Warning: this story contains very graphic imagery that can best be described as icky. :)
Darkness.
Dark, so dark. Sleep...
He stirred, bone sliding against rotted satin, disturbing the maggots that crawled over it.
Sleep... So tired.
He couldn't sleep. Not like he had been, with nothing to dream of except oblivion, nothing to do but rot. Someone was calling him, with a voice he couldn't quite make out, but that he couldn't resist. It had its hooks in him and was pulling. Not hard, not painfully. Just enough to raise him out of his somnolescence, dragging him up from the darkness.
There was no air. He had no lungs. None that would work with the decay in them. No lips left to breathe with. No eyes, no meat. Just a painless skeleton, garbed in rotting clothes. He tried to sleep again, but the voice called and he reached out towards it, only to have the bones of his hand hit the damp wood less than a foot over his skull.
The wood split. Not from any effort of his. The voice did it, and he felt himself lifted by its will, the bits of him floating in the air. He assumed it was air. His bones couldn't feel anything, not without the nerves he no longer had.
The voice spoke to him, and he felt his bits link back together, his bones rejoining. No, not quite felt. But he was aware of it. Just as he was aware with no brain in his skull. The voice whispered and tendons formed to hold the bones together. Almost, he could bend his elbows, flex his feet. Not without muscles, though, but after a moment, he felt it flowing over his bones, growing and strengthening as they expanded from his feet to cover his entire body to the crown of his head. He supposed he should feel pain, with his body floating in midair, basically flayed of the skin it hadn't received yet, but there was none. Without a brain, there was no way for him to register any. He was grateful.
A murmur from the voice and his skin returned, covering the muscle and bone both. Hair grew from his head and groin, a bit on his arms and legs, a touch on his chest. The chest didn't rise. He was eyeless, heartless, a mindless body. An empty organic machine. Hollow.
A few minutes, or perhaps a few centuries passed, and he felt his ribs touched by the edges of new lungs, his abdomen expanding with the loops of gut that filled it. A heart began its first tentative beatings and his torso was filled. Kidneys, liver, pancreas... he named them all off as they filled him. Or guessed. He wasn't sure what was supposed to go where, though he supposed the voice did. A brainstem filled the base of his skull and sensation returned.
He was being rained on. He could feel the drops striking his skin, feel the wind that blew over his body, and swept his long hair away from him. He still couldn't move though. Eyes filled his sockets, closed though they were, a tongue in his mouth. He breathed on his own.
The voice spoke again and he could hear. Not the voice. That spoke without words. But the wind, and the rain, and the frogs that sang, and the grass that rustled. Even his own breathing and the rumble of his empty stomach. He was hungry. He'd laugh if he could.
The voice sounded satisfied, pleased with its work, and his skull was filled with a mind that could reason and think, and was aware with emotion of its surroundings and what had happened to it.
He opened his eyes, and his mouth, and he screamed.
The voice soothed, still without words he could understand, and his panic eased, though it was still with wide eyes that he watched as he was lowered from a prone horizontal position hovering ten feet in the air to the cold wet ground. His back touched the cold grass and the voice was gone.
Frightened, he rolled over, clutching the soaked rags he wore to him as he looked around. He was in a graveyard, and his terror only increased as he saw he lay by a grave that'd been forced open. A coffin already filling with the storm's water lay inside, the lid torn off, and he could see from where he was the maggots that crawled on the empty, rotted satin within. Maggots that had crawled on *him*. It was *his* name that decorated the tombstone, with the date of his death that he could remember so clearly.
His back crawled and he yelped, clawing at the now ruined suit he'd been buried in. They were crawling on him still. Desperately, he tore the jacket and shirt off, tossing them away, and watched the blind larva worm their way back into the darkness from where they'd fallen to the dirt.
Wiping tears from his face as much as the rain, he stood, kicking off his shoes as he did so. He was afraid of what was crawling in them as well.
Why was he alive? He remembered dying. Remembered every detail and sensation as he'd collapsed and passed away, overcome by the darkness that stole sensation from every part of his body, every thought from his mind, until it was the only thing left. There'd been no heaven with its angels and hymns. No Hell with its fire. There'd been nothing... nothing? Almost, he could remember. Almost, he could see something. Something indescribable.... It was gone, the memory not able to be held by a living mind.
It was cold outside, the night air half frozen even without the rain. His arms wrapped around his naked chest, he blinked the rain away and started to walk. He didn't know where he was going. He just knew that, whether he'd been there seconds or centuries, he'd spent enough time in that graveyard.
Beyond the cemetary, the path led to a road, which he began to follow. There were lights to the north, so he went that way. Once, he'd been terrified of the people those lights promised, but he'd killed his demon and he'd lost enough time alone in the ground. Besides, it seemed as though something pulled him that way, one last whisper from the voice.
He didn't see any cars that would stop for him as he walked, and when his feet finally felt as though they would break off and his lips were blue with the chill, he lifted his head, shook away the rain from his lashes, and saw the lights of a building up ahead. It was a restaurant, and as if guided, he turned towards it. Harry's Hideaway, he read. It looked cheerful, but he hesitated by the side of one half open window near the door. Death aside, it'd been a long time.
A few moments later, he realized he was hearing voices, and what was more, he recognized them.
"What a jip."
"Easy, Bobby. Try to enjoy your dinner. It's not like we get out much to eat as a group, and after our latest adventure, we're all starving."
"But, it's not fair," Bobby protested. "We went halfway across the multiverse because Roma needed our help- again, and Rogue here saves her anthropomorphic ass, and she skips out on the reward she promised her."
"You so sure of that, bub?" He heard Logan ask.
"She said she'd give her her heart's desire, didn't she? But Rogue's powers still work."
Storm laughed gently. "You did prove that to all of us when you tried to kiss her this afternoon."
"Yeah, well..."
He leaned a little closer to the window, shivering but momentarily forgetting the cold. The X-Men were dining right on the other side, but with the lights the way they were and the storm, no one could see through the window from either side.
"You've been very quiet, Rogue," the Professor said. "Are you all right?"
His heart surged at the sound of her low, sultry voice. "Ah've been thinkin'. Maybe it ain't mah heart's desire ta control mah powers."
"You got another idea in mind, darlin'?" Logan didn't sound surprised.
"Ah- ah was thinkin'... 'bout Remy."
He started as the sounds of dining faded around the table. That had been his name, though it'd been a long time since he recognized it as such.
"He's been gone for over a year," Scott said softly. "He's not coming back."
"Ah, ah know that. But Roma's a goddess. Ah mean, Jean came back ta life, more than once. So has Sam. Maybe Remy has too." She sounded like she was crying. "Ah'm sorry, ah should be over him by now, but thinkin' 'bout what Roma coulda meant brought it all back."
"You want to go swing by his grave, darlin'?" Logan asked gently.
"Yes," she whimpered.
Scott sighed. "Check, please. Let's get this over with."
He heard them preparing to leave and froze with uncertainty. Should he go inside, or wait for them to come out? Then Sam stepped outside and the decision was taken away from him.
The young man froze at the sight of him. "Oh mah... CYCLOPS!" He screamed. "PROFESSAH! GET OUT HERE NOW!!"
There was a flurry at the door and instinct started backing him away as the X-Men poured out the door, ready for a fight. As each one saw him, though, they stopped in stunned amazement, forcing those behind to push past them before they saw him and skidded to a halt as well.
"Remy..."
"Remy?" Rogue slammed her way to the front and stopped. He stared at her. She was beautiful, a little older than when he'd seen her last outside Sinister's lab, but still so beautiful, her auburn hair dampening in the heavy rain, her green eyes huge. She started to tremble and he wasn't sure if it was rain or tears that soaked her face.
He swallowed. "H-hi," he managed with chattering teeth. "Miss me?"
Her lip trembled and she threw herself at him, sobbing. About the only thing he could think of as she hugged him, though, beyond the fact that she was blessedly warm, was that she was his heart's desire as well.
The End**********