Risen

Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. I do not seek to profit from this story in any way. All creative rights to the characters and original storylines belong to Marvel.

Author's Notes: If the flashbacks are at all confusing let me know… then I can rework them or explain them somehow later on. Enjoy!

This chapter is dedicated to katjen- the song is perfect.

Cold in the Sun
My feet on the ground
A pale windless city
A numbness for sound

I'll wait, back here
or will you notice
A moment in time
A photograph lost here
Since you were mine
I'll wait back here
or should I start pushing my way back
Should I start pushing my way back

I walk past your room
A deep silhouette
You're tired of racing
I don't understand

I'll wait, back here
Cold and beneath me
A soaked cigarette
I'm asleep on a shoulder that I've never met
I'll wait back here
Or should I, start pushing my way back
Should I start pushing my way
home

And I'm with all these women
And I'm on the edge of my breath
And I'm thinking of leaving
I could just lay down
Lay down and freeze to death.

Cold in the Sun
My feet on the ground
A pale windless city
A numbness for sound

-Howie Day

Reflections

By: Dark Elf

Remy…

He looked around. He couldn't see. Everything was so dark, so empty. He reached out… toward the shadows he knew were flitting around him… toward the ghosts he knew were calling out to him…

Etienne…

He stumbled. He fell. He crawled upon his hands and knees because he knew they were still there- even though he couldn't feel them, even though he could barely remember how to move them...

Lebeau…

It was pointless looking around… he didn't have to. He knew where he was. He could feel the cold already seeping into his veins… freezing his blood… stilling his heart… And he wanted to scream…and he wanted to care…but he could only close his eyes…

Wake up. Come back.


"Non!"

He woke up in a sweat. Not understanding where he was or who he was. Naked and tangled in white sheets… alone. Naked and cold and feeling as empty as he had the day he realized he was alive, the same feeling he had when he noticed that he still was.

He could feel the sun watching him. Studying him.

Remy looked around. He couldn't see, blinded by the light that filled his room. His vision flared and shifted color interpretation, adjusting to the new tinted picture of the world. He reached out as he pushed himself out of bed, trying to touch anything solid – trying to get a handle on the moment.

He staggered and with ungracefully faltering footsteps made his way across the room. Still disoriented he moved from instinct, moved without registering where he was going. He moved because he felt he had to; he moved without knowing why.

It was so cold – the thin hairs on his body raised up in response to the chill he felt. New York was a cruel lady, covered in ice but promising fire. But to a point he couldn't tell if it was the winter weather kissing the sun that caused shivers to run down his spine or if it was something else… something… He reached the bathroom and pushed himself into the shower. Turning the water on full blast he let out a sigh of relief. He threw his head back, letting the water hit his face, his chest… letting it cradle him in its embrace.

The steam surrounded him and blurred out the world before him. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the sensation of the burning water; scalding water that somehow didn't hurt. It wasn't enough, and he absorbed the heat as it touched him. He drew it in instinctively, beginning to feel a semblance of warmth again.

The sky was laughing along with the people on the beach. But he sat huddled away from them, in the sun's private blanket of light, trying to stop the cold…trying to-

"Why are you shivering?" She asked, looking at him with golden brown eyes. She reached out to him, touching his forehead lightly, hesitantly, as if she didn't know if she was allowed to touch something so beautiful. He flinched. She stepped back.

"You don't have a fever… Are you all right? It's ninety degrees out here… are you cold?"

She began to near him again, offering her company – offering her compassion.

He reached out his hand and placed it on her wrist. Accidentally leading her closer in his attempt to stop her. She was warm, just like the rocks around him… and he wanted that warmth… he wanted it to radiate inside of himself …

She yanked her hand from his grasp as if she had been burned – but burned by ice and not by fire. And slowly she backed away, holding her wrist limply… covering the markings he had left where his hand had laid for a second in time.

He looked down at his palm, feeling a tingling sensation he hadn't felt in a while… feeling heat. He placed his hands upon the rock he was sitting on and closed his eyes, ignoring the sound of running footsteps. Footsteps of a frightened girl; footsteps once more running away from him. The rock turned cold, freezing cold – but he felt warm – he felt alive.

Remy opened his eyes and glared at the sun… only beginning to understand. His gift had expanded, had grown – for now the process could be reversed. He could give his 'heat', his 'energy' to an object to make it speed up – heat up – blow up; or… he could take it, not just back, but completely… and he knew how dangerous he had become.

He was brought back to himself when he noticed the water had stopped hitting him; warmth and cold, both were gone. Remy stepped out of the shower, kicking pieces of frozen water and droplets of icicles out of his way and picking them delicately out of his hair. Wrapping a towel around his waist he found himself in front of a full-length mirror – one he always knew was there, but that he desperately tried to avoid. Yet, somehow he couldn't avert his gaze, hypnotized in his own burning pools of fire. His hand slightly twitch at his side, yearning to touch something solid… his eyes slowly closed and reopened, yearning to see something. Yearning to see himself – straining to see the past within the present.

He touched the side of his neck lightly. Slender fingers ghosting over the markings of earlier pleasures. A proof of its occurrence. He grimaced as he ran his nail alongside the scratches that were signs of unchecked lust. He pressed harder and his grimace turned into a sly grin. He felt a sharp twinge of pain where his nail broke his skin, stopping only when he saw a drop of blood appear. Sometimes he wished they'd leave scars, these little insignificant memories. Faded scars that would serve as permanent memorials to the proof that he could feel.

He closed his eyes, blinded once more in the dark of his eyelids, and ran his hands lazily across his eyes, his nose, his lips – his face. Trying to form an idea of who he was.

He opened his eyes and placed his hands on the mirror. Tracing the contours of the image in front of him. Running his hands against flat eyes, a flat nose, flat lips – flat glass.

And he couldn't recognize his own reflection.


Logan paced angrily back and forth in his room. He knew the rest of the inhabitants in the mansion were up, he could hear the bustling downstairs in the kitchen, as breakfast was prepared. He could smell the bacon, the eggs, the toast… and his stomach could as well. But he couldn't go down there. For he knew that the minute he set foot in the room someone was bound to notice that he wasn't telling them something… someone like Xavier or Jean… and he didn't feel like being interrogated by questions or looks at the moment; he didn't feel like lying. Because even though he was up here deliberating whether he should tell anyone of his suspicions, he knew that he had already decided that he wouldn't. He just had to be sure first.

It had nothing to do with the fact that Remy's name was taboo.

It had nothing to do with the silence he knew would descend upon the house he was in the minute he opened his mouth and brought back memories and guilt long hidden.

It had nothing to do with the fact that he was scared… scared that no one would care… scared that someone would… scared that Remy was alive.

He hadn't slept all night – he couldn't. So he stayed up, smoking a cigar and wondering if he should follow the scent to wherever the hell it had gone. But he had decided against it because he didn't know what he would do when he found him… he didn't know what he would say. He didn't know if he could look Remy in the eyes, if he would find anything within them to look at.

Something was wrong. Something had been wrong for a long time. The group, the family that he had come to know, was slowly pulling apart. Alliances that he hadn't noticed before were now exposed and words that were spoken once were now silenced. He had noticed the growing fault line between dear friends ever since he returned. Hell if he knew what it had to do with – if not with Remy.

There was an emptiness that couldn't be filled. Moments when everything went dull and no one knew how to fill in the holes in their conversations. A pause that shouldn't be there, that left the room tinged with awkwardness common to strangers. Logan, ever watchful, had only sat back and observed. He could feel the uneasiness, feel the tension – feel the uncertainty that threatened to tear them and their one dream apart. And he couldn't place his finger on what was different. So many things had befallen them before. So many trials – and they had made decisions before. Hard ones. But this time – it seemed as if the glue that held them together was finally flaking apart. That after years of friendship, the little flaws of those that they knew so well were finally rubbing away at the cement of the mansion.

Something was definitely wrong. There was no denying it, and there was no hiding from it. It had been that way, growing in size and feeling since Remy had betrayed them. Since they had betrayed Remy.

Something had to be done. And Logan gruffly put on his leather jacket, knowing exactly where he was headed. Knowing exactly what he had to do.

Out in the quiet of morning, interrupting the soft chirping of birds, turning heads in the mansion kitchen, a motorcycle roared to life – and sped off in search of a lost one.


Jean tilted her head slightly, delicately – like a flower afraid of the wind that blows too hard. Afraid of the wind that threatens too much water and too many flashes of light. Of a wind she heard the soft whisperings of in her head, but couldn't quite understand. Of a wind she knew carried a warning within its soft song, but a warning she wasn't sure of.

A wind that threatened a storm.

"Has anyone seen Logan?"

Red hair slowly moving against pale cheeks, Jean turned her head to look around. She asked because she was certain she heard something a minute ago, she asked because she hated being uncertain.

Scott, sitting beside her, cast her a sidelong glance and then scanned the room seeing only red. She knew what he was thinking. She could feel the jealousy and the distrust. She could feel the turn that his thoughts were taking, and she could feel him trying to fight them.

"No- I assume that was whom we heard but a few moments ago. He probably wished to obtain his breakfast elsewhere, or knowing Logan, I am sure he had some exciting adventure awaiting him." Storm replied carelessly. To no one, to everyone.

"Oh- I…" Jean let it drop. She saw that no one cared; no one listened – just as no one truly spoke anymore. She saw the way they all buttered their toast without meeting each other's eyes and the way that they chattered as if in a routine. A routine that could not be broken, and that in her observations she was afraid to break.

"Good morning." Xavier came in. The only semblance of unity left within the decaying walls of a home Jean had known for far too long to relinquish so easily to time and strife.

A chorus of voices that once resembled those of angels arose and greeted their dream with smiles that Jean knew were not as true as they had once been. Smiles that were forced; smiles that were infused with grief and anger.

Jean stared. Oblivious to her surroundings. That was it – that soft lilting sound that had inhabited each other's speech for the previous years. So foolish of her to only notice it now. Grief. Anger. But where they came from she could hardly guess. Didn't want to guess.

Jean?

The Professor looked at her beneath lowered eyelids as he wheeled himself near the refrigerator and proceeded to open it.

Jean? Is something wrong? You look –

Oh I am sorry, Professor. My mind was just drifting. I – Everything's all right. Everything's okay… it has to be she added silently to herself.

Are you sure? You seem, troubled. Disconnected.

No – it's just- I was wondering… do you feel it Professor? All around us? Do you feel it?

Xavier couldn't help raising his head as she addressed him. Locking eyes with her. He was surprised- it had been years. And he thought that at this point she would never notice. Never want to notice.

Yes, Jean. Yes.

And he averted his eyes because he didn't know what to say – was uncertain of what his eyes might say.

How long? Why? I don't understand it – just all of a sudden – I don't know-

Jean. Jean – it's been here, for quite a while now. This feeling. It's been hiding all around us in plain view.

Why didn't you tell me? Why –

Would you have wanted me to?

Silence.

Jean?

It's Logan isn't it? He knows. He knows, and that's why he's gone.


Wind whispered. Blowing past him it sang secrets into his ear. Imitating conversations and memories that were his alone. Forcing him to remember what he was looking for. What he doubted he would find.

Empty beer bottles littered the floor around him, decorating the living room along with plates of forgotten food. Logan looked intently at the cards in his hand. Damn. Nothing good. Shifted his eyes back to the enigma before him. Waiting. His move.

"Royal flush, mon ami."

Logan let out a good-natured growl as Remy's hand stealthily, out of habit, reached for his money. Dropping his worthless cards on the small table between them Logan extended his claws- smirking as Remy stopped midway with his prize clasped in his hand.

"Tsk Tsk Logan. A bet's a bet right? Sometime y' win – sometimes y' lose. Sometimes y' lose a lot. But dat's de way it goes, non?"

Logan grinned. Pulled back his claws and tapped his temple with his finger.

"I'm not dense, Bub. But I swear, I always lose around you. We all do."

Remy stared intently for a moment at Logan. Shifting uncomfortably when he realized that Logan had noticed.

"Logan – do y' ever…" Remy hesitated. Weighing his words, something Logan had noticed the thief had begun to do recently.

"Do I ever what, kid?"

"Do y' ever question dis?" Remy gently, slowly, waved his hand around him. "Do y' ever question whether maybe… maybe it'd be better t' leave? T' see if maybe…"

"If maybe what? If maybe there's something more out there? Something that will give you the answers to the questions this place hasn't?"

Logan scratched the side of his head tiredly, scrunching his eyes in contemplation while he spoke. He wondered why he felt that his answer mattered more so than usual.

"Sure Gumbo. That's why I leave. But I always come back. 'Cause I know I always can. You can go too, you know. And we'll be here. Waiting."

Remy studied Logan. Studied his words and saw understanding beneath their gruff sounds. Logan tilted his head, a soft sound brushing across his ears, that he could barely hear. That he had to strain to hear.

"But what if – what if it wasn' yo' choice t' leave?"

A whisper.

Had he known? All that time. Smiling and flirting with everyone. Sitting in front of him, opening up sometimes when he had enough alcohol in his system… did he know what was in front of him, what was to come? What fate had driven them to?

Too many riddles. His mind filled with questions that he didn't know how to answer. Remembering questions that once upon a time he had failed to answer.

The motorcycle roared louder.

Logan ignored the wind whipping past him. He pushed himself. Faster. Following a scent that was quickly disappearing.


Remy balanced himself precariously against the railing of the balcony that connected to his hotel room. He detachedly watched the comings and goings of the many people below him. Smoke lingered lazily from the forgotten cigarette between his fingertips. He closed his eyes and let the cold air play with his hair.

Up here nothing could touch him. Not the cold. Not the hurt.

Not the pain of remembering what he had left behind.

"Remy – do yah- do yah think that after all this- fighting for Xavier's dream- maybe one day, yah n' Ah can jus' – have a happy ending?"

Clear emerald eyes pierced his own with an intensity of passion he couldn't escape.

"Chere..." He got closer to her. Cupped her chin in his hand. Meeting her eyes with his own, "…de world isn' made o' happy endin's. De world is made o'dreams. N' de minute dey end anoder one starts."

"An' what's your dream Remy? What's our dream?"

He looked at her intently. Unsure of how to answer.

He saw himself coated in green, reflected off of her gaze. He saw himself and what he could become. He saw himself and what he wanted to become.

"De dream…?" He whispered – getting closer to her. His body pressing her against her bedroom door. Lowering his lips to hers, his hand entangled in her hair, his sultry voice once more reaching her ear.

"Y' are Rogue. Y' are de dream."

And then his lips came crashing down on hers.

And then his world came crashing down as well.