Title: Call of the Void

Author: cloudsongs

Genre: X-Men; Drama/Sci-Fi/Romance/Friendship

Rating: PG-13

Summary: The world is ending. Logan and Marie find themselves in a stone tower in the middle of an inescapable forest. Marie reflects on her life before the apocalypse and how they all found little ways to destroy their worlds.

AU Notes: Rogue can keep the abilities of others indefinitely. The order of events are slightly off. 3 parts and a short epilogue.

Call of the Void

Part I

"You cannot expect me to sit around and do nothing while everyone else is actually making an effort to stop this!" Rogue shook in rage as the hulking man in front of her made no indication that he heard her. She tried to run past him, but he caught her in one arm and pushed her back towards a small tunnel dug into the sandstone colored tower. Rogue growled in frustration and ran at him with full force, knocking him back one step. "You cannot do this to me, Logan. Kitty and Bobby are still out there fighting, and you want me to just wait it out here?"

He must have knocked her in the head harder than expected because she couldn't quite remember the events that led up to her kidnapping. The evacuations, the sirens, the fighting, she remembered. The dark figure in the sky, pulling all life into it. The days after were black.

She had woken up on a large pile of what looked like yellow fur in a round room with extended half-circles cut on one side of the wall. Impossibly tall trees close enough to touch stood right outside of the window. When she walked out of the tunnel leading out of the room, she found herself standing in a long, curving hallway with steps leading downstairs on one side and a wide ledge two-hundred feet to the ground and overlooking the forest outside.

Logan sat on the ledge, a cigarette between his lips, looking defeated.

When he couldn't answer her angry questions about where they were, she used Jean's abilities to hypnotize him so she could stock up on the strange-looking fruit growing at the base of the tower and ventured out into the surrounding forest before she realized that he had literally left her in an unnavigable area far from civilization. Each time, she would collapse from starvation or dehydration and would wake up hours later in the same fur-pile in the same cave in the tower. Even telekinetic flying didn't get her very far. There was the forest and the tower.

"Move, Logan, I'm going," she yelled.

"Marie, it's over," he said in a low voice.

Rogue froze for a moment, not comprehending what he said. "What are you talking about?"

"The Void…it attacked the mansion. Everyone's dead. We're not going back. It's over."

Her skin tingled, reactivating itself like it did when she was in dangerous or stressful situations. She put her hands up in front of her as a warning "don't touch me." Logan didn't bother putting a comforting hand on her bare arm. A hollow feeling replaced the burning anger in her chest; a large lump sits in her throat. Rogue turned away from him and walked back into the cave she woke up in. She took a long look at the open space with the pile of fur in one corner. She collapsed on the pile and took a nap.

They danced around each other for days. Rogue refused to talk to him, much less make eye contact with him. She wanted to ask why he had bothered to save her of all people but more importantly, why were they hiding out here, wherever here was. But she couldn't stand before him and keep the urge to scream at him or hurt him at the same time. His presence itself made her vibrate in rage because he only served to remind her of the family she lost. But she admitted she was being stupidly stubborn. This was not the way an X-Man solves their problems.

Sometimes, he came into her room at night when she was on the cusp of waking up from a nightmare, gently smoothing his hands over her hair and neck, knowing it would calm her instantly, never hesitating to touch her. The first night he asked her whose dream it was, and she almost burst into tears when he considered that not all her dreams belonged to her. When she said it was his, he apologized in that low, silky voice and she slipped back into the darkness.

Otherwise, Logan did his best to minimize her awful reaction to him because she hardly ever saw him during the daytime. Most times she didn't find him in the long hallway, and she wondered where he slept. He certainly hasn't been sleeping in her pile of fur. There were several other tunnels that ran throughout the spiraling hallway, some tunnels branching off into multiple tunnels or caves. Sometimes she would find ash leading up to a tunnel and then be unsure which forking path he took.

The times that he was sitting on the ledge, he ignored her, choosing instead to spend his time with a book in his hand. He claimed he woke up with an entire bookshelf carved into the wall of his cave. This brought up more questions that she was too stubborn to ask. Why didn't she get any books? He offered her his books when he finally led her to his cave after she asked.

This annoyed her more than she cared to admit.

Rogue had never been much of a reader. She enjoyed mathematics more than literature, but Logan didn't carry many math or science books around. He had shelves of classics -some first editions that probably could be sold for a small fortune. She flipped through an old, weathered copy of The Canterbury Tales that laid flat on the edge of the bookshelf. The book opened up to a ribbon marked page titled "The Manciple's Tale." Stubbornly, she refused to pick up his apparent hobby and instead dwelled in her own thoughts. It seemed like those would be her only entertainment in the meanwhile.

She laid down on a pile of fur (she learned they were leaves of a type of tree within the surrounding forest) which was surprisingly more comfortable than hers. Logan's familiar scent lingered; Marie felt a bit embarrassed sniffing it but at least she knew where he slept, as if it mattered.

It was hours before Rogue remembered exactly why she stopped minding when Logan left the mansion so often. It hurt her in the beginning, him roaming off to "find himself" without her. They were supposed to be a team. The wanderers that refused to pick a side a fight they didn't start. Then he would come back and maybe talk to her for a grand total of five minutes before chasing Jean Grey's tail and pissing off Scott Summers. She did not even notice that until Jubilee brought it up one night when he came home, and the girls were up late eating an obscene amount of food while watching movies with their favorite heartthrobs.

"Doesn't that just piss you off?" asked Jubilee as if she was sharing a secret.

"He talks to me more than five minutes," defended Marie.

"I hate to say it," said Kitty, "but Jubilee is a little bit right." She smiled sheepishly when Marie shot her a hurtful look. "C'mon, he just got home after leaving for another two months and where is he now?"

"Not with you," said Jubilee in a sing-song voice. She yelped when Kitty threw a handful of popcorn at her.

"Don't be mean," warned Kitty.

Marie looked doubtful. "He has a lot of important stuff to do with Professor X. With his memory and stuff. Obviously, he wouldn't have time to hang out with me."

"I saw him flirting with Jean earlier. That doesn't look like important stuff," said Jubilee. She picked off a kernel of popcorn from her dark hair. "Girl, all I'm saying is that it's pretty fucking rude of him to come back after worrying you for months and not have the decency to spend one evening with you. He obviously thinks of you as a kid."

"I'm not worried about him!" Marie said hotly. Jubilee's last statement stung. Marie just turned eighteen three months ago. Sure, she still did things with her friends that might classify her as "one of the kids" but who was to say which age you could stop having movie-nights with your girlfriends or go out and binge drink for absolutely no reason?

Kitty laid a calming hand on Marie's shoulder. "I think what Jubilee is saying is that maybe Logan isn't prioritizing this relationship as much as you are. And that is completely unfair to you. Maybe it's time you move on to someone who will appreciate you more. Bobby, for example. He's a really nice guy and he's really into you."

"Ohmigod, Bobby is such a dreamboat. You two would be so cute together," Jubilee crooned.

"I guess," Marie grumbled. She didn't really like thinking about boyfriends after what she did to her last one. "I'm going down to get a drink."

Marie opened the fridge with the vague hope that she would find unchaperoned bottles of beer but only found soda. She grabbed a chilled bottle and headed back to the common room when she heard a clank from the garage. She peeked through the ajar door and saw Logan tinkering away at Scott's bike.

"You gonna just stand there or come help me?" asked Logan without looking back at her.

Marie smiled. "Sabotage or necessary repairs?"

"How about you hand me that wrench and find out?" He winked at her and gave her a smile that made her heart throb more than any of the actors in the movies three floors up.

After she gave him his wrench, she sat on a stool next to him and crossed her legs and rested her chin on the heel of her hand. She saw him glance at her bare legs, her shorts just barely reaching mid-thigh. She plucked at the shear pantyhose covering her legs as an explanation. Logan looked away for a second, as if to be polite. She didn't think she would mind if he kept staring.

When he saw her drinking her soda, he held up the bottle of beer next to him. She excitedly grabbed it from him, shot him a grateful smile, and took a deep swallow. "Thanks," she said. "Needed that." Marie handed the bottle back to him.

Logan drank after her. "Our secret." He got up from his crouch beside the bike and dragged another stool to sit in front of her.

"How was your trip?" she asked. She restlessly moved her legs, brushing against the rough denim covering Logan's knees.

He pursed his lips. "A bust. Almost crashed the bike on the way back."

"On purpose?" she joked.

Logan let out a surprised laugh, as if she had said something he had already thought about.

"Funny thing," he said as he shook his head. "No, not on purpose. Not on purpose."

He told her about his visit to Alcatraz as they both took turns taking sips from the bottle. Marie wanted to joke that hell must have frozen over because Wolverine was sharing alcohol. As he recalled his little adventure, Marie thought about how much she missed being out on the road. It was rough and tiring…but nothing felt more freeing.

"So," Logan started. "The nightmares. Need to talk about it? You doin' okay?"

The first thing Marie thought was, who told you I was having nightmares?

Several months passed since that night on Liberty Island. The only reminders left of that night were the stark-white streaks of hair and the occasional agglomeration of her and Wolverine's nightmares of the different events. Sometimes she woke up forgetting that Magneto did not trap her in a metal box and fuse her bones with adamantium. Sometimes she forgot that she didn't enjoy smoking and red-headed women.

"No," she replied. She didn't specify which one of his questions she was answering. "Anyway, are you…planning on staying for a while?" she asked as nonchalantly as she could. She wiggled her toes and looked anywhere except at him. Her legs brushed his again.

"For a while," he echoed.

Marie began to smile when she noticed he was looking past her towards the garage door. She turned and saw Jean leaning against the doorframe. She wore a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of worn jeans.

Jean waved when she was noticed. "I just got a shipment for new equipment for the lab," she said. "Logan, would you like to make yourself useful and help me put everything away?"

"Slim not around?" asked Logan wryly.

Jean rolled her eyes. "He's down there already." She jerked her head towards the hallway. "Come on."

"My pleasure," he said cordially. He smiled at Marie once more before patting her knee softly and tousling her hair and then walking away. Marie's heart squeezed as if she experienced a crushing loss but felt a little warm despite it. At least he made the effort to touch her like no one else did.

Marie bit her lip as she stared at the motorcycle in front of her. It was sleek in design and probably the coolest splurge Scott had before it was "borrowed" by Logan. She imagined herself suddenly on the bike driving a recklessly high speed over a broken bridge. A laugh escaped her. She probably wouldn't even get ten feet past the driveway before crashing. She finished off the rest of the beer and returned to her evening with her friends.

Rogue found herself hurling his books at him that evening. She could tell by the way he clenched his fists that he was fighting the urge to unsheathe his claws and shred the books that flew at him. He wouldn't though, of that she was absolutely certain.

"Why the hell. Would. You. Save. Me. You. Asshole!" With every pause she threw another book at him, sometimes using Jean's abilities to throw multiple at once.

He begged her to stop.

She stared at him and wondered: would he kill her if she actually destroyed his precious little books? Guess I should find out. Marie grabbed The Canterbury Tales at the same time activating Pyro's abilities. The thin papers burned quickly as if it were doused in oil, the crackles like music to her ears.

Logan crashed into her with all his weight, knocking the air out of her lungs. The flaming book seared into the flesh of both their abdomen following with two pained cries until the fire dissipated.

"Why didn't you save anyone else?" she screamed though her voice came out as a rasp from her inability to breathe properly with him still on top of her. "You should have saved Xavier. You should have saved Kitty or Ororo or anyone else. Why did you save me?" Her long wail staggered into short sobs and then a painful inhale. Repeat.

Logan's face hovered above her own, his jaw set but lip quivering. "I couldn't." He swallowed painfully. "Marie, I couldn't. You…I could never leave you behind."

But you always left me behind.

With Piotr's strength, she pushed him off so hard he flew to the other side of the cave. She let the ashes of The Canterbury Tales shed off of her as she watched the burnt skin bubble and move until it was flat and only slightly pink. Without another glance, she stormed off into her own cave and dove into the pile.

It was a long while before Logan entered. Rogue laid on her side facing the window, wide awake, but didn't make a sound of acknowledgement. She heard his heavy steps come closer. The scent of the strange-fruit wafted to her nose, tempting her to hungrily accept his gift. Rogue challenged herself and buried her face further into the pile, refusing to look at him. The very thought of what he had done made her want to scream and hurt him. How could he have been so selfish to bring her here while everyone they loved sacrificed their lives to save the world. How could he do that?

"Marie," she heard Logan say lowly. "You need to eat. Get up."

Till the end, Rogue did not understand why his words triggered something so unrelated in her mind. She thought of the mission in Worthington facility so many years after she first arrived at the X-Mansion when she and Kitty ran through the sterile white halls, gasping for breath, not daring to look back to see whether Juggernaut was still behind them.

Marie collided into Kitty's back as the smaller girl stood, frozen. She was about to push Kitty and scream at her for stopping when she saw what had caught the girl by surprise. The hall before them stained red, blood pooling on the floor and dripping down the hall. Arms, legs, torsos -still wearing ironed lab coats and pleated pants- heads-Marie couldn't tell which appendage belonged to who.

Kitty began to wheeze in front of her, struggling to catch her next breath. Marie shook herself back to their task at hand when she heard the rumbling sound of the large man pursuing them. She clasped Kitty's hand, skin to skin, still such a foreign feeling after a year of gaining control and pulled the girl forward further into the blood hallway, their feet slipping on the slick floor.

Suddenly, the smaller girl yanked her back, causing Marie to fall onto her back. Their hands were still joined together in desperation as Kitty screamed at the top of her lungs. Marie looked up to see Kitty's other arm in the tight grip of the Juggernaut.

Without her own volition, Piotr's mutation took over and she felt the icy metal overtake her skin. She tightened her grip on Kitty's tiny arm and pulled with her all her might. "Kitty, get us through the wall!" she screamed. Kitty stopped screaming and struggling against Juggernaut and turn on her abilities as Marie pulled them through the adjacent bloody wall. She watched the wood and steel beams pass around her as they slowly walked from the hallway into the stark white room. The room was made to be a simple room for a patient but was cluttered with machines, vials, and syringes, with a single bed right in the middle. She saw a small form underneath unmade bed. Immediately she let go of Kitty's arm and rushed towards the bed. She knelt beside it and lifted the bed skirt up to reveal a small, pale boy curled up in a fetal position underneath. The little boy watched her with wide, frightened eyes. She stretched out her hand towards the boy, smiling weakly to placate him. The boy tentatively touched her fingers with his own. A ripple passed in the micrometer space between their fingers. Kitty's shriek panicked the boy, forcing him to pull his hand away from Marie. She turned to focus on pulling all of Kitty in and saw that Juggernaut's body was halfway through the wall too. Panicked, she reached out her hand to her friend and she exclaimed, "Kitty!"

Kitty didn't even react to Marie's voice or her outstretched hand. One moment, Juggernaut growled at the two women. The next moment, the superior portion of Juggernaut's body cut in one sharp slice and smacked onto the floor. Then came the violent screaming as liters of blood flowed out from his abdomen and sliced upper appendages.

Kitty fell to the floor in shock, Juggernaut's thick, sausage-like fingers still wrapped around her thin wrist. A blood curdling scream left her mouth.

Marie knew she did the wrong thing just as she was doing it when the syringe slipped into the inside pocket of her jacket.

Marie turned back towards the white bed, not wanting to look at Kitty, afraid that the loyal X-Man would see the betrayal on her face. "It's okay, sweetie," said Marie gently to the boy with the sound of Juggernaut's scream still violating the room. "We're here to save you."

Days after the incident, Marie knocked on Kitty's door. The girl hadn't left her room since they returned to mansion with the young mutant boy. Although many people tried to get her out to eat or at least check to see if she suffered from any injuries, Kitty refused them all. She said she wanted to be alone.

There were lots of people at the mansion who justified her actions at the Worthington facility. They said anybody in that position would have done exactly what she did. But none of that erased the moment when Hank and further X-Men members found them both in the room with the little boy and the "what did you do" that slipped out of his mouth. Marie didn't blame them, of course. She thought maybe she would have had the same reaction as well.

"Kitty," she called. "Kitty, you've been in there for days. Please come out." No response. She activated Pyro's abilities and melted the door handle until she could easily push the door in.

Marie walked in expecting Kitty to be tucked away in her bed, avoiding existence, much like Marie herself had after Magneto tried to kill her, after Pyro tried to kill himself. Instead, the girl sat on the edge of her bed staring at the sunlight pouring in through her window. She kicked her legs back and forth, her feet sometimes freely passing through the bed frame. Kitty finally sighed and looked at Marie and smiled. She was noticeably thinner for a girl who was already too thin, and her hair hung limply over her bony shoulders. But Marie couldn't take her eyes off of that smile.

Marie said the only thing she could think of at that moment because they still did not know whether it was she or Kitty who really killed him. "He deserved it."

They looked at one another for a long time before Kitty finally broke eye contact and continued to stare at the sunlight. "Yeah. He did," she said. She looked back and Marie realized she couldn't properly see Kitty's eyes. She expected to see the accusation, the knowing look, or even a question. Were you the one who did it? Her pupils were bright yellow, almost reflecting the sun. "But I wonder if he would think the same way. I think I deserved it too."

"It wouldn't be the same," Marie tried to argue, but Kitty was suddenly gone.

She stared at the empty bed for a few seconds until she heard a loud thump somewhere downstairs and many panicked screams. Marie rushed down the stairs from the third floor to the first and saw a crowd of students gathered around. When a student whimpered, "oh my god there's so much blood," she pushed past them to see Kitty flat on her back, her left leg bent in an odd angle, a pool of blood escaping from the back of her head.

"Hank!" yelled Marie.

The kids surrounding them suddenly caught on and began to disperse, looking for other responsible adults.

She knelt down beside Kitty and felt for a pulse. Weak and thready but still there. She called out for Hank again. She heard a couple of the kids down one hallway answers her, letting her know that Hank was on his way.

"Kitty, why?" she pleaded.

Kitty weakly rolled her head to face Marie. "I felt it calling to me; all I had to do was answer."

"What? What was calling to you?"

The Kitty said something that Marie had heard again and again for a long time. "The Void," she whispered. "I heard a call of the void."

"She was my friend," she mumbled into her furs, knowing Logan would hear. She tried to breathe through the nose and struggled with a juicy sniffle. "And after everything she's been through, I just left her there by herself." The furs were close to suffocating her, but she would be damned if she let him hear her sobbing.

She heard a thud as Logan set the strange-fruit beside her. The pile sunk under his weight by her legs. Minutes passed in silence. She wondered whether he was trying to come up with something to say that wouldn't make her grab the tray and throw it at him.

"Left her too," he said finally. His voice was gruff and curt as if he had cried too. "I left all of them."

Rogue peeked at his stubbly face, still young so many years since they first met during that cold winter. He caught her staring with glinting eyes. She ducked underneath the furleaves and turned to face away from him. She laid there silently for what felt like hours before he finally got up and left the room, walking away from her as he always did.


A/N: Thanks for reading!