It had been some
time in early June; the weather had been pleasant, but not terribly hot yet -
the days had been getting steadily longer, which meant that his night-time
shifts were getting pushed back later and later. He didn't mind so much. It meant he got more time to mess around
during the day.
His cell phone had
gone off on her nightstand about five times before he'd finally got round to
answering it.
“Yo,” greeted that
perennially cheap and cheerful male voice. “Remy, man, what took you so
long? I've been tryin' to call you the
past half hour or so.”
“Sorry,” Remy
replied with only a cursory stab at tactfulness. “I've been kinda busy.”
Lying in bed beside
him, the redhead was snuggling up to him with the satisfied expression of a cat
that'd got the cream.
“Oooh,” came the
knowing reply on a short laugh. “Gotcha.
I'm glad to know one of us is still havin' a good time these days.”
“Don't tell me -
she dumped you?”
“Let's not talk
about it.” For a moment, the cheerfulness had completely gone out of the voice.
“From now on, I'm gonna be a strictly free agent. Relationships are depressin', man.”
“Den dere's a
simple solution, homme - don't get into them.”
“Which is how you
always manage t' score, huh?”
He slung his arm
over the shoulder of the redhead, stroked her upper arm absently.
“Uh huh. So what exactly is it dat you so desperately
wanted t' call me about?”
“Well,” (and the
cheerfulness had now completely returned), “you remember that side project you
were talkin' about a few months back?
You know, the one about that girl?
Well, surprisingly, I've actually made some headway.”
That got his
attention.
“You've found her?”
he said.
“Well, I saw her.
That don't mean I know where she lives or what she does for a
livin'. Yet.”
“You know I don't
wanna know about dat stuff. Where did you
see her? When?” he asked rather more
urgently than he'd meant to. Beside him,
the redhead had stirred.
“Outside some
swanky apartment in Long Island the other night. Looks like she was on some sorta mission or
somethin'.” He paused, added animatedly: “Man, she is cute.”
He grinned.
“I told you
so. But hands off. She's mine.”
“Yeah.” The voice
was now faintly sarcastic. “I kinda guessed.
So that's what this is all
about, huh? Some sorta weird form of
stalkin'? Maybe I should get you onto my
girl for me, Rems - perhaps then she'll come back t' me.”
“Peh. Dat'll be de day. No way I'm gettin' involved in your affairs,
homme, gettin' involved in my own is bad enough.” He paused momentarily. “So -
you seen her again since den?”
“I'm workin' on it. It's gonna take some time, Remy, you know
it. Gotta figure out the pattern… Ain't
gonna be easy. But I've got her mark
now. Man, have I got her mark,” he
finished wistfully.
“Hmm,” Remy sounded
wryly. “Well, just keep me in de loop, d'accord? I'll let you know when I'm gonna make a
move.”
“Will do. In the meantime, have fun and don't work too
hard, okay?”
“Don't worry, I
won't.”
“Yeah, I know - you
never do.”
“It's de secret t'
my success.”
“Naturally. Speak to you later, Rems.”
“See yah.”
He ended the call
and threw the phone back onto the nightstand.
“Her?” Cindy/Susan spoke up suspiciously.
“A girl?”
He grinned easily.
“Just a job,
chere,” he answered without hesitation, without even a flicker of the eye. The redhead pouted, then relented.
“So, what exactly is it you do again?”
“Not'ing
int'restin',” he answered flippantly, idly brushing a loose lock of hair from
her cheek before pulling the covers aside and stepping out of bed. “I guess you
could say I'm in de missin' persons business.”
“Oh? And this girl… she's gone missing?” she
mumbled on a yawn. He stepped into his
boxers and crossed the room, going for a fresh packet of cigarettes.
“Yup.”
“Oh. Cool.”
She'd already lost
interest. When he looked back, she'd
turned over and was huddled back under the covers.
“Mind if I use your
shower?” he asked. She merely hummed her
assent.
When he came out
again ten minutes later, she was already fast asleep. Taking the opportunity, he dressed quickly,
and left without once looking back.
*
It'd become a new
form of obsession to him, something to keep him going through the day, a new
kind of cheap thrill.
It was the thrill
of knowing that somewhere out there she was alive, and that moreover she was
traceable, watchable, attainable. All
through summer, all through autumn she was at the back of his mind, egging him
on to bigger and riskier heists; he was being more reckless, getting injured
more, but it was good, it was a gleeful and masochistic sense of victory over
something he couldn't even describe.
Over time, a distinct pattern began to emerge - she'd show up here, and
then there, and then back here again; her network of associates was determined,
her potential targets established.
He of course,
didn't care for any of these things.
Just as long as he could be told when and where to find her, none of the
rest mattered to him. He was weaving a
secret web around her and she wasn’t even aware of it; he was hunting her down,
ghosting her every step without even being near her. He got a buzz, a rush out of this fact more
than anything - that he seduced her without even so much as a touch or a
kiss.
She was going to be
his in every sense of the word - no movement she made could ever escape him
should he so wish.
And yet, he couldn't
help this curious sense that she was
the one baiting him, that he was the
one being drawn into her web, and that she was the widow spider, lying in wait
for him, calm and voluptuous, at the centre.
It had only been a
few days into December when he had made the decision.
He'd woken up in
the early afternoon with a raging hangover - the job the previous night had
been shitty and after delivering the goods he'd spent the remainder of the
night drowning his sorrows in some beer he'd purloined from a 7-Eleven on the
way home. When he'd woken up, the first
thing he'd thought about was her. He was
bored of waiting. He needed some balm
for the previous night and the best way to get that was to see her again.
She always made him
think of the better days they'd shared - the days back at the mansion with
Xavier's fucked up brood, days when he'd almost successfully kidded himself
into believing there was something better, before they had so cruelly been cut
short.
It was a little
balm for his aching soul, and that day he'd wanted it.
The cheap and
cheerful male voice had been even more cheerful than usual when he'd rung him
up, which led him to suppose that he and 'his girl' had got back together.
“Yo, Remy,
whassup?” was the never-changing greeting, one of the few peculiar constants in
Remy's life. He'd gone to the medicine
cabinet in the bathroom, popped a few more pills. He wasn't in the mood for pleasantries.
“My side
project. Got any updates?”
“Man, Rems, you
sound rough. What happened last night?”
He didn't want to
talk about it.
“Not'ing. Just wanna hear 'bout my side project,
homme.”
Something in his
voice had communicated that this was more than just business. There was a deep breath on the line before
the reply came.
“She's on the move.
Tonight.”
“Bon,” Remy
returned decidedly. He shut the cabinet, stared at himself in the mirror. Jesus, he looked like shit. “Look, I wanna make contact. Can you arrange a meet?”
“Sure. She'll be at the FoH Headquarters at eight
p.m. tonight. Looks like this is gonna
be a big one. I would warn you to stay
out of it, Rems, but somethin' tells me --”
“No, I'm not gonna
wait. It's contact t'night or never.”
“Rems…”
“T'anks for de
concern, mon ami, but it ain't needed.
Her mission is her business, I ain't gonna pry. I just wanna meet. Okay?”
“Okay,” came the
wary reply. “But, man, this girl's got eyes.
And I know how you get with the girls who've got eyes.”
“Trust me. I ain't gonna pry.”
Sometimes, he
forgot Storm's old advice that it was a bad idea to make promises he couldn't
keep.
*
He had gone to the
FoH Headquarters at a quarter to eight and hung around in the shadows, his
stomach churning with impatience and lust.
He'd figured if he was going to bust in, it would've been through a back
utility door, and sure enough, at eight o'clock on the dot, there she'd
appeared. He'd had every intention of
hanging around and waiting for her to come out again, but as soon as she'd
disappeared into the building, his curiosity had got the better of him and he'd
followed her in. She was tense, she was
wary, but she was focused. If he had
been less of a thief perhaps she would have noticed he was tailing her, but he
could be a ghost when he wanted to be and she noticed nothing.
But when he'd
realised it was Kincaid she was after, he should've known that then was the
time to back away, if any.
He hadn’t.
Killing Kincaid had
meant little to him; what concerned him was the fact that it meant something to
her.
Contrary to what
she may have believed, he didn't kill for sport, and he didn't kill without
reason. He killed Kincaid because she
wouldn’t; he killed him to protect her.
And from the very
moment he'd done so, he'd plunged himself into something deeper than he'd ever
intended to get himself into.
It didn’t mean that
he didn't think Rogue was naïve and emotional and foolish. Her naïveté irritated him, her sensitivity
was something he found redundant, even dangerous in their line of work. And yet her innocence was part of what
attracted him to her - it had always attracted him to her. While it frustrated him that she still clung
so stubbornly onto Xavier's legacy, it was also a source of comfort to him,
something that he wished to protect in her at all costs - because it was an
innocence that he'd lost himself. A
radical, a militant and a dissident Rogue may be, but she wasn't a cold-blooded
killer, and somehow, that made all the difference. It was something he wished to preserve in her
as far as he could. That was why he had
killed Kincaid. That was why he had
pulled the trigger.
And he would again,
if it would keep Xavier's flame burning inside her.
Still, out of the
Kincaid disaster, he'd managed to get what he'd gone there for. She hadn't been able to resist him - he'd
known she wouldn't. He'd taken her back
to the safe house because somehow it'd seemed right, even though he hadn't
stepped a foot within its four walls since he'd last been there with her. She'd been nervous, uncertain, standing in
the middle of the room solitary and forlorn, a strange little girl with nowhere
to go and no one to run to. He was her
refuge, as she was his.
He'd placed his
hands on her arms and smiled at her as encouragingly as he could. The smile she'd replied with had wavered on
her lips like a candle flickering in the night.
He'd kissed that smile, slow, unhurried, and she'd trembled under his
touch; she kissed like a novice, self-consciously, and he found her reticence
and inexperience endearing, arousing even.
It was one of the things he liked most about being with her - that with
her everything seemed meaningful, sincere, wistful and romantic. To him, nothing had felt like this for years
- romance was a dead thing. But somehow,
in the midst of the grim and monotonous horrors that encompassed everyday life,
she had managed to remain untouched and unspoiled, a quiet little flame burning
away in an unknown and neglected corner, one that seemed to burn just for him.
He was greedy. He wanted it all to himself, even if only for
just one night of whimsical escapism.
*
He hadn't slept.
He'd lain in the
darkness, listening to the regular sound of her breathing, watching her
sleep. He dozed off at odd intervals,
but whenever he awoke her face had been there, clear and untroubled. She was very beautiful. He hadn't touched her for fear of waking her
and spoiling it all.
At about five
thirty she'd woken. He hadn't wanted the
softness of kisses, the carelessness of pillow talk. It had been far easier to feign sleep. He hadn't moved, hadn't blinked when he felt
her touch his face, running a finger over his cheek with a tenderness he'd
never wanted nor asked for. And when
he'd heard her break down, when she'd moved away and gone to the window, it was
as if a coldness had filled him from head to toe.
Her tears had been
completely soundless, but he'd known that she was crying. He'd watched her weep at the window feeling
awkward, knowing he was witnessing something more private, more personal than
anything else he'd witnessed yet from her, and that in watching her he was
crossing a boundary he had no right to cross.
And yet, it was not only embarrassment that filled him. It was also anger. Anger at her weakness, anger at her
sentimentality, anger that she cried for him.
He didn't want it. He didn't want
her affection, he didn't want her tears, and he didn't want her love. He wanted her to be strong, he wanted her to
be as ruthless and impenetrable as he was.
That she allowed herself to cry was a betrayal of the trust he'd placed
in her, the trust that their meetings would be nothing more than pure
indulgence.
And so he made no
move to go to her, to comfort her. He'd
made his terms clear; if she couldn't abide by them, he had no sympathy for
her. He wasn't about to be guilt-tripped
into a love affair with her.
The next morning
he'd woken up still feeling angry. He'd
shouted at her, very nearly smashed a few things and walked out hoping he never
had to see her again.
It took him all of
two months to change his mind.
* * * * *
The winter of 2009
gave way to the spring of 2010; Remy celebrated the New Year and a new decade
by getting horribly drunk. All in all,
he entered 2010 in just about the worst way possible. Ashamed, alone and completely paralytic. After the way he'd bowed out of 2009, he
reckoned it was the least he deserved.
He woke up the next
afternoon sprawled out on the sofa, several bottles of whiskey littered about
the floor around him. He got up
painfully, vomited violently and showered.
He couldn't stomach breakfast, so he got some coffee and rifled through
the newspaper. He didn't read the
newspaper much these days - but that day he'd had a specific reason to look.
He found it on page
fifteen, in a small column underneath another short article about the Sentinel
Mark 3 project being delayed due to technical problems.
'MUTANT KIDNAPPER STILL AT LARGE'.
Remy scanned the
article quickly, but found very little of interest. A mutant activist had broken into a
little-known juvenile internment camp on the outskirts of the city and abducted
one of the inmates. The current
whereabouts of both the kidnapper and the captive were a mystery, despite the
police, the military and Hounds all being put on the case. The article was very brisk, very terse, and
gave no more news on the matter.
Remy took a swig of
coffee and flipped back to the front page.
The Kincaid murder was still headline news. Headway on the subsequent murder
investigation was slow and incompetent - people were now calling for a public
inquiry, they wanted to know if it was an inside job, if security should be
tighter, whether the militia shouldn't be doing something more about mutant
terrorists. Kincaid, they said, had
always been a champion of baseline human rights - he was a natural target for
radical mutant groups, he should've been better protected. Even those fancy new power nullifiers based
on state-of-the-art nano-technology hadn't been good enough to save him. What was needed was more internment
camps. The last of the mutant radicals
needed to be flushed out and sent to the gas chamber. They'd been tolerated long enough. We might as well kill the others in the
internment camps too - people like the X-Men were still mutant figureheads,
they could still cause trouble.
It was the usual
anti-mutant hyperbole, but underneath it all Remy could see one thing very
clearly - nothing much had been discovered about the case. No one knew about him or Rogue. Yet.
Remy closed the
paper again disdainfully, got up and went for the Tylenol. He was as annoyed with himself as he was with
the media. After all, if he hadn't been
such an idiot last month he wouldn't have had to read the stupid papers
anyway. Killing Kincaid had been one
thing. Almost getting caught on a job
had been another. It had been the first
time he'd allowed his emotions to get in the way of his work, and it had almost
cost him everything - his better judgement, his freedom, his life. He'd even had to move apartments a couple of
times because of it, and a month down the line he was still lying low on the
business front. His employer hadn't
called in weeks as a precaution. But all
that was neither here nor there. What
bothered him more acutely was that, five weeks on, the case still left a bitter
taste in his mouth and he knew it'd be a while before the nightmares
disappeared completely.
He should've known
from the moment his boss had told him he had to go to a juvenile internment
camp that the whole exercise had been bad news.
But he'd still gone and done it because he was reliable and he never
turned down a job - it was what he prided himself in, the fact that he would do
any job, however grey, no questions asked.
But he hadn't been prepared for this.
It was only when
he'd been looking at his target on the other side of the prison bars that he'd
had any idea what he was letting himself in for.
His name was Leech.
He was little more
than a child; it must've been only a year or so since his powers had first
manifested. He was ugly and stunted,
horribly deformed, more alien than human, a true mutant in every sense. And yet, as he had sat hunched at the back of
his cell, staring back at Remy without even simple curiosity, there had been
something in his eyes that suggested something more human than Remy had ever
seen, even in himself. It wasn't the
resignation, it wasn't even the anguish.
It was the pleading in that boy's eyes that had tied knots in Remy's
stomach, the pleading to be delivered from the torment he endured daily, to a
life he could simply call 'normal'.
It was something
Remy hadn't been able to offer him.
Leech knew
suffering. It was a kind of suffering
most mutants didn't experience, even mutants double his age. Leech was precious to the military because of
one crucial thing - his mutant power. He
had the ability to cancel out other mutant's powers.
It was a power that
Leech had never asked for, nor that he had ever found of any particular
use. But to the military, it was a
godsend - it was an effective way of stopping other mutants from accessing
their own powers. Leech was their
weapon; he was forced to watch his own kind be tortured while he stripped them
of their powers. It was their screams
that lulled him to sleep most nights in bed, when he grappled with the
knowledge that, at thirteen, he was nothing, he was worse than nothing, lower than the low - he was a mutant, and a
traitor of mutants; he was the torturer and the tortured.
It was precisely
this power to negate mutant powers that had made him so precious to Remy's
employer.
Being faced with
the eyes of a young child had made Remy reckless, even lose his nerve. Men, even women he could do - but children
were a different matter. How could he
free this boy from bondage and turn him over to bondage of a different
kind? For the first time, Remy had
questioned himself. And it was that
hesitation that could've cost him his life and his sanity. It was only when
he'd realised that surveillance had spotted him that he'd made up his
mind. He'd broken into the cell,
unshackled the prisoner.
Leech hadn't moved.
In the end he'd had
to take the boy over his shoulder and carry him out. It'd slowed him down, made him more
conspicuous. He hadn't had time to free
anyone else as he'd first intended. By
the time he'd got to the perimeter fence he'd been jumped on by four guards and
beaten up pretty bad. How he'd managed
to get both himself and the boy out had been more a fluke than down to any
skill on his part - it made him shudder just to think about it.
But what haunted
him, what made him shudder the most was the last look Leech had given him
before they'd parted.
The wounded,
accusing stare of the mute.
Afterwards he'd
gone to the 7-Eleven, stolen some beer and come home wasted.
The next morning
he'd woken up and decided he needed to see Rogue again.
*
It was early
February when his boss finally called him again. He didn't know whether to be glad or
upset. He didn't need to be employed to
be happy - in the couple of months he'd been jobless, he'd got back in touch
with his thieving instincts, making his living in other, equally dubious ways -
but on the other hand he felt tied to his employer in a less than genial way,
as if he was being threatened to remain in their service. That was why, ultimately, he always went back,
even if the incident with Leech had somehow subtly changed him.
Thankfully his new
assignments were less risky, both physically and emotionally, which was a good
thing because his taste for breaking out and freeing mutants had waned. Consequently he spent most of his days wandering
listlessly and picking random pockets.
After all those years keeping feverishly busy, it was a loss of purpose
that was quite alien to him.
On Valentine's Day,
Murray was away on business.
Remy paid a visit
to Rita, who was in a more morose mood than usual, but she didn’t kick him out for
it. As soon as he'd walked in the door,
he knew it was probably a mistake going to see her, but then again, he figured
they both needed a little solace that day, even if they could only find it in
each other. Besides, he hadn’t seen her
in months.
It was all very
listless and pointless; afterwards they sat up in bed and barely said a
word. Even Rita seemed reluctant to
elaborate on her problems. Ever since
their last encounter, something had shifted between them - it was like shooting
at a target board askance. It had taken
something out of the pleasure of their association. Perhaps it was because the true nature of
their relationship had now been revealed to them in stark and certain terms -
he'd divulged a very personal part of himself that he'd divulged to nobody
else, and in a way, it made him uneasy to know that Rita knew one of his
innermost secrets.
“So,” she asked,
when even the silence had begun to depress them. “Did you ever find her? That girl?”
Remy stared into
the bottom of his ashtray and gave a non-committal grunt of agreement. It was Valentine's Day, and he didn't want to
think about Rogue. He regretted shouting
at her the way he had last December, more still the way they'd parted. It wasn't her fault she was so idealistic
about things, and after all, he was the one who'd gone chasing after her.
“Yeah,” he said at
last. “I found her.”
“How was it?” she
probed.
“I dunno. De novelty wore off pretty fast.”
“Oh,” she
said. He made no further elucidation,
placed the ashtray aside, and got out of bed.
He felt restless - he often felt restless, but not for stretches this
long. Even work had lost its buzz. He'd never felt this directionless before in
his life.
“Wanna talk about
it?” she asked. He stepped up beside the
window, opened it as he often did, and looked out. Rain was pouring in thick
slats, filling the room with the raw tang of moisture and ozone.
“I dunno,” he
muttered.
“Maybe it might
help,” she remarked matter-of-factly. He
looked back over his shoulder. She was
lying on her stomach, her white, freckled skin glimmering against the dark blue
comforter. She had every appearance of a
very pampered feline.
“Fuck you, Rita,
you ain't my shrink,” he mumbled uncharitably.
“Didn’t stop you
from spillin' last time,” she noted wryly. “What happened? Did she reject you?”
He looked away,
laughing humourlessly at the rain. “Heh.
Who ever heard of it? A woman who
rejected Remy LeBeau?”
“Maybe it'd do you
some good if someone did,” she pointed out sardonically. “It might make you a
more sensitive person.”
“I'm very
sensitive,” he retorted acidly, annoyed at her words. “Don’t I always know
exactly what you want whenever I come here?”
“That's a different
kind of sensitivity, Remy.” He heard her roll over onto her back. “So did
she? Reject you, I mean?”
The rain was
getting heavier, so heavy he could barely peer through it. Reject him?
Hardly. If anything he was the
one who'd rejected her, and yet, having just slept with Rita he was being
mysteriously haunted by memories of kissing that beautiful, soft mouth, of
feeling the electricity he got when she closed her eyes and kissed him back…
“Non,” he answered
in a sudden, vehement rush without thinking. “I told her to fuck off. Stupid femme was takin' everyt'ing too
seriously. I got pissed 'cos I did her a
favour. And before you say it, no, not
de sexual kind. I did somet'ing big for
her and she was fuckin' ungrateful. She
wanted more when she knew I couldn’t give anymore. And she knew from de beginnin' dat I couldn’t
- she knows de deal b'tween us. I ain't
gonna be guilt-tripped into a relationship wit' anyone.”
He halted and took
in a deep breath. There. He'd said it.
He'd said it all and he was surprised to feel relieved that he'd
actually talked about it, that he'd actually vented his frustration in some
fashion. Behind him, Rita laughed, deep
and sexy.
“Remy, baby, surely
you're savvy enough to know that something like this was bound to happen sometime?
The girls are crazy about you!”
“You're not.”
“Of course I'm
not. I already love someone else. That doesn't make me immune to your charms,
but it makes me immune to fallin' in love with your sorry ass.”
“Pfft. Dis femme knows de score. She knows how t'ings work b'tween people like
us.”
“Yeah, whatever,”
she retorted disdainfully. “But get a woman together with a man like you, and
logic is bound to be blown outta the window.
It ain't just the sex appeal, Remy.
It ain't even the bad boy appeal.
You've got a certain something else that drives girls crazy. Just a look from your eyes and you can make
them believe they're the one. Do you even realise that?”
He shook his head.
“Dis girl ain't
like dat. She knows me. She's just bein' stubborn. God knows she was always so goddamn
stubborn.” He sighed, a little of the rancour going out of him. “I guess I
can't blame her for dat. She was always
dat way. Always so damn emotional. Never met anyone wit' so much self-pity. I remember, once she said --”
He halted abruptly
mid-sentence, realising that he'd just been about to recount something he'd
never repeated to anyone, let alone a casual acquaintance like Rita. Her face in the dimness, those questing green
eyes staring at him through the smoky haze of a dimly lit bar, so serious, so
earnest, so wonderfully disarming, so disarmingly child-woman…
Ah first used mah powers when Ah was
thirteen. And when Ah did… Ah changed.
Haven't felt like mah old self since then. Ah'm just Rogue. That's all.
Rogue and yet so
much more.
He wondered whether
the voices in her head still screamed at her during the night.
“What did she say?”
Rita asked indifferently, lighting up a cigarette in the background. A gust of wind blew up by the window; rain
sprinkled against his face, cool as sea-spray.
“Doesn’t matter,”
he murmured.
“Are you still
angry at her?” she asked.
“Kind of. Sometimes, I just wish she'd wake up, you
know? She's still so… so old world. Still so morally black and white, even when
she knows it could get her killed.”
“And you just wanna
protect her from that?” Rita half-queried, half-stated. He paused, and thought about it, not for the
first time unnerved by Rita's astuteness.
He turned away from the window.
Rita was lying on her back, pale and voluptuous.
“Yeah,” he replied
at last. “I guess a part of me does. And
de other part just wants to shake all dat old world shit outta her.”
“Forget it,” Rita
advised him evenly. “Maybe she clings to what she does because it's what keeps
her going. Just like sex and cigarettes
and kleptomania are what keep you going.
Different things are precious to different people. One day, she'll learn – the hard way.”
There was an
ominous quality to her voice that made him shudder instinctively. Outside, the rainfall had now grown into a
storm. He pulled the window to; the wind
and rain pelted against the pane, incessant and violent. He walked over to the bed and slid over
Rita's long-limbed and shapely body, closed his eyes, kissed her pale pink
lips, and this time there was an emotion inside him, one he couldn't place…
He paused,
hesitating; and then her fingers were in his hair, stroking him, sympathetic,
encouraging…
“It's okay…” she
whispered into his ear, “I know, Remy.
That when you fuck me… she's the one you'll be making love to.”
*
It was May when he
went back to the safe house.
He hadn't stepped a
foot in there since December, and when he turned the key in the lock and pushed
the rickety, creaking door aside, a part of him half suspected that she would
still be in there, waiting.
She wasn't.
Of course she
wasn't.
The room was
inhabited only by dust and a faint, musty odour. The bed sheets were still crumpled on the
mattress the way they had been when he'd left, when she'd stood right there
with them gathered, snow white, at her feet.
She was gone; she'd always been gone.
Silently he dropped
the heavy pack at his feet, turned, and locked and bolted the door. Then he went over to the mattress, bent down
on one knee and curled his fist into it, raised it to his face, closed his
eyes, drew in a deep breath. It still
smelt of her, very faintly. Orange
blossom and vanilla. She had lain right
here that night, on her stomach, looking at the wall, trying desperately to
ignore him when all the while her body had been screaming to him so painfully
it had been obvious.
He opened his eyes
again, dropped the fistful of linen, and set about straightening it. Then he went back over to his pack lying in
the middle of the floor, and unzipped it.
Very methodically he unpacked its contents - towels, a kettle, an
electric heater, a lamp. When he had
done this, he zipped up the bag again and stared at the items laid out in an
orderly row across the floor. He felt
strange, looking at such ordinary household items in the middle of such a
small, dreary space. What was he doing
here, why was he doing this? What was
the point?
It wouldn't do to
ask questions. He simply switched off
his mind in the same way he switched it off whenever he had to kill someone and
got to work arranging the various items around the room. Five minutes later, he was done. He went to the window and opened it a little
to take away the stale odour of disuse, then looked about at his
handiwork. He scratched the back of his
neck awkwardly. Stupid, stupid, he thought.
It had been dangerous, coming here without any real necessity. Even taking her here for nothing more than
sex was dangerous, and yet it seemed right to do it, to do this.
He didn’t want to
stay a moment longer than he had to.
Quietly he shut the window again, picked up the empty pack, and unbolted
the door.
He turned just once
before he pulled open the door and stepped over the threshold. Having secured the dingy apartment once more,
he slipped away as silent as a revenant into the night. Some time, maybe in a month or two, he would
return.
But for now, it was
back to business.
*
He went back two or
three more times, each time with something different in his pack. Spring slipped into summer, weary, sluggish…
By autumn she was on his mind most days, and more than just a few nights. He would dream of her, dream of running his
hands over that silky sea of skin, of sinking his body into it and…
He would wake up
slick and aroused, panting, feeling an acute and penetrating sense of
loss. She would lie there with him
almost every night, silent and ghostly, invisible arms about him, fuelling his
lust, his desire.
And yet he
possessed nothing of her, not even her name.
No physical connection by way of an address written on a small scrap of
paper that he could horde in his wallet.
No photo - the only photo he'd seen of her had been on Xavier's desk in
his office years ago, an informal group affair that had stared at him every
time he'd sat across that desk awaiting a stern reprimand for some minor
misdemeanour or another. He had very few
memories to speak of - their acquaintance during their time with the X-Men had
spanned little more than a year, and they'd never really got closer than a few
casual dates. He didn't even know basic
things about her. What was her favourite
food, her favourite colour, her favourite place? All he knew for sure was what she presented
him with whenever he encountered her.
The insular reflectiveness, the childlike uncertainty, the tentative
tokens of affection; the way she kissed him, shy, self-conscious; the malleable
smoothness of her body against his; the softness of her cries as she clung to
him, as she orgasmed with him…
The way she called
his name.
It was all he had.
It wasn’t nearly
enough and he needed more.
Mid-November would
have been temperate if it had not been so windy. The grey, grimy streets of New York City were
windswept, dying leaves and stray plastic bags zooming down the sidewalks
faster than thought.
That day, Remy
stepped out of a local convenience store, pocketed the cigarettes, condoms and
cards he'd just bought, and stared out over the skyline. A convoy of Sentinels were patrolling a
street several blocks down, their perfectly symmetrical and dispassionate faces
looming over the skyscrapers, menacing, omnipotent. No doubt the military would be nearby as
well. It was best if he went back to his
apartment right now - for a mutant to be seen on the streets by a patrol was to
invite a stop-and-search at the very least, and that was the last thing Remy
needed.
He lit up a
cigarette from his new packet and pivoted on his foot, began walking in the
general direction of his apartment with an outwardly unruffled yet slightly
hurried pace. To be seen rushing
anywhere was suspicious in the vicinity of a patrol. Many people had had the same idea as him; the
streets had suddenly become flooded with people eager to move out of the path
of the Sentinels. Even baseline humans
preferred to stay out of their way.
Nevertheless Remy kept up his relatively calm pace - ten minutes at
least and he'd be home.
It was then that
the scream pierced the air, shrill and plaintive, neither discernibly male or
female; it could not have been closer than a couple of blocks away, and yet
that one sound sent everyone on the street into a wordless frenzy. Even the statics were suddenly running,
looking back over their shoulders with worried, hunted expressions over their
faces - whatever the trouble was, no one wanted to be part of it, it was a
group consensus between both baseline human and mutant that no one should be
involved. Within a few seconds, Remy was
part of a huge, swimming crowd, being jostled this way and that - he was
literally swept along on the tide of bodies towards the end of the street.
It was just as he'd
resigned himself to this that someone bumped into him from behind, ran past
him, and back into the crowd. For a
split second he caught a streak of white hair, the unmistakable scent of a
woman. It was only a split second, he
had barely seen a thing, no face, no form, but at the sight of that white
streak of hair something inside him had inexplicably burst into flame, and his
heart was suddenly thudding painfully, he was picking up his pace, he was
pushing into the throng, elbowing people aside, swallowing down the urge to
call out her name for fear it may indict her, for fear he might give her away…
And suddenly he'd
broken out of the front of the crowd, and there she was, only a few metres in
front with her back to him, arm outstretched, hair streaming out behind her…
“Tommy!” she called
in a strange, high-pitched voice he didn’t recognise.
A little
fair-haired boy was cowering in the middle of the sidewalk, and Rogue was
bending down onto both knees, her arms encircling the small child, crushing him
against her bosom in a motherly, protective embrace; she was sobbing, rocking
him, cradling him…
She opened her eyes
and they were brown.
As soon as he saw
her eyes it was as though his heart had been ripped from his chest.
It wasn’t her.
“Tommy, you naughty
boy, I told you not to run away from me like that, don’t do that again Tommy, promise mommy you won't do that ever
again…”
She stood, still
cradling the weeping boy against her, and he saw that her body was wrong, the
way she walked, the way she held herself was all wrong… And the face, it wasn’t
only the eyes, the lips were too thin, too wide… Stupid, stupid, he'd been a
fool to believe it was her…
He stood there,
rooted to the middle of the sidewalk, feeling drained, deflated, as if the
flame inside him - the flame that had burst into life so quickly - had simply
been snuffed out in a moment. The crowd
had caught up with him, were pushing past him; but he remained there, watching
the woman carry her child away; watching Rogue walk away from him, watching
Leech walk away from him, watching everything walk away from him.
* * * * *
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10 : Go to Chapter 12