Sins of the Father

Chapter 10: Fresh Eyes

The morning after the attack from Sabretooth, Kurt was the first one awake, even before Logan slipped into the kitchen only to leave again with two mugs full of coffee. Scott wasn't up yet — which in and of itself was unusual, though he didn't put much thought to it, since Scott had been pretty severely injured the night before.

But when Annie appeared alone, he only frowned deeper. "Is Scott not well today?" Kurt asked.

"I'm not sure," Annie admitted. "He was sleepin' pretty soundly when I got up, and considering the day y'all had, I thought I'd better let him." She went to get herself her usual glass of sweet tea with a sigh. "And Chance woke up in the middle of the night, so I'm sure he's catching up on a little overdue sleep."

"He's probably just tired," Kurt said with a muted smile.

"And you know he so rarely relaxes; I didn't want to disturb him and mess with that," Annie said, laughing quietly. "Don't you worry, Kurt. You'll get your fearless leader back in time for the next adventure."

Kurt gave her a warm smile at that and went back to refill his mug.

As it turned out, though, Scott didn't actually emerge until Kate was awake and well into her third cup of coffee — which was a tipoff as to how tired he had been, since she was usually the last one up in the morning. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he drank his coffee like it was the only fluid he'd had in days and then made himself plenty to eat.

"You doing okay?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Just a little tired," Scott admitted as he drained another cup of coffee. "Late night with Chance. And Tyler's healing takes it out of you."

"Well, that'd do it," Kate said, returning to her notes for the alien tech class she was subbing for Noh while he worked up the capsule for Creed. After all, she remembered how it was — she'd been fairly starving after all the excitement of meeting Tyler when she took the time to sit down after he healed her arm. "Maybe you should take a vacation with Mrs. Boss."

"With teachers checking out left and right? No way," Scott muttered into his coffee cup. "Someone's gotta get the work done around here."

Kate just smirked as she got up and patted Scott's shoulder on the way out. "Got another two months before the end of the semester. Don't burn yourself out between then and now, huh?"

Scott grunted to himself and went back to his breakfast. He had time still before he needed to be anywhere.

Scott, Beast, and Bobby had a Danger Room session scheduled that afternoon, and by the time that came around, Scott looked much more like his usual self as he walked into the room in his uniform to meet the other X-Men.

"Alright, guys, we're just going to run a basic sim today," he said as he met the other two. "We'll run through some stuff with the Mutant Response Division — rumors are they're still intact and gaining a little strength, though I'm not sure who they're rallying under with Bastion gone."

Bobby grinned and shook out his arms, bouncing from one foot to the other. "Sounds fun."

Henry just smiled their way as Scott called out the codes and the room dimmed for a moment. When the lights came back up, it was a basic military-style infiltration of a shopping center. Right off the bat, Hank swung into action and simply started disarming MRD officers left and right, while Bobby slipped off on a sheet of ice, blasting them and freezing them to the spot.

But the first one that Scott tried to shoot — nothing happened. Instead, the MRD soldier charged at him, and Scott had to dive aside, popping back up to take aim again, but still ... nothing happened.