Chapter 25: Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue (Has Anybody Seen My Girl?)
Day 36
New York City, New York
Jean Grey was a compassionate person. It was not just her telepathy that made her so; her compassion was an actual part of her personality. She was, by her very nature, a good person.
As she let herself into her parents' home in the city, she didn't feel like a good person.
As much as she wanted to help her teammates, as much as she wanted to ease their pain and grief, in the end it was too much for her. After hours spent tossing and turning, their negative emotions slamming at the walls of her telepathy, Jean had finally ceded the battle and left.
Scott, of course, slept through her troubles and would more than likely be hurt when he woke to find a hastily written note in place of herself, but she would deal with that later.
The sun was just rising on the horizon, providing just enough light that Jean didn't need to turn on any lamps as she walked through the small house. Her parents had bought the home on the outskirts of New York City just after Jean had made the decision to move to the Institute, wanting a place nearby for visits and so that she'd have somewhere to go when she went into the city.
During the few summers that she'd been at the institute, she'd spend most of the three months here, with her mother. Her father would come up on weekends and the three of them would use the home as a base of operations, visiting all the museums and tourist traps of New York.
Jean's smile weakened as she listened to the silence of the empty rooms.
Her parents would not be coming this summer. All the trouble with Rogue, and then with the Hellfire Club, had convinced Jean that perhaps it would be best if they remained at home, in Connecticut.
It didn't stop her from missing them.
It also didn't stop her from moping around the stale home and wishing she'd ignored her instincts and had asked them to stay instead of to go.
The sudden clang of the doorbell, so early in the morning and unexpected, startled Jean out of her melancholy. Unconsciously her telepathy reached out, seeking the identity of the bell-ringer, only to encounter...nothing.
Even if no one had been standing on the other side of the front door, Jean would have felt something. She'd have felt the vibrations of other minds echoing through the air, perhaps even shadows of the thoughts of those that'd stood there before.
Instead, she felt nothing.
No thought, no echoes, no static.
Jean felt fear rise within her, but she fought to push it back.
What kind of villain rings the doorbell, after all?
It was with some trepidation that Jean moved to the door, one hand reaching for the doorknob, but the other wrapped around her communicator, her thumb on the panic button.
The woman on the other side was impeccably and expensively dressed. Her eyes were dark, dark enough that Jean was unable to tell the difference between her pupils and her irises.
They were also very, very fascinating. In fact, Jean couldn't take her eyes away.
She was so consumed by the deep unending color of the stranger's eyes that she almost didn't hear her speak.
"Good morning, Jean. I am Selene."
Costa Verde, California
"Took you long enough, chere."
Rogue smiled to herself as she shut the front door behind her. "I decided against teleporting and took a plane. Figured you'd want the extra time to snoop around."
Gambit chuckled huskily in the darkness of the front entryway, the only light coming from the lit cigarette in his mouth, which flared brighter as he inhaled deeply. "Remy knows everyt'ing he needs to."
Rogue set her bag down on the foyer table and reached for the small switch just beside the living room doorway. In a rush of sound the blinds covering the bank of windows opened and blinding sunlight flooded the room, a small portion of it reaching the foyer as well. Gambit squinted his eyes against the light and exhaled the gray smoke smoothly.
Rogue smiled at him slightly and commented in a purposely soft voice, "Do you realize that when you're trying to be charming your accent becomes thicker?"
Gambit's eyes hardened and he pushed off the far wall to stalk to her side. As he moved closer, he pushed up the sleeve on his right arm, revealing the address still displayed there. "Remy here now, you remove the ink, oui?"
Rogue nodded and turned her eyes to the tattoo she'd used an imprinted power to place there. She wrapped her fingers, long, slightly cool fingers, around his wrist. Together, they watched as the ink faded, leaving no trace of the tattoo ever having been there.
"Dat's an interesting power, chere. Where you get it?"
Rogue shrugged. "I've got a lot of powers you've never seen."
Gambit's eyes slid from his now bare forearm to lock onto her lips. "You show me your's, I show you mine."
Rogue grinned and pressed her hand against his chest, pushing him away. "We're here to work together, not to play together."
Gambit shrugged. "Wha's a little work wit' no play?"
"Serious business, that's what," Rogue answered with no hesitation. She walked past him and into the sunlit living room, grabbing her bag as she did so. "You said you know where Essex is and that you'll take me to him. Live up to your promise, Gambit. Where is he?"
Gambit took one last long drag from his cigarette before putting it out under his heel. "Gambit knows where he was. Don't know whether he's still there."
Rogue shrugged and pulled out a small computer from her bag. "Neither I nor Tessa have been able to catch even a telepathic trace of the guy, so anything helps."
"Where are your...esteemed companions?" Gambit asked, his voice sly but cool.
Rogue hesitated, her green-grey eyes sliding over to meet his. "You said alone. Here I am, alone."
Gambit grinned, all charm and dimples. "Didn' think you'd actually listen, bien-aimée. You don't seem the type."
Rogue glared at him. "I'm trying to save the world. That's the only 'type' I am." Suddenly, her glare softened. "Just why did you want me alone, anyways?"
Gambit licked his bottom lip and took the seat across from her. "Why does any man ever want a woman alone?"
Rogue smiled and turned her piercing grey-green eyes away from his mesmerizing red-on-black ones. "What do you want to ask me?"
Gambit licked his lips unconsciously, his eyes studying her face. "Why do you need me to take you to Essex? Can' you jus'," he waved his hand in the air vaguely, "summon the knowledge from my memories?"
Rogue stared at him unseeingly for several moments before opening the laptop and turning her attention to it. "It doesn't work like that."
Gambit pushed the laptop shut with his fingers; almost catching hers in the keyboard as he did so. "Then explain how it works."
"Did you know that when you're serious you have almost no accent at all?" Rogue inquired in a deliberate change of subject.
"Answer the question."
She only smiled a little as she leaned back into the chair. "The only way I can safely access the abilities I've imprinted is to remove the emotional aspect of them. The personalities, the memories; they must be taken away for me to have control. Otherwise, as you have witnessed, they try to take over."
"So you have my abilities, but not the memories?" Gambit inquired softly, his real thoughts on the matter kept entirely to himself.
Rogue smiled bitterly. "They're there; I just can't access them anymore. It's like...cold storage. With enough effort I could get to them, I could use them, remember them, but it comes with enough significant risk that it's not worth it."
Gambit nodded slowly and leaned back in his own chair. "It's... difficile to not have control, Rogue. To know what power you have, but not be able to harness it."
Rogue's eyes sparkled with malice. "And what would you know about it, Gambit? The smooth-talking, card-throwing conman? Avec un coeur d'or?" She asked mockingly, clearly put on the defensive by the too intimate conversation regarding her powers.
He grinned at her, but the irritation her words fostered in him made it more an aggressive baring of teeth than a smile. "I know lack of control. Je le sais bien." Gambit stood quickly, startling Rogue whose fingers sparked with power at his sudden movements. Gambit had already become lost in his thoughts and didn't notice her instinctive call for weaponry.
He paced restlessly, his long overcoat moving around him gracefully as his thoughts roiled around his face. For several minutes he did this, moving back and forth as he debated something in his head, something that clearly was causing him angst.
Rogue debated whether or not to use telepathy to just take whatever knowledge he was arguing himself over telling her. In the end, however, she found she did not want to invade his mind, and would rather wait for him to make his own decision.
Finally, Gambit stopped pacing and turned to her. "Dr. Nathaniel Essex, better known to mutantkind as Mr. Sinister, is really a doctor. He's also a mutant. I met him through a mutual acquaintance in New Orleans, a man called LeBeau." Gambit grinned quickly and shark-sharp and answered her question before she could ask it. "No relation. Just an old man, fond of gin, who always seems to know too much. When my powers manifested, he was there to help clean up the mess I left. He's the one who told me about Sinister."
"What happened when your powers manifested, Gam-...Remy?" Rogue asked softly, her body leaning forward as she found the urge to comfort him. There was pain in his eyes, old pain dulled by time, but pain nonetheless.
His jaw clenched and it seemed to take him a lot of effort to force the words through his lips. "I had no control. Everything I touched would become charged. The poker cards in my hands, exploded, burning and shocking me. I pushed back from the table, and it charged, sending my friends, my brother, flying back into the walls, hurt and bleeding. I moved to the door, pushing it open, and it too charged, sending shards of wood shooting through the crowd in the bar. Again and again I tried to leave, to escape the strange violence of it all." His words seemingly came faster and faster until finally he took a deep breath and stopped. "It was me. I realized after countless injuries, thousands of dollars in damage. It was me."
Rogue started to speak, her mouth already open to spew platitudes, to reassure him that none of it had truly been his fault, but Gambit wasn't done yet.
"There was a man outside the bar, a cop who heard the screams and the explosions and came running in. He'd thought I was hurt, thought he should help me..." His voice trailed off and his eyes closed and Rogue knew without peaking into his thoughts that he was reliving the next few minutes of that night in his head. It wasn't hard to figure out what happened.
"You charged him. Not his clothes, or his watch, or his badge. You charged him," Rogue said slowly, standing and moving to his side instantly. You didn't need to be an empath to feel the waves of pain that rolled off of him.
"When it was over and done, I passed out. When I woke up I was on the floor in the back of the bar, in a locked room. LeBeau was there, watching me. He didn't say anything to me about what happened. Just handed me a piece of paper with an address and a name on it. Dr. Nathan Milbury, 318 Chartres Street. French Quarter, my favorite stompin' grounds, yet I'd never even seen that building before. The good Doctor," Gambit said mockingly as he continued to speak, his eyes still glazed over as he was lost in his thoughts, "helped me with my control. In return, I was indebted to him. He had...jobs for me. Things I had to do to pay him back. One of the last jobs I did for him was go work for Magneto. Report back as to what Magneto, and by extension, Dr. Charles Xavier were doing." Gambit smiled bitterly. "It was supposed to be my last job for him."
"Who is Dr. Nathan Milbury?" Rogue asked, though she had a good suspicion as to the answer.
"Dr. Nathan Milbury is Dr. Nathaniel Essex is Mr. Sinister," Gambit replied matter-of-factly.
Rogue nodded slowly but could no longer resist the urge to comfort. Her fingers trembled as she brushed them along the harsh leather of his sleeve, sliding them lower until there was the barest brush of her skin against his. "Was it worth it?"
Gambit knew she didn't ask this question just for him, but for herself as well. He gave the only answer he knew. "Yes. It was worth it."
Rogue smiled to herself before stepping back from Gambit. The words that she began to speak surprised even her. After all, neither of them had come here to play confidante. "Before I came back here, the last person that I imprinted I killed. Carol Danvers, 36 days ago. While Bishop and I trained, I refused to imprint anyone ever again. I've broken that promise a couple times in the last couple days."
Gambit stared at her steadily, his eyes seeing too deeply into her own psyche for comfort. "You have new abilities, though. I've seen them."
Rogue shrugged. "We found a way around it."
Day 36615
Bayville, New York
The physical training is easy; Rogue has been doing a variation of the routine they put her through for well over a year with the X-Men. She's stronger than your average seventeen year old girl, more skilled in various martial arts than most Marines, and has a keen intellect that makes fighting her a constant surprise.
It's her mental training that is becoming increasingly difficult.
"We need to examine how your ability works, Rogue. We can't do that if you won't allow us a practical demonstration," Elisabeth "Call-me-Betsy" Braddock stated slowly, as if Rogue were either hard of hearing or dense.
"The last person I touched, I killed. You'll understand if I'm not eager to do it again," Rogue said saccharinely as she mopped at her sweat-covered face with a towel. Bishop grinned at her and tossed a cold bottle of water to her before opening one for himself.
"Bishop, back me up here. She needs mental and physical training," Betsy cajoled him, turning lavender eyes onto his with hopes that her beauty might sway him to her side.
She obviously didn't know Bishop very well.
"It's her decision, Ms. Braddock. She doesn't want to demonstrate, she doesn't have to."
"Your superiors have a differing opinion," Betsy replied smartly, turning sharp eyes back to Rogue.
"Besides," Rogue interjected, "I already know how my imprinting works. The professor figured that out a long time ago."
"I highly doubt the primitive technology of the twenty first century could identify all factors of the process."
Rogue shrugged and smiled amusedly, "It's relatively simple. Through skin to skin contact I remove and adapt the portion of mutant DNA that has the X-gene and graft it onto my own. Most of the time the graft is temporary. The memories and personality comes from the exchange itself, not the actual graft. It has to do with the small trace of telepathy tied into my ability."
Bishop's eyebrows shot up in surprise, and he stepped closer as he cocked his head to stare at her as if she'd suddenly developed a very interesting facial feature. "You're a telepath?"
Rogue shrugged and began to remove the sparring gloves from her hands, though she retained the thin nylon ones that covered her arms. "Not in the traditional sense. It only works in the way that it takes the knowledge of how to use the powers I'm taking. As a consequence I get personality and memories. Professor Xavier gave some thought to trying to stop the mental exchange, but the few times we tried that I had absolutely no control over the abilities I took and," she paused for dramatic effect, "the resulting outburst of power was bad. I don't think Storm ever got all the blue fur out of the carpet."
Logan chuckled roughly from the door, startling the three occupants. "She didn't, but after you disappeared she stopped trying."
Rogue's face lit up at the sight of her who she considered her only friend in this time. "Logan!"
Without a word he opened his arms and Rogue flew to them, a small giggle slipping out as he easily lifted her off the ground. The very visible affection between the two had Betsy shifting her feet uncomfortably and Bishop glancing away. His superiors had done all they could to keep the former X-Men apart after Rogue's move to X.S.E. Headquarters.
In fact, his superiors had done their damnedest to make sure no one knew, and would ever find out, that Rogue was here. The file under which all information gathered about their time traveler was labeled top secret; no other branches of government had access to it.
"Surprising to see you here, Logan," Bishop said blandly, his eyes twinkling with mirth.
"Hard to get an appointment," Logan replied just as blandly, his eyes not as mirthy as they were aggressive.
Bishop shrugged and glanced meaningfully at Elisabeth Braddock, where she stood next to him. Logan understood the implication and kept his real opinions of the situation to himself, at least he would until Betsy was gone.
With an almost animalistic grin, Logan introduced himself to the attractive British woman. "I'm Logan."
She smiled back, and for a second mirrored Logan's primal twinkle in her own eyes, but within seconds Bishop was sure he'd imagined it. "I'm Elisabeth, but you can call me Betsy."
Rogue explained the situation. "Betsy is a telepath. She's here because Bishop's 'superiors' want to know how my powers work. I just got done explaining what the Professor found out."
Logan started to ask why the X.S.E. Board of Directors thought it was their business, but Betsy quickly spoke up. "And you've actually given me an idea, Rogue." The group turned to her and listened as she started to explain. Betsy smiled to herself as she realized that for the first time since she'd walked into the room they were actually paying serious attention to her. She struggled to remain stoic in an attempt to translate their silent curiosity into respect for her.
"You said your ability works in that it grafts alien, well at least to you, DNA onto your own. As a reaction, you develop that person's mutant powers, if they have any, and telepathically pull knowledge and personality from their minds. My question for you is have you ever had a blood transfusion?"
Rogue blinked in surprise, she hadn't been expecting that question (or any question at all). "No," she responded automatically. She stumbled as her mind raced over her past to try and remember if her instinctual response was wrong. "I've been hurt and hospitalized quite a few times, but I never lost any blood or needed a transfusion. Usually I'd just imprint Logan," whom she shot a grateful glance, "and healed myself up."
Betsy smiled in pleasure as her mind explored the possibilities of an idea percolating in her head. "I believe, unsubstantiated, that a blood transfer might do the same thing skin-to-skin does. The DNA from the blood would be imprinted onto your own, without any of the messy personality and memory transfer."
Bishop was already shaking his head. "She just told us that without the telepathic transfer, she can't control the abilities she takes."
Betsy, if possible, smiled broader. "And I heard her, but I have a solution for that as well, I think. The transfer is telepathic by nature, right? Well," she held her arms out and gestured to herself, "you're looking at a telepath! I believe I can remove the knowledge of how to use the abilities by the donor and implant them in Rogue's head. That takes away the emotional problems and uncontrollability."
Logan remained silent but admitted to himself that he was intrigued. Professor Xavier would surely never have taken such an out-of-the-box approach to it.
Rogue was less silent.
"So...I could use my power...without hurting anyone?" Her face seemed to brighten as the idea of it dawned on her. "That sounds...really nice." She finished quietly, ducking her head and unconsciously lacing her gloved hand with Logan's.
Betsy started thinking out the mechanics of the situation, still speaking but now more to herself than any of them. "Then there's the question of what to do with the abilities she's already imprinted. I suppose the same process could be applied to them, but that's an extensive undergoing and I'm not sure any telepath we have on staff would be capable of doing it..."
Bishop and Logan watched in amusement as Betsy proceeded to walk and talk herself right out the door, leaving the trio behind to discuss this new possibility of a "cure" for Rogue's problem, and the new complications rapidly arising in their future.
"She's...interesting," Logan noted to Bishop, ignoring the too silent form of Rogue beside him. Without paying much attention to either of them, Rogue glared down at the dark gloves covering her bare skin, rubbing her fingers together just to here the rough catch of cloth on cloth.
"I'd rather have Jean on this case, but unfortunately my superiors disagreed," Bishop explained as he removed his sparring gloves and threw them on a side table. "Surprised to see you here; you're not on the approved list."
"Since when did some silly little list stop me from doing or going somewhere?" Logan asked with another animalistic grin, popping his claws with a sharp sound and startling Rogue out of her reverie.
"List? For what?"
"To even get into X.S.E. Headquarters," Bishop explained. "Logan's been banned ever since he had an "argument" with the Board of Directors over the direction the organization was heading. They still haven't gotten the claw marks out of the walls."
Logan added with a small chuckle. "Not all of them were mine. Laura gives as good as she gets."
"Laura? Is she one of the Directors?" Rogue asked as she stepped away from Logan, realizing just how far into his comfort zone she'd treaded (and just how much of her own she'd ignored).
Bishop grinned maliciously. "Yeah, she's the head Director. She's also Logan's daughter."
Logan bit back a grin at the shock on Rogue's face. "Technically, she's a clone." He turned a mean look promising retribution for Bishop later. "And it's not like it's a big surprise, Lucas. Rogue has met Laura before."
"I have?"
"Yeah, but I think we were still calling her X-23 at the time."
Day 36
New York City, New York
"I'm bored."
"Get over it."
"Very bored."
"It's called a stake-out."
"Incredibly bored."
"Read a book."
"I'm so bored; I think I can literally feel the cells in my body dying."
"If you don't shut up, you're gonna feel something dying and it's gonna be a bit more widespread than cells."
"Bishop?"
The much larger mutant looked away from the monitor long enough to glare at his "bored" partner. "What?" He asked through grinding teeth, tired of having this conversation over and over again in the hours they'd both been sitting there.
"When is Sage coming back?"
"When she's done installing surveillance camera hardware around the Club," Bishop replied in a slightly less grating tone. Even he had to admit that the waiting was wearing on him. Rogue had left almost 24 hours before, and without her there as a buffer, he and Pulse tended to conflict terribly.
That probably had to do with the fact that for most of their relationship, up until Rogue had come into their lives, they'd remained firmly on opposite sides of the law.
Even as Bishop spoke, the monitor before him bloomed to life, several different angles and feeds all directed at the Hellfire Club appearing simultaneously. "Speak of the devil," Bishop muttered ironically as he systematically began checking on all connections and systems of the laptop.
Pulse pushed himself off of the bed where he'd flopped himself over an hour before. "Up and running, then? So...Sage'll be home soon?"
Bishop froze in mid-type and turned a mocking, eyebrow quirking look on the younger mutant. "Do you have a crush on Sage, Gus?"
Pulse grinned and shrugged. "Well...she's a pleather-clad hottie with cold, dominatrix ways...and you're a cranky, uptight, hand-cuff loving older black man." He paused for dramatic effect. "Whose company would you prefer?"
Bishop turned back to the screen. "Good point," he replied with a grin before freezing once more, this time in bad way. "What..."
"What's wrong?"
Bishop shook his head slightly. "I thought I just saw something."
"Saw what?" Pulse asked as he invaded Bishop's personal space and shoved his face over the man's shoulder and close to the monitor.
"A flash of red..."
Much love to my awesome beta, SkyRogue! She rawks my chapter's socks, she does, she does.
Translation:
Bien-aimée beloved
Difficile difficult
Avec un coeur d'or? With a heart of gold?
Je le sais bien. I know it well.
And from previous chapters, though I'd think it obvious...
meine Schwester my sister.
chère dear, beloved (though literally it means 'expensive')