Chapter Text
Scott Summers said Bobby’s name like a warning.
That was the first sign something was wrong.
Not wrong in the usual sense. Not alarms blaring, walls shaking, Warren yelling from somewhere above them that whatever had happened was “technically not his fault.” Bobby Drake knew those wrongs. He had a whole internal filing system for those wrongs, cross-indexed by property damage and Professor Xavier’s level of disappointed silence.
This was a quieter wrong.
This was Scott standing in the doorway of the old equipment room after midnight, one hand braced against the frame, his ruby quartz glasses catching the dim emergency light in a way that turned his face into angles and shadows.
This was Scott looking at him like restraint had finally become more painful than danger.
“Bobby,” he said again.
Bobby sat on the edge of the storage table, one ankle hooked around the metal leg, a maintenance manual open uselessly beside him. He had been pretending to inventory the spare regulator parts for the Blackbird because Hank had asked and because pretending to be useful after midnight was sometimes easier than lying awake thinking about things he was not supposed to want.
Things with dark hair.
Things with red lenses.
Things currently blocking the only exit.
“Summers,” Bobby said, because his mouth had always been faster than his survival instincts. “If this is about the coolant system, I would like to go on record as saying the wrench started it.”
Scott did not smile.
That was the second sign.
Usually, privately, if no one else was around and Bobby found exactly the right angle of ridiculous, Scott would give him something. Not much. A twitch of the mouth. A sigh with amusement trapped inside it. A look that said Bobby was impossible and, worse, known.
Tonight, nothing.
Scott stepped inside and closed the door.
The latch clicked.
Bobby’s heart went very stupid.
“Okay,” he said lightly. “Door closing. Dramatic. Very noir. Should I be smoking? I feel like I should be smoking.”
Scott crossed the room in three strides.
Bobby stopped talking.
That almost never happened, and Scott knew it. Bobby could see the knowledge hit him. It landed in the tightening of Scott’s jaw, the small breath he pulled in through his nose, the way his hand flexed once at his side before stilling.
Control, Bobby thought.
Always control.
Then Scott said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
The words dropped between them with a weight Bobby felt in his ribs.
He forced a laugh. It sounded awful. “Great. Terrifying opening. Very specific. Lots of room for interpretation.”
Scott stopped in front of him.
Too close.
Not touching. Scott was too good for that. Too careful. Too Scott. But close enough that Bobby could see a faint scratch near the edge of his glasses, close enough to smell soap and metal and the clean sharpness Bobby associated with training rooms after everyone else had gone to bed.
“I mean this,” Scott said.
Bobby’s throat went dry.
“That’s worse,” he said. “I prefer when people mean things less.”
Scott’s face changed then. Not softened. Broke, maybe, but only in one controlled fracture.
“For six months,” he said, voice low, “I have tried to pretend that what happened between us was only the accident.”
Bobby did not move.
He did not breathe either, which became a problem almost immediately.
Scott continued, “I told myself it was confusion. Residue. Jean’s body. Your mind. My guilt. I told myself if I was patient, if I loved Jean correctly, if I did everything the right way, this would go away.”
Bobby’s hands had curled around the edge of the table.
“Scott.”
“No.” Scott shook his head once. “Let me say it.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Bobby should have stopped him. Some nobler, smarter, less catastrophically in love version of Bobby would have jumped off the table, opened the door, fetched Jean, Hank, Charles, a priest, possibly Reed Richards, anyone capable of interrupting a disaster before it developed weather patterns.
Instead, he stayed.
Because Scott Summers was looking at him and telling the truth.
And Bobby Drake had spent too long hungry for truth to refuse it just because it came poisoned.
Scott stepped closer.
“I think about you,” he said.
Bobby’s body went hot and cold at once.
“Don’t.”
“I do.”
“Scott.”
“I think about your laugh. About how you looked at me that night in the city when I didn’t know it was you. About all the things I thought were Jean and weren’t.” Scott’s voice roughened. “And then I hate myself because Jean deserves better than me turning that into something I want again.”
Bobby slid off the table because sitting still had become impossible. Unfortunately, this put him directly in front of Scott, which was not a tactical improvement.
“You love her,” Bobby said.
“Yes.”
The answer was immediate. No hesitation. No cruelty. Just fact.
Bobby nodded too quickly. “Great. Excellent. We’ve solved it. Look at that. Very efficient meeting. I’ll type up minutes.”
Scott caught his wrist.
Not hard.
That made it worse.
Bobby looked down at Scott’s hand.
Warm fingers. Careful grip. A question disguised as restraint.
“You also know that isn’t the whole truth,” Scott said.
Bobby laughed once. “I know a lot of things that are bad for me.”
“Bobby.”
There it was again. His name, not as command, not as exasperation, but as surrender.
Bobby looked up.
Scott’s other hand rose slowly, giving him time to move. Bobby did not. Scott touched his cheek with two fingers, barely more than contact, and Bobby felt the whole world tilt toward that small point of warmth.
“This is unbearable,” Scott whispered.
Bobby closed his eyes.
That was his mistake.
Because without sight, there was only Scott. Scott’s hand at his wrist. Scott’s breath close to his mouth. Scott’s restraint trembling hard enough that Bobby could feel it in the air between them.
Then Scott kissed him.
The first touch of Scott’s mouth was not gentle.
It was careful for half a second and then not, as if the care itself had been the last thing holding him back. Bobby made a sound he would later deny to God, country, and congressional inquiry, and then he was kissing Scott back with everything he had spent six months burying under jokes, training drills, late-night glances, and the word fine.
Scott’s hands went to his waist.
Bobby’s went to Scott’s shoulders.
The room disappeared.
There was only the hard line of Scott’s body, the hot press of his mouth, the impossible fact of being wanted by someone who had spent his whole life making wanting look like responsibility in uniform.
Bobby backed into the storage table. Tools clattered behind him.
“Sorry,” Scott murmured automatically.
Bobby laughed against his mouth. “Do not apologize to the wrench.”
Scott kissed him again, harder.
That was unfair.
That was catastrophically unfair.
Bobby tugged him closer by the front of his shirt, and Scott came willingly, too willingly, one hand sliding up Bobby’s back, the other braced beside his hip on the table. Bobby felt the shape of Scott’s restraint changing, not vanishing but becoming something hotter, less organized, less noble.
For one dizzying second, Bobby thought: this is it.
Not fantasy. Not borrowed skin. Not Jean’s mouth. Not a secret hidden inside someone else’s life.
This.
Scott’s lips found the side of his neck. Bobby’s head fell back.
“Scott,” he breathed.
Bobby opened his eyes.
Scott looked wrecked. Hair mussed. Mouth flushed. Glasses still in place.
“I want you,” Scott said.
The words hit harder than the kiss.
Bobby stared at him.
Scott’s face tightened, terrified by his own honesty and unable to take it back.
“I know I shouldn’t,” he said.
Bobby’s chest hurt.
“No,” Bobby whispered. “You really, really shouldn’t.”
Scott’s hand moved to Bobby’s shirt, fingers curling in the fabric like he was holding on to the last ledge before a fall.
“Tell me to stop.”
Bobby almost laughed.
He almost cried.
He almost did the right thing.
Instead, he pulled Scott back to him.
The kiss this time was desperate, stripped of cleverness and shame. Scott made a low sound into Bobby’s mouth. Bobby felt it everywhere. His hands slid beneath Scott’s shirt, found warm skin, muscle, the impossible reality of him. Scott pressed him back against the table, and Bobby went, because he had always been going, for months, maybe years, maybe since the first time Scott had said his name like Bobby was not only noise.
Scott’s hand slipped lower.
Bobby’s breath caught.
They were close now. Too close. The edge of something neither of them could pretend was only kissing. Scott lifted his head, breathing hard, his forehead nearly touching Bobby’s.
“Are you sure?” Scott asked.
There it was.
Of course there it was.
Even here, even burning, even in the middle of throwing away the entire moral architecture of his life, Scott Summers still stopped to ask.
Bobby looked at him.
At the boy he loved.
At the boy who loved Jean.
At the boy whose hands were on him at last.
“Yes,” Bobby said, as he pulled Scott’s shirt up over his head.
Scott’s hand slid down the front of Bobby’s pants as he kissed him again.
And Bobby woke up.
The ceiling above him was not the equipment room ceiling.
It was his bedroom ceiling, which had one water stain near the corner that looked vaguely like the state of Ohio if Ohio had been personally disappointed in him.
Bobby lay flat on his back, breathing hard, tangled in sheets, heart pounding as if he had actually been running from something instead of toward it.
For three seconds, he did not move.
Then he looked down.
“Oh, come on.”
His body had responded to the dream with all the enthusiasm of a marching band falling down a staircase, leaving an enthusiastic reminder of what never could be pointing straight to the ceiling, making itself known from under Bobby’s blanket.
Bobby covered his face with both hands.
“Traitor,” he muttered.
The accusation lacked force. Everything lacked force at seven in the morning when a person woke up from an erotic betrayal staged entirely by his own subconscious.
He lay there for another minute, waiting for his pulse to stop acting like it had been invited to a disaster and arrived early.
It did not help that the dream had been unfairly specific.
Scott’s voice. Scott’s hands. Scott saying I want you like a confession and an injury. Scott asking are you sure, because even in Bobby’s dirtiest, most humiliating dreams, Scott could not stop being decent.
That was the part that made Bobby want to fling himself into the lake.
He could have dreamed Scott careless. He could have dreamed Scott selfish. He could have dreamed some cheap, uncomplicated fantasy that would have been easier to hate in the morning.
But no.
Bobby Drake’s unconscious mind had excellent characterization.
Horrifying.
He sat up slowly, dragging the sheet off his lap and then tugging his boxer’s down next, realizing this wasn’t going to go away by itself. Morning light filtered through the curtains. His room was not as chaotic as it had been six months ago, which was one of the more embarrassing side effects of having once watched Jean Grey inhabit his life badly enough to reveal how much of it had been hiding places.
He had cleaned. A little.
Bobby rubbed his eyes and exhaled.
Six months.
Six months since he had woken up in Jean Grey’s body and learned, with the subtlety of a piano dropped from orbit, that wanting Scott Summers was no longer a private tragedy if other people’s bodies could get involved.
Six months since Jean had forgiven him.
No. That was too simple.
Jean had not simply forgiven him. Jean had listened. Jean had laughed with him about the impossible horrors of puberty from both sides of the cosmic fence. Jean had apologized for telling him she knew he was gay before he had been ready to say it. Jean had admitted, cheeks pink but chin lifted, that she had handled certain unavoidable biological situations while inside his body, twice, and Bobby had laughed so hard he almost fell off the lab stool because the alternative was dissolving into ash.
Their friendship had survived because both of them had finally told the truth.
Not all truth fixed things.
Some truth did.
Hank had forgiven him too, though Hank’s forgiveness had come wrapped in three lectures, two awkward hugs, and one terrifyingly organized pamphlet on “Psychological Boundary Repair Following Metaphysical Identity Events,” which Bobby suspected Hank had written himself and then pretended to have found in the library.
Warren had been the surprise.
Not romantic. Absolutely not romantic. Bobby’s life had enough hazardous materials without adding Warren Worthington’s cheekbones to the pile. But something had changed there after the body swap. Warren had spent days thinking he was connecting with Jean, only to discover he had been seeing something real in Bobby by accident. They did not talk about it often, because Warren was allergic to sincerity unless it came with good lighting, but the competition between them had softened. Not vanished. God forbid. But softened.
Warren still called him “Drake” like an accusation of tax fraud.
Bobby still threatened to freeze his hair products.
Balance had been restored.
Mostly.
Then there was Scott.
Bobby stared at the ceiling again, as he took his uninvited morning friend into his hand and began to gently stroke it, thinking of Scott once more.
Scott was not restored.
Scott had never been broken from Bobby exactly, which made the situation worse. There was no clean before and after. No line they could point to and say: here, this is where it started.
The body swap had changed something, yes. Scott had kissed Bobby while believing Bobby was Jean. Scott had touched Bobby in Jean’s body. Scott had even touched Bobby’s body while inhabited by Jean and liked how it had felt.
And then, at the end, after everything had been reversed, after Bobby was Bobby again and Jean was Jean again, Scott had looked at him differently.
Not constantly.
Scott was still Scott. Controlled. Loyal. Careful with his hands and cruel to himself in ways he probably thought counted as discipline. He loved Jean. Bobby knew that. Everyone knew that.
But sometimes, when they were alone, Scott let something else exist.
A look held half a second too long.
A joke answered too softly.
A hand at Bobby’s shoulder that did not move away immediately.
Once, in the garage, while they were repairing the Blackbird’s auxiliary coolant line, Bobby had said, “Careful, Summers, you keep asking me to hand you tools in that voice and I’ll start thinking you like me for more than my socket wrench.”
Scott had not looked up from the engine.
He had only said, “You have other qualities.”
Bobby had nearly dropped the socket wrench.
That was the problem. Scott never promised anything. Never crossed any line big enough for Bobby to name without feeling insane. But he gave him just enough to live on. Just enough that Bobby’s stupid traitor heart woke up every morning and checked the horizon for a future it had no business expecting.
Hank had caught him staring once after training.
“You should be careful,” Hank had said.
Bobby had rolled his eyes. “I am the picture of caution. My middle name is Caution.”
“Your middle name is Louis.”
“Wow. Betrayal from the archives.”
Hank had not smiled.
That was how Bobby knew he was in trouble.
“Scott cares about you,” Hank had said carefully. “More than he did before. Perhaps more than he understands.”
Bobby had looked away.
“But?”
Hank’s mouth tightened with sympathy.
“But Scott’s heart belongs to Jean.”
There it was.
The sentence everyone knew and nobody wanted to say where Bobby could hear it.
Hank had said it anyway because Hank loved him enough to be unkind accurately.
“For better or worse,” Hank added, “whatever curiosity he feels about you exists inside that fact. Not outside it.”
Bobby had made a joke then. He did not remember which one. Probably a good one. He was excellent in crisis.
But he had remembered the sentence.
Scott’s heart belongs to Jean.
Bobby knew it was true.
Unfortunately, knowing true things did not prevent his morning erection from insisting on considering the pleasures that could be found in the lie.
A knock came at his door.
Bobby froze, laying there naked in his bed in the most compromising position one could be in all alone on a Tuesday morning.
If it was Scott, Bobby would die. If it was Hank, Bobby would die for different reasons. If it was Warren, Bobby would weaponize the morning situation and traumatize him on principle.
“Bobby?” Jean called from the hall.
Bobby closed his eyes.
Somehow better and worse.
“Alive,” he called back. His voice cracked at the top like betrayal had a soundtrack.
There was a pause.
“Are you decent?”
Bobby looked down at his Scott-induced erection that he was still gripping because letting go now seemed like an even bigger mistake even if he was no longer moving his hand. Then he looked back at the door.
“In a moral sense? Debatable.”
“Bobby.”
“Give me five minutes.”
“I’m not coming in.”
“Great. Ten minutes.”
He could hear her laugh through the door, warm and familiar, and the sound eased something in him that the dream had tightened.
“Briefing in twenty,” she said. “Professor Xavier wants everyone downstairs.”
“Everyone everyone?”
“Me. Scott. You. Hank. Warren.”
Bobby sat up straighter. “Mission?”
“Sounds like it.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know yet.”
But Bobby could hear something in her voice. Excitement, yes. Concern too. Jean always carried concern like a candle cupped against wind.
“Jean?”
“Yes?”
He almost said something stupid.
Had a dream about your boyfriend finally making terrible decisions in my direction, please advise.
Instead he said, “Save me a coffee?”
Another pause. Softer.
“Always.”
Her footsteps moved away.
Bobby fell back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling.
“Always,” he repeated to the empty room.
Then he then returned to that old familiar motion of his right hand, so as to deal with the immediate biological consequences of being eighteen, alive, and disastrously in love with Scott Summers.
By the time Bobby made it downstairs, Scott was already in the briefing room.
Scott Summers arrived early to everything except emotional self-awareness, where he had been running several years behind schedule since birth.
He stood beside the long table with a folder in one hand, wearing a dark sweater and pressed slacks, ruby quartz glasses polished clean, posture straight enough to qualify as architecture. Jean sat at the table with a cup of coffee between both hands, her red hair loose over one shoulder. Hank was beside her, already reading notes over Scott’s shoulder because personal space was apparently a theory he supported only in journals. Warren lounged near the window, looking offensively rested.
Bobby paused in the doorway.
Scott looked up.
For half a second, the dream overlaid reality so vividly that Bobby forgot the difference.
Scott’s hand at his wrist.
Scott’s mouth.
I think about you.
Then Scott’s expression softened in the real room, not much, but enough.
“Morning,” he said.
Bobby heard the word like a private disaster.
“Debatable,” Bobby replied, stepping inside. “The sun is up, so technically, yes. Emotionally, I object.”
Warren turned from the window. “You look like you lost a fight with your own pillow.”
“I won,” Bobby said. “But at what cost?”
Jean hid a smile behind her coffee.
Scott’s mouth twitched.
Bobby tried not to live there.
Professor Xavier entered before Bobby could do something foolish like enjoy the fact that Scott had almost smiled at him. The Professor moved to the head of the table, expression calm but serious.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Xavier said.
Warren straightened slightly. Hank closed the folder he definitely had not been given permission to read. Scott shifted into mission posture so completely Bobby could almost hear the armor lock into place.
Jean noticed too. She always did.
Xavier placed a file on the table. “Three days ago, a private research expedition entered an unexplored region of the Antarctic interior based on unusual atmospheric and geological readings. Their intended destination was a place long considered myth by most of the scientific community.”
Hank leaned forward, interest sharpening. “The Savage Land.”
Warren blinked. “I’m sorry. The what land?”
“The Savage Land,” Hank repeated, already warming to the topic. “A prehistoric tropical ecosystem hidden beneath Antarctica, theoretically sustained by geothermal activity and atmospheric anomalies. There have been scattered reports for years, but little credible documentation.”
“Prehistoric,” Bobby said. “As in…?”
“As in dinosaurs,” Hank said, with deeply inappropriate enthusiasm.
Bobby looked at Xavier. “I resign.”
“You do not have a position from which to resign,” Scott said.
“Then I invent one and resign from it with dignity.”
Warren’s smile tilted. “Dignity was optimistic.”
Jean glanced at Xavier. “The expedition crashed?”
Xavier’s expression sobered. “Their aircraft went down after transmitting a partial distress signal. The signal was degraded, but we believe at least some members of the expedition survived impact. Local conditions are interfering with conventional rescue attempts.”
“And you want us to go in,” Scott said.
Not a question.
Xavier looked at him with something like pride and worry mixed together. “I want a small team. Four at most. The Blackbird is better equipped than any conventional aircraft to survive the atmospheric instability, and your abilities may give the survivors a chance no one else can provide.”
Scott nodded once. “Jean pilots.”
Jean set down her coffee. “Yes.”
“Scott commands,” Xavier said.
Warren made a small noise. “Naturally.”
Scott ignored him. “Who else?”
“That,” Xavier said, “is what we need to determine.”
Hank sat forward, already mentally volunteering. “If the environment is as scientifically volatile as the readings suggest, I would be useful analyzing terrain, atmospheric conditions, and—”
“You would also try to collect samples while being chased by a tyrannosaurus,” Warren said.
Hank blinked. “I would not do that during the chase.”
Bobby pointed at him. “Important distinction.”
Warren folded his arms. “I can scout from the air.”
“If the canopy allows it,” Scott said. “And if the atmosphere doesn’t make flying unstable.”
Warren gave him an offended look. “Summers, I have wings. I am not a kite.”
“Noted.”
Bobby leaned back in his chair. “I can make ice bridges, ice walls, ice slides, emergency refrigeration, bad decisions more festive—”
Scott looked at him.
Bobby stopped.
“—and I’m also excellent company in dinosaur emergencies,” he finished.
Scott did not smile this time. The mission had taken him fully.
Bobby hated and admired that in equal measure.
Xavier steepled his fingers. “I am inclined toward Scott, Jean, Bobby, and either Hank or Warren, depending on the final risk assessment.”
The hallway outside the briefing room creaked.
Scott’s head turned immediately.
So did Jean’s.
A second later, Alex Summers stepped into the doorway like he had been deciding whether to enter for five minutes and had finally chosen badly on purpose.
He looked like Scott in the way echoes looked like original sounds if someone threw them against rock first. Same sharp bone structure, same intensity around the eyes. But where Scott compressed himself into discipline, Alex seemed to vibrate with everything he was trying not to say.
He was eighteen now. Newly, awkwardly, legally adult in a way he clearly wanted the room to recognize without having to ask. His jacket was half-zipped. His hands were shoved in his pockets. There was a healing split near one knuckle, probably from the training room wall he had hit after Lorna left last week.
Bobby knew because Bobby had seen the wall.
The wall had not been impressed.
“Alex,” Scott said.
The word contained warning, irritation, and older-brother dread in roughly equal portions.
Alex lifted his chin. “I want to go.”
No one spoke for one beat.
Then Warren murmured, “Good morning to you too.”
Alex ignored him.
Scott set the folder down. Carefully. Too carefully.
“This is a closed briefing.”
“I heard enough.”
“That is not a recommendation.”
Alex stepped fully into the room. “You need power. Mine qualifies.”
Scott’s mouth flattened. “You need training.”
“I train every day.”
“You train in controlled environments.”
“So did you before your first mission.”
The room went quiet.
Jean looked at Alex then, really looked. Bobby saw the moment happen. Alex noticed it too. His posture shifted, not softer exactly, but less alone.
Scott’s voice cooled. “The Savage Land is not a training exercise.”
“I know that.”
“No, you don’t.” Scott came around the table. “You have no idea what we’re flying into. Hostile terrain, unstable weather, unknown animal life, a downed expedition, and probably no support once we land.”
“Sounds like you could use someone who hits hard.”
“It sounds like we cannot afford someone who loses control because he needs to prove a point.”
Alex flinched.
Only slightly.
Scott saw it too late.
Jean certainly saw it.
“Scott,” she said.
He did not look at her. “No.”
Alex’s face went red. “I’m eighteen.”
“That is not a qualification.”
“I’m your brother.”
“That is definitely not a qualification.”
The words landed badly.
Alex’s expression shuttered.
Bobby, who had made a career out of saying the wrong thing at useful speeds, almost intervened. Hank beat him by leaning forward.
“Alex’s power output is considerable,” Hank said gently. “With proper support—”
Scott cut him off. “Proper support is exactly the issue.”
Alex laughed once, sharp. “You mean a babysitter.”
“I mean control.”
“You always mean control.”
Scott’s jaw tightened.
Jean stood.
The movement was quiet, but everyone felt it. Jean had a way of standing that made rooms remember she had gravity of her own.
“Alex,” she said, “give us a moment.”
Alex looked at her.
The anger on his face faltered under the simple fact of being addressed without dismissal.
“I can make my case,” he said, but his voice had lost some of its edge.
“I know,” Jean said. “And you did. Give us a moment to discuss it.”
He hesitated.
Scott looked like he wanted to object to Alex being allowed to hesitate.
Jean looked like she would object to Scott objecting.
Alex backed out of the room, but he did not go far. Bobby could hear him stop just outside the door.
Subtle, thy name was absolutely not Summers.
Xavier regarded Jean. “You have thoughts.”
“I do,” Jean said.
Scott turned to her. “Jean.”
She looked at him then, and Bobby felt the temperature of the room change without any ice involved.
“Scott,” she said, “I know you want to protect him.”
“He is not ready.”
“Were we?”
Scott stopped.
Jean softened, but not by much. “When Charles first trusted us in the field, were we ready?”
“That was different.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Scott opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Bobby watched the argument move across his face: because we had to be, because Charles said so, because I was careful, because Jean was there, because Alex is Alex, because I remember him screaming after the crash and I cannot put him in another plane and call that leadership.
He said none of that.
Jean did not need telepathy to hear it.
“Alex is powerful,” she said. “And raw. And impulsive, yes. But treating him as if he can only become mature after we stop giving him chances is a circle we built for him.”
Scott’s expression tightened. “This is not about his feelings.”
“It is partly about his feelings,” Jean said. “Because his feelings affect his control. You know that better than anyone.”
Scott looked away.
Jean continued, quieter. “He needs to learn how to be part of a team before the team becomes something he resents from the outside.”
“He could get hurt.”
“So could any of us.”
“He could get someone else hurt.”
“Yes,” Jean said. “He could.”
That honesty seemed to surprise Alex from beyond the door; Bobby heard the floorboard shift.
Jean glanced toward the hallway, then back to Xavier.
“But he is not wrong that his power could be useful. And if Bobby comes, Bobby can help contain a misfire. Between Scott’s field command, my piloting, Bobby’s defensive control, and Alex’s output, we would have a balanced team.”
Bobby lifted a hand. “Always happy to be someone’s emergency off switch. Very flattering career trajectory.”
No one laughed.
Tough room.
Scott stared at Jean. “You are arguing for this.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
Jean’s eyes softened in a way that made Bobby look down, because there were some things between Scott and Jean that still felt private even from across the table.
“Because he is your brother,” she said. “And because one day you are going to need to trust him somewhere other than a training room.”
Scott’s face changed.
Not convinced.
Hit.
Jean turned to Xavier. “Charles, you gave us room to become more than our worst risks. Alex deserves the same chance.”
Xavier was silent for a long moment.
Bobby could feel Alex holding his breath in the hall.
Finally, Xavier said, “Alex may join the mission.”
Scott’s head snapped toward him. “Professor—”
“With conditions,” Xavier said, calm but firm. “Scott remains field commander. Jean pilots. Bobby joins as defensive support and, if necessary, containment. Alex follows orders without improvisation unless immediate survival requires it. If Scott tells him to stand down, he stands down. If Jean tells him to pull back, he pulls back. If Bobby tells him he is about to overheat the room, he listens.”
Bobby pointed at Alex’s invisible hallway presence. “I have always wanted that authority.”
Alex stepped back into the doorway. His face was trying very hard not to show what the decision meant to him.
It failed.
He looked at Jean first.
Not Xavier. Not Scott.
Jean.
“Thank you,” he said.
Jean smiled faintly. “Earn it.”
Alex nodded as if she had handed him a sword.
Scott saw that too.
Bobby saw Scott see it.
The room had just rearranged itself, and nobody yet knew how badly.
Xavier closed the file. “You depart in two hours.”
Warren straightened. “Wait, I’m not going?”
“Not this time,” Xavier said.
Warren looked personally betrayed by Antarctica. “I object on behalf of aerial excellence.”
Hank sighed, disappointed but already shifting into preparation mode. “I will assemble medical kits, portable scanners, environmental sensors, and emergency repair tools.”
“Thank you, Hank,” Scott said automatically.
Hank nodded, but his eyes flicked to Bobby for one careful second.
Guard your heart.
Bobby looked away.
Scott began issuing assignments: Jean to run the Blackbird diagnostics, Bobby to prep cold-weather and tropical survival gear because apparently the Savage Land believed in climate-based comedy, Alex to suit up and meet them in the hangar, Hank to supply equipment, Warren to stop looking insulted long enough to help load.
Alex accepted his order with barely concealed pride.
Scott sounded steady.
Jean looked thoughtful.
Bobby watched all of them and felt, beneath the usual pre-mission buzz, a small cold seam of dread.
Something about this felt too tightly packed. Scott’s worry. Alex’s need. Jean’s hope. Bobby’s dream still lingering like heat under his skin. The Savage Land waiting somewhere below the world, green and impossible and full of teeth.
He told himself that was dramatic.
He told himself lots of things.
Two hours later, the Blackbird lifted from beneath the mansion and cut south through the morning sky.
Jean sat at the controls, calm and focused, red hair pinned back from her face. Scott sat beside her, already scanning mission data. Bobby took the rear left seat and tried not to watch the back of Scott’s neck. Alex sat across from him, strapped in too tightly, eyes bright with terror and triumph.
“First official field mission,” Bobby said.
Alex looked over. “Yeah.”
“Try not to die. Paperwork’s a nightmare.”
Alex’s mouth twitched despite himself.
Scott glanced back. “Bobby.”
“What? Mentorship.”
Jean smiled at the instrument panel.
Outside, clouds opened beneath them.
Somewhere far ahead, hidden under ice and impossible weather, the Savage Land waited.
And none of them knew yet that they were flying toward the place where every secret they had survived would learn how to hunt.