: HOUSE OF CARDS :
PART SIX : COMPLETION
(25) - Undo -
Rainfall.
There is rainfall on her skin, rainfall quenching the fires, quenching the parched ground, sizzling on the smoke that still coils about her, thin and ephemeral.
Xavier is lying prone beneath her, and she can smell the stench of his blood, feel the moist coolness of it against her cheek and her hands. It is wetter than her tears. She stopped crying a long time ago - she can't say when, minutes or hours - but she hasn't left his side. She still can't let go of the twisted hope that somewhere, somehow, he's still alive. She's searched the astral plane, and he isn't there. Still, she doesn't give up hope. She can't believe that her teacher, her mentor - the only man whose words had ever touched the barren, hollow core inside her - could be gone.
She sits up.
For the first time she sees him, sees his bruised and battered face, staring up into her own as though to impart some final words of comfort to her, words that would now find no articulation. The red bloom on his shirt is cool and sticky. It has left its imprint on her hands, her cheek, her heart. And yet still she stares down at him with the expression of a child who knows and yet cannot believe that a parent will never come back. As if she could will him back to life just through the power of her glance.
"C'mon, kid."
A soldier is behind her, poking her in the back with the butt of his rifle. He's getting impatient; she can feel it. She can feel the tendrils of his psyche snaking out towards her, prickly, like needles puncturing her skin, making her flesh goosepimple. She says nothing.
"C'mon, get up." He prods her in the back again. "You don't know how lucky you are, mutie. Dr. Campbell's decided he has uses for you. Hey, are you listenin' to me? Get up!"
She doesn't care. She doesn't care what this doctor wants with her, she doesn't even care if the soldier shoots her right now, on the spot. She lifts her face, sees a grey expanse of sky and rainfall, charging down towards her from the heavens - she wants to open her arms to it, she wants to welcome it into the very depths of her being. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth. She tastes the rain on her tongue, wild, feral, the flavour of creation, of passion, of life. Something flares inside her, and for some reason she is happy, indescribably happy and she has no reason to be so but it's so powerful she can feel it thrumming through her heart, her throat, her eyes…
"Did you hear me, mutie? Get the fuck up!"
The soldier grabs her by the upper arm, forces her to her feet. She lets him. The feeling has dissipated - she feels nothing now, she is empty. The soldier clamps something tight and metallic round her neck - a power disrupter - then guides her away roughly, and she makes no resistance. As she walks away through the charred rubble of Xavier's mansion, she sees the bodies.
Warren, Bobby, Illyana, Kurt, Alison…
She averts her eyes, she stops looking.
She can't deal with the possibility that there's no one left but her.
The doctor is standing in what used to be the hallway, a little way from the general ruckus of the soldiers who still secure the place. He smiles when he sees her, smiles in a way she finds repugnant. He is dressed smartly in a suit, not a lab-coat; but his hair is long and shaggy, his features are harsh and prematurely lined, his chin is obscured by thick, black, bristling facial hair. She stares at him.
Bluebeard…
"Allow me to introduce myself," he greets her; his voice is low, gruff and insidious. "My name is Dr. Campbell, but you, my dear, may call me Ahab. I'm a geneticist, just like your old friend Xavier. And you are Rachel Summers, am I right? The daughter of the famous Scott Summers and Jean Grey?" He chuckles to himself, reaches out and touches her chin. His touch repulses her and she shrugs him away disdainfully. But there is no anger on his face. Again he merely chuckles.
"A feisty one, eh? Excellent. I have need of someone like you, Rachel. Ah, believe me, there are not a few people who would sell their very souls to get their hands on you, but, thanks to a little careful manoeuvring on the part of myself and Mr. Trask, from this day forward you will effectively cease to exist. Everyone will believe that you were killed in today's culling, just like the rest of you X-people."
She stares up at him, defiant; nevertheless her heart is sinking, drowning…
Because she can't be the last, she can't be the only one left…
Ahab chuckles again, turns, gestures for her to follow. She does so, hearing footsteps following her, feeling the barrels of guns trained upon her back. She looks back, only once.
She sees the human-sized bundles dotted across the hill.
I am the last, she thinks. I am the last X-Man.
God help me.
-oOo-
Rogue resurfaced as if from water, opening her eyes again to find herself half propped up against a tree clutching her broken arm, gasping for breath. She wasn't sure how long she'd been standing there, but it couldn't have been very long since she was still in the forest surrounding the Hound pens, and she could still hear the compound's siren wailing in the background. She was only dimly aware of her own consciousness, fighting for dominance - Rachel was even stronger than Remy had been, and her own memories, her own experiences were still raging through Rogue's head like a storm over an ocean, while Rogue bobbed, virtually unheeded, in the epicentre.
She knew why. Rachel wanted out. For the past six years she'd been nothing more than Ahab's puppet, brainwashed and tortured into submission, made to live a life of horrors a hundred times worse than what Rogue herself had experienced - and she had been conscious of the monstrosities she had been complicit in the entire time.
Rachel wanted what Rogue wanted.
She wanted to be free, she wanted to be whole and human once more. She wanted to break free of her cocoon, she wanted to live, she wanted to be.
She was fighting Rogue's mind for dominance.
And there was no way in hell Rogue was ever going to allow that.
Nuh-uh, sugah, this is mah body and Ah'm keepin' it.
The storms were raging, railing against her, but Rogue closed her eyes, focused on the epicentre, shielding herself against the onslaught, feeling it buckle against her yet refusing to balk.
Stay still, honey, Ah don't wanna fight you. Ah'm tired and Ah'm weak, but Ah ain't gonna budge. This ain't your body, it's mine. Your own's okay, Ah didn't hurt it. You'll wake up soon, and you'll probably be able to break free of Ahab's brainwashin' now that Ah've broken into your mind. But Ah need a little favour in return, Rae. Ah need to siphon off a little of your power, okay? Just a little. Please?
It took a phenomenal amount of willpower just to reason with the storm inside of her but it worked; little by little it began to abate, to disintegrate, until there was nothing left but a stark, lingering calm. Her psyche was back in the neatly ordered chaos Raven had taught her to keep it in. Permission had been granted.
Rachel's power was hers.
Rogue opened her eyes, feeling the strange new mutant ability flow into her veins. It felt different to anything she had ever felt before, heady and exhilarating and terrifying. Whereas with Irene's powers Rogue had been able to see Time, now Rogue could sense it. And it was tangible as matter, all-encompassing as space, it was seeping through every pore in her body, flooding her organs, thrumming through her heart and her brain. It was everywhere, and she could touch it. She could control it.
She glanced about her, her breathing choppy. Pain was searing through every limb she possessed, aching dully through her brain, taking over the first flush of euphoria Rachel's power had afforded her. She was in the depths of the wood; whilst under Rachel's psyche, she'd travelled as far as her wounded leg would allow. Rachel's desperation to escape had carried her thus far. From here on in it was down to her, and she had precious little time before Rachel's powers ran out.
No time to waste. She trudged back up the hill, dragging her injured leg behind her. A fifteen-centimetre length of metal piping was impaled in her thigh, but she knew better than to remove it. Already the wound was bleeding profusely, and if she gouged out the spear she wouldn't be around for much longer. But she'd lost enough blood already. Her limbs were cold and numb; her vision was blurred a sickly tint of yellow and she had to consciously fight back the urge to vomit. Several times on her path she stumbled, barely able to pick herself up again. To lie down, to fall asleep, to never wake up again… How tempting it would be…
But she couldn't. She wouldn't. Every time she got up again it took her minutes to do so, but she wasn't going to give up. She grit her teeth and soldiered on, up the hill, towards the bank where all this had begun… Back to him. Back to the only reason she had left.
And Rachel's powers were already fading. She hadn't made contact long enough. Time was starting to become invisible again, it was starting to fade, it's indomitable flow was becoming as faint as feathers brushing against her skin, against her face and her soul and she was never going to reach him in time, she was never going to reach him in time to take him away, take them both away from everything…
The Hounds were baying again. There were noises in the woods, shouts and calls, this time from humans. They were closing in on her, and she wasn't fast enough. She tripped again, biting on snow. Another few inches forward and she would be over onto the bank, and Remy would be lying there, waiting for her. And Time was cobwebs tickling her flesh, making her hairs stand on end, flowing away…
"Please…"
She propped herself up on her right arm, muscles pistoning, grinding, sweat on her forehead, her vision darkening, footsteps nearby and she was on her feet, she was stumbling forward, her eyes moist and stinging…
"Please…"
She could feel the voices around her, the psyches of six guards infringing onto the periphery of her fading telepathic vision, and she knew with a gut-wrenching certainty that she couldn't make it, she would never make it…
She pressed on, hauled herself up over onto the bank, seeing his inert form lying in the snowdrift only three metres away, just out of reach.
…And Time was dragging the guards towards her inexorably, and she could feel the moment approaching, as certain as the tides, as certain as birth and life and death…
A gunshot broke the stillness of the woods, echoing like a volcano eruption, bringing fresh clumps of snow raining down all around her from the tree canopies above. She heard the muffled cry of a man behind her; then another gunshot, and another - she didn't dare heed it. With all the willpower she possessed she focused on reaching that one unmoving bundle in the snow, and she wasn't going to give in until she did. One metre… Two metres… Nearly there… And it was going, it was fading, she could feel nothing…
Please, one more minute, one more minute so Ah can take us away… Please, it's not fair, Ah can do it, Ah know Ah can, Ah just need one more minute…
More gunshots. And suddenly she was there again, back in that mansion, feeling the explosion in her back and time stretching on into infinity, with every moment bleeding into eternity, and for an instant that lasted forever she saw, she understood… She understood that everything existed already, and that all she had ever had to do was reach out grasp it with her own two hands…
And she was. She was stumbling, she was reaching out with her unbroken hand, she was falling against him, pressing her cheek against his, feeling his breath on her lips, feeling him live…
And Time was a myriad of threads, vibrating, thrumming, pulsing, brushing past her, whipping in an unknown wind, fluttering away…
"Please!"
She was struggling, struggling to snatch those threads back, trying desperately to catch them and rein them in, to will them towards her…
"…No…No… Please no…"
And they were slipping out of her hands, and she was losing it… another world, another time, the place she'd always wanted, the Remy she'd always wanted, the Rogue she'd always wanted to be…
And then it was gone.
Rachel's power had left her and so had any hope of leaving this cold, dead world behind.
She slumped, her mouth opening in an inarticulate moan of fear and rage and despair.
"Nonononononono……"
Anguish. Anguish in the very core of her being as she buried her face in his chest and wept, her face contorted in agony. Anguish as she felt the last vestiges of Rachel's powers slip from her like a snake shedding its skin. No more. No more running away. No more haven. No more sanctuary. No more life worth living.
The Rogue she could have been sailed away on the tide, never to return.
-oOo-
She remained there cradled against him for what felt like a very long time. Then she felt the others behind her, even before they spoke. Their footsteps in the snow, the stench of cordite and the click of Pyro's lighter. The world was slowly coming to again.
"I thought I might find you here," the same calm, frosty voice of Mystique spoke behind her.
She sat up slowly, her limbs heavy, and burning.
"Did Irene--?" she began, but Raven interrupted her.
"Yes. She told me everything. On the way down."
So. Irene had known her secret and had kept it until the last possible moment…
"A second longer," Rogue whispered, "and Ah would've been able to skim us both away…"
"Quite." Raven spoke softly, distastefully. "The things we do for love…"
Rogue stared down at him, the beautiful face, the cold, blue lips that had kissed her pain away so many times.
I'm willin' t' take de risk, chere. Are you?
"Always…" she whispered.
She half-turned, looked back over her shoulder. Mystique's stern expression, Forge's guarded one, Dom's frowning one, St. John's sneering one. Some things never changed, no matter how far you ran to hide from them all. That, at least, was one certainty.
"Ahab's men?" she asked.
"We took care of them," Mystique replied grimly, raising her gun - a hefty-looking contraption of Forge's, no doubt.
"And Rachel?"
Raven's mouth twitched.
"Gone."
Rogue looked back down at Remy again. Gone as in taken back into the compound by Ahab, or gone as in escaped into the wilderness? Did it matter?
"Ah absorbed her," she murmured. "Ah know how her powers work… Ah think maybe Ah weakened Ahab's control on her, destabilised it if not broke it all together… Maybe she might find her way to us in the end after all…"
Raven grunted. To her this was just another bodged job, and despite everything, Rogue knew she was going to be in the doghouse again. She knew she deserved it. She'd risked exposure of the Brotherhood, risked her own life and Remy's. She'd played a dangerously selfish gambit and failed. Ahab and Trask probably had their mark now. There'd be another inevitable bout of running, of hide-and-seek. And Remy… he would have Essex to contend with. She didn't want to think what Sinister would do to any of them for that matter.
She didn't know where she found the strength left but she pushed herself onto her feet, and only as she did so did it occur to her how much blood she must have lost. Her injured leg felt almost dead; to all intents and purposes, her dislocated arm may as well not have been there at all. And something wasn't right with her vision…
She staggered; the next moment she felt Mystique's arm on her, propping her up against her own strong, lithe body. When Rogue looked up into her face it was like looking through clouded glass.
"Promise me somethin'," she mumbled.
"What?" Raven asked. Rogue drew in a beleaguered breath, answered wearily: "Say we'll take Remy back with us."
Raven's eyes flashed.
"Rogue, you're wounded, you're not thinking straight…"
"Ah've never thought so clearly in all my life. You leave him here, he'll die."
"Once Sinister realises what's gone down here, he'll be as good as dead anyway."
"Then at least let him stay until he's okay. Please. Otherwise you can leave me out here with him too."
There was a silence - Mystique stared at her, her gaze burning - but Rogue didn't feel it at all.
"You do know what you're asking me, don't you?" she spoke, though the edge had gone out of her voice.
"We can hide from Essex, and besides, you're more than his match, momma. Please."
She swayed again, feeling her legs give way; Raven held her upright with an effort.
"Rogue, we need to get you patched up…"
"Please…"
Ah ain't leavin' his side again…
Raven's eyes were still burning.
"All right," she said.
Rogue managed a smile.
"Thanks, momma…"
And then she sank into welcome unconsciousness.
-oOo-