Disclaimer: The X-Men, in any form, do not belong to me. Copyright infringement is not intended.
A/N: I've been thinking about this for a while. It's not great, but it's what came out.
Summary: Standing in the line to get the Cure are two people Pyro knows.
The Line
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Sinner was one of those people who couldn't turn her fuckin' brain off, and she wasn't impulsive, so this is what she'd wanted. She didn't do things by half-measures; she played for keeps. So she wasn't sure why the fuck she wanted to back the Hell out of this line and go home to her two kids and just put a fuckin' bullet in her husband's brain and scream like there'd been a fuckin' burglar. She lived in parts where it wouldn't even be investigated. But she wanted more for her kids than a fuckin' combo rat trap/roach motel, and he'd been the best she could marry as a mutant. After all, you could only hide it for so long, he'd offered after she'd gotten knocked up, and he was the only damn man who hadn't run. But maybe it wasn't the mutant thing; maybe it was just her that couldn't keep a man anyone might call good. Tommy was a drunken shit, but he was far from her worst; he hadn't raped her or used coke and shit, even if he had hit her before. Even if she was still bruised and aching now. She could go home to The Asshole and he'd take her back no problem, kids and all. He'd be a shit about it, but he'd take them back.
But she was of no use to her kids if this fuckin' mob killed her.
Thoughts and reality were often two very different things. She's always known it; known it from experience. But this was different. There was a thin police line between her and those "protestors" – who would turn into rioters right quick no doubt. Marrying well may have been her only option now, since her sister's dead and her parents too – not that they'd give a fuck – and her brother's been missing, just ran when the 'rents found out he was a mutant. And wasn't that damn smart of him? a mocking voice in her head asked, the one that'd told her to get the fuck out of Dodge. She's a housewife, she has no skills. Her thoughts were jumbled between yes and Hell no, and there wasn't a middle ground for shit like this.
Abruptly, she gets out of that line, just pushes past the police and into that crowd and some are congratulating her you did the right thing and some look at her like she never even should've fuckin' considered it, and maybe they're both right. Rogue took the Cure. St. Catherine Allerdyce didn't. 'Cause she's no saint. She's a Sinner through and through, and damn but does sin feel good.
And she never even looked back to see what she knew was little Pyro's work, because she knows that crackle-snap-explode anywhere. And she smirks that cocky damn Allerdyce smirk, 'cause her firebug always did what was best by him.
Just maybe he's doing what he thinks is right by his niece and nephew, too.
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