. IV .
Eileen Harsaw stood in the doorway, one arm outstretched and resting against the frame. There was something different in her expression – it was no longer hard, no longer pretentious. Her face had blossomed overnight, not in the way that young girls' faces bloom into womanhood, but in the way that one wakes to a new day with joy in one's heart, without reason or rhyme other than that the joy is there. Eileen Harsaw was smiling, and for the first time Remy realised how beautiful she really was.
"I t'ought you CSI's didn' have much to smile about," he quipped, refusing to move out of her way and let her in.
"There's something for us to smile about when a case opens wide open," she replied smoothly. "And when one's …ah – doubts – shall we say, are proved right."
"Meanin'?"
"Meaning, will you let me in?"
He did so, but only because her face rather than her words were intriguing him. Once again she sat in what was fast becoming her favourite chair.
"Anna out again?" she asked.
"What does it look like? An' why d'you keep on callin' her dat?"
"I don't know," she shrugged. "I suppose it suits her. Anna. Short. Sweet. It's also a palindrome. Goes both ways, backwards or forwards. Anna; Anna. See?"
Remy passed her an odd look. For one thing he wasn't used to hearing this ex-villain sounding so upbeat. For another, her words had somehow both bewildered and enlightened him.
"An' why exactly are you here?" he asked, finally, annoyed. He didn't particularly want to hear about palindomes or whatever the hell they were called.
"I suppose you heard about the second killing?" she asked him coolly.
"Is dat a t'ing t' smile 'bout?" he asked, scowling. Last night, when the news had come to him through Chase, he'd automatically felt responsible for the old woman's death. Rogue had tried to reason with him, saying that none of it was his fault; he, on the other hand, had figured he should have been able to stop it, because he knew something about cards. Rogue had, obviously, told him it was all ridiculous. Then they'd argued about it, and had gone to bed without speaking to one another. What had happened after that had just made things ten times worse, in a peculiar, surreal sort of way.
He thought of Rogue's quick, light breathing; swallowing, he pushed the thought away, suddenly embarrassed.
"It's both a curse and a blessing," Eileen was answering his sarcastic question. "It's a curse because – well, the reason's obvious, I suppose. And it's a blessing because we get a more definitive look into the mind of the killer."
"Oh really?" Remy crossed his arms and looked down on her, one eyebrow arched. "An' why are you suddenly lettin' me in on all dis? Yesterday I was your prime suspect, or was dat all jus' some sort o' fancy set-up?"
Eileen looked up at him, fully returning his caustic glance.
"You might be happy t' know, Mr. LeBeau, that we checked out your relationship to Lizzie Brown and found nothing. Same with Dorothy MacKenzie. And your shirt came back with negative results. The blood wasn't Lizzie Brown's. It was yours." She narrowed her eyes at him. "A small, localised bloodstain. Have you cut yourself recently?"
Speechlessly, Remy lifted up his shirt, baring Vargas' scar to her. For a moment, Eileen stared at the wound without speaking; then she sat back again, her expression thoughtful.
"Fascinating," she murmured in an exact replica of what Hank would have said. "An old wound that still bleeds – I've never come across that before. Ever heard of stigmata? They say it's a psychological manifestation of Christ's wounds on the crucifix, as if the person who has the stigmata takes on the suffering of the God they love."
"Dat a fact?" he replied, eyebrow raised. Religious debates were hardly to his taste, and he sincerely doubted that he was taking on the suffering of a God who had infringed upon his life only on those odd occasions when he had been dragged to church.
"That's a pretty nasty injury," she continued meditatively. "And you survived it?"
"Chere, I'm an X-Man," he returned; the bitter irony in his voice was not lost on her. "You should know dat we always live to fight another day."
"You sound as if you wish you hadn't," she mused.
He looked away. She wondered at the way his eyes seemed to glow of their own volition, when stimulated by emotion or stress. Obviously he didn't want to talk about it. She decided to drop it. It interested her little what the X-Men got up to nowadays, much less their personal lives. What interested her was the wound.
"Do you know why it bleeds?" she asked instead.
"You de scientist, chere. You're de one who should know."
"Was it the wound that took away your powers?"
"Not as such, though it may be one o' de reasons." He wasn't about to explain the fiasco with Khan and his intergalactic invading army to her.
"So does Anna have the same wound too? Does hers bleed as well?"
He glowered at her, both in irritation and uneasiness at her questions.
"Look, if you don't have a reason in comin' here, den I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave me alone. I got other t'ings to be t'inkin' about right now."
"Such as?" Her eyes had drifted to bed. At the end the Queen of Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts and Spades had been laid out in a row. "I see you've been working on our little puzzle."
He scowled at her. "I thought maybe I could do somet'ing about it," he admitted quietly.
Eileen got up, and wordlessly removed the Queen of Spades and Clubs from the row. "These two have already been eliminated," she said clinically. "Queen of Spades/Pentacles, and Queen of Clubs/Swords. That leaves Hearts/Cups and Diamonds/Wands."
"Hearts an' Cups, eh?" he half joked. "I don' see de connection."
"In the tarot, the suit of Cups is linked to human emotions," she replied dryly. "Hence, Hearts." She turned to him. "I finally worked out the pattern of the killings. Each suit also represents an element. Earth to Pentacles, air to Swords, water to Hearts, fire to Wands. That signifies his method of killing. And I also know who he's going to kill next – symbolically at least. In the tarot, the cards are always packed in a certain order. First Wands, then Cups, then Swords, and then Pentacles."
"Pentacles, Swords…De killer's workin' backwards," Remy murmured, stroking the stubble on his chin.
"Which means Hearts is next," Eileen retorted grimly. She threw the two cards back on the bed. "I've had the police stake out all bodies of water in a ten-mile radius. If we're lucky, we should be able to catch the killer before he attacks again."
"You t'ink he's gonna fall for dat? Dis be a small town, chere. De guy's obviously a local. He knows his victim's personalities as dey relate to de tarot. Word spreads fast round here. He probably knows how your li'l operation is workin' already."
"And what do you suggest we do?" she frowned at him. "Unless you go and pull one of your insane X-Men stunts."
"I'm on sabbatical," he replied, glancing at her shrewdly. "Unless, o' course, dat was your sole reason for comin' here. Could you askin' for my help, 'Eileen'?"
"I'm only asking for you to keep your eyes peeled, Remy," she sniffed. "I'm sure a person of your – uh – considerable skill would be useful to the investigation."
"I'm flattered," he answered dryly. "But dere's still too many questions t' be asked 'bout dis killer. Like why he's targetin' women. An' why he's workin' backwards. An' what he's tryin' t' tell us."
"All irrelevant," she returned. "What matters is finding the perp. And as it happens, I think we have a pretty good chance now of catching the bastard."
"I hope so," Remy muttered darkly.
She suddenly sighed.
"Well, I guess I shouldn't take up anymore of your 'quality time'. Just remember what I said, okay?"
"Sure thing. Eyes peeled."
She stopped when she got to the door.
"Oh and Remy?" she began, turning and looked over her shoulder at him.
"Quoi?"
"Take care of yourself, okay? Not just as regards to the bleeding. I'm not sure what the reason is, but the electrical currents inside your body are behaving rather strangely. Maybe it's part of the reason why you lost your powers, or vice versa. It's almost like a part of you is switched off. Or in stasis. Or…"
"Not even there at all?" he finished.
"I wouldn't go so far as to say that…" she faltered off, then shook her head. "Just take care of yourself, okay?"
"I will."
I knew it, he thought, when she'd left. A part o' me did cross over an' die dat day in Madripoor.
Knowing the truth didn't make him feel any better.
When Rogue returned, she was carrying something rather strange in her hands. The gun was clutched between her fingers like a totem pole from a foreign clan that bore no manner of relation to the person that now held it.
"All the women in town are gettin' scared," she explained, when Remy had simply stood there and gaped at her. "There's barely a body in sight out a' doors. But then ah met this really nice girl, Annie Walters is her name, she works at the local ammo store, y'know? She said ah oughta have somethin' t' protect mahself with, so ah said okay, it made sense, don't wanna get caught like those other poor women did, may their souls rest in peace."
All the while she was talking she'd sat down on the edge of bed and was very calmly loading bullets into the chamber. Remy had looked at her, trying to get a grasp on what she was saying. She had been talking so strangely – her accent was so thick and her words so clipped that he could barely register what she had said.
"Rogue," he began at last, when he'd finally gathered his wits. "Why de hell did you buy a gun? You don't need it. You never have. You're an X-Man, for God's sake. You can protect yourself. I mean, they don't call you the Rogue for not'ing, right? 'Sides, even if you did get in trouble, you got me to protect you, n'est-ce-pas?"
She looked up at him in feigned astonishment. "Do ah? Do ah really, Remy? S'funny – you haven' seemed that bothered 'bout the way ah've been feelin' recently, have you." She looked down again, continuing to load bullets. "Y'know, sometimes ah think ah barely know you anymore, Remy. You've changed, an' y' won't talk t' meh 'bout it. Why're you doin' this t' meh, Remy? Why're you hurtin' meh so much?"
Her hands were shaking as finished loading the gun. She'd left the box of ammunition lying precariously on the edge of the bed; she was quivering so much that suddenly it slid over the end and crashed onto the floor noisily. She started and cried out like a cat; bullets rolled this way and that in a myriad of brassy reflected light. For a moment he thought she would bend over and pick them up, but instead she dropped her head into her hands and began to tremble so hard he almost fancied she'd shatter into a million pieces.
"What's happenin' t' meh?" she suddenly wailed into her hands. "Why can't ah think straight? Am ah goin' crazy?"
It was one of those rare, rare moments, when Rogue was vulnerable and showed it. Some part of him was moved into that old familiar reaction, where he would put his arms round her, and try to console her. So often she'd only pushed him away, making her vulnerability all the more unbearable to him. But this time she did not push him away. Instead she clung to him as if she would never let go, her trembling racking his body so that, for the first time, it was he who felt guilty, not her. Paradoxically, he felt guilty for all the things that she'd once felt so guilty about – for being unable to touch her, for being unable to give her what she wanted, for being unable to fully trust her. Despite everything he'd lost to her, he could not help but felt ashamed for suddenly feeling so cold.
"You ain't goin' crazy, chere," he tried to comfort her. "You ain't."
"You don't understand!" she cried. "For so long ah've lived mah life bein' both Rogue and dozens of other people, all at the same time, all in one go. An' God knows that was hard enough. But now ah feel like there's two of me inside mah head, and ah don't know which one's the real me and which one isn't! Ah'm scared, Remy, an' ah ain't just scared of this crazy killer that's out there, ah'm scared of me! Sometimes ah just feel like…like…"
She stopped abruptly, shuddering in his arms, and suddenly he half understood what the gun was for. His heart hurt.
"Anna Raven…is she you?" he asked impulsively.
"Ah don't know," she whimpered. "Maybe she was, once. Ever since we got here, she's been comin' at me like some mem'ry ah'd tossed away an' buried over. Maybe she's the me that ah always wanted to be, but could never become. Maybe she's just a wish, a fairytale, a dream, a fantasy."
She drew away from him, her moist, green eyes staring timorously into his own.
"She scares me, Remy. She scares me so much. An' the more you push me away, the more she won't let me go. Ah'm so confused, Remy. She's just a ghost. Ah don't want her. Ah want you."
"Chere, right now you know I can't…"
"Can't what? Tell me you love me?" Tears were sliding out of her eyes freely now. "It was so easy for you to tell me on the astral plane, when you were leavin' me behind. It was only because you were leavin' that ah knew, ah just knew that ah'd never be able t' let you go again. Ah finally got it into mah stupid head what the two of us meant. An' now you're denyin' us, Remy, an' it's as though we never meant anythin' in the first place!"
Despite everything she was sure, so damn well certain of their love that he was both envious and frustrated with her. He felt it again, that same recurring pang in his heart, so violent, so urgent that the breath was forced out of him.
"Rogue," he began, trying to be patient, trying to wrestle against the ache in his chest. "What happened on the astral plane changed us. Not just me, chere, but de both of us. We've changed…"
"So what?!" she burst out; two tears were trickling, one, two, across each cheek. "Rogue still loves you, Anna still loves you! We both love you!"
The words seemed to shock the both of them. Rogue halted, horror on her face, shaking, shaking as though her whole world was crumbling down beneath her; her eyes widened so that the green fire in them seemed to dim and burn, dim and burn… And he could only stare at her, aghast, as her words stabbed into the core of him in all their infinite strangeness.
For the first time, her love was unconditional.
And it killed him almost as much as the time when it had not been.
Now she was staring at him, mouth opened into a small, disbelieving O. "Oh mah Lord," she whispered. Was it a dream? Was it a dream that he saw the death, the terror inside him reflected in those emerald eyes? "Ohmigod, Remy, you're bleedin'!"
He looked down, dazed. The single red rose was forming on his T-shirt, splaying outward, unfolding, unfurling its petals so that he was both entranced and confused. It couldn't have been blood, could it? It was too beautiful.
"Remy!" she was calling from far away. "Remy, what's happenin'?! What should ah do! Oh please God, no!"
He did not even remember keeling over and into her arms.
When next he regained consciousness he was lying on the bed, his head cradled in her arms against her bosom. It could have been seconds, minutes or days since he'd blacked out. He could still feel the blood on his chest, wet and sticky, relegating the length of his unconsciousness to seconds or minutes. The metallic stench of blood hung in the air.
"Mon amour, suivez-moi dans le lumière,[1]" he muttered thickly, feeling her lips on his forehead. He had the odd, fleeting impression of being back in his old life.
"Remy?" her breath quivered in his hair. "Remy, chere? What did you just say?"
He did not reply. The swimming sensation of contentment was fading away from him fast. He could not even remember what it was he had said. It seemed, for the second time, that she had drawn him away from the light and back into reality. He groaned, shifting. The pain in his chest had gone. The dampness on his shirt was cold. Vargas' wound had stopped bleeding.
"Remy, mah God, you're alive," she half-sobbed, hiccuping, holding him tight against her. There was time when such a position would have made him the happiest man alive. Now he just felt bewildered and confused. Through the softness of her blouse he could feel the sharpness of one nipple press against his cheek. It reminded him abstractly of that sultry, sensuous, arousing odour of lavender-scented hair, a memory from a stolen night so long ago.
"Am I?" he murmured hoarsely. "Am I alive?"
He sat up slowly, breaking free from her embrace. Had he been dreaming? However long he had been unconscious, it had felt like that free-floating, free-falling space in between sleep and wakefulness, when the one is neither here nor there, when one could leave one's body far, far behind. He still felt as light as a feather, disconnected from her arms, from her body, from the world.
Rogue was behind him, her hands on his back. It was only their warmth that grounded him in some sort of reality.
"Remy, what happened?" she asked uncertainly. "What's happenin' t' you? Tell me, sugah. Please tell me."
"Vargas' scar…" he began, then stopped. He didn't understand. He simply didn't understand any of it. How could he explain?
Slowly Rogue moved to kneel beside him. "Ah thought Hank had healed that scar," she stated quietly.
"Me too," he replied groggily, looking down into his upturned palms as if they could provide an answer. "But obviously he ain't. Somet'ing weird is happenin' t' me, Rogue, an' I don't have a clue why. All I know is it hurts. It hurts so bad…" His voice wavered to a stop, and she cupped his face in her hands, seeing the sadness in his eyes.
"Let me take your pain away, Remy," she begged him softly. "Please let me take it all away."
This was her atonement, offered freely to him. He could not answer. Why was she so beautiful, why did she make him want to love her? She, obliviously optimistic and obstinate to the last, mistook his expression for assent. Leaning forwards, she kissed him; her tongue, with coy, brave shyness, brushing against his as if to ask permission to love him. He did not know why he reached out for her, nor why he responded. Perhaps it was the light pressure of her fingers as they now rested in his hair; perhaps it was simply because he missed the taste of her. Perhaps because he loved her, only it hurt too damn much, right there, inside the scar. Or maybe it was because he could feel the way her body ached, and she'd somehow tricked him into wanting her.
On a bed, in some unnamed town, two shadows of their former selves kissed, each aware that the other was the shadow of one of the one they kissed.
"Ah wantcha to make love to me," she whispered against his mouth, seductive as the serpent. "Ah want us t' make believe everythin' is the way it was before all this."
She was tricking him! He could feel her body aching so much that he thought the aching was all his! How could he resist her? How could he repel her when she made him ache so much?
"Like Anna is make-believe?" he whispered back; accusations made in whispers as if to hide the wounds they dealt each other from the world. Her eyes burned then dimmed. For a mad moment he thought he'd killed her.
Someone knocked at the door, softly, reverently, as if they knew the nature of the singular embrace contained within. Remy remained silent, thwarted, still caught teetering on the brink of taking and rejecting her. When the knocking came again, it was louder, impatient; the single moment of decision was shattered.
Stalemate.
Unwilling, he removed his gaze from hers.
"Door's open," he called, "Come in!"
No reply. Rogue had backed off, her hands dropping to her knees, artfully demure.
"Come in!" he called again, this time with frustration.
There was a pause; then, from the gap underneath the door, someone pushed a small slip of paper into the room, the sound of it grating into the silence. Rogue held her breath, suddenly uneasy; Remy simply stared at the paper until it was lying fully on the threshold. His stomach flipped with an overpowering and instinctive sense of dread. No footsteps sounded outside the door. Wordlessly he shifted off of the bed and went to pick up the note.
It was a small, nondescript rag of notepaper, folded once over, four words written in broken handwriting on the front. 'Pour vous, La Mort'.
"What is it?" Rogue asked, seeing the sudden disquiet on Remy's face.
"It's for me," he replied, quietly. Slowly he unfolded the page and a card slipped out and onto the floor. It fell, landing on its back, upturned for all to see. A tarot card, black on white and frosted blue, the Grim Reaper, reaping souls and –peculiarly – fish.
Death.
"Oh mah Lord…" Rogue muttered into her hands, shocked. Remy had flung the door open and was looking up and down the corridor to no avail. Whoever had sent the message was gone.
"Shit!" he exclaimed, slamming the door shut.
"Remy, it's a tarot card," Rogue stammered, as he picked it up and stared at it. "Mah God, the killer was just outside our door!" Her face was whiter than he'd ever known it, so that she appeared stonier cold than the statue he'd come to fear she was. If she had been trembling before, she was trembling harder now. But he barely noticed. His mind now was working rabidly. The note had been addressed to him: pour vous, La Mort. For you, Death. And the card…The card was a message. A message he couldn't read, because, after all, there was no Death in the pack of cards Remy carried round with him; there was only the Joker.
Cursing, Remy grabbed his trenchcoat and threw it on, feeling his pockets for the bike keys.
"Remy, what're you doin'?" Rogue asked, her voice quivering with fear as she saw the suddenly fierce look on his face.
"Goin' out," he answered, folding up the tarot card back inside the note and dropping it into his pocket.
"Where?"
"The crime lab."
"What? Why? Remy, for God's sake please tell me what's goin' on!"
"You think I know?" he retorted, turning to look back at her, hand on the door handle. "Rogue, de killer's just sent me a message, God knows why, but he has. Eileen knows 'bout de tarot – maybe she can decipher it for me."
"Take me with you," she begged, jumping off the bed and going to him. Her cheeks were pale as she clutched onto the lapels of his coat with quivering hands. "Please don't leave me here, Remy, please don't leave me alone!"
"Non, non, chere, dis is personal," he shook his head stubbornly. "For some reason I'm already tangled up in dis mess, an' I can't get you involved too."
"Remy, the killer was here, he was here!" she exclaimed helplessly. "Please, ah'm beggin' you, please don't leave me alone again!"
He looked at her, Galatea, cold and white as marble, his love, his lover, crystallised.
"He won't hurt you," he said at last.
"How do you know?" she persisted.
"B'cause it's de Queen o' Hearts he's goin' t' kill next," he replied calmly, collectedly. "An' you ain't de Queen o' Hearts, Rogue."
Rogue, so fierce, so proud, so certain of the meaning of them, heard his rejection as clear as if he had slapped her in the face. For the first time in so long, she doubted; she doubted what they shared. Her hands slipped from his coat in resignation. The card that she'd given him, that he'd given back to her, that she'd given back to him in the snow[2] – she remembered it well. Too well. And now he'd handed that battered and faded card back to her, with all the love and pain and bitterness and regret that came with it.
"I won't be long," he told her, then turned, brushed past her and left.
Rogue locked the door, slowly, deliberately, eyes swimming. Then she slid to the floor and wept.
Annie Walters was not like the woman called Anna Raven, although, when they had met earlier that day, she had admired the brown-haired, green-eyed southern belle, if not for that unusual skunk-stripe in her hair, then certainly for her beauty and – dare she say it – sass. Anna was everything Annie was not: she was older, and wiser, and in-love, and her body ached in a way that Annie's never would.
Annie, sixteen, didn't like the ammo store – she was only doing her friend's shift because her friend was in a bad way after catching the flu (in summer?), and Annie was always the type who loved to help others. Unlike Anna Raven, Annie was fair-haired and blue-eyed, and though she was not meek, she was certainly quiet, and wistful, and prone to daydreaming. She admired strong women, because she was not particularly feisty or extroverted herself. She was a new instrument left unplayed; chaste, naive and untouched. In her free time, she liked to write poetry, or go and volunteer down at the community centre. She liked to read Dickens, Austen and Hardy to the crabby old grandmothers in the nearest old folks home.
Imagine being Annie Walters as she closes up for the night, unassuming, unknowing, unthinking; for she is untouched, and in this small town, the darkness of carnal knowledge has not fallen over her eyes. She is halfway through her task when a man comes, a man who she's seen around town often enough – she isn't stupid, just naive; no one can blame a girl for that, can they? – and he says that he really needs to buy some ammo, he's going hunting tomorrow morning with some friends, can he trouble her to open up again, if it's not too much to ask? She sees the man is in a dilemma and because she was always the type who loved to help others, she agrees. The man buys one box of ammunition for his rifle. He pays, then helps her to lock up. And, since he owes her one, and since there's the Tarot Card Killer roaming about (he says the name with a kind of derisive amusement), he offers to walk her home and keep her safe.
Annie is an orphan. The man knows that she lives with friends, who are on summer vacation somewhere up north. The man knows this because he's a loose acquaintance of Annie's friends. He says to her, oh, I know Mr and Mrs So-and-so, they talk about you a lot. That's the way he ingratiates himself. When he asks about the cat, who's sick, Annie doesn't find it odd to ask him inside the house so that he can see the cat and have a cup of tea. When he finishes the cup of tea, he leaves. Annie neglects to lock the door because it doesn't even occur to her, having been lulled into a false sense of security. She goes upstairs and runs a bath. While she is bathing, the man re-enters the house. The cat looks up, but recognises him and so goes back to sleep. The man knows Annie baths every night. He's been watching her, in his spare time.
When he walks in on her – quietly and calmly, for all the world as if he belongs there – that is when the darkness falls over Annie's eyes. But it is far too late. He holds her under the water, and she struggles with all the strength of her newfound knowledge, but it is too little, too late. Then he drags her wet body into the bedroom, and make-believes he loves her, because he can't really love her, yet he wants to love, even though a part of him is dead. Which is fitting, because, he realises abstractly, she is dead too.
When it is over, he rearranges her, as he has done Lizzie and Dottie before. Lizzie, Dottie, Annie. He likes the sound of their names together. That, he thinks, is the only inadvertent joy he gets out of loving them. Everything else is perfectly planned fantasy.
He slips the card underneath her left palm, and then the second; but already he is thinking about his next lover, and how she will be la reine des reines.
Annie's body, pillaged, will only be found thirty-six hours later.
Both Eileen and Dom Jones jumped when Remy came barging into the lab.
"What the hell are you doing here?!" she seethed, standing up by her workbench in indignation. "You're not even supposed to be able to get in here!"
"I'm a t'ief," he informed her through clenched teeth, as though it explained everything. Then he reached into his pocket, and slapped a slip of paper and a card onto the worktop in front of her. As she looked, all Eileen's previous sense of anger abruptly fell from her. She stared at the paper, with its short note, and then at the tarot card. Her cheeks were ashen. Dom said nothing.
"De bastard had de nerve t' pass it under my door," Remy said, eyes flashing.
Carefully Eileen picked up both note and card between her gloved fingers.
"'For you, Death'," she read quietly. She looked up at him, questioning. "Why would the killer send you a message? And why would he call you 'Death'?"
"I was hopin' you might be able to tell me," he answered darkly.
"Death," Eileen spoke thoughtfully. "Rather ironic, since he's the one who's dealing in it."
"Then why's callin' me La Mort?" Remy questioned in irritation. "You de one who's read up on de tarot, Eileen. Tell me what dis card means!"
"Well, the card is called Death," she retorted sarcastically. "What do you think it means? Death, corruption, decay, end…"
"But only inasmuch as death is a metaphor, Ms. Harsaw," the bespectacled CSI Jones spoke up from the sidelines. He blushed when they turned to him. "The Death card is about putrefaction," he explained rather self-consciously. "The old, the corrupt and the decayed… All these things have to undergo a death for the new to be reborn." He pointed to the picture on the card. "The fish that Death is reaping stand for the resurrection of souls. Fish are an ancient mythological symbol for the reincarnation of soul – from primitive mythologies to modern Christianity."
"Mon Dieu…" Remy muttered, half to himself.
"In its opposite aspect, this card also represents inertia and sleep," Jones continued, warming to the subject. "And some might say sleepwalking as well. Just like a part of oneself is…"
"Livin' an' kickin' an' walkin' around like a normal body, while inside a part o' him is dead?" Remy finished off, his gut suddenly churning. Jones passed him an odd look.
"Well, I suppose, if you want to put it in that way…" he conceded, after a moment.
"Shit," Remy hissed.
"What is it?" Eileen asked, perturbed by the sudden expression of horror and foreboding on his face. Remy looked away, down at the cloaked figure of Death.
"Dis guy – whoever de bastard is – he knows t'ings about me dat even Rogue don't know." He turned to face her, and his eyes were blazing red. "He knows me, Eileen. An' I don't have a clue how or why."
[1] 'My love, follow me into the light.'
[2] Uncanny X-Men 349-350. Wonder where that card is now?
Buh. There goes my brain. And for all you Romy fans out there, our couple will be sorting it out in suitably gory fashion in the next 2 chapters. I think…