First Kiss
by Persephone
Disclaimer: The universe and all named characters or groups of characters belong to Marvel and are used without permission and not for profit. Unnamed individuals mentioned, including one main character, are of my devising. If you want to use them, I'd prefer you discuss it with me ahead of time, but as I don't accord Marvel the same courtesy I don't suppose there's much I can say if you don't, except, "That is NOT who I wrote her to be!" Pop-up is acceptable, and if it inspires the desire to MST3K I suppose it deserves it. I would however appreciate being informed, preferably ahead of time. (For one thing, I'd want to know to read it and see if you did a good job.) Please ask before archiving. Thank you.
Dedicated to Diamonde, who wanted to see it.
The battle was not going well.
Stryfe was the one who made this evaluation, but it really could have been anyone in the general vicinity, on either side. The battle was not going well for anyone. The Canaanites and the Clan Chosen forces were relatively well-matched for once. No one had a particularly clear advantage, even with Nathan Dayspring and Stryfe both present.
Actually, that had probably been why neither side had a clear advantage, at least at first. Around midmorning, however, water had begun to seep from the field of battle. There was no readily apparent reason for this, as the battle was being conducted halfway up a mountain rather than in, say, a low and boggy region where such geological behavior might be expected. Mountain springs were all very well, but didn't usually turn half an acre of previously dry hillside into muck within the space of two hours. By noon, both sides were spending more time pulling comrades out of knee-deep mud and trying to climb back up the slope they'd just slithered through than they were actually fighting each other.
Later geological investigation by a former Askani novice who had always had a fondness for records of civil engineering projects would reveal that a giant reservoir of drinking water had been built there a few centuries ago. She would surmise that, after remaining surprisingly intact through the shock of the artificial earthquakes that had shoved a small mountain range into existence where it really shouldn't have been, the walls of the reservoir had finally given way under the continued pounding of the battle. This analysis, however, would have to wait, and probably wouldn't have altered the ensuing events very much even had it been available to all the participants.
Stryfe looked up the slope and saw Dayspring trying to organize his band to keep each other from sinking. He realized abruptly that he was looking up and discovered, with some irritation, that he'd somehow slipped most of the way down the battlefield without actually noticing. Most of his soldiers were near the lower end of the field, where mud began giving way to slightly firmer ground. The rest were floundering in assorted isolated locations scattered across the mudscape. Stryfe growled under his breath and made a mental note to add a bit of emphasis on cooperation to his soldiers' training, as well as a lesson on the reasons being able to stand up didn't necessarily do much good if your opponent had any footing at all and the option of throwing things down a mountain at you.
He then extricated himself from the mire with an audible squelch and started working his way uphill. Carefully. The Clan Chosen appeared to have developed some sort of anchoring system, and while lately the difficulty with staying upright had caused most concussive weapon strikes to miss everyone they were aimed for and just splash mud around, there was no guarantee that state of affairs would continue.
He glared uphill at the figure he still assumed, based on both the figure's behavior and that of the surrounding Clan Chosen fighters, to be Dayspring. Said figure actually looked rather more like an animated mud-sculpture, but then, so did everyone else in the vicinity. Stryfe planted an opponent headfirst in the muck, dragged one of his soldiers out of it nearby and propelled the startled woman in a direction generally suggesting attack, and ducked an unidentifiable projectile. He grimaced and decided that he should have put the energy into deflecting it. It had glopped mud onto him in passing.
Stryfe was drifting gently over the mud with the intent of sneaking up on an enemy soldier when the mountain jolted. Deep inside it, cracked walls had finally buckled and the water found an outlet. A gush of water fountained through the mud and swept him down the slope in its exuberant rush.
Tumbling unexpectedly, rapidly, and roughly down the course of an impromptu waterspout-turned river was, as it happened, quite enough to destroy a high-powered telekinetic's concentration beyond all hope of rescuing himself once the surprise wore off. Stryfe tumbled in precisely such fashion, utterly disoriented, retaining just enough presence of mind to avoid trying to cry out, instead keeping his mouth shut and hence preserving himself through excessive pride from having the current pour into his lungs. Between the helpless bouncing into occasional rocks and the general limits on the amount of oxygen one can obtain in quick gulps when one's head is briefly thrust above water at random, however, he was soon unconscious.
*****
The Clan Chosen soldier who had been being sneaked up on was alerted to Stryfe's presence and extremely sudden absence only because he turned around in response to being splattered. He gaped in shock at the new river from whose source was still gouting high into the air before diving down the mountainside -- but not for long.
Both sides lost footing as the ground lurched and water soaked faster through the ruffled dirt, liquefying the sticky, slippery mass into an even more treacherous soupy murk. Both sides froze for a moment in blank astonishment at the water spouting joyously through the mud and in disbelief at the Canaanite commander's abrupt disappearance in its flow. It was Clan Chosen, though, who recovered first and regrouped under Dayspring's direction to round up their nonplussed and disheartened enemies, most of whom seemed more confused than anything else.
It was a rout.
The first order of business, of course, was to collect prisoners. None of them exactly seemed terribly upset by the loss of their leader, but then, perhaps they couldn't be expected to get as emotional about him. After all, the warriors of Clan Chosen said to one another with a strange mixture of fondness and zeal, he wasn't the Chosen One.
The second was to collect the water. A thrill ran through everyone who heard as a few initial tests came back saying that the water was clean. Clean! Its source was clearly almost pure; they could find only the barest traces -- probably from the ground's surface itself -- of dangerous contaminants, and even those levels dropped as the flow went on and washed away even the customary levels of ground pollution from its outlet. This was precious stuff.
****
Stryfe regained consciousness slowly, and kept his eyes closed as he became aware of several things. The first was that his head hurt, though perhaps not as badly as might have been expected. Next he noticed that he could breathe again, which was nice. He had never really had occasion to appreciate the sensation of not drowning before, as he'd spent a great deal of his life in one desert or another -- and who needed to learn to swim anyway, when telekinetic levitation was so much simpler an option? All right, under the circumstances that was probably a stupid question. He then observed successively that his inglorious precipitation down the mountainside had been replaced by a gentle half-floating sway, that he felt bruised in assorted locations, and that a rock was sticking into his back from the bank that seemed to be supporting his shoulders.
His mind gnawed uneasily on that last realization for a few moments before combining it with the other sensations, of dirt and rocks and laving water, and concluding that either his armor had been severely damaged, or he wasn't wearing it anymore. That could be problematic, either way. He was probably worse off if someone had removed it. After all, an enemy who stripped but didn't kill him clearly wanted him alive for some reason, and in that case he was almost certainly in more serious trouble than if he were lying out in the middle of nowhere -- in a river -- with minimal protective gear or supplies. Not that the latter was a terribly attractive possibility itself, mind.
All things considered, his overall state of limp relaxation was not particularly well recommended by the facts he could dredge together. It was foolish. Perhaps it would not even be amiss to term it idiotic. Stryfe tried to summon more energy by berating himself, but was hampered by both weariness and the insidious, if accurate, suggestion that a certain lack of muscle tension while unconscious was not a particularly astounding phenomenon.
He also found himself distracted and vaguely alarmed by the sensation of a slight tickle at his scalp. If that was blood flowing, there was probably entirely too much of it. He hated head injuries. He hated being injured at all, of course, more because of the sense of shame at having permitted it than because of the pain, but head injuries -- especially concussions -- had the most exasperating tendency to wreak havoc on his powers. The worst effects other than the initial grogginess were usually delayed, too, which had on one memorable occasion allowed him to pull himself together long enough to break off the entire ledge his Clan Chosen opponents were standing on fifteen minutes after the injury -- only to find the next day that simply trying to juggle a few sour berries without touching them started a nosebleed. Granted, there was no ready explanation for why he might find it necessary, advisable, or even recreational to juggle berries, but it had still been irritating.
It had also been a little messy, and the healer had happened by and spent half an hour berating him -- with no apparent need to pause and replenish her air supply -- for having told her immediately after the battle that he was fine and required no attention. No one else in the camp would ever have gotten away with speaking to him as she did, but the prospect of incapacitating the only healer they had along was enough to give even the Chaos-Bringer's temper pause. Besides, for some unfathomable reason, part of the time he almost liked her.
Stryfe cautiously opted to open his eyes. They promptly flew wide, and he emitted a most undignified yelp as he found himself virtually nose to nose with a face that looked as if the carved mahogany Galatea which once graced the corner of Apocalypse's throne room had opened large blue-green eyes and peered down at him. Eyes the color some large bodies of water were in very old paintings, the color he'd never actually seen water be in real life.
"Well, just look what the current washed ashore for me. Ah, so you decided to admit you were awake," the face said with a grin. It had very white teeth. He hated being laughed at, but even though the voice was amused, it was rather pretty. Bubbly. Recovering his self-possession with some effort, Stryfe took stock of the situation visually as his heart slowed its startled pounding. The face hovering over him was attached to long, vividly green hair that rippled over brown shoulders (with gills at the base of the neck) and some sort of shimmering pale-blue, flowing fabric that might almost have been water itself.
He was stripped of his armor, lying in a slow-moving pool of water with his head and shoulders propped in the shallows surrounded by a quarter-circle indentation in the bank, very close to floating off but prevented by the curve of the bank, and there was a girl kneeling lightly beside him in the deeper water with one arm braced on the higher part of the bank and her torso curved so she could hang over him and peer directly into his face. This was not the way he ordinarily expected to wake up.
Not that he was complaining about the girl, to be sure. She was quite lovely, and his telepathy was at least currently in good enough order that he was fairly confident her intentions were not hostile. What wasn't immediately clear was precisely what they might be instead.
She straightened, pulling farther away from him and turning her head to glance appraisingly down the length of his body. "I'd ask if you were the new river-god, but if so your control is terribly poor." She couldn't possibly have said that. Perhaps her command of Canaanite was not of the best. She did have a bizarre accent, almost slurred. Or perhaps she only sounded that way because his ears were underwater. Still. River-god? "You don't appear to be injured too badly," that liquid voice continued. "I took off your armor to see. And no concussion, miraculously enough. You must have a very sturdy skull."
Stryfe started to laugh softly. The girl made a swift movement and was suddenly perching curled on his chest -- which probably would have been somewhat more uncomfortable if it hadn't been for the water, though she didn't seem to be all that heavy anyway. His mouth was still slightly open, though, when she murmured, "I like that quality," and abruptly swooped down to kiss him.
He froze for barely an instant. It should have been enjoyable. She was beautiful. Just looking at her had already set his hormones racing. But at the sudden touch of her lips on his, indistinct and long-buried memories of the last and only time he'd felt a similar sensation surged upward almost to the surface of his consciousness, carrying with them a blind dread and terror. A fragment of a thought fleeted through his head, --no, it'll kill me, won't be me, somebody please help-- and in sheer panic he shoved, with hands and mind, and the girl went flying.
He also managed to crack his head sharply against a stone. When his vision cleared, he realized what he'd done -- though he still wasn't quite sure why he'd been so terrified, and wasn't any more sure he wanted to remember -- and sat up. The river had plunged down the side of the mountain towards the desert, and off in the distance he could just see a figure pushing to its feet.
Then the river in whose edge he lay split, half the current arching out over the sand to sweep the girl back in his direction. She rode the ribbon of water easily, and as she neared him again he could see that her brows were drawn low together and her mouth was set. She looked angry, perhaps a bit puzzled, and Stryfe felt cold fear again and a burning shame as he realized just how badly he had embarrassed himself, and how contemptuous she would be of his fear. He reached out telepathically, ignoring the uneasy beginnings of a truly vicious headache in an attempt to reach into her mind and tear out the memory of what had just happened.
It didn't work.
Maybe he'd concussed himself jerking backwards against that rock. Maybe it was just something about her mind. He met no resistance, no shields at all; everything was perfectly transparent -- he could read every thought and memory and feeling with the mere effort of meaning to, if he so chose. He found the one he wanted to obliterate quite easily, and tried to take hold of it to remove or change -- and nothing happened.
Nothing happened. He could see it, sense it, experience it from her side if he wanted to, but he couldn't get hold of it! He tried to alter or erase it, and had no effect whatsoever. It was like trying to grasp... water. With his bare hands. Clutching instead of cupping. Maybe there was some other telepathic technique that would have worked, but he didn't know it. A sort of desperation came over him with the knowledge that she would remember, would, unless he killed her, and he was weakened and she was clearly an aquakinetic with excellent control....
She was back at his side, looking down, eyes stern. Stryfe looked back up at her, meeting those eyes for just a moment, and then his own left eye gleamed brightly and he lunged upward, flipping her onto her back in the shallows and bringing his mouth down almost crushingly against hers. He would prove he wasn't the coward she must think him; if he couldn't wipe her memory he'd make her forget another way. She made no objection; apparently this was more like what she'd had in mind to begin with. Instead, she wound her fingers in his hair and kissed back with enough enthusiasm that her teeth cut his lips and her toenails raked shallow gouges in his calves. He hardly noticed. Nor did he really notice when she flipped him, rolling them both into the deeper water and swifter current with her on top, so that he ended up underwater again -- though it was probably fortunate that he had already forgotten to breathe.
She finally pulled away and they both sat up, Stryfe sputtering slightly after his mouth filled with water on the way. She wasn't even out of breath -- perhaps it was the gills. "Much better. Oh, much better." She gave him an arch look. "Still, after that initial reaction, I think mating you would be a mistake, so I suppose I won't keep you. I'll find a male who doesn't throw me across the desert when I first kiss him, thank you."
He started to protest -- though he wasn't sure whether he was protesting her decision or the idea that she could simply decide whether or not to "keep" him at all -- and found himself silenced as the river seemed to rise around him. As he lost consciousness again, the thought crawled into his mind that he should have suspected she could control the water inside someone's body as well.
*****
When Stryfe awoke, it was to the feeling of water receding from his body. He looked around and found that he was still nearly naked, but his armor was visible now, washed clean of mud and glimmering damply in the moonlight in a neat pile beside the river. This was a real river, too, one that had been established in something approximating the normal geological fashion; he recognized it and knew exactly where he was. There should be a Canaanite camp within walking distance -- although somehow he doubted his troops would be among those there. The battle couldn't have gone too much better after his removal.
He donned his armor again and started walking. With a little luck he would look to be in a foul enough mood that no one would ask what had happened.
A desert campaign sounded like an excellent idea right now. He'd had enough of rivers.