It's dangerous being Senator Kelly.

It's not just the walk, the voice, the thousand secrets he must have had with his wife that she doesn't know (or maybe not; he wasn't very deep). Mystique is the best at what she does. It's listening to Sharon Kelly complain and wanting to backhand her into a wall; sliding into bed next to her at night and wanting to tear her clothes and force her down into the mattress, hand over her mouth so she can't scream.

She won't. Sometimes she's even gentle; Sharon hands her the milk at breakfast and Mystique smiles, so deep into the role that it's only later that she realizes the strands of gray among the black in her hair remind her of Erik when they met.

In the night, lying awake under the cotton sheets with the irritating whir of the ceiling fan, she wishes for Erik's impersonal power or Victor's blindness to consequences. She can't really bring herself to strangle the woman with her bare hands, just for sleeping in her own bed.

But if this goes on--if she can't find Erik, if Erik's dead, if they're all dead--she thinks she'll make Sharon pay for lying next to her where better men should be.

She can't leave everything at the lair.

She has to assume Erik's told them where it is. She doesn't want to think that he'd sell their secrets for a glimpse of daylight or a few hours sleep, but she can't take the chance. He's taught her not to trust in providence.

She's rented an apartment under a random name, picked a bland face to go with it. She's got her computer and a suitcase of Erik's clothes in the car. Nestled in them is Erik's spare helmet, the designs for the machine, some odd bits of wiring and machinery he swore were important but wouldn't explain.

There's a box sitting beside her in the front seat filled with photographs, souvenirs of past vacations, a few of Erik's well-worn paperbacks, her winter gloves--everything she'd hate to lose. She pulls up in the parking lot and sits for a long time looking at the stairs.

There are twenty-one steps up to the apartment. She knows this by the time she's gotten to the door with the suitcase. In with the suitcase. Down the stairs again.

The box isn't that heavy. She only brought a few books, the ones that she knows losing would make the lines on Erik's face harden. Twenty-one steps up. Set it down on the bar and she won't have to bend down. Down the stairs again.

Halfway up the steps with the computer she breaks out in a sweat, but she won't drop it. If he were stabbing her again right now, she wouldn't drop it. She makes it up the stairs and sets it down on the bar and leans against the wall, her hand pressed flat against her stomach.

In the bathroom she pulls her shirt up. There's blood soaking through the bandages. She hasn't got anything to dress the wound with here. She'll have to go back to the car, get gauze and tape out of the first-aid kit, come back up, change the bandages, bag the blood-soaked ones to dispose of somewhere far away, scour away any traces of blood from the sink and run the water for ten minutes.

She walks out into the bedroom and lies down on the beige carpet, curled on her other side so that any blood that soaks through her shirt won't leave a stain. It's hot in the apartment. The air conditioner hasn't been running. She should turn it on. The heat won't be good for her computer, or for Erik's books.

She's still grateful for what she could save.

She has to admit it was a terribly long winter.

Erik was absorbed in his work, spending nights out working on the machine, sometimes coming to bed near dawn, taciturn and tired, mostly not coming to bed at all. She consoled herself with Victor, but he stopped making even his usual amount of sense the moment he smelled Logan, and walked around growling and punching the walls. Then Erik ran into Xavier, and suddenly every plan had a good reason to involve fighting the X-Men.

Mystique wonders if she just has a weakness for obsessive men.

Even Toad seemed infected by the mood, sitting up all night watching apocalyptic movies and laughing when things blew up. Stainless steel dishes piled up on stainless steel counters in the stainless steel kitchen. The walls started to rust. There were pigeon feathers on the floor.

She's always hated the times when she's felt like she was the only sane one.

Now Senator Kelly sprawls on a park bench, knees apart, jacket off, feeding the pigeons. They mill around trustingly and stuff themselves with bread. The bench is warm under Mystique's back. She leaves her briefcase closed.

Her calendar is full for the afternoon, and she'll have to get up soon enough or she'll be late for her one o'clock. But for the moment, she thinks she's entitled.

Lately she's always hungry.

She's used to training like an athlete and eating enough to fuel her restless energy. But Kelly eats cereal and toast for breakfast, light lunches with his staff, sensible dinners that won't raise his cholesterol. Even keeping his slow pace she's hungry out of habit, looking longingly at steak and potatoes on the lunch menu and ordering ham on rye.

She has a tight schedule, but some of the meetings aren't real. She slips off her leash and out of Kelly's body to become a plain, muscular girl with a gym bag. Into the health club and into tank top and shorts. An hour with the weights, an hour of running, not at her top pace--she doesn't dare--but enough to satisfy her body's appetite for movement.

She strips efficiently in the locker room and showers, dries her hair, steps behind a bank of lockers and out again in a sharp black dress. Out of the club, into the restaurant across the street. She orders salad, pasta with cream sauce, bread dripping with garlic butter, chocolate torte, coffee with cream. Proof that there's nothing she's starving for she can't have.

She sips the coffee and licks the chocolate off her fingers, although Erik's not there to smile.

She doesn't think of it as sex.

Kelly has to make love to his wife often enough to avoid her suspecting he's having an affair, or sending him off to get Viagra. In her better moods, Mystique sees it as an acting challenge. She takes her cues carefully, alert for any hint of disapproval or, worse, pleasant surprise. She can't afford to be better than Kelly, and it's not as if that would be be hard.

In her worse ones, she knows it's selling her body, if for the best possible cause. She can say no tonight but not forever, and can she really afford to say no tonight, even though she's tired and on edge and in no mood to have those soft unwanted hands all over her. Even as one part of her mind calculates the risk of pushing the hands away, she's rolling over dutifully, her hand sliding down Sharon's hip. She lowers her mouth to where peach satin lies against Sharon's throat and tells herself for Erik, for Erik, for Erik.

It leaves her sweaty and restless and hating the feel of her own skin against the sheets. She slips out of bed late at night and locks herself in the bathroom, peeling off Kelly's cotton pajamas to crumple in a heap on the floor. Stretched out in the bathtub she shifts back to blue skin and scales, tilting her head back against the hard plastic, closing her eyes, one hand circling her nipple, cupping her own breast, sliding down.

She won't think of Erik. A flash of memory, the taste of his mouth, his hand on the small of her back, the feel of his hair brushing against her thighs--she can't help that, like the phantom taste of food when you're hungry. But she won't conjure his memory, too much like admitting he's a ghost.

She thinks, instead, about the pretty red-haired girl in the coffee shop this morning and the sliver of pale breast that showed when she bent over the counter. Or Kelly's nervous new aide with his five o'clock shadow and his strong-boned hands clutching reports. If she were trying to wreck Kelly's career, she's start by fucking the man, bent over the desk in Kelly's office with his tailored slacks around his ankles.

Her scales ripple, her body starting to shift to match her thought. She schools it to behave, hands moving restlessly over the familiar contrast of skin and scales. It's not enough. She holds onto the hard plastic as if she can brace herself against memory and imagines Victor's hands on her thighs, holding her knees apart, his claws digging into her scales.

He was rarely gentle, but that was a small enough price to pay for not having to be gentle herself. She presses her own knees wide against the plastic of the tub hard enough to hurt and uses her fingers roughly. Her hands spread on his back, his hair falling on her shoulders, the little half-laugh, half-growl he made when he entered her. Too rushed to really satisfy her needs, but there'd been a moment when she'd had her hands twined in the hair at the back of his neck and his mouth pressed over the pulse that beat in her neck, teeth pricking the skin, that had been just transcendent.

She's chosen the memory carefully; good enough to bring her shivering closer and closer to the edge, and not good enough to make the fact that it'll probably never happen again unbearable. She presses her thumb down hard and rubs against her hand, drawing it out as long as she can, a ragged breath the only sound she'll allow herself to make.

She curls up in a corner of the tub, knees to her chest, chin on her knees, feeling tired and aching and foolish. Eventually she gets up, straight-backed and steady on her feet, and lets Kelly's flesh crawl over her own. She puts back on his cotton pajamas, and smoothes his straw-colored hair.

At least she feels more like herself.

Someone is seeing Erik today.

Someone is bringing him his breakfast, food she hopes he's eating, tea she's sure he's drinking. Someone is handing him a newspaper and getting a lift of his eyebrow in reply. Someone is watching him open the newspaper as a wall between them, his elegant hands smudging the print.

Someone sits and watches him sleep, surely, because he's not to be trusted. Through cameras or monitors or clear plastic or glass, someone watches the rise and fall of his chest, the way he frowns in his sleep, hands searching across the sheets. Someone watches as he jerks awake out of nightmares, face twisting, and sits up on the side of the bed. Someone watches as he paces until exhaustion drives him back to the bed. Someone watches the way he turns his face into the pillow to shut out the light.

Someone's hands touched him to undress him when he was arrested, taking away the clothes with metal zippers and the shoes with metal eyes. Someone folded those clothes carefully and sealed them in evidence bags. Someone felt the roughness of the wool against her fingertips and held the cool weight of his watch in the palm of her hand.

Someone has been visiting him, or so Amnesty International says, although they won't tell her who or when. She's not sure if that's because they don't want to or because they don't know, or because it was Xavier and anyone who tries to think about the details of his visits becomes persistantly vague.

It's best if it's Xavier. Xavier is sentimental; he'll try to ease the sting of his betrayal with books and music and imported tea. He might care enough to make sure Erik's eating, and to put a hand on his shoulder when he's starving for touch. He might argue with him and make Erik angry enough to distract him from his dull horror of being imprisoned. Anything would help.

She doesn't even know for sure that he's alive. She believes it, because what else can she believe? But she doesn't know.

And maybe she'll never know for sure. She closes her eyes against the image of herself years from now, still searching out of love and duty that have long outlasted hope, while Xavier lays flowers on his grave.

Senator Kelly is good at his job.

He sits in his meetings and listens carefully and makes incisive comments. He chats with congressmen and aides and secretaries in the halls, pouncing on the occasional opening to push his agenda. He takes calls from constituents, and is alternately patient and sympathetic and brisk.

The Mutant Registration Act is voted down on the Senate floor. Too many people want to talk to Kelly that afternoon, and after a round of reporters and angry colleagues and cheerful allies have given him a raging headache Kelly slips out of the building and goes for a walk in the park. The sun is shining.

Mystique pauses, looking at Kelly's hand on the stone railing of the little bridge. She thinks, You don't deserve to go down in history for this. But he will. Life's not always fair.

Senator Kelly is popular, even now. Maybe more so; he's getting respect for having the courage of his convictions, something Erik would never have believed. He could win another term. He's on his way up. There's always someone calling wanting him to do lunch.

She'd have made a good senator. She'd have made a good president. If she'd been born human. If she'd been born him.

She has to admit it presents a certain temptation. She could win friends and influence people. She could live in Kelly's nice house behind pretty iron gates. She could divorce Sharon and find some pretty young thing who likes powerful men. She could run for president. She thinks she might even win.

But she can't really spend the rest of her life being Robert Kelly. Erik needs her, and besides . . . She lets her eyes go yellow and smiles at her reflection in the water.

Kelly's only human.

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