"Out of Touch"

Chapter 2
"Broken Highways"

The city gleamed in the distance, night lights making wonderfully nonsensical shapes across the dark outlines of buildings, all pixilated and disparate. Her own reflection in the glass, even in the total darkness of the room, was a ghost, floating in the night.

"It wasn't always like this, you know." he said. He was behind her, on the couch, with his shirt open, revealing his flesh. His eyes were glowing a dim red. "It won't always be like this."

"Ah don't know this place." She said, "Was Ah here once?"

"Maybe. Why don't you come here and find out?"

"Don't fuck with me." she said. The city was falling asleep. Some of its lights flickered and went out as she watched, "It's hard enough as it is."

She could hear it as he popped the button of his jeans open.

"What are you so afraid of?" he asked.

"Don't be that way." She replied, putting one hand on the glass, "This ain't what Ah wanted."

A low frump of clothes being discarded, behind her.

"Come on. Wasn't it?"

The sound of skin scraping against the fabric of the couch. The reflection in the window, red eyes and nudity, in the dark. She snuck a look, out of the corner of her eye. She shivered.

"Ah can't." She said, "So don't."

"You can do whatever you want to me. Everything is real here."

"It's not what's real."

"Touch me. Find out."

"Ah didn't bring you in here so's you could fuck me up, Scott."

Another building went dark. And another.

"Ah know what Ah want, and what Ah thought Ah could have... but it ain't enough. It ain't never enough, never gonna be."

She turned to him, to the glowing embers in his skull. Behind her, the lights were going out, one by one.

"Because Ah want you in ways that'd kill you."

"So maybe I'm better off dead."

She shook her head.

"No." she said, "But Ah know Ah am."

The last of the lights went out suddenly, leaving only the red dots of his eyes, like cigarettes burning in the pitch-black of a sudden blackout.


Rogue woke up to the smell of cigarettes, sharp and distinct, mixing with the freezing cold winter-morning breeze rolling in through the window cracked open. Groggy, her eyelids refusing to part willingly, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Gambit, wrapped in his coat, smoking a cigarette. She knew that there was no sleep after that moment, so instead, she stretched, trying to get blood flowing. She sat up in the bed.

"What time is it?"

"Afternoon. Dat's all I know." Gambit said, exhaling a cloud of smoke, "Betta get dressed, ma belle. De road waits for no-one."

"Where'dya steal that one from?"

"No' dat kinda thief."

"Fine, don't tell me. Ah'm up anyway."

The moment she threw off the covers, Rogue shivered. The room had gotten considerably colder with Gambit keeping a window cracked open, enough that she wished she could stay bundled in the warmth of the bed sheets forever.

A brief flash and the dream ran through her mind. The darkness of the hotel room, the red eyes beckoning her closer, the warmth offered and the body presented.

Different from the red eyes watching her now, which were full of mischief and curiosity.

Rogue retrieved her road clothes from atop her duffel bag and marched over to the bathroom. She got dressed, one eye on the door handle and an ear to the room. Gambit didn't even breathe, far as she could hear.

You're being paranoid over nothing. Sure, he's an asshole, but he's no perv.

...in any case, he can look if he wants to. 'cause he can't touch. Nobody can.

The body of evidence in the hotel room, proof of existence. Proof of things she had no names for, of thoughts she still couldn't explore. Like the bathroom she was in, like many other bathrooms she had been in, replete with half-finished concepts and indistinct impressions.

She noticed that she hadn't had the dream in a while... not since the Professor had brought the echoes to heel.

But it's not my powers we're talking about, or who I am... I don't think he wants to talk at all this time around. It's the same, me and him, but it's different... why?

Is it because of the kiss? Did I take too much from him?

No. That can't be it.

I've kissed him dozens of times, touched him even more, he's not more than what he used to be in my head.

The room waiting outside the bathroom door was dead silent.


Gambit didn't comment when Rogue got out of the bathroom and grabbed her bag. He simply locked step and followed her. She was still a bit sluggish, her steps sweeping the cold concrete. She dropped the key off without a word, and kept her silence all the way to the car.

Then, they got in, she started it up, checked the GPS to make sure she wasn't headed the wrong way, and drove off. He cracked the passenger side window to smoke, smiled at the way it bothers her. Untouchable, not so much.

She dug into her mp3 player and picked an album. Her musical taste irritated him, he had to admit – having grown up around jazz and wonderful solo musicians, buskers and street virtuosos, the four-on-the-floor beats and the relentless, repetitive, synthetic nature of industrial music was like nails being raked across a chalkboard for him. So like her, he observed, to be drawn to the absolute certainty of rigid, formulaic songs.

He paid attention to the lyrics as he watched the scenery flow around them. Violence and bloodsoaked sex, the glorification of decadent fetish, fetishization of machine-like impulses. No stories to be found but the persona, always the persona, at the heart of the screaming breakdown of the world and the death of all things.


The interstate roads running through America were nothing but broken highways stretching on for miles and miles, into eternity, flanked left and right by variations of the same theme. A beautiful, endless wasteland. Nothing but empty space. The saving grace of the scenery outside his window was that the vast expanse of the continent waking up, carrying the appearance of an overexposed photo under the cold white light of a winter morning.


The closer they got, the more uncertain Rogue grew. She had let Gambit take the wheel after a while, but being in the passenger seat was no comfort. The music was indistinct now, pounding away relentlessly, reduced to nothing but dissonant noise that seemed to make no sense; reflecting the memories that she was trying to drag into sunlight as she sat in the passenger seat, watching the broken highways flow on by.

There were bits and pieces, small sensations that didn't seem to add up to much. Linoleum tiles. The smell of a kitchen, not in her home, but elsewhere – steamed vegetables. Signs that may have belonged to shops. Toys in her room, meant for a boy. The rough, sharp angles of the church pews. The dusty, wooden scent of the confessional booth.

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It's been a week since my last confession.

She got glimpses of each piece, felt them expand, but therein was her confusion: were these really memories after the first hint, or was she imagining them, filling them with whatever she thought could have (or should have) happened? She remembered an anecdote, that her memories weren't the memories themselves, but the memory of remembering something for the first time. Did it go like that, she wondered - moments upon moments, all distorted by God-alone-knew-what?

Looking at the world outside the passenger side window now, Rogue could only see the things she didn't know and couldn't say.


She drifted off into an uneasy sleep, somewhere down the line. She didn't recall the dream when she woke up to the car coming to a halt, in the parking lot of a rest stop. Despite Gambit's courtesy, the car smelled like snow and cigarette smoke. She thought about snow shovels, and that it was wrong to do that with the boys. She wasn't no mine worker's daughter.

But how would anyone know?


Gambit had been hungry, out on the street, with no money and nowhere to go when he had first discovered that if he hit the right frequencies with his voice, whoever was listening did whatever he gently suggested that they do. It wasn't telepathy, but rather a case of "when you say it like that..." His suggestions just found purchase because the timbre of his voice stimulated all the right centers of the brain.

Few knew about it, because he had discovered pretty early on that if his target knew his voice was charming, the trick didn't work. Women had taught him that.

To transition from hungry thief to Casanova, he had had to charm the owner of a deli out of house and home.

He was doing the same thing now to the Dunkin Donuts clerk who had pegged them for mutants the moment they had walked in, except this time, he was trying to to convince the man not to call whichever armed authority would arrive the fastest, and to just take their money and forget they were ever there.

Rogue, standing right behind him, hands in her coat pockets and looking annoyed, would never know how much he felt like he was back on that anonymous street in Louisiana.

It felt like going home, but he never said it and she never knew.

Once they had two large Styrofoam cups of coffee for each and a couple of donuts for good measure, Rogue took the wheel and put them back onto the path. The GPS showed that they were a couple of hours out.

Rogue didn't turn on the music. It had started to grate on her just a bit, having listened to her usual playlist for hours upon hours on end. In its place, she offered Gambit a chance to pick a station. Gambit fumbled with the radio, and stopped when he managed to pick up one that seemed to play, as Rogue noticed after the first twenty minutes, jazz tunes non-stop.

The tunes recalled some of the sensations from that morning, particularly the smell of spices, steamed vegetables, and swing jazz on full blast in the background, against a characteristic clanking of pots and pans.

A tattoo on a slender neck that felt warm and safe when she used to wrap her arms around it. But what's it mean, Miss...

No name. No face.

"Dat's more like it." He said as he lit up a cigarette, "De music of de spheres."

"You grew up around this, didn'tcha?"

"Didn't you?"

"Jazz was sinful." Rogue blurted out.

"Sez who?" Gambit countered with half-mocking offense.

The song changed. Rogue recognized the clarinet. A half-memory surfaced, the glossy surface of a vinyl record, the needle's approach to the grooves...

"Mah auntie." She said.

"Why's it sinful? 'cuz it's carefree?"

"Put it to ya this way, she bought me or maybe just brought me a Benny Goodman record once. Ah listened to that until it got worn out and didn't play no more."

"He'z good." Gambit smiled, "Master o' de clarinet."

"He's white." Rogue said, clacking her tongue, "That was the reason."

"So ya come from prejudice, cheré, but ya ain't like dat yourself. Dat's improvement, non?"

Opportunity. Your choice, Scott-by-Rogue offered.

"You come from thieves and you're still one."

"Guilty as charged."

Rogue didn't say anything else.


Gambit kept her going with an endless stream of semi-related anecdotes that she half-listened to. She was busy keeping time with the GPS, counting down the miles as it repeated that she had this many left to go.

He kept talking, let his mouth do the work while he watched her. Green, sunken eyes focused on the road, on the eternity of it, the constant strip of asphalt coming in with no real end. The white streaks in her hair that added beauty, as gorgeous and defining as any mark on any skin. The Southern drawl, much more tame than what he was used to, much more New York in her now than Mississippi. The haphazard make-up, the clothes, the Old Spice aftershave that she was wearing like a perfume, alcoholic and sharp; the external elements that composed her like a song, a song he was listening to as she listened to him.

Oh, he knew that betrayal wasn't something she took kindly to. Despite what she had said back there, that he had been doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, he knew that she hadn't forgiven him. He didn't even know if she had it in her. Because yes, he had fucked her over, used her to use her powers, just like every other asshole had tried. He had known that the moment she had touched him, he had lost her, probably for good.

Probably for the best.

But this thought, just like every other thought there was, did nothing to curb the pleasure he took just from watching her, just from hearing her responses to his wild anecdotes.


Rogue thought of Scott as the GPS intoned that they had very little left to go. What was he doing, she wondered, right this second? Was he sitting in his room, waxing poetical in his head? The image brought a smile to her face. Gambit was going on about this and that in the background, creating split-second images in her head that she often commented on, just to hear her own voice every once in a while.

You are like an angel, Kate.

My name's not Kate... but maybe it is. Maybe there's a whole story that comes with it, a story you haven't even heard. Maybe Kate was somebody and meant something to someone. Maybe Kate knew what to say. Maybe Kate could kiss her boyfriend without freaking out about if she's gonna send him into a coma or not.

"In five hundred feet, turn left."

Evening was steadily progressing into night outside their small world in the car.


The scenery changed as the car moved through the highway and entered into Caldecott. The welcoming committee of gas stations, Taco Bells and Dunkin Donuts quickly gave way to high-rise buildings, their windows mostly dark; concrete and glass, extensions of air-con units mounted onto the sides of window frames. Gambit wound down and finally fell to silence as Rogue allowed her body to dictate her direction. She didn't know of any place, but could feel the pangs of hunger in the pit of her stomach, so she thought about food. Immediately, images of mixed dishes rushed out at her, but the more prominent ones, the ones she could taste, were not the steak and potatoes she adored with a passion.

Rogue thought of exotica. Gumbo. Jambalaya. Baked chicken. Novelty dishes of mix-and-match meats and vegetables – the last one felt like a warm meal at the end of a very hungry, very cold day.

"Cajun..."

"Yes?"

"Ah'm in the mood for somethin ya probably know how ta make."

"Honored. I know o' a few places in dis town."

"Ah'm guessin, Ah do too. So hold on, let's see if Ah can't find us a place to eat."

Rogue could hear jazz playing. She checked the radio to see which station it was tuned to.

The radio wasn't on.

Rogue clenched her teeth and steered.