Author's Notes: Thoughts are signified by 'these'. Emphasis and the voices in Rogue's head are in italics. Telepathic conversation is underlined.
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Scott made a disapproving noise, and Xavier asked Scott to leave the room so he and Rogue could talk in private. When Scott had closed the door behind him, Xavier sat forward slightly and studied Rogue.
"Why is it that you want to see Magneto after all this time?"
"It's personal," Rogue replied. She sighed softly. "It involves more than just me and I'm not at liberty to discuss it."
Xavier studied her for several minutes before responding.
"I'm not sure it would be in your best interest, Rogue. Magneto hurt you, and… I think even more importantly in your mind… he hurt someone you care very deeply about."
She blocked the flood of memories that threatened at his words, but several scenarios of possible revenge flashed through her mind, some of her own design and some courtesy of her Inner Wolverine. The Erik in her head flinched at all of them. She pushed them aside. Revenge was inconsequential when weighed against what she had the chance to get back.
"I promise I won't touch him or try to hurt him in anyway, no matter how much he deserves it."
Xavier didn't look convinced. The second half of her sentence probably hadn't helped her case any.
"Please," Rogue pled, willing him to feel her desperation but not the reason behind it. "There is something only he can tell me that I have to know."
Finally, Xavier conceded with a sigh. "Well, I must say you have impeccable timing, Rogue. I'm leaving in half an hour to visit him myself. You understand that you'll have to be blindfolded on the way. Also, you'll need to change into something without any metal."
"Thank you," Rogue said. "Would it be possible to borrow a pair of sweats or something?"
"Storm is waiting for you in the hall, I'll have her find you something. She'll bring you to the garage when it's time to go."
Knowing a dismissal when she heard one, Rogue got up and left the office. Storm was waiting for her in the hall, and after brief pleasantries, she took Rogue down to the team changing room. Rogue put on a sweat suit with an X logo at the hip and shoulder, and borrowed a sports bra from Storm because Jean's were even smaller than the Weather Witch's, and even hers were too snug on Rogue. Until Storm's gentle reminder, Rogue hadn't even taken into consideration the fact that the hook-and-eye closures of her regular bra were metal.
Rogue vacillated when it came time to take off Logan's dogtag. It had rarely left her neck in the last eight months, but she knew it wouldn't be allowed in the prison. When she unclasped the chain from around her neck, she felt bare. Rogue carefully tucked the precious metal piece and its chain deep into her jeans pocket and put her things into a locker, making sure no one was in the room before using her borrowed control over metal to fuse the door shut. Now no one could go through her things while she was gone.
When she exited the locker room, Storm smiled at her and told her it was time to go. As the two women walked toward the garage, Rogue finally asked what she had been too caught up in other things to ask Xavier.
"Has Logan come back yet?"
Storm gave her a sympathetic look and shook her head, "No. And he has not contacted any of us in any way, either. You must remember that Logan was on his own for a long time before he met you or the rest of us. He may not realize how much his friends worry."
Rogue thanked Storm with her eyes and the older woman smiled softly. Storm left Rogue at the door to the garage, and Rogue steeled herself for the journey. She wasn't a big fan of traveling blindfolded.
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Rogue's blindfold was finally removed when they were in the elevator inside the prison. The walls were white and temporarily blinded her. Logan's senses compensated for the weakness of her own and she only had to blink once before her sight cleared. There was a guard in the elevator with she, Xavier and Scott. Rogue wondered what he thought of a visitor being brought in blindfolded.
As sometimes happened when she had thoughts like that, Xavier's power kicked in and Rogue could hear what was in the guard's head.
Milk, bread, butter and eggs. Wasn't there something else Heather wanted me to pick up? She's gonna kill me if I don't remember.
Rogue stifled a laugh and forcefully turned off the runaway mindreading ability. Evidently, if the guard'd had an opinion about her, it had been a fleeting one. All amusement left Rogue as the elevator stopped and the door slid open. The room they walked (or wheeled in Xavier's case) into contained three guards, a lot of surveillance equipment, and a sophisticated metal detector. Just how much money were they spending to keep Magneto locked up? If they considered him as big a threat as he truly was, wouldn't it be more efficient to arrange an 'accident'?
"This is one of Lensherr's distant relatives," Xavier explained to the main guard who had given them a questioning look. "She needed to see him for personal reasons."
Rogue almost got angry at the lie. Related to Magneto? No thank you. A niggling little voice in the back of her head reminded her that she was actually happy that Mystique was her adopted mother, and Mystique had been at Liberty Island too. She firmly reminded the voice that Mystique hadn't truly been herself at the time.
The guard frowned and told Xavier, "Only one visitor a week, you know the rules."
Rogue's heart almost stopped. She couldn't have come this far, asked for and received this favor from Xavier, just to have it be for nothing. But she hadn't given Xavier enough credit.
"Very well, she'll visit him today and I'll come back next week."
Relief rushed through her and Rogue toed off her tennis shoes. She knew she would be unable to wear them in because of the metal grommets on the lace holes. She had not thought to ask for metal-less shoes when changing at the school.
I apologize in advance for anything he does or says, the Erik in her head said as one of the guards instructed her to step into the scanner.
'Don't take this the wrong way,' she thought back, 'but please shut up while I'm in there. I don't think I could handle two of you at once.'
Very well, my dear.
Rogue got the distinct impression that the echo of Erik in her brain was amused. She mentally stuck her tongue out at him.
The guard near the metal detector gave a nod and another of the guards pressed a button on his machine. A plastic tube began to stretch between the plastic box Magneto was being kept in and the room she was about to leave. The guard who had scanned her opened the doorway and lead her toward the man who had killed her eight months before.
If Magneto was surprised to see her, the lifting of his eyebrows was her only clue. The guard instructed her tocome to the door when she was done, and Rogue nodded absently, her eyes locked on Magneto as if he were her prey.
When the guard was gone and the tunnel had begun retracting, Rogue sat in the extra chair in the room and played with the finger of one of her gloves. Magneto's eyes fell to her hands and he paled visibly. It made his gauntness more pronounced. Rogue mentally slapped herself when she began feeling sorry for him.
"Oh, relax," she said bitterly. "I promised Charles that I wouldn't touch you."
Rogue thought she saw his mouth twitch at one corner and realized she had used Magneto's name for Xavier.
Great, she thought, now I've amused both of him.
"Then why are you here? Does Charles think throwing you in my face is going to convince me to renounce my wicked ways and join his team?"
He seemed so calm, sitting there and watching her for a reaction. Memories of her own and of Logan's of what this man had done to both of them flooded her mind briefly. Rogue had an overwhelming urge to reach out and suck him dry, more for Logan than her. But she couldn't orphan Wanda and Pietro, and she refused to let Magneto provoke her into doing something that would hurt people she cared about. And considering the fact that she was already fidgety after a few minutes in here, she could only imagine that she'd be doing a favor releasing him from his 'mortal coil'.
Not sure how to ask what she had come to and nervous about Xavier telepathically listening in to Magneto's side of it, Rogue stood up and paced for a moment before sitting back down.
"I don't really know what Xavier thinks and I don't care to," Rogue answered Magneto's question. She looked around the plastic room. "You have a cozy little set up here. But it's a bit like phantom limb syndrome, isn't it?"
Magneto frowned, a suspicious look on his face. "Isn't what?"
Rogue looked directly at him. "No metal." She saw understanding dawn in his light blue eyes but continued on. "I can feel it everywhere I go, you know. It's almost comforting. It's always around in some form or other. But in here…" she shook her head, "nothing. The power in me keeps reaching out, hoping to find some small speck for comfort."
Magneto smiled, a calculating kind of smile. "Charles must enjoy having such a powerful weapon."
She didn't ask him what he meant, only looked bored and responded, "He doesn't have me."
When she didn't expand on the remark, Magneto frowned again, impatient this time. "Why are you here?"
"Where's Mesmero?" Rogue asked bluntly.
The satisfaction she felt when he paled as the smirk fell from his face was vicious, a side effect of Logan's increased presence in her head that resulted from Erik's absence. It was an odd truth to realize the two men balanced each other so well in her head, but a truth nonetheless.
"How much has she remembered, and how?" Magneto asked, his face still pale, worry in his eyes.
It surprised Rogue to think he might actually care about her adoptive mother as more than just another of his weapons. That he cared that Mystique would understandably be angry with him. It was hard to think of him as a person with real emotions considering what he had done to her, but she knew very well from past experience with the Erik in her head that he did, indeed, have very strong feelings. She sometimes forgot that the Erik in her head was the same person as the one who had sacrificed her life to further his own agenda.
"Destiny, and not enough," Rogue answered Magneto's questions in reverse order.
Magneto nodded slowly, his eyes flicking away from her. When they returned to her after a minute, they were reserved.
"I suppose I owe both of you that much."
Rogue snorted in anger, "You suppose?"
Magneto ignored her outburst, and Rogue wasn't sure if she was grateful or wanted to slug him for it. Probably both.
"He's probably holed up at the warehouse in the garment district. She'll know where it is."
Neither one of them had said Mystique's name the whole time, Rogue out of fear of Xavier listening in. It suddenly dawned on her that Magneto was afraid of being heard as well. She glanced at speakers that had been piping in classical music since her arrival, almost sure now that they were two way intercoms and not just speakers. Someone could be listening to them or recording their conversation.
Rogue sighed and stood up, "I'm not going to thank you."
"I wouldn't expect you to."
Approaching the sealed circle the tunnel to the guardroom attached to, Rogue nodded. The guards saw her and began extending the tunnel. The Logan in her head was growling at her, encouraging her to forget her promise to 'Chuck' and make Magneto pay. When her feet began to itch with the need to turn around back toward Magneto, Rogue begged Erik to come to the fore and subdue Logan. He did so quickly but stayed quiet in deference to her still-churning emotions of being so close to Magneto.
"Did you get what you needed?" Xavier asked her when they were back in the elevator.
"Yes," she answered quietly. "Thank you for bringing me."
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Pietro and Wanda were waiting for her just inside the door from the garage when she got home. Neither one of them looked very happy. In fact, Wanda looked worried and Pietro was mad. Trying to figure out if she had forgotten to do something she was supposed to, Rogue hung the keys to the SUV back on the rack on the wall. When she faced them again, they still had the same looks on their faces.
"Something wrong, guys?"
Wanda's eyes narrowed slightly, "Are you really our friend or are you just here to spy on us?"
"What?" Rogue asked in shock.
"There's a tracking device on all the vehicles, Rogue," Pietro informed her coldly. "We know you were at Xavier's."
Rogue relaxed slightly. She had known that this day would come. If they accepted her past, great. If not, she would move again. Mystique had said if she was ever uncomfortable in the House, she'd find another way for she and Rogue to stay in touch.
"I told you I was taking Piotr to a mutant safehouse."
"You were there for hours," Pietro retorted. "It doesn't take that long just to drop somebody off."
Just tell them everything, Erik urged in her head. It will only be more difficult if they find out later.
"How much do you know about Xavier?" Rogue asked, sitting on one of the kitchen stools.
This might take awhile and it had already been a long day.
"He and our father were once friends, but Xavier wants to live in peace with humans, even if it means being treated as inferior," Pietro said in a rush. "So now he sends his X-Men to get in the way of things."
He said 'X-Men' like it was a swear word.
Wanda tried to be the voice of reason. "Pietro and I have had our powers for nearly ten years. We know through our father that Xavier has been able to find us with Cerebro that whole time. But he only tried to recruit us once our father entered our lives. All that time that he could have been helping us, and he waited. It doesn't exactly make us want to trust him."
Rogue nodded. "I can understand that. I don't always understand or agree with Xavier's motives, which was part of the reason I left there." Rogue sighed, thinking about Xavier's unwillingness to tell Logan everything he knew. Feeling how she did about that, why hadn't she just told the whole story to the Brotherhood right away? But she knew the answer to that. She had wanted them to accept her, and she had feared that they wouldn't. "I'm going to tell you my side of what happened. You can ask Mama to verify anything you don't believe. If you… if you don't think you can stand having me in the House with you, I'll move out."
Pietro and Wanda shared a look before they both nodded their agreement. Slowly, leaving off personal feelings as much as possible, she told them the story of the events leading up to their father's imprisonment. Her voice broke several times when it came to that night up at the torch, but she pushed on, not wanting to leave anything out now that she was telling them her story.
When she was done, Pietro had his head in his hands and Wanda was staring off into space, shock clear on her face. Rogue, knowing she had to give them time to process everything and make their decision, told them she had to go call Mystique and went to her mother's office. She curled up in the desk chair in the room and cried for twenty minutes before she got herself together. She placed the call that hadn't been scheduled but which had to be made.
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Not quite two hours after she had gotten an emergency phone call from Rogue, Mystique was instructing her helicopter pilot (a human-looking mutant with minor sensory powers she had hired herself to replace Kelly's old pilot) to land on the roof of the Brotherhood House. No sooner had the legs of the chopper touched the roof than Rogue was inside and buckling her seatbelt. Mystique smiled softly, just as anxious as Rogue to retrieve their memories.
The twenty minute flight to a privately owned helipad on an office building passed in silence. They were both too excited and nervous to say anything. Mesmero was indeed in the warehouse Magneto had referenced. To say he was shocked to see Mystique and Rogue together was the understatement of all time. The gun Mystique pulled on him and the metal bar Rogue manipulated to secure him to his chair quickly convinced him to reverse what he had done to both of their brains.
Mystique let Rogue go first to keep an eye on the other mutant. When he moved his hands away from Rogue, Rogue staggered a few steps away and closed her eyes.
"She's reliving the memories you had me remove," Mesmero said to Mystique's concerned look. "Your turn."
She had only a split second to worry about his tone before his hands were hovering inches from either side of her head. A dull pain filled her brain as her eyes slammed shut, memories flying by at an amazing rate. Memories of Irene and Marie and their happy but relatively short time as a family. Memories of the last few weeks of Irene's life and Mystique turning to Erik, whom she had known for some time, for comfort when her love had died. That had been when Erik began his plan to use Marie. When Mystique had expressed her emphatic unwillingness to use Rogue that way, he'd called in Mesmero.
But Mesmero wasn't done with her. The next group of memories he released were older, and they shook Mystique to her core and broke her heart. The amount of time encompassed by the second set of memories was much shorter, a year at most, and had ended nearly twenty years ago. Mystique felt herself collapse to the ground as Mesmero laughed slightly and moved away from her.
Mystique forced her eyes open to glance over at Rogue. The younger woman still had her eyes closed and she was smiling softly, probably at some favorite memory she was reliving.
Rogue must have felt her staring, because her eyes opened. Tears were streaming silently down Rogue's face, but she smiled brilliantly at Mystique.
"I remember," she whispered in awe.
Mystique smiled back, but even she could tell it hadn't been a convincing effort.
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Settling into her seat in the helicopter, Rogue noticed that Mystique was still quiet and withdrawn. They had left Mesmero behind, promising intense pain followed by a brutal death if he ever affected either of them again, whether by their request or someone else's. He had accepted the threat, but there had still been a malicious glint in his eye as he looked between the two of them. Rogue had to wonder what he knew that made him so sadistically pleased with himself. But he was behind them now, and her only immediate concern was her adoptive mother.
"Mama? What's wrong?"
Mystique smiled, though the gesture didn't reach her eyes. "Nothing… it's just the memories. It's like losing Irene all over again."
Rogue had the strange feeling that it was more than that, but she nodded. She, too, felt the pain of losing her foster mother as if it had happened yesterday. When Irene and Mystique had decided not to take her with them to Austria, Rogue had been forced to say her goodbyes just before the memory wipe. She'd never had the chance to grieve. She didn't know how much worse it would be for Mystique, who had loved Irene and been with her at the end.
The flight back to the House went faster than Rogue thought it would, and Mystique made no move to get out of the helicopter when it landed.
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"In two weeks the Senate will have a break and be out of session for a month," Mystique said. "I'll be back then."
Rogue nodded and leaned forward to hug Mystique.
"Bye, Mama," she called as she climbed from the helicopter and moved far enough away for it to take off.
Mystique signaled for her pilot to take off, swallowing the guilt that told her to land and stay here. To forget her charade as the Senator now that she knew what she had forgotten, both by force and by choice. But if she stayed, she'd have to explain to Marie. And she wasn't sure she could face how Marie would react to the truth. Ignoring the tears streaming down her own face, Mystique watched out the window of the helicopter until her daughter was no longer even a speck.
Her biological daughter.
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Author's Note: I am not entirely clear on Mesmero or how his powers work, but he's just a fall guy for the situation at hand. So if I got it wrong, forgive me and move on ;). And please review! Thanks.