Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I wake up with Kitty still sleeping and slide out of bed to do my stretches. All the little muscles across my upper back are sore from the new workout with the balance platforms and heavier practice sword.

From the floor, I hear Kitty snore lightly. She was up too late again reading. Probably someone’s dissertation about the most obscure moments in mutant history. She gets too many requests and says “yes” to a shocking number of them. When I’m limber enough, I crawl back into the bed and watch her.

“Stop it,” she grumbles.

“Which part?”

“The looking. I’m not awake enough. And my hair isn’t either.”

I push her sleepy hair aside, kiss the side of her face and ask, “What do you want for breakfast?”

“What do we have?”

“It’s Sunday. There’s enough time for brunch. What do you want?”

She curls into me, head on my shoulder, hair tickling my chin. “Waffles. And …” her fingers trail down the center of my chest to the waistband of my boxers.

“Oh. Yes please. Waffles first, though? That waffle place in Portland?” I fumble on the bedside table for my phone so I can call in a carry-out order before I teleport out to get it. “Which ones do you want?”

Kitty puts her hand over my phone. “In the multiverse, in other places, what do you think we’re doing today?”

Chapter Text

“Devi, which boots?” Illyana stands in the doorway to the bedroom holding two pairs: shiny black and flat black.

Spiral points to the flat black. “Those and your short jacket, not that one.”

“But … okay. You need help with that?”

Spiral has a heavy gray top half on, tugging with four hands. She rolls her eyes, saying, “Such nonsense. Only for Ginny. Help me zip this up.”

It’s a complicated set of compression sleeves that hold four of Spiral’s arms across her belly and down her sides. That’s covered with a layer of padding. Wearing this, and a few layers of shirts, she can walk around in the world looking somewhat like a normal human—if that person stored all their weight around their torso. She wears it almost never, but today is special. She’s even got in the contact lenses that make it look like her eyes have irises (indigo) and pupils. With her silvery-white hair, she still looks otherworldly, but in an aging-human-rockstar way, not the true human-modded-to-alien-space-ninja way.

As Illyana helps her zip into the top, Spiral growls, “We are going dancing later.”

“The new place?” Illyana asks.

It’s a club they found way out on the other side of the galaxy—even Spiral has to teleport twice to get there—with the best music and no drugs. Finding it took Illyana months of scrying but, more importantly, took Spiral finding a therapist she trusted, sticking to the one prescription that actually worked for her, years of mindfulness and finding a monk who could create six-armed T’ai Chi routines.

“Unless Ginny wants us to do something with her,” Spiral says.

“Oh right. She’s the first one in the family to graduate college in her 20s, she’s going to want to party with her friends, not get stuck with her moms.”

But Illyana’s looking across the room to the framed photo taken last summer, Ginny in the middle with four arms around her: three of Spiral’s and one of Illyana’s. Ginny is beaming like the sun.

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It had taken years, over a decade, to get all of Belasco’s magic out of Illyana’s body, at which point further changes were warranted to truly make it home. Tattoos and piercings could do for some, but Ilya wanted something more complete, more right.

Without Belasco’s enchantments keeping her artificially short and young, Illyana grew to 5’9” and brunette—then realized better still was being Ilya, a 6-foot-tall guy, not as broad as Piotr, but with lean, dense muscles and much better hair. Maybe he wouldn’t be a guy forever, now that he had the magic to change his body as he liked, but right now it was perfect.

Leave all the past in the past: the demon child Illyana had been forced into being, the way she’d been kept a little, blonde girl because Belasco and others thought this would make her tractable, vulnerable, willing. It didn’t. Girl or boy, woman, man, person, sorcerer, demon, human—Ilya came to the point of being only ever self-determined.

And beyond that point, it got fun to be embodied in all the ways that felt best. The last few years this meant being a man and discovering the kind of man he was. Not at all hyper-masculine like Piotr (and Mikhail). He liked to cook, it reminded him of magic, and to write silly poems to make Kitty laugh. He finally enjoyed dance lessons. He relaxed and touched people more often and more gently, didn’t freeze when students hugged him. Plus, Ilya loved fine materials and pretty colors in a way he couldn’t when he’d been forced into “girl.”

He let Kitty dress him sometimes. They shopped together a lot. He let Kitty undress him a lot more often than she dressed him. He needed the practice. He wasn’t good at sitting still, reclined back in a chair, while she went through all the buttons one at a time, down his chest, slower at his waist, as if she couldn’t phase, as if she didn’t know how to get his pants off. She kept saying there’d be a reward if he’d stay still the whole time, but he never did. There were plenty of rewards as it was.

Kitty loved him either way. Any way. All the ways.

Whatever he was in the future, he’d be Ilya/Illyana and Kitty would be there. That was true whether or not they made it legal, but Kitty deserved a big, fairy tale wedding and it was time.

Piotr wasn’t going to make it to the wedding and Ilya didn’t blame him. If the situation were reversed, he probably wouldn’t go to Piotr’s.

Chapter Text

Dear Piotr and Kitty,

Thank you for the invitation and many congratulations on your upcoming wedding. I regret that I cannot …

Dear Kitty,

You know I’m happy for you. That is I always want for you to be happy. But I can’t …

Dearest Katya,

…

“Hi, Mystique? … Yes, it’s lllyana. How much would it cost to have you impersonate me at the upcoming wedding?”

Chapter Text

Illyana’s in her sanctum until she hears the tiny thunder of four little feet on the other side of the scrying portal. She finishes up the most immediate work in front of her and teleports into the living room.

Kushala got up before she did and took the dogs for a walk, now they’re in a contented heap with Ro and the Mindful One. Age fifteen, Ro is reading to Mindful. From the sound of it, Witch Week again. Ro wants to be a witch when she grows up. (Spoiler: she already is.)

The smells from the kitchen suggest that Kushala has successfully used demon fire to cook turkey bacon. Illyana steps through the archway and snags a piece off the plate on the kitchen counter.

“I heard four feet, where are the twins?” she asks.

“Backyard with [Untranslatable Name] looking at bugs and leaves, like usual.”

Illyana chews the bacon, watches Kushala slide piles of veggies into the big skillet for a frittata. Their household works better than she could’ve imagined even ten years ago, even being Sorcerer Supreme, even seeing as many futures as she has—she couldn’t have predicted that she and her longtime friend and lover, whose name couldn’t be said in Earth languages, would find a home with Kushala and Mindful.

Definitely would not have predicted that they’d have three kids: Ro was Illyana’s by magic, black-haired with bright-blue eyes and classic olive Russian skin, and then the twins, one each carried by her and Kushala, magically both of theirs, light brown skin, closer to Kushala’s color, and a beautiful blend of their features: broad noses and high cheekbones, Kushala’s smile and Illyana’s eyes but dark brown. When Piotr insists that the twins got his eyes, Illyana never argues.

Their youngest dog, Kestrel, trots in and Illyana slips her a bite of the bacon.

“Hey, no human food in the kitchen,” Kushala says. “You’ll give her bad habits.”

“Everyone needs some bad habits. Especially around here.”

Illyana moves behind her, wraps arms around as Kushala is already turning to kiss her. Pressing her back against the sink, hands cradling the shaved parts of Illyana’s head, fingertips brushing the hair on top. Illyana pulls Kushala’s weight into her, opens her legs so Kushala stands between them, opens her lips to Kushala’s tongue, always hot, always just short of burning.

“I’m burning—,” Kushala begins to say as she pushes away.

“Me too,” Illyana tells her.

Laughing, turning back to the stove, Kushala adds, “and also the vegetables.”