Rating G- does contain angst, so be warned.

Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me, they belong to Marvel. But since I’m not making a profit out of this, I’m hoping they don’t mind. The title is taken from the song of the same name by Ben Folds Five.

Feedback: Rossi@subreality.com I’m not going to beg- either you’ll feedback or not.

A short, very bleak piece set sometime in the future of Gen X, one in which Jono and Paige got it together.

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I used to believe that love, true love, could conquer all.

It was there in front of me, all the time. Movies, songs, TV- even the stories my momma used to tell us when we were small. "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "Snow White". I’d look at Cyclops and Phoenix and think, ‘Yes, that’s how it is. You find true love and you can survive anything, even death’.

It’s all a lie.

I should have known he wasn’t right for me, that I wasn’t right for him. That we’d pull each other down into this mire we find ourselves in. But when you’re seventeen and in love for the first time, you don’t think of things like that. You don’t think at all. You _feel_, and that’s all that matters.

Jono drew me because he was nothing like the good old boys back home, with their rough farmers’ hands and pick-up trucks and lack of sophistication. Jono was dark and brooding and played beautiful music and came from England. In my more deluded moments I thought of him as my Heathcliff, wild and untamed, needing the love of a good woman to put him straight. And for a while, I did. He called me his ‘Sunshine’, played his music for me, and when he looked at me I felt like the Queen of his world.

He finds it hard to look at me now.

Depression is an insidious thing. It creeps up on you, day by day, until everything looks black. Jono’s view of the world was always pretty bleak- losing half your face is not what you’d call a ‘life-affirming experience’- but I thought our love would overcome that, that I could drag him out of the pit of despair and lead him into the light. And on his good days, when he laughed in my head and joked with Angelo and felt he could do something with what was left of his life, I thought that was what I was doing. I thought I could save him. It’s what heroes do, isn’t it?

Instead, it turned out the other way round. Instead of bringing him into the light, I found him dragging me down into his darkness. He came to rely on me, need me, and that was all right too, since I’ve always been needed. Momma needed me to help with the young ‘uns. The team need me to be their leader. As a kid, every time I found some animal hurt, I’d have to drag it home and try to fix it, burying them in the backyard when they died. But then I found I was bound, couldn’t leave, even if I wanted to. I grew afraid of what he would do without me- he would say he wouldn’t know what he would do if I wasn’t there for him. The bad days got more and more frequent, until I grew afraid of waking, because I didn’t know whether he’d be sullen and cranky, or angry and weeping. The medication seemed to help at first, but as time went by, it worked less and less well.

And the worst of it was I couldn’t blame him, couldn’t be angry, no matter how much I wanted to sometimes. When he gave up, sat in his basement like the Phantom of the Opera, I wanted to shake him, shout at him, tell him that he was only making it worse, closing the circle in upon himself. But I couldn’t, because it wasn’t his fault. Depression is an illness, not an attitude, and with Jono’s life he was well-entitled to it. Ms Frost told me when he was first diagnosed that she would have been more surprised if he _hadn’t_ been depressed. She had tried to warn me it wouldn’t be easy, being with him, but she didn’t try very hard. I think she preferred to sacrifice my happiness rather than lose another student.

Sometimes it feels I’ve lost everything. My career. My chance at having a family. Momma’s stopped asking me when I’ll give her grandkids. She tried to tell me once to think over what my relationship was doing to me. I got angry, didn’t speak to her for the longest time. It felt like betrayal. Even now, when Jubes or Monet ask me why don’t I end it, I tell them I still love him, and that I’ll stand by my commitment. Because that’s what I was raised to do. Keep my promises. Honour my word. I won’t throw our lives together away, not unless he asks me to.

He does love me, as much as he is able when the black moods are on him. He tells me so, cries on my shoulder and tells me he’s sorry for failing me. And I cry too, because my heart is breaking seeing him helpless, when I know there is strength in him. I tell myself things will get better, one day the cloud will lift, because if I don’t, I will have to admit that I’ve wasted my life.

I’m going to stop this now. File it away in my heart along with my dreams of "Paige Guthrie, X-Man". Wash the tears from my face, hope they don’t show. Put on my smile and go out there, be his Sunshine. Pick up the burden again.

Because it’s all I can do.

The End.