I know that, right now, this looks like the stereotypical Romy. It isn't. It's very important that you keep reading, because there are things that are very... non-typical... coming.
Disclaimer: Heyho! Tainz owns nicht!
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Rogue got back to her room and tripped over a pile of junk on the floor, getting rug burn all up one leg. Kitty's stuffed animals and clothes flew everywhere. Rogue had been asking her roommate to clean up for weeks, but the valley girl didn't seem to understand the concept. Rogue looked at her reflection as she stood up.
"Ah'm so sick of this," she muttered to it as she examined her leg.
Furious, she went back downstairs to the maintenance closet and grabbed a handful of orange garbage bags. Returning to her room, she started picking up Kitty's things. She put all of the clothes in one bag, all of the toys in the next and so on, until the floor was clear. Then she moved on to the closet she and Kitty shared. By the time she was done, she had four huge bags stuffed full and the room was neat. She wrote "Property of Kitty Pryde" on each of the bags with a black permanent marker and tossed them out into the hall, seeing how far she could get them. She heard something shatter when she threw the last bag, but she really didn't care anymore.
Her anger at the world as a whole somewhat abated, she lay down on her bed, put her headphones on and closed her eyes. She nodded off, exhausted from her cleaning fit. It was just getting dark when she woke up to someone shaking her violently. Rogue pulled her headphones off and looked sleepily at Kitty.
"What did you do with all my stuff, Rogue?" Kitty asked furiously.
"Ah didn't do anything to 'all your stuff.' The stuff that was all over our room, Ah picked up and put in garbage bags in the hall. Anything that was where it belonged, Ah left."
"That was, like, totally uncalled for!" Kitty yelled. "You have no right to touch my things."
"It was all over mah room. Ah couldn't move without tripping over it. Look at mah leg!" Rogue rolled up her pant leg, ignoring the way Kitty instinctively moved away from Rogue's bare skin. An angry red patch blazed fiercely on Rogue's pale leg.
"How is it my fault if you're a total klutz?" Kitty stormed out of the room, only to return an instant later with an orange bag in tow.
A few minutes later, the room was in as total disarray as it had been before Rogue's tidying fit. Kitty had dumped the bags out, telling Rogue off the whole time and proceeded to inspect every single one of her belongings. Rogue had put her headphones back on and cranked up the volume to drown out the younger girl. Finally, Kitty came to the bottom of the last bag.
"Oh my god!" Kitty screeched.
Sure that Kitty had injured herself, Rogue looked over in concern. Kitty was cradling a porcelain doll and tears were streaming down her cheeks.
Rogue yanked the headphones off. "Are ya hurt?"
Kitty looked at her, enraged. "You broke Guinevere! How could you?!?"
"It's just a doll. Aren't you a little old for dolls?" Knowing that Kitty wasn't bleeding, Rogue didn't care anymore.
"Guinevere was my great-grandmother's doll! You shattered her! She was, like, I dunno, a hundred years old!" Kitty shrieked like a harpy.
She burst into tears again. Before Rogue could do or say anything, even tell Kitty to shut up, Kitty had run through the wall next to the door, clutching the shattered remains of the doll. Rogue surveyed the disaster in her living space again and closed her eyes. It didn't matter what she did, she'd never get any peace.
A few minutes later, the door opened and Ororo came in, followed by Kitty. Kitty, still carrying the doll, sat down on her bed. She gulped back sob after sob while Ororo sat in the chair at the dressing table.
"Rogue, Kitty says you broke her antique doll. Is this true?" Ororo asked serenely.
"Yeah. But Ah didn't mean to. Ah was just tryin' to make a point, that the room was a mess. Ah didn't mean for anything to get wrecked." Rogue shrugged. "It's her own fault for not tidyin' up when Ah asked her."
Kitty hiccoughed. "If you'd asked nicely, I would have."
"Ah did ask nicely. A month ago, when mah CDs went missing under a pile of your stuff," Rogue snapped.
"Rogue, calm down please. Why didn't you come to one of the adults if you felt that you had a problem roommate?"
"I'm, like, not the problem here. I don't play my music loud or keep my light on all night like she does," Kitty said, glaring at Rogue.
"Ah'm not two years old. Ah can take care of mah own problems and make mah own points. Without an adult," Rogue scowled, ignoring Kitty's accusations.
"By destroying other people's stuff? That doll's, like, irreplaceable!" Kitty stood and shook the object in question before Ororo could say anything. "Look what you did to her!"
Rogue had to admit that the damage was pretty bad. The doll looked worthy of a position as a prop in a bad horror movie. "Ah'm sorry, okay? If you'd just clean up once in awhile, this wouldn't have happened."
"I cleaned up, like, last month."
"Girls..." Ororo started.
"You haven't cleaned up since Ah moved in! This room's looked like a wreckin' yard since Ah got here." Rogue stood up too, moving towards Kitty.
Kitty put the doll down on her bed and took a step in Rogue's direction. "Maybe I'd be more co-operative if you didn't make fun of me all the time. I'm not stupid, you know!"
Ororo stepped between the girls and Rogue couldn't help noticing that the older woman stayed carefully out of Rogue's reach. "Girls, you aren't solving anything this way."
"If Rogue, like, got off this pathetic self-pity trip she's been on, there wouldn't be anything to solve."
"Kitty!" Ororo admonished.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Rogue asked, dodging around Ororo to try and get at Kitty. Ororo grabbed Rogue by the shoulders, to prevent her from attacking Kitty.
"You spend all your time moping about how you can't have a life because you can't touch. If you'd get over yourself and try, maybe you would have one." Kitty's malicious barb cut into Rogue and blindsided her.
"What?"
"Get over yourself already. You don't get to be the queen in your glass tower and make the rest of us tiptoe around you so it, like, doesn't get shattered."
Anger and pain overcame Rogue. She only had two choices as to how to react, and she didn't want to cry. She shook herself free of Ororo and attacked Kitty. Kitty was so shocked that, for a second, she forgot to phase. Rogue got a couple of good hits to Kitty's face and yanked out a large section of Kitty's hair before Kitty phased through her and ran into Ororo's arms.
Ororo looked furious. "Sit down, Rogue," she commanded fiercely as she hugged the crying Kitty protectively.
Rogue stared at her, challenging her.
Ororo stared right back. "If you are not going to sit, then you are coming with me to see the Professor."
"Make me," Rogue spat back.
A flash of lightning outside illuminated the room, which had suddenly grown dark. "Come with me now." Ororo's command was followed by a crack of thunder.
"Get out of mah room," Rogue countered. "Get out and take that brat with you! Ah'm not sharin' mah room with her anymore."
Finally, Ororo did the only thing she could do. She led Kitty out of the room. When the door opened, Rogue could see most of the Institute's students standing outside. Ororo closed the door behind her and Rogue threw herself down onto her bed.
The tears flowed freely onto her blankets as Kitty's words echoed in her head.
"Get over yourself already. You don't get to be the queen in your glass tower and make the rest of us tiptoe around you so it, like, doesn't get shattered."
Was that what everyone thought of her? That she didn't care about anyone else? She spent her time alone to protect them, not because she didn't ever want company. Rogue tried to stop crying, but found that she just couldn't. She didn't cry. She never cried. When she'd been told that she'd never touch anyone again, she hadn't shed a tear. Now she couldn't stop. She felt like she had no control over her own being.
Her bed shook and creaked from the force of her sobs. She knew that Ororo had likely gone to get the Professor and she didn't want him to come in and see her crying, but she couldn't help it. Sure enough the door creaked open and clapped shut. Unexpectedly, she felt the weight of someone sitting down on her bed. Knowing it couldn't be the Professor, she looked up and made out Logan's form through the blur of her tears.
He was wearing his overalls and a pair of the thin gloves he wore when he polished the chrome on his bike. She thought, rightly so, that he'd just come up from the garage. She expected him to go off into a speech about discipline or something, but he surprised her by reaching over and brushing the soaking wet hair back from where it was clinging to her face. She was startled by his actions and tried to move away, expecting him to do the same, but he held his ground.
"Let it out, Stripes. You need this, trust me."
At the gentleness in his voice, a fresh wave of tears found her and she sat up, still bawling.
"Logan...Ah didn't...Ah didn't...mean to..." she wailed between sobs. "Ah didn't mean...to break the...the doll..."
Logan reached over awkwardly and pulled her into a hug, slowly and gently so she could escape if she wanted, but she didn't pull away. He just put his arms around her and rocked her back and forth slowly, feeling strange and uncomfortable. She could smell motor oil and gasoline on his clothes, but it didn't seem like a bad thing.
"It's okay. Kitty won't stay mad," he whispered into her hair. "It'll be okay."
"No it won't! No one likes...me. They think...They think...that Ah don't care...They think...Ah'm mean..."
"It doesn't matter what they think."
Logan kept rocking her and she kept sobbing confessions into his chest. As time went by, Rogue got quieter and quieter until she finally fell asleep against him. Afraid to leave in case he woke her, Logan slowly and carefully settled back to stay the night. Just as he got comfortable, the door opened. It was Kitty and the Professor.
Kitty shuffled in, grabbed some pyjamas and clothes and scurried out again, but the Professor stayed just inside the door.
"She didn't need a lecture this time, Chuck." Logan kept his voice soft so he wouldn't disturb Rogue.
"I know. I knew that when I sent Ororo to mediate in the fight between the girls, but I wasn't sure what else I could do in this case. I thank you for helping her."
"I heard her and Half-Pint screaming from out in the garage. I knew you'd have to punish her to satisfy Kitty, especially after Rogue attacked her, so I decided to get up here before you."
"How did you know about the attack? The other students said you ran up here like 'one of the training sims was after you'." Xavier said.
"Only two things makes a couple of girls scream like that, and I knew the boys weren't doing a panty raid."
"You did an excellent job, Logan. She needed a parent to look after her and you did that." Xavier knew that he wouldn't have been able to help Rogue in the slightest, not this time.
"I did what I had to." Logan looked Xavier straight in the eye. "She's hurting real bad."
"The psyches haven't been merciful lately. She's been in my office almost everyday for help with them."
"That ain't what I mean."
"I know, but the only thing I can do for her is try to help her keep her mind intact and make her as comfortable as I can. I can't take away her pain."
Logan nodded. "She's sleeping better right now than she has in months. I check on the kids before I go to bed and she's always got her light on, reading, or she's tossing and having nightmares. I've had to wake her up a couple of times to keep her from hurting herself or waking up Kitty."
Rogue groaned in her sleep and Logan gave her a little squeeze. "It's okay. Go back to sleep." He looked up at the Professor. "We can talk in the morning. She needs sleep."
The Professor nodfded. As he rolled out of the room, he gently scanned the girl's mind. As the door swung shut silently, Xavier closed his eyes in pain. He headed down the hall to go call an old friend, Moira McTaggert. He could only hope that she'd know of some way to help his student.
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Tainz