Charles blinked in the soft light, his vision blurry as he stared down at his feet. Catching movement off to the right he sighed and closed his eyes. He had nurses coming and going within his room all the time, there was no peace for a man like him and he wondered if they would ever get tired of coming and disturbing him.
He wasn’t sure how long he waited but confusion set in as he realized that although there were three bodies, three minds in his room besides his own, he wasn’t being poked at. Shifting he wheezed as he moved, and opened his eyes to stare into the bitter gazes of three faces he’d believed he would never see again.
A bolt of fear ripped through him as they stared back at him. “What…what do you want?” he forced out past chapped lips.
Rogue smiled coldly, her features twisting with hatred. “To watch you die old man. Tell me, how does it feel?”
“I…I…don’t know what you mean.” Charles coughed harshly, his hand going to the summons button. He jerked in his bed as a glove encased fist smashed down on it, jerking it beyond his reach.
“You’re pathetic you know that?” Kitty drawled shifting her weight slightly and rocking back and forth on her heels. “Such a worthless pile of skin and bones. So what’s killing you? Your own evil?”
Charles closed his eyes tiredly. “I have nothing left…”
“We don’t care.” Jubilee retorted harshly. “See you still owe us something, you haven’t paid off your debt yet.”
Paling even more, Charles barely heard the heart rate monitor jacking up as he stared at the trio. What could they do to him now? What did they want from him?
“You sold us out. Gave up on us even before you’d ever really tried to find us.” Rogue started softly. “For the longest time I hated that fact. I hated what you allowed, what you encouraged to happen to us. But I’ve come to realize that if you hadn’t done what you did we wouldn’t have what we have. You see, old man, you still lose. You destroyed the lives of three girls. Ripped apart our faith, our self awareness and left us to rot in those tiny cells. We however, were stronger than that. We found a strength within ourselves that you could never break.”
“I’m sorry.” Charles gasped painfully.
“Oh, no, old man. You don’t get a free pass to forgiveness.” Rogue moved forward and leaned over the bed, her fingers tracing his face gently. “Frankenstein doesn’t sleep, there is no weakness within her, and your precious X-Men are gone. No students, no teachers, no wealthy, nothing but a broken, filthy freak. You get to die alone, unwanted, hated, resented, spat upon.”
She smiled gently. “And we get to go on living. Welcome to forever old man, you get a sample of what we endured.” Stepping back she allowed Jubilee to slide a long, thin needle deep into the IV and drain the syringe.
Turning they started for the door, only to pause at the gasps coming from the bed.
“I trusted in her, and for that I am truly sorry.”
“Not yet, you aren’t.” Rogue replied and turned to walk away. The soft click of the door closing even louder in the air as Charles lay there feeling the slow, steady burn of something within his body. Even as he felt the drugs taking effect he couldn’t scream out, the agony seared over him as he closed his eyes, begging silently for mercy that would never come.
Rogue stopped just outside of the hospital and glanced upwards into the warm sunlight, a slight smile on her face. Exhaling she turned her head and looked at her friends, “Come on, lets get home. I have a hankering to see my family.” Laughing the trio headed for the nondescript black car sitting idling.
Had Charles been able to see out his window he would have seen three women slide into it, and the dark haired man who sat behind the wheel. He would have seen the banked anger, the rage, and hatred that twisted Logan’s face for a moment before the car vanished into traffic. But all Charles saw was the searing wash of pain that engulfed him and the blackness that came with it. Gladly he surrendered to it, anxious to get away from the pain of his failures, and his loss.
He had no way of knowing that the ones he’d deemed unsuitable for his ‘dream’ were doing what he had never been able to. That in his devotion to Jean Greye, he had set into motion a group that would one day see his dream…their dream of unity come true.
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