[graphic descriptions of bullet wounds]

This is AU from the end of season one, though it should join in with at least some of the events of season 2 eventually.

I wrote this before season 2 started, with no idea where I was going. I still don't have a clue, but I also have about 6 chapters written, so maybe publishing with motivate me to keep going.

Enjoy!

John sees the bullets coming at them before the firing even starts. His powers give him a slight head start, sometimes, blinking a few seconds ahead.

It lets him run to Clarice to shield her, all the while praying Marcos can get to safety on his own, because he can't get in front of them both. His mutation makes him a little faster than most people, but this just means far too many things have the time to run through his mind before he feels the first bullet hit him.

That Clarice isn't fully safe yet, still too far in front of him. That Marcos' power is useless against a bullet coming at him. That this mission, the one he dragged them into because he just can't lose anyone else, despite Marcos' disapproval, might just be what destroys them all.

John's skin is thick, the bullet doesn't tear through when it hits his back. Neither do the next five−eight−ten. They all hurt, each hit taking his breath away, but they don't pierce him. His arms find Clarice's body almost on their own, covering her the best he can, as he gasps for air. Everything is too fast. Marcos is the only one of them with a power than can be used on the offense, but he can't evade the bullets. John doesn't think Marcos was hit, but he can't even be sure.

"Clarice, get us out of here!" he hears Marcos shout. The shower of bullets doesn't let up, and Clarice isn't moving in John's arms, not fast enough. John tries to shield her from the recoil of the bullets hitting his back, so she can get stationary enough to build a portal, but each impact takes more out of him. His body may be dense enough to stop the bullets, but it doesn't protect him from the pain.

His desperate try for stability is what loses him in the end. Clarice is still struggling to extend her portal beyond a few sparks, and Marcos is too far away to reach them. John stills as much as he can, and the abused, battered skin of his back gives way to too many bullets hitting the same spots. He feels them get through, tearing through his body, slowed and stopped by the density of his muscles.

"Now!" he shouts, lifting Clarice in his arms as she finally opens the portal. He runs, awkwardly moving crab-like to keep shielding her, until they're close enough to Marcos.

The last flight of bullets makes him stumble as he passes the portal, searing pain engulfing his back and coming down his legs, and he falls to his knees. He only barely manages to let go of Clarice so he doesn't take her with him.

"John?" Clarice asks as the portal winks out of existence behind them.

John hears her voice as if from far away. He registers vaguely that the ground underneath him is soft and wet, that the impacts on his back have stopped, that the deafening noise is gone, but the pain doesn't lessen.

"John?"

He tries to breathe, but it hurts too much. John is no stranger to pain, despite his body's extraordinary resistance to almost everything. He doesn't do a job where he can afford to avoid it. But this pain tearing through his back is worse than almost anything he's felt before.

"John, you're bleeding," Marcos says from somewhere above him. Hands are on him, suddenly, and he wants to shake them off but he can't move. They tear at his vest, at his shirt, trying to get them off, but every move sends a fresh wave of pain through his back.

"What the hell happened?" Lorna's worried voice joins the others.

"Security got us," Marcos says. "John took too many bullets, I think."

"Where the hell is Campbell?" Esme asks.

John bites back a scream as his vest is ripped off him. Through his tracking power, he feels Lorna kneel beside him and cut through his shirt with one of her knives. His eyes are closed, and all his energy right now is on breathing. The rest of the conversation−shouting match, really−between Esme and Marcos escapes him.

The one thing that gets through the pain fog is the trample of guards coming from the building.

"We have to go," John breathes, trying to straighten up and off his knees. "They're coming."

"No, we can't!" John isn't even sure if Esme or Lorna is the one who says that. His vision is blackening around the edges, and he has to keep himself from falling on his face.

"We have to go," Marcos repeats.

John carefully reaches up to get his arm around Marcos' shoulders, riding the fresh wave of pain. He doesn't know if the pain is actually receding or if he's just able to think through it better thanks to adrenaline, but things aren't as foggy anymore and he's able to open his eyes again.

"Come on," Marcos whispers in his ear. "It's not far."

Marcos can't take his whole weight, John's dense body is too heavy for anyone to lift him, but he does his best to stabilize him as John gets to his feet. The sensation of the bullets shifting inside his body as he moves is sickening, but the pain is finally nearing a level where he can breathe through it.

It allows him, at least, to take stock of his injuries. Bullets have gone through his skin in what feels like four places, though the rest of his back is probably a mess of bruises. They have mainly buried in muscle, stopped from going through by the density of his tissues. The bullet that's the origin of most of the pain, though, doesn't shift at all as John stands up, and he can't really feel the metal. It's in the middle of his back, possibly buried in a vertebra, but John has little choice but to ignore it for now.

"Few more steps."

He leans on Marcos as little as possible getting to the car, knowing his weight could crush his friend easily. It takes them far longer than it should to get him into the passenger seat.

"There you are," Marcos keeps up his constant stream of encouragements. John tries to hang onto it, his world reduced to pain.

Now shirtless, John groans when his wounds brush against the back of the seat and hunches over. This is the Frost sisters' car, he doesn't care much about bleeding all over it, but his back is too sore to rest against anything.

"We need to put pressure on those," Marcos says, getting in the back seat behind John. He pushes the back of the seat between them as far back as it can go to get access to John's back. "Are the bullets still inside?"

"Yeah," John nods after a beat. His reactions are too slow, his senses distorted and mixing up.

"Dammit. Do you have medical supplies?" Marcos asks Esme, who is behind the wheel.

"At the house," she says. "I'm afraid we prepared for interrogations more than for medical emergencies, though."

"Clarice, can you keep pressure on these?" Marcos asks, shifting to let Clarice closer to where John is trying to straighten up. He hands her John's ruined jacket and guides her to press on two of the wounds on John's left side. John groans and fights his instinct to get away, while Esme brings the car onto the interstate.

John manages to stay more or less coherent through the ride back to the safe house, and to get inside on his own. It's for the best, because none of the others could actually carry him if they tried. He let them sit him down on a stool and take a closer look at his wounds without protest, too wiped out to pretend he's fine.

"We need Lorna to get the bullets out," Marcos says. "Where is she?"

"I don't know, she was just here," Clarice says, looking around.

John looks up from where he's sitting hunched over a table, Marcos and Clarice still trying to slow the bleeding with the packs of gauze they found in the bathroom. His back is on fire, but he's regained that clarity of mind that escaped him earlier.

"She left about ten minutes ago," he says, letting his perception shift to the past. He didn't notice her leaving when she did, which is not a good sign as to his state of health, but he can't ponder on that right now.

Stars fill his vision before he finds the strength to go any further. He sways, catching himself on the edge of the table. He's lost too much blood.

"John!" Clarice exclaims.

John painfully turns toward her, then looks down where she's pointing to the table. The wood is cracking around his hand.

"Damn," he says, removing his hand. It's been a while since he's lost track of his own body this badly.

"I'll go look for Lorna," Marcos says.

John wants to tell him to wait, that he can find her quicker, but it's beyond him at the moment. He slumps over instead, letting himself lean fully on the table. He's tired.

"John, stay with me," Clarice urges, distressed. "You can't go to sleep right now."

She has her hands full trying to keep pressure on all his wounds at once, and John can't see her since she's behind him, but he struggles to keep his eyes open. "'m okay," he murmurs.

"No you're not," Clarice says. "You've got holes in your back."

"I know," John answers.

He doesn't know how long he fights the urge to close his eyes, but Marcos's return startles him.

"I can't find Lorna," he says.

John frowns, shaking his head to clear it. Straightening up with a hiss of pain, he opens his senses as far as they can go.

"She's gone," he says. "And she's not the only one."

"What do you mean?"

"She left with two of the sisters. I don't know−"

John barely catches himself when new pain erupts down his back, spreading down his legs. He groans.

"Something's wrong," he says. "We need to go after her."

"You can't move right now," Clarice says. "We have to get those bullets out of you."

"And we can't do that without Lorna," John says, the rush of adrenaline clearing his mind. "Don't worry about me. Just dress the wounds the best you can so I don't bleed out."

"But−"

"Look, we don't have time for this. We need to know what's going on."

"Fine," Clarice relents. Marcos looks torn between looking for Lorna and taking care of his best friend, but he nods.

Between the two of them, they pack John's wounds with gauze and make the best pressure bandages they can manage. John endures it all stoically, bracing himself on the ruined table, though he can feel his strength seeping out of him. Marcos helps him into a shirt and hands him a bottle of water, hoping to replace some of the blood he's lost.

Though he's limping worse with every step, John doesn't take Marcos's proffered arm to help him walk, unwilling to risk crushing his friend. Between his weight and his current inability to properly feel his body, he can't trust himself. He tries not to show how much each movement feels like fire running up and down his legs and back.

There's something wrong with his body that's more than a few bullets tearing through skin and muscles, but he can't deal with that right now. They need to find Lorna.

They're too late.

Seeing Lorna ready to bring down a plane, of all things, gives John the strength to try to stop her, but she doesn't let him. He can only feel vaguely relieved that she uses barbed wire to do that and not the bullets in his back, but Lorna's not cruel. She's angry, always full of righteous rage, perhaps even more since she got out of prison, but she doesn't want to hurt her friends.

John stumbles in front of the barbed wire and nearly falls to his knees. He catches himself, barely, against Clarice until she bends under his weight. His legs are starting to feel like lead, and he has a hard time finding his balance again.

"This isn't why the X-Men chose us," he tries to shout at Lorna. His voice is stupidly weak and tired.

"The X-Men made a mistake," Lorna says. "This is who I am."

John closes his eyes, dismayed. If Lorna does this, it will mean the failure of everything they've built together. Lorna is capable of this, of wanting this, John has always known that, but he's tried his best to protect her.

"I'm tired of hiding."

He's failed.

"This changes everything," Marcos shouts. "This will change everything."

The desperation in his voice is the one they all feel, yet he's the only one who still holds on to faith. John let go of his long ago.

He already knows Lorna is going to do it whatever they try.

He sways again, grunting.

"You alright?" Clarice murmurs while Lorna and Marcos argue.

"Yeah," John says. He's not the one they need to worry about right now, but he's fading fast.

"It's time to make a new world," is the only thing he catches from Lorna's last words.

His senses a mess of pain and confusion, he doesn't even notice the plane taking off before it starts coming apart in the air. They all look on, fascinated, as it catches on fire above them, and starts falling.

What's left of the place explodes the moment it touches the ground, close, too close to them. John's brain is too foggy to anticipate what he should know is coming, the blast of air and heat that throws them the the ground. He can't shield Clarice or Marcos, and they are projected violently onto the hard dirt floor.

The last thing John feels before blacking out is agony exploding down his back.