Mels POV written by Oracles Maiden and a damn good job she did too!! Remember show her your appreciation by reviewing!!
2 days later- departure time!
"Hey…" I slowly called from the doorway to Kurt's bathroom. The sound of running water had let me know where he was. He was doubled over the sink splashing water onto his face.
At the sound of my voice he looked up into the mirror to see me reflected. I however couldn't bring myself to look in the mirror, what did it show anyway? A shell of a girl that I'd once known… that now was… Alien.
"Melody…" He quietly moaned, reaching for a towel beside him. "I did not expect to…"
"You didn't think you'd see me until it was time for me to go."
"You still have time left before your departure…" He did up his loose collar. He was wearing a shirt and waistcoat, and a pair of Black suit trousers that I myself had altered so that his tail could emerge from the back. It seemed a life time since I last held a needle and thread… would I ever hold a needle and thread again?
There were so many questions, questions I wouldn't know the answer to before I was there, before I couldn't change my mind.
"Why are you wearing that?" I asked. He blushed and tilted his head away.
"You always said you wanted a prince charming… I was going to give you a prince."
"Don't say that." I said walking over, my eyes sore from the tears. "You are charming. If you weren't then I wouldn't love you."
"You are too kind." He said facing me, his yellow eyes just as bloodshot as mine. In his hands he held a gold tie limply, so I gently took it from him and started to tie it for him. He could balance on a trapeze and jump from tall post to tall post, he could wield a sabre like no other… yet he couldn't tie his own tie.
I was going to miss tying his tie for him.
I shouldn't have thought that, because now I was having trouble doing the job.
He gently reached up and took my shaking hands, pulling them from the half tied knot.
"Melody, I will always love you."
I half laughed, half cried, "You sound like that bloody bodyguard theme song. What you are going to say next, everything I do I do it for you?"
He didn't laugh, didn't even smile.
"I always will."
I cried. "I will too." And I lay my head against his chest, letting myself hear his heart for the last time.
No, not the last time… it couldn't be the last time… it wasn't fair. This wasn't fair… why did fate always have to put her two cents in, why did destiny have to throw in her hand. Why couldn't the universe get on with its own business and leave them alone. Why them and why now… why not before the academy, why not before I had met Kurt, Why not before I'd fallen in love with him, why not anytime but now.
But why's and why not's couldn't change anything.
"But you have to promise me something…" I said finally, pulling my head away from his heart. "If while I'm gone you find someone else… if you fall in love with someone just as much or more then me. Promise me you won't let her get away just because you're waiting for me." I sniffed then looked up.
Kurt's face had fallen even further. I hadn't told him what Ash had told me. That it was likely that we wouldn't return… at least not in the lifetime of the X men. I hadn't wanted to hurt him… and I didn't want him to spend the rest of his life ignoring his feelings for other women, and I didn't want him to feel guilty when he fell in love with someone other than me.
"You are not coming back… are you?" He barely whispered.
I lowered my head even more, tears running slowly over my nose and down onto my lips.
I opened my mouth but the words had difficulty coming out, they stumbled on my teeth and my vocal cords shook… what was meant to sound like a an upbeat comment now sounded like complete and utter despair. "I don't know."
Kurt wrapped his arms around me and I felt the patter of a teardrop on my bare shoulder, he pulled me so tight that I knew he wasn't willingly going to let me go.
"I don't want you to go…" He cried and it made my lip shake to hear him in so much pain.
"I don't want to go… but I have to." I replied, surprising myself at the amount of pain in my own voice "I have to go. I have to." I repeated. And to tell you the truth I didn't know why I had to… something was going on in some far away place and I was a part of it even though I had no idea what I was meant to do.
Help, you are meant to help Mel. Help people who need it. It was what you were born to do.
But was I born to help some planet that I couldn't remember?
It was prophesy, you were born to help these people.
It might not even be me they're talking about. Hank's smart, it could be him, the professor… hell it could be Ev, she had more smarts than people gave her credit for.
"I know." Kurt said giving me another squeeze before kissing my hair. "But I wish you didn't have to."
I let out a tearful sigh. "Do you think I want to? I want to stay here with you. I want to stay in this mansion and fight holographic monsters… I want to get beaten black and blue every morning by Wolverine, I want to get drunk with the girls and put ink in Scott's shower. I want to wake up in the morning with you."
"I want that too."
"But because of some book that was written centuries ago I can't do that and it's not fair…"
"I know it isn't. But you must do what you were born to do." Kurt's voice seemed a little lighter, I looked up but he was still crying and I didn't think he was going to stop. "I have always known you were a hero and a goddess and now these people have made you one. It seems as though I was right."
"I'm no goddess." I scoffed. "I'm a false idol."
"Then God send me straight to hell." He kissed me like the night we had first kissed, with as much passion and longing, but it was tinged with sadness. This was our last kiss. Maybe for a little while… more likely forever. A kiss of true love mingled with the taste and smell of tears. A kiss that would stay in my memory and remain stained on my lips forever.
Finally we parted with a sob from me and he pulled a little away.
"I have something for you." He smiled sadly. And moved off into his bedroom, gently I followed and watched as he searched through one of his bedside draws until he came across what he was looking for and quickly palmed it.
"Melody…" He breathed again walking back to me in the doorway, holding out his open palm. I looked down into it and saw shimmering against his blue fur a white chain and a white cross with a sparkling diamond at its intersection. It was beautiful.
"I was waiting for you're birthday. But I may not…" He stopped shaking his head, not able to continue.
I took the chain carefully from his paw and put it on smoothing the white gold against my skin and letting the diamond catch the light. Then my fingers moved from the warm metal of the cross to the freezing metal of my tags. And suddenly I realised I had nothing to give.
"Here." I said pulling my dog tags over my head and offering them to Kurt. He looked at them lying in my hands shining.
"I can not take your tags." I sadly smiled and his selflessness.
"I want you to have something of me. These tags are useless now because I'm not in Retribution X anymore, I'm not Tantalus anymore I'm Aegis. These tags have no purpose." I said pouring them into his hand and closing his fingers around them.
"But they are your only link to Retribution. To your friends… to Wolverine"
I smiled, Kurt had told me one night while sitting on the roof of the academy that he believed that I had a crush on Wolvie, and he thought that if I offered myself to Wolverine then he would take me whole, and leave me tainted.
I had laughed at the absurdity of the comment… and now I realised that I had been so busy laughing that I hadn't told him… how I felt.
"Wolverine is a father to me, he's shown me things about my power that no one ever could have, and I owe him everything. I do love him its true; I love him like a father, like a big brother like a friend. But I don't LOVE him. I only have ever loved you. In every meaning of the word."
Kurt looked up, his eyes sparkling- sadness was for a brief second replaced with joy but then was eclipsed once more by the sadness.
"Wolverine gave us all these because he cared for us… now I'm giving them to the man who I care for to look after them. See... whenever I loose them I always have a way of finding my way back to them. I'm thinking the same logic might work if I give them to someone… that at some point I'll find my way back to the man who's wearing them."
"But your friends…" He breathed, looking down at them in his hand.
"My friends will always be with me, I have Kat and Ash to help me remember them, we'll always be thinking of them every time we see some people making an ass of themselves we'll remember. And you and Wolverine are what will help keep our memory alive here. But for that you have to have something to remember me by."
"I'll never forget you Melody."
"I know… I just want to make sure." I smiled as much as I could.
Kurt copied me and pulled the tags around his neck, letting them fall beside his half undone tie.
I just looked at him for a few more seconds… wishing that I didn't have to say what I was going to have to next.
"Its time for me to go." I choked.
Kurt took in a huge breath, squared up his shoulders and let it out. "Well then hadn't we better get going?" He moved towards the door but I remained rooted to the spot.
"I don't want you to go." I breathed…
"What?"
"I said I don't want you to come and watch me go through that portal. I don't think I'll be able to go through it if you're there… I'm not strong enough for that."
Kurt looked at me like I had ripped his heart out… then slowly backed away from the door.
I started to walk out and down the corridor when I heard a voice behind me call.
"Melody you gave me something other than your tags… You gave me your heart. And you'll always have mine… remember that Melly… Remember I love you!" I turned a corner out of ear shot of him… than then I crumpled to the floor in tears.
I looked around our wing of the mansion, for the last time in who knows how long. I thought back on myself and my faults: sarcasm, intolerance of others and their faults and above all else Jealousy (should I mention I have a small tendency to deceive?). It will be funny that when (or if, but I shouldn't think that way) we come back from whatever god forsaken hole we were going to, our wing will have been extended and full of fresh new faces and new voices and views.
I don't know how the others felt but I sure as hell felt deceitful for leaving without saying goodbye to Wolverine, but damn it he should have been here! I sighed making myself angry was getting me nowhere; I began to trudge the long weary way to the woods where the intergalactic portal would be opened. As I made my way down the hallway I was aware of Mel saying her goodbyes to Kurt, making him promise not to come and see her go! It so stupid but I felt an eternal darkness plunge in to my soul and something else. Was I jealous of Mel? Yes, I was incredibly jealous of Mel.
Me and Mel stood by the portal, looking at the mansion for one last time.
"Keep safe okay! You gal's are the closest we've got to sisters and it would be a shame never to see you again!" Jubilee said trying to keep a brave face.
"I really wish you weren't going on your own" Ev added sadly
I looked over to where Kat was clinging on to Bobby, she was sobbing.
"I don't wanna go!" She was wailing as he gently kissed her forehead
"I know!" He said softly letting go of her
"I'll see you soon right?"
"You can count on it!"
I looked over at the girls and nodded, indicating that it was time to leave.
Suddenly our futures seemed less sure, more scary but somehow more exciting. And so we steeped into the darkness of the portal, or else the light?
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