Laura didn't want anything to do with Sync. He was trying to project the (apparently) dead woman he spent 1000 years in the vault with on her, and this Laura is not that person. She didn't have those experiences that led to that relationship.

Don't be so sure.

Kyle's remarks came at a time he was vocally critical about Marvel's direction with Laura period, specifically the decision for her to become Wolverine, and the Adamantium Agenda retcon that Laura has Sarah's DNA and is biologically her daughter (ironically while praising Taylor, who wrote AA in the first place, as being the only current Marvel writer who "gets" her). Including posting a page from Dave Sim's Cerebus that eviscerated the Big Two over how they "abuse" characters while their creators are helpless to stop it.

Also, as late as 2014 Yost still shipped her with Hellion. He's also been pretty silent about Kyle's comments.

Frankly, I think Kyle was just pushing a hot button topic to stir crap up. There's no evidence this was ever actually something he intended to explore when he was writing her (especially taking Yost into ).

We also don't see Laura's response to Kiden telling her how she feels. It instead cuts right back to her confronting Julian, with her using that conversation as an epiphany on what she's been doing wrong.

And Kiden was visually unhappy at the end, suggesting Laura's response wasn't what she was hoping for.

Laura returned to the school, and she begins hearing things about what Julian had done. She still had an image of him in her head and heart, and she's horrified by these revelations. She can't see the pain and trauma that led to his anger because she always saw him as something better than her. And, as she tells Kiden, she concludes that it wasn't Julian. It was her. Her own darkness is spreading to him, and she's ruining him.

Therefore, Laura decides she can't be with him. At first she's distant. She's not listening when Julian reaches out for help coping, because all she can think is how her pain and anger is destroying the good person she knows him to be. But Julian is persistent, and finally Laura does the only thing she can to spare him from her: She tells him she doesn't want to be with him.

This is why, after telling Julian to his face she doesn't feel anything for him, she turns around and tells Gambit the exact opposite. Because she still loves him but thinks this is the only way to save what's left of his goodness.

The cruel irony is Laura's inability to recognize that Julian's problems are the result of his own rage and pain, and her decisions he has to leave him to keep from ruining him, creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: Julian is crushed by her rejection and internalizes it. It festers with all the other trauma and anguish, and he starts to hide behind it. For much of the next decade he's treated as if he's a step away from becoming a villain. He's angry and hurt, and begins to externalize all his problems. He blames Laura. He blames Bastion. And then Krakoa falls, and that's one tragedy too many. He breaks, and using his anger as a shield creates The Krakoan.

2/2

Between that and seeing someone finally fix the colossal mess made by Liu during the Babysitting Arc, this issue made me so happy (although the retcon that sometime during the NXM run Laura and Julian actually progressed beyond just uncertainly dancing around their growing attraction while Laura spied on him while he was sleeping kind of makes her look even WORSE over how she dumped him under Liu. And even if they both screwed up, speaking as an X-23 fan that's probably the only time I've ever found her unsympathetic. Yes, I'm still bitter).

Even if they haven't formally rekindled YET, you can't tell me they'd have her say "It was only him," and NOT be building towards it.

"Johnny's defeat at the hands of Pyro might make sense on the surface as Johnny Storm can generate flames while Pyro has the power to control them."

Except Pyro HAS controlled his flames in the books.