Title: Falls the Shadow
Author:
SionnainCharacter/Pairing: Nathaniel Essex (Mr. Sinister)/Faye Livingstone.
Rating: Teen.
Warnings: Some unpleasant imagery.
Summary: When things end, they do so in silence.
AN: Canonically, Mr. Sinister had a brief affair in the 30's with a radio comedian named Faye Livingstone (she knew him as Nathan Essex, not Nathaniel, hence the use of that name). He fell in love with her, though he never admitted it. He kept her captive and performed experiments upon her, since he'd discovered she would have children that would carry the mutant X-Gene. One night, Sinister let her go by throwing the door open in a storm and not speaking a word to her. She never married, never had any children, and she died of old age and cancer while sharing a telepathic dance in Essex's arm. He visited her in the nursing home once a year, still maintaining she meant nothing to him until the end.
I find this pairing very intriguing. The story is sad and dark and a little horrible. Just my kind of thing :-)
The title/quote is from T.S. Elliot.
The AN's are longer than the ficlet. Hee.
Falls the Shadow
This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.--T.S. Elliot
It's storming outside.
"Why are you doing this?" Faye's voice is cracked and ravaged by pain. She's sobbing, but Sinister is used to her tears. "Nathan..."
That is not my name, he says in his mind. He's not speaking. Sinister has not spoken to her in weeks. He has nothing to say.
She continues trying, though. Every day. Right now, she is begging. Her eyes used to be beautiful. Pools of blue, framed by lashes so fair they looked almost white. Her hair is white-blonde shot with gold. It used to be healthy and vibrant and smelled like cigarette smoke and spicy perfume. Now, it is lank and limp and hangs in her face. A face streaked by dirt and tears. She was beautiful, once. She is not beautiful now.
The door to his home is heavy. He throws it open without a word, and outside, he can see the rain. It falls in sheets, vertical and relentless. The sky trembles on the edge of full-dark, and the color is the last heavy gasp of blue before blackness swallows the heavens.
"Nathan," she breathes again. She puts her hand on his chest. "Please." Her voice is honey-smoke roughened by tears, broken. Like her. "Don't do this."
He has dragged her to the foyer of his home. Thrown the door open, letting the storm inside, and he is waiting. Waiting by the door. Waiting for her to leave. He does not look down at her hand, pale and trembling, resting against his black shirt.
He would tell her to leave. But he doesn't have to. She has to understand what this means. He has not allowed her out of the lab in weeks, now. Even when he was weak, even when he succumbed to the temptation of her sweet flesh, he locked the door after him when he left. Sinister knows the hand pressed against his chest. He knows the feel of her nails raking his back, desperate and wanting.
The rain is coming in the house, pooling on the floor. It makes the hardwood sparkle like there are diamonds trapped within the water.
"I know you're not a monster," she says, and for a moment, he wonders what will happen if she doesn't leave. If he will slam the door, and take her against the wall, slim hips cradled in his hands. Her back against the door, her wide eyes drowsy and half-shut. She is nothing. She has to go. He has no further use for her.
A telepathic suggestion is all it takes. Sinister slides into her mind with brutal precision. He knows where to go. He knows her, inside and outside and everywhere in between. Faye leaves him with a sob, and she runs outside, into the rain. She slides on the grass, falling in a sodden heap on his lawn.
Sinister closes the door. He stands by the window, hands clasped behind his back, and watches her disappear down the road.
* * *
"I know why you made me leave," she says to him, the last time he ever sees her. Her body is broken and ravaged by sickness. Her voice still sounds the same to him, though life is fading fast from her and time has made her old.
He makes her think they are dancing, instead of sitting together on the bed in her little room. Her hand is on his chest, resting light against where his heart beats. He still has one, a physical organ which pumps blood, though he does not need it to live.
"Do you, now," he says, his hand on her waist in their shared telepathic dreamscape. She is light, a negligible weight in his arms. He twirls her as easy as air. Of course, they are not really dancing. All that is between them is air.
She nods, and touches her hand to his face. "I loved you. You knew it."
"Yes." Sinister dances her into a turn, intricate and practiced. The music is getting louder. She does not have long now. "Of course I knew."
She smiles her old smile at him. Before he broke her with pain and humiliation and the constant horror of experiment after degrading experiment. The one she used to smile at him at a party, from across the room. Smoking thin cigarettes from a long cigarette holder the color of her dress. Red. A scarlet so deep, it matches the shine of his eyes. "One day. One day you'll know. Goodbye, Nathan."
"Nathaniel. That is my name. Nathaniel." He stares down at her, into the quiet peacefulness of her face as the light leaves her eyes.
She dies with a long, slow breath. He has seen people die before. They all make the same noise, a rattling gasp. Faye is no different.
He tells himself that for years. He has an eternity to live. Maybe there will come a point where he will believe it.