DARKNESS WITHIN
Part Twelve
Rogue had never been particularly fond of romantic comedies. Horror movies, thrillers, even action films and the occasional crude comedy, sure, but films that focused on the drama of relationships she'd never have, of the good times she'd never experience...it was in her opinion, like showing a buffet of fine meats, sweet desserts and candies to the starving in third world countries, and saying 'you can look at this, but you can never eat it'.
And she would starve for the rest of her life.
But she was being forced to endure this, to participate, to sit with everyone else in the recreation room on the Thursday night – which was movie night in the institute – regardless of whether she wanted to be there or not. The others all seemed to be enjoying the movie, while she thought this to be some kind of wicked torture. Perhaps this was just another device to cruelly pester her, something she'd deserved for yet another suicide attempt.
Jean could drag her physically – with her powers – to whatever activity she wished, but Rogue refused to enjoy it. She would not speak, just sit quietly, brooding, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room. She had lost track of how long it had been since she'd last spoken. It seemed pointless to ever speak again. She'd said all she wanted to say, there was nothing else worth saying.
Sullenly, she stared across the room at Kitty Pryde, who was curled up in an armchair, watching the movie, every now and then dozing off. Kitty had not spoken a word to her in days, in fact, not since the day after the suicide attempt, those cross words in the hospital room when she'd awakened had been the last time. Now, she simply ignored her as she came in to the room, she no longer brought food, books, or laundry in, no longer attempted to make small talk before bed and in the morning. She no longer got up to help her with her panic attacks. Rogue simply endured each attack as best she could, either getting so frantic she would pass out, or somehow manage to stop herself from hyperventilating after struggle to control it. Depending on the dream or the situation, sometimes it was almost manageable while other times it was practically unbearable.
More than once Rogue had considered breaking her silence to say sorry, but what was the point? It'd been said before and it meant nothing. Nothing was going to repair the brittle bonds they'd once had. The ship had sailed and already had made it too far into the distance to be able to call back; this was beyond repair.
Remy LeBeau sauntered in with the usual confident swagger, his strength seemed to be returning. Rogue observed that he was mostly unnoticed, as if he were a ghost that no one could see. How can anyone fail to notice someone like him? She wondered dully as she watched his every move. They can see him, they're just pretending they don't see him, like they do with me, she thought irritably.
She watched as he sat upon the floor (as there were no free seats) and leaned against the wall, one knee pulled up to rest his arm upon. He watched the movie for a short while, but every now and then he threw a glance in her direction; more curious a glance than anything else.
The anxiety symptoms began nearly immediately after the first glance he gave her, that light tingling in her fingers that would soon turn to numbness and she sat curling her fingers discretely to get the blood circulating, hoping no one would notice what she was doing. Then her face, the nerves around her cheeks and nose seemed to pop, tiny little invisible explosions that made her rub her nose and twitch a little. She caught Remy looking again, and their eyes met and locked. He seemed almost apologetic that he'd been caught staring at her, and he offered the tiniest yet most confident of smiles.
She gasped for air, and she knew she wasn't going to be able to contain this attack. Ah can't hold myself together, Ah can't let him see me like this...Ah can't let them all see this happen again...
Quickly, trying to remain as focused on being calm as much as she could, she got up and walked speedily out of the room; the attack seemed to burst forth barely four feet from the recreation room door, and she crouched to the floor, gasping for the breath that seemed to catch in the back of her throat.
Jean was with her in barely seconds, and was holding her upright, "you can overcome this, Rogue. Take control of your mind and your body."
It was all very well to be told to do these things as if Jean Grey were any expert in this field, but trying to do them was a different matter. It didn't matter how softly the woman spoke, or how almost convincing she sounded telling Rogue that this was in her control. It simply was not.
"Stop surrendering to it, Rogue," Jean said, her hands gripping Rogue's shoulders hard, "stop being the victim. You can do this."
No, Ah can't! Rogue thought in a daze, her head felt tight, her eyes were blurred with the tears of frustration, her lungs ached from lack of breath. She was sure she was going to black out just as she had been for the past few nights whenever an attack would occur.
"Rogue, stop letting this win!" Jean demanded. "Come on, you're stronger than this!"
Rogue shook her head, the air coming in in sharp gasps and burst of three in, one out, but she couldn't slow it, it got faster. It was like some kind of incurable virus attacking her, spreading. There was no control over it.
She was close to blacking out, her eyes felt heavy, her limbs limp, tingling, jaw seeming to rattle. To her dismay, Remy had come out into the hall, his expression fell to see the scene playing out before him.
"What's happening to her?" he asked, his mouth hung open as he stared at Rogue in the full swing of her panic. His eyes were calculating everything the way they always did, and it only made it feel worse.
"It's just an anxiety attack," Jean responded, "go away, please."
Remy looked at Rogue for a moment, and she felt his intense gaze as he studied her, seemed to see almost through her. And he was thinking, contemplating, in her own panic she could see the cogs of his mind turning, and she wished for that moment she could touch him again just to absorb those thoughts, to know and understand exactly what it was he was thinking of her.
Then swiftly Remy LeBeau moved right in front of her, and took her hand with a strange almost unsure tenderness she hadn't expected. He placed her hand flat upon the centre of his chest, and somehow, frozen with terror, she could not pull herself away. "Look into my eyes, chere..." he said quietly and he gazed at her fully, his eyes penetrating, and endlessly deep. "Focus on nothin' but my eyes...and my breath as my chest rises and falls..." he murmured, gently stroking her sleeved arm.
Ah can't, she thought desperately, Go away! Ah can't do this! Ah don't want to kill you!
"Come on now, chere, you know you can beat this...you're a fighter, and you're not about to let somethin' like this control you; you control it, come on, just follow my lead..."
His breath was a slow, steady rhythm, impossible to somehow not match as she felt his chest beneath her hand rise and fall and she listened to the sound of air draw in and breeze out from his lips. Her eyes relaxed on his until they seemed almost blurry, and despite being in shock of actually having her hand upon him, she found herself beginning to feel the anxiety ebbing away, her breathing beginning to slow, her heartbeat trying to match the tempo of the weak pulse she felt beneath her glove and his shirt.
Finally, it was over. Her hands still tingled, as did her nose, but she was in control again, at least of her body. Her emotions though were another matter and upon realising now that he had seen her like this, that he was touching her, and that she was touching him caused her to break down and crumple into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably.
"It's okay, chere, it's over now..." Remy said softly, "you beat it."
Exhaustion and strain pulled at her until she had no energy left to sob and relaxed completely there, until darkness and warmth swallowed her whole.
Remy gave a sigh as he carefully laid Rogue down upon the air mattress, her body limp, her expression almost serene as she dozed; she almost seemed peaceful considering how frantic she had looked before. He was aware, as he brought the blankets up over her, that Jean Grey stood in the doorway watching his every move as he crouched there by the girl who had wept in his arms until she'd fallen into a deep sleep.
"Got somethin' to say?" he asked in a half-whisper to Jean as he tucked the blankets under the edge of the air mattress a little.
Jean had said nothing to him for the entire fifteen minutes it had taken between Rogue's sudden anxiety attack and her falling asleep, and then as he'd suggested he carry her to the room, Jean had argued that she should do this, use her powers to accomplish the task.
"No," he had said most emphatically, but had given no explanation as to why he felt that way about it. To some amusement he realised he didn't even know exactly why it was so important that he carry her to the bedroom, and put her to bed. Perhaps it was just that it had been his arms she'd sobbed in, his arms that she had finally succumbed into a state of relaxation enough to rest after what had happened. To jostle her with Jean's powers, to take away whatever security had lulled her into that sleep seemed almost unfair, or premature...he wasn't sure how to explain it even to himself.
Jean pushed herself away from the door frame where she'd been standing with her arms folded. "You handled that well," was her response. Remy had expected something a little more unforgiving. He had interrupted. He'd been asked to leave and instead, he had stayed. He'd thought she'd reprimand him for this, not compliment it.
Remy remained crouched by the mattress, staring down at the girl, "How is it I don't have a memory of anythin' that came before that coma," he finally raised his eyes to Jean, "yet I knew how to handle that? How did I know what to do?"
Jean momentarily considered her words carefully, then responded. "Perhaps it was instinct."
"Maybe it was. I'm used to just..fakin' it. Been doin' that all my life, you know...you don't know what exactly you're meant to do, so you fake it...act like you know what you're doin', sometimes things fall in to place..." he shrugged. "It's all theatrics sometimes..."
"I see," said Jean.
"The thing is..." he stood slowly, staring at Rogue, studying the tear stained streaks on her face, the way her eyelids seemed slightly puffy, her lashes still spiky and damp. "I feel like...I knew this. Don't ask how but...this has happened before...like I relived it almost. Felt that way when I found her passed out in a puddle of her own puke..." he rubbed his neck, "On and off I've been having this...deja vu feeling. This room...somehow I know I slept in here. Then the overdose, this panic thing...feel like it's happened to me before..." he raised his eyes to Jean again. "I don't know..." he shook his head. "Maybe I'm crazy."
"You're not crazy, Remy. Some memories may be returning. But I can't say from experience what any of those memories may have been..." Jean said softly as she led the way out of the door.
"So...you and I definitely weren't close," he mused as he followed, glancing back over his shoulder hoping that Rogue really was asleep and that she wasn't going to take off and try to harm herself again. It struck him that this concern should have not been his own. "How long has this been goin' on?" Remy gestured over his shoulder to the doorway of the hidden bedroom once they'd gotten into the hall, "Rogue's...issues, I mean..."
"Since...since the day that..." Jean tailed off, upset, seeming to search for the way to explain this without causing too much to be revealed. Perhaps she wasn't aware he'd managed to piece some of the puzzle together.
"Since the day she absorbed me and put me into a coma," Remy finished for her. Without even looking at the young woman, he could tell she was genuinely surprised he knew this. It seemed that some things said between him and the Professor and Hank had not been spread like wild gossip after all.
"You know?" Jean asked, her voice light.
"Some of it. I figured it out when Wolverine had to save her by forcin' her to absorb his powers...the way he lay there...out cold. The way your Professor and the Beast spoke...it clicked into place."
"I see," said Jean.
"It was never really fully explained...Professor tried to explain it but...well...seemed inappropriate to try and chase what most likely no longer relevant and probably well deserved."
"You think you deserved to be put into a coma?" Jean seemed surprised by this admission.
"I'm not a nice guy, Jean," Remy gave something of a snort, "I've done some pretty underhanded and self-servin' things since I started free-lancing. My guess...I came here givin' you all the assumption that I wanted to join and that I was tryin' to change sides, make somethin' honest of myself and all that bullshit. But it probably turned out I was tryin' to glean some information to sell to the highest bidder...somethin' pretty nasty and underhanded and so I got caught and a huge fight happened...that's probably how I got absorbed. I know myself...I know the kind of cheap thing I've done in the past and-"
"I'm sorry," said Jean, "but...no...that's not right..." she began.
"Whatever happened to me...seems...I don't know..." Remy shook his head, "I don't know what the word is..." he tried, "inconsequential. I don't think I really want to know any more."
"Oh?" Jean searched his eyes.
"In comparison to the way things are goin' on here, my problems don't matter right now, do they? There's...a lot of bad feelings floatin' around her, lot of stress, hostility, sadness. I'm not an idiot, I can tell everyone is under strain."
"We are," Jean sighed, sweeping her hair tiredly from her face.
Should I tell her about Kitty and the pills? How did the girl even get away with having those in the house with two telepaths? Maybe Logan would have sniffed them out if he weren't in a coma downstairs, Remy thought dully. Can she even read my thoughts right now?
"The extra hours are exhausting for us all," Jean explained, "and there's the strain of not knowing...never really being able to predict what may happen..." she stood against the wall and folded her arms casually.
"Is it true she stayed in her room all that time?" Remy asked delicately.
Jean gave a slow and careful nod, "four months, since that day it happened. It looked almost as if she was starting to take some interest in life again, leaving the room, doing laundry...but then...something happened that caused her to relapse. One night inexplicably she took an extremely frightening anxiety attack – screaming, fighting us off. It didn't stop until she literally passed out from lack of oxygen from the hyperventilating. Then she wouldn't leave the room other than to go to the bathroom. Prior to her overdose, she wasn't bathing or showering, changing her clothes or washing her hair. She would barely even eat."
"I noticed she'd lost weight," he admitted, "she's barely skin and bones."
"A few days before her overdose, the Professor and Logan were trying to come up with solutions to how to deal with all this. The Professor thought perhaps sending her to an institution that specialises with grief and severe depressive disorders..."
"But she's dangerous now," Remy remembered the discussion he'd overheard as he'd eavesdropped at the Professor's office door. Now it all made sense. It was Rogue they'd been discussing.
"I hate to say it but dangerous is an understatement in her current condition. Because she hasn't trained any of these new abilities, she's extremely unpredictable; she could devastate an entire building if the mood took her. Even if we did send her to an institution, there's no guarantee that she would sit and take that treatment. There's no guarantee that she wouldn't hurt someone, there's no guarantee that she wouldn't just punch a hole through a wall and fly off to dive into the nearest body of water to drown herself, or break into a pharmacy to take handfuls of prescription drugs..." Jean explained.
"She can fly?" Remy blinked.
"Yes," Jean responded coolly.
"Can't she be sedated so that she wouldn't be capable of those things?" Remy asked curiously.
"Trying to force her to take a sedative would be impossible, and no needle can penetrate her skin. She's practically invulnerable as near as we can tell. There have been other attempts to harm herself that failed utterly. Numerous times tried to cut her wrists, tried to stab herself, hang herself. Nothing worked. This attempt...an overdose...it's the closest she's ever come to succeeding. Clearly internally she isn't as invulnerable as she is externally."
"Is it really that bad that she thinks her life isn't worth living?"
Jean tilted her head, "her powers have been amplified, her absorption abilities, her super-human strength...they make it very hard for her to live a normal life...we're not sure if she'll ever be able to truly live a normal life like you and I can. Things we take for granted such as being out in public...wearing a t-shirt on a hot day...having real physical contact...plans for the future..." she reeled off. "She can't even attend college any more, it's far too risky...too much chance of someone becoming inadvertently harmed..."
Remy supposed he couldn't blame the girl for wanting to give up on life. What was she supposed to for the next sixty or so years she had left? He didn't altogether agree with her idea that suicide was an answer, but he certainly sympathised with it.
"An institution is out of the question, so the only alternative is Logan's idea, which is an insanely brutal dose of tough love. We're going to force her to live until she hopefully starts doing it on her own again. Until she finds some kind of reason to live."
"I hope it works, it's a shame to see the girl goin' so downhill," Remy sighed, "Listen, you should get back down to dinner. Girl is sleeping, you can't do much for her now. Go be with your friends."
"I'd rather sit with her a while," Jean replied, "she's supposed to be supervised right now."
"Let me do it," Remy made his way to the closet.
"No...that's not a good idea," Jean stopped him, "You're still weak, and there's too many complications."
"Look, it's fine...I know how to handle her, you saw that. Besides, it's just until after you finish dinner...I'll be fine, don't worry, she'll sleep for some time, I saw how exhausted she was."
Jean hesitated.
"I'll yell for you if she wakes up," he promised, crossing his heart with his index finger.
"Well..." Jean still lingered, hesitant.
"Don't you trust me with her?"
Jean snorted a little, "strangely enough, I do."
Remy watched as she left to go back to dinner and he went back up to the attic room. Rogue was still deeply asleep, snoring very quietly. Remy watched her, feeling a strange sense of responsibility regarding what had occurred to her. Her powers had been fine up until the event that she'd absorbed him, so did that mean those powers had stemmed from him? Had he been meant to have super strength and the power of flight? Did he want to even know about something that couldn't even be changed?
Right now he didn't. Trying to think of them made his head hurt.
He glanced around the room for something to read to keep him occupied while he stayed with the girl a while, his eyes fell to the book by Kitty's nightstand. He remembered a few nights before, watching her taking pills from the dust jacket of that large hardback.
Silently he crept over to the nightstand and picked the book up after noting the placement. The weight of the book had been hiding the pills on the bottom enough that no one would have suspected. He opened the back of the cover and on the inside of the dust jacket flap there were three of the blister packs taped neatly there. Adderall and Oxycodone...jesus, who the hell did she get this stuff from? He wondered, as he closed the book and he placed it back down exactly where it had been. She must have been taking the Adderall to try and stay awake for school...and then using the Oxy to try to sleep at night. Jesus, no wonder she slept through Rogue's overdose. How is she affording this stuff? I know people who used to have to steal all week to support the habit of this stuff, it doesn't come cheap.
Remy sighed as he sat down on the wooden chair by the wall and contemplated. Should he tell the Professor about what he'd found? Was it fair to rat the girl out? He suspected she certainly wouldn't have thought twice about ratting him out should it have been the other way around.
Maybe I should just confront her, he thought as he watched Rogue sleeping soundly. Maybe I should give her a chance to clean herself up before she gets addicted – that's if she isn't already. Bringing drugs into the institute, or even using them...it's one of the cardinal rules that I was told about when they let me out of the hospital room. What would they do if they found out she'd been using? Would she be kicked? Do I even care?
These thoughts were so conflicting, but somewhere he couldn't explain feeling partially responsible. Whatever he had done that had caused Rogue to absorb his powers and fall into this depression had clearly spilled into the lives of others, and directly had affected the life of Kitty Pryde. Did that make him responsible for this?
At least partially, he decided. I'm probably not blameless here. Jesus, just goes to show how one person's problems can spill into the lives of everyone else and become their problem too. That's what's happened here...Kitty got affected by Rogue, who clearly got affected by me. This whole thing is like a virus, it needs to be nipped in the bud.
It was then he decided that he had to at least do something. He couldn't sit back and just let this play out, couldn't let Kitty get caught by the instructors but neither could he let her continue taking these pills. What if she went too far accidentally overdosing? Or what if someone else got into the pills and outed her, shaming her? Would she be kicked out then?
Jesus, this isn't my problem, I got enough to deal with, he ran his hand through his hair frustratedly as he glanced towards the book again. Fuck, he thought angrily at himself. Why do I have to keep getting involved in other people's drama?! He wondered as got up and moved quickly to the book and opened the cover and tore the blister packs from the inside of the dust jacket and pocketing the stash. Hopefully she ain't got anything else lyin' around. Gonna have to wait until everyone is out of the room so I can properly rake through everythin' and make sure she doesn't have a second stash somewhere, he decided.
I shouldn't get involved, he chided himself, barely getting comfortable in the seat again before Jean returned to the room.
"That was fast," Remy glanced up at her, hoping the thoughts about the pills wouldn't be read by Jean's powers even inadvertently. Telepaths found him hard to read, hard to filter through the static that prevented his thoughts being read usually, but there was always a first time for anything. He quickly forced himself to clear his mind, he didn't want to give anything away, didn't want any guilt to show.
"I ate quickly," said Jean, "I know you can handle her anxiety but it's not fair to leave you supervising her when you're still recovering."
"I don't mind," Remy assured. "To be honest, bein' around everyone down there right now...it's too hard after all that's gone on..."
"I wish you'd let me tell you-"
"No," Remy stood up slowly, "I get that I probably need to know some things, but I'd rather just not. Knowing what I know now..." he tried, "maybe I'm better off not knowing more. All this knowing and not knowing is givin' me a headache, I need a break from it."
"You may still regain those memories, you know," Jean suggested.
Remy paused at the door and sighed, "maybe it's better if I don't."
End of Part Twelve
Thanks to everyone for reviewing. I hope you're all having a super new year. I'm glad to see some of you agree with the course of treatment the X-Men are forcing Rogue under, lol. Makes me feel less cruel as an author to have her go through it, lol. 3
