I was told of a distant land
where tortured souls often cried together in anguish
and the scenes that were shown
were of a cruel and violent nature
Scenes of pain and cruelty were there to be seen.
The arena, the time, and the place were set
for all to watch and see.
I was told of a place in a distant land
where the oppressor ruled with an iron hand,
and of nations who sat in
complacency, left cold and emotionless by history.
Scenes of pain and cruelty were there to be seen
and all the while I should have known
it was you killing me.
Somewhere east of Eden the designs will never change,
Infected through others
fear the world stops at the end of the hall.
We watched the life force fade away,
The eventual price you will have to pay.
(Once you are dead how could the children have known?)
--- East of Eden, Dead Can Dance
Phoenix Compound
Southwest Nevada
August 31
Think of it like a wedding.
That is what the old women whisper into our ears when the white dresses slide over our heads, sticking to our skin in the early morning heat. Their bony fingers press cold circles against our shoulders and the ridges of our spines as they fasten each button one at a time. Their words drone all around us, within us, through our heads. Ms. Sophia-- the coldest and boniest of them all-- taps her cane against the floor in rhythm to the liturgy.
(May you bear many young. May you honor your bondmate with a son. May you brighten the steps of his dwelling with a daughter.)
The voices rattle like bones in the dry air, but I never listen to them. I listen to his voice. I have kept him safe from this place, tucked far back into a corner and buried under memories of better times so they will never find him. It is to prevent them from taking him from me. It is to prevent me from destroying him myself.
The lace falls over our faces, smothering us with the scent of incense and jasmine. Everyone bows their head to accept the veil. Everyone submits. Even Jean, and even me, though I would like to say I did not. My dresser tugs a pair of white cotton gloves onto my arms, sheathing my skin in protective cotton from fingertips to elbows. Ironic. I am the exception, even here, when we are all supposedly equal at the genes. An urge to laugh pulls at the back of my throat, but it is bitter like semi-sweet chocolate. That is the taste of all laughter here. That is, for those of us who still indulge.
They press flowers into our clasped hands, a single white carnation. Then they whisper to us again, squinting out of the wrinkles at the corner of their eyes.
(Think of it like a wedding. Think how you all will make such beautiful brides.)
Jean told me this is a lie. She had a real wedding, two springs ago, in a little stone church in the country. There were candles in the windows and pink roses in her hair, and Logan kissed me in the back of the sanctuary when everyone else went outside for the reception. Does he even remember that now? Wherever he is, whomever he's with? I do.
As we kneel for the final benediction, I watch Jean's hands twist and turn her wedding band around her finger. Sophia's caned her three times so far for refusing to take it off during the Ceremony. None of them understands her stubbornness.
(It's just a ring, dearie.)
Her dresser pats her hand or smoothes her hair as she talks.
(It doesn't even mean anything anymore.)
Jean says that I shouldn't be angry, that the women are just trying to make it easier for her. I think they're just jealous. All of them. She still has what they've all given up-- her spirit.
It's her survival, her one small defiance, but it costs her. I wonder if she tells Scott about the beatings, if he finds the marks on her body at night and asks what happened. If she feels his pain when he touches the bruises. If she lies to him to make him think he really is protecting us like he promised. I could say it's worse for her than it is for me. She knows what love is supposed to be; she holds the memories of what she and Scott had before all this.
But then, I know what love is not. I learned the hard way, and there are still nights when I can't sleep because it all plays back in my head. I guess I'm still the lucky one because it's easier to lose something if you never had it to begin with. I don't have her kind of memories, and at this moment, I am grateful.
/Grateful that the one who'd ask you about your bruises is far, far away from here. He's not coming to save the day any time soon, or maybe he's not coming at all./
Some mornings I wake up with this fierce sort of gladness that he is free from all this. Sometimes I hope he's locked up too. I don't know what's worse-- the idea that they have him again, or that he's alive and has just stopped looking for me.
I'll be angry with both because on these days, anger is the best sort of drug. When it's in my veins, I feel nothing. Nothing at all. I disappear between the white rage and the white veil and hope no one notices me and calls my name before the Elders.
The door opens and we walk one by one into the stifling heat of the courtyard. Jean flashes the sunlight off her ring into Ms. Sophia's eyes as we walk. The hag glares at us like she'd cane us both if she had more time. But there is not time.
The glare of desert sun on white cloth stings my eyes, causing them to throb with tears. The throbbing closes in on my chest as well, a second pulse that races to the frantic shouts of men ready to fight. Ready to claim a prize. I fight the urge to run.
My eyes pull away from the crowd, pushing up through the disgusting pallor of the veil to drink in the deep, wet blue of the sky. For one beautiful second, all I see is sky and clouds and all I hear is the wind and his voice in my head, and we all are free again.
Then the drums throw me back to the earth, and I kneel with the others in front of the Elder's platform, shifting to find the softest spot on the hard cushion beneath my knees. The flower in my hand shrivels, wilting in the baking air It looks like me. Shining and white and beautiful for a moment, but drying up fast in the desert sun. That's what they're really doing to us. They dress us up and parade us out and suck our life away until we're brittle and old like Ms. Sophia and the other women. Until we're nothing but dust and dead flowers on the inside. No spirit. No life.
/I swear, I'll never give it up. Jean will not give up her ring and I refuse to lose what's left of who I am. If they couldn't take that outside, then a bunch of survivalist freaks can't take it from me in here./
The High Elder, an old man with no hair and wan yellow skin -- part of his mutation or malnutrition?-- rises to his feet and addresses the crowd.
"Brothers and sisters, it is my privilege to invoke this month's Bonding Ceremony. I call on the Powers that they may give skill to our brothers competing today and grace to our sisters who await their bonds to these warriors."
I ignore him....it's the same David Koresh mumbo jumbo every month. If I strain my eyes hard enough, I can see Scott through the veil. His visor makes him easy to recognize, even through a blur of lace. From this distance, his posture and body language paints a deception of total confidence. Cockiness, even. He always does know how to put on a face. Not quite as good as Logan, but he comes close when the occasion calls for it.
"May the strongest hand prevail and may the womb of his bondmate be fertile with hope for our future."
Yeah, like a compound full of squaling little mutants is going to help us win back our freedom on the outside. Sure.
This is our third Ceremony, but my stomach still twists into little hard knots when the fighting begins. The helplessness is worst-- the knowledge that control of my body is again taken from my hands. We're china dolls on a shelf, waiting to be passed to the winners here today. If I'm lucky, he'll be a friend. A protector. If I'm not lucky... A month can be a very long time.
It is on these mornings when I think of Logan the most. He was built to fight. He lives for it. That's not the way Scott works. All he ever wanted was a family and a safe place for them to live in peace...
"Let the challenges begin."
The cry of a child interrupts the anticipation, and Jean's head snaps over to the shade where the Nurses are watching the young children. She knows the sound of her son. Will just turned three months old; he still cries when she leaves him alone for longer than a few minutes. I don't have to have her telepathy to sense her craving to leave her seat and comfort him. But she can't. Scott can't. He has to fight and she has to watch and maybe when it's all over, they can hold their son again.
It'll cost him something in the mean time. Always does. Jean is contested every month; last Ceremony, Scott fought three different challenges for her, and one more for me. Sometimes the fights are easy. Other times...not so easy. I never know exactly what to say to him when it's over. It makes sense that he'd do this for his wife, for his son, but he doesn't owe me a thing. All he gave me was his word that if I stayed with him, nothing bad would happen again. So far, he's proved it.
Thank you just doesn't cut it for something like that. At least my mutation makes it easier for him. Not many men want to risk his kind of beating for a girl with poison skin. Most of my challengers take him on just for prestige. Everybody wants to be the first to take the head X-man down.
Oh yes, his reputation preceded him. Here's another irony --we had to run to this freak show in the first place because the humans hated us for trying to save our people. As it turns out, the mutants hate us just as bad because we failed. Maybe even worse.
Jean's name is called twice. The challenges are clean and quick; Scott's getting faster every month. Ms. Sophia has orders to cane us if we soil our eyes with the fighting, but I risk a glance at him from time to time in guilty fascination. His fighting style is so different from Logan's. Logan is steel, hard and rough and angry all at once, one big metal fist crushing anything in his way. Scott is not metal, but liquid. He's not allowed the use of his mutation, but it is not needed. Each motion is calculated, graceful, darting between his opponent's defenses before any reaction can stop him. The more you watch, the more the spin of his body and arms seems like an intricate dance. In this manner it is almost beautiful. But sometimes I see him bleed, and then there is no beauty, and there is no grace.
Five challenges into the Ceremony, Ms. Sophia tells me to stand.
"Are there any challengers for ownership of this bondmate?"
A moment of silence. I can almost hear the thoughts of the men as they look at me.
(What's she hiding under that veil? Does her skin really suck out minds? Can I find a way to get around it? Is it really worth fighting her man?)
A lean but muscular young man steps out from the crowd and peels off his shirt, grinning as he winks at me.
"I am called Paul. By the Powers, I challenge for her ownership."
"Who accepts this challenge?"
Scott's voice, weary but firm.
"I am called Scott. I defend ownership."
"Powers be with you. Let the challenge begin."
My stomach dives straight for my toes as they move into the white chalk circle where the challenges are fought. This time I can't look. Not even once or twice. I close my eyes, pulling very far back into the dusty black, and I begin to count backward from six hundred. Very slowly. Jean taught me this as a method of keeping your sanity when you hear the fighting. Counting fills your mind with an abundance of nothingness. You don't think about what's at stake. You don't think about what could happen to you.
Six hundred. Five hundred ninety-nine. Five hundred ninety-eight. Five hundred ninety-seven...
I fill the space between the numbers with snapshot memories of a past more real than my life now.
/Goldfish in a plastic bag, a present from my aunt for my fifth birthday./
Five hundred ninety-six.
/The first time I played the violin, startled but enraptured by the sound./
Five hundred ninety-five.
/His smile, the day before he left me.../
As I said, Scott's getting faster. I barely reach two hundred before the cry of "yield!" ends the match and allows me to open my eyes again. The kid is down, bleeding hard from his mouth. I think Scott broke teeth. Good.
The Elder confirms the victory. "The Challenge belongs to Scott. Ownership is retained. May the Powers bless the continuation of this union."
A quiver slides down the length of my spine, like ice, like cold hands. I'll never get used to this part. I hate it.
"Scott, you will now publicly bond this woman to you as your mate until the next Ceremony, or until the bond is extended by creation of a child. Rogue, you will now rise and accept his bond."
My knees shake as I stand. Bad memories die hard.
My eyes are still lowered, waiting his command before I will be allowed to look up, so I do not see him until he is directly in front of me. My gaze falls level with his chest. Beneath the streaks of dirt and sweat, the skin is tinged with purple or yellow splotches that will turn into bruises before nightfall. I smell the fight on him-- blood, adrenaline, anger, more animal than human. It reminds me of Logan when he came out of the cage the first time I saw him. Scott's breathing is ragged when he speaks to me, reciting the formula of the bonding ritual.
"You may raise your eyes."
I look up to read the silent apology in his gaze. He knows the degradation of this. The disgust. Every month I see a plea for forgiveness in his eyes. I give him what I can, but I have to stifle the urge to pull away. The revulsion can't be helped. Possession is still possession, even if the owner is nice.
He reaches for the edge of my veil. Bright smears of red stain the white lace where he touches. As he pulls it back from my face, he tries to smile. I try to smile back.
"I bond you, Rogue, to my side for as long as the Powers decree."
"I accept your bond with gratitude and hope I may honor your house with many children."
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Jean watch us. She is impassive; a portrait in stone.
His face moves closer to mine, until I can no longer see the sun but only my own reflection in his visor. My eyes are wide, flared. Will he see it as fear? This is not supposed to be that kind of kiss. It is a form, a ritual. Nothing more.
The rock-bottom truth of it is that I have no choice. I couldn't move away even if I wanted it. That makes me cold inside. I need the right to turn away. But if I do, I'm as good as banished-- maybe even Scott too -- and there are things outside the fences so much worse than a kiss.
Scott pulls the bottom corner of the veil over my mouth. I close my eyes and pretend with everything in me that it's Logan. That it is simple and beautiful and something I want.
But when his lips touch mine, it's not that kind of kiss either.
It's mechanical. Stiff. A touch of lips through lace, a taste of blood from his split lip, the suspicion that he's left another apology in my mouth. And after that, nothing.
As I follow him from the courtyard, I am relieved. I am also empty inside.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000