A/N: Yes I realise that Wanda has been re-retconned(? is there a technical term for when you retcon information that was retconned into existence in the first place) to no longer be Magneto's daughter but shh. Roll with it.

Warnings for fairly graphic descriptions of violence and death; largely-psychological torture. Supervillain!AU. Or; supervillains-in-training of the well-intended extremist type. Basically, they are super cute, and super down with murder.

-now-

His grandfather has never sent him out on an assassination before. (And when he's working, Billy's supposed to think of him as Magneto, but he can't quite manage to disconnect like that. Every admonishment, every time he'd been passed over in the past had felt deeply personal because they're family, and his grandfather hadn't believed in him enough to do some of their most important work.) But now that he's finally trusted with a regrettable but necessary murder, Billy is determined to prove himself.

He's done the research. He's done so much, so carefully. He never went to school, but he thinks he would have been good at it. He studied the senator's days and nights and planned his own movement meticulously, with a relentlessness and focus he usually only has for comic books. And once-upon-a-time, for learning to fly. Billy doesn't necessarily like the idea of killing someone. It all seems a little messy to him, a little too likely to go wrong. But in this case, he doesn't dislike it either. The senator is proposing putting forward a bill that would force the sterilisation of mutants. And the Brotherhood know it would never pass, but they can't risk it. They don't want to risk it. They want the senator stopped. And his grandfather sent Billy to do it.

Nothing can go wrong. He knows where every member of staff will be at any moment of the day, and he knows exactly what the senator will be doing.

Billy teleports into the hall between the waiting room and the senator's office, and knows immediately that something has gone wrong. The building is almost silent. Every time Billy has listened in in the past week there has been a constant noise - staff chatting in conference rooms and the kitchen, visitors awkwardly shuffling around in the waiting room, the secretary tapping away at her keyboard. But now there is nothing but the steady buzz of electricity from the lights and the refrigerator. And the smell of blood and death, sharp and metallic and invasive. Billy may be here for an assassination, but he doesn't have the stomach to look around the corners and into the rooms of the building. Nor the time. Instead, he heads straight to the senator's office.

The door is opened a crack, and the stench that wafts out into the hall from that room is worse than anywhere else. It reeks of fear; a body that betrayed itself, though whether before or after death Billy can't be sure. And suddenly, he's furious. This was his assassination. He was the one who was supposed to kill the senator to protect mutant kind, and make is grandfather proud. He had planned for this, thought about nothing else for weeks, and someone just swoops in and steals it from him?

He's about to blast open the door when something else drifts out the open gap - a pleasant voice singing absentmindedly. And Billy has to stuff his fist in his mouth to stop his laughter when he hears the words: "mmm whatcha say."

It's that that makes him decide to take it easy on the stranger. Oh, he's still going to kill them. He came here for a murder and he's going to leave with one. But it's cute, really, the stranger singing to themselves, and it's that brief moment of levity that makes Billy decide not to hurt them for taking away his chance to prove himself, and instead just kill them quickly. Billy gathers his magic and steps into the office, shooting lightning ahead of himself. As he does so, he finds himself singing back. "Mmm whatcha say." He feels an odd flash of contentment in the fact that, for a very brief moment, at least the stranger will know that they were killed by someone with good taste.

Then the lightning clears and Billy can see into the room and he knows he's in trouble, because the assassination-thief growls and turns away from the mangled corpse of the senator - its lips blue, burst capillaries leaving ugly red marks across its face, its shirt stained with blood, a dark line across its neck, its eyes wide and staring - and Billy sees big and green and hard, and he throws himself sideways on instinct because his lightning was not strong enough to do much more than piss off a Skrull.

A pen is launched at high speeds towards his throat, but Billy's movement makes it sink deep into his shoulder instead. And even if he could work through the sudden, intense shock of pain to raise his arm and cast a spell it wouldn't matter. Because his own gasp and the sound of his blood rushing passed his ears isn't loud enough to mask the sound of the Skrull singing, echoing his own reply. And it's so absurd - the whole situation - that Billy just laughs as his body goes into shock.

-then-

Rebecca Kaplan knows her son will be special. It comes to her in a dream. She always tells her patients to pay attention to their dreams, to look for stressors and clues in their subconscious' imaginings, no matter how abstract. But this dream isn't a dream. The vision of the Scarlet Witch that appears behind her closed eyelids is very real, and Rebecca knows immediately that this is no unconscious fantasy. In this world of monsters and metahumans it is not so hard to believe that an Avenger sits down beside her in her dream and tells her that her son will one day be a magic user so powerful he will be able to change the multiverse itself.

Rebecca gives birth and she names her son William; the name the Scarlet Witch let slip and thought she didn't notice. When they ask, she says it in a whisper, and Jeff knows something is strange - she had told him about her dream, but not about the name. He calls their son Billy, and it makes the boy feel more like theirs, and not a child linked to curious dreams and prophesies.

She keeps a close eye on Billy, doesn't let him wander. She takes him into her practice and he sits in the corner and plays with the stuffed toys she buys him, instead of going to daycare with other children. Jeff takes him out to the park or the library sometimes, when she needs some time alone, but Billy knows he's not allowed out of sight. He's such a well behaved boy.

Nothing they do helps. No amount of watching their son, keeping him close, is enough to stop him from being taken from them. They lock their apartment up securely, but when Billy is three, Rebecca wakes in the middle of the night knowing something is wrong. She runs to Billy's room, but it is too late. The window is thrown open - the locks a twisted, melted mess on the windowsill - and Billy is gone.

She will see him again, when he is older. Many times. But she will never know that he is her son. There will be moments - a photograph from a specific angle, a video catching the way he smiles - when she will recognise something, but the thought will slip from her mind as if she never had it. And she will see Billy in news reports and the paper and will turn to her two young sons and warn them of how easy it is to go too far and forget other people exist. How she and Jeff nearly did the same when their brother was stolen, but they decided they couldn't let it control their life forever. Nor stop them from ever feeling love again.

And she will never stop looking.

-now-

Billy wakes. That is the first surprise.

Billy wakes in a large bed, covered in a soft, heavy blanket. It's warm and it's comfortable but it's not his, and he makes sure to blink his eyes open slowly so as not to betray his fear. He's not alone. There's a boy sitting in a chair next to him, his feet propped up on the bed and head bent over a comic book. Somehow, Billy knows that he's the Skrull from the senator's office.

If Billy could change his appearance at will, he'd probably choose to look as stunning as this boy. But he'd never pull it off. He would copy other people, steal bits and pieces of appearances that he liked until he was a mess of mismatching parts. The Skrull looks like no one Billy has ever seen, and better than any of them; big and broad, with muscles that are practical and intimidating, not just for show. Solid, but his features are surprisingly delicate. He has rings and cuffs lining all the way up both ears, and unless they're fake and make of plastic then they're Billy's best chance of rescue. Skrull are tough and heal fast, but having half of their ears ripped off will probably incapacitate for long enough.

The Skrull must feel him staring, because he looks up from his comic and blond hair flops down into bright blue eyes. "Good morning, sleeping beauty." He says and he smiles. It's devastating. And any halfhearted plans Billy had to attack him go right out the window in the face of that grin. He curses his own heart as it skips a beat and sends all the blood rushing to his face in an embarrassing blush. The Skrull smiles wider.

"Why didn't you kill me?" Billy asks, his voice raspy with what he hopes is tiredness.

The Skrull gives him a look that clearly communicates that he thinks Billy is an idiot. "You're William Lehnsherr." He says, in a voice that suggests that the fact is something to be celebrated, and not something he should be imprisoned for. Then again, Billy did meet him shortly after he killed an anti-Mutant senator, so the Skrull may be sympathetic to the Brotherhood's cause.

"Billy." He finds himself correcting. He doesn't remember much of his mother. His grandfather told him she lost control of her powers and he was left with him, but Billy does know that she had soft brown hair and a kind smile and she called him Billy. He doesn't want to forget that, but it's not a name he normally shares with strangers.

"Billy." The Skrull agrees. "I'm Teddy."

"Funny name for a Skrull." Billy says without thinking about it and immediately feels like a bit of a jerk. Luckily, Teddy just laughs.

"They tell me my name is Dorrek. But I grew up on Earth, so the Skrull and the Kree can suck it. I'm not going to go fix their problems until I've sorted out this planet, and I'm keeping my funny human name."

There's an awful lot of questions that Billy could ask of that, but he's not quite feeling up to it right now. Instead he focuses on the present. "Why did you kill the senator?" He asks. "You're not a mutant."

"What? A guy can't have principles?" Teddy replies, and then shrugs. "A lot of the kids on the streets are mutants, and they trust me to look after them."

Billy lets silence reign for a moment, then says "My grandfather will come for me."

"I know."

"Hoping to run away before he gets here? Because even if you do, he will hunt you down."

"No," Teddy says, and he smiles again. And Teddy is probably the most beautiful boy Billy has ever seen. It's ridiculous. "I was kind of hoping you'd tell him to let me live."

And Billy laughs.

-then-

Teddy thinks he is simply an early-blooming mutant, until the Super-Skrull comes for him. He is twelve when he discovers he is supposed to be the hope of reconciliation between two eternally waring alien empires that either want to steal him for their planets, or see him dead. Twelve when he watches the woman who raised him burned to death in front of his eyes.

The Super-Skrull grabs him after, but he is still young enough that the rules of shifting seem silly to him, and he changes rapidly and violently - in ways he wouldn't dare to when he's older because he knows better, and knows how easy it is to get stuck in a shape you don't fit - and manages to escape to the streets.

He hides. For years. He doesn't have any family, or any friends that he'd put in danger. He sleeps in alleys and abandoned buildings, eating at homeless shelters or rooting through the trash for food. He runs; from the authorities who want to put him in foster care, from other people living rough. And he keeps low, stays out of trouble, tries to be a good boy like his mom taught him - he never steals, only takes what's freely given. He's afraid. All of the time. Anyone he sees could be the Super-Skrull come back to take him away. He shifts himself into inanimate objects at night in the hope that no one will notice he exists. It's uncomfortable, and it makes him feel wrong, being a cardboard box or a broken TV or anything else that could be garbage. But it's safe, and he can be no one.

And then a man tries to mug him. It should be obvious he has nothing. His clothes are old and torn and dirty and he's barefoot in an alley in winter, staring at a dumpster and wondering if it's worth it, or if he should go to the shelter and have someone risk noticing how young he is and contact the authorities. Teddy doesn't want to run again, but he's good at it. Yet despite the ragged appearance of his clothing, he's careful to keep his face and hair neat, his frame in a healthy-looking condition so most gazes will slide right over him. And it's that that makes the mugger think he has something to steal.

The man has a gun and a nervous, jittery look in his eyes as he demands Teddy give up his money. When he tells him he doesn't have any, the man gets angry, his hands shaking as he cocks the gun, finger dangerously close to the trigger. And Teddy doesn't know what to do. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and he doesn't want to die but he has nothing to give to save himself. He makes an attempt to flee, anyway, to slide under the man's arm and out of the alley, but as soon as he moves there's a bang that makes his ears ring and a sharp, fiery pain in his gut that makes him look down and see blood and suddenly, without thinking, Teddy shifts.

The next thing he remembers he's standing over a body. There's five holes through it's chest, and Teddy's left hand is green and huge and covered in blood dripping down off the ends of claws. He breathes heavily, tries to remember where he is and who he is and his stomach rolls sickeningly as he looks down at what he's done.

But he doesn't run. He's done running.

Teddy's fourteen, and it's the first time since his mom died that he's felt powerful and unafraid.

-now-

They sneak into a movie together. Billy would have liked to pay for them both, like a proper date. But Teddy refuses on principle. If the world is going to label them villains, he says, they may as well get some good from it. Billy has never actually committed a petty crime before. It feels strangely naughty, in a way that extortion and blackmail never has. He supposes it's because he's not doing this to help anyone else. Just himself and Teddy.

They take a seat at the back to the cinema; holding hands, their heads bent together as they giggle together like they're normal teenagers doing something a little wrong, and not two people who met over a corpse.

The movie is something dumb that markets itself as a comedy but doesn't seem to have any actual jokes Billy picks up on. It doesn't matter. He's not here for what's happening onscreen. He sneaks frequent glances at Teddy, and every time he looks a little different. Billy realises Teddy's playing with his appearance, copying bits and pieces from the actors. But he always returns to the same form, and maybe he's really attached to the face, or maybe Teddy's base form really is the one he presents to the world. Which is just unfair, that Teddy is a shapeshifter that doesn't even need to use the power to look hotter. It's also strange, because Skrull aren't supposed to look like teenage humans. Billy resolves to actually ask about what Teddy said when they introduced themselves.

They walk to a comic book store after the movie. Teddy holds on tight to Billy's hand all the way from the cinema, doesn't even flinch when they step out into bright daylight and the public. Billy isn't exactly in the closet, but he isn't exactly out, either. He kind of lives in this liminal space where everyone suspects, but no one says anything. That doesn't mean they don't let their opinions known, of course. Most of the Brotherhood is fine with it. It's not as if he's the only one, after all. But there's always a few bad apples. And they let it be, for the large part. Either because they're afraid of what Magneto would do if they tried anything, or they're afraid of what Billy would do. Even so, he's been 'accidentally' zapped and burnt enough times that he keeps quiet about it.

Teddy appears to have no such reservations. And when Billy focuses on the feel of Teddy's fingers laced through his own, he forgets all about his own nerves.

They duck into an alley next to the comic's store, and Teddy grins at him and shifts and suddenly Billy is standing face-to-chest with a fully decked out Captain America. It's a testament to how stupidly infatuated he is with Teddy that Billy is momentarily disappointed by his new view. Then he looks up into Steve Rogers' face and Teddy winks at him and ducks around the corner and into the shop.

Billy only manages to count to three before he hears a scream, followed but half a dozen or so more voices raised in excitement. And he pulls up his hood, waits a few seconds and slips unnoticed into the store. He pauses for a moment to acknowledge how much of a shame it is that he can't just stop and watch Teddy work. He actually hears someone full-on swoon behind him, like a character in a Victorian romance novel.

Instead, Billy opens a portal that links to his bedroom and starts shoving comics through it. It doesn't even matter which ones; they're going for speed and quantity over quality here, and Billy upends entire tubs of comics through the portal and hopes that there's something in there that they'll like.

When he's emptied the whole back of the store, he makes eye contact with Teddy over the small crowed around him and walks back out the front door. Teddy follows close behind, already shifting back into his own form. Billy takes his hand and they wait around just long enough to hear the beginnings of outraged voices rising from the shop and Billy teleports them away.

They end up back in his bedroom and Teddy collapses backwards onto the bed, yanking Billy down alongside him. It's uncomfortable - the bed covered in comic books sticking into his back at awkward angles - but Teddy is giggling again and still holding his hand and it's Billy's first ever first date, but he knows he's never going to have a better one.

Or - with any luck - another one.

-then-

His powers manifest at fourteen, and his grandfather wastes no time telling Billy exactly what he really wants from him: to create a new world. To create a universe where mutants rule, and humanity knows its place as an evolutionary throwback that will evolve or perish. A world created in his grandfather's image, where he is King.

But Billy doesn't want to change reality. The thought that he could is terrifying. The thought that he could take away the free will of not only people, but the entire universe. He's read enough science fiction to know nothing good could come of it.

And besides, Billy doesn't want to live in a world that exonerates humans from their crimes. His unwillingness to change reality is not through benevolence and forgiveness. Billy learnt to read in his grandfather's library, and every book within detailed the history of the oppression of mutants. He knows how they have been treated - feared and hurt and locked away. Used as weapons and destroyed. Experimented on.

He doesn't want a reality where human's don't know what they're being punished for. Billy wants to change this one. For humans to live with the knowledge that they have been beaten.

-now-

Billy takes hold of the knife sticking out of Teddy's chest and pulls. It slides out disturbingly silently. Billy had expected something more dramatic. It had made an odd sort of wet thunk sound going in, and he had thought it would be somewhat similar coming out. Instead, all that happens is one side of Billy's fist is smeared with Teddy's blood, and Billy determinately looks away. Teddy doesn't move.

"Now if you're done wasting our time," Billy says to the man who just stuck a knife in his boyfriend, in the most bored voice he can muster. "We'd like to have a chat about your client."

The guy runs out of the building five minutes later, with the agreement to tell his clint to drop all charges against the Brotherhood. Teddy lets out a little whimper and sits down heavily on the floor. Billy rushes to kneel at his side. A knife wound, no matter where it is, definitely isn't enough to kill Teddy or even really injure, but Billy hates seeing him bleeding and in pain.

"I forgot how much being stabbed hurts." Teddy says through gritted teeth.

"You…forgot?"

Teddy draws in a slow breath as the knife wound starts to seal itself closed. "Well it does't happen often."

It shouldn't happen at all, Billy thinks, but the lawyer had surprised them. They hadn't expected a human to be stupid enough to actually attack them, and he'd unsheathed his knife and stabbed Teddy while they were still doing their good-cop-bad-cop routine.

Billy's grandfather doesn't like Teddy. He spared his life because Billy asked, but he thinks he's distracting. Billy doesn't understand it, because Teddy is extremely useful in their line of work. Billy can scare humans easily, show them a little lighting and they usually bend over backwards to do what he tells them - the recent stabbing incident notwithstanding. Mutants are a little more difficult, and aren't often impressed with the little day-to-day magics Billy uses for intimidation. Having Teddy there improves the process exponentially. No one likes Skrulls, and having Teddy big and green and clawed, standing behind him and glowering with his arms crossed, is enough to make almost anyone pause and reconsider their disagreement.

Plus, Teddy can get stabbed and not flinch, which is a pretty cool look.

He finishes healing, and Billy reaches out and puts his hand on the tear in Teddy's shirt. He focuses and repeats his chosen mantra and the clothes stitch themselves together as cleanly as the flesh underneath, the blood leeching out of the material and into nothingness. They stay there for a while, Billy's hand on Teddy's chest where he can feel his heartbeat, until Billy is sure emotionally and not just intellectually that Teddy will be all right.

Billy stands after a tense moment, and hold his head town to Teddy. Teddy takes it, and Billy yanks as hard as he can. Teddy shoots up like a rocket, and Billy would like to take credit for that, but he can't really lift Teddy without magic. But they're still holding hands, so the logistics of it all matter very little to him. He reaches up with his other had and pats very gently down Teddy's shirt where he had been stabbed mere minutes before. He nods in satisfaction at a job well done.

"Milkshakes?" Billy asks. He and Teddy have been dating for a few weeks now, but Billy still gets a thick tongue and a dry throat when he asks Teddy out.

Teddy beams down at him, covering the hand patting his shirt with his own. "Lead the way."

-then-

Teddy takes to spending more and more time in his Skrull form, until he never changes back unless he's alone and feels safe. It's not as comfortable a fit as what he supposes is technically his Kree look; but that one is too easily mistaken for human, and it makes him feel vulnerable in a way Skrulls never are.

A few days later, he notices a group of young kids; always at a distance, but who seem to be following him. And when he sees one of them floating in midair and another coax flowers to grow through gaps in the sidewalk, Teddy knows that they're all mutants. He invites them to stay in the abandoned store he has staked out as his own dry place to sleep, and over the next two weeks the building slowly fills with mutant children who have nowhere else to go and think Teddy can protect them.

He doesn't need to see the bruises or the way some of the kids flinch away at loud noises to know that they're not all orphans like him.

Pretty soon they start to run out of food and water. Many humans ignore the homeless, but even those who will give their spare change to someone who needs it tend to give mutants a wide berth. Shelters and kitchens aren't supposed to discriminate, but more than half the time they tell Teddy it's too much of a security risk to let him in.

Staying away from crime stops becoming an option, if he's going to keep the kids clothed and fed. He starts talking to them about their lives before they found themselves on the streets, and he gathers a group of some of the older mutants and starts visiting the houses of those that came from well-off families who threw them out of their home. And they cajole and they intimidate and they threaten them into giving up their clothes and money and food for a good cause. Soon, Teddy's little safe-store has enough supplies to keep everyone inside fed and warm.

But it's not all smooth sailing. It isn't long before Teddy accidentally brings a small girl along with him to her old house, and when he comes back from raiding the pantry he finds both the parents dead. The girl stares up at him from over their corpses, and her look is one of fear, but also a defiance that challenges him to say something. Teddy remembers her black eye when he first met her, the cuts on her feet and the hollowness of her cheeks. Her broken arm is still healing, and they don't have the resources to set it properly, so it's likely that she will have problems with it for the rest of her life.

And Teddy remembers his mom's face all those years ago, as she burnt and screamed and burnt right in front of his eyes. He doesn't know what he'd do to the Super-Skrull if he ever saw him again. But maybe not everyone deserves to live.

Teddy shrugs at the girl, puts his arm around her shoulders and leads her outside. He looks back just before they turn down the next street. The house is huge, and their little abandoned store is rapidly running out of room for all the mutant kids who find themselves homeless and fall through the cracks before Xavier's Institute can catch them. Luckily, it appears a whole new housing opportunity has just opened up for them.

-now-

Billy doesn't know if the Avengers are too scared to face his grandfather and the Brotherhood, or if they genuinely didn't know that Magneto was away on the day they apparently planned their raid on the headquarters. Somehow they disable the security systems, so they're inside before Billy and Teddy notice them.

With his grandfather busy, Billy had taken the day to relax. Teddy spent the night, and they woke up late in the morning, the sun high in the sky. When they hear the sound of the headquarter's doors being blown open, Teddy is playing a video game with Billy stretched out over his lap reading some generic fantasy book he is neglecting to really pay attention to in favour of watching Teddy's character run around swinging its sword.

Teddy leaps to his feet, shifting fluidly into his Skrull form, but stumbling into a standing position Billy knows it's already too late to come up with a plan to defend themselves. Instead, he follows through on the only thought that actually matters: protect Teddy. "I'm sorry, Teddy," he says, and Teddy spins away from the door to face him, eyes wide and scared like he knows what Billy's going to do before it happens. He probably does. "I love you." Billy finishes, and Teddy reaches for him but Billy is already chanting what he wants IwantTeddytobesafeIwantTeddytobesafe and Teddy disappears from the room like he was never there, his mouth open in protest, his features shifting smaller and more frightened.

Billy sits down heavily on his bed, head in his hands as he tries not to cry. He's glad he can hold back the tears when his door is ripped off its hinges and Iron Man is standing on the other side. Because he's angry, yes. And he's worried about what's going to happen to him. But on the other hand, it's Iron Man, and Billy's never been able to think of the Avengers as his enemy. They save the world. Literally. On the regular. Billy wouldn't even have a planet he wants to change without them. And they often want the same things as him, they're just too willing to compromise. So Billy admires them far more than he hates them, and getting apprehended is terrifying; but as Iron Man accepts his immediate surrender, Billy can't help but think it's also kind of cool. He's getting arrested by the Avengers. Teddy would tell him he's really made it as a villain.

-00000-

Billy wishes he hadn't really made it as a villain.

He had felt his powers fading as he had approached the prison, like someone was turning down the volume, but he had still thought he would be able to access them, until a grinning guard had approached him, small devices in the mould of earplugs in his hand. Then they were forced roughly into his ears, breaking skin, and it was a few seconds before Billy realised that he was screaming, because he couldn't hear himself. However, he could certainly hear the laughter of the guards.

They leave him alone in his cell. Without the sound of his own voice to break the silence, all Billy can hear is the noises his own body makes, sitting with his arms immobilised and attached to the back of his chair; the thump of his heartbeat, the blood rushing passed the pressure on his eardrums, the gurgle and squelch from his stomach, the incessant rustle of his clothes with each minute movement. Billy tries to sit still, but it only makes his muscles seize and ache and a headache bloom in the top of his spine from the tension. He tries to shout, to make any sound to drown it all out, but then there's the uncomfortably wet sound of his cheeks moving across clicking teeth.

They come back to question him after what feels like an immeasurable amount of time, but is more likely only a few hours if the hunger Billy feels creeping in is any indication. They want to know about the Brotherhood. They want to know the members. They want to know about Magneto. They want to know where he is. The want to know about plans and strategies and powers and weaknesses and Billy tells them nothing.

They leave again, and Billy tries tapping his foot over the sound of his stomach rumbling, but the repetitiveness, the sameness, only makes him frustrated. He hears a hiss that is unlike any noise his body makes and then a clang as the door to his cell bursts open and Teddy stumbles into the room, solid and human and wrong, one side of his body burnt and blistered like Billy imagines his mother must have look when she died. Teddy sinks to the floor and he stops breathing and Billy struggles against his restraints and he shouts and begs IwantTeddytoliveIwantTeddytolive but he cant hear himself, he's useless and he can't help Teddy and he can't do anything as Teddy dies. And then the body fades, and Billy is alone in his cell.

The guards return. They ask about the Brotherhood and his grandfather and their plans. They leave him with an emptiness in his stomach and the silence. The hiss comes again, and Teddy walks through the door. He's whole and perfect and he reaches for Billy's hands, touches skin so lightly and briefly and then is thrown across the room and somehow he's at Billy's feet even though he was behind him as he writhes and convulses and screams and Billy sobs until Teddy's corpse fades. Because his words mean nothing here.

The guards and the questions. The hiss and Teddy. And Billy watches Teddy die, over and over again; burning and electrocution, his head cut off, being forced into the shape of inanimate objects and trapped like that. He can't sleep. The guards entering and exiting and the sounds of Teddy dying keep him on edge and wrung out. His throat hurts from shouting and begging and telling the guards he doesn't know anything, please, he surrendered himself without a fight he's no threat. His stomach aches from hunger, and he can feel blood dripping down over his hands from where he's rubbed his wrists raw in his struggles.

And maybe the Avengers don't know about this. Maybe they don't know what the guards do here. But how could they care so little about the people inside that they wouldn't even think to check?

-00000-

The door swings open, and Billy looks up slowly. It hurts to move, his muscles so tense and so exhausted. Time has escaped him, but he is well passed the point of hunger; instead where his stomach should be, there is only dull weight.

Emma Frost walks into his cell. And even before he shifts, Billy knows that it's Teddy. Somehow, he always knows Teddy, no matter his form. Even that first day, waking in his bed before he knew his name, he knew Teddy and his assassination-thief were one-in-the-same. Teddy is a constant, a truth in his life, even though he hasn't been in it for very long. Billy doesn't understand how he could have mistaken all those fakes for Teddy, now he has the real thing closing the door and shifting back into himself in front of him. He relaxes all at once with a solitary sob.

Teddy doesn't hesitate. He's across the room in a flash and he's real and here and so beautiful and he takes Billy's face between his hands and kisses him with tears in his eyes.

They come apart, but Teddy doesn't let go, and Billy leans in to the feeling of Teddy supporting him. He tells him about the implants - or at least he hopes he does - and Teddy gently tips his head to the side so he can get a closer look. The hand Billy's cheek isn't resting on comes around the back of his head to his neck and Teddy's fingers rub up and down over his spine and press up into the nerve points under his skull in a bid to lessen his headache just a little. Billy doesn't know how Teddy knows about the pain, but he does, and his hands on his skin are the embodiment of warmth and comfort.

Eventually, Teddy speaks. "I'm going to have to pull them out." Billy swallows heavily, and Teddy continues. "This is gonna hurt, babe."

Billy sets his jaw. "Do it."

Teddy moves his hands so they're framing Billy's face again, and he kisses him hard. Billy kisses back just as desperately and there is a brief moment where there is nothing in the multiverse but them, together. And then Teddy yanks his hands away and the implants are ripped out, opening up the barely healed wounds from insertion. Billy bites down instinctively on Teddy's lip between his own and tastes blood filling his mouth but he doesn't pull away immediately, just keeps kissing Teddy as Teddy bleeds and shifts bigger and harder under his hands. When they separate Teddy is most of the way to his Skrull form, but blood drips down from teeth marks in his lip that he kept soft so Billy wouldn't hurt himself. Teddy reaches behind him, sticks one long claw between Billy's wrists and the chain binding them to the chair and pulls it apart. Finally free, Billy grabs ahold of Teddy's arms and stands unsteadily. Teddy's hands come up to encircle his waist.

They breathe in tandem, and then Billy says "I want them dead. All of them."

"Okay." Is the entirety of Teddy's reply before he lefts Billy go and spins away, ripping the cell door of its hinges as he leaves. Billy takes a few steadying breaths, and then pushes his pain and hurt and exhaustion behind the anger, and steps through the hole in the wall.

He can't see Teddy in the hall outside his cell, but he can hear him around the corner and he can see the bodies of some of the guards to show which way he's been. Billy heads off in the opposite direction, to head off anyone trying to sneak up on him. He doesn't have to wait long. A guard comes running around the corner, his gun already in his hand, and Billy doesn't have time to think that he's never killed anyone before because he won't let them hurt him anymore. He won't let them hurt Teddy. He raises his hands and he can hear himself now as he chants IwanthimtodieIwanthimtodieand the guard freezes in his tracks, glows blue for the briefest of moments and then just collapses. It's almost absurdly easy.

Billy kills six more guards before they stop coming and the sounds from behind him stop. In the quiet, Billy finds his gaze landing on the first guard he killed, the first person he ever killed, and thinking how he doesn't feel bad about it. Not one bit. He had thought he would feel conflicted, taking a life, but instead all he can think about is seeing Teddy for the first time over a corpse, and it's still ridiculous but he can't stop himself from singing. "Mmm whatcha say."

He hears a little snort of laughter from behind him and then Teddy's voice is singing back to him. Billy looks up and turns and Teddy is standing just out of reach, a concerned look on his face and blood on his claws and up his arms. And he came to rescue him. Not his grandfather or the Brotherhood. Just Teddy, putting his life on the line to save him. "I love you." He says again, for the second time in his life.

Teddy beams and shrinks down to his usual form as he steps forward all the way until they're chest-to-chest. "I love you too." He replies, before grabbing Billy around the waist and kissing him hungrily. Billy throws his arms around his neck and kisses back.

And Billy doesn't need the rest of them. He only needs Teddy. They did all of this together.

-00000-

A/N: And then somehow they meet the rest of the Young Avengers who have their own backstories as to why they're villains now and they form their own team and they call themselves like the Young Brotherhood except they're not mutants so they're called something else. Whatever.

Don't ask me how the earplugs work okay, maybe they're calibrated to block out the specific frequency of Billy's voice. I don't know.

If I wrote a suuuuppper self-indulgent orchestra AU where Teddy's birth parents are a violinist and a viola player and his mum raised him to play the tuba so doesn't get involved in that String Drama TM, would anyone read it?