Disclaimer: I work only with the materials created by others. There will be no OCs running about this fic, just enjoy my take on other's characters.

AN: I forgot to mention last chapter that I'm pretty much ignoring the AvX part of the Marvel Universe. Though pretty much everything else I'm trying to keep comic book consistent. At the same time I am not one of those lucky souls that has read every single X-Men comic ever and I have some holes in my knowledge base. Forgive me, but I'm going to act like I know what I'm talking about regardless.

Now on with the Apocalypse!


There was a great darkness all around her and she was flying desperately from it. Footsteps pounding ominously behind her, as she fled at inhuman speeds. Trying to escape the equally, if not more so, inhuman man behind her.

No. Not flying. She couldn't fly anymore.

Still she ran until her very lungs might rip and bleed from the exertion. Her own little desperate pants reverberated in her ears, urging her onward. Usually those sort of frightened cries were signs of another person in trouble, needing her help. She'd do anything in her power to come to the troubled person's rescue… but this time it was only her.

And the light at the end of the claustrophobically dark hallway was just a taunting beacon. Telling her she might get out… But as the glowing square refused to get any larger she knew, with dread, that she'd never reach it.

A scream tore from her throat as knives flew past her left side, one slitting into the material of her shirt. The stinging pain and dripping blood were the least of her concerns as she flung herself to the side, shoulder hitting wall. Her frightened eyes probed the darkness, picking out the silhouette of a tall winged man, skin midnight blue.

She would run. She would fight. She would do everything in her power to keep the man away from her… But all she felt capable of doing was trembling. Tears burst up into her eyes as the being stepped toward her, the palpitations in her chest frantic.

"All things must die."

The haunted, pained voice was accompanied by a twisting sneer on the man's face as she pressed her back against the wall. Hoping she might yet escape in some corner of her mind when all she really could do was panic. Fear spiked in her chest, somehow familiar in its essence, like she'd done this before, as the man stepped forward.

A hand encircled her neck, skin black as pitch. A gleaming white grin kept her attention to the face, which had changed. There, too, the skin was black and the eyes burned a hellish red and the entire picture framed by white hair. The palm pressed against her throat and she choked for breath, feet scrambling to gain a purchase to throw him off. To break the suffocating grip. To escape.

"All t'ings…"

She gasped for breath, lungs fiery from the lack of oxygen. Sobs of panic wracked her body as she kept scrambling from a foothold. Like she could back away from the crushing blow around her neck, her desperate, rasping breaths sounding like death themselves in her ears. Her vision was going dark, eyes rolling into the back of her head.

Still she fought, numbed fingers digging into the skin of his hand. A pained whimper was her last release as every nerve in her body cried out for the lack of nourishing oxygen. Her vision clouded over with the terrible relief of everything ending, her only escape from this terrible atrocity being the one thing that let them win!

Rogue was almost surprised when she was actually able to scream, sitting up in her bed in a soaked mess of sweat and tears. She let the scream taper off into a bit of a sob, squeezing her eyes shut and leaning forward. Her shoulders and arms trembling from the dream that had felt more than that. Like a parasitic psyche nestled dirtily in the recesses of her brain and attempting to do her real damage.

She'd never been so scared in all her life. That feeling of her own mind turned against her… it was just like nothing on Earth. And there was hardly a soul out there that could understand it, too. Only Rogue had been cursed with the skin that drained people's very life force when she touched them, leaving a sliver of them behind in her mind. A sliver if she was lucky…

It took a couple more seconds before she was staring down at her hands, recalling that she need no concern herself about that anymore. She had control. People no longer sat like nosy, unwelcomed guests in her head. They flit in only when she allowed herself to take another mutants power and were just as soon gone again when an invisible timer went off.

The result was more peaceful. And as such, Rogue had nearly forgotten the pounding pressure of an unhappy psyche in her mind.

But it was jus' a dream!

She couldn't quite get herself to believe it, though, as she flung her legs over the side of the bed to plod across the room to the bathroom. The sink whined into action, pouring crystalline water into Rogue's hands before splashing onto the woman's face. It was cool and refreshing, but all in all, Rogue still felt like a mess. Her mind still couldn't quite escape that feeling that another presence was in there. Biding its time.

It just couldn't be, though! The Professor wiped the psyches from her mind, broke down the barriers so that she could control her power. Let her touch without draining that person that she contacted skin to skin. She'd tested it, even, on Remy… on…

Her green eyes downcast at the thought. She hadn't gone over that moment in her mind in quite some time. It had seemed enough that the theory worked in practice. And maybe at the time she'd been just a little pleased to finally kiss Remy without anything in between them. Of their complete and utter control. Not because her power had been placed inert, but because she kept back the flow of his powers into her head.

Then it suddenly hadn't felt right anymore. Because as it always were… something was between them. Rogue just couldn't place a finger on it.

The phone to the hotel room rang suddenly, breaking her from her thoughts. Rogue huffed a little in annoyance, stomping out to get a good look at the read on the alarm clock.

"And who would this be, calling me at five in tha morning," Rogue grumbled to herself, plucking the handheld up and keeping herself from any of her nasty greetings. Instead she stood there, teeth grit and waiting to see if it was important enough the other person would speak to a quiet line.

'Sides, she might be a might paranoid. Didn't want whoever it was knowing it was definitely Rogue until she knew who it was calling!

"I've actually located a coffee stand catering at this time of morning," Magneto's terse tone broke crisply through Rogue's mood. His careful indifference actually brought a bit of a smile to her face, though she'd sooner die than let it on to him. "Should I fetch you something, since you are clearly up?"

"And how do ya know I ain't about to just roll back over and get back to sleep?" Rogue said coyly, finger curling in the telephone wire

"Because you're just as concerned as I am," Magneto said. He held absolutely no playfulness in his voice nor did it seem at all wise to continue in this vein of mood the way he spoke. Always so serious, this one.

Rogue sighed, still cradling the phone to her ear. She supposed he was right to remain serious and he was correct in assuming her concern. Well, less of an assumption really as she pretty much said as much. Demanding that Scott and Utopia stay out of this one and rushing to Seattle herself without so much as a 'how do you do' to Logan.

He'd agree with the urgency of the matter. It wasn't everyday a mutant kid turned up dead. Even more unusual when it was one that Cerebra had never noticed before until the moment she died. Like her X-gene kicked into life at the last second to futilely try and save her from death. Yet there was no sign of a struggle or anything malicious. She'd simply dropped dead in a club.

Scott felt it was prerogative to investigate. Protect the world of mutants from everything else and all that. He'd turn this into a tick toward starting war. Didn't that sound like somebody else they knew?

Magneto, on the other hand, actually viewed this with slightly the same sentiment as Rogue for once. That since it was a child whose power just appeared, it ought to be under the school's jurisdiction. Either that or he liked the excuse to see her on neutral ground. Though she might be hoping for a bit much on that one. Didn't hurt a girl to like a bit of romanticism every once and awhile, even from a stern and controlling man like Magnus.

"Besides, I'm not the one that woke you," Magneto continued in surprising softer tones. "Is there something else to worry about?"

Concern? From the Master of Magnetism? Something had to be off!

"Yau're not Mystique in disguise or nothing?" Rogue said suspiciously.

"I hardly think so." He was back to the more familiar, clipped tone. Back to business. It was almost relieving. "Coffee, my dear?"

"Yes please," Rogue said in a low voice. Glad that this was not a man that pushed on personal matters, that she wouldn't have to share her dream. "Black. Bring some cream and sugah."

"In the city of coffee," Magnus muttered under his breath, "and she wants it black." Still she heard him repeat the order as well as his own cappuccino order.

"Ah'll be ready by tha time ya get here," Rogue said when she was sure that was done. Enjoying just for a second the muttering of her long distance lover. It wasn't quite playful but it said a lot that he shared some of his thoughts in an undertone to her.

"See that you are."

The phone cut out and Rogue pulled the handheld back to give it a bit of a knowing smirk. Magnus was a man completely dissatisfied with intimacy over the phone. Hell, he wasn't really a man prone to intimacy in the slightest. So what he did share, he tried to do properly. His rudeness in hanging up only solidified that further in Rogue's mind and she crept gratefully to the shower.


AN: I will point out that I am not a fan of Rogue/Magneto. But as I am trying to keep comic book canon I am rather forced to deal with them. And deal with them the way they are until it actually makes sense for things to start changing. That being said I am trying to make both more in character than the serious OOCness they've been suffering from in X-Men Legacy lately. Hopefully you feel that this has been done. Please R&R. It pleases the Goddess of Destiny greatly