xp_logs | Lost In The Woods - Amanda, Remy

On the way back from leaving Selene at the bottom of the Atlantic, Pete and Amanda not-talk.

Selene was gone.

Amanda stared out of the window, watching New York slide by and trying to make sense of the night. Of the last eight months. Nothing she had believed was real, her choices had been based on lies, the people she'd trusted most had been dishonest... and she'd come so close to messing everything up.

She'd taken a life.

Pete was equally silent, had been since they'd left Strange at the docks, just as caught in his thoughts. Selene was triply-bound, with magic and a reinforced concrete coffin and finally by hundreds of feet of Atlantic Ocean. There had even been a metal plate welded to the top of the concrete box, directing anyone who found it to contact Dr. Stephen Strange on a certain phone number for a large reward - the sight of it had made her snort briefly with black humour. They'd thought of everything.

Except, perhaps, the idiot decisions of a emotionally fucked up teenage girl.

"I've got one question," she said, breaking the silence. "Meg being kidnapped... was that anything to do with you? Did you sell her off to make them trust you?"

"No."

A beat.

"No, I had nothing to do with that. The point was to keep you safe from those fucks. You and the rest of the kids."

"Safe." She repeated it flatly. The word stung. That was all what she'd wanted too.

Shrugging deeper into the coat he'd thrown at her - she was still wearing the Hellfire outfit and it wasn't exactly the warmest thing she'd ever worn - she looked out the window again. Flakes of snow were spiralling down, dusting the ground, sticking to the windscreen. Too much, there was too much to process, all her world was askew. Pete and Rom and Strange had all been in on it, they'd watched while she'd gotten herself deeper in the shite, hadn't stepped in, hadn't stopped her from... From what? Making her own choices, her own decisions? Pete and Rom had never been about that, she knew that. They'd had faith that she'd make the right choices, in the end. And she had. Eventually. Too bad it hadn't come before Alison had nearly been killed, before she'd had to kill Askani to save her.

All the Askani language was gone from her head, she realised.

"So, where now?" she asked. She could have meant any number of things and probably did.

"Fuck knows, but right now I never want to see Xavier's again. You want to jump on a plane back to London, forget all this shit ever happened? Pretend we never heard of the bald git or his fucking school and the little bastards in it?"

Pete pulled his cigarettes out of a pocket, and offered the pack to Amanda, before lighting one himself.

"It'd be so fucking easy. So fucking easy."

He glanced over at her.

"You think we've earned the easy way out?"

The gesture of offering her a smoke was so familiar it made her throat hurt. Taking one, she punched in the cigarette lighter on the dash, waiting for it to heat up. "You've probably earned it," she replied. "Me... there too much stuff I've left hanging. I should at least try and explain." The lighter popped out and she used it to light her own cigarette, the first one in what seemed like weeks. "'Sides, easy doesn't work, not for us."

He didn't answer that, and the silence deepened. Neither of them was ready for this conversation yet - maybe they never would be. Then Amanda broke the hush, sitting up a little straighter as she looked at something outside through the snow-streaked window. "Can we stop for a bit? There's something I have to do before I can go back."

One last confrontation.

Snow dusted the headstones and Amanda was glad of Pete's coat as she made her way to one particular grave. She had finally asked the location of Remy, but since then things had moved so fast there hadn't been time. Still, it seemed right that she go there tonight of all nights. She had a certain insight into stupid decisions after all.

The graveyard was cold and bleak; a cold wind hunting between the grey stones. It didn't take long to see him, a thin black figure against the off-white sky. He was leaning on that damned cane, eyes fixated on the grave. She hesitated, seeing the moment swell around them. It was a focus of eight months of questions, guilt and recriminations. On that snow dusted knoll, he stood, bent like a reed, a penitent before the grave.

"You going to spend de whole time down dere, chere?" His voice cut the emptiness, dispite the softness of his words.

"I should have known you'd be here," She replied quietly, shoving her hands into the pockets of the coat and making herself take the last few steps to stand beside Remy. She wasn't sure she could deal with this confrontation now, if ever - her nerves felt scraped raw, that innate sense of her mutant ability numbed, absent. Here and now, she truly was powerless and perhaps that was as it should be. Looking at the plain headstone, she ran over a hundred things she could say and discarded them all as pathetic. "You were right," she said at last, voice dead. "I fucked it up."

"Dat's right, you did." He agreed. He eyes drifted back to the gravestone. The lines in his face were harsh. Remy had looked eighteen coming back to the mansion, but the last year had aged him terribly. Pain and stress had etched years into his looks. "De question is what did you learn?"

She didn't answer right away, looking down at the grave. "You took the easy way out, you daft bastard," she said softly, almost inaudibly. "I wish..." She cut herself off, not wanting to make this about her selfishness. "There's no excuse for what I did," she said louder. "Going to Selene... doesn't matter why I did it. It was the worst fucking thing I could've done, and I got people killed tonight 'cause of it." Amanda laughed, a brief, hurt sound. "So, that line you were talking about... do you cross it when you kill someone? 'Cause if you do, then you might as well take me out here and now."

"It's not dat easy, 'manda. Remy killed more people den de Italian army. De question is de why and de what." Remy shook his head. For once, he was glad of the glasses. He had a glimmer of what had happened, and if it was true... He didn't know if he could survive it. "Did you cross dat line? I know you won't lie to me here."

"I wanted it to be me," she said softly, wrapping her arms around herself. "Selene wanted me to drain Jubilee completely, only I couldn't, not when it came down to it. And Selene... well, she didn't take it well, as you'd expect. Tried to take us both out. And there wasn't a fucking thing I could do about it." Another of those noises that wasn't quite a laugh, wasn't quite a whimper. "Alison did the hero thing, saved us both, only Selene drained her dry. I was ready to do what needed to be done, use meself, only Askani..." She lost the words for a moment, and breathed in deeply through her nose to regain control. "Askani told me to use her as a power source. And I did."

"But Tante pulled you back." Remy smiled as she gave him a stunned look. "You don't think dat she watching you, chere? Felt it right down to my bones when it happened. It was your friends dat pulled you back."

"Doesn't change things, Remy. I killed someone tonight. Used their life energy to bring Alison back. I did the thing I've never done, even at my worst. I've crossed that line, I killed someone and I don't see how I can ever come back from that!" She turned away from him, dropping to her knees in the snow, unable to face the blank stare of the glasses, not having the energy to hold herself up any more. "I wanted to pay the price like I was supposed to and I couldn't even do that!"

"A price paid is a price paid, 'manda." Remy finally turned from his immobile reflection. He reached down and pulled her to her feet. "Sacrifice isn't murder, chere. You know dat."

"How's it different to what I did for you? I took the life from someone else for the magic - that's wrong, isn't it? Yeah she said it was okay, but I took it all, left Nate in a fucking walking coma!" Despite herself she held onto his coatsleeves, holding herself upright. "Nothing makes sense any more and I don't know what I'm supposed to do!"

"Yes, you do." Remy reached down and took her, drew her into him. It was an isolated moment, caught against the chill of the night. "You know de difference between murder and sacrifice. You learned where right and wrong stop, 'manda. Nate made his choice, like you and dat Askani and Wisdom. Everyone make dere choice. You act on it."

Amanda held onto Remy's coat as if she felt he'd somehow slip away from her. "I didn't want to die," she whispered at last. "I was ready to do it, to pay for everything I'd done, but really, I didn't want to."

"So den you live wit' it, 'manda." Remy's voice went strangely hollow. "You alive, so you have to face de decisions you made. Learned dat you can't even hide from yourself on dem. Dat's de joy and de hurt of it."

"I'm scared." The admission was muffled by the fact her face was pressed into his coat. "I made the right decision in the end, but living. going on, it scares me bloody shitless. There's a lot of people I hurt, people that aren't going to forgive me. I'm going back to the school 'cause there's too much I left hanging, but I can't expect them to want me there."

"No, you can't. But dat's what you're going to have to deal wit', chere." Remy shook his head, the last year of being beaten on the anvil of his past, and she had all of that to look forward to. "Dere's always a price, right or wrong."

She took a deep, shuddering breath, willing herself to calm. It didn't work very well. "And what about you?" she asked, voice trembling just a little. "Did I cross that line with you?"

"What do you think?"

Her immediate response was to say she didn't know what to think any more. But that was as much as a cop-out as staying with Selene when Remy had come there at huge personal risk. "You're here," she said at last. "And you haven't broken my neck yet."

"De night is young." Remy said lightly. "But you right. You didn't cross de line. Dat means everything else is forgivable."

Part of Amanda wasn't sure she wanted it that way, but Remy had given her a gift and she wasn't going to throw it back in his face. She shifted her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly before letting go and turning back to the grave. "I haven't been here before," she said softly. "I couldn't, not after I made that deal."

"Good. You didn't deserve to." It was harsh, but it was fact. Amanda knew that Remy was ready to die for her, but it didn't mean he would spare her an instant of pain that she deserved. In a way, it was vaguely comforting, especially against the widely swinging excuse/blame of the mansion as a whole.

She nodded. "I know." She shivered slightly as the chill crept in under the coat, licking at skin left bare by the ridiculous Hellfire outfit. "As far as stupid decisions go, mate, I think I win," she told the headstone. "I just wish you were here to kick my arse."

Remy didn't say anything, just quietly waited at the edge and waited for Amanda to speak. He'd already said all his words to Charlie, in the darkness while he was waiting. There were more words, more things to say, but not here. Not amongst the dead. They were questions for the living.

There was so much she wanted to say, to know... "I miss you," she said instead, stepping forward and brushing snow off the top of the headstone. "I hope you found what you needed." Tears shone in her eyes, but she didn't let them fall. "Goodbye."

Turning away, she shoved her hands back into her pockets, squared her shoulders. Time to start facing things, as hard as it was going to be.