A car had swerved to miss her and hit a lamp post instead. People standing around gaped as she dithered uncertainly, unsure of where to go.
"Hey, what are ya, nuts? Crazy kid!" barked the driver angrily, climbing out. Sick with alarm, she was already running.
She wound up in a street she didn't remember.
... Yes. Yes, she did. She smiled in relief, finding it a little hard to breathe. Only a few more streets and she'd be home, where her parents could help her.
She walked (albeit unsteadily) toward her house, and Rogue had never been so glad to see it in her life. It felt like she'd never seen how glorious her house was. It was an ordinary house, and yet it felt like she was seeing it for the first time.
It felt... new. Was this really the way her house looked? There was a red car in the driveway, and as she gazed at the house she had a sudden recent memory of her dad.
Yes. This was most definitely her house. Smiling happily, she looked eagerly through the glass panel on the front door. Where was the key? She remembered, reached up to get it and then let herself into her home.
"Dad? Mom, where are ya?" she called, and then shook her head, shivering uncontrollably. Of course. They were going to Cody's little sister's ballet recital that night. She wasn't going because... uh, because...
Because she and her sister had had a fight. She felt rather sorry about that- Rogue had never had a little sister before and she felt like it was an experience she rather wanted.
Tottering up the stairs towards her room, she exhaled loudly. It would be OK. When her parents had sorted out this whole ugly mess, she'd apologise nicely to her sister because- that was the way things.. always worked out, in that house. Yep.
She opened a door and found the room within covered in pop star posters and relics of a little-girlhood recently shirked. Nope, this wasn't her room, because she was... Cody.
Right, Cody.
She found her room and stumbled inside. She wanted to lie down and take a nap, or collect her thoughts, or something, but she found herself fascinated with the contents of the room. She picked up the pillow and hugged it briefly, she ran her hands over a couple of lonely-looking trophies on a shelf far too long for someone who'd only been wrestling a couple of years. She thumbed through a magazine without even looking at the pictures, she pawed through the desk.
On a bookshelf were some yearbooks. She grabbed the latest one and started turning the pages, finding Cody's picture everywhere.
It was... so perfect. She'd never thought of it that way before, but it was. Cody was incredibly lucky. He had lots of friends (including a best friend), parents, a younger sister, a nice house.
"All this?" she whispered, having heard a car pull up outside. Maybe Cody's parents and sister were home! His parents, Sharon and Randall, and his sister... Abby? Allie? Ellie? Something that began with an vowel, anyway. "It's all mine?"
She got up and moved toward the mirror, feeling a deep sense of despair. God, that sullen-looking girl Cody had a crush on was still there. She must be going crazy. Cody must have some obsessive crush if he was seeing her in the mirror! "But which me am Ah?"
For her memories, the precious ones of a family and friends... were starting to drip away. Soon all that was left would be the girl, Rogue. She groaned.
All these stupid imagined Rogue memories kept seeping into Cody's head... like shopping for clothes or standing alone in a corner in kindergarten, first grade, fifth grade, freshman year...
They weren't real. They couldn't be real! In a vain effort to get them to stop, she knocked a cluster of pristine wrestling trophies off the vanity and heard them clatter to the floor. The noise didn't seem real either.
There was a crash. Startled, she backed away from the door as a muscly male breathing heavily and baring sharper-than-normal teeth strode in.
Was this Cody's dad? No, it was- someone-
"Who- who are ya and what do ya want?"
A fierce rumble burst from the man. "You, girlie! I want YOU!" he roared, and dived at her.
He could have just been antagonising her, she realised later. Usually an attack ending where the attacked dodged out of the way and the attacker ended up in a closet would have made her laugh.
She yelped and the man climbed out. "Stand still and I'll make it quick. You're dealin' with the X-Men now and y'ain't got a chance."
Frantically, she snatched a board and held it up in what she hoped was a menacing manner. "X-Men? Ah don't understand, Ah just want ya to leave me alone!" She brought the board down on her aggressor and ran for her life.
The man let out a howl that made Rogue's hair stand on end. It was like she'd been transported into one of her books that she liked to read.
Her books?
...Yeah. She was Rogue again, and this wasn't her house, and she didn't have any parents or sister coming home to rescue her... she didn't have anyone...
She bumped into the back door, wrenched at the handle with Cody's strength and pushed it open. Her heart seemed lodged into her throat as she made her escape, dashed for the dark shape of the back fence.
There was noise behind her. Rogue dared to look and saw that the man had gone, replaced by a tall woman in some weird skin-tight thing with a cape. She had blue eyes, dark skin and white hair that hung to her waist. The woman raised her own gloved hands and said in booming tones, "One well-placed lightening bolt, one ex-mutant!"
Terrified, Rogue had begun to jump the wooden fence. She was reasonably athletic but had little practice at running for such a long time, and taking such self-imposed blows as these. She halted a split second because her foot was stuck-
There was a small explosion and she was pitched over.
Rogue had never seen anything explode except in Science class. Oh, she'd watched action movies where whole cities would explode of an evening, but she'd never- there was a sudden, violent burst of heat and a kind of shockwave that hit her like a sledgehammer.
She hit the dirt, having landed in an alley between houses. In movies people always jumped up good as new after something had exploded, but she felt paralysed. Flashing back to the dance, she rolled a little and opened her eyes. For a second she saw bright lights and Cody reaching down to her, the first and last kid who'd ever offered her their hand.
A voice. A female voice, speaking gently but with urgency. "Rogue, it's me, Irene. Try and remember."
But she came crashing back to earth and saw a woman with dark glasses standing over her and looking concerned.
What was SHE doing there? It was like a dream... some crazy dream... at any second the white-haired woman and the beastlike man would reappear, rip this Irene to shreds, start for her- she'd scream, then she'd wake up...
"Uh, who? Wait- Irene, yes, but... Ah'm so confused. Strange thoughts in mah head," she said tearfully, and suddenly she flashed back to being chased by the man and woman. She nearly screamed at the memory. She wanted to hug Irene- not because she loved her or anything, but because she just needed to see someone she knew... "People chasing me..."
"Easy, easy, honey. The police are coming. The X-Men will not risk a confrontation."
"Th' X-Men?" echoed Rogue. It felt difficult to breathe. It was a struggle to exhale- she pictured suffocating fumes pressing in on her, smothering her. Suffocating fumes that made dark clouds around her, green poison pooling under her skin- there was nothing good or pure about Rogue.
"Yes, mutant hunters," said Irene hurriedly. "Now hurry! I have a friend who can help you, I'll take you to her." She held out her hand to Rogue.
Quaking, Rogue grasped Irene's hand. "Ah don't know, this all happenin' so fast, Ah don't-"
She froze. The man who'd attacked her, accompanied by two smaller people, was racing toward the pair of them.
She imagined how it would feel to have those metal claws that popped out his knuckles plunged into her stomach. Fear, like being ducked into an icy lake, washed over her and Rogue choked out, "It's him! The one that attacked me! Run, Irene, run!" She broke away, leaving her glove in her foster mother's grip.
Rogue heard the man's voice. "Yeah, that's gotta be her!"
She was going to be killed! Scarcely able to breathe, she clambered back over the fence. "PLEASE, just leave me be!" she wailed. Frankly, if it was between the woman and the man, she'd take her chances with the woman.
But the woman wasn't there any more. Relieved, she started running again, her thoughts wheeling through her head. Whenever she hit a fence, she climbed over it to the next garden.
Ah can't stop running, she thought grimly. If Ah stop, they'll get me.
She stopped underneath a tree to breathe. She was drenched in a cold sweat and so terrified she couldn't see.
Mutant hunters? She didn't understand. They'd done mutant genes in Science class. Was the thing that had happened- were Cody's thoughts in Rogue's body the result of a mutation?
She remembered the story she'd stumbled across on a search engine of a Russian girl with x-ray vision, or one who cried acid tears. But she couldn't BE one? Her? No, this happened to normal people, people who had everything to lose- not to people who were already shunned...
God, she felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. If one more weird thing happened she would die.
"Guten tag, fraulein," said a pleasant male voice.
Rogue gasped. A teenage boy with longish dark hair was sitting on the tree swing, smiling impishly. It had been empty one moment and suddenly- oh, no-
Not another one! she thought numbly. Yet he didn't seem dangerous...
"Please don't be frightened," implored the boy in a German accent.
Rogue had seen and felt so many awful things that night it hardly startled her when the boy disappeared from the swing and reappeared at her side in the space of half a second.
"W-What do ya want?" she asked.
"To help you. We're the good guys, especially me!" He grinned, but Rogue found nothing to laugh at.
"Ah don't understand!" said Rogue angrily, and then her voice softened as she tried not to sob. "Ah don't understand anythin', all this awful stuff's been happenin' and- and Ah-"
"I was like you once," the boy said easily, pacing a circle around her. "Alone, unsure of what I was, afraid to show my face." He groomed himself absent-mindedly and then said incredulously, "Can you believe it?"
Rogue almost managed to giggle.
The boy opened his mouth to say something more and shut it, frowning at something over Rogue's shoulder. Then his eyes widened. "Kitty, no!" he shouted in alarm.
Rogue was tackled from behind and fell face first onto the ground. Even though she knew that it wasn't anyone really strong she freaked out. She reacted instantaneously, throwing her opponent off and preparing to run off again.
The boy grabbed her. Rogue shoved him hard, slamming her fist onto one of his wrists.
He disappeared. There was a strange pixellated flicker before his face and it was demonic all of a sudden, with the eyes turning yellow, the canine teeth becoming fangs and the face swathed in indigo fur. Rogue heard a tail beat at the dirt in surprise.
Rogue seemed physically unable to draw a breath, staring in shock at the- whatever it was. The boy who'd seemed friendly- he was a monster! And he was after her the same way all the others were- she was going to be killed.
She reached out for his face that time, to harm, to hurt, to defend herself. When her fingers connected with his face there was the sudden, strange feeling of being in two places at once, and then- she was gone.
In the same way he had moved from the swing to her side in half a second, Rogue disappeared. Somehow, she came to be in the darkness of the nearby cemetary.
Rogue's head was flooded with memories- being picked up and hugged by a mother as a child, a plane and then a train trip to a place where people would help with something, some girl named Jean... Great? Grey, that was it. Some girl named Jean Grey saying empathetically, "Aw, she just needs time, Kurt. She'll come around." about somebody whose name was Kitty Pryde.
Kitty Pryde. That name was very definite. It was an important name.
Kurt. Kurt Wagner, who would be sixteen in a few months, the adopted son of Heide and Deiter Wagner. They were good parents. Kurt was their only child...
Ah'm Kurt Wagner, she thought, trying to catch her breath.
But she knew that wasn't right. She had Rogue's body and Rogue's voice, but her mind's eye had been flooded with all kinds of painful, beautiful memories and she felt incredibly different. She felt stretched out, like she ought to be weighted down by something, and also strangely impatient and hyperactive, like she was a coiled spring. A live wire.
"What just happened?" she blurted in confusion, trying to rid herself of the urge to slouch her shoulders. "Where am Ah? And Ah understand German!"
She frowned. That didn't sound right.
Yes, it did.
No, it didn't.
Ich verstehte Deutscher. 'I understand German.' She'd said that actually in German... Deutscher. German?
Something clicked.
"Ah can speak German?" she repeated, weirded out.
It had happened when she touched his face. She'd stolen memories from him, and the ability to kind of- change places?
A recent memory, "... next time I'll honk before I port."
Port. Port? Teleport, yes. And THAT meant that she could- which meant-
"The fuzzy one, Kurt- Ah'm him," she realised. "Just like Ah was Cody. Ah think Ah'm catchin' on now. But- how did Ah...?"
It was too much for her. And with this feeling of wanting to get away, she suddenly saw her surroundings change in the blink of an eye- except she didn't even blink.
BAMF!
She was high, she was low, the moon was her spotlight. She felt like backflipping or something, but she knew she couldn't. She hadn't pulled a real backflip in years, since she stopped taking acrobatics lessons from... someone...
... Why shouldn't she? Ah'm Kurt Wagner, Ah'm great at backflips! she thought happily. Acrobatics were part of who she was.
This- this was kind of fun. She laughed nervously, but too soon. She teleported to a dilapidated bench, which broke under her weight and sent her sprawling to the ground.
She groaned in pain and slumped, giving in to the urge to bow her head. She'd hurt her ankle falling from the bench. "When is this all gonna end?" she said, frustrated.
For a few minutes Rogue stayed forlornly on the ground. She held her ankle tightly, trying to make sense of her surroundings.
Rogue got laboriously to her feet. She rubbed at her lower back to try and relieve the phantom pressure of an extension of her spine dragging in the dirt. She knew what it was now- Kurt had a tail, a long forked one, and the weight caused him to stoop his shoulders and walk with slightly bent knees. His odd posture was also caused by unusual feet- there were only two toes on each one.
Her feet were really started to hurt. "Ah have TEN toes, fuck it!" she snapped, glaring down at her feet. "Ten toes, ya hear? Stop playin' up!" She pounded on her temples with her fists, trying furiously to drive it home that it was normal for her to have five toes on each foot, but to no avail. Rogue sat down at the foot of a grave to rest her feet. It would be fine. She'd collect her thoughts and find her way home...
Someone emerged from the darkness, and Rogue inhaled the cemetary scent sharply, tensing up. Her whole body ached from running, from crashing into things. Rogue had bruises everywhere that gave her dull pain whenever she moved, particularly one of her ribs. Her ankle was killing her. She could only just walk normally.
This new person was a girl with long red hair. She was a fair bit taller than Rogue, but Rogue was a good judge of age... or maybe Kurt was. It was getting hard to differentiate between her own abilities and his. This girl looked around Rogue's age, at most a year or two older. For a moment she looked calculated, as though trying not to make any sudden movements. Then she looked friendly. Rogue didn't take this as a sign to let her guard down, the boy had looked friendly too.
Then the girl opened her pretty mouth and said the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Hi."
Rogue gazed at her incredulously, with some kindly feeling mixed with plain bewilderment. "Do- do Ah know you? Ugh, these memories. Ah'm so confused!"
The girl nodded wisely. "Yeah, I know. I can relate to what you're going through."
Rogue suddenly paired the words from her head with the person before her and leaped up with a thrill of horror. "Jean. You're Jean Grey," she spat angrily, and her voice wavered and compromised her. "You're like the others!"
Jean Grey moved forward, but not aggressively. "Relax," she said firmly.
It was easy for her to say. She seemed so calm. She was Jean Grey who could move things with her mind. People liked Jean Grey, and this in itself gave Rogue a powerful swell of contempt for the girl.
"... I won't hurt you," Jean Grey was saying. "Look, it's tough to go it solo. Hey, zero pressure, but if you want to talk more, you can reach me anytime with this communicator." She held it up for Rogue to see, and Rogue had so many Jean Grey memories of Jean eating breakfast or playfully squabbling with some boy who constantly wore red shades or fighting in the uniform she was currently wearing that it didn't surprise her when the communicator floated to her hand.
Rogue took it cautiously, glancing at Jean Grey. "Latest fashion accessory, huh?" she joked shakily.
Out of the night behind Jean Grey, as dark as the seafloor, two people approached. One was unfamiliar, but the other- it was the white-haired woman who'd tried to blow her up. No. No, no, no, no, no!
"You!" gasped Rogue, backing away. The woman looked puzzled. "You... no, you won't take me!" She turned around and ran for her life. She dimly heard the third person- a teenage boy- leap at her, but heard the splash and his grunt of pain as he ended up in a mud puddle.
She was short of breath. Shooting pains erupted from her rib every so often, and her ankle twisted beneath her several times. With sobs of pain, she stopped, wrapping her arms around her ribcage in a vain effort to try and make the pain cease. She stared around without really seeing anything. Which way should she go?
Rogue staggered up the steps into a dark, mossy crypt. At the foot of the coffin within, she curled into a ball and listened fearfully for the sounds of the X-Men coming to get her.
... Minutes inched agonisingly past. She could hear insects in the air outside. Fiercely, she murmured to herself, "Don't find me, don't fine me, go away, leave me alone..."
Hands clapped over her ears, she rocked back and forth slowly. Where was Irene? Had she escaped?
A clatter of someone dropping through the open ceiling. Rogue cringed, trying to make herself as small as possible and then forced herself to look up. Quaking, she spied a tall boy with brown hair in his late teens. His eyes were hidden by a red visor. Her mouth dropped open.
"Thought you could escape us, did you?" the boy barked, spotting Rogue. With a small cry she shied away, her wide eyes pleading with him to leave her alone. "The X-Men don't leave loose ends," he said ominously, and began to advance on her.
With a yell of defeat she fled, stumbling down the steps of the crypt straight into- into the boy?
HOW COULD HE BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE? This wasn't happening, how could it be happening? Summoning whatever strength she still had, she pushed him onto the ground and dashed back up the steps and into the crypt. Oh God, they were everywhere, they were all coming after her...
Panting heavily, she made an abrupt stop, staring around in bewilderment. A dull flare of red asserted itself in the darkness and Jean Grey appeared. Rogue felt her fear ebb slightly. Only slightly, because of the expression on Jean's face. She looked- angry. God, what had she done now?
"I tried, I really did, but some people just won't be helped!" snarled Jean Grey, starting forward menacingly. Rogue's eyes widened. If she were any younger or any more afraid than she was already, she might have burst into tears.
Rogue teleported away. When she reappeared she found herself seeing only empty air and the tops of trees- and then she started to fall. Her ears rang and she seemed, for a few earth-shattering seconds, to take on only physical properties, falling at the speed of a rock. She heard her own scream as if she were a bystander. Perhaps this was what you felt- before you died.
Some little voice in her head was howling in panic, and shutting her eyes tightly she managed to teleport to a short way above the ground. She still hit it hard, though.
When she opened her eyes a few seconds later, she was horrified to discover Jean Grey leaning over her. "Are you hurt? Lie still, don't try to move," Jean said, all concerned. The white-haired woman was there too, she knelt down beside her too.
Rogue freaked, squirming and jerking in her prone position in the dirt in a vain effort to escape the clutches of the X-Women. Jean jumped slightly, but the white-haired woman seemed worried. "Child, what is it? We are your friends."
The traces of Kurt Wagner that remained in her mind responded happily to this statement, babbling encouragement that Rogue did not want to listen to. You're not, Rogue thought hysterically. You're not. You're not, you're not mah friends! No!
Her bare hand shot out instinctively and grabbed the woman's arm. Both bellowed in shock, and Rogue was swamped with memories.
Ah'm Ororo Munroe, she thought, but did not dwell on it as the weather suddenly went nuts. All she could hear was the crash and clatter of winds and rain as she rose into the air.
This time there was no fear of falling. There was only fear itself, and pain as lightening burned in her skin and crackled in her brain. Rain pummelled her body and the ringing in her ears became a roar.
"Too much power! Ah can't control it, Ah have to-" Rogue teleported away.
She was thrown into a brick wall as if by another explosion. Rogue ricocheted off the bricks and onto her feet, staggered and fell in a heap. Her shoulder felt like it had come away from her, and her whole body was doused in something wet- not sweat, but rainwater. Tiny electric currents coursed through her hair, and when she clapped her hands to her head her fingers were shocked and jammed in one position.
Gasping, feeling like her lungs were scorched by fire and ice, Rogue brought her knees up under her chin and didn't move, waiting for the X-Men to come and finish her off.
"Just kill me," she whimpered.
She wept, inconsolable. Rogue had teleported into an alleyway where the sounds of a steady stream of cars could be heard. Every sound of an engine backfiring was the clatter of aggressive footsteps, every exhaust roar a war cry.
Eyes tightly closed, she stayed like that for a long time.
- - -
DISCLAIMER: None of the X-Men belong to me. God, I wish they did. I'd steal shitloads of their outfits. I am only a slightly sad individual who, despite being in her teens, feels that Rogue is a Tragic Heroine on a par with Anna Karenina or all those ladies from Dickens. : ) All this belongs to WB, Stan Lee, Marvel Comics, whoever you like.
"Hey, what are ya, nuts? Crazy kid!" barked the driver angrily, climbing out. Sick with alarm, she was already running.
She wound up in a street she didn't remember.
... Yes. Yes, she did. She smiled in relief, finding it a little hard to breathe. Only a few more streets and she'd be home, where her parents could help her.
She walked (albeit unsteadily) toward her house, and Rogue had never been so glad to see it in her life. It felt like she'd never seen how glorious her house was. It was an ordinary house, and yet it felt like she was seeing it for the first time.
It felt... new. Was this really the way her house looked? There was a red car in the driveway, and as she gazed at the house she had a sudden recent memory of her dad.
Yes. This was most definitely her house. Smiling happily, she looked eagerly through the glass panel on the front door. Where was the key? She remembered, reached up to get it and then let herself into her home.
"Dad? Mom, where are ya?" she called, and then shook her head, shivering uncontrollably. Of course. They were going to Cody's little sister's ballet recital that night. She wasn't going because... uh, because...
Because she and her sister had had a fight. She felt rather sorry about that- Rogue had never had a little sister before and she felt like it was an experience she rather wanted.
Tottering up the stairs towards her room, she exhaled loudly. It would be OK. When her parents had sorted out this whole ugly mess, she'd apologise nicely to her sister because- that was the way things.. always worked out, in that house. Yep.
She opened a door and found the room within covered in pop star posters and relics of a little-girlhood recently shirked. Nope, this wasn't her room, because she was... Cody.
Right, Cody.
She found her room and stumbled inside. She wanted to lie down and take a nap, or collect her thoughts, or something, but she found herself fascinated with the contents of the room. She picked up the pillow and hugged it briefly, she ran her hands over a couple of lonely-looking trophies on a shelf far too long for someone who'd only been wrestling a couple of years. She thumbed through a magazine without even looking at the pictures, she pawed through the desk.
On a bookshelf were some yearbooks. She grabbed the latest one and started turning the pages, finding Cody's picture everywhere.
It was... so perfect. She'd never thought of it that way before, but it was. Cody was incredibly lucky. He had lots of friends (including a best friend), parents, a younger sister, a nice house.
"All this?" she whispered, having heard a car pull up outside. Maybe Cody's parents and sister were home! His parents, Sharon and Randall, and his sister... Abby? Allie? Ellie? Something that began with an vowel, anyway. "It's all mine?"
She got up and moved toward the mirror, feeling a deep sense of despair. God, that sullen-looking girl Cody had a crush on was still there. She must be going crazy. Cody must have some obsessive crush if he was seeing her in the mirror! "But which me am Ah?"
For her memories, the precious ones of a family and friends... were starting to drip away. Soon all that was left would be the girl, Rogue. She groaned.
All these stupid imagined Rogue memories kept seeping into Cody's head... like shopping for clothes or standing alone in a corner in kindergarten, first grade, fifth grade, freshman year...
They weren't real. They couldn't be real! In a vain effort to get them to stop, she knocked a cluster of pristine wrestling trophies off the vanity and heard them clatter to the floor. The noise didn't seem real either.
There was a crash. Startled, she backed away from the door as a muscly male breathing heavily and baring sharper-than-normal teeth strode in.
Was this Cody's dad? No, it was- someone-
"Who- who are ya and what do ya want?"
A fierce rumble burst from the man. "You, girlie! I want YOU!" he roared, and dived at her.
He could have just been antagonising her, she realised later. Usually an attack ending where the attacked dodged out of the way and the attacker ended up in a closet would have made her laugh.
She yelped and the man climbed out. "Stand still and I'll make it quick. You're dealin' with the X-Men now and y'ain't got a chance."
Frantically, she snatched a board and held it up in what she hoped was a menacing manner. "X-Men? Ah don't understand, Ah just want ya to leave me alone!" She brought the board down on her aggressor and ran for her life.
The man let out a howl that made Rogue's hair stand on end. It was like she'd been transported into one of her books that she liked to read.
Her books?
...Yeah. She was Rogue again, and this wasn't her house, and she didn't have any parents or sister coming home to rescue her... she didn't have anyone...
She bumped into the back door, wrenched at the handle with Cody's strength and pushed it open. Her heart seemed lodged into her throat as she made her escape, dashed for the dark shape of the back fence.
There was noise behind her. Rogue dared to look and saw that the man had gone, replaced by a tall woman in some weird skin-tight thing with a cape. She had blue eyes, dark skin and white hair that hung to her waist. The woman raised her own gloved hands and said in booming tones, "One well-placed lightening bolt, one ex-mutant!"
Terrified, Rogue had begun to jump the wooden fence. She was reasonably athletic but had little practice at running for such a long time, and taking such self-imposed blows as these. She halted a split second because her foot was stuck-
There was a small explosion and she was pitched over.
Rogue had never seen anything explode except in Science class. Oh, she'd watched action movies where whole cities would explode of an evening, but she'd never- there was a sudden, violent burst of heat and a kind of shockwave that hit her like a sledgehammer.
She hit the dirt, having landed in an alley between houses. In movies people always jumped up good as new after something had exploded, but she felt paralysed. Flashing back to the dance, she rolled a little and opened her eyes. For a second she saw bright lights and Cody reaching down to her, the first and last kid who'd ever offered her their hand.
A voice. A female voice, speaking gently but with urgency. "Rogue, it's me, Irene. Try and remember."
But she came crashing back to earth and saw a woman with dark glasses standing over her and looking concerned.
What was SHE doing there? It was like a dream... some crazy dream... at any second the white-haired woman and the beastlike man would reappear, rip this Irene to shreds, start for her- she'd scream, then she'd wake up...
"Uh, who? Wait- Irene, yes, but... Ah'm so confused. Strange thoughts in mah head," she said tearfully, and suddenly she flashed back to being chased by the man and woman. She nearly screamed at the memory. She wanted to hug Irene- not because she loved her or anything, but because she just needed to see someone she knew... "People chasing me..."
"Easy, easy, honey. The police are coming. The X-Men will not risk a confrontation."
"Th' X-Men?" echoed Rogue. It felt difficult to breathe. It was a struggle to exhale- she pictured suffocating fumes pressing in on her, smothering her. Suffocating fumes that made dark clouds around her, green poison pooling under her skin- there was nothing good or pure about Rogue.
"Yes, mutant hunters," said Irene hurriedly. "Now hurry! I have a friend who can help you, I'll take you to her." She held out her hand to Rogue.
Quaking, Rogue grasped Irene's hand. "Ah don't know, this all happenin' so fast, Ah don't-"
She froze. The man who'd attacked her, accompanied by two smaller people, was racing toward the pair of them.
She imagined how it would feel to have those metal claws that popped out his knuckles plunged into her stomach. Fear, like being ducked into an icy lake, washed over her and Rogue choked out, "It's him! The one that attacked me! Run, Irene, run!" She broke away, leaving her glove in her foster mother's grip.
Rogue heard the man's voice. "Yeah, that's gotta be her!"
She was going to be killed! Scarcely able to breathe, she clambered back over the fence. "PLEASE, just leave me be!" she wailed. Frankly, if it was between the woman and the man, she'd take her chances with the woman.
But the woman wasn't there any more. Relieved, she started running again, her thoughts wheeling through her head. Whenever she hit a fence, she climbed over it to the next garden.
Ah can't stop running, she thought grimly. If Ah stop, they'll get me.
She stopped underneath a tree to breathe. She was drenched in a cold sweat and so terrified she couldn't see.
Mutant hunters? She didn't understand. They'd done mutant genes in Science class. Was the thing that had happened- were Cody's thoughts in Rogue's body the result of a mutation?
She remembered the story she'd stumbled across on a search engine of a Russian girl with x-ray vision, or one who cried acid tears. But she couldn't BE one? Her? No, this happened to normal people, people who had everything to lose- not to people who were already shunned...
God, she felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. If one more weird thing happened she would die.
"Guten tag, fraulein," said a pleasant male voice.
Rogue gasped. A teenage boy with longish dark hair was sitting on the tree swing, smiling impishly. It had been empty one moment and suddenly- oh, no-
Not another one! she thought numbly. Yet he didn't seem dangerous...
"Please don't be frightened," implored the boy in a German accent.
Rogue had seen and felt so many awful things that night it hardly startled her when the boy disappeared from the swing and reappeared at her side in the space of half a second.
"W-What do ya want?" she asked.
"To help you. We're the good guys, especially me!" He grinned, but Rogue found nothing to laugh at.
"Ah don't understand!" said Rogue angrily, and then her voice softened as she tried not to sob. "Ah don't understand anythin', all this awful stuff's been happenin' and- and Ah-"
"I was like you once," the boy said easily, pacing a circle around her. "Alone, unsure of what I was, afraid to show my face." He groomed himself absent-mindedly and then said incredulously, "Can you believe it?"
Rogue almost managed to giggle.
The boy opened his mouth to say something more and shut it, frowning at something over Rogue's shoulder. Then his eyes widened. "Kitty, no!" he shouted in alarm.
Rogue was tackled from behind and fell face first onto the ground. Even though she knew that it wasn't anyone really strong she freaked out. She reacted instantaneously, throwing her opponent off and preparing to run off again.
The boy grabbed her. Rogue shoved him hard, slamming her fist onto one of his wrists.
He disappeared. There was a strange pixellated flicker before his face and it was demonic all of a sudden, with the eyes turning yellow, the canine teeth becoming fangs and the face swathed in indigo fur. Rogue heard a tail beat at the dirt in surprise.
Rogue seemed physically unable to draw a breath, staring in shock at the- whatever it was. The boy who'd seemed friendly- he was a monster! And he was after her the same way all the others were- she was going to be killed.
She reached out for his face that time, to harm, to hurt, to defend herself. When her fingers connected with his face there was the sudden, strange feeling of being in two places at once, and then- she was gone.
In the same way he had moved from the swing to her side in half a second, Rogue disappeared. Somehow, she came to be in the darkness of the nearby cemetary.
Rogue's head was flooded with memories- being picked up and hugged by a mother as a child, a plane and then a train trip to a place where people would help with something, some girl named Jean... Great? Grey, that was it. Some girl named Jean Grey saying empathetically, "Aw, she just needs time, Kurt. She'll come around." about somebody whose name was Kitty Pryde.
Kitty Pryde. That name was very definite. It was an important name.
Kurt. Kurt Wagner, who would be sixteen in a few months, the adopted son of Heide and Deiter Wagner. They were good parents. Kurt was their only child...
Ah'm Kurt Wagner, she thought, trying to catch her breath.
But she knew that wasn't right. She had Rogue's body and Rogue's voice, but her mind's eye had been flooded with all kinds of painful, beautiful memories and she felt incredibly different. She felt stretched out, like she ought to be weighted down by something, and also strangely impatient and hyperactive, like she was a coiled spring. A live wire.
"What just happened?" she blurted in confusion, trying to rid herself of the urge to slouch her shoulders. "Where am Ah? And Ah understand German!"
She frowned. That didn't sound right.
Yes, it did.
No, it didn't.
Ich verstehte Deutscher. 'I understand German.' She'd said that actually in German... Deutscher. German?
Something clicked.
"Ah can speak German?" she repeated, weirded out.
It had happened when she touched his face. She'd stolen memories from him, and the ability to kind of- change places?
A recent memory, "... next time I'll honk before I port."
Port. Port? Teleport, yes. And THAT meant that she could- which meant-
"The fuzzy one, Kurt- Ah'm him," she realised. "Just like Ah was Cody. Ah think Ah'm catchin' on now. But- how did Ah...?"
It was too much for her. And with this feeling of wanting to get away, she suddenly saw her surroundings change in the blink of an eye- except she didn't even blink.
BAMF!
She was high, she was low, the moon was her spotlight. She felt like backflipping or something, but she knew she couldn't. She hadn't pulled a real backflip in years, since she stopped taking acrobatics lessons from... someone...
... Why shouldn't she? Ah'm Kurt Wagner, Ah'm great at backflips! she thought happily. Acrobatics were part of who she was.
This- this was kind of fun. She laughed nervously, but too soon. She teleported to a dilapidated bench, which broke under her weight and sent her sprawling to the ground.
She groaned in pain and slumped, giving in to the urge to bow her head. She'd hurt her ankle falling from the bench. "When is this all gonna end?" she said, frustrated.
For a few minutes Rogue stayed forlornly on the ground. She held her ankle tightly, trying to make sense of her surroundings.
Rogue got laboriously to her feet. She rubbed at her lower back to try and relieve the phantom pressure of an extension of her spine dragging in the dirt. She knew what it was now- Kurt had a tail, a long forked one, and the weight caused him to stoop his shoulders and walk with slightly bent knees. His odd posture was also caused by unusual feet- there were only two toes on each one.
Her feet were really started to hurt. "Ah have TEN toes, fuck it!" she snapped, glaring down at her feet. "Ten toes, ya hear? Stop playin' up!" She pounded on her temples with her fists, trying furiously to drive it home that it was normal for her to have five toes on each foot, but to no avail. Rogue sat down at the foot of a grave to rest her feet. It would be fine. She'd collect her thoughts and find her way home...
Someone emerged from the darkness, and Rogue inhaled the cemetary scent sharply, tensing up. Her whole body ached from running, from crashing into things. Rogue had bruises everywhere that gave her dull pain whenever she moved, particularly one of her ribs. Her ankle was killing her. She could only just walk normally.
This new person was a girl with long red hair. She was a fair bit taller than Rogue, but Rogue was a good judge of age... or maybe Kurt was. It was getting hard to differentiate between her own abilities and his. This girl looked around Rogue's age, at most a year or two older. For a moment she looked calculated, as though trying not to make any sudden movements. Then she looked friendly. Rogue didn't take this as a sign to let her guard down, the boy had looked friendly too.
Then the girl opened her pretty mouth and said the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Hi."
Rogue gazed at her incredulously, with some kindly feeling mixed with plain bewilderment. "Do- do Ah know you? Ugh, these memories. Ah'm so confused!"
The girl nodded wisely. "Yeah, I know. I can relate to what you're going through."
Rogue suddenly paired the words from her head with the person before her and leaped up with a thrill of horror. "Jean. You're Jean Grey," she spat angrily, and her voice wavered and compromised her. "You're like the others!"
Jean Grey moved forward, but not aggressively. "Relax," she said firmly.
It was easy for her to say. She seemed so calm. She was Jean Grey who could move things with her mind. People liked Jean Grey, and this in itself gave Rogue a powerful swell of contempt for the girl.
"... I won't hurt you," Jean Grey was saying. "Look, it's tough to go it solo. Hey, zero pressure, but if you want to talk more, you can reach me anytime with this communicator." She held it up for Rogue to see, and Rogue had so many Jean Grey memories of Jean eating breakfast or playfully squabbling with some boy who constantly wore red shades or fighting in the uniform she was currently wearing that it didn't surprise her when the communicator floated to her hand.
Rogue took it cautiously, glancing at Jean Grey. "Latest fashion accessory, huh?" she joked shakily.
Out of the night behind Jean Grey, as dark as the seafloor, two people approached. One was unfamiliar, but the other- it was the white-haired woman who'd tried to blow her up. No. No, no, no, no, no!
"You!" gasped Rogue, backing away. The woman looked puzzled. "You... no, you won't take me!" She turned around and ran for her life. She dimly heard the third person- a teenage boy- leap at her, but heard the splash and his grunt of pain as he ended up in a mud puddle.
She was short of breath. Shooting pains erupted from her rib every so often, and her ankle twisted beneath her several times. With sobs of pain, she stopped, wrapping her arms around her ribcage in a vain effort to try and make the pain cease. She stared around without really seeing anything. Which way should she go?
Rogue staggered up the steps into a dark, mossy crypt. At the foot of the coffin within, she curled into a ball and listened fearfully for the sounds of the X-Men coming to get her.
... Minutes inched agonisingly past. She could hear insects in the air outside. Fiercely, she murmured to herself, "Don't find me, don't fine me, go away, leave me alone..."
Hands clapped over her ears, she rocked back and forth slowly. Where was Irene? Had she escaped?
A clatter of someone dropping through the open ceiling. Rogue cringed, trying to make herself as small as possible and then forced herself to look up. Quaking, she spied a tall boy with brown hair in his late teens. His eyes were hidden by a red visor. Her mouth dropped open.
"Thought you could escape us, did you?" the boy barked, spotting Rogue. With a small cry she shied away, her wide eyes pleading with him to leave her alone. "The X-Men don't leave loose ends," he said ominously, and began to advance on her.
With a yell of defeat she fled, stumbling down the steps of the crypt straight into- into the boy?
HOW COULD HE BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE? This wasn't happening, how could it be happening? Summoning whatever strength she still had, she pushed him onto the ground and dashed back up the steps and into the crypt. Oh God, they were everywhere, they were all coming after her...
Panting heavily, she made an abrupt stop, staring around in bewilderment. A dull flare of red asserted itself in the darkness and Jean Grey appeared. Rogue felt her fear ebb slightly. Only slightly, because of the expression on Jean's face. She looked- angry. God, what had she done now?
"I tried, I really did, but some people just won't be helped!" snarled Jean Grey, starting forward menacingly. Rogue's eyes widened. If she were any younger or any more afraid than she was already, she might have burst into tears.
Rogue teleported away. When she reappeared she found herself seeing only empty air and the tops of trees- and then she started to fall. Her ears rang and she seemed, for a few earth-shattering seconds, to take on only physical properties, falling at the speed of a rock. She heard her own scream as if she were a bystander. Perhaps this was what you felt- before you died.
Some little voice in her head was howling in panic, and shutting her eyes tightly she managed to teleport to a short way above the ground. She still hit it hard, though.
When she opened her eyes a few seconds later, she was horrified to discover Jean Grey leaning over her. "Are you hurt? Lie still, don't try to move," Jean said, all concerned. The white-haired woman was there too, she knelt down beside her too.
Rogue freaked, squirming and jerking in her prone position in the dirt in a vain effort to escape the clutches of the X-Women. Jean jumped slightly, but the white-haired woman seemed worried. "Child, what is it? We are your friends."
The traces of Kurt Wagner that remained in her mind responded happily to this statement, babbling encouragement that Rogue did not want to listen to. You're not, Rogue thought hysterically. You're not. You're not, you're not mah friends! No!
Her bare hand shot out instinctively and grabbed the woman's arm. Both bellowed in shock, and Rogue was swamped with memories.
Ah'm Ororo Munroe, she thought, but did not dwell on it as the weather suddenly went nuts. All she could hear was the crash and clatter of winds and rain as she rose into the air.
This time there was no fear of falling. There was only fear itself, and pain as lightening burned in her skin and crackled in her brain. Rain pummelled her body and the ringing in her ears became a roar.
"Too much power! Ah can't control it, Ah have to-" Rogue teleported away.
She was thrown into a brick wall as if by another explosion. Rogue ricocheted off the bricks and onto her feet, staggered and fell in a heap. Her shoulder felt like it had come away from her, and her whole body was doused in something wet- not sweat, but rainwater. Tiny electric currents coursed through her hair, and when she clapped her hands to her head her fingers were shocked and jammed in one position.
Gasping, feeling like her lungs were scorched by fire and ice, Rogue brought her knees up under her chin and didn't move, waiting for the X-Men to come and finish her off.
"Just kill me," she whimpered.
She wept, inconsolable. Rogue had teleported into an alleyway where the sounds of a steady stream of cars could be heard. Every sound of an engine backfiring was the clatter of aggressive footsteps, every exhaust roar a war cry.
Eyes tightly closed, she stayed like that for a long time.
- - -
DISCLAIMER: None of the X-Men belong to me. God, I wish they did. I'd steal shitloads of their outfits. I am only a slightly sad individual who, despite being in her teens, feels that Rogue is a Tragic Heroine on a par with Anna Karenina or all those ladies from Dickens. : ) All this belongs to WB, Stan Lee, Marvel Comics, whoever you like.