"Love must precede hatred, and nothing is hated save through being contrary to a suitable thing which is loved. And hence it is that every hatred is caused by love."

---

She wasn’t wearing the tags the first time he saw her, small and thin and vulnerable and standing waiting to be let into his room, his flea bag motel room, substitute home. He should have known then, or did know and wouldn’t admit it. All his senses told him Truth.

They walked back into his room but didn’t talk. It was all like a pleasant dream, the kind where everything moves slowly and even when you want you can’t speed anything up. She didn’t smile. He didn’t ask questions.

The bed was unmade and they sat down in the tangle of sheets, pushing back the stiff, yellow fabric that passed for a blanket and letting themselves into the cool mess. He wasn’t wearing shoes or a shirt, and his hair was still wet from the shower he’d taken a few minutes before he’d heard her knock at the door. All of her clothes were still on, even that heavy green coat he remembered from so long before. Had it been years?

Together they pushed and pulled it off of her, both sets of fingers clumsy and fat and far too inefficient. Perhaps that was when he noticed, that her hands were bare, free of the fetters that had been her gloves. If he did, he kept it to himself, aware only of the heat coming off her, the way it burned his hands and his eyes.

---

"The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate."

---

The pool of blood was dark, dark, dark – nearly black. A sticky curtain, it kept him blind for minutes, hours, before he felt enough to want to lift his hands and swipe it away, exposing the brilliancy of day, a light so painful he had to shut his eyes again to keep from crying.

---

She was so sweet. Even running her tongue between his lips she tasted like innocence, like purity, washing him clean. So new, and so clean, and probably all that he wasn’t, and never had been, and never would be.

And as her blows fell upon him, it still felt like absolution.

---

Rogue was Rogue was Rogue. She had a body, and a mind, and a touch… no, no touch. She was free of touch. Free of the filth that came with it, free from the disease it spread.

When her legs wrapped around his hips, he came with a start. She didn’t look surprised or even disgusted. From the bed she rose like air and walked herself into the bathroom. He heard the shower run and let himself sleep.

---

When he awoke, dizzy and groggy, he was bound hand and foot. Nothing he shouldn’t have been able to break. He couldn’t though, and he would later ask himself just what those chains had been made of.

Looking up from the bed, he could see her, still Rogue. Smiling now and looking prettier than ever, she stood over him. The blurred object in her hand was a hammer. Why ever would she need that?

---

Real Rogue asked him once, how he hadn’t known it wasn’t her, how he could mistake her for that other, Unreal Her. No answers came to him as she stared with her deep, questioning eyes. Perhaps he’d been drugged. It seemed as plausible an answer as any, even when she shook her head and mentioned his healing.

But this was much later, after he’d killed her and then himself.

---

The hammer was the simplest of all her tools. Bones couldn’t be broken, but skin could. Over and over again, she smashed the end of it into him, watching as the skin splintered and mended itself. In the delirium of pain, he thought he saw her mouth words of love.

---

Rogue killed Unreal Rogue. Stabbed her dead with claws of bone. His claws, inside her. Inside them both.

---

"There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear’s dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear will be lurking."

---

Always he knew where she was, and from this he drew no small satisfaction. His tags, sitting blithely on her chest, were no longer a memento of affection. With them, she was the loveliest girl in the world; without, the devil draped in finery.

---

After the hammer came the knife, a much more precise instrument of torture. The cuts she made were deep, deep as the well of his healing would allow. The sight of his blood pleased her, pleased Unreal Rogue, and each time she smiled at the vision of it flowing across her fingers, he felt a pleasure in the pain.

Sometime between the blade digging underneath skin and blood battling to be released, she leaned in and kissed him chastely, reminding him how much he loved her.

---

"When love grows diseased, the best thing we can do is to put it to a violent death."

---

He knew the feel of steel penetrating skin. Recognized the hurt revealed in her eyes, trembled when Unreal Rogue was not revealed for something else. An unremembered agony washed through him when he saw her choking on his claws, which had made their way through all too fragile flesh, leaving her dumb and panicked. There he’d killed her, as he’d shoved something far stronger than steel through her pretty little neck. Oh, poor Rogue, not Unreal, but still... the death produces more than a little satisfaction. Then he touches her, and his death is the sweetest death imaginable.

---

"Death is close enough at hand so we do not need to be afraid of life."

---

But they do not die. He brings them both back to life. At his touch, she lifts up, like Lazarus arisen from his grave. He needs no touch; his own unlucky blood does the deed for him.

They are both alive, yet not alive. She tends to his unseen wounds, telling him of the time she had bone claws and, like an animal, ripped the counterfeit countenance off the Unreal. Not quite listening, he thinks how glad he is he kissed her once: That figment of his imagination. That sour-sweet Unreal Rogue.

End