: HOUSE OF CARDS :

PART SIX : COMPLETION

(21) - Broken -

They said nothing on the way back, not even when they'd stepped back into that little room where they'd first become lovers. There was an uneasiness between them, born out of sorrow and mistrust. And yet, despite everything, he'd still come after her, he'd still done everything in his power to protect her and keep her safe. There was a part of her, the proud and solitary part, which resented this. But there was another part, deeper and more profound, that ached with the realisation that she could not simply turn off her feelings for him. From the moment they'd stepped into one another's lives they had been playing with fire; they had accepted that risk, and she had no reason to resent him for that. She had hurt him as much as he'd hurt her.

And she knew she'd hurt him. She knew that in a way he'd seen her as his unique possession, and she had broken that belief just as he had broken the belief that deep down he was a good person doing what he did for the right reasons, even if he did it in the wrong way.

After all, there weren't many good or innocent people around these days, and she herself had long ago stopped being one of them.

-oOo-

Once back at the safe house she'd run straight into the shower. Her body felt old and tired under the water - it was as if the past day or so she'd aged a lifetime. She spent a long time there, running her hands over herself, trying to make out just who and what she really was.

We are the faceless and the formless, wanting to become something complete and beautiful and whole, striving to become human…

That was what Mystique had said.

And somehow, for the first time, she saw that statement clearly for what it was - it was a truth that had followed her not simply since the war had started, but ever since she had been born as a mutant; it was her phrase, her motto, it was the meaning of her.

She wondered whether she would ever escape her cocoon, whether she would ever be more than just Rogue.

It was thirty minutes later when she stepped out of the shower. It'd taken a while to get all the brown dye out of her hair, but she'd managed it at last. In the lopsided and mottled bathroom mirror, the butterfly pendant still glittered brighter than anything else in this sad and dreary world, just as it always had done. She thought of Simmons, of the way he'd looked at it with his strange, oblique glance from eyes now dead and cold and staring. He'd known what it meant, somehow. He'd known what it had meant to her, that it kept her looking and dreaming for something that had probably never even existed. A better her, a better Rogue.

-oOo-

Remy was sitting on the edge of the mattress, playing solitaire with a new pack of cards - she could smell the aroma of fresh plastic. She stood and watched him a while as she towelled her hair dry, the way his fingers absently caressed the edges of the cards as he placed them out in front of him in a somehow meaningful array of pattern and colour. But whatever he found in them remained obscure to her, and always would. She had accepted long ago that there were some things that she would never know about him, however long they spent together.

"Feelin' better?" he asked her at last, not looking up from his game.

"Ah guess…" she replied waveringly. She didn't know how she felt.

"Hmph. At least it's better den you bein' mad at me." He paused, laid down the queen of diamonds. "You better rest up, chere, get some sleep. We should be leavin' early for de Hound pens tomorrow. We'll need to be at de top of our game."

She made no verbal acknowledgement, merely nodding silently, even though he was too engrossed in his game to see it. She took a glance around the room, her gaze resting on the battered old armchair in the corner of the room. A blanket had been laid on it, and a pillow; his trench coat had been slung over the back. Despite everything that had passed between them, something inside her fell. She knew he was planning to sleep apart from her as a token of respect, but nevertheless she didn't want that courtesy. It wasn't the sex she wanted - it was his warmth that she needed. Perhaps it was weakness, but she couldn't stand this enforced coldness between them any longer. Of everything, he was the very last thing she had left, and still she couldn't let him go.

Her stomach gnawing listlessly, she slowly laid aside the towel and slumped onto the edge of the mattress. She was tired; she didn't want to argue with him. She didn't even have the strength anymore. Gently she touched her cheek, which ached dully where Simmons had hit her. Even that felt numb.

"You okay, chere?"

He had turned slightly and was looking at her. She nodded slowly.

"Ah'm fine. It's nothin'."

He swivelled round fully to face her, and when he reached out she found she didn't want to turn away. His fingers touched her cheek lightly as he examined the wound.

"Should be okay," he decided after a moment. "Might get a little septic though, if we don't treat it." He got up, went over to the dresser, and when he came back he had some cotton wool and a bottle of disinfectant on him. He sat next to her again, shook some of the pungent-smelling liquid onto the wad of cotton wool, before pausing and looking at her. "Are you okay wit' me doin' dis?"

She smiled wanly. "Ah'm fine with just about anythin' you can throw at me, sugah."

His smile was wan too, but it was there. Gently he placed his left hand on her shoulder while his right carefully tended the cut. She thought he took a longer time than was necessary to clean the wound, but she made no complaint, sensing that this was some sort of test for them both, a testing of the boundaries that had been newly erected between them. She knew instinctively that this was his way of apologising to her. Deep down, she wanted to apologise too. It took a minute or so for the tenseness to abate somewhat, and she allowed herself to relax.

"You still wear dat?" he asked her in an undertone while he continued to dab at her cheek. She gazed at him questioningly, before seeing him looking down at the butterfly pendant hanging at her breast.

"Sometimes," she replied softly. She paused: his eyes were back on the cut, inspecting it. "Ah always have it on me, even if Ah'm not wearing it," she added, her voice dropping a notch. His brow furrowed slightly.

"Why?" he asked after a moment. She could tell that he was referring to why she wore it at all, rather than why she sometimes hid it.

"Ah dunno," she murmured. "Ah guess… because it was the only thing I had left from the life I left behind."

Along with you…

His eyes flickered; he dropped his hand and finally his gaze was on hers again. He stared at her a long moment, and she realised that that short conversation had broken the barriers between them more profoundly than anything else could have done.

"I see," he murmured at last. Then he stood, threw the cotton wool into a nearby wastebasket and put the disinfectant back into the dresser. When he was done, he went back to the cards, still lying in formation next to the bed, and began to pack them away. Though the coldness had gone between them, there was still something thick and invisible that she couldn't pinpoint. A feeling… A dread…

She stared at him, the way he avoided looking at her, the tautness in his body as he felt her eyes on him, and something viscous and sickly suddenly rose inside her.

Sinister doesn't just want Rachel's DNA… He wants Rachel all to himself. It's what Remy does, isn't it? He frees mutants from the concentration camps, brings them to Sinister so he can perform his sick experiments on them… Rachel's a chance he won't be able to pass up. He doesn't want to broker a deal with Mystique at all. He's just usin' us t' find the location… usin' me to get the access codes… Once we get to the pens, Ah'll just be in the way. Ah won't be needed anymore. None of the Brotherhood will.

She gazed over at Remy changing out of his shirt by the armchair, the sick revelation hitting her with an agonising abruptness.

He's ordered Remy t' kill us all…

The full weight of the realisation seemed to bear down on her with a dull, terrible ache, and she slumped onto her back, feeling her body fill with a hollow numbness. What was it that Mystique had said before she left? If you feel at all that he is being duplicitous, kill him.

Kill him.

She would have to kill him.

Because the moment she'd touched Irene, the moment she'd looked into the window of the future, she'd realised what was truly at stake. It was beyond revenge and hate and anger, it was beyond petty attachments. If Rachel was indeed their last hope, she was more important than anything else, more important than a selfish need for a cheap and tawdry affair that meant nothing.

Why, Remy, why didn't yah just let me walk away, why didn't yah carry on with the mission and leave me behind? Why did you haveta come back and make things harder?

And for the first time she saw the answer. She saw the answer as clear as day. It was because he didn't want to lose her either. Because he couldn't resist her like she couldn't resist him. Because after all, despite all his playing, all his posturing, she really did mean something to him and he couldn't let her go.

It was more than she could bear.

She stared up the ceiling, that same old ceiling she'd stared at the first moment she'd realised she was falling for him, the night he'd killed Kincaid for her and there had been no turning back for either of them.

Like there was no turning back even now…

"Ah'm sorry," she suddenly began in a hoarse rush, the words racing to get out, "about what Ah said earlier on t'day. You were right. Every time we came here, it wasn't about us. It wasn't about the world or our lives outside. It was just about feeling. About comfort. About trying to be happy once or twice a year."

She paused and he stood beside the armchair, his back to her, staring at the blanket in his hands.

"What we do with our lives is one thing, and what we feel is another," she continued slowly. "Feelin' doesn't have any place in what we do - it can't, because if we let it get in the way, we fold. Ah shouldn't have resented you for that, Remy. It made me a hypocrite. There are no good men in this world anymore. And Ah… Ah ain't a good person. Ah'm wicked. Ah had no right t' be mad at you."

She stared at the ceiling, expecting no answer; but he turned and looked at her then, his eyes searching her face, finding her gaze with a solemn intensity she'd never seen in them before.

"You ain't wicked, chere," he returned softly. "You just tryin' t'do de best wit' de hand dis life has dealt you." He paused and looked away - she didn't think she'd ever seen such a softness in his eyes before. "I'd never think you were wicked, chere. Back when we were wit' Xavier's brood, there were a lotta self-righteous people there, people who were selfless and noble and all de t'ings I wasn't. Good people, chere. People I'd never had de good fortune t' grow up wit'." He pulled the kind of wry, self-deprecating look she knew so well. "But… out of all of them… I always thought you were de best of de lot. Good, an' pure, an' untouched… Guess dat's why I liked you so much. And sometimes, I just wish I had dat old Rogue back." A small, soft smile had touched his face as he said these words; but then the smile faded, and there was sudden realisation on his face. "But it wasn't Mystique dat took her away, was it?" he continued slowly, reflectively, his eyes dull. "It was me. I did it. B'cause I destroy every good thing I touch." He paused, looked down into his hands, murmured: "I spoiled de most beautiful, pure and innocent thing I ever saw. And now… however hard I try, I can't get her back."

It was as if she'd been waiting her whole life to hear those words. Something inside her broke and all of a sudden she could feel her heart again, not just with the dull ache that had occupied it all these years, but with a white-hot pinprick that seared through her chest and her throat and stung the back of her eyelids. Nothing he could have said or done to her could have been more visceral, more intimate. Suddenly she wanted to weep, weep for the past they'd both left behind; but she couldn't bear to show him just how much she mourned her lost innocence - she could never show him such weakness. Wordlessly she rolled onto her side and buried her head into the pillow, clutching it tight, pushing down the stone in throat, the one that had weighed down her heart for so long. She wouldn't cry, not for him, never for him…

Nevertheless a dry sob shuddered through her, one that she couldn't suppress. There was a long silence and presently she felt the weight of his body against the mattress, his hand touching her bare arm, soaking into her skin, her bones, her heart…

Only three centimetres and one night between them, a gap she couldn't bridge…

But he was there, and she felt the warmth of him as he inched himself close to her hunched and trembling figure, the warmth of his breath as he nestled his face into her hair, and she knew he was trying to console her, that he knew how much his words had both injured and inflamed her.

"Rogue?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper. She swallowed her tears back. She didn't want this anymore. She wanted to be free, she wanted to be the way she used to be, naive and innocent and unspoiled. Such irony she wanted to laugh in the face of her tears. Her throat burnt but she would not cry. She refused to. Instead she swivelled onto her back and found his eyes in the half-darkness, the patience of his gaze, the way he'd waited for her and would continue to wait because two more minutes, two more hours no longer made any difference…

"Rogue's gone," she whispered to him. "You shouldn't wait for her anymore."

He reached out, smoothing a rough hand against her cheek, not waiting for any explanations, needing none, because what he'd always wanted was right there before him, he'd take her however she was, however broken, however tainted. She closed her eyes and felt those worn hands caress her face, hands that had maimed, that had killed, that had deceived and lied and betrayed so many, yet telling her it was all right, that the two of them…they were the same.

The same.

"You're wrong," he whispered, his fingers tangling into her tousled hair, leaning forward so close his nose touched hers and his lips teased her own. "The Rogue I've always wanted, the Rogue I've always waited for… she's right here…" He kissed her nose, slow, soft, then the bow of her lips, said: "And I'm gonna keep on waitin' for her 'till all dis is over…"

His mouth slid over hers, warm and liquid, and she closed her eyes, kissing him back slowly as if she'd never kissed a man before, her arms reaching for him, holding him close. It didn't matter now, all the lies, all the subterfuge. There would never be anything more between them than these stolen kisses, these stolen nights when everything would cease to exist except them. Tomorrow they'd return to the real world, to pain and death and suffering. Tomorrow, one of them would have to die by the other's hand.

But until then she'd savour this one night, this one moment. She would believe that they were lovers, that they had never stopped; nor ever would again.

-oOo-

A/N: Thanks again to all those that have taken the time to review, and to all the newcomers who've faved and alerted this story. Your continued support keeps me smiling through a busy day, keeps me rooting for Romy, and most importantly, keeps me committing these random fancies to 'paper'. Enjoy.

-Ludi x