[fic] One Good Turn
One Good Turn
Life is a turning wheel. There is a knock. This is not how it ends. This is not how it begins. It is just another turn of the wheel. Listen.
.
A knock at the door. It's nowhere special. Just another apartment, just another faceless block. The elevator cage creaks and rattles its way down through a square spiral of stairs. Mike shifts the bottle and the plant-pot awkwardly in his arm, lifts the other hand to knock on the door again. Just once. A sharp, flat sound.
(If he closes his eyes, he can hear the forty-six other people in the building, bright thoughts and slow thoughts and muddled sleep thoughts and up there and down over there the carefully organised electronic thoughts of LMD guards. Crazy old cat ladies with circuitry for brains.)
There are footsteps on the other side of the door and it opens without pause. The woman -- brunette now, cut short around an oval face, pale eyes and skin -- is dressed in red, more crimson than scarlet.
"Hello, Wanda," he says. He doesn't say, you didn't check the spy-hole again. He doesn't say, you should have left the chain on. He just smiles his everything's fine smile. Everything isn't, of course, but what can you do? "Merry Christmas."
"Oh," she says.
.
and six months or so before this, everything goes to hell in Transia, fire raging out of control, Magneto spread all over the landscape, Chthon pounding on the Dog Door, cracking Wundagore and pushing its way up through the breach, Mike blood-soaked and guttering, people dying all around him, his people and others, dying and worse, and the air filled with smoke and thunder and Wanda, screaming and screaming, twisted right around with her eyes bulging and her spittle frothing and he doesn't have time to beg her forgiveness before he slams the needle into the back of her neck and squeezes
.
"It's that time again." Mike's smile could even be genuine. "I brought orchids! And booze!"
"I suppose you better come in, then," Wanda says. "I just put on some tea. Would you like some?"
.
There's a knock at the door, even though it's open, even though the dorm is communal, which is how John knows it's Peter without even looking around. No one else is that polite. There's a silver tinsel tree, a miniature, on the windowsill, and he's been watching the lights blink on and off, on and off, on and off without thinking for the last who-knows-how-long. Freedom Force isn't much different to the Brotherhood, really. You train, you wait, you fight. Rinse and repeat. Except now he gets twenty days mandatory minimum holiday like every other government employee.
"We are preparing to depart," Peter says.
It sounds like an invite, not an order. Perhaps these days it is. He's come a long way. Or maybe he hasn't moved at all. Sometimes it's hard to tell. Maybe it's just Pete being Pete.
"The thing in Austin." John swings his legs off the bed and sits up. "Robot-people, right?"
Peter nods. "Mike says the Reavers are augmenting themselves with scavenged transdimensional Kree technology."
"Well, if Mike says." It's supposed to be light, but it comes out sharp. Petty. But he's not going to apologise, and they both know it. "I'll grab my things."
"We are assembling in departure lounge C," Peter says, and John waits for him to leave, but he doesn't. "It has been five years, John."
"Do you think they'll throw a party?" John jokes, except it isn't, of course, because he knows Mike, knows Mike never stops pushing. Freedom Force. Hah.
"The world is a safer place for mutants because of what we do."
Peter's sincere and solid and pretty and John thinks about -- but, no, Peter isn't made for flings and John's seen how commitment goes. Commitment to people, to causes, to ideals. Mike never offers apologies. He never asks for them, either, and John sometimes wishes he would, that someone would demand they all stand up and say, 'I was in the Brotherhood and I was wrong.' Five years and this doesn't feel like redemption or punishment. Just routine, maybe. The survivor's life.
What is, is, right?
"Come on, Pete," John says, standing. "Let's go kick some robotic ass."
.
The plant pot knocks a little against the table when he puts it down, but they both pretend not to notice how unsteady his hands are. Mike starts to ask how she is, but Wanda gets in first, and he lets her because, come on, what is she going to say, really? 'I'm fine, thanks for taking my powers, my identity, my self away'. No. No one ever thanks you for the choices you make, not the hard ones, or the ones you pretend were hard.
"You were on the news," Wanda says. "Something in Texas?"
"That's quick," he lies. The press had been pre-prepped. Two stories, one if they won, one if -- well. "I only finished the debriefing a couple of hours ago."
"Saving the world again." Her smile is only a little bitter. "It went well?"
.
They're the Black team -- which is a bit ironic since no one on the team is actually black; well, Ortega's Afro-Cuban but Toad insists that doesn't count, and tries to get them renamed the Green team but the response is basically 'shut up, n00b' even if no one actually says that -- and they go in first, real quiet like. Toad spent three years in the Cube and eighteen months being retrained by Freedom Force and he knows he's only out here now because of Mike (in more ways than one). And because Magneto is dead, of course. Politicians think that makes him less of a threat and he's willing to play into that for now. Give them a sense of false security. Softly, softly, catchy flatscan. Toad knows how to be sneaky. He's got more experience than the rest of them combined.
Which is maybe why he manages to get his tongue around the guy's neck before anyone else reacts.
They're barely two minutes in and he's up in the rafters, jacking into the camera lines, when the guard comes up out of nowhere, off the usual rounds for a quick fag judging by the pack in his hand, except the guard sees Ortega before anyone sees him -- ceramic plating in the uniform, makes them all invisible to telepaths, something Toad is going to keep in mind for later. Just an ordinary guy though, not Kree-enhanced, which means he goes for his pistol not for the punch, and then Toad's tongue is around his neck, jerking the flatscan right off his feet and--
'And snapping his neck' should follow, but no. It's more like, 'and then Toad is smacked into the nearest wall by that dumb ass Mike because obviously letting your team mates get shot is better than dealing permanently with the homicidal fanatic'. Which is complete crap, and he tries to open his mouth to say so, but his jaw won't work and it starts to hurt to try, so he stops.
Cassie drops the guard silently and Ortega starts his psychic shit, reading the guy's history, and Mike -- Mike just stares at him, pinned there against the wall like a laboratory specimen. It wouldn't surprised Toad if this whole thing was a big experiment, if Mike wasn't just doing it for shits and giggles. How long before Freedom Force pushes him too hard and he decides to take them down as well? Once a backstabber, always a backstabber.
The force holding him pinned goes off all at once, but he's got the reflexes, so he just kicks off the wall as he falls, somersaults, lands neatly. Mock bows.
"You're benched," Mike says, tone as flat as his glasses, black and opaque. "If you try to leave the ship, I'll hamstring you."
Toad opens his mouth to say -- something, he isn't quite sure, but it would have been right cutting -- except the world goes bendy gold and he's bouncing off the QuinJet wall, half sure Mike left his stomach behind, the twat. He reckons it's deliberate because three seconds later the radio comes on with some of that emo-goth shit Pyro always listened to and none of the buttons work and he knows damn well the hamstring line wasn't a bluff, so there's nothing he can do but sit there with his hands over his ears, plotting glowboy's painful and protracted death.
.
Mike knocks the neck of the bottle against the table to loosen the cork, pulls a utility knife out of his pocket and hunts through it for the corkscrew. Wanda is still looking at him, waiting for an answer. How did it go? How does it always go?
"Well enough," Mike says. "Nothing ever works in the field quite the same way it does at the strategy tables."
.
Something knocks against the ship again -- a tree perhaps; John's at the back so he can't see what, just gets the edge of Keller's flashed sheepish smile as the guy's hands dance across the controls -- and the vibration in his chair hits toothache point before they finally settle down. The ships are both old and new, retrofitted QuinJets left over from Stark's failed Fifty States Avengers project. They look pretty snazzy; they also steer like a brick and feel like a blender, but then Stark buzzes around in a tin suit, so who knows why they were expecting comfort.
Stark hit on John once at some PR thing, his arm slung over the shoulder of his long-suffering PA the whole time.
Peter's up, and John follows. This too is routine, now. Red team are go, the blunt force trauma backup to the Black team's surgical strike. They come down the access ramp in formation, Peter in the lead, smooth stride as he shifts metal, and John flicks his hands, runs a burning barricade on both wings. There are no alarms. They hit the central compound before the wall guards have caught on, hit like a full-on locomotive.
Keller's an impressive telekinetic. Not a telepath at all, which is good because John likes having his head to himself. Laura's basically Wolverine, but a girl, and she kinda creeps John out, but he keeps this to himself. Dorrek is a Super-Skrull and he creeps everybody out -- something about a perfectly human form with completely alien body-language skips the conscious entirely and twists in the gut -- but he can hold his own and, anyway, John likes having a firecaster on the team. His flame-throwers aren't failproof, especially since he's stopped wearing the ones Mike built telekinetically from the atoms up.
Even Kree-enhanced, the Reavers still rely on mob-tactics. They have no style and their numbers might be great, but they're hardly overwhelming, not against four alpha-mutants (Pete might technically be beta, physical mutation only, but to John he counts) and an alien, especially not when they're taken by surprise in their middle of a 'humans are cool' rally. One day, John thinks he'd like to get one of these guys in a cell, ask them how come, if humans are so cool, the Reavers spend half their time cutting bits of their humanity off and sticking machines in instead. He doesn't expect an answer. He just wants to ask the question.
Four minutes, nine seconds from touch-down to mission over and while Keller goes about securing the healthy and carting the wounded to the medical-carrier -- Laura doesn't kill but she doesn't fight clean either -- John goes around putting all the fires out. This too is routine, standard sweep and douse, so routine that maybe he zones out because it's not until he's been staring across the way for a couple of minutes that he realises who he's looking at.
Mike nods his head -- a greeting, a thank you, a compliment, something. John turns away.
.
and five, six years before this, they're sleeping, curled towards each other on the bed, not close because they both run unnaturally warm, but close enough, fingertips knocking, and yesterday he sleeps the same way, on his side of the double bed, curled towards the other, though when he reaches out in his sleep he touches only empty air
.
The ball knocks against the backboard, rebounds neatly through the hoop. Mike snags it out of the air and takes it back to line, bouncing the ball idly from hand to hand, watching Peter watch him. This is their post-mission warmdown. Preternatural aim versus height, reach and size-belying speed. Plus Peter always remember to call 'no powers'. Mutant high all over again.
"It was a good mission," Mike says. Peter nods in acknowledgement. "We stopped the nutters. We've got a good trace on their technology. No injuries on us, no major injuries on them -- no thanks to Toad, but that's pretty much par for the course, which reminds me that we haven't played mini-golf in ages, man. We could take the teams out. Call it a bonding exercise or something, I dunno. But it'd be cool."
"You yell at the windmills," Peter says.
"Only because they're evil," Mike insists and, "hey!" as Peter steals the ball. They clash. Peter, a stride ahead, wins; neat overhand drop. "I think having long legs should count as cheating."
Peter just hands him the ball.
Play continues. They're at five-nine, Pete playing for ten, when Mike says, "so I saw John. In Texas. I mean, not to talk to or-- He's looking good. He's doing good, right?"
"He is an excellent member of the team."
"Of course he is! I knew that bit already. Plus, I read your reports -- don't give me that look! I read everybody's reports. ...look, if they didn't want me to, they would have better security," Mike whines. "You know what I meant. Non Freedom Force-y good. Socialising and... things."
"Things," Peter repeats without inflection.
"Stuff!" Mike waves his hands vaguely. Peter dodges around him, double-step and jump, but Mike gets his fingers in front of the basket, deflects the shot. He tries to take the rebound, but the angle's wrong and Peter steals the ball back. "I'm asking if he's okay. Real okay, not work okay."
"I believe he is," Peter says.
"Okay, then." Mike nods. Peter tosses the ball up, lets Mike tap it away again, and this time takes the rebound himself, sinking it clean. "Don't think, just 'cause you're better than me, you're going to win."
"I do not." Peter nods. "I think I am going to win because I have ten baskets and you agreed we were playing to eleven."
"Did I say-- Because I meant fifteen. Yes, fifteen is what I meant." Mike retrieves the ball. "So. You and John are getting on okay."
"As we have been every time you have asked for the last nine months," Peter agrees.
"Has it really been nine months? Huh. Nine months. People can get to know each other a lot in nine months. You can make a baby in -- well, not you personally, I mean, what with the gay thing and all. Although there are certain, heh, totally irrelevant things I shall stop talking about. Just. You know. Nine months."
Mike dribbles the ball for a few moments. Peter waits.
"Are you and John--" He can't finish the sentence, shrugs one shoulder. "You know."
"I would not do that," Peter says.
"The rules about fraternisation are more kinda guidelines. And way back at Mutant High..." Mike jumps, doesn't take the shot. "I'm just saying, you know. Psychic and all."
"The guidelines are not the reason."
"Yeah, but I mean. If you wanted-- I'm just saying, me and John aren't..." Mike trails off. Peter waits, calm and solid. Russian, Mike thinks, could wait forever. Nine months. Five years -- how long is that? "John and I aren't," he finally repeats.
Peter is impossible to read.
"Right," Mike says, feints left, goes right. Peter's already there, blocking the lay-up, and he takes a one-handed jump shot but Peter's there too, catching it with the tips of his fingers and snapping it back down and they end back where they were, positions swapped.
"Do you not want to be?" Peter asks.
"Every second of every day," Mike says without hesitation. "But that's not how it works. I'd settle for happy."
Peter considers this. "Would you?"
Mike just chuckles. "Make your move, Pete. Time's a-wasting. I have places to be. Well," he corrects himself, "one place, anyway. But I like to drop in on Wanda every couple of weeks, check how she is, so there's that." Peter nods. "And I have meetings with the big bosses to prepare for. That counts as places, right?"
"Will you tell them about Toad?"
"Honestly? I haven't decided yet. I should do. I dunno though. Politics, man." Mike shrugs. "You know, some days I actually miss Magento. How screwed up is that?"
"It is easier to remember a man's good points when he is not around to demonstrate his bad points."
"I suppose." Mike sighs. "It's just, sometimes... I miss things. The way they were. Even with the bad, which is pretty stupid, really." He sighs again, pulls on a smile, eyes glittering. "Still, there's always hope, right?"
"Na Boga nadejsja," Peter says, "a sam ne ploshaj."
"So say we all." Mike considers this. "Well, no, we don't, because, for one thing, quite a lot of us don't speak Russian in the slightest." Peter almost smiles and Mike grins at him. "But you have a point. Anyway, I always have plans. Lots and lots and lots of -- and some of them aren't even completely insane. Play!"
Peter does, in, up, over, dunk. Mike stares.
"Eleven," Peter says.
"I totally meant fifteen." Peter smiles. Mike grins back. "I'll win next time, you'll see."
"I look forward to such an event."
Mike grabs the ball, ignoring this, and they tidy up, clean up, talking about inconsequential things, and it's not until they're leaving that Mike says, as if answering something, some earlier conversation continued across the gap between -- a gap of years, maybe, "I was wrong, you know. It's not better to have loved and lost at all."
He manages a watery smile. Peter squeezes his shoulder. There's nothing to say.
.
They knock their tumblers together -- Wanda doesn't have any proper wine glasses and Mike didn't think to bring any with him -- in silent toast.
.
and nineteen months before this, Kavita Rao is talking excitedly about their research into a derived mutancy-repression serum, about how they think it will be ready for field testing within the year, and Mike's poker faced in his sunglasses but his heart is knocking against his ribs, because there are worlds upon worlds of possibilities here and the vast majority of them are terrible things
.
"Hey," Mike says, knocking on the door of the Detention control room and sticking his head in. "Bob, right? Do me a favor -- kill the cameras in Three, could you?"
"I'm really not supposed to do that," Bob says. "Especially not with ex-Brotherhood."
"You have great hair," Mike says. "Floopy!"
Bob blinks at him, turning a little watery and then drying up again. "Oh, uh. Thank you?"
"No natural telepathy defences, though," Mike adds, "so you just turn those cameras off, and I won't mention those secrets of yours to interested parties, yeah? Don't think of it as blackmail."
"...it is blackmail," Bob points out.
"Well, yeah, but, try not to think of it, you'll feel much better." Bob reaches out and flicks the switches that turn the recorders off. Mike beams. "Love the hair."
Ten minutes, one detour, and two security doors later, he's outside Interview Room Three, a pair of shotglasses in one hand, a bottle of tequila in the other. He kicks the door open. Toad looks up lazily from where he's sprawled out, legs on desk, leaning back in his chair. He sneers by way of a hello.
"Mister Toynbee! How goes the night?" Mike asks. "Is it night? I've totally lost track and these built-into-the-mountain type bases really don't have enough windows. Feet off the table, please."
Toad doesn't move, so Mike moves him, little telekinetic push, dropping into the seat opposite.
"And how are you?"
"I'm peachy," Toad drawls, sitting up. "The world is my oyster."
"Good, good." Mike beams, ignoring the sarcasm. "I thought we might talk."
"Yay!" Toad claps his hands with false cheer. "Lecture time -- super-super fun! Tell me," he adds, leaning in conspiratorially, "does being a hypocritical self-righteous back-stabbing douche-bag ever get old?"
"I have no idea." Mike splashes tequila across the shot glasses, flicks one in Toad's direction. "Have a drink." Toad stared at it dubiously. "Oi! It's the good stuff, probably."
Toad looks even more dubious. "Probably?"
"It's not like I really drink much." Mike rolls his eyes. "You never learn, do you? I don't have to get you drunk to get into your head, Toad; not that I actually want to, but. I'm just saying."
"I can handle my booze," Toad says, snatching the glass with his tongue and then, a moment later, spitting it back out, empty. Mike pours another without comment. "So lay it on me, glowboy."
Mike smiles, sips at his own glass. "You're right from your side, I'm right from mine. That's how it goes, isn't it?"
"Nah. I'm just right," Toad grins.
"Mm. The thing is," Mike says, filling Toad's glass again and topping his own back up, "the thing is, you hate me because I, you know, interrupted your pointless self-destructive bigotry and helped create a system that while it isn't perfect, and I will be the first to admit that, is demonstratedly improving mutant rights."
Toad snorted. "And you're a back-stabbing douche."
"And I'm a back-stabbing douche, right." Mike grins. "And I don't particularly give a rat's ass about you one way or the other, so we can skip the whole redemption thing, or the part where I try to explain that disabling people is more long-term effective than snapping their necks, because you won't get it--"
"Because it's bullshit?" Toad waves his glass at the bottle. Mike refills it. "If you don't put them down, they keep coming back. It's what they say about us. That's why it's war, Mikey-boy. Always has been, always will be, no matter how you goodie-goodies try to spin it."
"When you make Freedom Force look bad, you hurt mutants," Mike says. He empties his own glass, leaves it on the table. "It really doesn't matter whether you believe me or not; that's how it is. And I won't have that."
He stands, waves the door open. Toad calls after him, "yeah? Wha'cha gonna do about it, glowboy?"
"Keep the bottle," Mike says, and closes the door behind him.
.
Tossing his report onto the in-tray proves a bad move when it knocks the whole thing off the desk, and John spends ten dusty, cursing minutes picking the papers up and getting everything back in order. Bureaucracy is going right above the Friends of Humanity on his 'things likely to kill me' list. He's still patting himself off when the French guy from the Canadian team comes in, perfectly coiffed as ever, to add another to the pile. They fucked a couple of times and John feels guilty he can't remember the guy's name, but only a little. They both do casual well.
"You look like shit," the guy says.
Tact, not so much.
"I'm done for the day -- going to hit the showers." John makes it an offer because, what the hell, recreational sex is as good a wind down as any, but the guy just snorts.
"You need it. The scruffy look is so late nineties." There's a bright flash of a smile -- practiced, John thinks, for cameras -- and the guy's blurred out. John takes a step and the guy sticks his head back in the door. "Oh, yeah -- Central's shut down. Forge did something to the doors, I think. I wasn't really listening. Au revoir." And he's gone again.
"Great." The pile in the in-tray starts to slide again and this time John ignores it, leaving instead. The elevator is handily waiting which is something. Central being closed means he has to walk back to his room through Detention block. The long way around is bad enough; the long way around being lined with cages is just all sorts of wrong he'd rather not have to deal with. Especially today. Stupid mission. Stupid Mike. Stupid Forge. This is the third time this month. For an intuitive inventor--
"Forge is kinda dumb," Mike says cheerfully as the elevator doors open.
"Don't," John snaps automatically. He almost reaches out to close the doors again, but he's got no other way to go, so he steps out instead. See? No problem. He's cool.
"So..." Mike says. "You, ah. You look good." John snorts. "You do! I mean, okay, a shower wouldn't go amiss--" He pulls a face. "Sorry, that was rude."
"It's fine," John says. "I was going to the showers anyway." He can actually see Mike's eyes dilate a little; it's funny and it pisses him off at the same time and he opens his mouth to say so, but Mike gets in first.
"I saw-- I mean. Good work today."
"Thank you." John nods. There's a long silence. Awkward. "Was there something else?" Mike smiles wryly. "Don't, Mike."
"Are you going to be mad at me forever? I mean, I kinda figured you would be, 'cause of the whole-- Yeah. Only," Mike adds, "I got you a Christmas present. Because it's Christmas!"
"Not for a week," John says, only because 'why the hell would you do that?' has the really obvious answer of 'I'm Mike'.
"But it's a good one. You'll like it. I hope. Only you have to have it now and you're not allowed to tell people about it, because you're kinda not supposed to and I'm definitely not supposed to -- anyway." Mike waves a hand. The door to Interrogation Room Three slides open. "Oh, don't worry, I made sure all the cameras and things are off. Total privacy. I won't listen in."
"To what?" John asks.
"What's going on out there?" A familiar voice yells.
"That's--" John looks at Mike.
Mike grins. "Yep."
"I'm not allowed--"
"I covered that already," Mike says, and his grin gets even wider. "Go on, John."
There's a nudge, a ghost touch, part telekinetic push, part caress, and he pretends not to notice that bit as he goes, to the door and then through it. Toad looks up and then his eyes go wide and he bounds across the room, yelling "Pyro!" and wraps his arms around John in a rib-bruising bearhug, smelling of tequila and old times never quite gone, and John doesn't notice when the door slides quietly closed behind them.
.
Wanda knocks the plant pot to loosen the soil and carefully transfers the orchids into a proper vase, settling it on the windowsill. "They're very pretty," she says. "Aren't they out of season?"
"I thought that as well," Mike agrees, "but, weird thing, I just happened to stumble across this flower place on the way here, and they had them in the window under lights. Like, heat lamps or something? I dunno. I think they grow them in greenhouses or something. Bit of luck, though."
"Poor things," says Wanda, and he can't tell if she's playing with him or not.
Mike half-shrugs. "Most things will grow, if you nurture them. You just have to treat them right. Have a little patience. Or a lot."
"Are you?" She asks. He looks askance. She qualifies, "prepared to wait."
.
They have one of those sprawling conversations that go everywhere, reminiscing and spinning new anecdotes and knocking fists in celebration, just like they used to, and it's good, it is, old friends, reunited, but it's also weird. Like the laughter's a little too loud, the stories a little too forced. They're trying too hard. Toad offers John the tequila twice after he's been reminded that John doesn't drink.
There aren't many of them left. When it came down to it, very few of the Brotherhood could be charged with anything more than guilt-by-association. Accessories, before and after the fact. Handling stolen merchandise. Most of them got slaps on the wrists, set-up funds and new lives. He saw Sally the other day at the edge of a SHIELD press conference. Arclight runs a modelling agency now. John remembers how Mike took one look and called him 'her' until eventually everyone was and Arclight stopped being sour and pretty much smiled all the time. Being a mutant didn't make you immune to bigotry,
The thing was, once you realised that, then everything else started being weird.
And now here he is. Five years down the line (how had it been so long?) and (most) people actually smiled at him when they recognised him on the street (not that he goes out much) like he was an Avenger or something. Tony Stark knew his name or, anyway, an approximation there of, which was better than the time he'd called Peter 'Steve' during a live broadcast banquet and Keller had had a giggling fit and accidentally blown up the punch. He had stories that didn't involve people hating on mutants or mutants hating on people. Admittedly a lot of them involved fighting augmented fanatics and terrorists who hated on everybody, but still. He was a team Second. He'd be a First if he didn't keep dodging the responsibility. And somewhere along the way it became really fucking weird to be called Pyro like it was an actual name, and he's busy trying to work out when this happened (and if he can blame Mike for it as well, because blaming Mike for things is easy) so it takes him a moment to realise what Toad is saying.
"--been talking to Dom over the old ichat, Spike and the Fatman. We can get word out that way, slow like, keep under the telepaths radar."
"What?" John asks. "I-- What?"
"It'll be great, mate." Toad is beaming at him. "Never thought I'd get the opportunity to bring you in. Sure, some of them still think you screwed the pooch bringing glowboy in with you, but me, I know you were duped just the same as the rest of us."
"No." John shakes his head.
"It's okay." Toad nods. Real sympathy. "We're all fools for love, right? I knew this bird once, lovely hooters--"
"No," John repeats. "Are you insane? Are you--?! You'll get caught, and they won't just stop with you!"
Toad blinks at him stupidly. "Is that appeasement talk? From Pyro? Play nice so they won't hurt us too much? You're bigger than that bullshit, mate."
"It's not--" He can't think. "You're twisting it."
"Come on," Toad wheedles. "You were Magneto's right hand man, mate. He loved you like a son!"
"He had a funny fucking way of showing it!" John yells. He's on his feet. When did that happen? Hands clenching and unclenching. No flamethrowers, but there's a lighter tucked into the cuff of his hoodie. Never go out without one. "He put us in cages--"
"That's Mike talking," Toad says, and John shoves at the table, takes a swing at him. Toad is fast, faster than he was. John's fist doesn't land. Toad's jab does. He hits the table. Tequila splashes everywhere. It stinks. Everything stinks. Toad is in his face again. "We're rats in a maze to them. We eat the cheese or we don't, they still gonna chop us when the experiment's done."
"It's not like that," John says.
"Yeah, Mike says." Toad sneers. "How many times does he have to fuck you over before you get over fucking him? How--" He mewls a little when John's knee connects, backs off, clutching at his groin.
"Fuck you," John says. Flick of the wrist, there's the lighter. Still closed. Are the cameras really off? Mike doesn't lie. He just doesn't tell you things. Are they being watched? Is this a test?
"You've gone soft, Pyro." Toad has really sharp teeth. He can see them all. "They've made you weak."
"I'm not that person anymore," John says, and he realises he knew this, he knows it, but it still fucking hurts to say. "Maybe I never was."
And Toad is going to talk and talk and John really, really doesn't want to listen, so when the man moves John flicks the lighter open and flame rushes and the tequila all goes up, all at once, mostly on the table and floor, enough on Toad to send him backwards, yelping, smacking himself to get it out, and John goes out the door. Palms it closed behind him, locks it.
Mike's at the end of the corridor, leaning against the wall by the far elevators. He opens his eyes in surprise, straightens up. John crosses the distance in a few angry strides, grabs him, slams him back against the wall.
"Was that supposed to be funny? Some kind of lesson?"
Mike actually looks hurt. "No! I just-- I thought you'd like it. That's all."
"Were you listening? What am I saying, of course you--" John finds his fingers unpeeling themselves, is slid gently backwards.
"I said I wouldn't," Mike says quietly. After a second, he smiles sheepishly. "I got the timing wrong when I got Forge to lock the elevators down. It was only supposed to be a few minutes."
John blinks at him. "You--" Rage fades. He feels -- nothing, really. Just tired. "Forge. Central. Not an accident then."
Mike looks embarrassed. "I had to get you down here somehow."
"You couldn't just ask?"
"Not really." He shakes his head.
Toad bangs on his door. After a while, he stops.
John leans against the wall. Mike does too, the elevator between them.
"Hey," says John eventually, "do you know the name of that French guy from Alpha Flight?"
"Quebecois, not French," Mike corrects. "Beaubier, I think. One of those Catholic first names, like a pope. John-Paul or something."
"Right." John nods.
"I miss you," Mike says. "That's not a thing. I just. I wanted to say."
"Everything changed."
"Everything always changes." Mike shrugs. "Every day is a different world. Well, generally not literally. Anyway, planets are bajillions of miles apart; I'm pretty sure you'd be breaking all sorts of laws of physics if you could do that in a day--"
"Shut up," John says. Not unkindly. He can tell Mike is grinning at him, but he doesn't look around.
"It's okay," Mike says. "I can wait."
"That's not fair."
"Oh, I'm no good at fair." Mike grins. "But waiting I can do."
"Fine." John sighs. "You do that."
"Yeah?"
"I'm not saying anything."
"Okay."
When the elevator finally comes, John goes up first.
.
"Everything changes," Mike says, then forces a smile, continues, "but enough about me! How have been getting on? And do you like the wine?" He knocks on the bottle. "It's Australian! It's wine from about as far away as you can get while still being on this planet."
"It's not bad," Wanda says, smiling a little as she puts her glass down on the coffee table. "A little too sweet for me. You know I always prefer red."
Colour bursts in the middle of the wine like a popped blackberry; pink spreads, darkens to burgundy as it sloshes against the rim of the glass.
They both look up. Their eyes meet.
He kicks himself backwards out of the chair, crimson lightning leaping from his hands towards her and bending impossibly away, scarring the walls, and the chair comes alive, comes after him, and he rips it apart with a thought, sends another at her like a laser beam, but there's nothing but churning static and everything turning liquid around him, drowning in plaster and gooey floorboards until he blows out the wall and tumbles out into empty space and Wanda is flying, since when could she, and the whole building's coming at him and he takes it, splinters it, grabbing out those he can, tossing them clear, bruised is better than dead, and smashes through the rest into empty air because she's gone, gone, gone, just one last echo, "everything changes" and somehow those two words take longer to say than the rest of the fight.
The cure doesn't work. The cure doesn't work.
He hits the floor running, grabbing a cellphone from a startled spectator, cuts the police off, dials the Force.
"Code Purple," he snaps at the operator. "Full mobilisation. The cure doesn't work."
The cure doesn't work. The cure doesn't work. Under him, the operator is saying, "the number you have dialled has not been recognised. Please hang up and dial again." The cure doesn't work. The cure doesn't work.
Mike hangs up, redials. There's no answer again. He tosses the phone, takes to the air, then between. There's no base any more either. He can feel probabilities ripple around him. The cure doesn't work. The world tries to grab him, make him part of it. Everything changes. The cure doesn't work.
Magneto, he thinks. She'll go to family, to the ones she loves. The ones--
His thoughts burn across the world. A few hundred people in the City develop spontaneous nosebleeds as he jumps from mind to mind, searching, finding and losing as possibility becomes probability becomes certain, as Wanda shifts the past and the future remakes itself in sympathy.
The cure doesn't work. It's burnt into his brain. The cure doesn't work. And he burns in their brains, mind to mind, until -- there.
"John." He goes, loses power too soon, crashes into a sidewalk. A car horn blares. He runs. John. The cure doesn't work. Everything changes. Loved ones first. The cure doesn't work. There's time. Still time. He finds the building. Still time. The cure. The door. Locked. It's. John. Answer the. Cure. The door. Answer the knock. Answer--
.
Life is the spinning wheel of time. It turns the fibers of possibility into the threads of the future. The wheel turns. This not how it ends. This is not how it begins. There is a knock at the door.
.
There is a knock at the door.
John turns down the volume on his television as he crosses to the door, is still looking at the mutely moving newsreader when he opens it.
"Mike," he says, "I was just thinking about--"
He sees the woman first; rather, he sees the scarlet swirls of her -- he can't tell if it's a coat or a cape or somehow both. It's only after that that he sees her face, and it's only when he's opening his mouth to say "Wanda?" that he finally recognises the old man at her side, eyes sharp steel under the soft wide brim of his hat.
John's blood turns to ice in his veins. His heart pounds.
"Hello Pyro," Magneto says. "Might I come in?"
.
Knock knock. Listen.
Life is a turning wheel. There is a knock. This is not how it ends. This is not how it begins. It is just another turn of the wheel. Listen.
.
A knock at the door. It's nowhere special. Just another apartment, just another faceless block. The elevator cage creaks and rattles its way down through a square spiral of stairs. Mike shifts the bottle and the plant-pot awkwardly in his arm, lifts the other hand to knock on the door again. Just once. A sharp, flat sound.
(If he closes his eyes, he can hear the forty-six other people in the building, bright thoughts and slow thoughts and muddled sleep thoughts and up there and down over there the carefully organised electronic thoughts of LMD guards. Crazy old cat ladies with circuitry for brains.)
There are footsteps on the other side of the door and it opens without pause. The woman -- brunette now, cut short around an oval face, pale eyes and skin -- is dressed in red, more crimson than scarlet.
"Hello, Wanda," he says. He doesn't say, you didn't check the spy-hole again. He doesn't say, you should have left the chain on. He just smiles his everything's fine smile. Everything isn't, of course, but what can you do? "Merry Christmas."
"Oh," she says.
.
and six months or so before this, everything goes to hell in Transia, fire raging out of control, Magneto spread all over the landscape, Chthon pounding on the Dog Door, cracking Wundagore and pushing its way up through the breach, Mike blood-soaked and guttering, people dying all around him, his people and others, dying and worse, and the air filled with smoke and thunder and Wanda, screaming and screaming, twisted right around with her eyes bulging and her spittle frothing and he doesn't have time to beg her forgiveness before he slams the needle into the back of her neck and squeezes
.
"It's that time again." Mike's smile could even be genuine. "I brought orchids! And booze!"
"I suppose you better come in, then," Wanda says. "I just put on some tea. Would you like some?"
.
There's a knock at the door, even though it's open, even though the dorm is communal, which is how John knows it's Peter without even looking around. No one else is that polite. There's a silver tinsel tree, a miniature, on the windowsill, and he's been watching the lights blink on and off, on and off, on and off without thinking for the last who-knows-how-long. Freedom Force isn't much different to the Brotherhood, really. You train, you wait, you fight. Rinse and repeat. Except now he gets twenty days mandatory minimum holiday like every other government employee.
"We are preparing to depart," Peter says.
It sounds like an invite, not an order. Perhaps these days it is. He's come a long way. Or maybe he hasn't moved at all. Sometimes it's hard to tell. Maybe it's just Pete being Pete.
"The thing in Austin." John swings his legs off the bed and sits up. "Robot-people, right?"
Peter nods. "Mike says the Reavers are augmenting themselves with scavenged transdimensional Kree technology."
"Well, if Mike says." It's supposed to be light, but it comes out sharp. Petty. But he's not going to apologise, and they both know it. "I'll grab my things."
"We are assembling in departure lounge C," Peter says, and John waits for him to leave, but he doesn't. "It has been five years, John."
"Do you think they'll throw a party?" John jokes, except it isn't, of course, because he knows Mike, knows Mike never stops pushing. Freedom Force. Hah.
"The world is a safer place for mutants because of what we do."
Peter's sincere and solid and pretty and John thinks about -- but, no, Peter isn't made for flings and John's seen how commitment goes. Commitment to people, to causes, to ideals. Mike never offers apologies. He never asks for them, either, and John sometimes wishes he would, that someone would demand they all stand up and say, 'I was in the Brotherhood and I was wrong.' Five years and this doesn't feel like redemption or punishment. Just routine, maybe. The survivor's life.
What is, is, right?
"Come on, Pete," John says, standing. "Let's go kick some robotic ass."
.
The plant pot knocks a little against the table when he puts it down, but they both pretend not to notice how unsteady his hands are. Mike starts to ask how she is, but Wanda gets in first, and he lets her because, come on, what is she going to say, really? 'I'm fine, thanks for taking my powers, my identity, my self away'. No. No one ever thanks you for the choices you make, not the hard ones, or the ones you pretend were hard.
"You were on the news," Wanda says. "Something in Texas?"
"That's quick," he lies. The press had been pre-prepped. Two stories, one if they won, one if -- well. "I only finished the debriefing a couple of hours ago."
"Saving the world again." Her smile is only a little bitter. "It went well?"
.
They're the Black team -- which is a bit ironic since no one on the team is actually black; well, Ortega's Afro-Cuban but Toad insists that doesn't count, and tries to get them renamed the Green team but the response is basically 'shut up, n00b' even if no one actually says that -- and they go in first, real quiet like. Toad spent three years in the Cube and eighteen months being retrained by Freedom Force and he knows he's only out here now because of Mike (in more ways than one). And because Magneto is dead, of course. Politicians think that makes him less of a threat and he's willing to play into that for now. Give them a sense of false security. Softly, softly, catchy flatscan. Toad knows how to be sneaky. He's got more experience than the rest of them combined.
Which is maybe why he manages to get his tongue around the guy's neck before anyone else reacts.
They're barely two minutes in and he's up in the rafters, jacking into the camera lines, when the guard comes up out of nowhere, off the usual rounds for a quick fag judging by the pack in his hand, except the guard sees Ortega before anyone sees him -- ceramic plating in the uniform, makes them all invisible to telepaths, something Toad is going to keep in mind for later. Just an ordinary guy though, not Kree-enhanced, which means he goes for his pistol not for the punch, and then Toad's tongue is around his neck, jerking the flatscan right off his feet and--
'And snapping his neck' should follow, but no. It's more like, 'and then Toad is smacked into the nearest wall by that dumb ass Mike because obviously letting your team mates get shot is better than dealing permanently with the homicidal fanatic'. Which is complete crap, and he tries to open his mouth to say so, but his jaw won't work and it starts to hurt to try, so he stops.
Cassie drops the guard silently and Ortega starts his psychic shit, reading the guy's history, and Mike -- Mike just stares at him, pinned there against the wall like a laboratory specimen. It wouldn't surprised Toad if this whole thing was a big experiment, if Mike wasn't just doing it for shits and giggles. How long before Freedom Force pushes him too hard and he decides to take them down as well? Once a backstabber, always a backstabber.
The force holding him pinned goes off all at once, but he's got the reflexes, so he just kicks off the wall as he falls, somersaults, lands neatly. Mock bows.
"You're benched," Mike says, tone as flat as his glasses, black and opaque. "If you try to leave the ship, I'll hamstring you."
Toad opens his mouth to say -- something, he isn't quite sure, but it would have been right cutting -- except the world goes bendy gold and he's bouncing off the QuinJet wall, half sure Mike left his stomach behind, the twat. He reckons it's deliberate because three seconds later the radio comes on with some of that emo-goth shit Pyro always listened to and none of the buttons work and he knows damn well the hamstring line wasn't a bluff, so there's nothing he can do but sit there with his hands over his ears, plotting glowboy's painful and protracted death.
.
Mike knocks the neck of the bottle against the table to loosen the cork, pulls a utility knife out of his pocket and hunts through it for the corkscrew. Wanda is still looking at him, waiting for an answer. How did it go? How does it always go?
"Well enough," Mike says. "Nothing ever works in the field quite the same way it does at the strategy tables."
.
Something knocks against the ship again -- a tree perhaps; John's at the back so he can't see what, just gets the edge of Keller's flashed sheepish smile as the guy's hands dance across the controls -- and the vibration in his chair hits toothache point before they finally settle down. The ships are both old and new, retrofitted QuinJets left over from Stark's failed Fifty States Avengers project. They look pretty snazzy; they also steer like a brick and feel like a blender, but then Stark buzzes around in a tin suit, so who knows why they were expecting comfort.
Stark hit on John once at some PR thing, his arm slung over the shoulder of his long-suffering PA the whole time.
Peter's up, and John follows. This too is routine, now. Red team are go, the blunt force trauma backup to the Black team's surgical strike. They come down the access ramp in formation, Peter in the lead, smooth stride as he shifts metal, and John flicks his hands, runs a burning barricade on both wings. There are no alarms. They hit the central compound before the wall guards have caught on, hit like a full-on locomotive.
Keller's an impressive telekinetic. Not a telepath at all, which is good because John likes having his head to himself. Laura's basically Wolverine, but a girl, and she kinda creeps John out, but he keeps this to himself. Dorrek is a Super-Skrull and he creeps everybody out -- something about a perfectly human form with completely alien body-language skips the conscious entirely and twists in the gut -- but he can hold his own and, anyway, John likes having a firecaster on the team. His flame-throwers aren't failproof, especially since he's stopped wearing the ones Mike built telekinetically from the atoms up.
Even Kree-enhanced, the Reavers still rely on mob-tactics. They have no style and their numbers might be great, but they're hardly overwhelming, not against four alpha-mutants (Pete might technically be beta, physical mutation only, but to John he counts) and an alien, especially not when they're taken by surprise in their middle of a 'humans are cool' rally. One day, John thinks he'd like to get one of these guys in a cell, ask them how come, if humans are so cool, the Reavers spend half their time cutting bits of their humanity off and sticking machines in instead. He doesn't expect an answer. He just wants to ask the question.
Four minutes, nine seconds from touch-down to mission over and while Keller goes about securing the healthy and carting the wounded to the medical-carrier -- Laura doesn't kill but she doesn't fight clean either -- John goes around putting all the fires out. This too is routine, standard sweep and douse, so routine that maybe he zones out because it's not until he's been staring across the way for a couple of minutes that he realises who he's looking at.
Mike nods his head -- a greeting, a thank you, a compliment, something. John turns away.
.
and five, six years before this, they're sleeping, curled towards each other on the bed, not close because they both run unnaturally warm, but close enough, fingertips knocking, and yesterday he sleeps the same way, on his side of the double bed, curled towards the other, though when he reaches out in his sleep he touches only empty air
.
The ball knocks against the backboard, rebounds neatly through the hoop. Mike snags it out of the air and takes it back to line, bouncing the ball idly from hand to hand, watching Peter watch him. This is their post-mission warmdown. Preternatural aim versus height, reach and size-belying speed. Plus Peter always remember to call 'no powers'. Mutant high all over again.
"It was a good mission," Mike says. Peter nods in acknowledgement. "We stopped the nutters. We've got a good trace on their technology. No injuries on us, no major injuries on them -- no thanks to Toad, but that's pretty much par for the course, which reminds me that we haven't played mini-golf in ages, man. We could take the teams out. Call it a bonding exercise or something, I dunno. But it'd be cool."
"You yell at the windmills," Peter says.
"Only because they're evil," Mike insists and, "hey!" as Peter steals the ball. They clash. Peter, a stride ahead, wins; neat overhand drop. "I think having long legs should count as cheating."
Peter just hands him the ball.
Play continues. They're at five-nine, Pete playing for ten, when Mike says, "so I saw John. In Texas. I mean, not to talk to or-- He's looking good. He's doing good, right?"
"He is an excellent member of the team."
"Of course he is! I knew that bit already. Plus, I read your reports -- don't give me that look! I read everybody's reports. ...look, if they didn't want me to, they would have better security," Mike whines. "You know what I meant. Non Freedom Force-y good. Socialising and... things."
"Things," Peter repeats without inflection.
"Stuff!" Mike waves his hands vaguely. Peter dodges around him, double-step and jump, but Mike gets his fingers in front of the basket, deflects the shot. He tries to take the rebound, but the angle's wrong and Peter steals the ball back. "I'm asking if he's okay. Real okay, not work okay."
"I believe he is," Peter says.
"Okay, then." Mike nods. Peter tosses the ball up, lets Mike tap it away again, and this time takes the rebound himself, sinking it clean. "Don't think, just 'cause you're better than me, you're going to win."
"I do not." Peter nods. "I think I am going to win because I have ten baskets and you agreed we were playing to eleven."
"Did I say-- Because I meant fifteen. Yes, fifteen is what I meant." Mike retrieves the ball. "So. You and John are getting on okay."
"As we have been every time you have asked for the last nine months," Peter agrees.
"Has it really been nine months? Huh. Nine months. People can get to know each other a lot in nine months. You can make a baby in -- well, not you personally, I mean, what with the gay thing and all. Although there are certain, heh, totally irrelevant things I shall stop talking about. Just. You know. Nine months."
Mike dribbles the ball for a few moments. Peter waits.
"Are you and John--" He can't finish the sentence, shrugs one shoulder. "You know."
"I would not do that," Peter says.
"The rules about fraternisation are more kinda guidelines. And way back at Mutant High..." Mike jumps, doesn't take the shot. "I'm just saying, you know. Psychic and all."
"The guidelines are not the reason."
"Yeah, but I mean. If you wanted-- I'm just saying, me and John aren't..." Mike trails off. Peter waits, calm and solid. Russian, Mike thinks, could wait forever. Nine months. Five years -- how long is that? "John and I aren't," he finally repeats.
Peter is impossible to read.
"Right," Mike says, feints left, goes right. Peter's already there, blocking the lay-up, and he takes a one-handed jump shot but Peter's there too, catching it with the tips of his fingers and snapping it back down and they end back where they were, positions swapped.
"Do you not want to be?" Peter asks.
"Every second of every day," Mike says without hesitation. "But that's not how it works. I'd settle for happy."
Peter considers this. "Would you?"
Mike just chuckles. "Make your move, Pete. Time's a-wasting. I have places to be. Well," he corrects himself, "one place, anyway. But I like to drop in on Wanda every couple of weeks, check how she is, so there's that." Peter nods. "And I have meetings with the big bosses to prepare for. That counts as places, right?"
"Will you tell them about Toad?"
"Honestly? I haven't decided yet. I should do. I dunno though. Politics, man." Mike shrugs. "You know, some days I actually miss Magento. How screwed up is that?"
"It is easier to remember a man's good points when he is not around to demonstrate his bad points."
"I suppose." Mike sighs. "It's just, sometimes... I miss things. The way they were. Even with the bad, which is pretty stupid, really." He sighs again, pulls on a smile, eyes glittering. "Still, there's always hope, right?"
"Na Boga nadejsja," Peter says, "a sam ne ploshaj."
"So say we all." Mike considers this. "Well, no, we don't, because, for one thing, quite a lot of us don't speak Russian in the slightest." Peter almost smiles and Mike grins at him. "But you have a point. Anyway, I always have plans. Lots and lots and lots of -- and some of them aren't even completely insane. Play!"
Peter does, in, up, over, dunk. Mike stares.
"Eleven," Peter says.
"I totally meant fifteen." Peter smiles. Mike grins back. "I'll win next time, you'll see."
"I look forward to such an event."
Mike grabs the ball, ignoring this, and they tidy up, clean up, talking about inconsequential things, and it's not until they're leaving that Mike says, as if answering something, some earlier conversation continued across the gap between -- a gap of years, maybe, "I was wrong, you know. It's not better to have loved and lost at all."
He manages a watery smile. Peter squeezes his shoulder. There's nothing to say.
.
They knock their tumblers together -- Wanda doesn't have any proper wine glasses and Mike didn't think to bring any with him -- in silent toast.
.
and nineteen months before this, Kavita Rao is talking excitedly about their research into a derived mutancy-repression serum, about how they think it will be ready for field testing within the year, and Mike's poker faced in his sunglasses but his heart is knocking against his ribs, because there are worlds upon worlds of possibilities here and the vast majority of them are terrible things
.
"Hey," Mike says, knocking on the door of the Detention control room and sticking his head in. "Bob, right? Do me a favor -- kill the cameras in Three, could you?"
"I'm really not supposed to do that," Bob says. "Especially not with ex-Brotherhood."
"You have great hair," Mike says. "Floopy!"
Bob blinks at him, turning a little watery and then drying up again. "Oh, uh. Thank you?"
"No natural telepathy defences, though," Mike adds, "so you just turn those cameras off, and I won't mention those secrets of yours to interested parties, yeah? Don't think of it as blackmail."
"...it is blackmail," Bob points out.
"Well, yeah, but, try not to think of it, you'll feel much better." Bob reaches out and flicks the switches that turn the recorders off. Mike beams. "Love the hair."
Ten minutes, one detour, and two security doors later, he's outside Interview Room Three, a pair of shotglasses in one hand, a bottle of tequila in the other. He kicks the door open. Toad looks up lazily from where he's sprawled out, legs on desk, leaning back in his chair. He sneers by way of a hello.
"Mister Toynbee! How goes the night?" Mike asks. "Is it night? I've totally lost track and these built-into-the-mountain type bases really don't have enough windows. Feet off the table, please."
Toad doesn't move, so Mike moves him, little telekinetic push, dropping into the seat opposite.
"And how are you?"
"I'm peachy," Toad drawls, sitting up. "The world is my oyster."
"Good, good." Mike beams, ignoring the sarcasm. "I thought we might talk."
"Yay!" Toad claps his hands with false cheer. "Lecture time -- super-super fun! Tell me," he adds, leaning in conspiratorially, "does being a hypocritical self-righteous back-stabbing douche-bag ever get old?"
"I have no idea." Mike splashes tequila across the shot glasses, flicks one in Toad's direction. "Have a drink." Toad stared at it dubiously. "Oi! It's the good stuff, probably."
Toad looks even more dubious. "Probably?"
"It's not like I really drink much." Mike rolls his eyes. "You never learn, do you? I don't have to get you drunk to get into your head, Toad; not that I actually want to, but. I'm just saying."
"I can handle my booze," Toad says, snatching the glass with his tongue and then, a moment later, spitting it back out, empty. Mike pours another without comment. "So lay it on me, glowboy."
Mike smiles, sips at his own glass. "You're right from your side, I'm right from mine. That's how it goes, isn't it?"
"Nah. I'm just right," Toad grins.
"Mm. The thing is," Mike says, filling Toad's glass again and topping his own back up, "the thing is, you hate me because I, you know, interrupted your pointless self-destructive bigotry and helped create a system that while it isn't perfect, and I will be the first to admit that, is demonstratedly improving mutant rights."
Toad snorted. "And you're a back-stabbing douche."
"And I'm a back-stabbing douche, right." Mike grins. "And I don't particularly give a rat's ass about you one way or the other, so we can skip the whole redemption thing, or the part where I try to explain that disabling people is more long-term effective than snapping their necks, because you won't get it--"
"Because it's bullshit?" Toad waves his glass at the bottle. Mike refills it. "If you don't put them down, they keep coming back. It's what they say about us. That's why it's war, Mikey-boy. Always has been, always will be, no matter how you goodie-goodies try to spin it."
"When you make Freedom Force look bad, you hurt mutants," Mike says. He empties his own glass, leaves it on the table. "It really doesn't matter whether you believe me or not; that's how it is. And I won't have that."
He stands, waves the door open. Toad calls after him, "yeah? Wha'cha gonna do about it, glowboy?"
"Keep the bottle," Mike says, and closes the door behind him.
.
Tossing his report onto the in-tray proves a bad move when it knocks the whole thing off the desk, and John spends ten dusty, cursing minutes picking the papers up and getting everything back in order. Bureaucracy is going right above the Friends of Humanity on his 'things likely to kill me' list. He's still patting himself off when the French guy from the Canadian team comes in, perfectly coiffed as ever, to add another to the pile. They fucked a couple of times and John feels guilty he can't remember the guy's name, but only a little. They both do casual well.
"You look like shit," the guy says.
Tact, not so much.
"I'm done for the day -- going to hit the showers." John makes it an offer because, what the hell, recreational sex is as good a wind down as any, but the guy just snorts.
"You need it. The scruffy look is so late nineties." There's a bright flash of a smile -- practiced, John thinks, for cameras -- and the guy's blurred out. John takes a step and the guy sticks his head back in the door. "Oh, yeah -- Central's shut down. Forge did something to the doors, I think. I wasn't really listening. Au revoir." And he's gone again.
"Great." The pile in the in-tray starts to slide again and this time John ignores it, leaving instead. The elevator is handily waiting which is something. Central being closed means he has to walk back to his room through Detention block. The long way around is bad enough; the long way around being lined with cages is just all sorts of wrong he'd rather not have to deal with. Especially today. Stupid mission. Stupid Mike. Stupid Forge. This is the third time this month. For an intuitive inventor--
"Forge is kinda dumb," Mike says cheerfully as the elevator doors open.
"Don't," John snaps automatically. He almost reaches out to close the doors again, but he's got no other way to go, so he steps out instead. See? No problem. He's cool.
"So..." Mike says. "You, ah. You look good." John snorts. "You do! I mean, okay, a shower wouldn't go amiss--" He pulls a face. "Sorry, that was rude."
"It's fine," John says. "I was going to the showers anyway." He can actually see Mike's eyes dilate a little; it's funny and it pisses him off at the same time and he opens his mouth to say so, but Mike gets in first.
"I saw-- I mean. Good work today."
"Thank you." John nods. There's a long silence. Awkward. "Was there something else?" Mike smiles wryly. "Don't, Mike."
"Are you going to be mad at me forever? I mean, I kinda figured you would be, 'cause of the whole-- Yeah. Only," Mike adds, "I got you a Christmas present. Because it's Christmas!"
"Not for a week," John says, only because 'why the hell would you do that?' has the really obvious answer of 'I'm Mike'.
"But it's a good one. You'll like it. I hope. Only you have to have it now and you're not allowed to tell people about it, because you're kinda not supposed to and I'm definitely not supposed to -- anyway." Mike waves a hand. The door to Interrogation Room Three slides open. "Oh, don't worry, I made sure all the cameras and things are off. Total privacy. I won't listen in."
"To what?" John asks.
"What's going on out there?" A familiar voice yells.
"That's--" John looks at Mike.
Mike grins. "Yep."
"I'm not allowed--"
"I covered that already," Mike says, and his grin gets even wider. "Go on, John."
There's a nudge, a ghost touch, part telekinetic push, part caress, and he pretends not to notice that bit as he goes, to the door and then through it. Toad looks up and then his eyes go wide and he bounds across the room, yelling "Pyro!" and wraps his arms around John in a rib-bruising bearhug, smelling of tequila and old times never quite gone, and John doesn't notice when the door slides quietly closed behind them.
.
Wanda knocks the plant pot to loosen the soil and carefully transfers the orchids into a proper vase, settling it on the windowsill. "They're very pretty," she says. "Aren't they out of season?"
"I thought that as well," Mike agrees, "but, weird thing, I just happened to stumble across this flower place on the way here, and they had them in the window under lights. Like, heat lamps or something? I dunno. I think they grow them in greenhouses or something. Bit of luck, though."
"Poor things," says Wanda, and he can't tell if she's playing with him or not.
Mike half-shrugs. "Most things will grow, if you nurture them. You just have to treat them right. Have a little patience. Or a lot."
"Are you?" She asks. He looks askance. She qualifies, "prepared to wait."
.
They have one of those sprawling conversations that go everywhere, reminiscing and spinning new anecdotes and knocking fists in celebration, just like they used to, and it's good, it is, old friends, reunited, but it's also weird. Like the laughter's a little too loud, the stories a little too forced. They're trying too hard. Toad offers John the tequila twice after he's been reminded that John doesn't drink.
There aren't many of them left. When it came down to it, very few of the Brotherhood could be charged with anything more than guilt-by-association. Accessories, before and after the fact. Handling stolen merchandise. Most of them got slaps on the wrists, set-up funds and new lives. He saw Sally the other day at the edge of a SHIELD press conference. Arclight runs a modelling agency now. John remembers how Mike took one look and called him 'her' until eventually everyone was and Arclight stopped being sour and pretty much smiled all the time. Being a mutant didn't make you immune to bigotry,
The thing was, once you realised that, then everything else started being weird.
And now here he is. Five years down the line (how had it been so long?) and (most) people actually smiled at him when they recognised him on the street (not that he goes out much) like he was an Avenger or something. Tony Stark knew his name or, anyway, an approximation there of, which was better than the time he'd called Peter 'Steve' during a live broadcast banquet and Keller had had a giggling fit and accidentally blown up the punch. He had stories that didn't involve people hating on mutants or mutants hating on people. Admittedly a lot of them involved fighting augmented fanatics and terrorists who hated on everybody, but still. He was a team Second. He'd be a First if he didn't keep dodging the responsibility. And somewhere along the way it became really fucking weird to be called Pyro like it was an actual name, and he's busy trying to work out when this happened (and if he can blame Mike for it as well, because blaming Mike for things is easy) so it takes him a moment to realise what Toad is saying.
"--been talking to Dom over the old ichat, Spike and the Fatman. We can get word out that way, slow like, keep under the telepaths radar."
"What?" John asks. "I-- What?"
"It'll be great, mate." Toad is beaming at him. "Never thought I'd get the opportunity to bring you in. Sure, some of them still think you screwed the pooch bringing glowboy in with you, but me, I know you were duped just the same as the rest of us."
"No." John shakes his head.
"It's okay." Toad nods. Real sympathy. "We're all fools for love, right? I knew this bird once, lovely hooters--"
"No," John repeats. "Are you insane? Are you--?! You'll get caught, and they won't just stop with you!"
Toad blinks at him stupidly. "Is that appeasement talk? From Pyro? Play nice so they won't hurt us too much? You're bigger than that bullshit, mate."
"It's not--" He can't think. "You're twisting it."
"Come on," Toad wheedles. "You were Magneto's right hand man, mate. He loved you like a son!"
"He had a funny fucking way of showing it!" John yells. He's on his feet. When did that happen? Hands clenching and unclenching. No flamethrowers, but there's a lighter tucked into the cuff of his hoodie. Never go out without one. "He put us in cages--"
"That's Mike talking," Toad says, and John shoves at the table, takes a swing at him. Toad is fast, faster than he was. John's fist doesn't land. Toad's jab does. He hits the table. Tequila splashes everywhere. It stinks. Everything stinks. Toad is in his face again. "We're rats in a maze to them. We eat the cheese or we don't, they still gonna chop us when the experiment's done."
"It's not like that," John says.
"Yeah, Mike says." Toad sneers. "How many times does he have to fuck you over before you get over fucking him? How--" He mewls a little when John's knee connects, backs off, clutching at his groin.
"Fuck you," John says. Flick of the wrist, there's the lighter. Still closed. Are the cameras really off? Mike doesn't lie. He just doesn't tell you things. Are they being watched? Is this a test?
"You've gone soft, Pyro." Toad has really sharp teeth. He can see them all. "They've made you weak."
"I'm not that person anymore," John says, and he realises he knew this, he knows it, but it still fucking hurts to say. "Maybe I never was."
And Toad is going to talk and talk and John really, really doesn't want to listen, so when the man moves John flicks the lighter open and flame rushes and the tequila all goes up, all at once, mostly on the table and floor, enough on Toad to send him backwards, yelping, smacking himself to get it out, and John goes out the door. Palms it closed behind him, locks it.
Mike's at the end of the corridor, leaning against the wall by the far elevators. He opens his eyes in surprise, straightens up. John crosses the distance in a few angry strides, grabs him, slams him back against the wall.
"Was that supposed to be funny? Some kind of lesson?"
Mike actually looks hurt. "No! I just-- I thought you'd like it. That's all."
"Were you listening? What am I saying, of course you--" John finds his fingers unpeeling themselves, is slid gently backwards.
"I said I wouldn't," Mike says quietly. After a second, he smiles sheepishly. "I got the timing wrong when I got Forge to lock the elevators down. It was only supposed to be a few minutes."
John blinks at him. "You--" Rage fades. He feels -- nothing, really. Just tired. "Forge. Central. Not an accident then."
Mike looks embarrassed. "I had to get you down here somehow."
"You couldn't just ask?"
"Not really." He shakes his head.
Toad bangs on his door. After a while, he stops.
John leans against the wall. Mike does too, the elevator between them.
"Hey," says John eventually, "do you know the name of that French guy from Alpha Flight?"
"Quebecois, not French," Mike corrects. "Beaubier, I think. One of those Catholic first names, like a pope. John-Paul or something."
"Right." John nods.
"I miss you," Mike says. "That's not a thing. I just. I wanted to say."
"Everything changed."
"Everything always changes." Mike shrugs. "Every day is a different world. Well, generally not literally. Anyway, planets are bajillions of miles apart; I'm pretty sure you'd be breaking all sorts of laws of physics if you could do that in a day--"
"Shut up," John says. Not unkindly. He can tell Mike is grinning at him, but he doesn't look around.
"It's okay," Mike says. "I can wait."
"That's not fair."
"Oh, I'm no good at fair." Mike grins. "But waiting I can do."
"Fine." John sighs. "You do that."
"Yeah?"
"I'm not saying anything."
"Okay."
When the elevator finally comes, John goes up first.
.
"Everything changes," Mike says, then forces a smile, continues, "but enough about me! How have been getting on? And do you like the wine?" He knocks on the bottle. "It's Australian! It's wine from about as far away as you can get while still being on this planet."
"It's not bad," Wanda says, smiling a little as she puts her glass down on the coffee table. "A little too sweet for me. You know I always prefer red."
Colour bursts in the middle of the wine like a popped blackberry; pink spreads, darkens to burgundy as it sloshes against the rim of the glass.
They both look up. Their eyes meet.
He kicks himself backwards out of the chair, crimson lightning leaping from his hands towards her and bending impossibly away, scarring the walls, and the chair comes alive, comes after him, and he rips it apart with a thought, sends another at her like a laser beam, but there's nothing but churning static and everything turning liquid around him, drowning in plaster and gooey floorboards until he blows out the wall and tumbles out into empty space and Wanda is flying, since when could she, and the whole building's coming at him and he takes it, splinters it, grabbing out those he can, tossing them clear, bruised is better than dead, and smashes through the rest into empty air because she's gone, gone, gone, just one last echo, "everything changes" and somehow those two words take longer to say than the rest of the fight.
The cure doesn't work. The cure doesn't work.
He hits the floor running, grabbing a cellphone from a startled spectator, cuts the police off, dials the Force.
"Code Purple," he snaps at the operator. "Full mobilisation. The cure doesn't work."
The cure doesn't work. The cure doesn't work. Under him, the operator is saying, "the number you have dialled has not been recognised. Please hang up and dial again." The cure doesn't work. The cure doesn't work.
Mike hangs up, redials. There's no answer again. He tosses the phone, takes to the air, then between. There's no base any more either. He can feel probabilities ripple around him. The cure doesn't work. The world tries to grab him, make him part of it. Everything changes. The cure doesn't work.
Magneto, he thinks. She'll go to family, to the ones she loves. The ones--
His thoughts burn across the world. A few hundred people in the City develop spontaneous nosebleeds as he jumps from mind to mind, searching, finding and losing as possibility becomes probability becomes certain, as Wanda shifts the past and the future remakes itself in sympathy.
The cure doesn't work. It's burnt into his brain. The cure doesn't work. And he burns in their brains, mind to mind, until -- there.
"John." He goes, loses power too soon, crashes into a sidewalk. A car horn blares. He runs. John. The cure doesn't work. Everything changes. Loved ones first. The cure doesn't work. There's time. Still time. He finds the building. Still time. The cure. The door. Locked. It's. John. Answer the. Cure. The door. Answer the knock. Answer--
.
Life is the spinning wheel of time. It turns the fibers of possibility into the threads of the future. The wheel turns. This not how it ends. This is not how it begins. There is a knock at the door.
.
There is a knock at the door.
John turns down the volume on his television as he crosses to the door, is still looking at the mutely moving newsreader when he opens it.
"Mike," he says, "I was just thinking about--"
He sees the woman first; rather, he sees the scarlet swirls of her -- he can't tell if it's a coat or a cape or somehow both. It's only after that that he sees her face, and it's only when he's opening his mouth to say "Wanda?" that he finally recognises the old man at her side, eyes sharp steel under the soft wide brim of his hat.
John's blood turns to ice in his veins. His heart pounds.
"Hello Pyro," Magneto says. "Might I come in?"
.
Knock knock. Listen.