Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men
A/N: Warning- original character approaching! Title this time is taken from the Manic Street Preacher's 'Design for life'.
Humble neighbourhoods
03: We don't talk about love
Blaze brushed away panicked tears, frightened thoughts as they troubled her make up and her mind. Her heart throbbed melancholily as it had since leaving Geneva by plane some time last night. They'd landed in Paris not long before, instantly heading their separate ways she just had to be as far away from Gambit as possible...
She wanted to not care that she'd offended him. She wanted to not care that he'd be worried about her. A day ago, she wouldn't have dreamt that he could be worried about her. She didn't know if she wanted him to or not. Fire grew in her belly, her foot pressed to the floor of the cheap car she'd stolen as she left Paris and headed into the countryside. Headed to Normandy.
Her powers had been distracting her to the point of madness the whole journey home. She'd refused to sit near Gambit on the plane, trying and failing to distract herself from her powers, from where he sat a constant distraction, just visible a few rows forward. If he glanced back at her she wouldn't meet his eyes, staring at her hands as a light sheen of emotional flame darted over her fingers. This was madness. She was a wreck. What he'd just done to her, her emotions now so ragged... If she lost control she would bring the plane down...
Fortunately she knew a few things. She knew how to slip into a meditative trance, reducing her troublesome emotions to a minimum. She spent the journey in a daze, but the sight of him stood waiting for her as they disembarked made her run for the car park. She could not deal with this! How dare he kiss her!
And so the Normandy countryside opened up around her. A small village near Bayeaux was home to an exceptional woman, Miriame. Blaze had met her on her way to Paris, a small and frightened teenage mutant. Miriame took more than one such child in, people round about directed kids like her to the 'mutant- witch' with the awe of peasants talking about some mystical hedgewitch of old. But Blaze knew Miriame was not a mutant, she claimed only to have some skill in calming troubled spirits.
Blaze was more than troubled, banging on the cottage's wooden door with tears flooding down her face, powers making her hands leave burn marks on the ivy-green paint. The ones she'd made last time she was here had barely begun to fade, the marks of a girl who had murdered her parents. The door swung open slowly, grating on the stone floor. Blaze entered straight into the living room, startled the cat sat washing itself on the windowsill. Animals rarely took to her, she smelt too much of fire, and Miraime's only family was no exception, darting for cover as Blaze came in.
"Back so soon, child?" The Frenchwoman spoke easily in her own tongue, coming straight to Blaze and taking her hands. A wizened, kind grey face with crystal eyes smiled at her, forcing Blaze to make the same response through her tears. "Tut, tut, and I'd thought you were making a name for yourself as a criminal now. What kind of thief is reduced to tears?"
"Help me." Blaze begged in French. "Make it go away, before he does anything stupid again and I kill him..."
"Child," The older woman smiled a soothing smile. "Child your emotions are running riot. Your aura is a storm of panic and... Oh." The smile changed, became a slight frown. The white witch ran her fingers through the air around Blaze's face, making the redheaded teenager pull back. "You feel this strongly about him?"
"I didn't mean to. I didn't know. It was nothing, nothing to him... I'll kill him! Miriame I will murder him like I murdered my parents! I can't control this..." Blaze's frantic desperation swung into a needy plea. "Please make this go away. Make my mutation go away... It scares me..."
"I know child. Your terror is clearer even than your swell of feelings for the boy. But I cannot take either of them away." The distress on Blaze's face was obvious, the fire in the hearth dancing frantically, trying to sooth its young mistress. Miriame was forced to take matters into her own hands before her home went up in smoke. "But you can control both of them!" She stubbornly commanded, not looking at the rampant fire, but holding Blaze's face in her talon-like hands and demanding that the child look at her. "You can control both, and you do not need me to know how to do it. I have taught you better than that."
"That sounds like something he'd say..." Blaze half sighed, eyes wet and heart painful.
"You are a good pupil Blaze." Miraime counselled. "Let us mediate a while, rebuild your controls. You can stop this. You can stop your power from ever leaking out..."
"From killing anyone I care about?" Blaze asked, ignoring the tears on her cheeks, images of her parents filling her mind's eye.
"From killing anyone else." Miriame announced, more confidently than she could feel.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Where the hell..."
"None of your business." Blaze snapped before Gambit could get his sentence out. She didn't know why she'd come back, she couldn't stay away.
"But why did you..."
"I needed a break, okay? My powers were acting up. Or do I need your permission to go and make changes to stop me from roasting you alive?" She knew she sounded cruel, but it hurt so much to be back here. The girl he was with couldn't follow the English conversation, instead muttered an insult in French, not thinking that Blaze could understand. "Est-ce que peux vous aider?" Blaze snapped, asking if she could help the girl. Unsurprisingly, the blonde got up and left the sun-filled coffee shop.
"You could've just said, Blaze. I could've helped you." Remy wasn't the least bit phased that his date was leaving, apart from watching her leave rather critically before turning back to his troublesome apprentice. One day he'd meet a woman that actually got on with Blaze, and then they'd be getting somewhere. "You t'ink I don't know how to control mutant powers?"
Before Blaze could answer, he had a single ace of spades in his fingers, turning it around, alternatively charging and uncharging the object, and all the while not breaking eye contact with Blaze. She slid into the vacated chair, dropping her eyes, ashamed and afraid. Whatever barriers Miraime had helped her to put up held firm. But it didn't mean she still looked at him the same as she always had done...
His eyes no longer troubled her. Instead she was fascinated, how could eyes so dark be made up of so many delicate shades and colours? His pupils weren't red, they were amber and crimson and gold like the sunset... And his mop of scruffy hair, half-gelled half-forgotten, deep chestnut with highlights of red, what would it feel like to run her fingers through that hair? Like he had hers...Tall, growing more muscular and less lanky by the day, he was on the verge of being stunning to look at. And not quite aware of it. He knew he was good with women, but he didn't know why. Blaze longed to be the one to show him. And then her meditative barriers slammed in, made her stop thinking about it.
"You know how to play solitaire?" He asked, carelessly dealing cards across the table. "When I'se just a kid, everythin' I touch blew up..." He wouldn't meet Blaze's eyes as she looked at him with sympathy. "Somethin' 'bout breakin' chemical bonds, releases energy, I don't know exactly what happens. But it happen all the time, till I got playin' cards. It the only thing ever really take my mind off of it, what help me get control..."
"But..." Blaze started slowly. "But you're so in control, I've never seen you blow up something you didn't mean to?"
"No mutant got control jus' like that Chere." He looked at her, making her heart leap. "An', I wont say I'se not had no help. But you'se not got nobody either. I'se right here, okay?"
"Sure." Blaze sighed. "What do I do?"
"With the cards or your powers?" He asked, frowning at her, eyes sharp across the café's table.
"Huh." Blaze shrugged. She was becoming very skilled at avoiding his piercing looks and she knew it. "Either..."
"Cards is easy." Remy replied seriously. "Your powers maybe you should try lettin' off a little at a time, non?"
"No way." Blaze shook her head, making her curls dance in the sunlight. "I'm never using them again."
"Never? Petite, that ain't gonna work..."
"Yes it will." Blaze replied adamantly over Gambit's discouragement. Her terror gave her no choice. She couldn't face being overwhelmed by her powers, not again. "I will not kill anyone else."
"I'se know you're scared, Blaze, but..." Gambit reached out to take her hand comfortingly. He nearly brushed her skin before she pulled back, not looking at him. Her cheeks were flushed with the stress, her eyes clouded with emotion. Her hands shook. No thought of him crossed her mind, only the images of her parents' charred corpses on the smouldering kitchen floor.
"Scared doesn't even come close..." She muttered, remembering everything as though it had happened yesterday. The acrid smell, the taste of embers on her tongue, the sound of the fire engines outside...Slowly, Blaze bit back on the terror, the knowledge that she'd killed her own parents. She looked back at Gambit, he didn't know, she'd never told him what she'd done. He only knew she'd killed people who wanted to hurt her. Could she tell him the truth? Could she live with herself if she didn't? Surely she had to start trusting him sometime... His eyes pinned her where she was, waiting for her to explain. Blaze took a slow breath, let it go, and dared herself to confess all...
"I killed my own family, Remy. That's why I was running, why I came to Paris. When my mutation appeared, I killed my parents..."
Gambit was taken aback, leant back in his chair as though visibly trying to distance himself from her. An orphan himself, though later adopted, he'd spent his early years dreaming what it would be like to have a home and a family. Blaze had had that, but she'd destroyed it all... Why? And then he realised it was a stupid question. She'd had no choice; he knew how her intermittent powers worked. A burst of wild firepower, and she was spent, knocked out. Wasn't that enough to make anyone scared of their own powers? He knew he would be.
"But you not mean to, Petite." He answered gently, not allowing her hand to slip through his fingers this time. Holding on to her carefully, aware she may bolt at any moment, he risked a haphazard sideways smile. "It be okay. You not want to use your powers, Gambit help you with that. You're not alone..."
...And as his eyes bored into her very soul, all Blaze could think to herself like a mantra was I'm not in love, I'm not in love...
A/N: Warning- original character approaching! Title this time is taken from the Manic Street Preacher's 'Design for life'.
Humble neighbourhoods
03: We don't talk about love
Blaze brushed away panicked tears, frightened thoughts as they troubled her make up and her mind. Her heart throbbed melancholily as it had since leaving Geneva by plane some time last night. They'd landed in Paris not long before, instantly heading their separate ways she just had to be as far away from Gambit as possible...
She wanted to not care that she'd offended him. She wanted to not care that he'd be worried about her. A day ago, she wouldn't have dreamt that he could be worried about her. She didn't know if she wanted him to or not. Fire grew in her belly, her foot pressed to the floor of the cheap car she'd stolen as she left Paris and headed into the countryside. Headed to Normandy.
Her powers had been distracting her to the point of madness the whole journey home. She'd refused to sit near Gambit on the plane, trying and failing to distract herself from her powers, from where he sat a constant distraction, just visible a few rows forward. If he glanced back at her she wouldn't meet his eyes, staring at her hands as a light sheen of emotional flame darted over her fingers. This was madness. She was a wreck. What he'd just done to her, her emotions now so ragged... If she lost control she would bring the plane down...
Fortunately she knew a few things. She knew how to slip into a meditative trance, reducing her troublesome emotions to a minimum. She spent the journey in a daze, but the sight of him stood waiting for her as they disembarked made her run for the car park. She could not deal with this! How dare he kiss her!
And so the Normandy countryside opened up around her. A small village near Bayeaux was home to an exceptional woman, Miriame. Blaze had met her on her way to Paris, a small and frightened teenage mutant. Miriame took more than one such child in, people round about directed kids like her to the 'mutant- witch' with the awe of peasants talking about some mystical hedgewitch of old. But Blaze knew Miriame was not a mutant, she claimed only to have some skill in calming troubled spirits.
Blaze was more than troubled, banging on the cottage's wooden door with tears flooding down her face, powers making her hands leave burn marks on the ivy-green paint. The ones she'd made last time she was here had barely begun to fade, the marks of a girl who had murdered her parents. The door swung open slowly, grating on the stone floor. Blaze entered straight into the living room, startled the cat sat washing itself on the windowsill. Animals rarely took to her, she smelt too much of fire, and Miraime's only family was no exception, darting for cover as Blaze came in.
"Back so soon, child?" The Frenchwoman spoke easily in her own tongue, coming straight to Blaze and taking her hands. A wizened, kind grey face with crystal eyes smiled at her, forcing Blaze to make the same response through her tears. "Tut, tut, and I'd thought you were making a name for yourself as a criminal now. What kind of thief is reduced to tears?"
"Help me." Blaze begged in French. "Make it go away, before he does anything stupid again and I kill him..."
"Child," The older woman smiled a soothing smile. "Child your emotions are running riot. Your aura is a storm of panic and... Oh." The smile changed, became a slight frown. The white witch ran her fingers through the air around Blaze's face, making the redheaded teenager pull back. "You feel this strongly about him?"
"I didn't mean to. I didn't know. It was nothing, nothing to him... I'll kill him! Miriame I will murder him like I murdered my parents! I can't control this..." Blaze's frantic desperation swung into a needy plea. "Please make this go away. Make my mutation go away... It scares me..."
"I know child. Your terror is clearer even than your swell of feelings for the boy. But I cannot take either of them away." The distress on Blaze's face was obvious, the fire in the hearth dancing frantically, trying to sooth its young mistress. Miriame was forced to take matters into her own hands before her home went up in smoke. "But you can control both of them!" She stubbornly commanded, not looking at the rampant fire, but holding Blaze's face in her talon-like hands and demanding that the child look at her. "You can control both, and you do not need me to know how to do it. I have taught you better than that."
"That sounds like something he'd say..." Blaze half sighed, eyes wet and heart painful.
"You are a good pupil Blaze." Miraime counselled. "Let us mediate a while, rebuild your controls. You can stop this. You can stop your power from ever leaking out..."
"From killing anyone I care about?" Blaze asked, ignoring the tears on her cheeks, images of her parents filling her mind's eye.
"From killing anyone else." Miriame announced, more confidently than she could feel.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Where the hell..."
"None of your business." Blaze snapped before Gambit could get his sentence out. She didn't know why she'd come back, she couldn't stay away.
"But why did you..."
"I needed a break, okay? My powers were acting up. Or do I need your permission to go and make changes to stop me from roasting you alive?" She knew she sounded cruel, but it hurt so much to be back here. The girl he was with couldn't follow the English conversation, instead muttered an insult in French, not thinking that Blaze could understand. "Est-ce que peux vous aider?" Blaze snapped, asking if she could help the girl. Unsurprisingly, the blonde got up and left the sun-filled coffee shop.
"You could've just said, Blaze. I could've helped you." Remy wasn't the least bit phased that his date was leaving, apart from watching her leave rather critically before turning back to his troublesome apprentice. One day he'd meet a woman that actually got on with Blaze, and then they'd be getting somewhere. "You t'ink I don't know how to control mutant powers?"
Before Blaze could answer, he had a single ace of spades in his fingers, turning it around, alternatively charging and uncharging the object, and all the while not breaking eye contact with Blaze. She slid into the vacated chair, dropping her eyes, ashamed and afraid. Whatever barriers Miraime had helped her to put up held firm. But it didn't mean she still looked at him the same as she always had done...
His eyes no longer troubled her. Instead she was fascinated, how could eyes so dark be made up of so many delicate shades and colours? His pupils weren't red, they were amber and crimson and gold like the sunset... And his mop of scruffy hair, half-gelled half-forgotten, deep chestnut with highlights of red, what would it feel like to run her fingers through that hair? Like he had hers...Tall, growing more muscular and less lanky by the day, he was on the verge of being stunning to look at. And not quite aware of it. He knew he was good with women, but he didn't know why. Blaze longed to be the one to show him. And then her meditative barriers slammed in, made her stop thinking about it.
"You know how to play solitaire?" He asked, carelessly dealing cards across the table. "When I'se just a kid, everythin' I touch blew up..." He wouldn't meet Blaze's eyes as she looked at him with sympathy. "Somethin' 'bout breakin' chemical bonds, releases energy, I don't know exactly what happens. But it happen all the time, till I got playin' cards. It the only thing ever really take my mind off of it, what help me get control..."
"But..." Blaze started slowly. "But you're so in control, I've never seen you blow up something you didn't mean to?"
"No mutant got control jus' like that Chere." He looked at her, making her heart leap. "An', I wont say I'se not had no help. But you'se not got nobody either. I'se right here, okay?"
"Sure." Blaze sighed. "What do I do?"
"With the cards or your powers?" He asked, frowning at her, eyes sharp across the café's table.
"Huh." Blaze shrugged. She was becoming very skilled at avoiding his piercing looks and she knew it. "Either..."
"Cards is easy." Remy replied seriously. "Your powers maybe you should try lettin' off a little at a time, non?"
"No way." Blaze shook her head, making her curls dance in the sunlight. "I'm never using them again."
"Never? Petite, that ain't gonna work..."
"Yes it will." Blaze replied adamantly over Gambit's discouragement. Her terror gave her no choice. She couldn't face being overwhelmed by her powers, not again. "I will not kill anyone else."
"I'se know you're scared, Blaze, but..." Gambit reached out to take her hand comfortingly. He nearly brushed her skin before she pulled back, not looking at him. Her cheeks were flushed with the stress, her eyes clouded with emotion. Her hands shook. No thought of him crossed her mind, only the images of her parents' charred corpses on the smouldering kitchen floor.
"Scared doesn't even come close..." She muttered, remembering everything as though it had happened yesterday. The acrid smell, the taste of embers on her tongue, the sound of the fire engines outside...Slowly, Blaze bit back on the terror, the knowledge that she'd killed her own parents. She looked back at Gambit, he didn't know, she'd never told him what she'd done. He only knew she'd killed people who wanted to hurt her. Could she tell him the truth? Could she live with herself if she didn't? Surely she had to start trusting him sometime... His eyes pinned her where she was, waiting for her to explain. Blaze took a slow breath, let it go, and dared herself to confess all...
"I killed my own family, Remy. That's why I was running, why I came to Paris. When my mutation appeared, I killed my parents..."
Gambit was taken aback, leant back in his chair as though visibly trying to distance himself from her. An orphan himself, though later adopted, he'd spent his early years dreaming what it would be like to have a home and a family. Blaze had had that, but she'd destroyed it all... Why? And then he realised it was a stupid question. She'd had no choice; he knew how her intermittent powers worked. A burst of wild firepower, and she was spent, knocked out. Wasn't that enough to make anyone scared of their own powers? He knew he would be.
"But you not mean to, Petite." He answered gently, not allowing her hand to slip through his fingers this time. Holding on to her carefully, aware she may bolt at any moment, he risked a haphazard sideways smile. "It be okay. You not want to use your powers, Gambit help you with that. You're not alone..."
...And as his eyes bored into her very soul, all Blaze could think to herself like a mantra was I'm not in love, I'm not in love...