Sorry I haven't updated in a while, but I've been busy, and I'm on a veryshort break punctuated by setting up events and the like. Ugh, life and work suck. School sucks.

Anyway, thanks everyone for their comments. It really made me think about some things...

If there is a pairing (as Rogue is in a very tough situation about commitments) then it might be whatever pairing situates my fic.

Could be anyone actually...

Mwahahahaha...

Oh and wow, with just a prologue and two chappies I've got 51 reviews, 4612 hits! Very pleased about that!!!!

Oh, and some mentions of X2 are in here. As I'm trying to view this as a sort of alternative movie, I haven't exactly spelle dout some of what I thought were obvious signs pointing to the movie, so if you're confused about anythign just tell me and I'll explain.

The Hellfire Club and Creed are not apart of the movie so don't worry.

Oh, and this chapter isn't as long as it would have been because I just wanted to kind of wrap up this year in a small bundle. So if anything is confusing do tell, I've tried to make it as compact as necessary without losing necessary parts. But there is a lot of stuff going on in this year.

Chapter Three

One Year And Some Odd Months Later...

London, Britain...

He was sitting there with his hands wringing together, his eyes moved from each exit and his lips were pressed together as he spoke apprehensively.

"They say," He was saying slowly to the group, his eyes wide and almost too comical in their fright.

"They say she went insane. They say one of those muties fucked her up real bad, did some sort of psychic blast on her or something and she's been off ever since."

"That's wha' I 'erd from d' boss man too." The other, more heavier one of the bunch said.

He was biting down on a wad of gum heavily, and sloshing a half gone bottle of rum in his right hand while he steadied the cards on the table with his left.

The game had been playing for an hour or so.

The group were composed of amateurs, mostly new recruits at the lowest level of the Hellfire Club.

Mere minions whose deaths would not be viewed as significant.

The ease of which they could be rid of was the only reason why they were currently meeting up with the legendary Inner Circle Members-the White Queen, and her protege, the infamous Jade Fox.

The White Queen was a prominent figure within the Hellfire Club.

Her rank was held behind the Black Queen and King, both of whom controled the powerful London branch of the prestigious, secret organization with an iron fist and watchful eye.

Both of whom were too powerful, in both their mutant abilities and current standing with the rest of the Inner Circle to be dealt with currently. It would take a lot of time to become rid of them.

But the White Queen was diligent and patient.

The garage door to the abandoned building suddenly flew open.

A stream of moonlight streaked in, and the small lights they had flickered out.

There came a moment of shared fright, and then the lights came back on again.

This time a woman clothed in pure white, with platinum blonde hair, exquisite features and blue eyes filled with malice appeared.

She was wearing a white dress with white heels and pearls around her neck. Her hands were gloved with white satin, and her coat was one of pure white fur and silk.

In her right hand she was languidly holding a silver gun, as if the object were nothing more than a purse or accompanied accessory to her person.

"Boys," She said with a perfectly arched brow raised towards the ceiling.

She could be no other than the White Queen.

They all stood hurriedly and with a level of fright.

She laughed and turned to look over her shoulder.

A tall, slender figure was standing there. Her curves were perfectly shaped, her movements were slow and deliberate, as graceful and predatorily alert as a cat's. She had a face of gold skin, with large green eyes and round ruby lips.

She was beautiful but younger than expected.

She was barely bordering on the age of eighteen.

She was wearing a tight dark emerald tank top, a brown bomber jacket and tight black jeans.

Her auburn hair of unruly curls fell to her hips.

A pair of yellow gloves with the inside palms cut out were stuffed in her back pocket.

She walked slowly into the building, her eyes flashing with a myriad of emotion before turning on each one of the men with interest and skepticism.

As her head turned, a rugged, dark purple scar (like the color of a bruise) became visible. It began at the tip of her eye and moved upwards towards her skull like a jagged lightening bolt in a diagonal direction.

"This will work," She said slowly and turned towards the White Queen with a nod.

"Alright then, boys. You know what to do." The blonde woman replied and they stood up.

It was going to be a long day.

Rogue moved the blade across her fingertips.

The bejeweled hilt glinted and the curved, silver blade seemed like tempting silk as it brushed against her wrist.

Come on now... a voice goaded, and Rogue twitched as she pushed it back.

That won't do...press it harder...another purred.

"Shut up." Rogue snapped.

The men in the car turned towards her in surprise.

They hadn't been speaking.

"Well go in already." Rogue spat at them, her mood instantaneously changing from depressed to out of character rage.

They nodded, picked up their guns and piled out of the car.

Emma Frost turned to her young protege and grimaced.

She had learned to read Rogue rather well in the year and some odd months they had spent together, and the expression of pain and confusion that was twisting the young girl's face suggested she was having problems with her psyches once again.

"Rogue, ducky-Rogue?"

She slipped one hand cautiously over Rogue's wrist.

Rogue roared with an inhuman ferocity, and her eyes turned yellow with flickers of red.

Her hand pulled back, curling into black talons and she slashed down at Emma.

Emma cursed and her skin became diamond, impenetrable to Rogue's suddenly animalistic antics.

"Goddamn it, luv! You know I can't use my telepathy with this skin! Rogue-fuck-Rogue! Don't do this to me now!" Emma snapped.

Rogue suddenly blinked and her eyes turned bright green as she moved back into her seat with an expression of pure horror.

"Ah-Ah'm sorry, Emma."

"It's all right, Rogue."

"It's just Ah can't-Ah...Ah can feel them now, like they're apart of meh, y'know? It's like Ah'm not Rogue sometimes anymore, it's like Ah'm someone else." Rogue hissed.

"Psylocke fucked you up bad, luv." Emma said slowly.

"I fucked her up worse, darlin'." Rogue said simply and snorted.

"I wouldn't say that."

"Dead is definitely worse." Rogue said quietly.

Emma sighed and rolled her eyes in outright irritation.

"So you killed her? Who cares? She attacked you, luv. Act of preservation." Emma said with a snort.

"Is this an act of preservation?" Rogue asked with a hiss, jabbing her finger at the looming building.

Emma chuckled and shook her head in hysterical delight.

"No, this is just fun. Let them do all the work. That's what they're there for. "

"That's not what I meant, Emma. Ah don' know what the hell Ah'm doing now a days. This is ridiculous! Ah ain't the type o' person to do stuff like this. Ah stole yeah, because Ah needed to make a living but this-!"

Emma chuckled and cupped Rogue's face in her hands. Her pale face and shining blue eyes were alive with amusement and boredom.

"You've stolen, you've killed you've lied you've cheated. Now stop trying to act coy and fuckin' deal with what you've become ducky. You're not at the Institute anymore, luv."

Rogue pulled herself away from Emma's cold hands with a look of pure abhorrence and irritation-at Emma and herself.

"Thanks a lot Aunt." She spat.

"You're welcome."

An alarm sounded.

The flash of red lights across the grounds and the whistle of police officers suddenly sounded.

The area became surrounded by police officers and the click of weapons could be heard in the distance.

Emma and Rogue listened intently from their safe place on the curb, some ways away from the prison camp.

The commotion could be heard echoing outside.

"Prisoner break." Someone was yelling on the speakers.

Rogue glanced at the prison and sighed, boith hands pushing through her hair in exasperation.

What was she now?

Nothing like what she had been- a sniveling, sensitive little girl with no backbone.

But she was also a murderer, a liar and seemed to have entirelly circumvented the once moral upbringing and resolute beliefs she had based her life upon.

It was about self preservation now.

And as much as she loathed herself, she knew, despite what she said, that she'd learned to deal with it.

This was what she was and what she would always be now.

A survivor.

"There she is." Emma said pointing someone out in the ruckus.

She was pointing at a tall, dark skinned man with brown eyes.

He was a police officer, with a raised gun and confounded expression.

He mumbld something to one of the other men, laughed, and then walked away from the scene with his gun clutched tightly in one hand.

Emma snickered and rolled down the window, waving at the man with a wide grin.

A flash of recognition pressed upon his face, and then he was walking straight for the car, practically ripping the door open as he entered.

"Your people the one who started that ruckus?" He asked, though his voice was pleasant enough his face seemed to be harboring irritation.

Emma nodded.

"Yeah. They're probably dead by now," She retorted and then snorted arrogantly, turning to Rogue.

"Rogue, aren't you going to say hi?"

The man turned towards Rogue in surprise-the brown eyes became gold as the car began to move.

The skin rippled and became blue scales, the jet black hair dark red hair that had grown since Rogue had last seen her.

"Hi...mother." Rogue said slowly, and narrowed her eyes at Mystique

"Mother?" Mystique furrowed her brow, and a sudden look of complete anger washed across her as she turned to Emma with a murderous expression.

"My children are dead! How dare you play games w-"

"Hush, sister." Frost hissed and pushed the angered blue woman back into her seat.

"Suck me, Frost. What do you want? I haven't seen you since our father died." Mystique spat.

Frost huffed.

"Listen, Raven, I got you out of there, you might as well shut the fuck up for a moment." Frost said pleasantly, with a majestic arrogance that seemed to make Mystique even more enraged.

"Then speak!"

"Magneto lied to you about your children Mystique. Wagner didn't kill them when he found out they were mutants. Magneto just wanted you to believe that so you would turn against your husband and human kind in general. Baron Wagner might have hated mutant kind, but he didn't have the balls to kill his own children. He placed them in adoption agencies."

Mystique stared at Emma blankly, and then screamed in rage.

She seemed like a sudden, deadly animal as her fist punched the seat behind her and her teeth bared and her yellow eyes narrowed into feral sliits.

"That two timing sonofabitch! He tricked me! He tricked me! I-I could've let you die I could've-" She turned to Rogue with a look of mixed awe and sadness.

"Marie, I'm sorry. I didn't know. The bastard tricked me. And then he left me there, after I saved him from the Cure. He left me human and naked to be humiliated and imprisoned. He left me. But my powers came back. They came back." She added almost frantically.

Rogue sighed.

She possessed some form of sympathy for the woman.

After all, she had her in her mind, and after the encounter with Psylocke-her psyche was just as hard to control as the others.

Silently Rogue brushed her hand over her mother's face.

Realizing the lips were the same.

The eyes, though darkened gold, were the same in shape and intensity, and the feelings were the same in all respects as well.

They had both loved once, with all their being and naive understandings.

And they had been betrayed and born anew because of it.

They were the same in some respects, not just in blood.

"And you didn't want to break her out," Emma said with a small snort as usual.

"Stop reading my goddamn thoughts!" Rogue cursed.

"Then stop projecting them."

FLASHBACK

The battle with Psylocke had shattered her.

Psylocke had plummeted her psy-katana into Rogue's brain, and it felt as if she were melting from an overload of nerve impulses. Rogue did the only thing she could do, reached out and grabbed Psylocke's face in both hands.

They screamed together, and Psylocke's blade finally stopped.

Not before leaving Psylocke in a vegetative state.

And not before the goddamn combination of Psylocke's psychic abilities, and Rogue's acivation of her powers caused a lasting consequence.

At first it was not noticeable.

Then as time grew on, she found herself remembering things-things she later realized she had never done. And the memories came pouring into her as if they were all her own. And then came the voices of the psyches once again, only to die down with their personalities.

For a while, she was a shattered thing, insane and uncontrollable, harboring different people in one form and losing herself in the expanse of their minds.

She ravaged the streets of Japan for three days, moving in and out of personas-Magneto, Warren, Mystique-.

And then they came.

S.H.I.E.L.D

They appeared in black uniforms with raised guns and special orders.

To capture her and bring her back to their base.

Still plagued with memories and personalities, she fought them like an animal, but her crazed form of mind was her downfall.

She was captured by clever tactics, and taken to their headquarters.

She was put under the supervision of Col. Wraith, a cruel man who hated mutants and had no qualm with showing his hatred.

They kept her drugged constantly, to keep her powers in control.

And in between their tests of her abilities, which were tiring and long and rigorous, sometimes excrutiating-

Wraith would ask her questions about her time spent in Japan.

"We know who you are," He would say, smoking a thick cigar and blowing the smoke into her face.

"Jade Fox,"

In her shattered mindd the name had some familiarity, but Rogue couldn't hold onto the memory long enough before another washed it away.

"The Hand? What do you know about the Hand?" He snapped.

"I don't remember...I don't-" Her speech patterns shifted in preferred dialect and sometimes varied in language.

"Don't fucking play with me mutie, you killed one of them, and supposedly stole from them as well. What the fuck do you know about them?"

Rogue felt her apprehension rise and then fall into someone's else's anger.

"What the fuck does it matter to you, bub?" She growled.

He snorted.

"The Hand is an illegal organization, with numerous crimes that must be accounted for. I plan to rid this world of them, along with your inhuman kind. Either you help me do so, or you face the consequences."

She ended up facing the consequences.

He starved her first.

For a week she was given no food and only some water.

Her throat was dry, her movements were weak and trembling, and she vomited bile and slept throughout the day.

Then one morning he fed her a grand dinner, waited and asked the questions again.

When she was unable to respond he nodded and she was taken away.

The next morning he questioned her again.

"Are you sure?" He asked quietly, deadly.

"Ah don't remember, Ah can't remember anything please Ah-"

"You're lying. All muties lie." He spat, and Rogue screamed as she was held down.

A doctor came into the room, his eyes seemed full of fear and horror.

"Jesus, I'm sorry." He whispered to Rogue, and she screamed as he steadied her lips and pressed a needle against them.

Crying and preventing himself from looking away from his work he stitched her mouth shut as she screamed..

Wraith laughed throughout the event, his eyes filled with sadistic pleasure.

"If you won't tell the truth, then don't speak!" He had barked.

Rogue's nightmares were filled with the hours and days spent there.

If Frost had not rescued her when she did...

God-she owed Frost her life and her sanity.

Emma helped her piece together the falling pieces of her mind.

The problem however was that Psylocke had not triggered a reaction of psyches, but destroyed the mental walls that held them at bay. In effect, the psyches began to blend, enveloping Rogue's own mind with their presence, become almost impossible to separate from her true mental being.

It took a week before Rogue was back to normal-whatever normal was.

Especially after being tortured for months by Wraith.

She still retained, now and then, traces of certain personalities that couldn't be completely removed.

Wolverine's 'darlin'' and insistence on a cigarette, Magneto's hatred of humans sometimes came about abruptly, Sabertooth's bloodlust and other certain traits of her psyche became apart of her.

Sometimes she lost control, and became consumed by the psyche, but that began to occur in dwindled amounts, almost to the point where she had full control over herself.

Almost.

Frost had saved her, brought her to be her protege in London, the most powerful branch of the Hellfire Club.

Th second branch being New York.

In some way, she felt a need to protect her Aunt.

Emma had revealed Rogue's true origins, proved it by accessing Mystique's memories with her.

She'd helped her with the psyches and her control over their personalities, she'd even given Rogue a position in the Inner Circle as Knight.

Emma had plans, grand plans to take on the title of the Black Queen, and eventually to get Sebastian Shaw, the Black King out of the way.

But it would need to be handled delicately. The organization was powerful, branching into a myriad of smaller organizations of illegal dealings.

She would need to control those first, to gain loyalty and power in case she would need to overcome the Inner Circle by force.

But Emma was as vulnerable as she was cruel.

The white haired woman could be vindictive and conniving, but she was the result of her father's dogmatic hold over her, and her own need to escape from both him and the animosity of mutant haters.

The bond between them had grown, and Rogue didn't want Emma getting herself killed.

Somehow the woman had begun to mean the world to her.

She would do anything to keep her safe.

And Frost knew it.

She knew it as easily as she knew that she would do the same for her niece.

So when the young girl, only eighteen now, woke up screaming in horror-from the nightmares of her own torture and someone else's, all Emma could do was soothe her and feel a certain awe wash over her being.

How could one girl survive so much in such a short time?

Two Days After the Prison Break

"We shouldn't have just left those guys there like that, Emma. It wasn't right it was-"

"Shut the fuck up! I'm tired ofyou yammering about some lives that don't matter. I'm trying to watch television, ducky." Emma said pleasantly enough.

She liked her dear niece, but sometimes her battles with her sense of "morality" were repetitive and uncalled for.
As well as childishly farfetched.

Life was life.

"But-"

"They're in the hands of the authorities. Just like we planned. It looks just like a regular stir up among the prisoners with every possible suspect rounded up and no idea of outside influence. No one will be looking for us, and most importantly, the Black Queen and King won't take another glance at this event. We don't need them questioning our actions." Emma yawned and stretched.

"Where the hell is-Goddamn it, Emma!" Mystique snapped and forced open the door.

Emma sighed and pointed.

Mystique picked up the machine gun and gave it a light pat before smiling in a moment of eery, soft tranquility.

"She'd have sex with it if she could figure out which part would fit best." Emma whispered to Rogue.

"Don't talk to my daughter that way!" Mystique snapped and pointed the gun at Emma threateningly.

Emma smirked.

"See how she waves it about like that. Makes her feel like she's holding a great, big, powerful metallic di-"

"Why do you always have to push me, Emma?" Mystique snarled.

"It's so easy big sister. After all, you were the mistake. My father shagged every young girl he saw," Emma said with a small smile and sloshed back a bottle of whiskey as she changed the channel and continued talking, "He messed up with your mother though. Forgot to protect his interest. Ended up with a baby, one he didn't want mum finding out about. But everyone knew."

Mystique looked as if she was ready to start shooting bullets, but instead she turned and walked out of the room screaming and cursing.

"Why'd you do that, Emma?" Rogue asked with a sigh.

Sometimes she couldn't understand if their bickering was some twisted semblance of sibling rivalry or evidence of their enmity.

"Because I wanted to. She looks just like the bastard," Emma began, speaking of her father, "... and I always wanted to make him hurt before he died."

Rogue shook her head and stood up.

Sometimes Emma just made her so fucking angry...

"Roguey, don't think too much. That twisted mind of yours can be confusing to read, but I know anger when I feel it. Don't hate me, Rogue," Emma whispered as quitely as a child would.

She was curled up on the couch, the alcohol staining her breath and making her eyes droop as she looked up at Rogue with almost pleading eyes.

The usual acid sarcasm was gone from her voice, replaced by a weary plead as she drifted into sleep.

"Don't hate me, Rogue."

Okay, so basically Xmen 1 and Xmen 2 (of course without Rogue's presence) have already occured. And recently the middle of Xmen 3 in this chappie. For Mystique was turned into a human trying to save Magneto fromthe cure, etc, etc.

Her powers came back, but she was pissedoff at Magneto.

Rogue and Emma decide to rescue her, mostly because Emma needs another helping hand with her plans against the Inner Circle.

I hope this wasn't too jumbled, any questions just ask. I kind of just put glimpses of parts of her life in this, because I didn't want to make a separate chapter for her fight with Psylocke, and then her time spent with Wraith (which is taken from a comic book actually) and then her time spent with Mystique and Emma. I might in the future do this anyway, but at the moment I kind of just want to get this moving so she can return to the Xmen.

I know I'm lazy.

Sorry.

Oh and RR!!!!!!!