Author: Calex

Rating: R

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Marvel comics created them and I took this mostly from the movies. Not my characters, but the plot is mine, what little of it is there.

Summary: You wouldn't expect them to have something in common, yet they did. Two people they loved were gone. She's still grieving, but he's recovering, in a way he never thought he would…

Author's Note: It's late and I should be sleeping. But the plot bunny wouldn't leave me alone, so here it is: the product of something I don't even know why I did it. To Nicki, Jas and Caz, to Leena and whoever else is reading, thanks you guys. Hope you like. It's short. Might be a series of vignettes, depends on the mood.

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            There were a lot of things that she thought she knew. At least, she was sure of them until…until he left. He was her saviour. Her hero. Her idol and her first love. Oh sure, she loved Bobby, but Bobby was someone in between. She even had that crush on John, once, but no one really fit the ideal of him. But he was gone, and he wasn't going to come back.

            She walked around like a ghost, haunting the corridors and the places he used to go, eyes ever sad, always detached. She knew they worried for her. It was hard not to notice, everyone practically radiated concern. Concern for what, though? Her mental state? She was perfectly fine…well. That was debatable. But she was still sane. And yet some could say that that was debatable as well. She went to her lessons, ate the food that was given to her, did her work and her share in Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters. She wasn't even sure what the name of the school was, anymore. If it really was that. All she saw was a haunted face as realisation dawned, of dry eyes that begged for the liquid tears. A once strong back walking away with slumped shoulders. Defeated.

            So she moved in the luxurious halls, gliding across the carpeted floors, passing the wood panelled walls…if walls could talk, they would give them nothing about her, nothing more than they already knew. She was lifeless, once a person with so much fire. Fire… He had seen the fire in her, he who had nurtured it into what it was. He who had made her that way, come to think of it. He was always in her head, her mind, her heart and her soul. Not because she loved him, not only because of that. His very essence was in her person, a little of his so-called "life force" clung fiercely to her. Or maybe it was she who was clinging to that piece of him, unwilling to let it go. To keep some part of him for herself, to hold him there despite of his abandonment of her.

He had said he would never leave, yet he had left again. Left her, broken hearted just as he was broken hearted, knowing for sure that he had lost the one he loved, just as she knew. So similar…and yet so very different, for where he was the one she yearned for, she was not the one for him. So she mourned for him, her heart more than just cracked, dusted under the pain of awakening, of realisation. Pain of girlhood dreams crushed to a fine powder, then blown to the harsh wind.

She walked the corridors like a ghost, dressed in her old fashioned clothes, gloves ever present, a scarf around her neck. John always did use to tease her about her dress sense. Never in the caustic manner he had with the other mutants. He was gentler with her, kinder. He showed her a side of him that he had not shown anyone for a long time. She knew that John had suffered, perhaps worse than she did. Maybe it didn't help that his leaving coincided with John's abandonment. Two of the three men she looked up to were gone, the third lost in his very own world of misery, of pain and torture. Of guilt and anger and helplessness.

The boy she used to love, she locked out. Gave him the coldness he was supposed to be master of. She had put a block of solid ice where her heart was, and it wasn't thawing. No matter what anyone did, it wasn't thawing. It was still there, larger than life, cold as death, numbing her from life and keeping her cold and dispassionate where she used to be warm and impassioned. She referred to him as boy, whereas she had referred to the others as men. Even John had been promoted as man, Bobby was and forever shall be a boy. He had that untainted innocence youth holds, how she did not know. He should have been darkened, dirtied by reality, but he stayed pure in the face of darkness. She did not want to taint him with her darkness.

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He was watching her, watching that heart of hers get colder, smaller. He watched as she let her depression pull her under, watched as she let the pain of loss and grief blind her to life and it's possibilities. He couldn't judge, he wanted to be her. Wanted it almost as much as he wanted her. Oh yes, he wanted her. Wanted that darkness she exuded when she moved, or even when she was still, wanted to taste the bitter sorrow of her mouth, to feel the silken sin of her hair against his guilt ridden hands. He wanted her with a cold passion that should have scared him, if fear had still been present in his heart. This was not the warm comfort of his love for Jean, this was coldness that derived from his grief. His too short grief that had somehow channelled itself into this… this madness. This cold, gnawing lust. He didn't know why she was the victim of this unexplainable reaction, truth be told he didn't want to.

            So he watched her, watched her listless movements and her silence, watched her as her dark beauty grew. She was one of those women that grew beautiful in pain and sorrow. She had been pretty before, now she was…irresistible. He didn't know how he managed not to ravish her on several occasions, as she sat in silence, sitting with a group and yet isolated, detached. He supposed it was his morals, the girl was only 17. She was also his student, and he her mentor. He knew she looked up to him, respected him; saw him as someone going through the same thing. In some ways so true, yet in others so very wrong.

            He taught her not only in lessons, but sometimes they would meet. If only in the library to read in silence in each other's company. They didn't need to talk, both knew words were inadequate. They merely revelled in the other's company, the silence always comfortable. Sometimes they sparred, he would teach her how to fight and fight well. She took it up quickly and he never knew if it was her or that little piece of him that was in her. Even he didn't speak his name, anymore.

            Tonight they were not going to meet. They hadn't arranged for it. Tonight was the night she usually spent on her own, doing lord knows what. He was sick of it, of her secrecy. He wanted to know what the hell she was doing. So he followed her when he saw her leave the dining room. Made some stupid excuse and left, trailing silently in her footsteps. She didn't lead him to where he thought she would, instead she lead him to the very place he wouldn't expect her to be. The music room.

            He leaned against the doorway and saw as she took a seat in front of the harp. Saw her sigh and her shoulders slump. This was where she allowed herself to be weak. Even then, she didn't not allow full weakness, for she was already straightening her shoulders. She rested the harp on her shoulder, tested the string. Then she paused, head cocked as if in thought. The next moment, the silk elbow length gloves were spread on the floor and her fingers returned to their earlier positions, resting lightly on the strings, graceful.

He never thought of her with a harp, didn't think of her with a musical instrument. Yet he should have, he supposed. And she looked good, the dark wood o f the harp blending harmoniously with the darkness of her hair, contrasting brilliantly with the white shock at her temples. He was taken from his musings by the soft strains of music in the air. It was then that he realised that her fingers were plucking the strings.

            The melody that she churned out was an unfamiliar one, haunting in it's beauty, heart wrenching in it's sadness. It was a song epitomised by her, so very like her. Beauty and pain mixed in a package that was just…evocative. She moved her fingers over the harp and he watched in silence, enveloped by the shadows and first noticed the glimmering trail on her cheek.

 He watched her for awhile, the turned on his heel, closed the door softly behind him. He might still lust over her, want her with a need unrivalled, but he would let her have her moment of pain and mourning. He would let her have her time. Today would be that time, tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow he would begin again, when wanting her wouldn't seem like such a sin. Tomorrow he would taste her sorrow, tomorrow he would kiss her pain, tomorrow he would caress her darkness. But today he would let her have her tears.

                                                                                                                                               

Hope you liked that. It wasn't written in my usual style and it was VERY short, but hope it was okay. You know what to do, press that little button on the left and leave me some feedback. Tell me to leave it or make it into a short series. But that is all I have the strength for tonight. Tonight I need my sleep. So nite nite, bon nuit, buona sera, selamat malam and all that.

~Calex~

"The only good spider is a dead spider." -Garfield