Fic: "diamonds on fire", Rated T. Emma, Logan, comic-verse X-Men
Title: diamonds on fire
Author: Sionnain
Fandom: X-Men (comicverse, Astonishing and New X-Men for backstory)
Characters: Emma Frost, Logan. (Mentions of Scott/Emma, Scott/Jean, Logan/Jean, and Emma/Jean)
Rated: T
Summary: Emma and Logan have a fireside chat, about mythical beings you can see in the flames.
AN: Written for Inlovewithnight's Song Lyric Challenge. Thanks to resolute for the beta and comma-clause clean-up. *G* The song was Jeffrey Foucault's Northbound 35. The song title and the quote are from that song :)
diamonds on fire
You were as much in my hands/As water or darkness or nothing/Can ever be held
There are nights like tonight, when Scott is asleep next to her, his breathing deep and even and quiet, that Emma cannot sleep. So she gets out of bed and puts on her robe, the soft white silk whispering like flowers against her skin, and leaves their bedroom. Her reflection in the mirror is spectral; the white of her nightgown and the pale fall of her hair makes her look like a ghost as she walks down the stairs. It's autumn, outside, and everything is dying in slow, quiet waves. In the morning there will be more leaves on the ground, and the branches of new-barren trees will stretch up like bones towards the sky.
Downstairs in the rec-room there is a fire still lit in the fireplace. Emma can see the muted glow of it in the hallway, even though the warmth has long since faded.
Emma had wanted a gas fireplace, because it was easier to manage and less of a danger, but Scott held out to keep it traditional. The kids liked to sit in front of it, he said, and play cards like a normal family. Scott had never had a normal family, but Emma kept that thought to herself. These things were more important to Scott than they were to her, so she didn't argue. It wasn't like she lit the damn thing, gas or otherwise. Honestly, she never spent time in the rec room with the kids; the movies they watched were pedestrian and the music they liked hurt her ears, and all those raging teenage hormones gave her a terrible headache.
There aren't any kids there now, thankfully. It's empty, only the dying glow of embers in the fireplace throwing shadows on the wall Emma pretends she doesn't see.
You're good at that, a voice whispers, indelible as smoke, singeing like flame. Pretending to ignore the things you wish weren't there.
Emma hears that voice, sometimes, when she's alone in the quiet of her thoughts. Jean's voice, yes, but something more besides. Something ageless and clarion and tinged with fire at the edges of words. Emma moves to her knees and stares into the flames, a slight sneer on her face, daring the fire to rise up and take her.
"You hear it too, huh."
Startled, she looks over her shoulder, surprised to see Logan in the shadows at the edge of the room. "Hear what?" she asks, voice cool. He can't mean what she thinks he does. No one hears that voice, not anymore.
"Uh-huh," Logan says, sounding vaguely amused as he steps into the room. Logan walks like an animal, slinking and predatory, with an undeniable undercurrent of grace running through the movements of his stocky frame. He sprawls on the couch, hands behind his head and legs spread, watching her with narrowed, perceptive eyes. "What are you doing up so late, Frost?"
"What are you doing up so late, Wolverine?" Emma asks, arching a brow, but she doesn't give him the dressing down she might have given someone else for speaking to her in a similar manner. Logan's crassness and lack of manners has never bothered Emma. Oh, she finds the body hair a bit off-putting, but there is something she respects about Logan's acceptance of his own basic nature. It's a trait she appreciates.
"Couldn't sleep," he answers, shrugging. "Stupid that Cyke won't get a gas one. Lot easier." He nods towards the fireplace, obviously changing the subject.
"Yes. I said something similar. You know Scott. He's very fond of tradition."
"Thought maybe he was just fond of fire. Then again. Maybe not. Considering."
"Considering?" Emma drawls, raising a brow. "Considering what, darling? Did you come down here intending to make fire and ice jokes? Because you had to know I was in the room. Super scent powers, and all of that. Or," she asks impishly, "Did you think you smelled Cyclops in here? Hoping for a fight?"
Logan laughs, the sound more like an animal braying than anything. "That'd put me to sleep all right, a fight with Cyke." Emma wonders what it was like for Logan, in her recent psychic attack on the team, to be James Howlett. To be afraid, vulnerable. More human than animal. She wonders if he remembers any of it. He doesn't like her, she doesn't think, but that isn't anything new. He hadn't liked her before, either.
Because of her.
"No, I came in here because I knew it was you. You smell like you, with a hint of Cyke. That man ever bathe?"
"You're a fine one to ask that," Emma retorts, and he laughs again, and maybe he doesn't hate her as much as she thinks.
"I don't like that goddamned fireplace. Kids make a mess. Always thinkin' I'm gonna wake up with this damn place on fire, and it's burned down too many times before. Makes me nervous."
"They make a mess out of everything," Emma says dismissively, looking back at the fire. It's small and mostly banked, now, but there are embers still glowing, trapped within wood. Fire struggling to stay alive, so it can burn and devour and turn to ash. Emma glares at it, as if it's an errant student turning in a late assignment. "This fire should be dead by now."
"Nothing ever stays dead, 'round here."
Emma whips her head around, her glare focused now on Logan. "So you did come in here to make some vague allusions to our dearly departed Miss Grey."
"Mrs. Summers," Logan answers, and Emma lets it go because Logan says the name like he's snarling. "And no. But you're thinkin' about her, ain't ya?"
"No," Emma answers, a shade too quick, and she knows it's pointless because Logan can smell a lie, anyway. That damned skill of his, it drives her crazy. It's like he's the goddamned telepath of the animal kingdom. "I suppose I was, but only for a moment."
"Ain't cause you miss her, I bet."
Emma's mouth twists. "No, I can't say that I do." Missing and wanting aren't the same thing. She won't say that, and she's glad now that Logan isn't a telepath, because that thought is for no one else, not ever and the denial she offers is not a lie. "And is she the reason why you couldn't sleep?" Emma asks defensively, voice faintly derisive.
"Hell, Frost, I got a lot of reasons why I can't sleep. Jeannie's just one of 'em." Logan stands up, stretching. He comes to rest standing next to her, staring at the flames, seeing whatever it was Logan saw when he was pensive. "Read this book once--" he begins, but stops and looks down at her, waiting for her to respond to a question he hasn't asked.
"Yes?"
"Just waitin' for the inevitable joke there, is all," he says, hands in his pockets.
Emma makes a noise, slightly annoyed at his comment. "Logan, I am not so oblivious as to make the common mistake people do about you."
"Which is?"
"That you're stupid," Emma responds bluntly. "Despite your poor hygiene and your unfortunate taste in liquor--" (and women is thought but unsaid) "--I know you're not an idiot." She looks away, back towards the flames.
Logan doesn't argue. She didn't think he would. He has to realize she is right, that she knows something about facades and how easy it is to fool others into thinking you are nothing more than what you choose to show. "Yeah. So I read this book. About how you can see this goddess in the fire. Pele. Hawaiian chick. Gets mad if you steal her rocks. Anyway, you can see her, they say, in every flame. If you look close. I used to see if I could find her. Prolly made me look kind of crazy."
The tiny embers are still glowing a soft pink, and the wood shifts and cracks and falls as the slow heat works its careful magic. "And did you ever see her?"
"Used to think I did, a few times," Logan says, and his voice is low, quiet. "Now, every time I see fire, all I see in it is Jeannie. Her, or Phoenix. Can't so much think about anything else, not anymore."
"Maybe they're the same, Jean and Phoenix. It doesn't seem much of a stretch to me to think that they are," Emma says, standing up. She's thinking about Jean, of course, but Phoenix, too; all burning bright rage, golden wings spread in a night sky. The way Jean's eyes would glaze with white sometimes, the way her nails felt like talons in Emma's skin. She wonders idly if Logan ever felt it, the way Jean's skin would shift and move as if there were things trapped inside; things that were aching and desperate to break free. She wonders if Logan ever kissed Jean and tasted ash and sweet honey beneath, some terrible whisper that said You will burn, oh yes, but you will beg for more while you do echoing like a curse in his mind.
Probably not. Logan loved Jean, just like Scott did, and Emma didn't think Jean would have let it be like that with either of them. The Phoenix loved Emma's fear, drank it like ambrosia, sipped it like wine. What was love to Phoenix, when it could have terror and hate, emotions that burned far brighter than love ever would?
Scott had Jean's love. Logan, he had love, or maybe just lust, but it was something real and something that was Jean, just Jean, and even if it was wrong it didn't matter. Jean loved them and wanted them and it wasn't anything about devouring and guilt and hate, and if the Phoenix drank from it, it drank a sweeter juice. Jean loved Scott and Logan both before the Phoenix ever turned its fire-bright eyes her way, and it stayed that way until the flames took her, until Logan buried his claws deep in Jean's body and let it free at last.
"You never knew her, not like the rest of us," Logan says, and Emma doesn't say anything because Logan is talking at the fire more than her, and Emma doesn't think Logan wants to hear what she has to say about that.
You never knew her like I did, Logan, and you should be very grateful.
"I love him, Logan," Emma says quietly, shaking her head, clearing it of things better left buried. "I know that you all wish it was her, instead of me. But it isn't. And I'm never going to be her." Emma stands up, grabs one of the fireplace tools in a neat set on the hearth. "And I don't want to be."
"We don't want that. Never said we did. Could go without havin' to kill one of Scott's women again. Tough. That sucked. So don't make me have to."
Emma smiles despite herself, hitting at the logs with the poker, jabbing it quick against the embers, over and over. "I'll remember that. But you don't love me. So I don't think it'd be the same thing at all, do you?"
"Well, no." He pauses and when he speaks again his voice is low. Sincere. "But still. I'd kill you. If I had to." Logan's eyes shine in the light of the fire, half-human, half-animal. Emma knows he means it. She's almost touched.
"But I don't think you'd end up looking in the fire and being all maudlin about it," Emma answers with a half-smile, stepping quickly away as the embers danced out of the fire and head towards her pristine white robe. She sidesteps them just in time; the symbolism would only be annoying.
"No. Maybe I'd go look in the freezer, though. Or spend a second thinkin' about you when I was gettin' a beer outta the fridge."
Emma throws her head back and laughs. A real laugh, warm and amused, and something tense inside of her uncoils and relaxes. She thinks she'll be able to go back to sleep, soon. "Thank you, Logan. It's nice to hear that. You do know how to flatter a girl."
Logan grins at her, all incisors and flashing teeth, and shuffles back into the shadows from whence he came. "Night, Frost. Don't catch yourself on fire. You're tryin' to put it out with that poker, but you're just gonna make it bigger, so you're gonna miss that point you're tryin' to make. Thought maybe I should tell ya before you burned that pretty thing you're wearin'."
"Thank you," Emma drawls, replacing the poker back in the metal stand. She knows very well what she's done, but Logan doesn't need to know that. "I'll let you know if I see Pele," she calls after him, and then stares back at the fire, which is indeed becoming brighter as the embers rouse and stir to life. She watches as the flames grow, and she's looking for a woman, maybe, but she doesn't think it's Pele. And she's not sure, in the end, if she wants to see.
--Fin
Author: Sionnain
Fandom: X-Men (comicverse, Astonishing and New X-Men for backstory)
Characters: Emma Frost, Logan. (Mentions of Scott/Emma, Scott/Jean, Logan/Jean, and Emma/Jean)
Rated: T
Summary: Emma and Logan have a fireside chat, about mythical beings you can see in the flames.
AN: Written for Inlovewithnight's Song Lyric Challenge. Thanks to resolute for the beta and comma-clause clean-up. *G* The song was Jeffrey Foucault's Northbound 35. The song title and the quote are from that song :)
diamonds on fire
You were as much in my hands/As water or darkness or nothing/Can ever be held
There are nights like tonight, when Scott is asleep next to her, his breathing deep and even and quiet, that Emma cannot sleep. So she gets out of bed and puts on her robe, the soft white silk whispering like flowers against her skin, and leaves their bedroom. Her reflection in the mirror is spectral; the white of her nightgown and the pale fall of her hair makes her look like a ghost as she walks down the stairs. It's autumn, outside, and everything is dying in slow, quiet waves. In the morning there will be more leaves on the ground, and the branches of new-barren trees will stretch up like bones towards the sky.
Downstairs in the rec-room there is a fire still lit in the fireplace. Emma can see the muted glow of it in the hallway, even though the warmth has long since faded.
Emma had wanted a gas fireplace, because it was easier to manage and less of a danger, but Scott held out to keep it traditional. The kids liked to sit in front of it, he said, and play cards like a normal family. Scott had never had a normal family, but Emma kept that thought to herself. These things were more important to Scott than they were to her, so she didn't argue. It wasn't like she lit the damn thing, gas or otherwise. Honestly, she never spent time in the rec room with the kids; the movies they watched were pedestrian and the music they liked hurt her ears, and all those raging teenage hormones gave her a terrible headache.
There aren't any kids there now, thankfully. It's empty, only the dying glow of embers in the fireplace throwing shadows on the wall Emma pretends she doesn't see.
You're good at that, a voice whispers, indelible as smoke, singeing like flame. Pretending to ignore the things you wish weren't there.
Emma hears that voice, sometimes, when she's alone in the quiet of her thoughts. Jean's voice, yes, but something more besides. Something ageless and clarion and tinged with fire at the edges of words. Emma moves to her knees and stares into the flames, a slight sneer on her face, daring the fire to rise up and take her.
"You hear it too, huh."
Startled, she looks over her shoulder, surprised to see Logan in the shadows at the edge of the room. "Hear what?" she asks, voice cool. He can't mean what she thinks he does. No one hears that voice, not anymore.
"Uh-huh," Logan says, sounding vaguely amused as he steps into the room. Logan walks like an animal, slinking and predatory, with an undeniable undercurrent of grace running through the movements of his stocky frame. He sprawls on the couch, hands behind his head and legs spread, watching her with narrowed, perceptive eyes. "What are you doing up so late, Frost?"
"What are you doing up so late, Wolverine?" Emma asks, arching a brow, but she doesn't give him the dressing down she might have given someone else for speaking to her in a similar manner. Logan's crassness and lack of manners has never bothered Emma. Oh, she finds the body hair a bit off-putting, but there is something she respects about Logan's acceptance of his own basic nature. It's a trait she appreciates.
"Couldn't sleep," he answers, shrugging. "Stupid that Cyke won't get a gas one. Lot easier." He nods towards the fireplace, obviously changing the subject.
"Yes. I said something similar. You know Scott. He's very fond of tradition."
"Thought maybe he was just fond of fire. Then again. Maybe not. Considering."
"Considering?" Emma drawls, raising a brow. "Considering what, darling? Did you come down here intending to make fire and ice jokes? Because you had to know I was in the room. Super scent powers, and all of that. Or," she asks impishly, "Did you think you smelled Cyclops in here? Hoping for a fight?"
Logan laughs, the sound more like an animal braying than anything. "That'd put me to sleep all right, a fight with Cyke." Emma wonders what it was like for Logan, in her recent psychic attack on the team, to be James Howlett. To be afraid, vulnerable. More human than animal. She wonders if he remembers any of it. He doesn't like her, she doesn't think, but that isn't anything new. He hadn't liked her before, either.
Because of her.
"No, I came in here because I knew it was you. You smell like you, with a hint of Cyke. That man ever bathe?"
"You're a fine one to ask that," Emma retorts, and he laughs again, and maybe he doesn't hate her as much as she thinks.
"I don't like that goddamned fireplace. Kids make a mess. Always thinkin' I'm gonna wake up with this damn place on fire, and it's burned down too many times before. Makes me nervous."
"They make a mess out of everything," Emma says dismissively, looking back at the fire. It's small and mostly banked, now, but there are embers still glowing, trapped within wood. Fire struggling to stay alive, so it can burn and devour and turn to ash. Emma glares at it, as if it's an errant student turning in a late assignment. "This fire should be dead by now."
"Nothing ever stays dead, 'round here."
Emma whips her head around, her glare focused now on Logan. "So you did come in here to make some vague allusions to our dearly departed Miss Grey."
"Mrs. Summers," Logan answers, and Emma lets it go because Logan says the name like he's snarling. "And no. But you're thinkin' about her, ain't ya?"
"No," Emma answers, a shade too quick, and she knows it's pointless because Logan can smell a lie, anyway. That damned skill of his, it drives her crazy. It's like he's the goddamned telepath of the animal kingdom. "I suppose I was, but only for a moment."
"Ain't cause you miss her, I bet."
Emma's mouth twists. "No, I can't say that I do." Missing and wanting aren't the same thing. She won't say that, and she's glad now that Logan isn't a telepath, because that thought is for no one else, not ever and the denial she offers is not a lie. "And is she the reason why you couldn't sleep?" Emma asks defensively, voice faintly derisive.
"Hell, Frost, I got a lot of reasons why I can't sleep. Jeannie's just one of 'em." Logan stands up, stretching. He comes to rest standing next to her, staring at the flames, seeing whatever it was Logan saw when he was pensive. "Read this book once--" he begins, but stops and looks down at her, waiting for her to respond to a question he hasn't asked.
"Yes?"
"Just waitin' for the inevitable joke there, is all," he says, hands in his pockets.
Emma makes a noise, slightly annoyed at his comment. "Logan, I am not so oblivious as to make the common mistake people do about you."
"Which is?"
"That you're stupid," Emma responds bluntly. "Despite your poor hygiene and your unfortunate taste in liquor--" (and women is thought but unsaid) "--I know you're not an idiot." She looks away, back towards the flames.
Logan doesn't argue. She didn't think he would. He has to realize she is right, that she knows something about facades and how easy it is to fool others into thinking you are nothing more than what you choose to show. "Yeah. So I read this book. About how you can see this goddess in the fire. Pele. Hawaiian chick. Gets mad if you steal her rocks. Anyway, you can see her, they say, in every flame. If you look close. I used to see if I could find her. Prolly made me look kind of crazy."
The tiny embers are still glowing a soft pink, and the wood shifts and cracks and falls as the slow heat works its careful magic. "And did you ever see her?"
"Used to think I did, a few times," Logan says, and his voice is low, quiet. "Now, every time I see fire, all I see in it is Jeannie. Her, or Phoenix. Can't so much think about anything else, not anymore."
"Maybe they're the same, Jean and Phoenix. It doesn't seem much of a stretch to me to think that they are," Emma says, standing up. She's thinking about Jean, of course, but Phoenix, too; all burning bright rage, golden wings spread in a night sky. The way Jean's eyes would glaze with white sometimes, the way her nails felt like talons in Emma's skin. She wonders idly if Logan ever felt it, the way Jean's skin would shift and move as if there were things trapped inside; things that were aching and desperate to break free. She wonders if Logan ever kissed Jean and tasted ash and sweet honey beneath, some terrible whisper that said You will burn, oh yes, but you will beg for more while you do echoing like a curse in his mind.
Probably not. Logan loved Jean, just like Scott did, and Emma didn't think Jean would have let it be like that with either of them. The Phoenix loved Emma's fear, drank it like ambrosia, sipped it like wine. What was love to Phoenix, when it could have terror and hate, emotions that burned far brighter than love ever would?
Scott had Jean's love. Logan, he had love, or maybe just lust, but it was something real and something that was Jean, just Jean, and even if it was wrong it didn't matter. Jean loved them and wanted them and it wasn't anything about devouring and guilt and hate, and if the Phoenix drank from it, it drank a sweeter juice. Jean loved Scott and Logan both before the Phoenix ever turned its fire-bright eyes her way, and it stayed that way until the flames took her, until Logan buried his claws deep in Jean's body and let it free at last.
"You never knew her, not like the rest of us," Logan says, and Emma doesn't say anything because Logan is talking at the fire more than her, and Emma doesn't think Logan wants to hear what she has to say about that.
You never knew her like I did, Logan, and you should be very grateful.
"I love him, Logan," Emma says quietly, shaking her head, clearing it of things better left buried. "I know that you all wish it was her, instead of me. But it isn't. And I'm never going to be her." Emma stands up, grabs one of the fireplace tools in a neat set on the hearth. "And I don't want to be."
"We don't want that. Never said we did. Could go without havin' to kill one of Scott's women again. Tough. That sucked. So don't make me have to."
Emma smiles despite herself, hitting at the logs with the poker, jabbing it quick against the embers, over and over. "I'll remember that. But you don't love me. So I don't think it'd be the same thing at all, do you?"
"Well, no." He pauses and when he speaks again his voice is low. Sincere. "But still. I'd kill you. If I had to." Logan's eyes shine in the light of the fire, half-human, half-animal. Emma knows he means it. She's almost touched.
"But I don't think you'd end up looking in the fire and being all maudlin about it," Emma answers with a half-smile, stepping quickly away as the embers danced out of the fire and head towards her pristine white robe. She sidesteps them just in time; the symbolism would only be annoying.
"No. Maybe I'd go look in the freezer, though. Or spend a second thinkin' about you when I was gettin' a beer outta the fridge."
Emma throws her head back and laughs. A real laugh, warm and amused, and something tense inside of her uncoils and relaxes. She thinks she'll be able to go back to sleep, soon. "Thank you, Logan. It's nice to hear that. You do know how to flatter a girl."
Logan grins at her, all incisors and flashing teeth, and shuffles back into the shadows from whence he came. "Night, Frost. Don't catch yourself on fire. You're tryin' to put it out with that poker, but you're just gonna make it bigger, so you're gonna miss that point you're tryin' to make. Thought maybe I should tell ya before you burned that pretty thing you're wearin'."
"Thank you," Emma drawls, replacing the poker back in the metal stand. She knows very well what she's done, but Logan doesn't need to know that. "I'll let you know if I see Pele," she calls after him, and then stares back at the fire, which is indeed becoming brighter as the embers rouse and stir to life. She watches as the flames grow, and she's looking for a woman, maybe, but she doesn't think it's Pele. And she's not sure, in the end, if she wants to see.
--Fin