Notes: For those looking for more concern over Rogue... well, there's some in this chapter, so I guess you should have just been patient, huh? :) Seriously, this angst stuff is kinda hard for me, and I'm trying to keep it to a minimum. Oh, this chapter also features a scene that really didn't need to be in the story, but I wanted it to be. And I'm the Godlike Writer so it stays! Ha ha ha!
What happened to the girl I used to know?
You let your mind out somewhere down the road.
- from "Don't Bring Me Down" by Electric Light Orchestra
It was weird, Kitty thought, to know that her roommate wasn't really her roommate. Beast and Wolverine had run through the entire explanation earlier, at dawn training, and everyone had been suitably freaked out - except herself and Scott, because they'd already known about the switch, and Jean, who was doing something with Cerebro. Kitty hadn't known everything, of course, including the fact that her name was Carol and not Ace. "Carol" was an okay name. Kind of old-fashioned, but okay.
And now that the shock of the previous night was wearing off, the scariness of the whole thing was threatening to overwhelm her. So far, in her efforts to get ready for school, she'd been able to suppress it; if she looked at the sleeping figure in the bed across the room, there was nothing different to be seen, and she could pretend it was a normal morning. Denial wasn't just a river in Egypt, like her mom said.
Kitty had missed Carol coming in the night before because she'd been asleep, but she had woken up enough to hear Carol saying something about the Odd Couple personified. That fit, she guessed. She and Rogue really didn't have anything in common.
She kind of missed Rogue. Okay, so she really missed Rogue, and she was worried about her, and she hoped the adults figured out how to switch their brains back soon. Everyone felt the same way. But it had been a nice surprise to wake up and see Rogue's half of the room looking almost... clean. Carol must have straightened it before she went to bed. Kitty could get used to that; she wasn't exactly a neat-freak herself, but Rogue was - had been - a total slob and she was sick of that half of the room looking like a tornado had hit it.
The alarm by Rogue's - Carol's - bed went off, and Kitty looked over her shoulder to see her new- old roommate sitting up and running a bare hand through her hair.
"Good morning," Kitty said, trying to be cheerful, and returned her attention to the closet in front of her.
"Good morning," Carol said. "Kitty, right?"
"Mm-hm." Kitty gave up on the floor of her closet and stood, dusting her hands off and considering. Had she taken them out of the box? She must have, because there was the box in the corner, right underneath her new sweater, and it was empty. But then where had she put them?
"What are you looking for?"
"A new pair of shoes," Kitty said, dragging her desk chair over and climbing on top of it, on the theory that maybe she'd put the shoes on the top shelf of the closet. "They're sandals, with this cute strappy thing over the ankles."
"Ah, youth," Carol said dryly, coming to stand beside her. She looked a lot fresher and more alert than Rogue did in the morning. The plain grey sweatsuit she was wearing - as opposed to some depressing Goth outfit - did wonders to further the impression. "That chair doesn't look very steady."
Kitty shoved a dusty shoebox out of her way and said, "Oh, no, it's fine. I can keep my balance."
"I guess you'll all be going to school." There was definitely an edge there, but Kitty decided to ignore it.
"Yeah, unless I can't find these shoes in time to catch a ride- Aha!" She leaned forward to snag the sandals, which were tucked way, way further back than they should've been considering that she'd bought them only a week ago, and felt herself overbalancing just as her fingers closed around the straps.
"Whoa, careful-" Carol said quickly, reaching out a hand to steady her.
Kitty looked down in horror at the bare fingers closing around her equally bare wrist and overbalanced some more in a last-second attempt to dodge the memory drain she knew was coming. "No, don't -!"
But nothing happened.
Kitty looked again, just to be sure. Yes, Rogue's hand was touching her wrist. Rogue's very gloveless hand. Skin-to-skin contact was being made.
So where was the absorption?
Carol held on to her wrist a moment longer, then released it and stepped back, looking thoroughly confused and a little indignant. "I wasn't going to hurt you."
"No, no, it's just that..." Kitty started, then trailed off helplessly. How did she explain it to Carol? Obviously no one else had. And it raised some very, very big questions. She dropped her head, placing a hand over her eyes. She did not need this at 7:00 AM. "Oh boy."
Carol followed her roommate's slightly panicked run down the stairs with no small amount of confusion. There was something here she wasn't getting, and it was more than why the Cajun kid kept looking at her like she was going to blink out of existence any moment, and he couldn't wait to see it. Oh, no - she understood that well enough. It was probably the only thing she'd figured out.
She was a little annoyed with Kitty's demands that she follow the younger girl, because her intention was to quietly sneak out at the first opportunity, go back to the city, and find Warren. Anxiety for him had been tugging at the edges of her mind since she'd woken up, but she believed Logan and Beast when they said that they'd help her find him. She'd seen the proof of that when Beast had exited the Danger Room the night before and gone directly to work, trying to find Warren's mutant signature despite the high likelihood that it had been altered or (she hated to admit) no longer existed.
What Logan had told her of his conversation with Mystique made her fear the latter was the case.
Kitty rushed through the foyer and down a hallway, finally skidding to a halt in the kitchen. "Guys!" she blurted out. "Where's Mr. McCoy?"
The kids in the room - Carol recognized only Cyclops and the fuzzy blue one - looked at her with mild curiosity. Then they turned their attention on Carol with undisguised speculation dancing in their eyes. She gave them all a friendly smile, which seemed to take them aback. Evidently Rogue had not been a very cheerful person in the mornings; she herself was eyeing the coffee maker in the corner, but any house with Logan in it was producing military-grade sludge only, and she'd had quite enough of that.
"He's still working with Cerebro," Cyclops said. "Jean's down there too."
"Yeah, tell her to get a move on or get left behind," a boy said, pushing a skateboard back and forth beneath the table.
"Tell her," Cyclops said, scowling at the boy, "to take her time. And I have some asprin if she needs it."
Carol raised an eyebrow as she followed Kitty from the room, but only because laughing would have been rude. She'd said it once already this morning, but she felt like saying it again: Ah, youth. All the foibles and intricacies of teenage life... after so long in the company of deadly serious plots and plotters, it was a breath of fresh air. If it hadn't been for the shadow of dread hanging over her, she thought she could enjoy it here.
The idea that she was occupying someone else's body had lost most of its strangeness after the Danger Room session. She still had her powers, and that was what had truly concerned her. Being someone else... Well, it didn't thrill her, but she could adapt. She'd done a damn good job adapting to the Kree genes, hadn't she?
Kitty drew to a stop in front of the open door of the cavernous Cerebro room. "Mr. McCoy?"
"Good morning, Kitty," Beast said, beckoning her forward without looking up from the screen. "I could use your opinion on this protocol."
Jean was also in the room, standing next to Beast and rubbing her forehead in obvious pain. A metal helmet rested on the console next to her; Carol didn't know the equipment, but she did know a psionic migraine when she saw it, and she doubted the asprin would help.
Kitty grabbed her arm and tugged her out onto the narrow walkway, saying with some urgency, "Mr. McCoy, Carol doesn't have Rogue's power!"
Beast straightened abruptly and turned to look at them. Jean opened one eye, winced, and kept it open.
"Good morning," Carol said pleasantly.
"Ah - good morning," Beast said, blinking. "Kitty, what are you talking about?"
"Okay, she just touched my wrist, you know, with her bare hand, and like nothing happened!"
Beast frowned. "That shouldn't be."
"I know!" Kitty exclaimed, frustrated.
Jean winced again. "Not so loud, please."
"Sorry."
"I've been trying to figure it out all night - with what little help the professor could give me from Scotland - and I think I've come up with an answer." Beast typed a quick sequence into the console, and a holographic display popped up above them. Carol regarded the oscillating waves with interest. Some kind of distinct energy pattern, she thought. "But if you're right, Kitty -"
"I am!" she cut in, loudly, then looked at Jean, who was now cringing instead of wincing. "Oops. Sorry, Jean."
"If you're right," Beast continued calmly, "then my theory makes no sense."
Carol, being sure to keep her volume down, asked, "What is your theory?"
"We had been operating under the assumption that your mind is in Rogue's body and vice versa. Your energy signature is here, so it stood to reason that Rogue's would be... wherever. To that end I had Cerebro spend the better part of the night searching for her signature outside of the Institute. I couldn't find it. But what I did find," he said, gesturing at the hologram, "was yours. Your signature is emmanating from a convent in Brooklyn."
"My signature," Carol repeated, letting her increduality show freely. "From a convent. In Brooklyn."
Beast nodded. His expression was serious. "And Rogue's signature is here also. I think I should to explain something to you, Carol, before I go on: Rogue's power, simply, is to steal other peoples' powers. She also, occasionally, takes memories and personality traits. Jean said last night that your mind had a double echo of some kind. I started to wonder about that, so I had her search Cerebro for those times in the past when Rogue has had contact with someone long enough to retain their memories and personality. In all the incidents recorded, the double echo appears."
Jean said, "Faintly, sometimes, but it's there."
Beast stepped forward and hesitated, then said, "Carol, I don't think you switched bodies. I think that Rogue, for whatever reason, absorbed your mind so completely that you now exist outside of your body. In other words, you're a duplicate psyche. An extra."
Carol closed her eyes, letting the statement's full impact hit her and forcing down the rising tide of panic when it did. She was. She knew that. She wasn't a copy, she wasn't someone's purloined memories and chunks of personalities no matter whose body she was in, and for a few moments she refused to even consider the idea. But reality intruded in the form of more memories: a lab, a metal table; her arm numb, a frightened girl next to her... the pale, young face she now wore. And very, very hazy - almost more of a subconscious feeling than an actual memory - being drained of life.
She didn't want to believe it. But she knew it was true.
"Carol?" Beast said, gently, and the word was accompanied by an even gentler, steadying hand on her shoulder.
She opened her eyes and saw all three of them staring at her with concern. Logan was right; these were good people. Nonetheless, they didn't need to worry about her. She was a trained operative, a military officer, a woman who really had seen stranger stuff than this, and she was not going to fall to pieces over something so minor as being a psyche in the wrong body.
She gave Beast a small nod to reassure him, then stepped forward purposefully, resting her hands lightly on the console. This might not be a stint she'd planned on, but it was time to take control of the situation. "All right. I assume this absorption usually wears off?"
"Uh... Yes, it does," Beast stammered.
She stared hard at the hologram, as if all the secrets of the universe were in there. "How long does it take?"
"It's a sixty-to-one ratio." Beast sounded slightly more composed now. He keyed another sequence into the console and a diagram appeared. "Roughly. It's hard to find volunteers for more precise experiments, and Rogue's not too keen on it herself. A one-second touch results in a sixty-second transfer, during which time the, um, victim is incapacitated."
She turned around and leaned against the machine, crossing her arms over her chest. "Woozy-incapacitated, or unconscious-incapacitated?"
"Both. It depends on the length of the contact."
Carol tapped one finger in a rapid staccato against her arm, thinking and remembering more vague, hazy impressions. "What if... What if the contact was over a minute? What would happen then?"
Beast frowned and scratched his head. For a moment he looked exactly like a big, dumb, blue gorilla, and Carol's no-nonsense attitude slipped a notch into amusement. With his next words, though, her humor evaporated as though it had never been. "Well... I'm not sure. Nothing good. Hopefully Storm and Wolverine will find out more."
"And how will they do that?" she demanded.
Beast's eyes widened in alarm, and Carol felt a wave of anger at the realization that he and the rest had been hiding something from her. She pushed off the console and took a few steps forward, well aware of the menacing air she was projecting.
Jean and Kitty edged away, Kitty chattering nervously. "Well, like, Scott is waiting, and um, we're going to be late for school, so, like... goodbye!"
She watched as the girls practically fled from the room. Jean was a little hampered by the fact she was still clutching her forehead, but they made good time. Once they were out of the hallway, Carol returned her attention to Beast.
"And how," Carol asked again, leaning forward without uncrossing her arms, "will they do that?"
He sighed. "Jean has a headache because she's spent the last hour making Cerebro find something it didn't want to find - a very well-cloaked mass of mutant signatures originating from the New York City sewers. Wolverine and Storm are there now, searching."
"I KNEW it!" Carol exclaimed, throwing her arms wide in mixed exasperation and triumph. "I knew it, and now you've wasted a whole night - not to mention all the time while I was out of it!"
Beast shook his head, holding up a hand for patience. "Be that as it may, we still have to figure out why you've displaced Rogue, and why her powers aren't working."
"I'd rather be bashing that sick doctor's face in," Carol said; a brief moment of deja vu hit her and she had the idea that she'd bashed his face in already. "But let's talk."
The ride to school had been agony, even though Scott had obviously done his best to avoid any bumps or potholes, and the other kids had been respectfully quiet. The only thing that kept Jean from dissolving into a wretched ball of tears right there in the front seat was the merciful fact that she couldn't hear anyone's thoughts. Her telepathy was all but completely burnt out. She just wished it wasn't a temporary thing.
She was never, never, never using Cerebro again. That had been so stupid she couldn't believe she'd suggested it - and she really couldn't believe that Beast and Professor X had agreed to it. It wasn't like they'd had a lot of other options, true, but still.
And whose bright idea had it been for her to go to school?
The car braked to a gentle halt, and she risked opening her eyes. The bright morning light stabbed into her brain and she shut them again immediately. "This is going to be harder than I thought," she said, trying to joke and failing miserably.
There was a rustling noise, and then something cool and hard was placed in her hand. Scott said, "Here. Does wonders for me."
Jean fingered his spare pair of glasses and managed to give him a genuine smile. "Thanks, but that would probably make more than one person upset." And the constant red would turn her headache into a crippling nightmare, but she saw no reason to ruin the gesture by telling him that.
"Well - here," Kitty said, leaning over the back of the seat and handing Jean a pair of regular, black-lensed sunglasses. "I mean, it's not like I'm using them anymore, right?"
Jean looked at the shades, recognized them as the ones Kitty had worn as a Siren, and shook her head - gingerly. She slid the glasses on and the searing light dimmed to tolerable levels. "Thank you. I can't believe you kept these."
Kitty giggled, sending spikes of pain through Jean's temples, and then it was time for her to face the true test of the morning: getting out of the car and walking to class.
She took a deep breath and carefully opened the door, carefully put her feet on the pavement, carefully raised herself up. There was a brief moment, as she stood leaning against the car's frame without trying to show it, that her skull felt like it was going to burst its seams, but it passed. Jean took a step forward. It wasn't as bad as she'd feared, actually, even with the chatter from the other students, and she made it into the school with some semblence of normality.
She was opening her locker, just starting to think that maybe the day would be bearable, when a red-and-white shape inserted itself in her peripheral vision, and Duncan said, "Hey, babe. What's with the shades?"
"I have a headache," Jean said flatly, hoping he would take the hint.
"That's too bad, 'cause they make you look hot," he said, casually kicking the lockers. "You're still coming to practice today, right? Need my cheering section."
The sound of his sneakers hitting the metal locker, over and over and over, was more than she could stand. She finished stowing her books and shut her locker - gently - and risked further headache by using her telekinesis to pull Duncan's feet out from under him.
He stumbled, but regained his balance almost immediately. "What was that?"
"What?" she said, feigning innocence, which was infinitely easier to do in sunglasses. Years of living with Scott had taught her that, at least.
"Why'd you trip me?" he demanded.
"I wasn't anywhere near you."
"Hey, having a headache doesn't mean you get to be a-"
She cut him off with another TK tug at his feet, this one stronger. It made her vision swim a bit, but it was worth it to hear his irritated, inarticulate protest. "You could show some sympathy, you know."
"What, because you partied too hard last night at that freak school?" he said, face twisting into a look of disdain. Maybe it was disgust. Her headache was rapidly sending her past the point of not caring. "With Summers?"
"Just go away, Duncan," she said, pulling off Kitty's sunglasses and rubbing her eyes hard. He was making her headache worse just by standing there; at this rate she'd never make it through first period, let alone the whole day.
He exhaled, raising his hands in temporary surrender. "Okay, I'm sorry. Look, I'll see you at practice, right? Coach is trying to find a receiver who can catch, and I'll be throwing all afternoon..."
Duncan went on and on, and Jean suddenly realized two things: she did not want to spend another second listening to him swoon over himself, and she did not care if she hurt his feelings. Some last bastion of compassion told her to let him down easy - or better yet, to just grin and bear it - because she'd regret it later if she didn't, but for once, Jean did what she wanted to. Really wanted to.
"No," she said. "Go away forever. I don't want to see you anymore."
He blinked several times, and then comprehension flooded his face. "You're breaking up with me?"
Oh, go right for the cliche. Well, what did she expect? She just nodded, and slid the glasses back on.
"Well - you can't!" he exclaimed, now furious. "Because you were never my girlfriend!"
Jean reached the last limits of her patience at that, and turned away. "No argument there."
It took Duncan a full three seconds to put that one together, and when he did, he took a few steps toward her with an indignant, "Hey!"
She kept walking, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, and almost before she knew it she was at the door to her first-period class.
"Jean," Scott said at her elbow.
I swear to God, if one more person does that... She stopped and faced him. "What?"
"I really don't think you should be here today," he said, looking at her with an intense expression she couldn't decipher through the veil of pain.
"Then deal with it," she said, a bit sharper than she'd meant to. "It's none of your business anyway."
"No, it is," he said. "Because your ex-boyfriend just tried to feed me my teeth. He said you dumped him, although I'm betting the rest of the school will hear something different."
She checked her watch; they had two minutes. "And? Don't tell me you're sorry."
A hurt expression flickered over his face, vanishing just as quickly as it had come, and she knew Duncan had been right: she was acting like a bitch. And she would have apologized to Scott for it - of all people to abuse - but the stabbing pain was giving way to a thick, dull pounding, and her brain felt like it had been replaced with wet cotton, and before she could even start to formulate an apology, Scott was already talking.
"I'm not. But Jean - Jesus, you were agonizing about that just last week, and I know the only reason you did it now is because you're not feeling well, and if you're feeling that bad, then you don't need to be at school."
She took off the glasses again, this time in frustration. "I can handle it," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose, "as long people stop harassing me."
"So you didn't nearly pass out when you got out of the car? I just imagined that?" he asked, eyebrows raised high behind his red glasses. She didn't say anything, although she did wonder why he hadn't been as solictious as usual, and he just nodded, as if she'd confirmed his suspicions. "You have Yearbook second period, right?"
"Right," she said automatically. What did that have to do with anything?
"You guys aren't doing anything important today?"
"No." She started to see the threads of his plan, a few beats slower than she would have otherwise. "Just going over the text selections, or something like that."
"Okay, good. I'll take you back to the Institute, and have Mr. McCoy see if he can find something stronger than asprin."
"But you have Trig," she said. They all knew each other's schedules, for efficiency's sake, but she had made a special point of memorizing his.
He shrugged. "Kitty will cover for me. Just humor me, Jean. Please?"
The bell rang, sending new spikes through her head, and she gave in. "Okay."
He broke into a relieved smile. "Great. I'll meet you here."
"So many questions could be answered if I was simply there," the professor said, sounding frustrated. "If I had known that this... atrocity would happen in my absence, I would never have agreed to help Dr. MacTaggert design-"
"With all due respect, Professor, that's not going to help," Carol cut in. Her tone was sharp. "Beating yourself up is just going to slow us down."
Beast said, "Charles, is there anything you can tell us?"
"Only that, in all probability, your conjectures are correct. The data from Cerebro look solid, and I trust Jean's abilities. Carol has taken over Rogue's psyche."
"I suppose the real question," Carol said slowly, "is why I'm in charge, and if that will ever change."
There was a momentary hesitation, and then Professor Xavier said, "Carol, even judging from the short time I've known you, I can tell that you have a... forceful personality."
"I prefer to call it confidence, sir," she said briskly, "and it's an easy thing to have when you can crumple steel in your bare hands."
"Exactly. I think you may have simply overwhelmed Rogue, and it's unlikely that she can regain control unless you relinquish it."
"Considering that my signature has just vanished from the radar, that won't be anytime soon," Carol said. "And if it turns out that my body is dead, it'll be never."
"Your body isn't dead," Beast said, clearly trying to be patient. "It's just been moved from the convent into a shielded facility. For example, hospitals confuse Cerebro's scanners - there's too much activity."
"I'll believe it when I see myself breathing," Carol said. "Until then, this brain-sharing is going to have to continue."
Again a hesitation. "There is also the possibility that you may have displaced her altogether. In that case, I'm afraid that she will not return, even if you do give up control."
"But you can't know that for sure," Beast said immediately, worried. "Not without actually examining her."
"No, but we have to be realistic," the professor said.
There was a long silence, until Carol sighed. "I feel sorry for the girl. And that Cajun kid."
"Remy," Beast said.
"Right," Carol said, and went on talking.
But the person leaning against the wall outside the Cerebro room, quietly eavesdropping, did not hear the next few minutes.
This changed everything.
It changed nothing.
By the time they reached the Institute, Jean's headache had gotten significantly better. In fact, it had almost disappeared by the end of first period, but Jean had followed the plan anyway. For starters, Scott would never believe that she was fine. For another thing, Beast liked to keep track of incidents like this, as benchmarks of their progress and for future medical reference. And the final reason - the one she would usually try to ignore - was that it gave her some time alone with Scott.
But now, as the events of the morning sank in, she found that the second reason was much easier to accept - as was the steady warmth of his hand on her back as they walked into the foyer.
"Beast?" Scott called. The word echoed around. "Uh - Carol?"
"They're probably still busy," Jean said.
"Yeah. Huh... I guess they'd be down in the basement, then." He scratched the back of his head, looking suddenly uncertain, then blurted out, "I, uh, I told Taryn I didn't want to see her anymore."
A smile broke across her face before she could stop it, and she felt a bright surge of emotion flood through her mind as her telepathy kicked back in and showed her everything behind that sentence. He smiled back, and she lost a few moments in the simple warm happiness of knowing exactly how she felt, and how he felt, and that those two things were the same.
Then a small pack of the new kids emerged from the upper hallway, heading downstairs, and Jean looked away, biting her lip to stop smiling like an idiot.
"Hey, there is somebody out here," Bobby said, smacking Jubilee on her shoulder. "I told you."
"Whatever," she said, scowling.
Sam reached the bottom of the stairs first and asked, "What are you guys doing back?"
"Jean has a headache," Scott said, nodding at her.
Bobby looked at Jean, who was fairly sure she was radiating joy and vitality, and frowned in confusion. "Oh. Well, Beast and, um, Carol are still in the basement."
"Thanks," Scott said, and put a hand on Jean's shoulder. "Come on."
"Wait," Sam exclaimed in his soft Kentucky drawl. "We wanted to ask you about somethin'. The TV in the lounge? None of us can get it to work."
Scott looked at her, the question clear.
"I'll be fine," Jean said, adding a telepathic, I really do feel better now.
He was startled for a second, then smiled. "Okay then."
Jean left them discussing reasons for the television's failure, making her way down the hallways and elevator to Cerebro. If the headache had been fading, it was completely gone now, and the absence of pain was a sweet relief.
There was irony, she thought, in the fact that it took pain to bring joy. And it was even more odd to consider that her life was improving just as her teammates' were disintigrating. Rogue was gone, maybe forever, Remy was becoming a virtual shadow of himself - he hadn't even gone to school today - and Carol's entire future was in the air. She felt sorry for them. At the same time she felt guilty because she was lucky, and none of it was happening to her.
Not that things would be easy; the school's gossip machine would spring into overdrive at the news that she and Scott had both become single on the same day - in the same hour, at that. But it no longer mattered as much as it once would have.
So what if the timing was incredibly bad, more than suspicious, and people would be sniping at them until they graduated? The path of her life had cleared suddenly, and she was too busy looking at the new possibilities to be dragged back into the mire.
Distracted by these thoughts, Jean saw without really seeing that there was someone else in the hallway - someone who vanished around a corner as she approached, so that even if she had been paying close attention, all she would have seen was a flicker of brown from his trenchcoat's hem.
But she didn't pay attention, and so she went to talk to Beast, interrupting his conversation with Carol and Professor X without realizing that Gambit had been listening to it the whole time.