Disclaimer: Don't own them!
Note: Hi! So I made up my mind: italics are gonna be for Rogue's dreams, okay? The rest is reality. All right, here we go.
Chapter 2: The new guy.
"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake." Henry David Thoreau.
This moment had happened so many times before: all of them bunched together, standing in front of the Black Bird's closed door, waiting for it to slide open, getting ready to jump out and kick some butt while trying to keep themselves alive at the same time. It wasn't anything new, but yet, Rogue's heart always started to beat faster and damn she had reasons for it: she couldn't shoot energy beams, move objects with her mind or have a ray instantly frying her opponent with a snap of her fingers. She used to punch guys that were bigger than her, then quickly sneaked away from their grasp, playing little traps on them and tripping them, and that was okay; but there was always a moment when things got uglier, and the only choice left was the one she liked the least: sometimes she had to actually use her power and unlike the rest of the guys, this power hurt her more than it helped her.
"Everybody, remember:" Storm spoke as the door started to open: "We are not here to harm anybody."
"Speak for yourself, 'Ro" was the answer she got from Logan, as he pulled his claws out and jumped off the place. Scott, Jean, Colossus, Kitty and Storm followed him, while Kurt vanished in a cloud of bluish smoke.
Standing alone inside the metal box, Rogue took a look at her hands gloved in black leather and she prayed they could just stay like that tonight. She didn't need more people inside her head, no more ghosts in her mind that made her second guess the person she really was…
But trying to brush away any thought that wasn't specifically about fighting tactics or Danger Room exercises, she took a deep breath and jumped out too.
And there she was now, in the middle of a soon to be battle field, that usually was just the huge backyard of a very fancy house. Walking behind her team mates, Rogue kept piercing the darkness with her eyes, trying to guess where the danger would come from. But somebody else did it first:
"Hey, Maximoff" Cyclops spoke: "Don't you know you're trespassing?"
Quicksilver emerged from the shadows, soon followed by Blob, Toad, Lance and Pyro:
"Hey, Summers: don't you know you're an idiot?" Pietro shot back, but before any more greetings could be accomplished, the ground under everyone's feet started to shake and tremble, as a large crack began to spread on the ground, separating the two bands apart.
"Yo, good one, Avalanche!" Toad laughed queasily, clapping and jumping up and down like the maniac he is.
"I've just had enough of these punks" Wolverine growled: "Come on!"
As everybody either jumped across the crack, teleported to the other side or telekinetically flew over it, nobody noticed that the Canadian was the only one that didn't do it, staying glued to the ground for a couple of seconds, sniffing, frowning, glaring around. Nobody noticed it, except Rogue:
"What is it? Logan?"
He didn't answer a word; all he did was making his way over the crack on the ground and running towards the house, away from the place the fight was really starting to develop.
The Wolverine avoiding a good fight? That was more than odd, and there could only be one possible explanation for it: he'd just found an even better fight.
As he walked among the trees that lined the house by its right side, the blasts and noises kept bugging his superior sense of hearing, but that didn't keep him from sensing something else was fishy around here. Someone who wasn't invited to their little get-together there, was now trying to sneak out.
Sniff, sniff.
He could smell him.
Turning abruptly to his left, he saw nothing but trees, darkness and empty space, but when he turned back, he saw this person suddenly jumping off a tree, landing on his feet and raising both of his hands in surrender:
"I give up, mon ami."
No one would need enhanced senses to recognize the mocking tone in this guy's voice, the way a smirk was about to show up in his face at any second, or how his red on black eyes were so far away from being the eyes of a man who surrenders.
"Sure you do, buster."
Now the smirk did make its appearance.
With a fast movement of his hand, the guy took hold of a couple of poker cards and threw them at Logan, who managed to evade the objects before they exploded:
"Whatcha gonna do now? Attack me with your dominos?"
"Non" he replied, and before Logan could do anything about it, this guy hit him in the face with some kind of large stick, then made it swing and rest by his arm: "Was thinkin' more of dis."
Wolverine groaned angrily, sort of adjusting his head to its right position:
"Now I'm mad."
The other guy attacked him with the staff again, but Logan quickly cut it in several pieces. Then, he pulled him by the collar of his trench coat and put a whole set of three very sharp claws to his throat:
"All right, Cajun: you're gonna tell me who you are and what you're doing here, if you wanna stay in one piece, got it?"
The referred Cajun swallowed hard, but didn't seem to be scared at all.
"Got it, homme. Question is…" he raised a hand and gripped one of the claws with a hand: "who gonna be de one t' break t' pieces?"
"What the…?!"
Logan had taken a lot of pain in his life and of course he always recovered from it; but that didn't make the pain less… well, painful. He saw his claws acquiring this gleaming purple coloration, and then he felt this wave of pain travelling from his knuckles to his wrist, from his arm to his shoulder and then to the rest of his body, in spite of which, the last thing he would have done was releasing that crook, who was staring at him almost with amusement.
He had to do something and he had to do it fast… but all of a sudden, the pain stepped back, the red on black eyed guy winced and fell on the ground flat on his face.
"Ah should have known." Logan saw Rogue standing there, her right bare hand still suspended in the air: "Yah 'kay?"
"I'm fine" he took a last look at his claws before retracting them: "You?" Rogue just nodded, her eyes low as she put the glove back on: "Hey, you sure?" he insisted.
"Yeah, ah'm… ah'll be fine."
He stared at her for a moment, but then switched his attention to the man lying on the lawn: "So, what does Gumbo here have to do with the Brotherhood there?"
Rogue searched inside her head. Many thoughts and images she couldn't recognize started to appear; it was like doing zapping, just not in the TV but inside her mind.
"Nothin'" she finally said.
"Nothing?"
"Nah. He… took advantage of the confusion an' broke into the house to steal... this." Kneeling by his side, she slid a hand in one of his coat's pockets and took out a necklace with gems of ridiculous dimensions.
"Great" Logan snorted: "Can't believe I wasted my time with this pickpocket. Come on, let's go."
Rogue dropped the necklace to the ground, next to the man that laid there; then, took a last look at the back of his head, and followed Logan.
(…)
She was holding the mug with both of her hands, taking a small sip of hot chocolate and narrowing her eyes at the Cajun sitting at the other side of the table:
"De look on de man's face, chere: just priceless" he continued chuckling, and drank some more… whatever thing he was drinking.
"Really? Yah coulda…"
"Killed 'im?" Remy questioned, raising a brow.
This reminded Rogue of a game some of the kids (including her) used to play some time ago: by turns, each person had to come up with an idea of a way Wolverine could die. If you spent more than 5 seconds thinking about it when your turn came, you were out of the game. Needless to say that, in the game, the man got his head cut off, drowned, sliced and diced, and chewed, swallowed and digested by alligators, anacondas and piranhas. There were always these endless discussions about if he could actually die this or that way, or if he'd just manage to heal somehow.
"Ah don't know" she finally recognized, placing the mug back on the table: "But ah swear ah'd never seen 'im so freaked out."
"Ha, see?"
In spite of herself, she couldn't help to laugh along with him.
"Hey, you two," a gruff voice called their attention: "I don't find that particularly funny." Logan was standing there, holding a tray with food with both of his hands.
"Nah, ah know! Me neither" Rogue hurried to say.
"At all" Remy shook his head, taking another sip.
"It's really…"
"Shameful."
"Yeah," she turned her eyes back to Gambit, in an attempt not to laugh again at the sight of Logan's upset frame: "Shameful, that someone could ever do somethin' like that."
The Canadian glared at them sceptically and then left with his meal, not before murmuring:
"Cornpones."
She followed him with her eyes until he sat on a nearby table, next to Storm and Professor Xavier. Kitty and Colossus were acting way too friendly in another table: she was giggling out of control and giving him ice cream with a spoon. Anyway, Rogue continued:
"Nah, really, Remy: what were yah thinkin'? Please, enlighten me. If he exploded in pieces, yah were goin' down too."
She saw him manoeuvring a wooden toothpick in between his fingers, and staring at it almost with interest. Next, it started to gleam:
"See, cherie, I'm a man of chances; I take 'em…" with a puff, the toothpick blew up in a little explosion: "…an' den I deal with 'em."
The tiny bunch of ashes that fell on the table gave off a ribbon of grey smoke that ascended slowly, like a bonfire that was just put out. Then, there was no more smoke.
"Yah're not a man;" she found rather funny the perplexed look in his face when she said this, but truth be told, she wasn't joking this time: "Yah're just a ghost trapped inside mah head. Nothin's for real" she took another sip of her chocolate, watching the dawn out the window.
"Well," Remy slid his hand on the table until he reached her gloved one: "Dis do feel real t' me."
Before that strange feeling that took over her for a moment got any stronger, she pulled back her hand:
"But it ain't. An' don't do that."
"Do what?" he asked innocently.
"Don't yah dare to try an' flirt with me, Cajun; ah know all your tricks. Yah're in here, remember?" she said, tapping a finger in one of her temples.
"Don't think so; Remy still got a few more cards under 'is sleeve." He knew she turned back to the window just to hide the smile that for a moment seemed to be about to appear. But it didn't; you can't smile when you're biting your lower lip. "So, dat how it works?" he continued.
"What?"
"Y'… absorb people an' their thoughts become yours? Is it like dat?"
None of her residents had ever asked her that. At the beginning, some of them were upset to suddenly be stuck without their permission in this sort of alternate reality, but as time went by, they were happy with just hanging out and wandering around.
"Not exactly, ah mean…" it wasn't something easy to talk about: "The Professor has been teachin' me to push the psyques to the back of my mind. They seem to appear only in here, when I'm sleepin', but ah don't know anything about them, ah don't remember any of this when ah'm awake. It's like… a movie yah saw years ago; it's somewhere in your mind, but yah don't remember the details or the characters, or the story…"
"But if y' happen to catch de movie on TV, y'd recognize it?"
"Ah don't know" she shrugged, "Why?"
"'Cause accordin' to dis y' sayin', we don't really know each other out dere, non?"
"Nope; ah didn't even see your face, yah didn't see mine. Guess ah caught yah outta guard."
"Remy's never outta guard, chere," he rectified: "Just wanted to give y' a little lead."
"Really? 'Cause ah could notice yah didn't even know what hit yah… hey, where did Logan go?"
"Dunno, he was right dere."
Storm and Xavier were still at the table, but Logan's spot was empty.
"Yeah, well… ah guess ah didn't see him when he left."
"Forget 'bout 'im; I got a little surprise for y'."
Rogue looked into his eyes for a few moments, feeling weird, yet feeling somehow happy that he was around:
"Why?"
"Why not?" he winked: "Just wait here, I'll be back in a sec."
He took the last sip of his drink and stood up to leave, but she made him stop in his tracks:
"But ah think ah'll be awake when yah get back."
They stared at each other for what seemed to be an eternity:
"Den I guess we'll always have t'morrow night" he stated, and then, coming a little closer to her: "It'll be just a moment cherie, wait for me, oui?"
She finally nodded and then saw him going out the Café's door.
Her hot chocolate was over. On the other side of the window, it began to snow lightly.
Note: Yes, I watched the Wolverine movie, and yes! I had to bring something of it to Gambit and Logan's fight there. It was fun to write, as well as this whole chap. As you can see, Pyro is member of the Brotherhood, and nobody around here knows Remy. Another thing: the line "But I'll be awake when you get back" is from the movie "The science of sleep", as I said in chap 1. I'm not sure if it's literally like that, but that's what it says.
Also, please remember I'm still learning English, so I tried my best but there might be mistakes. I'll gladly receive any corrections.
Thanks so much to those who reviewed and read chap 1, and please… please? Drop me a line, a word, anything! I wanna know what you guys thought of this. Thanks again and onto next time!