I know, I know. As a ROMY shipper, I shouldn’t be a fan of Belladonna. I should hate the blonde swamp witch with a passion for being the antagonist of choice in my favorite ship. And yet, here’s a piece in which I attempt to make her somewhat sympathetic. I blame a plotbunny that’s obviously watched “Psycho” too many times (it literally tried to stab me to death in the shower), and listening to the acoustic version of Gotta Get Thru This By David Beddingfield way too damn many times. Here’s hoping you enjoy.

Ooooh. Before I forget, please take a minute to check out GreenAmber’s story “When You Wish Upon A Star”. It’s a collection of vignettes exploring the psychological background of Evolution characters as pertaining to the powers they eventually develop. She’s desperate for reviews, so if you’d grace her with one I’m certain she would be greatful.

We now return to your regularly scheduled story.

As soon as she put her hand to the doorknob of her bedroom, she knew something was off. You didn't grow up the child of Marius Boudreaux without being acutely aware of you environment, and she would be a poor Ripper indeed if she didn’t take her father’s lessons to heart.

She became eerily still as she placed the palm of her other hand to the door in an attempt to glean any information about this offness she sensed. She pressed her ear against the door too, careful to slow her breathing and her heartbeat (a trick she had picked up from one of the boys that ran with her brother) as she did so. The untrained ear would have heard nothing. Her ear was far from untrained though, and she could hear the sound of breathing coming from inside her room.

Someone was in there. Someone was violating her personal space, invading her private quarters. Her eyes narrowed dangerously at the realization. No-one got away with that. No-one. Dropping to a crouch, she withdrew a small pistol from an ankle-holster hidden discreetly beneath her jeans. The gun had been a present from her brother on her sweet sixteenth. She had fallen in love with it as soon as she opened the bright package it had been wrapped in, and the two had been inseparable since that day. She had heard that saying about diamonds being a girl’s best friend once. She never really understood it, to tell the truth. She had always been of the mind that you didn’t really need diamonds if you had a gun in your hands . . . and steel-toed combat boots on your feet. After all, you didn’t grow up the little sister of Julian Boudreaux without learning how to hit below the belt.

With a sharp inhalation, she launched herself at the door, bursting through and leaping for the figure there, who happened to be perched on HER bed. She landed on top of this stranger and had her gun at his forehead before she (or the stranger for that matter) had the opportunity to draw another breath. Her eyes went wide as she saw who it was beneath her.

"Remy?"

"Nice to see you too Bella."

Now, a normal person would likely have been shocked. Finding your long lost fiancé in your room isn’t exactly a pleasant experience. An understandable reaction would be to demand why the fiancé in question (who had disappeared a week before the damn wedding and hadn’t been heard from since) had chosen NOW to reappear.

Bella was not a normal person.

She chose instead to use the butt of her gun to deliver a wicked crack across her fiancés face.

"Where the hell have you been?" She hissed, returning the barrel of her weapon to Remy's forehead.

"If you'd get that gun out of my face, we could actually try and talk about this like civilized people."

She cocked the hammer back in answer. Remy didn’t even bat an eyelash, which frustrated her to no end. The bastard had been on the wrong side of a gun too many times for it to faze him anymore.

"You’ve changed." He remarked mildly. "Usually you’d be all over me by now."

Bella frowned. She wasn’t used to not being able to instill fear, or having fiancés waltzing in and out of her life for that matter. She was in uncharted territory here. How did that adage go? When in doubt, go with what you know.

Bella knew violence. She was good with violence.

She pressed the gun harder in to Remy’s forehead, ensuring her point would be driven home. The fact that she brought out The Voice (a bitter, angry tone, all frost and disdain that Julian had seen fit to give proper noun status to) probably helped too.

"You haven’t changed a bit."

Had the situation been any different, she imagined that this would be a point where he would roll his eyes. He didn’t though, and for that she was somewhat thankful. That meant he was taking her at least somewhat seriously. Good.

"Are you going to let me say my piece, or should I just go?" He asked, somehow managing to sound slightly bored even in the face of possible death at the hands of a vengeful fiancée. Bella’s jaw tightened.

"So talk."

Remy sighed.

"I owe you an explanation."

"You always were the master of the obvious."

She was pleased to see the effect her caustic words had on him. He was starting to squirm ever so slightly, a dead giveaway that he was uncomfortable. He might have had the best poker face in all of New Orleans (maybe even in all of Louisiana), but no man was without his tells.

"Belle--"

The use of his private nickname for her only increased Bella’s ire. He had no right to use that name with her; not now, and not ever again. Not after he abandoned her like that.

"Don’t. Don’t you dare try and sweet-talk me, Remy. Just say what you’ve got to say and get out or so help me, I’ll scream and my entire family will be here in seconds, all of them ready, willing, and able to flay you alive."

She wasn’t bluffing. And by the looks of things, he knew it. He gave a slight nod (interesting thing to see, really, considering he had a gun to his head and all) before speaking again.

"If it’s any consolation, I didn’t leave because of you."

"It’s not."

He sighed and tried again.

"You know Jean-Luc was a jerk. If I stuck around, even if I married you and united the guilds, it wouldn’t change a thing between him and me. I’d still have hated him and he’d still have tried to use me and my powers for his benefit."

"Make your point."

"A guy rolled in to town by the name of Erik Lenscherr. He was looking to hire some mutants for some work up north. It was an out, I took it."

His honesty, however appreciated, stung. She didn’t let it show though. Remy wasn’t the only one with a killer poker face.

"And left me."

"It wasn’t about you Bella. It was never about you."

"You made it about me when you left just before our wedding without so much as a by-your-leave. You could have said something."

"You would have flipped out."

She snorted at this.

"And wouldn’t I have had the right? We were engaged. We were going to be the heads of the United Guilds once we were twenty-five. We could have fixed things between our families, and you know it. We had plans, Remy, and you ran away."

He remained silent, and she cursed in exasperation.

"Say something, damn you!"

When he did finally speak (which was right about the point where she made to smack him across the face with the gun again), it was quiet words that echoed with significance.

"I'm not going to be able to tell you what you want to hear."

Damn him for being so right. Deep down in that soft feminine part of her, there was a hopeless romantic that wanted desperately for him to tell her that he was back for good. That they could give this whole thing another shot, and that he still cared about her. That he was sorry. The greater part of her, the battle-scarred fighter that would one day ascend to the leadership of the Rippers clan, knew better. The barrel returned to his forehead and her face hardened.

"Right now I'm really not caring. Say what you've got to say."

"I'm not working for Erik anymore."

Those six words almost made her heart stop. Before she had a time to respond to this, he had continued.

"I was offered a job by this Xavier guy up in New York. I accepted."

And with those fifteen words her heart started up again, albeit a little more broken than before.

"So you're not coming back."

"Nope."

With a sigh, she removed the gun from his head and placed it on a conveniently located side table. She also got off of Remy and made a point of taking a seat at the far corner of her blankets, which happened to be as far away from him as she could get while remaining on the bed. He got the point, thankfully, sitting up and remaining at the other side.

"What are you here for then?" She asked wearily.

"To tie up some loose ends."

"And I'm one of them, apparently."

He nodded soberly.

"One of the biggest."

She shifted her weight so she was facing him.

"What if I don't want to be tied up?"

"It's not your call, Bella. I'm going. I just thought I'd come and try to do right by you before I go for good."

Bella choked on a bitter laugh.

"And how exactly did you plan on doing right by me? Apologizing? You're a little late."

He had the grace to look ashamed of himself, if only for a moment.

"You want to know the stupidest thing?" She asked, sad smile spreading across her face. "I still wear your damn ring."

She lifted her hand to display a thin gold band about her ring finger, the engagement ring that he had given her all those years ago. He looked shocked to see it. With a particularly violent motion, she yanked it off her hand. She glanced thoughtfully at it for a moment as it rested in her palm. It ought to have been one of those significant moments, the sort that the world turns on and that destinies are woven around, but all she could think of was how naked her hand felt without the ring she'd grown so accustomed to wearing. She shook her head as if it would help clear her thoughts. No good. It was with a deep breath that she eventually tossed it to Remy. He caught it easilly, and the look of shock on his face only seemed to grow.

"Take it. It's yours." She couldn't help the slight bitterness that managed to seep in to her voice as she spoke.

"Bella, I--"

"Just go, Remy. Get out of here and leave me be."

He looked as though he wanted to say something, but thought better of it. Without even a nod, or even a goodbye (just like last time, she thought-how typical), he rose from the bed and crossed the room to the open bedroom window. He threw one last glance over his shoulder before climbing up on to the sill and jumping out.

It was only once she was certain he was gone that Bella - warrior, ice-queen, daughter of the Rippers clan, child of Marius Boudreaux himself - hung her head and cried.