Chapter Eighty:


"Quit staring at me, furball!"

"Sorry," Kurt said with a toothy grin, clacking his fangs together in order to keep from laughing at the irritated look on his sister's face. "I just can't get over it, zat's all."

"Over what?" Rogue asked, scrunching her nose up in confusion.

"You, liebchen," Kurt replied with a shrug. "Ze hair, ze tan, ze smile... it's like seeing a completely different you."

"Please," Rogue scoffed. "Ah'm the same me Ah always was."

"Ja, sure you are," Kurt snickered, reaching out to tug on the thin hoop earrings she was wearing. In her teenage years, she would never have been caught dead wearing such a trendy piece of jewelry, but they somehow fit her perfectly now.

Rogue rolled her vibrant emerald green eyes, clearly exasperated with him, which only made him grin even more. He was her little brother, after all, it was his job to annoy her, and he had four years worth of annoying to make up for.

He'd meant what he said, though, about her being a whole new Rogue. This woman sitting in front of him was not the same girl he'd left behind in Bayville, and yet she was. Her fiery spirit, her unwavering strength and courage, the compassion and empathy that she hadn't liked to show very often were all still there, but the insecurity of a girl who had closed herself off from the world was gone.

Her hair was so much longer than it had been four years ago, cascading over her shoulders while the infamous white streaks framed her face, and her skin was now so tan that he was beginning to wonder if maybe they had some Hispanic blood in the family somewhere. She was tall and slender, with lithe muscle and smooth grace, the kind of woman that looked like a model but carried hidden strength.

She was beautiful, but then again he'd always thought so.

She was also married to a former Acolyte and pregnant with his child.

Kurt was still trying to wrap his head around that, but he was willing to make an effort to like Remy, for Rogue's sake. At the very least, he was willing to resist the urge to wipe that cocky smirk off the Cajun's face for knocking up his sister, no matter how tempting it might be.

And it was very, very tempting.

They had always shared a special closeness, he and Rogue, long before they'd ever discovered that they were, in fact, siblings. During that fateful battle with the Sentinel, he hadn't even seen her get captured, he and Todd had been too busy trying to dodge plasma fire to notice much of anything at the time, but when they were all regrouping to retreat it had become clear that they were four people short.

And one of the missing was Rogue.

That had not escaped Mystique's observations, as she posed as the Professor bringing the X-jet down for them to escape on, but she had been able to realize that if they didn't leave now, all of them would be captured. Better to run and stay free so that they could come back for the others, than to end up in cells right along with them.

It had been a painfully quite flight back to the Institute, no one had felt much like talking, and each person was lost in their own thoughts.

As for Kurt, all he'd been able to think about was the fact that he hadn't been able to help Rogue, Evan or Hank, and he was kicking himself for it. He was a teleporter, it was his job to get his teammates out of dangerous situations, and he'd failed to do it.

Of course, as soon as the ruins of the mansion came into sight, a whole new set of problems had come into play.

No one had been more shocked than Kurt when Scott called Mystique on her act and she demorphed into her true form. His mother had been posing as Charles Xavier ever since his last visit to the sanitarium where Wanda had been kept locked away, several weeks before.

But the most shocking revelation of all had come while Storm and Mystique were arguing over whether or not they could trust Mystique to help them free Rogue and the others, when Jean had suddenly picked up on a rather loud and fierce thought pattern from his mother. Her words still rang in Kurt's ears sometimes when he thought about all the 'what-ifs', how his life would have been different if he had only known the truth all along.

Rogue is your daughter?! Jean had cried incredulously, and everyone stared at Mystique, stunned in disbelief at what they'd just heard.

Mystique's jaw had clenched tightly and she'd given a curt nod, her gaze turning towards Kurt as she answered grimly that yes, Rogue was her daughter, she had left her with Irene Alder, a trusted friend, for Rogue's own safety, but that was all she was willing to confess at the moment, because they had more important matters to deal with.

Like the fact that the police, National Guard, Air Force and the FBI were all converging on the Institute grounds.

It was several hours before Kurt was able to sit down and demand answers from his mother, during the flight to Muir Island after they had retrieved the Professor from the holding tank she had imprisoned him in. He had asked her to tell him the truth, all of it, and she had sighed, warning that it was a long story, but he'd been adamant about hearing it, so she had given him some of the details then, and the rest had come at a later date.

For a long time, it had weirded him out just to even think about the fact that Mystique and Logan had once been... intimate with each other.

He could just imagine how poor Rogue felt.

"Ugh," Rogue groaned suddenly, her hand going to her mouth as a queasy look crossed her face. "Ah hate bein' pregnant."

"Nausea?" Kurt asked with a wince.

"Ah swear this kid is tryin' t' kill me," Rogue sighed with a nod. "He must know Ah'm gonna be a terrible mother already."

"Zat's crazy," Kurt snorted. "Ze kid is lucky to have a great muzzer like you."

"Ya t'ink so?" Rogue asked hopefully.

"Nein, I know so," Kurt responded firmly.

Rogue smiled softly, the kind of smile that made a brother feel all warm and fuzzy inside, knowing he'd said the right thing to cheer up his sister. "Yo' a sweetheart, ya know that, Kurt?"

"Danke," Kurt muttered sheepishly.

"Ah mean it," Rogue said seriously, her eyes welling with tears. "Yo' the best brother a girl could ask fo', ya always have been an' Ah... an' Ah..." she let out an irritated growl under her breath, furiously blinking back her tears. "An' Ah hate mah damn hormones!"

Despite himself, Kurt burst out laughing. He tried not to, he really did, but it was all just too much. His laughter earned him a murderous glare from his sister, however, so he bit his tongue. "Sorry," he apologized, even though they both knew he wasn't.

"S'not yo' fault," Rogue grumbled, shaking her head in dismay. "It's me. Ah hate this, Ah feel like a damn crazy person. One minute Ah'm happy an' the next Ah'm angry an' then Ah'm bawlin' over an empty bottle o' pink nail polish. An' Ah hate pink, it wasn't even mine, it was one o' Kitty's that got stuck in mah bag somehow!"

"Vow," Kurt murmured. "Zat doesn't sound like fun."

"Believe me, it's not," Rogue replied darkly. "An' t' make matters worse, Ah have t' pee every five minutes!"

"Vell, at least you only have seven months to go, ja?" Kurt offered.

Rogue laid her head on the table, a whimper escaping her lips, and Kurt felt a wave of sympathy for her. He knew how excited she was about being a mother, but she obviously wan't enjoying pregnancy nearly as much.

Iz it going to be like zis for Amanda when we have children? he thought with a shudder.

"Trouble, darling?"

Kurt turned to find his mother in the doorway of the kitchen, eyeing Rogue with concern in her yellow eyes.

Rogue lifted her head, a completely miserable expression on her face. "I hate bein' pregnant," she again lamented. "It sucks!"

"It always does," Mystique agreed, crossing the room to take a seat next to them at the table. "I was lucky with Kurt, the morning sickness wasn't very bad, but it was terrible with you. It's usually a bit easier with the second child."

"At this rate, don't count on another grandkid from me," Rogue said with a scowl. "Ah t'ink Ah'm gonna have Remy castrated after this!"

The corners of Kurt's mouth turned upward in a smirk, and he was about to offer his services, but a sharp look from their mother silenced him. How does she do that? he grumbled to himself. He was just glad he hadn't grown up with her, or he would have never gotten away with anything.

Of course, if Mystique had raised him, he might very well have grown up evil, but that was beside the point.

"I highly doubt you'll want to go through with that when you're holding your child in your arms," she told Rogue evenly. "But if you do, I'm sure your father would be happy to arrange it."

Rogue chuckled, which was their mother's intention, and smiled ruefully. "Poor Remy," she said. "Ah'm gonna say somethin' Ah don' mean while Ah'm in labor, an' he'll wind up dead b'fo' he even gets t' see his firstborn."

"I suppose I'll just have to dispose of Logan for a while, in the interests of preserving Remy's life, then," Mystique replied.

"Good luck," Rogue snorted, making a face. "That's almost impossible."

"I have my methods," Mystique assured her smoothly.

"Oh God, Ah don' even wanna know," Rogue insisted, burying her face in her arms again.

Kurt grimaced, catching the implications of his sister's words, and Mystique scowled, yellow eyes taking on a fierce gleam that was as animalistic as her gaze when in wolf morph. "Not those kind of methods, young lady!"

"Danken Sie Gott," Kurt muttered.

"Ya can say that again," Rogue griped. "Ah don' even want t' t'ink 'bout the two o' ya'll even kissin', much less..." she trailed off with a shudder.

"And just how do you think that you exist, then?" Mystique demanded.

"Frankly, Ah try not t' t'ink 'bout it," Rogue retorted, shaking her head as if to get the horrifying image out of her mind. "Dieu, je vais être traumatized... Nous avons besoin d'un psychiatre dans cette maison!"

"Uh, Rogue?" Kurt said slowly. "Ve don't speak French."

Rogue blinked, startled, and then bit her lip sheepishly. "Ah didn' even realize Ah'd slipped," she admitted.

"Ja, I figured."

"You made quite a life for yourself in New Orleans," Mystique observed thoughtfully. "I'm glad."

"Thanks," Rogue said with a faint smile. "Ah really do love the Big Easy, an' Remy's family is great, Ah was accepted from day one, but Ah missed mah old life an' the people in it."

"Ve missed you, too, Sis," Kurt assured her. "Didn't ve, Muzzer?"

"Yes," Mystique agreed quietly. "We did."

And it was true, they had, terribly. Though she had remained determined that Rogue would be found alive, refusing to even consider the possibility that she might be dead, Mystique hadn't been nearly as confident as she pretended to be.

By the time that the Professor decided to call off the search, both she and Logan had already known in their hearts that Rogue was dead.

Only she wasn't, and learning that news had done more for Kurt's spirit than anything ever had. It had taken him a long time to come to terms with the her death, he'd been unable to accept it for so long that he knew the others had been worried. They'd all tried to talk to him about it, to try and get him to let her go, but that just served to make him angry. How could they just forget about her, give up on her so easily?

Logically, he knew that wasn't the case, he knew that they all loved her and missed her, but for some reason seeing everyone else, especially Logan and Mystique, give up hope had angered him. Maybe it was because seeing them accept it had made it all too real, and the only other option besides getting mad was to get sad, and he had refused to cry, because that would mean that it was real and that Rogue was really dead.

"Ah know," Rogue said softly, looking down at her hands as if they could give her the answers she was seeking. "Ah'm sorry ya'll thought Ah was dead all this time. If Ah'd known that ya'll were alive..."

"But you didn't know," Mystique pointed out, reaching across the table to lay her hand on Rogue's, and even though his sister flinched, she didn't pull her hand back, so Kurt had to smile at the progress they'd made in the past few days. "And if we hadn't given up hope, if we'd kept searching..."

"Then maybe Ah wouldn't be where Ah am now," Rogue rebuked, her hand moving to her stomach even though she had not yet even come close to starting to show. "An' Ah'm happy, Ah really am. Ah couldn't have asked fo' a better life than the one that Remy's given me. Ah jus' hope that we can give our baby an even better one, wit'out all the chaos o' ours."

"I wouldn't get your hopes up, dear," Mystique advised, patting her hand. "Life is rarely anything but chaotic."

"Especially vhen you are an X-man, ja?" Kurt added.

"And speakin' of X-men," Logan's gruff voice filled the room, and Kurt blinked in surprise, turning to see his... what was Logan to him anyway? He was his half-sister's father, so what relation did that make them?

He didn't have time to contemplate it, though, because Logan was dressed in his black and yellow training uniform, which could only mean one thing.

"Let me guess?" Kurt groaned. "Danger Room session?"

A feral grin crossed Logan's lips. "Five minutes, elf," he warned, crossing his arms. "Don't be late."

Kurt was going to mutter something under his breath about not wanting to do that, but his mother again gave him that look, and he was beginning to wonder if she had some sort of telepathy she had been keeping a secret all these years.

"How you holdin' up, Stripes?" Logan asked, and his gaze softened as he looked at his daughter. "Yer mornin' sickness any better?"

"Ah don' know why they call it that," Rogue scowled. "It ain't restricted t' mornin's, ya know. What idiot decided t' call it mornin' sickness anyway?"

"It was probably a man," Mystique commented.

"Damn right," Rogue agreed fiercely, and Kurt's tail twitched uneasily. If this was about to turn into one of those male bashing sessions, he was going to teleport out now, because he valued his life too much to stay.

"Hormones," he muttered under his breath, but apparently it was too loud because not only did Logan hear, and grin, but Rogue heard it, too, as evidenced by the way her scowl turned even deeper.

"Watch it, furball," she warned sharply, folding her arms in that typical defiant manner of hers, one thing that had not changed over the years. She still had their mother's temperament, and Logan's stubbornness, a lethal combination to anyone who dared to cross her.

"C'mon, kid," Logan called, gesturing for him to follow him out of the room, so Kurt rose to his feet and started across the kitchen. "Let's get you to the Danger Room before she gets one of those mood swings and decides to kill you."

"Keep that up an' Ah may jus' decide t' kill both o' ya'll!" Rogue shouted after them.

"You don't really think she meant zat, do you?" Kurt asked as they made their way down the hall.

"Kid, let me give you some advice," Logan said. "Remember how I told you it was best to steer clear of her while she was brooding back at the Institute?"

"Ja," Kurt answered with a grimace. "Ze one time I didn't listen, she nearly decapitated me by throwing a picture frame at my head. It hit ze wall instead of my head because I teleported out just in time."

"Let's just say that her temper is going to be even worse now," Logan concluded grimly.

"Gott helfen uns," Kurt groaned, and Logan, having picked up some German over the years, nodded his agreement.

"It almost makes me feel bad for LeBeau," Logan said with a smirk. "Almost."


Translations:

Nein- no (German)
Danke- thanks (German)
Danken Sie Gott- Thank God (German)
Gott helfen uns- God help us (German)
Dieu, je vais être traumatized- God, I'm going to be traumatized
Nous avons besoin d'un psychiatre dans cette maison- We need a shrink in this house