Momma Don't Preach
The sound of the Vault's power generators thrummed in the corner of the ceiling behind Rogue's head, coming from one of the numerous vents placed at just above ear level. She knew that they weren't just powering the heating and lighting of the massive concrete and steel building, but also keeping the individual cells' power-dampening fields up and running, so that inmates with natural powers (like Venom, or the U-Foes) were kept docile and unable to use their unique abilities. Those that weren't controlled by the fields required more physical restraints – she'd passed a cell that had reinforced steel clamps set into each of its four corners, in the centre of which, sat on a simple square block of plastic, was the genius known to many as Dr Octopus. He'd given her an ugly, pudgy smile, like an overweight shark, as she'd glanced into his room, and it had sent a shudder down her spine. "Come to view the circus of the damned, miss?" he'd asked her, in a jovial, yet utterly chilling tone. "Well, you've come to the right place!" His laughter had echoed in her ears for a while after she'd been guided away from his cell by a heavily-armoured Guardsman, who'd fired a crackling bolt from his foot-long stun baton through the door to Octavius' cell as punishment and then ushered her away as quickly as possible.
"Come on, ladies," he said in a flat, businesslike manner. Obviously he was used to doing this day in and day out, and the novelty of being around superhumans had worn off long ago. Rogue sighed and pondered on how that might feel for a moment or two before she turned to Jenny, who was standing beside her, her hand clasped in Rogue's gloved palm.
"Thanks for comin' with me, Jen," she said quietly. "Means a lot to me."
Jenny smiled, and winked. "That's okay, sweetheart. Means a lot to me, too – it isn't every day you get to meet your girlfriend's mother, is it?"
"That's just it, though," Rogue sighed. "My momma ain't like your average momma. You cross her, you're gonna end up deader than a 'coon that ran under a tank." She touched the bridge of her nose with her free hand, as if massaging away a migraine. "I'm just afraid that if you meet Momma, and she doesn't like you, she'll scare you away. She has that effect on people sometimes."
Jenny squeezed Rogue's hand gently, and then drew her close, into a gentle embrace. "Come here," she said kindly, and then began to speak softly into Rogue's ear. "Lou, you're not the first person who's been uneasy about introducing me to their parents. It'll be fine." She kissed Rogue gently on the forehead, a small fizzle of electricity passing through her lips and into Rogue's skin as she did so, and then continued "Be brave, kiddo. Better to get it over with now than have to tell her after we've adopted our first kid, right?" She nudged Rogue in the ribs, trying to get her to smile. "Right?"
Against all the odds, Rogue burst out laughing. "Oh, God… 'Grandma Raven'? She'd kill us both." Abruptly, she noticed the Guardsman studying his stun baton awkwardly, trying not to look in their direction (probably for fear of gawking, Rogue decided), and gave Jenny a naughty little smile. "We'd better keep going, or the help's gonna get uppity with us."
Jenny laughed. "Oh, my. Can't have that, can we?" She nodded to the Guardsman with a reassuring smile, and offered him her wrists as if he were about to handcuff her. "Don't worry, officer, we'll come quietly."
The Guardsman coughed, seemingly unsure of how to respond, and then pointed towards the passageway to the right with his stun baton. "This way, ladies," he said, doing his level best to keep his eyes on the corridor ahead of him. Rogue and Jenny followed him past row after row of cells, their reinforced, armoured-glass viewing windows displaying every move that the inmates made. In one she saw the Rhino, drugs being pumped through his system continuously in order to keep him docile. Ropes of drool spilled down his chin and pooled on the floor, his usually-crazed eyes rolled up into his head, the pupils barely visible. In another, she saw the man who she'd heard was called Bullseye. He winked at her, then picked up the cockroach he'd been playing with and tossed it at the cell's window with deadly, unerring accuracy. It splattered on the inside of the window, pieces of carapace clinging to the surface of the glass before falling to the cell's floor in sticky lumps.
"Boo," he said, his voice little more than a slithering whisper. Rogue felt another shudder wriggling down her spine, and tried her best not to look at him. She felt Jenny's hand close around hers, and, reassured, she pressed on regardless of who or what else was dwelling inside the cells. Finally, the Guardsman led them to a cell that was situated in the centre of a particular block full of prisoners for whom the use of lethal force had been authorised. Its occupant sat on the meagre chair that had been provided her, clad in a prison-issue orange jumpsuit, writing something down in a tattered, ragged diary with a blunt stub of a pencil.
The Guardsman reached out to press the button on the door that would alert the cell's occupant to the fact that she had visitors – but just as his finger was about to make contact with the round plastic button, Mystique said "Thank you, Mr Guardsman. I think you can leave now, don't you?" The Guardsman shuddered involuntarily, and took his hand away from the button, dropping it to his side where he could reach his stun baton more easily.
"I'll be at the end of the corridor," he said, in a low tone. "Call me when you're finished." Then, he turned on his heel and marched away, taking up an "at ease" position by the door to the particular block of cells that housed Rogue's mother. Rogue could almost taste the relief that he left behind him; it hung in the air like perfumed incense, thick and sweet. She wondered if it might be easier to join him, but then she decided against it. She'd come here to do something – and do something she really needed to do, at that. Jenny seemed to sense Rogue's discomfort, and nodded to her silently, in order to give her a little more strength, before respectfully stepping back a pace so that Rogue could begin talking to her mother.
"Hi, Momma," she said, after a long pause. She figured it was easiest to start off with something simple, and move onto the complicated stuff as time went on.
"Hello, Rogue," Mystique said, still with her back turned towards her daughter. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
"Just wanted to see how you were, Momma," Rogue lied. She knew she sounded false as all hell, but she'd always been a lousy liar. She'd hoped that Mystique would be fooled by it just this once, but Mystique's next words proved that to be a vain hope.
"I see," Mystique said, finally turning to look at Rogue, her yellow eyes reduced to narrow slits. "Why are you really here, Rogue?" She sighed. "Come on. I don't believe you came all the way out here for a family visit." She sat back in her chair, folding her sapphire-blue arms across her chest and giving Rogue a contemplative look. "I don't like lies, unless I'm the one telling them." She offered Rogue a smile, evidently in the hopes of disarming her daughter's all-too-apparent reserve, before she noticed that Rogue was not with her usual companion. "Where's the Cajun Casanova?" she asked, laughing. "Doesn't he like to fly?"
Rogue took a deep breath. Here goes nothin', she thought. "Momma, I…" she began, feeling the words dying in her throat almost before she spoke them. "I…" She coughed. "I ain't with Remy no more," she said finally, before gesturing at Jenny, who had taken a few steps forward and put her left arm around Rogue's waist, while putting her right hand in Rogue's own. "This is Jenny Franklin, momma – my girlfriend. She an' I are… together."
Mystique looked stunned for a moment or two – which was quite a feat, considering she prided herself on keeping her emotions tightly hidden. Then she frowned. "I… see. How long have you known?"
Rogue felt puzzlement creep over her for a moment or two. "Known what? That I'm gay?" She shrugged. "Not long – 'bout six months, maybe. Jenny came to the mansion a few months before that, when she got outed as a mutant, and she needed somewhere to stay. We became friends, and we talked a lot – we used to sit up late watchin' old movies, go swimmin' in the lake, do all the things friends do. Wasn't until she kissed me that I knew something else was there too. I remember the kisses gettin' easier every time, until they were the only kind I ever wanted."
"She kissed you?" Mystique replied, incredulous. "And she didn't pass out?"
"No, ma'am," Jenny said. "My powers protect me, somehow. Don't ask me how – Dr McCoy thinks it's something to do with the way my touch can mess up bioelectric auras, or whatever he calls it. It interferes with the skin-to-skin thing just enough for me not to get affected by Lou's powers."
Mystique scowled, jabbing a finger angrily in Jenny's direction. "When I want your opinion, sweetheart, I'll ask for it." Turning back to Rogue, she said "I see you've shared your real name with her, then. How… touching." She sat back in her chair and regarded Rogue with what looked like a disgusted expression. Rogue shook her head and pressed her fingers up against the glass of her foster mother's cell, stunned at what she was hearing.
"Why are you being this way, Momma?" she asked. "I thought you of all people would understand what I've been goin' through!"
"I understand," Mystique began, her voice with an edge like cut glass, "exactly what it is you've been going through. I understand that you feel you can't be like me in one way, so you've decided to copy me in another. I wonder what Irene would say if she could see you trying so desperately to copy what she and I had?"
Rogue was speechless for a moment or two. "Oh, for God's sake, Momma! Why does everythin' I do have to be about you? The world don't revolve around you – no matter how much you might think it does!" she exclaimed, angrily. "This ain't about me tryin' to copy you an' Irene – this is about me findin' out who I really am, what I really want to be! You don't understand –"
Mystique laughed then, a piercing shriek that stopped Rogue in her tracks. "Oh, I understand plenty, my dear. I had this exact same talk with my father when I brought home my first girlfriend, only he wasn't sealed in a cell at the time, and he wasn't nearly so knowledgeable about the subject. I had bruises on my ribs for weeks after he beat the living shit out of me for 'defying the Lord's creation'. I had welts on my face for longer, because he kept hitting me every time I tried to defy him, to explain why what I felt wasn't wrong." She laughed again, coldly. "You think I don't understand you? Well, I don't think you understand what it is to know hatred and prejudice just for loving somebody, Rogue. When you were with the Cajun, you weren't in danger of getting beaten or spat at just for holding hands. You didn't have to hide behind a dozen masks just to get through the day. You didn't get rocks with hate messages taped to them thrown through your windows by humans too stupid to understand differences. I did." She paused, flame still lurking behind her eyes. "Do you remember when you were a little girl, when we used to go out to restaurants for dinner? I used to disguise myself as a man for a good reason – it was the only way Irene and I could show affection for each other in peace." She sighed. "Take my advice: if this is the way you need to be, you'd better make damned sure you're prepared for what comes with the territory, because once you cross that line you're not going to get to go back. Trust me."
"I know, Momma," Rogue replied, though she had clearly been struck deeply by what Mystique had just told her. "I know all that stuff. Just last week, I had to stop myself from punchin' a guy's teeth down his throat because he told me I was gonna go to Hell for sleepin' with Jen. All I was doin' was holdin' her hand – then I told her I loved her, an' he went off at me like I'd shot his sister, or somethin'."
Mystique's smile was tinged with something akin to remembered pain, as if a similar memory had surfaced in her mind. "That's what I'm talking about, Rogue. Get used to it, because it's going to happen a lot from now on. Human maggots that can't get their heads around differences will keep doing that to you, and they'll keep on doing it, because they're too stupid and bigoted to know any better. They'll tell you you're the one who's evil, that you're the one who'll burn in Hell, or that you're the one with a mental illness – whatever makes them comfortable in their own perverse, twisted little existences."
"I think you ain't givin' humans enough credit, Momma," Rogue said flatly, "but I'll remember what you said, anyway."
Mystique sighed. "That's all I can hope for, I suppose. For what it's worth, I hope this works out for you. Just don't think it's going to be an easy ride, because it won't." She nodded towards Jenny. "Could you give us a moment, Rogue? I'd like to talk to… Jenny, is it? I'd like to talk to her alone, if I can."
Rogue looked at Jenny uncertainly for a moment. "You okay with that, Jen?" she asked. When Jenny nodded briefly, Rogue took a few steps away from the window's surface and began to walk towards the end of the corridor. "I'll better give y'all some privacy, then."
When she was out of earshot, Mystique folded her arms across her chest and regarded Jenny with a clinically curious look, taking in every aspect of Jenny's physical appearance as if she was trying to read the other woman's character through it. "So," she began coldly. "You're the woman who awoke my daughter's dormant Sapphic side, are you?"
Jenny shrugged. "You could call me that, yes." She smiled sourly. "So is this the part where you tell me to stay away from your little girl?"
"Oh, I wouldn't do that to Rogue," Mystique shot back, a similarly sour smile crossing her lips for a moment or two. "I didn't tell the Cajun idiot to leave her alone, even after he broke her heart so many times she had to use duct tape to put it back together – why should you be any different?" She paused, before interlocking her fingers, the index fingers still extended, and then used them to point at the other woman, a disarming smile spreading across her face. "How old were you when you realised you were a lesbian, Jenny? Tell me about it."
Caught off-balance by the abrupt change in tack (and tone), Jenny didn't reply for a moment or two. When she had regained her composure, she said "I was thirteen. I had this huge crush on my geography teacher, Miss Simpson, and I told my best friend about it, like the dumb kid I was. I thought it was perfectly normal to feel that way." She paused. "Sarah didn't. We didn't talk for years afterwards."
Mystique looked thoughtful for a moment, digesting that information carefully. Then she said "And what about your first relationship with a woman? How did that go?"
"With respect, ma'am, I don't see what this has to do with Lou –" Jenny began, before Mystique cut her off.
"Humour me," she said, in a calm but firm tone that suggested she didn't want to be diverted from her course. "How did it go?"
"It was… tough. My partner cheated on me," Jenny replied, "so I was pretty broken up when it ended."
Mystique looked as if she'd just heard exactly what she wanted. "Then you know exactly how it feels to be rejected by your first love, and by your best friend, don't you?" Jenny nodded uneasily, looking only slightly surer of where this was going – and also looking like she didn't like where this was headed, either, now that she had a firmer idea of its destination.
"Yes, ma'am, I do," she replied. Mystique walked right up to the glass of her cell and locked her pupil-less gaze directly with Jenny's.
"Good," she hissed. "Then for your own sake, don't make Rogue feel that way. She adores you – I can see that in her eyes." She paused. "She's only just begun to find out what this life involves, Jenny. Don't pull the rug out from under her – not when she needs you the most. Or I swear I will make you pay – and I promise you, you won't live to regret it." Folding her arms across her chest again, she continued "Do I make myself clear?"
Jenny tried her best to look as composed as possible – without much success. "Crystal," she said, returning Mystique's acid-edged glare as best she could. "Are we done?" Mystique shrugged.
"I suppose we are," she replied, matter-of-factly. "So shall I call Rogue back, or will you?"
Scowling, Jenny turned towards where Rogue was standing. "I'll do it," she said, before raising her voice loud enough for Rogue to hear her.
When Rogue had rejoined them, Mystique nodded towards Jenny with a snake's smile and said "Don't forget what we talked about, will you?"
"I doubt there's any danger of that, ma'am," Jenny replied, gritting her teeth. When Rogue had said her goodbyes to her mother and they were walking away from Mystique's cell, Rogue asked her what Mystique had meant. Jenny put her arm around Rogue's waist and sighed. "Oh, your mother just warned me to do right by you, or she'd come and find me and make me regret it."
Jenny wasn't surprised when Rogue didn't look too shocked. "Somehow I was expectin' that," she remarked, touching the palm of her gloved hand against Jenny's cheek. "Momma can be pretty protective when it suits her. Still, I wouldn't worry about it – if all you gotta do to stop that happenin' is behave yourself, you ain't got nothin' to worry about, have you?"
Jenny laughed. "I guess not. Promise me you won't turn into your mother when you're older?"
"Darlin', there ain't anything I'd like to do less," Rogue replied, a little tinkle of laughter sprinkling her words. Then, she took a deep breath and laid her head against Jenny's shoulder. "Can I say again how glad I was that you were here today? It was… nice… knowing you were there, even when Momma was screamin' at me."
"Hey, it's all part of the job description, Lou," Jenny said, gently stroking Rogue's long brown, skunk-striped hair. "Don't sweat it. I know how rough it can be to come out to your folks. Took me until I was twenty-one to do it – and even then it was really difficult. I'm surprised you were brave enough to do it so soon, actually."
"Yeah, well, Momma and Irene were the two people I cared most about when I was growin' up," Rogue said, thoughtfully. "I thought it'd be easier to come out to someone who knew what I'd be feeling." She sighed. "Guess not."
Jenny kissed Rogue softly on the forehead. "Hey, come on, honey - don't get miserable on me now. The hard part's over." She noticed the Guardsman beside her getting uneasy again, and straightened up a little. "Sorry, officer," she said, mimicking her earlier treatment of the armoured man. "I'll behave myself from now on." She rolled her eyes at Rogue, jerking a thumb in the man's direction. "Men in armour – you can't take them anywhere." The silliness of the remark made Rogue burst out laughing, which made Jenny smile widely. "There you go," she said. "That's more like it."
"Thanks, Jen," Rogue replied. "I needed that."
Jenny chuckled. "Hey, what my lady wants, my lady gets, all right? Now how about we get some Chinese tonight, rent a movie, and just sit and recover?"
Rogue nodded in approval. "Sounds like a plan to me, Jen…"