Author's Note:
For those of you who don't remember, Fatale was a character in 1990's X-Factor. An assassin who worked for the Dark Beast, she kidnapped Alex Summers on her boss's orders, and then had a brief relationship with him after he'd been brainwashed. She's had more recent appearances in X-titles, post M-Day, but nothing recent.
I'm assuming she's living on Krakoa, re-powered, and watching.
Dogs
It hurts, watching him sit there, tears streaming down his cheek. Almost as much as it would hurt if he were laughing.
Fuck if I know why. Alex Summers was never anything to me, not for real. Sure, the Doc made him think there was something between us, way back when - I've never been sure if he did that because it made Alex easier to control, or just as a throwaway gift to me, like tossing a bone to his favorite dog. Knowing the Doc, it could've been either - or both, or neither. He always did what he thought best, and at the time, pairing up his newly acquired/repaired WMD with his pet assassin had been on his To Do list. I hadn't complained, because...well, because Alex Summers was hot as fuck, mostly.
Being able to toss it in the face of his green haired ex had just been a fun bonus. Never did understand what Random - or Alex - saw in her. Green's a much better color for skin than hair, anyway.
Anyway, that doesn't explain why it would hurt, watching Alex tear up over the psycho bitch who'd traded in his brother's memory for a younger, blonder model she could more easily manipulate. I've never met Madelyne, never wanted to, and as for her chaining him up, I did it better. Granted, he hadn't exactly been in a position to vote at the time, but still. I'd done it better.
Maybe it was why he'd been crying. She was dead, and they wouldn't bring her back. No loss, to my mind; I saw what she and her demons had done to New York during the Inferno. Hell on Earth wasn't really my scene.
I'd seen him there, too. On a leash, at her heels. Ready to defend her, like a guard dog just waiting for the order to attack.
I knew what it felt like to wait for that order, every sense on edge, just waiting - yearning - to have that chance to be of service, to do what you were born - no, created - to do. After all, I'd been the Doc's right hand bitch. I'd been bred for it. Literally.
Madelyne had been a clone. I was a collection of random DNA, stirred and simmered. If the first hadn't mattered to him, had the second? It hadn't seemed to, but then, mind control. I'll never know.
The Doc told me once, after it was all said and done and Alex had gone back above ground where he belonged, that Prelate Summers had been the death of me in the dimension he was from, and that I was better off without him. I hadn't felt better off. Alex Summers had been hot as…
Fuck. Okay, so maybe there'd been more than that, on my side. Maybe I'd liked the way he checked out my ass (blatantly) and how he'd run his fingers through my hair as he half shoved his tongue down my throat. Maybe part of me had even realized just now much I was going to miss the way his body (hard muscle, all of it, and always, always hot, in the literal sense of the word) fit against mine as he pinned me back against the wall and ripped my clothes off. Impatient. Insistent. Mine.
Part of that Alex is still there, underneath the tears, underneath the chains and the humiliation. I've heard that's why he's with Sinister's team of attack dogs now, the ones that can be sent off on the hunt when the chances of them ever coming back is low, because who'd miss them? Because something in him is broken, because he's dangerous and a sociopath and likely to flip out and kill them all in their beds.
I just wish he'd stop crying and remember that I'd always liked him that way.