Rogue stood on a
street corner and idly watched a couple of static girls walk into a posh
boutique across the road, giggling, joking, oblivious to anything outside their
own lives. Overhead, lingering somewhere
between the next two blocks, Rogue could make out the looming and
expressionless face of a Sentinel, its black and beady eyes scouring the street
below for mutants. Ever since the
debacle at Trask Technologies there had been a very public clampdown on mutant
activity.
Rogue felt somewhat
guilty about her part to play in the whole thing. The government was now keen to stamp down on
any mutant it saw, not just the militant ones - poverty-stricken, homeless
mutants were now being sent to internment camps in their droves, never to be
seen or heard of again. It was okay for
her and the Brotherhood - Forge's nullifying devices were able to cloak the
X-gene for short bursts at a time, effectively disguising their mutant
status. With that Sentinel on the
horizon, Rogue would certainly not have been able to stand where she was right
now without it. Sometimes she would ask
Forge why he didn’t just mass-produce his little devices and hand them out to
mutants all over town. He'd always reply
that mass-production was impossible unless an underground factory was built and
staffed - and besides, the devices were only worthwhile on mutants like her,
mutants who could pass as humans. The
rest, like the Morlocks, would stand out a mile.
Of course, one good
thing had come out of the whole Trask Technologies affair. Two days after the event had become public,
she'd been watching TV at headquarters eating breakfast, when she saw that same
handsome face on the screen, that same sandy hair and those same baby blue
eyes. Troy Rifkind had been walking away
from a heaving crowd of press reporters, a hunted look on his face as he'd
repeated over and over again: “No comment.” He'd been fired from Trask Technologies after
it was discovered that it was his
keycard that had been used to gain access to the database. Witnesses had even said they'd seen him
access the files himself, though he had vehemently denied it through his
subsequent trial.
Rogue had watched
the news that morning with an odd sense of triumph. No one had asked her why she had hated Troy
Rifkind so much. Mystique had even
casually pointed out that she had thought Rogue would find him a 'softer
touch'. The Brotherhood didn't know what
had happened between them that night, and Rogue had no inclination to divulge
that information. Mystique had always
suspected that it was something to do with the fact that Rogue had only
returned the morning after (which Rogue had ended up being thoroughly chastened
for), and Rogue had let her think that.
It was safer that way.
Still, she wondered
whether Rifkind had ever put two and two together and figured out that the
source of his downfall had been none other than the mysterious and beautiful
Anna Wagner, or whether she was still the winsome Southern gal who'd given him
the best night of his life.
Somehow, she hoped
it was the former. At least then her
revenge on him would have been complete.
Across the street,
the static girls were coming out of the boutique again, laughing
raucously. Rogue thought she heard the
word 'men' as they rounded the corner and disappeared out of sight. She stood with her hands in her pockets and
gave a half sigh. What she wouldn't do
to be one of those girls even for one day, to live in blissful ignorance once
more. She now knew that there was at
least something to be said for the stupid and the credulous after all.
It was at that
moment that a short, stocky, well-built yet slightly balding man exited from an
unmarked building across the street, glanced furtively left to right, and
carried on down the sidewalk, walking away from her. Rogue nudged the sunglasses up over the
bridge of her nose, pushed herself off the lamppost and followed him, keeping
her distance from the other side of the road.
The man stumbled down the path - he was overdressed in a suit that
seemed to be too small for him, and he was obviously sweating in the summer
heat - he kept loosening his tie now and then, and the sparkle of sweat
reflected on his forehead. Though strong
and stout, he was looking clearly agitated - he kept looking about him as if he
expected someone to jump out at him.
Rogue's expression was impassive as she noted every detail of this
man. To anyone else she was an outsider,
an incidental passer-by on the street - and that was exactly the way she wanted
it.
At least this time
round her job would be simpler. This
insignificant man would be less than likely to have a power disrupter on him,
and she would be able to absorb him, knock him out, steal his papers, and make
her get-away. Usually, this was a job
that would have been done by one of the others, but she'd begun to resent the
fact that she was given all the undercover, seduction ops, and she'd begged
Mystique to give her something low-key.
Reluctantly, Raven had agreed, reminding Rogue pointedly that the
undercover ops would still be hers no matter what. Rogue hadn't cared. All she wanted was something halfway decent
and respectable for a change, something that she could come out of with even a
modicum of self-respect.
The man had slid
into a cramped, dingy alleyway, disappearing out of sight. Rogue quickly picked up her pace, crossing
the road whilst only narrowly avoiding the traffic. In her best impression of nonchalance, she
sauntered past the alley and gave it a quick glance. Empty.
Again with calculated insouciance, she backtracked, slipping inside the
alleyway as the man had done before her.
It was cooler here,
and darker. The dank, fetid smell of
waste and refuse filled her nostrils, making her nose crinkle in disgust. Carefully, she pulled off her shades, slid
them inside her coat pocket. The man was
nowhere to be seen.
The alley was
littered with rubbish. She had to pick
her way through it - she had little doubt this was a place regularly used by
junkies, seeing the cooks and hypes that were scattered everywhere. The problem was trying not to make a
sound. There was barely any room to
manoeuvre, and before she'd got halfway down the pathway, she'd already stepped
on a glass needle. It cracked with an
ominous resonance, and she paused with bated breath.
Swish.
She started,
looking up. Something had jumped between
the buildings over her head, and its shadow had only just fleetingly caught her
eye… She froze for a long while, waiting for any sign or signal that it was
anything untoward. A minute later, and
still nothing. She shook herself.
Musta been a cat…
She began to pick
her way through the trash again, until finally it petered out, and on the
building to her left she was faced with a set of double doors, one of which had
been left slightly ajar. She scaled the
surrounding area with her eyes, searching for any other escape routes. Nothing.
Then her man must have come through here.
She slipped off her
heavy duster - underneath which she wore her usual black bodysuit - rolled it
up, and deposited it behind a nearby dumpster along with her pack. Then she edged herself between the double
doors, and into the room within.
It was the shell of
an old warehouse. Dust flittered in the
milky sunlight that poured in from several smashed windows. The rest of the room was wreathed in dark
black shadow. Again, her man was not to
be seen. At the other end of the room,
there was another door, again slightly ajar.
Rogue inched her way towards that door, keeping to the shadows. From the adjoining room, she could hear
voices, low mutterings in two distinct male voices. She paused.
She needed to find a better line of attack. Two against one wasn't good odds at all. She needed to find somewhere that could give
her the element of surprise…
She scanned the
room, looking for another means of accessing the other room. Looking up, she saw beams. And up in the opposite wall, a hatch,
obviously once having been for passing goods from one room to another, the door
hanging from one of its hinges.
With skilled and
practiced stealth, she tested one of the shelves standing next to her. Finding
it strong enough, she clambered up onto it, moving up it with a lithe grace. Once at the top, she swung herself up onto a
nearby beam, lying flat on her stomach.
The hatch was some twenty yards away, and she had very little time to
navigate it. Gritting her teeth, she set
to work.
She was grateful
for all those hours in the Danger Room, for all the time Mystique had spent
honing her physical skills. She crawled
the roof-space like some wiry insect. It
was only a couple of minutes before she had slipped through the hatch, and was
now in the adjoining room. Muscles tense
and aching, sweat beading on her brow, she managed to scramble onto a nearby
beam without so much as a sound, scaling it until she reached the centre of the
room. It was only then, when she was in
the safest and most advantageous place she knew she could be in, that she
looked down.
There was her man,
nervously adjusting his tie, urgently whispering to a taller, lankier, somehow
more commanding man in a navy blue suit and a red tie.
“I don't know why,”
the balding man was saying in a stammer to the taller, more confident man, “but
I got the feeling I was being followed when I came down here. I think maybe we should keep our eyes
open. You never know with those rebel
mutants. For all we know, they could be
in this room with us, right now.”
“If that was the
case,” the taller man said in a harsher, yet strangely familiar voice, “you
should have doubled up on your way here, and made sure they lost you…”
The man looked up,
scanning the ceiling with his eyes and suddenly his gaze seemed to be right on
her, boring into her… And in that split second Rogue saw that she was staring
into the face of none other than Bolivar Trask.
The force of the
revelation was so shocking that she almost slipped off her hiding place; but
his gaze swept over her with no sense of recognition or acknowledgement in
them, and the next moment she felt a warm hand press against the small of her
back, steadying her, just quickly enough for her to regain her balance…
Startled, but not
threatened by this unexpected presence, she jerked her head sideways - and
there he was, crouched on the beam
right next to her. At the sight of him
her heart gave an involuntary palpitation, but he pressed a quick finger to his
lips and pointed down to the two men below.
Nevertheless she saw his eyes flash in a semblance of greeting, and she
half-nodded, reverting her attention back to the small party below.
“The room's clear,”
Trask was saying in an irritated tone. “But if your instincts are right, we
should watch ourselves. I'm taking a
great risk coming to see you, Guess.
What is it that was so important it required my presence?”
“Golden
information, sir,” simpered the other man, “for your ears only.”
“Really? Then get on with it.”
“Well, I went and
saw Rifkind, like you asked. He said he didn't
remember anything strange about that night, so I used my mutant power on him,
like you told me to. And there was something that didn't seem right…”
He paused, wiping
sweat from his brow - Trask grunted impatiently.
“Of course there
wasn't something right! Idiotic though
Rifkind is, there is no way he would've divulged such sensitive information to
so many of the wrong people! And yet
many witnesses saw him enter the Core at the time the information was accessed
and disseminated! There have been
rumours that he was being impersonated by a shapeshifter… If such a scandal
broke out; if they knew a mutant could break into our most sensitive systems…!”
He halted, passing a hand over his brow, and when he next spoke his voice was
calm, controlled, yet cold and threatening. “This had better be good, Guess -
you know that it's only because of my
influence that you are allowed to even walk the streets - and even this I only
allow because you are of use to me, and because you can pass for a pure human -
mutant scum though you are.”
Rogue felt
something in her blood boil at these words, and she wanted nothing more than to
jump down there and kill those men at that very moment; but again she felt that
calming touch on the small of her back, and when she turned, she saw him
pointing out two specific corners of the room.
Sure enough, there in the blackness, she could make out two looming,
stationary shadows, waiting, watchful.
Bodyguards. Of course Trask
wasn't stupid enough to come in on his own…
Down below, Guess
was simpering and fawning.
“I assure you, Mr.
Trask, this intelligence will be highly interesting to you.” He paused,
produced a handkerchief, and wiped his forehead with a shaking hand. “As I was
saying… Rifkind didn't recall anything strange about that night, but when I
plucked his memories of that evening, there was someone, an incidental and
accidental someone who wouldn't have seemed out of the ordinary at all, except
that they looked suspiciously familiar…”
“You're rambling,
Guess,” Trask scowled at him. “Get to the point.”
“All right, all
right.” Guess took a deep breath. “That night he met a girl with a white streak
in her hair.”
The phrase
immediately seemed to catch Trask's interest.
Up above on the beams, Rogue froze.
Did Trask know about her? Did he
know about the Brotherhood? Worse still,
was Guess going to tell Trask what had happened that night, with Remy right
there beside her…?
“A white streak,
hmm?” Trask was stroking his chin thoughtfully. “The description does seem
familiar…”
“Five years ago,
during the first culling of the super-powered mutants, a girl of the same
description went missing - one of the X-Men, I believe. She was never found… Indeed, it isn't even
known if she is still alive… There was a flurry of interest, at the time. Of course, this may be of negligible
significance… Still, you must admit, the coincidence is there, Mr. Trask…”
“But then,” Trask
replied shrewdly, “while there aren't many girls with white-streaks running
round New York, there are bound to be more than one. There's no evidence that they were one and
the same person…”
“No, I'm not
suggesting that…But you'll admit, it is
interesting…” He halted, dug into his breast pocket, and pulled out a sheaf of
papers. “I just got these printed off - they're stills from a duplicate copy of
the security video taped at the Ritz that night.”
He passed the
photos to Trask, who looked at them with interest. From her position, she could make out a few
of them - pictures of her that night at the Ritz, checking in, entering her
room, heading for the bar that evening… Luckily he stopped short of any that
may have shown her with Rifkind.
“She signed in
under the name of Anna Wagner,” Guess continued. “An assumed name of course…
But the funny thing is, there was no record of her ever having signed out that
night - nor do any of the security tapes show her leaving the building. It's as if she vanished into thin air.”
He paused, leaving
a silence loaded with meaning. Trask
looked up from the photos, his eyes now glittering.
“Perhaps she left
as another guest… Perhaps she's the shapeshifter we're looking for.”
“My thoughts
exactly,” Guess nodded.
By now Rogue was
shaking violently, and it was down to more than just fear, or trepidation. It was rage, it was violence… Now her face
had been hijacked, as well as her body…
Trask rifled
through the photos a little more, then handed them back to Guess, a small smirk
on his face.
“Well done, Guess,
very well done indeed. You are to be
congratulated.”
Guess' face beamed,
but stopped short of smugness.
“Of course we'll
have to check those security tapes again and see if there are any anomalous
moments where the same person checked out twice -”
“Naturally.”
“- But other than
that I do believe we've found our woman.”
There was a small,
appraising smile on Trask's face - he was nodding slightly, staring at Guess
with narrowed eyes. After several
moments he broke the silence, saying: “I suppose the copy of that tape is in
your possession at this very moment?”
“Of course, Mr.
Trask, sir.”
“And I take it you
would be willing to sell that tape - and these stills - to me? For a price?”
Guess gave a
nervous laugh.
“I'm so glad we can
understand one another so thoroughly, Mr. Trask…”
Trask looked back
over his shoulder, at one of the bodyguards lurking in the corner, and gave him
a slight, imperceptible nod. Wordlessly,
the man emerged from the shadows, a large black briefcase in his hands. Trask turned back to Guess.
“Show me the tape,”
he said.
Guess, who now looked anxious, reached
inside his breast pocket with a slightly shaking hand, and produced a glimpse
of the tape, before very quickly and furtively stuffing it back in his
suit. At the very sight of it Rogue's
trembling became so violent that her knuckles were white as she gripped the
beam, trying to steady herself. Trask
was trading in her, exchanging her for money… He was going to be able to see
her face, her movements, every moment she'd spent in the bar with Rifkind,
every sick second in the elevator up to his penthouse suite … Something white
flashed in her mind, raw and pure rage, desperation… At all costs Trask must not know who she was, must never touch
that part of her life she wanted no other to touch…
She was stirring,
she was moving, and she felt Remy's hand on her back in urgent warning, but she
was beyond that, she was beyond all reason, all logic… she was jumping, falling
towards her quarry…
And even as she
leapt from the beam she felt a wall of static in the air behind her, the faint
crackling of energy making every hair on her body stand on end; a sudden flash
of blinding, pink eldritch light flooded the room like a starburst, but she
didn't stop to heed it, her feet had already slammed into the wooden floor
below her and she had grabbed a hold of Guess, her mind flashing black and
white, her muscles contracting, bursting with an inhuman effort and…
KA-BOOM!
Dust had filled the room in a
dense and smoky cloud and there was coughing behind her, to her left, to her
right… She couldn't see… Bits of the beams, of the roof were creaking,
crumbling, raining down on them and still, she couldn't see…
…But Guess was
still in her grasp and she was hurling him with all the might she possessed, in
a titanic display of raw strength she'd never known she possessed, and he flew
through the air like a baseball, smashed through the door and into the
adjoining room with an almighty CRASH!…
Behind her there
were thuds and screams, but Rogue paid it no heed. She was already going after Guess, heading
for the splintered door she'd thrown him through and into the room beyond. At some point she came out of the billowing
cloud of smoke and dust and onto the other side, and there, sprawled out on the
wooden floor, looking terrified and with his nose a broken and bleeding mess,
was Guess.
She leapt on him
before he could get to his feet, and the next moment she had her hands round
his throat, her rage a palpable thing inside her, throbbing in her veins,
hammering in her head, pounding behind her eyes…
“Why…” was all she could breathe, over
and over, “WHY…?”
His eyes were
bulging as he stared up at her, half from fear, half from recognition, and his
voice was hoarse, squeaky when he said: “You…”
But she didn't
care, she didn't want to care; she
was gritting her teeth so hard that it hurt, and her hands were strangling him
but she couldn't stop squeezing, she couldn't stop squeezing…
“Why?” she breathed again, her eyes and
her throat both stinging, and it wasn't from the smoke but something more… “Why
did you do it? You're a mutant too… They
hate yah… They'd never letcha stay
alive… You're one of us… Why did you betray us, why did you do it…?”
Anguish was
spilling into her voice and before she even had time to check herself the tears
were tumbling down her cheeks, because everything she'd fought for - for the
sake of mutants, for the sake of the X-Men, for the sake of Xavier's dream…
Everything she'd ever sacrificed for them, all the terrible things she'd done
to protect them… He'd thrown it all back in her face…
But his face,
though a pinched and bloody, broken mess, was defiant, his eyes scornful as he
looked back at her with something akin to disgust.
“You think I'm a
traitor, do you?” he spat. “You think I've betrayed mutantkind? Don't make me laugh! You're the one who's the traitor, stirring
things up, creating even more bad blood between the mutants and the baseline
humans… Look at the purges going on outside in the city because of people like
you! It's the innocent who suffer, the
poor, ordinary mutants who can't afford to fend for themselves, the young, the
sick, the invalids… Do you think they thank you when the Hounds come knocking
round their door, when they're sent to die in internment camps?” He sneered at
her, his expression one of pure loathing. “Yeah, maybe I'm a double-crosser,
but at least I'm looking out for myself, and at least I have no pretensions, no
illusions about who I am and what I do!
At least I don't think I'm some sort of mutant freedom fighter, someone
who causes even more pain and misery for the people on the streets!”
He halted, shaking
under her grasp, but now with rage, not fear.
And at his words all her own rage had flooded out of her - it was as if
all her anger had gone into him, and all his fear had seeped into her.
“Yah don’t know…”
she muttered under her breath, blinking back the tears. “Yah don’t know what
it's like…”
“Bullshit!” he
seethed. “I know what it's like to live in pain! All mutants do! Do you think the fact that you're fighting
the good fight makes you some sort of martyr to the mutant cause, that it makes
you better than the rest of us?” He paused, his expression jeering. “I saw what
you did with that guy Rifkind,” he hissed derisively. “Watching that video, it
didn't take a genius to figure out how you got to him. You're no freedom fighter. You're nothing but a cheap whore.”
Shuck.
The sound sliced
through his words, through her reeling mind like a hammer blow - it was as if
time had stopped and silenced him forever.
It took a moment for her to realise that Guess was dead. At first she thought that she had done it,
but her fingers had been trembling too much to exert enough force on his throat
to kill him… She dropped him suddenly as if contaminated, and it was only when
he fell to the floor with a sickening thud that she saw the knife vibrating
ominously in his heart.
Shuddering,
nauseous, she looked back over her shoulder.
Remy was standing in the broken doorway twenty yards behind her, his
expression steely. The adjoining room
was deathly quiet. She hadn’t even
noticed that the fight within had ended.
“You killed him,”
she whispered, her voice sounding high-pitched, alien. She hoped against hope he had not heard
Guess' parting words to her…
“He knew too much
about you,” he explained, quite matter-of-factly; and she felt somehow
reassured he'd heard nothing. “You really t'ink we could've let him live?”
Rogue said
nothing. She knelt there in the dust and
stared at Guess' staring eyes, his words consuming her numb and throbbing mind,
over and over, over and over, making her put a hand to her mouth, making her
gag…
Remy walked up,
placed a foot on Guess' flank, bent down, and pulled the knife out of his
chest. It slid out of his body with
another thick shuck.
“I took out de
bodyguards,” he explained in an oddly conversational tone, while he wiped the
blade on Guess' suit and slipped it back in the sheath at his thigh. “Trask got
away though. I guess we're lucky he was
empty-handed. Don't t'ink he saw either
of us neither, since I was de one who had de smarts to get up dat smokescreen.”
He was now casually rifling around inside Guess' pockets, and a second later,
he'd produced the videotape. Rogue
stared at it, swallowing the gritty lump in her throat.
“Ah'm sorry,” she
apologised hoarsely. “Ah wasn't thinkin'… Ah just got so scared, so angry… Ah
should've been able to keep my cool, it's what Ah was trained t'do. If you hadn't been there…”
She trailed off,
staring once more into Guess' vacant eyes.
Remy said nothing, but stood, and offered her his hand. She hesitated a moment before taking it,
finding she really did need the support when she wobbled a little on unsteady
feet. He reached out an arm to stabilise
her, touching her waist, but she pushed him away. She didn't want him to touch her, not just
yet. She wasn't halfway ready for that
yet.
“Ah'm fine,” she
insisted gruffly, but he shook his head.
“No, you're
not. You lost your head back dere, and
it could've cost more den jus' lives. If
I hadn'ta been dere dey could've captured you, tortured you, made you give up
secrets dat could've gotten a whole bunch'a people killed.”
She laughed weakly.
“Ah would've liked t' see 'em try…”
His eyes narrowed
coldly as they perused her.
“It ain't no joke,
chere. I seen what those bastards can
do. If they got their hands on you…” He
trailed off, his eyes burning; then he lifted the videotape in his hand, said:
“But now we got de body of evidence b'fore they did. Neat, huh?”
She ignored the
comment, peered off into the adjoining room where the bodies of the bodyguards
now lay, two formless, shapeless lumps on the floor.
“And the
stills? The photos of me?”
“Musta got burnt in
de explosion,” he said. There was a
flash of pink light as he charged the tape - the next moment it had been
incinerated and was nothing more than a cloud of soot and ash, floating to the
ground. “Dat takes care of dat,” he grunted.
He paused, raised his eyes, looked at her. “You okay?” he asked, concern
finally edging into his voice, into his face.
She glanced away, wiping at her eyes.
She'd stopped crying, but her cheeks were still tearstained and she
rubbed them roughly too.
“Ah- Ah'm fine,”
she muttered, hating the fact that he'd seen her crying. Then, inexplicably, something hit her. “Remy…
Guess mentioned he'd made a duplicate of the original tape… That means the
master copy is still back at the Ritz… There's still evidence that Ah was there
that night…”
Remy's eyes flashed
briefly in the semi-darkness. The next
moment he had swung round and was making for the door.
“Remy!” she called,
a sudden fear growing tentacle-like inside her.
He stopped at the door, swivelled towards her, his face hard.
“I'll go t' de
Ritz,” he said, his voice low, resolved. “I'll get de master copy, destroy it.”
Despite her fear, it
was something she knew she couldn't let him do.
“No.” She walked up to him, stood within
a few inches of him, looked him in the eye and said: “Ah ain't gonna let you do
it. This is my call. It was my mission, and Ah fucked it up. It ain't got a thing t' do with you. Ah'm goin' t' the Ritz, and Ah'm gonna get
that tape.”
He returned her
gaze, his eyes flaming red, his mouth a straight, angry line.
“De fuck you are,
Rogue,” he hissed. “You're a fuckin' mess, you can't expect me t' believe you
could go in there right now and keep your head straight. I dunno what got you goin' back there, but
whatever it was I suggest you deal wit' it.
People like you an' me, in dis line of work - we can't afford t'be goin'
and pullin' stunts like you pulled back there.”
“All the more
reason why Ah have t' be the one to go and sort it out!” she yelled at him,
infuriated that he should be speaking to her like this, him, a thief, a womaniser, a cold-blooded killer…!
“All de more reason
why you're gonna lay low and get yourself t' calm down,” he retorted, his voice
wavering with anger. “Now you'd better listen t' what I tell you t' do, b'cause
I ain't gonna stand here arguin' wit' you.
Trask got away and he's gonna be sendin' people down here real soon, and
I want us t' be shot of dis place b'fore dat happens. You and I both know he's gonna be headin'
down t' de Ritz right now, aimin' t' get his hands on dat master copy b'fore we
do. Now we ain't got a lot of time, and
you ain't got your head t'gether yet, so I'm gonna do dis favour for you, and
you're gonna shut up and let me do it.”
Something in his
eyes communicated to her that he meant what he said, that this was just a
favour to her, just another job; that he had no intention of prying into her
affairs, as she had been so afraid he would.
She stared up at him dumbly, some form of hope finally allaying the
doubt in her heart, and he reached out when she said nothing, placed his hands
on her upper arms and said: “All I need is your trust in dis, chere. Do you trust me?”
His eyes, intent on
hers, waiting for her answer, taking her breath away…
“More than
anythin',” she murmured, as if she had confessed something wonderful and
terrible, and his lips had curled into a smile so beautiful, so reassuring that
she wanted to lean forward and kiss it…
“Then do what I
tell you. There's a place a couple of
blocks down from here, a bar called Louis's
Place.” He reached inside his duster for his wallet, flipped it open and
slipped out a worn, battered and cheap-looking business card, handing it to
her. “Louis is an old friend o' mine. Give him my name and he'll look after you
till I come back for you. And don't
worry, Louis is in de business, he knows not to ask any questions.” He tucked
his wallet back inside his pocket as if having just concluded a transaction.
“I'll come an' pick you up around seven.
Make sure you lie low and don't spill a word t' anyone till then.”
He turned, the matter having been concluded to
his mind; but she still wasn't ready, there was still so much she needed to ask
him…
“Remy…”
He halted, swung
round in the doorway, and the words all surfaced in her mouth in one go and she
couldn't get any of it out…
“Good luck.”
Please come back t' me alive…
He smiled, and with
a swish of his coat he had gone, leaving her alone once more with a cold and
silent Guess.
*
Louis's Place turned out to be a rundown
bar on the rough side of the town. Louis
himself was a sallow yet somehow sturdy-faced man in his fifties - whether
mutant or not she could not tell. When
she'd mentioned Remy's name he'd shown no sign of recognition, but had led her
wordlessly behind the bar and off into a side corridor, filled with old crates
of beer and spirits. At the end of the
passageway he'd shoved aside a dusty old box of shot glasses with his foot, and
pulled aside a frayed, canvas rug to reveal a well-concealed trapdoor.
Still wordless (she
began to wonder whether he was mute), he'd guided her down into another
corridor, one that was a far cry from the one they'd just left upstairs. It was bright and well lit - carpeted too,
though not lavishly. Many doors lined
this corridor, and Louis stopped at a certain one, ignoring all the others,
stabbed a key from his overloaded key ring into the lock, and opened it with a
kind of flourish. When she made no move,
he gave an odd, vexed expression, and gestured for her to enter.
It was exactly as
if she'd stepped into a motel room.
There was a bed, and a TV, and a mini-fridge, and an en-suite bathroom,
all cheaply yet efficiently decorated.
Before she could utter a word of thanks Louis had already closed the
door behind her, leaving her there, alone.
She half expected to hear the key turn in the lock, but all she heard
was his heavy footsteps walking back down the corridor and out of earshot. She was free to do whatever she wished.
Finally alone,
finally safe, she felt an all-encompassing exhaustion suddenly descend over
her. Without thinking, she slumped onto
the bed and slept.
The clock read
five-thirty when she awoke - on the dresser Louis had left her some food and an
impressive array of drinks from wine to water.
He was, she thought wryly, a barman after all. She got up and ate rather half-heartedly,
though she chugged down as much water as she could. By the time she had finished it was a quarter
to six, and she had an hour and fifteen minutes to kill before Remy's
return. She wandered the room aimlessly,
and while at first she had thought it typical of any old normal motel room, it
was, as Remy had suggested, tailored to someone who was in 'the business'. The bathroom cabinet was filled with pills
and potions and whatnots; a first aid kit was tucked away inside the
dresser. Various weapons had been
stashed in a cupboard in the corner; along with gun parts, ammo, knife
sharpeners, even old crossbow bolts.
Under the bed were various bits of gadgetry she was sure Forge would've
killed to get his hands on.
While this amused
her for a while, she soon became bored and decided to go for a wander, only to
discover that almost all the doors in the corridor outside her room had been
locked. No big surprise there. Only a dusty old storeroom had been left
open, which contained only mundane food supplies, more crates of beer, and a
couple of tool boxes. By the time she'd
finished it was still only six thirty and she still had half an hour to kill.
Disheartened, she
went back to her room to continue her wait in there. She lay on the bed and twiddled her thumbs;
seven O'clock came and Remy didn’t appear.
Another fifteen minutes passed and still he hadn't arrived. She'd finally been motivated to go up to the
bar and ask Louis where he thought he was at that point. Louis, ever the tactician, had courteously
pointed to the back passage once more, and she had been left to stomp off to
her room feeling less than agreeable.
It was another half
hour before she heard the tread of familiar feet outside her door, and she'd
managed to sit up just in time to greet him when he finally stormed into the
room.
“Remy…”
He made no
greeting, didn't even look at her, but went straight to the dresser and brought
out the first aid kit.
“You're late,” she
breathed, confused as to why he was being so off with her.
“Do me a favour,
chere,” he remarked gruffly, ignoring her comment. “Next time we meet, remind
me not t' offer t' get involved wit' your affairs.”
She held her
breath, at first thinking that he'd somehow seen what was on the videotape,
seen her in that elevator with Rifkind… But when he finally turned and faced
her, shrugging off his coat, she realised what he was talking about.
“Remy, you're
bleedin'!” she cried.
“Hmph. Bastards were ready for me.” He sank onto the
bed and removed his shirt, revealing a myriad of cuts, welts and bruises.
“Mission was tougher den I thought, hahn?”
Rogue made no
reply, bending over slightly and examining the wounds.
“Remy, maybe you
should go see a doctor…”
“Yeah, right - and
get asked all de funny questions? Chere,
you know better.” He opened up the kit, began to toss out disinfectant,
sutures, bandages and other paraphernalia. “T'ink I cracked some ribs or
somet'ing…but it ain't as bad as it looks - pretty much superficial, lucky
me. And besides, my mutant abilities'll
make sure I heal up faster den normal… Don't got not'ing to be worried about…”
He opened up the
bottle of disinfectant, ready to pour it onto the swabs, but she took the
bottle off him before he could even begin.
“It's mah fault,”
she told him in a low voice when he gave her a questioning look. “Let me do
it.”
“Hmm.” He raised an
eyebrow. “Dis gon' turn out like one of dose action movies when de guy finally
gets de girl?”
She half smiled,
snatched the swabs off him too.
“You already had me
from act one, scene one, line one, Cajun.
So no, Ah don't think this is gonna turn into some movie cliché. Unless you mean the blue kinda movie where
the girl gets to inflict judicious pain on her man. Because this is probably gonna hurt.”
He grinned.
“So hit me, chere.”
He was an obliging
patient, for the most part - he never wriggled, never complained, and never
winced. The fact that he didn't seem to
mind at all made her feel a little less guilty about actually agreeing to send
him off on the job in the first place.
“It wasn't too bad,
was it?” she asked, while she was busy finishing up taping his ribs - luckily
she hadn't needed any of the sutures. He
gave a mere ghost of a shrug in reply.
“Coulda been
worse. Dey was expectin' me, so
naturally I was at a disadvantage.”
She didn't know
quite how to ask the next question.
“Did you…did you
kill them?”
He shrugged again,
wincing for the first time when the movement jarred his injuries slightly.
“Had to,
chere. Dey'd seen my face. I'm afraid dis whole crazy affair was too big
to have any witnesses. God knows what
you've gotten yourself into, p'tit.”
She grimaced.
Yeah, tell me about it…
“And the tape?”
“Destroyed. Torched it.
Torched de warehouse too. T'ink
we've covered our tracks pretty well for now, hahn?”
She paused, sitting
back to admire her handiwork. Lucky
Mystique had taught her first aid too.
The wounds had been easy to treat - they hadn't been half as serious as
she'd first thought, and his body was already healing nicely.
“You make a good
nurse, chere,” he noted rather comically.
“Don't get any
funny ideas,” she told him archly, getting up to go into the bathroom and wash
the utensils.
“I dunno,” she
heard him remark behind her. “I tend t' get funny ideas about you when you do
de most mundane t'ings. Like walk into a
room. Or breathe. Or cross your legs. Or when you do dat pouty t'ing wit' your
lips.”
She couldn't help
but smile in spite of herself.
“Ah don't recall
yah ever havin' seen me cross mah legs,” she rebuked him.
“You used to,” he
replied, somewhat whimsically. “Back when we were in de X-Men. You used t' do it sometimes when I hit on
you. Used t' make you go all prim an'
proper, you'd sit dere wit' your legs crossed and give me dat look dat used to
say, make one more innuendo and I'll rip
your head off, Remy LeBeau.”
She laughed.
“That was years
ago!”
“Yeah, but for some
reason it still sticks in my mind.”
There was a short
silence, during which she finished cleaning up; when she walked back into the
room he was spread out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling with a pensive
look on his face.
“So you were de one who was behind dat whole
Trask Technologies t'ing,” he murmured out of the blue. “Didn't t'ink dat was
your brand o' style, chere. You ain't
got de vindictive streak.”
She snorted. “Wanna
bet?”
He looked at her
sharply. “So it was you?”
She paused, packed
away the first aid kit, wondering just how much she should reveal - but then if
he hadn't earned her trust by now, he'd never earn it.
“That wasn't me,”
she returned at last in a low voice, as she put the kit back into the dresser
drawer. “Ah was just the one who got the keycard off Rifkind. The night we met outside the Ritz… That was
what Ah was doin'.”
In the mirror, she
could see him still looking at her with a thoughtful expression, but he didn't
ask anything more on the subject. He
could guess perfectly well that whoever had orchestrated the Trask Technologies
debacle was her superior, the one she took direct orders from. Any more information would break the unspoken
rules between them, and even if he'd asked her who it was, she wouldn't have
answered him. But now it was her turn,
for she had questions of her own.
“So,” she began,
turning round to face him, “why exactly were you there at the warehouse today,
Remy? It was you, wasn't it, jumping
across the roofs like the freakin' Energiser Bunny - right?” Even if
Ah did think you were a cat at first…
“Just doin' my job,
chere,” he replied with a bland smile.
She raised her eyebrows, surprised.
“Your guys were
tailin' Guess too?”
“Yup. Seems both our guys were justified in their
interest, huh? Fuckin' traitor was
reportin' direct to Bolivar Trask hisself.
Glad I got a clean shot at de bastard.
I know you ain't into killin', chere… but he got what he deserved.”
Rogue looked away,
remembering Guess' words to her, those last hateful words before the knife had
penetrated his heart with that thick, sickening thud. The memory of what he had said to her had
troubled her since she had left the warehouse - yet she had tried to push them
away, refusing to believe his estimation of her and the Brotherhood had been
right. They were trying to help mutants, to rescue them from
slavery, torture and worse, not give them more misery… And yet something about
what he had said had rung true, and she couldn't get it out of her head… And
then there was what he'd called her.
A cheap whore…
“What did he say t'
you?” Remy asked abruptly, jolting her from her reverie.
“What?” she blurted.
“Guess. Before I snuffed de bastard. He was sayin' somet'ing t' you. Musta been heavy, 'cos you were cryin'…” He
paused, gave her a look that was a strange mixture of compassion and curiosity.
“Ain't never seen you cry b'fore…”
“It was nothin',”
she replied quickly, in a tone that said back
off… He didn't take the hint.
“Not'ing?”
“Nothin'.
Okay? Let's drop it.”
A gulf of silence
settled between them and she could feel his eyes boring through her; but she
couldn't return the look, knowing what it would cost her. For the first time since they'd met that day,
she felt it. That tenuous yet unbreakable
connection between them, one that was strengthening with every minute, every
second that passed. There, in the
silence, each felt it thickening, deepening, making Rogue's throat close and
the pit of her stomach stir. She could
feel it coming off him too, in waves, making her cheeks burn as she remembered
how it had been when they'd last been alone together…
She turned to
fiddle awkwardly with some of the items on the dresser, but she could still
feel him looking at her; she didn't dare look up into the mirror for fear of
seeing his eyes on her own.
It's still there… this thing b'tween us…more
than just need, or lust… Somehow it's gotten too deep, too serious… Ah don't
even know how it happened, but it's there… And he feels it too…
She wondered whether
it bothered him. Whether it bothered him
that he'd been willing to help her out of a tight spot, willing enough to kill
for her.
Gathering her
courage, she turned, walked to the bed and sat down beside him.
“Remy?” she asked
softly, reaching out with a hand and absently tickling his navel, nevertheless
still unable meet his gaze.
“Hmm?”
“Does it bother
you? Killin', Ah mean?”
It was a long while
before he finally answered. “It did, de first couple of times. But after dat I'm sorry t' say… Y'get used to
it.”
She paused,
something in her giving way to - disappointment? - then rested her palm on his
stomach. “Ah don't believe you,” she murmured.
A laugh rumbled in his chest.
“S'fair
enough. I don't want you t' have to
figure it out for yourself, Rogue. Not
ever.”
She looked at him
then, seeing something deeper in his eyes than his words had intimated to
her. He had been right, and she'd known
it from the start - Guess could not have been allowed to live, not if she
wanted to stay alive - he'd known too much, seen her face, heard her voice,
known what she was willing to sacrifice.
She would have had to kill him.
Remy had simply done it before she had had to. Because he knew she would never have been
able to do it, not without killing her soul first. He'd done the same for her with Kincaid. It was his form of protecting her, shielding
her from something far worse than mere physical harm. She wondered how much of his own soul he'd
had to kill in order to survive - when she searched his face she thought she
saw it, in the dark circles under his eyes, the tiredness of his mouth. He alone knew what killing could cost her,
because it had already cost him so much.
But my soul's already tainted, Remy… It's
already been spoiled…
Nevertheless she
found herself squeezing his hand, just once, when she said: “Thanks.” And she meant it. He however, touched her hand with his
fingers, stroked the back of it with just a hint of insinuation.
“You really wanna
thank me, chere, there are other ways you can do it…” he drawled huskily. He moved his hand, grasping her wrist in a
strong, firm grip, communicating to her what he wanted; but she resisted his
pull.
Not here… We only belong in one place…
“Remy…”
“Hmmm?”
She released her
arm from his grasp, placed a hand on his chest, traced the latticework of scars
on his skin with a curious finger…
“Ah wanna go back
t' the safe house,” she whispered.
*
Go to Chapter
14 : Go to Chapter 16