Look at You Fooling You
Peter hadn’t really thought anything through when he began running. He just needed to get away. His entire life was crumbling apart to the point where it felt like he had nothing left. As his mom said, it had been hell this last month, but Peter couldn’t help but think whether they would ever escape it – hell, that is.
The sounds of one of Peter’s old mixtapes played in the background. The lyrics of Sly & the Family Stone’s song Runnin’ Away barely heard as he ran, burning off all the aggravation he could at the situation he was in now.
Running away to get away
Ha-ha, ha-ha
You're wearing out your shoes
Look at you fooling you
To be honest, Peter didn’t truly know why he helped those guys at the Pentagon. He couldn’t tell you if it was for fun, or because the guys who asked him were mutants too, or if he just wanted to make fools of the government people. Maybe he did it as a way of acting out after Arnold’s death, but in all honesty, Peter doesn’t remember anymore. And no matter what reason he came up with, it doesn’t seem to justify all that had happened as a result.
But while he knew that there wasn’t a single reason that could satisfy him, he couldn’t help but wonder why those other guys would want to break a presidential assassin out of prison. It wasn’t like any of them seemed to like America’s new favorite terrorist. Hell, the one drugged-up dude punched him the second he saw the guy in the elevator. Why would any of them want to risk their lives helping Lehnsherr break out of that place if they weren’t even friends? Did they owe the guy a debt of some sort? If so, why wait ten years to make it even? Why break him out at all? So long as he’s in there he can’t get to you. None of it made sense. God, he wished he asked more questions beforehand.
Peter shoved both his fists into the pockets of his silver jacket from frustration, before coming to a halt when he managed to get a papercut from something inside. Hissing, he quickly removed his hand from the pocket sucking on the finger where blood began to bead. Carefully reaching inside and pulling out whatever it was, he looked at the punch card to a sandwich shop in New York and some business card to that one preppy school, both of which he stole from Druggie’s wallet before they started their heist. Peter couldn’t help but eye the business card once more.
Xavier’s School
For Gifted Youngsters
Charles Xavier
Professor
1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center
Westchester County, New York
(914)-555-1407
‘Hey, didn’t Erik call Druggie Charles?’ Peter thought to himself before it all clicked into place. Peter still had a lot of questions about the whole Pentagon incident, now… he had a place to go if he wanted to ask them. And boy, did Peter want answers.
Luckily for him, Westchester was only about two hundred-something miles away. With a quick snack (like the free sandwich he’d get thanks to the man’s punch card) he could be there in no time.
Shorter cut is quicker but
Ha-ha, ha-ha
Time is here to stay
Look at you fooling you
The deeper in debt, the harder you bet
Hee-hee, hee-hee
You need more room to play
When he finally arrived at what seemed to be the right address, Peter found himself not in front of a school, but what appeared to be some castle. While Peter would have loved to take a quick looksie around the place before knocking on the door, he stopped himself because that wasn’t why he was here.
Look at you fooling you
Another day, you're farther away
Ha-ha, ha-ha
A longer trip back home
‘Maybe next time,’ he told himself before making his way over to the main entrance and taking his headphones off. He rang the doorbell, but after what seemed like enough time for some butler or servant or whoever waited on whatever kind of royalty this man apparently was, he rang it again, and again, and again. He rang it over and over without waiting until finally, the door opened to the most frustrated face he’d ever seen.
“We’re closed,” the person said in a voice so stern it could almost have rivaled his mom’s. It was one of the guys from the Pentagon, but not the one who he expected to be here. No, it was the nerdy guy in glasses who was overly excited about what Peter could do when they first met.
Peter never pegged the man to be so obvious about his frustration towards people. In all honesty, he thought the man was more of the passive-aggressive type, smiling to your face while planning 50 new and inventive ways to creatively kill you behind your back, then not acting on any of those thoughts and just putting up with you because they’re just a ‘better person.’
“Well open up. I just ran over a hundred miles to talk, so the least you can do is let me in,” he told glasses before zipping through the opening in the door and glancing around the big open foyer. “Nice place you guys got here,” he begins to say as he slides a finger along one of the tables gathering dust. Glasses whips his head 180 degrees to where Peter’s now standing and closes the door. Peter’s not really paying attention though as he draws a smiley face in the dust. “I never would have thought you guys owned a castle. Makes me wish I asked for a larger cut when pulling our little heist,” he jokes.
Glasses looks like he’s getting ready to say something but before he can Peter zips over to look at the sconces on the wall, flicking them and hearing the little ding causing Hank to whip his head around again to see that Peter was now to the left of him.
“Get it? It’s a joke because I didn’t get anything out of it,” he tells the man nudging him in the shoulder before running off to look at the huge staircase. Shouting over his shoulder Peter asks, “are you guys closed for cleaning? I noticed it’s a bit dusty.” He can hear Hank jogging to meet Peter where he’s at but before he can, Peter zips over right in the dude’s face and studies him, making Glasses abruptly stop thinking he was about to crash into him. “Wait, are you Charles? I never really committed your all’s names to memory, but I thought the guy who was high as a kite was Charles. At least that’s what the guy we broke out said before he got punched in the face. On second thought, maybe he punched him because he misremembered his name. Oof. Don’t let me make the same mist—”
“—What the hell are you doing here? How’d you even find this place?” Charles? Charles cut Peter off to ask.
Peter pulled out the business card he had shoved into his pocket and handed it to the guy. Slowing down, catching himself before he started to ramble again, he told him, “I’ve got some questions about the terrorist we just broke out the other day. I just followed the address on the card to get here.”
“You stole this from Charles’s wallet?” he asked sounding exasperated to which Peter nodded.
“Yea, that, twenty bucks, and your punch card to the one sandwich place which was pretty mediocre by the way. Wait,” he stopped himself, “you’re not Charles?” He asked.
“No, I’m Hank. Charles was the guy whose wallet you stole from,” Hank explains to him.
“Oh,” he says, drawing out the word before beginning to ramble on. “Then why are you here? And where’s Charles? Do you live here with him? Does the guy with claws also live here? Are they upstairs?” He asks before zipping up to the first landing “Should I grab them so we can all have like a group talk? Wait, am I going to get lost up there if I look? How big even is this place? I swear you can fit my entire house in the foyer of this place it’s huge.”
“Woah! Don’t go up there. How about we go to the kitchen? We can sit down. You can ask me what you need to know there, and I’ll try to answer you. You can’t spit fire them at me though, I won’t be able to keep up. Sound good?” Glasses – Hank – asks as he begins making his way over to what Peter assumes to be the kitchen. Peter doesn’t give much of an answer aside from nodding and following behind him.
The kitchen, much like every other part of this place was huge and dusty. Peter followed Hank’s lead and went to the table taking a seat across from him.
“I guess my first question is there’s no way any of us are ever gonna get caught, right?”
“No, I scrambled all the cameras, they have no record of us ever being there.”
“Cool. Cool. But what are the chances they still figure out who it was and come after us?”
“They won’t. It’s all been taken care of. I promise.”
Beat.
Peter takes a deep breath.
“You know that guy, Erik, the one we broke out said that he didn’t kill the president. I’m not saying I believe the word of a fugitive, but… what are the chances he didn’t do that, and they still did that to him? What if they do the same to us? I… I can’t… I saw where they were keeping him. I-I can’t do that. I wouldn’t last a day, let alone ten years. I can’t have anyone finding out I was there.”
“And no one will.”
“Good. Good… Uh, speaking of anyone finding out… Nobody told Erik who I was, right? Like he doesn’t know what my name is or anything, right?”
“Nope, not that I can recall at least. Though, you know he owes you a favor, not the other way around?”
“Yea, of course. It’s just I don’t think psychopaths care about the whole who-owes-who kind of thing is all.” There’s a long beat of silence again where Peter fidgets underneath the table before looking back at Hank and asking, “Can I ask why you guys wanted to break him out in the first place or is this one of those ‘if I tell you I’m going to have to kill you’ kind of things?”
Hanks sighs and runs his hand down his face.
“It’s a long story,” he says.
“Well, it’s not like I’ve got homework worth doing anymore, so take all the time you need,” he tells the guy.
“You’re not going to believe me,” Hank warns him before taking his glasses off to clean them and placing them back onto the bridge of his nose.
“How about you let me be the judge of that.”
And boy, was the story unbelievable, but honestly, who was Peter to say that wasn’t possible when his sister could manipulate reality to her every whim’s desire should she choose to. It was fair to say Peter had no shortage of questions after that and the two of them spent the whole day up until one in the morning discussing it all.
Apparently, the dude with claws was from the future, which checks out because he seemed to know an awful lot about Peter. And he kept saying things like how Peter was younger than he remembered even though Peter could have sworn they had never met each other before.
Also, the only reason they freed Erik was because he was supposed to help them in preserving the future. Peter can only imagine what that supposed future was knowing how awful the present – which none of them would be living had Claws never come to visit – is currently.
“So did it work?” Peter asks. “Is the world saved? Was it worth all that’s happening now?”
“I-I don’t know. I hope so, but the plan… well, it didn’t quite go to plan.”
“Wh-What do you mean it didn’t go to plan? What happened?”
“Instead of trying to save Raven, Erik attempted to kill her.”
“You freed the guy accused of killing the president and you didn’t think he might just try to kill someone else?” He asks with an incredulous look on his face before adding as an afterthought, “who’s Raven?”
“She’s the one plastered all over the news right now for being a hero,” Hank explains. Peter raised his eyebrow to ask ‘who?’ before Hank mentioned, “she’s blue.”
“Oh.”
“Yea, and in our defense – not that I feel the need to explain – but none of us thought Erik would kill one of the few people he actually cared about.”
“They knew each other?”
Hank nods.
“Damn,” Peter says under his breath.
“Yea,” Hank agrees. “Look, it’s pretty late. How about I get you a bed to stay in for the night and we can talk more first thing in the morning, ok?”
And really who was Peter to disagree with that. It was late, and he hadn’t the energy to run back home on an empty stomach. He hadn’t even noticed how hungry he was until now either though. Guess it’s hard to have an appetite when you’re discussing the end of the world. And so, Peter grabbed a small (for him) snack from the kitchen while waiting for Hank to get some clean sheets on one of the beds where he’d be staying for the night.
Finally laying in his bed Peter thought there was no way he was going to get any shut-eye after the massive bomb dropped on him today, but as soon as he hit the bed the speedster was out for the night.
*****
When Peter woke up it was to complete and utter quiet. Which was weird because never was the house was never this silent. Everyone should be up and moving around by now. Wanda and Lorna still had school to get to and his mom was pulling extra shifts lately making her never have the time to sleep in. Maybe Peter had just woken up extra early?
Reaching over to see what time his clock read, he finally realized he wasn’t in his house. The realization came slowly then all at once when he remembered he was in New York and not Silver Spring, Maryland.
He remembers the long day spent discussing how Erik was only freed in hopes of protecting the future, which may or may not have failed as far as any of them know. In all honesty, Peter felt like he’d just wasted hours and hours of his life only to feel no better than when he decided to come here.
Groaning, Peter shrugged the covers off himself and headed downstairs into the kitchen to raid these people’s cabinets for some breakfast. Zipping down the stairs he stopped himself at the smell of bacon and proceeded to move slower and at an average human pace to the kitchen.
“Wow, I’m not used to other people being up and at it before me in the morning,” he comments from the kitchen entrance making Glasses look over his way.
“I’m not a fan of wasting daylight. Want some?” Hank asks the speedster, gesturing with a spatula to the pancake currently being cooked in the skillet. Peter nods and the two wait in silence together. Peter fidgeted with whatever he could while sitting at the table from yesterday until Hank places a plate with a traditional American breakfast in front of him. It included a short stack of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and freshly squeezed orange juice.
“I don’t know how you like your eggs, but—”
“—It’s great. Thanks.” Peter cuts off to finish for the man, giving him an appreciative smile. “And for letting me rest here for the night.”
Peter knew that he was starving, having barely eaten much yesterday compared to normal, but he hadn’t realized how quickly he engulfed it all until he looked back up to see Hank watching him in amazement.
“It’s fascinating. How did you – were you starving or is this a typical thing? With your increased speed, does it come with an increased metabolism too? That would make sense seeing the number of calories one burns while running would probably be far more for you considering your mutation,” Hank begins to ramble on about, causing Peter’s cheeks to redden slightly in embarrassment.
For the most part, Peter had always made sure to pay attention when he was eating. He’s never really felt comfortable eating around others as they made comments about how much he could shovel into his mouth at a time and yet still want more to eat. Even before Peter’s mutation as Hank called it kicked in, Peter had been constantly hungry. At first, his mother just thought it was because he was a growing boy, but even then, no kid ate as much as Peter did and stayed as skinny and scrawny (though Peter prefers the term lean) as he’d always been. Once the whole Speedy Gonzales thing happened though, it kind of started to make sense.
His mother had been the first to realize it was because he burned more calories, much like Hank was saying now. They hadn’t figured that out until Peter began fainting about once a week though. Those were some rough times.
Either way, Peter knew he needed to keep how hungry he truly was on the down-low because it wasn’t normal. The last thing he or anyone in his family needed was another reminder of how they don’t fit in. While Hank might also be a mutant, it doesn’t seem like it’s something all mutants share (an increased metabolism). Which he guesses makes sense because not every mutant has his speed. In fact, he hasn’t seen a single mutant with the same traits. Is that even possible? Granted, he hasn’t seen many mutants aside from these guys and Wanda, but still.
Shrugging, Peter answers,
“Yea I uh… everything about me is kind of fast. Feet, metabolism, you name it.”
Sure, he’s not outright saying that he’s always starving, but he doesn’t really feel like saying that right now. It just feels rude. Glasses just gave him the whole bed and breakfast experience after Peter’s out-of-the-blue visit. He’s not about to be sound ungrateful to the guy.
Even without saying he’s starving, Hank seems to pick up on it, giving him a second serving before pilling his plate and joining the speedster at the table.
“There are more eggs on the stove if you want more and the rest of the batter is in the fridge, so I can make more pancakes if you need. I’m guessing after having a night to sleep on it, you’ve got a laundry list full of more questions about what we did, huh?” he asks.
“Mean, yea obviously, but uh,” he shrugs before lifting a forkful of eggs to his mouth and chewing, “where even are the others now?” he asks making sure to cover his mouth as he talks. This is a castle after all, Maximoff. Get it together.
“Charles is upstairs, probably sleeping still. He’s usually not up until another hour from now. Erik is who knows where probably putting together some mutant army and planning world domination. I don’t know. Raven’s out kicking the government’s asses doing what she does best, but only Charles would be able to reach her. And Logan… your guess is as good as mine. I don’t think he’d remember us though even if we could find him.”
“Wait, why? Why wouldn’t he remember our crazy adventure at the Pentagon? We bonded so much during the ride there. I know for a fact I can be a bit much which makes me pretty hard to forget. Mean, I get you; you look like some run-of-the-mill computer guy– no offense.” Peter says catching his words last second. You’d think with all the extra time he has, he would think things through before saying them, but no.
“Thanks,” Hank deadpans.
“My bad. My mouth ran quicker than my brain there. Anyway, why would he not remember? What is he a superhero or some shit and breaking into the Pentagon is just a normal Tuesday for the man or what?”
“It’s because he didn’t stay here in the past as weird as that sounds. His future consciousness traveled back in time, but it didn’t stay, therefore past – er present him doesn’t have future him’s memories. Or at least that’s my understanding after seeing what happened to the guy in Paris.”
“In Paris? What happened in Paris? Mean, other than what you’ve already told me. What did you leave out, man?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but after hitting the wall, when he got up there was a moment when he didn’t remember who we were or what was going on. I had to go after Erik, but Charles stayed behind to keep Logan in check until he was able to remember again.”
“Cool. Cool. So, uh… what you’re telling me is that the only person who would actually know for certain whether this whole shitshow we’re going through right now is worth it may not even remember why? Or even who we are? That’s-That’s cool. Where could I find him?”
“You’re not seriously going to try to find this guy, are you?”
“Why not? It’s not like I’ve got school in the morning,” Peter jokes, but Hank looks at Peter his gaze becoming serious.
“You’ve said that twice now,” Glasses points out.
“Said what?” Peter asks.
“Just mentions about how you’re not going to be doing schoolwork,” Hank says. And oh, Peter knows what’s happening. The man is skirting around the question, but Peter can see it in his eyes, so he just decides to blurt it out.
“I got expelled. Kind of fresh. Still basking in the extra open slots in my schedule,” Peter tries to play off like it’s no big deal. After all, he’s just some delinquent to these guys. He shouldn’t be worried about being expelled.
“Ah. Can I ask why?” Hank inquires before taking another drink of his OJ.
“Sure, mean freedom of speech and all that, I guess,” He tells Hank with a shrug before taking a deep breath and explaining to the man, “I uh, got in a fight with some other kid. They were talking about me being a mutant, but it wasn’t until they started talking about how I cheated because of my mutation that I kind of lost my cool and threw a punch at the guy.”
“Did they expel you because of the fight or your mutation?” Glasses questioned and Peter could see how upset one of those made him. Though he tried to hide it, it was almost like he was literally going blue in the face. Weird, Peter noted to himself. Cool but weird.
“Technically the reason is I already had a pretty shoddy record and getting into a fight was kind of the last straw, but word around the school is it’s because of the other thing. Eh, I couldn’t wait to get out of there anyway,” Peter explains leaving out how that wasn’t the way he planned on exiting the school.
“At least they came up with some student handbook reasoning to back it. I’ve been seeing a couple of stories on the news of people getting expelled and losing scholarships just because of this one gene. It’s awful. They’re practically outing these kids for the rest of their lives plastering their photo on every segment.”
“You don’t think that could happen for me, right?” Peter asks a bit hesitantly. “Mean sure, the official reason isn’t that they think I’m some freak, but if that’s what people are hearing from word of mouth… what’s the likelihood they might write a news story about it?”
Hank’s eyes lock onto his and they both share the same thought: oh shit.
Now, Peter can’t help but ramble on about how bad this is. It’d make one hell of a story. He’s just lost a scholarship to the University of Colorado, and he was going to try out for the 1976 Olympic games coming up but that might be off the table now due to all the mutant hysteria. He wasn’t a minor meaning they could use his photo. His photo on the news would make it easy for one of the people at the Pentagon to identify him. After all, he lived right outside of DC.
Fuck.
He was completely and totally screwed if that happened. And unfortunately, it was likely to happen.
At the point where Hank realized how big an issue this could wind up being, he ran upstairs to wake up his drug-loving friend.
When Charles came downstairs, Peter noticed there was something different about the man. There was a lot different about him, to be honest.
“Is that something I can comment on? Or no?” Peter asks, gesturing toward the chair. “I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t know if it’s worse to act like I don’t notice you’re now no longer walking or to act super interested in what happened to get you like this. Either way, I’m quite tempted to ask if you have a second one of those so we can race each other.”
Charles this time has a very different reaction to Peter’s craziness. He laughs. He doesn’t comment on how annoying Peter is or how big of a pain in the ‘arse’ he’s going to be to put up with. He laughs. It takes Peter back a millisecond before he smiles at the man.
“You know, you’re much nicer in the chair,” Peter thinks aloud before realizing how awful that might sound, but Charles only smiles at him and apologizes?
“Yes, well I’m sorry I wasn’t very nice before. I wasn’t coping with the situation I was put in very well. That’s my fault.”
“Woah, when they say drugs change a person, this isn’t what I imagined,” Peter jokes. “Anyway, I was wondering if you’d like to make another trip to the Pentagon. I left my good duct tape there in one of the elevators and really need it back. No, uh I have a feeling I’m going to be all over local DC news soon and if someone connects my face with Magnet’s liberation, I’m going to be in deep shit.”