Shameless plug: Please go and read the new(ish) chapter in "Black is the Color," if you were following that fic… the new chapter is lonely and wants some reviews. pause …Okay, I want some reviews. But seriously, I want to know how that fic is working—or isn't—for readers. Thanks! —Alara

Xanadu

By Alara

Chapter 21: "Where Alph, the sacred river, ran"

They broke apart five seconds after midnight, both flushed and blushing but smiling, unnoticed by most people around them, who were also disengaging (or maintaining, in a few cases) embraces—obviously, their kiss wasn't shocking, or attention-getting, except to the two of them. Rogue was grateful for it, now that the moment had passed; wonderful as that kiss had been, she didn't know if she could handle a bunch of strangers' eyes on her, judging her, measuring her… She glanced around furtively. Most people were now removing their masks, and shouts of surprise and glee sporadically ricocheted off the vaulted ceiling as friends were recognized after hours of anonymity. No one seemed to be paying much attention to them.

The crowd around them parted suddenly, as though swept aside by a strong wind, and suddenly a small, older, determined-looking woman was charging like a miniature locomotive straight toward Remy.

"Remy, m' chil', m' chil', just let me get a good lookin' at yo'!" She exclaimed, in an accent so thick you could grab hold of it. She held Remy at arms' length for a moment, shaking her head. The accent noticeably eased as she turned to Rogue and pulled her into a completely unexpected hug, murmuring, "Welcome to you, child. I'll be speakin' wit' you later. Don' worry." She winked, released her abruptly, and turned back to Remy, enveloping him in her strong arms as the surprised Rogue caught her balance.

Remy's expression was bemused as he accepted her hug. "Tante! It's good to—what are you doing?" He cut himself off as she broke from the clasp and drew two small bags hanging from cords from out of her sleeve, and dropped the necklace-like object over his head, then turned and thrust the other over the startled Rogue's head, as well. Remy picked it up in one hand, examined it, and eyed his aunt narrowly. "Gris-gris? Tante, what's going on?"

She waved him off. "Don't you worry. Just keep 'em on. At least, until She's seen you. She wants to see you, as soon as possible. See you both." She nodded significantly in Rogue's direction.

Remy shook his head, suddenly weary, and more to Rogue than to anyone else, said, "Fine. Let's talk about it all in the morning. It's late." He sighed to himself. He was home again, wasn't he?

His father caught his arm and held him back as Tante Mattie and Mercy efficiently swept Rogue up between them and hustled her off to a guest room. She cast him one helpless, wry look over her shoulder. He shrugged his eyebrows at her; she took this as mute suggestion she simply go along with it, shrugged herself, and proceeded to make polite, friendly small talk with the pair as they all disappeared into the night.

"Now dat I've got you alone…" his father began, a serious expression coming across his face. "Where've you been de past two years, mon fils?"

Remy avoided his direct gaze, and repeated, "In the morning. It can all wait 'til the morning." He walked off after Rogue, Mercy, and Tante, hoping he remembered the way back to the Guild Seat after all this time.

Jean-Luc LeBeau stared after his son thoughtfully, and shook his head sorrowfully, wondering, What happened to you out there, my carefree boy?

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next morning, Remy was halfway through his eggs—and, if the looks his Tante was giving him were any indication, he'd finish them too—when Jean-Luc settled deliberately across the table from him.

For a moment, silence held in the sun-drenched kitchen, the light bouncing off of the scarred kitchen table they sat at, gleaming off the copper-bottomed pots and pans hanging over the counter.

It chased off the plate Remy was eating from, and he traced his hands over its chipped, once-broken, glued-back-together edge fondly. That plate had been one of the first things he'd accidentally charged. He still remembered the terror he'd felt when the shards went rebounding through the kitchen—funnily, his fear was not born of the strange power he'd just manifested, but horror at what his Tante would do to him when she found out he'd broken one of her plates.

Of course, ten seconds after the plate had exploded, before the thirteen-year-old could even think about cleaning it up (or think of a good excuse), Tante came through the door. She stopped dead in her tracks, gravely surveyed the porcelain littering the room, and heaved a sigh. "Happened again, didn' it, chil'?" She helped him gather the pieces. Even after the mess had been cleaned up, though, he eyed the bag of broken pieces forlornly. She considered a moment, then (frighteningly) smiled. "How's about you g'wan an' get de glue, and' we'll fix this here plate, mon rascal?" Remy's face had lit up at the suggestion, and soon they were carefully piecing things back together. By the next morning, the glue had dried, and from then on, that was 'Remy's plate.'

He was touched she'd kept it even after he'd fled the Guild warfare, presumably never to return.

"So." His father's voice broke into his memories. "It's 'de morning,' pup. Time to talk. Where've you been?"

"Pennsylvania," he replied flippantly. "B'fo' dat, living in Ohio. Befo' that, New York. An' before that, just… jus' wandering." He shrugged, reluctant to speak further.

Jean-Luc sat back in his chair and eyed his son narrowly. He decided his best tactic would be to needle Remy until he got more than a relatively one-word answer to his question. "Well," he said, "I knew 'bout Ohio, an' I helped send you 'wandering.' So what happened in New York? You… meet up wit' some gangs, or something? Fall in wit' dis... Rose Noir an' piss off her pere, o' what? Are we gon' have some angry father busting in here wit' a shotgun someday? O' course… y' letter did say y' were mixed up wit' de Feds. Her pere an agent?"

"No!" Remy barked harshly, his voice rasping as his throat tightened at the thought of Trask's lab. "No! Roisin's got nothing to do wit' it! She was only there the same time I was—the—the same time…" He swallowed, unable to continue, his eyes burning with fear and fury.

Jean-Luc leaned forward intently, seizing his son's attention, startled at the terrified look on the younger man's face. "But Remy, where? The same time as what? That's what I want to know! Y' vanished, mon fils, just disappeared, an' I need to know what happened t' you… whatever it is, it's changed you." He finished quietly. "I'd like t' know my son again. Please, Remy. Tell me. Tell us," he added, as Tante Mattie quietly sat beside him.

Remy, for his part, physically couldn't speak, couldn't even look at them. Of course he didn't want to tell them—to not only admit that he, a prince of the Thieves' Guild, had been captured—and held—but that he'd been reduced to a lab rat… hard enough to even remember, let alone tell.

"Please, Remy." This time, it was Tante's voice, soft and pleading. She shook her head, as if to herself, and said, "I don' know why, but it is important we know what happened last year. It's one o' my feelings, Remy, or I'd not make you relive whatever it is. I can see it hurts."

One of Tante's feelings… oh shit, Remy thought, as the bonds of duty and obligation clamped firmly around him. When Tante had a feeling about something, well, one just didn't ignore it. It was part of the reason the Guild loved her—and feared her, a little—so much.

He glanced up: both of these, his father, his aunt-and-surrogate mother—these, he should be able to tell about—

But his body betrayed him at the thought, throat closing over with tears, bands of terror-born pressure constricting his chest, causing him to huddle in on himself, unable to hear or speak or breathe—

"Remy." The voice was sweet, and low, and had that welcome Mississippi drawl. He felt the vise around his chest ease, and the weight of familial duty rose a little. He cracked open his streaming eyes: Rogue's concerned face flickered in his sight. She was kneeling in front of him, her small white hands curled around his clenched fists—which were glowing a fiery red. A frown crossed her face as she concentrated, and the fiery red seemed to flow over her hands and dissipate as she used Remy's borrowed powers to take the charge down. As soon as the glow disseminated, she tipped her head forward against his, her emerald eyes glittering. She turned a cold look on Tante and Jean-Luc.

"What," she asked, in a dangerously pleasant tone of voice, "were you doing to him?"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

In Philadelphia…

Logan growled aloud to himself, ignoring the startled looks of passers-by as he stalked along the sunny, shop-strewn street in search of the place where Kitty had seen that maybe-familiar guy making out with a model.

And he was supposed to find this guy's scent from three friggin' days ago. In a city. A crowded, bustling, noisome city.

Did they think he was Superman? Sheeze.

He hated cities. No, scratch that—he liked cities just fine when he was looking for a whore or a fight or wanted to watch Scooter squirm and blush, but for tracking people, give him suburbia or wilderness anytime.

His narrowed eyes scanned the slushy streets looking for—what was it again? The Fuzzy Mitten Kitten Café, a cutesy kitschy half-open-air coffee shop. Leave it to Half-Pint to track down a mysterious someone smooching nearby a place named that he sighed to himself, when a flash of garish color caught his eye. Yep. There, in all its Technicolor glory, was the 'café.' And, yes, there behind where it jutted out into the broad sidewalk was a space of blank wall where the café hadn't managed to cram one of their hideous tables or chairs (they were all decorated with stylized images of kittens drinking bowls of what looked like mud but was presumably coffee). Well. He liked joe, and before he started literally sniffing around, he'd better try and reconnoiter a little. Maybe a worker saw something.

He entered the shop, and stopped dead at the sight of the proprietor.

A biker. A bona fide, leather-wearing, tattooed, pierced Hell's Angel.

Logan tactfully made no comment—not even a long look—as he ordered a venti, double espresso half-milk latte, which was the least girly and least complicated thing on the menu.

As he handed over the—well—coffedrink, the biker stated, "Lost a bet."

"Mm." Logan counted out change, not looking up.

"Biiiig one."

"Mm." He found the nickel and penny.

"To my wife."

At this Logan glanced up in faint horror. "Oh." He considered. "That bites."

"Yeh." A pause. "So… you don't look like you belong in here any more than I do…"

Logan leapt at the opening. "About three days ago, there was a guy…"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Jean-Luc eyed the young woman kneeling in front of his son with interest. Far from the painted, powdered, coiffed ingénue of the ball, she was clean-faced, but no less beautiful for that. Her curly two-toned hair was pulled back to the nape of her neck, where the waves cavorted and corkscrewed around her shoulders. She was dressed casually, in dark brown slim-fitting pants, and a soft, fleecy-looking shirt. The eyes, however—those striking green eyes he'd noticed at the ball were the same, and they were murderously furious now.

And they were directing that anger at him, for—what? He still didn't understand, and one thing Jean-Luc Antoine LeBeau hated was being confused.

What had she asked? Oh yes—what was he doing to upset Remy. He leaned back in his chair, eyeing her—Roisin, was it?—from beneath half-lidded eyes as he answered her question.

"Doing to him?" He drawled smoothly. "Wasn't doing anything to Remy, p'tite. Just be talking with him, ce n'est pas?" Her expression didn't change; she merely kept staring at him expectantly. He gave up a little more information, hoping her reaction would clue him in to where Remy had been the past year, for she undoubtedly was involved with that somehow. "We were discussing what happened befo' Remy landed himself and you in Ohio. Care to add anything to the conversation?" He finished pleasantly, watching the girl for her reaction to his deliberately provoking words. He got a reaction to his questions, all right—but not from Roisin, whose angry flush had drained to pale blue-whiteness in about two seconds.

No, it was Remy who unexpectedly reacted, shooting to his feet in a sudden violent burst, his chair skidding behind him as he aggressively leaned across the table at his father and Tante. His yes ignited with hellish fire as he snarled, "Y' don' ask her 'bout dat. Y' don' ask her 'bout dat—y' don' make her go back there."

While he was threatening them (which Jean-Luc found to be a novel and interesting experience), Roisin rose gracefully to her feet and placed an ungentle, restraining hand on his arm, her nails digging slightly into the skin to draw his attention to her.

Sympathy entered her face as he turned to her. "Remy…" she said softly. "Rem, is that what upset you?" She paused, but received no answer. She continued, "They're your family. They of all people have the right to know—"

"The hell they do!" He shouted at her, angrily shaking her hand off his arm. "You an' me, chere, only you and me have de right to know about—about that. No one else." He turned, kicked the chair out of his way, and stormed out, leaving the other three standing staring awkwardly at each other.

Tante Mattie spoke for the first time since Rogue had entered, pleading," Chile', can't you tell us—"

"No," Rogue cut her off. "It's something he really has to tell you—" She looked anxiously in the direction Remy'd gone. "I'm sorry, I've really got to—where would he have gone? I've got to go to him—"

"T'rough de door, down de hall to de righ', out de door an' down de pat' to de bayou." Tante advised her. The last Rogue heard was, "Bring dat boy an' y'self in fo' breakfast, y' hear?"

Then the outside door closed behind her, and she was suddenly surrounded by the sights, sounds and the warm wet marshy smell of the Louisiana bayou. She shivered a bit in the cold early morning February air, and set off resolutely down the clear path that trailed from the back door. Even from here she could sense Remy's inner turmoil.

She spared a moment to be privately glad her absorption of his empathic sense had only sensitized her to his emotions. She didn't know how he withstood this much emotional information from everyone, all the time. Perhaps, unlike her own sensitivity to him, his power wasn't 'on' all the time, or perhaps he'd learned how to control it over the years.

She shook herself from her reverie and looked around as she came to a fork. Now, which path was it Tante'd told her to take? Well, she hadn't said, had she. She'd said, the path. Which meant that two of the three paths that lay in front of her were red herrings.

She studied each in turn, cursing Remy beneath her breath—he'd left no marks of passage. Well, the path that led in entirely the wrong direction was out, unless it was a really long way around and somehow involved flight. That left the middle and leftmost paths. It looked like-yes-she took a step around the middle path's first bend. Yes—that wasn't the right one, either; it twisted and doubled back on itself, but ultimately would take one nowhere at all.

"Door number one it is, then." Rogue said aloud, as she plunged through the brush hedging the sides of the leftmost path.

The bayou quickly enveloped her, its air thick and cloying with the faintest hint of vegetative rot and slightly-stagnant water. She grimaced, realizing she was barefoot as her toes encountered a mossy, marshy patch of ground.

"Remy, you'd better not have gone too far," she sighed, and continued her search.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Remy, for his part had quickly cooled off, once he was over his initial burst of anger. He'd cooled off further, of course, once he'd climbed into the spreading branches of what he and Henri had long ago dubbed their "sittin' tree. Some of the branches stretched out over a pool of deep clear inviting water. This cold February morning, Remy lay on one of those branches and stared into the slowly-moving water, vapor rising from the surface.

His thoughts were just as confused as the swirling layers of mist. Why had he overreacted to Rogue's entirely correct (he admitted) suggestion that if anyone had the right to know about Trask, his family did. It wasn't however, so much that he feared the telling—though he did, to some degree. He knew, whatever else, his family wouldn't think any less of him for being captured. He also knew, terrible as it was, that they had to know—had the right to know what had happened to him. To them.

He stopped. There was the heart of it—they were captured, they were tortured, they were made into experiments. Not himself alone. And to tell his part of it would mean Rogue telling hers, as well. It would mean asking her to expose that darkest part of her life to people who were strangers—and never mind they were Remy's family, they were still strangers to her.

But—still. Why did he have a problem with that, when she so obviously did not?

Maybe he wanted to kept that part of her life known to him alone, to keep that subconscious trust of him alive, a trust born out of the fact that he alone on the earth knew what she'd gone through. He needed something to maintain that trust, especially with what she would undoubtedly learn about him in the coming weeks…

Or maybe he was afraid she'd hate him, however unreasonably, for 'making' her tell her story to strangers…

Or maybe he was afraid she'd have no problem telling her story at all, and she'd realize she didn't need him after all…

What it all boiled down to was:

He could not lose her.

He recalled his earlier behavior and flushed. Well, shouting at her certainly was a good way to chase her off! He really needed to go find her, and apologize.

She's probably still in the house, he thought, swinging off the tree branch, only to come nose-to-nose with a very startled Rogue, who took a swing at him before she recognized him.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Her tromp through the marsh had only increased her ire. First he unfairly shouted at her, then he ran out and left her in a room staring uneasily back at people she didn't know, then he made her trudge through mud and weeds and insects to try and find him. She was busy watching her footing, and not actually looking about her for Remy at the moment. So when a man's figure suddenly dropped down in front of her from nowhere, near the bayou's edge, she swung at him, an instantaneous reaction honed from years' physical combat training. She belatedly realized it was Remy, and pulled the punch… a little. She was, after all, still pissed.

Remy saw the blur of movement far too late to do anything about it without hurting Rogue. All he had time to do was relax into the punch, hoping like hell she'd pulled it and wouldn't break his jaw. WHAM!

A few seconds later, he was sprawled in the ground, one hand in a sloppy puddle of mud, looking bewildered up at Rogue, whose expression flickered between anger and concern. It settled somewhere in between the two as she leaned forward and gingerly ran her fingers along his swelling jaw. Her eyes asked, "Are you all right?" Her mouth asked, "So what the hell was that about?"

"Dunno, chere," he mumbled, running his tongue along his teeth to make sure they were all still there, "you punched me—oh. You mean, why'd I go crazy."

"Yeah. That."
"I realized, chere—that—" his courage failed him, and he fell to telling her most of the truth. "Well, that—that—experience" he said bitterly, "is something that only you and I share. It seems like if I tell about it, if more people know about it, it isn't such a big thing anymore, it's diminished—and it is a big thing," he said, and frowned. "I'm explaining this badly. It's like—if I tell de famille my story, yours has to be told too. And right now, I'm the only one here who knows you that well, to know the worst times you've gone through… and if your story gets told, I feel like I lose that part of you that only I know right now. Do you understand where I'm coming from?"

She looked at him seriously a moment, then extended a hand to help him up. "I think so," she said, "though I can't say I agree, exactly."

"I yelled at you because I didn't want to lose y—that part of you," he said, as they started back up the path. He felt the glance she threw his way. "Yeah, didn't say I was smart…"

As they walked, he explained his logic—such as it was—to her.

By the time they made it back to the house, he'd finished explaining to her, and she was nodding slowly.

"Okay," she said. "We've been through a lot, I'll give you that." Her voice sharpened a bit with anger. "But knowing about a horrible experience in my life does not give you any particular claim on me, Remy." Her expression softened a bit as she added, "Knowing about it, that's one thing. Understanding it, however, is something no one else can claim. I think you need to remember that. I can share that experience with whomever I choose, whether you like it or not, and some weird sense of 'ownership' of that information does not change that." She shook her head. "But what I can't share with many people—maybe I can't share it with anyone—is the bone-deep understanding of that knowledge, that experience. That, like it or not, is yours and mine alone, at least for now. Now, I think your family has been waiting for two years to hear about where you've been, good and bad, and I think they deserve the information. They don't need to truly understand it, but they do need the knowledge. If you want, I'll stay, and help you get through the story—"

"Want you to stay?" he repeated incredulously. "It's your story as much as mine, chere. You have to stay. Yes," he said resolutely, heading into the house, "it's time we told my family our story. But—together, right?"

She smiled. "Yes, together, Remy. C'mon, let's go in. Your Tante has breakfast waiting, and my feet are cold and muddy. Let's go in where it's warm."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Soo… a new year, a new chapter… let me know what you think. Alara UNDERSCORE Celt AT hotmail DOT com. Or, better yet, clickety-click on that little purply box. Yeah, the one that also lets you get updates on when I update this. :) I'm just all about the shameless plugs today, aren't I?