Chapter 15: Suit up

"STORM!"

I nearly crashed into Jubilee hurtling around a corner. Already she looked a little too excited for what, to me, already sounded like bad news.

Both us raced toward the sound of Hank's voice. The edge of something about to happen had been in the air for the last day or so, the afternoon too eerie a quiet for comfort. We found Hank standing a few steps from the door, standing more awkwardly than usual next to a dark-haired woman I'd never seen before.

"You called?" Jubilee chirped, practically skipping towards them.

Hank glanced over, then pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

"For Storm," he said, eyes closed.

The mystery woman smiled widely in a way that struck me as familiar. Thoughtful, assessing. Like a predator. A glimmer of both admiration and annoyance simmered in my veins, reasons unknown.

"Well you got us," I said to Hank, who had bailed on several Civics lessons in the last week, resulting in several patchwork lectures in which Rogue or I tried to remember anything about democracy. "Congrats."

Hank sighed heavily just as Storm appeared, practically jogging down the stairs. Say what you want about the woman, she knew how to hustle.

"You called?" she said.

Jubilee grinned. Hank threw a glare in our direction.

"Yes," he said, directing his attention to her pointedly. It was obvious he meant it as a dismissal. Neither of us moved. "We have a location on the brotherhood. We have to get moving."

"How?" Storm asked, hands at her hips.

Hank gestured to the woman next to him. "Meet Raven Darkholme," he said. "You may know her as Mystique."

Storm blinked. Raven/Mystique smiled even more widely, and I realized why I'd recognized the expression.

Jubilee apparently did, too.

"Whaaaaaaaaaaat?"

Jubilee snapped her mouth closed hastily as Hank shot her a look of pointed disapproval.

Annoyance flew threw my veins again. The year of strange mansion-wide solemnity had been followed by Storm and Hank's collective scrambling to handle the most recent disaster, argue about whether to keep the school open, fail to communicate anything to the rest of us they still seemed to consider too young to be concerned. Plus I'd just spent a half hour forcing Flea—who'd been trying to speed vertically up a wall and broken straight through the window of the room Lydia shared—to clean up his own mess for once.

When Hank moved as though to posture us out of the conversation again, I snapped.

"Sorry," I said, one hand raised. "And what is she doing here, exactly?"

Hank gaped at me and Storm looked unsure.

"I understand that you have no reason to trust me," said Mystique, by way of preface.

"That is correct," I said shortly.

Hank raised his eyebrows. A little too much like he was registering my existence for the first time. Mystique—or Raven rather, the mysterious human woman that Mystique had turned into—smiled wryly, as though I was more interesting than I'd been before.

"Fair," she said. "But believe it or not, I knew Charles once. We were close a long time ago. I owed him this, at least. A warning about Erik's plans."

I watched her face, trying to decide if this was a lie. It didn't feel like it, but I could only ever picture her on that jet, sitting beside Magneto in a cocky smile, laughing at the white-haired streak from when Rogue had almost died, watching the flame grow in John's outstretched hand.

"Erik left me behind," she continued, when no one else spoke. She was speaking to everyone but looking at me. I flushed as I realized why.

"Cute," I said, though it came out a growl.

If anything, she looked even more pleased than before.

"He left me like I was nothing. Can you believe it?" she said, genuinely amazed, still saying this to me, specifically, as though we knew each other somehow.

I didn't know how to respond. The words hit such a familiar place that my throat was tight, but her tone was almost positive. Bitter, but amazed. She had the blunt sincerity of a woman on a chaotic streak.

Then turning back to Storm and Hank she said, "They're headed for Alcatraz. For the source of the cure. They'll kill him if they have to."

"He's just a kid," Hank said automatically. The blood fled my face. "But they're just kids," I'd said once, like I was new to cruelty.

Silence fell over the group for a beat.

Mystique pursed her lips. "They'll attack tonight. That's all I came to say."

Then she took two steps toward the door, true to her word, only for them to be flung open as Logan came barreling in.

"What're you doing back here?" Storm said.

"I need help."

I snorted. Jubilee, failing miserably to cover it with a cough, laughed.

"You found her?"

I'd forgotten entirely that he'd gone looking for Jean. Dead but now alive Jean. Savior but now enemy Jean. Everyone was switching places lately. It made my stomach hurt.

"Yeah, she's with Magneto."

His eyes flicked to me as he said it. Just for a moment. This whole day was one big throwback to Alkali Lake, it seemed. "He's with Magneto—" "Cel—" "I don't want to talk about it." My heart felt heavy again.

"They're on the move," Logan said, still rushing at us like we weren't grasping the emergency. "I know where they're going."

"Is it Alcatraz?" Jubilee asked innocently.

He swung around on her, dumbfounded. We both pointed toward Mystique who, frozen like a cat by the door, gave a slight wave.

"Oh," he said, slightly deflated.

Storm sighed. Then, eyes on the wall, she said, "Anyone planning to suit up, be at the jet by 5. Spread the word."

I nodded, moving away, the group disbanding. Jubilee immediately barreled after Storm, already petitioning to go, promising not to cause trouble.

"You are her, aren't you? Celia?" Mystique said behind me.

I turned slowly to find that she'd paused halfway out the door. I didn't offer her an answer but waited, curiosity getting the best of me. She smirked again, that almost laughing expression.

"You know, I didn't like you when we picked up the hothead," she said, still eying me up and down like something had occurred to her.

"Delighted to hear it," I replied, voice flat. My pulse jumped.

She laughed, shaking her head, the door balanced open in her hand.

"Don't believe me if you want," she said. "But he doesn't look at you like you're nothing."

And then she was gone.

"Please come back to retrieve ice boy," I texted to Rogue as Bobby was distracted pulling at his new uniform. "If he asks me about you one more time I am handing him this phone and your geolocation."

Her response was almost immediate. The line for the cure must have been as long as she'd feared.

"You tell him where I am and I will keep my powers just to murder you."

I snorted, comforted she still seemed to be in good spirits after what I'd been informed was her second time running away from the mansion, however temporary this one might be.

She'd knocked at my door late the night before to sit on my bed and stew it over, though both of us knew her mind was already made up. I couldn't find it in me judge her. Her mutation was a whole other kind of battle I knew nothing about. And in any case, it was her decision.

I'd agreed not to tell Bobby, to leave that to her, even if it was afterward. Some things needed to be done alone.

Well, alone with your best friend checking in on you to make sure you hadn't been kidnapped. Which, I had stressed the night before, would be consistent with her previous times running away.

"Can't hear you, must go fistfight magnets with my very scary flashlights," I typed. "Be here when I get back please. Roommate sanctum."

"Roommate sanctum! Oooh are we gonna talk feelings? Finally."

"Absolutely not"

Rogue, having now also hung out with Jubilee entirely too much, was only encouraged.

"Ok but hypothetically, are y'all even exes if you never officially broke up? Seem to recall you being obsessed with each other until #DramaliLake. Let's unpack"

"You have to stop calling it that"

Something I'd learned about Jubilee since befriending her that day in the hallway was that she referred to it exclusively by that name. And "Jubilee-isms", as Grace liked to call them, were hard to resist.

"I think it's catchy! Also, accurate"

"Rogue."

"Sorryyy of course I'll be there. You better be alive"

It was so nice to be scolded for it that I smiled. Nice that someone might be more than disappointed if I didn't return. It was possible that I was a person now who might be missed.

After a few seconds, like she could hear the thought just beginning to creep into frame, more text appeared.

"And don't be saving his ass when I get there. He's still a jerk"

I almost responded "who?" even if I knew it won't fool her.

"In WHAT world would I," I settled for instead.

"This one. You know I'm right. Xoxo gossip girl"

"Hate you," I typed, smiling.

"Love you too. Tell bobby not to die also"

I scoffed and stowed the phone away in one of the packs that we would leave on the jet to go fight. Bobby approached behind me as I was double-checking the zipper on my suit. I felt good about the fake leather look. As though looking dangerous was another kind of armor.

"Ready to go, Ice Boy?" I asked, completely forgetting I was no longer talking to Rogue.

Bobby snorted, his face shocked into a half-smile from the deathly serious expressions everyone in the basement had been wearing throughout prep.

"I'm sorry…Ice Boy?" he said, "Did I miss my own rechristening?"

Kitty, lingering a few steps behind him, made a noise between a squeak and a snort. I bit back a laugh. Oops.

"Last Monday," I said seriously, "Kitty's now Puma. Logan's now Honey Badger."

Logan, half-hearing this from across the hallway, cast a smirk in my direction.

"What're you?" Kitty asked, face visibly relieved to have something to focus on that wasn't our potentially impending death.

"Edward Flashlighthands," I said with the utmost sincerity.

She and Bobby burst out laughing. Storm, trying at that moment to pass us looking very stoic and In Charge, ducked her head suddenly, one hand over her mouth.

As we turned to follow her, Bobby shook his head.

"I don't know," he said, mock thoughtfully, "Angel is just so much easier to say."

I was so shocked to hear him say it that a laugh bubbled out of me, the kind of abrupt belly laugh I hadn't had in a while.

"Oh shut up," I said, but there was no heat it in and both of us smiled.

"What about Angel of Death," he said, now dedicated to the bit. "Has a nice ring to it. 'Better suit up, Angel of Death.'"

Storm tried to turn and cast us a scolding glance but everyone in the tunnel was laughing. It was a small crowd of us. Beast was also here. It was just Bobby, Kitty, Colossus, and I of the younger class. Logan and Storm were the only professors left of the initial bunch. I wondered vaguely at Warren not joining us but found I was unsurprised. He didn't seem like the type for direct conflict. Or any conflict.

"Jubes isn't coming?" I wondered out loud, and it was Logan who turned to me.

"Do I look like I want to be blown up today?" he said, face his trademark frown.

I shrugged in response, one eyebrow raised.

"You're letting me come."

The tunnel echoed with quiet laughs again. Logan chuckled and glanced at me sideways as the others started boarded the jet up ahead.

"You good for this?" He asked, voice low, while Kitty scolded Bobby in the background for being "unhelpful with zipper hair".

I thought of the last time I'd seen John, how I could still picture his eyes on mine, face closing like he'd already left, before he'd walked away. My feet had been cold for hours afterward from standing in the snow. I couldn't think of those last moments without remembering the feeling of missing a step where I knew there was one, had always been one. How utterly wrong it still felt.

It was hard for me to think about without also remembering everything else that we'd been, and that the conviction that we had mattered so much to each other, still written into me where I couldn't erase, was now always be at odds with the reality that he had walked away.

I grunted.

"Are you?"

Logan gave me a look and we boarded the jet without either of us answering, trying not to think about the last time we'd been on board.

John POV:

We heard the X-Jet overhead before we saw it. Then, through the clouds like strange little parachutes, they dropped: first Storm, then an enormous blue creature John understood to be Beast, then Kitty and Bobby, Cyclops, and Logan.

Just as Logan landed his dramatic entrance against the building, Celia dropped from the clouds like a rock, so suddenly that several mutants around John jumped backward, spooked. She was inches from the ground when she finally broke her own fall, catching herself on a disc of light and hopping neatly down to land next to Bobby.

She'd been practicing.

Next to his old friend, who still looked shaken from his brief contact with Kitty's powers, Celia's complete nonchalance was a stark contrast. She nodded once in Storm's direction, jerking her chin upward in one brisk motion, and then eyed the army in the distance, her expression almost bored.

It caught him off guard, even though he had been thinking about her so often, to see her standing there in person. The crowd around him was tense, and their mutants had already started charging the island, but the X-Men line had only just struck down and held strong, waiting for the onslaught.

He wanted to touch her. No amount of imminent battle could distract him from knowing what it would feel like to wrap his arms around her waist, to feel her hands in his hair, to press both of them further into a dark corner, her laughing under his lips.

The others shifted slightly on their feet, Logan nodding encouragingly at Kitty, adjusting the line. Celia stayed still, face deadly calm. The uniform suited her. He'd always liked her in leather, he'd just preferred when it was his jacket.

He'd known from the beginning that she'd be trouble for him. Whatever side of Celia had emerged over the time he'd been gone, whatever side this was, staring blankly into a crowd screaming for blood as though she'd seen them a thousand times before, was no exception.

She was too far away for him to see her face clearly, but he was beginning to think it was a good thing. The shape of her eyes in his direction was enough to have thrown his stomach for a loop he thought he would never feel again.

As the battle began in earnest, he felt old and new anxiety creeping in on him. Magneto's eyes slid sideways to him, a knowing smirk on the older man's face.

"We were right to keep you away from her," he said.

John imagined that he was referring to himself and Mystique, and for a moment the image of her pleading eyes from the ground haunted him again. How easily Magneto had just left her there with nothing. How easily it must have seemed that he had left Celia.

"That girl does something to you," Magneto was saying, his voice jolting John back to the ongoing fight.

John didn't need to listen to the rest to know.

Celia POV:

I hadn't been ready to see him again.

We were supposed to drop down from the jet at the same time, assemble in a line in front of the facility, our lives the last defense, apparently, between an army and a child. Bobby had given me one last wide-eyed look before he jumped out of the jet with Kitty, his ticket to landing without injury.

I'd given myself another couple of seconds. We could see them through the fog once we were close, and when my first thought had been John like a sigh through my whole body, I'd made myself a deal. I could have until the other side of the cloud to look at him. Then I would remember that I was nothing.

So I'd given myself another couple of seconds before dropping through the clouds, catching myself just before the ground on an energy disc, taking my place in the possible suicide mission. I wasn't sure I'd ever be ready to see him again. Maybe it wouldn't matter if I died. It almost felt preferable to looking him in the eyes ever again, to facing how wrong I had been from the start.

But battle, it turned out, I was ready for. It was like slipping back into that survival mode I knew so well, that old skin of myself that lived knowing where death was at all times.

Crack.

I cracked the pipe I was holding over a man's head who'd been running straight at me. I wasn't sure how many minutes had passed since the first line had advanced at us, running wildly, screaming for blood. I'd been past fear even then. Monstrous Celia had already seen death, knew how to survive.

"Hey aren't you Celia?" It was one of the Brotherhood pawns, looking almost excited, a few paces away. People were wasting an awful lot of time today establishing my name.

I ducked an incoming log of some kind and glared at him, flinging a beam of energy up from my wrists that nicked him cleanly so he fell backward, unconscious. I didn't have time to wonder where all of this sudden interest had come from. Besides, after the bizarre interaction with Mystique, it felt less dangerous not to find out.

'He didn't look at me like I was nothing?' When would he have even seen me? I had to stop thinking about it. She was pulling something on me. I just didn't know what yet.

I walked past the guy's unconscious body to pick my way through the wreckage. I could see Colossus in the distance and walked steadily toward him, ignoring where Magneto and his corps stood surveying the battle. I was angry but I wasn't stupid. Picking a fight while they were together and strong would be reckless and ineffective. And I wanted to win.

Plus, I was supposed to be lying low, per Storm, who was concerned that drawing too much attention to myself early would put a target on my back.

Magneto and the mutants who flanked him watched me without comment. I didn't have to look to know that Magneto would wear that same calm mask of indifference that I found generally infuriating. Whatever knowledge they had of my powers appeared to have deemed me not a serious threat, not worth eliminating even when it was easy.

Good, I thought.

A cursory glance in their direction showed that amusement rippled across the faces of more than a few. I tried to avoid rolling my eyes, knocking a few more of their approaching frontline unconscious before they could react, throwing a blast toward a man attacking Beast from behind that sent him flying into the side of the building. This would have been fine, I think, but then from over a heap of crushed metal came three men, one breathing what looked like venomous shadows, all headed toward me.

I punched a wall of energy at them, knocking them backwards and unconscious into it. Storm's was a good plan, but I got the sense it was already too late to stick to it. I heard clapping behind me. The slow, sarcastic kind.

I glanced around me to find that I'd wandered too close to Magneto's frontline, and that approaching fast behind me was a colossal man covered in what looked like knives, his face an ugly, brutal expression. I knew that face from nights of hiding knives, stories of mysterious accidents, a flat look in the eye, a pool of blood on the living room floor.

This man was a stranger but I knew what he meant to do.

My stomach went cold and I was grateful for my training. I knew that face, those eyes. This man would kill me and enjoy it.

I watched him grow near before launching myself over his head with a staff of energy, landing on one of my discs. He swerved as quickly as his size allowed but not quick enough to stop the two sharp energy discs as they cleaved through him in opposite directions.

My stomach stayed cold as his body fell in three pieces to the ground. Now fifty feet in the air, I stared at the spot for a moment, a beam of energy ready in hand. I had killed him. Hadn't even hesitated. I knew it would catch up with me later but for the moment, I felt only numb and angry. Awful, deeply awful. Like I would throw up at any moment. But also cognizant of an unhappy satisfaction at having acted in time for once.

I wondered vaguely if Storm would punish me. If anyone would ever look me in the eye again.

"Oh," Magneto's voice said loudly, carrying over the sounds of the ongoing fight. "I could have made you great,"

I turned slowly to look him dead in the eye from where I hovered in the air, pooling energy around me, my heart a dead weight in my chest.

Great, he says.

I was staring too long and it was making everyone uncomfortable, I could tell. It was impossible to care. I grasped for the threads of power around me as I weighed this scene in my head. What it might have meant to me if I were a different person.

I was obscenely aware of John's face at his side, eyes wide in shock, but kept my eyes on Magneto's. The leader worth leaving for. He looked so small from the air, just another angry man fighting his battles with others' deaths. He looked impressed, optimistic even, like he thought I would be lured in by the compliment and switch sides mid-battle.

It didn't even make me angry anymore. Not the way it had all that time ago, he and Mystique smooth-talking John with visions of himself as a 'god among men'. It had no power over me now. He'd already taken the person I cared most about. I'd already found out where I fell in the balance. Who cared anymore?

It was possible I was in shock, the blood of the stranger was splattered up the entire front of my body, speckled over my face and hair. I wondered in a disassociated sort of way what breed of nightmare I looked like today. The blonde with my mother's eyes, covered in blood. But all I knew was I could look at Magneto, at all of them, a crowd that might've once terrified me, without feeling anything at all.

It was almost nice, like breathing above the water for the first time. It also made me unbearably sad.

I smiled, though it felt more like baring my teeth, all white teeth and bright eyes.

"Funny," I said, noticing it was quiet enough that my voice carried over the crowd even from the air. "My father said the same thing right before he died."

I watched this dawn on his face. Of course. He would know that secret. He would know about anything that made me a potential commodity. In another world, one where I was still feeling things, I might have been surprised to watch it ripple through every face around him as well. My awkwardly guarded secret, something I could still barely discuss, even with my now closest friends. He'd told them all. He was that careless.

If I was surprised that John knew now too, what did it matter? What was there left to be scared of when he'd already left? It's not like we would be having follow-up conversations about it.

My chest hurt. I pulled further into the air, shooting two huge needles of energy through the cliff they were standing on. It crumbled beneath them, sending them tumbling down through the hill.

Magneto caught himself, clinging to a summoned sheet of metal, and looked back up my way.

"You don't think they'll turn against you, your precious X-Men? That they don't already think you a monster?" he shouted up at me, ignoring the coughing, injured, or unconscious bodies of his army around him. "Join us and you would be celebrated."

I smiled at him. So numb. So free. So awful and sad.

"I am a monster," I said. "And you can go fuck yourself."

Moments later, every face below me, including his, was replaced by cries of pain, as their eyes suddenly flooded with milky, unsurpassable light. It was a new trick, and I wasn't sure it would last longer than a few minutes tops.

But damn did it feel good. Aim for the eyes, indeed.

An inconceivable length of time later, I crash-landed on the roof of the building, drawing the immediate attention of a man covered in spikes who, despite actively dangling Warren's dad off the side of the building, looked at me with sudden interest.

Then out of nowhere, there was an enormous pair of wings.

"Warren?"

He gave me an alarmed look, even as he hastily collected his father from his fall. I was surprised to see him there at all, at the scene of a conflict.

"Halo!" he shouted. "You're covered in blood."

I was less surprised when he then immediately flew away, quivering parent in his arms. I ignored his comment about the blood—he'd said it like I wasn't already aware. Plus, the man covered in spikes had refocused on me then, entirely too interested, like he'd found new prey. For good measure, I knocked him and the other the Brotherhood mutants off the roof before crashing through one of the skylights.

I spent the remainder of the battle teaming up with Kitty, of all people, who'd had either the good sense or the adrenaline rush to look nothing but grateful when I dropped out of the glass ceiling to help her. Plus, she didn't say a word about my being covered in blood.

When we emerged again with the kid, Jimmy, in tow, there was enough going on to cover us. Which was good. Because I was starting to feel the kind of exhausted that makes your legs shake.

This included Bobby and John, who were engaged in a fight that felt so personal that watching it felt intrusive. But it also had a very Degrassi after-school vibe to it, so of course we all watched.

"I thought the world was supposed to end in fire."

"Some say ice."

At one point, I thought I caught John glancing toward us, where Kitty and I, half carrying Jimmy, had paused in silence to watch. It was just barely, in the moment he realized the tide was turning against him, before a look I didn't recognize crossed his face. Not fear. Something else.

"You should've stayed in school," Bobby said before head-butting him unconscious.

When it was over—when Jean had almost destroyed us all, Logan had destroyed her, Magneto been de-powered—Bobby stared, still in glacier form, at his old friend's unconscious body, panting from the confrontation. They had been best friends for longer than I'd known either of them. I was always forgetting that in the depth and selfishness of my old feelings.

The ice was gently loosening back into normal-Bobby when he looked up again and caught my eye. I stared back for a long moment, glancing involuntarily at John, sprawled on the ground. I hadn't seen him in person since the day he'd left. He was completely knocked out, and I could still feel my heart pounding. Even unconscious, he made me nervous.

An unconscious man shouldn't have that kind of power. Still.

I looked up to find Bobby watching me as though waiting for a decision. We stared at each other for a beat. I'm not certain what expression was on my face. I felt like I was silently pleading for something but I couldn't have told you what. Then I tried to breathe through my heart pounding with a sigh and turned away to help Jimmy and a limping Kitty along.

Even facing the bridge, I was aware of Bobby scooping up the unconscious body and carrying John away from the battle after us, along our evacuation path.

He wasn't John anymore, and I would need to remember that when we were back at school together, as I realized we inevitably now would be. He was Pyro now. I didn't care about Pyro.

Or at least that was what I decided to repeat to myself until it finally, mercifully became true. Because it had been two years, but I'd placed the look in his eyes when he'd seen me emerge from the building.

Relief.