Mutatis Mutandis

Summary: Scott and Jean have a complicated relationship. Pyro has regrets.

"Why were you so worried when I went into Cerebro?"

His tone is almost chipper when he answers. "I thought you couldn't handle it. I was wrong." There's no pride in him admitting his error and he prides himself on that in the backburner of his brain, where she pokes around like a child putting a fork in an electrical socket, looking for where he loves her.

"So you don't have faith in me?" Jean is teasing, but the Phoenix wants to

know

The parallels between John and Jean never really struck me before reading this, but it turns out that they have a few things in common. An intertwined pair of stories about love and identity.

Disassociation

Summary: A sentimental education.

It sucked that Magneto was still making him study. John had figured that when you ran away with international mutant terrorists, that really wouldn't be an issue anymore, but no. Of course, it was a little different than Xavier's, with Magneto just sitting across the table with his piercing blue eyes and asking him question after question about what he thought about the book of the week, just not letting up until John was ready to wing it right at him.

He'd done that once, in fact, when Magneto had been poking holes in his argument that might made right. Erik had batted it back into his face with a twitch of his eyebrows. "It seems to me you have two options here, Pyro," he'd drawled, amused, as John rubbed his head. "Either accept the counterargument or get better at hitting people."

Pyro is learning a lot now that he's joined the Brotherhood, and not all of it is about mutant terrorism and robbing banks. A beautiful insight into the thoughts of a character caught between adolescence and adulthood, and learning all the time.

dragonflies draw flame

Summary: Bobby Drake encounters Henry McCoy for the first time.

"What's it like to. Um. Look like that?"

"Do you think the facial fur detracts from the natural sharpness of my cheekbones? Is blue really my color?"

"I ... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked, I mean, I didn't mean --"

"It's all right, Bobby. No, don't apologize. I fear I've grown far too accustomed to being rather ... flip with my responses to that sort of question, over the years.

When Bobby met Hank, the movieverse version. These two have an epic friendship for the ages in comic canon, so I love to see them meet in this continuity. Bobby's reaction to the mansion's new occupant is adorable, and the part about the X-Men as a Eurotrash pop band makes me crack up every time.

Event

Shirtless, blindfolded Scott Summers is always good with me, and this is a lovely drawing of the subject.


X-Men: Faceless Crowd by ~GabrielMalkavian on deviantART

Summary: Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul.

Warren climbed to the top of the jungle gym and tipped his head back, watching the tattered clouds chase each other across the sky and make a hazy, shifting mask over the sun. It made his chest go tight and his shoulders hurt, but he didn't look away. He was used to feeling that way, a lot, when he looked at the sky or at the pigeons outside his window or at his father across the length of the dining-room table. A dull, vague kind of ache all over, but stronger in his shoulders and his heart. Maybe that was what they called growing pains.

A glimpse of Warren Worthington's life long before X3, when he's a twelve-year-old boy already suffering the effects of his father's prejudice. Luckily, one of the X-Men is there to provide moral support even if he can't do anything else. I like that Scott gets to be the cool guy here, and his conversation with Warren is lovely.

Feathers

Summary: Bobby hasn't told Rogue everything.

They say when you’re young, you think you’re immortal. Risk-taking has never been that way for Bobby. He is a mutant and, barring disaster, a future member of the X-Men. No matter what he does, danger is fact of life. He has no choice. It’s a taste of the way Rogue must hate the limits that were suddenly placed on her when her own more extreme mutation manifested.

He understands Rogue -- and he doesn’t. He doesn’t.

There's plenty of kinky fanfic out there, and I'm as fond of stories where the characters just go nuts with the handcuffs and whipped cream as they next fangirl. But there aren't nearly as many that are actually about kink and where it comes from and how it works. This story is, and it's adult in quite a different way than the usual.

Fetish

Summary: Rogue comes home for the first time.

In Anchorage she had a daily routine of classes, a room of her own, beauty surrounding her every time she stepped outside. She managed to make a few friends, hallmates who knocked on her door to borrow things and stayed to talk. But outside of her time in Canada, it was also the farthest she had ever gone from anyone who knew her, from anywhere she might consider home.

Home. Whenever people from the Xavier Institute called her at school, it always brought that constricting feeling back. Her chest would get a little smaller, a little tighter. Each voice taking a turn at the phone seemed to head straight for her lungs, pushing all the air out of her chest.

A beautiful story of Rogue's first homecoming after leaving the mansion. I love the way the supporting cast is drawn, too, from her friends at the Thanksgiving dinner table to the voices in her mind.

The First and Last Places

Summary: One of these is probably the way Storm met Charles Xavier. It's possible that it matters which one.

"My name is Charles Xavier. I run a school for children like you."

"For kids who get into trouble," she says.

"Well, often that happens, I'm afraid. But what I meant was for children with special abilities like your own."

"Witch school," she says, and laughs a little wildly. "You're a rich white teacher who can talk in my head, and you want to take me to witch school."

He seems to be considering that.

"If you want to think about it that way," he says. "I prefer to call it a school for the gifted."

Ororo encounters Charles Xavier for the first time, in four different ways. Touching and disturbing depending on which universe you're in at the time, and I really like the different character portraits of Storm and Xavier. This is the kind of thing fanfiction is made for.

Four Ways of Coming out of The Cold

Summary: No one believes Rogue...

Jean smiled politely and nodded. "I was expecting something like this ..."

Rogue looked at her in surprise. "You were?"

"Well, yeah ..." Jean smiled. "I mean, even with Logan's memories fading, you're still confused by what you think are your own thoughts, but are vestiges of Logan's."

You know, I first read this story the day it was posted, and eleven years later it still makes me giggle every time. Real world problems being complicated by mutant powers don't always have to be completely Serious Business, but one of the things I like the most about this is the underlying thoughtfulness.

Gaiety

Summary: "Checkmate, old friend."

"Charles?" Now Erik's brows were drawn together in a neat, single line across his forehead. He reached out an arm to Charles, fingers mere inches away from the back of Charles' hand. "Are you all right, Charles?"

"No," Charles whispered, "no, no, no..." He reached a hand out to steady himself against Erik's outstretched arm, but the arm turned translucent as soon as Charles' fingers alighted upon it. Erik flickered for a moment, then faded away altogether. Charles turned on his heel, eyes darting madly as the world around him began to bleed away.

The empty room rippled.

The walls of Cerebro-Two were buckling under the weight of thousands of tons of water. Already, the lower half of the chamber had filled with water, like a fishbowl being prepared for occupation.

X2 ends ... differently. Disturbing and disturbingly plausible, this is a scary look at how the chess game between Charles and Erik could have taken another turn altogether.

Gestalt