Rogue

It'd become just another part of the routine, stopping in at the now abandoned and rather torn apart Catholic Church. She'd been there once before- talked into going to an Easter mass, when the pews were packed with people wearing their best clothes, attending one of the two masses that most of them felt were the only ones needed to secure their little assigned seats in heaven. It'd always felt like a cold place, the stone walls and high windows reminiscent of a castle of some sort, but now, empty, voice echoing so easily in the cavernous building... it somehow, probably rather morbidly, felt warmer.

The zombies had gotten to it, of course, making quite a mess of the altar and (she could only assume) grabbing the priests who lived in the rectory. Toward the front of the pews, under the pulpit, a rack of candles had been set up, and they'd go there, without fail, after burying someone and light a candle for each victim. In the beginning, the one rack had been enough, but over time the candles had expanded, and they'd added another rack. Now, it had gotten to the point where small votives spilled out onto the stone floor surrounding the racks, a row of taller candles at the top of them, each representing one of their teammates.

She sighed, swooping in through what had been the large stained glass window at the back of the cathedral. A bad thunderstorm had knocked a few of the panes out long ago, and the church was in the process of collecting funds to repair it when... when shit hit the fan. Now, it was a convenient spot for entering the building, since zombies seemed to have enough trouble standing upright, let along flying. Luckily, they seemed to stay away for the most part, probably due to the constant fires that were burning in the building, small but bright enough to cast vague shadows across the otherwise dark interior of the church.

The area appeared to be clear, and she tightened her grip around him before jumping from the perch to land in the center aisle, a few rows back from their little memorial. Glancing at the small display, she frowned. Only one candle remained unlit. Jerking her head toward the confessional that had been being used as an impromptu storage area, she looked at Kurt. "Guess I'd better go find another box of candles, huh?"

Kurt
—
He would have liked to marvel at the fact that they were actually flying, but given the landscape they were moving over there was nothing left to marvel at. It was just a way to get from point a to point b without having something that used to be a person shamble out of the shadows and try to eat their brains. As the charnel house that had once been a bustling city passed beneath them he found it hard to accept that it had only been a few weeks. A few weeks of Hell like Dante never could have imagined...

There were still some small enclaves of resistance, scattered and isolated, where people had managed to barricade themselves in and hold back the undead. But they were growing smaller every day, and as they passed over a rundown strip mall where the locals had thought they could hold back the tide until they were proven wrong a few days ago he averted his eyes with a shudder. They'd buried too many there, and the ones they'd taken back to the Institute after were still hollow-eyed and broken.

He sighed, not quite in relief, as they passed through the broken window into the dubious sanctuary of St. Peter's. He hadn't had to ask her since that first time, they just always came here. After.

It was broken and desecrated, just like the rest of Bayville - from what little they could tell, the rest of the world - but he still could grasp a faint echo of comfort in the weathered wood and stone, the musky-sweet memory of incense and beeswax pushing back the stench for a time, if only in his imagination.

Some of the candles before the alter were guttering fitfully, almost at the end of their life, a reminder of the shattered lives they represented while others still danced in the breeze sweeping in through the equally shattered windows, casting a wan, flickering light through the vast and empty space. None of them had gone out, though, he noted with relief. The sanctuary candles they'd lit for each of their fallen friends, that is, the tiny votives they left to commemorate the lives of strangers guttered and died in only a matter of hours.

As Rogue lowered them to the floor in the center aisle, he quelled the impulse to genuflect. He had, at first. Even though he wasn't quite sure if it was appropriate with the altar desecrated and broken, the font shattered across the floor in the vestibule. The presence lamp had still burned, that first time, and he'd convinced himself that he could still feel His presence here. Now, though...the last time the candle in the presence lamp had died he'd held the misshapen stub in his misshapen hands for long minutes, his chest tight and tears he refused to let fall burning at the back of his eyes. He'd dropped it then, listening as it rolled down the steps before turning away to trim the wick on Scott's candle. He hadn't bothered to replace it since.

If God was still here He wasn't listening to His children anyway...and yet still he prayed. Prayed to a God that had let chaos loose on their world, lit candles for souls that he could no longer quite believe hadn't simply been snuffed out. Took some faint, visceral and unidentifiable comfort from the forms, even if he could no longer quite believe they really mattered.

He turned, golden eyes slipping back into focus as she laid a hand on his shoulder and jerked her head toward the confessional where the Church's few remaining supplies were stored.

"Guess I'd better go find another box of candles, huh?"

He nodded absently as she moved away, his gaze lingering on her retreating form for a moment before he shook himself and headed towards their make-shift shrine. Lit the last remaining candle as he absently muttered a Heilige Maria, checked the pillars and decided they had another couple of days before Herr Xavier's would need replacing. Idly fingered the worn beads of the rosary in his pocket, the one Opa had carved the beads for from the wood of Oma's apple tree, and refused to wonder if any of them still survived.

At the sound of Rogue's quiet footsteps returning up the aisle behind him he turned. "We need...five more for now," he told her, reaching for the box in her hands. "And we should try to find more matches if we can."

Rogue
—
She almost hated having to walk away from him to find the candles, his face was distraught and his mind was obviously still on... God, on everything. She slid her hand slowly off his shoulder, though, and made her way through the broken building to the confessional. The door opened with a creak, probably one of many things that the pastor had been meaning to get to but never would. Stepping into the small, dark booth she moved a few boxes of vestments and altar dressings, finally finding another case of candles. At the rate they were going, it would be only a matter of weeks before that box ran out as well. Of course, there seemed to be less and less movement out on the streets that wasn't zombie. So maybe the flow of dead folks would taper off a bit. Lifting the box, she stepped back out of the confessional, pushing the other boxes back inside and setting the large case on top of them, tearing it open and removing one of the smaller boxes of votives.

She closed the door and moved back toward Kurt, who was already praying over one of the candles, his hand inside his pocket, probably holding the rosary that she knew he never left home without, futile as the gesture seemed. She wanted to reach out, assure him that things were okay, that he needn't worry about his family. He tried to hide the anxiety about it, but it was clear every time he looked at a picture of them. But trying to reassure him was useless. She knew well enough to know that he wouldn't buy it. Might appreciate the attempt, but in the end it would only make him feel worse about it, and so she didn't say anything, approaching him as silently as she could. "We need...five more for now," he told her, reaching for the box in her hands. "And we should try to find more matches if we can."

She nodded, opening the cardboard box and handing five of the shockingly white candles to him. It was almost surreal, how perfect their condition was. The world was crumbling around them, the ground, the air- it all seemed to be a perpetual shade of decaying murky gray, but the candles were in pristine condition, cleaner and more complete than anything she'd seen outside of the Institute for some time. Setting the box on the edge of one of the pews, she stepped aside and let Kurt light the candles, all the while watching the flickering lights that represented the people who had been their friends.

There was a candle there for Mr. McCoy, too. He'd gone off one day on patrol and never came back. They didn't know if he'd died or been turned, but people claimed having spotted him stumbling among the undead. It was really a kick in the 'nads, if that was true. Out of all of the brains they'd had to destroy, that one was going to be the hardest. If they ever found him. Sitting in the pew next to Kurt as he prayed, she felt completely useless. He knew she didn't believe that any of what they were doing would actually help, that she saw it all as a way to remember the people instead of a way to usher them into the afterlife or whatever the hell it was supposed to do. But that didn't make her feel any less guilty about just sitting there while he prayed. She quietly reached over and gave his shoulder a squeeze. Wasn't really helpful, but it was something.

She'd thought for sure that when the world ended, it would be all at once, in a flash of white light or something equally sudden and dramatic. The slow torment of watching things crumble around her as her own life had suddenly started to seem less disastrous was not at all expected, although in retrospect, it probably should have been, given her luck. As Kurt slid up onto the pew beside her, she draped her arm around him, holding him close. There really wasn't much left at all, only what they had. And sometimes, she wondered if it was going to keep on being enough.

Kurt
—
He just stared at the candles for a long moment, shockingly white and clean in the filth surrounding them. They were pretty cheap, actually; the Church hadn't splurged for anything fancy. Or, rather, it had but they'd used the beeswax tapers up in the first couple of weeks and now these were all they had left. If he closed his eyes, though, he could almost catch the faint, honey-tinged scent lingering on the air, mixing with the exotic perfume from the censers...but it was just an illusion.

Opening his eyes again he set to work, settling the new candles atop the burnt out stubs of old, large fingers fumbling with the tiny matches from a book with some doubtless dead - or undead - lawyer's number printed on the back and it was almost too much. He stopped, hands shaking slightly as he took a long, slow breath, trying to ignore the faint scent of putrefaction that they could never quite escape as he focused on the simple task at hand.

Light the candles. Say the prayers. Go through the motions and hope to still be alive tomorrow to go through the motions again. It took a moment, but when he finally struck the next match it took light and he touched it quickly to the wicks, adding six more flickering points of light to the rest. Brief candles in honor of lives snuffed out...

He pocketed the matchbook - only three matches left after the two he'd wasted - and then slid into the pew next to Rogue. He knew she didn't believe, never had, but she'd helped him without a word. They'd cleaned up the worst of the filth the zombies had left behind, burned the soiled altar cloths, swept up the shards of glass from the shattered windows. Ferreted out candles and candelabra and hoarded matches when they found them. He was fairly certain that the candles were important to her as well, just in a different way than they were...had been...to him. They never actually spoke of it, though, not between themselves or to anyone else, so it was only a guess.

Her arm slipping around his shoulders, pulling him close against her side, felt like the only warmth left in the world and he leaned silently into her, letting his tail coil around her thigh as he turned away from the light. He didn't have any prayers left in him today and the violated sanctuary and feebly guttering flames provided no comfort, no warmth, no light.

Reaching up, he ran calloused fingers gently across her cheek, his thumb brushing a silent question at her lips before his hand slid up farther to tangle in her hair. Without saying a word he leaned over to press his lips to hers, hungry and demanding as he twisted slightly in the seat so that his other arm could pull her closer still. There was precious little comfort left in their world but this one thing, the feel of her in his arms, the warmth of her skin, taste of her lips...even here and now, at least for a little while, it was enough.

Rogue
—
She couldn't stand seeing the pain in his eyes. God, couldn't even really see his eyes, yellow as they were, but the sadness was there, loud and clear. She much preferred her Fuzzy cracking a joke or tumbling through the air in an overly theatrical and wholly idiotic attempt to steal someone's dessert. The worrying was something that she could do without. Seeing him sad made her sad, always had. Even before... before she knew about Mystique, before she knew about how she really felt about him. Before this whole goddamn mess.

He leaned into her half-embrace, tail working it's way across her thigh, and she reached over to absently trace the edges of the spade, turning toward him as his thick fingers pulled silently across her cheek, thumb pausing at her lips, lightly brushing against them and sending chills up her spine. Although she'd been able to control it for some time, the feeling of bare skin against hers was still incredibly electrifying and sometimes overwhelming.

His lips caught hers and she closed her eyes, the feeling of his mouth right up against hers, no barriers, nothing to keep them from exploring with their tongues as they saw fit, making her moan softly. Without really thinking about it, she started to shrug off the zombie covered trenchcoat that had become a part of her uniform, covering the bare arms that she still wasn't entirely comfortable with having exposed. He pulled her in, twisting to get a better angle, and she leaned back, letting the weight of his body push her down onto the bench.

They were alive. Most of the Institute's inhabitants were still kicking, and she didn't really give a flying fuck about how they coped with the situation, but she knew one thing. She was alive, and she intended on acting like it. Pulling him in gently, she let her hands run across the back of his neck, along his hairline and to his ears, where she traced the contours with the tip of her fingers. More than ever before, she needed his weight on top of her, needed to feel the pressure. So few things were heavy anymore, and she often worried that she was losing touch with reality, seeing things as more simple than she should have, taking things for granted. She didn't like that, didn't like the idea that she would lose sensation, stop being able to feel him pressing against her.

She didn't want to think about it, though. Didn't want to think about anything other than the beating of her heart, the silent pulsing of his mouth against hers, the movements that told her that not only were they alive, but they were living.