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Monile
Disclamer: Scott Summers and Emma Frost
belong to Marvel; but the universe
belongs to me. This story is rated PG-13.
She had always assumed that when the illusion fled it would be her who
initiated
the break, her who would explain to him, calmly and cruelly, why she was
ripping
his heart to pieces and grinding it into the floor beneath her heel. Any
other
scenario had been unimaginable, until now.
He was leaving her.
She twisted the necklace around her fingers, the unconscious, repetitive
motion
betraying her true feelings and making her perfectly schooled expression
of cool
nonchalance worthless.
She did care.
God help her, she *loved* him.
She couldn't love him, not him, not this boy from the streets she had
somehow
fallen in with after her bloody escape from the asylum. Not this blind,
taciturn
fool who still believed in good as well as evil and
infinate shades of gray, despite the horrors that life had heaped upon
him, who
would have been eaten alive by that same life had she not come along
when she
did.
The necklace tightened around her hand, a dull pain radiating up into
her wrist.
He had given her the strand of crystalline beads two years ago, for her
birthday, and she seldom was without them. A fleeting image flickered
behind her
eyes, the memory of her naked body rocking atop his, the jewelry cold
and heavy
against her hot skin, the translucent shell pink colour of the glass
blending
perfectly with the subtly different hues of her breasts.
That had been the only time she had wanted him to see her, the only time
she
wasn't thankful that the doctor at the orphanage had sewn his eyes shut
when his
power had erupted.
The only time she had been willing to let him in.
She couldn't love him.
Not now.
Not when she was losing him.
She clenched her hands together, the necklace clasped between them, the
familiar
ice solidifying in her veins once more as she turned from the window and
looked
at him, tossing her pale, wheat coloured hair behind her shoulders.
He was deftly moving through the tiny room that they shared as he felt
for his
things and placed them in his bag, his tall, lanky frame concentrating
solely on
the task, ignoring her. She wanted to scream, throw herself at him and
pound his
chest with her fists, disrupt his methodical search; but her own
stoicism, at
times worse than his, prevented her. She broke the silence by speaking
instead,
her voice low and detatched.
"Where will you go?"
"Do you care?" His voice was as distant as hers.
"No." She ran the beads around her wrists and pulled, hating
him, losing herself
in the less frightening emotion. "When have I ever cared?" she
continued,
increasing the pressure.
He didn't answer. She turned away so that she wouldn't see her
reflection in the
dark of his glasses. She loosened her grip on the necklace and let it
dangle
from her outstretched fingers.
"There were times," he said slowly, "when I thought you
did."
"That's because you're a dumb fuck." The beads rested in her
palm, clicked
softly together. She wondered briefly if she would die if she swallowed
them.
"You're an easy fuck. Does that make us even?" It gave her a
thrill, deep
inside, to hear such bitter hurt in his voice although she was thankful
he could
not see the amused smirk it forced to her lips.
"I suppose it does," she said too quickly, unable to keep her
tone completely
flat. He threw a sorrowful expression in the direction of her voice as
he pulled
on his wool coat. She had taken it for him, the year before he had given
her the
beads.
She fingered the necklace more slowly now. She could stop him from
leaving with
a thought.
She followed him down to the street, refraining from making a rude
comment about
how cautiously he took the stairs even with his cane, refraining from
pushing
him down and throwing herself after him. The beads, held under her hand,
skittered along the bannister.
She stood on the pavement, oblivious to the sun in her eyes and the wind
in her
hair.
Her hands, tangled up in the necklace, wrenched violently apart, the
shimmering,
mournful beads disappearing in the gutters and the puddles, as she
watched him
walk away.
FINIS
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