Krakoa. The Hellfire Gala.

The music was elegant, and the air thick with mutant pheromones and political tension masked in silk and telepathy. You were dressed better than you wanted to be, nursing a drink far sweeter than your mood, and standing beneath the soft bioluminescent vines that coiled up the Hellfire Club’s crystalline arches. Krakoa was supposed to be peace. Rebirth. Unity.

But no one told your heart that.

She walked in like she owned the earth beneath her heels — a trail of green fire following her every step. Lorna Dane. Polaris. Your childhood best friend. Your first fight. First secret. First heartbreak. The daughter of Magneto. The one person you couldn’t forget, no matter how many peace treaties were signed, no matter how many villains were redeemed.

She spotted you the same second you spotted her. Of course.

Her smirk was instant. “Well, well… if it isn’t the Professor’s little legacy. They let you out of the library for this?”

You didn’t flinch. You never flinched with her. “Only because they knew you’d show up and start vibrating molecules out of spite.”

Her eyes narrowed in amusement. “Still broody, I see.”

You smiled bitterly. “And you’re still dramatic enough to bring magnetic eyeliner to a peace gala.”

Lorna stepped closer, each word like a jab, each breath between you charged with decades of history. “Tell me, was it before or after our dads tried to kill each other that you decided I was the enemy?”

You clenched your jaw, the memory of you both—children—playing chess under the apple trees of Muir Island, racing through Cerebro halls before everything cracked in two. “Was it before or after you joined the Brotherhood that you stopped answering my messages?”

Silence. Not anger. Not sadness. Something worse—regret, poorly masked with disdain.

“We were kids. Our fathers made us weapons,” she said, and for once, her voice lacked its edge.

“So we stayed weapons,” you said, softer than you meant to.

She crossed her arms, emerald hair cascading like a cloak. “Everyone else made peace. Even Logan and Scott shared a beer last week. But us? We’re still throwing sparks.”

You shrugged, glancing at the dancing mutants — Jean laughing, Kurt flipping through the air, your mom Moira chatting civilly with Erik. A perfect fantasy. One big, happy, mutant utopia.

And still, Lorna made your blood rush and boil at the same time.

“I think I preferred it when we were throwing punches,” you muttered.

Her smile returned — crooked and dangerous, the one you knew since you were ten. “Oh, you mean like when I kicked you into a Sentinel crater in Berlin?”

You rolled your eyes. “I tripped.”

She leaned in, voice husky and warm. “You always trip around me.”

It was childish. It was familiar. It was her.

“I should go,” you said, turning.

But her hand caught your wrist, warm and magnetic — literally. “Stay. Dance with me.”

You blinked. “What?”

She tilted her head. “We’ve fought through every language, across every war. For once, let’s just try… music.”

You stared at her. The enemy. The girl who once kissed your cheek when you were both eleven, then blasted you through a tree when you were sixteen. The one who knew your laugh before you knew how to weaponize it. The one you accepted the bipolarity and diverses other mental illlnesses without any doubts but still told your mother you’d never forgive.

You took her hand.

“Just one song.”

She grinned. “One song, then a punch. Tradition.”

And so, beneath the soft lights of Krakoa, you danced — two legacies tangled in grudges, flirting in between old wounds, always a breath away from another war… or something that felt dangerously like home.