off: Well, this is my first official X-Men fanfic - hopefully the first in a series of posts if I get off my butt and write them. The bare bones idea of the series is to change things that I didn't like about The Last Stand :)

"My So-Called Life"

Rogue/Marie D'Ancanto

Dying wasn't as big of a deal as it used to be.

Jean had been re-discovered at Alkali Lake (the Jean Grey that had risen the first time apparently just a clone - although how that had happened was still anyone's guess) and the Professor had shown up after his so-called death sporting a new body and a scruffy looking goatee. Sabertooth had resurfaced and then Toad ... in fact it seemed only Scott Summers had gotten the short end of the stick, though you couldn't take anything for granted when mutation was involved.

Ain't that the truth, Marie thought as she pulled on her glove.

The cure had lasted all of a month but Marie had known it was over three weeks before it completely failed her. Magneto had floated away on a sheet of metal in his dramatic, over the top fashion and the next day she had started to feel a strange sensation all over her body - not quite tingling, not quite pin pricks, definitely painful. She had felt that way before her mutation had first kicked in too.

The next week Mystique had turned blue and slipped her government guards while Marie had absorbed a thought from Bobby - of ice skates, snow, and Kitty - without killing him. In fact he hadn't felt a thing; the feeling of nausea was all hers.

She knew it was over - for them, for the cure - but she held onto her hope that third week, just in case, somehow, she was wrong. Because sometimes God made mistakes; just look at the platypus.

But by the final week, Marie knew she wasn't wrong. It was hard to pretend when her brief touch had left Bobby's hand numb for two hours.

She apologized and told him that it was over and her ex was decent enough to wait a few days before going to Kitty.

Marie should have spent her last days as a human in celebration - casual touch, lots of sex, bikinis, hell -streaking, but instead she locked herself in her room and waited for the inevitable. And when it came, the total and utter failure of the cure, Rogue felt oddly free ... and forever trapped - a weird contradiction that she was sure the Professor would have fun discussing, if he wasn't busy trying to keep Jean from turning into Phoenix again.

In the end, it was Logan who broke down her door, held her despite her protests, and later took her out for drinks provided - he said - that she didn't get plowed on a regular basis. She slept through her hangover the next day and the day after that woke up at five in the morning and headed for the Danger Room.

A week was a long time to dwell on the future; if she was going to be a superhero, she was going the best damned one out there.

Rogue smiled grimly and then pulled on the other boxing glove.