"The Dividing Line"
Chapter Five: "Undo Control"
Rogue rode shotgun and directed Jean's navy blue SUV through the streets of Chicago. She had the path from the General Hospital to the Academy of Tomorrow practically memorized. She had been there several times, sometimes with Scott and sometimes without, and the way back, she could recognize by several pointers scattered around the road.
After showing the security at the campus entrance her ID and assuring them that the people in the car were in no way terrorists, vandals, PETA protestors or the like (mutants went without saying,) Rogue guided them through the campus, towards the parking lot behind the library tower. They pulled up into an empty space and got out. The lot was at a lower level than the building itself, and though there was a door that led into it, they chose instead to walk up the small incline of grass that ended in the main walk.
There was moisture in the air, thick and pungent.
It's going to rain soon.
Thought you liked storms, Ororo?
I do. You don't.
I... don't?
You were always afraid of the heavy rain. You don't know that?
I don't.
"Rogue?"
Jean's voice, somehow concerned.
"Sorry." Rogue murmured and took point.
The three of them emerged from the elevator shaft and found Emma Frost and Charles waiting in the therapy area, sharing a cup of tea. Jean and Kitty took a few moments to drink the large, seemingly cooled down but still rich confines of the office. Rogue shuffled her feet nervously. From the way they had put down their cups and the way Emma Frost had immediately stood up, she knew that she wasn't going to like it.
"Here we are." Jean said.
"Yeah. So, what's this about a solution?" Kitty asked.
"Can you help me..?" Rogue asked, meekly, fully aware of the fact that one of the people she was asking this of had no reason whatsoever to do so.
"There is a way." Emma Frost said, "But it's not something as light as taking a pill."
"What do Ah have to do?"
"You have to consent to it." Charles said.
"We can erase the echoes. Completely." Emma Frost assured.
Rogue's eyes grew wide. When she spoke, her voice was trembling.
"You can? Ya mean, you can end this? You can set me free?"
"Yes." Charles said, "We can. But there is one catch."
"And that is?" Kitty asked.
"We will need to gain complete access." Emma Frost said, "I will repeat that: complete access."
"What does that mean, exactly?" Jean asked.
"Exactly what it says." Charles replied, "There will be nothing hidden from us, nothing at all. That isn't to say your thoughts or desires will be exposed, that goes without saying."
"Oh, stop being so prim and proper about it." Emma Frost said, "He means to say we will strip you bare. Your baser instincts, your worst inclinations, your everything, you yourself will be bared to us. This isn't about finding out what it is that you think about when you masturbate. This will not be an invasion of privacy. This will be an invasion of your ego-self."
Silence fell. Kitty, Kurt and Jean exchanged nervous glances, while Rogue twiddled her thumbs and considered it.
"...do Ah have a choice?"
"Realistically?" Emma Frost asked. Rogue reluctantly nodded, "Not really, no. If you continue the way it is, soon, either an echo will completely overcome the rest and override your psyche, or you will become an amalgamation of the echoes. From what Charles tells me, it'll most likely be the former. Either way, however little self you may have now will be erased completely and permanently. You will then spend the rest of your life with the firm delusion that you are someone you're not."
Emma Frost let it all sink in.
"When can we do it?" Rogue asked.
"Right now, actually." Emma Frost said. She gestured towards the couch she had used during their sessions, and Rogue hesitantly went over and took her place. Charles rolled up his wheelchair around the couch and positioned himself right by Rogue's head. Rogue looked up into his eyes and saw nothing but determination.
"Excuse me for a moment." Emma Frost said.
Rogue turned to see her take off her pure white heels. She raised an eyebrow, and her sentiment echoed in the others assembled.
"Christian made this pair especially for me, as a gift." She said, "If anything goes wrong, I don't want any harm to come to his generosity... they are, after all, one-of-a-kind."
Charles rolled his eyes.
Emma Frost knelt down next to the couch while Charles kept his position. They both told Rogue to relax, to take deep breaths and to close her eyes. Everything would be alright soon.
Rogue complied. She tried to relax, tried to still that panicky voice in her head constantly telling her that this would all end in disaster, it would all end in catastrophe, when had things ever gone her way anyway, and why should this be any different?
"Rogue, this won't end that way." Charles said, "I assure you."
Hadn't he said similar things? Hadn't he told her that she could trust him, that she'd be safe with him? Hadn't he told her all that and so much more?
"You'll be safe." Emma Frost said.
Coming from her, it meant fuck-all. Rogue remembered the words, but she always remembered them through the mouth of someone she trusted, someone she loved, someone she hurt and deceived and stole from and fucked over.
Having no choice in the matter, Rogue kept her eyes closed and tried to settle into the hands of two individuals she found she wouldn't trust with herself. Not in that moment.
Upon Jean's suggestion, she and Kitty moved to Emma Frost's desk. Proximity, Jean told Kitty, was an issue in almost all telepathic endeavors. The closer they were, the more chances of something from them rubbing off on the process. They sat on the desk, side-by-side. Jean held Kitty's hand to establish a connection, so that they could converse telepathically, neither wanting to provide the Professor and Emma Frost with external, erratic stimuli.
They didn't say much. Mostly, they simply tried to keep their tension under control.
Charles felt Emma Frost's presence, pure white and glistening, beside him as they, together, reached into Rogue's mind. The conscious parts were noisy, but easy to navigate: she was barely keeping her panic under control. Flashes of her worries, her anxieties and future projections distracted them only momentarily. They were both used to this reaction. Telepath-paranoia, despite the fact that she had explicitly been told that they would be seeing everything inside of her mind. Charles could feel Emma Frost's mild amusement vibrating through the upper layers.
Charles focused, and joined Emma Frost in digging deeper. Together, they penetrated Rogue's being, layer by layer by layer, breaching through each one with increasing difficulty. Her unconscious mind was a snake pit, full of twisted desires, sickening inclinations and the usual, nauseating surge of filth that dwelled underneath the perception of any human being.
Emma Frost and Charles approached the final layer, the subconscious. They paused for a moment, as if to gather their strength, and then, got to work. The subconscious was the thickest layer, guarded by rabid, raw surges of emotion and absolute thoughts, both of them threatening to overwhelm simply by existing. Impossible concepts, paradoxical suggestions, maddening contradictions, blinding darkness... Charles and Emma Frost, as one, pressed on, wading through the sheer intensity that was the shell of Rogue's subconscious.
What they would find neither could have imagined.
A mass of flesh underneath her, writhing, pulsating. Sweating bodies, glistening in the pitch-black, sliding against one another, scattering moans and squeals of delight into the air. Whispers, murmurs, shouts, merging into one noise.
Legs, arms, heads, tongues, hands and feet, chests and buttocks merging, separating, pushing forward pulling back.
Hands. Hands holding her feet, hands around her ankles, arms intertwined with her legs. Two fingers in her mouth, two different hands on her neck, three pulling her hair, one holding her nose, another caressing her shoulder, two, three gripping her breasts, four fiddling with her stomach, one buried into her crotch, moving. Hands around her arms, fingers intertwined with hers, palms exploring every single inch of her flesh, a finger tapping on her eyes... touching, pulling, wanting, touching, touching...
"Let me go..." she pleaded, her tongue moving around the fingers, sliding across them, "Please... let me go..."
But they were still there. New hands were reaching from the lower parts of the pile, clawing their way across and finding an exposed spot. Sometimes, they slapped present ones away, like right now – two hands pushed away the ones holding her neck and immediately latched onto the empty spot and pulled.
"Let me go..." she whimpered, her eyes filling with tears, "Let me..." the fingers in her mouth caught her tongue, and a thumb pressed against her chin. She tried to jerk her head free, tried to kick and punch... they wouldn't let her go. They wouldn't let her go, they would never let her go, there was too many of them and one of her – one against the many that now made her.
They were her now, and she, herself, was bound to be their slave, at their mercy.
A hand grasped one beast and squeezed. She buckled, trying to avoid it, but the hands held her fast... she couldn't even say anything...
A booming voice that interrupted the hell that was the totality of them.
"ROGUE! CAN YOU HEAR ME?"
Yes! Yes, she could! She could! She tried to move her jaw, but it was being held in place. She screamed into the fingers exploring her teeth and prayed that the voice would hear her.
"ROGUE? ARE YOU THERE?"
No! No! Please, no! Please, hear me, please... please...
The mass of bodies around her pulsed, once, twice, and third – they expanded from the bottom and they slowly released her. Planting both feet on God knew who, Rogue looked at the stream of bodies rising up in an arc. Pietro, Toad, Taryn, Sam, Piotr, Remy, Stacy, Erik...
Scott was standing there, close by but still distant, standing apart from the smothering echoes.
"Scott!"
Rogue extended her hand, fingers grasping. The rest of the echoes stopped. Suspended in the pitch-black and made of silence now, they looked at her.
"Scott, please..." Rogue said, "Ah'm sorry... Ah'm so sorry... please... Ah'll do anythin, just..."
Moment of silence.
Scott extended both arms and came shooting towards her – as he did, the rest of the bodies followed him towards her. Rogue screamed and held up her arms to shield herself...
Scott's arms found her, and his body shielded her a moment before every body in the pile took her off her feet and swallowed her whole.
Rogue screamed.
The psychic shockwave sent Emma Frost, Jean and Charles screaming in pain and hit Kitty with an indescribable, dense rush of emotion that brought her to her knees. As Kitty fell onto the carpet, the panoramic window behind her was shattered into tiny shards, most of which fell outside. All balance left Kitty and she found herself rolling on the ground, next to a writhing and screaming Jean, trying to find which way was which.
Rogue jerked awake and, throwing her legs up, spun around and fell off the couch. The mellow texture of the Persian rug scraped her skin and she tried to rise to her knees, at least to her knees.
In her head, there was a swirling mess of white noise, circling around her conscious mind. Thoughts and impulses rapid-firing, urges dancing to a machine gun beat. Her heart was racing, her pulse spiraling out of control, her hands were shaking.
Stop...
A thousand protestations, a million lies. Hundreds of affirmations, a trillion cries.
Rogue stumbled to her feet. She couldn't balance the world. It was all happening too fast, because it was so slow she couldn't breathe enough to feed her lungs, she was suffocating, because the world was moving by so fast that it all felt like a time-lapse video.
Pressure was building inside her skull, like a tumor rapidly growing, spreading across her brain, pushing against the bone. She blindly stumbled across the office, clumsily zig-zagging towards Emma Frost's mahogany desk as the mass inside her grew and grew and grew...
She knew what was coming. She had felt this once before, only it wasn't nearly as bad as this back then. It was mellower, and she still remembered what had happened, what she had done.
She leaned on the desk, cold palms pressing on the smooth surface.
I can't do it again... I won't do it again... I can't...
Cold wind blew into the office, making her aware that there wasn't a window there anymore. The whole world came to a split-second pause, and her one thought, absolute, calmly bubbled to the surface.
This is it. This is the end.
No more Rogue.
Moaning in pain, barely seeing straight, Rogue dragged herself around the desk and to the edge of the room, to the opening that used to be a window. The closer she got, the better she could see the fall.
I won't be weak anymore... you'll never take me alive...
Mustering up all her strength, Rogue stood up and stumbled, dragging her feet, towards the edge.
Inside her head, they were all screaming.
"Rogue..."
Kitty's voice. Nearby. She was trying to find her bearings and stand.
I always knew it would end like this.
She stood at the very edge, looking down. It was raining now, thin droplets showering those below.
"Rogue!"
It's the kind of end trash like me deserve.
Kitty was almost standing now, almost up to Rogue, so close that she could almost touch her friend...
Rogue leaned forward and let her body carry her down.