AN: And here's today's edition of Didn't I Post This Years Ago? This chapter made its internet debut back in the stone age and was actually etched onto the rock walls of a cave. Pretty sure I was set to share it here in 2014 but somehow that never happened. Upon uploading it to Google Docs I did make some changes so some parts of this fic are Brand Spanking New.
Four Times the Library Didn't Bring Rogue & Remy Together, And One Way It Did
II. And Then...
Just like that, the riddle was solved.
The old man was dead; his bald head broken open like a used-up eggshell, his brains splattered and half lost to the tide, his skin a translucent, too-thin white.
Their supposed murderer murdered on the shore.
They were all that remained. She swallowed hard, aching from the clear betrayal. "It was you," she said, barely whispering, but when she turned her head up to look into the eyes of the only other person still alive on their island of death, her voice improved; she repeated, louder, "It was you." Everything she had missed before was obvious now. She saw the devil in his eyes, dark and red and bottomless, where once his smile and easy charm had quieted her doubts. She saw the cruel strength in his sinewy arms, where previously, she had only looked for comfort.
He had admitted himself to be a soldier of fortune, but not a vicious, cruel one. And what of the Morlock rumors? Those deaths were all accidental, to hear him tell it. On his mother's grave, nothing but a terrible miscalculation. How could he have known what his meddling into the quiet, private community would mean for its people? Only now she wondered how a man so painfully careful, so ever alert, could make such an egregious mistake. How could she make the mistake of trusting him? She stepped back, needing the extra foot or so between their bodies, and the slap of wind against her face.
"Ah should a' known," She said.
"You. Should. Have. Known?" He repeated slowly, every syllable angrier than the last. "Non. I should have known. De truth was clear as day all along. What with what happened last year - de Carol Danvers incident. We all knew it was more 'n a accident."
"Ah've paid for my mistakes," She insisted. And yet… Carol's name was a cold chill down her back. A memory better left alone, in a locked box lost in the dark spaces of her mind, untouched.
(Unforgivable, everyone had said at the time, as she had risen up out of the ocean, alone and reborn, like Aphrodite, shaking off seafoam and the memory of life in Carol's shadow. Their condemnation hadn't mattered, not with Cody finally free to marry her.)
"And I made reparations on mine. It don't seem t' matter none." He was right. Their pasts were irrelevant. All that mattered was now, because now someone was going to die, and she thought, it wasn't going to be her. Not like this, another body piled atop the others. Not like bright, rich Warren, the gruff, hairy military man, or that shamefully boring Summers couple, all of them dead and rotting.
"It shouldn't end this way," She said, stalling. He was stronger than she was, physically, but if she could get her hands on the gun in his pocket...
"Oh?" He smiled a cold, mirthless smile. "Really, now? What exactly do you propose instead? A happy ending? You, me, and de sunset at our backs? Somehow, it don't seem likely." He looked at her strange, warily, as if he were afraid. Why the murderer would be afraid of her, she did not know. It didn't matter.
"Ah meant for the old man. Bad enough to be dead, but this? Flaking off in to the water, piece by piece. A man's gotta rest. We could - that is, we should - help him out."
"Right. Help him out." He didn't believe her intentions, but all the same, he looked down at the old man's body. Something must have hit a nerve, because he finally said, "Grab his boots. I'll handle de shoulders." Together, they hoisted the old man up and away from the water's edge. He was heavy, dead weight in the truest sense, but they managed well enough. After, she crossed his arms over his chest and then stared at the watery pink blood on her hands.
(There's blood on your hands, Cody had said to her, when she'd stepped out of the courtroom, freedom intact. The judge may have missed it, he'd said, but Ah can see it. You killed her, Rogue. You killed the only woman I've ever loved. He'd looked so tired and accusatory, like she'd drained the life right out of him.
How her heart had broken, shattered more and more with every word, until there was nothing left but dust.)
She wiped her hands along the sides of her skirt, leaving faint smears of red.
"Well." He cleared his throat. "Now dat's finished..." And he reached into his pocket. Then, "Merde."
By the time his eyes turned to her, her aim was already set. He looked confused. Of course, their contact had been so brief. Only a brush, as she leaned towards the old man to raise him, her heels sinking deep in the pliant sand. A near impossible sleight of hand to move the weapon from his pocket to hers.
Nearly impossible, but not quite. The gun was hers now. The battle was hers.
"Hmm." He said, eventually. He bowed his head, shaking it slightly. "Just last night, we were sharing a blanket. Trading secrets like school girls, non? Rule number one when it comes t' survival: never trust a pretty face."
"A lesson Ah won't soon forget," she said.
"Yeah," He acknowledged, moving closer to her. His steps were slow, cautious, careful. It made her hands tremble. "You ain't looking so great, Chere. You sure you don't wanna give me de gun?" His hands reached forward, fingers brushing against the barrel now. "We both know you don't wanna shoot me. Just let go."
(Let me go, Carol had coughed out, hard, gasping, opening her lungs for air but only taking in more water. Let me go. Of course, she had not obliged. Why would she? Her grip had never been so strong, so sure; the longer she had held on, the stronger she felt. Was that not a sign that she was doing the right thing? The tide had come for Carol; the Earth had come to claim her back, dust to dust and all of that. She was only helping.
Carol's body had slowed, slowed, slowed and then very obviously stopped moving altogether. Still, she had found it impossible to loosen her grip. Too much inside of her. Too many voices of the past screaming out at once. Raging in delight that she would never play second fiddle again. Her fingers had curled around the lifeless shoulder, grasping the flow of blonde hair, tighter and tighter…)
Bang.
She came back to her senses and found her hand so firmly clasped around the trigger that it ached. Looking beyond herself, there was Remy, eyes wide, hand clutched across his chest, where a patch of red was blooming over the gray and magenta of his shirt. He frowned at her, opened his mouth to speak - and fell, face down into the sand. Dead.
Dead?
She dropped the gun, and nearly laughed. That was it. The murderer was dead. How had so many died when escape was so easy? Nevermind, she was alive. Barely scratched. She raced back to the house, imagining the ways she would spent the next twelve hours or so, until the boat arrived and she could finally make it back to civilization. The stories she could tell. She could sell it to the paper; use the money to make a new life for herself, move somewhere nice and foreign and far from the water. She pulled open the great glass doors, danced inside, and nearly missed the kitchen table.
Her feet froze in their tracks.
When they'd left the house, there had been three little soldiers there. Three little soldiers, hand whittled from beach wood and once part of a set of ten, to match the poem. Now there was one. One little soldier boy left all alone. The numbers made sense, only she survived, but then… who had removed two soldiers while she was on the beach?
"You didn't think you were going to make it out of here, did you? That's so sad."
She gasped. That was Carol's voice. A ghost?
She stepped back, tripping over some unseen thing. She looked, flushed with fear. There was a rope, thick, braided, sprawled out behind her. The world spun. A fog of undeterminable origin rolled in across her vision.
Ten of them had set out for the Island. Ten. Only she still lived. Logically, the Cajun had to be the murderer. Logically, she was safe now. But logic was losing its appeal. Everything was getting so fuzzy and confusing.
"You've touched a lot of lives, haven't you," Carol said, speaking to her without a mouth, face or body. Reaching out across time and past the veil of death to chastise her for her indiscretions. "Touched them just long enough to ruin them, stealing dreams and futures that weren't yours."
She bent down and picked up the rope. It wasn't as heavy as it looked.
"You stole my life. You killed me for a man who didn't want you."
Across the ceiling, there was a series of hooks, intended to hold large, cast iron pans and heavy, potted plants.
None of it was her fault. Carol was the one that had wandered too far down the shore and gotten twisted up in a tangle of seaweed. It had been her intention to help when she'd leaned forward and reached out a hand. What actually happened… well, that was destiny at work. And on the beach, with the gun… Could she really be blamed for being proactive when her very survival was on the line?
"You know the poem, don't you?" Carol asked. "One little soldier boy left all alone."
The steel hooks caught the light from an open window, little twinkles she could not ignore.
The fog was thick now. A cumulonimbus cloud of confusion. Who had moved the two soldiers? It didn't make any sense, not any more than Carol's voice in her ear. Why did the world feel like a dream she might wake from?
"He went out…"
Maybe none of it was real. She seized that idea and clutched it tight, pressing it close like a child holding a favorite toy. Maybe she was still on the beach, still feeling Carol strain, still tasting salt water, pale skin burning under the hot sun. Maybe the Cajun was just a figment of her imagination, his warm, familiar drawl a mind-made salve to dress her ailing heart. Maybe destiny had not whispered the future into her ear at all, just played out one possible option and if she woke up in time, she could choose differently. Maybe all she had to do was wake up.
That made so much sense. This was all a dream slowly unraveling.
She just had to… How could she make herself wake up?
The rope.
The hooks.
She wrapped the end of the rope around one arm and took a purposeful step onto a kitchen chair. Its placement there was bizarrely convenient, almost as though someone had staged the scene. Then again, this was a dream. In dreams, toy soldiers marched off on their own, ghosts spoke out loud and chairs were exactly where you needed them to be. This one was old; it creaked under her weight.
One little soldier boy left all alone.
She took a deep breath.
And then there was none.
Author's Notes: Agatha Christie, anyone?