Rogue closed her eyes, breathing in deeply. In and out....in and out... "Mutants aren't immortal." Her lips tightened around the cigarette dangling from her mouth, she removed it after a deep inhale and let the stream of smoke exit her like a spirit. Her words were spoken to no one else, she didn't need to talk to anyone else. She couldn't tell other's her thoughts, so she told herself, as a reminder. But some things she wanted to forget. She never spoke of them. "Teenagers are, though only in their heads." Behind her closed eyes, she imagined the blue shadows dancing feebly across the wall. A window pane enlarged grotesquely across the floor, the silhouette like a nightmare. A sound like the wailing of a dying animal coming from outside. In the woods. From the woods. She shivered, opening her eyes to erase the picture her mind had produced from some deep corner she hid far away. Her cigarette died and she let it, not bothering to punch it out in the ashtray beside her. The feeling of stress as her lungs contracted and pulsed with breath was soothing yet torturous. A thousand different minds, a thousand different thoughts, all of them bore down upon her in this starless night, in her lonely fatigue and insomnia. No one else could get the pain. The anxiety. She didn't really know how to deal with it, except to numb it. Her fingers brushed the soft carpet, scrabbling across the floor to touch the orange pill bottle. As her index finger felt the plastic, her heart raced and jumped into her throat. In her ears she could hear that high wailing, unearthly and not right. A white shape flitted among the trees like a ghost, not nearly as graceful or haunting.
Rogue snapped her hand back, closing her arms about herself. The flashback was harsh....it shouldn't have come...she buried it so deep...why was this happening...
She bit into her palm, trying to silence the sobs that threatened to tear her apart. Inside and out, she wrenched herself free of memories. Memory was only pain.