Disclaimer: Marvel made millions for a reason. I'm still hoping just to scrape by in college.

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Far Away

He had been standing at the airport for little more than an hour now. The flight he was waiting for had been delayed, inevitable given the weather on the other end. He supposed he was lucky it was still coming, something for which he was grateful. It wasn't every day he found something that made him get up early in the morning and over to one of the many New York City airports. Hell, it wasn't much that could get him to actually take the subway, but he had done it.

Piotr Rasputin wasn't sure what kind of guy he really was. He hoped he knew right from wrong. He knew where his loyalties lie. He knew heartache, heartbreak, and heart anything at this point. He knew art like the back of his hand. He knew he would be glad when the semester was over and he was able to graduate. He knew without a doubt that things would be different from now on; they had been since the death of the Professor.

But most of all, Piotr knew that family would always come first.

Both of them.

The X-Men were really a new family for him. Since coming to attend school at Xavier's Piotr had made close friends with his fellow students. Many of them were like siblings now, they shared a lot together. Meals, rooms, homework assignments, training hours – it was a never ending foray of the same things a family might do together … with the exception of using powers and learning how to fight with them.

But it was the other family that still tugged at his heart. His sister, his brother, his father, his mother – Piotr's past. It was a part of him he had never been able to forget no matter how hard he tried.

His brother had died when he was young, leaving him the man of the family. Their father had been sick and without work for so long that it had always been expected that Piotr would help Mikhail pay the bills and put food on the table. What no one had expected was the accident that claimed his brother's life. After that Piotr had to grow up.

It hadn't been easy, naturally, but Piotr had taken his brother's stead and done all that was expected of him. Work was easy for Piotr had always been exceptionally strong for his age – something he had always attributed to his height and the time spent working in the fields of his family farm.

He had gotten a brief education in his younger years. He hadn't learned English until he had come to the United States at the age of fifteen, but that seemed like so long ago now – three years, in fact.

It had been in his homeland of Russia that Piotr had discovered he was a mutant, and even then he had been careful to hide the truth from his mother. But afterwards, well, afterwards everything seemed to change. If he wasn't careful his body would become encased in steel without his meaning it to. People looked then. They looked and they stared, and before long word got back to his mother that Piotr wasn't quite right.

He had been forced to stay home from work after that. His boss had threatened to turn him into the police for the amount of threats he himself had been receiving on Piotr's behalf. It was for that Piotr had become ashamed of himself. He was unable to work and unable to support his mother and sister. At the time Illyana had been too young to understand what was going on. She had only been thrilled that Piotr was home to play with her, a result of her nature to always be cheerful. She had always been something of an angel to him, his precious snowflake in the hard times.

Then came the attack on their house. It had happened in the dead of night when they had least expected it. There had been shouting from outdoors followed by someone pounding on the front door. Piotr had answered and found the house crowded by a good number of people from his village – all brandishing burning torches and demanding that he leave.

They were blaming him for the odd disappearances in the area. People had gone into the woods and vanished without a trace. Even Piotr had grown scared, forbidding his sister from ever playing there again. At the time the disappearances had drifted from his mind if only because there hadn't been any more to speak of. Yet the village could not forget, and Piotr supposed they never would.

He was the logical explanation. A freak of nature that could turn into steel had to be the cause behind good people vanishing into thin air. They had called him a murderer, a vile vicious man that needed to be killed before he killed another. Behind Piotr he could hear his mother clutching his sister tight, murmuring to the younger blonde that all would be fine. That everything would be okay.

He had believed her as well.

Encasing his body in steel, Piotr had shut the door to block out the jeers of the crowd. The torches had then been tossed onto the roof of the house and smoke had begun to cloud his senses. Piotr turned to get his mother and sister, but they were nowhere to be found. It was as though they had vanished into thin air.

For time afterward Piotr had come to believe that the smoke had affected him more than he had originally thought. He convinced himself he had failed his mother and sister; that they had perished in the fire with all the other remains of his past.

He had been found by Professor Charles Xavier wandering a lone road in Russia two days later and brought to the United States. Now he was a citizen of the United States and a full-fledged member of the X-Men. He spoke English like a native, though some words would continue to elude him. He could play football, though he failed to see the excitement behind it. He drew pictures, many of which were scenes of his past, or portraits of his family. Piotr would be an artist, he knew that without a doubt. It was possible now, more so than a year ago when mutant unease had been at the forefront of everyone's minds.

And it was one year ago today that Piotr had learned his sister was still alive.

The Professor had called him into his study, a serious, yet welcome expression upon his face. Piotr had been afraid the Professor had discovered that it was Piotr that had drawn that picture of Rogue and Bobby kissing, the one with Bobby being shocked by Rogue's powers. But that hadn't been it.

The Professor explained that since the events of Piotr's arrival at the mansion he had been searching for an unexplained mutant presence that had been occurring in the same area Piotr had lived during the same time Piotr had been there. The Professor had said that he had simply assumed it had been Piotr that he had sensed with Cerebro, but after more studying he had decided it had never been Piotr in the first place.

The power Cerebro had sensed had been something odd – a sort of here and there presence, almost like that of the mutant Nightcrawler, the transporter. Piotr hadn't been sure what the point behind this explanation was, not until Professor brought up the disappearances. The source behind the power, the mutant he had been searching for those two years prior, had been able to open a window into time, vanishing into a sort of limbo, likely where the humans had vanished to never be heard of again.

Professor Xavier could now say that the powers belonged to a young girl living in an orphanage in Russia. She had blonde hair and bright blue eyes and would now be a mere thirteen or fourteen years old.

Piotr couldn't believe what he was being told. It sounded like his sister, but he was afraid to hope that it was. He had already convinced himself she was dead that he was scared to have all his hopes crushed again as they were the night of the fire.

A week later Piotr had taken a plane to Russia with then girlfriend Kitty and Professor Xavier. At the orphanage the blonde girl in question had come running at him, a delighted expression upon her face. It seemed Illyana had not forgotten him after all. For one week they were able to catch each other up on their adventures apart. Piotr learned that Illyana had no control over her powers, able to open her small window into limbo without trying hard. He also learned that she had lost their mother in one of the windows. She had cried about that for two days with him, but he told her that all that really mattered was that they were together again.

At the end of the week Piotr promised to do everything he could to get Illyana into the United States. Ties with Russia made that difficult, but with the help of the Professor Piotr began to the process of adoption, all of which would be completed the day he turned eighteen.

That day had come in the midst of the battle with Magneto and all that was happening with the cure. The loss of the Professor had put his petition on the backseat, but a few weeks ago Dr. McCoy had come around the mansion to help finish up the petition, and now here Piotr was awaiting the arrival of his now fifteen year old sister. By all matters of the law she was his ward, and Piotr was glad. He would do everything in his power to keep her safe and sound within his reach. He wouldn't let her out of his sight, and with the help of those at the mansion, Piotr hoped Illyana would learn how to use her powers and control them for the better.

A loudspeaker broke his concentration. Piotr's eyes lifted to the screen above him, eyes focusing in on the fact that the flight he had been waiting for was just arrived.

It was the moment of truth.

For the next fifteen agonizing minutes Piotr shifted from one foot to the other, his eyes scanning the crowd of people coming from the direction of the gates. He would have been awaiting his sister at her gate if the law had allowed him to, but the threat of terrorism kept Piotr and all others waiting for loved ones a good distance away.

She saw him before he saw her. The sound of her voice calling his name jerked Piotr's attention. A smile broke his face as he made his way through the crowd, easily moving people by his tall size. For once he was grateful for his appearance.

They gripped one another in a fierce hug, Piotr for the sake of never wanting to let her go again, and Illyana for the sake of never being alone again. They were finally a family again, and that was all that mattered.

Looking up with eyes shining bright with tears, Illyana said, in her broken English that she had been studying at the orphanage, "Now we not so far away."

"No," agreed Piotr as he hugged his sister once more. "Now we aren't so far away."

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A/N – I rather like this chapter, it's rather touching.