A/N: Don't own the rights to X-Men. Reviews and constructive criticism are always appreciated.

Chapter 2

Shadowcat, better known at the mansion as Kitty, leaned into the hands Bobby was using to put her hair in a series of braids to keep himself occupied while Professor Summers droned on endlessly in such a monotone voice she found her head drooping forward while giving a detailed mission report to Professor X. Bobby's hands on her new braids kept her head from falling all the way forward. It was followed by a gentle tug to bring her awake again. Could she help it she hadn't had her allotted sugar dose yet today? Could she help it Scott didn't know how to use anything…but…the…same…damn…tone…for…the…past…thirty…minutes?

Technically the professors weren't their professors anymore, not since they'd graduated three years ago, but several of their graduating class had chosen to remain at the mansion under a new program Professor X had initiated with most of the ivy league universities. Mutants could enroll in and attend online courses to get their degrees from one of the universities without exposing themselves to the general population. Things might have gotten better for mutants since Emily Smithson had become president, but nothing was going to change over night.

Shaking her head in an attempt to stir up her brain when Bobby--they'd been officially dating for the past year after Rogue and him had gone through a mutual breakup--finished with her braids, she turned a concerned glance to Rogue. There'd been more than a little tension between them when Kitty had started openly dating Bobby. Hell, they were supposed to be best friends. Best friends didn't date the ex-boyfriend, but Rogue, who had a greater capacity for understanding and forgiveness than anyone she had ever met, had forgiven her. They were back to being best friends, and best friends were supremely concerned when Rogues weren't acting like themselves. Damnit, she knew she should have chained herself to Rogue's ankle during the mission! If she'd been there, Kitty might have been able to stop Rogue from touching the psycho-freak's face.

Rogue looked…fairly okay at the moment. She was dressed in a rather Victorian-looking set of black, velvet overalls and a plum top, but Rogue could get away with wearing off-the-wall outfits while managing to make them look like they belonged. What concerned Kitty, however, was the distant look Rogue was locating on the general area of the window and the sweat beading her brow. Logan's and Piotr's metabolisms worked overtime, so Professor X always turned the air on in his room so the poor guys wouldn't sweat to death. Rogue shouldn't be sweating. Of course, her best friend also shouldn't be staring at a bird with a slight bearing of her teeth like she was contemplating how the poor bird would taste.

"Did you spend last night with her?" Bobby asked in a whisper so as not to interrupt the professors.

"I tried, but she said she was okay and insisted I go work on my project for photography class," Kitty returned. "She always likes to deal with things on her own, so I didn't push it."

"Well, hey, Logan's not going to let her keep this silence up for long, so she's going to be okay. I wish John was here though. He was always good at badgering Rogue out of her silent treatment."

"John's not here, is he," Kitty muttered in a sullen tone. She didn't like John anymore, not after he'd taken off with Magnojerk, not after he'd gone almost five years without so much as calling them to say "I'm not dead in a ditch somewhere!" What irked her more than anything was that John had just dumped Bobby. They were supposed to be best friends! Best friends didn't dump each other without a damn good reason.

Her concern for Rogue was interrupted when Scott started in on bragging about how well the younger X-Men had worked together. Well duh. They'd grown up together and could read each other so well they generally knew what the other was going to do before the other knew it. Obviously they were going to work well together, but as far as she was concerned, yesterday's mission should never have taken place. All she wanted to do was forget everything or borrow Dr. Who's time machine, pop back to yesterday, and stop them from ever having gone on that stupid mission. Kitty had seen and experienced things she had never wanted to experience, like the old lady who'd approached her convinced Kitty was really Amy, her granddaughter. The old lady had begged Kitty to take her home, had even burst into tears, and Kitty had felt gutted by the experience. Grandmas weren't supposed to be locked up in nut houses! They were supposed to be at home baking cookies and spoiling their grandkids. So yeah, totally blacking out all of yesterday sounded like a pretty good idea.

"I think he gets the point, Scott," Rogue suddenly interjected without glancing away from the window. "We went, we saw, we kicked ass, mission over. Is it really necessary to bore us all half to death. No wonder I almost fell asleep in math class so often."

Kitty's eyes suddenly looked like small pie-plates. What the fuck and requiem of what the fuck, dude?! Rogue had never…ever spoken so disrespectfully to any of the professors. Dude, she was training to be a team leader, so she'd never interrupted a mission report before! A slight tremor of fear worked down Kitty's spine and made her get as close to Bobby as she possibly could. What the Hell was wrong with Rogue, and how did they fix her?!

"Is there something you'd like to add to the report, Rogue?" Scott asked in one of his milder tones.

"What's to add? I believe you covered it all in that half-hour-fucking-long-snooze-fest. Can we just all get out of here now before you decide to give a dissertation on what you had for breakfast?"

"Kid," Logan began when he paced away from the window to stand behind Rogue, "I think maybe me and you better go outside for a while and cool off."

"I don't need to go anywhere but back to my room." That said, Rogue shoved to her feet and was preparing to leave when Logan caught her upper arm to stop her.

By that point, Kitty was really and truly freaking out. That was not Rogue, dude! Rogue took all this leadership stuff seriously, and she never would have used that tone with Logan. They were like Dad and Daughter, a Logrogue rather than Logan and Rogue. Kitty grabbed hold of one of Bobby's hands and offered up a slight of whimper of uncertainty. If something was wrong with Rogue, she just didn't know what she would do with herself. They had to fix her! Yeah, that was it. Now that Professor X knew something was wrong, he'd fix Rogue and they would all go out for pizza at the arcade later.

"That's enough mission reporting for now," Professor X said from behind his desk. "Everyone is dismissed, but Rogue, I'd like you to stay behind for a few minutes. I need to talk to you."

Kitty blew out a sigh of relief that Professor X was indeed going to get involved and fix her best friend. Shooting another furtive glance in Rogue's direction, Kitty was suddenly overwhelmed by an impending sense of fucked-up-ness when she noted Rogue staring out the window again at that bird like she was going to punch her hand through the window and break its little neck. She couldn't get out of the room fast enough to give the professor an opportunity to fix Rogue.

Leaving the room, however, didn't bring an end to her fear, and she said to Bobby, "Dude, just dude."

"I know, but Professor X will know what to do. It's not that time of the month for her, is it?"

"You're accusing her of a major case of PMS? That's so not funny right now, Bobby. Rogue gets emo and weepy when she's on PMS. She doesn't talk back to the professors and stare at birds like she wants to go majorly organic!"

"Yeah, it was a stupid suggestion, but I'm trying to find any excuse but the one we're all afraid of. She killed that dude by touching him. God knows what that could do to her brain."

"Let's just… I don't know. I don't know what we can do to help her. Rogue's always been the resident bad-ass, so she's never really let anyone help her before."

"Do you think John would even care about what's going on here? He was always attached to Rogue, so do you think he would want to know that she's not well?"

"Quit talking about her like that."

"Like what?" Bobby asked.

"Like she's sick and needs to be thrown into one of those padded cells at Bellevue. I don't know if John would want to know about this or if he would come if he did know." Kitty took a moment to mentally remark on the sadness of it that even after almost five years, Bobby still talked about John. They'd been as close as brothers at one point. She wanted to strangle John anew.

"That's not what I meant. She's just going through a hard time right now."

"Well, if you're so worried about whether or not John would want to know, then why don't you call Parker and beg him to give you his number?"

"Yeah, maybe, but I doubt he'll tear himself out of Magneto's bunghole to get here. Still, it couldn't hurt to let him know, right? After all, if something's wrong, Rogue's going to need all the support she can get."

Her eyes rolled in the patented Kitty-can't-believe-this expression. "Dude, stop looking for a reason to call him and just call him. You don't need my permission to track his ass down."

A suffocating fear rose up to choke Kitty. Whenever she'd been afraid in the past, she had always been able go to Rogue to talk about it, and Rogue would make it better, would reassure her the world wasn't about to get a major case of diarrhea on their heads. Who was she going to go to when Rogue was the one making her afraid? Kitty could sum the entire situation up into two words: This sucked.

***

Rogue ignored Charles even after the room cleared out, even after Logan squeezed her shoulder, told her to let Charlie help her, and left. Her steady, unblinking glance returned to that damned bird sitting on the windowsill. The unbidden desire to grab hold of the bird and tear its little throat out with her teeth was so strong she gripped the edges of her seat to keep from flying off it. As far as she was concerned, there was no point in talking privately to Charles, because he couldn't help her. No one could help her but Brogan. He'd comforted her last night, had slipped into bed beside her and held her through the long night, whispering soothing words, telling her he'd take care of her. She knew he wouldn't lie to her.

"Rogue, can you look at me?" Charles asked from his wheelchair still parked behind his desk.

Her chocolate glance flicked in his direction for the briefest of moments before returning to look out the window, but the bird was gone now. Relief slumped her shoulders, because without it sitting there, the urge to do violence dissipated.

"How are you?" he asked gently.

"Fine," she returned with little desire to control her Southern drawl that elongated the "i" to make the word sound more like "fawn."

"You can talk to me, Rogue, and nothing you say will leave this office, not even to Logan. We're all very worried about you."

"I just said I was fine!" she snapped. "I don't need you people breathin' down my neck and lookin' at me like you expect me to snap at any moment and require a padded adamantium cell, so just back off, would ya?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that. Using your mutation has always been hard on you, I understand that. Also, I know you retain the memories of those you've absorbed. Having all those people inside your head is hard enough without adding the thoughts of an insane man to the mix. He was institutionalized for a reason. Let me help you."

"No one can help me deal with this shit," she spat. "It's my head. There's so much goin' on inside my head, so it's not like you can give me a pill or have Doctor Leigha give me a new brain."

"I'm the one person who can help you," Charles said inside her mind. "Let me remove the memories from you or at least bury them so deeply inside your brain they will no longer torment you."

Rogue went stiff all over for two point five seconds before she realized what he was trying to do. He wanted to take Brogan away from her, to render her all alone again. No, she would never be truly alone, she noted to herself. With so many personalities swimming around inside her, she could never be alone, but Charles wanted to take the one person away from her who loved her like a man loved a woman despite her inability to touch. Such would not be allowed.

Flinging herself from the chair, she kicked said chair away from her, the force of her kick breaking it into pieces when it slammed into a nearby wall. Something she had once absorbed from Jean activated instinctively, grabbed hold of Charles' presence in her head, and forcefully threw him out. The professor's shock was evident in the widening of his eyes and nostrils. Usually, she couldn't use mutations she had absorbed beyond a certain period of time, at least that was what she had thought, but was it possible the mutations had imprinted inside her? Her head cocked to the side as she watched Charles like a hawk.

"Stay outta my head," she warned.

"Then talk to me, Rogue. I can't help you unless you let me, and you know deep down all I want to do is help you."

"I don't need your help. Look, I get that you're all worried about me, but this is just like every other time I've absorbed someone's energies. Remember when I ran around actin' like a miniature Logan when he touched me at the Statue of Liberty? That's all this is. After enough time passes, I'll be able to stop acting like Flesh. I'll go back to normal."

"Flesh, is that what the man called himself?"

"Yeah. His real name was Adam Bancroft, but when he… When he went insane, he started calling himself Flesh, because he loves the taste of human skin."

"Concentrate on someone else's memories. Call up the memories of Jean or Scott, someone who is calmer than he is and stay focused on them. It may help you resist any urges you get from Flesh."

She turned again to look out the window over the garden and its hedge maze. "Do you know whose memories are the most comforting? Magneto's. I don't know why. Does that make me like him?"

"No," Charles said without hesitation. "Eric has always been so sure of his purpose, singularly focused on bringing his purpose to reality that it's not surprising your memories of him can be soothing. He approaches everything he does with a calm assurance that what he puts his mind to will be the outcome. Allow yourself to feel him right now if that's what helps."

"You had better take me off active duty until I can get my head sorted out again. You can't have some crazy ass bitch out there in an X suit threatenin' to eat peoples' intestines. I'd end up gettin' everybody killed."

"You aren't a bitch or crazy. Don't ever let me hear you say that about yourself again. If you won't let me help you at least do me a favor and stay with Logan at night so he can watch over you. Talk to him about what's going on, because I'm sure you can imagine just how worried he is."

"Fine," she drawled. "Can I be excused now?" At least she wasn't so far in the grips of Flesh's memories she had forgotten how to use basic manners.

"Yes, you may."

Rogue was out of Charles' office as though Flesh had come back to life and was intent on turning her into a rump roast. Surprisingly, the one person she wanted was John. He'd never been quite right in the head, so maybe he would know what to make of what she was going through and be able to understand when the others couldn't. Wait, she didn't need John anymore. He'd deserted them all in favor of Magnojerk, the man who had tried to kill her with his fanaticism. That he didn't want to see them, hear from them, or have them care about him was plainly obvious after almost five years of silence. Well, that was just fine. He could shove his hand up his own ass and roast himself like a marshmallow for all she cared. Besides, she had Brogan now.

"That's right, I'll take care of you, Rogue," Brogan whispered in her ear.

A smile brightened her features when she felt his arm come around her waist to snuggle her back against his chest. "You'll never leave me?"

"Never. You need me too much."

"That's right," she said. "I can't exist without you anymore."

"Who you talkin' to, Kid?" Logan asked from a bench located around the corner from Charles' office.