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Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health.Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is.- Romeo and JulietAll the nights were like each other, even counting the sporadic storms the turn of the season had brought with it. Endless hours of silence and the thousand small sounds that made the silence deeper. The dark that spilled through the room and crept in behind his eyelids. Johnny was finding it steadily more difficult to sleep at night. Sometimes he'd watch the night sky, often finding Magneto... Erik, because it was hard to think of names worn like masks as belonging to that hour of the dark... already gazing up."Young Rogue is lucky," Erik said once, watching the slow wheel of stars in the heavens. "She carries her old friends in her head with her, lovers that do not leave or betray."Johnny thought this, no offense meant to Erik, was total bullshit. Rogue... Marie... two names so separated in his own mind that they might as well be two people as the one they were... had never asked for or chosen to have the passengers in her brain. She'd made wry jokes often enough about how teenagers already had identity issues without an internal vox pop going on constantly.It had been a discomforting and eerie sensation, when she'd grabbed his ankle outside Bobby's house. Like everything that made him who he was - as Johnny, as Pyro, as the person inside that never really had a name - was water in a bathtub that had suddenly had the plug pulled. Swirling down, draining out, all seeping into the young girl with the ancient streak running through her soul and her fringe.When it was happening, Johnny had hated it, but looking back it gave him an odd tug of excitement that made Erik's words hold a shred of sense in them. Some part of him was a part of her now. Maybe when her fingertips touched a hot kettle by mistake now she recognised the sting as an old familiar friend, maybe she fiddled with the lids of pens and jars and lighters when she was bored. Maybe she looked at Bobby and wondered how much condensation they could cause to thicken on the windows just by willing it so. As if Bobby would ever misbehave so.This imaginary situation, idly mulled over on nights when Johnny was bored and Bobby was being his irritating good-natured good-boy good-son good-boyfriend good-looking good-student good-guy appealing self in the general vicinity, always took place in a room with a convenient fireplace. Occasionally John would wallow in self-dislike and self-pity, envying the fact that Bobby carried the ice inside himself where John had to draw the fire from an external source. But the feeling always passed because, literal meaning notwithstanding, fire was just so much cooler than ice as far as powers went.And Bobby was there too, inside Rogue's head, wasn't he? And what did that do, to have the pair of them in her brain together all the time? Did they meld somehow, squishing together like different coloured clays to make the malleable shape of Rogue's own consciousness, or were they separate and dissonant and clashing behind her eyes?Yeah, Johnny had spent the expected amount of time musing over the masturbatory habits of the hot chick he saw every day in class, the girl he knew for a fact wasn't getting it from anyone but her own gloved hand (though presumably she didn't wear the glove when... Johnny filed that line of thought away for later use). But more interesting than that was the thought of what kind of dreams might go on behind that dark lively face when the lights went out. If there were dialogues, conversations, love affairs and wars and times of uneasy peace. What was it like, to never be alone?Johnny knew all about being alone. But now he didn't have to think about it anymore, didn't have to remember. He had somewhere to belong now.A Thursday morning in English class. Romeo and Juliet, and the Professor asking for volunteers to read the parts.Johnny puts his hand in the air and the Professor looks at him, reading his intentions, and nods with a small smile."John, you will take the role of Juliet."Whoops and whistles and laughs from the class, and Johnny mimes a bow at his desk. It was always his defense, to be the clown, and now it's habit. If you can't join 'em, make 'em laugh."Bobby shall play Romeo," Professor Xavier goes on. "Gentlemen, the balcony scene, if you will."More whoops, Rogue laughing and clapping."See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek," Bobby says with as much enthusiasm as any teenager learning about dead white English poets.Johnny's turn and he grins and launches in."'Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face. What's in a name? That which we call a Rogue by any other word would seem as sweet."She blushes, ducking her head so her hair falls forward. Johnny speaks on as if nothing had occurred, but is unsurprised to find his dinner that night - minestrone soup - at a temperature the wrong side of frozen.Mystique was Rogue's negative and opposite (and, sometimes, when it struck Magneto's fancy, her double). Rogue, who could not touch, kept others inside her head, whereas Mystique (who could touch and writhe and whisper and bite) had a mind that remained solely her own no matter what shifts and masks her skin was wearing. For Christ's sake, she was a dude half the time and yet never seemed to go through a moment's doubt or existential angst.Shouldn't use the Lord's name in vain, some shocked small-child version of himself inside his own head said in a horrified voice. Ah, the things that stay despite years of healthy secular capitalist deprogramming. He'd been named for Saint John, and had never had the chance to ask which Saint John that might have been. The one who wrote the book of Revelation and rained deadly fire down on 200 men in the temple of Artemis, or the one who was the patron saint of firefighters? Or another entirely, with no ironic significance behind the name?Bobby had given him a jersey for Christmas two years ago, Bobby's brother was a sports nut and had gone through a hockey phase. The jersey had a bright orange dragon curled across it, words spelling out ST JOHN FLAMES in bold letters. He'd appreciated the joke. Bobby was always doing stupid sweet crap like that just because he could. Ah, Bobby, what were you doing in the middle of this endless night? Did you dream easily, or did something keep you awake as well?Friday night and Johnny's managed to smuggle a bottle of Jack Daniels into the dorms. Exams are finally over and it's about damn time, his brain feels even more fried than usual. He invites Bobby and Rogue to join him and they sprawl around on the floor and the bed and Johnny idly wishes he had some weed, because the thought of these two stoned is pushing him to the verge of laughter."Come on, I wanna see how a Nice Little Southern Girl does a shot," Johnny says, handing the glass to Bobby so it'll be icy cold against the liquor. Rogue tips her head back and her throat moves as she swallows."Pretty smooth for a chick." Johnny is impressed."You can be such an asshole, Johnny," Rogue laughs. "I should get a bunch of 'chicks' together to kick your ass.""Kidding, kidding." Johnny holds his hands up in defense. "I take it back, my little suffragette.""Well, good." Rogue pushes her hair out of her eyes. "Am I ever glad those tests are done with. There is no way on this earth I passed math, but otherwise I think I did ok."Bobby sits up from his slouch long enough to grab the bottle and then flops down again. "What'd you write on in the history paper?""Stonewall," Rogue answers."I wonder what it's like. To be in the thick of that. Or a suffragette, or whatever, you know?" Johnny muses, playing with his lighter. "Sorta like fighting a war, I guess. 'For our tomorrow they gave their today' and shit.""Hmm." Bobby chews idly on his lower lip, pondering the idea. Rogue takes a quick gulping shot straight from the neck of the bottle and says nothing."I mean, we're kinda the same, aren't we? One day kids at this school are gonna write essays on the stuff our generation does, what we fight for. Just like women's lib and gay rights and all.""It's not the same," mutters Rogue, shifting so she's fractionally closer to Bobby. Johnny sees the movement and maybe that's what makes him press the issue."Why not? Because you don't like being a mutant and you like being a girl?" he snaps. Rogue flinches. Johnny keeps talking. "It's a matter of life and death, just the same, whether you like it or not.""What do you know about life and death?" Rogue spits the words out like they're acid."An idea isn't true just because someone dies for it," says Bobby, trying to bring the tension down from the sudden crackle-pop-lightning atmosphere of the room."Don't give me that Oscar Wilde bullshit, Drake," Johnny snatches the bottle off Rogue and takes three quick swallows. "She's making it all about her, we all know it. Well, Marie, you wanna be a feminist? Welcome to conscription. Men have been dying for shit they didn't believe in for a long time.""You'd die for it then?" Rogue asks quietly, and her dark eyes are burning him inside. Johnny shrugs, brushing off the weight of that look."Guess we'll find out one day, since we can't change the fact that we're the children of the revolution, you know? And come on, Rogue, didn't some bit of you inside get off on being the new Joan of Arc?"Rogue runs out of the room and Bobby punches Johnny in the jaw and ow fuck it's like being hit with a block of ice and then he's alone and the JD is spilling out into the carpet. Bobby will forgive and forget soon enough, it's not the first time he's clocked Johnny for mouth-shooting.He finds Rogue in her dorm room, she's standing at the window and wipes dampness from under her eyes when she sees him at the door."You can be such an asshole, Johnny," she says quietly, her voice shaky."I shouldn't talk about what I don't get. Tell you what, once I've had the chance to die for The Mutant Cause and thereby discovered whether I've got the balls to put my money where my mouth is, then I'll comment on what happened. Not before. Deal?""Deal." Rogue nods. Johnny follows her gaze out the window."The sunrise is like a fire in reverse, isn't it? First the sky is grey all over, like ash, and then the light comes over the horizon and everything's bright.""Mmm." Rogue's eyelashes sparkle with the droplets caught on them."Hey, I'm a jerk," Johnny says, putting his arm around her carefully. "And anyway, you've got something Joan of Arc never thought of.""I do?""A bud who can manipulate fire, natch."Rouge laughs a sniffly laugh at that, and they watch the dawn together.She had taken to gardening over the Spring, happy to touch something that thrived with her attention instead of wilting. Green and yellow and blue and violet and a hundred other shades, vegetables and weeds and flowers. Rogue wasn't choosy, she loved them all."That one's in honour of you," she'd said one afternoon as he joined her on the soft ground, her face flushed from working and her hair coming loose from its ponytail. She pointed to a plant, some kind of sage from the look of it, with bright red blooms all over. Rogue pushed a damp strand of hair off her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving behind a dark smudge of dirt on her skin. "St John's Fire."And he'd leaned over carefully, taking the corner of her scarf between his fingers, and wiped at the mark. Her breath had caught, skin tensing out of fear that had become instinct."It's ok, I've got it," he'd whispered, wiping the dirt away carefully. Her eyes were so bright, like some stupid metaphor that just meant really big wet bright eyes on a completely beautiful girl in the garden one early evening.It made him think of those games kids are always playing, one finger hovering an inch away from skin 'I'm not touching you I'm not touching you why're you getting annoyed I'm not touching you'.He'd loved her then. And Bobby too, this perfect white-bread barbie-doll pair that the world would have crucified given half the chance. They were plaster saints, frozen and untouchable and reverent.And he loved them still, but they'd never understood. Not even Rogue... Marie... Rogue, who should have seen and understood. He could be St John in a worn hockey jersey given as a gift from a perfect-gorgeous-perfect friend with friendly eyes the colour of a penguin's hangout and he could be St John smiling at pretty red flowers that a pretty dark girl had planted in the garden. Maybe they could have loved that boy, their St John.And he could be Pyro defending himself against police who shot first and asked questions never and he could be Pyro flirting with danger when danger wore a dorky helmet and he could be Pyro learning the secrets of flesh and power and evolution from those who had seen the depths and heights of human action. Maybe they would have understood. Maybe.But in the night, when the masks were gone and the world was still and silent, all he had was himself. And there was no good or bad, no black and white. Just the even grey colour of ash, in the moment before the world caught fire with the new day.