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hiraet3h · 13 days ago

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Alate { Pietro Maximoff x FEM!Reader }

Alate - Adjective (Latin) |

~ Having wings; lifted up in flight

Summery:

"The past dripped slowly in places like this—quiet, empty, and full of ghosts. The ground doesn’t forgive, it just waits."

An 'impromptu' encounter with a boy she never quite really knew. And a man she never had any interest in meeting.

Too bad they were the same person.

Pairings: Primarily: Pietro Maximoff/Fem!Reader, Slight John Allerdyce/Fem!reader, Slight Remy LeBeau/Fem!Reader

Word Count: 11.5K

Warnings: strong language, canon typical violence, reader gets hurt, smoking, cigarettes, bad bird puns/nicknames, Use of (Y/n)! I'm sorry if that bothers you, but i use it quite a bit, Pietro being an asshole, Reader is also an asshole to be fair, Gambit and Pyro too honestly, so everyone really, an excessive use of em dashes, Reader has curly hair! It's pretty vague and not specified what kind of curls, but it's mentioned a couple times! other than that, her appearance is pretty neutral i think. Let me know if I forgot something!

Fic Type: Oneshot/standalone

Author's Note: Omg! this is the first time i'll ever be posting to tumblr, and it being my shitty fanfic is kinda nerve-wracking! I've posted on Ao3 and Wattpad before, but tumblr always intimidated me for some reason. But there are SOOO many incredible writers on here, and i thought someone else might appreciate a non movieverse/fox/MCU Pietro x reader, so i decided to post it here as well! I hope it makes someone out there happy as well!

Anyways, this take place in a semi -alternate AU? In the way that, i didn't quite have a specific variation of Pietro or the x-men universe i was writing for. It's a mesh between an aged up X-men Evolution AU and the Wolverine and the X-men universe. With some comic elements thrown in. So it's my playground essentially.

This fic will also be available on AO3! I have other nonsense on my AO3 if the curiosity ever strikes and you want to check it out!

Please, if anyone wants to chat about anything, my door is always open!

The wind carried more than cold that night. It howled like a wounded creature through the hollow veins of the abandoned train yard, weaving around rusted steel and splintered wood and forsaken motors with a kind of sorrow only old places knew. (Y/n) stood near the skeletal remains of a cargo car, arms crossed, her shadow carved in sharp lines by the moonlight above. She found comfort in places like these. In places filled with things long abandoned and things that should have been. A feeling of tragedy she couldn't help but chase. A masochistic tendency she’d hoped she would have outgrown in her adolescence but had unfortunately been a habit that had followed her into adulthood.

Maybe she found comfort in things and places and stories she could relate to.

Romanticizing life, or whatever the hell the kids were calling it these days.

She hopped onto the train tracks, her arms outstretched to her sides in an attempt to keep her balance as she walked along the stealrail of the track, as though she was a tightrope walker, dangling dangerously on the brink of doom and death.

A single misstep and she’d be gone, and nothing but her memory would remain, before that too would inevitably wade out of existence, time chipping away at the ghost she used to be.

The metal creaked under her boots like it remembered her from all those years ago—like it knew she didn’t belong to war or missions or field assignments. Not really.

But she'd always show up anyway.

"You’re late, L/N."

The voice skittered through the dark, cocky and cruel and cold, like a blade dragged across glass.

A sharp exhale through her nose.

She didn’t turn. She didn’t need to.

The air told her he was close. It always did, vibrating with the static of him, with the feeling of electricity that he would leave in his wake and upon his arrival. With a disruption in the winds as it bowed to his whims.

"Punctuality has never been your thing, has it?" she replied, dry. "I figured if I gave you an extra ten minutes, you'd still manage to make an entrance."

In a blink, he was standing where moonlight met shadow—just on the edge of it, and the light of a street lamp which was miraculously still working save for the occasional flicker before being resurrected by the currents running in the wiring.

Quicksilver. Pietro Maximoff.

Silver hair tousled like he’d just stepped out of a storm, windswept and wild but in a way that looked intentional and effortless all at once. And smirking, of course. Always smirking. His eyes were electric with the kind of arrogance only someone who could outrun time itself had any right to wield.

"Nightingale," he drawled, crossing his arms with exaggerated ease as he leaned against the streetlamp with a casual grace that could only be achieved by a man who had been trained in combat for years upon years. A confidence that came with self assurance and a pride that wasn’t completely unearned "Did you miss me?"

She rolled her eyes. “Like a migraine.”

"Oof. And here I thought we were finally building something resembling camaraderie."

"No, but we can build something else entirely. Like a coffin for you to lie in. Or your gravestone. If you’re here to finally do the honors and give me the relief that would come with you dropping dead.”

He chuckled, stepping closer with the kind of laid-back threat that came from someone who didn’t need to try hard to be dangerous. "Come on, (L/n). You think anyone else could put up with your holier-than-thou shtick and still show up like clockwork?"

Her jaw tightened. Her glare was met with a look of mirth. A punchable one, if she was able to say so herself.

"Why are you here, Maximoff?"

“Birdwatching,” he says, a smug grin playing on his lips. He looked proud of that one.

She gives him a bored look, unamused.

He rolls his eyes at her, not at all intimidated, nor deterred. And he had not enough shame to ever feel a lick of embarrassment, so that was out of the question as well, despite his ill-received pun.

“C’mon, that was a good one. Even you have to admit it.”

She spins on her heels, ready to walk away from him, and this train yard and the whole useless encounter, when his voice stops her in her tracks before she’s made more than a couple feet away.

“Magneto wants a word,” Pietro said suddenly, almost too casually.

She turned slowly, narrowing her eyes. He remained at ease.

“Then he should send someone with better people skills.”

He chuckled. “He did. I’m charming. Ask literally anyone.”

“Not your ex-wife, I presume.”

That got a crack in his cool, his brows furrowing and a frown marred his lips quickly. It filled her with a satisfaction she’s not proud of.

“Low blow,” he muttered, eyes flashing. “He wants to make you an offer.”

“No.”

“You haven’t heard it yet.”

“I don’t need to.”

Pietro tilted his head, undeterred, voice still carrying humor of a joke she wasn’t in on. “You always this stubborn, or is it just around me?”

“I know how he sees people. How he turns them into pieces on a board. I’m not interested in being another one of his knights, thanks.”

“You’d be a rook, if anything,” he said, thoughtful. “Straight lines. Limited. Boring.”

“Funny, coming from a pawn.”

That one seemed to have also landed. His jaw clenched, but only for a second

He recovered with a grin. “You used to be more fun, birdie.”.

“And you’ve always been annoying.”

He sighs. And rubs the back of his neck, his eyes closing for a brief reprieve from her insults.

“Look, he only wants to talk right now. There’s no harm in a conversation, right?”

She stepped back. Not far. But enough. Enough to make the space between them suddenly mean something deliberate.

"Not interested."

"Didn’t ask if you were," he said smoothly, straightening and taking a step forward to reclaim lost distance "Only told you what’s happening."

"Not to me, it’s not."

She turned as if to leave, but in a flash, he was in front of her again. This time closer. Too close. She could feel the charge in the air between them. Like standing beside a live wire. He towered over her, and she was face to chest with him. She tilts her head up to meet his eyes, and his gaze is firm. Jaw tight and lips pressed into a firm line, almost resembling a frown but not quite.

It seems her jeers and refusal were getting to him. Good.

"I’m not here to play tag, (L/n). I’m here to bring you in."

She blinked. Slowly. As if the words themselves needed processing.

Then her laugh—a low, bitter thing—cracked through the lighting-tension like a sharp knife.

“You're pathetic. Running after daddy’s approval by doing tasks he couldn't be bothered to do himself.”

His jaw tensed. Just a flicker. But she saw it. She knew all his sore spots. That one was particularly tender, she knew.

"You think I have a choice?" he said quietly.

"You always do." Her voice was sharper now. Not louder, but colder. "You just stopped pretending to care."

Pietro's expression shifted then—like clouds over the moon. Not anger. Not yet. But the storm was there, gathering behind his eyes.

"You think you know anything about choices, L/N? You, with your perfect little X-men who’ll pat you on the back every time you try and fail to throw a punch? You don’t know what it’s like to be needed by someone who only values what you can do, not who you are."

Her jaw tenses at his words of vulnerability. But she knew a farce when she saw one. He wasn't going to emotionally manipulate her tonight.

"And yet, here you are," she said cooly, stepping past him. “I’m not going with you.”

He grabbed her wrist. Gently—but firmly. His touch was warm. Steady. Frustrating.

"(Y/n). You don’t get it. He’s not asking.”

She looked up at him, chin lifted, heart pounding like war drums beneath her ribs.

She hated that he said her name like that. Like it meant something. She rips her arm out of his grip and takes a step back, insistent on keeping space between them

“I’m not going to be a pawn, Pietro.”

"You're already in the game. You just don’t want to admit it."

“I'm not in shit.”

Her fingers sparked with energy then—just barely. A shimmer of violet light flickered up her arm like fire in a hearth. Slow and steady. Pietro's eyes dropped to it, then back to hers.

"You sure you want to do this, moon girl?"

"I’ve never been more sure of anything."

He didn’t move. For a moment, the silence held its breath. The wind paused. The night listened.

Then he stepped back. Let her go.

“You’d lose.” he says like it's a fact. Like no other outcome could be possible.

She holds his gaze for a beat. Then two.

He was probably right. She couldn’t fight to save her life. Which, coincidently, was exactly when she needed it. And she needed it often.

Her sigh then cuts through the air like a slow exhale of a long-forgotten lullaby. The kind of sound a soul made when it was too weary to fight the silence, but too stubborn to surrender fully.

She was stretched thin with exhaustion, not from the confrontation, but from everything. From war and missions, from expectations and choices. From a world that hated them for simply being, and the constant requirement to prove themselves worthy of existing in places that deemed them undeserving. And the inevitability of running into him. Again. Always.

The past dripped slowly in places like this—quiet, empty, and full of ghosts. The ground doesn’t forgive, it just waits.

A reluctant truce between instinct and exhaustion and pure curiosity had overcome her.

So she turned. Slowly. Her boots whispered against the gravel as she moved, the oversized denim jacket she adorned slipping from her shoulder just enough to show the moonlight pale on her skin before she pulled it back up into place. It was approximately five sizes too big— ill-fitting, like a life she never asked for but lives anyway cause there’s no other choice. A little girl lost in grown-up‘s clothes. A soldier pretending she knows how to play war. The cold of the freight train bled through her layers when she leaned back against it, metal biting down through fabric and resolve alike at her back. She flinched only slightly, then settled, one boot scuffed against the asphalt, the other kicked up behind her to rest flat against rusted steel.

It was the posture of someone who wasn’t going to run, but wasn’t going to be dragged either.

Quicksilver hadn’t moved. Maybe he was waiting for her to bolt. Maybe he was calculating how many steps it would take to reach her if she did. But she wasn’t running.

Her eyes flicked back to him with a gaze she wore like armor. Bored. Tired. Disinterested. Except it was a lie, of course. She was studying him. Every angle. Every slight change.

His hair was longer now. Not by much, but enough for her to notice. Enough to know she hadn’t seen him in months. Time had been kind to him in the way it was kind to cruel people—preserving their beauty like a warning sign. His silver strands, always unnatural, gleamed in the moonlight like silk laced with mercury. She remembered thinking, once, that he looked like he’d been touched by the stars. Moonkissed, she had called it.

But that was before she knew who had really touched him.

Before she knew who had carved him from the same sharp stone and set him loose on the world.

It had always been like that, even when they were teenagers, even when he was just some cocky blur of a boy who annoyed her on missions and flashed too many teeth when he smirked. She’d initially thought the color was dye, some edgy brooding Brotherhood thing.

She'd been wrong. It was blood. It was legacy. It was Magneto’s, like everything else about him. The sharp lines of his jaw. The eerie grace of his movement. The cold glacier- blue in his eyes, That intensity beneath the bravado, coiled tight like a spring, waiting to snap. The anger. Oh, the anger. Constant and bitter. Angry at a world that wouldn’t change no matter how hard anyone tried.

He looked more like Erik than Wanda did. More than Lorna ever could, despite her having her father’s powers. It unsettled her. That resemblance. That inheritance. Sure he was younger, the lines of time yet to set into his face. He was taller and leaner and wore his cockiness out and arrogant, but at the core they were alike in a way that was undeniable. She wondered if he ever looked in the mirror and saw himself, or only the man he’d been chasing his entire life like a ghost, despite him always being right there, just unwilling. She wondered what Magneto thought when he looked at him. His eldest child? Or the reminders of the failures of the man he used to be? Maybe that’s why he was so cold towards his only son.

Her eyes lowered briefly. Civilian clothes, tonight. That was interesting.

No combat gear, no flashy insignias. No weight of war on his shoulders, only a dark leather jacket that suits the season, resting just right across a frame broader than it used to be. He’s taller now, more filled in. Still lean, still quick—but not all sharp corners anymore. There’s muscle under that snug black tee. Probably more than he needs. Probably more than she needs to know about.

Of course the shirt clings like it always did, tighter than it probably needed to be. Not that he needed help drawing attention. But Pietro Maximoff didn’t know how to wear anything without a little arrogance sewn in.

“What could that man possibly want with me?” she asked at last, voice level, somewhere between disinterest and disdain.

Pietro didn’t answer at first. He just looked at her.

And maybe it was the moonlight, or maybe it was something else, but for a moment, he wasn’t smirking. He wasn’t mocking her. He just stood there, staring like she was something just slightly out of reach, slightly more dangerous than she'd ever let herself be.

"You're asking the wrong guy," he said eventually, voice lower now, almost thoughtful. “I don’t play chess, remember? I’m the piece that gets moved.” He tilted his head. “You, on the other hand… you’re a piece Magneto can’t quite figure out.”

"Or maybe I'm just not worth the effort," she replied.

His smile returned, sharp and annoying. “If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be here.” He took a step closer, boots crunching on gravel. “You think he sends me to do grunt work?”

“Yes,” she says, not even hesitating for a second. Voice flat and deadpan, like it was an obvious answer to that question

“Ouch. You wound me, little bird.”

She gave a lazy shrug, the oversized jacket slipping slightly off one shoulder once more. She didn’t bother pulling it back up this time. “That’s the idea.”

Pietro's gaze slips to the newly revealed skin for a brief second, eyes mapping out her collarbone and the slope of a shoulder that was now exposed due to the sleeveless shirt she wore underneath, before his eyes snapped back to hers. She pretends not to notice.

They stood there, not quite talking. Not quite fighting. The wind carried a whistle down the tracks, eerie in the emptiness. The city was far away now, nothing but a glow on the horizon.

"Why are you really here?" she asked, softer this time. "You hate taking orders. You cannot stand your father. I’ve seen the way you flinch when he speaks to you like you’re a tool. So why are you still running his errands?”

His jaw worked. For a moment, he didn’t answer. Then:

“Because I’m good at it,” he said finally. “And when you’re good at something, you’re not given a choice. Not really.”

Her brows furrow at his words.

“That’s not true.”

He scoffed. “Says the girl who stayed with the X-Men even after they kept sending her out there like bait.”

That one stung.

He noticed. His voice softened just a little. “You ever wonder what it’d be like to stop trying to be what they expect?”

“I don’t take advice from someone who also does exactly what’s expected of him,” she shot back. “You think you’re a rebel, but all you’ve ever done is chase your father’s shadow. You talk big, but you’re still a scared little boy running after a man who will never give you what you’re looking for and everybody knows it.”

That did it.

His expression hardened, and he took a threatening step forward. Once again the distance between them has shrunk to a considerably small size. Like a waltz, they ebb back and forth. The air seems more hostile this time, however. It seems her words had finally stung as deeply as intended.

“I came here,” he said through clenched teeth, “to give you a chance. You could’ve walked away from all of this. Could’ve had power. Could’ve stopped playing foot soldier for Xavier and his pathetic dream.”

God he was insufferable.

“Firstly, it’s not pathetic, you self-absorbed-”

“Please, i’m self-absorbed that’s actually rich coming from you-”

“-And you’re no better, following orders like a dog-”

“-considering the moral high-horse you lot sit on. it’s actually nauseating-”

“-for a man who has no idea he’ll become what he hates-”

“-the way things are going is gonna get us all killed, we don't have time to-”

“-he’s a damn hypocrite, and you’re no better-”

“-and the X-men are useless at best, hoping if you do enough dirty work, they’ll accept mutant-”

“-Have you and any of your buddies actually done anything except prove every mutant stereotype down to a T or-”

“-Who the fuck cares? They’re gonna blame everything on us anyways-”

“-yeah, so proving them right is the move-”

“-God, you reek of self-righteousness and privilege-”

“-better than playing terrorist-”

“-you’re saying this from up in your ivory tower-”

They were yelling over each other at this point. And it was beyond unproductive, considering neither was willing to even attempt to hear the other out.

“Enough!” she yells, and it's actually enough to get him to shut up. He continues to glare at her and she lets her eyes close, and her head drop as a sigh pulls from between parted lips, her breath fogging in the cold air with the exhale.

“I didn’t come to debate politics with you,” she says, voice tired. She takes a few steps away from him and slips further against the freight train, letting the rusting junk take on the brunt of her weight so she wouldn't have to carry it all on her own. Her bones feel heavy. They have for a while and she was getting tired of carrying them with her everywhere she went.

(Y/n)'s words fell like slow, deliberate raindrops—each one dampening the tension rather than snapping it. They weren’t meant to wound. Not really. But they were heavy, and the weight of truth had a way of bruising.

“Xavier’s a bastard,” she said, voice steady, eyes narrowed as she watched him. “But Magneto’s no better. ‘Sides, Cyclops has been calling the shots for a while now.”

Pietro scoffed, but said nothing. Not yet. So she kept going.

“I’ve disagreed with Charles plenty, especially the older I get and the more I see what he's willing to overlook for the sake of the dream. But his ideology doesn’t rest on bloodshed, or dominance, or this superiority complex your father breathes like air.”

his eyes narrow back at her words.

‘Not talk politics, my ass.’

“It’s not a superiority complex.” He says, voice cold and agitated. “News flash, Nightingale—they hate us. They want us dead. We have to fight back with the same force or we’ll be wiped out. Why cant you and those spandex-wearing freaks get it through your thick heads.”

He also lets himself rest against the cart, his shoulder to the metal so his body is facing her, but his head is looking out into the rail yard, nothing in particular catching his interest. He just didn’t want her to see him seething.

“You think ‘peaceful coexistence’ means anything to the people outside that mansion, praying we disappear? We’re fighting for our lives, and you're still acting like it's some kind of moral debate club.”

She scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“I’m not doing this with you, Pietro .”

“You’re the one who started it.”

“Just shut up.”

He fumes, but relents.

The quiet overtakes, and they let it settle between them and the night like a balm on a burn, meant to soothe. Frustration and anger easing out of both bodies slowly and slightly.

He steps closer—not all the way, but enough that she could feel the cold static of his presence again. That same subtle tension in the air, like a thunderstorm waiting behind glass.

“You’re scared of it,” he said, softer now. “Of your powers.”

Her lips parted, just slightly but no words came out. He’d hit something. Something she didn’t like people seeing.

“I’m not afraid,” she said eventually. “I’m cautious.”

“Same thing,” he said, and for once, there was no tease nor malice in it. Just truth.

She swallows a huff, breathing slowly through her nose. “Maximoff, I can go borderline nuclear in five seconds flat if i dont have the reins all the way in check. What would you have me do?”

He gives a lazy shrug. Nonchalant and noncommittal. Like she couldn't level a city block with a flick of her wrist if her head was on wrong.

“Don’t be afraid.” He says it like it's the simplest thing in the world. Like the answer has always been obvious and she’d been looking in all the wrong places for it.

She shakes her head, not bothering to answer him. She doesn’t really know how.

Maybe he was right. Maybe not. It didn't particularly matter. Because she didn’t know how to stop being afraid. It was etched into her soul, the fear she had of herself. It took over a decade of training to get where she was, to the mastery she possessed of her own mutation. And even then, it felt like a bandaid over a gaping wound. Superficial. Only there to cover the damage so nobody had to look at the bloody, ugly thing.

Another sigh slipped from her lips like the wind blowing between forgotten cracks. It was quieter this time. Less a sound of defeat and more the weary exhale of a woman who'd been holding her breath too long. Her head dipped forward, curls swaying gently kissing the sides of her face, as she reached up with a manicured hand to rub the back of her neck, her fingers digging into a knot that had formed like a stone lodged beneath her skin. Firm and pulsing like the echo of the tension she'd been carrying for days. Weeks. Years, if she was being honest.

This place—the X-Men, the mansion, the maddening missions and miscommunications, the quiet understanding that no one really knew what they were doing—they were home. Not perfect. But hers. The family she never had. The one that fought like hell and screamed in the halls and cried behind closed doors. The children running around, learning to use and accept and be with their mutations. The one that let her be broken, and still let her stay.

There was never a version of this where she left the X-Men. Not even in dreams. Not even when the mansion got too loud, or too quiet, or too full of ghosts.

They were hers. Her ragtag, squabbling, loyal, impossible family. The one she chose. The one that stayed.

Scott with his leadership and saviour’s complex. Ororo with her soft reprimands. Kurt, always trying to make her laugh even when her world was falling apart. Kitty, with her quiet strength. Rouge with her southern charm and a shoulder she always had to cry on. Logan with his gruff grunts that somehow meant love.

Even the ones who were gone. Even the ones who’d stayed too long.

She would not leave them.

And she definitely wasn’t trading them for Magneto’s army of true believers and half-broken boys pretending they weren't scared.

Her gaze slid lazily back to Pietro, head tilting, curls catching moonlight. Her voice came soft, almost amused, like a cat playing with something half-dead between its paws.

“He still hates you, y’know?”

Pietro blinked, clearly not expecting it. “Who?”

She smirked. “Scott.”

The reaction was instantaneous. That deadpan look returned to his face like a well-worn mask as he stared at her in exhausted disbelief.

“Good,” he snapped.

A pause.

And then, quieter, sharper: “Mutual.”

She laughed.

Not a scoff, not a sneer. A laugh.

It burst from her, sharp and musical, and it knocked the cold out of the air for a second. It was unexpected, unguarded—like a bell ringing in a quiet cathedral. Genuine, melodic, light. It peeled from her like sunlight through fog. And Pietro, who’d spent a lifetime outrunning things—responsibility, feelings, his own name—froze in place.

Because it was the kind of sound a man might go into reverence for.

It undid something in him. Made the space between them feel impossibly close, impossibly far.

Pietro would’ve done anything she asked to hear it again.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. There was a soft twitch of his jaw, the way his fingers flexed at his sides, like they ached to hold something they knew they couldn’t.

It was unfair, honestly, how good it sounded. How alive it made her look, even draped in fatigue and denim too big. The smile that followed bloomed across her face, softening her features into something sweeter than he had any right to see after threatening to drag her back to his father like a prize.

The smile on her face was gentle now, real. Something that didn’t belong on a battlefield, didn’t belong in the ruined husk of a rail yard at midnight. It belonged in gardens. In sunlit kitchens. On slow Sunday mornings and soft cotton sheets. It made her look younger, somehow—like this war hadn’t touched her quite as deeply as he knew it had.

She rolled her eyes, but there was no sharpness in the gesture. Just… tired affection. Fondness. Soft-edged history. The kind that tasted of years they pretended didn’t matter.A thread of memory pulling through the decade. The old days, back when the fights were mostly verbal and the stakes were mostly pride.

Some things didn’t change. Not really.

She slipped a hand into her pocket then, the movement smooth, easy. Like instinct. Her fingers closed around the battered pack she hadn’t even dared touch for months now. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was the company. Maybe she just wanted to reclaim a little vice for herself tonight.

The Camel menthols box were practically falling apart. The cardboard was soft with wear, corners dented and edges fraying like the last edge of self-control in a stressful week. But she popped the lid open and plucked a cigarette from the pack like it was routine.

Then her eyes flicked back to him, one brow arched high.

A silent offer.

Pietro’s eyebrows rose, a soft scoff escaping him. “You smoke?” he asked, arms crossing over his chest again, the leather of his jacket groaning softly under the strain. His too-snug shirt pulled tighter across his chest with the movement. It was entirely too obvious, and he was entirely too unaware of just what he was doing to her unconsciously. She ignored it expertly.

She shrugged, the cigarette dancing slightly between her fingers. “Not really,” she said. “Sometimes.”

Another scoff. But he reached out anyway.

She didn’t hide her surprise at that, though she disguised it behind a curl of her lip. He plucked a cigarette from the pack she held, slipping it between lips that were always slightly wind-chapped, with practiced ease.

And for a moment, they just stared at each other, smoke-less, caught in the absurdity of it all.

She tucked the pack away again, reached into the same pocket and produced a cheap plastic lighter—one of those corner-store things, half-broken and temperamental. She flicked it once, twice, three times before the flame danced alive in the dark. She gave him a look, one of those universal gestures that meant you’re too damn tall, get down here.

He snorted but obliged, bending at the waist, so their faces were close. Too close. With only the lighter’s flame flickering in the narrow space between them. It danced like a restless spirit, casting his face in shifting gold and shadow, tracing the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the curve of his mouth.

The flame caught his eyes like a hook in water, drawing out something ancient and quiet and furious. An impossible shade of blue, not sky, not sea, not anything she’d ever seen. Something colder, deeper—like the gleam of lightning before it strikes.

There was anger in that gaze, a deep, smoldering kind—the kind that burned low and endless. Anger at the world. At how it had turned him hard when he might’ve been something else.

He was painfully handsome. Unfairly so. Like a statue half-broken by time—still beautiful, but not untouched. Not innocent.

But it wasn’t like she wasn’t, either. Innocence wasn’t something she could claim anymore—hadn’t been for a long time. It had been taken, not lost. Ripped away in pieces, sharp and sudden, in the way only the world could do when it didn’t care how young you were.

They’d all been too young. Too soft, too full of things like hope and wonder and the foolish belief that the world might give back what it took.

And yet—here she stood. Still holding onto that hope like a lifeline, knuckles white around it. Because that was all she had. Cause it was all she could believe in to keep herself going. Because without it, everything unraveled—everything turned gray and senseless, and she needed something to tether her to the fight. Hope was the thread she stitched herself together with each morning. Fragile, foolish, maybe, but hers.

He didn’t seem to need something as delicate as hope. Anger was enough. There was no softness in the way he looked at the world—just that simmering fury and a drive so relentless it was almost frightening.

She stepped forward, closing the last inches of space, the heat from her hand near his jaw, the flare of fire catching the end of his cigarette. He kept his eyes on hers, unmoving. That’s when he caught a whiff of her perfume—soft, powdery, clean and sweet. Something candied-floral tucked beneath warm skin and the faint scent of ozone that always clung to her after she used her powers.

It hit him harder than expected. It made him dizzy.

It was her. And it was comfort. And it was memory. And it was the scent of someone who made abandoned train yards feel like the edge of something beautiful.

Then she stepped back, putting space between them again as she lit her own cigarette with the same soft detachment, as though she hadn’t just handed him a memory he’d crave for the rest of his life. The flame briefly illuminates the gentle curve of her face, the shadows beneath her eyes, that seemed darker these days. She inhaled, slow and long, and exhaled just as steady, smoke curling from her lips like fog rolling through forgotten hills.

Her absence was immediate. Like being snapped out of a dream too soon. The distance felt wrong, like something sacred had been broken.

Pietro took a drag, the nicotine burning hot and sharp in his chest, and for a second, they were just two people in a forgotten train yard, caught somewhere between what they were and what they could’ve been.

He savored the moment. He wanted to memorize it. To stretch it out so it could last forever. The ease. The quiet affection of an enemy who still remembered what he used to look like when he was seventeen and angry at the world.

He supposed not much had changed. He was still angry at the world. Angry at all of it.

He took another drag, this time, without looking at her, letting the menthol numb his tongue and sting the back of his throat. His jaw worked as he exhaled slowly, letting the smoke unfurl into the cold night air, curling like ghosts between them.

She leaned against the train again, one leg bent, boot still planted on the metal behind her, cigarette now resting between her fingers like an old friend. Her eyes were on the stars.

“You ever think,” she said, voice quiet now, like the moment between them had shifted into something not quite safe to name, “that if we’d met under different circumstances... things might’ve been different?”

Pietro’s gaze drifted toward her.

The wind carried her curls across her cheek. The cherry of her cigarette glowed faintly red. Her lips were parted just slightly, flushed a deeper color from the cold. She looked something straight out of a painting. A masterpiece.

He didn’t answer right away.

He didn’t want to lie.

So he didn’t.

“Yeah,” he said eventually, exhaling smoke from the corner of his mouth. “I think about that a lot.”

She turned to look at him then. Just once.

And in the silence that followed, they both said everything they couldn't say out loud.

The smoke curled from her lips, delicate and transient, vanishing into the cold night like the moment they were standing in—fragile, stolen, doomed. They stood in that half-silence, the kind that only exists when two people are trying not to admit there’s nothing left to say. The train yard stretched around them, rusted and quiet, a graveyard of motion and memory. A place suspended in time, where the past dragged its heels and refused to die.

For a breath—a single breath—it felt like peace.

But peace was never meant to linger.

Not for people like them.

The leaves rustled in a way that wasn’t wind. In the way that whispered company. Her spine straightened before she even processed why, cigarette frozen halfway to her lips. Years of training kicking in subconsciously like reflex. Her eyes narrowed, scanning the shadows between the train cars. She heard them before she saw them—footsteps too coordinated to be casual. Too numerous.

Pietro noticed it too. She caught the flick of his eyes, the way his jaw locked tight. Not fear. Not surprise. Just cold understanding.

Then they stepped out of the shadow and into the moonlight.

Three men.

Monsters, some would say. Freaks.

She knew them all.

The first wore a grin that stretched too wide over his sharp face, flame-red hair catching the dim light as if already half-ignited. His eyes sparked with glee, like he loved the idea of having an audience for whatever carnage he planned. As unstable as the fire he worshipped.

The second was all smooth swagger and subtle menace, red-on-black eyes glowing faintly under the brim of his hood. With those cards of his and a mouth that dripped charm like venom. She remembered him kissing her hand once, years ago, as a distraction to swipe something from her pocket.

And the last…

The sight of him made her stomach turn.

His footsteps were heavy and slow and sure. A beast in human skin. A hunter stepping into the world. Taller than the other already tall men, Older. Broader. Wild blond hair tangled like a lion’s mane, falling around his face like a curtain. His eyes were yellow—sharp, detachteched, cold, predatory. She didn’t even need to see the claws to feel them at her throat.

She remembered that feeling all too well. It still haunts her nightmares sometimes.

Her fingers tensed around the cigarette. Her lips parted in a breath that didn’t come. Her heart plummeted.

She didn’t move.

Didn’t dare.

Her eyes moved to look at Pietro then, with a slow turn of the head, as if she could somehow will him into explaining this away.

But he didn’t.

He stood still, expression unreadable, back straight and spine rigid like a soldier at attention. His face was blank, so carefully composed it almost hurt to look at. He wasn’t surprised.

He’d known.

The realization hit her like a blow to the gut.

She’d been set up.

The look she gave him wasn’t betrayal. Not quite. No, it was something softer, something older. The weight of inevitability. The quiet ache of knowing they’d always end up here, drawing lines in the dirt only to find themselves standing on opposite sides again and again.

Her heart dropped through her chest, nonetheless. She didn’t need to say it. The betrayal wasn’t loud, wasn’t dramatic. It bloomed quietly in her eyes, like the first crack in a stained-glass window. Barely visible.

But once it started—it never stopped.

She looked at him like someone who had almost let herself believe in something, only to be reminded why she never could.

He would say it if she gave him the chance.

I don’t owe you anything.

And he’d be right.

He didn’t flinch.

Didn’t defend himself.

Didn’t say anything.

Because what could he say?

They always ended up here.

Different sides. Same battlefield. The same war they never asked for. Both fighting for mutantkind in their own way, but walking paths that would run parallel for all of existence, never crossing. Not when one was lit in fire and fury and the other was a tightrope balanced over a chasm of compromise and restraint.

Maybe it was fate.

Or maybe it was another cruel trick of the universe.

Or maybe it was just survival.

She took a final drag of her cigarette, the burn of menthol sharp and grounding. She exhaled smoke slowly, deliberately, as the three men came into clear proximity. They didn’t run. They didn’t need to. The way Pyro’s grin widened, the way Gambit rested his hands in his pockets lazily, the way Sabertooth sniffed the air like he was already tasting the hunt—it was clear.

Magneto had sent his Acolytes.

They were here to collect her.

And it was clear they didn’t think they’d have to try very hard.

"You never were very subtle, mate," Pyro called out, an Australian accent thick, “Bit dramatic for a snatch-and-grab, don’tcha think? Having a smoke under the moonlight?”

Her eyes turn back to Quicksilver’s face. "How long?"

His jaw clenched. Just a flicker.

"Since the start."

She nodded once. Not big. Not dramatic. Just an acknowledgment of something already known in her bones.

"Well, well, well," Pyro purred, voice coated in gasoline. As the three had made their way over to them. “Didn’t think we’d find you out here alone, Nightingale. Guess the songbird strayed too far from the nest, eh?”

(Y/n) didn’t answer. unblinking, unreadable.

Sabertooth chuckled low, like gravel sliding down a mountain. It was a sound that was familiar in all of the worst ways. “This her, Maximoff?”

Pietro’s voice came steady. Empty. “Yeah.”

That was all he said.

Not a warning. Not a protest. Just confirmation.

Her blood ran colder.

“You’re not walking away tonight, chère,” Gambit said smoothly, his voice sliding around her like smoke, Cajun accent as heavy as she remembered. “We’ve got business. You, me, and the boss.”

She straightened, finally, letting the cigarette fall from her fingers to the dirt below. She ground it out beneath the heel of her boot, slow and silent. When she lifted her head, there was no fear in her expression. Only resolve. Contained. Contoured.

Like a fuse lit but not yet burning.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, voice steadier than she felt.

“Come on, now,” Pyro crooned. “Don’t be like that, love. Magneto’s got plans. Big ones. And you’re on the guest list, baby bird.”

“Don’t call me that.”

He just flashed his teeth at her with a knowing wink that went completely unacknowledged.

The weight of the situation came pressing on her chest. Hot and heavy, and cold and unfeeling all at once. She looked around uselessly already knowing there wasn’t an out for her. She wouldn't be able to escape or flee. Not with Quicksilver and not with Sabretooth. And fighting seemed laughable. She was outnumbered, outclassed and outranked. She couldn't take on one of the assholes, much less all four. It was a losing situation for her no matter the hand dealt.

She sighed for what felt like the thousandth time that night.

Besides, she didn’t want to fight.

Not tonight. Not now.

The adrenaline was starting to mix too heavily with the nicotine in her blood, and she knew if she let her panic take the wheel, she’d regret what followed. So she reached back into her jacket instead—hands steady, slow, deliberate—and pulled out the battered pack of Camels. Her fingers dipped inside and came out with one last cigarette, slightly bent, a little weathered, but still perfectly smokable.

“Quite the party,” she murmured, voice soft but steady, refusing to look away from the approaching threat. “Didn’t realize I was so popular.”

It perched delicately between her lips, the curve of her mouth pulling around it like it belonged there.

A girl playing dress-up in her father’s jacket. A delicate, pretty thing made of soft curves and sharper edges. The cigarette looked out of place in her hand. On her mouth. She didn’t look like a smoker. But the ease with which she moved—the practiced, habitual precision of it—betrayed the truth.

It looked out of place until it didn’t. Not when it had clearly lived a few lives with her already.

Because nothing about her was simple.

She let her eyes drag lazily over the men in front of her, as though they weren’t here to drag her to some gilded prison of Magneto’s making. As though they were just three guys she might see in a dive bar or waiting outside a concert venue.

They were dressed like civilians, the same way Pietro was. Their attempt at blending in, at pretending this was anything less than an ambush. Gambit, of course, wore that damn trench coat—dramatic as ever, even without the armor or gear. Pyro looked like he’d stepped out of an indie band lineup, something almost artistic in the haphazard way his clothes clung to him, flannels and baggy jeans and some obscure band’s t-shirt she couldn’t tell you the first thing about .

And Sabertooth?

Sabertooth looked like a monster in borrowed clothes.

Nothing on earth could domesticate that man.

She studied them with the same gaze one might give a gallery painting from across the room. An art critic trying to decide if they were charmed or offended.

Gambit caught her eye first.

He’d changed. Gambit looked older now—matured. The boy she remembered was long gone, replaced by a man who hadn’t lost a drop of that swamp-born charm. Heavily shadowed stubble now lined the sharp angles of his face, making him look older, rougher, better, honestly. His charm had deepened—ripened with time like some expensive wine. The smirk on his face was criminal, lethal, and she knew if the smile didn’t get a woman, the voice would. Honey-dipped and sin-slick, he’d always known how to draw hearts like blood from a wound. The kind of thing that would make a girl trip over herself and thank him for it.

But his eyes—those unforgettable eyes were the same as she remembered them. Oddly beautiful; red irises and black sclera like spilled ink and blood. They seemed amused. Like he could hear every thought in her head. Roguish charm was an understatement.

He caught her looking.

Of course he did.

He offered her a lazy grin, slow and smooth, like molasses poured from a silver spoon. “Ma chérie,” he said with a wink that probably made hearts flutter from miles away. “If you keep lookin’ at me like that, I might start thinkin’ you missed me.”

She didn’t dignify that with a response, just raised one unimpressed brow and moved on.

Pyro—he hadn’t changed as much. His frame had filled out some, arms defined beneath the thin long-sleeved tee he wore under an open flannel. Shoulders broader than she remembers, and he might’ve been an inch or two taller than he used to be. His vibrant hair had grown a little longer, hanging in his face, which was sharper now, in artful chaos. Tonight, he’d swapped his flamethrowers for something subtler. He stood with one hand in his pocket and the other fidgeting with a matchbook—flicking it open and closed, the snap-snap-snap a rhythmic tic she remembered from years ago. There was still that unhinged brightness behind his eyes. That barely-contained chaos that looked like a spark always about to ignite.

Her eyes lingered on him a little longer.

Old crushes were a strange thing.

She remembered liking him once. Maybe it was the accent. Or the danger. Or that brand of reckless energy. Or maybe just the way his eyes used to light up when he talked about fire like it was a living thing. Like he was in love with it. That kind of devotion was rare. It was foolish, in retrospect. But she had been seventeen, and he had laughed at her jokes. Sometimes that was all it took.

And then there was Sabertooth.

She swallowed.

He hadn’t aged a damn day.

He still looked older than any of them but was aging like some slow-turning curse. Healing factor made him almost eternal.

Out of everyone, he had changed the least. He was still enormous. Still terrifying. Still too quiet and too aware for someone so feral. Still exuding the kind of hunger that wasn’t about food or sex, but something deeper, more primal—an instinct to devour whatever he couldn’t control. His golden eyes didn’t blink as he watched her. They never had. He was the same the day she met him, and he’d be the same long after she was dead. Time didn’t touch men like him and Logan. Not the way it did everyone else.

She looked at him, and in the quiet between her thoughts, wondered—not for the first time—how long he and Logan had been circling each other, roaming the earth. How many times had they torn chunks from each other’s flesh, only to heal and meet again?

And how many more times were left? It seemed they’d be here till the end of the universe itself.

Star-crossed lovers, Shakespeare had written.

She supposed Logan and Creed were something else entirely.

Star-crossed enemies.

The term didn’t exist, but maybe it should’ve.

Destined to destroy, and somehow, destined not to die.

Her voice broke the stillness like glass underfoot. She turns her attention back to Pyro, her head cocked to the side, a dry smile on her lips.

“Got a light?”she asked, utterly casually. As if she wasn’t surrounded. As if they weren’t here to kidnap her. She thought she was funny. She brought the cigarette up in front of her and waved it nonchalantly, as though that explained everything.

Pyro blinked.

A heartbeat passed.

Then a shit-eating grin spread on his face, like a fire catching wind. God help her, he looked like the type who’d light a match just to watch it burn down to his fingers and laugh about the scars.

Oh, he liked that. Not just the question, but the whole performance. The cigarette dangling from her lips like punctuation. The way her curls framed her face in disheveled poetry. The tilt of her head like she was unbothered, like this was just another Tuesday and not a setup spiraling into something dark.

Gambit let out a low whistle under his breath. “Mon dieu chérie… bold of you.”

“Oh, Darlin’,” Pyro drawled, pulling his lighter from the inside of his coat like it was a holy relic, flicking the silver Zippo open with a practiced snap. A distinct cling sound filling the hollow air. A tiny flame danced to life, flickering gold in the shadows. “You know I always have a light.”

He took a step forward, hand outstretched. Even though he didn’t need to. They both knew that. He could’ve lit her up from ten feet away with a thought and a twitch of his fingers.

She raises a brow at him in question, and he just flashes her a brilliant smile.

“Don’t mind sharin’. Any excuse to get close to you, songbird.”

(Y/n) didn’t flinch. She didn’t laugh either. But her lips twitched, like she was amused. Maybe she was. In a twisted sort of way.

Pietro let out a slow breath through his nose, muttering something under it that sounded suspiciously like you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.

She stepped forward as well with casual ease, cigarette held delicately between her lips. She didn’t rush. The men around her, the fear clawing up her ribs, the betrayal still scalding behind her breastbone—all of it could wait.

“Let me guess. You want me to say something cheesy. ‘Light your fire, birdie?’”

“I’d actually prefer it if you’d shut up, but I never get what I want.”

“Aw don’t be like that, love.”

Pietro’s voice cut in then. Cold and sharp.

“She has her own lighter.”

(Y/n) didn’t even look at him. “It’s out of fluid.”

That was a lie. Her plastic Bic was full. She just didn’t feel like using it.

She could practically hear him grit his teeth from somewhere behind her. She didn’t really care.

She leaned in, letting the thin cylinder of her cigarette rest against the edge of Pyro’s flame. It caught with a soft flick and a brief flare, the scent of menthol curling up in the air between them. For a second—just a second—they stood close enough that she could see the ash flecks in his eyes, the faint scar near his temple she didn’t remember from before, the way his grin faltered as if surprised by the calm in her gaze. Like maybe she wasn’t scared of him. Like maybe she never had been.

She stepped back once her cigarette was lit, giving a little flick of her fingers in a mock salute. Smoke twisted in lazy ribbons around her face.

“Thanks, Johnny. Glad to see you’re good for something still” Her voice was breezy, offhanded, cut from the same cloth as the smoke curling from her lips—soft and biting at once.

He chuckled low, licking the inside of his cheek. “You know how much I like watching things burn. I take any chance I can get to light one up for pretty girls.

A beat.

“Especially the mean ones”

She rolled her eyes, but the sharp edge of her mouth softened just a touch, betraying the ghost of reluctant amusement.

Behind her, somewhere closer to the rusted freight train, Quicksilver grunted.

Not loud. But sharp. Meant to be heard.

(Y/n) didn’t turn.

Pietro hadn’t moved since the moment the others arrived, but the tension had twisted his spine into something steel-cable tight. He looked like he wanted to punch something—preferably Allerdyce’s stupid face.

And Pyro, the bastard, caught his eye over her shoulder.

Met his stare.

And gave him a slow, lazy grin, mouth quirked like a match head begging for a strike. His expression said What? Jealous? as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud.

Go on, do something

Pietro’s finger’s twitch, every bit of self restraint he had going into not choking the redhead right here, right now.

He could. God, he could do it before anyone blinked. Pyro wouldn’t even see it coming.

But he didn’t.

“Mm. Therapy might help with that.” Nightingale replies, unaware of the silent threats the two men shared in a split second.

The flame snapped closed with a flick, and Pyro watched her with something unreadable in his gaze as she took a drag. Something one could mistake as veneration.

Not lust. Not infatuation. Something deeper.

The kind of quiet awe a boy might carry for the storm that ruined his hometown—beautiful, destructive, unforgettable.

Behind her, the moon hung low, swollen and bruised against the indigo sky like it had seen too much and said too little. A witness draped in borrowed light. She turned her head and exhaled smoke up toward the stars. Ironic, how peaceful it looked. How quiet. Like the world wasn't holding its breath around them.

Like nothing was about to break.

“You’ve changed,” he said eventually, almost admiring.

She exhaled again, eyes on him like steel under velvet. “So have you. Still an asshole, though.”

His lips pulled into a smirk. Crooked. Honest. “Fair.”

A low growl cut through the air then like a scalpel through skin—feral, throaty, primal. The kind of sound that made your bones remember what fear was even if your brain insisted you were fine.

“You’re stalling,” Sabretooth rumbled. His voice was gravel soaked in blood, low and sharp, the warning in it unmistakable.

(Y/n)’s head snapped toward him on instinct, her pulse hitching despite her best efforts. For just a flicker—just a breath—panic danced behind her eyes, a sliver of raw instinct. The kind that came when someone called your bluff before you could salvage the illusion. Her expression didn’t falter long, but it was enough to make the corners of Sabretooth’s mouth twitch.

She covered it with a lazy draw from her cigarette, but the damage was done.

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe I just wanted a smoke before your people started throwing punches.”

“You always this mouthy before a beating?” Sabretooth asked. He was watching her the way a lion watches a cornered gazelle—curious, patient. Hungry. A confidence that comes with knowing you’ve already won.

Something in his gaze said: Run. It’ll be more fun for me.

(Y/n) inhaled, and let the smoke sit in her lungs for a heartbeat. Then exhaled slowly through her nose, eyes trained on the older mutant like he didn’t terrify her down to the marrow.

So she opened her mouth and said something she knew was beyond stupid.

“You always this eager to play attack dog for someone who keeps you on a leash? Or is this your way of proving you still got it after that thrashing Logan gave you?”

The silence that followed was deep and sharp, like the breath before a scream.

Sabretooth’s snarl was instant—teeth bared, hackles raised, the line between man and beast erased in one second.

He lunged a half-step forward, claws twitching into view—

And Pietro moved.

In a blink, he was between them, arm outstretched, fingers splayed—not touching her, but blocking the space between her and the coming storm. His voice came low

“Enough.”

“You got a real goddamn mouth on you, girl,” he hissed. “Let’s see if you still got any jokes when I tear out your fucking throat—”

“Whoa, whoa—easy, mon frère,” Gambit cut in, stepping slightly in front of him, one hand raised.“Ain’t no need for that just yet. She's just talkin’, homme,” Gambit said lazily, though his tone was a notch more serious than before. “You know how birds get when they’re backed in a cage. She don’ mean nothin’ by it.”

(Y/n) turned her gaze sharply to Gambit. “Don’t speak for me.”

The look Gambit gave her was pleading��bordering on annoyed. Like a man trying to keep a bar fight from turning into a body count.

Quicksilver turned toward her at that, eyes burning. His jaw clenched hard enough to tremble at the edges.

“Stop talking,” he bit out. “Just—stop. You’re not helping yourself.”

His face was unreadable, but his eyes flickered—furious.

And beneath it all—he looked scared.

For her?

She nearly scoffed. Yeah, right.

He’s the one who got her into this fucking mess.

From off to the side, Pyro chuckled lowly, breaking the tension just enough to turn all eyes.

“Bloody hell, love. Ain’t you just a little spitfire.” His voice was darkly amused, tinged with something she couldn’t quite place. “Careful now, Creed,” he added, eyes flicking toward Sabretooth. “Looks like the little birdie’s got claws too.”

Sabretooth growled again, a low, guttural threat vibrating up from his chest. But Pyro wasn’t finished.

“She’s not wrong though,” he mused, head cocked, genuinely entertained. “Wolverine did mop the floor with you last time. What was it—three minutes? Two?” He grinned, wicked. “Not that anyone’s counting.”

Sabretooth snarled—really snarled this time, shoulders bunching, claws arching forward like he meant to carve someone in half right then and there—

“Say that again, you little—!”

“Don’t,” Pietro snapped, venom sharp and sudden, his voice cracking like thunder across dry air. “We’re not doing this now.”

Gambit threw up a hand in warning, cool and casual but firm.

“Let it go, Victor.”

(Y/n) glanced at him, a ghost of a smirk tugging the corner of her mouth despite the pulse thudding behind her ribs.

“Thanks for the assist,” she murmured.

Pyro winked. “Anytime, birdie.”

Quicksilver made a strangled sound like he might actually implode. “Somebody shut him up” he hisses.

Gambit’s eyes slid to (Y/n) again, sharp and steady now. The flirtation had bled out of his expression, replaced by a sort of grim calm.

“You come now, chérie. Quiet-like. We walk, we talk. No one gets hurt.”

“And if I don’t?”

No one answered.

They didn’t have to.

Sabretooth’s claws flexed in the still air with a slow, deliberate snikt.

And the night held its breath once again.

A pin drop could’ve echoed like a gunshot in the stillness that followed.

It was that quiet.

like the world itself had gone silent, teetering on the knife’s edge of violence. (Y/n)’s heart thundered in her chest, a frantic drumbeat behind her ribs. Fear had its hands on her—tight around her lungs, threading through her limbs, trembling just beneath the surface. It was there in the way her shoulders stiffened, in the twitch of her fingers at her sides, in the shallowness of each breath that left her.

She knew it.

They knew it.

She would have gotten mauled in five seconds flat had Quicksilver and Gambit not stepped in.

And still, she was stubborn.

Stupid, reckless, gut-deep stubborn. The kind that burns out stars before it ever yields.

She moved before she thought.

Shoved Quicksilver back with both hands—palms pressed to the cold leather over his chest. The contact was brief, but unexpected, and he stumbled—not from force, but from shock. His silver brows lifted a fraction, mouth parting in disbelief.

“Get away from me!,” Her voice cracked like glass, and still she stood her ground “All of you.”

Son of a bitch. The whole damn lot of them.

She smashed the cigarette under her boot’s heel, twisting her toe into the gravel until the last ember died with deliberate finality, grinding it into the rocks like it was something she could control.

Then she straightened slowly, lifting her chin like a blade drawn from a sheath. Her voice rang out like something final—low and serious.

“I thought I made myself perfectly clear. Tell Magneto he can rot in whatever hole he crawled out of.”

Her gaze swept over them, unflinching now despite the way her pulse screamed behind her ears.

“And if you're all so eager to follow him to hell.” her eyes landed on each of them, one by one. “be my guest, but I'm not gonna roll over so easily.”

There it was.

The line.

For one raw moment, no one breathed.

Then—

“Oh, come on,” Pietro snapped, throwing his hands up. “Are you trying to die tonight?”

Gambit winced and muttered something in French under his breath, something that sounded a lot like a prayer—or a curse.

“Merde,” he muttered under his breath. “Girl really don’ know when to shut up.”

Pyro’s expression was hard to read now. The flame in his grin had gone out, replaced by something pensive, almost cold. There was a flicker of something in his eyes—not admiration, but maybe... regret. Maybe just the echo of it.

“You’re makin’ this harder than it needs to be, love,” he said, and for once, his voice wasn’t teasing. No lilt, no smirk hiding behind his words. Just truth. And something that could have almost been pity.

And Sabretooth?

Sabretooth laughed.

A low, guttural sound that crawled up his throat and slithered across the night air.

“Well, that settles it,” he growled, flexing his claws with audible delight. “We do this the fun way.”

A wind stirred through the train yard then, sharp and cold as an icicle pick in winter. It slid past (Y/n)’s cheeks like a warning.

The sound of Sabretooth’s laughter rooted her in place, that deep, lupine rumble clinging to the insides of her ears like cobwebs. He stepped forward again, slow and heavy—each movement a flex of coiled muscle and malevolent intent. The moonlight caught on his claws as they extended fully, glinting silver like the teeth of some ancient trap.

He stepped again—deliberate, savoring the moment, the way monsters do when they’re certain the end has already been written. His bulk loomed larger with each stride, shoulders rolling like tectonic plates, hands relaxed but twitching with promise.

And still—she didn’t move.

Didn’t dare to.

Every instinct screamed at her to run. But where would she go? There were four of them. Trained. Ruthless. Men who had bathed in battle since their bones were half-grown. She’d be tackled in seconds, ripped apart before she could so much as scream.

Still, she couldn’t stop her legs from tensing, couldn’t stop her fingers from curling, couldn’t stop her power from flaring just a little too bright behind her ribs.

She took one breath. Another. And then—

The air around her began to shimmer.

Faint, at first— like a flickering lightbulb.. Then stronger. A ripple of something soft and silver-blue, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. Her pupils shrank to pinpricks, the stars above catching in her eyes like pin-lights reflected in water.

Pietro saw it first.

“No—no, don’t,” he snapped, his voice slicing the air like a whip as he turned to her. His hand lifted, palm open, like he might physically push the power back into her chest. “(Y/n) stop!. Don’t make this worse—”

Sabretooth lunged.

Fast.

Too fast for anything but panic.

But Pietro was faster.

In a blur of black and silver and wind, he caught Sabertooth mid-leap—shoulder crashing into the older mutant’s side with the full force of a sonic boom. The impact sent both of them tumbling across the gravel in a burst of motion and fury, a cloud of dust exploding where they fell.

“Get her!” Pietro shouted mid-scuffle, his voice a gruff and a whip-crack of command as he fought to keep Sabretooth’s claws from his throat.

But (Y/n) was already turning—already moving—legs pushing off the earth like a raven. Her power bloomed behind her eyes now, lighting her skin in soft purple pulses. She moved with desperation, hands splayed, eyes scanning for the narrowest exit between rusted freight cars and stacked debris, and wooden carts.

And then Gambit stepped into her path.

He didn’t raise a hand. Had no cards visible. Didn’t reach for the bo staff strapped to his back. He just looked at her, red eyes almost glowing under the yellow streetlight

“Don’ do this, chère.”

She didn’t stop.

Didn’t even hesitate.

She ducked low and lunged past him—

—only to feel his arm loop around her waist mid-sprint, catching her momentum and spinning her hard into the wall of a derailed car. He was holding back, just wanting to use enough force to stop her. But it still hurt like a motherfucker.

She gasped, the air knocked clean out of her chest, her shoulder slamming into rusted metal with a sick clang.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” he said softly, arm tightening around her middle like a steel band. “Please.”

‘Too fucking late for that.’ She thinks bitterly in her head as her body continued to thrash, desperate and fierce.

A burst of shimmering energy flickered from her palms, reading herself to break free from his grip—only for Gambit to seize her wrists in his gloved hands and pin them to the wall beside her head.

‘Son of a bitch.’

“Enough, Nightingale,” Pietro barked from across the yard, his voice ragged with effort. Sabretooth had him pinned now, but not for long—the black blur of his limbs still jerking, struggling under the larger man’s weight. “Goddammit, get off Creed—”

“Let go of me,” she hissed, still writhing, her voice gone hoarse from panic and fury as she fought tooth and nail to break Gambit’s hold.

“LeBeau, I will kill you, I swear to god-!”

He pulls her restrained wrists away from the wall of the car, the movement forceful enough to peel her entire back from the surface just for him to slam it back in with a force that makes a grunt leave her lips, and she bites her lip to restrain the whimper that want to follow.

“Chère you need to calm the hell down-”

“Fuck you-!”

That’s when she sees him from her peripheral vision. Pyro approached slowly now, arms outstretched—not threatening, not mocking, almost placating, like trying to sooth a frightened animal. His brows were drawn tight, mouth a grim line.

“You’re not gonna win this fight, love,” he said, gently now. “Not here. Not tonight.”

Her lips parted, breath catching on a sob she didn’t let out. Her wrists ached in Gambit’s grip. Her heart ached worse.

Pietro finally shoved Sabretooth off with a surge of speed and landed, panting, one arm cradling his ribs.

“Let her go,” he said, voice gravel-rough. “I’ve got her.”

Gambit hesitated.

Then slowly, he stepped back.

(Y/n) staggered forward—but not far. Pietro caught her by the elbow, not unkindly, just firm. Like a leash. Like gravity. An unstoppable force.

She didn’t look at him.

Didn’t look at any of them.

Her eyes stayed fixed on the tracks ahead—long, endless steel rails stretching toward darkness.

And the night felt colder than before.

She felt a ringing in her ear.

Sharp, high, incessant.

She didn’t know if it was from the panic attack crawling up her throat like a hand around her windpipe, or if it was from Gambit bashing her damn head—twice—into cold, unyielding steel. Probably both. Either way, it wouldn't stop.

There was an unabating throbbing at the back of her head as well. One she was desperately trying to ignore.

Her knees threatened to give out, breath rattling, but she didn’t fall. Wouldn’t give them that.

She hated this.

Hated the stifling heat of her own skin, hated the pounding of her blood in her ears, hated the hands that had touched her, gripped her, held her down.

She hated the freight yard, the scent of rust and ash, the cold press of gravel under her boots. She hated them—every last one of them. Why couldn’t they have just left her alone?

She hated the way Pietro’s hand still gripped her elbow like he was the only thing keeping her from shattering.

But most of all—

She hated herself.

For letting it happen. For not being faster. For not being stronger.

She was supposed to be better than this. She had promised herself she would never be this helpless again.

She was an X-Man, dammit.

And yet—here she was.

Surrounded. Dragged from the only sense of control she’d managed to carve out for herself in this brutal, unforgiving world. Caged like a bird with clipped wings and too much pride.

(Y/n) sucked in a breath that caught in her chest like broken glass, blinking against the pressure behind her eyes.

She was not going to cry. She doesn’t think she’d be able to survive the humiliation that would come with her breaking down into tears right now.

“Get off,” she muttered. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was steady—knife-steady. “Don’t touch me.”

Pietro didn’t move for a beat too long.

Then—slowly—he released her.

She stepped away from him like his touch burned. Like she could scrub it from her skin if she just moved fast enough.

Pyro watched her with a strange stillness now, all the fire in him dimmed to embers.

Gambit’s mouth was tight, eyes unreadable beneath the glint of shadowed red.

And Sabretooth… Sabretooth looked pleased.

Pietro’s voice came again, quiet, but with a thread of command under the weariness.

“We're leaving.”

(Y/n) didn’t answer.

Just stood there, staring at the ground. Her jaw clenched so hard it ached.

“You can walk,” Pietro said, voice a bit softer, “or someone’s going to carry you. But we’re going.”

Her fingers curled at her sides.

And after a long breath, she moved.

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popculturebuffet · 2 years ago

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Mutant Month: House of Claremont: Avengers Annual #10: Rogue Rises, Carol Falls (Patreon Review for Brotoman.exe)

Hello all you happy mutants and welcome back to Mutant Month, my celebration of the X-Men and all things marvel mutant. Today we're taking a step back from the strangest heroes of all themselves: while they do cameo in this story and Charles plays a very imporant roll, the main focus is on the X-Men's sometimes friends, sometimes rivals, and sometimes guys who sit there and do nothing while genocide happened because of editorial not stopping to think how bad this would make them look, the Avengers.. specifically Carol Danvers, at the time Ms Marvel. While Carol is absent most of the story it's her being found half alive and mostly brain dead that kicks off the story, her scathing reason you suck speech to the avengers for the events of Avengers #200, and the writer of this book being so pissed off by the events of said issue he wrote THIS ONE in the first place.

For those who haven't heard of avengers #200... i'm truly sorry i'm about to tell you it exists. But since this story is a direct sequel/fuck you to the story, I have to. Apologizes in advance.

So Avengers #200 was the story of how Carol Danvers got mystically impregnated by Marcus, extradimensional son of avengers foe Immortus... WITH Marcus. Marcus then revealed he'd previously kidnapped Carol, made her fall in love with him with the subtle manipulations of his machines, his EXACT words, and then when he had to go back to his home dimension due to his presence destroying the world, took Carol back with him. The avengers all GLADLY sent her off with her rapist and hoped she'd be okay.

If your curious to view this nightmare for yourself, my review of it's right here`, and it's easily one of the worst things i've reviewed. And that's not in a general group.. i'm still not sure if this monstrosity or the transphobic episode of faimly guy where Brian vomits for 2 minutes straight because he slept with a trans woman is worse. It's a toss up. It's a straight up deadlock of things that PHYSICALY HURT to write about.

So as a sort of apology Brotoman, who comissioned the review of Avengers #200 not having any idea how bad it was, as did I as while I knew what happened reviews only prepare you so much, agreed to eventually have me review the direct response to that, this issue. As for why it's in X-Men Month.. well if you know Carol's history or x-men history.. then you know where Rogue got her powers.. and this is where not only that happens.. but Rogue debuts. So not only does this change avengers history.. but it's also VITALLy important to x-men history, to the point the issue is both int he x-men and marvel masteworks and their respective epic collections. It's simply too vital to both stories to ignore, especially the x-men's as Carol also basically joins the group for a while after this.

As I said this is a direct response from Chris Claremont about Avengers #200. Now any resonable person would hate this story, something i'd rarely say as tastes differ but this is

So I feel confident saying no one likes this and if they do their just being a trollish jackass.

But no one liked this story less than X-Men Maestro Chris Claremont. Chris was deeply attached to Carol and for good reasons: While Carol existed before him, debuting in Captain Marvel and then getting her own solo, the character wasn't exactly defined, first being a kinda sorta but not really love intrest to Captain Mar-Vell, then having this weird split identity gimmick and working at a women's magazine printed by J Jonah Jameson. It was clear while Marvel had the idea of "neat new womens superhero" that was about all they had.

Luckily Chris took on the book and quickly ended the split identity schtick and defined carol as we know her: Tough as nails, badass, miltary referree. He defined her backstory, the son of a sexist jackass who joined the Air Force to get an education after he refused because she was a woman. He defined most of her supporting cast, her skill and genuinely who she was. He even took her archenenemy mystique with him when he started writing x-men and to my shock Rogue was actually intended for an arc in Carol's book.. but the book got cancelled before it happened.

So finding out a character he poured his heart into was raped and her friends were just fine with it while also pouring a thick gravy of sexisim on top of the procedings.. didn't go so well

Shooter.. let Chris right the ship. Which says a lot as normally when editorial is asked to correct a creative mistake they either wait a bit so they can make money off correcting their own bullshit or actively refuse

Granted in this case, Chris Claremont was marvel's #1 writer at the time, with X-Men rising to be their best seller, with Chris having just finished the back to back classics Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past. It was clear the X-Men needed chris, wouldn't be the same without him and Chris had all the power in this negotation, while all Shooter could do is nod and say sure. While Shooter would ocasoinally flex his power on x-men for both good (shutting down the Colossus and Kitty Pryde thing) and bad (not letting Mystique and Destiny be publicly gay.. or letting Destiny be nightcrawlers mom and Mystique having shapeshifted into a man to make that possible. ), but it was stuff Shooter was willing to fight for where as here the writer of his biggest hit was asking to fix a huge mistake for him. And given jim was busy making mistakes of his own

Someday.... i'll deal with this mess someday.. but for now Chris had the greenlight to fix Shooter's mistake, and thus we got Avengers Annual #10. And as said, since he couldn't do the Rogue story in carol's book, he did it here a way to both set up Rogue as the next big threat for the x-men, and of course swerve it by them being forced to take her in, and Carol joining the team in a supporting role while not having her powers... then giving her a new more powerful set. The latter part was also likely always intended, it simply played out diffrently. It's hard to tell. What won't be is does this issue hold up on it's own and does it help wash the taste of avengers 200 out of our mouths? Let's find out.

Avengers Annual #10 gets right to it as we open with a woman getting pushed off a bridge.. thankfully she's quickly saved by one of the guest stars.. no not storm...We're in san francsico and Chris Claremont is still writing non- mutant books so...

Yup. As a nice bonus to this issue in addition to Carol and the X-Men guest starring, we also get the Startling Spider-Woman. As I mentioned in my review of God Loves, Man Kills, claremont really likes using everything he's worked on or has worked on. I see echoes of that attitude in Al Ewing's work today, finding ways to weave in your other books or tie off loose ends you never got to.

For those less familiar with her, Jessica Drew was experimented on by her dad and the high evolutionary, raised around Animal People, and then became a super heroine, with Claremont turning her into a detective after some hit and miss directions. I'm a fan thanks to Dennis Hopeless breakout run, so it was nice seeing Jess here. When we next see Jess she's waiting at the hospital, where she finds out her Jane Doe is carol.. and whlie not suprising to us given this issues place and history, it was meant to be a suprise at the time with the cover lady easily being any super being the avengers had met.

And before we move on, let's talk about that cover for a second because it's this weird mix of being both really eyecatching and an absolute hot mess. On the one hand the striking red, various panels of all the stuff and nice bit of building intrigue as they don't spell out what out of the brotherhood knocked out cap and iron man. On first look it's not too weird.

But when you really step back and look at it it's saying a lot of nothing. instead of going just with cap being thrown through a window or showing the various things happening to the avengers and then having jess and the x-men on the botttom it tries to showcase EVERYTHING in this issue and cram it all on to one cover, which is never a smart idea. Not helping is the large advertisment for a ten speed giveaway taking up a lot of real estate in an already busy cover. I don't mind covers homaging this, as it's a neat IDEA for a cover, the excecution is just sloppier than I remember and has diminishing returns: it does the job of catching your attention.. but then gets it for all the wrong reasons.

Anyways there's a problem: Carol's mental state is so withdrawn the staff psychologist assumed she'd been insutlationalized since child hood, and they can't really reach her. Thankfully Jess happens to be friends with the x-men.

That's something.. weird that happened with the passage of time. See due to Chris writing her early on Jess was friends with the x-men and her reason for knowing them is not remotely small: on a case she found former member Banshee's lost daughter Siryn, who'd go on to be a major part of X-Force and X-Factor and a faviorite of mine thanks to the latter. It's not the biggest foot note but it's something that almost never gets brought up. She's friendly enough with the x-crowd it's weird it dosen't get brought up apart from her skrull counterpart and wolverine being on good terms due to Jess also having been a close friend of logan's in his series during her powerless days. For instance in the solo I mentioned, none of the uncanny x-men visit her party. They just kinda fell out of touch. I mean Logan was dead at the time but I can't imagine Kurt Wagner would pass up free shrimp and pretty ladies. It's just not who he is.

At any rate Jess calls the professor for help, and we get a little bit of slice of life stuff with the x-men. It's something chris REALLY loved doing and that I honestly miss in modern comics: with how tightly packed the pacing is there isn't time for the x-men to say, be busy rebuilding the danger room after Kitty had to use it to murder an alien, which is the case here. It's fun seeing Kurt and Kitty slowly bond and also fuck up some machinery together trying to fix things. Charles heads down to San Fran, and the avengers have been notififed: Carol's identity isn't public YET , so it's just said their linked "somehow". Charles tells Jess in his mind that not only is her concious mind just.. gone but he was able to find out who did it: Rogue. Who at the time would've gotten a solid reaction out of fans as

As this is her intro. It's a good way to set up a villian though: have her take out a hero at Carol's level.. and a few more. YOu do have to thread this needle carefully: if you go too far, the villian comes off overpowered. Here , Rogue has just enough to be a threat, but not so much she's entirely overpowered, as we find out some drawbacks later.. and much later will find out permenanlty stealing Carol's powers and memories comes with the whopper downside of a whole other person being grafted to her brain.

And we first meet Rogue properly.. as she suprise attacks captain america. Which COULD be seen as cheap.. but Rogue makes a valid point after: she has Carol's memories.. and thus unlike most foes fighting cap , knows how he fights. And Carol being military herself meant she probably thought about how to take him down just in case someone possesed him, turned him into a werewolf or created a nazi clone. You know the usual.

Rogue then does what would become her trademark of taking the power with a kiss. This is also where we find out she stole Carol's powers for keeps, and as long as she dosen't touch someone TOO long can usually not take too much. This part.. is a bit out of sorts with her later deep fear of being touched, but I feel fits: At this point Rogue is a villian and is being encouraged by her moms to be evil. As such the ethics are likely being actively downplayed. Most memroies she's taken fade away and so does the guilt with only her first use of her powers with her childhood friend cody really bothering her. It's a case of her simply not having the downside of her powers HIT HER yet. Without any consequences, she has no reason to fear her power.

While the rest of the avengers minus thor and iron main wait for cap, Rogue leonardos him through a window. This gets them to contact Tony as Iron Man who plans to help.. but turns out the attack on Cap wasn't something random.. it was well planned, with Mystique waiting in hiding as the wasp to trick tony.. and slam some sort of doo dad that depowers the armor and leaves tony stuck inside it.

Finally for the big three, just as Thor turns out of being Donald Blake, Rogue hits him. Granted she docent know he's thor's mortal alter ego... but it still makes sense as he's their doctor. Before she can finish him though Jess shows up, having apparently travled to NYC to follow up on Carol's attempted murder.

We get a neat fight as Rogue really beats the shit out of the avengers, but like I said it's done in a way that dosen't leave her coming off OVERPOWERED. Yes she snatch's thor's powers.. but that's why: She has the combined powers of thor, cap and ms marvel with Steve, Carol and Thor's combined knowledge of their teammates. It makes perfect sense she easily floors them and only dosen't kill them because Mystique has other plans for her daughter. It's also a ncie way to show off her inexperience and deference to mystique: she stole three powers but dosen't know if she can do more, and balks out of a guaranteed win simply becaase it's not in the plan.. which sets up the brotherhood's defeat LATER by not finishing the avengers NOW.

With the avengers on the backfoot for now, Jess reveals that Carol disappeared from new york 6 months ago with avengers 200.. but resurfaced three months later in San Fran, living just fine. It's our first hint that Carol isn't exactly happy to see her friends again. She moved to a city with one other superhero, hasn't picked the mask back up, and didn't call them. And as we'll see later she has every reason not to.

The avengers reacap avengers 200, and after giving me some flashbacks, we get to the main point: This attack was cordinated, the avengers are now down their three strongest and most experienced members. The only good news is Beast, who was an avenger for a while, it's why he wasn't in the Claremont run outside of a few choice guest spots as by the time he wasn't, he got swept into x-factor, meaning beating Rogue won't be easy.

The reason behind hobbling the avengers like this? A prison break. See the brotherhood first appeared a few months before this in the landmark x-men story Days of Future Past, trying to assassinate bigoted senator kelly, our heroes winning.. but Kelly being an ungreatful bastard about it and turning around to be mutantkind's greatest pain in the ass for a while, trying to publish the mutant registration act.

The brotherhood at the time consisted of Mystique, master shapeshifter and Carol's arch enemy at the time turned x-men villian, Destiny, Mystiques wife who can see the futttttttooorrrrrr, the blob, the imovable object, Pyro, Australian arsonist and fire bender, and Avalanche, earthquake machine of the cool costume without a personality to match, with Rogue joining here. They'd keep the lineup minus Rogue for most of the 80's, transitioning from terrorists to being the goverment's go too hired goons

At any rate Misty was the only one to escape last time, so it's her job to break them out, with help from her wife predicting when, and Iron man being used as a blunt instrument. Though really he's more of an object. All that matters is he's blunt, hard and blunt.

So the brotherhood is broken out and costumed up... just in time for the avengers to arrive. Spider-Woman heads to fight iron man while a decent fight ensues: the main gimmick is destiny is tipping off the brotherhood before the avengers each move, allowing them to counter. It's a reminder of just HOW powerful Destiny is: her knowledge of the future isn't 100% , it's more propablities than full info or other wise she'd be invincible and our heroes could never win and it'd be really, really boring. But it's still potent enough and showed off well by chris claremont here: while the rest of the brotherhood get a great showing, their mostly hired goons. Destiny is Mystiques #2 for more reasons than that mouth thing she likes, and this shows it. The avengers are entirely on the backfoot because of her and it's telling the tide turns after Wanda gets a chance to attack her.. and more telling that it was only concidence she got a shot in on her and pure luck, as none of them KNEW destiny was doing this. The X-Men at least later have the advantage of knowing Destiny's the most dangerous piece on the board.

Mystique tries to kill Jessica, mostly because she's pissed Carol lived. Destiny warns her this will be their downfall.. and she's right. Mystique was a terrible choice to send for this as Jessica sees right through her nick fury disguise and Misty barely escapes , with Jessica bringing iron man back

With that the tide has fully turned: Iron Man goes with the genius strategy of hitting Rogue real hard.. and her feeling it tells her she's down to just Carol's power and Mystique tells her to retreat, the two of them feeling. Now.. tha'ts a solid marriage right there. Where you can leave your wife to get captured by the avengers.

We get more of the fight including highlights such as pyro makin ga giant firebird, his trademark and Vision and Jocasta using double laser vision to collapse the ground beneath blob. It's a decent enough fight, I just don't care about it a lot and it's one of the issue's main weaknesses: A lot of it's a fight scene and while there was good setup for it with Misty taking out a lot of their members, the people who did said setup.. have left at this point. IT's down to blob, pyro and avalanche. And while I like all three for their designs and they've had great development in later years... in this case their just three interchangable mooks. Destiny's the one really making them dangerous and with the people who actually personally hurt the avengers gone, it looses any emotional weight. It's just the avengers against some b-list super villians. I've seen this before, i'll see it again and while it's fun enough it just feels like padding. What Chris HAD to do to justify the issue. It would've been more intresting had they actually escaped. The avengers won, the brotherhood just had to retreat. But i'm guessing Chris wanted the actual escape in his own book, and knew it'd also be weird if these guys beat the avengers and the earth's mightest heroes weren't after them.

It's nice ot see the brotherhood in this sort of situation.. but I can see why we only saw them pop up more elsewhere after they became freedom force: it's a lot easier to have the heroes eat the loss or the villians loose when the villians are working for the goverment and thus wont' be going back to jail.

The ending of this annual.. is what we came for though, the big centerpiece. The only thing I can say bad about it is the art. See the avengers come to see Carol, whose staying with the x-men, and will be for the next 20 or so issues of their title. More on that in a moment. For whatever reason artist micheal golden.. decided to have her pool side so this scene of a woman talking about her sexual assault.. is done in a swimsuit.

The art in general is the book's weakpoint: As a critic while i'll point out stuff I dont' like I generally try to be positive. Something bad like Avengers 200 isn't my usual wheelhouse. i'll gladly REVIEW terrible media for money, but even then I try to be fair.

But while the writing is good as any Claremont story of the era... the art from Micheal Golden is just bad. It's bad. At best i'ts inoffensive and at worst we have Rogue's looking like she's a 4 year old who found mommy's make up

Wonder Man looking like he pulled everything , everywhere all at once and cannot move from this pose as a result

Or the blob breifly replaced with a wax statue by the ghost of vincient price

Now credit where it's do there are good shots like this one of wanda

Or beast easily out manuvering pyro and blob

But as you can see their still not the BEST shots, just decent ones. It puts a damper on an otherwise solidly written book.

Speaking of which, it's time for the moment you've been waiting for, the reason we're here. Carol has the x-men and Jessica go inside, she needs to speak with her guests alone. Before she does though there's one small moment.. but an important one

It's a small subtle thing.. but the fact Jess is still here despite this scene taking place weeks later... shows she was there for Carol's recovery. While she found out what happened.. she cared enough to stay by her side and help her.. and it was through that one of the strongest friendships in the marvel universe war born. While it takes Jess becoming relevant again to really take hold, the two have been best friends for most of modern marvel, only briefly having a falling out over civil war II.. and even that didn't last long. Jessica and Carol are each othe'rs ride or die, and that call goes both ways. While we never see these weeks their what built a bond stronger than any on earth.

But this is something Carol has to do alone.

It's an utterly heartbreaking scene, one of the best in Chris Claremont's long career on this reread. The pure PAIN in carol's voice comes through in print, a hard feet but one Chris makes seem easy. And while Golden's artwork still isn't the best... he does a damn fine job of capturing her pain without making it melodramatic: instead we see a person who was horribly violated, has her friends casually assume she was in love with her rapist and even has one loudly tell her "no we saw you you didn't see what you think we saw".. only for Carol to calmly and tearfully explain that no, she did. Marcus violated her, and they LET HIM take her with him. It's only through sheer grace of his instant death far worse didn't happen and by then he'd still done more than enough.

What i love is that while Claremont is very thinly calling out how horrible the writing was.. he dosen't let his understandable outrage hurt his ablility to make a good narrative out of it: many a comic writer can succumb to clumisly fixing what they deem a mistake or even when fixing an actual mistake, fumble the ball. Chris here however turns it into character: Carol calls them out, tearfully, but calmly and lets them know how bad they hurt her, how bad they betrayed her.. but right after also makes it clear theyc an learn from this. They HAVE to learn from this. And if they do maybe all of this will have had SOMETHING good come out of it. But that's their choice.

It gives Carol agency back after an issue that was determined to strip it away, mocking her for not wanting a baby that was forced on her, that left her to a "happy ending" with her rapist." She could wallow in anger, but chooses to move on. She's cutting the avengers out of her life for now.. but after all they've done she can't bare to have them in it, and that panel above, that one right there shows how badly they get that: they came expecting to get some closure.. and instead got the wakeup call that they lost that one. Their friend was in pain, needed help, and they ignored what she wanted, ignored her concerns.. and like marcus ignored her consent. LIke him they didn't care what she wanted or who she was, just waht this whole thing meant to them. And it's clear fromt heir expressions.. that won't happen again.

I also like how it ends: Wanda, the one of them who was the most supportive during this debacle (and was missing during the sendoff with captain rapist, rest in dust you miserable bastard), is the most broken up by it and tells her sorry.. and Carol wipes her tears and accepts it, knowing at least one person tried not to betray her. It's a fitting sendoff for Carol's time in the avengers, a time that wouldn't come again till the 90's, one that dosen't let the avengers off the hook at all and has them utterly raked over the coaals for their henious actions, but allows her to move on

The final scene is in the Quinjet, as most of the avnegers sit in stone silence as the weight of everything hits them.. but it's once again wanda whose the most affected

It's a hell of an ending, one that offers no easy comfort.. simply the promise that maybe there will be a better tommorow. It's not easy making a mistake.. but it's the harder step learning from it. And evne harder to live with what others have inflicted on you.

So yeah while the art is hit and miss.. this issue is still solid. THe last act really steals the show, and is one long callout by chris.. but again it's done perfectly in character, a way to bridge carol leaving the avengers and joining the x-men and to make the Avengers deal with what they did. To make sure #200 isn't just fixed, with Carol back and Marcus a pile of dust, but to make sure it isn't forgotten. It's easier in comics to just.. wipe away a bad decision, and sometims necessary. But it's ofen the better route to take a huge writing mistake and refit it for character.

As for Carol her story would continue: she'd basically join the x-men, helping them on occasion, then get shot up into space with them, with her powers reawakend and reformatted as the even STRONGER binary. But with her emotions attached to most of her memories gonCarol's place on earth was gone and she took to the stars. She'd regain those emotions and rejoin earth of course, rejoining the avnegers, leading them and eventually becoming Captain Marvel.

As for Rogue.. having Carol's Memories would nearly drive her insane, revealing her not as the callous monster seen here.. but as a scared 20 or so year old... and forced to turn to the people who hated her most for help. But that.. my friend sis a story for next year. For now .. we can take comfort that even with lows like Civil War II under her belt.. Carol has never been through something like avengers #200 again.. and god willing never will. Thanks for reading

#captain marvel #carol danvers #x-men #mutant month #avengers #ms marvel #iron man #captain america #thor #the scarlet witch #vision #hawkeye #jocasta #destiny #mystique #the blob #pyro #avalanche

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