X-Men: Evolution

Blood Magics

22. Searching for Answers

Once Rogue was able to leave Cerebro, she did so, together with Dragon. She was, if she was honest, still in some shock over everything that she'd been told… but, then again, she'd had her world turned upside- down before, and this wasn't nearly as bad as those experiences. This was more like tipped sideways. Life- changing revelation? Seemed like a regular Wednesday to her.

"I still don't understand." Dragon complained; she seemed to be trying to keep up with Rogue, her tiny legs moving at what could be called a trot. "Just because we bled on each other? Why would that cause all these problems? Other people were controlling my body! All because we bled on each other? That doesn't make any sense!"

Remembering the time she had lost control and had the psyches take control of her body, Rogue felt a surge of sympathy for the girl. It had been completely terrifying, and Rogue, at least, had had enough of a defense that a little part of her remained aware of what was happening, at least, and she had a wisp of understanding as to why at the time, given that she knew what her own power was. Dragon had no defense or idea what was going on; just blank spaces in her memory and realizations that she'd done something she shouldn't have during those spaces.

Rogue knew how terrifying that particular kind of experience was, too; it was what had happened to her when Mesmero had been taking control.

Still, she didn't have any further explanation for the girl.

"No, it doesn't." She agreed, slowing her steps down just a little so the girl could keep up with her more easily. "Unfortunately, I have found out in the last few years that when you're a mutant, sometimes things are going to happen that don't fully make sense, even to the experts. The X- gene that gives people powers has been discovered and even sequenced, but the best of the best who took a look at it can't determine exactly how it works- not how the same gene gives different people different powers, and not how it gives some people different appearances and others look perfectly nor- well, look like non- mutants. And still others have physical mutations that still make them look mostly normal. On one hand, we have you, Kurt, and Mr. McCoy, who all look very different. On another hand, we have Kitty, who has no outward sign at all. And then, there are people like me and Mrs. O, who have different coloured hair."

"And the man in the cell downstairs has strange eyes." Dragon added. "I saw them during that… that first strange thing that happened, when we saw what each other was seeing."

Rogue nodded. "There's him, too." She agreed, though her mind did go back to him. Gambit had been somewhat forgotten, at least by her, since her visit, with everything going on. But he had really helped them out by pointing out the surveillance drones. Someone would have noticed them at some point, of course, the X- Men weren't that ignorant; given that they had just started spying on mutants a few minutes before midnight on Friday, that meant Saturday had been their first "day on the job," so to speak. They would have been noticed before too long… but, Gambit had seen them first, and had warned her… a little late, but he had warned her. From what she could tell, he'd been waiting patiently in the containment cell since, too, not causing any trouble… but he had asked for one of his decks of cards back. For something to do… she could only imagine that it must be pretty boring in there. And, as he'd commented, it was a power- negating cell, engineered and built by professor Xavier and Hank after realizing such a room may be necessary after two of his students- Jean and herself- had lost control, meaning that the only thing he could do in there with a deck of cards was play with them.

It seemed fair to bring him one, after he'd lent his help twice- once with the drone warning and once at the café brawl, because that had been his explosive and not Tabitha's that had knocked her opponent off balance- and after he'd so far proven to be on good behavior, aside from his flirting.

After dinner, maybe. She'd bring it before she turned in for the night. She felt a little too unsettled from the conversation she'd just had to bring it to him just yet.

And right now, she was still talking to Dragon.

"My point is," she continued, "that sadly not everything is going to make sense, at least not easily. There are still studies going on to unwrap the secrets of the X- gene. And the professor intends to have someone start researching how mixing two different mutant's blood together reacts. You're right in saying that getting our blood in each other's open cuts somehow causing our minds to start merging with each other really doesn't make sense, but maybe they'll find out something that will make some sense out of it someday. Or, maybe they won't. Unfortunately, being a mutant means that we have to get used to living our lives with a lot more uncertainty in it than any regular people have. There's a lot that doesn't make sense, and while it's certainly okay to want and to look for answers, you also have to accept that sometimes, there just aren't any that can be found."

"But don't all questions have to have answers? Something has to cause everything, right?"

"Not always, Dragon. Not always. But you're right that most questions have answers somewhere. And maybe there are answers that just can't be found until the right method to look for them exists. Lots of things weren't discovered until people found a different way to look at them. But some things, no matter how long people have searched for answers, just don't have any."

"Like what?" The girl wondered, tipping her head back to look up at Rogue.

Rogue was quiet for a moment, trying to pick out a good example, before realizing a good one.

"Like the question of how people like Trask can be so horrible to people like you and I."

Dragon froze, trembling a little at the mention of his name. Rogue felt fear ripple down from the presence of the girl she could still feel in her mind, stronger than any of the psyches behind their barriers.

Rogue stopped and turned back to her. "Sorry, I don't mean to scare you. But that is a question that will never have an answer. Anyone who's horrible like that… there's no answer for why."

"You're right." The girl hung her head.

For a moment, they stood in the hallway without moving, Dragon looking at the floor while Rogue looked at her. Figuring she'd better see if she could cheer the girl up, Rogue bent down and picked her up.

"Want me to read you a couple more chapters of that book from yesterday before dinner?"

It seemed to do the trick. She brightened. "Ooh, yeah! It seemed kind of strange but kind of fun!"

Rogue smiled. "Definitely some interesting fairy tales." She agreed, while making a mental note to check the Prince Caspian book before she read it to Dragon; she knew that it had dragons in it, even if the one that got the most description was a boy that had temporarily turned into one, but she wanted to prepare herself to… "edit" anything that might upset the girl ahead of time rather than run into a bad description and have to do it on the fly.

"Oh, oh, and I just remembered! From what they were saying about what happened during my surgery when my wing was broken, it sounded like… without you, I would have died during the surgery. So that means you saved me, right? So that means I should say, "thank you!"" Dragon squirmed a little in her arms, some pride being what Rogue felt from her now.

Rogue felt her lips twitch. "You're welcome. Proud of yourself for finally remembering what the words were, are you?"

Dragon deflated a little, embarrassed now. "You can tell?"

"I can still feel you connected to me."

"Really? I don't feel anything. I never have."

"Well, like the professor said, that comes with practice. A strong emotion coming from the other person can make it easier, too."

"Should I practice trying to feel you?"

"Um… if you want to, I guess? Ah don't think it's really all that important, if you can feel me or not."

"But if you can feel me, I want to be able to do it, too! I'm gonna practice!"

"If you say so."

Kitty headed up to dinner when they bell rang only because Mr. McCoy insisted. She had been helping him work on the other fifteen drones that Mr. Logan had brought in to see if there was anything they could get off of them that they hadn't gotten from the first three. Neither of them were able to help Forge much where he worked with the various pieces of electronics that had been brought back with the adults who had gone to the abandoned lab; she had no idea what he was putting together or how he was getting anything off of what looked like completely- destroyed scraps to her. So she just… left him alone.

They hadn't really been finding much that they didn't already know. Given the thankfully relatively short time frame that they had been around, there wasn't a lot recorded on them; certainly, they had identified almost every student, which was worrying in itself, but most of the footage was going back and forth to school, and a little of the students playing outside, as well as, of course, the café brawl, which the footage of them managed to all start right in the middle of; there was no earlier footage than that, not even of them eating lunch at that café, or even Tanner holding Dragon by the tail.

In fact, somehow Dragon had managed to be the only one to not appear on the drone footage at all; in the café brawl footage of all fifteen drones she managed to remain hidden or blocked at each angle they'd seen. It was almost funny, given that it had to be all by sheer coincidence. If Kitty had been in a better mood, trying to see if she could spot a glimpse of her might have felt like a game.

None of it was what you might consider "incriminating." While Mayor Kelly had made sure to pass legislation to bar mutants from using powers in public, Professor Xavier had managed to interfere in it enough that it did not make powers illegal to use on private property- that remained at the discretion of the property owner- so the footage of games of mutant ball on the mansion property didn't give any reasons for any of them to be in trouble. Xavier had also managed to get it in the law that powers could be used in self- defense and defense of others in the case of emergencies- emergency being defined as either life- threatening or to prevent serious injury or property damage- and the footage from the café brawl supported their side; the powers being used clearly were being used in defense, at least for the X- Men. For the Acolytes, not so much, but Kitty wasn't concerned about them. So thankfully there was nothing on them that would truly present any problem, other than the fact that it was definitely logging each mutant and what their powers were, as well as anything that could potentially be a "weakness."

So the drones were worrying, still, but not actually a problem, not yet.

And they had nearly gone through them all, with only two remaining, which was why Mr. McCoy had insisted she leave when the dinner bell went off. After all, after dinner the younger mutants had a Danger Room session that the older mutants, including her, were to help run, just like every Wednesday. It would be a lot easier for Kitty if she ate before it… as long as she was careful not to eat too much. Everyone was aware of how careful they needed to be about that when they had an after- dinner session. The only one who could eat like he was hollow and then head out to train right afterwards without feeling sick was Kurt.

Thinking about him hurt. Where was he? Was he okay? What was being done to him? She felt like she was going crazy, but until they had some kind of lead on where he was, it wasn't like she could just go out and search on foot. Searching just their town inch by inch would take days, and he was probably further away than that, or Mr. Logan would have been able to track him by scent by now. It would have surfaced somewhere, even if it was just being carried by whoever it was that had taken him.

She shook her head miserably. If she'd gone into his room that night… would whatever it was have left them alone, or taken her too? Honestly, she didn't care at this point, either option would be better than the constant worry for her, but no… they'd been obeying the rules of not having others in their rooms overnight. The only time they'd broken that rule had been the night immediately after the "Tristan incident."

Joining the others at the table- Dragon, she noticed, was not present this time- she sat down with a sigh. Tonight's dinner, she noticed, had a couple of the sides that Kurt always tried to hog as much of as possible; foods he had particularly loved.

Another wave of heartache squeezed her chest.

She said nothing as the rest of the table chattered. She served herself as the dishes were passed around, but the food didn't taste like much to her. She forced herself to eat some anyway, and wondered, in a weak attempt to distract herself, what exactly Dragon was up to, anyway. Rogue hadn't brought her to the table this time, and Dragon certainly didn't seem inclined to join them on her own (Kitty felt pretty sure Tabitha could still be blamed for that), so she never knew what the girl did while they ate. She assumed she also ate, at the table in her room, but for all Kitty knew she could be crawling around on the rooftop.

No, scratch that; with her wing no longer working, she wouldn't be able to get up there. She could be crawling around the grounds, though.

As dinner came close to being finished, Kitty felt the same sense of trepidation and unhappiness that tended to fell over the end of every dinner when some of them had a Danger Room session after the end of it. Wednesdays it was always twice as bad, since both the younger students and the older students were participating on some level; on Tuesdays, only the younger students had to attend an after- dinner session, as it was run by the adults and not the older students.

Kitty noticed Professor Xavier glance at Mr. Logan, who nodded, and began to feel a worsening sense of trepidation herself; if the professor and Mr. Logan were about to announce something, and they'd waited until the end of dinner, she probably wasn't going to like it. The fact that it was on a day when everyone was going to a Danger Room session after dinner only increased that feeling; maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it had something to do with it.

Her hope would be that the session was canceled, but that was about as likely as Mayor Kelly announcing that mutants were good people and were free to use their powers in public as they wished.

Before either of them could say anything, however, they were interrupted; Mr. McCoy and Forge both burst into the dining room, a little out of breath, but eyes blazing.

"I got it!" Forge announced. "I was able to extract everything those computer parts had on them, and some of it might really be useful!"

A/N: Dragon and Rogue have wrapped up the last of their problem, thank goodness. By some impossible miracle Dragon wasn't seen in any of the drone footage (good thing she's been inside either the mansion or the X- Jet since the cafe brawl or that wouldn't be the case for sure), and there might be something useful on the bits of stuff taken from the old lab. Now, what might that reveal...