This popped into my head while listening to Voltaire's When You're Evil and just wouldn't leave me alone until I'd written it. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I
don't own them, Marvel does and I make no claim to them.
This is
entirely for my own enjoyment and not for profit.
Rating: PG
Warning: Het
When You're Evil
Resting on her side, feeling Remy's warm, muscular body cuddle in closer to her, Sage wonders exactly what she's doing and how much of a price she'll pay when it comes down to it. Looking at the muscular tanned arm draped over her waist in an almost possessive gesture, part of her knows that when the time comes she'll pay it gladly.
She's sleeping with the enemy. What's worse than that though, is that the X-Men don't realise the man in her bed is their enemy. No, they think he's one of the team, a loyal if somewhat misguided member of their little club. They think he's tame, that after what happened all those years ago he wouldn't dare foul the nest he's made with them. What they don't understand is that his home has never been with them. His loyalty has rested with others far too long to ever be theirs completely, and given recent events they've lost what little of it they did hold.
She's known this for some time though, almost from when she joined the team. It would have been useless to take it to Scott, Emma or the Professor though, since in their eyes she was still one of the enemy. She'd yet to prove her worth to the dream, and as such they would have laughed her off at best. At worst they would have accused her of sowing discord among the team. No matter how much they distrusted him, he had at least proven himself.
So instead she watched him and waited. Watched as the loyalty slipped away and the friendships disintegrated. As he moved further and further away from Xavier's precious dream and closer and closer to the darkness. Then at some point the watcher became the watched, and she became his prey.
She should have known that it wouldn't take him long to figure out that she was on to him. Most people underestimate the spark of intelligence in those burning eyes, instead seeing the airy mask that he puts forward. Much to her chagrin she has to include herself in that category, although she's learnt better since then. She worked out that he was stalking her almost too late, when he had nearly ingratiated himself to her completely. Blinded by the dream she'd thought that the right partner, herself in this case, could turn the blackest heart bright again, forgetting the most important lesson she'd learnt in the Hellfire Club. You can never save someone. Especially if they don't want saving.
The night that she'd finally come to her senses had been the first night they'd slept together. It had been fire and passion on both their parts, each too firmly entrenched in their roles as seducer and seduced to pull back had they even wanted to. Afterwards, as he settled behind her to cuddle, he'd whispered in his honey-whisky voice that she was special and that she meant so much to him. She'd know that it was all lies, but part of her had wanted to believe him when he'd told her that he loved her.
It started off as sex with cuddling afterwards, something which she'd always envied after her time with Sebastian Shaw. He always stayed the night, ensuring that she either woke up with him still wrapped around her or waking her before slipping away. It was something that he'd never done with any of his other conquests, he'd said as much when she'd asked, and it was all designed to make her feel special. The worst part of it was that it worked. Logically she knew that he was playing her in an effort to keep her from revealing him to the others, but she wanted more than anything for it to be real.
Their 'relationship' had built from there, developing faster than she would have imagined possible and almost entirely out of both of their control. It became a yearning, panting animal that was dragging both of them along for the ride. She could have been wrong though, it might all have been according to plan for her devious Cajun lover. The rare glimpses she got behind his carefully constructed persona suggested that it was the same fall for him though.
Sex became an almost secondary part eventually, taking its place behind simply spending time with each other. The actually went out on dates, with fancy restaurants and homemade picnics falling into place with shopping trips and night clubs. It made her feel truly human, something that she hadn't felt for so long, and it was so tempting to give in to the lie. Instead she let him know that she wasn't entirely ignorant of the game he was playing, and that she was more than willing to play along. The dynamic shifted but if anything the relationship itself became stronger.
She knows that part of the attraction to him is purely physical, after all she's only human and she has needs too. Part of it though is the fact that he stops her being lonely and makes her feel human. She wonders if he gets anything from it other than a convenient and easy lay, and her silence. She likes to think so but he's so hard to read properly these days that she can never be sure.
It's a dangerous game she's playing, and she knows it. She knows it's a matter of when, not if, he betrays them. She hopes that in playing this with him she'll delay that betrayal, if not prevent it entirely. Even if she buys the team another year, or even two, it will be worth the sacrifices she'll have to make in the meantime.
When it all comes down to it the question that Sage really asks herself while she's there laying in her lover's arms is not what price will she pay at the end of this game, but what the price will be to ensure that it doesn't end. If he were to ask her to turn on the team with him, or even look away while he went ahead with his plans, would she be able to say no to the one man she never thought she'd end up loving?
