Sweat. Too much sweat. Everything is warm. Too warm.
He can smell everything so strongly, as if every scent is intensified. Any every noise is dialed to eleven.
The lightbulb, above the bathroom sink he's desperately clinging to, makes an almost imperceptible flicker. It feels like someone took a sledgehammer straight to his temple.
He tries to reach up, his fingers trembling, to sooth the throbbing. Instead his numb fingers touch the smooth metal of his visor.
The realisation, remembering that he's on a mission, has a job to do, it's almost worse. People are depending on him, the mission is depending on him. All of his kind are depending on him.
He has to keep it together, he has to, he's always had to. He's their leader. He's the leader. The only one they got right now and he cannot let them down, can't let anyone down. Not again.
He cannot let it show, could never let it show. How exhausted he is, how powerless he feels against everything that has happened and is still happening, that is always happening and repeating. How his body feel like it is attacking him, how his senses feel like they're choking him.
Breathe in, hold, then breathe out. He returns to the role he's been given, the masks he has had to wear all his life.
Scott is a Revolutionary, a Survivor, a Leader, an X-Men, the X-Men. Cyclops steps out of the bathroom, his breathing even and his expression serious but controlled.
And everyone who looks at him sees one thing clearer than anything, Cyclops never falters.
If only somebody could see him, Scott thinks.