DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
thatcraftykid
track four // “GREAT GIG IN THE SKY”
THERE’S NO GIVING UP THE GHOST
“Fear doesn’t make wrong into right.
How you stop yourself from falling matters.”
– Rogue –
Rogue isn’t falling, she’s sinking. No air down there, her brain yells. Push up, push up. Something hard hits against her. She tries to flail. She twitches. She screams, but nothing comes out. The fog only gets thicker.
A heavier something drops on her spine, causing her upper body to jerk and lift. Rogue uses the momentum to roll herself onto her side. Her sputtering coughs turn into deep hacking. To steady herself, she puts her hand on the uneven rock. Water from the puddle she almost drown in splashes over her wrist.
With the sleeve of her cloak, she wipes her face. In the dim artificial light, she can see that Senator Kelly is semi-propped up against the now-sealed wall. In his hand is a palm-sized piece of debris. She glares at it, and he lets it fall to the ground.
Gasping faintly, Kelly explains, “Y-you weren’t waking up.”
She notes the fact that he saved her life cynically, knowing it’s meant to be reviewed later. Undoubtedly, he will ask her to return the favor. For now, she tries to find a comfortable way to sit without toppling backward. Whatever was in that syringe is still in her system.
“Are you hungry? There’s food by the door. It’s lunchtime.” He cradles his watch. “Twelve on the dot. That zoo animal comes about every hour and a half to check on us.” He holds his watch’s gold face toward her, even though she’s too far away to read it. “Waterproof.” His laugh is sharp.
“It was a gift from your son,” Rogue remarks. It comes out mild, though she meant it to be nasty. She meant to remind him of what he was then and what is now.
He touches the engraved band. “Yes, from Mark. You’re right.”
“I know everything about you, Robert. Your darkest secrets are all up here with me.” She presses a finger to her temple. Her bones are solid again.
Kelly is more rubbery than he was last night. Even his smallest movements cause water to spurt from his pores.
“The truth about me is bound to be more flattering than whatever it is you people think. I’ve never drank the tears of mutant babies. Then again, my detractors would say that’s only because no one’s offered me a taste.” He wheezes at his own joke, then cuts himself off to catch his breath.
To avoid Kelly’s external and internal presence, Rogue cranes her head around the room for inspiration for escape. They’re sealed in completely. No cracks.
“Anyway, he already told me how you take from people. I think he wanted me to try to hurt you, so you’d murder me. He’s trying to make you like him. I don’t think you can be. You’re just a scared young woman. I don’t think you want to be a mutant any more than I do.”
“Don’t compare yourself to me,” she snaps. The more he gets to talk, the more he comes bubbling to the surface. She needs to put him down, shut him up. “You’re a bigoted, egotistical opportunist hypocrite. You threw away your ‘family values’ for a string of barely legal mistresses who held your hand and walked your pathetic mommy issues all the way to the bank. And you got down on your knees and you begged Nora not to leave you, but this time she had somebody else. She really did love you. Now she hates you. You use people – ”
“And I do it without conscience, because I expect them to love me. I demand it, even though I’m too selfish to love them back. Young lady, those words you’re trying to use against me are things I’ve told myself again and again. I’m in therapy.” Long trails of spit drip from his lips as he chuckles mirthlessly. “Mutants should know better than anybody, you can’t help the way you’re born.”
“That’s lazy.”
“I know that.”
“No you don’t. You think what you do in public is so important it shouldn’t matter what you do in private. What is it you tell people? That stupid metaphor.”
“It’s true. I was. I was the hammer, not the blacksmith. The vast majority of American citizens do not have mutant powers. But even greater numbers won’t be able to stand up to mutant aggression without the legislative force to back them up. They needed me to serve their best interests. Every villain is a hero to someone else. And vise-versa.”
“So then Magneto is your big, bad villain, but how is he any different from you? He turned you into a mutant and now you’re sick. You want me to feel sorry for you, and I do. But that doesn’t change the fact that you support places like Southaven. You want to turn mutants normal no matter who gets hurt.”
“Don’t you want help?” His head, resting against the wall, bends with the curve of the rock. His eyes take in Rogue disbelievingly. “You’re so young. You’re going to spend the rest of your life covered up like that. Seventy, eighty years. How are you going to stand it? People deprived of physical contact eventually go insane.”
Rogue blinks against the sting. “You’re just saying that because you blame your mother’s postpartum depression for the way you are. But you saw. She couldn’t bring herself to hold your brother, either, and he turned out fine.”
Kelly closes his eyes at that. “They’ve done studies. You’ll go nuts if you don’t get help. You’re like a cancer victim who bombs medical laboratories because animal testing is cruel.”
“I wasn’t a patient at Southaven. I was the test chimp.”
“I’m not a doctor. I don’t know what or why they did whatever it is that they did to you. But, you know, one chimp can end up saving a lot of lives.”
“So no one cares that a hundred people – human beings – end up brain damaged.”
“What happened to Carol Danvers was a surgical risk. The best, most cutting-edge research points to the amygdala being the seat of mutant powers. The procedure could have worked.”
“The doctors told you maybe, but it was best to wait year. You threatened funding.”
“And that makes me a monster. The American people cannot wait for hope. What do you think this country will look like in a year? Tensions are only getting worse – ”
“You provoked them!”
“Terrorist attacks, young lady. Murders. Kidnappings. Robberies. Mutant gangs are practically running Los Angeles. Mutants laugh in the face of rule of law, and why shouldn’t they? Bleeding hearts keep us unprotected, because they don’t want to see the threat. It’s not nice. They’d rather believe every mutant is a Jean Grey or a Hank McCoy. But even they have their secrets. They’ll lose control eventually. Who will trust them then?”
Kelly is stopped by his own panting and coughing. Misery dulls his fever bright eyes.
“Yeah. The thought of the ‘freaks-in-suits’ failing doesn’t make you so gleeful anymore. People like Jean Grey are willing to fight people like Magneto. They do it on behalf of people who hate them and people like you. I mean the way you are now. You’ve been a mutant almost a whole day. You don’t want world domination. You just want your family back.”
“I want more than that. I tried to turn a negotiation into a war. If you get me out of here alive, I’ll do whatever it takes to fix that. I’ll turn in my hammer.”
“And be what instead?” Rogue can’t exactly picture him a hippie flower stuck in the barrel of some soldier’s gun.
“I’ll say I was wrong. I’m still a senator. I’ll let Hank McCoy build a bridge out of me. Just…use your powers. Get me to a good doctor. Save my life. I’ll make it worth it.”
She believes him. Of course Kelly would be self-serving enough to switch sides. “You just want to continue to control the debate.”
“The sin of control. It’s the entire issue, isn’t it? Control. Chaos. Some people say there’s nothing wrong with mutants, as long as they can be controlled. Other people say, ‘Don’t hate the mutant, hate the mutation.’”
Kelly runs a hand over his mouth. He’s finding it difficult to direct its movement. Everything he’s said has been garbled and slow. Rogue gives him time to push the words out only because she’s sickened by the thought that any one of them could be the last of a clearly dying man.
“You hate your mutation because you can’t control it. You hated Southaven because you couldn’t control your treatments. We don’t agree with the madman who trapped us here, because he seems to us a lot like chaos. Every person has their limit. It’s all just a slippery slope. At what point do you become afraid of falling?”
“Fear doesn’t make wrong into right. How you stop yourself from falling matters.”
“Imagine it’s someone you care about. What then?”
Her hesitation is pure reflex, even though the answer should be irrefutable. “It still matters.”
Carol has been remarkably quiet through all of this, probably because Rogue’s so hazy. She doesn’t intend to leave Kelly behind, so she’s glad Carol can’t fight her over it.
Rogue closes the discussion by climbing to her feet. It takes a moment to blink away the lights floating in front of her vision. She lurches to the entry and knocks on the flat metal sheet that covers it instead of the prison bars. The metal is thin, and she can’t hear anything on the other side. She crosses the cell and knocks on the window covering. It’s much thicker, and Rogue isn’t feeling all that strong.
“All right. We have to take the inside route. We’re going to fly over the dam, and we’re going to make it through the tunnels without being seen. Then we’ll take the helicopter to Westchester. There’s a good doctor there. With secrets.”
“You know Jean Grey.”
“She doesn’t turn people away if they need help.” Rogue picks up the damp glove Magneto took off her and puts it back on. To Kelly she says, “Neither do I, I guess. But I don’t forgive you.”
“I wouldn’t even consider it, were I in your position. But what about the machine that did this to me?”
The light was so bright, even the memory makes Rogue squint. She can still feel that light seeping into Kelly’s body down to his cells, scrambling his DNA even after Magneto was literally peeled from the machine. The same machine he no doubt intends to put her in.
Bastard sonuvabitch coward, she thinks with a shuddering jolt of adrenaline. It’s as close to direct as Logan has spoken to her yet.
“I know I should do something, break it somehow. But we don’t have the time.” And, honestly, she never wants to have to see the travesty of it in person. “Besides, Magneto didn’t have me last time the UN Summit was supposed to happen, and he didn’t go through with it then.”
Rogue searches for a place to grip the seam where the metal sheet meets rock wall.
“He had Telford Porter as his ace in the hole then. And that blue…” Kelly sputters, landing on, in his mind, the worst possible insult, “…woman – She posed as Henry to convince me how important international opinion is and that Summit had to go on.”
“The Summit isn’t the issue anymore. Without me to do his dirty work, chances are Magneto will just have to try again with another venue. In the meantime, we can tell anybody who wants to know exactly where to find him.”
Finally. Near the bottom right-hand corner she finds a small crack. She drops to her knees to start prying it away by inches.
“Can you be any quieter? It might echo,” Kelly cautions unhelpfully. He staggers over to take a look at her work. “From the noise, it sounded like you should have made more progress.”
Rogue pauses, the hole now large to stick an arm through. She could tell him that she’s doing pretty damn well for just having woke up from over twelve hours of drug-induced sleep. Instead, she chooses a subtle reminder that he’s next to useless.
“You’re dripping on me,” she monotones, and Kelly backs off.
A few more minutes of teeth-clenching, nerve-wracking exertion, and she’s confident she can wiggled her shoulders through. Then she remembers she inherited her momma’s hips and devotes another minute to filling out the exit.
Rogue stops to listen to the silence outside before poking her head out for a quick scan. No sign of a bridge, meaning no unscheduled visits. So far so good. She wiggles free.
From behind, she hears a gasp for help. Kelly oozed through the hole, and he’s too wobbly to get back on his feet. Gingerly, Rogue tries to lend him support with her knee and impetus by pulling up on his collar, but the sight of his neck lulling to the side at an impossible angle almost makes her let go in horror.
“Okay.” She mimics his deep breaths. “Let’s only do this once. I’m going to put you on my back. You just hold on however you can.”
All Kelly can seem to manage is a wheeze. Guilt eats at her. She should have taken time to make sure he wouldn’t have to use his jelly monster abilities to get out. Rogue doesn’t need to be an MD to see that he’s holding himself together through sheer will.
“Do you need to rest?” she asks, trying to sound equally concerned with his well-being as she is about their extremely pressing escape.
“No,” he says, wisely not shaking his head. “Go.”
With her free hand, Rogue pulls up her hood to protect them both from contact. Then she slowly, carefully dips her shoulders under his chest and lifts him onto her back. God. She could’ve picked him up without Carol’s powers. He’s Jell-O inside a leaky hot water bottle.
She starts forward slowly. “Are you all right? Hanging in there? Make a noise, please.”
He moans, and Rogue’s heart continues to pound. Good for maintaining adrenaline, but bad for giving her the shakes. It’s a long way across that gaping divide, and she can’t even get her usual running start without losing Kelly off her back.
Deep breath. She stands with her toes on the very edge of the chasm. No problem whatsoever. Carol could do this from day one. Just jump up and don’t fall back down. Couldn’t be simpler. Rogue bends her knees, pleads with an all-loving higher power she wishes existed, and leaps.
Straight drop for a moment before fear pushes her up. She arcs and slumps, arcs and slumps. Her muscles quiver, her sweat and Kelly’s fluids run down her aching spine. Carol is unnervingly still.
Almost there, but Rogue begins to sink faster. If she makes it to the bottom, there might be a way out but it would be way too far from the helicopter with Kelly to worry about. And she’s so tired. At the lip of the waterfall, she does one last arc and lands on her feet then her knees. Kelly slides off her back, groaning. His arm flops too hard against the jagged rock.
When she was seven, little Marie leaped from her parents’ dresser onto their waterbed. The pop, knowing it was a belt-worthy trespass, was the most horrifying sound she’d heard yet.
Ten years later, on her hands and knees in a mutated villain’s lair, that same sound causes Rogue to choke on a gasp and a sob. Her shaking hands go to scoop up the water spraying from the end of Kelly’s empty sleeve.
“Mutants – ” Senator Robert Kelly’s old disgust is back, she can hear it in his raspy voice.
“Don’t,” she says, desperate for something better for them both.
The wetness from Robert’s fingers seeps in through the fabric of her glove. “Mutants are afraid of normal people because they’re afraid of themselves. Aren’t they?” Off her emphatic nod, Robert sighs. “I banked my career on that. I wanted them to be afraid, like me. Fifty-two years of living in fear.”
Afraid of getting to close, afraid of trusting people. Rogue hates him for his confession, because it’s a dying man’s last grasp at immortality. He’s addressing her forehead, the way people who understand the true evil of her mutation inevitably do. He’s digging up sympathies, burrowing a home, knowing a part of him will survive to haunt the crevices in her brain until her death do they part.
Robert’s voice turns soft and the gentleness he normally reserves for his son settles on his undulating features. “I guess you have one less person to be afraid of.”
His chest sinks in. He gurgles on water bubbling up from his lungs to his throat. His right eye remains fixed on her as it slides to the side. The pressure builds against his translucent skin, against the heavy lump between her vocal cords. He bursts and she screams, impossibly cold water raining onto her, dripping from her hood and her nose and her lips.
Rogue screams and shivers, clutches the solidness of her skull as she wobbles to her feet. Sabretooth is barreling toward her. Toad drops down in front of her.
She turns and runs right off the edge of the cliff, her arms and legs pinwheeling against the nothingness of empty space.
Adrenaline turns her freefall into a slant. She lands heels first and rolls and picks herself up to stagger to the nearest tunnel. A dulled survival instinct keeps her moving through arbitrary twists and turns. The only light she has is from sunrays through the cracks in the rock wall. Rogue thinks she’s trudging uphill, but she could just as easily be dragging herself down into hell.
Direction doesn’t matter, really, since probably everybody but Sabretooth has anticipated her foolhardy get-to-the-choppa plan. Her urgency died with Kelly. The best she can do at the moment is keep hidden. It occurs to her – more like Logan, hard to tell – to circle back, confuse her scent. The passages are endlessly identical, but there are clues enough if she pays attention. And she does, excessively. All her faculties focused ahead because, from behind and inside, the monsters are out to get her.
A subtle change in temperature alerts Rogue to an opening barely her size. From it, a narrow trickle of water falls onto her sneakers. Nausea makes her step back.
Get it together. When she turned the corner, the ocean moved to her left. Meaning the channel runs further inside the cavern. So then where…
The waterfall. Of course. The one place she was hoping to avoid. Rogue sighs, grits her teeth, and crawls into the widening channel. Her inner Logan would inadvertently lead her to grudging heroics. He so would.
Magneto’s master machine of messy mutations and mass murders is hardly more than a blurred outline from her vantage point behind the half-curtain of the waterfall. With supreme effort, Rogue manages to use the curve of the channel’s wall to turn herself around. She works out her frustrations with the soles of her shoes as she kicks herself a better view.
Head first again, Rogue looks beyond the rushing water to assess her options. The machine is ludicrously shaped, rendering it difficult to tell where it’s most vulnerable. The light comes out of the top, so maybe she can drop a big boulder or something on it and call it a day. Or a suicide attempt, depending on how personally Magneto took that whole “go fuck yourself” thing.
Damn it, why did the machine have to be so out in the open? Giving up the relative safety of her hidey-hole seems less than intelligent. But, then again, hide has always been her go to strategy even when she’s been the one on the seek.
Rogue crouches on the lip of the tunnel, looking above and around for something heavy. What she sees is a figure approaching the machine. Gasping in a yelp, she ducks back into the hole. One hand covering her own mouth, after a minute or so she dares a peek.
Whoever it is has moved around to the back of the machine. Metal sings against metal and sabotaging sparks fly out.
Before she even consciously makes the decision, Rogue has leapt onto the flat, metal walkway. She sprints toward the smoking machine, on top of which Logan poses with a satisfied smirk.
“Thought you’d make it down here.”
Rogue slows, her common sense breathless at the sight of him at her rescue, so collected and triumphant, so here. So impossibly too good to be true.
“Logan…”
“It’s good you’re cautious, but we gotta hurry. The X-Men can only keep them distracted so long.”
Not exactly a definitive answer. Still, she keeps toward him, as if magnetized. “But how – ”
“Ain’t always reliable, but Charles’ got a secret machine just for telepaths.”
Hope bubbles up on recognition. “Right, that’s how he tracked Sabretooth to Canada and found us.”
Logan squats on the edge of the machine’s raised platform. “Bet you wish he hadn’t,” he says ruefully.
“Bet you’re right,” Rogue replies, gazing up at his half-smile through her lashes.
The hairs on the back of her goosepimply arms stand on end, though she can’t quite say whether it’s due to the unease rocking her stomach or the warmth spreading through her chest. Logan has his hand beneath her hood and he’s stroking her hair, drawing her closer.
“You okay?” he mummers, not breaking eye contact with her.
“I’ll be okay.”
Logan’s right hand pulls her scarf from under her cloak and holds the thin material across the bottom half of her face. Rogue’s pulse rattles her brain. She balances herself against his knees. He adjusts his hold so that one hand is free to caress the back of her neck.
Rogue swallows, not sure how to hold her lips. His are parted and moving forward by inches. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of this before? she thinks at the same time as, How could he want to kiss me again after I almost killed him?
Her stomach flips again, and she thinks it’s the Logan inside her head. He remembers how kissing the Rogue inevitably ends. He also knows this isn’t the time or the place. Survival instinct, both of it.
Mouthing Logan’s name to stop him only erases the distance between them. His mouth is hot on the other side of her scarf, but Rogue’s suddenly aware of other details, like how the mend she made on his threadbare jeans isn’t there and that he’s making an awful lot of movement with his free hand.
Against her lips, he says, “What’s the matter, baby?”
Rogue punches him right in the wide-open crotch. Logan has not, does not, and will never call her “baby.” Gross.
His eyes go yellow as he lets out a wholly feminine noise of pain. Rogue smacks his arm away, and a syringe falls out of his sleeve. But doesn’t hit the ground.
Not bothering to look around for Magneto, she jumps straight into flight. She doesn’t make it too far before something ropes around her ankle. From his perch an a tree, Toad starts reeling her in by his tongue. She kicks at it viciously until he has to let go. A needle’s prick breaks her skin, but she knocks the syringe away before it can administer the full dose.
Caught in a nightmare, Rogue loses more and more control over her body. She’s swimming in the air, clawing at it to stay up. Eventually, her eyes roll back. She plummets.
Paralyzed, she drifts in and out. Like when Marie got her wisdom teeth out, she’s aware that something awful is happening to her but unable to feel it and therefore unable to care. Rogue isn’t locked up, just left to the side. At some point, a boat appears. Later, Mystique kneels painfully on her hair.
The same grin stays on her face as she transforms from herself to Carl the Janitor to the lunch lady to Bobby and back to Logan. When that doesn’t get a rise, she turns into Senator Kelly. His fingers brush over Rogue’s crown. “It’s getting to be quite the graveyard up there,” she comments with Kelly’s mouth but her own voice.
Rogue tries to spit, but it just ends up dribble on her lips.
Mystique is Mystique again. She grows out her fingernails so she can trace Rogue’s skin with them. Rogue shrinks back. Absorbing her wouldn’t be a way out, just a new way to get trapped.
Her touch is reverent in its near-recklessness. “So much potential,” Mystique muses. She scratches Rogue’s cheek hard enough to leave stinging tracks. “Wasted.”
Mystique shifts her long, scaled legs and tilts Rogue’s head so they’re both gazing at Magneto, who loads the boat with his arms out like Jesus on the cross.
“He sees something useful in you.”
Rogue works her mouth until she manages, “Flattered.”
“Erik pushes me past the limits of what I think I’m capable of. Another mutant told me he would. A blind woman saw me, and she saw you. A version of you.” Mystique grips a chunk of Rogue’s bangs and lets the dark brown strands fall into her eyes. “But so much more.” The serene expression on her face is Mother Mary meets Mary Magdalene.
Blind prophets, messiah complexes, forced martyrdom, and brave new worlds. All of it raises bile in the back of Rogue’s throat. “You’re both bullshit psychotic. They’ll die.” She strains her neck and yells again, “They’ll die!”
Magneto’s voice rings out. “A percentage might not survive their initial mutations, true. Senator Kelly has shown us that genetics are a delicate art. Nevertheless, my machine has worked beautifully in the past. And with any great change, sacrifices must be made.” Magneto clucks his tongue and shakes his head. “My dear girl.”
Mystique grins that manic grin of hers, and tops up Rogue’s sedative.
What feels like a blink, and Rogue is on the boat, her wrists tied up. Magneto looks out at the blurry green outline of the Statue of Liberty.
“Magnificent, isn’t she?”
“I’ve seen it,” Rogue slurs. Age thirteen. Family road trip. Dad said flying was cheating, but Momma knew he did it for her because she hates airplanes. He has his moments, as far as husbands go. She married a good man –
No, don’t remember. Concentrate.
“I first saw her in 1949. America was going to be the land of tolerance. Of peace.”
“Half a century later, you’re back. To kill me.”
Gravely, he replies, “Yes.”
Bitterness twists her mouth. “Why?”
“Because there is no land of tolerance, there is no peace. Not here, not anywhere else. Women and children, whole families destroyed simply because they were born different from those in power.”
He kneels in front of her, no longer playing the kindly granddad but the apologetically damning preacher.
“Well after tonight the world’s powerful will be just like us. They will return home as brothers. As mutants. Our cause will be theirs. Your sacrifice will mean our survival.”
Sabretooth appears at the top of the ladder, startling her.
“I’ll understand if that comes as a small consolation,” Magneto stands, all superior purpose. “Put her into the machine. I’ll raise it.”
The wind is cold at the top of the Statue of Liberty, but it brings no sense of clarity. Time is still slipping past when she’s not looking.
Her body is weak. Her mind is empty. Her conscience is bursting. They’ll die. She’ll kill them, because Magneto has manipulated all her choices. He got her through pride at the train station. She thought being carried out unconscious in a sack was an affront to her grownup decisions. At least then she’d now have the privilege of a damsel in distress. Southaven has made her stronger, no doubt, but at the cost of her innocence.
Rogue twists her bound wrist. Left hand, the same one Carol in her desolation grabbed hold of and held tight. Where’s that strength you made me take? she wants to know. Rogue rattles her restraints. If I die, you’ll never fly again. Not a stir.
Fine, so maybe you all want me dead. But where’s the glee? Primo mutie on mutie violence, Eugene, your favorite...Sinners getting what’s coming to them, right, Lora?...Good news, David, you’ll be free of my monster…Oh, come on. Eight months I’ve listened to your crap commentary! One of you answer me...Momma, please?
The void in her mind is a gaping black hole, as full as it is empty.
No, you can’t. Don’t leave me all alone now. Say something! Somebody.
Silence.
Tears drip pitifully from her chin. “Help.” She pushes the plea out onto a world that doesn’t care.
A world she’s not done a thing to endear herself to. “I don’t owe you nothin’,” Logan said, all those weeks ago.
But he saved her life anyway, and she saved his. I like you, she told Logan the second day they met, meaning it whether he deserved it or not. Just yesterday, he told Rogue, “I’ll take care of you,” and meant it more than he or anyone ever had.
Even though nobody can deserve a thing like that.
So she’s not going out silently. She’s not going out gracefully, either. She’s going to cry and beg and scream until she has no voice.
Locked in the towering torch of symbolic new beginnings, she tugs at her restraints with all her muted strength and gives into the life-affirming sensation of terror. Her head might be a graveyard, but her redemption is worth so much more.
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