Thanks to Threnody, Cosmic, Lynxie, Kaleko, and DeadEye for looking over this at various points, and not being shocked or appalled at my twisted plotlines.
Lost in a Gunshot
by Timesprite
She was like a hurricane, blowing in off the street wound up and angry
about things she wouldn't talk about. A cold fire
burned behind her eyes, a fury that would not subside and seemed to
burn her up from the inside, leaving her brittle and
hollow.
She vanished into the bathroom and the shower seemed to run forever,
though all the water in the world could not have
quenched that inferno. He sat in bed, book open though he wasn't reading
it, wondering what had brought her back to him in this state.
They'd managed an agreement of sorts in the last few months. Neither
one asked where the other went, keeping their
separate lives just that, living other lives when they were together.
It occurred to him, suddenly, that it had been almost a
year since she'd tried to kill him. Not Domino, he corrected. Aentaros,
one of the Undying who'd taken possession of her mind and body in an attempt
to kill himself and others in a twisted game he'd finally brought to an
end.
They'd never discussed it.
Almost a year since something had seemingly made her anew, wiping years from her body, if not from her soul. He'd never asked what happened, and she'd never asked about Apocalypse or his father's death.
They'd done pretty well not talking like that, though the fact that
while they still tolerated, even needed each other, they
hadn't really spoken in... well years, hurt. Maybe because he'd never
thought they'd end up this way, skirting past each
other like ships in the night, a few days here, a one-night stand there.
They'd been friends for so long, and then they'd
become more than friends. Now, they just were. They lived, and that
was about it.
It seemed fate was against them. They'd had
it good for awhile there. Long enough ago now that it seemed some sort
of fever dream. Life had caught their carefully hidden smiles and acted
quickly, forcefully, to correct the matter.
There'd been Tyler's death to deal with, then Onslaught. And almost
before they'd regained their footing, Bastion and
Operation: Zero Tolerance had swept in, had robed him of his team and
Domino of so much more.
It had been difficult to worm the story out of Sam, but he'd eventually
explained what had happened to her- shed light on that night outside the
old safehouse when she'd stood exposed before him, head shaved and shaking
so hard he could almost hear her bones rattle. When he stood and stared
as she'd rambled on about normal lives then pushed him away to vanish from
his life, taking his heart with her.
She'd had her soul ripped out and he still saw the bleeding wound when
he looked in her eyes.
The world continued to turn, things went on. She'd shown up later, accusing
him of things he couldn't understand, almost died, and then vanished again.
X-Force sought her out while he stalked a monster.
In the end, somehow, Wisdom had ended up leading the team. He'd replaced Dom, and she, losing the last thing in her life that'd meant anything- the team- had gone off on her own again.
Wisdom had died.
Cyclops had been taken over by Apocalypse.
The Legacy Virus Stryfe had made was finally cured, but not before
adding Moira and Colossus to its list of victims.
Somehow, amidst it all, they'd found each other again, or rather, found
each other's shells. There wasn't much left of the
people they'd been, really.
The door opened, the light in the bathroom clicking off. She looked at him for a moment, standing there naked and dripping water on the floor before she crossed the room and climbed into bed. Fire still burned behind her eyes.
He put the book away.
"You know, you can-" he stopped. "If you need to-"
"What?" She asked, sweeping hair that had finally grown out away from her eyes. "Talk?" Her laugh was bitter and hollow.
"If it would help."
"I don't want to talk," she said scathingly. "I don't want to talk and
I don't want to think. I don't want to remember the
things I saw or how good it felt to pull the trigger on the bastard
I just killed." She turned on her side, placing one hand in the center
of his chest. "I don't want to pretend it's all okay when it hasn't been
and probably never will be."
"When did it happen?" He asked, staring at the ceiling to avoid having to meet her eyes.
"When did what happen?"
"This. When did you become so bitter? When did I get so flonqing tired
of it all? When did we both die without realizing
it?"
"When did I die?" She laughed as if there were something ironic in the
question. Maybe there was. He didn't know her
anymore.
"We're dead," he said, still concentrating on the white square of the ceiling. "We don't feel. We don't communicate." He picked up her hand and held it. "We come here and pretend- we escape. We pretend we feel something when it's nothing but a shallow echo of an emotion."
"What? One good fuck and it's back to the wars, Sweetheart? Maybe. It's something, isn't it?"
"It's a lie."
"The whole world is one big fucking falsehood, Nathan. Haven't you realized that by now? And it's out to screw us over. I, for one, am done clinging to foolish hopes that will never come to pass."
"Were we a foolish hope, Dom? All of it, it meant that little to you."
"I don't know." She said tersely. "It's pretty pointless to dwell on
it, isn't it? That was our moment in the sun. It's gone
now. I don't live in the past."
"No, you run from it," he sighed. "For awhile I envied that talent of yours."
"What talent?" She snapped, pulling her hand free from his grasp. "I didn't come here to take this kind of crap from you."
"No, you didn't." he replied, sitting up against the headboard. "You
came here to fuck blindly until you can forget how
angry you are at yourself for whatever it is you think is your fault
this time around. And for the record, I envied your ability to walk away.
Just detach yourself from your life and start a new one. Now I wouldn't
want that for the world. You destroyed yourself."
"Well, thank you, kettle. Next time, think before you go pointing accusations.
I destroyed my life? Excuse me? I don't
remember any of this being up to me, anyway."
"Maybe it wasn't. But you picked the way in which you dealt with it." He settled back down on the pillows. "You're right. This is pointless." He reached over and clicked off the bedside lamp, turning away from her. "Good night."
Silence hung like a wet blanket, stifling. He could hear her breathing next to him, still awake. He could almost see her eyes glaring holes in the ceiling. He ignored it, training his ears instead on the sound of the slowly dripping faucet in the bathroom. Behind him, Domino tossed restlessly, and with a curse, flipped on the lamp on her side of the bed. "Don't do this."
"What?" He growled, not turning over.
"Don't be such a sanctimonious prick."
"Me, right," he scoffed. "I'll forget you stormed in here like a psychotic bitch, expecting me to take whatever shit you felt like tossing my way."
"Oh, I see," she snarled. "I suppose you want explanations first."
She laughed. "You're such a God Damned hypocrite,
you know that?" She pushed him back against the bed, straddling his
waist as if her weight could hold him there. It was the murderous rage
that bubbled behind those eyes of hers, burning into him without seeing
him, that made him lay still.
"Fine! You want to know why I came here? I
came here because I just blew the brains out of a lowlife asshole who
was prostituting out street kids. He had them locked up in the fucking
basement. And I had to find them. So I blew his
damned brains all over the back wall of his office where he was counting
out the cash he made from letting people rape little girls." She took a
breath that sounded more like a strangled sob. "You're not the only one
who has personal crusades, you heartless bastard." Her fist hit him squarely
in the jaw, stunning him momentarily as she climbed off him and sat on
the edge of the bed, nursing her bruised hand. "I didn't want to be alone."
He sat up and reached out for her, but she slapped his hand away. "Don't
touch me," she hissed. "Don't think you can
make it better."
"I'm-"
"You're what? Sorry? It never occurred to you that maybe I come
here because I need the company? I need someone
who's not going to ask me what's on my mind? I never questioned you,
Nate," she said, turning to face him Tears hovered at the corners of her
eyes. Only sheer determination kept them from overflowing and running down
her cheeks. "I never goaded you into talking about Scott, or why you've
joined the X-Men when you know as well as I do that you don't give a fuck
about Xavier's dream. I never made you face up to this little masochistic
stunt you're pulling. I could have pointed out that this kind of shit was
exactly the sort of thing your father hated. But I held my tongue." She
got up and began retrieving clothes from the dresser drawer she'd reserved
as her own.
"I thought maybe I could come here and forget
for awhile. Forget how after I'd killed the son of a bitch, I wished I
could do it again. Make him suffer this time around. Make him beg like
those kids begged. Wanted to kill him as many
times as it took to make the score even." Her hands were shaking as
she pulled on her jeans. "But he's dead, so I guess it doesn't matter,
does it?"
"I didn't know."
"No, you didn't. I didn't want you to, okay?" She pulled a shirt over
her head. "Because I wanted to be able to look in
your eyes and not see that look you're giving me now. I don't want
your pity." She began gathering up the things she'd
brought with her. "I didn't mean to intrude on your little self-flagellation
game here." It was easy to overlook, with most of her bodily scars erased,
the scars she still carried on her heart. He'd had the gall to rant at
her about not living- not feeling, when she'd been in so much mental
anguish it was tearing her in two. He'd thought he'd been dealing with
a will of forged steel, when she was really brittle glass.
"Let go of me, you stupid-" she squirmed in his grasp while he ignored her blows.
"You could have told me you didn't want to be alone," he said. "That's all you had to say."
"Was it really?" There was still anger in her eyes, but it was weary
and worn out. "Seriously, if I had just walked in that
door, tossed my things down and said 'I really don't want to be alone
inside my own head tonight' could you just have
taken that in stride, no questions asked?"
"Shown up like this?" He asked. "Probably not." He tipped her chin up to look her in the eyes. "You look like shit."
"Part of me is still pulling that trigger. Like some sort of damned
video loop over and over. And there's a hundred other
bastards just as bad as him- or worse- still out there. I close my
eyes and all I see is the look on his face as he stares down the barrel
of my gun- and it's still not enough. I killed him and God, I still feel
sick inside." She took a step back. "Maybe you were right. I'm dead."
She started to unpack her bag again to keep her hands busy, as if she could
somehow keep going as long as she didn't stop moving. As if she could outrun
the gunshot's echo in the back of her mind. "I've let the past bury me."
Cracks were showing in the mask she'd worn
around him of late. Old pain was seeping through, and the flaming anger
behind her eyes had been replaced with a desolation so cold it burned.
"I stood there staring at him, after I shot him. It was as if he were mocking
me. He was dead, but I was the one who was going to live with the nightmares.
Fuck." She slammed her fist down on the top of the dresser. "I swear to
God, he looked through me like I was glass. And even dead as he was, he
knew. I didn't kill him because it was my job-" This time her control
failed her and the mask slipped, tears spilling down her white cheeks.
"Some sort of sick vengeance. I thought, if I stopped him somehow- but
the moment my finger pulled that trigger, I knew I wouldn't be able to
take this alone. If I tried to- in the dark, the nightmares would be there."
He looked at her, offering his hand. 'Come here,' it meant. 'All's
going to be well,' the look in his eyes said. At least for
now. At least for tonight. Shadows still hovered at the edges of their
lives
He lay in the dark, driving back her demons with his touch. Words swirled
through his mind, accusations and revelations, secrets and whispers of
the truth. Her eyes burned in the dark, hungry, trading nightmares for
this instant. Lost in a gunshot and a strangled scream, the woman tried
to forget the child that hid within her walls. Who'd confronted fear. The
child, not the woman, who'd pulled that trigger.
Inside himself was a broken man chasing a
death that should have been his. Stolen from his grasp, leaving him spinning,
without direction. Left him to search for meaning in the scorched desert
of his soul, with nothing but endless, timeless sand all around him. And
the two restless wanderers, two lost souls, joined, both mentally and physically,
yearning for the touch that would make them whole again.
End