DISCLAIMER: The characters belong to Marvel, and are used without permission for entertainment purposes only.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Set after the real X-Force 'dies'.

DEDICATION: To Red Monster, to whom I owe feedback, but... well, sillylongstory. :) I hope she'll accept this less-silly short story and forgive me until I get my act together. :)

***

AND THEY SHALL HAVE STARS...
by Alicia McKenzie

***

It shouldn't be such a beautiful day.

There should be hard rain, and an angry wind. It should be cold and gray, not clear and warm with the hint of a breeze and the most glorious sunrise I've seen since the last time I was in Ireland.

The world's got no sense of the appropriate. I'm saying goodbye to my friends today, and the world doesn't want to be the colder, lonelier--uglier place it's become, now that they're gone.

Gone. It's hard to think of them as dead, when there are no bodies, no graves. An empty grave is just a hole. An empty casket is a joke. It was a good thought Jean had, to spare us all that and make it a memorial service, not a funeral. A kind thought.

I still want it to rain.

Pushing the curtains aside, I lean out the open window and take a deep breath of the fresh morning area. If it had been up to me, I'd have spent the night outside. Far too stuffy in the mansion, with all these people, all this tension. I'm no telepath - wouldn't be, not for all the money in the world - but headblind or not, I can feel all the pain beneath the surface in this house.

None of them want to accept it. It isn't supposed to happen to the young, they think. Forgetting how young most of them are, how few years truly separate even the most veteran X-Men from us. From X-Force.

Except there isn't an X-Force anymore. My team, what was left of it, died in that pit. Now there's just the rest of us. The ones that left, to find something or to flee something, or just because there was no other choice. Remnants. Survivors, with new guilt to carry.

Roberto and Julio are tight-lipped. They've moved through the last two days like men determined to get to the end of an unpleasant task. Shatterstar and Caliban just seem confused by all of it. I'm not sure Cal even realizes what's really happened. I don't even know how Nathan found him again.

Nathan is here, but--not. I've never seen his eyes so cold, or so empty. We don't know where Domino is. We know she's alive, but she's not here. And Nathan doesn't seem to care.

I can't reach any of them. There are whole worlds between us, walls I can't breach.

So I've been listening to the others, instead. Unfair, they say. Not right. A waste. I've been hearing the words, the whispers they don't intend me to hear. They forget how sensitive my hearing is. As my da always says, with our power you either hear very well or go deaf. I hear what they say, and what they don't say, and it's so bloody ridiculous, all of it. Words don't matter. Words can't make it right.

I never thought that silence could be such a relief. Closing my eyes, I let the air in my lungs out on a sigh, and try to let the tension in my muscles go with it. I hadn't slept well last night. I'd been dreaming about them, about Sam and Tabitha and Jesse, and--

And Jimmy. Another sigh escapes, and I push myself away from the window, back into the room. My eyes fall on the black dress I laid out last night, and my jaw clenches in anger I can't quite control. Not time yet, I tell myself harshly. I've got a few more hours, a while longer to be myself before I have to take on the role of bereaved teammate and grieving friend.

I wish I could fly away, just take off through that window and get away from all of this, come back when the memorial's done, when all of this is over. But that would be the act of a coward, and that's one thing I won't be. If I have to put on that bloody dress and listen to their platitudes, I'll do it. I'll give them a brave smile and pretend my heart isn't falling into pieces.

I can do that much. Surely, I can.


fin