Disclaimer: I own none of the characters within.
Author's Notes: About time, eh? Much love for the loyal readers, and much love for the new ones! Who knew this old story could gain so many new fans after all this time?
And by the way: I'M GOING TO NEW YORK UNIVERSITY! Next fall I'm starting in the Dramatic Writing program at the Tisch School of the Arts. BAM! Rock on.
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inferno --- Any place comparable to hell.
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The stars were warriors. Ice-cold gladiators with burning eyes, guarding the night like they were guarding a treasure trove. They were the queen moon's sentinels...
Sentinel!
Pietro's eyes snapped open wide, wide, with whites all around the edges and his breath coming in rapid, ragged gasps. Top Gear was burning a hole through his mind, like a disease. He figured his brain must look like swiss cheese.
Cheese.
Everyone knows the moon's made of cheese.
"I'm going crazy!" Pietro hissed to the cool night air.
The stars didn't answer.
So Pietro sang: "I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so!"
And he danced. It's just a jump to the left...
"I wonder," he said (while he danced), "If there will be anything left of me to rescue."
The stars didn't answer.
So Pietro did the Time Warp again.
And again and again and again and again and again and again and again...
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Jean couldn't sleep.
She didn't know how the Professor did it. Blocked out all the turmoil. When people are very upset, they send off intense waves of telepathic distress that are almost impossible for telepaths to shield themselves from. Somehow, the Professor must be able to do it, though! Otherwise, how could he get any sleep at all?
Maybe he doesn't get any sleep, she mused. Maybe he's an insomniac. I hope I don't become an insomniac!
Those were thoughts for another day. For now, she would just focus on sleeping.
Only, she couldn't sleep.
Finally, she decided that maybe warm milk or something could help. It always helped in the movies, right? A glass of warm milk always sent the troubled hero or heroine into a deep and restful sleep, and they would wake up the next day refreshed and ready to fight evil.
Only, the evil was in their house and sleeping in their guest room all by himself.
No. Don't think about Magneto.
So she slid out of bed and into a bathrobe and slippers and down the hall and heading for the kitchen. How long does one microwave milk to make it warm but not hot?
Rustle, shuffle, shuffle.
Someone else was awake. She heard footsteps, pacing around the library that had been destroyed by the Maximoff twins earlier in the day. Someone was in there, but who? She reached out tentatively with her mind and was quite surprised.
"Pyro?" she said, at the door to the library.
His head snapped up lightning-fast, his eyes wide and his face bathed in sweat. His hands opened and closed in fists at his sides. He laughed when he saw her and said, "It's the redhead!"
"Pyro," she crept into the library slowly, sensing something wrong. "Is everything okay?"
"Oh, it's fine, princess. Don't be worrying about me. Just... don't feel well."
"I'm sorry." she said politely. And then, "Is there anything that might help? Warm milk, maybe?"
"I haven't felt well in a long, long time." he continued, ignoring her, not even looking at her. "I hope I die soon. I don't really like being alive anymore."
"What are you talking about?" she gasped. "Is something wrong?"
"Yes." he said. But he didn't say anything else.
So she advanced towards him, stepping carefully over the remains of the ruined library. Pages everywhere, covering the carpet like snow. Broken shelves lined the perimeter of the room, decorated with mangled paintings and the empty shells of books that used to have pages, now just strips of cardboard. He didn't acknowledge her approach. She laid a hand carefully on his arm.
"Pyro—" She pulled her hand away. "Oh my god, you're burning up!"
"Burning up!" he cackled, rubbing his hands together. "Right from the inside! Whoosh! Up in flames!"
"Are you sick? Pyro?"
"My name's not Pyro." His voice dropped, his eyes became clear, as he turned on her with a growl.
She backed away. "What would you like me to call you?"
"My mother called me Johnny." Just as suddenly, she lost his attention and his gaze wandered to the ceiling. "I wonder where she is."
He walked away from her, over to the wall, leaning his forehead against it. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to wake up the Professor. She wanted to call for some kind of help. But how could they help him if he wouldn't even tell her what was wrong? To think, if she hadn't have wanted her stupid warm milk, she could be safe in bed and not having to worry about any of this.
"You know," said Johnny. "You must think I'm crazy."
"I don't think you're—"
"You don't want to see!" He spun on her, screaming. "You don't want to see because then you have to know! And you don't want to know! You want to pretend nothing's wrong and that humans will accept us! You're so stupid!"
He was crying, hysterical, and then he pulled off his t-shirt.
Jean recoiled, horrified. His chest was marred by a nasty black lesion, a sickly smudge against his pale skin. He spun in a wobbly circle and she saw a second, smaller one on his lower back.
"Look at it, look at it, look at it!" he babbled, and then he sank to his knees, covering his face. "I don't feel good, I really don't, I think I'm gonna throw up..."
Instinctively and before she knew what she was doing, she ran over to him, crouched next to him, put an arm over his burning shoulders while trying not to touch that... that thing on his body that marked him like a pariah.
"It's okay, Py– Johnny, it's okay."
"It hurts all the time, now." he said darkly. "My whole body. It aches like an old man's. I think I'm dying, and I just want it to be over with."
"Do you know what's wrong with you?"
"Nothing that concerns you, Miss Grey." a new voice warned.
Jean and Johnny looked up and saw Erik Magnus Lensherr looming in the doorway like an avenging angel, his broad shoulders seeming to fill the frame and his silver hair catching the light from the kitchen. Johnny whimpered and scooted away from Jean, cowering before the imposing sight. Jean stood, arms crossed, trying to act braver than she felt.
"What is going on?" she demanded.
But before Erik could either answer or ignore her, Johnny bounded towards him and stared him in the eyes.
"I'm dying, aren't I?" he asked earnestly.
A long, long pause. Then Erik said, "Yes, I believe you are."
"But how?" Johnny's voice rose in pitch, desperate. "You said that you saved me! You said you would protect me!"
"I cannot undo the past, John." said Erik gravely. "I'm afraid I may have been too late."
"Too late for what?" Jean demanded.
"He saved me!" Johnny moved towards her, stumbled, held his stomach and groaned, "From them. There were needles and surgical masks. And he said it was all over, that he would help me." he turned agonizingly on Erik. "But you didn't!"
"I tried." the older man's voice grew impatient, frustrated with... himself? "I brought you out of there alive!"
"But you didn't! I'm a dead man! I just happen to be walking around!"
Far away, out in the backyard of the mansion, Logan clicked his lighter, a cigarette already waiting between his lips...
Suddenly, Johnny's eyes widened. His hands flew out as though he were parting the Red Sea...
Logan grunted, startled, as the flame of his lighter suddenly leapt away from him...
And then fire was in Johnny's hands, stolen fire that he now built into an enormous ball and sent hurtling at Erik. The room was bathed in an infernal red glow, every corner and cranny and secret place illuminated and thrown into stark relief for all eyes to see.And just as suddenly, the fireball vanished as Jean ripped apart its creator's mental link to it.Johnny whirled on her, furious, snarling, "Why did you stop me?"
He bolted towards her, then suddenly stopped, swayed, and collapsed.
Before Jean could say or do anything, Erik had swooped over his fallen Acolyte and knelt beside him, laying a cool hand on his scorching forehead. He winced when he saw the lesion, then looked up at Jean and said weakly, "It's not what you think."
"Oh, it isn't?" she said coldly. "You didn't decide to continue your original work? Pyro just made up all that stuff about needles and experiments? Tell me, sir, what am I supposed to think?"
Jean felt sick, physically sick, that Erik was in their house. He was a monster hiding in the body of a man, who genetically altered his own son and the poor young man that now lay twitching on the floor before her.
"I rescued him." said Erik calmly. "From a mutant experimentation facility."
That knocked her flat. Unwilling to believe him, she reached out into his mind for proof. She saw it, saw the metal doors of a laboratory being torn away, the syringes being thrown into the bodies of the humans who had wielded them... saw the broken, emaciated young man strapped to the surgical table, his head shaved and his eyes glassy from all the drugs. Saw Magneto's hands reach into the image and gently undo the straps, cradling the boy in his arms like it was his own son.
"They called it the Legacy Virus." Erik's voice said, somewhere far away in the fog. "A disease they were creating to kill mutants and only mutants."
She saw the care, the gentility that Erik showed his new ward. She saw Johnny unable to walk or talk, his words stolen from him after years of silence, and Erik patiently teaching him all over again. She saw Johnny with his hair growing back and his eyes a little brighter, carefully building his flamethrowers while Erik watched with silent encouragement. And then she saw the Johnny of the present, the Pyro she thought she knew, screaming in panic as he pointed to the lesion on his chest, begging, "Why? Why?" and Erik shaking his head slowly.
"By the time I found the location of the facility, John was the only surviving test subject. There were others, but I was too late for them. I thought that I had saved him..."
Jean slowly came back to the now, blinked and looked around the shattered library, the destruction wreaked by Pietro and Wanda, both of them victims of experimentation, both of them with psyches so scarred and twisted that no amount of care and gentility could ever fully heal them.
She saw Erik gently pulling Johnny's t-shirt back over his head, guiding his arms into it and smoothing it into place like a father would his young son.
No.
"He's a replacement." Jean said, her voice shaking.
Erik said nothing, pretended he didn't hear her. He lifted Johnny in his arms and carried him to the couch, laying him down on it and putting a pillow under his head.
"He's a replacement!" she repeated, louder, "For Pietro!"
"I don't know what you're talking about." he said stiffly, searching for a blanket.
"You knew that you could never repair the damage you inflicted on your own son," she continued, trying to keep her voice from cracking with fury. "So you gave up on him and sent him away. You didn't get rid of Pietro because he reminded you of Magda," (and Erik flinched when she said her name,) "You got rid of him because he was your dirty little secret! Every time you looked at him you were forced to remember your own cruelty, your hatred that you took out on your child!"
"That's ridiculous!" he insisted, but he would not look her in the eye.
"And then you found Johnny. Someone with the same problems as Pietro, the history of abuse, the experiments, the fear. But it was someone who didn't know you! Someone who you could introduce yourself to as the hero, the savior, the rescuer. Someone who would look up to you and owe you his life. He probably doesn't even know that you're exactly the thing that he was running from!"
Erik had been standing with his back to her, unable to face her accusations. His hands were shaking as he rubbed them reflexively on his thighs, as though he were trying to wipe them clean. Suddenly, he whirled around and stormed towards her, his eyes blazing.
"I saved him! I saved his life!" his voice was hoarse with emotion. "Those monsters would have killed him down there, just like they killed the others! He would already be dead if it weren't for me!"
"But he's still dying, isn't he?"
"There was nothing I could do! I tried!"
"Pietro wasn't dying." She paused, looked away from him. "And you didn't even try."
He didn't answer. He couldn't answer. He strode swiftly from the room, one hand swiping furiously at the tears that had almost fallen.
He ran away.
So that's where Pietro got it from.
Jean stood in the ruined library and covered her face with trembling hands. This was a nightmare, a horrible nightmare. They were all just watching it, bystanders, audience members. But Erik, Wanda, Pietro, and now Johnny were the participants, the players. They were performing this macabre Twilight Zone episode for the whole world. It was their lives. And there was no way for them to change any of it.
Before she could go back to bed, she instinctively went to check on Johnny. He was still unconscious from his collapse, his breathing shallow and his shirt already drenched in sweat. She put a hand on his forehead and wished more than anything that she could take all of his pain away.
And then fever-bright eyes were staring up at her, silently questioning.
"Johnny, I don't know what to say." she began lamely, then finished sincerely. "I'm sorry."
He took her hand tenderly in his (how could his hands be so dry?), rubbed his thumb over the back of it, smiling as though recalling an old, fond memory.
"Don't you worry about me, princess." he said weakly. "When this is all over... this body is gonna burn away in flames... and I'm gonna come rising out of the ashes... like a phoenix."
Then his eyes rolled shut while his smile faded into a grimace of pain, and he was asleep.
When Jean went back to bed, she had abandoned the idea of warm milk entirely.
Nothing could help her sleep now.
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