"Yer know, it's still well 'ard to believe she's bin gone fer five years, now."

A phantom smile drifted across his thin lips. It was an expression as incongruous as the spray of red roses he clutched tight against his leather-encased chest. Watching her lover drop into a reverential bow beside the headstone, the young blonde couldn't help but feel jealous.

"She must have been really special."

The green-eyed monster hung heavy in her every syllable. He glanced at her through a mist of tears and gave a humourless laugh.

"Special." Starsmore rested the unfurling buds against the cold granite, his eyes lingering on the stark reality of the chiselled epitaph. "Yeah. Yer could say that, darlin'."

"You loved her, didn't you?" She couldn't help herself - her tone was harsh, scathing. As hateful eyes fixed her with a baleful stare, she hastily added: "I-I didn't mean to upset you, Jonothon. It's just they - the others - they don't talk about her at all."

"And why should they? None of 'em knew 'er - not like I did."

He allowed his fingers to trace out the gilt contours of the name engraved upon the sombre stone. It was a name that had tormented him as much in life as in death: Paige Guthrie.

"Five years, sunshine," he whispered. "Five long, unreal years."

Shadow flickered across his face. The girl, like all the X-Men, instantly recognised the danger signs and stood up, unsure as to whether she should comfort him or run for the motorbike.

"Poor Paige," Jonothon was soliloquising. "She was the best of us in so many ways. What 'appened to 'er was more than a tragedy. So much life to give ... D'yer know 'ow she died, Kali?"

The girl shook her head. Didn't know, didn't want to know.

"Betcha think she died twatting Magneto or something, eh? The sorta glory-death all us X-freaks secretly hope fer. She deserved that sorta end, Paige did. Instead ... instead, she gets topped by a pissed blue-collar slob doing a ton down the bloody road! How normal is that? That's a flat-scan way to go, not a bloody mutant's way!"

Kali wasn't quite sure what response Starsmore was gunning for, so she opted for an uneasy and hopefully compassionate smile. Not for the first time since she'd become romantically involved with him, she found herself wishing her powers were empathic in nature. Possessing the ability to total a small city with the slightest of thoughts might break the ice at parties but it didn't help her understand the mess that was her lover's psyche.

"Jonothon..." she began. "Jono, please. I know how you feel but - "

Derisive laughter cut through her clumsy efforts to reassure him. "What? How the bloody Hell can you possibly know 'ow I feel?"

"You're not the only one who's ever lost anyone, you know?" Tears burned her eyes as she thought: I'm losing you right now.

"That's as maybe, darlin' but I'm betting you ain't never been glad that someone died!"

The severity of the delivery hit her like a slap to the face. Dumbstruck, Kali reeled back against a gravestone and clamped her hands to her mouth. Starsmore rounded on her, a cascade of pulsating, livid scarlet searing his pale complexion.

"That's right, Kali - glad! If she hadn't 'ave died, it'd be me lying in this poxy cemetary."

He lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply, a gesture as empty as the tears in his eyes. No lungs to pollute, no lacrimal glands to dampen his non-existant cheeks, just a mockery of humanity dressed in psionic skin. Kali knelt down beside him and wrapped her slender arms around his shoulders. Starsmore sighed as her body heat slowly permeated through the armour of his biker's leathers. He could feel her sadness, her fear - so profound and intense on the sepulchral atmosphere he could reach out and touch them. Did she know? Had she finally realised why he had allowed her and noone else into the black cage of his heart?

"Seeing 'er lying on that blood-drenched trolley, seein' all the beauty an' potential ebb away into the starched, abrasive linen... it was a rite of passage. Childhood's end. You used to 'ave ta kill a wolf or somethin' to prove yer were a man but me? I'm a fuckin' Jonah, Kali. I 'ad to see my one chance of happiness die right in front of me. Never told 'er... never told 'er 'ow much she...

"When my powers manifested an' I thought I'd mullered up me bird, I ran away like the irresponsible little brat I was. And when Paige died, that's all I wanted to do but the others - Angelo, Monet - they made me stay, made me face up ta what 'appened. Christ, I was eaten alive by guilt, by regret, by those two grating, grinding words 'If only'. I'm not proud ta admit this, darlin' but I'd've topped meself if I'd 'ad the bloody guts. Being wiv 'er was the only thing that mattered, yeah?"

"Jonothon." He could hear the tears in her willowy voice. "Don't do this. I'm sorry. I didn't want you to relive all the pain."

He tossed the remnants of the fag onto the overgrown earth and ground it beneath his heel. "I'm beyond pain, Kali. I thought you knew that more then anyone else."

Memories of a love that never was, of a boy who used a vibrant girl's emotions to flagellate himself - to punish the brooding, moribund monster he'd become. Had he really ever loved her at all or was she just another aspect of his suicidal death-wish? The night after her fatal accident, he had entered her room and rifled through her possessions, desperate to feel her in his heart. But the obssession had died with her; holding her belongings, drinking in the subtle aroma of her pheremones, drowning in the essence of Paige, he felt nothing but a terrible sense of freedom.

Within a year of her death, the imago Starsmore emerged from his cocoon of dark self-loathing wearing a psionic facsimile of how he'd used to be. He'd learned to control the raging power within him and use it to create rather than destroy. A being composed entirely of malleable psychic energy was precisely the sort of operative the senior X-Men wanted on their ever-expanding team and they were quick to promote him to their hallowed ranks. It was something he'd never wanted but he did it for her - for her memory and out of gratitude for her unknowing sacrifice. Starsmore marked his brilliant metamorphosis by sarcastically adopting the code-name Osiris; 'Chamber' just didn't seem appropriate anymore.

But although he was complete in pseudo-body, there was an emptiness in his life. The darkness still lingered within him, hungry for torturous misery. Blonde, blue-eyed and naive New Zealander Miranda Sterling, aka Kali, more than sufficiently sated that rapacious need ... .

Starsmore turned his head and kissed her, aware of her doubts dissipating into the encroaching night. "C'mon, sweetheart. I've done what I came to do. Let's go home."

Kali smiled and nestled close to him as they started to walk down the hill to where he'd parked his beloved Norton. How could she have been so petty as to be jealous of a dead girl? Sure, their relationship had it's ups and downs but, at the end of the day, it was her he loved, right?

The throaty growl of the 1500cc engine became muffled by the shifting shadow, was slowly devoured by a stilted, tomb-silence that drifted effortlessly through the tangle of weathering gravestones. A slight Vernal breeze lifted the stooped heads of the undergrowth - a cold and bitter reminder that Summer was still three months away. Decaying wreaths, their muted colours desiccated by frost, groaned beneath the skeletal touch of the wind. Across the maudlin expanse, six fresh roses shivered upon the hardening ground, the droplets of moisture carried within their half-closed buds becoming crystalline tears of ice.