“Hello, Professor.”
Rogue was possessed of a habit of darting her gaze around any room she entered, before she had fully stepped across the threshold. Both Marie and Yuriko both had picked up the habit separately before they had met, and it had saved each of their respective lives a number of times.
Xavier recognized it when she entered his office, because Wolverine did the same thing, every time, no matter how well he knew a place. “Welcome, Rogue. If you would sit down, please.” He gestured to the chair in front of his desk.
Rogue approached, and Xavier casually observed the preciseness of her long strides, giving the illusion of an almost wolfish lope to her gait. She did not sway in a feminine manner; her whole demeanor was one of containment; it matched her mind.
She settled into the chair opposite him, her dark eyes reading his expression intently, and Xavier had no doubt that she was just as perceptive as Logan, due to her senses and past experiences; in fact, she would probably read him better, since she tended more toward eerie calm than sudden outbursts.
Rogue smirked to see him trying to read her without his mutation. “Are you worried about me?” she asked. It was a question with multiple layers: was he worried about Rogue’s mind, worried about Rogue’s presence in his school, worried about her predatory tendencies and questionable morals...
“I am simply wondering what your plans are, and how I may help you with them,” Xavier answered. “We found your records amongst Styker’s data...”
“I’m not Marie,” she interrupted. “Not anymore, at least. Look over the files on Yuriko Oyama, or Project Deathstryke. You’ll understand me much better, then.”
Xavier nodded, and gestured toward the large stack of papers on the edge of his desk. “Yes, I looked into those as well, once I read that you had killed her in self-defense. I also listened to Stryker’s recorded notes.” Seeing the way her body stiffened, Xavier gave her a look that was part-apology and part-sympathy. “I believe he was under the misapprehension that it was some kind of delusion on your part based on what you had absorbed from Yuriko, but I doubt that this is the case.”
“Rightly so.”
“I take it, then, that you do not have any plans to become a student here. Yuriko’s records were harder for Stryker to put together than Logan’s, and have more gaps in them due to how good she was at hiding, but I can guess that your mental age is, in all likelihood, nearer to mine than to those who would have been Marie’s peers.”
Rogue nodded. Then a hint of curiosity, almost amused, crossed her features for a moment. “Do you think I’ve been corrupted?”
Xavier hesitated. “I would not quite say that. It was not intentionally done to-”
“Yes it was, X,” Rogue interrupted, her voice low, but firm. “Yuriko was trying to kill herself, despite having a good idea of what it would do to Marie. It was only in the chaos of double-identity that she began to regret, and that was only because her ideas of right and wrong were already blurring as they mixed with Marie’s. Yuriko’s only concern was not going back to Stryker’s lab as his puppet, and not giving him the satisfaction of getting what he wanted: me.”
Xavier considered this. “I am sorry that I misunderstood.”
“But,” Rogue urged, “would you call it corruption?”
Xavier looked at her, and at the edges of his senses could feel and almost see the peculiar form of her psyche. “I would say that you have taken what you have been given, and done well with it, and grown stronger from it, in ways that few people could possibly understand, and fewer could ever hope to achieve had they been placed in your situation.”
She smiled very faintly, from amusement more than anything. “You give good answers, considering that you claim you can’t see into my mind.”
“It is not impossible for me, but I cannot do it easily, and in order to not damage anything within your psyche I would need you to be in a meditative state or something similar, which would calm some of the chaos of impression that forms a barrier around your mind.”
Rogue tilted her head. “‘Chaos of impressions’ is it? You mean to say that my ghosts are keeping you out?”
“In a way, yes. They form a barrier of––white noise, but with thoughts, memories, and portions of psyche. It’s rather disconcerting to look at, let alone try to navigate through.”
Rogue nodded, looking thoughtful. “Oh. That’s just the background noise.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, letting the breath out and taking another, smoothly. Then she opened her eyes, still breathing slow, half her focus on keeping her mind calm. “How is that?”
Xavier could feel the way her mental energy output smoothed out, and hesitantly lowered his mental shields in her direction. The chaos had calmed, the various impressions of people Rogue had touched were individual shapes, calm, still, and almost transparent––and he could see their faces, now; they did indeed look like ghosts or tricks of the light. They still surrounded Rogue’s mind, but he could actually see her through the faint fog now, and what he saw was...interesting.
Like two portraits superimposed over each other to make a completely new image or two colors mixed so that they swirled into a spiral and mixed into a new color at the edges where they touched; Marie and Yuriko were both still there, but not alive as Rogue was. Xavier must have stared at her for a slightly too-long while, because he could feel her relax her hold on whatever it was that had calmed her ghosts. Soon she was eclipsed again behind them, like the moon behind a veil of clouds.
“Thank you for showing me, Rogue. I believe that I understand a bit better,” Xavier said.
Rogue’s dark gaze was piercing. “Ya sound a little unnerved, there, X.”
He calmed himself deliberately, but was hard to look at her face now, framed by white streaks, and not see the faint after-image of Yuriko. Marie’s eyes had been dark, too, but they hadn’t been so nearly black; yet when Rogue smiled it was with a fiery edge that had once belonged to Marie.
“I was simply surprised,” Xavier said, “I had not expected that Yuriko was quite as old as she was, and I’m still not sure how so much age and so many memories didn’t overwhelm you, but there is an unnervingly perfect balance between her and Marie.”
Rogue smiled enigmatically. “Marie was tougher than anyone expected.” Including herself, she added silently, secure in knowing that Xavier could not hear it.
“Indeed.” Xavier took a breath. “That taken into account: with your...more mercenary past, I am not entirely sure why you have expressed an interest in joining the X-men.” He looked at her cooly, a calm negotiator once more: impossible to offend and serene to the core. “St. John mentioned it to me, if you were wondering. He seems to like you.”
Rogue’s smile faded from her lips, but lingered a little around her eyes. “I’ve been a mercenary, yes, but I’ve also been a helpless runaway and a victim of some of the most outlandishly abusive and inhuman treatment of mutants in the last few decades: non sum qualis eram, Professsor.” She shrugged. As Xavier nodded in sagely understanding, Rogue’s grin returned a little more openly, if only for a moment. “And I’ve spoken with Johnny. He’s a good kid, really.” She leaned back in her seat a bit more, appearing at ease, but clearly still hyper-aware of the room around her. Outside, she could occasionally hear the whispers of conversation from passerby.
“You’ve reached him, where I and the rest of my staff have previously been unable,” Xavier said, with mixed gratitude and sadness.
“He’s been roughed up enough to think that anything that sounds good or idealistic is either a scam or stupidity. He needed to hear the blunt, realist take on it, from someone else who sees things in a slightly more predatory fashion. I just let him get the idea of what kind of sharks he’d be swimming with if he went too much further down the same paths I’ve tread, and I told him in a way that would resonate in his mind, which is a few shades darker than you and your staff are really comfortable with getting into. That’s part of why I want to join your team: I’ve been in all those dark places, and I’ve survived them, and I can keep other people from going in there and either dying or turning into the kind of twisted monster that I used to be.” For a moment all the years of her lives and the lives of her ghosts showed in her eyes and her expression. “And I can do what needs to be done to keep you all alive.”
Xavier’s eyes lowered, and he appeared very deep in thought. “Yes. I am well aware that your contributions so far have prevented a large number of the children at this school from being taken into the lab of William Stryker.” He looked into her eyes, open and sincere. “I thank you for that, Rogue.” He almost hesitated, just for half a second. “And also for what you did for Logan.”
Rogue’s impeccable poker face returned en force. “You don’t have to thank me for that. It wasn’t for you or your team,” she said quietly. At his questioning look, she added, “We’re the same kind of creature, he and I.”
Xavier nodded. “Logan currently teaches self-defense and survival courses here. He also helps Hank design and implement lessons, drills, and scenarios through our simulation programs for the younger prospective members of the X-men team. He has been rather overburdened, I admit. Would you be interested in taking up the same kind of work?”
Rogue’s eyebrows raised a little. “Simulation programs? Sounds ominous, X.”
Xavier smiled, almost conspiratorially. “I rather think you will like it when you see it.”
Rogue was sincerely curious now. “I’m interested, certainly. I can also offer my services as an all-purpose shredder.” She waved about one hand in the air lazily, her fingers curled to resemble claws.
“Something else you share with Logan,” he murmured, eyeing her fingertips. “You work well with him.” The way he said it suggested a great deal.
Rogue’s smile quirked a little, and for a moment Xavier could almost read a hint of softness in her expression. “Like I said before...”
“You are of like kind, yes,” Xavier finished for her, still smiling. He nodded, once, respectfully. “You are very welcome to stay here, Rogue.”
She nodded back, her smile a little more solemn. “Thank you...Charles.”
Xavier tilted his head slightly to one side, curious as to what she meant by the use of his first name, knowing the importance that she usually attributed to her own three names. In this case, he was quite sure that it was gratitude. “And thank you, again, for what you’ve already done for us.”
Rogue got to her feet and straightened her gloves. “I just do what I have to do, to be who I am and to be able to look at myself in the mirror every day. If I can make a profession of it here, all the better.” She saluted him briefly. “Thanks for the opportunity.”
Xavier watched her leave, feeling a mixture of moral anxiety and amusement, which he could only hope boded well; it had been so with Logan.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I know. It's short. I've hit writer's block, and it's still busy hitting me back.