All I Want for Christmas
A skewed take on Carol's 'invasion' of Rogue's mind and the latter's relationship with her mother, Mystique.
PG-13
A/N – AU version of Impact in which Mystique is both alive and well. Originally intended to be multi-chaptered (and still may become so if I rediscover interest in it), but for now simply a one-shot. Yes, it does become rushed towards the end. I was on an inspirational role, so to speak, and nearly forgot it was 1 AM and my homework was still not completed ;-). Whoops. I may post a revised version in the future.
Disclaimer – I do not own any part of X-Men Evolution, and I do not wish to. Well, maybe Scott's car. It's pretty hot.
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS
"Rogue." I shivered in revulsion at the mention of my name on those lips. I knew she had been watching me for quite some time; her presence was one that was unmistakably foul and bitter. It rode the wind like the crisp, biting winter air. Her white heels left small punctures in the gray snow. "Rogue." I kept my eyes to the ground.
I wanted to scream and to run and to – I wanted to kill her. My hands would wrap around her throat, and I would push her to the guardrail and hurl her over the side of the steep embankment, and the breaking of her bones would congeal with the sound of traffic. Although I was clothed and my skin poisonous, I felt naked and violated. Her presence did not surprise me. It revolted me. If she was able appear as my principal and as a friend and as a classmate, able to find me and to hurt me no matter where I took refuge, then why should I have been surprised that then, too, she had found her prey?
No longer would I stand for this. The hunter became the hunted. "No."
"Rogue, please, I only – I only want…"
"No! If ya don't get the Hell outta mah sight and outta mah life, Ah'll kill you."
"I am not asking for forgiveness, Rogue. Please, listen. I simply want to say that I am sorry…" 5. 4. 3. The professor would have been proud of the control I exercised. 2. "I am sorry for ever becoming a part of your life, and I am sorry. For everything." 1.
"Shut the fuck up, ya monster! Ah don't want to hear your fucking apologies!" Devious woman that she was, I knew that she only shed these theatrical tears and sobbed these apologies for the sole purpose of believing that I would succumb to her will once again – that I would trust her so that she could use me like she had all of those times before. That was why she had sought me out. That was why she had become unwanted company in my moment of solitude.
I turned to face her, and put my gloved hands on her shoulders and shoved her into the center of the road. My face was burning. It was a pity that there wasn't a van turning round the corner to barrel her into the snow and crush her beneath its wheels. The wind howled mercilessly and my breath was like a phantom before my eyes. It clouded my vision. I felt tears run rivulets down my cheeks.
Mystique turned her head from me, and her shoulders shook. I shivered, too. "Ya can't even face meh. Ya can't even look meh in the eye. Ya're a murderer an' a liar an' a coward! Ya ain't foolin' meh with yer sob story!"
Kill her! Juggernaut shouted. Destroy her. Hurt her. Sabertooth. She deserves what she's getting! Wolverine. Never forgive her for what she did! Scott. I flung my head wildly to the side. I heard them, but I couldn't see them. The voices were so real. I felt them twist at my insides and pull at my mind. A fierce battle cry rose from my throat that was not my own, and again I pushed her. Closer to the edge. Closer. Small stones tumbled down the face, and the monsters legs quivered as they neared the precipice. But it offered no resistance.
Rogue, you cannot let your anger consume you, or you will become the person you despise the most. She is our mother; you may not forgive her, but spare her life in my honor – in your honor.
"Get outta mah head, Kurt! Ah don't want that. Ah want this!" But then my eyes met hers, and I saw how dead and how lifeless they were. I saw dried tears on her frost-blue cheeks, and I saw sorrow in her that a part of me could not dismiss as purely theatrical. I closed my eyes. In all of my dreams it was never this hard. It was never this complex.
"Ah – Ah…Ah can't." My hands hovered inches before her shoulders. I inhaled shakily. It was at that moment that a car turned the corner and splashed snow and water at us, and its tires skidded across ice. I did what came instinctively. I took a step forwards, away from the hurtling blur of vehicle. My hands touched Mystique's shoulders, and I felt her weight drop from beneath my grasp, and then my body was falling forwards, forwards for an eternity, and my boots slipped, and I tumbled over the edge. The snow was packed and hard. I felt a horrible jarring as I struck it. Then I was slipping and sliding head first, and all I recalled was the bright whiteness of it all – the sky, the snow, Mystique's stiletto heels.
---
Carol Danvers sipped leisurely at the lukewarm tea, which was quickly becoming frigid. The radio was crackling. "It figures," she mused aloud. "What can one expect in the middle of freaking nowhere?" She placed her tea in the passenger seat and turned on the heater. Cold she could deal with; indeed, cold she was immune to. Cold tea, on the other hand, was unacceptable. She smiled. Her mother had always served lukewarm instant soup and cold microwaveable T.V. dinners. This Christmas feast, she thought, would be an interesting one.
Her cell phone rang. Carol leaned across her tea to grab it. Before she had even put it to her ear her mother's voice was clear. "Are you near? We were getting worried about you."
"Don't worry. There's a bit of bad weather. I'm driving cautiously." As she said those words she pressed her sneaker down on the gas hard. Flurries of snow dotted her windshield. She was running late, wasn't she?
"Be careful." Carol rolled her eyes.
"I will."
"Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas to you t – Holy shit!" The cell phone dropped from her hand as she grasped the wheel, spinning it wildly. But it was no use. The car skidded sideways perilously close to the guardrail. "God no, God no, God…God, there's people!" She felt tears collecting in her eyes. People. On the road. In the middle of nowhere. In a blizzard. God, no. Time did not slow, but quickened at an alarming rate as one leapt to avoid the back end of her car and fell over the edge of the world, taking the other one with it. It all happened too fast for a normal human being to have done anything.
---
I felt a hand grasp my own, and saw Mystique being caught by another, and then we were both lifted into the air. Were we dead? No. Hell, I always thought, was down. My hand slipped. I pulled my other arm up frantically, and with a torn glove encircled a bare forearm. It took a moment for her memories to surge into my skull, but they came – and they came with the force of a jackhammer.
The scream that escaped my throat must have been loud enough for anyone to hear anywhere; she (and my rescuer was, I asserted, a woman) screamed, too, and our shrieks reverberated in the air with a sort of a reverence one usually reserves for speaking at important meetings. Or funerals. We fell and hit the snow again, still screaming. Somehow the woman had managed to keep her hold on both of us. She must have been incredibly strong.
Then I saw her face. It was drawn and convulted and her veins bulged like balloons with too much air in them. I screamed ever louder. I began to feel that strength I observed in my own limbs. It alarmed me. I felt my senses heighten and my eyes sharpen. I clung to my only lifeline until she collapsed, and then held on longer, and grabbed Mystique, too – Lord knows why – and suddenly I was hovering above the snow and above the street and touching the ground safely, laying their two bodies out in front of me.
Lord, what had I done? Mystique's face was bloody. Her temple bled profusely and stained the snow at my feet. The other woman was lifeless. Both may have been dead.
Dead. A sullen voice in my mind whispered.
"Who are you?" My frantic voice rang in my ears.
What's happening?
"What's happening?"
What's happening! Where am I? How did I get here?What did you do?WhyamItrappyedlikethisIdon'tfeelcan'tfeel…
"Be quiet. Be quiet!"
Murderer. Monster!
"Ah'm not! Who're ya to say a thing like – "
Carol Danvers. And you killed me. My head was yanked viciously to the side by a force that was not my own, my eyes forced to rest upon the lifeless woman, her blond hair pooling about her.
"Ah don't know what ya're talkin' about! Ah ain't killed nobody!"
You did. You sucked the life out of me.
And I understood. It was a result of my gift. My mutation. The normally temporary effects did not appear very temporary, and Carol's presence in my mind was abnormally strong. Everything was wrong.
Everything is wrong. I hope you go to Hell for this!
To Hell. That's where I was.
No. But you'll wish you were when I'm through with you! I was…the voice in my head faltered and broke. I was going…home for Christmas. I…you…I'll never see them again…Sobs that were not my own racked my body and memories of a family that I never had plagued me. I would never see them again. All I wanted…all I wanted for Christmas was to see my family. One more time. Just once.
Get the fuck out of my memories!
Oh, God. I felt Carol's radically changing, unstable persona through mood swings in time with her own. All I want. For Christmas. Is. My. Family. I want them to know I'm okay. I want to tell them I love them. I want…
I fell by Mystique, clutching my head. Nonononononono.
"Mystique…" I whispered, my voice faint, feeling Rogue slipping away and Carol reigning. "I'm sorry."
END
A/N Review, please!