evolution

"listen to me... you can't kill an idea. it always comes back. resurrected. or reborn... into a different form."

[firstxman]

@phoenixtouched​

(✉️ ➡️ Rachel): [UNSENT] You’re young, right? (✉️ ➡️ Rachel): [UNSENT] How familiar are you with (✉️ ➡️ Rachel): [UNSENT] Do you know if (✉️ ➡️ Rachel): Is it possible for an Uber account to be compromised?

[firstxman]

colleenrand​:

(✉️ ➡️ Scott ): ominous. i don’t know if i like this  (✉️ ➡️ Scott ): store as in hide and let mold in my fridge while you “:pretend” to have eaten it?  (✉️ ➡️ Scott ): you’re trying to get me in trouble.

(✉️ ➡️ Colleen): It isn’t ominous! It isn’t at all ominous. (✉️ ➡️ Colleen): Not /mold./ I don’t think it’s capable of growing mold. (✉️ ➡️ Colleen): You won’t get in trouble. No one will ever know, Colleen.

[firstxman]

@colleenrand

(✉️ ➡️ Colleen): I have an odd request. (✉️ ➡️ Colleen): I’d like no follow up questions here. (✉️ ➡️ Colleen): Can I store some casserole in your refrigerator? 

[firstxman]

greatestarcher​:

@firstxman sent 13﹕ an  intoxicated  text

[📱to Arges ] 😎🧨🔥 [📱to Arges ] it you [📱to Arges ] pretty poggers tho we should hang out

(✉️ ➡️ Kate Bishop): My powers are concussive, not explosive. There’s no fire involved. [...] (✉️ ➡️ Kate Bishop): What does poggers mean?

[firstxman]

kxtepryde​:

[📱to Soup Summers ] to rescue a friend! [📱to Soup Summers ] it was a good use of jet, I promise [📱to Soup Summers ] I even washed it after […] [📱to Soup Summers ] wow [📱to Soup Summers ] I find your lack of faith in me disturbing [📱to Soup Summers ] heh

(✉️ ➡️ Shadowcat): Who needed a /jet/ to rescue them? (✉️ ➡️ Shadowcat): Why did you have to wash it? Did you get it dirty? How do you even get a jet dirty? [...] (✉️ ➡️ Shadowcat): A side effect of your powers is irreparable damage to electronic systems. I think my doubts are well founded here.

[firstxman]

jeaniegreysummers​:

///

“Nuh-uh, big guy,” Jean said, leaning in to press a kiss to the centre of his forehead, fingers trailing along the curve of his jaw. “The only sacrificing you’re doing tonight is to the turkey gods so we don’t burn the sauce.” There had to be such a thing, right? Maybe that was the element of cooking that Jean had missed out on (there were certainly stranger things in the world to count on than deities). The smile on her face faded slightly, but didn’t entirely go away, as they continued to speak. After all, it was all they had ever wanted – to have a home they felt safe in, to have each other, to have a child out there in the world, a person who was half of each of them. “I worried that I’d dreamt her,” Jean admitted, lowly. “The same as I did with Maddie, you know – I worried, when they appeared, that it was something else, something that would fade away. But they’re not going anywhere, are they?” Her sister was always on the periphery of her mind, her presence a constant reassurance that she hadn’t faded into the stars. Jean might not be able to explain how Maddie and Rachel came to be here, but maybe not everything needed to be explained.

After all, there were so many things in this moment that seemed impossible twenty years ago. The fact that they could be married, that they could both be alive, that someone could understand her as Scott did and love her all the same, despite her dark corners and twisted thoughts. “I think she might have an eye for something else, too,” Jean admitted, and the teasing smirk reappeared on her face, even if it was a little smaller than before. “We should do it more often,” she suggested. “I know we’re both busy, but … life’s short, right? We deserve a night off – or maybe even a postponed honeymoon.”

/

“I’ll get right on that, then,” Scott promised with an amused chuckle. They could probably use all the help they could get when it came to turkey gods; he’d never say it, but he figured the chances of Jean accidentally burning down half of Genosha during her Thanksgiving preparations were a solid sixty percent. He quieted at her confession, chewing his lip thoughtfully. He’d be lying if he said the thought hadn’t crossed his mind, once or twice. When there were things that were too good to be true, they were usually just that. Scott had learned that the hard way. But... “They’re not going anywhere. It’s been a long time now, and they’re both still here. Still with us. They’re not going away.” He felt sure of it as he said it aloud, as if the words cemented it as a fact. Jean was alive, with breath in her lungs. Maddie and Rachel were real, solid and present. Scott was happy. These were all things that were too good to be true, but they were true nonetheless. And maybe they all needed to learn to trust that, just a little. Maybe they needed to learn to stop looking gift horses in the mouth and just enjoy things while they had them.

Scott’s smile returned, and he huffed a quiet laugh. “You’ve noticed, too, have you?” Kitty and Rachel reminded him of himself and Jean twenty years ago in a way that made nostalgia ache in his gut. Best friends who both felt something more, with a psychic connection assuring them that the feelings were requited and a fear in their gut that kept them from saying it aloud anyway. History repeated itself, sometimes. “I don’t know if I ever pictured our honeymoon to include singing rats on the fire escape.”

[616rogue]

“i gave you a chance. i told you to surrender.”

source: art by adi granov and jorge fornés.

[firstxman]

colleenrand​:

There was a weak smile on Colleen’s face as he spoke. This was typically Scott — and it wasn’t a bad thing. It was never a bad thing. Colleen had been focused on what she would change about herself and if she would change any of it, but Scott? He was thinking about the people he loved. His wife and her sister and their daughter. And Kitty and herself… he was thinking about the people he could protect if he was allowed to pull the strings of fate and change how the world treated them.

It only reaffirmed her claim that Scott was a good person. “Is this where I tell you to change your scope? Make what you want to change more reasonable instead of it just… being everything?” She should. She should be reaching out and gripping his shoulder and telling him that he shouldn’t be gathering all this pressure to put on his own shoulders. Even if this was just random conversation. “I’d do the same thing for Danny,” she admitted. “But when I think about that, the more… the more it hurts.” The more grief and blame she felt, even if it wasn’t hers to bear. “Don’t do that to yourself on my behalf.”

/

If Scott could have made the world a kinder place for the people he loved, he would have done so without an ounce of hesitation. Every single one of them deserved that, had earned it far more than their fair share. Jean deserved peace. Maddie deserved tranquility. Rachel deserved a life with the people she loved. Kitty deserved for everyone to live, for everyone to stay. And Colleen deserved to look in the mirror and like what she saw. Scott couldn’t give them any of that, of course, because he couldn’t make the world a kinder place. He’d tried. The world was set in its ways, and its ways were cruel more often than not.

He offered Colleen a small smile, thought it always hurts because everything did. It hurt to not be able to change the world. It hurt to want to. “I don’t think I know how to stop myself,” he admitted. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Colleen, but I’m something of a control freak. I never quite learned how to turn it off.”

[firstxman]

mistressofmagic​:

The words I’m sorry were in the back of her throat. Already choking on it because how could she apologize for this? How could she look him in the eyes after she conspired with Jean herself — how could she look at him and say that this wasn’t what she meant to do? It was a calculated move on her part. A promise that she had kept wrapped up with the pretty bow of being something she did to save the world. (The road to hell was paved with good intentions.)

Zatanna stood there, looking down at Jean with a burning sensation in her eyes that threated to be a full blow meltdown — but Scott’s voice came through and she thought… she didn’t have the right to be upset. This grief wasn’t hers to be had — it was his. It was theirs. The other mutants that lingered on the outskirts of the landscape, looking at the three of — the two of them and feeling that loss. Zatanna had time to mentally prepare herself for this moment. (And she had misused that time.)

She didn’t deserve to cry.

Straightening up, she looked at Scott, trying to ignore the body at her feet. “She did.” Two words were all the confession he’d need, but it didn’t feel like enough. Jean’s death shouldn’t be summed up in two words. “She tried to fight it but there was nothing in the library that offered a hint as to what would bring her down short of killing her.”

Since the first time it made itself known in Jean’s head, the Phoenix had been a thing that worried Scott. He’d pretended it hadn’t in the beginning, of course, because Jean told him how it had saved her, saved all of them, and she’d been happy. But Scott? Scott had been saved before. He’d been rescued from a hospital bed and placed into the care of Nathanial Essex, had been plucked off the streets by Jack Winters. Nothing that saved you like that ever did it for free. And when the Phoenix came to collect, Scott had always known the price would be steep.

He’d just never imagined this. In all his worst nightmares, in all his deepest dives into the worst case scenarios, he’d never let himself go here. But there was no escaping it now. Jean’s body was rapidly cooling in the grass, and the expressions of the students cowering nearby were mixed with grief and relief, because she’d scared them in a way she never would have wanted. And there was a special kind of ache that came in knowing that, just like there was a special kind of ache in knowing that this result had been one she’d known was coming. She’d planned for this, and she hadn’t told him.

“She never said,” he murmured quietly, reaching out towards her body and stopping before his fingers could brush her skin, jerking back like there was an invisible wall between them, like there was a string limiting the reach of his hand. “She didn’t tell me about any of it. I think... She must have known I’d try to stop her.” She probably thought she wouldn’t have been able to go through with it if Scott had asked her not to. That was why she’d gone to Zee instead, he suspected.

[firstxman]

jeaniegreysummers​:

i loved you my whole life. || @firstxman

Scott and Jean had always been good at communicating (or at least they started to be good at communication that night after the shuttle accident, when they finally put credence to their feelings and admitted something even if it made them vulnerable to do so). They lived in each other’s minds, they spent almost every day together, and they had spent their lives together before that. Of course, that didn’t preclude her husband from occasionally trying to protect her feelings.

He didn’t do it with dishonesty (he never would; one of many reasons why Jean adored him). He did it by stating the truth as simply as he could. Jean sighed, about to argue that wasn’t the point, but then she looked at him on the other end of the sofa and couldn’t help but break into a smile at the warmth in her chest at his words. “I know that,” she said, leaning in to kiss him briefly, “and you know I love you, but loving someone …” She sighed again, leaning her head back against the sofa. “Loving someone doesn’t make them a good mother,” she continued. They both knew that firsthand, more than they should. “You make it look so easy. Being a parent, I mean.”

Scott would like to claim that he loved Jean from the moment he saw her. It sounded romantic, at least, sounded like something out of an old movie even if it wasn’t entirely true. The first time Scott saw Jean, he’d been too caught up in his own mind to focus on anything else. In retrospect, sure, there’d been an interest there. But love? That came later. That came with hours in the Danger Room, with her dragging him to the fair, with them in the Savage Land falling off dinosaurs together. Love was a thing they built, and it was better that way. It was truer, purer. 

But he’d still loved her all his life. 

He’d loved her all his life because, in every way that mattered, his life hadn’t started until that love was built. Scott was born alongside it, drew his first breath the first time his heart beat for her. And it was hard for him to imagine that anyone in the world might not love her. It was hard for him to think that anyone found challenges there. But... Rachel loved her mother. Scott knew that. But it wasn’t simple, either. It hadn’t been simple from the start. “It isn’t easy,” he admitted. “It... It scares me. A lot. But she’s so much like you. And I’ve loved you for so long, that it’s easy for me to love her.” Not to say he didn’t love Rachel as her own person, because he did. He loved his daughter more than anything, wouldn’t change a single part of her if he could. But her stubbornness, her pride, her bravery? It all came from her mother. And Scott had practice loving all those things.

[firstxman]

i have absolutely no purpose at all // @ruleroflimbo​

Scott wasn’t sure when anyone had decided that he was a good option to turn to when they needed to discuss matters of emotional complexity, but he was fairly certain they must have hit their head shortly before coming to such a conclusion. Understanding feelings had never been an area in which Scott excelled. In fact, the opposite was true. Scott understood so little about his feelings that he saw no way of dealing with them beyond shoving them down as far as he could, hoping they’d go away if he ignored them long enough. It rarely ever worked. 

And people kept showing up anyway.

Take, for example, Illyana on his sofa. She looked as though she might have mistaken his apartment for a therapist’s office, sprawled out with one of Jean’s throw pillows clutched in her arms. Scott sighed from the kitchen, leaning down as he inspected the fridge. “If you’d like a purpose,” he offered, “you could take home some of these casseroles. There’s not much room in the fridge for anything else now.”

[firstxman]

a text sent out of worry . // @jeaniegreysummers

(✉️ ➡️ Jeanie): Are you on your way home? (✉️ ➡️ Jeanie): [UNSENT] You’ve just (✉️ ➡️ Jeanie): [UNSENT] It’s been a while since you went out, and I’m (✉️ ➡️ Jeanie): Text me when you’re close?

[firstxman]

i’m sorry for what you’ve been through. i’m really, really sorry. // @greatestarcher​

Scott’s life hadn’t been private in a long time now. When they were teenagers, they’d played at having secret identities. They wore masks, they gave each other new names, they put on uniforms. They’d only ever been kidding themselves, really. Hank and Warren were instantly recognizable due to the physical manifestations of their mutations, and Scott wasn’t far off with his bright red glasses. And these days? His life was more public than ever. That was an unavoidable side effect, he guessed, of a public death in Central Park.

So, people knew things about him. People knew most things about him, really. He’d always known that.

Typically, when they approached him about it, it was to... pass judgement. About who he was, about the DNA that differed from theirs, about the article he’d published in the Bugle after his resurrection. It wasn’t with kindness. It wasn’t to apologize. But people surprised him, sometimes. 

He blinked, uncertain. “Oh,” he said quietly, shifting his weight. “That’s... Um. Thank you?” He’d never been good at this, at people. He’d never known what to say. “I’m not... I, uh, I appreciate. That.”

[firstxman]

i’m sorry that we never told you. // @mistressofmagic​

Jean was dead. Jean was dead, and the world felt so much emptier than it had before. It felt so much harder to breathe. Scott couldn’t tear his eyes away from the body, and he felt sick just thinking the words. The body. Not Jean, who used to run her fingers through his hair when he lay his head in his lap. Not Jean, who once pointed up at the starry night sky and said I’m going to go there someday. Not Jean, who understood him better than anyone ever had. A body. Just a body.

He almost forgot Zatanna was there, which was stupid and wrong and maybe a little cruel, too. She was right there, on the other side of the body, and Scott almost forgot. And then she spoke, and he tore his eyes away from Jean’s hand sprawled out on the grass, away from her hair flowing behind her, away from her still chest. 

Zatanna looked shellshocked, looked desolate. Scott imagined he looked the same. He swallowed, closing his eyes so tightly that it burned. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “She asked you to,” he said quietly, “didn’t she?”

[firstxman]

kxtepryde​:

@firstxman

[📱to Soup Summers ] hey [📱to Soup Summers ] you’re looking great today, Scott!! [📱to Soup Summers ] did you get a haircut? [📱to Soup Summers ] new sweater? [📱to Soup Summers ] I used the jet without asking [📱to Soup Summers ] new socks?? looks good on you!

(✉️ ➡️ Shadowcat): Kitty. (✉️ ➡️ Shadowcat): What did you do? [...] (✉️ ➡️ Shadowcat): You /what?/ (✉️ ➡️ Shadowcat): Where did you take the jet? (✉️ ➡️ Shadowcat): You didn’t crash it, did you?

[firstxman]

colleenrand​:

/

He had a point. Scott offend did when it came to making decisions and defending logic. But Colleen’s specialty had always been people. And math didn’t experience empathy or emotions. It was easier to deal with, knowing there was a right answer at the end of all of it. But it didn’t help her much. “I guess,” she said slowly, rolling her head to the side, pretending to admit defeat. “I think you need to broaden your horizons but… if it works, it works.”

Hoping. Wanting. Colleen had been down that path before and that had led her here. To a marriage. To a man that she was happy to spend the rest of her life with. But there was fear that enveloped this hope. Disappointment that might happen down the line or create a crack in an otherwise perfect relationship. Inhaling sharply, Colleen glanced away. Not towards Danny — not towards anyone. She didn’t want to look anyone in the face right now. “I know,” she replied. She knew — she told it to the kids often enough she could hear her own voice saying it. Applying it to herself was a different thing entirely. “I just feel like I’m setting us up for disappointment. For…” she shrugged, unsure of how to describe the knot in her stomach. “Nothing is as damaging as false hope.”

[firstxman]

terryberg​:

“Don’t be, that’s just part of life. Some people are part of the journey but not the destination, and that’s something I’ve learned along the way.” Terry shrugged having come to that conclusion on his own after many nights of pondering. “I do, and I know that there will be students whose mutations make it so they are shunned by society just because of their appearance, and isn’t that just the most heartbreaking thing? I mean they’re just kids.” he sighed. “Plus, I can always defend them if anything were to come attack us. I might not look it but I’m pretty tough.”

/

“It shouldn’t be,” Scott offered. Loyalty was an important thing to him, but not everyone in the world saw it the same. He knew that better than most, had experienced it time and time and time again. It hurt every time, no matter how many times you went through it. No matter how familiar it was. “Yeah,” Scott agreed, thinking of his own experiences. They weren’t as bad as most, of course, but the ruby quartz glasses had always marked him as different at a glance. “Most of them don’t need much defending. If anything, they’d be offended you tried.” But there was amusement in his tone, and it was nice to see someone who wanted to defend these kids instead of hurt them.