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"Congratulations, you're rescued. Try not to move too much, I don't know how to get these off myself. We'll have to wait." Pietro smiles at the girl on the lab table in what he hopes is a calming smile.
The girl keeps staring at him like she just saw a ghost.
Pietro is well aware that his speed is oftentimes bothersome to people - especially when they can't hear him coming - but the girl was a mutant too. She should be used to weirder things. Especially in here, in Trask Industries labs.
"I'm Peter Maximoff." He introduces himself. "What's your name?"
The girl blinks. There's the same fearful recognition in her eyes that Pietro is almost used to when he tells people his name. But she looked very suspicious when she first saw him anyway. His face has been all over the news for the past thirty years, nonconsecutively. "I'm... Rogue. Are you really here?" She's hyperventilating.
"Yeah, I'm really here and soon we'll get those restraints off you, okay? You're safe now." Pietro wasn't great at comforting people, but he tried his best. He had no patience for annoying whining and crying. Least of all for himself. The only one he could tolerate it with were kids.
He checks his watch. Erik certainly was taking his time today. Pietro didn't know what he was doing to those scientists and soldiers and didn't particularly care, even as he heard the screams. As long as he didn't have to commit those atrocities himself, he was fine with his father's handiwork. Well, not fine. But at least he didn't have to face it.
The girl still seems panicked. He can't blame her, the whole lab surroundings is making him more jittery than usually as well. And she's there with a known criminal. He pushes that feeling down and looks around for something important instead. "Just a moment, he'll be here soon."
Rogue looks at him in fear. "Who?"
Before Pietro can answer, the door fly open. Erik comes in, dramatic as ever.
"You sure took your sweet time." Pietro complains, but he's not that bothered. He puts the file they have on Rogue on the desk for Erik to read. He had a stronger stomach regarding these things.
The girl scrambles back, terrified. She's staring at Erik like he's there personally to kill her. "You!" She bursts into tears.
Pietro zips over to her side. "Calm down, he's not gonna hurt you." He tries to stop her from pulling on the cuffs but it doesn't do much help. "A little help here?" He snaps at Erik.
Erik undoes the cuffs with a flick of his fingers. The girl backs away immediately. "Stay back!" She seems absolutely hysterical.
It wouldn't be the first time they've gotten a bad reaction from a mutant who they were saving. Never this extreme tho.
"Do you know her?" Pietro asks. Her crying is starting to get on his nerves.
"She was Charles' student." Erik answers calmly. Too calmly. There's definitely something more behind that but Pietro can question him when he gets the crying wreck out of his hands.
"You're safe." He tells the girl again. "Rogue, we're not gonna hurt you."
She shakes her head and keeps crying. "Don't let him come closer!"
Pietro presses his lips together. "Okay, I won't. You don't have to cry. It's fine, you're safe." He regrets that he doesn't have a Walkman anymore. Or food. It would be a good distraction.
Rogue keeps sobbing her hear out and Pietro is losing patience. "Can you stop it? Nobody's gonna hurt you anymore." For some reason that doesn't calm her down.
"We better move it." Pietro sighs. "I'll take her." Maybe she'll calm down when she doesn't have to see Erik anymore. Even if not, she'll be someone else's problem.
"Don't touch her skin." Erik warns him.
Poisonous mutant? He never met one of those. Just to be sure, he puts on gloves before he runs with her to the plane. There he hands the girl over to Pyro, who exclaimes in surprise. "Rogue?"
"You two know each other. Great. Make sure to keep her far away from the cockpit, Sparky." Pietro pats the girl's shoulder. "And don't touch her!"
He leaves the two to catch up and goes back to Erik. "I think she was the last one. Anyone else?"
Erik is reading the girl's reports. Despite the fact that he's doing this often, he seems a little pale. Particularly nasty stuff then. "We've come too late. They've already implemented her DNA into the Sentinels."
Pietro frowns. "They do that with everyone. What's her mutation?" So far the Sentinels could only shoot fire or bullets, but they were evolving.
"Power and life force absorption." Erik flips through the pages. "It will now be easier than ever for the Sentinels to adapt."
Pietro shakes off the thought of fighting a Sentinel who could move as fast as him. That was a terrifying thought. "Is there anything we can do?" It wasn't just superspeed. Was it possible to absorb teleportation? Phasing? He was oddly grateful that Madrox kicked the bucket two years ago. Literally.
"I'm afraid there isn't, my boy. We came too late."
"Don't call me your boy." Pietro snaps again. He doesn't mean to, but he's angry at his failure. He didn't like the word late. He could outrun a bullet, how could he ever be too late? Yet he was, so often.
Back at the base, Pietro sits down with his food by Erik's feet. "So where do you know Rogue from? She seemed to know you." That was an understatement of the century.
Erik stares off into the distance for a while. Pietro frowns and looks up at him. "Can you hear me? I asked where you know her from." He wants to poke him with the fork but it melts in his hand. He takes a spoon instead.
"She's the mutant I used in New York." Erik's voice is impassive.
New York, what the hell happened in New York? "Your little fiasco with the mutant beam." Pietro muses. He only saw some news on the TV. "What do you mean by used? Manipulated?" He asks in concern.
"The machine would have killed me." Erik says impassively. "I gave her my powers and made her use it."
Pietro scoffs scornfully. Magneto could be absolutely impossible. "I thought you were all for risking your life for the betterment of mutant lives."
Erik presses his lips together, not rising to the challenge. "I would have if there was no other choice. But I found it unnecessary."
"Unnecessary." Pietro repeats slowly. His lips twist in disgust. "I have no doubt that you would have gladly given your life for any mutant back then." Then he snaps his fingers. "Oh, wait. What was it that Pyro said? Pawns go first? I wonder where he learnt that."
"You have never understood my intentions, Pietro."
Magneto could be quite the monster. Pietro could understand the necessity of violent retribution for the correct cause, but Erik's frequent attempts to break the fragile peace between humans and mutants brought mainly grief. "On that much we agree."
He takes a bite of his food. "How old was the girl anyway? She looks like a kid." It should surprise him but doesn't.
"I wasn't wasting time checking her identification, Pietro. All I know is that she was a student." Erik tries to brush him off.
"Student. So you were going to turn a bunch of people into mutants while murdering a teenager." He rubs his face with his hand. "Fuck, and you wondered why I never joined you."
"A war demands its sacrifices. That is another thing you have never understood."
"Shoot me if I ever will." He snaps, not entirely joking. He puts his plate away, suddenly losing his appetite. It's not like he didn't know what a monster his father was. Everyone threw it in his face.
But to see it even now, especially when Erik's words prove true.... Is nauseating. Erik was right in one thing, war with humans have always been imminent.
"I should have looked for her a long time ago. If she were dead, they couldn't use her genes. I didn't take that into consideration."
Murders were never pretty, not even the deserved ones. He still felt a little sick when he hurt one of their own, even in retribution. Nevertheless, he can see the sense in this. It disgusts him. "For fucks sake, do you ever hear yourself? Shut up."
"My apologies."
"That's not shutting the fuck up now, is it?" Pietro asks pointedly.
Erik responds with petulant silence. Pietro rubs his face again. "I'm going for a run. Don't know when I'll be back." Ruining himself would be better than trashing the room, which was an impulse that kept growing in him.
He runs before Erik can object, lapping around the base a few thousand times. When he's properly spend, he drops to the floor. "Shit." He sighs. He'll have to get new shoes. These ones are already charred.
"Bad day?" Pyro asks with a smirk from the bench he's sitting at.
Pietro rolls his eyes. "Bad life." He doesn't get into it. Pyro was all about Erik's ideology, it wasn't worth the fight.
"Care for a drink?" Pyro offers him the whole bottle.
Pietro doesn't take it. "It's a waste on me."
"Is this a sudden moment of realisation or do you have an actual reason? Not that I would want to disagree with you." Pyro sits down next to him and drinks.
"I burn through heroin in a couple minutes. Alcohol won't do shit to me." One of the many drawbacks of superspeed, as he painfully learned when he tried to forget.
"Damm, that sucks." Pyro takes another sip.
Only now Pietro realises why he's drinking so heavily. "You looked through her file?"
Pyro nods. "Nasty stuff." He drinks yet again.
Pietro is only a little jealous that Pyro can numb his senses with alcohol. It does seem addictive. "Do you know her?"
"Magneto didn't tell you? We used to be friends. Well....Schoolmates."
Pietro nods. The question "Did you know Erik almost murdered her?" burns on his tongue, but stays there. He also isn't sure he could stay calm if Pyro said yes.
"Sorry about that."
Pyro shrugs. "There's nothing we can do. She's safe now, we'll give her to the Professor as soon as we can."
"Did someone check her?"
"What do I look, stupid-?"
"Yes." Pietro interrupts him.
"-of course I checked her. She'll be okay. Asshole."
"Just try to keep her away from Erik. She freaked out back there, I'm not dealing with that again."
Pyro takes another gulp and promptly coughs.
"Is the file that bad, really?" He wonders a little what was in the file that everyone seemed so shaken today.
"It's not just what happened to her. It's about what will happen to us now. Sentinels will now be able to drain our abilities without a bunch of scientists working on it for months. They just need the DNA now."
Pietro suddenly feels cold in the warm evening. Could they absorb superspeed? "So a single cut is enough." He says grimly.
"What a positive future ahead of us." Pyro says just as grimly. "Shit, shame we don't have the heroin."
"Tell me about it." Pietro mumbles.
When Pietro returns back into the room, Erik is asleep. He sits down at the foot of the bed, for a moment just studying his face.
How much longer would he be able to protect him? He wasn't slowing down, his enhanced healing kept him fresh, but he feared Sentinels evolution. Maybe he should ask someone smart if Sentinels could get his power. If yes, it would be the end of them. Nobody could outrun him.
He rests his head on the side of the bed, looking at the ceiling. Was there still a chance for them?