Single Vision

by K-Nice

"I am a simple man, but I am simply a man." - Lucient P. Singer, The Boys Next Door

Scott Summers sat at the kitchen table of the X-Mansion, his head in his hands. His usually under control brown hair flopped loosely over his hands. He closed his eyes and removed his red glasses. There was grit in the corners of his eyes and his mouth was sticky. He had fallen asleep in the kitchen and had woken only seconds earlier to the roar of approaching motorcycles. Wolverine and Gambit were back.

Scott tried to rouse himself, in order to rail at his two teammates who had decided to cut out on their team responsibilities for some reckless self-endangerment. Scott had foregone his warm bed and his even warmer wife for the sake of greeting the two miscreants with a thorough tongue-lashing.

See, he knew from duty, he understood responsibility. Scott knew that his life was forever changed the minute his parents placed the last parachute on his back and tied his younger brother to him. At the time, he did not know that it would be the last time he would see both his parents alive, that in the next few months he would be separated from little Alex and sent to live a painfully isolated existence in a wretched orphanage. He was not aware that on that day he would sustain damage to the part of his brain he would one day need in order to control his powers. He did know, however, that that one moment would define his life. In that instant, he was no longer a child whose needs had to be met RIGHT NOW by his patient, loving parents. He was a child who had to meet the needs of others at whatever personal cost.

From that moment on, Scott knew duty. He took care of little Alex and tried to keep them together for as long as he could. In the orphanage, he did his chores swiftly and sensibly, he helped other children with their schoolwork, he played nicely with others. When he became a mutant, Scott understood a new duty. He took on a new family, the X-Men, and lived every day to fulfill that duty-to lead, to serve, to protect.

As a teenager, when his power to shoot destructive blasts from his eyes was discovered, Scott was deprived of the ability to see color. The only to save him and those around him was see the world through ruby quartz glasses. But Scott had no illusions, no fantasies about life, that would seem to be precipitated by his skewed view of the world. Scott had developed tunnel vision the day he lost his first family and, during his years at Xavier's, he had developed it to a fine art. He had learned to put the dream first and foremost. It was the light at the end of the tunnel and everything else was merely red walls.

Now, as he struggled to wake up in the unholy hours of the morning, Scott prepared in his mind what he had to say. As the front door closed almost silently, he stood. As he began to hear footsteps in the hall leading to the kitchen, he pushed in the chair and folded his arms at his chest. He thought about tying his robe but he figured he looked angrier with it undone.

The kitchen door swung open and Scott just stared. He had expected Gambit and Wolverine to stumble in drunk. There was only Gambit, and he wasn't stumbling. Actually, he had his arm around the shoulders of a woman. Even in the dimness of the darkened kitchen she was a beautiful woman by anyone's estimation.

Which only made Scott more angry. He shifted his focus and began his diatribe. First, "Where is Logan?"

"'E went ta bed, homme, an' maybe you should do likewise, henh?" Gambit was slick as ever.

"Where have you been? It's 4:37 in the morning, Remy, that's no time to be coming home!"

"Well, I would been here at 6:00, only the chere here done lost her house keys. She need someplace to stay for the night. I figured we had plen'y room for 'er."

The smile and the tone told Scott she wouldn't be sleeping in a guestroom. Scott found Gambit's grin infuriating. Why couldn't Gambit understand duty? How could a grown man behave this way, without regard for the needs of his team? His family?

Scott understood obligation. Scott had always understood it. He hadn't wasted time bar hopping and picking up "chicks." Even in high school, he had buckled down and studied when Hank and Warren went out on the town. Scott hadn't minded being the "serious one." All the better for him, right? He had found the girl of his dreams (the fact that she reminded him of his dead mother was a moot one, and his affinity for red didn't even enter the picture) and he had won her, hadn't he? But Scott had seen her look at other men-Angel and Wolverine particularly. Scott's eyes had never wandered.

No, no, he had strayed once. For a moment he had looked to the right and to the left and he had seen Psylocke and she had seen him and trouble had chased him back into the tunnel. And he had vowed to himself, Never again. Not just because he loved Jean with all his heart, but because he knew himself and single vision was not for him.

Single people, Scott believed, had single vision. They thought only of themselves, of their own advantage. He didn't have that problem since his selfishness was ripped from him the day his parents' plane went down in flames. Yet, witnessing Gambit's decadence and hedonism, Scott saw selfish single vision head on. /If that is what being single is all about, I'm eternally grateful that I have Jean.\ Every life needed a direction, a focus, outside of itself. He had to impress that on Gambit. Tunnel vision was best. Live a life full of adventure and pleasure, yes, but not complications, not distractions.

"You listen to me, Gambit, 1. Your guest is not welcome here. 2. You, yourself, will not be welcome here if you don't start to show a sense of responsibility. You've got no discipline, coming in at all hours of the night, trailing whatever whore is willing to follow you-"

"Hol' up, Cyclops, 1. My guest is none of your business. 2. What I do in my private life is none of your business. 3. You wan' learn about disc'pline, you try de T'ieves Guild and dey teach you som'ting and 4. If you don't take back what you just said about my sister, I'm gonna make you wish you'd a stayed in bed, homme."

Scott was nonplussed. He looked at the woman again, through a clearer light as Gambit raised a charged card in his fist. She was tall for a woman, though still a few inches below Gambit and himself. Her hair was brown and curly, almost kinky. Her skin was the color of sand. Her eyes glittered like dark blue gemstones . . . Scott stopped himself as he began to wax poetic. He had no interest in this girl, of course. He was married. Happily married. To his soul mate. The point of his examination was that she looked nothing like Gambit. Except for the fact that she was uncommonly attractive and possessed a kind of muted sexuality . . . Scott summoned his righteous indignation and sneered, "Your sister?"

Gambit sneered right back, though the girl placed her hand on his arm. "Yeah, Logan and I went to meet her at the airport last night. She was supposed to stay in city somewhere, but she lost her keys and it wasn't the kind of place you can get away with breaking into so I figured she could stay here." Gambit stopped, he voice finally settling on expectancy after traversing through anger and humor. Scott was startled by both the honesty and the concern for the girl he could sense in Gambit's countenance.

However, Gambit had not dropped the card. Scott realized he was still waiting for an apology. Scott cringed. He only now remembered a half over-heard bit of conversation that substantiated Remy's claim. Something Ororo had said about JFK and a pickup. He had assumed it had been about packages. Scott realized he had sat at the kitchen table, in his PJ's, bathrobe and slippers, for 6 hours for nothing. Any other night and he could have considered himself justified; but this one night Logan and Remy had had and honorable reason for keeping ungodly hours.

Scott breathed deeply and began "I'm sorry, miss, that was out of line."

"Oui, 'twas, Monsieur, mais, you 'ave not apologized to mon frere." Her voice was liquid, lending a soothing quality to her thick accent. She was young, maybe 18 or 19 and her voice still held the lilt of girlhood in it. Scott reveled in it. She almost sounded like Jean, in a dusky, Cajun sort of way. Yet, her words struck home and he fought a blush.

"Remy . . . I . . . apologize . . . for . . . unfairly characterizing your behavior." There he said it. He looked like a fool but he had said it.

"'Pology accepted, homme." Gambit tossed the card in the air and turned from the room. Just as Scott cursed himself for not wearing his visor, the young woman caught the card in her hand. He began to warn her about the imminent explosion, when the bright pink card flared a golden yellow and disappeared. She winked at him and followed Remy out the door.

Seconds later, Gambit reentered the kitchen. "Hey, Scott, just for the record, no matter what I do out dere, I never bring it into the house, tu comprends? Dis is our home, homme." A flash of grin and he was gone again.

In the kitchen, Scott paced to the sound of the large refrigerator humming. He thought about the exchange with Gambit and the way the thief had managed to avoid asking permission for his sister to stay. He heaved a sigh as the clock turned over to 5:10. A wasted night was almost over and he had too many things to think about. He remembered the old adage: Things are not always what they seem. It seemed that what the tunnel he had built for himself allowed him see was not always what really was. He wasn't going to change who he was--he couldn't control the fact that that change had happen long ago and seemed irreversible--but maybe other's saw things he did not.

Scott sat back down at the table. He placed his head on his arms as a pillow, and just rested his eyes. When Jean finally came to look for him, there was a smile on his face. He was dreaming in single vision, with starry blue eyes flickering beside him.

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