Rogue looked over the menu at the grease pit on the side of the highway. She loved greasy food and all that it entailed. Ororo was found of reminding her that one day those calories would catch up with her.
Glancing over to Remy she saw that he was studying the menu too. He looked up when he felt her eyes on him and winked. He could be such a charmer sometimes. She quickly decided on a bacon cheese burger with fries and a milkshake. Rogue had every intention of milking her metabolism for all it was worth while she could, calories be damned.
Closing her menu, she set it on the table in front of her and looked around the diner. The first thing she noticed was that every female eye was on the man across the table from her. He was awful handsome even with his oddly colored eyes he seemed to be a magnet for attraction. Hell on Genosha during their tour she had even seen a handful of men give him a second look.
A red headed waitress in a canary yellow uniform with an apron walked up to their table. Her eyes were glued to Remy while she popped on the bubblegum in her mouth. An odd sense of jealousy came over her but she pushed it aside and picked her menu up again.
"Hi, my name's April and I'll be serving you today, handsome." She said with a thinly veiled insinuation.
Skank!
Remy glanced up at her before focusing his eyes on Rogue with a smile. "What would you like, chere?"
Slutty April frowned down at her with pursed lips. Apparently the Queen Whore didn't like being turned down. "Bacon cheeseburger, no mayo and fries with a chocolate milkshake."
Waitress Hoe-Bag primly jotted down her order before turning her back on Rogue to give Remy her full attention. She twirled a strand of Jezebel red hair around her scrawny little finger in a pathetic attempt in flirtation. Remy's eyes never left hers. "I'll have the same."
"Right away, cutie." She said, throwing an assessing glance at Rogue.
Once she was gone Remy smiled at her and for the first time in forty eight hours she wanted to smack it off his face. "Do I detect a twinge of jealousy, chere?"
Rogue scoffed. "Of what?"
"It's alright, I am quite a catch." He replied smugly.
With a roll of her eyes she looked away from her cocky husband. "Yeah, and then you have to go and open that big trap of yours."
He laughed and reached across the table to grab one of her hands. "So I been meaning to ask you a couple things." He said and all traces of playfulness were gone.
She looked back over to him thinking he was wanting to know what would happen once they got back to New York. She nodded to signal him to continue.
"Can you use powers you've absorbed at any time?" He asked seriously.
Rogue blinked, that wasn't exactly what she expected. "Well it depends on how long I absorb someone. But I can only use a power I've absorbed for anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours." She explained. "Why?"
"I've noticed that you have surprising strength and rather thick skin." Rogue had gone quiet, he was treading on a very sensitive subject. "Now I know you work out that fine body of yours, chere." A Leer accompanied this statement.
"But even then you wouldn't be able to grip my arm like that in a moment of passion." She blushed as she remembered the moment he was speaking of. She hadn't meant to grab him so hard but it was her first time experiencing something so fantastic that she had slipped in control.
"Then there is the lack of bruising. I know my back is all scratched up and you seem to be missing love marks." She opened her mouth to argue that. "And don't deny it, chere. I distinctly remember biting you, but this morning in the shower your skin was as flawless as ever."
Rogue closed her eyes took a deep breath. She had hoped she would never have to tell anyone about what had happened to Carol, but Remy had already put the pieces together. She had to tell him.
"After the X-Men disbanded three years ago we all scattered. I wondered around for a couple of months until finally I found myself in St. Louis." She took a deep breath. "I was there for only a couple of hours when there was an accident."
Remy squeezed her hand tighter as encouragement.
"There was this woman, Carol Danvers. She attacked me but I fought back and she promised that next time we met she would kill me." This next part was particularly hard. "As it turns out we bumped into each other half an hour later in a park. She came at me like a bat out of hell and as I soon learned she was a mutant. Super strength, flight and invulnerability, it was damn near impossible trying to lay a hand on her."
"But eventually I did after half the park had been destroyed. The only problem was I couldn't let go of her, see she had a hold on me and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get her off. I used her flight and strength to try and fling her off me but i wasn't used to it and flew into a building."
She focused on their held hands to continue.
"When I woke up her lifeless body was next to mine and her mind was trapped inside of my head. If killing her wasn't bad enough I learned that I had been tricked, that we both had. A woman, Mystique, my mama, is a shape shifter. She tricked Carol into thinking I was going to kill her and she tricked me into thinking the same."
When she looked back up at Remy it was to see him with a small frown on his face. "Why did your mere do it?"
Rogue gave a long suffering sigh. "I really don't know. At first I thought that maybe she had just used me to kill Carol. But when I looked at Carol's memories I couldn't find a trace of Mystique in any of them."
"It wasn't your fault Anna." He said and squeezed her hand.
Rogue nodded, she had blamed herself countless times over the last three years. Carol's psyche had assured her countless times that she wasn't the one at fault and that she certainly didn't blame her. It was a small condolence but a condolence nonetheless. "Now I have her powers, physical abilities and knowledge."
Remy was quiet for a moment while he rubbed small comforting circles in the back of her hand with his thumb. "And you've been hiding this from everyone for the last three years?"
She snorted. "Yeah, the opportunity to talk about it never really came up."
He smiled and brought her hand to his lips to place a chaste kiss on her knuckles. "Your secret's safe with me, chere."
"Thanks Remy."
After they had finished eating and the trampy waitress had made several more flirtation attempts they were finally ready to leave. An older woman with the name tag Gloria was at the cash register. April the Harlot leaned over on the counter next to Gloria and making doe eyes at Remy who was dutifully ignoring her.
"I get off at nine, why don't you came back around then, honey." She said giving him a wink.
Gloria stopped rifling through the cash register and swatted at the floozy beside her. "You need Jesus."
Rogue couldn't agree more.
