Rogue’s world became a blur wherein time meant nothing. Her drug resistance meant that she was always on the edge of outright hallucinations due to high dosages. Most disconcerting was how, and how often, she kept snapping awake.
Stryker had initially just been testing out her weapon-capabilities, but he seem to have quickly run into a very clear problem: using her mutation and absorbing someone caused all of his control drugs to abruptly stop working, and nothing he tried seemed to hinder the process in the least. He was becoming increasingly frustrated.
Rogue was just getting tired of waking up with extra ghosts whilst her mutation collected yet another to add to her collection. How Stryker had gotten nearly a dozen of his men to volunteer for this, she did not really want to think about.
Then the experiments seemed to change. She rarely woke up, but she knew they went on even whilst she was under. He was trying to turn off her skin.
Rogue finally woke up, and stayed awake, with no visible machines or strange new devices around her, for a full minute. It was sweet, blissful sanity like a breath of air after drowning. Then she looked straight ahead, opening her eyes fully, and felt a coil of fear in her stomach as the strange scent of the man seated before her finally reached her nostrils.
“Hello, Rogue,” Stryker said quietly. He stood beside his son, a hand on the withered creature’s shoulder. “This is Jason. He’s gonna help you find a way to consciously control that pesky power of yours.”
So that you can control it. Of course. Fuck! Rogue forced herself to calm down, glaring at Stryker. “How long have I been here?”
He smiled. It was not reassuring. “Lost track of time did you? It’s been two weeks. I don’t think that those pesky little X-men are comin’ to get you. I don’t think they can find you without access to their Cerebro, and if they try to get to that, I’ll know, and I’ll have them destroyed within an hour.”
Rogue felt sick, but did not blanch. “Ya sure about that?”
Stryker laughed, but there was something in his eyes that looked like fear. “Help her out, won’t you, Jason?” he said, loud enough for her to hear. When Jason’s eyes flicked in his direction, Stryker leaned down and whispered to him.
Rogue tried to listen, but found herself overwhelmed as the world drained away, replaced with a new one. Jason’s mind lulled her, made her forget all about Stryker, all about where she was, and began to weave a little dream for her...
Logan followed Emma Frost down into the lower levels beneath the mansion, once Forge and Hank had successfully hacked all of Stryker’s surveillance systems into thinking that everything was normal.
Jean had refused to use Cerebro, and it would not have been safe to take Xavier. Emma had volunteered, but only after looking for a long few moments at Logan’s face. That had been a few days ago. It had taken Logan a long time, too damned long in his opinion, to make his case to Xavier and to make Scott stop bitching so loud.
“You don’t really do charity. You’re not the type. What’s your angle?” Logan asked finally, as they made their way down the steps.
“Xavier’s contacts in the financial and international realm, for one. But you mean why I’ve agreed to help you in your own little cause, while the others hide and try to come up with a morally satisfactory tactic to take?” Her ice-blue eyes were impossible to read, and her smile was enigmatically knowing.
Logan wondered if she practiced that look in the mirror. “That, too. In fact, mostly that, but thanks for the rest; I’ll add it as a footnote.”
She smirked a little. “If you must know, I like seeing Jean Grey get her prudish little neuroses tied up in knots. It used to be my favorite hobby back in our school days.”
Logan pictured Emma and Jean as teenagers both living at Xavier’s, and shuddered; ‘cat fight’ would not cover it, but ‘cat apocalypse’ might not be too far off. “That’s more petty than I expected from you.”
“Yes...well, it also stands that this Styker person stole a person of great interest to me, and for truly abominable purposes. I was just about to invite him to my school, and now he’s in Xavier’s clutches. I’m also rather put out about that, and want to make sure that he never gets any ideas about other mutants I keep my eye on.” She sounded more vicious, but covered it up well with a light-hearted air.
“The blue teleporter?”
“Yes. Kurt Wagner.”
Logan gave an affirmative grunt and followed her into Cerebro, where he leaned against the door. “You sure you need me for this?”
“I have a theory that the connections in your mind linked not only to Rogue, but to your history with Stryker, will provide me a clearer trail to them both on the astral plane.” She was already putting on Xavier’s helmet.
Logan was still caught on the way she had implied that his mind was linked to Rogue’s. It had occurred to him that Rogue had probably absorbed more than the toxins in his blood, but...
“Not only that, Logan; although I’m interested to see quite how that might work. Now hold still, please,” Emma said firmly, and Cerebro activated with a low hum and a flood of vivid images, voices, and the feeling of impossible movement.
Logan grit his teeth instinctively against dizziness and squared his shoulders against the sensation of falling. He could see a trace of a silvery-white line from his own forehead to the top of Emma’s. Every now and then he could almost see something moving in it, like seeing the world through a narrow slit.
Something twisted and Logan felt a pang in his chest so strongly that it made him curse.
“Ooh. That’s some impressive interference, indeed. No wonder Jean and dear Betsy had such trouble,” Emma murmured, and parted the fog like a cloud with minimal effort. She had very nearly as much power as Xavier, and was far more casual about using it. “Now...let’s see here.”
Logan got a glimpse of a military compound, as seen through dozens of eyes within it.
Then Emma finally seemed to hit a barrier, a low gasp catching in her throat. “No...oh, no, dear Jason, what has he done to you?” she whispered.
Logan knew the name, from previous X-men discussions over the past few days. “The batshit illusionist?”
Emma shot him a glare. “He was only batshit because of that horrendous father of his. And the monster has gone and made it worse than you dare imagine. Feel lucky, Logan, that your existence is not half so bad as his.” She turned back to the console and took a deep breath, regaining her focus.
She half-closed her eyes and tried to see through the cloud of far more powerful interference caused by Jason’s illusions. Rogue was in its center, and Emma wanted to see the mind that had so unsettled poor Jean; but Emma got too close, and the illusion and Rogue’s mind both sent twin jolts of pain and horror through her mind, until she nearly yelled.
Emma jerked back in her seat and reeled out, moving on to a simpler mind in the compound to ease her aching head. She settled on William Stryker herself, and soon regretted it.
“I should kill him,” she hissed.
“Not your right,” Logan said firmly.
Emma looked at him without turning her head.
He felt it, and flinched, but did not look away. “I’ve got a little more claim than you on that sonofabitch.”
Emma gave a reluctant affirmative, and returned to her body, removing the helmet from her shiny platinum head. “Alright, but I’ll be there to make sure you actually do it.”
Logan snorted, but reluctantly accepted.
“We should be able to head out this evening,” Emma mused.
“It’s about damned time.”
Rogue was momentarily lost, the illusion shattered yet again. She was slippery to him––to Jason, or whatever it was that was left of Jason after all this time and all that his father had done to him. His illusions could not correctly replicate how her mutation felt when it activated. He also could not quite fabricate the way that Rogue experienced her sense of smell: his olfactory illusions were dim compared to how brilliantly vibrant and real his sights and sounds were, and they would be interrupted now and then by the smells of the laboratory, bringing Rogue’s dream to an abrupt and screaming halt that left her breathless.
This time had been different, though. She had almost felt something, almost seen the attacker in her dream become a curious-looking blonde woman, and suddenly her world had gotten bright and loud and painful, and now she was floating.
And then the floating absorbed her, and became the sensation of laying in a hammock in the sun. She was warm and comfortable, and she could hear the sounds of children playing, chasing chickens. She was in Singapore and the smells of a nearby open market enchanted her senses. Pulled directly from Yuriko’s memories, they were vivid as only childhood memories can be, and Rogue found herself smiling.
“You comfortable, there, Darlin’?”
“Yeah.” She opened her eyes slowly and saw Logan standing there with two open beers. They smelled good, but not as strong as she preferred, it seemed. Logan was smirking at her, and something about the look made Rogue feel a spreading warmth in her chest. “You got some piss-poor beer, there, Sugar. I can’t trust you with anything.” She reached for one. She wore very thin silk gloves, and when he handed her a beer the condensation on the glass soaked her fingertips.
“I look too white for them to give me much else, even when I tell ‘em I’m Canadian.”
She laughed, and tilted her head back, draining her beer in a few large gulps because she it was hot out and her throat had somehow gone dry. She could feel Logan watching her, and once her beer was gone, she met his gaze as she tossed away the empty bottle. “See something interesting?”
“Yeah.” He sat on the edge of the wide mesh hammock she occupied, and smiled when she gave a playful growl of protest at the way this caused her to cling to the mesh in order to avoid rolling onto the ground.
She was still muttering curses at him when he finally lifted the rest of his body onto the hammock. The curses stopped abruptly. The whole length of Logan’s body was lined up against hers, and she could feel every lean line of him. His pupils were slightly dilated as he pushed her bicolor hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. Rogue’s eyes fell shut for a moment, but her lips parted slightly, sucking in a breath.
Logan leaned in and fixed his mouth over her throat, letting her feel his lips and tongue through her sheer silk scarf.
Rogue shuddered, clinging to his shirt with one gloved hand. Then he shifted a little more, his body on top of hers as his hand slid down from her hip to her knee and tugged, gently urging her to wrap a leg around him. He felt so good, so close, so warm and strong and she felt that they were tangled together impossibly close until his sheer presence threatened to overwhelm her, and what he was doing to her neck––as his hand on her knee moved up her inner thigh––threatened to make her cum right there. She had a cool Singapore breeze on her back through the mesh of the hammock, and the warmth of Logan’s body everywhere else.
Then she felt him growing hard in his jeans, felt him rub against her core, and saw sparks as a tremor went through her, not quite sending her over the edge but leaving her panting, and wanting.
“Rogue,” Logan whispered, his lips close to her ear. “Turn it off.”
Rogue gave a low moan, her hips rolling against him. “C’mon Logan, please...” She was panting, and her body felt weak with how close she was to satisfaction.
He ran his tongue up the side of her throat through the scarf. “I want t’ touch you,” he growled, and bit at her throat again, a little harder than before.
Rogue squirmed, and tried to do it, tried...tried...
But there was no magic switch to reach for, no sudden insights.
She inhaled deeply through her nose, to clear her head, but the information she got from it sent her spiraling downward. She felt disappointment so acute that her whole body went limp, desire extinguished, and she felt choked with rage and embarrassment and something like shame. It wasn’t Logan. Rogue opened her eyes and glared at Jason, especially when she felt a strange and unfamiliar chill on her face, from the dampened skin under her eyes: wet trails made by tears.
This was not fair. She had been given horrors, villains, and guidance from mediation teachers, but nothing like this: nothing so sweet that she wanted to shatter as soon as it ended. She felt anger well up, but could take no strength from it.
“When I get out of here, I won’t even kill you, ya sonofabitch. It’d give you too much satisfaction to die.” She let her head droop forward, and squeezed her eyes tight shut. “You don’t deserve the relief it’d give ya.” Despite the rage in it, her voice was uncharacteristically shaken.
Her world drained away again, and she was caught in another dream.
She was at the desk in the room that she had been given at Xavier’s mansion, and she looking over a few papers: a few class schedules for teaching self-defense to the younger students. Rogue was thinking about whether she might have to change around a few of the dates for one or the other.
She was aware of Logan walking in, shutting the door behind him. She did not look up, but gave a faint, distracted sound that could be interpreted as greeting. Then she sensed him step up close and lean his weight on the back of her chair, one of his hands splaying across the edge of her desk as he peered over her shoulder. His proximity was quite distracting, but Rogue could feel herself smiling a little, almost involuntarily.
“Busy?” Logan rumbled.
He was trying to pull her away from her work. She rather wanted to let him. “Yeah,” she said, but peered up at his face through her eyelashes playfully, just long enough to catch his eye before she looked once more down at her schedules.
Logan gave a thoughtful, mock-absent-minded hum, and watched her scratch at a few dates and times with a red pen. After nearly a full minute, he leaned in closer and nuzzled her neck through her sheer scarf.
Rogue’s body went a little tense, feeling and hearing his breath so close to her ear. The sound and the feel of his mouth, when he suckled a tender spot on the side of her neck, took her breath away and made her flush.
“Mmn, Logan.”
He bit, just lightly, and tugged at her scarf with his teeth. “Let me touch your skin, Darlin’.” His tongue flicked across the skin under the corner of her jaw––just too fast for her mutation to kick in.
Rogue’s breathing was a little uneven. “I can’t, Logan.”
His tongue flicked across the tender skin just under the edge of her scarf.
God, that felt good. Rogue took a sharp breath, and cursed when the olfactory illusion fell short of fooling her; she could smell the lab, and she could smell Jason.
“It’s him again. Fuck!” she hissed.
“Does it matter?” Logan asked.
Rogue slid out of her chair with an elegant movement that simultaneously pushed Logan back, tripped him up, and got her to her feet so she could turn and glare at her hallucination.
“Damned right, it does. I don’t do fantasy, dammit, I’m a creature of the real fuckin’ world!” She narrowed her eyes as Logan’s shape became that of a little girl with bicolor eyes. The sight made her feel distinctly queasy, for a lot of reasons.
“How do you know whether it’s real or it’s not? Why isn’t my world ever enough for anyone?” the girl asked, sounding hollow and emotionless.
Rogue snorted. “When you’ve got as much shit in your head as I do––as many ghosts and as many strangers, as many dreams that ain’t yours––you learn the hard way how to distinguish reality from hallucination. In your case, you can’t fabricate enough to cover up the smell, and I have a bit of a problem with someone controlling my mind!”
That snapped her awake again, and she stared at Jason, listening to the hiss of his breathing apparatus.
“I’m sure that’s that part that most other people hate, too,” she added, and then let her head loll forward as she caught her breath, feeling suddenly as though she had run several miles. She’d had no idea how much it could hurt to have something good ripped away like that. It ached deep within her very bones.
When she heard the room’s only door swing open, she winced, but lifted her head again, glaring at the intruder. At the sight of Stryker’s face, she felt some of her strength and resolve return. She’d kept him from getting what he wanted: Xavier’s kids, Logan, and whatever it was he wanted from under the mansion––probably Cerebro.
“Hello, Colonel. How’s your German-style chicken restaurant chain doing? Still got all that pesky resistance from expansion into Poland?” When she called someone a nazi, she at least wanted to be clever about it.
Stryker ignored her, ordering two doctors next to him to take Jason away. Then he approached Rogue. He had something in his latex-gloved hands: a dull, metallic circle.
Rogue’s gaze fixed on it, and the way he all but cradled it like something precious. Then she looked into Stryker’s eyes, and felt her muscles instinctively grow tense. She growled low, showing her teeth.
“Now, now. None of that.” He pulled the little remote from his pocket, and pressed the control button a few times.
Rogue’s eyes flared blue-green and her facial expression smoothed into a blank mask.
Stryker placed the little metal circle around her neck, snapping it like a handcuff, and latching it with a complicated little gesture. A small green light near Rogue’s pulse-point flickered to life. Stryker pulled off a glove and touched a fingertip to Rogue’s forearm. Nothing happened, and after a few long moments, he gave a truly vile grin.
“Gentleman, we have ourselves a weapon.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
This chapter was proofread very little. Sorry about that.