I Remember You

He couldn't quite remember who she was at first. After all, it had been years since he had left the Institute and, except for Bobby and Rogue, he had had no other friends when he had still been a student there. He almost asked her for her name a few times but he always thought better of it. She didn't strike him as a particularly chatty sort of girl, especially with fugitive members of the Brotherhood. So he just watched her, and tried to remember.

As best as he could reckon, the X-Men had been keeping him in this room for a week, maybe two. The last thing he recalled was Alcatraz disintegrating around him and, the next time he opened his eyes, he was a prisoner. He screamed and cursed for days. Then he attacked Bobby when the Iceman came to see him. When he was beaten back, he took a fork from his meal tray and stabbed himself in the throat. He didn't cause any serious damage, however, so he lived and Storm made the decision to put him in restraints. That enraged him further, and he tried to kill himself again by bashing his head against the walls. Bobby and Wolverine stopped him in time before he cracked his skull and a huge, furry blue guy dosed him with something that made him calm down.

He stopped eating then. It got to the point where Storm herself tried to spoon-feed him, she was that worried, but, even with the unnatural stillness caused by the drugs, he remained difficult. One day, he spat oatmeal on her face and she left the room crying. Both Logan and Hank McCoy kept trying to convince her to give him up, he was a lost cause, but she wouldn't be swayed. It seemed that with the deaths of Professor Xavier, Mr. Summers and Miss Grey, Storm was determined to save anyone she could still help, even if that person had been her enemy.

They were discussing methods of intravenous feeding already when Rogue stepped in. She had been more or less hiding in her room all that time since taking the cure, refusing to see anyone, even Logan. Then one day she just appeared during a meeting of the other X-Men and she finally learned about his condition. She didn't say a word. She just took some food and went to see him.

"Pyro."

He stared at her like he didn't recognize her. She crouched in front of him and reached out a bare hand to touch his face. He didn't flinch when her skin came into contact with his. When nothing happened after several minutes, his expression twisted.

"Why -," his voice was a harsh croak, " – why aren't you punishing me? Why -?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes. "I got cured," she admitted, sounding almost shamed.

"I – I think I'm also –"

"No." She shook her head. "You still have your power."

He started to shake and bang the back of his head against the wall. "Still have it," he mumbled. "Still here. In me. Inside me. It's still here." He suddenly screamed. He struggled against his restraints, his body convulsing violently. He managed to kick her away from him and she grunted in pain. Bobby and Logan were there in an instant while Mr. McCoy injected him with more drugs.

When he was quiet, she went back to his side. There were tears in her eyes. "John," she whispered his name, whispered it the way she used to late at night in the darkness of her room. "John. I'm sorry. Forgive me. I'm sorry for letting you go. I'm so sorry."

But he wouldn't look at her anymore. Bobby tried to help her up but she pulled away from him. "Don't touch me!" She stood up unsteadily. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she ran out of the room.

After that, things got a bit better. He was still furious and depressed but he started eating again. They took turns bringing him his meals; Bobby, Rogue, that big guy who could turn into steel, a guy with wings, for fuck's sake, then the silent girl. None of them helped him eat, however; he had to do that himself, which became easier once they traded the straitjacket for good old-fashioned manacles. Whenever Bobby came around, he made sure to always make a big mess which the iceprick always cleaned up without a single complaint, something that just pissed him off more. The two other guys he would just ignore. Rogue, though – there were too many things unspoken between them, but he knew she knew. She had absorbed all the dark secret thoughts, the whispered confessions, the fevered dreams, along with his powers when she had stopped him from killing those policemen back at Bobby's house, a lifetime ago.

Then there was the girl. It all finally clicked into place for him one day when she came in bearing his food, and she just passed right through the door before it could open all the way for her.

"You're the girl who can walk through walls," he suddenly blurted out.

She blinked, surprised that he had spoken to her. "Excuse me?"

"I remember you now," he said. "You used to follow me and Bobby around school like an annoying little shadow, getting us into trouble with the teachers whenever we teased you."

For some reason, she blushed. "H-here's your food." She set the tray in front of him then went to sit on her usual chair in a corner of the room. She looked everywhere but at him for the next thirty minutes as he ate. When he was finished, she got the tray and headed out of the room.

At the door, she suddenly stopped and looked back at him. There was an expression in her eyes that he didn't understand. It was only there for a second then it was gone.

"I remember you," she told him softly. "It was my first day in school and I was completely lost. You were running in the hallway then you crashed into me. You told me to watch where I was going. But, when I started to cry, you helped me pick up my books. You could still be kind then. What happened to you, John?"

And she left him alone thinking of the answer to her question.