. VII .

It was a good while before they decided to leave. Exiting the restaurant, Remy had been quite blasé about flirting with each and every one of waitresses in sight. It was the kind of thing he had always encouraged in the days when, as he had liked to put it, the two of them had been ‘footloose and fancy-free’. Which had been a complicated matter, seeing as they had been on-off for most of their years of acquaintance. Rogue herself had wondered at the purpose of this display almost as much as she did at Remy’s boldness. Little touches meant nothing to him. Despite her own penchant for casual flirtation, it was the kind of thing she had never contemplated, let alone been able to do without fearing for her sanity. And she didn’t like to admit it, but she was more than just a little jealous of the fact that these anonymous women were getting attention from the man she had wanted for so long.

Now, as the two of them walked towards a hotel, Rogue glanced over at him walking casually beside her, cigarette hanging loosely from his bottom lip. There was – and always had been – something insolently handsome about his features, the kind of look that Rogue had always found irresistible since the first moment that they had met. But it was his hidden, inner qualities that she had come to love – the buried insecurities, the inherent sensitivity, the tenderness and regard he held all those he respected in. If anything she had loved him too much and had scared herself away from him.

And now?

Now Rogue looked at him, and felt that familiar old wrenching in her gut. She hadn’t felt this way about him since they’d parted ways. Now every move he made tortured her; the easiness of his walk, the well-toned physique shown to perfection through the cut of his clothing, the strong, aquiline line of his profile set her pulse racing and her breath quivering. It made it even worse to know what it felt like to be with him, to run her fingers over his skin, to kiss him, to touch him, to hold him to her for one night knowing that he was hers and she was his…

She blushed, realising that she’d been staring at him openly, and turned away. She suddenly felt self-conscious in his presence, dressed provocatively as she was – even though she was loath to admit that the dress had been primarily for his benefit. She pulled at the hem of the jade-green skirt nervously, feeling paranoid that it would suddenly decide to ride up her thighs. Durnit, she and short skirts had never got on. She wished she’d worn some pants. And her stockings were irritating her no end – not to mention the blister she felt forming on a big toe, on account of her high heels. What had possessed her to dress up so fancy anyway? She didn’t like the answer, and she knew it was currently walking right next to her.

“These shoes,” she groaned out loud. “They’re killin’ me!”

He grinned at her. “I must admit, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in heels. Or lookin’ so fine,” he added as an afterthought. “Howzabout I carry you back to de hotel?”

“That isn’t cute, Remy,” she shot at him warningly.

“Well den take de shoes off,” he suggested.

“What, an’ ruin mah stockings?”

“Den take dem off as well,” he grinned, “I don’ mind.”

She elbowed him playfully. “If you had things your way, ah’d just strip off right here an’ now,” she joked.

“Now ain’t dat a fact,” he admitted, smiling with open humour, but not quite succeeding to conceal the sudden gleam in his eye as he caught hers. Surprisingly enough, Rogue did not find herself blushing at their exchanged remarks. If anything she felt rather excited by his admission that he still found her attractive. She met his gaze without shying away; but to her chagrin, he drew away first.

“Ah, Roguey,” he muttered good-naturedly, beginning to walk again. “You still such a whole lotta fun t’ hang out wit’, y’know dat?”

“Am ah?” she replied, a little annoyed that he’d brushed off her obvious innuendo.

“Sure,” He smiled at her, the way he always did – but there was something forced in the expression; something strange and yet something familiar. She turned away, her heart suddenly pounding. She had the odd, fleeting idea that of all the millions of people in this world and of all the countless years that had housed them, somehow the two of them had worked themselves into this niche, coming accidentally together in the same place and at the same time. Could this be destiny, she thought? For somehow it felt important that she should turn to her, and smile that non-smile the way he did, and that she should turn away, and that her heart should race…

But finding themselves in that niche he turns to her, and smiles at her, and she turns away and her heart races: and in the chain reaction, the conclusion is already foretold, and all other endings melt away like ice into a sea.

It was late by the time they reached the hotel. Remy yawned as they entered the dingy little room again, switched on the low light and slung his jacket against the back of the nearest chair.

“You? Tired?” Rogue half-joked, rolling up the shawl and throwing it on the nearby coffee table.

“It was all dat sittin’ round waitin’ for you t’ buy a dress dat did it,” he replied sarcastically.

“Oh really?” Rogue returned, swivelling round and placing a hand flirtatiously on her hip. “You’re not complainin’, are you?”

He eyed her with a predatory grin.

“Not when you put it dat way, chere.”

The suddenly hungry look on his face made her cold, but she hid it, resolving to act as naturally as she could and not provoke him anymore than she had already.

“Good,” she answered him shortly, knowing she hadn’t said the word quite right. Her tone was too low, too strained. Bad mistake, she thought. This whole evening had been a bad, bad mistake. She half turned her head away, feeling suddenly and inexplicably vulnerable. She wanted a shower – on the other hand she felt that if she so much as made a move to get undressed something terrible would happen. All the flirting had brought everything up to the surface again. The tension between them was so thick she could have cut it with a knife. It was only a question of who was going to slice through it first, and when. She could have kicked herself, ignored it all and gone into the bathroom, right there and then. But for some reason she didn’t. Her gaze lifted to his, furtive, uncertain, and – perhaps unintentionally – suggestive. And he was looking at her oddly, so oddly…

He was the first to cross the room, and instinctively she knew his intention, so that she moved forward to meet him, without even so much as thinking about the consequence. Without hesitation his arms went around her, pulling her to him greedily, opening her mouth with his own, sealing the contract they had both been avoiding. With the courage of need they clung to one another, desperate to still the ache the long months of separation had enforced upon them. Rogue had never experienced an embrace so charged, so tactile. Without remorse he touched her, her hips, her buttocks, her thighs, re-familiarizing himself with the shape of her, the thing he had so longed for. The warmth of his lips, the rough softness of his tongue against hers sent her reeling with desire, and she drew a hand into his hair, pulling him closer, pressing her body against his. If a kiss could have lasted forever she would happily have remained in that one single exchange forever and ever. It was only with reluctance that he released her mouth, holding her eyes with his own, the bright red of his desire streaking through the semi-darkness.

“Mon Dieu,” he muttered, raising a hand to her bare throat, spreading his palm and his fingers over her neck and her collarbone. “You are so beautiful…” He drew his hand downward, over her breasts and waist, round the curve of her hip, his searing gaze following the sinuous trail with lustful intensity.

“Ah still love you, Remy,” she murmured, yielding to that singular caress of his warm hand, needing to spill the words out before they were both lost.

“I never stopped lovin’ you, chere,” he answered in that deep, husky tone that she remembered too well in all its promise. Drawing her close he kissed her again, and she reached out for him, no longer knowing or wishing any restraint. This was what she had feared and longed for for so long – him against her, holding her, caressing her. He released her mouth, gently trailing his lips down her throat and neck, and she sighed, burying her face in his hair, breathing in the unique scent of tobacco mixed with shampoo and aftershave. With the stealth of some snake his fingers slid inside the slit at her thigh, stroking the bare skin above her stocking, rubbing upward to the swell of her buttocks before drawing tantalizingly away. She moaned, both with pleasure and at the withdrawal of his caress. Reluctantly he raised his head; but as she gazed questioningly into his eyes she saw the hunger there, as all-consuming as her own.

“Tell me what you want, chere,” he spoke, his voice hoarse.

It was that same old question, the one that he had asked her what seemed like a lifetime ago. Six months they’d been apart, six months she’d wasted when she should have been with him. And for the first time, she knew her answer, as surely as she knew that she’d never been so sure of anything else in her life. Impatient, she drew her arms up his chest and around his neck, bringing him closer again.

“Ah want you, Remy.”

No other guarantee, no other reassurance was needed.

For the first time in months, both were secure in the knowledge that neither of them needed to search any longer.

*

“My daughter…!”

From within the inky darkness of some unknown building, two red eyes glared out of some undeterminable niche. Wide, unblinking, shimmering with malignant humor, they peered out silently into that dank old room swathed in shadows. Silent as a mouse, silent as the eyes of one in their final death throes, penetrating as twin gimlets.

These were the eyes that stood in the corner, watching on as the woman named Raven Darkholme paced the floor, heels thudding inelegantly on the frayed, greying carpet, her own eyes wild.

“My daughter…?”

She repeated the word again like some ancient curse, as though both nuance and meaning were like blasphemy itself. She stopped, rage sharpening the contours of her face into something akin to ugliness. The white-haired man before her blanched. The other, larger man named Victor Creed said nothing. He knew the woman far too well to be intimidated by her rages. But there was something mesmerizing about her, none could deny it. Her strength, her conviction, her ruthlessness – all lent her a beauty and power over them that made them fear. It made them fear her.

“It was her,” the white-man spoke up earnestly, his voice openly trembling. “But it wasn’t her. The woman…she looked like Rogue, but she didn’t act like her. She had a gun… She killed Harpoon and Arc…”

Raven’s face contorted; measured, silent as soft bat wings. The next moment her hand had flashed out, and a dark spurt of blood shot across the room. Riptide reeled backwards, only to stumble forwards again a moment later, nursing a broken nose, blood oozing from between his fingers. Raven’s face was calm once more, eyes as narrowed as shards of yellow glass. With a faltering gaze he looked up at her, uncertain, bending his will to the coldness of her glance. No further sound emitted from his lips.

“Get out!” she screamed at the white-haired man. “I said get out!”

Her words were like vipers. Without a second thought Riptide turned and fled.

“Shall I find the girl?” Creed asked softly, once the white-haired man had disappeared.

“No,” Raven replied decidedly. “I will not allow that bastard child near Irene.”

“And the thief?”

“Leave him,” the woman retorted, turning away as if she had lost interest. “We don’t need him anymore.” Creed said nothing. Wordlessly he left with the prowess of some huge silent tiger, knowing it was better not to incur the wrath of his one-time lover. Raven paused, the dim light of the window playing across her smooth cheeks like sunshine on stained glass. Her eyes were deep in thought.

“Leave him?”

The two red eyes spoke into the quiet, the disembodied voice low, resonant, malleable as quicksilver.

“Let him walk away,” Raven murmured, her eyes still on the window. “And he will have no other recourse but to come to us of his own free will.”

“Is that what the diaries say?” the eyes spoke again.

“It’s what Irene says,” she answered shortly. Suddenly she looked unnerved as she glanced over at the twin red lights in the shadows. It was not a look of fear – rather it was a look of confusion. She knew she could not fathom him; on the other hand, he knew he could not fathom her. Nothing more was said. For all he admired her ruthlessness, Nathaniel Essex had no time for Raven Darkholme’s obsession with Irene Adler’s Diaries. His fate was a far more straightforward one.

The taming of Remy LeBeau – his own personal destiny.

*

“Crazy. This just has to be one of the craziest periods of mah life.”

Rogue was sitting on the edge of the bed, musing softly to herself for no particular reason other than to attempt to let everything sink in. Over the past few months she had had her powers shut down and her sanity tested; she had entered into one relationship only to see it fail miserably; she had her mind stolen by another consciousness and come all the way to New Orleans on some insane mission based on some equally insane premonitions. And now here she was, having jumped without thought for consequence into bed with the man she now knew she should have spent the entirety of those six crazy months with.

Life, it seemed, couldn’t get any more deranged.

Remy’s hand touched the small of her back, moving to stroke the tender skin there lightly. He was being rather lavish with his touches at this particular moment in time, caressing her here, there and everywhere with an almost child-like curiosity. Not that she was complaining at all.

“Yup,” he agreed after a moment, speaking in that lazy drawl she found so sexy. “S’all pretty much crazy.”

She looked back over her shoulder at him, lying there on his back, cigarette between his lips, tousled brown hair framing his brazenly handsome face. His dark red eyes, now soft, now tranquil, seemed to be appraising the pattern his hand formed on her back. There was a studied look of concentration in his expression.

“What’re you thinkin’?” she asked, seeing the look.

“Dunno,” he replied momentarily, his hand climbing her spine to rest lightly on the nape of her neck. He knew it was one of her more sensitive areas. She shuddered involuntarily. “Jus’ admirin’ de view, is all.”

She swivelled round, bringing her legs up to lie on the mattress beside him. “You’re thinkin’,” she persisted, propping her head against her hand, running her fingers through the fine dark hairs on his chest. “What is it?”

“Nothin’, chere,” he answered quite seriously, exhaling smoke. “Jus’ feelin’ kinda…nice.”

She smirked, removing the cigarette from his lips and leaning over him to stub it out on the nearby ashtray. “That’s such a disgustin’ habit,” she reproached him.

“Not when it gives me such a great view of your assets, chere,” he remarked, staring at her chest openly as she leant over him. She withdrew, slapping his bicep playfully.

“Be serious!”

“I was, until you came and distracted me,” he grinned, but it wasn’t the usual full-blown insolent grin that he usually bestowed upon her. She pounced on it.

“You really are thinkin’ aren’t you?” she said softly. “Somethin’s on your mind, Remy. Care to spill?”

He smiled indolently, stroking her arm gently. “Jus’ thinkin’ how we got placed here, Roguey. Three months ago I wouldn’ have guessed it’d turn out like dis. Thought we weren’t never gonna meet up again, let alone end up together. Does seem more den just a little crazy, doesn’t it.”

“Maybe it’s what destiny had in store for us,” she suggested. He chuckled.

“I sure hope dis here night isn’t in dem Diaries,” he joked, running a hand through her hair.

“Ah hear that. Can you imagine what Sage would say?” she grinned.

“Hm. Might give her a rise. If I can please more den one woman at a time den I ain’t complainin’.”

She laughed, unable to help herself. “You’re terrible!”

“Yeah. I know.” He smiled impertinently. “But dat’s what you like ‘bout me, chere.”

“Amongst other things,” she murmured, pressing her mouth against his and kissing him passionately.

“I’ve been thinkin’,” he began again, after they broke apart.

“Ah know,” she whispered, stroking the backs of her fingers across his cheek.

“No, I mean, really thinkin’.”

“Ah know. What ‘bout it?”

“I’m in love wit’ you.”

“Yeah? I love you too, Remy LeBeau.” She kissed him again just to prove her point.

“Maybe I should go back to de mansion wit’ you,” he continued, when the kiss had finally ended.

She paused. “To tell the truth, ah’d forgotten that was ever an issue.”

He laughed softly. “Great sex’ll always do dat to even de smartest people,” he quipped. “An’ tonight was pretty darn great, neh?”

“Don’t you ever stop feelin’ so damn pleased with yourself?” she queried, knitting her eyebrows and frowning.

“Shouldn’t I be?” he asked innocently in reply. “Lyin’ here wit’ you, what man wouldn’t?”

She couldn’t help smiling. How was it that everything he said came out sounding so natural and funny and sexy?

“Okay. Ah take it back.”

“Good. Because I’m feelin’ that damned pleased wit’ myself dat I’m gonna ask you whether we can make a go of dis for real.”

“For real? You mean, like a proper couple?” she mused.

“Been long past time, chere,” he returned solemnly. “You an’ I, I figured we should make it official-like now. Every time we start t’ get serious, somethin’ happens to screw it all up. Dis time, I’m gonna pre-empt disaster. Will you be my girl, Roguey?”

Her smile softened. “D’ you even need t’ ask?”

“I gotta be sure, chere – I don’t wanna lose you t’ someone else again,” he replied gravely. “Maybe I’m selfish but I want you all to myself. We made for each other, p’tite. Dese last few days I realized nothin’s changed. I still loved you, still wanted you de way I always had. Didn’t you feel de same way ‘bout me?”

“Uh-huh. It was drivin’ me insane,” she answered, rubbing the tip of her nose against his. “An’ t’ tell you the truth, ah couldn’t give a damn ‘bout those Diaries right now, just so long as ah can be with you, Remy.”

“You’re such a liar,” he murmured, his hand nestling against her cheek. “No matter what you’re feelin’ now, in de end you’re gonna go back to dat mansion, cos Destiny an’ dose Diaries mean so damn much t’ you.”

“Mm. You’re probably right. Mah beef with Destiny’s personal – but so’s this, cajun. Ah wanna make a go of this. Ah want it real bad.”

He sighed theatrically. “An’ so we come to de impassé, ma chere,” he half-smiled. “But since I be wantin’ it so bad too, I guess I can meet you halfways. How does dis sound? I go back to de mansion wit’ you, an’ you promise t’ be my girl.”

“Mm, sounds like a deal,” she agreed, more interested in his lips at the current moment.

“An’ I don’t have to have anythin’ t’ do wit’ dose Diaries neither,” he put in, holding back from her persistent little ploys to kiss him. She drew back, sensing that he really was being serious.

“Whatever you say, sugah. If’n you can get round Sage an’ the Professor an’ all, that is. Ah don’t mind.” She pressed a soft kiss against his lips before speaking again. “Ah love you, you love me. Nothin’ else matters, right?”

“Right.” He didn’t want to tell her that a hell of lot else mattered – but being there in her arms, it was easy to believe that nothing did. Tomorrow they’d think about it. Tomorrow, when the night was left far behind them.

*

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