Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men!

Note: Hi guys! For this fic, I wanted to use a song for each chapter, so each chap will be titled as a song that I like for the mood of it. This one is by The Smiths. Btw, I remember little ago, rereading some of my older fics, I thought "why did I use songs in this fic? It's kind of silly". Well, now I'm doing it exactly that again, but I just feel like it. And I think writing and any form of art (if these things I write can be called art) is more about emotions and about feeling, than about thinking. All that said! Here we go.

Chapter 1: There's a light that never goes out

Why am I here, Remy? How did I get here?

I remember this place very well, though it was about a lifetime ago. The white tiles, the blue booths, the mirror from one edge of the wall to the other. I've repeated this night in my head thousands of times, sometimes lulling myself to sleep with it. Why not one more time?

But now I'm here. I'm sitting here, taking short sips from this glass of tap water and I didn't see you arrive. I don't know if you were here before me, I just know I raise my eyes and you're sitting across several tables, staring at me. You smile at me, remember that? More like, smirk, so I look away. It's just not the best day to go and flirt with some random person, you know? So I just sink in my seat a bit more. I try to think, what will I do?, should I go back?, but I'm mostly blank. It's overwhelming when you want to do something for so long, and you finally do it, but then you're face to face with the now what? Options studied backwards and forwards, but that fall flat every time.

Why am I even here, anyway? Precisely here?

You come and sit at my table, in front of me, just like that. So you. Many times I've wished you'd never done that, or that I had got away, simply cut things off at their very start. But how would I have known? If we knew the consequences of stuff, right the moment they're happening, we'd stop in our tracks or jump right at it, whatever was best.

What am I saying? Even now, knowing what will happen, I'd stay once again. I do.

I do.

You don't say anything, which is unusual, 'cause you don't really have an off switch for shutting up, do you? You just rest your back against the booth and keep on staring at me, so sure of yourself.

I should have got away, while I still had the chance.

This moment, your eyes on mine for the first time…

I'm there, but I'm also here.

"May I help you?" I ask, slightly annoyed but mostly taken aback.

"Oui, s'il vous plait" you lean forward, elbows on the table: "What's your name?"

I'm too messed up for this shit right now.

However, the rude words don't come out. Guess I was too tired or… sickened.

"How does that help yah?"

"Helps me know y' better".

You take the salt shaker, pour some on the tip of a finger and taste it.

"Better? 'Cause, yah know me already, right?"

"Non, but I see y'. I see your teary eyes, your reddened lil' nose. Backpack, glass of water. Y're going somewhere. Y' just don't know where to."

Funny, your face looks so young here. I mean, similar, of course, just less… well, we were kids. Have we got so old? When? I'm still 16, I'm still sitting here, letting you in.

"Congratulations, Sherlock. Now scat."

No, really.

You shake your head, as if figuring something out: "Can't."

I sigh and brace myself even more, here, inside the big, warm jacket: "Great".

"Like it or not, cherie, we have a relationship now."

Now you spread your arms on the backrest.

"What?"
"A relationship, of a sort. We ain't strangers no more, all I need's your name and we'll be acquaintances, which I think's a nice start. What's your name?"

So many opportunities I had to ditch you. This was a golden one.

"Rogue."

"Remy, nice to meet y'." I squeeze your hand hard, don't want you to think I'm a little lost girl. There's that music. I knew it was there. "Now, y' gonna tell me what's wrong?"

Then again, many times I've wondered why in Jesus Jones I went along with everything that came next. It wasn't that I was sad, it wasn't your oh so famous smooth talk. I think it was more like pieces fitting alright, you and I; two meteorites crashing somewhere in the Universe, improbable but definite.

Wish I could write all this crap I'm rambling about. I will, once I'm out of here.

I open the trailer's door and go up the steps carefully, 'cause I know the exact spots where they squeak. You stay outside. It's dark but I know, I still know every corner.

"Mom."

She turns to me, frightened, then takes a look at the bottom, there, where their bed is.

"Where were yah?" she whispers and puts aside the man's shoe she was unsuccessfully attempting to polish.

"Mom, come with me."

It hurts me to see the bruise on her cheek, purple, red, green, a melting pot of colors and pain.

"What're yah talkin' 'bout? Go to bed 'fore he wakes up."

My bed, or the cot I call bed, is at the opposite side. I don't plan to sleep there ever again.

"Mom, come. With me. Now."

"But…"

"No buts. Yah don't deserve this. He…" God, mom. Why did you have to…? "He tried to… touch me last night, 'kay? We have to go, now."

What makes someone act the way she did? Or, better, not act at all, as if she had no willpower? Low self esteem, like shrinks say?

"Well… yah know how he gets when he drinks, he'll just…"

I was about to raise hell on her and drag her out, take her with me God knows where.

But he did wake up.

I don't like this part.

I don't know what he says. He just shouts and grumbles.

"We're leaving, mom, pick up your stuff and let's go."

He grabs her by the hair and tosses her against the bed, then turns to me right on time to receive my fist in his jaw. I think this was the first time I ever hit anyone, and it wouldn't be the last. It makes him lose balance for a moment, maybe mostly because of the shock of what I just did. But he's too big to be actually hurt.

I do understand what he says next:

"Yah little bitch, now I'll show yah."

"Sir!" At the moment I was too angry to think or to recognize anything at all, but now, I wanna hold on to your voice and hide in there from the image of all of this: "Excuse me but I can't let y' treat two ladies like this."

The look on the man's face.

"Who the fuck is this? Is he screwing yah?"

You and I, Remy, had sort of a rough start, that's for sure. This isn't the best type of context you would expect two people start getting to know each other. And it's so weird to be here again, as he grabs me by the shoulders and pretty much spits his liquor breath on me, but you get him off of me right away and kick his ass. I see that poker card coming out of nowhere, gleaming in red out of the blue and being the final touch to the already beaten up man.

Before this, I don't think I knew about mutants more than I had seen on the news once and on the internet twice.

And what does my mom do? She rushes to his side, holds him, gets a cushion underneath his head.

"Mom, let's go!" I shout. "He'll kill yah one of these days."

She's weeping now, wiping the blood from his nose, with the hem of her shirt.

"Yah go, honey." This is the saddest face I've seen in my life. The last time I saw her, too. "Ah'll be fine."

That night set a before and after in me. I left the piece of junk I'd called home my whole life, and on top of that, I met you. And I'm back at it, like this night was a place I could visit.

Where are you?

Here.

I storm out for good. My head's spinning but I'm glad you're with me, even though I don't know more than two or three things about you. Which doesn't quite keep me from going to where you live.

It's not far away, in the swamps area. We sneak in, 'cause we shouldn't wake anyone up. I don't even know what I'm doing but why not go ahead, if I'm with you?

You take a mat and a blanket, go to sleep in the attic and leave me there in your bedroom. The times I've smiled all alone, when remembering that, are countless. How did I end up here?, and now I'm here again, and I like it. I like how your bed is one of those old style ones, and when I let myself fall on it, the mattress budges like it's alive.

Then, I listen to the silence. And the crickets and frogs maybe, out there. I don't cry anymore because I've had too much of that. I feel safe, in this bed that's not mine and nothing but the unknown ahead and around.

I indulge myself in this… memory, dream? I could very well stay and live in it.

But not there. I mean, not here. What's this? I can't move.

The sun's up and you bring me a bag full of food, but I've got to stay in the bedroom and quiet, because your father, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins and three billion people that live in this house, can be a pain. That's what you say. And you promise you'll come back in the evening and we'll go out. No idea where to, but then that's just another thing I don't know right now and it doesn't bother me.

There are several types of music coming from different directions and they all add up to the noise in the boulevard. We take a seat as I eat my caramel popcorn and you, chicken wings.

"So, you're not scared I'm a mutant?"

"No, why would I?"

"Most people are."

"Well Ah'm not most people."

"I know" you tell me and I know you mean it.

"Besides, if yah wanted to hurt me, yah'd have done it by now, like…"

"Killing y' in your sleep, cannibalizing y'? All that horrible stuff they say mutants do and worse?"

"Yeah, like that."

"Nah, wasn't in the mood for that last night."

You have hot sauce in your chin, just a little bit, and I wipe it off with my finger.

"And tonight?"
"Tonight, chere, just want y' to have a good time. To leave the past in the past and just enjoy now, this moment. Tomorrow, we'll figure out what to do 'bout everything else."

You say we, we'll figure out. Like we are a "we", already. I have plans: moving to another city, getting a retail job or being a waitress, then, who knows. But now, we're walking down the boulevard with all of this happy people. And I wish I hadn't left my mom behind but… could I have done something more for her? I had to leave, now I'm gone and she's in the past too. Just like you, Remy; you've always been in the past, the times you've been in the present have been way too brief for me to even grasp them. And the future… I always had the feeling you'd eventually show up. You did, you stirred the past up several times. But now… I prefer not to think. I better just let myself walk with you, see the street artists, talk, let you make me laugh, 'cause God, I need that.

Now we're back in your roofless 60's car and you turn the radio on. I was like dreaming then and I'm dreaming now. I throw my head back, see the tree branches and lamp posts fly by as we go. I feel your eyes on me, from time to time, when the road allows you to.

"I really like y', Rogue."

I turn to you now and I still smile on the inside at this. I mean, we'd known each other for roughly 24 hours and then you blurt that out because, why not?

"Wow."

"What?"

"It's just kind of sudden."

"Not a problem, it's the truth."

I think we signed our sentence right there and then, in the pupils of the other.

We tip toe our way to your bedroom again; besides the crickets outside, the pounding of my heart is probably the only thing that could be heard. And how your eyes stand out in the dark, like the devil's. You cup my face with your hands and I know I'm lost. I wish I could kiss your lips once more, that you could kiss mine, like we did that night. Well, I've been wishing that for years. You hold me with those arms of yours and I can't help to whimper, because I'm bursting inside.

Bursting. Yeah, very accurate.

You start to gasp like your choking, I don't know what to do besides calling your name and asking if you're okay, which is obviously useless. You look at me with wide eyes and that's it, you fall to the floor.

I could have thought it was… I don't know, anything else, something you ate, something wrong with your heart. But I knew it had been me. And I got it confirmed when these images, flashes of your life, started to pop up inside my head.

Even though you were breathing, I thought I had killed you, that you'd die from whatever it was I'd done to you. So, cowardly, I pick up my backpack, dial 911 from your phone and run away.

The thought that maybe I should have stayed, has always bugged me. I should have woken people up, go to the hospital with you, make sure you were fine. But I was scared and the insides of my head were all scrambled. It's not enough of an excuse but… it's the way things happened.

And I can't change them now, let alone from this pit I'm all sunk in. The pain is so general, I couldn't even put my finger on where it hurts the most. There's someone around, I hear her talking. She says something about milligrams and doctor something.

Who's she?

Why am I here, Remy? How did I get here?

Note: As you can see, this is from Rogue's point of view, but I decided not to use the accents in her thoughts, but in the lines she speaks. And I got inspiration for this fic from a book and from some movies, but I'll tell you which ones later, I try not to give spoilers away. And nooooooo, please don't leave without dropping me a review. Please? Thanks for reading!