Amidst the Ruins

[Bobby Drake]

I'm not supposed to be here.

The thought runs absurdly through his mind as he pokes around the ruins. He's not even sure why he's here, or what he's looking for, really.

Who the hell does he think he is, anyway, sneaking behind police lines at two in the morning to look for clues in the burned-out husk of a seedy motel bar? Logan would probably sniff a few times and explain everything... and Rogue'd probably surprise everyone with the ability to steal the memories from barstools or something... but what's he supposed to do? Yeah, the walls are warm. No shit, Sherlock -- the place burned down!

Besides, it's not like he needs clues. That damned TV news snippet told him everything he needed to know... because, really, just how many incendiary eighteen-year-olds is fucking Magneto likely to be hanging around with, anyway?

Actually, maybe that's not such a great question. He really doesn't want to think about it.

He wonders what the place looked like before it got trashed. Probably not much better than it does now, from what he's heard. Not the sort of place Bobby Drake would normally hang out. Which makes him like it more, all of a sudden.

At least the cops took the bodies away. He isn't sure he could handle that. Not after Alcatraz. He knows it's a war now, really he does, he doesn't need to keep seeing the bodies. If only he was sure what the sides were...

[Pyro]

He doesn’t know what possessed him to come back.

Predictably there are plenty of excuses – he forgot something, wants to empty the till, needs to remove evidence – and no doubt one of them will hit him with Magneto when he finds out how his protégé has broken the whole ‘go to ground and stay there’ thing in order to walk back to the scene of the crime and straight into the media maelstrom. But none of them hit him. None of them are reasons, and none even begin to explain why he’s doing the one thing Pyro never does; backtracking.

Well, the motel was never meant to be backwards, was it? It was a step up from one night stands and crashing on sympathetic couches, which was forwards from the streets… and so on and so on all the way back to Alcatraz. He couldn’t pretend there was a ‘Master Plan’, but things were going, if not well, then better-than-bad, which is always more than good enough once you realise survival is as good as it gets.

And it’s taken Magneto all of 24 hours to wreck everything (quite literally; the walls, he knows, are still smouldering, begging to be nudged back into flame). So much for Rogue’s (he can’t think of her as Marie any more, not now the lines have been redrawn, the board – to latch onto Magneto’s favourite image – reset) naïve assertions that everything was finally over. Nothing ever really ends, it seems, and it’s almost funny that Fate has chosen to change the rules, seeing as how he’s finally become numb to how nothing ever lasts.

The cold hard bitch is determined to screw him over, it seems, since she won’t even let him run through this latest crisis alone. A wiser man would hide, make a discreet getaway… but he’s never been wise, per se, not in the conventional sense, and if the last few days are anything to go by he’s definitely not yet a man either.

“Of all the gin joints..” he starts, stepping out of the shadows so there’s no way Bobby could mistake him for anyone else, lighter flicked open with customary click though not yet ignited. “You’re a tad late, Icicle, if you’re planning on playing the hero.”

[Bobby Drake]

"I think we both stopped playing a few weeks back..." he blurts out bitterly, before his voice trails off as he realizes he's not even sure what name to use. (He can't keep calling him "Johnny"... they aren't really friends anymore, are they? But calling him "Pyro" is too much like admitting defeat.)

He tells himself he's surprised. He has to be surprised, because otherwise he expected Johnny to show up, and that's crazy. So, he's surprised. But, anyway, now he knows. Pyro and Magneto, together again. Which means the Brotherhood is back.

Great. I wonder what national landmark gets trashed this time... the Space Needle? the Washington Monument? Empire State Building? I wonder who dies, this time?

He remembers their last meeting. Their last fight. He laughs at that description... it makes them sound like a couple who split up, instead of two soldiers on the craziest battlefield in history. It's not funny... but he laughs anyway.

He wonders if he'll get killed next time. Wonders if it'll be Johnny who pulls the trigger. Or the igniters, or the lighter, or whatever the hell it is. No... Johnny'd never do that to me...

Honesty forces him to finish the thought: ...but Pyro might.

Bobby looks over his ex-roommate more carefully. "You look like shit, John."

[Pyro]

Looks like Bobby’s not the only one acting on rash impulse, because he’s quick to pick up on the tone, which prompts a few less than comfortable thoughts of his own. Chief among them – which bothers him more than it should, because he’s not meant to be able to read him like that – is where exactly he gets off on the bitterness. What exactly has he got to feel bad about? Alcatraz fucking made him - the blonde, blue-eyed, All-American hero. No sign of Captain Hoarfrost getting shipped off because he’s one of the good guys, the mutants with the seal of approval.

”So dressing up in that costume and running around pretending to be a super-hero is serious now?” he shoots back, without really thinking (but since when has that been anything new?) ”The jackasses at the Leather Emporium telling you this is real?”

He doesn’t want to look much closer - switching instead to leaning back against one of the more intact stretches of used-to-be-wall, coaxing a spark from the orange embers and running it across his fingers idly, weaving in and out the way world-weary street-corner philosophers do coins - because if he does it sort of spoils the whole hero-mould he’s forcing Bobby in to so that this all makes sense, so that he can draw nice lines around everything separating Villain and Hero, Friend and Foe. It’s only natural that he would have changed, of course, but there’s no way Pyro was expecting this much of a change. Which makes the dismissive sneer and half-snorted ”Look who’s talking, Bobby-boy” the only right and proper response.

[Bobby Drake]

"No, dammit, trying to fry your goddamn best friend is serious!"

He cringes mentally at the sound of his own voice, hearing his own feeling of betrayal, his own vulnerability, his own need -- for what, he isn't sure -- and it's like he's thirteen again and trying to sound like a grownup while his voice is cracking.

Bobby had genuinely believed, after Alcatraz, that he'd accepted that Johnny -- that Pyro -- was the enemy. Believed he'd burned out whatever it was that had hurt like that when Johnny left. But it seems he'd just numbed it, after all. Packed it with ice, and now it's just melting away, which is all poetic and stuff but it also sucks, because this isn't some kind of stupid soap opera or ancient Greek myth or something, it's his life.

And he knows that someone else would probably hear the anger and the bitterness, see the new look, and stop there. Not notice the old need, the old vulnerability, the old pain. Not notice the old Bobby.

Someone else. But not Johnny. The bastard always could get in his head, play him like a damned fish on a line, and whatever else has changed between them he can tell that's stayed the same, that Johnny still knows him better than anybody. Only now that's a fucking scary thought, because this isn't just some kind of screwed-up headgame they're playing here, this is life and death, and Johnny's on the wrong side, and the right side is never going to feel right without him.

For just a moment, he feels like he can change that. Feels like the right words are there, in his throat, in his lungs, choking him... the words to make Johnny see what he's really walking away from, the words that can cut through all this stupid Hero/Villain comic-book crap. (And much, much later, when he has come to terms with those words, he will look back this moment and curse himself for not being willing to say them, or think them, or admit to them. But that's later.)

And then that moment is gone, and Johnny is gone, and Pyro is lounging against the wall and isn't really seeing him at all anymore, and Bobby has no more words.

[Pyro]

”Don’t try that one.”

It’s not – as one might have expected – an explosion, nor is it a pathetic childish whine like Bobby’s. But for all the control it’s no less raw, the sharpness in his tone deceptive in its apparent mastery of, rather than attempts to overthrow, his own weaker side, the side which still thinks about Bobby in terms which suggest there is, or was, any sort of connection there to prompt his own feelings of betrayal and exposure. That side is still there, in the way an amputated limb ghosts long after it’s gone, and he can accept that image because it means he’s finally cut John off and become entirely Pyro. Again it’s the lines which keep him sane.

Which is why Bobby can’t play the friend card, because the lines have been drawn, and for once it’s not by him. Sure, Bobby might try and push the blame that way, take things back to Alkali Lake, back beyond that to Boston. But it’s so much bigger than the actions of one fire-starter, isn’t it? Bobby’s problem is that he’s never been able to see that. He insists on the personal, and that’s what should have got him killed long before now.

Much bigger... and at the same time much smaller. Because the real reason – not the one he tells himself, but the one he instinctively knows underneath all the rejections and tries to ignore – is so much more simple. Sandbox politics still hold good, after all. It’s all very well Bobby acting the martyr, but ‘truth’ (or as near to truth as belief, of which the best part is always going to be lie, can come in Pyro’s private melodrama) is, he was the one doing the screwing over when it came to the crunch. Pyro can rationalise his actions easily enough – it was war, and he was the ‘bad guy’ – but the dagger which Bobby drove into his spine is another story. His own actions were ‘natural’, ‘right’ and ‘proper’, but for a hero like Bobby what followed is nothing less than perversion.

(Lines. Always lines. Bobby’s crime, above all else, was to cross his, break out of his neat little box)

”Don’t you dare fucking try it, Drake. All this crap about friendship’s pretty and noble now, isn’t it? You know fucking well you were as much of a backstabbing bastard as anyone... don’t make me add hypocrite onto the list or I might have to really start hating you” The sarcasm in those last few words is unmissable, because he does hate Bobby. He really, really does.

Or at least, Pyro does. John, who still thinks skipping classes is real rebellion and messing around with a lighter the most he’ll ever use his powers for, takes a little more convincing...

... which is why it’s a good job he’s not John.

Soon it’ll all be purely instinctual. Sooner or later he’ll be able to do this without reminding himself of the basic facts, including this one.

[Bobby Drake]

Backstabbing?
Hypocrite?
Bobby has no idea what to make of any of that, or the intensity in John's voice... less than two decades of mostly sheltered living and a few aberrant psych texts just aren't enough clues to decode a psyche like John's.

He's not even sure who he's talking to anymore, not sure if there's anything left of the scrawny kid who taught him all the dirty jokes he knows (well, almost all... all the funny ones, anyway), who got him throwing-up drunk for the first time and helped him clean up and never even mentioned it afterwards. Hell, he's not even sure that kid ever really existed. Maybe it was an act all along and Bobby was the only one too stupid not to get the joke.

Except if that's true then he hasn't gotten any smarter, because he still remembers that Johnny, still sees him peeking out through the eyes of this half-starved half-washed stranger when he thinks nobody's looking. He's seen that look before, he realizes, and it takes him a while to place it. When he does, it makes him want to laugh.

It was back at his folks' house in Boston, when Bobby was eight or nine. The Hendersons down the street had just broken up... after Eileen had left with the kids, before Bill disappeared and the house got sold. They had a German Shepherd named Flash who started hanging out in the Drake's garage after that... but Dad hated dogs, and Mom was scared of Flash, so Bobby didn't tell anybody about him, just brought him leftovers after dinner every night. He never got close enough to pet Flash or anything, truth was he was scared to try, but after a few weeks it got so Flash'd actually stick around when Bobby came out, and watch him from the garage door, ready to bolt if Bobby came too close.

And it sounds stupid even to Bobby, but Flash's eyes looked just like John's when he thinks nobody's looking. And suddenly that isn't funny anymore, suddenly it makes him want to cry, and there's no way he's letting that happen. Sure, maybe his best friend did come after him with a flamethrower, but Bobby remembers who won that fight.

"John... what the hell are you talking about?"

[Pyro]

Of course, Bobby was always going to be a little too blonde, blue-eyed suburbanite (dual income 2.4 children, picket fence and hell, probably a golden lab to boot) to fully understand his particular brand of triple-reject neurosis, but Pyro would have thought this latest argument easy enough to follow. Because Bobby – poor bleeding heart Bobby, who still, it seems, thinks they’re friends – wouldn’t ever be able to forget sending his so-called best friend into hell, would he? No matter how much war has hardened him – and all the evidence suggests that it’s not a great deal – that should haunt him. It’s more than annoying, bordering on painful, to see that it doesn’t seem to have broken the Iceman’s infamous cool... though of course Pyro’s not going to admit that it bothers him, seeing how little he it seems to mean. They’re enemies, after all, and not supposed to care what happens to the other.

Bobby’s still all wide-eyed and innocent, a rabbit caught in the headlights, and for a moment he wants to laugh at how stupid it seems, seeing this guy pretending to be some sort of superhero. A moment or two later it still seems ridiculous, but in a way that renders him nauseous instead of amused, because this guy is the one who fucked everything up for him. In his version of things (which is of course the only one that matters, logic and reality be damned) it would have all ended differently if Bobby hadn’t felt the need to a) rescue him and then b) shop him to the Dangerous Mutant Containment Division (or whatever more politically correct acronym they’re currently going by).

Never mind that he’d have been captured and cured soon enough anyway, or failing that disintegrated along with everyone else fool enough not to get of the island... no, that way madness lies. Obviously Bobby couldn’t have saved his life. Wrecked it, yes. Things are easier that way, because hating the whole world is nigh on impossible. John learnt that quickly enough before (and passed the wisdom on, in due course, to Pyro), learnt how much easier it was to just hate a select few, or better still just one person. Right now that one person is Bobby, and that’s fine, because Pyro alternates between hating him for himself, and hating how hard it is to make him fit the label he needs to in order to be hated.

”Don’t try that either. Don’t try and tell me you’ve fucking forgotten” He's struggling to stay clear enough to keep the flame casual; it splutters and flares, aching to be allowed to destroy because it's always externalised all the complicated feelings for him so he doesn't have to deal with them. There’s a choked quality in his voice now. It might be tears, but probably isn’t because tough mutant terrorists don’t cry, especially not over how their worst enemies don’t seem to care... He tells himself it’s just bitterness, coupled with memories from that place, though the rest of the time he’s been claiming to be numbed to both.

”Or are you really that green, that fucking naive, that you have no idea what happened after you shopped me to the authorities? They probably didn’t tell you, did they? Didn’t want their baby hero to have nightmares about the big bad world and the things good guys can get away with”

[Bobby Drake]

Bobby's first reaction is anger of his own. He's blaming me for what happened after Alcatraz? Where does he get off? We were the ones with the damned bodycount!

But then those eyes are back, and that damned ember sputters, and Johnny's voice hitches. He's seen Johnny like this before, kinda, back when they were roommates, whenever anything hurt or scared him... not that he'd ever admit to being hurt or scared, but after a while Bobby could tell.

And suddenly a lot of things make sense. Johnny's attitude, the way he looks, the way he's dressed... why he was hanging out in a place like this... the rumors about what went on inside the mutant camps.
Bobby may be young and dumb, but he's not stupid, and he doesn't have to be smacked in the head by an uncomfortable truth more than a few times before it starts to sink in. Well... about most things, anyway.

And all his anger drains away like the bloody bathwater after one of Logan's training sessions, leaving nothing behind but a cold clammy pit in his stomach and cotton in the roof of his mouth and the nauseating realization that, however screwed-up John's view of reality is, he's right about one thing... Bobby'd just left him there.

And, sure, they'd all been busy going to funerals, and making sure the government really did destroy the rest of the damned Cure (which it turns out they didn't have to bother doing, but how were they supposed to know that?), and trying to keep the Institute together... but that was excuses. The truth was he'd been pissed at John and didn't want to think about him.

He'd just told himself someone else would deal, and he'd never bothered to wonder who that was going to be. The Professor would have done something, of course. But the Professor was dead, and no matter how much they were pretending to carry on his legacy the truth was nobody could ever take his place.

Bobby regrets having come here in street clothes instead of iced up, because without the ice he knows everything he's feeling is right there on his face for Johnny to read, and that's... well, maybe that's just fair, after all. Because Johnny's still looking at him out of those awful eyes, and Bobby wants to look away but he's not going to. Not again.

"John, I'm sorry. I should have known. I should have stopped it. Should have gotten you out of there."

His voice surprises him by being calm, sincere, regretful... he hardly recognizes it as his own, really. (From anyone else he would have recognized it as pure Xavier, but that's not something he's prepared to hear right now, as he realizes for the first time, just how incredibly HUGE the wheelchair-treads they're all trying to fill really are.)

He doesn't add that he won't let it happen again on his watch, doesn't add that he's done hiding under the covers and hoping someone else will make the tough choices. John would just mock him, and he'd be right: it's all just words until he shows they're true.

"But... you don't have to do... this." He waves his hand vaguely to indicate the remains of the seedy motel bar, trying to get the images out of his mind of what "this" probably included, knowing they'd come back to haunt him at night. "And you don't have to go back to Magneto. You can --" he trails off. He'd been about to say "come back to the Institute," but he knows what reaction he'd get. "--let me help." he finishes, lamely.

[Pyro]

”Oh, well, that’s all right then.” There’s laughter in the mix now, alongside the biting sarcasm and the definitely-not-tears – harsh, bitter laughter, also oddly choked. The laughter that means this definitely isn’t funny, unless you find imminent flaming death amusing. ”Drake’s sorry.”

It’s surprising that they have yet to attract any attention, what with this being a hot crime scene and all, but any pretence of stealth and secrecy is abandoned. He has other concerns, after all, beyond worrying about attracting attention, and in any case is fired up enough by now that the odds are dramatically against anyone stupid enough to interrupt. Not that there is anyone else there, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed that, addressing an invisible audience in richly scathing tones. ”Hear that world? An apology. So you can erase everything and we’ll all live Happily Ever Fucking After... I knew you were naive, Drake, but this is taking the piss”

And it really, really is. Because despite everything Iceman’s been through nothing seems to have soured him, and Pyro’s torn between pity and envy over the view he must have from that ivory tower where things can still be okay between them. He decides, ultimately, on the usual fiery antipathy that carries him through, because hating Bobby makes things easier; hate is a scene he knows how to play, and puts him back in something like control because it’s no longer about letting things Bobby does make him feel anything, it’s about making Bobby feel all the shit this conversation is dragging up.

Bobby’s right; he should have stopped things. But he didn’t, and hating him for that is easier than accepting that he’s right about anything. ”The people who should have gotten me out, mate” – he overdoes himself on the sarcasm on that word, so laced with it it almost makes him wince, so the effect it should have on the ever-sensitive Bobby who actually believes that still describes their relationship should be priceless – ”are the ones your lot pumped through of ‘Freak-be-gone’, or killed.” (same thing really, in his head at least, seeing as how exercising his ‘gift’ was like breathing...) It’s no longer shouted, nor addressed to anyone except the blue-eyed idealist and his heroic mask, the distance between them closed somewhat as, still flexing the flaming sphere, he steps forward to launch the venom to full effect. There is something of John in this, of course – the John who’s just been given detention, told that his powers are ‘inconvenient’ and the exercise of them something which needs to be punished – and something else, something of Pyro who thinks nothing of firebombing a cure clinic or torching his ex-roomate.

”You, on the other hand... You and I have nothing to say to each other. This idea of yours, that you can help me?” His tone switches rapidly – first mocking, then back to the anger ”It’s crap and you know it. Even if I was insane enough to want to go back with you, I’d be lucky to get within a mile of the Institute without 6 foot of adamantium being forced through my spleen. We’re enemies, Drake. That’s one lesson you should let sink in. The Brotherhood is where I belong.”

That’s a lot of speaking for him, accustomed as he is, where Bobby is concerned, to silent brooding rather than his usual smartass wars of words, but he can’t let it go without a few more. ”And stop calling me John. That’s not my name.”

[Bobby Drake]

Bobby flinches with each sentence from John's mouth, feeling it like a bodyblow, but he doesn't even try to defend himself. He's still reeling from the realization of what he, and the rest of the X-Men, stood by and let happen after Alcatraz. Compared to that, what difference do words make?

He doesn't back away when John steps right up into his face. He doesn't ice up when John feeds his flame. He should, no question, before John tries to kill him again. If this were a Danger Room sim he'd have flunked by now.

But it's not a sim, and he's not sure he's even controlling his own body as he steps forward himself, until there's almost no space left between them and John's firey globe is singing his eyebrows. He can smell John's breath, unbrushed teeth reeking of cheap beer and other things he doesn't want to think about, and can feel the rage behind John's eyes aching to spit his charred bones on the floor, and somehow he doesn't move.

He's not sure he's ever been this scared. Alcatraz must have been scarier than this, he thinks, but right now it doesn't seem that way. Just standing here like this, knowing John could kill him without even a snap of his fingers, that just a thought would engulf both of them in flame that only one of them would survive... how could anything else ever feel like this? His heart is pounding like a frightened bird in his chest, his breath is shallow gulps in a dry mouth, and he can't tell whether the heat flashing over his body and the pit of ice in his bowels is their powers in action or not. Hell, he's actually sweating, and he's the one man in the world who can never blame that on the weather.

A smart man would either run, or fight. Bobby knows that, and knows he isn't going to do either. He just wishes he knew why.

"I'm not talking about the Institute, John." He voice is a cracked whisper, too quiet to be heard by anyone else. "You're wrong about Logan, but it doesn't matter, I know you won't go back there."

He can't seem to stop the words, even if he wanted to. They spill out from somewhere he can't see, even if he'd had the courage to look.

"I'm talking about me. I'm the one who should have gotten you out... not Mystique, not Magneto, not the Brotherhood. They just want Pyro, just want the weapon. They don't care about you... not the way I do." ("We." He'd meant to say "we.") "You don't need the Brotherhood. Or the Institute. Just... come with me. Away from all of this."

He's not really sure what he means, but he knows this much: it's not just the seedy bars and cheap beer, it's the whole damned war.

All of it.

The sane part of him is clamoring for attention: Am I seriously talking about leaving the Institute, walking away from the X-Men, turning my back on Xavier's legacy just to rescue a pyromaniacal ex-roommate from a choice he made back at Alkali Lake? Am I insane?!? And the other part has no response except a mute "yes," and Bobby doesn't know which question it's answering. Maybe both.

All he knows is he has a choice now, and he's got to make it even if he doesn't know what he's choosing. The sane, safe voice he understands... he's been following it all his life. But it's telling him to walk away from John. And it's not like he can say he won't betray a friend, or anything that B-movie heroic, because the truth is that's exactly what he did after Alcatraz.

And just like that it's an easy choice. Because one thing he knows for sure is he's not going to do that again if he has any choice in the matter.

"You can be more than a weapon. We can be more than enemies. John... please."

[Pyro]

The sane thing to have done would have been to cut Bobby short rather than have to listen to all that, but this whole situation is so fucking crazy that maybe sane isn’t necessarily the best fit any more. At least this sort of madness doesn’t carry a body count… yet. So he listened, and listening made him want to laugh and cry at the same time, because god help him he can see it…

Only it’s not them. At least not them now. This isn’t Pyro and Iceman running away into a big ol’ celluloid sunset. It’s John and Bobby, back when they weren’t growing up to go to war but to college, when Bobby was going to study something sensible and practical like accounting and John was going to end up a foreign correspondent and it was all going to be so unbelievably ‘Cuban’ (John hadn’t yet lost all trace of Australian along with the St. he’d dropped on the plane) because they were thirteen and roommates and dreaming big dreams untroubled by niggly little details like how they’d drive each other insane and destroy the flat they were meant to be sharing.

Now, of course, there’s something much bigger than ‘niggly’ standing in their way.

”Back in your closet, Iceman.” It’s as much a threat as a plea, a reminder to himself as much as anyone that he doesn’t need to be this weak, shouldn’t be, not when he’s holding all the aces. His customary dismissive sneer and cynical bite return with avengeance as if to compensate for his momentary lapse. ”Stop calling me that, stop trying to rescue this boy you think I am, and stop reeling off your fairy stories. It’s pathetic. You’re fucking pathetic.”

Part of him wants Bobby to snap, wants this to descend into a fight so he’ll know that they hate each other and that things make sense. He wants Bobby to beat him and leave him again, because that’s a script he can play (this one doesn’t make any sense, and leaves him reeling). The rest of him is insane, and doesn’t merit listening to.

The fire at least he knows how to deal with (both metaphorically and, though the way it gutters seems to suggest otherwise, literally), having no doubt that Bobby too is painfully aware how little it would take to torch him – this being no Alcatraz; the poor fool hasn’t even iced up and it would be so very easy… - and wondering vaguely if he’s as confused as to why the flames aren’t yet licking at his blackened bones.

It’s not like him to burn with words alone…

But it’s not like Bobby to talk the way he has been, definitely not like him to wake what sounds dangerously like a declaration of…

No. Bobby couldn’t possibly have said anything like that. Even if the words are all there, he couldn’t mean it. Not Bobby. Not really. He’s straight as an arrow and pure as the driven snow (if he wasn’t… well, Pyro would know, wouldn’t he? They were roommates, after all, which is the nearest thing to getting inside someone’s head non-telepaths can manage. Bobby wouldn’t be able to hide something like that… and he likes to think he wouldn’t fail to notice any ‘interest’ in that area). The irony of the situation is not lost on him either; having spent the last year or so at the Institute feeling like the third wheel, it’s darkly entertaining to watch the golden couple in a tailspin over him, especially given his clandestine meetings with Marie. Her words are also there, both reassuring and taunting him, because even if he does have better legs, he’s fairly sure his isn’t the prettier back story she’s steeling herself towards being dumped for… No, Bobby doesn’t care. Not like that. He’s just reeling from some sort of self-righteous, self-pitying guilt trip. He, like everyone else who’s tried to ‘adopt’ John, just wants the ego-boost having him around gives, whether from being the good guy by saving him or from being able to use him. Magneto earns the distain least removed from something almost like respect for not sugarcoating that pill, for just playing it straight and accepting that they’re both only out for what they can get, without any sentimentality complicating things. It’s why Pyro fits better with steely pragmatism than Xavier’s airy abstraction, and why he can’t just run away with his ex-roommate. Why he has to stay with the Brotherhood.

”We are what we are, Drake.” he says. Little words, so Bobby can’t miss the meaning, can’t fool himself into thinking there’s any reciprocation of the care he can’t really be feeling (because there isn’t, is there? They’re enemies, and Pyro hates him. Simple).

[Bobby Drake]

> "Back in your closet, Iceman."

It takes Bobby a moment to work through the implications of that jibe. When he does, he backs away, startled. I hadn't been -- I'm not -- I just meant we were -- does John think I was -- is he?!? But that would -- he -- 'cuz we were -- I -- gack!

He almost trips over a broken barstool as he tries to keep his brain firing on some functional subset of all cylinders. He's got a girlfriend for crying out loud... and even if things haven't been that great between them lately, that doesn't mean he's... and sure, he's thought about... stuff... but hey, so does everybody, right? (RIGHT???) It doesn't make him queer. No. John's just trying to throw him off, that's all. First he got Bobby all tangled up with that business about the mutant camps, now he's trying to make this... dirty, and Bobby just isn't going to think about it. He's not. This isn't about... that. It's about friendship. And loyalty. And stuff. John's family, is all, even if he is a flaming asshole. He'd do the same thing for Marie -- no, bad example. For Warr- um, Log- er, for anybody at Xavier's. That's it. End of story. Nothing more. Certainly not that. Which he isn't thinking about.

> "We are what we are, Drake."

We choose what we are, dammit!, he wants to snap back, but the words choke in the back of his throat... they don't have to be enemies, is all he means, but now he's tongue-tied by the implications and thrashing in his mind until he grabs hold of something safe, something smooth and cold and hard and hurls it.

"Is that right, Allerdyce? So you're just Magneto's little Zippo now, huh? You just light up when he flicks you open and burn what he wants you to burn?" He can feel the room getting colder as the ice-sheath forms around his body. He's protected, now. Safe. Powerful. Iceman.

"Fine, then," he spits out. "So now I know Magneto's picking up all his broken toys again and reforming his band of mutant-killers -- because, just in case Pyro's forgotten, it's your side that left the Professor and Miss Grey and Mr. Summers dead."

Except that had nothing to do with Magneto, that was some kind of crazy Phoenix thing in Miss Grey's head, or something like that, but it didn't matter... they could have fixed it if it hadn't been for Magneto's little war. He knows they could have.

"So, are you just gonna let your enemy walk out of here knowing that? You gonna explain that to the big bad man pulling your strings?"

He's not sure what he's doing, anymore. A minute ago he was ready to walk out on the war (wasn't he?), now he's starting a battle that doesn't need to happen (does it?). But this doesn't hurt as much, and he isn't hearing that pathetic neediness in his voice, and he isn't as vulnerable... this is better.

Except the crazy part of his head knows it isn't. It's easier, and it's safer, and it's way more satisfying, but it isn't better, and when the shouting is over Bobby knows he's going to regret every word coming out of his mouth as much as he'll regret leaving John on Alcatraz.

But right now, this moment, he doesn't care.

[Pyro]

It’s not weakness to admit that Bobby’s words sting, though it’s surely madness for that to feel as good as it does. There’s certainly a demented quality in the dark, twisted approximation of a smile it prompts, because this is what he needs from the situation, exactly how he wants things to play out. Irritating Bobby has always been far too entertaining, and now there’s a darker quality in the joke, because it’s no longer just playful since there’s no bond of friendship to hold him back and stop before he crosses the line and drives the point home. And now he’s got a weapon, and that’s almost as good as the smoking gun Bobby’s handed him because it’s far too easy to latch onto those words and let them do all the hard work when it comes to hating him.

It’s with no small pleasure that he notes Bobby’s choice of name… he’s dropped the John, then. That can only be a good thing. Because if it’s Iceman he’s facing he doesn’t have to take into account any ‘friendship’ or ‘history’, because the only backstory that matters is the one where they beat the shit out of each other. Fire and Ice can’t coexist, can they? It’s almost like they’re meant to be enemies, destined to annihilate each other… and though he’ never believed in destiny that thought is a good one.

”I’m no one’s toy, asshole” For Bobby the room might be getting colder, for him it’s all fire, and this time nothing’s going to stop him. He can’t count on Bobby to say the same thing, can he? Not after everything else he’s said tonight. As for what he’s saying, he knows it’s a lie. But he’s the only one who can make those statements about himself. ”No one’s fucking puppet… Wish you could say the same, right? And no one’s walking out of here… Unless you want to run home and let everyone know just what the ‘big bad mutant-killer’ is up to. Let the real heroes deal with it.”

He’s given him a chance, which is more than he should have done… but that’s the only mistake he’ll allow himself to make. If Bobby really wants to play, then this time the gloves really are off. None of this banter, no holding back just because they used to share a room.

This is war, after all.

[Bobby Drake]

"OK, fine... that's how you want it? Enemies? Fine, bring it on, asshole! I cleaned your clock last time, I can do it again!"

To say he isn't thinking clearly would imply he's thinking at all, and the truth is he isn't. He may not be as schizo about the whole codename thing as John -- oh, excuse me, "Pyro" -- but still there's something about being iced up that changes his perspective... cold, powerful, hard.

He dives forward as the temperature around him plummets and charges, more or less blindly. He can feel his now-brittle street clothes cracking around him as he grabs at Pyro, trying to tackle him to the ground.