Sorry about the delay, internet problems, you would have thought that universities would be able to get it right. Anyways :D hope you enjoy this little nugget of a chappie, took me ages to get it the way I wanted it.
As always love my faithful reviewers and readers ;) Keep it up and so will I!!
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E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N......E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N......E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N......E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N......E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N.
Rogue lightly touched the bruise that spanned the entirety of her right cheek stretching from the corner of her mouth to the edge of her eye. She had been training when the simulation had taken a nasty turn landing her in an ambush. She had unwittingly run one of Wolverines programmes. She had been hit on other parts of her body but this was the first injury that she had gotten on a piece of visible skin. She sighed and reached for her foundation, she just hoped that she would be able to cover it up so no one would get worried that she had been in another fight.
She was just putting the finishing touches of eye liner on when there was a loud banging on the door, causing her to jump and smudge just under her eye.
"Rogue hurry up I am going to be late!" came Jeans shrill voice. Rogue involuntarily winced; Jean had been watching her like a hawk for the past few weeks, for what she didn't know. But she was getting sick of it. As soon as her voice came back she was going to have a few words with Miss Perfect.
Jean banged on the door again and Rogue slammed her hand down on the counter in response, only to wince again as pain flooded her hand. Looking down she had slammed her hand directly down onto Scott's razor, the edge had sliced a sizeable strip of skin and blood was already leaking out. She had never realised that hands could bleed so much, she stopped to grab some tissue and mopped up the blood on the counter, then chucked the razor and the tissues in the bin. Scott wouldn't want to use a bloody razor and she was sure he had spares. Then clasping a tissue to her bleeding hand she double checked her make-up. To her relief the bruise was not noticeable unless you looked really closely, Jean banged again and Rogue felt the familiar pressure as she attempted to speak via Rogue's mind. Rogue didn't even try to block her out. Ever since Apocalypse she had had barriers erected around her mind. Must have been some kind of self-defence mechanism. But no telepath could get through it, or so the Professor had said, without her permission.
She finally left feeling Jean's eyes on her as she pushed her way past the small queue and went to collect her book bags. Scott had insisted on driving her to school every day since she had been deemed healthy. She hated being back at school, and was contemplating skipping again, except that the school had insisted that they would not hesitate to expel her if she missed any more days. So the entire X-team had insisted that she return.
Jean drove the others while Scott drove her, as always he attempted to begin a conversation in any way and as always she just stared out the window. Knowing he would get tired of it before she did. She knew that Hank wanted to get her to talk to a shrink, and she knew that he would never stoop to actually forcing her to do anything, so until the Professor got back from his crusading she was stuck in limbo, without a voice.
The day dragged by, Hanks note got her out of having to answer questions in class so she simply sat at the back doodling in the back of her notebook. She knew she attracted more stares than the rest of the X-team because no one in school actually knew what her power was. Rumours circulated about why she wore the gloves, the most accurate being that she was a vampire who could suck blood through skin to skin contact. She didn't mind, it helped keep people away from her skin, she had successfully gone through the last few weeks without absorbing anyone. Her head felt blissfully clear without the remnants of people's psyches running around in there.
Not soon enough it was lunch time, she grabbed the first food that she could find and began to make her way to the door. She preferred to eat her lunch away from prying eyes, somewhere she could sit in solitude. However on her way out a tall blonde girl in her year, a preppy girl from Tennessee called Brianna and her friend, whose name temporarily escaped her, "accidently" crashed into her, covering her top in chunks of chips and cheese. Rogue didn't even look up just stared at the yellow pieces attached to her top.
"Watch where you're going freak!" Brianna announced in a loud voice, immediately attracting the attention of everyone in the canteen.
Rogue just stood there taking it. There was no doubt that she could take either of these girls in a fight, but she just didn't care, and she was useless at bitch fights without a voice. Mentally she asked her voice box to resume prior services hoping it would work.
"Aw, I wonder if she's gonna cry?" Brianna sneered
"Hmm, what's the matter freak? Mutant cat got your tongue?" Her friend piped up again, enjoying her role as bitchy sidekick.
Rogue looked up at that and opened her mouth to speak, hopefully, when Kitty stepped to her defence. "Like what is your problem? She was just trying to eat her lunch!" The valley girl stood with the rest of the X-men who were still in school holding a tray of food.
Kurt soon followed "Leave her alone, she didn't even do anything!"
Brianna snorted, "She didn't have to, and we don't want any of you freaks here, from now on you're not welcome in the canteen, any of you."
Both turned to go back to their table of friends but Brianna stopped for a moment before turning back to Rogue. "Just to make sure our message sinks in" she smirked before throwing her coke all over Rogues face.
Rogue blinked a couple of times before wiping the substance out of her streaming eyes. She turned meaning to go to the bathroom to get the rest off and to clean her top up, but stopped at the look of horror on Kitty's face. She realised that she must have wiped her makeup off as well unwittingly revealing her bruised face to the world.
"Rogue like what happened?" Kitty asked
"Vas it zose men? Did zey come back?" Kurt asked
Rogue could see the other members of the team peering at her curiously. She froze not knowing what to do, and then she heard Amara lean over and whisper something to Bobby unfortunately she didn't whisper as quietly as she thought so Rogue heard clearly.
"She probably did it herself, I heard Jean telling Hank that she found bloody tissues and a razor in the bin this morning, Rogue must be self harming."
Rogue felt rage grip her, Jean had been snooping around after her! She clenched her fists into balls and tried to count to ten before,
"Rogue is this like true?" this was Kitty, Kitty! She doubted her, Rogue knew that they were never bosom friends but she had thought that they were close.
She looked up eyes flashing in anger, the rest of the canteen, bar the X-men, took a step back afraid of what the "crazy mutant" was going to do now.
Kurt decided to placate her, he spread his arms wide, "look if you haff a problem ve can help ve are you family"
That did nothing to help her mood; they actually thought she would do something as stupid as self harm? And if she had she would have a done a much better job of hiding it.
Suddenly she was fed up, of all the subtle looks, of all the comments made when they thought she wasn't around. And especially of people feeling sorry for her, she was done feeling sorry for herself wasn't that enough? So she did the only thing she could think of.
She ran.
It was her tried and tested method, she had learnt it from the best, and so she put it to good use. The X-men parted like the red sea around her, they were too scared of her skin to reach out and touch her. Kurt and Kitty too stunned to do anything.
As she cleared the school doors she was sure she heard Kitty yell for Kurt to follow her, but there was no familiar 'bamf' or smell of brimstone so she kept going. She kept running until her lungs began to scream in protest and she was forced to rest against a nearby wall.
It was then that she took stock of her surroundings; this was an area of Bayville she rarely visited, the industrial section, the only buildings around were warehouses and factories, somewhere she could rest in peace for a few hours.
She sat on the cold floor panting. She could hear the sound of her communicator ringing on her wrist; angrily she pushed the reject button and wrenched it off her wrist before throwing the thing away. She would return but on her own terms.
She was startled out of her angry reverie by the sounds of approaching footsteps. She leapt to her feet and looked around, assuming that it would be workers of some description. She shrank back into the shadows and watched as a group of men walked into the space between three warehouses, their leader looked familiar but she couldn't place him.
The men appeared to be looking for something and spread out over the area. Rogue began to get nervous; she thought that she recognised the leader now. He seemed very familiar to the leader of the group of thugs who had attacked her outside the Wall-mart. Her suspicions were confirmed when the man suddenly looked in her direction and checked a remote held in his hand. He began pointing in her direction and the men swarmed completely surrounding her.
"Hello again" the man announced coldly.
"Thought we had forgotten about you? Thought we would leave you alone now? One man grabbed her arms, and the leader walked closer, "Rogue, our boss is very, interested, in your case, and he believes that given time he could find a use for your; talents."
Rogue spat in his face.
"Your friend isn't here to protect you this time, I would be careful if I were you" the man snarled slapping her across the face with a gloved hand.
Rogue inwardly groaned; gloves! These guys were definitely prepared for her, and worse they now knew her name who were they? She glared at the man and began weighing her options, there were 10 of them and only 1 of her, not great odds. And she had thrown her communicator away.
The man holding her was not holding her too tightly assuming she wasn't going to move, she dropped allowing her body to become as heavy as it could until she was effectively a dead weight. As the man fell with her she twisted pushing him over her head and onto the ground in front of the leader.
She smirked and dropped into a crouch looking for a gap in the circle, thinking it would be safer to make a break for it before they could overpower her. The men were all the rough size and shape as Wolverine and looked like they had been in more than one bar brawl. But that may be where she got her advantage, where they were inexperienced she had been practising for weeks against bigger stronger opponents. She was small and quick where they were big and slow, or so she hoped.
As one swung at her she ducked low and hit high effectively knocking all the air out of his stomach. She then used him momentum to throw him into two other men on the other side. One stayed down having caught his head on the side of a building.
"1 down" she thought briefly before two leapt for her. Like something out of a cartoon she sidestepped and the knocked heads, she would have laughed had it not been so serious. The remaining looked pissed; the leader had drawn out some sort of gun and was currently aiming it at her.
She leapt just as he fired so the round caught her leg. Looking down she saw that it was some sort of dart, probably containing some sort of sleep inducing drug. Wrenching it out her suspicions were confirmed as her vision blurred briefly and she saw the men grinning. She struggled to stay awake and began shaking her head to clear it.
The nearest man reached out to grab her but was thrown backwards by a small explosion in his chest. Rogue thought she must be hallucinating as she watched the men all fly backwards in slow motion from unseen explosions. Light and sound seemed to be proving a challenge as her ears were filled with a dull ringing.
Slowly time sped up and her head began to clear. She presumed that she hadn't got a large enough dose of the drug to completely knock her out. Briefly she wondered what had happened, all the men were lying around her knocked out. Something had attacked them, or someone. A phrase used by the man who had shot her ran around and around in her head "Your friend isn't here to protect you this time"
"Your friend"
"This time"
"Your friend"
Rogue slowly turned to face her saviour knowing already who would be standing there. Leaning nonchalantly against a far wall, arrogantly shuffling his cards and smirking was Gambit.
"Bonjour cherie"
E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N......E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N......E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N......E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N......E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N.
Like hate? R+R
Daegana
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