Three months earlier
Rogue had been unconscious for almost four full weeks. That first day, after Beast had brought her into the infirmary, Rogue had another seizure and stopped breathing. Then her heart stopped. It took several tries before Beast had been able to get her heart beating and her lungs breathing on their own again. Logan had been willing to let Rogue absorb his healing factor but Xavier didn't want to risk further damage to Rogue's mind.
Since then, she was almost never alone in her room in infirmary, with most of the senior team on a schedule to keep her company. Of course, Remy was there the most, often found reading aloud from one of her Poppy Z. Brite books ("Didn't know you were into this kinda thing, Chere. We gonna have a little chat about it when you wake up, you can bet on it.") or playing her favorite CDs for her. Sometimes he cleaned the plaque that hung over her bed. (It had been a joke: Kurt and Bobby had made the plaque that said "Rogue's Recovery Room," to be placed above whichever bed she was in at that time. She was, without question, the most frequent patient in the mansion, much to her chagrin.)
Several days into the beginning of his vigil, Remy had to be convinced to return to his own quarters to get some sleep rather than trying to doze in an infirmary chair. Beast had assured Remy that Rogue would never be unattended, and that if Rogue should awaken in the middle of the night Remy would be one of the first to be notified. Mollified, Remy eventually resigned himself to the weary cycle of sleeping in his own bed, picking at food during meals, calling his contacts to see if they knew anything new about Sinister, then returning to Rogue for the rest of the day. The X-Men knew that until Rogue woke up, Remy wouldn't stray far from her.
Remy was early this morning, trading "shifts" with Kurt because he was needed for a mission. In the elevator down, Remy heard banging coming from the lower levels. When he reached the infirmary, he was concerned when he realized the sounds were in fact coming from the Med Bay.
Rogue was certainly awake. She had been throwing infirmary furniture which triggered the institute to produce its defense system of adamantium walls blocking the windows. She was trapped inside until someone set her free.
"The hell is happening here, homme?" Remy demanded of Beast. "Thought you said you'd let me know when she woke up?"
"I assure you, Mister LeBeau, Rogue had only just awoken moments before she started attacking her surroundings. You arrived just as I was about to raise the proverbial alarm," Beast replied.
Looking at the monitor, they watched in concern while Rogue continued to trash the room. Saline bags were punctured and bed linen was ripped to shreds. Rogue screamed to be let free.
By this time, Scott, Kitty, and Wolverine had arrived. "Charles has been alerted and should be at the Institute in less than 30 minutes," Storm explained.
"I don't know if she's got 30 minutes," Wolverine said.
"Does Rogue's voice sound different to you guys?" Kitty asked the group.
"Sorry, it's a little hard to judge since she hasn't stopped screaming since I got here," Remy replied, bemused.
"It's her accent. It's… gone?"
The group fell silent as they tried to listen to the words Rogue was screaming. "You are all complicit in this! Let me out of here!"
"Call me crazy but I don't hear any southern twang. And her voice sounds deeper," Kitty said.
"The blue eyes, the different voice… I think we may be dealing with Carol Danvers," Beast said.
The banging finally stopped; Rogue/Carol had broken everything there was to break in the infirmary. Rogue/Carol didn't even look like she was out of breath. Instead, she looked at the security camera and demanded, "You must free me. I am being unlawfully imprisoned and the Avengers won't stand for this! Do you have any idea what you've done?!"
"I don't think she knows," murmured Storm.
"Know what, 'Ro?" Wolverine asked.
"It's not the infirmary that Carol Danvers is trapped in. It's Rogue."
Later, Professor Xavier tried to make telepathic contact with Rogue while speaking with Carol but with no success. Rogue was nowhere to be found in her own mind.
"Please believe me, Ms. Danvers," Xavier said. "This was not an evil plot on our end trying to trap you or kill you."
"And yet here I am, trapped! You're the one who won't let me go! You're the one who won't acknowledge that Rogue attacked me!"
"Ms. Danvers, I know it's confusing," began Xavier. "But that is not what actually happened to you."
After the attack, Xavier had read the minds of all the nearest witnesses and pieced together what had taken place. Xavier was able to project this into Carol's mind. "You were both lured to that location," Xavier explained.
Carol screamed again. She ran to the metal walls, and seeing her blurred reflection, tugged at Rogue's white locks. "No, no, no! No! She ruined my life, the stupid bitch!"
"Carol," Xavier said sternly. "This isn't easy for you but I assure you, Rogue had nothing to do with this. She is a victim in this as much as you are."
"Oh, the dumb bitch is going to be the victim, I can tell you that," Carol promised. "If I don't make it out of here alive, neither does she."
Xavier didn't let Carol continue as he forced her unconscious immediately after her threat to Rogue's life. She fell to the floor, silent for the first time since she woke up. Jean used her powers to levitate Rogue's body back onto her hospital bed.
"I'm afraid that we will have to restrain Carol for the time being," Xavier said.
"What happens when Rogue wakes up and sees she's chained up to the bed?" Remy asked pointedly. "You're going to make her nightmares a reality when she sees what you've done."
"I do not make this decision lightly," Xavier assured Remy. "But I do believe Carol's threat, and I will take every precaution to keep that from happening. When Rogue wakes up, I will explain to her what has happened and hope she will forgive me for making that choice."
Remy barely got any sleep that night. He tossed and turned, thinking he could hear Rogue throwing the furniture and screaming more threats from several floors below. Finally he succumbed to sleep, still agitated. He dreamt he was running around some Twilight Zone-type hotel and was looking for Rogue down halls that seemed to stretch forever. Finally she appeared behind a door and he ran to her.
"Rogue! Are you ok?" Remy asked.
"Remy, help me! She's gonna kill you all!" Rogue cried.
"Chere, what can I do? I ain't no telepath," Remy said.
"She said she'll kill as many of you as she can until she decides it's my turn!" Rogue pressed. "I can't be responsible for that! I need your help!"
"What can I do?" Remy repeated in anguish.
"You need to stop me," Rogue said, grasping both his shoulders with her hands.
"I told you, I ain't no telep-"
"Remy, you need to stop me. By whatever means necessary."
Remy was incredulous. "Non. Non! You askin' me to kill you, Rogue?!"
"I can't be the reason so many people die! The other X-Men won't do it, we both know that. I need you, Remy. Please!"
Before he could respond, Remy's eyes shot open. He looked down and saw he had charged his bed in his sleep. He took a breath and let the charge die out. He jumped out of bed and made his way to the infirmary.
There was Rogue, lying still on her bed. Remy knew it was a risk to go in alone but he had to speak to her, even if it was just to monologue.
"Chere," Remy said. "I don't know if that was really you coming to me in my dream or if I've got one seriously messed up subconscious. But if it was real, Chere, you can't ask this Cajun to do something like that. I know we haven't said it out loud yet but I care for you too damn much to be the reason that you ain't in this world no more. We're not out of options yet, mon coeur. Just hang on. Please."
Days later, Rogue awoke late in the afternoon, blurry eyes looking first down at her restrained limbs, then at her surroundings. Remy was just starting a new book, the Fellowship of the Ring, wanting to read something with fewer vampires than Rogue's other books.
"Remy," Rogue coughed out.
"Chere? Rogue, that really you this time?" Remy looked at Rogue's eyes and saw the familiar grey-green color.
"Remy, tell the Prof that he needs Jean an' Emma Frost to stop Carol. It's not going to be enough on his own," she said.
"We'll get them, Rogue, I promise," Remy assured her.
"Tell 'em to hurry, Rems. We don't have much time." Even as Remy reached out to Xavier telepathically, Rogue fell unconscious again.
Emma Frost was summoned and arrived the next day. Xavier, Jean, and Emma worked tirelessly for nearly 36 hours trying to block off Carol while still trying to preserve Rogue's psyche.
"Remy, Rogue is asking to see you," Xavier said as the three telepaths finally exited the infirmary, exhausted from their ordeal.
Remy took that as a good sign and rushed in, unable to believe she was ok until he saw her for himself. There she was, the head of her hospital bed raised so she was sitting up, looking his way as he walked in. She had bags under her eyes and looked like she was barely awake but still smiled when she saw Remy enter.
"Hey Swamp Rat," Rogue said softly.
"Chere, you got no fuckin' idea how good it is to see you again," Remy responded as he sat in the chair next to her bed. Out of habit, he quickly crossed himself in gratitude that his prayers had been answered, murmuring a few words in Latin. He took her hand in his and ghosted a kiss on her knuckles, then placed it back on the bed, still clasped in his own.
"You were here," Rogue rasped, her vocal cords still damaged from Carol's unending screaming. "You were here the whole time."
"I promise you, I only left your side to sleep, and even then-"
"You were with me in my head, through all the craziness," Rogue explained. "You even tried to stop Carol by yourself. You told me to hold on. That I'd be ok, that you'd get me back here no matter what. I wouldn't have made it-"
Remy shook his head and squeezed her hand. "Rogue, I woulda dived through Hades' Underworld all Disney-Hercules-style and carried you back myself if I had to."
Rogue breathed out a laugh, then looked out the open infirmary door. "Everything's changed, Remy," she whispered.
Remy agreed, seeing no sense in trying to deny her statement. "I know, Chere. But you got me, and Kurt and Kitty and Wolvie and the Prof and everyone else here to help you. We won't let you down, and we won't let you go. Not without a fight."
Rogue hummed in acknowledgement, her eyes closing and her breathing soon becoming more even, then fell asleep, hand still in Remy's.
Hours later, Rogue and Kitty were catching up while Remy had gone back to his room. He could feel from the way his pants hung low on his hips that he had lost weight recently. He had barely been eating and he could almost feel his muscles losing their strength every day. Remy rubbed a hand over his face and felt how long his beard had gotten. He'd transformed from a ruggedly handsome rake with cultivated stubble to a bushy-bearded hipster lumberjack. He appreciated that no one on the team had teased him for it. He'd neglected nearly every part of his life while Rogue was in the infirmary.
In his bathroom, under the hot spray of his shower, Remy allowed himself to feel every emotion from the last four weeks in excruciating detail. His brain demanded he revisit it all: Rogue's seizure, Rogue's heart stopping, Rogue in a coma, Rogue waking up but not herself anymore. The threats of violence against the team. Rogue's haunting plea for Remy to stop her, by any means necessary.
Remy's breath hitched when he thought about her desperate request again. He knew he would do anything in his power that she asked of him but to take her life was not something he could ever consider. Was he selfish to want to keep her around when she couldn't stand the thought of being the reason someone died? Could he look at his teammates and tell them it was her dying wish for her to die? Was it because of what he did for Sinister that she thought she could ask this from him?
Remy's stomach churned, then vomited on the shower floor. He heaved stomach acid for several minutes, then leaned heavily on the shower wall once he had finished and lamented that he didn't have any food in his system for his body to purge. His eyes had been tearing up but he couldn't tell if it was because of the vomiting or the stress of almost losing Rogue. Or being Rogue's would-be killer. Or a terrific combination of all three.
He toweled himself off then dried his hair. He took out his clippers and trimmed his mountain man beard. He went to the kitchen and made a sandwich, keeping his eyes down to avoid speaking to anyone. He went back to his room to get his headphones, thinking he would run off his anxiety. He started reaching for his sneakers, stopped, sat down, got up, sat down again. He made up his mind he had to talk to Rogue right now.
"Desolee, Petite, but I'd like to speak with Rogue again. I'm afraid it can't wait," Remy said to Kitty when he walked back into the infirmary.
Kitty looked like she was about to argue but saw the look on his face and nodded. "Sure thing, Gambit. Rogue, I'll catch you later, ok?" Rogue waved as Kitty left.
Rogue waited while Remy paced for several moments.
"You told me I helped save your life, Chere," Remy began. "You said I was there with you and that's why you're here now. And I know I told you I'd do anything to help you, Rogue. And I will. But there was a night when I saw you in my dream and we spoke, and you fuckin' begged me to be the one to stop you, to fuckin' kill you…. Did I make all that up? Or was it actually real?"
Rogue looked almost as pained as Remy felt.
"Mon Dieu, how could you ask that of me?"
Rogue's breath hitched. "I'm so sorry, Remy. I didn't know if I could even reach you. I was so scared. It was worse than the time I lost control of my powers a few years ago, worse than Apocalypse draining me of all the psyches. I scared my team again. I scared my friends and family again. I can't be that person again. I can't be a liability. I'm sorry I asked you, Remy. I really am. And you're right, I didn't once stop to think what it felt like for you. I swear, I was out of my mind with panic. It was impossible for me to think about anything except not becoming a monster. I'm so sorry, Remy," Rogue sobbed quietly and looked at him, tears falling freely.
Remy nodded, leaning his head so their foreheads touched but their skin was protected by their hair, gloved hand cupping her cheek. "I obviously don't agree with it but I understand why you asked. But I can't do that to you. Ever."
"I know that now. I'm sorry, Sug."
"De rien, s'all right, Chere."