Flames for the scars and stories

[Pyro]

“Oranjeboom? What the fuck is this shit?”

“No idea… boom ‘cos it kicks like a mule, probably”

”And oranje?” He’s already splitting the shrinkwrap, picking the pen he’d miss least if the nib broke (from a selection of three, the least number he’s ever carried, all carrying adverts for services he can’t afford which betray where he’s stolen them from) because the unwritten law decrees they do each other the courtesy of pretending they’re not shining blades. ”Let me guess. If it’s anything like last time, we find out tomorrow morning”

”Fuck you, John” The way his companion is eyeing him up suggests he’s not the only one suppressing the footnote Been there, done that. He even got the bloody t-shirt – sized for some past conquest (it seems ‘Fred’, the only name he’s been given and probably fake, likes them slender, boyish), so the print is cracked from being tight over their form (it’s easier to think of ‘Fred’ as ‘they’ – human enough to fake emotion now, enough like a ‘thing’ it won’t matter later) and hangs over his, but in everything else a perfect fit, faded from black to just-darker-than-grey with red lettering 333 – Don’t make me show you my other half. It’s so gloriously tacky, just like everything about this relationship, but unlike it’s previous owner he’s fallen for it despite his better judgement. Next to their latest wardrobe – front a weird little metal dude, back an *ahem* violated orange, the joke of which was explained at length and still isn’t quite understood – it’s positively sophisticated.

He grins – his disarming grin, one which hasn’t had much airtime recently, supplanted by the darker gleam of having found something worth destroying (or rather, not being held back by finding it worth saving) – and they scramble for a catch and crack open a can. He’s about to do the same, but a hand lighting upon his shoulder guides him away from the crate and to his feet. ”What?” Their fake-coy down glance directs his attention. ”I thought we’d done…”

”The deal was for dinner, the room, and the lighter. No one ever mentioned beer”

”But…”This is nuts”You’re serious, aren’t you?”

”Deadly”

Lips, teeth, tongues mesh. One hand twists in his hair, nails scraping the join between skull and spine, the other fumbling at his belt.

”Wait” – he pulls back, hard to do when they’re intent on drowning him, but he’s always had too much fire to be so easily controlled. ”You’re not screwing me over again”

”I believe I am, Johnny-boy”

”That’s not the point… Gotta settle this deal first so you can’t pull the same trick”

”Trust you to spoil all my fun…”

”Stop that… Two cans, okay? – Look, it’s bloody hard to concentrate with you doing that – Two cans. Plus one now to stop me caring what you’re asking me to do” It’ll take more than that, of course, but he needs to keep a clear enough head to work up one hell of a room service bill since they’re the one picking up the tab, and still be sober enough to figure out where the damn minibar is.

”Can’t have you not caring… The broody post-coital thing you do is half the appeal”

”Two”

”Do you want me to play nice?”

No. He wants nasty. He wants to feel just how fucked up this really is so he has an excuse to walk away, something bad enough to out balance the roof over his head, the meal in his stomach, and the cheap confection of plastic, metal and lighter fluid pressed to his palm. The first two are easy enough to disregard.

”Okay, one”

*****

He hates repeat performances – too close to backtracking – but it’s getting harder to find unfamiliar faces and he hasn’t yet saved enough from the carefully un-missable amounts he appropriates from blind-drunk bedfellows to move on. With a bitch of a storm on the way, roughing it is not the greatest idea.

The act itself is clinical, which is a blessing. That damn t-shirt stays on, one little nod to how seedy this whole business is, and he fucks like a machine though it’s clear he’ll never be the robot in their private joke.

*****

As soon as he’s alone he slips on his jacket – battered leather, as if it’s taken all the scars he should have collected since Boston – and heads down to the bar. If he stayed he’d only end up thinking; this way he might find tomorrow’s meal ticket.

He doesn’t know what it is about this place that keeps dragging him back; the writer in him wants to philosophise about the darkness and how the people here blaze against it, intent on enjoying temptation, surrender and pleasure, but the pragmatist realises it’s got more to do with the multitude of slightly drunk and more than slightly impressionable barflies just waiting to be exploited. The absence of awkward questions as to credit and legality was a nice touch.

[Rogue]

The guys at the mansion were good people, the superlative kind that put themselves on the line for others, and cared about the world and politics, and kept everything - a whole damn mansion, seriously - tidy and in ordered. It was such a change from her time on the road, when it was just her, and even when it wasn’t, she couldn’t let her guard down, because the kind of guy who gave a ride to teenage hitchhiker on her own had another kind of ride on their mind as well, and couldn’t be trusted. Letting her guard down at the mansion was such a relief.

Only she couldn’t, not completely. She still had to make sure that she didn’t hurt anyone, always on guard. And she had to make sure that no bare flesh was on display, because even when they were on the other side of the room, people would look scared and on edge, and it made her irritated and depressed in equal measure. There was always that feeling that she just wasn’t perfect enough, as well. She saw how Kitty and Bobby looked at each other, and how much they looked like extras from Dawson’s Creek when they did it. It should piss her off, considering that Bobby is still technically her boyfriend, but it just makes her feel kinda isolated. The untouchable girl, who couldn’t even keep her boyfriend happy when she could actually touch him.

The cure hadn’t exactly been the miracle she’d hoped for, anyway. Everyone had looked so disappointed in her when she’d taken it - she still vividly remembers Bobby, “This isn’t what I wanted” - but she’d told herself it didn’t matter. She wasn’t a superlative person, she’d always known that. People didn’t flinch away when she near them, and she could touch something living without a thin layer of cotton protecting them for the first time in what felt like forever. That was enough.

When her mutation had come back, she’d been leaning absently against Bobby’s side, and they were watching TV so that they could pretend that they were choosing not to talk, it wasn’t that they never had anything to talk about anymore. One minute Summer had been berating Seth for another implausible escapade, and the next she could feel his energy rushing into her where their arms were touching, and she was so cold. Bobby had been unconscious for two days, and when he came out of the Medlab, he wouldn’t look at her for days.

She’d slipped back into being untouchable surprisingly easily. Her old wardrobe was back, tops that came down past her wrists and gloves to her elbows, to keep her poison skin hidden. And people flinched away again. It was tiring, physically. She was on guard again, and it people looked at her like she was some semi-feral animal that could snap at any minute.

The mansion was changed as well, in ways much bigger than her brief foray into not-killing-people-when-she-touched-them. Scott was gone, and Jean was gone (again). The Professor was dead. Storm was a reluctant leader, but she ran the mansion well, and it was as immaculate as ever.

Sometimes it was too perfect, and she had to get away. Mimi’s could never be accused of being too perfect - many, far less legal stuff, sure, but it was grimy and dark and people brushed past each other without really noticed each other. They disappeared into the hotel, reemerged a few hours later, and still never actually noticed each other. It was a place to be completely anonymous, and that was refreshing. No one flinched, because they didn’t know they had any cause too. Who cared if she was wearing too many clothes for the close weather, Spring bleeding into Summer? She was just another girl at a bar. She nursed a Malibu and Coke (no one cared she was underage, either). It was refreshingly meaningless, and she enjoyed that.

Her attention was caught by a familiar form across the room, moving from the restroom through the bar, headed for the exit. Gathering together her courage, she called, “John,” across the room. Unsurprisingly, she got no response. “Pyro,” she tried again, and enjoyed his surprise when he turned to see her.

[Pyro]

The ‘John’ he can ignore, though it’s a vaguely familiar voice – this isn’t somewhere you go for the familiar, and if it’s anyone worth noticing they’ll try again. Which they do.

Shit. He hasn’t been called that in a long time, and anyone using that name is unlikely to be someone he wants to run into. Ironic, really, for someone so determined to make their name based on that aspect it celebrated, that right now he’s so concerned with avoiding being associated with it.

He hasn’t been John for years, it’s true, but right now he’s not really Pyro either; he could thank Alcatraz for that one, now that everyone knew the ‘legend’ of the mutant terrorist who’d had pretty much every attack laid at his door since he hadn’t officially been tracked down (Bobby had done him that one favour, at least, letting him decide whether to confess; he hoped it had got back to the Institute that he’d chosen not to). Besides, it wasn’t exactly wise to advertise your screwed up genetic code even post-Alcatraz, in the supposed ‘Golden Age’. Yet more irony - he’d finally resigned himself to his inability to revel publicly in being a mutant, since despite the best efforts of the UN’s fluffy poster-boy and the idiots at the leather emporium ‘mutant’ was still pretty much the only dirty word left in places like Mimi’s.

What the hell. He’d always been self-destructive, hadn’t he? And he can’t not look… He could chose not to believe that he’d never used his real name with the Brotherhood (as far as he knew, only Magneto – now Erik – and Mystique – now Raven – had been in on it) and expect to see one of them, with some news. Because however often, and however strongly, he tells himself he’d struck out with them out of some twisted independence, he misses having that shoulder to stand at. Any news would be welcome; there was a rumour, nothing more than a whisper, that the cure hadn’t worked, though the government was quick to quash that one, and those who ought to have cared either way had long since stopped hoping.

He can’t not, and so he does. With a slowness which seemed to betray far greater alcohol consumption than he’d had the opportunity for thus far – though nowhere near as much as he intends to drink as the evening goes on – his eyes roll from head to foot, and back, taking in the whole surreal spectacle, which a single word sums up. “Fuck.” It’s not an exclamation, far from it. No anger laces it, nothing anywhere near as passionate. Instead it’s a simple statement of fact, a resignation to the deep universal truth that reality is a bitch.

Rogue… No, he supposes it must be Marie now. She would have taken the cure, wouldn’t she? He knew Bobby had been trying to track her down at the Clinics, and has no reason to assume she backed out. Hell, she’d probably done it out of love. How sweet.

It is easy to forget they haven’t seen each other since Alkali Lake, have barely talked since Boston, and yet at the same time every inch of the gulf is strangely tangible, far wider than it had felt before when they’d had purpose, a Cause to fight for and a reason to feel like flipsides of the big mutant coin.

“Marie…” he returns the ‘greeting’ of sorts, starting towards her but hanging back slightly, hands buried in the pockets of the jacket, looking at her sidelong with dark eyes from behind half-bleached strands he hasn’t bothered, for once, to gel back. He would have liked to get the lighter out, ostensibly to see the irritation as he clicked it just a little too loudly, in actuality to fall back on his usual comfort blanket, though of course it was just a little too knowingly macho for that term to fit, part of the posturing which befitted someone of more imposing stature and yet had been made his own. But he can't risk it. For the moment 'Pyro' is just a nickname; one slip, and it becomes something far more dangerous, something he usually enjoys exploiting but right now lacks the energy to face. "It's been a while..."

[Rogue]

She knows he heard her when he stops, his back still to her, and when she sees the tiny movement of his jaw, she knows he's utterly some form of swear word, and he smiles at how John it is. The old days - when she and Bobby and John had hung around malls and poured their allowance into the Starbucks cash register - are long gone, but she still knows him. She doubts he'd agree with that statement.

He turns slowly, like he doesn't really want to. His movements are laced with a sluggishness, and she wonders how much he's had to drink. Probably not much. If he'd started properly on the alcohol, he wouldn't have stopped till he hit the floor. He's like that, all or nothing, never a happy medium. Or at least he used to be. The John standing in front of her is infinitely older than the one who couldn't just sit in the jet, had to go do *something*. But then again, look where that had got him. Still, it saddens her to see the changes. The roots of his hair are dark, and fall forward into his eyes. He’d always been particular about his hair, almost vain - though he’d never admit it, and curse out anyone who suggested it. One more thing he’s let go, she supposes. He’s alone too. You’re not alone, she reminds herself harshly. She’s aware of her martyr complex even as it takes her over.

“Marie,” he says, and she couldn’t call it a greeting because nothing about it suggests he wants her to be there. He wants her to be back at the mansion in neat compartments. Xavier’s: good guys, drink soda in the kitchen; Brotherhood: bad guys, drink spirits in bars. When that starts to break down, things get complicated. He says, “it’s been awhile,” and he’s saying it to throw her off. Instead it fits with what she expected, and she smiles, a child’s smile at being right. It clashes with the vinyl bar stool and glass of rum.

“Hey,” she says, and makes it friendly and genuine, like they were still at the mall and Bobby was in the bathroom. Like they were skipping History with Miss Munroe (not Storm in class), and that was the most rebellious thing they’d do all week. And she’d copy up her notes from someone, making sure he didn’t find out, cause he’d laugh at her every time. She pats the bar stool beside her, and the cracked leather creaks. She doesn’t quire have the guts to invite him with words.

[Pyro]

His petulance is about as childish as her glee, his scowl deepening, the tone with which he returns the ”Hey” perfectly pitched to mimic her ‘friendliness’ and subject it to something that would once have been playful teasing and is now acidic and disparaging. He knows he’s changed; other than the glass he’d have taken for straight coke – probably Diet, the caffeine and sugar hit being just a little too dangerous for a straight-laced X-Man – at first glance and now is conveniently ignoring lest it wreck the neat little picture he’s trying to build up of her, she hasn’t. Not at all. Although he gets the sense most of that apparent similarity is at best played up and at worst a complete act (hmm.. would that necessarily be so bad?) designed to get him all nostalgic over the ‘good old days’. What Marie fails to understand, of course, is that there are no ‘good old days’. Only days. It’s foolish to tag them either way; days are for living through and discarding, not cataloguing, because once you start they sneak up and entrap you, just like everything else you get attached to.

Her nervousness is no different either. She never did have the guts to ask him to do anything even before he was tagged with the ‘Super-villain’ thing. Although maybe back then it had less to do with guts and more with how she’d always been, or at least seemed, more willing to accept that he wasn’t someone you could tell what to do… Ech. That’s not a road he wants to go down, skirting dangerously close to sentimentality. The past is dead and gone, and there isn’t any point romanticising her now she’s here when he’d only have to dehumanise her back into the stock role of villainess once he was alone again.

That in mind, he doesn’t want to take the proffered seat. But he doesn’t want to leave either, not really. What ifs are never any fun to live with, and there’s still some mileage in the old game of seeing how far he can push her – always further than anyone else, if he remembers correctly, certainly further than Bobby, though he has plenty of reason to suspect that at least has changed. Besides, though he’ll never admit it, he wants to know what’s been happening. There’s something satisfying about believing they’re as messed up as he is, the same way he used to like imagining how they were coping without him. Hopefully this time reality might measure up; back then they hadn’t given any sign of missing him at all, hadn’t bothered looking or trying to win him back into the fold. Jean’s death might have had something to do with that, of course. But those excuses don’t interest him, because he tells himself he doesn’t mind either way whether they cared except that it would be darkly enjoyable to think they let him burn them the way he tells himself they didn’t get to him… or something. So he slides in beside her, the rest of his manner still knowingly abrasive and cold as if to compensate; deliberately not looking at her, focusing instead on the glass the barman has set up without him asking, given how he’s the nearest this place has to a regular.

That small concession out of the way, no doubt she’s expecting him to try some sort of easy conversation. Yeah, right. For once he’s not going to be the one to make the first move, except to push her to run after him without caring how twisted that no doubt is.

[Rogue]

John sits next to her, but only in the technical sense. They are two people occupying chairs next to each other, not people sat together. He doesn’t look at her. A drink appears in front of him, placed there by the bartender - a dark man whose brow is creased by a perpetual glare; he puts the drink down, stares pointedly at her cleavage, and moves on the next customer. Rogue shifts uncomfortably. She watches as John swirls the amber liquid in the glass dispassionately before drinking, and takes a sip of her own drink - more for something to do than anything else. The coconut is sweet on her tongue.

“Sooo...” she says, and the syllable drags out, emphasising the Mississippi in her voice. “It really has been a while.” God, it has, she realises. She hasn’t seen him since the jet, and that whole mess was still chaos in her memories. She still remembers him as the boy on Bobby’s porch. His voice is still in her head, and she hears him muttering sometimes, when she’s too tired or preoccupied to be completely herself. She’s never been able to explain in to anyone, having another person’s voice inside your head. It’s not like she can speak to them in a normal way, but their voices and ideas work their way into her thoughts, and sometimes she forgets that she doesn’t know them as well as she thinks she does. She knows the person John was in that instant, his rage, and sense of power, and the fear that run underneath it all like the rip current that drags you down below the water level. This John is completely different.

“The mansion’s all different now.” She talks with the air of someone avoiding an awkward silence. “It’s quieter. The kid’s aren’t so cocky now - which has it’s benefits, cause you jut can’t relax in a house full of arrogant kids who can teleport and blow stuff up. But it’s kinda sad. Plus Logan’s going kinda domestic, which is weird. Unnatural.” She shouldn’t be telling him all of this - he’s the bad guy, after all. But it feels nice to just talk, and she really can’t reconcile John from the mall and John, super villain. She wonders how dangerous that could be. “People keep watching the news a lot. Keeping an eye on what the government are doing.” It’s true. In almost every room, a television tells its audience what is going on in the world. It has depressingly little good to say.

A thought comes into her head, and before she could stop herself, she turns to John abruptly and asks, “Who does the cooking at the Brotherhood place? I can’t imagine Mystique being a domestic goddess.” And the image of Magneto in a pinny is one she will hoard for future amusement.

[Pyro]

He takes another swallow, appreciating the slow burn far more than the taste itself – the bartender knows him well enough to pick a drink he likes, though he couldn’t care less if it were ethanol, champagne or anything in between as long as the alcohol makes itself known – and thinks how he’d probably prefer the awkward silence because that way he can pretend she’s not really there. No matter how awkward her words, how banal her topics, it’s always going to be skirting a little too close to banter for comfort. Mortal enemies don’t sit in bars and chat about domesticity. And amusing though the thought of Logan, feather duster in hand, playing mother to the Xavier brats no doubt is, he can’t make it sit with Wolverine, claws drawn and tearing into the tattered remains of the Brotherhood after Magneto had put the pawns into play, since imagining him doing anything other than launching to a berserker rage implies some degree of humanity which Pyro can’t afford to allow him. Thinking of them – any of them – as the people they were is too much of a risk. Which is why he wishes she’d shut up.

The mention of the cockiness… is that a pointed remark? Well, he’s glad his departure was so damned convenient, that Miss. Martyr of the Whole Bloody Mutant Race can relax now without the big bad fire-starter being, heaven forbid, cocky. He scowls, noticing he hasn’t mentioned Bobby once (not all roses in paradise, then?), swirls dispassionately and raises the glass again…

A movement halted by her next words so it seems stunted and awkward as he stops short and sets the glass back down. Is she really that much out of the loop? It would explain why she’s avoiding mentioning her so-called boyfriend, since things must be more than awkward on that front if he’s neglected to tell her anything. He’s not sure whether he wants that to be the case; watching their inevitable self-destruction is satisfying, sure, but knowing she wasn’t in on the royal screwing-over he received is another nail in the coffin for the girl he needs her to be for this to make sense. He can’t afford not to hate her, much less to actually pity her.

Really, doesn’t she know anything? He’d have thought the X-Men would have been shouting their victory from the rooftops… Instead, no celebrations greeted the news that Magneto had fallen. The fact that no one has made anything much of Alcatraz is unsettling, suggests that it meant nothing. Her ignorance only serves to highlight that fact.

He’s unsure how to answer that one without biting her head off, although why exactly he’s so keen to avoid that eventuality is something of a mystery and only pisses him off more. He hates that she can still make him think when he’d thought he’d finally got the hang of pointedly not-thinking… and he hates that she can make him think things like that which only serve to make his brain hurt.

“There is no Brotherhood place.” The words are out quickly, too quickly to be comfortable, though the way he downs what’s left of his drink and signals for another looks like he’s trying to remove the taint they’ve left from not being out quick enough. “There’s no Brotherhood”

[Rogue]

Rogue sends a startled, shocked look his way, a reaction that smothers the sensible part of her that would like to keep her poker face. She knows she’s naive, but she’s really not stupid. She can’t afford to just sit and chat with John/Pyro/whatever-he-calls-himself-these-days, that she has to remember he’s kinda the enemy now. Only apparently he isn’t. Apparently the enemy doesn’t exist anymore.

She schools her features back as quickly as she can, but the damage is done. She takes a fortifying drink, and the rum burns through the sweet tang of coconut. She’s not as worried as she should be, as she will be, because her mind’s consumed with the fact that Bobby, Logan, Kitty, all these people she would class in various positions along the acquaintance-friend-family spectrum - they knew, and no one told her. Cause, y’know, the Brotherhood was only destroyed. No reason that should interest her. They hadn’t tried to kill her or anything. The Statue of Liberty had the best views of the city.

The ice in her glass clinks together, the few indistinct shapes that haven’t yet melted, and the cold of them slowly seeps through her gloves as she holds onto the glass with both hands; the way she stares ahead silently incriminates her as much as her initial reaction. John (guess it’ll be that, now, then. No Brotherhood. Does that make Magneto plain old Eric?) will have a field day with this, and the silence will be filled with scathing sarcasm.

“Huh,” she says, in the sort of even tone that is so obviously forced that it negates the evenness of it. Hell if she’ll cry, though.
“Well.” The monosyllabics will buy her time to think of something clever and unaffected to say. “You’d have thought someone would have mentioned that, wouldn’t you?” she says wryly. There’s not much point trying to cover her slip now. She turns to look at John again, and his face is as passive as she hopes, somewhat optimistically, hers is.

“Guess it makes sense. It’s been pretty quiet on the bad guy front lately.” Which she had accepted blindly, too caught up in teenage drama too notice properly. Because of course the idea of her and Bobby growing apart was the be all and end all of the world. When did I get so sarcastic in my own head? She’d settled into the role of student and girlfriend to contentedly - because, honestly, the role of homeless runaway wasn’t all it was cracked up to be - and was holding on to it stubbornly, even though any sensible, self respecting teenage girl would have staged a loud, public breakup weeks ago. Maybe even months.

She remembers, uncomfortably, that she’s sat in a seedy motel bar with John. Now probably isn’t the best time to work through all of this in her head. But it could be a good time to figure out what, exactly, has actually happened.

[Pyro]

While she’s working her way through various acrobatic contortions he’s only got the one expression. It’s not surprise or amusement, as she might have expected, but pity. Pure, simple (perhaps a little over-played) and deeply scathing pity, a look which says Wow, guess someone got pretty well screwed over plainly enough to perhaps explain why he doesn’t feel the need to underline it with words to that effect the way he usually would.

So, Rogue’s been stabbed in the back. He can empathise (in a knowing, cynical way, of course, rather than genuine sympathy), and though it’s tempting to launch down the route which starts You think you’ve had it hard? he can’t be bothered with sob stories, playing it that way never sitting comfortably. Besides, she’s probably got the raw end of the deal in the long run, because at least he can rationalise what happened to him. She hasn’t got any big excuse which pardons whatever they’ve done because whoops, she’s on the winning side, paired up with the good guys, and good guys aren’t meant to betray each other like that. Bad guys, on the other hand… well, you half expect it, right?

You’d have thought someone would have mentioned that, wouldn’t you?
The flatness of her tone, the space-filling almost-words… all things he recognises, only now they’re about something more important than playground politics. She’s trying so hard not to care, it’s almost painful. Almost. Close enough that he has to remind himself it should be darkly entertaining, but still not enough that he has to force the emotion, or the comeback. He’s not sure whether the fact it’s out before he can think it through is a bad thing; even if it does skirt ever closer to the way things were back when before Alkali Lake, his tone should be just about vicious enough to kill off any assumption that this means he still feels the same way he did back then, though to be fair it’s not that much of a change. ”I don’t know, Rogue. I’d have thought you and Test-, I mean, Ice-icle would have been a little too… busy to talk, since you got cured and all.”

He doesn’t want to think about that, but her reaction should, if he knows her at all, be priceless, since that’s cutting even for him. Venomous.

At the very least it should distract him from this… he can only term it jealousy, though he doesn’t want to think like that. He should be feeling something else, anything else, should be thinking about how she’s betrayed herself and her race, all the things he shouted without thinking back when they – that they which doesn’t exist any more, that’s just him now – were torching the cure clinics. But all he can think about is how she’s done it for Bobby.

It makes sense that he should feel like that after Alcatraz, after how Bobby screwed him over in the immediate fallout. Nothing to do with her, save that she’s fool enough to give a damn about someone like Iceman. The less he thinks about it, though, the better.

[Rogue]

The look in his eyes expects a reaction, an explosive one, but her head is still tangled up in what she’s just learned, and all the ways she’s gonna scream at Bobby when she gets back - or would, if they weren’t already so awkward. Instead she makes a noncommittal noise, drains her drink, and signals for another one from the bartender. Everyone she knows has been lying to her - ok, maybe not out and out lying, but lies of emission count as well - and drinking that bit too much seems like a good mini rebellion.

“Haven’t been talking much, no.” He thinks he’s the only one who can play games, but she survived eight months on her own, hitchhiking across the continent, and you don’t manage that without learning which buttons to push. This way he either gets irritated or thinks he’s won, depending on why he said that. And she doesn’t give anything away, and can avoid giving him more ammunition. It’s a trick she learned the hardest way, with whatever truckers would give her a lift. You never know why some guy has elected to help out a damsel in distress, and the most predictable reason is a bad one. She’s learned what she should and shouldn’t say. And now, of course, the people in the mansion think she’s actually the person she is when she with them, and she doesn’t have the heart to tell them she’s a liar.

She’s not actually lying to John, though, which is the beauty of that answer. She’s never liked lying to John, for reasons she doesn’t like to examine.

“Where are you staying?” she asks, with worry in her voice, which is not a conscious choice but more a gut reaction; she knows what its like to not have anywhere to stay, and doesn’t wish it on him. Bobby’s never been able to understand, or stop complaining about, her near hero-worship of Logan, but its based in the memory of what it was like to be going nowhere, with nothing to do when she got there. When her parents kicked her out - Mississippi not being a haven of acceptance and equality - she’d headed to Alaska, because she already had the plans, and what else would she do, anyway? And the thought of being somewhere cold and snowy signified getting away form where she was. She’d hoped that the clean white vistas would be a new start, a fresh one. Instead she’d been in the same mess, and cold to boot. By the time she reached she reached Laughlin City she was disillusioned and hopeless, and he’d saved her. The mansion may have its problems, but it beat the cabs of long haul trucks.

Not that Pyro would appreciate her concern. She offered it anyway, in the hope that maybe he was grateful, and just hid it really well.

[Pyro]

Her response is… interesting. Which is of course code for irritating as all hell, though he can’t exactly put his finger on why and so moves on to the dark pleasure he can draw from the implication that the Mansion’s Golden Couple isn’t working out the way it should. No happily ever after for Prince Charming and the girl with the poison skin. Well, good. That he should be enjoying watching their tragic demise he can rationalise, at least; no one there deserves anything good, not now, least of all Bobby. It’s of little concern who he’s entangled with, so long as he’s not happy. Pyro doesn’t care how pathetically bitchy that makes him sound, because having that as his motivation is better than the alternative. Because obviously Rogue’s own relationship status is of no interest to him.

He doubts that her newfound interest in his welfare is any more genuine, born of guilt and of saying what people expect her to the way she always has. Any sympathy he had left for seeing her subject to that need vanishes because it’s shallow and devious now, not weak and pitiful, making him think she gives a damn. Not that he cares. It’s just the connivance which chafes. Yes, chafing. Not intriguing at all, this new depth which probably serves to make her more like him than either would want to admit to.

He wonders exactly how much he should tell her. Should he start with the camps, with everything that happened there, since if Alcatraz was considered too troubling to bother her with there’s no way they’ll have filled her in on that? ‘Course not. He doesn’t want her pity, after all. That same reason’s good enough to stop him detailing what came after, is a better explanation at least than addressing why exactly he doesn’t want her knowing how depraved he is, or why he should suddenly feel ashamed…

Nothing to be ashamed of. You do what you have to… and she wouldn’t understand that, of course. The only darkness she knows is controllable, comprehensible, tame, and he doesn’t fancy being the one to teach her that the world doesn’t work like that (why not? Why should protecting her innocence suddenly matter so much?), to show her exactly what ‘charity’ means here on the streets, what people expect from kids with just the right balance of wantonness and artlessness.

While he’s puzzling all this out, coming up with a million and one things not to say, he’s leaving her hanging. Maybe the silence would be the best response, since he can’t think of anything halfway clever to fill it with… because this isn’t something he can crack a dark smile about and pass over with a quip or two.

A few seconds later, and he’s regretting not adding ”Why the hell do you care?” to the banned list, it slipping out far too easily as he looks up from his glass for a moment. But whatever. It’s out now, and he shouldn’t really be worrying about how it makes him look, or her feel, because it’s a valid enough question. No one showed any concern before, at Alkali or Alcatraz, so why now? His stare underlines the question until he notices that, corrects it with a return to his usual dispassion with a half-shrug and a down glance. ”I’m surviving. So you can leave with a clear conscience and go back to not-talking”

It’s the drink which is messing with his thoughts, hitting him harder than usual. That’s all.

[Rogue]

His reply is clipped, harsh and venomous, and it pisses her off because she’s done nothing to deserve it. It makes her feel isolated and cut off, because he used to be her friend, then time went, and now he’s being a dick, and she doesn’t understand what changed. It also makes her feel oddly alive, because at least he’s saying it, not coating it in so many euphemisms that it doesn’t mean anything anymore - these days, the mansion is a hotbed of clichés and people trying not to cause offense.

She knows, suddenly, what he can say to put him off guard, and with this knowledge comes a strange urge to do so. She tells him the truth.
“Bobby and I don’t talk much anymore because he’s adoringly devoted to a new girl with an all together prettier past and better legs. He won’t call me on it and I won’t admit it. It’s a relationship of sorts.” It’s a new kind of therapy, and the words drawl themselves out, the South in her accent always more obvious when she’s had a bit to drink. “No one’s told me a thing about whatever it is happened to your Brotherhood, and I don’t know why, but intend to find out.” That may be a lie. She intends to find out if her nerve doesn’t fade out with the pleasant light headedness she’s got happening. “I’m not trying to be condescending, but you’ll probably take it that way anyway, because it’s easier for you. If you think I don’t know enough to know that, you’re underestimating me, and you’ll regret that.” It’s almost a threat, and she feels powerful saying it. Hmmm, better keep that to herself - don’t suppose Kitty gets kicks out of those sorts of comments. “And I have a clear conscience, at least concerning you. I have no reason not to.”

She wonders, then, if her outburst will surprise him nearly as much as it surprised her.

She has a new drink in front of her, and she takes a gulp, only to gag slightly when it’s much stronger than the last one. It depletes the whole strong, confident, don’t-mess-with-me thing she was going for.

She remembers when she hitched her first ride: she’d felt powerful then, too, and something altogether less pleasant than rum had brought her back to reality with a bump. She only hears his voice when she’s too stressed at night to block them out, and she thankful for that.

As quickly as the rush of adrenaline - which is what she will blame that outburst on - came, it’s gone again, and she looks down at the bar almost shyly, and feels like Marie and not Rogue. She understands why Pyro, and Magneto for that matter, prefer they’re mutant names, at least while they’re doing mutant things. Marie could never deal with being an outcast, a mutant. She doubts John would either. It’s not the same when your power entails making pretty things out of frozen water. Marie could never kill someone just by touching them, but Rogue can, and possibly has. Very much Marie again, she waits for a reaction.

[Pyro]

There are a few too many knows in that for him and his good friend Jack to be able to keep up with what exactly she knows, or doesn’t know, and what he should know better than to think, but he’s fairly sure it’s not especially complimentary – not to him, not (he notes with a small inward grin) to Bobby – and definitely not the Rogue he remembers. Everyone seems so much older now (hell, every cliché has some truth) and has either died away or blossomed red and gold. He’s not sure which camp he fits in, changing by the day and sometimes the hour thereof, but she’s definitely (contrary to expectations) rooted firmly in the latter. The little wallflower has finally found her tongue, and while her words should offend, anger, something, they only make him fell strangely alive for once because the power of being able to provoke such a response is oddly intoxicating.

It’s her last words which resonate even through the haze.

There’s the threat, of course, if it is a threat, which only leaves him sort-of excited. Bring it on. He knows full well what she’s capable of – was capable of, he has to remind himself, since she’s been cured – and it doesn’t scare him, though the bravado feels somewhat foolish even through the buzzing alcohol which probably carries the blame for it. He remembers Boston, though that was another life, and part of him would welcome a re-run, wants to have the blank numbness, or the sense of revulsion which followed. He’s been trying for both recently, wanting to feel how fucked up everything is or else not feel at all, and failing to catch either.

Yes, he remembers, and so – he has no doubt – does she, so the real surprise is how she can look him in the eye and say she’s guilt free when it comes to him. If she knows him half as well as she claims, she has to know what the ’Incident’ did to him, even if they never admitted it, skirting around the issue in the brief interlude between that and Alkali Lake in rare moments when he wasn’t sulking and she wasn’t being sickeningly cute with Drake. It’s all her fault – at least, as much as it’s anyone’s fault – everything from then onwards.

”No reason. Right. Of course” He doesn’t look at her, the ‘not looking’ oh so deliberate, the same as his carefully emotionless tone, his world-weary passivity and aura of poorly hidden biting cynicism which has no place hovering around someone so obviously not an adult. ”Because you’ve never screwed me over”

“Not that I blame you” he adds quickly, tone still consciously measured as he looks back to her for a fraction of a second, the lie spilling out so neatly between the hard truths. ”Everyone disappoints eventually. At least you were upfront about the whole affair. The rest of them waited until you’d forced me out. Hell, even Bobby held off from trying to kill me until Alcatraz” The last may be unnecessary, true, but he can’t resist. If genuine guilt really isn’t going to get through to her (though god knows he’s going to ride this trip until it does) another reminder that her sweetheart isn’t being totally upfront should open up the wounds he’s already made, and if she still holds anything other than righteous hatred for him (of which he has no doubt, given the faked concern and how he’s getting to her) then knowing what Bobby did – and that, guess what, he didn’t tell her that either – should make for a nice head trip.

He’s going to have his fireworks, no matter how far below the belt his hits have to land, because all he’s ever been able to do with bridges is sit back and watch them burn.

[Rogue]

Her night out away from the drama and responsibility of post Alcatraz mutant hood is getting less and less relaxing. Not that relaxing was ever really the right word, but she was here to get away from the past year or so, and is instead taking it apart and talking about blame. It’s not quite what she had in mind.

And John, being John (and he really is John, no matter how hard he tries to be Pyro. She can see the old him in every sentence) has started this argument, and will not walk away from it. He can’t resist a good confrontation, almost seems to enjoy them, though enjoy them isn’t the right word either, and this whole argument, coupled with a few drinks, is messing with her head...

Rogue isn’t one to walk away from a fight either, but Marie is, because it upsets her to upset other people, a little weakness she could never get rid of until she split her whole life into two worlds, before mutation and post mutation. It makes for an odd internal monologue in response to the obvious accusation in his tone. Rogue, hardened mutant runaway, wants to ask him exactly where he gets off acting like the only wronged party, when everyone came of the loser. She has Logan in her head, and even Magneto, and has an idea now of just how much people can suffer. She has nightmares about Birkenau, and understands Magneto in a way that no teenage girl should understand the man who tried to kill her. She doesn’t even hate him. She also has a trucker in her head, who she does hate, who didn’t understand that no doesn’t mean yes, and feels like she has the right to feel a little bit hard done by. Marie, on the other hand, doesn’t want to fight with the only friend who hasn’t spent the past few weeks lying to her, even if its only because he wasn’t there.

She’s aware, in a distanced sort of way, that this sort of mental conversation probably isn’t really healthy. She wonders if it’s still mental illness even if you really do hear the voices.

She jumps down from the stool, and is surprised when she sways slightly. Guess I’ve drunk more than I thought. After giving the world a moment to stop swaying, she looks at John - John, not Pyro, and she’s Marie, not Rogue - and announces, “We should go get ice cream. There’s a place down by the Park that has Italian style stuff.” And then she walks off, leading the way. She contemplates glancing back to see the look on his face, but that would kind of spoil the effect.

[Pyro]

Ice-cream?

After everything she seriously thinks she can just smile and suggest they get ice-cream as if nothing has changed? As if they’re still skipping classes and hiding in Starbucks, and suggesting they go to that shack near the park and split a sundae far too large and sickly for them to ever finish really can patch up whatever stupid childish argument they – or more usually he and Bobby, because Rogue was always more part of the scenery than a sparring partner, and had her knight in ice-white armour to shield her from the dragons - have had. Pyro, of course, could never admit to actually missing those days, because the neat black-and-white divisions which define his world mean that it has to be grouped along with everything else that made up that time and place, things he has to hate for the here and now to make anything like sense. It’s probably far from healthy to think like that, but it’s a hard habit to give up, given how it’s helped him survive.

Then again – and he’s fighting against this thought, even as it comes out, blaming it on the alcohol, on anything other than genuine sentiment – survival might not be all it’s cracked up to be if life isn’t any colour beyond monochrome. The crimson, gold and orange is what makes things worthwhile, isn’t it? That’s what this whole great bloody mess is about, after all. What she’s suggesting is just another sort of fire…

Gotta love drunken logic. It makes everything so much more… interesting.

At least, it’s interesting when you’re drunk and beyond caring how complicated and head-spinning it’ll be when you’re sober again. And intoxication does make for a pretty neat catch-all excuse…

No. This is insane. Totally insane. Mortal enemies don’t just buy each other Gelati like old friends.

Only they aren’t really enemies any more, are they? Not specifically, at least. Only in the general sense that he is still an enemy of mankind. Because she’s not the girl with the poison skin, the backstabbing leech from Boston. She’s not Bobby’s girlfriend with her bouquet of ice-roses and her elbow high black gloves. This is a wholly different creature, one he – in keeping with The Cause, a loyal Brother to the end – can pity, but never care enough about to hate. Marie, as he guesses she is now, is disposable, and what he does with her will never really happen…

At least the cure had one good point. A toast would no doubt have been drunk to it, and to liquor-laced philosophy, but judging from the struggle the floor seems to be having staying where it should be as he gets to his feet, it’s probably best that there’s no time to do anything other than mumble something about Fred picking up the tab, which of course goes unquestioned.

Pyro knows the smile Marie will be giving on hearing his footsteps, the one of Rogue’s which meant she thought she’d finally got one over John. Never actually happened, of course. And even though they’re different people and that was a whole lifetime ago it’s not going to happen this time either.

”Don’t think this changes anything. This doesn’t make us friends. And I’m not paying for your stupid stunt”

She leads, he follows, careful to be just scornful enough, to keep the smile a knowing, cynical smirk and not a genuine grin. He gives nothing, and she hasn’t won anything, and really this is all about the long and complicated game because in spite of it all he’s still him and it’s not in his nature to just let this lie. It’s just like old times. Sort of. But also completely different, and the impossibility of it all makes things just surreal enough for the details to cease to matter. A boy and a girl go buy ice-cream. End of. No flowery prose, fanciful backstory or complicated subplot for them, no Once Upon A Time or Happily Ever After. It means nothing.