[OP: "Allies or Enemies?" -- The Crane Wives]

In universe 1081 [for simplification purposes you remember], Scott's progress had been slow on the hunt for answers.

It'd been about a month for him, though it had been less in the other world, however, no one knew this.

Scarlet Witch had stayed in touch with them, particularly with Nightcrawler, had informed them that pretty much all telepaths had gone missing.

They had detected the Tear on the island too. They didn't know what they were. They called them Ghost Portals.

A few people when they were taken had been fought by obviously mind controlled people, but the X-men were never anywhere near it.

In an effort to catch this happening, they had chosen to just stay on Genosha for a short time.

Wanda had tried and tried to find her brother and father, and had failed on both accounts. The Brotherhood was mostly not around either, but Domino had finally responded to her putting out a feeler, to inform them that Quicksilver  disappeared some time ago, after Magneto had gotten a mysterious summons from some weirdo no one recognized. The brotherhood was effectively disbanded, thanks to this.

When she heard what was going on, she offered to help them get to get to the bottom of it, saying they could use a little luck.

Rogue said that she figured Domino might not be one of them, but this kind of situation wasn't one she'd have caused, so if she wanted to help, they could probably trust her.

But luck or not, nothing was clearer.

Then Forge started switching.

When the old Forge spoke to them, he was curt, but he told them of a nightmare future, and who Apocalypse was, which finally cleared up Xavier's last message before he'd gone radio silent.

Scott was able to tell them even more than.

"I should have known it was him," he said.

Forge knew Scott by sight, but had no memory of any of the events after the DJs came. Scott asked him and he didn't know them either.

Scott had no explanation for this, but he knew it was bad. And since Forge had not met them in his time, Scott wondered if they were long gone...if so, did that mean everything was hopeless?

It also convinced everyone else that Scott's DJ friends were either liars, or had been removed from their time stream entirely.

Wanda was really nearing the end of her rope when the Switch began happening. She'd lost a bunch of people, and her family, except for Lorna.

Lorna's innocent world view had really been shattered already by her father leaving, but this situation had finished it off. She was a paranoid mess.

She got on the X-men's nerves, though some of them pitied her.

She actually seemed to do better with Tildie, their young charge. Both of them were innocent.

Then, the final straw, at least for Nightcrawler.

Wanda herself disappeared.

This time they saw it. She was in the meeting hall, and they were talking about what the Old Forge had told them, and whether it was their future, or another one, and suddenly a Ghost Portal appeared and since none of them knew anything about how to fight it, they could do not to stop her from being sucked into it.

"Wanda!" Nightcrawler attempted to yank her out, but Logan grabbed him. "Don't be a fool" he said. "You'll just disappear too."

And she was gone.

"But...this..." Nightcrawler said slowly.

"She wasn't a telepath..." Kitty said.

"Wanda!" Lorna looked into the room and started yelling. "Wanda! Wanda?!"

"Please," Storm went up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "It's no use...she's gone."

Lorna burst into tears.

Storm hugged her awkwardly.

"That goes it," Rogue said. "Enough of this. We have got to find some way to get to where it is they are going."

"Could it be that the teleporters are all gone because they could help us do that?" Domino said flatly. "Duh...you guys really don't think that far ahead. Now if we just knew of one they hadn't gotten yet, who wasn't useless like this blue furry one."

"Nightcrawler isn't useless," Iceman said.

"He is for this," Domino said meanly. "I'm just saying it how it is. We're screwed if we don't figure something out.

Scott shook his head.

Just then, Forge switched out.

The Old Forge glanced at all of them. "Oh it's you again" he said. Like they were an unwanted salesmen.

"You have to help us" Nightcrawler burst out. "Scarlet Witch is gone now...what next? Vill they just take us all?"

"Look, it's not my problem, blue man," Forge said. "I don't know why you Snowflakes are vanishing permanently or whatever, I don't even remember this place when I'm not here, except this real sense of deja vu....But that reminds me, I just saw your mother."

"My...who?" Nightcrawler said. 

"Mystique?" Scott said.

"Mystique?!" The others all exclaimed.

"Mystique isn't my mother," Nightcrawler said.

"Sure she is," Forge said. "Everyone knows it...well maybe not the one I saw, I think it was like with Cyclops there, two different people, I may have seen your old friend though. And this other dame, not sure who she was, looked uptight."

"Uptight?" Rogue said.

"Oh, you must mean Emma Frost," Kitty said. "But she was...dead..."

"She's not dead now," Forge said. "If that's who it was...didn't give her human name. We don't use those anymore..."

"Now how is it, Bub, that you can remember all that about your dimension, but nothing about ours when you're not here, apparently?" Wolverine said. "If you could, maybe we could figure out what's going on here."

"How should I know? It's my dimension, that's probably why," Forge said. "Oh, and there's these two strangers, not sure what they are, but, they knew about the Confusion, this thing that's happening, only they said it was Merging...I don't really know the whole story yet. They're time travelers though. So that's your proof I was right. You freaks are in a different time from me. Told ya this was way too shiny to be my timeline."

"Two strangers? The DJs?" Scott said.

"I don't know what they are, but Disc Jockeys wouldn't be my first guess," Forge said.

"But if they're there and your in the future...that doesn't make any sense," Scott said. "I thought this was the future, they should be in the past...They can't time travel."

"Apparently they can," Forge said. "From 50 years in the past."

"But that's about right," Hank said to Scott. "From what we figured out...they must be the people you know...so they have not disappeared, but they apparently didn't tell you everything."

"And I'm still convinced they're behind this then, Logan said.

"I wouldn't say that," Forge said. "But they're a little off if you ask me."

"But Emma Frost, how is she alive?" Iceman asked. "And did she take Scott? I mean, the Scott we know? Was Jean right?"

"I don't know any of the answers, you pinheads. Look, I have a war to fight, and you fools aren't really part of it, but if you can tell us anything at all, I won't even remember it later," Forge said. 

"It seems there should be a way around this," Storm said.

"Oh, maybe you could write a note?" Domino said, cocking her gun at the ceiling in a bored way. "Or like, record a message? Just throwing that out there."

"Ah...yes, that was obvious," Hank said.

But before they were finished doing either of those two things and arguing about it, Forge switched back.

"Hey guys..." he said. "Where's my tool...oh no, I dropped it back there didn't I..."

"You shouldn't have been tinkering in this room anyway," Kitty folded her arms. "You had to switch back now?! We were just about to actually accomplish something here!"

"I don't control it!" Forge said, wincing.

"What's that in your pocket there, Stud?" Domino asked.

"What..." Forge pulled out a piece of paper. "This...this was here before...it must be from the place I keep phasing into...I wish I could remember..." he frowned. "I think I was talking to someone...someone I knew..."

"Give that here!" Wolverine snatched it. "It's...addressed to Scott?"

"Well," Scott said. "Let me read it then."

Wolverine handed it over reluctantly.

"It's from Shine," Scott said. "This is her handwriting...not very clear, but...listen to this: 'Scott, if you're read this then this idea worked, I don't have time to explain more, but we're in the future...about 20 years from where you are, we think, in an alternate dimension, Yes, that's a thing, but by now, you know that. Everything you're seeing that doesn't make sense, it's centered in the future. The dimensions are being merged by some unnatural means, we believe Apocalypse and Sinister are both responsible, and who knows who else? All telepaths and teleports are being used to make this happen in some way, but we don't know how yet. We are currently on our way to the Capital of this regime to find them, and see if we can save them and fix the Merging with our powers, God willing. There is nothing you can do to help this, except pray, unless you have a means to time travel. If that happens, you'll be on the other side of the merging, but both are quickly becoming the same. You'll find us around D.C. if you get there. But if you do, the chances are much higher that you and all your new X-men will merge with the ones here, and one of you will die. We don't know which one. At all costs, you need to try to stay away from us until this is over. If we succeed, you'll be returned home along with everyone else. I have no time to write more. P. S. (Avoid any Tears in dimension fabric that you see, they're deadly, and there's brainwashed mutants who may be attacking you)--reply to this using Forge if it works--Shine."

"She writes fast, I'll give her that," Domino said. "So there really is a Shine and Wally West."

"I'm sorry, what was all that?" Kitty said.

Scott let out a sigh of relief. "I knew they'd know what this was...Merging...that makes so much more sense than what we thought. That's why I switched...and the others, they're being used to make it happen. On both sides...and apparently they meet in the future."

"Oh...is that what that meant?" Iceman said.

Hank frowned in consternation. "It's a little like String Theory I think. And Multiverse theory. But not quite." 

[String theory doesn't have much to do with this, but it allows for the opening and closing of dimensions beyond the ones we can observe with our eyes, which could be why Hank is alluding to it. Multiverse theory is a time travel theory that says that if we could time travel, we'd create a different universe just by doing so, because the events can't just be undone. It makes time travel kind of pointless, which is why I didn't use it here, I substituted the idea of "projections' which I got form Madeleine L'Engles's "Swiftly Tilting Planet", which says that there are futures you can go to that aren't real yet, but can be interacted with, like an AR simulation could be. If she got the idea from a real science theory, it wasn't named in the book, so I'm not sure what it is, but I suppose it would be these two or one like them.]

"So what do we do about it?" Kitty asked.

"We can't time travel," Rogue said. "Can we?"

"No, we have no idea how to do that," Forge said. "Sure, I've thought about it, but we don't have anything like the technology for that."

"Ve cannot help them if ve cannot time travel," Nigthcrawler said. "This is vorse than before."

"At least we know my friends are on the job," Scott said. "If anyone can solve this, it's them...They're heading to the capital...D.C. ...what if we went there."

"There?" Domino said. "Hey, I know you said in your world the humans don't have MRD, but here, we'd never make it past the border."

"We could return Kelly," Scott said.

"What?" Lorna said. "But my father...and Wanda..."

"Wanda didn't want anyone to know it was Genosha," Hank said. "But Mystique surely is not still acting as him. Or if she was, we could reveal that."

Lorna frowned at them. "But...that's...not fair."

"He can't say here forever," Scott said. "And he's not going to trust mutants even more now. Maybe this will make it right. You can't use the same tactics as the humans do and then say we're any better than them. What about mercy?"

He sounded like Shine, he realized, but he didn't care.

"Sure, they showed us so much Mercy," Domino said.

"At least Kelly called off the war," Scott shot back. "Did Magneto?"

Domino had no answer for that.

Huh...so this is what Shine felt like when she shut someone up with facts...it was kind of a buzz.

"I say we take him back" Scott said. "And then we sneak in, see if we can find any signs of what's going on."

"But it's still not the future," Iceman said.

"No, but if Genosha is different, then why not D. C.?" Scott said.

"He makes a good point," Hank said. "And it's better than no plan, but, Wolverine will have to agree.

Wolverine frowned.

"Better to do something than nothing," Scott knew if it was the Wolverine he knew, that would work on him.

And it did.

"It's stupid, but if all this is true, we ain't got a lot to lose, let's try it," Wolverine said. 

***

The plan actually went okay, the humans tried to arrest them, but Kelly called it off.

He said that the X-men had returned him, and it wasn't their fault, and while he still didn't trust mutants, they at least didn't want war and a shoot out and arrest right now would only stir things up more.

He also didn't mention that Magneto had kidnapped him, because they had told him it might not be wise to do so till they located Magneto himself.

Kelly then actually let the X-men into the White House when they explained that they also had a message from the future.

And the security told them Kelly's impersonator had disappeared several days ago, and they'd kept it quiet till now hoping for some message from his kidnappers about it.

The White house had been closed to the public all week.

And they were shown why.

Just like at Genosha, some things had just up and disappeared. Nothing too big, but, you could see already.

The staff thought it might be aliens...in all fairness, that was a possibility in this world.

Forge was the only one who's memory served him at all..he had fleeting glances of seeing a different Capital...one that was built to seem like a Temple and a prison at the same time...

But it only confirmed what they thought, it didn't help them much.

"And you can't all stay here, the press will find out," Kelly said. "I appreciate the return, but this doesn't make us friends. So..."

"Don't you get it?" Scott said to him. "Your hatred of mutants aside, we all could die. Time travel is not something to mess with. It should never have happened. It's kind of disappointing that you needed someone to tell you that an all out war with mutants was a bad idea...Even the Kelly I knew wasn't that naive. But, even so, you can't really think we're your big problem right now?"

Kelly stared at him.

"I can't help you either way," he said finally. "This is all beyond us. And consider that even if you're right, I wouldn't be president in the future, what do you expect me to know?"

"At least you listened to the warning," Scott realized. "What was Magneto thinking...and now he's gone."

"I bet he's in the future," Kitty sniffed. "That would make sense wouldn't it? Why we can't find him."

"Well that and not having a telepath for Cerebro..." Iceman said.

They shot him a death glare, he shouldn't say that in front of Kelly.

Kelly didn't really know what he meant.

"One thing I could do..." he said. "Check and see if the MRD lost any teleporters or telepaths. Not that they'd have many after what happened...but, that's about it."

"Well that might be useful," Hank said. "Though I think we all know the answer."

And the answer was yes.

"I never thought that we'd be making plans from the White
House..." Iceman commented, while they were trying to figure out what to do.

"And to think right now that's not the worst part about this," Kitty said.

"I just don't know Hank," Wolverine said. "We don't know what to do. It looks like we're stuck. We can't time travel. All we can do is gauge how bad the damage is already. And Jean and The Professor, they're somewhere in the future...being used to power this...and Frost is alive, and not captured? That looks suspicious right here."

"I agree it seems Emma has something to do with this," Hank said. "I wish that letter had mentioned why her and the Scott we know were both there, according to Forge."

"If it was Frost Shine would have mentioned it," Scott said. "And she's smart enough to know if Frost was suspicious. Telepathy doesn't work on her, there's no way she could have lied to her like to you. Maybe Frost is just with them to protect her."

"You don't know Frost," Logan said. "She fooled all of us. She didn't even have to use Telepathy. She's a very good liar."

"Yeah, but, Shine and Wally can see through lies easily," Scott said. "Mystique couldn't fool them, I doubt this Frost could. I can picture the one I knew being that effective against them either."

"It's great that you're so confident in these people," Kitty said. "But why should we be? If they could help, they would have."

"They're trying," Scott said. "Maybe even now they're close. I just want to help them somehow. If we could do something..."

"But there's nothing we can do," Storm said. "Except pray, as they said... What a strange day this has been."

Scott sighed.

"Oh don't fret," a new voice said.

Everyone looked up.

By the door of the room, they saw someone no one recognized at all, (but it was Selene,) and with her was Mystique...their Mystique of course.

Mystique regarded them like she didn't really care, but Selene definitely looked like she was enjoying the moment.

"I think you can help your friends," she said.

Scott already didn't like her, and he didn't even know why.

"Who are you?" He put a hand to his visor. "And Mystique...not the one I know, I don't think."

"I'd hope not," Mystique said. "Selene get on with it, Kelly just pressed the button for security."

Kelly had done so. Which already made him more useful than the X-men were being here.

"Relax President, we don't want you," Selene said. "Just the X-men...you need to time travel right? Well, your prayers have been answered."

She held out her hand.

The air simmered around all of them, became fuzzy, like a TV out of focus.

"What are you doing?" Kitty cried.

"Run!" Wolverine said.

Kitty tried to run for the wall, and Mystique shot her with some kind of stun gun. Then she ducked under Scott's laser blast and kicked his visor off so he'd have to shut his eyes.

Then everything went all fuzzy.

He heard Mystique say--and not really like she was liking it-- "It was necessary to take them all? I just don't understand, for what purpose?"

"I like to think of it as Insurance," Selene said. "Just in case. Upset about your old flame? Don't worry. I'm sure they'll save him for reserve."

"It's not that, I just think they could escape."

"So we'll make sure they can't. .."

Things went black.

***

Back in 616, they never got a reply from the other Forge.

Also...the switching didn't happen again.

Though apparently it had been happening every few hours, it didn't happen the rest of the day, even after they evacuated and moved to another part of the sewer, getting close to exit the city.

In that time, they'd argued about whether or not their plan was insane at least 5 times. Forge thought it was a bad idea, and Shine insisted that it was the only way.

The others backed her up, but Forge's description of how bad the Capital was did make them nervous.

"War machines, mutant and otherwise, are everywhere, and if they don't catch you sneak in, then they'll find you if you get inside, and even if you don't, you won't find anything. Apocalypse will crush you all like ants." He said.

"I really want to go home," Ryan whimpered.

The others ignored him, but they were all tired.

Even Wally, he had to refuel, and they'd have that much food left.

Reluctantly the resistance provided them with some meager supplies, a few food rations that tasted as bad a they looked, and some spare jackets.

Forge said they all stuck out like sore thumbs in their bright costumes and it was crazy to be so obvious, but there was nothing for them to change into.

They could have been in DC by now, Logan complained, if they hadn't made all this smalltalk.

Of course getting information was valuable, but it was only so useful if this world wasn't going to stay this way, and if it was...well, then it was hopeless anyway.

In all this, Scott was pretty silent...seeing Forge had stirred up a lot of memories for him. Especially the mention of Jean.

But while he had memories...he was shocked by how little that came with any wish to see Jean right now. He hoped she was all right, but he could think of literally nothing she'd have been doing right now to help with all this, or saying to make him feel better about it, aside perhaps from that she was there.

He couldn't understand it, shouldn't he just want to see her whether she was helpful or not? Why did he even care about that?

But...it just wasn't there, that gaping hole feeling.

In hindsight...he wasn't sure it had been there for a long time. Jean had been gone for a year even before the X-men had regrouped. He'd spent all that time obsessing over it, but, had that been missing Jean, or had it been feeling guilty for not finding her? At some point the lines blurred. And he knew that now. He hadn't seen it before.

Maybe deep down, he'd already given up on ever finding her, and had been more depressed than anything else. When he rejoined the X-men, he'd had hope again, and that had been the torture...but of remorse, not actual wishing to talk to her.

How much of it all had just been needing to save her?

He knew it now because he still wanted to save her...but without the link in his head, it was like that was all. No other emotional attachment to the idea. No expectation that it would make him feel that much happier. With her gone for a year...he'd lived with that for a long time, and maybe all his thoughts about Jean were just centering on the unexplained things anyway.

He'd thought it would all be different once he got her back, but now that he could think clearly about it, he realized it hadn't been.

For the few weeks they'd been back together after the Phoenix incident, there'd been a distance, that both of them knew was there, but hadn't talked about.

He tried to pretend it wasn't, but Jean had missed so much, she was bound to feel out of place in the X-men.

And Scott hadn't known how to explain it, for one thing, because all of it pretty much involved Emma, who Jean didn't seem to like talking about, when the others had brought it up, she'd said "But it was all a lie. Wasn't it?"

Yes...it was...But still...

Scott wondered now how Storm had felt about it. Emma had saved her, lie or no lie, and all of Africa by proxy. Did that make her wonder if Emma deserved the kind of censure the others were tempted to give her once they heard about the Inner Circle.

How much did good deeds do for if you were doing it as part of a scam? But it was still saving them...

Scott also wondered if he'd been distant from Jean because he didn't know how to explain how he felt about it all. Guilty, partially, and confused.

Emma had tried to tell him something before she exploded...he'd almost forgotten about it. "Forgive me."

Well he'd done a great job with that, hadn't he? Even if he didn't remember her saying it till later, he could have been nicer.

He'd sort of blamed Emma for all the confusion in the team, but he was starting to think it as already there. Just comparing it to the team here, he saw it was different. They just didn't talk as much, didn't make things as clear to each other.

And Jean wouldn't have understood anyway...

That's what shocked him, he wasn't even emotional about it, he was just certain. Jean would understand none of this. Why he thought it all made things different, why he thought this X-men had something that the ones at home didn't, and why he now felt Emma didn't really deserve the kind of scrutiny the other would have for her if she did go back.

He'd have hoped Jean would be on his side, but he already knew she would be. Not at all.

And without their link to make him feel what she felt...he had to ask why?

What was different about the two of them. Just experience maybe? She had seen all this...but would she have cared?

They were going to have to have a long talk if they ever made it back, he decided. Straighten this out finally.

Also that whole thing with Wolverine had been more unfair than he realized, and they were going to have to talk about that. It was better to just know where things were now. Either Jean wanted him or she didn't.

That thought was far less damaging than it used to be.

Making Scott wonder how much the link had tugged at his emotions...making him feel things so keenly where she was concerned.

He'd been grateful for it...once.

But...if he couldn't think of things clearly because of it...did he really want that? Maybe there was a limit to how deeply someone should be in your head.

No that sounded crazy, of course someone shouldn't be in your head.

Scott realized at about the early evening of having thought about this constantly all day that if he was trying to make an excuse for Jean's actions, that might not be the best indication of what he thought of them.

Even if the excuse was true...didn't that just mean he didn't like it? Shine's words about it had been bugging him all day. That he didn't really want it. He just wanted to forget...

So...what did he want then? Just to start over? Maybe that was it. Things were off balance, and they needed to be in balance again.

At first losing the link had made him feel empty, even afraid, and angry...but after two days, he'd settle down a bit and looked at it more objectively, and Shine was right, it had cleared his head.

But she was right also that his feelings about it were not clear. But that was his own fault. Because he'd never thought about them before. Never thought he had any feelings about it at all. But it turned out he did. In a way he had to blame it for all the suffering of the last year and a half. Even if he didn't blame Jean herself.

So he didn't want it back. Jean would understand that, right?...Or would she feel betrayed?

He was more worried about that then about himself feeling used, of course.

But it came down to the same thing, in the end.

https://youtu.be/X7qHeS5TAlc

[The Moon Will Sing-- the Crane Wives]

Emma kept glancing at him like she could tell he was lost in thought, but she never asked why. She was probably just too tired and overwhelmed to pry into someone else's thoughts right now.

Scott took time off from brooding to notice she didn't look so good right now...well, she looked fine, in her usual way, but she was paler than usual, and tired, and walking slowly for such a tall person.

Also she was talking less and less, which was proof enough that she was drained.

Considering what happened already, he thought maybe just being here was too strenuous for her. It was hard on the DJs too obviously, they were both tired, and slowing down, but, they're spirits were at least not so down, Emma seemed almost no longer to care how tired she was. 

She didn't seem to care what was happening to her at all.

Scott had been there enough to recognize that kind of desperation when he saw it. She had gotten tired of suffering, for weeks. That had to be it. She just wanted it to be over. Enough to do stupid things.

But that wasn't right. Now of all this they had to be cautious. 

She was acting recklessly, trying to use her telepathy to trace the others...The thought of of Xavier trying to reach out to them was concerning. Just another thing he was worried about.

He wondered why Jean hadn't broken through also. Maybe she just didn't think it would work.

Or had they done something to her, seeing as she was a level 5 mutant, so that she couldn't break through?

Even with his conflicting feelings, that wasn't a nice thought.

Scott always tended to worry about other people more than himself, as a distraction, and three telepaths who were in danger were plenty to worry him.

But as Emma was the only one he could do anything about, he was extra paranoid about that. 

[Uh huh.

You know, I would love to watch the JeanxScott ship crash and burn. I loathe her from the Wolverine and the X-men show. So toxic. So if Scott's waking up to it, I say Amen.]