Chapter 10 -
There's a fire in the fireplace. The nights are getting cooler- not quite cold yet as the summer drains away from the mountains but John has never really needed an excuse to start a fire.
Lying on the couch, he is toying absently with a bite of flame from the fireplace, turning it around in his hand, shifting it from finger to finger like a street magician with a coin. With the fingertips of his other hand he holds down the page of a ragged copy of 'Heart of Darkness'.
John has become a reader.
Or he has become secure enough or indifferent enough to her opinion to admit that he likes to read. It's hard to tell which. He looks surprisingly natural in the firelight, frowning gently down at the book with the flame like a content and playful pet in his hand. He's draped all over the ancient couch, one leg over the arm, the other foot resting flat on the floor. The book is propped on his stomach, leaning against a pillow resting against his legs. The rugged coffee table exists between him and Rogue where she sits in the hard rocking chair staring into the fire.
John won't touch her.
In the confines of the cabin, he steps around her carefully, keeping the thinnest of spaces between them. Just enough air to prevent actual contact. Rogue should be used to such treatment. People have been just a little afraid of her for so long.
But it's not fear. Not with him.
It's a choice.
Once a day, he sits down across from her and waits silently until she turns her naked palms towards him. Then he touches her, refusing to show any emotion or desire, showing nothing until whatever it is that happens between them begins to happen. Then memories erupt from him like water through holes in a dam. And when one of them can't take it anymore and they break contact, it's over. They go silently back to whatever they were doing and neither of them speaks about what they had seen between them.
John never seems the least embarrassed.
For Rogue there is no predicting when their little lessons will happen- afternoon, morning, high noon. He even woke her up once in the middle of the night to sit in the moonlight flooded kitchen- their memories that evening were particularly strange and intimate.
She feels like a ghost, haunting his house until he deigns to notice her.
Now he's turning his index finger in idle circles and the fire swirls around it, responding to some centrifugal force. His hand has drifted down, close to the old couch cushions. They are beginning to smoke.
"John," Rogue says flatly, "You're going to set the couch on fire."
He doesn't even look up; he just moves his hand out and away from the couch.
Rogue has the sudden urge to scream.
Since she came here, everything has been on his terms. Everything.
She drums her fingers on the arm of the rocking chair. She stands abruptly, impatiently and moves to leave the room. Pausing by the couch just above his head, Rogue mutters something at John that might be 'goodnight'. Then she waits. After what seems like a ridiculously long pause, John raises his free arm and wiggles his fingers absently, never looking up from his book.
The urge to rip her gloves off and press her fingers to his upside down face is so strong, Rogue is held immobile by it. She stands perfectly still, refusing to give in and terrified that any motion she makes will lead to just that event.
Don't look at me, John, she thinks frantically.
Look at me, John. Something else whispers in her head.
Rogue stands by the couch for hours, centuries- a pale stiff figure made of wax. Below her John turns a page idly, his index finger caressing the papers edge. In her dream, that first night, John had touched her face with that same gesture. She moves infinitesimally towards him.
He rubs the bottom of his foot absently against the arm of the couch like it itches. An innocent unconscious gesture- a human gesture.
Rogue walks away.
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She's dreaming again. The scenes behind her eyes are sliding by so fast she hardly registers one before another takes its' place.
Logans' agonized face, his blades buried deep in her stomach while she reaches out with a shaking hand to save her own life. There is moisture on his cheek that is probably sweat but might be tears.
The professor, in his study, explaining to her class where they fit into the theory of evolution. Then the professor trying to explain to the betrayed little girl inside her that her parents weren't bad people, just ill-equipped to handle the circumstance that fate had dealt them.
A man with deep eyes and heavy features praying over a loaf of bread, at a table lit with candles.
Her father, smiling at her across a picnic table on some half-forgotten day. She must have been very small then- he seemed so tall and she knew without a doubt that he loved her.
Someone who is less than a face and more a series of familiar impressions - rough hands and rough words. Sneering eyes-
Magneto like she had never seen him, laughing with his mouth open, head thrown back, neither mocking nor cruel.
There's something she wants to tell them- all of them. Something important that she had known just a moment ago but keeps slipping from her mind each time one of them slips away.
They say her name. Rogue.
Their faces are perplexed.
Rogue.
She needs them to be quiet, to hold still for just a second so she can remember.
Rogue.
Magneto says her name but he uses the professors' voice. There is a question in it. A hint of disapproval.
Rogue.
Bobby has walked in from off-stage, reaching toward her until the hand between them is full of claws and she looks up into Logans' face.
Rogue.
The man at the table says her name in a language she doesn't know but she recognizes it anyway.
Rogue.
She can't remember anymore that she wanted to tell them anything, she just wants them to stop looking at her, to stop intruding-
Rogue.
I can't –
Marie.
She sits up in bed, breath desperate and aching in her chest. Her cold naked fingers close around the sheets under her hands and John is there. He sits on the edge of the mattress and watches her silently in that way she recognizes. Rogue lets go of the blankets and her head falls into her hands.
"Not tonight John, please." She whispers. She's just not strong enough to fight it tonight.
His calm face gives way to anger, "Yes, tonight! Every damn night- are you in control or not? How weak are you?" He demands.
Crying out, Rogue throws herself at him. He falls back against the bed under her weight, her bare fingertips pressed to either side of her face just as she had imagined earlier.