Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with X-Men.
His hair slips through her fingers like silk. She loves to play with it when he is asleep—when he pretends to be asleep—when he is unconscious.
It is the only natural part of his body, other than his teeth and his toenails and fingernails, that she can touch without hurting him. And even despite her mutation, she has yet to develop a toenail fetish. The same may not be true in fifty years—in thirty—in ten—if she lives beyond tomorrow, beyond this instant—but it is now. His hair is one of her favorite things to touch.
He stirs under her fingers, and she murmurs words that are not words in his ear.
In the years that she has known him, he has taken from her everything she loved. He has given her everything she cares about. She is not his equal. She is his sometime-subordinate. Sometimes she is even his superior, though never in the field. He does not take orders well.
He shifts, turning towards her, his face instinctively nuzzling into her warmth. She adjusts as he moves so that his nose presses into the cloth of the blanket on her shoulder.
When they first met, she took his pride from him. Not on purpose, of course—but she was there. She was meant to be the mechanism for his greatest success, and instead her continued survival marked one of his failures. Not his greatest failure, no, but a stinging failure nonetheless.
Her eyelids droop, feeling heavy, as though weights have been attached to them and are pulling them down, down. She wants to shake her head, to keep herself awake, but she is afraid of jostling him.
He has always been a light sleeper. She knew this even before the first time she slept with him, from her memories of his childhood. He was a light sleeper even before Auschwitz. It took him a long time to learn to sleep again after.
They lie in a pool of blood. Some of it is his. Some of it is hers. It is difficult to tell from her position whether the pool is still expanding.
He loves her. She knows it though he has never said the words. She can tell by the way he worships her with his body. By the way he worries when she is gone. By the way he looks at her when she returns. She feels an ache in her chest, and knows that she loves him in return.
He shifts. Whispers her name. She tries to shush him, but he weakly pushes himself up on his elbows. There is blood in his hair. There is blood in her hair where she ran her hand through a white lock.
He came to her first. She always delights in reminding him of that. She is stubborn enough that she would never have gone to him unless he gave first. He stole her away one night, as if they were midnight lovers, their faithful steed a brand new Ferrari. She has never looked back.
He asks where they are. She can tell by the clouds in his eyes that he does not remember what has happened to them. Why they are in such pain. Why the stone walls around them seem so very high. She is glad. She wishes she could not remember.
When they fight, he apologizes first. It is the way of their relationship. Their friends do not understand—imagine completely wrongly what occurs behind closed doors. He apologizes even if he is in the right, and she forgives, because he has always needed forgiveness, and she has always longed for validation.
She sees in his eyes the moment he realizes that they have no hope. If they had wings, they could fly from this place. If one of them was a telekinetic, they could have levitated out. But these were not their gifts—a fact their captors knew well, and planned for. The stone walls are high, high, much further than either of them can climb. There is no metal in the well that is their prison, not even on their bodies, for they have been stripped except for the single blanket they now share.
Never in the time she has known him has he given up hope. He has always been strong, a leader. She has admired the way his eyes flash and his chiseled jaw clenches as he speaks out against injustice. He has admired the way she looks when she admires him.
She is confused, at first, when he begins to kiss her, but she does not try to stop him. His mind, his purpose, quickly fill her, and she understands, and accepts. She kisses him back, fiercely, reveling in the touch. It seems strange that they are both able to become aroused so quickly in this situation, yet she is not surprised.
Despite his age, he has never needed medial assistance to become aroused. And even when they fought on opposite sides, she found him devastatingly attractive.
He enters her swiftly, passionately, and she gasps in ecstasy at the sensation. They have never before had sex without the protection of multiple layers of clothing and latex between them. She savors the experience as she has savored every touch since she became a mutant. They move together in a primordial rhythm, and he pours himself into her with a desperate cry. In that moment, as she herself screams in bliss, she finds it in herself to hate him.
He has never been afraid to touch her. She has been afraid for him.
He collapses on top of her. Though they are touching skin-to-skin from head to toe, she is not draining any of his life force. He is already dead.
They have spoken before, though not often, about what they would do if they were ever in a hopeless situation. Somehow sex never figured into their planning.
His hair slips through her fingers like silk. She does not cry, but only struggles to breathe under his weight. She concentrates on the powers running through her, and his voice whispering to her from within herself.
Once, long ago, he admitted that he could never kill her. He was not strong enough. She told him then that if the situation ever required it, she would be strong enough for both of them. She keeps her word now.
She takes one last deep breath, feeling his scent swirl through her lungs. Then she closes her eyes, and reaches for the infinitesimal bits of iron in her own body.
In a single defiant scream, she rips herself apart.