Logan was glad to see Pyro finally learning to rely on his teammates, even if it was just a simple exercise in the yard. He'd harassed the kid a good fifty times about not watching his back if someone else already had the job because he wasn't good enough to have his attention divided. Looks like his last "lesson", resulting in a broken rib and sore pride, had finally broken the kid's habit, a product of living on the streets no doubt. He clocked Storm flying low overhead and was about to point out the team's good offensive positioning to the wonder twins, gesturing for them to be quiet, when a sharp exhale from next to him broke his concentration. "Rogue?" Damn. This had to look really fucking bad. He tried for his best honest face and poured as much sincerity and gentleness into his voice as he could dredge up. "Look kid, it's not what you think."
No response. Actually, no sound at all. He rewound his immediate memory and couldn't remember hearing Marie inhale after losing her breath. She was sitting, hands folded neatly in her lap, back ramrod straight and staring out the side window at the cage with the "kids" in it. She seemed pulled into herself, felt as if she was hiding even though there were no physical signs to prove it.
"Rogue." What the hell was he supposed to do? Was this another fit? "Rogue." A little gruffer this time in his agitation. He turned, leaned over to check the CD player lying next to her in the seat, upping the volume slightly to maybe force a reaction. He threw the car into park and killed the engine, turning to the backseat.
"Ideas, ladies?" Jubes shrugged, her silence more telling of her worry than anything she could have said. Kitty's distant look wasn't helpful either. Now he was getting really worried. It was like she had checked out and her heart was starting to slow slightly from lack of oxygen.
"We'll go to the lab. Kitty, bring Jean. She ain't breathing." He reached over to unbuckle her seatbelt while he unlocked the doors, intending to haul her physically into the house. She didn't flinch when he stabbed the seatbelt button and didn't acknowledge his door opening. He ran around the front of the car as the two in the back got out and started jogging up the stairs, passing through the cage hologram to the front door. He wrenched the car door open and heard a sweet gasp from the girl he was reaching for. She still didn't seem to be aware but at least she was breathing.
"Plan B," he called before the door could shut behind Kitty and Jubilee. "We're going to Xavier's office." They turned and started back down the stairs, stopping beside him and peering at Rogue through the open door.
"Think she's good?" Jubes asked, hopeful voice directed to Logan.
"Not sure Bean," her face fell. "She's been through a lotta shit recently. Maybe her mind's playing catch-up now cause she was knocked for a loop seeing the exercise. Chuck'll straighten her out." He didn't know who he was reassuring, himself or the girls.
He leaned into the car, tucked her CD player in the front of her jeans and slid one of his arms under Rogue's knees, trying to get the other behind her back. She unexpectedly snapped to life, rocking him in the nose with her elbow and kicking out at his unprotected legs.
"Unhand me, gentlemen, by heaven! I'll make a ghost of him that lets me." Great! Quotes. But she sounded different. Sure, she was pissed off but something else was going on. He cocked his head to the side and raised his hands up by his ears in the universal "it's fine" sign as he took a few steps away. She unfolded herself from the seat and stood, motionless, by the car, still stiffer than he had ever seen her.
"We're going inside, Rogue. Gonna meet that guy we told you about." He used his "I'm right" voice, hoping that it would be as effective on her as it was on most of his martial arts students. She turned to him, sniffed indignantly, and started walking up the steps.
The wonder twins fell in place in front of her and he picked up the rear, the three of them forming a triangle of flesh between Rogue and the world. He was pretty sure she wouldn't want anyone seeing her so out of it, let alone people that she hadn't even met. And he was still drawing a blank on what was off, using his position to study her more. Her normal smooth grace was replaced with sharp, short, soldier steps, jerky looking and unnatural. And her scent was somehow, he groped for the thought, less than it should be. As if something was smothering it with cotton.
He saw her face contort, rage edged with fear, as she skirted around the "cage". She was focused intently on the hologram children, still thinking they were real regardless of the assurances Jubilee was tossing out in the front.
Rogue's accusing voice rang out "And since the quarrel will bear no color for the thing he is, fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented, would run to there and these extremities; and therefore think him as a serpent's egg, which, hatch'd, would as his kind grow mischievous, and kill him in the shell."
Did she really think that they had killed the kids? And that it was because they were afraid of what the kids could become? He shook his head. I guess this place did look like a lab if you saw it from that angle.
Jubilee opened the front door and they all filed into the cool foyer, shoes scuffing slightly on the polished floor in the silence. Wondering what was coming next, Logan let the door swing shut behind him with a bang and followed the three girls into one of the side hallways.
God, he was so fucking mad. The asshats wanted out. He growled, heard a yelp from door one and smirked in response. They weren't getting out. Not when it was his job to keep them in.
Wolverine paced back down the hallway, dragging his fingers over the locks, keeping them turned. Every time he looped around to the shadowy corner in the back, he checked to make sure she was still there before starting again. Music was flowing around him but he couldn't use it the way she could and it wasn't working on its own. He snorted. When she was in charge, she was stronger than she thought, constantly forcing the music to do her bidding.
He hoped this situation wasn't gonna become normal. It shouldn't be like this. He'd been sleeping in the shadow corner, coexisting with the blue, fuzzy one in the hallway when something had slammed into him. He'd jerked awake and almost came up swinging before noticing it was the girl curling in on herself and trying to shove past him into his corner. He'd shifted so she could have the wall at her back and hide behind him. It was her space, after all; she had the right to go where she wanted.
He would've been perfectly content to stay where he was, leaning back slightly into the girl, shielding her, but he'd noticed the walls of the hallway start to waver. The rhythmic thump-thump, always underlying other sounds, had started to slow and his instincts had kicked his gut, screaming that something was horribly wrong. Then, the blue one had approached and Wolverine was shocked to hear a growl working its way out of his lower stomach, stopping the other from nearing the girl. He'd risen to his feet and walked part way down the hallway, staying between the blue one and the girl pressing her face into the wall.
"Gotta do something," his voice had been rusty, not often used. "Shit's falling apart. You've been here longer. I'll keep them," he'd flicked his head to the hallway, not taking his eyes off of the other one, "under control if you can keep everything functioning." The blue one had nodded and turned on his heal, exiting the hallway and grasping control of the entire mind, instructing the body to breath and wake up.
He didn't know if things seemed normal from the outside but the blue one was moving, talking and reacting to everything. He had been slightly weary of letting someone else have control, but he hadn't wanted to leave the girl. She had used him as a shield, choosing him to keep her safe. So he would. This space was his until she reclaimed it. As he paced the hallway again he felt smug. He would protect the girl until the other him, on the outside, could get her to take her rightful place as controller. Then he could settle back in for another nap.
Logan approved of the pace Jubilee was setting to get through the mansion. Not fast enough to draw unwanted attention, so they weren't running, but quick enough to discourage other people from getting in the way. They'd passed a handful of people so far, but none had tried to stop or inquire about the girl in their midst.
They had just rounded a corner, bringing the grand staircase onto view, when he smelled Bobby and heard the typical teenage boy clomping on the stairs. He stiffened slightly, trying to eye the kid into stopping while he rotated their triangle around so he was in front. Bobby, excited eyes on the new girl, ignored his glare and continued advancing. Rogue didn't react to him but evidently felt the need to comment on her surroundings.
"Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent; for beauty is a witch against whose charms faith melteth in blood."
Bobby, having over heard the quote, stopped in his tracks and looked confused. Logan rolled his eyes. This was not what they needed. Bobby, mansion's biggest gossip next to Jubes, was going to tell everyone that there was a new girl around and that she was off her cracker. He wanted to go scare some silence into the boy, but didn't want to leave Rogue with just the other two as blockers, knowing it was his presence that had allowed them to walk without being stopped. "Kitty, go talk to Bobby," he spoke quietly, not wanting the kid to run back up the stairs. "Make sure he doesn't say anything about her."
Kitty peeled off and made for the stairs, grabbing ice boy's arm and leaning up to his ear. Logan didn't know what she was saying, but the look on his face was priceless. He went from curious to slack faced before going pale and shocked looking. Evidently she had some serious dirt on the kid. If he shook his head up and down any harder, agreeing with his full body to whatever Kitty was saying, he was bound to get whiplash. Kitty smiled prettily, rose on tiptoe and mock lovingly double tapped his check with her palm before turning on her heel and coming back to their blockade. She nodded at Logan, indicating that they should continue on their way, leaving Bobby standing stock still on the stairs.
The rest of the trip was made uneventfully, ending with Logan knocking on Xavier's office door and the four of them entering. He met Xavier's eyes and hoped that this was going to go well.
"Chuck, this is Rogue. We ran across her, hitching, when we were in Mississippi. She's a mutant; skin sucks the life out of everyone who touches her. And," he paused, part of him rebelling the thought of telling anyone else of her weaknesses. He was trying to decide exactly what to say when Xavier interrupted his mental struggle, proving that he needed to work on his mental blocks.
"Logan, you know I mean this girl no harm. I would never hurt someone coming to me seeking aid." Xavier laced his hands together on the top of his desk, trying for the benevolent look. Wolverine, normally pretty silent when the prof was around, thought he looked kinda constipated. Logan coughed to cover his laugh and decided what to say as Rogue piped up again.
"In my false brother awakened an evil nature, and my trust, like a good parent, did beget of him. A falsehood in its contrary as great as my trust was, which had, indeed, no limit, a confidence sans bound-"
Jubes cut her off, evidently not wanting to hear anything else about betrayal. "She does that. It some nutso defense mechanism though all she's been doing since we got here is quoting. We like her professor! She's super cool and she knows all kind of stuff and she's wicked smart. I mean, she escaped from the house of crazies that she was a prisoner in for forever. Can we keep her? She does have a lot of really bizarre shit in her head. And people. There're people in her head that sometimes try to-"
Logan jumped in over top of her, knowing that if he didn't get in the way, Jubes would blabber everything that Marie had wearily told her and Kitty. They didn't know as much as he did but she'd told them enough about her passengers and her story that the Jellybean needed to have the emergency brakes thrown for her.
"She isn't a puppy Jubes. She'll decide what she's gonna do." He glared at Jubilee, who had the decency to look ashamed. He turned to Xavier who was calmly sitting behind his huge mahogany desk, obviously used to Jubilee's run-away-train of a mouth. The easiest way to go about this was treating it like a mission report. "And we're not telling you everything. That's up to her. Cliff notes version: She was locked up in her parents' attic for years after she manifested. She absorbs people's memories and personalities when she touches them and they stay with her, living in spaces in her head. She mostly controls them. And I think she got pushed over the edge when we drove in, she saw an outdoor sim and thought we were taking her to a lab."
Xavier eyed Rogue and motioned her towards a chair. Logan found it funny that she glared at him, cocked an eyebrow (in a much better imitation than Jubes could ever pull off) and stayed standing in the center of the room. Deliberate obstinance was not something the old man was used to. Well, at least it wasn't just him that she was acting that way towards; at the moment, she seemed to be an equal opportunity insulter.
He took the chair and was sure Chuck's eyes twinkled momentarily before he refocused on the girl standing before him. Logan heard the wonder twins settle into other chairs, still forming a rough ring around Rogue.
"Rogue, I assure you, we mean you no harm. I would like to help you get back to your normal self. Do you want that?" Xavier said, making Logan think that maybe he needed to hit the professor up for lessons in speaking calmly.
"I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so to punish me with this, and this with me, that I must be their scourge and minister. I will bestow him, and will answer well the death I gave him. So again good night. I must be cruel only to be kind. Thus bad begins and worse remains behind."
Logan was still trying to decipher exactly what she had meant with that when Xavier started speaking again. "You aren't being punished for anything, my dear. You are merely confused. What you saw outside wasn't real. It was an illusion used as an exercise for my staff. I don't know if you actually have ever killed someone but I assure you, no one died today from your actions or otherwise. It was fake." The girl continued standing there, staring at nothing and didn't seem swayed.
Xavier tried again "Rogue, I don't-"
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms." Evidently this was the day for people to get interrupted, Logan thought, as Rogue continued the poem to the room.
Xavier leaned around and spoke over her. "I'm going to try to get into the uppermost layer of her mind and see if I can pull some semblance of sanity out of her." Logan was somewhat shocked to hear a note of question in Chuck's voice, like it was his decision what was tried with Rogue. He nodded his assent and tossed that around in his mind, wondering why Xavier would think that. Maybe he was a little possessive of the people he brought to the mansion, but Chuck had never asked him for permission for anything. Maybe it was a vote of confidence from the other man regarding his decision-making skills. Or maybe he thought that Logan had more of an insight on what Rogue would want because he knew her better than everyone else here. Maybe-
He was jerked out of his musings by a startled exclamation from behind the desk.
"What?" One word in three voices, the girls had asked at the same time as him. Rogue was still droning on, at a fairly accurate place actually. "And then the justice, in fair round belly with good capon lined, with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part."
Xavier looked at the three of them and then back at the girl. "This isn't Rogue."
Logan felt rage creeping up on him. "What're you talking about?"
"We have the distinction of speaking to someone who refers to himself as Norbert."
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Author's Chapter Notes:
This is a fourth attempt to post this because the few didn't want to work right for some reason. Sorry if you got a bunch of emails about this fic. It wasn't changing the update date or where it was on the most recent list... Anyway, interesting things are coming! Thanks to everyone who has ever reviewed this. I love you all and I always do a little dance when I see the review email in my inbox. Enjoy!
Chapter End Notes:
Hope you liked it! Let me know what you thought. Kiss Kiss.
Unhand me, gentlemen, by heaven! I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me. ~Hamlet
And since the quarrel will bear no color for the thing he is...~ Julius Caesar
Let every eye negotiate for itselfr32; and trust no agent...~Much Ado About Nothing
In my false brother awakened an evil nature, and my trust...~The Tempest
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it sor32;To punish me with this...~Hamlet
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players...~As you like it
(it pains me to use the last quote because it gets so overdone but I needed to do it)
Unhand me, gentlemen, by heaven! I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me. ~Hamlet
And since the quarrel will bear no color for the thing he is...~ Julius Caesar
Let every eye negotiate for itselfr32; and trust no agent...~Much Ado About Nothing
In my false brother awakened an evil nature, and my trust...~The Tempest
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it sor32;To punish me with this...~Hamlet
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players...~As you like it
(it pains me to use the last quote because it gets so overdone but I needed to do it)