Outside
the sky was roiling; against the blackness great white clumps of snow were falling,
thick and heavy, to the ground below.
Inside the little
room, Rogue stirred softly against Remy.
In the languid aftermath they’d lain entwined together in a perfect
silence broken only by disconnected words and disconnected touches, by the
exploration of hands on one another, idle play that had guided them to no
further conclusion. After a while they
had fallen into stillness again, sinking back into their own thoughts and a
mutual sense of contentment. She had
placed her hand upon his breast and listened to his silence, one that was
louder than words, louder even than the psyches in her own head. Once, years ago, lying in this very same
spot, she'd felt the urge to absorb his memories, to see what lay inside the
depths of his soul. It amazed her now
that she had ever felt the need. She
knew enough; enough to read his silences, to read his touches. She needed nothing more.
“Shoulda kissed
you,” he murmured suddenly into the silence, breaking her reverie.
“Hmm?” she mumbled,
tilting her face slightly to look questioningly into his eyes.
“Dat day. De day
before de military came and fucked over de mansion and killed Xavier.” He
paused, absentmindedly looping a curl of her hair round a forefinger and
tugging on it lightly. “Shoulda kissed you,” he finished decidedly, letting the
curl bounce free. She chuckled quietly.
“Then Ah woulda
seen Sinister in that tortured mind o’ yours and hated yah even more,” she
half-joked.
“I dunno,” he
rumbled back. “Figure you woulda absorbed some part of me dat woulda told you I
was serious about pinnin’ you down.”
“And what about all
the other stuff in your head?” she murmured back soberly. “What about all your
most cherished memories and innermost secrets?
Ah would’ve gotten them too.”
She felt him shrug
against her.
“Would’ve been
nice, I’m t’inkin’, t’ have someone understand me for a change.” He paused and
stared at the white flakes of snow flitting across the window, a pensive look
on his face. She followed his gaze, and
they were both quiet for a long moment, saying nothing. When next he spoke, his
eyes were still on the window. “Was it easy, chere? Sleepin’ wit’ other men?”
She was silent,
feeling the weight of his words sink into her with an oddly alien texture; the
stillness seemed to pass like an age as she stared at the little rectangle of
window, framing the same little patch of sky that had been theirs for so long.
“No,” she answered
at last, simply, honestly. “No, it wasn’t.
Not at first. But it got easier.”
He shifted; she
felt his eyes on her, but she couldn’t return the look, couldn’t explain the
feeling inside her – how could she find the words to tell him that all of it
had been a sacrifice, a sacrifice for them, for the only thing that had kept
her going through even the most degrading and humiliating moments? “But it
didn’t matter, did it?” she continued thickly, flatly. “You were right,
Remy. We can have no ties, no loyalties,
no loves. Ah was only livin’ the way Ah
was s’pposed to be livin’, doin’ what people like us are s’pposed to do.”
His eyes were still
on her, tracing the contours of her face with a stark intensity she still could
not reciprocate.
“And you believed
what I said, back then?” he murmured, his voice low and gravelly.
“There was a truth
to your words,” she whispered back.
Silence. Silence falling thickly
again like the snow outside, cradling them both in a cold and knowing
hand. She closed her eyes and continued:
“But no one, not you, not any of those other men, not even the statics can take
it away from me. They can’t take away
feelin’. It doesn’t matter who you
are. It doesn’t matter where Ah’ve
been. Ah can’t stop wantin’ t’ be with
you; and besides,” her voice lowered to little above a whisper, “you're the
only good thing Ah have left.”
She paused, feeling
his eyes burning in the darkness, willing her to look at him, but she couldn’t.
“It was the feelin’
that Ah had to switch off,” she began again hoarsely, blinking her eyes open,
still unable to meet his gaze. “And then it became easier. That’s all it takes. Just switchin’ all the finer feelin’s off,
just like killin’ the ignition and goin’ on autopilot.” She reached out then,
swallowing back the metallic taste in her throat, splaying her fingers upon his
flesh once more, feeling the intricate etchwork of scars imprint itself onto
her palm. “Isn't it the same way with killin'?” she whispered softly. “Even if
it's only for the sake of the mission?”
She was brave
enough to meet his eyes then, finding his glance now wary, watchful. Yet she did not find it hard to return the
look with all the openness and honesty she now knew could only exist between
them. It was a challenge - a challenge
for him to see that she knew what Essex had planned for her, that she knew the
only way this could end. They said nothing
for a long moment, each holding the other's gaze; and then abruptly, something
flickered in those beautiful, deep red eyes and she realised.
He knows.
He knows Ah know…
“It's different,”
he answered at last, his voice a low undertone.
“Yeah. Ah guess it is.” She nodded. “Even if Ah had
to sell my body, Ah got to keep my soul.
Whenever Ah came up here with you, Ah still had that soul. Maybe it wasn't as beautiful as it should've
been, but Ah still got to keep it.” Her gaze flittered over the walls as she
said the words, as though she was marking every inch of the room in her
mind. Then she turned back to him and
said, thoughtfully; “Killin's different.
It chips away at your soul, until there's nothin' left.”
“I'm still here,”
he whispered.
“But at what price,
Remy? For all the souls that you saved,
didn't your heart ever bleed for the few that you sold?”
He looked
away. His mind was on a young boy, a
young boy named Leech, the one face that had truly pricked his conscience.
“Honestly…” he began;
but the sentence remained unfinished.
His eyes shifted to hers once more, curious, challenging. “But with
Kincaid and Guess… if I hadn't turned up when I did, would you really have let
them live, knowing that you would've been sacrificin' your own life instead?”
“Ah wouldn’t have
cared,” she answered with certainty.
“Even if your death
had meant there was no more freedom and justice than there was before? Even if it had achieved nothing? We're not martyrs, Rogue. We're invisible as ghosts, no one cares, no
one even sees if we live or die; we're ghosts…”
“Ghosts outside,
not in,” she interjected gently. “Ah told you, Remy. If Ah had to kill Ah'd be dead. Dead inside.
It would be the end for me. In
every sense. Ah wouldn't be able to
carry on.” She paused, and he said nothing this time; but his eyes were still
on hers, intent, assessing… And suddenly she realised that she had to tell him
the truth. “Irene showed me somethin',” she began to tell him softly.
“Yesterday night, Ah absorbed her powers.
To be honest, Ah didn't believe any of this bullshit about Rachel. Ah thought it was just another one of Raven's
paranoid obsessions. But Ah saw it,
Remy. Ah saw…everythin'. So many worlds
beyond ours, so many timelines, so many of us…”
She held a tremulous breath, released it slowly. “There are other worlds out there.
And if Rachel could chronoskim, if she could take us there…”
She halted, her
voice suddenly wavering with emotion, and he cupped her head in one palm,
gently rubbed the nape of her neck and said: “You believe she could?”
“Ah…Ah don't
know. The Professor was always tryin' to
help her to develop it, but Ah don’t know what kinda damage the Hound
programming could've done to her powers.
Ah don't even know if he taught her how to do it properly.”
“You believe in it
then?” he asked. “Dat she's worth savin'?
Dat she's de one who could end all dis?” His eyes were burning; the
pressure of his fingers in her hair had increased.
“Yes,” she replied
with finality. He sucked in an imperceptible
breath, looked away, then back at her again. “Ever since yesterday,” she
explained in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “Ah've realised that Ah
have another chance. Ah have another chance, Remy. All this time, Ah've been holdin' onto a
tether, a life that has no meanin' anymore.
Here, now, Ah've screwed up…everythin’. But out there, there must be other Rogues
that are happy, that made the most of their lives. Even if Ah don’t have a chance to be
somethin', to be the kinda person Ah've always wanted to be, they do.
And Rachel's the key.”
“Rogue --” His
fingers were still in her hair, but motionless now; his eyes had changed, were troubled,
but she didn’t want to hear him, she didn’t want to hear him dissuade her.
“Ah saw her,
Remy. Right at the end of it all, Ah saw
her.” She gave a small, mirthless laugh. “It's funny - Ah don’t even know how
Ah knew it was her, but it was
her. A burst of fire, like the whole universe was gonna go up in flames, but
at the same time like it was gonna be reborn…
Like the phoenix, risin' from the ashes… It's a feelin' Ah can't describe,
Remy, and Ah wish, just for once, that Ah could make you understand, that Ah
could show you how it is… The end of the world… The beginning of the world… The
beginning of everythin'…”
Her voice was
wavering again, and she couldn’t look him in the eye anymore for fear of
shedding tears. So she lowered her head,
rested it upon his chest, upon his heartbeat, the only thing that had kept her
going for so many long, empty years…
“Ah'm willin' t'
die for it, Remy,” she whispered at last.
So take me, Remy, it won't make it a
betrayal if Ah want it. See through the
mission, free Rachel, do the right thing and let her go free; live on, be
happy. Always be happy…
His hand rested on the
back of her head; he was so still, so silent that, if not for his heartbeat,
she would have thought she had killed him already.
“Rogue --” he began
again hoarsely, but faltered off before he could say the words - perhaps he
didn't know what he wanted to say after all.
She didn’t mind. She didn’t want
to hear him say it. It was better this
way, after all. No attachments, no
bonds, no love. It wasn’t about honour
or pride, or dignity. It was about
humanity - all humanity. It was about something bigger even than that, about saving it, preserving
it. It was a universal truth; it was everything. And now she felt calm. She felt calmer than she'd felt in
years. All that time fighting against
destiny, fighting against her fate, and now she was ready to face it, stoic as
the gladiator, as the martyr making his sacrifice for the liberty of
others. It didn’t matter if the world
would never see it.
She was ready.
And he knew she was ready.
She did not know
how long the silence between them lasted, but for some reason she was content
to lie there against him, listening to his heartbeat. He would live on, she knew it; he always
would, it was what he did, he was resourceful, protean. Like Raven he could mould himself into any
shape he wanted - it was this one basic skill that she lacked, the ability to
be malleable and thus indestructible.
She couldn’t because she had stolen the essence of so many - nothing was
more sacred to her than her own identity.
But he… he would go on. He would
always have someone to hold him close on a cold night. He would always be there, her dark angel, the
thing she loved most.
Just let him live, and Ah'll never regret
this…
She rolled away
from him; but he wasn't quite ready to surrender her so easily. His arms suddenly encircled her from behind;
she felt him press his face against her hair as he held her close to him,
tenderly, protectively, as though she would shatter in his grasp.
“De key to
deprogrammin' a Hound,” he murmured into her ear. “Hit them wit' a memory. Any memory dat means somet'ing to them. Better still, hit them wit' as many as you
can. It confuses them, it breaks them.”
She stared
wide-eyed at the wall. In saying those
words he'd tacitly implied that he too was willing to make the same sacrifice
she was.
If one of us is killed, the other can see
the mission through to the end…
It was somehow
worse than if she'd clung to him and been unable to let him go. And yet… …
“Rachel's at the
back of the compound,” she found herself whispering back. “In sector D, cell
fifty. There's a crawlspace you can use
to get through to it, from the maintenance room in sector C; an air vent. Don’t wait for Mystique to show up, she'll
kill you if Ah haven't. It can be done
in about fifteen minutes, if you're quick.”
There. They were equal now. Lord, they were equal, with all the risks it
entailed…
She closed her eyes
and gripped his hands, sudden agony etched on her face.
“Remy --” she whispered,
but he silenced her gently, the warmth of his breath in her hair.
“Shh,” he
whispered. “Get some sleep, Rogue. It'll
be all right. I'll be here. Get some sleep.”
No. It would never be all right. Not ever again. Because she loved him. Because she'd never be able to do it. She would never be able to destroy the one
life that had given hers so much meaning.
He kissed her
hair. Outside the snowfall had deepened;
the moon was nowhere in sight.
It was a long time
before she slept, but when she did, he was still wide-awake.
*
He was still awake
when she woke up; she couldn't even tell if he had slept at all.
This time there was
no pretence, there was no differentiation between what was pleasure and what
was business. Their touches, their
kisses were all they had left.
She stood in front
of the old dresser mirror and stared at herself for a long time. It was as if, for the first time, she was
seeing herself for what she was; there were no longer any blinders over her
eyes. For the first time in so many
years, her actions this day would be hers and hers alone. And in that she felt a certain freedom. It was the same kind of freedom she had felt
every time she had come into this room and made love to him, the feeling that
she was fighting the world and all the suffering it contained.
And this time she
would succeed. This time she would make a difference.
She picked up the
cell phone beside her and dialled Raven's number.
There was only one
ring before she answered.
“Rogue?”
“Momma? Everything's in place. We'll meet you there at noon.”
“Rogue, what happened
last night? Simmons was on the news just
a few minutes ago, they found him murdered in his suite! What the fuck--?”
“He knew,
momma. He recognised me. He almost had me cold… He was crazy, Raven,
Ah thought Ah was dead for sure. Luckily
Remy was around to bail me out.”
“That fucking
idiot!” Raven rasped through gritted teeth. “He killed Simmons, didn’t he?!”
She paused, her breath coming sharp and deep. “Is he there, Rogue? Is that jumped-up little fucker in the room
with you right now?”
Rogue glanced in
the mirror. Remy was standing a little
way behind her, smoking a cigarette; her eyes met his and he shook his head
mutely.
“No,” she replied
after a moment. “He's in the shower.”
“I don’t trust him,
Rogue. Today is the day when all our
work comes together. I'm certain Sinister wants sole possession
of Rachel himself. Promise me you won't
let that happen.”
She closed her
eyes, inhaled a soundless breath, then opened them again.
“Don’t worry,
momma. It's all sorted. Just be there at noon, okay?”
“We will.”
“Good.” She
hesitated, then added: “Raven… did Irene… has she said anythin' since Ah left?”
“No.” Mystique
sounded confused. “Should she?”
“No, no. Ah just thought… Ah just thought she might've
seen somethin'…” Like how this all turns
out… “Don't worry. It's nothin'.
Probably just me gettin' the heebie-jeebies.”
“Don’t. For God's sake, I need you to be focused
today, Rogue. Despite that idiot Cajun's
actions last night, we have to go ahead with our plans as usual. As far as I can tell from all the news
reports, the cops are still clueless about Simmons.”
“Are they bringing
the Hounds in? That could be a problem.”
“Not yet. It seems they're treating it as a bungled
robbery at the moment, but I heard the feds were being called in. I don't know whether that's going to
last. That's why we've got to work fast
today, Rogue. Do you hear me?”
“Ah hear yah, loud
and clear.” She stopped, watching Remy stub out his cigarette before speaking
again. “Look, Ah gotta go. Meet you
later, okay? Bye.”
She switched the
phone off and set it down on the dresser again.
Despite everything Raven had put her through over the years, she still
found it strange and somewhat distressing to think that she would never hear
her voice again.
There was no time
to mourn this as she felt Remy's arms wrap round her from behind, and she
shivered, arching slightly when she felt his lips press against the dip between
her neck and her shoulder in a slow, sensuous kiss. She watched him kiss his way across the line
of her shoulder, painstakingly slow and deliberate, lavishing his tender
caresses on her as if there would never be another chance to do so. She closed her eyes, savouring each
bittersweet moment, etching it onto her memory along with the rest of all her
meaningless treasures.
“Today,” he
murmured into her flesh.
“Today,” she agreed
on a whisper.
When she opened her
eyes, he had stopped. His chin was
propped on her shoulder, and he was gazing at her reflection in the
mirror. They stood there for a long
while, gazing at their entwined reflection; it was the first time they'd seen
one another together. Again Rogue felt
as if she were embossing this image onto her memory, locking it away deep
inside her. The moment was so
unnervingly profound that she was almost relieved when he finally stirred and
unwrapped her from his embrace. Then his
hands were on her upper arms, swivelling her away from the mirror, making her
face him; when she did so, when she looked up into his eyes, his gaze was
intent, lustful, so full of desire…
Last time.
She tilted her head
slightly, welcoming him, and he pulled her against him, his kisses increasing
in passion until she could barely breathe under the intensity of them… She
clung to him, steadying herself, feeling the flare rise up in her throat,
choking her… She didn't think she could bear this, she didn’t think she could
bear his sweet kisses any longer…
As if he had sensed
this he eased away gently, breaking the embrace, his lips lingering seductively
on her own before finally letting her go.
When she opened her
eyes again, he was smiling cockily as if nothing had happened.
“I'm gon' go and
get ready, 'kay, chere?” he murmured in that same old wolfish tone. She half-smiled, let her hands slide away
from him.
“Okay,” she
whispered.
He stepped away,
but she remained at the mirror a moment longer.
The butterfly pendant glistened against her bare skin, bright as a star
she could wish upon. Without thinking she
clutched it in her palm, held it tight.
One more day of good luck, she silently
implored. Just one more day of good luck
is all Ah ask.
*
They left an hour
earlier than they'd been intending to; outside the snow was lighter, flittering
delicately to the ground, turning the squalid square of apartment blocks into a
shimmering field of pure white. In the
space of a night, something cheerless and ugly had been turning into something
beautiful. It gave her a sense of hope,
of fortitude - that this indeed was a memory worth fighting for.
“Ready?”
Remy was already at
her bike, waiting for her. She stood in
the snow, pulling the leather gloves over her hands, flexing her fingers inside
the thick, cold material, watching the fabric stretch taut like an old memory. She looked up.
“As Ah'll ever be.”
She clambered up
onto the driver's seat of her bike, whilst he got up behind her. From now until either one of them got to
Rachel, it was her ballgame.
“Yah comfortable
back there, sugah?” she asked him, breathing wisps of condensation into the
morning air. Behind her, she could
almost feel him grin.
“Very.” His arms
encircled her waist. “Makes a nice change to have you bein' the one ridin'.”
Jokes and
banter. It was almost like it used to
be. She half-smiled and switched on the
ignition. She was looking forward to
this. What she needed was to feel the
wind hit her so hard it stung, for her to feel alive. She hit the gas,
revving up the engine, making her own stomach churn with dread
anticipation. She was going to drive
hard and fast as if her life depended on it, as though into the very sundown of
her life.
“Better watch out,
Cajun,” she threw back at him with a relish she couldn’t hide. “Ah have a
feelin' this ride’s gonna be a wild one.”
Before they left
she looked back over her shoulder just once, her heart stirring with a sense of
longing for the place that had contained them for so long. They'd both closed the door on their room,
closed this chapter of their lives, cut off the thread that had linked them to
the grand tapestry of Fate. After today
there would be no more, and in a way she could face her destiny now without
flinching, because there was nothing left to cling to.
Because a part of
her had died already, on the doorstep of their little room.
*
They rode for two
hours, out of the city, through the snow, past the suburbs and the outlying
industrial estates. The sky loomed
overhead, pale and mauve but for the charcoal grey clouds seething like the
contents of some apocalyptic cauldron.
There was no further snowfall.
Something was still holding out for them at least. With the wind in her hair and smarting her
cheeks, Rogue felt freer than she had done in a long time - a liberation, an
exhilaration, like flying, like becoming a part of the elements. There was nothing left in the world that could
ravage her, not when it was hitting her like this.
Presently all signs
of civilisation began to peter out into a snow-strewn wilderness – the barren
wilds that had been left in the first altercations fought between static and
mutant, when she had slept in the coma that had shut her off from a rapidly
changing world. She had never wandered
here, out into the battle grounds of old - the twisted remnants of the Mark One
Sentinels still littered the ground, a city of ruined and rusting
weaponry. This sad wasteland was the
furthest she had ever ventured into the real world since her new life had
begun; and yet, as she navigated the single road that cut through this
forgotten battlefield like a knife, she spared few glances for the scene of the
event that had changed so much for mutantkind.
What she rushed to now was the future, not the past. And if Rachel could bring about a time when
wars and battles were no longer needed, it was worth it. All worth it.
At last the barren
plains gave way once more to vegetation - to hills and vast outcrops of
forest. Rogue steered the bike off the
main road and onto a roughly beaten track; here the snow was pure and hadn't
been muddied. A thick wood lined the
path on the right; on the left was a great expanse of hills, stretching on into
the distance. The track began to climb a
stark incline, which became quite difficult to traverse - more trees sprung up
on the left side, obscuring the hilly vistas as the bike laboured up to the
crest of the slope.
And then, at last,
they crested the hill, and were staring out onto a narrow valley nestled
protectively by the bluffs and the surrounding forests. Rogue stopped the bike momentarily, letting
Remy follow her gaze down into the valley.
There, sandwiched by the encircling landscape, was spread out a huge
enclosure of grey, squat, military-type buildings, neatly ordered into
characterless rows and columns, contained within an eight-foot high perimeter
fence. Smoke was rising gently from one
of the farthest buildings, but apart from that there was no sound, no movement.
“The Hound Pens,”
Remy breathed beside her. She glanced at
him. His eyes were narrowed, his jaw
set. Their destination unknown had
finally been reached.
“Ah'll park the
bike in the woods,” she told him matter-of-factly. “We'll dismount there and
make a quick survey of the region.” She revved up the bike again, turned away.
“Raven will be here in just over half an hour.
We'll have to work fast, Remy. Ah
don’t want either of us t' be around when she gets here.”
She felt him touch
her waist, soft, intimate.
“Rouge…”
You sure dis is how you want dis…?
She said nothing,
guiding the bike slowly right, off the track and into the awaiting woods,
letting them swallow her into their depths, letting it feel as if this was the
point of no return. A part of her wanted
to turn tail and flee, the other wanted to stand tall and end it…
She rode in a good
thirty metres before they dismounted.
The wood was as still as the hill had been, except for the faint shlup of snow sliding off the canopies
overhead and onto the ground below. She
guided him down a little ways into the valley, taking care to mark a path where
they would not trip and fall. At last
they came to the edge of the forest; from the cover of the trees they were
looking directly out onto Ahab's compound.
From their position the hill suddenly went down in a sharp incline of
about thirty degrees, before finally levelling out and giving way to the Pen's
perimeter fence. Up until that moment
Rogue hadn't guessed just how hard it was going to be to get down that
slope. There were trees dotted at sparse
intervals on the way down, but there were large gaps in-between where there
would be no anchor for anyone trying to get down. Whichever one of them made it would have a
tough workout.
“Yah think yah can
make it?” she asked him breathlessly.
“It's a cakewalk,”
he replied from beside her, but there was an uncertain timbre to his voice, and
she held her breath, wanting him to be as strong and certain as she wasn’t…
No.
Ah can do this…
“How about
security?” he asked.
“It'll be lunch in
half an hour,” she answered, glancing at her watch. “Otherwise, security is
pretty tight. From Mystique's files,
five guards circle the perimeter in tight formation. Once the first guard passes this point, we've
got a five minute gap to get from here and into the compound before the second
makes his appearance.”
“Seems clear now,”
he noted.
“Yup.” Rogue
reached down into her utility belt and produced a pair of binoculars. “We'll
haveta wait for a guard to come along before we make our way in. That way we can time ourselves jus’ right.”
“You wanna go in
now?”
She passed him a
sidelong glance.
“As soon as
poss. Makes sense t' get this over and
done with, huh?”
He didn’t
answer. She didn’t want him to.
Ah've shown you the door, Remy, and it's
open. If it’s you that walks away, all
yah haveta do is walk right on through.
Just don’t screw this up. For the
sake of everythin', please don’t.
“But while we're
waitin',” she added as brightly as she could, “Ah'll just check that the rest
of the area's clear. Then we can both
mosey on down.”
She squatted in the
snow beside him on the small bank, training her binoculars over the ugly, squat
barracks. Somewhere inside Rachel was
waiting, waiting for her destiny to greet her as much as Rogue was rushing
towards her own. Her eyes flickered
against the binocular lens. She
remembered, suddenly, the red star earring she had found in the ruined mansion
that day so many years ago, that she had dropped it and let it roll away.
Everything had a
meaning. She felt certain of that
now. Absorbing Irene's power had made
things very clear to her. Every moment,
every second had meaning, had purpose, to some ultimate end of which she would
only play a very minute part. And if
Irene's visions were true - if Rachel was
at the end of it all - then Rogue's own meaning was to be here now, helping to
break her free. She was in the right
place, and this was the right time. It
had always been the right time. She could feel it. She could feel the vestiges of Irene's power,
telling her that this was right, telling her……
Instinctively her
hand went to the knife at her thigh, her fingers closing over the hilt. It was there; it had always been there.
And up until that
moment she'd never realised it… but she'd always known that she was going to
let him win.
“Clear?” he asked
above her.
She tucked the
binoculars back inside her belt, rose to her feet.
“Clear,” she said,
her voice catching on the air, a tangible cloud of smoke. The moment had come, that lingering quiet,
the moment she had been dreading but that she now greeted with an odd
detachment. Finally, it had come. Understanding. She could wrestle with her feelings no
longer. It was either him, or her.
She swung, her
knife flashing upwards in a silver arc, but he’d already anticipated her
attack, had already taken a mere step back and she realised her mistake too
late, a mistake neither her head nor heart could afford. He’d known, all this time he’d known as she
had, that this was the moment… She
cried out, a growl of fear and frustration as she lunged forwards again, but he
was quicker, grasping her arm in a vice-like grip before her blow could
connect. Their gazes met, just for a
second, a momentary flash in the frosty sunlight, and the next he’d knocked the
knife from her grasp, tripped her into the snow. She gasped for breath, her throat aching, her
lungs burning as he followed her to the ground, pinning her into the snowdrift
with his body, and she saw the flash of the knife before she saw his eyes,
clutched between his fingers and emanating the warm pink glow of his energy
signature. He held it to her throat, said
ever so softly: “Sorry, chere…”
She struggled, but
he pressed the fullness of his weight into her and she caught her breath again,
feeling the familiar heaviness of his body against her own … He was enjoying
this, he was loathing this.
And now it was
plain. What Irene had seen, what she had
known for so many years – that all these feelings, all these dreams, all these
years were funnelling down into this one moment, this one single event. From the very beginning, since the second
they'd met one another again in that dark and dirty alley four years ago, it’d
been either him or her and one inch that was going to cost her her life. For so long they'd been blind and only now
did they both see it.
She gritted her
teeth and said nothing. She was ready to
die, it was what she wanted, an end to all this pain, all this suffering, all
this hopelessness, the darkness that had shrouded her all these years. She would welcome release, even if it meant
there would be no more them, no more clandestine meetings, no more stolen
kisses and heartfelt fumblings in their lonely little room. Because she couldn’t bear it anymore, she
couldn’t bear the other 364 days of the year when they were apart and
constantly thinking about one another.
End it, Remy…
But his eyes, his
eyes were so sad, almost tender… and his breath was warm on the cold air, on
her skin, making her lips part, making her breath come heavy…
“Beg me t’ stop,
Rogue,” he whispered. “Tell me t’ stop an’ I will.”
She closed her
eyes, dug her teeth into her lip.
“I love you,
Rogue,” he told her, and for the first time she heard his voice tremble.
Her eyelids stung.
“Rogue, please…Look
at me…”
Horror was filling
her, wild and desperate… Her fingers were in the snow, scrabbling, and she felt
them enclose around a rock, a jagged rock, small, but big enough…
She stopped
thinking.
Her mind felt
almost divorced from her body, as if she were an outsider looking at her own
body swing its arm in a quick, sharp arc, smashing the rock into the side of
his skull, and at the impact, the horrible impact she was jolted back inside
herself, and she let out a sickened scream as she felt him slump against her,
as she realised what she had done. His
hand was limp against her throat, still holding the knife, and she moved it
away, trembling violently, tears blurring her eyes, whimpering as she nudged
him off her and back into the snow.
Shaking, she sat up, her body weak and querulous as jelly. He was lying beside her, droplets of blood
colouring the snow in a crimson spray where he lay. She leant over him, sobbing quietly as she stripped
the gloves from her hands and ran her fingers over his face again and again, as
if she could hold that face and emboss it upon her heart. Even there, in the snow, so white and cold
and unfeeling, he was beautiful, so beautiful…
She dipped her head
and kissed the unresponsive lips, kissed them again and again in a way she'd
never been able to before, feeling an overwhelming surge of emotion explode in
her chest, and for the first time in years she was crying, really crying.
“Oh Remy, Ah love
you… Ah love you, Remy… Ah love you too…”
She didn't know how
long she remained like that, kissing him and repeating that mantra over and
over until her sobs became dry and her throat was too hoarse to speak. It was the first time she'd ever spoken those
words and she'd never known how much they'd needed to be said before. Except now they were too late…
She slumped against
him, weeping softly, feeling her determination, her resolution slip away like a
thief into the night. This beautiful
sacrifice, this glorious ending she'd envisioned for herself, stripped away,
vanished in a second. He was meant to
have won, he was meant to have killed her, he was meant to have walked away and
ended this all but somehow there had been a mistake and she didn’t understand
it, she didn’t know where it had gone wrong…
I love you, Rogue.
He hadn't been able
to do it. He hadn't been able to kill
her. The moment he'd said it he'd ruined
it all. She'd trusted him enough never
to love her, never to form this one last unbreakable attachment to her. It was the only reason she could have seen
this through. But to hear him say that,
to hear him admit that they could be something bigger than this sacrifice; that
all those years of dirty, tawdry encounters were really something more,
something better, something really
worth holding onto… …
He'd said to her, I destroy every good thing I touch. And she'd done the same. Because to have that good thing was too much,
too much for someone as tainted and spoiled as her to handle, and she wanted it, she wanted it so badly, she'd
wanted it for so many years and now it was gone…
At last she fell
silent, letting the eerie stillness of the snowdrift cradle them both, clasping
him tight to her, afraid to let him go.
And suddenly she felt it.
His heartbeat.
Fluttering against
the wall of his chest, soft as butterfly wings…
Like Kincaid on
that fateful day three years ago, like Rogue herself awakening from her coma
six months after she should have died… he was alive.
He was alive.
Everythin' has meaning…
Rogue sat up, her
fingers trembling as she touched his neck, feeling for his pulse, her cheeks cold
where her tears had frozen. He was
alive, and that meant something. Fate
was trying to send her a message… What
message? She bit her lip to stop
herself from shaking as she finally felt his pulse, shallow but still so
strong, still so resolute, pounding away beneath his skin. She frowned, clutching the coat at his chest,
pulling it tighter about him, trying to keep him warm, trying to hold him
inside his own body.
She knew what this
meant.
She knew what to
do.
She knew.
Her breath was
coming slower now. With shuddering hands
she wiped the tears from her eyes, cupped his cheeks in her palms and stared
down into his face. The secretive face
now open and unassuming, pinched and bloody yet beautiful… Her own expression
was now calm as she leaned forward and kissed him tenderly on the cold yet
still passionate lips.
“Ah'm comin' back,
Remy,” she murmured against his mouth. “Ah'm comin' back. And then Ah'm goin' t' take us both away.”
She pulled - the
contact was fleeting, gentle, ephemeral.
It was enough. She only needed a
smidgen of his psyche anyway. There -
she'd crossed the barrier she'd sworn never to cross; she'd taken a part of
him. Still, it was painful to break
away, but there was little time left to do what she must; she sat up slowly,
wiped the blood from his face with her sleeve with a tender attentiveness. Then she stood and trudged back onto the edge
of the bank with broken steps. Below
her, inside the Hound enclosure, one of the guards was just completing his
round.
It was now or
never.
*
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22 : Go to Chapter 24