""The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants"? Y' kiddin' right? That's not really what ya call y'selves…"
"In the eyes of the world all mutants are "evil""
"So ya bein' ironic then?"
"Sure."
St. John's power, when activated, feels like a little electric shock.
Accompanying the shock is a flash of heat between the eyes and in the heart. The current then meets in the shoulders and rushes down the arms, pooling in the palms where an oily iridescence rises up from them. When it's lit, he's got something to play with. A dancing flame, his finger the wick. A fireball rolled into shape by his hands. An animal. He's especially fond of firebirds.
He watches one soar through his bedroom leaving smoke trails in its wake.
"Our powers are like muscles - the more they are used, the stronger they become and the more control we have over them. When I first began shifting it hurt so much I'd pass out and wake up hours later with a new face, a new body. I was terrified, but I learned to control it. I knew I had to. I pushed myself even though it hurt, and I kept hold of who I was so that when I looked in the mirror again, even though my features were different, I saw myself."
The firebird hovers above him, its wings outspread, tiny flames forming the feathers. He'd love nothing more than for it to wrap those wings around him and soothe his bruised and battered body, his aching muscles…
A hot shower would probably be safer.
"If you're not going to use your powers you need to learn how to defend yourself in other ways…"
He peels off what's left of his uniform and drops it onto the white fluffy bathmat. There'll be soot marks no doubt. Raven'll have a heifer.
He twists the knobs to turn on the water and steps carefully under the icy hot spray wincing a little.
"I'll help you learn how to fight."
"Ah already know how ta fight."
"You've studied Martial Arts? Or perhaps-"
"Ah'm a brawler, Raven. No punches pulled. Everythin' above an' below the belt."
"And you think you can take Pryo?"
"If he ain't gonna use his powers, yeah."
"And if he does?"
He lathers himself up, scrubbing away the blood and burnt skin, humming.
She takes a pair of scissors and cuts the thumb and middle fingers off her gloves. Raven watches her do it, smiling. "Just in case?" she asks and she doesn't answer. "You're going to need a code name… something to use if you ever decide to join us in the field…"
She slips the gloves back on. They look like Remy's now.
"Call me "Rogue"," she says.
He turns off the water, pushes open the glass door and stands there dripping on the ruined bathmat before swiping a hand across the foggy mirror.
He grins at his reflection, "Why h'lo there…"
One of his creations has come to call.
A Botticellian goddess with a mahogany river of damp curls tumbling over her breasts, eyes green like sea glass, pink lips a rosebud waiting to be plucked…
He ran his fingers over them as she trembled…
No… quivered…
He ran his fingers over them as she quivered… like a plucked violin string…
No Ah used "plucked" before… umm…
A Botticellian goddess with a mahogany river of damp curls tumbling over her breasts, eyes like sea glass…
Focusing...
Focusing to a hard familiar emerald.
"Goddammit!"
Pyro!
She'd accepted the faceoff because she had wanted to prove to Raven that she could protect herself without her powers. True she'd never done it before, but she'd been beaten up enough times in the past to have picked up a few tricks. She had really thought she could handle the guy without skin on skin contact. The cutting up of her gloves had been an impulse - before she'd even realized what she was doing the scraps of leather were already on the floor. Maybe subconsciously she knew same as Raven that she'd have to do it, have to touch him if she wanted to survive the "training session".
All she had to do was tag his foot and avoid the flames while doing it, but after a few minor burns she found herself reaching for his face instead. She knew she couldn't win. She knew he was going to kill her and she knew Raven wouldn't stop him.
"Whatever happens in there happens. I'm not going to intervene. You have what it takes to get the job done on your own and I'm not just talking about your power. You're smart and resourceful and-"
And screw that. She'd been burnt too many times without getting anywhere near his stupid foot. Raven had neglected to mention that he could use his stupid flame throwers to fly.
She'd ended up playing the wounded bird. The second he touched ground to go in for the kill, she punched him in the face with one exposed knuckle and that was enough to do the trick.
"Bravo."
A knock on the bathroom door.
She grabs a towel, wraps it around herself.
"Yeah?"
"It's Dominick… Raven thought you might be here."
"She mad at me f'puttin' that punk in the infirmary?"
"She's proud of you."
She looks at her reflection again. It looks like she has a sunburn. A really really bad sunburn.
She picks up a match from beside the candle in St. John's bathroom. He likes to lie in the bathtub with only the candle burning as he plots out his novels. It's his secret, this little ritual, as well as the projects themselves. Raven couldn't care less what he does in his spare time, but Dominick would never let him live it down. St. John wants to be a romance writer. He wants Fabios and damsels spilling out of their peasant blouses with lurid titles in shiny pink lettering.
She lights the match and holds it over her cupped palm. The flame jumps into it and she molds it with her mind, making herself another bird. She likes this power, it's fun. She wonders how long she's going to get to keep it. Remy's had disappeared pretty quickly but she had felt some of his agility kicking in when she had been evading Pyro's blasts. Or she thinks it was his. She doesn't know where else it could have come from. Remy is the only person she's ever touched who had moved like
Like he knew his body as intimately as he knew his lovers', like he could make it do whatever he wanted, just like he could make hers do whatever he wanted because she, like all women, was helpless against his overwhelming-
"Oh fa' Christ's sake!"
"You okay in there?"
"Ah'll be fine…" She says and she means it. She's packed away everyone else, she knows can get rid of this yahoo too. She just needs to concentrate.
She curls her hand shut and the firebird dissipates.
"Dominick?"
"Yeah?"
"How long has it been since th' fight ended?"
"About fifteen minutes."
Fifteen minutes…
Cody and Bruce were a nightmare to get rid of, it'd taken forever… but Remy had only been a few weeks, and that was her fault. She hadn't wanted to let him go. Once she did though he went pretty quickly. Within a day of putting her foot down and actively blocking him, she hadn't been seeing things through his eyes anymore, and by the end of the week she wasn't remembering his past and getting it confused with her own. Except for the whole lookit me ma I'm an acrobat! thing that popped up today, he'd been pretty much silent.
And now St. John…
She looks at her reflection again and removes her towel. She sees only herself and not some heroine in a bodice-ripping novel. She smiles, relieved. St. John's taken a backseat for now, and in a few hours she'll have him locked in the trunk with everyone else.
Ah only lost fifteen minutes…
She can deal with fifteen minutes.
-/-
"Irene? Are you in here?"
The room is dark and still but she steps inside anyway. The curtains part with the breeze slipping in through the open window and she sees her with her head down on the desk beside it. There's a book under her cheek.
"Irene?"
The woman jumps and lifts her head. "Yes?" she asks suddenly alert.
"Hi… Ah'm Rogue."
"Oh yes…" Irene reaches out and turns on the table lamp filling the room with a warm glow. "I've been waiting to meet you for a long time."
She blinks at her, surprised. She had pictured someone around Raven's age, but this woman has to be at least eighty…
"Please sit down. How are you feeling?" She takes a seat on the edge of the bed and Irene smiles at her. "I heard your training session yesterday went very well."
"Ah failed."
"If you had failed you would be dead."
"Ah failed cuz Ah went in there intendin' ta win without mah power an Ah couldn' do it."
"You hate it don't you?" she says softly. "Your power?"
"Yes."
"I understand."
"Ah don't mean to be rude, ma'am, but Ah don't think so..."
"My powers aren't exactly enjoyable either, Rogue." Irene slides the book off the table and onto her lap. A pencil falls to the floor and she pauses a moment before leaning over to reach for it. Her hand sweeps past it completely, feeling the carpet for it and she gets up from the bed.
"Here…" She hands it to her and Irene smiles at her forehead as she takes it.
"Y'blind?"
"Yes."
"Did y'powers do that t'ya?"
"In a way… Did Mystique tell you what I can do?"
She shakes her head and stops.
"No… she just said it was time for me to meet you, or rather you had some time…"
"You see this book?" Irene places a hand on the volume lying in her lap, her fingers tracing the words burnt into the leather cover.
Libris Veritorum. Volume Twelve.
"Yes…"
"When I developed my mutant powers I was overcome with images I didn't understand. The only way I could cope with them was to write them down. For over a year I filled the pages of books like this one in an attempt to get them all out of my mind…"
"Did ya?"
She shakes her head. "Even after all these years… every once in a while they come again, like a tidal wave threatening to overwhelm me and sweep away all that I know… That's why I could not meet you earlier… I was... drowning." She sighs, but smiles tiredly, continuing, "When my powers first manifested I wrote day and night. I barely slept, I barely ate. My vision eventually deteriorated to nothing. The images were still coming to me but I could no longer write them down." Her hand slides across the tabletop and rests on a small tape recorder. "I record them now."
"What are they? Th' images?"
"They are visions of the future. Or rather many possible futures… Some of the things I've seen have already come to pass while others have not. What I do here with Raven's help is determine which of these futures is the most likely to occur, and which are the most… desirable to the cause. We try to mesh the two together if we can. I am almost always right when trying to determine the immediate future, but my long-range scanning of probabilities isn't always as exact, although I have learned to pinpoint certain factors which can lead us out of harm's way or to a victory. Raven and I use these books and the tapes as a kind of guide to help us recognize these factors."
"So it's... kinna a crapshoot?"
"Yes, you could say that."
"That's gotta be frustratin'."
"It's very frustrating, but I do what I can to lead us in the right direction."
"Raven told me that you were the one who knew about me in Mississippi. She said y'told her where ta find me…"
"Yes… You're very important to us, Rogue."
"But why? Ah mean Raven told me that too but Ah don't... Ah don't really understand…"
Irene reaches out to the other books resting along the wall on the desk. Her fingers drift over the first few volumes before settling on the sixth and pulling it out. There's a red ribbon slipping over the top, marking a page. Irene opens it and shows it to her.
A sketch of a little girl huddled into herself, her arms hiding her face. A woman is there, reaching out to her. The woman is Raven. The girl… she has a white streak in her hair.
"It's you, Rogue. I drew it long before you came into this world."
Irene flips to the next page and she is there again. She is fighting a woman in a mask… a suit with a bolt on it, a sash… her hands are on the woman's face, her own contorted in pain… She's huddled again, her hands clamped over her ears, tears streaming down her face…
Another drawing of her… an X on her uniform…
Irene pulls out another volume and hands it to her. Volume eight. Another red ribbon.
Another Raven, older, battle-worn. Another her.
And there is a man. A distinguished-looking man with long hair, holding an odd helmet. She turns the page and she's a little older and fighting at this man's side… The images are horrific, there is torture and death scrawled across the page but there is also a child… an innocent child… an extraordinary child… And there is another man… a man who looks achingly familiar…
Volume twelve. A green ribbon.
She is young. She is rolled into a ball on the floor and there is no one reaching out to her. She is alone.
She is older, she looks as she does now. She is standing beside Raven. And Pyro. And Avalanche.
"Raven is a constant, child… in every future of yours I have seen, she has been there beside you… And you trust her don't you, Rogue? More than you have ever trusted anyone in your entire life…"
"Yes…" she whispers staring at Raven's image, at her hands resting on her shoulders.
"This is why. You two were meant to be together. She was meant to be your guardian… But she is not the only one I have seen with you in my visions… There is someone else whose life is so entwined with yours that in every future he is there with you…" Irene turns back to the sixth volume lying open on the desk. She turns another page.
She is kissing a man. They are holding onto each other. They are frozen in glass.
She is turning away from him, a burning Queen of Hearts falling from her fingertips.
He is pinned down to a slab, jewels set into his wrists and ankles, his heart.
A sword, pinning them together. Her cheek resting on his naked chest. No absorption, no life.
She looks down at the eighth volume lying open in her hands, at the man who had looked so familiar. He is standing in the shadows behind her, staring at her hand joined with another's.
Remy.
She is kissing Remy, she is leaving him behind, she is dying for him, she is with another but looking back at him.
She reaches out with trembling fingers and turns the page of the twelfth volume resting on Irene's lap.
They are kneeling on a dirty floor facing each other, he is binding her burnt hands.
They are staring into each other's eyes. He is about to drape his coat over her shoulders. She is wearing his shirt.
"We are your destiny, Rogue… In your future, there is always Raven. And there is always this man."
She tries to turn to the next page but Irene places her hand gently on top of hers. "No, child. I only showed you what I did to help you understand that you belong here with us, with Raven. Those other futures… knowing about them cannot hurt you because they will never happen now. They no longer exist. But here in this volume is a future that is possible..."
"Does somethin' bad happen to me?"
Irene shakes her head, squeezes her hand. "You've only appeared in these volumes in the places I've shown you. There is one more page in this one, but I cannot reveal it to you until it has already happened. You need to decide who you will become on your own."
"Y'already know who that is though dontcha? Y've "seen" it."
"I'm not always right. One word from you and this may become obsolete."
"And y'not gonna gimme a hint if that word is yes or no?"
Irene smiles.
"I will not influence you in any way. It is purely your choice whether or not you will stand with us."
"Do Ah have ta give mah answer now?"
"No," Irene closes the book, holds it to her chest. "But I think you will come to a decision very soon."
"Can ya just tell me one thing?"
"It depends."
She takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes.
"Will Ah see him again?"
Another smile.
"Yes."