Chapter 3 – Close to the Bone
When Jessie Crowell awoke, she thought she'd heard screaming. It had almost seemed imaginary. She'd been having a very pleasant dream about dancing balls of light that made lightshows in a velvety blackness. She sat up and reached to the small nightstand to turn on the lamp. The room of shadows was thrown into a warm familiarity she'd grown very fond of in the past six months. Outside, she heard a car speeding down the drive, and she stood on her bed on her tiptoes to peer out to see the X-Men's black van disappearing out the gates.
The High School Musical clock beside her lamp said it wasn't even ten pm yet. She felt wide awake now though, and doubted she would sleep now.
She stepped into her fluffy slippers and pulled on her fleecy robe to beat the mansion hallway chill, and she left the bedroom. She made her way to Miss. Pryde's room, hoping that her instructor and supervisor would give her cocoa and a cookie to help soothe her back to bed. She was just about to turn the corner when she saw Rogue running into Kitty's room. She waited, hearing Rogue asking what was going on.
Jessie inched down the hall quietly to eavesdrop.
"Kitty's going into labour...they takin' her to the hospital."
"Aren't you going too?" Rogue asked.
"I can't, Chere...I gotta sit back and take care of the kid..."
They were sitting on the bed together, Rogue was looking at Mr. LeBeau in the way that Jessie had seen Mr. Drake look at Rogue, and the way Jean Grey and Scott Summers look at each other.
"I guess that's a bad thing?" Rogue asked softly, her voice was more tender for him than for any other person in the world, Jessie noticed. "Because...you don't look too happy."
Remy LeBeau wrung his hands absently between his knees, "she said to me...if anything should happen to her...I need to be there for the kid..."
"Someone needs to," Rogue agreed.
"But me? I'm not responsible, as Kitty pointed out, and...I'm not the right person to be there for a child."
"Why not?"
"Just...because."
"That's not an answer," she stated.
"Chere, there's just...so much that Kitty don't get when it comes to me and...kids..."
"Such as?"
"I don't wanna talk about it right now, chere," said Mr. LeBeau sounding quite upset. There was a heaviness in his voice that Jessie was unfamiliar with. It wasn't like the lighthearted tone or soft tone he used when he spoke to her, this tone was different, it made Jessie think of blackness, and sadness.
Rogue sighed, "Remy, if we're going to be together, we need to be honest with each other, and if you've got something on your mind, I'd really like to hear it. We're supposed to be here for each other, aren't we?"
A pause. "Yes."
"Then stop building up walls to keep me out and let me in..."
"Gabrielle..." Mr. LeBeau sighed.
Jessie hid behind the doorframe, and listened.
"Why do you keep torturing yourself like this, sugar?" Rogue asked, Jessie picked up a high note of distress in her voice. Jessie had never heard of Gabrielle before, and didn't know who she might be, but by the sounds of it, she must have been a very important person for both the adults to sound so very upset.
"You don't understand, cherie, I saw her..." Mr. LeBeau said, Jessie looked around the corner to see him get up and pace.
"You...saw...her..." Rogue repeated, sounding very confused.
"When I died...I went to heaven and I saw her."
"That...sounds crazy," Rogue admitted.
"I know it does," Mr. LeBeau gave a nervous laugh, "I was in a warm light place and I saw Betsy, and I saw my daughter..."
Rogue was silent, listening. Jessie was astounded. Mr. LeBeau had a daughter. Or he had a daughter once. Jessie didn't know too much about religion and death, but she understood that heaven was where people went after they died, and if Gabrielle, Mr. LeBeau's daughter was in heaven, then she must have died.
How old could she have been? Jessie wondered, still shocked with this new piece of information. Mr. LeBeau wasn't that old, really. Although she knew Miss. Pryde to be slightly younger than Remy, and pregnant, she hadn't pictured the man old enough to have a child.
"She was...this beautiful glittering ball of light...this...pure...soul..." he explained, "and oh my god, the love I felt from her...radiating like...like heat from a flame..."
"Maybe this was a dream," Rogue suggested.
"No! It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a dream any more than being a ghost in this mansion was," he said, sounding hostile. "And now, I'm havin' these...crazy nightmares..."
"Nightmares?"
"Faceless children singing...and I see my daughter's soul. I don't know what this dream is trying to tell me..."
"Did you talk to Kitty about all this?" Rogue asked softly.
"No...how can I? She's stressed out about the baby, and she wantin' me to take care of Jessie and..." Mr. LeBeau gave a very sad sigh, "and being around Jessie...reminds me of the time I'll never spend with my daughter."
Silence, Jessie listened. She felt tears welling in her eyes, sadness like no other stirring every emotion with her until tears trickled down her rosy cheeks.
"It hurts...chere...it hurts so damn much. I feel...empty...whenever I'm with the kid. And I wish I didn't, because she is...a wonderful kid. I just...I can't be around her anymore."
"Remy...the more time you spend with her, the more that pain will dull."
"Maybe it's not meant to," Mr. LeBeau suggested.
Jessie peered around the corner to see Rogue get up from where she'd been sitting. She put her arms around Mr. LeBeau lovingly from behind, and let her cheek rest upon his shoulder.
"Of course it's meant to. Do you think your daughter would want you to feel so sad over her?"
"Of course I don't..." he replied, "But...would she want me forgetting about her either while I...while I...take care of the child she can never be?"
"You're not going to forget about her..." Rogue kissed his shoulder, Jessie probably thought she'd left a lipstick mark on the back of Mr. LeBeau's t-shirt, but she found this incredibly sweet somehow. She'd never really understood how Rogue could have a relationship like perhaps Miss. Grey and Mr. Summers, but now that Jessie seen Rogue and Mr. LeBeau together, she saw it was completely possible.
Mr. LeBeau seemed to hesitate about something, he turned to look at Rogue, "whether I do or not...it's still too...too close to the bone. Especially at this time of year. I look at that Christmas tree in the foyer, and see Jessie's presents under it and think that Gabrielle's should be there too. I think about what I would have got her for Christmas...every year...every day on her birthday I think it too..." he sounded incredibly sad, and it took some time for Jessie to realise that he was close to tears.
She'd never seen a man cry. She was torn between embarrassment and immense sadness. She felt compelled to run to him, to wrap her arms around him and hold him tightly and apologise for ever causing him so much pain.
"Seein' the snow here, wondering what the snowmen she'd have made would have looked like..." Mr. LeBeau sat on the new rocking chair that had been a gift to Kitty from the Professor. "And then I look at Jessie...and...I think only of my Gabrielle...my baby."
When the sobs came from the bedroom, Jessie had to push her hands hard to her mouth to suppress the sob that wanted to escape her own tiny lips. Tears poured down her own face to hear it, and she peered into the bedroom one last time to see Rogue comforting Mr. LeBeau, sitting on the arm of the rocking chair, arms around him, her cheek against his soft brown hair. They rocked together and she whispered softly to him words that would soothe him in time.
Jessie pulled herself up from where she'd been sitting on the floor and rushed back into her bedroom. She cried like she'd never cried before, she cried more tears for Mr. LeBeau than she ever had for herself, and the ache in her tiny heart was stronger than anything she'd ever felt before, stronger than the sad loneliness she felt most of the time, stronger than the love she felt for the people of this mansion – even the ones she barely spoke to.
It was then, her heart told her what she had to do.