Quicksilver (X-men) One shots

Confined

It was a normal Tuesday afternoon when Peter walked down the hall to go to the danger room for some training. A few weeks ago Isabel and he had run into each other when they were doing hand to hand combat training. They both decided it would be more productive to practice with a partner, and had been training together, once a week, ever since.

As Peter walked to the closest elevator going down to the basement, he walked past Isabel reading a very used copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird".

'Hey, what are you doing reading a book. It's training time.'

Isabel looked up from her book at Peter, and then at her watch. 'Oops.' She closed the book and stood up. I'll be back in 10 minutes.

Peter jokingly rolled his eyes and sighed over dramatically as Isabel walked up the stairs. When she returned 10 minutes later, in training gear, Peter was leaning against the wall with some bottles of water in his hands.

'I thought we were out of water bottles?' She looked somewhat confused.

'Oh, yeah, I ran to the store while you were upstairs.'

Isabel laughed and rolled her eyes. 'Alright, let's go slowpoke.'

Peter had gotten used to Isabel calling him slowpoke, and even liked it somewhat. He had been called many names while he was growing up, but they were always meant to do damage. Isabel calling him slowpoke, however, was always done in the way a parent would call you silly. There was an affection in it, which only made Peter sure that she considered him a friend. And everyone in that mansion knew that mutants rarely had close friends out in the real world, and therefore that every friend you made was something to hold on to.

As they went down to the basement and walked the clean cut grey hallways, brightened by white light, they heard noises coming from behind the doors of Hank's lab. They looked from the door to each other.

'Sounds like he is experimenting with stuff again.' Isabel stated.

'Yup, so let's stay far away from there.' Peter answered and walked passed it towards the door of the danger room, placed at the end of a hallway.

Isabel followed him and they quickly started their training.

They walked out the door of the danger room about an hour later, tired, but laughing at the jokes and stories they were telling. As the door of the danger room closed behind them, they heard the soft sound of hank yelling "no" from behind the doors. Before the look of confusion had fully set in Peter and Isabel's faces, the left wall in front of them -which divided Hank's lab from the hallway- exploded with a loud crash. Peter and Isabel ducked, but were still blown back a few feet by the blast. When the dust settled in a few minutes later a wall of rubble had appeared in front of them, separating them from the hallway system below the mansion. They were stuck.

'Great.' Isabel muttered.

Peter walked towards the wall of rubble and tried to move it, but it wouldn't budge. Even his super speed didn't make a dent.

'It looks like we're not getting out of here anytime soon.' He muttered as he turned around. 'Iz... did you hit your head in the blast?'

'Yeah... why?' Isabel asked

Peter pointed to her forehead. 'You're bleeding.'

Isabel tried to look up at her forehead and sighed. 'Great, again.' She gently pressed the towel she took with her to the wound and flinched slightly.

'You alright?'

She nodded. 'I will be. Though it would be great if we could find a way out of here...'

'I know... But I guess Hank knows the wall exploded, taken that he probably caused the explosion.' Peter stated somewhat optimistically.

Isabel did not share his sentiment. 'And you don't think that that blast knocked him unconscious if it took out the whole wall?!'

Peter's smile faded slightly and he sat down next to Isabel, leaning back against the wall. 'Pessimist.' He muttered, receiving a glare from his friend. 'Well, with that loud an explosion, I'm sure the people upstairs know something happened and will come to help us soon.'

'Yeah, probably.' Isabel answered, her voice slightly shaky.

'Everything okay?'

'I don't do well with small spaces. Kind of claustrophobic.'

Peter looked at her with confusion. 'I didn't notice that when we were captured by Striker...'

'General fear of dying and stuff tends to overpower things like claustrophobia.' She chuckled slightly. 'I did my best not to show any fear at all, figured it would only give satisfaction to the guards there.'

Peter nodded. 'It probably would.' He looked at the ceiling. 'What did you parents do to you Isabel?' He looked at her again and saw the puzzled look on her face. 'You once said you were used to nightmares because of your parents' abuse... What did they do to you?'

Isabel sighed. 'The usual I guess. They didn't like me being a mutant, and I guess at first it just meant no more hugs, harsher words and being ignored, but that was fine since my brother was around. He was a lot older and always took care of me. But he was sent out to Vietnam for the war.' She chuckled humorlessly. 'It was only about a year or so before the war ended when he was sent out, but he never made it back. Killed in the line of duty...' She sighed and blinked away some tears. 'I lost the only person who was able to protect me from my parent's hatred, my dad lost his sobriety.' Although she tried to hide it, Peter could hear the tremble in Isabel's voice as she spoke of the heartaches of her childhood. 'With Noah gone and my dad being drunk all the time, there was nothing stopping him from beating me up, pretty much every single day. Sometimes he would still have the bottle in his hand and used it as a bat, sometimes he had broken it against the wall and I'd have cuts instead of bruises.'

'That's awful, Izzie. How, how can you be so calm about it?!'

Isabel looked at him with barely any emotion in her eyes and shrugged.

'What else can I do Peter? Being angry at the world or at him won't help me. Being angry all the time won't make me happy, so why bother? And I won't resort to violence and hurt him because it will make me just as bad as he was... All I can do is accept what happened and move on. Find my own happiness.'

Peter took her hand in his. 'You won't have to do it all alone now anymore. We're a family here, and we'll stand with you.'

Isabel smiled 'Thanks for being my friend, Peter, it means a lot.'

Their attention was pulled away when Kurt appeared in front of them. 'Hi guys.'

'Kurt!' Peter yelled excitedly. 'I have never been so happy to see you, man.'

Kurt walked forward. 'Thanks, I think. Now if you all hold on to me, I'll get us out.

Peter and Isabel took Kurt's hands and within a second they were on the other side of the wall.

Hank quickly took Isabel to the infirmary to take care of her wound, apologizing multiple times for the damage he had caused. Erik quickly hugged Peter, relieved that he was okay. But before the two of them were pulled apart by the others, they looked at each other and smiled. They finally had found true friendship at the mansion, and Peter was right, they were like a family.