Unspoken: Just the Peacocks Screaming

Just the Peacocks Screaming
by Minisinoo

Rating: PG-13 (language)

Summary: Rogue faces down some realities, and makes some decisions.

Warning: I really hope this doesn't offset everyone else's timing in stories, but I hit fast-forward.

Notes: Even though Rogue is older in this series, I'm still assuming that she's younger than Jean, who has a medical degree. Here, Marie and Scott are contemporaries, and she's working on her masters in English literature, Eighteenth Century women. Also, I mention Frank Placido, an OC love-interest I created for Ororo in some of my stories. I have made use of him here, but no one else need feel bound by that.

Date: September 25, 2001

Mid-afternoon sunlight was languid, spilling over autumn-gilded leaves and dripping down onto the ground in butter-pools. It was too cool of nights now for gnats and other annoying insects, but summer clung still in the middle of the afternoons with stubborn, sultry fingers. Marie sat on the ground with her shoes off, toes buried in grass. How she missed the luxury of going barefoot more often than not in Mississippi. She stared at the fountain pool and tossed bits of stale bread to carp which came to the surface long enough to raise rings, then disappeared again into shallow algae depths beneath the lily pads. A griffin ruled the center –- Warren's choice, that. Griffins with iron wings and feathers as sharp as knives. She could remember the spring they'd built it. Scott the engineer, Warren the designer, and she, Ro, Frank and Hank the free labor. But it had been fun. Ro had added the goldfish carp later, big fish, some as long as Marie's forearm, dappled in gold and white and black.

"You are going to make my fish fat," Marie heard behind her, and looked over her shoulder. Ro slipped down to sit on the grass with her, idly pick up the book she'd been reading from where it lay face down, to hold her place. Kate Chopin, THE AWAKENING. Aloud, Ororo read the final two paragraphs of Chapter Nineteen, highlighted in flourescent green. Marie knew them by heart.

"'There were days she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.

"'There were days when she was unhappy, and she did not know why, -- when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood.'"

"Let me guess," Ororo said then, "which of these two paragraphs applies to you at the moment."

"Neither one," Marie replied.

Ro didn't comment, just raised white eyebrows.

"Thesis work," Marie explained. "Chopin's one of the women I'm focusing on. Sand, Chopin and de Beauvoir."

"You're stuffing my fish, too."

Briefly, Marie grinned, and returned to tossing bits of bread. There was an edge in the warm breeze, sharp like griffin wings – the scent of fall coming, creeping up on cat feet.

Would the end with Scott have been easier if it, too, had crept on cat-feet instead of exploding into their lives?

But the bitch was gone. Four days gone. And Marie still hadn't tried to talk to Scott since that disastrous lunch hour in the library when he'd cornered her and they'd exchanged exactly three sentences before the professor's mind voice had echoed into their heads, telling them to get out of the library *immediately*. It had turned out to be the new woman again, coming apart at the seams in the stacks. She and Scott couldn't even have a goddamned fight without Jean's shadow intruding. Not that a little 'talk' would do any good, whatever Scott thought with his need to rationalize everything, make it ordered and neat and logical, make it run smoothly like the fountain and the Blackbird and the march of student chores on the roster. A place for everything and everything in its goddamn place.

Once, she'd so loved that. His certainty, his self-control, the fact that he was neater than she was. But of late, it had begun to irk her, grind against her and strike as anal-retentive, not organized. Cold and flat and frozen hard like the ground in a New York winter.

"Can I ask you a question?" she said to the woman beside her: Ororo of solitudes, Ororo of the deep eyes and soft smile who'd been so closed and prickly and sarcastic when she'd arrived seven years ago. A weather goddess and ex-thief at once, all contradictory, as strong as a hurricane off the Gulf, whirling around a quiet eye: the sad Italian to whom she'd given her heart, and hadn't seen it since. Il Bel Tenebroso, they'd called him -– the Beautiful Gloomy, who saw the future and dreamed in nightmares. Frank had centered her, cut past her defenses and quieted the winds. Frank alone could get away with calling her "Baby" and not be kicked in the balls for the audacity. The thought of that made Marie smile as she remembered summer nights and open windows and the whispers of the two of them on the roof, fluid Italian, soft and forward in the mouth, and then other sounds, too, less coherent and more throaty. That was before Marie had let Scott into her bed, before she'd trusted him, or more precisely, before she'd trusted herself not to kill him. So they'd circled each other like starved dogs, while Ororo and Frank had rolled under the sheets like thunder in the sky. An entire Sunday spent in bed, on at least one occasion. How on earth they'd had the stamina, Marie had never known. The two of them had been the grand passion of the school's early years. Quiet on the surface, but unyielding and powerful, and when the gale-force winds blew, look out. It could flatten twenty-year oaks.

Now, they conducted their love affair by satelite connections across the whole of the wild Atlantic, bound heart and soul although Frank had a *compagna* in his bed these days and Marie knew that Ororo had gone out on a date or two from which she hadn't returned until dawn.

"How do you do it?" she asked her friend now. "Why do you stay with him, when he's living with Chiara?"

"Francesco, I assume you mean?" The voice was amused.

"Well, he's the only guy dating a Chiara that I know of, sugar."

"He is a man," Ororo replied, as if that explained everything.

"Aren't you jealous?"

"Of *Chiara*? Why on earth would I be jealous?"

"What's it like, to be that sure of someone? How can you just . . . know?"

"It is -– How do I explain?" Ororo turned her face up to the blue quartz sky overhead. Not a bird crossed it, or a cloud. "Frank gives to me his secrets. He trusts me. It has nothing to do with whomever he fucks."

Marie thought about that, and found herself wishing for a cigarette. She hadn't smoked in two years. Not since Scott had put that ring on her finger. He didn't like it, even chipping, so she'd taken her cigarettes out of the freezer and thrown them away.

But did it matter any more what he liked? Absorbing Logan had reawakened her half-submerged occasional craving for nicotine. She rubbed her hands together and tried to forget it for now. She'd buy some Camels later.

"So you don't consider it cheating? Him being with Chiara?"

Ororo drew up her knees and crossed her arms on them, laid her head down on the backs of her forearms. Her white hair spilled down like early winter ice. "Love and sex aren't the same thing, you know."

"I know. But still."

"When he went back to Italy, we talked about it, made choices. If I had asked him to keep it in his pants, I would have been disappointed. I know that. This is Frank we are discussing, after all." That wistful smile. "He needs sex as he needs air. Part of loving someone is knowing what one can ask of them. If I needed fences to make Frank mine, then he would not *be* mine. I am the one he calls when the nightmares come. I am the one he cries to." Raising her head, he held out her hands in front of her as if cupping something invisible. "I hold his heart. That is what matters."

"Aren't you afraid he'll . . . find someone else?"

"No."

Simple. Certain. Not a denial but a plain statement of the way the world ran. There was Ororo and there was Francesco and they were two halves of one whole. What God –- or Fate -– has joined together, let no man or woman put asunder. "Are you ever going to marry him?" Marie asked.

"Perhaps. Someday. We shall see."

"Can I tell you a secret?"

"Of course."

"Scott doesn't tell me his secrets."

Silence for a while. "How do you know that he has any that he has not told?"

"I just know. He seems all upfront, and he's honest in what he tells you, but there are things he just doesn't tell, too. It's like a dance of the seven veils with him -– or maybe mirrors, like in a fun house. He seems so there, so transparent, so *clear*, but then you try to touch him and you just hit glass. It's not real. He doesn't mean to do it, I don't think. But sometimes, I felt like I was hunting for him in this *maze* of reflected Scotts."

Ororo didn't reply to that, just waited. Marie had tossed the last of the bread to the fish, but continued to stare at the pond surface until it fractured her sight, scattering it in a million pieces. Like her certainties. Her truths. A bluejay in the branches above mocked her in a raucous voice.

"I wasn't happy. Like Edna, in the book. And I didn't know why. Some days, I was the happiest woman on earth. I had a home, a good job –- either job you count -– and a good man who loved me and kept his eyes off other women's asses. But there were days 'when life appeared to her like a grostesque pandemonium.' All of a sudden I wasn't sure of anything, not my job –- either one of them –- or of Scott. I still wonder sometimes what we're doing here, Ro. We're a bunch of too-old kids playing super-hero in our little black suits. Do we really think we can change the world?"

"The rainstorm begins with just a few drops."

"Profound."

A quick flash of smile. "Thank you." Then the smile disappeared. "Do you love him still? Scott?"

"I -– Would it surprise you if I said ‘yes'?"

"No, it wouldn't surprise me."

"I don't know if I trust him. Or rather, I don't trust him. I can't trust him. But then -– he never trusted me, did he? Not like Frank trusts you. We played at trust, the two mutants at the school who could kill each other with the wrong move. But that's not trust, that's just the thrill of danger. It's not like you and Frank. When I watched him watching her, but knew he'd come back to me for duty, I knew the truth. It just took me a while to admit it. He's here in body still, didn't race off after her. He'd let me back in his bed, he'd even tell me he wants me there. But all I'd have is his body. I wonder if that's how Chiara feels? Does she even know about you?"

Ororo's head jerked up, and Marie realized that she'd put her foot in her mouth -– but couldn't regret it. She felt a sudden, sharp pity for the unknown Italian woman sharing Frank's bed but never his heart -– or his secrets. "I don't know," Ororo replied.

"It's hell, to have the body and not the heart."

Ororo didn't reply, reaching instead to pluck at wild vines that had climbed the stone of the fountain, marring the gray surface with waxy green. Marie could see from the set of her jaw that she was angry, but nothing disturbed the sky above. Too many years of careful control. Ororo wouldn't let her moods affect the weather on a whim and a pissy-fit.

"You know," Marie said finally, "I think I understand Logan better than I ever did Scott. Isn't that funny? I've dated Scott since we were nineteen -– seven years -– and I've slept in his bed for five of those. But all I've seen is a mirror man. Red mirror. She doesn't see that, does she? Jean doesn't see mirrors." She asked the question less to hear her friend's answer than to twist the knife. "Like you and Frank. He tells her his secrets."

"I don't know, Marie. You would have to ask him."

Marie stood up and wiped grass bits off the legs of her jeans. "I don't need to." She looked down at Ro's white crown. The part was a little ragged. "You know why I love the Nineteenth Century Romantics? Everything is grand for them. Passion, life, hates and loves. They declare love forever. Undying passion. But life isn't like that. Not real life. Not for most of us. The morning glory blooms at sunrise and closes at sunset. But me, I always wanted the passion."

"Passion is messy," Ororo said. "Trust me."

"Yeah, it is. Hurts, too. You know what all this reminds me of? The wreck of Homestead after Hurricane Andrew went through. I was just a kid. One of my mother's brothers lived down there, in Homestead, and we went to visit after the storm. The whole town was just . . . flattened. Streetlights gone, buildings -– all the landmarks. I didn't recognize a bit of it. I'd never seen wreckage like that. But the sun still set in the west, out over the Florida marsh. And there were still peacocks in the woods that screamed at night. Weird noise they make –- an awful noise, like a woman being murdered. We had a hurricane come through here, too, didn't we? Name of Jean. I don't recognize the landmarks anymore, just the peacocks screaming."

~*~

Darkening the Sun by Shana

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Disclaimer: All X-Men characters belong to Marvel and Fox; this piece of fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.