Title: "Neither Fire Nor Ice"
Author: Kat Lee
Rating: PG/K+
Summary: He thinks of her as neither fire nor ice.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, names, codenames, places, items, fandoms, titles, and etc. are always © & TM their respective owners, not the author, and are used without permission. Any and all original characters and everything else is © & TM the author and may not be reproduced in any way without the author's express, written permission. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.

He's heard women described as fire and as ice, but the woman who owns his heart is both. He's held her fire when she's raged against him, so intoxicated that she knew not her own words of hatred. He's felt her ice, too, when she's turned against him on the days after both their fights and their passionate trysts on some of her better, and worse, nights.

She's burned him many times, but never froze him. He's sometimes wished he could become as frozen as she has felt before in his arms, and to the rest of the world, he can. Yet never can he be ice or turn a cold shoulder, let alone a cold heart, to her. She's burned him too much perhaps, melted his every defense until he has none left to wield against her. He's putty in her hands, and she takes constantly from him what she needs and leaves him as dry as a land throughout which flames have roared or an ocean that's been turned to ice and shattered.

He has nothing left for any one else for she's taken his best, his worst, and his all. She's taken everything he has. Yet, still, he can not turn from her whenever he sees her. He's lost, enraptured with just the mere thought of her, but he never pictures her with flames or ice. Oh, he often sees the fire in her emerald green eyes that flash often with anger and not nearly frequently enough with mirth. He still shivers when he thinks of how icy she's been to him in the past, when all he's wanted to do is hold her, protect her against the world, and love her.

But what he thinks of most, when he pictures her ravishing beauty in his mind, is not the fire or ice with which she's treated him. No, instead, he sees her with her long, red hair, which is passionate and out of control in its own right enough to be accurately compared to any flame, sprawled out underneath her and above a bed of snow. He sees her laying in that snow, her eyes dancing with what he'd once mistaken as love for him rather than her true love of using him.

He sees her there in the snow, smiling up at him, calling his name in her wonderful, lilting Irish voice, and twinkling so merrily and seemingly innocently. He remembers what it was like to touch her with no ice or hurtful fire between them. He recalls that one night where he made love to her far away from any human or mutant kind, that one night where it was just them for miles and miles around, the one encounter they had where he showed her how much he loved her and didn't have to pay it for the next day, and the mighty Warpath is lost again, always lost in her, always in love with her, and never, sadly, having that love returned.

The End