The Reckoning Day

"My debt to you, Belovèd,
Is one I cannot pay
In any coin of any realm
On any reckoning day."

~Jessie B. Rittenhouse

Today was definitely one of Rogue's bad days. One of the days when the voices did not shut up, but instead critiqued her every thought. Remy had found her asleep in the bathroom with a damp towel on her forehead. She looked sweet, curled up on the cool tile floors in her pink robe. Her makeup was gone now and she looked a decade younger. Another reason he was wrong for her. She was just out of high school, fresh and pure as a daisy.

Incidentally, they had had this conversation before. It hadn't gotten very far. He had called her a daisy, too fresh to be profaned by hands like his. She had scoffed and called it a moot point. He couldn't touch her anyway. Besides, she had said, she would rather be a rose. But Remy couldn't see it. Underneath her makeup, she was too simple to be called a rose. She had layers, but they were arrayed in such a way that her heart lay open at the center. She was no rose to hide a worm in its bosom. The conversation had ended soon after that point. She had looked at him in the way that always made his heart beat pick up. He wondered if she knew the power she held in her gaze. What would she do if she knew that one look of true disappointment, would drive him mad, or that the twitch of her lips when she tried not to smile could send him into convulsions.

Remy sat down on the toilet and tried to think of the best way to wake her. She had to be at the dinner tonight, absolutely had to be there. He wasn't invited seeing as he was only a probationary member of the team, but she was a corner stone. Their spy, and decoy, as well as the best hand to hand fighter they had, excepting Logan. She had helped them take down the latest Sentinel army. Remy had sat in the plane and waited to help them make a clean get away.

She was starting school in the fall, Remy had never been. Once an orphan, than a thief, and then a man for hire, he had not had much spare time to invest in an education. To be sure, there was nothing the Thieves' Guild couldn't buy their way into, but a purchased diploma did not a graduate make.

Remy made a toilet paper flower and tickled Rogue's nose. She sneezed and jolted awake.

"Holy shit. Did you let me sleep through the dinner?" she did not stop to hear a response, opting to begin tearing through her closet for the outfit she had set aside.

Remy rose unsteadily, his joints were getting stiff in his old age. As anyone with sense would have told him, thirty was not old; but Remy had not maintained his reputation by being loose about his confidence. He did not complain, and all believed that he was well. He leaned on the bathroom door and watched Rogue fly about the room. "Chere, I am wounded that you would think me capable of such crimes. You got plenty of time, long as you use it well."

Rogue did not answer, but threw a shoe at him, Kitty's judging by the color. Remy held it up to the light. "Y'know chere, I'm not sure, but I think this is a pink shoe." He adjusted his imaginary glasses. "In fact, I'm right. This is a hot pink shoe. Chere, why didn't you tell me you were wearing colors now? I'll have to exchange all your Christmas presents."

"Hush." She said, throwing on her dress. She pulled a cardigan out from under a pile of books that Remy had never read, and never noticed if he was being honest with himself. He would make an effort tonight.

"How do I look?" she asked with a smile.

"Lovely, as always, but Chere, I can't help but wonder when you stopped dressing like a goth?"

She frowned. He noticed that she still wasn't wearing any makeup. "I grew out of that, ages ago. I also stopped listening to My Chemical Romance. And reading trashy romance novels, and wearing too much makeup. I was trying too hard to be something I hated. I like to think this is an improvement."

"Oui, of course it is, Chere." He lifted her hand to his lips. Now please allow me the honor of escorting you to the door."

She blushed, and he was happy to see it. She could still blush; she was not grown away from him yet.

It was a very bored Remy LeBeau who sat on the floor later that night. He was trying to read through Les Miserables, and finding it a hopeless cause. Thus far, the author had stopped twice to explain certain aspects of politics and the particular beauty of one summer day. It was a far better thing to read A Tale of Two Cities. He had grabbed himself a couple of Logan's beers and was hoping that when they were added to his own supply, he would be drunk enough that Logan wouldn't need to beat him senseless as a punishment. His hangover in the morning would be enough.

Around twelve, he could no longer keep himself together. He called Rogue, who didn't pick up for some obscure reason, it didn't matter why in the end, Remy couldn't care less. He left her a message, long and rambling.

The message was concluded with Remy explaining why he couldn't be with her anymore. She was too good for him; he would lock her up and throw away the key. No one would ever see her heart again. This was only the end of the message. After the tone had gone off to signal the end of the recording, Remy had continued speaking for hours, only stopping when Rogue walked into their room.

She glared down at him. He looked up with weepy eyes and tried to think of something witty and lovable to say. He settled for the timeworn classic, "Allo, Chere."

"Hello, Remy." said the love of his life and the cause of his strife. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

He could not think, not now that she was here. The most sober and self-assured part of his brain wondered when he had gotten so whipped. The drunkest, most in love part answered, somewhat snarkily, "When she slapped him for the first time."

"Well, Remy, I'm waiting for an answer here." she had her hands on her hips. She sounded stern, but her eyes were frightened and when he saw her gulp, he wanted nothing more than to hug her.

"'M sorry, Roguey. Didn't mean nothing by this."

"And what is this?" she asked gesturing to the empty beer bottles.

"Liquid courage. I've been trying to get up the nerve to break it off. 'M a coward Roguey. You deserve better."

"Uh-huh. Is that so?" she didn't say anything else, but she led him into the bathroom and tucked him into the bath tub.

Remy was in New York for the first time, it was raining and no cabs would stop for him. He didn't feel too bad about it, he wouldn't have stopped for himself.

One cab pulled over and he ran to it, but the doors remained locked. The cabbie rolled down his window and looked at him with green, green eyes. "Wake up you damn Swamp Rat." Hearing Rogue's voice and seeing her eyes startled him awake. His eyes flew open.

This was his first mistake. He had achieved a hangover unlike most he had ever endured, and thus his head now felt like a million lumber jacks were cutting at his brain. His second mistake was calling for Rogue, who was right beside him and holding him by the ear. She used this advantage to jerk him out of the tub.

He lay on the ground, wishing himself dead, and marveling at Rogue's strength, until she knelt down next to him and he could admire her eyes which were at last in her head where they belonged.

He promptly ceased admiring any part of Rogue as she began to scream at him. He didn't remember too much about the previous night, but everything he did remember was awful.

"Do you really want to break up with me?" Rogue finished with tears in her eyes.

Remy groaned and tried to manage a sitting position, but his brain assured him that any movement on his part would be treated as an act of war. He settled for turning his head on its side so that he could look up at Rogue's face while he tried to explain himself out of the grave he'd dug.

"I don't want to break up with you, Rogue. I just think that you should break up with me."

"I don't want to. I like having you around when you're not being an asshole."

"I'm no good for you. You need a guy who'll take you places. Who reads what you've read and more, maybe. Someone who's not so jealous. I want to make you happy, because I think you're beautiful when you smile. But I won't keep making you smile. Sooner or later, something will come up, and when it does, you'll look at everything we've had and hate me for using you. You're nineteen, Rogue. You've got a life in front of you. I've got nothing but this place."

Rogue walked out of the room. Remy closed his eyes. There, he'd done it, and sober at that. He tried to come to terms with himself, but he couldn't think of anything more complicated than the relative comfort of the floor when compared to the bathtub.

He had resigned himself to his fate (he would return to his womanizing ways and eventually die of an STD) when Rogue came back to the bathroom. She lay down next to him, and he could smell her toothpaste on her breath.

"I've decided that you are an idiot who doesn't know what's best for him."

He swallowed as hard as he could. "Whatever you say, Chere."

"And that is why you need me to stick around. I left you alone for eight hours last night, and look what you did to yourself."

Remy nodded. She was right about his incompetence concerning his own well-being. That sane part of his brain insisted that once he hadn't been so pathetic, but the in love part stifled it with pathetic screams of joy. "Thank you, Chere."

"It's nothing, Swamp Rat." And when she kissed him, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

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