Remember back when you were a kid, and you thought there were actually people that knew what this thing we call "life" was really all about? Remember when you thought there really were "grown ups?" Then, all of a sudden one day you become a "grown up" yourself and the terrifying revelation occurs to you that there really are no "grown ups," just kids that got old and had kids of their own, and no one really knows what the fuck is going on. - Joe Rogan

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Azazel and Erik hurried in the direction from which the explosion had come, Mystique following a step behind. The two men stopped in the wide doorway to the common room, and Mystique slipped between them, squinting against the smoke that was billowing from the room.

She saw Janos and Remy there, standing across from each other. Janos's back was to her, but Remy was facing her direction, and she could tell from a glance that someone – and it wasn't hard to guess who – had struck him in the face. His right eye was red and already beginning to swell, and Mystique thought that it was going to make for one hell of a shiner. Remy was holding a playing card – the king of hearts, she noted – out in front of him like a weapon.

Angel was standing further back in the room, a type of bored distaste on her face as she eyed the two men. As Mystique watched her, Angel dropped down onto the couch with a thump and blew the hair out of her eyes. She crossed her legs and then her arms and sat back, supremely unimpressed with the proceedings.

To Janos's back, what had been a bookcase laid on the ground. It had been blown into a hundred pieces, the books torn apart and scattered, many of them on fire.

"What in the bloody hell is going on here?" Mystique heard Erik demand, as she turned and ran back toward the kitchen to fill a cooking pot full of water.

As she was busy doing so she heard the sound of Azazel teleporting away and then returning a few seconds later. By the time she'd gotten back to the common room with the water, he was already busy spraying the chucks of burning paper and wood down with a fire extinguisher. Mystique sat the pot of water off to the side and forgot about it.

Mystique didn't think that anyone had answered Erik's question while she was gone, and by then a crowd had begun to gather. Emma had come up behind Mystique, and stood taking in the scene with a thin frown drawn across her lips. From the other doorway, Matthew and Luke stared, speaking quietly to one another in worried tones, while Fred loomed above them, his broad face slack with confusion. Todd sat crouched on his shoulder, watching blank and unresponsive, without the slightest sign of surprise at the violence, and Mystique felt her anger flare up against Remy and Janos when she saw that; she had told the boy that they were all friends here, that it was a safe place, and she didn't like to be made into a liar so soon.

"Emma," Erik said, turning to her. "It's possible that one of our neighbors might have taken note of this little disturbance and notified the police. Kindly go outside and wait, so you can inform them that they have the incorrect address, if or when they arrive."

"Right," Emma said lightly, and turned to head for the front door.

"The rest of you may go back to whatever it was you were doing as well," Erik told Fred's group. "Matters are well in hand here, thanks." Matthew and Luke turned their conjoined heads upwards to look questioningly at Fred, so shrugged heavily. He turned to leave and the others followed after him.

And then it was just Remy and the original four members of the Brotherhood.

"Well?" Erik asked Remy and Janos again. His voice was as light as before but Mystique saw that his eyes had gone hard.

By then Remy had put the card away, and Janos and had turned to face Erik. It was clear to Mystique at a glance that Janos was in the grips of something like a panic attack; his eyes were glassy and too large, and his chest was rising and falling too rapidly. His fists were balled at his sides, nails buried in the flesh of his palms, and she could see blood where he'd split the skin of his knuckles against Remy's face.

"It's just guy shit, Erik. It doesn't even matter," Angel said from the couch, when Remy and Janos remained silent, but it wasn't Angel's answer that Erik was waiting for. He ignored her, staring hard at the other two.

Remy broke first. "Va te faire foutre," he spat at the room at large, and stalked from the common room, going the way that Fred and the others had gone. Erik watched him leave, a tight frown on his face, but did not attempt to stop him.

Erik turned his eyes back to Janos, waiting.

Janos seemed trapped somewhere between rage and panic. The wild, cornered animal look that had made Mystique keep her distance from him for so long was back in his eyes now, and she wanted to tell Erik, Stop. Just leave him alone. Can't you see how scared he is? but she only waited and watched.

Janos took a step toward Erik. He seemed to have to dare himself to do it, propelled by desperate, stubborn pride. He was almost as tall as Erik, and he stood stiff-necked, looking into Erik's eyes, and Mystique could see the tension in the muscles of his neck, how taunt they were. "I hit him," he told Erik simply. And then he added, as though he did not think that he had been understood, "I hit Remy first."

"Yes, I worked that much out for myself," Erik said flatly, apparently not especially impressed by the confession.

And a confession was exactly what it was, Mystique realized suddenly. He expected that someone would be punished – that someone would be made to suffer – for the fight, and he was claiming all of the responsibility and all of the blame for it, but god was he scared.

Erik sounded nearly bored when he asked, "Why?"

Janos opened and closed his mouth, apparently blindsided by the question. "He was trying to steal Angel," he answered finally.

"I wasn't aware that Angel was your property, that she could be stolen," Erik said.

"Ha," Angel said, from the couch. "Thank you."

Erik closed the space between himself and Janos, and leaned in very close to him before he said with a soft voice that was dangerously serene. "That's a good impulse, wanting to protect your fellow Mutants. I don't fault you for it. But Janos, if you continue to insist on acting as though they need protected from me... then there are going to be some difficulties between us." He straightened, took a step back.

"Clean this mess up," Erik told Janos, and turned to go the way Emma had went.

"That's it?" Janos said to Erik's back. His voice had grown suddenly loud, indignant with disbelief. "I told you that I hit him," he repeated. "You aren't going to do anything?"

Erik stopped in the doorway. He turned back to face Janos. "Do you require chastisement?" he asked speculatively. "Well, I suspect that you will face consequences for this childish nonsense, but that's not my business. I imagine Angel is very capable of handling the matter herself."

"Oh, you bet," Angel said, darkly. It was only now that Remy was gone that Mystique realized how angry she really was with Janos.

Erik nodded at Angel with what looked to Mystique to be suspiciously like approval, and then he continued out of the room and headed down the hall, apparently headed outside to join Emma.

After a moment, Mystique and Azazel turned and went back the way they had come, leaving Janos with the messes he had made.

They returned to the dinning room table and attempted to returned to the Russian lessons, but it was difficult to focus in light of the flurry of angry Spanish that was coming from the other side of the closed door.

"What's she saying?" Mystique asked Azazel. She felt guilty for the question – like a snope – but her curiosity had the better of her.

Azazel grimaced. "That Janos is only ruining things for himself," he translated. "That Angel likes him very much, but that he will only ruin that if he insists on being so suspicious and fearful and jealous, when there is no reason for him to carry on in this way. Also, that she takes all of this as an insult, because he does not behave as though he trusts her to be faithful. But there were more curse words when Angel said these things.

"I don't understand why Janos has gotten this way lately," Azazel went on, speaking for himself rather than repeating Angel now. "He gets so angry so often now, and he says stupid and angry things, and regrets them almost at once, but still keeps doing it. He's always been high-strung, but when Shaw was alive he was much calmer... or more quiet, anyway."

Mystique blinked. He can't really be that oblivious, she thought, at once angry and astonished. "When Shaw was alive he was too fucking scared to have an opinion about anything. Jesus, Azazel, I'd have felt the same way if I was trapped under the thumb of a Nazi –"

"Don't start that nonsense talk again," he said stiffly, and Mystique could see that she'd found one of his buttons, and that he was at least as angry as she was. "It isn't true. Shaw was what he was, but he was no fascist, and you shouldn't repeat things about people who you did not even know."

You didn't know him, either, Mystique thought. You might have followed Shaw for years, but you never knew who he was. That knowledge was what kept her from storming away from the table, and it was what lead her to take a moderate tone when she replied. "I suppose that's true," she allowed. "But I'm going to go on taking Janos's and Erik's words for it."

"What's Erik got to do with Shaw?" Azazel demanded, but now there was confusion in his voice.

Too late she remembered that Erik had told her a few days ago that Azazel was largely ignorant of his history with Shaw – that he believed Erik had killed Shaw only to stop the war – and that Erik had said that he preferred things that way. "Never mind," she said, and changed the subject.