Prompt: Prediction
Timeline: AU, post X3
Paradox
The first time John saw Kitty Pryde, he told Bobby she looked like he could break her in half. Bobby had laughed; she'll break you, most likely, he'd said.
He was an improbable suitor, but possibly the best match for a girl who could let the world move through her like she was nothing more than fog. After all, John was used to being intimate with the intangible.
They did not love so much as they survived, each trying to solve the living paradox the other posed. She told him he was too cold for the fire he could control; he told her she cut too deep when she phased through his arms. He touched her to the core when no one else could grasp her flesh, and she kept him warmer than any flame ever could.
It breathed life into both of them while it stayed. It did not leave them, even after the exhalation.
Seeing her at Alcatraz didn't weaken him, as he'd worried it would. Instead it strengthened his resolve, eliminated the shades of gray that clouded his thoughts whenever he thought of her. She would die and he would live, and maybe he would finally stop waking in the middle of the night with the terrible feeling that he had lost something very important.
But he didn't. Instead of waking up in the middle of the night, he found himself standing at the spot where she had fallen almost without knowing how he'd arrived there. Once a week, once a day, twice a day.
She'll break you.
No words had been truer.
