X3: Phoenix Rising

[Zev]

Immediately after the escape from Alkali Lake.

Silence bloomed between them. Kurt said his prayer, finished with the twinge of an eye on the “Ah-men,” and no one else had anything to say. Scott’s sniffles, barely audible under Kurt’s words, had entirely subsided. He wiped at his nose once with his glove, smearing snot and tears between thumb and forefinger, before looking at the flight computer. Ororo had set in the course for Washington and they were following it precisely, no interception detected.

“If John’s really with the Brotherhood, they probably won’t have chipped him yet,” Scott said, his voice not hitching once. “Professor, maybe it’d be best if we got you back to Cerebro. You can track him, we can end this once and for all…”

“My place is in Washington.” Xavier spoke as if there was a rock sitting on his chest. “Magneto is a battle, a significant one, but this could decide the war.”

“Alright then. We’ll drop Jean off at the mansion, she can…” Scott’s breath caught in his throat. He lowered his head, shook it once, then raised it again. “Can’t this thing move any faster?”

Storm pressed the throttle forward.

***

The flight back to Manchester was even quieter, if that was possible. They listened to the President’s revised speech, awkward and halting as it was, and some of the younger students dared to hope. An hour into the flight, conversation sprung up. The X-Men didn’t speak. There weren’t any words. They sat silently in their chairs, heads downcast, not looking at each other.

There wasn’t that much to look at.

***

Bobby and Marie offered to give their uniforms back. No one took them up on it.

***

Erik sent his condolences by e-mail. Xavier wanted more than anything to delete the file. Instead, he sent a reply, saying he did remember the time Jean had taken their car out for a drive and totaled it in a ditch somewhere.

***

The glass had to be swept up, the doors had to be replaced, the damage had to be repaired. No one asked Kurt to help out. He just did. But his best work wasn’t wallpapering over the bullet holes or painting over the scorch marks. It was with the children. They huddled together in nervous bunches until Kurt began talking, his mellifluous voice describing worlds of magic and fancy. The small groups spread out, until the children hung around the entire room like a mosaic. He gave them new dreams instead of nightmares.

***

It took a few days for the cracks to begin to show. Scott had volunteered to tell Jean’s parents in person, blazing away from the mansion atop his motorcycle. Ororo took it upon herself to water Jean’s plants. Aside from that, she left Jean and Scott’s room exactly as it was. A mausoleum.

Logan broke first. He was in the middle of a training exercise when a projectile hit him, right behind the shoulder blades. Left a bruise that faded in seconds. He whirled around anyway, angry and not bothering to hide it.

“Damnit Jeannie, you were supposed to…”

The Danger Room grinded to a halt around him. Logan looked at the others. They were suddenly ridiculous in his eyes, animals walking around on their hind legs in funny suits. He snarled and walked off, ripping the suit off him as he left the mansion behind. They found bloody scraps of it leading into the forest.

***

Scott came back, the bike splattered with mud, a crack in one of his lenses.

“They took it rather well,” he said in a funny little voice as he parked the motorcycle.

***

Ororo caught Scott the next morning. He was coming out of his room in a cut-off tee and jugging shorts. They had jogged, Scott and Jean, each morning. He soldiering along at a steady, tanking pace; her graceful as an antelope, long legs pumping. They made an odd pair, but they kept in perfect step with the other.

“She would’ve wanted you to be happy,” Ororo said.

“Please don’t,” Scott said as he pushed past her.

***

Scott found Logan on his fifth lap around the mansion. His claws were half out and his head was folded down atop his arm. Logan had grown a heavy beard since last Scott had seen him and the feral mutant’s clothes were blood-stained jeans and flannel over a tank-top.

“What’ve you been eating?” Scott asked.

Logan raised his head incrementally. “Deer, mostly. Some squirrel.”

“Why’d you come back?”

“I ran out of rotgut.”

“Wanna make a beer run?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

***

Logan insisted on coming into the store with him. He picked out a bottle of Molston’s, while Scott went with a Bud Light. The clerk was so nervous he asked for their IDs automatically. Scott showed his.

“Left mine in my other pants,” Logan quipped.

“Don’t mind him,” Scott said. “Laundry day.”

The clerk rang up their beer.

***

They sat on the sidewalk together, drinking straight from the bottle.

“Funeral’s comin’ up,” Logan said.

“Yeah.”

“You delivering the eulogy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Thought of what you’re gonna say?”

“Nope.” Scott gulped a mouthful of beer down. “What’s there to say? She’s gone. I always knew… I always knew how lucky I was to have her. I wasn’t her type, you see. You were. The big man on campus, the star quarterback, the playboy.”

Logan threw his empty beer bottle out, watched it shatter against a tree trunk. “The hell you weren’t her type. You’re the leader. Start acting like it. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, bub, but the team’s falling apart. You wanna honor her, pull it back together.”

“I will,” Scott said, standing up. “I always do.”

 

[Zev]

Scott and Charles sat across from each other. The chess board was set and both of them could not stop thinking.

Scott had always been more into Avalon Hill. Jean had put up with his obsession, even if she preferred Checkers or Backgammon, and she was really the only consistent opponent he could find after Hank left. Although sometimes she got impatient and just read his mind to find out his strategy, an act of surrender which always took him a while to figure out…

And Xavier, more than anything, wanted things back the way they were. A second chance. Not being wielded by Erik against the humans, like a gun to be aimed and a trigger to be pulled. Not bribing coroners to say Jean was killed in a car accident, body incinerated in the explosion. Not a lot of the things he had become.

“I suppose we should have a funeral,” Scott said, moving a pawn. “A memorial. Something… closure. She deserves that.”

“Yes. The sooner the better.” Charles stared blankly at the gameboard.

“I’ll attend to the arrangements. You should let the others know.”

“Yes.” Charles belatedly made a move. “Will you want to tell Alex yourself?”

“I don’t suppose I have much choice in the manner. But who knows, maybe he’ll surprise us.” Scott picked up a pawn and rolled it between his fingers. “I’m thinking of offering Kurt a spot on the team. He’s inexperienced in a team setting, but his experience speaks for itself.”

“I’ll begin planning a training curriculum to incorporate him.”

Scott closed his fist around the pawn. “And moving some of the older kids into a training program. Not full-time X-Men, but I would like the option of having more hands to call upon.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

“No. No, I’m not. But that’s what I’m going to do. Bobby and Marie, for starters. It’d do Rogue good to get some… to be involved. And Logan told me that our Colossus was helpful during the attack. John…” Scott opened his hand and the pawn rolled out of his palm. “He’s gone too, isn’t he?

***

John had never ridden in a helicopter before. It seemed a childish thing to think, now that they were in the air, now that there were so many more important, adult things he could be thinking… but there it was.

“What does that do?” John asked as Mystique manipulated the flight controls. He couldn’t recall ever being as close to an “evil mutant” as when he was leaning over her now. She smelled of Earth, like a very vague mildew. He didn’t know what to make of that.

“Collective pitch lever,” Mystique answered. “Controls the total rotor thrust.”

John had no idea what that meant, but he kept his mouth shut anyway.

Mystique checked the radar. “We’re clear.”

Magneto nodded. His hands were steepled together, his helmet off. John was a little surprised to see him without it on. He couldn’t think of him as a frail old man anymore, but that was what he looked like.

“Pyro, have you given any thought to evolution?”

John snorted. “Yeah, like what?”

“Your flames, dear boy. A lighter is a somewhat unreliable way of summoning them, wouldn’t you agree?”

John turned his beloved lighter over in his fingers. Watched it dance over his knuckles before he lit it smoothly. “It’s classy.”

“Mystique, you’ll help John find a better mechanism for his powers.” Magneto rested his hands on his helmet, running a thumb over its forehead. “She built this for me, you know. She’s an excellent craftsman.”

Mystique smiled at the compliment, her teeth blindingly white, encircled by dark-red lips.

***

Alex Summers was on military time. Ironic, he thought. All that time spent rebelling against Dad and apple pie; now he was the chump. He didn’t quibble. There were bigger things mattering here than one screw-up. He did his laps, did his push-ups, polished his boots, cleaned his uniform, smiled a little at the red piping that formed an outline of an X over the otherwise black bodysuit. The only thing in his life he’d really earned.

“Summers,” the CO hollered, “message for you.”

Alex nodded, still sweaty from his morning exercise regiment, his uniform bunched over his arm. He went towards the phone, hearing the CO’s familiar refrain that he was not an answering service as he walked out of the building. The quadrant of pay-phones was waiting for them. He picked up the phone that wasn’t on the hook.

“Yeah?”

It was Scott. “Jean’s dead.”

Alex processed that. Jean. Red hair, green eyes, golden ring on her finger. Scott’s. Nice girl. Probably didn’t deserve it, unless she’s changed a lot since the last time they’d met.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, literally automatically. It was all surface, but they were their father’s sons. They knew what it meant.

“The funeral’s in two days. Where are you?”

“I’ll be there,” Alex answered instead. He hung up. Well. Back to the Westchester. Wouldn’t that be interesting.

He went to ask the CO for leave.

***

Being a terrorist wasn’t as exciting as Pyro had thought it would be. Well, he supposed now it was “being a freedom fighter wasn’t as exciting as Pyro thought it would be.” There was a lot of boring studying and planning and although Magneto was tolerable in small doses, his constant self-righteousness got old fast. He and Xavier had that in common. John didn’t get old people.

Mystique was fun though, even if he was pretty sure she was just screwing with his head most of the time. After they got his flamethrower jacket up and working, Magneto had schematics for them to build. It looked like armor, full of weird relays and circuitry. Magneto was building the helmet himself, but he left the chassis to his apprentices (or whatever they were). Pyro and Mystique worked together, welding and doing all that other shop class bull****. Mystique liked to appear as people from the mansion and role-play mocking him, or something. He didn’t know what it was.

They just talked. She turned into Bobby and they talked as if she was Bobby and she turned into Rogue and they talked as if she was Rogue. They had completed the torso of the armor by the time Pyro figured out that she was getting some comfort from it as well. When she kissed him, he couldn’t have been more surprised if she had pulled out a gun and shot him.

***

Hank McCoy was checking himself for gray hairs. At forty years of age, he still had a full head of hair, including facial hair that was so brushy he had to buy razors in bulk. His latest was already blunted after three uses. He put a new blade in it and scraped the hair off the left side of his face when it hit him. One part on the conscious level -- Incoming telepathic message -- and the other just like a memory that he couldn’t remember forming.

Jean was dead.

Hank stopped shaving. His razor might as well be a toothbrush for all he knew what to do with it. Jean was dead. Not their Jean, surely. Jean Reno, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Michel Jarre, Jean Simmons? No. The Jean. Crushed by a mass of falling water. No body. Funeral to be held in two days. Please attend. That was all. Just the words, like it was something he’s read in a history textbook.

He’d cut himself shaving. A thin line of blood drew softly down his cheek. He wiped it away at the mandible. Jean. Gone. How must Scott be taking it? Frantically, Hank tried to recall the last time he’d spoken to her. Months ago, on the phone, well wishes on her birthday. He’d sent her a passel of Bolivian chocolates. Hadn’t had time to handwrite a note; he’d ordered it online. When had he last seen her in person? It had been ages. He almost didn’t recall what she looked like. How had she fared in adulthood? It had been far, far too long.

Hank, all of a sudden, felt the small-dog energy that used to suffuse him flee. He felt old. Tired. Like “Dr. McCoy” or “Henry” instead of friendly Hank. He ran a hand through his hair. No gray. Just cordite blue hair along his sideburns.

Hank shaved it off.

***

There were two dining halls in the mansion, a large cafeteria for the students and a private dining room for the faculty. Ororo didn’t use either. She stayed in her room, dug a meal out of the refrigerator, and tried not to feel anything. Her melancholy was pulling rainclouds out from all over New York. If she didn’t keep a tight lid on her feelings, the entire region would go into a drought while they were flooded.

They weren’t thunderstorms either, because Ororo didn’t feel angry. She tried to summon up hatred, passion, an active emotion for the people who had lived where Jean had died, but she just got the same nil. Jean was dead and there was no one to avenge her upon.

Someone knocked at the door. “Leave me alone,” Storm called, immediately feeling guilty. What if it was a student? It wasn’t. Kurt transported in with a bamf and the quickly dissipating smell of sulfur.

“Guten tag,” he said in a nervous voice. He hunched a little, hands folded together, penitent. “The others said you were eating alone and I thought…”

Ororo held out her half-finished meal. “I was thinking of going on a diet anyway.”

Kurt spooned what was left of her TV dinner into his mouth, taking conscious effort to use a utensil. It had been a long time since he’d dined in polite company.

“She seemed like a nice person, your friend. Jean Gray.”

“She was,” Ororo said absently. She was seated on the bed and Kurt stood a fair distance away; she felt the sudden urge to pump her legs, so she began pacing the floor. “You still hungry? I have a casserole I’ve been trying to get rid of since March.”

“Tuna?” Kurt asked hopefully.

“Ham. One of the culinary arts students made it for me. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by refusing, but I hate ham. It’s such an… uncommitted taste. Unsure of itself, if you follow.”

Kurt was a few steps behind her as she took the casserole out of her fridge, unwrapped it, and consigned it to the microwave. His tail flicked anxiously, stirring up the bed skirt.

“Do you like your room?” Ororo asked suddenly as the microwave timer clicked down.

“Was? Oh, ja. Four walls, ceiling, bed, very nice.”

She smiled. “From anyone else, that would be sarcasm. I’ll give you this, you’re never ungracious.”

The microwave rang and she pulled the casserole out, handing it to him. He set it down on her bed, waiting for it to cool down.

“They say they want to give me a uniform,” Kurt said, chest puffing up with pride. “I was thinking something swashbuckler-y. Like Errol Flynn would wear if he were a superhero.”

“We’re not superheroes, Kurt.” Ororo didn’t know if that ‘we’ included Nightcrawler or not.

“Of course you are!” Kurt held out his hands and spade-tipped tail in a superlative gesture. “You fight bad guys.”

“Some would say we are bad guys.”

“Ignorant people,” Kurt said dismissively. He picked up the casserole and scooped out a bite with his fork. “You shouldn’t give them so much thought,” he said after he had gulped down his first taste.

“How’s the casserole?”

Kurt took another bite. “Your student should be a chef. You’re lucky to have an admirer who’s so good in the kitchen.”

“She died,” Ororo said, as abrupt as a car crash. “She was going home to see her parents when a car hit her. She had green skin and webbed feet. The driver didn’t even slow down. They ruled it an accident. Like when you color outside the lines. ‘Oops. My bad.’”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was at her funeral. You know the most compelling memory I could summon up of her was that god-awful casserole? No one deserves to be remembered that way. Just because she didn’t make an impression doesn’t mean she…”

A hailstone broke against the window. More followed it, starting at pea-sized and moving up to the size of acorns.

“Should I go?” Kurt asked.

“No. Stay. Finish your casserole.”

The hail died down.

***

Warren Worthington III didn’t have time to mourn scheduled in. He was the only out mutant on Wall Street (buying Brooks Brothers suits tailored for your wingspan will do that), which meant he couldn’t just be the wild screw-up playboy he had been in his youth. His good looks he kept, the rest he discarded. Let someone else tell the lame jokes, make the crude passes at beautiful women. Warren had left those behind with the leather harness.

“Cancel all my appointments,” he told his secretary as soon as the information faded in. Jean dead. It didn’t fit. It was an oxymoron. She had seemed so alive, so infallible when he’d known her.

Knowing he wasn’t going to get any work done, Warren withdrew into his office and drew a sniffer of brandy from the liquor cabinet. A Rémy Martin cognac, Hors D'age. He had been saving it for a special occasion. Now he just wanted to get drunk. He kept the bottle beside him as he sat down as his desk, his wings spreading out to lie across the carpet like thick feathery blankets.

“Jean, Jean, damn it all, not you first…”

He dug the picture of her out of his desk drawer. Clients and associates didn’t take kindly to having framed reminders of his past staring at them and he didn’t have the guts to tell them to put up with it or leave. But for now, he would make an exception. It was from Prom Night, just before they’d ditched their too-small, too-chaperoned affair for Bayside High’s senior prom. Not that there was any competition, but Warren and Jean had been prom king and queen. The perfect couple. She’d been his first love, and he liked to think he was hers. It had never truly deepened into anything meaningful, but she still held a place in his heart despite the different paths they’d walked down.

Warren set the picture down on his desk and took a swig of alcohol. Two days until the funeral. Not nearly enough time.

***

Pyro didn’t know what to make of the way Mystique treated him. Sometimes she was Miss Gray or Miss Munroe, submissive, begging for him to live out his old fantasies. Sometimes she was Logan or Xavier and those times… those times he took the good with the bad. And sometimes she was Bobby and he didn’t know what to think of that. They would be in bed together, not touching lest Mystique shift in her sleep, and suddenly Bobby would be next to him, naked, smiling, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Pyro figured it was Mystique’s private joke; he gave nothing away.

If Magneto knew what they were doing, he didn’t show any sign of caring. If anything, Mystique found even more excuses to hang off him. Pyro would’ve thought that she was trying to make him jealous, but he didn’t give himself that much credit. Instead, he watched as Mystique emptied an AK-47 at him. With the new armor, Magneto caught every bullet. He looked inhuman in it, mechanical. His face was concealed in shadows by the helmet’s high, gothic T-slit.

“Why didn’t you just build this thing before?” Pyro asked as Mystique helped the old man out of his armor.

“Charles and I built Cerebro together. I always knew similar principles could be used to enhance my own power, but sentimentality didn’t allow me to do so.” He reached out and ran a gloved hand along John’s cheek. “The same reason you wouldn’t turn against your old friends.”

“Just say the word and Bobby’s ash, along with Rogue,” Pyro growled. His hand was in his pocket, furiously gripping the now-redundant lighter.

“Pyro, the day will come when you and they will be reunited to live in a world free of humanity’s bungling and prejudice. I had thought, when we reached that brave new world, that Charles would understand the necessity of my actions. The man is a pacifist at heart. Even the loss of his legs couldn’t convince him to accept violence as anything but a last resort. And I… I turned him into a weapon of mass destruction. The two of us have crossed the Rubicon. There is no going back.” He took his helmet off and reluctantly laid it down beside the rest of the armor. “I am building this now because I have nothing left to lose where it comes to Charles Xavier.”

***

The funeral was short, almost perfunctory. Scott read a statement from a piece of paper ripped from a notebook. His tears had smudged some of the ink even as he’d written it, causing him to pause and try to decipher his own words. Finally, mercifully it came to an end. He sat back down and the preacher, much more experienced in such things, took over. They said a short prayer and adjourned to the funeral. Scott sat in the front seat of the car directly behind the hearse, keeping his eyes peeled on it as if searching for a sign of life. Beside him, Charles drove the special hands-only interface, just like he’d used to shepherd the students around when they were young enough to not know death.

The cemetery wasn’t the main one in Bayside. That was reserved for human corpses. Instead, they buried Jean in a small grove on the edge of the estate. There was no body, but they put a coffin in the ground anyway. Jean had always said she hated the idea of being cremated. There was nothing in the grave but a picture of her and the hairbrush Scott had gotten her for their fifth anniversary. It hurt too much to look at for him to leave it aboveground.

The preacher said more words and departed, leaving them alone with their grief. One by one, the others trailed away, hoping this would be the last grave in this virgin soil, knowing it wouldn’t be. All but the first of them, connected in a rough semi-circle, them and Logan. Hank chewed on his cheek and walked away, Ororo on his arm. Logan squeezed the headstone and walked off. Warren sat in the grass, his tie loosened, his wings coiled tightly around him.

Leaving only the Summers brothers in front of the grave.

“It’s not your fault,” Alex said at last.

“I’m the leader. It’s always my fault.”

“What about Xavier?”

“What about him?” Scott asked, a warning inherent in his voice.

“One quick mind-sweep and he could’ve picked up what they were planning before any of this ever happened.”

“It doesn’t work like that. And besides, this isn’t 1984.”

“Not for them, maybe.” Alex took a step closer. “Xavier’s peacefulness is noble, I agree. But it’s not the best match for the current situation.”

“And what would be? Magneto?”

“There’s a middle ground between pacifism and genocide. I know people, people who know that if the current administration isn’t willing to give us the rights we’re entitled to, then we have to take them.”

Scott turned on Alex slowly, like the world rotating. “You come to her funeral to make me a sales pitch?”

“An opportunity!” Alex insisted.

Scott grabbed him by the lapels of his coat, shook him once, hard enough to jostle his fillings loose. “You were never an X-Man and you never will be! Get out and don’t let me see you again.”

He walked away, never looking back. Alex stood there for a moment, paralyzed, then he set down his old scorched quarter atop the headstone and started away. Warren grabbed his arm.

“You mean what you said?”

“Every word,” Alex said.

“Maybe Scott didn’t care enough about Jean to avenge her death… but I’m not Scott.” Warren spared a glance backwards at Scott’s receding form. “Tell me everything.”

 

[Zev]

It was a routine traffic stop. Car driving too fast, not staying centered in its own lane. Officer Mick Brady didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary. There was that curt, twilight moment when the perp tried to decide whether to run or pull over (that moment that always served as transition from the driver being a citizen to being a perp). Brady tested the stress limits of his steering wheel, rested one hand on the radio. The car pulled over. Good boy.

He pulled to a stop twenty feet behind the suspect car, put his car in park, got out. He wore a Glock 22 with .40 S&W bullets on his hip. Not the most powerful handgun in the world. It didn’t have to be. Seven years on the force and he’d only fired it twice. He’d missed the first time and hadn’t seriously injured his target the second. That was just fine with him.

There wasn’t anything off about the car, either. Buick LeSabre 1992, red, the left rear tire a little low. Reliable. Not too sporty, not too fashionable, but reliable. Bumper stickers on the back, my kid’s an honor student at so and so high, my other car is a Ferrari, nothing out of the ordinary. Brady was expecting a perp who’d had one too many beers and thought he was okay to drive. Good that he’d caught him before there was an accident, but no big deal. Drop him off at his house if it was a first offense, if not, even him out in the drunk tank and let someone else worry about it.

That’s when everything went straight to hell.

The driver got out of his car, screaming, my son, my son, the mother was in the passenger seat, her body through the open window, pounding on the roof of the car, try to understand! Brady put his hand on his gun, fingers around the stock, thumb on the hammer, calm down sir, my son needs help. Then something in the backseat lurched towards him, cracking the window, something INHUMAN and Brady was pulling the trigger, not even knowing that he’d drawn his weapon.

***

Bobby was perfectly fine with not being normal. He was perfectly fine with the fact that his brain was sending signals to his body that were lowering his body temperature, turning his flesh slightly blue, but, conversely, making him feel warm and toasty. He was fine with the fact that choppy, splinted, spiky ice was growing off his body like whiskers, as if he’d just been dipped in a vat of liquid nitrogen. He was perfectly fine that a gas fire was shooting out of the wall directly at him and he was testing the limits of his powers against his, the spray of his frost gutting the flame, the moisture constantly being sucked from the air, coating his body in frost, and then melting off. What he wasn’t fine with was how long this was taking. Endurance test, yeah, sure, fine. But who was to say he wouldn’t get stuck this way?

For that matter, who was to say his power wouldn’t conk out at any time? Sure, someone had their finger on the button to turn the gas off, but he’d been at this for at least fifteen minutes. Maybe they were reading a book or something? Being an X-Man was a lot less fun than he’d been told.

Or maybe it just seemed that way since one of them had died.

Yeah, that was probably it. Things would perk up. Wouldn’t they?

The flame died down and he felt that weird not-a-headache tingling that was the Professor in his head. Scott said you got used to it. Maybe.

That’s enough, Mr. Drake. Take a breather.

The water that had melted off him swirled down a drain. Bobby watched it go. His reflection in the water showed him going back to his normal flesh tone, the cold catching up with him. It was goddamn freezing. He tried to rub some heat back into his arms when Marie threw a towel over him. Separated by the towel and her clothing (he was in trunks; someone really needed to get around to making him a uniform), he could still feel her warmth. She smiled at him and he wrapped an arm around her, under her arm and above her hemline, where he couldn’t touch skin no matter how much her shirt rode up.

“You mind?” she asked.

“Go right ahead.”

She had been training in control. Slowing down her absorption, speeding it up, selecting what she took. Some things were easier than others. Her palm made contact with his skin, just above the hipbone, and he felt the prickly numb feeling of something… not going missing, but being misplaced. It weakened him, as always, and she pulled away, a light layer of frost forming over her knuckles. Marie led him towards a bench and he let his arm pull her to him a little tighter, wondering if she had absorbed any of his doubts.

***

Scott was testing his power against the old Adamantium bullseye when he heard the news. The dial on his visor was swung all the way to eight, his optic blast so powerful that it expanded once through the ruby quartz, as if it were water exiting a siphon. Hank approached him, wearing the Manhattan Project goggles. It was a day for nostalgia. He remembered it was his brother Alex who had coined the term. How long had that been before the day Alex left? Why had he left again? Some stupid fight? God, it all seemed so pointless, disjointed from reality.

Marie stopped by behind him, in the safe zone where Scott couldn’t turn his head and accidentally blow someone away. At first Scott thought she was going to try to give him some comfort words about how it wasn’t his fault, Jean would’ve wanted him to move on, blah blah blah… Scott turned the dial on his visor harder, watched as the metal started to glow red-hot and dent inwards. He hadn’t used the bullseye since Lensharr left, now it was like he couldn’t get away from it.

“Can we talk?” she said, in her quiet voice with the subdued Southern drawl.

Scott turned down his dial. Without the energy leaving him, his body sagged automatically. The uncomfortable numbness flooded back into him. Jean was gone. “What about?”

Marie took a step closer. “Bobby and me, we’re… we’re not talking like we used to. Not since John left. I think he blames himself.” She hemmed and hawed for a moment, gloved hands at her lips, her eyes. “John thought he was never really one of us. Maybe he was right.”

“You, Bobby, and John. Had to be an odd man out.” Without looking at her, Scott walked up to the Bullseye and watched patiently as the metal resumed its original shape. His beam had been steady as a rock, not deviating one iota from the center. “Marie, nobody likes to hear this, but people grow apart, especially young people.”

“That’s what Logan said. Like he remembers being young.” Marie made a wry little smile at Scott, the smile you make at sassing out someone that isn’t there and could kick your ass without breathing hard.

Scott turned around and forced a small smile in response. “So why’d you want to talk to me?”

“I was just… wondering if you and Jean went through anything like this. When you were young.” That said, Marie almost shrunk into herself, like she wanted to jump into a shell. Scott waved his hand; it was alright. Jean was on his mind anyway, no need to make her name into a dirty word.

“Jean left Warren for me. There were a lot of times I think she may have regretted that choice. It wasn’t always easy. Nothing ever is. But we were happy. That’s what matters. Are you and Bobby… are you happy?”

Scott was crying, or something like it.

“We’re very happy,” Marie assured him.

“Good.” Scott took in a deep sob of air. “That’s good. You hold onto him. You let him know how you feel.”

Without another word he turned and fired another optic blast at the bullseye, teeth gritted again, face furious, tears stained red in the light.

***

The expression “couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy” was not sarcastic when applied to Officer Mick Brady. Married twenty years to his high school sweetheart. They’d been fresh out of Elk Falls High, him twenty and her nineteen, when they’d gotten married. Two children, a boy and a girl. Wedding rings that he’d nearly bankrupted himself to pay for. Once, he’d lost his wedding band down the sink while washing his hands and had been up all night retrieving it.

Xavier knew all these things because Mick Brady and his colleagues in the Elk Falls Police Department knew them. Mick Brady was well-liked, if not beloved. The casual intrusion Xavier was practicing was the kind of thing he said he didn’t do, but you had to bend the rules sometimes. It was the kind of thing Erik once would’ve taunted him over, gently, affectionately, like two people on a diet eating ice cream together. Charles never lectured him excessively when he did the things that led up to him being Magneto and Erik never pointed out his hypocrisy.

A good guy. Wrong place, wrong time. The worst you could accuse him of being was ignorant, not evil. But he had shot a kid, a mutant kid, and a message had to be sent. Whether or not he was guilty, mens rea, was irrelevant. Him going free would set back human-mutant relations for years. He had to do time. A plea bargain. Some place quiet. Get the whole thing out of the way, prove the system work. That was the plan, anyway.

But Xavier’s mental poll didn’t bold well on that front. The other cops thought it was a righteous shoot. Internal Affairs was just dotting Is and crossing Ts. They were circling the wagons, all of them. Xavier called the Institute’s lawyer-on-retainer. A message still had to be sent. The system had to work.

***

Bobby caught Logan parking his pick-up (the first thing he’d bought with his new X-Men expense account) around back and saw him carrying some groceries in. He tried to call to get Logan’s attention, but the Canadian ignored him. Bobby scowled and checked the back of the pick-up to see if there was anything Logan might make another trip to get. Seeing nothing, he followed Logan inside to the kitchen nearest Logan’s new room. Logan was transferring a steady supply of beer both canned and bottled into the refrigerator. Xavier had objected to that until Logan suggested a compromise; a note that said “This is Logan’s beer. I know what you smell like.” It worked like a charm.

“Mr. Logan, hey, you didn’t hear me back there?”

Logan shot him a look, then itched at his knuckles idly and grabbed a bottle of Molston’s. “Sit,” he ordered, straddling his own seat. A card table lay between them with two unoccupied chairs; there primarily so that people with an urge for a late-night snack didn’t have to haul their food to the dining room to eat.

Bobby considered duplicating Logan’s posture, but instead he just pulled a seat out and sat down in it the regular way.

“What do you wanna talk about, kid?”

Bobby shrugged in the way teenagers had, assuming people had to know what they were talking about because how could they not? Off Logan’s impenetrable glare, he elaborated “It’s Marie.”

“Rogue,” Logan said, as if to confirm they were talking about the same person.

“Yeah. She’s been acting kinda distant lately and I know she confides in you” Logan guffawed, “so I’d like to know if there’s anything… wrong.”

“Wrong,” Logan repeated.

“Yeah.”

Logan scratched at his knuckles, couldn’t seem to reach the itch, then extended his three long, silvery claws out a few inches. Bobby jumped a little at the snikt. Smirking, Logan retracted them slow, letting the wounds left behind heal in their own damn time.

“The girl can’t touch anybody. Just about the only person her own age she’s made a connection with… that’d be you… ‘as got a wandering eye…”

“I do not have a—“

“You’re a seventeen-year-old boy, ‘course you got a wandering eye. Only this time it really means something because Rogue can’t do much more than notice that. You blame it on hormones, I’m gonna have to beat your ass. Rogue didn’t choose to be that way…”

“Look, I don’t know where you get off—“ Logan popped a single claw and cracked the cap off his beer bottle. “Damnit, would you let me finish a sentence!?”

“Getting all het up, I see.” Logan took a drag off his beer. “I ain’t your goddamn marriage counselor, kid. I don’t know if you’re treating her right. You seem like a good kid, far as that goes, so probably. But there’s treating her right and then there’s treating her good and I don’t know if you’ve got that in you. So maybe you look but don’t touch, that doesn’t stop Rogue from thinking you could be touchin’, if’n it weren’t for her dragging you down.”

“You done?”

“You asked,” Logan replied. He shook his beer bottle. “Freshen me up?”

Bobby flicked the bottle with his index finger. When Logan tried to pour some out, the liquid was a solid mass of ice. He raised two eyebrows as Bobby left.

“Kid’s got moxie.”

***

As expected, the IAD hearing went south. Mick Brady was acquitted on all charges. His fellow officers offered to throw him a party as he walked out of the tribunal room. He declined, hugged his kids, his wife. He wasn’t five minutes out of the courthouse when Matt Murdock personally served notice of a wrongful death suit.

Ten minutes later Avalanche attacked Brady in the name of mutant liberation. Daredevil stopped the assassination attempt. The story got more airtime than mutant relief workers making manna drop from the sky in Uganda.

***

Hank agreed to take over Jean’s class until the end of the semester. In fact, he was thinking of volunteering full-time. The job paid good wages and he was tired of his other colleagues treating his mutation as an unpleasant factor of his personality, like he was a Mormon or had bad breath. His blue hair was coming in fuller and longer than he had expected. He let it grow down his back and across his shoulders like a lion’s mane. It gave him a king-of-the-jungle appearance he thought looked very dignified.

“Engines running hot, no leaks,” he reported to Scott over the intercom.

Scott and Rogue were in the air tunnel, giving the X-Jet a preliminary shakedown cruise. Although it had never been unworkable, the fuselage had been battered almost beyond recognition. Xavier had thought to replace it, but Scott had insisted on repairing it. Marie was along to learn to fly. She was somewhat keen on it.

“And if I want to throttle up, I would…?” Scott began.

Marie finished his sentence, demonstrating the procedure as she did so. Scott nodded and gave her one of his rare smiles.

“Think we finally got the air foils ironed out,” Marie said.

“It’s something.” He toggled the intercom. “Hank, bring the fans up to Mach 5. There’s some shaking I want to pin down.”

“So, uh, how you holding up?” Marie asked as soon as the line was closed.

“I thought that was the kind of question I asked you. From teacher to student.”

“I prefer friend to friend.”

Scott concentrated on the vibration that reverberated through the ship. “Left wing, near the tip. Let’s hammer it out.” He pressed the intercom. “Hank, throttle us down. We’ve got our crack locked down.” He unbuckled himself from his seats as the fans died down, the wind rushing past the X-Jet settling. “Marie, I’d prefer if you didn’t overstep your bounds.”

“Oh.”

“I’m fine. You don’t have to worry.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Marie said as Scott went to repair the plane.

***

The wrongful death suit was thrown out of court. Xavier detected anti-mutant bias in two of the jurors. Nothing overt; no Friends of Humanity membership, but it was there. And in some deep, dark corner of the country, Magneto had found his target.

***

Bobby and Marie made love unerotically, out of a sense of obligation really. It was a ritual. His hand encased in a plastic glove, between her thighs, her blouse-covered breasts under his tongue, the clinical feel of her gloved hand moving at his crotch. Afterwards, they laid in separate beds like a 1950s married couple on a sitcom. Disposing of the plastic gloves always made Bobby feel dirty; the whole process was unsatisfying and ashamed.

“Good night,” Bobby said as she slipped under the covers.

“I want you to break up with me,” Marie said, sitting up in her bed.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You don’t love me,” Marie said as if she were trying to convince herself of it. “I release you.”

“You think you can just… I care!”

“I won’t think any less of you,” Marie said. She couldn’t summon up the energy to cry. “No one will. Please, just go.”

Bobby dressed quickly, quietly. “You were my first,” he said before he stole out the door.

***

After long hours, the pit had been dug all the way to bedrock. Mystique had arranged for the diggers, disguised as an oil prospector with a bad combover. The diggers had long ago left for the night. Magneto, encased in his Cerebra armor, felt cold and invincible. The world couldn’t touch him. Mystique stood on one side, Pyro on the other. The persistent sneer Pyro had borne since getting onboard the helicopter was gone. He knew the mechanics of what they were doing, knew the necessity of it. But he wasn’t sure. None of them were.

“Are you sure we should do this?” Pyro asked as he looked down at Elk Falls, town in repose. “All those people… they can’t all be guilty…”

“Guilty Pyro?” Mystique shook her head, her voice raising with growing conviction. “It’s a conspiracy of silence. They boast about it in bars and their drinking buddies say nothing. They come home with a mutant dent in the grille and their wives take it to the body shop and say they hit a deer. Any one of them could have shined the light of reason on the mob’s actions, any one of them could have stopped it. But they didn’t. That place is half owned by Donald Trump. Sean Hannity has a summer home there. Hitting it sends a message.”

Magneto was the only one who remained silent. He just started.

Forgive me, Charles. This must be done.

If one were watching, they would be able to actually see the power he was channeling take form, lines of magnetic force bending and racing down the pit. Straight down to the exposed bedrock, laced with iron ore.

The bedrock was wrenched apart, as if by the claws of some great invisible animal. The displacement caused the ground shake like an earthquake, a giant throwing off its shackles. Mystique and Pyro stumbled. Magneto hauled Bobby to his feet, standing shoulder to shoulder with him at the lip of the hole. Air rushed down into the deepening hole, causing a cyclone effect.

With a scream that might have been the Earth’s, might have been his own, Magneto fully pierced down to the molten lava running like blood through the veins of the planet. Pyro took control of more heat than he had ever had to work with before. The arriving air was set aflame and the cyclone reversed, shooting up like a geyser, forming a tornado of blame before the Brotherhood.

“Do it, Bobby,” Mystique whispered in his ear, every syllable falling on another loved on. “Do it for all of us.”

“My name is Pyro,” Bobby said as Magneto looked on with mingled approval and horror.

He sent the firestorm toward Elk Falls. It was easy, like throwing a switch. The top of the cyclone expanded like a mouth to swallow the entire world and the firestorm toppled over to engulf the entire town. Face set in stone, Pyro began to shrink the maelstrom, incinerating the town from the outside-in.

“My boy,” Magneto said, his words lost under the sound of flame and scream.

For a moment, Pyro thought he could see a face in the firestorm, the Devil’s face, eyes of sulfur and brimstone. Then he saw it was his own and thought he had gone mad. The roar of the flames was a demon, in his mind and outside it, and briefly he wondered what he had become.

Then Elk Falls died.

 

[Noir]

you know they made an X3 already right?

 

[Zev]

They did? Was it any good?

 

[Zev]

John dreamed that he was wandering through Elk Falls. Everything was frozen and black, like statues. As soon as he touched something, it would collapse into hideous fells of ash. He saw Bobby and Rogue, ran to embrace them, felt his arms and face grow heavy with smoke.

He woke up. The scent of flame was still in his nostrils, no matter how many showers he took. Slowly, he became aware of his tangled sheets, the pajamas which he had sweated clean through. He felt like he was going to puke some more. Magneto was sitting at the foot of his bed.

“Human morality is hard to set aside,” Magneto said, patting John’s calf. “Just keep in mind they would’ve done the same to you. They would’ve marched off to put you in camps at the slightest exhortation from Stryker or those like him.”

John said nothing. He rolled over to check the clock on his bedside. 3:28 A.M.

“Pyro,” Magneto said gently, standing. “Are you a god or an insect?”

“I feel like a bug,” John confessed. “What we did was a sin. Monstrous.”

“And was what they did to us not monstrous?”

“An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.” Marie had used to say that.

“I know. That’s why we’ll take both of their eyes first.”

Almost immediately after Magneto left, Mystique appeared in his doorway. John didn’t think it was a coincidence. The negligee clung to Rogue’s body, her accent so exaggerated she could’ve gotten a part in Gone With The Wind.

***

The next morning, John stole out of the abandoned church they had been using as a hide-out. Funny. The Mansion was a shelter, sanctuary, safe haven. Now John spent all his time in hide-outs and lairs and abandoned warehouses. Before he took one of the cars they’d acquired, John looked back at the church. One arm was hanging by a splinter from the cross over the door, giving it a lop-sided expression. He knew the other two wouldn’t be there when and if he came back. It was just as well. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see them as well anyway.

He passed through a dozen checkpoints. The faceless stormtroopers with their plastic guns didn’t even ask him to step out of the vehicle. Apparently Xavier hadn’t deemed to share that John was running with the Cavity Creeps now.

John didn’t know where he was driving <i>to</I>, but he knew the direction he was driving <i>in.</i> The mansion. Xavier. Bobby. Marie. Home, maybe. He drove straight through for thirty-six hours. Peeing in a bottle, just like when he was a kid. John knew he couldn’t sleep, even if he tried. Elk Falls is living, dying, behind his eyelids.

Pyro is not a revolutionary. Pyro is not a freedom fighter. Pyro is a terrorist. More than ever, John wished he didn’t share a name with Pyro.

John wished he could just wake up. He never had a mother, but he remembered being thirteen, angry, snide, and how he opened up to Jean. He wished she was still alive to tell him he was welcome back anytime. But some things they just don’t make forgiveness for.

Thirty-six hours on the road. Not eating. His stomach howled like the coyotes back home. Finally, under the driving heat of the five o’clock sun, John pulled over to the shoulder of the interstate and wished he were dead.

So, as always, his father was there. This time in the passenger seat, a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips. His lips, no longer black and chipped.

“Got a light?” his father asked.

“You’re dead,” John replied. “The cancer ate you away til you were nothing. I watched you die. Two years I watched you die, every weekend and it was a ****ing <i>drive</i> from the school to your musty hospital bed.”

“You gonna give me a light or not?”

John took the lighter out of his pocket, lit his father’s cigarette. John Sr. sucked the cigarette more fully into his mouth, then took a long drag off of it.

“What are you doing here?” John persisted, accustomed to his father not being quite dead.

“Maybe I just want my lighter back.”

John hid his lighter back in his pocket. “It’s not your lighter. Marie bought it for me at a street vendor last summer.”

“But the reason she bought it was ‘cause you said you liked it and the reason you liked it was ‘cause it looked like mine.” John Sr. flashed his own lighter at John. The whirling hammerhead shark was embossed on the side, under the words ‘Feeding Frenzy’.

“Why’d you need a light from me if you had that?” John asked.

His father set the lighter down on the dashboard. “Ain’t nothing works when you’re dead. Enjoy it while it lasts, boy. You’re coming down here soon. People don’t get away with what you’re getting away with.”

John shook his head vigorously. “No. No, it was Magneto. He made me do it. They’ll go after him!”

“My son, the genius,” John Sr. said. Death hadn’t diminished the sarcasm in his voice. Or how it hurt. “You’re a born loser, Johnnie. You’re his fall guy. Just a pawn to be moved ‘gainst those boys in that fancy mansion you ran away from.”

“You alright, sir?”

Pyro jerked. Almost instinctively, he reached for his lighter. He was disheveled like the rest of his car, his beard scruffy, hair flat. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he saw it was a highway cop. His throat felt barren all of a sudden. He summoned up the words anyway.

“No problem, officer,” Pyro said, with a minimum of sass. “Just needed to take a break from driving.”

“There’s a bed and breakfast just a few miles down the road,” the cop said. John let himself be practically towed there.

He slept and didn’t dream, transitioning straight from his head hitting the pillow to getting his breakfast. Pancakes. They tasted like ashes. But then probably anything would. As he ate he watched footage of the Elk Falls disaster relief. Whaddya know. There were some survivors. Kids without parents, parents without kids. The X-Men helped. Pyro was a little surprised at seeing them out in the sunlight like that. Maybe they had come out to counter what he had done. More likely they just wanted to help. John wondered if he could have ever been like that.

“There’s gotta be a deep level in the pits Hell for the people who did that,” the proprietor said as John returned his room key. “Can you imagine if they went to the same afterlife as the scum who did that?”

John almost felt like laughing. Compared to him, his victims had gotten off easy.

***

He reached the mansion the next day. He was proceeded. A gang of humans, the fear and hatred boiling off them like steam. The institute had always been mutant-sympathetic, with the revelation of the X-Men’s existence… well, people were looking for scapegoats. Idly, Pyro wondered if people had made the connection between the former student and the firestorm. Probably not. If they had, the mansion would be wiped off the map.

John blended in with the crowd. He watched as some ringleader screamed that a thousand Elk Falls were being born past those gates. A Molotov cocktail was pressed into his hands. What the hell. Flame was all he was good for anyway. He lit the gas-soaked handkerchief and hurled it. It hit the metal sign by the gate, melting the letters of ‘Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters’. John lost himself in the violence as the mob surged against the gate. Just like the rave scene. So retro.

The gate buckled. Some of the more prepared mobbers were working at the hinges with crowbars. <i>You see, Magneto? They’re not so stupid. They can be plenty clever as soon as you set their mind on atrocity.</i> John’s heart hardened. He was no better, really. No one was any better. Wasn’t that what Xavier preached? It sounded like equality, but really, all it meant was that all of them were in the same mud as the rest. He reached for his lighter. Burn it all down. Just let it burn down, baby.

The gate went and the mob charged onto the estate, leaving John behind with the lighter burning in his hand. The flame. Calling to him, again. He could lose himself it in, like at Bobby’s house, with the cops. That had felt <i>so</i> good. And again, at Elk Falls. So good. So pure. So bright…

The X-Men met the mob at the door. Localized lightning pinned them in place. The faces of the children hung in the windows like moons, no doubt despite the teachers’ warnings to find shelter. There was Bobby and Marie, right alongside the big guns in their black leather. A beer bottle smashed against Wolverine’s face, cutting and being healed almost in the same beat.

It hit them like a wave. Professor X. Even apart from the main group, John felt the urge to disburse and go home. A few broke and ran. Most stayed. A cocktail hit the building. Bobby froze it. Then Marie’s glove was off and she was touching the back of Xavier’s neck. Smart. Take his telepathy, augment it with her own strength. Brute force instead of finesse. This time the unfocused voice was screaming at anyone in range.

<i>Get the hell out of here!</i>

John left. There really wasn’t anything there for him anyway.

***

John had never really been the church-going type. Ran in the family. But the cathedral had a lot of candles and he had always found that comforting. They were dead now, unlit, the church closed. He had broken the chain with a welding-torch fingertip. A little trick Magneto had thought him. Gee, thanks.

For a moment, standing at the alter (or whatever it was, he didn’t know what they called it), he considered immolating himself. Feel what Elk Falls had felt. Kneeling down, he used his car key to scratch “I’m sorry” into the stone between his knees.

“Why’d you come back?” Marie asked, her voice hollow but carrying nonetheless. John looked over his shoulder. She was at the other end of the church.

“Why’d I leave?” John looked back at the alter. “How’d you find me?”

“I felt you when I had the Professor’s power. Knew I had to say goodbye.”

He took out his lighter and lit one of the candles.

“Who’s that for?” Marie asked, long footfalls placing her past each pew in turn. “You know someone in Elk Falls?”

“It’s for me.”

Marie tilted her head back, laughing harshly. “Right. You’re not the one who has to live with it. All those nightmare scenarios, those end-of-the-world what ifs? You made them real. We’re all going to suffer and why? Because you were angry.”

“You even gonna try to understand?” John asked in a small voice.

She guffawed. “What’s to understand? You killed people.”

John flexed his hand into a fist. The candle flame spread outwards, lighting up the entire alter. “Don’t say that. You have no idea how hard it’s been for me. Knowing you’re even <i>capable</i> of something like that.”

“Oh, boohoo, is that right? I’m supposed to feel sorry for you. You’re a murderer, John.”

John stood, turning on her in the same motion. Behind him, the candles flared up. “<i>Don’t say that!</i>” His rage left him. The candles ebbed low. “It wasn’t like that. You don’t know anything. Try to understand, please…”

“You want me to understand? Turn yourself in,” she said, taking a tentative step forwards. “You can help us find Magneto, you can put things right…”

“Things aren’t ever going to be right again, Marie. The battle lines are drawn, the war’s starting. I don’t want to live with that.” Lunging forward, he took hold of her. She pounded at his chest and face, trying to get him to let her go. “Maybe you can.”

He kissed her, willing his memories into her, trying to share the pain, the isolation, everything he’d been through since that awful day. He felt, through her nerves, her gloves comes off and, through his, her nails digging into his face. They scratched a savage furrow down his cheek, but he kept pressing his life into hers, feeling the welcome numbness engulf him. Soon, it would be all over.

“<i>Get the hell off her!</i>” Bobby yelled, separating them with a blast of frost. John stumbled away from Marie, who collapsed. His lips were wet with blood where she had bit him.

“Bobby,” John said, faltering momentarily to one knee, “friend!”

Bobby let his heart ice over. Time to slay the dragon.