"Mouvement"

2: With Mouthfuls of Blood

She woke up. She didn't mean to be awake when it happened.


The subtle sound of his frustrated sigh pulled her out of the limitless depths and sensory isolation of the no-dream. She felt herself pulled towards her body, if only for an instant, as if she was drowning below and was pulled by a lifeline. She felt the lack of covers on her body. The sheets were somewhere else and she was bare to the air.

Immediately, she had a protestation that it was still summer, and luckily, Kentucky wouldn't start getting cold until much la... no. Cannonball's thoughts, whimsical. Before she could even have a basic distinction between herself and who Cannonball was, she heard him speak, in barely-restrained whisper hissing through clenched teeth.

"Jean, quit running my fucking battery down. Stop calling."

Full awareness came rushing back at the mention of the name. It was almost like a physical impact that shook her. Her limbs sprang, her arm jumping quite visibly.

Close your eyes and feign asleep, Kurt's voice gently said to her, it works every time.

So she did.

She felt Scott leaning over her, to check. Rogue heard the briefest snippet from the other end of the line. She tensed up, praying with all the strength she could muster that it wasn't visible.

"Please, Scott, I just wanna talk... Scott?"

Please don't let him see, please don't let him see, please don't let him see...

"Shut up." He whispered, "Wait, I gotta get out of the room. Because she's sleeping and I don't want to wake her up to this."


She feigned asleep until he was out. The devil prodded her then, telling her to fake a turn and move in the bed to get as close to the window as possible. She should hear this, the devil said.

She agreed, but refused to admit it. Through a crack in the door, she could hear him speaking, his voice now in its normal range of tones.


"What? What is it that you wanna hear? That yeah, I'll go back to the institute? That I'll patch things up with fucking Xavier?"

Response-time. Part of her imagined the response. The other parts of her chided that part.

"No. No. No-shut up, I'm talking now... Jean, shut the fuck up and lis- will you jus- no I'm not being unreasonable, you won't let me t- alright, I'm hanging up. Yeah, hanging up. No, fuck this, either fucking listen, either fucking listen, or don't fucking call. No, you're not talking to me, you're talking at me, there's a difference. You willing to listen? Are you willing to listen?"

Silence. Response-time.

"Fine, I'll tell you what it is – don't fucking call me. There's nothing to say. Charles Xavier used me, used Rogue, used you, and God knows who else, and you're still trying to tell me I'm being unreasonable. You like the guy too much to see what danger he poses. That's fine by me, it's your own welfare, no sweat off my back – but don't expect me to be anywhere near the son of a bitch, nor to bring Rogue near him. If it were up to m..."

Rogue could hear the response in her head, and knew which route Jean would take.

"Fuck you. You and your insane jealousy! Y'know, when you were all over Matthews, I didn't fucking treat you like this!" brief pause, Rogue shivered at the anger in his voice, "Yeah, I chose to take it out on him, because I had issues with the way he treated you, not the way you liked being treated! Liked, yes, liked, 'cause... what? What do you mean how can I say that, why else, listen, why else would you fucking date the guy if you didn't like being with him? Oh, it was complicated, well none of it matters now, Jean. Whatever it was, whatever it all was, you, me, fucking Dunc the Lunk, whatever, it doesn't matter now. No. No it doesn't. No it doesn't. What? Oh, you're gonna talk now? What are you going to say that you haven't already said?"

Silence. Rogue couldn't help but feel ashamed. She was knowingly eavesdropping on something that Scott apparently would rather she didn't hear. But there she was, absorbing every word. That was what she did, after all. She felt ridiculously ashamed, as if he, upon noticing it, would come in and tell her everything she just didn't want to hear.

He would, too. He had never shirked from it, in fact, he seemed to take pride in the fact that his tongue could deal more damage than his eyes ever could. It happened everytime, and the Rogue, the little bitch, she knew, god damn it, she always knew – it was because Scott's little pet project couldn't keep her hands off of him, and when... no. Wait. What? This was different than the self-hating voice in her head, the one that told her about the whore goddess...

The gleaming, sharp focus of Jean's thoughts, slicing through her every doubt with horrible, almost primal jealousy.

Rogue started shaking, uncontrollable panic rising within her.

He would turn, look through the window, and know. He would know she wasn't sleeping, he would know she was snooping, he would know, he would...

She cupped both hands on her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

"Oh, please. Do you even believe that? Do you for one second, honestly, believe what you just said? Oh, you do, huh? This is where, as they say, we reach a disagreement... As in, I don't support experimentation on mutants just to reap some fringe benefits. Yeah, you heard me, don't pretend that you didn't. Fuck you. No, fuck you. Fuck you! Oh wait, already did. You heard me." Brief pause. Rogue could almost hear a gun being cocked back, "Oh, you wanted it cleared up? Here's as clear as I can fucking make it: don't fucking call me." First shot, "I don't want to see you, I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to even know you exist. I don't want you, at any capacity, at any time, at any place." Clip half empty, "I want you out of my fucking life, for good. This isn't some mean streak that'll go away, it's not some phase, it's not some rough patch we're going through, it's not some guy-pride tantrum that I'll regret ten minutes later, which I am sure was under your influence..." brief pause, "Fuck you. This is the truth: we are through. Deal with it. Stop it with this."

He choked. Rogue's eyes widened in shock.

A sob.

"Stop it." He said, "Stop it, Jean, I mean it. Stop it. Leave me the fuck alone, why do you always... I don't need your help. I don't want your fucking pity, just stay away from me, why can't you just let me be? I don't... no, that's not what I said. Just... leave me alone, alright? No. I don't want... no. Just leave me the fuck alone!"

The sound of the phone smashing against the ground made Rogue jump. Brief flash of red light and the clack of plastic breaking to pieces.

She felt tears biting into her eyes. She curled up and, unable to stop, cried, sobbing into her own palms, trying to stifle her noise.


Scott stayed out there for what seemed to Rogue like centuries. She could hear him muttering to himself, no doubt replying to an approximation of Jean. His effigy to burn and mutilate. Jean-by-Scott. And Rogue, in her distress, couldn't do anything but lie there and weep.

After a while, she felt that she couldn't breathe. With her nose completely blocked and knives in her eyes, she sat up, barely balancing the world. It always felt like that after a fight, thought Scott wou... no. Jean, still. Insistent. Driven.

Too much.

Rogue went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She looked around, frantic in her search, for something, anything.

Jean's thoughts, focused, focusing... details, the crack on the wall, slight incline to the left, very regular for a regular one, not a fault line but a paint job error... no. Too much detail.

Rogue bit into her fist to keep herself from screaming. Her teeth sank in, one canine even managing to puncture skin and draw blood, and her mouth filled with the sweet, sweet taste.

He had cut his hand on the carving knife, trying to clean the fish. Clean cut right across his index finger, bled like hell. She remembered licking it up, in attempt to playfully take his mind away from the blood; he didn't like it. It was something inherently red, to him it might as well have not existed.

But that wasn't her. That hadn't been the Rogue. That'd been Jean.

Find the line, she told herself, the dividing line between you and the echoes. Find the line.

Nothing around.

The mirror. Yes, visual aid, added sensory grounding. Ground herself in reality, yes, that might have worked. She smiled, anticipating the reflection.

Her breath got stuck in her throat.

The reflection in the mirror, save for two white branches at the very front, had red hair.

Rogue screamed and smashed Jean-by-Rogue to pieces.


Pain of the broken mirror, the small pieces of glass sticking to her knuckles. Blood, more of it, on the sink, around it, on the floor, everywhere.

Blood.

She sank to her knees, looking at the reflection cast by each broken piece with renewed panic.

Chestnut hair and her white streaks. Chestnut hair and her white streaks. No red. No red but... that of her own?

In the pieces, she saw other faces slowly emerge from her own; each shard distorted her face, slightly, until it was her face, only not. Each echo made their own reflections known, in her as well as out, as if they had been made into natural extensions of her, reaching out. And there she was, in the center of the debris left of her fragmenting mind, on her knees. Looking at the shadows cast on the mirrors, shadows that belonged to her but were foreign to her. She could name each one and relive, in its entirety, the defining moments of their lives, the tipping points that had shaped them into what they were when she had touched them. And time and again had she experienced, through them, things she had never experienced as the Rogue, as the thief, the taker.

That was what she saw, in each reflection. How she had taken what was theirs, and should have been theirs alone.

Jean-by-Rogue, present, and taking over three different shards, laughed.

Oh, was that it? Theirs alone?

Did the little Rogue know how much some people wanted their innermost thoughts to be known, begging for others to be made aware of their perversions, their deviance, but were too afraid to say anything? How about all the times when those she had touched would have given anything, anything at all just to be able to make a connection and say all the right things?

Or when they just wanted to be understood?

And who was she to give this to them and never give them the satisfaction of actually acknowledging or choosing this connection? What gave her the right?

Stop it... Jean... please...

Oh, no you don't, you little thief.

Shard underneath her fingers, cold.

More sensory input. More grounding. She needed more.

I can't...

Oh, a goth cutter. How original. I thought Scott had better taste.

Shut up, Jean.

Delicately picked it up, feeling for a good grip that wouldn't slice her entire hand open.

I need more, she thought, need to feel more, need to... need to do this. Need it. Just a little more...


Pain.

Delicious, real and hers alone, dripping onto the white tiles of the bathroom, each droplet spreading across twice its own size. She felt herself release her breath, and with that breath, she released the overbearing presence of Jean-by-Rogue. Her mind awash in tides of that adrenaline clarity, she noticed that her breathing was heavier. She laid on her back, cold tiles against her skin, feeling the pain shoot across her arm and then spread out.

She licked her lips in profound pleasure.

Tasty.

She sat back up, shards of the mirrors looking back at her. Reflecting her and her alone. She smiled. She felt absolutely giddy, as if all the things that had brought her to that moment had simply evaporated. Lightheaded, she floated.

Knock on the door. Probably Scott.

"Rogue? You in there?"

Yes. She was in there. She was drifting, floating indoors and anemic, but was in there for sure.

"Rogue?"

Knock on the door. Forceful. Insistent.

"Rogue, answer me! Hey! You there! Oh fuck me, fuck me!"

Silence. No knocking. No Scott.

Not that it mattered.

Red on white and shiny, reflective glass looking back at her. The phrase, "licking wounds" came to mind. She decided to do just that. More input. More grounding.

Another chain on her anchor.

She was thirsty.


Caught up in the moment, she didn't notice the door behind her being blown to splinters until a stray one actually dug into her arm. Taking her lips off of her wounds, and with half-seeing eyes, turned around.

Scott.

"Rogue, what..." his eyes met the shards on the floor, and trailed onto the red, "What the hell..."

Rogue hung her head, averting her eyes. She didn't want him to see this.

"What're you doing?"

She wanted to hide everything, every bit of it, away where he couldn't see. Where he wouldn't know.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

What was she doing?

"This is... fuck me, what..."

Rogue saw the dance of emotions on his face: shock to sorrow to pity to anger. The emotion radiated off of him in waves, he was furious. He crouched, teeth clenched, and grabbing hold of her arms. Pulled her to her feet. Rogue lost all sense of direction as he pressed her against the nearest wall and lifted up her arm for her to see.

Jagged lines, irregular, red and still bleeding. Bright red on pale, white skin, the marks left by the glass too raw, to visceral for her to handle. She looked away.

Scott took a deep breath and released it in frustration. Rogue closed her eyes, hoping not to come face-to-face with him when she opened them. She knew she couldn't. He left her, and she, fearing to open her eyes, hugged the wall.

His hand returned on her injured arm, covered by a towel to avoid skin contact, a moment before a searing pain bit into her wounds, sending shockwaves into and through the cuts. Rogue whimpered.

"Why would you do something like this I..."

She had no words to offer.

"Listen, I'm not made of steel, okay?" he said, gently patting on the wounds with what Rogue made out through the scent was something soaked in alcohol, "I'm not. I can't stand everything, I can't do everything. I'm just as breakable, as made of glass as you, or anyone else. I'm trying, I'm trying to find a way, 'cause there is a way, there always is, and I'm trying to find it."

She was listening, as she always did.

"What is it? What is it that you're not telling me?" he asked, "I keep talking, I keep babbling and you're just... absent. I get shock, I get it, believe you me but this..."

She could almost feel his eyes looking at her, scrutinizing her face as he always did for clues.

"I know it's barely been two days, but... now this, I..."

She couldn't take it.

She just leaned forward, flung her arms around his neck and pulled him in. She wanted him to know, wanted to whisper to him, speak, shout, touch, kiss and tell him all the things she couldn't tell herself, tell anyone. Tell him for real this time, not in some half-remembered, half-felt dream. Tell him everything.

He was rigid, unresponsive. Rogue feared the worst, that she, tongue-tied as she was, would never be able to tell him and he would never know.

Then, she felt him embrace her. She relaxed to the feeling of him, the feeling of another this close.

They didn't speak. There'd be time for it.


She withdrew after what seemed to her to be a very calm eternity, and sat down on the bed. He sat next to her, and she, in her most callous and most insincere, offered him her wounded arm.

Without a word, he took her arm again and continued to tend to her wounds as she watched.