Molotov Heart {Alex Summers | X-Men}

21. opia.

when you s m i l e you knock me out
i fall a p a r t

“I know her.” Moira’s mind is a mess of newly sharp memories, jagged fragments that feel both half remembered and brand new simultaneously. There’s no-one else around her to focus on from what she now knows is her past, Raven, Charles and Erik have all joined Hank in the cockpit for what she assumes is the world’s most awkward family reunion, since after Cuba, Erik went on to be a mass murderer, Raven a terrorist, while the other two simply started a school.

Instead, she’s left with a bunch of children, with a girl who can tear apart gods and a boy who can disappear at will, the others she’s less worried out. Ororo – one of the former horsemen – seems rather subdued, sitting on her hands and alternating starry-eyed looks between both Jean and Raven. Scott’s seated himself by Aoibheal’s ankles, glaring at anyone who dared go near her, a fierce protector rivalled only by Peter, who cradles the girl’s head in his lap.

«You did.» It takes a moment for the agent to realise that it was Jean in her mind, but by the time she’s realised, the teen is watching her with interest. Jean’s eyes are bright despite her exertions of the day, curious and watchful where the others are simply exhausted, she is powerful and wonderful and Moira can’t bring herself to be afraid, not like she knows Jean would expect. At that, the girl is smiling almost bashfully, apologising quietly for intruding without asking; the agent’s mind isn’t nearly as loud as Aoibheal’s, but the sudden influx of memories had caught Jean attention.

It’s Jean who asks, rather than Moira who invites, but  in the wake of the Apocalypse, Jean learns what really happened in Cuba.

-

Hank took the shot, and it's all he can think about.

Hank is eighteen and this child looks at him with stars in her eyes as he talks about his mutation, calls him cool, asks how long it is until something like that happens to her. He took the shot.
Hank is twenty-six and he’s putting Aoibheal in pain to test the limits of her mutation time and again; she tells him only once that she can feel everything the clones do, can feel every explosion as if she’s the one being torn apart, but she refuses to stop the tests. He asks why, she tells him she’s not doing it for herself, she’s doing it because he asks. He took the shot.
Hank is twenty-eight and Aoibheal('s clone), all of seventeen years old, is standing between him and the Sentinel as it fires at him; she doesn't flinch as she's filled the plastic projectiles, just smiles, moves closer, and blows the creation sky high; she had his back, like always. He took the shot.

Hank is thirty-something and every time Aoibheal sees him, her eyes light up, because he's her best friend, and she is his. She stayed at the mansion for him and Charles, came back to the mansion for him and Charles, and now she teaches, she lets her life be stagnant in all the ways he knows she hates, because they're family. He loves her for it; she's always been there for him. He took the shot.

Hank is still thirty-something, and his baby sister is lying in a hospital bed with an uneven heartbeat and more broken bones than years in her life, because he took the shot.

-

Raven doesn't spend a lot of time around Aoibheal's bedside, can barely bring herself to look at the girl when she is; her mind is stuck in a way none of the others really are, fixated on the image of Aoibheal as a child, clinging to Raven and the other mutants like lifelines. Sometimes she can barely seen how much Aoibheal’s changed for her memories, and those are the times Charles finds himself dragging her away to discuss the X-Men’s training routines. Even if they both know what he’s doing, she doesn’t call him out on it.
“I saw Sean’s autopsy file.” It’s the only thing she could think of to say, staring down at the pale girl in the bed, Hank checking her heartbeat and revealing the faded scarring across the ginger’s chest. Fingers hove just above a particularly raised scar that stretches the length of her chest, just beneath her collar bones and Raven has to swallow a lump in her throat at the sudden memory of an identical scar on display in Sean’s autopsy report photos, glossy if not for the fire damage around the edge.