If Ever - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Painted Eyes
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 12

"So ..." Scott's hands stopped, but he didn't look away from the intricate traceries of the circuits from Sinister's machine under the scope.

"How's he doing?" His eyes fell closed for a moment, a sigh deeply weary hissed through his lips.

"The same, Bobby."

A rustle of clothing as Bobby settled on the bench beside him facing out into the hanger, a rasp as he rubbed his face with his hands and sighed himself. "Shit."

Scott went back to work, it was all he could do and he had to be doing something.

"Do you really think we can protect ourselves from ... from that ever happening again?" From being stripped of all but what was base and venal and vicious ... Bobby didn't like Gambit, but he liked himself even less right now, and that kind of made him mad at Gambit, too.

"The Professor thinks so." Scott prayed so with every fiber and shred of will. "I just have to find the new relays in here ... " He couldn't say more, so ashamed of what Sinister had revealed to him of what lay under the reason and honor he was ... had been ... so confident in. Though things between he and Jean were calm, it was still brittle and he suspected with true dread that if Remy died, his marriage, and the team itself, would never be whole again. How did he find the will to forget his wife's delirium in Gambit's arms?

The Professor, Ororo and Hank had returned within six hours of Jubilee's nearly incoherent summons and had gone straight to the med lab. Scott could still see Ororo's dark delicate hands hovering in shocked disbelief over the bloody wreckage of Remy's body as Hank went into frantic action, tears raining down her dusky cheeks and gale-force winds rising to assault the grounds. No one could bear to look at her, though all had been present in guilty responsibility. It had not stopped raining since, nor had the all-encompassing shadows lifted. The mansion held breathlessly grim and solemn.

Scott had faced the Professor at dusk in the darkness of his study once they had done all that could be done, with Warren and Psylocke and Bobby behind him, all unable to meet their mentor's eyes. In pained silence they had listened to the cold recitation of Hank's initial report: Aside from the obvious compound fractures of the right femur and left humerus, he'd suffered bilateral pneumothorax and bleeding into the pericardium around the heart that stopped it's beat twice more before being relieved. Twelve further broken bones in ribs and left hand and fingers, a dislocated hip and shoulder, a ruptured spleen, two depression fractures of the skull, a broken nose, jaw and right retroorbital sinus, severely bruised kidneys and liver lacerations, small ruptures in the stomach wall and intestines that had birthed a rampaging peritonitis, and a seemingly endless list of torn tendons and cuts and contusions.

Though Xavier had keenly felt the crushing burden of guilt that bowed their shoulders and rendered them child-like before him, he could not give them absolution any more than he could absolve himself. He had failed, had not examined more closely the underlying currents upon Remy's return, had not been there when his instincts told him he should be, the situation too volatile and Sinister too exquisitely predictable in such vulnerability. That Remy might have influenced him into inattention without notice was even more deeply disturbing, and if Sinister had triggered this new manifestation of the Acadian's powers, what else might be passively waiting its awakening at their enemy's whim?

Remy might yet die of his injuries, might be crippled forever if he survived, and certainly no one would ever be the same. His beloved X-Men would carry the scars of their own actions forever, even as Remy did, and the irony was painful. No matter that it had been Sinister's doing, the dormant seeds of possibility had been coaxed to life within them all; their innocence, the faith and confidence that had been their greatest strength, had been broken, perhaps irreparably.

Because Joseph's mental state was growing increasingly fragile despite all her efforts, Rogue returned unannounced to the mansion to ask the Professor for his help. She felt stronger now, safer from her destructive emotions, and her heart had latched onto Joseph's vulnerabilities and need with frantic relief. Joseph was Remy's polar opposite in his child-like honesty, and looking after him gave her a focus away from the burning chaos of secrets that did not belong to her. That she desperately did not want.

What did it say about her that a handsome face and persistent charm could blind her to Remy's true nature? To the truth of all those she kept giving her heart to? Monsters ... first Mystique, then the Brotherhood, Remy, beguilingly convincing and manipulating her lonely heart to ends that had nothing to do with love at all. Mystique for her power, the brotherhood for the spoils, and Remy ... for the challenge, she thought, puzzles and schemes and intricate seductions were his nature and craft, natural not to let go of a problem until he solved it. What he wanted, he would find a way to get, and he'd likely lose interest the instant it had been acquired. Lies upon lies upon lies, more tricks than a fox.

Constant reminders of these cold hard facts kept the sweet foolish memories at bay, but they came nonetheless; the white-toothed slant of his smile, the warm spark of his dark shuttered eyes. The whiskey-rough murmur of soft words that had touched her so deeply, too perceptive not to be true ... but he had told her himself the best way to feed a mark a lie was to sandwich it between two truths. She was no different than any other mark, as it turned out. Honing his skills, entertaining himself with her without the depth to care about the wreckage he left in his wake. Why had that face, that voice, those demonic eyes, seemed truer to her than anything ever had in her life? She had believed him and it was bitterest gall to imagine the amusement her eager naivety must have given him.

She'd known Remy could be cruel, that his sense of justice was warped with an astoundingly casual ruthlessness, but she'd never suspected he was a monster with the blood of hundreds of innocents on his hands. For all his sarcastic disdain for the Professor's noble aspirations, she'd never thought it more than the pessimistic nature of a hard life, never realized he would turn out to be Sinister's and a traitor to the only thing that gave her life any meaning, the only people she loved like family. But he did, he had, he would. As much as it hurt, the pain fortified her.

"We do not have to do this, Rogue, we can turn around, we two, and leave before they ever know we've come ..." Joseph swayed faintly on his feet, pale face turned up to the mansion on the hill through the gates and the rain dripping off the ends of his long white hair.

"Th'rain feels like Ororo..." She murmured, but Joseph would not know what she meant, he looked down at her somberly. Weary and bewildered and tortured by the emptiness inside him, and still he cared for her more, and would abandon every help if it hurt her. His eyes amazed her, the color of a breathless hot summer sky, clear and pure, feelings unconcealed.

He looked back with anxious affection; she was all of this world he'd yet found that eased him, and it struck a terror hard and deep to think of being without her. She had not wanted, really, to come here, he could still feel her apprehension at the thought of facing her teammates again, particularly Ororo, who had been a particular friend of Remy LeBeau's. The building itself struck a faint forboding in him, but Rogue's sudden smile warmed him, and his, tentative and gentle, brought her out of the memories that had made her glorious eyes turn sad murky jade. She looped her arm tight through his and levitated just enough to kiss his lips, all the reassurance he needed.

"Ah ain't runnin' from Remy LeBeau at y'all's expense, sugah, y'need th' Professuh, n' ah aim t'see ya get 'im."

"I will not let this Remy LeBeau near you, then ..."

Her laugh was brittle, "Ah imagine he'll avoid me like the plague, hon, I got too much t'say he surely don't want t'hear."

He shivered, his clothing beginning to cling wetly to his tall body and she took him by the hand; "C'mon, let's get you outta th'rain."

There was no one in the foyer, but a murmur of voices could be heard from the den and Rogue headed in that direction, shivering herself now as she looked around with a growing sense of unease for whatever had so changed the mood of this place. It felt ... wrong, disturbed and brittle.

Joseph's head swiveled toward the darkened rear staircase and Rogue glimpsed the glow of a cigar, but before she could speak to Logan, Jubilee rounded the corner from the kitchen with her normal distracted speed, head down over a mug of cocoa that nearly ended up on Rogue as they collided.

"Rogue!" With a clear edge of hostility in her surprise that hurt to hear. Nothing else; a hot glance over her shoulder, presumably at Logan, stilled her usually uncontrollable tongue and she just looked up at Rogue, thin raven eyebrows drawn low and unfriendly.

"Well, thanks Sugah, ah'm glad t'be home, and so nice y'missed me n' all ..." The attempt at humor, even sarcastic, fell flat. Jubilee just shook her head and moved off, leaving an electric prickle of anger in her wake. The fading scent of Logan's smoke told her he too, was gone, without ever having acknowledged her at all. This was home, it had to be home, she had none other and it scared her to feel so different now.

"Rogue?" Joseph touched her arm and she looked away from Jubilee's retreating back filled with a growing anxiety. She could not expect that some would not be angry with her, but he hadn't died and was recovering well the last she'd heard - so what was Logan's problem? And Jubilee's?

She took a fortifying breath and put some posture in her spine. "Well, sugah, let's see who else has a bitch with me." So saying, she flung the door to the den open and walked in.

"Rogue!"

"Well, I'm s'glad ev'body seems t'remember mah name! Really gratifyin'..." They just sat there, staring at her, and she looked at each in turn, Warren and Betsy, Bobby.

"Now if someone could just think of somethin' t'say after that, we'd be makin' some progress." Her quizzical smile faded, turned into a frown.

"Awright, what's goin' on?"

They exchanged looks hemmed in with what looked like guilt, even shame.