#orchis

Dream Jean insists that it's going to be okay but Scott has doubts. He felt her die, but he's been having this dream - or dreams much like it - the whole time. Their world is very much burning and he asks if this is real. If Jean is real. For you and I our neurons fire during REM sleep and produce all kinds of imagery, but Scott is a protagonist with a God for a wife. He has narratively significant dreams.

Of course Jean's real. She might be discombobulated and dissembled in the White Hot Room, but she knows he's been tortured and assures him the burning works both ways. 'I am the fire,' she says with glowing eyes and a smile on her face.

Heh. We then find out that the narration wasn't just for the reader - he's describing it to a psych in an ORCHIS black site ahead of his trial. Clearly the psych hasn't read many X-Men comics because it's not a dream if it's real. 'You're wrong, doc. My wife and I have been having interdimensional psychic fire sex. It really helps with the torture.'

The bait and switch is something I find morbidly funny. There's zero reason ORCHIS would do anything for his benefit, so Scott is sharing detailed description of his sex dreams with an enemy. Total power move.

On the bright side, his broken back has healed up. It shouldn't be surprising that Scott is traumatized AF right now and having mental health issues. Six months of this presided over by the spitting image of your childhood tormentor, without any information from the outside world. Put on trial in front of the world and very nearly executed, only to escape and learn that Chuck had joined ORCHIS.