:: VII :: Identity

Same dream, five nights in a row. It has occurred to her, during her waking hours, that it can’t be a dream, because it’s too pungent, it smells and it tastes and it’s too vivid not to be real, not to be anything but memory, a moment relived and replayed constantly as if to say ‘lest we forget…’.

The girl lies on the table, trussed up like a chicken, hazel eyes wide and timorous, imploring as she watches the blade descend towards her, as it caresses the valley between her breasts in a parody of something artful and sensuous.

All you have to do is say ‘yes’, say you’ll do it and she goes free… The man grins, a shark-like grin of snow-white teeth. That face, she knows that face…

No, no more, no more killin’, won’t do it, won’t be part of it no more…

There’s a sour taste in Rogue’s mouth, the bitter aftertaste of drugs. Every movement of hers in sluggish, every image seems to leap out at her, embossed into her mind just like the ghosts, just like the psyches… No mo’… And the row of white teeth expands, erupts, engulfs her…

She wants to say no. Every fibre of her being longs to say it. No more sacrifice. No more bargaining with her soul. But the girl on the table, the girl has no part in this game, and she can’t let her die. It isn’t her fault the girl got mixed up in all this. Perhaps Rogue could do it one more time, perhaps she could ply her trade in dissolution and death one more time just to let the girl live… And then it would be over and they could both walk free, and it’d be white picket fences and two point four kids and a pony…

No, no more, she wasn’t going to gamble away her soul anymore…

The grin again. The blade flashes like strobe lighting in a darkened hall.

Still can’t make up your mind, eh? Maybe I can help settle the matter for you, no?

He makes the first incision.

The girl screams as the knife ruptures into soft, yielding flesh, teasing, torturing, not deep enough to kill but just enough to cause the most delicious and exquisite pain. The scream seems to pulse through Rogue’s head, jangling through her already nauseated senses. She wants to be sick. She no longer knows whether it’s the drugs or the stench of the blood or the fact that she’s so utterly helpless, that she has no control of the moment, no control of her powers, no way to save them both…

Hot knife through butter. I’m going to scar her for the rest of her life. Do you really think there’s nothing worse than death? Will you still love her when I tear that lovely face to shreds? Will she still love you when she looks in the mirror every morning and sees what you’ve done to her?

There are some things worse than death… Like walking through life wit’ no soul left…No more, I can’t do it no more…

The girl screams, or never stopped screaming; she isn’t sure anymore. Rogue can feel it zigzagging through the web-like fabric of her nerves, white noise exploding through her senses until she curls up on the floor, she weeps, she wails in pure agony, in utter anguish because she knows, she knows… How can I still have a soul without havin’ her love?

Dank, dry sobs rack her body and she finally gives in, she screams over the scream, I’ll do it! I’ll do it! I do anythin’ you want Essex, jus’ don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her no more!

And then, she wakes up.

*

Rogue sat on the windowsill watching the rain, twisting a cafe-au-lait curl of hair lazily around a forefinger. The past few months she’d grown the waves back into her locks, the way she’d worn it when she was a little girl in frills and ribbons. At least, that’s how she imagined she had been, when she was five – she wasn’t really sure anymore whether it was her past, or someone else’s. It didn’t matter. She liked her hair this way.

Remy came up behind her, placed a hand on her shoulder, handed her a cup of hot chocolate. The strands of intermingled brown and white hair slowly uncoiled from her finger and bounced back into place. No, she thought, Ah never really wore mah hair like this until Ah was ten…

“You feelin’ better now?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. The warmth of the cup soaked into her hands, the only real warmth her skin would ever experience. “Ah’m sorry Ah woke you up, Remy. It was just a nightmare. Ah’m okay now.” But what must it be like to live with that nightmare day in, day out? Can yah tell me that, Remy…?

She turned and looked into his eyes, wanting to confess the truth but unable to. Why was he still so much a part of her? He should have gone by now…

“You been havin’ nightmares ev’ry night for nearly a week now,” he pointed out, his tone one of concern. “You sure dere ain’t nothin’ wrong?”

“M’sure.” She turned away again. “Yah just go back t’ sleep. Ah’ll just stay here an’ watch the rain some. Try an’ wake mahself up.”

“Ain’t tired,” he replied

New Orleans, September; the heart of the French Quarter, slow and sultry by day, wild and frenetic by night, a place where you could mix with the rabble and remain, to all intents and purposes, both nameless and faceless.

Friday night in another anonymous bar, with another crowd of drunken revellers, an aimless herd of disenfranchised humanity who were searching, searching… always searching in the bottom of an empty glass, only to find their own twisted reflections. Rogue had become used to blending in, to hiding behind the vacuous stare so many adults wore, to become unexceptional and plain as the Jane who stays at home every night and exaggerates her past. She knew how to wear their faces, to become part of the walls, to evaporate in a puff of evanescent cigarette smoke. It afforded her the opportunity to watch them, these fleeting phantoms who would touch her life but briefly before they would continue the search, the endless search… A search she preferred not to know, only to guess at. She had known too many quests in her time, some noble, some tawdry, but none of them hers.

Her own personal quest was sitting right across the bar from her.

Remy lit a cigarette and winked at a passing girl from his seat in the corner with the detached mien born from routine. Rogue watched him out of the corner of her eye, assessing every movement, every flicker of his eyelids. He was searching too, and had been ever since they had arrived in New Orleans. It was more than homesickness, more than nostalgia. She knew that now.

The jazz band on the stage struck up a mournful, yearning tune, the sonorous wail of a violin pulling at her heartstrings as she swallowed on a memory that was not hers. She’d heard this song before, in a recollection that did not belong to her, that was utterly divorced from her being yet intrinsically tied to it. A lull broke over the palpitating crowd as the dusky-skinned singer opened her scarlet lips and spilled forth an ode to fool’s gold and unrequited lust in a voice dripping with molten honey. The crowds wept silent tears for loves they had lost or not yet found; a thousand tales blossomed in that one dingy, smoky little room in the aching minds of a multitude of sad and lonely little people, each now wrapped within the confines of their own personal tragedies. For several minutes in time, the song would become the entire sum of their life story, each word a collective experience.

They were stories Rogue had heard a million times before, songs her ghosts would sing when they got sad, or frustrated, or melancholy. The loves she stole were phantoms who would never kiss her back.

In a corner of the room, Remy LeBeau sat alone but for a beer and a cigarette, his eyes on hers. He’d preempted her, found her first; he’d been expecting her, eventually. Rogue moved forward from the shadows to join him, concern washing away the brooding sense of melancholy the song had woven upon her. When he came to places like this he was never alone – he enjoyed the company of fools and strangers like himself, he enjoyed titillation, meaningless words and kisses exchanged here in the Big Easy, in a place where they meant everything for one moment and then died away, as ephemeral as a scent on the breeze. She wove her way through the crowds towards him, the tsunami of bodies surging about her in a sinuous, cajoling grip that made her shudder. To get this close to one person was disconcerting enough, but this many people…

She broke on through to the other side, swimming to sanctuary of his table, wordless, obstinate. His crimson eyes followed her as she sat down to his right; no greeting, none needed. He appraised her, silent, cat-like. Nowadays she always looked at him with apprehension in her eyes, as if she’d caught his scent, as if she had an inkling of the stranger inside him – she’d chase him down until she read him right, until she’d figured out his secret. It did not surprise him to see her here, in a place she didn’t belong.

“You shouldn’t be here, cherie,” he informed her coolly, tapping his cigarette over a nearby ashtray. The ash wavered a second before slipping deliberately, unceremoniously into the grimy glass bowl with a ponderous finality. “Louis find out you sneaked in here again, he gon’ turn your hide out and whip it some fer good measure.”

Rogue folded her hands on the table, said: “An’ Ah’m s’pposed t’ be scared?”

His gaze was a mixture of frustration and amusement.

“Non. I’m just tryin’ to keep you outta trouble, girl, what d’ you think?”

“I’m thinkin’ that if you’d wanted to keep me outta trouble, yah wouldn’t have taken me with you in the first place, Remy,” she replied pointedly. He looked away, chewing on his cigarette, not able to find a suitable reply to her statement. Her presence annoyed him. He’d wanted to brood by himself. Why’d she have to follow him here? He respected her privacy – why couldn’t she respect his?

“Yah been out since yesterday evenin’,” she continued, her tone suddenly more conciliatory. “Ah was gettin’ worried you’d decided to split.”

“What, on you, cherie?” He turned his trademark charming grin on her. “Never!”

“You’re only sayin’ that ‘cos Ah found yah,” she remarked hotly.

“One thing I don’t do,” he assured her seriously, “an’ dat’s leave damsels in distress. Don’t leave partners in crime neither.” He paused as the voice of the dark-skinned chanteuse rose to a wavering, waif-like crescendo, only to tumble down, down, down into sensuous oblivion… “Was wantin’ a little time t’ myself, Rogue,” he confessed, lifting his chin and blowing smoke pensively into the thick and hazy air. “Thought you’d understand dat.”

“I do,” she assured him. He glared at her.

“Do you?” His tone was peremptory, but not overly unkind. “Marian, you’re young, still practically a kid. Dere are some t’ings in dis world y’ just can’t learn by readin’ about them, or even by absorbin’ them… Dat’s what life’s for, cherie. And dere are some things you ain’t never gon’ understand about me, no matter how much you believe otherwise…”

He faltered off, pulling heavily on his cigarette, his gaze refusing to meet hers. Rogue said nothing. He was wrong, she knew he was wrong… but she couldn’t tell him why.

“Go home, Marian,” he said at last, his eyes still on his drink. “I don’t want you hangin’ round dis shit-hole no more. I be back in de mornin’, I promise. You just go home, get some sleep, stay away from dis rough lot, stay outta dis crowd.”

Rogue’s eyes flashed green fire. She stood up, mouth hard, jaw set. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her fist on the table, taut, tight as a bowstring.

“Fuck you, LeBeau!” she seethed, her voice hard, trembling. “Y’all seem t’ think Ah’m a child – funny yah didn’t seem t’ think Ah was so much of a kid when we first met. If you were so concerned about mah innocence then why’d yah have t’ go load yah sordid mem’ries inta mah head?!” Her voice unintentionally wavered and she pushed her chair aside with one deft, agitated movement. “Reckon if Ah’m good enough t’ have your screwed-up self floatin’ in mah brain twenty-four-seven, Ah should be good enough t’ be hangin’ out with these low-life creeps.”

He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. He was afraid that if he did, he’d see himself in her eyes…

“Ah ain’t a child, Remy,” she said, her voice low and thick, barely audible. “Not since you came my way.”

She backed away, soft and silent as the ninja, losing herself in the jungle of undulating bodies before he could stop her.

Remy gulped down the rest of his beer, feeling a pang of guilt for no discernible reason. He slammed the glass back onto the table with a thud, looking down into the crystalline depths, peering into the kaleidoscopic relics of his past, searching, searching… always searching in the bottom of an empty glass… only to always find his own twisted reflection.

Autumnal rain sheeted down across the city from inky, sullen skies, chasing late-night revellers off the streets and into temporary, song-filled shelter. Rogue pulled up the collar of her leather jacket, watching the puddles wink and sparkle with the pinpoints of reflected lights. A half-dressed woman in a cherry-red negligee and feather boa called to her drunkenly from the cavernous doorway of a sanctuary frequented only by desperate men who craved a cheaper substitute for love. It was the kind of place that chewed you up and spit you out. Rogue knew what lay on the other side of the door. She didn’t stop.

They’d been together six months now, the mismatched mutant answer to Bonnie and Clyde. She was still waiting for the day it would bring her a touch of much longed-for glamour and a life on easy street. He did it for the thrill, for the drink, the gambling and the women. He did it for the reason everyone else did when they came here. To forget himself. He taught her to pick pockets and pick locks and pick heartstrings if she could, but he never asked her to do the obvious thing.

He never asked her to steal another’s secrets for his own personal gain.

And so had begun yet another strange and exciting chapter in Rogue’s short and eclectic life. She’d already tried so many things and so many places, whether willingly or not, whether intentionally or not… She had been afraid there was nothing left for her to see, nothing left in the world for her at all – and this all before she had even reached the cusp of womanhood. But he had offered her something more, or so she had thought – not riches, not excitement, not the fast lane, but something else, something that she’d seen over and over before in the memories she had stolen, but had never felt. Something no money could buy… And she trusted him, that beautiful scoundrel, and it confused her because she’d never trusted anyone before. Except perhaps Bobby… But that, of course, was in the past. All she’d known before then was pain and betrayal and desertion. Her greatest fear was that her trust would be misplaced, that he would abandon her and she would be alone again. She’d known he’d wanted his own space, she’d known he’d come back, sooner or later. But she hadn’t been able to help that constant, gnawing dread, that one day she’d wake up to find him gone.

The rain became a downpour became a storm. Rogue slipped under a Bourbon Street balcony to wait it out, ringing her sodden hair dry.

They were two of the same species of mad creature, drawn together by both fate and necessity. They had no one else. And he was lonely. She knew that now. He was terribly, bitingly lonely, and she reminded him of himself when he was younger, wild and untamed and uncontrollable and irreverent, full of the brooding sorrow that no child should ever have to experience. That was how he saw her – a child, untainted. It pained her. She hadn’t been young since the day Colonel Wraith had taken her away. She’d stopped being a child when she was twelve. That was what he didn’t understand about her. He saw here merely as some crazy, mixed-up kid who was too young to know that running away from oneself got you nowhere, that anger and an attitude would never change the world. But she’d known the truth already, maybe better than he did himself. She’d absorbed over twenty psyches now, each one of them more sordid and tumultuous than the last.

And now his infection had added to her growing collection. He was with her twenty-four-seven, always skimming right on the surface of her mind when she locked up all her ghosts and tossed away the key. He was there when she was feeling lonely, there in the night when she could not sleep, there in the morning when she woke up. Her guardian angel.

How utterly perverse.