Chapter 4
He bought her beer, and now she would die in a cave. Life was strange, wasn't it? Bobby called down to her, letting her know the guy with the rifle had died. She thought about life, her life, and sent her condolences to her mama and daddy. They would bury her in an oak casket and preach about being mutant free. She wasn't dying, Bobby reminded her. She hated this chapter; it didn't roll from her mind or make any sense. Storm was serene, Sabretooth liked sleep, then it ended with her tears. She crawled back to being tattered and torn, the dozen minds within her own clashing when she heard Bobby yell. He needed help. She searched for her tracker and tripped her memories, collapsing into the past again.
Two visits in two days and Victor wouldn't roll the red carpet out until he killed her. From his bed, he rumbled irritably and refused to open his eyes. "Get outta here," he grumbled from his half-slumber, his body craving sleep.
Storm showed a silent understanding of his frustration and surveyed the inside of the cabin. "You should spend less time sleeping," she replied, noting a leak in the ceiling and the dust gathered on the kitchen counters. "We have a cleaning regime at the mansion and maintenance Thursdays."
He lifted his head from the sweat stained pillow and reluctantly opened his eyes. "Which one of us did you land with a head injury the last time we talked?"
"I'm well aware I harmed you," she told him lightly, sitting on the lone chair at the even lonelier table.
He jabbed a finger at her. "I've had worse than some weather witch slamming me against my own wall."
She smiled again, resting her bag on her knee. Her plans created with the Professor's approval were simply designed stages guaranteed to pique Sabretooth's interest. The X-Men were always keen to recruit their enemies with the belief mutants would never remain lost causes. Even Magneto himself was frequently offered chances to redeem himself. "I completed a little research," she said. "Are you interested in what I found?"
His eyes closed and rolled on his side. She stifled her surprise when the sheets gathered under him, his body without a stitch of cotton to cover his nakedness. "I'm not leaving until I'm ready," she told him. "I've watched men twice as tall as you, just as naked and carrying spears as they bravely wrestled lions."
"My spear's more the riding kind," he muttered into the pillow, drawing a scoff from her lips.
She briefly lost her composure, annoyed he noticed the subtle change in her body language when they talked about sexual contact. "I'm not here to sleep with you," she scolded sternly, eyes narrowed.
Her irritated tone had him lifting his head off the bed again. He smirked at her because he could scent her willingness to shed her clothes. "You wanna join me," he said with a chuckle, less a question and more an observation.
She unzipped the inner pocket of her jacket and unfolded a set of papers, choosing to focus her attention on the facts. "I conducted a little research," she informed him, hoping he would listen. She read from a dull list of petty crimes, date by date and time by time. He still seemed uninterested until she left the chair and dropped the papers on his chest. "I suppose family men like you need your sleep."
A puzzled Victor watched her leave the cabin and he scowled to himself, wondering what he had missed. He picked up the papers and read the rap sheet from Westchester, New York. When his eyes skimmed the name of the petty criminal, he cursed and scrambled from the bed, grabbing her bag, and stalking after her. "I wanted to fucking sleep!" he roared.
Unperturbed, Storm staked an infrared camera in the ground beside his porch. "I'm not stopping you," she replied, refusing to glance in his direction. She blamed his rudeness on lack of tact and brushed it off, before pretending her focus could not stray from her phony experiment.
"He's long gone in the head department, so just leave it alone," he warned her, dumping the bag at her feet. "He ain't a kid no more, and the last time I saw him I dropped him over Greenland to put a stop to his bullshit." She kept staring at him and he crumpled the papers in his fist. "Look, woman, I –"
Storm interrupted him, stopping him in his tracks. "Do you even have the capacity to care?" she asked him.
He scowled a little at her question because he hadn't expected it. Could he care? He thought over his past and failed to come to an overriding conclusion. He had done his best to keep his brother safe back when they fled as boys, but look how that turned out. Then the mess with Mystique and their boy kept him wanting to stray into the murky side of his life as a feral. His relationship with Rose ended with her shooting him and bedding his brother. "I don't know," he answered eventually.
Storm approached him and picked up the bag. She could easily recite the conflict in his gaze, having suffered from it herself. She had stirred something unfamiliar in him and it read to her as worry. "I believe you can with practice," she reassured him and opened the bag, showing him the standard surveillance equipment.
He reached inside and snatched a tracker. While he studied the standard black box with a scowl, he shook it and quickly lost interest. After he tossed it to her, he returned to his cabin in search of clothes. "You're wasting your time. The thing that attacked you didn't have a permanent form – it's shapeshifting from sludge to a half-mutant. Do the science, woman. Your plan won't work until it finds a host to feed from."
"I have a name, Sabretooth," she reminded him with a frown.
"So do I," he growled at her, pulling on his clothes and reaching for his boots.
She paused for a moment, considering her stance. "What would you prefer I call you?"
"'Let's Fuck Victor' has a nice ring to it," he smirked, lacing his boots while he craved further sleep. He stuffed the papers in his pocket, grabbed his duffle bag and left the cabin without bothering to lock the door.
"My name is Ororo," she replied, continuing to frown at him.
With a gruff grunt and a confident stalk to the jet, he left her to quietly wonder what her fellow X-Men would make of his arrival.
Rogue twirled in a circle, enjoying the seat but not the company in the control room. Being alone scared her, but she didn't think she had any real friends left. She tapped the tip of a pencil against her teeth as she half-listened to the class being taught in the round room below. Fidgeting when boredom set in, she would pretend to break a Guinness World Record. This week it was an attempt to drum the tune of a Paty Kerry song on her two front teeth without losing the will to live. It didn't even matter which song she chose because they all sounded the same.
A short-tempered growl filtered through the speaker and filled the room. "Rogue, I don't see any ninjas."
Maybe he would demote her again? She might have complained all the time, but at least the office had been quiet, and she even thought the bullet points missed her.
"I said I don't see any ninjas, Rogue."
The voices in her head were laughing again, and she didn't understand the joke.
"Rogue, where are the ninjas?"
She peered down through the observation window, watching Logan below with his class of frightened students. Flicking her communicator on, she gave a little shrug. "I don't see them either. Do you think we should start a club? It might grow into a cult, and we could both die wrapped in Christmas lights."
Logan didn't understand her sense of humour. "I want to see ninjas in two minutes," he growled, holding up two fingers to make his point.
"I want to see Bobby Drake chased by a pack of salivating hyaenas through the Mall of America," she answered back, opening the file of sims codes for his class. "Can you believe he promised to take me there for our anniversary? Another lie, I guess. I'm stupid, aren't I?" She switched her communicator off without waiting for an answer.
He quickly grumbled some instructions to his students. "And I'll be watching, so keep to the allotted time and agreed movements."
Heading back upstairs to the control room, he noticed a change in Rogue's moods. She had gone from crying to not caring in forty hours flat. Since the episode with the fire, he kept a closer eye on her, making sure she kept away from matches. He hoped to keep it up long enough to persuade her to sit down with Charles. Once her head was fixed, he could relax with Jean and beer.
"Hey, I still don't see any ninjas," Logan said, walking in the room and swinging Rogue's chair to face him. "They're an important part of the class, Rogue. No ninjas, no demonstrations, no students learning, no pass grades, no X-Men." He growled in her face. "Nobody's saved, no future, no Earth, and no more dimes for jukeboxes or eggs to toss at cars."
"How did you hear about the eggs?" she giggled, her smile fading when he glared at her. "Okay, okay, I'm taking this seriously now." Trying to find the instructions for the right X-Men simulation, she grimaced. "What's the code for ninjas again?"
"Why the hell did you pelt Pryde's car with eggs?" he asked her, thinking there was a screw loose in her head somewhere. "I thought you were smarter than that." He leaned over and typed the code. "You're going to send Summers to an early grave, kid. First you burn his favourite tree, then you reduce his boat to ashes, and then you pay a whole class of students to throw eggs at Pryde's car."
"I didn't pay them, Logan," she said, her nose wrinkling at the accusation. "Storm asked me to cover her art class. So, I gave her students the boxes of eggs, took them to the garage and told them to express themselves artistically on any car painted yellow. It was an art exercise that I turned into a test and they really enjoyed it." She spotted his scowl. "It's not my fault the subject was primary colours and art installations. If that class graduated tomorrow, they would be experts in the Life and Art of Rogue: Queen of the Heartbroken and Friend of the Eggs."
Logan stared at her. He was sure one of the other personalities had reared inside her head again. She bumped into a college student at the mall once and accidentally drained some energy from her. "What was her name?" he muttered to himself.
"Gloria!" Rogue answered automatically. "I liked her. She's bubbly, loves art and thinks your classes are boring."
"Shut her down and keep her quiet," he growled. "We had enough trouble when she told you to walk that class into Summer's bedroom at 4am to study still life."
"That turned into an impromptu portrait painting competition of a sleeping Scott Summers as the sun rose," she said proudly, as she sprung to her feet and sounded just like Gloria. "There were some incredibly gifted painters that day and I would have been very proud to showcase their talents at my newly opened art gallery."
Logan sighed; he'd lost her to the voices again. "You ready to come back to me, kid? Hey, kid?!" He shook her roughly by the shoulders and snapped her out of her daydream. Noticing the look of nervousness on her face that only belonged to Rogue, he dumped her gently into the chair. "That's better. Now, where are these ninjas?"
She blinked slowly and pointed with her gloved hand to the control panel, her finger hovering over an encased button. "I'm sorry, Logan," she said softly, feeling the blush sweep across her face. When she noticed he kept staring at her, she fidgeted again. "I'm fine, I promise. I'm just a little tired."
He nodded, flipped open the dome, and pressed the button. A ninja appeared in the room below. With another sigh, he looked down at Rogue. "Look kid –"
"I'm fine," she muttered, turning the chair to face the control panel, and busying herself with freeing the instruction manual from a sea of spilled paperclips.
"Yeah, sure you are," he snorted, and returned to his class.
A quiet Rogue almost rolled her eyes and counted the paperclips as she flicked them into their box. Her fragile focus turned to the wheels on the bottom of her chair and she agreed with Gloria, Logan really didn't have any artistic flair. Lost in her thoughts, she failed to hear the door open behind her or the footsteps creeping closer. Yes, that's right! She agreed with Gloria again. Broken hearts always make better paintings.
Suddenly, a gloved hand swept across her mouth and the force of the grip kept her trapped in the chair with the paperclips spilling to the floor.
"I just want to talk," Bobby said in a slight panic, managing to lock the door and keep her quiet and still. He almost jumped ten feet in the air when he heard Logan's voice, but soon realised it bled from the speaker. "He can't hear us, can he?"
Rogue's eyes narrowed. She tried to yell, but he smothered her words and pleaded for her to listen to him.
"No, no, you don't understand. This wasn't Kitty's idea, okay? I talked to John earlier, and he reminded me of confession. You know, like at church. He's right, Rogue. In the past, it always made me feel better because confession is a great American, uh, I'm really making a mess of this, aren't I?" he rambled, searching for the right words. "I know what happened hurt your feelings, but do you think you can tell everybody our breakup was amicable? Kitty's really worried people will find out what happened and I'm worried about her. I mean, I'm worried about you too, Rogue. I'm worried about you both."
Bobby opened his mouth to dig himself a deeper hole, but Rogue had heard enough. She chomped her teeth down on his hand and he yelped, letting her go. When she jumped up, he backed away from her. "It was an accident, Rogue. Me and Kitty are just friends. I didn't plan to do it!" He reached for the door, watching the tears stream down her face. "I slipped, okay? I fell on the bed and that's all that happened. Okay, we planned it! I thought about breaking up with you last week, but you were happy, and I didn't want to hurt your feelings."
The voices in her head faded for a moment, and Rogue gazed at him. "You didn't want to hurt me?" she whispered.
Bobby shook his head and reached for her hand. "We're still friends, aren't we? You can tell Logan we're friends, right? And then I can keep my place on the team. Nobody will trust me if they think I broke your heart, Rogue."
Rogue snatched her hand away from his grasp and collected the voices in her head. "We were never friends, Bobby Drake!" she snapped and launched herself at him.
An oblivious Logan cut down a ninja to size with his claws. The acoustics were loud enough to knock his senses into space as his claws shed simulation blood. "That's how you deal with the enemy," he told his students. "Questions?"
A timid girl who could see ten seconds in the future slowly raised her hand in the air. "What do we do when the enemy comes back to life and brings his friends to attack us too?"
Logan turned around. The corpse of the ninja multiplied, and before he knew it, they were surrounded. Thrown against the wall, his class was pinned to the ground. "Rogue, turn the settings down before you get us killed!" he yelled. He tried to ease himself up through the bodies, the voices of the ninjas complaining about the impoliteness of the hairy American man. "I'm Canadian!" he roared, the room suddenly emptying when the sim's hazard trip was triggered. He climbed to his feet with a grunt, looking at the pale and terrified-looking kids. "Everybody okay?" Receiving nods in response, he wondered why he could smell smoke.
The timid girl raised her hand again. "What would happen to us if the Danger Room controls exploded because of an ice storm?" she asked curiously.
After repeatedly trying to stop her tears by making promises he knew he couldn't keep, Bobby dodged another attack. This wouldn't look good to the rest of the X-Men. They all saw Rogue as fragile. She would blame him; everybody would find out about him sleeping with Kitty. He panicked and thought of a plan that made him hate himself. He had to do it though, he'd attack her, and blame her for this whole mess.
Rogue thumped Bobby in the face and he shot a stream of ice at her. She skidded and fell awkwardly against the chair. "You lied to me, Bobby!"
He held his hand out, not to help her, but to freeze her if necessary. He knew this would probably lead to a probation, but if she reported him, he would lose his X-Men suit. "I went to Kitty for comfort because you're crazy, Rogue. You're crazy. Even Logan's sick of dealing with you. Can't you see that look on his face when he sees you in the halls? He feels sorry for you, Rogue. We all feel sorry for you, you're a burden and a drain on the whole team."
Tears flowed down her pale face, and she listened to every cruel word that left Bobby's lips. Every letter cut deeper into her soul until the last taunt sent her scooting to the corner on her butt. She wanted to hide from the world and covered her face with her hands.
Scott reached the locked door first and discovered Forge had failed to fix the fault with the security box. The door would never unlock from the outside without help from the occupants of the room. "Open up now," he ordered, knocking impatiently on the door.
Bobby grew desperate when he heard Scott's demands to unlock the door. The shame he felt when he watched Rogue sobbing in the corner made him sick to his stomach, but then he remembered his pride when he first wore his first X-Men suit. He couldn't lose that; he wouldn't let her tears win. With a sudden shout all for Scott's benefit, he kicked the chair. "Scott, help me! Rogue's lost it and I can't stop her!"
With a run at the fortified door, Scott smashed his shoulder against the thick plate of steel and cursed loudly. "I think I just broke something," he complained with a wince that turned to a frown when Logan arrived.
Logan shoved him out of the way and used his claw to yank the security box panel off the wall. He ripped several wires out and tripped a hidden safety feature deep inside the wall cavity. The door swung open with a soft click.
Moments before, Bobby had dropped to the floor beside Rogue. Shaking her by the front of the shirt, he triggered the thoughts in her mind to reshuffle ,and she beat him with her bunched fists. Logan burst into the room and hauled her off the cowering Bobby.
Rogue in her torn shirt bucked, fought, and kicked like a wildcat. Logan dragged her halfway down the corridor and almost pinned her to the wall to calm her. She escaped from his grip when he accidentally brushed against her bare arm. He stumbled and almost fell, then grabbed hold of her covered wrist, pulled her back and continued to hold her. "Kid, calm down," he growled, almost blacking out when her elbow collided with his jaw and his powers were drained again.
Jean waited at the end of the corridor. She saw Logan glance her way when he almost collapsed the second time, but he gained ground and soon pinned Rogue to the floor. Concerned either Logan and Rogue would be further harmed, she placed her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes.
Logan frowned when he realised Rogue was unconscious. He looked over at Jean and grumbled until he growled, his angry words dying on his lips. His nostrils flared, and he heard a familiar chuckle making its way closer to his spot on the ground. He hauled Rogue into his arms and staggered to his unsteady feet, his healing factor on the sluggish side.
"You're slow on your feet there, Jimmy. That metal on your bones turned to rust?" Victor chuckled, coming into view with a dangerous smirk.
