Title: Dancing in the Sunshine of the Dark
Author: Märrie
Category: AU
Summary: There´s no excuse for this story. It´s just my twisted brain...
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I own the lines, they own the cute ones...
Feedback: Never underestimate the power of encouragement and critism.
Special thank you:Karen for being such a sweetie and thank you for the speedy beta!
Dedication: to Evilein, my partner in LJ-crime. Don´t kill me for calling you that;)
"She twirled a million dances
Within the army of madness
Seeking passion and cold fire.
A soul too cold
Too far gone
And too deep in.
She was the one
The one dancing
In the sunshine of the dark
They said. "
Staring into the bathroom´s mirror I saw a stranger. An exquisite creature,
invented for the last amusement of two elderly senators, stared back at me.
Nobody would know they were killed by a mere mutant. By someone who was
referred to as DNA waste.
I had immediately accepted the job offer when I heard who the targets were.
Senator Kelly and Senator Taylor had initiated the Friends Of Humanity
movement all those years ago when I still had a life. Way back when there had
been dreams and hearts and flowers.
Sometimes when I hide in the darkness, forced to hold my breath, watching the
patrols waltzing their way through the restricted area I could hear the
sounds of the old times. I could still hear their voices, their laughter, their joy
and it seemed as if Magneto had been wrong though. But I can´t find comfort in my
memories because I can´t stop recalling the mourning that replaced my life.
Perhaps I had discovered love too early. Perhaps loving wouldn't have hurt
that much if I'd already had nothing left to lose. I learnt the hard way that you love
on even if who you loved had vanished. Vanished without a trace. None of us knew
about his transformation and when I realized who he had become it was already
too late to stop everything from falling down. I often feel guilty because I
could have prevented the first kill. My conscience whispered to me that I was
walking with the dead if I continued to cover his tracks, but I still did it.
In my own strange way I calmed my heart by ignorance, by being the spectator
of his work and I lost my innocence a second time to the same. It was
torture, reminding myself that the thin line between love and hate is
transparent and once you crossed you´ll never find a way back home.
When Scott had died by the hand of the FOH killer and his wife Jean had
retreated into insanity, the team, and our heroes had finally fallen apart.
Professor Xavier had been killed shortly after, leaving behind a world that
had long lost all resemblance to his vision of a shared community for humans
and mutants.
The students and I among them had soon been disappointed by our foster
families. There was no place in society for us and dumped into the streets
like trash, the mutants had learnt to adapt, accepting their social isolation
and living in the underground. Humiliation and oppression became what we were used to. Numberless fears came true, haunted our life like a waking nightmare.
Remy had been the first to try to change that fact. Like in any modern Robin
Hood story his crusade had ended badly and left us desperate. He had not been
the last of our own dying for a cause. Jubes had been the next, following the
path of her lover, leading and inspiring those still remembering the old
world. I was with her on the day the FOH solved `the problem`. When I saw
into the eyes of her killer I saw into my own grave. I couldn´t stop him, I
coudn´t even try.
Perhaps this was the turning point, the day I lost what had been left of my
shattered beliefs. Her blood flowed for hours from the wound in her head,
mixing with the dust on the street and seeping into my skin. Maybe time
soothed the pain I felt that day. Maybe I just became numb. I don´t know. I
don´t care anymore.
When I sat in the warm summer sun, my best friend´s head bedded in my lap,
her dead body already cooling I mourned for the first time. Yes I had cried
before. Yes I had felt the loss of Scott and the others, but I hadn´t had the
time to decipher what their deaths meant. But with Jubes everything changed.
She had been so alive that I couldn´t combine her lifeless form with the
person I loved. There was no hope. There was no shame. Only the steady flow
of the cars close to me and the cold blood dripping over my hands onto the
pavement. I was stranded, left alone in a strange world. The cops collecting
her body had to tranquilize me to get her. I wasn´t willing to let her go, as
if that final goodbye would kill me too. And I asked a million times why he
didn´t kill me. Why I was always left out. I felt his gaze travel over me.
Curious, speculative and very cold. I opened my senses to feel him.
He was standing on the other side of the street, dark clothed on a hot summer
day. Connecting his gaze with mine, dragging on his cigar. He followed me and
I didn´t disobey, I knew he knew how to find me.
I don´t know why I started to dance that night. In a back alley, all by
myself under the watchful eye of my very own killer, twirling around until
the colours of the night became one. Until everything faded into grey and I
was too dizzy to remember my name. Or anything. I did not cry. Nor did I
pray. I did not hear the shuffle of my bare feet on the gravel. Just dancing,
not thinking.
Since then it became my nocturnal ritual, performed to celebrate each and
every occasion. Hank´s death and the birth of Kitty´s daughter became one
when I danced. There was nothing left, no cruel or bitter thoughts, no love
affairs, no lies and no fights, just my swaying in the silence.
It had been so easy to become indifferent to the temptation that was hope. My
friends were dead and I had to go on. Step by step leaving their ways and
breaking free from the confined ethics, morals and rules the X-Men had
implanted in me. And that was the moment I became a killer, his equal and
copy. Amazingly he killed my rivals until there were just two high-priced
mercenaries left, him and myself. He never contacted me, nor did he recognize
me as his associate. I knew he knew. But nothing happened.
Fighting, screwing around and killing until there was nothing human left.
Until there was just me. By now I hated everything I had become and I still
chose living whenever I treaded close to the abyss. After all I had today´s
mission to accomplish.
With one final glance in the mirror I left the bathroom and walked back to
the party. A party- well that was one way to describe the foundation dinner
held for the FOH. A gathering of all those being in a position of power and
privileged enough to lack a certain genetic defect, that was the other way
to put it. I had been able to sneak into the grand event with a lot of money
and the luck to have an "invisible" mutation; meaning I was pretty enough to
work as a hostess at the party.
My Sig was strapped to my left leg, not to be seen and still reminding me to
be as chatty and friendly as possible. Gracefully I walked over to the two
men I had to entertain, Senator Kelly and his golf partner Senator Taylor. I
had a smile plastered on my face, looking for any watchful eye like the
epitome of a southern beauty, in my clinging red dress. Not shivering when
they lectured me about the genetical purity that was to be kept, but nodding,
speaking little. I even managed to dance a few times with both senators,
accepting their stolen touches with a sweet smile.
The fireworks were due at midnight and the guests walked outside in the park.
I managed to stay behind with the two men, whispering with southern charm
that I knew the place we could go to have the best view. And they agreed,
following my lead to their own execution. Never bothering to ask how I could
possibly know that. Life is ironic like that.
When we were at a safe distance from the other guests, I took my gun, turned
and shot. I had worked on my technique to perform these two movements for
nearly two months and they were perfect. Pulling the trigger twice before one
of the senators could utter a sound. I guess they never knew what or who
killed them.
Two bullets terminating two existences.
An eye for an eye, a life for a life. I could hear my lost friends again;
they were singing a song for me, so that I could dance a last time.
The firework started suddenly and the night became day. By then I was dancing
in the sunshine of the dark, forgetting hope and the glittery illusion of
love. I knew he watched me. His mission tonight was my assassination. And he
knew I knew that.
Fin