Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel Comics and are being used for non-profit entertainment only. The story belongs to me.

This is an answer to Alara's Breakup Challenge.

Her hand slapped him across the face, making one of those loud kwap sounds that hurts just to her it. "Bastard!" she screamed at him, her blue eyes dancing with fire.

"What is wrong with you?!" he demanded as he jumped off the couch and walked over to her. He stood so close, his chest pressing against his, the force of him trying to push her back into a corner, but she wasn't moving. They'd played this game before and he had always found it hard to overpower her although she wasn't much bigger than him. Her willpower seemed to give her the strength necessary to stand, unmoving, in front of him.

"Damn you, you know!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, one hand raking through the short hair. He was right there, they were eye to eye, head to head. She could kill him right now if she wanted to. He'd be dead before he knew what was happening. God, it was tempting.

His face set into a tight, angry expression and he had to keep himself from wrapping his fingers around her wrist and *making* her tell him. "What is it?" he ground out, barely able to contain his rage.

She finally drew away from him, going to stand on the other side of the room. "Oh, you'd like to know, wouldn't you. Then you could just deny it. Bastard!"

"Wake up, girl! I have nothing to hide."

She threw the letter at him and asked, "Then what the hell is this?"

Roberto held the white envelope in his fingers, staring at the return address. It was from Illyana. It couldn't be from Illyana. "What kind of joke are you playing, Tabitha?" he inquired.

"I'm not," she insisted. "That came in the mail. I thought that bitch was dead!"

The dark figure of Roberto DaCosta flew across the room, slamming his lover into the wall. "Never call her a bitch," he commanded.

"Get *off* me," Tabitha cried, not wanting to give him the satisfaction but too startled to keep the fear from her voice.

Roberto backed off, walking away from her slowly, his hands in his mass of curly hair. The letter lay between them, symbolic of Illyana, who had parted them for a time. He had told Tabitha about the demon sorceress, the eternal beauty with the eyes like ice and the smile that was both chilling and wonderful. One day, he had gone on for hours about how much he wanted to see Illyana safe, alive, free from the demon taint and in love with him.

Tabitha had felt betrayed by his confession because what was in the past, was the past. She didn't care who he *had* loved or who he *had* screwed. All she cared about what that he was with her now. The realization that he still loved Illyana had come like a slap in the face. He loved this dead demon more than her. And didn't she resemble the girl in some aspects, in too many aspects. For months they had skated around the issue, had strayed from each other, only to come back together in the end because, she thought they were in love.

They weren't in love. They had never been. She was just his next fling, his next replacement for his love dead and buried.

"I can't believe you did this to me," she said after the long silence.

He was sitting on the bed again, letter in his dark fingers, twirling there in the light that filtered through the window. "It wasn't intentionally," he breathed but even as he said it, he knew that it had been. In the right light, in some keyways, Tabitha was so much like Illyana that it had scared him. They had both been battered but had risen above it, they both had things too dark in their pasts to face, they had both gone over the edge. They were both blond and blue eyed. All his loves had been blond.

"Lying bastard," she muttered as she starting digging her clothes out of the closet in handfuls.

"Leaving, Tabitha?"

"Damn straight. I can't take this, Bobby. I can't take playing second to *her*, the dead girl."

Roberto just nodded as he watched his former lover throw her clothes out the door. She turned to examine his face for just a moment before walking out herself. The letter still lingered between his fingers. He opened it.

Dear Roberto,

Hiya Bobby. Bet ya didn't think you be seeing me again, huh? Yeah I've been getting the "but you're dead" rap from everybody.

Look, I'm not sure where we stand but...I do know that I'd like to make this thing between us work. I know you felt it. I know I feel it. Maybe we should play it up and see what happens.

I'm at Muir right now. I doubt Moira's gonna let me out of her sight anytime soon. I'll explain everything later. Just get your adorable ass over here.

Love,

Illyana.

Somehow, his fingers managed to carefully fold the letter and put it in his jeans pocket when he got off the bad. For a minute his gaze lingered on the picture of Tabitha and him, smiling, happy. Back when he was still pretending, back before he realized. Then he opened the window, changed into Sunspot and flew away towards his past, his future, his destiny.