Time: 3:00 am or so
Day: May 21th, four days after ShadowX falls

---

The night had come and the grounds had fallen silent. Many still healed. Many still suffered. Many still feared.

He did not play his violin for them.

But Pietro Maximoff did play. He stood beneath the tree where his lost love had either died, or gone into hiding, and he didn't know anything about her abilities, about how this worked with her. She might've been gone forever and it would be his fault for not keeping the promise he had made to always be there because he had fallen in battle. So, he stood beside the tree, as he had every night, and he played.

Pietro had never studied music, his violin learned at the knee of the older men of the camp who had found it amusing that the little muddle head was so fascinated by music, and had learned it so quickly. It was not, however, until he came to this school and met the green skinned beauty who would capture his heart, that he had learned to appreciate other music beyond what he had grown up with. And, so, it was in that vein, that he had learned... for Avery, for the girl he had loved and possibly had lost.



He didn't sing the words, it was hard to sing while holding a violin with your chin.



The song was a Newfoundland song, a folk song, not as rich as the gypsy music he was used to, and he played it with a flair that was a little too wild, but it was nevertheless a beautiful sound, strangely mournful despite it's upbeat tempo.



Pietro fell to his knees beside the tree, and his violin slipped from his chin, to rest at his side. His head drooped, white hair hung in his face, not entirely hiding the tears on his cheeks.

Wanda awoke from her nightmare with a start, her fingers clinching the sheet and legs kicking out. It wasn’t from the evil influence and cruelty of ShadowX, it was her own fractured mind. She didn’t need ShadowX to torment her; her mutation did it to her constantly.

“Pietro,” she called out in a cold sweat. It was his absence that reminded her where she was and what was happening. They had come back to live at the mansion while his elf healed herself inside the security of a tree. A part of Wanda’s mind was almost smug as she put on a robe and tied the belt around her waist; they tried to tell her Avery was a mutant, just like them, but everything she did proclaimed her elfish heritage. Clearly, the others were delusional.

Her beloved Pietro was not hard to find, she merely followed his music and stood away in the shadows as he had his private time with Avery. A selfish, dark part of Wanda would always hate anyone who took Pietro’s devotion away from her, but it was the mean-spirited sliver of a crazy woman, one whose mania was as unpredictable as chaos. At this moment, that part was buried and her heart broke for her heartbroken brother, and for Avery, who was sweet and kind and whom she actually did like. The contradiction was also part of who Wanda was.

As Pietro’s serenade ended and he cried for Avery, Wanda reached down to her feet and plucked a dandelion from the grass, its crown already a fluffy white sphere. She put it near her lips and blew. As her breath carried them away, they changed, becoming soft creatures of light, a hybrid of plant and a lightning bug. The swarm of will-o-wisps gently floated through the air and landed on Avery’s tree, decorating her boughs with soft white light tinged with yellow, like tiny suns on her leaves wandering through her branches.

She didn’t go to Pietro, not just yet, and intrude on his moment. He knew she was there and that was enough.

[4 days after Friends to Foes]

As soon as she had been able to Ari had returned to Avery's tree, and she had been coming back to it repeatedly over the last few days. There were no signs of change though, and Ari's feelings of hope were bleak.

Ari's vivid memories of the battle continued to make her sick, sometimes making her so physically nauseated that she'd throw up the small amounts of food she'd been able to force down.

She was avoiding as many people as she could, feeling too shameful to really show her face around the mansion at the moment. Ari was a killer, a shame to the X-Man name, to Xavier and the true dream he'd held. She didn't know how to come to terms with it, or what to do with herself.

Thankfully, other than those she checked up on in the infirmary, or visits with Diego, it hadn't been particularly difficult to avoid people. Mostly everyone was dealing with the aftermath of ShadowX in one way or another, and solitude, or plain leaving the school, seemed to be the most popular method.

It was the middle of the night, and though Ari had always kept odd hours, lately she'd been sleeping even less.

It was Jean and Scott, their two bodies melded together grotesquely at the arm, hip, and leg, filled with so much darkness that Ari couldn't make out their faces. There was a heavy chain around her wrists, so heavy that she couldn't raise her hands as ShadowX gripped her hair and forced her to watch as Avery bled green blood and wept, her violet eyes filled with sadness. Their joint voice whispered that she'd done well. That she'd done her duty to the Dream, and that she would be rewarded for her vigilance.

Jolting awake, Ari sat up in her bed, breathing raspy and painful to her chest. Another nightmare. They were frequent at the moment, coming to her nearly every time she slept.

With no hopes of sleeping, she slipped sneakers on and exited her room. It was extremely late and Ari highly doubted that she would run across anyone at this hour, something she was indeed thankful for. She needed to be by Avery's tree, to beg forgiveness through the bark and to plead for her friend to return. There was nothing else she could do.

It was almost pitch black out, the grounds only lit by the full light of the moon, but it wouldn't have mattered even if she couldn't see. Ari knew her way to the tree by heart now.

The sounds of a fast, yet melancholy song hit her ears and she paused mid-step, fear gripping her chest momentarily. There was no one that played like that...no one except a certain white-haired speedster.

As bad as it sounded, Ari had been avoiding Pietro like the plague. He loved Avery deeply, and Ari could not bear to be the one that had taken his love from him.

A part of her badly wanted to turn around and head back to her room, to avoid him at all costs. But he was her friend, and he didn't deserve that. Walking quietly, she neared, her eyes landing on him as he finished the song and hung his head. Her heart twisted painfully and she felt a lump rise in her throat, tears filling her eyes of their own accord.

Moving out toward him, tears now running down her cheeks, she could only utter a few choked words.

"I'm sorry, Pietro."

The will-o-the-wisps surrounded him and the tears in his eyes made them glitter all the more. He looked up, looking around for Wanda, and because she remained in the shadows, he could not see her. He wiped his eyes, and got to his feet, as the tiny glowing plants- creatures- fairies- whatever they were settled in the boughs of the tree, lighting it up as if it was Christmas time. "Thank you, my sister," he said, liking the look of the fluttering glow, thinking to himself that Avery would like it as well, the magical creature she was... is... Wanda was not certain about his relationship with Avery, jealous as he was when he thought of her with Jeffries or Black, whoever she chose, but she understood that his heart was broken, and she would never be so selfish as to think of herself only at this time. She was truly a marvel, his darling twin, to be so generous.

She gave him his time with what it was that Avery was now, while she healed, and did not intrude upon him. For that too he was grateful. He had spent as much time as he could beside the tree, only leaving it to tend to his sister, to see Alexander, to visit Lorna. He returned her to see his love, to try and find her features inside the bark of this, her hospital bed God hear him, and not her grave.

Someone emerged from the darkness, and he felt a little annoyed that this person did not show him the respect and the privacy that his sister did, until she stepped into the flickers of light from the will-o-the-wisps.


"I'm sorry, Pietro." Ari Boyd said, tears running down her cheeks freely, her body trembling as if with cold, but even as unused as he was to caring about the feelings of others, he was not so ignorant as to not know what caused her shiver.

He moved fast, in the way he had when first they met, attempting to catch her off guard, to remind her who and what he was-- so that she might understand why he was these things. He was suddenly inches away from her, before she could flee and one hand was wrapped around her closest wrist. The other hand came up--

--and brushed the tears from her cheeks. "Cry for Avery, Ari Boyd," he said, accented voice soft and free of anger, "Not for me. She is the one you have wronged."

Through the blur of her tears, Ari saw Pietro's head turn toward her sharply, and in less time than she could react, he was coming at her. A quick intake of breath sounded from her as Pietro's hand closed around her wrist, her eyes closing as she braced herself.

It felt a bit like deja vu, reminding her of a time long ago when she had thought he might hit her. She knew him much better now, knew that he would never strike a woman because even though he had done things he was not proud of, he was not that type of man. But Ari couldn't deny that she felt hear heart jump as she expected an oncoming blow. She deserved whatever she got at this point, a part of her even wishing that he would. Anything to make her feel less guilty.

There was no blow though, merely Pietro's soft touch, and for some reason it made her feel even worse. Ari's eyes opened to look at Pietro's face, the sorrow in his features; sorrow that she had put there.

Pietro spoke and Ari gave a soft sob, her eyes looking away from his pale gaze, noticing for the first time the will-o-wisps decorating Avery's tree. It was beautiful, ethereal, and magical, a sign that Wanda had been there, or perhaps still was. "I haven't stopped crying for her Pietro..." she said quietly. She felt as though a piece of her humanity had died, stolen away by the thing that had possessed her and all of the staunch supporters of the school. But if Avery was gone for good, there would be no hope in ever getting it back.

It frightened her to think of the past month, though it was all she could really think about. She had slipped into the role so easily, enjoyed giving orders and being feared. Fighting and hurting the students had made her feel satisfaction, and terrible disappointment and frustration when they'd gotten away.

How could she tell Pietro that though? That at the time, she had wanted to hurt Zanra and Avery and take them both down. At the time she'd felt such conviction that it was for the greater good, that Avery Doyal was the enemy.

"Pietro...what if she doesn't come back?" she asked, her words choked as she looked to the speedster. She didn't know what she would do, how she would ever be able to look at her reflection in the mirror again, how she'd sleep or laugh or be happy again knowing that she had killed a person, and that said person had been her very best friend.

"Pietro...what if she doesn't come back?"

Pietro released her and turned away, looking up at the tree, decorated with lights that were made strangely more beautiful by the tears in his eyes, turned into glittering shooting stars, that twinkled and shifted when he blinked, "Then... Ari Boyd... then, we learn to live without her and we decide how we are to deal with what we have done. I am not a man of great introspect, or forgiveness, not for myself, not for others. I do not know how I will live knowing that I failed her, but I failed my mother too, and I have failed my sister. Now I fail my lover... I do not know how to live with this, but I will learn and I will learn quickly. It is what I do. Move quickly, the speed of the wind, as fast as a though, and yet, I am always too slow when it counts, when it matters, when it comes to protecting those most important to me."

He lifted his violin again, tucking it beneath his chin and he began to play a song, a soft, sad gypsy tune. He stopped and said, "When I was sixteen years old, I was taken from the camp, and told that I was a waste of flesh with no skill but the violin. At sixteen I was to be a man, but I was still a boy in my mind. I was taken to the nearest town, and told that I must play to earn money for the camp, so that I could earn my place. No longer a child, I had to make coin." A few more bars of sad gypsy violin, "Then, in my mind, my sister screamed, and begged for my help. I turned and ran and ran, as fast as I could."

His voice had gone distant, as if he was not even really there, "My heart began to quicken, the world around me began to blur. My foot steps melted the tar on the roads, and I did not know it but my hair turned white and my skin was leeched of color. I found her, found those who had hurt her, who had killed my mother, and I beat them within an inch of their lives, for the first time powerful, for the first time able to voice what was always inside me. I stopped only because Wanda begged me to, but I would have killed them for their wronging my loved ones."

Turning his head he looked at Ari and said, "And what am I to do with you? Who killed the one person who had found me worth loving? I would hurt you? My sister watches from the shadows, but is she quick enough to prevent what I could do to you for your crime? I was new to my powers then, and still I was quick enough to lay three grown men flat before my mother's blood had cooled. I could break you in half and call it justice for hurting Avery."

He placed his violin beneath his chin again and played the rest of the song, his hand sawing the bow faster and faster, the notes stretching into each other into an eerie symphony of danger and despair. The strings began to smoke and his eyes closed, his heartbreak pouring into this useless display of speed that would not bring her back. With sharp pock pock sounds, the strings snapped, one whipping out and striping his cheek with blood. He looked away and didn't seem to notice the mark, "Would your death bring her back? Would punishing you for something you could not help bring her back? Besides, I know you well now, Ari Boyd, whatever I did to you is so much less than what you are doing to yourself."

Ari listened to Pietro speak about the loved ones that he had failed and she could only feel deep regret for what she'd done. It hadn't been Pietro's fault, or Kurt's, or anyone else's. No one but she had put those glass spears through her friend, and it shouldn't be anyone else's cross to bear.

He said that he would move on, that his speed would help him, but Ari knew otherwise. Speed, quickened healing, no mutant ability was going to help anyone deal with the loss of Avery.

Ari had thought of Jean, and how her telepathy might have helped at this point, to soothe her frazzled mind. But it had been Jean's abilities in the first place, when put under whatever control the redhead had been under, that had slipped into her mind and made her do the things she'd done.

She was silent as Pietro played his violin and spoke of his memories, feeling guilty that she had helped dredge it all up for him. The white-haired speedster spoke of murder and Ari hung her head, her troubled eyes moving to stare at the ground.

When he spoke, looking toward her, Ari's gaze matched his for a moment. He spoke of hurting her, ripping her in half, and she knew that he wouldn't, though a part of her wished for the rest it would bring. Just a few moments without having to think of what she'd done, without having to see the sight of Avery's bloodied body hanging by the spears that had sprung from her fingertips.

Ari's tears had not stopped, and as Pietro spoke, they merely continued to run down her cheeks, her breathing uneven, her sobs soft and barely audible. She could not say sorry enough, because sorry would not bring Avery back. For Ari she had lost her best friend, but for Pietro, he had lost his love. Her crimes were truly unforgivable.

She brought her hands to her face, to muffle her crying as Pietro played like a madman. His music seemed to emphasize the things she was feeling, her sorrow, their sorrow, seeming to echo out into the night sky. Ari could not play music, but she could certainly feel it.

Her head pounding, tears blurring her vision so much that she might have missed the stripe of red against Pietro's pale cheek had it not been for the snap of string to announce it. Ari gave a small gasp against her hand, blinking rapidly to try and clear her eyesight.

"Would your death bring her back? Would punishing you for something you could not help bring her back? Besides, I know you well now, Ari Boyd, whatever I did to you is so much less than what you are doing to yourself."

Ari closed her eyes briefly, her voice muffled and thick, "If it could, I would beg you for it." He was right of course. Death would have been the easy way out. It was living with what she'd done that would be the real torture.

Taking several tentative steps toward Pietro, Ari raised a wet hand to brush gently at the blood on his cheek, simultaneously brushing at his tears as he had done to her. She cupped his cheek, her eyes looking to his, "Pietro, I can't say it enough, and I know it means nothing. But I am truly, truly sorry for taking her from you. I don't expect forgiveness. Or for you to ever speak to me again. I don't deserve it anyway."

It made her feel sick now, but back then she had felt such a determination, such a feeling of fulfillment when she'd seen Avery defeated. "I would have killed Zanra too," she said quietly, her voice hollow. "I know I nearly did. I'm...thank you for stopping me." She didn't say that she wished he would have taken her down then. Because that would only add to his guilt. But she was sure he was thinking it too.

The hand on his face dropped away as Ari took a step into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and leaning her head against his shoulder. She cried against him, lost in sorrow though it may not have been a welcome action. But for a moment, he was the closest thing to Avery that she had.

"If it could, I would beg you for it."

"That is the easy way out, Ari, is it not? And if you truly wished to die, you would have taken your glass shards and ended your life, perhaps feeding this tree with your blood. But it will not bring her back and you do not wish to die. So, there is no point in thinking such things," Pietro said, and perhaps it sounded cold, perhaps it sounded cruel, but there were very few who had ever seen a spark of warmth from the man, and since the battle on that day that number was down by one.

"Pietro, I can't say it enough, and I know it means nothing. But I am truly, truly sorry for taking her from you. I don't expect forgiveness. Or for you to ever speak to me again. I don't deserve it anyway."

He looked at her and there was confusion in the hard depths of his unusually colored eyes, "I am speaking to you. And, why would I not? You did not take her from me. The twists and turns of a tainted dream took her, and you were merely the knife it wielded. My own sister struck me down because I threatened that dream. Am I to fold my arms and stick out my bottom lip and not talk to her either? We are evolved beings, and we should rise above giving the 'silent treatment,' as I have heard it called."

"I would have killed Zanra too," she said quietly, her voice hollow. "I know I nearly did. I'm...thank you for stopping me."

Pietro tried to remember his actions of that day, and recalled the girl he had swept away. Zanra Dayo, she was an impetuous child who had the temerity to take on someone much more trained, and for that Pietro admired her spirit. "I take no thanks, and need no apology. I am merely lucky enough that I was considered too inconsequential to influence. I am your friend, and that is another number that has been lessened because of this. Do not compound it by making me cross you off as well. I do not know if I could take it."

She collapsed against him, crying. He had held Wanda like this so many times, and wondered if he was ever to hold Avery in this fashion again. If she was alive, if she returned from this, Pietro vowed he would never let go of her again. He felt very alone at that moment, even with Ari in his arms. One of the few who had not been touched by ShadowX's evil and yet he was suffering nonetheless.