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

Note: This is the sequel to "No Light, No Sound"


For Love Betrayed
by Magik

A man stands overlooking a bluff. The wind whips his long blond hair
around and a melancholy look stains his face. A strange star tattoo is
drawn around his left eye and, in the light, it seems to glow yellow.
His blue eyes focus dead ahead, taking in the world around him as though
it is the first time he has ever seen it.

The man sighs and walks away from the bluff, pulling his black leather
jacket tighter around him. A white star, echoing the one on his face,
is stitched on the right side of his jacket. White gloves cover his six
fingered hands and he wears black leather pants and boots.

"I miss Alison," he whispers into the wind.

Alison. He remembers Alison. The way the light would hang on her eyes
like tears and the soft murmur of her voice at three in the morning. He
recalls that sometimes she would stop, and peek around the corner at
him, a sad, whimsical smile playing this way and that across her face.

However, he also remembers other things about his wife, this man on the
hill.
He can see her running, blasting lasers this way and that, fighting for
her life, fighting for his, for their child's. And, when he closes his
eyes at night, he can hear Alison screaming as they drag her and lock
her in a small, black box with no light and no sound.

When he stops thinking, he can feel her dying. He can feel her death
in his heart, in his soul, the same way he felt the child's.

The child. His child. His son.

The man slams his fist into a boulder and feels the tears trickling
down his face as the blood pours from the wound.

The child, screaming, yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!"

His hands ball into fists and clench and open, clench and open before
he allows himself to scream, allows the tears to flow openly for her,
for the child, and for himself.

It is some time before he picks himself off the ground and stares back
out over the bluff. He can feel the wind brush against his cheeks and
blow his hair back. The wind feels like her caress and it sounds like
her laughter, soft and warm.

But the eagle crying above his head sounds more like her screams of
pain, of fear, of sorrow.

When he closes his eyes, he can hear her again, see her again.

Alison. One shock of her honey blond hair hangs into her blue eyes but
she doesn't care, she keeps running. Her feet hit the ground in some
sort of rhythm, not strange when he considers her. Every few seconds,
she blasts a laser out behind her, attempting to stop the army chasing
her, trying to stall them. She isn't succeeding.

There's a rock in her path, a rather nasty large stone, and she doesn't
see it, and she doesn't see it, and she doesn't see it. Then she has
tripped. Rolling again and again over the hard ground, trying to stop,
wanting to stop. But it's too late. They've caught up with her.

Her eyes are pitiful, defeated, when she looks up at them. They fill
with tears when they see him bound and gagged. From their own accord,
her lips whisper, "Longshot." They scream, "Longshot," and then the
eyes cry and the moisture slips down her dirt-covered cheeks and wets
the ground.

Nevertheless, she screams the loudest when they put her into the box.
No sound, no light and she's screaming. She's screaming.

Longshot gazes at the view before him, running water, tall mountains,
green, green trees. He sees what's before him but he doesn't want to.
The only place he wants to be is where there's no sound, no light. And
the only thing he wants to touch is his wife's soft face and hold her
hand and cry and know and feel once again.

But he can't.

`Two steps forward and you can't step back,' that was the devil's
promise.

The devil wore hair of long, spun silver and her eyes were gleaming
cold. She had six muscular arms and lots of magic tricks. The devil
said, "I can save your son and all it'll cost is freedom." But the
devil didn't say whose and Longshot never questioned.

He just assumed. He hoped he knew, hoped it was him. Thought that
Alison would have the baby back and he'd be trapped in a cell.

Never, never did he imagine that the devil would want Alison. Never,
never did he think that the child would be saved only to be tossed into
a future full of only war to battle with his father's tattoo and his
mother's hair and the name of Shatterstar.

As he steps away from the edge of the cliff, Longshot knows that it
wasn't his fault, not entirely anyway. It was for love that he betrayed
her. And it is for love now that he searches, searches for her
salvation.

"I miss Alison," he says again. "I love Alison. I will save my love."
Then he climbs onto his motorcycle and rides away, away into the coming
night where a child is crying and there is no sound, no light. There is
only hope and love and the echoing laugh of a devil, a laugh that
whispers, "Traitor".