by Alicia McKenzie
DISCLAIMER: The characters belong to Marvel, and are used without permission for entertainment purposes only. This is a what-if, but I can't promise that certain themes won't appear--elsewhere. ;)
Domino saw him as soon as she stepped out the door. He was just standing there, out in the middle of the backyard. A casual observer would have thought him to be transfixed by the beauty of the cloudless, star-filled night sky.
She knew better. Moonlight glinted off his silver hair, and the wistful yearning on his face tore at her heart. The tears glittering on his cheeks nearly broke it entirely.
"Nathan? What are you doing?" she called softly. Knowing he knew she was there, even if he couldn't see her.
Even if he couldn't see anything, anymore.
A faint smile tugged at his lips. "Listening to starlight," he said, no trace of pain or regret or anger in that deep, quiet voice.
What had happened to his temper? she wondered absently as she went over to join him. If it had been her, dealt a blow like this, she would have been raging. So unfair, all of it. If this was an example of the universe's sense of humor, that sense of humor was blacker by far than her own.
"Listening to starlight," she said, shaking her head as she stopped in front of him. His smile grew a little. "What does it sound like?"
"Like distance. And time."
"You get a kick out of being deliberately oblique, don't you?"
"You know me." He reached out, tentatively, his hand shaking a little, and she took it, squeezing it tightly. #You talk to Hank?# he asked along their psi-link, his telepathic 'voice' more subdued.
"I did," she said aloud, not quite knowing why she stuck to words. Maybe she was just being perverse. Maybe words were the only things she could throw at this, the only weapons she had left to keep him firmly anchored in a world that had severed a vital connection with him. "He's still--pretty down." A spasm of pity stabbed through her. Poor Hank. He'd been beaming, this morning, so hopeful as he'd removed the bandages covering Nathan's eyes. So sure this latest procedure had worked.
When Nathan had given him that same faint smile he was smiling now and told him, so very gently, that he appreciated the effort, Hank's expression had just--crumpled. Domino didn't think she'd ever seen the usually-jovial Beast look so miserable before.
Of course, she'd been wiping away a few stray tears, herself. Hank hadn't been the only one who'd hoped. She should have known better. After everything they'd tried in the last couple of months, all the different procedures, the Shi'ar implants--she shouldn't have gotten her hopes up.
"Dom--don't," Nathan said softly, his grip on her hand tightening. "Just don't. It's over."
The words struck with a painful finality, even though she knew he only meant this most recent attempt at restoring his sight. At least, she HOPED that was what he meant. "What is, is?" she asked hoarsely, swallowing past a lump in her throat. What is, is. Couldn't be changed, couldn't have been foreseen.
So unfair. Everything had happened, the way it was supposed to happen. The right time, the right place--the right Twelve.
She had watched as the man she loved channeled the powers of the Twelve, weaving her mutant ability and those of the other eleven into one seamless tapestry with his own prodigious gifts. She had watched, as he had been transformed into a being of pure light, shining like she imagined the sun had shone on the first morning of the world.
She had watched, from a distance--from a 'safe', damnable distance, as he'd lashed out with every bit of strength in his heart and blasted Apocalypse into his component atoms. The power had bled out of him until he was only a man again, human, fragile--
--drained and utterly helpless to shield himself from the backlash of Apocalypse's death. The energy wave had blown up right in his face, hurtling him backwards and to the ground in a crumpled, broken heap.
She remembered crying out in denial, struggling back to her feet--even Jean's telekinetic shield hadn't been enough to buffer the impact totally--and running across the sand to him. So close--it had been so close. He'd been so badly hurt. But, grave as they'd been, his injuries had been easily enough healed with the technology available to them. Especially with the specialized expertise of the medical staff aboard the Shi'ar cruiser that had dashed to Earth on Lilandra's orders to see exactly what the 'unidentified psionic flare' had been. They'd managed to heal everything--
Except the damage to his optic nerve. She'd tuned out the long, involved medical explanation after the first twenty times she'd heard it. In the end, she supposed the why didn't really matter.
"Like I always say, the why of any situation--"
"Oh, shut up." She said it jokingly, forcing the words out past the lump in her throat. "Fatalist."
"Realist, Dom." His grip on her hand tightened again for a moment, just briefly, but there was nothing but that calm, mild expression on his face.
That damned mildness again. It made her want to scream, or shake him, half the time. Far too often lately, this utter, utterly uncharacteristic tranquility was all they saw from him. Nothing seemed to be able to break it from the outside. Nothing seemed to touch him, when he was in this 'mood'.
He just--accepted this, accepted everything. If the sky suddenly fell on his head, he'd probably smile and accept that, too.
Yeah. Shaking him would be good. Strangling him might be even better--maybe THAT would get a reaction.
Something flashed across his face and was gone, a quick flicker of some unidentifiable emotion--a momentary break in what she couldn't think of as anything but a mask. She replayed it in her mind, trying to analyse it, desperately willing it to be a clue, a key to how he was feeling, really feeling beneath the unnatural serenity emanating from his end of the link.
He pulled his hand out of hers, suddenly, sharply. And maybe she should be careful what she wished for, but the mildness was gone. In its place was a strange, resentful defensiveness.
"What do you all WANT from me?" His voice was almost plainitive. "Am I supposed to pace around cursing myself and the world and fate? I still trip over enough flonqing furniture as it is, Dom--"
"Maybe just a sign you're angry," Domino said, her voice breaking, despite her best efforts to keep it level. "You should be angry, Nate."
"Why?" he asked, half-angry, half-bewildered. "Dom, he's DEAD. It's over. We w-won." If she hadn't been listening so carefully, she would have missed that faint, telling catch in his voice. He continued, his voice more forceful. "I didn't expect to walk away from that alive, damn it, but I did--"
"You didn't exactly walk away from it, Nate. I seem to remember sitting at your bedside for three solid weeks--"
"That's not what I mean and you know it! I'm ALIVE, Dom. I'm here with you and the kids, and Scott and Jean--can't I just be content with that?"
She stared at him incredulously for a moment. "Be content with the fact that you can't see?" she asked, very quietly. Maybe he could be, but she couldn't. It was too hard to sit back and watch the strongest, most capable man she'd ever known struggle to do something so simple as walk across a room without running into anything.
"I'm hardly helpless!" A brief struggle for control showed plainly on his face, and he gave her a forced smile. His left eyes shone briefly, the gold flare somehow complementing the soft silver glow of the moon and stars. Half-raising a hand, uncertainly, he walked forward, and, after a moment's hesitation, laid it on her shoulder. "I'll perfect this telekinetic 'echolocation' eventually. It's not all that hard, not really--"
"Nate--"
"Besides, how blind can a telepath be, really?"
"Enough," she said tautly, reaching up and taking his hand in her own. "Enough to have to change your life--"
"Dom--"
"Sure, you can at least get around the mansion without breaking your neck, these days, but can you see yourself in a fight, like this?"
He was silent for a long, long moment. "No," he finally said. "So?"
She blinked at him. "SO?" Of all the things she'd expected him to say--"What do you mean, 'so'?"
"I mean, so what? Maybe that part of my life's over. Mission complete, 'destiny' fulfilled--that's all, folks." Speechless, she stared at him, and he gave her a tentative smile after a moment. "That was supposed to be funny, Dom. You know, like the cartoon--"
"I know exactly what it was supposed to be," she said with an exasperated sigh. "And since when did you start making pop-culture references?"
He half-shrugged, looking ever so slightly pleased with himself. At having changed the subject, she realized, her eyes narrowing. Well, she wasn't going to let him get away with THAT--
"So what are you going to do, then?" she asked pointedly. "If you've decided to give up and retire from the spandex business, I mean."
His mouth quirked. "Maybe I'll give Matt Murdock some competition--"
"Nathan!"
"Hey, I'm a good lawyer," he protested, that smile trying to break free and become a grin. "Even if I haven't practiced in a while." He laughed softly. "There are lots of things I haven't done 'in a while', Dom, you know?"
"Like?" she asked with another sigh, this one faintly rueful.
"Like listen to starlight. Or walk on a beach. Or sit down and listen to Beethoven's symphonies all the way through in one sitting--" The smile grew a little sad. "Or read War And Peace. You suppose they have that on tape?"
"Tape, hell," she said in a voice rough with emotion at this wistful recitation. She reached up and caressed the side of his face gently. Feeling the dampness there. "If it comes to that, I'll read it to you."
She heard him take a sharp, indrawn breath. When he finally spoke, his voice was hesitant, strangely unsteady. "I'm just--I'm tired, Dom."
No plea, no hint of complaint in those simple words. "I know," she said gently. If anyone deserved to rest, it was him. She winced, a little ashamed of herself. What right did she have to nag him like this? He deserved some space. Some peace. He'd more than earned the right to walk around in this gentle haze if he damned well wanted. She just--
"Don't worry so much, Dom," he chided her gently. "I just want to remember what it's like to live without the fate of the flonqing world resting on my shoulders. Just for a while." The smile returned, a little shaky but somehow determined. "I want to be able to wake up in the morning and NOT think about the battles that need fighting, or the problems that need fixing. Even when it's me that needs fixing--I don't know, am I making any sense?"
"I'll get back to you on that," she joked weakly.
He chuckled wearily, squeezing her hand. "I'm not giving up, Dom," he said. "I promise. I want to be able to look into your eyes again, more than anything." She blinked rapidly, trying to hold back the tears, and he went on. "I'm just not going to let this take over my life. I don't want to get into the habit of fixating on any problem that comes up--turning it into a substitute object-of-obsession. It would be--SO easy, to do that But I want to LOSE the crusading mentality, Dom--"
"So where do you want to go from here, then?" she asked, a little ashamed by the realization of how much thought he'd really put into this. And here she'd been under the impression that he'd been sleepwalking through all of this, so numb from what had happened in Akkaba that he wasn't dealing with what was happening now. "What--do you want to be, Nathan?"
"A man. Just a man." He reached up and took her hand that was still lingering on his face. Brought it to his lips, kissed it. "The man who loves you--who needs you." He smiled, but it was a slightly more strained smile, this time, his face shadowed by a fear that he maybe hadn't even admitted to himself. "Just promise me you won't leave?"
"I don't know," she said teasingly, blinking back more tears. She knew he'd feel what she was really feeling, through the psi-link--the promise some residual bit of stubborn pride wouldn't let her speak aloud. So the banter was safe. "I've heard Outer Mongolia is nice this time of year."
His smile grew, steadied. "I'd track you down, you know."
"Oh, really?"
"Wherever you went." He held her hands between his. Strong hands--gentle hands. All the strength that made him who and what he was was still there, she realized as she stared up into the blind eyes that somehow, nonetheless, seemed to look right into her soul. Still there--just balanced, now, by the kindness he'd so rarely allowed himself to show before, and a new sense of peace that she finally allowed herself to share. "I still do see you," he said in a softer voice.
"Oh?" she said with a faint chuckle, expecting him to say something about what she 'looked' like telepathically.
His answer surprised her. "Yeah," he murmured. "I see you exactly as you looked standing on that dune when I walked out to meet Apocalypse." She took a deep, shaky breath, and he smiled hesitantly. "You were crying, but you were smiling, too. That's the last thing I remember clearly about that day, Dom. That, and your voice on the link, telling me you loved me--"
Something close to a sob broke free from deep in her chest. She leaned up and kissed him, and then embraced him tightly, burying her face against his chest. Listening to the sound of his heart as it beat in soft counterpoint to her own.
His arms went around her after a moment, held her tightly. "Even if Hank comes up with a miracle tomorrow, I think I'll always see you that way," he whispered into her hair.
And she would always remember how he'd smiled back, a clear, calm, loving smile, and then turned and walked out, slowly and unhurriedly, to face the five thousand year-old External waiting for him on the Egyptian sands.
She had never been more afraid for him, more proud of him.
She had never loved him more than at that moment.
Swallowing, she pulled away gently, wiping her eyes. "It's getting late," she said softly. "Why don't we go in?" She smiled, knowing that he'd sense it, know what she was feeling. "I'm in the mood for a little light reading tonight, how about you? Although if you ask me, Anna Karenina is much better than War And Peace--"
He laughed. "I like War And Peace," he said with a mock-pout as she took his arm and steered him towards the door.
"You would. What is it, the size?" She chuckled wickedly. "I'm sure there's a phallic-substitute comment that's appropriate here--"
"Dom!"
They went inside, laughing.
fin
continued in Tangible Light