[center][b]Within the Infinite[/b][/center]

The man who was Logan had died countless times before. The alteration of humanity running through the very substance that was him always bringing him back from the emoty release of death. As the long years had dragged by, he had spent much of it in agony, being rebuilt from a shattered core which had, in every observable sense, been dead. One time, long ago, Jean had asked him if he felt it, if in the worst moments where he had been shredded and burned down to little more than flesh dragged across rent bones, had he at least been allowed the mercy of unconciousness. He had told her yes. In what possible way could someone be aware when flesh had been stripped away and even their brain was pulped by heat and force? It had been a lie, no one could truely lie to Jean Grey, but from what he knew she had allowed it. Somehow he felt every moment.

That was nothing next to this.

In the time it took for a human heart to beat once, the thing who had been a man who had been Logan was annihilated and reborn countless times. To even witness, to observe, the infinite nothing-creation before him was to die. It overwhelmed him in every possible manner, in ways he knew and ways he didn't. By the time the thing-that-burned spoke to him again, there was nothing left of him. The hand that reached for the door forged of the bird itself bore no sense of recognition to the smoldering soul of who he had been. He turned the doorknob not out of familiarity or muscle memory, but simply because it was the only thing to do. All creation had narrowd to this simplest of portals.

If the reality before the room had been fire, the room itself was the burning heart of a solar cauldron. The infinite before had been without scope, but somehow this equally blank space of nothing had something finite to it. To behold the walls-that-were-not set every remaining iota of his beind ablaze, as finally he behld the being at the centre.

She was perfection, and all the fire and pain of the room bled from her. Each death and rebirth, already faster than perceptible, increased in scope and speed. Anyone else would look away, but the seared core of a man remembered who he was, and who she was.

"Jean."

He didn't so much speak it, there was nothing of him that could consitute a physical being to do such, but still the noise pushed through to her, through the space that was there, yet wasn't. From the man who died a thousand deaths to simply gaze upon her for a moment, yet still to look away, to abandone her, would be a worse pain. At first it seemed futile, that it still wouldn't reach her. Then, the cosmic eyes beneath her crown of death and creation looked upon him. For the barest slither of time there was recognition, and then the intensity of her shredded his being to nothing.

Logan awoke to nothing once more, just him and an expanse of nothingness so vast it was beyond scope. He uncurled himself, feeling the pain of every countless rebirth in the ache of his metallic bones, his own blood dripping from the extended length of his claws as he fought to stand. Only then did he remember the words of the Bird-That-Was-Flame.

"Y....You don't get to choose...for her."

[b][center]Earth, Krakoa[/center][/b]

Tony Stark had stared down monsters and gods before, but that didn't neccesarily make it easy. Especially when the being before him was a monster [I]and[/I] a god. Not that anything was ever truely hidden from the mutants, but he was thankful enough for the concealing plate of his helm to soften his reaction as he rose up from his signature kneel-landing to stand before the Apocalypse itself. He may have been mortal, but he was still Tony Stark. Starks had a habit of defiance in the face of those who wished to make slaves of humanity. Sure, at least when his father had done it those tyrants had been simply other humans, but he liked to think it was a core they shared.

The mask flipped down, although the shades remained. In truth he didn't know quite how effective they were. That was the problem with Mutants, they defied all the rules he had spent a lifetime learning to master.

"Well, as it turns out, when you spend the last few years ensuring your ability to get away with whatever you want, the rest of us have some pretty concerning questions whenever you mark an issue as 'yours," He didn't give the tyrannic god-thing the respect of replying to them and their state-speak, his concealed eyes instead focusing on Scott. He'd always seemed the most human of them, other than perhaps Logan, but then that's why Logan got to be in the Avengers friends club.

"Sounds like you'll need a genius to tag along, if that really is the best plan you all have come up with so far." He didn't bother with anything else, of accusing them of once again putting more human lives at risk to save a limited number of mutants, to playing God and Spymaster all at once. His presence itself was that accusation all at once.

"When do we leave?"