Disclaimer: Marvel's, not mine. This is just a little introspection piece, loosly related to canon, but not really.

Life Support
by Timesprite

Sometimes, all you have just isn't enough. She'd known that for years. It wasn't a startling revelation, a bolt out of the blue. Sometimes, things were simply beyond one person's capacity to fix, no mater how many years they spent pouring effort into the situation. Some things were just bigger than one woman's determination. Some things were inevitable, no matter how stubbornly she refused to acknowledge the truth.

It wasn't a surprise, no. But it still left a biter taste in her mouth. It still left her thinking there was more she could have done, more she could have sacrificed beyond merely her body and her soul. There was more--there had to be--because it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to have spent nearly two decades holding one man together, only to realize it was pointless. Futile.

Nothing could ever save Nathan Summers from himself.

And all she'd done, all that monumental effort on her part, had only prolonged his destruction. Life support for a dying man. That was all she'd ever been.

And now all she could do was stand by, tasting the ashes.

That phoenix wasn't going to rise again, she knew that much. Not if he allowed himself to fall. Not if he gave in. And all the violence, all of her well placed punches and hysterical screams had amounted to nothing. A stoic mask and a hand on the shoulder once she'd finally worn herself out. The same old comfort in a dark bedroom, and an arm around her waist afterward. But it didn't seem to matter, not to him.

She'd had to track him down herself. That should have been her first clue. He hadn't called her in so long, and she'd had to find him instead.

He hadn't turned her away, but he hadn't made any excuses. He'd made up his mind. He wasn't going to try any harder. Just make use of the time he figured he had left.

He didn't seem the least bit sorry that he was standing there telling her he was going to leave her behind. Behind in the same brutal, bloody, utterly pointless world he'd found her in. That was when she'd started hitting him and he'd let her, impotent blows that had not moved him, though they had raised bruises, darkening in that silent bedroom as he moved above her and she lay there, wishing he could somehow fill the empty place in her soul as easily as he did her body.

Wishing she could find the magic words that would change his mind. Knowing no such words existed.

There was no point in asking why. Because he was tired. Because, no matter how hard she tried, she'd never be a match for what had come before. Because the sun had shone a particular way one morning, and he'd just decided he didn't have another fight left in him. She knew she shouldn't blame him for that, but she did. Because the more she lay there contemplating his loss, the more she realized just how pointless her own struggle would be rendered. Because she couldn't see it any other way. All the years, all the battles, all the nights spent guarding him from his own demons, were a band-aid to a fatal hemorrhage. She doesn't even feel the brief moments of joy anymore, because he's going to destroy it all. He's going to leave her with herself, which is less than nothing at all.

And it was enough to rip her from the warm place at his side. If he was going to be so damned accepting of what he saw as his fate, that was fine. But she wasn't about to let him think he had her compliance in the matter. She would accept, because there was nothing she could say now to change things. But she would not condone, and she would not watch. He wouldn't have watched, in her position.

Two decades of purpose fell to the floor like so much broken glass at her feet. Funny how the freedom didn't feel like freedom at all.

Funny, how it felt like she was the one who'd stopped breathing.

End