Once divided...nothing left to subtract...
Some words when spoken...can't be taken back...
Walks on his own...with thoughts he can't help thinking...
Future's above...but in the past he's slow and sinking...
Caught a bolt 'a lightnin'...cursed the day he let it go...

Nothingman...
Nothingman…
Isn't it something?
Nothingman...

            ~Nothingman, Pearl Jam


CHAPTER 10: HAUNTED

"Come on, Remy," Storm taunted. Hovering in the air, black cape spread out behind her, her bright blue eyes gleamed with a touch of mischief.

"I'm not sure 'bout dis, chere," he said with a doubtful look at her. Standing there, every curve and muscle outlined by what they insisted was standard X-Men uniform, he felt more than a little ridiculous.

"The Danger Room is completely safe. I have set it to a low level of challenge. All tests indicate that you are well… and all you have to do is cross the room."

"Somehow I'm t'inkin' it's not as easy as you make it sound."

"Can it be that the vaunted Gambit is frightened?" she asked with the hint of a smile.

His chest puffed with pride before he could catch himself, and then he grinned at her, askance. "You tryin' to bait me, chere?"

She only smiled, and he felt wind rise around him, ruffling through his hair gently at first, then increasing in force.

"I see how it is," he muttered with a smirk.

"Begin program," Storm said, and then the room seemed to explode with obstacles and items.

He saw a flash of light as a flurry of laser beams erupted, and he threw himself through the air on instinct, twisting his lithe body to avoid their rays. With a handspring forward off the floor, he was in motion again, arms and legs twisting and slicing through air with graceful ease as they dodged, spine coiling, rolling and flexing as he turned his body sideways to avoid another lance of light. He hit the floor in a forward roll and came up standing, something warning him not to stay in one place too long.

He dodged to the right—again on pure instinct—and something sharp whistled past his ear. He threw himself forward again and pushed off with a handspring, launching himself above the barrage of missiles that rushed at him. He arced over their flight and landed on his feet, every nerve seeming to catch fire now as adrenaline kicked in and rushed his senses with the white-hot glow of power. It flooded through him, welcomed and somehow remembered, and he grinned.

The grin faltered as he sensed/heard… something. He glanced up and saw a gigantic piece of machinery falling toward his head. At least ten-feet across, his mind processed, lightning quick, and then there was no time to think as he pushed off with his feet, trying with all his might and will to reach the relatively safe looking area of floor several feet away.

He skidded along on his jaw and grimaced, feeling the thud of the weight as it hit the floor, bare inches from his feet.

Dere you go, gettin' cocky. Wish I had my bo staff, den—

Bo staff?

What was a bo staff?

Caught up in the almost remembered memory, he was completely unaware of the second machine that descended on him like a harbinger of doom.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

"Are you all right?" Storm asked, touching down near him as the machine struck him without impact and vanished as if it had never existed.

"Not'in hurt 'cept my pride an' my jaw," Remy responded, rubbing said jaw with an expression of chagrin.

"What happened?" Storm's entire face reflected the intensity of her question, as if she understood intrinsically that something of great importance had occurred.

"Not'in," he protested with pride, then paused, thinking. "Chere… what's a bo staff?"

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

In New York, Magnus lounged in a high-backed chair and surveyed his team.

It had been clever of Kitty to drug the champagne to make everyone more susceptible to her offer. He supposed that if things hadn't turned out as they had, Magnus would have found himself consuming even more of the drug the following morning, and eventually agreeing to whatever plan she had hidden up her sleeve. But that was no longer a concern.

She knelt before him now, head bowed and subservient, the others gathered round her in a tight, vicious circle of malicious grins and leering glances.

"What is your will, Master?" she asked.

Like a horde of demons, the X-Men giggled and twined around each other. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice screamed in horror and outrage.

The Shadow King looked upon it all, and deemed it good.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Remy sat, back pressed against the wall, knees drawn up, bo staff held between them, balanced on its end as he stared at it.

The corridor was empty, and he didn't want to retreat back to his room, filled with machinery and already sour, new memories as it was.

He heard her approach long before he saw her, and she didn't try to hide herself, skinny legs and bony kneecaps consuming the range of his vision beyond the object of fascination between his knees.

"How you doin', chere?" he asked as he looked up, for lack of anything better to say.

Irineé tried to smile, and it was a fragile and perilous affair. She lifted her slim shoulders in a shrug and struggled to keep her composure. "Okay, I guess." She took a deep breath, sighed. "I don't know. It's all so… strange, isn't it?"

"Dat it is." He nodded and skirted her eyes as he glanced back down, trying to make his next question as nonchalant as possible. "How's your brother doin'?"

She actually laughed, just a little, but it wasn't a pleasant sound. "He's angry, of course. Everything makes him angry, these days."

"Learnin' dat life ain't fair…" Remy nodded slowly. "I t'ink I musta learned dat one back dere somewhere. How 'bout you, chere? You angry, too?""

She crouched down and scooted next to him, not close enough to touch, and drew her knees up, resting her hands on them. "A little. But more sad than anything."

"I can understand dat." He said, turning his head toward her. His daughter. So pretty and so small, so vulnerable and innocent. Lip gloss and candy coating, a girl on the verge of blossoming into a woman. It seemed wrong to him that he shouldn't remember her. A nothing man in a nothing place, an identity plastered on him, labels like husband and daddy that he knew should have meaning but didn't resonate. Stair cases in his mind that led nowhere, dark shadows and deep corners that seemed to beckon with glittering teeth. And though he wasn't at all sure what kind of man he had been before, he suddenly wanted to find his way home so badly that tears rose in his eyes.

She turned, and the tears in her eyes mirrored his own. Longing like the reach of hands to touch the sun, the desire to draw it down and let it illuminate all the secrets and distance between them.

"I… I don't know what to say," she admitted, as if it pained her, and the glimmer of tears filled her eyes, spilling over the edge of delicate lashes.

He shook his head, soft and regretful. "Me neither, chere."

"I missed you, Dad. God, it hurt so bad sometimes, how much I missed you." Her voice trembled and her hands shook, and she was so scared, so frightened to tell him this, and he wasn't sure if she feared causing him pain or worsening her own. Probably both.

So strong, so brave. Even for twelve years old, she seemed ancient, as old as any of the others he had seen so far. He wondered if it was his death that had made her so, or her life as an X-Man, or if perhaps she'd just been born that way. No child should have to endure this, he thought, suddenly angry.

"And now that you're back, it's like I don't know what to say, or how to feel, or how to act…"

He didn't think about what he was doing; he just knew she was in pain. He reached out for her hand and took it in his own, closing his fingers gently over hers. She looked up with doe-eyed surprise, tears still shining in her eyes.

"Me neither," he said again. He might not know her, but that didn't mean they couldn't share their sorrow.

They sat there in comfortable silence for a long time.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

"Look at this!" Renaldo breathed with awe as he pointed to the screen. "The second pattern we found? It's changed even more."

Dr. Hayes leaned over his shoulder and frowned. Indeed, the second pattern was completely different now, the tiny, almost cancerous spot they had noted the day before growing until it consumed the vision of the first with its phosphorous glow. "That's impossible. People's biorhythms don't just change over night."

"This one did."

"Did you double check it?"

"Quadruple checked it. It's unprecedented."

Her scowl cut even deeper into her brow, and she folded her arms over her chest. Dammit. This was all they needed. How were they going to explain this?

A sudden thought occurred to her. "Does it still register as resembling our original target's biorhythm?"

"Only on a trace level. It's removed from the original by more than ten cycles, but the trace is still there, yes."

She shook her head, at a loss. "I don't understand. Has the target been cloned? Consumed by something…" she trailed off, her eyes widening in horror. The words had sparked a memory that shifted and chuckled inside her mind.

Of course. It made perfect sense.

After all, history did nothing more competently than repeat itself.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Rogue sat within the reflection room, soaking in the feel of southern gardens, their images depicted on every wall around her. It lacked the scent of honeysuckle, and wisteria, and all the other floral, organic scents of the south, but the images calmed her somehow, centered her.

The door slid open on the north wall, interrupting the image of the willow tree whose branches spread outward and drooped, protectively, toward the floor.

She turned her head, and caught her breath.

Remy stood there, a bo staff in his hands, and he stared at it as if it might hold all the answers to the mysteries of the universe.

"I remember dis," he said, as if to himself. His eyes traveled the length of polished wood, his hand following the smooth contour. "I don' remember anyt'ing else, but today, I remembered dis."

She stared, at a loss for words. And God, he was so beautiful, his lean, lithe body encased in spandex that left little or nothing to the imagination, bo staff in his hands, shadow of stubble across his angular jaw, lost little-boy look in his strange, wondrous eyes. Surrounded by the beauty of the south that was her home and her solace, he was the most beautiful centerpiece she could have imagined.

He lifted his eyes to her, those eyes that always seemed to smolder with fire and intensity, their red pupils burning like twin coals against their black backdrop, and looked at her, so searching, so desperate. She hadn't thought her heart could break any more for everything that had happened, and yet she felt it fracture along a thin line for his sadness, for everything he had lost, and the well of her emotion swelled against the breach. She cradled her hands to her chest and tried to hold back the tide.

"Mebbe soon, I remember you, non?" he asked, his smirk thin and stretched. And oh, she could feel his pain, feel his confusion. He didn't remember her, but he wanted to. Some part of him, at least. Perhaps the part lost with the memories of their life together. And he was scared of remembering those things, of realizing the level of commitment and love he had given to her. She knew that because she knew him, knew how he thought, how he moved, how he used to be in the days before they had come together. He was terrified of this… but so was she.

She swallowed hard, mustered the courage to hold his gaze, though she knew her heart must be visible in the look she gave him. And oh, she wanted to say so many things—everything! But slow, she had to take this slow. She took a deep breath, calmed the thunder of heart. "How… how did you remember?"

He blinked, shrugged. "I was trainin' in de Danger Room, and while I was movin', it occurred to me dat it would be a whole lot easier if I had my bo staff. 'Course, I didn't know what a bo staff was, 'til I asked Stormy." His smile grew thin and brittle again. "When she told me, den it clicked."

She nodded slowly, taking that in, and then she patted the empty next to her on the bench, reaching for her tattered cloak of bravery as she smiled. "The staff was always your favorite, next to the cards." He frowned in confusion, and she held on, held tight to the remnants of her courage. "Come on. Sit down. Ah'll tell you all about it, if ya want."

He moved slowly, like a man in a dream, and sat next to her, his hands still caressing the bo staff as he leveled it across his lap. "It's de only t'ing I remember," he said, his voice at once an apology and a bitter twist of anger.

"It's…" she started to speak, then bit back the automatic words. "It's not okay…" she said with a bitter laugh, and shook her head. "But Ah'm tryin' to be okay. Tryin' to understand."

He set the staff aside, placing it carefully on the floor beside him, and turned to her with a look that took her breath away.

"I'm not gonna lie to you, chere. All dis… you… de children. It scares me more dan I can say. I don't know what kind of man I was before, but I get de feeling I wasn't de family type." He paused, shook his head. "But I want to know who I was… who I am. An' I was t'inkin'… maybe if dat jogged my memory… den…"

Breathing was a concept that existed somewhere outside of her, somewhere where the world made sense and didn't narrow to the two brilliant points of light in his eyes.

His hand came up, caressed the curve of her face, smooth fingers brushing against her with a familiar graze that called up more memories than she could lay name to—and yet it was all different, so completely different. Her heart trip hammered in her chest, and though she wanted this—wanted it with all her heart—she was so suddenly, inconceivably terrified.

His eyes held her with an intensity that made her ache, and in that moment, her heart remembered to beat, her lungs remembered to draw breath.

"Den mebbe dis jog my memory, too," he said, his voice a soft, lascivious caress.

He leaned in, and his mouth met hers in a trembling, uncertain moment. Only mouths at first, gently testing each other, tasting each other, feeling each other out—and then the moment took over, and they opened like the desert desperate for rain. She caught the taste of him on her tongue, and swirled it around, touching every surface, and her hands came up, catching his face between them, pulling him in deeper, deeper still, slaking her desperate thirst with the well of his soul.

God he tasted like memory, and home, and she drank down every drop, reveling in every moment. Tongues circled and teased like they'd always known how, like they'd been waiting only for this moment to remember, and she whimpered against his mouth, pulling him even closer.

His hands tangled in her hair, and he met the passion of her kiss with wild abandon that left her gasping, undone, completely consumed. His mouth sought something beyond love or even lust; it sought memory and hope with an intensity that left her spinning, the entire world compressed into the fine, bright line of a horizon that fled from her even as she tried to reach it.

He pulled away, mouth still working, gasping for a breath of air into tortured lungs that had been breathless until that very moment.

"I… I don't remember," he gasped and shook his head, his voice a tortured mess of longing, broken glass and bleeding love, scattered along the highway. "I shouldn't have…" He stopped, and his face twisted back upon itself with regret. "I'm… sorry, chere," he managed, and then he disentangled himself from her, pulling away, taking that horizon, that entire world with him as he drew away.

Tears rose in her eyes, but he didn't see them as he gathered his bo staff and stumbled his way out the door.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Veronica did not want to contact her superior. Not at all. Not even if what she suspected was true. Especially not then.

She had taken some time to think it through, but she wasn't coming up with any solutions, and a report of their complete failure seemed inevitable.

"Where is the target currently?" she asked as she walked up and stood next to Renaldo, hands gripping the edge of the console so hard that the metallic edges beneath cut into her flesh. "Can we track it?"

"Normally, no. But this resonance is so strong, I think I may be able to narrow it down a bit…" Renaldo said, typing in commands at the speed of light.

"Somewhere on the upper East Coast…" he said after a moment, and shook his head. "Wait… looks like… maybe New York?"

Upper East Coast. New York. Veronica's mind turned that over, making connections with light-speed. She didn't know everything about her superior's plans, but she knew enough to make her think that this was all going south in big way. Very, very quickly.

Months ago, Veronica had concocted a serum for her superior, a neural inhibitor of sorts, one that made the imbiber very susceptible to outside influence and suggestion, to be delivered to a particular address in New York. She hadn't thought much of it at the time, beyond noting the location of another possible scheme. A little research had revealed a place with unlikely name of "Hellfire Club" at that address, and with a moment of hilarity at the ridiculous name, she had put the incident out of her mind.

He didn't keep her apprised of all his plans, as it should be, but she had known that whatever she was sending them had something to do with another of his schemes. And she knew that all of his schemes revolved around mutants, and one mutant in particular.

If that biorhythm was somewhere in New York, mutated as it was, what were the chances that it had been lured there by another of her superior's schemes?

It might be a stretch, and she might be being paranoid, but scientists, as a rule, believed very little in coincidence.

This could change everything.

"We have to contact him," she said with a sigh of resignation.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Remy stood outside the complex, watching the sun set in the west. The red earth of Arizona turned an even deeper shade of crimson as it sank, shadows pooling around his feet like specters. He took a breath, inhaled long and deep of the cheroot he'd appropriated from Logan's stash, and tried to still the troubled beat of his heart, drown out the voices that gibbered in his mind.

He didn't know why he'd wanted this nasty thing, he just knew the moment he'd seen them he'd wanted one very, very badly. And it seemed to be helping. His nerves calmed, his head cleared a little with each deep breath, and at last, he steadied.

Images flashed though his mind… small fingers entwined with his in silent solace… deep green eyes and the shuddering touch of soft lips that worshipped and loved him. His daughter. His wife. His girls. And a son who seemed to hate him for not remembering. And all of them in so much pain… because of him.

His wife. He turned the word over in his mind, strange and unfamiliar as it seemed. A kiss like that, love like the love he'd seen in her eyes and felt in her touch… you'd think he'd remember something of that.

And beyond all that and by the way Remy, who are you, anyway?

He watched the sun set, trying desperately to find something he remembered, something that would make it all make sense.

He was still waiting when darkness fell, the cheroot forgotten, burned down to a small nub between his fingers.

Maybe he just didn't belong here.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

"I respect your concern, Dr. Hayes—although I am deeply offended by your nosing about into my business—but I assure you that everything in New York is going completely according to plan. Plan C, to be precise."

Veronica shook her head, wondering why she didn't seem to be getting through. "Sir, with all due respect, if what I believe is true, our entire operation could be in danger of collapsing. And beyond that, the entire world may be at risk."

"Dr. Hayes, I am ordering you to back off this project as of this very instant. The target no longer needs to be tracked, and has progressed beyond the level of Plan B's divide and conquer theme. Everything is now within my court. Nimrod II is yours, Plan B is yours, this is mine."

Veronica bit down on her lower lip, drawing blood to keep from replying. After a long moment, she pressed the intercom button. "Yes sir."

"But just in case," the voice went on, and she thought she detected a different note there, veiled and hidden just beneath the brittle anger. Something sly. "I'd like you and all of the staff there to remain within the complex. Do not return to your homes. The facilities there should be adequate to your needs for a few days until I sort all of this out."

She hesitated even longer this time before replying, the wheels of her mind spinning.

"Yes sir."

"I'll be in contact soon," he snapped, and the intercom clicked off.

She sank down into a chair and pressed her face into her hands. If what she suspected were true, there was far more at stake here than their project. Why would he ignore that? Unless…

Perhaps that was his true plan?

No. She shook her head, confused. It didn't make sense.

And the command to stay on site… that troubled her even more deeply than anything else he'd said, though she couldn't pin down exactly why.

Although… they'd served their purpose, gotten the target to Plan C and out of their realm. Perhaps they were expendable now?

That seemed much more likely. A man of his stature and power wouldn't want any loose ends. But what if it were even more than that? What if he had—

Terror pounded in her heart as the thought struck her, and she knew, somehow, on a gut level, an instinctive level, that it was completely true.

There was no way in hell she was staying here, like a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.

"Come on, Renaldo, we've got to get out of here. I'll explain on the way…"

Renaldo looked at her, uncomprehending, and blinked once. "Veronica, what are you talking about? Didn't you hear him? We've got to stay put."

"If we do, we're dead," she said, gathering up her things and stuffing them into her bag. "If I'm right, then that thing we saw on the screen earlier is headed straight here."

"That's impossible!" Renaldo sputtered. "No one knows we're here, except…" She watched as realization sank in, and then nodded.

"Except him."

"Okay, now you're just being paranoid," Renaldo scoffed. "You think the Shadow King is--" He broke off, as if suddenly realizing he'd said too much.

Her own realization went off like a bombshell exploding in her chest. "Renaldo…" she said, her voice shaking just a bit. "How do you know what I'm thinking?"

Renaldo's face went carefully blank for a moment, and then his face split in slow smile that made her shiver.

"Oops."