ax_main | Illyana and Billy

After trying to console Kitty, Billy hunts down Illyana at the Brotherhood base. It goes well - until it doesn't.

“BringmetoYana.BringmetoYana.BringmetoYana!” Billy let the anger and hurt move through him as well as his magic and he grit his teeth as his vision was consumed by blue. He had just finished talking to Kitty, the memory of her brown eyes red rimmed and filled with tears still had him clenching his fists as he disappeared from school.

Kitty's eyes weren't the only ones that were red and puffy, but Illyana was doing her best to ignore that as she refolded her clothes and put them into the dresser drawers in the room she was now sharing with Pyro. She caught the flash of blue light out of the corner of her eye and turned, bracing herself. Given that Billy hadn't just replied to her text, and how long it had taken before he appeared, Kitty'd already told him. She had a feeling this wasn't going to go well.

"Hey," she said in greeting.

He reappeared in an unfamiliar room, but he could only guess where he was as he looked up at her voice. His anger stalled for a minute when he got a look at her face, cheeks and eyes red, not at all the picture he had expected. He took a deep breath and took a step towards her, yelling wouldn’t help right now. “What is going on, Yana? What are you doing?”

"Joining the Brotherhood. I'm guessing Kitty told you that already." lllyana put her leggings into the open drawer and closed it. At least he wasn't yelling. It was better than she'd expected.

“But,” Billy moved a little closer, trying to reign in all the questions he wanted to shout and beg her not to. “Why? Did we do something or-?”

"What?" Illyana turned to look at him, obviously confused. "No. Why would you think that?"

“Cause this seems so...sudden?” Billy tried to explain. Yana had always been close to joining them he was pretty sure, but why when the BRotherhood has fucked up the worst was she suddenly itching to jump ship. “What made you suddenly want to join them?”

"Because..." Illyana paused for a moment to think about it, then shrugged. "Because I sat there, watching the building collapse on TV and not knowing whether or not Pyro was even alive, I guess?" She pushed her hand back through her hair and met Billy's eyes, hoping he'd understand. "Except it was replayed footage, not live. It'd all happened already, and I didn't even know they were going, because we'd agreed way back, we didn't talk team stuff. And then Lance didn't want me there," she gave Billy a look, because as family, he'd gotten to stay, "and I went back and listened to everyone blowing fits about what had happened, and hardly anyone even wondering whether or not any of the Brotherhood had been hurt, or wondering if the news had even gotten it right. And I.3..I can't deal with that anymore. I don't get it, and honestly, I'm not even sure I want to. So."

Billy was not about to feel guilty for being able to stay and see Wanda and Pitreo, but he did get how it would feel if he had been forced out. “Okay, I get the worrying thing and then hearing people bad mouth them, I have to really hold my temper cause if Wanda and everything...but...”

But did she really have to leave in order to do this?

“Why can’t you just be with us still? If you leave then...Kitty has no roommate and I lose my magic partner.” He felt tears starting to string his eyes and he did not want to start crying like an idiot in front of her. “You could still come back...”

"It's not like I won't be back for classes after Spring Break," Illyana pointed out quietly. This was harder - way harder - than Kitty's arguments, and she stepped closer and reached out to rest her hand on Billy's shoulder. "And you're in and out of here anyway, it's not like you're losing me. Or, y'know, you could stay." She gave him a hopeful look. "I know Wanda's invited you."

“Stay?” Billy repeated quietly and thought about it only for a second before shaking his head. Even if the Brotherhood has Wanda and Pietro, he couldn’t leave Tommy, Teddy and all his other friends back at school. “I like Xavier’s Yana. They are my family, just like you are.”

He reached up to take hold of her hand that was on his shoulder and held it. “The Brotherhood does a lot of dangerous stuff, reckless too, I don’t want to have to worry about your life along with the others. If something happened to you what would I even do?”

"Show up and do healing spells, hopefully." Illyana smiled a little and turned her hand to squeeze his. "And let's face it - doesn't doing reckless, dangerous stuff sound like it's perfect for me? Honestly? I mean, I do that anyway - at least here, it's for a cause."

“But, You could have done it on the X-Force. It’s teally starting to get going and I don’t know. I was looking forward to doing a mission with you outside of Limbo.” Billy looked down at the floor, wondering when he’d become so pathetic sounding but it was true.

"So? We can do that. I mean, Tommy does it with Alex and Fatale," Illyana pointed out practically. "They went and blew up a whole base in Arizona." She smiled crookedly. "Besides, I never joined X-Force. Half of them hate me."

“You’re not coming back...are you?” Her smile made this worse. They could both teleport, so distance wasn’t an issue, but knowing that she wasn’t right there with them, with him, made his heart beat painfully. “People are going to be upset about it...I mean, the brotherhood hasn’t exactly painted a great picture for all of us right now. Even if they didn’t mean to do it.”

"People are going to say 'I knew she'd do it eventually'," Illyana corrected. "Hell, Tamara'll probably throw a party. But no, I'm not coming back. Not to stay." She squeezed his hand again. "Which doesn't mean movie night's cancelled, so warn Teddy he's not getting rid of me that easy. Unless you want to cancel it, I mean." After all, she was pretty sure Kitty never wanted to see her again. Billy might decide he didn't, too.

“Cancel it?” No, he wouldn’t want to cancel it. Just because Yana was in the Brotherhood, it didn’t mean that....but the Brotherhood has done something bad in everyone’s eyes. There was a bigger divide now between everyone and the gap felt unfixable at the moment. Billy sighed and ran his free hand through his hair. “I don’t want to cancel anything with you, but this is so tricky now. I can’t just look at what the Brotherhood did and be okay with it, even if they didn’t mean it to happen.”

Illyana crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows. "But you can be okay with me outright killing my former mentor. On purpose." Because yeah. She didn't get the logic behind that. At all.

Billy frowned and looked up at her in disbelief. “Yes? He was someone who took a small child from her home, used her soul and was the literal definition of the worst. You think they are the same? I’m sorry did you not want us to kill him? Let him keep tourting you and threatening the people we cared about?”

He needed to calm down, but the fact that she thought it was on equal footing was ridiculous.

"You didn't kill him. I killed him," Illyana corrected. "You killed a shitload of demons and kept them off my back so I could do it. On the flipside? The Brotherhood blew up a couple of people, by accident, who'd gone into a room full of ammunition and ambushed them. Who'd already shot their leader, and Alex, and Pietro." Granted, it maybe hadn't been the same people who'd fired off the shots a couple of months back, but they obviously had the same goals. "And what was the FoH going to do with all that ammo, anyway? Because you can't tell me they had a stockpile they were just keeping for deer hunting season or something."

She was changing the subject immediately and he grit his teeth. “No, probably not. But that doesn’t mean they should have blown everything up, including hurting people outside the building. They were human, Yana. Humans who you can just as easily put in a cell and they can’t do anything about it, unlike us. But because the Brotherhood decided to be rash and attack with barely a plan besides ‘let’s get them’ all mutants now have mark on our heads.”

His hands started to glow blue the more he got worked up. “I want them and people like them to pay, especially after what they did to Tommy, but that isn’t the right way.”

"And knowing what happened to Tommy, you think all mutants don't have a mark on their heads?" Illyana stared at him, incredulous, her eyes flickering red. "They're not going to be put in cells. They shot your grandfather, and it didn't even make the news. And for the umpteenth time, Pyro didn't blow the place up on purpose! You can't tell me Wanda didn't tell you that!"

“NOT ALL HUMANS ARE BAD!” Billy roared at her, the thought that the Brotherhood saw all humans as threats made his blood boil and he wanted to scream at her. “Not all humans think mutants are bad, but this stunt they pulled might have scared anyone who doesn’t know away!”

His own eyes burned blue and he sneered. “Oh course. I get it. Your precious boyfriend didn’t do it on purpose. You can stop beating me over the head with that cause it doesn’t change how I feel about it.”

"And you can stop beating me over the head with how the poor innocent humans who were stockpiling weapons got hurt. Because they wouldn't have gotten hurt if they hadn't gathered up an ENTIRE ROOMFUL OF AMMUNITION!" Yana shouted back. "Who do you think they were going to use that ON, Billy? People aren't dragons. They don't gather up weapons for NOTHING, not even in your stupid games!"

His eyes widened and somehow her yelling seemed to take the rage inside that felt like he was going to explode and turned it into something calm. His eyes continued to glow blue, along with his hands, but his posture became less tense and he smiled coldly. “I never said that those people were innocent, that’s just what you wanted to hear. Let’s face it Yana, you want to be with them cause you're tired of rules and limits. You left us cause you found something that suited you better and you didn’t care who’s feelings you hurt.”

His whole body started to glow blue and he snorted. “Stop acting like you're joining them because you're some misunderstood crusader. Because we both know you don’t care about anyone but you.”

Illyana took a step backwards as if slapped, the red flickering from her eyes as her expression changed from angry to hurt, then pulled herself together, all emotion fading from her face . "You're right, Billy. I just don't give a damn," she lied. She turned back towards her dresser, reaching down to pull out the next article of clothing, hiding how her hands were trembling with the t-shirt. "I think you should leave now. Go back to your fantasy games and your wishes and your therapist, and tell your boyfriend he was right about me all along."

What he had said left a bad taste in his mouth and the way she had reacted was satisfying but also hurt, but he couldn’t crumble now. Instead he glared at her back and quickly muttered his spell for teleporting back home, blue light flashing before fading.

As the light faded away, Illyana let the act drop, and collapsed over the dresser, sobbing. Because Billy'd been right - she didn't really care about the Brotherhood's cause, one way or another. The people, though...

She'd thought Billy knew her better than that.