Logan glanced up from the couch when I walked in, a frown line cutting deep between his eyebrows, putting aside the book he'd been reading.
"Where've you been?"
I pushed the door closed and leaned against it, taking a long breath.
Before--long before, a week or so before, a life or so ago, one universe over to the left, I'd been able to hide from Logan pretty damn easily. A seven year crush, a wealth of vicious jealousies, and any emotion under the sun. He could see through it occasionally, granted--he knew me far too well--but I'd perfected the art of being the sweet younger sister/surrogate daughter in his eyes to match the me in his mind.
Lying--I'd been lying my entire time here, in some way or another--with my words, with my name, with my body, with my history. Lies to conceal the truth I didn't want revealed, and I'd been damn good at it.
I could do this. I could.
"Talkin' with Scott, sugar," I said, crossing the room and dropping carelessly on the couch. The dark head tilted as he studied me, taking in my scent.
"Something botherin' you?"
Lies were a lot like the truth, when you knew how to spin it.
"It's tonight," I murmured, and Logan leaned back, nodding slowly.
"Yeah." Little breath, let out in a hiss. "Scott called, said I didn't need to be there. He and Jeannie think they found a way to make it work."
"They did," I said steadily, keeping my eyes fixed on the far wall. "The--they found a way. It'll work. Perfectly. It'll all work out."
An arm slid around me, pulling me close, and I drew in another breath before melting into him.
"You drew my picture."
A moment, where I felt him stiffen beside me, and I shut my eyes, letting time stretch. Waiting.
"Yeah."
It was rare, I knew that. Love, the real thing--this kind, this feeling, this sort of promise, this sort of devotion. It was everything I'd ever wanted, the kind of crap that romance novels make millions of dollars on. It was real, and it was--God, it was good. Turning, I looked into the hazel eyes and smiled.
"I love you. Remember that."
I leaned forward before he could answer, kissed him, let him feel it--and when his hands touched my face, I opened my mind and let Jean's shields slip--felt the shock in him, the leak, and closed my fingers over his shoulders. Holding the moment, holding the kiss--and when he went limp, I pulled back.
My face was slick with tears and he was in my mind--and so were a thousand pictures that were all he'd had of me for so long.
Choking, I stood up and went to the bedroom, fumbling through the dresser until I found the tags I knew he'd put there.
Let myself slide down the wall and gripped until the blunt metal cut into my skin.
*"No more legends, Logan. No more lies. There won't be another Rogue."*
The irony didn't escape me at all.
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. I was glad Jean would be there for him when he woke up.
I left the car outside the camp entrance, wading through moving bodies several feet deep around the edge of the camp, the guards letting me in without a word, eyes fixed anywhere but me. I supposed they weren't sure how to react to the living incantation of their personal martyr wandering around, even blonde and all grown-up. The stairs that led to the third floor went by too fast, and I was glad on some level; every second delayed was another second I could back out and run for it, and Polaris would happily take my place--and fifty thousand human beings crowded into this camp would die.
I was brave, I thought--but never in my life had I been actively suicidal.
There were more personnel than usual on the third floor--Secret Service for Mystique, all mutant of course, who knew me on sight and nodded as I passed to the newly built staircase that led to the roof. Behind me, I could hear their murmurs in the radios to seal the camp--all gates would be locked and triple guarded until this little experiment was over.
Sort of useless, I thought. Mystique could damn well fly away if she got threatened, and I'd love to see the terrorist who could get through that mob to do anything before we could begin.
Emerging onto the platform unobserved, I took in the witnesses. Magneto and Polaris both, talking in the far corner with Mystique, scarily Senator Kelly-ish; Scott, nearest the machine; the various others who were in charge of making sure the thing worked for my last performance, unless another Rogue made the mistake of tossing herself into this dimension to die for mutantkind.
Maybe there should be some interdimensional sign to warn all Rogues off. We really weren't meant to live here.
The design was a little different, I noted in the rational corner of my mind, the one still picking up trivialities, the part of me that had gotten showered and dressed, put on make-up and put my dirty clothes neatly in the bathroom hamper. Set on the top of the tower at the edge of the Mansion, the machine's radius would run at roughly thirty miles in all directions for the leading edge of the wave. I walked forward, feeling the interested glances, the sudden silence, coming to the edge of the platform. Far below, I could see the spread of humans. Norms from the Restricted Zone, wearing their badges that allowed their freedom for this one day, hopefully to be discarded in less than ten minutes. Even if someone made a break for freedom, there was no time for anyone to run far enough to escape the leading edge. And not many of those outside the fence would want to. This was their last hope.
I was. Their last hope.
Fuck, suicide could make a girl romantic.
At least Magneto had listened to my restrictions. The only person allowed on the platform other than his entourage was Scott. The others were gathered outside the camp, watching and waiting, with the medical personnel to care for the survivors.
Seven years seemed far too close all of a sudden. I wrapped my arms around myself and felt the leather under my cold fingers, my gloves shoved into my pocket that I'd grabbed from instinct.
The tags were cold metal around my throat, fished from the dresser Logan had left them in. I had to wonder why he'd saved them.
I felt Magneto come up behind me, close and strangely warm, almost suffocating. Pulling away, I looked up at the sky. Perfectly clear, a hint of the stars that would color the darkening grey, the fat 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 within only a few feet of us. "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. Irony again. I couldn't stop my flinch. "Let's--let's get this over with, okay?" I'd never been one for long goodbyes.
Magneto silently moved away and I shivered again as his hand left me. A few long seconds, and Scott was at my side. I turned to face him and his head tilted just a little.
"You don't have to do this." Quiet.
"Yes I do," I said, equally soft--the wind was the wrong direction for Magneto to pick up our voices, and my eyes trailed to the men setting up the machine for its final use. "If I don't--Polaris'll do it. He'll use her. He knew--he knew from the trials that it had to be me--you knew it too, Scott. Look down."
"I know how many people are down there." His voice was tight. "Marie--"
"Rogue." I stopped, drawing in a breath. "It was--was what I was, who I was, as an X-Man. Rogue was my--my name." 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 never told anyone in the other world--my world--my real name. Except Logan. Because Rogue was what it was, from the day I left home." I shivered again, nothing to do with the wind that cut through my shirt like it was nothing. "It's true, you know. Your lie, it's true now."
"Truth is relative" Scott's mouth twisted, and I thought of all the compromises he'd made, the decisions that haunted his memories 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 just hug him, my teacher and this man, who was my friend. Tell him that everything would be fine, because I really was going to change everything, right here and now.
I couldn't, but he'd understand. Eventually.
"Yeah." 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 seen in other memories.
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 still slept, no idea of what I was doing, what I was taking from him again.
God, couldn't think of that now. I'd fall apart right here, and there was no one to catch me.
"Tell me you'll dismantle the camps. All of them."
"I will."
"Tell me that the ground will be salted where they stood. 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. And tell people that--that I died for something I believed in. Scott, just the truth. What I did and why. Make sure--promise me they'll know. I died as an X-Man."
Here it was. I was making that last lie, the biggest lie, the truth.
I reached out, touching Scott's face briefly, and his warm fingers held mine before I pulled away.
"Don't touch me," I whispered, and closed my eyes.
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. I didn't need to rebuild this time, so didn't even bother to be careful, watch how I did it.
For an endless second, nothing happened. Blank, open space, and the moment was sharp and clear and I was alone still, standing in this endless white that went on forever. And everything--*everything*--was going to fall apart now, because....
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 for myself.
The taste of Belgium chocolate and the death of Xavier, his head in my lap, Scott in an Amsterdam hotel staring at the quiet city streets, watching Auschwitz fall around me, Kitty 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 labs. The executions. And my face at every one, in every memory.
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.
--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.--
I wanted to ask him to understand, to give me something, anything. I'd never be his daughter again, his sister, his friend. I'd given that up willingly, but--I wanted at least this.
--Tell me I'm wrong.--
He nodded slowly, considering me as I'd seen him study a thousand different plans, running through every scenario, and maybe, just maybe, he'd get it. I owed him this, owed them all this moment, this understanding.
--You're not.--
Scott was watching me when I re-emerged 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. Stared down at my bare hands in surprise, and Scott touched my hair lightly, almost sadly.
"Marie...."
"I'm ready."
Little, sad smile now, and I could hear Magneto's voice, impatience straining it, and I reached out, grabbing Scott's sleeve. The platform was almost empty now--Magneto, Mystique, the guards. Kitty and Bobby had already gone down, and that was--good.
"One last thing, Scott," I said softly, and he nodded. "Get off the platform with Polaris. Promise me."
It was instant, suspicion and something dawning on his face that could have been the beginnings of understanding. Good thing I'd left this for last--I knew somewhere in me that if I'd told him everything, he'd never have let me do it. This was the one thing I'd known that he could not accept.
"Promise," I said softly. "The second my hands go down, go. You'll have thirty seconds. That's all the choice you have now."
"What--"
"It's time," I said softly, turning toward the waiting platform, Magneto standing beside it. 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 saw Scott's shocked face briefly over Magneto's shoulder. Knowledge, consulting with Jean probably, and they weren't stupid, they were going to figure it out.
They didn't have time to change anything, though.
"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 porn we'd found in Logan's closet years before. Hating my gloves because they symbolized everything that I was and would ever be--a mutant with the power to kill.
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.
--Thank you.-- I felt his touch, warm and thick and comforting, his tags around my throat and his promise in my mind. He'd help me do this.
"Marie--" Scott said, and it was in his eyes. All of it--shock and suspicion and dawning realization. With a smile, I reached out too fast to be caught and held Magneto's face between my hands, looking into his eyes.
Thirty seconds. Start running.
"It was seven years ago, and her name was Marie," I whispered softly, and his eyes widened as my skin began to pull. "Logan said to look them in the eye when I kill them, so they'll know who and why. Now you know."
"What are you doing?" he whispered, and I smiled a little, thinking that it was really going to hurt when he figured it out. Then the connection snapped like heat between us and jerked my body.
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--if there had never been an Auschwitz or a Miami 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.
Not this time. This would be me.
--It's over, all of this--the camps, the hate, the war. I'm doing it, Magneto. I'm changing everything.-- I paused, letting him see what I only knew in theory, letting him see Johnny's room only seven hours before. "We're changing everything."
I felt it happen, like an elastic band snapping in my mind, in his body--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 and I smiled--the power ran through me, hot and swelling faster and farther as Magneto's power twisted inside of mine, and the pain was *there*, as the machine drew it out of me inch by agonizing inch....
Jesus. Johnnie. Do it. God, do it.
...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. So worth it.
Time stretched and I felt the heat start beneath my feet, heard the sharp gasps of realization, but four point eight seconds wasn't nearly enough time to do anything but *know*.
Looks like the thirty seconds were up. Scott sure as hell had better gotten Polaris off the platform and out of the building.
Hands closed on my face, warm and large and I smiled, because it was Logan--
--and he was forgiving me. And for some reason, that was important, so important now, this moment. He understood why I had to do this. Why I made it true. All of it.
Finish it, Johnny. Christ, do it *now*.
I did believe enough. They needed the symbol and they needed the legend, and they were getting both right the fuck *now*.
Then there was nothing else but the pure darkness that I reached for with all of my soul. I was taking my sixth life--my own--and all that was left was the sheer relief that it was over.
Interlude 5: The Martyr
Present Time
It was like the end and the beginning, all at once.
A column of pure white heat, brilliant against the night sky, turning the camp bright as day. Visions of screaming people running as each tower became nothing but flame, one after the other.
Frightening, fascinating, utterly beautiful, and Scott was unable to move, even breathe.
Fear like something tangible in the thick, humid night air, but Scott watched without wincing, fascinated despite himself with the pure beauty of it. Scott had seen it in the field far too many times to not recognize the sheer power of wht he was seeing--not the fire itself, but the control that kept the damp grass unscathed, the people safe even as they ran.
Two years ago, St. John had been vegetative, and Jean had held him on the field, earning the name Pyro. Eighteen months ago, they thought he'd never be able to function independently again, locked in that tiny Canadian refuge. Twelve months ago, they'd thought he'd burn himself out.
Now--now everything was different, and Scott tore his eyes away, scanning the perimeter. St. John had been trained and trained well. It was easy to find him, almost invisible through the struggling crowds of running people. Scott didn't understand how he'd missed him--small and inconspicious, but it was all over him, as brilliant and unmistakable as the colums of fire that lit up Salem.
"Scott, what happened?" Polaris' voice was shaking, and Scott gently disengaged her hand from his arm.
"I--" He stopped, taking a breath. "Get everyone back here. Call everyone out. Now."
A quick glance, a nod, and she was moving, already disappearing into a car that started at her touch. Slowly, Scott made his way through the people, stumbling as they knocked into him, panic making them blind to the man they most feared in their midst.
Clear of them, he stood on the sidewalk only feet away and looked at the young man who was destroying two years of work--and ending a war.
Glazed blue eyes dilated into pure black, hands slightly raised, sweat standing out on his forehead from the effort of control. Heat surrounding him like a halo, almost visible to the naked eye. Little smile turning up the corners of his mouth, and it was like seeing him for the first time, or the last time, and Scott hesitated briefly. Emotion wasn't to be trusted, not now, and Scott clenched his hands into fists at his side, feeling Jean's echoing shock, echoing anger--and something else he couldn't quite define.
All it would have taken was one twist of the controls, and St. John would have been so much dust.
Then it was over--sudden, swift, black darkness taking over, leaving a glare in Scott's retinas even through ruby quartz. St. John stumbled, dropping into a crouch, hands pressed into the ground briefly before the blonde head lifted, finding Scott without effort.
"Johnny."
The smile didn't fade--if anything, it widened, though tears were streaking the tanned face, and St. John pushed up, coming to his feet unsteadily.
"Cyclops."
Scott winced, taking another step, and St. John watched without moving, maybe without breathing. A thousand questions raced through his mind, fast and hard and uncontrollable, but only one was important, only one.
"Why?"
St. John shook his head, almost as if in thought, before turning his eyes down, fixing them briefly on the ground.
"I promised Dagby," St. John whispered, and the smile widened even more, even through the tears. "The war's over, Scott, today, now. The camps will all come down. Rogue started the war and now she's ended it."
Scott nodded slowly, thinking over what she'd said, what it'd meant at the end. She'd never been a believer, not until then, not until now. Not until she'd chosen the martyrdom they'd given her, but not before she'd gotten it on her own terms.
Rogue had died for humankind, following Xavier's dream, like the X-Man she was.
"She wanted to be a symbol," Scott said slowly.
"She told me to tell you that she believed in you, what you would do when this was over," St. John said softly, and Scott shivered. "She said--this was the only way, to be sure. That if she died, if she did it this way, everyone would know. That this was her choice and it was her legend. And that you'd tell the truth about what happened, how she died, and why she chose it." Rubbing a hand across his face, St. John smiled. "She believed, Scott."
She believed.
The night seemed too big around him--Magneto and Mystique were dead, and everything in the world hinged on Rogue's faith in him. It was seven years ago and they were removing her body from the Statue, and it was five years ago and he was in Canada with Logan, and it was three years ago when he'd cut the deal wiht Erik that won them a war.
He became only conscious of the real world again when St. John moved past him, toward the ruined fences of the camp. Crossing the street, stepping lightly over chain fence and razor wire, emerging onto the ground that only days before had seen the lives of thirty people end in a rain of gunfire. Scott moved, all unwitting, following wiht a numb shock as St. John approached the smouldering ruins of the building where Rogue had died.
"What are you doing?" he heard himself ask as St. John stepped into the rubble.
Bright, brilliant smile, like the sun rising, and it was St. John at eighteen, all lines erased, young and unscarred and so alive, more alive than he'd been since they'd taken him from Canada.
"Symbols are good when they're dead," St. John answered, pushing through the rubble, "but better when they're living."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
St. John turned to face him, shaking his head.
"She can walk through my fires, Scott. Carol could, and so could Rogue. This is the one thing I thought we might change in the legend, you know. She didn't think so, but I figured we'd try."
the end
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