23 April 2001
X-Men
Gambit & Marrow , violence

Disclaimer: If they were ours, Marrow wouldn't have needed a damn makeover.

Authors' notes: Yet another of the what-shall-we-do-with-Marrow vignettes.

Acknowledgements: Te was thinking a lot about V's outrage over Gambit's treatment by the X-Men while doing this . . . Jane was undoubtedly chortling over her easy enslavement of her co-author . . .
 

Scourge
by Janete

The thing is, she'd been getting to like the slippery Cajun bastard. Something about the way he didn't flinch whenever she walked in, just watched her with steady, slightly sad eyes. Something about that time he'd picked the lock on Cyclops' liquor cabinet and taught her how to drink properly. Whiskey, gin, tequila, and by the end of the night she'd been past fucked up and headed for unconscious, and he'd sort of pushed her to bed, not much more sober than she was.

Not fair that it should be him. The one she's been hunting. All of him tied up in the Marauders and the rage that drives her awake at night. All those old fantasies of using her bones to slowly shred the tendons of the ones who did it until they really understood what she'd lost.

Quiet, dark space in which she gets to inflict her revenge.

She'd screamed at the X-Men when they came back without him. And louder when they told her why. Less because he was dead than because they wouldn't let it be her doing the killing. Not fair for it to be pretty, pretty Rogue, who'd always had him.

Raged and threw things and carved the sleeve of Rogue's suit away with the bloody edge of her thighbone and snarled animal-furious until they set Beast on her and pumped her full of something and she woke up more than a day later in med-lab, curled up like a dog on one of the beds.

And even now she can smell him. Something about the cologne he's taken up since he's been back that crawls up her nerves. Too obvious for a thief. She keeps wondering whether he's trying to track himself, or if he's trying to attract hunters.

Maybe it's just right for the new him. This X-man the rest of them don't want back. Either because they can't forgive him or because the light of day is tough to face when you've got blood on your hands.

Upworlders.

If they were gonna do it, it should've been done right.

Finalized.

Something sick and cowardly about leaving a man to freeze to death. Or starve. Perfect for a Marauder in its ruthlessness, but if it'd been her, she'd've stayed to watch. Make sure.

But now he's back, and it takes a lot more spine than any of these half-assed murderers have got to kill a man twice. No one asks how he survived. No one gives two shits most likely. A nice little heavenly reprieve for being bad.

Play nice, kiddies, and learn your lesson: The dead walk.

They talk in slow, half-cringing voices and scrape weakly at the remains of their old life.

Not yours anymore, you freak!

She wants to yell it out loud. Not yours. Not theirs. Not hers, either, because isn't she just as bad?

Why is he still alive, since he's right here and Marrow can find him just by following her nose. Following that invisible slime trail of guilt and penance no one's around to take.

'cept her. Yeah. Her.

So. If she forgives him -- screams and blood and faces all twisted up with pain and the man running with her who won't let her go back won't let her go until they're far away and it's sunny and hot and wrong and the air isn't right and then gone. Bump of ground, scratchy weave of a welcome mat and she'd watched long, strong legs pump and pump away from her . . .

Marrow growls aloud, and the hall around her seems to still for it. Whole house listening to see what she'll do, who she'll hurt, what else she'll fuck up because she doesn't know better.

Whole house wired for sound with good ol' Professor X keeping a close eye on all his charges.

Makes her neck itch.

Or maybe it's just a bone thinking about making her bleed. It's a little maddening, just like it's a little maddening to find herself outside Gambit's open door. Opened a crack, no light spilling out in the dark hall. Cologne all soft upworlder-uncautious-man and her, Marrow.

Just as Morlock as she needs to be.

She doesn't knock. He's in there, she knows. He's not breathing as softly as he would be if he were hiding. Just sitting. Near the window, she thinks. Close to the cold, because it is cold out. She tends to stay away from the great outdoors on principle, and the miserable cold of semi-upstate New York is just one more good reason. Ache in her from that chill and her bone-enforced half-nakedness.

Slinks up and crouches just out of his reach. Aware of how fast he can move and how fast she can, and not worried in any case because he isn't going to attack her. Something in him cracked while he was out on the ice. If he moved fast enough to take her off her guard he'd shatter. She knows this.

He turns toward her, eventually. Arch and curve of the hollows around his cheekbones that she does and doesn't pity. Wanting this agony for him and knowing exactly how ugly it is to die slowly. So that eventually she stands and grabs his wrist and pulls him to his feet. He doesn't resist, but the eyes watch her like bright, sharp lights, and he follows closely enough that there's no tension on his arm. He could break free if he needed to.

Well, good. She'd hate to think that all the survival instinct that pulled them both out of the blood of the tunnels, his arms around her skinny, bone-dangerous child's body, smelling like fear and horror and the ozone-smell that she's learned since is the smell of his kinetic power at work . . . She's glad it isn't gone entirely. Nothing of him left if it was.

Drags him downstairs, underground to her room in the basement. They picked it for her originally, she thinks, because it was easy to monitor. About one step up from a prison cell. She decided she liked it, though . . . Underground inherently more home for her than the upworld, and the half-light of the basement makes a good approximation of what she's used to.

And no one comes around to bother her about the mess. She knows that Bobby gets chewed for the wreckage he lives in, and the pretty little ones in the school at Boston get lectures on living neatly, but she's both grown-up and hidden, and she can live however she wants.

Which is more or less how she would have lived if she'd always been Morlock. Scavenging and building from what she finds, so that her personal space is half ratsnest and half collage. Clothes she's torn too badly to wear again in a box by the door, to get used for rags or whatever, clothes she's waiting to tear to uselessness waiting on a chair.

A couple of books that she likes are in there, but they're out of sight in the mess, hidden the way she knows is best. Bed in the corner with a sleeping-bag and collection of old blankets, mostly torn, thrown over it. Her bone-spiked doll leftover from childhood stashed somewhere in the depths of covers.

He folds himself down onto the edge of the bed when she lets him go -- strange and homeless-looking, like he could sink into the rags and vanish.

Leave nothing but dry-rotting armor and that smell. Burned in her senses now, carving an it-shaped hole out of the rest of her perceptions. This man. Her savior. Sitting there and waiting for the judgment no one else has the balls to give.

Not even him.

"I liked you."

"I know."

Barely even catching his reply because that wasn't even close to what she wanted to say. What had to be said. "Shut the fuck up."

He nods, and settles back into his slouch.

Time for more silence, way too big for her room, pressing into her from all sides before even two minutes have passed, and pacing through it is like wading through muck that stinks so bad it takes a while to really understand that you're smelling it. Half-sealed sewer pipes and rot.

Thick heat of that other world, and the day her first calluses burst and "Talk."

No tease, no smile, just "what do you want me to say?"

Me, not Gambit. And it's a good fucking question. She's heard it all. Rogue's rage and Storm's angry understanding and everything Wolverine said with his own silences. And she can't even say she just wants to hear it in his voice, because she doesn't.

Absolutely never wants to see those over-red lips shape themselves to apologies and god-fucking-damned regrets. Doesn't know why so much as has that . . . feeling. Of something finalized and ugly, too soon out the oven, something.

"Do you know how many of us died?"

"Oui."

"Do you know their names?"

He lists them, one by one. More than she remembered. Lists the way they died and where they lay. Lists what they were wearing and she can see him, masked against the smell -- no. Not masked. Walking and memorizing. Not crying, just . . . noting.

Awful things stuck to his boots and Marrow bites her cheek until she tastes iron, wills bone to pierce her scalp in a dozen places and watches his eyes. Fucking undead eyes fucking killer but no, he just ran.

Fucking coward fucking killer fucking Gambit. Blood running down her neck and back, sliding ticklishly to pool at the base of her throat and spine. Stain and wet her down and she can't blink. Breathing through the thinnest hole her body can make. Nails digging into her palms. "Keep going."

And he never pauses. Not to nod, not to lick his dry lips, just keeps talking in that low almost whisper until he comes to the end, when he finally stares directly into her eyes.

Open plea for nothing like mercy and "I can't. Sometimes Gambit can't feel it no more."

Backhands him before she knows what she's doing, fist clenching in resistance only after it's already done and Gambit lets the blood from his lip drip unhindered down his chin.

"It was not the only thing Gambit did."

Other cheek, more blood. Something curling and alive in her, something hot and painful and right like medicine, like bone.

"Gambit never would have told."

His eye will blacken quickly.

"I still like you, chere."

And she's on him then, fingers clenched around his throat, knees digging hard into the muscles of his thighs. Watching and being watched, as the tip of his tongue shows between his swollen lips. One moment, just like this, for everything.

It's not enough.

Marrow rips herself off him and punches him again and again, biting her own lip and making sounds she couldn't have identified as human, counterpoint to his grunts and aborted moves to defend himself. Hits and hits as her eyes blur, as her blows grow awkward and glancing and everything just burns until she can't take it anymore. Until she bites off a scream and cries, at last.

For someone, anyone who isn't like her, or him, or them, or anyone Marrow thinks might actually exist.

And when Gambit wraps his arms around her and pulls her close, she lets him.

janete
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