Cable POV—Sacrifice

Chase and I go way back. We share a psi-link. People say that I was the first and only one to believe in her, and Xavier says that it was my subconscious psionic recognizing a potential Phoenix host. I say it's because she was, is, and will always be irresistible. I'm not quite sure what made me treat her like an equal, as opposed to the half-ordinary human she was. I mean, the only thing going for her were her weird eyes, and I've got to say, eyes that are so similar to that flonqing Cajun bastard's aren't very interesting to me.

The first moment I saw her, it was like everything went into suspended animation. She was beautiful, for sure, but I wasn't analyzing her that way. I wasn't even analyzing her, which is amazing in itself. Usually, the warrior in me sizes people up the second I see them, measuring their powers and strengths against mine, testing myself mentally to see how difficult they would be to defeat. But it wasn't like that.

There she was, this girl, barely fourteen, adorable as hell, Rifted, angsty, her eyes red from the pain of leaving home and the only reminders of her loved and lost twin, and all I could think was, Oath. My mind pretty much quit working. And I'm not talking anything sick here, I'm talking about pure, untainted psionic fascination. I could feel her psi-signature billowing around her like that leather jacket of Starsmore's. And it was folding me in, too. Dom was looking at me funny because she could feel it through our link. I think she was worried because I hadn't had any coffee that morning.

Scott didn't like Chase, and I could feel he thought that the only reason I was taking any interest in her was because he didn't believe she was an asset or interesting at all. He thought whoever was sponsoring her was wasting their money and that Xavier was wasting his time. But I knew better.

Then, that night she asked me to show her…everything, I poured myself into her. I didn't only show her the reality and the horrors of my life, I opened my soul and allowed her to feel every nuance of emotion I had experienced during those years, all those years. I knew she could take it, even if she was just an adolescent girl from the boonies without powers or potential. I didn't know she had potential, and I didn't care. I knew she wouldn't use anything in my memories against me. I knew she'd use every single moment of my life, not only to her advantage, but to everyone else's as well.

The day I sacrificed Domino and my psi-link to bond with her, I didn't only sacrifice the trust and respect of the woman with whom I am in love, I sacrificed every possibility of love, ever. But it's been worth it. It's been worth it to share her life, to share the magnificent beauty with which she perceives life now. Her and the Phoenix, they're both…amazing.

They take my breath away. I love them. They're the only family I can truly say is mine.

My father is half my age, and will do anything to prove that he is superior to me. My mother…she's a psionic shell who hates the remainder of my family. Jean is…Jean. She sees me as a responsibility to take on. Nate Grey is dying from the intensity of his powers, off snogging his girlfriend, and the rest of them…I don't even want to think about it. Stryfe's dead, Tyler's dead. I have nothing left to live for but her.

And I intend to do just that.

She knows how much I've sacrificed for her, and she's told me so many times that she doesn't know what to do, because she loves me that much, also, but she's never had a chance to prove it to me. Given her occupation, I think that's actually a good thing.

She's wasting time on Worthington, I don't know why. Maybe she loves him. No, I'd be able to see that in a second. I don't think she'd hide something like that from me. She's never blocked the link before, and I can't sense her doing it now. She wouldn't do that to me, because we're too close. We've been through too much. She trusts me.

That's the only thing I want to be able to say when I die. That Chase trusted me. That she loved me. That she knew that she could depend on me through thick and thin, that she'd never have to block me out. I'd watch Jen die a thousand times to earn that trust. But I don't have to.

She gave it to me. Freely.

And all I had to do was sacrifice.