“You are not so pure, Rogue. You are not so clean.”
Rogue was taken aback by the venom in her foster mother’s voice. Eyes glittering with malevolence, Mystique wondered, “What would your X-Men think if they knew the truth? If they knew who you really are?”
Taking off her sunglasses, Rogue watched the dangerous mutant walk slowly around her. Her remaining senses assessed the situation, the frightened screams of people lessening in volume as the area emptied of their scents. Assured her safety was the only one she needed to worry about, her body tensed when she refocused on Mystique. This wasn’t going to be an easy fight.
“Charles has compiled an interesting collection of miscreants under his roof over the years. Even my own son succumbed to his spell. But Xavier hit the jackpot with you, didn’t he?”
Wanting to keep Mystique talking, Rogue replied, “It didn’t matter where we came from. Charles helped us understand we could be greater than the sum of our parts. He gave us an opportunity to do something worthwhile with our lives. Something good.”
Mystique laughed derisively. “What a load of tripe. You are all mutants. Mutants. Hated, feared, and reviled.” She leaped onto the stone edge of the fountain and held out her arms. “Look around you. I did nothing but reveal my true form and these pathetic humans scurried away like mice. Yet Charles continues to believe we can peacefully co-exist with these vermin. This is the man you would choose over me?”
“I choose myself, Mystique.”
“Really? And who is that, exactly?” At the brief flash of anger in Rogue’s eyes, Mystique laughed again. “Melanie told me everything, Rogue. Everything. You’ve been hiding behind so many different disguises for so long, you don’t know who you are anymore.”
“I know who I am, Mystique.”
“Fill me in, then. Are you Anna Marie, the sad, lonely little girl eager to please anyone who loved her? Or are you Anina, the cold woman who expressed passion on stage, but nowhere else in her life? Maybe you’re Anna, substituting the closest thing Xavier had for a daughter while trying to be worthy of a good man’s love?” Mystique tilted her head, taking in the fury that began to show on her foster daughter’s face.
“Right now you’re Rogue, who you become by default when you want to rebel against them all, but who you really wish to be is Marie, isn’t it? The woman Logan so desperately loves.”
Rogue shook with the effort to keep her claws from slipping past her knuckles. Rivulets of blood trickled down her fingers from where the skin split, the coppery scent making the feral inside her snarl in anticipation. Flexing her hands, Rogue felt her skin tingle as rage sparked and began to simmer.
“Shall I go on? Would you like to know more about the memories Melanie stole from you?”
“I don’t believe anything that comes out of your mouth, Mystique.” Rogue’s voice was hoarse, her throat working around the growl at its base.
“Again, you disappoint me. Did you not point out you have your lover’s mutation? ” Mystique’s voice turned mockingly sympathetic. “Poor little Anna Marie. You were inconsolable when you learned it was you who should have died. Not Priscilla.”
Rogue paled. She could feel the tendons around her muscles loosen as a rush of adrenaline coursed through her. Attack, the animal inside her urged. Attack.
“An infant in its mother’s womb. How were you to know you were killing her?”
Rogue took a step back, Mystique’s words slamming into her. It's not true, her mind screamed, trying to ignore the lack of artifice in the blue woman’s scent. It's not.
“Your mutation manifested when you were a baby, in reaction to the umbilical cord wrapped tight around your tiny neck. Your mother didn’t stand a chance.”
Oh god. Ohgodohgodohgod...
“A child who sings before it can talk? Clearly that’s not normal. Your father withheld the truth from you, hoping that by not being aware of your mutation, you’d never use it. And it worked - until it switched back on with a vengeance when you had your first kiss. Too bad the trauma of almost killing your little boyfriend made you lose the control you had been born with. Did you know your aunt was a mutant?” Mystique didn’t expect an answer, placing her hands on the brass belt of skulls slung low on her hips as she warmed up to her story.
“Her mutation was the ability to manipulate emotion. The first time Carrie heard you sing, she recognized her sister’s voice and suspected the truth, especially when she discovered you were immune to her power. Your mother had been able to pull your father out of her twin’s influence, but that protection disappeared as soon as Priscilla died. When Carrie came back to Mississippi, she wielded her power to get your father to love her again – to the complete exclusion of you. But you remember that, don’t you, Anna Marie?”
Tears were falling unchecked down Rogue’s cheeks, her arms leaden and hanging by her sides. “Xavier told me Daddy and I reconciled before he died,” she whispered. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears but Mystique heard her easily, alone as they were on the vacated terrace.
“Yes, but he insisted you live the life your mother never had the chance to, didn’t he? You became the famous Anina. For him. For her.” Seeing the devastation on Rogue’s face, Mystique experienced a brief pang of guilt but quickly recovered. Her foster daughter needed to be reminded of who she was. “I only wanted you to be yourself, Anna Marie. A survivor. Like me.”
The sudden roaring in Rogue’s ears drowned out the sound of the fountain’s waterfall, the tightness in her chest making it hard to breathe. A golden outline rimmed her tunneling vision, her thoughts hurtling through a growing void in her mind as everything around her took on a dream-like quality. This couldn’t be real. Rogue looked past Mystique to the fountain’s crowning figure, the winged woman’s arm reaching down as if towards her. Entreating. Rogue found herself lifting her hand in response and frowned. For a moment there, she thought -
“Come with me, daughter,” Mystique urged, stepping down gracefully to stand in front of her. She transformed into Raven Darkholme and long black hair framed a stunningly beautiful face, clear blue eyes shined with love. “Together, we can be unstoppable.”
Rogue’s gaze stayed on the statue. “You mean, I’m unstoppable,” she intoned, eyes and voice vacant.
Mystique watched her carefully and said nothing.
Transfixed by the serene expression on the face of the patina angel, Rogue commented quietly, “That’s why Irene took me away. I’m in that diary you want.”
Moments passed. “I believe so,” Mystique admitted finally, knowing there was nothing left to lose. “When Irene became aware of a child with the ability to harness mutations through touch, we had to find you. But we did love you. I still do. You are my daughter in every way, Anna Marie. My creation.”
Rogue closed her eyes, Mystique’s revelation pummeling and forcing her to acknowledge – accept - the ring of truth in her words. She couldn’t remember being Anina, Anna, or Marie, but she could recall how she wanted to run away from what she was – the reasons why she became the Rogue. She could see how she would have lived her life pretending to be women she wasn’t. Incarnations of who she wished she could be.
All futile attempts to escape what she really was.
I am so sorry. Forgive me.
A soft breeze flitted past, gentle and feather-like over her heated skin and Rogue turned her face into it. Soon the comforting wind changed, swirling unnaturally around her as it developed gale-like strength, breaking Rogue’s hair free from its confines and making it serpent and swirl behind her. Mystique stared at her, then up at the sky, eyes widening at the sight of huge black clouds consuming the Manhattan skyline around them. The sun was obliterated by the encroaching storm, rolling forward as lightning veined through the billowing and threatening mass.
“Anna Marie! What are you doing?”
Rogue’s eyes opened; the whitened irises lambent against her darkened face. Lamp posts flickered on throughout Central Park, the illuminated buildings surrounding the green space guillotined by the eclipsing nebula gathering overtop. Mystique reached for the cane she had dropped earlier but Rogue’s hand shot out and snatched it away, making the shape shifter jump back in fear. Eyes rubied, Rogue ignited the walking stick with lilaceous energy as claws jutted through her fists, the growl burning in her throat escaping with a roar.
Mystique reverted back into her true form, blue scales shimmering in the dusk-like dimness that had fallen over the park. “Please, Anna Marie!” she begged, realizing she might have gone too far. “Come with me! Be with me!”
Rogue struggled to contain the feral howling inside her – scratching – angry - mindless. With a tortured scream, she threw the charged object into the air where it exploded with a tremendous force, sending Mystique sprawling for cover as it blew back the branches of the trees around them. Rogue stared at the bone extrusions sticking out of her hands, sobbing, aching - breaking.
Emptying.
Rogue wiped her tears away with the back of a forearm, smearing blood across her face as her eyelids fluttered closed in resignation. She leapt straight into the air, climbing higher and higher until she disappeared into the obsidian sky, a single ray of golden sunshine bursting down in her wake and spotlighting Mystique who was left looking up from where she lay on the ground. Within moments, the metamorph was plunged back into darkness as the cumulonimbus cluster closed into itself, rain crashing down all around her.
I am so sorry. Forgive me.
Scott’s head pulled back sharply.
Looking over his shoulder at his teammates, he knew by their facial expressions they heard Rogue as well, her desolate voice echoing through their collective consciousness. Scott’s face hardened, entering the once rarely used emergency code into the control panel for the second time in as many months. Within seconds, clearance was received from S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Blackbird’s trajectory was immediately given priority over the airborne traffic currently in their flight path.
“Hang on, everyone,” he warned through gritted teeth, stealing a glance at the darkening countenance of the growling Wolverine seated by his side. “Things are going to get a little bumpy.”
The recently rescued adolescent strapped into a chair in the rear grinned with excitement. He heard the rockets whine in response to the instructions inputted by the two large men sitting by the powerful aircraft’s controls.
The X-Men were freaking epic.
Jubilee and Kurt gripped their armrests. The cloaked jet within moments reached the sound barrier - in the next instant - surpassed it, streaking hypersonically across the sky towards the Atlantic Coast with equilibrium shattering speed.
I am so sorry. Forgive me.
Charles Xavier bolted straight up, eyes open. A barrage of noise welcomed him back into awareness, alarms going off so loudly he placed his hands over his ears to ward off the shrieking sounds.
Hank sprinted into the room, mouth agape at the sight of the professor sitting up on the bed. “Charles! You’re awake!” he exclaimed unnecessarily.
Charles tore off the cap that covered his head, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed that he had been lying on for three weeks. “Where is Rogue?”
The doctor frowned. “She should be in New York City. With the Avengers.”
Charles’ face blanched at Hank’s confirmation of his fears. Pressing his forefingers against his temples, he closed his eyes and focused on trying to contact Rogue, but her shields were back in place, stronger than before. He swore loudly, frustrated by his inability to get through to her.
Alarmed, Hank asked, “What is happening, Charles? Why – how – is Rogue able to contact us telepathically?” He was extremely wary, remembering the professor’s behavior before losing consciousness. Hearing his thoughts, Charles’s face reflected his remorse.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake, Henry.”
Hank stared after Charles as he jumped off the bed, hearing in his own mind the telepathic summons the professor sent out to the rest of the X-Men. Less than an hour later, the Blackbird was docking back into its hangar, the hatch barely making contact with the ground before its occupants raced out of the jet’s belly towards the War Room where Charles Xavier was waiting, gripping Destiny’s diary in his hands.
“Mon Dieu.”
Northstar’s whisper was full of the shock everyone was feeling. The X-Men were riveted to the video feed displayed on the monitor above them, sitting around the large mahogany desk that took up most of the room. The shaky camera image focused on Rogue and her look of misery before she shot up into the sky, a bottom banner identifying the location as the Angel of the Waters Fountain in Central Park.
The CMN news reporter was describing the events that led up to that moment in an practiced rush of verbosity, an image of Mystique flashing across the screen with a texted warning under it before returning to the earnest faced young man gripping a network identifying microphone in his hand. Moments later, a perfectly coiffed anchorman provided background information on both mutants before leading into unedited eye-witness accounts of the afternoon’s events, flushed and excited people giving their takes on what transpired barely an hour earlier.
A sound bite extracted from when Captain America had spoken outside the Avengers Mansion minutes before was played, assuring everyone that Rogue was in no way affiliated with mutant terrorists, while a camera shot of an empty podium outside the Homeland Security Office in Manhattan was bottomed by a caption reading that the H.A.M.M.E.R. director, Norman Osborne, would be making an announcement shortly to address the situation.
“Damn it, Charles! Why didn’t you tell us about Destiny’s diary before?”
The professor muted the television with the controller in his hand. “I believed the fewer people aware of its existence, the better, Scott. The chance of it falling into the wrong hands was too great.”
“Did you ever consider that perhaps it wasn’t safe in your hands?”
Scott looked sharply at the White Queen but she kept her face averted, refusing to acknowledge him. Emma missed her flight back to Boston only because Charles asked her to, having planned to be gone before the X-Men leader returned from his mission. She pulled her hand away when he tried to reach for it under the table, eliciting a frown from him.
“No, Emma, I didn’t,” Charles answered her. “I was wrong. I know now the diary should have been in Rogue’s possession, not mine.”
“So that’s why you tried to stop her from leaving. Because Destiny prophesized that she would be an Avenger when -”
“Don’t!” Remy’s bellow shot across the room like a cannon, startling Ororo into silence as his fierce gaze landed on her before sweeping across the people seated around him. “Dis one won’t let anyone talk like dat book is fo’ true. Rogue will not die.”
The tension in the room rose at the Cajun’s outburst. Several moments passed before someone spoke again.
“Ve must find my sister, Charles.” Kurt’s voice was soft, but there was steel underlying it. He was angry. “I von’t let anything to her because of an arrogant man’s belief he vas the only person capable of saving her.”
Charles’ face was haggard. “I know, Kurt. I am sorry. Cerebro is unable to locate her and I can only hope Rogue will attempt to use her telepathy again. It’s the only way I am able to communicate with her.”
He took a deep breath and stood up, leaning forward and placing his knuckles down onto the highly polished surface in front of him. The journal lay between his hands. “It took some time to decipher Destiny’s cryptic notes – initially I had thought what was in her diary referred to the past. It was when Rogue began to lose control of her mutation years ago that I realized the journal actually centered on her.”
“When Rogue left us to return to Mississippi, I must admit, a part of me was relieved. There was nothing in the journal that spoke of a singing career, or of a school she would open for young mutants. I thought the danger to Rogue was over. Until she revealed to me she had the ability to access every mutation she came in contact with.” The professor stood up straight and locked his fingers behind his neck. It was difficult for him to look at the faces of his X-Men, all reflecting their anger and disappointment in him. He knew he deserved their condemnation.
“I should have given Destiny’s journal to her that night, but I convinced myself I could continue to prevent the precognitive’s prophecies from coming true. I made sure Rogue refused to join the Avengers, I made sure to keep her evolved mutation from becoming known. When her memories were stolen from her, I made sure S.H.I.E.L.D. was unable to take her into custody.” He scowled and pounded a fist onto the table, surprising them with the abrupt violent action.
“I had no idea Rogue was considering leaving the X-Men. That morning when Anthony Stark arrived to take her away, I was unprepared. I panicked. I frightened her. Terribly.” His shoulders slumped dejectedly. “And she lashed out at me - I don't know how, but she did. To protect herself, and some of you. Bringing into play the very prediction I have been desperate to prevent.”
Silence fell over the group, each person lost in their own thoughts. It was broken by Piotr. “Put the volume back on, Charles,” he said suddenly, pointing up at the screen. “Osborne is on.”
“… can only assume the Avenger known as Rogue has gone AWOL. It is imperative she be brought into custody immediately and questioned on her association with the Brotherhood of Mutants and it's leader Mystique. Due to the clear conflict of interest generated by her membership with the Avengers, I have called up a new team who will be responsible for apprehending both fugitives.”
Norman Osborne paused dramatically when journalists immediately began to yell indistinguishable questions at him. Putting his hands up to silence them, he continued with an expansive smile, “I am pleased to introduce a new team of superheroes in charge of ensuring the security of our nation. Freedom Force.”
The X-Men stared as the scene switched from the steps outside the Homeland Security Office, to the Bethesda Terrace. Five individuals appeared on the screen, waving to the crowds lined along the famous esplanade – all dressed in familiar uniforms of Avengers past and present.
Emma gasped, spotting the black tattoo that worked itself around the large bicep of the man standing at its end, dressed in the familiar uniform of the Wolverine.
At that moment the holograph receptor next to Charles switched on and the face of Colonel Nick Fury appeared. He looked somber.
“Officially, the Avengers hands are tied, X-Men,” he told the assembled group. “This has fallen to H.A.M.M.E.R. jurisdiction under Homeland Security protocols. The Fantastic Four are presently on a mission but Daredevil has been informed and is currently making his way to Central Park. S.H.I.E.L.D. will not be interfering in Rogue’s apprehension. Good luck.” And just as fast as he appeared, the S.H.I.E.L.D. director was gone.
Seeing the look of horror that settled over the professor's face, Scott stood up. He struggled to keep his voice steady although every piece of him was screaming.
“Gear up, everyone. "We've got an X-Man to save.”
Logan leaped onto the turret of the Belvedere Castle, eyes scanning the forest below. The rain made it difficult to catch Rogue’s scent, the canopy of blackened clouds above him the only indicator that she was still in the vicinity. He insisted on being dropped off by the Blackbird prior to its return to Westchester but still wasn’t able to find her.
Damn it, where are you, Rogue?
Suddenly, he heard it, a slight sound, barely there. A whimper. But it was her. Lifting his nose in its direction, he caught his mate’s scent. Along with another’s.
Recognizing it, white hot rage ripped through him, taking his control over the Wolverine with it. Snarling, he jumped across the roadway separating the bricked structure from the Ramble, breaking out into a dead run as soon as he landed onto the muddied ground.
I’m coming, darlin’.