Author's Note: So! After quite a few conversations I've had with pixienerd about a theory I came up with (my theory is that the Kurt and Kitty of the Age of Apocalypse universe had an affair, because you totally know they were screwing each other behind AoA!Piotr's back *gets shot*), not to mention discovering that there's a total lack of AoA!Kurtty fics, this one-shot was born. It's basically a series of snippets exploring what Darkholme and AoA!Kitty's relationship may have been like and how the former coped after the latter's death.
Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men in any way, shape, or form.
He doesn't quite know what to expect when she asks if he would spar with her.
It's not like they're strangers to each other, not really. They'd indulged in some flirting during the first several weeks after she joined the X-Men, but that was before she'd gotten involved with and married Colossus (a fact that annoys him every time he thinks of it, though he'd never admit it out loud). For the last few months, their only interactions were on a strictly professional level, and now she's asking if he would have a sparring match with her?
He wonders what she has in mind.
They agree to use only hand-to-hand combat; no powers, no weapons. The minutes tick by in a flurry of blows, kicks, and dodges; both of them appear to be evenly matched, neither of them gaining an upper hand on the other. She smirks as his frustration becomes noticeable, and soon banter mixes in with the battle. It's not long before she suddenly rushes at him, backing him up against the wall.
All he can do is look at her as she quickly closes the gap between them. He has a glimpse of her fervently glittering brown eyes and mischievously smiling lips; in the second before it actually happens, he realizes exactly what she has in mind.
She kisses him, and he doesn't stop her.
The fact that he really shouldn't be kissing a married woman doesn't even enter his head.
She's still smiling when the kiss ends. "Want a rematch?"
"You have to ask?" is his only reply.
Their "rematch" takes place the next night.
They have another one the night after that.
During their fourth match, he's the one to corner her and steal a kiss.
They have sex sometimes.
Their first time together is unplanned—by him, at least. Not that he hasn't thought about having sex with her before, but when he goes to his room several days after their initial sparring match, the sight of her splayed out on his bed and already stripped down to her undergarments still leaves him, for lack of a better word, unprepared.
She watches as he stares wordlessly at her nearly naked form, an eyebrow raised in amusement. Well? she seems to be asking.
He closes the door behind him and locks it. And for the next few, passionate hours, nothing exists for them but each other.
They lie next to each other afterward; he's still coming down from his high when she gets up from the bed to gather her clothes. She tells him she can't stay; Piotr will be wondering where she is. As far as he's concerned, that husband of hers can go hang himself, but he doesn't stop her from phasing out of his room after she's fully dressed.
It's about a couple of minutes after she leaves that he gets up to get dressed himself.
They keep their affair extremely secret. In public, they exchange no affectionate gestures, acknowledge each other only when necessary, and any conversation they do have is brief and usually about X-Men business. As far as anyone else can tell, they're nothing more than distant acquaintances.
Well, almost anyone. About three weeks into the affair, his mother asks in a would-be casual voice if he has any plans for the night. He pauses for a few seconds, wondering how he ought to answer. His first thought is to lie—he can be an excellent liar when the situation calls for it—but his mind is strangely blank.
So he decides to say—very sarcastically—that he plans on sleeping with Colossus' wife.
His mother is able to see through his sarcastic tone. "That explains why you've been disappearing so much lately."
Her codename suits her, he thinks. She's as impossible to hold on to as any shadow, and if their relationship is reminiscent of one between a cat and a mouse, then she's certainly the cat more often than not. It's become a game of theirs, to see who will be on top. And it's a game they can't get enough of.
He once asks her why she decided to pursue him. She jokingly says it was because it's fun to get him wound up.
She adds in a more serious voice that it was because he's sane. As sane as any of them can be, anyway.
He knows something is wrong when he finds her in his room, looking pale and uncharacteristically anxious. After a few seconds of prodding, she startles him by throwing herself into his arms and bursting out crying. He hears her mumble through her tears that she's pregnant.
Those two words momentarily leave him speechless; it's a wonder he doesn't pass out. He pulls back slightly to look down at her still flat stomach. She continues talking rapidly: the baby is his, she can't hide the pregnancy forever, Piotr will kill him if he finds out—
He puts a hand to her mouth to quiet her and wipes a few stray tears from her face. He's never seen her cry before, and God forbid he ever makes her this upset. He smiles in what he hopes is in a comforting manner and tells her the first thing to come into his head: sooner or later, they'll run away to Avalon together. It's not long before she agrees to the idea.
They get intimate a while later; to his slight surprise, the sex is tender and gentle, so unlike the heated, almost desperate passion that had brought them together in the first place.
She stays with him the whole night.
All the hopes he'd dared to have over the past couple of months are brutally dashed when she's killed by her husband.
He's busy fighting off Apocalypse's minions, but catches a glimpse of an insane Colossus charging towards her. For those few seconds, time slows down. He seems to freeze where he stands even amidst the chaos, his body either unwilling or unable to follow his mental order to teleport over and get her the hell away from the hulking mass of metal.
When Colossus shoves her aside, she falls to the ground and doesn't get up.
She is killed instantly.
Suddenly, time speeds up, his eyes are stinging horribly, and a primal roar erupts from his throat as he starts attacking his opponents with every bit of ferocity he has. He doesn't know how many he kills in the next several minutes, nor does he care.
Half of his mind is screaming denials at him. She—no, they—can't be dead. Surely this is some sort of illusion, a hallucination, a sick joke. After this battle, they will sneak away to be alone together, just like they always do.
But the other half of his mind knows better. Both she and their unborn child are dead, ripped away from him by the bastard who dared to call himself her husband.
Later on, when he learns that Colossus had been killed shortly after killing her, he feels grimly satisfied. He only wishes he'd been the one to do it.
He copes with his loss the same way he copes whenever something goes wrong. He pretends not to care.
He throws himself into being an X-Man; he trains for long hours and fights to the bitter end during each mission. He craves the company of no one and manages to offend nearly everyone he comes across.
All the while, he tells himself over and over that she didn't mean anything to him. That the feelings they shared—the desire, the passion, and even the love—weren't real.
He's lying, of course, but he prefers to deceive himself.
Because he thinks it would kill him otherwise.