Once upon an innocent day, you discover something horrible about yourself: you can kill with a touch. You run away from your home, your family, everything you ever knew because you know that is what must be done. From the sun and warmth of a Southern state, you travel the loneliest roads North, where it's cold and you are alone.

Money in a jar looks like everything because you have nothing. The bartender hands you another glass of water and removes the jar with a suspicious glare. The bitter man from the steel cage sits a few seats down and you're glad for the distance until you see his head jerk at the news, bothered by the same sound bite that bothers you. Then you know. He is like you, he can kill and he is feared. Two men approach him and say the things that make you understand. A flash of metal makes you scream for him to look out. A new metal presents itself, gleaming and dangerous, from his fists. The suspicious bartender calls him a freak before getting put in his place. Bitter Man leaves and you follow him. Suddenly, he is your beacon, you're only hope.

You huddle next to his motorcycle that provides no warmth. Forward movement stops and you know you've been discovered. He growls at you and you almost hate him again when he tells you to get out of his trailer and leave him alone, he doesn't care where you go. You try to plead and it doesn't work. Watching him go, you're afraid again until the red brake lights tell you that it's okay to join him. You do and he shares food with you. He tries to get you to place your freezing hands on the heater, but you jerk away and tell him about your skin. People get hurt when they touch it. Fair enough he says. You say you're real name and he tells you his. You are bonded.

The truck lurches, crashes, he is thrown into the snow and you hear a snap that breaks your heart because you think that you're only friend in the world is gone. But he gets up and walks toward you, already concerned for you, asking if you're okay. You try not to stare as the wound in his forehead closes before your eyes. Just when you think you're safe again, something attacks him and flings him around in the same way he flung his opponents in the steel cage.

You smell the gas before you see the fire creeping up on you, hissing and spitting like an angry snake. A chill comes as a surprise in the growing heat and you see two newcomers in black suits. The eyes of the woman are kind and you can't see the eyes of the man. Their faces are masks of seriousness, but they help you and help him. Because of this, they are your friends.

The school is new to you. You'd never imagined there were so many people like yourself. Suddenly, you're not so different and you can relax just a little. You see him in the window of the classroom, looking at you and you're not sure if you should smile or look away. You do neither and he does both before he leaves.

You can't sleep because you hear him and his nightmares. Creeping to his room, you wonder if you should just go back to yours. But you don't and you push his door open and see him twisting, moaning, saying no, no, no. Waking him up seems like a good idea but suddenly it's not because he shouts and you scream and those gleaming and dangerous claws are buried in your chest. You can't breath because of the wound and because of the way he's looking at you, like he just killed his lover. The claws retract and you stumble. You realize you don't want to die so you reach your gloveless hand toward him and pray he will forgive you later. Somehow, he hears you through the contact and promises to forgive you if you'll forgive him. You do when you see the kiss he wants to give you.

His body sprawls at your feet and you leave, mumbling apologies to anyone who will listen. The next day, after you hear he's okay, you are relieved until someone tells you that you've violated an unspoken rule that you were never aware of. Explanation has no effect and you find yourself on the run again.

On a train to no particular place, you sit and stare out of the window, ignoring the people around you who can touch. He is the one who comes for you and promises he will take care of you. He says nothing about that kiss that he wanted you to have and you think maybe he didn't know you saw that much. You say nothing and let yourself be comforted. The train lurches and you're ready to go back when it stops and rips open right through the center. A man you've never seen before wants you and your power. You try to escape but an ugly hole opens up in the earth and you fall in.

You beg this new mutant not to do what he wants to do and he ignores your pleas, apologizing for your imminent death but trying to console you with the idea that you will be the means of forcing the world to accept mutants like him. You are the Virgin who will birth a new era, you are Joan of Arc and you are fighting for a man who will burn you alive.

White light surrounds you and you can't see anything but the memories of the man who would have you die to fulfill his desire for acceptance. You realize as you're dying that it's something he's never had.

Only when you feel the flow of his healing energy into you do you know that you will be okay. Your body will. Your mind is filled with a different set of memories now and you're crying because he is lying at your feet once again, bleeding and broken this time, like you've never seen him before.

He recovers and you cry when he leaves, but he promises to come back. He gives you his dog tags and says he will be back for them. You imagine that he really means he will be back for you. You smile a little as you watch him grow smaller and smaller on a "borrowed" motorcycle.

Three years later, he does come back on that same motorcycle, speeding through the gate. Misunderstandings abound and you finally hear what you wanted to hear. He came back for you. He loves you. He cries when he tells you this, in the middle of the night and alone in your room. It's okay that he can't touch your skin because that isn't what matters. You are his and he is yours. You curl up beside him and he wraps his arm around your waist like he will never let go. The next day you ask him to take you somewhere on that motorcycle of his for just a little while and he does.

You spend four years together, loving each other and finding a hundred ways to bypass the poison of your skin. He can make you scream his name with his wonderful hands and you find it amazing that you can do the same for him.

The day you learn control is one of the happiest of your life. Suddenly, the physical aspects of your relationship take on a new significance and you make love like you are both liquid, mixing with each other seamlessly. Every movement of your body every day says I love you to him. He tells you in every way he can think of. He buys you roses on your birthday and wakes you up in the middle of the night for a ride on the motorcycle that frees you as the wind whips your hair around your face. You talk to each other about serious things. He asks you to marry him and you say yes.

You lay in your bed together, hands laced and ringed fingers clinking. You're not ready for children, you both decide. Maybe in a few years.

You have your time together and you never imagine that it will end. When it does, you are suddenly lost. He died for you and your colleagues, for the mission that he made his own, the mission you didn't realize he believed in so fully.

You're alone in the room you shared. The invisible ghosts of him step lightly around you, just like your friends. Remembering all of the things about him that you loved, you try not to cry. Looking at the few pictures of him, you hem the tears in. Smelling him on a sweatshirt you wrap yourself in to keep the cold out, you know it won't be long until you have to feel it. In your lonely bed, you cry and cry. That first night is cruel and you sleep anywhere but there afterwards, dreaming of him. You always wish you could live in your nocturnal fantasies instead of facing the Sun's superficial warmth.

A memorial service offers no sense of closure and you drift for months, years. A friend encourages you to meet new people and you try it, thinking you can. Every relationship you try to have fails miserably because no one is him. The men see the wedding ring that dangles from the chain around your neck, along with the dog tags he gave you so long ago. One night, you remember thinking that you wanted him to mean that he'd come back for you. You realize that that's exactly what he meant. You remember seeing the kiss he wanted to give you when he nearly killed you one night. You never told him you saw that and you wish you had. Another night ends with a damp pillow on some miscellaneous couch in the vast school that you can't leave. If you leave there, you leave the room you shared but don't ever stay in for long and you leave the precious ghosts that dwell in it. You leave the dreams of him that keep him in your head.

You're flailing, looking for something real (like you had) and you can't find it. No one can fill the void because he was the man you didn't even know you could hope for. You cry sometimes for the children you wish you'd had together because then you could see him in their faces. Maybe you would've had a boy with hazel eyes that would've been tender, like his father's.

You still try, though. You tell yourself you're over him--he died four years ago. You'll always love him but you need to move on, for yourself. You let other men touch you and kiss you, always thinking it might work. But no touch ever feels right because it's not his and you can't let a man make love to you.

More time passes and more men pass you by. Your friends worry about you and try to encourage you to move on. But they don't know what's going on in your head. They don't know that he is every broad-shouldered man you see on the street, every denim jacket that's worn and faded, every head of spiky black hair, every pair of greenish-brown eyes. He is every goddamned motorcycle roaring in and out of your life.

*End.*

the end