Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was always a ringing silence after a battle. All heavy breathing, frantically beating hearts, the remains of adrenaline pumping through veins waiting for the other shoe to drop.

At least, that was what it was like for normal people.

But Bobby had never been normal. And he had always hated the silence after a fight. All that heavy tension in the air just waiting to be popped, like a balloon slowly being blown up too big. It was always him who had to break it.

It had made sense for it to be his role before, but – and it wasn’t a brag but a fact he was very proud of – now he was kind of a heavy hitter. In fact, he was pretty sure he was only just behind Ororo on the whole ass-kicking scale, which was as cool as it was terrifying.

So, he thought it was about time someone else stepped forward into the massacre scattered across the mansion’s oversized lawn, clapped their hands together, and asked, “What the fuck just happened?” Someone who wasn’t the guy who had been fighting on the front lines so long he should be the one who answers that question from the mouth of some rookie. After all, whatever just swept through and neutralised the enemy for them took his ice golems with it on the way out. Nobody else did, though, so it was up to him again.

Ororo didn’t even tell him to watch his language. That was always a bad sign, especially when there was a chance of the kids being around. Normally, in a fight this big, they wouldn’t be anywhere near the front lines – long gone were the days when the main soldiers of the mutant race were a bunch of teenagers – but they had attacked the mansion.

In fact, if the Cerebro reports Betsy had been telepathically projecting to them as they fought were correct, they’d attacked everywhere there were mutants, without any warning. But they had swarmed the mansion. They knew who their biggest threat was, who they needed to remove first.

Only Bobby was pretty sure whoever took them out wasn’t anyone involved with the X-Men. Something on that scale was big with a capital B. Seeing as the lights were still on in the mansion behind them, it wasn’t Magneto, and the only other person with that level of indiscriminate power was the Phoenix, and Jean was still locked out of that.

Not to mention, an hour ago, the X-Men hadn’t even known the Sentinel program was still running. They definitely didn’t know it was running like this – whatever this actually was. It was the kind of thing Hank would spend the next couple of months working out with help from Kitty. She could put her half of an MIT degree to good use.

Too boring, she had claimed before running off to join some British superhero team. Not that Bobby had anything to do with that. Sure, maybe he had encouraged her, but seeing as she had phoned him out of all the responsible adults she knew, it was clear she had already made up her mind.

The way Bobby saw it was why not? Why would anyone with a half-working head on their shoulders commit to anything? Life was endless, why not have some fun?

People like Kitty and Hank found robots fun. Maybe, if they got lucky, they would have a chance to show their findings in court. Bring down Trask Industries once and for all. Again.

“I do not know,” Ororo said, surveying the damage in front of them.

It wasn’t good. Bodies littered the lawn like broken toys, limbs sprawled out unnaturally where they had fallen from the sky, his chunks of ice scattered amongst them. Most of those bodies weren’t because of them. If he was still human enough, Bobby’s stomach would roll at the sight. Five minutes ago, that army had been trying to kill them.

Everyone was still tense, half-expecting them to jump back up and start attacking again. Even Bobby. He was keeping himself in his stronger ice form with the wicked spikes.

Logan moved forward. He always looked so animalistic in a fight, crouched low on the balls of his feet as he moved across the grass, his claws still out. Bobby thought that was who he really was. It was always there, just under the surface, waiting for the opportunity to come out. Logan sniffed the air.

“Human,” he confirmed.

Ororo’s lips twisted into a grimace. She refused to take a life, even if it was obvious they deserved it.

“Not completely,” Bobby pointed out, trying to be helpful. “They had force fields and lasers. Not very human if you ask me.”

He ignored the fact he knew mutants with those abilities. It wasn’t like the army had got their skills from any natural means.

“They were alive,” Ororo said.

Bobby bit his tongue so he didn’t reply. If she wanted to lose sleep over it, it was her choice, but he wasn’t going to join her. In fact, he didn’t even need to sleep anymore if he didn’t want to. Which he usually did. Twenty-four hours dragged if you had to be awake for every second of it. But it was helpful sometimes, if you didn’t want to dream.

Bobby was pretty sure he didn’t want to dream tonight.

Logan stretched his arm out and, with one of his claws, poked the closest body’s head. It rolled towards them, limp. When they had been attacking, their skin had been a pinky colour, circuity on their skin. Now, it was an ashy grey. Their eyes no longer glowed with that burning artificial light. Instead, they were blue and empty, looking at nothing. Looking at him.

Logan was right. Human.

Bobby was right. He wasn’t going to sleep tonight.

“He’s dead,” Logan stated like that wasn’t obvious. His claw retracted and he put his hands on his knees, pushing himself to standing, the metal in his bones creaking loudly. From animal to man, he thought the threat was over.

Bobby couldn’t accept that. “That can’t be it. The villain hasn’t even arrived to give his evil monologue yet. There are rules to these things.”

“Maybe we were not their primary target,” Ororo said, her lips pursed slightly. The thought bugged her as well. Nothing ended like this, so easy with so many loose ends.

Bobby snorted. “We’re the X-Men.”

“Someone else must have stopped them,” Logan grunted with a shrug. Now that the violence was over, he was bored. Never was one for the mysteries. Normally, neither was Bobby. Just something was itching at him.

He glanced over the lawn, at the chunks of his ice. It had been years since his power level had exploded, and he wasn’t going to pretend he understood it all, but nothing had done that before. The connection with his ice had been severed so suddenly, like a guillotine had come down between him and them.

“It can’t be over,” he repeated, shaking his head.

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, kid. We need to regroup.”

“Logan is right,” Ororo said. “We shall take this granted rest.”

She knew Bobby wasn’t going to override her authority – it wasn’t like they could actually do anything else right now. There was no information, no leads to follow.

“I’m going to get a beer,” Logan said, turning on his heel and moving back towards the mansion. Bobby glared at his back just because he could, trying not to think about how they were going to have to do repairs on the mansion once again. He’d never been a good handyman, and even from across the lawn he could already see two broken windows. He hated to think what the inside looked like. No matter how good you were, the enemy always managed to get one or two past the front lines.

Not to mention, the lawn would need to be cleaned up as well. There were a lot of bodies on it. He wondered if they would get picked up by someone, and if that would happen before they started smelling. If they got them together, he could make a deep freeze. At least it wasn’t the middle of summer.

Ororo’s eyes hadn’t left the closest body, locked onto it. “Do you have any idea what did that?”

Bobby smoothly stepped forward, blocking it from her line of sight. It was the least he could do. She was the only reason he was still on the team. She had easily looked past how much of an asshole he’d been after he went MIA. “Maybe Betsy might know.”

“I do not like this,” Ororo said. “Human and Sentinel combined. Who would do such a thing?”

“They must not like us.” It was too soon to joke, but it wasn’t really one. Bobby understood hate, the kind that burned in his bones, but these people didn’t even know them. How could they decide to risk so much to kill someone they don’t even know?

Ororo didn’t need to be told, though. They ran a school for mutants, for people cast out of society, and people still got funny that she was the headmistress. “Surely, it was not a choice.”

He hummed, amazed she could still be so hopeful after all they had seen.

The smile she gave him was tired. “We need to find out.”

Together, they moved back across the lawn. Ororo was limping slightly. She was trying to hide it, but it was there. Bobby didn’t comment. She wasn’t the type of person who would delay help if she needed it. She knew how dangerous it was to be a liability. Even so, he would mention it to whoever was running around with the first aid kit in there, just in case she forgot.

If the outside was unnaturally quiet, the inside was chaos incarnated. Nobody had said aloud they were becoming a proper school again but the mutant population was exploding and there were kids who needed help, needed somewhere safe to live and understand their powers.

They didn’t go on missions, they just used the ridiculous amount of space the mansion had to protect them from the outside world. Somewhere that wasn’t the sewers, where they wouldn’t be exploited, where they didn’t have to be alone. Bobby thought they saw the worst here, the people who were running from something and now he was teaching them mathematics on Tuesday afternoons. He liked to think he was the cool teacher.

Though, from the body halfway through the wall by the front door, Bobby suspected he was still losing his competition with Proudstar for that title. He paused at the doorway, looking into the mansion. Ororo had already disappeared. Everyone already had a role, hurrying around.

He’d never been good with the after. He was worse now, in his ice form. It left him slightly removed from all the emotions twisting in the air, but he didn’t change back. It was easier to exist like this.

He looked at the body for a second longer before shrugging to himself. It couldn’t stay there, and if nobody else was going to…

Seeing as he was a superhero, he’s always been pretty strong. He still worked out, even though he had never been close to a jock, even though he didn’t need to anymore. He found it calming. So, it was easy to pull the body from the wall.

Now that it looked human, it felt disrespectful to carry it over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He wondered if it had a family, if it used to be someone with a life, if it had actually chosen to let this happen to it. He shook his head before the thoughts could settle. It had been sent here to kill kids. It didn’t matter who it was before. They had just been protecting themselves. He wondered if whoever it had been before believed the same.

He wasn’t Ororo. He wasn’t going to feel sorry for it. It wasn’t like he could change how it all played out. He was glad it ended like that. He doubted if it won, it would shed a tear at their bodies.

He moved it outside, dumping it unceremoniously by the others. He turned without giving it another glance, making his way back towards the mansion. He hoped there weren’t many more bodies inside.

He didn’t know what his plan was. Maybe Logan had a point with his beer. Getting a drink and not thinking sounded good right now.

He was walking back through the front door when the phone rang, a shrill thing that seemed to echo as it cut through everything else. It sent his mind spinning. Could it be Warren and Jean, calling from New Mexico? Or some family member of someone in the mansion, wanting to know their loved one was okay? Could it be the Professor? Surely the Sentinels wouldn’t have crossed the border, not after last time. That killing in Canada had shut them down for years. Only, they had been sent to kill, with no intentions of stopping. It had been a planned extinction-level event. A genocide. His government wouldn’t have sanctioned that. The Sentinel program must have gone rogue.

He wondered how many nations would have actually cared if it had been successful. If the UN would condemn the action or just wipe their hands clean of the whole thing. Bobby didn’t get involved in the whole grassroots activism side anymore. The protests, the helping, the people, but Hank was more than willing to keep him up to date with the grim reality whether he wanted the information or not.

Rumour was, China had a blanket kill policy. Neighbours telling on neighbours, random genetic tests, and unfortunate consequences for anyone daring to hide a mutant. They would probably be glad if the Sentinels wiped out everyone they had missed. Maybe that was better than the places they were forced into the army, where they were cut open and sold for parts, where they were publicly honoured killed. At least here, they were only denied jobs and housing and healthcare.

Bobby bit back a laugh. How was he able to feel grateful for that?

The truth was, the only place on the whole planet you could actually be a mutant was Genosha, and that was a dictatorship run by Magneto.

Bobby reminded himself the Sentinels couldn’t have got that far. There hadn’t been enough time for them to go worldwide.

He picked up the phone, careful not to freeze it solid in his hand. “Xavier’s School.”

“Bobby. Thank God.” Hank’s voice held the same tone as all of theirs did, the comedown after a battle. “You’ve got to get here.”

Bobby felt his back straighten as the spikes reformed down it. “Are they still attacking down there?”

“No.”

He felt himself relax, even though they would have known before now.

“We’re the reason they stopped.”

He tensed up again, taking a second to let that sink in. “How? What? How?”

“We’re at the MERA building.”

Another time, that would make Bobby tense up further, even though Scott didn’t have a single thing to do with that organisation anymore. But now wasn’t the time to focus on things like past wrongs. It made sense for Hank to be there, anyway. Neither him or Cecilia would be willing to sit it out while people were in danger. “That doesn’t answer any of my questions.”

Hank sighed, and when did sounding so weary become so natural for them? They were beginning to look old, the team, long before their years. Not Bobby, though. He was going to look handsome forever. He felt it, though, when he turned back to his human form. Maybe that was the reason he preferred the ice.

“It’ll be easier to show you,” Hank said.

Bobby wasn’t even surprised by that. It had to be something big. “Okay. Is this a whole team kind of thing?”

“It’ll be wise to bring Ororo at least.”

He looked around, unsurprised to find she hadn’t magically appeared beside him. Cradling the phone between his shoulder and his head, he knelt on the floor. He held his hand out, creating a little army of bug-like creatures. He could do that without thinking now, sending them scuttling off to hunt for her in a recon mission. It would be easier than trying to talk to anyone, even if the whole seeing through multiple eyes thing gave him a headache. Well, the closest he could get to one without the biological functions to produce one, anyway. A brain freeze, really.

“Give us ten,” Bobby said.

“We’ll be waiting.”

Chapter Text

Bobby would be the first to say his power was cool. Being invincible? Producing ice golems? Being able to freeze anything? That was, objectively, a cool power to have. He didn’t draw the short straw in his mutation one bit. But the best part of his power, the part that really cemented the fact he had won the genetic jackpot?

Bobby could teleport.

No longer did he have to use public transport, or waste time in the plane, or, worse, use Kurt’s and Illyana’s way too hot and stinky inferior version of it. No, he could simply do, uh, something with water molecules and transport himself, and one or two lucky others, to a new location in a radius that covered most of the mainland states.

It was amazing, groovy, awesome.

He just couldn’t quite understand why nobody else thought so.

Ororo wouldn’t say it to his face, of course – she had a politeness to her the rest of the team sorely missed – but her face couldn’t lie. The frown, the slightly green around the gills look, the way she took an unconscious step away from him as they landed in the hallway of the MERA. Bobby just couldn’t understand it. He felt fine. So he had no idea why she would suggest taking the plane when he had clearly said time was of the essence.

Sure, maybe Hank hadn’t exactly used those words, but Bobby could easily infer it from the urgency in his tone.

And, well, Bobby liked teleporting.

Hank did a double-take as they appeared in front of him. He seemed to have a mental block on just how powerful Bobby was these days. Whenever they tried something new out, Bobby had to come to him before experimenting due to some… unfortunate events. And every time, Hank would always shake his head and laugh. Who would have thought little Bobby would end up being the most powerful out of all of us? The unsaid part was that it was only true because Jeanie had lost her powers. She blew everyone else out of the water.

“I’m glad you are both okay,” Hank said, slapping Bobby’s shoulder before pulling Ororo in for a quick hug.

“And us, you,” she said as she pulled back. “This was not what I expected of this evening.”

Hank snorted. “Nor any of us. You should see the street out there.”

Bobby imagined it looked much like the mansion’s lawn. Property damage and dead bodies. Oh, and smashed up cars. Sentinels loved to go for cars. Unlike the mansion, he suspected the human authorities were already there trying to sort it out. That was why he had teleported them straight to the source. The last thing this evening needed was a confrontation with the police.

“Did you have much trouble?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

“One man army?” Bobby asked.

Hank hesitated. Just for a second, but it was there. Before Bobby could call him out on it, he smoothly carried on. “As you can imagine, people came here as a form of refuge. I was not alone in holding down the fort.”

“And they are all alright, too?” Ororo asked, concern etched on her face. With the skilled fighters in the mansion, there had been nothing more than a couple of cuts and broken bones, but out here, they were terrified civilians. She was counting the dead.

“Less than there could have been.” Hank’s voice was heavy as well. Maybe it was selfish, but Bobby couldn’t stand it. They were so focused on their failure. They couldn’t have prepared for this. They hadn’t even heard so much of a whisper this was coming.

“But you fixed it,” Bobby pointed out.

Hank’s face, somehow, turned grimmer. Great, why couldn’t they just have some good news? Why couldn’t they have a celebration of a job well done without something negative holding them down? “Yes.”

One of Ororo’s eyebrows rose. “How did you stop them?”

“It’s best if I show you. Just understand, if there was another way…”

Bobby was glad he wasn’t in his human form, glad he was a step removed from it all, because he knew that voice. It meant someone had sacrificed something. Maybe too much. And Bobby was selfish, right down to his frozen core, because here, miles away from the mansion, he was just glad it wouldn’t be someone he knew.

“Hank?” Ororo prompted, stern and soft and understanding.

Hank took a breath, nodding to himself. He placed a hand on the door but before he opened it, he looked straight at Bobby. “Most people have already left. I’m asking you to stay calm.”

Bobby wished he could blink so he could clearly show how absurd he thought that statement was. “Why wouldn’t I be calm?”

Hank’s eyes flicked to Ororo and back to him again. “Scott’s here.”

Bobby needed a minute to absorb that, to take the information in and work out what his game plan should be. Hank didn’t give him that time, just pushed open the door and threw him straight into the shark-infested waters.

Asshole.

Bobby never got rid of that sixth sense, that ability his eyes had to zone in on Scott even in the middle of a crowded room because he seemed to be right in front of him whichever way he looked. He couldn’t glance at the groups of people huddled in groups, shell-shocked and scared, nor could he look at the ex-Sentinel on the floor, the damage on it clearly sustained before they all shut down.

No, just Scott, sitting away from everyone else on his own.

He shouldn’t be here. He had no reason to be here. He wasn’t a part of the MERA anymore. He had forgotten the whole ‘peaceful’ part of protest, he had broken into a prison, he was a wanted fucking criminal.

Whoever said time healed all wounds must have taken more LSD than all of the Beatles combined because the wave of emotions that crashed over Bobby was just as strong as four years ago, clawing at his mind.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” he spat.

Scott’s head flew up at his voice, his mouth dropping open. Great, so did Hank just drop them both into this? Scott tried to rush to his feet, seemingly regretting it halfway through from the way his hand flew out to grasp the wall and his face turned pale. It was a good thing he didn’t try to speak.

“He helped us, Bobby,” Hank said, tired, like he was fed up with this already. Like he was fed up with Bobby having perfectly reasonable angry feelings for his ex-boyfriend who chose a wife and kids over him.

“And, what? That means he just gets to stay?”

“He was thrown into a wall. We’re monitoring him for a concussion.”

“Concussion? For fuck’s sake, he-”

“Can you please shut up?” Cecilia’s voice crashed over them, her Bronx accent out in full force. Bobby turned to her. She was standing in the doorway of the clinic, her arms crossed over her chest and a fire burning in her eyes that threatened to cow everything in her path. “I have a patient in here.”

Her eyes settled on Hank, who swallowed loudly. That wasn’t trouble in paradise, that was a nuclear bomb dropped on Bikini Atoll. Suddenly, Bobby remembered they were here for a reason. It wasn’t actually the time to be airing out the dirty laundry. Cecilia turned to Ororo, her face refusing to soften.

“You need to see this,” Cecilia said, before her eyes focused in on Scott behind them. “And don’t you dare run off, Summers. Not with the evening I’m having.”

Things must have been bad because Scott didn’t even try to argue, just slide back down the wall behind him with a soft groan. Bobby hated the fact that some very small part of him felt bad for him. For the first time, he wished he let Kurt do the teleporting. He should have stayed home and drunk a post-battle beer or something.

He just didn’t understand why Hank hadn’t warned him on the phone. Did he think these things didn’t matter in a time of crisis? That Scott would just be forgiven because he had helped fight off hordes of genocidal cyborgs?

Bobby was glad they were leaving him behind as they made their way into the clinic part of the building. Unfortunately, it wasn’t built for this many people. Bobby, in an attempt not to stand next to Hank who had pissed him off, ended up shoulder to shoulder with the woman who was pissed off with everyone. From the way she shivered slightly and edged away, Bobby wasn’t going to be back in her good graces any time soon. But that didn’t matter. He understood why she was radiating anger.

She had a patient, and he didn’t look in a good state.

He was lying in the bed, eyes open but looking at nothing. The skin on his face seemed to be rippling, circuitry growing and fading on his skin. A Sentinel. Only he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Because Bobby recognised him.

Doug was a mutant.

Ororo let out a gasp at the sight. She knew him too. Of course, she did. He was one of Kitty’s best friends. He hung out at the mansion, less now, but at one time it felt like every time you turned around he was there. Ororo had liked Doug, he would talk to her in whatever her native language was. Or maybe languages were more accurate. Sometimes, it sounded different.

He was a nice, polite, kind of awkward kid. He also creepily seemed to know everything you didn’t want to say, so Bobby had always tried to keep out of his way. It wasn’t like he disliked him, but he didn’t like him either. Indifferent.

Bobby still didn’t want to see him like this. Of course, he couldn’t just catch a break and have it be a complete stranger.

“Is he dead?” Bobby asked. The words were clumsy, definitely the wrong thing to say. He didn’t even know why he spoke – he could see Doug was alive. Maybe it was because someone had to break the heavy silence that had fallen over them. That was his role, after all.

“Stable,” Cecilia corrected before once again glaring at Hank. “For the moment. He needs to be in a hospital but…”

Nowhere would take him, or maybe, nobody would know how to help. Maybe Cecilia didn’t really know either.

“How did this happen?” Ororo asked, unable to stop the horror bleeding into her voice. There was something nauseating about it. Sentinel tech shouldn’t be anywhere near a mutant, and it certainly shouldn’t be inside one.

“Yes, Hank, how did this happen?” Cecilia’s voice was colder than Bobby.

“It was his choice,” Hank said, this time refusing to back down. Instead, he lifted his head higher.

“You had no idea it would work.”

“We didn’t have a lot of options. We couldn’t hold those Sentinels off forever.” Hank sighed and Bobby noticed he wasn’t looking at Doug, his eyes refusing to focus on him. “He thought he could shut them down, hack the system. But to change the code, he needed to see it.” His eyes found Cecilia’s, and there was a hint of begging in them. For all his stubborn front, he wanted her to forgive him. “He was right.”

“You hunted a Sentinel down and ejected its nanobots into him,” Cecilia countered. “Did you even tell him what it would do?”

“We didn’t know what the effects would be.”

She laughed. “Oh, don’t give me that. An idiot would know what would happen.”

When that army had first landed on their lawn and they had no idea what they were up against, Rogue had flown up to one and touched it with her bare skin. Whatever she had absorbed from it had tried to tear her mind apart. Sentinel and mutant didn’t mix. It couldn’t. Hank had been with the X-Men long enough to know they couldn’t help but destroy each other.

It was going to destroy Doug. But it wasn’t for nothing. The kid did just save the mutant race. Though maybe that was the problem. He did look like a kid right now. A dead kid. Bobby felt his ice thicken around him.

Doug was two years younger than Bobby was when he was shot.

Fuck.

That was young.

When you sign up to the X-Men, you know you might die. That you were going to throw yourself into dangerous situations because you were trying to make the world a better place. Doug had never signed up. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a hero, though.

“He still wanted to do it,” Hank said. “He wanted to help people.”

Cecilia’s frown deepened. “He deserved to make that choice for himself. We don’t sacrifice one to save the many.”

Before Hank could think of a reply, she turned to Ororo. “I need better facilities.”

“The mansion?”

“I can’t think of a better option.”

“Is he stable enough for Bobby to teleport him?”

Cecilia thought for a second before nodding. “Currently, I will say it outweighs the risks.”

“Then, it shall be done.”

Cecilia’s lips pulled into the first smile Bobby had seen since they arrived. “Thank you.”

“It is the least I can do.” Ororo cast her eyes over Doug. “Mutant kind owes him a large debt.”

They stood over him for a second more before Bobby realised that was his cue to do something. He stepped forward and looked down at him. Not as a person, but something that needed to be transported.

“We’re going to have to take off these wires.”

Cecilia nodded, not wasting a second before getting to work. Bobby turned to Ororo. “You know I’m not good with big groups.”

Ororo nodded. “I’ll contact Betsy, get her to send the plane.”

“Can you take me?” Cecilia asked.

“Just about.” Bobby looked down at Doug again. It was hard to believe he had managed to take out all those Sentinels single-handedly. His power was nothing, and yet he had managed to save countless mutant lives with it.

Every mutant has the ability to be dangerous. That was what the Friends of Humanity said. Maybe Doug had just proved them right.

He was paying for it, though.

Proof of that statement appeared as a trickle of blood dripped out of Doug’s nose, rolling down his face. Bobby moved automatically, wiping it away with the edge of his sleeve. Of course, he didn’t have a sleeve in this form, so it left a bright red smear against the ice that made up his arm. It was gross, but it was too late to take it back, even as he tried to rub it against the bed.

Cecilia sighed softly, her hands resting on Doug’s shoulders. “I need to know what they’re doing to him. He’s a good kid.”

Bobby wondered if they said the same about him, after he was lost. Unlike him, though, he didn’t think Doug was going to come back.

Chapter Text

Bobby didn’t hang around for a second longer than he had to after Doug was brought back to the mansion. Unfortunately, it had been longer than he hoped in that room with the scorn Cecilia had been sending out, the grief that crackled through the air, and the complicated, twisted inevitability that the savior of the mutant race was once again someone who was barely out of their teens.

Once he finally escaped, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. What was the right response to everything that had just happened? Maybe he should go get that beer he’d promised himself and stare at the wall.

He wasn’t that lucky.

Of course, he wasn’t.

He had barely taken two steps down the corridor before Ororo was calling after him. She had probably only just gotten off the plane. He considered ignoring her, even though he had no good reason to. If Bobby knew one thing, though, it was that it was impossible to really hide from someone in the mansion.

With a sigh, he stopped walking and turned back around. He wondered if she was going to call him out for still being in his ice form. The others made comments about it sometimes, full of concern. They never seemed to believe him when he said he preferred it.

“I was hoping we would have the opportunity to speak,” Ororo said as she reached him. She looked like she needed to sleep but Bobby suspected her day was far from over. Nobody was going to bounce back quickly from this, and they all needed a leader to look to.

He bit back a sigh. “Well, fire away, then.”

“First, how is Doug?”

Bobby shook his head. “The same.”

Her lips thinned. She wasn’t going to get another miracle today. “I suppose it was just wishful thinking.”

“Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“No.” The smile on her face was concerned. “I’m sure you already know we’re taking in some people. Those who have lost their homes, or their mutant status was revealed to neighbours, or those who just don’t want to be alone tonight?”

“Are you asking me not to take so long in the bathroom?” he joked. It fell flat, but he kept pushing it, narrowing his eyes. “Or are you commandeering my bedroom? Because it is not public safe right now.”

Mainly due to his collection of adult magazines poorly hidden under his bed, but she didn’t need to know that.

“It is not commandeering if it is willing.” She knew him too well. Of course, he would give it up if someone needed it – though that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to complain about it the whole time. “But it’s not that.”

Bobby frowned. “Then what?”

“It’s Scott.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Of course, it was. Why wouldn’t it be? “So, what, the X-Men harbour criminals now?”

“That is what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Bobby raised an eyebrow. She took that to mean he wanted her to carry on talking. She was wrong.

“I will not pretend to understand what happened between the two of you, and I will respect your privacy and not pry where I am not wanted. Though I assure you, you can always trust me with anything.”

She paused and Bobby was surprised at how much he wanted to speak. It was an insane urge but it wasn’t the first time he felt it. It sucked that he had this wedge between him and everyone else. He was getting tired of it, and he did trust her. It would be so easy to say aloud, especially in this form where he didn’t have to move his mouth into the right shapes, coax his vocal chords to produce sound. It could slip off the ice that covered his throat into the air between them. He’s my ex. He’s the only person I’ve ever loved. He broke my heart.

He couldn’t.

Because even if she accepted it, took it in her stride, it didn’t change the fact he would be pulling her into his bullshit, asking her to keep a secret about him. It would change everything, and he was sick and tired of that happening. He had told his parents he was a mutant and that destroyed their – sure, already shaky – marriage. He wasn’t going to do that to the X-Men.

The silence went on for a beat too long. He knew he should say something, an assurance of some kind, but, somehow, even without having vocal chords, they felt broken. Ororo carried on smoothly like she didn’t notice.

“You know him so much better than I do.”

“Not really.” His ice tongue felt heavy around the lie.

She didn’t call him out on it. Instead, she took a breath, her eyes narrowing as she assessed him. “Do you think he did it?”

“Freed Rusty from prison? Or destroyed that mutant collar factory? One hundred per cent.”

“He claimed credit for those,” Ororo dismissed, and he had known that wasn’t what she had been asking. “Do you think he assassinated Creed?”

The petty part of Bobby wanted to say yes, but it would be a lie as well. He didn’t think Scott killed him, never once, not even in those first seconds when the news hit the mansion. As great as it was to have a real reason to hate him, Ororo was right. He knew Scott better than he wanted to. And Scott still carried around the guilt of killing a man who made his life hell as a teenager. Still carried around the guilt of Bobby’s death, and his wife’s, and everything else that happened when he disappeared into the future.

Not to mention, he had cleared out that factory before turning it to dust, didn’t kill a single man when he busted Rusty out, even though some of those monsters deserved it. He didn’t want to kill anyone else.

So shooting a man in the head at an anti-mutant rally really wasn’t his style. However many years it had been, people didn’t change that much. Not at their core. Scott, amazingly, annoyingly, was a good person. He thought things through, thought of the consequences to his actions, and killing Creed had just made everything worse for mutants.

It wasn’t just Bobby’s feelings as well, manipulating him. The evidence had always been shaky. Very shaky, if Hank was to be believed.

Bobby groaned, long and low. “No.”

Ororo nodded like she had already known that. “And will he hurt anyone here?”

Bobby snorted. “Not intentionally.”

She gave him a long, hard look and he tried not to shift under it. “And you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you okay with him being here until Cecilia gives him the all clear?”

The problem with Ororo was, she thought Bobby was a good man. So, he didn’t want to let her down. Ask him to teach a mathematics class? Sure. Give up his room? No problem. Let his ex stay in the one place he felt safe? Might have to do a rain check on that. Current expected reschedule: two thousand years in the future.

Only, she had asked him. Not overruled him, but asked. Like his feelings in all this mattered.

He wondered if she already knew. He didn’t think anyone would have told her, but she was smart enough to work it out. It was mentioned sometimes, that he didn’t seem interested enough in women, not enough of a hound dog compared to the men around him. The annoying thing was, he was. It wasn’t like he stopped being a red-blooded male, it was just aimed at all the wrong places.

“It’s fine.” He was amazed the words managed to find their way out of him.

She gave him a smile, soft, grateful, understanding. “It will not be for long.”

“I’ll stay out of his way.”

She reached forward and touched his shoulder. For the first time, he wished he wasn’t in his ice form. With her mutation, she was slightly immune to how cold he was, but the contact was still too brief. He couldn’t feel it properly either, couldn’t get the comfort she was offering to him. “Try and get some sleep.”

“I will if you do.”

She laughed and Bobby felt some of the tension he was carrying with him release. If she was able to do that, it was truly over. “Then I fear we will both be awake for a long time.”

She left, heading into the medical bay, and Bobby watched her go. The problem was, to him, it didn’t feel over. Doug had knocked out those Sentinels, but that didn’t explain what happened after. His ice golems had been destroyed. There was something else, he was sure of it. He just had no idea what.

He needed that beer.

The mansion was quieter now. Everyone who could sleep was doing so, and everyone who couldn’t were staying out of the corridors. No doubt huddled in silent groups, trying to set their minds straight after the chaos that had descended so rapidly on them.

It was a relief to enter the kitchen and find it empty. He made a beeline for the fridge, opening the door and picking out one of the beers stored at the bottom. Great, it was Logan’s Canadian shit. He stared at it in his hand.

He had a problem.

To drink it, he needed to turn back to a human.

And he still wasn’t ready to do that yet.

This evening had been too much. He couldn’t just shake it off like normal.

There had been a point in the battle. One of those freaky Sentinel hybrid things had kamikazed him. Shot out of the sky like a bullet at him and exploded when it hit him. He was fine – after all, what was a blowing up to him but a minor inconvenience these days? But, as he pulled himself back together, for a second, he had truly believed this was it. That the X-Men were going to be overwhelmed. He knew he was going to outlive them, been trying to process that information for years, but he wasn’t ready for it to happen, especially not like that.

Then, he saw Ororo bring down all the wrath that was held in the sky and he had shaken it off, convinced himself they were going to win like they always did. He wasn’t going to dig their graves just yet. But, maybe soon…

“Just going to stare at that all day, bub?”

Bobby jumped, the beer almost slipping from his hands as he spun around and glared at Logan. “No.”

“Right,” Logan said, a smirk on his face.

Bobby kicked the door shut behind him before opening the bottle with his teeth. It was easy to do when you didn’t have to worry about cracking them. He flopped down on a seat at the table, breathing over the beer to cool it down further.

Logan went to get his own beer before, surprisingly, sitting down at the table across from him. He took a sip before raising an eyebrow. “You actually going to drink that?”

“Yes.” Bobby’s body refused to defrost, even to prove a point. “I’ll get there.”

Logan chuckled. “Well, don’t keep breathing all over it if you’re not.”

“As if a bit of spit would stop you.” Not that he could spit in this form. He could, however, gather up lumps of snow in the back of his throat and launch it at people, which was kind of the same thing.

Logan, as sociable as ever, grunted in reply. A beat of silence passed, and it seemed to drag endlessly. Apparently, Logan was done for the night. Great, it would have been better if he hadn’t sat down at all, because not only was Bobby frozen still, but now he also felt awkward.

Bobby still didn’t know where they stood. After the whole stabbing misunderstanding thing, they weirdly seemed to get along better. Like Bobby just needed to fight it out of his system to accept the fact Logan knew far too much about him, but they weren’t close enough to be doing this – whatever this was.

“How’s Kitty doing?” Bobby asked to fill the silence, playing with the edges of the label. Freeze it solid, peel slightly, repeat. He had heard she was back, but she hadn’t been allowed in to see Doug yet.

“How do you think? Her best friend is dying.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

Logan snorted. “As good as, then.”

Bobby might not have actually died, but he felt like he had enough experience to know the other thing was worse. That state of barely existing. “Did you tell her that?”

“No. But she knows. Wouldn’t have got Illy to give her a lift back to the States if she thought he was going to bounce back.”

“And you?”

Logan blinked at him, which was fair enough. Bobby was asking the Wolverine how he felt – that was skirting dangerously close to insanity. “Nothing a couple of rounds in the danger room won’t fix.” He paused. “I’m not going to ask you how you’re feeling.”

“Good. I don’t want you to.” Only, he kind of did.

Logan must have heard it in his voice because he took another long drink before sighing. “You’re not Kitty. I’m not going to break your ex-boyfriend’s legs for you.”

“Oh, so that’s why Piotr doesn’t visit anymore?”

Logan’s lips twitched up. “Something like that.”

“Anyway, I wouldn’t want you to. That way, it’d take him longer to leave.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

Bobby lifted up his beer to take a sip. Then, he blinked. No way did talking to Logan just solve that problem for him. Then again, he was actually feeling kind of relaxed. He laughed. “Why don’t we hang out more often?”

“Because you’re a dick.” Logan stood, downing the rest of his beer in one long gulp before raising a threatening finger towards Bobby. “Don’t waste one drop or I’m going to start hiding them.”

“Oh, stop, you love me.”

Bobby laughed as Logan threw the bird behind him on the way out. Of course, defrosting was the easy part. Now, he had to take Ororo’s advice and work out how to actually go to sleep.

Chapter Text

The heaviness hadn’t dispersed after a restless night, still weighing down on them all around the war room table. Bobby remembered when they used to do it around the dining room table, planning out their attacks and delivering bad news. He wondered why it had taken them so long to make a dedicated room in the basement of the mansion by Cerebro. It made them seem like a real superhero team, that they had a chance of actually fixing all the problems plaguing mutant kind.

It was lucky they had it today – Bobby was pretty sure this was the worst it had ever been.

There had been no good news this morning. The tinny speakers of the TV didn’t have the gravity to announce the five hundred dead and counting, both mutants and those who had been made into those Sentinel cyborg things. Maybe Bobby was, somewhere inside of him, still naive, but a part of him had hoped they had never been real humans at all. After all, cloning apparently existed. But, while little was still known about them – if they had made a choice, how long they had been lying in wait, what had set them off on a normal Wednesday evening – they knew who they were now.

They weren’t soldiers or monsters, they were people. Normal people. People who had lived in their town.

Bobby had watched an interview with a local woman. He’d never seen her before, but she lived in the Salem Centre. She had insisted with tears in her eyes that her son would have never agreed to something like this. He was a good man who volunteered at the local church and never thought violence was the answer.

The Professor used to say that to them all the time. He still sent them out to fight, though.

Bobby had recognised the photograph that flashed up on the screen, even though it was years old. It was of the body he had pulled from the wall, tossed on the pile of the dead. The authorities had picked them up this morning. Bobby wondered if they would have preferred it to be a pile of dead mutants.

Well, they had picked up nearly all of them. Hank had kept one, stashing it down in the basement. Bobby had made him a makeshift cold storage. Partly, it was because they didn’t trust the official investigation the authorities were talking about to give them the answers they needed, and partly because it might help Doug.

Kitty was helping. Bobby didn’t quite know how she had managed to pull herself together, but now she was held up in front of the Cerebro-powered computer in the basement, trying to get any information she could out of the thing.

She was keeping herself busy. She didn’t want to have to think about it all, and she didn’t want to feel like a loose cog. That was what Bobby felt like. He’d never been much good once the fighting stopped.

The report had also confirmed the Sentinels had gone over the border, a grim reminder that total annihilation had been their end goal. Up into Canada and down into Mexico. Luckily, Doug had shut them down quickly. They hadn’t made it over the ocean to anywhere else. There were bodies floating in the Pacific.

Just as he had.

There was also going to be a Presidential address at lunch. Bobby didn’t want to watch it, knew how it would already go. All carefully worded drivel that made it impossible to work out if the tragedy he spoke of was against mutants or humans, followed by long spiels about investigations and justice. Bobby hated politicians, even the ones he voted for.

That local woman in the news had, at the end of the interview, looked into the camera and asked mutants if there wasn’t another way to stop them, a peaceful solution. Like they could have just sat down and talked while those Sentinels had been systematically and emotionlessly murdering them.

It was good Doug was a nobody. Just a quiet, dweeby NYU student. The only people who knew what he did saw him as a hero, and none of them were ever going to rat him out. In the outside world, they were making out like he was as bad as the Sentinels. It was clearly self-defence, but if he was awake, they would probably put him on trial.

Instead, he had been put on a respirator. At some point in the two hours of sleep Bobby had managed to catch, Doug had seized and couldn’t breathe on his own anymore. Cecilia was desperately trying to keep him alive, and Hank was desperately trying to shut down the tiny Sentinel robots in his blood without killing him, and they were both doing it without speaking to each other.

Bobby thought that was the final nail in the coffin. Things were bad enough without the interpersonal tragedies as well.

Ororo must have read his mind. “Does anyone have any good news?” she asked. She was standing at the head of the table looking like she might drop at any second. Two hours of sleep probably sounded like a luxury for her.

The silence was thick. Of course, it was. Why would anything be going their way?

Then, Scott coughed. Bobby knew it was him without turning around to look. The awkward way he had to draw attention to himself was annoyingly distinctive.

Bobby tensed, his hands closing to fists under the table. He didn’t even know why Scott was here. It wasn’t like he was a part of the X-Men. Everyone else seemed to think the same. Nobody had pulled up a chair for him, instead, he was leaning against the door frame like someone who knew he wasn’t wanted. Bobby reminded himself that it was just for a couple more hours, then Scott would get the all clear and leave. Hopefully forever.

“The Long Island group is okay. I called Sally this morning, and she said they all hauled up in the bar. Rusty blew up a couple of cars though.” Scott couldn’t completely hide the amusement in his voice at that. It was what Rusty was known for. It wasn’t that funny, though, when you remembered the first time the car had people inside it.

Bobby glared at the table. He was glad of the news. Just, he should have thought to call up Mr Blevins. After all, he had known him before Scott. Though he was beginning to suspect Mr Blevins liked Scott more. Not only did he find his long-lost granddaughter hiding out in the New York sewers with the Morlocks, he also then broke out said granddaughter’s boyfriend out of prison. And it didn’t matter to the man that it was the start of Scott going off the rails because Mr Blevins didn’t seem to mind that. Though he did agree that it had no place at the MERA.

And, the final sour cherry on the top of the shit sundae, was Ororo smiled at it, like it was the best news she’d ever received. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Then, the floodgates opened. Apparently, everyone suddenly knew something good. Logan said Alpha Flight managed to contain all the Sentinels that escaped into Canada efficiently, and Rogue said she had heard all of Sam’s family was okay, and before long, they had a long list of the living because apparently everyone else had been on the phone nonstop the moment the Sentinels fell.

Bobby knew he shouldn’t feel bitter about it, but he had nothing to report. He hadn’t even got around to phoning his ma yet. Not that he needed to. She knew he was immortal and she had nothing to worry about.

So, instead of joining in with the positivity, he had to drag it back down instead and ask, “Has anyone heard anything from War and Jean yet?”

There it was again, that awful silence. Ororo’s face fell as she shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Even Betsy?”

“She is rather busy,” she reminded him. He tried not to take it as a jab.

Bobby’s leg bounced under the table as he scowled. He wasn’t really worried – War and Jeanie had both been X-Men, they would be fine – but it did give him an excuse to do something. Not to mention, it made him look helpful, even if it was really just an excuse to catch up with his friends and escape the mansion for a couple of hours. “I could go check.”

Ororo thought it through for a second, before nodding. “Thank you. But take someone with you.”

Bobby frowned. That didn’t really seem necessary and it would be nice to relax with them alone for a while. “The threat’s over.”

“We have no idea if something has happened. It will be wise.”

Suddenly, it struck Bobby that it was real weird they hadn’t checked in. That maybe he should be worried. Of course, it was more likely they were busy, they were probably taking some time to regroup themselves. Maybe they contacted the Professor instead of the mansion and assumed the message would get through but in the chaos, it had been lost. That had to be it, because if not, it meant-

No. He wasn’t going to think that.

Jean had already died once. It wasn’t going to happen again. She had told him she had another two thousand years in her yet.

He slouched slightly in his chair, looking around the table. Everyone seemed to be refusing to make eye contact with him. “Rogue?” he tried, hopefully. She was always a good laugh.

“You teleporting?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Then I’ll pass.”

Bobby frowned, devastated at the agreement on everyone’s faces. It was a shame Logan had got over his whole creepy crush, or he’d be chomping at the bit to ruin Jean’s day. “Oh, c’mon. There’s no point wasting a day travelling for a quick pop in.”

Ororo nodded. “The plane needs to stay here.”

“I can go.”

Bobby shut his eyes tightly and used every inch of his willpower not to smash his head against the table in front of him. Not that fucking voice. Not him pretending to be helpful when his real goal was to ruin Bobby’s day even more. “Anyone at all? You know, War always has that fancy coffee.”

“I’m willing,” Scott said again, not getting the message. “Plus, I like Jean.”

For the first time, Bobby turned to him. He still wasn’t looking good, slightly pale, leaning against the wall. At least he had made it to standing this time. “You don’t know Jean.”

Scott shrugged, infuriatingly cool. Why did he have to be like that? Why couldn’t he show some emotion? “We talked.”

“No, you don’t,” Bobby insisted. He was aware he shouldn’t be doing this here, that he was acting like a child in front of the rest of the team, but he couldn’t help himself.

“How would you know?”

“Jean would tell me if you ‘talk’.”

Scott raised an eyebrow. “Would she?”

Bobby could kill him. Only, he kind of had a point. Because he wasn’t just mad at Scott right now. If that was true, he was mad at Jean as well, which was a good reason why she wouldn’t tell Bobby that she was doing something as stupid as that. “I just don’t think you have anything to talk about other than past mistakes.”

Scott’s jaw tightened, and Bobby had clearly hit a nerve. Then again, bringing up someone’s dead wife would do that. “I was just saying I’ll go. It’s not like you’re getting any other volunteers.”

No, Scott wasn’t going to act like he was doing Bobby a favour. He didn’t want his stupid pity. “Aren’t you still on concussion watch?”

Scott shrugged. “You have eyes. I’m sure Hank would sign me off into your care.”

Asshole. He always had a comeback. And Hank would sign him off too, because he was an annoying traitor like Scott. Bobby looked around the table, desperately trying to find any support. Only nobody else knew what was going on and the person who did – Logan – was very clearly laughing at him. Bobby sank lower in his chair. “Whatever. Sure.”

Scott didn’t even have the decency to look pleased at that. Just nodded his head stiffly like he’d been given a mission briefing. “I’ll go find Hank.”

Scott walked off and at least he wasn’t holding onto the wall anymore. He wouldn’t be a complete liability then. Bobby’s scowl deepened and he wondered if he would be able to sneak off without him. Of course, then Ororo would be pissed and Bobby always felt the need to prove that he wasn’t some loose cannon who would go and get himself stabbed at the smallest bit of personal stress.

Well, his fun trip to catch up with his friends after a major disaster had just been ruined.

Chapter Text

Bobby didn’t pay much attention to the rest of the meeting – something about a clean up team to help out in the City, something about counting the dead, something about offering support to those affected – which was pretty normal for him. What wasn’t normal was the way his leg wouldn’t stop bouncing under the table, the anger and stress eating away at the edge of his mind.

He hoped Hank would put a stop to Scott’s plan, that the asshole himself might get lost in the bowels of the mansion, that anything might happen so he couldn’t come. But, as the meeting finally ended and Bobby hurried out of the war room, Scott was waiting for him outside. Leaning against the wall, relaxed, chatting to Illyana like any of this was normal.

Bobby would say it was a pretty good idea someone was keeping an eye on Scott, but a half-demon woman wouldn’t be first on his list. He didn’t even know what they would talk about. He tried to speed past him, but it turned out everyone was right, he couldn’t run away from his problems.

“So,” Scott said as he caught up, not even out of breath, “you can teleport now?”

Maybe he wasn’t as relaxed as he was making out because his attempt at being casual was missing the mark by a couple of states. Bobby hoped he was already regretting his dumb plan to invite himself along now he realised how uncomfortable it was going to be.

“I can do a lot of things now,” Bobby replied, short and to the point. No way could Scott try to continue the conversation.

If Bobby was a paranoid man, he would think Scott set the whole thing up. Well, not the whole genocidal cyborg thing, but the whole going to the MERA and giving himself a minor concussion so he would have an excuse to come back to the mansion and make Bobby’s shitty week somehow even shittier.

It was, of course, a ridiculous thought. Didn’t mean the asshole wasn’t taking full advantage of the situation, though.

What Bobby couldn’t work out was why. It had been a long time – longer for Scott than for him. While Bobby was still bitter, he was over him. He had proof. Here they were, walking side by side, and Bobby wasn’t having any of those pesky emotions. And it wasn’t just because he had turned into his ice form either.

He could ask. Scott always preferred people being blunt with him but then he would know Bobby was on to him, and that would leave him at a disadvantage. Or, worse, Scott would be as blunt back and say something painfully sincere like he missed their friendship and then not even his ice form would stop him from being angry and Ororo would be disappointed he started another fight.

“That’s real cool,” Scott said, not taking the hint.

Bobby couldn’t help it. He never could, always grabbing the bait if it was dangled in front of his nose. “Let me guess, you’re still stuck with lasers you can’t control?”

Scott touched his glasses, slightly rueful but failing to get angry. Didn’t even point out that, technically, they weren’t lasers, but he knew Bobby knew that already. “Unfortunately so.” He paused and he was definitely getting the courage up to say more. Bobby still knew him too well. “I could control it, for a while. In the future-”

“No!” Bobby said loudly, cutting him off. He stopped and turned to him, raising his finger in warning. “I’m not doing that.”

Scott nodded, painfully agreeable. “That’s fine. We can-”

“If your next words aren’t ‘not talk’, I’m going to leave your molecules scattered from here to New Mexico. The only reason you’re coming is because Ororo thinks I need backup, capiche?”

This time it wasn’t a hint. Scott still didn’t get it. “I wasn’t lying before. I do want to know Jean’s okay. This isn’t because of you.”

Only maybe Bobby had been lying before because somehow those words made him feel disappointed. He already knew he wasn’t important. Scott just made everything complicated by standing too close to him.

“Good.”

The silence was heavy, choking really. He knew Scott wanted to say something else, trying to work out the best words. Bobby didn’t want to hear them, whatever they might be. Instead, he reached forward, grabbing Scott’s wrist with his icy hand. Better if he wasn’t wearing a sweater, that way, he’d probably give him ice burn. Better that he was, Bobby was pretty sure actual skin contact would be too much for him.

Why couldn’t he be other people? Why did his ex have to pop back into his life after a disaster?

Scott looked down in surprise. Bobby wondered if he thought it meant something. As he looked back up, Bobby forced a grin on his face.

“Keep hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times. Or don’t. I don’t care.”

For the first time, he hoped the journey was unpleasant for his passenger. It probably was worse than normal. The distance meant he had to really concentrate, not to mention they were going to the desert. It didn’t matter how powerful he got, dry air was still his weakness.

The moment they reformed on Warren’s drive, Bobby let go.

Scott swayed slightly, turning pale. Oh yeah, that just sucked big time for him. Bobby grinned – served him right for coming along.

Then, Scott tried to take a step forward and dropped like a bag of rocks.

Bobby moved on instinct, his hand flying out and grabbing any moisture this hell hole had in the air, making a pile of snow to soften Scott’s fall. He thudded down into it, sending a cloud up.

Bobby moved closer. He'd better not have killed him. Nobody would believe it was an accident. Ororo would be so pissed.

Scott stayed down. Bobby stared at him with growing concern. Just as he thought he would have to bite the bullet and touch him again, the light behind Scott’s glasses turned back on.

“I think that fucked with my concussion.” Scott’s voice was slightly slurred but Bobby couldn’t help but feel a wave of relief through him. A laugh burst out of him before he could stop it – that was thanks to all the self-control he had failed to learn.

Quickly, he shoved a scowl back on his face, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked down on him. “Knew you were going to be a liability.”

Scott looked like he needed a hand up, but he was going to have to find someone who wasn’t Bobby to give it to him. Instead, he looked around the drive. Scott could lie there all day for all Bobby cared. “Well, War’s car is still here.”

“So, they’re here,” Scott said as he got back on his feet. The snow around him was beginning to melt, running down the tarmac. There was a large wet patch on his back. Bobby hoped it was uncomfortable.

Bobby nodded. “C’mon, we don’t have all day.”

He marched forward, jumping up the two steps onto the decking. Scott trailed behind him. Bobby went straight to the front door, knocking loudly. He gave it half a second before knocking again. “War, Jeanie, open up.” Another half a second of knocking. “It’s Bobby, by the way.”

He was starting to get a bad feeling when nobody answered. After all, there were loads of reasons why they wouldn’t call in after the Sentinel attack, there were fewer reasons why they wouldn’t open the door while their car was parked outside. At least, ones that didn’t involve War flying Jean to the local hospital.

No. They had to be okay. They had years of training.

Only, War hadn’t been in the X-Men for a long time, and Jeanie no longer had her powers. That wasn’t even a guarantee that the Sentinels wouldn’t attack her. They read DNA, they attacked people with only physical mutations. They didn’t care if you were basically human.

His knocks turned louder, faster. “Guys, open up. This isn’t funny.”

“The lights are on,” Scott said beside him, his face pressed against the window, his hands cupped against the glare.

Bobby looked up into the sky, as if he needed confirmation that the bright sun was still in the sky. “It’s day.”

He didn’t like this one bit. It was meant to be an escape, something easy to take his mind off things for a while as he pretended he was being helpful. Scott moved down the decking and Bobby stared after him stupidly.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Going round back,” Scott said like it was obvious. It was clear he was worried too, and it was doing nothing to calm Bobby’s nerves. “Or are you going to try and kick in the door?”

That had been his plan, vaguely forming in the back of his mind. Though if it did turn out they were just taking a nap or something, War would kill him. That door was probably worth more money than Bobby had ever made in his life. Then again, seeing as he had done only a couple of months on minimum wage at the local gas station, it wasn’t exactly a hard figure to beat.

Quickly, he chased after Scott around the side and into the back. The house was built on the side of a cliff, the view over the desert breathtaking. Bobby had always hated it. So big and hot and dry. Why couldn’t the Worthingtons have got a holiday house in Colorado? Or, even better, Canada. There weren’t any deserts in Canada – or Sentinels.

Bobby didn’t focus on that, instead letting his eyes rest on the last source of water before hell. The swimming pool Bobby had once frozen just to prove he could.

There was a body in it.

It was floating face down, its hair in a halo around its head. Bobby’s mind sped up, even though he could see from here it wasn’t either of his friends. No wings, no red hair. But it did mean the Sentinels had attacked.

“War must have thrown him in,” Bobby said because what were the chances it was just leaving when Doug took them all out? He had been right – Warren hadn’t forgotten his training. With no other bodies, it must have been the only one. Of course, it was. Their closest neighbour was miles away and the reports said the worst of the attack was focused on New York, the Sentinels in the other states limited. It must have been neutralised the moment he turned up and his friends were fine.

“Bobby,” Scott said from behind him. His voice was soft, slightly too blank. Bobby knew that voice, had heard it before and it never meant anything good. He needed to turn, to see what Scott was seeing.

He couldn’t bring himself to. Not yet. If he didn’t look, things might still be okay.

He felt something heavy touch his shoulder, a hand, and he should shrug it off, but people never touched him in his ice form. He pretended it belonged to someone he liked, someone who hadn’t shattered his frozen heart into pieces, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to turn around without drawing all the strength he could from it.

It had all been too easy.

As if something that big, that horrible, could happen and the only casualty Bobby directly knew was someone he didn’t care about.

He forced his head to turn and his neck creaked as his ice form fought the movement. He took in the shattered French doors he once walked into as they were always freakishly clean, the TV that had been knocked to the floor they used to watch with stovetop popcorn as they caught the Saturday night movie, the couch blasted across the room that Hank once managed to lift with the rest of them sitting on it.

And the pool of blood staining the cream carpet, drying and sticky and far too big with his two friends lying dead on top of it.

Chapter Text

Bobby’s ears were ringing.

He had no idea they could do that, produce a high-pitched buzzing that bounced around his head and blocked everything else out. It wasn’t like he had ear drums in this form. Whatever was going wrong, it was getting worse, the sound getting higher and louder.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away, couldn’t get a nano-second of relief by blinking. All he could see was War and Jean in front of him, burning into his spinning brain.

He was disconnected from everything else, a wire loose somewhere, frozen in place.

When they used to watch Star Trek at the mansion, Hank had tried to work out how teleportation would actually work. He had this theory that the beam would have to copy them before destroying the original and reforming them from new matter. That wasn’t how Kurt and Illyana worked, they travelled through another dimension, folding space around them. It was how Bobby worked, though.

Every time he teleported, he destroyed himself, transported the information that made him (and his passengers) up through the water molecules in the air, and then reformed himself at his destination. He couldn’t just do the first bit, couldn’t give up halfway through the process. But, at this second, part of him wanted to. He wanted to exist in that nothing space, as a water molecule, so he wouldn’t remember this, so he wouldn’t feel like this.

It was worse than being shot, worse than waking up afterwards, worse than having his heart broken. It felt like he was standing too close to the sun, his insides boiling and the radiation sloughing off his skin and he was unable to die to get any relief. Time had stopped existing, every second dragging into an agonising eternity.

He was trapped, alone.

Except he wasn’t.

Scott couldn’t feel the aching pain of the scene in front of them. He was saying something Bobby couldn’t hear over the buzz, but it didn’t matter. Whatever it was, it was unimportant. Fingers clicked in front of his face but Bobby couldn’t look away. His body wouldn’t listen.

This couldn’t be happening.

Then, Scott was moving away. Away from him. Just like he always did when Bobby really needed him. He knelt above the bodies and Bobby wanted him to stop.

The scene in front of him was awful. Blood and agony and his two best friends in the middle of it.

It was also, somehow, impossibly, beautiful. Jean was holding Warren. Her arms were slack, boneless, but wrapped around him still. Together, pressed close, as they lay in the pool of their own blood. They loved each other so much. Even in death, they were still connected together.

Bobby couldn’t blame her for choosing to die with Warren instead of waiting with him until the end of the world. That had never been a serious promise, more a joke they didn’t even know if it could really happen.

Bobby’s voice was stuck too, though. He couldn’t call out to Scott. Instead, he could only watch as Scott ruined it, peeling them apart, separating them, turning them back into the two instead of the whole they wanted.

He rolled Warren over. His wings, already slightly misshapen and singed, got crushed beneath him, his glassy eyes open and staring at the ceiling. There was blood flecked on his skin, lifeless and ashy grey.

Scott’s face was tight, his mouth pressed in a hard line, his nose wrinkled up against the smell. Bobby didn’t know how they hadn’t smelled it from a mile away. It was so obvious now, rotting and sweet. It wasn’t the first time he’d come across it, not with what he did, but it was worse this time. He knew he should be able to block it out. Senses where for other people.

He couldn’t any more than he could shut his eyes.

Scott worked in a grim, mechanical fashion. He didn’t even stop as Warren’s lower abdomen was exposed, a messy hole that organs Bobby couldn’t even name was spilling out of. More seemed to come out, staining Scott’s hands with blood before trailing onto the floor.

Bobby was an ice statue. It was the only thing stopping him from finding out if he could throw up in this form.

Scott still checked his pulse like Warren could still be alive. Then again, the X-Men did kind of suck at dying on cue. But Warren hadn’t been an X-Men for a long time, and Bobby could see his intestines.

Scott shook his head before reaching forward and shutting Warren’s eyes. It failed to make him look more at peace. He hesitated for a second before turning to Jean. Bobby knew he was seeing Maddie in her place. He had done this before.

So had Bobby.

Only there hadn’t been a body the first time Jean had died. She had exploded like a sun, raining back down to Earth. This time, it was all wrong. It didn’t suit her to go out like this.

Scott took the breath Bobby couldn’t, steeling his nerves before pressing his shaking fingers into Jean’s neck. Warren’s blood smeared against it, joining the red already on her. He’d been so quick with War, but they lingered on hers.

Then, his head shot up, his face twisting in a way Bobby couldn’t understand. He was saying something again, his mouth moving fast but the buzzing was still there, drowning everything out. What could he possibly say that Bobby didn’t already know?

Scott got up, leaving Jean behind, lying on the floor like a rag doll. Bobby wanted nothing more than Scott not to walk away from him, but this was wrong as well. He couldn’t leave Jean like that.

Scott moved towards him in quick steps, his mouth moving all the while until his face filled all of Bobby’s vision. He was trying to make Bobby focus on him. And Bobby did try. He felt like a TV that needed to be hit on the side to disperse the static. Scott must have realised that too. Except instead of hitting him, he pressed both hands on either side of Bobby’s face.

They burnt. That sun again, trying to melt him. The buzzing was getting louder, increasing in pitch, screaming at him. A thousand wasps, stinging the inside of his mind. A warning. He needed to breathe. He needed to-

“-alive.”

Bobby only just caught it, a whisper a million miles away. He grabbed onto it, clung it close to his cold body, and used it to pull himself back like it was a life buoy.

What? he thought, as thick as the blood Scott was pushing into his ice. Making it a part of him, really. Like he would ever need something physical of Warren’s when he was currently filling up so much of his head.

Only he must have spoken aloud, even though he was sure he hadn’t moved his mouth, because Scott replied.

“Jean’s alive.”

That didn’t make any sense. Bobby had seen her. He had seen her and she was dead and Warren was dead and they couldn’t be but they were.

The words were getting through, though, melting him enough that he could shake his head.

“Yes,” Scott said, and he wouldn’t lie to him. All this time, and he still wouldn’t do that, not about something like this. Scott knew death, seemed to follow him around, so Bobby had to believe him.

He removed his hands from Bobby’s face and stepped back towards Jean. Bobby knew he should follow but he couldn’t. He didn’t have it in him yet.

Scott wasn’t going to let him wait. Instead, he grabbed Bobby’s wrist and guided him. Another time, Bobby would be annoyed at how easily he surrendered control to him. Then, his fingers were being pressed against Jean’s neck.

He couldn’t feel a thing.

“She’s not-” Bobby managed to push out before faltering. It took him a second to pull himself back together, to try again. “She’s cold.”

She was always burning up, a flame inside her of the Phoenix even when she didn’t have her powers anymore. It wasn’t there.

“Bobby,” Scott said, kneeling on the other side of her and catching his eye, his voice in that commanding tone that refused to be ignored. “You’re cold.”

Bobby looked down at his hand. Somehow, the ice was surprising even though he couldn’t melt, he couldn’t turn back, he couldn’t be doing this in a million years in his flesh form. Was barely doing it in this form.

He had to know.

There!

Just slightly. A weak flutter against his fingertips, but it was there. He shook his head again, this time in disbelief.

“Jean, she’s – she’s alive.”

That wasn’t possible.

It was true.

He laughed, a wave of relief that turned sour when his eyes caught on the blood staining the floor. Jeanie might be alive, but Warren wasn’t. He was still dead. This wasn’t a miracle.

“How?” Bobby asked instead. It felt wrong to ignore Warren, but if he thought about it for too long, he was going to freeze into place again. He didn’t have time for that. Jean needed him. He couldn’t save her. “She’s injured!” he realised suddenly, his hands patting her down. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for.

“I think it’s just, uh, Warren’s blood,” Scott said.

“Oh,” Bobby said, his hands slowing. “Then, why is she… like this?”

Scott shrugged. All his focus was on her as well. But he couldn’t forget Warren either, his blood was smeared across his face. “I don’t know.” His voice was steady, he already had a plan. Bobby was glad. He needed to do something but his brain was still slow, sticky. He needed someone to tell him what to do. “But Cecilia will.”

Bobby nodded. That made sense, she was a doctor. She could help Jean. “I need to take her to the mansion.”

“Now,” Scott agreed.

Bobby frowned, finding the flaw. “I’m not good with a lot of passengers. I can’t – I’m not going to leave Warren here.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Scott promised. He was good at this. So calm and collected and not getting mad at Bobby even though he knew he was being slower than usual.

Warren was dead. The thought was burning a hole in his mind.

“I don’t trust you.” It was blunt. Nasty, really, and Bobby wasn’t even sure it was completely the truth.

Scott didn’t even flinch. “I know. But this is for Jean.”

Bobby’s eyes slid off him and back on her. Lying pale and boneless. He had to save her. She needed him.

“Okay,” he said, nodding his head. He felt the plan slip into place in his mind, refocusing him. He knelt down, gathering Jean in his arms and holding her close. She weighed barely anything, limp in his arms. It was so wrong. He wanted to press her fingers against her neck again, give himself a steady reminder she was still alive, but what if the weak pulse was already gone? What if he wasted precious seconds? He couldn’t afford distractions.

“I’ll come back for you,” Bobby said. He let Scott believe he was talking to him.

Chapter Text

Hank’s old workshop – the medical bay, Bobby reminded himself, and he should think that automatically by now – was quiet apart from the steady beep of two heartbeats, the whoosh of that bright green ventilator, and Cecilia’s quiet snores from where she all but collapsed an hour ago.

Jeanie looked like she could be sleeping. She wasn’t like Doug, not a mess of wires and equipment trying to keep her alive. Cecilia had said there was nothing physically wrong with her, that she didn’t have a scratch on her, that she should just be able to wake up at any time and walk off. Betsy, who they had brought down to see if something was psychically wrong with her, couldn’t get through the blocks in her mind.

It was hardly a surprise. Jean had once been the strongest telepath in the world, but it meant they were blind. They had no idea what was wrong with her. Well, other than the obvious.

Once Cecilia had declared Jean the medical equivalent of a shoulder shrug, Bobby had refused to leave her side. It was easier to hold her hand and beg her to wake up than think of Warren lying along in a make-shift cold storage, to think of the fact Warren was-

Bobby closed his eyes. Jeanie would wake up.

Even if she didn’t want to. She was strong.

Bobby squeezed her hand for what felt like the thousandth time, and once again cursed the world with every emotion twisting in his body. Why had this happened? Why had those Sentinels only taken from him?

Only, that wasn’t true. He knew that, deep down, had to keep reminding himself.

The number of the confirmed dead was only rising. It was shown at the bottom of the TV screen, repeated on the radio. One was always on, tuned in to whatever news station that was talking about it. The X-Men were punishing themselves for their failure. It was their job to keep mutants safe from these threats and they had been caught with their pants down.

Whole mutant families had been wiped out, kids who didn’t even know what they were yet killed in the arms of parents who didn’t even know they needed protecting from threats like this, and the humans who had recklessly got in the way to try and save the people they loved. It was the weak, the young, the civilians who had suffered the most. Those without community, without a deadly power.

And it had all happened so quickly.

It wasn’t even just him in the mansion who was feeling it. The X-Men knew Jean and Warren, the younger team were close to Doug.

Everyone else seemed to be doing something, though.

Bobby scowled at himself. Here he was, sitting around feeling sorry for himself and pretending it was for Jean. It wasn’t. It was just for him. He was being selfish. Betsy had said Jean was locked down too tightly in her own subconscious to know what was happening in the outside world. She couldn’t hear him, feel the comfort he was giving, couldn’t follow his voice back. So, he was just moping.

Hank wasn’t moping. Ororo wasn’t moping. Even Kitty, who everyone still saw as a kid even though she really wasn’t anymore, wasn’t moping.

They were trying to find a solution, doing something actually helpful.

Bobby stood, suddenly, the uncomfortable chair he’d been sitting on scraping along the floor loudly. Behind him, Cecilia shifted in her sleep at the sound, but she had done this countless times, she knew she didn’t need to wake up.

He didn’t let go of Jean’s hand. Instead, he squeezed it again, as tight as he could, part of him still hoping that it would be the miracle to get her to open her eyes. It wasn’t. He looked down at her, his mind working again for the first time in hours as he made up his mind.

“I’ll fix this,” he promised. It was empty. He had no idea how. He couldn’t bring War back, he couldn’t heal people who weren’t him, he couldn’t even get Jeanie to hear him. But he would do something, anything.

Maybe it was still the selfish part of him in charge. He needed to do something so he wouldn’t go insane, so he could distract his mind. That didn’t change the fact it was for a good cause, though.

It felt wrong to leave her, abandoning her in this medical bay on her own, even if she had a doctor standing vigil who would wake up at the first sign of distress. Cecilia, who didn’t even know how to help her patients, was doing more than him right now.

That thought was the last push he needed and he carefully let go of Jeanie’s hand, placing it back on the bed. His eyes skipped past Doug as he left the room, and he didn’t look back before he moved down the corridor. The only problem with his plan was, he had no idea what to do.

Ororo probably needed her help – and he owed her big time seeing as she was the one who called War’s mother when Bobby couldn’t bring himself to – or Rogue, who had taken a team to help clear up the City. Mr Blevins would probably be there, always willing to lend a hand, even though he really shouldn’t be with his deteriorating health.

Bobby didn’t want to do either of those things. It wasn’t what he was good at. He needed to fight. A buzz in every single one of his muscles telling him someone needed to pay. That he needed to make someone pay.

It was Kitty he ended up coming across first as he aimlessly walked through the halls. The door to the computer room had been left ajar. It was set up next to Cerebro, thick wires connecting them together through the wall. Apparently, it gave the whole thing some much needed whoomph, but Bobby didn’t know the details. He didn’t really see the point of computers. After all, things had been working fine without them, and he didn’t want to learn. What was the point? He never needed to use them. Kitty loved them, though, insisting they were the future.

He stuck his head through the door. “Got anything?” he asked.

She jumped and the dragon that had been snoozing on her shoulder reared up, glaring at him with its glowing yellow eyes. Bobby refused to be intimidated. Lockheed loved him, even if it was overprotective of its owner.

“Jeeze,” Kitty yelped. She was also glaring at him but seeing as she didn’t breathe fire, it wasn’t nearly as effective. Well, that and the fact it looked like a strong wind could blow her over. She had heavy bags under her eyes and her curly hair was messy like she had been continuously running her hand through it. Bobby would bet money she hadn’t slept since getting the news about Doug. “Don’t do that. If I phase through this computer, it becomes a very expensive paperweight and I’ll be back to square one.”

Bobby took an actual step into the room, his heart rising slightly in his chest. “So, you’ve moved past square one?”

Kitty sighed, a loud huff of air, and cast a glance back at the screen. Lockheed, convinced there was no danger, curled back up on her shoulders to sleep. “Barely.”

Bobby raised an eyebrow, ignoring the way his heart crashed back down to Earth. It was his own fault for getting his hopes up. It was never going to be that easy. “So, nothing then?”

She tensed, affronted by his dismissal. “Well, the best thing to do would be to raid Trask Industries. But seeing as the government has oh so helpfully already done that, and taken anything that would even be remotely useful into evidence, I’m stuck with trying to get remote access to their computers via Cerebro. Which should be easy, right? Mixing technology with telepathy? The Prof has been doing it for over a decade and I helped streamline the whole process. Hell, I’d planned to write my dissertation on it before I dropped out. But there’s a vital part in this whole process, and that’s they need to turn the damn things on. Which nobody is. So, I’m trying my best, okay?”

Her voice rose as she spoke, tears of frustration gathering in the corner of her eyes. She was exhausted, overwhelmed, and just wanted something, anything. Just like Bobby was. He raised his hands. He knew everyone was stressed and here he was, bumbling around and making everything worse for the people actually doing something. He was making her feel bad for not being able to do something he could even start to understand. Before he could even try to correct his mistake, she carried on, like she couldn’t stop the words flooding out of her.

“Instead, I’m trying to hack the nanobots we keep removing from Doug. But that’s giving me shit all as well because they keep self-destructing. All I’ve got is a whole bunch of ones and zeros in some strange pattern that doesn’t mean anything.”

She pointed at the screen, oozing frustration. Bobby felt like he had no choice but to inch forward and look at it even though they both knew if she was lost, he didn’t stand a chance.

She shook her head. “Doug would understand it. Anything I didn’t understand, he would always help out. Even with the stupid time difference.”

Bobby didn’t know how to answer that, just nodded at the screens. Yeah, they were definitely all ones and zeros. Complete nonsense.

Only…

He narrowed his eyes and leaned in closer. It did seem kind of familiar. Not the ones and zeros, but the pattern they were in. Kind of like…

“Is that Morse code?” he asked.

She blinked at him for a second before turning back to the screen. She scanned it, her eyes flicking madly across it before pointing at a line. Her whole body was shaking with excitement. “That’s an SOS. Three ones, three zeros, three ones.”

Bobby always felt slightly smug when he worked out something a genius couldn’t. Still, he shrugged, needing to at least project a veneer of modesty. “You probably just spent too long looking at it.”

Kitty refused to rise to the bait, her frown getting deeper as she leaned in closer to the screen. “Look, it repeats here. And here. That can’t be a coincidence, right? We need to check this out properly. But what I don’t understand is why these nanobots would be using Morse code? Unless…” Her face drained of all colour as her breath hitched. “Doug?”

“He’s in a coma.” Bobby winced the moment the words were out of his mouth. Kitty already knew that.

“He’s not dead,” she snapped back, defensive again. Even if Bobby wanted to argue, he wouldn’t have. He felt the same about Jean. She was going to wake up. Kitty needed that hope with Doug just as much as he did. “He wants to tell us something. Can you translate the rest?”

Bobby shook his head. “My memory’s not that good. But Hank has a chart somewhere. Let me go get it.”

He was pretty sure he had never run through the mansion so fast before. It seemed to only take him seconds before he was in the library, hunting through the shelves for the right book. It was easy enough to find, like it was guided into his hands by a magnet.

Then, he was running back, ignoring the looks shot his way. Probably not a smart thing, to be running around like a madman after a disaster. He was probably making people panic, think round two was on the way, but he couldn’t slow down. He crashed back into the computer room, waving the book wildly in his hand.

It had nothing to do with Morse code – it was some psychology book that Hank had spent the summer trying to pathologise them all from – but he had stuck the guide in the back cover. Bobby felt bad for calling him a nerd over it.

Kitty didn’t waste a second, jumping on it eagerly. With a pen and paper, and a couple of mistakes, it didn’t take them long to decode it.

“Its coordinates,” she said, lifting it up to show him. “Recognise them?”

Bobby snorted. Just like Kitty, he was failing to hide his excitement. This was what he needed. “Oddly enough, I don’t have every location in the world memorised.”

“Well, we need to go to them.”

Bobby caught Kitty’s eye, his face stretching into a wide grin. “Let’s go find you a computer to break into.”

Chapter Text

The coordinates were in a field just outside Danbury.

It was mocking them, it had to be. Because if the message was from Doug, and if it did lead to some top secret evil lair (which Bobby was sure of), then it was way too close to the mansion to be a coincidence. It was a hop across the state line. They could have driven here.

They didn’t, because the van was currently in The City and, y’know, a plane was so much cooler. But it had only taken minutes. Barely got up into the air before they were landing again.

The mission team was a small, precision strike force full of people they could get together on very short notice. They didn’t want to waste a single second. Ororo to fly the plane and lead; Kitty to do the computers; Logan, because even though Kitty was twenty-one and on another superhero team across the world and he’d found another teenage girl to mentor, wasn’t going to let her out of his sight right now; and Bobby, the muscle and an all round great guy.

The dream team, really. All points covered. Ten out of ten.

Which begged the question of why Scott was currently sitting at the back of the plane like a lingering fart. The only reason he even knew of the mission was that he’d just happened to be talking to Betsy about whether his brother was still alive (so, they weren’t talking again, Bobby would say he was surprised but he knew him too well), and happened to overhear.

At least everyone had made the decision to ignore him. Even Kitty, who had no idea of the fraught history, seemed to realise he wasn’t a guy to make small talk to.

It wasn’t like Scott was bringing anything unique to the team. He didn’t have some amazing mutation that they couldn’t do the mission without. An hour ago, he’d been officially cleared by Cecilia to fuck off far away from the mansion, so he should be long gone. But Scott had got weirdly good at manipulating people. Said something about the accountability of the X-Men and the common mutant trusting his word more than theirs and Ororo couldn’t talk her way out of it because the whole reason the X-Men hadn’t handed over the information to the government’s investigation yet was for the same reason.

Bobby was beginning to think Scott was going out of his way to make his life worse.

They set down on the field, and who knew what was growing in it, but right now, it looked like a load of mud. The plane sank slightly into it as it landed. Bobby didn’t know what he expected from a secret Sentinel headquarters that had tried to orchestrate a genocide but, when they piled out of the plane and looked around, it was not this.

“It’s a field,” Bobby said, having no choice but to point it out. Somebody had to. After all, they were following the instructions of a dying kid who could only communicate through technology that was completely incompatible with him.

“There’s something here,” Kitty said, shooting him a glare. “I know it.”

She bit her lip as she looked around. She was the same age as Doug, but Bobby didn’t think of her as a kid anymore. She was tough, having seen the horrors that came with a superhero life. She actually reminded Bobby a bit of himself, and he would have hated to be coddled at her age. Right now, though, she just looked lost and desperate and young. If nothing was here, it meant her best friend was dead. No wonder Logan insisted on coming.

“I’ll phase through the ground,” she decided.

“No way, kid,” Logan grunted.

Kitty turned her glare on him. “I can do it.”

“Nobody is saying you cannot,” Ororo said. “But the people we are up against are well-funded and knowledgeable. I fear they may have prepared for us.”

“What else can we do, though?” There was a hint of stubborn triumph in her voice. She was sure she was going to win this battle, but she didn’t know how desperate they were not to lose another person.

“Sometimes, the solution is simpler than you first think,” Ororo said. Maybe not seeing Kitty as a kid anymore was a him problem, because Ororo was trying to turn this into a lesson. He caught Kitty’s eye, pulling a face. Worth it for the slight smile that pulled at the corner of her mouth. It was probably the best anyone was going to get from her until they got a breakthrough.

The wind picked up as Ororo lifted out her arms and began to rise into the sky, Lockheed launching itself off Kitty’s shoulder to join her. She cast a glance around the field before moving higher. She pulled away the fog and rain, leaving the field cast in a perfectly sunny day. They followed her along from the ground.

As Bobby stomped through the sticky mud, he remembered how much he hated the country. Too much walking and space and not a single bit of concrete in sight. At least when he wasn’t in human form it didn’t cause him to sneeze. Luckily, Ororo wasn’t going far, settling back down on the ground.

“There’s something here,” she said as they got closer.

Bobby frowned down at the ground. “Looks the same.”

“I assure you, it is different.”

“So, if we can’t let Kitty drop through it, how do we get in?”

It felt like everyone looked at Scott. It made sense just to nuke the entrance, but it still made Bobby scowl. He didn’t want a decent reason for him to be here.

“Could you do it?” Ororo asked.

Scott pushed his glasses up his nose, awkwardly. “I can try.”

“Makes sense to give the job to the guy nobody likes,” Logan said as they moved a safe distance away from him. “That way, it doesn’t matter if there’s an automated defence system.”

Bobby snorted, even as Ororo frowned in disapproval. Who would have thought Logan would be his saviour through all this?

“Are you all well back?” Scott called over his shoulder. That hadn’t changed, the nervousness before he used his powers. He was so tense, so afraid he was going to hurt someone.

“You may proceed,” Ororo reassured.

Scott’s back was towards them. That was the only reason why Bobby could allow himself to look. In the five years they had spent together, he had rarely seen Scott use his powers. Something had changed in the future, because when he got back, he was way more willing to start blasting his way into prison and blowing up factories and fighting with it.

But it was clear it still scared him.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe mutants like them couldn’t stop being scared of what they do. They held life and death in their hands, a single mistake could have drastic consequences. That was something deeper than acceptance.

Scott took a deep breath, rolled back his shoulders, and shot the ground.

It was noisy, a wet dirt cloud exploding into the air and that buzzing hum of his powers. It seemed to get louder as Scott got lost in the cloud, the burning red glow visible in the middle the only proof he was still there. Then, a loud metallic thump filled the air. All noise cut off.

They gave it a second, Ororo manipulating the wind to carry the dust and dirt away before they moved forward. Scott was covered in a layer of the stuff, shaking out his hair and coughing. Bobby tried not to laugh. It wasn’t very successful.

The plan, however, had worked. Exactly where Ororo had said it would be, there was a metal hatch, a hole now ripped into it. Bobby peered into the dark void. “I’m betting elevator shaft.”

“I told you we were in the right place,” Kitty said, half-smug and half-relieved.

“I’ll see if I can bring it up,” Bobby said. The hole was big enough for him to get through. Unfortunately, Scott’s power was a battering ram. Knowing their luck, he’d probably totalled the platform below as well.

“You should not go alone,” Ororo frowned. She was probably tired of repeating it, but he wasn’t just being a dick this time. He knew Ororo wasn’t a fan of small, dark spaces with no known end. Bobby didn’t blame her – he didn’t much like them either, but he wasn’t going to bug out in them. Before he could work out a tactful way of saying that, Kitty spoke up.

“I’ll go.”

Bobby blinked at her. “You can fly?”

“Kind of,” she shrugged.

Bobby waited for more but she didn’t explain so he waved his hand at the hole. “Lead the way then.”

She edged closer to it. When she reached it, she sat down, her legs hanging over into the darkness below. She didn’t take a deep breath or try to steel her nerves, just pushed herself off the ledge. Instead of plummeting to her death as Bobby had been half-expecting (and preparing for), she just slowly sank down into the black like a balloon with a slow puncture. Lockheed followed her down, a purple streak.

“If the thing’s broken, I’ll make you guys a real nice ice slide.”

“It’ll work,” Logan grunted and, from him, it sounded like a threat.

Bobby gulped. “Real nice,” he promised before diving through the hole himself.

While the elevator shaft was the type for goods and vehicles (though maybe the giant old school Sentinel size was more accurate), his ice slide was tight. A twisting vomit machine. Maybe if the lift didn’t work, he’d just let Ororo fly Logan’s heavy ass down so he wouldn’t spend the rest of the mission bitching about his slide.

“That’s pretty cool,” he told Kitty as he passed her, his voice echoing off the close sides. He was pretty sure she rolled her eyes, but it was too dark to be sure, and his method of transport was far quicker. He landed on the platform below and waited for her to set down next to him, Lockheed taking its familiar place on her shoulder.

“No doors,” he said, nodding forward into the inky black that could only be achieved miles underground in a place that had never even heard of the sun.

“Lights?” Kitty asked.

Bobby grinned. “Let’s hope they’re automatic.” He stepped into the corridor, his face falling when nothing came out. “Great. How are we supposed to find a light switch in this? Lockheed, be a good boy and make some light.”

Kitty made a sound that, if Bobby was being optimistic, he’d call a snort, following him into the room. As she stepped next to him, the lights flicked on, pooling them in a bright fluorescent glow. “It’s a PIR sensor.”

Bobby glared at her. “I have no idea what that means.”

“It means-” She cut off, her eyes growing wide at something behind his shoulder. He tensed, his hands flying up as he crouched low and twisted. He didn’t know what to expected other than something bad. It would always be something bad.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise to see a Sentinel standing in front of them. After all, they were breaking into the Sentinel’s headquarters.

Only maybe things were going their way for once, because it wasn’t reacting to their presence. Bobby wasn’t even sure it was on seeing as it wasn’t doing anything but standing there.

Carefully, he edged closer to it. It still did nothing.

“Do you think Doug shut this one down as well?” Kitty hissed. Lockheed was in attack mode, wings beating the air behind it, ready to attack.

“Let me…” Bobby trailed off, quickly building a snowball in his hand. Then, he threw it at the metal monster.

He messed up. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, it was what he was known for, but he had really thought it had been shut down. Instead, the moment the snowball hit its metal breast plate, smashing into a cloud of white, the Sentinel opened its eyes.

Chapter Text

As the Sentinel’s yellow glowing eyes lit up, Bobby thought it was fortunate he was used to his dumb plans causing havoc. His hands flew up before his brain even made a plan yet, creating a stream of ice to keep it in place.

Kitty reacted as well, moving backwards purposefully enough that Bobby was pretty sure she wasn’t just leaving him to face his mistakes alone. The movement caught the Sentinel’s eye and it reached for her. It was a slow old thing, looked like one of the first generations. Lockheed shot forward, always ready to protect, and it breathed out fire around the Sentinel’s head as Bobby shot a burst of ice towards the Sentinel’s arm. It hit, and the arm flew upwards, a laser shot firing off into the ceiling. Dust danced down onto them.

“Give me a boost,” Kitty yelled.

Bobby nodded. He gave a burst of ice towards the Sentinel and it staggered backwards. Using the distraction, he made a slope, angled slightly upwards at the end.

Kitty ran towards it as Bobby froze the Sentinel’s leg. She jumped, sliding down it and gathering speed before flying into the air. She phased, travelling through the metal monster.

It spluttered, the light behind the Sentinel’s eyes going out. It swayed dangerously before falling forward. Bobby scrambled out of its way before it hit the ground. Metal hitting concrete echoed around the room. As he looked back, an unimpressed Kitty glared back at him, some major system in her hand. Lockheed was back on her shoulder.

“You’re a fucking jerk, Bobby.”

He winced. “Whoopsie.” That did nothing to soften her frown.

His radio crackled, the signal obviously suffering from all the earth between them, even with Forge’s crazy upgrades to the things.

“Is everything okay down there?” Ororo’s voice, while full of static, was sharp and worried.

“All fine,” Bobby quickly answered. Clearly, they had heard the crash.

“You sent me down here with an idiot,” Kitty corrected. Then, she sighed, tossing the component in her hand over her shoulder. “I’ll start looking at getting you down now.”

As Kitty walked back to the lift, Bobby looked around for the first time. He couldn’t wander around properly, which was annoying, because this place was clearly a loading bay. Everything of interest had already been removed.

The Sentinel must have been left as, well, a sentinel. To guard over this place and stop anyone who wasn’t authorised from poking around and finding out all their nasty secrets.

“They’re coming down,” Kitty called over her shoulder as a loud hum filled the air. Bobby turned from the wide door he had been staring at. It was almost comically slow how long it took the platform to rise and come back down. Scott jumped off before it clicked into place safely at the bottom.

If it was anyone else, Bobby would grin at that. Just like he would grin at the fact he was wearing flairs and a sweater vest on a superhero mission. In fact, Bobby was pretty sure they were the same pair of jeans he brought when they were dating. They really did fit his ass well. Not that Bobby was thinking about that.

“Is that a Sentinel?” Ororo asked, spotting the monstrosity lying across the room.

“We shut it down,” Kitty said.

Bobby clapped his hands together before she could reveal how much of an idiot he was. Everyone already knew, of course, but they didn’t need it spelt out for them again. “So, are we going to get this show on the road?”

“I need to find a computer,” Kitty said. Maybe all that time in Britain had made her less like Bobby. She was completely focused on the mission in a way he never quite mastered. Of course, she had grown up.

Logan nodded. “I’m with her.”

Bobby took a second to weigh his options. If he went with them, who knew what Scott and Ororo would talk about, what might slip out, as they trudged around this place. Except, he did trust Ororo not to pry and he had to grudgingly admit he knew Scott wouldn’t tell. Chances were, they would just talk about mutant politics or gossip about Hank and Cecilia’s relationship, or just say nothing at all, an awkwardness over them. Even that would probably be a better conversation than he would get with Logan. But, if he went with Logan, he wouldn’t have to be around Scott.

Bobby stuck his hand into the air. “Me too.”

Ororo nodded like she expected nothing else. It kind of felt like he was letting her down. Bobby shook it off.

“Keep in contact,” she said pointedly. At him. He did have a habit of forgetting his radio was there.

Still, he saluted her. “Yes, ma’am.”

At the door, Ororo took the left, while they went right. It was obvious this place was going to be big from the loading bay, but the corridors felt endless. All concrete walls and neatly organised sections. It was old as well. Like, well before the Sentinel program first crashed into his life old. Well, that or whoever had designed this place had a thing for thirties telephones.

“Is this military?” Bobby asked.

Logan grunted and he was pretty sure it was a ‘yes’ grunt. Bobby missed the days when that would come as a surprise. Because, sure, the president wasn’t demanding mutantkind’s head on a stick, had even invited some activists to the White House, but there was always going to be something more happening behind the scenes.

“So, the government’s involved?” His voice was flat. Sometimes, he could understand why Scott had just said fuck it and started blowing things up. It was endless. There were only so many court cases and fear campaigns and hatred you could face before it all became too much. How many steps could you fail to take forward before it was easier just to give up and start hurting people as badly as they hurt you?

Bobby wasn’t there yet.

Only, Warren was dead.

His brain didn’t want to think about it, kept skipping around it. He needed to keep himself busy, focus on Jean and the fact she needed saving, and this mission. That way, he could ignore it for now, the giant black hole in his chest. Maybe he was a bad friend.

He just knew if he thought about it for too long, the pressure in his chest would take him over. It wasn’t physical, it couldn’t be in this form, but it still felt like it. It was expanding, pressing against his outer shell, wanting to take him over, wanting to drag him into the depths of -

Of what? Did it even matter? Because if Bobby gave himself to it, he wouldn’t be able to get back out. Then, he would let Jeanie down, and War would be so mad at him if he did that.

Except was this mission even going to help Jean? She was trapped in her own mind. She didn’t need revenge right now. It wasn’t going to be the magic button to wake her up.

This was just for him.

But if this was some grand conspiracy, some horror orchestrated by some man in Washington, would he say fuck it? Go off the rails?

Fuck.

Warren was dead.

“-going to answer that?”

Bobby blinked back to the present to once again see Kitty glaring at him. “What?”

“Your radio.”

He shook his head back into the game. He knew better than to get distracted in enemy territory. That was how people died. Not him, but other people. People like-

No. Head, game.

“Why does she always call me?” he grumbled instead, a beat too late. He reached down and pressed the button. “I’m here.”

“We’re in the right place,” Ororo said, the static still thick. “We’ve just found a lab and some documents I think Hank would be very interested in. Anything on your end?”

“Still looking for a computer.”

“Wait,” Kitty said, removing her head from the wall she had stuck it in the moment he looked away. “The hunt's over.”

“Scrap that. We got gold.”

“Keep me updated,” Ororo said. “Over and out.”

Logan opened the door as the line went dead and they piled in. The room was some kind of main hub with a computer in the middle. Wires in thick bundles trailed across the floor connecting it to large servers, taking up more room than Cerebro. From the determined delight in Kitty’s eyes, they had clearly just found her paradise.

She moved to the main chair, looking almost comically small in it. Linking her hands in front of her, she clicked her knuckles before reaching forward and turning the computer on.

Nothing happened.

She frowned and tried again. Second time was not the charm. “This may be harder than I first thought.”

Logan snorted. “More than you can handle?”

“Of course not,” she defended quickly, before biting her lip. “Only, maybe, if Doug shut down all the Sentinel tech…”

“He didn’t shut them all down,” Bobby pointed out, in case she forgot the fight they just had.

“The new stuff, I mean. If this computer received the self-destruct order, he might have accidentally shut it down as well.”

Bobby snorted. “So, this whole thing was a waste of time?”

“If I were you, I’d start searching for the paper backups,” Logan smirked.

Normally, Bobby would complain about that task but watching Kitty try to fix a computer would, somehow, be more boring than opening random doors in this place. At least he might have a chance at taking out another Sentinel. That first one didn’t quite scratch his itch. He shot Kitty a double thumbs up and a “good luck” before leaving. They were probably both thankful he was gone.

It wasn’t actually that hard to find the file room, just, y’know, mind-numbingly boring. But at least with his brain turned to mush, he wasn’t thinking about anything. And Bobby knew he shouldn’t be complaining.

The X-Men never got this. The whole mission was, so far, amazingly low risk and simple. But Bobby needed a battle. A proper battle, without someone like Kitty swooping in and saving the day before it could really begin. He needed something big, needed to feel some satisfaction, needed to pretend he could do something. That he had won, even if it was too late and Jeanie was lying in a hospital bed and Warren was-

Bobby shook his head again. Still not the time. He had to find something he could actually use. He didn’t want to sound like Kitty, but he desperately had to believe something was here.

The file room was large, all pull-out cabinets. He almost didn’t want to start opening them in case it was a giant red herring. But he couldn’t cling to a possibility. Ororo had already confirmed they were in the right place. Still, his limbs felt slow and heavy as he reached towards the closest one, pulling it open.

His legs couldn’t actually turn to water under him, but it still felt like they did as relief flooded his body as he scanned the first piece of paper. Something about a Project Dolen and cryptography and fuck, official letters were complicated and boring. That was why the X-Men had people smarter than him on the team, but it was something.

As he shoved the paper back into place, he clicked the radio on with his other hand. “’Ro, I think I’ve hit the jackpot. I’ve got more of those files.”

“Where are you?” Ororo asked. The relief in her voice was clear as well, and Bobby wondered how much of it was for Kitty. She had never been completely convinced it was Doug who had led them here.

“No thank you? No congratulations? I’m hurt.” He walked over to another cabinet at random, picking another piece of paper out of it. Some kind of schematic. “Oh, that’s another one for Hank.”

“Bobby. Location.”

He looked around, hoping for some clue on the smooth grey walls. “Um… file room?”

“Can you not be more specific?” She sounded exasperated, though not surprised by his response.

“A million rooms past the computer room?”

Her sigh was clear, even through the crackling reception. “We will endeavour to find you.”

“Don’t take too long. This stuff’s the shit.”

Normally, she would at least let out a chuckle at that but Jean wasn’t only his best friend. It was amazing how well the two women had clicked. They had none of that awkward trying to make a connection part. Just a blink and they were getting along like a house on fire. Bobby wasn’t even sure what they had in common, their upbringings worlds apart, but it didn’t seem to matter.

Ororo needed something good to come out of this as well. She had the same burning urge to do something. Maybe she wanted a fight as well, even if she was better at hiding it.

He left those files on the top of the cabinet, moving on to another random one. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for so the whole logic thing didn’t have to factor in. Just pull open, flick through, carry on.

He found a list of those Sentinel cyborg things – filed under ‘P’ for patients, the fucking nerve – but that didn’t tell him much either. A list of names and locations and strange symbols meaning something he didn’t understand. But the dates…

Bobby frowned at them. This had been in the works for a long time. Years, in fact. And nobody had said a word. Not even one slip to warn them this was coming.

He shook his head, unable to comprehend why anyone would sign up for this. He knew people hated them, but this was changing everything about themselves, turning themselves into weapons, into machines. If they believed that this planet was only for humans, why would they remove themselves from that category? He didn’t want to look at it for too long, didn’t want to think about the fact they were now lying in mass in morgues across the country. Names made them real people, and they hadn’t even been close to that when they were killed. No, shut down. He quickly put it down, leaving it open so they could find it again.

He carried on, reaching the end of the room, and the lower part of the alphabet. He knelt down, pulling open one near the floor. They must keep the real juicy stuff there because nobody would open them – it involved bending down. He frowned as one of the tabs caught his eye.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

“What is it?” Ororo’s voice cut through the quiet and Bobby jumped. Wildly, he looked around before realising he had managed to lean on the radio button as he knelt down. Though maybe it hadn’t been an accident. Maybe he had wanted some kind of confirmation that he wasn’t going mad because that tab sure did seem like it said Worthington Industries on it in bold lettering.

“You should come quick.”

“We are close,” Ororo assured. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know yet.” He reached forward, picking up the file. It felt heavier than the others, like it was made out of solid steel instead of paper. Was it a hit? Had they planned to take out Warren? But why would they bother? He wasn’t a superhero anymore, and it wasn’t like the public knew who he was.

His fingers felt slippery as he flicked it open, his mind trying to understand the information on the page, the numbers and words taking a second to form into something legible. It wasn’t a hit, or something personal information they had collected.

No, to Bobby, who was no means an expert on it all, it kind of looked like funding. Out of one of the grant pots War’s mother had set up when she took charge. It didn’t make sense, though. They were meant to go to children’s charities and widows and puppies, not to fund leagues of genocidal cyborgs who would kill her son.

She couldn’t have done it. Not because she would win any Mother of the Year awards, but because she didn’t even care enough to apply for one. She was fine with Warren being a mutant as long as nobody knew and it never interfered with the business. They had just failed on both of those fronts, and she was smart enough to know that.

But if it wasn’t her, and it certainly wasn’t Warren, who else could it be? Because the only other person they trusted with that kind of thing was-

The paper turned frosty around the edges and he dropped it before he could damage the evidence. It couldn’t be. He had never acted like a bigot. Not to mention, he was clearly completely and utterly in love with Warren. He wouldn’t do this.

Only, Bobby didn’t actually know him all that well. Made a point of not knowing him. He’d been an easy fuck. Well, that wasn’t quite true, but Bobby had liked his Dodge and there had been a thrill to it all that couldn’t quite make him forget Scott as much as he hoped it would.

It could be him.

“Bobby?” This time, Ororo’s voice echoed across the room rather than his radio, but that didn’t mean Bobby couldn’t ignore her. His mind was spinning too fast.

It didn’t make sense. That was sick, to funnel the money of a guy into something that would kill him. No, that was more than sick, that was psychopathic. They always used to joke about that to wind War up, that rich boys were psychos, but they never actually meant it.

He felt his ice form shifting, reacting to the whirlwind inside of him as spikes ruptured from his back. He wasn’t sure if this was why Doug had sent them here – probably not, he didn’t even know Warren – but it had to be why Bobby was here. There was only one path forward.

Bobby stood, his legs feeling disconnected, catching a glimpse of Ororo and Scott hurrying towards him. He couldn’t say anything to them. They would just try to stop him.

Only, he couldn’t actually be stopped anymore.

Still, he didn’t want to hurt them. Because he was definitely about to hurt someone. He could feel it inside of him, the bubbling of more anger than he ever thought possible.

Bobby didn’t know if he looked a certain way before he teleported but he must because Ororo cried out. He ignored her. She didn’t want to see this.

As he felt his molecules begin to shift, to split apart, something heavy crashed into the side of him. It was too late to stop, he was already in motion, a clear plan in his mind.

He was going to kill Cameron Hodge.

Chapter Text

For the first time, Bobby understood why everyone thought his teleportation method sucked.

As he reformed in the men’s bathroom on the top floor of Warren’s place of work, he felt sick. And he didn’t even have a functioning stomach. He veered to the right, clinging to the edge of the sink for support as the world spun around him. He couldn’t even take a deep breath or close his eyes or do anything except wait for the world to right itself around him again.

Only that wasn’t possible anymore. Everything was wrong, and it would never snap back into place again. But, after a few painfully long minutes he didn’t have, he could look in the mirror and glare at the unwanted passenger he’d brought along.

It wasn’t until his eyes landed on a completely whole Scott Summers on the floor he realised how lucky this scenario was. Bobby’s mutation was amazingly powerful and mostly under control, but he had never done that before, taking someone along when he hadn’t planned to. He didn’t like to rely on instinct when someone else’s life was dependent on him. Even if that someone was an ex who just wouldn’t leave him alone.

“You’re a fucking jerk,” Bobby said, mimicking Kitty’s words from earlier. She just had a way with them.

Scott, slightly green and looking just as dizzy as Bobby was feeling, had the nerve to smirk. “I’m beginning to see why everyone complains about that.”

Bobby’s glare deepened. “You can’t just go jumping on people when they’re performing complicated manoeuvres. You could have been hurt.”

Scott shrugged, still infuriatingly unbothered about harm coming to himself. “And what about you running off here? You’re going to tell me there isn’t a chance of you getting hurt?”

“I’m immortal. Surely, your son told you that.”

That was probably a low blow. Sure, the forty year old baby Nate hadn’t exactly been pleased the last time he saw Scott, but Bobby didn’t keep track of their lives. Maybe they did father-son bonding at Mickey D’s every Friday now. Bobby was going to guess not, though, from the way Scott’s head slipped downwards slightly.

“I, uh, didn’t know that.” He took a deep breath, rolling back his shoulders and smoothly skipping past the topic Bobby didn’t want to talk about anyway. Asshole. “And that’s not the only way you can get hurt.”

Bobby snorted. “Real wise. Did you read that on a bumper sticker?”

Scott’s jaw tightened. Bobby used to hate that pissed off look but, right now, it was the best thing that had happened since this shit show started. “Where are we?”

“It’s a bathroom, Scott. I’m sure you’re familiar with them.”

Scott, finally, attempted to stand. When he got to his feet, he swayed slightly, but this time he didn’t faint like a girl. Instead, he leaned against the wall next to the hand towel dispenser, the light going off behind his glasses for a second. “I could make a joke here. You, me, a men’s bathroom, but that’s more your style.”

Bobby pushed off the side, turning to look at him straight on. He wasn’t going to do this, wasn’t going to listen to Scott talk to him like they were still friends. For some reason, that was what Scott wanted to be, it was obvious. Bobby couldn’t do that.

“Not really,” he snapped. It wasn’t just because of Scott. He could make that joke about him and Cam as well. Cam always liked to fuck in places that were near to Warren and it was weird and messed up and if Bobby had been in a better place, he wouldn’t have touched that with a twelve-foot pole. But Bobby had been messed up as well, so he had. Even though it never meant anything, it made everything worse now. Like Bobby should have known Cam was a fucking psycho because that was the kind of thing you worked out before you got your pants down. “I’m here to kill a man.”

He didn’t know what he expected Scott’s reaction to be, but it wasn’t an unimpressed eyebrow raise. “No, you’re not.”

Bobby took a step forward, trying to be threatening. He could never understand why it didn’t work. He was one of the most powerful mutants in the world, he was covered in ice spikes, so why did nobody ever take him seriously? They took Ororo seriously, and Logan, and Rogue. Why was he still seen as a kid? And it wasn’t even the younger X-Men team level, or Kitty, but Jubilee? Like he was some ditzy teenager who could only shoot sparks from his fingers. “I am.”

Scott looked at him, hard, before shaking his head. “You’re not that person.”

“You don’t know me.” All that anger buzzing inside of him that was meant to be focused on the mission was twisting, spiking out towards Scott.

“I do. And not just now.” He smiled, wryly. “You were kind of famous in the future.”

Bobby’s hands closed into fists. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want to talk about that?”

Scott didn’t listen. “You looked after humans. You were still a hero.”

Bobby knew that. Nate had told him that, his voice a strange mix of familiarity and trust and faith. But Bobby wasn’t that man and he didn’t want to be told the future was set in stone and he couldn’t control it. He didn’t want to be told he would be a hero sometime soon when right now all he was doing was letting everyone down. “Well, maybe I’ll get a redemption arc. But, right now, I’m doing this.”

He set off towards the exit but Scott’s dizziness must have passed because he smoothly stepped in front of him, crossing his arms over his chest. “You still haven’t told me anything.”

“That’s because you’re not meant to be here,” Bobby said. Scott didn’t move and he bit back a groan. “We’re at the Worthington’s main office. Through that door is a man who killed one of my best friends. So, either you move, or I’ll make you get the fuck out of my way.”

Scott, amazingly, did. Stepped to the side and let Bobby push past him. He followed. Of course, he followed. Bobby couldn’t get a real break. At least, finally, he had stopped talking.

Bobby stormed through the corridors. Part of his mind was glad it was so late. Everyone else would have gone home and Cam always worked late, gave this place one hundred per cent of his attention because he didn’t have much going for him in the real world. It wouldn’t have mattered to him, though, if it were the middle of the day. It wouldn’t change his plans.

Bobby didn’t need to think where he was going. He knew the route, had taken it a million times because of Warren. And Warren liked Cam. Gave him a job and hung out with him and didn’t even mind he was slightly strange.

Just like Warren didn’t care about anyone’s weirdness, didn’t think it reflected badly on him. He didn’t care Jeanie had been institutionalised and Hank was blue and Bobby was gay. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve to die, to be killed by those things.

Bobby slammed open the door of Cam’s office so hard it stuck to the wall. Scott might not be scared of him in this form but as Cam’s head flew up from the desk where he had been leaning over some spreadsheet, he looked terrified. Bobby couldn’t help but smirk as he stalked forward. Cam scrambled off his chair and pressed himself against the far wall. Behind him, he heard Scott shut the door behind them.

That was more than move. That was help.

Only, the movement was enough to draw Cam’s eyes away from him and he somehow grew paler.

“What do you want?” he stuttered, lacking any composure. Cam had always been a weasel. Looked like one, too. All big glasses and slightly overweight. Even when they had fucked, Bobby had never thought he was attractive. It had always been a distraction. His personality was the same, not that Bobby had ever wanted to get to know him. Maybe he should have. Maybe then he would have known he was an anti-mutant scumbag.

Bobby slammed his hand down on the table, pissed off that he was more scared of Scott than of him. Scott’s reputation wasn’t even real. The table shook under the force. “Look at me.”

Cam’s eyes flicked back to him, and he gulped loudly.

“You killed Warren.”

Bobby expected denial, confusion. After all, Cam shouldn’t have known War was a mutant any more than War knew Cam was in love with him. What was a lifelong childhood friendship without some major secrets in it? Or maybe Bobby had been hoping that he’d been wrong, that it was all just a misunderstanding.

Instead, Cam, the weasel-faced fuck, smiled. A wide, ugly thing that he couldn’t keep off his face and if Bobby hadn’t planned on killing him anyway, he would now.

“Warren’s dead?” he asked. “They said it wouldn’t get back to me.” He spoke like that was the most important thing, standing up straighter with some newfound confidence. All that fear was just melting straight off him.

“Well, I don’t know if you noticed, but it didn’t exactly go to plan.”

Cam nodded. “No. I suppose it didn’t for them.”

That was the confirmation. Only, this wasn’t going the way Bobby thought. It was leaving him unsettled. This wasn’t the way normal people acted. He slammed his hand on the table again, even though it didn’t have the same effect.

“Why did you do it?”

Cam blinked, owlish, as surprised at the question as Bobby was. It wasn’t like it mattered. He had done it, he admitted to doing it, and he wanted to, and he was a fucking monster.

Yet, at the same time, it was the only thing that did. Bobby couldn’t understand.

Then, Cam laughed, bitter and with an anger that matched what was bubbling up in Bobby. To Cam, it didn’t matter that he was human, that Bobby could take him out without thinking. Maybe that was what those Sentinels had proved. Humans weren’t weak, they could evolve too. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Bobby’s fists tightened. It felt like the ice that made them up could crack under the strain. “You loved him.”

Cam’s eyebrow raised. “No. Oh, God, no. I hate him. Have you seen him? Everyone is always drawn to him. He’s so handsome and charismatic and perfect.” He spat the word. “Even I am. How could I not? He’s a literal angel. And he kept me around as a reminder, so nobody would ever forget how amazing he was. Then all you, all his shiny new mutant friends turned up, and he forgot all about me.”

Bobby frowned. “Do you know who I am?”

“You don’t exactly hide it. You can’t – all that smugness, that superiority. You know you’re the next step in human evolution. You all deserved to be put in your place. Especially Warren. Don’t act like you don’t understand that, Bobby.”

Bobby reared back. “I’m nothing like you.”

“I thought all that anger you carried around with you was because of Warren too. All that love and hate twisted together into something all-consuming.” Cam smirked again, his eyes flicking to Scott and, somehow, he knew. “I suppose we all have different shadows we live in. So, you understand.”

Bobby moved before his brain kicked in, jumping onto the desk and down the other side, his arm pulled back. He punched Cam in the face. In his ice form, he could have taken his head clean off, but Bobby transformed before his fist made contact, his body rippling into flesh until he was breathing once again. He needed to feel his skin hit skin, his knuckles ache, the adrenaline flood his body. He needed the crunch of Cam’s nose as it broke done by him, not his power. Something human and alive.

Cam had killed Warren for no good reason.

Cam had killed Warren for a reason Bobby could understand.

It had been years and he still hated Scott and that meant, somewhere inside of him, he cared enough to feel about him at all. Scott was never going to become a stranger to him, someone he used to know. Who he would be able to make small talk with, and everything would be simple between them.

But that didn’t make Cam innocent, didn’t make him some kind of kindred soul. He didn’t have to spend every day around Warren, torturing himself. He didn’t have to let it all fester inside of him, let it turn into something twisted. He didn’t have to come back, again and again. He had made that choice.

And choices had consequences.

Cam’s head snapped backwards, banging against the wall behind him, his hand flying to his nose and his eyes watering. Bobby had managed to snap his glasses. Blood dripped between his fingers, sliding down his arm.

“You’re a monster,” Bobby spat.

“Have you seen yourself?” Cam hissed back, congested.

This was the point Bobby knew he was meant to walk away, to be the better man, the stupid hero of the hour. To take a step back and let the mutants be the bigger side, limping and triumphant because every action he took would be used to judge his race as a whole and used later as a sweeping brush. Maybe those Sentinels had destroyed that, too.

Doug had killed them all. Mutants didn’t take time to talk it out, find a better way. They didn’t shut down their extra genocidal-fuelled skills. Doug had killed them, without hesitation, and Bobby couldn’t feel one ounce of sympathy for them.

Just like he couldn’t for Cam.

Warren was dead because someone wasn’t as great as he wanted to be. It was so petty, stupid, meaningless.

“Fuck you,” Bobby said because there was nothing else he could say. Because they all thought Cam was harmless because he was human. Because Bobby laughed at his misfortune for falling for a straight guy and ignored the fact Bobby actually knew how much that sucked, even if Scott wasn’t completely straight anyway. Because Bobby had used Cam and it hadn’t worked, so he tossed him out like everyone else had.

Bobby punched him again, a sharp jab to his stomach and, when he moved his hands in a delayed protection, he sent another one towards his face. Cam wasn’t like the normal people Bobby fought. He couldn’t shrug it off, he didn’t have super strength. Didn’t even know how to defend himself properly, let alone fight back. Just slammed his head back against the wall and slid down to the floor, slumped.

Maybe Scott was right, maybe Bobby wasn’t that person because he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t beat someone who was lying on the ground, helpless. The humans didn’t have that problem. If given a chance, they wouldn’t stop. Bobby knew that, he’d been jumped before.

Cam had killed Warren and it was fucking unfair how he did it. He hadn’t got his hands dirty, while Bobby didn’t have that veil of separation. He didn’t have money he could manipulate and get other people to do his will for him, nor could he pretend that the man in front of him wasn’t human. But Cam wasn’t weak even if, right now on the floor, he looked like it.

Bobby tapped him in the ribs with his foot, hard enough to hurt but not to cause any more damage. “Get up.” It was an order, but nobody ever listened to him when he gave those. Instead, Cam let out a pathetic whine.

It, somehow, made Bobby madder, like there was a part of him that wasn’t trembling under the weight of all that morality. It had been a long time since he felt that buzz in a human body, felt his blood boil and his stomach twist and his hands shake, felt like at any second he could lose control, explode like a coke can that had been thrown across the room.

“You’re a coward. Stand up.”

Cam wouldn’t. Maybe he couldn’t.

Bobby was stuck.

Logan wouldn’t hesitate. Jean wouldn’t.

Ororo would, though. She would let him get away with it, but she was a goddess, above such things.

Only that was unfair. They just told themselves that so they didn’t try to live up to the impossible standard she set. He had seen her win battles to the death without ripping out hearts and show mercy to those who didn’t deserve it, and time and time again rein in the fury of the tornadoes which whipped up inside of her. She had to be careful, all the time, or the weather would respond. A bad day for her could destroy the East Coast. That was why they followed her.

War was dead, and Jean wasn’t waking up, but if Ororo was here, she wouldn’t kill him.

Bobby spun around and kicked the desk. It jumped and he swore, pain dancing across his foot. He looked up and there was Scott. He’d taken his words to heart and was just watching. Six years ago, he wouldn’t have done that. If he hadn’t broken his heart, Bobby wouldn’t have either.

“Have you got it out of your system yet?” Scott asked, slightly dry. He never believed Bobby would kill him, never feared there would be another death here. Yet, he still bore witness, let him do it. Why? Who did that even help? Certainly not Bobby himself. All that anger was still there, but he somehow felt worse, his stomach twisting.

Bobby closed his eyes, taking a second to appreciate the darkness it provided. “It’s not enough.” He owed this to Warren.

Scott angled his head towards Cam. He was thinking, analysing, working something out in his head faster than Bobby ever could. “You have proof, right?”

Bobby snorted. “And what? Give it to the government? The press? They don’t care.”

“I more meant to give it to Warren’s mother.”

Bobby knew what Scott was saying. That he could make his life hell, get him fired, toss him out of the family that gave him everything. “That’s not enough.”

Scott shrugged and Bobby recognised it. He was trying to look calm and collected when he really wasn’t. “It’s that or commit murder, and I’m not going to let you do that.”

Somewhere behind them, Cam whined at that. Bobby wondered what he thought about the fact a mutant terrorist had his life in his hands. Bobby stood up straighter. “You can’t stop me.”

“I told you, I don’t need to.”

Bobby wondered if he really knew that, if he still believed it after that. It didn’t matter. Scott looked around the room, carrying on.

“We should go before someone sees us.”

There was nobody else around but Bobby could hear the order in it. He always had been a follower. He cast a glance at Cam. Bobby was going to have to live with his regrets for an eternity but, if this new plan didn’t work out, the first wasn’t off the table. It wasn’t like Cam would be able to hide.

With his weakness crushing him, Bobby left.

Chapter Text

The train back to Purdy’s was quiet.

Bobby wasn’t going to complain. It was proof that the country hadn’t already moved on from the horror that had descended on it, that it wasn’t just Bobby who was mourning. Only, a hissing part of his mind reminded him, it was the wrong time. The commuters had long since gone home and anyone hitting the City would be going the other way.

At least it meant it would be less likely anyone would recognise them. Or, more accurately, Scott.

Nobody knew who Bobby was, what he had just done. They couldn’t look at him and see the regret pooling in his stomach. Only he couldn’t work out what it was for. Was it a sign he was a good person, that he regretted attacking Cam like that? Or was it a sign he was a bad person, that he regretted not finishing the job? It could always be both, a twisting mess of complicated contradictions inside of him.

He leaned backwards on the uncomfortable seats, kicking his legs out in a large V, taking up as much space as possible as he pretended to be relaxed. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Scott, standing with his hand clutched around the rail, leaning into the curve at every turn, wasn’t going to call him out, though. He hadn’t even pointed out that teleporting back would have been safer and easier, not even when he was fumbling at the bottom of his pockets for the shrapnel for the fair back.

Bobby thought that was why nobody suspected he was a wanted mutant, even with those distinctive glasses. Scott was the kind of guy who would use his last few pennies to buy a ticket instead of jumping over the barriers. He’d brought Bobby’s, too, who had no problem with denying the New York Transit Authority of their hard-earned cash.

That probably should make him think, but Bobby had a more pressing matter filling up every inch of his mind. He was stuck in human form, and he didn’t know how to deal with it. It had never happened before. He’d never forced himself to feel, preferring to keep the buffer up. He wondered if that was why Scott was still here. That he thought at any moment Bobby might ice up and finish the job and prove him wrong.

Only, for some stupid reason, he knew Bobby wasn’t going to do that. He believed in him. It shouldn’t matter. A lot of people thought he was a good person, but Scott was different. He was meant to think the worst of him.

He refused to.

Annoyingly, there was part of Bobby that felt the same way about Scott. He wasn’t like Cam, whatever the other man had claimed. He didn’t want Scott dead. Just out of his life, as far away from him as possible. It had been going so well for the last four years.

Bobby flexed his hands out in front of him, appreciating the sting as his sore knuckles stretched. That was why he couldn’t turn into ice form. It would heal him, wipe away what he had just done. The pain was a prize, and a punishment.

Scott must have taken it as some kind of sign, moving to the next seat but one to him. Bobby wondered if he could, if Scott would take away the scars, the pain, the guilt. Only what would be left then? He would be a different man.

Bobby wanted to laugh. Look at him becoming introspective. He was pretty sure he couldn’t change. He had a theory, slowly brewing in the back of his mind for years, and coming to a perfect flavour the longer he spent around Scott, that he might have got himself stuck not just with the body of a twenty-three year old but the mind of one as well. That every time he made some new connection in his brain, he turned to ice and reset himself back to where he had started, back to when he had fallen off that stupid boat with a bullet in his heart. He was being left behind, only now he was doing it to himself.

Everyone around him was growing, and he wasn’t.

It was getting more and more obvious. He looked slightly too young, acted slightly too childish, didn’t want to settle down or find something steady or any of that other stuff he was meant to do that he just couldn’t find interesting.

And then, there was the Scott problem. The fact that when he sat too close to him, it still made his head hurt and his heart race. Anger, mostly, because if Bobby was stuck, it meant he could never heal mentally from it all. His brain just kept fixing the connection that told him he was in love with Scott and the shit show that came along with it.

Bobby had never been ice. Ice changed states. He was absolute zero. He was at a complete stop.

“So,” Scott said, dragging the word out. “Do you want to talk about that?”

“No,” Bobby scowled. The unsaid not with you was clear. Only, who else did he have? Nobody else had been there, and he would have to edit parts. He always had to edit parts. It was lonely, and he didn’t dare let anyone else in. Maybe if Jeanie – but she wasn’t. He shook his head, sighing long and slow. “I fucked him.”

Scott made a choking sound. “What?”

“Me and Cam. He was there, I thought it might make me feel better. Don’t act like you haven’t.” Bobby held his breath slightly, hoping Scott wouldn’t deny it. He had barely waited after Bobby went missing, to find out four years hadn’t been long enough after Maddie… it would be a blow. Even though he shouldn’t care.

“Not with bigots,” Scott shrugged, oblivious to how much had been hanging on his words. Bobby’s breath came out all at once, his anger escaping with it. Part of him wanted to know more, if they had been strangers, or if Scott had a new partner somewhere out there. How many people, and had they been men or women. Bobby didn’t know what was worse: to be the exception, or not to be.

Bobby crossed his arms over his chest but his glare had no bite. “I didn’t know he was a bigot then. It’s not like we talked a lot.”

Scott made a humming sound and Bobby’s frown deepened.

“You think I should have known.”

“No,” Scott said, but he was lying. He probably vetted everyone before getting into their pants. Probably had a whole checklist of their political beliefs and compared it to his own. Then again, Scott was a well-known mutant. It seemed unlikely he would be able to accidentally hook up with someone who didn’t believe in mutant liberation. “He was just a cog. It would have happened without him.”

“Why?”

Scott snorted. “You know the answer to that.”

“No,” Bobby said, tightening his hands just to feel the burn. “Why is this happening to me? Why do people I know keep dying?”

Scott looked stumped at that for a second, his head angled out the window, watching the landscape. Night was falling quickly. “I never found the answer to that. It just happens. People die.”

Bobby laughed and it sounded dangerously close to wet. He wasn’t going to do this. He wasn’t going to have a breakdown on a train to his fucking ex. “You’re not helping.”

“Sorry,” Scott said, automatic but he meant it. Genuine, like he always had been, wanting to help. Maybe that was why Bobby was talking to him, because he could understand.

“In the future-” Bobby took a deep breath, not quite believing what he was asking. “In the future, you said I was a hero. But was I… happy? How could I be?” It felt stupid to ask but Bobby needed to know it got better, because he couldn’t keep feeling this way for the rest of his very long life.

The pause before Scott spoke felt endless, stretching long and sticky between them like caramel with none of the sweetness. “I’m not the right person to ask.”

“You’re the only person.”

“No, I’m not.”

There it was again, the anger. He was flicking between that and the crushing grief like it was the only two emotions left in the universe. Why was Scott following him around like they were stuck together like superglue if he wasn’t going to help the one time Bobby actually needed him?

It didn’t last for long, though. Bobby felt exhausted. His bones heavy like they had been turned to lead, all that sleep he had missed out on in his ice form catching up to him all at once. “You suck at this. Just tell me it gets better. Tell me everyone who was involved in this Sentinel mess gets what’s coming to them and mutants rule the world one day. Tell me I stop feeling like this.”

Scott pursed his lips. Where was the man who told him life goes on? Did he finally realise that wasn’t actually living? That none of them were actually living? They were just jumping from one fuck up to another that kept drowning all the good parts out? “I can tell you mutants rule the world one day.”

“Is it good?”

“No.”

Bobby snorted. “Of course not. So, why do I even bother?”

“You have to,” Scott said like it was simple.

“Why?” Bobby didn’t want to be like this. He never wanted to be a mutant, let alone a super powerful one. Somewhere inside of him, no matter how cool he thought it all was, just wanted to be normal. Not boring, not nine-to-five office work, but normal. Just like Warren pretended to be, and Jeanie, and Doug.

Look at where that got them.

“Because people care about you.”

Scott wasn’t getting it. He didn’t understand how enormous of a task it all was. For Bobby, this was just the start. “And when they’re all gone?”

Scott shifted, moving his hand up before remembering touching Bobby was a bad idea and letting it fall back down into his lap again. The small, traitorous connection in his brain that was stuck at twenty-three and was still, kind of, in love, wished he had. “After the crash, I thought that. But then I met you. It took a while, but you were there.”

Bobby snorted. “So, that’s it? You just find someone else to care about? Move on and lose, move on and lose? Fuck, Scott, that sucks.”

“Yeah,” Scott shrugged, like it was that easy. Maybe it was for him. Maybe it would be for Bobby one day when he got enough experience. Maybe there wasn’t another choice.

“And that was what Maddie was?”

That was mean. Bobby knew he shouldn’t bring it up, but she was always going to be there whether Scott wanted to talk about her or not. It was like an insight into what he had been like when Bobby had gone missing, why he was able to so easily lie about it all to everyone. He just hadn’t talked about it.

“And everyone else. I was never actually very good at being a lone wolf.”

“Join the club.” Bobby leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling. The steady thump of the train on the tracks filled his brain. “I keep making all these plans to go somewhere new, do something new. And I just… don’t. It’s like I know one day it won’t matter, that I’m not going to get the choice, so why can’t I do it now?”

“Leave people before they leave you,” Scott recited. “I was never good at that either.”

“Warren’s gone.” It hung heavily in the air, sucking all the oxygen up into it. It was clear Scott didn’t know what to say to that because, if it was him, he wouldn’t want anyone to say anything back at all. Would rather push it back behind a door in his brain until it stopped hurting years down the line. “And I can’t shake the feeling, he’s going to come back. That if I do the right things now, he’ll come back.”

Scott opened his mouth, but Bobby carried on quickly. He needed to get this out.

“It’s stupid. I know, it’s stupid. Only, well, that’s kind of how my world works. The Prof, Jeanie, your family, me. Hell, even Maddie, in a twisted kind of way, lived on. So, why can’t War? He deserves to as well. And here I am trying to work out how to get the other shoe to drop. Not the one where I realise he’s dead, but the one where he’s still alive. And I keep thinking, when he gets back, he’s going to tell me I did everything wrong.”

Bobby wanted to cry, his eyes stinging, but he couldn’t, not here. Instead, he flexed his hands again to feel the ache. It wasn’t enough. He jumped up and began to pace, balancing easily as the train sped down the tracks. He had spent so much of his life on them.

“I don’t think he’ll be disappointed,” Scott said after a long pause.

Bobby laughed. “You don’t know him.”

“No,” Scott agreed. “But if I was him, I wouldn’t want you to tear yourself apart.”

“Maybe.” It was true. War wouldn’t want that. He probably would get more of a kick out of societal and financial ruin because that had always been his world. He only visited Bobby’s one, full of beatings and violence. Bobby looked down the window as the train slowed down and sighed. “This is our stop.”

Chapter Text

As they entered the mansion, Bobby put whatever just happened on that train ride into the back of his mind. It was a lapse of judgment, a mistake. He didn’t mean to talk about his problems with Scott. It didn’t suit an X-Man at all, but he was in control again.

He wasn’t sure what his plan was other than staying as far away from Scott as possible. Being near him made everything murky, let him spill out all of his vulnerabilities. Without Jean being in a fit state to listen to him, his stupid brain was latching on to what it knew instead of trying to find someone new to help.

It was lucky, at least on the whole distraction front, that he almost immediately crashed into Logan.

“Meeting,” he grunted, not even breaking his stride as he moved towards the kitchen. You could always count on him not to quiz you about unauthorised side missions.

Bobby cast a quick glance behind him towards Scott, but he had already disappeared. He seemed to know his presence wouldn’t be appreciated. Finally.

Bobby hurried down to the war room. He took a seat at the back, leaning on his chair so the front two legs were off the floor. He didn’t have to worry about cracking his head open these days, and the way his brain was working, maybe some minor damage could do it some good. He had hoped to be ignored, but Ororo zoned in on him like he was the only person in the room.

“So, you have decided to return.” Every word dripped with how unimpressed she was. Part of Bobby hoped he hadn’t caused too much chaos on the mission. Not that he was going to show that.

Instead, he shrugged, trying to act relaxed even though all his nerves still felt like they were live wires. “How could I stay away from a pretty face like yours?”

It was the wrong thing to say, but he knew that before he spoke. “I have told you before, Bobby, you need to-”

“- inform other people before I go chasing a lead,” he finished for her. It reminded him of the old days, with the Prof. He really hadn’t changed.

She raised an eyebrow. “Then, why didn’t you?”

It was personal, was on the tip of his tongue but he swallowed it back. If he said that, he would have to explain why.

“That doesn’t matter,” Logan said. He had already taken a seat, coming in seconds after Bobby. He popped open the can of beer he had got from the kitchen. “Did you find anything?”

It would all be so much easier if he came back with some new information. He would go from being a loose cannon to the hero. “Dead end.”

“Fortunately, we had more luck,” Ororo said, and she definitely wasn’t done with her lecture. Right now, Bobby was just grateful he could put it off.

Bobby let his chair fall forward, eager to grasp the change of topic. “Already? There was like a thousand files?”

“I am a quick reader,” Hank said as he bustled into the room. Bobby guessed he was who they had been waiting for by the way he seemed to be trying to carry all those aforementioned thousand files in his arms. He shoved them onto the table as he reached it and they skidded out into an unorganised mess. “I’m not too early, am I? I am far too busy right now to be listening about the cleanup operation.” He looked around the table, shooting a rueful grin towards Rogue. “Not that I doubt your work is anything less than exemplary.”

Rogue snorted. “We ain’t done shit. Nobody wants our help. Hell, most of them seem to think it’s our fault.”

“Well, I have found most people to be idiots,” Hank agreed. “Unfortunately, though, that number may be slightly less than we first thought.”

“What do you mean?” Ororo asked, leaning forward to catch a glimpse of Hank’s notes. A pointless exercise, he’d started to encode them when they were teens as a fun challenge in cryptology. Bobby thought it just made him look paranoid, though Hank insisted it was something called shorthand.

“The numbers don’t add up,” Hank said, reaching down and searching through the files on the table.

“Which numbers?”

“These ones,” Hank said, holding up a group of papers triumphantly.

Bobby squinted at it. “That’s the list of those Sentinel cyborgs. I found it,” he added. Again, nobody congratulated him. Almost like they thought it was his job or something.

“Prime Sentinels,” Hank corrected.

“Why would you pick that name?” Bobby asked, wrinkling up his nose. “They’re not the first.”

“I assume they are using it in the context of best. And I did not name them.” Hank had a tone to his voice, exhausted not just physically but mentally as well. Reading all these files was probably how he was handling it all, keeping himself grounded. It was a shame Bobby's way of dealing crashed into his messily.

“I think we should change it, ‘cos they aren’t the best either.”

“Shit,” Logan suggested.

Bobby nodded his head towards him. “I like it. Got that alliteration ring to it.”

“Can we please try to stay on topic?” Ororo asked, cutting over them. “I have more concentration when teaching the children botany.”

“That’s because some plants are fun. Have you tried teaching them division? You’ll think I’m a delight after an hour of that.”

“Hank,” Ororo said, refusing to rise to the bait and offer to take his next class. If there could be something good to come out of it all, it was he didn’t need to teach again until they had some semblance of control back. He wasn’t joking, nobody paid attention in math. Even Bobby hadn’t, and he’d always been good at it.

“As I was saying, there aren't enough names on this list.”

“What? Like you’re missing a sheet?” Bobby asked.

“No. As in, the nanobots must have been multiplying in the human population.”

“How?” Rogue asked.

“Well, the way one would expect.” At their blank looks, Hank carried on. “Much like with Doug, I believe they were using an exchange of bodily fluids.”

Ororo blinked. “They were blood donors?”

Hank coughed. “Among other things. But I don’t think this was the final form. They seemed to be trying to work on a more effective way of spreading them across the general population.”

“Wait,” Ororo said, the frown on her face growing deeper. She was going to say the part the rest of them were choosing to ignore. “You mean, some of these people did not choose for this to happen to them?”

Bobby’s stomach twisted. She had to go and say it aloud. Only, it didn’t change anything. It had been a battle of life and death, they weren’t going to stop attacking unless someone did something drastic. Still, Bobby would prefer to think of them as monsters, as willing participants, not the innocent, not people who were trapped in someone else’s plan. Not people who were just as much of a victim as them.

Maybe it was lucky Doug was going to die. He was a good kid, a college student with a bright future ahead of him. His mutation was going to take him far, and he had learnt to walk the line, make it so he seemed more of a language genius than someone to be suspicious of. He didn’t need to know he was also a mass murderer.

“It could have been worse,” Hank said, not half as tactical as he hoped. “As I said, they had hoped to infect a far larger percentage of the population. In fact, some of these plans stretch far beyond the borders of the US.”

“So, why didn’t they?” Rogue asked. “Even if they didn’t know we could shut them down so soon, why leave it to chance?”

“Alas, the answer is hidden deeper than I have reached in these files, if it is even there at all.”

“Maybe the worst-case scenario just wasn’t possible,” Bobby suggested. Still the person trying to find a positive spin on it all like his knuckles weren’t bloody and Warren wasn’t dead.

“But that still doesn’t explain why now. Every extra person infected raises the chance of a successful mission. And, with nobody even looking for it, it could have still spread rather effectively through the population. Instead, it seems mostly centred on the East Coast. If I had a genocidal horde of cyborgs, I would have waited for the perfect moment. It’s not like you would get a second chance.”

“So, they ran out of time,” Logan shrugged like it was simple, taking another sip of his beer.

“We didn’t even know they existed.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “Never said it was us that got close. There are all kinds of mutant teams about, some of them more secretive than ours.”

“What are you saying, Logan?” Ororo asked.

“Nothing,” Logan shrugged before turning to Bobby, that annoying smirk on his face. “Though it is strange your boy Scott was in New York.”

“He would have said something.” Bobby spoke before his brain processed the words. Not the bit he should have complained about.

Logan snorted. “Quick to defend someone you don’t like there, kid. Had fun on that mission, did you?”

Bobby flipped him the bird. That didn’t change the fact Logan wasn’t wrong, though, if you ignored what he was implying. Bobby had defended him quickly. Two days ago, he would have been the first to have thrown Scott into the firing line. Now, he was claiming he was innocent based on gut feelings. So much for leaving that conversation on the train. Scott had got into his head. Again.

Asshole.

“He would have told me,” he muttered and it sounded lame, even to his own ears. He slid down further in his chair. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Logan grinned, ear to shit eating ear. “Maybe I will.”

“You know what I don’t get?” Rogue asked, flicking her perm back. “If all those nano-bot things shut down, why do we still have some working in our basement?”

“They are not, strictly speaking, working,” Hank said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “As far as I can tell, they seem to have – and please excuse the joke – mutated. It is… rather unsettling.”

“But they’re contained, right?” Bobby asked. He didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “They can’t just jump out of Doug and go walkies, can they?”

“Not currently without outside intervention.”

“See, you just said currently. I’m not liking the sound of that.”

Hank sighed. “Unfortunately, I cannot ask Doug why he didn’t shut them down at the same time as the others.”

“He didn’t want to die,” Logan said. Everyone turned to look at him, and he shrugged. “Everyone else died.”

Ororo nodded. “Logan may have a point. If they had already integrated with him, perhaps he knew if he shut down the ones inside of him, he would die as well. He hoped we would be able to help him.”

“The techniques used to make them are rather advanced. I wasn’t even aware humans had these capabilities until I saw them myself.”

“You’re a genius,” Logan pointed out.

Hank knew that, but it didn’t stop him from beaming at Logan like he was underappreciated. “Yes. And I am sure, given enough time, I will-”

Whatever he was about to say was lost under the sound of the door crashing open. Cecilia skidded into the room, stopping as she crashed into the table. Her hand came out to steady herself against it as she leaned over, gasping hard like she had a stitch. Everyone was on their feet in milliseconds, Bobby already icing up.

“Jean,” Cecilia pushed out.

“What’s wrong with her?” Ororo asked. The air felt charged with electricity at her worry.

“She’s awake.”

“Where is she?” Bobby asked because Cecilia wouldn’t have come crashing in here if that was a good thing. Something bad had happened, he knew it. He was messing it all up.

“She was going outside.” Bobby was already halfway out of the room when he heard the second part of Cecilia’s breathless sentence. “She has her powers.”

Bobby’s mind spun as he raced through the mansion. That didn’t seem possible. It had been so long. But Jeanie had always believed they were still inside of her, she was just unable to reach them.

If he had any doubt that Cecilia was wrong, that it had been some kind of misunderstanding, it would have been crushed as he slammed the front doors open and ran out onto the front lawn.

It was as if a tornado had touched down, the air whipped up into a frenzy around him. It wasn’t Ororo, she hadn’t been as quick as him, trailing behind with the others.

In the middle of it floated Jeanie, her hair flying around in the breeze and her clothes transformed into her uniform, a red and gold that seemed to explode with light, a beacon in the dark night. In front of her, was Warren.

The other shoe came crashing down.

Chapter Text

For a second, all Bobby felt was an all-encompassing joy. He felt warm, actually warm, like how sinking into a nice bath felt like for everyone else. All the fear and worry and panic was gone as he looked up, overridden by something he hadn’t even been sure was possible anymore.

Warren was alive.

Bobby didn’t care that it shouldn’t be possible. It was never possible, it never stopped being a miracle, but that didn’t change the fact it could and did happen. This was what he had been waiting for.

He took a step forward, his hand out ready to make an ice slide and join them, but someone grabbed his shoulder. He tried to shake it off, but it was firm, holding him in place.

“Look,” Ororo said and it was an order from a god. Bobby wanted to shout that he was, that nothing bad was going to come because he deserved this, they all did. Warren did. But when Ororo gave you an order like that, you listened.

So, Bobby pushed back the joy exploding in his chest like a firework and looked. If he still had human eyes, he would have missed it.

If Jean was a burning sun in the sky, Warren was the black hole. He seemed to be absorbing her light as fast as she could make it.

Warren didn’t look alive.

His skin was pale, his blond hair lying flat, dark veins standing out on his skin. The hole in his stomach was still there, oozing something that looked closer to thick black tar than blood. It dripped down and, where it landed on the floor, it hissed, burning the grass like acid. His eyes, like Jean’s, burned with the eternal red-hot fire of the Phoenix.

Whatever Jean was doing, it wasn’t working.

She seemed to realise it too, flinging her head back and letting out a frustrated scream. It echoed in Bobby’s head. Next to him, Ororo let go, bringing her hands up to cover her ears as her knees folded below her. Her mouth was open like she was screaming too, but Bobby couldn’t hear it over Jean. It seemed to have the same effect on the others, as he caught them from the corner of his eye. Cecilia’s forcefield, her power Bobby always forgot she had because she never used it, was covering her.

The wind picked up around them and Warren’s body distorted, turning Bobby’s attention back to him. As Jean’s cries died down, he could hear Warren’s wings cracking as they popped themselves straight behind his back. The hole that had been shot through him closed up, leaving a long, raised, black scar.

Bobby cheered her on. Jean might be wearing the red and gold of the Dark Phoenix, but she was still life and death incarnated. She could still bring him back.

Bobby needed her to bring him back.

The tar-like substance bubbled out of Warren’s mouth, eyes, nose.

It wasn’t enough.

Jean screamed again and flung one of her arms out towards him. A dark mass ripped its way out of her, lit only from the flames that burned inside of it as it twisted towards Warren. It hit him, but it didn’t knock him back. Instead, it flowed into him.

Somehow, Bobby could feel it for a second before it entered Warren, like a part of him was trapped inside of all that. But that didn’t make sense.

Only, Bobby’s mind flicked back, maybe it did. After the battle, he had lost his connection with his golems. It had been like an inhale of breath, sucking all the death out of the air. The last sparks of their souls, of their psychic energy Doug had snuffed out and left for the taking. But Jean had been in New Mexico. Surely, that was too far.

Last time, she had eaten a sun. Compared to that, reaching across a country was easy.

And all those people, those people who hadn’t even asked for what happened to them, humans and mutants alike, hadn’t died in vain. She was making life out of their ashes.

Above his head, Warren’s wings moved. It wasn’t a trick of the swirling air. Slowly, the muscles on his back tensed and, like a swan, like an angel, they beat in the air, holding him in place. That black tar was still dribbling, but he was waking up.

A blur shot past him. Green and gold. Rogue, already flying up towards them. She was going to try and stop it, halt a miracle in progress. She hadn’t been on the team last time, she had no idea that if anyone could do this, it would be Jean.

Bobby wasn’t going to let Warren die, not again.

He sped off after her, his ice slide forming under him. He moved faster than he ever had before and, unlike Rogue, it didn’t matter that the wind whipped his face and shot debris in his eyes. He needed to reach her before she managed to press her bare skin against Jean’s.

His fingers brushed her covered ankle, and she kicked it away before he could grasp it. He needed to be faster. He needed to-

He was crashing through the air, spinning downwards. Of course, he didn’t need to do anything. Jeanie would never have let it happen, and now they were both tumbling towards the ground like trash discarded from a car window.

It didn’t matter to him when he slammed into the ground with bone-shattering force, but it would to Rogue. She wasn’t quite that tough and Jean had no interest in pulling her punches to someone who would try to stop her.

Bobby stuck his hand out, making her an ice slide to turn her fall slightly less vertical and giving her a nice pile of snow to land on. More than she deserved right now, but she didn’t understand. She crashed into it, popping up immediately, but her face was stormy.

“What the hell are you playing at?” she yelled at him over the howl of the wind.

“She’s bringing him back to life.”

That should be enough to explain everything but Rogue snorted, looking back up to War and Jean in the sky. “Doesn’t look that way to me.”

As if to illustrate her point, Warren crumpled again. This time, it was all of him, his bones snapping one by one. They ripped out of his skin, that black tar dripping. His flesh bubbled in response, reforming over them, leaving strange bumps that moved angrily under the surface before disappearing into smooth skin.

This time, Warren screamed.

Bobby realised he had never heard Warren scream before. He yelled and cursed like a sailor and complained, but he always refused to show it when he was in pain. He didn’t like being weak. Right now, what was pouring from his mouth was agony. It forced its way into Bobby, clawing at his insides.

Wasn’t it worth it, though, to save his life?

A bit of pain for a life. That was the way the world worked after all. Childbirth was painful. Life itself was painful. Love was painful, eventually.

Jean screamed alongside him, a desperate cry to the sky for help.

It wasn’t enough. It was all she had.

Except it wasn’t.

The answer seemed to come to her at the same moment it came to Bobby. If she needed ashes for life, she could always make more.

Her left hand swept out and the X-Men, unsure on how to attack below, crashed backwards. She seemed to assess for a second before reaching down and pulling Logan up to her level. Jean wasn’t gone, her brain was still working, because there was logic to her choice. Logan could heal.

He didn’t have enough. Bobby could see it in the way he struggled, the way he stabbed forward with his claws, the way he howled. It was a horrible sound, animalistic and desperate.

Jean was going to kill him. Logan wasn’t immortal.

Bobby was, though.

He rushed forward without thinking, ignoring the shouts from his teammates below. All in the same vein of him not being able to stop her. He didn’t have any plans of doing that, though.

He wasn’t able to wake up Jean, and he couldn’t kill Cam, but he could do this. He wanted to do this. He needed to. They didn’t understand.

He crashed into Logan, sending him flying through the air and back towards the ground below. That didn’t matter. He would be okay.

Bobby’s plan didn’t feel so great when Jean turned those burning eyes onto him. There was an inferno trapped inside of her, ready to rip him apart. But it was still her in there. He knew that. How could it be anything but her in her purest form as she was trying to bring back the love of her life?

“We can do this together,” Bobby yelled over the wind. She stared back at him and Bobby dared to slide slightly closer. “You’re my best friend. You and War and Hank. I’m not going to lose a single one of you.”

She smiled and it was beautiful. Then, she stuck out her hand.

It burned. Of course, it did. Jean and him had always been opposites. Fire and ice. She was life and death, and he was when that stopped working.

But this was hotter than anything he had ever felt before, like the inside of the sun, ripping through him as fast as he could reform. It wasn’t just his shell. It was burning his mind, like the connections in his consciousness were only oil for her flames to dance along.

He screamed.

It had been so long since he had felt true pain, but it was still nothing compared to how he felt when he saw them lying on that carpet dead. It was a small price to pay, and he would pay it. He had to.

But it hurt.

It was getting worse. He wasn’t human, his nerve endings couldn’t be destroyed, his lungs couldn’t be fried by superheated air, his heart couldn’t give up. There was no escape, not death. It was endless.

He couldn’t cool down fast enough.

He needed words even Hank didn’t know to describe what it felt like. Only that wasn’t true. He already had a word.

He was melting.

His ice was bubbling, turning into gas around him. He didn’t even know that was possible.

The first crack was loud, his chest splitting down the middle as the steam trapped inside of him escaped, and he felt it. Like his body was still human and someone had sliced an axe into it. The second crack was louder.

He was going to shatter. Jeanie wouldn’t stop until there was nothing left for her to take.

He screamed, trying to hold on, trying to give her everything.

It wasn’t enough.

Maybe it was him. Maybe he just wasn’t strong enough. Or maybe it was her, her power dormant inside of her for too long, out of practice. Or maybe bringing back the dead like this would never be possible.

All three of them weren’t going to walk out of this alive.

Warren, who, through the billowing cloud of his own body, Bobby could see was still oozing black, still screaming like he was boiling alive too.

Scott had been wrong.

Bobby was a bad person.

A good person wouldn’t give up, would fight to save a life until they stopped existing. A good person would gladly trade it all for their friend.

It wasn’t just him, though. Once he was gone, Jean would move on. There weren’t enough souls in the universe for her.

Warren was dead, and maybe this time the price was too high to bring him back. If Jean even could, if she didn’t just burn everything living up, including herself.

At least, that was what Bobby told himself. It was easy to believe. He was so good at lying to himself, and this time he was in agony, and he wanted relief. No, he wanted to escape. This wasn’t a grand act of acceptance, some kind of heroic gesture. It was pure selfishness.

He let go, dropping out of his body. It was a choice, his mind completely in charge as it ran away. He didn’t give it all to Warren, instead, he used it to rebuild, regather himself back together as he crashed into the floor below, his old body smashing apart in the air above into a million shards that fell around him like hail.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, a desperate croak into the night sky as Jean and Warren fell after him.