Chapter 9

Rogue was holding onto a very thin shred of hope that her fellow occupants of the house would have gone to bed by the time she cracked open the front door and crept inside. She was wrong even to think that. The moment she clicked the door shut, a light flipped on in the room, and she could see most of them waiting for her on the stairs.

Not now, she thought listlessly. I can't deal with this now.

Mystique was at the fore, arms folded tightly over her chest. Rogue noticed that those behind her had drawn back slightly in fear, and Rogue couldn't really blame them, her mother was a formidable sight when she was angry. Her eyebrows furrowed, Mystique eyed her daughter dangerously.

'Well?' she asked, her voice dripping like slowly melting ice.

'Well what?' Rogue snapped back, wearing an almost identical expression to her mother. Anyone who had doubted the connection before couldn't fail to see it now.

Mystique eyed her with an almost dumbstruck expression. 'You think you can storm out of her and have everyone worried sick about you for hours, then swan in and pretend nothing's happened?'

Rogue tried to push past them and up the stairs, but found her way being barred by Logan. 'Tell us what's going on Stripes.' he said, and there was no laughter in his voice when he used that once familiar nickname.

She eyed him coolly. 'I don't have to tell you anything.' she declared. Logan's eyebrow's raised slightly. Rogue would hardly have dared to be so forward back at the institute. Things in the group that had left the mansion had certainly changed since they'd stormed out, but Logan had yet to put a finger on what the cause of it was.

'I strongly disagree with that.' Mystique said back quickly. 'For a few weeks now I've watched you Rogue, watched you withdraw and close in on yourself. I've watched you be troubled by something you feel you have to keep to yourself, and I've seen you push away the people who want to help you most in the world. Stop it, this isn't you.'

'And what would you know about that?' Rogue hissed. She wheeled around and faced off with the older woman. 'What the hell would you know about me? You haven't been around long enough to even have a clue. You know nothing.' She spat the words out finally, and Mystique looked at her as though she'd been slapped, falling back through weeks of building bridges between mother and daughter.

Lance stepped into the void, filling the sudden hush that had descended upon the room. 'Well I know you, and Mystique is right. This isn't you, and we're not letting you go until you give us some answers.' He stood tall beside Logan, and the other man had to admit to a grudging respect for the teenager. He looked at what was possibly the most powerful mutant on the planet when she was angry, and there was absolutely no fear in his face.

Rogue moved ever so closer to them, and the air around her seemed to crackle with her efforts to keep control. 'Get out of my way Lance, or I swear I will move you myself.'

Lance did move then, but out of pure shock more than anything else. Never, in all the time he had known her, had Rogue seriously threatened to use her powers on any of her friends, especially not since her birthday. She was obsessed with all of their safety. This was most definitely the Rogue he knew who stood at the top of the stairs now, looking down on them with a tired glare.

'Stay there and discuss my behaviour if you want, I'm going to bed.' She took two steps, and then called back over her shoulder. 'Don't even think about following me Pietro.'

Pietro, who had been coming up close behind her, stopped in his tracks, and sat down on the top step with a thud. Rogue continued down the corridor without another word.

They waited in silence until she had fully departed, before they let out the collective breath they had been holding. They looked to each other with hopeless gazes, thinking that their friend was beyond the reach of anyone, and without a clue of what to do about it.



It was later in the night, and Mystique still hadn't been able to sleep. She had done some tossing, mixed in with a little bit of turning, but she couldn't sleep a wink. She was worried about her daughter, more worried than she'd ever been before.

Rogue had been very angry on the stairs, about what she didn't know. She didn't know if the others had spotted it too, but she'd seen something going on under the furious exterior of the young girl. Part extreme tiredness, part something else that she just couldn't put her finger on.

Seeing the moon still shining white in the darkened sky outside, Mystique gave up the prospect of sleep, and walked to the window to get a closer look at the outside, and to have a bit of a think.

She threw open the window, and stuck her head out into the cool night air, feeling any last hope of sleep evaporate from her skin. She closed her eyes, and tried to absorb herself in nothing but the silence, but she was halted in her purpose by a noise beneath her, quiet and heartbreaking at the same time. Somebody was crying.

Curiosity got the better of her, and Mystique ventured out her room. The moonlight cast bizarre shadows on the walls, and twisted normal objects into new sculptures, but Mystique followed nothing but the sound of the sobbing. It sounded like a child.

Fairly certain the person was somewhere outside, Mystique pushed open the door that previously Rogue had entered through. She half hoped, half expected to see her daughter huddled in the porch of the house, crouched over and crying like the world had suddenly come to an end.

You could imagine her shock when she saw that the figure was actually Pietro. Hunched over, and weeping openly.

He started when he saw Mystique standing over him, and reached immediately to dry the tracks of tears running down his face.

Mystique didn't want to humiliate him any further by drawing attention to the fact he had been sobbing, and waited the few moments it took for him to be able to speak.

When he opened his mouth, the words came out as a hoarse crackle. 'You're up late.' he observed.

'So are you' Mystique shot back, 'probably for the same reason.' she added.

Pietro gave the ghost of a smile, and turned his head to look away. 'I'm sorry I woke you. I would have stayed upstairs, only, well Lance. I mean, he's a great friend, but he doesn't, I mean he never...'

Mystique smiled as he trailed off. 'You didn't wake me. I couldn't sleep.' she then gave a little laugh.

'What's so funny?' Pietro demanded, his cheeks flushing a little brighter than they already were.

Mystique didn't answer him directly; instead she gave him a quick searching look. 'You know, you're probably the person who's changed most since you met her.' She didn't need to explain who 'her' was.

Pietro shrugged. 'We've all changed.'

Mystique nodded. 'For the better.'

Pietro was silent for a moment. 'The one thing I want to do in the world is help her. I never thought I would say that about anyone. And what scares me the most is that there's nothing I can offer her anymore. Why is she still with me?' He asked the question as though Mystique were not in the room.

'Because she loves you, and that's the thing I think she needs most of all.' Mystique replied, before rising slowly and turning to go into the porch, and to think over the gentlest conversation she'd ever had. Pietro was right, they had all changed, and it was mainly because of Rogue.

She told Pietro to turn the lights back on, and walked back into the house without another word. She was more surprised still when she saw Rogue at the foot of the stair. There were rings around her eyes that she hadn't noticed before.

'I heard crying, and talking.' Rogue said, by way of explanation. Her speech was short and awkward, mainly to do with their argument of earlier, that Mystique had yet to go over because it gave her feelings unpleasant and unknown to her.

'Pietro's outside, if you want to talk to him,' Mystique responded, feeling like a teenager again. Both women stood on the brink of saying something, then seemed to think better of it and passed each other by with a curt nod. Mystique stayed after Rogue closed the front door behind her, and hoped that someone would be able to break through the mask she'd painted around her, even if it wasn't her.

Pietro looked up when the door clicked open again, thinking Mystique had forgotten to tell him something. He felt his breath catch in his throat when he saw Rogue at the door, just like the first few weeks when he had started falling in love with her. More things had changed than just them.

He opened his mouth to say something, but she stepped up to him quickly and placed a finger over his lips, and then leaned in close to him. But this time Pietro wasn't going to be silenced.

He sighed, and then spoke. 'We can't keep going on like this.' He said. 'We're going round in circles.'

She spoke as though she hadn't heard him. 'When I was a little girl, I used to hate summer.' she said dreamily, and Pietro wondered where she was heading, 'All the girls in school would wander in with their skirts and t- shirts and sandals, and do you know what I wore?' She didn't pause long enough for him to answer. 'I wore a sweatshirt and long jeans with boots, and I used to hate how the other kids laughed at me, it was the first time I started to feel abnormal.' She gave a little laugh. 'I think Irene was afraid my powers could manifest, and she wanted to protect me.' The ironic laughter grew. 'Great job!' she said sarcastically.

Pietro was now slightly worried about his girlfriend's sanity. She turned her head slightly, so she looked into his face. 'Do you what my first thought was when I realised I could touch?' He shook his head slowly, and she laughed again. 'No, I don't either, because I took it for granted so quickly. Sixteen years of feeling something less than human, and after a week of normalcy I'd completely forgotten where I came from.'

'I don't want to take this for granted anymore.' She gestured between the two of them. 'I love you, that should matter to me more than most things in the world. I don't want to take it for granted that I have you, that I can touch you. And recently I've done everything in my power to push that away, and I don't know how to explain why, and I can't guarantee that I won't in the future.'

On hearing her say that she loved him, Pietro leant in to kiss her face, and she responded fleetingly. 'I've found out things about myself recently, things that I'd rather not have had to think about. But I have these powers for a reason. I have to look after people, and it's not because it's who I am, it's because of who I've become.'

Pietro shook his head, and kissed her chin clumsily. 'I want to look after you too, we all do. We all should.'

Rogue looked at him with a sad smile, and relaxed finally into his embrace. Pietro let out a sigh of relief, feeling inside that he had broken through somehow, not completely, but that she was finally trying to let him in. The last of the tears dried on his face as he held her to him and he went to sleep that night with a weary smile on his face. If he'd been slightly less relieved, he would have seen the torture in her smile, and the slight misting in those eyes he loved so much.

Rogue wasn't quite so fortunate in the department of sleep for the short remainder of that night. She lay in her bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling, and trying to make sense of the events of that evening, feeling slightly better knowing that she'd put Pietro's mind at rest, and feeling also that she couldn't keep it so.

It was all a bit of a blur; there had been a surprisingly small amount of small talk, and a great deal of shouting, and somewhere in between that her world had collapsed and fallen out from under her. She couldn't tell the others what Destiny had told her, she wouldn't tell them. This was something she had to accept and face up to alone, no matter what the cost.

Rogue went to sleep with tears running down her face.

DISCLAIMER: Characters belong to Marvel and WB

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Short chapter, because I just needed to finish off that night before I carried on with the rest of the story. What did Irene say to Rogue? I hear you ask. All in good time!! Next chapter should follow very soon, so keep reviewing!!!