Work Text:
07/29/2018
Their call to the building downtown that the Brotherhood had so cynically renamed a communication bridge was failed to answer for so long that Ororo was already busy in mind, coming up with the necessary mission preparations. It would be messy, lossy and shatter whatever arduous restraint her team had held on to ever since their enemies had taken over one of the USA's most beloved historical metropolis locations, declaring open war on humanity that the latter still had no means to even answer to as of yet. There was a good chance that, if they would enter their jet in a minute to approach the besieged city and counter their foes' latest strike, that they would put their own signature under that blood red document of looming global destruction at last, any attempts and hopeless plans of negotiating for a peaceful solution that simply did not exist vaporized.
Ororo didn’t need to consult with the X-Men's leader first to know what the latter would have had to say to such an impulsive, highly risky move – and yet if she ever wanted the chance for such a just as tiring as beloved tradition of endless lectures from one of her oldest friends again, there was no doubt, she'd be suiting up in probably 10 minutes tops, calling whoever in this house was trained enough to face a whole city of hostiles and an impenetrable shield surrounding it, for a desperate rescue mission part of her knew perfectly well would never have been approved of if by the one person it was necessary to go on it for.
Accordingly big was the relief, fighting a hefty battle with immediately building wrath inside her soul when she'd just gotten her ass off that control room chair, the first order necessary on her lips, and suddenly startled from a flash of lightning stinging in her pupils as the main monitor right before her came to life, the sought connection to the New York Brotherhood base finally established, revealing the exceedingly smug expression on a very familiar blue and red scaled face.
"You got something that belongs to us, Darkholme? Again?"
"So do you," Mystique reminded her harshly, confirming the X-Men's worst suspicions about why their leader had been taken into captivity at that damn mutant talent show he'd originally been invited to as a guest in. Well, so much for that. "Care to trade?"
"You really want to turn this into another war?" Ororo asked with numb lips, her hand a helpless, trembling fist by her side, the other - invisibly for the monitor camera - clawing down on the muscular leg of the woman sitting right next to her whom she could see even from the corner of her eyes had turned even another shade paler yet than at the live transmission from that show on TV earlier. Namely, when the abrupt stage exit of one of mutant world's most famous and the sudden silence in the mental link between said woman by her side and the X-Men's leader almost at the same moment had confirmed all mistrust and anxiety beforehand about this so-called peace offer.
"Funny how you always ask that whenever you launch an attack on us." Mystique leaned back in her chair unfazed, reaching for something outside the monitor lens on her side, upon which surveillance material from a certain bloody air strike on the other side of the world this afternoon flickered over another screen right behind the one showing her snarl. "I warned you. Loud and clear. I was even nice enough to give you a chance to delete the data you stole from us and reveal to me whatever you think you've read from it. Instead, you fuck around in our outpost in Egypt and insult my intelligence by thinking we won't even notice. Consider this your second and last ultimatum. Either you people will tell me what I want to know or I have to find out how much it takes to make that stuck up Boy Scout of yours talk."
"And what about Dazzler? You trying to host American Mutant Idol or something?" Ororo's thoughts were racing, that knot in her stomach growing when she realized there was nothing she could change about the dire situation, not right now, and not even only because Scott would never have let her hear the end of it if she started goddamn World War III over a few possible days of imprisonment of one of theirs. Especially when it was him.
"I’m pretty sure you know, one of you can’t answer that. As I said, I am not hot on intruders in my living room." For some reason, Mystique's yellow and brown eyes narrowed towards the visitor chair in the control room that was occupied with someone not even on the permanent team … A young man of whom Ororo suddenly had a pretty good idea why he had stuck around today against his usual habits of vanishing right after action.
Mystique knew damn well who had stolen this very data so important to her back then that she had just pulverized the truce between her people and the X-Men over once more an hour ago. This time, Stu wouldn’t be able to sneak into the city unseen thanks to his mixed mutant and human genes, at least not if he didn’t want to risk the life of Mystique's two prisoners … one of whom Ororo had suspected for a while now was far closer to Peter Parker's secret son than he'd ever let on.
"Care to let us in, Parker?" she asked with whatever patience she could still come up with once the com connection had been rudely cut by her conversation partner without as much as another threat that wasn’t necessary.
They all knew in how much danger beloved friends and family members were right now, and there was a good chance that very situation could have been avoided if there wasn’t so much goddamn secrecy existing between people who'd actually been friends for decades. Addressing that was obviously her job right now as it was pretty clear, from the way Logan's claws were only barely not ripping some keyboard to pieces and Katja next to Ororo was still stock still and dead silent, that her team members were worlds from the emotional distance necessary to think about how to free their missing loved ones as quickly as possible.
Ororo had rarely loathed this unloved role of a leading position she'd never seen herself in outside of emergencies more than tonight.
Stu promptly ducked his head and began to tug on the edge of his mask on his neck as if he suddenly had trouble breathing under the tight latex. "Mom didn’t want anyone to know. Peter and her … That was some drunk one-time thing back then. I don’t think either of them is proud of it."
"Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me." At least Logan finally found his tongue again, stopping in his rude movement to shoo Katja off her ass, with his thoughts probably already halfway on the way to the hangar yet before they'd even decided if that was the direction they would turn into in a minute.
Ororo was almost glad that the unexpected news distracted Logan from that ill thought through endeavor for a second, the hint of a grin curling under his thick beard as, with something between amusement and alienation, he eyed the young man next to him from head to toe. Someone who'd long started to be part of his family but had kept a lot of secrets from him, too, obviously. "So sparkly Taylor Swift really is your mother, huh? Your dad has some weird-ass taste, Spiderhead."
"Says the guy who married Phoenix," Stu answered, absent as if his thoughts, too, were in a whole different dimension, apparently trying to digest the news of Alison's kidnapping himself, and to decide how to not make things worse, again. At least this time. Ororo guessed that could be called progress or something.
Far enough gone to not wince when a casual adamantium claw tapped his kneecap, a warning growl from Logan's lips following, Stu wasn’t though.
"You wanna keep dating my daughter, Glitter Webs?"
"Shutting up, shutting up." The boy ducked his head visibly contrite and hurried to the other side of the room to silently wait for instructions.
"Where do you think you're going, Logan?"
Only when her teammate turned toward the door again, patting down his shirt for a cigar or a drink or both in a well-oiled pre mission routine, Ororo had to raise her voice a little, reaching out to her side once again when she saw Katja wince next to her, a firm, warning grip around a slender elbow making sure she wouldn’t have to stop two people at once from doing something immensely stupid.
"Let's just say I kinda stopped caring for taking orders from terrorists, Windrider."
Hardly even taking the warning nuance in her tone seriously, Logan only stopped with an unnerved look back over his shoulder when a strong gust of wind around his fist stopped his zippo from lighting his cigar. "Really?"
"I don't care what you care for. This isn’t about you."
A routine gesture back to the keyboard behind Ororo sufficed to seal the electronic door locks before her impulsive teammate could just storm off with a dismissive snort, an unimpressed brow wandering up her forehead when the well-known snikt sound of Logan's wavering self-restraint sounded through the control center next.
"What, want to try cut your way out? Be my guest. Thinking about it, that electrocution might be a good warm up for whatever you think you'll be doing once you stand outside the Field, trying to get in without anyone noticing, getting the people you're trying to save killed right before the eyes of their loved ones."
"I'll think of something when we get there," Logan growled, not retreating his claws even for an inch …
At least not until one of the people they were talking over here as if they weren’t in the room suddenly rose, and Ororo saw Logan falling silent all voluntarily in a way it hadn’t often happened since she knew him.
"You're not gonna do shit, Claws."
Ororo couldn’t shake a certain shiver creeping down her spine herself, and contrary to her darkest fears, it wasn’t anxiety over having to try to hurt a friend to protect them and their captive husband from her own temper, or a hint of worry about possible destruction from Katja's established and new-found powers raining down on this house in a bout of loss of control as it hadn’t happened for years.
Indeed, thinking about it, Ororo hadn’t even seen up the status signal from one of the conductors on the roof flashing red even once, ever since they'd had to watch on TV as one of their own had once more fallen into the hands of the enemy. Not a hint of a tremor was in Katja's hand when she used her wrist communicator to call her daughter to the IT center, cool and undisputable determination in the few syllables aimed Stu's way that commanded him to call his father on the phone, without Ororo having given Katja as much as temporary control in a crisis she was actually forbidden from taking a crucial part in for being compromised alone.
In fact, Ororo didn’t think she'd ever seen anyone less emotionally compromised who had to fear for their husband's life. Maybe this was a kind of control that years of having your emotions connected to destructive weather phenomenon earned you.
What she'd mistaken for ice-cold shock a minute ago was the crystal clear calculation of someone who'd been robbed off control far too often in her life and was no longer willing to stand and watch as it happened all over … either to her or to the people closest to her.
Ororo had rarely been prouder of her former pupil.
With the same dejected but composed calmness, Katja nodded Saskia close who must have been waiting right behind the door as so often, entering only a second later, and motioned for Stu to mirror the video call with his father to one of the monitors in the wall that they could all see from where they stood.
"It's my family, and Stu's, who has to make the choice of how to save our people. Anyone's got a problem with that, you're welcome to file your complaint with our leader if we happen to get him back alive."
Even the gentle touch on her daughter's hand when a visibly upset Saskia next to her trembled at this sadly very possible reality that this exactly wouldn’t be the case, came without looking, without a second of distraction from a situation that allowed no delay, not even for comfort.
Only the energy that maybe only the rage of heaven could give.
"Until then, I suggest anyone who doesn’t want to get fried by accident get the fuck out of my way."
"You know you're pretty hot when you're pissed, Kitten," Logan grunted after a second of stunned silence in the room, with a lopsided grin and a very appreciative eye-roll his teammate's way, finally lighting his cigar before leaning back against one of the monitor towers, at least no longer looking like he'd just burst through the door by force if necessary.
"Any more cavemen commentary?" a voice from said secure new video com line to New York above their heads asked dryly. "Otherwise, if the weather-witches in the room don’t mind, I have a few specifications from the city defenses for you guys that might help getting through the Field without anyone having to electrocute their balls off in the process."
Ororo signaled a visibly mortified Stu, burying his masked face in his hands with a suffering groan, with a soothing gesture that it was alright, that in a house living with a amnesic feral with the world's worst manners, there was no need to apologize for a slightly rude-leaning parent, and then turned her attention to the latest crisis.