Radio static in my head, mixing with the static in my brain to form scattered clips of words and phrases of existence. The whole nightmare of my world has been warped into some kind of broken-down television, the picture distorted and skewed by bad reception. There is only one channel. One show. One choice. Murder a man, live another day. Betray your lover, save your life. We specialize in all lies, all the time. Even if I had the guts to look, I can't find the remote. Someone else has been  holding it a long time. Someone without a face or a name or a soul.

Oh, sure, they tell me I'm so young and so pretty, but if any of them ever saw the view behind my eyes....well, let's just say I doubt they'd stick to their story. Everything is old. Tired. I've seen too much for sanity. I've watched it all blend and blur until life is nothing more than one endless cycle of black and white re-runs. Color was the first thing to die. Right before hope. Now my world is a monochrome of thick black, shadow gray, and the kind of harsh, ugly white that blinds rather than heals.

/We're all born blind and we live blind. The really lucky ones die that way-- blissful and ignorant. I could never have that ignorance....none of us could....so who could blame us for the choices we made? The end was chosen ahead of us by the same men who dictate what makes a human being human. We just walked different paths to reach the  destination./

And I suppose I could point out now that he was the one in the straps, under the knives, and I was one on the other side of the restraints, watching it all unfold without so much as a scratch. I would mention it, but right now I'm not sure which of us ended up with the better deal. At least he believes in his freedom enough to fight for it. Enough to bleed for it. I haven't believed in anyone or anything for a long time. Not since I woke up surrounded by men with cold eyes and colder hands who gave me one choice-- play by our rules or break under them. I had to
say yes. It might seem ironic now, but I can't stand the thought of pain.

He almost made me believe, almost. He came the closest of anyone. Of all the men I've seduced, all the men I've betrayed....he hit me in soft spots I didn't know I had.

I mean, how was I to know what I was getting into? They handed me a simple manilla folder containing everything about him from his claws and his healing powers to his cigar fetish. It wasn't an easy assignment-- I didn't get those. I had to steal the heart-- and the trust-- of a tough, paranoid man with metal bones who bashed skulls in for a living. I had to love him. To make him love me.

And, in the end, sell his body back to the monsters for thirty pieces of silver.

I never expected him to be so sincere. So fragile, underneath the tough exterior, frightened to let anyone remotely close. I think I was  an exception. He felt something for me he didn't feel with any of the other women he took home. He needed me. He needed something to protect, something to save so he could claim just one piece of humanity. No, it wasn't roses and flowers and wine. It took me nearly losing my life and him nearly losing his trying to bring me back before he realized what he was feeling. But then he loved me, with all the meaning of the word he knew at the time. The very first time I kissed a man and drained his mind out through his lips, I swore that I'd never make it personal. That I'd never fall for a target. Leave it to a guy with a name like Wolverine to break all the rules.

To say I love him is a lie. I don't. I can't love; it's not in me. Love requires disturbing amounts of humanity, which in this business is about as helpful as a mild case of Ebola. All in all, I'd take the virus. At least the men I work for have a cure for *that*. Although they have a cure for  humanity too....a slow, painful acid that eats away your soul and your conscience.

If I could have loved a man, it would be him. Something about him cried out for help, for someone to guide him through his demons and into the dawn. It drew me to him in spite of myself. Something about him amazed me. He was everything I could have been but never will be. He would not compromise. I sold out at the first nudge of a gun to my  head. He told me he would die for me. I never even broke a sweat defending his honor. Only selling it.

I will go to my grave cursing that, as I curse hell and the other demons around me. That grave is closer now than it ever was; I can even smell the sulfur leaking from under the headstone. My time is up. The reckoning is due. And here I stand, hands empty and dripping blood.

Any moment now, the men I used to work for so loyally will be here to put a bullet in my head. If I'm lucky, that is. If I'm not, I'll end up a ravaged animal in human form, stuck on the same testing tables I sent him too. Or even worse, one of my superiors will "save my life" with another of their arsenic offers. I know just what he'd demand in return. The same thing they always demanded whenever they needed something to take their mind of the job.

/They always told me they liked me best. I took advantage of that to the fullest extent possible. I had money. I had power. I had safety. All three things are gone now. As dead as I will be. /

Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. This time, though, I get to choose what kind of sword it will be. It won't be the one I've lived by. It will not be theirs. This is for me, and no one else. If my life was never my own, then at least my death will be. If it was never pure, at least my final act was.

I couldn't leave him there. I couldn't let them recreate his nightmares. So I sent his location to a group of my fellow mutants-- they calls themselves X-men -- who share his ability to believe in something. They believe in big
things like saving the world and peace with mankind and, if you ask me, they're all going to end up disillusioned or dead before they're fifty. But  that's not my problem. I only hope they will get there in time to save what is left of him from us. No...from *them*. I am no longer the mistress or the killer or the slave.

I am a woman about to die. And that is all I want to be, anymore.

Why did I do it?

I told you I would have loved him. Now how could I let them slive his skin and hurt his beautiful mind and do *nothing*? I don't know if they'll be gracious enough to tell him where his deliverance came from, or if he'll
live on thinking of me as the harlot, the traitor. I couldn't care less either way. I saved him because I knew I could not save myself. One of us had to survive. One of use had to give Fate the finger and then go one our way.

It's better him than me anyway. As I said, he loves to live. He loves every moment of it, wants to taste it and feel it and hold it close in his  bones. He wants color, light, sound. Maybe he'll find that kind of life with another woman who is nothing like me. Maybe he'll have children not from my body and comfort not from my arms and a graceful old age while I slip into oblivion unwept and unremembered.

I suppose tomorrow's children will know.
I, however, will not be around to find out.

The pill is slightly bitter as I grind it into the finest poweder between my teeth. I run my tongue over the poisioned fairy dust, waiting-- no, *longing*-- for it to speed my into never-never land. This isn't the cheap
crack I carried in my purse for short trips away from myself. It is forever. No turning back. No regrets. No tears to shed....

Then why are the corners of my eyes suddenly wet? And why is that same moisture now trickling down my face, a solitary river in a dry and barren desert? The colorless world is beginning to smear like a ruined painting, grays and whites and blackes blurring around me. I see nothing else. The last coherent sound is the slamming of a familiar car door outside. It will be a black sedan, with bogus government plates and bogus government workers. Real guns. But this time, boys, you're too late...

Hahaha.....too late too late too late too late....

Oh. No.Too late! I don't want to die like this! Like...this...I want to live... like I did....go back...kiss him....kiss without red lipstick.....no scheming how to use his love to knife him in the back....

Too late...I want...too late....I don't....I love....too late...

Radio silence in my head, no more bad reception because the picture is fading and for once I can switch the television

Off.

Ouch, that was a bit...cough....dark, but you seem to have come through unharmed. Blame it on the challenge. Really. It's too much fun for it's own good. I'll try to come up with a more Logan-Rogue friendly version of this tomorrow.

thanX for reading
darkstar