Molotov Heart {Alex Summers | X-Men}

5. liberosis.

t r u s t that I'm being t r u e
and do it for the people who l o v e you

Hank and Charles take it upon themselves to explain Erik's situation to Logan, Aoibheal content with flitting around the room, gathering maps and blueprints that Charles had meticulously filed away in the desk draw he reserved especially for reminders of Erik, and had subsequently lost the key to. Offering her skills and abilities, she remained quiet for most of their prison break planning, trying to fix Charles's desk, where she had accidentally ripped off a corner when she tried to open it. Her attention had drifted, and it was an annoyed Charles who told her not to both with it, to pack for a few days as they needed to drive to Washington to find one M. Maximoff.

"Well, we're after Peter, but this M Maximoff is the only one in the phone book." Logan folds himself into the front seat between Charles and Hank, grumbling to a mildly curious Aoibheal. "It's not a common last name." He adds it almost as an afterthought, while Aoibheal hums distractedly and sprawls out across the back seat, letting her eyes drift closed.

Shouting her brother's name as she wakes nearly causes Hank to swerve sideways into a ditch, but Logan grabs the wheel while Aoibheal claps a hand to her mouth, and tries not to think of feeling of falling asleep in the back of her brother's caravan. Making sad faces, she perches her head on the seat back between Charles and Logan, Charles stroking her hair begrudgingly as she makes faint whining sounds until they get to a hotel that looked clean, but discrete enough that they wouldn't ask questions. Even so, it's Hank who they elect to go in and book the rooms, Aoibheal trying to scurry in relatively undetected, the other two glowering at everyone until no-one wanted to watch them.

The room for four people comes with two double beds; Logan announces that he's not sharing as soon as he dumps his bag onto one of the beds in clear ownership. Hank diplomatically takes the sofa, while Charles goes through the mini fridge and comes back with peanuts and Twinkies for he and Aoibheal to share as they watch the news together.

Aoibheal's pretty sure she hasn't had a full night's sleep since Sean's death, and this night is no exception. Flushed with terror, she bolts awake in the dead of night in a cold sweat, breathing hard. It's with great difficulty that her eyes begin to focus on the cheap hotel room around her, rather than the picture of her brother's corpse, and when she looks around, it's not 'doctors' who are watching her, but Logan, expression both bitter and contemplative. Aoibheal finds herself wanting to roll her eyes, having been through this whole debacle with both Charles and Hank when she had first moved back in with them. She lets herself flop back, wriggling onto her side to face Charles, who opens one bleary eye and gives her a small, sleepy smile; it's disarmingly kind, and for a moment, she lets herself relax.

"I don't want to talk about it." Voice soft as she still addresses Logan, she allows a half-aware Charles to tuck a strand of loose hair behind her ear, smiling fondly as he pets her cheek.

"Good. I don't wanna hear about it." There's a note of derision in Logan's voice that she doesn't like, frown on her face despite herself, only half watching as Charles tucks his arm close to his chest on rolls so he's facing away from her. Lightly touching Charles's shoulder in thanks, she merely gets a barely coherent hum of acknowledgement in return, and hopes for sleep to dissipate the bitter silence now hanging about.

Though neither she nor Logan manages to get much more sleep, neither will admit it, Aoibheal still manages to feel refreshed by the next morning, almost managing a laugh at Hank's awful pun over their coffees. Even with everything that's happened, everything he's gone through, Hank still manages to smile without bitterness, still wants to smile without bitterness, something which Aoibheal finds herself envying. He'd always been honest with her, stopped treating her with kid gloves after realising that she was no longer a little kid, and though he doesn't know the full extent of what happened - doesn't know she'd seen it all, lived it all - he knows enough about what happened to Sean to comfort her, help her through her panic attacks where Charles never could. He's not her brother, not technically, but it's as close as she's got now.

Charles himself isn't nearly so chipper, while Logan is downright sullen, and the two drink their coffees in mutual, bitter silence. Looking between the four, the waitress's expression is strange, almost accusatory, her smile thin-lipped and slightly worried as she turns it on Aoibheal, raising an eyebrow.

"My aunt's getting married next week," the teen lied through her teeth with a grin, "dad said we should drive up to support her, but apparently everyone else in the family had the same idea." It's with a faint laugh that Aoibheal looks across the table to where Charles is tipping something from a flask into his coffee and Hank scowls at a bunch of papers clearly ripped from a telephone book

"They're family friends." Logan growled by way of explanation, somehow the only normal adult present at the table. The waitress's smile eases and she wishes them all luck, taking their orders and refilling Aoibheal's coffee. As soon as she was gone, Charles looked pointedly at the girl over the lip of his drink.

"I don't want people calling social services on us." Aoibheal said with a shrug, snatching Charles's flask from the table and emptying the remains into her own coffee. Charles actually smiles at that, even if it was only a little one, and he'll probably deny it if she accused him off such a thing.

The Maximoff home was a quaint suburban one, with a lush green garden and large, shiny windows. It's almost nauseatingly normal, but Aoibheal's heart is in her throat for reasons she can't quite articulate. She lets the men lead, eyes wide as saucers as she fights the urge to lie on the sun-warmed path. The Xavier mansion is nothing but gravel or marble, but these stones are cemented into place, smooth and warm with little blades of grass peaking through the cracks; she sort of wants to cry, but she's also not sure why. Logan's the one who knocks, Aoibheal with her hand on the wall, fingers fanning out against the rough, red bricks, and Charles gives her a Look when a woman opens the door, looking almost expectantly at them.

"What's he done now?" There's an air of resignation to her words, she looks defeated. "I'll just write you a check for whatever he took and -" Aoibheal's expression is one of shock and she's glad the woman can't see it; this kid, Peter, he's a mutant, not a saint, she shouldn't be surprised.

"We just need to talk to him." Surprisingly enough, Logan actually smiles at the woman, as do the rest of them, the men trying to be as unintimidating as they possibly could in order to raise the least amount of suspicion. The woman lets them in and Aoibheal thinks that suspicion is probably a common occurrence in this household.

"Peter, the cops are here..." Case and point, the woman punctuates her sentence with a sigh. "Again." Aoibheal finds herself fascinated with the mundanity of the place, the walls lined with children's drawings and family photos, Beatles music filters down from the second story. However, it's the scorch marks and heavy weathering on the floorboards leading down to the basement that really catch her interest.

The basement itself is more like a homage to the seventies themselves, rock music filtering from a nearby record player, posters tacked to every inch of the wall that boxes of snacks hadn't been pushed against. The sofa looks like it's a hundred years old, but there's a TV, a video game cabinet and a ping pong table all stashed in the one room; she may have grown up in a mansion, but this seemed like luxury. So enraptured by the room as a whole, she hadn't even wondered where the slight breeze was coming from until she noticed a silver-ish blur playing ping pong.

"What do you guys want?" The blur demands, and by the voice alone, Aoibheal is about ninety percent sure it's a human, and also probably a guy. "I didn't do anything." He covers quickly, and her suspicions are confirmed as the ping pong ball drops to the table and the boy, the mutant, is suddenly behind them, sprawled out across the sofa, looking up at them with wide, dark eyes.

"Just... relax, Peter, we're not cops." Logan growled, all but rolling his eyes. Aoibheal actually finds herself surprised to realise that Peter's probably around her age; she had been expecting another adult.

"Of course you're not cops, if you were cops, you wouldn't be driving a rental car." Talking at a mile a minute, Peter gives them a moment to think, looking each of them over in turn. Aoibheal finds herself smiling at him when he gets to her, and though he doesn't smile back, he tips his head to the side in consideration.

"How'd you know we were driving a rental car?" Charles, both wary and perplexed in equal measure, scowls at Peter, who seems not to be paying them much attention, even though he clearly is, since he responds to Charles's question with ease.

"I checked your registration as you were walking through the door." There's the barest moment of pause before he barrels on. "Also I had some time to kill so I went through your rental agreement and saw you were from out of town: are you FBI?" Not waiting for an answer, he's gone in a flash; Aoibheal feels the barest of pressure against her jeans pockets before she looks up and sees Peter going through Charles's wallet. "No, not FBI. Hey what's with this 'gifted youngsters' place?" Letting the wallet drop, he's off once more, and Aoibheal finds herself going through her own pockets out of suspicion.

"That's an..." Charles surges forward to pick up the wallet again, look of something akin to guilt on his face as he stuffs it back in his own pocket, mumbling, "...old card."

"He's fascinating." Hank enthused with a grin, looking not to the Professor and his near-permanent scowl, but to Aoibheal, who was nodding in earnest agreement, despite the fact that she's pretty sure Peter stole a quarter from her pocket. Somehow.

"He's a pain in the ass." Charles turned on Hank, glaring up at the younger man, who still towered over him.

"What- a teleporter?" Hank asked, genuinely curious and ignoring the Professor as he goes to Logan for information. Aoibheal's not entirely sure where Peter himself is, but she makes her way to the game cabinet with the word 'Pong' emblazoned on the side.

"No, he's just fast." Logan's sigh is audible, even without visual confirmation, but Aoibheal finds herself preoccupied with the modified game that moves faster than she can see and has her feeling nauseous after barely a moment. "And when I knew him he wasn't so... young." Logan grimaces, making at face at Aoibheal who spun around on the seat, trying to clear her head.

"Young?" It's Peter's voice again, this time from behind them. Aoibheal's the only one facing the right way, enough to see him finishing off an iceblock that hadn't even been the room until that moment. "You're just old." He looks back to Logan before dipping his head in concession. "Mostly." He can't help but smirk at the woozy expression Aoibheal's wearing after trying to play his machine.

"You're not afraid to show your powers." The way Hank marvels at him has Peter back to focusing on the adults, raising an eyebrow.

"Powers? What powers? What are you talking about?" Dead serious, he looks at them all in confusion, as if he hadn't been zooming around the room just minutes ago. "You see anything strange here?" His voice gained a knowing, menacing edge to it. "Nothing anybody would believe if you told them." Staring down Hank and Logan, Peter misses the eye roll Charles shares with Aoibheal, who presses her hand to her mouth to keep from giggling. Peter, however, gives up whatever he was trying to achieve with that threat, and Aoibheal suddenly finds herself by Charles's side, stomach lurching while Peter's seated at the video game and playing it without problem. "So who are you and what do you want?" He asked.

"We want your help, Peter." Logan told him, as Charles and Aoibheal shared confused looks, Aoibheal leaning on Charles as her stomach lurched uncomfortably from the sudden movement.

"With what?" Peter asked, barely paying them any attention.

"To break into a highly secured facility... and get someone out." Logan explained, hands on his hips. Aoibheal found herself leaning her head on Charles's shoulder more out of habit than anything else, watching Peter's reflection in the game screen, marvelling at how he split his attention before reminding herself that what she did was much harder than playing video games and talking simultaneously.

"Prison break? That's illegal you know." Peter was smirking, an expression Aoibheal found surprisingly attractive, considering how irritating he was being. His statement causes a collective reassessment of the room, taking in the boxes upon boxes of snacks, TVs, radios and game devices all still with the tags on them that he clearly didn't pay for.

"Only if you get caught." Logan tells him, and Aoibheal is relieved to realise just how little convincing Peter would take.

"So what's in it for me?" With Peter's mind still half on the game, Charles finds himself getting annoyed at the lack of respect, not that he'd done anything to earn it, but it was the principle of the matter.

"You, you kleptomaniac," Charles's voice drops to a mutter, taking off his glasses with a sigh to rub at his eyes, "get to break into the Pentagon." Peter stops. For the first time since they arrived, he truly stops, stops running, stops playing stops speaking, to simply turn in his chair and regard them with interest, despite his better judgement.

"How do I know I can trust you?" His question is uncharacteristically soft, and it's Aoibheal who finds herself taking a step forward.

"Because we're just like you." Her expression is hard, but not unkind, and Peter simply raises an eyebrow at her. Aoibheal straightens her spine, squares her shoulders, and meets his challenging gaze with her own, missing both Hank and Charles's fond half-smiles.

"Show him." Charles urged, and she didn't waste the opportunity, refusing to falter as a clone appeared beside her. The clone allows herself a small smile, even as she crosses her arms and cocks her hip, another three clones fanning out behind them, each mirroring one of the two in front, standing in the gaps between the adults. Peter is suddenly nose to nose with one of the clones, the five Aoibheals flinching back on instinct, letting the clones disappear in a puff of smoke until the original was the only one left.

"Cool." And he gave her the most genuine smile in response. Just like that he agreed to go, packing an overnight back and racing up the stairs before any of the others had time to blink. There's a little girl in a princess's outfit at the top of the stairs, clinging to the hem of Peter's shirt and looking at him with sad, brown eyes, telling him to be safe. Peter scoops the little girl up as he tells her that he'll be back before she knows it, and spins her around in a hug as the little girl giggles. Hank moves without thinking, steering Aoibheal outside with her breathing growing short and her heart hammering against her ribs. The little girl, Peter's sister, was about the same age as Aoibheal when Charles had taken her in, maybe even a few months older, but all she can think of is how much she misses her brother, and how helpless she felt being that small. Hank's by her side, rubbing her back supportively, arguing over his shoulder with Charles on the best way to the hotel. When she rights herself, she thanks Hank and slides into the back seat beside Peter, trying to pretend as though nothing happened. He doesn't ask. She's pretty sure he didn't even notice.