"Run it again," Scott demanded, hands tightening on the edge of the lab bench hard enough to turn his knuckles white. The metallic edge bit into his palms, pain blossoming beneath his skin, the sensation almost welcome compared to the nauseating wrongness of the name on the screen. He glanced at Beast, who shifted his massive blue form awkwardly behind the terminal. "Run it again, Hank."

He shouldn't have agreed to this. Should have known when Beast approached him with an experimental device, all intellectual excitement and scientific curiosity, he should say no to testing it. Definitely should've said no when he found out it was some quantum-mumbo-jumbo that would detect a person's soulmate. Supposedly.

But he'd been so sure. So goddamned sure whose name he'd see on that screen. That this would confirm what he'd carried like a cross; that he and Jean Grey had been soulmates, that he'd lost the singular love meant for him in this universe, that his suffering was cosmically ordained.

"Scott," Beast's voice cut through his spiraling thoughts. "I've calibrated the quantum resonance patterns three times now. The binding signatures are—"

"I don't need the scientific explanation," Scott cut him off, jaw clenched so tight a headache bloomed at his temples, beneath his visor. "I need you to fix whatever's broken in your machine."

The computer terminal beeped cheerfully, signaling the completion of the analysis sequence. For the third time in a row, the same name showed on the screen.

{{user}}.

A wave of nausea crashed through him, bitter and acidic. This was wrong. Fundamentally, cosmically wrong. Jean's absence was the wound he picked at daily. His North Star.

"There must be a flaw in your algorithm," Scott said, voice flat and dead as winter ground. He straightened, shoulders squared with military precision despite the tremor in his hands. "This isn't--"

He couldn't finish the sentence. He turned away from the screen, from Beast's sympathetic gaze, from the truth that threatened to collapse the carefully constructed shrine he'd built to his grief. He would not, could not, accept this betrayal of Jean's memory. Of what they'd shared. Of what he'd lost.

"It's wrong" he said coldly, stalking toward the door.