XXXXXX
The last week had been the ugliest, most raw, and violent week of her life. It should all be too much to deal with all at once, but she was doing just that.
Rogue walked down the hallway, her thoughts on her boyfriend. Thinking about him made feelings of guilt come up within her as she knew she had been ignoring him over the past few days.
Bobby and her were happy for a long time, even with only innocent touches and frustrating near kisses. She finally let Bobby kiss her at his home, far away from the nightmare of the soldiers invading the school. And the kiss had been good.
Great even.
That was before he had abruptly ended it as her mutation kicked in.
Bobby had been added to the list of people she had absorbed when they kissed in his bedroom back in Boston, followed by John who she touched to get under control Sunday morning. They both joined David, Magneto, and Logan in her head. While they weren't nearly as strong as they once where, they were there...and probably always would be.
She finally arrived at Bobby's door and knocked.
No answer.
"Bobby," Rogue called softly.
"Yeah?"
"Can I come in?"
After a few moments of silence, Bobby answered.
"Sure."
Rogue opened up the door and smiled when her boyfriend glanced over at her from where he was standing.
"Hi Bobby," she quietly said as she moved into the room.
Bobby nodded back and continued staring out the window. Rogue sat down on John's bed, the silence in the room making her feel a little uneasy. Having been in the room quite a few times before, she instantly noticed that items were missing…John's things were missing.
"Where's John's stuff?"
"Pyro came back and got it a little while ago," Bobby sighed and finally walked over and took a seat on his own bed, the backs of his legs a little stiff from standing in the same spot for so long.
Rogue looked at him curiously.
"Pyro? You mean John was here?"
"No. It was Pyro. John is gone."
Rogue then stared at the floor as sadness came over her face, she seemed to realize what he was saying.
"So…I guess we really have lost him."
Bobby nodded.
"We knew it that day at the lake, Rogue. Now we just have to accept it," he said with a maturity he'd never shown before.
"Are you okay?" She asked, knowing that Bobby had known John for a lot longer than she had.
"It hurts…I can't lie about that, but I'll get over it…eventually."
Rogue sighed as she realized just how difficult the past week must have been for him. She slowly got up and sat down next to him on his bed, taking Bobby's hand into her gloved one as they just sat in silence.
Later that night, Ororo Munroe made her way to the second floor of the mansion to look for Scott. It had been days since she's seen him as he wouldn't come down for dinner or work on his cars and motorcycles or anything. Her brows furrowed as she got closer to the workout room of the mansion and looked inside to see Scott boxing up things.
"Scott?" She said curiously as she watched him keep packing things up.
Scott saw her in the doorway but he didn't stop what he was doing. He thought that she was going to try to give him some comfort words about how it wasn't his fault, Jean would've wanted him to move on, blah blah blah…
Ororo sighed.
"Why are you packing this stuff up?"
"Because I plan on re-designing this room." Scott answered, not stopping from his task.
"To what?"
"It's all there on those papers."
Ororo looked down at the floor at the papers Scott pointed to. She curiously picked them up and looked them over.
The top of the paper was labeled "The Danger Room."
Robots…fire…lasers…what the hell?
"This is crazy!" Ororo said.
"No, what's crazy is the way we use to train. From now on we're going to train for real dangers out there. No more tossing me plates to shoot at."
When it was time to go on a mission, they would all be at their absolute best, they would master their powers. The kind of power that Jean displayed back at the lake.
Thinking about what she did after she left the jet, Jean was controlling it, the whole thing. She lifted the whole, goddamn jet. Then she turned the engines on when they weren't working. She fixed them, and more than that, kept the controls under her power until the very end. They couldn't lower the ramp, they couldn't do a thing. And she kept Kurt from teleporting out to fetch her. She flat stopped him. Maybe the professor could do something like that…but Jean? She's never had that kind of strength.
"Scott…" Ororo said again. "I know you're upset about Jean, but the Professor will-"
"Oh please, don't try to tell me that Xavier will fix things! He didn't figure out the mansion was going to get attacked, or that Stryker was after him, and he knew the bastard! He doesn't know everything. He can't answer everything. He can't fix everything."
Ororo stood quietly, listening through Scott's tirade, and now wondered how she ought to reply.
"He can't fix everything, Scott. You're right…he's not a god. People make mistakes."
Scott then went back to packing things up and Ororo looked at him sadly. He was still on emotional autopilot…he needed Jean. He didn't want to let her go.
"She loved you," Ororo finally said.
Scott smiled back, a cynical, bitter, annoyed smiled.
"Don't patronize me."
"I'm not. She loved you."
"Bullshit."
"No, you're talking bullshit!" Ororo snapped. "And you forget who you're talking to. I know, Scott. I know how she felt about you. We talked a lot. I talked to her three days before that trip to the museum. We talked about you."
Scott seemed to be intrigued by that.
"What about me?"
"Marriage…again. We talked about you, and marriage."
Scott's expression locked down, jaw tightening, and he stared down at the floor.
Jean had wanted to get married…Scott didn't. For the most part, Jean had kept her real feelings to herself or at least, hadn't shared them with Scott. Ororo however, had always got an earful. Jean always turned to her when she felt like she couldn't go to Scott.
Scott heard how much Jean wanted to get married, and how Scott was afraid of it, and how she didn't want to pressure him. He took a deep breath.
"Maybe I'll take a break," he said. He had been working non stop since morning and had not eaten a thing. He past Ororo on the way out and she gave him a gentle smile as he walked out of the room and down to the elevator.
