Chapter Sixty-Five:


"Y' okay, chere?"

Blinking, Rogue shook herself out of her shocked daze to find Remy peering at her with a concerned expression on his handsome face. "Yeah," she said, nodding slowly. "Ah think so."

Wordlessly, Remy reached over to squeeze her hand, rubbing her knuckles with his thumb.

Taking a shaky breath, Rogue turned her attention towards the front of the car, where Lance was watching her in the rearview mirror as he drove slowly through the streets of Charleston. They had dropped Tessa off at the pier, and the telepath was currently following them on the bikes with Lucas. Rogue didn't need to look back to know that her friends were right behind them, their tracking skills were the best in the Thieves Guild.

Instead, she offered Matt a small smile. The kid was watching her worriedly from the passenger seat up front, as he had been for the past ten minutes while she tried to wrap her mind around what Lance had just told her.

The X-men were alive.

Scott, Bobby, Kurt, Logan, Jean.... they were all alive, and so were all of the others.

It was a dream, she was sure of it. How else could it be explained that every wish she'd ever kept safe in her heart over the past four years had finally come true?

The car had been relatively silent ever since Lance's news that her family was alive. She could sense Remy's curiosity, his eagerness to ask questions and hear the story, but her husband had been patiently waiting for her to gather her composure, and it seemed that Lance had been doing the same.

But Rogue couldn't wait any longer, she had to know, and she had to know everything.

"How?" she asked, and no one needed her to clarify what she was asking.

"Scott and the others rode out the explosion in Cerebro," Lance explained gently. "After you and Fred and the others got captured, we retreated to the mansion in the Blackbird, and that's when we found out that the Professor was really Mystique in morph."

Rogue blinked again, trying to comprehend what he was saying, but it was all too much. Mystique had been posing as Xavier? When did that happen? How long had that been going on? There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but they could wait until later. Right now, she needed to know what had happened to her friends.

"Scott figured it out, somehow," Lance continued. "He accused Mystique of blowing up the Institute and she demorphed and admitted it. For a minute we all thought she and Storm were going to throw down, but Mystique told them she wouldn't take them to Xavier unless they cooperated. The police were on their way to the Institute by then, so we all got into the jet and split before anyone could see us. For once, Mystique kept her word and took us to the Professor- she'd trapped him inside the Juggernaut's stasis tube."

So that's how Cain got free, Rogue realized, and wanted to smack herself for not absorbing him before dragging his unconscious body out of New Orleans. If she had, maybe she would have figured things out on her own a lot sooner.

"Anyway, when we freed Xavier he was pretty ticked off," Lance said. "But he looked into Mystique's mind and found that this guy Stryker-"

"Bastard," Remy muttered under his breath.

"Yeah, big time," Lance agreed with a scowl. "Well, it turns out that Stryker had been on to us for a while. And by us, I mean all of us, Brotherhood and X-men alike. Somehow Mystique found out and realized that they were coming for us, so she destroyed the mansion to get rid of all the evidence about us."

"The Danger Room," Rogue said, her eyes widening as she was struck with realization. "DefCon4..."

"Yeah," Lance nodded grimly. "One glimpse at the arsenal you guys were packing, and Stryker would have had enough proof to get the President to lock mutants up in labs for good. Besides, we didn't want them getting their hands on the technology Xavier's got access to, imagine what they could do with that."

Rogue didn't need to imagine, she knew all too well the kind of horrors that Trask could create if he got his hands on that technology.

"What 'bout Cerebro?" she asked, a stab of panic rising in her chest. "Ya'll jus' leave it there fo' them t' take, did ya?"

"No," Lance replied, shaking his head. "It was pretty much wasted in the blast. The circuitry was fried beyond repair, so we had Tabby throw a few of her bombs into it and got rid of the scraps. Mystique and Storm both figured that the last thing we wanted was for people to start trying to replicate their own Cerebro."

"Ah'll say," Rogue murmured. "What 'bout the Professor?"

"Well, once we found him, he sort of convinced us all that the best thing for us to do was to work together, at least temporarily. Since Bayville was crawling with cops and the marines were on their way in to investigate, he felt it was imperative that we get out of the country, seeing as how our faces were plastered all over the news around the U.S. after that."

That much she understood all too well. While she has spent the first three months after the Sentinel Battle in captivity, she had been able to see the news from time to time on Magneto's Island, and blurry footage of that battle had been shown more than once.

"Where did ya'll go?" she asked.

"This base off the coast of Scotland called Muir Island," Lance replied. "Turns out Xavier knows the woman who runs it, Moira McTaggart."

"Rhane's foster mom?" Rogue blinked in surprise, recognizing the name from the borrowed memories she'd stolen after absorbing the wolfish metamorph during a Danger Room session back at the Institute.

"Yeah," Lance nodded, glancing at her in surprise. "We holed up there for a few months, trying to figure out what to do and all. Since we didn't have Cerebro, we had to rely on what little military intelligence information we could gather to try and locate you guys wherever Trask was keeping you."

"Area 51," Rogue responded with a shudder.

"Yeah," Lance said carefully, not missing her reaction. "Bad place, huh?"

"Big time," she murmured, but she refused to let her thoughts wander back to that place. "Well, seein' as how it was Magneto who busted us out, Ah'm guessin' ya'll didn' have much luck trackin' us down, huh?"

"Not really," Lance sighed. "Even Mystique couldn't get much, and she can be anyone she wants. We thought she was going to have a breakdown, she was getting so frustrated with not being able to find you."

Rogue pressed her lips together, uncertain how that made her feel. It had been so long since she'd even heard anyone mention her mother's name, much less talk about her that way. She didn't really know how to respond, but luckily Lance didn't seem to expect her to.

"She told us about you, you know," he told her, keeping his eyes on the road as they turned a corner ahead. "After we got back to the ruins of the Institute and Scott exposed her. She was furiously determined to get you back, and no one really understood why, but Jean picked up on her thoughts so she came clean. Told us you were her daughter, that she'd left you with Irene Adler for your own protection, and that she'd already lost you once to the X-men, she wasn't going to lose you again."

"Blunt as always, isn't she?" Rogue muttered, her chest tight with emotions that she couldn't really label.

"She hasn't changed much," Lance agreed evenly. "But from that day forward she never took Kurt for granted. She thought that you were dead, that she'd lost one child, she was determined not to lose another."

"Good," Rogue said, before she even realized she was going to say anything at all. Whatever her feelings towards her mother were, she was glad, relieved even, to hear that Mystique had finally given Kurt the attention her brother had always hungered for.

"What happened after y' went t' Muir Island?" Remy asked, subtly steering the conversation away from such touchy topics. Rogue gave him a grateful smile, and he winked at her before looking to Lance for an answer.

"For the most part we just laid low, stayed out of sight," Lance responded flatly. "Since we weren't having any luck finding you guys or Trask's base, the Professor decided he needed to build a new Cerebro. He and Moira and Hank spent weeks working on it, but it wasn't until we picked up Forge that it really got put together quickly. Man, that kid can build anything."

"So I've noticed," Rogue said dryly, not forgetting the whole dinosaurs from another dimension debacle at the school dance years back.

"It still took a while," Lance sighed. "By the time we got Cerebro up and operational, it had been six months since you guys were taken. Some of us weren't even sure you were still alive, given Trask's open hatred for mutants."

"Ah'm sure he'd have killed us as soon as our usefulness to his experiments wore off," Rogue muttered.

"Yeah," Lance agreed darkly. "Anyway, we did eventually locate Wolverine at one of-"

"Logan?" Rogue cut him off, her heart jumping in her throat. "Logan's okay?"

"He's fine," Lance replied, glancing back at her in the rearview mirror, a flicker of something unreadable in his dark eyes. "Since he was being held in one of Trask's bases, Xavier couldn't risk a big operation to get him out. In the end, it was Mystique, Jean and Kurt who went in after him, with Storm in the Blackbird a mile outside of the base. Somehow they got him out, and Kurt teleported them all back to the jet. It was a close call, the air force sent up a few F-14's, Storm barely got them out of there."

"Good t'ing dat she's a good pilot, hahn?" Remy mused.

"Read that in Magneto's files?" Lance inquired, narrowing his eyes.

"Dat an' ma chere here tol' me," Remy retorted, not at all bothered by the other man's accusative tone.

"Hey, quit that," Rogue scolded Lance with a scowl. "Remy ain't been in league with Magnus in years, an' besides, Ah got a debt t' pay t' Magneto mahself. Or did ya'll fo'get that he was the one t' rescue me an' the others from Area 51?"

"You have seen the news at least once in the past four years, right?" lance shot back, raising an eyebrow. "Magneto's become Public Enemy Number One."

"Ah know," Rogue blew out a hiss of air. "Why the hell haven't ya'll done anythin' about that?"

Lance looked at her in surprise. "We have. Imagine how much worse things would be if we hadn't. But we've got our own backs to watch now, Rogue. We get in and get out without being seen if we can, but most of the time there's no way we can stop Magneto without being exposed and captured by the Sentinels they send out to apprehend him."

"Ya mean kill him," Rogue muttered darkly. "They don' want him alive, they want him gone."

No one said anything for a long moment, unable to deny the truth of her words.

"So y' rescued de Wolverine, oui?" Remy cleared his throat. "Bet dat cheered de gang up some, havin' him back."

"Until he issued his first training session, yeah," Lance said with a weak smile. "That's how we found out that Magneto had rescued you guys, actually. Logan knew, guess Trask took it out on him when you guys escaped or something. So at least then we could quit wasting out time trying to find you in military bases and start trying to look for Magneto instead."

"Tryin'?" Remy echoed.

"That helmet of his doesn't just block telepathy, it blocks Cerebro, too," Lance reminded them. "So we had to just sit back and wait for one of the others with him to use their powers."

"That couldn't have taken too long," Rogue reasoned.

"Not really," Lance nodded. "It was about a year after that Sentinel battle where you were captured at that point, and a few weeks later we picked up Evan's mutant signature. We piled in the jet, flew to the Outback and found Magneto's temporary base hidden out there."

"Oh, dat must have been a hell o' a reunion," Remy snorted.

"It was interesting, that's for sure," Lance agreed with a grimace. "But Magneto was almost polite to us, kind of gave me the creeps. Xavier tried to reason with him, of course, tried to convince him to drop his crusade and join us, but Magneto's still bent on world domination for mutants."

"Well, y' can't say de homme's not ambitious," Remy joked.

Rogue swatted him with her hand. "At least he played nice wit' ya'll fo' once," she pointed out to Lance.

"Yeah, he was forthcoming with information for once, too," Lance said, then frowned slightly. "They told us that they'd gotten separated from you two during the Sentinel attack on the island, and didn't have any idea what had happened to you. Magneto was optimistic that you were probably still alive, he said that you were a survivor, Rogue, and he likened Gambit here to a cockroach."

Rogue choked on a laugh, as much at Lance's words as at the indignant outrage on her husband's face. "Nice t' hear Magnus has such faith in us," she chuckled.

"More faith than we did, I guess," Lance said ruefully. "When Xavier couldn't find you on Cerebro no matter how many times he tried, or how long he searched, it started to become clear to us that you had to be dead. But I guess we were wrong."

"Not yo' fault," Rogue shrugged, then frowned, confused. "Wait a minute, what do ya mean the Professor couldn't find me with Cerebro? Ah used mah powers plenty over the years, practically every day."

"Well, at first we thought that it was because of the interference of Carol Danvers," Lance replied, and Rogue raised an eyebrow, startled that he knew about that. "Evan told us," he explained, seeing the look on her face. "Xavier and Hank thought that having Carol's psyche in your head had something to do with it."

"Maybe," Rogue conceded begrudgingly. :"But Carol hasn't been in mah head in a long time. Tessa managed t' put her back in her own body."

"Really?" Lance pressed his lips together. "Hmm, that is strange. I don't know why we couldn't find you, then, maybe the Professor will be able to figure it out."

"Where is he?" Rogue asked anxiously, the mention of Carol reminding her of her mission to find a way to awaken her comatose friend.

"Westchester," Lance replied.

"New York?"

"New York," he confirmed. "He opened up a new school up there about two years ago. It's called the Westchester Academy, the public thinks it is just a prep boarding school."

"Is it like the Institute?" Rogue inquired curiously.

"Bigger, actually," Lance told her. "They have a lot of students, ranging from elementary school to high school in age, and they have more teachers now, too. Including Summers, if you can believe that. I mean, who'd let him teach a class?"

Despite herself, Rogue smiled, pleased to hear some things never changed. Lance and Scott were still bickering, and they probably always would be.

"So Scott's in Westchester?" she asked, prompting for information on the others, especially her brother.

"Yeah, Jean's there, too, along with a few others," Lance replied. "But most of us ended up splitting up. Todd, Wanda and the girls came down here with me and Kitty, and Kurt dragged Mystique and Logan off to Canada to run the training program up there."

"Logan and Mystique are together?" Rogue wrinkled her nose. "An' they haven't killed each other yet?"

Lance shifted uneasily. "Well, I guess Kurt's there to keep them in line and all. Besides, Mystique's given up terrorism, at least for now."

"Huh, will wonders never cease," Remy drawled. "Didn' t'ink dat woman had it in her."

"She's just full of surprises," Lance said dryly, pulling the car into a driveway that led up to a large, middle-class home. "I'll let Kitty and the others fill you in more inside, but before I forget, Summers and Jean finally got married."

"They did?" Rogue blinked, but she found she wasn't all that surprised, so she studied the house appraisingly instead. "When?"

"About two years ago, just before Xavier opened the new school," Lance replied. "But the real kicker is they've got a kid."

"A kid?" Rogue echoed, tearing her gaze from the house and looking at Lance in shock. "Scott has a kid?"

"A baby, really," Lance said. "Little tiny thing with a head of auburn hair. Luckily for the baby, he got Jean's looks instead of his father's. He's only about six months old, they named him Nathan."

"Nathan Summers?" Rogue let the name roll of her tongue, then shook her head. "God, Ah feel like Ah jus' entered the twilight zone!"

"Now you know how I've felt for the past four years," Lance replied sarcastically, turning off the engine. "Come on, let's get you inside. Kitty's going to scream when she sees you, and I bet you're dying to see her, too, huh?"

"You have no idea," Rogue replied with a smile. "Ah haven't heard her valley girl shrieks in ages."

"You're in for a surprise, then," Lance laughed. "She's lost the bimbo-talk."

Rogue gaped at him. "Are ya serious?"

"Completely," Lance grinned. "I haven't heard the word 'like' come out of her mouth in years."

"Good God," Rogue muttered. "Ah really am in the twilight zone."


A/N: Again, sorry this one is so short, guys. I haven't been having a very good week, so I'm short on writing time. Thanks so much for all the well-wishing for my sister! She is sixteen, just got her license not too long ago, so it's been stressful. She's doing better, though, and she's able to move around on crutches, so I think she'll be fine in a few months. Well, my midterms are over after Friday, so expect a new post this weekend, with a much longer chapter :)