hiraet3h

[hiraet3h]

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."

or

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.