Persistence of Memory
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X-Men - Animated Series (all) › General
Rating:
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Category:
X-Men - Animated Series (all) › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
57
Views:
7,457
Reviews:
68
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own X-Men Evolution, or any of the characters from it. I make no money from from the writing of this story.
36
Persistence of Memory Chapter Thirty Six (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster
Witch and Uberbeta…You’re right. It is
Novampire! InterNutter, TC and Maxwell
Pink all get big, glittery, purple muse wings for archiving. J ProPhile gets extra dancing muses for being
all smutty (you must be andeepdeep by now…)
Readers/Revis: s: Okay, email
problem fixed. Huzzah! And those who still review, I adore
you. Even if you don’t review, I love
you because you read this fic. J
“You late,
chere.”
“Remy,”
Jubilee sighed, closing her eyes.
“Don’t scare me like that.”
“You left
yo’ bedroom door unlock.” He d oud out
of the shadows by her bed and crossed to her in three long steps, pinning her
against the door. “You used ta not.”
“That wouldn’t have stopped
you anyway,” she yawned, hugging him perfunctorily. “I’m so sleepy, Gumbo…”
kin kin wear
you out, cherie?”
She paused,
halfway across the room from him, and turned.
She had been on her way to change in the half-bath but his tone and
comment snapped her into focus. “Do you
think I’m flirting with him?”
“Did I say
dat?” he asked sulkily, leaning against her door.
“You asked
if Skin wore me out. Now if that’s not
insinuation, I don’t know what is.”
“It would
be insinuatin’ dat you an’ him fool ‘round, not flirt,” he corrected her
sharply.
“Remy
LeBeau! If you had a middle name, I’d use it!”[1] Jubilee stamped her foot for emphasis. “Angelo is an old, old friend. More of an acquaintance, if you want to
split hairs about it!”
“Why didn’
you ever tell me ‘bout him ‘fore?”
“I don’t
recall you telling me about Belladonna before…”
“Low blow,
chere!”
“Keep it up
and that’s the only blow you’ll be getting!”
He was
across the room and gripping her arms before she knew what he was about. “You threatenin’ me, p’tite?” he demanded,
pushing her against the wall next to her dresser.
“Let go of
me or you’ll be sneezing sparklies for a month!”
“Dis hurt?”
“No,” she
admitted reluctantly.
“Den lissen
up.” He lifted her so she was off her
feet and leaned into her so that she could not break free. “You been real bad ‘bout ignorin’ me lately
an’ forgettin’ me. Now I don’ like ta
tink I petty,” he paused for her snort of derision, “mais je pense que c’est
necessaire que tu arêtes avec Skin.”[2]
Jubilee
blinked, taking a moment to process the words and translate them with her
limited French. “Put me down,” she
growled.
“Non.”
“I don’t
believe this! You don’t trust me! You
think I’m going to go fuck around with Skin just because he’s part of my
past? You don’t trust me!”
“You
already say dat.”
She made an
inarticulate sound of rage and worked one foot free to kick him hard on the
thigh. He cursed and relinquished his
hold, allowing her to drop to the floor.
“What the Hell makes you think I’d ever do that to you? What makes you think I’m that kind of
person?” She shook her head and
regained her feet. “Damn, Remy…that hurts more than anything anyone has ever, ever
done to me.”
He bowed
his head, feeling a hot wash of shame color his features under her tearful
gaze. “Chere…”
“You don’t
trust me. You all but called me a liar
to my face. Damn it all, Remy….I love
you. I love you so much it hurts. I
love you so much it scares me. But
right now, I can’t even look at you.
Get out of my room.”
“P’tite…” He felt as if he were watching the scene
from the sidelines, trying to rewind things and start all over. He had felt uncommon jealousy, seeing
Jubilee bent close with Angelo, laughing over memories that she had never
shared with him, talking in some sort of shorthand about places they had both
been while living on the streets. Remy
had wanted to break in, lay claim to her in a way Angelo never could. “I need ta explain why…”
“Remy,” she
said, her hands fisted at her side, her head bowed with fat crocodile tears
dropping towards the floor. “Remy, I
think I can understand why you said something that hurt me because I know you
wouldn’t do it on purpose, not really.
But right now, I don’t want to hear it.
I need to be mad ou rou right now because you hurt me. I feel raw and burning and I hate it and if
you try to talk to me, I might yell at you.
Just…go.”
Remy opened
his mouth to say something but found words failed him for one of the few times
in his life. Instead, he reached out
and tugged a pink-tipped lock of her hair and sighed. Finally, he said softly, “Je t’adore, je t’aime…pour toujours.”[3]
“Go!” Jubilee was quite proud of herself—she did
not s off officially crying until he shut the door behind him on his way
out.
Pietro
stretched slowly, easing out from under Tarot’s arm. She had a habit of gripping him tightly when they slept in the
same bed and woe be to him if he even tried to go to the bathroom when she
wanted to cuddle. He let out a shaky
breath of relief when she did not wake as he finally freed himself of her
grasp, slipping a pillow under her arm in his place. It works on television…maybe it’ll work in real life. He paused at the door, listening to her
breathe, and for a moment pondered their relationship and it’s nonstatus. She refused to be called his girlfriend and
never referred to their relationship outside of the bedroom in terms other than
“it”, “that” or “Pietro, you idiot!” He
sighed inwardly. He really could do
better… Tarot snuffled softly and he
decided to make tracks, the door shutting behind him with a barely audibllicklick. Pietro blurred down the hall and
then down the stairs to the main part of the house, trying to put some distance
between him and Tarot’s potential awakening.
After a minute or two of careful silence during which he became sure the
red head did not wake up, Pietro let out a relieved breath and, with more determination
than he would have thought possible, he strode down the hall towards the room
he now knew to be Magneto’s suite, a place the man never left if he could help
it, now that he was growing ill. It was
a thick dark within the room, any light that might have trickled in from the
outside smothered by thick velvet curtains and dark colored walls. It smelled of Magneto, a scent that
triggered memories of childhood in Pietro’s back brain, of a man who would tell
him long stories and encourage his nascent differences, actually cheering when
he came into full possession of his powers.
The smell made him nostalgic, homesick for a father he now thought he
had lost, lost to his own grandiose plans and machinations.
Reluctant to turn on a light,
Pietro finally gave in and switched on a small Tiffany lamp on Magneto’s desk,
bumping a pencil cup in the process. The
tiny scrape of a noise resounded in Pietro’s ears and he had a sudden vision of
Magneto bursting through some hidden door and striking him down for insolent
snooping. No such retribution came so
he continued his gentle perusal of his father’s desk. He was not sure what he was looking for, but he was desperate for
knowledge, desperate for some idea why Firestar and Psylocke were so intent on
leaving when they otherwise seemed to be helping Magneto with this new version
of Cerebro. He moved around to the
other side of the desk and frowned at the sight that met him there. An old black and white photo of Magneto and
Professor Xavier, the one Magneto had been so intent on a few days before,
stared up at him from the desktop. It
was no longer framed and seemed to be more frayed than was possibly healthy for
the photo. Picking it up and flipping
it over, as one tends to do when offered a photograph, Pietro frowned. Scrawled across the back was a series of
faint pencil marks that were unidentifiable in the dim light. Looks like math from Hell, he finally
decided. Voices in the hall made him
freeze, then panic as he looked for an exit.
Fuck me running backwards! His only exit was the door he had
entered, unless he wanted to go out of the window and into the cold night
wearing nothing but boxer shorts.
“Stay here,” Firestar said sternly
as she opened the door.
Pietro belatedly ducked under the
desk but knew he was screwed.
“What are you doing in here?” she
demanded, reaching across to pull him up by his hair. “Where’s Magneto?”
“In bed, I guess. It’s after midnight. And he’s my father so I have every right to
be in here!”
Firestar snarled. “Blood relations do not have the right to
violate privacy!”
Pietro peered at her, feeling
something not quite right in her speech and actions. “Incubus?”
She flung him against the wall,
climbing over the desk immediately to grab him again. “Go get Magneto!”
“No,” Pietro spat. “Get him yourself. You’re his lackey.”
Firestar stiffened and frowned. The
inner struggle was writ large in her eyes.
“I’ve brought his associates.”
At this, two people entered,
looking alternately nervous and tired.
One, a man of little description, smiled thinly at Pietro. The other, a rather striking,
olive-complexioned woman with green eyes so striking Pietro could only stare,
fixed him with a dull gaze. “This is
Scatterbrain,” Firestar said dryly, pointing to the man. “He won’t tell me his real name. And this is Saint Anna.”[4]
“Right,”
Pietro drawled, dusting imaginary specks from his arms as Firestar released
him. “Scatterbrain. Saint Anna.”
“Quicksilver,”
Firestar snapped.
“Like
mercury?” the darker woman queried. “Why’s
that?”
“I’m fast,”
he said, smirking with some of his old bravado. “You work with my father?”
Scatterbrain’s
smile disappeared entirely. “Something
like that. Where is he?”
Pietro felt
something rush through him, burning and freezing at the same time, and Firestar
sagged visibly. Incubus had gone for
Magneto. “He’s on his way…” Surreptitiously, he slid his hand over the
photograph still over the desk, dragging it back to hide against his
thigh. “Um, I’ll just go get dressed…”
“No,”
Firestar gasped. “Wait with me. With us…”
“Okay…” Pietro looked from the two new people to the
red head clutching his arm. Why am I
always a softie for the red heads?
[1] Joke down
here is to decide on a name for your kid, stand on the back porch and holler it
out like you’re calling them for dinner. If it sounds good being shouted, then
that’s the one to go with. I think that’s
why we all get called two names down here.
[2] But I think it’s
necessary that you stop with Skin. A
bit stilted but…meh.
[3] I adore you,
I love you…for ever.
[4] http://www.uncannyxmen.net/db/characters/showquestion.asp?fldAuto=922
(Scatterbrain) and http://www.uncannyxmen.net/db/characters/showquestion.asp?fldAuto=905
(Saint Anna) Saint Anna has been with X
Force in some older comics and Scatterbrain is actually from Daredevil, older
issues. Both are Marvel so fair game
for my little AU-verse. Now I’ll tell
you up front (*ahem *) these are not going to be in other fics of mine and will
most likely be somt OOt OOC. Deal with
it.
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster
Witch and Uberbeta…You’re right. It is
Novampire! InterNutter, TC and Maxwell
Pink all get big, glittery, purple muse wings for archiving. J ProPhile gets extra dancing muses for being
all smutty (you must be andeepdeep by now…)
Readers/Revis: s: Okay, email
problem fixed. Huzzah! And those who still review, I adore
you. Even if you don’t review, I love
you because you read this fic. J
“You late,
chere.”
“Remy,”
Jubilee sighed, closing her eyes.
“Don’t scare me like that.”
“You left
yo’ bedroom door unlock.” He d oud out
of the shadows by her bed and crossed to her in three long steps, pinning her
against the door. “You used ta not.”
“That wouldn’t have stopped
you anyway,” she yawned, hugging him perfunctorily. “I’m so sleepy, Gumbo…”
kin kin wear
you out, cherie?”
She paused,
halfway across the room from him, and turned.
She had been on her way to change in the half-bath but his tone and
comment snapped her into focus. “Do you
think I’m flirting with him?”
“Did I say
dat?” he asked sulkily, leaning against her door.
“You asked
if Skin wore me out. Now if that’s not
insinuation, I don’t know what is.”
“It would
be insinuatin’ dat you an’ him fool ‘round, not flirt,” he corrected her
sharply.
“Remy
LeBeau! If you had a middle name, I’d use it!”[1] Jubilee stamped her foot for emphasis. “Angelo is an old, old friend. More of an acquaintance, if you want to
split hairs about it!”
“Why didn’
you ever tell me ‘bout him ‘fore?”
“I don’t
recall you telling me about Belladonna before…”
“Low blow,
chere!”
“Keep it up
and that’s the only blow you’ll be getting!”
He was
across the room and gripping her arms before she knew what he was about. “You threatenin’ me, p’tite?” he demanded,
pushing her against the wall next to her dresser.
“Let go of
me or you’ll be sneezing sparklies for a month!”
“Dis hurt?”
“No,” she
admitted reluctantly.
“Den lissen
up.” He lifted her so she was off her
feet and leaned into her so that she could not break free. “You been real bad ‘bout ignorin’ me lately
an’ forgettin’ me. Now I don’ like ta
tink I petty,” he paused for her snort of derision, “mais je pense que c’est
necessaire que tu arêtes avec Skin.”[2]
Jubilee
blinked, taking a moment to process the words and translate them with her
limited French. “Put me down,” she
growled.
“Non.”
“I don’t
believe this! You don’t trust me! You
think I’m going to go fuck around with Skin just because he’s part of my
past? You don’t trust me!”
“You
already say dat.”
She made an
inarticulate sound of rage and worked one foot free to kick him hard on the
thigh. He cursed and relinquished his
hold, allowing her to drop to the floor.
“What the Hell makes you think I’d ever do that to you? What makes you think I’m that kind of
person?” She shook her head and
regained her feet. “Damn, Remy…that hurts more than anything anyone has ever, ever
done to me.”
He bowed
his head, feeling a hot wash of shame color his features under her tearful
gaze. “Chere…”
“You don’t
trust me. You all but called me a liar
to my face. Damn it all, Remy….I love
you. I love you so much it hurts. I
love you so much it scares me. But
right now, I can’t even look at you.
Get out of my room.”
“P’tite…” He felt as if he were watching the scene
from the sidelines, trying to rewind things and start all over. He had felt uncommon jealousy, seeing
Jubilee bent close with Angelo, laughing over memories that she had never
shared with him, talking in some sort of shorthand about places they had both
been while living on the streets. Remy
had wanted to break in, lay claim to her in a way Angelo never could. “I need ta explain why…”
“Remy,” she
said, her hands fisted at her side, her head bowed with fat crocodile tears
dropping towards the floor. “Remy, I
think I can understand why you said something that hurt me because I know you
wouldn’t do it on purpose, not really.
But right now, I don’t want to hear it.
I need to be mad ou rou right now because you hurt me. I feel raw and burning and I hate it and if
you try to talk to me, I might yell at you.
Just…go.”
Remy opened
his mouth to say something but found words failed him for one of the few times
in his life. Instead, he reached out
and tugged a pink-tipped lock of her hair and sighed. Finally, he said softly, “Je t’adore, je t’aime…pour toujours.”[3]
“Go!” Jubilee was quite proud of herself—she did
not s off officially crying until he shut the door behind him on his way
out.
Pietro
stretched slowly, easing out from under Tarot’s arm. She had a habit of gripping him tightly when they slept in the
same bed and woe be to him if he even tried to go to the bathroom when she
wanted to cuddle. He let out a shaky
breath of relief when she did not wake as he finally freed himself of her
grasp, slipping a pillow under her arm in his place. It works on television…maybe it’ll work in real life. He paused at the door, listening to her
breathe, and for a moment pondered their relationship and it’s nonstatus. She refused to be called his girlfriend and
never referred to their relationship outside of the bedroom in terms other than
“it”, “that” or “Pietro, you idiot!” He
sighed inwardly. He really could do
better… Tarot snuffled softly and he
decided to make tracks, the door shutting behind him with a barely audibllicklick. Pietro blurred down the hall and
then down the stairs to the main part of the house, trying to put some distance
between him and Tarot’s potential awakening.
After a minute or two of careful silence during which he became sure the
red head did not wake up, Pietro let out a relieved breath and, with more determination
than he would have thought possible, he strode down the hall towards the room
he now knew to be Magneto’s suite, a place the man never left if he could help
it, now that he was growing ill. It was
a thick dark within the room, any light that might have trickled in from the
outside smothered by thick velvet curtains and dark colored walls. It smelled of Magneto, a scent that
triggered memories of childhood in Pietro’s back brain, of a man who would tell
him long stories and encourage his nascent differences, actually cheering when
he came into full possession of his powers.
The smell made him nostalgic, homesick for a father he now thought he
had lost, lost to his own grandiose plans and machinations.
Reluctant to turn on a light,
Pietro finally gave in and switched on a small Tiffany lamp on Magneto’s desk,
bumping a pencil cup in the process. The
tiny scrape of a noise resounded in Pietro’s ears and he had a sudden vision of
Magneto bursting through some hidden door and striking him down for insolent
snooping. No such retribution came so
he continued his gentle perusal of his father’s desk. He was not sure what he was looking for, but he was desperate for
knowledge, desperate for some idea why Firestar and Psylocke were so intent on
leaving when they otherwise seemed to be helping Magneto with this new version
of Cerebro. He moved around to the
other side of the desk and frowned at the sight that met him there. An old black and white photo of Magneto and
Professor Xavier, the one Magneto had been so intent on a few days before,
stared up at him from the desktop. It
was no longer framed and seemed to be more frayed than was possibly healthy for
the photo. Picking it up and flipping
it over, as one tends to do when offered a photograph, Pietro frowned. Scrawled across the back was a series of
faint pencil marks that were unidentifiable in the dim light. Looks like math from Hell, he finally
decided. Voices in the hall made him
freeze, then panic as he looked for an exit.
Fuck me running backwards! His only exit was the door he had
entered, unless he wanted to go out of the window and into the cold night
wearing nothing but boxer shorts.
“Stay here,” Firestar said sternly
as she opened the door.
Pietro belatedly ducked under the
desk but knew he was screwed.
“What are you doing in here?” she
demanded, reaching across to pull him up by his hair. “Where’s Magneto?”
“In bed, I guess. It’s after midnight. And he’s my father so I have every right to
be in here!”
Firestar snarled. “Blood relations do not have the right to
violate privacy!”
Pietro peered at her, feeling
something not quite right in her speech and actions. “Incubus?”
She flung him against the wall,
climbing over the desk immediately to grab him again. “Go get Magneto!”
“No,” Pietro spat. “Get him yourself. You’re his lackey.”
Firestar stiffened and frowned. The
inner struggle was writ large in her eyes.
“I’ve brought his associates.”
At this, two people entered,
looking alternately nervous and tired.
One, a man of little description, smiled thinly at Pietro. The other, a rather striking,
olive-complexioned woman with green eyes so striking Pietro could only stare,
fixed him with a dull gaze. “This is
Scatterbrain,” Firestar said dryly, pointing to the man. “He won’t tell me his real name. And this is Saint Anna.”[4]
“Right,”
Pietro drawled, dusting imaginary specks from his arms as Firestar released
him. “Scatterbrain. Saint Anna.”
“Quicksilver,”
Firestar snapped.
“Like
mercury?” the darker woman queried. “Why’s
that?”
“I’m fast,”
he said, smirking with some of his old bravado. “You work with my father?”
Scatterbrain’s
smile disappeared entirely. “Something
like that. Where is he?”
Pietro felt
something rush through him, burning and freezing at the same time, and Firestar
sagged visibly. Incubus had gone for
Magneto. “He’s on his way…” Surreptitiously, he slid his hand over the
photograph still over the desk, dragging it back to hide against his
thigh. “Um, I’ll just go get dressed…”
“No,”
Firestar gasped. “Wait with me. With us…”
“Okay…” Pietro looked from the two new people to the
red head clutching his arm. Why am I
always a softie for the red heads?
[1] Joke down
here is to decide on a name for your kid, stand on the back porch and holler it
out like you’re calling them for dinner. If it sounds good being shouted, then
that’s the one to go with. I think that’s
why we all get called two names down here.
[2] But I think it’s
necessary that you stop with Skin. A
bit stilted but…meh.
[3] I adore you,
I love you…for ever.
[4] http://www.uncannyxmen.net/db/characters/showquestion.asp?fldAuto=922
(Scatterbrain) and http://www.uncannyxmen.net/db/characters/showquestion.asp?fldAuto=905
(Saint Anna) Saint Anna has been with X
Force in some older comics and Scatterbrain is actually from Daredevil, older
issues. Both are Marvel so fair game
for my little AU-verse. Now I’ll tell
you up front (*ahem *) these are not going to be in other fics of mine and will
most likely be somt OOt OOC. Deal with
it.