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Shuffling Contingency: A Beautiful Lie
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A beam of sunlight shone down on the face of a young woman. Amid her slumber, she shifted, angling her body to the left, towards the warmth. Wisps of consciousness seemed to return as one thing was clear to her mind: go towards the warmth.

Shuffling, her auburn hair splayed out across the ground as she moved closer. It was so warm, a warmth that she lacked and craved. Her body uncoiled slightly to absorb more of the heat than it could curled up. A content smile spread across her lips.

Lazily, her eyes eyelids flickered open. They took a few moments to adjust to the light, before taking in the sight before her. It was true that she was indeed in the path of the sun, yet she was also extremely close to a human being.

When she looked up at their face, she gasped.

It had only been a few years since mutants were publicly outed. And in those years, humanity had advanced along with technology and decided that genetic anomalies weren't wanted. They were to be hunted.

And so the fact that she was lying next to another mutant shouldn't have been what shocked her. She had decided to travel into the sewer system for the night because she knew this was one place where mutants were accepted, where they were safe. If you could call the cramped space that.

Truthfully, she didn't think it was his mutantcy that caused her to lose her breath. If it had been anything, it was his eyes. They were the most unbelievably beautiful and horrible eyes that she had ever seen. And she had seen plenty in her life.

She looked into his eyes, gorgeous red on black that revealed his genetic heritage, and felt an incomparable feeling of safety wash over her. With the sun shining down in the dingy tunnel, lined with moss at the edges, she felt safe. Here, with him.

An almost complete stranger, and yet she felt such a connection with him. It was something that she had been told not to ignore in her life. Her gut, her instinct, it was what saved her life on a daily basis. So what did it say when it told her should could trust this man implicitly?

What did it say that among all the other bodies around her, his was the one that she had moved towards subconsciously? What did it mean that his eyes were just as wide as hers as he looked at her? What did it mean that her palms itched uncontrollably to touch his face without the aid of her glove?

It meant that she was in trouble.

And that sometimes, she had to go against her gut, her instinct.

But even as she knew that to be true, her dazed and lethargic mind could not execute her decisions. Her body, her muscles only inched that much closer to this man with his devilish eyes. And soon, the only thing that could truly move was her head, and it too sought a closer proximity.

Their lips were a breath away, literally. His breath played across the flesh along her jaw line, making her mind jumble further into chaos. Her eyelids fluttered, threatening to close fully, but not from sleep or exhaustion. Her breathing was shallow, barely registered as her eyes bore into his steadily.

She was going to lean forwards, to connect the scant centimeters that separated them. But even as she made that decision, her thoughts from earlier came racing back. This feeling, this instinct was not to be trusted. This man was not to be trusted.

No one was to be trusted anymore.

Finally, she tore her gaze from his own and pushed herself violently backwards. Her body curled in on itself, her knees tucking in to touch her chin. Her breathing increased as her chest heaved. She flicked up her gaze to his face, seeing mild surprise and hurt. But mostly, she saw concern, and it made her torso constrict that much more.

Scrambling purposefully to her feet, she set her feet to walking away from him. From everyone and everything. She couldn't believe what she had almost done. It wasn't the fact that her power would have ended things quickly, it was the fact that she hadn't thought about them the whole time.

It was the fact that she held no reservations against the man. It was the fact that he was a complete stranger. And most importantly, it was the fact that she trusted him. She trusted him with her life and she didn't know a thing about him. She felt this deep connection with him that insisted to her that he was all right, he was safe, and he was home.

Not that it probably would have changed things anyway.

But she couldn't believe these feelings. Because no matter what her gut told her, there was no one she could trust. No one that could keep her 'safe', and no one that could make her existence worth living, no one worth loving. There was no home for Rogue.

Because in the end, love was really just a beautiful lie in this world but a lie all the same. And she wasn't getting caught in that web ever again. So she left, she walked away from the beautiful man with his red on black eyes. She walked away from her feeling of security, of warmth, and of home.

And since that day, the empty pit in her stomach hasn't filled and her heart still aches with a dull thump, reminding her of what she lost.


Author's Notes: I was reading something and this idea just popped into my head, out of nowhere. Well, actually I think it had something to do about people waking up to look at each other, but then this just like went "Hey! Pay attention to me! Write me! No, don't look at the clock. It's not two in the morning, the clock lies. W-R-I-T-E M-E!!" I'm not joking. I have the furious post-it notes to prove it. Scary man, scary. … Yes, I might have been hallucinating. No, I didn't have any toxins or alcohol this evening (morning). Anyway, enough with my ramblings. Just for some clarification on this one (because I realize it might be confusing), this is like a futuristic setting where mutants are being hunted and killed by the humans. And so one of the many ways to avoid them is the sewers, because no one really wants to go down there. It's sort of bittersweet, but it's an uphill process to purely fluffy one-shots. Until the next time, all right? We'll see what happens in that one together, because I've got no clue.