HER NOTHER’S DAUGHTER
Mr Sinister
PG-13 Drama/Angst -
The first thing Jean noticed when she entered the darkened room
was the
powerful odour of alcohol
and nicotine, and the feeling of utter despair that
she could sense from the
figure hunched over a chair midway between the door and
the window. Flicking the
light switch with a thought, Jean watched the figure
inside raise a hand to
their red-rimmed eyes, and immediately regretted doing
it. Moving closer, she laid
one hand on the figure’s lean, well-muscled shoulder
and touched their pale,
stubbly face with the other.
“Hi there,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t sit in the dark like
this, Remy.
It’s bad for your eyes.”
Remy glanced at her with eyes that were dulled from too much
whiskey, and
then laid his head back
down on the hands folded over the back of his chair.
“T’anks for de health tip,”
he said in a rasping tone. “Go away, Jean. I don’
need you givin’ me a damn
pep talk. Not now.” He took a despondent pull on his
cigarette and blew the
smoke out in a long, thin stream, so that it could join
the growing cloud that
already hung in the air. Jean shook her head and sat down
on the bed so that she
could talk to him properly.
“I didn’t come here to give a pep talk, Remy,” she said firmly. “I
just came
to see if you needed
anything.”
Remy laughed bitterly. “I don’ need nothin’ right now, Jean,” he
replied, his
voice hoarse. “Just leave
me alone, okay? Be fine in a couple of days.”
Jean shook her head, and gestured towards the almost empty
bottle of Jack
Daniels in Remy’s left
hand. “I don’t think so, Remy. Look at what you’re doing
– sitting here in the dark
by yourself. I’m not going to let you do that, and I
wouldn’t let anyone else do
it, either. Don’t do this because of what happened
with Rogue. It’s not your
fault.”
Remy shook his head and stood, somewhat unsteadily. “Really? Den
whose fault
is it, Jean?” He threw his
hands out to either side of his body, before he ran a
hand through his tousled
chestnut hair. “I keep wonderin’, you know, if I did
somet’ing to upset her – if
I wasn’t good enough for her, somehow. I keep
t’inking dat maybe if I’d
been a better guy, and listened to her a little more,
den maybe she wouldn’t have
done what she did.” He shrugged, his shoulders
lifting up and down
listlessly. “Maybe I ain’t de best person in de world, but I
know I didn’ deserve dat.” Jean
pulled her mouth into a thin, sad line and shook
her head.
“Remy, I can honestly tell you that Rogue never meant to hurt
you. She just…
couldn’t ignore what she
felt. When she left with Jenny just now, I could tell
that a part of her still
didn’t want to go. That part of her kept saying that
what she had with you was a
wonderful thing, and she shouldn’t give it up. She
almost stayed, Remy. She
would have stayed, and lied to herself for the rest of
her life if it meant not
having to hurt you.”
“Don’ lie to me,” Remy muttered angrily. “Don’ lie to me, Jean. I
saw her go.
She didn’ care dat she
ripped my heart out and stomped on it. She got someone
new, and Remy? He don’
matter to her at all. No, she just followed in her
momma’s footsteps and
started a new life wit’ another woman, as if everyt’ing we
had meant jack to her. Do
you t’ink dat her feelin’ sorry for what she did to me
makes everyt’ing all
right?” He laughed quietly, humourlessly, bitter tears
spilling down his cheeks. “Hell,
no. Mon dieu, I don’ ever want t’ see dat bitch
ever again. She hurt me,
Jean. She hurt me real bad, and she didn’ even have de
guts to come and say
goodbye. Don’ insult me by tellin’ me she sorry for what
she did. I won’ believe it.
Ever.”
Jean winced at the potency of Remy’s emotions, closing her eyes
and turning
her head slightly, as she
felt them multiplied a dozen times by his empathic
abilities. She took a deep
breath and then reached into a pocket of her blouse,
taking out an envelope
which had Remy’s name marked on it in red ink. “Actually,
Remy,” Jean began, “she
didn’t do that because she didn’t think she could find
the words to say to you,
face to face. She asked me to give you this letter
instead – she told me that
she hoped this might help make things a little
clearer for you. She wanted
you to know why she decided to leave, and why she
fell in love with Jenny.”
Remy snorted. “Oh, well, dat make everyt’ing all right, den.” He
slugged a
mouthful of whiskey, and
swallowed it with a sour grimace. “Write Remy a nice
letter an’ make all de hurt
go away, right? Sorry, Jean. Ain’ gon’ work.”
Jean frowned, and telekinetically moved the bottle out of Remy’s
hand,
setting it down across the
room. “No more whiskey, Remy,” she said firmly, her
eyes flashing with veiled
anger. “Now listen to me. Rogue asked me to give you
this letter, and I will not
let you ignore it – for her sake, and for yours. No
matter what you say, I know
you still love her: you couldn’t make it any more
obvious if you had it
tattooed on your forehead. I’m asking you, as a friend, to
read the letter that she
wrote you because of that love.”
Remy smiled weakly. “What you gon’ do if I don’ read it, Jean? Read
it to me
like you my kindergarten
teacher?” He smirked. “Don’ insult my intelligence,
Jean. I don’ want t’ read
anything Rogue has to say to me.” He walked over to
the window and stared out
across the darkened grounds of the Xavier Institute,
the full moon casting its
pale light on his face and illuminating his red-black
eyes as they searched for a
particular pin-prick in the sky. “We chose a star
together, did you know
dat?” he said quietly, placing his hand up against the
glass and letting it slide
down slowly. “Corny, I know, but Rogue liked de idea.
Didn’ have de heart to tell
her dat de one I chose was actually Jupiter – didn’
figure dat she needed to
know dat. Jus’ wanted somet’ing for her to find at
night, when we weren’t
together, so she’d t’ink of me. Made her happy, anyway.
T’ought we could look at it
when we were both old and grey, and laugh about it
sometimes, you know?” He
hung his head, pounding the glass once with his fist.
“So much for dat idea, non?
Now I look like an idiot, and she still get to be
happy.” He turned to look
at her, a despairing look in his eyes. “I feel like I
wasted the best years of my
life on her, and for what? To get dumped like
yesterday’s jambalaya?” He
rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “Dat’s
gratitude for you, I
guess.”
Jean slapped her forehead in frustration. “God, Remy, listen to
yourself!
Rogue was grateful for
everything that you ever did for her – she’s still
grateful. She didn’t do
this to spite you – she told me, right before she left,
that she spent months trying
to convince herself that she hadn’t fallen in love
with Jenny, because she
knew exactly what her leaving you would do. And from the
looks of things, she was
absolutely right.” She paused, taking a deep breath.
“Look, Remy, I know you’re
hurting, but Rogue never meant to hurt you
intentionally – otherwise
she would have just taken off with Jenny, the first
time she realised she felt
something for her. She stayed here and she stayed
with you, even though she
knew that that wasn’t what would make her happy in the
long run. Doesn’t that tell
you anything about how she feels about you?”
Remy shrugged, before crushing the butt of his cigarette into
the overflowing
ashtray next to the bed. “Still
don’ make it right.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Jean conceded, “but Rogue wanted to make
amends for it, as
best she could, before she
left. That’s why I want you to read the letter. Even
if it doesn’t change the
way you feel, at least give Rogue the chance to let you
know what happened, from
her point of view.” She paused, and pushed the envelope
into Remy’s left hand. “Please,
Remy.”
Remy gave Jean a forced smile, and closed his hand around the
letter slowly,
before running his finger
gently underneath the lightly-sealed edge of the
envelope’s flap and carefully
pulling out the light-blue paper of the letter
itself. “You ain’ gon’ quit
unless I read dat letter, are you?”
Jean nodded. “Sorry, Remy. Rogue made me promise.”
A small laugh issued forth from Remy’s lips – the first sign of
humour that
Jean had seen since Rogue
and he had separated. “Yeah, Rogue insists on dat
sorta t’ing, don’ she?” Remy
lowered his head and began to read the neat,
occasionally tear-spattered
handwriting that had been spilled all over the pages
by Rogue’s pen.
Remy,
I know you must hate me right now. Hell, I hate myself,
for hurting you
the way I did. I never
meant for this to happen, I swear to you I didn’t. Jenny
and I just sort of…
connected. I couldn’t help the way she looked at me, or the
fact that I kept wanting to
look back. Didn’t happen right away, though; she and
I spent a lot of time
together without really feeling the way we eventually did.
Never thought I’d fall in
love the way Momma did, Remy. Never thought I’d hurt
you, either. I know this
has been pretty unbearable for you, and for that I’m
really, truly sorry. You
were my first love, Remy, and you gave me something
even Jenny can’t give me –
you taught me how to bring down the walls of my soul
and let somebody in. God, I
know that sounds so stupid, but it’s true. You gave
me my life back, and I’ll
never forget what you did for me.
I’m not going to give you the old “let’s still be friends” line
of bull,
either, because I know that
after what I did to you, I don’t deserve that. Not
really. Jenny says that I
shouldn’t blame myself for hurting you so badly, but
it doesn’t help; I still
feel so damn guilty. Must be where I’m different from
Momma, I guess – I think I
got a guilt complex to give Scott a run for his
money.
So if I felt so guilty
about doing this to you, why did I do it? Tell you
the truth, the first time
Jenny kissed me, I had no idea. I was too busy
thinking that I was going
to have to find her a hospital bed to notice that she
wasn’t unconscious. When
I’d finished freaking out, she told me her powers
protected her (something
about her bioelectric zaps messing with my body’s aura
just enough for the
skin-to-skin thing not to work, I think), and that was that.
We didn’t do anything like
that again for weeks. I figured, hey, that was a
fluke, it won’t happen
again.
Guess I ain’t like Irene. Predicting the future apparently ain’t
my strong
suit.
I know what you’re thinking, Remy – you’re thinking that I
latched onto her
because she could touch me,
and you couldn’t. Well, that probably had something
to do with it in the
beginning – I’ll admit that; I think I know myself well
enough to know how I’d
react to something like that. But it went beyond stolen
kisses, eventually. I felt
like she gave me something that I had been missing
all my life, even when I
was with you. Momma always used to tell me to follow my
heart at times like these,
Remy. She was a good momma to me, even when I left
her to come to the X-Men;
she always gave me good advice. I felt like I could go
to her about anything, you
know? Ask her about anything in the whole world.
Raven was my momma in every
way that mattered. She was the first person who told
me about boys, and she gave
me my first birthday present that was worth a damn.
I trust her advice, Remy.
Even though it hurts like hell, I trust her advice. I love Jenny
so much,
Remy – she gives me
something I’ve never experienced before. I feel… complete,
somehow. I know that sounds
like I’m disrespecting you, honey, but it’s not, I
swear. I’m just telling you
how I feel. How she makes me feel.
I still got regrets though, sugar – hell, I got a whole room
full of them. I
regret that I never had the
guts to come out to your face, and had to write you
this letter to explain why.
I regret that I had to find out I was gay like this.
I regret that I can’t make
everything go back to the way it was. I regret that I
hurt you so bad when I
finally found happiness. I regret… I regret so much other
stuff that I’d need forever
to write it all down.
Most of it involves you, Remy. I can’t tell you how bad this
makes me feel.
I can’t begin to imagine how bad it makes you feel. I hope you
can forgive
me, in time. It’s a long
shot – I know I don’t deserve it – but I hope you can
put what I did to you
behind you.
Love,
Louise Darkholme.
PS – Yeah, that’s my real
name… I figure I owe you that, at least, Remy. Don’t
spread it around, now,
hear?
Folding the letter up with shaking fingers, Remy wiped his eyes
and took a
deep breath. “See you
round, Cherie,” he whispered softly. “Be happy.”
Jean laid a concerned hand over Remy’s own curled right
knuckles, her jade
eyes filling with a deep
concern. “You okay, Remy?” Remy glanced up at her, and
shook his head slowly.
“Non,” he whispered, running a hand through his tangled auburn
hair. “Gon’
take me more than a few
days to bounce back from dis one, I t’ink.” He paused to
squeeze Jean’s hand, as if
there was a way he might draw into his body the
strength that Jean always
seemed to possess. “I don’ wan’ hate her, Jean. She
was my best friend.”
“She’s still your friend,” Jean corrected him gently, before she
pressed him
to her in a friendly
embrace and kissed his cheek, her rose-petal lips brushing
his skin just above his
face’s short, wiry coat of stubble. “She still loves you
very much, Remy. Focus on
that.”
Remy closed his eyes, and folded his muscular arms around Jean’s
slender body
briefly. “Anyone ever tell
you dat you make life-lessons sound real easy?” He
returned to the window and
looked up at the moon again, feeling the cold light
wash over him. “Give me
some time, Jean, s’il vous plait. I gon’ need it, I
t’ink…”