Disclaimer: I wave any rights to the X-Men universe, Marvel or the characters found therein.
Author's Note: This is the start of a drabble-based series revolving around the character Rouge and playing on situations found within X-Men comics, animated stories, and live action movies. WRoF will be set in an alternate universe with eventual Rogue/Wolverine romance. Unless stated otherwise all drabbles will be un-beta'd for viewing confusion. Written for the LiveJournal community 100(underscore)situations; prompt 083-Prison. 620 words.
The Horror of Reality
She was floating, weightless and numb. Adrift in a sea of nothingness, a tactile void created by the insane. A cage of liquid and glass, not much bigger than her abused and weary form. It was a watery grave dyed and tainted a sickly toxic green, one of five showcased in the stone and metal laboratory. They were all in line, one after the other, equally spaced on a platform. Sequestered in solitude but never alone. There were men, hazy and blurred and frosted with jade, who happily went about their business in brilliant long coats. Their excited words were muffled, drowned in the quiet echoes of the many voices that resided within. They were always with her, memories and emotions that were never hers to own.
A mask fastened over her nose and mouth provided air greedy lungs drank in defiance of her will. Thin spidery silk tubes pumped dark liquid through her veins as insulated wires attached to her skin ran to computers, keeping records she would never care about.
She wondered how long it would take. How long until she saw that smile of superiority and heard his detached voice explaining their newest experiment. How long until the broken boy with dead eyes was brought before her prison to invaded her mind. She wondered how long it would take for them to grow tired of her… How long she had to wait for an end that always seemed out of reach.
There was no way for her to know how many days or weeks had passed, no way to know how long they intended to keep her alive. She remembered a time before this hell, a time when she was back home and everything was fine, before being thrown to the street, a time before they found her in the snow.
From the corner of her eye she saw movement, quick and angry motions where last time she forced her way into the waking world there had been nothing. With effort she moved in her constricted confines, the tubes twisted and grew taunt. They pulled on her skin, pinched and tore to the point she should have felt pain and she found herself cursing their drugs once more. It was a pain she would have welcomed, something that would have allowed her to focus on beyond the look of abject horror and panic on the face of the young girl beside her.
It was the girl's expression that gave her away, told any who read it just how new and untried the poor creature truly was.
A shiny toy for a greedy devil dressed in military issued fatigues. She stared, fascinated by the play on the young girl's face. Had she looked like that- so betrayed and desperate, so lost? Doubtful, by the time they took her down she had absorbed several of his soldiers and knew the horrors to come. They worked in hatred and anger, advocating peace for humanity by destroying those that were different. A philosophy that may have worked in theory, for some, but would always meet with resistance in practice.
Well, at least now she knew the reason behind such furious activity gripping the laboratory's various scientists. If the girl didn't stop struggling not only would they introduce a powerful sedative, but he would be called.
He. And it didn't truly matter which he came through the door. All three should be avoided whether clothed in black and green and grey, bounded in a wheel-chair, or encased in white.
In vein she tried to catch the girl's eye, but the girl was either unable to understand her or lost inside the horror of reality…
And then, well then it was to late.
ETA: updated 14/12/08.