A/N: Okay, so I know it's been a while. I'm terribly sorry about that. It drives me crazy to have to wait months for an update, so I understand. All I can say is I lost the plot bunnies for a while. But they're back now, have taken up residence under my desk, so all is well. I thought it would be a good idea to further show my apologetic-ness by answering to all of your reviews personally. Here goes:

Brazos- This chapter is dedicated to you. Your dedication to my work astounds me, and you are pretty much single handedly responsible for this update, and the others that will follow. Incidently, if you want to contact me through email (sometimes all I need is a not so delicate prod in the mental behind), my email is the same as my penname, at hotmail. Look forward to hearing from you. And many thanks!

Equinox- In theory, I agree with you. Updates are good, and I am very close to them. The only problem is sometimes they won't answer my damn calls! Not to worry, though. I finally got in touch with them. Thanks for the much needed push!

Snufit- I hate to keep you waiting. If you read this one really slowly, maybe it can last you until the next one. Or maybe I could just get off my butt and write with some kind of schedule. You know, either or.

lelann- In time, all will be revealed. Sit tight, and the everything will be unravelled. Or is it ravelled? Oh, you know what I mean. Forget the metaphor, it will all be explained. Eventually.

pashtess- A tortured Remy makes for good reading. I could hardly go against the grain, could I? Thanks for your support!

Imaq- I hope you stay that way. And I hope you keep letting me know. ;p

Shockgoddess- I love the Outsiders! But I have to tell you...glances around conspiratorially...I don't like long hair on guys. I have to fight the urge to cut off his hair in all my writing. ducks and assumes fetal position to shield body from blows and flying objects Thanks for your comments!

Aethena- Intrigue is my middle name. Well, not really. It's Kathleen. Not nearly as cool, is it? Anyways, I reread this chapter a bunch of times, so hopefully I missed any mistakes. I should probably apologize in advance, cause I'm sure I didn't catch all of them.

BJ2- see Shockgoddess. Again, I'm sorry about the hair. But it can grow back, right? listens to angry grumbling Right?

Once again, you guys are magnificant! I'm sorry if I missed anyone. Every single comment is much appreciated, and keeps me motivated. Anyways, enough boring you. On with the story!

The guards left him alone in the twelve by twelve concrete box with that pile of hair at his feet, looking for all the world as if he was paying homage to a past life. He remained on the bunk, hadn't moved since his captors had bid him farewell. For a time. Remy swiped a hand over the newly created spikes, and sighed softly. It was only beginning to crack through his shell that maybe he was in a situation. A bad situation. Oddly enough, it hadn't been the guard's brutality that did it, or his promises of what was to come. It was sitting on the bunk, staring down dejectedly at the pile of dead cells.

That's all hair was, really. Dead cells, and a few more things Hank had explained at length at one point, but for the life of him Remy couldn't recall. He mourned the loss though. There had been a point in his life when his hair had defined who he was. He hid behind it, behind the image of him it provided. Although it had been quite some time since he had felt that way, he nevertheless regretted having to lose it.

Remy was sure they had cut off his hair as a way to break him. The guard whose hand had held the offending knife had spoken of a "boss", a person above him who apparently made all the decisions regarding their captive. The guard had implied through rather obvious words that they were trying to dispirit him, probably to a point where he didn't care what happened. And it seemed as if they thought the way to begin that process was to remove all ties to his old life, starting with his clothes and hair. Instead of weakening him, staring down at the heap of auburn strands served only to strengthen his resolve. Their obnoxious assumptions angered him, until he could do nothing but clench his hands into fists and hope he would get his chance. After another minute, he swept the hair under the cot with a bare foot.

For the countless time that hour, Remy's thoughts drifted back to what the head guard had said after trying to knock his teeth out through the back of his head. The realization that Remy's captors knew who the X-Men were, let alone that he was one, was worrisome. It gave an even worse spin on already horrible circumstances. Over the many years the X-Men had been operating, they had made an innumerable amount of enemies, mutant and human alike. If one group were to decide they wanted revenge, capturing one of those on the team, even someone not in the X-Men's total confidence like Remy, would be a damn good way to start. Torture in the hands of someone he didn't even know hadn't been an ambition at any point in his life.

He fell back on the cot with a heavy sigh. Remy had cleaned up his face as best he could after the guards left, but without water or ice to help, he still looked like he went twenty rounds with Mike Tyson and lost. His bottom lip was split and swollen to a point that made it difficult to close his mouth. And he was more sure now than he had been earlier that his rib was broken, and not merely bruised. That would certainly make escape more of a challenge.

All subsequent thoughts suddenly absolved to nothing as he heard, for the second time in as many hours, the sound of footsteps coming from the hall outside. This time was different than earlier, though; for starters Remy was certain he could only discern one pair of boots. And, he got the feeling that the owner of these boots was trying, and failing rather miserabley as a matter of fact, to be sneaky and inconspicuous. He didn't rise from the cot, only pushing himself up onto his elbows as the door was unlocked and opened slowly.

He noticed immediately that the precautions of the earlier visit were far more lax in this one. The simple fact that it was one guard and not a whole squadron made that observation blaringly obvious. Also, said guard was armed only with a taser. Remy watched with interest as the guard set a piece of wiring in the doorjamb, and allowed the door to fall closed against it, keeping the seal open but holding an illusion of being shut.

"You all by your little bitty lonesome?"Remy smirked as the guard straightened. "Y'sure dat's safe? Mutants are dangerous, y'know."

The guard turned to face him, and Remy recognized the hungry glint in dark green eyes as his stomach dropped. The man's features twisted into a feral smile.

"Oh, I'm pretty confident you'll behave yourself." He held the taser loosely in one hand, and ran a finger up its stock with the other. "You know what this is? It's called the Advanced Air Taser M18. Most advanced in its field." He tapped the nozzle of the gun shaped taser. "It's got two little darts in here. I fire this baby, and I could hit you anywhere from fifteen feet away. The shock disrupts your nervous system, so no matter where I hit you, you go down like you're having a fucking seizure. It only lasts a couple of minutes, but sometimes that's all I need."

"Yeah, I bet,"Remy muttered under his breath. He shifted back on the cot as the guard stepped closer, still fingering the muzzle slowly.

The guard stopped when his shins hit the edge of the bunk, but Remy didn't. He scooted as far back into the corner as he could, the only thing between him and the filthy guard was his near palpable disgust. The Faucon didn't appear to notice the manner in which his capture viewed him. Remy glanced past him, and was unable to hide the longing on his face as he stared at the near open door. The Faucon smirked at this.

"I wouldn't try it. It's unlikely you could make it out of here without me getting you with this baby," -he kissed the stock of the taser gun- "But even if you somehow managed to get away from me, you'd never make it out of here alive. Not without some serious help, and I think we both know help's not coming. Leastways, not for you."

Remy shifted his gace back to the nightmarish features of the guard. Again, if he thought that Remy would simply lie down and take whatever they dished out, he had another thing coming. He only needed to wait a moment for the opportune moment before acting. It came when the Faucon lifted his right leg to kneel on the edge of the cot. Remy struck like a coiled cobra, lashing out with his left foot and hammering it home into the guard's most vulnerable parts. From there, he could've knocked him over with a feather, if Warren had've been handy. He made a mad dash for the door, but never made it.

True to his sales pitch, the Faucon was a little over eleven feet away when he fired the taser from his fetal position next to the cot. The darts embedded themselves in the middle of Remy's back, and just as the guard had predicted, he dropped with a strangled gasp like a marionette with his strings cut. The shock to his system left him helpless to do anything but twitch spasmadically on the floor for several minutes while the compromised guard recovered.

"You're going to live to regret that,"the Faucon growled, as he struggled to his feet. He staggered across the floor, bent gracelessly to grab Remy by the neck of his t-shirt. Without any offered resistance, he was able to drag the trembling Cajun back to the cot with little difficulty. Remy was tossed unceremoniously onto the mattress and lay there twitching for a long minute.

"You're not...gonna...get away...with this..." His words were staggered and slurred, but the intent was obvious. The guard laughed, spraying a fine mist of spittle over an unprotesting Cajun.

"What, are you gonna do something about it?" He rose to his feet with little difficulty, and knelt on the edge of the cot, supporting himself with an arm on either side of Remy's head. "You're hardly in a position to tell me what to do."

He leaned down closer, his lips moving right next to Remy's ear. For his part, Remy was unable to do more than stare at him with fire in his eyes.

"See, I like you. Something about the way you move...the way you're hair falls over your forehead..." He reached out with one hand to gently brush a lock of auburn hair out of Remy's eyes. "And I always get what I want. Just wait and see." He placed a quick, almost chaste kiss on Remy's cheek, then straightened, and locked the door carefully behind him.

Remy squeezed his eyes shut, and for an indeterminable amount of time lay shuddering on the cot. It was worse than he thought. Being held captive without his powers and no way of knowing if the rest of the team was all right didn't even hold a candle to having a psychotic guard with a taser lusting after him. He'd lived through similar experiences before, and had no desire to suffer through repeat performances. He sighed, forgot about his earlier concerns about the condition of the mattress, and pressed his face against the rough cloth. He was on his own.

Gradually over the next few days, a routine slowly started to develop. The guards would come in before he had woken, three would train their guns on him while the forth would rip him out of his restless sleep. They would cuff him, knock him around a bit, then blindfold him and drag him down the hall to a different room. Remy memorized the exact number of steps, and every change in direction between his cell and what the guards had coined 'the Playhouse.' He was unsure of when the knowledge would come in handy, but it felt better to have it. Once they arrived in the Playhouse, the guards would knock him around a bit more, then strap him to a chair not unlike one you would occupy at the dentists office. While he was there, they tortured him in every way imaginable, from burning him with branding irons, to pushing nails through his palms, to tasering him over and over again. Never enough to permanently damage him, apart from scars, but just enough so that every night he prayed a bolt of lightning would break through the roof and melt the bastards until they were little more than a grease stain in the cement. They gave no explanation for what they doing, just increased the pain whenever he tried to reason with them.

There was no sign of the X-Men. He really had no way of knowing how long he had been in these freaks' custody, but he guessed it to be about a week. Every day he asked about his teammates, if they were alive, if they were somewhere in the building with him. Everyday he was told to shut his fucking mutie mouth. The torture along with the lack of information and the poor diet they kept him on had zapped his strength so completely he wondered if he could escape if they left all the doors open and handed him a wheelchair. It was getting to the point where he couldn't stand up on his own. Frequent random visits from the guard he had come to know as Faucon had him on increased hypervigilance around the clock, and the constant weak adrenaline running through his body was wearing him out.

On the eighth day, though, everything changed. They had just dumped him back on his blood stained cot after another session in the Playhouse, when the door to his cell opened. He rolled over, pushed his face into the mattress, and clasped his hands behind his back. He had resisted strongly the first few days, but had soon learned that if he hoped to survive long enough to get out, he had better play by the rules. And these people were nothing if not cautious.

It was different though. Instead of the guards heavy steps on the cement floor, it sounded like a pair of high heels nearing him cautiously.

"Remy?"

He froze. It couldn't be. Not here. God, please, not here.

"You okay, sugah?"

A sob burst forth from his mouth before he could bit it down. He felt the cot dip slightly next to him as his visitor sat down, then a pair of gentle hands landed on his shoulders, squeezing softly. "It's all right now, Remy. I'm here." A pair of lips pressed against the back of his neck, right below his inhibitor chip.

"Rogue?" His words were muffled by the mattress; he lifted his face and rolled over stiffly.

"It's me." Tears abruptly filled his eyes. She was perfection. As beautiful as he had ever seen her, more so, if possible. Her long, wavy brown hair hung down her shoulders like a waterfall, the ends tickling his bare arm as she smiled down at him. She was dressed in what he had come to think of as her uniform, green and yellow leotard with an olive green flight jacket overtop. She leaned down, placed a careful kiss on his forehead. His eyes widened, and a stray tear broke free from the others, running down his temple and past his hairline.

"Chere? But how...?"

She laid a finger against his lips, hushing him quietly. "Don't worry about it, sugah. Everything's all right now."

He rose into a sitting position, and pulled her into a sudden bonecrashing hug. "God, Rogue, I missed y'so much. T'ough y'all were dead. Dey didn't tell me anyt'ing...t'ought I was de only one left." Remy hid his face in the crook of her neck, tears spilling silently down his cheeks and onto her skin as he breathed in her scent.

"We're all right, Rem. No thanks to you, though." Her inflection didn't change, so it took nearly a full minute before Remy realised what it was she had said. At the same time he noticed something else; the scent was all wrong. Rogue didn't allow anything that wasn't vanilla scented to touch her body. Her shampoo, soap, even deoderant and perfum were all vanilla. Some of the X-Men found it strange, Remy knew, but he loved it, for everytime he smelled anything vanilla, he was reminded of how she made him feel. In his condition, he noticed that blaring difference rather easily.

He straightened, frowning at her, removed his arms from around her, and scooted backwards on the cot.

"What's the matter, sugah?" She leaned forward towards him, reaching out to touch his knee with one hand.

He jerked away with near violent force. Remy didn't know what was going on, but something wasn't right. "What did y'say, Rogue?"

The puzzled expression melted away from her face, and she smiled kindly. "Ah said we're okay. But it's no thanks to you." She squeezed his knee. "It's our fault, really. You betrayed us once, we should've known you would do it again."

His mouth hung open, gaping like a fish out of water. "But...Remy...chere, Remy didn't betray you. He mean...not again."

Sorrow replaced contentment on her features. "It's not really your fault either, Rem. Ah guess you're just one of those people who doesn't form loyalties. It's too bad we didn't know before. Then maybe Scott would still have both arms, Storm wouldn't be paralyzed."

Shock froze his body once more. "Paralyzed?"

He shot to his feet, the hurricane of emotions whipping through his mind overriding the weariness and constant pain that had settled over his body in the recent days. He paced in front of Rogue, three long strides took him from wall to wall. He muttered softly to himself, clenching and unclenching his hands. "Dis can't be happening. Storm can't be paralyzed. Remy didn' betray anyone. Somet'ing's not right..."

He halted, staying his movement so quickly he overbalanced and nearly toppled over. His vague impression that something was wrong had developed into a full blown certainty. He returned to Rogue's side, crouched next of her. She watched with what could pass as love in her eyes as he reached out and gently lifted the hair from the nape of her neck.

"Aha. Remy was right." He let her hair fall back into place, and sat back on his heels, smirking and crossing his arms over his chest. "Where's y'mole?"

She touched the back of her neck with one hand, and frowned. "What are ya talkin' about, sugah?"

"Y'mole. You have...dat is, Remy's Rogue has a mole on de back of her neck. Jes' a little one, usually hidden by her hair. It's not dere. Who de fuck are you, and what have y'done wit' Rogue?"

The creature, for lack of a better word, sitting before him rose gracefully to its feet, and stretched languidly. "All right, you're better than I gave you credit for." Its features melted into obscurity, and Remy soon found himself face to face with a fairly bland looking green skinned middle aged man. He scowled.

"A shapeshifter. Very clever. She was almost perfect, too. But y'didn' do y'homework."

The other shook his head, sneering at Remy. "It doesn't matter. You can't beat these people. No one can. By resisting you're only delaying the inevitable. They never lose, and you're in for a hell of a fight if you believe otherwise."

Remy squared his shoulders, raised his chin and stuck his jaw out defiantly in a way he hadn't done since being captured. "Well, dey never come 'gainst Remy LeBeau, monsieur. Y' damn right it'll be a helluva fight. But y'bet y'money on de wrong winner."

The shapeshifter shook his head slowly. "Are you so sure about that?" Once again his countenance dissolved, and this time reformed into familiar mocha coloured features. Remy stiffened, his upper lip raising in an angry growl.

"You are on your own, my brother." Pseudo-Storm crossed the floor to stand in front of him, head held high in a regal stance. "You have not fought a battle of this magnitude without the X-Men since before we met. Are you so certain you can do it now, while you are so obviously weak and malnourished?"

Remy sub-consciously reached up with one hand to smooth his fingers over the depressed hollows of his cheeks. His mind knew that wasn't the real Storm, but his heart was having a difficult time believing it. If the shapeshifter's Rogue had been less than adequate, his Storm was damn impressive. She looked equisite, right down to the brilliant sheen of her white hair. His chest tightened painfully at seeing her, and yet knowing it wasn't her.

He puffed his chest out, clenched his hands into fist. The shapeshifter saw this defiance as a challenge, and promptly shifted into a form so unexpected a gasp issued from Remy's mouth before he could stop himself. Jean Luc LeBeau smiled down at him, reached out and gently touched Remy's cheek. "Allo, mon fils. Y'look well."

He managed to keep himself from answering in kind, but wiping the wistful and loving expression from his face would've required non-Cyclops approved use of his powerful explosive abilities.

"You disappoint me, Remy,"Jean Luc said, his rich timbre voice reverbating around the small room. "De man I knew, de t'ief I knew, woulda never let himself be caught like dis. Maybe I failed you, fils. For you have certainly failed me."

Remy bit the inside of his cheek until the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth to avoid responding to the condemnation. Although most would never believe it, Remy was a deeply insecure individual. He desperately needed approval, and so hearing these words from his father's form, even knowing they weren't his thoughts, cut deep into his soul.

Jean Luc stepped closer to Remy, settling a hand down on his shoulder. "It's no use fightin' dem, boy. Listen to y'pere. I know what I'm talkin' bout."

One final pat and he left, walked right out the door and shut it carefully behind him.

As soon as the seal hissed closed, the strength left Remy's knees, and he crashed to the floor. He could've won this thing if it was physical. He could probably have even withstood a mental attack with his considerable psychic barriers. But to go after his emotions was to find his weak point. Using the people he loved as a way to further break his spirit was possibly the most effective tactic they could employ. He laid his head on the cool concrete, but it was a long time before he drifted off to sleep.

...tbc...

A/N: Faucon means hawk, I hope. I thought it would be better for Remy to come up with nicknames for the guards instead of me typing 'the guard' a thousand times in one paragraph. As always, lemme know what you think!