Chapter 16: Damage

Indifference was so much easier to pull off in theory.

In reality, the damage from Alcatraz Island was still there when the sun rose. People were more terrified of us than ever. Hank was now even more deeply entrenched in trying to show the government the error of their ways, while simultaneously trying to help keep the school running. The school itself had a slew of new students sent by their parents (or who'd run, or been tracked down to safety, etc.).

Also, after Bobby knocked John out cold only to carry him to safety while Jean tore everything in molecular sight apart, we had nowhere else to bring him but to Xavier's.

Rogue had suggested dropping him on the doorstep "Harry Potter style" of a hospital rather than taking him in, but the likelihood that he would be recognized from Magneto's short-lived television career or else arrested for being a mutant was too great to do so in good conscience. Not that she cared much. If anything, she exhibited even less sympathy than she had for him before. If she'd been protective before out of habit, she'd made it clear she was coming in deliberately armed this time around. Not that the rest of the mansion was stoked to have him either. It occurred to me that an unconscious man might be too easy a target for anyone swept up in their own rage and fear in a mansion that was still fragile.

I told myself it was for this reason and no other that when a very stressed Storm (who had fixed Bobby with a dubious look as he lugged John onto the jet) asked for volunteers to help with the fallout once we were back at the school, I'd raised my hand. That it was out of practicality alone, not some other intense impulse, that I ended up in the medical wing next to John's passed out form, wondering if I'd recognize the person who woke up.

John POV:

John's head was killing him, but apart from that it was hard to assess anything at first. Wherever he was smelled clean. Prison? A hospital? Both? He had the vague thought that it would be nice to have access to indoor plumbing. Then he wondered if he'd imagined someone adjusting his hair away from his face while he slept.

He blinked away the crusts at his eyes and almost didn't recognize the medical wing of school. It was colder than he remembered. More vulnerable while he was lying down. He could remember two last things from the battle. The hard, determined look on Bobby's face as he turned to ice, something in his eye suggesting somehow, still, that he wasn't the enemy. The shape of Celia emerging from the building with Kitty and the kid, surrounded by destruction, covered in blood, but alive.

Looking around, he realized the last time he'd been in this room was when Jones had cut himself trying to skateboard and Celia had insisted he walk with him. There was a twinge of pain in his chest.

He was tucked under a thin white sheet on a stretcher in the center of the room, the slow beep of a monitor close to my head, facing a wall of vials and monitors. He turned my head painfully toward the door and froze, face to face with Celia.

She sat in a chair by the door, legs propped upward on an examination table and a book she didn't appear to be reading in her lap. Then she looked up.

Neither seemed to know what to do right away. John's heartbeat sped so abruptly in his chest that he idly wondered if, after everything, this was how he was going to die.

Celia looked so like herself. It was painful how accurately he had missed her. In battle she had been cold, decisive, edged. She'd made an army of mutants terrified, then looked Magneto in the eye and told him to go fuck himself. As if though doing any of those things had just been an option all along. John knew for a fact some of the mutants blasted had remained blinded and rendered inert for the rest of the night. It was hard to reconcile the pride that had crept up his spine with the fact that it had been his side of the battle she attacked.

But she was this too. Still could be caught off guard sitting improperly in a chair, still careful eyes and delicate fingers, still having an impossible chemical effect on him from a few feet away. An old pain stirred in John's chest like it was his first night away. He couldn't move his eyes from her until he was sure she wasn't a memory. Not a kind smirk in a stranger's face or Mystique's cruel impersonations. The dreams that had tormented him for months were made real and awful by the proof that he hadn't imagined this person who had cared about him. Her eyes the same wary blue, same furrowed brows, same mouth frowning at him. Her hair was braided lazily to the side. A dark jacket was draped around her shoulders like a blanket, flannel lining peeking out around her frame.

He needed badly for her to be closer, to stop looking at him like a stranger. He needed to have never left. She had never stared at him on that mountain before he walked away. If he got the words out quick enough maybe no one would notice that time had passed.

"Thought you didn't have a jacket," he said instead, like an idiot.

He thought maybe her jaw went slack for just a moment, but it was gone just as quick. Thought he saw her swallow but was sure he was wrong. When another beat passed, he wondered if maybe she hadn't heard him. She didn't say a word.

Then she cleared her throat slightly, lowered her feet to the ground, and stood to push a button on the wall.

"He's awake," she said into a speaker, her voice rippling through his stomach.

She didn't turn back. He watched her shoulders as she waited for the response. There was some crackling from the intercom.

"Oh great—I'll be right over," someone's voice said over the crackly noise. Storm, maybe? "Thanks, Halo. I owe you one."

Oh.

Celia backed up from the wall and grabbed a bag from the floor that John hadn't noticed, expression still shuttered. This looked new, too—a dark leather strap crossed her chest as she pulled it over her head. He wondered vaguely where (more specifically, who) all these new possessions had come from.

She turned to catch him sharply in her eyes as he watched her, heart pounding even though he was lying down, entire body suddenly entirely too awake.

He kept thinking about that awful look in her eyes when she'd turned toward Magneto after killing a man. The empty kind of sad. Unreachable. Watching her face now, he could've sworn that she hesitated, lips parting.

What was there to say to him? Fuck you. It was 20 degrees and snowing and you just left me there, alone. You were a mistake. Everything we were, I regret. I see you now and I hate you.

Something unreadable passed over her face now that leveled him with a different kind of sadness entirely, like all of his guesses were wrong. He watched her open her mouth to say something, close it again, and then with her eyes not quite on him, unfocused, she said instead, "she'll be right in," and then in a parting shot he probably should have expected: "Pyro."

With three steps she was at the door and smoothly disappearing on the other side of it, his pulse in his ears as he watched her go.

He'd known all along that she could hurt him. But lying there alone in the cold medical wing, he found that knowing hadn't made any difference at all.

The dining room went silent the first time John emerged for a meal.

It was about as warm a welcome as he figured he could expect from the mansion. He'd taken a plate back to a corner in hopes the younger kids would stop staring. Bobby was the only one to join him, though he did so in near silence and was glared at by Rogue from another table throughout the entire meal. It was almost comforting to see the same shade of disapproval on Rogue's face as before.

He didn't see Celia again for two days.

The much younger kids, who'd only seen him on news segments surrounded by destruction, treated him with the same apprehension you'd expect if the school had appointed a crocodile hall monitor. By the end of the first day, several had burst into tears or run screaming down the hallway based on his presence alone. He couldn't help but think this wasn't terribly different from before.

Except Celia. She wasn't anywhere. By the second day, he wasn't even being particularly subtle about it, and was lucky that Bobby seemed to be the only one who had noticed (or at least, the only one not terrified to tell John he had).

"She won't be there," he said at the end of the second day, when he strolled into the kitchen and John was lingering by the windows to the back deck.

John stared at him but didn't bother pretending he didn't know who he was talking about.

"She doesn't go out there anymore," Bobby said, closing a cupboard door that was swinging open. "Hasn't really, since…"

Since the lake. That stupid argument.

"Why not?" John asked anyway.

Bobby looked at him like he was an idiot, which made him feel better, somehow. It felt right. He did feel like one.

"She doesn't do a lot of things anymore," Bobby said finally, shrugging. "She's probably downstairs again."

"We have a downstairs?" John asked, genuinely confused.

Bobby just looked at him.

"The X-Men do," Bobby said slowly, eyebrows raised, and John realized he'd said "we" like a habit remembered upon re-entering the building. "The training facility."

He sighed like he was resigning himself to face a chore he'd been hoping to put off, then motioned for John to follow. They rounded the corner to the elevator John could only remember using once, and he took a short breath in. He was not awesome at small spaces. It wasn't a full phobia, but it was connected to some memories he would've preferred to never think about again.

Unfortunately, only one person outside of a particularly sadistic foster parent had ever noticed, and she was currently doing her best to pretend they'd never met.

"It's technically open to all of the older students," Bobby continued, misinterpreting his hesitance to get in the elevator.

John nodded as though this was what he was waiting for, took a breath, counted back from eight.

"Some people use it…more than others," Bobby said, almost to himself.

When the doors opened, John didn't need to ask him what he meant. The elevator doors opened to a floor that was much like John remembered it from the chaotic glimpse he'd had before. One hallway branched off in the direction of the X-Men's prep zone, while the other branched toward the garage he vaguely remembered. Straight ahead was a state-of-the-art training facility. Gym equipment and sparring floors, but also what appeared to be rigged training spaces with translucent walls. At the very far end, completing what appeared to be a target practice/obstacle course hybrid, was unmistakably Celia.

Bobby and John stood in silence for a moment. With no one else around, John watched her as closely as he could without moving. She was so quick now, lethally quick, ruthless. There was something both impressive and concerning about the way she was throwing herself into the exercise. If the Xavier's school motto was still something in Latin about "necessary changes" being made (he'd never listened to enough of any Professor lecture to know exactly what), it wasn't entirely clear that Celia hadn't interpreted this to include self-destruction.

"So," Bobby said, a familiar mocking note in his tone. "You still sure she's fine?"

"Don't be a dick, Bobby."

There was no heat in it, just a reflex springing back to life. They both knew he was right.

Across the room, Celia turned away from the punching bag she'd been attacking like it was herself, faced a wall of targets wearing a detached, stony expression. A now-familiar sinking feeling stirred in John's stomach.

"Did you really think it wouldn't fucking matter if you left?" Bobby said, tone surprisingly calm.

John almost jumped purely from shock that he could curse.

"I know I wasn't paying attention back then," Bobby continued, not looking at him. "And that's on me. I let things get bad. I wasn't there when I should have been. Still, I'm not really sure what you expected."

Across the room, Celia pummeled a series of obstacles like they'd threatened her life, shooting the targets with darts of light, face a focused mask that looked ever so slightly too much like pain.

"It never mattered to me where we came from, you know," Bobby said, abruptly, after another moment when John wasn't sure he'd speak to him again. "You were my best friend. It's not like anyone from back home knew who I was or would've accepted me for it. This place was all I had—you guys were all I had."

Neither of them moved. One of the targets was now nearly beheaded. The music still blaring through the speakers was starting to feel like montage music for too many kinds of pain.

"It was all I had, too," John said, heart pounding uncomfortably.

Bobby shrugged.

"Well I'm still your friend, whether you're willing to accept that or not. And as your friend," he said, nodding toward the end of the room. "You fucked up."

They stood there for several beats, unnoticed under the music. Celia had paused to stare at the backs of her hands as though confused to find them open and bleeding and John didn't know what to do with the fact that he couldn't cross the remainder of the room to cover them.

Bobby cleared his throat.

"Oh," he said, mouth twisted. "Also, I'm supposed to give this to you."

He pressed a neatly printed note into John's hand. Not hand-printed. This note had been emailed or texted to some machine and then printed out.

"Sorry everyone hates you.

Jones

P.S. Tuesday night orca documentary. Bring snacks."

Celia POV:

The mansion wasn't quite big enough for hiding.

Grace was away visiting her parents, which Rogue called "a lucky break" and Jubilee warned me gave me a limited time frame in which to "get my shit under control", a task I was failing at miserably.

I tried to keep enough space between me and John to remember how to breathe, act, fight the feeling that we were magnets pulling back toward each other again. To avoid John, I had to avoid Bobby, and to avoid Bobby, I had to avoid Rogue, and to avoid Rogue, I probably had to avoid Jubilee, who had an uncanny habit of being everywhere. So I did my best to be nowhere.

This went on for two more days. Two days of Rogue covering my share of the sub spots for classes, two days of rolling out of bed at a strange enough hour that the halls were empty and then hurling my body into workouts until I was too sweaty and exhausted to think.

My system of coping mechanisms was built on him never coming back. The assumption that I had forever to repeat to myself that we had never mattered, that I had never loved him, over and over until I believed it. I hadn't planned on a deadline, because to plan for that would be to believe, at least partly, that things weren't what they seemed. That he had regrets. That he might return someday. It was the one thing I couldn't afford to let myself believe.

Now that we were operating in a post-Bobby-mercy world, in its place had grown a new certainty: John would leave again. Somehow this was even worse.

It was on the third day that both Jubilee and Rogue ran out of patience. Jubilee appeared in the gym that afternoon, said "this is so not what I meant," and dragged me upstairs to the living room, where Rogue waited, flipping through one of Jubilee's fashion magazines.

She glanced up as I entered.

"They're outside," Rogue said in the tone of someone who already knows what's coming. "Storm's making them clean the gutters."

"Is that safe?"

"We have gutters?" asked Jubilee at the same time.

Rogue ignored her, glanced up at me. "Do we care?"

Jubilee snorted but Rogue shot a knowing look in my direction, folding the magazine and setting it down.

There were more students than usual scattered around in the same place, studying or talking or watching TV. Warren's father was on the news again, talking about the "cure". He'd begun to wax mutant-friendly in his speeches to an almost religious degree, sapping on and on about forgiveness and acceptance. I'm not saying he was a bad guy. It was good to see some pro-mutant sentiment in the news. But there was something at worst distrustful and at best very annoying about someone making that big a show of their sudden support after arming the government against its own citizens.

Kitty was staring blankly at the TV screen, the same way she had when it was Magneto but with slightly less naked fear. Warren, who I had at first not even registered was in the room, stared out a window.

"Did you have to save him?" I mumbled as I passed to sit down.

Kitty laughed under her breath. Warren almost-smiled in my direction (even his facial expressions were polite, restrained things, like both they and his clothes had been tailored his entire life).

I removed some stray cups left lying on the floor to the table to clean up later, unsure why the news was on the first place. Then I noticed Jimmy, aka Leech, among the younger kids scattered nearer to the TV and wondered if anyone even knew where the remote was when we were so used to relying on Jones.

There was some avid whispering among the younger kids as I sat down. There was a slightly wider space between Jimmy and the rest of the students. Enough for the backpack he had at his side and then some. He glanced up, expression wary.

"Jimmy, have you met Celia yet?" said Rogue kindly. Then in a slightly more pointed tone, to me: "Jimmy is the non-criminal element to join us after Alcatraz Island."

I rolled my eyes at her.

"Hey," I said to him, hoping my smile looked right. "Nice to officially meet you."

The broad relief of the smile that came with his mumbled response told me he'd been met with mixed responses to his mutation. I wondered idly if he'd met Grace at all before she'd left.

"Do you always wear a backpack indoors?" Jubilee asked, hands on her hips and head cocked to the side.

"Yes?" Jimmy's face had gone a blank kind of nervous.

"For…class?" said Kitty, confused.

He didn't answer, swallowed for a moment, flushing.

It occurred to me that before Xavier's, he'd lived in quarantine at a scientific research facility that was raided. That of all of us, he had the most recent cause to expect an emergency at any time. That he was wearing a full backpack indoors at a school he now lived in. Most Xavier's students were too lazy to use backpacks, even for class, and any classes for the day had long ended.

"It doesn't take long to get to your room from anywhere else in the mansion," I said, getting there a beat before the rest. "If something happened, you would probably have time to grab a bag."

He smiled a little sheepishly. To my surprise, so did Rogue.

"Don't feel bad. I have one, too," she said. Then nodding in my direction: "After Stryker, just seemed like a good idea. And I know you've always had one."

I kept forgetting that we had been roommates, that just because she'd been too polite to say anything at the time didn't mean Rogue hadn't noticed the paranoid habits I brought along with me.

"You're not the only one who can prepare for things, you know," added Jubilee, who'd hurled herself dramatically across one of the couches and was flipping through the magazine Rogue had abandoned.

"You have a go bag packed?" I asked.

I vaguely remembered her asking me about them earlier in the week, but since in the same conversation she'd suggested she get bangs and that Logan get a motorcycle sidecar, I'd largely written it off.

"Duh," said Jubilee. "Just like you said to!"

She reached inside the enormous purse at her side (she visited the local mall the most of any of us—something Storm seemed to allow because the number of explosions tended to decrease for the day and thus far there'd been no incidents on the local news), pulled out a smaller bag, and tossed it to me.

I peeked inside, pulled out an umbrella, bag of gummy bears, and several arcade tokens, waited.

"I got distracted," she said, shrugging.

Rogue sighed. "See, this is why no one lets you make the plans."

Kitty snorted at this from her seat. Jimmy looked distinctly less embarrassed now, a little more at ease. I remembered what it felt like to arrive here and be relieved to find the social bar low for once, realizing I'd somehow swapped parts in the script from when I'd first trudged in the front doors.

"Are you the Celia they were talking about?" Jimmy said in a quiet voice, as Jubilee began arguing the nutritional merits of gummy bears.

I felt my eyebrows raise.

"The people who were there to kidnap me," he said. "One of them kept mentioning a Celia. Something about how you might have powers they thought would be useful."

No wonder everyone kept trying to establish my name that night.

"Thanks," I managed, letting this roll through my nerves for a moment. "For letting me know."

Jimmy nodded.

"I don't want them to try to kidnap anyone else," he blurted quickly, still a little red-faced.

"Probably sanest."

A smile crossed his face but it stayed serious, watching me like there was something else he'd meant to ask, another suspicion on his mind. He looked around him for a moment as though to check that the rest of the room wasn't paying attention before continuing in a quiet voice.

"That guy John who's here now, is he your boyfriend?"

My heart stuttered for a moment. Rogue looked over, frowning, leaning slightly away from Jubilee's chattering.

"No."

I heard myself say it in an equally quiet voice. Tried not to think about how my voice sounded when I did. Jimmy's face stayed thoughtful.

"But he was?"

I nodded, throat tight.

"Do you think…I mean, he was one of them, wasn't he? He was there with the people who wanted to kill me?" He paused. "Do you think he'll try again?"

His voice was quiet by the end with fear. The rest of the room may not have been paying attention, but Jubilee had stopped talking, Kitty leaned a little closer. I didn't have to look to know Rogue was still frowning at me.

Jimmy was far from an outlier, especially among the younger students. Some of them might have known John from before, but many of them knew him only from the news, only as someone who had willingly destroyed buildings, attacked crowds, marched on Alcatraz with Magneto. To them, the fact that he had been one of us to begin with was eclipsed completely by his new reputation. This time around, the school's general fear of John had some substance to back it up. They weren't Bobby, they didn't have some mysterious reason for offering an old friend refuge. They had every reason to fear that instead he would use it for his own devices, that he was here completing Magneto's mission, that their home was at risk.

I looked at Jimmy, who waited with a wary stance, his packed bag at his side at all times. John back when I was sure I knew him wouldn't hesitate to let everyone believe the worst. Would threaten and glare at and ignore the entire mansion, but recognize the marks on a new kid's arms a mile away. Find some excuse for us to be the last ones awake. So when a wary face appeared in the hallway, bag on their back, ready to run, there was someone around to convince them to sit, to stay, to give it another night.

John who'd carried his own essential belongings with him everywhere he went. Never without a lighter, never without a way out. His entire life in a box gathering dust under my bed.

I knew things had changed. I'd seen the news. I'd seen him that day on Alcatraz. I had no business thinking I still knew him. What kind of idiot gets left in the literal cold and comes back for more? I still couldn't help but be sure he wouldn't do this.

John who had opened his eyes in the wing Storm liked to keep at arctic temperatures and immediately checked for a jacket. John with those same eyes, same mouth, staring at me with an expression so open, so transparently hopeful for a full two seconds, that I'd wondered if Storm had drugged him.

"No," I said finally. "I don't think he would do that."

Jimmy nodded, the tension ebbing from his face. He smiled slightly before turning to Kitty, who was asking him about home.

I doubted even John had ever planned for this particular contingency. It would have required the optimism of betting on Bobby's better nature, and John neither bet on others nor was optimistic. Still, part of me was already dreading what the next surprise would be, especially when it looked so much like the one I was still reeling from.

"Thought you didn't have a jacket?"

That was all it took, and I was right back out there again, under the trees in the backyard, embarrassingly hopeful, vulnerable but giddy with it, more important than I had ever been before, already handing myself over in pieces.

Never had it been so urgent to get out of a room. To leave before he did. Because he would leave again, that much felt inevitable. He would leave again and if it came to it, I wouldn't let him take any of the safety I was now a part of with him.

I couldn't let him take more of me with him than I could help.

John POV:

By the third morning, John was considering building himself a cell in the backyard.

He thought it might save everyone the trouble of pretending their eyes weren't constantly cast his way, like he would attack at any moment. Even if he hadn't long ago given up on the possibility of proving his intentions to Xavier's, he wouldn't have known where to start. They looked at him like he had plans when he nothing at all.

What he had was too much energy, and the distinct sense that something was out of place. As though in trade for sleeping in a comfortable bed under a safe roof, enjoying the marvels of indoor plumbing instead of the insect bingo of a new campground, he woke up each morning with a restlessness that drove him to continue lingering in the halls, even despite Bobby's words.

On the third day, he finally ran into Celia, almost literally. A crowd was exiting one of the classrooms into the hallway, Celia behind them, saying something about reading the next chapter in a tone that suggested she was already sure they weren't listening. The eyes of the crowd of younger children flashed to John before they scattered, like prey tipped off by a scent on the wind. Just one younger kid, a pale dark-haired boy John recognized from the files for Alcatraz Island, lingered a moment longer, looking puzzled. When John didn't move, he dashed off after the others, with what appeared to be an apologetic look back at Celia.

And then it was just the two of them.

She was dressed in a faded blue V-neck and jeans today. No bag, no jacket. Time could've stopped except for how much distance she left between them as she stepped out of the classroom. If it hadn't been for how stiff her movements were, John might have believed she hadn't seen him at all. Her eyes never once met his. They followed Jimmy down the hall, eyebrows furrowed.

"That's the kid from Alcatraz," he said. It wasn't a question.

She nodded, watching the boy disappear around a corner. It felt a little like she was bracing for something.

"Can I ask you something?" she said, looking at the hallway instead of him. Please. "Just don't set the school on fire or anything when you leave, ok? Don't hurt anyone this time."

He was frozen, pulse in his throat.

Celia glanced up into his eyes. There was certainty in her stance though he couldn't seem to read any feeling at all on her face. She'd gotten better at hiding it. No, she'd always been good at hiding. She'd just never hid from him before.

"It's not like you've been subtle," she said evenly. "You're constantly looking for a flame."

Everything that could produce a flame had been confiscated from him upon arrival, stripped from him before he'd even regained consciousness. It wasn't just that he'd gotten used to wearing the flamethrowers nearly all the time, too paranoid to sleep in the woods among people who were not friends without them. He hadn't spent so much time without even his Zippo on him in years. He felt exposed without it.

Still, he wasn't aware she'd been watching. That she'd seen any of him since his arrival, much less enough to know his habits. This might have given him more hope if it weren't for the look on her face. A little too close to empty. Like she was much further away than the few steps that separated them.

He tried to swallow but his throat was suddenly tight. She was still looking him in the eye and he was afraid to break eye contact in case she never looked at him again.

"And I get it now," she said.

"Do you?" He said, voice hoarse.

Her forehead tightened but she didn't flinch.

"You want what Magneto wants and all humans and the rest of us are disposable. I know I can't change your mind. But don't hurt this place or these kids—if you don't want to be here…just leave."

She spoke quietly so he was the only one in the hallway who could hear her. Calmly, as though every word wasn't devastating. He thought he caught her eyes watering, but she spoke with such precision he told himself he must have imagined it.

Her blue eyes flicked over his face once and then she was gone, exiting soundlessly down the hallway. Again.

"When you leave."

He let out a breath and found that the weight on his chest had resumed.

Celia—who'd seen the parts of him he'd meant to hide and stayed anyway, who'd kept coming back, who had once clung to him on a terrible night like he was the only thing keeping her in the world—was just waiting for him to leave again. Expected that he would. He had built that into her. Taken his own deepest fear and carried out a different role in it, passed it along to the only person he loved. And in the meantime, she had developed a new habit of leaving him.

"Don't hurt anyone this time."

When John walked into the TV room with some bags of chips from the kitchen, placed them dutifully in front of Jones, and half-collapsed into his usual spot, sans Celia, beside him, he caught a few of the younger students scurrying out. He wondered idly if someone would mention it to her, if she would be surprised that he hadn't left yet.

A clip of the news before commercial break was recounting the efforts to track down the mutants who had attacked the laboratory staff at Alcatraz, the reconstruction and general disarray of the aftermath. John wondered if Quill would be picked up, almost hoped, for reasons he couldn't quite pin down, that he had.

Jones only nodded at him in greeting as though he hadn't been gone for long at all, accepted the chip offering silently, blinked and the opening credits to a whale documentary replaced the newscast.

Across the room, Colossus nodded at him hesitantly, left the room. A younger girl John now recognized as Lydia—looking notably less teary than before he'd left—eyed him a little brazenly, chin in the air, before following suit.

Artie, hunched over a book at the other end of the couch, was the only one who didn't bother moving. Part of John wondered at the uncanny fit of a mutant who couldn't talk and wanted to do nothing but read with a mutant who didn't like talking and wanted to do nothing but watch documentaries. As he watched, Artie glanced up, noticing that the room had vacated. He furrowed his eyebrows at John briefly, shook his head, then appeared to decide it still wasn't worth moving and turned back to his book.

"He's mad at you, too, in case you were wondering," Jones said, eyes on the screen.

"Wasn't. Thanks for the head's up."

"It's only partly because they're terrified of you," he continued, as though John hadn't said anything at all. It was annoying. Almost comforting. "People care about Celia, you know. She's one of us. And we don't have a lot of people left."

The room was empty now. It was the three of them, the only noise a British man describing orcas as "the schoolyard bullies of the ocean." John exhaled. It was both helpful and hurtful that he found he still understood Jones' way of communicating, that unlike when he and Celia used to say it, when Jones said 'people', he also meant himself.

"I know," he said, running a hand through his hair. "I know they do."

Jones turned in his direction, eyes not quite leaving the screen but flickering below it briefly as though distracted.

"You used to, too," he said. "Before you bailed."

There was something about the phrasing that swept the air out of John's lungs for a minute. One second he was sort of fine, the next he felt almost panicky with guilt.

"I didn't bail," he managed, but his voice sounded rough even to him. "It's complicated."

Jones raised his eyebrows. "Heard you walked off the jet," he said. "Celia went after you and came back two hours later alone. Jean told everyone you'd gone to meet Magneto. Sounds like bailing."

"I didn't go to meet—Sorry, two hours?"

How long was she out there?

Jones shrugged. "That's how long Rogue said she'd been gone. Artie overheard them talking on the flight back."

Artie glanced up at him sharply and, without taking his eyes off the screen, Jones corrected: "Well, Rogue was talking, at least."

The room felt too close without other people's hostile stares in it for camouflage. John needed someone to walk in and glare at him, call him a criminal, maybe throw something at his face. This conversation was destroying him faster than anything else could.

She hadn't even been wearing a jacket. He knew she hadn't, because she hadn't owned one, and he'd been wearing his. Suddenly the mansion was too quiet even with the TV on.

"Are you planning on staying?" said Jones, this new pre-teen Jones with bony elbows and the same point-blank stare.

Guilt ran through John for a beat that he ignored.

"It's not like I have anywhere else to go."

It was a cop-out answer and one he knew even as he said it that Jones would ignore. Artie glanced up from his book to frown at him. John got the sense that if Jones had been normal, he would have rolled his eyes.

"Of course you do," he said simply, still staring at the screen. "Magneto wasn't the only mutant in the Brotherhood. Go find your friends."

"They're not my friends."

He'd said it automatically but it was true. Jones turned away from the screen at this, stared pointedly at him for two seconds, then returned to the screen.

"I suppose that makes sense," he said. "Friendship and anarchy are not historically super compatible. Still, you could go find your allies."

John blinked at him.

"Are we not allies?"

He said it in a near-joking tone but they both knew it wasn't. Jones considered this.

"Jimmy thinks you might kill him," he said, instead of answering.

"The kid from the cure facility?"

Jones nodded.

"You were there to kill him."

"I wasn't."

"Your allies were," Jones said matter-of-factly.

John considered Jones this time.

"I wouldn't have killed him."

Artie still watched him, frowning, but Jones just nodded, as visibly unbothered as ever.

"I know that," he said. "But if you're planning on staying, you should probably know that he doesn't."

They weren't just talking about Jimmy. Another Jonesism—blunt but subtle. Direct but indirect. Too many things at once for a kid his age.

John cleared his throat.

"Yeah, I've noticed."

Jones did the thing again where he looked at him without quite looking at him, eyes just off the screen.

"Are you going to leave her alone?"

It was hard to tell which version of the question he was asking more. Even for John, who, though this conversation might have sounded like nonsense to anyone else, felt like Jones was making the most sense of anyone he'd spoken to all week. He didn't know the answer. He wasn't good at having those—nobody had looked at him for one in such a long time. He wasn't someone people looked to for confirmation, for solutions. He'd grown comfortable, made peace with it. The only exception was when Celia had happened, when there were suddenly things he thought he knew that he could not believe the rest of the world hadn't noticed.

He didn't know how to leave her alone. Not really. Or he knew how, but he didn't fucking want to.

When he didn't answer, Artie leaned forward suddenly and shot a hand out, fingers closing around John's forearm.

He saw himself, through the eyes of someone much shorter. Walking down a hallway, face giving way to a smirk as he came to a stop in front of a group loitering outside the dining room, Celia stepping away in his direction, face relaxing into a smile. He sat next to Jones on the couch, eyes on a documentary about tectonic plates with one arm slung along the back of the couch behind Celia, who as he watched lifted her eyes from the book in her hands, leaned into the curve under his shoulder, took a breath in. He was at a table at lunch with Bobby and Rogue, Kitty on the other side trying to tell a story, Bobby and Rogue listening politely, his hand running up Celia's leg, pulling her chair closer to him absently as he stole some of Bobby's chips with his other hand, not quite catching the smirk that flashed across her face.

It was different to see it through someone else's eyes. The same kind of sharp but harder to blur. Harder to bury.

"I'm fucking aware, Artie, thanks," he said, practically growling, flinching away.

Artie ignored him, leaned forward further, closing his hand around his shoulder this time.

He and Celia disappearing around a dark corner of the hallway, laughing. He and Celia stepping off the stone steps into the backyard, her mug in his hands, his jacket around her shoulders. Celia half-asleep curled against him in the living room where a group had gathered to watch a movie and ended up watching Cyclops fight with technology for half an hour instead, her body draped easily into his with a trust it now hurt to see.

He and Celia, in a hallway, facing each other. Blurry, like they were viewed from far away. Her face was turned more fully away from the rest of the hallway than he remembered it being. John's own face was looking down at her with an expression he wasn't aware his face could hold.

Celia walking mechanically out of the snow, face closed, taking a seat across from a younger girl who burst into sobs. The mansion hallway, still covered in broken glass, debris, and fallen tranquilizers, silent as the group of them trudged back in. Somewhere down a hallway, someone said "Cel, you shouldn't—" and Celia, dumping a bare handful of broken glass into a trash can, said "I'll do the locks then," and walked away with a vacant expression. The younger kids scattered around the mansion for a meal, ignoring the sound of Storm and Beast arguing in the other room. Watching as Celia entered, paused by the back door as though to open it, checked that it was locked instead, took a plate, and left again.

Then suddenly at the end it wasn't Artie's perspective at all. It was Celia's red-rimmed eyes frozen on him in the snow, it was his aimless wandering through the woods in the direction of the compound, the sound of his voice whispering "fuck fuck fuck" over and over. Mystique showing up at his tent wearing Celia's face and a knowing grin, cackling when his voice told her she was losing her touch. Strolling by wearing it at the end of a meeting with Magneto and waving at him. Magneto watching his face doubtfully as John told him "You don't know her." Alcatraz shimmering in the fog but Celia's closed expression clear as a beacon through it, as Magneto said "that girl does something to you."

John started, dismayed.

"You can't just—" he cut off at the noise of other voices chattering along the hallway.

A group of younger mutants passed by, including several new faces. Upon seeing him in the room, they scrambled quickly out of sight. They were scared of him. He couldn't find it in him to be annoyed when he knew why they did. Doug, looking considerably older than when John had left, stopped to glare at him pointedly and then shuffled away with the rest. The room went quiet again as they faded into the distance.

When he turned back, Jones was exchanging glances with Artie, who had reached across to touched his wrist. Then he blinked at John, looking almost relieved, like some private hope of his was safe after all.

Or maybe John was imagining things. This was Jones, after all.

"Why can't you ever just say that?" He said, visibly annoyed, which felt ironic considering who was talking.

John blinked.

"Jones," he said in warning.

"You still do," Jones said, in a voice that suggested he was half laughing at him.

John had the distinct feeling of having missed out on some near-telepathic communication. His stomach flipped. He glared suspiciously at Artie for good measure, who was now conspicuously absorbed in the book in his lap. Jones returned to ignoring him as well, blinking the recording back from a commercial instead. John could've sworn he heard Artie chuckle.

"You know, it's rude to barge into someone else's mind like that," John said lowly to both of them, still a little shell-shocked.

Jones scoffed. It was odd to see the same mannerisms he'd had as a kid just arrived at the mansion on the gangly body of a pre-teen. His glasses looked new but the blunt disdain in his voice was all the same.

"Since when do you care about rude?" he said, blinking again, a whale shark cutting through the waters on screen. "Anyway, not sure if you remember, but this is a school for mutants."

They watched a small pod of dolphins for a beat in silence. John waited for that panicky, exposed feeling in his bones to turn into something worse. When it faded instead, Artie turning a few pages in his book, Jones watching the screen in silence, John shook his head. He thought of the new, nice jacket draped over Celia's shoulders in the medical wing, the new bag, his unspoken certainty that someone had given her both of those things. Someone who had been here while he was gone. While he was traipsing through abandoned churches, sleeping in the woods, setting fires he didn't even enjoy. All while she was beating the shit out of the X-Men's training facilities.

"You tell anyone and I will actually burn this place down."

Jones and Artie both smirked, neither looking at him. How had this happened? Not a week ago he'd been Pyro from the news, Pyro from the Brotherhood, Pyro who people ran from in fear. Now he was on a couch in Westchester being openly mocked by two socially challenged pre-teens.

Jones, looking as unimpressed with this as ever, watched an orca tail-check a sting ray for no reason.

"If you think Artie's bad, you should know Grace is back tomorrow," he said, a little ominously.

John's stomach sank again.

"Who's Grace?"