Disclaimer: anyone I gave a full name for is property of Marvel. Some of the students I made up myself; any similarities to already-existing Marvel characters are coincidental and unintentional.
In the near fourteen months since they'd first moved in together, Marie had woken before Bobby on only two instances. The first was when they were fighting, and she'd made a point of doing so, in order to be long gone by the time he finally roused himself. She was in the middle of the second.
When Marie awoke, her cheek mashed against Bobby's bare chest, her arm slung halfway across his waist, the first thing she noticed was the utter stillness of him. She understood that he was a very sound sleeper, and marveled at his ability to maintain this skill in a building where anything could and did happen.
Rising languidly, Marie blinked away the headiness of her dream, which had involved snowdrifts, and curiously, ice-skating with Kitty. It brought to mind the weeks she had spent actively ignoring and passively despising someone who had once been a relatively close friend. Marie woke with a feeling of calmness settled deep within her gut, radiating outward, one that convinced her to forgive Kitty. After all, it wasn't her fault that she liked Bobby. What was not to like?
Smiling, bursting with affection, Marie rubbed the last of sleep from her eyes, and cast her fond gaze down at her boyfriend.
It was then that she noticed how gray he was. Ashen, really, like melting snow trodden on by muddy boots. And he wasn't merely still, she slowly realized with horror, he was barely breathing. His veins were prominent, thick lines webbing across his corpse-pallor skin.
The calmness in her gut, something she now attributed to being Bobby's influence, gave way to horrendous panic. "Bobby?" she attempted, but it wouldn't wake him even if he was in a regular sleep, because the word came out as barely more than a whisper.
Marie barely had enough presence of mind to locate a robe in the mahogany closet and fasten it around her naked form before she darted down the hallway. "Josh?" she called into the hallways, which were only just beginning to teem with life. The students turned their heads as she flew past, no doubt asking a million questions as to why one of their teachers was running through the school in her bathrobe.
Marie made it to the last elevator, the only one that went up into the south tower, the home of Josh Foley. One of the crop of "new" mutants that had started flooding to the school shortly after Magneto's defeat and the publicity of the X-Men, Joshua Foley called himself Elixir because his mutant power was to heal. When he arrived, he was an asset to the institution, where the students attempted to blow each other up on a regular basis, and no longer had a live-in doctor. The situation gave Josh arrogance without pause. Since he could use his powers on himself as well, Josh had swaggered around for several weeks, cutting himself at the breakfast table, nicking students' cigarettes to put out in his palm. Logan, who was cocky to a fault but loathed the characteristic in others, quickly put a stop to Elixir's particular brand of showing off. He saddled the kid with a weeklong detention that forbade him use of his powers, and then proceeded to school Josh in the Danger Room the next day. When Josh came to in the infirmary several hours later, groggy and aching, Logan imparted one of his succinct nuggets of wisdom: "Not all of us are so lucky, but your powers are a gift, kid. Don't waste them on stupid shit, and stop strutting around here like you're the second coming, 'cause we've already got ourselves a bona fide Angel." Miraculously, the lesson had worked, and now Josh only used his powers where they were legitimately needed.
The elevator's ascent was creaky and dawdling, the victim of pure age. Marie had never minded it before, attributing it to being another quirk of the mansion. The elevators that led into the sub-basements were the only ones that needed to work efficiently, and those were state-of-the-art. But now Marie wished all of the mansion was so lucky, and she shifted her weight back and forth on her bare feet, gazing up at the ticking dial displaying the floor numbers, praying that at the very least, Josh would still be in his room so she was spared having to search the entire estate for him.
She was an interesting vision for him to open his door to, fisting her robe in front of her chest and out of breath. Josh leered for a moment, but any words he'd been preparing to lay out for her got lost en route to his mouth when he caught sight of the horror in her eyes. "Miss Marie?" he asked, his voice taking on an almost childlike quality.
"Hurry," she said. "Bobby's hurt."
Marie traveled with Elixir only as far as her floor, but trusted him to find the rest of the way on his own. She had more pressing matters to attend to. Marie entered Ororo's room without knocking, having spent years earning that right. However, Ororo was an early riser, liking to watch the sunrise and occasionally manipulate its hues to her liking, so she was already on the balcony. She heard Marie coming, and turned to face her coworker with a question on her lips.
"Call Dr. McCoy," Marie said, the words riding out shakily, as her breath was only just now slowing down. "There's a situation. The cure is wearing off."
Nothing remained secret in the school for long. Bobby and Marie's relationship was something of much speculation, and the students who had been around while Rogue was still a student (members of the team aside), quickly let the word spread as to how the relationship came about. So when Bobby Drake was carted out of his bedroom on the brink of death, everyone could guess how it had come to be. As a result, there was a considerable crowd of people lounging around when Marie returned. Bobby wasn't there, of course, having been taken down to the infirmary where Elixir could work in private.
Marie shut her door, scouring her closet for anything with long sleeves, despite the heat wave that was already making itself known in the early morning, and threatened to get worse throughout the day. In an act of defiance, severing ties with her existence as Rogue, Marie had thrown out most of her old protective clothes. She had to make do with snitching from Bobby's closet, and she raided it with success, pulling out a heavy cable knit sweater to throw on over her. She began to sweat instantly under the thick top, but paid it no mind, because her gaze had landed on something hidden beneath the sweaters in Bobby's drawers. She pulled them out, gazing at them as she would at a long-lost acquaintance, with whom she'd parted on bad terms.
They were the gloves. Not the standard light cotton that she wore as a student, or the industrial leather she wore as an X-Man, but the elbow-length white silk gloves that Bobby had found in his Boston attic so many years ago. When mutants were under persecution, when the school was under siege. The first time she had ever kissed Bobby.
Marie hefted up the sleeves of the sweater, and slid the gloves on her hands, following the almost liquid nature of the material up to her elbows, and once again embracing her role as Rogue.
Rogue's spine chilled as she descended to the infirmary level, and she only wished it was an after-effect of absorbing Bobby's powers. The truth was, her body was tense and tight, numb with horror. She didn't know what to expect when she entered the code to get into the ICU.
Bobby's body was draped across a cot, with Josh hunched over him. The boy looked up at Rogue's entrance, his body limp, his eyes dark and spent. Ororo was hovering near, as were Piotr, Warren and Logan. Logan moved instantly to Rogue's side, her oldest friend, and the one she had come to depend on the most, even though he was the one who disappeared the easiest. He put an arm around her shoulders, and it rested heavily against the thick sweater. He said nothing, silently offering the strength he had in spades. Warren cast her a sad-eyed look, and Rogue felt a pang of guilt for bringing that desolation back to his handsome face. For months after the events at Alcatraz, Warren had shuffled throughout the mansion like a ghost, claming the uppermost room in the south turret, leaving only through the air. With work, the staff had managed to get Warren smiling again, and it broke Rogue's heart even further to see him sad now.
Piotr remained so silent in the corner, that though the largest of anyone in the room, Rogue almost didn't realize he was there. The look he cast her was one of commiseration; after John's departure, Piotr had taken up the mantle of Bobby's best friend, meaning it more than John ever had. He no more wanted to be here than any of them did.
"He's stable," Ororo said, and Rogue felt a tide of relief, one that soon went out in favor of her initial worry, because while stable was good, he was not yet awake. The only other person who had ever been a victim of Rogue's powers for this amount of time was Logan, and he was no basis for comparison, what with his x-gene running rampant.
Ororo now turned her authoritative gaze to Elixir. "Why don't you go rest, Josh," she said kindly. "You've done so much."
As Elixir passed, Rogue reached out to touch his shoulder. "Thank you," she said softly, but he abruptly wrenched himself out of her range, his steps quickening to get him out of the tomblike ICU. Rogue felt a fresh burn of shame, and Logan's embrace only grew tighter.
They left one by one, Ororo going to wait for news from Dr. McCoy, Piotr going to calm the students and restore order only the way a massive Russian with a steel exoskeleton could. Warren paused for a moment, looking down at Bobby's prone form with something eerily ethereal in his eyes, as if he truly was the Angel they dubbed him. With the right lighting, the scene could have been a painting by Michelangelo. But Rogue only felt the horror of watching Warren's hand touch Bobby's shoulder, bare skin against bare skin, and knowing that the brief, beautiful gift she'd had was gone.
When left alone with only Logan and Bobby, the two people she trusted implicitly and valued more than life itself, Rogue allowed herself to release the tears that had been gathering in her throat. Logan held her as she wept, the same rock he'd been from the day they'd met. "It's all my fault," she said, an unnecessary thing to say, but she felt somehow better releasing it into the cosmos.
"No," Logan said firmly, "it's not. That damn cure was a fluke. You couldn't have known it was only temporary. If it's anyone's fault, it's Worthington's, for leaking that thing into society."
"But if I hadn't gone and taken it..."
"Then what? Then you never would have been in a position to hurt Bobby anyway, because you'd never do that of your own volition. And if you'd never gotten the cure, then you'd never have gotten the time you had with him. Do you regret that?"
Rogue glanced blurrily over at her boyfriend, whose chest rose and fell with weak and steady breaths, as his pallor slowly receded. Rogue looked at the soft hair she'd stroked, the firm jaw that she'd kissed, the lean body that she'd embraced, the hands that had touched her in all the right places and made her feel so vibrantly alive. She wouldn't give that up for anything. Rather, she'd give up anything for it.
"I don't," she answered Logan quietly, yet another unnecessary statement, because he'd already known, before asking, how she felt.
"It's not your fault," he repeated. She remained silent and still for a long while, refusing to even so much as cross the room to be closer to Bobby, and Logan broken the moment by releasing her and asking, "Do you want me to leave?"
"No," she gasped, surprised at the vigor of her response. "I can't—" She couldn't explain herself, but fortunately, Logan understood. He pulled over a few chairs, and they sat, still a safe distance from the comatose Iceman.
"I'm not ready to be feared again," she said. "When I was a mutant, everyone was afraid of me, of what I could do."
"They're afraid of all mutants, Rogue, not just you."
"Humans are afraid of mutants," she broke it down for him. "Mutants are afraid of me."
Logan cracked a grin. "Well, I wouldn't wanna come up against you in an alley."
Despite herself, Rogue smiled. It was tiny, and fleeting, but it was enough. If Logan could believe that everything might be okay again, then she could, as well.
The two sat in the ICU for a long time, watching Bobby's progress. When he was rested, Elixir returned to try and work his magic again. But Rogue knew Bobby was going to be under for awhile. Several hours later, Logan felt the need to poke her and announce, "Hey, kid, you're a mutant again." Before she could cut in with a scathing reply, he added, "Means you're back on the team."
"There's no trial period?" she said.
"'Course not. You're one of us. Always have been." They exchanged a smile, all either of them had the energy for, and Logan excused himself from the room, leaving Rogue with her thoughts.
In his absence, it occurred to her that she had been in possession of Bobby's powers for quite some time now, and no physical repercussions had manifested themselves. With concentration, she managed to form a light coating of ice around her closed fist, proof that she was in fact endowed with Bobby's powers.
Rogue had been in excellent control of her powers right before she had opted to take the cure. But her mutancy was absolute: she could not turn off her absorption ability. And that meant that the powers she borrowed came into effect immediately. Yet Bobby's hadn't. His abilities, now her abilities, had lain in wait for her to call them forth. She had heard, briefly, ghosts of the voices in her head, as though they'd never left. But they stilled, dulling to a roar so faint it was like a fly buzzing, in an entirely different room. Her powers hadn't just returned to her, they were now stronger and she was more in control of them.
This notion began to unlock a series of questions for Rogue, but before she could sort out any of them, the doors opened, and Kitty entered. She offered Rogue a wan smile. "Hi."
"Hi," said Rogue in return, but didn't get up from her chair. She was sure Kitty understood.
Kitty went over to Bobby, bracing her forearms against the gurney, studying him up-close as she would her textbooks or a piece of machinery. If she said anything, it was in her head, but she stayed long enough that she must have. When she was done with Bobby, she went over to Rogue's side and took up the chair that Logan had vacated. They sat in silence for several minutes, far more tense than it'd been with Logan. Rogue waited uneasily for what Kitty might say.
"I liked Bobby from the second I met him," said Kitty. "He was a really sweet guy, quiet, but funny, and he went out of his way to make me feel like I belonged. He did that for everyone. Bobby never drew attention to himself, but damn if everyone in the school didn't know who he was." Kitty smiled to herself.
"He introduced himself to me the very first day I got here," said Rogue. "Asked me to lunch. Gave me a tour. It was the first time I didn't feel like a freak."
"Bobby almost dated Jubes, you know," said Kitty, and Rogue looked over at her in surprise. She certainly hadn't known that. Jubilee was friendly, but had a darkly sarcastic streak that had always made her more of an adequate match for John, if anyone. If Jubilee had any attraction for Bobby, or he for her, it never showed. "Yeah, I know," continued Kitty. "But anyway, it never happened. You came along. And it was like Bobby found the rest of himself in you." Rogue blushed, touched by the sentiment, even if she wasn't quite sure where Kitty was going. "The rest of the world moved on, but I guess I never did," said Kitty. "Rogue, I've always liked you. But a part of me wished things had stayed the way they were, when we were all a group and no one was coupled off. And I don't know, I was trying to get that back. At your expense. I want him to be happy. I want you both to be happy. You're my family." Her lips tugged upwards in the facsimile of a smile. "Bobby loves you so much. And I'm sorry. For everything."
Rogue stretched her arm around Kitty. "I know."
"He'll be okay, right?" said Kitty, resting her head against the thick weave of Rogue's sweatered shoulder.
"He should," Rogue said decisively. "Elixir has been healing him."
"All right," said Kitty, but her tone held a hint of doubt. "And what about you? Are you gonna be okay?"
"I don't know." At that moment, it was all she could think to say. Having her powers back, after so long without them, was an odd sensation, like taking the first swim of the summer. Letting the water course over her, shocking at first, but familiar. She was so used to having them that it was as though nothing had changed, but she had stored up a year's worth of memories, and knew that everything had. She wasn't sure if she could go back. Nor was she sure if she couldn't.
But she had no choice.
"Thank you," said Rogue, her voice barely above a whisper, but it didn't have to compete with anything else.
"I should go," said Kitty, rising to her feet. "If the cure is wearing off..."
"The X-Men might be needed. Gotcha."
"Hey, you're on the team again now, right? You should come."
"I want to be here when Bobby wakes up," she said. Kitty nodded with understanding, and left the infirmary. Rogue knew that even with Elixir offering his healing power, it would still be several days before Bobby was up to par. But she had gotten him into this, and God save her, she was going to see him out.
Rogue rose, stood by Bobby's bedside for what felt like eons, before finally kissing her fingertips and laying them to her boyfriend's face. A few tears dripped off her chin and stained dark spots on the back of her gloves, because she knew this was the closest she'd ever get to kissing him again.