“You’ve been incredibly silent Rogue.”

“I’m trying to concentrate on not dropping your ass,” she replied back, not glancing at the woman she was flying with.

Casting a side long smirk that she hoped would dismay any further inquiries she continued, “Couldn’t we have borrowed one of those many nice shiny expensive cars they have at Xavier’s for this trip?”

“They’d expect you to be coming back then,” Mystique replied strictly as the air whipped around them.

Mentally sighing, Rogue lowered their position as they dropped down delicately in the middle of the cemetery.

Letting go of the other woman she glanced around the mossy hills filled with gothic looking angels and marble of stone representing the dead.

“You always pick places with character, don’t you, Raven,” she muttered as a chill ran through her despite the shining sun.

Plucking a cigarette from her jacket she popped it in mouth and rolled it back and forth between her lips as she snapped the lighter open.

A slender blue hand appeared in front of her face and grabbed the cigarette out of her mouth. With stern eyes Mystique threw the stick on the ground.

“This is serious, Rogue,” she stressed and continued on up the hill.

“I thought this whole thing has been one serious thing after the other ‘cuz it sure as hell wasn’t a picnic for me.”

Following the other woman up the hill her eyes wandered over the rows of antique names and lives.

“That was just good old fun, Rogue.”

Rolling her eyes, she came to stand beside the other woman who’d stopped suddenly and was staring down at a more well kept tombstone of grey marble.

The name scrawled across the elegant marble burned inside her mind. Irene Adler.

No date of birth or death given. Just a name, but the attention of detail and up keep to the marker spoke volumes that someone still cared about the mutant known as Destiny.

She noticed a stillness to Mystique and she stepped back giving the mutant some privacy as she pocketed her hands inside her jacket and felt the two small diaries.

Suddenly, she found herself wishing for some kind of emotion, wishing she could be more sympathetic to Mystique’s silence. Wishing she was able to express some kind of empathy but there was an open void filled with detachment inside of her that she couldn’t pretend wasn’t there. She wondered not for the first time, how much of a cold hearted bitch she’d become.

It was hard to fathom that the merciless mutant before her was struck by the scenery around them. It was hard to believe Mystique was a woman who helped raise her, who was a brief recollection in her hazy mind that was filled with surprising warmth at times. But then again present day reality would set in and the reason she was so removed at times was because of the same woman; the fact that she’d had her memories altered by Destiny, that she’d been abandoned by them, despite the fact she was told it had been for her own safety.

It was never going to be enough. She was never going to get all the answers she needed.

She felt the hard ridge of one of the diaries dig into her chest and she hoped there was something to be salvaged from her actions.

It was easier to believe the dead woman buried six feet below them was the perfect image of warmth and safety she recalled. No other memories to taint her past. She couldn’t argue with a dead woman about whether or not they hadn’t given her up for her own safety or if they’d just tired of her.

When Mystique had tracked her down after news of the cure had broken out that it wasn’t permanent, she’d been horrifically surprised. Scared even. She was alone in the city of Boston, just making her way along the road, spending a month or two working as a waitress and who should walk in one day but a tall blonde woman with knowing eyes.

Whose eyes stared at the gloves she’d started to wear again fearful of when the cure would finally disappear as it started to flicker on and off. The woman’s knowing eyes that spoke of a comradeship, a path of sameness.

The uttering of the one word, one name, Rogue and Marie was gone again because a ghost had hunted her down.
She’d been vulnerable; there was no point in denying it. It had been obvious to Mystique and the other newly changed mutant had lapped at her crumbling self-hood eagerly.

She couldn’t blame her.

She wasn’t stupid though. She still had a backbone. She still had that edge to her that hadn’t died the moment the poison of the cure had hit her blood stream and alerted her genes. And when Mystique had finally revealed herself, she’d automatically threatened her without skipping a beat.

Intelligence stayed with her as Mystique said her piece. An erased past. Ties newly reconnected. Two mothers who’d tried to protect her from a world that would want to use her.

She’d told the blue mutant to fuck off and Mystique just smiled at her that day, smiled and ordered the number one special and told her simply.

“When you’re powers fully return, you will seek the truth and I will give you my touch freely so you can gain that which you have lost.”

And on that fateful day when her genes finally betrayed her, when the life that danced along her treacherous skin had finally returned and she felt herself crumble a little more inside she’d done exactly what Mystique had said.

She’d absorbed Mystique’s memories and found the life she’d forgotten.

And it wasn’t so easy to turn away. It wasn’t so simple to see Mystique as the enemy because she had no lines to draw, no place to hold herself to.

Someone had found her; someone had come to her and openly admitted to wanting her. Skin and all. No illusion about hopes and dreams, just the after taste of bitter reality and that life isn’t fair.

So Rogue had rolled with the punches. A newfound link. A place to belong with someone who didn’t expect to change her.

When the attack by Carol had occurred, she felt the combined monsoon of Carol’s hatred and her own that she was paying for Mystique’s mistakes take her over and it only allowed Carol more access to her mind and body.
But for the first time Mystique had proved the existence of those restored memories by saving her life, by sticking by her, making sure she didn’t become lost.

Mystique may have a lot of enemies but she had ties and debts to call in that were useful as well. A favour for the Stepford Cuckoos back in the day and Mystique had her under the best telepathic care in erasing Carol’s invading personality.

She’d taken on the duty of recovering the Books of Truth without hesitation because it was something that tied her to a semblance of belonging that wasn’t complicated by the politics of unrequited love or what it was to be a hero. It was simple and straight forward and it made her believe she had a purpose, a role to take on that wasn’t already preconceived by all the heroes that had fallen before her.

It was just her now.

What she always said she’d wanted.

She felt cold despite the calm breeze and she huddled in her jacket as she tried to forget Logan’s face when she’d left.

But she couldn’t hide the pain of his confession even from herself; she couldn’t find the strength to brush it off. Gone was her fortress of solitude and in its place was the familiar spinning of a wheel of chance.

Chance for hope.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she sensed Mystique behind her and knew there were things to be taken care of.

She didn’t bother asking when Destiny had died exactly, she knew that Irene had been weakened by a previous battle and had succumbed naturally to death sometime before her own skin had activated, after lifetimes and lifetimes with Mystique by her side and Rogue had only been a small part of that time, she felt out of place.

“She would be so proud of you Rogue,” Mystique’s calm voice interrupted her.

Opening her eyes she turned around.

“I wish I could remember her more,” she replied honestly, knowing somehow that Irene had been the far more maternal figure out of the two. It was obvious even now that Mystique thought of her as more of a partner then a daughter but sometimes the shape shifter would surprise her with a concerned action or two, or serious threats to the likes of Sabertooth if anything ever happened to her and it made it a little more easier to believe Mystique was capable of caring; in her own way.

“I know it broke her heart that day we had to send you away,” Mystique continued. “She’d been so scared for you, knowing that there would be many people interested in knowing what the supposed child of both her and I would be capable of. She waited all that time knowing, seeing when your mutation would appear only to realize we’d been unprepared for how violent it was and you running away.”

Rogue remained quiet as she heard the repeated tale of shame and regret. It didn’t matter so much to her that she’d had her life altered to be safe, it was a hard pill to swallow knowing the trials she’d been through since being a mutant, since the moment her mutation had violently manifested and she was rejected by the family she thought loved her, only to know that it was all a lie and she couldn’t blame them for feeling horror in knowing what they’d let into their lives now that she knew.

On the road for eight months and she’d learned barely how to play the game of survival even when she didn’t have all the pieces and then Logan had come along and opened her narrowing world, wide open with his rough attitude and his devil may care shrug, that reminded her that the will to get by lay on her shoulders and nobody was going to ever stick around to play the blame game.

And that stubbornness that seemed so much a part of who she was, was enough to get her by, was enough to give her the courage to crawl into his trailer and into his life and she couldn’t regret it.

If she’d stayed with Mystique and Irene despite the family she may have had and acceptance, she may have never met Logan and that thought struck through her heart like a cold, hard arrow filled with truth that paralyzed her to the core.

As she stared down at the mound of dirt over a decade old grave she realized they all looked the same in the end. The Professors, Jean’s and Scott’s, every grave was just a marker of loss and the encroaching door to the past and she didn’t want to feel that barrenness anymore, where the earth below her soaked her down with the buried lives and she knew with sudden clarity she’d forgotten how to view the life around her without the bitterness of the past and the fear of the future.

“What’s done is done,” she murmured and glanced around the open space.

Mystique shifted away from the grave and Rogue was aware of the raw clarity that seeped into the yellow irises and knew the shape shifter’s thoughts were no longer hovering in the past. Rogue straightened her spine and jammed her hands inside her coat pockets.

“Is that your new philosophy then?” the other woman teased her. “You forgive me then?”

Rogue tilted her chin up and knew she couldn’t hide the truth in her eyes, she’d never tried before.

“Does it really matter if I do?”

Mystique pursed her lips and watched her wearily only to smile and step closer a moment later. “I suppose it never does either of us any good to over think these things.”

“Can we get to the point of all this,” she snapped back and was concerned by the looseness of her anger and agitation that was making her bones tremble beneath her hard shell of ambivalence.

Mystique’s eyebrows rose up in surprise.

“Alright,” she replied simply.

Reaching into her jacket Rogue pulled out the diary they’d stolen from Graydon.

“Here,” she motioned but Mystique kept her arms down at her sides and stepped closer.

“What are you doing?”

“What’s the rush, Rogue?”

Narrowing her eyes she huffed and shook the diary in her hand.

“Open it,” Mystique commanded.

“What?” she exclaimed in shock.

“I said open it and read it Rogue.”

Watching the other woman with wide eyes she picked up on the serious and slightly precarious tone in her voice and she felt her guard go up but instead of snapping back she laughed in disbelief. The dam she’d built over time slowly starting to crack.

“Why does it matter if I read it? I don’t really care, Raven. We’ve already determined the books can’t be decoded. We did the job you promised Irene, we recovered them for you to watch over,” she paused as she shrugged. “But that didn’t work out so good the first time either, they were stolen. You did you’re duty and I did mine, so stop messing around.”

Mystique’s expression didn’t change.

“Stop being so blind, Rogue.”

Her eyes narrowed at Mystique’s under laying harshness.

“Blind to what?” she snapped back. “We recovered two of them and now we destroy them, making the last one virtually useless and no more concern about back trapping over past mistakes.”

“This is no longer about the past, Rogue.”

Rogue rolled her eyes.

“Fuck this,” she spat confused by the direction of the conversation. Turning around she started down the hill, she’d only gotten two steps away when Mystique called after her.

“Anna-Marie.”

Her back stiffened and she froze.

Tentatively, she glanced over her shoulder and felt the thick, suffocating presence of a lifetime ago calling her back.

Mystique approached her.

“All I’m asking is for you to read the diary,” Mystique began calmly. “It is your birth right,” she continued trying for a smile that only made her nerves fill with caution.

Rogue nodded slowly and glanced at the book in her hand.

“I don’t want to.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Why aren’t you afraid?” she snapped back. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered desperately.

“Because Rogue, you always run away when things get tough or too real and I won’t let you walk away from your potential future.”

“What?” she gasped and stepped back as she regarded Mystique in new light. “No,” she seethed as realization swept over her.

“You said this was never about that!”

“I lied,” Mystique replied calmly. “Not exactly though, you’re right that it was never my original plan to use the diaries but Rogue,” she paused and tried for a relaxed smile that only made her eerie yellow eyes bleed with greed. “That was before you told me about the dreams.”

Rogue stuttered and stumbled back as she felt the need to distant herself from the woman and the truth of the matter.

“If the diaries cannot be accessed then obviously it would be best to destroy them from stopping future thieves from possibly decoding them but we can’t ignore the fact that you’ve been having the dreams, that when you read Irene’s words, it awakened something inside of you. It was always a possibility and you knew that.”

Rogue balled her fist as she felt anger at herself in believing Mystique had the capacity to do the right thing. She’d been a fool and all along everyone had known it, because she was always making the wrong choices. Mystique may have never pressured her to live up to an ideal or judged her but she’d trapped her all the same with her ambitions.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she snapped back. “I told you. I don’t understand these entries anymore then you do.”

“But Rogue, you were always going to be special, don’t you see that?”

“Shut up!”

“We picked you from such a young age already knowing you’d play an important role in the future of mutant kind.”

Rogue’s head snapped and she glared at her. “That’s what it was always about wasn’t it, just waiting to use me. You didn’t want a child, you wanted a tool you could shape and use!”

Mystique didn’t reply back and she felt the fury rise in her. “You always pressured her didn’t you,” she yelled. “Destiny could see the future but you were the one with the ambition to make it come true. It was an obsession of yours, that potential for power and it corrupted everything you touched.”

When she remained silent, she knew it was true.

“She did question my intentions with you,” Mystique replied steadily.

A hollow laugh broke through her trembling lips as she shook her head. “Well she was right; I mean you handed me over to Magneto like a pig on a silver platter minus the apple, just for his dream of the future.”

“It wasn’t the way I would have liked things to have gone.”

“No?” she repeated bitterly. “How was it supposed to end, Raven?” Lifting the book up in her hand she motioned violently. “How is this supposed to end? You think I’m going to unlock some magical secret that may or may not come true just so you can turn the world to your whim?” she paused as her voice grew steadier. “No matter the consequences on me, on anybody else.”

“You may have the gift to foresee, Rogue, how can you ignore that?”

“Because,” she spat tiredly. “I know when the price is too high and I won’t go down this path for something that isn’t even set in stone, for something that I know in the end I probably won’t survive and will end in destruction. This isn’t the way to live a life.”

``And what life do you want for yourself? To be an X-Men, to be another patented soldier...”

“I won’t go down this path,” she interrupted. “I don’t want to have to worry about having everything mapped out for me. It just doesn’t matter anymore.”

She sighed, feeling tired, defeated and empty inside as the truth of Mystique’s intentions slapped her in the face.

“You know, I wasn’t stupid, I always knew what working with you would mean but even you surprised me about this,” she whispered. “The one thing that tied to you to a sense of morals. The duty you accepted when Irene died and you’re willing to abuse it all just for some foretold power. Didn’t you learn anything from Magneto, from the Phoenix? Power just corrupts.”

“You have the chance to be someone, Rogue to...”

“Just stop,” she snapped, realizing how blind Mystique was. “I don’t care about any prophecy. Where does it say that this cursed skin brings me anything more than just power! Where’s my promise of control!”

She gripped the diary harder and felt the binding snap.

She turned away as she felt the tears blur her eyes.

“I gave you a chance,” she whispered. “And you ruined it all the same, you proved everyone right. I don’t understand you.”

“Oh, please Rogue,” Mystique snapped with sudden authority. “You’ve never wanted to understand this world. You’ve just always been blowing through it as fast as you could, as destructive as you could without seeing the big picture. I gave you direction, purpose and an outlet for that confused anger!”

“And did I make you proud, Mother,” she seethed over her shoulder. “Is it time for me to give you something in return for the honour you’ve given me. I hadn’t realized I was supposed to thank you and be in your debt for walking into my world.”

She turned to leave.

“Where are you going?” Mystique yelled.

“Away from you.”

“You think they will accept you again, you think he will!” Mystique called after her.

She paused and turned around.

“I saved your life, what did Wolverine do but break his promise.”

“The difference is he doesn’t hold it over me. He doesn’t expect servitude.”

Mystique glared at her.

“You’ll be back,” she huffed confidently and Rogue watched her silently and almost felt a small amount of pity for her, knowing it was all a front. Mystique actually would miss her and although it wouldn’t be in the capacity of a mother’s love, she knew their relationship was the closest the other woman had ever come in some time in acknowledging another person.

“We just expect different things out of life, Raven.”

“What?” the other woman snorted and mocked her. “Love,” she spat.

“Maybe,” she smiled and shook her head. “Just something more than this and I’m sorry that you can’t understand that.”

Mystique’s face twisted into a nasty snarl. “Emotions are for the weak.”

“You don’t understand,” she replied. “In the end if tomorrow the world ends all I want to know is that those by my side recognized me as an equal.”

Mystique’s snarl turned into a smirk. “And what happens when your precious X-Men reject you again? You’re better than them, than...”

“I’ll find my way on my own terms,” she replied confidently and lifted into the air as she felt the heaviness of Mystique’s presence leave her.

“Rogue!”

She quickly turned away and sailed up higher as Mystique became a blue dot and she flew away.

The crossroad had been presented before her and suddenly it had been so easy to see the mistakes she’d made with Mystique just as she had made with the X-Men. She relied too heavily on deciding who she was on their terms. As the wind caressed her face she felt a heavy weight lift off of her shoulders and although she was hurt, although she was angry and mad, the cloud of confusion that always seemed to hover around her appeared lighter.

Smiling a little even as the tears glistened in her eyes, she burst forward and tumbled through the air as she had no real path before her but for the first time she felt a moment of freedom.
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