Title: Leaders Like Them
Fandom: X-Men/Avengers
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Tony/Emma, past Sean/Emma, Sebastian/Emma, and Scott/Emma
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: There are very few leaders like Emma Frost in this world. She chose her well for her husband.
Word Count: 2,574
Written For: Fan FlashWorks 467. Finger
Date Written: 14 January 2025
Warnings: Spoilers
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.






She knew this song, Emma thought. She knew it but could not quite recall its title. They used to play it all the time when she was younger, fighting for survival in the very beginning of her career in the Hellfire Club, back when she had to literally scratch out another girl's eyes to gain her place and position. It hadn't been all bad, though, or at least she had not seen it, then, in such a vulnerable, tender place in her young life, as all bad. Sebastian and the others had made such promises, and she had clung to those promises, done everything that was expected of or even subtly suggested to her that might gain her favor, and climbed and clawed her way to the reigning title she still possessed to this day.

People didn't understand, but then, when had she cared what people thought? It had hurt, of course, that Sean and the kids, or at least that generation of children, had turned from her. Sean had almost tried to make up with her on Krakoa, and although his smile had been beguiling and his Irish charm at its best, she had known better.

Men had power. They had the power to build a woman, or to help a woman build, but they also had the power to tear her down and rip her to shreds, all with their crass mouths and judgmental views. She had thought she had been beyond all that when she had met Sean Cassidy, but she had been wrong. Her former co-headmaster had clawed his way underneath her skin, slowly but deliberately and in a way no other man ever had before or since, and how no one ever would again.

She sipped her champagne, holding the cooling liquor on her tongue, and subtly surveyed the gleam of the diamond ring on her finger. Men had power, and that was precisely the reason why she had married Tony Starke. She had never much to do with him before, but of course, in their professions, both superhero and civilian, their paths had crossed many, many times. She had had Tony before, many times for few attended a good many of the soirees to which they were called who could understand them and the many roles they played as well as they did each other. He was neither the best nor the worst lover. She could think of a certain Atlantean Prince who was certainly far more skilled.

Sebastian Shaw had not been bad back in the day, not that she would ever admit to another soul, living or dead. The man had always been a cruel bastard, but he had not gotten where he was without learning several trades. He had taught her all she'd known back then, back when they had danced a time or a dozen to the tune currently playing, but she had learned much more since. He could not begin to appeal to her now, and not only because she had been cured of all the madness he and her parents had placed into her mind at such an early age.

There were those who would dispute that fact, of course, but she didn't care what they thought. She didn't care where Sean Cassidy might be now -- her blue lips twisted into a wry grin although her heart also felt a certain pang -- skin intact or not. She could have told him Moira was not a fit match for him, but he never would have listened, no more than Scott did these days. At least he wasn't with that infuriating little redhead their whole world seemed to love so much. Being with their so-called fearless leader had solidified a place for her in Xavier's Dream, although it was odd that that was what it had taken when it had been the old man himself who had first given her hope and redemption.

Charles couldn't be dead. She could sense him, every now and again, just a whisper in the furthest recesses of her mind. Whoever had him knew what they possessed. It was nothing to do with his mutant abilities at this point, but everything to do with what he possessed, what he meant as a leader to his people. That was the very reason why Scott refused to truly search for him, she firmly believed. Oh, he claimed he was looking, but in truth, he was doing very little more than eeking out survival for him and his little tattered group of dark-natured X-Men.

Emma couldn't help but to scoff at that, tapping her champagne glass as she did so. Those people thought they knew what it meant to be dark! Illyana with her little Demons, Cain with his power from a Demon and his remorse over not joining his brother when he'd had the chance, yet another kid with a huge chip on her shoulder... They couldn't begin to understand the true darkness of life for if they did, they would surely turn from Scott and his preached ideology and recognize why he had not dug deeper and risked more to find the Professor.

Charles Xavier assumed barely alive, held captive somewhere, in chains both manmade and non, ensured the mutant species kept fighting. They kept fighting not only for survival, but to keep ideas alive and people like Scott Summers in charge. Scott had pegged her right, that day when he'd asked her to come back to help him lead his team then, to help him babysit another group of X-Men who were not living up to their full potential. She was a teacher, above and beyond all the other roles she had played past and present. She was a teacher, and she was beyond weary of the children of the world, homo superior and otherwise, failing to live up to their full potential. They didn't want to hear what she had to say, no more than he had, no more than Bobby Drake had when she had taken over his body from him and shown him what he could do if he only put forth the effort and stopped hiding from his true self.

They were afraid. They were all afraid, Emma thought, finishing her glass and signaling for another. It was why they refused to understand her, why she remained a misfit among misfits, and yet everyone wanted her on their side. She was powerful. The power she had killed for with her bare hands when she herself had been but a child had grown to eclipse the power of almost every other mutant on this planet. Charles was one of the few exceptions, and he had believed in her. He had believed in her in a time when she had not truly believed in herself.

And he needed her. He had to be found, but wherever he was, it would take time to find him and time further to rescue him without whoever held him killing him. He was a hard, old coot to kill but could not begin to be a survivor to the extents of herself, Logan, or even the girl they'd all helped raise, the one who now refused to call herself Shadowkat, with a k or without. She, too, held so much potential that she refused to use. But she needed her, whether she admitted it or not. She needed her, like the other mutant children needed Katheryne to train them, like Emma herself had needed Charles when she had not even realized she had needed him.

Like she needed another man, who was now striding toward her. She never would have thought her life would come to this. She had sworn, from her earliest days, that she would never get married. She had began to reconsider that for a time in Generation X, when she had been working so closely day in and night out with Sean, but that Irishman had been as full of blarney as they came. She could no longer pity him, not for what Moira had done to him, for even after her death, he had taken the coward's way out when he had committed suicide. Emma knew he could have found another way to save that plane full of people, but he had chosen not to. He had chosen to end his life, and although she had grieved for him for years after, even through some of her time with Scott, with whom had she had first devoted herself merely out of desperation to be allowed a place to stay on the X-Men, she had chosen to end her acquaintance with him long before his endeavors at the Hellfire Gala.

But this man coming toward her, his muscular legs striding so purposefully not unlike the determined, bold, yet graceful stride of a wild mustang, this man with whom she never would have thought she would share much more than a one-night fling, he had proven to be a loyal companion and a devoted friend in more than one way. Her ice blue eyes raised cooly to him, but they knew each other gazes and he knew how to read pass her exterior. He knew she had been here for far too many hours today, drank one too many flutes of champagne although his fingers flicked out, signaling for another.

Another song had begun, Emma realized, and then she remembered the direction from which she had seen Tony begin his stride. Her gaze flicked over to the piano, and she watched, for a moment, as green fingers sailed gracefully over ivory keys. The man knew he was being watched and lowered his fedora over a horned head. He was a mutant too, but a mutant with a life, it would seem, so much simpler than her own. For just a brief moment, Emma wished for a simpler life, but she knew better. She had been born into the life she was fated and had fought to make it a life of her own choice as to the best of her abilities. Besides, it was not in her to not live to her full potential, and she would not regret the choices she had made to be able to be in the position she now was, a position where she could help others, both old and young, both mutant and none, others who had been hurt by a world who, for whatever number of myriad reasons, feared them because they did not understand them and hurt them, like her parents and Sebastian had her to rule over them.

She returned her gaze to the man whose hand now extended between them as he made a partial bow before her. "Can I have this dance?"

She uncrossed her long, slender legs and stood, very well aware that every eye in the place was on her. All the workers were mutants, but that did not mean that their guests were the same. She and Tony travelled in many, different circles, and any number of beings could have come to their latest establishment, even if it was meant to be a safe haven for mutants, even to the point of running a soup kitchen out the backs of its doors and offering beds, not cots, in the floors beneath. "Of course," she said, and though her smile was thin as she stood to embrace her husband, her heart did warm. This man tried everything he could to help others, after all, and like herself, he did not know how or when to stop.

She let him lead her onto the dance floor, and even on the dance floor. She no longer had to be the leader in every aspect of her life, not when she had a few good men she could trust. A very few, but they did exist now, starting with Charles. Her eyes gazed into her husband's as he swept across the floor in tune to the same song they had chosen together for their wedding. Unlike most wedding songs, theirs was not a romantic ballad. It was a ballad instead to power and survival, a power that spoke to them singularly and together, and to spoke to their people. Scott only thought he was a leader, Emma thought, smirking and almost laughed aloud.

Tony raised a dark eyebrow at her but knew better than to ask. Instead, he spun her around her and brought back into the safe haven of his strong arms. For the first time in her life, she was safe here, safe in the arms of one of the world's most renowned and revered Avengers, but she would not stop. She would never stop helping the mutant children of the world while there was life still left in her body, something they had fought about at first but to which he had, at long last, conceded. He had known, after all, who he had married when he had wed her, and had known that she was doing so to protect her people.

She turned in his arms as the next song began to play to a slower and more romantic rhythm, no doubt a personal choice of the pianist when he witnessed the club's most famous couple and owners dancing together. They swayed together with as much ease and grace as they fought side by side against common enemies. Emma remembered late nights and whispered confessions of ideologies they both held for their people. Theirs was a union, not unlike the royal unions of old where neighboring kingdoms had wed their Princes and Princesses who had been coming of age to make their kingdoms stronger and safer and to protect themselves and their people.

Only neither of them were young. They had both come of age long ago, and Emma knew, like herself, Tony had never truly thought he would wed. He had considered one time, with Pepper, but that had never worked out. This would, for as long as they needed it to and not for one day longer. Her breasts pressed against his chest so close that she could almost feel the metal device that kept his heart beating. This man truly had fought, clawing his way, for both his survival and that of his people's. They truly were a match, a match made of necessity but a match who fit each other very, very well nonetheless. To be so different, to be literally different species, they were very much alike after all. If she had had to wed, Emma recognized, she had chosen the best man with whom to partner, not just for her safety and contentment but for her people's.

Her hips slid against his, white silk caressing against Titon executive threads. With all his meetings of the days, only Tony's tie gave a hint of color in a brilliant splash of red hinting to his other personality. Her baby blues gazed up into his deep, brown eyes as she asked, Any sign?

None, his answer echoed in her mind. She saw the sorrow in his eyes. We'll find him, Emma.

To his surprise, almost to his shock, she laid her weary head against his muscular shoulder as they glided together. She whispered words back of faith that equally ensured them both and encouraged them to continue fighting every day until her people could be free again. I know, Tony. I know.



The End