Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.
The twenty or so young mutants in the classroom couldn't sit still. They whispered among each other, passed notes, and used their powers to communicate in esoteric and slightly unsettling ways. Their attention was on everything but their teacher, who was becoming visibly frustrated as she tried to teach them the finer points of mathematics. At last she gave up.
"What's so interesting?" she demanded. They could tell that she wasn't really angry—her angry was a sight to behold, and one they all strove to avoid—because her narrowed eyes and annoyed expression were offset by the slightest crinkling at the corners of her mouth. She was young, in her late twenties, and very pretty—or at least that's what some of the boys in her class were starting to realize. She was also incredibly knowledgeable on all subjects mathematical or engineering-related, had a lively sense of humor, and was considered by many of her students to be a kind of big sister substitute.
They exchanged a glance before one of the more daring of them spoke up. "It's Liberation Day, Miss Rogue."
Her face twisted into a grimace, and one of her gloved hands reached almost involuntarily for a strand of white hair. Most of her hair was a chestnut brown and pulled back in a loose, comfortable ponytail; there was a shock of white at the front, however, which hung free and framed her face. It was the source of endless speculation by the students.
"I'm well aware of that, thank you, Grace," she said firmly. "That doesn't answer my question."
Another furtive glance was exchanged among the ten- and eleven-year-olds. A different student ventured forward. "We were thinking—you were around before the Liberation, right Miss Rogue?"
"Yes, I was, Jason," she said calmly, leaning back against the blackboard, careful to avoid touching any of the chalk.
"Well—would you tell us about it?" he persisted, sensing that she might be willing to speak on the subject.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out. Her eyes when she opened them were full of pain, although the young mutants might not have recognized it as such. "What do you want to know?"
Of course that question led to a great deal of clamoring and bickering, and she was forced to shout to overcome their eager attempts to be heard over their classmates. "Kate, what is it you're interested in?" she asked, singling out one of the quieter students, a girl with purple eyes and orange hair and the ability to change any liquid into gas.
The girl blinked slowly at being so addressed, then whispered, tentatively, "Will you tell us about what happened before and after Liberation Day, Miss Rogue? And why we don't celebrate it in this class like we do in all our other classes?"
Rogue sighed, her face looking wearier than her students had ever seen it before. "Because I don't necessarily view it as a holiday," she replied. There was the slightest of twangs in her voice, signs of an accent long repressed. It only ever appeared when she was feeling emotional, which was rarely. Her eyes had a far away look to them as she stared over her students' heads, into a past they were too young to remember. "I was nineteen when the humans developed what they called a cure to mutancy." She laughed, bitterly. Her voice when she spoke was self-mocking. "'Step up, folks—one shot, and you're free of your pesky powers forever.' Of course, what they neglected to mention was that the cure was only temporary. The mutants who took the cure had their powers back within the year, some of them stronger than they had been before, and at that point the humans who had been the most sympathetic, who had said that at least we saw the error of our ways and wanted to be normal, turned on us as we had never expected them to."
"Did you take the cure, Miss Rogue?" someone near the back piped up.
Her face was unrepentant when she spoke. "Yes." A collective gasp was audible throughout the classroom. "I considered my powers to be more of a curse than a gift. Put yourselves in my shoes—I had been raised by humans to believe that anything not human was out of the ordinary and therefore wrong. My powers had harmed at least one innocent and put me in a position where I could never expect to touch anyone ever again. I was terrified. The cure seemed like an out."
"But it didn't last," a boy named Nathan said solemnly, his blue eyes huge in his face as he watched her.
"No. It didn't. My powers came back quickly. Stronger. At that point, I could control them, but I didn't see their return as anything but a sign that I was doomed forever. I had lost touch with the X-Men—" at their blank expressions, she elaborated "—a group that was designed to protect mutant rights without harm to humans. I was one of them for several years, but after I took the cure I grew apart from most of them. Anyways, I was alone, depressed, and then the humans formed the camps."
"My mother told me about those," a girl asserted. "She told me about how the humans rounded up the mutants in pens and used collars on them that suppressed their powers. They even experimented on some of them, really awful things."
Rogue shuddered, and the more perceptive students noticed that her right hand clenched almost convulsively around her left forearm. The gloves she wore were now more of an excuse to cover the blue numbers tattooed there than to protect others from her powers; after all, she had control now.
"Yes." Her voice was heavy with remembered pain. "The camps were—terrible places. Most of us couldn't understand how the people who had professed to care about us—our own flesh and blood—could do such a thing to us. Most of us were so busy protesting that we let the humans do whatever they wanted to us."
"And then Magneto came," someone said knowledgeably, and the entire class started talking excitedly among themselves for a moment again.
"I saw Magneto from a distance," one boasted.
"My dad says he actually met Magneto on Liberation Day," another said proudly.
"Have you ever met Magneto?" yet another asked Rogue, and suddenly all of the attention was on her again.
Her eyes turned almost inadvertently to Nathan, the only telepath in the class. His control wasn't so good yet, and she suspected that he could see her thoughts—her memories of Magneto's device, of the X-Jet before Jean Grey had died the first time, his icy blue eyes as he pulled her to her feet in her cell in the camps, seeming to know at a glance of the atrocities that had been performed on her—and she put up her best mental shields, wanting to protect him from such memories for as long as possible.
"Yes," she said at last, realizing that her students were becoming impatient for an answer. "I've met him."
That, of course, led to even more excitement among the students, and Rogue allowed them to talk to each other until she heard one say, "I want to be just like Magneto when I grow up!"
"Don't," she said sharply, and all heads turned toward her, surprised. She had never taken that tone with them before. "You don't want to be like Magneto." She raised a hand to forestall their objections, her brown eyes conveying the determination and intelligence that set her apart from the other teachers at the school. "Magneto became who he is through great suffering and sacrifice. He's a genius who could have done things the easy way and had everything; instead, he gave everything time and time again to make what he considered a better world for mutants. He gave everything so that you wouldn't have to. He wouldn't want you to be like him. He would want you to use your powers and be happy."
There was resounding silence after that outburst as some of the students seriously considered what she had said and others discarded it without a second thought. Nathan was the one who spoke next. "What happened when Magneto came to the camps?"
"He and his men killed the humans in charge at the camps," Rogue said quietly, staring down at her hands which were gripping each other tightly, almost against her will. "At the same time, his army attacked strongholds throughout the country. His numbers had swelled with the creation of the camps, and everyone had underestimated him. By the time the day was over, mutants had become the dominant people in the country. It was the first Liberation Day. You know what happened after that."
"Magneto set up a new government with mutants as supreme," Grace said with great surety. "And now all mutants have a comfortable home and good jobs and the respect we deserve."
Rogue laughed, not from amusement. "That's one way of putting it," she said. Her eyes shifted toward the wall, and she stiffened at the sight that greeted her.
Standing in the entrance to the classroom, wreathed in shadows and wearing a dignified suit that had none of the ridiculousness of his helmet back in the old days, was Magneto. The years—and victory—had been kind to him, and the only indication that time had passed was the addition of a few more wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was as handsome as ever, with chiseled features, and there was an openness to his expression that was in none of his pictures from before Liberation Day. At his side was a younger man with spiked reddish-brown hair and eyes that hinted at mischief.
"How long have you been standing there?" Rogue demanded, hands on her hips. "And for that matter, what are you doing here?"
"Is that any way to greet an old friend, Rogue?" he asked, and she cursed herself for shivering at the sound of his faintly accented voice and clipped words. He was an attractive man, no denying it, but he and she were in entirely different leagues.
Her students were watching with eager eyes, looking simultaneously awed and enthused about the startling presence of the most powerful man in the world in their classroom.
Rogue breathed out loudly through her nose. "Hello, Magneto, how's it going?" she asked flatly. "So glad you could drop in."
His eyes danced with amusement as he watched her—not a contemptuous amusement, or an amusement tinged with bitterness—and to her shock he threw his head back and laughed. His laughter was pure and infectious and she had never thought that he could sound so carefree and open.
Rather than address her directly, he turned to the children. "My fellow mutants, I have a surprise for you," he said, seeming pleased by their attention as they leaned toward him, hoping to soak up some of his glorious presence. "My assistant Pyro is going to take you to the gym and show you some of his tricks for using his powers. In the meantime, I'm going to have a chat with your teacher." They looked reluctant to leave the great leader in favor of an assistant none of them had ever heard of. "Go on," he said. "What I have to say to Rogue is personal." And then he winked—winked!—at them as if sharing a joke, and with conspiratorial smiles and a few bobbed heads they left as he had instructed.
And Rogue found herself alone in a room with Magneto for the first time in a very long time. She stepped away from the blackboard, not wanting to appear defensive, and dropped her hands to her sides. His expression when he looked at her now was no longer amused; rather, it was a little sad, a little wary, and very…hungry.
"No warm welcome, Rogue?" he asked, sounding almost disappointed.
"Did you expect there to be one?" she returned, nervously brushing a strand of white hair out of her face, conscious as she did so that his eyes tracked her movement like a hawk.
"I hoped so," he said, taking several steps further into the room, several steps closer to her. "I am not your enemy any longer. I haven't been for a very long time."
"We've never been friends," she said firmly, refusing to meet his eyes. "I don't know that we've ever had a civil conversation." She risked a glance at him, but seemed overcome by the intensity in his gaze. "We may not be fighting any more, we may not be on opposite sides of a war, but you're still my enemy, Magneto. Always will be."
He scoffed. "I haunted your nightmares once before," he said. "Before Liberation Day. Tell me truly, am I the one who haunts you now?"
"Sleeping pills are remarkable things," she said. "I ask again—why are you here?"
He took several more strides towards her, and all of a sudden he was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off of his body. His hand was ungloved when he grabbed her chin, tilting her head and forcing her to meet his eyes. Part of her wanted to flinch instinctively at the threat inherent in his touch—in a remembered fear—but the larger part of her suppressed that instinct.
"I have waited eight years—eight years—for you to come to your senses and come to me," he said, his eyes mesmerizing as they locked with hers. His hand stayed on her face, but now it brushed against her cheek, a caress, and she was ready to melt. "I can't wait any longer."
"I don't—" she began weakly, but he pressed his finger against her lips, silencing her.
"There has been a connection between us since we first met," he said, his voice all the more passionate because he spoke quietly. "Even on the Statue of Liberty, as I tried to kill you, there was a connection. Even eight years since I last saw you, you still understand me better than my closest advisors."
"If this is some kind of strange proposal, I'm not interested," Rogue said weakly, cursing herself for her stubborn defiance even as she was proud of herself for not instantly giving in to him.
"The word 'proposal' implies that there is some chance of rejection," he said in return, a hint of a smile curling his lips. "I'm here because every day for the past eight years I have yearned for your presence but restrained myself because I was so sure that you had to be the first to give. I'm here because obviously that method wasn't working."
She tore herself out of his grasp, convinced that away from his touch she would be able to think more clearly. "You're the leader of the country," she exclaimed, fists clenched at her sides. "Respected and admired everywhere and by everyone. Why pick me? Why the one person who has never been quite able to worship you?"
"Because every time I have seen you, I have been impressed by your strength of spirit," he replied. "Every time I have seen you, I have been amazed by the hidden steel in a slip of a girl who should have been nothing but a tool to me. I have hated you, Rogue, I have fought you, and I have respected you. For the past eight years, I have loved you. I've made a fool of myself through my love for you. I've built a country for you. Yet every time I have checked on your well-being, you have been miserable. Taking jobs in slums, hiding yourself away among the mass of mutants as if you weren't special even among a race of special people."
"I'm not special," she muttered.
"You are," he said fiercely, and the tone of his voice forced her to look at him again. "You are special to me. Can you honestly say that I'm not special to you? I heard what you said to those children."
"I respect you," she said. "I—am grateful to you for rescuing me. I hate you for trying to kill me. Of course you're special to me—I'm just not sure it's in the way that you mean."
Despite the general trend of their conversation, Rogue was honestly absolutely shocked when Magneto stepped close, grabbed her by the shoulders, and kissed her, hard, years of pent-up desire and frustration unleashing themselves as his tongue pressed its way inside her mouth and did battle with her own. She didn't even think to resist, melting against him as she gave into the kiss, the sensations. His grip moved from her shoulders into a tight embrace, and she found that she was embracing him back, running her hands up and down his back.
He broke off for a moment to allow them both to breathe, then claimed her mouth again. He grabbed her thighs and pulled her up so that she wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling the hardness there, and he placed her on her large teacher's desk, seeking to meld her body to his own in his passion. She returned his energies in kind, pulling his neatly tucked-in shirt out of his pants and moving her hands up the warm skin of his chest.
They realized at exactly the same moment that their actions were perhaps inappropriate for a school room, and they broke off their kiss. Rather than move away, however, Magneto maintained his grip on her and their position, and Rogue reluctantly rested her head against his chest, dizzy, unable to resist the urge to be closer to him. The frantic pounding of his heart beat a reassuring tattoo against her ear.
"Tell me again that I'm not special to you in the way that I meant," he murmured in her ear, his voice harsh from suppressed exertion.
"This—we've barely spent two hours total in each other's presence," she protested, more out of form's sake than anything else. She didn't think she could give up the comfort of being in his arms for anything. "How can either of us make declarations of love?"
"You know me as well as anyone ever can," Magneto said, caressing her hair lightly. "You have my memories. You know every important part of my life. And I know you as well as you'll allow anyone to know you. Marry me, Rogue."
She opened her mouth to say no, but somehow the word "yes" squeaked out instead. At the sound, he grinned savagely and pressed forward to ravage her mouth instead. He pulled back eventually, hesitated. "If I hadn't waited eight years for this, I might insist that we do this properly, on a bed or some other such nonsense. As it is…" A wave of his hand slid the bolt to lock the door. Never losing contact with each other, they both discarded their clothing quickly, and it wasn't long before he sheathed himself inside of her for the first time, both crying out at the bliss when he slid all of the way inside of her, joining them as closely as two people can be.
Neither could last long, and they cried out almost simultaneously as they were filled with wave upon wave of pleasure. He slumped over her, still joined with her, and both breathed heavily as they sought to recover their composure. At last, he pulled out of her and lay on his side next to her, grasping her small hand in his much larger one.
"Good thing Pyro has so many tricks to show the students," Rogue observed idly. She wiped a bead of sweat off of her face. A thought struck her. "You live in the Capitol—what am I going to do about my kids?"
He smiled gently, an expression at odds with almost all of her memories of him. "We'll work something out," he said reassuringly.
Someone knocked at the door, and they both started, hurrying to pull on their clothes. After they were more or less dressed again, Rogue made as if to unlock the door, but Magneto stopped her as he pulled her into one last sweeping kiss. It was shorter than the previous ones but no less passionate. When she pulled away, Rogue let out a breathless laugh.
"What?" Magneto asked, smiling.
"I was just thinking—I guess today is a holiday after all."
At that, Magneto laughed in return, unlocking the door as he did so.
The two mutants were separated by the swarm of children who filed in, all gushing about how cool it was to be a mutant and how awesome Pyro was and it was so terrific that Magneto was there, but their eyes remained locked through the onslaught and they had no thoughts for anyone but each other.