X-Men: Civil War

Chapter 14: Past Happenstance

Emma

"You did.. What?!" I yell at the imbecile of an X-Man. I see Bobby physically swallow and start to itch under my furious gaze.

"I-I had to, Emma," He clears his throat and tries to regain some of his pride, "Stark didn't give us a choice." Of coarse the coward chose to hand out threats behind a metal mask. 

"But you didn't tell me until now?" My hand reaches to my temple to ease the ache that resides there. 

"And how long has it been since you and Adam came back from that, 2 weeks?" He cringes and starts to scratch the back of his head guiltily.

"Well, we didn't really know how to tell you..." It had been slightly busy the past couple of weeks, what with the 198 roaming aimlessly around the institute with "nothing" to do, that I hadn't noticed Maxine's absence until this morning when I realized that I hadn't heard her laugh for a while. When I confronted Logan about her, he just shrugged his shoulders lazily and poured himself some strong smelling drink, which I immediately took and through down the drain, much to his annoyance. Bobby had heard the question and I sensed his regret. Now I have him telling me that she's with that pig-headed playboy Stark, because of something that I could've handled better than any Avenger.

Frustration bubbles up in my chest and I feel Bobby wince at the sudden coldness in my expression.

"We're going there and getting her back, I don't care how we do it, but we will-" A knife, in the dark, silently cuts through my mental barrier and a voice, calm and collected, speaks.

"Do not worry about Maxi, she is coming." And with that it retreats, leaving no trail and no other words. How could someone be powerful enough to do this without repercussions? And how did I not recognize it's psychic presence?

"Bobby." He stares at me with an odd look.

"Yeah... ?" 

"Unlock the front gate and open the front door." He frowns, taken back by my words.

"Why..." He stops when he sees the seriousness of my words.

"Because, I am the headmistress and I know who's coming." He hesitantly walks away towards the kitchen door and turns around again to look me in the eyes with reluctance. 

"Ok..." His words and expressions tell me so much that I don't even have to read his mind.

"Just... go, you'll want to trust me on this one." He turns and runs out of the room, finally making haste.

Should I even trust the mysterious voice that just showed up and left in a second? Probably not, but it won't hurt to take precautions for Maxine's presumed arrival, no matter the fallacy of the notion.

"You good, Frost?" The roughness of Logan's voice throws my thoughts into a corner where they wait for their turn to be pondered once more.

"Of coarse, why shouldn't I be?" He shrugs and pours another bottle of the same liquid I threw out earlier into a glass.

"You're just acting irrational, that's all." I grab the bottle and the glass an throw them both into the incinerator chute.

"Come now, Logan, I just got word that Maxine may be coming back," I pause and shoot a smug smile at his gritting teeth, "Wouldn't you do the same?"

"That was the last bottle." He reaches his hand into the chute to try and fish it out, only coming back up with searing flesh and a nasty burn.

"Anyways, who are you to judge someone else's irrationality?" My words make him grumble and I leave him to lick his wounds, both the mental and the physical ones. My feet carry me out of the door and up some stairs to see my bedroom door slightly ajar with a faint light trickling tempestuously into the hallway.

"My, haven't you been busy?" I say to Scott as I push the door open and stride slowly into the room.

He's lying in bed with a smirk playing on his lips.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you though, I'm rather busy at the moment." I say and the grin flickers, revealing a shadow of confusion.

"Then why'd you come up to your room?" He asks and this time I smirk.

"To find you, I have some news." He sits up, his full attention gained.

"Yes?"

"Apparently Tony Stark has had Maxine for two weeks, and she's now coming back." A million emotions run through his head that it's harder to keep up with, more than usual, but the prominence of one is not overlooked. Worry.

"How do you know?" He asks, and his voice does a good job of not lacing the worry in.

"A message was sent to me."

"By who?"

"I'm not necessarily sure." A frown paints his face.

"How can you trust the information then?" His questions do have a good point, but I don't want to hear it at the moment.

"I can't, but I think it's time we took some more risks, don't you?" He shakes his head.

"Not really, we recently took one of the largest risks we could have ever taken, and it didn't really turn out the way we wanted it to." All the cases he's made make sense, and that's not what I need right now.

"This is a little different." I reply.

"How?" His incredulous tone is mocking.

"Well, in the first place, we're not risking ours, or anyone else's, freedom, so that's an upside."

"What are we doing to react to what this message said then?"

"I only unlocked the gate and opened the front door, nothing as big as breaking the law and almost killing one of our own." As I say this, I realize too late that it was the wrong thing to say to someone who is only thinking about our safety. Hurt radiates from his body.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." He waves the insult away.

"It's ok, I know you're stressed and I understand that." He's holding something back, what is it...

"Don't." He warns, knowing I'm reading his mind.

"Then what aren't you telling me?" His lips pull at the corners tightly.

"I just- I've never known you to do something so... sporadic." I instantly understand what he's trying to say.

"You don't have to worry about whether I'm making the right choice or not." I say to him.

"And, why not?"

"Because I am making the right choice."