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Do you think that you’ll remember me?
Sometimes, on his darkest days, Rogue wondered if Sting had asked him that so that the question would haunt him across the years. However, that thought rarely lasted long, because even if he couldn’t forget that thrice-cursed question, he also couldn’t forget how hard Sting had fought to find a counter to his curse. A way to spare him from this lonely eternity with nothing but memories to keep him company. Right until the very end Sting had searched for answers, and even wizened and bent with age, he had raged against the unfairness of it, grief and guilt written across his face as he’d reached for Rogue.
I love you. I will always love you, and I will find you again.
A final promise, after a lifetime littered with them. Some that they’d kept some forgotten and some unfulfilled and Rogue had clung to that promise like a lifeline in the first year…the first decade… the first century after Sting’s death. A hope, a light that couldn’t be put out, even as loss and loneliness had given the shadows ample food over the long years. But its flame was flickering now. Doubt creeping in, and Rogue didn’t know what had changed. Why uncertainty seeped in, and that question haunted him more than ever as he wandered through life, not touching it, ever on the outside. It was easier that way. He had been forced to watch as Sting faded with age. And left behind, he’d drifted as friends and family, in Sabertooth and beyond had succumbed to the ravages of time, and the generation after them, and the generation after that.
He had tried at first to cling to the threads of his old life. To the memories that he and Sting had shared and made together, the flat they had shared with the Exceeds, the Guild, the places where they had achieved their greatest victories and worst defeats. But time was a cruel mistress, even to someone cursed to be outside her ebb and flow, and slowly, one by one they had trickled through his fingers. After that, he’d tried to stretch out and find a new place for himself, a place for Sting to find him again. I will find you again, his mate had promised, and he had believed him, and so he had forced himself to live, to let people close, in the hopes of looking up one day and finding Sting staring back at him.
But, with time, that had slipped away again.
He’d still tried, the stubbornness that Sting had complained about so many times during their long life together rearing its ugly head, fanned by the promise and hope that wouldn’t die. But loss has the power to undo even the strongest person, and Sting’s death had been like the falling of small stones that started an avalanche, the cracks spreading beneath the surface.
He wasn’t sure when the shattering had truly begun.
Maybe it was when his wandering steps had taken him back to Crocus, to Sabertooth and found houses and shops where the guildhall had been, Sabertooth passing into history, with the friends who haunted his memories. Or, maybe, it had been the day he had looked into the mirror in the corner of the room he was holed up in and not recognised the man looking back at him. He wasn’t sure, he just knew that it felt like it had happened in the blink of an eye, even though he knew that it had been the work of years.
“I wish that I could forget you,” he whispered in response to the question in the back of his mind, to the ghost of Sting that haunted his memories, and to the promise that would never be fulfilled. It was selfish. It hurt. But those memories fed his hope, left him clinging to Sting’s promise because he wanted to see him again. To love him again, even if this life would end like the other. If he could just forget, if he could stop seeing those blue eyes that had shone with laughter and life, the light that had held the shadows at bay so long, the smile that he had loved, then he could stop hoping. Stop clinging to a promise that tormented him as much as it forced him to keep moving, to keep living.
It would hurt but hope hurt even more.
****
He couldn’t forget.
But the hope had faded, becoming a wound on his soul that refused to heal. It ached in the loneliest moments, in the long nights where the memories bubbled up, filling his dreams, and leaving him waking with Sting’s name on his lips, and tears on his face. He’s not coming, he would tell himself each time, another wound, another hurt. Easier to bear than the hope, but still painful. He’s gone, he would remind himself in the moments when he would turn, decades and centuries later, expecting to see blue eyes and that bright grin.
I miss him…
****
The darkness claimed him eventually.
Now, he lived, far from anyone that he could become a threat too, alone but for the shadows that lived and breathed beside him. Ghosts of the lives lived and forgotten. Echoes of the memories of Sting. Alone, but never alone, as they whispered to him. Whittling away at the edges of his sanity, scabbing over the hurt of the lost hope, with loss and loneliness, and a deep, growing anger. The kind that burns low and slow, seeping into your veins until you burn with it and Rogue was on a pyre of fury now. Burning with it, almost ready to burn the world along with him.
The world that had cursed him.
The world he no longer belonged to.
The world that refused to let Sting return to him.
Almost, because even in that darkness, alone and angry, he couldn’t forget Sting or the promise he had made. The tiny spark of hope that was all that was left of them stubbornly refusing to die dimmed and threatened by the shadows, but shining still. Sting. Sting wouldn’t want him to let the darkness win, to let his shadows run wild and tear apart the world. He had fought so hard to stop that from happening, sharing his light, his life, his love to keep Rogue standing in the light.
So, Rogue lingered and seethed in the darkness. Trapped by memories, by a hope that wouldn’t entirely release its hold on him. The curse keeping him tethered to life as the years trickled away from him in a haze.
At times, people would try and venture into the tower he’d claimed as his own. Drawn by curiosity and fear, tales of what lurked in the darkness spreading across Fiore and beyond. Some ventured in on the words of dares, others were mages chasing a reward, others were adventurers chasing the unknown. Rogue chased them all away, sometimes letting them glimpse him amongst the roiling mass of shadows, other times becoming one with the darkness as he hounded them from his home. He tried not to kill, a throwback to the voice in his memory that still sounded remarkably like Sting, but he was not gentle. He was not kind. He wanted them gone. He wanted them to hurt. To know what the darkness fell like. Over time, the visitors grew less and less, until he had almost forgotten what other people looked like. Not Sting, his mate’s image remained untouched in his mind, a pinprick of light in the darkness, a final, lingering trace of humanity.
**
Perhaps that was why he hadn’t detected the invasion. The presence of a human unnoticed, until a hand had landed on his shoulder where he sat, huddled in the depths of the darkness. The touch, a forgotten sensation after so long, had terrified him and he’d fled rather than fight, slipping into the shadows. “Please don’t run away.” It took him longer than it should have to make sense of the words, unable to remember the last time he’d heard anything but his own thoughts and the echo of Sting’s voice. It was a siren song, even as the rage rose once more, banishing the fear as he peered out of the darkness.
Sting…?
No, it wasn’t Sting. Or, at least not the one in his memory. The eyes that met his, unerring even though Rogue was buried in the darkness were grey not blue, and the hair settled in gentle, chestnut waves as they framed a youthful face, and yet there was something. A light that shone in the curious gaze. A spark that kept any fear at bay, even as the shadows wrapped around the man, sealing him off from the rest of the world. Trapping him with Rogue, who found himself unable to move, unable to breathe, as despite everything the man smiled at him, soft yet sorrowful at the same time. “I’m sorry.”
Why? Rogue wondered, not sure if his voice would even work after all this time. But curiosity got the better of him, and a tendril of shadow reached out, lightly poking the man in the arm and recoiling. To Rogue, the warmth was alluring and terrifying. Shockingly real in a world that had been defined by the darkness for far too long, and he nudged the man again. This time, the man was ready, reaching out to press his fingers to the tip of the tendril, unafraid even as the darkness swelled, threatening, at odds with Rogue who was drifting closer. “I’m sorry that I made you wait so long,” the man whispered, lifting his head, and once again his eyes found where Rogue was buried deep in the shadows. “Rogue.”
Rogue.
He had left that name behind. It had been lost to the dust of time, or so he had thought, and he quivered at hearing it spoken so softly, as though it was the most precious name in the world. I will find you again. It couldn’t be him, not after all this time, and yet… Rogue shifted. Afraid more than angry for the first time in years, and the man waited, watching him quietly. Giving him the time to work through his thoughts, just as Sting had always done and Rogue hated it. Hated the hurt that he could feel rising in his chest, an ember flickering to life and he yanked the tendril away from the gentle touch and lashed out. Leaving deep scores in the ground either side of the man and drawing a bloody gash across a pale cheek. The man cried out, pressing a hand to the cut and looking at his bloody fingers when he pulled it away before sighing. “I should have known that it wouldn’t be that easy,” he said, more to himself than Rogue, but Rogue froze anyway, braced for an attack.
Instead, the man stepped forward, arms spread to show that he wasn’t a threat, pausing as the shadows lashed towards him again without hitting their target. A smile crept across the man’s face, and Rogue shifted uneasily, as though the man knew something that he didn’t, and then he was moving forward, stepping into the darkness as though it was nothing.
The darkness didn’t touch him.
There was a pale glow around him as he moved forward steadily. The shadows lashed again, more frantically this time as Rogue retreated, but they didn’t connect with him, instead skittering off some kind of barrier-breaking into drifting patches of shadow that faded into nothingness. Rogue tried to shout at him to stay away, to leave him alone, but the words wouldn’t come after so long, and all he managed was a low growl that echoed and echoed. That got a reaction, but not one he had been expecting, as the man looked ready to weep at the sound, although he didn’t stop moving forward.
“Do you think that you’ll remember me?” For a moment, Rogue thought that it was just the echo in his memory, but then the question came again, in a voice different from the one in his mind. The man looking at him, head tilted to the side, tears on his cheeks even as he smiled at Rogue. “Do you remember me, Rogue?”
Rogue froze, his heart hammering in his chest. It can’t be… He shook his head, trying to deny the words, the hope, but he couldn’t look away from the man. Apparently, that was answer enough because the man was moving towards him again, closing the distance between them in slow, but steady steps and Rogue didn’t know what to do. It couldn’t be him, and yet…
“Rogue.” Fingers brushed his cheek, finding him in the darkness and pulling him from it as he solidified, still wreathed in shadows, but present in a way that he hadn’t been for years. The man was trembling, but confident as he ran his fingers over Rogue’s cheeks before cupping his face, not letting him pull away. “Do you recognise me?” A denial was on the tip of his tongue, but as he found himself staring into grey eyes that for a moment looked almost blue in the soft glow the man was letting off, it faded away.
“S—S-S-ting…” His voice was ruined, the word mangled and lost in the roaring sound in his ears, but the man – Sting – was laughing and sobbing as he nodded. It can’t be and yet… Sting was pulling him into a hug now, the sensation overwhelming after so long alone, and yet Rogue couldn’t fight it, because as he found himself pulled into place beneath Sting’s chin, it felt like a long-awaited homecoming. And as Sting’s arms crept around him, holding him close, Rogue felt a sob bubbling up in the back of his throat.
You kept your promise…