever give another person. She was almost poor now, or at least as poor as a Frost ever got, and it was all his fault.
What was worse, by far, was that her powers were gone, or malfunctioning at best, and she had become a laughing stock to the X-Men. Those who did not see her as the whore they had all persisted in believing her to be at one time saw her instead as a washed up, old woman who was a fool to follow her boyfriend into all that she had. Not a single one of them dared voice their opinion of her being old and used aloud, as afraid of her retaliation as they were of her team's, but she didn't need her telepathy to know what they thought of her. She saw it in their eyes every time they met. She was the woman who had replaced Jean Grey, the woman Scott had used to near death, the woman who didn't have a reason to live, the woman they didn't want to see live.
Emma stiffened both at that silent admission and at the change she felt sweeping over the land. She closed her eyes for a moment and stilled her very soul. She had not come here to be attacked or to allow the unspoken attacks of her peers to prey upon her mind. She did not care what the X-Men thought. She was not in the position of life where she was for any one of them, not Scott or even the Cuckoos.
She chose to walk her current lifestyle because she was not the woman she had once been. She was not evil. She was not corrupt or without a heart that beat and bled for others of her kind. She was not devious or cruel or mean, no matter how hard she tried to be all three.
Emma's blue eyes reopened, and she looked around her. The remains of the school were barely noticeable in the vegetation that had grown up all around it. At one time, a single phone call from her would have had all of the debris cleared away and the school full and erect once more within less than a week, but she no longer warranted that kind of power or respect. She stepped closer to the school. Glass crunched underneath her white, booted feet.
The change she had felt in the atmosphere was gone, but there were other things there. There were always other things here; that was why she came to this area at least once a year, more often if she needed reminders of who and what she truly was. She was a teacher. Her goal in life was to teach the younger mutants not to follow Charles' dream or Magneto's or even Scott's but to be able to defend themselves and never fall prey to humanity.
The others were too interested in the war to see the single lives before them, but she did. She always had. It was her place to teach the children of all mutant kind how to survive this world that hated them so much, even their fellow mutants when they need arose, how not to fall underneath any opposing force, how to always stand tall and become and be who and what they wanted to be.
Emma looked around her again. She could hear laughter on the cool wind that was barely moving around her. At one time, her cheeks would have burned with anger and indignation, because ever since being trapped in the asylum, a part of her always thought that any one laughing around her was laughing at her. But she had learned better in this place where she had also learned her duty in life.
She scooped and picked a flower, the single, white rose that always met her, and she remembered some more. The children who had roamed these grounds had laughed at her, but she had been there for them when they'd needed her. Over the years she had spent here with them, a few of them had actually hugged her. Even Jubilee had hugged her once. They had hugged her. They had cared about her, and perhaps one or two had even loved her in their own way.
Emma crushed the flower she held, keeping it in the gloved palm of her hand until its thorns pierced the white fabric of that glove and made her flesh bleed. Droplets of blood splashed onto the ground beneath her, ground that would always hold many memories for her and always belong to her. She had cared for those kids, too, cared for them to the point that some had thought she'd cared too much. She had killed her own sister to protect them, and that single act, that act that had shown how much she loved them and how determined she was to protect them, had cost her all their friendships.
They had never, she knew now, truly cared for her. They had liked her, at least, and wanted what she could do for them, but they had turned too easily away from her to have ever actually cared for her. Even her fellow headmaster had been one of the quickest to turn his back on her for doing what he himself had not had the balls to do. Cassidy could have killed Adrienne with one of his sonic screams. He could have killed her family, so that she had not had to do the deed herself. But he would have rather let her return to take more of their students than do what had to be done to stop her and then point a finger at Emma in accusations that would always ring in her ears for doing what had had to be done.
He had been a fool. Emma saw that clearly now, had a few years after his death. Sean Cassidy had been one of the greatest idiots she had ever known. It wasn't, after all, as though he hadn't killed before, but he would not do so again even for the very students he claimed to love as much as she did. He would not dirty his hands for what he believed or for those for whom he claimed to care. Yet, he had killed himself to protect people he had not even known. Emma's lips curled in distaste. He had been a coward, too, too afraid to live in a world without the woman he'd claimed to love, too afraid to let another soul die because he wouldn't do what was needed, too afraid to put his own people first over the humans.
She would never make that mistake, she vowed once more, turning from the school's remains. She would never do for humans what she could, or would, not do for her own kind. She would never place humanity before her people, before her children. She would never believe that another soul loved her, not even Scott who simply dallied with her to enjoy the private pleasures they shared, which were clearer greater than anything he'd ever experienced with his dead wife, and she would never, ever love again.
She began to walk away from her second school, the first with which heroes had entrusted her, the first time and place where some one beside herself had believed in her, no matter how short, the second place where she'd been foolish enough to believe she could have a family. She had watched her team be destroyed a second time here, but unlike her first students, her first family as it were, it had not been by death. It had been by their own petty differences and foolish beliefs that their kind could live freely in a world that hated them without having to kill to protect their people.
Emma dropped the rose at the school's crumbling gate. A cold wind whipped around her. She pulled her white, leather jacket closer and stepped into her waiting limousine, never once hearing the words that whispered in the breeze behind her. "Ye're right, Em. We were idiots, but ye were, too. We all loved ye. I'm sorry I didnae act on that love when I had th' chance."
But she wouldn't have wanted him, he told himself. She was too wise and strong a woman to want a bloke like him, a bloke who she knew to be foolish. That had been part of the reason why he'd killed himself, but all that was too late now. The ghost of Sean Cassidy turned as his true love was drove away and returned to his haunting, as unaware of the man who hovered high above them both as Emma herself had been.
Erik's sad, blue eyes cast cautious looks upon the school's wreckage. It appeared to be deserted, but his old bones told him better. That land was full of ghosts, as was both Emma's mind and his own. He had followed her when she'd slipped away unnoticed by all the rest, because he'd known she'd been hurting. He had followed her to make sure she was okay and, in watching her, had learned that she was anything but.
His gaze focused, for a moment, upon the crushed remains of the white rose. He understood that single, damaged flower represented a part of Emma's heart and soul, a part which she would never let any one, not Scott and especially not him, grow close to. The world did not need to know that the White Queen hurt, only that she was there to protect the mutant children who could not save themselves. Erik understood that notion well for he, like her, would also never let the world know just how badly the Master of Magnetism hurt these days not just for the wife and child he had buried or for the parents and love he had lost but for so many other reasons.
They lived in a world that hated them and amongst people who did not trust them, Erik reflected as he rose into the air, leaving both the school and Emma far behind. She was not okay. She was not going to be okay, he knew, but she would survive. He'd see her again at the new school. She'd never know he had followed her, but he knew, at last, that one other person in all the world shared his pain.
As he flew away, he thought, as he did with almost breath he took and beat his heart made, of his beloved, cherished Charles. The pain of seeing him killed before him was still far too fresh. If it were not for the children they protected, Erik would gladly hand Scott over to the authorities, but he knew that was not what Charles had wanted. Charles had been the first to see the potential for good in him, and the good he strove into bring the world; Erik knew, from her files, that Charles had done the same for Emma. Without his beloved, they would not be on the right path. Without his love, he would not care about the world, but he did. For that reason, they would continue, no matter how much it pained them, no matter how much they wanted to be done with this life.
They were so old, he thought with a weary sigh, too old for these games that the youngsters played all around them. Even Scott was a child compared to them, and he spent too many days with the weight of the world burdening his soul. They were too old and too weary for the things which they endured, but if they were going to save their children, if there was to be a future generation of homo superior, Erik knew, as did Emma, that they had no other choice. They would continue to live in a world full of hatred and indifference, continue to play the games they must play in order to stay with what remained of the X-Men, and hopefully one day before they died, they would see that next generation of their kind as full, bright, happy, and powerful as they should have been, and would have been, if only their loves had been returned.
The End