Habits
by Cosmic
Disclaimer: Marvel’s, every single one of them. Continuity wise, sometime after the six month gap, except for the flashback scenes. You’ll figure it out. ;) All and any feedback would be loved at cosmic1982@hotmail.com.
Rating: PG-13. A few words that aren’t that nice, and allusions to f/f
Notes: This is something new for me, this pairing. I never could have come up with it myself, it was Crantz’s idea and he forced me to pursue it, bless his little, evil heart. And because Melly liked the idea... Thanks to Crantz, kaleko and many other people for their help. And to Thren for the beta.
Dedicated to Mel. Happy birthday, even if this is a *bit* late. *snugs*
“Domino, lass, thanks again for doing this.” Sean was an old friend, a good friend, but he worried too much.
“No prob. Someone had to check out your school’s new security systems and this gives the kids a chance to get to know each other better.” My smile was forced and it didn’t take Sean’s police-training to notice that.
I hated this. This whole phase in my life when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and why I was doing it in the first place. It had something to do with getting old, but I wasn’t quite yet ready to settle down and hang up the spandex.
The kids were a mess, both mine and Sean’s. X-Force had lost its newest mentor, Pete Wisdom, and Gen-X had lost one of their own. We were all a big bloody mess. We were all on a crash-course, waiting for the shit to hit the spandex. It was just a matter of time ‘till something happened, till one or some or fucking all of the kids did something reckless and stupid.
And the rest of us, the cool, calm adult-types, we just reverted to our old, bad habits.
**
“Good morning,” came a soft voice somewhere in my vicinity. Somewhere near the big, comfy bed I was lying in. Now if I would just open my eyes...
I groaned, digging deeper under the covers, remembering last night. What a night that was. Biting hard on my lower lip, I reminded myself not to get drunk anymore. Ever. Not with *her*, at least.
Some habits shouldn’t be recurring, no matter how much fun they were when you were 22. Aging wasn’t as much fun as it was cracked up to be. “I’m getting too old for this.”
#I see we have a headache.#
I poked my head from underneath the blankets and glared at her. “I don’t like people in my head, Frost. You should know that by now.”
“Fine. Be that way. Coffee?” She smiled sweetly, offering me a cup.
“Thanks,” I nodded, looking around for my clothes.
“I put them in the wash. You can borrow some of mine.”
“Do you own anything that isn’t white?”
Her laugh was sincere as I heard her rummaging around her closet. “I have missed your sense of humor, Becca.”
The cup fell from my hands, shattering on the floor, sending droplets of coffee on the exquisite rug. I glared at her as she arched one of her delicate blond eyebrows at me. “I’ve told you to *never* call me that.” I knew my face was flushed with anger. It had bloody well better be.
“What? You still have that problem with your name?” she continued to smile that ever-so-sweet smile of hers, her lips twisting cruelly.
I guess she still enjoyed pulling the carpet from under my feet as much as she used to...
**
“Emma?”
“What?” Blue eyes of steel looked at me, thunderous in their own right and I lost my words for a moment. She was upset with me. *She* was *upset*.
Then it hit me. I was the one she’d hurt. I was upset. She didn’t have the right to be upset over what happened after that. She didn’t. She made her bed, now she had to lie in it.
“Oh, that’s cheap,” she growled, angrily pushing her hair back, still looking at me.
_No-one gave you permission to read my mind, witch,_ I thought, trying to shield my thoughts better anyway. I glared at her defiantly. Righteously.
“You know what, Becca? I don’t give a damn about you and your privacy. You sure as hell didn’t give any of mine.” Her voice was raised. I’m not sure if I’d ever heard that before. She was Frost, she was as cold from the inside as she was from the outside. She didn’t yell at people. She didn’t lose her temper. That sort of thing just didn’t become her.
Or I had thought so, at least. I guess I was wrong.
She continued to stare at me with those icy blue orbs of hers. “You betrayed me,” she finally uttered, voice almost broken, almost with actual heat, almost human.
Shit! She didn’t think I actually... “Emma, I’m—”
“Sorry?” She grinned, this inhuman smirk that terrified me to my very core. “I don’t believe in apologies.”
I visibly shook at that, leaning to a wall for support. How dared she? Nathan was off-limits. Everything else she could accuse me of, but she didn’t have the right to use Nathan.
I looked at her, looked hard at her, with my own hurt and anger as my weapons. She hurt me, so she would be hurt. It was as simple as that. There were boundaries that weren’t to be crossed.
And if they were, all bets were off.
**
“Domino?”
“Yes, Sean?” I looked up from my magazine, guiding my features to a mask of calmness delicately, away from the memories that I somehow couldn’t keep at bay right now.
“Is that the same magazine you’ve been reading for two hours now?” The tone was teasing, but oddly reproachful. Familiar, when it came to Sean.
I looked down, realizing it was an issue of Cosmopolitan. And I was still stuck on page 12. I had the grace to blush. “Sorry, Sean. I’ve been...distracted.”
He looked at me seriously, now. “What’s wrong, Beatrice?”
It was all about names, as always. Why didn’t Sean using that pseudonym bother me as any of my other ones? Maybe because it was Sean and maybe because of Milo.
Maybe that was the reason why it was so fucking hard, *her* calling me Rebecca. I didn’t choose that name. She just picked it out of the farthest corner of my mind. And it wasn’t the name, it was the person who called me by that.
Some things were too hard to fully comprehend. I was better off not thinking those to death.
“Domino.”
I looked up, realizing I had zoned out again, to find Sean hovering above me, looking even more worried than before. I managed a weak smile. “Sorry.”
“Lass, tell me what’s wrong.” I could have laughed at the tone in his voice, that determined, concerned, authoritative, underlined with steel, all around ‘Sean’ tone of his. I didn’t, though, because I wouldn’t have been able to stop. Hysterical wasn’t a good thing right now, that I knew.
He wasn’t just asking me, he was telling me to come clean. Anyone else and I would’ve bitten their heads off, but Sean... With him, it wasn’t so easy.
“Cassidy, I’m not fine, but I’m not going to go nuts here either.” I took his hand in mine. “I appreciate this, but I can take care of myself.”
He didn’t quite believe me, but he didn’t press the issue. He let it go, for now. I wish it was that simple to me, too, but old habits die hard...
**
“What are you doing?” she asked, voice as normal as hers ever was, icy.
“What does it look like, Frost? I’m packing.”
I saw her take a step back and lean on the wall. Anyone else would have called her posture confident, but I knew better. She had learned that pose from me, as I had learned that icy stare from her. You picked up your lov— companion’s habits without noticing as time went by.
I continued my work in silence, with her eyes following my every move. I wasn’t sure if it was because she’d miss me and she didn’t want to lose sight of me until I was gone, or to make sure I wouldn’t take anything of hers, by mistake or otherwise.
“All done.” I zipped up the last bag and looked at her, waiting for her to say, to do...something, anything.
She was deep in thought, God only knows what went on in her head, and I coughed. Puzzled, she focused her eyes on me, obviously embarrassed I had caught her unprepared. “What happened? We were happy once.” Her voice sounded so small, I almost deserted the thought of leaving her.
“We were never happy, it was just the illusion of having someone that kept us interested in this.”
Her smoldering eyes bored into mine, sending shivers down my spine. She didn’t scare me, she never did, but I was scared for her, sometimes.
She was still so young. So beautiful and dangerous. She’d do well in the world, I knew. She’d rise to a position of great power and wealth in the Hellfire club. She’d be something, someone great one day.
If she could learn to keep her demons at bay. Then she’d be fine. If she had learned all the steps to our dance, she’d be fine. If she learned to separate her own habits from her mind games.
As long as she played those games, she’d be safe. She’d be safe and she’d be fine, with no monsters under the bed, no demons looking over her shoulder. Without love, without feeling, without getting hurt. Without pain.
“I’m losing you.” There was some actual feeling in that. Some actual pain. Like when you had to give up a favorite possession. A puppet with strings.
_For good,_ was added there in secret. In secret and in plain sight. Not in words, but in her touch.
“You’ve already lost me. Worse, you never had me.” God, saying this hurt more than anything, more than the pain of letting her go, more than the pain of seeing Cable shooting Hammer, more than condemning Nathan for his sins. More than _anything_.
She turned away from me, eyes glistening with unshed tears she must have thought I hadn’t noticed. The ice queen almost cried. For me.
For me. The woman who prided herself of her lack of emotions had almost shed tears. The woman who was incapable of love, the woman who I thought had lost the capability to feel a long time ago. Maybe I had been wrong about this.
I bit my lip till it bled. I wouldn’t have second thoughts about this. I wouldn’t. _She’s better off this way. Really she is,_ I thought, shielding as well as I could. Hiding my thoughts and the feelings I wouldn’t admit to anyone I had, somewhere in a dark corner, somewhere where there never was light.
Because we had to keep some things like they were. And to go by the rule Emma taught me firsthand; hurt them before they hurt you.
Just one more habit I picked up over the years.
**
“Thank you for coming, Domino.” Sean hugged me, gently, and then looked at me with questions in his eyes. He knew I wouldn’t tell, but he had to ask. And he couldn’t ask out loud, because he cared and he knew I might tell him if he said the words. It could very well break me, saying things I knew wanted to be spoken out loud of. And as much as he wanted to know, he knew the knowledge wouldn’t be worth that much.
He knew and I knew. We all knew and we all kept on playing the same games, the dance of secrets and lies and betrayal. And of love.
I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, Cassidy. Tell the Snow Bit—”
He stopped me with a look. The look. The ‘this is still a school and you can’t swear here, because I’m the headmaster and I say so’ –look. With a twist of ‘she’s not that bad and you know it’ thrown in for good measure.
Grinning, I rephrased. (I swear, if it had been anyone else...) “Tell the *Frosty* bitch I said thanks. On second thought, don’t.” With that, I walked out, refusing to leave the last word to him. Bantering and fighting over the last word, this was one more of our precious habits.
We were all creatures of habit. We lived our lives according to certain patterns and rhythms. We could try something different but inevitably, at least in some cases, we never changed habits. And we never learned from our mistakes.
At least I didn’t. My liaison with Emma was something I got accustomed to over the years, this dance of ours, entwining us in its rhythm. We never truly escaped from it, no matter how hard we tried and how far we ran. It always came back to that one thing that always got us together and always kept us apart.
Habits.
~fin