I love feedback. I read and laugh at flames before I throw them away.  And as long as I am told where my story is being posted, feel free to archive it.

Note: I hope I did okay with this one. I've never tried to write Scott before. In fact, I've avoided it because I don't really like Scott. Okay, I didn't really like Scott. He's grown on me now. I hope I wrote him right. Oh well.

Day on a Bridge

by Magik

    She peered over the edge of the cement barricade, down, down to gaze at her reflection on the shimmering water. The water moved slowly under the bridge like a long piece of dirty, blue ribbon being pulled through a loop. And despite the pain tearing up her heart, she continued to watch the water, content in it's solemn ripples and undercurrents.

    Almost as if it's a living thing, she thought and caught her breath, as the water seemed to move up towards her. Stay away, stay away, she pleaded in her mind. I don't want you. Not now.

    But the water didn't listen, or if it did, it ignored her words completely, because, as she backed away from the side of the bridge, it rose up, up to greet her. A giant water creature with large pooled eyes that stared at her intently as she backed away.

    Around her, the screams of other people filled the air. Among their harsh words came the most distinct, the most painful one of all, "Mutie!" It rang in her ears, echoing through her already blown mind.

    Celeste Thompson clamped her hands over her ears so she wouldn't have to hear, and closed her eyes so the images wouldn't overpower her. This was all getting to be too much. Way too much.

    The water creature loomed in front of her, its eyes glassy and sightless. It was, after all, just a thing made out of water. It had no life behind it, no reason for being or way to live. It was controlled and animated only by the mind of a young mutant girl named Celeste.

    Scott Summers stopped walking when he heard the shouts and screams coming from the direction of the stone bridge that ran over a small creek. He often came to this park when he had some down time. It was a place where he could let his worries drift away and just try to enjoy the world. Now his peace was being shattered by screams and cries of "Mutie."

    After sighing and adjusting his ruby quartz sunglasses, he walked towards the bridge, intent on breaking up a pointless fight started over some child who looked different. What greeted him was a giant, water creature looming over the head of a small girl. People were running around and screaming. The girl seemed to have pulled away into her head, shutting the outside world out altogether.

    Scott drew closer to the girl. She looked young, maybe fourteen if even that. Long, limp white hair fell down her shoulders but if he looked at it from the right angle, in the right light, he could see streaks of blue running through it. It was hard to tell exact colors through his ruby colored glasses but somehow he managed it.

    Slowly, so as not to disturb the girl or her water creature, he walked over to her and laid a hand on her arm. For a moment, there was no response from her and Scott started to think that maybe, he should be off getting some backup. Ororo would be helpful in such a situation, and this was Wolverine's calling card. Heck, even Bobby would be more useful then he was.

    The girl lifted her head out of her hands and stared at him with a pair of intense eyes. The left one was blue with a white glaze over it and her right eye shimmered like the river, reflecting whatever color she saw. Her face was slightly rounded and about as pale as white sand. There was something in the way her eyes flicked about that made him think each one could focus on whatever was behind her.

    "You okay?" Scott asked and the lack of emotion in his voice made even him cringe.

    The girl's eyes moved from his face to the water creature dripping in the space next to them. "No," she mouthed. "No, I'm not okay."

    "What's your name?" he pressed, trying to keep her planted firmly in the real world.

    "Celeste," the girl breathed her eyes focusing on him, which caused the right one to turn an eerie echo of ruby quartz.

    Celeste, Scott went over the name in his mind. She seemed like a nice enough girl. A bit cut off from society and her peers but when one was a mutant, you had to accept that and move on.

    It hit him like a two by four, as her eyes moved from his face to the screaming citizens around them, that this girl hadn't learned to cope with her situation. At this point in time, she probably wasn't even sure of what her power was or why she had it. While he analyzed her potential to become one of the X-Men, Celeste was trembling on the bridge, feeling lonely and unwanted.

    He remembered the feeling of being unwanted. He remembered being curled on top of his bed at the orphanage where he had grown up as Alex packed his bags, ready to leave Scott for a new life, a new family. But nobody wanted him. Nobody wanted to adopt little Scotty Summers who had suffered an intensive head injury. Scotty who always managed to mess something up with his headaches.

    Celeste's eyes cleared and then refocused on the man standing in front of her. He seemed to have pulled into his own thoughts and memories leaving her alone with the water again.

    Alone.

    Celeste had grown used to being alone over the years. At first it was just her looks, the strange way her eyes looked and the blue streaks in her light blond hair, that made her an outcast from the group. Then, after a few years, things just started to happen.

    It was a slow transition at first but she could still feel it. She was...changing, becoming something she didn't like the feel of, something that wasn't even her.

    Then there was the water. One day it just started to follow her, flow where she wanted it to, do what she thought it should do. And, at first, it was kind of fun to be able to control the water. She could shape the water into animals and humans, she could make them smile and talk. They were her friends, the water creatures, and the only friends she had.

    But when she discovered that she couldn't turn the water power off, that it wasn't like a one-week pass to Disney Land, Celeste became worried. If her weird looks could separate her so fully from all other life on the planet, then what would people think of her connection to water.

    Her eyes turned to look at the water lion looming over her, its eyes blank and unseeing, paws held still, unmoving, dead to the world. Lacking function because it lacked her thoughts, holding a form only because stray tendrils of her power held it there.

    Then she turned back to the man. He was tall with skin that had been given a slight tanning by the sun and eyes that were hidden by a pair of thick, red sunglasses. The breeze blew strands of his brown hair around; messing up the careful crafted cut and making him look younger. He was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a brown leather jacket that he kept leaning into, making him look shorter and shorter.

    Scott finally resurfaced from his pool of thoughts to find the young girl studying him. It was a bit distressing to find yourself lost in a pair of eyes where one resembled a reflecting pool more than anything else in the world and the other was glazed over as if by disease. Finally, he broke the silence between them by saying, "Do you know what you are, Celeste?"

    Celeste's breath stopped in her throat. Not another one. She thought that the priests and politicians had finally decided to stop giving her lectures. And if this guy turned out to be another FBI agent, she was going to scream.

    "I know, I know. I'm a mutie, dangerous to the public and a spawn of satan. Or I'm a powerful mutant who could be of great potential if I let the government hire me. Right? I've heard all the lines and I'm sick of them," she exclaimed, placing one of her hands on her hip and waggling a finger at him.

    Scott almost drew back a step. Where had this tigress come from when before all he could see was a hurt little girl? It's a defense mechanism, his mind screamed loud and clear, a way for her to keep from getting hurt or letting anyone in.

    So, instead of getting angry or shutting himself down, Scott Summers just laughed and said, "That's not what I was going to say."

    The girl's eyes fell; they dropped to look at the bridge and, maybe, gazed through it to watch the churning waters below. "Oh," the word escaped her lips, which were now drawn into a line on her pale face.

    "You're not the spawn of satan, and I'm not here to recruit you into any organization," and even as the words left his mouth Scott knew that Cyclops, leader of the renegade X-Men, had taken a hike today leaving just plain Scott Summers, hurt and bewildered Scott Summers to deal with this.

    "But I am dangerous," she replied as her strange eyes passed over the water creature.

    "A little, maybe," he agreed, hiding a tiny smile as her eyes grew wide and turned on him, "but that's only because you can't control your power. If you could control it, then no one would be the wiser."

    Celeste chuckled quietly and rolled her eyes at him. "Of course >people would know," she hissed. "People have always known that I am different than they are, less then they are. My strange looks give me away."

    Scott opened his mouth to speak but she stopped him. "No easy way out for me. My hair won't take dyes, it just washes out, and my eyes are too sensitive for contacts. I'm stuck mister. Face it. I'm destined to be a freak."

    "Freak." The word rung like a bell in his mind, dragging up days at the orphanage. Days when he would be surrounded by the other children at recess and have it beaten into his head, by their words and their stares, that he was not a part of them, that he was less, that he was a freak.

    Freak.

    It was a bitter and cruel word, laced with the deadly potential to sting like hell and scar the mind and body. Out of habit, Scott leaned farther into his coat, trying to escape the taunts and screams that still echoed in his ears.

    But he couldn't escape Celeste's eyes. They dug into him,>searching, digging their way into his soul and heart, almost as if she knew that there was more behind those glasses than just regular eyes.

    "There are ways to be accepted," he finally muttered.

    Fear changed over to anger again with the flick of a mental button. "Forget it. You don't know what you're talking about," she snapped and turned away from him.

    Celeste turned her back to the man, pulling her windbreaker tightly about her thin shoulders and began to walk away. What did he know about being alone, being made to feel that you were worth less than the rest of the world just because you had been born different? No one could know how she felt, day after day the only girl in school who was laughed at and picked on, teased and tripped in the hallways.

    ZARK!

    The sound stung the air and surprised Celeste so that she jumped and gave a little squeal before turning back around. Her eyes grew wide, expanding so that they seemed to fill her whole face.

    "It's gone," she whispered, gazing at the empty space where her water creature had hung suspended in the air mere seconds ago. Now it was gone, reduced to its key element: water.

    Scott lowered his ruby quartz glasses and smiled at the site of the surprised girl in front of him. "See, things go away."

    "But how?" she stuttered, inspecting him as her right eye wavered from color to color.

    He shrugged deeper into the brown leather coat, feeling safe within its familiar confines. "Me," he stated simply. "I did it. You see, Celeste, you're not alone. I'm a mutant, too."

    "How?"

    With one hand he lowered the glasses and shot a beam of red light >at a tree as Celeste covered her open mouth with a hand. He was like her. He was a mutie, a freak, an outcast, one of the unwanted. She wasn't alone.

    "You're not alone," he commented as he lowered the glasses. "There are lots of us out there, in the real world. I find that most of them are like us, though, hurt, alone, feeling that they're worthless or unwanted. I always thought that. Sometimes I still do. But it's easier to get through the rough times when you have friends around and I have a lot of friends now," Scott finished and he was surprised by the warm in his words, the need to share his hurt utterly and totally because only then could this girl be healed.

    The girl's eyes dropped to the stone bridge again and a tear slipped down her round cheek. "I don't have any friends," she breathed.

    "It doesn't have to be that way, though. There's a school to help young mutants gain control of their powers. I could get you enlisted there if you'd like?" Great, once again Cyclops was taking over, pushing Scott out of the spotlight. Cyclops was thinking, new mutant, recruit, recruit, while Scott was wondering about her mental stability and how well she would deal with other mutants.

    For a moment Celeste stood there, hands dug into her jeans pockets and the windbreaker pulled tight around her, keeping her safe in her shell of thought. As the wind picked up, she thought she heard someone yell, "Mutie freak!" and that was all it took.

    "I think I'd like that," she said and raised her eyes to take in the view of the man with the red eyes

    "Okay. Good," he commented as he watched her and fumbled for >something in his coat pocket. He handed Celeste a small card and told her, "Talk it out with your parents. Have them call the bottom number and ask for Sean."

    Her thin fingers tightened around the card, lifting it from his light grip to place it in her pocket. "Okay. Thanks," she murmured.

    Scott Summers turned to leave. He hadn't saved the world, not today. Today he had helped a young girl, a mutant whose life echoed his own. A girl who now had a chance to be happy.

    "Sir," Celeste called after him and he turned. "What's your name?"

    "Scott Summers."

    The girl made a hand motion that most resembled a salute and smiled. "Be seeing you, Mr. Summers."

    He grinned. Saving the world was no longer important. When you saved the world you never got any thanks, you never got to see a child smile knowing that you had helped her, saved her. He liked this much better. "I'm counting on it," he replied and was greeted with an even larger smile.

    After watching Celeste turn and walk away, off the bridge and towards home, her head held up, her eyes on the sky, and her hopes just a little higher, Scott could leave. He stopped leaning into his jacket and walked straight and tall. He felt great now. And it had been so long since he felt this great that he smiled, really smiled, and allowed himself to forget about the differences between mutants and humans.