They
said nothing on the way back, not even when they'd stepped back into that
little room where they'd first become lovers.
There was an uneasiness between them, born out of sorrow and
mistrust. And yet, despite everything,
he'd still come after her, he'd still done everything in his power to protect
her and keep her safe. There was a part
of her, the proud and solitary part, which resented this. But there was another part, deeper and more
profound, that ached with the realisation that she could not simply turn off
her feelings for him. From the moment
they'd stepped into one another's lives they had been playing with fire; they
had accepted that risk, and she had no reason to resent him for that. She had hurt him as much as he'd hurt her.
And she knew she'd
hurt him. She knew that in a way, he'd
seen her as his unique possession, and she had broken that belief just as he
had broken the belief that deep down he was a good person doing what he did for
the right reasons, even if he did it in the wrong way.
After all, there
weren’t many good or innocent people around these days, and she herself had
long ago left both goodness and innocence behind.
Once back at the
safe house she'd run straight into the shower.
Her body felt old and tired under the water - it was as if the past day
or so she'd aged a lifetime. She spent a
long time there, running her hands over herself, trying to make out just who
and what she really was.
We are the faceless and the formless,
wanting to become something complete and beautiful and whole, striving to
become human…
That was what
Mystique had said.
And somehow, for
the first time, she saw that statement clearly for what it was - it was a truth
that had followed her not simply since the war had started, but ever since she
had been born as a mutant; it was her phrase, her motto, it was the meaning of her.
She wondered
whether she would ever escape her cocoon, whether she would ever be more than
just Rogue.
It was thirty
minutes later when she stepped out of the shower. It'd taken a while to get all the brown dye
out of her hair, but she'd managed it at last.
In the lopsided and mottled bathroom mirror, the butterfly pendant still
glittered brighter than anything else in this sad and dreary world, just as it
always had done. She thought of Simmons,
of the way he’d looked at it with his strange, oblique glance, from eyes now
dead and cold and staring. He’d known
what it meant, somehow. He’d known what
it had meant to her, that it kept her looking and dreaming for something that
had probably never even been existed. A
better her, a better Rogue.
Remy was sitting on
the edge of the mattress, playing solitaire with a new pack of cards - she could
smell the aroma of fresh plastic. She
stood and watched him awhile as she towelled her hair dry, the way his fingers
absently caressed the edges of the cards as he placed them out in front of him
in a somehow meaningful array of pattern and colour. But whatever he found in them remained
obscure to her, and always would. She
had accepted long ago that there were some things that she would never know
about him, however long they spent together.
“Feelin' better?”
he asked her at last, not looking up from his game.
“Ah guess…” she
replied waveringly. She didn’t know how
she felt.
“Hmph. At least it's better den you bein' mad at
me.” He paused, laid down the queen of diamonds. “You better rest up, chere,
get some sleep. We should be leavin'
early for de Hound pens tomorrow. We'll
need to be at de top of our game.”
She made no verbal
acknowledgement, merely nodding silently, even though he was too engrossed in
his game to see it. She took a glance
around the room, her gaze resting on the battered old armchair in the corner of
the room. A blanket had been laid on it,
and a pillow; his trench coat had been slung over the back. Despite everything that had passed between
them, something inside her fell. She
knew he was planning to sleep apart from her as a token of respect, but
nevertheless she didn’t want that courtesy.
It wasn't the sex she wanted - it was his warmth that she needed. Perhaps it was weakness, but she couldn't
stand this enforced coldness between them any longer. Of everything, he was the very last thing she
had left, and still she couldn't let him go.
Her stomach gnawing
listlessly, she slowly laid aside the towel and slumped onto the edge of the
mattress. She was tired; she didn't want
to argue with him. She didn’t even have
the strength anymore. Gently she touched
her cheek, which ached dully where Simmons had hit her. Even that felt numb.
“You okay, chere?”
He had turned
slightly and was looking at her. She
nodded slowly.
“Ah'm fine. It's nothin'.”
He swivelled round
fully to face her, and when he reached out she found she didn’t want to turn
away. His fingers touched her cheek
lightly as he examined the wound.
“Should be okay,”
he decided after a moment. “Might get a little septic though, if we don’t treat
it.” He got up, went over to the dresser, and when he came back he had some
cotton wool and a bottle of disinfectant on him. He sat next to her again, shook some of the
pungent-smelling liquid onto the wad of cotton wool, before pausing and looking
at her. “Are you okay wit' me doin' dis?”
She smiled wanly.
“Ah'm fine with just about anythin' you can throw at me, sugah.”
His smile was wan
too, but it was there. Gently he placed
his left hand on her shoulder while his right carefully tended her cut. She thought he took a longer time than was
necessary to clean the wound, but she made no complaint, sensing that this was
some sort of test for them both, a testing of the boundaries that had been
newly erected between them. She knew
instinctively that this was his way of apologising to her, and deep down, she
wanted to apologise too. It took a
minute or so for the tenseness to abate somewhat, and she allowed herself to
relax.
“You still wear dat?”
he asked her in an undertone while he continued to dab at her cheek. She gazed at him questioningly, before seeing
him looking down at the butterfly pendant hanging at her breast.
“Sometimes,” she
replied softly. She paused: his eyes
were back on the cut, inspecting it. “Ah always have it on me, even if Ah'm not
wearing it,” she added, her voice dropping a notch. His brow furrowed slightly.
“Why?” he asked
after a moment.
“Ah dunno,” she
murmured. “Ah guess… because it was the only thing I had from the life I left
behind.”
Along with you…
His eyes flickered;
he dropped his hand and finally his gaze was on hers again. He stared at her a long moment, and she
realised that that short conversation had broken the barriers between them more
profoundly than anything else could have done.
“I see,” he
murmured at last. Then he stood, threw
the cotton wool into a nearby wastebasket and put the disinfectant back into
the dresser. When he was done, he went
back to the cards, still lying in formation next to the bed, and began to pack
them away. Though the coldness had gone
between them, there was still something thick and invisible that she couldn't
pinpoint. A feeling… A dread…
She stared at him,
the way he avoided looking at her, the tautness in his body as he felt her eyes
on him, and something viscous and sickly suddenly rose inside her.
Sinister doesn't just want Rachel's DNA… He
wants Rachel all to himself. It's what
Remy does, isn’t it? He frees mutants
from the concentration camps, brings them to Sinister so he can perform his
sick experiments on them… Rachel's a chance he won't be able to pass up. He doesn't want to broker a deal with
Mystique at all. He's just usin' us t'
find the location… usin' me to get the access codes… Once we get to the pens,
Ah'll just be in the way. Ah won't be needed anymore. None of the Brotherhood will.
She gazed over at
Remy changing out of his shirt by the armchair, the sick revelation hitting her
with an agonising abruptness.
He's ordered Remy t' kill us all…
The full weight of
the realisation seemed to bear down on her body with a dull, terrible ache, and
she slumped onto her back, feeling her body fill with a hollow numbness. What was it that Mystique had said before she
left? If you feel at all that he is being duplicitous, kill him.
Kill him.
She would have to
kill him.
Because the moment
she'd touched Irene, the moment she'd looked into the window of the future,
she'd realised what was truly at stake.
It was beyond revenge and hate and anger, it was beyond petty
attachments. If Rachel was indeed their
last hope, she was more important than anything else, more important than a
selfish need for a cheap and tawdry affair that meant nothing.
Why, Remy, why didn't yah just let me walk
away, why didn't yah carry on with the mission and leave me behind? Why did you haveta come back and make things
harder?
And for the first
time she saw the answer. She saw the
answer as clear as day. It was because
he didn’t want to lose her either.
Because he couldn't resist her like she couldn't resist him. Because after all, despite all his playing,
all his posturing, she really did mean something to him and he couldn't let her
go.
It was more than
she could bear.
She stared up the
ceiling, that same old ceiling she'd stared at the first moment she'd realised
she was falling for him, the night he'd killed Kincaid for her and there had
been no turning back for either of them.
Like there was no
turning back even now…
“Ah'm sorry,” she
suddenly began in a hoarse rush, the words racing to get out, “about what Ah
said earlier on t'day. You were
right. Every time we came here, it
wasn't about us. It wasn't about the world or our lives
outside. It was just about feeling. About comfort. About trying to be happy once or twice a
year.”
She paused and he
stood beside the armchair, his back to her, staring at the blanket in his
hands.
“What we do with
our lives is one thing, and what we feel is another,” she continued slowly.
“Feelin' doesn’t have any place in what we do - it can't, because if we let it
get in the way, we fold. Ah shouldn't
have resented you for that, Remy. It
made me a hypocrite. There are no good
men in this world anymore. And Ah… Ah
ain't a good person. Ah'm wicked. Ah had no right t' be mad at you.”
She stared at the
ceiling, expecting no answer; but he turned and looked at her then, his eyes
searching her face, finding her gaze with a solemn intensity she’d never seen
in them before.
“You ain't wicked, chere,” he returned softly. “You
just tryin' t'do de best wit' de hand dis life has dealt you.” He paused and looked
away - she didn’t think she'd ever seen such a softness in his eyes before.
“I'd never t'ink you were wicked, chere.
Back when we were wit' Xavier's brood, dere were a lotta self-righteous
people dere, people who were selfless and noble and all de t'ings I
wasn't. Good people, chere. People
I'd never had de good fortune t' grow up wit'.” He pulled the kind of wry,
self-deprecating look she knew so well. “But… out of all of them… I always
thought you were de best of de lot.
Good, an' pure, an' untouched… Guess dat's why I liked you so much. And sometimes, I just wish I had dat old
Rogue back.” A small, soft smile had touched his face as he said these words;
but then the smile had faded, and there was sudden realisation on his face.
“But it wasn't Mystique dat took her away, was it?” he continued slowly,
reflectively, his eyes dull. “It was me.
I did it. B'cause I destroy every
good thing I touch.” He paused, looked down into his hands, murmured: “I
spoiled de most beautiful, pure and innocent t'ing I ever saw. And now… however hard I try, I can't get her
back.”
It was as if she'd
been waiting her whole life to hear those words. Something inside her broke and all of a
sudden she could feel her heart again, not just with the dull ache that had
occupied it all these years, but with a white-hot pinprick that seared through
her chest and her throat and stung the back of her eyelids. Nothing he could have said or done to her
could have been more visceral, more intimate.
Suddenly she wanted to weep, weep for the past they'd both left behind;
but she couldn't bear to show him just how much she mourned her lost innocence
- she could never show him such weakness.
Wordlessly she rolled onto her side and buried her head into the pillow,
clutching it tight, pushing down the stone in throat, the one that had weighed
down her heart for so long. She wouldn't
cry, not for him and never for her…
Nevertheless a dry
sob shuddered through her, one that she couldn’t suppress. There was a long silence and presently she
felt the weight of his body against the mattress, his hand touching her bare
arm, soaking into her skin, her bones, her heart…
Only three
centimetres and one night between them, a gap she couldn’t bridge…
But he was there,
and she felt the warmth of him as he inched himself close to her hunched and
trembling figure, the warmth of his breath as he nestled his face into her
hair, and she knew he was trying to console her, that he knew how much his
words had both injured and inflamed her.
“Rogue?” he asked,
his voice barely a whisper. She
swallowed her tears back. She didn’t
want this anymore. She wanted to be
free, she wanted to be the way she used to be, naive and innocent and
unspoiled. Such irony she wanted to
laugh in the face of her tears. Her
throat burnt but she would not cry. She
refused to. Instead she swivelled onto
her back and found his eyes in the half-darkness, the patience of his gaze, the
way he’d waited for her and would continue to wait because two more minutes,
two more hours no longer made any difference…
“Rogue’s gone,” she
whispered to him. “You shouldn’t wait for her anymore.”
He reached out,
smoothing a rough hand against her cheek, not waiting for any explanations,
needing none, because what he’d always wanted was right there before him, he’d
take her however she was, however broken, however tainted. She closed her eyes and felt those worn hands
caress her face, hands that had maimed, that had killed, that had deceived and
lied and betrayed so many, yet telling her it was all right, that the two of
them…they were the same.
The same.
“You’re wrong,” he
whispered, his fingers tangling into her tousled hair, leaning forward so close
his nose touched hers and his lips teased her own. “The Rogue I’ve always
wanted, the Rogue I’ve always waited for… she’s right here…” He kissed her nose, slow, soft, then the bow
of her lips, said: “And I’m gonna keep on waitin’ for her ‘till all dis is
over…”
His mouth slid over
hers, warm and liquid, and she closed her eyes, kissing him back slowly as if
she’d never kissed a man before, her arms reaching for him, holding him
close. It didn’t matter now, all the
lies, all the subterfuge. There would
never be anything more between them than these stolen kisses, these stolen
nights when everything would cease to exist except them. Tomorrow they’d return to the real world, to
pain and death and suffering. Tomorrow,
one of them would have to die by the other's hand.
But until then she’d savour this one night, this one moment. She would believe that they were lovers, that they had never stopped; nor ever would again.
* * * * *
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