Implosion

[mystique]

Mystique woke in the middle of the night, Pyro's arms wound around her as if he'd never let go. She didn't mind the feeling. She needed that safety after the events of the last day.

Turning her face, she kissed the soft spot at the bottom of his neck. "You awake?"

"Mm." He shifted position slightly, his arms still around her. "Y'ok?" He sounded sleepy. He'd slept like the dead at first, even the nightmares refusing to rouse him from his exhaustion. He opened his eyes to the darkness and let his night vision slowly kick in.

"You OK?" he asked, more clearly. "Do you need anything?"

Something had been eating at her, kept her from resting quietly. "Why did you go to the warehouse?"

"What?" He was still half asleep and her words didn't register with him properly at first, then they sank in. "I'm not…entirely sure," he said, truthfully. "I just figured that it needed checking out."

She frowned, turning a bit to face him. "But you went before I gave the signal. I... are you sure it wasn't someone... influencing you?" It would have to be Emma, but she wasn't going to tell him that.

There was a period of silence. When he spoke again, there was the warning hint of irritation in his voice.

"No, I figured that the warehouse needed checking out. What's wrong? Don't you reckon I'm capable of acting under my own steam?"

Her body ached. she was tired, and on edge. It kept her from reacting the way she likely should have. "No..." she sighed. "But with the way you've been acting... half the time completely together, the other half... well I just wasn't sure I could trust you, and look what happened because of it. You realize we could have gotten out of there without the Sentinels showing up if you hadn't blown the warehouse up?" She sat up on an elbow.

"You reckon, do you?" He released his hold on her and sat up as well, swinging his body round until his feet rested on the floor. "Sure we would have. Because you were doing SO much better than we were inside that building, weren't you? And NOW you tell me that you don't trust me?" He was also tired and still shaky and nauseous. "The Sentinels would've come anyway, Mystique, when we launched the attack. So don't try piling the blame for that on me and me alone."

"Oh and where WERE you, little boy? When I was getting beaten into the ground, you were out playing army in the warehouse." She got up, tossing the shoulder-length red hair he'd had his fingers tangled in a few hours before out of her face. She grabbed a bottle of water from the table opposite the bed and took a long drink.

"I offered to come in with you, but no, you didn't need my help. I'm a liability, remember? I went out there to destroy the Cure. It had to be destroyed. Then the next thing I know, it's all 'I'm sorry, John' and you screamed in my ear." He was getting increasingly agitated and his hand reached for his lighter, his personal security 'blanket', which he began to flick on and off, on and off. "And never, ever patronize me. Never again. Not any more."

Something about his tone got under her newly blued skin. Everything she'd been holding back, the frustration at offering HER Brotherhood up to this... child...

Mystique turned suddenly and threw the water bottle at his head. It narrowly missed, careening off his shoulder and spinning water around the room.

"How DARE you act as if you deserve respect. What IS it you have done to deserve what you have?! All you did was SURVIVE." Her hands were in fists as she leaned towards him a bit. "While Erik and I DIED inside."

The sudden invasion of his personal space made him react in a way he'd never have done if he had been thinking rationally. But John Allerdyce hadn't been thinking rationally for months. He pushed her backwards away from him and instinctively drew a fireball up between them. "You think I didn't lose a part of myself in all that?" he said, no longer shouting. "You really think that?"

Fresh wounds ached in protest as she tumbled to the ground. She hadn't been on her guard; wasn't in her right mind. "WHAT did you lose." She laughed bitterly. To her horror her voice carried more raw emotion than she intended. "You gained what I have worked for all my life!" Her voice broke as she winced away from the fire. She didn't care if he burned her alive. Emotion she'd been holding back for a year came flooding forward. All she could do was watch from deep inside herself, and hope they both survived.

The fire in his hand flared in response to his rising temper and his eyes took on an increasingly insane, dangerous glint. "You think I haven't worked. That's it, isn't it? That's what all this is about. Get me into your confidence, then stab me in the back so you can take it all back." He turned his back on her and began walking towards the door. He needed to burn something. Desperately. And there was still enough of him that didn't want it to be her.

Oh no, he wasn't walking away from her. Getting up quickly, she shoved him with both arms through the door, watching his body connect with the opposite wall. Pinning a knee to his back, she put her arm around his throat and tried to get the lighter out of his hand. Her nails pried at his fist.

"I have never lied to you," she said through her teeth. "And what have I gotten for my dedication, for HANDING you Baltimore on a plate?" She pulled on her arm, wanting to hear him choke. Her every muscle was on fire, scarcely healed after a few hours of sleep. "You would be -nothing- now without me."

He didn't release the lighter, even when her nails drew blood on his clenched fist. Instead, he did something she wasn't expecting.

He laughed.

Only it wasn't the sound of humour. It was the sound of complete insanity. The lighter flared once, briefly, and a tendril of flame snaked backwards, solid enough to connect with her like a fiery whipcrack, enough that she loosened her grip on him enough that he broke free of her grasp. He swung around and moved someway backwards down the corridor, the fire whip coiling around him.

Let it come, she had said about his ability to control fire. It appeared he'd done just that.

Why was this getting to her? She leaned back against the wall, feeling the heat from only a moment's touch of fire still lingering on her skin. Heaving a breath, she felt tears in her eyes. There was no way he could possibly understand. What she'd lost, what he'd gained, how precarious his grip on any of it was. She was going to watch the whole thing fall down... and what made her angriest of all was that he would go down with it.

Unless she killed him first.

Kipping up to a stand, she kicked the lighter out of his hand, letting it clatter behind him.

The damage was already done. He'd lit the fire. He didn't need the lighter any more. Once he had the control of his weapon of choice, he didn't need the means to create it any longer. Where once he'd tentatively exerted a little energy to control it, now he didn't think twice and just let it happen.

The fire whip uncoiled and traced a scorch mark along the corridor ceiling as it came towards her, singing the skin as it cracked past her before he recalled it to him and without so much as blinking changed its form back to that of a fireball. "You see? I got it now," he said, and his voice was dripping with the madness that had been threatening him for so long. It was a terrifying sight to see the boy losing his grip on reality just as he had anticipated he would, but he was losing it into rage and not any other emotion that might have taken him.

"I kept the damn Brotherhood going, fuck you," he snarled. "I've put my life on the line for Magneto and his vision so many times – I could just have walked away, but did I? DID I? ANSWER ME!"

If anybody had been sleeping still, the sheer volume of his demanding yell would have rectified that.

Defiant as always, Mystique levelled her gaze at him. He really could be beautiful when pushed to the edge. Such a shame he would die mewling like a kitten.

Turning, she stepped with her silent grace down the hall towards the door.

“Don’t walk away from me,” he said in the quietest of voices.

In retrospect, it was that moment when the last metaphorical little finger clinging to the cliff of sanity finally slipped and Pyro plummeted to the Sea of Insanity far, far below. However, he hit the Rocks of Rage before he got there.

”Don’t,” he said, summoning his mental energies, “walk away from me.” On the final word, he loosed the twin fireballs at her like a pair of Patriot missiles, hitting her square in the back with both of them.

Emma's door slammed open, and a fiercely angry-looking Emma Frost stepped into the hall. She had been sitting in her room for the duration of the argument and then fight happening outside in the hallway. The only reason she had kept silent for so long was her knowledge that if she tried to cut in, that someone at some point would have good evidence that Emma used her powers over the other members of The Brotherhood.

Also, Mystique had seemed to be holding her own. Emma found herself wondering if Pyro knew what he was getting himself into. It wasn't until Pyro yelled at the top of his lungs, "DID I? ANSWER ME!", that Emma entered the fray.

As she stood and crossed to the door, she opened both Pyro's and Mystique's minds like picture books. What she saw in Pyro's mind--the plan to send two fireballs at Mystique's retreating back--made Emma pull the door open with force and move quickly. Even as she stepped into the hall, she took control of Pyro's mind. His mind she had glimpsed into before, and she had seen the depth of his mental instability. As she moved into sight, she looked straight at Mystique, who was on the floor, flames on her back. She knew Pyro could take the flames from her, and she commanded him to do it with an extreme urgency.

Not fully understanding why he did so, Pyro clenched his fists as though he was fighting against something inside himself, but the flames on Mystique withdrew instantly, returning to him. "That's just the START!" he yelled, spitting the words at her. "Get up! Fight back, damn you!"

Mystique turned, a mixture of emotions so strong on her eyes that he couldn't possibly tell her intentions. But Emma could see. Heartbreak, rage, sadness. She stood, backing away down the hall. "Emma..." she didn't know what she was asking for, wasn't thinking clearly... but knew the White Queen had just saved her life.

As soon as the words left Pyro's lips, Emma commanded him to stop talking. In fact, in her burning anger, she yelled it at him, into his mind. 'SHUT UP!'

She told him forcefully to get rid of the fire at the same time that she looked to Mystique and caught the utter pain in her eyes. For Mystique's own good, Emma took control of Mystique's mind and changed her thoughts around, blocking out the worst of the pain and anger. As she did this, she took a split-second to consider hurting Pyro.

But she knew that his mind was already so dark and shredded that any hurtful thing she might do, such as dredge up a painful memory, could easily ruin him. But her anger would not be satisfied, so she sent a forceful psionic bolt into his mind, which would cause him to black out and find himself with an awful headache when he woke.

For the young pyromaniac, the bolt of psionic force was the equivalent of someone smacking him around the face with a baseball bat. He stumbled backwards, his eyes mad and wild, clutched briefly at his head, then pitched forwards face first, passing out on the floor.

Instantly, the remaining flame died, no longer having anybody to control it. The boy on the floor jerked spasmodically several times, then lay quite still.

Mystique looked calmly at Pyro, some sense of regret on her face as she stood. Looking at Emma, she knew her long-time ally would stand by her.

"Get your things," she said softly, and looked back at the boy laying unconscious in the hallway. "It's time we left."