. II .

Eileen Harsaw, 6'2", 171 lbs., blonde hair, blue eyes, 31 or 28 years of age, depending on her mood; PhD, member of Mensa, former Lecturer in Astrophysics, currently Head CSI; mutant, ex-terrorist, former member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, alias – Phantazia.

A man with an eye for the beautiful and the ambitious might have marked her out for a career in modelling, but Eileen had had an extra something that would never have been conducive to such a profession. It was not pride. It was not arrogance (of which Eileen certainly had plenty). Nor was it even her rare and brilliant mind. It was, in fact, something called 'ideology'. And Eileen was ideological to a fault.

It was ideology that had led her into the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. It was ideology that had led her to turn down Erik Lensherr's offer to join him on Asteroid M and become a member of his elite coterie of Acolytes[1]. It was ideology that had caused her to fall in love with St. John Allerdyce, world-renowned author of Gothic noir novels and world-class traveller, known better in mutant circles by the immortal codename of 'Pyro'. (And whose death at the hands of a flatscan assassin she had, incidentally, mourned silently and without shedding a tear. Perhaps if she had seen him pass away in person and not on TV, she would have found it in her to cry. But those were the dreams of the romantic, bawdy noir novels that he had written.)

And finally, it was ideology that had caused her to turn away from the Brotherhood and walk out into the Real World, leaving all thought of mutant powers behind.

The Death of Ideology, alias – Disillusionment.

After being exposed as a mutant in Harvard University, she'd white-lied her way into the Jackson CSI unit, and looked back only once.

That was when she had seen St. John's boil-infested body dying so unceremoniously on TV.

Now she was sitting in her lab, microscope at her right side, a Petri dish of dried, brown soil sitting untouched nearby. Something was bothering Eileen Harsaw, and she was rarely bothered about anything; despite the kind of deaths she had seen, despite the kinds of bodies she had witnessed, bodies cold, bodies warm, bodies unbroken, bodies mutilated, bodies ravished, bodies as crimson with blood as if newborn, bodies as white as old, sludgy snow.

She had, on her hands, a potential serial killer. Modus operandi – organised (Ms. Brown's body, killed away from the initial crime scene, dragged/carried/transported to her lodgings not three hundred yards away); and ritualistic (Ms. Brown's body, stripped, arranged spread-eagled on her bed, displayed – sacrificially – for all who entered the room to see instantaneously; a clod of wet earth inserted into her closed mouth). Victim, killed in the small patch of woodland that separated the bar from the motel (Ms. Brown's feet had lost its stilettos in the woods, and had gathered up traces of dirt and leaves between its toes – evidence of which lay in bags marked D, E and F). Indications of a sexual motive (Traces of semen left on the victim's body, evidently after the initial murder had occurred – vagina burnt in order to destroy trace DNA [clever bastard]). Weapon, most likely a thin, sharp blade (Single laceration to the throat, puncturing both the jugular and the carotid, almost to the point of…)

Eileen paused, laid down her pen and gazed blankly at her notes. It was not any of this that was bothering her. It was something else.

Beside her left elbow rested a flat, clear, polythene bag. Turning, Eileen reached inside and brought out the contents. Between her latex-gloved fingers, the tarot card glared at her in an eloquent silence, still smeared in dried, faded blood.

'The Tarot is symbolism; it speaks in no other language and offers no other signs…'

In which case, what did the Queen of Pentacles signify?

Eileen turned the card around in her hand thoughtfully, flipped it this way and that, considering. The Queen, horned like the devil, dressed in green, a disc in her arms and goat at her feet. The Queen was…Lizzie Brown?

"Ms. Harsaw?"

Eileen snapped out of her reverie. Framed in the door of her lab was one of her subordinates, a serious-minded young man named simply 'Jones', and whose only distinguishing feature was that he wore thick-rimmed glasses.

"Yes, Jones?" she asked. Imperious, her voice was. She might well have been a queen herself.

"We tried talking to the maid," he replied, almost apologetically, as though his presence offended her. "Luckily we managed to get an interpreter in, but she didn't have anything new to tell us. All she did was open the door, see the body, then run right out again. She was too shocked to see anything, she said. She said that two of the other witnesses saw more than she did, because they came into the room with her after she called for help, while she was still too shocked to look."

"I see," Eileen mused. "I suppose we should call on these two witnesses. Names?"

Jones stared down at a notebook in his hand.

"Uhm – they'd be Remy LeBeau and Anna Raven. Officer in charge thinks the names are false. They could be tricky. You wanna talk to them personally?"

Eileen Harsaw's eyes were momentarily incredulous. Remy LeBeau? She knew that name. She'd only met him a couple of times – but she knew the name all right. Remy LeBeau, alias – Gambit.

The tarot card flipped about absently between her fingers.

Tarot cards, playing cards.

Symbols and weapons both.

She grimaced.

"Yes. I would like to talk to them," she said.

Everything seemed different when he wasn't drunk. Everything was outlined with some inexorable clarity. That blurred edge, that indistinct fine line was lost to the Real World. It instilled in Remy a sense of profound disquiet. Why was he so divorced from everything? Why was everything so divorced from everything else? That was why it pained him to touch her. Because even if he did, touching her felt less than real. It was all her fault anyway – she couldn't really blame him for feeling this way. She was the one who'd dragged him away from the edge; the edge over which everything was blissful, and right, and proper and true, simply because it held none of the clarity that human mortality lent to life. She couldn't understand. She couldn't understand what it was like to taste that light, to be withheld from it, and to return to what was only a paler shade of existence.

That was why he was being quiet. That was why he didn't really care that she was taking these back roads at God-knew-how-many-miles-per-hour. Because even if she did happen to lose control, at least then he'd end up where he was rightfully meant to be.

He looked up at the road ahead. Not a car, not a truck in sight.

Damn.

On the other hand, there was something rather romantic and nostalgic about sitting on the back of the motorbike, letting her take the lead, giving himself into the passive activity of simply remembering.

It was easy to remember as he sat there, arms wrapped around her waist, thighs cupping her hips, pressing himself against her backside and daydreaming of being in a different (yet achingly similar) position. He was almost humming to himself as he idly studied the nape of her neck. Yup, he thought, Michelangelo eat your heart out. Marble's a waste o' money in comparison to dis. Unlike marble though, skin was made to be touched. It was also that much harder to steal. Not that much harder for a thief of his repertoire. But where Rogue was concerned, nothing was as simple as it seemed.

They'd only given into temptation twice. One – that crazy night in Antarctica. Two – the night after she'd picked him up from the airport after that equally insane time-jaunt[2]. Perfect imperfect memory. He remembered sitting up against her like this, with his cheek against her shoulder blade and his hands clasped about her midriff. Her hair had been longer then. He'd just sat there and nestled his face in it. He hadn't a clue what shampoo she'd been using back then. But it had smelt good. Real good, and definitely different from what she used now.

For the moment the haziest of memories became clear to him, and he was lost in lilac shades of lavender scent.

"Remy, you're hard!"

Rogue was shouting at him over the whirring of the engine, and the nebulous memory of hair and perfume dissipated. Suddenly he was back on the road again, battling against the wind, turning a blind corner at a speed even Evel Knievel would have found galling. It took a moment for her words to register.

"I'm what?! Oh. Right." He figured he should be feeling more embarrassed than he actually was.

"You better get rid o' that, sugah," she shot at him accusingly. "It's givin' me goosebumps."

He was going to tell her that a good case of les freesons[3] wasn't always a bad thing, but decided against it. He didn't think she'd appreciate the innuendo. Instead he slackened his grip on her a little. It wasn't exactly what he wanted to do, considering the speed she was going at, but either way, he was going to be in trouble. Lose-lose situation, Gambit, he thought wryly. Or perhaps it was win-win. He wasn't really sure whether he cared about love or life anymore.

"Chere," he yelled, out of a lingering sense of duty, "You do know that you're not invulnerable anymore, don't you?!"

She did not reply. Instead she swerved onto the grass verge and ground the bike to a halt, leapt down from the seat and strode off, her back to him. He watched her silently as she paused by the side of tree and punched it viciously. Once upon a time – not that long ago, mind you – a punch like that would have felled the tree in one deadly swoop. Now her fist connected with the raw, unyielding bark and she cried out, her fury negated by the jolting yet unfamiliar shock of pain. She turned away, her shoulders crumpled, nursing her bleeding hand with the other.

"Ah want to leave," she stated, her voice muffled.

"Can't leave, chere," he answered calmly, "We been sequestered. 'Sides, we skip town now, we get in trouble wit' de cops an' dat's somet'ing I don' personally want t' deal wit' right now."

She laughed coldly. "You're kiddin', right? You, master thief and Patriarch of the Unified Guilds, scared o' the police?"

"Sometimes, chere, it's best not t' go paradin' yourself in front o' de jaws of de lion. Not until y' know how you gonna outsmart it first," he said.

Her shoulders fell again, her head dropped. She shuddered like leaves whipped up by an autumn wind.

"Ah want t' go home," she whimpered, like a petulant child.

"Where exactly is home?" he asked her.

"Anywhere but here!" she burst out bitterly. Her voice shook with tears. Only then did he leap down and go to her, but he could do no more than lay one hand upon one shoulder, and even then his fingers were cold and uncertain.

"Rogue, look, I know it hurts, chere. An' right now I wish t' God dat you hadn't seen what we all saw dis afternoon. But we gotta t'ink rational about dis, right? We gotta help dat poor girl get some justice, an' right now de best we can do for her is stay here."

Rogue turned to him, eyes moist, blazing.

"Ah don't care about her! Ah care about us! An' ah don't want t' stay! Ah don't want to stay here anymore!" She began to cry again, and he held her to him, but his hands were on her shoulders. "Why won't you touch me?" she wailed into his chest. "Why have you changed so much? Do you hate me, Remy? Do you? 'Cos last night you had to be drunk, you had be drunk before you would touch me, before you would tell me y' wanted to fuck me, an' you can't remember any of it, not one li'l bit, an' it hurts, it hurts so goddamn much!"

He was silent, flipping round two extremes inside his head and unable to work out which one was her and which one was not.

"An' that woman," she continued, voice now thick and flat, "that poor woman, she was lookin' at you all night, an' ah don't know why, maybe ah'm crazy, but ah keep on thinkin' what if ah was her? What if ah was her? B'cause ah left that stupid bar not long after her, an' it could've been me; an' ah couldn't find you anywhere after you left, you'd disappeared, so what if ah had been the victim an' you weren't there to…"

She trailed off on a sharp intake of breath. Something had shocked her into silence, but she didn't know what it was. She stepped back, uncertain of what it was that she'd just been enlightened with. Her green eyes gazed back up into his red ones, searching. So hopelessly in-love that love had withered in on itself. How far gone was it? How corrupted was their love?

"Ah tried so hard t' bring you back t' me," she whispered, holding his bare hands between her bare hands. The bruises on her knuckles stood out like sprigs of blossoming heartsease. How sweet, how bitter! To finally touch and to want so much more! "Doesn't that mean anythin' t' you?"

"It means your love is strong, p'tite," he answered softly. "But that it ain't strong enough t' let me go."

"Ah've let you go too many times t' make the same mistake again," she admitted, cheeks pale and tear-stained. "An' whatever you want, ah ain't gonna let you slip away from me again."

Stalemate.

She wanted to give, he would not accept.

All the way back to the motel, a memory from another life haunted him, the memory of lavender scented hair.

Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since Lizzie Brown had lost her life. The night was as humid as the night before; Rogue was in the shower, basting her skin with gel and foam, washing away, as she perceived it, a day's worth of tainted experience. Remy, on the other hand was in the room, cursing. Taking his trenchcoat off, he had only just realised that his black shirt was half-wet with a huge, dark blot of blood, right on the spot where Vargas' scar was. And then, on the crisp, white bed linen that no one had seen fit to change – due to the traumatic events of the day – he'd noticed two spots of the same crimson liquid, dried, bold and unambiguous as two glinting red rubies.

"Merde."

In a flurry of movement he'd stripped off his shirt, and ripped away the bed linens with the greatest alacrity. The bundle of offending material now in his arms, he took the opportunity to gaze down and gingerly inspect his bare chest. Blood was smeared ever so slightly on the taut skin near the scar. He cursed again. Evidence of …what? He did not know what exactly. He was scared of the blood. He dabbed it away with a tissue and threw it in the waste basket, just as Rogue was coming out of the bathroom.

"Remy, what in tarnation are you doin'?"

He knew he must've looked strange, standing there without his shirt on, the white bed linens piled in his arms. He didn't particularly care – all he was praying at the moment was that she didn't smell the metallic tang of fresh blood.

"Not'ing, chere, I'm just changin' de bedclothes is all," he replied as innocently as he could.

"Changin' the bedclothes?" Her voice held the sarcastic note of a housewife who knew she'd never catch her husband doing household chores unless he wanted something outside of the kitchen.

"Yeah," he replied, dropping his load carefully so that his shirt was lost underneath the starchy mass of white cotton. He began to pull off the duvet cover. "No one came t' do it today, what wit' all de commotion an' all, so, y'know…"

"You thought you'd do it?" Rogue's look was incredulous. She paused. "Where's your shirt?"

"Gonna put it in de laundry," he returned, a little too quickly.

"Remy, what are you up to?"

"Not'ing, ma mignonne."

"You ain't called me that in ages. Are you angling for somethin'? B'cause if you are, you're mistaken if you think that bein' shirtless an' doing the chores is even remotely sexy t' me."

"Gambit's anglin' for not'ing," he answered. That at least was the truth. In some ways, after their conversation earlier on, he wished it wasn't. It probably would have kept her happy if he had been angling. It certainly would also have stopped her from looking at him in the blatantly suspicious manner she was bestowing him with right now. "Like he said, he's changin' de bed linen," he finished, with a note of finality.

Having completed his task, he heaved the whole bundle into his arms, taking care not expose his black shirt underneath it all. Then he turned to the door and pulled it open.

"Won't be long," he told her. Even as he made his escape he could feel the disbelief of her gaze boring into his back like gimlets.

He made his way down to the laundry room, carrying the load like some precious parcel. Down the corridor, turn right at the corner. It was as he was turning right that he bumped into the balding, scrawny manager. The linens in his arms lurched ominously.

"Sorry," Remy muttered, heart racing, shifting the bundle into its previous position. "Shouldn' have been takin' dat corner de way I was."

"No, ah'm sorry, son," the manager half-smiled. His lips were yellow and nervous. "Ah should've been paying more attention."

"You've had a lot on your mind today," Remy returned the half-smile. All he really wanted to do was forget the niceties and race to that laundry room. "Can't blame you for bein' distracted."

"It's terrible, terrible," the manager shook his head, brow furrowed. "That poor woman, in mah motel, mah motel. Who would've guessed… It's just weird you know, unreal… It shouldn't be happenin' t' good folks like us. And honestly, what kind of a reputation am ah going to have after all this dies down? What kind of a reputation?"

The man shook his head again, tutting, trembling – too much heroin from his previous life. Now his eyes were on the bundle in Remy's arms.

"Expect it'll all blow over in time," Remy replied. "Jus' gotta accept dat sometimes dese t'ings happen."

The manager looked less than convinced, but he nodded.

"Say, aren't you one of those guys that was first on the scene?" he asked, by way of making conversation. He'd obviously lost the art since his days of wealth and power.

"Yup. I'm stayin' in de room next door," Remy explained after he moment, eyes wandering. All he wanted to do was getting to that friggin' laundry room…

"Oh yeah, room 100, ah remember now, with that girl, that pretty girl with the white stripe in her hair…" The man was almost babbling, as if desperate to make small talk, as if frantic for some sense of normalcy. Remy almost felt sorry for him. The man's eyes were looking up into his with an almost ravenous expression, hungry for acceptance.

"Yeah. My Queen o' Diamonds," he replied, impulsively, not knowing quite why he'd said it.

"Queen of Diamonds?" the thin man repeated in confusion.

"Pet name," Remy returned, after a moment. What the fuck was he talking about?

"Heh. Hard as nails, you mean?" the older man said with a knowing smile.

"She can be ruthless," he admitted, not knowing why he was confiding in this stranger. "But she can also be…" He faltered. The pang in his chest ached. The ache in his chest panged. Had a part of him crossed the line into death after all? Because when he thought of making love to her, it seemed to be a lifetime away…

The manager regarded him, head cocked, one corner of his mouth raised. At last he nodded vigorously, humorously.

"Ah understand, ah understand completely. Women, eh? Ah was married once, y'know. Pained me. Pained me hard." He sighed. "Women," he repeated sombrely, as if he remembered his wife, as if he remembered Lizzie Brown, and the word faded on his lips, and there was regret in his eyes. Then he shook himself, and held out his hand to Remy. "Ah'm Chase, Chase Beddows. Manager of this place, but probably not for very much longer."

Whatever that meant. Remy shifted his bundle into the other arm and shook the man's hand. He was distracted. He wanted to get away.

"Remy LeBeau," he murmured in acknowledgement.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. LeBeau," Chase nodded amiably. "And since you've been sequestered, ah guess you an' your girlfriend will be seeing a lot more of me over the next few days." He sighed again. "Damned cops."

Remy nodded absently. The wet patch on his shirt was soaking into his left arm.

"Well, ah'll let you get to it," Chase said. "Got a broken sink to check out. Oh, and by the way, tomorrow the maids will be back to work, so you won't need to worry about doing all that laundry stuff yerself, okay?"

"Great."

Chase Beddows left.

Remy practically ran to the laundry.

Rogue had been combing out her hair and staring into the mirror, when she'd noticed the bloody tissue inside the waste basket underneath the dressing table. She'd stared at it for a long while, pulling the comb through the strands of her hair, her eyes faintly troubled. But she did nothing. She did not stop combing her hair, and she did not bend over to inspect what she saw. She stood there, combing, until Remy returned, fresh linens in his arms. He looked like he'd been running.

"Everythin' okay, sugah?" she asked nonchalantly.

"Yup, bien," he replied, and got to work putting on the bedclothes once more.

It was when he'd finished that the knock at their door came. Rogue answered it, while Remy pulled on a white T-shirt. The woman at the door was much taller than Rogue and was blonde haired and blue eyed.

"Can ah help you?" Rogue asked, looking the woman up and down, only for the woman to look her up and down in return.

"Jackson crime lab," the woman replied at last. "Can I speak to you please?"

"This is to do with the murder?" Rogue asked, plaintive.

"Yes."

Rogue stepped back and the woman walked in. Remy eyed her in the mirror. She looked far too attractive to be a CSI, but then he should have learnt by now that no one should judge a book by its cover. Or a cover by the book inside, he added to himself wryly.

"Won't you sit down?" Rogue offered, pointing to one of only two chairs in the room as she closed the door to. One thing Rogue hadn't bargained for, and that was that too much of normal life meant being polite. Rogue's brand of politeness had been borrowed from classic films and romantic fiction. Her manners were as stale and stilted and melodramatic as her nature was tough and fiery and passionate.

"Thank you."

The woman sat down in the most comfortable chair. She took up a notepad from her pocket and ran her eyes over it; Remy knew that she was pretending to read. His suspicions immediately heightened.

"So," the woman said, looking up at him from under shiny black eyelashes. "You're Remy LeBeau, right? And you," her eyes flicked to Rogue. "You're Anna Raven. The name you gave when you registered here yesterday was different. May I ask why?"

Rogue blushed – she was that good that Remy couldn't even tell whether she was faking or not. "Well… ah ain't actually supposed t' be here," she replied, voice coy with embarrassment. "Mah husband thinks…"

"I see," the woman interrupted coolly. "So Anna Raven would be your real name then?"

Rogue nodded mutely. But there was nothing false about her expression. Nothing false at all. It was entirely as if she'd just answered the truth.

The woman scribbled something into her pad. It was, most likely, a load of rubbish.

"So," she began quietly, still scribbling. "The Rogue has a name after all. Anna Raven – what a strange, touching name."

Rogue stood stock-still, as if she'd been shot. Her eyes were suddenly wide. Remy took a step forward, red eyes blazing.

"Just how the hell d' you…?"

"I suggest you keep quiet, Remy LeBeau – or should I say, Gambit?" the woman cut in, shooting him a fierce look. "It might be safer – a lot safer – for you if you say nothing."

Remy clamped his mouth shut.

"Who are you?" Rogue asked.

"Eileen Harsaw, head CSI." Eileen flashed an ID card at them, then put it away abruptly, knowing that it meant nothing. She sat back in the creaky chair, her countenance faintly sardonic. "It seems a little ironic, doesn't it, that the last time we met was in the fairytale realm of the superhero and the supervillain, and that now – so many years later – we meet again under the futile guise of the normal human 'flatscans'." She paused, and her smile was wan. "For us, it is humanity that is the mask, isn't it? Normality is the fallacy. We are frauds in a world that disowns us. In that, we are the same. And as such, you have nothing to fear from me – yet."

"Phantazia," Remy spoke through gritted teeth. The look she passed him was almost one of surprise.

"You have a good memory," she admitted begrudgingly. "Considering we barely met. Considering neither of you even saw my face."

"Supervillain or no, women always have a certain perfume," he replied mockingly. "An' a certain way o' speakin' down t' others."

"Ah." She looked half amused, half chastised. Rogue moved away from the door slowly, like a rat caught in a corner.

"What do you want from us?" she asked.

"What my job requires me to ask of you," Eileen replied simply. "It would seem that fate has brought us together in a rather more mundane manner than on previous occasions; or perhaps not as mundane as we think." She sat back again, considering. "You both feel…strange to me. The electrical currents inside you are…different. Fluctuated. Changed. Especially with you. Do you prefer to be called Anna these days? Or is she as make-believe as the Rogue?" She grinned at Rogue. "You're both currently powerless, aren't you? I suppose that must be a godsend to you, Anna. Isn't it nice, to feel him inside you when he fucks you?"

Rogue blushed. Not from embarrassment, not at the bluntness of the question, but from shame. Because she didn't really know. Because she was empty as an old, cavernous well, and she hated to admit it.

"If you're quite done tauntin' us den I suggest you get out," Remy spoke up icily. "Unless you actually have a point in comin' here."

Eileen's face was quite calm.

"Actually, I came here to ask you a question." She lifted up the tiny notebook, scanned it briefly. "The police records show that you left the bar last night before Anna did. What were you doing, in the time between you left her and the time she got back to your room?"

Remy's face went pale. It made his eyes seem to flash all the more.

"Are you insinuatin'…?"

"I asked you a question, Mr. LeBeau," Eileen interrupted coldly.

"You mean t' say you actually suspect me?" he raged. "Fuck you! What you suggestin' is bullshit! I'd never touch an innocent woman, never do the kind o' sick things dat freak did t' dat lady! Fuck you! I don' have t' answer your goddamn questions!"

"It's in your best interest to do so, Mr. LeBeau."

"No! I don't have t' answer a goddamn t'ing!"

"Just answer the question, Remy." Rogue's voice was small, low. He stared at her, jaw tensing; then back at Eileen.

"I was comin' back t' de motel," he finally answered through clenched teeth. "An' den I went t' bed."

"You came straight back?"

Remy nodded.

"And what time did you arrive back here?"

He glared at her.

"I don't know."

"No clue?"

"No."

"Not even a rough estimate?"

"No!"

Eileen was silent, disbelieving. Rogue looked on, arms crossed about her as if she were cold. Her eyes were darting back and forth between them, resting every so often, imperceptibly, on the dressing table opposite her.

"He was drunk," she spoke up softly. "He wouldn't remember."

"I see. And your clothing? What were you wearing on the night of the murder?" Eileen persisted relentlessly.

Remy stared blankly. Now that his rage was passing, his face had gone deathly white. He couldn't speak. Couldn't say a thing.

"He was wearing those pants," Rogue offered again. "And the shirt…" She paused, took in a breath. "He put it in the laundry."

"The laundry."

Eileen's voice was sharp, punctuated as a cold winter morning. Her clear, blue eyes lifted to his, the words behind them as unambiguous as headlights. His rage flared again. That she should suspect him – him – of murdering an innocent, unknown woman in cold blood when he could not even bear to touch the woman he loved… Loved? Yes, loved. Maybe, too much, or maybe too little, he couldn't tell. It didn't matter. Irrelevant. Even if he could find it in himself to touch Rogue, dammit, he'd never kill a defenceless woman. He'd killed enough wicked men to know that to kill was not right.

Tainted; hands tainted as filth; wicked beyond repair. The Pig, Sinister, the Morlocks, New Son…Live to fight another day, and all with hands tainted as muck and filth.

"Get out!" he suddenly roared, his wrath all the more fearful for the fact that he did not move a muscle, not an inch. "Get out!"

Eileen stood, placid in the eye of the storm. Her expression was as stone.

"It's late," she stated matter-of-factly. "I'll leave you for now. But I'll be back tomorrow to resume my questioning." To turned to Rogue, scornful, derisive. "Don't worry, Anna, I'll see myself out."

She strode to the door, left with her contempt thick in the air. As soon as her footsteps had died away, Rogue strode to the dressing table and bent down over the waste basket.

"De fuck she comes back here tomorrow!" Remy exploded. "Who de hell does she t'ink she is, accusin' me like dat?!" Rogue said nothing, stood upright, looked him in the eye. Between her fingers he saw the bloody tissue hanging with the baleful portent of some blood-drenched noose.

"How long has this been in here?" she asked him, steely quiet.

"I…" he began, gaping.

Blood, blood dripping, one, two, over still-warm flesh.

He swallowed, bile suddenly thick in his throat.

"I didn't do it, chere," he whispered hoarsely.

Wordlessly Rogue took the tissue into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. Then she returned, and put her arms round him as if to say: I know you didn't.

But her mouth said nothing.

[1] X-Men Unlimited #2.

[2] Gambit #16, although that's just speculation on my part.

[3] Goosebumps.