A/N: I started writing this story years ago and have suddenly decided that I need to start uploading it. The plan is to tell the story in two parts. This first part should be about ten chapters long and is set during the events of the third film. I'm doing my absolute best to keep things in canon with the movie-verse, but as I started writing a long time before X-Men Origins: Wolverine came out it's possible a discrepancy will creep in here or there. I'm rating it a T because John has bad manners.
1.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Wasn't that what they said?
The lone guard fell to cinders at Pyro's feet and the shadow of a sneer fell with him. John swallowed, claiming self-defence: the guard had been the one pointing the gun. The little voice inside his head that sounded like Rogue told him otherwise.
Pyro told John to stop listening to that bitch and get on with the job.
Another burst of flames threw the reinforced door from its hinges and left a jagged black hole in its place, gaping wide and hungry for fresh meat. John stared into the darkness and the mutant inside of him whispered of chains and pain and fear.
'We should stay together; we don't know what's in there.'
John imagined Callisto behind him, with her hateful eyes and misplaced self-importance. He stepped into the broken cavity of the wall without acknowledging her, his boots crunching on blacken shards of metal and concrete. He paused for a moment.
'Mutants?' He flicked his gaze back to Callisto for a second. She looked pissed-off, which made him smirk.
'Two. One class four. The other...three-ish.'
John scowled. 'Three-ish? Well thanks for coming along, you've been a great help.' He ignored any retort she may have tried to make and moved further into the darkness. A short way ahead the corridor forked. John turned right but two steps forward his instincts dug their heels in.
'Pyro!' He stopped, but not because Callisto wanted him to. He doubted that her concern was for him. 'We should stay together. Let's take the class four first.' She moved towards the passage that forked left, as though expecting Pyro to follow. Gritting his teeth against the irritation her assumption raised in him, John felt the urge to follow the right passage rumble inside of him. There was something down there that he couldn't ignore; something he couldn't leave to its terrible fate.
'What's wrong, don't think you can handle them on your own?' If he had been anyone else, Callisto would have broken his jaw.
'I can take this one without your help.'
'Good, you do that. I'm going this way.'
She didn't argue, which probably had more to do with pride than respect. They parted ways without a backward glance.
Five minutes into the darkness and Pyro began to sense that something was seriously wrong. Every step forward was filled with dread and doubt and the overwhelming urge to turn around and run.
He stopped.
His senses hummed a warning.
And then he was running – not back, but forwards – instinctual fear suffocated by adrenaline and rage. Someone screamed up ahead and he sped up, skidding to a halt at the end of the corridor, flames in his fists. It took him only a moment to assess the scene before him: two hulking guards and the staggering mess they were chasing. The skinny slip of a thing had somehow managed to give one of the men a bloody nose, but she was faring less well now. One of the guards – the bloody one – knocked her to the floor with enough force to break bones and dug a heavy boot into her ribcage when she was down.
His scream of terror as he was engulfed in flames did not grace Pyro's ears.
Ashes to ashes…
The second guard turned his gun on Pyro, but fear and panic caused him to empty half a cartridge without thinking to aim. The second half of the cartridge was rendered useless when the crumpled creature at his feet kicked the gun out of his hand and Pyro reduced him to ash before it even occurred to him that he could have spared his life.
Dust to dust.
John swallowed back bile at the thought and let it burn, the way everything else around him seemed to. He looked down at the captive, still sprawled on the floor and breathing hard. Pale eyes watched him, wild with something that wasn't fear. He turned away, unnerved despite himself. He could still hear the fire roaring in his ears; gnawing at his fingers. He was burning up.
'Who the hell are you?'
He smirked to hide his fear and glanced back over his shoulder at her. 'That's not much of a thank you.'
Gritting her teeth against his sarcasm, she pushed herself off the floor and John noticed the way her eyes creased at the corners as she jarred bruised ribs. She choked on air drawn too quickly into a cracked chest cavity and he thought to ask if she was alright, before realising that he didn't give a damn. The girl managed to steady herself against the wall without his help. After a moment she fixed him with steely eyes that tried to tear to pieces.
'What do you want?'
John sniffed at the question and threw his sarcasm over his shoulder as he turned to go back the way he'd come: 'You're welcome.' He didn't bother to walk at a speed that would allow her to keep up.
The urge to rip the building apart from the inside out itched at his fingertips.
'Wait!'
He glanced back and found himself staring at her without really seeing her. He closed his eyes for a moment - just a moment - and then looked at her again.
'What's your name?' It was a careless question – one that he asked out of habit rather than interest.
She paused for a moment before answering. 'Vixen.'
He scoffed. 'That the best you could come up with?'
'I didn't come up with it.' Her voice was flat and cold but her eyes flashed in the half light. There was something untamed behind them, growling beneath the surface. She was daring him to say something but he didn't rise to it; he wasn't sure why.
He smiled when she looked away. There was anger behind those eyes – and naivety – even if she hid it well.
'What brings you to a place like this, Vixen?' The words were meant to irritate. She turned back and surveyed him with narrowed eyes that made him stiffen.
'Who the Hell are you?'
'Pyro.' That answer was another habit he'd gotten into since joining Magneto and for the briefest of moments it was Erik Lehnsherr's face he was looking into, answering a question he didn't understand with a name he wasn't certain of.
This time it was her turn to smile. 'What's your real name, Pyro?'
John's blood went cold, but before he had a chance to make sense of what she'd said Vixen had turned and disappeared around the corner, heading back the way he had come. His brain jolted into action and he lurched forward, catching up with her quickly. He wondered why he was the one that always ended up following .
'Wait.' He reached out to grab her shoulder but she'd stopped and turned to face him before he'd even spoken. His hand fell away and he stared, disorientated. She waited for him to say something. He drew a blank and swore under his breath. Not knowing how else to save himself he shoved past and took the lead, unwilling to pursue her any further. She didn't seem to mind, falling into pace a few steps behind him. A natural follower: perfect Brotherhood material.
This time it was Iceman's voice telling him that he shouldn't assume too much, but Pyro wasn't going to start listening to him any time soon.
They reached the fork where he and Callisto had split-up and Vixen stopped, somehow seeing Callisto before he did. She wasn't fool enough to walk into the arms of a stranger who looked like she wanted to kill something as soon as she was given the chance.
'So you're who we're waitin' for.' The accent was tinged with cynicism and John scowled as he turned to look at the speaker. Eyes that flashed red in the dim light stared back, a wicked grin playing on the taller man's mouth. He was older than John, although his exact age was difficult to guess at.
John's jaw clenched. 'And you are?'
'Remy Lebeau. And he's late...again.' Vixen was lingering in the shadows, looking at the older man with an unreadable expression. Remy pulled a face that was somewhere between a frown and a smirk and leant back against the charred wall.
'Yer one ta talk, Belle.'
'I thought your name was Vixen?'
She didn't even turn a cold glare in Pyro's direction; that pissed him off.
'That's the name you asked for.'
Tension hung in the air, ready to snap at the slightest movement. Callisto was watching the whole exchange with a muted satisfaction that made Pyro's scowl deepen: it was never this difficult with Magneto around.
Remy broke the silence: 'In that case, I'm Gambit. Pleased ta meet ya.' He pushed off from the wall and brushed past, heading for the gaping hole of a doorway.
'Hang on a minute.' Callisto had blocked Gambit's path before Pyro even noticed her move. For a moment the older mutant actually looked surprised, but then he laughed and turned back to the girl still standing stoic in the half-light.
'Looks like these kids want somethin' from us, Belle.'
Pyro open his mouth to say something but Callisto spoke over him.
'These kids just saved your asses. So why don't you take a step back and offer up some gratitude before you go.'
Pyro's teeth clashed closed and he glared at Callisto so hard that he knew she noticed, even though she failed to acknowledge him. Gambit was looking at her too, although his expression wasn't as easy to read. He tilted his head slightly and spoke to Vixen without looking at her.
'Belle?' It was a question without words. John glanced over his shoulder and found Vixen watching the whole exchange without interest. She caught his gaze and held it and John stiffened again, expecting something that didn't happen. Vixen turned her grey gaze to Remy.
'They're not the ones we need to worry about.'
Pyro finally managed to subdue his growing desire to kill everyone in the corridor and caught their attention with a flare aimed at the floor. All eyes turned to him.
'What the fuck are you talking about?'
Vixen looked put out by his words, which was what he'd hoped for. She tilted her mouth into a half-smile that matched most of the scowls and smirks he spared for her since they'd met.
'I'm talking about the six or seven armed bastards that are going to start shooting at us in, let's say, ten seconds.
Gambit swore. Distracted, John turned to look at him and took a breath to say something, but the air was knocked out of him as Vixen shoved him to the floor. She landed on top of him and he gasped for breath, grabbing blindly at her body. He pushed her off and pinned her down, blinking his vision clear and glaring at her. She was staring wildly into the dark corridor ahead of them.
The wall where he'd been standing a moment before exploded, sending shards of plaster and concrete showering down on them. John's insides went cold again with the feeling that he should be dead. Vixen took the chance to knee him in the stomach and push him off of her.
'Move!' She sprang to her feet with the kind of agility he had witnessed only in cats and acrobats and wolverines throwing themselves off of high-up landings; the fact that her injured ribs should have stopped her moving like that at all hardly occurred to him as he staggered to his own feet and threw a fist full of flame at a combatant he didn't bother to identify. The dark corridor blazed with light and the screams of burning men. He stared, still disorientated from the fall.
A hand closed tight on the back of his shirt. 'Let's go.'
He stumbled as Vixen dragged him backwards with more strength than he'd expected and turned thoughtlessly towards the mess of a door behind them. Callisto had already vacated the area; Gambit was looking at Vixen as though she'd gone mad. Right now, John didn't care about either them.
Magneto wouldn't be happy about this – it was a mess.
Vixen let go of him and shot out into the dark after Gambit, negotiating the rubble with deceptive ease. John stumbled after her and, finally reaching the cover of night, looked for Callisto, whom he'd expected to leave them for dead. She was waiting but probably only out of fear of Magneto and certainly not out of concern for John.
'Go back and explain this!'
She followed the order without question, which was rare, and disappeared in a blur of black clothing and bad temper. Gambit had a hold of Vixen's arm but for some reason she wasn't following him. She glared at Pyro through the darkness with impatience rather than spite.
'You coming?'
He stared and then, without meaning to, nodded. Vixen snatched herself free and turned to run, although not in the direction Gambit wanted. He paused, scowled at John and then followed after her begrudgingly. John let them get a good distance away before putting his fist full of fire to good use. The compound became nothing more than a burning wreck in the darkness and he turned to flee, leaving ashes and dust behind him.
