Disclaimer: I do not own any of Marvel's characters. The only ones I own are my OC's (mutant and otherwise). I swear the OC's aren't Mary Sue's or Gary Stu's! They're like new mutants in the movies, you gotta give them a chance!

When life gives you cannibals…

Chapter 1: Alone

2 years ago

The first thing his mind registered was the profound silence surrounding him as he slowly regained consciousness. Not the coolness of the earth he was limp against, not the bleeding gash down his face, not the smell of blood and ash and death. He wanted to open his eyes, to survey the damage done, but the darkness pulled him under again in its warm embrace.

After an immeasurable amount of time, his eyes fluttered open, showing him a black sky dotted with a handful of twinkling stars. All he did was blink and breathe for a couple minutes, waiting to see if he would lose consciousness again. There was also a surprising lack of physical pain; just a stinging ache on his forehead, and an itching sensation on his hands. Aside from those sensations, he didn't feel he was dying, so sitting up was the next option. He proceeded slowly, trying to minimalize the sudden bout of dizziness.

He looked down at himself to check for other injuries. His hands were numb and frostbitten, a scarring reminder of his fight with Iceman…which was probably how he got the big ass gash across his handsome face. It wasn't bleeding that bad, but that didn't mean it stopped hurting. He felt around some more, and was relieved to detect zero broken bones or anything more severe. After a deep inhale, he decided to try his luck and stand up. He got up to his full height, but that was when his legs started to shake. He didn't want to fall, so he threw out his arms and managed to stabilize himself before a humiliating flat-on-his-ass-fall could befall him (no pun intended). He breathed heavily through the vertigo that swam through his head, and once it finally assed, he looked around through the nighttime darkness.

No soldiers, No X-Men, no Brotherhood in sight. The ground was littered with debris from the half…he guessed 'vaporized' Worthington Labs and the dozens of cars he incinerated as Magneto flung them around from the bridge. What the hell happened after he lost to his old friend?

The sound of approaching sirens in the distance caught his attention, and he turned his head in the direction of the wails. Police, and the Fire Department, the two he knew by heart. While the sirens sounded nearly identical, an experienced ear like his could pick up the slight audible differences. A helicopter's droning engine also caught his ear, and that was when he started to panic a bit inside. He couldn't see a way out of this that didn't get him shot, cured, or arrested. Though he'd never admit it, weaponizing the cure was actually a pretty smart move on the humans' part. Was it cheating? Yes…but it was effective. He could clearly remember half the Brotherhood forces being essentially wiped out within seconds of their rampage; their cries as the drug stripped them of their mutated DNA, made them powerless, weak. Human.

The sirens were getting louder as each second ticked by, and he just stood there, thinking back on the events of the fight. He looked up to the bridge, sighing in relief as he saw the unused cars slowing the authorities down. This gave him a little time to escape, the only question was 'how'. He couldn't walk across the bridge, he couldn't teleport, and there was no way he could make the swim across to land. He was in a jam, a pickle, a conundrum, and he started to panic more. Should he burn his way across the bri…where the hell were his igniters, anyway?

He spun around, scanning the ground fervently, and his heart sunk a bit when he saw them, broken, layered in ice, in pieces.

'It was probably a suicide mission anyway.' he thought, snarling as the flashing lights got brighter. He looked around the immediate area for a magical escape hatch, but was only faced with the grim aftermath of junk, ashes, and blood-soaked earth.

Was that all that survived the war? Were Magneto, Callisto, Arclight…Bobby, Storm…were they all dead? Was he the soul survivor? If so, what made him so special?

The screech of cranes and tow trucks sounded, clearing a path through the erratically parked vehicles. He could hear some commands being shouted above all the noise, but he couldn't distinguish any words. And this was the worst possible moment for a migraine to start making a home in his head, annoying, stabbing pains. He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, only to immediately draw it back and hiss in pain. Stupid frostbitten hand, and stupid gash! "Shit, shit, shit!" he whispered, biting his lip until the pain dulled.

The bridge work was going at a slow, but steady pace, chipping away at the 'dam' between him, and the pathetic forces of authority the humans constantly loved and defied all at once. The wind started to gently blow now, pushing the various stenches of the battle ground away. He let out a tired exhale, he was too tired to put up a fight in this condition. So with that, he steeled his nerves, set his jaw, and marched toward his fate, whatever it may be. He was done, he had no way out.

He got closer and closer to where he and Magneto stood side by side, raining Hell on their opposition. His hands were raised unhappily above his head to show those he'd encounter that he wasn't a threat. And the closer he got, the more people started to notice him, stopping what they were doing to gawk at him like drooling idiots. It was really fucking irritating.

"Can someone, uh, get me a Band-Aid?" he asked, knowing he'd need stitches, and not just a patch of gauze on tape. Unsurprisingly, a ton of rifles and pistols focused on him as the cops and soldiers moved in front of the fire fighters.

"Get down on your knees!" a cop shouted, and the encounter at Bobby's house flashed before his eyes for a moment. Things were simpler back then, being on the run from a psycho soldier who brainwashed mutants was a cake walk compared to the life he was facing now.

"Hands in the air!" another cop chimed in.

"They already are." he mumbled, lowering himself to his knees like a coward. Four cops and two soldiers approached him, all threatening to blow his head off if he so much as twitched a millimeter. While under the cover of the others, one brave cop circled him and cuffed him, enjoying the winces Pyro involuntarily produced. God, he wanted nothing more than to just blow them all away in waves of scorching infernos, but that was out of the question, and it pissed him off.

After being hauled to his feet, he was led through the crowd of spectating officials. They looked at him like he was some deformed zoo animal or something! The cop jerking him around was blabbing into his ear, but he didn't pay attention. He was fucking mortified, and for a minute, he was glad Magneto couldn't see him like this. He was forced to stop next to a cop car and was pushed into the back seat, the door slammed in his face. With an emotionless sigh, he rested his head against the window, feeling every ounce of pressure it put on his bloodied forehead. He glanced down at his cuffed hands…his blue, black, purple, and white splotched hands. A pang of rage burned in his gut at the sight. How bad did Bobby maim him? Was the frostbite major, and would it scar? He could see where Bobby grabbed his wrists, even in the shitty excuse for light around him. There were thick, black bands where his wrists were, and he could feel a painful tingling in his fingers.

A knock on the window startled him and he looked up, not at all expecting to see Storm of all people standing there. She opened the door and leaned don, taking in his appearance, and her staring was unnerving to him. Regular people staring at him didn't bother him this much, but her, it was like she could see into him. Just like the Professor, or even Mystique with her weirdly hot (did he seriously just think that?) reptilian eyes.

"You've been down there this whole time?" she asked, breaking the silence as they stared at each other.

"Been coming to every so often. Didn't have the strength to get up." he replied, looking away. Not in shame, it was something else, something more.

She lightly prodded his face, tracing the cut all the way down to his right cheek bone. "Does this hurt?" she asked during the examination.

"No." he said, half lying.

"Okay." she replied with a nod. She removed her fingertips from his face and looked down at his handcuffed hands on his lap. "Did Bobby do that?"

He nodded, sighing.

"May I see them?" she asked. He looked at her suddenly, feeling incredibly vulnerable at the moment, but he raised his hands toward her, giving her permission. She held his arms an inch under his wrists, avoiding the damaged areas above.

"Is it bad?" he asked, truthfully unsure about the severity.

"The frostbite on your wrists is more severe than what's on your hands." she said.

"Okay, doctor. I'm sure I'll get treated in prison." he replied with a half eye roll and pulled his hands away.

"John, this is serious. You could lose your hands." she said, her voice getting stern. He gulped, starting to feel anxious and nervous and scared as all hell as he looked down at his wounds. He couldn't lose them! He needed them to whip out his lighter, or for his new igniters!

"Won't my body temperature just reheat them?" he asked.

"The minor frostbite, maybe. But your wrists, and other bigger areas? I doubt it. If it didn't cause any further damage, your hands could be saved."

"Well then get me out of here. Patch me up at the school, I promise I'll be a good little boy scout." he said, crossing his heart.

"Let me talk with the police." she said, turning to leave.

"Wait." he blurted, wanting an answer to a suddenly important question. She faced him, doing a bad job at hiding her impatience with him. "Who won?" he asked, finally making eye contact with her. She glanced away for a second as her face softened, and he knew something bad was about to come out of her mouth.

"Magneto's cured. Jean's dead. Dozens of people were disintegrated, John. Nobody won." she said, walking away.

The words hit him like a brick. Disintegrated? He shook his head in disbelief. How many fallen mutants had he walked through down there? And Magneto was…human? Mystique was human, the rest of the Brotherhood was either human or dead. And if any escaped, he doubted he'd be able to find them. He hung his head at the realization that he was truly alone. His friends hated him, his allies were dead. He suddenly wished Storm was back, he had so many more questions he needed answers to, dammit!

He looked around at the blur of bodies running to and fro, becoming aware Storm had left the door open. He could slip away and nobody would notice. But he had nothing waiting for him out there…maybe he could find Mystique. Raven. Whatever she decided to go by nowadays was fine with him, if he could even find her. She might have moved away from New York entirely, which was really far from his current locale.

Storm's back was still to him, and no one was keeping an eye on him…so lazy. He got up, still expecting someone to push him back into the car. He zigged and zagged through the crowd, blending in amongst the different uniforms, becoming a needle in a haystack.

He needed to get away from all this, and he sure as hell wasn't going back to the school. No fucking way.

1 year, 11 months, 29 days ago

He somehow managed to get off the bridge without being spotted. They didn't even know he was gone, no alarms were raised. He soon broke into a car, hijacked it with practiced ease (even with his tingly, bound hands), and drove away from the past chapter of his life.

After a couple hours behind the wheel, he crossed into the Nevada border, low on gas. It was now dawn, and the adrenaline from the previous night's events was wearing off. He smiled to himself at the irony of the situation. Wasn't leaving the X-Men what got him into this mess? And yet, here he was, doing it again.

'Oh, grow up. You can take care of yourself, you don't need them.' he thought, rubbing away some of the dried blood near his nose awkwardly with both hands. He examined the injury in the rearview mirror, grimacing at how deep and nasty it looked, and at his paleness. He definitely needed stitches, just as he had thought.

An approaching whirring sound caught his attention and he looked up, groaning as he saw the X-Men's jet lowering into view about a football field's length ahead of him.

'Bitch, just leave me alone.' he silently whined, pulling up near the suspected landing zone. Time to get this over with. The dry desert ground crunched under his shoes as he got out of the car and sauntered over to the parked jet. The ramp lowered as he got closer and Storm came outside, shielding her eyes from the sun.

"Miss me already?" he yelled, taking his sweet time in approaching her.

"John, please. This is crazy, even for you. Do you really think you can drive across the country? You're a wanted fugitive, a wounded one." she yelled back, taking quick steps forward.

"Are you going to turn me in?" he asked, not moving any closer. She paced forward until she was directly in front of him.

"I should, but I won't. Not until I patch you up." she said, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. He looked at her warily, observing her body language for a minute. Was she telling the truth? Would she help him? He didn't want to go to one of those mutant prisons, that was for fucking sure. The thing that bothered him was that he knew he needed help; her help. And she knew it, too.

He allowed himself to be taken aboard the jet and plopped into the seat she pointed to. After a brief absence, Storm returned with a first aid kit.

"Just give me a mirror, I can do it myself." he said, his pride was coming back. He wasn't a scared little kid, he was motherfucking Pyro.

"Just let me, okay?" she asked, sounding annoyed with him. He rose his linked hands in mock surrender and leaned back in the chair, waiting. The seat was pretty uncomfortable; it was hard and oddly contoured. Storm leaned closer and dabbed at his gash with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball, causing him to release a chain of cursing and other choice words as he screwed his face up at the stinging pain. She was wiping away the dried bits of blood, too, working professionally. The cotton ball lifted away and he opened his eyes to the sight of her sterilizing a needle. No words were spoken between them as she threaded the needle and steadied his head.

"Let me know if you need me to stop." she said. He looked over at her, giving her a non-verbal 'go ahead'. The needle was pushed through the ripped skin above his left eye and he winced, not realizing it would hurt quite that much.

"Son of a bitch." he muttered, clamping his hands down on the arm of the seat.

"Sorry." Storm apologized, putting the needle through his forehead again.

"Got any painkillers? Booze?" he asked, opening his eyes again.

"Sorry, no." she replied, again sticking the needle through his skin.

"Jesus, fuck, ow!"

"I'm going as fast as I can."

'Oh, this is going to be a long, fuck-tackular day.' he thought in frustration as he tried to escape to a mentally happy place. But everything came up blank as he realized he didn't have one anymore. Maybe he never did…

A/N: So, this is going to be a X-Men/The Hills Have Eyes crossover. Not a common mix, but what the hell, that's just how I roll. If you haven't seen the Hills Have Eyes (especially the remake, which, coincidentally has Aaron Stanford and thus inspired me to do this), then watch it. The remake is what I was envisioning as I wrote this.