The afternoon the next day found Scott and Rogue sitting around a small folding table with two chairs tucked neatly into her room. He was laying a plate in front of her, watching her take a seat swiftly. Her moves were more fluid then before, more cat like. It was as if every twitch of muscle had a purpose.
“I noticed you went to breakfast this morning,” Scott said with a smile as he sat in his own chair.
“I figured that I might as well before anyone else came up here to snoop around.” He thought she was joking, had hoped she was. But one look at her face told him she was perfectly serious.
“Can I ask you a question before we begin?” He asked as he sat his fork down on a napkin. “Completely out of context, of course. Why are you so interested in what happened between me and Jean? I would have thought that something so personal wouldn’t interest you at all.”
“Scott, nothing is out of context,” she replied swiftly. “Why do you so badly want to know what I so badly want to keep hidden? Why do you want to know about what I went through?”
He was a little frustrated with her question, but knew that if he backed out now, he might not be able to get back in. “Isn’t it obvious? I want to help you. I want to see you get past it and become a real person again. Is that why you want to know?”
“Oh, Scott,” she replied with a little chuckle. “I am more real now than before. But, to answer your question; no. I don’t want to help you get through it. I have no stake in your relationship with her, or lack of one. I just want to sate my curiosity, so to speak. I can’t help but wonder; what did it take to break up the perfect couple?”
“You would be surprised,” Scott said, giving up and picking up his fork again. He speared a cherry tomato but paused before putting it in his mouth. “I think it’s your turn to go first.”
“Sorry, Sugar,” Rogue replied with a drawl, “but you go first. I don’t give without taking first.”
He thought for a second as he chewed, wondering what he could start this with. It had to be something too small to give anything away, but big enough to get her attention. “She hogged the bathroom.”
“I was one of the few who didn’t share a cell with anyone,” she replied swiftly. “Can’t you think of anything else?”
“Alright. Everything we did had to be what she wanted. Every movie, every dinner out. Even sex. And everything had to be planned.”
“Shocking. I wouldn’t have taken you for spontaneity,” Rogue asked with mock surprise. “Maybe you don’t have a giant popsicle stick shoved up your ass.”
“Cute. Let me guess; Logan,” Scott replied comfortably. From anyone else, he would have probably been upset, but this was different. He was able to take it with stride, and, for some reason, it was almost relaxing. “It’s your turn.”
“They knew about Logan. They knew that I knew and were angry when I didn’t give him up.” She was serious again. Everything she told him was significant, and he was beginning to put a picture of what it must have been like for her together. “They did things to me that no person should ever have to go through.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she replied, her voice icy. “I don’t want your sorry or your pity. I’m proud of what I endured. Everything those bastards did to me, even as if just got worse and worse, only proved that I was getting one up on them. It meant that they were getting desperate. It meant that I hadn’t given in. Your turn.”
He wanted to elaborate on what she had just said, but knew that she wouldn’t accept that. So he sighed, continuing as he forked through his lettuce. “We weren’t having sex at all during the last few months. She didn’t seem interested anymore, no matter what I tried to do.”
“They made a special chip for me, to help me control my mutation. It’s imbedded in my neck. They thought that they could control me with it, but the mutant that built it made sure that it wasn’t possible. He died for that.” She bit into her piece of chicken, her features devoid of any emotion.
“This game is going to take a long time, isn’t it?” He asked as she shrugged her shoulders. “Why don’t we get this all out in the open?”
“What ever you say,” she said quickly, motioning for him to go first.
“Jean and I started to deteriorate three months after you disappeared,” he began, pushing his plate away. Suddenly, he wasn’t so hungry anymore. “I wanted to keep searching, to keep pushing until we found you, but there were other things that needed to be looked into, new mutants who needed to be saved and terrorist that needed to be stopped. Jean and I, well, we weren’t as perfect as everyone believed. There were lies on both parts. I would tell her that I was going on a routine mission to do this or that and, really, I was checking up on leads. At the same time, we were trying to get pregnant, or, at least I was trying to get her pregnant. I found out that she had Hank place an IUC.”
“And then you broke up?”
“No, then we discussed it. She talked me into waiting with her, until we were both ready. I thought she was right. I stopped talking to her after that. Stopped going out of my way for her. I was still there, but not really.” He looked away from her, looking down at the table. “We became distant.”
“And so it wasn’t too much of a shock when she started drinking and cheating, was it?” Rogue asked swiftly, as if it was a normal question.
“How did you know?” He sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. He eyed her carefully, watching her every move, wondering what she was thinking.
“I figured that there were really only three things that could tear you two apart,” Rogue said quickly, a glint in her eye. “Drugs, drinking, and infidelity. And, lets face it, Jean was never one to pass up that extra glass of wine at dinner.”
“Well, yeah. The drinking began to get out of hand. I was willing to look past that and help her when she was ready, but then I caught her in bed with a scientist she had been working closely with. I might have forgiven her if it was just one time, but…” Scott met her eye again, ignoring the pain he was feeling. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why she got the IUC behind my back. I asked her about it, and she confirmed. They had been sleeping together for three years. And there had been someone else before that.”
Rogue waited for a moment, letting the information sink in. She had always had her suspicions of the good doctor. The woman was just too perfect, tried too hard. The struggle must have been too much. She was a weak woman.
“I wasn’t allowed contact with the others,” Rogue said softly, beginning her own story. “Right away, I was put into my own holding tank. No contact with anyone but the guards and scientists. They wanted to know about Logan. The man in charge, his name was Stryker. Well, Stryker knew Logan, from before. For the first year, I was beaten repeatedly. He was trying to get information on where Logan was. Kept calling him his weapon. I guess word got back to his bosses that I wasn’t being used like the others, because, one day, there was someone new. And she let me know right away that she had big plans for me.
“She was the one who decided to insert the chip into my neck. She put me on a new diet, and had me train to become one of her super soldiers, like the others. But she kept me separate. She had me watch the others be put through these tests to see how far they could be pushed. I watched them train and interact with each other. She insisted that one day, I would be her right hand man. She tried her hardest to break me.”
“But she couldn’t?”
“Not even a little bit. She had me beaten, raped, starved. You name it, she did it. And then she got this terrible idea into her head.” Rogue stopped for a second, collecting her thoughts. Scott watched her closely, waiting for some kind of emotion, but there was none. “She decided to try something with my skin. She had this little device that would activate the chip. Although it gave me control, she had control, also. If she activated it, I couldn’t stop it. So, she got this real neat idea to through me in a box with a woman named Carol Danvers. A good woman, really. Very powerful, though.
“Well, she let us sit there, all day, every few minutes, reminding us that she was going to activate the chip. Carol, well, she could have killed me if she had control of her mutation, but she was wearing a suppressant collar, like the others. So she sat there and told me storied of what it was like for her growing up, and how her family never shunned her and stood by her side when she manifested. It was like that for twelve hours. And then SHE turned on the chip and I took her life.”
“How long did you retain her abilities?” Scott asked, trying to picture Rogue stuck in this small box.
“I still have them. Why do you think I gave up your training sessions?” Rogue sat back, taking a deep breath. “After that, I was trained to use her powers. Her super strength was easy enough once I got the hang of it, but her flying was a bitch. I had to wear one of those damn collars after that, just in case. But Carol wasn’t the first. There were three after her, but only one more actually stuck. A little girl with a healing factor. I got that one a week before you arrived. I can still hear her crying.”
“What were her plans for you? Did she ever make those clear?” Scott asked, leaning forward, becoming enthralled with her tale.
“She made that perfectly clear. I was her Angel of Death. When one of her little soldiers would fuck up to greatly to be ignored, I was going to be the one to kill them. The only problem was that she couldn’t find a way to get past the fact that I would have a piece of them stuck in my head even after their abilities faded. She was trying to come up with a way around that when you showed up.”
“She was trying to make you into her perfect weapon.”
“She was making me into her only weapon.”
“Did she ever tell you her name?”
“Yeah. Master.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I was her Angel of Death. When one of her little soldiers would fuck up to greatly to be ignored, I was going to be the one to kill them.