She thinks about it sometimes, even now. The soft glide of his lips over the skin of her forehead. The desperation in his voice as his hand strokes her cheek. She wishes she could remember it from her own point of view.

It's strange, knowing how your own skin feels beneath your lips, but it's all she has of touch now.

She thinks of David -- his lips pressed to hers, gentle and sweet -- before the horror began. That memory is hers alone, she thinks, until she realizes she can also see it refracted through his vague memories.

Her mother's kisses, her father's hugs -- all have faded into a hazy blur of long ago, like the ink on the last letter she received, smeared from tears falling on it. The tears of her mother's apologies, which she has yet to accept.

All her other memories of touch are theirs. Logan's. Erik's.

The salt taste of sweat on her tongue as it trickles down the valley between his lover's breasts. The copper taste of blood as he bites her and then laves her wound, her rough velvet tongue rubbing against his desperately.

The sour taste of bile tinged with metal -- a taste that never leaves the back of his throat, even as his lover tries to ease his pain. The feel of his bald head, smooth beneath his hands -- he lost his hair young, and Erik wouldn't have him any other way.

She forgets sometimes, that she is not Logan, not Erik, when she calls these memories up. She speaks in German, Japanese -- angry words she knows the meaning of, but only if she doesn't think too hard. By trying to hold the thoughts, she loses them, like grains of sand trickling through her bare hands at the beach.

She smells the fear -- another gift he gave her, one that has lingered far longer than the healing -- when she moves too close to the others, especially the newer students.

Some have grown accustomed. They touch her covered arms or legs, and, for the more adventurous, her hair. Her hair is amazing, they tell her; she craves their bare fingers sliding through it, the closest she will ever come to the familiar sensation of touch they have never even thought about.

She contemplates the feel of leather on her body. She touches herself with bare hands usually, but sometimes she likes to pretend her hands are his, and she knows he would wear leather gloves to touch her. She rarely lets herself think of a day when he could touch her without gloves. She's too pragmatic now to indulge in such unattainable fantasies. And on her bad days, she silently thanks Erik for that. Her life is painful enough without setting herself up for even more disappointment.

She would think it's impossible that he wants to touch her at all -- gloves or no -- except that she's seen into his thoughts, and his thoughts about her include things that make her heart race and her breath ragged. It's possible he doesn't even know he has those thoughts; it's possible he has those thoughts about every woman he meets. She prefers to believe the former; the latter brings with it too much pain.

The pain of rejection. Something she has in common with all of them here. They've accepted her cheerfully, and if she sometimes hates the space they leave between themselves and her, she accepts that there are risks some people are not willing to take.

She contemplates the personal bubble in which she is enclosed. Very few wish to enter, and she's weeded out the ones she wouldn't let touch her, even if they could. Those left -- Scott, Storm, Jean, the Professor, Kitty, Jubes -- are all she imagines she needs on the bright days, when she reminds herself that this is home now, this is her family, this is her life.

She reluctantly lets Bobby in -- she knows it's not his fault, and she's learned to be comfortable with him now, but she sees his face in her nightmares, and passes him silently in the halls for days after. He refuses to hear her apologies anymore; he sits, a lonely sentinel outside her door as she shrieks in the night, knowing that the others will help, while his presence will only upset her more. He's given up his hopes of romance with her. A year has convinced him that they're better off as friends.

She loves the glide of wind or water on her skin. They leave her alone now, when she escapes at night into the gardens during the rain. She leaves her clothes behind, stripping as she goes, and no one disturbs her. She suspects that Storm enjoys the rain, also; she never knows that the weather goddess gives her the gift of rain so that she can remember the sensation of something touching her bare skin without fear.

She's in the garden now, stripped down to her bra and panties. Soaked, she spins like a child, arms out, face uplifted to the starless skies, her tears mingled with the rain coursing down her face, indistinguishable. She believes the sky cries for her when she's feeling fanciful, and Erik lets her think it. He has some compassion, after all.

And then she stops. She senses it -- him -- before she even hears a sound or catches his scent.

She smiles, beckoning him the last few feet home to her embrace.

He moves quickly, closing the space between them with eager steps, his hands enclosed in leather, as she's always imagined, his hair plastered to his head, and his eyes intense upon her.

She's aware, as never before, of her body. Not her skin, but her body -- the fullness of her breasts and the heat between her thighs. For him, only for him. She senses that he knows this as he crushes her to him, enveloping her in his arms without fear. He kisses her hair and inhales her scent, freshened by the rain in the warm summer night, and she knows.

The space between what she dreams and what she has is gone. He fills it, and she is content.

End