The Phoenix Compound
August 31
Midnight. Tangible darkness wraps around my body in a thick black film decorated with specks of starlight as it slips through holes in the window screen. Orion's left elbow across my hip. The Milky Way spread out in creamy white across my stomach. The North Star hidden in the hollow of my throat.
I wear the starlight to bed in one last hope that when all the stars fade, they will think I am one of them and take me away. Out of this place. But every morning, I wake in the naked sunlight, and always I find myself here.
I am always without him.
On some nights, in spite of my determinations not to remember, I close my eyes and wear him like the stars. A kiss on the forehead, brushed across the smooth curve of my temple. The subtle indentation of fingers spread over the back of my hand. A smile hanging carelessly above my lips.
All of it, like my starlight plans of freedom, vanishes with the sun.
I don't wear them tonight. I can't. The nights after the Ceremonies are always the hardest. They remind me of what I escaped; they remind Jean of what she lost; they remind Scott of what can be taken from him. We see most clearly what we have become. Quiet, desperate people fighting a quiet, desperate struggle to bind our humanity to ourselves. Tonight, we realize that the cords are not steel but string. Fragile. Easy to break.
There are two kinds of people lying under the darkness tonight-- those who have been broken and those who will be broken. I have come to believe it an inevitability, one of those slow, dry desert inevitabilities like weeks without rain. No one wins every battle they fight. No one can protect everything they love. Scott may fight very well for a very long time, but sooner or later he will fail. It's only a question of when. Not if.
Logan and I learned this by experience.
The man and the woman across the room from me have not. They have their suspicions, but they are in love and blind like lovers who refuse to admit they will be separated. I can hear this blindness through the night. It makes me ache in places I can't explain, old scars and new wounds. I remember when I was blind in that way too. I want it back.
As it is, I sit very still and try to lose my sight by proxy as I listen to his whisper in the darkness. It's soft, like the sound of a burning candle, something I am not meant to hear. No one is meant to hear, but the room is small and I have learned to catch his every word.
"Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence:"
This is their ritual: poetry and whispers in the dark. Scott holds his wife and whispers the words into her ear. Jean listens and allows her husband the pretense that he is making her feel exactly as if they are in their bedroom in New York. The poetry itself depends on his mood. Sometimes it's Shakespeare, or Donne, or Eliot, or Browning. Sometimes it's love, or it's hope, and other times it is none of those things.
I recognize tonight's poem as one of his favorites. An image forms in my mind; a sliver of a past. He's standing in front of literature class, reciting the words from flawless memory. His smile is the warm, contented smile that men get when they say the name of a lover. He talked that way about all his books, all his philosophies and ideals. The words don't sound quite the same now. Something in them is strained. Breaking.
"In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near."
Scott believes he can keep her with him just because it is the Right Thing and the Right Thing always triumphs in the end. Or at least he tries to believe it. The weariness in his eyes tells me that it's getting harder and harder with each month. With each challenge. Charles never prepared him for this. He taught that every fight must mean something, that every act of violence would be justified by the common good and salvation of our people. Honor was to be preserved at all costs. And after honor, logic. Reason. Control. No battle must be fought without those things. They were the rules Scott lived by, the way he defined himself as a man.
And we came here-- where there is fighting without any meaning beyond survival. Where violence abounds but not reason. Not honor. Every time the Ceremonies come and he steps into the circle to fight, another part of his identity and his idealism disappears. This is not easy knowledge, the burden of realization that he's done this all for us. For Jean, for his child, for me. He brought us to this place thinking it would save our lives, and then we found out it was almost worse than the nightmares outside the gate. (Almost, but not quite. He knew this because he remembers how I looked when they found me. The bruises. The blood.) He promised to do whatever it took to keep us safe. To keep us together.
At times I wonder if it's killing him. But of course it is. It's killing all of us.
"Your slightest look easily will unclose me, though I have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself, as spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose."
For Jean, it is enough to believe in Scott. It's easier for her that way. She knows so much more than he does how futile it is to hold onto a marriage in a society designed to destroy it. She believes anyway, even harder than Scott sometimes, because the alternative would be to believe the truth. And that terrifies her. I see the burn in her eyes when strange men challenge for her or stare at her in the streets....even when she holds her baby and tries to sing lullaby. Who am I to judge? If I had something left to lose, I'd be afraid too.
What do I believe in? Good question. I think I believe in the dream that someday I'll get the guts to get up and walk away from this place. Even if there is nowhere to go. Even if I know what's out there, what's waiting for me. Maybe one out of fifty girls like me makes it to the border and true freedom. I believe that I will be that one. That Logan will be waiting for me. Everything will be reversed between us; I will love him and he will love me.
I'm still here because I don't believe that enough. Because I still remember what happened the first time. Maybe I'm more like Jean and Scott than I thought. I stay because, like him, I still have something to lose after all. Or maybe I'm just paralyzed like her, because when you simplify my reasons, I am too scared to move.
"Or if your wish be to close me, I and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending."
I imagine snow carefully everywhere descending. A calculated smothering. Cold and premeditated. It sickens me. The sticky layers of midnight press too close around my face, clogging my nose and filling my mouth with heat. I'll suffocate if I can't get out of this building. Away from his empty words and his old man's voice.
/Gotta get out. Out. Fresh air, starlight./
My bare feet land without noise on the cement beside my mattress. Hands brush the floor until they meet a fine arch of wood and close around it. They won't hear me leave, and even if they do, they won't try to stop me. They know we all need to breathe, sometimes.
/Scream. Scream and it will all go away. If you don't get through that door right now, you'll explode. Make it stop. Just make it go away. Don't want to hear him talking. Don't want to hear it all breaking down. Make it stop. Stop.Stop. Stop.../
Outside.
My feet rush over the sand, skin tingling as individual grains lodge between my toes. The breeze untangles itself from my hair and slides down my bare arms, hollowing out air pockets beneath my t-shirt. I lean back against the wall and taste the wind to learn where it has been. Hints of oil and grease and fast food trucker stops, the closest "normal" thing to this place. No trace of his brand of cigar smoke, the sign that he's coming back for me.
I never find that smell. I've done this too many times to cry, or to feel anything besides vague disappointment as I slide down to sit yoga-style on the sand, my violin across my knees. My fingers trace the curves of the instrument. The smooth lines, the nicks, the cuts, the scrapes that it accumulated since we left the mansion. All in all, it's survived better than I have. Could I still play it like I used to?
I don't know. I haven't touched the strings since he left. I've tried, but no sound comes. There is nothing in my head; no music or light. Just silence.
Scott never asks me why I don't play. Just like I don't ask him what happened to the others at the school, those who tried to run or those who tried to stay. Conversations like that have been marked strictly off limits, locked somewhere that can't hurt anymore. I suspect that if we did open them, we would find that neither of us remembers what we were trying not to say.
Five feet away from me, the wire cuts away the rest of the world. I could reach out and touch it. Let it cut my skin, shed my blood. I almost need to feel it, to prove that something about this is real. To prove that I'm real. I can still hear him through the window.
"Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility...."
I'm tired of fragility. Tired of white dresses and lace veils and barbed wire and the fear keeping me from finding the only person left that I can love. Tired of not loving him. I am worn to the bone, unable to do anything about it but listen to poetry outside the window of a dirty house in a broken down reservation.
I set the violin down and stand up.
"Someday, Logan, I'm gonna tell you about this place. I'll sit down and write you the longest letter telling you how much it kills but how I've managed to survive. How I survived everything, even when you were gone. I'll mail it to Nowhere and maybe you'll get it."
My fingers curl around the wire, a delicate grasp like picking a flower instead of squeezing cold metal. I touch it like I touch his claws. I imagine him imagining me, and this is a small salvation. Too small to count.
"I'll tell you the same they told me. Think of it like a wedding."
No more delicacy; now it begins to bleed.
"Think of it that way and maybe you'll believe that I always pretended it was you."
Fifteen seconds of pressure and blood and sharp pain brings sharper memories and a sensation of standing somewhere else. Under a purple sky, watching lightning over the mountains, a man standing in the distance. I almost ask him to turn around. I almost ask him to wait. Then I hear the gunshot and my chest explodes into a red-white-black ball of pain.
I let go of the wire to feel nothing. When I let go, he disappears.
And it's silent because Scott's finished his poetry and I've finished my memories. I wipe the blood on my pants and walk back inside to pretend to sleep. Jean says no one really sleeps here. She's listened, and she can't even hear their dreams. Not even Scott's. Not even mine.
No, we don't sleep, she says. We all just die for a little while.
I dream, but it comes out in nightmares. Where does that put me?
The Upper Room: Marie
His coat falls across your shoulders; you try not to wince when it hits bruises. No time for apologies or gratitude, his hand closes around your elbow and steers you up the stairway. The hall is narrow: rotten wooden stairs and peeling walls that close in on all sides. The smell of liquor, of decay, a damp underground smell like the earth underneath a stone.
The door opens; his wife stares at you in shock.
(Rogue? Scott...how...)
He pushes you inside a small room that is more shadow than light-- one yellow light bulb flickering in the ceiling, a glow of burnt orange neon from the sign outside the window. You let him move you, your arms and body stiff, autopilot. You're shaking and there is blood under his coat. He hasn't seen that yet.
(Found her at the bar when I went down to pay for our room.)
His hand is shaking; you feel it through his fingers on your arm. Anger.
(Some trucker tried to sell her for a drink. Take care of her.
Where are you going?
He's still down there.
Don't--)
You are invisible between them. You bleed onto the frayed carpet while they argue.
(She's one of us, Jean.
You know the rules here. No questions asked; no trouble caused. They'll kick us out and there's no other place that takes people like us. Unless you want to spend the night on the street again.
I can't just--
You're a father.)
She thrusts a bundle of cloth to him. The bundle kicks, squirms, screeching like a tiny red lizard. It's not a lizard. You remember attending her baby shower before you and Logan left. Scott takes the bundle, holding it out from him, arms skewed at odd angles.
(Does he need to be changed or something?
Babies cry.
So what am I supposed to do?
Hold him.
How?
Closer to you. He's not a bomb. He just needs some attention.)
Their voices smear together and drip off the sides of your mind like dirty rainwater. You find it increasingly difficult to stand; the floor undulates beneath you, shifting left...right...front... back...
(Jean, take the baby. She's falling--)
Arms stop you from hitting the floor, although you have no memory of falling down. More like falling up, out, everywhere at the same time, tumbling over and over. A dim sensation of purposeful movement; he picks you up.
(God, she's bleeding...Jean...we have to do something....
Get her onto the bed.
Ok.
Watch her skin. Hand me the first aid kit from the suitcase.
Can I help?
Yes. You can take Will and go outside. I'll let you know when I'm done.
Ok.
And Scott--
Yes?
Leave him alone.)
The longest pause. (Fine.)
And these are your memories of the night they found you: a burnt orange room, a bed with one mildewed blanket, antiseptic rinsed across the cuts on your shoulders and back and feet. Questions you can only half answer.
(What happened?
Wouldn't...let me...leave. Paid for my ride....but when we got to town...decided he didn't want money....
Are there any other injuries you want to tell me about?
No.
Are you sure?
Yes.
You can tell me--
My skin, remember? He didn't get the chance.)
Not this one, at least. But what would it matter if you told the whole truth? The past is the past and no one can heal it.
(Where's Logan?
Dead.
How?
Border police.)
You don't know why you lie to protect him. Maybe you've already forgiven him and just haven't admitted it. Or maybe you are only protecting your wish to see him dead.
(I'm sorry.)
She is; she is sincere and you believe her. You feel the slightest guilt at adding new sadness to her face when it's so obvious that she and Scott have had it rough. Not as bad as you have, maybe, but maybe worse, in a way. Survival is a different sort of hell for everyone. She's lost weight, even though you've always heard that women are supposed to gain once they're pregnant. You wonder if something went wrong. Her face isn't quite as smooth as you remember, her hair a bit thinner, falling in strands out of the ponytail she always used to keep so neat. The charcoal gray dress she's wearing emphasizes these changes. Two wet circles cover her breasts; she's nursing. It surprises you. You always thought she would be too clean for it. Not that she'd have much of a choice, now, would she?
Footsteps outside the door. Scott paces back and forth the whole time. The lizard baby cries twice. She finishes bandaging and questioning, and then walks outside to join him. The door shuts behind her. You listen to them talk through the walls.
(How is she?
She'll be fine, I think. The beating wasn't too bad...the cuts on her feet are going to give her the most trouble.
Cuts?
He cut her feet so she couldn't run.
I knew we should have never let her leave. We should have taken care of her. Where's Logan, anyway?
She claims he's dead.
Do you believe her?
Yes. I felt loss in her. Scott, her eyes. They're just broken.
We're taking her with us.
I don't know if she'll want to come.
Why?
Rogue may have trouble trusting people; even us. It's common in victims of--
Victims of what? You said she was fine.
I think it was worse than a beating, Scott. Maybe not with this man, but somewhere along the line, it was worse.)
A muffled thud, like something has hit the wall. His fist, maybe. You close your eyes. Telepaths. You should have remembered to shield.
The door opens again; he's there.
You're between realities; for a moment you think it's Logan. But it's not. It's someone else. That's the story of the past six months of your life....it has always been someone else. At least this time it is a friend. You think. Neither of you quite recognizes the other. You would never have imagined him in this kind of place. He would never have imagined you. The sudden recognition unsettles you both, like you are staring at the other's ghost. A dual hallucination.
(Jean says you'll be fine.
I will.
You sound like you don't believe it.
I do.)
He sits down on the edge of the bed; runs his hand across the stubble on his chin. You've never seen him unshaven before; it is disturbing because it lets you know he's changing already. The Scott you remember would die before parting with his razor.
(I'm sorry about Logan.
Thanks. Really.
Listen, Rogue, I know you've been on your own for a while. You might feel a bit edgy about us, might not know what to trust...your memories or your instincts. I know how that is. I spent time on the streets too, before I got to Xavier's. And that was back when they weren't hunting us down.)
He stands up; walks back and forth, hands in his pockets.
(What I'm trying to say is, we want you to come with us.
Where?
A safe place.
Does that exist, anymore?
It's called the Phoenix Compound. It was home to a mutant survivalist group before the laws passed. Now I hear it's a sanctuary of sorts. They're accepting anyone who's got the cash.
I don't have any money.
Doesn't matter. I have enough.
I can't ask you to--
You aren't asking. I'm insisting.
Safe places usually come with a catch...
Don't worry about that. Let me worry about that. If you come with us, I'll take care of you. I promise.)
You ask yourself how they stayed so sincere; you don't know yet that it's not sincerity at all but desperation. Two people, drowning, fighting to breathe.
You take a deep breath and remember the last time someone promised to keep you safe. Logan. You remember where it got you.
But you don't really have a choice.
(OK.)
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