The next hotel was different. Separate rooms. She could do what she wanted and he wouldn't know. He couldn't stop thinking about what she was doing on the other side of the adjoining doors. He wanted to check on her, but that would make him look weak, like he cared. And she'd use that against him. They always did. But maybe she wouldn't because she didn't want any more to do with him than he her.
He was afraid that she would hurt herself. She said she was fine, but they call rape a fate worse than death. She was at least giving him enough courtesy to not pull him into the healing phase, and he was used to being the one who turned away from people, from their emotions, from their words…from their presence.
But she didn't ask for his presence. She kept to herself until that one moment when she actually had the fucking gall to laugh at him. Laugh at him for communicating for two seconds with that waitress who had given him a great night, released a lot of tension. She laughed at him. And it wasn't flirty or snobby or even bitter.
She didn't give him any attitude or crap about how he used women either, just that one laugh.
He'd helped her and he'd saved her. And now he felt like he wanted to keep saving her. But she didn't want that. She didn't want to look at him as her God or savior, but as a hired bodyguard and driver. Why? He didn't know a thing about her and wasn't sure he wanted to. That would ruin the image. The belief.
He wasn't Wolverine when he ripped that guy off of her. Hell, he wasn't even Logan. He was someone else. Maybe who he used to be. But who was that? She took that guy's memories. She knew what he was and what he'd done. Could she tell him? Was she not just someone he'd come across, but someone who could find another piece of the puzzle?
It was too soon to ask, too soon to ask anything. Right now she was scared, right now she was running, and he had to help. And the hardest part was he didn't know why.
What the hell was wrong with checking on her?
He tried to turn the knob. It was locked. No shock; if she could she'd probably lock them in so securely that a SWAT team couldn't get through. He'd pick the lock. He didn't want to scare her, so he'd open it quickly and reassure her. But when he did, he saw no one. Her bed had been touched, the covers thrown back, a glass of water on the nightstand, but she wasn't there.
The nightstand light was on. He stepped into her room and closed the door. He felt a cool breeze and saw the drapes floating with it. The sliding balcony was door open, as well as the tiny fridge. No mystery what she'd taken out of it.
He walked over to the balcony and through the doors. She was there. She wore a black lace bra and a tiny nightgown over it. Her smile was exaggerated and she held a crystal glass filled with heavy alcohol in her hand. Her hair was up in a ponytail, but the white tendrils fit closely around her face, echoing the light of the moon. Her makeup was faded and her skin was bruised. The cut around her neck was still visible.
"Don't look so surprised," she told him and looked away.
She looked over the balcony at the town, lit up, so fake and full of it to her, and yet the lights swayed inside her deflated vision. She pulled the crystal glass up to her lips and drank, hating the taste but loving the effect, her beautiful hands encircling the fragile glass.
"And don't look at me like a father would, either. I can barely stand up but I know exactly what I'm doing. I'll be fine in the morning, but I had to kill it. You understand, kill the fear of it happening again."
She laughed into the glass at his sympathetic eyes.
"Go to bed, Logan. No one's paying you for this. You're a mutant. You know what it's like. One minute you're feared, the next minute you realize it's a mutant staring down at you, knowing your power and knowing he can use it to his advantage."
She sipped more as her free hand clung to the railing as she dangled over it in her tipsiness.
"You should be taking care of yourself," he stated.
"You expect me to want that? What…to be healthy? Why would I want to be healthy? My body turned against me Logan. You understand that, you saw what I did. And I can do it again."
"Your skin," he said softly.
Her painted lips left the glass and she was as serious as she had ever been. She swallowed and breathed out cold air.
"Do you know what it's like?" she asked as she looked over the city. "I had to leave. I had to get out and someone picked me up. He touched me and he is now in a hospital, for the rest of his life. Looking down at him…took my fucking breath away," she wavered, her voice cracking as tears pricked her eyelids.
"And I hated my body. I did every single evil thing I could to it. I tried to kill it. I had all the money in the world and I was trapped inside something evil that I couldn't control. And I hated it. I hated me."
She took another sip, rather a gulp, of the liquor.
"And like you I wandered. I traveled. And then one day I found myself caught between life and death and someone pulled me into life, curing me of what I hated more than anything."
"How?" he asked.
"I don't know. But it worked. But by that point the damage was done. I was too tired to play at twenty-five. I'd gone to school. I'd done what they'd said. I'd learned to do what they told me not to and I never thought I'd ever wish to be trapped again. Trapped inside something evil. I raped, Logan, I really did. I took things from people that weren't mine to take. Sure, maybe it wasn't my fault but my skin did it anyway, didn't it? And one night not so long ago someone showed me what I had done."
"Don't look at it that way," Logan replied, wanting to rip the glass away from her and tell her it was different. "Rogue, you can't think like that."
"Don't act like I'm blaming myself, Logan, I'm not. I don't regret what I did, I murdered him. I don't know what that makes me, but I'm glad he's not walking around, lurking behind some tree ready to jump out and attack someone else."
Another gulp.
"But he raped me, didn't he?" she sighed now, looking him right in the eye. "And hell, if you hadn't seen him do it you'd be hitting on me right now in some local restaurant, not knowing I could kill you in three seconds. And who could blame you, either?"
"You should lay down-"
"No, I should punch you in the face for trying to talk me out of ANY momentary escape I could possibly have from the sheet that has now hardened around me, following every step I take. It's there Logan. It's with me. I feel what he did to me and I need this drink. I need this drink and any other drink that can wipe the smell of his sweat from my skin and the pounding of his voice from my ears. There are no morals now, Logan. I can afford to sip alcohol for the rest of my life but I will do it without you. You tried to save me and I thank you, but every time I take a breath, it chokes me and I don't want your eyes, your sad, aching eyes staring into me. So go to sleep, wake up, and get the hell away from me."
She turned back to the view, placing both her arms over the railing for support, barely able to hold the glass that she now saw as her haven.
"Please," she said again. "I don't want you to take me anywhere, I don't want you to protect me, and I don't want you saying something stupid like it'll pass. Let me go."
"Go where?" he asked.
She downed the final drop and exhaled.
"Disappear," she told him.
She waited and he didn't leave. She reversed her skin, making it lethal.
"I'm not going to lie down right now, and I'm not going to stop drinking."
"You could lose your balance-"
"Then I'd lose it!" she snapped. "Then I'd fall off and die. Call me crazy but that doesn't exactly seem like a big deal right now. Look, even though you saved me, your presence still freaks me out so would you go away?"
"Rogue, you've been drinking, I don't want you to kill yourself."
"That's not your decision now is it?" she replied. "I'm not going to kill myself. Not tonight. That's something that will take up more energy than I've got."
"If your intentions are just to get drunk than why do you want me to leave so badly?"
"Because I want to be alone."
"Was it your first time?"
Her eyes blazed in anger.
"Meaning what exactly? That it would somehow be LESS? That the trauma should be less?"
"I'm…just asking."
"No, it wasn't."
"Why are you angry at me?"
"Because all I HAVE right now is anger! If you don't like it, go, please. I'm not asking you to stand here and be my therapist. You said you didn't want to be my charity case."
"Doesn't mean I couldn't use that money," he replied coldly.
He had done everything for her and she was giving him attitude!
She turned her face back towards his, her vision of him coming down in pieces as she felt the cool glass slip from her fingers, and heard it shatter below. As he pulled her down, she grabbed the railing and felt his hands on her waist, her clothed waist.
"I don't wanna hurt ya," she managed as she blinked furiously to get a clear picture. "I'm not turning off my skin though."
"That's fine," he replied, gently lifting her up and putting her down in her bed.
She was giving into the drowsiness, still whispering words as if she were awake. Not to him though. She was somewhere else and working her mouth off.
"Shhh," he said, trying to hush her.
She quieted slowly as she went into full sleep-mode, and he pushed a lock of hair from her closed eyes with his fingers, not giving enough time for her skin to hurt him.
~~~~~~~~To Be Continued~~~~~~~