Empty Spaces, a x-men fanfic

Notes: The 'project' mentioned briefly in this story was actually proposed at one time in Yemen, though this is not supposed to be an accurate portrayal of that, nor is it meant to indicate the geographical location for this story. I've kept those details obscure because they're not really the point, and while accuracy in fic is something I strive for, I don't want the details to obliterate the plot. So please, please don't send me e-mails in that vein. It's like this on purpose, trust me.

Disclaimer: Alex Summers and Domino are the property of Marvel comics and are used without permission. No profit is being made from this story. This story is a sequel to 'Remnants.' Thanks go out to Kossie for the beta work.

Ropes slapped as they hit the ground in stacks, and a truck pulled up, kicking dust into the stifling air. Alex Summers sat on the battered hood of another, watching the team of professionals check their gear, murmuring to each other in several languages as they inspected ropes and harnesses. The second phase of the job he'd been sent here to begin was underway, his presence a mere formality, really. He'd finished his job--the rest was up to them. His possessions--everything he'd carried with him from the States, and everything he'd obtained since then--sat in the rear of the jeep, waiting to be loaded on a plane.

Two months ago, he never would have imagined doing this. He'd walked away from his old obligations, decided to get back to what he truly loved. No more saving the world. He'd known his heart wasn't in it. And it had been a good assignment. Something without pressure, without deadlines, something to let him hone his neglected skills. It had, but like anything else, there had been other, unforeseen factors that had had their say as well. He was leaving now. Whether he would ever come back was yet to be seen. The previous week had taught him a thing or two about presumptions, after all. The house he'd occupied was empty now--sole witness to a handful of turbulent weeks spent haunting the desert with the unlikeliest of companions. She was gone, and he was on his way out.

Empty Spaces
by: Timesprite

The car jumped and jolted down the makeshift road, equipment clattering in the back with knocks and pings as the vehicle bounced over the dirt. The ride was jarring, but soothing in a way. Familiar now after a month and a half of driving it.

Domino was leaning in the shade of the open doorway when he pulled up; a long length of brightly patterned fabric wrapped sarong-style around her narrow hips and a white cotton shirt barely a shade whiter than her skin protecting her from the sun. She'd knotted her long dark hair at the back of her neck. He noted absently that she was barefoot.

"Exciting day?" She asked, walking out to help him unload some of the equipment from the jeep.

"Only if you find rocks and sand exciting," he replied.

She laughed. "I think I'll leave that to you." She reached out and ran a hand through his hair. "You're all dusty."

"Dusty work," he replied. This had become routine for them, though it had seemed strange at first. He was still fighting with the dim stirrings of memory that chided him, telling him he ought to be careful. After all, he'd danced this dance before, and gotten burned.

His eyes followed her as she vanished back into the dim sanctuary of the house. She had a way of gliding in and out of the landscape that bothered him. He'd always gotten the impression that she was more... tangible than that. This wasn't the vanishing act of a trained mercenary, but a sort of fading he couldn't quite describe, as if a part of her simply wasn't there. It made him uneasy, and he wasn't sure why. He stuck his hands in his pockets and followed her into the building.

It was cooler inside, the small, high windows built to keep out the heat. Thick, whitewashed walls also helped to insulate the rooms from the sun. Out back in the small courtyard, the light was glaring, but standing in the medium sized kitchen he was comfortable.

The house had come furnished; heavy, dark wood affairs that had probably been there for ages. The bed was a four-poster, gracefully draped with a canopy of mosquito netting--for practicality, though the aesthetics couldn't be argued. They had running water and electricity, though both were unreliable at best. There was also a large tub and pump out in the courtyard as a backup, he supposed. It wasn't bad--they'd both certainly lived in worse. Looking around, he could see evidence that the housekeeper Dom wished they didn't have to deal with had come through. It was easier not to resist it--Domino could have cared for the place herself, but they would have needed someone to cook anyway, and it was simply a given in these parts that the 'rich' foreigners could afford to employ some of the local population. He walked out of the kitchen and through the small living room to the back bedroom. Dom was sprawled across the bed, reading a newspaper. He eyed it as he stretched out next to her, but couldn't make out the language.

"So what'd you do today?"

She looked up. "Not much. Walked into the city, looked around a bit. I had to get out of here for awhile. It's too quiet."

He watched her for a long moment. The levity she'd had when he'd met her had fled in the first week they'd been here. Whether it was a result of the bleakness of their surroundings or something deeper, he didn't know. They were still casual around each other, but he knew it was only because neither of them ever tried to dig beneath the surface. Sometimes, he wondered what would happen if he did. "Why do you stay here? I mean, I know why you came, but why stay? You don't have any interest in geology, and I'm not naive enough to think my company is that great."

She shrugged. "Where would I go?"

"Anywhere."

"And who would I be?" She pressed. She seemed to have a point to make.

"Whoever you wanted to be."

"Really." She looked at him for a long moment. "It doesn't work that way."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't escape who I am. I can't turn off a lifetime's worth of instincts. You can cage a tiger, Alex, but you can't make it a pet. It'll kill you in the end, because that's all it knows how to do." She leaned forward on her elbows and looked at him intently. "I've killed people. Lots of them. I'm very good at it, and more importantly, I like it. I'm the kind of person you should lock up and then throw away the key. I don't belong in society, not the way you do. That's the difference between us, Alex. You can do something else. You can be constructive if you choose. All I can do is destroy. At least out here, the only person I can hurt is myself. "

'And me,' a part of him thought, though he'd decided he wouldn't be affected by anything that happened here. He reached out, touching her hair. "That's not true."

She pulled away, rolling on her back to stare up at the rough plaster of the ceiling. "Please don't."

"Touch you?"

She sighed. "Don't try to pretend I'm something better than I am."

"I'm not," he replied, folding his hands behind his head. He wasn't that idealistic. "I'm just saying you might be more than you'll let yourself believe."

She pursed her lips but didn't reply, dismissing his point rather than arguing against it.

"I mean it," he pressed on, as ruthless as she'd been a moment before. "You talk about yourself as if you were selfish. I don't think you are. Maybe that's why you keep insisting like you do. You're trying to convince yourself."

She closed her eyes. "Why would I do that?" The hollowness in her voice made the comment a formality rather than a question. He answered anyway.

"Because believing you're something more means having to act on it."

She sat up. "You're wrong."

"Maybe," he admitted. "I doubt it."

She reached back and unknotted her hair, letting it fall in a raven cascade down her back. It was a signal the conversation was over, and he cursed the fact that his body responded to the little gesture. He would have resented her for the way she could manipulate him had he not known her better. With her it wasn't manipulation, really. It was a way of running away from the conversation. Domino, he'd discovered, did a lot of running. She turned to him, blouse already half-unbuttoned. He reached out, sliding the fabric off one shoulder, pulling her to him as he marveled at the contrast between his deeply tanned hand and her impossibly pale skin. She caught his lips roughly, tangling her fingers in his hair as he finished unbuttoning her shirt and shifted his attention to the fabric knotted at her waist. "You like making this complicated, don't you?"

She grinned at him, already done unfastening the fly of his shorts, hands trailing over sensitive skin that caused him to gasp even as he worked to slide the brightly dyed fabric over her hips.

He lay awake a long time afterward, lethargic-feeling in the warm air, watching the bed canopy shift in the breeze from the high windows. Dom seemed to be asleep, though he supposed she could have been pretending. She slept a lot in the daytime, a strategy that wasn't a half-bad idea in this place. Daytime temperatures soared, and even those who spent a lifetime here were wont to shelter through the hottest hours, while he was the lone, sun-bleached madman standing amidst the shimmering waves of heat. She didn't sleep much at night--he'd woken from uneasy dreams on a few occasions to find the bed abandoned and Dom either standing in the courtyard or gone entirely. He'd never asked her where she went.

He sat up finally, driven by hunger, and found his shorts tangled in the sheets at the foot of the bed. He covered Dom lightly out of a sense of modesty--he didn't like the vulnerability her nakedness gave her. There were two more newspapers on the kitchen table--one, the look of the script told him, in Arabic, the other, thankfully, in English. His grasp of languages was limited to the brief exposure college had given him. He didn't know how many Dom knew, or whether it was a talent of hers or merely a result of the life she'd lead. He browsed through the dishes left covered on the counter for his dinner--simple food that didn't need reheating--and sat down again, unfolding the paper. He was halfway through an article on militarism and the United States when Domino came in, dressed as she had been earlier, though both the shirt and skirt fabric were considerably more rumpled now. She went to the cupboard and took down a glass and a bottle of scotch, pouring some into the glass and sipping it as she sat down.

"Were you asleep?" he asked, suddenly wanting to know. He watched the white column of her throat as she swallowed, eyes following the deep v of her half-opened blouse to the tops of her breasts.

"Mostly," she replied, and refilled the glass. She drank the alcohol like water. There was something faintly erotic about it. "Why?"

"Just wondering." He shrugged his shoulders.

"Ahhhh." There was a flash of something in her eyes--merriment or malice, it was impossible to tell.

He picked up the paper again and pretended to read. He heard Domino refill her glass. "So you went into the city?"

"Yeah."

"Cause any trouble?"

"Oh, you know me..."

'No I don't,' he didn't say. "That's why I'm asking," he replied instead, without looking up. "Nothing exploded, I hope?"

She laughed at that, a deep, warm laugh. "I don't do that kind of thing for free Alex. I'm not an X-Man, remember?"

"The property damage was always more of a side effect," he replied. "Besides, I seem to remember those students of yours having a penchant for destruction."

"They were Nathan's students," she corrected, the warmth suddenly leeched from her tone. "Not mine. They were never mine."

He nodded slightly. There really wasn't anything else to say.

Alex opened his eyes and sighed. Moonlight was spilling into the bedroom, draping itself across the floor and bed. From where he lay, he could see a sliver of the moon through the high windows. The air around him was still and oppressive in its silence. Carefully, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and treaded lightly through the house, stepping out into the back courtyard. The light was stronger here, nearly as bright as daylight, coating everything with a gauzy silver glow. He tipped his head back, and stared up at the stars. There were so many of them out here. He never ceased to love that sight--the deep blackness of space punctured by a thousand tiny pinpricks. He missed it when he was in the city, and the heavens were obliterated by an artificial glow.

He felt restless. He wasn't sure exactly what had woken him--dreams, probably, though he couldn't remember them. He'd dreamed so many things when he'd been hiding... hiding from life, from this reality, from himself. Some of them had been good dreams, ones that had been breathtakingly real and just as painful. Because he'd known that if he dared open his eyes, they wouldn't be there. Not Madelyne, not Scotty. They were both someplace he couldn't get back to--and as far as anyone else was concerned, that life had never even happened.

Funny, when he'd first been lost, he'd tried so hard to make the Six believe what he'd known was true--that he hadn't hallucinated the world he'd come from, that he wasn't their Alex. When he'd woken up here, he'd tried equally hard to convince Scott of where he'd been. After a while, he'd stopped trying, unsure if Scott believed him, unable to burden him with the details. If his brother really thought he'd just been in a coma, the minutiae would have cut too deep. There would always be that wound between them, and he saw no reason to reopen it. It didn't matter what anyone believed in the end, anyway. It certainly wouldn't make anything hurt less.

And now he was here, existing in a reality that seemed equally alien, equally insane. Repeating past mistakes. The only reason, he told himself, that he even continued this charade was because she was an equal party to it. She'd wanted to come with him, and having seen the pain behind her detached demeanor, he'd wanted her to come. Most times, that rational was enough to soothe his conscience.

He cast one last longing look at the stars, then walked back to the bedroom. He climbed into bed and studied his companion, reaching out to lightly follow the curves of her sleeping form. The body he traced with his hands was thin, limbs graceful, though the muscle coiled beneath the surface made it a deadly kind of grace. Watching the shallow rise and fall of her breathing, the cascade of all that dark hair over her shoulders, he began to see what she'd meant about the tiger. He couldn't see her in another life--marrying, raising children. He couldn't picture anything. Beneath the beautiful fa硤e, there was an animal lurking. There was danger, a danger he couldn't understand, and was doomed to fall victim to.

He fell back on the mattress and she stirred, leaning over him, eyes meeting his in the dark. He'd tried to classify those eyes at first, match them up to some gemstone for days before he'd given up. Her eyes were liquid, he'd finally concluded, mercurial. Nearly transparent in the sunlight, like translucent glass. In the silver of a desert night, they were the color of a fresh bruise, deep and painful.

"Something wrong?"

He reached up and brushed her hair back over her bare shoulder. "No. Just... restless. I'm okay."

"Hmm." She studied him a moment longer, before laying down again, her head on his shoulder. He slid an arm around her waist and sighed again. This wasn't right.

"Do you know what really happened?" It was early. The sky was a red blur beyond the windows, there were birds chattering in the few gangly trees outside, and he felt like talking. Any moment, he would get up and dress, find himself breakfast, fiddle around with the battered percolator so Dom could have coffee... The same pattern, day after day. He'd have to break it eventually. This job wouldn't last much longer, and ultimately, they'd part ways. He knew that. Everything they'd said and done here would be buried in waves of sand.

"No. I only knew you were alive. I didn't trade gossip much. I remember being unsurprised." She was laying on her back behind him, he knew, staring at the ceiling through the fine mist of the mosquito netting.

"It was a different universe," he sighed, feeling impossibly old at that moment. He didn't turn towards her, remaining, instead, with his legs hanging over the edge of the bed. He stared down at his feet. "I had to step into it, into everything. He--my counterpart, I mean. He was married to Madelyne. They had a son." He paused. "I had a son."

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"I didn't tell Scott. About that last part. I couldn't."

Sheets rustled, the mattress shook a little with the motion. "I understand." She probably did. Domino would understand the need for secrets.

"I didn't want to come back here," he said. "Didn't want to wake up to this again."

"Then why did you?"

"Because I realized the pain would be there whether I tried to hide from it or not. It didn't matter. I could dwell on it, it could be my whole world, or I could try to live."

There was a long pause, and he heard her laying down again. "I wouldn't have come back," she said finally.

The sun was blazing directly overhead, and Alex perched on the driver's seat of his borrowed jeep and stared out at the empty waste around him. His mission was, ostensibly, chart the area and mark out numerous cavern entrances, exploring the ones he could safely, leaving the more treacherous to a later, trained spelunking team, all in hopes that the government could develop the massive cavern system into a tourism lure. Some of the caves were supposed to be utterly breathtaking, though all the ones he'd seen in more than a month of work were small, narrow, and universally uninteresting. Still, he wasn't about to argue with the paycheck. He'd known it was likely to be boring work when he'd signed on for the job. Truth be told, he'd thought a little boredom was just what he needed. Now, he wasn't so sure. Having so much idle time left him with too much time to think about questions he didn't have answers to, yet. He knew he'd eventually have to get his life in order again, and that this wasn't the path to doing it.

Alone, with nothing surrounding him but the sun baked earth for miles and miles around, he felt, paradoxically, trapped. He couldn't really sort out the source of his frustration, other than the fact that his life had, once again, spun out of his control. He hated the helplessness of it, the encroaching feeling that nothing he did really mattered because none of it was something he could choose. It would happen whether he liked it or not.

So he'd chosen this half-life instead, standing on the fringes of the world he knew and stubbornly refusing to walk back into the embrace of an existence that seemed hell-bent on destroying him. In the darkest, quietest moments of the night, he believed death would have been preferable.

He reached into the recesses of the truck and dug out a damp cloth, running it over his face and neck. The heat didn't bother him, but the dust did. When he was done here, he would drive back to the city, find a telephone, and make the weekly call to his employers, and then to his brother. He and Scott would exchange another half hour of awkward pleasantries, Scott would urge him to 'come back home' while trying hard not to sound like the scolding elder sibling he was, and Alex would dance around the topic of who he was actually here with, while praying to god that no one had realized where Dom was and put two and two together. It wasn't wrong, really, but he couldn't be sure how the others would see it.

Domino was sitting out in the courtyard when he finally returned to the house. She wore a different blouse and skirt, a wide-brimmed straw hat protecting her face. The way she dressed here was so different from how he'd known her before, even in those few weeks before he'd gotten his placement and they'd moved themselves to this tiny, sun-bleached home. In the States, she'd been all jeans and tee-shirts, occasionally sweatshirts and sweaters of such a size that he did not have to guess at their former owner. They were casual clothes, ones that did not call attention to the body wearing them. It had seemed strange to him, that she could wear Nathan's clothing still, and so casually.

Here, however, the loose, light fabric she favored outlined her figure and drew attention to her height. She was tall, though he hadn't realized it until he'd had time to see her away from Nathan's towering frame.

"What are you doing out here?"

"Cloud watching."

He looked up, though he already knew the sky was empty. It was always empty here in the desert. "There are no clouds."

"I know," she replied.

He sat down next to her, stone warm on his back and legs, the sunlight bathing him. "Half the time, I don't understand you."

"My husband used to say the same thing."

"You're married?" It was startling, the way she sometimes dropped information into his lap, revealing some new facet with a demeanor that suggested she just hadn't thought it worth mentioning previously.

"Was." She arched an eyebrow at his reaction. "That's so surprising?"

"No," he hesitated. "Well, yes, I suppose it is."

"It was while I was working for the NSA."

He nodded slightly, an acknowledgment of that small sliver of shared experience between them. They knew the great bureaucratic machine well. "He let you go?"

"I walked away." She paused. "He thought I was dead, anyway."

"That just seems..."

"Incredible?"

"Ordinary, I guess."

Domino shrugged. "It was, mostly. I suppose Milo wasn't ordinary, our arrangement wasn't ordinary, but it was a mostly ordinary marriage, in the end. I loved him, it just wasn't enough. He died a few years ago."

"I'm sorry."

She looked up at the faded sky. "Yeah. So am I."

Her head was in his lap as she lay cross-wise on the bed, occasionally running a hand down his arm, though mostly, as far as he could tell, she stared at the ceiling.

"You haven't been sleeping well." It was a random observation, but he supposed she said it just to have something to say. Idle conversation to fill the silence.

"Dreams," he replied. "They keep waking me up."

"Nightmares."

"Not really. They're... dreams of things I try not to think of when I'm awake. It helps me tell the difference."

"Your son."

"Scotty. Yeah." Absently, he slipped his fingers through her hair, reducing the chaotic waves to neat order. "It's just... I wake up. Because I think I hear him, heard him even in my sleep, and my eyes open, and it just... takes a minute. Until I remember he's not here. He might as well be dead. He could die, and I'd never know. And something... aches, at that. At waking up wanting to comfort him and realizing that my son is gone forever." His eyes studied hers for an instant. "I suppose you couldn't know what that's like."

She sat up, legs falling over the edge of the bed, a hesitation away from leaving the room. "No... I couldn't."

There was a hostility there he wouldn't ask about. He was scared to death that she'd tell him, and he didn't want to know. He didn't want to understand what and who had broken her. He reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. Not holding her there, but just enough to let her know he didn't want her to go. "Look, I'm sorry..." He didn't want it to become an argument. They had no reason to argue.

"You don't have to be," she replied without looking at him. Her eyes seemed to be fixed on the far wall. "It's your life. You're allowed to talk about it."

"What about you? You never say anything."

She turned, and he dropped his hand. "Should I?"

"I don't know." He shrugged and shifted to lay flat on his back, watching the ceiling that had held her attention only a minute before. It struck him again how little he actually knew about the woman sitting next to him. She was a blank space at his side, the kind of person he could talk to for hours before realizing he knew absolutely nothing about her at all. He never really asked, either. Yes, there were big things he was purposely avoiding, but there was a realm of smaller things that he'd just never bothered to find out. He looked over at her, sitting still on the edge of the bed as if she were anchored there. "Can I ask you something?"

She turned towards him, tucking her legs beneath her. "I don't see why not."

"He--does Nathan know your real name?"

She brushed her hair out of her eyes. "I don't have one."

"Everyone has a name."

"I don't."

"Really?" There was something in her tone that made him uncomfortable.

"If it bothers you," she continued with the same oddly flat tone of voice, "you can make one up. I don't mind."

"No." He shook his head. It was too much like possession. There was no possession in this game. There was lust, but neither of them had any expectation to walk out of the desert with any more than what they'd carried in. The offer elicited an odd feeling of horror in him.

She leaned over him then, hands on his shoulders, straddling him lightly, face close to his for several moments before she straightened. Her hands kept him pinned to the bed. "You told me a story, Alex. About another life. It's my turn now."

"A story?" He raised his eyebrows, a heartbeat away from breaking her hold on him. He was certain now that whatever she had to say was something he did not want to be told. But the eyes she pinned his gaze with were so intense, so filled with grim purpose that he knew there would be no stopping her.

"Shh." She pressed a finger to his lips. "It starts with a woman. An insane woman, a very desperate woman. She's desperate, so she sells herself to the government. Sells her body to them, sells the children that body can produce." Her voice had a cadence to it that caused a shiver to work its way down his spine. "They kill those unlucky children," she continued, "one by one, with their experiments and equipment. It takes many years, and they kill all but two. One of them is five years old, and he's my brother. I tried to save him. I took him away, and that five-year-old body balanced on my hip felt right. I didn't want it to, but it did. Five-year-old arms holding on to me as the only thing in the world they trusted felt right, so I had to give him up. I gave him to someone I thought could protect him. He couldn't, of course. That very desperate woman--my mother--took him. I don't know where, I don't know if he's still alive. They called him Lazarus. They never called me anything."

"What--" He tried to sit up, but her hands were firm on his shoulders; stronger than he'd expected her to be.

"Close your eyes, Alex."

He did, and her lips on his were soft, though her hands continued to bite into his shoulders. He opened his eyes again, and found her staring back at him, unwaveringly. She was deep and dark, bottomless and impossible to see into. All that peered back at him was his reflection.

He took a breath and pushed her from him with one strong shove on her shoulders, sending her tumbling back onto the bed. "Don't. Dom... You can't just--"

She pushed her hair out of her face roughly and glared. "You were the one talking about sharing."

"I wasn't trying to force anything out of you! God." He took a moment to steady himself. "How long--I mean, does anyone else know that?"

"There's no one to tell," she retorted. "Nathan had better things to do with his time."

"You asked him... for what? His help?" The air felt electric, like a storm was building somewhere nearby. Domino looked dangerous, her hair in disarray, her eyes fierce. A wounded animal that had been backed into a corner.

"I was being used," she hissed. "By someone I thought I could trust, though I didn't know it at the time. He used me to get the information he wanted--on them, on me,--then tried to steer me off course. When he was killed, I contacted Nate. He was too busy to even hear me out." He reached for her hand, but she yanked it away. "Don't. Just... don't, Alex. I don't want anyone's stupid fucking pity."

"Then why the hell did you tell me? I can't just... not care when someone drops something like that in my lap!"

"You obviously wanted something from me, Alex! That's all I've got left to give."

"I told you I wasn't making demands. I have never... wanted anything from you, Dom. That's not what this is about."

"Then what the hell do you want, Alex?" she demanded.

"I want my son back!" he shouted. "And no one can give me that."

The corner of her mouth twitched up. "Yeah. Life's a real bitch, isn't it?"

She might as well have punched him; the cold behind her eyes was like a fist to the gut.

It was late. The moon was a beacon overhead, the air cold. Around him, the desert leeched its warmth into the still air like something newly dead, slowly going cold all around him.

He couldn't bring himself to go back to the house.

It seemed callous, the way he'd left her there, but he knew it wasn't his job to comfort her. He didn't know her well enough, and he wasn't the one she wanted, anyway. He hadn't been able to see the end of their time here before; he thought that now, perhaps, he could. As much temptation as there was, he couldn't blame himself. Bottled up secrets ate away at a person--he'd simply given her the opportunity to lash out. He wasn't the cause of her venom.

He lowered himself to a clear patch of ground, resting his forearms on drawn up knees. This wasn't how he'd intended things to go. He wasn't sure what he'd intended, exactly, though he imagined it had been more along the lines of the easy, joking camaraderie they'd shared in the States. That hadn't lasted long, evaporating like water in the heat of their surroundings, replaced by... what? He wasn't sure how to classify what they were doing now, only knew it wasn't healthy. They were airing all their dirty laundry in the midst of a sandstorm, and it wasn't helping one bit.

And he was too entangled now to see an easy way out of it. He couldn't just walk away. Not really. He didn't know much about her, but he had a feeling Domino was not a person best left to her own devices. He'd seen too much of the bleakness behind her eyes to believe she ever had--or ever would--manage well on her own.

She certainly didn't deserve the abandonment. No, if--when--this ended, it would have to be out of some mutual agreement, though he supposed he wouldn't be too hurt to wake one morning and find her gone. Permanently gone, anyway. There was something very transitory about her, anyway. He was starting to wonder how long she could stay in one place. Just how long did it take for her to feel caged? Then again, he was pretty damned sure she knew ways to escape that didn't take actual physical absence. And he'd certainly seen proof.

It didn't happen often, but sometimes he came home to an empty bottle on the table, Domino asleep beside it, head resting on her hands, ink-black hair pooled like a dark stain on the wood. It bothered him, because he knew she had some pain then that he could not share.

He always picked her up and put her to bed, sitting beside her to finish his notes and charts until she woke, acting as if hangovers were a myth. Another man might have been foolish enough to try and love her. Certainly, people had. His nephew, probably, or the husband she'd mentioned with a hint of real regret. He wasn't stupid, though. Domino didn't want to be loved. She wanted to be fucked, to be needed... and maybe somewhere in the twisted mess of her emotions, those equated to the same thing.

He didn't want to love her, anyway. Didn't need to. His heart was already filled with the ache of lingering affection for relationships long since severed. A part of him loved Lorna still, and part of him loved Madelyne. All of him loved Scotty, and he died every time he opened his eyes and remembered he was gone.

She was asleep when he finally returned to the house, and remained so when he got up again and left for a last minute meeting in the city to discuss the project with some of the members of the team who would be taking over from him once this phase of the project was over. The conversation was intelligent enough, but he couldn't help feeling the insignificance of his work. It was fairly unlikely anything would ever actually stem from this project, but that didn't stop him from collecting his paycheck.

Cut loose from the dim confines of the sauna-like boardroom, he stepped from shadow into the dazzling light of the sun. The streets here were narrow, claustrophobic even between the awkwardly leaning rough brick buildings. Foul-smelling and full of activity. He let the crowds and the empty span of the day ahead of him pull him out into the open air of the central market, a dazzling array of everything that could be bought and sold in this part of the world.

It didn't take long to realize he was being followed.

He'd been out of the superhero business for a while, but he hadn't lost the sixth sense, that little shudder of a feeling that let him know someone was stalking him from a distance. Going on instinct, he made his way down a long series of twisted streets that were more alleys than actual thoroughfares, hoping to evade whoever it was while at the same time removing himself from the crowd in case he had to defend himself. His mind raced through a virtual list of probable suspects, but his knowledge was out of date, and there were too many reasons, probable and improbable both, why someone might wish him ill. Having worked his way nearly to the outskirts of the town, he finally stopped. Either his pursuer would lose interest, or he'd have to make his stand here.

"Tired of the cat and mouse game?"

The voice was familiar, as he'd expected, but it certainly wasn't who he'd expected. And there was only one real reason Scott's son would have come looking for him in this sun baked outpost. Given that bleak realization, Alex found himself stridently hoping it was all a coincidence. A really bad joke the universe had decided to play when it realized his life was starting to go smoothly again. He really wasn't in the mood to get into a fight with Cable. He hardly thought the city would withstand it. Besides, Jean would kill him.

Then again, he hardly looked up to a fight. Unshaven and in tattered clothes, he looked as if he'd come out on the losing end of a brawl with a sandstorm. There was, Alex realized as he took in his haggard appearance, probably a good reason no one was talking about his nephew. Nathan had always been a man with presence. Despite the obvious wear, that presence was a downright aura at the moment.

He'd certainly changed since the last time they'd crossed paths. He was thinner, and it made him that much more obviously Scott's son. Well, obvious if you dismissed the time-displacement problem, anyway. He certainly hadn't forgotten how to use his height to loom effectively. "What are you doing here?" he finally asked.

Steel-grey eyes went momentarily distant. "Would you believe looking for God?" The tone was flippant, but Alex couldn't help the cold feeling that crept down his spine. There was a very good reason no one was talking about his nephew.

"Trying to intimidate your poor, heat-stroked uncle? Wait... don't tell me my brother sent you."

Nathan's rumble of a laugh put him on edge. "No. We... haven't talked in a while."

Alex was suddenly very eager for this encounter to end.

"If," Nathan continued, fixing him with what was probably supposed to be a smirk, "you're trying to hide the fact that she's here, you're doing a piss-poor job of it."

And here he'd thought he'd been doing an adequate job of shielding. Either his skills had deteriorated--possible--or his nephew had become a much better telepath.

"Go with that second thought."

Alex sighed, looking around for a probable escape route. He didn't care to stand around and let the family's black sheep scare the crap out of him with his bizarre behavior. "It's not how it looks," he tried, lamely. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell Nathan would believe that.

"No, I'm sure it's exactly how it looks."

"She told me you weren't together," he sighed. "I wouldn't have--" Nathan's hand was heavy on his shoulder, and he frowned at it, couldn't help but note that it wasn't T-O. Not all of it. He blinked up, puzzled.

"She didn't lie, Alex. And believe it or not, I didn't come here looking for you. I--" He shook his head, looking more tired, if possible. "I'm not sure what I was thinking. I should go."

The uncertainty seemed an awkward fit on Cable. He looked at the hand again, feeling for a moment that the world was not right around him. "No threats?"

Nathan's hand vacated his shoulder. "I don't own her. No threats." He paused. "Alex, she's not..."

"Right. I know."

"You don't know. When she left, she said she needed space. But something happened to her, something changed. She wasn't Dom anymore. I don't know what caused it. I wish I did. Just... take what she offers, then let her go."

"Aren't you a bit biased to be offering advice?"

"I'd take her back in a heartbeat," he said, voice pitched low, like a warning. "I never stopped wanting her. I told you, something happened. She couldn't be with me anymore." He turned to go. "Don't hurt her."

He wasted a few more hours in the city, walking without really seeing. If he'd been hesitant to return home before the run-in with Nathan, he was doubly so now. Too much about the meeting unsettled him, and though he knew it would be easiest to keep the encounter to himself, it wasn't the right thing to do. She certainly had a right to know he was in the area.

When he got back to the house, he found Domino in the courtyard, the gear she'd brought with her from the states spilled out over the stone. Sitting there in cut off jeans and a worn tee-shirt, giving the rifle sight in her hand a critical look, she broke the lazy spell that the weather and land had woven around their days here.

He leaned in the door way as she looked up at him. "Going someplace?" he asked casually.

She shook her head, wisps of hair coming loose from her ponytail and clinging to the thin sheen of sweat on her face. "Just maintenance. Leave it sitting at the back of the closet, and it's going to be no good when you finally need it." She squinted up at him. "Something wrong?" There was a smudge of grease on one cheek. "Meeting not go well?"

"No, it was fine." He stepped out into the courtyard and crouched next to her as she began gathering up the items spread before them. Intellectually, he'd known what her profession entailed. She was dangerous and he, in his own way, was vulnerable. Mercenary--that was the way Scott had dryly described his son's 'companion' to him years ago, clearly not sure what to make of the woman. It hadn't, apparently, been the best of first impressions. Mercenaries, Dom had brusquely informed him weeks ago, did not generally work alone. He'd gotten the hint.

She stopped what she was doing and looked over at him. "Something is the matter, Alex. What is it?"

He sighed. "I saw Nathan today."

Something in her eyes folded up and vanished, leaving them empty. "Oh. You talked to him?"

"He tracked me down, actually. He didn't look good."

"Ah." She finished collecting the gear and wiped her hands on a rag, standing.

He rose to his feet as well. "Don't you care?"

She crossed her arms in front of her. "I don't dictate his life, Alex. I never have. What he does with it is his business. People need to learn to leave him alone."

"I don't think he's doing very well on his own," he shot back. "There was something strange going on with the virus. And he didn't exactly sound grounded in reality."

"Alex, he's had people controlling him his entire fucking life. As far as he was concerned, he should have died taking care of Apocalypse. If he wants to get lost in the desert somewhere or scare the crap out of his relatives, that's his choice, all right? Don't expect me to be all concerned just because you think he's acting erratic. I'm not his goddamned caretaker, and I don't care what he does."

And maybe it was the way she stood there, defiantly angry and daring him with her eyes, but the words bubbled up and past his lips before he could stop them. "You really don't give a fuck about anyone, do you?"

She whirled on him, fists bunched at her sides, the anger on her face apparent. "Don't," she hissed. "Don't fucking judge me. I stopped caring because I had to, Alex. How long do you think you could go on, day to day, living with someone, risking your life for them, depending on them to watch your back in return, knowing deep down in your soul that everything--everything you felt for that person and everything they felt for you--meant absolutely nothing in the end? For years, I did that for Nathan. I was there for him, I came when he asked and I helped hold him together, knowing all the while that I was life support for a condemned man. Everyone expected him to die. His whole life--in this era, at least--was nothing but a placeholder, a stop along the path to his grand fucking finale. And I? I was just someone to help him pass the time while he waited to die and be returned to that perfect fucking life that he lost. Try living with that kind of ghost haunting your life and see how long you can continue to care, all right? Call it self-defense, but I can't start caring now. Not when I'm sure this is just a stay of execution. Someday, somehow, Nathan will find that perfect death of his, and I'm not about to be left with the ashes."

"I'm not him."

They were back in the bedroom, the bed the only truly comfortable piece of furniture in the house. She'd left for awhile, and he'd done his penance, picking up what she'd left in the courtyard and tucking it back into the closet like an old ghost. She hadn't been gone long--she had no choice. Out here, the sun would burn her to the point of blisters within an hour.

She pushed herself up on an elbow and looked down at him, hair sliding over one pale shoulder. "Is that why you think I'm here?" Her tone was cool. If she was still annoyed, it didn't show. She was, he knew, pretty good at acting.

"You can't tell me there aren't similarities."

Her mouth twitched slightly, but whether out of amusement or anger was up for grabs. She tapped the side of his face. "Jaw. You, Scott, Nathan. It's the same." She paused, staring down at him intently. "What color are Scott's eyes?"

"Brown."

She leaned back with a little nod. "Where does the blue come from?"

"My mother. I've... seen pictures."

She settled her head back on the pillow, quiet for a long moment. "The hair and eyes are from my mother. The skin... who knows." She held out a hand and stared at it, as if seeing herself for the first time. "I can't decide if knowing a little is better or worse than knowing nothing at all." She dropped her hand. "Did he look like you?"

"Who?"

"Scotty. Did he look like you or Madelyne?"

"He looks like me."

She touched him lightly. "I am sorry, Alex."

"I know."

"Nathan looks a lot like Scott," she continued after a moment. "Did, anyway. I knew him when he was Scott's age. Same hair. It didn't stay blond." She smiled slightly. "I've seen pictures, too. Tyler..." She trailed off. "He looked a little like you, actually. It would have been nice to know him as the boy Nathan loved."

"I thought he wasn't--"

"Nathan's son?" She sat up and looked him in the eye. "No. He was still your relative."

"...oh."

"Don't tell him I told you."

He nodded. So many secrets. One more wouldn't matter. "I'm sorry about what I said."

She sighed. "Don't apologize for things you believe, Alex."

"I was being hurtful."

"You were being honest. You were right, anyway. I don't care. Not in the way you mean it."

"Then I'm sorry you have to feel that way. Is that better?"

"I don't want sympathy."

He ran a hand roughly through his hair and sat up. "Why are we doing this?"

"You want to stop?"

He leaned forward, arms on his knees, back bowed. "I just want to understand."

"You're honest, Alex. You don't play games with yourself, and you don't expect the impossible. I like that." She paused. "It isn't about the sex. We don't have to, if it bothers you."

"Does any of it mean anything, though?"

"Does it really have to?"

"I'm not sure. I think it should. Otherwise, what's the point?"

"The point," she replied, running a hand across one shoulder and down his arm, "is to be somewhere. To be doing something."

"And you like it here."

"I like the quiet. I like the lack of obligation, and I think I'm better off."

"Sometimes I think this is just a different sort of running away."

"Everyone's running from something. It's the only thing that keeps things moving."

"You have an interesting view of the world."

"I didn't grow up the way you did." She paused, and smiled bitterly. "I didn't grow up, I suppose. I mean, I never had a childhood. And a person learns an awful lot about the world growing up."

"What would you be doing if you weren't here?" He didn't want to delve further into the black hole of her past.

"Finding out who was faster."

He gave her a questioning look.

"Me, or everyone else."

At some point in the still of night, he felt her go, slipping out of the room like a shadow. She didn't return with the sun, so he sat alone in the kitchen, drinking bitter coffee and reading the paper, wondering if the whole world had gone insane while he'd been away. The house was silent, except for the sound of his breathing and a headache was forming behind his eyes.

Outside the window, the sun baked earth shimmered like water, mirages dancing to and fro in a surreal ballet, like reality itself had been stretched taut and was about to snap, like everything was building to critical mass.

He got to his feet.

When he opened his eyes again, he was staring at the ceiling through the thin gauze of the mosquito netting, wondering how he'd gotten back to the bed. His head throbbed, and his throat felt dry. He pushed himself upright.

"Don't." A hand pressed him back into the bed, thin fingers cool on his skin. He turned his head and watched Domino reach for a glass of water. She handed it to him and he sipped gingerly.

"What happened?"

"I don't know. You were on the floor," she replied, something resigned in her voice. Her eyes told him she'd spent far too long taking care of other people. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah." His head still hurt, but the pounding was receding. He tried to remember what he'd been thinking before. "Maybe the sun finally caught up with me." Too much time outside, too much power raining down on him from the cosmos. Batteries had their limits, after all. "Thank you."

"I'm used to it." Her smile was flat.

He was better the next day, his headache gone, the thirst that burned the back of his throat sated. The sound of running water issued from the bathroom; Domino filling up the tub for a bath.

He went outside and started loading his equipment into the jeep, hands working, trying to occupy his mind with menial tasks. He unlatched the hood, looking over the engine even though he knew only the most basic car maintenance. His brother would have laughed at him.

The desert stretched for miles around, an unending expanse of tan--sand and rock that seemed to be lurking over his shoulder. It no longer looked like a harsh paradise to him, but rather a malevolent thing that devoured those foolish enough to fall under its spell. Now, more than ever, he understood the need to leave this place. The desolation was infectious, seeping slowly into his bones. Rooting him here to this place with a dangerous, broken woman who'd never had a name.

He was still there, staring down the desert when she emerged from the house, white blouse and long red skirt flapping in the hot wind that had kicked up, sending sand whirling and scouring at the corners of the house.

"There's a storm coming." And then her lips were on his, kissing him hard as her hands twined in his hair, too long and bleached platinum by the sun. She tasted like scotch and desperation, the sand stinging their skin for a moment before they broke and went to secure the house.

The wind was screaming outside the bared windows, the sun blotted out. Dust swirled around the darkened room, hot, sticking to the sweat on his bare skin. A strange, hollow feeling was building at the center of his chest.

Domino perched on the edge of the bed, skirt-clad knees drawn up to her chin and her arms wrapped so tightly around herself that he could see the jut of her shoulder blades, even in the dim light of the sandstorm.

"Are you all right?"

"No." She shook her head, hair falling in a black cascade across her face.

He sat up and reached out to push her hair back from her face so he could see her. "What's wrong?"

"I don't want to hurt you, Alex. That's not why I came here. God knows you don't need another woman tearing your family apart."

He sighed. "It's not you. It's not you or Maddie or Lorna or Jean... it never was. We're just... weak."

"Everyone is, Alex."

"Even you?"

"Especially me. You know... when I decided to leave my husband, when I realized that just loving him wasn't enough, I didn't have the guts to tell him. I knew I wasn't just leaving him, I was abandoning him to his fate. So I had things arranged. The government was plenty happy to help get me out of the picture. He thought, almost until the end of his life, that I had died protecting him. I never even said I was sorry, Alex. I never told him I still loved him. He died, not knowing. We all run away, Alex. We're all cowards. In your case, it's not such a terrible thing."

"I'm sure you only did what you had to."

What could have been a strangled sob broke from her throat. "I failed him in every way possible. He did nothing but love me, and that just wasn't good enough. I lied and betrayed him--for what? The same stupid, meaningless, empty life he tried to save me from." Years worth of pent up anger colored her words.

"But you love Nathan."

"Beyond hope."

"Then why...?"

"Because we don't get a happy ending, Alex. It's just not in the cards."

The storm eventually ceased, and they emerged, blinking like the survivors of some nameless armageddon, into the dust choked air, pitiless sun beating down on newly scoured patches of earth.

He stared at the desert--changed and yet fundamentally the same--trying to ignore the way he could feel things unraveling all around him. He didn't want to stay here. Didn't want to cope with the vulnerability he could see in Dom now that her facade had cracked. He wanted to help her and knew that he couldn't, for his own sake. He couldn't let her draw him in and he hated himself for feeling that way. He couldn't just walk away.

"I know what you think you're doing." Domino's voice was quiet, something to be carried away by the wind.

"Really." He turned his head to look at her. "Fine. What am I doing?"

"You think I need someone. Someone to watch me. You think that if you don't--" She stopped. "I'm not a ghost. I won't vanish if you look away. But you think that. You think that if you walk away, I'll wind up dead. Don't you?"

He didn't answer that. Instead he turned away, raising his face to let the sunlight hit it. He closed his eyes, and the sun glowed orange through the paper-thin skin of his eyelids.

"I'm mourning, Alex. This is just grief."

"For what?" His throat was dry. He could feel the sun baking his skin, afraid he was on the edge of some terrible revelation he'd never be able to unlearn, wishing he'd somehow seen this destruction coming. Now, all he could really do was brace for impact.

"Death. Life. Something that could have been, a long time ago. Someone I might have been, in another lifetime. If I'd had more luck." No irony there, he noted. "Look at me, Alex. This is what happens when you just run away from it. This is what happens when you try to bury it deep inside, so that you won't remember. It buries you, instead. Better than you ever could have hoped."

Maybe she was feeling merciful. Whatever the case, he let out the breath he'd been holding and looked at her. "Why does this have to be so brutal?"

"Because I am. Because this thing is." She sighed. "I don't want to ruin your life, Alex. And if we stay here, I will. I don't want that on my conscience. You should go. Find Lorna, find someone. Buck the trend. Be happy."

"And you?"

"I'll go back to Nate eventually, I suppose. Once I've run out of stupid pride."

"He said something happened. That made you leave."

"It was nothing."

"No, it wasn't."

"Okay, you're right. It wasn't. It hardly matters."

"You should tell him."

"No," she shook her head. "I shouldn't."

The exhaustion he'd seen in her eyes stuck with him. She wasn't, as he'd first assumed, trying to drive him away. She'd just laid out the cold, hard truth from her perspective. Clinical, uninvolved. He had family--family who he did not always get along with, but family. People who would understand, better than she ever could. She, he'd come to realize, had no one--excepting, perhaps, the one man she couldn't bring herself to talk to quite yet. They had their own drama to play out, and he wasn't going to pry.

And so, when he called Scott for their weekly awkward chat, he broke the stagnant routine. The words hurt, but he let them come, pouring out all the details of the life he'd lost, details he'd previously deemed too painful for Scott to know. He'd been wrong about that. As much as it might have hurt--pulling at their mutual scars--it was something they shared as well. That was the part he hadn't considered--how much Scott would understand. And so, when, like clockwork, Scott asked him to come home, it was as a concerned older brother, not as a leader.

And when he returned to the house to break the news that he'd cut the expedition short, that tomorrow would find him on a plane to Europe and from there to New York, he found her resting against the doorframe, packed bag at her feet.

"You knew."

"I guessed," she replied, tucking an errant wisp of hair behind her ear. "It's what you need to do, Alex."

"And you?"

"I think..." Her eyes slid away from him towards the horizon. "I think I'm going to find my wayward partner. We have some things to discuss. From there... I don't know."

He stood still for a moment, then stepped forward and folded her against him, a chaste, uncomplicated hug. It had all been need, after all. There was no romance in any of it. Her chin was resting on his shoulder. "It'll be okay."

"I guess we'll see," she replied, the words barely a whisper. It could have been a prayer.

He released her and she stepped away. He could see her fear and her determination. "Can I give you a ride into the city?"

She shook her head. "It's not far. I'll be fine."

He watched until she was gone from view, vanishing into the desert like a mirage, and he was alone, the hot breeze swirling dust and sand around his ankles. He took a deep breath and held it for a long moment, then went inside to finish packing.

-end-