Disclaimer: "Out of body and out of mind Kiss the demons out of my dreams"

(An: If you are looking for a cheerful Romy fic, turn back now. This isn't happy. This is also not a little kid fic. There's lots of dark thoughts and nasty deeds. And guess what? It's also from Remy's POV. This completely ignores Remy's canon character and plays with the self-serving jerk he was in Evo. Flames will be ignored. Props to Leslie, owner of Leslie's Groovy Art Site, who gave me this idea. And I don't actually know when Remy's birthday is.)

There's no excuse for what I did. I'm not trying to make one, and I don't want one. That's not what this is about.

I did what I did, and I'm not sorry. I really don't care.

I don't really care about anything.

She was just a tool- something part of me wanted, and most of me wanted to destroy.

So that's what I did.

From the first day I layed eyes on the Rogue, I knew I wanted to break her. Only someone like me, to whom reading emotions came as naturally as breathing, saw the innocence in her. Only I knew she could be manipulated, that her hard facade was just that- a facade.

I wanted to hold her in my arms, feel her lips against mine, and crush her soul like an insect. Just to see if I could.

If this whole thing had been thought up by some cheesy romance writer, I would've been chasing her just for the thrill of the chase. Not to see that innocence, that girlish stupidity, die in her eyes. And, if written, I would've probably fallen for her whole-heartedly somewhere along the line.

But life isn't plotted. And I haven't felt much of anything for about five years.

I can pinpoint the exact time I pulled out of the emotional world- June fourteenth, my eighteenth birthday. That was the day I decided that caring about anyone else but myself took too much time and effort, and too much of me.

That was the day Belladonna Bodreaux died in my arms.

We'd been friends since childhood. Somewhere along the line, it got deeper. When I was sixteen, and our parents suggested the marital arrangement that would supposedly end the feud between the guilds, we accepted without any thought.

Julien never liked it.

To him, I had been, and would always be, "that stinking mutie freak." I was never good enough for his sister.

If I'd had any sense, I would've eloped- kept the contract, got the girl, and gotten the hell away from him.

But I didn't.

So that's why it happened like it did- Julien stumbling in, stone drunk, and putting the dagger he intended for me deep into Belladonna's breast.

Do you know what it's like to feel someone you loved die in your arms? To feel, at the end, their utter contempt for you, their hatred, their longing to never have met you, just so they wouldn't die?

I doubt it.

That was the day I put up the blocks on my empathy for good. To the clueless, this meant blocking off my own emotions as well. I wasn't going to feel that way again. Not ever. Having someone that close was like Japanese suicide- slow, elaborate, painful, and always deadly.

Magneto found me wandering around Baton Rouge a few years later. I'd been exiled from New Orleans- my life. I was about twenty at that time, utterly purpouseless. Not depressed though. Just empty.

He came to me in a back alley, with his stupid helmet and his show-offy ways. I hated him from the start, but he offered me a way to gain power, infamy, and money.

None of these mattered to me, but it sounded like a better way to waste time than I'd been doing, so I went with him.

I wasn't friends with my fellow Acolytes. They were younger than me, and I found them boring. Pyro was fruitier and nuttier than a fruitcake, and Colossus was a bore, with all his angst and shit like that.

They probably found me scary. Glowing red eyes, emotionless demeanor, explosive powers- there was no reason for them not to. And this was at least minorly amusing.

It was with them I met Rogue.

I never wanted to kill her, or rape her, or physically harm her in any way. I wanted to scar her, to watch her cry, watch her shatter. All because of that innocence, that weakness, that hope in her eyes. The one thing I could never have myself.

Maybe I was jealous, somewhere- jealous of her completeness. We were alike, me and her- cut off from the rest of the world, trapped inside our own heads. But unlike her, I was happy about it. I'd chosen it. She would have done anything to be free.

Whatever it was, I invested all my efforts into that girl.

I knew all the tricks for dealing with girls. Faking a lovesick sigh, flirting, feigning all the right signs at all the right times- to me, these came without thought.

With her, it took a lot longer, just as I expected, but I got her to love me. I was careful never to actually assure my love in return. When she had me beneath her, at that "eventful" training session, and she whispered, "Je t'aime," in my ear, I didn't say it back. I just murmured, "Aussi."

It wasn't the same thing as lying to her. That was one thing I couldn't do. The only part of my empathy I let through is enough to tell me if someone is lying. Lying to someone else is lying to myself, and I don't do that.

There was only one place in our whole, ages-long relationship that I allowed myself to feel.

She whispered "I love you" to me after three years; after four more she kissed me. It was that day that I dropped my barriers.

She had her ungloved hands on her knees, meditating. I saw something click in her expression. I touched her face. She opened her eyes. Nothing happened.

She stared at me for a moment, and then she kissed me. I was curious. I let down my mental blocks for a moment, feeling what she felt- love, fright, joy, all in one instant.

And when she broke away, scared of herself, I felt something I hadn't for years. Just that real life catch in my breath, the sudden urge to never blink again so I don't miss one moment of her- all of that.

So I pulled back, deeper within myself than ever. I knew that feeling. And my whole purpouse in blocking myself off from the world was to prevent it.

I've done a lot worse things in my life, I guess- murder, arson, theft, I've resorted to it all with the Guild and then with Magneto.

This was the most satisfying, though.

To see someone crack like that, to inflict on them the same pain you once felt- well, I really don't think there's much that's more enjoyable.

I used her, and then I threw her away.

It was that day she kissed me. I left. I wouldn't tell her why. I just said I had business to attend to, and I probably wasn't coming back. She'd grabbed my arm. "Why not?"

I just looked at her and she shook her head. "No..."

"Yes," I replied.

She fell back on the bed. "No, Remy, I... I can't lose you."

"You probably are going to, chere. I wish I could lie and say you won't... but this is something I have to do, and you need to know that."

There were tears in her eyes, as she whispered, "I love you."

This time, I said, "I know." Just so I wouldn't get predictable.

The next day, I came back and sat on a tree outside her window. Since Logan was out on one of his "quests," this was not as risky as it would've been. She was crying her eyes out into her pillow. I smiled.

I came back again, a year later. She was slowly burning each and every photo of us together, sobbing all the while. That made it all worth it. There was no innocence in her eyes anymore, no willingness to trust or love, and there never would be again.

I don't know what happened to her after that. I never bothered to find out. Like I said, I really don't care.

None of it seems real anymore, anyway.

Nothing seems real anymore.

Except the razors in my hands, and the blood on the cheap linoleum, and the darkness closing in as all of my eyes fade to black.

I'm just another bastard off the street. No one will miss me. Just another demon, going to join his fellows at last.

And that is what this was all about.

(...Well. For the record, I am a fluffy Romy writer most of the time. I just wanted to write something depressing. To keep y'all on your toes, like. Review, please.)