Monday morning, just got up. Hit my alarm clock, swivelled out of bed, nearly tripped on the dirty magazine I’d been reading the night before, the one that’d obviously slid off the edge of my bed as I’d dropped off. Hopped into the shower, got dressed, brushed teeth, shaved. Normal, standard day, the routine of a million lives like mine. Ironic, perhaps, that today hardly seems normal at all.
Everyone is already up. I suddenly wish I’d set my alarm for some godforsaken hour of the morning like 6:30 or something. I need to be alone. It’s so silent in the mansion that I’m cloyed with it. Everybody looks at everyone else with uncertainty. We’re not used to seeing one another through different eyes. Logan’s gone AWOL. I can’t say I blame the man.
I skim through channels 1-912. So many channels and so much of the same boring drivel to watch. Makes me wonder how anyone can bear to be considered a couch potato. I want to blow up something so goddamn much my head starts to ache. I should probably go back to bed. I have nothing better to do.
For some reason, my body and mind are both unwilling. I avoid watching the news. Can’t stand it these days.
By midday a thick sheet of rain comes pelting down over the mansion. At first it comes light and refreshing, and I absently watch the water running in thin veins down the windowpane, a sense of calm coming over me. Then the water comes crashing, and I can hear it pummeling on the roof and the glass, thick and fast and unrelenting. It makes me want to sleep. Under normal circumstances I would have blamed Stormy for the downpour, but with our powers stripped I know it can’t be her. I rebel against the sudden urge to sleep. Against better judgement, I wonder back downstairs and stroll in the general direction of the kitchen. Nothing better to do.
Stormy’s in there, battling with the washing up. Usually she’d have just created a mini storm cloud to do the job for her. Normal life, I think, has its own intricacies. Kurt, for instance, is having trouble getting used to the fact that he can’t just teleport himself to the phone whenever he wants to answer it. I, on the other hand, find it a nuisance not being able to light my cigarettes manually when one of my damn lighters goes surreptitiously missing.
“Hey, Stormy,” I greet her, “Ça va?”
“I could be better,” she replies grimly, scrubbing away rather viciously at a certain dish. “Especially if you’d stop calling me by that infernal name.”
“Need a hand?” I ask, ignoring her statement.
“I can manage,” she answers curtly. She’s not in a good mood this afternoon. I begin to wonder whether the storm outside really is her doing or not. I decide it’s best not to push the matter and saunter out of the room.
My fingers are itching to blow something up.
I step out onto the patio, needing the fresh air. Rogue’s there, sitting on a step, lifting a hand out to catch the raindrops. Her hand’s soaking already. I don’t see why she persists in her action.
“Whatcha doin’?” I ask her.
“Needed some air,” she replies shortly, looking back over her shoulder at me only momentarily.
“Nah, I meant your hand,” I say.
“Just feelin’ the rain on mah skin,” she answers. There’s an oddly wistful note to her voice.
“Oh.”
There is something of a need to sit down beside her, but other than that odd twinge in the pit of my stomach I am oddly devoid of any other emotion I might associate with her. Still, something in her words touches me; and yet a sense of awkwardness radiates from the both of us like a thick sweat. For some reason, today it hardly seems relevant. Nevertheless, I still can’t remember the last time I touched her.
I sit down beside her. For a long while neither of us says a word. We shuffle – there’s something almost farcical about the whole scene. I can almost imagine it. A soap opera audience laughing at us, pointing and saying how stupid we are for avoiding the real issues.
- For Pete’s sake, get it out. It’s gone on long enough. Come on, if I were him, I’d just speak to
her.
- No, she should speak to him – give him a good talking to, maybe even
bash him round a bit. God knows he
deserves it.
- Hey, you know she deserves it too, after what she did…
- Yeah, but I never liked him.
The strange thing is that even though most of the time this whole thing feels like a soap opera, I’m reluctant to admit that it isn’t. If half the confrontations we see on TV ever happened in real life, then most of this relationship thing would get sorted out sooner or later – whether for better or for worse. It’s easy for people to slink around one another, and even easier to pretend to yourself that there aren’t any issues that need to be dealt with. Still, I know I should talk to her about it. Even though I’m not even sure what exactly ‘it’ is.
“How’s Mystique?” I ask her after a moment. Isn’t it strange how the things you want to say always come out totally different instead?
“No better,” she replies with a sigh. “Ah can’t do a thing for her. She probably hates me for it.”
“You like a daughter to her, chere,” I say. “I don’t think she could ever hate you.”
“She’s desperate, Remy,” she says, “And in desperate times who knows what she could do.”
I know Rogue. She feels defeated by this, by her mother, by her inability to deal with her, to help her. Just as she feels defeated by the fact that even though she finally has the ability to touch others, the thought of such a thing daunts and frightens her. Plunged headfirst into a world comprised of the tactile, the material, the mundane, Rogue feels crowded, hunted, drowned. Ironically, this is the world I have come to know so intimately. I can hardly even begin to know what it feels like for her. To have to deal with others on the daily superficial level we all so take for granted, to have to make small talk and shake hands, to brush past someone on a crowded street knowing all the time that you’re vulnerable, that nothing differentiates you from the rest of the herd, that nothing can save you from the blind normality of everyday life. She has spent more and more time holed up in the mansion. I don’t think I’ve spoken to her directly in more than a week. And now, neither do I know how to comfort her.
“Sounds like you need some time out,” I tell her. “Get out of de mansion for a while, relax, enjoy yourself. No good in worryin’ ‘bout t’ings goin’ on round here. It’ll only drive you crazy. God knows I’m startin’ to feel more than just a li’l insane myself.”
“Betcha you’re wantin’ to destroy somethin’,” she grins wryly at me, finally withdrawing her hand from the rain.
“I must admit, a grand ol’ display of pyrotechnics would help me to vent out some o’ my frustration,” I admit, smiling, but only because she is.
“We’re all feelin’ the loss,” she returns slowly, brow furrowed. “Strange t’ think ah always thought o’ mah powers as a curse, and now, a part of me wishes they were back.” She half-smiles. “What ah wouldn’t do right now for some decent flyin’.”
I chuckle momentarily. Somehow this is almost better than confrontation and yet curiously deceptive. Here we are, talking like old friends, at the same time conscious that I should be angry with her, and that she should be feeling guilty, and confused, and frustrated, and reproachful and hard-done-by. Truth is, I’m tired of riding this rollercoaster, year in and year out. I don’t want to try anymore. Whatever my feelings, direction seems purposeless now, in the light of all this. I’m tired. I’m tired of trying.
“Hey,” I say, putting a hand on her shoulder amiably. “Sounds like you need a drink, chere.”
“Sounds like you do too.”
“Harry’s Hideaway, half an hour?”
“Sounds good.”
“Great. I’ll meet you there then.”
I get up, leave her there on the steps, turn back towards the mansion. As I go she begins to hum a tune I vaguely remember, an Aussie hit from a couple of years back; I forget the name.
Like a secret coded message she softly sings the closing lines – the words spill out, only to be eaten up by the staccato melody of the rain.
“I didn’t want to leave you there.
I’m calling out.
Didn’t want to leave you with the wrong
impression.
Well, I’m calling out.”
-END-