Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Xmen. I wish I did but I just don't so get over it. Because I never will. Nor do I own any of the music.

Beautiful, another chapter up and running. I am on a roll here. Oh yeah, I am unstoppable. Ya gotta love this skill. Anyhoo, thanks to all that reviewed!!!

Star-Of-Chaos: Nope, she's kind of crazy that way.

SassyGrl024: Yup, Remy was a bit of a jackass for not listening to her. I know, it makes me cry to just say that. I have amazing skills that involve me being able to type at enhanced speed in order for me to get my desired result. Depending how I have everything planned out. *Thank you Computer Keyboarding ;)*

RogueChere: Why thank you! I have amazing skills when it comes to typing. Plus, I must finish this story off so I can continue my other ones. Oh yeah, great funny.

ASGT and Kat Maximoff: Yes, it truly was bad timing. So sad huh? Glad to know that it all evened out for ya!! Just like I planned.

Heaven's a Lie

Chapter 7: What it's like to die

Of course he'd seen her drop out of the sky like a bird and land softly in the ally branching off from the street below. Ah, she was beckoning him, calling him out of hiding to her. Well, how could he resist. Closing his eyes he sensed her as she walked away from the building. Withdrawing inside himself he could feel her, hear her breathing, hear her thoughts. His memory flashed his death into his vision. The cold blade sliding into his stomach, feeling the metal cut into him. Even then she had been strong. Now she was beyond powerful. Her strength was astounding, her poise miraculous. Not only had she mastered flight but she had mastered the ability to fight.

Still, her mind was the same. And that was where he held her. That was where he saw her now, a frightened little girl, afraid of what she could do, afraid of what she had done. Inside she was completely different, inside she was weak.

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She knew she was being followed and smiled, so many years since she had every felt threatened, so many years since she had been physically vulnerable. She may be a little nervous but that was all and that was perfectly natural. Her body was providing her with adrenalin as if she wasn't strong enough already.

"Rogue..."

She spun around.

"Logan, what are ya?..."

He smiled and shrugged helplessly.

"It's my job to look after you."

"Your job?"

She glanced behind him as he continued towards her.

"Have yah been followin' meh for a while?"

"No, a few minutes, I was trying to catch up with you."

As he stopped in front of her she reached out to place a hand on his shoulder and advise him to take cover somewhere while she baited her. It was such a simple movement, a simple gesture, one of guidance, of condolence.

When he shrunk away from her as if her touch was poison she froze. There was something very wrong and in those milliseconds of realization her heart sunk through the concrete below her.

He smiled. Okay so the charade hadn't lasted as long as he had hoped, but it had had the desired affect.

Rogue staggered back, then regaining her composure she reached for him, this time with conviction.

"You ain't Logan."

Her words slipped easily from her mind and into reality but the image was all wrong. Her outstretched hand went through his shoulder as though he wasn't there.

"No, perhaps i'm not."

He looked down at her hand, at her fingers twitching as she tried to feel for something that wasn't there. Those gloved fingers reaching, stroking, touching but touching nothing.

Her hand shot to her mouth.

"You aint real." She whispered, her eyes open wide with a new found fear of the unknown.

"I'm real alright, Rogue, jus' you killed me a long time ago."

She'd reached for him but he hadn't been there. Not physically anyway. He stood before her as Logan, his words sounding like Logan might.

She watched the image of Logan fizzle away, dissolve into something and someone that triggered vicious memories inside her mind.

"You know me Rogue."

The same man she'd seen in the alley, the same man who'd taken her hand and raised it as if to examine her, as if to kiss her fingers as though he were a gentleman, the same man that had tried to steal her life away from her, that had violated her, that she'd killed in cold blood.

He opened his arms, raising his palms to the sky, opening himself to her welcoming her knowledge.

"It's me Rogue, your rival, the only person who can compete with you. Touch me Rogue, feel me..."

She backed up. She couldn't touch him. Her hand had passed right through him which made him a ghost, ghosts are harmless, aren't they?

She smile with false enthusiasm.

"You give yerself some credit, why would I even want to spit on yah. Ah aint that lil' girl you almost killed, not anymore, it's been a long time, a lot has changed stranger and you'd do good to leave me alone."

He stepped forward.

"Or what? You'll hurt me Rogue? Try it."

He laughed. The sound travelled around her, spiralling into her mind and pulling at the hooks embedded in her reason.

He stepped forward again.

"If you can't touch me Rogue how do you expect to hurt me. All you are is a little girl, as helpless as you always were."

She flew at him with uncontrolled emotion and passed through him. A shiver swept through her and her strength was drained. Staggering back onto her feet she turned and met his powerful gaze at the same time he turned and marked her with his eyes. It was his turn.

He rushed her, slamming her back into the wall of the building with a speed she couldn't follow. Before she knew it her back was slamming against brick and her strength was leaving her.

He gripped her around the throat.

"You may not be able to touch me but ah can surely touch you and ah's takin' what belongs to me, what ah should have had a long time ago. You made me like this, you made me."

She reached for him out of instinct and once again her flailing grip passed straight through him and she snatched at air. This wasn't right, it didn't make any sense. But she knew better than to expect any sense out of this world. She'd seen things that defied the laws of nature, the spat in the face of physics. She's seen such wonders and become one herself. He was no more unusual than she was.

He snatched at her inactive communicator and tore it from her suit, flinging it out onto the road.

Rogue searched desperately for a way to beat him, if she couldn't touch him what good was all of her strength going to be. There had to be another way around this, underneath all of her strength she wasn't a little girl, she was Rogue, she was powerful... her mind was strong...

His hand roamed her body snapping her back into what was supposed to be reality. Sneering, because that was all she could manage, she screamed aloud.

"Touch me and ah'll find a way tah kill yah again!"

"Too late!"

He hissed, sneering in return and pressing himself against her.

"That feel good Rogue, think of it, you unable to touch me but ah can sure touch you. Think, you who has been cursed with a vampires kiss, so defenseless. Ah, the irony, doesn't it make you wanna to cry."

She lashed out, tried to strike him but felt nothing underneath her palm. She kicked but her legs flailed in the air. How can he not be there and yet pin her down. It wasn't real, it couldn't be real. She closed her eyes and thought of Xavier:

Help me, ah need you...

The ice cold brush of skin against skin snapped her out of her mental plea. No, this was not how this was supposed to be, this wasn't how it was supposed to happen.

In the real world she would absorb his power, his life, he would be hers. But now? What was happening, why... why like this?

He stopped.

His expression froze on her, his body appearing to tense. He looked at her fiercely, his stare digging into her and all she could do was blink back at him like the innocent defenseless child she was.

A smile lifted one corner of his mouth, a smile filled with so many things. The same smile that a wolf might use while watching it's unsuspecting prey. His expression engaged her, trapped her under his spell.

She felt herself beginning to fall, a sensation familiar to her, but not a sensation such as this whereby she knew there was nothing she could do to stop herself. She was tumbling into the darkness and he was sucking her down, faster and faster. With his stare fixed on her he pulled her into him, drew all that she knew out of her and left her feeling barren, left her in the silence that she'd been so afraid of for decades. He knew her fears, knew her dreams, knew it all. While she felt herself slipping away she knew she'd made a fatal mistake.

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The Blackbird landed with a rumble of the reverse engines and the burning hot thrusters of the directional turbines. Few curtains twitched and those that did watched in anonymity from the safety of their homes.

Gambit scooped up the communicator from the road and turned it over in his hand. The fabric attached to the back told him that the device had not left its host peacefully. So where was she? He lifted his head and looked around him.

"Anything?" Cyclops called as he descended the steps of the jet.

"Non, jus' her communicator..."

He continued to scan his surroundings. It was a crack branching up the side of a building that caught his eye, like a lightning strike trapped in brick it cried out danger. He began to make his way towards the alley every step causing his heart so sink further.

"What is it?" Cyc's voice echoed through the street behind him.

The light from the street yawned into the alley opening and there she lay. He stopped, his feet frozen to the concrete suddenly. Perhaps it wasn't her, perhaps it was someone else.

"Gambit?" Cyc again.

He held up a hand as he looked closer. He could make out the dark green of the suit that covered her from head to toe, although it was streaked with something of a lighter colour.

He stepped forward once.

"...Cher...?"

He called, his voice barely above a whisper should he disturb her. It may sound insane but the peace was something he didn't want to shatter, not this time.

His pace quickened as he heard Logan's voice somewhere behind him.

As he drew closer he saw that her suit wasn't streaked with something but it had been torn, what he'd seen had been her bare flesh.

He knelt beside her and turned her face towards him. For a moment he thought she was dead, her eyes were open wide while her stare gazed up into the sky. Her lips were parted, her moist white teeth catching a glint of light from the street behind him.

His breath caught in his throat.

"....Rogue....No, cher, you can not leave Remy... He won' led you."

He thought he saw her lips move, thought he might have heard her whisper. He felt for a pulse at her wrist where her gloves still covered her flesh. He wasn't sure if he could feel anything or not.

Scooping her into his arms he stood and turned back towards the Blackbird.

Both Logan and Cyclops were silence as Gambit emerged from the shadows, Rogue limp in his arms. Cyclops heard Jean gasp behind him but he didn't move to comfort her.

"She can't be..."

Logan whispered without knowing he had even spoken. She can't be dead. He'd let her die? He watched Gambit approach them and snapped himself out of it.

"We hav' to ge' her back to deh mansion! NOW" Gambit called.

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He would never truly leave her. She realized that now. He was part of her like all the rest only this time it hadn't been her own doing, he'd made it his way. He'd invaded her, slipped inside her soul and made himself at home.

Xavier had asked if he'd been real at all and at first she'd snapped back at him and accused him of calling her a liar. Only later had she realized that he may have been right about part of it.

Had he been real? She hadn't touched him, she hadn't felt him, she'd had no affect on him when she'd tried to retaliate. But wasn't that how he worked. In truth he had been like a Ghost, she'd killed him and he'd come back to haunt her. Wasn't it as simple as that?

No. He'd been the same as her. She'd killed him alright but it had triggered something, he'd died but at the same time he'd begun a new existence. When she'd run away from him all those years ago, when she'd realized what she'd done and she'd fled. She hadn't merely killed him, but she'd made him stronger. Made him a monster.

Had he been real? To her he was so much more than that. To others he was a Ghost, a shiver in the shadows as it were. To Xavier he was a mental apparition, to Logan he had been a challenger, to Gambit... the man who'd taken Rogue away from him, away from all of them.

So what was she supposed to do? Look at herself in the mirror, at her reflection at the waters edge and pretend it was actually her she saw staring back at her. Or the man with the features of an angel and the heart of a serial killer, if had had a heart at all. Well, now he had everything, he had a heart and soul and a life to go along with that. He had her. The one person who's alluded him both in his dreams and in his life.

She'd died, as Gambit had thought she had. She'd died and left all of herself behind, he'd taken from her what he'd promised he always would. Her innocence.

She was nothing.

She'd watch Logan watching her, she'd watch Gambit flicking a card between his fingers and know his thoughts were of how he'd let her slip away. Xavier spoke to her but she rarely answered, he could invade her mind but he would never allow himself to do that.

Jean whispered comforts but they were worth little and Storm would pray for her.

Rogue barely understood if she was alive or not. She barely understood anything anymore, anything other than the fact her home no longer existed, her friends... her love... All stolen. She watched in silence as the charade continued, as words were exchanged, battles were fought, won and lost. She watched lives fade away, dreams die. What was left for her in a world filled with so many shadows and no light to guide her.

"Rogue, I know you can hear me..."

She lifted her gaze and rested her soft stare on the lone man seated in the arm chair. A shot of whiskey in one hand, but untouched.

Could he know, could he sense her? Wolverine....?

He shifted slightly and looked right at her, moments passed, but then he shook his head, downed the alcohol, slammed the glass on the table and left the room.

She reached out for him, her gloved hand brushing the flesh of his arm but he barely felt her.

If only they could hear her, if only they would believe. For now all she can do is watch. Perhaps if she waits long enough they'll see her... or perhaps not.

Either way she was with them. Whether they knew it or not. She would always be with them.

Another chapter done. Now I am only confused to what I shall do. Would you rather I leave that as an ending or have a ever so nicer one? Hmm…

I know I said this would be my last chapter but, hey? It may not be. I really don't feel like being to evil today. Maybe you can persuade me otherwise.

Review Please!!! Review!!

~RoguesHeart~