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.

 
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.

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 Two