roleplay :: let's pretend we don't have a past.
<@Wanda> Wanda is used to this routine: she goes home, quietly excuses herself, and tucks herself into her attic room for a span of time, with all the lights off. After a while, though, it becomes apparent she's not asleep, because the floorboards creak when she paces a certain part of the room, /so/.
@Remy is used to this, too, though he doubts Wanda knows he is. He's noticied it a few times now - once you notice the first time it's impossible to ignore. He gives her some time, some space, and he's silent in a practiced way as he climbs the stairs and sits at the top, waiting. Guarding, maybe.
@Wanda steps out after a little while, paler than she should be. She might be gentle sometimes, and she might have grace, but she's very rarely genuinely /fragile/, so she disguises it as quickly as she can when she sees him. "Remy? Is something wrong?"
<@Remy> He stays quiet for a short while, looking up at her with an unreadable expression on his face. "Is there?"
<@Wanda> It's sort of like a showdown of caring about each other, which is ridiculous, she knows. She slides her hand through her hair and steps back into the doorway of her room. "If we're going to talk about this, you should probably come in."
<@Remy> "You don' have to if you don' want to." ... It's sincere, if quiet. He will just continue to sit around when she gets like this, because she /does/ deserve her privacy. He just worries.
<@Wanda> "No, I think I should...be honest. I know I compartmentalize sometimes." 'Sometimes.'
* @Remy gets up, then, and squeezes her arm comfortingly.
* @Wanda goes back into her room and sits on the bed, which is in the corner, so she can press her back to the wall and tuck her knees up. "I really, really, really hate that you have to do this, and that I have this /weakness/. I know you have a lot on your plate all on your own."
<@Remy> "What weakness?" he asks softly, sitting on the edge of her bed, not close enough to crowd her. "You break an ankle you gotta rehab it."
* @Wanda smiles at that despite herself. "So practical."
* @Remy shrugs. "I know it's worse'n that, but what else can you do? Weak ain't lookin' at it an' tryin'. That takes strength mos' people do not have."
* @Wanda leans her head back against the wall. "I have good reasons to try." People, mostly, are her reasons. Principles, too. "I spoke with a young girl today online who is a mutant. She has telepathy. It gives her headaches. We got to talking about Xavier, things like that. I didn't tell her who I am, but I thought about what was waiting for her, the way people think."
<@Remy> This is a hard subject for Remy - someone who identifies so fiercely with being a mutant. Can people really deal with this existence? Can it last, even if Wanda's spell is reversed? Or will they all destroy each other in the end? He shifts and reaches out to take her hands, looking at her.
<@Remy> "I know that it's not fair." It's all he says. What else is there?
<@Wanda> "I know." She laces her fingers with his. It's still dimly lit in there- her headache is still present, a quiet throb at her temples, but it's not as bad as it was. Not debilitating. "And my sons- they're mutants. They were there in the City, and they were being themselves--/real/, and I didn't even say anything to them."
<@Wanda> She wonders what they think, her boys, do they believe that she finds something wrong with them? Because of the depowering? Do they think that she doesn't want them to be mutants? /Does/ she? ...she doesn't care, she thinks, suddenly, vehemently, she doesn't care what they are. Maybe it's better if they're away from her, but they're still hers.
<@Remy> "You didn't have to. They /knew/ you cared." It's out of his mouth too quick to do anything about it, so he refuses to look busted, and squeezes her hands.
<@Wanda> "Did they?" She looks at him with wide eyes, teary, now. "I see." She appreciates it. Really. It's startling to her how much. "I am so glad you were the one to talk to them. I know we didn't know each other well until the City, but I'm really glad it was you with them."
* @Remy remembers sitting down with them - all four of them, at first, and then just the boys, later - after the coma. It was strange to see Tommy so fragile, and Billy the stronger one. "I..." ..he doesn't know what to say, that kind of sincerity from her, about /this/. But this isn't about him.
<@Remy> "They jus' wanted you to be happy. I figured you'd want the same, so I jus' said.. you know, don' worry 'bout it, if you can. Whether it was right or not..." he shakes his head. "I didn't want them 'round Stark."
<@Wanda> "Thank you," she says, soft-voiced, after a silence. And then she tugs his hands a little. Come sit up here, Cajun, you can both have your backs to the wall and be broody.
<@Remy> All right, all right. He moves up, transferring one arm around her shoulders. "You're gonna be okay, you know that?"
<@Wanda> "You said that before, too." She leans her head on his shoulder without really thinking about it. "Both of us, as I recall."
"Nothin' else to be." Someday, he will take his own advice. Probably. Maybe. (No.)
* @Wanda lets the silence after that stretch out a little, weighing whether she wants to go ahead and ask. (She'll never really mind her own business entirely.) "What's going on with you, Remy?" It's not accusing, just...asking. There is something, she knows.
What a question. He doesn't want to talk about it, but he doesn't want to lie to her, either. So for a long moment he's quiet, sorting out his words in his head. "People are justified in not wantin' you keepin' me as company," he says, voice low. "They jus' ain't sure why, for half of it. Think I'll go through a girl, steal somethin', break a heart."
And maybe they have a point. It's not like he doesn't have a track record (even though it takes two for everything, and Rogue never made anything *easy*). "I have done things in my life that I cannot forgive myself for." A struggle now - it kills him to speak about it, even now. His voice is hushed. "Ororo forgave me when it came out, so everyone else did. She shouldn't have. 'Cause here I am again."
* @Wanda looks at him, shifting so she's kneeling and facing him at the same time, so she can rest one hand on his shoulder and make sure she's taking this information with the gravity it deserves. Her voice is as low as his; the ache in her head sharpens to the point where it makes her want to scream, but he is more important than that.
<@Wanda> "What happened?"
* Remy tries to keep her gaze but he looks down, trying to keep himself shuttered in - but the shame and self-loathing are clear. "Wanda..." What? I can't? Please don't make me? He pushes his hair back from his face, troubled.
* @Wanda won't make him- even if she could, she wouldn't, so she doesn't say anything. Maybe there are disagreements about why she did what she did, and who should be blamed, or whose fault it was, but regardless things like shame and self-hatred are concepts Wanda is very well-acquainted with by now. She doesn't know if it's okay to push, so instead she's still. But present.
It's hard, because he knows that, eventually, someone will tell her. Pietro, if he's from her time, will know about Apocalypse, and thus the Marauders. And as the gossip mill goes - 'Gambit is with the Marauders. Again.' No one's entirely sure how that 'again' got on there, but he feels like his former team mates are the probably the leak on that particular subject. He thinks of Cyclops and Emma Frost and wonders how he could have ever bought into it.
"..For all my luck, I never had much of it where it could have saved me," he says at length. "Other kids got picked up by Xavier. I got picked up by Sinister." He holds her hand in his and wonders when she'll pull away, his grip soft, almost non-existant. "I've never managed to break clean. No matter how far I run."
* @Wanda is almost blank for a second, processing this, trying to reconcile the man in front of her with the Marauders and Sinister. But how old was he? How young was she, when Magneto found her? And how many times has she been dragged back to the Brotherhood (she remembers chopping off all her hair and staring at the mirror, pretending she was someone cheaper and more capable of bravado)? ... she thinks: how many people has Remy killed?
<@Wanda> Maybe it's as many as she has. And maybe that's not what this is about; Remy won't forgive himself, of that much she is certain. When he's really screwed up, she suspects, he is his own best punishment. That's how it is. And it's not that she can say she doesn't care, or that she can sweep this aside, because it matters. But she accepts him anyway.
<@Wanda> So she doesn't quite let go so much as say something in her mother language and rush forward to wrap her arms around him. Hi.
It's not at all what he expected, but it's something that's happened before. For a moment he just tenses, because part of him hates so much that the people he cares about do this. /You should hate me/. But he can't be angry at /her/ for it, and wraps his arms around her in response.
* @Wanda is thinking about that, too, because she knows the perspective. And she's still learning it. "I know it's almost worse this way, but..." She doesn't hate him. But maybe she wishes somebody had protected him the way other mutants were protected by Xavier once.
"I can't. I just--" one hand is flat on her back, and he curls his fingers against her, a frustrated motion. "I can't." Can't talk about it, can't justify it, can't ask her to forgive him. It's so much worse than she can imagine, he's sure of it, and he's selfish for not wanting her to know the details. Does this make him a liar, omitting it?
<@Wanda> He probably feels her nodding, more than seeing it, at this angle. Her head still hurts- worsens when she moves a lot- but oh well. "All right." Maybe they've pushed enough for one night. She straightens up just enough to look him in the eye.
* Remy reaches up to push her hair back behind her ear, thumb stroking over her temple. He knows she's hurting - how, exactly, he can't tell. But he knows better than to let her focus fully on him. "You lay down, fille, you look tired."
<@Wanda> "It's just a headache. From the the barrier Nick implanted back in the City." It's breaking, is the problem, and she knows it. There's a hesitation, like she's not sure she should ask (they've gone over some heavy subjects), but-- "Stay with me?"
He doesn't hesitate, exactly, but when he nods in response he seems somewhat tired, himself. He strokes over her hair again and nudges her to lay down.
* @Wanda does, after a moment. "You know what I think we should try? Not thinking. I think we're both emotionally exhausted enough to actually manage." That's...not really a joke, but it's wryer than she was before. Wanda appears to use terrifying sincerity like a nuclear-grade weapon sometimes.
* Remy settles next to her, on his side, and keeps one hand on her, stroking over her hair and forehead, soothing. He gives her a half-smile at that, an echo of the teasing he uses normally. "That's a whole 'nother sorta therapy, belle," he says, nearly a whisper.
<@Wanda> "Not the kind they'd ever sell in a book." Her eyes are half-closed, watching from under her eyelashes. "Don't let me keep you here if you get too tired." She doesn't know if she means...here, specifically, or the house. (It's that illness paranoia, that she's /making/ people stay because they worry. It's more common than she realizes yet.)
"I don' /keep/ well, Wanda," he says, assuring. "You should know that 'bout me by now." He'll stay here and coax her to sleep, his touch gentle and appropriate, grounding.
<@Wanda> "Headstrong," she half-teases, as though she has any room to accuse anyone of that, ever. But she is going to fall asleep, soon enough, to be sure. She doesn't expect him to stay.
"Stubborn," he corrects, shameless. And he does stay, long enough to be drifting himself.
Remy's subconscious, when you can find it, is a disturbing place. Telepaths have a hard time getting into his mind even when he's unconscious; there are jokes that some people never sleept, only /wait/ - and for Remy LeBeau, it's half-true. Unable to properly keep his shields up when he's asleep, it's rare that he lets himself get /true/ rest outside short intervals. (He slept when Jean was around. He trusted Jean.) But Wanda's not a telepath. It's
It's not mind reading. It's something else. Something that makes mind-sight almost /tangible/.
He's young - fifteen, sixteen? - on a cold metal floor, his entire form crackling with red-hot energy, until something strikes him - he's in a tank, red eyes are watching him, he's screaming, punches the glass - he's older, who knows how much, but his eyes say he's ancient. The hulking form before him moves and a stray beam of starlight shows he's in a sewer, and the thing in front of him is Victor Creed.
A second later he's scrambling back, watching blood and slaughter -- he's thirty and Lorna Dane is sitting next to him on the steps of the lake house at Xavier's. She's saying something to him but whatever it is, no sound comes out. It's silent, all silent, like a void. Morlocks. All of them, dead. It should be a still picture but it's not, and though he has nothing like an eidetic memory, every single face, every single pair of eyes, are burned int
are burned into his mind with such clarity it's like the image has never left him.
Suddenly, sound. Screaming - Rogue's voice, shrieking his name, Ororo's calm voice talking, indistinguishable - but the image is Magneto, whose hand is over his throat. And he's laughing. Then it's Genosha, and all of reality is crumbling around them. Then Jean is dragging him away from Eric, telling him it's not worth becoming a murderer. She doesn't understand, he /already is/--
Apocalypse. Sinister. Lorna again, crying, black ichor covering her, bleeding from her eyes - Remy's the same and their hands touch, desperate, terrified - the X-Mansion is burning to the ground and the Horsemen stand before it, laughing. He is Death. She is Pestilence. Sinister again, hands on Gambit's face, whispering to him that he's the only one who's ever taken care of him.
Rogue, laying out before him. Magneto's voice. Genocide. Genocide. Genocide, you did this, this is what you deserve.You betrayed your own people. Mystique is telling him that he can end it all and be with her, just do it, kill yourself, touch her. Touch her, and finally be responsible for a death that will benefit mutantkind.
She has green eyes, and perfect hair. She's the most beautiful woman in the world. She's the only woman he's loved since he saw her. She meets his gaze for the first time in months.
"Don't follow me, Remy."
<@Wanda> When Wanda wakes up, she doesn't realize she's crying until she feels a teardrop on her hand. She's sitting up, numb, battered--and that was just from seeing it. What he did. Lorna--her sister, the better sister, the one who lately Wanda has hoped will always be better than her. Genocide, again--
<@Wanda> Why does that word follow them? Mutants? Even before they knew they were mutants. And then, Magneto. Wanda's father and his mission, his manipulations, his talk of his 'people'--does he value them as much as he values his own pride? But then she thinks back to all of that death, and the man who was Death who is in the bed with her, and she doesn't know what to say.
<@Wanda> So instead she doesn't look at him, not right now, shielded by her hair, and curls against the wall like she's been stricken. (Which she has: by her own power.)
* Remy only realizes what happened thanks to years and years of paranoid training - like messy footprints through a sand garden, he knows something's been disturbed. He wasn't /really/ asleep, only partly. When she pulls away he knows for sure, and he sits up, facing away from her, silent.
<@Wanda> "I--don't understand," she says, and it would be plaintive on any other woman but with her it's sort of like she's expecting the universe is going to adapt and explain itself to her shortly. And maybe it will, once she's managed to breathe, but probably there are going to be things she will just never understand, too.
For a moment, he thinks he might throw up. But he doesn't, he just sits there. Silent. Not even the sound of shaken breath leaves him. He knew this would happen, eventually. It's just -- so soon. He feels stung, suffocated. He didn't want to fail her, though he knew he would, despite it all. "I'm sorry."
<@Wanda> "It was like I was there." It's only rarely gone haywire like this, with the Beyonder, and--oh, now it does make more sense. The Beyonder's side that was Chaos possessed her, made her different, made things happen. "Lorna. My /God/, I can't--" Her voice breaks on the epithet, and she slides to the edge of the bed. It's too much all at once.
<@Wanda> "You were just a boy, when he took you."
* Remy stands up and moves away, not looking at her. It's taking a lot out of him not to just leave entirely - because that's how he deals with things. Every time he's tried to stay and fight he's been shoved away, and every time he's battled his now-trained instincts to run, it's blown up in his face.
He stayed for Ororo, who's gone now - does she even remember him, Queen now in name as she's always been? He stayed for the X-Men, who have exiled him. He stayed and fought and bled for Rogue, who hates him. And now he's in a house in the nexus with people who don't know him, because he has nothing else.
<@Wanda> And now Wanda knows. She presses her hands against her knees; he keeps this locked up so tightly and it's this awful invasion that she knows, frankly, is not okay for her to have done, even accidentally. And she digs her nails into her knees, which are bare with her skirt pulled up like this, until she's close to drawing blood.
<@Wanda> She doesn't say things like this a lot, but... when she does, she means every word. "My father will go to hell for what he did." For lots of things, but yes, she is certainly fucking including that! "This is why you understand, isn't it?"
* Remy covers his face with his hands for a moment and runs them over his hair, somewhat unsteady. It's like there's an actual physical /thing/ that's preventing him from speaking - it's so painful and so deeply entrenched that even now he's completely terrified in the face of it.
<@Wanda> "I see." It's paired with a soft exhale, and she rises. There's no violence in her- no anger, just the sort of slack tiredness that comes after a storm, like she's reminding herself how to breathe. And maybe there is a tremble there in her shoulders, but it's never been her body that dictates her personal strength. "Look at me." Please.
The lack of anger is the hardest. He can cope with hate - the pain is at least something familiar, something he can navigate with ease. This is a different kind of wound, that makes him want things he can't have, like his friends coming back. He finally does turn, one hand up on his forehead, fingers shoved in his hair, at a loss.
<@Wanda> "We are fucked up," she says, deliberately choosing words that would never touch her lips in ordinary circumstances, "but I am not going to turn you away, or kick you out. Okay?" She wonders if she really did used to be better at this, or if hindsight makes things look clearer-cut than they were.
"You should." His voice is cracked and raw with tears that will never fall, because he's just not that kind of man. "You should get me away from you, because I'll tear you down. I don't want to, but that's how I am-- an' I can't do it, Wanda. I don't know how to stop wantin' people unless they tell me to stop."
<@Wanda> "I don't give up on people." And it's true--one of the truest things about her, actually. "And I am not going to tell you to stop." She doesn't think many people have ever, ever seen him like this, and she wishes she knew a way--a /real/ way--to make things better.
<@Wanda> Instead, she (without hesitation, but not abruptly, either) moves closer, intending to tug his hand away from his face gently.
Ororo's seen it, yes. Rogue, absolutely. And, perhaps strangely, Logan. (Hate and rage are as passionate as love.) Remy lets her move his hand, but his expression isn't any less tormented. "You'll get hurt. You hurt even now, I bet. You didn't need to see that."
<@Wanda> "You can't be close to someone and not get hurt. And you have to decide if this is worth being hurt, and I say it is, and I am just as stubborn as you are, so don't try to persuade me otherwise." This could be construed as harsh for the conversation, but her tone isn't at all. "I already hurt you, too." Physically, even.
"This ain't about bein' /even/," he sounds somewhat desperate - he doesn't know how to deal with being forgiven. It's a level of acceptence that's become alien to him. He thought he could recover and put it behind him, after the first stretch. But there's no way, now. He's cursed and he's damned and the time he has with these people is cheated, stolen. Eventually, they'll leave him - either they'll forget him or they'll shove him away, and he'll tak
and he'll take it silently, because it's more than he deserves. "I thought I could get away wit' bein' here, pretendin' like I could help somehow. Make up for--" he lowers his gaze.
<@Wanda> "You /do/ help. Don't think for a minute you don't." She doesn't know about 'making up for it', doesn't know if it works that way, and she does know that there is nothing she can say that will make this better. It's like losing a limb; some part of you is gone, maybe the part that lets you believe you're a good person, and all you can do is figure out how to live without it. "Remy..."
* Remy has to believe that he can at least make attempts to give something back to the world that refuses to let him die only so that he can go on to continue to screw things up. He knows he'll never come out even close to even, but he can give what he can. "How's your headache?" he asks, very quiet.
<@Wanda> "Alleviating. But not gone. I think the drink I had staved it off a while." She has this weird irrational (maybe) fear that he's going to quietly take his things and leave, and she doesn't have the energy right now to examine why that is so distressing to her in the way it is.
Unfortunately that is... not altogether irrational, but at the moment, he'd probably feel worse for doing that, and he'd worry that he'd upset Wanda enough to make her hurt herself or someone else in the house by accident. So he finally moves, raising his hands to once again brush her hair back and stay cupping her face. "Really?"
<@Wanda> "I promise not to develop a drinking problem." She smiles at him a little, and it's sad, but at least it's there. "Really."
"Drinkin' problems ain't all that bad, you know," he says, something resembling humor hidden somewhere in his voice.
* @Wanda places her hand over one of his, lightly. "Well, then. Do you promise not to report me to the Nexus authorities if I get something now?"
"Somethin'? Girl I'm gon' have to rob a liquor store pretty soon wit' how badly I need a drink /right now/."
* @Wanda kind of laughs a /lot/, in a soft, genuine way, and leans on him for a second. "All right, what would you like? If you say 'surprise me' I'm making you something pink with an umbrella."
"...If you would like to make me an umbrella drink you may, I will jus' use it as a /chaser/ for de /bottle/ of whiskey I know is down there," he laughs.
<@Wanda> "Whiskey it is. For you," she adds, crinkling her nose. Wanda will never be a whiskey girl. She touches his arm, briefly, and goes downstairs to...pilfer them liquor at 5 AM, no one can stop them.
* Remy thinks booze is almost always the right answer. He will never complain.
* @Wanda brings a bottle of whiskey for him and something else - a breezer, probably, she likes Bacardi - for herself. Also a bottle. "I feel like some teenager," she says, almost-light, "sneaking bottles into my room. ...Not that I did that." No, she really didn't.
"I will leave de dark tales of my formative years to your imagination," he says, and takes his bottle. Because... Remy as a teenager! These stories are either horrifying or deeply scandalizing.
* @Wanda goes to settle back on her bed, legs tucked up, back against the wall. "I don't think I have any stories from my teen years, personally. ...Although- you know, when Pietro and I were really little? Before our abilities manifested, I was always much faster than him. And then it all switched, of course, and that was for the best, but..." She has no idea why she's talking about this.
<@Wanda> But remembering Pietro chasing her through the woods yelling 'wait up!' is sometimes hilarious, okay.
* Remy wonders, briefly, if she knows about her brother's experiments. Things not to bring up first: That. He sits down, about where he was earlier, before they went to sleep. "I was in a street gang 'til I was adopted." ... Hi.
<@Wanda> "...tell me you were at least the baby of the group."
"Uh... well I was ten..." he seems to be pondering this. "No, I had plenty o'contemporaries." .. He's just going to drink his whiskey now.
<@Wanda> "I can't actually say anything, Pietro stole everything that wasn't nailed down and I got to play distraction. Django stole, too, so Pietro copied everything he did and went /completely/ overboard." She shakes her head, remembering. Yeah, maybe she'll have her drink now, too.
"I'm not ashamed." He shrugs. "I jus' realize how weird people usually see it." And that's the truth. "I got dumped on de hospital steps when I was a few days old. I ended up wit a family I adore. I ain't never be ashamed of that, no?"
<@Wanda> "No." She smiles less wryly, now. "Of course not."
* Remy is actually.. trying to think of a childhood story that isn't deeply concerning. "When I was a kid," he begins, "maybe eleven or twelve, we played this game - you go down to de grave yard an' find de staircase to de vampire court, right at sunset, an' you race down, touch de door, race back, see if you can go before true darkness. 'Cause then they jump out an' nab you."
* @Wanda looks over at him, listening, already a little amused-- kids making games out of monsters.
"Never do nothin' to you, mind - just scare you a bit, sometimes dump you back on de guild grounds. One in particular, Marat - he got turned when he was sixteen, in de fourties, in France. Always kind a young in de head, no? He'd get us pretty good, played hide an' seek wit us." Remy smiles. "Still around, same family. Good friend."
<@Wanda> "An interesting sort of vampire, I take it." It doesn't sound as terrifying as other stories, but monsters can always turn on a dime.
"Ah?" he seems confused at that, a little.
<@Wanda> "Consider the one whose presence we just spent the evening in." She thinks the Brucolac is interesting, but is glad she stays reserved around him.
"Oh, I dunno what world's got snake vampires," he chuckles. "I may be jaded concernin' our undead friends, growin' up 'round 'em. Them an' voodoo an' killers and thieves an' witches, you lose... a fear of people, I guess."
* @Wanda looks at him with slightly playful and entirely false astonishment. "I'd never noticed that about you."
"Oh really?" he gives her a smile, playing along. "Some o'de other kids got scared, growin' up. I never did. I liked people too much."
<@Wanda> "I always wished we could have met more people. But the Roma, you know, we liked to stay by ourselves when we could. It was safer. I usually just imagined what people in other places were like instead--although I don't think I ever imagined anything like how you describe your city."
"Well.. N'Orleans has got people like me - people who know 'bout what goes on behind de scenes an' live it, an' it's got everybody else, who lives there an' may know or suspect but don' get involved. Civilianz, no? An'... tourists." He shrugs. "I traveled some in de States when I was younger. After I got married I went over to Europe an' Africa an' all.."
<@Wanda> "I remember- /when/ did you get married, anyway, what happened?" She hopes it wasn't too traumatic.
"Aahhh... well. It was arranged, an' I was seventeen." Booze is great for this. He's told people, it's not a horrible secret - and Belle's dead anyway. Oops. "I don' think I cared as much as I did, 'cause it was somethin' I had to do, for de guild - my father bein' de patriarch for us and her father bein' de patriarch of de Assassins Guild. Turns out she was crazy. Like. Really."
* @Wanda is unfazed by 'seventeen' because she's Roma and would have been married by fourteen had her adoptive family not died, yay! She is, however, raising her eyebows at 'really crazy'. "I see. Did you get divorced, or...?"
"...Well." Eyedart, drink.
* Remy_ is now known as Remy
<@Wanda> "It's funny how that look is the same on almost every man," she muses out loud, "I wonder if it's a community secret."
* Remy gives her a half smile, and says, somewhat quiet: "I got into a disagreement wit her brother, who didn' want de guilds to unite, and I ended up bein' forced to kill him to save my own neck. I was exiled from N'Orleans for ten years."
<@Wanda> "Oh. I'm--so sorry." She imagines this woman didn't take that very well, or some other such thing.
* Remy shrugs. "C'est la vie. I'm de patriarch now, ah? Anyway, she died." REMY.
<@Wanda> "So you're a widower." A /very grief stricken one/, clearly. She is about half done with her breezer by now.
"Yeah, I guess. But she kept tryin' to kill me, so, not so much wit de mournin'. For de record she was tryin' to kill me 'cause I wasn't wit /her/."
<@Wanda> "I have never understood that tactic. In a similar vein: kidnapping one's ideal intended, which I found personally annoying." Dammit Arkon.
"Yeeahh it..ain't exactly endearin', no?" He shakes his head, bemused.
<@Wanda> "Not remotely. Did you ever hear of Arkon?" This is actually a hilarious story, in retrospect, although at the time it was kind of distressing because she couldn't tell whether Arkon was just kind of a moron or a genuinely malicious one.
"Yeah! Asshole kidnapped Stormy." >:/
<@Wanda> "I think I heard of that; apparently he didn't learn. Before that, he kidnapped me. And tried to force me to marry him. I didn't appreciate that very much."
* Remy staaaares. "...I swear, some guys." He takes another long drink. How can you do that and not choke, Remy?
<@Wanda> "He was dealt with, fortunately. Mastermind and Toad at least never tried to /marry/ me." She glances out the window. Getting kinda light out. Oh well.
"You... have some /luck/." Holy creeptastic, Wanda. He's got about a thirt of the bottle left. Maybe he should give it a rest. "I jus'... people give me hell but it's been Rogue." He shrugs, and seems, at least, less completely raw about it than he was during Mardi Gras. But not happy.
<@Wanda> "Jan always said it had something to do with the unattainable." She watches his expression- no, not happy. She doesn't know what the circumstances are there exactly but she did get some distinct impressions earlier from what she saw, /so/. "Those people don't know you very well, then."
* Remy shrugs. "Like I said. I like people. Guess that's it."
<@Wanda> "It must be." She knows how he is with her, when they flirt, can't mean anything. That's just how he /is/, it's fun and friendly and a part of their interaction. So. Yes. "I liked Steve right when I met him, but I sort of talked myself out of it." Turns out it was too late and all the wrong way when things did start to happen, of course.
"Jack says he loves me." ..........................Oh. My god. Why did he say that. <--Is exactly what his expression looks like right now.
* @Wanda turns and looks at him like 'oh, I see.' She doesn't /laugh/, because it's not really funny in and of itself, but the suddenness of it was, a little. "And...I suppose this is the part where I ask how you feel about him?"
* Remy facepalms makes some indecipherable noise of OH GOD WHY behind his hands. "I-- you know what. That. Topic. Next. NEXT."
<@Wanda> "...I have /really/ missed something," she says, to the ceiling, and then to Remy: "And I don't have another topic, so I think you're actually stuck with this one." Wanda be nice.
"He- and I- I dunno. I dunno, you know, guys - whatever, usually I hate 'em, but we get on, an'--Christ. Ain't like that, you know, he's got Tosh, and I'd kill him inside a week no matter how good he cooks. Jus' odd, ah? Not bad though. I guess."
<@Wanda> "You are so cute when you get all awkward. I feel like I should photograph the occasion with how rarely it occurs." Pause. Okay, now she's going to be sincere. "And I'm glad you guys have what you have, even if it's hard to define. I know he's important to you."
* @Wanda remembers when Jack SUDDENLY APPEARED in the kitchen, yes.
* Remy makes a face at her and reaches out to poke at her. Hi, he's ten. "Yeah it'll last longer with a picture." ...Yes. "I dunno where it's goin'. Least I can call him an asshole still." And now Wanda is getting tugged closer.
* @Wanda tucks herself quietly against his side, then. "You should have something that makes you happy. ...that sounds incredibly simplistic; I know it's not, but there you go."
"You happy, here?" Softly. He manages to get the bottle onto a nearby nightstand without dropping it.
<@Wanda> "Closer than I've been for a long time. I'm--I think the last time I was really happy was when I had the boys? And we know how that worked out." Her smile is rueful. They are officially in 'wee hours of the morning' conversation where insane things get said, it's wonderful. "The difficulty is recognizing it at the time, I suppose."
"Hindsight, no?" he pets her hair, idle - he does this, barely realizing it, it's just how he is with people who let him this close. "I get that."
<@Wanda> "It doesn't seem fair, does it?" She doesn't seem bothered, though. Most likely, after such a chaotic night she's simply not up to it- right now she doesn't want to sleep but she's just kind of still.
"I dunno if there's such thing as fair," he muses, staring at the ceiling. "I think it's jus'... a construct.. that sentient life came up wit', tryin' to put meanin' into things. All of life is jus' chaos, an' sometimes we can hammer order out of it, but there's so many of us, everywhere, all over time an' reality, de chances of not gettin' tangled are so remote we can't really fathom it."
<@Wanda> "We're not supposed to fathom it, no." Sometimes she comes way too close. That's not a good thing, as we have all learned. "Chaos and order are pretty equal forces, but order is found in... the patterns of planets, objects. Chaos is all people. And I think you're entirely correct about 'fair', too."
"Couting," he agrees, somewhere on the edge of dozing. It's not the liquor that makes him sleepy, but the aftermath of their earlier conversation, which has.. done this interesting flip, here. "Numbers always add up."
<@Wanda> Emotional whiplash? Is that what they did? She murmurs a noise of agreement, and notes how tired he is- and how tired she is. "Remy?"
Compensation, maybe. "Ah?"
* @Wanda tips her face up and brushes a kiss over his cheek. "Thanks." She's not going to specify what for, not right now, but maybe some other time. Partly because she thinks they're both a half-step from finally crashing.
* Remy noses her back in response, soft. "Mm." He closes his eyes. This has been... a lot. He doesn't know if he'll be able to talk about it again - but he won't ignore that it happened. "Night." (At six am or something. That's fine.)
@Remy is used to this, too, though he doubts Wanda knows he is. He's noticied it a few times now - once you notice the first time it's impossible to ignore. He gives her some time, some space, and he's silent in a practiced way as he climbs the stairs and sits at the top, waiting. Guarding, maybe.
@Wanda steps out after a little while, paler than she should be. She might be gentle sometimes, and she might have grace, but she's very rarely genuinely /fragile/, so she disguises it as quickly as she can when she sees him. "Remy? Is something wrong?"
<@Remy> He stays quiet for a short while, looking up at her with an unreadable expression on his face. "Is there?"
<@Wanda> It's sort of like a showdown of caring about each other, which is ridiculous, she knows. She slides her hand through her hair and steps back into the doorway of her room. "If we're going to talk about this, you should probably come in."
<@Remy> "You don' have to if you don' want to." ... It's sincere, if quiet. He will just continue to sit around when she gets like this, because she /does/ deserve her privacy. He just worries.
<@Wanda> "No, I think I should...be honest. I know I compartmentalize sometimes." 'Sometimes.'
* @Remy gets up, then, and squeezes her arm comfortingly.
* @Wanda goes back into her room and sits on the bed, which is in the corner, so she can press her back to the wall and tuck her knees up. "I really, really, really hate that you have to do this, and that I have this /weakness/. I know you have a lot on your plate all on your own."
<@Remy> "What weakness?" he asks softly, sitting on the edge of her bed, not close enough to crowd her. "You break an ankle you gotta rehab it."
* @Wanda smiles at that despite herself. "So practical."
* @Remy shrugs. "I know it's worse'n that, but what else can you do? Weak ain't lookin' at it an' tryin'. That takes strength mos' people do not have."
* @Wanda leans her head back against the wall. "I have good reasons to try." People, mostly, are her reasons. Principles, too. "I spoke with a young girl today online who is a mutant. She has telepathy. It gives her headaches. We got to talking about Xavier, things like that. I didn't tell her who I am, but I thought about what was waiting for her, the way people think."
<@Remy> This is a hard subject for Remy - someone who identifies so fiercely with being a mutant. Can people really deal with this existence? Can it last, even if Wanda's spell is reversed? Or will they all destroy each other in the end? He shifts and reaches out to take her hands, looking at her.
<@Remy> "I know that it's not fair." It's all he says. What else is there?
<@Wanda> "I know." She laces her fingers with his. It's still dimly lit in there- her headache is still present, a quiet throb at her temples, but it's not as bad as it was. Not debilitating. "And my sons- they're mutants. They were there in the City, and they were being themselves--/real/, and I didn't even say anything to them."
<@Wanda> She wonders what they think, her boys, do they believe that she finds something wrong with them? Because of the depowering? Do they think that she doesn't want them to be mutants? /Does/ she? ...she doesn't care, she thinks, suddenly, vehemently, she doesn't care what they are. Maybe it's better if they're away from her, but they're still hers.
<@Remy> "You didn't have to. They /knew/ you cared." It's out of his mouth too quick to do anything about it, so he refuses to look busted, and squeezes her hands.
<@Wanda> "Did they?" She looks at him with wide eyes, teary, now. "I see." She appreciates it. Really. It's startling to her how much. "I am so glad you were the one to talk to them. I know we didn't know each other well until the City, but I'm really glad it was you with them."
* @Remy remembers sitting down with them - all four of them, at first, and then just the boys, later - after the coma. It was strange to see Tommy so fragile, and Billy the stronger one. "I..." ..he doesn't know what to say, that kind of sincerity from her, about /this/. But this isn't about him.
<@Remy> "They jus' wanted you to be happy. I figured you'd want the same, so I jus' said.. you know, don' worry 'bout it, if you can. Whether it was right or not..." he shakes his head. "I didn't want them 'round Stark."
<@Wanda> "Thank you," she says, soft-voiced, after a silence. And then she tugs his hands a little. Come sit up here, Cajun, you can both have your backs to the wall and be broody.
<@Remy> All right, all right. He moves up, transferring one arm around her shoulders. "You're gonna be okay, you know that?"
<@Wanda> "You said that before, too." She leans her head on his shoulder without really thinking about it. "Both of us, as I recall."
"Nothin' else to be." Someday, he will take his own advice. Probably. Maybe. (No.)
* @Wanda lets the silence after that stretch out a little, weighing whether she wants to go ahead and ask. (She'll never really mind her own business entirely.) "What's going on with you, Remy?" It's not accusing, just...asking. There is something, she knows.
What a question. He doesn't want to talk about it, but he doesn't want to lie to her, either. So for a long moment he's quiet, sorting out his words in his head. "People are justified in not wantin' you keepin' me as company," he says, voice low. "They jus' ain't sure why, for half of it. Think I'll go through a girl, steal somethin', break a heart."
And maybe they have a point. It's not like he doesn't have a track record (even though it takes two for everything, and Rogue never made anything *easy*). "I have done things in my life that I cannot forgive myself for." A struggle now - it kills him to speak about it, even now. His voice is hushed. "Ororo forgave me when it came out, so everyone else did. She shouldn't have. 'Cause here I am again."
* @Wanda looks at him, shifting so she's kneeling and facing him at the same time, so she can rest one hand on his shoulder and make sure she's taking this information with the gravity it deserves. Her voice is as low as his; the ache in her head sharpens to the point where it makes her want to scream, but he is more important than that.
<@Wanda> "What happened?"
* Remy tries to keep her gaze but he looks down, trying to keep himself shuttered in - but the shame and self-loathing are clear. "Wanda..." What? I can't? Please don't make me? He pushes his hair back from his face, troubled.
* @Wanda won't make him- even if she could, she wouldn't, so she doesn't say anything. Maybe there are disagreements about why she did what she did, and who should be blamed, or whose fault it was, but regardless things like shame and self-hatred are concepts Wanda is very well-acquainted with by now. She doesn't know if it's okay to push, so instead she's still. But present.
It's hard, because he knows that, eventually, someone will tell her. Pietro, if he's from her time, will know about Apocalypse, and thus the Marauders. And as the gossip mill goes - 'Gambit is with the Marauders. Again.' No one's entirely sure how that 'again' got on there, but he feels like his former team mates are the probably the leak on that particular subject. He thinks of Cyclops and Emma Frost and wonders how he could have ever bought into it.
"..For all my luck, I never had much of it where it could have saved me," he says at length. "Other kids got picked up by Xavier. I got picked up by Sinister." He holds her hand in his and wonders when she'll pull away, his grip soft, almost non-existant. "I've never managed to break clean. No matter how far I run."
* @Wanda is almost blank for a second, processing this, trying to reconcile the man in front of her with the Marauders and Sinister. But how old was he? How young was she, when Magneto found her? And how many times has she been dragged back to the Brotherhood (she remembers chopping off all her hair and staring at the mirror, pretending she was someone cheaper and more capable of bravado)? ... she thinks: how many people has Remy killed?
<@Wanda> Maybe it's as many as she has. And maybe that's not what this is about; Remy won't forgive himself, of that much she is certain. When he's really screwed up, she suspects, he is his own best punishment. That's how it is. And it's not that she can say she doesn't care, or that she can sweep this aside, because it matters. But she accepts him anyway.
<@Wanda> So she doesn't quite let go so much as say something in her mother language and rush forward to wrap her arms around him. Hi.
It's not at all what he expected, but it's something that's happened before. For a moment he just tenses, because part of him hates so much that the people he cares about do this. /You should hate me/. But he can't be angry at /her/ for it, and wraps his arms around her in response.
* @Wanda is thinking about that, too, because she knows the perspective. And she's still learning it. "I know it's almost worse this way, but..." She doesn't hate him. But maybe she wishes somebody had protected him the way other mutants were protected by Xavier once.
"I can't. I just--" one hand is flat on her back, and he curls his fingers against her, a frustrated motion. "I can't." Can't talk about it, can't justify it, can't ask her to forgive him. It's so much worse than she can imagine, he's sure of it, and he's selfish for not wanting her to know the details. Does this make him a liar, omitting it?
<@Wanda> He probably feels her nodding, more than seeing it, at this angle. Her head still hurts- worsens when she moves a lot- but oh well. "All right." Maybe they've pushed enough for one night. She straightens up just enough to look him in the eye.
* Remy reaches up to push her hair back behind her ear, thumb stroking over her temple. He knows she's hurting - how, exactly, he can't tell. But he knows better than to let her focus fully on him. "You lay down, fille, you look tired."
<@Wanda> "It's just a headache. From the the barrier Nick implanted back in the City." It's breaking, is the problem, and she knows it. There's a hesitation, like she's not sure she should ask (they've gone over some heavy subjects), but-- "Stay with me?"
He doesn't hesitate, exactly, but when he nods in response he seems somewhat tired, himself. He strokes over her hair again and nudges her to lay down.
* @Wanda does, after a moment. "You know what I think we should try? Not thinking. I think we're both emotionally exhausted enough to actually manage." That's...not really a joke, but it's wryer than she was before. Wanda appears to use terrifying sincerity like a nuclear-grade weapon sometimes.
* Remy settles next to her, on his side, and keeps one hand on her, stroking over her hair and forehead, soothing. He gives her a half-smile at that, an echo of the teasing he uses normally. "That's a whole 'nother sorta therapy, belle," he says, nearly a whisper.
<@Wanda> "Not the kind they'd ever sell in a book." Her eyes are half-closed, watching from under her eyelashes. "Don't let me keep you here if you get too tired." She doesn't know if she means...here, specifically, or the house. (It's that illness paranoia, that she's /making/ people stay because they worry. It's more common than she realizes yet.)
"I don' /keep/ well, Wanda," he says, assuring. "You should know that 'bout me by now." He'll stay here and coax her to sleep, his touch gentle and appropriate, grounding.
<@Wanda> "Headstrong," she half-teases, as though she has any room to accuse anyone of that, ever. But she is going to fall asleep, soon enough, to be sure. She doesn't expect him to stay.
"Stubborn," he corrects, shameless. And he does stay, long enough to be drifting himself.
Remy's subconscious, when you can find it, is a disturbing place. Telepaths have a hard time getting into his mind even when he's unconscious; there are jokes that some people never sleept, only /wait/ - and for Remy LeBeau, it's half-true. Unable to properly keep his shields up when he's asleep, it's rare that he lets himself get /true/ rest outside short intervals. (He slept when Jean was around. He trusted Jean.) But Wanda's not a telepath. It's
It's not mind reading. It's something else. Something that makes mind-sight almost /tangible/.
He's young - fifteen, sixteen? - on a cold metal floor, his entire form crackling with red-hot energy, until something strikes him - he's in a tank, red eyes are watching him, he's screaming, punches the glass - he's older, who knows how much, but his eyes say he's ancient. The hulking form before him moves and a stray beam of starlight shows he's in a sewer, and the thing in front of him is Victor Creed.
A second later he's scrambling back, watching blood and slaughter -- he's thirty and Lorna Dane is sitting next to him on the steps of the lake house at Xavier's. She's saying something to him but whatever it is, no sound comes out. It's silent, all silent, like a void. Morlocks. All of them, dead. It should be a still picture but it's not, and though he has nothing like an eidetic memory, every single face, every single pair of eyes, are burned int
are burned into his mind with such clarity it's like the image has never left him.
Suddenly, sound. Screaming - Rogue's voice, shrieking his name, Ororo's calm voice talking, indistinguishable - but the image is Magneto, whose hand is over his throat. And he's laughing. Then it's Genosha, and all of reality is crumbling around them. Then Jean is dragging him away from Eric, telling him it's not worth becoming a murderer. She doesn't understand, he /already is/--
Apocalypse. Sinister. Lorna again, crying, black ichor covering her, bleeding from her eyes - Remy's the same and their hands touch, desperate, terrified - the X-Mansion is burning to the ground and the Horsemen stand before it, laughing. He is Death. She is Pestilence. Sinister again, hands on Gambit's face, whispering to him that he's the only one who's ever taken care of him.
Rogue, laying out before him. Magneto's voice. Genocide. Genocide. Genocide, you did this, this is what you deserve.You betrayed your own people. Mystique is telling him that he can end it all and be with her, just do it, kill yourself, touch her. Touch her, and finally be responsible for a death that will benefit mutantkind.
She has green eyes, and perfect hair. She's the most beautiful woman in the world. She's the only woman he's loved since he saw her. She meets his gaze for the first time in months.
"Don't follow me, Remy."
<@Wanda> When Wanda wakes up, she doesn't realize she's crying until she feels a teardrop on her hand. She's sitting up, numb, battered--and that was just from seeing it. What he did. Lorna--her sister, the better sister, the one who lately Wanda has hoped will always be better than her. Genocide, again--
<@Wanda> Why does that word follow them? Mutants? Even before they knew they were mutants. And then, Magneto. Wanda's father and his mission, his manipulations, his talk of his 'people'--does he value them as much as he values his own pride? But then she thinks back to all of that death, and the man who was Death who is in the bed with her, and she doesn't know what to say.
<@Wanda> So instead she doesn't look at him, not right now, shielded by her hair, and curls against the wall like she's been stricken. (Which she has: by her own power.)
* Remy only realizes what happened thanks to years and years of paranoid training - like messy footprints through a sand garden, he knows something's been disturbed. He wasn't /really/ asleep, only partly. When she pulls away he knows for sure, and he sits up, facing away from her, silent.
<@Wanda> "I--don't understand," she says, and it would be plaintive on any other woman but with her it's sort of like she's expecting the universe is going to adapt and explain itself to her shortly. And maybe it will, once she's managed to breathe, but probably there are going to be things she will just never understand, too.
For a moment, he thinks he might throw up. But he doesn't, he just sits there. Silent. Not even the sound of shaken breath leaves him. He knew this would happen, eventually. It's just -- so soon. He feels stung, suffocated. He didn't want to fail her, though he knew he would, despite it all. "I'm sorry."
<@Wanda> "It was like I was there." It's only rarely gone haywire like this, with the Beyonder, and--oh, now it does make more sense. The Beyonder's side that was Chaos possessed her, made her different, made things happen. "Lorna. My /God/, I can't--" Her voice breaks on the epithet, and she slides to the edge of the bed. It's too much all at once.
<@Wanda> "You were just a boy, when he took you."
* Remy stands up and moves away, not looking at her. It's taking a lot out of him not to just leave entirely - because that's how he deals with things. Every time he's tried to stay and fight he's been shoved away, and every time he's battled his now-trained instincts to run, it's blown up in his face.
He stayed for Ororo, who's gone now - does she even remember him, Queen now in name as she's always been? He stayed for the X-Men, who have exiled him. He stayed and fought and bled for Rogue, who hates him. And now he's in a house in the nexus with people who don't know him, because he has nothing else.
<@Wanda> And now Wanda knows. She presses her hands against her knees; he keeps this locked up so tightly and it's this awful invasion that she knows, frankly, is not okay for her to have done, even accidentally. And she digs her nails into her knees, which are bare with her skirt pulled up like this, until she's close to drawing blood.
<@Wanda> She doesn't say things like this a lot, but... when she does, she means every word. "My father will go to hell for what he did." For lots of things, but yes, she is certainly fucking including that! "This is why you understand, isn't it?"
* Remy covers his face with his hands for a moment and runs them over his hair, somewhat unsteady. It's like there's an actual physical /thing/ that's preventing him from speaking - it's so painful and so deeply entrenched that even now he's completely terrified in the face of it.
<@Wanda> "I see." It's paired with a soft exhale, and she rises. There's no violence in her- no anger, just the sort of slack tiredness that comes after a storm, like she's reminding herself how to breathe. And maybe there is a tremble there in her shoulders, but it's never been her body that dictates her personal strength. "Look at me." Please.
The lack of anger is the hardest. He can cope with hate - the pain is at least something familiar, something he can navigate with ease. This is a different kind of wound, that makes him want things he can't have, like his friends coming back. He finally does turn, one hand up on his forehead, fingers shoved in his hair, at a loss.
<@Wanda> "We are fucked up," she says, deliberately choosing words that would never touch her lips in ordinary circumstances, "but I am not going to turn you away, or kick you out. Okay?" She wonders if she really did used to be better at this, or if hindsight makes things look clearer-cut than they were.
"You should." His voice is cracked and raw with tears that will never fall, because he's just not that kind of man. "You should get me away from you, because I'll tear you down. I don't want to, but that's how I am-- an' I can't do it, Wanda. I don't know how to stop wantin' people unless they tell me to stop."
<@Wanda> "I don't give up on people." And it's true--one of the truest things about her, actually. "And I am not going to tell you to stop." She doesn't think many people have ever, ever seen him like this, and she wishes she knew a way--a /real/ way--to make things better.
<@Wanda> Instead, she (without hesitation, but not abruptly, either) moves closer, intending to tug his hand away from his face gently.
Ororo's seen it, yes. Rogue, absolutely. And, perhaps strangely, Logan. (Hate and rage are as passionate as love.) Remy lets her move his hand, but his expression isn't any less tormented. "You'll get hurt. You hurt even now, I bet. You didn't need to see that."
<@Wanda> "You can't be close to someone and not get hurt. And you have to decide if this is worth being hurt, and I say it is, and I am just as stubborn as you are, so don't try to persuade me otherwise." This could be construed as harsh for the conversation, but her tone isn't at all. "I already hurt you, too." Physically, even.
"This ain't about bein' /even/," he sounds somewhat desperate - he doesn't know how to deal with being forgiven. It's a level of acceptence that's become alien to him. He thought he could recover and put it behind him, after the first stretch. But there's no way, now. He's cursed and he's damned and the time he has with these people is cheated, stolen. Eventually, they'll leave him - either they'll forget him or they'll shove him away, and he'll tak
and he'll take it silently, because it's more than he deserves. "I thought I could get away wit' bein' here, pretendin' like I could help somehow. Make up for--" he lowers his gaze.
<@Wanda> "You /do/ help. Don't think for a minute you don't." She doesn't know about 'making up for it', doesn't know if it works that way, and she does know that there is nothing she can say that will make this better. It's like losing a limb; some part of you is gone, maybe the part that lets you believe you're a good person, and all you can do is figure out how to live without it. "Remy..."
* Remy has to believe that he can at least make attempts to give something back to the world that refuses to let him die only so that he can go on to continue to screw things up. He knows he'll never come out even close to even, but he can give what he can. "How's your headache?" he asks, very quiet.
<@Wanda> "Alleviating. But not gone. I think the drink I had staved it off a while." She has this weird irrational (maybe) fear that he's going to quietly take his things and leave, and she doesn't have the energy right now to examine why that is so distressing to her in the way it is.
Unfortunately that is... not altogether irrational, but at the moment, he'd probably feel worse for doing that, and he'd worry that he'd upset Wanda enough to make her hurt herself or someone else in the house by accident. So he finally moves, raising his hands to once again brush her hair back and stay cupping her face. "Really?"
<@Wanda> "I promise not to develop a drinking problem." She smiles at him a little, and it's sad, but at least it's there. "Really."
"Drinkin' problems ain't all that bad, you know," he says, something resembling humor hidden somewhere in his voice.
* @Wanda places her hand over one of his, lightly. "Well, then. Do you promise not to report me to the Nexus authorities if I get something now?"
"Somethin'? Girl I'm gon' have to rob a liquor store pretty soon wit' how badly I need a drink /right now/."
* @Wanda kind of laughs a /lot/, in a soft, genuine way, and leans on him for a second. "All right, what would you like? If you say 'surprise me' I'm making you something pink with an umbrella."
"...If you would like to make me an umbrella drink you may, I will jus' use it as a /chaser/ for de /bottle/ of whiskey I know is down there," he laughs.
<@Wanda> "Whiskey it is. For you," she adds, crinkling her nose. Wanda will never be a whiskey girl. She touches his arm, briefly, and goes downstairs to...pilfer them liquor at 5 AM, no one can stop them.
* Remy thinks booze is almost always the right answer. He will never complain.
* @Wanda brings a bottle of whiskey for him and something else - a breezer, probably, she likes Bacardi - for herself. Also a bottle. "I feel like some teenager," she says, almost-light, "sneaking bottles into my room. ...Not that I did that." No, she really didn't.
"I will leave de dark tales of my formative years to your imagination," he says, and takes his bottle. Because... Remy as a teenager! These stories are either horrifying or deeply scandalizing.
* @Wanda goes to settle back on her bed, legs tucked up, back against the wall. "I don't think I have any stories from my teen years, personally. ...Although- you know, when Pietro and I were really little? Before our abilities manifested, I was always much faster than him. And then it all switched, of course, and that was for the best, but..." She has no idea why she's talking about this.
<@Wanda> But remembering Pietro chasing her through the woods yelling 'wait up!' is sometimes hilarious, okay.
* Remy wonders, briefly, if she knows about her brother's experiments. Things not to bring up first: That. He sits down, about where he was earlier, before they went to sleep. "I was in a street gang 'til I was adopted." ... Hi.
<@Wanda> "...tell me you were at least the baby of the group."
"Uh... well I was ten..." he seems to be pondering this. "No, I had plenty o'contemporaries." .. He's just going to drink his whiskey now.
<@Wanda> "I can't actually say anything, Pietro stole everything that wasn't nailed down and I got to play distraction. Django stole, too, so Pietro copied everything he did and went /completely/ overboard." She shakes her head, remembering. Yeah, maybe she'll have her drink now, too.
"I'm not ashamed." He shrugs. "I jus' realize how weird people usually see it." And that's the truth. "I got dumped on de hospital steps when I was a few days old. I ended up wit a family I adore. I ain't never be ashamed of that, no?"
<@Wanda> "No." She smiles less wryly, now. "Of course not."
* Remy is actually.. trying to think of a childhood story that isn't deeply concerning. "When I was a kid," he begins, "maybe eleven or twelve, we played this game - you go down to de grave yard an' find de staircase to de vampire court, right at sunset, an' you race down, touch de door, race back, see if you can go before true darkness. 'Cause then they jump out an' nab you."
* @Wanda looks over at him, listening, already a little amused-- kids making games out of monsters.
"Never do nothin' to you, mind - just scare you a bit, sometimes dump you back on de guild grounds. One in particular, Marat - he got turned when he was sixteen, in de fourties, in France. Always kind a young in de head, no? He'd get us pretty good, played hide an' seek wit us." Remy smiles. "Still around, same family. Good friend."
<@Wanda> "An interesting sort of vampire, I take it." It doesn't sound as terrifying as other stories, but monsters can always turn on a dime.
"Ah?" he seems confused at that, a little.
<@Wanda> "Consider the one whose presence we just spent the evening in." She thinks the Brucolac is interesting, but is glad she stays reserved around him.
"Oh, I dunno what world's got snake vampires," he chuckles. "I may be jaded concernin' our undead friends, growin' up 'round 'em. Them an' voodoo an' killers and thieves an' witches, you lose... a fear of people, I guess."
* @Wanda looks at him with slightly playful and entirely false astonishment. "I'd never noticed that about you."
"Oh really?" he gives her a smile, playing along. "Some o'de other kids got scared, growin' up. I never did. I liked people too much."
<@Wanda> "I always wished we could have met more people. But the Roma, you know, we liked to stay by ourselves when we could. It was safer. I usually just imagined what people in other places were like instead--although I don't think I ever imagined anything like how you describe your city."
"Well.. N'Orleans has got people like me - people who know 'bout what goes on behind de scenes an' live it, an' it's got everybody else, who lives there an' may know or suspect but don' get involved. Civilianz, no? An'... tourists." He shrugs. "I traveled some in de States when I was younger. After I got married I went over to Europe an' Africa an' all.."
<@Wanda> "I remember- /when/ did you get married, anyway, what happened?" She hopes it wasn't too traumatic.
"Aahhh... well. It was arranged, an' I was seventeen." Booze is great for this. He's told people, it's not a horrible secret - and Belle's dead anyway. Oops. "I don' think I cared as much as I did, 'cause it was somethin' I had to do, for de guild - my father bein' de patriarch for us and her father bein' de patriarch of de Assassins Guild. Turns out she was crazy. Like. Really."
* @Wanda is unfazed by 'seventeen' because she's Roma and would have been married by fourteen had her adoptive family not died, yay! She is, however, raising her eyebows at 'really crazy'. "I see. Did you get divorced, or...?"
"...Well." Eyedart, drink.
* Remy_ is now known as Remy
<@Wanda> "It's funny how that look is the same on almost every man," she muses out loud, "I wonder if it's a community secret."
* Remy gives her a half smile, and says, somewhat quiet: "I got into a disagreement wit her brother, who didn' want de guilds to unite, and I ended up bein' forced to kill him to save my own neck. I was exiled from N'Orleans for ten years."
<@Wanda> "Oh. I'm--so sorry." She imagines this woman didn't take that very well, or some other such thing.
* Remy shrugs. "C'est la vie. I'm de patriarch now, ah? Anyway, she died." REMY.
<@Wanda> "So you're a widower." A /very grief stricken one/, clearly. She is about half done with her breezer by now.
"Yeah, I guess. But she kept tryin' to kill me, so, not so much wit de mournin'. For de record she was tryin' to kill me 'cause I wasn't wit /her/."
<@Wanda> "I have never understood that tactic. In a similar vein: kidnapping one's ideal intended, which I found personally annoying." Dammit Arkon.
"Yeeahh it..ain't exactly endearin', no?" He shakes his head, bemused.
<@Wanda> "Not remotely. Did you ever hear of Arkon?" This is actually a hilarious story, in retrospect, although at the time it was kind of distressing because she couldn't tell whether Arkon was just kind of a moron or a genuinely malicious one.
"Yeah! Asshole kidnapped Stormy." >:/
<@Wanda> "I think I heard of that; apparently he didn't learn. Before that, he kidnapped me. And tried to force me to marry him. I didn't appreciate that very much."
* Remy staaaares. "...I swear, some guys." He takes another long drink. How can you do that and not choke, Remy?
<@Wanda> "He was dealt with, fortunately. Mastermind and Toad at least never tried to /marry/ me." She glances out the window. Getting kinda light out. Oh well.
"You... have some /luck/." Holy creeptastic, Wanda. He's got about a thirt of the bottle left. Maybe he should give it a rest. "I jus'... people give me hell but it's been Rogue." He shrugs, and seems, at least, less completely raw about it than he was during Mardi Gras. But not happy.
<@Wanda> "Jan always said it had something to do with the unattainable." She watches his expression- no, not happy. She doesn't know what the circumstances are there exactly but she did get some distinct impressions earlier from what she saw, /so/. "Those people don't know you very well, then."
* Remy shrugs. "Like I said. I like people. Guess that's it."
<@Wanda> "It must be." She knows how he is with her, when they flirt, can't mean anything. That's just how he /is/, it's fun and friendly and a part of their interaction. So. Yes. "I liked Steve right when I met him, but I sort of talked myself out of it." Turns out it was too late and all the wrong way when things did start to happen, of course.
"Jack says he loves me." ..........................Oh. My god. Why did he say that. <--Is exactly what his expression looks like right now.
* @Wanda turns and looks at him like 'oh, I see.' She doesn't /laugh/, because it's not really funny in and of itself, but the suddenness of it was, a little. "And...I suppose this is the part where I ask how you feel about him?"
* Remy facepalms makes some indecipherable noise of OH GOD WHY behind his hands. "I-- you know what. That. Topic. Next. NEXT."
<@Wanda> "...I have /really/ missed something," she says, to the ceiling, and then to Remy: "And I don't have another topic, so I think you're actually stuck with this one." Wanda be nice.
"He- and I- I dunno. I dunno, you know, guys - whatever, usually I hate 'em, but we get on, an'--Christ. Ain't like that, you know, he's got Tosh, and I'd kill him inside a week no matter how good he cooks. Jus' odd, ah? Not bad though. I guess."
<@Wanda> "You are so cute when you get all awkward. I feel like I should photograph the occasion with how rarely it occurs." Pause. Okay, now she's going to be sincere. "And I'm glad you guys have what you have, even if it's hard to define. I know he's important to you."
* @Wanda remembers when Jack SUDDENLY APPEARED in the kitchen, yes.
* Remy makes a face at her and reaches out to poke at her. Hi, he's ten. "Yeah it'll last longer with a picture." ...Yes. "I dunno where it's goin'. Least I can call him an asshole still." And now Wanda is getting tugged closer.
* @Wanda tucks herself quietly against his side, then. "You should have something that makes you happy. ...that sounds incredibly simplistic; I know it's not, but there you go."
"You happy, here?" Softly. He manages to get the bottle onto a nearby nightstand without dropping it.
<@Wanda> "Closer than I've been for a long time. I'm--I think the last time I was really happy was when I had the boys? And we know how that worked out." Her smile is rueful. They are officially in 'wee hours of the morning' conversation where insane things get said, it's wonderful. "The difficulty is recognizing it at the time, I suppose."
"Hindsight, no?" he pets her hair, idle - he does this, barely realizing it, it's just how he is with people who let him this close. "I get that."
<@Wanda> "It doesn't seem fair, does it?" She doesn't seem bothered, though. Most likely, after such a chaotic night she's simply not up to it- right now she doesn't want to sleep but she's just kind of still.
"I dunno if there's such thing as fair," he muses, staring at the ceiling. "I think it's jus'... a construct.. that sentient life came up wit', tryin' to put meanin' into things. All of life is jus' chaos, an' sometimes we can hammer order out of it, but there's so many of us, everywhere, all over time an' reality, de chances of not gettin' tangled are so remote we can't really fathom it."
<@Wanda> "We're not supposed to fathom it, no." Sometimes she comes way too close. That's not a good thing, as we have all learned. "Chaos and order are pretty equal forces, but order is found in... the patterns of planets, objects. Chaos is all people. And I think you're entirely correct about 'fair', too."
"Couting," he agrees, somewhere on the edge of dozing. It's not the liquor that makes him sleepy, but the aftermath of their earlier conversation, which has.. done this interesting flip, here. "Numbers always add up."
<@Wanda> Emotional whiplash? Is that what they did? She murmurs a noise of agreement, and notes how tired he is- and how tired she is. "Remy?"
Compensation, maybe. "Ah?"
* @Wanda tips her face up and brushes a kiss over his cheek. "Thanks." She's not going to specify what for, not right now, but maybe some other time. Partly because she thinks they're both a half-step from finally crashing.
* Remy noses her back in response, soft. "Mm." He closes his eyes. This has been... a lot. He doesn't know if he'll be able to talk about it again - but he won't ignore that it happened. "Night." (At six am or something. That's fine.)