little snowflake

When he sees, it takes him a moment to understand because he can’t wrap his mind around it. Lying there in the dirt surrounded by light is Wade Wilson. Piotr tries to stop, to absorb the horrific sight in front of him. He loved Wade Wilson. Though Wade was difficult to understand, and infuriatingly negative sometimes, Piotr and Wade became something like best friends. He turned his wrist and gripped Illyana’s to look her in the eyes, the look on his face filled with betrayal and dread.

“How could you kill him… for me? Why would you do this?” Piotr doesn’t even process the fact that Wade is without his scars. The body lying there in front of them is not exactly his best friend, but that’s what it looks like to him. “He did not deserve this, Illyana!” Piotr’s eyes are filling with tears and he’s staring at her, squeezing her wrist maybe a little too hard. “он был моим лучшим другом!”

As Piotr squeezes her wrist, Illyana tries not to cry out. She couldn’t appear weak here, and if she did her demons may attack him. But she does grow frantic, trying to catch his cheek and make him look at her with her free hand. “Это не он!” she yells over the roaring fires as they nearly drown her voice out. “Это не он!” She shakes her head, “You’ve missed so much, Piotr. You don’t understand, it isn’t your Wade. I promise you, Пожалуйста, поверь мне!”

This bubble that he lived in was treating her like an intruder, but that could be due to the fact that she gave up a piece of herself to protect them so long ago. At least, it seemed so long ago to him. He’d aged at least six years since he last saw her in the flesh, yet to her it couldn’t have been more than a year he thinks. He stands fast, not letting her pull him, “I cannot go.”

Her smile kills him though and almost immediately he’s caving in, “I do not want to be alive, for I should not be.” His words have meaning, and yet he is now allowing her to pull him toward their exit. If he didn’t go with her, she would burn up here and that would be worse. “How did you do it?” Piotr wants to believe it wasn’t anything sinister, but deep down he feels there could be no other way than a life for a life.

Illyana won’t take no for an answer, she drags him until he gives in. She has her eyes on their goal, her demons lighting the way. They blaze, flames reaching the black sky and dance in the wind that tosses her hair into her face. With her free hand, she shoves it away and their portal beckons to her. Could she tell him? Would he give up on her entirely? “I did it the only way I could,” she shouts over the wind. 

The sun was shining down on him, though the fields were covered in snow. He’d been walking through it, reminiscing about his time before the institute, before he and Yana were brought there to train and eventually die. Piotr heard her, only a whisper at first, but she was getting louder and louder the more he tried to shake her out of his head. He turns when her voice is so clear it has to be impossible for his mind to be playing tricks. When he sees her, it looks like her skin is being scorched by the light in his bubble. Piotr runs to her, knowing she is not an illusion this time.

“Yana, how did you get here?” She should be gone, safer elsewhere since she escaped. The last time they spoke, he was mad at her. Today, he still was, but he loved her and he had to remind himself of that. No matter what, she was still his sister. His family. Sometimes, family hurt you the most. “You shouldn’t be here, you’re burning!” He reaches her and tries to cover her with his large coat.

The sight of him is like cool water rushing over her. She’s become impervious to the flames just by hearing his voice. Illyana grabs for him as his coat wraps around her. Before, she’d only seen him through magic. A mirage. And now... He was so much older than she remembered and yet he felt the same. “Piotr...” she says weakly, crashing into his chest with a sob. She had wanted to be strong, to break in here and save him like she was the hero between them. But no, even as she rescued him, he saved her from the flames. 

The portal greedily opens, gulping like a tornado swallowing everything in its path. Illyana stares, mesmerized, as her prison of a year is revealed to her. She sees the fires creeping along the wasteland like they’re alive, turning into demons bowing to her as she enters. Some still revered her, but she knew there were others lurking. Waiting to steal her power back from the shadows. They didn’t interest her. She steps through, throwing the dead body to the ground and unflinchingly walks through his blood. “My brother,” she says shortly, and watches the fires light the way. 

It irks him, the thoughts that cross her mind. Not because he’s being compared because that’s only natural, but the fact that every story about Charles number two ended badly. He failed to protect his students, those he promised to keep safe and train to be better mutants. He thought about how he’d love to shove the other out of a window or down a flight of stairs. Even better, take his students away from him and give them a better life.

Charles admires her tenacity and ability to ignore physical pain. Though she didn’t feel it, he saw where each little splinter found a home in her skin. He listens to her request and he thinks on it for a moment before responding. “I have just the man. He’s willing to do anything to protect us. We would all mourn his loss, but he’d finally become the hero he wishes to be.” The inspector was not a mutant, no matter how much he wanted to be. Charles could stand behind trading a human for another mutant and he was sure the inspector would agree to the terms. That man did anything he asked.

At first Illyana feels relief at his eagerness to help, his readiness to do for her what her Charles wouldn’t. But then his words give her pause. The hero he wishes to be. Her expression grows cold. “So you aren’t different, are you? Maybe in your execution but it’s just that. You are an executioner.” The vines that had been growing up the walls snap. They crack like whips at everything in their path. Break her bed in two and knock the lanterns from their posts. Fire catches quick from the splinter covering the floor but she doesn’t flinch. It fills her, the fire, it gives her direction.

“People come to you and they show you their belly, don’t they? And you are happy to carry out their sentence in the name of heroism.” She stands slowly, looking to the ceiling because he loved to play God, didn’t he? “My brother died becoming one of your heroes. We’re all dispensable to you, as long as our names are honored with blood.” The fire nearly reaches the door but she reaches out a hand and it is extinguished. The room is mostly ash now. And so is she. Broken by the memory of her brother laid bleeding, of his acceptance of their fate while trapped in Limbo. She had no choice, she had to play into his narcissism to get Piotr back. “Fine. His name? I will deliver the sentence for you.” 

How many times would he have to hear about that Charles and his many failings? It was grinding on his nerves, but Charles kept his irritation towards that man to himself. “I’m sure he wouldn’t condone a great many things that I would.” he replied. He wanted her to ask him, he didn’t want to offer it outright. Of course he would tell her yes, no matter the price because he wanted to see the rawness of her power. All mutations intrigued him and he wanted to see exactly how far she could go for the one she loved.

“If you need my help, all you have to do is ask. What harm could it do?” Charles smiled despite knowing she couldn’t see it, “The worst that could happen is I say… no. Then you’ll do it anyway, correct?”

Illyana kept forgetting. That Charles and this Charles, they were more than worlds apart. The Charles she’d come to know would balk at her request, he’d tell her he’d find another way. No, he’d tell her there’s a natural order to things. He always put his foot in his mouth, where she wished he’d keep it so she didn’t have to hear his sanctimonious speeches. Like he was so innocent, like he wouldn’t slaughter someone to save his precious daughter. He might as well have been the one to put the blade through her heart. A chair glued to the ceiling bursts into splinters at the memory of cold steel piercing her, cutting her breath short. She watches it rain down over the room, doesn’t feel the pieces that embed in her skin. 

“Nothing will get in my way,” she confirms. “No one.” Her brother was her family, her only family, he’d raised her like she was his own and she wouldn’t leave him in that wasteland. Not for another second if she could help it. He could hate her all he wanted when he came here, it didn’t matter as long as he was alive. “I need a body, a soul, to trade for my brother’s. Limbo is hungry, it won’t let another meal escape its belly so soon.”

Illyana had been here awhile, slipping back and forth into the land she ripped herself out of. Charles felt it as he read her mind. So whatever she needed to accomplish her goal, Charles wanted to help her in any way he possibly could. Knowing that the other Charles would never allow such a thing to happen, he decided he would need to offer his services up otherwise she might never ask.

Perhaps it wasn’t time yet, but when he found her mind he mentioned it anyway. “Hello, Illyana.” he spoke through telepathy instead of finding her physically. Charles was on the roof looking out over the institute grounds as he continued, “What you are trying to do… I would like to help you. I just… can’t seem to figure out exactly what you need. Is it too soon?” @magiksoul

The journey to see Piotr again had taken a lot out of her. Limbo was seeking its power back but she'd managed to evade the darkness. Here, in the mortal plane, the part she'd retained spilled from her. The room covered in a heavy fog, ink visibly pumping through her veins. Her eyes are still white though heavily lined in charcoal as she rests her forehead against the wall of her bedroom. It was in chaos, various items of furniture turned on its side or fixed upside down to the ceiling. There was moss growing on the walls before her, vines snapping to grab hold of something, anything to trap.

When Illyana hears him she laughs, it would never be too soon. Piotr was ageing, his life racing before her eyes. She was failing him. She couldn't fail him again. "What I need... The Charles of my time would never condone," she muses, rubbing her lips with bloodied fingertips from scratching the walls until her nails peeled back.

It was true that they could both protect each other. Piotr wanted to feel useful, he wanted to feel like he was part of a team. That’s why he went to the school in the first place. Yana following behind only a few months later had been his dream come true. His voice is softer now, “We did that and we died together, Illyana. We shouldn’t be here anymore.”

The next words out of his mouth are harsh and vile. Piotr was always known for his kindness and his natural want to forgive, so these seem foreign on his tongue. It was almost as if someone else had taken over him, or the darkness of limbo seeped into his soul. “Then you have no heart and you will be lost forever.”

The pain his words ignite is like wildfire. "Don't say that!" she cries out, smacking her hand against the window hard enough to cause a crack. It spindles out like a spiderweb, fracturing the glass. His home. This sham of reality he'd created without her. She wants him to take it back, to tell her he loves her no matter what she's becoming. Or what she has already become. When she looks at him her eyes are shining bright, like light cutting through a diamond. There are no pupils, no irises. It looks like someone has scooped out her soul and replaced it with pure, unfiltered energy.

“Yes!” he snapped when he met her eyes, “You were supposed to let me die there.” He understood the instinct to survive and the pull toward life with every last fiber of being. Piotr didn’t necessarily want to die, but knowing he was supposed to and didn’t haunted him nearly every day. Surviving didn’t feel the same as living, not yet. The thought of possible effects his trapped soul could have on the world plagued him too.

“I know you can take care of yourself, Yana, but it’s my job to protect you! I am the older brother!” Piotr’s voice cracked with emotion, “What use am I to you if I cannot do that?”

Illyana visibly startles at his yelling, and it’s like she goes from queen to little girl in under a second. He had that affect on her, and she didn’t exactly resent it. He kept her human, he kept her grounded, and his decision to leave her had only made her grow in darkness. She knew she should tell him as such, beg for him to return so she could fill this hole growing in her chest. Tell him she needs him to stay right, to stay good. But her rebelliousness doesn’t allow it.

“We can protect each other, what is wrong with that?” she asks harshly, her hair moving in front of her face. She pushes it out with a frustration, turning away from him and looking out the window. This place wasn’t home, no matter how hard he tried to replicate home. It wouldn’t be home without her. “You are my heart Piotr,” she says after a long silent moment, resting her forehead on the window. “Without you I’m... Я не знаю, кто я. Я потерялся. Я так потерялся.”