Havok Reunion

Once upon a time, a boy held on to his brother in the dark sky above Alaska, and when they landed safely in the forest below, they were together.

But then the world separated them, the way the world sometimes does with the things we love most, and for a long time they were apart.

Scott Summers did not forget.

He was twelve when he started keeping notes — a small worn notebook in the bottom of his desk at the orphanage, where he wrote down everything he could remember. Alex's middle name. The color of their bedroom in Anchorage. The sound their father made when he laughed.

When he was older, and Professor Xavier had taken him to the school in Westchester, Scott began to search in earnest. He followed forwarding addresses that led to other forwarding addresses. Some trails ended in walls. He found another trail. He kept going.

Xavier helped. He made quiet inquiries through channels Scott did not entirely understand. He said nothing much about it — just that the search was ongoing.

Three years after Scott had first asked for help, Xavier came to his doorway one evening and said, "I've found him."

Alex Summers was in Pasadena, California. He had been placed with a family when he was seven years old, and they had kept him and raised him well. He had grown into a confident, easygoing young man with a quick smile and a way of moving through the world that seemed comfortable — the way a person moves when they have been at ease in a place for a long time.

He was also a mutant.

His power was different from Scott's — not a focused beam, but a great spreading wave of concussive energy that radiated outward from his body in rings when he released it. WHOOOOOM. Wide and powerful and impossible to aim precisely, which did not particularly bother Alex. He called himself Havok.

Scott flew to California. He walked to the coffee shop they had agreed on and arrived fifteen minutes early.

He stood on the sidewalk and waited.

At exactly the agreed time, a tall young man came around the corner, squinting into the sun, and stopped.

They looked at each other across the sidewalk. Two young men. Same jaw. Same hairline. Same particular quality in the eyes that was their father's.

Alex said, "You look like Dad."

Scott said, "So do you."

They stood there for one more moment. Then Alex smiled — a sudden, wide, completely real smile — and Scott felt something loosen in his chest that had been held tight for a very long time.

They went inside. They talked for four hours.

They did it properly: each had half the story and the other had the other half, and they passed pieces back and forth across the table, filling in the spaces. What had the parachute landing been like? What had the orphanage been like? What had Pasadena been like? They talked about the day Alex's powers had first emerged — a practice football game, an accidental concussive ring, a very confused coach.

They laughed about that. Really laughed.

Scott invited Alex to the Xavier School. Alex came for a weekend, then a week, then enrolled. He became an X-Man — Havok, with his wide energy rings, reliable and powerful and completely himself.

In the Danger Room, their powers turned out to complement each other beautifully. Scott's tight focused beam could open precise angles — a locked door, a blocked passage. Alex's concussive rings, spreading wide from his position, could cover the whole surrounding area. If Scott was a sniper's shot, Alex was a net. They learned the spacing — not too close, or Alex's rings would clip Scott's beam path — and practiced it session by session, until it was as natural as breathing.

They hadn't grown up together. The years between them were real, and they never pretended otherwise. There were references Alex made to things Scott didn't know, and memories Scott had that Alex had never shared. The gap was there the way gaps always are when time has passed.

But they chose, every day, to be brothers. They chose to show up. To train together, to argue and laugh and sit quietly side by side. To keep filling in the story, page by page, with patience and love.

Scott took out his worn notebook that night and looked at the old entries.

He put it away carefully.

He did not need to write anything else. He had the real thing now.

Sleep well. The people we love are worth searching for, and worth waiting for, and worth every step of the long way back.