August 18, 1992
"Incoming!"
Mystique ducked. She moved behind the soldier's arm and got behind him. With a quick motion she snapped his neck. She flipped to avoid several more bullets before kicking guns out of the soldiers hands.
She couldn't believe that she was in this situation. She'd thought, when Magneto had first said that they were going to aid Charles's pets, that she would be going to Westchester with him. That was where the real threat was.
Instead he'd left her to handle Lance and Boom-Boom like a second-rate babysitter. She hit another soldier in the throat before kicking him there, effectively collapsing his windpipe.
By all rights they shouldn't even be here. Mystique was all for helping out Westchester against a threat like this. She couldn't care less about whether or not the X-men received their aid and she disliked the idea about dividing their forces.
Emma hadn't liked it either, but she had liked that she had been picked by Magneto to accompany him the school. Mystique kicked another soldier away, getting angrier the more she thought about it. Mystique knew the mansion much better than Emma. If anyone, she should be going as a guide.
She took her frustration out on the soldiers in front of her. Mystique had hoped to find a time to talk to the X-men, explain why she and the others were there. Time was short though, and she needed to figure out a way to tell Alex's oaf of a brother what was happening.
She managed to slide towards him, making her movements as small as possible. She didn't want to alarm him and think that she was coming to attack him. In her experience members of the Summers family tended to shoot first and ask questions later.
Mystique was halfway to him when someone stepped into her path. For a moment she started, thinking that she was looking into the past. Her brother stared at her, blood coating his face, his eyes for the first time cold and condemning.
It took a few seconds before she realized that, no, she hadn't gone back into the past. This wasn't Charles. His build was too big for that time in Charles's life, and his hair wasn't the straight brown of her brother. It was almost auburn.
She put her hands on her hips, realizing who this was.
"David," she said.
David jutted his chin up.
"What the hell are you all doing here?" he asked.
His voice was venomous, not the cultured tone that she had been expecting. Mystique folded her arms.
"Magneto got wind that something was going to happen to all of you," she said, "Despite what you might think, we don't value the shedding of mutant blood."
She gestured around the square.
"It appears our intelligence was right," she said.
A soldier shot at David. David dodged and flung his hand out, sending the soldier flying. He winced.
"I don't believe that," David said.
His voice was angry, suspicious. Mystique sneered. This was her brother's son? It appeared that, despite his own preaching, he couldn't even get his own son to believe in peaceful solutions.
"Oh, really?" Mystique said.
"Really," David said.
A woman stepped next to David. Her hair was white, but flecks of blood had gotten into it. She recognized Sharon much easier than she had David. Hank was constantly on the news, his loving family ever present.
"Two of my people are fighting to help you right now," Mystique said, "I suggest you calm down a bit."
David's eyes narrowed and Sharon looked at her suspiciously. After a moment David's eyes relaxed and Mystique wondered if he'd read her mind. Her own eyes narrowed and David grinned.
"No, don't worry," he said, "I do have some moral decency. I just know how to read people's faces."
A soldier came up from behind him. Sharon slashed at him with her claws, and David kicked him in the stomach. He glanced back at Mystique.
"I'm more than my mutation," he said.
Mystique wanted to snarl at him. Maybe he was her brother's son: he was far too preachy. Instead she turned away from him and engaged another few soldiers. The crowd was thinning out now, and she was grudgingly grateful.
An explosion on the other side of the square shook the ground. It definitely wasn't one of Boom-Boom's. She saw smoke rising from one of the buildings and began running over. She saw David and Sharon try to get there, only to be stopped by some more soldiers.
Mystique slid through them, almost laughing. It appeared that David wasn't too versed in combat. She could see it now, her soft-hearted brother insisting that his son be kept from fighting. It left him quite useless at the moment, and she hoped that Charles was proud of that.
A soldier leveled what looked like a grenade launcher at her. Sinister really hadn't been keeping idle in prison. She was about to move out of the way when a cloud of black smoke appeared next to him.
Time slowed down. She watched as the young man disabled the soldier, hitting him before tripping him with his tail. Another soldier moved towards them, and he teleported behind them so he could push their head up against a wall.
He was too much like his father. Mystique had thought that ever since he'd been born. Her son had looked too much like his father. She remembered thinking that as she wrapped him up in a blanket and crept towards her brother's house, hating herself for her doubts, hating herself for her cowardice, and hating herself for what she was about to do.
Kurt turned and looked at her, his eyes blinking in surprise. Mystique wanted to say something to him, to shrug off the encounter as natural, just a cordial meeting between enemies. That had been what she'd decided when she'd laid him at his brother's doorstep. They were going to be enemies from now on.
Emotions and memories came flooding back. She remembered hiding her morning sickness, too afraid and doubtful to talk to any member of the Brotherhood. They were all against her really. All of them had sided with Lorna the minute she'd come into their lives and cast Mystique aside. So what if Lorna had just experienced a tragedy? They all had. They all simpered over her like she was something special, even Azazel.
He'd wanted children so badly, so badly that he didn't even dare to tell Mystique about it. She'd seen the way that he'd fawned over Lorna though, and she'd known that they could do better. If he wanted children then he didn't have to pretend as though Lorna was his, just like so many other members of the Brotherhood did.
Lorna was just an excuse in the end. They'd all thought that they were doing such a wonderful job, raising up the next generation of the Brotherhood. She'd seen though, known what it would mean to raise her son in the Brotherhood.
Even Magneto had been blind to what that would do to a child. The only reason it had worked with Lorna was because she'd been sheltered, a perfect little princess in Magneto's kingdom. And where had she ended up when all was said and done? She'd ended up in Alex's arms as his new lieutenant, an X-man.
There were other reasons, of course there were. She'd repeated them in her head a million times when she left Kurt at her childhood home. Mystique had almost taken him back into her arms. She'd had to stop herself. Mystique had rung the doorbell and then run away as fast as she could. The mental image of Moira, or worse Alex, picking her son up and taking him inside was too much for her to bear.
Now he was standing a few feet in front of her. Her eyes greedily drank up the details. He was wearing nice clothes, or at least clothes that had been nice before the explosions. His three fingers were calloused. Did he like crafting things? Painting, writing? The chilling thought that he might fight with swords made her shiver.
His golden eyes met hers and she saw him tense. Mystique wanted to tell him not to be afraid, not to think that she was going to hurt him. Her voice stuck in her throat though, and for the first time in years she became scared, scared of what a young man's presence meant.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a furred woman crash into the wall next to him. Kurt teleported away in time to avoid slamming into her. Mystique shook her head, feeling her thoughts clear.
They were in a war zone. She couldn't afford to think about things that she had locked away so long ago. It wasn't important anymore, and the time for regrets and what-ifs was long, long past.
Rogue knew that she was being stupid. Logan and Remy really were more than capable of taking care of themselves. She'd seen Logan in a fight, seen him demolish his opponents and heal from any injury. Remy was an X-man, and she knew that meant that he could fight.
So why was she running down the hall, putting her own life at risk? In some ways she could understand why she was doing it for Logan. He was a friend, he took care of her, he was family. They were all good reasons.
There weren't any real good reasons for Remy. They were friends, of course they were, but they barely knew each other. It wasn't the type of friendship that you would run through a building under siege for.
At least, she'd thought that it wasn't. Every footstep was telling her that it was. She'd seen that Max had peeled off and was following her. Rogue wanted to cry. She was being stupid, making all of the wrong choices, and now she'd dragged Max along with her.
He drew level with her, his eyes dead set on the course ahead of them. The sounds of combat filtered upwards, and she thought about the way that Max's mother had launched herself down the staircase. She said that she'd been a soldier, and the words filled Rogue with a strange fear. They couldn't be soldiers. They couldn't be at war.
A body slammed into the wall ahead of her. Remy followed it, someone pushing him back. He hit them with something that looked like a staff, she wasn't sure what it was, and sent them to the ground.
He looked up at them, his red and black eyes meeting hers. She saw confusion, panic, and anger there.
"Da exit's dat way!" Remy shouted, pointing the opposite direction.
"Ah...ah..." Rogue said.
She swallowed, unsure of what to say. She'd known that her reasons were stupid for trying to find him, but she could see that telling him that wasn't going to help. A second later she heard meat hitting metal as Logan came around the corner. His eyes widened in surprise as well.
"What the hell...? You two need to get out of here!" he shouted.
"What's going on?" Rogue asked.
It was the only thing she could say that didn't sound like some sort of confession. Logan shook his head.
"Kid, I'm not sure myself," he said.
"Ya need ta get outta here!" Remy shouted.
Max gave her a look, almost as though he was telling her that it was okay now, that she had seen them. Rogue looked at Remy and Logan for a moment longer, wishing that they would understand.
They continued staring at her, and Rogue realized that they might never understand. She turned around, Max beside her, when a group of soldiers came up from the other end of the hallway, cutting off their exit.
