Where the Wind Takes You
One shot fic about Ororo. The bits in bold are from a book read ages ago, something like 'The Photograph' about this man who searches for his destiny. I just liked the lines.
Two people together, irrespective of any distance or circumstance that aims to keep them apart.
Watching her surreptitiously from across the room, he saw her eyelashes, vivid against her skin flutter. Like she was surprised at something, and not wanting to show it. It would be the most any one would get out of her reaction wise. She thought it better not to let her feelings show. She for one felt stronger. It fit into her ideal of being a strong leader. She stood and he watched her slim form stretch gracefully to its full height. Her eyes passed over everyone in the group and she inclined her head slightly. Her eyes fleetingly met his and he raised one of the corners of his mouth.
He teased her about this persona of hers. He always told her that it was a fantasy of his. Her in her uniform, all untouchable and dominant, dismissive of things that worried her, so in control...she always rolled her eyes at this, but sometimes he would catch her looking at her uniform in her closet and then at him... - but then she was just Ororo again, and everything would come back with a vengeance, her worries came back to gnaw at her in the middle of the night. Her guilt would cause little attacks where she would sit bolt upright and demand that he leave. Or she would ask him what they were doing to each other. He often didn't know what to do except to hold her when she would turn to him and ask him a question. Half the time it was rhetorical – she never really wanted an answer, just more an affirmation that what she had decided was right – in her bed room, and for the team.
He sometimes laughingly told her she was wrong. A good leader was one who was able to demonstrate the fallibility of human nature. She would get angry at him, playfully so, and he knew that he sowed the seeds in her mind. She sometimes looked questioningly at him, almost like she valued his approval...his noticing that she was making an effort. He never said anything. It was a game they would play, they never voiced it, but they both knew the rules, knew what was out of bounds and both knew when one of them gained the upper hand, only to have it swiftly bought down to par again by the other.
No one else really got it. They couldn't see what on earth Ororo had in common with him. How she could tolerate him. Rogue could, but then, it was Rogue. Couldn't see how she could value anything that he had to say. Given everything he had done...had failed to do for these people.
She never judged him. Accepted anything said by him as sighingly, 'so you'. Sometimes something else would come to the fore of his mind, and he would badly want the words to come out, only to have them halted by something. Fear? Rejection? Loss of her? He never really felt inclined to examine it all that much.
Now they sat on her balcony. Sheltered on both sides, watching the wind whip the waters on the distant lake to a fine spray that dusted out over its banks, as dusk illuminated the water to an incandescent purple. He slid a glance her way and saw that she was sitting on her hands, like a child and he head was tilted slightly, listening to the winds. "What do you hear?"
"Wind." She smiled delicately and her eyes met his. He locked eyes with her.
He could tell she wanted to look away, but that would be admitting defeat, and Ro never did that. "What does it tell you?" She shrugged. Took it as a cue that she was allowed to avoid his glance without relinquishing that all important point. He bought his knee up to his chin and hugged it. He always wondered if it was just timing that bought them together. That they were just there. Two people that happened upon each other at the right moment. At a time when she needed him, and he needed her.
She took the chance to thread her fingers through his on his knee. He smiled and bought her hand up to his mouth. Lay a light kiss on her skin. Paying homage to the goddess she was.
It moves across boundaries and borders and laughs in the face of adversity. I did not choose to love you.
Sometimes he knew she hated it. Hated having to make the decisions, having to sacrifice someone's feelings for the 'team'. Sometimes he would see he so close to tears that it would wrench something inside of him, and he felt like shaking everyone else, and forcing them to see her like he did. She never actually cried in front of him. She would always gather everything up like a storm on its way and keep it there, until occasionally it would culminate in a huge fury, over a little thing. He knew she liked to dance, and occasionally he would dance with her, and twirl her around and around until she was giddy and fell against him, laughing and wrapped tight in his arms. She was so unlike her public self sometimes; he often wondered how she kept parts of herself so locked away. No one knew she ate ice cream in bed. No one knew that sometimes she liked to fly so high she would almost pass out from lack of breath.
No one knew she detested green M&M's with a passion. No one knew that she listened to Metallica loudly in her room when everyone was out. Her theory was that if no one was around to hear it, then it didn't really happen. That if no one was around to see it, then it didn't really happen.
Like them. No one ever saw them together like this. She was always careful to never bestow any more attention on him than any other when they were with the others. She never touched him in public. He was some dirty little secret that was kept in the back of her closet. She always told him that he wasn't whenever he mentioned it. That it was just because she liked to keep everything separate and she didn't see why everyone had to know. They both knew it was a lie, and he accepted it, because without it there would be no 'them'. He made out like he didn't really care, but it festered away, and it did nothing to alleviate his thoughts that maybe someone like him wasn't meant to be with a goddess. That he had to pay for everything he'd done wrong in his life...the things he could remember and the things he had blanked out so well that they just surfaced as inky little spots in his memory to float back down again.
He thought that she was like a shard of glass, a sliver that embedded itself deeply into him, which he couldn't pick out, no matter how hard he tried. The opportunity was always there to tell her that he was through with the secrecy, the hiding and the games but he never did. He never got round to it. He never found a reason compelling enough to get round to it. Because if he thought about it hard enough, it would be the reason for losing her.
Every time he thought he understood her, and thought that he would be able to let her go, she would do something to surprise him, as if to tease him with the enigma that was Ororo. She only told what she wanted to tell, she only showed what she wanted people to see. He was luckier than most. He'd seen her do things that the others would be at a loss for words about. He'd heard her say things that probably no one else was meant to hear. He's bought out quirky little nuances of hers that she had thought long gone buried and embraced them as distinctly 'her'.
He was also cursed more than most. He didn't know when it was that he had fallen in love with her. It had crept up so slowly and so insidiously that he had been blindsided by it, the sudden realisation that he needed her. He needed this child of the skies to keep him grounded. He needed her to keep him calm, to soothe him, to quiet the unrest in his soul. She did it without words. She did it with a glance. She did it with her soul which was serene, a cool wind on his heated one.
I fought and I cursed and I toiled, but Love knew every time I look into your eyes I fall deeper.
He had tried to get away. Early on in the piece when his intuition had been making loud noises about it. He had studiously avoided her, her green house, her classroom, her classes, her danger room sessions, sometimes even dinner, as if starving himself of her would ease the want. He had thought that others could assuage his need. He had dabbled in leaving, going back to where he came from – he had only really stayed because of her, because she'd asked him to. But he had always gone back, crept into her loft, drawn back there by some unseeing force, and she would smooth his hair and curl into his body like nothing had ever been wrong. When Jean would ponder over whom would be best to set her up with he would silently sit there gnashing his teeth inwardly, avoiding her gaze and hoping she wouldn't chance a glance and see the jealousy in his.
And now she pulled her hand away. Slipped it under her thigh again to sit on it tightly. "We have to stop this." She didn't meet his gaze. She knew that she would have to look away first. "Why? It's working out fine for both of us." He examined the top of her bowed head. She had worn her hair loose, and it fell around her face, shielding her expression from him.
"It's not really. There's no direction to it. It's a distraction...for both of us. There are more important things we could be doing."
"Like what?" There were other words there. There always were with her, but again, he couldn't make them come out. They were stuck behind the wall of his conscience, they seemed too ordinary to use on someone like her. Or maybe they were too extraordinary to be used by someone like him.
She exhaled a noisy sigh. "I just think we need to be apart for a little bit." She paused. "I'm going away for a while. I just need to be by myself. I need to sort out what I want from...things."
"From me?" He didn't move his eyes from her head.
"No. Well, everything. The team. Whether I want to do this forever. I thought I did, but it gets too much for me. Sometimes. Other times I couldn't think about doing anything else."
"What about what I need?" Her hair tilted a little, and he saw the glimmer of blue before he saw the wry smile. "You do pretty well fending for yourself. There's nothing I'd for you that's particularly special that someone else couldn't do. You can always talk to Rogue."
"If I wanted to talk." He replied with a grin, tempting her towards him. Her smile widened but she didn't touch him, she rocked her body away slightly.
"You'll be fine."
"If it's because of me, I can leave. I always do, anyway don't I? That should give you enough room to think." Bitterness made his words sink into her like stones, disturbing her calm.
"It's not you." Her tone was slightly exasperated. She was trying not to let it become defensive.
"I could come. Or meet you somewhere. It would be like-"
"No." She cut him off firmly, and then turned her body to face him. "Alone. I need to do this myself. I can't make someone else responsible for my decisions, and I don't need what I have with you – or you, colouring them."
"You're getting all leader on me, Ro."
"That's what I am."
"Not to me."
"Look, I just need you to respect this. Just once. When I come back we can talk."
"You won't listen when you come back. You'll have reasoned me out of the picture by then."
"Don't be ridiculous." She snapped at him this time and got up to leave.
"I know you, Ro."
She must have heard as she climbed back over the sill, but pretended not to, so she didn't have to reply. They both knew he had won this point, without any competition. But she wanted to bow out, and cede the game, and that, he didn't want to let her do.
He spent the night wandering around the mansion. Not able to sleep. Talking with Bobby, keeping Jubes up and locking horns with Jean over trivial things. Early in the morning he crept up to her room, but he already knew what he would find. Her room was empty, her curtains eddying around her open window, the smell of vanilla faint. She had left no note, no apology, no plea, and for one instant he hated her for that. If only she had asked, if only he had told, if only she had wanted him, needed him like he did her.
Now what was he meant to do? He looked out the open window and felt the wind cool on his face, beckoning him onwards. He could leave, but she had put him in a catch 22. She would come back. And he could be her waiting for her. Or he could leave, and forget all the feelings he ever had, let the wind take them and whittle them down to nothing.
He glanced regretfully at her bed, and then his eyes shifted to her dresser. An empty frame stood there, the back slightly askew, and the frame splintered and cracked with pieces lying in the soap-wood surface. He smiled to himself. She had taken the pictures out of it, the one of her and Jean and Rogue, all smiling and happy at the last New Years party, that photograph was sitting on the dresser. Wedged in tightly behind it, had been the one that a nameless old man had taken on a river boat. She was enfolded in his arms and resting her head on his chest, and he was kissing the top of her head lightly. That one had gone.
Maybe he'd go away for a few days, and be back before she was. To show her that finally, he was willing to be a constant in her life, to be there for her. That he wanted to stay with her, and screw the rest of the team, they could think and say what they liked. He knew they would anyway.
And maybe when she came back, he would have mastered the ability to say 'I love you' to her, and not just think it over and over in his head like a mantra, maybe he would be able to voice everything he felt for her instead of having the sentiment carried in her wake on the wind. He shut the window, and the smell of vanilla grew stronger. Picked up the picture frame.
And nicked his finger on a shard of glass.