He takes a breath.
I don't have to look to know that he's breathing, I can tell because I can feel it, the lift of his chest lifting my hand.
I can't hear it. I can't hear anything, and I can only hope that hearing is something that will return. A few hours ago I wasn't hoping for anything at all. And now I'm hoping for miracles.
That's what he does to me. Takes hopelessness and breeds a chance, a chance at life, a chance at love, a chance at anything.
He is my chance.
His fingers brush over mine, a soft gesture meant to reassure. I can't see his face, and I can hope that my sight will return as well. It would be beautiful, to be able to see again. To see his face and his eyes, to see his smile.
He's not smiling now. The fingers over mine are tense, even in their gentleness. He's angry, he's afraid. He's dangerous.
I hope that heals too.
Another breath, and only then do I realize how fast my thoughts are moving, if entire worlds can pass between the movement of his chest, the rise of inhalation and the slow sigh when he exhales.
It's my only anchor to the world, my hand on his chest.
I can't see or hear, but I can feel.
And I can hope. Because after six painful weeks, I'm finally free.
I'm no match for Mystique. I knew that, the moment she arrived. I knew I'd lose because I've been training for weeks, maybe a few months. She's got years of experience, years of training. She knows how to move, how to feint, how to hurt, how to kill.
I know how to touch someone and watch them die.
The gloves were my downfall. A vanity, opera gloves that clung to my arms and looked sexy and different and were my trademark. I couldn't get them off, couldn't peel them down my arms fast enough to get a finger free to use the only weapon at my disposal.
I had learned my lessons of adaptation too well, had learned how to move among humans and mutants without hurting anyone. She came at me fast, out of the darkness and Bobby was no match for her either.
I still haven't asked if he's dead.
I turn my face in the direction I know Logan must be. Reach up and brush my fingers across his lips. Form the words, and know that they must sound slurred because I can't hear what I'm saying. For all I know, I'm not making any sound at all.
My fingers touch his lips and feel the form of the word. No, he says. Bobby is not dead. He brings my fingers up to his face and shakes his head, not knowing how well I can read the shape of his lips.
Not knowing how well I can read him.
I nod, and smile to myself and don't speak again because I can feel in the stress of his shoulders how much it hurts him, hearing my voice harsh with disuse. Hearing the way my words sound weak because I can't hear myself, can't hear what I'm saying.
Bobby's not dead.
Neither am I, and I can hope.
I wasn't sure why he wanted me. I'd failed him once, failed to destroy the United Nations. Later, when he tried to coax me to his side after Carol's death, he failed a second time. Failed to make me believe in him and his ways and his methods.
I didn't know why he needed someone he knew would never join his side.
Vengeance isn't something I expect from Magneto. I've had him inside of my head and I understand, in the way few people can ever really understand another person - I understand his motives. He's not cruel, he's not inhumane. He has a goal and he will work towards it, and sacrifice is just that--sacrifice. He'll sacrifice the things he loves to keep the things he believes in safe.
He meant to sacrifice me. But I'm not fool enough to think myself so important that he'd risk everything to seek a little vengeance.
I was confused, when I woke up and saw him sitting next to me. Confused and afraid--and he just smiled this gentle smile and told me that I didn't have to worry anymore, I didn't have to worry about decisions.
"I have a task for you, Rogue." It was so calm, that voice. So softly spoken.
I don't know what that task was, because the next day someone betrayed Magneto as surely as he would have betrayed me. Someone sold him to the government, and I was there to watch his worst fears realized.
My fingers creep towards my shoulder, and Logan catches my hand and I can feel the rumble of disapproval in his chest. He's already seen the numbers, burned into my shoulder as surely as they're burned into my soul. He knows, and I know he hates it more than I ever could.
He brings my fingers to his lips and kisses them softly. I can feel every nuance of his skin. Can feel the tiny puffs of air caressing my fingertips.
No gloves. I don't need them anymore.
Logan cried when he touched my face with anxious fingers and nothing happened. I knew it wouldn't--I'd been feeling rough hands on my skin for weeks by that point. Someone had raped me, and I was so shocked that it was happening that I didn't even realize what they'd done until it was too late.
From the time my first kiss turned fatal I'd never worried about things like that.
I reached up and felt the tears on his cheeks, caressed them with bare fingers and marveled at how soft his skin felt beneath his eyes, how rough it felt where he had shaved too long ago. How I could smell the salt of his tears.
He was crying because I wasn't sucking the life out of him. I wasn't taking his mutation and making it my own. I wasn't healing.
I couldn't hear his sobs, but I could feel them in the heaving of his chest. I couldn't see his eyes, but I knew what they saw as they stared at me. They saw failure. His failure.
I wonder what they see now, as I lay curled into his side in a hotel room that smells too expensive to be his choice. My hair is damp, my skin freshly scrubbed. No more dirt and blood, he made sure of that as he lowered me into the bathtub and washed every inch of me with gentle thoroughness.
I wonder if he still sees failure in my sightless eyes. Hears it in my slurred voice.
Feels it with every brush of my skin against his.
I don't feel failure. But then again, I feel alive.
I lost my eyesight and my hearing when I lost my mutation. They'd been torturing us for three weeks, although I suppose it wasn't supposed to be torture. It was supposed to be science.
That's what Magneto told me when he held me as I cried.
Not Magneto. Eric. He'll never be anything but Eric again.
He kept us sane, the four of us locked up in a room together at night. He'd been through it before, and we thought he'd break first of all. Instead he kept us sane, kept us breathing in and out. Kept us for wishing for our own death.
I don't know what did it. Eric thought they'd broken my mind, but I was still there. Still whole, except that I was missing things that had been with me since birth. And I was missing something else--something I'd never thought I'd miss if it were gone.
When I felt rough hands on my skin for the first time in my life, I missed my mutation.
Two other mutants were with us. Two that we'd never met before. One was a telepath, and he kept me from going insane, locked away in my own head after their science broke me. Eric talked to me through him, told me things as he smoothed my hair back from my face and rocked me back and forth.
We discovered the true brotherhood of mutants. It was us against them, and we all understood that.
Logan's no telepath. He only has his hands and his body to comfort me with, only his touch and his love. I'll never know how he got me out, never know what he had to do or who he had to kill. I know he'll never tell me. My only reality now is the bed I'm on and his arms around me.
And the touch of Xavier's mind against mine. Soft, unobtrusive. They're coming to get us, he says. I can feel his touch even when I sleep, chasing away dreams. Jean's there too, fainter. She doesn't smell of power like Xavier. But she smells of worry, and of love.
She's growing stronger. Wherever it is that we are, Logan found a way to tell someone else, and they're coming to get us.
I don't worry about my sight. I don't worry about what was taken away from me, because I have hope. Hope and faith and trust. Logan reached into hell to carry me out.
Xavier will reach into the darkness to bring me light.
The exact moment I forgave Eric for everything was when I realized he took no satisfaction in being right. Faced with his fears, with the culmination of everything he'd fought against--I understood him perfectly. And he didn't gloat. He didn't scorn me for fighting against him for all the years when I could have fought aside him, could have prevented my own downfall.
He held me when I cried.
In the dark, curled in a ball with my spine pressed against his, I allowed myself to wish that Logan had never saved me that first time. I was going to die anyways, at least then my death would have meant something. It would have been for a reason.
Four weeks of torture will make you crazy if you can't tell yourself it is for a reason. There was no reason in my pain. No reason for the darkness I lived in--would live in for whatever pitiful time was left for me.
They killed the telepath in the fourth week, and my isolation was complete. I screamed when they hurt me, and I think I lost my voice during that week too. You can only scream so much before your throat goes raw.
I used to hate the voices in my head, but I started to cling to them. If I'd had to live in silence, I would have gone mad. Soft mumblings from outdated versions of friends and enemies--they danced in a never-ending cacophony of senseless chatter. But it was noise, even if it wasn't real.
I wasn't alone.
I'm not alone now. Cool hands brush my forehead, and they are softer than Logan's. All of Logan's gentleness with little of Logan's leashed strength. A soft murmur in the back of my head and I hear words again, hear Logan's voice through Jean's ears as she grants me the greatest gift I've ever received.
". . . have to be able to reverse it . . ."
". . . get her back to the mansion first . . ."
Scott, and I've never wanted to hear anything as much as that soft, calm voice. "Logan, wrap her in the blanket. We need to go."
I laugh a little, because Scott's voice has passed through Jean's mind before reaching my own, and she's colored it with all of her confidence in him, and love for him. I lift my fingers to her cheek and feel her blush as my thoughts filter through her carefully trained mind, and I laugh again.
"I missed you."
She wasn't expecting it, and I hear my own voice as I'd heard the others. Slow, slurred, hardly understandable. I hear Logan's pained, hitched breath. I hear Scott's swift exhalation, and Jean's muffled gasp.
I feel their fear, and suddenly doubt slips in.
I almost wish I couldn't hear at all.
They took me away from Eric during the fifth week. I'm not sure how I knew how long it had been. They didn't always leave us to sleep at night, so days and nights blurred together. After Eric was gone, time lost meaning.
So did hope.
I was blind and deaf. I was a mutant with no mutation. I was trapped in a dark hell where all I could do was feel--and all I could feel was pain.
I went a little crazy.
When Logan's hands found me, touching my body with gentle urgency, I thought he was one of them. I think I may have screamed, because the next thing I knew his hand was on mine, guiding it down his arm to feel the cool kiss of three long, deadly claws.
I didn't dare hope at first. It could have been torture. It could have been worse--
He could have been their next victim.
But he wasn't, and when I felt the wind against my face--wind that smelled nothing of fear and pain and blood . . .
I hoped. God, how I hoped.
Jean is being more careful now. I can tell she's filtering some thoughts away from me. She's not so cruel as to me off completely, but there are gaps in the conversation where someone has said something that she doesn't let me hear.
Logan swearing.
Logan crying.
Xavier is cool and soothing in my mind still. He has faith in me, faith in Jean, faith in our science and our technology. Maybe not today, maybe not even next week--but sometime Jean will reverse what has happened to me. I'll be a mutant, and Logan will heal me, and maybe I won't get to touch anyone again, but there are things more important than touch.
Faith. Love. Trust.
Hope.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks to: Donna, on whose laptop the beginning was penned. Donna, who inspired the evilness. Donna, who is my Tyler. Jenn, who just spent ten minutes needlessly stroking my ego. Sare, who I believe I showed this to before, though not in its present form. Kara, who hasn't even read it but gave me the title. Sara and Ellen, who read this in my journal and encouraged me. Weirdoes. And always the entire EFB Crew, AngstGrrl Central.