Disclaimer: I own nothing X-Men related.
Rivers, Farms, and Statelines
And every straight line has its price.
She considers herself a professional hitch-hiker now. A professional hitch-hiker knows: you take what you can get. You go where your driver is going. Your map is lined with unlikely detours. You stare straight ahead as the road feeds itself under the body of the vehicle.
But you're always on your guard. Getting into a car with a stranger isn't a matter of trust. It's a distinct matter of distrust. It's covert glances toward the driver's seat without moving any muscles of the face except the eyes. It's a body tense and ready to fight. It's as few words as possible.
But this one is a talker. It makes her nervous. Not for the fact that he's talking per se, but for what it is that he says.
"What's a good-looking girl like you doing out so late?"
When she doesn't answer, "You're lucky I came along when I did. There are wolves on these roads at night."
The pause lets through only the squeaks of the windshield wipers sweeping scads of big wet snowflakes away from two hump-shaped streaks of glass.
"Never snagged a wolf, but I've shot me a coyote or two in the past few years. The odd fox stupid enough to bother the heifers. 'Course those old cows could crush a fox's brains out with their hooves, eh. But I don't like to miss an opportunity for target practice."
There are skeletal cracks strewn across the windshield. She can see their place of origin directly in front of her: a dime-sized blister where a stone flew up from the tires of a semi when he was following too closely, trying to pass on a busy one-lane highway.
Like the skeletal cracks in the back of his dry, rough hand when he reaches over and places his hand on her knee. She lets her eyes fall from the road and regards the hand quietly with wary eyes. Her gloved hands she keeps folded on her lap. She clears her throat but does not yet speak. She'll wait to see what happens next.
His voice is quiet. Like the world outside, the sound sucked out of the air by the snow. "Weather's bad. Looks like not even the wolves are out tonight."
His hand slips up her thigh. It brushes against her glove but never leaves her leg. The unwelcome feeling burns right through to her covered flesh. Time for her to speak up. Not too shy.
"That's a matter of opinion."
And apparently, not too smart.
He sucks air as he chuckles at her sarcasm, now single-handedly shifting the 4x4 onto a turn-out beside a barbed-wire gate. She turns her head and looks out the window, examining the landscape for a route of escape. The field stretching endlessly beyond the gate is dotted with round hay bales coated by warm layers of snow. There have been no cars on the road for miles. She can't outrun him in a space he knows like the back of that creeping hand.
He's right beside her now. His mouth is in her ear. "You're quite the vixen yourself, teasing me like that."
His hand on her breast. The other sliding under her gloved hands.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she murmurs.
He snaps back his head and looks at her. She gazes steadily back, though her heart hammers against her chest.
"You're right," he replies thoughtfully. "There's something missing."
His hands fumble with his own jeans. He appears to be panting. Rogue shakes her head to herself as she loosens her gloves finger by finger.
He notices what she is doing and snorts. "Leave them on, sweetheart. I think it's hot." He has exposed himself. He smirks.
She ignores the words and leans toward him, hands out. She feels her legs shaking, but her arms are steady.
But before her fingers touch his face, he grabs her by the back of her shirt and thrusts her face down against him, snarling for her to suck him.
Rogue barely has a chance to register her disgust and dismay. Her skin against his doesn't fail to suck the life out of him. He shrivels under her cheek as she grits her teeth in annoyance, not this time voluntarily exploring his thoughts, but being assaulted by images of the world as seen through his eyes. She does't want to be exposed to his sick, banal life, but she doesn't have a choice.
She doesn't have a choice but to see the faces of the other girls, some terrified, others utterly blank. She feels their warm thighs in her hands and the jolts of excitement he had breathed in as he forced himself into their unwilling yet vibrating bodies.
Annoyance trembles into repulsion.
Though her face seems statically attached to him, Rogue rips it away, replacing it with strong, angry, gloveless hands curved around the finely-haired space between his abdomen and thighs. Still immersed in the man's memories where she sees even her own face on the roadside, Rogue turns that hot, tingling face and coughs up a well of vomit.
She knows he is dead when he goes completely limp. She knows he is dead because the memories stop. She doesn't know if she should feel sorry or relieved for his wife.
The sour taste in her mouth from the vomit seeps down her throat as she tries to get up but finds she is too weak to move. She leaves her head resting on the leg which was farthest from the accompanying sour smell of her puke as she tries to catch her breath.
Still, the adrenaline coursing through her body makes her jump when she hears a thump against the driver's side of the truck.
The door flies from its hinges, revealing a dark shape in the snowy shadows.
Gasping, Rogue gropes for the lock and throws her body against her door, which tries to stick shut but doesn't succeed under her persistence. Gloves in hand, she flees into the field.
The shape is a man, she realizes; its throaty voice calls after her. "Hey!"
But she doesn't want to be forced to kill again tonight.
Even less does she want to be forced to touch a man again tonight.
Nor does she want to be touched.
She thinks she hears a distant howl.
She would rather run with the wolves.