Author's Note: Takes place in the early years of the X-men, back when it was just the original team. Scott and Warren talk. I suppose you could read some of it as slashy, but that wasn't the intent.
Rose-colored Wings
"What's it like?" he asked me one day. We were still teenagers then, and he was grumpy because he was molting. I suppose it was understandable. Warren was the only guy I knew who had to groom daily, and now he was shedding feathers left and right, and his wings were in puffy disarray.
I turned to look at him. He was still perched on the lowest tree branch he could find, wings curved around him, stray feathers wafting into the air. "What do you mean?"
He shrugged without losing his precarious balance. "Seeing everything in red."
"What's it like with wings?" I retorted as I realized I had never thought of that before. Having eyes like this had become normal to me.
He scowled. "Answer me, Scott."
I sighed and leaned back into the tree trunk, tilting my head to keep him in my view. "I don't know. I've never really thought about it."
"Well think now."
"You know the saying about seeing the world through rose-colored glasses? It's nothing like that. Everything still looks normal."
"Except that it's red?"
"Pink, mostly," I conceded. "At least lighter colors are pink, darker ones are redder."
"Haven't you ever wondered what it would be like to see normal colors again?" he asked.
I thought again, and shrugged. "I don't know. I've gotten used to filtering out the red haze, so I think I have a pretty good idea of what things really look like."
"And wearing glasses all the time doesn't bother you?"
"Not anymore. Besides," I laughed shortly, "think of what would happen if I didn't."
"I see your point," he said, now merely a smooth voice somewhere above me. I turned around to see him, a disgruntled look on his face as he tried half-heartedly to reorganize his feathers.
"What about having wings? And dealing with all this?" I grabbed for a wafting feather and it merely spiraled away from me.
He shrugged, losing more feathers. "It doesn't happen that often. Besides, it's worth the benefits of having them."
I looked with some jealousy at his wings. Even when he was molting they were beautiful. As much as I hated to admit it, Warren could've had earned his codename purely by his looks alone. He didn't even have to fight on the side of good to be called Angel. I, on the other hand, was named for what? A monster of mythic proportions, one-eyed and brutish. I actually had to work to prove that being Cyclops did not mean I was slow or stupid.
I guess my envy showed because Warren coughed softly. "Something wrong, Scott?"
I shook my head and looked away from him and his wings. "I just wish – " I paused, realizing that this was Warren I was divulging secrets too. Warren, the snotty rich boy with the perfect life. Instantly, I felt a rush of shame. His life had been no more perfect than mine, in its own way.
"Wish what?" he prompted.
"I just wish my mutation was different." I wondered if he'd get my meaning from the stress of the words, but then, he had always been good at reading things like that. He didn't say anything, and when I looked up at him, he shrugged.
"What do you want me to say? I wish your mutation was different too. Maybe you'd be less of a control freak."
"That helps," I replied sarcastically. "Maybe if your mutation was different, you'd be less of a clean freak."
He grinned, ignoring the hostility in my voice. "You wish. Don't you think everyone wishes their mutation were different at some point? Or that they weren't a mutant at all?"
"Even you?" I challenged. He sighed and swooped out of the tree, showering me with twigs and leaves. I could hear his wingbeats and he landed in front of me, hands on his hips.
"Yes, even me, you dolt," he sat facing me, letting his wings drop into the grass. "Listen, Scott, I know you think I'm just a spoiled brat…"
I found I couldn't, in all honesty, disagree, so I gave him a sheepish smile. "Not 'just.' I did at first."
Warren held up a hand to stop me. "…but when these first came in, I wanted to kill myself. Sure, it was cool being able to fly, but at the time I thought I'd never be able to go swimming again and that I'd always have to wear a trench coat to hide the harness. At that time, these," and he flapped his wings once, scattering feathers, "cost me more freedom than they gained."
I had never thought about his mutation like that. Wings had always been representative of a liberty I would never find; flight seemed the ultimate escape.
"I guess I always thought of you in your vigilante days, you know, when you could fly around, and you were helping people and they praised you for it," I told him and he smiled grimly.
"That was a fun time."
I waited for him to offer another comment, but instead, he cocked his head to one side in a very bird-like movement and studied me.
"What do I look like?" he asked. My mouth fell open. That was a typically narcissistic comment, but I had no idea what he was asking. He laughed at my surprise. "I mean, with the red."
"Well," I looked at him. "Um… you have pink skin…"
"Really? I thought it was blue!" he exclaimed. "Come on."
I glared at him, and I hoped he picked up on it. "Fine. Your have violet eyes and your hair is orange. Your wings are pink and you're wearing a purple shirt and dark orange pants."
He made a face. "Sounds horrible to me."
"You're not bad-looking," slipped out before I thought about what I was saying. Warren grinned broadly and started laughing. His teeth were pink, and for a brief moment I wanted to punch him there to make him stop.
I opened my mouth to correct myself, but he managed to gasp out, "I get it, Scott. I know what you meant. It's just…" And he started giggling to himself like a little kid again.
"Warren," I sighed, suddenly not in the mood. "Stop."
Once again, he showed his perceptive side and shut up before I had to hurt him. He stood up, mouth set in a straight line, but I could see mischief in his eyes. "Something you're not telling me, Scott?"
I really glared. I knew he could see it because he took a step back and his wings curved protectively around his arms. "Well, for one, there's the strength of the urge I have right now to punch you."
"Try it," he threw back, then a slow smirk twisted his lips. "Pansy."
And I knew we were back to bantering, in our own insulting way. I stood up and spread my hands innocently. "Me, a pansy? I don't think so. You're the one who spends hours every day in front of the mirror preening."
"Hey," he shrugged and more feathers shook free from his wings. "A bird's gotta do what a bird's gotta do."
I raised an eyebrow. "That's the best comeback you could come up with?"
"Uh, yeah," he rubbed at the back of his neck. "I'm kinda out of it when I'm molting."
"Nice try, Warren," I said, but let him off the hook. He was being unusually friendly – no, that was unfair – we were getting along unusually well, probably because Jean wasn't around. She was a sore spot for Warren, since it was obvious that she wasn't responding to his advances, and he had told me that she liked me, but I didn't believe it. Why would she like me?
"You're thinking about her again, aren't you?" he asked me sharply. Those hawk eyes of his missed nothing.
"Yeah," I admitted, bringing my focus back to him. I noted that both of us had instantly know who 'she' was.
"She does like you, you know," he replied, a bit wistfully. "Don't you like her?"
Of course I did. But I wasn't going to tell him that. I must've waited too long to answer, because a small frown crossed his face. A sore spot indeed.
"You do. It's so damn obvious that you both want each other. Why don't you do anything about it?"
"She doesn't – " like me, I started to protest, but he cut me off.
"Yes, she does, Scott. I can tell whenever you're in the same room as her. And you, God, you're so blind, you can't even see it."
I wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind. He sighed heavily and spread his wings. When I started forward, he shook his head. "No, Scott. Don't." He lifted off the ground with slow, sweeping strokes and hovered above me for a moment. "That was a nice moment," he said ambiguously, before he soared away, disappearing into the sun's glare.
I sat down by the tree again. He would be back, later, probably arriving in time for dinner, but with no time before to sit around and make small talk with any of us. Hank and Bobby would pretend to be oblivious and try to at the dinner table, but I knew that Hank – genius that he was – could always pick out anyone in a Mood, and Bobby knew Warren better than the rest of us, and could see right through him. The professor would know and so would Jean – if she focused on him for a few seconds. Only I would not really be able to tell, but since I was the cause of his current surliness, I knew more than the rest of them. It was satisfying, in a way, to not be the one in the dark, but as I looked at the path he had taken, I knew it wasn't worth ruining that brief sincere time. I turned to go back inside, and knew that once there we would go back to being rivals – both for Jean and in the Danger Room, and I would stay in the mansion when he would take the others out to Harry's, and we'd grudgingly respect each other and maybe even pretend to have to pretend to get along. As I turned away from the tree and the feathers clinging to the grass, I knew one thing for sure.
The moment was over.
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