Call Back Yesterday

This is How Remy Began to Die

Remy fell in love by degrees. He'd wanted Rogue from the very first time he set eyes on her; what hot-blooded, heterosexual man wouldn't? They drove around every chance they got, in one bike or two. Some days they had specific destinations: a seafood shack in Maine, a swimming hole in North Carolina, a race through Manhattan. Some days, they picked a direction by spinning a bottle on the drive way. Some trips they talked, some they didn't, some they fought, some they didn't. She brought him funny little things: Indian food recipes from the internet, albums from Dave Grohl's band, leaves gone purple instead of red. He collected sea glass to spruce up the emeralds on her bracelet, got drunk with her when she and Bobby finally officially broke up, collected postcards of interesting tourist spots for her travel journal. How could he keep from falling? Not that he admitted it, even to himself.

Christmas day brunch, she pulled him away from the kids table with a box hidden behind her back. "I have something just for you," she said, mischief lighting her eyes.

"I see. I been a very good boy but now I think I may have to give it all up." He opened the box. In it was an oversized cupcake with lemon yellow icing and rainbow sprinkles. An unlit candle stuck out from the centre. "I don't get it."

"It's a birthday cake, silly."

"I told you, I don't got a birthday. Least ways, not one I know about."

"I know. We should celebrate it anyway." A blush tinted her cheeks.

There. Right there. Remy's whole body double-clutched.

In contrast, him, Scotty and Ro became tight in one day. The mission was in Iowa, just outside Des Moines. The target was a bunch of mutant children under the doubtful protection of a hustler. He used their skills to steal, took a quarter of the cut and leaving the rest for the kids' necessity. The Friends of Humanity got involved half a second after their arrival and it turned into a siege: cops and FoH outside, them and the kids trapped in the basement of the condemned building. Funny how a punctured lung, a bad case of claustrophobia and a dozen crying kids drew people together. Not that they'd have bowling nights or anything. But he knew those two had his back no matter what and he'd do the same. Once in a while, during the tough missions or when they lost a kid to the meanness of the world, they shared stories. The three of them grew up rough, had to grow up rough.

He even had his own training squad sometimes, the smallest kids, the energy converters or the seniors who wanted-- needed-- to learn how to fight dirty. Just one more tie to the future. Some days he hoped Richards, Sue, Network and Doomsday Logan were wrong. More than any other place, this was home.

He and Ororo cooked on the same nights, sharing a taste for spicy food. Tired of his haranguing, she ordered him to list his favourite foods then taught him to cook each dish, a different one each night. His sensitive palette, able to differentiate between organic heirloom tomatoes and hothouse hydroponics, pleased her. He became her recipe taster, much to his delight.

"You grow chicory in that garden of yours?" he asked her one uncharacteristically lazy Sunday afternoon. Coffee steamed in their mugs as they monitored the children playing basketball.

"Yes. Do you crave a salad?"

"Naw, was thinking of teaching you a little something called café au lait. Knocks anything that passes for coffee 'round here, even Summers' brew. You make it with chicory root in the grounds."

Ro's eyes brightened. "I know that coffee! I grew up on that in North Africa."

He couldn't help but laugh. "You and me, we're friends with good taste, hein? Everyone outside of New Orleans wrinkles up their nose at the idea, no matter they hadn't tasted it. Like Starbucks is any better with them damn burnt beans."

That very evening, Ororo dug two of her chicory plants up, sliced them up and took them to a local artisan coffee shop with its own roaster. She brought her treasure home, nearly cackling with glee as she ran the roots through the spice grinder. Summers, who was physically incapable of turning down a cup of coffee, joined them in their experimental pot.

"Holy fuck!" came out of fearless leader's mouth.

Remy inhaled the richness before partaking. "Yeah, that's there's real coffee."

Ororo happily nodded, sipping at her cup as Summers repeated his expletive. "Delicious, is it not?"

"I may never go back," Summers said. "Why didn't you tell me about this before?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure. I suppose for a while, talking about home was too painful. After that, it just fell by the wayside."

"Jean would've loved this."

Remy noted Ororo's stiffness. "Yes," she said, slowly. "Yes, she would have."

They sipped the rest of the pot, blissful, finding peace.

This is how Remy began to die.

He leaned over the sink to brush his teeth. Pink foam dripped from his mouth. He gargled to clear it away; he knew he got a little enthusiastic with the dental hygiene. The rinse water came out pink tinged. He rinsed again. Blood gushed from his nose.

He contemplated hiding it but Sue Storm called a couple days later. "I'm seeing something alarming in your blood samples. Have you had any symptoms?"

"Why are they alarming?" he asked.

"The blood is thinner, less viscous. It's paler as well, probably because the cell count has decreased. I'd like to take just another sample today, just to make sure it's not a storage mistake."

"I'll go there," he said. He drove a car so Rogue wouldn't hear him leave.

Sue only took a smear of blood this time, enough for a slide which she prepped and studied as he waited. Her expression remained grave. "I want to test for neuropathies."

"Hein?"

"Your sense of touch. I want to see if it's deteriorated since our baseline measurements in May."

The good news: it was fine; the bad, it grew worse. Remy hid it until late that month when Summers caught him shaking the pins and needles from his hands. He lit a fire under Hank who took time off to work with Reed Richards. Rogue punched his chest and wouldn't talk to him until after dark, when she snuck into his room and crawled under his top blanket but over his flat sheet. Her presence cemented his decision.

"To hell with going back. I ain't going anywhere, chere. I stay with you and the school."

"Don't be stupid. You'll die."

"Ain't a guarantee I won't die when I go back. Hell, maybe I step in front of the bus the day after I go to '93. Maybe this is where I'm supposed to be."

"What part of 'you're going to die' are you not getting?" Rogue demanded, close to sobbing. "Last week, it was a nose bleed. Now it's losing sensation. It's coming on fast."

"I'd rather spend that time with you, not that lab."

"And I'd rather have you away, alive, than here and dying." She punched the closest pillow. "This is bullshit! It's not fair!"

No, it wasn't. Remy wasn't the type to rail to the fates though. He cupped the back of Rogue's head, pulling her closer, forcing her to lie on his chest. His "I love you" tangled in her hair.

"When you go back," she started to say but Remy interrupted.

"You mean, if I get back."

"When," Rogue stated firmly. "When you go back, you have to promise to be careful. There's no point keeping you alive here if you're going to get into some idiot scheme without any other X-Men getting your back."

"Now, what fun would that be, chere?"

She propped herself up on her elbows. "You have to promise. Meet a girl, live in a picket fence--"

"Never. I wait for you."

"Oh, sugar, that's sweet but you can't be by yourself for twenty years. You'll go nuts." She tried for a smile. "Remy Jr's going to wither."

"I'll wait," he said firmly. "Unless you can't see yourself with a middle-aged horn dog."

"I love you, sugar. You'll just be a little less Chad Michael Murray and a little more George Clooney."

"Eh, byen. Never did like Chad Michael Murray."

As he grew sicker, Hank and Richards worked harder, sleeping even less than Remy himself. They updated him every other day.

"These are our findings," Hank said. "Think of space-time as a long, rough braid of rope, so wide, it resembles a sheet."

It was a familiar speech. Nausea burbled up Remy's throat.

"An event at a certain year will cause another event further down the line which will then cause another event, ad infinitum. Should one aspect of that initiating event change, a strand, if you will, splits from the braid like a bead of mercury. It can become a separate entity but ultimately, certain outcomes must occur no matter the process."

"Network said her sister could see the alternate dimensions," said Remy. "That enough alternates that end happy would make the whole timeline end happy. That's what they were trying to make with everyone going back, to make lots most happy-ending dimensions than apocalyptic ones."

Richards frowned. "Their hypothesis seems fallacious. The universe is finite; there would not be enough material to support an infinite number of realities even if they were to eventually return to the main timeline."

"So you're saying it never mattered whether or not Jean, the professor and I died; 2013 will still have a world war and global climate change," said Summers who was sitting in on this session ostensibly out of curiosity, in reality, he wanted to make sure Remy stayed upright. If that didn't depress a man, Remy didn't know what could.

Hank tilted his head to one side. "Not precisely. Change enough events and the subsequent major event may not occur immediately. A new thread is created. For example, were Remy to return to 1993 and affect our lives at the point, a new thread would form. It would cause a great deal of upheaval and I certainly do not recommend it for the sake of preserving current rates of entropy but, ultimately whether it be one year or a hundred down the line, that strand will meet with the main lines and time will correct itself; that event will occur. Remy currently lives outside that braid. As such, his body is not stable."

"As soon as I go to '93, I'll be stable again," Remy said for clarification.

"Very likely," said Richards. "But expect side effects. You've been out of your native space-time for almost a year. Your body is suffering and may continue to suffer until it has acclimatised itself back to its native clock, so to speak."

"What kind of side effects?"

"Your current weakess, perhaps some memory or cognitive dysfunctions. It's really hard to say without experimental data. We should collect these notes into a more coherent volume, Dr. McCoy. It may mean that in the not so distant future, the time travel machine would not be so crude."

"Any of those side effects lethal?"

McCoy and Richards traded looks. "Not to our knowledge. But no procedure, especially one such as this, is without a chance of lethality."

This is how Remy said good-bye.

He woke up early on March 14, 2006 and bought five bouquets of flowers for Rogue's room, turning it into a riot of colours. He cleaned his bike, leaving care and feeding instructors to Scott. He helped Ororo transfer bean shoots from pots to plots in the greenhouse. He played Monkey Ball Party for three hours with the little kids, fighting off lethargy and aches. He accepted a beer from Logan, smoked a cigar out at the pool house and extracted a promise: Rogue had to live to the ripe of age of a hundred and one. He lay with Rogue on the roof of the school, tracing the bumps of her spine, his nose buried in her hair and told her, in as much detail as possible, how he imagined the rest of their lives together.

Then, Richards called and they climbed into a car headed for Wyoming County. The sphere was in the exact same place, unmoved or unmoveable. He kept an arm around Rogue as Richards injected a much larger microchip into his right wrist this time. "If I've done this right--"

"If?" Ororo crossed her arms. "We're supposed to trust our friend with an if?"

Remy squeezed her shoulder. "Maybe go back versus for sure dead. The odds were never good."

"The chip should be calibrated to the wormhole's exit into 1993," Richards continued. "Make sure you find someone to remove it as soon as you arrive. I'm afraid none of the material we have are one hundred percent rejection proof. I would have loved to study your older chip but considering the sensitivity of--"

Sue Storm cleared her throat.

"Erm. Yes. It's on a time release. It will start searching for frequencies as soon as it interacts with the sphere's communications system." Richards patted his shoulder. "Good luck."

Good-byes were uncomfortable. Remy had never been good at them, preferring to duck away before any real emotional outbursts. Summers apparently felt the same; he stood off to one side, arms crossed, still as could be. Hank shook his hand and said a bunch of five-syllable stuff that Remy didn't, couldn't, understand right now. Ororo and Rogue hugged him tight.

Hazmat suit, forty pound helmet, big metal sphere... Remy took one last look of home as the door slid down.