Sabretooth and Birdy belong to Marvel, the rest are mine.

Comment and constructive criticism welcome.

It had been nearly three years. Creed stood in front of his house in Vancouver, the gate tightly locked up and the alarm armed. It took him several minutes to remember his security code after all the mind-fucks he had been through with the X-Men and then again with X-Factor.

The security system buzzed annoyingly at him as his first attempt at disarming it failed. Creed rearranged some numbers and smiled briefly as the gates slowly whirred to life, permitting him entrance.

The grounds were overrun with dead leaves and tall, dead grass. The gate's walls had been spray painted and it seemed that a few of his windows were broken where rocks had been pitched through. At least the ones that weren't shot down by his security system. It was outdated now anyway.

His front door was unlocked and he entered into the dark. The light switches still worked, his electricity bill was still being paid, probably an automatic withdrawal from some bank account set up by Birdy at some point.

Birdy.

A fine layer of dust had settled on everything, including a newspaper clipping laid out on the entrance table, waiting for him. It had yellowed sitting out in front of the entrance windows for so long. He shook it and blew the dust away to find her faded blue eyes staring at him from an obituary. They had printed it in colour. He had never seen Birdy the way she appeared in the photo. She seemed...happy.

He put the paper down again and for the sake of hearing something, called out for his wife. He heard the despair in his own voice echo through the empty hallways. A nest of birds raised protest from the top of a shelf in the den at the disturbance. He tried again, this time louder, bellowing at the top of his lungs.

He hadn't been this truly alone since escaping Weapon X decades ago, lost in the wilderness in the dead of an ungodly winter, half out of his mind in confusion and trying to figure out who he was and why he was covered in blood. After weeks Emma had found him. She had been bundled up like an abominable snowman and following reports of slaughtered, half-eaten animals across the prairies. He was naked and cold and screaming up into the sky like a lunatic.

All of her energy had been spent in the last few days of trudging through the snow on no more than beef jerky, so when she had finally found him in such a state, she fell back into the snow and laughed. She laughed until she cried. She cried until she was wailing his name for him to come to her because she could no longer move from where she had fallen. Obediently he approached her and curled around her, deep in the snow, and for the first time in what seemed like his whole existence, he cried too.

Since then he had never been alone. Not like this. Birdy had always been around, if not Emma. Or if they were gone, or he on business, there was always the certainty that someone would return to keep him company. Such a solitary man and yet never alone. The last two years he had been continuously flanked by one hero or another. He hadn't even been able to take a shit alone.

He wasn't sure what he had expected, if Birdy had found out about Graydon, chances were very likely she had told Emma in some form or another. Not only another affair, but a full grown son out of his infidelity, something she had not been able to give him. A feat that he constantly reminded her was a failing of hers as a wife and as a woman. The only reason it hadn't happened sooner, he supposed, was that the women he slept with tended to end up dead once he was done with their bodies.

Emma had been different to him, but why hadn't he treated her as such? Unable to alleviate the pain growing in his chest, he slumped on to the stairs and let out the wail of a wounded animal. The birds replied angrily.