Author's Chapter Notes:
‘Logan…’ she whispered pitifully. He opened his dazed eyes and looked down at her, suddenly realising, the pained expression in her face, she was more than just badly hurt… she was dying.

‘It’ll be alright darlin’… I promise…trust me…’ He took a hold of her arm and gently raised her hand, carefully removing what was left of her tattered glove, the sight of her broken hand struck him to the core.


Lots of action in this chapter, a chance to find out what happened to Jean, and Rogue gains yet another power.
Part 7- ‘Haunted by Phantoms…’

It hurt too much…her skin burned like the scorched earth around her; the scarred landscape blackened by the signs of a fierce fire-fight seemed to radiate as much pain as her aching bones. After Apocalypse they had thought it would get easier, they had still been recuperating when another ancient evil had been awakened, Mantor, and despite all their bravado they simply had not been ready for another fight so soon.

She smiled grimly against the darkness of it all, they were losing, the X-Men were losing and, who would have thought it, they were losing to a group of humans. Over-zealous, fanatic, psychotic and frightfully opportunistic, but humans all the same.

Irony of ironies they had come to save the pathetic creatures, they had almost saved them, Mantor had been on the verge of being banished but they had arrived with their own idea of saving the world. Those ideas involved eradicating as many mutants as they could in one fell swoop.

And this would be their prize opportunity, like shooting fish in a barrel, there were so many of them down there fighting, given that along with the X-Men the Brotherhood had been persuaded to lend a hand. As usual they had arrived late, but at least they were here.

A gruff voice was shouting at her, shouting for her to get up. It was only then that she remembered that the heat of a blast close to her feet had thrown her to the ground. No wonder all the angles looked askew.

‘Rogue…Rogue, dammit kid get up…!’ But she was tired, and it hurt, it burned. Her concentration drifted, eyes closing softly against the night. It would be so easy to slip away…Suddenly her eyes snapped open as the ground some distance in front of her began to kick up. It was as if tiny pebbles were hitting the dusty earth repeatedly, getting closer…and closer.

But they weren’t pebbles, they were far deadlier. Bullets, titanium tipped, skin and bone shattering bullets coming closer, coming to cut her to ribbons. She forced herself up, with every last ounce of strength pulling herself to her knees and then to her feet. And she ran.

Her legs and arms pumping faster, a desperate escape for the nearest shelter, but the whirring of helicopter gunship blades was above her now, a deafening roar surrounding her, then over her head and now in front of her. The pilot had manoeuvred the helicopter in her path directly cutting off her escape route, she thought she could see him smile, a vindictive, sadistic grin peeking out beneath his black visor.

But she stood her ground, the air currents from the blades whipping up her hair; she watched and waited as he trained the heavy machine guns in her direction. She closed her eyes, the last images in her mind being of the lettering on the front of the gunship. ‘FFH…Faithful Friends of Humanity…’

She heard the guns turning in their turrets, loading, priming, and she was ready and waiting. Let it stop…let it end. But others had different ideas, even as the guns began pumping out there deadly cargo she felt herself suddenly being rushed and tackled to the ground out of harms way. Over and over they rolled, herself and her mystery saviour, rolling further, an entangled mess of arms and legs, his arms clutching her against his chest tightly, protectively.

She despaired of ever stopping their rolling motion, every time her back hit the ground she released a painful grunt. It just hurt so damn much. They stopped eventually when they hit a boulder, it was his back that took the force of the blow, but he still held onto her, his arms locked tight.

The wind was knocked out of the both of them, the impact rolled him back onto her, and she lay pinned beneath him. She gasped for breath, ‘Logan…’ she whispered pitifully.
He opened his dazed eyes and looked down at her, suddenly realising, the pained expression in her face, she was more than just badly hurt… she was dying.

‘Rogue…hey kid. This fight ain’t over yet…where’d ye think you’re going…?’ he demanded gruffly of her, the slightest quiver in his voice betraying his fear.

‘Ah’m tired Logan…and it hurts, it hurts so much…’ He raised himself from her and brushed her hair away from her blood spattered face. She clenched her teeth and winced once more. The physical exertion of keeping her eyes open, of keeping them focused was becoming too painful.

‘It’ll be alright darlin’… I promise…trust me…’ He took a hold of her arm and gently raised her hand, carefully removing what was left of her tattered glove, the sight of her broken hand struck him to the core.

‘Ah’m sorry…ah let ya down…’ She looked up at him, and he could see the tears forming in her eyes. Her breathing was becoming shallower and she was slipping away, he had to act fast.

‘Don’t be dumb kid…’ Taking her hand he pressed it firmly to the exposed skin of his face. Held it tightly there waiting for her powers to take over, for her mutancy to do its thing. But nothing happened, nothing at all. He had closed his eyes, and when he opened them he could see her chest had stopped moving, she wasn’t breathing and her skin was becoming paler by the second.

‘No…no…NO! Come on kid…’ Dropping her hand he ripped off his own gloves and pressed both his hands to her face this time. Still nothing, he shook her, letting out a howl of despair. ‘Please…’ he begged, looking up into the night air. ‘Please…’ he pressed his hands to her face once more. Nothing…

He ought to have known the prayers of sinners were never answered, and providence had sought to wreak a suitable punishment for him by taking her away. He bowed his head and whispered once more, ‘Please…’ Utterly without hope this time, he gently placed his lips on her mouth, a simple goodbye for the girl he had promised it would all be alright.

And then he felt it, the pull, her powers kicking into force…sucking, taking him in. His healing power, his life force poured into her and her eyes suddenly snapped open. She grappled reaching for his shoulders as she saw him struggling with the pain. She pushed him back with all the might she could muster. He fell backwards and they were both rasping, struggling to catch a breath.

‘Welcome back kid…’ he muttered. She smiled at him. The sudden return of a familiar sound caught there attention once more. The gunship was back and this time it had both mutants trained in its sight. They awaited the inevitable, both still too weak to make an escape.

They didn’t have to, even as they watched with widening eyes the helicopter suddenly released an ear splitting screech, the sound of metal grinding and struggling. It began to spin out of control and as it did so they caught sight of its tail blades. They were iced over, frozen solid, the helicopter lost its manoeuvrability and they watched as the pilot struggled to gain control over the beast. He lost and the thing came down heavily, the main rotor blades detached themselves from the body and Rogue’s bad luck continued as the razor sharp implements promptly made their way towards her. She scrambled backwards bracing herself against the boulder, shut her eyes once more and held her breath…

She opened her eyes eventually and realised the blades had stopped…mere inches from her neck. She let out a relieved breath and shook her head. She looked up to see an equally relieved and recovered Logan holding out his hand. He had replaced his gloves and was flexing his hands, just itching to jump back into the fight.

‘Come on kid, they need us out there…’


Jean, oh no, Jean what have you done? Rogue looked up in time to see Jean’s fingers slip from her own. ‘I’m sorry Rogue…I had to, I have to. I need to save you all.’

And Rogue was too drained from the fight to go after her, to beg her not to make such a sacrifice, but even as Jean had pushed her out of the telekinetic force field she had grasped Rogue’s bare hands to allow herself to be drained of just enough energy for the field to collapse around her.

And collapse it did, with Jean, Mantor’s sarcophagus, his temple and the blast, that damned fatal blast from the nuclear bomb the FFH had been deranged enough to drop on them.

‘NOOOOOO! JEAN…!’ Scott’s anguished cry rang out into the night even as the field descended into nothingness, he made a run for the site but was tackled to the ground by Beast, who held him back from joining the woman he loved.

The field shrank smaller and smaller, finally collapsing into a ball of white heat energy that exploded with a brilliant radiance that would have resembled the best firework display had the circumstances not been so very tragic.

‘Tell him I loved him…’ Rogue clutched her hands to her head. She struggled to contain the voice, ‘No, ah don’t want you in there as well…please.’

Then all was silent, it seemed as if the world had stopped moving, simply to contemplate the lucky escape they had just had. It was then that a painful howl screeched through the rancid night air, but not from Scott as all had first suspected, but from Rogue cursing at forces unseen and clutching at her head despairingly…


Plausible deniability… that was the clause which the Government hid behind, they claimed to have not known about FFH’s plans to bring about a near nuclear holocaust. And perhaps there was some truth in that but everyone knew that the FFH had always had major players behind it.

It was the very deepest of black ops, the very deepest of undercover operations whose roots spread far, wide and deep. They penetrated the deepest echelons of all levels of society, its members immersed in all positions of authority, right up to the very senate itself, and some believed it went further. Right to the very top, el Presidente himself.

And their sole objective? To contain, maintain the mutant threat, to keep the beasts in check. The group had started with the humblest of beginnings, groups of over-zealous religious freaks, who ascertained that the X gene was a thing unholy, and to eradicate it would be performing God’s work. And they had set out to do just that, on a small scale at first until eventually they had reached the point where they could afford helicopter gunships and steal nuclear warheads.


Now it was ‘official’ that after the fiasco in China where it had been at last determined that the X-Men were in fact trying to save the world from Mantor and his horrors, that the group had gotten out of hand and needed to be disbanded.

But Rogue knew that whatever was official was never true, the group had not been disbanded, they had simply gone further underground, determined to fight a guerrilla war against the mutant race if that was what it took. But that was unnecessary, the support for them had not waned, if anything it had grown. Never mind what the X-men had sacrificed to save their lives, the fact that it was an ancient mutant that had threatened their existence in the first place was enough to ensure the heightened sense of paranoia and hate remained.

So began her deep rooted dislike for the ungrateful humans and their lies.



Rogue murmured returning slowly to consciousness, various images flashed before her eyes. Red…it was all an angry, fiery red. Red hair and black, dark sinful eyes…
Rogue gasped a deep breath that jolted her right back into consciousness. She had banged her head as she had fallen on the floor, gentle trickles of blood found their way down her forehead and into her eyes.

But that didn’t stop her from seeing the strange sight around her, everything was floating. Everything that wasn’t nailed to the floor was floating about the bathroom, the toothbrushes, and the towels even the fine droplets of water that had not yet drained away. Everything was floating about the room in a revolving motion, only she sat on the floor, her towelled body slumped against the floor.

She raised her hand slowly, and regarded it curiously with a tilting of her head before clenching it into a fist and bringing it back down to the floor with a hard slap against the cold tiles. In the same instant everything that had been floating came crashing down around her as well. She raised her hand once more and watched fascinated as the bathroom items quivered gently and slowly rise in synchronisation with the motion of her hand. Again, bringing her hand down the toiletries followed suit. She repeated the action a couple of times wanting to be sure, and yes, she had to at last concede, it was her…she was doing this.

Rogue sat perfectly still unsure of what to do next, the only thing moving was the fine trickle of blood that continued to roll down her head and into her eyes, red into black…
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