Project X [18+] [Fanfiction]

Chapter XXVIII: Borrow Me

  The steady beep of a life support machine was little comfort to me. Every three seconds it would break the silence in the room and remind me that Christian had not died. At least, not yet. The sterile walls of the mansion’s medical bay surrounded me on all sides and the lights had been kept low, better suited for the long vigil I had stationed at my lover’s side.

  Two days. It had been that long since we arrived once again at the mansion, and for two days, Christian had not opened his eyes. He was breathing and his life signs were stable for the moment, but it was the opinion of Beast that his condition would not improve, only deteriorate. No matter what we did, no matter what triage we provided him, he would fall before he had a chance to get better.

  I would lose my lover quicker and easier than I had gained him, and I already knew that the damage to me would be irreparable. The entire time he laid unconscious I remained at his side, still wearing the tattered, bloody clothes that I had worn throughout the fight against The Vixen. The members of the X-Men that tried to push me into resting were met with swift rebuttal, while those that came to pay their respects to Christian or show sympathy to me were merely tolerated. Pixie and Jubilee had been by every few hours or so to bring me meals I did not eat and offer me conversation I did not partake in, and each time they left with a sadder expression on their faces.

  I would tend to their feelings in time, but for the moment the sorrow belonged entirely to me. Christian was laying flat in the medical bed with a respirator strapped to his face and various tubes leading into his body; struggling with every electric beat to keep my lover’s ravaged innards working. Danger was an expected thing being an X-Man, and the mansion was well-equipped to deal with such issues. Still...it had been too little, too late.

  All I could do now was wait, and try to recover when the waiting was over.

  Sleep came to me in fractured minutes; often less than five by the time my head jerked up once more and my senses rejoined me. When I did sleep my mind was plagued with memories; both of the event itself and the long few months that had led to my deep attraction to him. I was aching in a very deep and personal way as I sat by my lover’s side waiting for the final moment, and there were things that fell into my mind that I revisited with a broken heart and a sore resolve.

  He had predicted this moment. Perhaps not the exact same circumstances, and certainly with the thought in mind that it would come much later in our lives, but it had always been known that Christian would not outlive me. Like Logan, I was destined to be either ageless or obscenely close to it, and as a result it was my burden to live past my loves and learn to let go of the heartache.

  Christian had expressed worry for me rather than sympathy when we had discussed it, and his words flooded into my mind as I watched his chest only barely rise and fall in the hospital room.

  "Will you be okay when I’m gone?” He asked, and the words echoed inside of my mind. “I mean...I know eventually you will, given enough time. But I don’t want you to waste a single year because of me.”

  My fists tightened as I remembered his words, and I could feel my slender claws pressing against the inside of my flesh, desperate to flash out and slash apart the room. The audacity of his words had infuriated me at the time. I was angry without a cause or a purpose, simply raging because it was a topic I didn’t want to discuss. And naturally, if I was too immature to even discuss the matter of Christian's passing, I was certainly too immature to actually handle it.

  My eyes narrowed as I glared at him, and then back to the dim lights on the front of the machines keeping him alive. Soon they would fail, and he would be lost, and I would be alone.

  And then…? I had no idea. I would rage, I supposed. It would be an opportunity for me to retreat to the woods and for a few months live like the man whose DNA I had adopted; to carve a brutal life out for myself in solitude and sorrow. Logan had confessed to me that it was never the most pleasing thing to do, but in impossibly long lives like ours, it was sometimes a necessary evil.