San Francisco, CA
Alcatraz Island
Chaos everywhere around her.
Explosions, fire, debris hurtling through their air.
The sky dark with black clouds and billowing smoke, the battlefield aglow with orange light from the fires burning all around and the entire island lighting up every few seconds as if there were fireworks going off overhead.
And an endless stream of shrill noise piercing her ears with a constant ringing.
The roar of explosions, the screeching of metal on metal, inhuman sounding voices as battle cries and death throws alike mingled into one.
She was in thick of things, caught in the middle of a mob of enemies so tightly packed that more often than not she absorbed mutants she didn't even intend to just because she was being jostled around so much in the fray. The ground was trembling beneath her feet and her throat burned from the smoke and sizzling heat being produced from the fires nearby, but none of it touched her.
Hell was unfolding all around her, but Rogue was in her element.
Logan had trained her well.
A projectile screeched past in a blur to her right, slamming into something solid and sending sparks flying.
One caught her in the cheek, another her neck.
She ignored them, focused on the mutant ahead of her.
The girl sensed her coming at the last second, whirling in the hopes of firing a blast of electricity at her, but it was too late and the instant that Rogue's fingers dug into the girl's bare arm, the blue lightning disappeared from her fingertips.
Another few seconds, the girl was out cold and Rogue was pushing yet another psyche to the back of her mind.
But her latest victim hadn't gone unnoticed.
"What the hell are you doing?" an angry voice filled her ears.
She turned to find a man, maybe in his early twenties, with snow white skin and jet black hair stalking toward her. His eyes, she noted, were all black, lacking any trace of a white sclera, and they seemed to draw her in as he towered over her. His gaze was doing something to her, a detached part of her brain realized, even as her mind went groggy, like she was falling into an endless black hole.
And then he made the mistake of grabbing her arm.
His fingers dug in hard enough to leave bruises, but his skin met hers where her sleeve had been torn away by the feral mutant she'd put down a few moments before.
The world around her blurred, spinning, and then balanced out again.
Shaking her head to rid herself of the last remnants of vertigo, Rogue glanced down at the unconscious man at her feet, and then looked up at the dozen or so mutants staring at her, all of whom had witnessed what happened.
So much for keeping a low profile, she thought ruefully, and shifted into a fighting stance.
A big, burly looking man charged at her and Rogue stood her ground, counting his paces until the precise moment she needed, and then she pushed off the ground as hard as her legs would allow her, springing into the air and twisting her body over the mutant's head, just barely with enough air to make it.
In midair, she splayed her palm on the top of his bald head.
His powers siphoned into her, and by the time that her feet hit the ground behind him he was already swaying forward to land on his face.
Two mutants rushed her at once, one from behind and one coming at her from the left, and she jerked an elbow back to hit the one behind her in the face, sending him flying back into the crowd and knocking several others down like bowling pins.
Then she whirled, forming a knot of electricity in her hand, and hurled it, catching the striped mutant full in the chest and knocking him, smoke sizzling from his flesh.
Not dead, but probably wishing he was.
For a long moment, the crowd around her was still, staring, and then she was being converged upon from all sides.
"Traitor," someone snarled close to her ear.
"No," Rogue grunted, ducking under a massive fist of stone. "X-man."
She dropped to the ground, sweeping out her foot to catch someone to her left in the ankle, and wrapped her hand around the stone mutant's leg, sending him toppling over onto a mutant behind him. Her fingers started to shift into a rough gray pallor, but she pushed his psyche into submission and smothered his power out, rolling to her feet just in time to avoid a sharp javelin from impaling her in the back.
The one who threw it was a woman, pink furred with pointed ears, and she had a second javelin in hand, which she launched in Rogue's direction.
But the javelin disappeared in midair, and only the sixth sense she'd picked up from one of mutants she'd absorbed gave Rogue the forewarning to throw herself out of the way a second before the javelin reappeared on a direct course for her face.
Teleporter, Rogue realized. How cute.
Forming an energy ball, she hurled it at the pink teleporter, who, naturally, teleported out of the way with a smirk.
Wait for it, Rogue told herself, tensing. Three, two...
The pink elf appeared behind her, a javelin ready to run her through, and Rogue feinted to the left, spinning back around fast to catch the girl by surprise, and clamped down on a furry pink forearm with her bare hand.
Rogue didn't have time to gloat, though, because as the pink elf fell something hard hit her from behind, knocking her to the ground.
Instinctively, she latched onto the girl's power and teleported.
She reappeared on the other side of the battlefield, disoriented and out of breath, her ribs aching sharply enough for her to wonder if she'd fractured something.
"Dammit," Rogue hissed, clutching her side.
Whatever hit her was going to regret it.
Drawing a deep breath, she shouldered her way through the horde of mutants around her, reaching for the nearest one and dropping him in an instant, then moving on to the next victim within touching distance.
She tried to ignore her aching body, and the low buzzing in her mind.
White noise from all the psyches she was suppressing, and her head was pounding under the strain, blood pulsing at a rapid speed, as if keeping time to the explosions around her.
She'd never absorbed so many people in such rapid succession, it was exhausting.
But the adrenaline was pumping so fast she couldn't help but keep pressing forward, even if she was probably going to be feeling it in the morning.
In the distance, Rogue caught a flash of something metallic, and she smiled as a mutant sailed through the air high above her head to crash into a pillar somewhere behind her, showering the battlefield with dust and debris.
Peter didn't see her, he turned away to grab onto the nearest mutant, but Rogue headed toward him anyway.
Just as she was drawing close, a strong hand yanked her by the arm, and she found her feet dangling off the ground as she was hoisted into the air. "Don't think you're getting away that easily, bitch," a woman's voice growled, and Rogue blinked, looking up to find herself staring at a tall, leggy blonde gone Goth, right down to the dark makeup, fishnets and fingerless gloves.
"Who are you supposed to be?" Rogue drawled, unable to help herself. "Gothic Barbie?"
Bad idea.
Gothic Barbie hit her in the face so hard that Rogue's entire world was spinning.
And the girl had only used one finger!
"The name's Warbird," Gothic Barbie snarled. "Remember it."
Before Rogue could get out a snide remark about the name, the girl calling herself Warbird cocked her arm back, and suddenly Rogue was sailing through the air to crash, hard, into a concrete wall, her head smacking with a sickening crack.
Oww, she thought, as she pushed herself up on unsteady elbows with a groan.
She touched a hand to the back of her head, and it came back wet, stained crimson with blood.
A concussion, to say the least.
Gothic Barbie was coming at her again, and Rogue's vision blurred, her head lolling back, as she was jerked up from the ground, a slim hand wrapping around her throat with all the strength of a steel clamp. Her lungs burned, screaming for oxygen, as the world around her began to swim, fading in and out of focus, and some distant, detached part of her mind was aware that she was quite possibly going to suffocate to death before the girl ever got around to actually crushing her windpipe.
What an inglorious way to die...
Bobby and John will never let me hear the end of it, she thought groggily.
And Logan, what would he think?
C'mon, kid, a distorted echo of his voice rang in her ears. Are you really gonna let some bimbo take you out?
Blinking, Rogue managed to get her eyes to lock onto Gothic Barbie's sneering face, and through sheer force of will she pushed aside the cloud of black gauze pressing in on her mind, her hand twitching as it dangled limply at her side.
Straining against the haze of asphyxiation, she lifted her weak arm toward the girl's exposed arm and missed, her fingers brushing nothing but air.
On the next try, she managed to touch her, and dug her fingers in as hard as she could.
In the blink of an eye, Gothic Barbie's sneer turned into a soundless gasp of horror as her powers and lifeforce began to drain away.
Rogue knew that look all too well.
She'd seen it on the faces of nearly everyone she'd ever absorbed.
But then Gothic Barbie did something that none of them ever had, something that, for the life of her, Rogue would never be able to understand, or forget.
Instead of trying to break free with her incredible strength, or pushing Rogue away, Gothic Barbie lifted off of the ground, at top speed, and Rogue realized in dread that the girl's powers weren't limited to super strength, she could also fly.
And, in her panic, she'd clutched Rogue's hand, pinning their bare skin together.
"Land," she yelled hoarsely, screaming and sobbing. "Please, oh God... you have to fucking LAND!"
They were high above the battle now, so high that the mutants below looked like little action figures, and in the middle of the chaos Rogue's gaze found Ororo's unmistakable hair, and Hank McCoy leaping through the air onto an enemy's back, and Bobby- oh Bobby- making an ice prison to hold a pile of unconscious mutants.
"Carol," Rogue wailed, for she knew Gothic Barbie's name now, knew everything about her as Carol's power became her own. "Carol, let me go!"
And then, suddenly, Carol's gaze cleared, for just an instant, and the other girl looked right at her.
Right into her.
"Carol," Rogue breathed, tears welling in her eyes.
And then they began to fall.
Rogue fought to break free of Carol's grasp, but it was like her skin had a mind of its own, ravenously drinking in every last drop of Carol's essence even as they plummeted toward the battle below.
She managed to turn her head, and caught sight of the ground rushing up at them, and, with one last vicious pull, managed to wrench her hand away from Carol's arm just as they hit.
There was a sickening crunch as they landed on top of a handful of other mutants, bones shattering beneath their weight, and Rogue felt the wind being knocked out of her lungs as her entire body jarred with the impact.
I'm dead, Rogue thought with a groan.
But she wasn't.
Even more strange, her body didn't even feel that bad.
A little sore, but...
Pushing herself up on her elbows, Rogue blinked, then blinked again, taking in the high walls of dirt around her.
She was in a crater.
No, she'd made a crater.
"Great," Rogue muttered, wiping dirt off of her face. "Not again. Mom is going to kill... me..." she trailed off, frowning, her own words not making any sense.
Mom?
The image of a woman swam before her eyes, golden hair and bright blue eyes with a warm, sunny smile, but she didn't know her.
Carol did.
Groaning, Rogue retreated into her own mind, forcibly locking Carol's psyche away in a fortress made of steel. When she returned to awareness, she looked around for Carol's body and found the other girl unconscious some feet away, sprawled across the flattened remains of a mutant wearing a bloody jacket.
"Carol?" she rasped, crawling over to her side.
She started to reach out a hand to Carol's neck, then stopped, not wanting to risk touching her again.
Instead, she knelt there, staring at the other girl's pale face.
"Havin' some trouble dere, chere?"
Startled, Rogue looked up to find a boy, not much older than she was, standing on the edge of the crater above, peering down at her as he leaned against a bo staff.
"I..." Rogue swallowed. "Can you check her pulse?"
The boy stared at her for a moment, then dropped down into the crater with the grace of an acrobat, and strode over to them. His auburn hair fell across his face as he leaned over Carol, and Rogue caught a whiff of cigarette smoke and spice, before he stiffened.
Slowly, the boy straightened, looking at her, and she found herself drowning in his red-on-black eyes.
"Don' t'ink she's gon' be gettin' back up, p'tite," the boy said softly.
Rogue blinked, shaking off her reverie. "What?" she said, disbelieving. "No, that's not... that's not possible. Check again."
"Dere's no pulse, chere."
"You're wrong," Rogue insisted, shaking her head, desperation rising in her chest. "There has to be. Here," she reached for Carol, as if to prove him wrong. "Give her CPR or something, just... just do something!"
"Chere," the boy said lowly.
"I killed her..." Rogue whispered, staring at Carol's lifeless face in horror. "I killed her..."
The boy reached out a hand toward her, but she jerked away, scrambling back as far as she could, until her back hit the other side of the crater.
"Don't touch me," she shrieked. "I killed her!"
"She was dead a long time b'for' y' ever touched her, dat one," the boy said gently, moving closer but keeping his distance so as not to frighten her. "Look at Remy, chere," he implored, in that low, husky voice, and Rogue found herself powerless not to. "Remy saw de whole t'ing, dere was nothin' y' could have done. She was tryin' t' kill y' an' y' jus' fought back, dat's all. It was an accident."
"An accident," Rogue echoed breathlessly. "I didn't mean it..."
"Remy knows dat," the boy, Remy, said soothingly. "S'a shame dat she had t' die, but life goes on, comprenez?"
A loud explosion ripped through the air above, and the crater shook.
Remy looked up and, after a moment, Rogue blinked, as if coming out of a dream, and stared at him. "What were you just doing to my mind?" she demanded. "I..."
Something metal, and on fire, soared through the air.
Was that.. a flaming car?
"John," she whispered, knowing.
"Sounds like yo' friends might be needin' yo' help, p'tite," Remy observed and, with a wry smile, he rose to his feet in one fluid motion.
"Hey, I'm not done with you yet, swamp rat," Rogue snapped, rising angrily.
"Ah, but dis swamp rat has t' run," Remy said with a grin that did something funny to her stomach. "Until we met again, chere."
And, with a dramatic little half-bow, he was gone, up and over the crater and out of sight.
For a moment Rogue seriously considered going after him and wiping that smirk off of his face, but then another flaming car was hurled through the air, and she knew that she had bigger things to worry about right now than that swamp rat.
She glanced over at Carol's body, a lump rising in her throat, and she looked away.
"I'm sorry," she murmured helplessly, pathetically.
Then she lifted off the ground with Carol's powers and floated out of the crater, forcing herself not to look back even as tears began to slip past her eyelashes.
As she rose into the air, Rogue was able to spot where the flaming cars were coming from.
On the top of the ridge, where the skeleton of the Golden Gate Bridge met the rocky shore of Alcatraz Island, was John Allerdyce, the fireball in his hand illuminating the sadistic pyromaniac smile on his face, the one that she'd seen from him that day when the police surrounded them at Bobby's house so long ago.
Behind him, watching emotionlessly, was Jean Grey.
Or what was left of her.
But Rogue barely spared her former teacher or friend a second glance, her sole focus was the man between them.
The man who'd once tried to kill her, and very nearly succeeded.
Garbed in gray, cape fluttering behind him and helmet enshrouding his face, Magneto was an impressive sight as he stood with one hand casually extended, arrogance etched on every inch of his face.
It's his fault, Rogue thought furiously. It's all his fault.
All of these bodies strewn across the island, all of these people... the soldiers and his acolytes alike, their deaths were all because of him.
Carol was dead because of him.
They were all just pawns to be cast aside in the name of his cause.
"No more," Rogue whispered, blinking back angry tears as she clenched her fists. "This ends here."