Pairing: Emma/Shalimar
Rating: PG-13
Status: New (04/24/03); Complete
Archive: Yes to list archives, anyone else please ask first.
Feedback: Yes, please!!
Series/Sequel: Part Two of the Lullaby series...
Other Websites: Crimson Redd
Disclaimers: Still not mine - Mutant X belongs to Tribune, and In Your Eyes belongs to Peter Gabriel...
Summary: "She wakes with a gasp, and I'm only milliseconds behind her, tuned as I am to every little sound and movement she makes."
Notes: The song Shal sings is In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel, off his album So. The lyrics are slightly altered to compensate for only one singer...
This is for Lil, because she fell in love with Lullaby I - Feels Like Fire...
Warnings: Femmeslash - like that's anything new. <lol>
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She wakes with a gasp, and I'm only milliseconds behind her, tuned as I am to every little sound and movement she makes.
No one really understands how scary these moments are, when the nightmares are so bad she can't even scream when she wakes from them. These are the times that I find myself in pure awe of her strength.
I couldn't live like that - my mind filled with everyone else's inner demons plus my own - but she embraces her powers, and makes them a part of herself...
Me, I'd be taking a header off the nearest tall building - but, then, that's always been the big difference between us. She's the strong one, and I'm the wild one that can't keep *anything* from getting to me...
Pushing my thoughts aside, I reach over to wrap her in my arms as I murmur soothing nothings in her ear. She clings to me like a lifeline, even after her tears have stopped.
"You wanna talk about it?"
She shakes her head - she never really does - and simply presses closer to me. "Just hold me..."
"Always, baby."
Several moments later, the silence has gotten almost claustrophobic to me, and I start humming softly to break it. She finally relaxes as I continue, so I start singing, very softly - it's about the only thing that completely calms her at times like this.
I don't even consciously choose the song - it just flows out of me, an unconscious reflection of what I feel for her..
"Love, I get so lost, sometimes...
Days pass, and this emptiness fills my heart...
When I want to run away,
I drive off in my car -
but whichever way I go,
I come back to the place you are..."
Adam says there are certain people who are here to be moral compasses for the rest of us, guiding us when we can't guide ourselves, and if I had to pick any one explanation of what Emma is to me, *that* would be it.
She's my beacon - no matter what's happening, she's there to lead me home, to my family and to myself.
"All my instincts, they return,
and the grand facade so soon will burn...
Without a noise, without my pride,
I reach out from the inside..."
I never thought it was in my nature to trust anyone so completely, but she makes it *so* damned easy. It's second nature now to reach out for her - it doesn't even matter whether it's because I'm upset, or because I just want her there to make that good day perfect, she's just *there* and that's how it's supposed to be.
"In your eyes...
The light, the heat...
In your eyes...
I am complete...
In your eyes...
I see the doorway to a thousand churches -
the resolution of all the fruitless searches...
Oh, I see the light and the heat...
Oh, I want to be that complete...
I want to touch the light, the heat, I see
in your eyes..."
She shifts in my arms to look up at me, and I could lose myself in everything I see behind her eyes. Love, trust, hope - *home* - and a thousand other things I could never name.
"Love, I don't like to see so much pain...
So much wasted, and this moment keeps slipping away...
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival.
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive..."
Brennan and Jesse tease me about my overprotectiveness - and I know it bothers Emma sometimes, too - but they don't understand.
Without her, I have nothing. Hell, without her, I *am* nothing - I need her the way I need to eat and breathe.
"All my instincts, they return,
and the grand facade so soon will burn...
Without a noise, without my pride,
I reach out from the inside..."
She curls up against me, completely relaxed, and the trust implicit in that almost makes my voice falter. She seems so fragile to me, especially at times like this, and, with my strength and my temper, I could hurt her so easily with a careless gesture.
Never once, though, has she looked at me in fear or shied away from me.
"In your eyes...
In your eyes...
In your eyes...
In your eyes..."
Her hand slips up to rest directly over my heart as she lays her head on my chest, and I don't even have to ask why - she likes feeling my heartbeat under her hand and hearing my words vibrate in my chest.
It's a gesture of contentment that lets me know her nightmare is behind her now.
"In your eyes...
The light, the heat...
In your eyes...
I am complete...
In your eyes...
I see the doorway to a thousand churches -
the resolution of all the fruitless searches...
Oh, I see the light and the heat...
Oh, I want to be that complete...
I want to touch the light, the heat, I see
in your eyes..."
When I look down again, I see that those gorgeous blue eyes are closed and she's finally drifted back off to sleep.
Certain that she's sleeping peacefully now, I start to drift back off myself, so quickly that the last few words I sing are little more than drowsy and contented murmurs...
"In your eyes...
In your eyes...
In your eyes..."