Summary: In the aftermath of a war, four survivors struggle to hold on to their identities in the face of a society meant to destroy them.

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Dedication:

To my Super Betas-- Fyrdrakken, Susan, and JenN-- for making sense of the madness. It takes a very patient and wise soul to straighten out my twisted thoughts....without their support and advice, the only place this story would have gone is the garbage can.

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Introduction: A Few Words

My first thoughts are "Wow. It's actually done."
::blinks in amazement::

The idea for this story hit my back at the beginning of
last summer, the result of multiple character-exploration
plot bunnies mingled with the traditional Post-Registration
plot bunnies. I started out thinking it would be a nice,
regular length story. Ha. I should know better than to turn
the Muse loose. I think this is my longest work to date.

Eleven months ago, I discovered the X-men fan fiction
universe, most specifically the beautiful relationship between
Logan and Rogue, and I have been blissfuly obsessed ever
since. Although this ardor has not dimmed in the slightest,
I have been forced into semi-lurkdom lately due to a very,
very heavy real life schedule. I just wanted to offer my
apologies for having to play Invisible Girl. It's not fun,
but I think I'll have to keep it up until things calm down.
I'll continue reading and offering feedback when I can,
although this will probably be my last story for a while.
I may continue to post the occasional poem or vignette,
but nothing much longer unless the Muse hits me hard.

I have tried to put this off, but I'm at last resorts and there
seems to be nothing else I can do but cut back. I hope this
story will be a viable contribution to the post-registration
genre, a field of fan fiction that I respect and love.

Thank you all so much for welcoming this little fan fic peon
and making her feel at home in the big, wide world of X-men.
I have never been in a fandom that is as warm and open
to newcomers (and antique members :P) and I am continually
amazed by your kindness and by your inspiration.

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The Legal Stuff: Disclaimers Etc

Any characters in this story previously affiliated with the X-men
movie/comic universe belong to People Other Than Me. I'm not trying
to make any money off them, so please...no lawyers. The following
songs, poems or novels are either quoted in relation to the story or as a
part of it, and are the property of their respective artists. I am
merely borrowing their genius and inspiration ---

1) "East of Eden" by Dead Can Dance
2) "Somewhere I Have Never Traveled" by ee cummings
3) "Ash Wednesday"by TS Eliot
4) "Rapsodia" by Andrea Bocelli
5) "Swamp Ophelia" by The Indigo Girls
6) 1984 by George Orwell
7) "Letting The Cables Sleep" by Bush

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la bas: song of the drowned (prologue)
darkstar
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Prologue: Marie


How did the end surprise you all? How did it form, how did
it coalesce? What gave it life? What hatreds, what blindness,
what fears? What blood and smoke? What politicians, what
legislation? What mobs?

They weren't the only ones to go blind. You couldn't
see either-- happiness got in your eyes, the by-product of
living and loving and being loved. No one was prepared for
what was coming, but suddenly it hit. The roof caved in,
the ruins burnt. Right around you.

The time after is black and white. For survivors, it is a
reel of old news footage-- jerky motion, grainy faces, stilted
dialogue-- like remembering a war your grandfathers fought.
For those who try to escape, there is an excess of
color: garish reds and yellows smeared across the eyes like
paint. It all happens too fast and too slow. It happens like
an explosion moving backwards, starting out as light and heat
and sound, then roaring into black silence.

You could read of it in the papers, but the headlines are all the
same. You could see it in a theatre, splayed and vulgar across the
big screen, but all movies are sterilized and edited to make you
the enemy. You are at the mercy of humanity, and by now you
have learned that humanity has no mercy to give.

You could leave this place...

No, you couldn't. Not really. There are wire fences and German
Shepherds (to keep them out or to keep you in?) and beyond that
an entire nation waits to lynch you on discovery. Discovery in your
case would be inevitable. You can't control your skin, and
eventually, someone would want to touch. They wouldn't
listen when you tried to stop them. No one else would be
around to stop them for you. Or rather, there is someone...but
Logan is not here. He is not anywhere close to you. Dead? At
times you hope so; it'd be so much easier that way. As it is, you
don't know what to feel. Part of it's love, part of it's hate, part
of it just aches, and if you saw him again, you wouldn't know
whether to hug him or spit in his face.

At least here there is someone else. It is strange, the sudden
wrench fate throws into your well-oiled life. You thought of Scott
as many things-- teacher, friend, brother-- but never as this.
Never as the one thing standing between you and Jean and  
the hands of strangers. The other men hate him, fear him, envy him.
They look at Jean and you as trophies, living proof of Scott's
manhood and prowess.

It's not really like that. This is the truth--

You are here because you wanted to survive, and because
there is no other place to go. Scott only makes them
fear him because he thinks it will keep the men away. He prevents
them from pushing too close, from looking too long, from
touching. You pretend to submit because that's how it's done
here; you let them think you need him to keep you safe, that you
could not do it yourself.
It used to all be pretense-- your dependence, his boasting.

But sometimes you don't know if it is, anymore.

That scares you most of all.

I was told of a distant land
  where tortured souls often cried together in anguish
  and the scenes that were shown
   were of a cruel and violent nature
  Scenes of pain and cruelty were there to be seen.
  The arena, the time, and the place were set
  for all to watch and see.
  I was told of a place in a distant land
  where the oppressor ruled with an iron hand,
  and of nations who sat in
  complacency, left cold and emotionless by history.
  Scenes of pain and cruelty were there to be seen
  and all the while I should have known
  it was you killing me.
  Somewhere east of Eden the designs will never change,
  Infected through others
  fear the world stops at the end of the hall.
  We watched the life force fade away,
  The eventual price you will have to pay.
  (Once you are dead how could the children have known?)

--- East of Eden
                     Dead Can Dance


Phoenix Compound
Southwest Nevada
August 31


Think of it like a wedding.

That is what the old women whisper into our ears when the
white dresses slide over our heads, sticking to our skin in the
early morning heat. Their bony fingers press cold circles
against our shoulders and the ridges of our spines as they
fasten each button one at a time. Their words drone all around us,
within us, through our heads. Ms. Sophia-- the coldest and
boniest of them all-- taps her cane against the floor in rhythm
to the liturgy.

    (May you bear many young. May you honor your bondmate
with a son. May you brighten the steps of his dwelling with a
daughter.)

The voices rattle like bones in the dry air, but I never
listen to them. I listen to his voice. I have kept him safe from
this place, tucked far back into a corner and buried under
memories of better times so they will never find him. It is
to prevent them from taking him from me. It is to prevent
me from destroying him myself.

The lace falls over our faces, smothering us with the scent
of incense and jasmine. Everyone bows their head to accept
the veil. Everyone submits. Even Jean, and even me, though I
would like to say I did not. My dresser tugs a pair of white
cotton gloves onto my arms, sheathing my skin in protective
cotton from fingertips to elbows. Ironic. I am the exception,
even here, when we are all supposedly equal at the genes. An
urge to laugh pulls at the back of my throat, but it is bitter like
semi-sweet chocolate. That is the taste of all laughter here.
That is, for those of us who still indulge.

They press flowers into our clasped hands, a single white
carnation. Then they whisper to us again, squinting out of the
wrinkles at the corner of their eyes.

    (Think of it like a wedding. Think how you all will make
such beautiful brides.)

Jean told me this is a lie. She had a real wedding, two
springs ago, in a little stone church in the country. There were
candles in the windows and pink roses in her hair, and Logan
kissed me in the back of the sanctuary when everyone else
went outside for the reception. Does he even remember that
now? Wherever he is, whomever he's with?
I do.

As we kneel for the final benediction, I watch Jean's hands
twist and turn her wedding band around her finger. Sophia's
caned her three times so far for refusing to take it off during
the Ceremony. None of them understands her stubbornness.
(It's just a ring, dearie.) Her dresser pats her hand or smoothes her
hair as she talks. (It doesn't even mean anything anymore.) Jean
says that I shouldn't be angry, that the women are just trying to
make it easier for her. I think they're just jealous. All of them.
She still has what they've all given up-- her spirit.

It's her survival, her one small defiance, but it costs her.
I wonder if she tells Scott about the beatings, if he finds
the marks on her body at night and asks what happened. If she
feels his pain when he touches the bruises. If she lies to him
to make him think he really is protecting us like he promised.
I could say it's worse for her than it is for me. She knows what
love is supposed to be; she holds the memories of what
she and Scott had before all this.

But then, I know what love is not. I learned the hard way, and
there are still nights when I can't sleep because it all plays back
in my head.
I guess I'm still the lucky one because it's easier to lose
something if you never had it to begin with. I don't have her
kind of memories, and at this moment, I am grateful.

    /Grateful that the one who'd ask you about your bruises is
     far, far away from here. He's not coming to save the day
     any time soon, or maybe he's not coming at all./

Some mornings I wake up with this fierce sort of gladness
that he is free from all this. Sometimes I hope he's locked up
too. I don't know what's worse-- the idea that they have him
again, or that he's alive and has just stopped looking for me.

I'll be angry with both because on these days, anger is
the best sort of drug. When it's in my veins, I feel nothing.
Nothing at all. I disappear between the white rage and the white
veil and hope no one notices me and calls my name before the
Elders.

The door opens and we walk one by one into the stifling
heat of the courtyard. Jean flashes the sunlight off her ring into
Ms. Sophia's eyes as we walk. The hag glares at us like she'd
cane us both if she had more time. But there is not time.

The glare of desert sun on white cloth stings my eyes,
causing them to throb with tears. The throbbing closes in on
my chest as well, a second pulse that races to the frantic
shouts of men ready to fight. Ready to claim a prize.
I fight the urge to run.

My eyes pull away from the crowd, pushing up through
the disgusting pallor of the veil to drink in the deep, wet
blue of the sky. For one beautiful second, all I see is sky and
clouds and all I hear is the wind and his voice in my head, and
we all are free again.

Then the drums throw me back to the earth, and I kneel
with the others in front of the Elder's platform, shifting to
find the softest spot on the hard cushion beneath my knees.
The flower in my hand shrivels, wilting in the baking air
It looks like me. Shining and white and beautiful for a moment,
but drying up fast in the desert sun. That's what they're really
doing to us. They dress us up and parade us out and suck our
life away until we're brittle and old like Ms. Sophia and the
other women. Until we're nothing but dust and dead flowers
on the inside. No spirit. No life.
   
    /I swear, I'll never give it up. Jean will not give up her
     ring and I refuse to lose what's left of who I am. If they
     couldn't take that outside, then a bunch of survivalist freaks
     can't take it from me in here./

The High Elder, an old man with no hair and wan yellow
skin-- part of his mutation or malnutrition?-- rises to his feet
and addresses the crowd.

"Brothers and sisters, it is my privilege to invoke this
month's Bonding Ceremony. I call on the Powers that they
may give skill to our brothers competing today and grace to
our sisters who await their bonds to these warriors."

I ignore him....it's the same David Koresh mumbo jumbo
every month. If I strain my eyes hard enough, I can see Scott
through the veil. His visor makes him easy to recognize, even
through a blur of lace. From this distance, his posture and
body language paints a deception of total confidence.
Cockiness, even. He always does know how to put on a face. Not
quite as good as Logan, but he comes close when the occasion calls for
it.
    
"May the strongest hand prevail and may the womb of his
bondmate be fertile with hope for our future."

Yeah, like a compound full of squaling little mutants is
going to help us win back our freedom on the outside. Sure.

This is our third Ceremony, but my stomach still twists into
little hard knots when the fighting begins. The helplessness is
worst-- the knowledge that control of my body is again taken
from my hands. We're china dolls on a shelf, waiting to be
passed to the winners here today. If I'm lucky, he'll be a friend.
A protector. If I'm not lucky...
A month can be a very long time.
    
It is on these mornings when I think of Logan the most. He
was built to fight. He lives for it. That's not the way Scott works.
All he ever wanted was a family and a safe place for them to
live in peace...

"Let the challenges begin."        

The cry of a child interrupts the anticipation, and Jean's
head snaps over to the shade where the Nurses are watching
the young children. She knows the sound of her son. Will
just turned three months old; he still cries when she leaves
him alone for longer than a few minutes. I don't have to
have her telepathy to sense her craving to leave her seat and
comfort him. But she can't. Scott can't. He has to fight and she
has to watch and maybe when it's all over, they can hold their
son again.

It'll cost him something in the mean time. Always does.
Jean is contested every month; last Ceremony, Scott fought
three different challenges for her, and one more for me.
Sometimes the fights are easy. Other times...not so easy. I
never know exactly what to say to him when it's over. It makes
sense that he'd do this for his wife, for his son, but he doesn't
owe me a thing. All he gave me was his word that if I stayed with
him, nothing bad would happen again. So far, he's proved it.

Thank you just doesn't cut it for something like that. At
least my mutation makes it easier for him. Not many men want
to risk his kind of beating for a girl with poison skin. Most
of my challengers take him on just for prestige. Everybody
wants to be the first to take the head X-man down.

Oh yes, his reputation preceded him. Here's another irony--
we had to run to this freak show in the first place because the
humans hated us for trying to save our people. As it turns out,
the mutants hate us just as bad because we failed. Maybe
even worse.

Jean's name is called twice. The challenges are clean and
quick; Scott's getting faster every month. Ms. Sophia has orders
to cane us if we soil our eyes with the fighting, but I risk a glance at
him from time to time in guilty fascination. His fighting style
is so different from Logan's. Logan is steel, hard and rough
and angry all at once, one big metal fist crushing anything
in his way. Scott is not metal, but liquid. He's not allowed the use
of his mutation, but it is not needed. Each motion is calculated,
graceful, darting between his opponent's defenses before any
reaction can stop him. The more you watch, the more the spin
of his body and arms seems like an intricate dance.
    In this manner it is almost beautiful.
    But sometimes I see him bleed, and then there is no
beauty, and there is no grace.

Five challenges into the Ceremony, Ms. Sophia tells me to stand.

"Are there any challengers for ownership of this bondmate?"

A moment of silence. I can almost hear the thoughts of the
men as they look at me.

    (What's she hiding under that veil? Does her skin really suck out
minds? Can I find a way to get around it? Is it really worth
fighting her man?)

A lean but muscular young man steps out from the crowd
and peels off his shirt, grinning as he winks at me.
"I am called Paul. By the Powers, I challenge for her ownership."
"Who accepts this challenge?"

Scott's voice, weary but firm.

"I am called Scott.  I defend ownership."
"Powers be with you. Let the challenge begin."
    
My stomach dives straight for my toes as they move into
the white chalk circle where the challenges are fought.
This time I can't look. Not even once or twice. I close my
eyes, pulling very far back into the dusty black, and I begin to
count backward from six hundred. Very slowly. Jean taught me
this as a method of keeping your sanity when you hear the
fighting. Counting fills your mind with an abundance of
nothingness. You don't think about what's at stake. You don't
think about what could happen to you.

Six hundred. Five hundred ninety-nine. Five hundred
ninety-eight. Five hundred ninety-seven.....

I fill the space between the numbers with snapshot
memories of a past more real than my life now.

    /Goldfish in a plastic bag, a present from my aunt for my
      fifth birthday./

Five hundred ninety-six.

    /The first time I played the violin, startled but enraptured
       by the sound./

Five hundred ninety-five.
    
    /His smile, the day before he left me.../

As I said, Scott's getting faster. I barely reach two hundred
before the cry of "yield!" ends the match and allows me to
open my eyes again. The kid is down, bleeding hard from his
mouth. I think Scott broke teeth. Good.

The Elder confirms the victory.
"The Challenge belongs to Scott. Ownership is retained.
May the Powers bless the continuation of this union."

A quiver slides down the length of my spine, like ice,
like cold hands. I'll never get used to this part. I hate it.

"Scott, you will now publicly bond this woman to you
as your mate until the next Ceremony, or until the bond is
extended by creation of a child. Rogue, you will now rise
and accept his bond."
    
My knees shake as I stand. Bad memories die hard.

My eyes are still lowered, waiting his command before I will
be allowed to look up, so I do not see him until he is
directly in front of me. My gaze falls level with his chest.
Beneath the streaks of dirt and sweat, the skin is tinged with
purple or yellow splotches that will turn into bruises before
nightfall. I smell the fight on him-- blood, adrenaline, anger,
more animal than human. It reminds me of Logan when he
came out of the cage the first time I saw him.
Scott's breathing is ragged when he speaks to me, reciting
the formula of the bonding ritual.
    
"You may raise your eyes."
     
I look up to read the silent apology in his gaze. He knows the
degradation of this. The disgust. Every month I see a plea for
forgiveness in his eyes. I give him what I can, but I have to
stifle the urge to pull away. The revulsion can't be helped.
Possession is still possession, even if the owner is nice.
    
He reaches for the edge of my veil. Bright smears of red
stain the white lace where he touches. As he pulls it back from my
face, he tries to smile. I try to smile back.

"I bond you, Rogue, to my side for as long as the Powers
decree."
"I accept your bond with gratitude and hope I may
honor your house with many children."

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Jean watch us. She is
impassive; a portrait in stone.

His face moves closer to mine, until I can no longer see the
sun but only my own reflection in his visor. My eyes are wide,
flared. Will he see it as fear? This is not  supposed to be that kind
of kiss. It is a form, a ritual. Nothing more.

The rock-bottom truth of it is that I have no choice.
I couldn't move away even if I wanted it. That makes me cold
inside. I need the right to turn away. But if I do, I'm as good
as banished-- maybe even Scott too-- and there are things
outside the fences so much worse than a kiss.

Scott pulls the bottom corner of the veil over my mouth.
I close my eyes and pretend with everything in me that it's
Logan. That it is simple and beautiful and something I want.

But when his lips touch mine, it's not that kind of kiss either.

It's mechanical. Stiff. A touch of lips through lace, a taste
of blood from his split lip, the suspicion that he's left another
apology in my mouth. And after that, nothing.

As I follow him from the courtyard, I am relieved.
I am also empty inside.

                        * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Candles for St. Francis: Marie


If you could have one single memory of him, you would
choose this one. It would be like a photograph, the tangible
proof that you were in love once. You'd hide it in your pocket,
or under your pillow, or inside your shirt, so no one else can see.
You'd want it next to your skin, to keep it warm, to keep
yourself warm. You'd take it out at night and hold it to your face.
Brush it with your fingertips. You wouldn't wear gloves.

The film, your mind, is black and white. A monochrome.
The stone walls of the church are charcoal gray, wet and soft
with sunlight. Outside the windows, a perfect spring day. The sky
is shining, thick white clouds smeared across the horizon like
vanilla ice cream against silver. Your dress comes through as
black, but you think it was dark blue. Or green.

Over the months, you have added color as you remember
it, painstakingly hand-tinting the photograph with pastel
attempts at recreating the Technicolor vividness of the moment.
It was a long time ago, however, and your attempts stray from
the concrete to the abstract. Pastel orange clouds, floating through
a lime green sky. Light pink rose petals on the floor-- one detail
you kept the same-- but the color spills over onto the candles
around the altar, onto the melted wax and curls of smoke in the
air.

The painting of St. Francis is flesh-colored, humanized
until he is more a man than a saint. His hands stretch up to
heaven and his eyes are wide and penitent. It is almost as if
he is blind. Heaven does tend to do that to one. As does love.    
You color the memory not how you saw it, but how you
felt it.

You are violet. You can't see your face-- it tilts down
in concentration to the votive candle and hid by your
hair-- but the back of your neck is visible where he brushed the
hair aside. You can also see your arms, although you distinctly
remember wearing gloves during the ceremony. Did he ask you
to take them off? No, he took them off himself. You see them
now...tucked in his pocket, limp and gray and lifeless. They are
not who you are; there is no need to color them as such.
You are violet because it is an innocent color, and that is
how you most want to remember yourself.

He is crimson. Every other shade in the photograph is
pale, delicate, muted, but somehow you have managed to
impart a deeper color to him. His hands rest on either side
of your waist, a reassurance of protection and closeness.
Your scarf-- also flesh colored-- is draped across the naked
skin of your neck, and his lips are pressed to the scarf. You can
see his profile: the thick hair, the forehead, the dark, dark eyes,
the full lips.
He is crimson because it is alive, and that is how you most
want to remember him.
    
You are not content, after a while, to remain on the outside
of the memory, so when you can no longer hold back, you
will step into it. You will go back a few moments before the
scene in your photograph because you want to remember
all the happiness of that day, not just the best.

Candles are lit; you tuck your violin beneath your chin and
begin to play something slow and sweet as the flower girls
walk down the aisle in perfect pink dresses with perfect pink
ribbons in their hair. A layer of rose petals begins to cover
the aisle.

Scott and his groomsmen file into the room to stand
beside the altar. Logan flashes you a grin and you try not to
laugh at his obvious discomfort in the tuxedo. You catch him
tugging on the collar when he thinks no one is looking. Scott
is smiling like you've never seen him smile before.
Next the bridesmaids; another attempt not to laugh when
Jubilee makes a face at you as she turns into position.

Once all are in place, you end the song and begin the
wedding march. People stand; all eyes dart to the back of the
room. An audible gasp swells the air. Jean walks through the
door, Charles holding her hand as he escorts her down the aisle.
For one moment, you almost forget to keep playing.

She has always been beautiful, but today she is radiant.
Shining.

(This, of course, is when white dresses and veils still
conjure up images of happiness and peace. This is long before
you have even dreamed of any other use for them.)

As she moves down the aisle, you notice the light of the
candles bending across a sudden wetness on Scott's face. One
tear, sliding down from his glasses, breaking the impassive
facade. It is a shock, coming from a man whose eyes
you have never seen. You almost had trouble believing he
had eyes, and tears, behind the lenses.     

You wonder now if he was crying because he had so much
to look forward to from that day on, or because he had so
much to lose.
Either way, you have never seen the phenomenon again.
It is like lightning. It doesn't strike twice, but once is enough to
change your perception on things you thought you understood.

Now you will fast-forward the memories to the hushed
cluster of moments that led you up to your photographic kiss.
Everyone has left the building, moving outside to enjoy the
gourmet catering-- Charles spared no expense-- and to
congratulate the happy couple. You cannot leave yet;  
a large oil painting of St. Francis in prayer draws your fascination.
A flickering line of votive candles stretches out before the paintings,
the glowing souls of prayer. An impulse strikes you, a whim.
You begin to reach for the match booklet lying beside the
unlit candles...
    
But he stops you. He has been watching you the whole
time, though you have not realized it, and now he reaches for
your hand. You jump, drop the matches.

   (You scared me.
    Why?
    I didn't see you.
    What are you doing?
    Looking at the painting. I was going to burn a candle. He's
my favorite saint.
    I'm not? I'm hurt.
    You're not a saint.
    Surprise, surprise.
    I meant you're something better.
    Oh. Like what?
    Maybe I'll tell you someday.)

He begins to tug on your gloves, pulling at the fingers to
loosen them.

    (What are you doing?
    Taking your gloves off.
    Why?
    You shouldn't have to cover up to pray.
    Logan....
    Trust me, ok?
    Ok. But...umm..be careful. Please?
    You worry too much.)
    
He has one of them off; now he's working on the other.
He paralyzes you with his nearness, with the way his hands move.
Gentle, careful, but not in the way that other people are around
you. More like he's afraid that he'll be the
one to hurt you.

    (I have to worry. If I don't, people get hurt.
     Not around me, Marie. You don't have to be that way.
    How am I supposed to be?
    However you want. When's the last time you took these off?
    I don't remember.)
    
A moment of silence.

    (I'm so sorry, baby. I should have done this sooner.
    No, it's fine. I mean, I want to take them off, but I'm still
    not sure about this. Your hands are awful close to my skin.
    How about this?)

He slides one hand around your waist, easing you back
against his chest. The other hand brushes your hair away from
your neck, pulling your scarf up over the skin.

You try to think, try to keep your hands from shaking as
you reach for the matches. A momentary fumbling, a flare
of golden light. The match kisses the candle and one more
flickering prayer springs into life. But this one has already been
answered.

He presses a kiss onto the back of your neck, through the
scarf. It is hesitant, delicate, awkward in a way, because you
know he has never kissed a woman like this before. Never like
a prayer.
Your skin muffles his voice when he speaks against your neck.
    
    (Why is he your favorite?)

This is the moment you photograph, the moment you
hold onto by instinct, because then you had no way of knowing
that someday it would be all you had. You flash-capture it
in your mind. His hands on your waist. His kiss on your neck.
The first time you were not afraid when your hands were naked.
The innocence of it, the naivete. Not just yours. His too.
You know he had it by his question, and you know by your answer.

    (Because he believed in love.)

As you look back at the moment, now, you see crimson
hands meet violet hands, just for a heartbeat.

But it was enough.

El Cantina de Plata
Soledad, Mexico
August 31


There is nothing like the silence of heat.

It's a baked dead sound that coats jeans and boots and the palms
of my hands or the roof of my mouth until I gag on it. The taste is
dry, gritty, like the water holes in the days when no rains come.
The locals call it ardientes los días. The burning days. The
days when cattle go mad with thirst and the old women
whisper chants to dead saints. It's also when the sons of the
ranchers and the dope farmers and the factory workers come
into town in twos and threes, looking to become big time
hombres in a fight.

I'll be waiting.

I've learned a lot since I left her, mostly about things I
never asked to know. I know what it's like to be driven like
the cattle, crazy with the desire for something simple yet vital to
sanity. To life itself. It's the kind of thirst that makes me ache
when I reach out to take her gloves off and she's gone. When
I turn to smile at her and find only empty air. My search for
her left a trail of cockroach motel rooms and cheap beer
from Vancouver to Mexico City and back again. A different
town or refugee centers or city ghetto every night, but never a
solid clue.

Sometimes I cross paths with some of our friends in the
Mutant Registration Bureau who try to brand a number into
my hip and ship me to a labor camp. I make them pay for
what they might have done to her. I've relearned the finer points
of how to make a grown man scream and cry, how to push
him to the point where he'll confess to anything. But it always
turns out to be a lie. They can't tell me how to find her. How
to save her. Too bad you can only kill a man once. I die
twice, three times, eight times, but then again I'm not a man.
Death isn't the way out for me. Just a punishment for losing her
in the first place.

Believe me, I've tried. I've looked for Marie on both sides
of life and in all the cracks between but still...nothing.

I also know the whispered desperation of the old women,
the quieter agony in the struggle for meaning in the meaningless.
When I walked away from her, I didn't think I had a choice.
She accused me of playing hero, but that wasn't it at all. I
was the only one who could come back alive. It saved the others,
but most of all, it saved her-- at least from one type of death.
How was I supposed to know that there were twenty other
kinds waiting in line? That they were just as bad, if not worse?

We were both innocent back then, her in her own way, me
in mine. It cost me one of my many lives. I still have nightmares
about what it cost her.
   
After I knew I wouldn't be getting her back, my life
disintegrated with record speed. I wake up screaming five times
every night, her big brown eyes staring at me in silent accusation,
just exactly how they looked when I pushed her away from me
that night. Love. Sadness. Fear. On top of it all, a plea. Stay
with me. Don't leave me alone. Protect me.

Since then, I've seen things that only add a new dimension
to the nightmares. My imagination-- that I didn't even know I
had-- puts her in the mass graves at the camps, the brothels
in the cities, the operating tables in the labs. I hear her scream
and it pushes me over the edge, and I break into a bar
determined to fight every last man in the building. I want to go
down hard and bleed like she bled, like she might be
bleeding still.

Does she still remember that day we kissed in the church?
It was right after Jeannie and Scooter got married. I took off
her gloves and kissed her, and she showed me a painting of
St. Francis. Said he was her favorite saint because he believed in
love.      

What am I supposed to believe in now?

I spent six months looking for her before the dead ends
led me to this godforsaken middle of nowhere in futile hopes
she had made the border after all. The only way I can describe it
was like looking for a rain that will never come. After a while I
realized that this was my life from now on.

Empty. Dusty. Barren.

I won't say I've given up. Just dried up.

I sit in the backroom of bars that all look the same, in
greasy Mexican towns with names I can't pronounce. These
are dead towns, where nobody knows or cares what I am. It's
not a bad life, really. I sit and smoke my cigar and wait for
the boys to come. Word's spread along the border fight clubs
that there's a white man traveling the circuit who's never lost
a fight. So now, I'm a test of manhood. The first would-be
heroes show up in June and the last crawl back home around
September. They pull up in their daddy's pickup with their
good boots and a new shirt, and throw a wad of American
dollars on the counter.

I beat the crap out of them, of course, but as a whole I
take it easier on them than I should. Maybe I feel sorry for
them, stuck in a life they didn't ask for and a world they
can't escape. The sad part of it is that every one of them still
has that gleam in their eyes, the notion that if anyone is going
to get out, it'll be them. I wonder at times if I'd be doing them
a bigger favor to go ahead and pound the foolishness out of
their heads before it hurts them. Before it hurts the ones they
love...

Whoa, whose world am I describing here? Theirs or mine?
I'm never too sure, anymore. I never meant to hurt her. I
should have told her to stay away from me. I should have
made her listen. I should have walked away while it was still
safe, while she could find someone else to give her everything
she deserved. But to be honest, I could never swallow the
thought that leaving meant living the rest of my life without
seeing that face. I'm living that way now. It's like dying every
day without ever getting the luxury of official death.

I finish my tequila just as the next Geronimo wannabe
struts through the door of the bar. Boots clapping against
the hardwood. A sweaty wad of money in hand. A sneer
on a face that is barely old enough to shave much less hold up
in a brawl.
The money lands on the bar beside my glass. The sneer
turns in my direction.

"I hear you never been beaten, hombre."
They all say the same thing.
"Nope."

Not by some kid in fake Levis and a cheap cotton
shirt. Just by a girl with eyes darker than anything I've ever seen,
more human than humanity will ever be. She took me down
using nothing more than a smile. She sucker-punched me
with a beauty I had never seen before, then finished the
knockout with a love I thought I'd never know. But where is
that love now? The beauty?     
Lost, in a very big, very angry world and I've run out of
places to look.

My fingers tighten on the glass as the Mexican keeps talking.
"I'm here to change that, gringo."
I shrug.
"Why not."

I peel off my shirt and follow the kid out back. No, I'm
not gonna take it easy on this one. Not today. I'm gonna hit
him hard and fast and show him exactly where fancy dreams
end up. He'll thank me someday, when he's all grown up
and jaded enough to fit into the rest of the world.

But I'm not really thinking about the boy or the fight. I
see her face every time I try to swing a punch. The smack of
my fist striking his flesh mutates into the sound of her scream.
I close my eyes to escape only to see her clinging to my shirt,
fingers digging into my bones, screaming in my face that she
needs me to stay with her. That she doesn't care what they do
to her as long as I'm there....and then I push her away....

It takes me fifteen minutes to score a simple knockout.

When it's all over, I walk back to my hotel room with the
kid's blood on my skin and one hundred dollars in my pants
pocket. I'm sick of this joint. Time to hit the road again,
find a way to the next dead end. The next town that I'll only
remember as a Place Marie Is Not.

I get halfway down the road before I realize I paid the
clerk twice the cost of the room. For a minute, I think about
going to get it back, but I end up walking on. I can get more
money. All I have to do is hit one of the big fight clubs in
Mexico City, and I'll have all the cash I need. Maybe someone
will have heard of her there. I can't shake the illusion that I'll
turn around in a cage fight and she'll be sitting at the bar
watching me, just like the first time I saw her.

    /C'mon, baby, tell me where you are. You're still out
     there, I can feel it. Come to me in a dream, give me a vision,
     and I'll follow you anywhere, no matter the cost. I'll even
     let them brand me and lock me up, if that's where they've got
     you. But you gotta give me something. This vague hope is
     killing me even faster than the momentary belief that you're
     dead.
    Or maybe that's just it. Maybe all I'm feeling is a ghost./

I leave the town without a second glance, but the blood
is still on my hands and the tequila is still on my breath. I
still see every detail of her eyes. The image burns, burns my
mind as I walk three miles into the desert. I stand like the
Geronimo kid stood in the bar and face the storm over
the mountains.

Purple thunderclouds hover above the horizon, hurling
white tomahawks of lightning to the desert floor. The thunder
pounds a war dance against the stillness. If I try hard enough,
I can almost smell the rain. But it won't reach me. I get all
of the thunder and the lightning and the chaos, but none of
the softness. None of the hope.

I take my gun out of my duffel bag. By now it's becoming
a ritual. Death can be both a religion and an addiction when
you can get as much of it as you want and keep on coming back
for more.

No more pain, not tonight. No more thirst, no more
darkness. No more being alone. I'll shatter into sparks against
the sky, free until my body heals and pulls me back to earth.
By dawn, I'll be on my way to the next town. The next fight.

The next step in the futile race to outrun myself.

I remember the first time it really hit me that I'd lost her.
I couldn't handle it. I broke into a fight club just inside the
Canadian border and started hitting everyone within reach.
Once they started hitting back, I quit. I wanted to take a beating,
wanted it hard and fast because maybe the pain would push
her from my mind. Once they were finished, they threw my
body into the snow behind the building. I don't know how
long I lay there, watching the snow turn red underneath me
and spitting up blood and crying for the first time in my
memory.

Somehow I convinced myself that it would get better in
time. That I'd find a way to move on, to live without her.
That it wouldn't hurt.

My fingers slide along the metal to embrace the trigger.
I speak my thoughts aloud because maybe, just maybe, she
hears me.

"I'm gonna tell you a secret, baby...."

Click the safety off, push the barrel against my heart.

"It always hurts."

Squeeze.

                        * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Double Violin Concerto: Logan

   
You'll never be able to remember it exactly as it happened;
the events refuse to correlate in straight lines and neat rows, but
insist on surfacing one piece at a time, glinting like flecks of
gold drowning in oil. You snatch up one to find it is of
yesterday; the next is the same day a year ago. Pain isn't linear
to you, it's spatial. There is no simple beginning and simple
end, but rather endless variations on degrees of guilt and loss.
In between it all, you even remember the happy time. That
hurts most of all, like the ache of your teeth when you eat
something much too sweet.

You collect these fragments of past and hide them in the
palm of your hand, clenching them tightly beneath metal-laced
fingers to make sure no one can pry them away. You go back
and count them when you are alone at night, touching each
one to reacquaint yourself with its unique ridges and textures.
Sometimes the edges are sharp. Sometimes they draw blood.
The greatest clarity comes when you are neither dead nor
alive, awake nor asleep, but somewhere in the middle, waiting
for your body to heal from your latest rage. You'll have plenty
of time tonight. You felt the bullet pass clean through your
heart. Even before you closed your eyes, you knew that this time
it would be worth it. This time you got a good fix, a rush
that will set you free. You knew because you heard her violin.

A melody that is clean, sharp on the edges, classically rigid,
but diffused by the warmth she brings to every song she plays.
She pours herself out through her fingertips, into the bow, across
the strings, dripping from the instrument to pool on the ground
around her feet.
    
    (Marie is by the lake.)

Charles anticipated your question, again, a small smile on his
face. A smile that was older than he should have been.
    
You could close your eyes and find her just by the sound
of her finger dances, but you want more than a melody. You
want to absorb every piece of the afternoon, to stain it across
your soul in vibrant color. Scarlets, oranges, yellows, the colors
of trees burning with life even as their leaves drop to the ground
in layers of ash.

    (We're all glad you've chosen to return.
     I've only been gone two months, Chuck. Not like I was
leaving permanently.
     Perhaps you should consider it.
     Kickin' me out so soon?
     Certainly not. This will always be your home, but I fear it
will not be a safe place much longer. I trust you've seen the
news?
     Why do you think I came back?)

The wind splatters the colors across the sky like finger-paints
in swirls of leaves and bending branches. It smells of earth,
of rich dirt and rotting leaves and bonfires. Of Marie. By
nightfall, the chill will deepen and bring out an early frost. The
clouds will freeze; more leaves will die. But you do not think of
that. You are too close to her to think of that.

    (Sometimes I believe Eric may have been right about them
after all. We shall have to wait and see.
     Do you think they'll pass it this time?
     Yes.
     Can't we do something to stop it?
     We will try. Now go, find Marie. Enjoy this weather while
it lasts. Winter is coming early this year, I believe.
     Why do I get the feeling you aren't just talkin' weather?
     Now you are starting to understand.)

A step farther, another, and you can see her through the
trees. She is on fire like the leaves are on fire, hair blown like
a scarf in the wind, her lips set in a firm line as her eyes stare out
into something you can't see. Her hands are bare. Unashamed.
The fingers a blur of white across the bow and strings. Her
gloves are neatly folded on top of the violin case.

You smile. She remembered.

She doesn't see you, at first. She is intoxicated with her
music, and you are intoxicated with her, and for a moment you
almost walk away. To break abruptly into the sound seems
almost a sacrilege. Screaming in a church. Cursing in a prayer.

But you can't help it.

You step out from the trees. You don't say a word; she
sees you now. The music dies. You wait for her reaction,
wondering how you would react if she left for two months
then appeared again from nowhere.
    She grins.

    (Hey stranger.
     Two months and I'm a stranger?
     The deal was two weeks, originally.
     I kept in touch.
     A redeeming grace.)

Her eyes sparkle the way they do when she teases you.

    (So what brought you back to the fold?
     I missed Scooter terribly.
     Ha. That'll be the day.)

This is it...you're going to say it right now. But what are
you going to say? The moment is upon you but the words
have gone. He wonders if she knows what Charles knows,
what he knows. If she feels the inevitability, creeping up her
spine, cold spider legs against the nerves.

Of course she does. But that is not the truth you came
to discuss. There will be time for that.
Now is time for…
You can't.

    (Violin sounds real nice. What is it?
     Bach. Double Violin Concerto. Me and this other girl
in my music class auditioned for a state honors recital and this
is the piece that got us in.
     Congratulations. I've always wanted to go to one of those.
     Liar. It's formal. You break out in hives at that word.
     I'll wear a tie and my good jeans and we'll call it even.
     So why did you really come back? I thought you said you
had a solid lead this time.)

You've been moving closer to her as you talk, and now
you need to touch her. Your fingers curl around a piece of hair
that's blown over her eyes.         
     
    (Didn't work out like I thought it would.
     Was it really the lead or was it the fact that they're going to
make it legal to burn numbers into our skin?)
 
A wince, yours, at her honesty. When it all breaks down, she
can take reality a lot better than you could. You fight it.
She drinks it down black, straight, without cream or sugar
or any other denials.

You wrap your arms around her, pulling her close enough
to whisper in her ear. She smells of a strange mix of perfume,
black coffee, and oranges. Or maybe you just think it is
oranges because her sweater was orange and you had your
face buried in it.

    (I came back because there was something you had to know.
     What? I already know that we're not going to win this one.
I already know that.
     I came back because I love you.)

You expect her to laugh, or smile, or maybe even cry a little,
but she pulls back enough to look you in the eye and you don't
see anything.

    (You never had to tell me that. I knew.
     And so?
     So what?
     So is it just me?
     No, I'm pretty much in up to my neck in it too.
     I want to hear you say it.
     Now you sound like Scott.
     Humor me.
     I love you.
     Good.
     Good.)

And you hold her by the lake until the sun falls and the frost
comes to drive you both inside.

The Phoenix Compound
August 31

   
Midnight. Tangible darkness wraps around my body in
a thick black film decorated with specks of starlight as it
slips through holes in the window screen. Orion's left elbow
across my hip. The Milky Way spread out in creamy white
across my stomach. The North Star hidden in the hollow of my
throat.

I wear the starlight to bed in one last hope that when
all the stars fade, they will think I am one of them and take me
away. Out of this place. But every morning, I wake in the naked
sunlight, and always I find myself here.

I am always without him.

On some nights, in spite of my determinations not to
remember, I close my eyes and wear him like the stars. A kiss on
the forehead, brushed across the smooth curve of my temple.
The subtle indentation of fingers spread over the back
of my hand. A smile hanging carelessly above my lips.

All of it, like my starlight plans of freedom, vanishes with the
sun.

I don't wear them tonight. I can't. The nights after the
Ceremonies are always the hardest. They remind me of what I
escaped; they remind Jean of what she lost;  they remind Scott of
what can be taken from him. We see most clearly what we have
become. Quiet, desperate people fighting a quiet, desperate
struggle to bind our humanity to ourselves.
Tonight, we realize that the cords are not steel but string.
Fragile. Easy to break.

There are two kinds of people lying under the darkness
tonight-- those who have been broken and those who will be
broken. I have come to believe it an inevitability, one of those
slow, dry desert inevitabilities like weeks without rain. No one
wins every battle they fight. No one can protect everything they
love. Scott may fight very well for a very long time, but sooner
or later he will fail. It's only a question of when. Not if.

Logan and I learned this by experience.

The man and the woman across the room from me have not.
They have their suspicions, but they are in love and blind like
lovers who refuse to admit they will be separated. I can hear
this blindness through the night. It makes me ache in places I
can't explain, old scars and new wounds. I remember when I
was blind in that way too. I want it back.

As it is, I sit very still and try to lose my sight by proxy as I
listen to his whisper in the darkness. It's soft, like the sound of a
burning candle, something I am not meant to hear. No one
is meant to hear, but the room is small and I have learned to
catch his every word.

"Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any
experience, your eyes have their silence:"

This is their ritual: poetry and whispers in the dark. Scott holds
his wife and whispers the words into her ear. Jean listens and allows
her husband the pretense that he is making her feel exactly as if
they are in their bedroom in New York. The poetry itself
depends on his mood. Sometimes it's Shakespeare, or Donne, or
Eliot, or Browning. Sometimes it's love, or it's hope, and other
times it is none of those things.

I recognize tonight's poem as one of his favorites. An image
forms in my mind; a sliver of a past. He's standing in front
of literature class, reciting the words from flawless memory.
His smile is the warm, contented smile that men get when they
say the name of a lover. He talked that way about all his books,
all his philosophies and ideals.
The words don't sound quite the same now. Something in
them is strained. Breaking.

"In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or
which I cannot touch because they are too near."

Scott believes he can keep her with him just because it is the
Right Thing and the Right Thing always triumphs in the end. Or
at least he tries to believe it. The weariness in his eyes tells me
that it's getting harder and harder with each month. With each
challenge. Charles never prepared him for this. He taught that
every fight must mean something, that every act of violence would
be justified by the common good and salvation of our people.
Honor was to be preserved at all costs. And after honor, logic.
Reason. Control. No battle must be fought without those things.
They were the rules Scott lived by, the way he defined himself
as a man.

And we came here-- where there is fighting without any meaning
beyond survival. Where violence abounds but not reason. Not
honor. Every time the Ceremonies come and he steps into the
circle to fight, another part of his identity and his idealism
disappears. This is not easy knowledge, the burden of realization
that he's done this all for us. For Jean, for his child, for me. He
brought us to this place thinking it would save our lives, and then
we found out it was almost worse than the nightmares outside the
gate. (Almost, but not quite. He knew this because he remembers
how I looked when they found me. The bruises. The blood.)
He promised to do whatever it took to keep us safe. To
keep us together.

At times I wonder if it's killing him. But of course it is.
It's killing all of us.

"Your slightest look easily will unclose me, though I have
closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself,
as spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose."

For Jean, it is enough to believe in Scott. It's easier for her
that way. She knows so much more than he does how futile
it is to hold onto a marriage in a society designed to destroy it.
She believes anyway, even harder than Scott sometimes,
because the alternative would be to believe the truth. And that
terrifies her. I see the burn in her eyes when strange men
challenge for her or stare at her in the streets....even when she
holds her baby and tries to sing lullaby. Who am I to judge?
If I had something left to lose, I'd be afraid too.

What do I believe in? Good question. I think I believe in
the dream that someday I'll get the guts to get up and walk
away from this place. Even if there is nowhere to go. Even
if I know what's out there, what's waiting for me. Maybe one
out of fifty girls like me makes it to the border and true freedom.
I believe that I will be that one. That Logan will be waiting for
me. Everything will be reversed between us; I will love him and
he will love me.

I'm still here because I don't believe that enough. Because I
still remember what happened the first time.
Maybe I'm more like Jean and Scott than I thought. I stay
because, like him, I still have something to lose after all. Or
maybe I'm just paralyzed like her, because when you simplify
my reasons, I am too scared to move.

"Or if your wish be to close me, I and my life will shut very
beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending."

I imagine snow carefully everywhere descending. A calculated
smothering. Cold and premeditated.
It sickens me.
The sticky layers of midnight press too close around my face,
clogging my nose and filling my mouth with heat. I'll suffocate
if I can't get out of this building. Away from his empty words
and his old man's voice.

    /Gotta get out. Out. Fresh air, starlight./

My bare feet land without noise on the cement beside my
mattress. Hands brush the floor until they meet a fine arch
of wood and close around it. They won't hear me leave, and
even if they do, they won't try to stop me. They know we all
need to breathe, sometimes.

    /Scream. Scream and it will all go away. If you don't get
     through that door right now, you'll explode. Make it stop.
     Just make it go away. Don't want to hear him talking. Don't
     want to hear it all breaking down. Make it stop. Stop.Stop.
     Stop.../

Outside.

My feet rush over the sand, skin tingling as individual grains
lodge between my toes. The breeze untangles itself from my
hair and slides down my bare arms, hollowing out air pockets
beneath my t-shirt. I lean back against the wall and taste the wind
to learn where it has been. Hints of oil and grease and fast food
trucker stops, the closest "normal" thing to this place. No trace
of his brand of cigar smoke, the sign that he's coming back for
me.

I never find that smell. I've done this too many times to cry,
or to feel anything besides vague disappointment as I slide down
to sit yoga-style on the sand, my violin across my knees. My fingers
trace the curves of the instrument. The smooth lines, the nicks,
the cuts, the scrapes that it accumulated since we left the mansion.
All in all, it's survived better than I have. Could I still play it
like I used to?

I don't know. I haven't touched the strings since he left.
I've tried, but no sound comes. There is nothing in my head;
no music or light. Just silence.

Scott never asks me why I don't play. Just like I don't ask him
what happened to the others at the school, those who tried to
run or those who tried to stay. Conversations like that have
been marked strictly off limits, locked somewhere that can't
hurt anymore. I suspect that if we did open them, we would
find that neither of us remembers what we were trying not to say.

Five feet away from me, the wire cuts away the rest of the
world. I could reach out and touch it. Let it cut my skin, shed
my blood. I almost need to feel it, to prove that something
about this is real. To prove that I'm real.
I can still hear him through the window.

"Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the
power of your intense fragility...."

I'm tired of fragility. Tired of white dresses and lace veils
and barbed wire and the fear keeping me from finding the only
person left that I can love. Tired of not loving him. I am worn to
the bone, unable to do anything about it but listen to poetry
outside the window of a dirty house in a broken down reservation.

I set the violin down and stand up.

"Someday, Logan, I'm gonna tell you about this place. I'll sit
down and write you the longest letter telling you how much it kills
but how I've managed to survive. How I survived everything,
even when you were gone. I'll mail it to Nowhere and maybe
you'll get it."

My fingers curl around the wire, a delicate grasp like picking
a flower instead of squeezing cold metal. I touch it like I touch
his claws. I imagine him imagining me, and this is a small salvation.
Too small to count.

"I'll tell you the same they told me. Think of it like a wedding."

No more delicacy; now it begins to bleed.

"Think of it that way and maybe you'll believe that I always
pretended it was you."

Fifteen seconds of pressure and blood and sharp pain brings
sharper memories and a sensation of standing somewhere else.
Under a purple sky, watching lightning over the mountains,
a man standing in the distance. I almost ask him to turn around.
I almost ask him to wait. Then I hear the gunshot and my
chest explodes into a red-white-black ball of pain.
  
I let go of the wire to feel nothing. When I let go, he
disappears.

And it's silent because Scott's finished his poetry and I've
finished my memories. I wipe the blood on my pants and walk
back inside to pretend to sleep. Jean says no one really sleeps here.
She's listened, and she can't even hear their dreams. Not even
Scott's. Not even mine.

No, we don't sleep, she says.
We all just die for a little while.
  
I dream, but it comes out in nightmares. Where does that
put me?

                        * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Upper Room: Marie


His coat falls across your shoulders; you try not to wince
when it hits bruises. No time for apologies or gratitude, his
hand closes around your elbow and steers you up the stairway.
The hall is narrow: rotten wooden stairs and peeling walls that
close in on all sides. The smell of liquor, of decay, a damp
underground smell like the earth underneath a stone.

The door opens; his wife stares at you in shock.

    (Rogue? Scott...how...)

He pushes you inside a small room that is more shadow than
light-- one yellow light bulb flickering in the ceiling, a glow of
burnt orange neon from the sign outside the window. You let
him move you, your arms and body stiff, autopilot. You're shaking
and there is blood under his coat. He hasn't seen that yet.

    (Found her at the bar when I went down to pay for our
room.)

His hand is shaking; you feel it through his fingers on your arm.
Anger.

    (Some trucker tried to sell her for a drink. Take care of her.
     Where are you going?
     He's still down there.
     Don't--)

You are invisible between them. You bleed onto the frayed
carpet while they argue.

    (She's one of us, Jean.
     You know the rules here. No questions asked; no trouble
caused. They'll kick us out and there's no other place that takes
people like us. Unless you want to spend the night on the street
again.
     I can't just--
     You're a *father*.)

She thrusts a bundle of cloth to him. The bundle kicks, squirms,
screeching like a tiny red lizard. It's not a lizard. You remember
attending her baby shower before you and Logan left. Scott
takes the bundle, holding it out from him, arms skewed at odd
angles.

    (Does he need to be changed or something?
     Babies cry.
     So what am I supposed to do?
     Hold him.
     How?
     Closer to you. He's not a bomb. He just needs some
attention.)

Their voices smear together and drip off the sides of your
mind like dirty rainwater. You find it increasingly difficult to
stand; the floor undulates beneath you, shifting left...right...front...
back...

    (Jean, take the baby. She's falling--)

Arms stop you from hitting the floor, although you have no
memory of falling down. More like falling up, out, everywhere
at the same time, tumbling over and over. A dim sensation of
purposeful movement; he picks you up.

    (God, she's bleeding...Jean...we have to do something....
     Get her onto the bed.
     Ok.
     Watch her skin. Hand me the first aid kit from the suitcase.
     Can I help?
     Yes. You can take Will and go outside. I'll let you know when
I'm done.
     Ok.
     And Scott--
     Yes?
     Leave him alone.)

    The longest pause.
    (Fine.)

And these are your memories of the night they
found you: a burnt orange room, a bed with one mildewed
blanket, antiseptic rinsed across the cuts on your shoulders and
back and feet. Questions you can only half answer.

    (What happened?
     Wouldn't...let me...leave. Paid for my ride....but when we got
to town...decided he didn't want money....
     Are there any other injuries you want to tell me about?
     No.
     Are you sure?
     Yes.
     You can tell me--
     My skin, remember? He didn't get the chance.)

Not this one, at least. But what would it matter if you told
the whole truth? The past is the past and no one can heal it.

    (Where's Logan?
     Dead.
     How?
     Border police.)
     
You don't know why you lie to protect him. Maybe you've
already forgiven him and just haven't admitted it. Or maybe you
are only protecting your wish to see him dead.

    (I'm sorry.)

She is; she is sincere and you believe her. You feel the slightest
guilt at adding new sadness to her face when it's so obvious
that she and Scott have had it rough. Not as bad as you have,
maybe, but maybe worse, in a way. Survival is a different sort of
hell for everyone. She's lost weight, even though you've always
heard that women are supposed to gain once they're pregnant.
You wonder if something went wrong. Her face isn't quite as
smooth as you remember, her hair a bit thinner, falling in strands
out of the ponytail she always used to keep so neat. The charcoal
gray dress she's wearing emphasizes these changes. Two wet
circles cover her breasts; she's nursing. It surprises you. You always
thought she would be too clean for it. Not that she'd
have much of a choice, now, would she?

Footsteps outside the door. Scott paces back and forth the
whole time. The lizard baby cries twice. She finishes bandaging
and questioning, and then walks outside to join him. The door
shuts behind her. You listen to them talk through the walls.

    (How is she?
     She'll be fine, I think. The beating wasn't too bad...the cuts
on her feet are going to give her the most trouble.
     Cuts?
     He cut her feet so she couldn't run.
     I knew we should have never let her leave. We should have
taken care of her. Where's Logan, anyway?
     She claims he's dead.
     Do you believe her?
     Yes. I felt loss in her. Scott, her eyes. They're just broken.
     We're taking her with us.
     I don't know if she'll want to come.
     Why?
     Rogue may have trouble trusting people; even us. It's common
in victims of--
     Victims of what? You said she was fine.
      I think it was worse than a beating, Scott. Maybe not with
this man, but somewhere along the line, it was worse.)

A muffled thud, like something has hit the wall. His fist,
maybe. You close your eyes. Telepaths. You should have
remembered to shield.
    
The door opens again; he's there.

You're between realities; for a moment you think it's Logan.
But it's not. It's someone else. That's the story of the past six
months of your life....it has always been someone else. At least
this time it is a friend. You think.
Neither of you quite recognizes the other. You would never
have imagined him in this kind of place. He would never have
imagined you. The sudden recognition unsettles you both, like
you are staring at the other's ghost. A dual hallucination.

    (Jean says you'll be fine.
     I will. You sound like you don't believe it.
     I do.)

He sits down on the edge of the bed; runs his hand across
the stubble on his chin. You've never seen him unshaven before;
it is disturbing because it lets you know he's changing already.
The Scott you remember would die before parting with his
razor.

    (I'm sorry about Logan.
     Thanks. Really.
     Listen, Rogue, I know you've been on your own for a while.
You might feel a bit edgy about us, might not know what to
trust...your memories or your instincts. I know how that is. I
spent time on the streets too, before I got to Xavier's. And
that was back when they weren't hunting us down.)

He stands up; walks back and forth, hands in his pockets.

    (What I'm trying to say is, we want you to come with us.
     Where?
     A safe place.
     Does that exist, anymore?
     It's called the Phoenix Compound. It was home to a mutant
survivalist group before the laws passed. Now I hear it's a
sanctuary of sorts. They're accepting anyone who's got the cash.
     I don't have any money.
     Doesn't matter. I have enough.
     I can't ask you to--
     You aren't asking. I'm insisting.
     Safe places usually come with a catch...
     Don't worry about that. Let me worry about that. If you
come with us, I'll take care of you. I promise.)

You ask yourself how they stayed so sincere; you don't know
yet that it's not sincerity at all but desperation. Two people,
drowning, fighting to breathe.

You take a deep breath and remember the last time someone
promised to keep you safe. Logan. You remember where it
got you.

But you don't really have a choice.

    (OK.)

El Cantina Senorita de Rojo
Mexico City, Mexico.
September 15

          
Hard right to the jaw. Head flying back, spotlights in the
eyes. Powerhouse to the gut. Cheap shot. Shouldnt've let him
get away with it. Ah well, gotta give them their money's worth.
I'll be pounding on this guy's butt good and hard soon enough.

Another right, deflected off my ribs. Gotta go down on this
one; making it look convincing. That one hurt a little. Caught me
right over last night's exit wound.
    
A couple weeks ago, I'd decided I'd had it with the desert
cantinas. The big city fight clubs offered a nice change of scenery,
and since Mexico City was only a couple hundred miles away, why
not give it a shot? Yeah, they have their reputations, but it's really
nothing spectacular. More money, more sluts wanting to spend
your money, more jerks looking to get a piece of you, more chances
to get drunk on better whisky.

Of course, I don't necessarily want whiskey right now. Or
even a smoke. I crave lead. Hot, liquid-solid-metal relief pumped
straight into the brain.

Snap-kick straight to the groin. Ouch. Flying back into the
barrier, growling a little when some drunk girl tries to wipe my
sweat onto her shirt through the fence. Everyone's crazy down here,
I swear. Everyone including me. I've just about had enough of this
punk--
I roll to my feet, catching him mid-jeer with a fist straight to his
dirty little mouth. And I really mean dirty...his teeth are just about
black. Or at least whatever teeth he'll have left after he finishes
spitting blood out.. I just hope none of that junk came off on my
knuckles...
    
When you break it all down, suicide is nothing more than a
bad one-night stand. It's fast. It's messy. It takes you places
you don't want to go and then dumps you there until you wake
up feeling like mano y mano with a sledgehammer. But in
the process of all that, it takes your mind off who you are, what
you are, and that's what keeps me coming back for more.

    /Speaking of sledgehammers, I think I'll repay an eye for
      an eye and play with his ribs a little while. Yeah, see how he
      likes it.
      He didn't even take a bullet last night./

Death's got a real racket going on with all this mystic garbage.
She's not some regal queen on a throne; she's a cheap prostitute in
a gutter alley. She doesn't care how or when or where just as
long as she gets her payment in flesh. A payment that I am in a
unique position to provide, which makes me one of her favorite
customers. Oh yeah, she leaves the light on for me every time I
come around. Stands in her doorway wearing her best black lace
with a blood red smile on her lips.
  
    /Finished with the ribs; I heard a couple things crack that
     weren't meant to crack. You gotta play rough in this town; if
     not, the guy you took it easy on in the ring will catch you in an
     alley and his hombres will hold you down while he slits your
     spine with his switchblade. Never happened to me; never
     gonna happen to me. They want to fight hard, that's ok. I'll
     fight harder./

You're not supposed to dream when you're dead, so I don't
know what to call the things I see. Memories? Premonitions?
Sometimes they're even good things, fragile, beautiful things that I
almost can't recognize as mine. Last night, for example, I
remember detail-by-detail the first time I told Marie I loved her.
I even remembered how she smelled. Oranges and coffee. Or
I'll remember dancing with her, walking with her...just plain
looking at her. It's like death taunts me with all the lives I lost the
chance to live. She sells me make-believe futures in exchange for
bullets and blood.

    /Uppercut to his nose; shattering the bone. Blood splatters
     on my face, on the crowd through the fence. They cheer. It's
     just about time to put this guy out. One more good one ought
     to do the trick./

Other times, the suicide queen deals out the past, every single
memory of the road that brought me to this dead end life. That's
the darker half of the addiction-- she keeps me pumped full of a
hundred and one reasons not to live, a never-ending feed of
logic telling me why I need to come back for another fix.

    /Winding my arm back for the killer blow; blood in my eyes,
     blood in his eyes. Wanting to scream and make it all just go
     away. Wondering, in the last second before my fist connects
     with his temple, what Marie would think or say or do if she
     saw me here, if she saw me like this./

I play my games with suicide, she plays her games with me,
but at the end do you want to know the real, gritty truth?
At the end, I'm never too sure which one of us is really the
whore.

Knockout.

*****
    
"So, you're the Wolverine. Impressive. Not as tall as I
thought. Wider though."

Great. Another one. What does this one want...my money,
my pants, or both? Maybe if I ignore her, she'll just go away.

"Bartender....a drink. Tequila, like my man Wolvie's drinking.
Order him another one too. On me."
And she expects me to thank her for this?
    
"I ain't your man."
I growl over my shoulder, not even bothering to look at her. Seen
one; seen 'em all. I'll be surprised if she's not stone drunk. No one
here is that perky naturally.

"Good, cause I ain't your woman."
She leans against the bar beside me, and I turn my head until
I can just barely see her out of the corner of my eye. Not
what I was expecting. She's a short little thing. Dark brown eyes
just like....no, I won't think  about it that way. Blue hair. No
kidding. It's the color of Marie's favorite pair of opera gloves, a
midnight blue so dark it could be black. She's wearing dark
purple lipstick.

"Buzz off, kid." She sounds young. Eighteen, maybe
nineteen. Twenty would be pushing it. Marie will be nineteen
this year. No, don't think of it that way either. It'll hurt you too
bad.

"I bought you a drink. You have to give me five minutes."

I slide around sideways so that I'm half-facing her, half-facing
my tequila. "Thirty seconds."
"Xavier never taught manners at his fancy house?"

My hand freezes around my glass, all my senses instantly
flaring to alert. The claws prick the back of my knuckles.

"Xavier?"
"Hello? Your old boss. Leader of the X-men? Ah, don't look
so paranoid. I'm an information broker. It's my business to know
things like this."
"Then this conversation is over because I ain't got information
to sell."

She glares at me like Scooter used to when I said something
exceptionally dumb at dinner.

"My uncle and I are part of an underground for people of
a certain...genetic persuasion. Word has it that there's a tough
guy on the fight circuit who's paying a thousand for information
about a mutant once associated with the X-men. Rogue."
"You got the wrong man."
"And do you know anyone else in Mexico who comes
equipped with steel claws in his hands?"

Ok, heard enough. I'm leaving now before her back-up team
gets here to shoot a tranq dart into my spine. She grabs
my jacket as I swing off the stool. Gotta admit; that's gutsy for
someone who knows about my...capabilities.

"Relax." She says. "I'm one too. Radiation's my thing.
Comes out through my skin when I get mad."
"You always tell your mutation to strangers? I could take you
across the border and sell you for that."

Maybe it's the eyes, maybe it's the fact that she sounds too much
like Marie, but I figure I owe her at least a warning. She's too
young to end up rotting in a camp or a laboratory or hooked
on heroine in the brothels waiting for the next fat businessman.

    /Like Marie?/
I growl at the thought.

"You won't." Her voice is still calm, edged with a bit of
cockiness.
"What makes you so sure?"
"Because we can tell you how to find her."
    
Every muscle in my body turns to stone. I can't even
swallow my tequila; it pools in the back of my mouth, burning
holes in my tongue.
Five seconds pass. Ten. Fifteen.

"What makes you think I'm still looking?"
She tilts her head to the side a little and looks at me. "Because
you wouldn't take a pounding like you did tonight if you'd
found her or found a way to live without her."

Now that, I don't have an answer for. I try, but I don't.
She stands up from the bar, waving her hand for me to follow
her. "C'mon. Talk to my uncle. He can help you. I promise."

We cross the room to a small booth filled with a greasy little
man who might just have more metal on him than I do. Thick
gold chains around his neck, falling down the neck of a yellow
silk shirt worn Vegas-style. Rings jammed over rings on Polish
sausage fingers. The scent of tarnished metal hovers around him; a
nearly imperceptible corruption and decay. The smell of dealing
in flesh, in secrets. In men and women and hope.

"The name's Reggie. Reggie Vargas."
He reaches out to shake my hand. I don't move.

"Jilly, darlin'," He pats his niece, or the girl who claims she's
his niece, on the hand. "Make yourself scarce while the
gentleman and I get to business."
He grins up at me. A silver grin.

"So you're the Wolverine. I was wonderin' when I'd get the
chance to meet you. Your reputation precedes you, as always seems
to be the case."
"What reputation?"
"Seventy fights on both sides of the Rio Grande, all won by
knock out. Sixty-eight before the first round was over. What
happened to the other two? Get tired or just bored?"
He laughs; it sounds like grease splattering on cement.

"Just get to the point. Kid said you got some information
I'd be interested in."
"All in good time, my friend. Would you like a drink?"

I tense my knuckles; six blades of metal glow dully in the
smoke-filled air. "You heard I had these, right? Part of my
reputation? Because I tend to use them if I get impatient. I feel
that comin' on real fast now."

His grin wavers, oil under heat, but he regains composure
with practiced speed. "You're looking for a girl. Have been for
some time. It would have made it easier if you'd spread it that
you two were with the X-men in the first place. Me and Jilly
busted our chops tracking that down, when all we would have
had to do was ask....everyone knows about you guys. Or at least,
what's left of you. Your buddies took it hard when the Big Apple
cracked down."

I relax my muscles, watching the skin split then regenerate as
the steel slides back into my flesh. "So you've found her?"
"Tracking down a mutant on the run these days is like
looking for a rat in the sewer. The trick is to find the biggest
nests. I keep tabs on most of the places that get the heavy
traffic. Her particular talent makes it a bit easier, but I wouldn't
go so far to say I've found her."
"But you do know where she might be."
"Call it an educated guess."
"Where?"
"What do you think this is? Charity?"
    
A scrape of metal against metal; I pin him to the table by
his necklaces. "Charity is me letting you keep at least one or
two vital organs if you keep me waiting any longer."

"Ok, ok, point taken." His face is red; sweating like water
running off lard. Why do I think it's more over concern for his
jewelry than his life? "No more stalling."

I let him up. He coughs; swallows the rest of his drink;
scoots back from the table before he talks to me again.

"Three thousand for the information and an additional
four to get you across the border."
"How bout you tell me while you can still talk and then I
cross the border on my own?"
"How long you been down here? A month? Two months?"
"Long enough."
"It's gotten worse up there. They barely even tolerate the
registereds, now. You get three choices-- reservations, camps,
laboratories. But you're smart...you're strong...I'd give you three
weeks before they picked you up as an unregistered. And even
if you did stay on the streets, you'd never be able to find her.
You gotta be able to move around."
"You can make that happen."
"We offer our clients total mobility-- gene therapy treatment
to hide the mutation as long as you want."
"How?"
"Implants, drug cocktails...that's not important. What's
important is that you'll be able to go anywhere a human can go.
But that kind of freedom comes with a price. I only asked you
for seven thousand. I've had offers of up to seven hundred
thousand. And I'm even willing to make it easy on you."

He pours himself another glass of tequila; charm oozing
from his smile to clog every pore in his face.

"I know you don't have that kind of money. I'll cut you a
deal. There's another mutant playing the circuit who's undefeated.
He'll be here in two weeks, and I want you to fight him. I'm not
talking this fight club crap you put up with. I'm talking high
stakes fighting. I'll put ten thousand on your victory. You win and
I'll consider it your fee. I'll even let you keep two thousand
for expenses."

I don't have to think. Not really. It's an instinct; a craving,
just like the twitch of my finger that sends a bullet into my bones.

"One condition."
"Name it."
"Tell me what you know about her now. I'll fight for you and
pay your fee. But I need some kind of guarantee."
"They call it the Phoenix Compound. It belonged to a
whacked-out group of survivalists before the legislations. Mutants
exclusively. It had to be some kind of weird cult thing, but now it's
turned into a sort of sanctuary for those who can afford it...and
those who can put up with that kind of craziness. I've been hearing
lately that an X-man showed up there not long ago; with two
women. A redhead and a girl with white streaks in her hair.
That was your description of Rogue, right?"

"Yes." You can hardly force the word out between your
teeth. She's alive. She's safe. "Where is the compound?"

"First you fight for me. Then we'll talk location."
"Fine. Just let me know when and where."
"Certainly. You need anything in the mean time, just let
me know." One last tarnished silver smile.

I walk away.

Marie is alive. I knew it; I always knew it, even when I gave
up. Even when I buried her in my mind. It was so much easier
to gain the forgiveness of a ghost.
A ghost can't say they hate you for leaving them.
A ghost can't bleed because you failed to protect  them.
A ghost can't say they don't love you anymore.
That's the fear, isn't it? That's the ice water dumped
straight down the spine.

I need another drink.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

part 2