Give Us Your Angsty X-Men Headcanons

Nori (Surge) once yelled at Dani during an argument that Josh and Laurie’s deaths were Dani’s fault because she wasn’t there to protect them. She’s never been able to apologize because a part of her does blame Dani.

After Elixir showed up at the X-Mansion along with the rest of the Utopia exiles, he locked himself in his old room and never left. However, every day, one of his old teammates would talk to him through the door. Hellion and Surge showed up every day, to make sure that Josh was okay. Eventually, Josh ran away just before the events of IvX and Hellion pursued him. In Hellion’s search for Elixir, he contracted M-Pox and after learning that Josh had died began working as a nurse to honour Josh.

Whenever Scott looks at Jean, some =part of him thinks, "I would die for you." He doesn't know if Jean ever hears this, knows how constant it is, but he feels she must, because she keeps dying instead.

Scott looked older than he actually was, partially because of how he dressed and acted, but mostly because of the stress. Jean Grey looks younger than she should be, because she is younger than she should be. The dead don't age, after all, and physically, she's closer to Kitty's age than to any of the original X-Men. It's a constant reminder, of how much she's missed, how much she's lost.

Madelyne Pryor prefers to wear things that expose her belly, even when not in costume. It's silly, she thinks, but on some level she knows part it is she wants people to see her stretch marks and remember what she's been through, the child she had and lost.

The New Mutants have been through more trauma than anyone should ever go through, but the one consolation they have is that they’re in it together. Shan wishes she could feel this way, but she spent so long away from them, caught up in her own personal hell, that even though she was the first New Mutant she doesn’t feel like she’s part of the group in more than name - that she’s in this all alone.

When David Alleyne first met Tommy Shepherd, he immediately thought of Josh, the way Tommy spoke, his wit, and his clear need to find acceptance and a home, all reminded David of his former roommate. He thought about what they had been through together as Prodigy and Elixir, and how David had been a stabilising influence to Josh, and how this kid clearly needed one too. And so he went to get noodles with Tommy. But even so, sometimes, the light will catch Tommy's skin in such a way that it looks gold, and David has to go splash some water on his face to remove the tears welling up over memories of innocence.

On the one hand, Doug’s ability to understand language, including body language, implication and subtext, makes him an absolutely perfect counselor/ informal therapist/ listener for traumatised friends, and acquaintances, and strangers. On the other hand, Doug felt absolutely alienated from many people’s feelings before his powers emerged, because his feelings just don’t work like theirs, and now he feels that way even more, because of what he’s been through. So pretty much every interaction he has every had except with his very closest friends (perhaps three of them) has been a sad affair of extreme asymmetry. He understands other people. They’ll never get him.

Rachel's used to seeing the ghosts of people she knew, people she trained with, people she killed as a Hound, all around the Xavier school. What's worse, though, is that she knows that in a few more years, she'll start to see her friends come to the school, and she still doesn't know what will be worse - seeing them, and remembering everything she's lost, or not finding them at the school there at all.

All of the O5 wonder sometimes what their lives would have been like, if they hadn't become X-Men - what they would have studied, what jobs they would have had, who they'd have loved - except for Scott. Scott knows he'd either be a supervillain, or he'd be dead. It's one of the reasons he can't ever fully leave the team.

Jamie still can’t get past the moment in his teens when, soon after his powers emerged, he realised that in some sense none of the Jamies was the real Jamie, that “Jamie Prime” was just an arbitrary designation for one of many Jamies, and that there would never be any single, inarguable real Jamie again.

One day, after Charles’ death, Cain, under the cover of night, went to the Xavier School and sat outside the gates, talking to the air. He never told anyone, and the following day, he fought the X-Men as the Juggernaut all the same. But in the dark and the cold, on that single night, Cain Marko found solace in his step-brother’s memory, and wondered, out loud to the universe, what the pair of them could have been, if Cain had only been more accepting.