Moving On - Chapter 14

By Gimpy


Rogue's tears accelerated, the prolonged hold she had on her breath escaping her, forcing elongated hiccups to attack her quivering form. Too much, too fast, just too much too fast. The truths, the revelations, the reunion, the death and now the epitome of paradoxes, the one person in the entire world with the ability to make her do anything. This woman had been her savior then her damnation, her hope and then her shattered dreams and yet Rogue had always clung to the ideal of her, clung to the love she bared for her. She couldn't grasp it, couldn't fortify the idea that her mother was truly here, the woman who owned, at least in part, responsibility of every action Rogue had ever taken, every choice, every mistake, the memory of her had some space within the thinking process.

She looked nothing like what Rogue remembered, just a sliver of what she used to be, hollowed out. The woman's faded hazel eyes were dead, lifeless and dark, the warmth they once harbored strangled and slaughtered. There was a depression about her, a sorrow and pain that seeped from her like a tangible aura. It hit Rogue then, the dawning of another nightmare to top off the horrors. Her inner death, her carved out shell of a body… She'd said it was her fault, that Rogue had caused it. Rogue's gut twisted, horrified beyond all distinction that because of her this once flamboyant beauty was now skin, bone and nothing else. Worse still she wanted Rogue's ultimate shame, the defining and crumbling attribute that Rogue now understood she had been cultured for, like a culture, forged in a lab.

It was just too much, too fast to handle and when the woman edged a little closer Rogue panicked, rolling off the steal table and landing on unsteady legs.

"Don't," Rogue curdled, gripping the gurney for support against her non co-operative legs. The tears trickled soundlessly, going unnoticed by the dazed young woman.

Rogue felt sick, her stomach churning violently, the nightmare she found herself in was far worse then she could ever have imagined and she had several times over. Had pictured the demonic things that would be done to her, what crude and animalistic experiments and tortures they would create to drive her mad. Nothing from her twisted imagination had come close to this, not a single scenario could compare and because of this Rogue knew without a doubt that Kemelman, his people, his government, they owned her. After this there would be nothing left for Rogue to fight for and her plots for revenge dissipated into a surreal dream.

Despite what her mind was telling her, she had to ask, had to ear it aloud before she believed it fully. "It's really yah?"

The woman swallowed a small amount of space between them, remaining at a distance. A crude, unnatural smile formed on her deathly pale face. "Flesh an' blood, skin an' bones."

The admonition nearly killed the overwhelmed Rogue, a torrent of hitched breaths overrunning her. "What'd they do ta yah?" she whimpered, her voice teetering on hysterical.

A callused almost casual shrug followed the quaking question, as the woman murmured nonchalantly, "Ah betrayed them, they did what they had ta."

"Cause o' me," Rogue spewed, biting viscously on her bottom lip. "Ah may as well have… done it all ta yah."

The woman sighed, advancing another step. "Yahr only fault was that yah made meh love yah, Ah did what any motha would have."

Rogue didn't respond, too wrought with information to think properly.

"Ah have nuttin' left, Marie, not even self-respect," she choked, pausing between words with shattering gasps of breath.

"Ah won't do it!" Rogue cried, stepping away from the table, returning the gap between them to its rightful size.

The woman seemed unfazed, a secret lining her hollowed eyes. "Yah will."

Sticking out her neck, tilting her head and narrowing her jaw Rogue barked, "Ah won't."

"It's what Ah want, no matta what Ah do, what yah do, Ah will die, that is mah destiny, child. This place, these people, have already taken too much an' Ah refuse ta let them be tha ones ta take mah life as well," the woman argued. "Ah need yah now, Ah need yah ta do it."

The utter desperation in her eyes, the true and guttural need for her own death was condemning and Rogue found herself for a moment considering. Self-disgust assaulted her and she physically shook her head, shuttering violently at the thought. "Ah'm not - Ah'm - NO! Damn-it! No, okay? Just… No!"

Sickly disappointment flashed along the woman's ghostly appearances causing a deeply wound knot of fear to surge forward within the younger woman. "Ah had hoped," the woman started, jerkily stepping around the metallic table, Rogue countering each step. "Ah really had hoped."

"Take anotha step an' so help gawd, Ah'll," Rogue started, raising trembling hands before her frail form as she backed away.

"There are only three ways o' this endin' sugah, tha first yah've already refused so now there's only two. One is that Ah force yah," she threatened, slowly but surely backing the younger woman into a wall. "Ah don't want ta but tha second… tha second is that bastard Kemelman forces yah… Yah don't want that baby an' Ah still refuse for it ta be on his terms, in his way. Those are yah're choices, me or them."

"Yahr wrong, all we have ta do is wait, Ah have friends, they'll come for meh, we can get away, tagetha," Rogue sputtered, desperate for something other then the hole she was slowly being buried in.

The woman scoffed and chuckled, the act bringing on a bout of coughing that ravaged her. Through the raspy gurgles she mocked, "No one's comin' darlin', no one. Tha sooner yah realize that the longa yah'll get ta keep yahr sanity."

"They're comin', Ah know they are," Rogue meekly returned. A sharp gasp jolted through her body, a wall suddenly colliding with her bruised and battered back. Panic stripped her of her senses for the briefest of moments which was just long enough for the crazed woman who at one point had actually resembled a human being.

She was on Rogue before she had a chance to act, a dizzying sequence following, a struggle, a scream and then nothing.


Solar lights flickered as Charles's chair wheeled itself down the long and narrow path to his ultimate creation. Unfounded dread filled the wise man the nearer he came to Cerebro. Sliding into place before the console he closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath to quell the uncertainty but to no avail. He couldn't see the future but he could sense its destructive essence nipping at his heels. Closing his pale blues to the world he eased his mind, meditating for a moment before reaching out and grasping the helmet that would give him answers. Pulling the sleek metal onto his smooth head he concentrated on the demure and stunningly graceful young woman who had spiraled into his world, his home and made a place for herself in his vast heart.

For a moment there was nothing, no presence, no thought, just darkness and then without warning the old man cried out. Tearing the helmet away and tossing it onto the console as if it were diseased, he struggled to breathe passed the visions he's seen. In one fluid motion his chair did a one eighty and he sped as fast as he could from the sphere shaped room.


Four rows of television screens lined the wall of the small security office, curving from one side to the other, each row containing five of the screens. Portrayed upon them were darkened scenes of the complex, shifting from one to another every so often. Two soldiers sat within the confining room watching idly for commotion, their pinned eyes grazing for something to awaken the lull of boredom that had set in after the excitement of before. The younger of the two refused to avert his gaze, silently staring without pause. The eldest groaned at the blank, dormant halls before reaching for one and tinkering with it. The screen fizzed before shifting to a hall not yet viewed. Upon it a tall, lanky man in a long white lab coat was slowly pushing a thin metal gurney down the hall escorted by a single soldier. The eldest soldier honed in on the table, a barely visible black body bag jostled back and forth with every dip and crevasse in the morphed floors.

The youngest solder, piqued by his counterpart actions, dared to shift his own gaze to the man's screen. He sighed emphatically at what he saw shaking his head. "It's just a dead body, I don't see why you're so obsessed with it."

The older man shot his junior a pensive and coarse glare before shifting the camera again to catch the moving forms. "I'm obsessed? You're the one who had to replay it three times!" the man argued.

The younger soldier returned to watching the TVs, retorting, "Considering how 'exciting' and 'thrilling' our days are being locked in this 'spacious' room for ten hours a day watching the lights in the cell blocks die, that deserved a second look."

"The man's dead Cellar, show some respect," the old man griped, still searing the image of the body bag into his memory.

"This coming from the man whose drooling over his corpse," Cellar snapped back.

A hand was raised almost immediately, Cellar receiving a quick thud to the back of his skull. "I'm not drooling, I'm being cautious, he's a fucking mutant, he could be faking it and we wouldn't even know it."

"No one takes four magazines to the chest and walks away."

"Mutant, asswipe, they aren't just anyone, they're freaks, they can do shit."

Cellar's eyes rolled in exasperation as the old man slowly became enthusiastic. "Are you going to go into your 'Weapon X' spiel? Cause if you are I'm going to get coffee."

"Fine, I won't but don't you dare tell me the dead can't come to life, I saw it."

"You sure you weren't drunk that day?" Cellar barbed, sitting back and taking in all the screens one by one in a giant sweep.

Ignoring the chide comment, the old man went back to flipping the camera's as Kale Peters' undetermined form was wheeled through the corridors to the crematorium where all bodies went for disposal. "I don't trust it, the whole thing was fucked up. The guy had to have know he was done for and he didn't care, might as well have pulled the triggers himself."

"According to Rider in Intel, Peters and the bitch grew up together, had some kind of bond. Course Doers in Testing thinks the bitch messed with his head some how," Cellar explained.

"I don't give a rats ass, the guy got himself killed and for what? It's not like him dying saved the mutie. She's still going to go through hell except now she gets the guilt complex on top of that."

"What do you care?" Cellar snapped.

"I don't," the old man barked back, ramming his portly fingers into a few buttons, effectively returning the television back to its original screen. About to pull back and continue the gripping the old man stilled, the screen before him breaking up, the image forming white noise lines that slashed across the screen. "What the hell?"

"What?" Cellar questioned, his answer coming in the form of the other screens separating into fuzzy black and white dotted lines. "Damn-it!" he cursed, slamming a hand against the side of one screen. The picture jostled but didn't clear. Glancing at the old man Cellar quickly reached for his radio, contacting Technical with the flick of a switch. "Carrie, we're getting snow down here," he explained over the two-way radio system.

A fizzle followed and then a young woman's voice echoed from the small contraption. "Copy that, systems are faltering all over the place, according to top side an electrical storm just broke out of nowhere. It's affecting everything, give me ten to figure things out."

"Electrical storm?" Cellar mimicked, casting a shared uncertain look with his elder counterpart.

"Out of nowhere, its comi…" the woman's voice cut out, piercing static surging from the small rectangular box. Just as it happened the dimmed neon lights flickered, cutting on and off, causing from soldiers to jolt out of their comfortable positions. The screens before them became engulfed in snowy white noise, echoing its sharp and shrill sound in the box like office.

Sharing another uncertain look the old man stood up from his chair and started for the door, calling over his shoulder, "Stay here, get those screens back up, try to get Technical back on the horn if you can but fix it."

"Wait, where are you going?" Cellar called out to the portly man.

"That isn't just a freak electrical storm," was all he said before vanishing out the door and leaving the young Cellar alone to deal with the mess of televisions before him.


An unnatural hum filtrated through the entire complex, every last machine unwilling to do its bidding, the sound of people moving, working, and talking, seeping through walls and disconcerting all others. Electricity was in the air, the hairs of everyone's neck rising in acknowledgement of its power. The only light within the complexes dingy hall was the dull amber emergency lights that made seeing almost too difficult to master. The mood was tense, each person feeling the underlining threat of something more then just weather. Communication from wing to wing was cut off, separate stations knowing nothing of the others. Dead radios laid forgotten on table tops, messages instead passed through the grapevine, barring in mind its ability to change the meaning.

Shadows seemed to come to life, imaginations reverting to that of children, uncertain of what may lurk.

Within her temporary cell, blanketed in two separate tones of red Rogue shook violently, ashamed salt drenching her bloodstained, bruised cheeks. The lifeless body she'd refused to mentally gut rested not two feet from her trembling form, the woman's blank, soulless eyes staring off into oblivion, death's shrill cold hand having conquered the maddened woman.

Head titled against the cold concrete behind her, eyes staring to the invisible skies above, Rogue cried, every iota of herself put into the action. She'd refused, fought, rebelled and in the end her winning had meant death anyway. Her mother had clung so desperately to her, skin slicking over skin and then the true cruelty was bestowed, revealed to them both. There had been no pull, so demobilizing, excruciating, mind numbing pain, just skin upon skin. Fury replaced the insane woman's desperation and she grabbed and clawed at Rogue, feeling for the, then and now, present black circle at the base of Rogue's neck. The animals had essentially declawed her, taking away her loathing and her security. It had been sadistic, utterly masochistic and the crazed woman dipped even further into the furrowing tunnel of insanity. The attack to find the inhibitor became the attack to destroy what wouldn't destroy her.

Shock had reigned at first, Rogue unable to grasp that she could touch but then the need to defend herself arose, her mother, or at least what still remained of her, had kicked and screamed, slamming the smaller woman into the wall over and over again. Rogue's blood stained the concrete around her, a fresh patch forming beneath her inert form. In the end the upper hand had gone to the more fit, the one whose torture within the complexes walls hadn't lasted as long as the other. Rogue had done what her mother had wanted, not in the way she'd wanted but in the end it was her body, slowly losing heat, her blood stiffening within her form, her eyes listless and drying.

Rogue lurched, bile rising from her starving form, choking her before tainting the already grotesque cement floor. Wave after wave rolled through her until nothing was left and yet she kept on going, disgust and hatred for herself overpowering her immense need to stop the burning in her acid torn throat. A long and forlorn wheeze managed to mingle with the coarse hacks, peaking into a high pitched cry.

The anger, the resentment, the pure unadulterated hate surged, her hands pushing against the unmovable concrete. Raising them suddenly, she thrashed them back down letting out a feral cry as they connected. She did it again crying out even louder, her strength exceeding all that she had ever known. It was just too much for her tiny frame to contain, two deaths because of her in one day, the surge of new memories, the falsehood of her identity, the resurgence of her mother and then her destruction at her hands. Hunching forward, her now cracked and bleeding hands sprawling out along the cement ground, she touched her head to the floor, sobbing open mouthed into the dirt.

"Mama," she whimpered through her tempered sobs. In short painstaking movements she dragged her dead and quivering form towards the stiffened body. Covering her mouth to keep the grotesque bile from returning with a vengeance, her dulled eyes stared blankly at the lifeless hand next to her crimson covered one. Unable to truly gaze at the woman's corpse she sat there and gazed at the torn nails, bony fingers and dust covered bruises along her wrists from years of shackles dominating her. Moving her hand from her mouth she scratched at the medical sensors sprawled along her chest, taking her vitals down and sending them to the sadist who had mockingly forced her hand.

It had all been a ruse, a ploy but for what purpose Rogue didn't care. A crooked grin menacingly forged upon her lips. Forcing her shattered, bloodied and beaten form off the floor she grabbed a thin hospital sheet and draped it lovingly across her mother's prone form. Kneeling on the blood soaked ground, she reached a quivering hand out, lightly pulling at the woman's eyes, closing them gently. Through stunted tears she leaned down and kissed the woman's slick forehead, muttering incoherent words that needed no true voice. Standing once more she took in a deep breath and composed what was left of her charred nerves. A determination set itself along her marred face, a look of vengeance overthrowing the doe eyed girl from the past.

The Marie she once was and always tried to go back to had died along with Rogue's last link to that once innocent girl. A barrage of faces flashed before her, Scott's betrayal, Logan's anger, Mystique's pain, Kale's pride, her mother's insanity and her own strange and mangled one, cut and out of joint in that broken glass mirror. She had nothing left and because of that void she realized what it was her mother had truly wanted. She understood now her need…

Peace…

And

Revenge…

TBC

Thank you for the reviews, Roguechere you are a trooper, hanging in there with me all the way 'smiles', thank you and I hope to finish this one so its no longer eating at me that I just left it. Again thank you for the reviews.

Gimpy