*A/N: Hello, everyone! Well, I've not updated in over two years now. I'm sorry that this story has been in existence for over 8 years and has not been finished. As I got older, I'll admit, writing X-Men fan fiction just wasn't a priority anymore. However, I never like to leave things unfinished, especially when I receive such great feedback and know that there are people out there who really want to know how the story ends.

There is no way that I can make the ending to this 8 year journey worth the wait. 8 years is a really long time. I'm a fan of cliffhangers, but this one seems to have gone on longer than necessary. I hope you can all forgive me for my hiatuses. In the past two years, I've graduated college and moved to Japan. I just turned 23, and I'm writing two novels, a RPG, and a graphic novel. Maybe one day you'll see my books on the shelves and think, "I used to read her sappy fan fiction." ^_^v

Anyway, I can only hope that my writing has been improving since I began this trilogy when I was 14/15 years old. Please do what you do best: read for enjoyment and review with a critical eye! Here it is. :)

-/-/-/-/-/-

John rocked on the balls of his feet as if to lull his nerves into dissipating, or at the very least, grind them underfoot. He'd come up with a plan to weaken Phoenix and finally have her abandon Earth, for a time anyway. He had never considered himself a brilliant tactician, much less a hero. He wasn't even sure his plan would work.

"No, it has to." It was the only way he could think of.

He got dressed slowly that morning, ate breakfast alone in the kitchen before anyone had awoken. He was careful not to use too much milk in his cereal, come to find later that he hadn't used enough. He begrudgingly poured the last of the carton into his bowl. There was no discernible reason for the guilt he felt as he threw the empty carton away. He washed his bowl and spoon, towel dried them, and returned them to their proper places in the cupboard. He paused before leaving the kitchen, however, and walked back to the cabinet that housed the bowls. He took his bowl from the top and gingerly raised the stack so that he could place it on the bottom. He did the same thing with the spoon he had used. Finally closing the silverware drawer, he felt a small flicker of relief that no one would use his dishes for a while. He couldn't stomach the thought of someone eating from the spoon he had used right before he died.

-/-

Aside from a few tugs on her muscles, Mystique felt no resistance from Phoenix as she made her way to the Xavier mansion. It worried her. Of course Phoenix wanted her to be near John. It was saving its power to possess him, hibernating inside of Mystique, sapping her energy to refuel itself. But Phoenix didn't want to possess him the way it had Mystique; nothing temporary would satisfy it. It wanted to overtake him completely, snuff out his personality, his memories, everything. The things she had seen happen to that poor Raven girl before Phoenix decided she lacked the necessary power and shoved her in that glass tube… She couldn't allow it. Phoenix was trapped inside her. Now was the time to end it.

-/-

John exited the mansion for the last time. He didn't look back, only forward as he made his way into the courtyard. A calm washed over him as he thought about his plan. If Phoenix wanted his power, he would give it to her. The part he couldn't predict, however, was if he would live through it. Sage seemed to think so.

Sage. It seemed like forever ago when they spoke. He wished he could see her now. To lounge in the embrace of her voice, to feel no fear in the cradle of her praise… Wishful thinking. She wouldn't pull him back to that luxurious haven when his task was not yet complete. He cast his sight to the horizon where the sun was just now climbing over the tops of the trees. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply.

"John." He flinched when he heard his name. Rogue had appeared next to him in a deadly silence.

"Rogue." He nodded at her.

"I can feel it coming—Phoenix. It's weak, but I feel it. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"It's not up to me. This is how it has to happen," he said. "Phoenix chose me, so I'm the one who needs to kill her."

Rogue shook her head. "I still don't understand why everyone is putting this on your shoulders. Is there something we're not being told? I know Phoenix is… un-killable, but does Professor X really not have a plan? Why is he sacrificing you? And WHAT exactly are you supposed to do?"

"She's already inside me," he said quietly. Rogue's eyes jumped to his face for answers.

"What do you mean?"

"It didn't make sense to me before. With you standing here, it's like I can think clearly; you're radiating the Phoenix's power."

"Ah'm what?" John smiled at her.

"It's the reason I could never figure out if it was Mystique or Phoenix that night with Raven." He shifted his stance and slouched. He felt that standing up straight was too proud for how much like scum he felt. "It was both of them. Mystique and I were just caught up in Phoenix's plan. When we… uh, that night… Phoenix connected with me, anchored in me. I thought this anger inside me was stress, that this hopelessness was self-inflicted. But it's her… inside me. It's why I stopped Jubilee from stabbing Mystique that next day, why I've felt this intense attraction to her even when I knew next to nothing about her. Phoenix must have an anchor in her as well. I suppose it's meant to make possessing us easier. Once I tell her that she's free to take me, that's it."

Rogue threw her arms in the air. Her southern accent pounded him. "What the hell do you mean that's it? That's your big plan? You're going to let Phoenix take over you and… what? When she possesses you, you die, Pyro. There will be nothing of you left."

"That's yet to be determined, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Who's to say I won't be able to overpower her in her weakened state? You drained her, right?" Rogue shook her head almost frantically.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, Pyro. You can't be serious. This power is going to fade soon, and—"

"Do you feel it fading?" He cut in. "Does it feel any less strong than when you first drained her?"

Rogue blinked. "I didn't want to say anything… but you're right. I still feel it as strongly as ever. Ah'm… a little afraid of it, actually. Are you okay, John?" John nodded and turned his eyes back to the horizon. The sun was half visible now, yellow with jagged green trees cut into it.

"I need your help, Marie," he said. Rogue looked at him curiously. She narrowed her eyes at him, hoping somehow she could discern the stoic look on his face.

"Is it going to help us defeat Phoenix?" He nodded solemnly. When he turned to her, she could see his brown eyes had darkened into coal. Where was the smolder she always saw— that glint, that flicker that seemed to incessantly burn within him? When had the John she knew disappeared?

"I need you to take us to the Brotherhood base," he said. "There's one last preparation before I let Phoenix take me." Rogue was about to object, but she knew that the outcome of this battle was far greater than her own morals. She simply nodded, slipped her hand into John's, and teleported them to the island one last time.

They arrived somewhat shakily. No amount of time could ease Rogue into the enormity of her new powers.

"You should stay here," she heard John say.

"What? Why?"

"I just… need to go in alone." Marie cocked her head at him. It was obvious what he had come here to do. Why the secrecy now?

"John, are you all right? You seem a little… distant." Suddenly he turned on her, eyes blazing, voice so loud that all she could do was bear the brunt of it as it slammed into her.

"I'M GOING IN ALONE, MARIE. DON'T FUCKING GET IN MY WAY!"

"John," she said delicately, "you're not angry with me. You're angry at Phoenix. Let's go inside together and do what we came here to…" He shoved her so hard and so quickly that she barely saw it happen. He was already turned toward the compound and running at full speed before she hit the ground. She slammed into the rocky shore she had but moments ago been perfectly standing upon. Luckily, since this portion of the beach was for the dock, there were no large rocks to smash her head on. Still, it took her a few minutes to catch her breath. It took her but half a second, however, to decide that she needed to run after John.

Rogue darted through the corridors. She was too far behind to hear John, but she used her new powers to see through the walls and mentally carve the quickest path to him. Meanwhile, John had made it to the lab, all but destroyed in the previous battle with the Brotherhood. Magneto was dead amidst the rubble, just as Bobby had said. He picked his way across the battlefield to the glass case that contained Raven. There she was, floating softly in the water, as if nothing in the world could disturb her. John dragged his hand along the top of the tank as he walked along it to see Raven's face. It was just as horrifying now to see her bright green eyes staring straight up into nothingness as it was the first time he saw her. What was he thinking? Why had he come here?

What resolve he thought he had dissipated. How had he been so sure just a moment ago that he could snuff out her life with one pull of a plug? What gave him the right? Phoenix was weak enough without this, wasn't it? Firecat didn't need to die. He backed away from the tank. He couldn't think clearly anymore.

"What am I supposed to do?" He pleaded at the tank, hoping that Sage would carry him away and answer all his questions. His eyelids clasped together tightly as if seeing alone made the world real. Killing Firecat was wrong; he knew this. He couldn't. Faint footsteps echoed into the lab, growing louder until he could hear the wind rush between Rogue's legs as she ran. In moments, she was in the metal doorframe, cautiously eyeing him as she entered the room.

"I can't do it," he murmured. It sounded more like a pathetic squeak to his ears. "I can't kill her." Rogue smiled weakly and made her way to him. A few small cement chunks trickled down the debris heap as she leapt over Magneto's body.

"You don't have to do this," she cooed, grasping John's hand in hers. "Phoenix should be weak enough without us resorting to this." She squeezed John's hand reassuringly because she didn't know what else to do. They sat silently for a moment before Rogue heard John snap at her in annoyance.

"Stop telling me two different things!"

"What? I didn't…" John threw her hand away and clenched his head in a death grip. He rocked somewhat, back and forth on the concrete. Rogue's eyes darted around him, desperate to find the cause of his outburst as if it had corporeal form.

"You keep telling me to kill her, and now you're telling me not to!" John lurched forward and fell to his knees. His head nearly kissed the ground.

"John," Rogue spoke soothingly, "what is it you're hearing?" She knelt beside him and placed a hand on his back. The muscles below her hand tensed. Looking at his clenched jaw made her own feel stiff.

"In… my head," he said, pushing the words through his teeth. "You're telling me to kill Raven, but… I won't. I… won't." Rogue's eyes zipped tightly back and forth in thought as she watched her friend dig his nails into the ground. She gasped.

"She's using me to speak to you, Pyro! Don't listen to her! Listen to my voice. It's Rogue. It's Marie. Only listen to me!"

"If we kill Firecat, we'll weaken Phoenix," John said dreamily, still staring at the floor. He raised himself to his knees then to his feet, pushing himself away from the dusty concrete with the aid of trembling fingers. Rogue attempted to stop him, but she was frozen in place. Her muscles simply refused to respond.

"What is going on?"

She watched John stumble toward the tank, legs locking sporadically as he seemed to fight against his forward motion. How was this happening? Did Phoenix really have enough power to…?

Rogue's heart leapt. They had all forgotten one critical detail about Phoenix. She wasn't a body; it wasn't human. Phoenix was power—energy. Who's to say it has one, exclusive consciousness? Marie's chest pitched with the thudding of her heart. Her eyes screamed as she realized Phoenix's plan. Desperately, she fought against the entity's power that entrenched her in place. Muscle flinched, toes curled, but still she watched John in his own struggle toward Raven.

"No! Stop… moving!" John groaned hard as he tried to stomp on his own brakes. It must be Phoenix. How could he have been so careless? The majority of Phoenix's power was inside Rogue; therefore, so was Phoenix. It wanted him to kill Firecat. But why?

"There must be a fragment of Phoenix inside of Firecat."

"Who is that?"

"It's Rogue! Phoenix isn't going to get the best of me. I've got to… fight her! Rrrah! Hrrrr! Uhnn…"

Rogue's voice shifted into bestial grunts as she struggled against the alien entity's hold. She was frozen in place while John ever-so-slowly, and with great difficulty, neared the glass tank. A thought came to him suddenly.

"If I'm not powerful enough to fight off Phoenix now, I have no hope of fending her off at full strength in my body. What was I thinking? Is this how it ends? I become a host for this cosmic force bent on destroying the world? I manipulate fire. I don't fight gods! I can't even stop her from using my own legs! If she possesses me, the only option I can see is suicide. But if she can control my body, she can easily stop me."

"What the FUCK am I supposed to do?"

Pyro felt his blood boil. He hadn't even realized that he'd screamed aloud, that he'd used his lungs without Phoenix's permission. His eyes were red with fire. He clenched his fists and shook away the invisible power that controlled his body as if he were a wolf tossing fresh snow from his coat. The glass tank sat pristinely in front of him. He wanted to overturn it and watch Raven tumble onto the floor. He wanted to set himself ablaze and dare himself to release his control on the fire.

"These aren't my thoughts," he reasoned with himself. When had he gained this clarity? He was angry, in a rage… His pulse raced. He could control the evil inside of him. But how?

"If Rogue can use Phoenix's power, then so can anyone who Phoenix inhabits. She's been dormant in Rogue's body. Waiting? For what? Rogue can't use it now unless she finds a way to overpower Phoenix's control over its own power. Phoenix aside, Rogue's mutation isn't psionic, which is necessary to… Fucking hell."

Pyro cursed his ignorance. The pieces were falling into place. This is why he felt so comfortable with telepaths! He himself wasn't telepathic, but his mutation was psionic. Even if he was limited to only controlling fire, he did share a thread of ability with his more powerful, telekinetic brethren. Maybe Phoenix's anchor inside of him could amplify his power or at least give him something to focus on. It was worth a shot… wasn't it? And then he had another thought: was his psionic ability the reason Phoenix wanted him in the first place? He hadn't considered it in depth before. Bobby's power was colossal. Why Pyro? Why not choose Bobby?

"Do you think I'm weaker?" Pyro asked inside his head. It must be listening. "Is that why you chose me for this? Because you thought I would be easier to manipulate and turn against my allies?" He could almost feel the smirk and chuckle in his head as the force spoke in his brain.

"I certainly did not expect you to be so clever, little Pyro. So long it took you to conceive the smallest details. It hardly matters. Your body and your mind will be mine very soon."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Perhaps you should pay more attention to your body and less to the voice in your head." John's eyes snapped open before the voice began to taper, before it even lifted high enough toward the ceiling of his mind to ring. When had he even closed his eyes? His vision focused in a matter of half-seconds— just in time to watch himself pull the main power line from Firecat's tank.

"NO!" Pyro regained control of his body, but it was all too late. Perhaps Phoenix had given it back to him on purpose, to watch him suffer while he scrambled in vain to backpedal. He shoved the power line back in, but the water was already draining. Air pumped into the tank; the water blew violently upwards as the air sliced into it. Pyro saw Raven in high definition as the water ebbed from her naked body, pulling away its natural cloak of distortion. She gently sank to the bottom of the case. Her eyes were closed.

John sank himself. He fell to his knees before the tank, staring into the glass as if to catch a reflection of just a few moments before when things weren't slipping out of his grasp. He'd killed her. He had come here to do what he did, but he'd decided not to and…

He clasped his hands around the back of his head and wept into his knees. Why was everything so hard? He had unwittingly done everything Phoenix wanted him to. It had shepherded him into this pen; he could hear a mocking baa in his head. He wasn't sure if Phoenix understood humans well enough to use that sort of taunt. In that case, he was sitting on a pile of painful debris in a destroyed laboratory on an empty island, crying like a child and making animal noises at himself in his own head. It had to stop. He needed to think.

"There must have been a piece of Phoenix inside Raven. An anchor just like she has in me, Mystique, and now Rogue. Phoenix wanted me to kill Raven in order to reclaim that piece. But… why couldn't it take the power back at will? Why did Raven have to die? Was its power trapped somehow within Firecat?"

He didn't think Phoenix made him kill Raven simply for the sake of demoralization. It must have needed the power it left in her. The question was: why couldn't it take it back? John raised his head from his knees and wiped his tears. He didn't have time to feel this way. He needed to think. What were all the elements in play here? There was the host, Raven, the solution she was suspended in, and the tank. Besides all of the mechanical equipment that kept everything powered up, that was it.

"Well, the easiest way would be to take the whole thing back to the mansion and have someone look it over. But how…" He looked at Rogue for the first time since he'd unwillingly made his way to Raven's tank. She was sitting on a flat piece of broken ceiling, a few tears sticking to her face, her eyes unfocused and looking straight ahead. John carefully picked his way across the debris and sat down beside her. He put his arm around her, cupping her shoulder on the other side and pulling her into him. Rogue was resistant. She was tough like Jubilee. But John knew that all tough girls had their breaking point. Eventually, Marie relaxed into him and sobbed.

"There's nothing we can do for her," he said. "You didn't have anything to do with this, Marie. This is my fault."

"I couldn't make it let go of me. I couldn't move. I'm so sorry." John gave her a reassuring hug and the biggest smile he could manage, which was a sort of bitter grin. He didn't blame Marie. Most of Phoenix was inside of her, so it was no surprise that its hold over its host was virtually absolute. But where had the fragment inside Raven gone?

"The only thing we can do now is get this tank back to the mansion. We need Jean to tell us what the solution was inside, and we need to figure out why Phoenix needed me to… to kill Raven in order to reclaim its energy from her. Something was holding it back. It needed someone to pull the plug; whether to simply kill Raven, drain the water, or disable the effects of the tank, I don't know. But it's definitely one of those. If we can find out which one, maybe we can still beat it."

Rogue lifted her head from John's shoulder as she took in his words. She watched his jaw move and his eyes stare steadily at the glass tank. This was the John who had betrayed Jubilee, who had stood against them with Firecat when she attacked them—the lazy, carefree Pyro with the temper of a canon. He was comforting her and formulating a plan to destroy a god at the same time. His focus almost scared her. It's well enough to say someone has matured and praise them for being less reckless, bigoted, and all around morally improved, but… it was sad to see him now. He hadn't gone through the natural maturation that comes with simply living life; it had been forced upon him in a matter of a year or two.

"I need you to transport us back to the mansion with the tank. I'm sorry, Rogue, but I also need you to keep Phoenix's power inside you for the time being."

"Why?"

"It's nothing to worry about. It's safest that it's inside you… for now." The two mutants raised themselves from the debris and stood next to the tank that contained Raven's body. John swallowed hard. Marie set her jaw.

-/-

"Bobby, you really don't need to be here."

"I know… it's just… I want to help. I feel so useless just waiting around. John left again this morning. I wish there were something I could do for him."

Jean Grey patted the teen on the head. He'd been buzzing around her laboratory like a fly avoiding the swatter since the wee hours of the morning—ever since he discovered John had left the mansion without telling him. So she'd put him to work doing menial tasks that she could have easily multitasked by herself. He was eager to feel like he was helping, however, and Jean was happy to give him some sort of relief.

"I left a clipboard on the other side of the room. Mind finding it for me?" Bobby perked up again and smiled brightly.

"No problem! Be right back!" The teenager bounced on his heel and spun around. He half-jogged toward the opposite end of the room. "SHIT!"

Jean whirled around as she heard Bobby scream. He had made it as far as the middle of the room and now stood on his tiptoes, body bent forward at his middle, arms waving in the air at his sides frantically like an offended flamingo. At last, he shifted his weight onto his heels and fell backward onto the tile. Rogue and Pyro now stood in the lab next to a large, glass tank that had nearly landed straight on top of Bobby. It had happened so quickly that not even Jean's telekinetic powers could have saved him if he'd treaded too far. She exhaled with a staggered, relieved breath and ran to help Bobby off of the floor. The teenager rubbed his rump as he stood up.

"'Dyce," he said, smiling as if his best friend hadn't almost killed him, "you're back."

The exhaustion on John's face added ten years. It dragged his eyes downward, flattened his lips, and curled his posture. But there was fight in his eyes, unmistakably. His eyes connected with Jean's immediately, severely. She almost felt the need to step backward and create some distance from him.

"Jean, we need your help. I need you to run tests on the tank and the liquid inside of it. There may be a way to end this."

"Su-sure," the telepath said, startled by the obdurate authority in his voice. "I'll get to work right away." She hurried to the tank and began to search for a way to open it, pausing only to ask Bobby to find her some thick gloves.

"There are latches all along the side here," she said, "but there's a double mechanism holding them shut. We'll need to plug it in." John looked at Rogue who understood his intention immediately. She disappeared for a moment, reappearing seconds later with the large set of mechanical equipment from the Brotherhood lab. The four of them had everything moved to a more convenient area of the lab in no time, all plugs stuck into the walls, sapping great amounts of electricity from Xavier's pocketbook.

Jean examined one of the electrical towers' panels of buttons. There seemed to be hundreds of them, all the same shape but undoubtedly with separate functions of varying import and consequence, as if one button served lattes and another detonated nuclear bombs. The telepath's hand hovered over the intricate spread of commands.

"We don't have time for trial and error," she said. She marched over to Rogue and grabbed the teenager's head. She gave Rogue a sad look as her student looked questioningly into her eyes. "I'm sorry."

Suddenly Rogue was convulsing upright, Jean's fingers digging into her hair. The younger mutant screamed as her knees gave way. Jean followed as Rogue crashed to the floor, never releasing the girl's skull. Rogue's hands locked in twisted shapes in the air as if she were continuously halting herself from clawing Jean to death. Bobby stared in horror, hands half reaching out in front of him, weight on his front leg. John simply bowed his head and breathed heavily. He could feel the Phoenix writhing inside of him as well, desperately trying to hide its knowledge from Jean's telepathic onslaught. He gritted his teeth and prayed for Rogue's agony to end. Just then, he had a thought. He started to antagonize the piece of the Phoenix inside of him as well.

"Aah! Fuck!" His hands rushed to his head as his own knees crumbled beneath him. A splitting pain crashed across his brain. He felt Phoenix thrash inside of him, inside of Rogue. He felt connected to the energy and to his friends in their pain. He focused on the power inside of Rogue and pulled.

It was the most anguish he'd ever felt in his life. Inside of him, he felt the Phoenix using his own internal voice to wish for death, trying to convince him to give up the fight indefinitely. But he held on. He pulled. They needed that information to defeat her once and for all. It seemed to take forever, but finally, being torn in three separate directions, Phoenix's control snapped. Jean hurtled backward; Marie sank forward, sobbing. John opened his eyes carefully. He'd expected lingering pain, an emotional breakdown…

He felt fine.

He raised himself to his feet, his eyes liquidly roving the room. Jean was just picking herself up, unsteadily. She wavered like the marble in a game of Labyrinth, firmly placing her arms outward to regain her balance. Bobby was at Rogue's side, both arms wrapped around her in an embrace reserved for only those you would die for. Jean stumbled to the electrical towers and pressed a sequence of buttons. The tank hummed to life and opened, hissing in defeat. Then the room was silent. John realized that everyone was waiting for him to do something. He walked to the tank slowly.

"Get a blanket or something," he whispered. Jean made a small sound as if to chastise herself for not thinking of that before. She hurried back with a sheet from one of the hospital beds and helped John lift Raven from the case.

She was dead weight in his arms, full of guts and air and blood, but none of it worked anymore. All of the chemicals that composed her memories were still in her brain, but she couldn't use them. He held her as if he'd known her all his life, close to him, breathing steadily, hoping she would hear his lungs moving and remember how to use her own.

"John," Jean croaked. She had been fighting back tears since her two students had come back from the Brotherhood's base. So much death and agony. So much weight on young shoulders. She gave a reassuring smile to John as she carefully wrapped the sheet around Raven's body. She gestured to an examining table, and John placed her delicately upon it. For a split second, Jean considered telling John to go outside for some air, but she knew he wouldn't leave the lab. She focused on collecting a liquid sample from Raven's hair for analysis.

"It's water," she said. "Just water." She thought she almost saw John smile.

"Good. Now we have to analyze the tank. How do we figure out what it's made of?"

"You mean you don't think it's glass?"

"I'm hoping it isn't."

Jean stared at John quizzically. "You're hoping…?" John began to pace and bit his lip before he started thinking out loud.

"Mystique told me Raven would die if taken out of the tank. That means something was keeping her alive. So it could only be three things: the liquid, the tank, or Phoenix's power." He continued pacing, his eyebrows in a hard line across his tired face. "Phoenix leaves an anchor in the people it inhabits, but the presence isn't permanent, as we could tell from when Jubilee and Gambit were possessed. At the Brotherhood compound, Phoenix… used me to kill Raven. It needed someone else to pull the plug, because it couldn't take its power back from her without disabling the tank. And since the liquid is only water, it has to be the tank. It must be something besides just glass if Phoenix couldn't escape it."

A sudden excitement danced on the air. Jean gave her student an epiphanous look as she dashed back to the case, John hot on her heels. She held her hands over the tank as if touching it would burn.

"How do we conduct tests on something this large?" John watched her eyes dart back and forth, propelling the wheels in her mind to turn. An idea came to her, visible as a bright spark in her eye. She gestured for him to wait and ran to another corner of the lab. Her return was marked by the frantic screeching of wheels across the tile.

"It's an x-ray gun," she answered before he asked. "It's simple! We just need to measure the distance in atomic planes and figure out if the diffraction is consistent with the atomic structure of glass." Her excitement hung in the air, unable to penetrate John's bewildered expression to get to his brain. She smiled expectantly, waiting for him to understand. He didn't.

"Oh, don't worry about the science! Just stand back, okay?" John did as she asked.

Having forgotten the proper safety equipment, Jean called up a telekinetic barrier around her to protect herself from the radiation. A red laser on the gun showed the precise point on the tank that the radiation would hit. Without any further delay, she aimed the gun at the tank and pulled the trigger. The red light instantly sprang away from the tank, the radiation not only repelled but almost visibly thrown back at Jean, who, with mouth agape and eyes like saucers, slackened the pressure on the trigger and stared bemusedly at John.

"It isn't glass," she said.

John exhaled like he'd been holding his breath the entire time. A smile of pure relief stretched across his face. He started to laugh, the kind of laugh that only sudden reprieve from sorrow could ignite—a hysterical laugh, a laugh sparkling with tears.

"We can do this," he said. "We just need to make sure we have all of Phoenix's energy."

"How are we supposed to do that?" John heard distantly. It was Rogue, limply rising from the floor and batting away Bobby's attempts to be her crutch. "Is there a way we can account for all of its energy?" John closed his eyes and focused on the Phoenix's anchor inside of him. He could feel Rogue next to him and, somewhere, he could feel Mystique as well.

"Focus on the Phoenix's power. You have more of it than I do. See if it's anchored in anyone else."

Rogue closed her eyes. Her consciousness spread out across the world, searching for fragments of the Phoenix's power. It scared her having this much power, but she pressed on in her investigation. She felt the bustling energy of the earth, water rushing, hearts thumping. But she needed to focus on energy that matched that inside of her. She felt John next to her, saw Mystique clearly in the courtyard in front of the mansion, but she saw no other signatures, no splinter cells hiding in the darkness. In her mind, the power between the three of them resonated a completeness that just felt right. Slowly, she disconnected from the vast energies of the planet and opened her eyes.

"It's only the three of us," she breathed, "and Mystique is outside."

"Get her, would you? We need to do this quickly." Rogue nodded and disappeared. Suddenly, the blood drained from John's face.

"Shit! No!" He spun toward the exit with such force that he nearly fell head over heels. He ran toward the emergency stairs leading up to the mansion proper. How could he have been so stupid?

"'Dyce! 'Dyce, what's wrong?" As always, Bobby was right behind him, taking the stairs three steps at a time to keep up. Pyro panted as he charged up each flight, every step threatening to trip him as he flew upward. He couldn't explain the sinister feeling that had registered in his brain the moment he'd told Rogue to get Mystique, but it left a chill in him that burned.

"Can't let… Phoenix… get… away." He burst through the door at the top of the stairs and sprinted toward the foyer. All he could hear was the blood in his ears and his own exhausted heaving as he ran. At last, he reached the foyer and ripped open the front door. Mystique stood at the end of the cobblestone walkway, hips square, and a menacing smirk creeping up her face that made her yellow eyes dance. He was too late.

"Marie!" Bobby yelled. Their friend lay in a heap at Mystique's feet. Phoenix had jumped into the blue mutant and sapped Rogue of all her remaining energy. Mystique continued to smile at them.

"Ah, it feels so good to be nearly whole again," she cooed. "Congratulations on figuring out how to use the tank. Too bad you cannot plan without me hearing every single word." Mystique sauntered toward him, hips dipping and rising deliberately as she neared. Pyro had to think fast. He needed to get Phoenix into the tank.

"Bobby, get Rogue down to the lab," he said, turning to his friend. She needs medical attention." Bobby nodded, eyeing Mystique suspiciously before he skirted her and ran toward Rogue. The advancing blue mutant paid him little mind as he scurried away. John's thoughts thrashed in his brain. He couldn't trick Phoenix into following him back down into the lab. And where else had he to run? He couldn't even use Mystique as an ally when Phoenix had control over her… or could he?

Mystique stopped just short of him. Her blue lips parted to spew Phoenix's words, no doubt something snarky and belittling—something about how he couldn't save his friends and that it would enjoy absorbing him. The words were coming. The first muscles of her mouth began to move, but before a single sound could escape, John leapt forward, grabbed her, and kissed her fiercely. Mystique thrashed in his arms, but he held fast, fighting against her lips' defenses to plunge his tongue into her mouth. He dipped her backward until only her tiptoes touched the ground. Her hands pressed his head together tightly as if her last hope for escape were to crush his brain like a grape. Pyro felt the Phoenix's energy burn inside of him. It pounded against the confines of its cerebral prison and screamed as if engulfed by its own flame. It took the young mutant a few moments to separate himself from the raw passion of the kiss and remember that he'd had a plan. He focused on the cosmic energy inside of him, slowly tethering it to the force inside of Mystique, and began to pull it away from her.

Overwhelmed by the unexpected kiss, Mystique lost herself to it. She couldn't even hear Phoenix inside of her anymore or feel her own mind at war with itself as she fought to make her own decisions. This… craze that had overcome her fueled her; it forced her to focus on her own emotions and extinguish the hold of the alien power that clutched her. This was what Pyro was counting on. The Phoenix knew next to nothing about human emotions. It couldn't hold on to him when he'd lost himself to his rage, so if Mystique really had feelings for him, Phoenix's hold would certainly crumble again.

Little by little, Pyro leeched the alien energy from Mystique. He felt his body grow stronger as hers fell feebly into his arms, deeper into his care. She kissed him without regard to falling, clinging to him desperately as if he were reality itself. He wanted to go on like that forever; god knows he could have. The majority of Phoenix was within him now, churning inside of him, pacing like a tiger behind an electric fence just waiting for the power to go out. At some point, he had started to cry. This was goodbye after all. He kissed Mystique no less fiercely as he teleported them from the courtyard into the laboratory below the mansion.

Phoenix knew what he was doing, and it raged savagely within him. The tiger had lost all patience waiting for the electric fence to die; it now hurled itself and all its weight against its confines, clawing toward freedom no matter the cost. Pyro could feel the entity's desperation. He wasn't worth the trouble anymore; it would find someone else; it would come back later if it couldn't find someone else; it just needed to get away. Soon, he couldn't tell if it howled, roared, kicked, screamed, or clawed. Soon, all he felt was pain. He concentrated and saw Bobby in his mind's eye. In that confused state, it was difficult to feel anything physical; he was vaguely aware that he'd started to cry even harder.

"Bobby." He felt his best friend staring at him as he spoke to him telepathically.

"'Dyce?" Bobby's voice was faint and scared in John's head.

"Get the air tubes ready. Jean?"

"I'm here, John."

"Ready the tank. Bobby's going to need to shove me in there quickly. When I'm in, don't hesitate. Lock it and flood it."

"N-no," Bobby replied, "you're not going in there."

"Ice… I have to."

"No! We all thought you'd put Mystique in there. Not yourself. Not you! Please, not you!" The Phoenix's power was becoming almost overwhelming. His senses were preternaturally acute, and he could feel Bobby's tears. He was almost breaking under the strain of keeping control of his own body. Falling to sorrow now would devastate his cause.

"I can't hold on much longer, and I've got to absorb the Phoenix completely. When I do, there's no telling how much control I'll have," John said as calmly as he could, though he dared waste no energy in fighting back the desperate tears that ceaselessly slid down his face. "Please, Bobby, just… do as I ask. Please."

Bobby Drake stared motionlessly at his best friend. His eyes drifted to his professor helplessly. Jean only gave him a sad nod. Bobby watched her walk to the tall, gray electrical towers. The tank hummed to life.

"Be strong for me, Ice," he heard in his head. He saw Jean raise the oxygen tubes and steel herself. A few breaths later, he heard the command he had been dreading: "Now."

Bobby took a deep breath. This had to be quick. He ran toward his best friend, smashing into him hard to knock him off balance. Mystique crashed to the floor. He grabbed John's falling body and flung him into the open tank. The oxygen tubes sailed autonomously after him, and the tank shut tight. Bobby stood back, crying and sweating as he watched his best friend lie as still as he could as the water began to overtake him.

So that was it. The Phoenix was being contained, its threat annihilated, and all it would cost the world was his best friend. Soon the water would rise and the equipment would put John into stasis. Bobby watched the water climb. It pumped into the tank to fill up the empty space, rushing to reclaim its rightful territory. John looked peaceful, like he was completely content with how everything had worked out, like he'd known all along that he'd be making this sacrifice. Until the water rose to his chin, everything was fine. Then his head snapped sideways violently, submerging his mouth and nose in the water. Terror overtook John's eyes. He was drowning.

"Do something!" Bobby screamed. John thrashed inside the case, fighting desperately against his forced suicide. It seemed that the case's power wouldn't solidify until the flooding process was complete, but by then, John would be dead.

"Open the tank! Open it! OPEN IT!" Bobby shrieked madly at Jean. "He's going to die!"

"You'll all die if you open the tank," they heard. It was John's voice on the air, urgent but suffocated. "Do not open the tank." Bobby pressed his hands against the alien glass, fingers curling inward in pain. John was losing control of the Phoenix. If they opened the tank, it would jump to someone else and escape. Bobby thought quickly, but the answer was simple. It came to him almost immediately.

"Open the tank," he ordered quietly. "Mystique, get out of here. Use the elevator. Get out of the mansion." She looked at him, still weak and dazed. "GO!"

She was too tired to argue. Whatever plan he had was to save John. She scrambled to her feet and made her way out of the lab as quickly as possible. Bobby turned his gaze on Jean.

"Open the tank when I say. Bring up a force field around yourself. Don't let Phoenix get a hold of you." He turned to Rogue. "I need you to grab onto me and John when Jean opens the tank, and then I need you to do exactly as I say without question."

Rogue shook her head at him. "What are you—"

Bobby brought her close and kissed her deeply. "I love you," he breathed after pulling away. "Please do as I ask."

She nodded slowly, suspiciously. "I love you, too."

"We need to do this now. Jean?"

"Ready."

"Okay. Open it."

Before his final words, the water started to sink, sucked up by the large hole that led somewhere into the depths of the mysterious case. Bobby bounced on the balls of his feet like a boxer about to enter the ring. He never took his eyes off of John's face, anxiously awaiting the agony to melt into relief. He felt John's sharp gasp for air in his own throat. He could hear nothing from inside the tank, but his mind filled in the frantic sound on its own—horrible, the sound of near-death. The instant he thought the locks would spring open, Bobby was at the tank, ready to hasten the case open and do what must be done. The latches popped open. Without a moment's hesitation, Bobby grabbed Rogue's hand and forced her other hand to grasp John's head at his temple. Rogue had presumed this was what Bobby had planned, but she still shot him a scared look, silently begging him to have a plan.

"Reverse your mutation," she heard him say. "Use Phoenix's power and transfer it all to me. The second you feel the last of it leave you, lock me in the tank."

Rogue's eyes threatened to burst. They already began to glisten with tears. "No, no, no!" She shook her head but still held on to John, absorbing the cosmic energy of the Phoenix. "I can't do it. I won't do it!"

Bobby used his free hand to stroke the side of her cheek. He brushed away the tears but more came, sliding down her face thickly and slowly, like a bow flowing across a violin.

"I will always love you," he said. "If I don't do this, John will die. I'm the only one, Marie. I have to do this."

The southern belle clenched her eyes tight and hiccupped out her sobs. She focused on the all-too-familiar, powerful energy inside of her and found that she didn't need to reverse her mutation at all; it was easier to simply serve as a conductor between the two of them. The energy flowed into and out of her at the same time. Because Phoenix's entity was its power, its thoughts flowed through Rogue even as she quickly passed the energy onto Bobby. It knew it couldn't leap properly spread across three bodies that were connected as they were in those moments, so it waited for the right opportunity to possess the weakest of them and flee.

Suddenly, John went limp and Rogue gasped. She'd nearly forgotten that she was sucking the life force out of him. It was difficult to concentrate on three bodies and the immense power within her concurrently. She yanked her hand away from his temple and instead grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and unceremoniously dragged him out of the tank. There was no time for formality. John lay half on the floor, his feet still in the tank yet gradually slipping farther to the white tile. Rogue now only focused on transferring the rest of the Phoenix to Bobby. Their eyes locked. Bobby tried to smile at Rogue to comfort her, but the power siphoning into him filled him with dread.

He cast his eyes to his best friend on the floor, smiling softly despite his pain. This was his chance to do something for John. He'd felt useless throughout this whole experience. For over a year, John had suffered at the hands of the Brotherhood's games and Phoenix's manipulation, had run himself ragged trying to uncover the truth about Mystique's feelings for him. And what had Bobby done? There was no going back now; he felt the presence of the Phoenix burning within him, a heft on his heart like none he had ever felt before. This was the burden John had been carrying that whole time. Bobby needed to take it, to run far away from John and never let it hurt him again. Even as he looked at Rogue, the love of his life, his loyalty to John overshadowed everything. He knew what he was doing was right. He felt sad about how his choice would affect the people he loved, but he regretted nothing. An electric power shot through his body, and he knew that the transfer was almost complete. He leaned forward to kiss Rogue one last time.

Marie couldn't believe what was happening. She felt weaker by the second, heady after Bobby's kiss, and now he was kissing her again. She tried to push back her sobs, but with each passing moment, more of the Phoenix and her own strength left her and funneled into Bobby, who was a blurry shape through her tears. A sudden alertness grabbed her as she felt the energy within her taper. She dragged a determined arm across her face to wipe away the tears and all the weakness they came with.

The next few seconds were breathless. Bobby seemed to nod at her in slow motion. Then, with all the strength she could muster, before the tail of Phoenix's power fully transferred, Rogue slammed Bobby hard in the gut, knocking the wind out of him, and shoved him into the open tank. The breathing tubes flew at him as they had John and wrapped around his head, settling inside his nose. Marie hadn't even seen Jean move, but somehow, the buttons had been pressed. She feathered her fingers across Bobby's cheek as the last of the cosmic energy passed through her, and the tank shut with a crushing finality. Rogue stumbled backward, her backside hitting the tile as trembling hands tried to steady themselves on her cheeks. Her chest caved inwards as she exhaled.

Again, the water rose. They couldn't hear it outside the tank. All they could do was watch and wait to see if their plan would actually work. Rogue didn't want to watch. She fought with herself to look away, but not seeing killed her. She always looked back at Bobby, lying as still as death in the case. John stirred beside her, and her eyes darted to him. Sharp guilt stabbed at her heart.

"Don't look," she pleaded silently. "Just don't look."

But shaking himself back awake, John saw the tank, Bobby inside of it, and the water rushing to consume him.

"NO!" He screamed. He scrambled on hands and knees to the case when his strength failed to bring him to his feet as fast as he wanted to go. He slammed his hands against the faux glass, screaming Bobby's name. "Open the tank! Open it!" He pounded his fists above Bobby, who smiled weakly at him and raised his fingertips to the top of the glass as if to touch John's hand and say "it's okay".

John's face contorted in despair. "OPEN IT!" He screamed at Jean, choking on his own tears as his throat constricted. But his professor didn't move.

"I'm so sorry, John," she croaked.

His mouth stretched painfully as he pleaded with her. "You're killing him! Please! It should be me! It should be me!"

Suddenly, everyone's attention snapped toward the tank as the water reached Bobby's chin. As expected, the Phoenix attempted to drown him, but Bobby's mutation easily waved the threat aside. He breathed calmly. When Phoenix attempted to remove the breathing tubes, he froze them in place. It screeched in his head, furious that it had been outsmarted and trapped. Bobby felt it wonder in his mind if it should try to destroy him from the inside. Thankfully, the power of the tank began to kick in, and Bobby felt its power subside like a deep yawn inside of him. He himself began to tire. The water was almost to the top of the case now; he could see John saying something above him, but the words were lost to him within the soundproof, alien material. The Phoenix's power was too weak now to use. Bobby's hand drifted back down through the water to rest at his side. He smiled one last time at his best friend and closed his eyes.

Pyro howled, his body pressing against the tank as if he thought he could penetrate it if he pushed hard enough. He hammered it with his fists as tears streamed down his fevered face. Eventually, all of his energy left him, forcing him to lie defeatedly against the tank, punching it limply with bloodless fists then and again just to feel anything. He sank to the floor, placing his head on the cool surface of the tank.

"Bobby, you stupid kid. You stupid, stupid…"

Jean ran a shaking hand through her hair. She wanted to comfort John and Marie—she was the adult in the room after all—but she couldn't summon any cheer onto her face. Her heart was like lead in her chest as she looked at her distraught students on the floor. John had cried and yelled so hard that he'd exhausted himself, and Rogue was propped against a wall with her head on her knees. Nothing she said would make them feel any better. There were no words for this. She briefly checked the vital stats displayed on one of the electrical towers then quietly made her way to John and knelt beside him.

"I'll go tell Professor Xavier." Her voice came out awkwardly. She realized that she was afraid of her student's response, bracing herself for his ire.

"Okay," he said. She had winced prematurely. His tone was soft and sad, devoid of any anger or even vitality. She reached out a few cautious fingers to stroke his hair but reconsidered. Rising slowly, she turned from the room and walked toward the elevator.

When she approached it, it was already opening. Mystique appeared before her, shoulders hunched and yellow eyes downcast. The two women made eye contact briefly and sidestepped one another, exchanging places. Mystique nodded meekly to the telepath and walked toward the lab, eyes still scanning the floor. She was fully prepared to see John still in the tank, dark and motionless in the water, perhaps dead. Her heart leapt when she saw him on the floor alive but plummeted when she realized that Bobby had taken his place.

Quietly, she made her way toward him, bare blue feet padding softly across the cold tile. He didn't look at her when she approached, but he felt her sit beside him and lean her back against the tank. They sat silently that way for a long time, facing opposite directions, bodies close but not touching. The air in the laboratory was still and cold. The only noise came from the towers powering the tank, their soft whirr whispering in the emptiness.