: HOUSE OF CARDS :
PART ONE : CONSEQUENCES
(2) - Consciousness -
Her name was Rogue.
For a long time after she would not remember the events of that day; but she would dream of it often within the following months of feverish sleep - of running, of an almighty explosion; an explosion inside her back, white-hot, searing; of atoms fusing, burning, disintegrating…
Xavier had been killed.
She knew this because she had seen them kill him. She had heard the gunshots from afar and her and Rachel had gone running and they'd found him in his study just before the men with the guns had opened fire. Rachel had gone to him and she'd tried to pull her back and then everything had become chaotic and confused and then… Then there had been the explosion in her back.
There had been a curious moment where everything had ceased to exist. No matter, no time. Everything seemed to stretch infinitely, every moment seemed to bleed out into eternity, and for an instant that lasted forever she saw, she understood… She would never understand what she understood. Stars forming, bursting in front of her eyes, filling, falling into the black tidal wave, extinguished by the sea, one by one, by one…by…one…
And then there would be her, falling in after them, being put out forever.
But for her, on that day, forever and oblivion did not come.
She lived, where so many others did not.
And then there came a time when the sea of darkness parted, when she opened her eyes and saw light; when she saw beyond all doubt that she lived.
When she awoke from her coma, it was to the face of someone so familiar and yet so alien that she thought she had woken to a dream.
The smooth, porcelain features; the thin, hard lips; and the cold, calculating eyes that would never change, whichever face they graced.
"Mystique?"
Her voice was different, hoarse and high-pitched from disuse. There was not one iota of change in the face that hovered above her. It merely stared and said: "Rogue, my child. Welcome."
Welcome. Such a simple phrase, one that she did not think she would ever feel again. Her limbs felt transparent, gelatinous; her vision was blurred, and her mind felt as if it was filled with cobwebs. She tried to move a hand, and it felt leaden as a dead-weight; when she finally did manage to move it, the movement felt divorced from her own body, as though her brain was moving somebody else's arm. When she felt herself touch her forehead, it was almost a shock.
"Wait," she murmured in confusion. "Ah was at the mansion… The military attacked… Ah think they killed Xavier… And Rachel… Ah haveta get back…"
Something glinted like metal in the cold eyes that floated so disconcertingly above her.
"Yes," Mystique replied levelly. "The military attacked the mansion. Six months ago."
Six months…
There was somehow something preposterous about such a notion. It simply wasn't possible that anyone could sleep for so long. It had only been a split second, a few minutes at the most… She'd felt the impact, fallen, and the next moment, this…
Lying in a bed with Mystique looking down at her with those hard eyes, eyes that nevertheless were filled with something else. Bitterness. Sympathy. Rage. Hope. So many things…
Her head hurt. She didn't understand what it all meant.
"Six months?" She laughed weakly. "But it was just a moment ago. Ah was there… Where --?"
"They're dead," the thin lips declared with a dread finality that seemed to communicate to Rogue that it was no lie. And the eyes… the eyes never lied, not Raven's… Cold as they may be they never lied…
They're dead.
It was as though all the coldness in Mystique's face seeped into Rogue herself; a frost was stealing under the numbness of her skin, sinking into her pores and her bones and her muscles, creeping over her organs with an icy hand and making her heart go cold.
If there was a moment when the old Rogue died, it was then.
"Dead?" she whispered. "But --"
"The military killed them," Mystique stated matter-of-factly, yet not without a trace of regret. "All of them. There are no others, Rogue. Only you."
She stood; the face became smaller, a pinpoint in the middle distance, glaring down on her with a brevity of expression that conveyed the dreadful truth to her.
"You're alive, Rogue," she told her with calm abruptness. "Get used to it."
The face disappeared from view, and a second later, she heard a door click shut.
All that she was left with was that snow white ceiling, one that would encompass her world for many days to come.
It was a long time before she found the tears to cry.
-oOo-
The next few days passed in a blur - even later, she would never be able to remember what she did, or what she thought, or how she survived those long, grinding hours of nothingness.
There was no comfort in that little room, and she lay there, shrouded in dimness during the day, wreathed in blackness during the night. There was only one small source of consolation, and she felt it lying, warm and light, against her chest, day in, day out. A butterfly pendant, resting close to her heartbeat, warmed by her body heat, as if she gave it sustenance, and it, in turn gave her the same… Sometimes, she would hold it, under the covers, run her fingers over the back of it, that thin sliver of white gold of which she knew every mark, every notch; and sometimes she'd run her fingers over the front, over the chips of smooth, glazed enamel, feeling the contours of the butterfly; wishing she could become one, wishing she could leave this bed, this room, this building, this world, this present… Wishing she could flutter away into sweet oblivion…
Some nights she would dream of it, she would dream of the silken touch of butterfly wings on her flesh, making her shudder, making her flush… The touch of a loved one, something she could never, would never feel… …
It was another three days before she found the strength to sit up, and when she did she found herself lying on a dusty bed in a ramshackle room inhabited by mangled furniture and cracked, peeling walls. She propped herself up against the headboard and looked around. What struck her first was the quietness of everything. There was barely a sound to be heard, apart from the innate creaking of the building itself - other than that there was none of the usual exterior sound: no traffic, no footsteps, no aeroplanes, no people talking or laughing, no nothing. No birdsong. There was something surreal about this soundless state, which gave the impression that perhaps she was still in a dream, or a nightmare - she couldn't tell. Just when she had digested the peculiarity of this, the distant wail of a siren sounded plaintively from somewhere outside, the only token of any outside life; it lingered a moment, indistinct and far-away, before faltering off out of earshot and into some place unknown.
A police siren.
There was a window by her bed, and, curiosity getting the better of her, she went to pull the threadbare and mouldy curtains aside, when footsteps on the wooden floors outside her bedroom interrupted her. Just as she dropped the curtain, the doorknob rattled, twisted, and the worm-eaten door gave way with a groan. She looked up.
It was Mystique.
"Ah," she said. "You're awake." She crossed the gap between the door and the bed with feline, graceful movements, with the stealth and elegance of the ninja, and sat down on a rickety chair beside Rogue; there was a bowl of something in her hand. It smelt good. "I brought you some food," she added.
It had been a few years since they'd last been in one another's company. Since then Mystique - or Raven Darkholme as she sometimes called herself - could have been any number of differing people. She certainly looked different now. What mattered was that on the inside she was always essentially the same. Ruthless, conniving, deadly and frighteningly unstable. Perhaps it was the fact that she had had to wear so many guises in her exceptionally long lifetime; over the years her personality had become so splintered that even she had little idea of what was Raven and what was not. She was only ever the sum of very many parts, never complete, never whole. As her one-time foster-daughter, Rogue knew just how wonderfully unhinged Raven could really be. And yet there was a calmness, a single-mindedness about her that could be quite disconcerting. Years of stealing other people's lives had turned her into something amoral and almost inhuman.
It was the thing Rogue had striven all her life never to become.
The form Raven chose to wear these days was like most of the forms she chose to wear - strong, proud, beautiful, yet somehow aloof and glacial at the same time. Both the body and face seemed young at first glance - but the features bore a stillness, a wisdom that seemed uncharacteristic of a young person. There was a coolness in the eyes, a bitterness, like a winter frost had permeated that face and locked it in time forever. The lips were thin, straight, and never smiled. The skin was pale, sallow, framed by a mass of thick, black hair that emphasised the sharp, unforgiving line of the high cheekbones.
One look at that face, and you would know the owner was not to be reckoned with.
Mystique sat quietly, whilst Rogue fell upon her first proper meal in ages with a gusto she could not conceal. If her mind could not believe that it was months she had been in a coma, her stomach could certainly do so. It was only a meagre serving of thick and tasteless porridge, but to Rogue it was like ambrosia. When she had finally finished and laid the bowl aside, her feverish mind was finally ready to ask the questions that had been gnawing away at her as hungrily as emptiness had gnawed at her stomach; and yet there were so many that she could not voice them. Beside her, Raven sat with her impassive stare - there never seemed to be a moment when she did not look at Rogue, and for the first time Rogue met that stare without flinching, without turning her eyes away even though her stomach was roiling with a sense of impending disaster.
Because ever since she had woken up and seen that silent face hovering over her, Rogue had known it. Something was wrong.
She could feel it in her very bones, something that was as tangible as day and night and yet that she could give no name to.
While she had slept, something had changed.
For a moment, a blind panic filled her; the uncontrollable desire to run back to where she knew the mansion was, to confirm that everything was as she had left it, that there was no change and that this was some sort of horrible misunderstanding. Something of this must have shown in her face, because Raven, who'd been watching her intently the whole time, suddenly spoke sternly.
"There's no point in going back," she informed her foster-daughter evenly, as if anticipating Rogue's every thought already. "You'd be a fool to do so. They destroyed the mansion. They're still staking the ruins out. There's nothing left."
Raven didn't even blink. Her gaze remained level and unwavering. Rogue opened her mouth, moved it as if experimenting with some new, unknown invention. And then, miraculously, the first question popped out.
"Who is 'they'?"
Cool, grey eyes, unblinking…
"The military."
"They destroyed the mansion?"
"Yes."
"And Xavier, he's…"
"Dead."
Silence. A gulf of silence, careening around her, making her head spin, making her nauseous… She clutched at the comforter, feeling the roiling in her stomach explode into something sour and ugly, clawing up at her throat, making her choke --
She vomited.
It must have been a minute or two later that she came to, this time hunched over into the covers, clutching the ragged bedspread in between her emaciated fingers with the raw, rancid stench of vomit in her nostrils.
"And the others?" she choked.
"Dead," came the flat reply.
"All of them?"
"Yes."
She paused.
"Kurt?" she ventured at last.
She did not dare look into Mystique's eyes when she mentioned the name of her own flesh and blood.
"Dead."
So calm, so composed…
Rogue heaved, but this time nothing came up. She was drained, drained of everything she had. Something hit her breast, cold and heavy. The butterfly pendant, swinging against her chest… She clutched it tight in her right fist. At some point, maybe when she'd been unconscious, it had been chipped. A bit of blue enamel on the right wing was missing, and the white gold had lost its lustre. But it was still intact, just like she was…
Suddenly, unbidden, one more question rose in her throat; but she snapped her mouth on it before she could say it - it was too personal, it belonged to her, only to her…
Remy…
Her eyes were smarting with a moist fire but she held the tide back.
"Ah'm the only one left?" she finally whispered.
Raven made no reply. She stood, scuffing the chair legs on gritty wooden floorboards as she did so, and walked to a small window at the other end of the room, pulled aside the curtain and stared out. Her jaw was tensing, relaxing, tensing, relaxing… apart from this there was no other emotion on her face.
"We got to the mansion as soon as we heard what had happened," she spoke at last, her tone almost nonchalant. "It was easy, to disguise myself as one of them. They had found you in amongst the wreckage - you were barely alive, but you were still with us, thank the heavens. Those bastards shot you in the back - luckily they missed your spine by millimetres. For two months, we weren't even sure whether you'd live, or whether you'd die." She turned, letting the curtain fall back in place behind her. "I sincerely hope you're going to be grateful for the rescue."
Rogue looked away, swallowed. Me too…
"Did you… did you look for anyone else?"
"Of course we did!" Raven unexpectedly snapped. "Do you think I would leave my own son --!" She broke off, clamping her mouth shut, her jaw tensing visibly again. "We looked everywhere for survivors. There were none. Xavier was killed - God knows who else."
Nausea gripped her again. It was crazy, it was unreal, yet she knew that if she pinched herself she'd never wake up.
"Where… where am Ah?"
"In a house on the outskirts of what used to be Mutant Town."
"Used to be…?"
"The military and the Sentinels 'cleansed' it two days after the mansion was destroyed. The residents were either killed or incarcerated. No one lives here now."
It was worse, this feeling inside her bones, inside her brain, worse than she'd thought. So strange, so alien… It didn't make any sense.
"Cleansed? Holy shit…"
"The military stopped prowling a month ago. We figured it'd be safe to make a temporary base of operations here, at least for a couple of weeks. But once you're strong again, we'll be moving on. It's not safe to stay in this place for too prolonged a length of time. The Sentinels still make infrequent patrols through the area. As do the Hounds."
Hounds?
She pressed a hand to her aching forehead. Too many questions. Save the Hounds for later. Save… everything for later. Prioritise.
Her mouth opened, the words forming slowly, inelegantly, inside it.
"Who's this 'we'?" she inquired. From her place in the corner, a wry, sardonic smile twisted Raven's lips.
"The Brotherhood. What's left of it anyway. Toad got killed in the purges, as did Blob and Phantazia. Sabretooth - missing in action, presumed dead. Not that I give two shits about the miserable excuse for a bastard anyway," Raven added caustically. "Now it's just me, Irene, Pyro, Avalanche - and Forge."
Rogue glanced up sharply.
"Forge?"
Raven's smile was still wry.
"As far as I can tell, he was the only one who wasn't in the mansion at the time it was destroyed. He came to us a week afterwards, of his own volition. He wanted to help us. Of course we could use expertise such as he possesses… So I welcomed him on board without a second thought. A man like him, a man with his skills is uniquely invaluable to people like us, Rogue."
"People like us…?"
"Come now, Rogue. You were once a member of the Brotherhood, weren't you. Or did Xavier surreptitiously wipe that fact from your mind?"
"Ah joined the X-Men because Ah wanted to," Rogue replied sullenly, bitterly. "Ah thought you'd accepted it."
"Oh yes, indeed," Raven retorted sarcastically, arms crossed. "But the X-Men are dead now, Rogue. Killed by the very humans that the Brotherhood so long warned you about." Her smile was glacial, didn't even reach her eyes. "I would say I told you so, but since recent events make my point so self-evident, it's hardly worth it. Xavier was wrong," she continued scornfully, "and sadly he paid for that with his life. Equality is dead. Harmony between baseline humans and mutants is only so much dust on the wind. And it wasn't our doing, Rogue. It was theirs. The humans. Who then, Rogue, is the more worthy race now?"
She turned back to the window, threw open the curtains; but the light that filtered in was dim and frosty, casting no illumination on the dingy little room that encased them.
"The world has changed, Rogue," Mystique murmured. "It changed while you slept, and there is much that you will have to learn. I'm going to undo what Xavier did to you, unpick it, unravel it, tear it to pieces - and not because I despised him and everything he stood for, no. I'm going to do it because these are the truths this world now presents us with - simple truths, Rogue, not the elaborate creeds that the good professor once taught you."
She swivelled suddenly, and Rogue saw that Raven's face was etched with hard lines, the mouth grim and set. Those lines were the scars of recent pain and hardship, of ineffectual victories won, of many more battles lost. They were scars Raven had never worn before, not in all the time that Rogue had known her. She shivered.
"You spoke of cleansing, of purges," Rogue spoke in a low tone. "You mean the humans have finally done it? They're purging… us?"
The hard line that was Raven's mouth curled at the corner into something faintly ominous. "In a manner of speaking. The purges lasted only a month, and were restricted to those the government deemed the most dangerous."
"The super-powered mutants?" Rogue whispered. Raven nodded curtly.
"Indeed. Naturally, the X-Men were at the top of the hit list. They had to go first. After that they rounded up any other superhero outfit they could find. Alpha Flight, Excalibur, Weapon X, certain of the Avengers… Afterwards came Magneto and his Acolytes -- and then the Brotherhood." Mystique looked away, leaned on the dresser beside her, traced the edge of it with a fingernail, leaving a thin trail in the dust. "Then they moved to Mutant Town and arrested anyone they classified as a danger to 'normal', law-abiding humans. Unfortunately, some of the mutant gangs put up a struggle. Many innocent mutants were killed, or were forced underground. What's left is a ghost town. What's been left is this."
She spread her arms in a parody of the grand gesture; but Rogue did not need to look to see.
The shapeless, ramshackle room, the scent of decay, the cobwebs and the woodworm, the silence… the silence…
Someone had lived here, and, quite possibly, died here.
Another wave of nausea took her, swelled up in her breast and she drew her knees tightly against her chest, clasping her arms about her as if to protect her from the silence, from the truth.
"They passed a bill," Mystique continued pedantically. "They passed it the very morning they attacked the mansion. The government declared martial law against all mutants. Segregation and oppression, Rogue. Strict control of where we go, what we do, and who we fraternise with. The army patrols every sector of the city, with or without the aid of Bolivar Trask's Sentinels. And then there are the Hounds."
"Hounds?" Rogue croaked over the crook of her arm.
"Yes." Raven's face, half shrouded in darkness, took on the sinister quality of a stone gargoyle. "Mutants like us, who have been brainwashed into betraying their own kind. They hunt us down, flush us out, toss us over to the military, kill us. They are the government's deadliest weapon against us. Ironic, isn't it." A sardonic smile twitched once more on those thin lips. "The one thing that can destroy us - ourselves. I suppose the baseline humans are smarter than I gave them credit for."
A sick horror was spreading through Rogue like a virus. She hugged herself tighter, her eyes smarting.
"They're using mutants against mutants…"
This time, Mystique merely grunted her confirmation - disgust, scorn and contempt were etched upon her face as she turned back to the window, the uncompromising lines of her face illuminated by the cold, grey light.
"Do you have an intimation, Rogue, of the world we are now living in?" she spoke harshly. "I can only suppose that, at this precise moment in time, you don't believe a word I have just told you. You see the veracity in my voice and in my face, but all your senses tell you that such a thing cannot be true. The United States of America, our beloved country," and she said this with open mockery and disdain, "is a bastion of democracy; since its inception it has stood for such human rights as equality and freedom of speech. But the hard, cold truth is that mutants are no longer classed as humans, Rogue. We are no better than animals, we are expendable and therefore we have no rights. Moreover, we are a threat to the very stability of the nation. We are dangerous and we cannot be allowed to promulgate." She half turned, eyeing Rogue askance from over her shoulder. "Once you have left this room, once you step outside this building, you will see the world we mutants inhabit; you will be forced to face the changes you have slept through. You will have no choice but to believe in the fullest sense - body, mind, heart and soul. But you are a strong girl," she half-smiled, "anyone weaker, and the truth would probably break them. But from the moment I first came across you, Rogue, so long ago, I knew that you possessed a strength very few possess. And a unique destiny few others have been blessed with."
It was only a throwaway comment, a nothing; but the word glared at Rogue as clearly as if someone had shone a headlight in her eyes.
Destiny.
And the coldness was in her throat now, lodging there; she stared at Raven with questing, tremulous eyes.
"What do you want from me?" she whispered.
For a long while, Mystique said nothing. Then she crossed the room, sat back down before Rogue, and held her gaze intently.
"What more could I want from you, Rogue," she spoke softly, yet fervently, "but for you to join us?"
She knew it, she knew it…
"Join the Brotherhood…?"
"Join us in our crusade to free mutants from bondage," Mystique nodded, her expression ravenous, even zealous. "From the very beginning, Rogue, your place was with us - before the X-Men, before you ever heard of Charles Xavier, you were one of the Brotherhood. Why do you think I sought you out in the first place?" She leaned back, her expression dulling, before continuing: "Of course, your time with the X-Men served a purpose. Xavier tempered you, taught you discipline. He trained you, cultivated you in a way that perhaps I could not. And with their deaths, the X-Men served their ultimate purpose. They gave you a purpose to live."
The coldness was growing, seeping into every bone of her body, and Rogue hugged herself so tight that her knuckles were white, that her jaw ached; but still she said nothing.
"It was the humans that did this to them, Rogue," Mystique hissed, low and insidious. "Not us. Not the Brotherhood, not Magneto, nor anyone else. It was the everyman, the guy on the street, the very people the X-Men fought daily to save. And what did they repay you with? Death, destruction. Here, if ever, is a reason for vengeance, my daughter. That you survived, of all people present in the mansion that day, presents you with a unique mission." She leaned in again, said: "Avenge those that were martyred that day, Rogue. Join the Brotherhood and together we will see them avenged. We will see all of mutantkind avenged. If not for our sake, if not for yours, do it for Xavier, do it for those loved and lost."
There was an odd moment where the two held one another's gaze, as if Raven wished to impart some terrible destiny on Rogue with the mere force of her glance. But after what seemed an impenetrably long time, Raven stood and looked down at her foster-daughter with a small smile.
"Of course, I don't wish you to make your decision now. I've told you a great many things today that you no doubt will have to think upon. But one day, and very soon, Rogue, you will have to make a decision. A decision that may affect a great many people. Do not consider it lightly, my child."
She stooped slightly, placing a graceful yet roughened hand on Rogue's shoulder; then she turned and walked to the door.
"It's best if you rest now," she said. "But when you are ready, come and see me. I'll be waiting."
She left, leaving behind portents of doom greater than anything Rogue had ever encountered before. And true to Raven's word, there was the undeniable sense of things unravelling right before Rogue's eyes. Her world, her life, everything she had stood for, quietly being undone, quietly being scattered to the wind.
What else could she do but sleep?
-oOo-
A/N: Well whaddaya know? By some strange twist of Fate, 'House of Cards' is now part of the House of Cards community! That tickled me and then some! Thanks Lucia!
Randi: I actually went back and tried to sort out the unfortunate KFC thing... And it turned out I was using Sanders and Saunders interchangeably. Doh. ;p And thanks for leaving a review, even though you've read it all already. I can't tell you how much your input meant to me. :) And personally I think this is better on a second reading... Not that I can be objective about it in any way. ;) Now all you have to do is update XMR and I'll be a happy and contented bunny. :D
Just to say thanks to everyone who has commented, faved, alerted and read this fic so far... especially from those who have stuck with me from the beginning. Your continued support is more than I deserve or could ask for. :)