Title: Southern Gothic
A Prelude by Mam’zelle Mattie Baptiste
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author: Carmine LaCroix
Summary: A love story.
Rating: Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rogue/Remy
Warnings: AU, History!fic
Author’s Notes: Hello. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Pull up a chair. Stay for a spell, why don’t you?

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Southern Gothic
A Prelude by Mam’zelle Mattie Baptiste
New Orleans, Louisiana, Present Day
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“Truth! Everybody keeps hollerin' about the truth. Well, the truth is as dirty as lies.”
(Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)

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Mama told her girl a story once – when her girl was only part-ways grown and the boys started calling at the old townhouse in the French Quarter – boys who were fool enough to stand in the street and holler up to the balconies; boys who’d try to climb the crepe myrtle if it would gain them favour enough to catch the eye of that strange creature Mama Raven kept cloistered in her Rue Royal apartments. The story was meant t’ keep her in line, t' keep her rememberin’ that not all wounds heal in the way they’re supposed to. Sometimes, there just ain’t no justice t’ speak of that can be shared between th’ people who deserve it. I think that maybe Mama mighta left that part out. So I ain’t gonna tell you that story, ‘cause this ain’t no cautionary tale. I’m gonna tell you how it really happened…

Heard tell that the girl wasn’t really her daughter, no. They only called her that for simplicity’s sake. And when the girl went rogue? Well, that’s how she was called forever after.

Yessir, you heard me right. That’s how she’s known ‘round these parts: the Rogue. ‘Parently even ol’ Jelly Roll Morton wrote a song about her, back before Storyville closed. But for a time, as I heard it, Jelly Roll had the devil speakin’ over his shoulder, behavin’ like his muse. Not that anyone’d admit to it – but there sure are enough folk ‘round these parts claimin’ to have seen him for themselves. They all agreed on one thing: said he had eyes black as pitch, with a fire set to burn deep inn’em. N’awlins is the devil’s town, don’t you know? Hotbed of vice and depravity, one critic said.

And in these parts? If the devil’s knockin’ at your door, honey, you best not answer it. Lawd save your everlovin’ soul, if ya do…

Leastways, that’s the way th’ gumbo ya-ya goes.

Now, where was I? Tante’s grey matter ain’t like it was, you know…

Right, right sug. There was the matter of Mama’s girl and her suitors.

Them boys – brave boys, strong boys, young men of all creed and colour and position – hung ‘round these parts; down in the dusty street where the carriages were likely to clip them or trample them or they’d make fools of themselves ‘fore Mama Raven would come down with her big ol’ broom and make ‘em shoo. Mama Raven? Don’t know the name, child? Don’t you fuss. Let me tell you, that’s not a name you want to be remembering. Best to spit it clean out of your mouth and hope you forget it come morning. For now, let’s just say there was somethin’ a little… peculiar about that family. The girl bein’ what people say she was the least of the strange dealings that went ‘round in those parts in the summer of 1822.

You spend any amount of time in N’awlins, and you learn two things right quick: the first being that the humidity creeps straight to your bones (so pass me that shawl, wouldn’t ya, child?), and that not everything is as plain as it is elsewhere. You stay here longer n’ a few weeks, and you start… sensing things. ‘Round where I’m from, down on Basin near St. Louis One? They call it getting’ ‘tipsy.’ Comes from spending so much time near th’ water, you see. There’ve been enough lives drowned away beneath th’ Mississippi to keep a pall hanging over this town. Seeps into the soil, it does – all that death. Folks round here, we grew up with it – planted in our bones and swallowed down with each spoonful of red beans and rice. That’s how it comes upon ya – it’s a belly-deep sorta chill from the bottom up. You feel under your skin when somethin’ unnatural’s a-comin’.

Barely notice it after a while, but there are some things that you can’t help but pay attention to; can’t help but stop and stare a little longer than is polite.

Mama Raven and her girl, them’s one of those things you couldn’t not take note of.

Sometime ‘round th’ first days when Mam’zelle Marie LaVeau took her claim t’ the title of Queen of the Voodoos, that girl done run off. Seems that there’d been a servant boy ‘round the Rue Royal house who’d been taken over with a fit. Name o’ Cody Robbins, I do believe. Child could no longer see or speak or hear, and though some people said he was crossed – that he’d fallen victim to a curse for visitin’ in secret with the girl without Mama Raven knowing – others know better. Others say it was the girl herself than done ‘im. Poor thing.

That boy never woke up again, and by the time they realized he was done for? They couldn’t find the girl anywhere to set things right.

She was a strange thing, that Rogue. Some say she was feeble, not right in the head, you know? Talkin’ to herself, hearin’ voices that no one else could… But it was the mark on her that got people talkin’, those that glimpsed her up on the widow’s walk in the evenings, that is; or cloaked under the shadows of that old wrought iron balcony up on the third floor when twilight fell… Pale as anything, with lips stained blue as death. Oh, the girl was white, alright – but Mama Raven insisted on keeping her covered from head t’ toe, not at all in the fashion of the day, and with a tignon wrapped about her head, just like th’ free women of colour who owned property ‘round the city. Just like Mama Raven herself.

Ain’tno one left living ‘sides myself who ever saw the girl out in broad daylight. Ma’ Raven kept her locked up tight, even for mass, though we saw that woman in her family’s pew each and every Sunday morning whisperin’ her desperate prayers ‘neath her breath, lookin’ around herself all cautious-like, as if she were just waitin’ for someone to hoodoo her on th’ spot... Like anyone save the Queenherself would risk doin’ something so foolish in the middle of ol’ St. Louis while Père Antoine was preachin’ about hellfire. Pah!

For what people say she done to the girl to drive her off like that? I’d be willin’ t’ wager that Ma’ Raven woulda deserved it.

Oh,she was two-headed, alright: there’s no doubt that the woman had power. You wouldn’t have gotten me t’ cross her, that’s for sure. Folks that did were likely t’ wind up floating in assorted pieces across Bayou St. John. Some can live without a finger or a toe or a tongue, but y’ can’t do much without your faculties, and that was Ma’ Raven’s specialty when it came t’ the boys who came a little too close to her girl’s window. That’s right: poison. Mama Raven was in the old profession of makin’ the grand zombi.

No one talks about that, though. Easier t’ pretend there ain’t nothin’ wrong with a few missin’ slaves than get on a Voodoo’s bad side.

Fact is, Mama Raven musta gone to the lengths she did for a good reason; if you’ve got somethin’ valuable locked up on the third floor of your house; somethin’ living and breathin’ that you don’t want nobody t’ even glimpse at; that you’d kill for? Well. What’s a few nickels spent t’ restock the slave quarters?

You ask me, I think the girl was touched – like a brand, it was somethin’ bad enough that Ma Raven thought she oughta keep it hidden. In these parts: you can’t go nowhere in N’awlins and not feel it when it steals across your path. Gives me th’ frissons just thinkin’ about it…

Child, you know that feeling? Th’ one where y’ think someone’s stepped over your grave? That’s what it was like t’ look on that poor creature; like she could know every dark corner of your heart as easily as she’d give you a kiss hello on the cheek. Unnatural.

Somethin’ wasn’t right with her dress, not that I thought much on the subject… and not that I pried. Tante just tells you what she heard ‘bout the girl. No harm meant. No wrong done…

But there ain’t no white woman who woulda willingly worn th’ tignon in those days ‘less she had something to hide.

What was that, now? What was she hidin’? Well…

Come closer, now.

There, that’s better. Sometimes, when you whisper, the spirits won’t carry it back to those who ought not hear:

I’d have doubted it myself hadn’t I seen that sorrowful-lookin’ thing one evenin’ that spring, right before she up and disappeared. ‘Neath that tignon was somethin’ she couldn’t have hidden unless she blacked her hair with chimney soot, and I only saw ‘cause the girl lingered a little too long on that rooftop. She was a red head, you know? Pretty little thing – with two strips of curls fallin’ round her face, whiter than th’ powdered sugar you get on your beignets…

It was his mark, y’ ask me. That’s how I knew he’d claimed her.

Maybe that’s why Ma Raven kept her holed up by herself for so long.

Maybe he was th’ one who told her to climb up to the roof in the first place… What kinda crazy does a precious little thing like her hafta be t’ go and do that, I ask ya?

Pah.Pah. Oh, but it still makes Tante’s chest ache t’ think on…

Shoot. And I promised m’self I wouldn’t cry.

I remember it like it was yesterday, back nearly two hundred years, when you could still smell the fish oil from the lamps lining the avenues, ‘fore they started using petroleum and callin’ it “gaslight”.

Funny, really, how these things seem so clear so many years after they’ve come t’ pass.

Didn’t surprise me none t’ hear that he was th’ sweet song to pull that girl out from under her mother’s careful watch. That be some bad juju, that was. Folks downtown ‘round that time were just as superstitious as them others living in the swamps.

Was Jelly Roll’s “muse” who carried her away, they say. The one voice that cut through the many that hung ‘round Rue Royal, hopin’ t’ catch her favour. Was the Devil who coaxed her out with his handsome grin and the promise of things no proper lady would know of, much less entertain. Me? I think it was the Devil himself that worked his charm on that poor Cody Robbins boy; that got the girl to steal his soul with her kiss.

What happened, y’ ask? Why, aren’t you eager! Seems like all it takes these days is a little hope t’ tug at the heartstrings when it seems like all is lost. Well, I stitched this one together, didn’t I? Might as well tell it, while I still have the breath…

Hear me well, then, child.

In N’awlins, there are some things more endurin’ than even the stories we tell to keep our spirits alive…

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To Be Continued…

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Post Script:

It’s ordinarily at this point that I’d stretch my arms above my head and croon in seductive tones, “My, what a wonderful lover…” But I won’t. Under this appellation – Carmine, that is – and doubtless some of you are familiar with my better half (she goes by Lucia, or, if she’s chummy with you, “Luce”) this is not what I’ve promised you previously. My apologies and sincerest condolences if you were expecting the upcoming “Bats in the Belfry” and discovered this in your inbox instead. Regarding that particular piece, I’ve grown firm in the promise that I’d like to see it at least half-completed prior to posting the first chapter, and as dear old Loo can inform you, she’s rather inundated at the moment with her (quote, unquote) magnum opus (scoff) and is unable to offer me the proper moral support that “Bats” requires. (Is this all too complicated for you to follow? No matter. Don’t trouble yourselves with the politics between Ms. Medici and myself. We love you both equally for reading this particular attempt at the gothic genre… within which the story situates itself firmly, as you will come to see over the next three chapters.)

This is, by and large, something governed by that monstrous creature I like to call “bunnicula.” A rather rabid plot bunny that insisted on withholding certain elements of the thematic that situates this as a “triptych” of sorts over several eras. It will not be narrated by Tante Mattie, that much I can assure you. It will be a frolicking romp through the darker side of New Orleans.

Having said that, let me conclude by requesting humbly that you follow the slightly batty wisdom of one Blanche DuBois, in that this author depends heavily on your glowing reviews to feel some sort of validation:

“Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

Please, give generously: leave a review.