That's when my chin hit the concrete sidewalk and I bit my tongue--hard--instantly alighting my head with all sorts of new and uninteresting varieties of pain. And wouldn't you know, invulnerability didn't cover that. Go figure. Instantly, a hand was under my arm and the stars in front of my eyes left me completely vulnerable to whatever the poor unsuspecting person was planning on doing.
Concrete *hurt*.
It hurt a *lot*.
"Are you okay?" The voice was dangerously close to my ear, and I jerked away instinctively, knees aching, wondering if I'd torn my pants, and God, these were brand new and my budget didn't allow for new clothes right now. Pushing my palms into the ground, I lifted my head, blinking away the dizziness, getting a hand to my mouth and rubbing at the drip of blood.
"I'm fine," I said slowly. No broken teeth. No broken bones. Or so I assumed. Closing my eyes briefly, I shifted back onto my heels, rubbing at my head. God, I hurt, and it just wasn't fair.
A tentative hand on my arm drew my gaze up to meet clear blue eyes and a small, worried smile. "You sure?"
I blinked back. "Think so." My voice sounded slurred, like I'd been drinking all night. Messy blond hair interfered with my view of his face, but it seemed familiar. He began dropping things in my bag, conscientious little citizen of Salem, and that was a surprise. I would have sworn they would sooner step on me than help me sit up. "Uh, you don't have to--"
"S'okay." My change was deposited in my hand, and I stared down at my gloved fingers, aware of the shape of the paper and coins, aware I couldn't feel the warmth of the metal and paper. It--felt different, and even to myself, I couldn't quite explain why. "You need a ride?"
"No," I said slowly, tasting the words. "I--have my car." When he reached for me again, my body reacted, shying away, and the look on his face hurt. "Sorry. I--my skin." Almost apologetically, I held out my gloved hands in explanation--they *knew* me, it's not like it should be a huge surprise that I'm--different.
"No problem." His smile widened as he looked down on me--and damned if this entire situation wasn't fucking with my head, because I could swear I knew him. The curve of his mouth when he smiled. "Sorry I hit you like that."
--I'm so sorry--I didn't, I swear I didn't see you.--
"No, it's--okay."
His hand under my elbow slid me smoothly to my feet, and I almost stumbled at how easily he touched me. Still careful, but everyone's careful, that's just common sense. Leaning down, he picked up my bags. "You need help carrying these?"
---can I carry these for you? To your car?--
Blinking, I reached for them automatically.
"No, it's okay." It was so stupid, but the words just slid out, like my head was on repeat. Taking the bags, I looked around, aware of the people that had paused to see what the entire drama was about. It felt wrong. Full parking lot and the sounds and feel of a town during the busiest part of the day. Overhead, the sky was clear and blue, and I thought I saw a plane pass by.
Taking a step down the stairs, I shivered, grabbing at the rail at the burst of pain across my head, chased with the kind of dizziness that I would have expected after a serious hangover. Was my blood sugar too low?
"Whoa." The guy's hands caught me before I could make even *more* of a spectacle than usual, and he braced me down the stairs, finding hard asphalt that seemed relatively solid. God, I had a headache. Me and bed and ibuprofen, the *second* I got home, no question. "Let me--"
"Everything okay?" A blue-uniformed police officer, and really, this was just surreal. Clutching my bag to my chest, I started to edge away from them both.
--Is he bothering you?--
"Everything's fine, sir." The pounding in my head got worse by the second, and I wanted more than anything to just give up, sit down, and psychically shout until Xavier or Jean came running, because acting ten years old was such an attractive idea. God dammit, what was wrong with me? "I just--I need my car."
"Where did you park?" he asked, and Christ, he sounded like an adult talking to a little kid, but then, I sure as hell was behaving like one, so no surprise there. The empty lot--no, the full lot--blocked my view.
A full lot of cars, just like five minutes ago when I left it, and I rubbed absently at my forehead. *Logan?*
Nothing.
I took an uncertain step--my mind felt weird as shit, and I wondered if I'd hit my head. Concussion shouldn't be possible, but what the hell, every day was an adventure when you're a mutant. For all I know, I could be having an aneurysm *right now* and okay, bad thought, seriously so. *Logan? Answer me. Dammit, you would pick now to be a prick. Did I hit my head or something?*
"Ma'am, did you drop these?" The nice guy extended a hand, silver winking in the full sunlight, and I stared at the chain looped between his fingers. "Sorry, it was on the steps, so I didn't see it. Yours?"
My hand went to my throat, feeling under the collar of my shirt--how the hell had they fallen off? Slowly, I extended a hand, fingers trembling--and okay, what was that about? My breath caught as the metal slid into the palm of my hand, chain trailing like water behind to coil around it, and I stared at it like I'd never seen it before. Except I'd worn it every day of my life, rubbing into my skin so the back was smooth like *that*, I'd held it when I slept as a silly seventeen year old girl in love, and it'd gone with me everywhere I went, even my dreams.
Slowly, I let the looped metal twine around my fingers as I slowly lowered it over my head, feeling silly as hell but not really able to stop myself. For a second, comfortable, right, *resting* there on my skin--then it slid away with a slither of metal. I caught it just in time, staring at the broken clasp blankly, then feeling the back of my neck. It looked like it'd been *ripped* off, and I had no idea how the hell *that* could have happened.
"Ma'am?"
--"I was--I was waiting."--
--"For what?"--
--"For you."--
Hysteria bubbled up. This was all so perfectly normal that I could barely stand it. Staring at the circle of wary, worried faces, I almost thought just flying away would be the greatest idea ever, and dammit, falling must have seriously rattled my brains or something.
"Sorry," I heard myself whisper. "I--just feel a little dizzy. I'd better go."
"You sure you're okay to drive?" The guy again, with the smiling eyes and the bright grin. --Who cares what happens to a mutie bitch?--
I stumbled another step back, dropping the bag. Forget the groceries. Forget the fucking car. Spinning on my heel, I turned away, my head aching so much I could barely see.
"Someone should call the school," a voice said from behind me.
I swung back around, aware of the brush of my hair against the back of my neck, tickling my chin. Automatically, my hand went to push it out of my eyes, because my hair *always* gets in my eyes, Logan said I should cut it or something. Except it wasn't. What-- "Don't. They can't know--" The words froze on my tongue. A full parking lot, a group of concerned looking citizens, and the money still clutched in my hand. I lifted it, slowly opening too tight fingers to stare at the faces of dead presidents from any high school history class, and stupid, stupid, flipping through to stare at every picture of Washington so carefully, like I'd never seen him before.
Oh God, I knew this money and it was completely unfamiliar and I reached out through my mind, frantically searching out Logan, who would tell me what an ass I was. Who would say--
*Logan, fucking answer me!*
--something, tell me why I couldn't make sense of my own body, the crowd around me, the full (empty) parking lot, the broken clasp of the tags, and the fact that these people were scaring me to death.
I'd never felt so alone in my own mind. But I recognized the feeling, even if I could barely remember it.
This had been my childhood, my adolescence before David. This was--
Oh God, this was me alone.
I crumpled to the ground, money spilling like an accusation of something I'd never done, and I ignored the worried voices around me to stare at it covering the ground before my knees, fingers sifting frantically through it for a face that I knew shouldn't be there at all.
I didn't remember a lot of what happened after.
The school rose up like a beacon of hopelessness, though I couldn't figure out why it scared me--I remember grabbing for the wheel and shouting I couldn't go back, I just couldn't, and Bobby trying to drag me down but my shirt was riding up and I'd pulled off my gloves to grab for Scott's face and *make* him stop.
It shouldn't be there, that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, beyond the questionable state of my own sanity. It didn't make *sense*.
"You promised," I heard myself hiss between clenched teeth while Bobby's gloved hands held my wrists inches from Scott's shocked eyes. "You promised and I believed you, I believed you meant it, that it would never happen again, that you'd never let it happen again--"
"Rogue," Bobby whispered into my hair, and then Jean's hands covered his, latex gloves coating her fingers in cool strength to push me back into the seat, Bobby straddling my waist, fingers ice cold. I was strong enough to kill them all, but I could barely find air. "Rogue, please, stop--"
"Fuck off, I saw what you did, I *felt* it, oh God, it didn't work, it didn't work at all..."
"The man who called us--" Jean was saying above my head, and somehow, magically, she had a syringe and I really started to fight then.
"He's following," Bobby answered tightly, blond hair falling in his eyes. "He said she hit her head, but she seemed okay for a while there."
"Concussion?" Jean's voice was sharp and practical, and I thought of all the power behind those brown eyes that glanced me over impersonally.
"No," I heard myself whisper, and even to myself, I couldn't explain my sudden start of fear. "I--Jean, I can't, make it stop, I can't hear them, I can't hear anyone--bring them back, please bring everyone back, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I did it right, I did the right thing, didn't I?" My empty mind, like an overinflated balloon that'd been abandoned on the floor, air seeped away, leaving nothing but empty skin. I couldn't feel *anyone*, and their absence was like pain. "Bring them down. I need them, Jean. I didn't know--"
God, everything was so mixed up.
"It's okay, Rogue. Just--"
"Marie," I whispered, and everyone seemed to go still. Turning my head, I felt the tears slide down my nose, wetting the seat beneath my cheek. "He said I wasn't Rogue anymore. He was right."
The car came to a sudden stop, and I heard Scott yelling for something, giving orders, maybe, but I couldn't focus enough to figure out what he was saying. Gently, someone pulled me from the car and I tried to find my feet under me, swaying beneath Bobby's arm.
"It's okay, Rogue," he whispered into my hair, slowly turning us around, and my eyes fixed on the school--huge and imposing, full of new building for the school, the basketball court, the lake, the open fields where kids played all day, the empty ground that shouldn't be empty.
I knew that, like I knew my name and my mind and the fact that something was horribly, horribly wrong with this cheerful sunny day, with kids laughing outside and towering, ancient trees that died in fire.
"Jean," I heard Bobby whisper, trying to keep me moving, but he was no match for my strength even at the best of times. I just stared up until my eyes blurred, knowing that nothing on earth could explain how I felt at that moment. I wouldn't even try.
"I destroyed it," I whispered, and I *had*. I *knew* it, knew I stood on the roof that building and felt the rush of heat and endless pain and sheer relief like being drunk "I destroyed everything."
"Jean," Bobby said, and I saw her in peripheral vision, needle down, red hair blowing on the wind. "Jean, help me out here. I can't get her to move."
Her hand closed over my arm gently, and I turned my head to look into her eyes. Warm and soft, no burn of barely checked power, and that felt wrong, too.
"Jean?" My head whipped to the door, the slim body of St. John jogging down the stairs. Bright blue eyes glanced around the group of us, and he came to a wary stop, eyes fixing on Bobby for his answers. "Professor said--"
I didn't even know I was going to move.
One second, Bobby and Jean were shouting in my ear when I pulled--the next, I was stumbling through the dirt and grabbing at Johnny's arm, losing my footing and knocking us both to the ground.
"You said it would be gone. All of it. That you could do it again. That you *would*."
--Johnny stared back at me from the other side of the bed, leg curled up under him as he looked at me soberly over the length of the coverlet. "It won't be hard. You just have to get down in time--"--
--"No," I said, and seeing his expression, I reached across the bed and grabbed his hand with my bare one. Pale skin against dark gold, Johnny, who tanned in the dead of lightless summer. He stared at our joined hands, then back up. "It all ends with me."--
--"You fucking lost your mind?"--
--I shook my head slowly, holding his eyes. "Everyone needs a symbol, you know that. This is the one I want. Don't fuck with the plan--there's no way I can get out of that machine in time, it'll kill me anyway, we all know that. Don't hold back because you think you can save me. You can't."--
Maybe this was my penance, and hell if I wanted to be a martyr for anyone, but I wasn't left a lot of choices. My first death had changed the world. The second one was going to set it straight.--
--"Marie...."--
--"Let it go."--
--"Why?"--
--For a wistful second, I couldn't even answer the question, or maybe it was something of Rogue who was sitting in the far back of my mind, shivering and quiet and so alone because I'd rejected her with all the other personalities. The girl who liked her coffee black and her morals monochrome and ate blackberry pie on long summer nights that reminded her of Memphis summers she'd never lived.--
--"Rogue was a believer in Xavier's dream, Johnny. I owe her this."--
"Why didn't you?" I forced his hands down, irrational anger coursing through me, and for the life of me, I couldn't understand why. "Why the fuck didn't you fix everything?"
The smell of burning ozone was my first clue--the second was heat from his skin, burning beneath my fingers, Johnny's eyes going distant and dark, like they always did when he started his little fire games, and I didn't give a shit. Jean's hands scrabbled at my arms, Bobby was pleading beside me, and I couldn't even answer them, couldn't find a way to explain because there wasn't an explanation that made sense. Endless rage and fear and disappointment like an ache, and above it all, blank horror. I'd done it all for nothing. I'd done it all--
--"I can--Johnny, I can change everything."--
I hadn't done a damn thing.
Jean's latex covered hand touched my forehead, and I *felt* it go out of me--not the same as how it felt to take a mind, but so close. No pain, not like the machine, an echo of memory, of my hands on cold metal and my mind open, my wrists warm, unshackled, and that feeling--oh God, that feeling--
"No," I whispered, and I felt Jean against my back, her softly indrawn gasp against my hair. "No, I didn't, I couldn't, I *couldn't*. Never again. I never would have gone into it. Never." That couldn't be real, but I raised my palms, stripping the gloves away, staring down at unmarred skin.
"Jean," Scott said somewhere behind me, and then I was pulled sideways, rolling in dirt like a, like a--
--like a norm, on a street I'd never walked, in a world I'd never seen. Oh God, I was going crazy.
I looked up into Jean's eyes, kneeling above me, and all her power showed in her eyes in that brief second that lasted forever between us.
"What's happening to me?" I whispered, and watched her drop the needle into the ground beside me. "I can't feel them anymore. I can't feel anything."
Gently, she stripped off her glove and reached out--I tried to flinch away, but I couldn't find the energy to so much as twitch, and soft, silky skin brushed across my forehead, coming to rest on my cheek. The dark eyes filled with tears, and I saw Scott kneel beside her, his instinct to find out competing with his terror. All eyes stared at the soft hand stroking my cheek.
"You changed everything, Marie." Her voice was hoarse. "Tell the Professor we need him, Scott. Now."
Xavier freed my hand while Jean paced the floor just behind him. I could see the strain etching her forehead--it was so easy for her--no, so hard for her to search a mind. Whatever I'd showed her--and God knew what that was, *I* couldn't even figure out what was going on in my mind now--it was screwing with her head badly.
"Your power's still there, Rogue," Xavier said slowly. "Jean, did you--"
"Yes and no." Jean paused in her pacing, turning to look at me with haunted eyes. It hurt to look at her. Mouth tight, she unbent enough to stop moving, though I could see her quiver in every muscle, just needing something to *do*.
"Excuse me?" It was so rare to see the Professor look so surprised.
"It's like--I did that. I can see--I can see it, that's--" She stopped, frowning. "But I don't have that kind of power."
"Yes you do." The words snapped out involuntarily, and I shut my mouth tight as the two of them looked back at me. "I don't--what the hell is wrong with me?"
"When did this start?" he asked, practical to the core. I clutched the tags that I'd kept against my skin since I'd come down here, even dressed in a medical gown and examined within an inch of my life. "Your hair--" He still looked at a loss about that--I had the same feeling, and I still hadn't had the courage to look in a mirror. "And your clothes."
Yeah, I knew all about that. I hadn't even realized it until Jean peeled them off me as I shivered, unfamiliar coat and shirt and jeans and boots, in a pile on the floor. They still lay neatly folded in a chair. I couldn't bring myself to let them out of my sight.
"There's burn line on them, and it's not from Johnny." Jean stopped, frowning again. "At least, not from downstairs. It's--I don't know how to explain it, Professor."
"I fell coming out of the store," I said, confidently, because that made sense. At least, some sense. "Then John--"
"Who?"
They both stared at me. I wondered why. "The guy that helped me. John. Andrews." Still blank. "Look, the blond? Who called you--"
Jean flushed. "I didn't ask Scott for his name."
Staring at her, I tried to remember. "I--" When had I asked his name? It was fluid on my tongue--
--*mutie bitch*--
--but I *knew* him. I'd seen him before, somewhere, curled up on himself, staring up through hazy blue eyes from the dust of the yard--and God, my head hurt. Pressing my fingers into my temples, I stopped fighting it.
Show me, dammit. Let me *see*.
"Did you--touch someone?"
I shook my head. "No. Nothing like that I can remember. I just--it's like, my mind's blank. I can't feel anything at all. Everyone in my head is gone." The Professor and Jean nodded understanding--they'd felt that. "Jean--Jean you said, I changed everything. What did you see?"
Jean stopped for a second, eyes growing distant and hands flexing at her sides. The Professor turned to watch her, little frown line forming between his brows. I almost thought I could see him reaching out, trying to follow along, and then Jean came back out of it.
"I can't--touch it." Jean shook her head, touching a hand to her temple. "I saw--I saw something. But I can't find it now."
This had to be how insanity started--one day, you're buying tampons. The next, you've lost your active schizophrenia and no longer hear voices.
"You told Scott he promised something. You told Johnny--"
"Fire," I said, and frowned. It wasn't anything like a memory. It was like touching another mind, the first rush before the pull started. When I was them and not completely me. "Professor--can you look again? Maybe bring down the shields?"
Jean looked at me carefully. "I can't rebuild those, Rogue. I have--I have no *idea* how those appeared. I don't think--"
"You built them." That I knew. Not memory, just plain old common, that is a pencil, that is a tree, the sky is blue knowledge. "You can unbuild them. You can rebuild them, too."
They both stared at me, and it wasn't creepy, this knowing, though it should have been. It should have been completely weird, but everything was just falling into place so easily, but not at all.
The Professor frowned more. "I don't know if I can."
Jean started a little.
"What?"
Xavier was frowning more. "It *is* you, Jean, that built those in her mind. But I have no--this is utterly beyond my experience." I could feel him teasing and testing the edges, frowning more, but not angry so much as curious, intrigued. "It's flawless."
I shifted on the bed, bringing him back to me. "Sir--Professor--" Biting my lip, I looked at him. "What is wrong with me? I mean--how could Jean do something that she can't do and doesn't remember?"
"Good question," Xavier said slowly. "We can't--shouldn't unbuild them. Not until we know what they are. But they *are* yours, Jean. You should be able to go through them."
I would never understand the science of telepathy. Jean started, then slowly came to the bed, glancing back at Xavier with wide, completely unbelieving eyes.
"Whatever happened, it's behind those shields," the Professor said, testing each word. "I don't know--I can't break them, even if I should think it was a good idea. But you can slip through them. They belong to you."
"Created in her mind." Jean was still shocked by that, all over again. Her eyes turned to me, looking into mine, then her hands settled on my temples, fingertips light and soft. So sure that my skin couldn't hurt her, and strangely, I was sure, too. It couldn't. "I don't know how I did it."
"Concentrate. Ground and center." I'd heard this lecture before, when they were trying to teach me to control my powers. "Reach out, recognize them as yours. And--"
The Professor's voice vanished as Jean's eyes widened, held in mine. Hands clamped down on my head like a vise and Jean let out a muffled sound, and the *rush* started. Not my skin drawing her, nothing I could describe as anything. Like a cool wind blowing through my mind. Like the taste of blackberry pie in late summer. The bitter flavor of hot black coffee.
A skin I slid into like it was my own, and I knew--
Oh God, I *knew*.
--"No more legends, Logan. No more lies. There won't be another Rogue."--
The irony didn't escape me at all.
Jean kept her promise--Logan wasn't there. I couldn't even be sure he was awake yet, and with any kind of luck, it'd be over before he recovered. That was something.
Not much, but something. I couldn't let him see me die again.
The design was a little different--set on the top of the tower at the edge of the Salem camp, radius running at thirty miles in all directions for the leading edge of the wave. As I stepped out on the platform, under the pre-night grey sky, I could see far below the spread of humans outside--not that the buildings could block the radiation, but they weren't taking any chances. This was their last hope.
Seven years that seemed far too close all of a sudden, even free of shackles. I wrapped my arms around myself and thought, a little wistfully, of the jacket I'd left on Logan's bed.
The tags were cold metal around my throat.
I felt Magneto behind me, close and strangely warm. Six of the camp guards had accompanied him up, setting up the machine for its last trial run, but I'd expected that part, and turned my head away to watch the sky for a minute. Perfectly clear, a hint of the stars that would color the sky, the moon just breaking the horizon, and if I wasn't very, very careful, I was going to get really nostalgic really, really fast.
"You have no idea how much this means to mutantkind, Rogue," he said softly, his voice carrying on the still air, and I heard Scott's quiet footsteps as he came up the stairs, coming to a stop only a few feet away. "You're changing everything again."
"I did so well the first time," I murmured, and his hand brushed my shoulder, almost as if he was trying to offer comfort. "Let's--let's get this done, okay?"
Magneto silently moved away and I shivered again as his hand left me. I stared into the sky and thought of Logan--not the one with Jean that I'd broken with a touch and a smile and a lie. The one who taught me and trained me and loved me with everything in him and left me when I stopped being someone he knew.
--*You don't have to do this.*--
Pretend Logan was nothing like the real thing that once lived in my head, but he'd do for now.
"Polaris is gone," I murmured. "If I don't--he'll find her. He'll use her. He knew--he knew from the trials that it had to be me--you knew too. If I didn't do it, he'd force it. Or do it himself. Look down."
--*Marie--*
"Rogue." I stopped, drawing in a breath. "It was--was what I was, who I was, as an X-Man. Rogue." The one I'd chosen to become, person and X-Man, and I'd never suspected the differences between Marie and Rogue would be anything like this. I shivered again, nothing to do with the wind that cut through my shirt like it was nothing. "I want--I want to say something that will make this make sense, something that can be told when they ask why I died and what I died for, but I don't know. I want something better on that tombstone--I want the truth."
--*Truth is relative.*--
I thought of Scott downstairs, all the compromises he'd made, the decisions that haunted his mind like the specters of people that once haunted mine. A man who'd made guilt into a form of art, and I wanted nothing more in the world than to see him do this, become what he'd always, always been.
"No, it's not." I smiled a little as I thought of the pictures sketched on paper and wood and cold prison stone, the captions that muttered about my courage, the visions of people who lived and died in my name on battlefields I'd never seen. "I would have chosen this, you know. I would have. This way. Before." Before, when I'd been just Rogue. Before I'd realized how much had been taken from me--Magneto had taken my mind the first time, but this place, this world--they'd taken my dream too. They'd taken away Xavier's student, the X-Man, the believer. They'd left--me. Who didn't know what the hell to believe anymore. This was as close as I'd ever get again.
I drew in a breath and tore my gaze from his, stared down at the desperate people below. Everything in my head was a wash of confused emotion and spinning pain--somewhere, far below and far away, Logan was being held by Jean so he couldn't stop this.
God, couldn't think of that now. I'd fall apart right here, and there was no one to catch me.
"Tell me this will work."
--*It will.*--
"Tell me you--tell me you--" I choked a little, drawing in a breath. It didn't help much. "Tell me that this time, everything's done for the right reasons."
Here it was. I was making that last lie, the biggest lie, the truth.
Stood in the white cold light of Jean's shields, in the empty lab of my mind and reached out--*tore* them down in a great rush of feeling that left me breathless.
For an endless second, nothing happened. Blank, open space, and the moment was sharp and clear and I knew everything--*everything* was going to fall apart right now, because I could never do this alone.
Logan was right. I'd always depended on my strength, and he'd been it for far too long.
Then--the taste. Back of my tongue, slicking soft and rich, surrounded with the greenery of a warm summer I'd been born fifty years too late to experience.
The taste of Belgium chocolate and the death of Xavier, his head in my lap, Scott in an Amsterdam hotel staring at the city streets, and watching Auschwitz fall around me, Kitty's trapped in a Miami cell, Logan and Jubilee beside the Mansion under clear sunlight six days before he left on that last run. Silvery flashes of black coffee in the morning and Memphis blackberry pie. Carol's hands clawing at mine that one long ago summer day, the last life I'd sworn I'd ever take, and ten year old Johnny Allerdyce standing in the middle of a slum apartment, bruised and frightened and so alone, the burned remains of a couch behind him.
Carol. Logan. Kitty. Scott. Magneto. So many others, so many casual touches swimming beneath. Shutting my eyes, I felt them swirl around me, bright and blinding, stood still as they coalesced and Logan stood before me, watching me with wary eyes that told me he understood.
--You were right.-- I said softly, staring at him. More real than anyone else. More real at that moment than I was to myself. --I'm making the lie true now. It'll all be true.--
--I know.--
--They'll all know what I died for and why, Logan. And it will be for mutantkind and it will be for all the right reasons.--
He nodded slowly, considering me as I'd seen him study a thousand enemies in more lives than I could count between us.
But he knew other things too, and waited as I drew myself together, stepping back, and I opened my eyes.
Magneto was watching me and I smiled a little, feeling my body shiver, my mind almost overflowing with memory--and God, so much, I'd forgotten how it felt, how everything was so different when I was this, when I was truly Rogue.
How much of me had been trapped behind those walls and I blinked, clearing my head with painstaking care.
"I know why," I said slowly, and he tilted his head, coming to a stop only inches away from me. "Why I'm doing this."
I turned toward the waiting platform, Magneto pacing behind me Carefully, I stepped up and the posts were ready for my hands. No shackles this time--the one difference, the big one that kept me even, made this more real in some indefinable way.
Magneto stood before me, stripping off his gloves, and I met his eyes.
"Are you ready, Marie?"
A thousand strange thoughts chased themselves through my head--Scott and Jean's wedding only last spring when I'd been a bridesmaid and Bobby and I drank so much champagne that Logan carried us both up to bed. Giggling at home with Jubilee over a porno movie we'd found in Logan's closet years before. Hating my gloves because they symbolized everything that I was and ever would be--a mutant with the power to kill.
--"It's not gonna always be that easy, Marie. You can't depend on your strength to get you out of any bad situation. Gotta use your head, use your instincts."--
I know.
I took a breath and reached inside, felt the other personalities begin to shift--and inner Logan, who always knew me better than I knew myself, moved the second I did, braced warm and hard around me, the strength I needed.
I reached out and held Magneto's face in my hands.
"It was seven years ago, and her name was Rogue," I whispered softly, and his eyes widened as my skin began to pull. "Logan got Sabretooth and Toad, and I'll give Johnny Mystique, because it's his right. But you're mine."
The rush was as hot and fast and addictive as it had always been, and I held on, feeling the pull, feeling him try to push away, his power weak but reflecting off of what he'd already given me, realizing in that second what I was going to do. Gripping closer, I kept hold--dragging him into my mind, letting him rush through the personalities that inhabited my head and heart for so long.
He was building in my mind, in my memories, stronger than any of the others, brilliant and bright and I wondered a little on what he could have been, sharp intelligence and iron will--if there had never been an Auschwitz or a Miami, an island or a meeting in Amsterdam that sealed the fate of the world when Scott made that final deal.
Facing me with blazing grey eyes and the *hate*, and I took it in, tried to absorb around it, but I'd had him in my mind before--and his were the thoughts that had pushed my hands into the posts seven years before.
I felt it happen--the same with Carol that long ago summer day I could never forget, that choked second where the last of his life was jerked free of his body and into mine, and I let him fall from my fingers, my hands dropping to the posts automatically--and the power ran through me, hot and swelling faster and farther as Magneto took over, holding me in place, and I'd sort of figured that part, as the machine drew it out of me inch by agonizing inch....
...like my organs and blood and soul being drawn through my skin all in slow motion and I felt myself scream and didn't even care. There was nothing but pain and dark and the thousands of people that would *not* die today, not for me, not for anyone else.
It was right. I was doing this, and it *was* for the right reasons, all the right reasons, and that was--God, that made it *worth* it.
Time stretched and I felt myself begin to fall, felt Logan's bare hands on my face, soft and so gentle and--
Heat, amazing, breathtaking, whipping through my body, exquisitely painful and endless. Even invulnerability has limits, and Johnny was going to break them.
Finish it, Johnny. Christ, do it *now*.
--and Logan brushed his lips against my forehead and didn't let me go.
Then there was nothing else but the pure red-gold darkness that I reached for with all of my soul. I'd taken my last life--and all that was left was sheer relief that it was over.
No one would ever die for me again.
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