Call Back Yesterday

Pieces of Cinnamon and Roses

This is how life as Remy knew it ended.

May 11, 2005. Somehow, Magneto and his merry band of mutant guerrilla fighters found Grey who was undead just like Remy said she would be. They marched east towards New York. What Magneto didn't crumple, Pyro burned and Phoenix dissolved. It was real hard not to say "I told you so."

The price of his restraint? They dragged Remy into the Jet along with the X-Kids to stop the army. Even Xavier went, leaving the house and the remaining students to McCoy, a senior student named Neal Sharra and Worthington's kid, Warren. Ten of them against at least a hundred angry mutants and the National Guard, and Remy without an escape hatch. This couldn't end well.

"They've crossed the border. Idaho is reporting damage in the millions," Cyclops called out to the back.

"There go this year's supply of fries," Remy said. He shuffled his cards.

"Don't you take anything seriously?" Bobby bit out.

"Not if I can help it, cher." The cards spiralled over his head, each one landing, perfectly of course, in his empty hand.

"Oh yeah, worrying could give you wrinkles."

"Gotta keep pretty for the sugar mommas."

They barely made it over Pennsylvania airspace when the whole cabin groaned. Remy's attention snapped to the cockpit.

"That wasn't a good sound," said Bobby.

Logan swore creatively, continuously and loudly.

"Neither is that," Jubilee pointed out.

The jet moaned again accompanied by shuddering and clacking panels.

"Fucking planes." Logan gripped his armrests tightly enough to leave dents.

The world turned upside-down and for a couple seconds, Remy thought somehow the wormhole caught him up again but everyone else's screams and the acrid smell of gasoline put that theory to rest. The plane flipped and twisted, pitching Remy's kinaesthetic sense right into a blender.

"Hold on for emergency landing!" Cyclops shouted through the PA system.

"You can land like this?!" Logan shouted back.

The plane nosedived, still twisting. The combination of g-forces and spin was too much for Remy. His eyes rolled back.

He came to, intact but with God's own migraine thumping against his brain case. Lord help him if he puked; he really hated puking.

"That's it, me and flying are obviously not meant to be," he heard Rogue say, "unless I absorb Superman's powers. You awake, Remy?"

"Yeah. Wish I wasn't though." He turned over onto his back. "Shit, girl, how'd we survive that?"

"Cyclops can land anywhere," said Bobby, loyal as ever.

"The problem is he can't land in one piece," said Logan.

Summers flipped him the finger. "You're welcome."

"Is everyone all right?" Xavier sent the message verbally and telepathically and the latter was never going to stop being creepy in Remy's opinion.

"My side really hurts," said Rogue. "It hurts to breathe."

Bobby rushed to her side. "Let me see." A panel off the plane slammed into him before he could stand.

"They're here!" Munroe cried out.

The war began.

Remy had no intention of hanging around and getting dead. No, sir, he wanted out of there as soon and as unhurt as possible. But he had to make sure Grey got offed and he had to do it without catching her attention because people in her line of sight had a bad habit of turning into dust. Problem was he couldn't figure it out. As Phoenix, Grey was Fort Knox, the White House and a nuclear warhead silo smushed into one hot package.

This was why Doomsday Logan couldn't change the timeline. She was too powerful. The minute Xavier and Summers made their move, they'd turn into ash and there was nothing Remy could do about it.

However, Summers evidently thought the power of his fucking hard-on could do something about it. He broke out of rank to stand in front of the Phoenix.

"Jean!" he yelled. "Jean, it's me!"

Remy took a knee to mutter, "She knows you who are, idiot. Don't mean she won't dust you." Another three mutants charged him, yanking his attention from the ensuing drama. He was tiring out, charging took longer and his hits weren't as effective. How long had they been fighting? Magneto's army seemed never ending. Besides that fool Summers, he had no idea where everyone else was or even if they were alive. Fuck Doomsday Logan and his wart-ridden face anyway.

Summers kept jawing, kept heading straight for point zero. "Jean, I know you're in there. Please, talk to me!"

They were determined to make this hard! Kill the unstoppable force, save the stupid boyfriend and the old man in a wheelchair in the middle of a battlefield. Remy took a cleansing breath before running out of his nice, safe hidey-hole. All the better the yank that fool in love out of the line of fire.

"What do you think you're doing?" Summers demanded.

"Saving your life," Remy said. "My ticket out of here remember?"

"To hell with you! That's my wife!"

"No, that's the crazy person in your fiancée's body."

"I can get her back."

"Then you as crazy as she is. What good are you to anyone dead, hein?"

Summers' lips tightened, the furrow between his brows deepening. Remy started to cajole some more but stillness dropped over the other man's body. The lines from his forehead smoothed and the tension in his shoulders visibly loosened. "You're right," he said.

"I... am. Sho'."

"Because of her telepathy, her awareness is through the roof but she can get distracted. It's the nature of her condition. We need her occupied." Summers looked away. A second later, Xavier's voice reverberated in Remy's head. ::I'm here, Cyclops. Everyone is telepathically connected as you instructed.::

::Good,:: said Cyclops and whoa this who brain talking thing was crazy. ::Professor, we all need to be telepathically shielded as well as possible, as close as shut out as you can make it against the Phoenix. I know that'll take a lot of concentration so Shadowcat, you're in charge of keeping him safe. Stay in contact with him, stay intangible. Everyone else, attack her in twos, guerrilla-style. Keep the other soldiers and mutants away if you can but the focus is keeping each other alive and clearing the way for Wolverine. Wolverine, you have to stay in her line of sight more than the rest of us. She has to think you're the main attack front.::

::Who is it really?:: asked Logan.

::Me. Through the professor.::

::Remy told us she has the ability to control your blasts,:: said Munroe.

::Not if she's sedated.:: Summers turned to Remy and held up two cardboard packet of pills. ::You're the thief. I need you to steal injectible versions of Jean's meds from the clinic. This is olanzapine. This is risperidone. They'll probably come in powder form so grab a bottle of water, along with syringes and needles. Big needles.::

::Try to find some pentobarbital as well,:: added Xavier. ::A combination of physical sedation and antipsychotic therapy ought to slow her down.::

::Olanzapine, risperidone, pentobarbital, needles, water,:: Remy repeated.

::Storm, give him cover,:: said Summers. ::Shadowcat, you'd better be with the professor right now. Everyone else, fall out!::

Heartily glad to be out of the major fire fight, Remy blew a hole into the building instead of picking the lock. Hey, not like anyone would notice considering everything else was blowing up. He grabbed the nearest flunky and threw her up the wall, his bo against her neck. "Tell me where you keep the antipsychotics."

"Th-third floor."

"And the stairs are?"

"Around the c-corner. T-to the r-right."

"Thanks, chere. Just for the record, it ain't for me."

She didn't look like she believed him. Another handful of cards cleared the hallway security on the way to the stairs. Screams and a loud bang shook the walls. Gun-toting cowboys poured out of the woodwork. Remy flattened himself in a doorway, letting the canon fodder go to their doom. Fewer people in his way to the meds.

The storage room was empty. Boxes in shrink-wrap lay in low stacks of five. Remy quickly scanned the stickers on the front. By the seventh stack, he caught gold: risperidone. Drawing a knife from his belt, he ripped the box open and took a couple boxes. The next stack over held olanzapine; he took the same number. Next, to find needles and water.

::Gambit,:: Cyclops' voice shattered his concentration.

::Do not do that again without warning.::

::We're a little strained out here. You'll have to mix and draw the medication yourself.::

::Sure, 'cause I go medical training.::

::Only olanzapine has to be reconstituted. Use the syringe to put ten millilitres of water in the container; sterile saline if you can find it but water will have to do if you can't. Shake the bottle like orange juice then draw out two millilitres into each syringe.::

::Yeah, yeah, I can figure it out. Just make you y'all're in fit shape to give it to her 'cause there's no chance in hell I'm getting close enough to give her the shot.::

He found the clinic by looking for the most lab coats running then going back the way the came. The jackpot room wielded shelves of syringes, needles, sterile saline and sedatives. A soldier double-backed, catching him as he entered the room. Remy slammed the business end of his bo in the man's nose, whirled around to smack him again on the head then kicked his kidneys for good measure. The soldier's piece clattered to one side. Remy picked it up, clicked the safety on and stuffed it behind his back. Just in case.

He drew and capped each med steadily; he'd lied about his past experience with the stuff. Back on the Island, he charmed some of the doctors into letting him help in the clinic in exchange for good behaviour. He'd learned schedules that way. There were different colours of masking tape, too. Remy wrapped the antipsychotic needles in red and the sedatives in blue.

Outside, the island looked more like Armageddon than ever. Remy waited for Summers' tell-tale red optic blasts before charging out into the battlefield. Thankfully, the man wasn't too far away. He used upturned trucks and chunks of wall as cover.

"Special delivery," he panted, landing beside Summers. He held the syringes out.

Summers plucked half of them then said, "Give the rest to Wolverine. He'll be the backup."

"'Cause it's so easy to run across a battlefield ." But he hauled ass 'cause talking got you killed when an all-powerful telekinetic was bent on world domination.

Logan needed a little more explanation about the medication. "I'd feel better if we had those Cure guns to fire instead of having to get close to her."

"You ain't; Summers is."

"That boy's gonna get himself killed."

"That's why you're Plan B."

He almost laughed. "That's his plan? How'd he end up team leader?"

"I figure he got it since he looks the best in them tight leather pants."

Logan did a double-take. "LeBeau, if I die with the mental image of you and Summers bumping uglies, I'm going to fucking haunt you for the rest of your goddamn life."

"Aww, jealous, cupcake?" He rolled away before Logan could come up with a retort.

At that exchange, everything blurred into a fog of explosives, chunks of dirt and a low level roar that could have been the ocean or the armies. Remy stopped processing anything more until he spotted Summers flinging himself at Grey, his arm bent back. She began to turn. Remy threw handfuls of charged gravel at her. Simultaneously, Logan ran at her, roaring. Summers sank a syringe in her upper thigh. Shrieking her displeasure, she shook him off before he could inject the second. Rasputin came to his teacher's rescue. Logan slammed the other needle in her other leg. This time, Grey kicked him off, sending him nearly off the Island.

::It's not enough,:: Remy overheard Summers think.

Munroe cried out, ::Scott, don't!:: but Summers had already popped out of his foxhole, a syringe in each hand. Grey turned. She raised her hands. Ocean water, already forming an unnatural twenty-foot wall around the island, proceeded to boil away. Summers flicked his visor open. His optic blasts nearly pushed Grey back but she caught herself and raised a hand to ward the beams away. She didn't see him thumb the caps off the syringes. She couldn't stop him from injecting her in each leg. With a screech that was very nearly a bellow, she fell to the ground.

Summers fell down beside her, panting. He gathered his twitching body in his arms. To Remy's surprise, Grey didn't dust him. Instead, she clutched his neck, her breathing ragged and faint. They touched foreheads.

"Hey you," Remy heard her whisper.

"Hey yourself," said Summers. He pulled her tighter and even Remy, who thought he had no shame, felt the need to look away.

Instead, he tallied his body parts, the bits left unhurt since that was the shorter list. His right knee felt good. He was pretty sure he still had all his teeth. Neither one of his eyeballs popped. The handgun pressed against the small of his back, cold as the grave. How long should he stall before informing Summers that he had to kill his girlfriend? For that matter, how the hell was he going to kill her with half a dozen of her best friends and two armies still going at it in the background?

The decision left his hands. Remy didn't catch that Grey said but Summers' voice increase in pitch and volume in response. "What do you mean-- For the love of mutants, you slogged through med school. For the love of our students, you stayed at Xavier's when you could've taken any position in any hospital in the world. Back in Alkali Lake, you sacrificed your life for the love of the X-Men. For love of me, you resurrected yourself. Now, for the love of the world you want to…Not know love? Jean, you are love!"

"If even one more person died at my hands... It's better this way. Quick. Clean. Final." She cupped his face. "I love--"

Summers reared back. "Fuck you!" Then he embraced her again, roughly, his face buried in her hair. "Don't you fucking do this to me again. Don't you dare! You're just sick... I love you, God damn it."

Firearms rose into the air. The one working cannon shook. Remy flipped quickly onto his knees, his eyes trained on that cannon even as he drew the gun out from behind his back. Everyone else was still fighting. They didn't notice this. He looked at Jean. Their eyes met briefly over Scott's shoulder and Remy felt the touch of fire and roses in his mind. She drew his attention to Scott then to a chunk of asphalt torn out of the ground, forming a shield. Remy nodded. Then Jean closed her eyes again.

"A part of me will always be with you, Scott," she whispered as the cannon and all the rifles pointed towards their little tableau.

"It's not enough."

Cinnamon and roses blasted Remy's senses and he leapt out of his crouch at Summers. The force pushed the other man off his feet; Remy took advance of his shock to fling him into a fireman's carry, one arm and leg trapped to keep his struggles to a minimum. Summers had to be shouting but Remy couldn't hear it 'cause a hundred rifles and a cannon went off. Heat, shrapnel and an inhuman cry blew them behind the asphalt outcropping.

Logan told him later that he gathered five pieces of the body altogether. Remy developed a life-long revulsion to scent of cinnamon and roses.