Chapter Three

Ivy stared at her reflection with dull, haunted eyes. Her naturally pale skin was almost white, making her amber eyes seem unnaturally bright. The water in the sink was no longer clear, but pinkish red with blood. The memory of what that blood tasted like was still fresh in her mouth, despite the three rounds of toothpaste and mouthwash. She could remember oh so vividly tearing through all that flesh and muscle and bone, remember the primitive urges welling up inside her and consuming her.

Her hands gripped the edge of the sink so tightly her knuckles were white, and she tried to force the horrible memory into the black box at the back of her mind where all the other horrible memories resided. It was a big box.

Someone knocked on the door and she jumped nervously. Swallowing her pulse, she unlocked and opened the door to glare at Kar.

"What?" she asked in an angry grumble, and he ran a hand through his long purple hair, eyeing her uncertainly.

"Listen, I, uh, just wanted to, uh, say that, uh…."

"Spit it out, Kar."

"Um… uh… don't… feel bad… about, uh… attacking… that mutant. Um, I know you, uh, don't like… your mutation, but, uh… it's not… horrible, or anything. Um… I mean… it doesn't make you… inhuman, or anything. It, uh…."

"What the fuck would you know about it?" Ivy growled, and Kar suddenly lost his nervousness. He looked at her with an angry, defiant stare.

"I know that I killed my family, fried their bodies until their skin was black. The smell of burning flesh was everywhere. I could barely tell who was my mother and who was my father. I was thirteen and I killed them. So I know about feeling inhuman and horrified with yourself. And I'm telling you not to."

He turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving Ivy staring at his back in stunned amazement.

Well damn.

Closing the door and leaning against it, Ivy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Kar was right. She had done what had to be done to make sure she and her friends survived and no one else got hurt or worse. She hadn't even killed the mutant, Rogue had. All she'd done had wounded her. It wasn't so bad. Really.

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Kar threw himself on his bed and glared at the ceiling. How could he have been so stupid? Trying to comfort that cold, heartless bitch! It wasn't his problem if she felt bad for trying to eat that mutant! And what was he thinking, telling her about his parents? Was he insane? Just because he happened to like the older girl didn't mean he had to tell her about his past and try and make her feel better! Well… okay, the last bit wasn't true, but he still didn't have to tell her about his past! Dammit, no one but Rogue was supposed to know about his past!

Kar sighed, feeling the anger drain out of him at the thought of his parents. They'd been at the beach, having a picnic. His power had only just manifested and he didn't quite understand the full potential held within his body. He'd been laughing and having a good time, really happy and excited.

Then he felt something tingling inside his belly, like prickly little snakes. The feeling had spread outwards, coating his body, and sparks began to appear, shivering across his skin. He'd gotten scared, not sure what he was doing and not knowing how to stop it.

The sparks got bigger, turning into large bolts, until they began to swirl around him in the air, faster and faster and getting bigger and bigger. He'd watched helplessly as the whirlwind of electricity surrounded him, tears running down his face.

His mother had run towards him, crying out for him to stop it, that it wasn't funny, that she was scaring him. His father had grabbed her wrist, telling her to stay away, it wasn't safe. And then his mother touched the whirlwind.

She screamed, electricity coursing over and through her body, scorching the flesh, and through his hold on her wrist, the electricity jumped to his father, and he joined her in screaming. They stood helplessly trapped, unable to break away, and he didn't know how to stop. He watched through a moving sheet of electricity as he shocked the life from their bodies.

They'd crumpled to the ground, his mother's hand trailing through the whirlwind, and lay dead at his feet, like some grotesque sacrifice. The whirlwind pulsed and spun outwards before disappearing, and he fell to his knees, exhausted.

Someone had called the police, and he watched, too tired to move, as they checked for pulses on his parents. He saw them glance at each other, and at him, and he would always remember the look in their eyes: fear and horror.

He'd stood trial, and been deemed innocent under the new set of mutant laws because he had been new to his powers and not understood what he was doing, sort of like a child with a loaded gun in his hands.

He'd gone to a foster home, only to be kicked out after two weeks when he accidentally blew up the microwave. The next foster home lasted a grand total of three days, when he shocked one of the other kids. It was the same everywhere he went: he'd stay for a little bit, accidentally use his powers, and get kicked out.

And then Rogue had found him. She'd explained who and what she was and offered him to help him control his powers, offered him a home. He'd accepted because he really didn't have a choice, and learned to like the mysterious, tough girl with a very sexy Southern accent.

And then Ivy had come along, and he'd felt… something. Not love, not lust, but… something. He couldn't describe it, wasn't sure he wanted to, but whatever it was… it was powerful. He hated to see her upset, hated to see her so bitter and angry. He loved to see her smiling, loved to see her relaxed. But he knew he could never have her. She was filled with too much rage and sorrow and horror and fright that getting close to her was nearly impossible. She kept everyone at a distance, terrified that she might hurt them.

Someone knocked on the door and Michelle walked in without waiting for permission. Kar glared at her. He was really not in the mood for company right now.

"Alright, spill," Michelle ordered, standing in a very aggressive stance, hands on her hips, feet apart.

"Nothing to spill."

"Bullshit. I can feel your emotions from downstairs and it's giving me a headache. Either tell me what's bugging you, or go out and get calm. I'm still shaky from Ivy's emotions during the fight, I don't need your angst on top of that."

"Stay out of my heart, you bloody empath," Kar said in a quiet, perfectly controlled voice. His eyes flashed purple and sparks danced across the skin of his hands.

Michelle decided that it was the right moment to leave and walked back down to the living room.

"I swear, it's a wonder I'm not driven insane by my bloody powers," she grumbled, flopping down in one of the armchairs. Rogue glanced at her and shrugged.

"We have stressful lives."

Michelle snorted. "That's an understatement. How's Jamie doing with the autopsy?"

"She should be finished in about an hour."

"D'ya reckon she'll find a pattern or trend or something?"

Rogue sighed heavily, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. "I don't know. We've had seventeen corpses and so far there hasn't been one link between all of them. Two were sisters, three had lived in the same town and two were born on the same day, but… there's nothing. We don't know how they're being controlled, by who, or anything. If we could find out how they are being controlled, we could work at neutralising it, instead of killing them. But there are no toxins in their blood that we can find, not machinery inside them like a chip or a bug or something, you haven't sensed anything wrong with their minds-"

"But I could be wrong on that," Michelle insisted. "When we find them, they are just so completely insane that I can't get more than basic emotions-anger, hatred, greed, stuff like that. I mean, even if they were perfectly normal, I'd have to concentrate for a couple of minutes if the brainwashing wasn't blatantly obvious. I'm more empathic than telepathic."

"Yeah, I know, I'm not blaming you or anything. It's just… all we know is that someone that we call 'the Agency' is somehow controlling mutants and making them destroy things in order to get all mutants arrested and executed. And so far, it's working. Dr. Keller and Dr. Garrison are doing all they can to stall the courts, but… if we don't find out what's going on soon and stop it, we're all gonna be hunted down like dogs. Just like…"

"The X-Men?"

Rogue sighed again and closed her eyes. "Yeah."

"Well, we aren't the X-Men, Rogue. We're the Dark Roses, YOUR Dark Roses. You trained us well. We won't make the same mistakes they did. Hopefully we'll make new ones."

Rogue had to smile at that. "Yeah. Look, why don't you go get some rest? It's getting late."

"You gonna be okay?"

"I'm more worried about Ivy, actually, but yeah, I'll be fine. It's just… memories. They'll go away in a few hours."

"Alright. G'night, bosslady."

Rogue nodded and watched the blonde leave. Michelle was the only person who knew that Rogue had been an X-Man, because she had disappeared early on in the Mutant Wars, at the Professor's orders. He wanted her to stay in the shadows and take care of things after the Wars, whatever the result. So, the few that knew there had been an X-Man called Rogue had had their minds wiped. She existed only in the minds of the dead. That was… depressing.

"Oh for-! I'm sleeping in the damned driveway unless everyone stops overdoing it with the angst! I'm getting a frigging migraine! Work through your problems, people, or I will bash them out of you!"

Rogue smiled and forced her thoughts away from her past. That happened fairly frequently, for all of them. They all had darkness in their pasts and didn't like to think about it much, because it just hurt. So they thought about the present and the future and let the past rest, as much as they were able.

"Rogue!"

Rogue chuckled and shouted an apology. She grabbed her laptop from the coffee table and brought up the files for all seventeen mutants. She'd add Jean's when Jamie was finished with the autopsy.

Because there were so many files, she just brought up the pictures that had name, age, mutation, date of death and place of birth written besides them. She stared hard at the information, trying to find some link that she had missed.

Then she realised something, one of those realisations that came out of nowhere. Jean had supposedly died in the Mutant Wars, along with the rest of the X-Men. But Jean had shown up, crazy and out of control. If she wasn't dead, then it was in Rogue's best interest to assume that none of the X-Men were dead. And if they were all being controlled by the Agency….

A frustrated scream came from upstairs, and a second later, Michelle stomped down the stairs in her pyjamas, dragging her pillow and a blanket.

"I'm sleeping in the SUV until everyone calms the fuck down!" she shouted, flinging the door open and stalking outside.