"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
--Frederick Wilhelm Nietzche
--The room was stacked with cold bodies, bagged and tagged.--
--Laboratory. I recognized it, remembered it from another life, another time. I paced the room, my white coat fluttering around me, giving orders in a shrill voice as someone kept calling the evacuation codes.--
--"We have to get out, Doctor," someone told me, grabbing my arm and I jerked away, yelling...something. Something about neutralizing the other subjects, something about...about, yes, those other mutant bitches downstairs. If they took this lab, they'd only get mangled bodies, nothing else, and I had given the order hours ago, so why the hell weren't they all dead already?--
--"Doctor, your staff left. No one wants to be here when Summers arrives." Cowards, I spat. Cowards. Filthy muties outside, and everyone ducked like they were a real threat, when we had the way to kill them all. Angrily, I turned around and there was a sharp sound. The person holding my arm collapsed onto the floor, blood dripping over the pristine white tile.
--I already knew what I'd see, with the red visor of the man appeared, hand touching the controls.--
--"Where are they?"--
--I darted for the far door, the beam just missing me. I remembered in Tucson, when this man had been in my laboratory, and I smiled a little as I thought of the tissue samples in this very lab. I wondered what he'd think to know his body had made so much possible for us...so damn much.--
--Something pushed me into the wall, and I was lifted against it, my head jerked around before I could find a clear breath--and a hand closed with casual strength around my throat.--
--"Downstairs," the man behind me...not man, mutant. Not human. "What are the codes, doctor?"--
--I spat blood into the wall and wondered if someone had started the gas downstairs. God, let something go right.--
--"Dead," I choked out and was turned around, my feet dangling from the floor. Cool hazel eyes studied me without a trace of anything recognizable. Not human, I reminded myself. Less than lab animals; at least they were natural, not these monstrosities. The hand on my throat lightened a little, and he tilted his head.--
--"Trial or casualty?" asked the man of someone, and there were others coming through the doors--more of the mutants, but I didn't recognize any of them. Summers walked up behind the man holding me and gave me a long look, and the cruel animal cunning on his face chilled me. Humans didn't look like that.--
--"I remember him," the mutant answered. "Send him to New York with the others."--
--"Sure?"--
--Summers grinned then and touched the other man on the shoulder.--
--"Only when necessary. Shadowcat's in the computers now. She's getting the locations." A pause. "Make sure the doctor can stand trial on his own feet, Wolverine."--
--The man holding me smiled slowly, and I felt the hand on my throat tighten, breath stopping.--
--Bastards. Let the gas work...--
"Mutie freaks!"
Hands were around me, holding me down, the fucking muties trying to--trying to--
"Marie, baby. Wake up."
I jerked from the restraining hands, found the floor on my knees and tried to struggle to my feet. They'd flipped the lights of the lab off, how the *hell* had they gotten to the power generator so damn fast?
"Marie, baby." Warm fingers on my face. "Marie, it's okay. Look at me."
Marie. Marie.
*Marie.* Me.
Blinking, I took in the warm, dark silence of the apartment and collapsed onto the floor, looking up at Logan sitting on the edge of the bed.
"God," I whispered softly, and he dropped to the floor beside me, gathering me into a close embrace. "Oh God, Logan, he was--" Filthy with hate; this was what they'd seen, what they'd lived with? Shuddering, I wrapped my arms around Logan and buried my face in his shoulder as his hands smoothed down my back. My teeth chattered together from the force of my shaking.
"Jeannie's shields were temporary--just a second." He pulled back a little and then the cool metal of the collar encircled my throat. My mind magically silenced, the crawling sick feelings slipping backward and out, disappearing into the haze of my mind. With painful gentleness, Logan's hands stroked down my back again, soothing tight muscles, kneading my shoulders until the last of the tension faded.
"Logan," I whispered, wondering how I could tell him. "He--he was--he worked on Scott."
There was the briefest stiffness to his body, damning for someone who had so much control.
"You have a name?"
"Dr. Michael Perry." I breathed out. "He--he escaped before the trials, didn't he?"
"Yeah."
"He's dead. I killed him." Something like satisfaction chased itself through me, and I couldn't--I didn't even try to stop it.
No answer--he knew I didn't need one. Fingers moved gently into my hair, easing against my scalp in an old caress, one the other Logan had used often enough. I opened my eyes, keeping them fixed on the dark room--nothing like that coldly sterile lab, Logan's body nothing like the corpses that man had dissected with such pleasure.
"He didn't think of us as people."
"They couldn't and still do what they did, Marie."
Was that comforting? I leaned into each stroke, trying to push the thoughts aside, ground myself back in the room again, but the images--God, this was too much.
I'd never really understood--I'd suffered prejudice since I'd manifested, all kinds, all ways. From snubs when I went shopping to the anti-mutant rhetoric regularly screamed at any mutant fundraiser or across national television. I'd lived with the reality of the Sentinels, the FoH, the congressmen who'd followed Kelley's lead with such pleasure.
It was the difference between dreaming and waking. That room was the real thing, all in stark white and grey. That's what the prejudice really meant--not little cards for us to carry to tell what we were. Living bodies to experiment on, less than people, less than sentient.
"I'm sorry," I whispered against Logan's shoulder, and his hands slid to my face, drawing my head back. Serious hazel eyes studied me carefully. "You--all those things I've said, I've thought--they were wrong, Logan. That--that was what you went through, wasn't it? All of that."
A pause, then Logan nodded slowly, and I bit into my lip, pushing the images aside.
"Come back to bed." An arm slid around me, pulling me up, cradling me like the child I'd been years before. No, hours before. Nothing in the camp, nothing I'd seen or heard, could compare with *knowing*. I'd always known they'd hated us.
I'd just never known how much.
"We have to meet with Jeannie and Scooter in the morning," Logan said as he laid me down, sliding in beside me, large and warm and soothing. A powerful talisman against nightmares, and he let me wind myself all around him, burying my head against his chest and closing my eyes tightly.
I needed him to remind me--that dream, those people, that place, were over. Before I'd stepped foot in this world, he and Scott had destroyed it.
Well, my life was taking a serious turn for suckage, no question.
Scott, Logan, and I gathered in the conference room, trying to look casual about the fact that the girl they thought was seven years dead was living, breathing, and fucking the X-Men's second in command. I'd turned off the emitter, shrugging at Logan's raised brows--there was no reason to use it now. Brown hair slid in front of my eyes, and it jarred me a little to see it outside of our bedroom. A little desperately, I pushed the short hair back behind my ear, trying to find a safe place to rest my gaze.
The floor seemed the only logical choice. Seemed like every time I found a good wall, Scott moved in that direction.
Jean had run her last test and was still in the lab, correlating results or something along those lines. Logan hadn't let me any farther away from him than the length of his arm and was currently seated beside me, warm and safe and utterly at ease, as if he protected random Rogues on a yearly basis and it was quite the thing to do. Scott was leaning against the wall by the door, watching me as if he expected me to bolt at the slightest hint of trouble.
He wasn't far wrong. Logan's hand on my thigh was the only thing keeping me in place. I couldn't help the involuntary twitch of my muscles every time Scott's gaze rested on me, taking in again the difference between the Marie Danvers he'd known and the Rogue he'd watched die. Had to be something of a shock, even with the link between him and Jean confirming my identity. All things considered, this could have gone much, much worse.
Though really, not by much.
Logan and I hadn't managed to get back to sleep the night before. I'd been shaking so badly that I hadn't even been able to relax, and his arms had tightened around me and he'd told me that everything was fine, everything would be fine. That it had just been the dream.
Dawn had brought the knowledge of this interview. Logan made me drink half a pot of coffee and sat me down, telling me nothing would change.
Riiight. Nothing at all. Two of the most powerful mutants on the planet and designers of the Polaris Project were now aware that the live and in concert Rogue was back, perhaps for a repeat performance. Something was going to change. And it didn't look good any way I sliced it.
With Jean's shields more stable this morning, I had safe skin but no inner Logan or Carol, and the emptiness of my mind was disconcerting. I searched a little, then settled back into the real world, discomfited. It felt wrong, unnatural. I'd been too many people for far too long. It was too much change for me to absorb this fast.
"Rogue," Scott said slowly, tasting the name as if he'd never heard it before, flickering a glance to Logan. It wasn't my imagination--Logan shifted a little closer to me, gaze fixed on Scott with something that was two steps from hostile. "When were you going to tell us?"
"I didn't think it'd come up."
An eyebrow raised slowly--sometimes, it was disorienting to see how much Logan and Scott echoed each other. I shifted in my seat, felt Logan's hand tighten on my leg in warning. Ah, alpha male crap. Got it. Go right on ahead, sugar.
"Not come up?"
Logan shrugged.
"You know the dangers, Scooter."
"'Seven years of trust against one choice'," Scott quoted mockingly, and I felt myself flush. "Glad to see it goes both ways."
Logan winced from the accurate shot, and I knew Scott had to have seen it, no matter how brief it was. This Scott knew this Logan far too well. I wanted to step between them, say something. This was just wrong--completely, absolutely wrong on so many levels.
"It was my fault, Scott," I heard myself say, Logan's soft groan a breath behind, and pushed through anyway. I'd never been noted for my subtlety before, after all. "He--I put him in this position. I didn't--I didn't know what you'd do if you--if you found out who I was. What I was."
Scott's gaze was fixed on Logan with utter absorption, but the answer was for me.
"What did you think I'd do?" Scott pushed off the wall with easy grace, pacing to the far wall. Scott had to be moving--it was almost intrinsic, something I was used to seeing. A stressed Scott was living perpetual motion, needing action and reaction as he organized his thoughts. A pissed Scott was that times ten. The red gaze fixed on me with something very, very close to rage. "Lock you downstairs and hand you over to Lensherr without a thought? What the *hell* do you think I am?"
I got the feeling that what I'd witnessed in the tower would be nothing compared to this if it wasn't played right. Getting to my feet, I stepped between them, getting all of Scott's glare. Crap, I'd never stand up to that. I'd never been able to, not in the other world, not here. He'd always known how to make his authority into a weapon. The only difference was this Scott was sharper, harder in different ways. He'd learned more about power and how to use it than the other Scott ever had--or ever would have wanted to.
"I don't know," I said softly, keeping my back straight, meeting his gaze without flinching. It was the bravest thing I'd ever done in my life. "If you were dropped in the middle of an FoH camp, would you tell them you were a mutant?"
The white teeth were bared in almost a smile. No humor there. No understanding either.
"I'm not FoH."
"No, " I answered, holding his gaze. "You're Scott Summers, leader of the X-Men, who gave the okay for Polaris to be butchered in my place. Tell me to believe you wouldn't strap me into that thing again to die for the greater good of mutantkind if that was necessary."
"Don't." It was low, even, and raised all the hair on my body. I locked my hands behind my back, trying to conceal their shaking, hoping the rest of my body didn't betray me too. "Don't even try. That's bullshit"
"I made the decision, Summers." Oh fuck, Logan, he doesn't *need* two targets here. Logan's hands closed over mine and he must have felt the shaking. I didn't need supercharged senses to pick up active hostile anger. Logan passively hostile was never a good thing, but when he let it loose, scary things were known to happen. The Brotherhood knew this intimately. In this world, stripped of the entrapments of the X-Men's ideals--I didn't want to know. I really didn't. "Take it up with me, not her."
"Marie." Jean was at the door--from the look on her face, the hurried step as she entered the room, she'd picked up what was going on in here. Oh thank God. I certainly didn't know how to handle this, what to do with it. I'd never been strong enough to stand up to this sort of power. "Marie, come with me, please."
"Jeannie--" Logan turned toward her, keeping his tight grip on my hands, and Scott stiffened. This was going worse than badly, and Jean saw that too. Before the tension could get worse, I turned around, getting a hand free, and reached up, catching his jaw in one hand, forcing him to look at me.
"Logan, please."
There was a tense moment, where I thought he'd fight it--and he very well might have. He wanted out of here so badly I could taste it, could feel it crawl along every nerve in my body. After a moment, though, the hazel eyes met mine and held for a minute, and I tried to put everything of reassurance I could into my face and body. He squeezed my hand, lifting it to brush a kiss across my perfectly safe wrist, before nodding. Reluctantly, I turned away, and Jean stepped aside to let me pass in front of her. Almost instantly, she shut the door, just in time to muffle the sound of metal and something breaking.
She stopped me from going back with a hand on my arm.
"Don't. This is between them, Marie."
No, it really wasn't. It was me--what I'd done to make him betray his friends. I wondered what I'd see when I looked into Jean's eyes, kept my gaze fixed on the door. No raised voices yet.
"I reopened the link," Jean said, pulling me gently down the hall. "It's harder for them to fight when they can feel how badly they hurt each other."
Blinking, I looked up at Jean. That was inspired. She caught my gaze and grinned with all the charm of a little girl with the perfect plan to steal cookies. She knew these men far too well.
"I've had a lot of time to figure out how to handle them. They don't like it, but at least they blame me for making them sensitive instead of thinking it reflects on their masculinity if it's all my fault that they make up fast. Don't worry about it."
"It's my fault," I answered as she gently pushed me into the lab, and the door shut behind us on its own. The room was chilly and quiet, sterile white, and flashbacks from the night before crowded into my head. I stiffened automatically, but Jean's gentle touch was everywhere--the masses of papers that looked like a mess but was actually a cleverly disguised form of Jean-specific organization. I almost expected her to push me to the medical bed I'd spent the better part of the morning in, but instead, two chairs skittered out from behind blinking medical machinery I couldn't recognize and situated themselves near a small table. She smiled at my reaction and took one of the chairs, waiting patiently as I hesitantly took the other.
"It *is* your fault, but under the circumstances..." she shrugged a little, taking a breath and letting it out slowly, her hand back on her abdomen, rubbing slowly, almost as if to comfort herself. "Scott understands. That's what's frustrating him most. Once he believed, that is." She shrugged, and a carafe of water hovered over the table suddenly, before seating itself between us, followed by two glasses. I'd never get used to this or stop enjoying when Jean played with her TK.
Looking at Jean, there was very little of the shock I'd been expecting--she'd taken it very coolly on the plane, though later Logan told me I'd been pretty out of it for over two hours. She'd had a good adjustment period there.
"You believe me, don't you?"
"I was in your mind," Jean answered, pouring a glass of water by hand and taking a drink. Fixing the brown eyes on me, she shrugged. "It would be very difficult to create memories, and I'd feel the difference between reality and artifice. Gene tests don't lie either, and before Rogue's body was buried, I took samples. Most of our records were transferred to Canada before the war, so I have the originals still."
Practical, that. Slowly, I poured some water myself, taking a drink more for something to do than anything else. I wondered what I could say to her now.
"I--I'm sorry," I blurted out, and recieved the clear gaze of two very steady brown eyes. Flushing, I looked back down at the glass. "I don't--I don't know what I can do or say that will make it make sense, but I couldn't--I mean, Logan never would have--"
"Logan would let the school burn if he thought it would help you, Marie." I winced, turning my head away. "His concerns about Erik are understandable, though. Erik's uncertain whether the machine will perform properly--several volunteers died in the trial run with Polaris. Logan is right--Erik can't know who or what you are." She paused for a moment, sipping from her glass idly. "You consulted with Hank?"
"Yes."
Jean frowned a little as her fingers traced over the surface of the table in idle thought.
"What? He's against the project."
"He's also opposed to more human deaths."
A horrible suspicion uncoiled in my mind.
"You--he wouldn't tell Magneto, would he?" No, he wouldn't. Turning a few thousand humans into mutants had to be against the code of ethics.
"If he thought that there was no choice--" Jean frowned again. "I don't know. Hank's a believer--sometimes, I'm not sure what it is he believes." She shook her head slowly, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Are the shields holding up well?"
Blinking, I touched my forehead uncertainly.
"Little rough last night, but yeah." I paused, trying to think of a way to frame the question, then gave up and went for the bald approach. "How? I mean--my power is in my skin, so why--"
"Your skin absorbs the energy, yes, but everything starts in the brain," Jean answered easily. "It's similar to empathy, except for the ability to mimic, or copy, other mutations. Currently, with my shields in place, there is nowhere for the energy to go--a breaker has been pulled, so to speak." She smiled again at my gape-mouthed shock. I suppose I must have looked pretty funny at that. "It's a temporary measure, but it should help you a little until I can begin analysis on your mutation and find a way for you to build these yourself."
I tried to think through that and couldn't.
"I don't--there is no way to control it."
Jean's head tilted a little.
"What makes you think that?"
Well, seven years of trying everything known to man or beast, actually, and some things just thrown in for the hell of it. I couldn't quite answer, but Jean must have read it on my face, and she leaned forward, her hand touching mine. Instinctively, I jerked away, but the long fingers closed on my wrist and stayed there.
"We'll find a way."
I shook my head.
"You couldn't in my world."
Jean grinned then, brown eyes warm and filled with light, her power thrumming through us both as she strengthened her shields inside my mind, inch by inch, walling away every foreign memory and every grafted person that wasn't Marie until the silence was so deafening I wondered if anyone else could hear it.
God. It was so strange, and scary, and addicting as all hell. So much like the collar and so very little.
"I'm not her."
No, she wasn't. Staring at those brown eyes, feeling her power against my skin like heat, I felt my mouth go dry.
"I've wondered why you look at me like that," she commented, freeing my wrist and picking up her glass. "I suppose I'm different as well?"
Blinking, I considered, nodding a little.
"Yeah." Needed water now, definitely. Taking a drink, I tilted my head. "You're not--not this strong."
"Hmm." Jean nodded a little, obviously thinking about it. "Is there--Scott and I--" she paused, obviously searching for a way to ask the question.
"Together; happy," I answered easily, taking another drink of water. "Though as far as I know, no plans for conception." Suddenly, it occurred to me what had happened the day before--oh God, they'd hurt her. "Are you--"
Jean laughed softly.
"Fine, Marie." A hand unconsciously dropped to her stomach, rubbing softly. "I checked myself out the second we got back. Everything is fine."
I blew out a breath I hadn't known I was holding and leaned back into my chair, smiling a little.
"That's good." Really good, actually. Jean had a strangely absent smile on her face, and it sent a strange pang through me--God, obviously I was post-menstrual here, if I was feeling cuddly maternal feelings. Shaking it off, I took another drink of water and stared at the door. "You think they're done yet?"
Jean cocked her head briefly, a little flash of mischief lighting her eyes.
"They're trying to figure out how to apologize without saying anything. Scott suggested they check out the jet." The grin widened. "Little post-bonding ritual--during the war, it was cleaning the weaponry." Jean gave me a smile. "Come on--we can watch and mock them a little."
Grinning, I stood up, finishing my glass of water. There was still so much to talk about--but at least now, there was a future to talk about. I was all for that.
My uniform was dead. Literally. Jean refitted me while Logan went through stores to find new accessories, and Scott didn't protest once. Nor did he take me off the roster for the next mission, which was--well, interesting. I couldn't be exactly sure what that was saying--either he trusted Logan to keep me in line during missions or wanted to keep me under his eye at all times. Scott was like that.
I'd been wandering the school for awhile, checking the fit, when behind me, rapidly approaching footsteps skidded to a halt. I paused and turned around, meeting St. John's bright smile.
"Marie--" he stopped, smile fading, and I couldn't quite figure out why. The blue eyes slicked my body quick and fast, then snapped up to mine. Blank. "Nice uniform."
I looked down, blinking, then grinned a little.
"Thanks. There's a mission in about an hour, and my last uniform was sort of--well, nuked. This is the new one, and Logan wants me to wear it for a bit. It was made so fast he's not sure if it's flexible enough." I shrugged, stretching my shoulders--there was a tiny pull at the neck that was easy to correct for, but my legs and arms were fine as far as I could tell.
St. John was staring at me a little blankly for a minute, then a quick, almost natural smile slid into place.
"Logan's anal about the fits." His eyes traveled down and fixed on my gun briefly, then back up to my face. "Erik and Polaris have returned," he said casually as he matched my stride down the hall.
"Oh?" Hank still wanted that tape of the last trial run to see if there was anything that he could have his calculations, and I wondered how Logan was going to get it--could he do it without raising suspicions? Okay, spying *not* my forte here, and I had to smile a little. "Good."
"Yeah." Little pause. "They're moving up the date of the implementation of the project--The last trial is tonight. The real thing will be in two days, once Polaris has recovered." Casual.
"Oh." Huh. Tonight. I wondered if Logan knew yet.
"You--I heard the last mission went badly."
Jerking a little, I shivered in memory and caught another look from St. John.
"It--we all survived. The bodies were returned to the lab and the norms were taken to the lower levels for isolation--"
"Don't worry. I had the bodies," St. John answered easily, and I frowned, surprised.
"I thought that was only for attacks to the school."
"Any of them could carry contagion, Marie. We still don't know what they came up with in those labs--they could carry a virus in their bloodstream. Standard procedure." St. John paused, giving me another glance. "It's the safest thing to do."
"We might have gotten physical evidence from their bodies. DNA samples, or--"
"I thought Jean did the samples the night they were brought in," St. John said slowly, and there it was again. Unfamiliar twitch in the back of my mind. "Damn. I'd better go talk to her--she might not even know I've disposed of them. Excuse me, Marie." Turning on his heel, he took off down the other direction and I reached out to stop him.
"Johnny--they know." I paused, glancing around. No one was in the hallway. "About--about me."
"Good." He gave me a long look. "I know it must have been rough out there--I heard Scott was knocked out--"
"They used those guns," I answered. "There--I had--had to kill one of them. Former camp scientist." For some reason, I felt almost violently uncomfortable now, with St. John's calm gaze fixed on my face. "It--was necessary. Everyone else was out--"
"Hey, no need to explain. X-Men have the right of execution for treasonable offenses. Kidnapping the leader of the X-Men is treason and felony all wrapped up in one. I gotta run, Marie." Pulling away, he took off again and left me standing in the corridor, confused as to what exactly had just happened.
Not since our first meeting had he been so guarded.
"Baby--" A nudge at my elbow and I kicked lightly with my heel, hearing Logan's soft grunt. I was awake, but I was trying *really* hard to pretend I wasn't.
"Tired."
Warm lips brushed against the side of my throat, finding all the sensitive spots that just made me crazy. He *knew* that. The bastard. Growling, I tried to push him away and got my arm pinned to the bed for my trouble.
I loved him, that was true. But right now, I'd send him to hell for another two hours of sleep.
"We gotta get to the school, baby." His hand joined the battle, sliding under the sheet and slipping over my t-shirt and down my thigh. I shut my eyes tighter and buried my head in the pillow until he rolled me on my back.
I took the pillow with me.
"Come on, Marie."
"Don't wanna." That didn't sound as strong as I meant to be through the pillow. I heard Logan's sigh before he stripped the blankets back. I growled into the pillow. "It's not even dawn yet."
"Yeah." A little breathy--I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe something worth waking up for. I was a big fan of that. Removing the pillow from my face, I tucked it back behind my head. "You gettin' up?"
"You make it worth my while?"
Oh, that was a new expression. A wolfish grin parted his lips, baring his teeth a little, before he grabbed my ankles and jerked me toward him. The pillow and I skidded across the bed, and my head slipped right off the mattress.
That was it. We were getting a new bed. Something bigger.
"Logan--" My hips were in his lap and I thought about levering myself up to see what the idea was now. He might tickle me. He'd done it before.
Instead, bare fingers ran down the length of my thighs, rubbing lightly into the muscles, working slowly back up from my knees to my hips. I heard myself sigh softly, trying to lift my head back up onto the bed, but a hand on my chest pushed me back down and I had an upside down view of the room. Lightly, the tips of his fingers skated across my stomach and then both hands slid circled my waist, rubbing slow circles deep into my skin. I shut my eyes to take in the sensation--almost chaste, this touching, but not quite. I felt the brush of his sideburns against the skin of my stomach as his tongue drew soft liquid patterns across my hips and up to my waist, slowly over the ribs, and I shivered when he licked just under the curve of my breast.
Oh, that felt good. I grabbed the bed for leverage and moaned softly when his tongue moved between my breasts, then turned a little to make a leisurely trek up the side of my breast, his hair soft against my skin. I stifled a moan as he found a nipple and bit lightly before circling it with his tongue, tightening it almost painfully. Reaching for him, I ran my hands through his hair and my entire body tightened when he sucked hard.
"Mmmmm."
"Worth waking up for?"
I grinned and let my fingers slide over the back of his neck, scraping with my nails.
"Do better."
Slowly, he slid his tongue back down my breast, then up to the other nipple, catching it between his teeth. I sucked in a gasp and felt his erection pressed against me. Lifting my hips, I rubbed into him and he bit down in reaction.
"Oh God, yes," I heard myself mumble, and the hands on my waist slid up my back, lifting me into his lap. I looked down at him, seeing the arousal in his expression, in the smile he gave me before I kissed him, winding my arms around his neck and letting him lay me back down on the bed.
"You know we don't have time for this," Logan murmured against my skin, trailing his tongue over far too many nerves.
"It's just shopping with Jeannie, sugar." I sucked in a breath as he slid his fingers between my legs. "She'll understand."
"I'm sure she will." A slow stroke, dipping inside me and I arched into it, grabbing his hair and pulling his face up, meeting hot hazel eyes. "Do it."
One long, hard thrust, and stars danced in front of my eyes as his body covered mine, warm and solid and so safe. I tightened my arms around him as his mouth found mine. Wrapping my legs around his waist, I moved into him, feeling my breathing speed up, his mouth nipping at my throat, my face, my shoulders.
Slow, warm sex, and my orgasm was a delicious, honey-slow rush of feeling. Above me I felt him stiffen and the thrusting slowed, then stopped, and I let my fingers drift down his back, over sweat-slickened skin, smiling a little as he rolled off me, pulling me close. Smiling, I rested my head on his chest.
"Shopping, huh?"
I grinned against his skin and licked a little sweat away.
"Bigger bed, better coffee table--"
"Huh." Logan shifted against me. "Do I get a choice?"
"I'm looking now at your choices, and I'm thinking 'no' on this one." He chuckled softly. For a second, I thought about it. "Maybe get more clothes, since I'm sort of low. Maybe--"
"Maybe look around for another place to live."
I sucked in a shocked breath, but Logan was stroking my back, still talking.
"Maybe a little closer to the school--God knows, Scott's been on my ass about being this far away anyway."
I lifted myself on an elbow.
"You mean--for both of us?" Which in retrospect should have been obvious, but--but wow. Me and Logan. Picking out a new place to live. Like--people. Like people that are seriously together. Heh. Cool.
Logan tilted his head at me.
"No, just for the furniture. To look at. Shit, Marie, what do you think?"
Absolutely idiotic things, apparently, and I couldn't help the grin, slid back into his arms.
"Somewhere in Salem?"
"That'd be good," Logan answered thoughtfully. "You know--house, apartment, whatever you want. I'm not picky."
A house. I blinked, feeling my grin widen a little, and Logan's fingers rubbed gently into the middle of my back.
"I'll keep that in mind," I heard myself whisper, and Logan's lips brushed against mine, all promise. All wonderful, fabulous, amazing promise.
"You do that."
I loved shopping. No question.
Jean and I meandered through some of the better furniture stores in the city. If I was going to live here--and apparently, I was--I had to have better furnishings. My coat wrapped around me against the cool weather, I nodded agreeably as Jean discussed fabric samples and color coordination.
Picking up frappacchino at a small coffee shop, we wandered out onto the sidewalk, and I looked around the old buildings surrounding me, smiling a little as a warm breeze caught my hair. Jean tilted her head, giving me a glance.
"Does the emitter keep your hair that color?" I sipped my drink and nodded, then frowned a little at the flavor. "What?"
"I think you got my chocolate," I answered, and Jean took a taste, grimacing. Jean might love all things coffee, but for some reason, she'd never taken well to the concept of it flavored with anything but vanilla. With a grin, we exchanged cups, and Jean hefted the bag containing assorted catalogues and fabrics over her shoulder. "Anyway, yes." I pushed a strand back idly. "It's a look for me." I was beginning to like it, to be honest, though maybe a darker blonde would be better with my complexion.
"While we're in the city, we can have it done professionally, if you wish to. Perhaps also get the cut evened out a little." I blushed, caught the smile turning up Jean's mouth as she took another sip of coffee. "Cut it when you got here?"
I nodded. "Sort of a desperate measure." Catching a strand of golden blonde, I thought about getting rid of the emitter, the last trace of the hiding Rogue. That'd be nice--no matter how comfortable it was, I was always aware of it and how it could be damaged. "You know a good salon around here?"
"Wouldn't have mentioned it if I didn't." Sliding her arm through mine, she grinned and pulled me along the sidewalk. "Did you like anything we saw today?"
"The leather--"
"What a surprise. You and Logan and leather." She shook her head, a red curl covering her eyes briefly before she tossed her hair back. "We'll go back and have it sent over--do you remember how big the door is at the apartment, or do we need to measure first?"
I'd never thought of that and frowned a little.
"Pretty narrow."
"Hmm." She was thinking, probably trying to decide if TK would help. That would be new--telekinetic moving sounded like the best thing to happen to moving since the brown box. "We'll have to measure, I think, or Logan could widen the door a little." She slowed as we came to a more congested area and a bright yellow woman with three eyes smiled at us as we passed. "Or you could talk Logan into moving into a bigger apartment, maybe in Salem instead of here. Spring for a house."
"Logan said something about that," I replied, unable to stop the smile that threatened to make me look even dorkier than usual. Jean caught it and her grin back was breathtaking.
"Good." And she meant it. "Tell him how he can design his very own gym in it. Trust me, it'll work. Scott and I are remodeling the boathouse due to my comment on how nice a large jacuzzi bathtub would be. Amazing how quickly we got an architect to come over and take look around."
"It'd be nice. Something--for us both." I wondered what sort of house Logan had in mind. Gym would be good--nice large living room, maybe a den as well for just sitting around. Big kitchen, and I might even learn to cook. Maybe three bedrooms, in case....
I felt a flush suffuse my face and realized that this weird fuzziness of possible maternal feelings wasn't just related to my recent period or to Jean. Wow. So much had changed so fast--but then, now it was *possible*. Possible, beautifully possible, everything I'd ever been denied. Swinging one of the bags, I almost skipped, restraining myself with some effort.
"I have a few errands to run--did you want to get more clothes now or wait until we have more time?" Jean asked over her coffee.
I shrugged, glancing down briefly at her bag with a little smile of thought. She'd picked up two newborn outfits--both in light blue, of course, and I'd seen how her hands had lingered on the rattles and assorted infant-type merchandise. Trying very hard to not be too hopeful, but unable to help it. I didn't blame her. At this point, I was ready to offer surrogate mothering--the longing was so sharp in her that it broke through both our shields.
Pushing through another knot of people, we emerged onto a relatively clear area of sidewalk, and I glanced around briefly, training warring with the knowledge we were perfectly safe. As a rule, I didn't like crowds, and this was no exception. Jean didn't seem as disturbed, but then, she'd never had killer skin either, nor the eternally paranoid Logan wandering around inside her head. Taking a tighter hold on her arm, we continued our movement through the scattered crowds until Jean came to a sudden and complete stop.
The brown eyes went sharp and distant and I sucked in a breath as both our shields shuddered under--*something*.
"Jean?"
The brown eyes were very dark--instantly, my hand went below my jacket, touching the hilt of my gun. God, she was too comfortable in the city--zoning out like that in a crowd was never a good idea. Tightening my grip, I pulled her back against one of the buildings and scanned the people around me. Obvious mutants, non-obvious mutants, and--
"Jeannie," I whispered, and her fingers waved a little at me.
"The New York camp has been breached," she murmured. "The FoH compromised security--"
In other words, they were dead. Shit. I tried to figure out where the camp was located relative to us, where our car was--and *why* the hell this wasn't already known by the X-Men. No matter how good you were, taking down an entire camp took time, and we'd only been gone from the Mansion for a few hours. Someone should know by now.
"Did you tell Scott?"
"Yes," she answered, then looked down at my grip on her arm. "Marie, you're bruising me. Don't worry--Scott is--"
The first rain of gunfire literally came out of nowhere, and I forced Jean under me onto the ground. Invulnerable skin, one, bullets zip. One grazed my shoulder and went the way of all bullets--to wit, not in me, and a second zipped by my head, knocking off the wall above me and splashing us with dust and bits of rock.
Around me were the screams of the other pedestrians, running and jumping about and generally being great targets for a machine gun. God, amateurs.
"Jean?" I whispered, and the second volley hit and continued. Definitely a machine gun, and more than one shooter. Sliding my hand beneath me, I felt for Jean's body. I didn't think she'd been hit. Shutting my eyes briefly, I used her shields as a link and pushed a thought into her mind.
:::you okay?:::
:::not hit, don't worry so much. telling Scott now.:::
Scott was going to go postal. Dear God. Glancing around quickly, I took in the area--the nearest store door was ten feet away to the left, over a distressingly large number of cowering people, and Jean was inches taller than me. No way I could risk her that far.
"Get up," she said, and pushed up against me.
"Have you lost your mind? I'm invulnerable, you're not. We're doing very well like this."
Another glance up--the shooter was on the far side of the street now but coming closer. I tried to narrow in on what he was carrying but couldn't quite recognize it other than the obvious. Large gun. Not good. The spill of dark red hair across one of my hands reminded me I was sitting on top of one of the most important and public X-Men in the world.
Shit, shit, shit. If he saw her, he'd know her, and I didn't have any illusions that Jean's TK was so good that she could stop a rain of bullets. Shit, I couldn't even be sure if my invulnerability would hold out long against multiple point blank shots. And as for flying, just call it duck season. If there was more than one--
"Jean--how far away is the camp? Do you think they're armed?"
"Yes," she answered briefly. "The FoH always makes sure to arm them. There's a weapons locker in the tower sublevel--if they compromised all security, they have all of those too."
"How many?" Please say ten or twelve.
"One thousand rifles, five hundred Glock, eight hundred gas bombs for camp control, and Logan's standard security package. Hell if I know what's in that."
I breathed out and made a mental note to ask Logan what he was thinking to keep that many weapons that close to the norms.
"Move, Marie." The command in her voice was clear, and years of conditioning took effect again. My body pulled reluctantly away as she pulled herself to her hands and knees, lifting her head. The tingle of power rushed through us both--her shields in my mind quivered at the energy she was calling on, and I remembered, with a shock like pain, that she wasn't the same Jean who needed anyone's protection.
The first shooter to come into her line of sight lost his gun, and it spun away on to the top one of the six story buildings on the other side of the road. Almost unerringly, his gaze found us in the crowd, and Jean pushed herself to her feet.
"Phoenix," he whispered--but he didn't sound particularly scared. I didn't like that at all and levered myself to my feet beside her, gun in my hand but hidden under my coat.
"Jean--"
People call it a lot of words, but I've always followed the Logan school of thought on strange, uncontrollable impulses that take over when thought and reason fail. It was instinct. Pure and simple. Somewhere around the time mankind crawled out of the ooze and made a nest in the caves nearby, we started losing it, but for some, it never dissipated completely. Every nerve in my body started screaming in concert, and I remembered the efficient way that Kitty and I had been attacked in that apartment. The threat wasn't in front of us or behind us this time, though--
I jerked my attention away from the shooter, knowing it was a bad idea, knowing that it could lead to my or Jean's death, knowing that the man standing on the asphalt street wasn't unarmed even if we'd taken his most powerful toy. He was a professional in every sense of the word--it was written all over him like blood, in his stance and in his coolness in the face of the single most powerful woman on the planet. You don't stand like that when faced with a telepath of Jean's caliber, not unless you were already sure of something else entirely.
I reacted without knowing why, throwing my entire weight into Jean, but it was a second too late--from her other side, a bullet shot out from a civilian who'd been cowering among the others, still on his knees, and it sank into her side like a cherry dropped into whipped cream. Blinking, her hand went down, grabbing her side, bright with blood, then she moaned a little and the gun jerked up into the air, falling into component pieces at our feet.
I wasn't so elegant. I shot him point blank and watched his skull explode, spraying blood and tissue over the sidewalk and other civilians, before pushing Jean behind me and looking around the semi-deserted street, the living bodies piled around us in eerie silence.
The fourth kill of my life, and probably not my last. Anyone here could be an enemy, anyone at all.
Jean was still on her feet, but I could feel her weakness, knew that she'd pass out soon from blood loss. "Jean?"
"Not fatal," she said. What she meant was, not fatal right this second. I scanned the huddled people, the shooter in the middle of the street who was still watching us, who hadn't been surprised at all to see us. To see Jean. Like this had been planned.
Like that attack on Kitty had been. Someone had been following us, the man who shot Jean, and they chose this day to take her down.
Very deliberately, I pointed my gun at him and pulled back the safety. Something was seriously wrong with someone who stood that still, begging to be shot. Pushing Jean more tightly between me and the wall, I tried to figure out my options, then simply made the shot.
He disappeared. Blinking, I stared wildly around the area, but nothing.
Mutant. Fuck.
"Jean--did you get inside his mind?"
Jean didn't answer for a minute, and I heard her cough softly. Please God, no blood. Please.
"Couldn't. Shielded" She coughed again, and I felt her body shudder against mine. She wasn't going to be able to stay on her feet much longer.
"Do you sense him anywhere?" Something held me in place. The huddled people, the missing man, the other shooters--where were they? What the hell was going on? Instinct was still screaming stuff about RUN, but I listened to my reason this time. And my reason was telling me that they were expecting us to make a run for it. Perhaps straight out into that oh so open and innocent-looking street.
"No," she said, and coughed again. Street was not the only option--there was the sky too. But that didn't seem like a good option either. Nor was taking my eyes off what was going on in front of me. Plan, plan, plan--where the hell was Scott, damn it?
"Someone sabotaged the Blackbird," Jean whispered in my ear.
"This was planned."
"So it would seem."
The eerily silent street was slowly coming back to life--people were cautiously getting up, looking around, beginning to scurry away. I kept my gun out, trying to figure out what to do.
"Jean? Do you sense anything hostile?"
"They're all shielded," Jean answered slowly. Her voice was getting fainter. "Marie, we can't go back to the car--there are minds there I can't read."
Mutants. Had to be. Humans could shield, but they had to be taught how. Rogue mutant telepath, the man who'd disappeared was a 'porter at the very least, and shit, shit, shit, my back itched so badly from the strain I wanted to rub against the wall. Oh, very clever, Marie. All kinds of a good idea.
"They want you," I said softly, and she didn't disagree. "This isn't--is this something that happens a lot or something? I mean--Jean, y'all never mentioned assassination before."
"No," she said, equally soft. "I think--" Another cough, and that had to decide me. Jean could bleed out here and now while I contemplated my toenails and that was just unacceptable.
Taking a breath, I put my arm around Jean and hefted her weight easily, hearing her soft gasp of shock.
"Are there any hostile presences on top of this building?" I asked.
"No--but we'll be in shooting range of any escapees who picked up rifles. As you said, this was planned. I think--"
"You have a better idea?" Please God, let her.
"Find a car, any car."
"We don't have time to hotwire--"
I felt rather than saw her smile.
"Privilege of being with a telekinetic, honey. Trust me, I'm an old hand at this. Get us to a car--"
"Anything for the woman who is going to save our asses." Pressing a hand against the stone, I tried to get a mental map of where we were. "Jean, breaking the wall. Can you--I don't know--make sure the shrapnel don't hit you?" God alone knew. I wasn't up to date on her powers these days.
"Just a--" I heard rather than saw Jean sink down onto the sidewalk, then her voice. "Go ahead."
Keeping my eye on the street, I kicked backward, feeling the stone begin to break. Old stone, New York buildings up to code, this wouldn't be easy. Another, and more crumbling, dust settling around us. Third time--
"Open. We can--crawl through."
I glanced down briefly, then took a step away.
"Get through, Jean." I could be the human shield for her--after all, what good was invulnerability if not to stop bullets from raining down on innocent shopping telepaths? From peripheral vision, I saw her begin to crawl through, then sucked in another breath, watching the street.
The bullet bounced off my leg, and I could only think that the marksman must have been distracted.
Pushing Jean through, I dived in behind her. She was a frail weight when I picked her up. Cradling her close, I ran down the deserted hall. This opened into an alley--death trap from hell--but--
"Does Scott know where we are?"
Jean's head lolled a little against my shoulder.
"Yeah," she whispered, and I breathed out a little.
"ETA?"
"Three minutes."
Fuck a car.
"They're getting us from here." Sinking down, I lay Jean against the wall, moving her hand to check the wound. "Jean--stay conscious. I have no clue what to do here."
"It's not--not bad." She coughed a little, taking a handful of her loose t-shirt and pushing it against the bullet hole. "Flesh wound. You--moved fast enough."
"Not nearly enough," I answered grimly, pushing her hair back from her face. Sweat was standing up clearly. "Not even close. Shit. *Shit*."
"They're almost here," she murmured, her eyes closing, shifting to find a better position. Carefully, I drew her down against my leg, covering her hand with mine over the wound. Blood bubbled bright and clean, but not much. Maybe she was right, not serious.
Maybe it would be okay.
Please God, let her be right.
"This isn't going to happen again."
Jean was asleep in the infirmary--another doctor I didn't recognize had checked her out and done whatever arcana doctors performed for bullet wounds. Logan had dragged me to the showers, checking me inch by inch for injury--I got the feeling he didn't have a huge amount of faith in my invulnerability. Redressed and feeling a little less paranoid, we'd returned to the situation room, where Scott was waiting, as close to Jean as the doctor would let him come.
Logan pulled me out a chair for me, and it was a close thing that he didn't bodily force me into it.
"Scott?" I pushed wet hair back from my face, trying to catch his expression. Not just anger, not just fear, but a stillness that was more frightening than either or both.
"I can't--" Scott stopped, closed fists pressed lightly onto the surface of the table. From the corner of my eye, I saw Bobby and St. John come in, Kitty a breath behind them. None of them looked too good right now, and I couldn't blame them. "Where's 'Ro?"
"Supervising the reorganization of the camp with Remy," Logan answered, sitting on the edge of the table and within easy reach of me should more random shooters appear. Logan was *not* a happy camper--like Scott, tension was radiating off him like plutonium was sitting under his skin. As the others took seats, I realized that this wasn't just a check-up of Jean--official meeting here. "'Ro says she'll support whatever you choose, and I got Remy's vote. So, what's the idea, One-Eye?"
Scott tossed Logan a long look--strange still, to see that connection between them.
"Betsy contacted me a few hours ago--it seems there was an attack on her apartment as well." I caught my breath, saw the naked shock on Bobby's and Kitty's faces. "It was only luck that she wasn't there--several in her building were injured, including three norms that are currently being held at the New York Detention Facility." Scott took a breath. "This was planned--I can only suppose after the attack on Marie and Kitty at the Salem Complex, they've come to the conclusion that there will be no consequences for security breaches." Scott's eyes flickered over all of us. "After tomorrow, they won't have that surety anymore."
Kitty made a small sound, but I couldn't quite take my eyes off Scott. Cool, cool voice, relaxed in his chair, some of the tension beginning to bleed off. Ah. Classic Scott. He had an idea.
"The interrogation of the dissidents taken during the attack on Marie and Kitty was completed yesterday. They're going to be the teaching example." His eyes slid over all of us again, gauging our reactions. "Tomorrow, they'll be executed in Salem Complex. Publicly. I will not have these incursions continue, certainly not the targeting and assassination of mutants. We fought a war to stop this, and I refuse to allow it to happen again." Scott paused. "Any questions?"
And it was no surprise, at least to me, that there weren't any. Something like shell-shock, or maybe just a sort of vague understanding--Logan's hand touched mine on the table, and I closed my fingers around his as Scott's gaze settled on me. There were nods all around the table and vaguely, I heard Bobby begin to start working out the details, but--nothing.
It was a little shocking to look inside myself and find nothing to protest this. Jean was downstairs, injured, might possibly lose her baby--and God, if it would prevent this from happening again, prevent having to sit in that hallway with Jean in my lap, bleeding into my hands--God.
While the conversations continued around me, I wondered when I had changed.
Public executions were something that Logan's memories had given me random glimpses of--a Guatemalan camp where six traitors had been led before a tribunal before they faced a firing squad. I couldn't find the memories as easily now with Jean's shields, but I didn't want them either--the echoes were enough. Wrapped in my jacket against the cool wind, I stood with the others in the tower while we looked down at the large, open area that had been cleared and cleaned in expectation of this day.
Logan had warned me what would happen, and I watched him and Remy standing with Scott as the twenty-five norms were led outside. They didn't look too good--all had been imprisoned somewhere in the Mansion's sublevels for almost three days with Jean and Betsy sifting their minds inch by inch. Betsy compared it to peeling an onion--I wasn't sure if that was accurate, but the graphic that appeared in my mind was quite enough to assure me I didn't want to know any more. Ten of the prisoners were the ones who had been apprehended immediately. The other fifteen had been implicated after the telepathic interrogation.
The FoH was involved. Possibly, so was Hank, but Logan had been tight-lipped about whatever Jean had told him, and I found myself with two brand new security personnel assigned to me. I didn't know what that meant, except that both had been indoctrinated by Jean before they appeared beside me under Logan's orders.
Jean was worried that Hank had told someone, perhaps even Lensherr, who and what I was. Logan worried that the FoH would target me for that same reason. I worried that I would spend the rest of my life having two very large, quiet people watching me until I went insane. We were in different levels of worry.
"Marie?"
I turned, seeing Kitty coming up the stairs, and tried to smile. I hadn't expected her to come for this; simply being near the camp had been enough to stress her to breaking and she'd only been out of her room twice since the ambush the week before. Extending a hand, I waited as she hesitated, then she crossed over, small, cold fingers closing tightly on mine. Touch. Comfort. Something I could do now.
God, I'd never be able to pay back Jean for this, for the simple contact that meant so much.
"They just came out," I told her. "The director already read the order of execution. It's almost over." A group of camp sentries were lining up and getting ready to finish it up.
She nodded a little blankly, watching the norms being herded out to the remaining wall of a once almost-intact apartment building. I wasn't sure when it had been destroyed--I could have sworn that it'd been in pretty good condition the day Kitty and I had come to the camp, but I wasn't certain of that anymore. Brown-grey dust was puffing up around the bare feet of the norms as they were lined up against the wall. None looked interested in putting up much of a fight. They weren't even manacled.
"They were wiped," Kitty said softly, her voice toneless, and I blinked, looking at her. "I didn't think Jean did that anymore."
Looking back down into the dusty square, I readjusted my vision, and looked into the faces. My eyes caught in the blank, dark blue gaze of the only woman--not for the first time, I wished I knew her name. She was third from the left in the file. Quickly, I took in the other expressions. Equally blank.
"Wiped?"
Kitty shrugged.
"Sometimes--sometimes their minds break after too long under telepathic interrogation. They--just stop functioning." Kitty stepped closer to the window. "Sometimes, they come out of it, and sometimes they don't. I guess since they were being executed anyway, Betsy and Jean didn't have to be careful so they could recover."
Oh. Eww. Onion metaphor again. Didn't want to think too much about that. Shivering, I placed a hand on the windowsill and wondered if I could see John Andrews if I looked closely enough. All the norms looked the same in grey coveralls, with little differentiation between them. Only the woman showed up much.
"What happened to her daughter?" I asked, waving a hand toward her row. Kitty blinked, tearing her eyes away from the scene outside to look at me.
"Scott arranged something. She was chosen to be part of the Polaris Project for a reason, after all. Compatible genes. Probably gave her to a family in here to take care of until it's all over."
Oh. That seemed--a little cold.
"Then what?"
Kitty shrugged again.
"Scott's careful with the kids. He'll find her mutant parents to raise her. Lots of us were sterilized during the war--there's always couples who want children. She'll be very well taken care of when this all is over." Kitty smiled a little. "There's a theory about mutation that it comes from environment as much as genes. Maybe she'll be a explosives expert like her mother."
I looked at the frail woman again.
"Explosives expert?"
"She was a mechanical engineer and a very good FoH terrorist." Kitty's fingers tightened in mine. "I wonder why she volunteered for the gene tests, then. Most of the FoH would rather die than join us." She must have caught my expression. "I looked up her file a couple of days ago. She had a mutant cousin, so she qualified for the preliminary testing and passed. She would have probably survived the wave."
The delicate looking woman against the wall didn't seem capable of surviving a strong wind. I swallowed hard, gripping Kitty's fingers as the camp guards moved into position. Scott was saying something to Logan and I wished I could hear them--it seemed lonely up here.
I shouldn't have come. There was no reason on earth I needed to watch this, no matter how necessary it was to camp discipline. Most of the camp population was gathered around the edges of the square, and I knew that the cameras were already rolling, recording everything that happened here so it would never have to happen again.
"We shouldn't have come," I said softly.
"I'm glad I did--I need to know, Marie." Her other hand gripped the sill. "I need this time, to see them die. When--when Logan and I got out of the Miami camp with the others, there was the explosion--but I never saw the bodies. I never--I never knew if they were even there, or if they were out in the city, having a nice dinner, and escaped. Maybe one of them got away and is out there, and remembers what he did to me." Her voice choked. "During--during the war, I wasn't on the field. I didn't have those powers. This time--I need to know for sure." Kitty's face broke, and I saw tears leak out of her eyes. "I don't care if it makes me a bad person anymore. I just--I need to know."
Without even thinking, I turned, pulling her into a tight hug, and the slim arms went around me with desperate strength, digging into my back.
"You know their names, don't you?" I asked, and Kitty nodded against my chest. I was glad I didn't.
An unspoken signal from Scott, a movement of his hand, and the guns came up. I bit into my lip, feeling Kitty's head turn to watch as well. There was more voices down there--but the eerie silence seemed to swallow those voices, not magnify them. I'd watch this. They were dying because of me--the least I could do was see it happen.
The norms braced against the wall didn't even to be aware of what was happening. Maybe it was better that way too--how could Scott stand there and give those orders if they pled for mercy, screamed for their families? It had to be kinder this way, that they didn't know, not really. I stared at the two rows of them, and John Andrews' face was suddenly visible--blinking a little, looking around him as if he wasn't sure what was going on.
I remembered his voice telling me he would have let those boys rape me in the middle of the street and not given a good damn. I stared at him, watched his head turn toward the waiting guns, and the blue eyes widened a little in some sort of half-realization. He took a step from the line, and Scott brought up his hand in my peripheral vision.
The gunfire was deafening and I watched John Andrews crumple to the ground, grey-brown dirt clouding my view of his body. The grey coverall was splashed with blood as the other bodies followed, but I watched for him to move.
He didn't.
A second round of fire, then a third-- I wasn't even sure anyone was standing anymore, and Scott signaled a group to go forward, who went through the bodies with drawn guns, ready to finish if there were any left alive. Another shot rang out, but I couldn't move my gaze from John's body.
It was over. Kitty shuddered against me and I tasted blood in my mouth. Invulnerability had never covered wounds from my own teeth.
"I'm glad they're dead," she whispered, and I tried to deny it in my own head, but it wouldn't work, not anymore.
"I am, too," I answered.
Outside, they began to gather the bodies, and I watched until John was taken away. He would have killed me and Kitty without thought. I couldn't even bring myself to pity that he'd come out of it enough to know what was happening to him. He wouldn't have cared if I'd been the one on the other side of that gun.
I couldn't pretend to care that he died.
Logan went back to the school and I got rid of my guards by sheer dint of perseverance--Hank was supposed to come by today and I knew there was no way in hell he would bother stopping by if he saw the X-guards playing outside to see it happen. Taking a shower, I changed clothes and thought about what I was going to do.
Two days. Last trial tonight, and that had to mean something. Hank didn't believe the machine would work without me, but--but maybe he'd found a way around that. Though his description alone--I pulled my knees up to my chest and thought about it, reaching for the coffee I'd made as soon as I got home, and taking a long drink.
There had to be a way. Short of assassinating Erik and Polaris, I couldn't quite see a way out for anyone, and everything in me shuddered at the idea of killing them outright. No matter where or who I was, murder was just--inconceivable.
And so the machine would still run, and those people would die, and I wasn't sure I could live with that either. If I could be sure--absolutely sure, positively sure--they'd just be changed, then maybe. Maybe.
But death? I couldn't accept that. And God, please, never let me able to accept it. Even if they were norms, even if they were responsible for the hell that lived in the minds of Jean, of Kitty, of St. John--for Jubes and Xavier's deaths.
I wasn't that cold. Staring at my ungloved hands, I wondered what Hank would say, what he could think to do, why....
The knock on the door startled me from the vicious circle of unproductive thoughts and I sighed, crossing the room and opening the door. Hank, big and worried and a little pale, stood waiting, and I stepped back to let him in, shutting and locking the door behind him.
"Where's Logan?" he asked, frowning as I passed him to go back to the couch.
"With Scott--cleaning up after the executions." I shook my head slowly and picked up my coffee cup, glancing up to catch an unguarded expression on Hank's face. "You don't approve."
"It's murder, Rogue."
Rogue. Jarring to hear that still, and I took a drink of coffee to cover my reaction.
"It was--precautionary." I sighed, staring down at the cup as if it would suddenly answer all my unspoken questions. "I know--but they were going to kill us, Hank. It was fast. If this sort of thing became standard, it could be so much worse for the norms--what?"
The big brown eyes were fixed on me with naked shock. Frankly, I was rather surprised by the words trickling out of my mouth as well, and shut it with a snap, frowning to myself.
"You--were there?" His voice was stripped of expression. I nodded warily.
"I--they died because of me. I thought--"
Soft, choked laugh, and every hair on my body went stiff and straight as Hank dropped heavily into a nearby chair. The creak seemed to echo in the silent living room like an accusation.
--"If this sort of thing became standard...."-- It was a shock to realize I meant it. More of a shock than landing here had been, more than bedding Logan, more even than the realization that my death had changed so much.
"A lot of people have died for you, Rogue," Hank murmured, as if to himself. "So many people for that lie." The clear gaze was fixed on the far wall, and I tried not to shudder, tried not to remember everything that lie was. How true it was. "You watched. I thought--"
"Thought what?" Putting down my cup, I stared at Hank for a few long minutes. "What did you think? That I'd stop it? It was Scott's orders, Hank. I'm one mutant--and he had a reason. It wasn't just because--"
"Because they were humans that dared lay a hand on two mutant women?" Hank answered sharply. "No, I suppose it was clothed with pretty words and lofty thoughts, but young Lucas who attacked you was merely sent from the zone. Or did you see him out there?"
My mouth dropped open--I couldn't even begin to form a response to that one.
"That's different! Lucas was--"
"A mutant." Cold, more than simply angry. "That makes all the difference, doesn't it?"
"He wasn't trying to hold me hostage for--"
"No, he believed you were merely a human woman to assault. And you say it is different."
He was misinterpreting the entire thing, and the unjustness of it brought my back up.
"My life isn't a fucking poker chip!" I found my feet, almost knocking into the coffee table. "How--you think those norms should have just been patted on the head and told better luck next time they decide to attack us? *Kill* us?"
"They shouldn't be trapped there in the first place! If they had held you and Kitty, they could have negotiated the others out--" Hank stopped short, but the words were sinking in between us, hard and cold and utterly unmistakable.
The silence stretched until I could hear the blood rush in my veins, hear the soft, uneven pressure of my breath in my throat.
It was like falling, like landing, like realizing that you've jumped worlds--everything condensed into perfect, clear realization of what I should have known. What Logan, what Johnny, what Jean said--but I hadn't figured it out.
"You knew."
Nothing. Hank stared back at me, unspeaking, undenying. Everything right there on the surface and I remembered. Hank was a believer.
"Rogue." Nothing else for an endless moment, and Hank studied me for that time, looking for something--God knew what. Whatever he was looking for, he didn't find, and the brown eyes dropped to the floor. "I knew."
Slowly, I reached out, grabbing the arm of the couch, then took a step toward him. God knew what I'd do or why, but--he, Hank--he was a believer. A true believer, any sacrifice worth it, any evil accepted, any darkness allowed, if it served the cause. Like Magneto in his own way, and something in me seemed to shrivel.
"You helped plan it." A pulse began to beat steadily in my head and my hands shook as I straightened, taking another halting step toward him. "You knew about it, you helped--that whole illness thing was dreamed up by you? You wanted Jean. To negotiate with. You--instead, Jean was busy, so you got Kitty and me." Jean, who if they could overpower her, would have made such a fine hostage, though God knew, they hadn't been as prepared as they could have been. Control collars would have been good, but they had the guns, and all they would have had to do was shoot once.
I swallowed hard, trying to breathe through the shock of realization. True believer, willing to die for his cause or take anyone else down if it would serve. I bit into my lip, tasting blood.
"You bastard."
"There wasn't any choice, Rogue."
"There's always a choice!" Always. There's always another way, a better way, if you have patience, and Hank had--oh God, Hank had just-- "Who--someone at the school is helping you. Someone is--someone has got to be. Their timing was too good, someone must have saw us--someone must have known--" Because they'd expected one telepath, not two girls. They'd been ready for two people.
It was easy to figure out that part, easier than I wanted to believe, and I took a breath, hands clenched at my sides.
"That--that attack on Jean in New York--it was by mutants." I sucked in a breath. "You planned that, too. Without Jean to keep camp control, the Polaris Project could fall to pieces with norms making a break for it." I shuddered--it was assassination, pure and simple. That's what that had been, and it was only luck that had helped us get away. "You let them try to assassinated Jean!"
And his helper in it all, sitting at the school and playing X-Man, and God, I should have told Logan so long ago. If I had--God, if I had, this might never have happened.
"One life against the thousands that will die, Rogue." His voice softened, turning inward, as if seeing something entirely different from the room we both inhabited. "The machine will never work, and those people will die."
I wanted to kill him. My mind shifted, shields moving softly and precariously, and in a breath I could have him. Bare skin of his face against my hands, and I'd know every traitor, every plan, every thought he'd ever had. I'd know--
--God, everything.
It would be so easy. So easy, so quick, let him fall down on the ground and die right here and now, one less enemy to deal with, one less traitor.
X-Men had the right of execution for treason. No trial and no jury, judge and executioner all at once, and I was an X-Man. I could do it.
My hands clenched into fists as I remembered what I'd said about myself, the one thing I wouldn't become. I wouldn't be a killer.
"Get out of the zone," I whispered, and the blue head came up sharply. "Get the fuck out of New York zone or I will turn you over to Scott before you have time to fuck us over any more."
Standing up, he stared at me with a painful look of utter disappointment, before he walked out. As the door shut behind him, I grabbed my coffee cup and went into the kitchen, taking a long, deep breath.
--Having fun?--
I blinked, almost dropping the mug, and grabbed for the counter in shock at the pressure in my head. It was Logan, he was awake, and God, I'd never, ever felt him this angry. Ever.
--Logan?--
Slowly, the pressure eased and he slipped back into the edges of my mind, warm and dark and God, so real he could have been in the room with me. He should have faded more by now, he should have been....
--Jeannie's shields are pretty good. You don't need the collar anymore, huh?--
I shivered.
--Felt all that?-- Angry, I grabbed the pot blindly and poured myself a cup of coffee, taking a long drink. Some people liked cream and sugar--I'd picked up Logan's preference for strong, black, for my first cup. --Jean thinks she can burn you out of my mind.--
--Probably can. Wouldn't put it past her.-- The slow boil of anger rushed over my skin and I grabbed the counter again, trying to keep my hold on reality. It was harder than I thought. I was seriously out of practice balancing the inner and outer worlds.
--You can't take me over anymore. She said....--
--I don't want to. Never did. You know that.-- The pressure eased back again--either he was controlling himself better than he ever had before or the shields were still holding pretty well. I could feel a light buzz on my skin and tried to rebuild like Jean taught me, tried to patch up the kinks. Had to be breakdown in the shields. Had to be.
--How's Hank, baby?--
I closed my eyes tight, putting down the mug before I dropped it.
--He betrayed us--betrayed me.-- God, in so many ways, and if anyone could understand, inner Logan would. Betrayal was anathema to him, always had been. --In that--in the camp, I could have been killed. Kitty too. He--he set that *up*, Logan!--
--Noticed that.-- A little edge of anger that was different, directed at Hank, but far less than I'd expected and that threw me hard. Logan had always been hyperprotective of me, and this almost afterthought of displeasure was nothing like I would have expected.
As if....
Curious, I pushed forward, trying to take his temper, and was pushed unceremoniously back into my body. Unbalanced, I stumbled back against the refrigerator, sliding down onto the cool tile floor. Opening my eyes in shock, I stared into the opposite wall.
--Logan!-- I caught my breath, the heels of my hands growing cold on the floor. --What the hell is wrong with you?--
Better question would be, how the fuck did you get through Jean's shields? I followed them in my mind, cool and seamless and there was nothing wrong with then, nothing seeping through except--except this Logan, here, and he shouldn't be, not ever again. I should be free.
--What the hell could be wrong, Rogue?--
I felt the jerk, knew he'd just been distracting me, and was pulled inside my head. I grabbed for grounding in the outside world but was terribly out of practice, so out of practice because I'd had the collar, then Jean to handle all this for me.
Blinking, I was in the white-washed laboratory of Jean's shields, and Carol and Logan were staring at me. Ghostly behind them were the other personalities--the man I'd killed outside that lab only a week before, Erik Lensherr, Cody, Kitty, Scott, too many other brief touches to name. Thick with the ghosts that filled my head and my soul, that had given me my liking for blackberry pie and chocolate-covered almonds and horseback riding, cigars and whiskey and late nights in run-down bars, and told me how to kill and when not to.
Blinking, I felt the rush all around me and wondered how on earth they'd done this.
"You can't do this," I whispered. Carol looked back at me--green eyes, short blonde hair, Johnny's once upon a time protector and abuser, arms crossed over her chest. Like moral indignation could possibly suit her. Like it meant something. I realized I'd almost forgotten what she looked like alive. "You're nothing. Just pieces of me--I don't have to be--I don't have to be all of you anymore. I'll burn you all out."
"Lose the cigars and pie, the horseback riding, the taste of chocolate in Belgium during the Depression, the smell of a woman's perfume in August when you learned to dance. Rogue, we aren't the enemy. They're cutting you apart from the inside out. Don't you see what they're doing?" Carol took a step forward, but Logan's hand on her elbow stopped her.
They were saving me from--this. From the hell of revolving personalities, of being who and what I was. I'd be free, like I hadn't been since I'd become Rogue. I'd be Marie again. Just Marie.
"I'll be me again," I whispered.
"Who the hell is that?" Logan's anger was even stronger in here, and the deathly white of my mind vibrated with it. "Who the hell are you? You, the woman who just threatened to kill Hank because he wanted to save lives, lives *you* as an X-Man said you'd protect? You, who absorbed and killed an FoH member in cold blood? You're willing to kill for them now--what the *fuck* do you think you're doing? When the hell did you stop caring?"
I couldn't believe they didn't understand. They'd seen--they'd seen as much as I had.
"The norms will destroy us! Didn't you feel--when that FoH officer I absorbed, didn't you *see* what he was going to do to us if norms got free? Kill us all, store us in labs again, torture us to find out how we work and what we can do--" I choked out the words. They didn't understand--they were too much a part of the other world. They didn't get the reality here, what the mutants here had to do just to survive. "There's no other way."
"And you believe that." Carol's voice was utterly flat. I whirled on her.
"You were Brotherhood, Carol. You said this was a damn good world for a mutant." We weren't persecuted, we didn't worry about being attacked just for being different. "This is the world you would have fought for, would have died for. What the *hell* is your problem?"
Slowly, the blonde head shook and I clenched my hands together as her smile turned sad.
"I don't know." She sounded honestly puzzled, and that froze me in place. Logan was watching her with a peculiar expression I couldn't even begin to interpret--though it might have been respect.
God, this was too surreal.
"I don't know," she repeated, and her voice dripped uncertainty. "Would you die for this, Marie?"
I blinked, staring back at her. I couldn't answer the question.
"Why are you calling me Marie? You never call me Marie."
"Because Rogue was an X-Man. And you're not Rogue anymore." She paused, throwing a glance to Logan, before the clear green eyes met mine. "Strange, isn't it, to know how thin the skin of morality really is, how far you can push the line? Fifteen years as a human being and seven years as Xavier's student, and it only took two weeks to make you Brotherhood. It took you two weeks to become a believer in Erik's dream, not Xavier's. Two weeks for you to kill without remorse, and two weeks to be a racist." She smiled wistfully. "Erik would be so proud."
I took a steadying breath. They'd never understand.
"I'm not a racist. I don't--it won't be like this always. Just for now. You don't understand." And they didn't, that was the hell of it. They didn't understand, and they never could.
"Just for now," Logan murmured mockingly. "Just for now, just for the next ten years, just until it's what you are and what you do and what you've become. Just until it's so grounded in the reality of this place that no one remembers there was another way."
"Things aren't what I thought--they aren't that simple, Logan."
Logan's head tilted and his eyes dropped to my bare throat. Suddenly, I wondered where the tags were.
"Rogue would have died before letting this happen," Logan said softly, meeting my eyes. I didn't know how to make him understand, why I had to do this. Straightening my spine, I forced my gaze steady. I wasn't his and never had been. "And I would have let her."
There was nothing I could say to that--nothing that could stop those words from burning into my heart, denying seven years of love and support, rejecting everything I had ever been to him. I'd once wondered, in an idle moment long before, what hold I had over Logan, what it was that bound us.
Now I knew what could break us.
"Let me go."
Logan's head tilted, giving me a long look. There was nothing in it. No warmth that was reserved just for me, no protective love and caring--there was nothing.
"I already have."
I opened my eyes on the blank kitchen walls, sprawled across the floor. My mug had rolled inches away, spilling black coffee across the clean tile and my fingers.
It was cold.
My mind was completely empty. Jean's shields were in place, just like before. As if nothing had happened.
Slowly, I levered myself up on one arm, shaking my head a little before pushing myself completely upright. The towels were under the sink--I fumbled the cabinet open and pulled one out, covering the coffee and cleaning it up completely. Grabbing the mug, I stood up and poured another cup, taking an absent sip before shock made me spit it out. The taste was unbearably bitter.
I stared into the mug. I'd always liked my coffee black.
It was his room, third to the left and the door opened easily beneath my touch. Johnny had barely turned around before I had him up against the wall, one bare hand wrapped around his throat. The cell phone he'd been holding clattered to the floor like an accusation.
The most damning thing was, he didn't even look surprised. I didn't have to wonder why, only wondered that he hadn't run. I kicked the phone out of reach and stared into the clear blue eyes.
"You fucking bastard."
The temptation to squeeze was almost irresistible--my fingers twitched with the need, the desire to just *do* it, kill him, God, he'd risked all our lives, our--
God. Traitor all along, and I thought of what he'd told me about his support of Hank, why he was here. I hadn't gotten it, not really. Didn't understand everything he was betraying, everyone he was going to destroy.
Five seconds that seemed to last five years, and I let him slide down the wall. I hadn't killed Hank, though God knew I'd wanted to. Stepping back, I studied his face, and there was nothing there--nothing but the coolest acceptance.
"Kitty, Jean--you knew both times, didn't you? That attack, when you immolated the corpses--you did that to protect Hank. That's why it's standard now. They might have had--something to implicated Hank." Implicate Johnny. Should have known, guessed, when Logan told me so long ago, that Hank had given those orders to Johnny.
Should have fucking put it together.
Johnny didn't answer for a minute--nor did he touch his bruised throat. Just watched me with a wary, intense concentration that drove every nerve in my body into edgy action. I wanted to kill him, wanted him dead so badly it shook my hands, and I clenched them into fists at my side.
"You help them, don't you? The FoH, Hank, the mutant terrorists--you *help* them."
"What do you want, Marie?" he asked slowly. Blue eyes stared into mine, nothing in them at all. Johnny could blank himself like no one I'd ever met.
"The truth. Kitty and Jean could have died. I could have died." Treason and murder in one beautiful package, and he'd betrayed us.
"Thirty thousand human beings will die. Slowly and painfully, while their bodies reject the mutation on the dirt of that camp." St. John stared at me, expressionless. "I know what happened to Senator Kelly, Marie, and the X-Men can hide the truth from the world, but that doesn't change the facts. I know how he died I was here. I *know*." He pushed by me, reaching for the duffel bag on the bed, not even attempting to hide what he was doing. A stack of clean shirts were dropped in without ceremony, then he retrieved the phone, flicking it off with a careless flick of his thumb.
The traitor was running. Hank had called and warned him, and if I'd been only a few minutes later, he would have been gone.
"That doesn't make what you did right--Kitty could have died." Jean could have died--could have lost the baby she wanted so desperately.
"Right and wrong went out of fashion around the time Magneto was allowed to dictate post-war policy," St. John answered coolly, not pausing in the steady packing. A framed picture disappeared into the recesses of the bag, and I saw his mutant ID laying on the bed beside it, proclaiming him the most elite of living mutants, a war veteran and an X-Man. "Feel free to get the fuck out. Hank got free passage out--I assume you're not turning me over to Jeannie for interrogation."
I shuddered at that thought, even now. --like an onion....--
"Did--did you know what they were doing?"
St. John shook his head slowly as he dropped the phone into the bag.
"I didn't know for sure--I was just sending information, like I told you before." And how damnable, that I couldn't be sure he was telling the truth. The St. John I'd known never would have done this, ever, never betrayed a teammate. "I wouldn't have stopped Hank, if that's what you mean. If they'd held you--maybe we could have negotiated the humans out. Instead--" St. John shrugged, looking away. Bitterness was written into every line of his body. "Instead, they got desperate, tried to take out the telepaths. Jean and Betsy got damned lucky, you know. They figured that without the two strongest, the others would slip up and the camp would be free." Twist of a smile. "It's not easy to hold that many dissidents in one place, you know."
*We* negotiated the humans out. Like he--like he was one of them.
"How can you betray your people?" I whispered. No X-Man would do that. "How can you turn on your own kind--"
"They *are* my kind." Flare, bright hot and almost blinding, and I felt the heat from his skin even at three feet away. I'd never felt that from Johnny before, not in this world, not in the other. His back was to me, head down, and I felt him pull it under control with an effort that was entirely visible. "I was born of human parents, same as you. They're human, Rogue--human. They're not rats for us to exploit or experiment on--"
"But it's okay for them to do that to us?" I was breathing too fast, too hard, the pulse in my forehead a counterpoint to my anger. He'd--he'd turned on us, risked lives, given out information--and for *what*? To save the people that would watch us all die, who'd spent a war trying to kill us already. My God, how-- "How can you forget? Is it that easy for you? To see what happened to your friends and family and--and then turn on them? I *saw* what was in their minds, Johnny, in that--in the FoH officer I absorbed. Don't you--don't you remember? What they did to you? What they did to everyone?"
Almost as if I was watching a slow-motion video, Johnny turned around, blue eyes darkened almost to black, fixing on me. For a moment, neither of us moved; *everything* seemed to freeze in place. Then, sudden heat, a flare of pure power that made the air burn briefly around us and I winced, invulnerable though I was. St. John had never needed much fuel for his fires. This St. John didn't need any at all. The air was full of the smell of charring wood and my gaze slid downward, unwillingly drawn to the blackened floor beneath his feet, the brown crisp of the ceiling above his head.
"Nine months," St. John whispered, and he pushed me back against the bed with hands that burned through my jacket and shirt like fire. Falling, I caught myself on both arms, the heat radiating from him sinking into my bones. "They burned me out. I blew up the Mansion. I wanted to die."
I sucked in a breath of hot air, letting it out in a rush.
"Three months. Drug trials and experimentation, torture and filthy cells crowded underground where I never saw sunlight." His voice was low and breathless and utterly flat. "I watched hundreds destroyed and experimented on and burned out, left nothing but bodies they dissected at their leisure. They dragged me out and flew me here, and the Mansion went up in smoke because I couldn't even think, much less control my powers. At that point, I didn't even care." Quick breathing. "It took four point eight seconds to vaporize the school, topped myself out into unconsciousness on the floor of their plane and I woke up locked in a collar. They watched me go insane in their cage and took notes until Logan found me. Nine months, Marie. No one thinks I can remember it. I do. I *remember*. Every. Fucking. Minute."
I couldn't move, couldn't look away from the blue eyes drilling into mine.
"Two years, where I couldn't function, didn't know where I was or what was going on. Jean fed through me so they could use my powers on the field. Hank manipulated me into blowing up the things he wanted hidden. Eighteen months ago I was still recovering from collar shock in a small room in Canada, and they thought I'd never be able to function independently again. Twelve months ago, they thought I'd burn myself out because I didn't have any control." Brief pause. "I can control myself now. It's hard, it's hard to hold it, it's a battle every day when I can feel it rise up inside of me with nowhere to go.
"My parents died in Australia during the government-sponsored cleansing, Jubilee died in the camps under torture, Xavier was murdered in the middle of a filthy camp latrine, and Bobby--God, he lost his parents, his lover--everything. Jean lost her baby, Kurt lost his tail, and I lost three years of my life and part of my mind. Don't you dare presume to think you can judge me--I paid for being mutant as much as anyone else. I paid for being different, and for being who and what I am."
"You don't--" I choked off the words, looking for something--something concrete. "He--the FoH I killed--he's in my mind. Don't you--don't you know what they'd do to us, if they got out?"
"I know," St. John said softly, implacably. "They already did it once. I lived the experimentation camps, Marie. I survived them. But I never, ever made it an excuse for what I did after. There is no excuse for those people dying out there so Lensherr can play scientist and experimenter and God all at once. I would go through it again, all of it, rather than be a person that can accept that."
*"I would have died in the camps before letting myself become them."*
That's what I'd said. To Logan. My own words, and it was as if the days between were nothing at all to this--to this moment, this second, when everything fragmented.
"You've been here two weeks, and you've changed. You believe in Scott's revised dream and Logan's cynicism and Jean's bitterness. You believe in what they brought out of the camps and out of the war. They--they think this is temporary, but it's not, Marie. You set up society with a chosen slave population, that's how it's going to be until there's another war. Until we've internalized and justified this--this social structure, until it's all we know."
And I'd said that too.
"Scott isn't going to do that," I whispered, hands shaking in my lap. Standardization of a way of life--Scott didn't mean that to happen, I knew it in my bones, knew it from his memories I'd taken when I'd taken his power.
But Scott wasn't Magneto, wasn't every other mutant in this school, on this planet.
"He already did. He approved the Polaris Project--but then, what's a few thousand human beings up against the good of mutantkind, right?" Tiny pause, almost breathless. "Or one life against those, one quietly indoctrinated girl who believes she's going to save the world. Just. Like. Rogue."
I shut my eyes against the bitterness.
"And you came back, and now you believe too. You believe the bullshit, that this will make everything better, or fairer, or more just, that this can erase what we went through, that this'll be what heals us all in the end." Instantly, St. John had my face, tilting it up, staring into my eyes. Whatever he saw in them, however, made his hands drop away. "Nothing, nothing, can ever be done to make this up to me, do you understand that? Nothing can bring back Jubes or Xavier, give Bobby his lover, give Jean back her baby, give us back our lives. Every human on earth could die and it wouldn't be enough. Don't you get it? It's not about fair or about reparation or even liking or disliking or hate. I'll hate them, I'll hate humans, for as long as I live. I'll hate them and fear them, and somewhere in me *likes* what I see every day, that humans are locked up where I know they will never hurt me again. I like their fear and I like knowing that they fear me and I hate myself for it, for being no better than they were to me."
"Then how--"
"Because they took everything else from me." St. John seemed to step back--not physically, not in the world. Something that was all in the eyes, the tilt of his chin, the space between us that seven very different years had created in him that I could never touch. He might not have been in this room at all. "They took St. John and left Pyro, they took my life and my family and my home and my world and left me in this--this godforsaken mutant dreamland where every day, I wake up knowing that my people--*my* friends--are playing mutant supremacist and training everyone to believe it. I can't let--I can't let the humans have anything else. I didn't believe in Xavier's dream when I went into the camps, Marie. I wasn't ever a believer. I believe it now, because otherwise, that war was for nothing. We all suffered for *nothing*. Humans were right, we're not anything more than animals who deserve to be exterminated, because we know better, we saw the what we could become, we lived on the other side of the fence and we fucking became it anyway. *Nothing* they could do to me, nothing, can make me want to become them."
*"I never stop making sure that what they are, the FoH, the Brotherhood, all of them, is what I don't become. It's a choice I make every day."*
God. This wasn't--
"St. John--" But I had no idea what to say, how to say it. If there was anything at all.
"You don't have the right to judge me, Marie--Rogue--whoever the hell you are and whoever the hell you've become. Not because you didn't live this and not because you weren't in the camps or because you didn't fight the war. Because you *chose* this--because you saw everything that humans could do to us, you saw everything they *did* to us, and you thought it was so fucking great that you decided to become that yourself. You made a choice, Marie. I understand Scott and Jean and Logan and Magneto--but nothing will ever make me understand, nothing you say will ever justify the fact that you support those camps, those restrictions, and those deaths."
"I don't. I don't--" Don't *what* Marie? What the fuck don't you believe? You watched thirty people die for you and you've taken three lives with your own hands in this place. What the *hell* do you believe?
We stared at each other for a few long minutes, my heart in my throat, pounding so hard I could barely think, barely breathe. Neither of us spoke, and the air cooled around us as St. John winced, bringing himself back under control, blue eyes turning downward as he shivered, suddenly shaking, rubbing sweaty palms into his thighs as if he was rubbing off something filthy.
Maybe my touch.
I stared down at my hands briefly before looking up, catching St. John's eyes.
"I sent Hank out of the zone," I whispered, and St. John didn't even twitch. "I sent him out. I told him if he came back, I'd have him arrested. The X-Men suspected him of collaboration with the enemy for a long time."
"I know."
Something twisted across his face, body straightening, and I reached out, pulling my hand back at the last second. The blue eyes were distant, dark, and I watched him separate us, distance growing with every breath--those words, that anger, had been for Marie, the girl he met, not the stranger who now sat on his bed.
"You'd--you'd die for those humans, wouldn't you?" I said slowly, picking my way across the confusion of my own thoughts. It was a question, maybe, but I knew the answer, easy. It was written into every line of his face, every movement of his body.
"Yes." Without hesitation. Without question. A true believer, what I'd thought I had always been until I came here and saw what the price of belief really was.
I'd never been a true believer in anything. Hard to say, to think, but there it was. I'd never believed this much. I'd been Xavier's invulnerable X-Man and then Scott's, I'd played on both sides of the fence and fought for a cause I thought I believed in--but I'd never personalized it. I'd thought--I'd thought I was better than this. That I was--that the cause meant something to me. I'd preached equal rights for mutant in the other world, but never risked myself to achieve it. I'd coasted along all my life, and this--this was the moment I had to acknowledge it. In the face of Johnny's belief, there wasn't a choice.
Everything I'd ever said, in this world and the other, had been a lie. I'd never believed enough in anything to die for it.
"I'm not a believer, Johnny." Somehow, it was easier to say than I'd thought.
He paused briefly, and I caught the quick dart of his eyes before his expression cooled again.
"They won't die," I heard myself say as St. John picked up his duffle bag. The words slipped into the space between us, hanging in the air with more meaning than I wanted to think about. As if from a distance, I heard Johnny's breath catch, the sense of the words penetrating. "Polaris won't die, Johnny."
Like falling, like flying, like knowing. It was--this was it.
"Marie?"
I looked up at him, blue eyes, shining with the faith I'd never had. I wanted to be him.
"I can change things," I said slowly, feeling it come together. "I can--Johnny, I can change everything."
I heard the duffel bag drop unceremoniously to the floor--and maybe he felt it too, whatever was moving inside of me, awakened for the first time in my life. What I was and what I could be, if I tried.
If I just--believed. Just this once.
"Tell me."
The day outside was gorgeous. I could see what seemed like forever from Johnny's window. Hearing his quiet footsteps as he left, I wondered a little on the fact that the sun looked just about the same today as it had the day Logan had brought me to the Mansion, about ten million memories ago.
Slowly, I retreated to the neatly-made bed, dropping onto the mattress and drawing my legs up to my chest, shutting my eyes. Going to Logan or Scott with this would be pointless--I knew the first arguments would wear down what I'd decided. I had to do it, had to make the commitment, and this time, I had to do it alone. No inner voice committee meetings, no advice from friends, just--just me.
And for the life of me, I hadn't had to do that in forever. Not since that first touch with David so long ago, not since Logan, Magneto and the Statue, and Carol. This was just--Marie.
And for some reason, I'd wanted this silence of the mind for so long. Ironically, I'd never wanted my voices more than at this moment. The white-washed halls of my mind were echoingly silent, only my thoughts, small and insignificant wandering through.
I rolled on my back and stared up at the ceiling. Closing my eyes and reaching inside, looking--but there was nothing. Logan and Carol gone as if they'd never been there at all, and the others--ghosts of feeling, like a thousand tastes in quick succession, nothing I could cling to, no one to ask, no one to tell me what was right and wrong.
I'd depended on my inner voices far too much. To help me clarify my own lines, to make my decisions easier, to always have the back-up of them telling me when I fucked up and how. Most people didn't have that, and most people--most people didn't need that. They were strong all on their own.
And Logan said I depended too much on my strength. I'd never realized until this moment how much he, how much Carol, were that strength.
So what was it, exactly? Rogue, Marie, the girl who refused to die for Magneto or the one who was going to save Polaris? Make a fucking decision, Marie. Or--just acknowledge the one you made. Just do it, for God's sake.
I shut my eyes and remembered the numbers on the boy's arm, remembered the blue eyed girl playing outside, remembered the way I'd felt the first time I'd seen the concentration camp--call it what it was, not an internment camp, a concentration camp--high chain link, electric current, and razor wire coiled above, silvery and deadly. Remembered a time and a place where I'd been the child behind the wire and stared out, when I'd been a immortal soldier and stared in.
Getting up unsteadily, I opened my eyes and stared at the far wall, rubbing my sweaty hands over the legs of my jeans as I walked out the door. The corridor was endlessly long and my boots were so loud, and for the first time in what seemed like fucking *years*, I *saw* the slim blonde girl whose name I'd forgotten, arms piled with towels, green eyes cast down as she hurried by me and the blue numbers etched into her skin in sharp relief like an accusation of what I was letting happen. Her death, perhaps, if she was one of the ones slated for experimentation. So many others. More than I could name.
Sarah. That was her name.
I stumbled into the wall and shuddered a little, the paneled wood cool and grounding against the bare skin of my hands.
Eric Lensherr was in his office and I pushed my hair back, briefly regretting the blonde, before opening the door and walking in. He rose, frowning a question, but I took the steps separating us and closed my bare hand on his uncovered wrist.
Jean's walls dissolved with a breath and his eyes widened in startlement as he felt the draw--shock and disbelief and horror and anger and laced through it all, sheer intoxicating *realization*, of what I was. Who I was.
The memories were a rush of blind color and sound and images almost too quick to identify. Xavier, dead at my feet and in my arms, my own face plastered across a thousand countries and a thousand ways, drawn from pencil and on the wall of a camp I'd seen only in Kitty's memories and I knew, *knew*, who had created this legend. The legend that had built a lie and won a war and people--people had died for without question. Because a seventeen year old girl was willing, they should be, right?
I jerked from Magneto as if he burned. It was too familiar.
When Erik looked at me, it was in his eyes, all of it, and I reached out with my other hand and the metal lamp at the edge of the desk tossed itself into my palm effortlessly.
I remembered this feeling and so did he.
Stepping back, I put down the lamp and held his eyes, washing his memories behind Jean's shields as I raised them again, feeling them ripple with the addition and the strength it took to re-erect what she'd created inside me. Bracing a hand on the desk, I got my balance and looked up into faded blue eyes that blazed with triumph, with hope.
It made me sick and high and scared at the same time, like freefall without a parachute--it would hurt when I hit, and I would land hard, but even knowing that wasn't enough to dissolve the determination created in that moment in Johnny's room.
"My name is Rogue."
Scott didn't move for a full minute after Magneto left his office, standing with perfect, military-precise posture by the door. Very Scott, obeying the chain of command even now, never let the subordinates see the leaders dispute.
Visored gaze fixed just above my head, and I knew he was talking to Jean.
The meeting had been short, brief, and to the point. It would happen tonight, and I had six hours to live. If I listened, I could hear voices in the hallway, people yelling questions as Magneto prepared, and I hoped to God Logan hadn't suddenly decided to come back to campus.
The flick of power turned off was almost audible, and his visor was on me, intense and blindingly red.
"What are you doing, Marie?"
I swallowed in a dry throat, running sweaty palms against my thighs and drawing in a long, deep breath.
"I have to."
Scott's hand snapped toward the door, fist closed, but he paused instead, resting his knuckles against the dark wood.
"We have to get you out, Marie." His voice was firm. Leader voice. "I'll call Logan--I can get you both on the Blackbird and into--"
"No." Standing up, I reached out, remembering at the last second that I'd just dropped Jean's shields and human contact was chancy stuff until I'd had time to meditate a little and rebuild completely. Crossing my arms over my chest, I leaned into the desk and looked for the right words. "I have to do this."
"Die?" His voice was harsh. "For what? Marie--"
I looked inside for something--anything--to tell him, something that would make sense of the uncomfortable cloud of swirling thought that made up all my useful brain function right now. Some words to bring it into focus again, make it something more than just impulse and guilt and--and *what* exactly? I could be on the Blackbird and gone--Logan and I could build a new life, and what were those damned lives to me anyway?
Rogue, of course, never would have needed to ask that question. Then again, Rogue hadn't been too hot to go in that machine either, and the uncomfortable mix of impulses and beliefs and reality were just enough to keep me silent.
But if he kept talking--I'd break. I didn't want to die any more than any other sane person on earth.
"When I got here, all I could think was that you'd betrayed Xavier."
My words hit him like a short gust of wind to the face--reeling but not falling, expressed in the tight lines that curled around his mouth and chin, hand flattening against the door.
"This--this isn't what Xavier wanted, Scott. Not--not ever. I know, Scott. Before I was here, I was Rogue, in his school--he trained me for seven years, took me in when no one else would or could."
There was a presence in the room with us now--the memory of a ghost, perhaps, or the memory of someone we'd both loved and, in our different ways, lost. Xavier might be dead, but Scott was his protege, his son in all but blood. His heir to the dream that was this now, and I thought I had the reason--or *a* reason, anyway.
"You--I've learned since then. I've killed for you three times as Marie Danvers. I watched you execute thirty people for mutantkind's existence, and I--I agreed. If it's any consolation, at least you have a reason for changing, for making this world. I don't. I just got used to it."
Got used to it. Jesus. What had I been all my life anyway?
"Then why?"
I sucked in a breath, locking my hands into the edges of the desk.
"I've never been a believer."
Scott frowned, more questions gathering, but I put up one hand shakily. I could do this.
"When Magneto put me in that machine seven years ago, I didn't want to die. I was a kid. I didn't know whether the machine would work or not, and I didn't care. I wouldn't have cared if the damn thing was going to bring eternal world peace and an end to hunger--it *didn't* matter to me, because I didn't want to die. It was young and understandable and selfish, and it was me."
His nod was slow, almost painfully precise, and I shifted my weight and looked down at the floor.
"When I got here, I didn't want to go into it because I didn't want to die. And I can put it in a lot of pretty words about free will and the wrongness of what you're all doing and crap like that, but that was the basic idea. I'd been there, done that, and I didn't want to be in it again. Not for mutantkind, not for humankind, not for anyone. I wouldn't get into it because I didn't want to die. Still selfish."
Scott opened his mouth to speak, but I raised a hand, hoping to God he'd pay attention--just this time. Just this minute. Just for this.
"A day ago, I didn't want to go into it because I didn't really care whether humans died because of it. Because I stopped caring. Because I was mutant, they were norm, and if I was willing to watch thirty people shot down for wanting to escape being forced to become mutants, then I was certainly willing to watch few thousand people die because I knew the machine would never, ever work. Polaris too, as long as I didn't get in that machine myself, and what does that make me, exactly? You, Jeannie, Logan, Johnny, even Hank--you're all willing to die for what you believe in. You believe in this world, and if you thought it would work, Scott, you'd get in that thing yourself. I'm--I'm not a believer anywhere--I never have been."
God, that hurt. More than Logan or Carol's defection, more than even Johnny--sharp and sudden and painful. And the truest thing I'd ever said.
"And that's a reason?"
"No," I answered, my voice sharp, and I could hear my own heartbeat, pounding in my ears. I wished I could tell him about my talk with Johnny, now safely away, the sound of his voice filled with my words, the beliefs I'd played at having. All hollow, all meaningless, because this was the truth. I was selfish, and a coward, and I'd been trying my damndest to get away and let everyone else deal with it. "I--can't let Polaris die for me, Scott. I can't--I can't let those people die for me. Just because I'm scared, just because I can't face this." It was like a breath of cold air between us, and Scott slowly leaned against the wall. This was it, the choice I'd made, and I almost smiled. It was easy. "I won't be that kind of person, Scott."
There.
"You believe." It wasn't a question asking for clarification--and just maybe, Scott had had one of these moments too, maybe in the camp, maybe before. When the decision had to be made, and when it was, the person who came out on the other side wasn't the same as the person who walked in.
"Yes," I whispered slowly, staring up into his eyes, reading all the pain, the understanding in them. "I'm a believer now."
His hand touched my hair, light as air, and I leaned into it without thought.
"I understand."
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