Chapter 2: The Dark Baptism
The restraint chair released him with a silent, hydraulic sigh. The silk cuffs fell away, and the lead-lined cowl retracted into the headrest with a soft click. Scott sat forward, his muscles protesting, his eyes—still forced open by the vanished internal plates—stinging in the relative light of the chamber. The afterimage of Emma’s psychic kiss lingered like a brand on his mind.
“Stand up, Scott.” Her real voice, for the first time in what felt like hours, cut through the hum. It wasn’t a request. It was a fact he had to obey.
He did. His legs were unsteady, not from weakness, but from the seismic shift inside him. The discipline that usually anchored him felt like a discarded shell. She watched, a statue of white silk and calculating eyes, as he found his balance on the cold floor.
“Where are we going?” His own voice sounded foreign. Hollow.
“Somewhere you can see clearly.” She turned and walked toward a section of the black marble wall that appeared seamless. As she approached, a door materialized, not sliding open but dissolving into a fine, shimmering mist. Beyond was pure darkness. “Without interference.”
She extended a hand back toward him, not looking. The gesture was effortless, proprietary. After a heartbeat that stretched into a confession, he placed his hand in hers. Her skin was cooler than he’d imagined from the psychic touch, smooth as alabaster. Her fingers laced through his, and a fresh, dizzying current of connection surged up his arm—not just physical, but telepathic. The door sealed behind them with a soundless kiss of stone.
The blackness was absolute. It wasn’t an absence of light; it was a substance. It pressed against his eyeballs, a velvety, smothering weight. He instinctively reached for his visor, for the familiar, sickening thrill of potential release at his temples. Nothing. His ruby-quartz glasses were gone. Panic, old and deep, clawed at his throat. In this utter dark, a single blink, a moment of lost control, and he would unleash a concussive beam with nowhere to go, ricocheting until it tore them both apart.
“Breathe,” Emma’s voice said, not from any direction, but from inside his skull, calming the frantic rhythm of his thoughts. Her grip on his hand tightened. “You’re not a prisoner here, either. You’re free. Freer than you’ve ever been. Your power is yours. I’m just helping you… reframe it.”
As she spoke, the darkness behind his eyelids—the darkness he was seeing with his actual eyes—shattered into a vision.
He was back at the school, in the Danger Room. Jean was there, clad in her black-and-yellow training uniform, her back to him. She was laughing, her telekinetic grip effortlessly reassembling a complex holographic array Scott had just painstakingly dismantled with a precisely aimed optic blast.
“Too slow, Summers,” she called over her shoulder, a playful, competitive grin on her face. The grin he loved. It never quite reached her eyes for him, not in that way.
He stepped forward. “Jean, I—”
She turned, but it wasn’t Jean anymore. It was Emma, in a perfect replica of the uniform, her white hair stark against the yellow. Her smile was different. Knowing. Hungry. “She doesn’t appreciate precision, Scott. She appreciates flash. I appreciate power under control.”
The vision evaporated, leaving him gasping in the sensory vacuum. He felt raw, flayed open. Emma’s thumb stroked the back of his hand.
“See?” her mental voice purred. “The truth doesn’t hurt when you stop fighting it.”
The floor beneath his feet felt different now. Cool, reflective. He could see a faint shimmer, not from light, but from the sound of her presence. The chamber was a mirror, he realized. A sphere of polished silver and obsidian, reflecting nothing but the phantom images she fed him.
Another vision slammed into him, bypassing his eyes, imprinting directly onto his visual cortex.
This time, it was pure sensation. Heat. Pressure. The weight of a body beneath him—not Jean’s. The curve of a hip under his palm was narrower, the skin impossibly smooth. A flash of white hair fanned out on a pillow of black silk. A groan escaped his lips, foreign and desperate. He was moving, driving into a tight, wet heat that coiled around him, pulling him deeper. It was perfect friction, a consuming fire that burned away every thought, every memory, every shred of who he was supposed to be. He heard filthy, encouraging words in his ear, not in Jean’s gentle tone, but in a voice of ice and smoke: “Yes… fuck me just like that… show me that famous control…”
In the tangible dark, his body responded violently. His cock hardened, straining against his trousers. Shame flushed through him, hot and immediate, followed by a darker, thicker pulse of want.
“That’s it,” Emma whispered aloud now, her breath a cool ghost against his neck. She was close. He couldn’t see her, but he could feel the whisper of her dress against his arm, smell her jasmine perfume cutting through the sterile air. Her free hand came up, palm flat against his chest, feeling the frantic beat of his heart. “That pure, animal need. You cage it. Dress it up in tactics and duty. It’s so much more potent when it’s raw.”
The vision shifted again, cruel and seductive.
Jean’s face, filled with pity this time. “Scott, I… I think we need to talk.” Behind her, the phantom of Emma stood, a hand possessively on Jean’s shoulder, smiling at him.
“She’s mine now,” Emma’s voice-over echoed. “And you… you’re something better.”
“Stop,” he choked out, but his protest was a formality. The thread of his resistance had snapped. The loneliness she had amplified had become a canyon, and the only bridge across was her.
“Make me stop,” she challenged, her voice dropping to a rough, intimate register. Her hand slid down his chest, over the flat plane of his stomach, and cupped him through his pants. He jerked at the contact, a ragged gasp ripped from his lungs. “Use that infamous willpower. Push me away.”
He couldn’t. His body arched into her touch, betraying him utterly.
In the dark, her telepathy wrapped around him, a vise of silk. He felt more than saw her kneel. Heard the quiet shush of a zipper. The cool air of the chamber kissed his exposed skin, followed by the devastating, hot wetness of her mouth.
His head slammed back against nothing. A strangled, guttural sound, part agony, part surrender, echoed in the silent sphere. Her tongue mapped him, laved the head of his cock with deliberate, torturous strokes before swallowing him deep. She worked him with a ruthless expertise that was entirely mental and devastatingly physical, her thoughts braided with the act: You’re not hers. You’re mine. This hunger is mine. This fucking release is going to be mine.
The visions and reality fused. He was fucking her mouth in the pitch black, his hands tangling in the silk of her hair, unsure if he was pulling her closer or trying to anchor himself. The chamber, Jean, the school, Xavier’s dream—all of it dissolved into the slick, primal rhythm. She hummed around him, the vibration traveling straight to his spine, and her telepathic voice was a continuous, filthy stream: That’s it, give it to me, you perfect, pent-up boy, come down my throat, show me what you really are.
It was too much. The coiled tension of a lifetime, the frustration, the yearning, the psychic manipulation—it crested and broke. With a shout that was pure, unadulterated release, he came, spasming into her mouth. She took it all, swallowing without hesitation, a soft, satisfied sound vibrating against his oversensitive flesh.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of his ragged breathing and the pounding of his blood in his ears. The darkness felt different. Softer. Accepting.
He felt her stand, felt her fingers, deft and sure, fastening his trousers. Her mental presence was a serene, victorious landscape. She took his hand again. Her skin was warm now.
“Now you see,” she said, her voice a contented murmur in the perfect quiet. “In the dark, with nothing to reflect, you finally see yourself. Not the weapon. Not the leader. The man.” She brought their joined hands up, and he felt her lips brush his knuckles. “My man.”
Scott Summers, former X-Man, leader of the still-forming team, disciple of Charles Xavier, said nothing. The emptiness inside him wasn’t loneliness anymore. It was a clean, quiet slate. And etched upon it, cold and clear and irresistible, was her.