Most Wanted Extra - Second Reason

[mayachain]

I promised people an explanation to the conversation in the epilogue of the Gazette Day/Most Wanted series. It got a bit out of hand, but here it is.

Second Reason The first time it happens, a sudden current of heat goes through his veins and something explodes a tealight in a thankfully parent-free living room, and he is a hysterical eleven-year-old screaming for Anna. Of the many subjects in St John Allerdyce's past he allows nobody to touch, this is the one he guards the most. The Professor tries a few times, but the teen goes colder than his new roommate in full ice mode, blank-faced, his mind a maelstrom of dark threats that lets the telepath probe no deeper than the surface. She is the one who spends hours and loads of pocket-money in the net-café down the street, who finds an explanation. She is not afraid. She is curious, and once she has told him what he is, she runs to find a matchbook and hands it over with only a slight admonition to be careful. He subconsciously decides to make friends with Bobby because he's like Anna, cheerful and responsible and, up to the point where it's better to be careful, always willing to believe the best of everyone. When she dies, she is terrified, but her look tells him Run, Squirrel and she loves him and she is not afraid. Uncomfortably perched on the couch at the Drake's, nervous energy running through him, senses on edge, he watches the parents. Maybe it's his fault, that Bobby doesn't think Ronnie will be a problem. When he wants to tell their parents, she advises against it, but he doesn't believe ill of his mom, isn't even really that concerned about her dad. She sits silently supportive beside him the whole time while he stutters and finally lights a match. Until the day he dies, he wishes he'd done the demonstration bit while she was out of the house. His worst nightmares are neither of uncontrollable flames, nor of days wandering the streets between social services and foster families. The most haunting nightmare he ever has while staying at the Mansion has her yelling at him to hurry up, climbing a tree ahead of him, a huge smile on her face. After, he learns to use his power to defend himself, refusing to curl up and die, unwilling to let any human hurt him or his friends because she wants him to live, no matter what her father says. As far as St John's powers go, the Iceman is virtually immune, no matter how far they push each other in the Danger Room. Bobby is the only one who knows, the only one he eventually tells. Everyone who meets St John automatically assumes he grew up an only child. And they are right, if you consider the first nine years of his life. But from that cold day in February when his mother inflicts him with a stepfather till everything falls apart in flames one day in June, for those two year he has an older sister. Alone in a temporary safe house's kitchen, he is an arrogant mutant teenager skimming through the New York Times' list of the dead, regarding the listed human victims, detached and not a little smug. His eyes glue themselves to four letters arranged in a familiar way in the middle section of the page. He is seventeen and eleven all at once and he knows he cannot possibly stay with someone whose actions killed another person with that name.