MAGNETIC ATTRACTION
Part Forty-Four
** Authors note: Well, here it is. The ultimate final part. Forty-four (four parts more than I wanted) parts in, lmao. Thanks to everyone who has spent their time reviewing and theorizing and predicting and thinking in depth about this story. For making it a favourite, for following it, and keeping me motivated by reviewing. By far, this has been my most favourite story to write, and I'm sad to see it end.
Warning: suicide triggers will feature in this story, so do be warned/cautious. Hope this doesn't ruin anything for anyone. 3
Remy LeBeau noted the almost scathing and disapproving expression on Magneto's face as he walked into the office holding Rogue's hand tightly. Rogue walked slowly, the walk of a woman who walked to her doom, not the walk of a woman who steadily walked to her salvation.
The doubt was there all right, but she wasn't letting anyone know that she felt close to faltering. In his mind, his thoughts screamed turn back, turn back. He wondered if hers did.
But she continued that walk, head held high, her stride slow but confident.
In the room stood Magneto, Logan, and the Professor sat close by. Everyone looked sombre, even Magneto.
He just wants this to be over, wants to get this through with so he can put his daughter through this, see what it does to her broken head, Remy thought dully. He examined the machine, the brushed steel, the exquisite cylindrical shape, the lights, the control panel, the cool air emanating from the thing as condensation rose up from within.
Rogue's breath misted in the cold office as she breathed timidly, stepping towards the machine, still hanging onto Remy's hand with a strange desperation. "Will...will it hurt."
Magneto's face was stern, serious. "Yes," was all he could reply.
Remy stopped her, he had to ask once again, "you're sure?"
Rogue gave a nod and she let go of his fingers finally; his hand had been held so tightly that upon release his fingers ached, tingling as the circulation began to return. Don't do this, chere. Change your mind. It ain't over yet, you can change your mind.
He caught the look on Logan's face, on the Professor's too, disapproving and worried. The concern was so thick on both faces that masks could have never hid it. Remy could see the professor's jaw seem to harden, the strain of muscle pulling as he held his tongue and almost seemed to chew on the inside of his mouth.
"Step inside..." Magneto gestured, holding a hand out to her to help her up onto the platform and into the chamber within. The blue lights lit her up, seeming to change the colour of her eyes to violet, and the white of her hair to pink. Remy's stomach quivered the nerves as he saw her going in and knew that this was it. She could never turn back now.
"You must be incredibly still," warned Magneto went to tapping a few buttons on the control panel on the machine, a few lights flashed within the thing, the blue light turned to a deep vivid red, and there was a loud whirring noise as the machine began to activate. Remy saw the long thick needles long before Rogue realised they were there, two at her shoulders, two at her hips and two at her thighs, coming from each side of the machine and jutting quickly into her.
Rogue, unsuspecting of the needles, let out a howl as they penetrated her flesh and seemed to collide with bone. The way her back arched, Remy was almost convinced that one had come from the back too to hit her spine. The chamber door began to slide shut, and Remy rushed towards it to try to throw his hands upon it, to scream that he should stop. Logan grabbed him quickly, hauling him back. "Don't!"
"Any false move in that machine now could paralyze her!" warned Magneto to Remy, "do not touch the machine."
Rogue's cries seemed to echo from the machine, Remy felt the vibrations upon the floor, the heard the humming. Magneto moved to three metal canisters hooked up to the machine. What was in them, he didn't know and he was almost sure that it would never be disclosed. Quickly, Magneto twisted the lock on each one, and Remy heard the hiss of what sounded like a gas, or liquid.
Jesus Christ, what is he doing? Is he gassing her?!
"Rogue!" Remy cried, trying to struggle against Logan's hard grip.
"Stop it!" Logan warned.
"He's killing her!"
"Quiet!" warned Magneto, "I must concentrate!"
More typing onto the control panel, Remy saw numbers and graphics appear on the screen above them all, a spinning diagram of a female body, tiny specs of light moving through it. Magneto's eyes almost seemed to light up as he stared at the screen, reading things that Remy could not read, understanding what Remy could not understand.
"Heart rate is above normal..." Professor Xavier read from the screen, "brain wave activity is higher than normal...the acceleration of her genes..." he whispered.
"Is it working?" Remy managed weakly, his arm ached from where Logan had him tight to the spot.
"As far as I can see...the x-genes are...in fact evolving..."
"You see?!" asked Magneto, "soon she will emerge evolved, more powerful than she has ever been!"
The process went on for more minutes, and inside, Rogue's cries and howls were muffled within the chamber. The machine whirred and buzzed and hissed and crackled as it processed what was being asked of it, and it seemed to do the job it was built for as far as Remy could see from Magneto's reactions, the feverish expression of success in his eyes.
Remy felt sick, hoping that soon, this would be over, that the pain would end for the girl, and she would be free of all the torment she'd experienced through most of her life.
The machine shut down, the whirring sounds dying down reminded him of how it sounded when the washing machine ended it's cycle, the drum slowing steadily into a quiet stop. Magneto waited a few moments before shutting off the canisters, and before typing a few more commands into the machine.
"Heart rate is slowing down now," said the Professor, "brain wave activity normal...blood pressure dropping..."
The sliding door of the chamber moved open, and Logan let Remy go just in time as Rogue fell out of the chamber. Remy made a swift dive to grab her, nearly missing her. She fell into his arms, her body trembling a little, her face soaked in sweat. Her lips were quivering.
"Chere..." he whispered, he put his gloved hand upon her face to brush her damp sweat tinged hair away from her forehead.
Rogue's eyes opened weakly, and they were not the same eyes he'd fallen in love with, they were greener than they had ever been before. More forest green than the faded olive green he'd become so accustomed to. The brown of her hair seemed different too, slightly darker, more fine than it had been, and the silvery white streaks seemed almost larger, brighter, more dominant over the rest of her hair. Her face was still pale, still childlike.
Remy was taken aback just by how much she had changed, how much like Rogue this girl looked like and how much she did not. He swallowed hard, gazing down at her speechless.
Is she still Rogue?
Rogue wasn't sure why Remy was looking at her so strangely. Her body was still shaking from the pain of the hard thick needles that had penetrated the various parts of her body. Her spine, her hips, her thighs, her shoulders, and the back of her neck all felt intensely sore. And yet, her body seemed oddly drained and relaxed as she lay there in Remy LeBeau's arms.
Magneto reached to take Rogue's wrist, pulled up her sleeve and felt her pulse. "Her pulse is strong..." he said.
"It could have killed you," Remy whispered to Rogue concernedly, that haunted look in his face had returned.
"Ah feel...fine," she whispered, her fingers tingling with energy. The pain she had felt within the chamber would stick with her for a lifetime. Like being on fire, as if acid was being pumped into her and driven through her while intense heat and cold pushed at her skin.
It almost felt as if she should have returned from the machine blistered and burned, frostbitten with necrosis, and yet, from what she saw of her bare arm, her skin seemed fine.
"Did...did it work?" she asked weakly.
"We...we don't know yet," Remy responded, his lips were trembling.
Rogue felt the dizzying nausea return. It was over. It had been done. She felt strangely no different for it other than the lingering sense of pain and the tingling. She still felt like herself. She had worried that perhaps this wouldn't be the case any more.
With a gloved hand, Rogue reached up and put her hand weakly behind Remy LeBeau's head, "it's time," she said softly.
And Remy looked doubtful of this, as if there may never be the perfect time for the first kiss they would share that wouldn't hurt one and leave the other reeling.
He gave the vaguest laugh, "here? In front of them?" he asked, he stroked her damp hair back from her face, so tenderly, so lovingly. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine how his bare hands may feel.
Rogue gave a nod, "Ah've waited long enough, Remy...Ah want the first kiss to be with you...'cause Ah love you..."
His expression changed so suddenly to one of shock that she'd said it aloud. And he processed it. "You..." he drew a breath, "say it again..."
"Ah love you," she whispered softly.
Remy gave a quiet almost delighted laugh as he leaned close, hesitant for a moment, twisting his face a little, and then leaning down to brush his lips lightly against hers.
For that moment, everything melted away, and she didn't feel that sensation of her powers drawing upon the boy as she normally would have. Just the brush of his dry lips against hers, and the stubble on his chin grating against her skin. That was all she felt...and when he pushed his mouth hard against hers to kiss her deeper, that that was when it happened.
The pull was immense, hard, and the flood of thoughts and feelings of Remy LeBeau were hers and suddenly hers alone. A mixed and muddled up mess of memories, of voices and emotions, and visions of things he'd seen. There were flashes of his encounters with Wanda the way he had seen the girl, there was a prominent memory of Wanda taking him against his will, of his arguing with her, the voices to muddled to make out. There was turmoil, over the events of the past few days in particular, memories of how it had felt for him in the woods the moment she'd taken the next step in their physical relationship and the absolute horror of how badly it had gone in the car afterwards.
One thing became very clear to her. He did not want tonight to happen. He did not want this evolution and he did not want to be with her the way she'd thought he did. There had been a lust that he'd found becoming less and less frequent the closer the time of her evolution had become, and as her promise had been made that they would make love tonight, came his promise to himself that no, they would not.
As these flashes continued to flood in, she had no consciousness of her own self for what seemed like minutes. She could not move, she could not pull away from him, and she could not see through her own eyes any more. She was only vaguely aware of the yelling in the background, muffled voices coming from the other men in the room, and there were sudden blacknesses that seemed to come and go.
The visions grew hazy, and she felt herself being dragged, pulled, and then nothing. She wasn't sure of the lapse of time, or what had happened at first. When she felt consciousness coming back to her, she saw the metal tiled floor she was lying almost face first upon and she pushed herself up, suddenly feeling much more energetic and stronger than she had before. She was filled with Remy's strength, his agility, his vitality.
The three older men in the room were not paying attention to her in this condition she realised, but of something else. And as she turned to see what they were looking at exactly after she took a moment to come to her senses, she realised that Remy LeBeau was unconscious upon the floor.
Scrambling to get up, she tried to get over to see what was going on. Magneto was administering CPR, but the boy was not responding.
"Remy!" she shrieked.
"Rogue, stay out of the way!" Logan warned before she could reach them.
Rogue gripped onto the edge of the Magneto's desk, her stomach flipping with horror. It didn't work. Oh my god, it didn't work, Ah've killed him, Ah've killed him! Her mind screamed, Remy LeBeau's memories seemed to whir inside her like the sound of too-loud music after long leaving a nightclub. She could almost hear him in there, as if he were in there with her, as if she'd taken all of him in.
"Got a pulse," said Logan after a moment, as Rogue stared in horror at the scene that lay before her. "Weak but it's there."
"He's not breathing on his own," the Professor realised.
"Hospital?" asked Logan.
"The hospital can't monitor him the way we can," Professor Xavier responded, "we have to take him back to the mansion, try to find out exactly what kind of condition he is in...this condition isn't a medical one the hospital will know how to treat!"
Rogue couldn't breathe, "it's all my fault...he's gonna die and it's all my fault..."
"Rogue, calm down..."
"No, Ah will not calm down! This is all my fucking fault!"
"Get a hold of yourself!" Logan got up and moved to her, "you had no idea your powers would do this..." he reached out to take her shoulders firmly, to try and shake some sense into her.
"Don't touch me!" she threw up her hands.
And then, something quite extraordinary happened. As she threw up her hands as she normally would with the same force she always used, Wolverine did not only move back, but he was thrown back across the room, as if he'd been hit by the impact of an oncoming battering ram. He hit the metal wall several feet behind him, and slammed into it hard. As he slid down the wall, groaning in pain, Rogue noted the dents his back had left upon the metal.
"Oh my god," she whispered, she spun to look at Magneto who was holding a bag valve mask applying air to Remy who wasn't breathing on his own. "What did you do?! What the fuck did you do to me?!"
"I did what you asked!" Magneto snarled, "I did exactly as you asked me to do!" he kept pumping the air into Remy's lungs rhythmically.
Rogue stepped back a little, slamming into the desk again and she grabbed upon the edge of it to steady herself, she felt her fingers bend into the metal and she gasped, turning back to see the dents her hand had left. She stumbled sideways in shock, her elbow slamming into the metal wall near the iron curtains, and she saw the dent just before she spun around, catching her foot on the step, she grabbed onto the metal chains to stop herself from falling and the entire fitting fell down, landing with a loud clatter, chains raining down around her.
"What's happenin' to me?!" she screamed, she tripped on the chains, her hands catching herself on the floor, somehow managing to displace two tiles that she was sure had been down firmly before.
Logan pulled himself up weakly, limping in pain, "jesus christ, where did that come from?" he groaned.
Rogue took off running to the door in blind panic, frightened and disorientated that she may hurt the others. With one foot still tangled in one of the chains, she yanked her ankle forward and it spun, whipping one of Magneto's computer's off the desk and nearly decapitating the Professor who managed to duck just in time. She slammed into the door and it caved outwards, falling to the floor with her against it. She saw the others outside, Piotr just coming down the stairs from the living room area, Pietro coming to see what all the screaming was, and Tabitha, who was standing with a large bag of chips in her hand.
Rogue felt tears blur her vision as she pulled herself up, noting how she left cracks in the concrete floors as she did so. Frantic, she ran for the exit, tripping on pieces of discarded building materials from the project that now nobody cared about. She managed to make her way to the door, and in her attempt to slide it open, she somehow managed to force the thing completely off it's setting, and she heard it clatter. She caught her boot on the frame, and she braced herself to fall into the brown mush of snow around the yard.
She shut her eyes, afraid she was going to go face first into the concrete.
Instead, she felt only the wind against her face, and the bitter patting of snow on her cheeks.
Her eyes opened and she found herself in the air, twenty, perhaps thirty feet above the land near the warehouse, she wobbled in the air, gasping as she found herself motionless up there. Desperately, she flailed, trying to catch herself on things that were not there to grasp onto. Her body tumbled forward, and she shrieked, bracing her elbows over her face as she began plummeting down at a forty-five degree angle towards the metal railings and barbed wire of the fences surrounding the yard. She felt herself slam into the fence, and she heard the strain and crash of the metal as it came down with her, felt the tangle of the barbed wire around her arms and finally the slam of concrete.
Dazed, she lay there for some moments in the cold slush covered concrete, confused. Remy's memories still flashed before her, his doubts, his hostility, his hopelessness, his kindness, his strengths, everything about him that she'd fallen in love with. He was with her but he wasn't with her. He was part of her but not.
Weakly, trembling in fright, she leaned up from where she'd landed and saw the mess of broken concrete, she'd broken through, right into the gravel and sand, leaving a two foot deep delve in the yard.
"Holy fuck," she heard a whisper, and she raised her eyes to see Tabitha, who had spoken the words, standing there, Piotr and Pietro there behind her. Logan approached.
"What happened?!" Logan asked, reaching down to try to help Rogue up.
Rogue yanked her arm out of the way from him, "don't touch me!" she gasped, "don't touch me!"
Logan blinked, "Rogue...I..."
"She flew," Tabitha said in a tiny whisper, "like...waaaaaaaaay up there..." she gestured to the sky.
Rogue saw the shock and concern in Logan's eyes. This was something he had feared would happen, something the Professor had feared, perhaps even Remy too. That it wouldn't have the effects she'd wanted, that other things would happen. New powers may develop...had Magneto warned her about that? She hadn't expected it to be an outcome...all she had expected as that it either wouldn't work, or it would. Not that she would end up like...this...
Shaking in the cold, she broke into hysterical tears. And she wouldn't allow anyone to touch her.
Ah can't allow anyone to touch me ever again.
Rogue stared around her old bedroom, the one she'd shared with Kitty Pryde for the two years she'd stayed here and called it home. It no longer looked the same, although nothing had changed. The walls were the same colour, the same godawful posters were still on the wall.
Despite she hadn't lived there in a month, her bedsheets had been changed, but no one had been given the bed, no new students had taken her place. It was almost as if they'd known she would be back. Rogue stood looking around the room, feeling helpless and hopeless, too afraid to touch anything, too afraid to even sit down in case she broke the bed or the chairs. Even each step across the floorboards she took slowly and carefully, afraid somehow her weight may have changed and she may go through through the floor.
Her heart bled.
Remy was in the sick bay being examined and monitored by Hank McCoy and Professor Xavier. He had not come to from the unconscious state her kiss had left him in. He was comatose, still, not even able to breathe on his own. She'd had to help keep him breathing in the car with the bag valve mask while the Professor had awkwardly tried to monitor his vitals.
Magneto had not wanted any further involvement. Rogue supposed she shouldn't have been surprised.
Despair ate at her. She'd made the sacrifice for nothing, and what was worse, she'd sacrificed Remy. That had never been part of the deal.
Was it worth it, Rogue?! She demanded of herself angrily. Was it everythin' you thought it would be?! He kept tellin' you to leave it and you just couldn't let it go. Made a commitment and now...look at you. Everythin' you touch turns to shit...and now the man you love is in a coma. You can't turn back the hands of time, you can't fix this. What if he dies?!
Rogue inched towards her bed and tried to sit, feeling almost like she may go through the thing. Somehow, she managed to sit without breaking it but she dare not put her hands upon it yet. This new found strength was frightening, she'd accidentally taken the door of of the Professor's Rolls Royce when trying to get in, and they'd had to ride that way all the way home, the cold biting at their faces. Another thing broken.
Just like Remy.
She glanced up to the open doorway to see Logan standing there. At the collar of his white tanktop she could see the bruises her hands had left upon him when she'd thrown him. They hadn't healed fast enough, which meant they were quite severe. She'd never been able to hurt Logan quite that way before, she'd always seen him as so invulnerable. It seemed now she was capable of hurting even him.
"Remy's in a stable condition," Logan said quietly, he stood in the threshold, leaning against the doorframe, seeming to be respectful that she didn't want him near her right now.
"Is he breathin' on his own yet?" Rogue asked quietly, she stared furiously down at the rug.
"Not yet," Logan responded, "but...he's stable. For now. He's on life support. He's in no immediate danger."
Rogue felt tears trickle down her cheeks and she furiously swept them away with the back of a gloved hand.
"It's not your fault-"
"Yes it is," she snarled, "it's my fucking fault. Everythin' Ah've ever touched has turned to shit," she got up and moved to the window quickly, not wanting him to see her cry again.
"Rogue..." Logan sighed, "I know there's nothin' I can say right now..."
Rogue snorted, "how about Ah told you so? Ah'm sure you must have wanted to say that since the minute it all went wrong."
"Come on, now," he grunted.
"You've known it was gonna go wrong since the moment Ah told you Ah was leavin'. If you didn't, you'd have never hired Remy to change my fucking mind," she turned and glared at him.
Logan blinked, "you...knew about that?"
"Ah had a feelin' he'd been providin' information after he left. When Professor Xavier arrived to offer his help with the machine Ah figured it wasn't gonna be a coincidence...what Ah didn't suspect was that you were fucking payin' him!" Rogue picked up a glass ornament from the dresser and threw it towards Logan. It was a cheap and tacky glass ballerina that Kitty had been given from Lance on Valentines day. Rogue only felt the guilt about throwing it afterwards.
Ah guess the relationship is broken, why not break the fucking ornament too, she seethed.
Logan put up his arm, and the ornament hit his elbow and smashed, landing upon the floor. "I was desperate, all right? I didn't want to see you get hurt...physically or emotionally. And since the minute you went there seems like you've been going through one or the other!"
"You're not even sorry, are you?!" she demanded, body shaking with rage, her mind full of mixed emotions from both Remy and herself, some of them so muddled, she could make sense of very little of it.
"You know what?" Logan asked, frowning, "no. I'm not sorry. I paid him to spy on you and to try and change your mind, and you know what, I'd do it again if I had to, I'd go to the ends of the earth to try and stop you from gettin' hurt. I accept as much blame for this as you do, 'cause you know what, I failed because I respected your decision instead of tryin' harder to make you understand!" he cried angrily. "And if Gambit hadn't been paid to try to change your mind, he'd have never gotten hurt, that's on me, all right? I take responsibility for that, so you can just drop all the guilt completely because it isn't yours alone to bear!"
Rogue looked away, tears blurring her vision. She tried to clumsily wipe the tears away but more trickled down. "It wasn't supposed to be like this..." she sobbed.
"I know, kid..." Logan moved to step towards her, and she held her hands out.
"No...don't..." she shook her head, "Ah can't be around anyone...Ah can't be trusted...my skin...my strength...Ah can't hurt anyone else...Ah've already hurt Remy...and Ah'll never forgive myself for that."
Logan sighed, he seemed to realise he was getting nowhere. "Do...you want to go see him?"
Rogue shook her head, "Ah can't. Ah can't look at him like that and know it was my fault...Ah can't..."
"He'll be fine, you know. Your powers have never killed anyone."
"Never," Rogue gasped, "but what about now...whatever this...evolution has done to me has made me stronger...what if now my powers have killed him...what if we're just prolongin' the life of a dead shell?!"
"He's still alive in there, Rogue. There's still brain activity, he still has a pulse. There's no point in giving up hope yet, because giving up hope leads you to do desperate things..." he reminded.
Rogue realised this was true. Giving up hope was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. But it was so much easier giving up hope than having it.
Logan headed for the door, "you should go see him. Maybe hearing your voice will get through to him somehow."
She didn't want to do that, not just yet, not right now while she was too broken and too full of Remy's memories. As she watched Logan go, she nudged the bedroom door shut gently, hoping it wouldn't break and she twisted the lock gingerly. She fell to her knees, almost convinced she heard a slight crack in the wood beneath the carpet. Putting her hands to her face, she began to sob hysterically.
All hope had been lost. There was none of it left. There was no point to anything anymore, there was nothing to live for. Only more pain, only more anguish, only more disappointment, and fear of being caged.
After an hour of sobbing to herself quietly in the bedroom, she somehow managed to pull herself up and stumble over to the dresser. She pulled on the first drawer, it was locked. A hard tug pulled the drawer right out of the thing entirely, breaking the lock completely and spilling the contents of the drawer right onto the carpet. Rogue found what she was looking for, the hair shaping razor that Kitty used to keep her bangs in shape. Holding it as she sat at the edge of her bed, Rogue stared down at the thing, wondering could she do this.
Can Ah end my life? What more is there to live for? Livin' like this, never bein' able to touch another person again, bein' afraid to break things, bein' afraid to watch the man Ah love lie in a coma maybe for the rest of his life because of me?
She slipped the metal feathering attachment off of the straight razor and she tossed it to the floor, examining the sharp, shining blade in all it's bare silvery beauty.
It was sharp enough.
Yanking up her sleeve, she swept the thing across her wrist roughly, she felt the cold of the blade, the sliding of it against her flesh.
But the thing did not cut her. No trace of blood, nothing. It didn't even scratch her. Frustrated, she tried again, only to find that regardless of how hard she pressed the blade to her flesh, it would not slice into her, and the only mark it would leave was the pressure against her skin, the slight denting of where it had been, which was already disappearing.
"No!" she howled, "you are not doing this to me!" she said furiously, the thing was sharp, wasn't it? She rushed to the mirror and grabbed a handful from the left side of her hair and began cutting through it frantically, it cut like a hot knife through butter, leaving a blunt layer behind. Again, the next handful, she cut hard, and it came loose, falling in long brown strands to the floor.
The blade was sharp, she didn't understand. She tried dragging the blade hard against her throat, hoping to expose her jugular and bleed out, but it would not cut, hard as she tried, her flesh was impenetrable. She thrust the blade at her arms, her thighs, stomach, chest, even her face and only left the tiny dents of pressure and shredded clothes.
"Rogue, oh my god!" came a shriek from the door.
Rogue realised Kitty had walked in, she'd phased right through even though Rogue had chosen to lock it securely.
"Stay away!" Rogue screamed hysterically.
Kitty did no such thing, and she rushed over, fighting Rogue desperately for the blade, and having to phase when the thing nearly cut her. They fell into the dresser, which in Rogue's powerful state came apart, snapping into pieces like salt crackers. A hole got punched through the wall with Rogue's knee, and a floorboard was kicked through. Somehow, after much wrestling, Kitty managed to get a hold of the blade and phased it right through Rogue's hand and tossed it, to where it slid under the bed out of reach.
"Are you crazy?!" she demanded.
Rogue dropped to her knees in sobs and wails, clothes ripped to shreds from the blade she'd tried to cut herself with and failed. Her own hair scattered around her. Maybe she was crazy.
Maybe, despite all she'd ever done, despite the sacrifices she'd tried to make, her worst fear was being realised. In her attempt to help Wanda, in her attempt to gain control, she'd become what she'd dreaded. Out of control.
She'd sacrificed to help Wanda.
Now she'd become her.
And her life was never going to be the same again.
THE END
Yes, the end. Cliffhanger? DUN DUN DUN.
After careful consideration while writing the last few chapters, I have indeed, realised, that there is far more of this story waiting to be told. In a sequel. But it will likely not be the next thing I post (as I do have other things I would like to get up, such as my Remy centric story, which is most likely the next in line).
Thank you to everyone (so many of you whom I wish I could all name but it would take me hours if not dates to sift through the reviews and name you one by on here, lol) who have taken the time over the (what, six months maybe?) that this story has been up and running. This has been the most fun I've had writing in a while, and the most psyched I've been about it in years. I really can't wait to work on the sequel to this, because there is just so much more in store.
I really can't wait to see the reactions to this, to see how many of you feel that Rogue's fate was deserved, or what your interpretations were. As I've been up writing for 15 hours straight now (and editing/posting) I think it's finally time for me to shut the word processor for the night, and have a post-fanfic shower before nap! Love you all from the bottom of my heart, you guys truly make it fun and challenging to write for. 3