Grey Water

by jenn

Author Notes: Had no clue I had it in me. Zen and Chopin again, Sare. If you feel like it, toss it into continuity with "Every Second Wednesday". Thanks to Shade and Sare for the history, Diebin and Beth for a read-through, and wow, Loganless fic. This is so odd.

Dedication: Shade issued the challenge and beta'ed the results, so thank you very much. I never would have thought of it without it. :)

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He didn't like elevators--confining spaces did odd things to him, probably something repressed from childhood that shouldn't be examined too closely. He didn't make it a point to know himself well enough to figure out the ins and outs of his own head anyway--it was enough he knew there were issues he didn't want to deal with and so didn't feel the need to check unconscious motivation. So the stairs it was, and not so many, not when it was deserted and he could jump to his heart's content. Truth be told, he liked the quiet and peace--there was nothing of that inside himself and he took the moments as they came to him with the simple, unquestioning gratitude of a child.

He remembered, vaguely and without real interest, when they fixed it; he was running a hit for Mystique, oddly angular in her Senator's suit with a glow in her eyes, giving him orders like any other professional lackey. He looked for his Master in her, clinging to her authority with a child's need for stability--no stretch of the imagination could make Sabretooth stand for anything but sheer, brutal force and a mix of rather repulsive habits.

And being called Toad had given him something of a fastidious streak--or maybe it was just mimicry of Eric himself in perfect personal grooming. Even during murder Toad had kept the imperative of neatness and he couldn't remember the last time blood had splashed his jeans before he jumped out of range.

He entered the reconstructed flame expecting darkness, not a blaze of soft light, and he wasn't as on guard as he should have been, that he didn't see it earlier--a girl watching out an opening, a girl who looked at him with raised brows and an unconsciously superior smile.

She recognized him.

That was the first thing he realized, the second thing he was sure of, should've been the third thing he cared about. She watched him with expressive dark eyes that reminded him too much of a man standing still while the world moved. A man who wanted to change too many things too fast.

He was here for the same reason though, without the same motivations--or maybe for the same motivations, who knew? She watched him as if she knew things he didn't, and hell, maybe she did.

"Mortimer." Softly clipped British edges beneath a southern drawl, a voice that might have mumbled Hebrew in his ear, haunting strains of Chopin humming in the back of his mind. Then she turned away, staring down again, into grey-blue water the color of his master's eyes. "Here to gloat?"

Maybe. Maybe not--he wasn't sure. He was impulse personified, and two hours ago he'd been stalking the wharves on a mission for Mystique. Now he was here and if anyone had asked him when the route had changed, he never would have been able to answer. Point A to Point C and fuck the middle.

He could kill her--here and now, for her sake his Master was gone, encased in tight plastic, locked from metal. For her sake they'd almost died, almost ending their struggle. For her sake--

He could kill her. A endless kiss on silky pink child's lips while behind her eyes his Master watched. No. He'd sooner kill himself.

"Brother," she said mockingly, her hand coming up abruptly and he felt the zipper of his jeans, the buttons on his jacket, tremble. "You failed me."

A graceful feminine turn that revealed familiar eyes, and he stepped forward involuntarily, knees weak.

"Master?"

He was starving to death in the slums of York, where all the mutants went to die and left to rot. Fourteen bodies littered in his wake while they hunted him like a rabid dog and he danced out of view to collapse against a dumpster smelling of urine and rotting meat and wait for them to pass him by, imagining their deaths in a hundred messy ways. Three days out of that hellhole they kept him in, four minutes from his next victim. Sewers were better accommodations than where he'd been, he'd swear it to anyone.

{--"I'll protect you, child."--}

A warm cloak, a gentle hand stroking his hair back, eyes impossibly dark, making promises that branded him more deeply than the dirt coating his bruised skin, fragile bones. Kneeling in the collected garbage of rotting tenements, unmindful of expensive wool slacks that whispered softly with every movement, hands cupping his face and meeting his eyes without disgust.

Promising life and hope in a filthy alley.

He'd whispered brother and Toad believed, when Eric killed them with their own guns. Worship was easy and in a motel room he'd been stripped of his ragged clothes with soft, cultured hands and washed free of blood, the scars on his body marked with traveling, understanding eyes. Memorizing the patterns of them across his back, traced with long, graceful fingers that soothed sensitive skin. Dipping to brush his hollow stomach, unconscious sensuality and understanding in every touch.

As if he was treasured, something long lost and now found.

She was staring over the water again, a gloved hand outstretched. Pointing.

"They landed there."

He followed her, breathing in the different scent of her--an echo of familiarity, barely noticeable, like iron or freshly shed blood.

"I knew Xavier, knew he'd send them." She wrapped her arms around her chest, almost swaying.

He stared out over the water, marking the spot of his own fall, the ripe shock and unwilling grin that had spread his mouth when the sky became all white light and pain. The burns were long healed, barely raised fading scars the only reminder. Dark hair brushed his arm, relaxed at his side.

"Master--"

--he'd whispered the first night, running his small, newly-cleaned hands over the silk-covered chest, staring up into eyes that promised him everything in the world. Eric's gentle fingers covering his, so kindly--

He wanted to say yes, this is what I can give you, I can offer you, for their lives, for my life, please Master, let me. Raising his head in a brush of his mouth over a soft pale throat, and it was enough when he was lowered onto the bed, wrapped up in the smell of silk and sweat and metal or spilled blood.

It was safety wrapped in those arms, the only place in the world.

"--I'm sorry I failed you."

Hated failure, hated he hadn't stopped them, hated that somehow, some way, something went wrong. Hate was art, life, he breathed it the same way he breathed air.

"It is not the end, my boy." Gentle, her hands gentle, rubbing the lines of the scars like Eric did, her fingers living other memories. Wrapped close and firm, too small, too delicate. Aristocratically long fingers against his own short ones, winding together, intimate. Stared down into her eyes, knowledge thickening them, changing them, an impulse to kneel and bury his head against her cloak barely restrained, ask her for forgiveness for not being what Eric wanted, for failing, for hating him as much as he loved him.

That room was so long ago and so fresh still in his mind.

Let me do this for you, he wanted to beg, and he was kissed, so gently, he was so afraid of hurting him, of hurting his god, turned his head away and the feel of that warm mouth on the skin of his throat. So gently he raised himself on his knees, the warm press of lips and tongue on his skin, safety, safety, safety--

He knew how to do it, how to touch and it was pleasure, pure pleasure, wrapped in silk and long arms and the feel of the body against him, sliding slowly inside him, pushing back against the warmth and heat, the thrust and he shut his eyes tight.

Eric could never hurt him more badly in any way other than the most subtle, that when he came, the name was of a man he'd never met, never knew.

She looked at him as if she could follow his thoughts and he turned away--Eric could always read him, always knew him, in a way no one else ever could.

"Brother," she murmured and he turned away. "Here to mourn as well?"

"Why are you here?"

She shrugged a little, almost as an answer, but her lips parted.

"A promise, a regret, a little satisfaction that I'm not dead." Flickered eyes up, and no fear, he realized that so suddenly that it really did stagger him, that she didn't fear him at all. With Eric's smile and a toss of her head, she walked by him, toward the door. "Thank you."

"For what?"

She tapped her head, a smile turning up the corner of her mouth, Eric's smile, all ageless wisdom and sudden charm, a smile given in a motel bedroom the next morning in light grey wool slacks and a pristine white silk shirt. A smile as warm as it was impersonal.

All he'd ever be.

"For the memories, sugar."

The End