He was trapped.

Trapped in a world without feeling, without movement, without possibility.

She¡¦d left all his senses other than touch intact. He could smell the sweat on his body, hear the beating of his heart, swift and urgent to match the rapid intake of his lungs. He could taste the sour fear in his mouth at the thought that he might never move again. And he could see only what the immobile position of his head would afford him. A perfect view of the white ceiling, with its cracking paint.

He could observe his environment and yet had absolutely no control over it.

He was helpless. It was arguably the most terrifying moment of his life.

At first he hadn¡¦t believed it. How could the Green Ghost Lady really have that much control over him? He¡¦d thought it was just some mind trick and he had tried and tried to break free, to send the commands over blocked nerve endings spanning the distance to his fingers and toes, desperately pleading with them to wiggle. And then it had occurred to him that even if he did manage to make them move the slightest bit, without the sense of touch and with his gaze permanently fixed on the ceiling, he wouldn¡¦t even be able to tell the difference.

So then he¡¦d tried more observable tasks. But his arms never rose. His leg never twitched. And his head never turned to afford him a different point of view.

After a while, he gave up in exhaustion. Or maybe he was only taking a break.

He thought about spending the rest of his life lying in a bed not able to move. He didn¡¦t like the prospect. He¡¦d been dealt a bad hand. He wouldn¡¦t accept that, had been taught not to almost before he could walk. You get bad cards, you trade them in. Or you bluff.

There was no way of telling how long he had been lying there in paralysis. It could have been hours, or perhaps only seconds.

However long it had been, it had been too long. It was funny the amount of time it seemed to take him to even realize that he wasn¡¦t completely trapped, that there was a way out of this cage, a keyhole that nothing so tangible and physical as his body could fit through. But he didn¡¦t need his body.

He had his mind.

It was hard to relax and allow his consciousness to fade enough to stop distracting him with sensations from the real world. He found that strange considering how much less sensory input he had than usual. But gradually, the ceiling faded and he could sense another plane of existence, another pathway, and as the darkness deepened that astral plane brightened and he gathered around him the blue light of his substance.

He was suddenly there, in the place where she was, taking the journey in the blink of an eye. She seemed to have been waiting for him, expecting him to return. A new feeling of power emanated in the way she stood. No more tears here, just a woman who knew she was in control and loved it. As much as he hated her at this moment, there was something extremely attractive in the way she carried herself.

Deep breaths filled his nonexistent lungs and exhaled in puffs of blue electricity around him. He could feel the pure emotion hanging in the air here like a tangible thing and it made him acutely aware of the darkness and the ghosts it whispered of.

"Okay, so y¡¦ showed me what you can do," he conceded, keeping his voice level. "What do you want?" He maintained the distance between them, remembering her reaction the last time he had come too close.

She tilted her head and seemed to contemplate her answer. "I want the future to be a place where life is more common than death."

He straightened his shoulders and met her eyes. "An¡¦ how do I fit into that?"

She was calmer now than before, in control. "You are the reason it is the way it is. You caused it all somehow."

"Somehow? You don¡¦ know for sure? Dan how do you know I¡¦m even responsible? I been being told since Bishop came back dat I de reason de X-Men were betrayed, and den dere was Onslaught and we realized it was Xavier all along. What makes you so sure dis time?"

She blinked. "You told me."

He wasn¡¦t sure how to reply to that, so he settled on a look filled with the confusion he felt inside.

"In the future," she added impatiently.

It was getting closer to making sense. "Y¡¦ mean de Witness told you."

"Yes. You."

He was surprised at how easily she was answering his questions. Perhaps it had something to do with her newfound power. She felt secure, that radiated out from her in waves, and maybe it was that assurance of security that made her willing to share information. "So you¡¦re from de future," Remy stated, doing his duty as master of the obvious. "Den how did you get here?"

She smiled wickedly. "I¡¦m a mutant, anything¡¦s possible."

"Apparently," he commented sourly, referring to his present physical condition.

Somehow she seemed to know what he meant, and smirked with arched eyebrows and a powerful stance. He suddenly became very paranoid that she was reading his mind, and then in the same thought realized how stupid that was. She was in his mind. There was a very good chance she knew everything about him. That idea struck him like a slap in the face. She knew his secrets and his mistakes, his past. And the reasons she hated him were for things he hadn¡¦t even done yet.

"Do you really want to know what the future holds?" she asked icily.

He had the feeling he was going to regret his answer. "Oui."

He thought she was going to touch him again, let him relive some more of her memories, but she didn¡¦t touch him. Instead, she walked toward him and then past. "Follow me. This time you see without violating my mind." she threw over her shoulder, not looking back to check if he did or not. He did.

They reached the crossroads of his mind and turned right. To his dreams. He watched as ahead of him her form seemed to unravel and dissipate. He paused for a moment, not sure exactly how to follow suit, or whether he really wanted to. Glancing at the path ahead of him, at the swirling mist of his dreams, he wondered what he would find there. Only one way to find out. Doing the opposite of what he did when he gathered his psionic form, he gently released his hold on the energy around him. There was a gust of cold air as the layers of blue light were stripped off, as if he had opened his coat to the chill outside, and as he went forward, he was immersed in a deepening fog and a closing blackness. It was a sensation like falling down a deep hole but never reaching the bottom, all the mental senses he had been relying on dampening as his astral form disappeared. For a moment he was simply falling in groggy darkness.

And then there was a world of senses surrounding him. He was standing on a hill, staring out at the graves again. It was just like the vision he had experienced earlier, only this time he was living it through his own eyes, rather than someone else¡¦s. It was windy here, a cold wind that sent shivers up his spine and reminded him of the desolate and gnarled fingers of chill that had crawled up and down his back all through Antarctica. There was a tree, sickly and scraggly next to him, one he¡¦d never seen before, and he realized he must be looking at the graveyard from a different vantage point. From here, the graves seemed to extend for an even greater distance than before, and as he slowly turned his head to gain a panorama, he realized there must be millions of dark patches marked only by stray misshapen stones. How many unnamed soldiers found their deaths here? It sickened him to think about it.

He was so consumed in the gothic scenery that it took him a moment to realize he was not alone, that next to him stood a figure, looming slightly behind his right shoulder. He turned to see who his companion was. A woman¡¦young, maybe 18, maybe 20. She was tall, slim, but not in the fashion model sense, rather, in an unnatural way, like her body shape was not by choice but by lack of nourishment. Maybe she would have been beautiful had she been healthier, had her skin not been so pale and the muscles not stood out in such stark contrast against the bones under her skin. But still, she wasn¡¦t ugly. Her face was all hard lines, solid, built out of traumas and tragedy. Chin length black hair fell layered around her face, straight and smooth. The clothes were adventurer style, but tattered¡¦scuffed black artillery boots, cargo pants hanging low on her hips, worn and stained at the bottoms, tearing at the knees and other places. A black tank top was above a heavy utility belt, compartments and what looked like a weapon clipped to it. She wore many necklaces, mostly beads that looked almost ritualistic. His gaze came back up to the face, to the eyes above the sharp, high cheekbones. They were green, like smoldering emeralds and he suddenly knew without another thought who she was. So the Green Ghost Lady was a real person after all.

He felt like he was supposed to break the silence, so he did. "Well, dis be a new look, chere."

Her expression was sour. "We are no longer on the astral plane, but somewhere in between it and consciousness. Dreams are as close as most people get to it, and here, your mind projects itself as how it sees itself, not as it really is."

"So, dis is what you remember lookin¡¦ like." The wind lifted up her hair briefly and it flew into her face. She seemed not to care.

"Yes. When I had a body, it was something like this. But because of you, I had to loose it." There was no mistaking the anger in the words.

It was her usual ambiguity. He had many questions, and he decided to start with the apparent remains of destruction all around. "What happened here?"

Her lips tightened to a thin line and her eyes got even harder, if that was possible. "The Human-Mutant War happened. We don¡¦t know how it started, only that you, and likely New Son, were involved.

There was a sharp intake of breath, involuntarily, and he realized it was from him. The Human-Mutant War. It was the thing of legends to the X-Men, elusively hanging over the horizon, constantly threatening them and promising to meet them one day. And this was the result. He surveyed the graveyard again, imagined many of the people he knew dead, resisted the idea. And it made him wonder why it was he felt so sure that this woman, barely more than a teenager from the looks, was telling him the truth, why he felt like he could trust her.

But he knew the answer. She was a part of him, as much himself as any other part since Antarctica, and he felt like he knew her in a way he¡¦d never known anyone before, in an intimate way born of sharing a mind.

He didn¡¦t want to hear the answer, but he had to ask the question. "An¡¦ de X-Men?"

"Why ask questions you already know the answer to?"

He swallowed uncomfortably. This wasn¡¦t the first time he¡¦d heard a story like this. Ever since Bishop the idea had haunted him, despite his outward denials and resistance to it. The X-Men had become such a big part of his life, had filled an empty space that Sinister had created. It didn¡¦t seem right to imagine a world without them. But this woman was telling him it was true. They were going to die. And he was going to live.

He could feel her looking at him as he stared, lost in thoughts, at the bleak scenery. "Shocking, isn¡¦t it?" she said.

Maybe he would have replied, but as it was, no words even had the chance to form in his mind, the scene that had him so engross suddenly melting into an amorphous shape.

The images swirled around him and he swayed, suddenly dizzy and not sure where he was. Fog rolled in around him and when it finally cleared and he could stand up straight, he was in an extravagantly designed room. The rug was plush and thick, a deep crimson color, matching the curtains. There wasn¡¦t much light, and instead of being painted white to add a airy feeling to the room like they should have been, the walls too were painted a dark crimson. There was a bookcase, an intricately carved wood cabinet, some ornamental lamps that looked very expensive and Remy thought quite tasteful, and a deep, overstuffed, easy-chair. His gaze scanned the room and its other assorted contents until he came to the huge redwood desk at the center of the room, with a man sitting behind it. The man was writing something, not seeming to notice he was there.

Remy stared at him for a moment, and then remembered that somebody was missing. He turned in a slow circle, lavish furnishings passing in his view, but she was gone.

He wondered if maybe he really was dreaming, if this whole thing had been one big dream. That¡¦s the way it felt now, different from when he had relived the Green Ghost¡¦s memories in the past¡¦ then he had no control over anything, was stuck in someone else¡¦s perspective to experience what they had¡¦ Now? He wasn¡¦t sure that his own mind hadn¡¦t created this place.

The man hadn¡¦t noticed him yet. That was strange, but then, the word ¡¦strange¡¦ had taken on whole new meaning lately.

Remy glanced at the man again, wondering who he was. The head was down, long windings of loose white hair blocking the face. He¡¦d have to go closer to really see¡¦ but his stomach was twisting in knots already, and he wasn¡¦t sure that he really wanted to know, afraid his suspicions might me true.

He decided to explore the room first. There was a book lying in the seat of the plush easy-chair, a very old book, with a brown warn cover and yellowed edges. He went over to it, feeling the rug squish loudly beneath his feet and recognizing the protective quality of the material. Nobody could ever sneak up on you if every step meant excessive noise.

The book was heavy in his hands, and as he opened it, the covered creaked threateningly. Inside there was a photograph, very old looking, covered with clear plastic. The colors had faded horribly and it looked like it might have ripped and been taped back together several times. Remy bent over it, trying to make out the dozen-or-so faces¡¦ and then he froze.

He knew these people. Knew them all. And he¡¦d seen this picture before in one of the flashbacks the Green Ghost Lady had sent him. His eyes tracked across the familiar faces, Storm, Rogue, Wolverine, Beast, Bobby with some sort of Band-Aid on his forehead. Even Trish was there, standing next to Hank and snuggled up under one large furry hand. Remy found himself on the fringes, a smirk plastered on his face, staff in hand, and his hair shorter than he usually liked it.

Twisting sharply, he faced the man again, the dread inside growing. He glanced back at the book, turning a few pages, and finding them strangely blank, the weight of the book indicating that it should be filled with scraps. He placed it down gently and walked back to the large desk, trying to minimize the noise his boots made against the rug.

The tabletop was glass-smooth. The man still didn¡¦t react to his presence and even from this close it was hard to see the down-turned face conveniently draped in shadows, but it was evident that the man was quite old. Remy looked at what he was writing and had to blink a few times. Though the pen moved across the page, no ink came out and no words filled the blank paper.

He felt his eyebrows rise.

And then the man looked up for the first time.

Remy blinked and swallowed. Hard. The man was staring at him with red-on-black eyes, the same ones he had seen in the mirror everyday of his life. Except these were different. They were pain hardened, smoldering with anger, sparking with a sense of eternal frustration and¡¦ there were shadows, shadows of something akin to despair. These were eyes much more tortured than his own, despite how tortured he¡¦d always been.

Remy suddenly found it very hard to swallow correctly.

The man¡¦s face was worn, scarred by flying shrapnel and long days spent out in the sun, with a particularly bad scar following the line of his cheekbone. Long, white hair was mostly tied back at the neck with a piece of leather and the clothes consisted of a black tunic. He couldn¡¦t see the rest of the man¡¦s outfit below the desk.

It didn¡¦t matter though. He knew who this man was.

A voice drifted up around him, echoing about the room. "Look familiar?" it whispered menacingly.

He spun around quickly, searching for the emerald eyes he knew must be watching him. There was no one to see except for the man at the table.

He looked at the man¡¦s eyes again. "Dat¡¦s not me." He wasn¡¦t sure who he was telling it to, only that he had to say it, to hear the words and give them substance.

There was no answer. He looked around, searching for her, knowing she must be nearby somewhere, earnestness in his expression and needing to hear someone else confirm his words, afraid they might not be true. There was ugliness inside of him, an ugliness he hated¡¦ could it one day manifest itself this way? "You know dat¡¦s not me. You been inside m¡¦ head." He said to the air around him, a little louder.

But still, she did not reply.

Finally he heard her voice, sounding like it was originating from right behind his shoulder. He twirled around. No one was there. "You are already working with New Son. He¡¦s a part of it."

She was sidestepping the issue. Familiar tactic. "How?" he asked, not sure where to direct the question.

It took a moment for the next echoed reply. "I don¡¦t know," she conceded reluctantly. "But what I know is that the pieces are falling together too quickly and that I waited too long to do something about it. I see my mistake now."

He felt something draw him to look at the man behind the table again, and then she said: "I¡¦ll make sure this man never exists."

He looked away and didn¡¦t say anything, not sure what he could say to that. He could be smart, confrontational, but that would do nothing to help his situation. He looked back at the Witness. The eyes stared at him with unimaginable depths, beckoning him closer to see the gruesome and horrible secrets they held. Remy felt like he was being sucked into them, forced to some deep and dark place, grabbed by tendrils of hate and anger. The room spiraled away around him as he slid toward the red centers of those black tunnels.

******

She was bracing herself with every wall, every defense she had. There was a reason why she was showing him this way, why she wouldn¡¦t let him experience directly what she was going to reveal to him next, and it was more than just the slimly feeling that covered her when she let him live inside her mind. These next memories¡¦ they were hers. She would not let him steal them from her, defile them. The Witness sitting at the desk had just been a warm-up really, letting him walk around in her mental recreation of the man¡¦s office while she worked up the courage for the real reason she had brought him here, while she got ready to relive her nightmares and got ready to share that nightmare with the bringer of all her nightmares.

It was time now. She took a deep breath.

And she remembered.

******

Gasping suddenly, he came out the other side¡¦ into a room? He was sitting on a floor covered in a tattered rug, with a home-made coffee-table positioned directly in front of him, rising to the level of his nose. Gathering himself, he slowly stood, taking in what looked to be a living room around him. Dilapidated, worn down. Whoever lived here wasn¡¦t very rich.

A woman sat on a wooden chair listening as a man turned knobs on something that looked suspiciously like a radio. A girl ran into the room, no doubt the daughter, and sat on the couch next to the man, beaming with the boundless energy of the young. She couldn¡¦t have been more than 12, if that much, and her straight black hair and green eyes were striking on the round face.

It was a peaceful family evening. Something that could be taking place in a million different households at this very moment. Well, maybe not right this moment. There was a marked lack of technology, so that it looked like this had happened at least 20 years ago.

A loud noise, and his attention suddenly snapped to the front door. Three men had burst through, and by the looks of surprise and shock on the faces of the room¡¦s occupants, the men were not expected nor wanted.

All black. They were dressed completely in black, except for the silver guns that hung in the holsters at their sides. Even the eyes were dark, shifty, sitting in dark faces with dark expressions.

These men were killers. Remy had no trouble recognizing that fact. He¡¦d grown up next-door to a clan of Assassins. There was a certain way killers carried themselves, with a defiance while at the same time giving the impression that they were carrying heavy weights on their shoulders.

The weights were particularly heavy on these men. And Remy knew that they were here for blood.

"What do you want?" the woman was asking frantically, already aware that the guns weren¡¦t for show. She stepped toward her daughter protectively, pushing the girl with wide eyes behind her.

One of the men spoke with a voice as gruff as his countenance. He was probably the leader, and was definitely the biggest of them, with muscles bulging from bases of more muscles. "You didn¡¦t hold up your end of the deal." He shrugged. No biggie. He probably went after people who didn¡¦t pay up all the time.

But not today. Remy would make sure of that. Rolling across the floor to stay low, he used his upper back and arms and the momentum of the movement to slam into the leading man¡¦s knees with a powerful kick. The man never reacted, never even looked down, and Remy¡¦s feet went right through him leaving him lying on the ground and trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

And then he remembered that this was only a dream. Not even just a dream, but a memory, someone else's memory. And he could do nothing to change it. He got up, backed away. He could only watch.

Another of the men, only slightly smaller than the leader spoke from the shadows, "Give us what we came for." There was no need to add the ¡¦or else¡¦.

The woman held her daughter tightly, viciously, and in all her fear and resistance, spit out: "Never!"

The man¡¦the father, was pleading with the men, trying to make them understand that the deal was unreasonable, that he couldn¡¦t be expected to follow through.

The gruff one just shrugged again and then actually chuckled. "You think we care? Sorry, mister, not our problem."

The guns came out. Both father and mother were screaming for them to stop, begging for their lives as they clutched their daughter, too young to understand, between them.

Remy jumped at the first gunshot, even though he had expected it.

The second brought the woman to her knees to join her husband spilling blood on the floor. But, as she slipped lower, as the red pumped across her shirt from her heart, there was a sudden clarity in her expression, her eyes coming upon her daughter. With the last energy at her disposal, she brought her consciousness together for one final moment, one final word.

"Run!"

And then she fell to the ground completely and was still.

The girl stared a moment longer, and then the men were approaching her with their black clothes and their black purpose and Remy watched her turn and flee. Not out the front door where she would have been caught up in their arms as she passed, but into one of the back rooms.

The men followed, slipping through a doorway out of view. Shouts about the girl having climbed out the window were heard. The voices faded.

Silence. Nothing but the faint sound of blood spurting onto the floor as the unconscious father¡¦s heart slowly pumped the rest of its life out.

Finally, the room faded away into darkness. The bodies were the last to go.

He stood, perfectly still, blinking in the night of his mind.

The Green Ghost was behind him now, he was sure. He could feel the static of her mind. He didn¡¦t want to turn to face her. Didn¡¦t want to be forced to choose a reaction, to see the hate in her eyes and feel guilty even though he had done nothing to earn it yet. He¡¦d just watched the death of her parents, deaths she blamed him for¡¦ how did you react to something like that?

But he couldn¡¦t hold off forever. Reluctance would be translated into responsibility for what he¡¦d seen, though he wasn¡¦t sure how she thought he was responsible. He had to face her.

*******

She stared at him, careful to keep her expression in check, to keep the pain off of it, to keep the weakness out. She tried to will him to turn to face her, and finally he did. His emotions were guarded, but there were some traces of sympathy, some traces of compassion.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Spare me the pity."

He looked hesitant. Then: "Dat was you."

"Why yes, how nice of you to notice." Sarcasm was her best defense with emotions this volatile, this precious.

Another hesitation. "Well, I¡¦m sorry, chere, that dat happened to you¡¦ but¡¦ why did you show me it?"

She wanted to punch him, to slap him over and over until he got it into his thick skull, until he finally understood that it was all his fault. "Those men were hired by you."

Nothing. Then: "I¡¦m sorry, chere"

But he wasn¡¦t. Not in the way she wanted, not because he thought he was responsible, but because he felt bad for her. He was looking at her with those unnatural red eyes trying to connect with her through sympathy, a sympathy she despised. A sympathy that sickened her for its trivialness, for its unimportance when it all came down to it, when it came down to the fact that her parents were dead and never coming back.

No. Not yet. She¡¦d journeyed to this time for a reason. Here, they were not dead. Here, they had a chance.

"Don¡¦t you understand yet?" she asked him.

He watched her with wary eyes, long bangs falling into his them. Here, he was what he thought of himself as, and he obviously still identified with his hairstyle before his last run-in with Sinister. He was also wearing his traditional X-Men costume, fuchsia spandex, trenchcoat and all. Strange that he¡¦d express himself this way when he had been so many others things in his life.

She took his silence as a negative response. "I came back here from the future to stop the War from happening. I was trained to do this. A whole organization was behind me, trusting me to fulfill my mission, to kill you. I can lock onto a person¡¦s consciousness and pull myself into them, leaving my own body behind." She paused to shrug in a very non-casual matter.

His arched eyebrows were crinkling his forehead. "So, can you enter anyone¡¦s body, even now?"

"No." She shook her head, frustrated with him. "Once I find a host and enter the mind my perception is blocked, except to detect my own body, and when I came here to the past those ties were broken too." Even as she said it she wondered why she was telling him all this. Why was it so important that he understand? Even now, when she had finally taken the control she should have taken when she first entered his body, she felt an obligation to him. It sickened and confused her all at once. Such was the price she had to pay for sharing a mind with another so closely that it felt like her own.

The demon eyes had a distant expression. He seemed to be thinking about something. He focused on her again. "You saved me in Antarctica, I know dat. But what about after Sinister?"

She scowled. Her cheeks felt hot and she was actually embarrassed. He had just pointed out her greatest moments of weakness, twice in one sentence.

He must have seen the confirmation in her expression. "You really don¡¦ have a connection t¡¦ Sinister, do you?"

She didn¡¦t answer again, not wanting to make this easy for him. She wasn¡¦t even sure why she was allowing him to ask so many questions.

"And m¡¦ power? I should be blowing up everyt¡¦ing around me wit¡¦ my Omega capabilities unleashed. But I ain¡¦t." His voice was gaining force and confidence as the pieces slowly came together in his head. "Dat¡¦s your work, isn¡¦ it."

A pause.

"If I had my full powers, everybody around me would be in danger. Y¡¦ don¡¦ want nobody to get hurt. Dat¡¦s why when de injury in my arm almos¡¦ caused dat girl to die, y¡¦ healed me."

She could see the information empowering him, in his stature, his expression, hear it in his voice. He was feeling more comfortable now, not as off-balance as he was when he had no idea what was going on. She couldn¡¦t afford to let him feel confident because then he became dangerous. This had gone too far. He knew enough, enough to appease the part of her that felt connected to him, enough to be too much. "You are a danger whether you have your full powers or not."

He seemed to digest that for a moment, to consider how much of what she had said he believed, and how much he would take seriously. And then, with movements so fast and agile that only he could perform them, he dove toward her.

And touched her.

******

A quicksand of colors and feeling, images and impressions surrounded him, sucking him into another consciousness. He fought to hold onto his sense of self while the sense of another filled and encircled him. He had taken another gamble, knowing he had nothing left, seeing in her demeanor that she wasn¡¦t going to answer any more questions. But he¡¦d needed to know.

Why?

Why had she allowed him to live? Everything she had told him and showed him indicated that there was no reason for her not to kill him.

She was everywhere, her essence surrounding him, pulling him in all different directions and showing him her whole life spread out at once, twirled into a winding strand stretching out in both directions. Any memory she had was at his easy reach, was right there for him to touch as he had touched her, was right there for him to make his own without her being able to do anything about it.

So, was he a rapist now?

Of all things Remy LeBeau had even been in life, and he had been quite a few things, he had never been a rapist.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. This was the future they were talking about, the survival of the X-Men. He knew she had told him the truth so far, could feel that much directly from their connection, but the puzzle still didn¡¦t fit together right, there were still those few pieces that refused to link up correctly.

He drifted along the winding string of memories, followed it back, looking for the cold, desolate, familiar chill that he would never forget. It wasn¡¦t hard to spot, standing out as a white spot on the timeline of colors, brighter because of its significance. He gravitated toward it, willing that he should come closer to the memory until he was flowing into it with the essence of his mind to be overwhelmed by her, by her perception, her personality:

It takes her a while to remember that she is not him, that she is a separate being with a distinctive mind. It takes her even longer to separate the two and remember who she is. What her mission is.

******

He woke in the darkness, and for a moment he believed that he was in his room with the lights off, lying on his bed.

Strange that there would be fog in his room and that it would have a greenish tinge. He rolled over, moaning softly. There was a dull pounding in his head and a sense of scrambled thoughts. It must have been a hard day. Maybe he had gotten drunk. He couldn¡¦t remember.

There was a distant voice yelling at him. "Get up!" it exclaimed from far away. He rolled over again. No nausea. Maybe he wasn¡¦t drunk. The voice was getting more persistent, closer, and he wondered who it belonged to. It was angry and female. It yelled again. Not just angry, furious. Only one person he knew that had a temper like that. Rogue.

Maybe it might be a good idea to get up. He didn¡¦t want an ice-cold drop in the lake to be his wake up call.

He blinked. Once, twice. Still darkness. Were his eyes lingering closed? He tried again. Nothing. His specially adapted eyes should be able to cut through the dark like a cat. Was he blind?

There was still that fog clouding his view of nothing. Maybe he was dead.

"Get up now or you¡¦ll no longer have that option!!!"

He turned to the voice, keeping his eyes in what he thought was the open position. He was met by a green silhouette. A female silhouette. Slightly angular, more so than he remembered Rogue being, but still with the tell-tale curves. The hands were on the hips and she didn¡¦t look very happy. He wondered what he had done. No doubt, it was somehow his fault that she was angry.

He grinned. Remy, you scoundrel, you.

"Stop smiling!" she shrieked. The green eyes were vivid in the shadows.

Had to be Rogue.

And then there was a sharp pain in his head, like an electric shock running through his skull and rattling around, sparking thought processes into ignition, shocking him into awareness.

The pain cut off abruptly and he sat up, gasping reflexively. The face staring at him was clearer now. Short black hair, young diamond-cut features. Not Rogue.

"Wha--?" he muttered weakly. "What happened?"

He briefly looked over his body, taking account that everything was still attached. He was dressed in his X-uniform, trench coat laid out on the floor under him. If the solid black surface could be called a floor. It was more of an emptiness that happened to be impermeable.

Her chiseled stare brought his focus back to her. "I suppose it¡¦s easy to forget stealing one¡¦s mind. It¡¦s in your nature. Not only are you a thief, but your girlfriend is a mind-raper too."

Shock, indignation, and then anger reached up in a knot in his throat. He came to his feet. "You better watch your words girl, or you ain¡¦t gonna have many more o¡¦ dem." Of course she knew exactly what to say to get him riled up. She lived in his mind. It was slowly coming back to him.

She laughed bitterly. The sound ended, cut short unnaturally. Her stare became steady. "I¡¦d like to see you try."

He was silent, not exactly sure how he would carry through on his threat. He was startled to remember what had happened, him touching her, falling into her mind, Antarctica¡¦ The reason she hadn¡¦t killed him. Some of his anger softened.

"Y¡¦ left me no choice. I needed t¡¦ know why you let me live an¡¦ you weren¡¦t going to tell me de answer."

She scoffed. "I left you no choice? Just like you, Witness, take what you want without considering the people you hurt to do it."

"You know dat¡¦s not true," he said softly. "Else, you wouldn¡¦t have saved me."

She took her turn at silence.

He decided to push the point. "You wanted me t¡¦ understand. Didn¡¦t you? Now I do."

Her head shook slowly. "You understand nothing," she hissed.

No one said anything for a while. He wasn¡¦t sure how long. There was no concept of time here. He considered closing the distance between them, but after the way he had just violated her, he decided that might not be the best idea. He took a breath. "I ain¡¦t de Witness, an¡¦ you know it. I ain¡¦t de man dat killed your parents."

She scowled at him and added, "Yet."

"Non." He shook his head. "It don¡¦ have to be dat way. Not now. You came back t¡¦ change t¡¦ings, and jus¡¦ by you being here de future may be different."

"¡¦May be different?¡¦ That¡¦s not good enough. I need an absolution. I can¡¦t take the chance." Black, straight strands fell across her face. Her arms were crossed and her weight rested evenly on both legs.

"You have an absolution. You have my word. I ain¡¦t gonna let myself become de Witness, not after what you showed me." He hoped his words were as coaxing as he¡¦d intended. He hoped they sounded true, as true as he believed they were.

A scoff. A laugh. And then a straight face. It was disconcerting the way she did that. "I¡¦m sure I can trust you."

She knew him. She knew him better than anybody ever had. And she hated him more than anybody, but even she had to admit there was a shred of decency in him. "You don¡¦ have to trust me. You jus¡¦ have to look at me. Your mind is linked to mine. You know I¡¦m telling de truth. I know you can feel it, jus¡¦ like I can feel de pain from you."

That stunted her. A pause, then finally, suspiciously: "What do you propose?"

"An alliance."

Her head tilted with a sardonic look.

"I listen to your warnings. No more jobs with New Son. An¡¦ I do de best I can to make sure de future you know doesn¡¦ happen." He shrugged. "Dat¡¦s all I can offer."

She seemed to consider. "It may be too late. You just finished a job for New Son." Disgust, dripping over the words.

"Den we in hot water already. Paralyzing me ain¡¦t gonna help. I can¡¦ do anyt¡¦ing to undo the damage looking up at the ceiling o¡¦ my room."

"No, you can¡¦t." Her eyes flashed, and she paused a moment to think. "You will never touch me again, or you will go to sleep and never wake up. Do we understand each other?"

He nodded. "Oui, perfectly."

"Watch your step, Rapist." She smiled wickedly. "I¡¦m watching, I¡¦m always watching."

He never got the chance to react to the threat. Cotton filled his head, the fog thickened and her body became a silhouette that soon faded with the rest. And then he was traveling through the road of his mind to blessed consciousness.

*******

She¡¦d cut a deal with the Witness. She would have never thought it would come to that when she had accepted this mission to come back in time. She would have never thought herself so weak.

She cringed. He had touched her, entered her mind uninvited. She felt dirty, vulnerable, like her whole life had been rolled out for the enemy to see. She rubbed her arms, trying to get rid of the grimy feeling, as she left the dream-state fading behind her. Time to go back to her corner of his mind.

Maybe she had just been abused so much in life that she was used to it. Maybe she didn¡¦t know how to react anymore, how to fight back. Maybe she had been broken.

She¡¦d cut a deal with the Witness. What was she thinking? How could his mind really have so much influence over her?

Sometimes she wondered who she was, who she had been. Sometimes she forgot.

She felt so tired, coming off the peak of her confrontations with the object of her nightmares. So tired.

And in the night of another¡¦s mind, her form slowly diffused, spreading a gentle, calm green mist.