X-Men: Italy, Sicily, France+Spain

The day he lost the last of his family, Peter reconsidered his stance on life. The X-Men had become a burden, something his forthright morals could no longer support. He left to join Magneto, recognising the good aims within the bad decisions. Not that it mattered, for soon enough Magneto's absence drew forces beyond his control into power games and little meaning could be derived from the original intentions. Peter took to defending the weak and helpless as he always had, and eventually understood that no matter what Xavier said it was the dream and the attempt that made the difference. He had an obligation, super-powered or no, to leave the world a better place than he found it and all that he could do meant that his was the weight to bear. He was self-sacrificing and noble, understanding of the honour involved of not simply wearing an X on his shirt collar, but of the power creation had bestowed upon him. It did not make him god, nor did it make him devil. It made him who he needed to be in order to fill a hole in the world. There was too much evil, and not enough Rasputins to go around.

Peter thought all of these thoughts as his magnetic boots thumped along the outer hull of Old Faithful. In his armoured form he was immune to the pressure effects of a vacuum, but as they were floating through an asteroid hotzone they knew it safer to dress accordingly. He felt as if he were wading through treacle, the lifelessness of his limbs swaying in vapour currents the same way wheat fields rippled following the path of wind.

He approached the extremities of the ship, passing landing gear not fully retracted and aerials jutting out like spears in a mammoth's hide. The smoking mass of Echeclus was far away, but its size was breathtaking. Millennia of chipping and scraping and scarring had left it rounded, perfect pebble shape in the ocean of space. He thought how similar his close friends were. Hard knocks make them into the people they are today. But it was not always the case as his mind drifted back to his brother Mikhail, and the electricity behind those eyes, the tell of pain bending and fusing a man beyond recognition. The black canvas of space was beautiful, but a harsh realm.

'He's almost at the nacelle's outer hull. You can go if you want, Kitty. This is strictly a hands-on job.'

Kitty left while Kurt was glossing over documentation and safety procedures posted on the control booth wall. In the upper decks, no-one observed the proximity alarm for the aft thruster cones bleeping.

Ororo had been in Observation. The top of the ship had partitioned transparent domes, most likely constructed she thought from a compound similar to Plexiglas. Scientific and astronomical equipment was set into each dome, telescopes and aerials and charts lying in bundles ready to be used again. With no weapons on board, the ship was a short-range carrier, outfitted with all the necessary tools for salvage, rescue, mining and exploration. Standard issue craft for all measures in all situations, but primarily those with distances less than galaxy-spanning. Ororo supposed that was part of the problem. Due to it's mass, she had had poor luck in rotating the nose and bringing it even a kilometre toward Earthspace. A lack of elemental resources was the main problem; with no atmosphere present, she had nothing to work with. But the theory extended from a possibility of currying favour with particle winds floating in the icy depths of their asteroid surroundings. Not actual air currents to speak of, just a gravitational ebb and flow of heated gas and dust trails present in the auras of neighbouring debris. Ororo was able to visualise a basic matrix of energy between the rocks, coaxing movement with the barest pull of her fingers. The low-level of resultant motion was the best she could do. Asteroids were not the size of Earth, and their atmospheres constituted little of the same materials present in her home skies. Sweating and tense, her unshakable will finally broken by nature's refusal to kowtow, Ororo retired, kicking the telescopes and tripods and transistors over the floor. Immediately guilt-ridden and angry at her loss of control, she went to attend to Xavier.

'I tried Charles, but there is little to work with. I am afraid I have resigned myself to the efforts of others. Peter and Kurt shall succeed where my favour with the Goddess cannot.'

She couldn't know that Charles was facing his own demons deep inside. His blackout was a symptom of the inner struggle diverting all surplus energies. Had he been awake to comfort her searching face and tell her so, he would have seen resolve not crumbling but stress and fear.

'Kurt? I've sealed the last of the hatches in place. I'm making my way back in.' Peter hailed, turning to approach the airlock. He took one last look at the black cosmos, imprinting the vista and gathering his magnetic equipment. The inertia Ororo had enticed brought the ship into a dense cluster of asteroids, and as Peter had his back turned an iceball blindsided him sending the stunned Russian end over end into space.

'Peter? Peter! Colossus!' Kurt yelled into the comm. 'Kitty come quick! Peter's been knocked off the outer hull!'

Panicking, Peter searched for the deathly whisper of escaping air. His hands padded over parts of the suit, sweat gathering at his arms and back. Decompression was one of a series of death scenarios Peter particularly disliked, ever since Magneto had crushed the Leningrad military sub in the ocean depths. He felt the skin at his cheeks tingle, felt it being stretched in hairline precision as the blood sought to evacuate the confines of a fleshy blanket. He screamed down the microphone interface, useless HUD data streaming red and green at the sides of his glass helmet, but the voice was lost in nothingness, shooting into an icy cloud inches out of his gear. He felt his chest constrict, arms flailing like a giant marshmallow but having neither the sense nor spatial awareness to find the tear at the base of his neck. He could turn to steel form, but the size and added weight would split the spacesuit in two and without the magnetic boots and lead loads could simply float off forever. 'Peter! Hold on, I'm coming!'

Kitty.

Peter's sight was fading.

The transmission spat and fuzzed as the glass cracked. Warning signs scrolled up and down. He wished he were back home, surrounded by the warm June waters of the Angara. Shrinking his fingers and toes and watching his sister jump in.

A sharp pain made his chest tremble, and as the adrenaline boost ejected into space -- an intelligent Skrull lifesaver design -- his vision blurred and his mind went blank. A tug around the waist, the glass shattered, his skin exploded into the armoured form of Colossus, disintegrating the spacesuit. He roared silently and everything went white.

***

'He's coming round! Storm!'

Peter cracked open his heavy metallic eyes, the skin resonating like wind chimes. He saw Kitty, eyes red, with her hands covering her mouth. She spluttered.

Then Ororo and Kurt and a lay of hands.

'How are you feeling, mein freund?'

He stared up at the operating theatre lights, scolding his confused brain.

'How long was I out for?' He asked, raising himself to sit on the side of the table.

It bent under the weight.

'An hour or so. Goddess! You had us worried, little brother. If Kitty hadn't slipped out of the ship to get you...'

Kitty sobbed.

'We would have named you a new addition to the heavenly bodies.' Kurt said. He prepared a needle from a canister at the workbench.

Logan grinned and snorted. 'See? Didn't I tell ya.'

Kurt stepped behind Peter and held up the canister of liquid. '...If you would change back, I'm going to give you this.'

'What is it?'

'It's a Skrull variantion on hyoscyamine. I think. I don't really know how to pronounce it.'

'It increases your heart rate and helps stabilise muscle spasm.' Kitty said, laughing. 'It'll also make you a little light-headed and probably make you go to the little Russian's room.'

'Ja, an overdose will, but we don't want to give that to Peter now do we?'

The needle sank into Peter's neck, and he closed his eyes. The dizzy shapes of terror spun behind his eyes, distant dots of colour amassing to form the broken shards of his helmet. He opened them and met the neutered gaze of Ororo.

'What is it? What's wrong?'

'Did you feel anything while you were unconscious?'

'No.'

They all looked at each other.

'There's no easy way to say it. After your repair work, the same rock cluster you were caught in struck one of the spires causing it to fall back in on itself. I'm not sure how, but part of the port side engine was struck from inside.'

'I don't understand.'

'There was a massive internal explosion and we have had to seal off Engineering for good. The boost has propelled us clear of the Kuiper Belt but we now have only one engine left to get us the next four billion kilometres home.'

She looked finished.

'My friends... I'm sorry...'

Kitty gave Kurt a hug.

'If nothing else goes wrong we might be able to make the distance, but given our odds so far...'

'I thought you didn't believe in odds, darlin'? Just the facts and the will of the gods.'

'You're right, Logan, of course; and we now have the advantage of distance from any interference of rock and ice. There is one other issue though.'

'What?' Kitty yelled.

'...The explosion consumed a heavy amount of our remaining oxygen. I do not know how much we now have.'

'Can't we find out?' Kitty asked.

'The recycler was damaged in the blast. What we have here is what we have left.'

So they held their breath.

***

Days did not exist in space travel the way they do on Earth. Time was measured through solar days, or via Kitty's more accurate qualifier, when her eyes became heavy. Her breath was drawn out, her hair a mess, her limbs sagging and the soles of her feet red and aching. She had been in Operations, trying to rectify the locked communications array with Logan doing the leg-work. Her basic understanding of Skrull alphanumerics leant her some ease with reconfiguring the looped message to the homeworld and directing it back at Earth, but with no contacts already established in Houston or Moscow or anywhere else, the mayday wouldn't send. Logan had redirected the array, pushing the satellite a degree or so, adjusting to vague standards of declination set by Kitty's approximations, but even after that, she was still aiming for the moon in the hope the Kree might pick up.

They didn't.

But the message was sent regardless. As Logan was stepping down from the array's gantries a strange effect dissected the air around him. The way she would core and apple, a beam of light green energy appeared in a column from the top of the ceiling to the bottom of the satellite's cogs and spindles. Logan had stared dumbfounded at his arms and hands, his face a blank. She ran from the panel down the steps of the platform and across to the fencing of the array. 'Get out of the way!' She screamed, more trauma and loss creeping through her heart like black ivy.

He started to speak but froze.

Her feet took the stairs to the gantry three, four at a time and phased intangible before crashing through the spire of stasis. Time was still inside. She was not. It was not physically possible. Looking back, Kitty supposed it was the fault of the stasis coils themselves, not stopping space/time fully, or simply slowing it to a crawl. Either way, she had no chance to ponder as her atomic dispersal infected Logan and together she wrenched them through the stasis beam and back into real-time. She held him close, allowing his feet to rise through the floor to stand on it.

'Why didn't you jump out the way?!' She shouted.

He shook his head, shocked.

That had been hours ago, in the meantime consuming another bowl of synthsauce and lying in a darkened room for thirty minutes to stave off a migraine. As she emerged, she tripped over a mop and bucket and coated herself in water rats would run from. Exhausted and disgusted she went hunting for living quarters with a shower in Habitation deck. Undressed and grimy she first froze her skin with the cold water and then scalded herself with the hot. The doors opened and Ororo knocked on the bathroom slide door.

'Kitten, are you in there?'

She came out shivering and shaking, towel wrapped around and on the verge of tears. She was strong, but not that strong.

Ororo hugged her, drying the damp hair with the towel.

'Is your shower broken?'

Kitty nodded. '... I can't make it warm. It's either cold or hot.'

'I had the same trouble; I fear Skrull tolerances for extremes outweigh ours by most inhuman standards. Let me see if I can help.'

Kitty sat at the edge of her mattress, the sheets smooth and shimmering. This was an officer's dormitory. There was a mirror, cabinets, viewports facing the stars and lamps. A far cry from the basic freezing tub of stasis reserved for soldiers and the non-essential.

Ororo came back out. 'There, I had a go and it seems to be functioning. Of course I used my own abilities for a power shower but you probably don't want that. Here,' she placed another canister on the table next to the mirror and desk drawers 'it's some kind of shampoo. I had some. It smells of honeysuckle.'

'Thanks, 'Ro.' She said.

'It's amazing how you do without the basics provided you have a few of life's little luxuries.'

Sometime later, a knock on her door.

She stepped out from the bathroom in her towel.

'Katya? Are you there? May I come in?'

Peter.

She held herself together and pressed the door panel revealing him perched to one side. He was about to say something but stopped. Water dripped from rattails and her forehead was plastered with loose strands.

'Hi.'

'I should have asked if you were decent.' He said, shuffling on the spot.

'It's ok.'

'Can I... I'll come back later.'

She grabbed his arm and turned him back to face her. 'Come in; I'm going to bed in a minute anyway so if you want to talk...'

She walked back into the bathroom. He stepped in, looking at the clothes draped on the bed and marvelling at the simple grandeur of the room. 'This must be the captain's quarters.'

The water was running again. 'What? Oh you should see where Ororo's sleeping. That's the real deal.'

He gazed out the viewport window, glad to see no damage inflicted on the starboard nacelle. It glowed a healthy blue, superheating plasma pumped from the core. He saw how the stars neither moved from dots to streaks nor melted into the darkness of space like in Star Trek. He had to take it for granted the ship was accelerating, even off-axis was better than not at all. The ship shuddered minutely, he hadn't noticed it before. It was the effect the leaking port engine had on overall stability. Steam emanated from the open bathroom door and drifted over the ambient lighting of the corner standing lamps. Purple haze, a mist curling over the colours and rippling the way it did in the Siberian lakes in winter. Something to do with the magnetic field and solar winds.

The water switched off, and he felt his hands sweaty. He returned to look out the viewport, very aware of his stomach, no food for hours. In the reflection of the Plexiglas he saw Kitty snake her arms out to grab the garb lain on the sheets and dash back into the bathroom.

'How are you feeling?' He asked. 'I know this is not where any of us want to be right now.'

'No,' she replied coming back out in a loose-fitting black skin suit 'it's not. I can't believe how rotten our luck has been. If anything else malfunctions I'm going to start dishing out the blame. We must have a saboteur on board...'

'You don't think --'

'I don't not really, but with the others still in stasis and the Professor comatose, the engines screwed up... I feel like falling apart.'

Peter stared at his feet. 'You look stronger than ever.'

She smiled. 'It's an act, believe me. Ororo gave me this shampoo mixture; it's making my scalp and neck warm. I think this is how Skrull female officers relax.'

'They say it's a male-dominant society.'

'Probably the same as us. I don't mean any of us -- the X-Men -- but the world in general. We accept that we're civilized in that way, women's liberty and freedom and equality but it's all a bit fraudulent.'

He said nothing.

'I'm not having a go, Peter. It's the truth. We may strive for harmony between races, but even amongst our own there's dissent. There always will be. How can we ever be united under one flag? I don't see it.'

'I suppose I can't deny it.'

Her face fell into a scowl. The floor was jarringly cold.

'No. Not that it'll matter soon anyway. Even if we make it back, Magneto's still in charge of Genosha, Joseph will be dead and the whole planet raging for mutant blood as penance.'

Her brain worked over the hysteria at home. The UN causing uproar, every tabloid, every news channel, every bookie, every chef, teacher, postman, gasman, gossiping neighbour spreading the virus of detest and jealousy and anger across America in one giant pandemic flood.

She leaned against the desktop and flung her arm to the bathroom ceiling. 'I might not even bother turning these lights off, the batteries and air recycling are going to die before we pass Jupiter. What's the point of returning home? All we do is manage to screw things up!'

'Don't think like that; pessimism and negativity is the start of self-loathing, and we have nothing to hate ourselves for, nothing to regret!'

'Nothing to regret?! Why not, Peter! We're stranded a billion miles from anywhere, without the faintest hope of getting home, our ship is worse than an arthritic mule climbing a mount Everest, bits falling off, air consumed in a ship fire and food that tastes like sewage. Our attempt at sending a communiqué was pointless, we could get stuck deader than Tommy Cooper in a stasis beam at any time -- Kurt barely escaped the engine blast, even Logan's losing it -- we can't wake the Professor from a coma we don't know whether it's dangerous or not, no-one wants to get Gambit and Marrow up because we'll all end up killing each other in cabin fever or using all the oxygen until we asphyxiate, and you -- you the most sturdy of the lot of us -- were knocked off the back of the ship --' she cupped her mouth and nose '- and almost died out there in space, the loneliness of space because of Ororo...! Because of Ororo! I can't, I just can't handle this...'

He wrapped his thick arms around her small shoulders. 'Shhh, little one, it's alright. Shhhh.'

'Peter, if I hadn't phased through about a hundred floors to come get you, you'd be all alone out there and Peter! You weren't moving or anything!'

He held tight and smoothed out her damp hair. 'But I'm moving now. I'm moving now, I'm ok! See? Even came to see how you were didn't I? It's alright.'

'It's not alright! It's not alright! I led us into this! This decaying ship with nothing but spit and tape holding it together! We're all going to suffocate and die out here, and nothing any of us can do can stop it! Not you, not me, not the Professor and not Ororo! I don't want to die, Peter! I've seen it so many times, and so many friends, I don't want to die out here alone, not having got married, had a child a baby with my love and care I never saw Dave Grohl play, I've never juggled, there are a thousand things I won't get to do!'

She wept freely into his chest, moisture leaking into his flightsuit and her clutching his arms.

When the waters receded, she sat on the mattress and turned off the lights in the corner. 'I'm sorry.' She said.

'Don't, you have nothing to apologize for.'

'Yeah, well, I'm not a kid anymore.'

'Everyone cries, Kitty. I cry.'