Mystique picked Wanda up at the Institute the next morning.

"I would like to speak to my student Charles, if it's not too much of a problem." She spat at him sarcastically. "I'll take her to school."

Wanda had expected Mystique to do something like this. Wanda was well aware of her status as one of Mystique's favorites. The attention and approval tended to alienate her a little from the rest of the Brotherhood. Usually this wasn't a problem, but there were times...

So Wanda got in the car Mystique kept for these types of situations and they took off.

"Are you okay?" Mystique had pulled the car over at one of the bluffs around Bayville. "Did they treat you okay there?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. But..."

"What?"

"Well, I realized this morning that I could remember the mental hospital. And I could remember why I hate Magneto. And that I remembered this yesterday. I haven't been able to think of that for a long time now. Even after that whole Apocalyse thing and he and Pietro and I started getting along, you know, more than usual, I couldn't remember, but after yesterday I can. And I do hate him, but not quite so viciously as before. Could Rogue have somehow cancelled out Mastermind's effects?"

Mystique was surprised. "I'm not sure, but maybe that was an aspect of Rogue absorbing his powers too when she gave them to Apocalypse. Or maybe Mastermind merely blocked the memory from your conscious mind and when Rogue absorbed you, that part was set loose. Are you okay about this?"

Wanda ignored Mystique's concern. "Well, obviously it was set loose. She was going to kill him, wasn't she?"

"It sure looked like it. You could too you know. So, what do you think of the X-men now that you've spent a night with them?"

Wanda smirked. "Rogue seems okay though." Wanda looked away but still noticed Mystique's close glance of interest. "She knows things about Magneto and Pietro and a lot of other people. She could help me. That's as good a reason as any to be her friend, right?"

A strange look flitted across Mystique face. Though Mystique quickly hid it, Wanda caught it anyway. Good. Her little bit of misdirection had worked well. Mystique couldn't suspect her of joining the X-men now. Ever since Lance had briefly switched sides and after Rogue had left, Mystique could be downright paranoid.

"Are you up to school today, or would you like to go somewhere else?" Mystique used her offer to avoid answering any personal questions that might arise.

"I think that since Rogue was going when I left, she might need some support today. She had it worse yesterday than I did." Wanda really wasn't up to spending the day with Mystique. "Thanks, though."

Mystique started the car and began the drive back to Bayville. "I will have to speak to your principal about this mutant persecution."

"It's just a bunch of snotty kids. And they let us go to that school openly. That's remarkable in of itself. You couldn't, Magneto and Professor McCoy and Xavier couldn't, but they'll let us. It's a step in the right direction. We can deal with the kids."

"You shouldn't have to."

"No, but only the jocks get through high school without taking grief off of someone. I'll be out in a year and a half, don't worry about me." Wanda smiled. "A little hex in the right place at the right time, presto, a test gone wrong. I think I'll have to look into that."

Even Mystique, who had hated mutant persecution and fought it in her own way all her life, had to smirk at the prospect of some old fashioned teenaged payback. "If the principal is as anti-mutant as you say, be careful. He could make things worse for you."

They drove in silence the rest of the way. As Wanda got out of the car Mystique added; "Have a better day Wanda. I'll see you lot back at the house by five." With that she drove off.

Wanda made her way into the school and got to her locker just as the bell rang. "Here we go." Wanda sighed as she ducked into homeroom, late.

New Scene

"Hey, Rogue. How was that geometry test?" Wanda set her tray down across from Rogue in the noisy lunchroom. They had taken to spending time together in the month since their accident. As they were both Juniors, they had some classes together, like geometry.

"I hate math." Rogue scowled down at the freezer pizza the school tried to fob off on them. "Why do we need to learn that stuff anyway? I'm never going to be an architect."

"State standards, probably. I -." Wanda stopped. "Well, what do you want?" She said to her brother who had showed up at their table.

"I was just wondering if you wanted a ride home after school."

"I told you I would be there at four and it means I'll be there at four. Go away!" There was more than a little trace of anger in her voice and Pietro knew when to back off.

"I swear, for the past month he's been overprotective in the extreme."

"Maybe he doesn't like you hanging out with me. After all, I did leave the Brotherhood."

"Too bad. I live in house with Mystique as the only other woman. I need some variety. And you are about as much variety you can get." Wanda referred to the odd references Rogue would make in some of their conversations. "Anyway, forget him. Can't you borrow some explanations about the geometry? Surely one of them understands it."

A wry smile twisted Rogue's face. "Magneto understands geometry as it relates to metal fatigue, Scott's blocking the memories and Jean, well; I leave Jean where she is most of the time."

"What about Storm?" Wanda asked.

"I don't bring her out much. We haven't started practicing her powers yet and I don't want to trigger something accidentally."

"Let me guess, you were trying to get me under control before you moved on to the heavy powers."

"I wouldn't call earthquakes, magma, and optic blasts easy going." They both smiled at the joke. Rogue found herself amazed at how much more easily she could handle her mutation by talking it over with someone her own age. Though both she and Wanda were normally suspicious and slow to trust, they had formed a fast friendship despite heavy opposition from both the X-men and the Brotherhood. "So, what do you have next? Any tests?"

New Scene

Wanda showed up at home at 4:00 exactly. "O.k. Pietro," Wanda started as she walked in the door. "What's so important about this meeting that it couldn't wait -." Coming into the living room, she saw Magneto standing in the middle of the room with Pietro standing nervously to one side. His presence filled the room, surrounding his children with a power they could not ignore.

"Hello Wanda. I was thinking the three of us could go out for dinner and get better reacquainted." Magneto calmly spoke as if it was a perfectly reasonable request.

Now, usually, Wanda would have set into her father like starving lions on a helpless gazelle. She hated him that much. However, in the month since that night in the Xavier mansion when Rogue had woke up screaming from a dream forged of both hers and Magneto's memories, she had been thinking about her father. She had been wondering what he was like as a person and what he had been through. Most of all she wondered how, having known what it was like to be institutionalized, he could hand her over to the mental hospital.

Not quite knowing what to say, Wanda glanced over at Pietro. The pleading in his eyes was clear. Why would he be pleading for her to come? He couldn't be afraid of Magneto, could he?

They had never spoken of Pietro's life while she had been locked away. They ignored it as if it never happened. After all, he had been in New York City enrolled in a school when Mystique found him, it couldn't have been too bad.

The long silence continued. Magneto was expectant, but not unnerved by it. Wanda's mind was working too furiously to notice. Pietro, was too full of energy to be able to hold still and quiet during a standoff. He shifted from one foot to the other. Finally, he burst out, "Come on Wanda, just try it!"

What the hell? She could always hex them.

New Scene

"Hey Rogue. Practice in half an hour." Logan told Rogue as she walked in the main hall.

They had been practicing, on a weekly basis, different ways of using her powers until they could become instinctive. None of them ever activated instantly. Logan wanted to make sure that she got as instinctive as she could so that when she was in danger, she would defend herself more actively and effectively. Logan sparred with Rogue, the injunction being that she could only use one power a session until she had the majority down pat. Today, they would finally work on honing Erik's power to a fine edge.

Rogue didn't like doing this to Logan. She knew from his memories that the times he had been physically manipulated by Erik, it had hurt and left him with a nasty resonance to magnetic fields for weeks afterward.

That was another thing Logan was trying to train out of her; too much consideration of her enemies' feelings. She almost couldn't help it. Since she had their experiences she knew how it felt. It took a lot of anger to get her to ignore that stab of memory from Logan when she inflicted damage to the Logan in real life. And she just didn't get angry like that at Logan.

"Rogue." Logan had his claws two inches from her throat. They had been practicing for over an hour. It had been his own control that saved her from having to practice his self-healing many times over. His voice sounded both exasperated and amused.

"Yeah, I know. I can use it; I don't want to practice like that. How many adamantium-enhanced skeletons am I likely to fight?"

"Me, for one. My daughter for another. You had no problem doing this the first time we practiced. Stop regressing!"

This went on for another ten minutes before Logan got frustrated and just heaved a metal beam at her. Rogue stopped this easily and then started chasing Logan around the room with it. Logan found that slashing it into pieces didn't help and Rogue was on the floor, laughing.

When finally, Logan cried halt, he came over to her, trying to keep a stern look on his face. "You're going to need to put that concern for your enemies away. They'll still kill you, no matter what the version in your head says."

Rogue didn't have time to form a retort. The Professor interrupted.

Rogue. Wanda is here looking for you. She's very upset, come quickly.

She found a very tense scene as she came down the stairs in the main foyer. X-men and assorted students were standing nervously to either side and well back from a hex-lit and clearly furious Wanda. Storm, the Professor and Hank were present, ready to intervene if need be.

Rogue knew of Wanda's memories; that there really only three things that could get her in such a state. Magneto, Pietro, and the sanatorium, her old alma mater. Something about the way Wanda was glowering at nothing in particular told Rogue that she needed to vent and that she probably wanted some privacy when she did.

Reaching Wanda Rogue said, "Come on. Let's go outside." Without actually touching her, Rogue led the way to one of the secluded spots scattered around the grounds. As they walked away, Rogue could feel the palpable relief radiating off of all the people inside.

"What happened?" Rogue sat while Wanda paced and fumed.

"I'll kill him! I swear it! The next time he comes near me, he's dead!" Wanda's hands had been glowing blue since Rogue had first seen her in the house, but now she started hexing grass, bushes, the odd bird that had been brave enough to stay.

"That, ass, that has the gall to claim that he's my father, asked if I would join his new mutant organization, now that I COULD 'HANDLE MY PROBLEM'!" Wanda's voice grew louder with every word.

The hexed birds were startled off, but couldn't quite gain enough purchase and some fell to the earth, squawking.

"As if I was the reason he had to put me in that bloody prison! I really thought after that whole Apocalypse thing, that we could get along, you know be a family. Maybe he was actually sorry that he had done that to me, you know, maybe he'd recognize that he missed out on having a daughter. But no, he's acting like it was all my fault we couldn't be a family. Like I was acting outrageous!" Rogue could see that Wanda was very close to crying and she was glad that no one else was there to see this.

"And Pietro!" Wanda's voice took on a note of hurt betrayal. Pietro just sat there and let him speak to me like that. I don't even know why I'm surprised, but it just made it so much worse. How can he claim to be my brother if he can't even stand up for me? You have them both in your head, you tell me!"

And here was one of the many dilemmas Rogue's power caused her to face. She badly wanted to help her friend. Having a deep understanding with all three members of Magneto's family meant she had insights into each ones motives. And while the info she had wasn't exactly under a confessional seal, did she really have the right to betray things better kept secret unless betrayed by the person?

Especially when they were things that Pietro dreaded the day that Wanda knew.