Lucia de'Medici (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} luciademedici) wrote,@ 2008-07-28 00:42:00 |
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Ficlet: Love Spell no. 32
Title: Love Spell no. 32
Author: Lucia de’Medici
Universe: X-Men: Evolution (Marvel Animated Series)
Character/Pairing/Series/Group: Rogue/Gambit
Rating: PG
Prompt: Haunted
Author Note: Set well after “Cajun Spice”.
Love Spell no. 32
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Haunted men all walk in a similar fashion: with hands thrust deep into their pockets, like they’re clutching the last bits of their dignity with the link and their pocket change, kept carefully out of sight of those who’d rib ‘em for it, or use it against them just as surely as they’d tear off the carefully stitched-on hearts fixed to their sleeves.
These boys either have something to hide, or something they can’t let go of, so they get on by keepin’ it awful close to themselves. (Cards close to the chest, if you’re at all familiar with the phrase.) But sometimes, them boys are just keepin' things in a spot where they don't have to look at 'em.
Somewhere deep on the outskirts of New Orleans, likely off in Cajun country where folks still live on the bayou in rotting cypress shacks that just barely float on empty oil drums, a young man in his early twenties pushes his pirogue to a worn-out dock. He ties the boat up, alright, but a second later and his fingers are gone an’ buried in the big old trenchcoat he wears like a funeral shroud over his shoulders.
Then, like a shadow, the mutant named Remy LeBeau disappears, the only thing suggesting he was ever there to visit the two-headed doctor living on Bayou Segnette, the echoing slap of a rickety door across the water.
It’s cramped. For a moment, Remy just stares, unmindful of the dim lighting and facing off with a stuffed alligator head mounted on the wall beside the front door. A quick appraisal of the place reveals herbs and whole roots stored in jars coated with grime so thick, not even the stroke of a finger could dislodge the work of time. The air has the faint, bitter bite of resin incense burnt loose atop smoldering charcoal.
Remy takes in the array of powders, preserves, seals, charms, hooch, guttering novenas burning low in their glass jars – the corners of photographs and folded dollar bills beneath a few – and his eyes settle on the figure in the corner.
Everything else he leaves alone, the magic yet untroubled by his presence.
To the figure, he bows his head.
“What for?” she rasps, chuckling. “What you come for, boy?”
Remy shakes his head, frowning to himself, and still not wholly convinced that he’s made the right decision in coming to this place.
“Money?” she asks, hefting herself to a bent-over hobble. “Power?”
He shakes his head.
“Revenge?” she tries again, shuffling across the room to her shelved supplies with the muted, slippered whisper of spider feet on curling linoleum. Her voice gives him the distinct impression of bat wings brushing his face in the dark.
“Non.” He extracts his cargo: a playing card, recently reclaimed, and a printed, black and white image, downloaded from the internet, courtesy of The Bayville Post. The face on the dot matrix is blurred, a swath of black and white stripes marring delicate features as Rogue’s hair whips around her head. There are fists, and only the curve of her mouth in profile, her right eye; pieces of the whole that seem clearer now, after so much time and trouble trying to forget.
A shame; an embarrassment that he’s never had a photograph of her to call his own.
“A love spell.” The tone the Hoodoo takes is one of smug superiority.
“Something like that.” He pushes the photos away, lingering for a moment as his wedding band catches the light of a guttering candle. Remy swallows thickly, less certain than ever that this is the right choice. He stares at the ring, too new and too alien, its inscription seared against his skin where he can’t see it: Je t’aime, toujours, Remy. –Belladonna
“A spell to forget love.” His voice cracks. He shoves his hands back into his pockets, as if to keep himself from reaching to touch Rogue's picture one last time.
