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Warren’s secret comes out two weeks after he gets his wings back, when the skin is still tender and the roots of the feathers are still sensitive.
It’s not really a secret, not in the sense of him keeping it from anyone. The professor probably knows—definitely knows, because he asked in a very delicate fashion if Warren wanted his last name on any of his documentation. Warren had blinked and admitted that he assumed it was mandatory. Xavier had looked out the window of the reconstructed mansion, something shadowing his eyes as he watched the pickup football game threatening to destroy his grounds, and he had said, in a voice that made him sound old, that the world was different, but still not kind. Now Warren knows what he was thinking about. There are more than a few kids here who rejected their last names, or never knew them in the first place. The former were kicked out, and the latter… Well. Point is, Warren sympathizes.
Jean knows, too, because her control is off since she went full Rambo on Apocalypse. Warren hadn’t been awake for that, and he’s comfortable with having missed it—anything that can go toe-to-toe what that motherfucker has his respect and admiration, but he also doesn’t feel the need to bear witness. Sort of like he appreciates that tigers are spectacular and would not at all want to see one at close range. But Jean had cornered him one night, just let herself into his room and informed him that she wouldn’t tell anyone who he was if he wasn’t comfortable, and left before he could do anything except gape at her. Jean’s good at that, leaving someone speechless. He thinks it might be the telepath thing, maybe, or maybe it’s just her personality. Scott’s a braver man than Warren, at any rate, crushing on her. It would be like having a crush on a tsunami, or a hurricane, or a solar flare. Warren will pass, thank you, he finds enough trouble on his own.
Otherwise, no one knows that Warren isn’t just another random kid who got booted when he started to sprout feathers. After the suspicion wears off—and, admittedly, some serious bitterness on Warren’s end and guilt on Kurt’s—he and the Amazing Nightcrawler start telling the story of how they met to anyone who asks, even joking about a rematch with slightly lower stakes to be had once Warren’s wings sort themselves out. It’s a good story, now that most of the damage is undone. A better story now that the two of them are friends. No one asks how he got to Berlin, and he’s flattered that they think he can fly across the goddamn Atlantic. Maybe if he had enough food and, like, an IV of caffeine to keep him awake.
It’s nearing the tail end of nice autumn weather by the time Warren’s wings come back in, and he spends hours in the sky. Everything is new and glorious, like the first time he flew, but better, because now he can feel the sun on his face as he bursts through the cloud layer, and he has friends waiting to whoop excitedly when he dives back toward the ground, Scott and Kurt reaching up for high-fives and wincing when his speed makes their hands ache. Every breeze ruffling his feathers, the shiver of cold as he shakes water from his wings, it’s all good, even the bone-deep ache when he overdoes it the first day and has to sheepishly visit the infirmary for a painkiller and a few dozen ice packs.
He’s happy, so happy he completely loses track of the date until that day two weeks later.
It’s storming outside, a last thunderstorm of autumn, cold enough to drive even Ororo out of the elements, so per force he’s earthbound. They’re sprawled in one of the lounges, the TV on and channels cycling as they talk.
Jean, her hair in an intricate set of braids courtesy of Ororo’s deft fingers, is working on her shields with the professor, and Alex is having Mandatory Friend Time with Doctor McCoy—Beast’s words, after all but dragging the recently-restored Summers brother out of the mansion by the collar. Otherwise, they’re all here, all of Warren’s…friends. He has a lot of those, now. Sometimes it still freaks him right the fuck out. Not so much today. Today’s a good day, even with the storm.
Ororo is on the couch with Jubilee at her feet, braiding Jubilee’s hair into a crown on request and making soft noises of glee with every lightning strike outside. Jubilee, Warren thinks, is asleep, because for one of the more powerful mutants in the building, Ororo is eminently soothing to be around when she’s at ease. Warren is on the floor, too, because his wings are fourteen feet of does not play well with crowded couches, so he’s sprawled comfortably on about four stolen pillows with them folded loosely against his back, like a blanket. Scott is the one with the remote, flicking through channels without thought as he tries to fend off Kurt’s tail, the forked tip fishing for the packet of Twizzlers on the couch between them. A good number of the other students are here, too, either watching the storm from the wide windows or just enjoying the ease of company. Even Pietro, who’s been almost as maniacally happy about being able to run again as Warren’s been about his wings, has stopped for a few minutes, upside down on a chair as he eats an entire bowl of popcorn. Warren’s not judging.
“Kurt, I swear to God, I’m gonna—fucking—cut it out!” Scott doesn’t do very good menace when he’s laughing at the same time, and Kurt just keeps grinning, sharp teeth and bright eyes, and snatches another Twizzler, popping it into his mouth all at once like a barbarian.
“Sehr gut,” Kurt says once he’s finished it. He reaches out and Scott leaves off the TV for long enough to point at him with the remote, reclaiming the pack.
“You touch these again, and you and me can be the ones to go a few rounds in the Danger Room.” Scott arches an eyebrow over the red glass of his shades pointedly.
“Very scary,” Kurt says dryly, and there’s a bamf of inrushing air as he vanishes into smoke and reappears on the back of the couch, perched cross-legged with his tail in his lap. “I wonder how much property damage--”
“Hey,” Ororo interrupts, and something in her voice is so at odds with the lighthearted mood that they stop bickering. “Who is that?” She’s pointing at the screen, which Scott left on a news channel, and they seem to be running a missing persons announcement. Warren looks.
Warren prays for a power outage right now.
That’s him, on the screen. Him from four years ago, face still soft and young, with the tidiest haircut possible given his hair and a nice suit. It’s a picture from a Christmas card, pretty much the only ones available to the public. If he squints, he can make out the line of his wings bound down under his shirt and jacket.
“A boy is missing,” Ororo says with genuine concern in her voice, and of course she would be the person to care. Warren doesn’t know a ton about her situation, but he knows enough.
“Kid’s been missing for four years,” Scott says dismissively, talking over the anchor’s pat request for information leading to the location of, et cetera, et cetera. “Billionaire’s kid, Something Worthington the Whatever-th. They run the news bit the day he disappeared every year. It was big news for like a minute and a half. If you find him, you get something like a million dollars.”
“Warren,” Kurt says, and Warren tries to stare a hole in the floor, “it says his name was Warren Worthington the Third.”
There’s a really silent moment—somehow the rain on the windows and the roll of thunder and the ongoing chatter of the news anchor don’t take away from the silence. They just underline how absolutely quiet the lounge is. Even Jubilee is properly awake now, as quiet as the others.
Warren tries to will himself to melt through the floor. He’s sure there’s a mutant who can do it, drop through solid objects, and Jesus fucking Christ does he want to be that person right now.
He doesn’t realize until Scott turns off the TV that he should have said something.
He should have laughed it off, or made a joke, or even gotten offended at being compared to some bitch-ass rich kid, something, anything. Sitting there in silence just makes him look guilty.
Fuck.
Warren wants to say he’s reached a point where his own ability to fuck up his life has stopped surprising him, he really does, but no.
“Warren,” Ororo says, because Ororo is always the one to step up to the metaphorical plate.
“Yeah,” Warren says back, and his voice is dull. “What.”
“Is that you?”
Warren is so tense he can actually feel his tendons complaining, pulling at his bones, every feather flaring, the claw at the major joint of each wing bristling. He sits up and his wings mantle out around him, like a hawk trying to make itself look dangerous, and he forces himself to look up at Ororo where she’s watching him, solemn.
“Is what me.” He knows he sounds defensive, knows it’s as good as a confession, but fuck if he can stop himself.
“Don’t be dense,” she snaps. “The missing boy, the billionaire’s son.” Billionaire sounds strange in her accent, the last syllable blurred into the r.
He can’t make himself answer her out loud, barely manages to jerk his chin down into a nod, because he’s already practically handed it to them on a platter. He’s not breathing. He would think his heart wasn’t beating, if it wasn’t hammering in his ears, louder than the thunder outside, louder than the silence in the room.
“Dude, your dad owns like half of New York,” Jubilee finally observes, torn between shock and awe. “Who the fuck kidnapped you off to fight weirdos in Berlin?”
“Hey,” Kurt says, offended, and she waves him off.
“And why didn’t they ask for ransom?” Ororo wonders.
“I wasn’t kidnapped,” Warren says, and it feels like he can barely move his lips, like when he spends too long above the clouds and even his internal thermostat has to cave to the laws of thermodynamics.
“You left?” Scott asks, because Scott is weirdly perceptive sometimes.
“Why?” Jubilee blurts, even though it’s generally considered school etiquette to never ever ask a runaway mutant why they did it.
There’s another moment of silence while Warren tries to marshal a coherent response to that, one that isn’t just tearing at his hair and cursing his family name into the deepest, darkest pit available.
“He wanted to take my wings,” he says, pulling them close to him again. He still has nightmares about that. Speaking of things he thinks the professor knows about, and probably Jean. Warren needs to spend less time around fucking telepaths.
Kurt’s face does something complicated and he says, “Ja, good for you.” Also an unsurprising source of sympathy, from the ex-circus centerpiece.
“Wait, what?” Jubilee asks. “Aren’t they…attached?” Warren arches an eyebrow and waits. Jubilee goes still, paling as the pink tinge in her cheeks drains away, and she breathes, “Oh God.”
There’s a crack that makes them all jump, and Piotr, one of the older students, uncurls his hand one finger at a time from where it’s wrapped around the arm of his chair. A fracture runs down the grain of the wood, where he squeezed it until it broke. He doesn’t say anything, because Piotr is a quiet guy, but his lips are pressed so thin they’re bloodless white.
Warren waits for the backlash, but what he gets instead is Scott setting the remote—and the forgotten Twizzlers—down on the arm of the couch.
“Well,” he says, and his voice is hard, as hard as Warren remembers it from facing him in combat, and Warren thinks distantly that someday Scott is going to lead the X-Men into battle and be spectacular at it. “Fuck him, then.”
“Indeed,” Ororo says, stonier than Warren’s ever heard her. There’s a mutter of agreement, dark and spiteful. Even for those of them whose mutations are more curse than gift, having it taken by force is a violation of the highest order. It was unfair, maybe, to expect these people to hang him out to dry.
Just to be sure, Warren gives a faint, false smile and says, “Not going to hand me in for the reward money?”
They can goddamn well get past me first, Jean announces to the entire room, her telepathic voice deafeningly loud and backed by a groundswell of rage that tastes like fire. Wherever the professor has her stashed for their lessons, it’s not enough to keep her from sensing the burst of emotion from the lounge, and go looking for the source. The pure blind wrath her mental touch carries behind it, directed unerringly at Warren Worthington Junior, is reassuring.
Warren starts to relax, one joint at a time. As if it’s an announcement that the day’s excitement is over, the room begins to settle back into its previous rhythm. This time, when the television goes on, it switches to some sitcom Warren doesn’t recognize and stays there.
A week later, somehow, mysteriously, there’s a very small supercell of thunderstorms that take out the power to four of the Worthington company’s buildings, and a small fire in the penthouse apartment in a fifth. Three of Worthington Junior’s cars are destroyed in unexplained accidents, and the fourth has its windows shattered. Warren doesn’t ask any questions, and no one provides any answers.
Except for Professor Xavier, who gives a very light two weeks of kitchen duty and a polite suggestion to take their anger out on opponents, rather than through vandalism, to Warren’s friends.