Warnings for Story: Slash of the Bobby/John variety, very little of the actual X-Men.

Warnings for Chapter: Rogue appearing evil for no reason whatsoever.

Chapter One: More Important

For a moment, St. John Allerdyce thought he was going to die.

Not that he hadn't been expecting an attack. He'd left the apparent safety of the X-Jet, deliberately gone towards where he knew there was danger. But he hadn't expected this, especially out in the open snow, far from the facility.

But there he was. He had fallen down as the first waves of the assault had reached him, and now lay there, pinned down by the sheer force of the onslaught.

He felt crushed to the ground, as if the mental attack had become physical, pushing him into the snow. Vaguely he registered the feeling of water soaking through his clothes as his unnaturally high body temperature melted it in seconds, but any unpleasantness was easily blacked out by the much larger distraction.

Wildly, thoughts began to ricochet around his mind, as if searching for a way out. What was happening? Had something gone wrong? Who was doing this? Whose side were they on? Why were they targeting him? Were they going to kill him?

Questions, questions, questions. And not an answer in sight.

It was strange. He had always thought that when he died, he'd see his life flashing before his eyes, the same way everyone supposedly did. His mother, her funeral, his father, the three step-mothers, one right after the other, the fire, the school…

Instead, he just kept brief glimpses of blonde hair. And cold.

Then, without anything, it stopped. The pain vanished. The piercing noise cut out. His mind stopped screaming.

He lay there, breathing heavily. He didn't want to move, but the instinct that had always kept him one step ahead was nagging at him, pulling him to his feet. You don't want to still be here if it comes back, it whispered. Get away from here. See if there's somewhere to hide. Go!

Just for a second, he paused. This was the same feeling that had made him leave in the first place. It had told him to go out, to look for Magneto, to find the man who could help him…

He hadn't wanted to go. Not alone. Not leaving Bobby behind.

That had hurt. Walking away from his best friend, knowing it was goodbye but not being able to say so. It pulled at something deeper than he had expected, some emotion that was deeper than he had ever felt before.

That feeling had almost been enough to make him stay. Or, if not, to make him say something, to make a final farewell.

Almost.

But the instinct had called and it was impossible for him to resist.

All the same, it felt wrong out here alone. As he looked around, getting his bearings, trying not to step in the puddle his body had created, he half-expected to see Bobby standing there.

It had always been the two of them. They'd sworn to stay together, just one week after they'd first met. And now one of them had stayed and one of them was walking away, probably forever.

He shivered, although he didn't know what from.

It wasn't from the cold though. Pyro didn't feel the cold.

Bobby lay curled-up on the floor, pressing his cheek against the freezing metal. It was a connection to the physical world, a distraction from what had just torn through his mind, ripping through his thoughts as if they just didn't matter.

Next to him, he heard Rogue sit up. "Bobby?"

"Yeah?" Strange. He could see his breath. That wasn't normal. Was the heating on the blink?

"What was that?"

"I don't know. But I do know that I don't want it to happen again." Come to think of it, he felt cold than usual.

"You think I feel any different?" He heard her shifting around, a brief pause, then a sudden intake of breath.

"What is it?" he asked, turning over to look at her. She was leaning away from him slightly, holding her hand close to her chest and staring at him. "Bobby… You're cold."

He smiled, even though it felt forced. "That's why they call me Iceman, remember?"

"No… Really cold. Colder than normal." Her gaze shifted across slightly. "You need proof? What happened to your hand?"

He looked.

There was his hand, same place as always, nothing missing. However, it was also slightly frosted over, the way it got whenever he used his powers.

Except he hadn't. Not intentionally, at least.

He stood up suddenly, too startled to even notice the slight light-headedness. "That's not right. I didn't do anything… I didn't even want to, so why…" He trailed off.

"What were you feeling?"

"Huh? What's that got to do with anything?"

She used a chair to pull herself up. "Remember what Storm said in that lesson last week? Our powers get controlled by our emotions just as much as our thoughts. You might not have been thinking about anything, but maybe…well…you felt something that worked the same way."

He frowned, thinking back. He'd been in pain, but that didn't seem enough to mean that he could still feel the effects. What had it been? Was it something bad, or was it just that it was still relevant?

Then he remembered. "John."

Rogue looked confused, "What about him?"

It was all coming back now, everything he'd realised whilst he'd been lying there. As it did, he could feel himself growing colder, could see more of his skin frosting…

"John's gone to Magneto. We're not going to see him again. Not as a friend."

She took a step back, mainly to get away from the plummeting temperature around him. "So?"

He stared at her. "Rogue, he's one of us. And he's going to the other side."

"Not that I don't care, Bobby, but isn't that his choice?"

Why couldn't she understand? After everything that had happened to them, he couldn't believe that she could be so…cold.

When he didn't say anything, she walked over to the front of the jet. "I'm sorry, but John's been changing for a while now. Is it really our business who he decides to be with? He's made it clear that he doesn't want to be with us."

That cut deeper than she had clearly intended. "You mean me."

"What?"

"John's my best friend. You're saying that I should just abandon him?"

She looked back at him, "Bobby, he's made his choice. You can accept that and stay here, where you belong, or you can't and go hear it from him first-hand."

There were only a few metres between them. It felt more like a hundred miles.

Just for a moment, Bobby hesitated. Then he shook his head, turned and pressed the button to lower the ramp.

"Bobby?"

He ignored her, walking down and out into the snow, leaving icy footprints behind him on the metal.

"Bobby!"

He turned around, to see her standing at the top of the ramp, looking down at him. He wondered what he had ever seen in her. Was she really worth losing his best friend?

"I've made my choice, Rogue. Sorry it wasn't the one you wanted."

Then he walked out into the snow, away from her.

And towards John.­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Pyro stopped as he came out of the forest. A helicopter was taking off from the bottom of the hill, and he recognised the flash of blue skin inside the cockpit.

'Missed them.'

He sighed, just standing there and watching his hope fly away. Magneto had seemed to care about what Pyro did, or at least what he did with his powers. He'd left his best friend to join him.

And now it looked like he'd have to go back. Face the people who knew that he'd tried to betray them.

But that wasn't even true. He wasn't trying to betray anybody. He didn't want to be remembered as some modern-day Judas. He just wanted to do what he wanted, away from the Professor.

The helicopter suddenly stopped in mid-air. It paused, and then started to descend once more. John stared at it, hardly daring to hope…

Until it landed and Magneto stepped out. The mutant looked up at him, appearing slightly impatient. "We don't have all day, Pyro."

Pyro. His real name.

Not John. Definitely not St. John Allerdyce.

John lived in the mansion. John's life was controlled by the Professor. John wasn't free.

John would have stayed with Bobby.

But Pyro couldn't.

A small smile crossed his face. He hadn't missed his chance after all.

At first, he walked slowly, calmly down the slope. Then his speed picked up, so that by the time he stopped he was almost running.

Magneto just turned to go back inside. Pyro caught hold of the doorframe, about to pull himself in after the other mutant.

"John!"

He frowned. That voice was so achingly familiar, it was unmistakeable. But it couldn't be…

"John!"

He spun around, expecting to see nothing, to discover it had just been his imagination.

But it wasn't.

Bobby Drake was running down the slope towards him. He was skidding slightly, probably from the speed, but managed to stay upright. That wasn't too surprising. He was in his element, after all.

But what was he doing there?

Bobby slid to a stop in front of him, breathing heavily. John stared at him, then flinched as his friend grabbed his by the shoulders. Not at the contact, in a way that felt right. But at the cold.

He could feel it through his shirt, as if Bobby's hands had turned to ice. When had he got this cold? Was his power going into overload in the snow?

"John…" Bobby breathed out shakily. "You can't go with him."

John's hand tensed around the doorframe. Bobby had come after him just because he wanted to bring him back? Was that the only reason he had come?

"Why not?"

"Because…" He looked lost for words. It seemed he hadn't thought this through at all. He lowered his head, closing his eyes, apparently thinking. Then John jumped slightly as he heard him whisper, "Because you'd leave me."

John felt torn. He reached out to touch Bobby's shoulder, gritting his teeth as the frosty temperature bit into him, as if he was touching pure ice, but at the same time he was gripping the door frame of the helicopter so hard that it cut into his hand.

"Bobby…I don't want to leave you. But apart from you, what is there for me back there? No one trusts me. Do you really think they'll ever let me be one of them after what I did to those cops?"

His friend shivered, but he knew it wasn't from the cold. He'd known Bobby long enough to recognise the difference between temperature and emotion.

Then Bobby opened his eyes and looked back up at him. His expression made John flinch. There was a determination in those eyes icier than he had ever seen before.

"Then I'll go with you."

For a moment, he thought he'd misheard, that hope was affecting his hearing, twisting Bobby's words into what he wanted to hear. "What?"

"I said I'll go with you."

"But what about—"

"The others?" He was serious. He was actually serious about what he was saying. "I don't care about them.

"Rogue?" This couldn't be happening. He had to be dreaming.

"What about her? John, weren't you listening? I don't care about any of them even half as much as I care about you."

There was a long silence as John frantically tried to think of something to say and Bobby wished he had kept his mouth shut. It was eventually broken in a way that neither of them had expected.

"And what about what you have been taught to think?" Magneto asked, watching them from inside. Rather than looking amused at the very idea of two of Xavier's' pupils joining him, his expression was deadly serious.

"Charles doesn't raise his pupils to agree with me. If you truly wish to join us, you will have to forget everything he has ever told you about them. Do you believe that your friendship more important?"

Bobby nodded. "Yes."

"Really." It was a statement, not a question. He walked towards them. "What do you call yourself?"

"Bo—" He stopped as he saw Magneto raise an eyebrow. "Iceman."

"Pyro and Iceman." The mutant smiled, more to himself than to them.

"Welcome to the Brotherhood."

Author's Notes: #collapses in a heap# Gah! Did it! I managed to type it all up before I go to Spain! This does mean that the next update will take a while, since I probably won't do much, if any, writing whilst I'm out there. Too busy avoiding the heat…

So, Chapter One. This one came out much easier than Chapter Two is, so I was actually quite surprised by how much of it there actually was. It's just slightly longer than Frozen Over, for God's sake! Ah well, I'm not complaining.

Hmm… This chapter was only supposed to have SlashLite, but that last bit went much slashier than I was expecting it too… Yes, I don't know what I'm going to write. You got a problem with that?

Eep. Have to go pack. Hopefully see you guys (in the metaphorical sense) soon…