Title: All Stumbling Words

Paring: Adelle/Topher

Spoilers: Major spoilers for Epitaph 2

Summery: Her lips on his could tell him better than all her stumbling words. ~Margaret Mitchell

AN: Goes alternate cannon during Epitaph 2.

Adelle kissed dead men before. A blur of boys in her youth, leather clad with track marks on their arms and red rimed noses, hurdling themselves towards oblivion they didn't believe in. She marvels that she survived, writhing against death as she did.

Much later, in between slews of healthy men and women, she would seek out the the occasional ex-patient, ones with faulty hearts or sickly marrow, eroding away from the inside out.

She liked the way they kissed, sharp lips edged from desperation.

Her first Rossum job, growing organs when the tech was new, experimental and almost unbelievable, the humans trials rife with the living dead.

She met Harold this way, charming, hansom Harold with the failing liver. He was one on of the first to receive organs grown in petri dishes.

Livers were tricking things, prone to fail. Not like hearts, easy things that beat on through so much.

Roger, who died a dozen times, a ghost of Harold, kissed like tomorrow wasn't promised, and for him it wasn't.

So when Topher kissed her, fingers warm on her arm, she knew what would happen. She could still taste the certainty of his fate as he walked off without looking back.

No time for tears, though they remained behind her eyes, balanced on the razor line of her control. As she herded the dolls to the upper level, Alpha appeared on the stairs without warning, giving Zone a fright he covered with a cock of his pistol. Alpha ignored him, gave her a tight hug and a smile that in the past would have made her skin crawl, now familiar in it's mischief.

"Try not to break my gift," he whispered in her ear, no time to ask what he meant before he disappeared up into the darkness above them.

On the street, she watched as the remaining glass on the top floor shattered. The dolls collapsed around her and her control slipped a little, a few tears escaping before she wiped them away with her sleeve.

There was work to be done, confused people at her feet, starring up at her full of confusion.

Behind her, Zone was soothing his young companion, Caroline wiped clean away. There were questions, so many questions and she answered as many as she could, leading them away from the carnage in front of the building.

They hadn't gotten far when they heard shouting. Zone handed her a pistol as he set his charge down and pulled another gun from his pockets. Far behind, a figure in red stumbled around the twisted scorched ruins.

She pushed Zone's gun arm down. This was the second time in a day she had though him lost and found him again and the hairline fissures in her resolve could no longer handle the stress.

A bruise began to form around his eye, all the story she needed and she thanked Alpha and his twisted noble gestures before she grabbed Topher in her arms and kissed him.

Adelle kissed dead men before, liked edge of desperation on their lips and the taste of the rushing grave on their tongues.

It took until this moment to discover kissing live men was better.