"Untouchable"

Chapter Nine
"Element 4: Angst"

(Schade, denn ich hätte dir so gern einmal richtig zugehört)

The cold air and the open night sky greeted her as Rogue stepped out, something stirring inside her. The sight burned into her eyes was her own mad smile as she fell, the brilliant light following her through the fall. The death of a dead girl. Standing there, all she could actually process was that she would never get out of the hotel.

He had been right. This was her prison. She knew now, as she stood before them that she had built this place, brick by brick, with her ruminations, and like an architect that had built herself behind a wall, she would never escape her own creation.

Both the potter and the potter's clay.

She blinked and that was when she saw Ms. Marvel, hovering in the air, just beyond the roof, and in her hands, the unconscious form of Scott Summers.

"Scott..?"

"Yes, that is the real Scott Summers." Cassandra Nova croaked. Rogue noticed then that she was standing right next to Charles, who was blinking rapidly, trying to shake loose the stupor.

"Rogue! She..." Ms. Marvel began, but her jaw clenched shut, the strings pulling, and her grip on Scott tightened.

"What..." Rogue's head, still reeling in from what had transpired, couldn't process the bizarre scene in front of her, "What is this..?"

"Ah." Cassandra Nova smiled, her face melting into a thousand wrinkles, "It's all very simple. I pulled you all here, because you have something that I want very, very much, Rogue."

"Don't listen to her, Anna Marie." Charles said, sitting up. He tried to move his legs. They wouldn't budge. He glared at Cassandra Nova, whom, without even noticing, could be the only reason for that.

The name stirred inside her, a knot in her chest.

"Tell me." She said.

"A body." Cassandra Nova crooned, "A physical form. A vessel that won't rot and decay under the psychic strain of my existence, a host shell that can accommodate me to the fullest. Yours."

A laughter, arrested in Rogue's throat, still cackled its way up and escaped through her lips. She felt the entire night roll off her shoulders as she threw her head back and laughed, the sound making Carol shiver through the tightly-wound puppet strings arresting every muscle.

"Mah body? That's it? Ya want mah body?"

"Anna Marie, don't listen to her!" Charles called out, trying to reach out with his mind. He found a barrier around her, a solid obstacle to his telepathy that he read only as profound, internal distress. Beneath the calm, even tired exterior, he saw a swirling mass of chaos, calm and slowly simmering.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

"I'm glad you think so. You see, Rogue, your ability ensures that I can exist inside you indefinitely. All you have to do is to let me in."

"Why don't ya just take it?" Rogue asked, "That's what the other echoes woulda done."

"That may be so, but I can't have the host ego-self fighting me for survival all the time. The strain would drive you insane, and me alongside. No. This is different."

"Anna-"

"Shut up, Charles." Rogue said, her shoulders slumped, "Just shut up, okay?"

"You expect me to just-" Charles began, but the look in her eyes stopped him. Dead. He searched, desperately trying to penetrate the thick shield of turmoil, some sign of life, some semblance of hope.

He then understood the danger they were in. He pushed the ground, trying to stand, but he couldn't. His legs weren't responding. The psychic compensation for his nervous system's shortcoming was being blocked, he knew. He glanced at Carol, silently and passively floating there, holding Scott's life in her hands... Charles' eyes widened when he realized what purpose they were there to serve, and his train of thoughts rushed on forward, dragging his mind with him.

The elevator doors hissed open and Emma Frost let go of the code-breaker hooked up to the elevator's console. It hung from the wires, forgotten, as she stepped out, her mind reaching out to scan the floor for any signs of life. The headache, sharp as a blade, entered her skull and made her wince. She stumbled, put one hand on the wall and kept standing. The sensation itself was maddening, the distinctive impression that something was utterly wrong on this floor.

She tried to concentrate. One by one, she found the flat, analytical minds of the S.H.I.E.L.D. technicians, all big balls of rationality, woven from yarns of cold calculation and a dedication to mathematical precision. They were easily shut down, unconsciousness draped over their calculations easily. Equals zero. Zero. Zero.

She huffed in frustration. The more steps she took forward, the worse the headache would get, she knew.

Cassandra Nova was speaking as Carol cradled Scott's head in her hands, his body hanging obscenely from her grip.

"The Hellfire Club tried to extract me from his mind years ago. You know this. The reason is very simple: they knew a war was coming, just like that damned demagogue with a Holocaust chip on his shoulder did. Mutantkind needs a definitive leader. Someone with extraordinary blessings who would not capitulate to lesser beings – someone who wouldn't seek to make peace with the natives, but someone who could conquer."

"And that's you?" Rogue asked with a tired sigh.

"They have technology, but what is technology to a technopath? They can have the most diabolical battle plans in place, and all it would take is a single telepath to make it useless. When it comes down to it, we are better weapons ourselves, without the need of external aid, and we can, and so will, triumph."

"Save the speech." Rogue shrugged, remembering the falling smile, "Where do Ah come in?"

"Oh. You absorb me, like you have absorbed the others, only this time, I will leave my brother's body completely, strictly speaking. I will leave no trace in his mind whatsoever."

"And me?" Rogue asked with a weary sigh. Charles got the distinct impression that she didn't much care about the answer.

But you'll love me in the end.

"You can stay in the hotel. You can make it bigger. You can have the rest of them there, or just be by yourself. I will preserve your mindscape, as it is, but I will only add to it as I see fit." Cassandra said with a smile, "I will be in total control. You will no longer have any say over what this body does or what I use it for."

Charles' heart was pounding in his temples. There were beads of sweat on his forehead from trying to breach through, but Cassandra had turned his power into a liability. He glanced at Carol, whom, silently, was holding Scott – a background decoration, an idle marionette, nothing more.

"If ya let him go." Rogue said, softly.

"Let who go?"

Rogue forced herself to look at him. His handsome face. His ruffled hair. His sweet cheeks, cradled in the hands of Ms. Marvel. His peaceful expression. His eyes, closed, that kept the sun inside them.

But you'll love me in the end.

"Rogue, you can't be seriously considering this!" Charles snapped, trying instead to use some oratory skill, "Do you really think her intentions are that pure? Don't you remember what she did to us, before we came here?"

How could I have ever loved you? You never loved me. You never knew what love was... until him.

"She was inside me all along, do you think she sat idly by as I went about my day? Think about it – that first night when you first had the urge to go down: why? Why would something pull you there?"

"Come on, Rogue," Cassandra Nova said, a hint of strain in her voice, "I'll spare whoever it is you want me to spare. You have my guarantee."

He gave everything so that you I could be here.

"How did you even know my password?" Charled asked, "Answer me that – how did you know my password? How did you know to access the archives? Do you think me so poor a housekeeper that I would just leave it out in the open for everyone to find? Do you really think the idea came from you?"

"That's just about enough from you, brother dear!" Cassandra Nova gestured towards him, and Rogue saw his lips fuse together, into a solid lump of flesh, "You're just adding unnecessary information."

I don't owe you anything, not after the way you treated me. Not after making me what I am, day after day, giving in and giving up and never giving up. But I'll love you in the end, and this isn't the end. Not just yet. I can't. But not him. I owe this to him.

"No." Rogue said, looking, for the first time, directly into the malevolent glint in Cassandra Nova's eyes, "Ah refuse."

A muscle twitched on the psionic tyrant's face.

"Fine. I'll make the choice simpler." Cassandra Nova said, "Refuse me, and-"

"Ah refuse. Ah didn't come this far just ta bow ta the likes of you. You're gonna gimme him, right now."

"I see that you've made up your mind. As you wish. Ms. Marvel, if you please... break his neck, here and on the outside."

A scream reverberated in Carol's throat, unable to escape her clenched teeth. She strained against it, summoning up all her will not to move. For a moment, Rogue's vision flickered, and she caught a glimpse of the monochrome settings of the Danger Room, with Carol hovering in the air, screaming with Scott's head in her hands. A flash and it was gone.

No...

Before Rogue could get a grip on the situation, Carol's hands moved and the sound of his neck snapping echoed in the night, louder than any of them could have imagined, and her hands released him. His limp body fell, disappearing into the darkness below, and there was a sudden silence.

Emma Frost back-handed Jean as if swatting a fly, the diamond-hard skin cutting open her cheek and dislodging two teeth as she swerved, limbs flailing, and fell against a wall, the world spinning in a daze. Nick Fury pulled out his .45 and unloaded on her without a moment's hesitation. Emma smiled. To his credit, he was landing every shot on precisely the same spot on her forehead, but twelve armor-piercing hyper-kinetic rounds could only scratch the surface and make minor, decimal shift on the scale of her headache.

"Stop right fucking there!" Fury warned, reloading, "I have explosive-tipped rounds in there, I don't wanna make you get another nose-job!"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. does do its homework." Emma Frost said, continuing to advance, "But, just between you and me, there is nothing between me and that console."

Fury fired. The round blew up in Emma Frost's eye, but failed to make an impression on the diamond surface. Emma started clapping as the next two bullets, aimed for her eyes, blew up in her face. Fury desperately pulled, pulled and pulled, and kept count in his head. He had twelve rounds, and ten... eleven...

A hand encrusted in diamonds slammed against his left temple and knocked Fury off his feet. He crashed against the console and his hand opened. The gun flew away, useless, with only one round left, and clattered away. Fury slumped against the console.

Emma Frost stood before the pitch-black. She had to admit that it was disturbing, yes, but not as disturbing as she thought it would. Barely out of sync, but to the others, it might as well not have existed at all.

She bent down, adjusting the camera feeds to see if she could take a peek.

She didn't feel the prick of the adamantium needle until it was buried deep into her main vein and Jean's thumb as pushing the plunger down.

The shock came first. The absolute silence of the aftermath, riddled with the sudden and overbearing return of awareness. Without echoes, without the self on the other side of the mirror, without anyone else in her head, Rogue felt the impact wash over her. She felt her heart, as if she had felt it for the first time, pounding in her chest. Her eyes darted up and found Ms. Marvel, hovering there, her hands clean. Her hands fucking clean.

Not a drop of blood, not a wound, not a scratch, just the sound of his beautiful, wonderful, fucked up head dislodging from its rightful place... to join the others in there, who couldn't be themselves, or be her. It all came crashing down and the sound of his body hitting the asphalt, far and wee, almost an afterthought, drowned out every other sound, ambient or otherwise, leaving only wretched silence that marked the breaking point of her fever.

But you'll love me in the end.

Hatred.

You...

In the darkness of everything else, a star going supernova: white-hot particles, the building blocks of breath itself, crashing over her in a tide, washing away everything else. Like writing in the sand, surrendered to the wrath of a wave.

Pure hatred, unfiltered, bred from the most malevolent of thoughts, the most violent of notions, cutting to the bone and then into the veins. Virile hatred, potent hatred. Blessed hatred, sacred hatred, exalted in tongues of wrath, in the clenched fist shedding the fragile skin to reveal diamonds forming the cracking knuckles. Beautiful hatred, surging through her entire being, flowing in her veins and being reproduced, sent out fresh every time her heart beat – her pulse the BPM of a star forged of unrestrained, unconstrained, boundless fucking hatred.

The echoes in their houses, for each soul a home, screaming out of opened windows, screaming where they stand and sit and lie, their throats vibrating with the wordless, mindless, brainless drive forward – screaming for vengeance, for vindication, for blood. Unsatisfied, thirsty for the blood of the taker, the blood of the thief!

Charles squeezed his eyes shut and cupped his hands over his ears. The cacophony was deafening, and he could feel the emotion rushing through him, like an intravenous drug, like heroin, like the morphine distillate he made, filling him up.

Rogue vanished with a resounding BAMF!, and before Carol could even begin to clench her fists, a hand made of diamonds detonated on her face, knocking her off balance.

A flash, and Carol saw that the hand had disintegrated, but it was regenerating rapidly.

A flash, and she didn't see the eight Rogue duplicates that had emerged from her the moment of the blast. Fruits of self-harm, all the selves that Rogue had seen, all the despicable visages she had glimpsed in mirrors, and there they were, each one a fraction of all the violence that she was. They brandished their weapons: psychic swords, claws coated in organic metal, optic blasts so potent they could rival the sun... without a word, they closed in.

Before Carol could put her guard up, a sensation overwhelmed her. Entirely alien, this supreme distraction was the feeling she recalled from Cassandra Nova's operating table: pain.

Pain was everywhere. She couldn't even see the attack coming, let alone where it was coming from and what it was. Energies mixed on her unbreakable skin, taxing it to breaking point; fists pounded on every inch of her body, growing more pronounced by the blow; a sound drilled into her head, a sound that kept repeating, sustaining a note filled to the brim with malice forever...

...Rogue was screaming.

Charles managed to find a speck of light in the middle of the chaos, a pin-head gleam in the darkness, and immediately pounced on it. His psychic might, thinned to a single dot, shot forward like a bullet, and for a few moments, he managed to open his eyes in the real world.

Movement alerted him, and he saw Rogue, shuffling her feet, eyes closed... staggering towards the limp, unconscious body of Ms. Marvel.

The Blob rose, proud of his handiwork, and Avalanche opened up a route for Sebastian Shaw to fall through, widening a gap underground that left enough on top for the Blob to stand on. Shaw clawed at the air, fingers finding no purchase as he fell, the energy building up from the free fall useless in the face of the seemingly endless depths of yawning earth underneath.

Selene caught Wanda squarely in the face, and the ring on her forefinger cut open her lip. Wanda's rage boiled in her head, and she responded with a spinning kick that the psychic vampire leaped back to avoid...

Wolverine's punch landed on the back of her head, and she was unconscious before she could land back on her feet. Her body folded as it fell, and Wanda looked daggers at Wolverine, who, holding his mostly-healed side, breathed through clenched teeth.

"Hey!" Wanda said, "She was mine!"

"Yeah, yeah, and I wanted a classic Harley. We ain't gonna get all we want."

"I beg to differ!"

Harry slammed into Wolverine like a MAC truck, his mass, 200 times its usual at the point of impact, bent his spine like a cheap piece of wiring and threw him on the ground. He stopped, and took a deep breath. The X-Men and Brotherhood members around him braced themselves.

And they expect a physical assault. Fools.

"Let's see if I can't create a fault line here in New York."

A moment, and the relentless assault receded as Rogue recalled the clones. Carol blinked, trying to reorient herself, suspended in the air and fumbling for directions.

A blast of pure energy dug into her gut and Carol's fingers reached for the beam, trying to grasp the light. Through the blinding corona of the optic blast, she saw Rogue, angel wings sprouting from her back, closing in, pulling along steel beams from the houses around her, all sharpened into spears, all burning while freezing.

Storm clouds circled overhead as winds beat the mental projections of brick buildings, making the echoes, as out for blood as they were, tremble where they stood.

A thud was heard, faint. A sound so in the distance, so forgotten now, and Carol understood as Rogue's optic blast broke her skin and drew her blood in a gush of blue, what she had done.

Bone claws came out and they were coated immediately in organic metal. Carol barely put her guard up when Rogue's claws dug into the wound in her stomach, and white-hot pain enveloped her entire body.

"So you can bleed, can ya?" Rogue spat, pushing further to get deeper into the wound, to reach in and pull her guts out, "Ya best believe ya gonna bleed for this, do ya fuckin hear me? Ya gonna fuckin die for this!"

Carol tried to throw the ghost of a punch as Rogue's fingers found the wound. Rogue headbutted her, and in the slow-motion approach of her forehead, Carol caught a glimpse of her eyes.

Sadness. Boundless sorrow in the eyes of her killer, buried beneath the thin mask of rage. Like she had just lost something precious beyond any expression could quite capture, something that she could never replace and knew that she never could bring back, even if she killed her. The boy, lying motionless below had been everything to her... and now he had been taken away.

Carol felt brick-and-mortar smash against her back, pulverized on impact as Rogue flew forward, pushing past terminal velocity, dragging Carol down. Carol caught the breath she had been trying to, clenched her fist and with a desperate force that shattered the windows around them, punched Rogue in the head. Again. Again. Again. Carol felt bone break, saw Rogue spit out teeth by the dozen, but no matter how hard she hit, her strength amplified by the agony of Rogue's spiked, diamond fingers entering into her body, she could not get her to stop. Greedy fingertips grazed her internal organs, making her scream out.

"Stop!" she screamed as they went through the layers of another building, "Please, Rogue, lis..."

Rogue withdrew her hands and delivered a sturdy kick to the wound, sending Carol flying through the air, carried by her own momentum, and deep into the street. The asphalt cracked, the road shifted as Carol's body was shoved into it, digging her deeper and deeper in until finally, mercifully, she stopped.

Wanda clenched her teeth. Around her, everyone was sinking into the soft soil, the ground buckling under their bodies. She saw Avalanche, the fucko, trying to respond by keeping himself on the ground, but he was still sinking, quickly and surely.

Wanda felt the ground pass her waist. How was he doing it? That fat fuck – what was his power?

"Oh, please don't struggle!" Wanda caught a hint of strain in his laughter, "There's no use! Maybe you did away with my compatriots, but I am not so easy... despite how I look."

"Ya look like a fuckin' fat fuckin' fuck!" Wanda spat, sliding in deeper, "A fucking ginger fucking fat fucking fuck at that, too!"

"Well, I do like my food like I like my enemies – easy to swallow and all the more delicious for it."

"Oh, fuck you!"

Wanda lifted her hand and concentrated. She shifted the pressure differential around Harry, lifting him up his feet and three feet into the air. A second later, he fell like a stone and stood up.

So that's how you're doing it.

"Wandawandawanda, Ican't-" Quicksilver's panicked voice came as he struggled, moving as fast as he could, but unable to make any progress.

"Shut up, Pietro! I figured it out, so shut the fuck up!"

"Oh, no you don't!" Harry shouted, "You witch!"

Wanda glanced around. Apart from herself and Quicksilver, there was nobody left on the surface level, and she was up to her armpits in the dirt.

She clenched her teeth. This was basic. So basic that she wouldn't...

In the distance, she felt the maddening splinter of the out-of-sync reality shift, and shift back into sync with base reality. She breathed a sigh of relief before it shifted again and out of sync.

Carol curled up in a ball, hands pressing against the wound. Pain was all she saw. Pain was all she could feel. Her nerves were on fire, she was bleeding profusely in a hole in the ground and she wished for a moment to be on Cassandra Nova's operating table, open belly to throat but unable to feel a thing.

"Rogue, stop it! You don't know what you're doing!" Carol heard Charles call. She heard Rogue land right on top of her, feet planted on either side of her, fists clenched, eyes ablaze with hatred.

"Rogue..." Carol hissed through clenched teeth, "Please..."

Rogue didn't say anything. She simply reached and removed one of her gloves.

"Stop it, Anna Marie!" Charles shouted. The mindscape flickered again and he caught the sight of Rogue standing over Carol, removing her glove. Carol heard Cassandra Nova cackling in the distance, her amusement coming through loud and clear, bouncing in the air.

"Please... stop..." she begged.

Carol lifted a shaking hand, trying to shield herself. Rogue slapped it away as she went down on one knee.

"Shoulda thoughta that before ya snapped his fucking neck, you bitch!"

Rogue's bare hand reached down and pressed down on Carol's face, fingers locking in. She put her knee on her chest as Carol weakly struggled, arms flailing, gripping her arm, trying to get her to budge, to let go...

"Rogue, stop!" Charles screamed in desperation, "Stop! Anna Marie!"

"No!" Rogue snapped, feeling the surge rushing through her, raw energy coursing through her veins, "No, Charles! No! Anna Marie doesn't exist! That is not who Ah am!"

"And who are you, then?" Cassandra Nova asked, giggling like a little girl, "Who are you supposed to be?"

But you'll love me in the end. Please... love me.

"Ah'm the thief! Ah'm the taker! Ah am the Rogue!"

Pure, exhilarating, intoxicating... the flow of memories, encoded information in every gene, suppressed but present, flowing in with everything else. Every impulse, every thought, dream and struggle, every piece of encryption flowing into her through skin contact, giving her goosebumps.

Somewhere, in the background, Rogue could hear Carol screaming.

Good. Let her scream. Let her fucking scream.

"No!"

Rogue felt Charles' mind reach into hers, a shadow draping itself over her thoughts, a hand reaching to halt her. Rogue's telepathic response was so potent that she heard Charles howling in pain, reminding him that she also had access to Jean's powers.

Carol squirmed, hands trying to pull off Rogue's fingers, but she was holding on strong, draining every last drop of life from her.

"Rogue, stop!"

His voice. In her head. All around her. Inside her. Now, forever inside her, where he would remain, the echo that despises her, the echo that she can touch and taste.

"How does it feel, Ms. Marvel!?" Rogue hissed through clenched teeth, venom in her voice, "How does it fuckin feel!?"

"Rogue, please! You're gonna kill her!"

Cassandra's laughter, mad, bouncing off the walls.

Ghost hands on her shoulders, trying to pull her off. Hands of his ghost.

"Rogue! Rogue!"

Say it. Say my name. Say it and hope it'll save you, you fucking...

"Rogue! Rogue, please! Snap out of it!"

Carol's struggling was dying down. Her limbs were growing limp as Rogue's hand drained the last of life from her, filling her palm with pins and needles, suffusing her entire being with an echo.

Somewhere in the city, an impenetrable prison was emerging from the ground, forming brick by brick to forever shut in the one echo that would never be heard. Ever.

"Stop! Please, stop!"

Rogue's ears perked. It didn't sound like Carol's voice. No, it wasn't a woman's voice at all.

"Get off of her! Rogue! Come on!"

Don't you get it..? There is no helping anyone. Everything is done. She'll be gone soon and I... I'm still...

"Rogue, can you hear me? Rogue? Rogue! Listen to my voice!"

I'm still here and I'm still...

The insane smile, falling, the assurance that she would be loved.

"You're killing her!"

Arms outstretched, as if to welcome her own killer, the reflection in the mirror...

She recognized the voice. His.

Everybody dies, Scott. You died. I died. I watched myself die and it's alright. It's all alright, in the end.

"Stop!"

His desperate scream as Carol twitched, and her hands, trying until then desperately to get Rogue off, slowly slid down the slick fabric of her skin-tight uniform and fell.

"Oh, God..."

The last vestiges of Carol Danvers' life, coursing through Rogue's veins, sealed the prison cell of the echo, buried under layer under layer under layer of conscious and unconscious rejection of its existence, stopped the moment her eyes opened and the familiar, neutral settings of the Danger Room came into focus... and with it, the concerned suns in Scott's eyes, staring at her through his visor, two bright red dots glowing in the center of her thoughts.