He wears his heart
safety pinned to his backpack
His backpack is all that he knows

After Alcatraz Pyro ceases to exist, just like John Allerdyce was erased when he left the mansion.

If people want to know his name he tells them that it's Drake and if they really want to know then he says 'Louis Drake'. John finds it fitting to use the name of the man who killed him, at least that what everyone thinks. Pyro is officially among the dead of the 'Battle of Alcatraz'. Louis is Bobby's middle name and only a handful of people know this.

John sometimes wonders if Bobby feels guilty for killing him, if it keeps him up at night. He likes to think so, imagines how Bobby wanders down into the mansion's kitchen each night and tries to calm his mind with ice cream. Bobby always eats ice cream when he feels guilty about something. John saw him do it after every time he came back from a trip home and when he was officially dating Rogue and unofficially sleeping with John.

Louis Drake is not a terrorist, he's not even a mutant, just a man with a shaggy mop of brown hair, a shark lighter and a battered guitar. A street musician travelling through the country like so many others.

There are people in Louis Drake's life, but all of them remind him one way or another of Bobby.

Lindsey, a country singer who is shot by a barkeeper in LA, has Bobby's stunningly blue eyes.

Gabriel, the prodigy from New York who ran away from his family planning his future, possesses Bobby's lanky and tall body.

Ethan, a jazz musician in New Orleans, is a cryogenic mutant.

Alex's hair is just as fine and soft and blonde as Bobby's. It's his idea to go to New York, because he has a friend there. John agrees only reluctantly but then he figures that the chances to accidentally meet Bobby in a city of a few million inhabitants are zero.

John should have know better than to tempt fate. It seems to have a perverse joy to throw John and Bobby together despite all chances pointing in the opposite direction.

They meet and Bobby crushes him in an embrace as if John was a long lost friend and not the guy Bobby tried to kill at their last meeting.

On the upside no none is harmed, on the downside John and Bobby manage to revert into their 17 year old selves very quickly and yell at each other about betrayals and bad choices on an open street. Since the fight doesn't resolve into violence it resolves into sex, very angry sex where they leave scratches and bruises on each other and it hurts more than it was worth it.

John fucking missed this.

'After Alcatraz,' Bobby hesitates: 'You were different before.'

'Death leaves a mark.' John answers: 'It kills you even if you don't die.'

And John can see that Bobby wonders how close John has come to actually dying on that island.

'You're going to stay?' He asks after a few minutes of silence. John shrugs:

'New York is as good as anywhere else.'

'I thought you were dead.' Bobby says as if there's some hidden meaning in the sentence that John hasn't discovered yet.

'Why didn't you come back?' Bobby asks.

'Bobby,' John says sternly: 'You never asked me to come back.'

'And if I ask you now?'

'We'll see.' John smirks.

'Please come back, John.'

'Okay.' John smiles and Bobby smiles back but before Bobby kisses him, John says:

'By the way, my name's Louis Drake now.'

Bobby laughed and just like that the years disappeared and they were again Bobby and John, sharing something beautiful, precious and fragile in a dangerous and cruel world.