Rogue gaL: —stares— Whoa! Hold on there. Okay, so we need to set some things straight here. You see, all that stuff about Rogue "switching sides" and "valiantly giving her life" to save Magneto is just PROPAGANDA. A story well told by The Master of Metal & Lies. …Perhaps a little too well told, it seems… The Truth: Rogue (& McCoy) faked death by growing and disposing of a brain-dead clone. Unfortunately, Remy didn't escape the compound like Rogue told him to but went looking for her…and found the body she had dumped. Rogue reluctantly disappeared into the night. So her "body" could be laid to rest, Remy cut a deal with Magneto. Mags declared her a hero and told the history books what to say about how she died, and Remy—well, you don't know what he gave up yet.

Skin2skincontact: No, it's okay to like something I worked really hard on. I'm glad the scary number of POVs made the chapter enjoyable for you. Would I have done them if I expected people to hate it? ——— Hey, I started reading your Shrieks and Shadows fic. It's interesting but the mistakes are killing the wincing English Professor perfectionist in me. Fix it up yourself or blackmail a friend into doing it, please. It's just basic-level editing. Make the sentences make sense, work on the grammar, fix up the formatting—things like that. It's a great story so far, but it's begging to be fixed up.

Anna Marie Raven: Yay for psychology references! The last chapter used a lot of my psych knowledge, since I've never been in such a situation. This coming chapter, though, is pretty much from personal experience.

Ishandahalf: Honey, using the Enter key a few more times when you review would make reading them so much easier. Less squinting, more chuckling, y'know?
Anyway. Funny thing about the Romy is that it was totally unplanned; it just sort of happened. But it's coming together so well, I'm just gonna spend a second and silently thank my Agathodæmon (Ancient Greek guardian/helper spirit) for guiding the idea along.
(What? I'm researching ancient mythology for a few dozen short original stories. …If you laugh, I'll whip out the Voodoo book with you in mind.)

GiveGodtheglory: Yeah, sure. People think it's funny how Remy got bugs in his pants. But I sympathize with my poor (unfortunately) fictional, (unfortunately) copyrighted Cajun. I write this fanfic in a BASEMENT. There are spider webs gleaming in the dim light. At midnight the creepy crawlies squirm up out of the carpet fibers. I'm barefoot, and I'm scared. —clock strikes twelve— … "HEEEEEEEEEELLP!"

EVERYBODY: UM, JUST THOUGHT I'D MENITON THIS. THE CLONES ARE NOT THE SAME PEOPLE AS THEIR "PARENTS," SO IT'D BE KINDA STUPID TO ASSUME THEY ALL END UP IN THE SAME ROMANTIC PAIRINGS THAT THE ORIGINALS DID. And if they all do, it proves that love is actually just biology and chemistry…which would prove McCoy right, dammit. NEEDLESS TO SAY, I'M RUBBING MY EVIL LITTLE HANDS TOGETHER AND PLOTTING SOME CLONE ROMANCES YOU'D PROBABLY NEVER THINK OF.


I am truly sorry about shortness and possible not so goodness. I was preoccupied with taking down some plagiarizing idiot on FictionPress (I have a published author who likes me now), keeping an eye on my little brother after he had surgery on a hernia (poor baby!), and valiantly trying to forget how few days it is until September 1st (not thinking about it, la-la-la…dammit!).

XXX

Cloning Evolution

Step 8: Have The Talk

XXX

Risty looked down at the small, blue frosted cake. "Is it Charlie's birthday again?"

"No. Yours. Well, sorta." Rogue shrugged, snapping a candle in two and pressing the burnable piece into the cake. "Half birthday. You've been around for a whoppin' six months. …Eh, actually you only left the tank six weeks ago, but I'm countin' every day up t' your conception, so it's six months today." She paused and thought, 'Six months…shit, that's it? Six months an' my two-celled organism's a teenager? …Damn, they grow up fast.'

The girl was quiet and unblinking as she watched Rogue light the shortened candle. It was her "learning sponge" behavior. Rogue made sure to be very well mannered and never, ever cuss when the girl acted like that. Normal kids picked up swears with frightening speed and glee; she did not want to see SpongeGirl in action.

"Why is there a candle?" Risty asked at last.

"Well, on birthdays, you get a candle for every year you've been alive. You're half a year old, so you get half a candle."

A moment.

"Why didn't Charlie have a candle?"

Rogue was truly beginning to hate that little, innocent pause Risty had right before she asked the most difficult questions on the bloody planet. She bit her lip. "Because he wasn't there to blow his candles out," she explained evasively, eyes downcast.

Another pause, accented by a huge intake of breath that Rogue mistook as the windup to a really long question. Only at the last second did she blink with realization and shield the fragile candlelight with her hands. "Not now!" she cried, and Risty froze. Then the girl sighed, releasing the impressive breath she had meant to blow out the candle with.

Rogue answered the question before the clone could open her mouth. "You have t'wait until the birthday song's been sung," she explained with raised eyebrows. "An' you have t'make your wish first." This time she anticipated the question before Risty could even start her patented silent moment. "The wish is for whatever y'want. Can't guarantee you'll get it, but if y'want it hard enough…"

She trailed off appropriately before going on. "Rules: y' can't tell anyone what you wished for, or it'll never come true. An' you have t' blow out all the candles on your cake to get a chance at the wish. Oh, an' if you've got too many candles—or asthma—you can ask people t'help you blow. Got that?"

The girl nodded and morphed a paper cone party hat onto her head. She had a look of perfect seriousness on her face. Rogue sang the birthday song while trying valiantly not to laugh. Risty asked for help blowing out the half candle—seeing as she had no prior experience in candle snuffing—blew hard, and then immediately started scrutinizing Rogue's face.

The woman got the most bizarre idea that the wish had been for her skin to turn blue. She hid a grin.

There was some inconspicuous fiddling with a holographic wristwatch, followed by a squeal of utter delight.

XXX

They divided the cake in their usual one sixth-five sixths spit, and the five sixths disappeared in record time while Rogue was barely into her single slice. She was left staring with her fork in her mouth. A small part of her was adamant that Kurt's ability to wolf down incredible amounts of food was genetic.

The rest of her wasn't disagreeing.

Risty wiped all stray icing off the serving plate with her finger. Then she started eying Rogue's cake dangerously, causing the woman to edge back and eat exponentially faster. The clone's glare seemed to accuse her of being a pig—she fought not to snort.

Soon there was no trace of cake left in the guest unit that Rogue had commandeered to be Risty's room. The two of them hunkered down on the floor, enjoying the silence and happy stomachs with varying magnitudes of fullness.

"When is your birthday?" the clone asked Rogue eventually.

She did a few calculations involving a day in late February before answering, "In a couple'a months."

The girl rolled over on her stomach and looked at her. "How many candles will you have?"

She hissed from an imaginary pain. "…Thirty-four," she admitted, trying not to search her face for wrinkles.

Risty's eyes were enormous. "That's a lot of candles."

Rogue shrugged with a resentful laugh. "Yeah, well I thought so too when I was your"—she stopped suddenly and blinked; technically, she had still been in the womb when she was the clone's age—"A lot of candles," she said instead with a sharp nod of agreement. She smiled at Risty. Inside though, she was screaming.

'Oh, hell. I'm ancient!'

XXX

After a while, Rogue left to do her work. Risty had asked her mom what her work once, and the woman had reluctantly said "gorilla welfare." She still wasn't quite sure what that was exactly, but it sounded important. She shrugged to herself, rolled onto her back on the floor, and looked up at the painted blue ceiling. Life was good in her opinion. Blue skin, blue room, blue birthday cake, blue Mom—she smiled, happy her wish had worked.

She lay for a bit, then sat up as that nasty feeling snuck up on her. She got it when she was alone. Reading helped sometimes—she glanced at her bookshelf—but not for long. Sighing, she stood and walked out into the hall. There was only one thing to do.

The children all perked up when she came in. They got the nasty feeling a lot too. She walked along the walkway and waved to them all before going back to the second in line. It was true that she spent more time with him than any of the others, but who could blame her? He was blue.

She sat down in front of his tank and waved again. He returned it.

With his longer tail, he reached out to touch the glass that separated them. In turn, she scooted under the walkway's railing until her legs danged off the edge. Stretching, she managed to press three of the longer fingers in her left hand to the glass. She looked up and saw him recoil a little at the sight of her two "extra" fingers. Then he began to scrutinize his own hands.

Some part of her expected him to grow the extra two fingers and make his hands look like hers, but he merely looked back and forth between their hands with a pensive expression. Well, she could relate. She had always wondered why the heck Rogue wasn't blue.

Good thing for birthday wishes.

Smiling at him, she got rid of her thumb and pinky. The remaining fingers grew and reshaped until her hand was the same as his. The worry lifted from his face. Instead he looked oddly eager, bouncing slightly, as if to say, "Do it again! Do it again!"

On a whim, she made her hair blue. He was so delighted; it looked like he was going into a fit.

"What're you doin' down here, hon?"

She turned away from the child in the tank, and looked up at Rogue. Sensing the worry in the woman's voice, she scooted back to sit safely on the walkway.

Rogue started to walk down the stair towards her, but then she looked down. The steps were suspended from the ceiling by wire, and they themselves seemed to be made of thinner wires interwoven to form a pattern of X-s. It was easy to see through the large diamond-shaped gaps. Muttering something about a "blasted forge" and insanity, she ignored the fragile-looking steps and floated down to Risty's side.

To answer Rogue's question, the girl turned back to the clone. "Visiting," she said, waving. She returned the floating child's smile. "You get lonely, stuck in there all the time."

Rogue, suddenly realizing that Risty had been very lonely growing up in a fish tank, was mortified. "Oh, I'm so sorry, hon," she said.

"For what?" Risty looked at her, surprised.

"For not visiting you more."

"Oh." The girl tilted her head—her version of a shrug. "It's okay. You're so busy with your gorilla welfare—"

Rogue snorted. "Guerrilla warfare. It's—complicated," she sighed.

Risty went on, unfazed, "And you've been out of your tank so long, you probably forgot what it's like. So it's okay."

Rogue had to plunk down on the wire-grid floor. Hard. "Honey," she began, like what she was about to tell her the hardest thing in the world. "Risty, I—I was never in a tank."

The girl looked at her like she was nuts. "What?"

"I wasn't born—made in a tank." Nervously, she put her hands on her abdomen. "I was made here."

"In your stomach?" There was note of horror in that sentence.

"Not mine," she corrected with a sigh, "My mom's, and—"

"Your mom ate you?"

XXX

Was it a bad thing to break into hysterical laughter when the horrified, blue, 6-month-old teenager sitting next to you looked ready to faint? Probably, but Rogue couldn't help herself. "No, no!" she finally managed in between gasps for air. "Of course not!"

Risty wasn't buying it. She scooted backwards in a way that clearly said, 'Don't eat me.'

That calmed down Rogue in a manner right quick. "No one ate anybody," she said with a straight, serious face. "An' I wasn't in her stomach; I was in her—" Instead of finishing the sentence Rogue blinked. Then she groaned. No more anatomy lessons, please, if there was a god—no more anatomy lessons.

Risty looked at her oddly, but thankfully did not ask where babies were made. Instead: "How did you get in there?"

'Oh, Hell. There is a God—and He hates me!'

Such thoughts careened about her aching head as she massaged her temples. Part of her argued that a six-month-old really didn't need to hear this. Another part countered that she had to tell the girl how people were normally made to make her understand the cloning thing. The rest of her was too busy running around screaming to take sides.

She finally sighed and decided to be incredibly vague. "My dad put me in my mom, like McCoy put you in th' tank. It's what people normally do…" she went on, stumbling at this point. She decided just to trail off.

Risty nodded to herself, quiet, accepting. Then she did that terrifying little pause of hers before asking one innocent question:

"Why didn't McCoy just put me in you?"

XXX

'Oh Dear God!'

The sentence kept on repeating in Rogue's head as she numbly stared off into space. The thought of McCoy putting—

'Oh Dear God! Oh Dear fuckin—'

"No. No!" she cried, shaking her head violently. "That won't happen. It can't!" She suddenly remembered Risty. "It can't, because that's how norm—ordinary folks are made. An' you're not ordinary." Well, at least this conversation was doing one good thing. Talking to the clone seemed to keep her mind off—

She gulped. "Honey, when an ordinary person gets made, part of her mom an' part of her dad get put together to make a new person, but you—do you remember Mystique?"

The girl nodded.

"And Kurt?"

The second nod came after a moment's hesitation.

"Well, Mystique is Kurt's mom. Kurt is part Mystique an' part his dad—Wagner. But you, both your parts are Mystique, hon. An' you weren't…put in her because she's gone now. Instead Doc McCoy used a piece of her to make both parts of you." She pointed up at the clone in the tank. "Elf's parts are both Kurt." She gestured at the rest of the clones. "The others' two parts come from the same person too." She shrugged helplessly. "You're special, Risty. You—an' your brothers an' sisters—are special. Do you understand?"

The girl didn't say anything for the longest time.

"So you're not my real mom?" she asked, almost inaudibly.

Oh, hell.

Rogue reached over and pulled the clone into her arms. "No. I'm not," she sighed reluctantly. She stroked the redhead's hair—which had inexplicably become blue again. "But Risty?" she began, and the girl looked up. She asked her, "Can y'think of me as your mom anyway?"


(this chapter was dedicated to my Mom, who is still dealing with the last of three embarrassingly curious little kids)

My four-year-old brother is the one responsible for the "She ate the baby!" line, among others. At a time when my head just barely cleared the countertop, I distinctly recall following her around the house for a few hours, asking her questions like "How did Daddy get Mickey in you?" (I never fully realized the implications of that sentence until now...) And my other brother (Mickey)…well, his questions probably shouldn't have been asked in public places.

I feel sorry for her sometimes, when I'm not trying to hide my amusement.

Well, it was rather short (for me), hopefully funny, and definitely had a few shudder-worthy mental images. I now bid you adieu.