Sorry about the long long loooooong delay in between updates… and yes I am still working on "Xanadu," however Real Life does get in the way. So does losing the only paper draught of the next chapter of Xanadu (I was writing at work in my notebook)… so here's a bit of "Black is the Color" instead. :) Some more ghosts, just past Hallowe'en! As always, please review & let me know what you think—good or bad, but I do ask if you particularly like or dislike something, let me know what that is. Thanks!

Enjoy!

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Black is the Color

Chapter 4. Deep Nights Past and Present

"Like, Rogue, are you all right?" Kitty Pryde asked her friend in shock the next morning. The Southerner looked like she hadn't gotten a good night's sleep at all, as though she'd stayed awake half the night.

"I had a strange dream, that's all," Rogue replied shortly, and moved past Kitty to peer out the window at the sleet and snow still falling outside. "Geez. Has this let up at all?"

"Like, I don't think so. Want some coffee? You, like, totally have to tell me about your dream," Kitty demanded, planting herself firmly beside Rogue, two mugs in her hands.

"Hm? Oh, thanks. Well, I don't remember it all that well, actually," Rogue disclaimed herself, then continued, "Well… it was strange. It was one of those dreams where you aren't you, if you know what I mean.

"It must be this place getting to me or something. I was living here, in this inn, and there was a guy who'd ride his horse to see me here…. That's all I really remember, but I know there was more to it than that…"

"A guy coming up on horseback to see you?" Kitty squealed. "Ooh… that's so, like, Princess Bride!"

Rogue snorted. "You would say that," she grumbled good-naturedly, and smiled as Remy entered the kitchen. "Morning, Cajun." She sipped her coffee, and remarked, "Don't look outside."

"Why, what's outside, che—" he cut himself off as, of course, he looked out the window. "Oh. More snow."

"Tolja not to look."

"Cherrrrrrrrre…" he groaned, "Why do y' torture your poor Cajun so? You know telling me not t'look would make me look."

"Why? Because it's fun," Rogue replied matter-of-factly.

"Like, duh," Kitty added helpfully, grinning. "Want some coffee?"

The young man sighed, looked from devious girl to devious girl, and capitulated. "Sure. Coffee. T'anks."

The three young mutants sipped their coffee and debated the extent to which Scott and Jean were freaking out at "losing" half the X-men. "Scott's going crazier," Remy opined. "He's got de biggest stick up his—"

"Don't finish that sentence, Gumbo," Wolverine advised gruffly from the doorway, where he was stamping snow off of his boots. "Well, kids, it looks like we're snowed in here for a few days, at least. I managed to get a short message through to Storm by walking a few miles to a hill where the communicator would work, so they won't be worried, but apparently this weather is just going to sit here a while. It's bad enough that the Blackbird won't even be able to get through for four days at least, and that only if necessary."

"So… why tell us this?" Kitty asked.

Wolverine grinned ferally. "Well, Rogue, the Cajun, and Colossus are the next most senior when Red and Scooter aren't around… and they're not here. So you get to figure out something to do with everyone for the next coupla days."

"Logan—what—but—Aren't you in charge?" Rogue protested.

"I'm delegating authority while I spend some time with the locals."

"Doin' what, homme?"

"Playing backgammon," came the surprising answer. "Always liked that game, and it seems the locals are willing to wager on a tournament. See you all tonight. Try to not damage the historical inn." With that, he grinned (evilly, Rogue thought) and left.

"Well." Kitty said. "What now?"

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An hour later they had gotten nearly everyone to join in on a game of Mutant Snowball Fight in the sheltered courtyard of the inn. Rogue couldn't suppress the atavistic tremor—of fear, or excitement?—that ran through her at the too-familiar angles and planes of the yard. I wish I could remember that dream…I wish I knew how I remember this place... She thought, just before an ice ball came flying at her head. Lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice.

She did notice, however, when Remy roughly pulled her to the icy ground, scolding, "Cherie, now, don' you go getting yourself hurt. You want Remy to pamper you, dere's better ways o' getting him to do it than by getting yourself a concussion." He smirked suggestively at her, only inches away—inches away? Wasn't he five feet below her window a moment ago—? And where had the snow come from…

"Chere? Chere!" A voice was calling her, sounding as though it were being cried across a great distance.

"Roarke?" She mouthed, but no sound issued from her lips, and breathing seemed to be difficult, requiring concentration. Sparks danced in front of her eyes as the scenery seemed to flicker from sunlit snow to dark fall night, and Roarke's moonlit features switched intermittently to those of a young sharp-faced man with the strangest eyes...

A shock of cold on Rogue's belly shocked her into awareness. Her entire body jerked in reaction, and she instinctively squirmed, trying to get away. She blinked up at Remy, who was leaning over her, kneeling in the snow, a handful of the icy stuff in one hand while the other gripped the hem of her coat, preparatory to cold-shocking her again. His eyes were wide with concern as he looked down at her; past his shoulder, she could see that the others continued to snowfight, oblivious to the pair by the wall. "Chere," he asked cautiously. "Are you all right?"

"Remy?" She asked guardedly, "What…happened?"

"Was hoping you could tell me, chere. All I know is, you were staring out at the fields out there and didn't see one o' Iceboy's snowballs coming at you, I pulled you out o' de way, and as soon as you hit de ground here you… went away… 'til I got you with de snow."

Woozily, Rogue sat up, shaking ice and snow from her hair. "I dunno, Cajun… I guess maybe the combination of too little sleep and too much cold isn't good for us delicate Southern gals," she joked weakly. At his look of concern, she said more sturdily, "Look, I'm sure that's all it was. After all, this morning I only had some coffee; I haven't eaten anything all day. I'm sure that's all it was." She smiled reassuringly.

"Well, if you're sure, chere," he reluctantly agreed. At her emphatic nod, he continued, "Well, I t'ink you should get back inside in any case. Don't want you going face-down in any snowdrifts without Remy dere to rescue you," he winked, a bit of his normal cockiness coming through after his scare.

"Yeah, wouldn't want you to miss out on a chance like that," she replied, and allowed him to lead her back into the inn as the rest of the group continued their sport.

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"Do I tell de Wolverine, or no?" Remy muttered to himself, after seeing Rogue safely placed in the kitchen, where a roaring fire was drying her out. He stood in the front room of the old inn, which was rapidly becoming all too familiar to his sight. "On de one hand, her mutation might be out o' control, and de Wolverine might need to get help. On de ot'er hand, she insists there's nothing wrong, and if I get Wolverine involved without her permission, de femme will kill me." He blew his breath out sharply as he thought. "Well, I'll give it a couple o' days more, and if she's not better, I'll insist she talk with him." He brightened at a thought. "And dat means I'll be out of the range o' fire of both of them!" The thought made him much more cheerful, and he whistled as he went to round up the snowfighting mutants for dinner.

He didn't notice Rogue sit bolt upright, face white, as he passed by the kitchen door. "Remy?" She called out. He paused.

"Oui, ma chere?" he asked.

"What's that tune you're whistling? Do you know the name?"

"Well, no, chere," he replied, surprised. "Actually, I don't. It's a nice tune, though, isn't it? I t'ink I heard it in the village earlier, or something... Hold on—I'll be back in a minute, with de rest of de kids." He said, and disappeared outside. Inside, Rogue suppressed a shiver: the song he had whistled was the same tune Roarke had whistled in her dreams.

She was very quiet at dinner that night, and went to bed early.

Kitty, Kurt, and Remy sat up before the fire downstairs, talking about her worrying behavior for a long time before they, too, went to sleep. Remy didn't tell them about the incident in the snow, however; obviously, his friends already had enough to be worried over as far as Rogue was concerned, without him adding to it.

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Remy fell asleep unnaturally quickly, and swiftly moved into a bewildering kaleidoscope of images, sounds, tastes, much like those Rogue had described to him from her dreams. He woke several times, cursing himself for paying such close attention to the dreams that he himself started dreaming them… OK. Get up, walk around a little, think of something else to dream about, he told himself, and quietly did so, so as not to disturb Piotr across the room. What should he dream about? Hmm. Well, Rogue, of course, but not like she'd been recently, not like this afternoon when she lay in the snow blinking up at him, as though she had never seen him before—

—She lay in the snow blinking up at him, as though wondering how she had gotten there, her long, dark braids an inky halo around her head. Laughing, he picked up his lovely Bess, kissing her on the way upright. The late sun glinted off the icy crust on the ground, and her breath puffed out white as she laughed in his arms, only half-heartedly trying to get free. She whooped when he suddenly threw her over his broad shoulder, and she gasped out, still laughing, "Roarke, love, what are you doing?"

"Well, I've captured myself a bonny girl, and I've a mind to enjoy the spoils of war," he replied, ignoring the fact that she was speaking to his back. He headed for the inn door, and she struck him between the shoulder blades.

"You are not carrying me into my own father's inn like this!" she said. "No no no no… You can't!"

"Oh, can't I?" He asked archly, and picked up the pace.

"Oh, Roarke, dear, don't tease me," she begged, still giggling. "I'll never live it down. Please?"

"Oh, all right," he said grudgingly, and flipped her back into his arms. "I suppose carrying you in the conventional way will have to do,"

"Roarke! You cannot carry me any way into the inn, conventionally or no!"

He looked down at her, in amused surprise. "Can I not? No one is there; this storm last night stopped all travel. Only your father is in the inn, and he knows I'm here already. What difference does it make?"

She snorted a laugh, defeated by his logic, such as it was, and ducked against his broad shoulder as he walked into the inn's warm interior.

Fifteen minutes later they were in her room, wringing the water out of their clothes and hair and trying to dry themselves before her small hearth. As he removed his soaked shirt, he turned to her bright face in time to see those endlessly deep eyes become round with shock, and hear a gasp escape her lips.

"Roarke! Whatever were you thinking of, to carry me around with a gash like that?"

"Hm?" He glanced to where her gaze was fixed; a cut the length of his hand rippled over his ribs. "Oh, that. It looks worse than it is, really."

"'It looks worse than it is, really,'" she mocked, and glared at him. "That needs bandaging. Stay here," and she bustled off to find medicaments and wrapping. In a short time she was back, and he tolerantly let her minister to the cut—which really wasn't all that bad, but wouldn't be hurt by her bandaging it, either. Plus, it gave him the excuse to enjoy the feel of her soft hands on him…

The second she was finished bandaging his ribs, he pulled her onto his lap, where she giggled and squirmed until he started kissing her. Kissing her thoroughly. Deeply and thoroughly, and when he stopped kissing her, she gasped a breath and dove back at his lips. Chuckling, he leaned back until they reclined on her bed, and wrapped his arms around her small waist as she covered his face with kisses. Suddenly, she froze, eyes wide. He raised his head, startled.

"Oh, Lord!" She said, "Roarke, I'm sorry! I forgot about that gash—" She moved to get off of him, but he pulled her down and rolled to the side, his weight over—but not on—her.

"What gash?" he murmured into her throat, and she shivered, her eyes half-closing in pleasure at the burr of his lips against her skin. Gently, his hands joined his mouth on her, and a while later he was almost sure she muttered, "Ah, yes. What gash?"

He couldn't be certain, after, whether he really heard it or not, since then her own questing fingers found his skin, and drove all thought of speaking from both their minds.

—Remy awoke, sweat-soaked, half-aroused by a dream he only half-remembered, a dream of warm lips and a soft touch… His pulse pounded uncomfortably in his temples... and elsewhere. I'll never get back to sleep like this, he thought, and just when I have a dream I really want to go back to... He let his mind wander aimlessly for a while, trying to capture the fleeting pieces of the unusually erotic dream he'd just experienced. He was shocked wide awake, as effectively as a cold shower, however, when a sharp, short cry rang out in the night: Rogue.

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Bess knelt by her window, trying not to fidget. The sun was only just setting, true, and there was plenty of time left for Roarke to arrive, yet… She was worried. True, last night, when he left on this final ride, he had said he might not make it back 'til moonrise, and not to worry. Yet worry she did, for all that; he had promised to try to get back to her as soon as possible after he'd finished this last act of robbery—he had as much as said he'd be back by sunrise! And here it was, sunset, a full day gone by, and no word. Well. She shook herself. She shouldn't worry; hadn't he said to her, "…midnight tomorrow will see me by your side, whether I have to fight devils or angels to get there…"? And so far she'd heard no word of angelic or demonic warring in the area. She shouldn't worry. What she should do was go downstairs and help her father with the few customers in the inn… But what she really wanted to do was stay here to be waiting for Roarke the second he returned. Sighing to herself, she turned, left her room, and began descending the narrow staircase.

She had barely reached the ground floor when the inn's heavy front door was thrown open with a crash, heedless of her father's stifled shout of outrage: stifled, because who walked in the front door but Commander Snythe, head of the local troop of those Redcoats still nominally employed by King George. Bess was startled to see their 'ostler, Tim, (who always tried to grope her when her father wasn't around) scuttling in behind the sub-commanders: What was he doing here?

She found out soon enough.

"Innkeeper Dawson!" Snythe boomed, striding toward her father. Those standing nearest him quickly moved away, and Bess couldn't blame them: Snythe stood a full head taller than most men of the village, and had a brawny, heavy fist, and the temper to match. No one got in his way; one simply tried to keep oneself whole to patch up those unlucky enough to be on his bad side.

"Innkeeper Dawson," Snythe repeated, more softly this time, but no less intimidating. "I have it on good authority that you have been known to harbor a fugitive, a thief, that infamously wanted highwayman Colin Roarke, here at your inn. What have you to say for yourself?"

"Well," her father returned calmly, with never a glance in her direction, "I'd be wanting to know who's been saying such things, that's what. Who's to say it's not some rival innkeeper spreading lies?"

Snythe's thin lips tightened beneath his moustache. "I'm to say, that's who!" He returned, and continued, "Furthermore, I have it on equally good authority that the miscreant is expected back here soon—tonight, in fact." He smiled nastily. "And don't tell me you never knew who your daughter's lover was." His eyes were small and cruel in his face.

At that, Bess started to silently edge up the stairs, breath caught in her throat, as her father snapped, "Leave my daughter alone! She's no concern of yours."

"Ah, but, Innkeeper Dawson, she is my concern, you see," Commander Snythe replied smoothly. "It's certainly not for your beer that the outlaw is coming tonight." He gestured shortly to two of his lieutenants, and they headed purposefully toward the stairs. He turned as his men dragged Bess from where she'd been trying to make her way up the stairs. They carried her pinioned by the arms between them, and she kicked at their heavy boots to no avail as Snythe continued speaking. "I'm afraid, Innkeeper, that your inn has just become a temporary garrison for myself and my men, while we work to preserve the King's justice—"

"Justice!" Bess spat. "You call it justice, filling your pockets with the bread of the poor; justice, that you hunt down a man who only wishes to restore some balance and grant some Christian mercy to the lowly—"

She yelped as Snythe's open-handed slap caught her full across the face, a heavy enough blow that she was nearly knocked from her captors' strong grips. He gripped her jaw and growled into her face, "Justice is whatever I say it is, Mistress Bess, and tonight you will aid me in delivering justice to that upstart young man of yours; he's made himself worth a pretty penny to the king." Before she could reply, he curtly ordered, "Gag her; we don't need a woman's screaming to warn the bandit."

He turned to Tim, who lurked nearby the door, looking nervous as a hare at a hunt from the look David Dawson was giving him. "You there!" Snythe said sharply, and Tim jumped as though he'd been struck. "Where does he usually meet her?"

"In her own bedchamber, sir," Tim sniveled, his greedy eyes flicking over Bess and back to Snythe. He, obviously, was the redcoat commander's source of information.

"In her own bedchamber," Snythe repeated thoughtfully, and nodded, a cruel smile crossing his face. "Well, men, take her there then. But don't mar her looks too badly, we do want her dearest Roarke to recognize her." The men holding Bess exchanged hard looks, and proceeded to drag her struggling form up the stairs, her shouts muffled by the rough gag in her mouth. Before she was pulled around the last corner, she saw her father, outraged, take a swing at Snythe, only to be cold-cocked by a soldier standing nearby. David fell like a bag of stones to the inn's floor, and did not move. Then she was around the corner, and could see her father no more.

When they arrived in her bedchamber, Bess could only mournfully think that the splendid sunset was mocking her, as it washed her room in a blood-red light. Quickly, the pair of men tied her to the upright foot-posts of her narrow bed, so that she had a clear view of the moors and the road leading to the inn: the path Roarke always rode.

She continued to struggle and fight as best she could, avoiding the men's pinching, groping hands, but stilled in abject fear when Snythe's heavy bootsteps entered the room: her cheek still stung from his earlier slap.

"Now, then, what's this?" he asked, mock-surprised, as the sun slowly slid beneath the horizon behind him. "Why, it's almost night, Bess, and you're nowhere nearly ready for bed, are you? No." He considered her for a moment, then began studiously unlacing her overdress and outer garments, stopping when she was clad only in her shift, which reached only to her knees. She shivered under Snythe's gaze and fought not to flinch as he put his arms around her and loosed the cascade of her hair, arranging the waves to fall over her shoulders and down her back in a sea of blackness. He left one hand resting on her waist, surprisingly gentle, and his other hand lifted toward her face and—

To her utter surprise, he pulled the gag from her mouth. Immediately, she took breath to begin screaming, cursing him, anything to alert other villagers at least, but before she could get a sound out, his hand struck her face again—the other side this time—and the hand that had been at her waist delivered a short, sharp blow to her belly, knocking all the breath from her. It hurt, and while she was trying to convince her lungs to re-expand, he kissed her, roughly, deeply, with a menace and a feral hunger she had never experienced with Roarke. It crossed her mind that she could have lived happily without the experience, when the hand not gripping her head moved suddenly to just under her breast—

—Rogue awoke, shaking, her cry of purest fear echoing from the ceiling, a bolt of terror coursing through her. My God. Images from the dream assaulted her mind, and she sat up, drawing her knees to her chest. She looked up, startled, when Remy burst through the door, covered in sweat, his hair disheveled.

"I don't think, anymore, that these are just dreams," she said quietly, fighting to keep her vioce from shaking.

"I agree." Remy said, releasing a shaky breath. "I am so sorry I half-shrugged them off, earlier, chere... I just had one of 'em myself."

She shivered at that news, closing her eyes in half-despair, and at last asked, "Remy? What's going on?" Her voice was thick sounding.

"I dunno, chere." He said, and sat on the bed and put his arms around her."I really don't know." Weakly, she leaned against him, sagging into his loose embrace.

Dawn found them sitting on her bed in that pose, statue-like, eyes wide and bloodshot, and fearing what the next night might bring.

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Review Responses:

Ishandahalf—Ish! Hope you're still reading this, I'm so bad for updating… geeze…

Haha. Yeah… the "Cajun GQ" line just jumped into my head, I HAD to use it… Thanks for reading/reviewing… please do so again! (Even tho' I took a freakin month to update…)
PeaceBeyondtheDoor—Are you ecstatic enough to review again:) Thanks for reading.

Weirdlet—Thanks for reviewing… Please do so again! Let me know what you think of the story... please?
Lady MR1—Oh yes but I DID write a fanfic based on "The Highwayman." But look who's reading it! LOL. Anyway, thanks for reviewing… Hey, I hear it's even MORE fun the -n-th time reviewing…
Cat2fat900—Glad you liked the Rogue-threatening-Remy-in-the-rain bit… LOL. Geez. Robert seems to be creeping people out the most, hm… Anyway, R&R!
A.M.bookwrm247—"Interesting," you say? You haven't seen "interesting" yet! Not even in Chapter 4! Well, not really… Please read and review. And if you feel like tossing some theories about, feel free… we'll see how close you are:)

FluidDegree—So glad you like the story! Hope the spookiness increased with this chapter… yep, Remy's being sucked in too. Muahahaha! Please read and review!
Sakura5star—Thanks for reviewing… please do so again! And, lol. If I ever get the plot thick enough I –was- actually considering a non-fanfic rewrite and submitting it to some publisher… I suppose we'll see…