All Characters are the property of Marvel.
It was Friday evening, it was beginning to get dark and that meant only one thing to one occupant of Xavier's Mansion, Rogue was going to have her regular weekly scented bath to unwind. She made very few demands of the other patrons in the mansion but this was one where she put a foot down. On this night every week, she got the second largest bathroom to herself for a few hours to be left in peace. In many ways it was a rather sad indictment of her social life that while many of the others would be considering heading out or at least had the option of going somewhere, the best she could manage was a bath. Though Risty had been straining at the leash in an effort to tempt her out to some party or another, she knew that she'd actually rather the warm soothing water's embrace to a group of sweaty strangers.
She entered as usual carrying what she considered to be the majority of her girly stuff as the private part of her refused to have any of that on casual display with the others stuff. The shelves in the bathroom were kind of a communal thing and if someone needed something, they wouldn't think anything of borrowing someone else's. Rogue did it herself but these things were personal and…well different.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, it bathed the room with enough red light that she didn't need to bother with the lights. Placing the plain black bag on a counter, she removed a number of candles and placed them at regular intervals around the bathtub. The candles were nearly gone and she knew that she'd have to go to that small store that was her little secret before next Friday.
She started the hot water running before getting some bubble bath and adding a liberal amount, a mushroom of foam quickly forming where the water mixed with it. She reached into a side pouch of the bag and retrieved a number of small bath pearls. They were gaudily colored but from experience, Rogue found that this brand was the most…satisfying.
Hearing a muffled voice from outside by the garage, she interrupted her ritual to open the one stained glass window slightly to better hear what was going on. Just because a girl wasn't going out didn't mean she couldn't listen in on those that were. Living vicariously was better then not living at all.
She could now clearly hear Kitty shouting for Scott to hurry up and she knew immediately what all the fuss was about. Lance and Kitty had arranged to go out on a date-date and for some strange reason, Scott had been roped into driving her to the cinema. It would take someone of Kitty's good nature to miss the fact that Scott would rather eat glass then deliver any member of the team to Lance and that Lance would feel uncomfortable for the rest of the night because before leaving, Scott, being Scott, would just have to say something that would annoy Lance. For Kitty's sake, she hoped the two guys would just leave their issues slide for once as Kitty deserved at least one night of happiness.
A rather beleaguered Scott finally emerged from the mansion hopelessly trying to calm a clearly hyper Kitty. She could understand her excitement. In this very room not an hour and a half ago in a rather unusual display of solidarity, the entire female contingent of the house had given Kitty a complete make over. There had been a lot of discussion (arguing really) about how much effort it should appear she spent on getting ready as she wanted to look good for Lance, but not so good that it would appear she was ready to have his children on the first date.
They had settled for a happy medium and the important thing was that Kitty was happy, her long hair tied up in an elaborate retro beehive look with enough make-up to suggest she had made the effort but wasn't in any danger of being considered a fire hazard.
A low guttural growl from outside signaled the imminent departure of Scott's car, the engine idling over reminding her of some big cat. A moment later there was a slight screech as the cat was let off the leash and the car tore down the driveway, with Kitty screaming something about her hair.
Smiling sadly, Rogue turned her attention back to her bath.
He had tried standing patiently and when that didn't work, he tried pacing back and forth but that didn't seem to make things any better either. He wanted a smoke, craved one in fact but knew Kitty would smell it off him straight away and wrinkle her nose in the non-cute manner that meant she was annoyed or upset. For tonight, Lance would have to keep from fidgeting the old-fashioned way, through will power alone.
He couldn't believe he was nervous. He had gone toe to toe with a human Juggernaut, stood at Magneto's side and pissed off Mystique on numerous occasions but somehow the thought of going to the cinema with Kitty seemed to make all of them pale in comparison.
As other couples disappeared into the cinema, he only grew more anxious, the clothes he bought specifically for tonight seemed to be itching more then they should, the cologne that Pietro gave him stinking more then it probably ought to.
And if things couldn't get any more embarrassing, who was pulling up but Summers in that fancy car of his. Kitty said something to Scott who nodded but said nothing. She then hopped out of the car and with that uniquely Kitty mix of shyness and enthusiasm made her way towards him.
For a moment Scott looked over in his direction and Lance thought here it comes but Scott merely gave him the slightest of nods and a small smile before he gunned the engine and dove into the traffic, his car a red blur beneath the streetlights.
"So," Kitty stated as she finally reached him, one of those deafening silences choosing that moment to descend upon them.
"I like your hair" "I like your cologne" they both said at the same time, causing them both to laugh and serving to break the palpable tension. Lance wrapped an arm delicately around her shoulder and guided her towards the foyer.
"Lets go inside and block someone's view with that hair," Lance quipped
"Lance!" Kitty exclaimed as she jokingly slapped him on the arm.
As he walked inside with the girl he had chased for months, Lance wondered what he had been nervous about in the first place. Good things do come to those who wait.
"Who was that particularly dreadful individual in the library?"
"That would be Mr. LeBeau. He's performing some work for me that demands his delicate and rather unique touch."
"His delicate and uique touch extended to trying to grope me before dinner."
"Yes well…I'm sure you conveyed your displeasure to him and he won't try anything like that again in a hurry."
"No…no he won't."
"As long as you left him the use of his hands. Now, keep your eyes closed and turn your head slightly to the left, please."
Emma complied immediately and she felt a feather light touch work its way down from the bridge of her nose. A hand clasped her gently beneath the chin and turned her face the other way.
"Outstanding," Nathaniel Essex observed, "no tissue damage, no inflammation or scaring. The alteration seems to be taking better then expected." He left her and noted something in chart that he had put down next to her.
"I can stop wearing the glasses now?" Emma asked, opening her eyes again.
"Indeed you can. They probably weren't necessary in the first place. You can sit up," he advised as he busied himself with a portable tray of syringes and vials.
The two of them were alone in a clinically clean medical area where Essex spent most of his time when he was in the mansion. The room was illuminated by a single startling white light that gave the place a very sterile feel that was only accentuated by the equipment that was set up all around the room. Some of it looked absolutely state of the art while other instruments looked positively Victorian.
Essex was wearing a large white lab coat over the dark business suit he seemed to prefer and his hands were covered in a clear surgeon's gloves. Emma was wearing a simple white patient's gown that was pooled around her waist leaving her upper body exposed. She felt no discomfort however as he been her doctor for a while now and there was nothing she had that he hadn't seen before.
He casually gave her a hand mirror and she brought it up to her face, carefully examining her nose. It was almost like looking at a stranger's face. Though she knew that only a tiny alteration had been made, she still felt that she may as well have been wearing a mask comprised of someone eles's features.
"It was necessary," she informed him. "I don't look like me anymore. To the others, the glasses will serve to hide that fact."
"You're overstating things," he sighed slightly. He had been expecting her to be unhappy, she usually was upset about something in that manner only the previledged can manage.
"No," she retorted immediately, "when I arrive in school on Monday the thing people will notice about me is that I am no longer wearing glassses, not that my nose had under gone cosmetic alteration."
"They wouldn't have known anyway," Essex informed her calmly, "and it was not cosmetic alteration. There was no need to crudely cut you open, or any time wasted in uncomfortable reccuperation. The procedure I performed last week works quickly and invisibly but the results speak for themselves if I do say so myself."
She turned her face this way and that gauging his work further.
"Cute as a button so to speak," Essex commented wryly as he watched her.
"Quite," she replied with slight irritation, something that actually amused Essex. If only she knew why he tolerated her attitude.
"And the rest?" she asked, indicating the rest of her body with an almost disinterested wave of her hand.
"It's a bigger task. I'll perform it tomorrow morning after breakfast," His confidence in his own abilities was so overpowering that she didn't doubt him for a second. He stopped where he was working to turn and face her as something occured to him.
"You've made contact with Summers," Essex stated.
"Yes," she answered simply, placing the mirror by her side on the examining chair where she sat.
"What do you make of him?" he asked as he leaned against one of the counters, genuinely curious it seemed. It wasn't an emotion Emma saw in Essex often. He always seemed to be ten steps ahead of everyone else so she considered her answer carefully.
"I can't really see what all the fuss is about," she stated simply. It was a lie.
"Oh no?" Essex almost chuckled, though if he suspected anything he said nothing.
Emma returned his gaze evenly, refusing to be caught out. Again she choose to be on the offensive in this verbal debate rather then weather Essex inevitable inquest.
"What is all the fuss about?" she asked. It wasn't the first time this topic came up but Essex always became uncharacteristically coy when it came to discussing anything about Summers other the same vague notion of his importance to the future.
He propelled himself from the counter and removed an old black leather bag from a low drawer. It was the kind of bag that doctors used in the past to carry all their equipment when making a house call. He opened it and removed an ancient looking stethoscope.
Moving around behind Emma, he placed it on her bare back, the cold metal causing her to hiss and jerk forward in the chair.
"Breath in," he commanded and she immediately complied. As he moved the instrument around her back he started to talk.
"Do you know much about genetics Emma?" he asked though he knew it was probably a rhetorical question.
"Not really," she responded between taking gasps.
"Genetics is life my dear. It shapes everything that we are; from the way we look, react to stimuli, interact with one another to our dreams and ambitions, it's all determined by those little strands of DNA. I have spent my life trying to understand its mysteries, how to manipulate it…create it even. For if one can control the very fabric of creation, there is nothing that lies beyond reach."
He moved around to face her as he continued his examination and his lecture.
"One of the fundamental aspects of genetics is inheritance. When two people have a child, the child takes some of the characteristics of both, though usually there are dominant features that always seem to get through. This is true in terms of both the body and the mind. There is naturally some environmental shaping that goes on but a great deal of a person's fundamental nature comes from what their parent's bequeath them genetically."
"Your family, for example are a perfect example of inheritance in both its consistency and inconsistency. Your brother and sisters are the norm whereas you are not. Your father having dark hair, brown eyes etc has genetic dominance over the blonde hair and blue eyes of your mother yet here you are; a blonde blue-eyed child whose the very image of your mother while the rest of the siblings physically take after your father."
He stepped away and she pulled the straps of the gown back over her shoulders as he put the stethoscope back in the old bag before returning to his former place by the counter. He took a hypodermic needle and filled it with a green milky liquid that he injected into Emma's proffered arm.
"But up here," he continued talking as he knocked against the side of his head with a finger," you are very much your father's child. The dry humor, the temper and the keen eye for human weakness are traits that he has passed on to you," he saw the stormy look cross her features and moved quickly to reassure her, "yet still you are not him. I remember meeting you when you could have been barely ten years old and you informed me what you wanted to be when you grew up…do you remember?"
"A teacher," she whispered. It seemed almost like a lifetime ago.
"That's right. Even with your father's rather blue blood coursing through your veins you wanted to be something he could never be. A common civil servant," he practically spelt out the words with some of the same distaste her father would manage. She loved her father and he her in his way, but he had always had high hopes for his children despite what they may have wished for themselves.
Emma was disturbed by all this talk of her family and would have left him right then but for the fact that Essex was being so unusually talkative which meant there was a possibility that he was going to reveal something.
"What has all this to do with Scott…Summers I mean," she corrected instantly.
"Everything my dear," Essex responded with a silky smile, having caught her slip though again he said nothing, "now this is the rather stunted version of events."
"Back at the turn of the last century in…well it's not important where but suffice to say a small enclosed village, an incident took place whereby the entire population of the place was decimated by an outbreak of a new and particularly strain of virus. This rather unique virus had never been witnessed before nor has it been seen since. I say that it's unique because it was one of the first constructed viruses, that these days seem to be the domain of so many doomsday tales."
"But regarding the village when I day entirely decimated, I erred slightly. There was one sole survivor; a young boy somehow managed to crawl through the fallen bodies of everyone he knew and loved, managed against all odds to stumble the twelve miles to a farmhouse where I imagine he related everything to the shocked people who lived there."
"The how and the why of his survival is anyone's guess but even a guess is just an uninformed choice. With enough research a wild claim can transform into a concrete fact. With the passing of time, the boy became a man, and went off to fight in a great war that spanned the world. He survived just about and scarred by the experiences, journeyed to America where he could begin anew for the third time. Settling up north, he married a local girl whom he loved dearly. They had a single child, another boy who like his father heard his countries' call when war threatened the world once again. But as opposed to the trenches he fought as a pilot, gaining a reputation for bravery and skill."
"The war over, he returned home and married his childhood sweetheart and they had three healthy children, two boys and a girl. Through a number of shrewd investments, they grew up in a loving home where money was never an object. When their country rose to face a new enemy, this time the threat being communism, the two boys took up arms like their father and joined the air force. This time however, the duo were not so lucky and only one made it back though. He had been a member of the air cavalry and again like his father, decorated for bravery and such like."
"He remained with the air force when he returned though the wealth his father had made meant he could have lived comfortably for the rest of his life doing nothing at all, but he took his duty keenly and choose to remain an officer. He met a nurse at the base he was stationed and like any good fairytale they fell in love. She made him choose between the military and her and he predictably set aside his country for love. In the fullness of time, they had two sons.
He started a private charter flight company that was doing quite nicely before tragedy struck. While flying back to an airport after a family holiday, the plane encountered difficulties. Only the two young boys survived the crash."
"Through some technical difficulties the two boys become separated. The younger was orphaned off to a family while the other remained in a coma as a result of the crash. When he finally recovered he was shuttled between care centers and homes until finally he come to the attention Charles Xavier who now houses the boy as his own."
He reached into a bag and withdrew a narrow folder. He looked into it and started withdrawing items and handing them to Emma, who took them curiously.
"This is a picture of Scott Summers taken with his brother Alex and their natural parents Christopher and Katherine Summers. Scott's grandfather and his family and a rather grainy portrait of his great grandfather, the same person who crawled out of the village so many years ago."
"How could you possibly know all this?" Emma asked, not believing it all for a moment though the pictures were startling. She could see bits of Scott in all of them.
"That's not important my dear," he responded with a slight smirk. If only she knew. He took a weight from a nearby desk and held it in the air.
"If I drop this weight and it hits the floor the energy expended is kinetic and spent, but if I hold onto the weight it keeps it potential, gets even greater if I increase the height above the floor."
Seeing that he had utterly lost Emma he placed the weight back on the counter and turned to face her, wanting her to understand what he knew to be true.
"Scott Summers is pure potential. Whatever genetic trait saved his great grandfather was passed down from father to son and has nearly reached its full potential in Scott. Like all his male relatives before him, Scott will be on the frontline of a war that will span the world though this one will not based on some social movement but instead on the composition of an individual's cells. Just like them, he is brave, noble and strong with the added benefit of a mutant power."
"It is my belief that were he to be coupled with a powerful psychic, their child could very well be the most perfect creature in creation."
This was all starting to be too much for Emma. For some reason she was starting to feel a little lightheaded.
"Why not just…take him…by…force," she managed. The room was starting to spin and she couldn't think straight.
"I don't take him for the same reason I don't permit you to use your abilities around him; Charles Xavier. His ability for mutant detection is troubling to say the least and with that little army he has created for himself, any forceful coercion of Summers will result in swift and probably brutal retaliation. No, Summers has to come willingly and that is why I need you dearest, sweet Emma."
He lifted up her lolling head and looked into her eyes which glassed over as they tried to focus on his blood red eyes.
"So pretty," he commented to himself as she finally lost consciousness. He laid her gently down on the chair and carefully removed her top. She was very specific about what she wanted done and it would take him a good deal of the morning to get it all done. "So pretty," he repeated, "but still she's not happy."
A thought occurred to him, "Why leave to tomorrow what can be done today," he asked the empty room as he went to get his special instruments.
"Scott was back,", Rogue mused in half-slumber as she lay practically submerged in the large bathtub. Even in this semi-conscious state she still heard his car rumble up the drive and into the garage.
The candles she had placed around the rim of the tub had long since extinguished but she didn't mind in the slightest, the light of the night sky being more then enough for her. All she wanted to do anyway was lie in the warm embrace of the water and let all her worries be soaked away. Sometimes it worked too…for a while at least.
Scott, Scott, Scott.
She stretched happily in the water at the thought of her team leader, a little happy sigh escaping her as she did so. She smiled dreamily knowing just how mortified he'd be if he knew he were such a hot topic these past few days or how embarrassed he'd be if he knew how many naughty thoughts he inspired in her and others, no matter how much they denied it. What made it worse she figured was the fact that he was totally oblivious, didn't even know the power he wielded over those around him. At least if he knew then she'd have something to hold against him but he couldn't even manage that properly.
You joined the X-Men for him.
It was something she had trouble even admitting to herself but it was the truth nonetheless. Even when she had gone over to the Brotherhood he had been civil towards her when the rest of them had blanked her. As always he had tried to make a difficult situation tolerable and had stoically taken her accusations and insults anyway because that was just the way he was.
Joined just for him.
When she learned the truth of Mystique's treachery, it had been an easy choice to join Xavier's brigade but the strange thing was she had been considering about it anyway, the brotherhood's lack of cohesion troubling her whereas the Scott and his teammates resembled a family as much as anything else.
He'll never see you as more then a friend.
There was the heart of the matter but here in the safety of the water she could dream. Her head slid beneath the waters surface as she ignored painful reality.
He hadn't intended to go this far this early but he would have been a fool to turn down an opportunity like this. His position secure he carefully fed the thin cable about an inch into the window. Bathed in the green from his night vision goggles, he could see that the room appeared empty, a bathroom of some sort. He twisted the cable slowly and the view moved slowly around the room…no it was empty all right.
He retracted the cable and placed it back in its place in his bandoleer. Whoever thought that thieves got in and out of buildings using a helpful girl's hair pin and a credit card were sorely mistaken; it was all high tech now. He examined the window carefully for any potential sensors and satisfied when he found none carefully grasped with both hands. Checking his stance once more, he lifted the window slowly, pushing it up another foot or so and then he waited for some sigh of an alarm going off.
Satisfied that he was still undetected he slid in through the gap, contorting to fit in through the narrow space. Landing on his hands he rolled to his feet in one quick but silent motion. There was an unusual smell in the air, incense or something. He touched one of the floor tiles with a finger and felt moisture. Someone had been in here recently.
The sound of something breaking through water almost made him spring clean through the window but instinctively he held his breath and his position. There was an intake of breath and then a long contented sigh from his right where the tub was. For what seemed like an eternity he stayed motionless until finally he dared move again. He rose to full height, his eyes watching the tub intently through the night-sight.
With practiced ease he edge closer to the tub until finally he saw her. Even through the green tint of the goggles he wore, she was radiant. Her wet hair was matted to her face, two strange white streaks showing up readily in his altered vision. Due to an abundance of foam, her dignity was kept largely intact but he saw enough to make him lick his lips.
He should have left right there and then, either to continue towards the goal or to get the hell out of here but he couldn't tear himself away from the bathing beauty. Having made the wrong decisions all night he decided to carry out in that vein and slowly pushed his goggles up, revealing black on red eyes. A fingerless glove stretched forward until it hung shaking over the side of her face.
"You'll blow everything Remy," a voice that sounded strangely like his papa warned him, "just for some mermaid in a bath."
What did papa know?
His index finger hardly brushed her face when he jumped back like he had been punched in the gut, all the breath stolen from him. A frantic Rogue, who had been shaken from bliss by an assault of memories and images that were not her own sprang to her feet and in a moment that would make her cringe everytime someone brought it up, she screamed with the all the vigor of a B-Movie queen.
Evan and Scott, who had been talking down in the garage were nearest when Rogue screamed.
Evan was already starting to move, "That sounded like…"
"Rogue," Scott finished as he sprang towards the stairs. "Get the others," he ordered as they hit the landing of the first floor. Evan complied immediately and tore off down the hall as Scott continued upwards unerringly.
The part of him that wasn't urging his legs to move faster sorted through tactical data; Friday night meant Rogue would be in the bathroom, the door would be locked from the inside meaning Kurt or Kitty would have to go in, Kitty would be better as who knows what condition Rogue would be in. Still, Rogue never screamed, no matter what the danger. This was serious. All on its own, one of his hands had snaked up to hold his glasses.
"Calm down, chere," a still rather stunned Remy pleaded in gasps, reaching out towards her while trying to figure out what the hell he had just happened. The jumping up and screaming he understood but the fact that he felt like he had been hit by a bulldozer, he did not.
Rogue stood dripping in the bath, some part of her remembering that she was naked and doing the best to retain some modesty but another part told her that someone had tried something they really shouldn't have and to be ready for anything. The two of them had been like that for a few moments when things got really surreal.
"Rogue!" a voice called but she couldn't find her voice to answer.
She was aware of someone trying the door before she heard the familiar whipcrack of one of Scott's optic blasts. The door sailed through the room before smashing against the far wall.
Scott stepped in through the hole and took in the scene, light spilling in from the hallway behind him. There was a guy dressed completely in black wearing a lot of high tech gear reaching out towards a completely naked Rogue. It was possible that there was a rational explanation for this and that this commando would be only the one to supply it but frankly at that moment Scott wasn't interested.
Rogue wouldn't scream unless threatened which was all he needed to know.
Remy turned to face him just as Scott lifted his glasses and opened his eyes, the red energy gushing forth like this were its only chance to escape. If Remy thought getting hit by something akin to a bulldozer was the worst thing that could happen to him that night, then nothing could prepare him for when Scott's freight train like blast knocked him and a great deal of the wall behind him clean out of the building.
Scott ran to the gaping hole he had created to the ground two stories below and was surprised to see the stranger stumbling into the darkness. His mind was already thinking of pursuit when a whimper from behind him dragged him back to more immediate concerns.
He dashed over the remains of the door and grabbed a large towel. Without a word, he leapt into the bath and wrapped her up in it. Not knowing what else he could do, he held her until Evan arrived with Storm and Kitty who could only stare in shock at the carnage in the room.
To be continued…