Epilogue
Tu es completement debile, Remy*.
He could still hear him in his head. There was no anger in it,
but a calming sense of release. How many times had he ever heard
it coming from him?
Tu es completement debile, Remy.
There was nothing that he could do. He slipped into the abyss as
Louis pushed him back to the surface, but he insisted on staying.
Fraught with self-pity he had stubbornly clutched there.
Tu es completement debile, Remy.
Debile, moi? Remy shook his head. Ills sout
completement debile**, Louis. Fools for the gods.
There is no one on the earth who is not a complete fool, at least
once. Everyone had been there, and they tried to escape it,
fearing its jaws. But whenever we tried to run from it,
unconsciously we are edging ourselves to another form of the same
foolery. The world is like that. An endless repetition of the
same pattern, only in a chaotic manner, no order, no rules.
What do you gain from dis, Louis? he asked the
emptiness. What do we gain from dis fights? I still can't
understand dis, even after a lot of fights I went through. What
good do actually come of it?
The emptiness echoed hollowly. It made him sink deeper.
Tu es completement debile, Remy.
He smiled again. Such tenderness in such a bad sentence. He knew
Louis always meant well whenever he said that. Penny would have
agreed, too. It was just his way of conveying his gratefulness.
He could not bring himself to say the proper words.
Where is he now? Twice dead, Remy wondered whether he liked it.
Now is a worse punishment than that.
He closed his eyes when the distant creak of the door alerted him
from his reminiscences. Hank's familiar hobbling was a welcomed
sound to his tired ears. He sensed another person but he could
not tell who it was until he heard them talking.
"He's all right. He's a strong man, and he'll heal
quickly."
"Ah hope you're right, Hank. Man, Ah can't tell you how much
Ah missed you guys. And him, too." He felt his hand being
held and a soft pair of lips touched him. "Get well soon,
dear."
"It's amazing what happened that day. You and Piotr and
Jubes regained consciousness simultaneously, defeating Louis and
stopped Sinister short of world domination using the X-Men's
souls..."
"He's always a sad sicko. I don't know how he did it but
it's terrible, that's for sure. I cannot even stand at the
thought of it."
"Sinister's knowledge seems to have surpassed the usual
biological field he was famed for. Now he's reaching beyond the
third dimension... the astral planes. Think what he could have
done if he could extend this kind of technology to reach all the
dead forces of the dark..."
"You mean the bad guys?"
A pause. Presumably Hank must have nodded. "It's a
frightening thought. We can see Louis as a test subject of how
far can he control a soul without actually making them realize
Sinister was really controlling them. It seems like he could have
achieved - perfected - this."
"While they, at risk of losing their lives, stopped him dead
short of that."
"We have to thank Ray for this. He used up a lot of energy
that day; he never quite recovered from that incident. You
noticed those scars on his face?"
"Yes, poor boy. Where did he get those?"
"Seemingly whenever his powers are used to the max, his skin
will start to peel off at certain intervals. He just found that
out that day; obviously he never had the need to exploit them to
its fullest."
"I hope he's all right now."
"No fear. He's stable. And so are Bobby, Betsy, Kurt and
Kitty."
"Logan?"
"Do we have to talk about him? He went out to have a beer as
soon as he saw his scars on the neck healed. I can't stand such
ignorant patients."
A long pause followed. "It's horrible, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"Power." Remy heard her shudder. "Its lure sweet,
its reward deadly."
"In the correct hands Power is a wonderful equipment. The
wrong hands will only exploit it to the wrong path. A
double-edged dagger."
There was silence for a minute. "I can't help but feeling -
sensing, that Louis was not an entirely bad person. What about
you, Hank?"
Hank sighed. "There is no bad or good, only thought makes it
so. Shakespeare."
"So, you actually think he was a good man?"
"He was driven, Rogue. Driven by the past, angered by the
present, frightened by the future. Who would not have resorted to
a simpler road?"
"All short roads lead to hell, I heard someone said long
ago."
"He wanted to fight for something, Rogue. That was a noble
cause. But he fought for something that was too far in the past.
Something deemed useless if not for a small pride in his mind.
You see now how something this small can metastasized into a
deadly trouble."
"Still, I can feel he was not an entirely bad person. Even
the sinners have friends."
"You feel him?"
"Yeah,... back when I was one of him before he assimilated us - me, Piotr and Jubilee - to form a host for Penelope's soul . He
was desperate, Hank. When he realized that Sinister actually
killed Penelope and hid her body and made everything seemed like
Remy who killed her, I guess... everything just sort of fell
apart beneath him."
"You can't help it if you fought for, died for and lived
again for something that had been a lie."
"What about us, Hank?"
"What about it?"
"What do we fight for?"
Hank probably shrugged. "I know what I fight for, Rogue. Do
you know what are you fighting for?"
Remy heard her sobbed. "I just want to live like other
people without making them fear me."
"Then that is all you need to keep in mind the next time
you're in a battle. Cone on. Jimmy had baked some cookies
upstairs. Later we'll come here again, okay?"
Silence descended. Remy realized a warm liquid trickled down his
cheek. Nervously he touched his hand there and brought it into
view.
There was only tears.
He smiled and whispered a prayer for Louis and Penelope. Wherever
they might be.
THE END
AUTHOR' NOTE: There you go,
guys! Thanks for the reviews and whatnots! This has been a very
challenging story; trying not to let it out of control is a task
better left to Hercules. Now I can lean back and read others'
story. Aaaaah....
Translations
*You are a moron
**We are all morons