In Alex's dreams, he loses them. And it's all his fault.
—
"I'm sorry!" he screams, kneeling on his hands and knees before them. "I'm sorry! I didn't know this would happen! I just wanted to do the right thing—I thought I was doing the right thing...!"
"Look at what you did!" Julie cries, standing in the rubble of the local gang turf, the burned-out crack den, the suffocating tunnels beneath Snark World. "You didn't stop when we said! You didn't listen to us, Alex! Look what you made us do!"
"Some leader you are!" Jack screams. The girls' hysterical sobbing fills the air as Kymellian soldiers swarm the four, dragging them off in different directions to punish them for technology they didn't deserve. But Jack's hate-filled are locked only on his brother, screaming, "You got us into this! Your stupid plan didn't work, like it never does! You think you're so smart, but all you ever do is mess up, Alex! You can't do anything right!"
"I don't want to!" Katie wails, hyperventilating. She's standing over the decimated bodies; Maraud's, Kurse's, Carmody's, anyone's that Alex forced her to destroy in his temper. There's blood on his sister's hands, utter anguish and despair written on her face. "No, no, NOOOOO! I don't wanna hurt anyone, Alex, no more! I'm a monster now, just like the Snarks—I told you to stop yelling at me!"
"I'm so sorry, baby," Alex tries to tell her, heart breaking, but his words are lost among his siblings' accusations. They shout and yell so loudly he can't make out the words anymore, only their hatred, and they force his eyes to stay locked on them through the sheer force of their misery and suffering. Alex tries to look away, tries to avoid seeing the damage and destruction he's wrought against his brothers and sisters, but they don't allow him. It's the price he pays, for the suffering and cruelty and stupidity he's inflicted.
After all, he's still their brother, isn't he? What good is a big brother, one who doesn't even watch his younger siblings like he's supposed to? Like his parents asked?
And then, horribly, they are there with him.
"Dad," Alex gasps, and it's not his siblings yelling anymore. Instead, his parents are in front of him, glaring down at their eldest son in terrible disapproval. "Mom, Dad, please. I didn't mean to—"
"Stop lying to us, Alex!" Jim Power interrupts, shoving his son's hand away when Alex stumbles to his feet and tries to reach for him. "We taught you better than this! You've been fighting, haven't you? Dragging your little brother and sisters into trouble, causing destruction like those damn mutants—like a murderer!"
"No! You don't understand!" Alex pleads, terror choking him; the thought of even his parents disavowing him for his actions is too much to bear. "I had to do it, Dad! He would have killed you both if I didn't stop him! He'd have killed all of us! I was trying to protect us!"
"No, no...not superheroes," his mother moans, weeping brokenly into her husband's shoulder. Her voice is broken, demented, and she now refuses to look at Alex at all. "Not heroes, not mutants, not my children. Oh my babies, running off and fighting, not needing their mother anymore...what can we do for children like that? Send them to the Xavier Institute? Send them to the Richards?"
"Mom, it's us!" Alex cries, desperate. "It's me, Alex, Julie and Jack and Katie—we're your kids, remember? You love us!"
"No, we don't!" Jim roars, shoving Alex away from Margaret and through the doorway to the street. "No son of mine is a killer, Alex! You murdered Carmody, lied to us, you disobeyed me! No son I raised is going to be a mutant or a superhero! So get out! You're not my son...you don't live in this house anymore!"
He slams the front door in Alex's face, leaving him abandoned and alone, standing in the street in the pouring rain. Alex lets out a scream of terror and yanks on the doorknob in vain until it breaks, then he pounds ceaselessly against the door with his fists in the hopes that they'll hear him and answer.
"Dad!" Alex screams, "Dad, please! I didn't mean to, I swear, please let me back in! I'll do anything! I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to hurt anyone—I thought we were supposed to use our powers, like Whitey said! PLEASE!"
Of course they don't answer. Why would they? He's a liar! Alex drove them away with his meanness, destroyed them, killed their happiness and well-being until they killed his right back. His own family doesn't want him anymore. He got what was coming to him, didn't he? He got what all disobedient sons, and fallen heroes, rightfully deserve...
...Aloneness.
—
Alex wakes up with tears in his eyes in the darkness of the Baxter Building.
Reality pours through the fears from his nightmares, and he recalls once for the umpteenth time that he's an adult now, not the leader of Power Pack. He's no longer fighting crime with his younger siblings, or with the New Warriors, or really anyone, at least not without the Fantastic Four there to supervise. He hasn't killed anyone in his life, and his younger brother and sisters forgave him for everything he did years ago. Alex's parents are both sane and perfectly well back home. They love him, love all their children, unconditionally. They always have.
Still Alex lies there for a long time, in the predawn hours after his nightmares, eyes open but focused on nothing at all. He can't stop his tears from falling when he's alone and shaken up like this, feeling exactly like the rage-filled, depressed little boy he'd been seven years ago. His mind reaches out, unbidden, into the past.
In these moments, he wonders if he would leave behind the Kymellians and the heroics; forget all the anguish, the strain that nearly tore his family apart—nearly allowed him to tear his family apart. He wonders if he could give up his powers, if it meant not being haunted by memories of his old mistakes. He remembers how it could have all gone so wrong so easily, so many times. He knows he could have gotten any of them killed. He thinks about how lucky he was, to ever make it to nineteen with his family intact.
Then Alex thinks about the kids in the Future Foundation. About Whitey and Kofi, and Friday, and the X-Men. He thinks about Franklin and Valeria, all the people that Power Pack helped so long ago, but also the victims they had to watch suffer and die. Alex cannot honestly say for certain, in those late-night moments of weakness, whether or not he would change it all in a heartbeat if he could. If he'd be a hero all over again, or a normal teenager going to college like anybody else.
The weight of the doubt is crushing. But it's his, and he can't escape it.
Maybe someday, Alex will learn to lift it off his shoulders and float it away, just like everything else in the world that drags him down.