AN: Here there be chapter 8. Getting closer to revealing Pietro's plan, but not there yet. Much love to y'all. Oh, wait, disclaimer: Don't drink if you're underage, or if you absolutely feel you have to, be really careful about it. Alcohol poisoning isn't fun, and as you'll read, it makes people act out of character.
"So I guess the fortune teller's right, I should have seen just what was
there and not some holy light;
But you crawled beneath my veins and now I don't care, I have no luck, I don't
miss it all that much,
there's just so many things that I can't touch, I'm torn.
You're a little late
I'm already torn."
-Ednaswap 'Torn' (Yeah, I know, Natalie Imbruglia made it famous, but Ednaswap did it originally, and I think that version is more appropriate to the story.)
Pietro sat on the couch in the Brotherhood house, listlessly watching the news. Some stupid skate competition the previous day had been disrupted when a mutant or mutants destroyed the arena in which it was being held. He flipped through the channels, not really paying attention, too stuck on the sinking feeling in his stomach, the feeling that maybe his masterful genius super greatest most brilliant plan ever was none of the above. There were just too many variables: Magneto, Gambit, Mystique, wherever the hell she was, Xavier and the X-Geeks, and god help him, Wanda. Maybe he'd already missed his window of opportunity, maybe his best shot was back during the Sentinel fight.
Still, Pietro knew that no one, with the possible exceptions of himself and his girlfriend, was perfect, and that other opportunities had to arise sooner or later. He just hoped that Rogue could wait that long, when even she didn't know what she was waiting for.
"What are you so sulky about, traitor?" Lance grumbled, walking into the living room. Lance had stopped trying to kill Pietro around the second day, and the two entered an uneasy truce. Todd and Freddy were a little more accepting, but Lance was still intensely suspicious of his former friend and current leader.
"Global warming," Pietro muttered back.
"Okay, not that I care, but what the hell happened to you?" Lance snapped. "Ever since you got back here you keep your mouth shut most of the time. Not that I'm complaining."
"What can I say, Lance, I just can't bring myself to interrupt your brilliant lectures. I'm rapt. Did you want something, or are you just here to annoy me?"
Lance didn't respond, instead looking out the window.
"Lance?" Pietro said. Lance jumped, looking back towards the couch.
"What? Nothing. I gotta go."
Lance opened the door and walked out.
Rogue trudged up the street, feeling lower than low. She'd been fighting with virtually everyone in the mansion, from Xavier to Kitty to Jamie and everyone in between. Evan never came back from his skate competition, instead deciding to spend some time with the Morlocks. As a result, Rogue was now the only one- except Scott, who had his glasses- who didn't have control over her powers. She hadn't thought it possible, but she belonged even less than before.
So she decided to take a walk. The weather was chilly and drizzling, Storm's powers manifesting her sorrow over Evan's absence, but Rogue hadn't bothered with a coat or umbrella. Her feet just took her over to the Brotherhood house. Maybe Lance would talk to her. Kitty had dumped him, and he'd been almost as betrayed by Quicksilver as Rogue. He'd have a beer, she'd pick up a bottle of cheap wine, and they'd stew in their misery together for a while.
"We gotta stop meeting like this, cheri."
Rogue just kept walking.
"Leave me alone."
Gambit strolled faster to keep up with her.
"Leave a lady unescorted in the rain, petit? What kind of gentleman would Gambit be if I did something like that?"
He pulled off his coat and offered it to her, walking backwards in front of her and blocking her path.
"I don't have the energy to deal with you," she said flatly, refusing to look at him.
"That's all right, cheri," Gambit purred. "I think you'll find that I got energy to-"
His pick up line was cut off as he collided with something. He turned around and smirked.
"Shouldn't you be inside, boy?" Gambit said. Avalanche scowled.
"I got plans, jerk," Lance snapped, and looked at Rogue.
"You wanna get outta here?" he said, gesturing to the driveway. Rogue nodded and followed Lance to his Jeep.
"Take care, cheri!" Gambit called after her, putting his coat back on with a flourish. Rogue didn't acknowledge him as she got into the Jeep, and she and Lance drove off.
Remy watched the car go, smiling even as the drizzle turned into a hard rain. His reverie was shattered when something swept his legs from under him, then struck him in the jaw and kicked him in the spine before he hit the ground. He opened his eyes to see Pietro standing above him, rain dripping from his fore-locks.
"I thought I made it clear that you were to keep away from me and my team unless we're on a mission."
"By your pere's math, I outrank you, boy," Gambit growled, letting fly three of his playing cards, charged to explode.
"Way too slow," Quicksilver said, easily avoiding all of Gambit's shots. "And math's so basic, so boring, don't you think?"
Gambit picked himself up off the pavement, not fooled by Quicksilver's relaxed stance.
"If math's too basic, allow me to take you to school," he retorted.
Gambit reached into his coat, and with a tug, his staff snapped together. He attacked, trying to crack Pietro's knee with a well placed blow. Quicksilver dodged everything so fast that anyone watching would've thought the staff just went through him.
"Slow. Geriatric. Snail. Tree sloth. Plate-tectonics slow," Pietro said after each shot. "How are you with physics? Me, I love it. There's a formula for everything. Speed equals change in distance over change in time," he started, running a few circles around the other mutant in a microsecond.
"Velocity equals mass over speed," he continued, "Acceleration equals change in velocity over change in time."
Gambit doubled over, as Pietro's fist slammed into his solar plexus.
"Force equals mass times acceleration. Which is why me hitting you hurts ever much more than you'd expect."
Gambit coughed, forcing himself to straighten up after a few moments of gasping.
"I always preferred poetry to science," Gambit replied. "For example: Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a belle, but could not keep her."
All the grim amusement vanished from Pietro's face.
"My name's not fucking Peter, and what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You must really believe in Magneto's ideas. Gave up your friends, your sister, your girlfriend-"
"She's still my girlfriend," Pietro snapped without thinking. Gambit smiled, red eyes shining darkly in the rainstorm.
"You sure she knows that, mon ami?"
Pietro grabbed Gambit by the lapels of his trench coat and started running, far too fast for Gambit to struggle or for any protests to be heard. An hour later, Pietro came to a stop and dropped the other mutant.
"When you get back, you tell Magneto to send someone else to do his surveillance for him, because if I ever catch you near my team again, you're gonna be a smear down fifty miles of I-90. And the girl is off limits. To all of you."
Pietro gave him the coldest smile Gambit had ever seen on a man other than Magneto, and added, "By the way. Welcome to Canada."
Quicksilver was gone in a flash, and Gambit sighed. Just what he needed, he thought as he tried to sort out a way to get home from Quebec.
"I hate that kid," he muttered.
"It's cool, hon, you can do better," Rogue said, taking another hit off the sweet port wine Lance had bought for her.
"You too," Lance agreed, finishing off his eighth beer. "Yeah. We can both do better."
"We must be real oblivious though, cause I totally didn't see that one coming," she said, flopping back against Lance's bed as they sat on the floor, getting trashed.
"Hey Lance," a voice came as the door creaked open. "Have you seen my-"
"Todd!!" Rogue and Lance shouted, raising their bottles in a toast and beaming.
"Um… hi?" Todd replied, hiding partly behind the door in case one of them decided to throw one. "I was just checking to see if my shoes was in here. What're you doing?"
"We're starting a new club!" Lance said.
"The Brotherhood-" Rogue started.
"-and Sisterhood," Lance graciously added for her.
"Of Unceremoniously Dumped Mutants," Rogue finished. Todd looked a little afraid.
"Uh huh…" he said.
"Yep!" Lance said. "We're gonna stay inside and drink until humanity and mutants have killed each other off."
"Then we'll go back out and drink some more!" Rogue said.
"Great. So no shoes, huh?"
"Nope, no shoes," Rogue said as Lance struggled to pull his off, thinking this was a new rule for membership in the B&SOUDM. All three froze, however, as they heard an angry voice from behind Todd.
"Look, if that prick with the cards shows up here again, you tell me, all right?" Todd tripped forward as he was shoved from behind. "I'm sick and tired of this cloak and dagger macho bullsh-"
Pietro immediately shut up as he got past Todd into Lance's room.
"Out!" Lance roared dramatically. "This club is for the unceremoniously dumped, not those who dump unceremim- unceremoniously. You're not qualified."
"Are you drunk?" Pietro asked Lance, though he couldn't seem to break eye contact with Rogue.
"Lil' bit," Lance replied, holding his thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart.
"I'm outta here, yo," Todd said, hopping past Pietro and out the door. "Y'all are fucking silly."
For some reason, Lance seemed to take great exception to this remark, barging past Pietro after Todd, shouting,
"Who the hell are you calling silly?! Hey! Get back here! Come down from there!"
Pietro walked in the rest of the way, cautiously, as though he might trip or make too much noise that Rogue might spook and run away.
"Hi," he said to her. She just gazed at him with a sorrowful and slightly dazed expression.
"Hi," she said back.
"Are you drunk too?" he asked. She looked down the neck of her wine bottle with a very grave expression.
"Pretty much."
"What are you doing way out here?" he asked, taking a step closer.
"Trouble at home," Rogue said. "What are you doing back?"
"Being in charge, and generally despised," he said. Rogue looked down at the floor.
"So all of y'all are working for Magneto now?"
Pietro took a deep breath and blew it out very slowly.
"Sort of," he replied. Tears filled Rogue's eyes, and she unsteadily scrambled to her feet.
"Rogue, wait wait wait wait wait wait," Pietro said, grabbing her arm. It was only the third time he'd ever seen her cry, and the first time it was genuinely and completely his fault.
"Leave me alone, Pietro," she said, trying to hide the fact that she'd been crying.
"Come on, Stripes, if you go back to Xavier's like this it's just gonna make everything worse."
"It doesn't matter," she sobbed, pulling out into the hallway, Pietro trailing off her arm the whole way. "I don't care."
"Look, just sit and talk with me for a while?" he said, coaxing her down the hall. Reluctantly, but too worn down to resist, she let him pull her into his room and closed the door. He sat on the bed, patting the space next to him. She shook her head, arms folded across her chest, wine bottle dangling loosely from one hand. Pietro rolled his eyes.
"Stripes, sit someplace, you're wobbling," he said. Indeed, she was swaying gently with her intoxication. She responded by sitting exactly where she was on the floor.
"Fair enough," Pietro sighed, getting down on the floor and sitting across from her.
"So what's going on?" he asked.
"Are you serious?" she asked. "I was captured by the army, I can't seem to talk to anyone anymore without them getting all Oprah on me, you dumped me and started-"
"Wait wait wait. I dumped you? When did I dump you?" Pietro cried out. "I never broke up with you!"
Rogue's jaw dropped.
"You led me into a trap with a giant mutant killing robot and your crazy father!" she shouted, giving him a shove.
"I told you to trust me!" Pietro protested.
"You nearly got me dissected and then you disappeared!" Rogue shouted. "And then you tell me nothing's changed? What the hell is going on with you?"
"I have a plan, okay?" he replied.
"I'd love to hear it!" she shouted, taking a swig off the bottle.
"I can't tell you, cause if I do, Grey and Xavier will pick it right out of your head and ruin everything!"
"They won't if it's a good plan!"
"It's not a good plan, it's a terrible plan!" Pietro shouted back. "But it's all I have to work with, so I'm just gonna have to go with it!" he continued, frantically fast. "And I wish I'd never thought of it, but it's the only way to get on with my stupid life! And everyone else's for that matter!"
"So we're right back where we started!"
"No, we're not," Pietro said. "Because this time we're in the same room this time. I haven't lied to you once, which is why I keep telling you that I can't tell you anything! But for the record I did not dump you, break up with you or blow you off. Yes, I admit, I nearly got you killed, but it wasn't the first time, was it, and it probably won't be the last what with our lives being an epic super-powered soap opera, but I promise I'll never get you all the way killed, and if this works, everything'll be so much better. So, will you forgive me?"
Rogue rubbed her forehead and sighed.
"No," she grumbled. Pietro put on his best sad puppy face.
"Please?"
"God damn it," Rogue muttered, wiping her eyes and smearing her eye shadow all over the place. Pietro tried not to laugh at her, cute as she was, her nose slightly pink from alcohol and crying.
"Well?" he asked.
"Fine," she said. He smiled broadly. "But you're still in trouble, you sneaky son of a bitch. You're lucky I love you," she growled as she got up unsteadily.
"Where you going?" he asked, unable to wipe the smile off his face. She still loved him.
"To the bathroom, nosy."
As she walked down the hall, she heard Lance whining at someone to leave him alone.
"No way man, you're too big of a bitch when you're hung over; now drink this water or I'll make sure you die like Hendrix."
She shook her head, smiling. She'd forgotten how weirdly tender their brand of 'brotherly love' could be. What she'd seen of the Morlocks, living with the Brotherhood, even living with Mystique and Destiny, those arrangements had all seemed so natural, even though she didn't belong with the Morlocks, and she hoped to god she didn't belong with Mystique, living with the Brotherhood had been different. Not great, not magnificent, just different.
She walked into the bathroom and washed her face, and looked at her slightly intoxicated self in the mirror and gave herself a smile. Then, out loud, she asked herself a question.
"So which matters more to you, sugar? Who's on the team… or who's leading it?"