Torn

“Torn (part 2)” 
Astonishing X-Men #14 (2006)
Written by Joss Whedon
Art by John Cassaday

I am not a fandom-y person, and don’t really go in for “shipping” and all that. It’s just not how I’ve ever engaged with fiction. That said, if I have an OTP – “one true pairing” – in all of fiction, it’s Scott Summers and Emma Frost. It’s not because I want to be either of them, or that I fancy them, or that I think it’s a particularly romantic pairing. It’s more just that there is something about the combination of these characters that rings very true to me. 

It makes a lot of sense to me that Cyclops, after falling out of love with Jean Grey, would gravitate to someone who could offer the same telepathic radical transparency but without Jean’s idealism. Both Jean and Emma can see him for exactly who he is, but whereas Jean judges him for his weaknesses, Emma accepts him as he is. She finds him interesting and wants to help him be the man he yearns to be. That gives him permission to be vulnerable. He’s exhausted by having to always live up to Jean’s example and expectations. 

It makes sense that Emma Frost would be attracted to a man with his power, ambition, and nobility. Emma is innately drawn to status, but also to puzzles and broken things. She is a domme, and likes to assert power and influence over him. But just as she gives him the freedom to let down his guard and be something else, he’s accepting of her desire to follow a more noble calling with the X-Men rather than with the Hellfire Club. While other X-Men doubt her motives and morality, Scott takes her at her word and gives her his full respect and admiration. 

They found each other at the perfect crossroads in their lives, where she was ready to be “good” and he was finally willing to loosen up and be a bit “bad.” Over the course of their relationship – which in publishing time runs from around 2002 up through 2014, mostly told in stories written by Grant Morrison, Joss Whedon, Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, and Brian Michael Bendis – they bring out the best and worst in each other. There’s something very honest about this love story, and how it begins and ends in very messy ways. 

While Grant Morrison established the Scott and Emma romance in New X-Men, it was Joss Whedon who fully developed it during his run on Astonishing X-Men with artist John Cassaday. Whedon’s story picks up where Morrison left off, with Scott and Emma officially together shortly after Jean Grey’s latest death. Morrison only ever wrote Scott and Emma’s romance as an illicit psychic affair, but Whedon gets to explore the dynamics of them as an actual couple. He’s the one who establishes them as partners in leadership, to the chagrin of most of the other X-Men – Scott defers to Emma in many decisions, and this is where her ruthlessness starts to seep into his own attitude. This is the beginning of his gradual political radicalization. 

Whedon fully dives into the Scott and Emma relationship in Astonishing X-Men #14, the second part of the “Torn” story arc. This issue is primarily focused on a confrontation between the two of them that echoes the sort of “psychic therapy” she gave to him during the Morrison run, but with a more aggressive “tough love” bent. Emma starts by prodding at his weak spots – his idealistic love for Jean, his envy of Wolverine’s macho charisma, his insecurity over his position as the leader of the X-Men – but he resists that approach. He’s aware of all that, he’s done the work to move on. But she’s really just softening him up so he can get to his darkest secret, a repressed memory of him as an adolescent deciding that the only way for him to have full responsibility his devastating eye-blasts would be to make sure he couldn’t control them and had a failsafe in the form of his visor. At the end of the issue, Emma gives him the control he’s denied himself, but in doing so effectively cuts off his access to the power altogether. It’s hard to tell whether she’s being cruel or kind, even if she’s only doing this as a pawn of the demented psychic being Cassandra Nova. It’s both. 

This plot could set in motion the end of their relationship, but it only makes them stronger. Whedon’s removal of Cyclops’ power echoes what Chris Claremont did with Storm in the ’80s, and uses it as an opportunity for him to prove his mettle and leadership skills without relying on the brute force of his mutant gifts. The power returns in time, and along with it his inability to control it, but Scott interprets what Emma did for him as a gift. He wants someone who will call out his weaknesses and illusions, he wants someone who will help him become a better person. It’s all he ever wants, really – he’s always been written as myopic and obsessed with being the best he can be. And Emma, a curious combination of dominatrix and school teacher from the start, has always been someone who wants to break someone down to build them up. Whedon saw what had been on the page for years and took it to a logical, if not entirely romantic, conclusion.