by Neva Laurie
Rogue sped through the skies over Antarctica, letting the icy air whip over her, trying to freeze out the pain and anger burning through her. The tears left frozen trails on her cheeks even as the speed of her flight pulled them behind her, back towards the place she had left him...and her heart. She got a vague sense of deja vu from the situation and realized it was the second time she had denied him and flown away alone and miserable. Love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed... Last time it was because she was afraid to trust him and learn what he'd done. This time it was because she had learned it and couldn't deal with it.
Though his powers and personality had faded from the brief manipulated kiss of judgment, the memories were still clear, barely suppressed in her subconscious where she struggled to hold them. It didn't work. They welled up and overwhelmed her, forcing her to relive his darkest hour again. This time, though, instead of judging him, she became him.
She felt the complete emptiness that had filled him at that point, nothing to live for, no one to care about or turn to. It was a pang even more painful because she remembered it from her own past, from the time after she had drained Cody. Sinister's offer was too good to refuse, especially with no other offers or goals, and he truly hadn't known what game he was becoming a pawn in.
The memories became more personal after that, scarred deeply into her brain because they were seared ten times more deeply into his. He had relived these moments thousands of times over many years, looking for a way he could have acted differently, something he could have changed, a way to save all those wasted lives.
She felt his apprehension as he led them down the tunnels, wondering when he had lost control of the situation and how, or even if, he could regain it soon enough to prevent whatever was about to happen. She knew from the gleaming animal eyes around him and the vicious predatory smiles that they had been given instructions he hadn't, and it scared him. Then, when the killing began, the mayhem, she felt his revulsion, his horror, the nausea inside him that he was witnessing this, that he had had a part in this, had made it possible. God, he had given these monsters the chance to slaughter, to take these innocent lives. No, it couldn't happen; he couldn't let them do this. It wasn't supposed to be like this! "Stop, stop!" she cried into the empty air, begging mercy that would never come from people beyond her control. She felt him run into the heart of things, trying to prevent the atrocity. The pain of Sabretooth's blows burned through her, knocking her out of the air to crash unfeeling into the icy ground. The sensation of true physical pain, buried so far back in her memory, striking her at such intensity immobilized her, leaving her laying in the snow consumed by the war raging inside her. She felt his agony as her own, wished with him for death to stop the pain, both of body and spirit. He deserved to die for letting so many others be killed. "Kill me, too," she whispered in agony. He needed to die with those he had wronged. Penance. Then she heard, through his ears, the wails of a frightened child, a little girl, desperate, alone, and traumatized. There was still life in this hall of death, and he couldn't leave it. If I can stop one heart from breaking... There was nothing he could do but grab the child and run for her life. His life didn't matter; he was already beyond damned. She was just a child who deserved none of this. He got her free, one life saved from dozens, and would have gone back to save others or die with them. But his body would not comply. Stressed beyond normal human or mutant limits, the adrenaline surge that had allowed him to escape flooded out of his limbs, leaving him to collapse to an unconsciousness haunted by evil dreams of self-recrimination, a half-life he had not yet fully woken from.
Mercifully, his thoughts receded from the forefront of her memory, leaving her huddled in the snow, gasping air desperately and trying to recover from the trauma she had just endured. And he had been living with it for years. Suddenly Rogue understood two very important things. The first was why he had never told them of this. If he still couldn't accept it and forgive himself, he couldn't expect anyone else to be able to. The second was why only priests take confessions. It takes a special sort of person to listen to a person's darkest sins and not condemn them as they have themselves. What Remy truly needed was someone to forgive him so he would believe it might be possible to start forgiving himself. She wasn't sure she could be strong enough to do that for him.
She stood up and took to the air again, brushing the snow from her body. She squinted against the blinding reflection from the snow, feeling the soft tinkle of ice breaking from her cheeks. That was when she remembered that despite everything, Remy was physically only a human man. She had freed him from the guillotine in the collapsing courtroom, leaving him in the snow to choose to live or die. For her, that choice would have been an option. In his case, a quick, crushing death might have been more merciful than leaving him to freeze slowly.
She couldn't keep his last words to her from her mind. "But I love you," he had whispered in disbelief, broken-hearted that it wasn't enough to keep her. He had, in his way, been as foolish as she had. She had thought by loving him she could make his past unimportant, make the dark secrets go away. He had thought by loving her he could be forgiven for the sins he had unknowingly committed and punished himself for ever since. Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds... Maybe they weren't so foolish after all. She had been willing to ignore nebulous evil acts from his past without knowing what they were, had been, in fact, desperately eager not to find out. Now that she knew, and also knew that she could never be as sickened by those misguided acts as he was, how could she do any less? Despite the accusations and twisted truths spouted by the man who had brought them here, Remy had not taken the lives of the Morlocks. He had done everything he could to save those lives once he understood what was happening. Rogue knew from his raw, painful memories that he would gladly have traded his own life for the slightest chance to help even a single one of them. He wasn't an evil man; he never had been. She knew better than anyone how people could unwittingly commit terrible acts out of a desperate need to fill a void, to try to compensate for the nothingness inside.
Knowing him so intimately, from the inside of his soul, how could she condemn him for acts she understood? How could she abandon him here? That, at least, she knew the answer to. She couldn't.
Squinting against the snow blindness, she got her bearings and sped back the way she had come. What could she say, how could she explain, apologize, let him know she understood? How could she help him begin forgiving himself? She considered going back for the card. The Queen of Hearts is always your best bet... But somehow it didn't seem appropriate, too cliché, too contrived, not to mention too hard to find in this snowy wasteland. Words, what words could tell him everything she felt, everything she wanted to say to him? There weren't any; the emotions were too raw, too intense, too deep to find words for. She didn't know what she could do.
In the end, her indecision turned out to be the best answer. She found his track before she found him. The footprints staggered aimlessly through the snow, with sunken spots quite frequently where he had collapsed to the ground and huddled there in misery for a while before getting up with nothing better to do than continue. She followed his trail. It didn't take long; he hadn't gotten very far. A man with no destination and no purpose has no incentive to hurry. He was a forlorn figure, starkly alone in the uncaring white landscape. She descended slowly to land softly by his side.
Hearing the snow crunch beneath her feet, he turned his head, eyes widening in disbelief and joy as he saw her. "Remy..." she whispered, stretching out one hand towards him. There were no other words she could find, but her tears said it all more eloquently than she ever could have. Slowly, he took her hand in his own, staring at her as if he couldn't believe she was real. He lowered his head, unable to meet the powerful emotions on her face. She saw the tears freezing in his stubble, tiny crystals as mute testament to his pain and joy. Unable to resist, knowing intimately the emotions running through him, Rogue put her arms around him and pulled him to her, holding him firmly. She felt his arms wrap around her, weakly at first and then tightening almost desperately. Together they stood and wept out their pain, fear, and love, knowing that ultimately the third would overcome the rest.
The four italicized lines are quotes that ran through my head and seemed appropriate.
The first is from the song "The Rose."
The second is Emily Dickinson.
The third is from a sonnet by Shakespeare.
The fourth is from "Desperado" by the Eagles.