Hey—Nathalia Potter, another author on decided in a burst of inspiration to finish my little "Rogue's Favorite Ghosts" ditty, set to the tune of "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music. Go check it out—it's awesome and hilarious! Very nice companion-piece to this fic. Three thumbs up, Nathalia! (Well, we are dealing with mutants in the Xmen universe, right?)

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Black is the Color

Chapter 7. Confrontation, Revelation

After Bess' ghost had—sighed—or whatever—at her, she simply dove for whatever clothes would decently cover her, and hightailed it out of the suddenly too-close room. On her way out, though, she grabbed Bess' shift and Roarke's shirt, which had remained stubbornly, eerily solid. It seemed to her that it was only fair that the physical belongings of the ghosts should fade with the ghosts' leaving, but nooo. The clothes were irrefutable proof. There was no way to leave this place now, immediately, and shrug the whole thing off as 'something in the water.' The boots and guns and coat remained, too, draped on and around the chair in the anteroom. She shook away the tactile memory of the smooth leather boots beneath her hands as she tugged them down his legs, shuddered at the neck-prickling sensation of his hands combing her hair down her back, hair far longer than she'd ever worn it…

"…But Remy doesn't know what's goin' on!" Rogue heard the Cajun's protest as she came down the stairs, running her hands through her disordered (barely even shoulder length, damnit!) hair.

"Logan," She said, her voice rough and raw—with screaming, she remembered—"leave him alone. Neither of us really knows what's going on."

Both men rose from the kitchen table, concerned expressions on their faces as she joined them. Remy, she saw, was still in the leather breeches, though he'd grabbed a shirt somewhere on his way down. Wordlessly, Remy handed her a mug of tea; equally silently she thanked him, and ignored Logan's angry expression as she sat close beside him. Logan could just deal; she needed to be beside Remy right now.

Involuntarily she winced as she opened her mouth to sip the steaming liquid. Predictably, Logan immediately demanded, "What's wrong with your mouth? Cajun, did you do something to her?"

"What did it look like I was doing that could have hurt her m—" Remy started indignantly, thinking Logan meant, had he hit her, but cut himself off in mid-sentence abruptly at the inadvertent double entendre he had nearly made, and amended quickly, "Don't answer dat."

Rogue eyed him for a brief second, to be sure his statement was inadvertent, and answered Logan. "No, Remy didn't do anything to hurt me—" She hoped he didn't notice she didn't say 'Remy did nothing to me at all,' since she wasn't quite certain that was accurate, but then, neither she nor Remy had been 'in charge' last night, so to speak. "Remy didn't hurt me; it was the bastards who killed Bess who did it."
"Bess? Killed?" Logan sat back in his seat, his expression becoming less fierce. "Maybe you'd both better tell me what's been going on, in your own words, before we go any further."

Rogue felt Remy tense beside her, and she laced her fingers through his. "You won't like… well, a lot of it," she warned. "You have to promise not to do anything to Remy." He squeezed her fingers gratefully. Grumbling, Logan agreed, and settled in to listen.
Remy went first, and as he spoke he swore it felt like Roarke was perched just barely on his mind's edge, just enough that he kept Remy closely informed about the events leading to his death, and Roarke's own feelings throughout. Overwhelming amongst these was the highwayman's unending passion for Arabessa Dawson, the daughter of the innkeeper. By the time he finished the story, he felt exhausted, and had the unsettling feeling that Roarke had settled in, somewhere behind his eyeballs, and was only politely letting him keep control of his body, for now at least.

Rogue spoke next, and he suspected that Bess was visiting her, too, as her accent sharpened slightly as she related Bess' side of the tale in quiet detail. Her fingers gripped his convulsively when she spoke of the abuses the Redcoats had visited upon her, and as she haltingly spoke of the sacrifice Bess had made, he couldn't prevent a quiet 'Mon Dieu!' from escaping his lips. It seemed the passion was two-sided in its depth and endurance, truly a 'star-crossed' pair of lovers.

Logan sat in silence for a moment, and stared at them. Then he addressed what was, to him, the most pressing question, directing it at Rogue. "So the ghosts had control of your bodies, right?"

"Right."

He paused, and with as much delicacy as he could muster, asked, "Does that mean that you and the Cajun—?"

She blushed fully red, slouched in her chair, embarrassed, and stammered, "Uh—actually—er—I'm—we're—not sure?" She bit her lip, and glanced at Logan, then Remy, worriedly.

Logan moved his gimlet stare to Remy. "Well, Cajun?" he asked. "Guys usually know when they've—well. There are—er… signs." He stopped awkwardly, and simply gave Remy an expressive look.

"Uhm. Well. I'm not—positive—but—I… don't think we…" He shrugged his shoulders, uncomfortable with the whole conversation, the topic, and sitting here clutching Rogue's hand with Logan four feet away. "De breeches, dey're… eh… pretty, um… pretty tight?"

Rogue's eyes shot wide open as she snorted tea up her nose, and started giggling uncontrollably. Logan merely raised his eyebrows and muttered, "Oh." Remy turned an indignant look on Rogue who was still chortling beside him.

"I'm sorry, Rem… oh…" More laughter. "But… but…" More giggles, fed mostly by incipient hysteria, Remy realized. "Ah jus' learned more 'bout male anatomy than I ever realized I never knew!"

Her response was jumbled, confused, but at least she was laughing a bit. Well, more than a bit. Remy gripped her hand, and Logan notwithstanding, put his arm around her and simply hugged her. Hard. Her nearness, though, seemed to give Roarke strength, and Remy could feel him hammering for control of his body.

Apparently Rogue felt it, too, for she sat upright abruptly, with a gasp, and said, hesitantly, "Remy? Do you feel them too?"

"Oui," he breathed, and went still.

Logan peered at them from across the table. "Feel them? Do you mean they're here? Now?"

Both teens nodded, trancelike in their expressions and movements, and Logan got the uneasy feeling he was about to meet Bess and Roarke, face to face. "What do you two want?" he growled. "Why are you putting these kids through all of this?"

He really wasn't expecting an answer, and so was startled when Remy—Roarke?—answered. The Cajun's features looked more careworn, more scarred and aged, somehow, than they had ten seconds ago. "What is it that causes ghosts? Unfinished business."

"Well, if you need to say goodbye to each other, or whatever, just do it, and leave these kids alone!" Logan demanded, out of patience with romantic ghosts, and inns, and teenagers, and Why-did-Chuck-leave-me-to-deal-with-all-this-by-myself?

Rogue/Bess laughed musically. "Oh, it isn't goodbyes we're after," she said lightly. "Not really. We need to talk to Tim, and Snythe, you see."

"Tim and—what?" Logan looked at them in confusion.

"Tim was our hostler—he took care of the inn's stables and horses," Bess explained.

"And the lecherous bastard betrayed me to the Redcoats," Roarke growled. At her look, he exclaimed, "What? He was always pawing at you when he thought no one was looking, and who else would have given us up?" He turned back to Logan. "Captain Snythe was the lowlife who hurt my 'Bessa, here, and shot me down. But since I killed him a moment before I died, he never had to answer for his crimes face to face. His crimes were so great, however, that his spirit clung to the earth as a ghost, rather than go to his well-earned punishment. We need to see him go to that punishment."

Logan shook off the sheer weirdness of these two young people, familiar to him, sitting here speaking calmly about their own murders. The occasional cutesy cuddle between them wasn't helping the weirdness factor, either.

"So," he said now, "Why pick Remy and Rogue? Why not choose some other couple from the area, and why wait 250 years to settle things?"

"Well," Bess replied, "We needed a young couple in love, of course," she smiled at Roarke. Inwardly, Rogue smacked her forehead with her hand. I'll never live that down, thanks Bess, she thought at the interloper in her mind. "Also, we are not always as strongly—here—as we are now. So there were years, decades, lost there. And we have tried before. But most of the couples either left right away, or were unable or unwilling to help us. But this one, she you call—Rogue? Her mind is already equipped, somehow, to handle other presences in her mind without going mad. And Remy there has shared in Rogue's mind, and so has similar traits."

Belatedly, Wolverine realized she was speaking about Rogue's absorption ability, and Remy's empathic sense. He felt a surge of warmth toward the Cajun, that he'd voluntarily share in Rogue's feelings and confusion with her mutation. But that didn't mean he liked the Cajun, he reminded himself sternly.

"Also," Remy picked up the thread, "Tim had to bring the young couple to us, as part of his penance. He had to search them out and somehow get them here, where we could make use of them. I think he only wanted some profit, he never thought people would die. He's astonishingly corporeal, for a ghost, much better than we are. I believe it comes from his very true sorrow and guilt over the trouble he caused while alive. He's so here that at times he can even move objects."

Logan's forehead creased. "But if you're Bess, and you're Roarke, who's Tim?"

The ghosts looked at him expectantly from Rogue and Remy's eyes.

The answer came to him like a thunderbolt. "Old Robert?" he asked incredulously. "Old Robert is a ghost?"

They both smiled. "Got it in one," Roarke said.

"Okay, so that's three… Who's Snythe?"

Bess' expression was suddenly crushed, and Roarke tightened his grip across her shoulders, and answered Wolverine's question. "Alas, Snythe is much in death as he was in life, ever looking for the easiest path to power. And as we've said, those with minds similar to Rogue and Remy's are easiest to infiltrate. The person he's entered is well-known to you, but obviously quite powerful, as Snythe's been struggling to enter him for more than a week now, but still has not succeeded. He's trying to take over—"

"The Professor," Logan whispered in horror. It made sense though; the distraction, the lack of focus in his usually laser-like thoughts, the uncharacteristic lack of communication, even his vagueness last night about when he'd be able to get here to help… This Snythe sounded like a regular Maquis de Sade, and for one like that to be in control of the world's most powerful telepath… he shuddered. Suddenly, the ghosts' problems had become the X-men's.

"Stay here," he said. "I'm going to assemble the team." He rose and made to leave the room, but turned back at the doorway. "And Rogue, Remy? Hang in there—we'll figure out a way to help you. All of you."

He left, and two ghosts and two teens looked at each other from two bodies, and tried to figure out how they were going to get out of this mess.

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Well… it's only slightly less than three months since I updated this… not a year… that counts for something, right? Very likely only one chapter more of this, then on to another fic set in medieval times (and of course still working on Xanadu). So please get comments or rewrite suggestions in! I will be tweaking this later for plot cleanliness; any suggestions or glaring errors I should correct? Email me at Alara Celt hotmail. com . Just remove the spaces, of course. :)