Finding Marie Chapter 10, a x-men: the movie fanfic

Author's Notes: Thoughts are signified by 'these'. Emphasis and the voices in Rogue's head are in italics. Telepathic conversation is underlined.

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Rogue didn't think a DR session would really take her mind off the fact that for all intents and purposes she had just lost her best friend, but she hoped it would help distract her. And she was always up for a good workout, an attitude that was partially her own and partially due to the fact that Logan'd had an impact on her life. And of course Erik preached constant vigilance, and what was the point of being always aware if you couldn't deal with things that did happen? She knew full well from her own experiences that even when you didn't go looking for trouble, it always found you.

Going up against live opponents would be harder for Rogue than practice was because she didn't have to worry about touching and absorbing the robots and holograms in the DR. She knew she had to get used to the very real danger in a relatively safe environment or she'd never truly be able to deal with it in the outside world.

Rogue went to the women's changing room down the hall from the DR with Wanda. A week before, Rogue had received a uniform from Forge, a man her mother apparently used as the Brotherhood's tech supplier. Although he was not a member nor did he live in the House, Forge had made the uniforms of all the Brotherhood members.

The bodysuits were made of an advanced material that was a hybrid of mostly Kevlar and spandex. They were formfitting without being obscenely tight and allowed full range of movement, something the Wolverine in her head greatly appreciated after the stiffness and restrictive quality of the X-Men's leather uniforms. The suits were tear-resistant and also featured some heat and cold resistance as well. Rogue thought they were wonderful.

Wanda's uniform consisted of a princess-cut red sleeveless swimsuit-style body with a full-length cat suit of pink underneath. Wanda also wore a red cape and red boots that came up to her midthigh. Her curly hair was held out of the way with a red headdress that framed her face and gave her the look of a medieval sorceress. Rogue had come to see that 'Scarlet Witch' was a very apt codename for her friend the first time she had seen Wanda in uniform.

Rogue had seen the guys' uniforms at different times when she passed them going to and from the DR or in sessions she had individually done with them in the past few weeks. Though he wouldn't be there today of course, Piotr's uniform had been the most simplistic. A pair of dark blue pants and black boots had been all he wore because of his ability to turn himself into organic steel. The pants were specially made to stretch when he changed forms because his steel frame was a bit taller and bulkier than his normal state.

In deference to his power of super speed, Pietro's uniform was a full-coverage bodysuit of an even more specialized material made to withstand the friction of his hyper movements. It was a light gray-blue color with white design accents of a lightning bolt diagonal across his torso and thin stripes around his biceps and thighs. He wore no shoes or accessories, "feet" being built into his uniform.

Dominic, who actually preferred to always be called Avalanche, wore a solid navy blue uniform. But he had more accessories than Wanda, Pietro or Piotr. His boots were silver and came halfway up his shins, and he had special equipment he wore over his head and forearms to more fully focus his abilities. He didn't wear the extra pieces in the DR because he wasn't allowed to use the full extent of his seismic powers indoors. They would have had to rebuild every time he used it, otherwise.

Remy actually almost always wore his uniform as far as Rogue could tell. In the time she had been living in the Brotherhood House, he had only been in residence about half of that time. Rogue had only seen him without his uniform a few times, either when he was going on one of his "dates" that Wanda pointed out always turned into a one night stand or when he was doing something with the two young women like going to a movie in town. When they did do "normal" things, Remy often wore sunglasses to hide his red on black eyes that immediately marked him a mutant. Remy still flirted shamelessly with both Wanda and Rogue when he was around, and sometimes Rogue felt like putting in earplugs thanks to his annoying habit of always talking about himself in the third person. Neither girl took the playboy seriously.

Remy's boots came up to his knees. His pants were black with magenta stripes on the legs. His shirt was magenta with a blue neckpiece that connected to the odd headdress he wore to keep his long hair out of the way, the majority sticking out in a ponytail through a hole in the back while the floppy, shorter strands stuck out of the top in a hairdo that reminded Rogue of a tamed down porcupine. He wore gloves that only had two fingers and a brown trench coat. Remy's playing cards, which he used as mini explosives with his kinetic energy ability, were always tucked away somewhere on his person, and he sometimes carried a retractable metal bo staff that he was quite talented with.

Mystique had actually designed Rogue's uniform without her input, but Rogue loved it. The long-sleeved bodysuit was a rich forest green with black accents, including slender rectangles that lay a few inches below her collarbone and large sections of black on the outer edge of each leg that ran all the way up to her armpits and then ran down the inner side of her sleeves. The collar of the bodysuit extended up from her shoulders about an inch, but the front of the collar was open, a V that plunged several inches to reveal a glimpse of her cleavage. She had ordered a pair of boots like Wanda's in black, but they wouldn't be in for another week. Until then, she wore black tennis shoes.

Rogue wore a simple pair of thin black silk gloves that stopped at her wrists with her uniform so she could peel them off quickly if she had to. She was still trying to figure out what to do with her gloves if she ever had to take them off in a fight. Luckily, she hadn't had to find out yet.

"Ready?" Wanda asked when she was done getting dressed, leaving her cape off for the less formal setting of a team exercise.

"Just a second," Rogue replied.

She pulled the thigh sheath of her throwing knives out of her locker and strapped it on. Together the two young women left the locker room and went into the DR, where Remy was already waiting for them. The Cajun grinned as his gaze appreciatively swept their figures.

"Gambit don't know what he did to deserve living with two such beautiful femmes, but Gambit think he should do it more often."

Wanda faked an overly dramatic swoon and Rogue rolled her eyes. Both women laughed when Remy looked offended.

"Oh, come on, Rem," Rogue said. "You can't expect us to actually fall for your lines. We hear them way too often."

And they're hardly original, the Erik in Rogue's head added. One would wonder about the intelligence of the women he beds if his secondary mutation wasn't persuasive charm.

Startled, Rogue asked Erik, 'What do you mean? I didn't know he had more than one mutation.'

I'm sorry, my dear, I should have told you sooner, but you seem to be immune to it, perhaps a side affect of Charles' powers. Wanda is immune because of her magic ability. Our Mr. LeBeau can make anyone believe him if he looks into their eyes, which I'm sure helps him in his conquests.

Unaware of Rogue's inner dialogue, Remy smiled good-naturedly and bowed to she and Wanda. Pietro and Avalanche joined them in the DR just then.

"Striking out again, LeBeau?" Avalanche asked.

"At least Gambit try," Remy responded airily.

Avalanche unknowingly mimicked Rogue's earlier response to Remy by rolling his eyes. "First of all, LeBeau, Wanda and Rogue are my team and housemates. Secondly, not every guy has their type narrowed down to all women. No offense, girls."

"None taken," Wanda and Rogue chorused.

Before Remy could respond to Avalanche's words, Pietro took charge.

"Alright, as much as I love to sit around and listen to you guys trade barbs all day, we're here for a reason. We've been slacking off in the team training department for several months now, and I think today should be the start of an actual training schedule."

The others nodded, Rogue nearly dancing in place at her eagerness to be an official part of a team. They spent the next several minutes hashing out a schedule that worked for all of them. They would meet for group training Monday, Wednesday and Friday for an hour before lunch. Individual sessions would still be up to that person's preferences.

As self-appointed team leader, Pietro chose a simulation and ordered them to stand in a circle with their backs to each other in preparation of an attack from a group of ten humans, the "first wave" of the adversaries Pietro had set up for them. Rogue stood between Avalanche and Remy, with Wanda on Avalanche's other side and Pietro closing the circle by standing between Remy and Wanda.

"No powers for the first phase," Pietro ordered as the artificial humans advanced on the group of mutants.

Wanda was the weakest of the group at hand to hand. Rogue had trained more in that area than others because the nature of her primary mutation caused it to be a last resort and she never knew when the powers she had absorbed from others might no longer be available to her. The extra physical training had given her nearly even footing with Remy and Avalanche, who only exceeded her because of their size, physical strength and experience. Rogue wasn't boasting to say that she was better at hand to hand than Pietro. He was built more lean than the other two men, and relied more heavily on his powers to get out of situations.

The ten holographic men were defeated quickly, each member of the team taking out two except for Avalanche and Wanda, Wanda unable to defeat her second assailant quickly enough and Avalanche coming to her rescue for a total of three 'kills'. The holographs were set to disappear when a debilitating blow was struck. Remy had laughed and called Rogue bloodthirsty when they had run a sim together before and Rogue had snapped the necks of two men before slicing open a third with her knives. But although Pietro had not said 'no weapons', Rogue was using simple close combat skill in this scenario until he said otherwise.

When the last human disappeared, twelve robots made their way onto the playing field, two of them hover-drones with wickedly sharp spines that pointed down at their intended victims.

"Powers can be used now," Pietro commented as one of the robots took a swipe at Avalanche. "And we have a surplus of spare heads right now, so if you could limit the destruction of bodies, that would be great."

"Anything you say, homme," Remy smirked.

He charged a card and threw it at the head of the furthest robot, not wanting the explosion to injure his team members. The small but powerful kinetic blast blew the robot's head to pieces, causing the body to automatically shut down. Smiling in Rogue's direction, Remy drew his bo staff from inside his coat and turned to the closest robot for a more up close and personal fight.

Having successfully dodged several swipes of the robot attacking him, Avalanche circled around behind it and grabbed its head. The robot and its body vibrated as Avalanche used a miniscule amount of his gift. The head came loose, and Avalanche shrugged when an arm did as well. Just as another robot was about to hit him from behind, Wanda sent the one nearest her crashing into it, her magical 'hex' ability making them both glow red slightly. Avlanche nodded in her direction in thanks. Unfortunately, the collision had not been strong enough and the robots disentangled themselves to begin their attack again.

Meanwhile, Pietro had run in tight, super fast circles under one of the drones to form a wind tunnel that swept the machine up toward the ceiling. When it reached the top of the dome-shaped room, the drone automatically took itself out of attack mode and remained passive. The drones were harder to replace than the humanoid-shaped robots and therefore had more failsafes.

Rogue went after the second drone, carefully aiming her knives at the servos that allowed the machine to fly. When her third throw disabled the drone, it came crashing down on one of the regular robots, smashing the other machine. Rogue flinched at the sound of metal shrieking against metal. It reminded her of Magneto's machine when it had started to come apart. She pushed the memory aside quickly, and rejoined the fight. Wanda finally succeeded in taking out one of the androids when she hexed one of Rogue's discarded knives to fly at the machine, lopping its head off.

"Now that we're no longer out-numbered, the robots will be on a much higher setting," Pietro shouted when he noticed Rogue taking out the sixth to last robot with a well-thrown knife to the sensor plate. "Gambit, Avalanche, protect the girls."

Rogue made a disgruntled sound. She did not like being treated as if she were a delicate Southern Belle who needed help for the slightest thing. She was a Steel Magnolia through and through, and the sooner her male teammates realized that, the better they could all work together. Rogue turned her head slightly to glance at Wanda.

"Show these boys what you can do," Wanda said with a glint in her eye.

Although the entire Brotherhood had known for some time that she had once absorbed Magneto, Wanda was the only one who had seen Rogue use Erik's abilities, which she had begun to train with much more seriously when she had moved to the Brotherhood House. With a wicked grin at her friend, Rogue created a magnetic field bubble and levitated herself off the metal floor of the DR to hover four feet above her teammates' heads.

Still busy fighting the robots, at first the men didn't notice Rogue's absence from the fray. Having been closest to Wanda and Rogue moments before, Avalanche was the first to glance around with a frown. Rogue chose that moment to tap even further into her borrowed power and lift all five robots into the air with her, keeping them enough distance away from her that they wouldn't be able to make contact. With a startled sound from Pietro, all three of her male housemates looked up to stare at her, slack-jawed in awe. Wanda had a huge smile on her face.

Noticing that Remy had his bo in his hands, Rogue ordered, "Hold on tight, LeBeau."

Remy did as asked and found himself being flown through the air. With a flick of his red-on-black eyes, the Cajun indicated he wanted Rogue to toss him toward one of the robots. She did so, and Remy took it out with a well-placed kick to the head.

"Enough, exercise complete," Pietro finally called.

Rogue set Remy down carefully, then the robots, before lowering herself slowly to the floor.

"That was amazin' chere," Remy commented.

Avalanche nodded agreement and Pietro asked, "Have you always been able to do that much?"

Rogue, knowing his 'always' meant 'ever since you absorbed my father', shook her head, "No, but I've been working on controlling it more. I know I used to touch Mama sometimes, but I can't shapeshift no matter how much I concentrate. But Logan's senses are still with me, and he and Magneto are the ones who touched me longest, so maybe that has something to do with it."

Pietro nodded thoughtfully and the team moved around the room to pick up the robots that were unable to move for themselves. This was why Rogue liked fighting the holograms better... no clean up.

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Scott waited until Jean had led Piotr out of Xavier's office and towards the older boys' section of the dorms to speak to his mentor. Although he had been surprised when the young Russian man had shown up unannounced on their doorstep, Scott trusted Xavier's judgment in regards to letting Piotr stay with them; he just wished Xavier had pressed Piotr harder about Rogue's whereabouts. Scott knew Xavier would probably allow Jean in on their conversation, but Scott didn't like talking about Rogue in front of her. Jean had never gotten close to Rogue, and she didn't always understand why Scott cared as much as he did.

Scott was worried about Rogue. She had seemed fine on her most recent phone call about a week and a half ago, but Scott was getting sick of not being able to see for himself how she was doing. He supposed it was part and parcel of being leader of the X-Men and feeling a responsibility to all those who came under his protection. He wanted to be able to tell that Rogue's clothes were new or at least holding up well, and he hoped she had put on a little of the weight she lost living on the road before meeting up first with Logan and then with the X-Men. She had always looked good, even when she had first come to them as a scrawny, tired waif, but in Scott's opinion, she needed to fill out more to actually start looking like a young woman instead of the school-age teenager they had previously mistaken her to be.

Was Rogue eating enough? Did she have friends other than Piotr? What did she do for fun? What kind of job did she have and where was she staying? Was she keeping up her physical training so she could take care of herself if need be? Scott realized that unless Piotr was willing to open up to him, he would just have to ask Rogue these questions himself when she called again in a few weeks. Scott just hoped Rogue not coming with Piotr herself was simply because she had been nervous and because she hadn't been back in so long. He'd hate to think that she didn't feel able to come to them whenever she needed to.

"So, what do you think? Do you think Rogue is okay?"

Xavier leaned back slightly in his wheelchair and steepled his fingers as he thought about Scott's question.

"Piotr cares for Rogue a great deal," Xavier began softly. "If she were in danger, he would be afraid for her, and I do not read any concern from him in that regard. I sense absolutely no ill intent from our new guest, and through him I know Rogue bares us no ill will. However, for some reason I cannot fathom, she does not feel welcome here."

Scott frowned thoughtfully. "The cab that brought Piotr here was from a local company. Do you think she's staying close by?"

"I don't know, Scott. She told me once that the D'Ancantos were actually her foster parents, and that she wanted to find the couple before them that had taken care of her. Perhaps she was able to track them down and is now living with them somewhere near here. Maybe that is where she became acquainted with Piotr."

"Is this couple her real family or just another foster family she once stayed with?"

Xavier sighed, "Aside from what I just shared, I am not aware of any more of Rogue's past than you are, Scott. You probably know her best of any of us since you're the one she calls every month."

"I'm sure Piotr knows her much better," Scott said offhand. "Maybe he can tell me more."

"Scott, I know you're concerned for Rogue, but she asked Piotr not to share information with us. I'm not sure what it is, but there is something Rogue is afraid we will react badly to."

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"Pietro's started calling me his 'Ultimate Weapon' now," Rogue told Mystique.

She was sitting in her mother's office, distractedly floating a metal paperweight around in circles. It had been two weeks since the first team training session in the DR, and so far they had all stuck to the new schedule, with the exception of Remy missing two sessions when he was called home to Louisiana to deal with something about the New Orleans Unified Guilds.

It had also been two weeks since Piotr had gone to live at Xavier's. He and Rogue had only been able to meet once in that time since Piotr was now busy taking college correspondence courses and sitting in on some of Xavier's classes in preparation for becoming a teacher himself. When he had his degree, Piotr would become the Art and Art History professor for Xavier's school. Rogue missed him terribly, but she was proud of the fact that he was moving forward in his life instead of dwelling on the things that had gone wrong in the past.

Rogue and Mystique were having one of their regular weekly phone calls to update each other on their current activities and discuss things either one had remembered about their lives before Irene's death. In another two weeks, Mystique would be home for a month while the Senate was closed. Rogue was excited and nervous about the prospect of spending so much time with her adoptive mother.

"Is he trying to get you to join the Brotherhood officially?" Mystique asked.

"No, he just likes teasing me. He and Wanda still aren't sure about joining themselves, they'd never pressure me to do so."

"Good," Mystique replied. "Have you remembered anything new?"

This was a subject Rogue had actually been anxious to talk about, and she sat up straighter, settling the paperweight back in it's spot. "Do you remember the summer before I started high school?"

"The cruise to Alaska? Yes, it's one of the things that I recently recovered. That was a very good trip, and you felt very comfortable there because everyone was just as bundled as you and you were still getting used to it."

"When I was living with the D'Ancantos I had the strongest urge to travel to Alaska. It must have been my subconscious trying to remember that trip."

"Maybe someday when all of this is over we'll go back there," Mystique commented warmly.

There was a sudden scuffle on Mystique's end of the phone, and Rogue could hear a male and female voice talking briefly.

"I'm sorry, Congresswoman," Senator Kelly's voice came over the line a few seconds later, "we'll have to finish catching up next week, I have a meeting to get to."

"Alright," Rogue said softly. "Bye, Mama."