Chapter 2:

A little while later when the scientists had almost finished testing their powers, Kelly Reed summoned Rogue to her office. As Rogue walked down the halls of the lab, she thought about how odd it felt to be allowed outside of the small space she shared with Scott. She was so lost in her thoughts, that she didn't even notice when she reached Ms. Reed's office. "Come in" Ms. Reed said from inside when the man escorting Rogue knocked on her door. As he pushed her into the office, Ms. Reed said, "Oh Rogue, it's you. Please come in, sit down." As she did so, Rogue asked, "What is it that you wanted to see me about Ms. Reed?"

"Oh call me Kelly, please" Ms. Reed said in an overly friendly voice. "Alright," Rogue said having no idea what she was doing there, "So, Kelly, why did you want to see me?" "Well," Ms. Reed said as she sat on her desk to face Rogue, "As you know we are nearing the end of our testing," "And you're gong to let us go?" Rogue asked unable to keep the hint of excitement and hope out of her voice, "Yes," Ms. Reed said with a smile, "We are going to let you go after you complete one final test"

"Okay" Rogue said now actually listening to what this woman had to say, It's finally over, after all of this Scott and Ah can go home! "So what haven't you tested yet?" Rogue said with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Picking up on the hint Ms. Reed laughed and said, "Fair enough, Miss Rogue. We have tested almost all normal habits of living except for," Except for what? Rogue thought anxiously as she was practically jumping out of her seat to be able to leave this place, "Except for reproduction."

"What!" Rogue said unable to control her confusion, "What are you…" Oh no, no, no, no. Rogue thought as understanding dawned on her, "You can't possibly mean," Rogue began with a laugh, "I mean exactly what I said Rogue" Ms. Reed said with no trace of her prior friendliness in her voice.

"Absolutely not! Scott is engaged, there is no way he and Ah are going to…going to…well you know" Rogue said indignantly. "Alright," Ms. Reed said with a sigh, "But just remember, that you have the power to decide when you and your friend leave. Have a good day Miss Rogue" Ms. Reed said as she called for the scientist to come and escort Rogue back to the observation chambers.

When she got back to the glass rooms, Rogue found Scott sitting in the kitchen sitting for her, "What was that all about?" he asked with a worried look on his face as he stood up to come and greet her, "Are you okay? You look a little shaken up." "Ah'm fine. Really" Rogue said as she tried to decide whether or not she ought to tell Scott, "She just…she just wanted to talk a little bit about my power"

"Oh," Scott said slightly confused, "Well then if you're okay, I guess I should head back to finish the testing in my room." "Alright," Rogue said with a nod, "Scott" she called stopping him at the doorway to his room, "Yes Marie?" he said using her real name, "Never mind" No matter how badly she wanted to tell someone, Rogue knew that Scott shouldn't have to share the burden of this information.

The weeks past and eventually the testing on their powers stopped, and when after another two weeks no new testing began, Scott began to get angry. "I just don't understand!" Scott yelled as he paced the living room during his now unlimited time to spend with Rogue, "If they're finished with the tests why don't they just let us go like they promised! I mean it's not like we don't deserve it."

"Scott," Rogue said trying to calm him down, "Unless maybe they're trying to keep us permanently," Scott continued unaware that she had spoken, "Scott," Rogue tried again as she placed her gloved hand on his arm, "I just thought, I thought I was going to get to see Jean again" he said as he broke down and began to cry.

"Scott!" Rogue finally yelled in tears, breaking him out of his self-pity, "Oh Marie," Scott said as he looked down at her, "I should have known that this was hurting you too, I never meant to…" "No Scott," Rogue said with a small smile as she wiped away her tears, "It's not that. You have every right to be angry and sad, it's just that, well there's something Ah should have told you." "Yes Marie?" Scott asked as he sat down on the couch and motioned for her to sit next to him.

"Well Scott," Rogue began, "Now promise you won't get mad at me and that you will let me finish what Ah have to say before you respond," looking up to see him nod Rogue continued, "It's about what Ms. Reed said to me in her office a while ago, do you remember that?" Seeing him nod and give her an encouraging smile, she went on, "Well what she said, Ah just couldn't tell you, but Ah will totally do it if you want me to, Ah mean it's my fault that we're here in the first place, and if you ask me to Ah'll do it, just tell me,"

"Marie" Scott said kindly as he grabbed her shaking gloved hands in his own, "Whatever you're trying to tell me, just tell me and I promise I won't be mad" "Alright," Rogue said as she took a shaky breath and looked him in the eyes, "She told me that there's a way that we would be allowed to leave," seeing the anger that flashed through Scott's eyes even as he tried to hide it, Rogue rushed on, "Ah would have told you sooner, Ah swear, but Ah was hoping that once they finished the tests they might let us leave anyway. Oh Scott, please don't hate me Ah'm so sorry."

"I could never hate you Marie," Scott said looking at her with a true gentleness in his eyes, "Why don't you just tell me what she said" "She said that if we were to let them perform one final test, we could leave." "That's great!" Scott said with a wide smile, "What do they want to test?" "Mutant reproduction" Rogue whispered quietly, "Mutant what?" Scott asked not having heard her, "Mutant reproduction" Rogue said as she blushed and looked down at her hands.

"What? I don't…Oh" Scott said finally understanding, then taking Rogue's hand he said, "Marie, Marie, please look at me. I would never make you do that Marie, you were right to think that I wouldn't agree, you are my fired and I wouldn't ever ask something so painful of you. We will simply have to find another way to get out." "So you're not mad" Rogue asked quietly, "Of course not" Scott said as he pulled her into a hug, "We promised that we will get through this together, and we will."

Two days later as Rogue was sitting in the kitchen and Scott was taking a shower, Kelly Reed unlocked the glass door and came into the kitchen. "Good morning Rogue" she said with a smile, "Have you thought anymore about my proposal?" "Go to hell" Rogue said without looking up from her cereal, "I feared that might be the answer" Ms. Reed said with a sigh, "But you see Rogue, you've been here five months now, and I just don't think that we can afford to keep this project going too much longer, so we will need to get our final tests finished sooner rather than later."

"What are you talking about," Rogue said rudely as she finally looked up from her cereal. As she did so she noticed the two rather large thugs that had entered the room behind Ms. Reed and were now approaching her. As they grabbed her gloved arms Rogue yelled, "Don't touch me! Stop it! Scott help!" the last thing that she saw before one of the thugs stuck a tranquilizer needle in her arm was Scott running out of the bathroom in a towel to try and stop them.

When Rogue woke up, she was back in her room of the observation chambers, and her head was throbbing. As she looked around the room she noticed that the curtain was fully open and that there were scientists with notepads staring in, typical she thought as she continued to look around the room.

As she tried to move her hand to steady her throbbing head, she discovered that she was chained down to her bed by both her hands and feet, but what shocked her the most was that she was not wearing any clothing, which she knew was not only horrific, but also deadly. Just then the two thugs who had grabbed her earlier walked into the room dragging a very naked Scott who was wearing nothing but his glasses. They quickly threw him to the ground and moved to stand by the door, each one of them holding a loaded gun.

"Oh god Marie" Scott said when he saw the fear in her eyes as she lay chained to the bed and he attempted unsuccessfully to cover his very stiff body, "It's not what your thinking," he said quickly as he avoided looking at her, "They injected me with something and now it just won't turn off."

As one of the men prodded him forward with his gun, Scott cried, "God Marie, I'm so sorry," "No" Rogue gasped as she realized what he was saying to her, "No Scott, don't!" "I have to Marie, or they said they will kill you," "Scott it will kill you to touch me!" Rogue yelled as tears ran down her face, she was terrified both for herself and for him.

"Please, no" she whispered not to anyone in particular as he reached the bed, "Scott," she began as put one knee on the bed, "Marie" he whispered as he looked into her eyes for the first time since entering the room, tears pouring down both of their faces as he moved so that his hands were on wither side of her head and his knees were on either side of her hips, "Marie, I am so sorry" Scott said looking deep into her eyes before he thrust himself inside her. Rogue felt an earth splitting pain inside of her just as she felt that now familiar tug and Scott began to convulse on top of her.

"Get him off of me!" she screamed as his thoughts and feelings flooded into her mind while red light beams shot out of her eyes and through the ceiling of the lab, "Don't let him die god dammit! Get him off of me!" As the scientists quickly came and pulled him of her, the beams coming out of Rogue stopped, as did the flood of his thoughts and memories, Oh god she thought please don't let him die because of me.

Meanwhile about ten miles away, the x-men were stopped by the side of the road. "Can you smell them Logan?" Jean asked desperately as he sniffed the surrounding air. Logan had returned to the mansion two months prior only to find out that Scott and Rogue, his Marie, had disappeared three months before he got home and could not be traced with cerebro. He had immediately begun to search for them using his heightened senses as well as his now somewhat faded link to Rogue. After two months of searching the x-man had ended up here in the small town of Tabet, Vermont.

They were running low on hope after a number of dead ends and although no one was willing to say it aloud, they all knew that it was quite possible that since it had been almost six months, there might not be anyone left to find. "Logan" Storm said as he set her hand gently on his shoulder, "No one will blame you if you can't find them, even cerebro couldn't do that." "No!" Logan said gruffly as he shrugged her hand off of his shoulder, "I can smell that they're nearby I just can't hone in on that smell"

As the whole team unknowingly held their breath while Logan tried to sniff out their missing members, Logan saw a flash of something red out of the corner of his eye. Turning sharply, with the others quickly following his gaze, he saw a beam of red light in the sky that vanished as quickly as it appeared, "One-eye" he said with an intake of breath of everyone began to sprint back to the jet. It took them ten minutes to get off the ground, and Logan knew that within a matter of minutes he would find whatever there was to find of his Marie.

As Scott was rushed off to be given CPR, Rogue was unlocked from her chains and she immediately went to the bathroom to throw up. She felt like dying both mentally and physically. The pain in her stomach was subsiding simply leaving a dull, stinging ache in its place, but it was her mental pain that would not go away. She had always imagined that her first time would be a special miraculous experience. Instead she wanted to forget it all, but if Scott died, that would never happen, she would be responsible for his death. Pulling on a random pair of laboratory clothes that they had provided her as well as her gloves that she had brought with her, Rogue thought Oh god what have I done? Please don't let him die like this, he was only trying to save me. Please let him live. Worse than all of her own thoughts were the new thoughts of Scott's.

She was normally to a point now where, although she couldn't control her power, she could keep the different voices and personalities at bay unless she was in a really stressful situation. So now Rogue had to deal with not only her own thoughts on the situation, but also all of the people she had absorbed. Magneto told her that he had been right all along and that humans were no good, Bobby tried to comfort her, Logan offered to kill Scott, but worst of all the Scott in her told her how guilty he felt and that it was all his fault. Absorbed in both her own pain and the pain that Scott's guilt transferred to her, Rogue watched helplessly through the glass of the living room as he was gently dressed in a pair of laboratory clothes and put onto a ventilator. In the back of her mind she briefly registered that someone had cleaned out her bedroom and that the bloodied sheets were gone, but it didn't really matter to her anymore, nothing did.

These were the thoughts that were going through her head as she sat curled in a little ball and the alarm started going off. She saw all of the scientists run for various exits, but her eyes were fixed on Scott. She barely even noticed as the various x-men came fighting their way into the room. The back part of her mind, the only functioning part at this moment, recognized that Logan had broken away from the fighting and begun to look around the room. When he noticed the glass rooms in the middle and then picked her out inside of them, he began to sprint towards her. Slicing through the supposedly unbreakable glass with his claws, Wolverine came in to rescue her.

"Oh Marie," he began when he saw her, but then stopped upon noticing the look in her eyes. They seemed to be vacant, only slightly registering her surroundings and completely absorbed in thought. She fought him at first when he tried to pick her up, but eventually gave up and allowed him to carry her. The one thing that she whispered before she passed out in his arms was, "Scott, save Scott" At first Wolverine was angered by her words and by her care for one-eye, but then upon seeing a helpless Scott lying unconscious on a nearby table, Logan yelled for Jean, and once she had gone to help Scott he left to take Rogue back to the blackbird.

I finished these two chapters in the little bit of free time that I had this weekend, I don't know how long it will be until the next chapter is done, but I will try to make it soon. Please, Please, Please Review!