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Scott goes to Rachel.He’d gone to Emma first in the wake of everything. He was already reeling, still stunned – still betrayed and struggling to stay afloat, his already shattered heart held together by rapidly fraying string – and Charles was gone now anyway, in more ways than one: no longer a mutant and no longer welcome at the school he’d founded. It hadn’t even been a hard decision. Had barely required any thought, although Scott could delude himself into thinking he hadn’t been reacting on emotions alone.Scott has always known Charles Xavier holds secrets. He’s known since the beginning that the Professor is much looser with the morals on his telepathy than he espouses. He’s known since the start that the Professor is much looser with morals than he espouses (self-defense or not, they’d still killed a man the first night they met, and “X-Men don’t kill” so Scott is just as much a hypocrite). But this…with Gabriel…the years of lies, the self-justifications that it was all for Scott’s benefit, the abuse of trust…it makes Scott question. Second guess himself, his life, the past ten years. Second guess their whole relationship.If Charles could do that to him once, there’s no question in Scott’s’ mind that he’s done it to him twice, three times, ten times, twenty. And…it’s not even the sentiment behind it all that bothers him. It’s not the idea that Charles has decided he knows what’s best for Scott. He can even appreciate how, in that moment, the man he loved like his father could look at him, the boy he loved like a son, wracked with grief and barely functioning and make that call.It’s after the fact. The lying, the never owning up to his mistake, the blatant manipulation of his mind—! To cover the mistake.It hurts. He can’t think of Charles without a wave of anger, without a touch of longing, without blinking away tears, without clamping down on his innate desire to please him and bring him back into the fold, without his sense of self being shaken to the core, battered back and forth by endless waves of one question rolling over in his mind: what else has Charles done to him?So he’d gone to Emma. First.Scott loves Emma. She’s his rock; his lifeline keeping his head above the waves. He trusts her so deeply, inexplicably, much as he’d never expected to, much as ‘rocky start’ was an understatement when it came to describing how they’d gotten together, much as everyone else in the mansion judges and hates him for it, much as he still feels guilt because, ‘Jean!’ on the best of days. Emma knows him well, knows his mind – has free reign to dip in and out as she pleases and takes full advantage, different from Jean’s constant connection (still a raw wound in his head thanks to Apocalypse, one that he doesn’t anticipate will ever heal now that Jean is no longer with them).Emma has ventured into the deepest, darkest corners of his mind in ways Jean had never deigned to – never felt the need to. It should bother him now, he thinks, after Charles. He’d trusted him for longer. Yet Emma’s touch in his mind is still a comfort – still what he needs right now – so he’d asked, and she willingly delved again this time. Charles had been better than her, back when he was a mutant, and could easily cover these things up (would have had to, for Jean not to know, unless…no. Jean just never went looking; she’d trusted Charles, too). Now, though, Emma knew what she was looking for.‘There’s…quite a lot more there than I expected,’ she’d said after. Scott sighed, unsurprised. But the thing is…it wasn’t just Charles he questioned now. It was…it is his whole life, everyone, himself especially. Charles had played his mind for putty, had treated him like Sinister had, and between the two of them…what else didn’t he know about himself? The question clawed at him, kept pulling him under where he didn’t want to be. So he’d asked:
‘Is there anything else?’
And Emma, she…She’d hesitated.Just a split second before she laughed it off, said, ‘No, of course not, Scott; relax a little. I’ll fix it for you in the morning,’ and then drawn him into bed. A distraction. Enough to tell him she won’t give anything up, that she’s another telepath hiding secrets from him in his own mind, but the spike that drives into him isn’t as deep or gouging as the hole Charles Xavier has already carved out of him.He loves Emma. He does. But she’s not…she’s not Jean. He loves her, but not as completely. He trusts her, but not as completely. A lie from her hurts but doesn’t surprise. Of course she lies. It’s Emma. He waits for her to fall asleep.He goes to Rachel.Scott has been avoiding Rachel since Gabriel. Everything is too raw, too soon, especially because she was there, too. Things between them have been strained enough since Jean, since Emma, twisting an already complicated relationship even further. Rachel Grey now, no longer Summers, and he loves it as much as he hates it because she’s the last legacy of Jean’s whole family. But…she’s his daughter, still, but not, different than Nathan who is in every way his son, has never been anything other than his son, who he held as a baby, who he raised until he couldn’t, who he still has old pictures of. He wishes he had that with Rachel. A different version of him or not, she’s still his, and Scott still loves her. More important, he trusts her. Trusts her to be more honest with him right now than Emma has been.This would be easier if Jean were here.Life would be easier if Jean were still here.(Life might be more complicated if Jean were still here, given things with Emma.)Jean would have words for Charles, if she were here. Jean would fix him if she were here. Jean would tell him the truth.(Part of him wonders if Jean would’ve covered up for Charles if she were here, if she’d been covering up for him all this time. She’d done it before. But no. He can’t let himself linger on that.)Time has passed, but time has never made Jean gone any easier. Last time, he’d known she was dead. At least he’d thought he’d known she was dead. Now he doesn’t know what she is: dead or alive or something in between, joined with the Phoenix but gone, alive but she’d died in his arms. All Scott knows is he’s been drowning ever since, that Emma’s the only thing holding him up – the only thing keeping him committed to this cause.It’s not just Jean, although he still aches for her, still wakes up crying in the night, especially since the thing with the Phoenix (again). It’s everything. It’s M-Day. It’s the Sentinels stationed around the school, keeping them prisoner in their own home. It’s Jean’s whole family his whole family gone. Murdered.This thing with Charles? It’s another blow he can barely stand right now. Maybe following this path to whatever other truths lie buried inside his mind is a mistake, but Scott needs something real to hold onto right now, and his mind is, at this moment, not that.Rachel doesn’t need to hear all this to agree, but she hears it anyway when she delves into his mind, sees the chipped and broken edges left behind, the parts of him rubbed raw and sore, sees him struggling not to drown in his grief, and this is more than he’s ever wanted to share with his daughter. Nathan, perhaps, if he were pushed – still his son, yes, but older, older than Scott, even – but Nathan is powerless on his island home. Like the Professor. Like most of their whole damn species, although Nathan burnt himself out on purpose. He’s still a mutant through and through, whatever use that still has for him.Rachel finishes her examination just as smoothly as she began, in every way her mother’s child. Scott appreciates that about her. There is a certain level of wariness across her face exuding the same feeling that Emma’s split second falter had, and when she opens her mouth to speak, it’s hesitant.“Dad,” she begins, but then cuts herself off, immediately second guessing.“What’s wrong?” he asks, resting a hand on her shoulder. She sits next to him on the bed, and there’s something like apology in her eyes. It’s not a look Scott has ever appreciated.Rachel leans forward, resting elbows on her knees. Red hair falls in front of red eyes that would be green, and his mind screams, ‘Jean,’ so loudly he’s grateful for the shades that keep their eyes from meeting. He’s too shaken as it is for his usual level of control.“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but…when did you decide to be with Emma?” the question takes him so off guard it breaks through the fog that has been settled in his chest since Charles. He frowns at her, unwilling to have this argument again.“I thought you two worked through your issues,” he says in lieu of answering. Emma’s not the most naturally likable person, diamond through and through, but everyone has more or less accepted her as a mainstay of their lives at this point. Also, she does a brilliant job running the school. Rachel looks him, as close an approximate as she can make, straight in the eye. It’s an accurate approximation.“Just think about it. Answer me.”He’d turned Emma down at first. Turned the whole school down after what he’d done, after what Magneto had done, after holding Jean’s limp body in his arms. He’d needed time to begin to grieve. He’d needed…“After the funeral,” he answers. The moment at Jean’s – now empty – grave, just the two of them and every regret he’d had about things with Emma.“Why?”Scott frowns, his displeasure bleeding through the atmosphere of the room around them. ‘Why Emma?’ Rachel has already demanded a million times over, and now with his life unravelling is not the tie for that fight again. Rachel is a telepath, though, and shakes her head, ‘No,’ rattling through his mind before he even says a word in rebuttal.She rests her hand on top of his still on her shoulder, a small comfort, and clarifies: “Why in that moment did you change your mind?”He opens his mouth to answer and closes it when the answer doesn’t come. Scott’s frown deepens. “I don’t know,” he realises. There was no train of thought that had brought him to that decision. Just Emma. And then it clicks in his mind, what Rachel is saying here, and the denial is already out of his mouth.“No,” he says, “Charles wouldn’t…” Charles wouldn’t what? There was a lot that Scott had thought Charles Xavier wouldn’t do to him, but this? This makes no sense.“Charles didn’t,” Rachel reassures. “He’s done…a lot in there, too much, but this wasn’t…”And now Scott laughs, disbelieving. “Emma?” he snaps out. “How many times do I have to convince everyone that Emma isn’t controlling my mind!”“Dad,” Rachel cuts in again, squeezing her hand around his. “I don’t mean Emma.”Then who? Scott scours his brain, wracking through every telepath he knows – crosses off Betsy, ignores Sage, laughs at the Cuckoos, does a hop skip jump over the idea of Sinister, who is obsessed with who he procreates with, yes, but likely would just try cloning Jean again – but he draws a blank. No one – absolutely no one – except Emma would have a reason to change his mind, and he trusts her too much for that. Rachel even just said as much. Still, Rachel is implying that this wasn’t his choice, that his relationship wasn’t his decision, but…how could it not be?Scott loves Emma. Almost as much as he’d loved Jean. He can’t accept that it’s not real. That it’s never been real, that someone made him this the way Charles seems to have shaped him to his liking.“Just tell me,” he demands – begs, really, because he needs to know what’s going on inside his head as much as everything inside him screams otherwise.Rachel nods slowly, sadly, biting her lip and there’s the faintest glimmer of disbelief to her shaky voice. Her shoulders sag, laden down with the burden of truth.“I don’t know how,” she says. “It doesn’t…it makes no sense, how or why or when, but…I mean, I recognised it immediately.” Scott stares at her blankly. Something about the way her voice hitches on the word recognise gnaws at him. And it hits him then, what she’s about to say, and denial rears up inside of him, desperation piled on top of growing horror because, no. No. No, not her, too.She was dead.“Mom,” Rachel says, voice barely perceptible, but the word a roar in his head. “It was Jean.”No. She was dead!(But what is death to a Phoenix?)But Jean wouldn’t…Jean couldn’t.(Jean would.)‘She…did,’ sounds like Rachel.Scott’s world implodes. Faintly, he can hear his name, but it’s tilting to the side, everything around him fading into an incomprehensible nothing. The fraying string holding him together snaps. He’s already lost Charles, lost his new brother, lost his wife – both of them – and now he’s losing Jean again – her and Emma, everything is a lie. It’s all a lie. His whole life. Everything solid he’s clung to disappears beneath his grasp. The relationships he’s anchored himself on…Scott drowns.