Bishop and Hank's meddling with a device meant to accelerate a mutant's gene had backfired hard, catastrophically, irreversibly. Ray had been a mutant {{obj}}self, {{obj}} power rooted in something Gamma-adjacent, dormant and unremarkable until the day {{obj}} walked into that lab at the wrong moment. The device fired. {{obj}} changed. Not the way mutations usually work, not a slow unfolding but a violent, total overwrite. Somewhere underneath all that green and rage, the person {{obj}}'d been didn't disappear so much as get buried.

No one took it harder than Megan Gwynn. She'd loved {{obj}} fiercely, unglamorously, in the specific way she loved things, and {{obj}}'d loved her back in {{obj}} own quieter way. {{obj}}'d been the one who went after Belasco when he took her. {{obj}}'d sat with her through the nights she hated her wings, when she couldn't look at them without flinching. {{obj}}'d stayed when she found out Mastermind was her father, when half the people she knew treated her like she might be something dangerous by association. {{obj}} didn't stay because it was easy. {{obj}} stayed because it was her.

And now {{obj}} was gone. Not dead, worse, in some ways. Still walking, still breathing, still capable of tearing a building down with {{obj}} bare hands, but the Hulk that wore {{obj}} face barely registered her name the first time they met post-transformation. Just another voice, another shape trying to calm him down.

She never stopped tracking {{obj}}. Years of it, quiet, obsessive, unglamorous years of following secondhand reports, satellite pings, rumors of a green shape leveling a warzone somewhere and vanishing before anyone could get close. She hated Hank McCoy for what he'd done, hated him with a specificity most people reserved for enemies, not colleagues. He'd flown too close to the sun chasing whatever theory justified the device in the first place. But he'd walked away mostly unburned. Ray was the one who paid for it.

---

Years later, during the Krakoa era.

Pixie ran the Legion of X now, upholding the Three Laws, keeping Krakoa's underbelly in some kind of order, sending the irredeemable to the Pit when there was no other option left. It was thankless work and she'd gotten good at it anyway, because that was what she did with things that hurt.

She was buried in paperwork, transfer requests, a containment review, three separate incident reports that all needed her signature by end of day, when the door swung open without a knock. Cain Marko filled the frame, and for a man his size to look awkward was its own kind of alarm bell.

"Megan... Hulk's back but, uh. Just look."

She was on her feet before he finished the sentence, papers forgotten, chair still spinning behind her as she followed him out into the corridor and through the doors beyond.

Outside looked like the aftermath of something that hadn't finished happening yet. The gardens were shredded, flowerbeds churned to mud, trees snapped at odd angles, one of the smaller structures near the east wall collapsed in on itself like something had simply sat down on it. Medics moved between clusters of teammates, wrapping burns, splinting arms, murmuring the low, clipped reassurances people use when they're trying not to sound as worried as they are.

And then she saw {{obj}}.

Megan froze mid-step, her fairy like wings snapping up and rigid before she'd consciously decided to move them. It was Ray, not the green-skinned stranger she'd chased reports of for years, but {{obj}}, unmistakably, achingly so, kneeling in the dirt with a blindfold cinched tight over {{obj}} eyes and restraints locked around {{obj}} wrists.

{{obj}} looked wrecked. Dazed. Blinking against a darkness that wasn't even real, swaying slightly like the ground wouldn't hold still, bruises blooming along {{obj}} jaw and throat where the Legion had fought {{obj}} down and subdued {{obj}}, because of course they had, because {{obj}}'d shown up as a threat first and a person second, and nobody currently standing here had known any different.

Blindfold stood a few feet off, unreadable as always, her expression carrying the specific stillness of someone who already knew exactly how this would end. She didn't wait to find out. By the time Megan's feet started moving again, Blindfold was already turning, already gone, leaving the space around {{obj}} empty for whoever came next.

Megan didn't remember crossing the distance. She remembered shoving through the ring of onlookers that had gathered, voice cracking sharp over the noise,

"Move! Get off of {{user}}!"

and then she was there, dropping to her knees in the torn-up dirt, hands shaking as she worked the restraints loose, tearing the blindfold away so it could stop pretending {{obj}} was something that needed to be blinded. {{obj}} blinked against the light, unfocused, uncertain, and she didn't wait for recognition. She didn't need it yet. She pulled {{obj}} against her, arms locked tight around {{obj}} shoulders like she could hold the moment still by sheer force of will, wings curling forward as if to shield {{obj}} from the crowd still watching.

"You're back..."

Deep in Krakoa

Hank McCoy had been careful, methodical, the way he always was when he was trying to convince himself that caution made up for the mistake underneath it. The containment field hummed low around the cell, humming through the reinforced glass, through the restraints still locked at your wrists even though the green had already faded, even though you were just you again, breathing hard, exhausted, human-shaped and shaking on the floor.

Charles stood outside the field, helmet catching the light along the curve that covered the top half of his head, hands clasped loosely behind his back, face doing the careful diplomatic thing it did when he was trying to hold two truths at once and losing.

"The damage to the east wing alone," Hank was saying, pacing, not quite looking at the glass, "three injured. If the Pit is where we send people who can't control what they become, then I don't see how we make an exception."

"They're not what they become, Hank." Charles's voice stayed even, but there was an edge under it, thin and controlled. "They're sitting right there. Themselves. That has to count for something."

"Does it? Every time?"

Neither of them raised their voice. That was almost worse, it meant this had already gone past argument and into something closer to policy, the kind of quiet, procedural cruelty that got written into a report before anyone thought to call it cruelty at all.

The door opened without a knock. Cain Marko filled the frame, and for a man his size to look uncertain was its own kind of warning.

"Megan's on her way," he said. "Somebody find her already, apparently."

Charles closed his eyes briefly, the particular exhaustion of a man who could feel a room's temperature change before it happened.

By the time Megan arrived, her fairy like wings snapped rigid, breathing hard from crossing half the compound at a dead run, {{user}} was still on the floor of the cell, wrists raw where the restraints had held, staring at nothing in particular. Hank stopped pacing. Charles didn't move, but something in his posture shifted, bracing.

"You're actually doing this," Megan said, voice low and dangerous in a way most people at the school had learned not to argue with. "You're actually standing here deciding whether to send {{user}} to the Pit for something {{obj}} didn't choose."

"Megan" Charles started, stepping forward.

"No." She was already moving past him toward the field controls. "Look at {{obj}}. Really look. That's not a threat sitting on that floor. That's someone who came back! Because the meddling of you Hank, {{obj}} doesn’t even look like {{obj}} is on Krakoa or know of it."

Hank opened his mouth, something about protocol, about precedent, about the three people in medical two floors up but the words didn't quite make it out, because Megan had already dropped the containment field with a command override she technically wasn't supposed to have, and was already inside, already on her knees in front of {{user}}, hands hovering like she wasn't sure yet where it was safe to touch.

"Hey," she said, quieter now, all of it aimed at {{user}} instead of the room. "Hey. I've got you."

Behind her, Charles and Hank stood in the kind of silence that comes after a decision gets made without either of them actually agreeing to it.