Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men, much though I might wish otherwise. Thus, I'm making absolutely no money using their characters and plots as a start-off point. Thanks to Beaubier for beta-reading awesomeness, and to Jen1703 for convincing me to write it!

Fractured Psyches

Prologue

The dream was always the same.

Monsters out of some B-rated horror movie, pooling together into some sort of collective. He hung there, in space, watching them explode themselves. He should've been happy, he knew, relieved that they were self-destructing, rejoicing that humanity was safe from yet another bizarre alien threat.

Instead, he was panicked, his eyes scanning past them, searching until they finally found the limp figure they were seeking.

Lorna. A lump formed in his throat, choking him as he called out to her through his communicator and got no response. God, he had to get to Lorna.

It seemed like hours, an eternity even. Despite the vacuum of space, it was like walking through quicksand, each step labored, and he knew, just knew, he was going to be too late, though he wasn't entirely sure just where his conviction was coming from, or what he was afraid he might find. Finally, after a hellish eternity, he grabbed her arm to turn her so she was facing him.

And she stared at him, unseeing, her mouth hanging open, her expression blank. He was already too late.

"Lorna!" he shouted, eyes popping open abruptly to stare at the ceiling without seeing it. Shaking, his hands fisted in the sheets, clinging to them as he'd clung to her space suit in the dream…

"Shhhh," he heard as a warm hand clamped onto his arm. "I'm here, Bobby. It's okay."

Nodding, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Just a dream; Lorna was okay. He reopened them slowly, a lopsided smile forming on his face as he turned his head to look at the voice's owner.

"Sorry, hon," he said sheepishly, hand stretching out to stroke her shoulder. She was dressed in Shi-ar enhanced, insulated spandex - the only way they'd found, so far, to keep her from getting frostbite, just being near him. She claimed she didn't mind.

He did.

"Golgotha again?" she asked hesitantly, and he nodded, pushing himself upright.

"Yeah. Same old, same old. Trust me to be consistent at least, hey?" he joked feebly, sighing as her hand moved to his back.

"Yeah, trust you for that," she agreed, and he turned his head, chuckling softly at the amused expression on her face.

"Is that why you keep me around, then?" he asked, running one icy finger down her face lightly.

Lorna rolled her eyes, then smirked at him. "Must be," she retorted. "It's definitely not so I can get uninterrupted sleep, after all," but the smile that formed almost immediately took the bite from her words.

Wrinkling his nose, he dropped his hand to her shoulder and squeezed it gently. "That's not what you said last month," he countered, raising his eyebrows and smiling back. "Something about you having nightmares?"

"Yeah well, it worked, didn't it?" she replied, shrugging casually, and he let out a snort of laughter at the smug look on her face. "I just needed someone to sleep with, that was all. You make a good teddy bear."

Bobby rolled his eyes, then laughed and shook his head. "I make a cold teddy bear. I'm thinking your room was just too warm and you wanted air conditioning - hey!" he protested as she thwapped his arm, hard.

"Stop that," she snapped, then sighed, reaching out to stroke fingers down his face. "Sorry. You know I hate that."

"Yeah, I know," he admitted, shrugging. He knew, it wasn't as if it didn't come up often enough. But while Lorna'd more or less dug him out of the depression he'd sunk into after his secondary mutation made itself known, he still wasn't happy about the situation. Even less so since they'd gotten back together, after all the years they'd spent apart. Sighing, he closed his eyes, enjoying the heat of her fingers against what passed for his skin these days. He was pathetic, really, and he knew it. But he missed being touched, even though he honestly couldn't blame anyone for not wanting to. It amazed him, constantly, that Lorna was even interested in him, even if it was purely for emotional support. He just wished it could be more than that.

"So," she asked with obviously fake airiness, averting her eyes, "What'd Alex do to me this time?"

Bobby shook his head, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and urging her back down, trying to push away the mental image that formed before his eyes. "Doesn't matter. Come on, let's go back to sleep," he replied hopefully, but was unsurprised when she shook her head, bangs flopping forward over her eyes only to be flipped back with a toss of her head.

"Bobby, do you honestly think he'd…" she began, cutting off as he shook his head.

"Of course not," he lied, what he hoped was a reassuring smile forming on his face as she settled back against his arm, then let him urge her down to the bed. "It was just Golgotha talking, hon. Alex is a prick, but not that big of one."

Lorna smirked as she closed her eyes. "You can say that again".

He chuckled as he settled next to her, closing his as well. "More info than I needed," he joked as he wrapped his arm over her.

Grinning, she snuggled closer, her fingers tracing lines on his chest for a while until they finally stilled, her breathing drifting into the soft cadences of sleep.

Bobby reopened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He hoped he was wrong. Because, as his ever more frequent nightmares indicated, he was nearly positive Alex Summers was exactly that big a prick. And he couldn't for the life of him figure out what to do about it.