She is running, running, running, legs throbbing, lungs stinging; prickling with every breath, fingers locked knuckle white around the tattered sleeve of a man she does not know, the pair phasing through ceaseless brick and mortar that gives way to stone and tile as they travel deeper into long forgotten ruins.

This is the third night that she has had this half dream, half nightmare, knows that she will startle awake as soon as they reach this last wall, squints her eyes shut in preparation. She opens them slowly, expecting the familiar shadowy dark of her room, to find that she and the stranger are in a vast hall held up by seemingly endless rows of columns. She is sure that they are somewhere ancient, this room untouched by humans for hundreds of years. The stranger does not let her slow, his strides easily doubling hers, his pace maddening, her fingers aching where they grasp him. The tile, beautifully hand painted mosaic, shudders beneath their feet as the hall fills with echoes of a distant scream. So, this is a nightmare, then. 'Wake up wake up wake up wake up…'

They are far into the room when a flash of purple catches her eye. She watches, fascinated, as a portal opens and a crystalline iced figure appears.

He is strikingly familiar, even from a distance, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as she tries to place him, but it is not until he speaks that she realizes, "Kitty."

"Bobby." But not the Bobby she knows, whose ice form is white, covered in a fine frost, whose eyes are always smiling.

She and the stranger slow as they approach and Bobby pauses, preparing to speak, when the unseen ceiling shakes, raining dust and clay on them. His fingers brush against hers as he passes. "Hurry."

…

The stranger is lying on the stone floor as she kneels at his head, his face between her glowing hands, the two of them encircled by diminished mosaics telling a forgotten legend. 'What am I doing to you? Why are we here, alone, during a battle? We should be fighting, not hiding. Where's Bobby? Where are the X-Men?'

The wall to their left shatters outward, stone and tile striking her face, her side, and Bobby's limp form is flung carelessly into the middle of the room. She watches his face, his chest, wanting to go to him but somehow rooted to the stranger. She feels the faint tickle of blood against her temple, her cheek, her jaw, squirms as it dribbles down her neck. "Bobby…" The man lets out a low moan as a giant… she has no idea what, robot? Alien? Mutant? shoves itself through the hole, primeval stone shattering around it. "Bobby!" He sluggishly lifts his head, blinking away the dust, and their eyes meet. Her heart constricts, she is sure, as the air leaves her lungs. Gone is the mirth, the smirk he wears even in defeat, replaced by sorrow; sorrow and something that she is afraid to name, before they harden as he returns to his ice form. He manages to stand unsteadily just as the giant reaches him and blasts it with ice as its form morphs from steel into red heat. It extends its scorched arm, sweeping out and plucking Bobby from the ground. The room fills with cries of pain, his and hers, as he struggles futilely against the burning heat, before the other arm hurtles into him and he shatters into infinite luminescence.

"Bobby!"

…

She startles awake, a sob trapped in her throat, fingers fumbling blindly over familiar objects cluttering her nightstand as she slowly sits up. Light floods her vision and forces her eyes shut, but Bobby's face, contorted in pain, is tattooed on the backs of her eyelids. She snaps them open, squinting against the still too bright light, and fists her sheets as she takes in her room. "What the hell was that?"