8014/Tell Me a Story

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Tell Me a Story
Date of Scene: 27 September 2021
Location: Medical Lab
Synopsis: Remy wakes in the medbay to find Rogue keeping vigil. He unwittingly shares a secret he thought she knew and she tells him a few stories of *them*.
Cast of Characters: Remy LeBeau, Rogue




Remy LeBeau has posed:
    Touch and go, that was the way of things in the beginning, on the Blackbird and for a little bit once Remy was in a proper medical facility. Damned fool kept forgetting that breathing was a necessary thing thanks to that neurotoxic gas. But then he stabilized and just slept.

    But even with him asleep, strange things happened. The most constant was the involuntary twitching of muscles in his limbs, his face, just about everywhere; left overs from that toxin that faded *almost* completely by dawn. The *strangest* thing, however, was that he woke, but not quite. He wasn't aware of his surroundings or even of what was happening at the time, but for a good twenty minutes it was just bizarre.

    His surface veins turned a glowing purple, the color of the energy he releases when using his powers. When his eyes opened, they even flickered that same color. In that short time, he dissolved the bed rail and one of those rolling table/tray things, he blew up a small supply cabinet without touching and and probably, the most disturbing of all, he exploded a plant setting on his bedside table. Remy's powers aren't *supposed* to work on organic material.

    It's been about six hours since that disaster happened and he's finally stirring for real. When he speaks, the words are likely familiar to Rogue, they're the same once he's said a million times after one too many at the bar, "Nnnnng, mah 'ead, it killin' me."

Rogue has posed:
The ride home had been difficult for Rogue, she sat in the back with Remy but tried not to get in Hank's way. She was used to helping Hank with some of his medical work though as she sometimes volunteered because of her rudimentary field medicine training that she pilfered from Carol Danvers several years back...

But really, Hank seemed to want the southern girl to keep her distance due to the connection and emotions she had in this patient. So Rogue complied. Reluctantly.

Once they made it back, she was convinced to let the Doctor do his thing while she went to clean up. When she arrived back they didn't want to let Rogue in due to the violent nature of some of what Remy was going through. She'd witnessed some of the mishaps with his power being shunted in ways she'd never seen before, in ways none of them had seen before...

It was obvious that it worried Rogue, and thusly she'd been told to wait outside. It wasn't until Remy leveled off that she was willfully allowed in to sit near him. This had become the bulk of what she'd done since then too, sit and be with him. She didn't have her gloves off either, because it was best that in this situation that she remain protected from his skin and vice versa...

She did pamper him as best she could though, using a clean cold cloth to wipe his face down and whisper words of encouragement in to his ears, hoping that it may help him inside if he could hear her.

But by the time he stirs, Rogue had settled in to the waiting chair beside his bed that had been pulled over to the medical bed he was in. She's there now, curled up beneath his leather jacket wearing exercise pants and a black tanktop with a Xavier's School hoodie zipped up to mid-chest level. She is out cold when he stirs, just laying there with her head on the back of the chair, her white bangs draped over the right side of her face toward her left ear, partially obscuring her face in the process...

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    It takes a few more moments for Remy to actually brave cracking open an eye, then another. Then a few more where he's just still. Not in a pod where he can barely sit let alone lie down. That's an improvement. No one in his head trying to scrape away bits and pieces of him a little at a time. That's a big improvement.

    He turns his head and finally spots Rogue. Cute girl beside the bed, that's a HUGE improvement. Familiar, it's the hair maybe?

    Familiar and comfortable - safe, although he's not one hundred percent certain as to why.

    Few likely pay attention to it, but Remy calls a LOT of females 'Cher', 'Cherie', however is reserved only for Rogue - the two words differ in meaning, in the feelings they express.

    For now, however... "Cher? Ya gonna get a neck crick sleepin' dat way," he says, voice raised enough to hopefully awaken without startling.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue was in the process of dreaming when Remy spoke up. She was dreaming that he and her were out at Apple Park in Salem Center walking her yellow lab dog around the lake there. The very same dog that Remy bought her from a pet store last summer when she was working as a Car Hop at a diner not too far from the school. He'd surprised her with the puppy in a box after picking her up once her shift was over....

But as dreams do, they get weird. When Remy speaks up to her, she sees it in her dream when Jeepers turns back to look at them both, and speaks in Remy's voice. It shakes her out of her dream and makes her shift on the chair some! She shakes her head side to side and then is suddenly pushing herself off of the chair with her left forearm and rising up to her feet to move to the side of his bed.

"Hey!" She says at him, her black gloved hands soft to the touch, the gloves tight on her skin like a second layer of soft silk.... because hey, thats basically what they are right?!

"Hey. I'm here." She says in a low tone of her naturally sultry voice. Her eyes look him over before going back to his face. "Are you good?" She asks him. "Do ya need anythin'?" She presses further. "Water or somethin'?" She almost insists, clearly nervous about his condition now, but her pale green eyes are locked on to his red hued own.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    Remy's reaction to Rogue coming closer is immediate and intense. He jerks back, flinching as he does so. One hand reaches up to his neck. "Non, Cher, don' touch me." It's not yelled, but his voice is raised and is that panic? "Where da collar go?"

    That weird purple glow beneath this skin starts again, his breathing's a on edge, breaths too quick. It's not something Rogue is unfamiliar with, considering her powers and the effects of her own emotions on them.

    ...but that's never been a problem for *Remy*. "Ah don' wan' ta hurt you."

    He reaches for the bed rail on the opposite side of the bed from Rogue and there goes another one, it just *dissolves* under his touch.

    Something else happens though, in that moment of panic. Her name, the name of one of the last people in the world he'd ever want to hurt.

    "Rogue, mah Marie..."

    A name with so many emotions attached to it, but still few memories.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue seizes up when Remy recoils from her. She has a look of concern only blossom from a mild case to one of more renewed major when what comes to follow all plays out. She jumps when he dematerializes the guard rail on the other side of the bed. It makes her look him over before she shouts over her shoulder.

"Hank!"

But the Doctor had gone to rest a little while ago, so he likely wasn't even in ear shot.

"Someone!?" Rogue shouts further but nothing comes of it.

She looks back at Remy on the bed then and steps further up it toward his head, her gloved hands unable to not reflexively reach out to him again. "I'll-- I'll go get someone!" She says before she starts to turn to leave!

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    Once Rogue is over there and not right next to him, Remy's building panic begins to retreat. As it does so, that purple glow fades. "Jus'... do dey have dose collars here, Cher?" he asks.

    He should *know* they have that tech here, it's not as if it hasn't been needed in the past, no matter how much it's hated.

    "Jus' don' come close again, oui?" Not until it's safe. "Jus' stay over dere." His hands clench into fists and relax a few times before he tentatively reaches out to touch the other rail. He breathes a sigh of relief when it stays as is and doesn't must melt away.

    "Sorry 'bout dat other one," he mumbles. "Ah know ya, cher, don' Ah? More'n jus' a little bit?"

Rogue has posed:
The Cajun's words cause Rogue to soften up some, some of the tension subsiding a little as her emotions shift in to a calmer state again. But its not a comfortable state. Its a state rooted in cold concern for the person she's spent the most time with since coming to Xavier's School, the one she's invested more of her personal life in to than any of the others.

"You want one'a the suppression collars..?" Rogue asks with clear confusion. She and he had joked about them in the past, as a way to get around her lack of control, but they'd never actually done anything quite so silly as to try one of those things.

"I know where they are, yeah..." She mutters before he says that last part. "You don't recognize me?" She then asks, tilting her head suspiciously as her white bangs wave gently against the sides of her face.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    "Oui, one o' dose," Remy confirms. The fact that he seems *eager* to get one on isn't him at all. But not much of him seems to really be him at all in the moment.

    His brow furrows as he considers that last question. "Non. Ya da one Ah called? Ah know dere somethin' dere. Ah know dat Ah trust ya wit' mah life. So Ah know dere should be more." He picks a little at the blanket on the bed, attention focused on the string he's find to fiddle with. "Ah'm sorry, cher. Ah feel like... dere a lot missin'. Ah have bits pieces. Ah remember 'Ro." That makes sense, she's like a big sister to him and someone he has a long long history with.

    "Maybe ya can tell some of it, afta' we get dat collar?"

Rogue has posed:
Obviously this leaves Rogue in a bit of a mood, the mere fact that Remy doesn't know her. Why wouldn't it? It brings up some of the insecurities she has about their relationship as a whole. But when he speaks of the collar, the young Belle just nods her head then and turns to look across the lab. "Fair a'nough..." She mutters before turning and walking away from him, the fabric of her loose exercise pants swishy-swashing as she walks through the quiet lab.

She approaches the metal cabinet and keys on the security pad. Her glove is pulled off of her right hand to tap in the code, then press her fingerprint to the scanner. When the cabinet unlocks, Rogue reaches inside it and starts to rummage through some of the containers within. She finds the row of collars and lifts one up before closing and sealing the cabinet again.

Now she's headed back toward him, spinning the collar around in her hands as she gets near to him. "The lock has been removed on these, ya can turn it off and take it off any time now." She says quietly to him, remorsefully as if she's a bit sad by all of this.

She stands there beside his bed again offering the collar over to him now. "So what do you remember about all'a this?" She asks him, a arguably vague question... but she's not in her best mindset at the moment.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    His hand shakes a little as he's reaching for the collar, but it's hard to say if it's because *of* the collar or if it's just residual whatever from all of it. It's hard to miss the little wince when Remy clicks it into place though.

    "'pends on what ya talkin' about," he replies quietly, barely a whisper. "Ah remember ya voice an' the way it makes me feel. Ah know how Ah *feel* when Ah look atcha." Because maybe they could get in there and take away *events*, but those feelings are something he struggled and fought to hold on to.

    "But if dat ain' what ya talkin' about, Ah remember... wakin' up dere. Ah think maybe Ah was... a poker game. Ah remember winnin' big. Den Ah was jus' dere."

    He turns those odd eyes of his up to Rogue more directly. "... and afta' Ah called, Ah knew ya'd come."

Rogue has posed:
Rogue relents the collar to Remy and then crosses her arms over her stomach, rumpling the fabric of her hoodie as she does so. She listens to his response before she glances away. Her eyes look at the bed where he damaged it and then back over at him again.

"Maybe it'll all come back in time?" She says to him, or maybe to herself a bit more so? Who's to say!

"Maybe Jean an' the Professah can dig around in there some an' fix some'a what they did to ya too." She says more directly to him then. "I mean, they certainly whipped my mangled mind back inta shape when I got here way back when..." She says then as she leans her hip against the bed's edge. "And ... yeah. Once I found out you hadn't just run off, or somethin', I couldn't think of nothin' but ya know... rallyin' the team. This team can do anythin' if we put our collective minds to it after all..."

She purses her lips and falls quiet again then for a second or two. "But how many times can somethin' like this happen before the badguys just... inevitably win?" She says a bit more grimly before shaking her head and lowering her slim pointed chin down toward her collarbone.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    "Dat depends on ya definition of win, Cher. We give up den dey win, oui?" Remy lowers his gaze again and asks, "So you'n me? Dats a thing?" Because he *does* feel that. That little thumpthump of his heart when she's close, the way her shampoo or whatever it is that smells so good about her makes him want to smile.

    He reaches up to touch that collar, run his fingers under it a second, it's a subconscious thing really. Remy hates the thing as much as anyone would, but he hates the idea of hurting someone even more. "Whatever dey did, it like dey turned the clock back ta before..." A quick shake of his head, just a little barely there motion to dismiss that line of thought before he gets too deep into it.

    "Tell me a story, oui? About us?"

Rogue has posed:
The question of 'you and me' gets a faint smirk to cross over the Belle's unpainted pink lips. She softly nods her head at him again after raising her chin up once more. "That's the rumah..." She says in that enticing southern belle flavored voice of hers. She keeps her arms crossed over her stoamch but gently lifts up and sits down on the edge of his bed down by his right knee.

At the following last question, Rogue just shows a faint smile. "I ..." Part of her just wants to go find Hank, shake him until he wakes up and push him in here to fix Remy's brain. Or Jean, for that matter.... but after worrying about Remy for so many days now she's just happy to even get this moment with him, since its quiet now and ... well, its something?

"WE, uh... met in a bar in Manhattan." She starts to tell her story. "I was eighteen. I'd only been with the school for a short time. Some'a the girls I hung out with wanted t'go t'the city for the night. See if we could get some cute boys t'buy us drinks." She holds her grin now up toward Remy where he lays on the bed. "We hit up a bar that had card games playin' in it. I heard ya flirtin' with some girl at the table from my place at the bar and just... kinda, started lookin' over at ya." Her grin broadens some then. "Vice versa, a'course. I mean, once ya saw me... ya couldn't look away, right?" She asks that last part with a raise of her dark eyebrows, suggesting he better confirm that!

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    "Did Ah win?" Remy asks with a little glimmer in those odd red eyes. "Non, cher, cards goin' on, dat not flirtin', dat part o' the game. See, Ah flirt, she climbs in mah lap. All the otha' men at the table want a bit o' dat. Distraction, dat all it is. Sometimes she get up, walk around, look at hands." Look at him, confessing a gambler's secrets. "Split the winnings at the end o' the night."

    He smiles that little half smile, the one that only brings a dimple to his left cheek. "Sure she didn' 'old no candle to you though." He's trying so hard, but it's still clear to anyone that knows him that he's rattled, down to the very center of him. It's not a common look for him, not a common thing for his poker face to fail.

    "So den what?"

Rogue has posed:
Rogue just flashes a grin at his response. "I'm sure she meant nothin' to ya." She says of the girl he'd been apparently working with at the table. Not that she holds it against him, she certainly understands flirting and the power there-in that it can achieve. Her eyes go down to her hands, and she starts to slip that glove she'd taken off at the cabinet back on to her right hand, wiggling her fingers to get them inside the tight glove, but being careful not to tear it... speaking of power!

Her eyes are down as he asks her what next went down. "Ya won a bit, lost a bit, I think I was distractin' ya." She says with a side long smirk over at him where he lays. "But once the table was emptied out ya joined me at the bar. And yes, I got some drinks from ya." She says with a grin. "The other girls I was with were bored'a the place though, so they wanted t'leave. I didn't really like them all that much, so I told them I'd catch up with'em. Which, I didn't." She states then as she glances down again. "We spent the resta the night just talkin' and such, before ya called me a cab to take me back up here to Westchester. All Gentlemanly... Imagine that..." She smiles back over at him and moves to touch his knee through the blanket he has over his legs, but she stops herself and puts her hand back on top of her lap instead...

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    "Dat's the ruma' huh?" Remy echoes Rogues words quietly, barely a whisper and with his gaze focused on a spot on the wall, just a random vacant, nothing of a spot. He's not really seeing it anyway. He's digging, or trying to, into his own mind to try and snatch even the tiniest thread of the night described and latch on to it. "Ya gloves, were dey green?" he asks. Did he do it? Find a thread, no matter how tiny?

    The way he turns those red eyes back again, all expectant and hopeful, might be hard to tell him he's wrong even if he is.

Rogue has posed:
The Belle keeps her eyes on him as he processes his own memories. She just watches him and wonders what all is going on in that head of his, which has been a pretty common trait for these two since she'd met him really. When he looks back at her and asks that question she just smiles at him. She looks down again and shakes her head.

"No." She answers him before a look back up is sent his way. "They were red. But my hoodie was a dark green." She says then and traces that with a flicker of a little smile.

"You don't gotta remember that kinda stuff though. You're here and you're okay. I mean... other than the loss of power control, but I bet that'll come back once you're back to full strength. Plus, there's the Danger Room, we can always... ya know, get ya good and exercised in there." She says a bit quicker like she's hopeful for the future if nothing else, hoping it'll keep him focused on such hopes and positives as well.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    "Ah was close anyway," Remy replies with a smile that's a little more forced than that crooked one dimpled thing. He looks down at his hands in thought. "Dis jus' like before," he begins quietly but without any hesitation. "...before he cut into mah brain an' made it so Ah could control it betta', so Ah couldn' hurt anyone."

    He knows he trusts her, knows he has all the feels just being close to Rogue, so why would he think he hadn't told her at least *that* much. The rest of it, the stuff that came later when payment for Sinister's services came due? That's something he knows, even know, that he wouldn't tell anyway.

    But that first bit? Why would he hide that?

Rogue has posed:
Rogue was idly thinking of other stories she could tell him that would help jot his memory. It'd been four years of them having time to build the stories up, even if periodically throughout those four years he'd vanished here and there for differing lengths of time. She was always mad at him when he got back, but his persistence always won her ove rin the end, even if others berated her for letting him do that to her. She knew him better than they did, or so she thought...

She looks back up when he says that bit about Sinister, and what had been done to him to help him gain control over his mutation. It makes her narrow her eyes at the statement.

"Who did?" She asks him now. "Someone helped you get control by doin' surgery on ya?" She asks then next, immediately reminded of Logan and what little of his past she's gleamed off of him in their time since coming here together way back to the days of 2018.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    "Essex, Nathaniel Essex, calls himself, Mista' Sinista' and fo' good reason." Remy's attention is fixed on his hands now, but he's not really seeing them. There are only a few times that he slips into that ridiculous third person speech pattern. One is when he's trying to sound bigger than his britches and the other is when he's talking about something that might be painful. "Remy was desperate though. It worked."

    A little head shake again, that barely there thing and he clears his throat. "Anyway, before he did what he done, Remy killed someone. It was an accident. Back den, Remy could charge livin' things. Dis is jus' like dat again."

Rogue has posed:
Rogue tenses up again as Remy starts to spill the beans like this. Her eyes go left and right quickly almost like she's searching for a pen and paper or a voice recorder to ... you know, record this! Her phone isn't even here, she left it in the X-Men locker room with her stuff on the bench! Curses!

Had they inadvertantly found Remy's mental diary with the key unlocked? That's what it suddenly starts to feel like and the Belle isn't sure how to process this... Should she stop him from spilling his beans?

Uh, no.

Her decision is no.

In fact, she stands up from the bed and walks over to the chair she'd been sleeping on. She pulls it easily toward the bed side and sits down on the edge of it, her gloved hands going to perch on the side of the bed near his arm, but not touching it. She just stares at him like an eager puppy now.

"Mister Sinister?" She asks. "Is he... around here?" She asks then. "Or back in New Orleans?" She asks further! "And like... is he... findable online? Medical practice or somethin'?" Uh oh.... what has he done!

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    Remy did not expect that. "No, non, cher... whoa... jus' 'old on. Dat man not one ta be trifled wit'. We stay as far away from dat monsta' as possible." Hmmm, likely an unexpected answer from Remy as well. He doesn't scare easily, but it's clear that Sinister freaks the bejeezus out of him.

    "It in the past, let it stay dere, oui?" Fuck, he shouldn't have brought it up! He thought she *knew*.

    He reaches up to scrub both his hands down over his that scruffy patched face.

    "Tell me anotha' story, Cherie..." There it is, the 'ie' on the end. It might be missed in her current state, but his voice is a little demanding in that sweet way he's used when he's trying to get her to come down from whatever crazed idea she's getting in her head.

    "Jus' talk to me, oui? Tell me about us?"

Rogue has posed:
"The response that Rogue gets does take some of the wind out of her investigative winds as it were, she slinks a bit letting her shoulders go down just a little. "Yeah, but what if he's behind what ... all of this is too? Or at least connected t'it." She then retorts back to him. "If could further explain why they went after ya, if this guy has a past interest in you, ya know?"

At his question about hearing more about them she does smile though and tilts her head again to the side. "One night you told me you were gonna come pick me up, then you showed up at the bus stop I was waitin' at in a green Porsche that you said you won in a card game. It was beautiful... We drove around quite awhile that night in that car. Sadly we gave it up recently though, cause ya wanted something tougher.... more manly, or somethin'. But... I prefer the Porsche."

She purses her lips again then and still has that look of her mind working wheels inside, like she wants to ask him more about Sinister... which he can likely see still simmering on the surface of her thoughts.

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    "Ah don' think so, Cherie, don' smell like him." It almost seems as if Remy thinks Sinister smells *worse* than what just happened.

    "More like dat Ah was afraid o' gettin' caught wit' it finally," is his reply in regards to the Porsche. His shoulders rise to nearly his chin in a shrug. There's that little grin again and a raise of his eyebrows that says, 'busted'.

    The car was probably stolen.

    "Ah'm startin' to get sleepy." His hands are twitching a little, like spasms. Likely still a residual thing from the gas made worse by... sleepy. "Will ya stay here until Ah drift off? Tell me somethin' about ya'self dat don' include me?"

Rogue has posed:
Rogue just shakes her head at the Sinister bit and the bit about the Porsche too. It's so hard to get the truth outta this guy, but she still cares the world for him, for some reason! She huffs at both of those things too before she folds her arms one over the other on the edge of his bed. She lowers her head down to put her chin on the top of her knuckles and just stares at him as he gets sleepy. "I'll get you some food once ya drift off, so it'll be here when ya wake up again." She tells him before she racks her brain about what she could tell him...

"Back in Mississippi, at my Aunt's place..." She starts. "I used t'play around in the barn, pretending I was an adventurer and explorer. When I was real little ya, see." She grins at him. "I liked to sit on the tractor and pretend I was usin' it t'go up the side'a mountains t'find lost cities hidden in caves'n such. Its why I started trackin and tackin' all the places I wanted t'go on the maps in my room back in the house. Course, that was before I discovered how fun boys could be." She says with a grin over at Remy, her eyes going to see if he's still even awake...

Remy LeBeau has posed:
    He's not, Remy's out that fast, before she can even get near an end to the story. At some point though, right as he was drifting off? He reached out to take one of her gloved hands into his own and mumble, "S'long as ya don' cook it ya ownself."

     If it wasn't for the brief flickering of those odd purple lines, this time across his face - but only a flash and it's gone - it might be easy to think he's just here with a bad flu or the like. That it's all going to be better when he wakes up. He looks so peaceful.