ana | Asgard all-powers threesomeverse (connor, sophie, pyro)

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Asgard all-powers threesomeverse (connor, sophie, pyro)

The war was over but Asgard was incredibly loud all of a sudden. Connor cracked a bleary eye to check the clock… it was still dark as if it was the middle of the night, and sure enough, 2:41 in the morning. What the hell. He didn’t think much of it at that moment, just rolled over to crush the pillow over his ears or burrow into Sophie’s neck or something that would allow him to get back to sleep.

But Sophie wasn’t there.

That itself would not have been cause for alarm; maybe she went to the bathroom, she was allowed to urinate. What was alarming, and thus caused Connor to bolt upright and stumble out of bed in terror, was the fact that Sophie was a black amorphous lump that was flopping off the other side of the bed. He’d seen it before, in the other world and in nightmares since, but this wasn’t a nightmare. He knew because falling off the bed hurt, and the thump of his side on the floor was so incredibly loud he felt like it would blow out his eardrums. He cried out in shock and pain, and that only made both worse.

Pressing both hands over his ears Connor struggled to his feet, speaking as loud as he could manage. “Sophie? Sophie?!” Fuck, it was so loud. So loud he could hear his heartbeat through his hands and see every thread of their sheets even in the near pitch black of their room and was what he thought was happening actually happening? Desperate now he lowered a hand to the blob, grimacing as it squished down under his hand, and shook. “Sophie! John! John!!!”

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For a long moment after John is gone and she has pulled Connor to his feet as though he was six feet and change of feather, all Sophie does is breathe, fighting down the Red in her, forcing her heart to slow and even. It hadn't felt unnatural until Connor pulled her shadow away, took control over something that she had forgotten is not simply part of herself. Now there is simply another thing in her that does not belong, vying for space in a tiny body already so polluted with other magics. She twists shadows in little snakes around her fingers, a complex weave of them to give her something to focus on.

"He's going to burn something down," she finally says, though she suspects that Connor is more than well aware. Her voice is still soft, in deference to his hearing. "Can his own fire hurt him?" Do I need to find him for you before he accidentally kills himself? is what she means, of course. If whispers and footsteps are deafening him, there's no way that Connor could stand a burning building.

"He'll stay away from places with people." Connor sounds more certain of that than he feels, using the hand Sophie used to help him up to in turn tug her into his arms. If she was anyone else, it's possible his grip would have fractured her wrist. He doesn't seem to have any control of his abilities, no way to focus his senses or his strength while he's still in control of shadows. Too much power crammed into too little space, indeed.

"The fire is part of him, and if he's still got his healing too, that's more reason we need to figure out what's happening. This is wrong." He rests his head on Sophie's, armored scales and all. "If people's heads are going to start exploding all over the city, someone's gotta know about it besides us."

Should John check his bracelet at all after he's done burning the shit out of that house, he'll find a simple text from Connor:
Please be careful.

It's less carefulness for other people's sake or property damage, but for his own, for John's sense of self. They aren't going to go out searching for him unless he doesn't come back, but Connor sure is going to worry.

It's through the fire that he discovers the rest of it: rafters falling and snapping his spine, breaking limbs, only for them to knit back together in moments. He crawls out from under countless piles of debris without a scratch on him, regeneration taking care of the wounds and fire no longer a concern. He's merged into a near-perfect being.

(He still can't create fire. That's a weakness it appears he'll never escape. But what a small one now.)

Unfortunately, he loses such control of himself that he isn't able to keep his clothes protected, and comes out of the literal firestorm of destruction completely naked. There are smudges of soot all over his body, of course, but he's still eerily unmarked. And the city is eerily quiet with so many having gone home, thankfully quiet as he walks down the streets without clothes or a single care in the world. The flashing of his bracelet only catches his eye once he's found one of many abandoned homes in which to rest, and he sends a quick message back.

I really am a god among insects now.

"I hope so." Sophie's body simply accommodates Connor's accidental clumsiness without comment, her bones turning to stone beneath her resilient scales. After a moment, she is her human self again, the scent of apothecary still clinging to her hair. Beneath that is new strangeness, though: the scent of burning, of cool, dank places, a metallic scent distinctly not copper, and the barest hint of seawater and linden blossoms. And human, of course. She is technically still that.

Her arms wrap around him, tight enough that he'll feel the squeeze of them. "It doesn't feel like any of the other times. What could we even do? Call upon the gods? What could they even do for us?" She sighs. "Besides resurrect us yet again."

Connor isn't quick enough when Pyro's message comes through that Sophie doesn't see it. She gives a snort, the anger rising in her again before she pushes it down and replies through her own bracelet.

It is impolite to call one's friends insects. She does not mention that she could utterly destroy him before he even had the chance to flick his lighter, though she would very much like to at that moment.

Edited 2015-04-28 01:57 (UTC)

"We'll see what happens. Maybe they'll make an announcement... I'd just rather not get blown up again."

Even if that's what it feels like is happening. Sophie and John adjusted much faster and easier than Connor, who sticks close to Sophie through the afternoon for two reasons. 1) This is fucking terrifying. 2) He wants to show that he doesn't care about the strangeness, about the animalistic viciousness put back in her. His is back as well after all, and by the time this text exchange is underway he's started to feel like his old self... his old self with the addition of shadow mastery.

This is bad news for Pyro's attitude.

Connor glances up at Sophie, who he was cuddling upon when the text came in and hadn't bothered to move, and raises an eyebrow. Either of them could track him through the city without having to think about it, now. "Should we see what he's gotten himself into?"

I'd like to see what you could do about it.

Invincible. Even if fire can't touch something, it can't keep him down for very long either. Why was Logan such a bitchy pain in the ass most of the time? This is amazing. It's perfect. He's holed up in a large house in Sigyn, still personalized and decorated but deserted, just another reminder that their time here should have come to an end and they don't really belong any more.

But he won't go back. After all that time with something stolen from him, the gods have made amends. They've improved him. All that's waiting for him is another shitty war, one that's been going on for decades, and mutants dropping like flies because humans have somehow figured out a way to cure their DNA - yet another one of the twists and turns in their attempts to eradicate their superiors, attempts which will never end. Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, right?

Not that he knows that saying or what it implies, but it's his general feeling as he creates a little palace of fire around himself, all just edging the surfaces of the living room so that nothing truly burns. He wants to be wrapped in it, cocooned. He wants the pressure gauge in his brain low and the thermostat high, just how he likes things. There will be time for more destruction, absolutely more time, but right now he wants to relax.

If he's allowed. He has a feeling his friends will come after him, which will probably mean a fight. But that's not a switch in mood to which he'll object at all, because when is he not fixing for a fight?

No, I do not think you will.

John's naivete would be almost cute if she was in any kind of mood for it. It's not precisely that she wishes John any harm (he belongs to Connor, after all), but if a lesson must be taught by force...well. Let him learn.

She lifts her head to look at Connor, smile brittle and sharp. It's been some time since he's seen that smile, but Sophie is feeling the full depths and heights of her abilities, and that eternal itch of ill-fitting skin has finally ceased.

"I do believe we have assigned ourselves his keepers," she says, and does not stand up so much as she is suddenly standing, hand extended to Connor. "Somehow I doubt he will be difficult to find."

Just follow the smoke to come upon the fire. Still holding Connor's hand, she leaps for the rooftops, bare feet sure on the tiles.

They follow the smoke to the fire traveling by rooftop, and though Connor already nearly always traveled by rooftop in Asgard his movements are different now. It takes so much less strength to make each leap, so much less focus to see where he's landing and what the next hand or foothold is. He and Sophie no longer look like travelers in the night, but predators locked on to prey. They drop down beside the remains of the burning Sigyn building and Connor breathes in, catching the scent of his friend and the flames that have taken him over, it seems in body and mind.

"This way," he tells Sophie, unnecessarily since they're so in tune, and she could alter herself to track on her own... but this is what Connor has been doing since he could walk, and he settles back into the role of hunter more comfortably than he'd admit.

Pyro's path is winding, but leads them to another abandoned house. So far no one's been hurt, and Connor doesn't smell anyone inside but Pyro and his fire. His fire, it's amazing how he can tell the difference between the flames at the other house and the ones that Pyro's controlling. They're different. Just like Pyro is different from John in a way he can't explain.

Connor pulls shadow armor up around him (he's both, how are any of them both at once and how will they ever be stoppable?) as he did in Alfheim -- unless Pyro really wants to hurt him, he should be able to keep the flames off his skin. Still, he gestures to the door for Sophie to go first. And that's the order they'll enter in, a girl covered in dragon scales and the inky black shadow of a boy.

He's very much holding court in the living room beyond the walls of flame, sitting in an armchair as though it were a throne, casual but coiled all at once. His weapon is all around him now. He just needs to think of it and they'll have the bowels of hell raining down on them.

"Still hiding behind your scales and your shadows," he sneers, as though he isn't hiding just as much behind his fire. "What's it gonna prove, busting my ass over and over again? You'll never leave a mark that sticks. I can do it as long as you can."

And that's when he stands up, pulling a stream of fire down from the ceiling and into his hand. If they have to do it, then fine. Whatever it takes to get them past this idea that he's something other than this - more, in their eyes. This is everything he was ever meant to be.

He's naked. An interesting choice. Then again, she doesn't appear to be wearing any clothing at the moment either But by the time he pulls the fire from the ceiling it doesn't matter anymore.

"Hiding?" Sophie says the word like a laugh. "You know Connor, Pyro, but you know nothing of me." One of her hands motions for Connor to stay back as she continues to slowly walk forward. "And you mistake me. It is not that I desire to break you. It is that I have a goal, and it will be accomplished. If that requires your suffering, or mine, so be it."

As she walks forward, the hand that she had used to gesture Connor back grows long claws, wickedly sharp.

It's impossible to tell that the shadow is the one speaking, as the light of the flames is sucked into the black hole of his armor the sound of his voice echoes through the darkness. He sounds sure of himself now rather than scared like earlier, and angry.

"You both think that, don't you? You think I'm an idiot, that I only see what I want of you and not the rest. It's you who's blind, thinking that all you are is what you can do. When you're both still in there." Connor hangs back for the moment, knowing that the tables have turned and at the moment he's the weakest in the room... and the only one who's not willing to hurt the others.

"Connor, stay out of this."

His own anger is a bit too defensive to be threatening. Sophie and Pyro can fight precisely because they don't have the same kind of bond yet, but Connor's a chronic blind spot, and he won't let it get in the way this time. As long as he's been here, people have been trying to belittle the loss of his identity as a mutant and push him past it as though it were like losing a weapon or some other important but external belonging; then, when he gets it back, suddenly everyone knows that identity better than he does. Everyone always knows him better than he does himself, be it a better or worse opinion, and has from the day he was born.

That's all he's got to say, though. The time for speech-making has passed with those vicious claws coming for him. With a flick of his hand, the coil of flame in his hand becomes a steady, white-hot stream, engulfing Sophie's scaled figure entirely before melting into the burning walls around them.

Sophie's scales glow brightly gold, but she doesn't even falter in her progress toward John. It's steady, fearless, and as she gets closer, something in her expression changes from fierce to calm, almost sympathetic. A second eyelid protects her eyes, making a reptilian blur over her pupils, and she tilts her head to the side.

"You are not a god, Pyro. Nothing good comes of infinite power, anyway."

Her arm reaches out, those claws settling with infinite delicacy around John's throat.

"I don't think even your healing could bring you back from the loss of your head." She sighs, some of John's fire snorting from her nose. If he moves too much, her claws will nick his skin like razors, but she is actually trying not to hurt him. "This is enough. You're hurting Connor. Come home so we can figure this out."

He can't knock her back, or even slow her down. Several times, he draws his arms back and appears to "throw" a greater force of fire at her, but nothing's working. Every pulse of energy rolls right over her and she shows not a flicker of fear.

It's infuriating. By the time she's got a grip on him, one he knows could be deadly, he doesn't even care about his own safety anymore. He's blinded by the months (the lifetime, really) of rage that's built up around people belittling and underestimating and pigeonholing him.

"You don't decide who I am. No one does. If you don't like it, fucking kill me already."

Connor is calling to her, practically yelling. It is just audible over John's flames, but Sophie can't turn away just now to hear him.

"I'm not deciding anything. If I intended to kill you then you would be dead. You are deciding whether you want to be a naked 'god' alone in an empty room of flames or come back home with Connor and me." She shakes her head, just a little. "All my life, people have told me what I ought be, and all I ever wanted to be was Sophie. Is this what you want to be?"

All my life, people have told me what I ought to be.

There's just something about the people in Asgard. There always has been. They turn to empathy when he's expecting judgment, dismissal, almost anything else, and it gets him in an area he never thought to shield because that was never necessary. An area that's all too vulnerable because he's only ever braced for attack.

Slowly, the flames die back - not from the walls, not from the ceiling, but from Sophie. Little nicks around his throat are perpetually opening and healing because he simply won't stop shouting and ranting, but now he's finally still. Still and visibly troubled.

"Let me go. I wanna talk to Connor."

Connor could only just hear that they'd been speaking over the roar of the flames, and he hadn't liked the sound of it... until Sophie's question. And then the unbearable blast of flame dies down, the fire that had kept him back, screaming himself hoarse because it was so hot and he had so little shadow to work with that even armored he was starting to feel like his blood was boiling beneath his skin.

He has to fight the urge to run to Sophie to check she isn't burnt, or John to check he isn't bleeding. He holds himself perfectly still as Pyro asks to be released, and as Sophie's claws retract and she steps out of his personal space, her scales still glowing white-hot.

Instead of stepping forward Connor lets his shadows thin and melt away, knowing full well that there's so much light in the room that if he lets them go completely he won't be able to protect himself. He does it anyway, and waits for his friend to approach.

He doesn't even know what he's going to say when he makes the demand, but the sight of Connor's shadow melting away definitely has an impact. Where Sophie stormed right in because she couldn't be hurt, Connor is saying that he trusts he won't. Pyro is free to do what he will without any retaliation in return.

That's when the rest of the fire evaporates, almost before Pyro - John? - realizes he's done it. Slowly, he moves closer to Connor, and it starts to dawn on him at last that he lost every single stitch of clothing in that house fire. He sure is bare-ass naked right now. The only indication he gives is a twitching of his arms and hands, like he wants to cover himself but isn't sure where to start.

"This won't be the last time," he says, with no threat or warning in his voice. It's just a simple statement of truth. "You really see who I am, all of it? That means you know it already. You don't just get to put this side away 'cause it might cause trouble."

"I know -- I see it. Asgard tried to take parts of us, but in the end you don't get to put any side away. Meaning my friend is still here. I just want you to come home." He reaches for John impulsively, then realizes he doesn't know how the heat retention works and he might burn the crap out of his hand. Sophie is still glowing off to the side, after all. "We do," he corrects himself, eyes hopeful.

It's not like they haven't all had their nature revealed even without their abilities. Connor murdered Sophie. She killed her friends. Pyro was still an arsonist but John, the person at the core, is the one that Connor loves. Pyro is a part of the whole, just like the Destroyer is always going to be part of Connor. If anything he's the worst of them, he thinks to himself -- he just tries really hard.

It's what no one would ever say to him before Asgard, before people like Oswin and Euri and now Connor and Sophie. The pieces of John can co-exist, be one - he can be good without always being good, be destructive without always being destructive, be cruel without always being cruel, be himself. Everything was a dichotomy back home, starting with mutants and humans, but there are shades here in which he can exist.

And be cared about. He can't forget that. There's no more hiding anything now (at all, he really is very naked), and they're both aware of that as they continue to offer that care.

Fortunately, the surface temperature of his skin is static, so he's able to reach out and grab Connor's hand before it drops away.

"If you change your mind -" That is a threat, but he can't finish it. He doesn't have to. And he doesn't really think it's a possibility anymore.

When John takes his hand -- and it's John now, definitely -- Connor lets out a sound that's part happiness and part relief, a faint smile curving his mouth. "I won't." And he uses the hand to pull John into a hug (oh, the dreaded hug) ignoring the dirt and soot he's covered in.

And the distinct lack of anything else.

He's already flushed from the heat of the fire but Sophie can see the moment Connor re-realizes his friend is naked, color deepening in his cheeks.

Sophie's smirk, equal parts pleased and amused, is only for Connor as she comes over, her still-glowing scales abruptly vanishing to be replaced with what appears to be a tight tanktop and leggings. This is entirely for John's benefit; she hadn't been wearing any clothes at all when they left the house. If he looks closely, he'll notice that there is not a single seam on any of her 'garments', but somehow it seems unlikely.

"Can we go home now?" She looks between John, covered in ash and soot, and Connor, covered in sweat and smeared with black in the places his skin had moved over John's. "We could all use a bath."

"Connor!!"

The horror in his voice is, quite frankly, hilarious. His objections to Connor's hugs have become more joking than anything, but this time it's really way the fuck over the line.

"I'm bare-ass naked, dude, let me go. I need a bath and clothes, and you not touching me right now."

Connor had sort of frozen in place when it sank in. Now he lets go, but is blushing to his ears and averting his eyes. "Y-yeah well. You're walking home naked unless we do touch, I can make you shadow clothes."

"He could hold hands with me instead," Sophie points out in an exceptionally helpful tone that falls just short of laughing."But let us not quibble over the details. The bath calls."

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