"Touch"
Chapter Two: "Haus der Stille (House of Silence)"
The night time serenity of the mansion, unless the Brotherhood or some other enemy decided that at the top of their to-do-list was an assault on the Xavier Institute, was undisturbed. It was almost extraordinarily quiet, and Logan making his night rounds didn't upset it. For a man carrying heavy, indestructible metal as his skeleton and featuring well-built muscles around it, he could walk without a sound well enough.
He could never sleep for more than an hour or so. Nightmares and subconscious representations of half-forgotten memories always put paid to that. His healing factor compensated for his insomnia, so he usually spent his nights reading, or roaming the grounds. If something unnerved him or a ghost-memory seemed too much, he took to checking on the students in an unending patrol through the mansion. This routine helped both him and anyone who needed help. He could be there before they could finish screaming. Within reason, of course.
Tonight was one of those nights. He was on edge. He knew the cause, too – the conversation between the prof and Hank. Headaches. Migraines. On a telepath?
Logan didn't trust telepaths. His rapport with Xavier was based on the latter's ability to make sound decisions, not his ability to mind-fuck. He had enough experience to know that Xavier was a well-balanced and well-adjusted person, but that didn't keep him from being wary of his powers.
Check at the door, and Berzerker slept as sound as Bobby, whose breath was in the process of slowly lowering the temperature around him.
Logan continued going from door to door, often sniffing through doors or listening in to get an idea of what was going on inside. His enhanced senses allowed him to spy in on many bouts of night-time gossip. Amara and Tabitha, as usual. Logan understood the basic concept of gossip well enough, but failed to comprehend the necessity of it. In his experience, people talked, and that was that. No accounting for or stopping it. In the old days, and he did mean very old when he said it, people knew, but rarely talked loud enough for the subject matter to hear. They left well enough alone and whispered their disapprovals to themselves. Nowadays, words were weapons constantly utilized in an invisible war.
Logan's patrol took him across the rooms and everyone seemed to be sleeping. The house was quiet and everything was calm.
Next door. Rogue and Kitty.
That gave him pause. He was worried about Rogue, in his own fashion. Stripe hadn't ever struck him as the social type and mostly kept to herself. Except for enforced bouts of socializing, she avoided the mutants of the institute altogether. While wanting to chalk it all up to exhaustion or to whatever had happened with Mystique, Logan knew better. It was simply everything she had been through.
He understood some of it more than she realized. Fearing herself, fearing that she would hurt people was detaching her even more from the people around her. She was spending an awful lot of time in that gazebo this summer, with nothing but a book or music to keep her company. He could relate. He had an itch that needed scratchin' every once in a while, a persistent itch that told him to be alone. Spending much time in his past, as much as the prof could give back to him, told him he had harmed others with his gifts again and again.
He understood well enough. But he had the advantage of being over a hundred years old and having more experiences in more contexts than she could ever hope to have. It gave him perspective. She had none of that.
The patrol usually ended there, and he just walked back to his room to do something to kill time. He had taken to playing solitaire as of late, and if it hadn't been for his unconscious shuffling of the deck in ways that would allow him to win, he would enjoy it more.
He decided to do just that.
Something in the air stopped him halfway to his room.
Thick. Tense. Overbearing. Real. Nearby.
His nostrils flared up instinctively. If it was an intruder, he would be able to smell him and hear him: he knew every scent and inherent noise of the mansion. Any shift, and he'd be able to tell.
And sure as hell, there it was. The stench of the intruder.
He had told Ororo to tighten up security, time and time again. Even argued with the prof to make sure they had adequate defense. But of course, lethal defense would require legal counsel and Ororo was convinced the institute itself was one large weapons depot.
This resulted in one thing: anyone with a whim walking right in.
Wolverine dashed across the corridor, following the scent. It was very familiar. He felt the same thing around the prof – his telepathy, involuntarily, blurred his senses and left the faintest of traces, confusing him. He extended his claws and turned the last corner, leading to the solitary staircase that ended with the prof's room.
Wolverine crept up closer, gently ascending the stairs. Standing by the door, he listened in. Nothing but silence on the other end. But that was impossible – his senses had never deceived him before. He knew what an intrusion felt like, how an interloper disturbed the natural state of things.
Was it his restlessness?
Not a moment's thought to it – his restlessness would have gotten to him for the first time in over a hundred years.
He aimed for the middle of the French doors and kicked them open, unsheathing his claws. He detached momentarily, his mind processing the entire room in a few seconds, enough for his first burst of action to stop abruptly. Nothing there. Nothing but the prof, who appeared unfazed.
Wolverine rose both eyebrows. Loud noise, a man with claws leaping into the room, and no reaction. He didn't even flinch. Wolverine scanned the room, sniffing the air. There was something, definitely, in the air, but not identifiable. Far and wee. Fading in and out.
"Hmph."
Wolverine got out of the room and closed the doors, gently, behind him.
"Coulda sworn..."
Rogue stirred awake, shivering.
By reflex, she immediately shut her eyes as tightly as she could – out of fear that her optic blast could kill whoever was in the way. And somebody always would be in the way.
Rogue clenched her teeth. This would usually happen in the mornings. Lose the line between her thoughts and theirs.
Scott's waking thought. Constant. She shivered. Her body loosened up as the initial panic went dormant, his thoughts disappearing.
She checked the time. Her bedside clock told her it was three o'clock.
The sensation of wind across her skin. Looking up, through her stupor, she saw that Kitty had left the window open. Again. Rogue just didn't understand why she felt the need to invite a night-time breeze into the room when the mansion itself was maintained at a constant, comfortable room temperature.
She tried to get warm by hugging her knees, drawing the bedspread in a cocoon around her. Didn't work. Frustrated, she threw off the sheets and got up. Shivered when her bare feet met the carpet. She closed the window and went back to bed, hoping that she could fall asleep again. Of course, that wouldn't happen. For the next half hour, she tossed and turned and tried to relax, but nothing worked. Common symptom; she was having trouble balancing what her unconscious mind could process and what her conscious mind could perceive. Scott's grey area kept unraveling and jumping out at her, disturbing her and fucking with her balance.
With a frustrated sigh, she got up and put on a light hoodie and pajama bottoms. Decent enough, she figured. Besides, nobody but Mister Logan would be awake at that time of the night.
But some part of her just didn't want to risk it.
The mansion, at night, always seemed a bit creepy to her. The normally vibrant place would turn into a house of silence after night. The merry screams of the kids and the daily hustle would be replaced by complete stillness. Normally, that kind of serenity, she adored. But tonight, something seemed off. The sensation of someone being right behind her followed her. She kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to see someone right there, knife in hand. She knew the feeling. Same thing when she saw movement right out the corner of her eye or felt someone with her in an empty room.
Ghosts, or approximations of people's memories intruding with her perception. It was nothing she couldn't manage. Not unless there were no cookies left. Hunger and other baser instincts brought out the worst in her, as she was assaulted with conflicted needs and desires. Everyone had their preferences, so much that they sometimes had trouble balancing them – Rogue had to cope with the latent preferences of all those inside her head.
Getting into the dining area, she immediately went for the fridge. Luckily, there was milk left. Then, she raided the supply cabinets for cookies Kurt hadn't yet gotten to. There was a whole large box of Chunky Chips Ahoy left, and she decided to settle for it.
She had only eaten one cookie when the doors opened and Jean walked in and upon seeing Rogue, paused to nod in greeting and then retrieved a cup. Jean sat down and took a cookie – held it between her teeth as she poured a glass to herself.
Rogue found the following silence awkward. She hadn't really had a one-on-one with Jean since Apocalypse. They had barely gotten out of the institute during that time, but Rogue had somehow always ended up with a buffer between her and Jean; and usually Scott, at that.
Plus, dreaming about her boyfriend didn't really help her feel more at ease. The prof always said such thoughts were a classical case of telepathy-paranoia: the irrational fear that a telepath always knew whatever you thought and felt.
Rogue knew that was utter and complete bullshit. Didn't help her feel any less naked to Jean.
"What got you?" Jean asked, in between cookies.
"Wha..?"
"What woke you up?"
"Kitty."
"Kitty?"
"Cracked open a window."
"Sounds like her. She likes having an opening."
"Guess so."
Silence.
"You?" Rogue asked.
"Nothing in particular. Just a feeling, first. Then, you."
"Me?"
"Your fear. You were very tense as you jogged down the corridors, Rogue. I almost screamed out."
Rogue glared at Jean.
"Can'tcha control that?"
"When I'm awake, yeah. Sleep dissolves control."
"Wow." Rogue said, not knowing what else to say to that.
"Tell me about it. I get lost sometimes. When I wake up, I mean, in that ten, fifteen second interval I lose the line between my thoughts and the thoughts of whoever is near. Usually Scott. Takes me a minute or two to get a hold of the base reality."
Rogue recognized the term – the prof called it that.
Another bout of silence. They ate their cookies and drank their milk, taking comfort in the sugar and wondering at what time they were going to get up in the morning.
The doors to the dining area let a very frustrated Logan through. Upon seeing them, he stopped. Then, he went to the fridge and acquired a beer.
He sat down to the table, looked at both of them as if asking why they weren't in bed, and then drank half the bottle. Sighing, he leaned back and closed his eyes.
"Logan..?" Rogue went.
"Quiet." He said, "I'm trying to hear."
"Hear what?" Jean asked.
"Somethin' other than your voices."
Jean and Rogue looked at each other. What was this about?
"Gah!" Logan exhaled, "It's there, it's there and I can't catch it. It slips away... somehow."
The door opened once more.
"Doesn't anyone sleep anymore?" Logan said.
"Tough to stay asleep when you're with a telepath who can't." Scott replied. He took a cup, sat down and munched on a cookie.
"Scott!" Jean huffed.
"What?"
She pointed at his ensemble. The short-sleeve undershirt over white boxers, red polka-dotted.
"Less than presentable, I know." He said, grinning, "Still... didn't want to fumble for clothes."
Rogue tensed up and Jean caught it out the corner of her eye; wondered if the tension was because Scott was in the room or if it was getting too crowded for her.
Truth was, it was both. She didn't like it when too many people started cramming into the same space – by their own volition or not. It got too hard to maintain enough of a distance from others. Her body didn't make it easier for her, constantly crying for sensation, for another's touch. To brush a stray strand of red hair with a finger, to bump into someone. But every time she did, a piece of whoever she touched smothered a piece of herself.
She drifted slowly, putting some distance between herself and the others.
Half an hour spent discussing nothing but the world debate on anti-mutant sentiment, the professor's stance on human-mutant relations and the recent upsurge in Registration Act supporters, along with predictions on the upcoming UN Summit on the mutant issue finally gave her enough of a disgust with the environment to want to leave. She did so, murmuring half-baked excuses about sleep calling again, and left their discussion behind.
In the house of silence, alone. She wandered aimlessly through the hallways, the dim lights bathing her path in warm colors, trying to understand where she was going. The soft carpet under her bare feet, the draped, wool blend wallpaper designs gently caressing her palms. She knew she'd go somewhere at the end of the night, she always did.
Her path took her down to the entrance hall. She wondered if she should go outside. Remembering the cold breeze, she decided against it. Something in her just didn't want her to go.
Rogue yielded to the feeling, and turned her steps to the elevator.
Wait. What? The elevator to the lower levels? Whatever for?
Desire. That distinctive, recognizable pull towards a singular, nonsensical action – to go down? Why?
She took a step away. The need strengthened, grew more urgent.
The sudden feeling of eyes upon her.
A telling, telling itch on the back of her neck.
"Who's there?" Rogue asked.
Nobody.
She returned to her room as fast she could without running. Kitty had opened the window again. Hearing her steady breaths gave Rogue enough of a comfort to deter her from taking Kitty's sheets. She couldn't help it. Rogue had heard that mutants often had fixations, little compulsive behaviors associated with their mutation. Amara couldn't stay off land for long. Kitty didn't like having no apparent exit. Kurt loved to stay in one place as long as possible.
Rogue, well, after the whole Apocalypse thing, she tended to avoid people like a plague.
After all, she loved them all like one.
