Monile

LEGAL JUNK: Scott Summers and Emma Frost belong to Marvel; but the universe belongs to me. This story is rated PG-13.


Monile

By Sequoia


She had always assumed that when the illusion fled it would be her who initiated the break, her who would explain to him, calmly and cruelly, why she was ripping his heart to pieces and grinding it into the floor beneath her heel. Any other scenario had been unimaginable, until now.

He was leaving her.

She twisted the necklace around her fingers, the unconscious, repetitive motion betraying her true feelings and making her perfectly schooled expression of cool nonchalance worthless.

She did care.

God help her, she *loved* him.

She couldn't love him, not him, not this boy from the streets she had somehow fallen in with after her bloody escape from the asylum. Not this blind, taciturn fool who still believed in good as well as evil and

infinate shades of gray, despite the horrors that life had heaped upon him, who would have been eaten alive by that same life had she not come along when she did.

The necklace tightened around her hand, a dull pain radiating up into her wrist. He had given her the strand of crystalline beads two years ago, for her birthday, and she seldom was without them. A fleeting image flickered behind her eyes, the memory of her naked body rocking atop his, the jewelry cold and heavy against her hot skin, the translucent shell pink colour of the glass blending perfectly with the subtly different hues of her breasts.

That had been the only time she had wanted him to see her, the only time she wasn't thankful that the doctor at the orphanage had sewn his eyes shut when his power had erupted.

The only time she had been willing to let him in.

She couldn't love him.

Not now.

Not when she was losing him.

She clenched her hands together, the necklace clasped between them, the familiar ice solidifying in her veins once more as she turned from the window and looked at him, tossing her pale, wheat coloured hair behind her shoulders.

He was deftly moving through the tiny room that they shared as he felt for his things and placed them in his bag, his tall, lanky frame concentrating solely on the task, ignoring her. She wanted to scream, throw herself at him and pound his chest with her fists, disrupt his methodical search; but her own stoicism, at times worse than his, prevented her. She broke the silence by speaking instead, her voice low and detatched.

"Where will you go?"

"Do you care?" His voice was as distant as hers.

"No." She ran the beads around her wrists and pulled, hating him, losing herself in the less frightening emotion. "When have I ever cared?" she continued, increasing the pressure.

He didn't answer. She turned away so that she wouldn't see her reflection in the dark of his glasses. She loosened her grip on the necklace and let it dangle from her outstretched fingers.

"There were times," he said slowly, "when I thought you did."

"That's because you're a dumb fuck." The beads rested in her palm, clicked softly together. She wondered briefly if she would die if she swallowed them.

"You're an easy fuck. Does that make us even?" It gave her a thrill, deep inside, to hear such bitter hurt in his voice although she was thankful he could not see the amused smirk it forced to her lips.

"I suppose it does," she said too quickly, unable to keep her tone completely flat. He threw a sorrowful expression in the direction of her voice as he pulled on his wool coat. She had taken it for him, the year before he had given her the beads.

She fingered the necklace more slowly now. She could stop him from leaving with a thought.

She followed him down to the street, refraining from making a rude comment about how cautiously he took the stairs even with his cane, refraining from pushing him down and throwing herself after him. The beads, held under her hand, skittered along the bannister.

She stood on the pavement, oblivious to the sun in her eyes and the wind in her hair.

Her hands, tangled up in the necklace, wrenched violently apart, the shimmering, mournful beads disappearing in the gutters and the puddles, as she watched him walk away.


FINIS


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