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“So you see, Herr Rogers,” the Red Skull continued as the specific image of the two men with sunglasses faded, “the most–”
He was interrupted by Captain America throwing his shield toward the Cosmic Cube. The Red Skull snatched the cube out of the shield’s path, letting it ricochet across the room before banking back.
Captain America rushed the Skull, who simply grabbed the Avenger’s arm and pulled him face-first into his own shield’s return path.
Colliding with his shield, Captain America fell to his knees. He watched the room spin, but that could be either a head injury or a side-effect of the Cosmic Cube warping reality.
“There are billions of people on this planet, Captain,” Red Skull boasted, “all of them slaves to their base desires. They wish to be elevated above their petty frailties in life. They wish for power, little dreaming of how that desire can be twisted against them!”
“I don’t buy it.” Captain America rubbed his temple as he crouched on the floor of the Red Skull’s inner sanctum. “Even if some people give into their thirst for power, we just saw examples of people who didn’t.”
The Red Skull grinned. “Do you think so, Rogers?”
Captain America held his gaze. “There were people who understood the cost of even making a wish in the first place. Like that young man who wished for sunglasses to escape such a burden!”
The Red Skull laughed out loud.
Fed up, Captain America leaped to his feet and aimed a punch to Skull’s sternum.
He found himself standing five feet away from the Skull, who had warped the reality of the room to his advantage.
“Those sunglasses did not come from nowhere,” the Skull revealed. “They were made of a rare ruby-quartz material. Would you like to see where the eye-wear came from, and what it cost the owner?”
Before Captain America could retort, he was assaulted by a series of images slamming into his head. Images that began with a young man in Westchester county….
Cyclops in: “Family Reunion!”
Written by David Ellis
Friday, October 12th, 1984.
“I wish I could have my family back,” Scott Summers murmured, on the verge of tears, “so I could be with them again.”
As he looked around the room and wondered who had asked him what he wished for, he felt his stomach drop out, along with his entire bedroom and anything solid under his feet.
He felt a sudden rush of air, cold and biting, as his feet slammed against hard ground and he stumbled over. Here he was, dressed for insulated indoors with a simple short-sleeved button-up over a t-shirt, slacks, and socks. It was freezing out here, and he wasn’t even wearing shoes.
Adjusting his ruby-quartz shades, he looked around. It wouldn’t do for his sunglasses to be jostled, considering they were the only things keeping in check the powerful energy beams pouring from his eyes.
He found himself near a cabin out by a lake in vast wilderness. The cabin and the lake looked old and rustic but familiar. Alaska. It’s the cabin! My family’s cabin!
Remembering he was still holding the photo of himself and his family, he glanced at it, only for the photo to slip from his fingers. The slight breeze carried it away from him and toward the cabin. As he began to chase after it, he noticed he wasn’t alone.
A teenage boy, blond and similarly under-dressed, stood hugging himself for warmth near the front porch. He wore a thin black long-sleeved shirt and pajama pants decorated with concentric circle designs. His back was to Scott; he turned when the photo brushed against the back of his jeans.
Scott stopped in his tracks. The teenager looked just like one of the faces in the family photo. It was his younger brother, but years older. “Alex?”
The teenager stared at Scott. He looked he was roughly Bobby Drake’s age of fifteen. “Who are you… wait. Scott? No. You can’t be.” He took one step closer, then another despite being barefoot.
Scott quickly covered the distance between them and pulled Alex into a tight hug for the first time in nine years. “Alex! Alex, I can’t believe it’s you!”
The cabin door creaked open and artificial light fell upon them, causing them to turn to see two figures standing in the doorway. They were a man and a woman wearing casual clothing from the seventies. The man, tall and broad-shouldered, had a neatly-trimmed mustache the same dark-brown color as his hair and eyes. The woman had long wavy blonde hair and light brown eyes the same shape as Scott’s when he was younger.
Scott and Alex gasped at the sight of them. Not only were they identical to the parents from the family photo, they looked like they were still in their thirties. They hadn’t aged a day.
“Oh, my god,” Christopher Summers whispered. “Why do you two look so much like–”
“Let’s worry about that later,” his wife Katherine replied. “Those two boys are freezing; let’s get ’em inside!”
Acting quickly, they ushered Scott and Alex inside the fireplace-warmed cabin where they could see the two boys in the light. “Scott? Alex? Is it really you? You were nine and six just yesterday!”
Katherine reached for Scott’s sunglasses. “You two look so much like our children, but I have to be sure–”
Scott stepped back, holding his palms out defensively. “Easy! You don’t want to do that! I’m sorry, I’ll explain later. It is us.”
The four of them pulled each other into a group hug that helped warm the boys somewhat. “It’s been years,” Scott explained, his mother’s head resting against his chest. “I don’t know how this has happened, but I’m so glad to finally have you back.” This barely made the top ten of the strangest things he’d seen over the past nine years, but he was at least thankful for this phenomenon.
The following Wednesday, October 18th.
“I think I’m starting to get used to this,” Scott admitted to Jean over a long-distance phone call to the Xavier estate. “It’s gotten to the point that I don’t expect my parents and brother to vanish in a puff of smoke the moment I turn around.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” Jean replied. “It’s sinking in that you’re actually with your family, huh?”
“It’s still sinking in with everybody here. We’ve reconnected with my grandparents on my dad’s side. They’re completely spooked by the fact my parents are alive, but they’re starting to get used to it. I mean, can you believe my dad has Tlingit Native relatives? We went to the reservation last weekend.”
“Seems like a lot to take in. How’s your brother handling it all?”
“He seems okay, Jean. He seems a little slower than Mom and Dad about accepting that I’m a mutant, but I’m sure he’ll come around in time. I can’t believe he’s so tall! He’s about the same age as Bobby and Armando, and … how are Bobby and the rest, anyway?”
“Bobby’s been in good spirits; he got back together with Zelda.”
“Oh? Glad to hear it.”
“Want to hear something weird? Armando looks human. Like a normal one, I guess?” There was a pause, and Scott could imagine her wincing at her own phrasing, unsure of how else to say it. “Remember when he could just shift his face and hold it for a few seconds? Now he looks like that all the time. He’s gone back to his mother in Harlem, and last I heard they’re starting to patch up their relationship.”
“Keep me posted on that.”
“There’s been a lot of good news here lately,” Jean went on, an uncertain note in her voice.
“So why does it sound like there’s a problem?”
Jean gave an audible inhale of breath. “Okay, so Suzanne and Edie have turned a corner in figuring out how their powers work. Suzanne can twist time forward and backward easily … Edie is popping all over the place. She can actually teleport where she wants to go now.”
Scott waited.
“Warren and I’ve been fielding offers from young adult mutants all over the country to form a coalition of campus clubs for mutant students — like my Mutant Campus Outreach, but on a national scale. I’ve already had meetings with the Mutants For Peace group at ESU.
“Hank got his paper approved for publication in a scientific journal. The paper that’s been giving him writer’s block. Warren and his father are seeing eye-to-eye.”
“Sounds like they’re getting what they wanted,” Scott replied evenly, starting to see a pattern in where this was going.
“Yeah. Meanwhile, there’s Kairi.”
Scott tilted his head to the side. “What happened?”
“For some reason, she no longer has any memory of her life past the age of six. She doesn’t remember us, she doesn’t remember the Hand or why she doesn’t recognize her own body … it’s bad. She’s been wanting to see her parents, and we’ve been trying to track them down. If it turns out they’re….” Jean trailed off.
“You don’t know how you’re going to break the news to her six-year-old mentality,” Scott finished for her. “Okay, so what’s the rest of it? What are you thinking?”
“Well, last Thursday, some voice asked me what I wished for, and I told it I wanted my MCO club to be successful. Now it is.“
Behind his sunglasses, Scott closed his eyes. Damn it. “You heard a voice too? I heard it on Friday. Jean–”
“Scott, listen, there’s more. They just had a Presidential address on TV. Looks like the government’s come to the same conclusion we have: just about everybody’s been having wishes granted. It’s making some things better, but it’s starting to cause so many problems the government is warning everyone against making a wish if they haven’t been asked already.”
“That would explain the record fishing yields over here, the streak of winning lottery numbers, and….” Scott gulped and lowered his voice so his parents and brother couldn’t hear him over the television. “And the people who have been coming back from the dead… or just plain dropping dead.”
He could hear the concern in Jean’s voice. “Scott, I am so, so sorry.”
“I’m coming back to the mansion,” Scott decided. “This is something that might require the X-Men if it gets worse.”
“Scott, no. Stay there and spend time with your family. Please. We’ll be fine here. Heck, I’m here at the mansion because we’re having a meeting to discuss who should lead in your absence. Do your folks know about the X-Men?”
“I told them, but I don’t think they know what to do with that fact. But I can’t sit on the sidelines, Jean. I’m coming back–”
“Scott. You’ve earned this. If anything, I’ll get everybody rounded up and we can fly up there for a visit this weekend. Or maybe even teleport if Edie’s up to it. We could make it a class field trip and everything.”
Scott sighed. “Are you sure?”
“Scott Summers, don’t make me come up there just to punch you. Because you know I will.”
He sighed. “All right. I’ll let them know you all are coming.” He turned to his family. “Hey Mom, Dad? Squirrel?”
Alex turned to Scott, almost spilling half a bag of popcorn. “Oh, come on! You called me that when we were little! That’s embarrassing now!”
Scott shrugged. “Older brother prerogative. I’m on the phone with Xavier’s School. They’re gonna come vis–”
A flash of light just in front of his eyes startled him. Then all hell broke loose. All three of his family members — and the sofa on which they sat, and the television, and even the wall behind it — were propelled away from him with sudden force. Energy poured from his eyes, and in the half-second it took for him to close his eyes and cover them with the crook of his elbow, he watched his optic blast tear into everything — and everyone — in front of him. He could hear their sudden screams cut short just as quickly.
He could feel and smell the blast of cold air from outside. He could hear birds fluttering and dogs barking in the distance. As he crouched to feel around for his glasses, he called out to his family. “Mom? Dad? Alex! ALEX! No no no no, come on! Answer me! I can’t see where you are!”
His fingers could feel the wooden floor, but his glasses were oddly nowhere to be found. He kept shouting.
“Scott?” Alex’s voice, cracking from stress and horror. “What the… what the hell happened?”
“You’re alive? Oh, thank god. I don’t know what happened. I was so careful…”
“Did you do…? That thing with your eyes.” Scott could hear the dawning realization.
“Can you see Mom and Dad? Alex, I need you to focus. What happened to–”
Alex’s sudden sobbing told him everything he needed to know.
Jean’s voice repeated his name; Scott realized he hadn’t hung up the phone call with her.
“Jean? Get… get everyone over here as soon as you can!”
Scott’s body trembled, wracked with more than just the cold Alaskan air.
Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery. Monday, October 22nd.
The air carried a slight breeze as Scott stood at his parents’ gravesite, wearing layers to keep out the just-above-freezing October cold. His jaw clenched as he stared at the names Christopher Summers and Katherine Anne Summers. Two headstones among a sea of similar graves on the twenty-two-acre property. They had been so alive, so warm, but now their passing had been marked by cold ground.
The memorial service on Saturday, he’d heard, had been ceremonial. Their bodies had not been recovered when they had died the first time in 1975. He’d been nine at the time. This time there was precious little of their bodies left to bury. Instead, the ashes of what remained had been scattered across Eagle Bay.
He was accompanied by a quartet of people from the mansion. Jean and Warren stood by his side, huddled against him for warmth and solidarity. Charles Xavier and Moira Kinross stood at a distance, similarly bundled up and concerned about Scott’s well-being as he paid his respects to his parents.
“What’re you doing here?” a young man’s voice, raw with grief and anger, shouted from off to the side.
Scott and his friends turned as Alex marched toward them, gloved fists clenched. “Alex, I–”
“What part of ‘I never want to see you again’ didn’t you get?” Alex moved toward Scott, but Warren stepped between them.
Scott frowned. “Alex, this is the second time I’ve had to miss my parents’ funeral. Do you realize that? The first time I was in a coma and had to find out about it later.”
“It’s your fault there had to be a second time!”
Scott clenched his teeth, trying to keep his composure. “It was out of my control, Alex. I keep telling you that. My protective glasses disappeared.”
“It should’ve been you.”
“Which is what I’ve been telling myself every second! Look, can’t I at least pay my final respects? You’ll never have to see me again after that, and I was even hoping you wouldn’t see me now.”
“Word gets around in a community like this,” Alex pointed out. “But you know what? You have your own family now, so you’re better off with them.”
Warren spread out his wings, his feathers fluffed out with anger. “All right, listen, you little jackass–!”
From where she stood with Xavier, Moira shouted, “hey, have a little respect for the departed, all of ye! If a fight breaks out I’ll knock all o’ your heads together, so keep it civil!”
Alex, Warren, and Jean stared at her in wide-eyed fear. Behind his shades, Scott did as well. Charles simply glanced at her with a bemused smile; he’d known the Scottish scientist most of his life, so he admired her restraint.
Warren turned back to Alex. “I know you’re hurting, but you don’t need to–”
Jean placed a hand on their shoulders, trying to smooth things over as Scott wandered away from the three of them, visibly shaking. “Warren. Alex. Moira’s right. This isn’t the place.”
Alex frowned and folded his arms, scowling as he looked away from Jean. In his fifteen-year-old way, he didn’t seem to want to admit she and Moira were right.
“Alex, may I ask what your wish was? It seems like everyone got one.”
“Don’t know what difference that’ll make,” Alex replied, “but I wished I could see my mom and dad again. So I made this happen, then I got my heart ripped out for it.”
“It wasn’t just you, Alex. Scott wished he could be reunited with all three of you. He never stopped thinking of you, and what’s happened has hit him hard. He hasn’t been back to the mansion since this happened.”
Alex’s eyes widened. “He hasn’t?” He’d been shown pictures of Xavier’s School. His brother had been living in a mansion while Alex himself had been adopted into a middle-class household.
“He hasn’t. He doesn’t feel like he deserves it. And while he hasn’t said much about his past, he’s at least told me about you. We’re never going to replace his birth family. All we can really do is be with him in his life now. If you don’t want to be a part of that, I understand.”
Alex’s expression softened. “Look, I get that it was an accident. I still don’t know how it happened, but I still think it’s gonna be a long time before I can forgive him.”
“He knows it was an accident, too,” Jean replied, watching Scott walk away from his parents’ headstone, leaning on Warren for support. “And it’ll still be a long time before he’ll be able to forgive himself.”
End
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