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Author: Sequoia Swennes" <athene@easy-pages.com>
This was written for the Strange Pairings Challenge *and* the Breakup
Challenge on OTL; and this talk of Emma and Scott made me remember it :)
It
takes place in the past of an alternate universe (obviously ;). "Monile"
is
Latin for "necklace".
Disclaimer: Marvel owns Emma Frost and Scott Summers. I am shamelessly
using them for my own wicked purposes.
Rating: PG-13. Couple naughty words, reference to sex, general unpleasant
angst. Enjoy :)
Feedback, please?
**********************
MONILE
She had always assumed that when the illusion fled it would be her who
initiated the break, her who would explain to him, calmly and cruelly, why
she was ripping his heart to pieces and grinding it into the floor beneath
her heel. Any other scenario had been unimaginable, until now.
He was leaving her.
She twisted the necklace around her fingers, the unconscious, repetitive
motion betraying her true feelings and making her perfectly schooled
expression of cool nonchalance worthless.
She did care.
God help her, she loved him.
She couldn't love him, not him, not this boy from the streets she had
somehow fallen in with after her bloody escape from the asylum. Not this
blind, taciturn fool who still believed in good as well as evil and infinate
shades of gray, despite the horrors that life had heaped upon him, who would
have been eaten alive by that same life had she not come along when she did.
The necklace tightened around her hand, a dull pain radiating up into her
wrist. He had given her the strand of crystalline beads two years ago, for
her birthday, and she seldom was without them. A fleeting image flickered
behind her eyes, the memory of her naked body rocking atop his, the jewelry
cold and heavy against her hot skin, the translucent shell pink colour of
the glass blending perfectly with the subtly different hues of her breasts.
That had been the only time she had wanted him to see her, the only time she
wasn't thankful that the doctor at the orphanage had sewn his eyes shut when
his power had erupted.
The only time she had been willing to let him in.
She couldn't love him.
Not now.
Not when she was losing him.
She clenched her hands together, the necklace clasped between them, the
familiar ice solidifying in her veins once more as she turned from the
window and looked at him, tossing her pale, wheat coloured hair behind her
shoulders.
He was deftly moving through the tiny room that they shared as he felt for
his things and placed them in his bag, his tall, lanky frame concentrating
solely on the task, ignoring her. She wanted to scream, throw herself at him
and pound his chest with her fists, disrupt his methodical search; but her
own stoicism, at times worse than his, prevented her. She broke the silence
by speaking instead, her voice low and detatched.
"Where will you go?"
"Do you care?" His voice was as distant as hers.
"No." She ran the beads around her wrists and pulled, hating him,
losing
herself in the less frightening emotion. "When have I ever cared?"
she
continued, increasing the pressure.
He didn't answer. She turned away so that she wouldn't see her reflection in
the dark of his glasses. She loosened her grip on the necklace and let it
dangle from her outstretched fingers.
"There were times," he said slowly, "when I thought you
did."
"That's because you're a dumb fuck." The beads rested in her palm,
clicked
softly together. She wondered briefly if she would die if she swallowed
them.
"You're an easy fuck. Does that make us even?" It gave her a thrill,
deep
inside, to hear such bitter hurt in his voice although she was thankful he
could not see the amused smirk it forced to her lips.
"I suppose it does," she said too quickly, unable to keep her tone
completely flat. He threw a sorrowful expression in the direction of her
voice as he pulled on his wool coat. She had taken it for him, the year
before he had given her the beads.
She fingered the necklace more slowly now. She could stop him from leaving
with a thought.
She followed him down to the street, refraining from making a rude comment
about how cautiously he took the stairs even with his cane, refraining from
pushing him down and throwing herself after him. The beads, held under her
hand, skittered along the bannister.
She stood on the pavement, oblivious to the sun in her eyes and the wind in
her hair.
Her hands, tangled up in the necklace, wrenched violently apart, the
shimmering, mournful beads disappearing in the gutters and the puddles, as
she watched him walk away.