"The Dividing Line"
Chapter One: "Therein"
Scott woke up to a knock on the door. Keeping his eyes closed, he reached to the bedside and retrieved his visor. Once he put it on, he glanced at the clock. Fast approaching five A.M., in thin, bright red numbers. He got up and went to the door. Opened it to find a familiar, yet worrying sight.
There she was, covered in mud, legs clamped together, arms embracing herself, shivering.
Scott stepped aside and Rogue walked in. She located a hoodie slung onto the back of her desk chair – a hoodie covered in mud stains and a few spots of dried blood. She wrapped it around herself and sat down. Scott knew the routine, he had established it after the first time this had happened when he wasn't around.
It would start with a pre-set, simple question.
"Are you hurt?"
"Not much."
Good. Second question.
"Any physical changes?"
"Mah fingers were Bobby's for a while and... claws. Bone claws."
"No healing factor?"
"Nah. Just the pain."
Scott ran a hand through his hair and sighed.
"Okay, why don't you take a shower." He said, "Wash some of this off. Then I'll take a look at the wounds."
She could only smile gratefully – and that smile, never mind how many times he had seen it, caught him off-guard. The gratitude of the broken stung, because there was something so very wrong in finding the simplest of things boons from life.
Rogue discarded her clothes and stepped into the warm water. Just the sensation of it, after she had been out in the cold for so long, made her shudder, but she enjoyed it. She remembered that wave of pleasure – like a physical blow, from her head down to her toes... the water was so warm, so comforting...
The water feels better between scales. Just imagine that your veins were in between the scales and your blood was flowing through the cracks, and the water flows over those, and then pools at your feet... mmm, just thinking about it, makes me wanna... hey, what do you know, it makes you wanna, too.
Rogue became aware of her wounded hand slipping down, fingers cruising across her stomach and moving lower... lower...
You want to. Admit it.
Shut up... he's waiting... for me...
Snakeskin, snakeskin... don't you feel how smooth that is? How textured? Ribbed for everyone's pleasure. You know, even with all the shit I took, this is still the best thing I've ever felt. Because it's nobody's fuck. It's mine.
Rogue felt the cold tile against her cheek as she bent over slightly.
No...
Her fingers, touching, circling, insistent.
Stop it...
A light moan escaped her lips, and she bit down on her lower lip to keep herself from it. But she couldn't help it, couldn't help but feel it...
You feel it, don't you? Ah yes, yes, that's it, right there, right there... fuck, that feels good... you have done this before...
Please stop... please stop...
Her free hand slammed against the wall.
Oh, and all those other times... were you thinking of him? You were, weren't you? Hah, you were!
I...
Did you imagine his hands over your body? His lips on yours? His tongue all around you, inside you?
No, I...
How would he feel? How big is his cock? Mmm, you have wondered what it's like, didn't you?
Why are you doing this..?
Because you won't.
Rogue tried to keep herself from moving. She was weak in the knees but her hand wasn't stopping, it wasn't letting up. She caught a mouthful of flesh on her arm and bit down hard, trying to flush the pleasure out with pain, but it was doing nothing. If anything, it was enhancing it, making her toes curl, making her shudder.
Stacy, please, I'm begging you, please just stop... I don't... I don't want this...
You say no, but the way you move your hips and the way you keep trying not to make a sound say fuck yes, sir, may I have more?
I can't... I can't...
You want this. You can't convince me that you don't. Hell, I am you now. So why don't you shut up and enjoy it? It'll be over quicker if you don't resist, you know.
No... no... no...
Somewhere inside, she was praying for the sound of the running water to drown out her own voice.
When the forced orgasm Stacy-by-Rogue wrenched out of her let her finally let her gain control again, Rogue broke into tears and proceeded to furiously scrub down every inch of skin available. Stacy-by-Rogue was gone, vanished with the last of what was supposed to have been the afterglow.
Shame. She was so ashamed.
She stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her body, concealing it. She caught her reflection in the mirror. The whore goddess was still there, but she was no longer a goddess.
And Scott, oblivious, was waiting in the other room.
He must've heard... he knows. Oh God, he knows it. Maybe he heard me all those other times, too, maybe he heard me every time and I don't know how I can do this... even now, he's waiting for me, knowing what he knows...
It took her a long time to get dressed and even longer to get out of the bathroom.
When she came out, she found Scott waiting, reading a book (The Once and Future King) to pass the time. She spotted latex surgical gloves on his desk, next to a wad of cotton and a bottle of iodine. Rogue sat down on her bed and he came over. He knelt in front of her. With gentle fingers, he held her wrist and lifted up her hand to examine the wounds. He gently prodded one, prompting her to wince, but she didn't pull her hand back. He decided they were shallower than he had first thought.
Rogue tried to avoid looking at him as he carefully disinfected her wounds. She couldn't face him, not tonight, not now.
Afterwards, Scott returned his supplies to where they had come from, kissed the top of her head (sending a shiver down her spine and telling her, without a word, that he was worried about her, that he wasn't sure if he was doing enough, that this was the third time this week, that he just didn't want to see her like that again) and returned to bed.
Rogue sat there, in the dark, until sleep claimed her, half an hour before she had to get up.
The alarm clock screeching pulled her out of the restless, mercifully dreamless sleep. She looked to Scott's side and found him gone. She checked the clock. 8 A.M., of course, as every morning. She would get up earlier, but it wasn't a question of resting, with the unlimited power and stamina she had, she didn't really need sleep, but just pretending to sleep made all the difference in the world.
Rogue reached to the clock to make it stop. She pressed one finger on the snooze button and her finger penetrated the device all the way through, reducing it to a crushed mess of plastic and wiring. Oh yeah, she always had that problem, that's why she had learned to judge the time of day by the position of the sun. An internal sundial. Timepieces were just too damn fragile.
Rogue stood up. She knew she didn't need clothes, they were just so she wouldn't have a swarm of cops on her ass about indecency charges as well. So she went to the wardrobe, pulled the door clean off its hinges and set it down. Staring at all of her clothes, she wondered where she had put her helmet. She normally put it right here, at the bottom of the wadro...
Wait... helmet?
Rogue shook her head. No. These weren't her thoughts. These were the thoughts of Juggernaut. This was his mind.
No. It was her mind. It was the mind of the Rogue.
I'm not him. I'm not him. I'm not him. I'm not him.
I am myself. I am the Rogue. I am not them.
She turned to look at the wardrobe door, lying on the floor as if it had always been there and suddenly, wasn't so sure of that herself.
Rogue spent five minutes on her laptop before getting dressed, as she often did to see if Kurt or Kitty had written back to their respective strings of e-mails that were exchanged ever since she had gotten settled into the Academy of Tomorrow. They had, but Kitty had gone on the longest tangent, and Rogue decided to read it after she was done with her day.
Rogue liked the late autumn. It required her to dress warm, which meant the only exposed patch of skin would be her face. Plus, jeans provided the best protection against the chill, and if it were up to her, she'd wear them all year, every day. She put on dark wash jeans, an undershirt, a black long-sleeve t-shirt and a bright red, V-neck sweater on. She found her gloves and slipped them on, relishing the familiarity of them. When she was convinced she had enough barriers between herself and the world, she headed down.
The Academy of Tomorrow wasn't a very large campus, but on certain days, getting to where you wanted to go became an issue, especially for Rogue. The campus' central point was the library tower, its lower three floors devoted to the actual library and the rest being administrative sections. Emma Frost's office was at the very top.
The White Queen dwelling in her tower.
Her dorm, the Selene Community, was directly across from the cluster of lecture halls, which drew a semi-circle around the central tower. Rogue followed the path she always took while munching on one of those nutrition bars Scott kept stocking up in the room. Of course, that was so they could have something to snack on after they'd fucked each other's...
Shut up, Stacy. Just shut the fuck up.
Rogue walked into the library and took a deep breath. It was relatively empty this time of day, which she always appreciated. By the time she'd get out of therapy, of course, the halls would be a little more difficult to navigate.
She got onto the elevator and ascended to the top floor. Emma Frost was waiting.
Emma Frost's office took up the entirety of the top floor, so much so that the elevator shaft became just a thick column sitting in the middle of everything. The east wall was a panoramic view screen of reinforced glass, providing the office with all of the required, natural light anyone could ask for. Emma Frost's mahogany desk, always housing her sleek Vaio laptop and several external drives, all filled to the brim with documentation, sat facing away from the view. The north wall, spanning the distance of the entire floor and going onto the west, was one big bookshelf. The west wall was her therapy corner: the obligatory comfortable, black leather couch, the armchair facing it, the Persian rugs laid out in between them... several tall lamps standing on the side shed relaxing, orange light, completing the setting.
Rouge found Emma Frost, wearing a pure white suit and idly sipping tea from a porcelain cup, in the therapy area. Her hand froze on the way to her face when Rogue approached. She cocked her head slightly to the side, and then shrugged it off. Rogue, unsure of herself, walked around her armchair and sat down on the couch.
"Good morning, Ms. Frost."
Emma Frost set her cup down.
"Good morning, Rogue. Sleep well?"
"Not especially."
Again, that small tilt of the head. Rogue raised an eyebrow. What was up with her?
Maybe she knows your dirty little secret. Hell, maybe she felt it, too.
Stacy, I swear...
"Alright." Emma Frost said, "Why don't you lie down, then, so we can get started?"
Rogue laid down and closed her eyes. It took Emma Frost a few moments to concentrate and reach out.
Suddenly, Rogue was two years ago and a thousand miles away.
The fabric of reality seemed to bend, slouching towards Bethlehem... it leaned down, and converged on her.
Everything around her seemed to come at her at once; the sharp, alcoholic smell of his aftershave, mingling with the smell of wet grass and the night air; the feeling of the support beam under the bleachers, its sharp edge digging into her back; his lips on her neck, his hands around her back, his warm palm, his tongue slithering across bare flesh, making her shiver; she could hear the ambient pulse of the world, humming faintly beneath all the soft, swishing sounds of fabric and the disgusting noises of flesh.
Shiver, running across her entire body, making her toes curl.
Beneath the blind rush of her body, beneath the instinctive motions she made, the flesh she captured between her teeth, the moans she let out, there was pure, cold logic. Every bit of data deciphered into thought, into abstractions just so her head could wrap itself around the process.
Of all the thoughts in all the moments of the world, she remembered her father. His face, his shy yet forthcoming attitude regarding the subject...
He couldn't know. He couldn't know. He couldn't see her like this.
Another shiver and a sound escaped through her teeth, and she shook, feeling it, and closed her eyes.
Fingers clenching the soft fabric of the varsity jacket.
One truth: this was as good as it was going to get.
She clenched her teeth and bore it.
She was tired of being mocked, tired of being made to be the virgin of the group – why should she be that when she could have him? He wasn't so bad. He cared a reasonable amount, and had some experience, more than her anyway, and she could still enjoy herself.
Besides, Scott wasn't going to be going much further anyway.
Scott.
Of all the thoughts in all the moments of the world...
She was now, here and lying on the couch... no. She was someone else now. Split down the middle, the latter part of her consciousness told her a different story.
There was nothing but the overwhelming monolith of a reality, hers. The fact that she was there, her heart beating out of her chest that he could feel through his lips, and for him. The warmth of the flesh against his, skin-on-skin... shivered, tried not to let on.
Was it working? Was this how it was supposed to be?
He couldn't help but turn the twisted, absolute logic of the situation upside-down and analyze every moan, every shiver, every minute movement and facial expression... he had to know. Was this how it was supposed to be?
There and then, he had never felt as exposed, as naked and as unsure of himself. On the field, facing down a defense player, that was a different ballgame altogether, he was the fucking Hulk out there, and couldn't be stopped.
But the small, seemingly defenseless presence of Taryn Fujioka stripped him of all his strength.
So he went on, going in as deep as he could, trying to remember the visual examples he had spent most his time with and trying to imitate it the best he could.
Was it working?
He tasted her skin. The slight bitterness of her Jasmine perfume, the alcoholic substance lingering on her neck. No man's land. That was what Al Pachino had said in that movie, and there he was, breaching through it.
Fumbling with his clothes. He could just see himself there, under the bleachers, his varsity jacket crumpled up under her powerful grip, trying to get the fucking fly open.
At least he was sure that he was better than Scott "Sunglasses-at-Night" Summers.
He heard her emit a sound that he couldn't quite describe or recognize.
Was it working? Was this how it was supposed to be?
She was now, here and lying on the couch... no. She was two years ago and a thousand miles away, on both sides of the same story. Sam Peterson and Taryn Fujioka both at the same time. She writhed, twisting and buckling, her body perceiving both sides of the physical sensations simultaneously, giving her feedback on organs she didn't possess and on actions she wasn't performing.
"Stop..." she heard herself say, but it was just an echo, a half-heard sound so far away that it didn't matter.
Push-pull, rise-recede, leave-return, rise-fall, push-pull, tug-of-war, tug-of-lust, tug-of-flesh... riptide, pulling her to both sides, tearing apart her insides... blood trickling down her naked thighs...
She screamed. He screamed. They all screamed through Rogue's mouth.