Post by deadpool on Jul 24, 2006 14:51:10 GMT -5
As Wade lay next to the blue skinned mutant, huddled within a small dome of snow, near a miniscule artificial fire, he considered the past day and a half. He’d made her give her word that she’d not try to kill him if they used one another to stay alive. He made no such suggestion for the files, for if she really was working for someone else, there would be other rules in play there. Wilson knew that not everyone was good on their word, but he knew that at least 10% of people tried to live up to it. That gave him a slightly better chance of surviving until the two could leap onto the next oncoming train – assuming they lived that long.
Leni Zauber… who are you really? You can shape-shift, yet you chose to walk in this blue skin. Is it no warmer to be a big furry guy? You’re naked in the snow. Is that spite?
His questions have been unanswered of course. It wasn’t like she had said anything more than a few basic necessities in the past 36 hours. A yes, a no, a ‘your digging it wrong’. Very concise, very to the point. Not that he was expecting a lot of friendly banter, or to make a new friend out of his foe, but talking was always Wade’s way of filling the void. Wade, though a loner normally, didn’t much like the void.
Mystique had been saved by a scant few circumstances in her favor. She was cold beyond belief, but her mutant nature gave her a certain resilience even in the snows of Siberia. She wouldn't last as long as Wade however, enhanced physicality or no. So it was Wade that was keeping her alive, her lithe blue body curled tightly against his.
He'd been intelligent enough not to take advantage of the situation, and it had given her time to think. She had not been able to get the files, as he kept them under his clothes day and night. As the cold dug its way beneath her skin, she lifted her head.
Her gold eyes were dull as they looked up at him.
"I am going to die first, Wade Wilson." There was fear in her voice, the faint mist of her breath seeming to tremble as it left her lips. He knew that fear, the one all clandestine agents of something larger than themselves carried within them. To die without anyone knowing the truth of their soul, to die wearing someone else's face, someone else's name.
It was the first really emotional thing he’d ever heard out of Leni, and if what she was saying was true, it could easily be the last. Wade frowned. He was such a chauvinist at heart: He just plain didn’t like to see a woman suffer.
Wade rubbed her skin with his hands, taking off his gloves and doing it with his skin. He did so to warm her, using the friction to do the best he could.
“If you go I won’t be far behind you, so make sure to hold the door open in hell for me… but we’re not dead yet, Leni.” His teeth chattered a little, but he was a man of control, and it was barely noticeable. “If you want to check out as Leni Zauber, be my guest… but if you want to die with your real name on your lips, you can tell me your story.”
* * *
The next few days, Wade and Raven kept one another awake and alive by telling their stories. He learned about her life, falling for and eventually losing Irene, marrying the Count, leaving her child behind to allow him a chance to survive. Her work for the governments of germany and russian, her deep desire to see mutants freed of prejudice.
Though he had no tale as tragic as her own, he told his none-the-less. The story of a young boy raised from infancy into the world of the martial arts, of how his family owned a dangerous school for the times, one who taught Ninjitsu (albeit, and eclectic, Americanized version) to anyone who wanted to learn. He was raised with specific values, and as an over-achiever. His eventual move into the military, a natural progression for his love of danger and his willingness to excel. A fairly clean-cut career, but his eventual move into Black-Ops, where he found his real calling and passion. It was very simple, it lacked a certain amount of sadness, save for Wade’s occasional longing for someone to remember him. He’d become a true ghost, even among those who work in the field. Even using his real name didn’t bother him, because few would ever hear it, or even know he was there.
* * *
"Wade," she called him from the shelter a number of days later. "The fire's about to go out. Hurry!"
They'd managed to survive much longer than the other had anticipated, after they learned to work together they'd almost struck up a strange sort of friendship. Rather than be stubborn just to spite him, she'd shifted back into Leni's visage so that the poor man didn't have to figure out where to put his eyes. She had begun to like him.
Wade sprinted back to the small hole, sliding in with something similar to grace – what was left in limbs that didn’t want to work properly any more. He quickly drew a pile of roots from his jacket, dug up from the snowy ground near the mountain side. They were damp, but with luck they’d burn.
He laid them on the fire, and worked it back to life. With a sigh, he sat down the rest of his make-shift supplies and leaned against the interior of their shelter.
The Leni form was gorgeous, but Wade had come to admire the other, which is probably why she changed it. Maybe she thought he was nervous as he cast glances her way in that form, when instead his likelihood of death had simply removed some of his inhibitions. Maybe she knew that too.
Once they’d begun to exchange stories, he had no other option but to warm up to the incredible, and old, mutant. Her life was one of tragedy and triumph, and her spirit seemed indomitable. She was passionate, wholly, desperately passionate about her cause. He figured being born blue would do that.
“So… I think we may just live another day.” He said, holding his jacket open for her to take her usual spot against him, but beneath it. “Will wonders never cease.”
She crawled up near him and nudged a root to get it back onto the fire, shivering against him. Lifting her face, she kissed just behind his ear.
"Thank you." Her arm slipped along his chest, holding him closer to her.
Wade raised his eyebrows, but wasn’t taken off guard. He could feel the tension between the two building since the stories came. It was one thing to genuinely respect a fellow agent, someone buried deep like the both of them had been, but it was another to try and deny the most fundamental of human (or mutant, he supposed) emotions and longings. He didn’t write it off as an inevitability, but it came close.
Wade put a finger under her chin, and brought her lips to his. Not an inevitability, no, but certainly a very pleasing thing to do. He held her that way for a moment, savoring what could very likely have been his last kiss in this life.
It was a strange thing, to be made love to as ice and snow threatened to kill you. The heat between their bodies nearly froze where they didn't touch, but Mystique found herself ignoring it.
* * *
It had been a week since they had been thrown from the train, and not so much as a freight car had passed. They'd found just enough to eat to survive, though both were thinner than they had been a week ago. Much of their time then was spent telling stories, recalling everything they could remember about anything, just to stay awake, to keep their hearts beating. Many times their hearts raced as they found any excuse to warm up again.
To Wade, it was the most he’d felt alive in a long time, and it was like an addiction. He’d been out of touch with humanity for a long time. Sure, he’d had sex a few times in the past few years, but always as someone else. Never as himself, never with someone who knew anything real about him. It was invigorating…
Besides that, he was genuinely falling for her. He often found himself wanting to stay alive, to make it out of the frozen waste simply to see where the future would take the two of them. He assumed it was simple delirium talking, however, but deep inside, hope was creeping into his well guarded heart.
* * *
Mystique woke first, eyes opening in the pitch black of the shelter.
"Wade."
The rumble, the sound of metal wheels screeching against rails.
"WADE!"
She scrambled up, jerking him out of his sleep. "The train!" She ran out of the shelter.
Wade was up after the second Wade, the cold dulling his senses enough that the first didn’t do the trick – or the train, for that matter. He drug himself up, aching and with little energy, and ran out of the hole towards the train.
“RUN!” He couldn’t help but keep the relieved joy out of his voice as he sprinted towards the approaching train. “Holy shit, I can’t believe we’ve lasted this long!”
Wade did his best to match speed with the train, knowing he’ll need to time it just right if he ever planned on surviving the jump back on. He kept his eyes on Raven, ready to carry her if he needed to, if she didn’t have the strength.
Mystique had been carefully saving herself for this moment. With the last of her strength, she ran quickly, and as the train began to pass them, she leapt, grabbing ahold of the railing and clinging to the platform.
As she turned to look at him, Wade saw the files tucked under her arm. He barely had time to see the other arm come around, his own gun pointed at him.
Her golden eyes disappeared behind a puff of smoke as she pulled the trigger.
Wade’s world had fallen out from beneath him. If his shock hadn’t stumbled him, the bullet probably would’ve killed him. Instead it caught him in the arm, spiraling him off to one side.
He laid in the snow for minutes, staring up at the fluttering snowfall, steam rising from his shallow breath and from the hot blood that dripped into the snow from his arm.
He ignored the disappearing sound of the train, now a vague rumble in the distance. He ignored the searing pain of hot lead lodged in the meat of his arm. He ignored the fact that he was very likely going to die now, here, abandoned in the waste.
He’d let himself open too much. He let himself believe in the simple too much. He stopped thinking three steps ahead.
Mostly, he let himself think that she could love him.
Wade Wilson hadn’t cried since boyhood, and never since that first day he picked up his martial art. He wasn’t going to start now. He found the strength to drag himself up, barely able to stand, and stumbled back to the small shelter he had built with Raven.
Leni Zauber… who are you really? You can shape-shift, yet you chose to walk in this blue skin. Is it no warmer to be a big furry guy? You’re naked in the snow. Is that spite?
His questions have been unanswered of course. It wasn’t like she had said anything more than a few basic necessities in the past 36 hours. A yes, a no, a ‘your digging it wrong’. Very concise, very to the point. Not that he was expecting a lot of friendly banter, or to make a new friend out of his foe, but talking was always Wade’s way of filling the void. Wade, though a loner normally, didn’t much like the void.
Mystique had been saved by a scant few circumstances in her favor. She was cold beyond belief, but her mutant nature gave her a certain resilience even in the snows of Siberia. She wouldn't last as long as Wade however, enhanced physicality or no. So it was Wade that was keeping her alive, her lithe blue body curled tightly against his.
He'd been intelligent enough not to take advantage of the situation, and it had given her time to think. She had not been able to get the files, as he kept them under his clothes day and night. As the cold dug its way beneath her skin, she lifted her head.
Her gold eyes were dull as they looked up at him.
"I am going to die first, Wade Wilson." There was fear in her voice, the faint mist of her breath seeming to tremble as it left her lips. He knew that fear, the one all clandestine agents of something larger than themselves carried within them. To die without anyone knowing the truth of their soul, to die wearing someone else's face, someone else's name.
It was the first really emotional thing he’d ever heard out of Leni, and if what she was saying was true, it could easily be the last. Wade frowned. He was such a chauvinist at heart: He just plain didn’t like to see a woman suffer.
Wade rubbed her skin with his hands, taking off his gloves and doing it with his skin. He did so to warm her, using the friction to do the best he could.
“If you go I won’t be far behind you, so make sure to hold the door open in hell for me… but we’re not dead yet, Leni.” His teeth chattered a little, but he was a man of control, and it was barely noticeable. “If you want to check out as Leni Zauber, be my guest… but if you want to die with your real name on your lips, you can tell me your story.”
* * *
The next few days, Wade and Raven kept one another awake and alive by telling their stories. He learned about her life, falling for and eventually losing Irene, marrying the Count, leaving her child behind to allow him a chance to survive. Her work for the governments of germany and russian, her deep desire to see mutants freed of prejudice.
Though he had no tale as tragic as her own, he told his none-the-less. The story of a young boy raised from infancy into the world of the martial arts, of how his family owned a dangerous school for the times, one who taught Ninjitsu (albeit, and eclectic, Americanized version) to anyone who wanted to learn. He was raised with specific values, and as an over-achiever. His eventual move into the military, a natural progression for his love of danger and his willingness to excel. A fairly clean-cut career, but his eventual move into Black-Ops, where he found his real calling and passion. It was very simple, it lacked a certain amount of sadness, save for Wade’s occasional longing for someone to remember him. He’d become a true ghost, even among those who work in the field. Even using his real name didn’t bother him, because few would ever hear it, or even know he was there.
* * *
"Wade," she called him from the shelter a number of days later. "The fire's about to go out. Hurry!"
They'd managed to survive much longer than the other had anticipated, after they learned to work together they'd almost struck up a strange sort of friendship. Rather than be stubborn just to spite him, she'd shifted back into Leni's visage so that the poor man didn't have to figure out where to put his eyes. She had begun to like him.
Wade sprinted back to the small hole, sliding in with something similar to grace – what was left in limbs that didn’t want to work properly any more. He quickly drew a pile of roots from his jacket, dug up from the snowy ground near the mountain side. They were damp, but with luck they’d burn.
He laid them on the fire, and worked it back to life. With a sigh, he sat down the rest of his make-shift supplies and leaned against the interior of their shelter.
The Leni form was gorgeous, but Wade had come to admire the other, which is probably why she changed it. Maybe she thought he was nervous as he cast glances her way in that form, when instead his likelihood of death had simply removed some of his inhibitions. Maybe she knew that too.
Once they’d begun to exchange stories, he had no other option but to warm up to the incredible, and old, mutant. Her life was one of tragedy and triumph, and her spirit seemed indomitable. She was passionate, wholly, desperately passionate about her cause. He figured being born blue would do that.
“So… I think we may just live another day.” He said, holding his jacket open for her to take her usual spot against him, but beneath it. “Will wonders never cease.”
She crawled up near him and nudged a root to get it back onto the fire, shivering against him. Lifting her face, she kissed just behind his ear.
"Thank you." Her arm slipped along his chest, holding him closer to her.
Wade raised his eyebrows, but wasn’t taken off guard. He could feel the tension between the two building since the stories came. It was one thing to genuinely respect a fellow agent, someone buried deep like the both of them had been, but it was another to try and deny the most fundamental of human (or mutant, he supposed) emotions and longings. He didn’t write it off as an inevitability, but it came close.
Wade put a finger under her chin, and brought her lips to his. Not an inevitability, no, but certainly a very pleasing thing to do. He held her that way for a moment, savoring what could very likely have been his last kiss in this life.
It was a strange thing, to be made love to as ice and snow threatened to kill you. The heat between their bodies nearly froze where they didn't touch, but Mystique found herself ignoring it.
* * *
It had been a week since they had been thrown from the train, and not so much as a freight car had passed. They'd found just enough to eat to survive, though both were thinner than they had been a week ago. Much of their time then was spent telling stories, recalling everything they could remember about anything, just to stay awake, to keep their hearts beating. Many times their hearts raced as they found any excuse to warm up again.
To Wade, it was the most he’d felt alive in a long time, and it was like an addiction. He’d been out of touch with humanity for a long time. Sure, he’d had sex a few times in the past few years, but always as someone else. Never as himself, never with someone who knew anything real about him. It was invigorating…
Besides that, he was genuinely falling for her. He often found himself wanting to stay alive, to make it out of the frozen waste simply to see where the future would take the two of them. He assumed it was simple delirium talking, however, but deep inside, hope was creeping into his well guarded heart.
* * *
Mystique woke first, eyes opening in the pitch black of the shelter.
"Wade."
The rumble, the sound of metal wheels screeching against rails.
"WADE!"
She scrambled up, jerking him out of his sleep. "The train!" She ran out of the shelter.
Wade was up after the second Wade, the cold dulling his senses enough that the first didn’t do the trick – or the train, for that matter. He drug himself up, aching and with little energy, and ran out of the hole towards the train.
“RUN!” He couldn’t help but keep the relieved joy out of his voice as he sprinted towards the approaching train. “Holy shit, I can’t believe we’ve lasted this long!”
Wade did his best to match speed with the train, knowing he’ll need to time it just right if he ever planned on surviving the jump back on. He kept his eyes on Raven, ready to carry her if he needed to, if she didn’t have the strength.
Mystique had been carefully saving herself for this moment. With the last of her strength, she ran quickly, and as the train began to pass them, she leapt, grabbing ahold of the railing and clinging to the platform.
As she turned to look at him, Wade saw the files tucked under her arm. He barely had time to see the other arm come around, his own gun pointed at him.
Her golden eyes disappeared behind a puff of smoke as she pulled the trigger.
Wade’s world had fallen out from beneath him. If his shock hadn’t stumbled him, the bullet probably would’ve killed him. Instead it caught him in the arm, spiraling him off to one side.
He laid in the snow for minutes, staring up at the fluttering snowfall, steam rising from his shallow breath and from the hot blood that dripped into the snow from his arm.
He ignored the disappearing sound of the train, now a vague rumble in the distance. He ignored the searing pain of hot lead lodged in the meat of his arm. He ignored the fact that he was very likely going to die now, here, abandoned in the waste.
He’d let himself open too much. He let himself believe in the simple too much. He stopped thinking three steps ahead.
Mostly, he let himself think that she could love him.
Wade Wilson hadn’t cried since boyhood, and never since that first day he picked up his martial art. He wasn’t going to start now. He found the strength to drag himself up, barely able to stand, and stumbled back to the small shelter he had built with Raven.