The View From Above
I knew from the day Logan left that we would not keep her long.
Though I have been called so, I am not a goddess, nor ever was. If only I had that power for a day, I often think. But that power of what is and what will be is not given to humans, even those like me. And it is well. We think to do only good, but such evil has been wrought in the name of good intentions. Such things are better left alone.
Or so I believe. Poets through the ages have spoken far more eloquently than is in my small ability to what happens when man reaches for what belongs to the gods. Prometheus stole fire, and paid in an eternity of blood. Cassandra knew the future, and went mad with knowing. For the sin of building a tower that would reach the heavens, man was forever divided here on earth.
Never is it given to us to hold such power long.
Twice have I seen it. Twice, a woman like a sister to me has held such power and I have seen it. Twice I have seen it destroy a friend.
They could not have been more different. Phoenix was beautiful and bright and terrible, embracing the fire even as it burnt her soul from her and took her from within. Rogue was ever a darkling child, reluctant, wanting nothing of what was given her. She accepted her lot, some might have thought too easily.
I did not think so. She was strong, that little one, so strong. Strong enough to walk her path alone, to refuse the one thing that might have made her burden lighter, simply to protect the one who would have shared it. I knew that. I saw her where she went to remember that, when it would have been easier to forget.
I saw her in the sky.
Man was never meant to fly. Icarus died, sun-kissed into his oblivion, for daring to claim that power. I was born to that, for reasons I do not understand. She was not. But when the gift of flight was granted her, she accepted it as well. She never told me so, but I know the joy of flight, the touch of the soft winds that caress you and the clouds that brush your face, and I saw her there.
She took solace there, in the one touch, the one kiss that was not denied her. This I saw, and bear witness.
And it was in the sky that it ended for her. I alone was near enough to see the truth, and the truth I swore I would never tell. I was with her as we fought against the machines that man had built in this age to try and harness the power of the gods. I was with her as we were battered and torn by the forces massed against us, as slowly and inexorably we were splintered into ineffective remains of our battalion, until all those we had gathered were fighting only for their own survival.
It was then that she chose.
It seemed that she only tried to draw their fire, tried to give the remainder of our forces the time to regroup. It seemed that she hoped that my winds, Cyclops’ beams, Colossus’ mighty fists, would be in time to end the fight. She must have known that we would bear the guilt of that failure.
It was not enough to change her mind.
I saw her take the first strike, all the fire of a thousand suns against that little body, and she did not try to hide. She took that first attack, took all that it could do to her, and it weakened her just enough. As I tried to reach her, I saw her look down to earth, then back at the aiming Sentinels, and I saw her smile. And she closed her eyes.
I alone saw her fall to earth.
We won a Pyrrhic victory that day. The time that Rogue had purchased with her life was enough to turn the tide. The metal monsters were destroyed, and we escaped the explosions they set off as they fell, in an attempt to take lives even as they lost their own.
We returned to the field to find and bury our fallen warrior, but our numbers were not less. I did not envy Charles Xavier the task that was his that night. I do not know what words he used to tell Logan that Rogue was gone. I do not know what words there could be for such a message. I suppose he was prepared for that. He must have known the day would come, as well as I.
A man named Logan left us. Only the Wolverine returned.
It was he who found her. Found all there was. On that radiation-scarred field, in the midst of fires that still burned and earth scorched beyond repair, only he could have found anything that remained of Rogue. The force that made her invincible in life did not protect her body after death, and the power of the atom is not unlike the power of the gods. I saw him find the spot, find the scraps of bone and flesh. I saw him plunge his bare hands into the mud that had soaked up her blood and draw the earth across his face, his chest.
When he stood, battle-marked, I knew his intentions were fixed forever.
I am pledged to protect all life. Wolverine was pledged to protect only one, and now he turned his sights on bringing death.
It was hard for me to see it. All he cared for then was ending the lives of all those who had had a part in killing the girl he loved so much. He stayed with us only to finish what they had begun, stayed to destroy the thing that had destroyed her. He took no prisoners, accepted no surrender, and he did not allow the rest of us a choice in the matter.
He might have released me, if I had told him what I saw. But Rogue had paid with her life to buy my silence, to protect him from that knowledge, and I did not have the right to take that choice from her.
It was my penance for not preventing her death, and Wolverine claimed it from me to the last. My heart ached to see him, as we went through campaign after campaign. Bloodlust is a cruel mistress, never sated, and his kills did not bring him the peace he sought. Something else had taken Rogue from him before the Sentinels ever had, and that was something that could not be fought with fists or claws.
I have never known a darker time among us.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
We continue with a new voice: Storm, comicverse version.