Life is a lot like a gala.
Being in a crowded room with no place to move except forward, nudging people and spilling their drinks while they glare at you just because you exist inside their personal space, is no way to live. Unless you’re an emotional masochist. Unless you enjoy the withering looks and barely suppressed “fuck you”s. Being in a crowded brain tends to have the same effect.
Rogue sighed loudly at the thought. It earned an annoyed look from Storm. Few months back, the weather goddess would have simpered at her side, asking her what was wrong, to divulge her soul. Ever since the…ugliness, she was less sympathetic. So Rogue sighed again, because in a way, she relished the hatred that had suddenly bubbled up in the mansion against her. It made her feel like she had a reason to be angry too. But this time, Ororo just ignored her.
Passive aggressive bitch.
Thank God there weren’t resident psychics around to hear that.
And then in a flash Rogue’s mouth turned into a thin line. What a fucking awful thought. Thank God? Thank God that Jean and Xavier were dead? That was a new low for her.
Realizing that now Storm and Bobby were peripherally watching her, she got up with as much dignity as she could muster, which wasn’t much these days, and headed out of the library. As she pushed the heavy doors open, a few of the junior students jumped out of her way. Maybe it was because she still held the demeanor of a girl too deadly to touch. Or maybe it was because you don’t just brush past mutant pariahs.
What is a pariah anyway? It sounds like a fruit. She’d always thought it was until a few weeks back, while she yelled and screamed at Hank about how he couldn’t understand. How he couldn’t relate his blue fuzziness to poisonous skin now cured and still held against her. She was still a loner, still an outcast and in her muddled, ranting mind, Erik finally supplied the word. But not before he called her an ignoramus for not knowing what it meant.
Ignoramus. What a weird word. Like pariah. Who the hell talks like that anyway? A queer old man with a fetish for inflicting pain and correcting grammar, apparently.
I have three children, his voice drifted from the depths, through the fog. And little girls with dementia shouldn’t discriminate.
Fine, the queer remark is retracted. Rogue still thought he was a tool.
Entering the empty kitchen, Rogue headed straight for the stash. Opening the cabinets in the kitchen where the beer was hidden felt like a crime. In fact every little breath she took in this infernal house felt like betrayal, which was stupid really. It had been her home, her sanctuary. She’d grown up relatively happy, considering the cruel hand fate had dealt her, with her skin and all. Friends, mentors, education, safety. Even an honest to God boyfriend. Who turned out to also be a tool, one she had to see every day. Yet if it came down to it, she was the one expected to leave. This place was just as much hers as anyone else’s, but apparently the keys came with a clause. How the hell did the back panel pop out again?
Rogue grunted when she finally gave up and started wrestling with the false back of the cupboard, nearly ripping out the whole damned wall. Damn Danvers.
By the time she got to her coveted case of Molsons, she wasn’t sure she even wanted them, but that’s the test of a true alcoholic. You don’t want it. You need it. The fact that it was his favorite brand just added to the humiliation of it all.
It’s pathetic, she thinks, seeing as not so long ago all the things that made her happy were still around. Her life fell apart so quickly and so spectacularly, it’s hard to believe that she went from zero to one hundred on the degenerate scale so fast. Rogue’s come to realize that those things that she listed as things she won, were actually crutches for her, stilts on which she stood and now she’s lower than low without them.
I lost Bobby to Kitty.
I lost one mentor to prejudice, the other to his wife.
I lost my father figure to a friend.
I lost my first love to the memory of that friend.
I lost my safety, because I am alone.
The chant is carved into the headboard Rogue now rests her back against, hidden behind a fluffy chantilly pillow. It’s the girliest thing in her room, an out of place presence, the one thing she took when they divided up Scott and Jean’s room, aside from his extra set of keys to the bike Logan took.
He’d been gone now four months, not a hint he’d ever be back. With all the dead buried in the backyard, she couldn’t really blame him.
Rogue shook her head, her hair perfectly tousled, like a just bed-fucked Bardot, falling over her face before she pushed it back again. She hated thinking of him, because when she did, she missed something. And it wasn’t him. It was the idea of her lost fragility. Back then she would have missed him. Nowadays, she didn’t miss anything.
Rogue looked at the remaining five cans. She wondered how they made it, if it would be a long shot for her to just hit the road and get a job at one of their breweries. That would be idiotic; boarder-line alcoholism was never cured by making a career of making the stuff.
Of course, if she got an apartment nearby, she could call it The LaBatt Cave. She chuckled to herself but shook her head as she flipped the tab on the next can. Somehow, it didn’t quite sway her.
But getting sauced in the day, before her life as the resident Math tutor started, was usually the only way to move forward. And in a crowded room, that’s all you can do.
Ah sure have come along way. Ahn alcoholic, ignoramus pariah who refers to herself in the third person. Maybe Ah am crazy.
Life is a lot like a fruit basket. As in Ah’m a pariah and a basket case.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Story Notes:
I am an avid reader and writer, so I'm shocked it has taken me seven years to finally attack this fandom. I'm just happy to write this down.
Author's Chapter Notes:
This chapter is dedicated to "Super Intendent", my land lord, who apparently has a sense of humor when using the fire alarm PA system while I'm writing.