Apparently I'm still writing this, because my chest still hurts from this episode, and I still have trauma to unpack from the horrifying beauty of Gambit's death…
I honestly am not loving Carol, but it is what it is, now that I've committed to it. Just wish I would have realized when Rogue refused to come out of her mind that I would have NO ONE left to write for/with that I actually know and have a good grasp over. But she'll still make appearances. Can't loose my favorite Cajun AND Southern Spitfire in the same go 'round.
If anyone is reading this, cares a bit about the plot concept, and has suggestions for a "strike team", what should/could happen, etc, let me know. Because this story has decided to take up residence in my brain, however temporarily, and I'd like to have SOMETHING of a plan in case it cozies in to stay a while.
This chapter, or fanfic, isn't pretty, or even proofread. It's just me trying to dump my ideas as some form of cheap, self-help therapy after that episode…
~X~X~X~X~X~
"Shattered" Part 2
By Wiccamage
~X~X~X~X~X~
Cyclops stared from Rogue/Carol to Jean, and back again as Wolverine growled, his arm still slung over Kurt's shoulders for support. "Are you crazy, Red? Don't you remember what happened last time she got out?"
"I didn't have a choice, Wolverine," Jean snipped right back. "Rogue has buried herself so deep in her own mind, I wouldn't have gotten her out in time to save her. And she doesn't WANT to be saved. She's livid that we didn't just let her die with Gambit." A single tear escaped Jean's eyes and she wiped it away as 'Rogue,' with her strange blue eyes, sat on the concrete slab, watching the X-Men warily. "But Carol is here, and willing, to take over for a while. It's the best we can do right now."
Carol, looking to the rest of the world like Rogue, nodded slowly, raising one eyebrow as she took in the different faces. Some she knew, others she'd only seen from the deep recess of Rogue's mind, but could not put names to them.
Beast cleared his throat, stepping closer to Carol/Rogue. His blue face was harrowed with shock and grief, compounding on itself ever since they'd first seen the news just a few hours prior. "Ahem, uh, Carol - is it? I'm Henry McCoy. Is it alright if I ask you a few questions regarding your current state of health?"
Carol/Rogue narrowed her eyes, but nodded slowly. "I suppose. I'm confused, though." She looked at the telepath, her strength returning despite the activated collar. "I know that you … let me out… because Rogue was dying. That there was a battle. But, I'm not sure what makes you think I'm just going to go BACK, willingly, once this is over."
"We can always have Jean trap you back in there right now'," Scott snarled. He had placed the pile of blankets on the ground and stood with his arms folded, his expression hard and haunted.
"Good luck with that," Carol scoffed, tossing unfamiliar chestnut and white waves over her shoulder. "All that will get you is a catatonic body. And from the sounds of things, you need all the extra muscle you can get right now."
Wolverine growled, standing once again on his own as he folded his arms. He was still clad in just his boxers, however, and the state of undress ruined his attempt at intimidation
"Carol," Jean tried again. "You have to understand, it's Rogue's body. Her mind. Her life."
"Because she STOLE MINE!" Carol threw the coat and blanket from her shoulders and stood at Rogue's full height, seemingly unaffected by her near nudity. The men on the team, however, quickly turned their attention away, uncomfortable with the way Carol was clearly flaunting Rogue's body. Only Wolverine didn't look away, expression unreadable.
Ms. Marvel rolled her eyes, but still grabbed the discarded coat and slid it over her arms, wrapping the excess around her narrow waist. The gesture, although meaningless to Carol herself, sent a pang of loss and torment through a deep recess in her mind, and the woman swallowed hard, taking a moment to study the garment.
"This -" she stopped, brows furrowed. "This was his, wasn't it? What was his name? Gambit?"
The room was silent, the other five still processing the loss of their teammate, unable to even speak his name.
Finally, Wolverine's voice, soft and hollow, replied. "Yeah, Ace, it was. Take care of it, will ya? He - he died savin' a lot of lives."
Carol nodded pensively, eyes focused purely on the coat. Memories of it being draped over her shoulders, at their first meeting… No. Not THEIR first meeting. Hers - Rogue's. It was a memory from when Rogue had first met Gambit, on the nearby Muir Island, over a decade ago, when the Shadow King had taken over. Right after she'd left the Savage Lands, and Magneto..
Rogue had been so young back then, barely 16… And though 10 years had passed, and the X-Man was older, and had changed in many ways, in some ways Rogue was still that scared teenager.
Shaking her head, Carol finally looked up, her gaze softened. "She won't come back. Not anytime soon. She's… she's not okay. I don't know what all went down, what she saw, but she's very, very broken right now."
Tears were in nearly everyone's eyes as they absorbed Carol's words. The former hero took a deep breath and folded her arms, gaze steady as she looked again to Jean. "Maybe we can work something out. You can, I don't know, try to talk to her, see if you can 'fix' her or whatever. If she wants to take over her body again, well… Maybe… Maybe we can share or something."
Cyclops snorted, his arms folded as he scowled at the figure that had once been his teammate and friend. "What, like joint custody?"
Carol shrugged, grinning slightly. "Something like that. I know you don't like it, but right now, I'm all you've got. And it sounds like there are people still trapped and in trouble out there. I can help. Rogue can't. So let me help." Hands on her hips, she stood poised and ready to take on the challenge that lay outside the crumbling walls.
With a sigh, Cyclops looked to his teammates, who all nodded in agreement. "You're with the X-Men, though, understood? Rogue - she's being hailed as a hero, and right now, she's become some kind of symbol of hope. She's the only …" His voice caught, and he swallowed down the emotion lacing his words. "She's the only survivor who stood against that thing. It - it's kind of a big deal to those who made it, I guess. People have been asking about her, if she's okay. I think - I think it would help the masses cope better if you just … pretended … to be her - at least for a while." Although his words were certain, his voice wavered under the weight of personal loss. "Is that something you can do?"
Carol thought about it a moment, arms crossed as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Pretend to be the woman who had taken away her life? Pretend Rogue was a hero, and not the villain she had become in Carol's own story? Could she do such a thing?
The former blonde, whose hair now identified her to the rest of the world as the X-Man, Rogue, pulled the wild locks out of her face, tucking them behind her ears as she looked out of the 'window' in the room that had been unintentionally created by some kind of blast. Outside, buildings had been reduced to rubble, people were milling about, crying, clutching each other, or digging through the debris in a desperate attempt to find more survivors, or the bodies of their loved ones.
Carol set her jaw, tears pricking her own eyes from the heaviness of the world she had come back to, and nodded solemnly. "For now, I'll do what I need to. I'm not going to lie to people about who I am, but I won't … correct them, necessarily. Unless they're supposed to be friends, or something, right?" She shrugged lightly, looking around at the forlorn and untrusting faces. "Her friends would know - should know. But yes, I can "be" her for a while, at least symbolically. I make no promises after we deal with this mess, though. I won't pretend forever, I'm not going to lie, and I'm not going back. Deal?" She held out her bare hand to Cyclops, who was wearing his uniform and gloves, and he took it.
"Agreed," he promised, then looked at Nightcrawler. "Kurt?"
The blue furred acrobat stepped forward, using the key to deactivate and remove the suppression collar. He smiled lightly at Rogue - Carol - but it did not reach his eyes.
Once the collar had been removed, Carol rolled her head around on her neck, flexing and stretching her arms and fingers to make tight fists, feeling her super strength return. She flew upward, hovering a few feet off the ground, just because she could.
"Boy does it feel good to fly again," she stated simply, but her voice contained a levity that was felt only by her. Despite the heaviness in the room, she grinned widely before touching back down.
"Now all I need are some new clothes," she stated, a bit less jovially, considering the emotional toll her very presence meant to everyone else in the room.
Kurt stepped forward, meeting her blue eyes for a mere moment before looking away, crestfallen. "I - I will retrieve some for you Ro - vermissen (miss). Excuse me." The furry blue mutant did not teleport, however, but walked out of the room so he could safely exit the building without disturbing any other patients within.
"So," Carol continued, folding her arms and turning to face the others. "What's the situation? Can someone fill me in?"
Before anyone could speak, a young woman had dashed through the wall, rocketing toward 'Rogue' and catching everyone off guard. "Oh thank goodness you're okay!" a shrill voice echoed in the decaying room and Carol found herself hugging a small brunette.
"Um, hi," the former Avenger chuckled lightly, amused by the exchange. "Have we met?" She was already preparing to play into the "Rogue fanclub" bit, however vile it felt.
The girl disentangled herself from 'Rogue's' arms and looked up at her in shock. "Ohmygosh!" the thin young woman exclaimed. Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was disheveled and falling out of the hair tie. Her face was streaked with dirt, and her uniform was torn in several places with a handful of cuts adorning otherwise tanned and flawless skin. "Kurt told me you were awake, but he didn't mention amnesia! It's me, Kitty!"
Cyclops, Beast, and Jean looked surprised, yet pleased, while Wolverine grinned from ear to ear. "Hey there, Half-Pint. Good to see you, kid."
The young woman squealed happily and raced through the makeshift bed slab to hug her favorite grumpy X-Man. "Wolvie! Oh my gosh, it's been like, ten freaking years!" Her tone was light and easy, but once the older man's arms were around her, she leaned into the embrace, hugging him like a lifeline. "Oh god, Logan…"
"I know, kid, I know." The somber melancholy surrounded the room once more, before another visitor provided a temporary distraction. In the midst of the heavy moment, another man walked through the door, his large stature nearly encompassing the entire frame, and he had to duck down to enter the quickly crowding room.
"Ah, there you are, Katya!" Piotr Rasputin grinned warily as he took in the familiar faces. "Rogue! Thank heaven you are well again, my friend!" Without warning, the massive man had grabbed Carol up in a hug and lifted her off her feet.
"Friendly bunch you've got here," Carol mused, grinning slightly as she patted the man's bare arm in a sort of reciprocation. "Would you mind putting me down, big guy? I'm more accustomed to doing the lifting, myself."
"Of course, my friend!" Peter blushed, setting the woman back on her feet. "My apologies. I was just so glad to see you awake and…" his face fell suddenly. "I am sorry about earlier, but you were not yourself."
"No kidding." An ironic chuckle escaped Carol's lips as Cyclops huffed and Wolverine snorted. Carol's smile morphed into a grimace as she gasped and held her head, though, an image of the hulking mutant flitting across her mind. A vision of large, gentle hands holding her down as she kicked and flailed and screamed, sobbing out for Remy, wailing and fighting until she once again succumbed to the darkness brought on by a needle full of sweet oblivion…
The same hands were on her now, gently holding her up by her bare forearms.
"Carol?" Jean asked quietly. "Are you alright?"
Both Kitty and Piotr looked back and forth between Jean and the woman they knew as Rogue, as the latter nodded.
"I'm fine. Just - just flashes. I think some of Rogue's memories are surfacing. They… they aren't exactly pleasant."
"You - you are not Rogue?" Colossus questioned, not realizing he was still holding the woman's bare wrists.
"Pete!" Kitty called, finally noticing the danger he was in. "Don't touch her skin! She'll absorb you!"
But the large man did not let go of the woman's hand, and instead held it up in wonder. "What does this mean? Who are you, if not Rogue? And how are you able to do this thing - to touch me - without harm?"
To this, no one had an answer.
~X~X~X~
"I - I can't believe it," Kitty moaned a while later from just outside the slightly less damaged building that housed the makeshift infirmary. "As if things weren't bad enough. After all this... Gambit… And now Rogue." Fresh tears pricked her eyes as she leaned into Colossus's embrace and he placed a kiss on her head. She, Piotr, Kurt, Jean, and Scott sat together, waiting for Hank, Logan, and Carol to finish their business inside.
Beast had insisted on checking over Rogue's body for any further wounds, as well as addressing her lack of absorption, and Wolverine had stayed behind as a guinea pig and guard. Friendly as he had once been with Ms. Marvel, he didn't exactly trust her not to fly off with Rogue's body and never return.
"But at least Rogue is ALIVE, Liebchen," Kurt reminded her, even though his face reflected similar melancholy. He was exhausted, his body aching from the frantic teleporting, forcing himself past his limits to save just one more. His body was bruised, something probably broken, by the blast he had taken while saving Rogue and Magneto. By all rights, he should be dead, too, and the thought further sobered him.
"If you can even call that living," Cyclops groused, his arms folded. "I - I can't just stand around here. I'm going to head down to Hammer's Bay. See if I can help Morph and the others look for more survivors." He ran a hand through his hair, his own face pinched and haggard.
Jean looked up at him, Scott's sorrow rolling off him in waves. First he had lost his son, and now the woman he had spent the last year - or longer - living with, loving, planning their life, now she was dead, too. They had yet to find Madelyn's body, but from the eyewitness accounts, many had been vaporized by the machine. There were probably thousands who would never be found. Whose families would never have that closure.
"I - I'll come with you," Jean announced slowly, uncertainly. Her rage from earlier today - or was that yesterday? Time no longer held meaning. No longer moved in linear waves that made any sense. Either way, her rage was gone now. The hurt the small act had caused was nothing compared to the gaping hole of horror left in the wake of genocide and personal loss.
She stood, placing a tentative hand on Scott's arm, and he gave her a sad, tilted smile, nodding.
"I can teleport you down there," Kurt offered warily. But the X-Men could see the lines of exhaustion and haggardness in his furry face, and Cyclops shook his head. "No, you stay and rest, Kurt. We'll call if we need another extraction. There are a few vehicles up and running. We'll catch a ride down with… We'll catch a ride."
Cyclops didn't want to say it out loud. 'With the bodies.' The few working trucks that were able to traverse the destroyed city were being used to haul away the dead or dying. Bodies were being brought into the center of the city where a handful of mutants - those with powers less suited for recovery work - were photographing, tagging, sometimes identifying, the dead before allowing them to be hauled off again to the beach, or anywhere they could find a place for them.
There was a bulletin board, already erected near the epicenter - where Gambit had… where the MegaSentinel had been destroyed… and it was full of hundreds, THOUSANDS of pictures of the dead or missing. Those cataloging the dead, including one unfortunate soul who could produce a tangible photograph of anything he chose to 'snap' with his hands and eyes, had started their own such board, and visitors to it were frequent and many. With every new image added, every new body recovered, photographed, and cataloged, came a new wave of anguish for some other survivor, some other family.
It seemed endless, this suffering.
Everyone had their own way of dealing with it, mostly. Though some, like Rogue, were not coping well with the tragedy. The knowledge that Rogue, who he had always thought was made of tougher stuff than this, had retreated into her own mind and refused to help both saddened and angered him. Sure, she was close to Remy, had probably loved him, but it wasn't like…
Like him and Jean.
Swallowing hard, Scott covered Jean's hand on his arm with his own, giving her a grateful smile. He had been distant and closed off from her, but the loss of their teammate made him realize just what Rogue must be feeling - what HE would be feeling if he lost Jean, too.
The two were turning to leave when Beast came outside with a sluggish Wolverine draped over his shoulders. They were followed closely by Carol/Rogue, who had on a pair of black leggings and a black, sleeveless, high collared tank top. Her arms and hands were bare, unencumbered by the gloves that had long imprisoned Rogue's deadly skin.
"What happened?" Kitty stood quickly, grimacing slightly at the aches and pains that permeated her own body.
"Our friend here offered to play the lab rat for a few experiments with Rogue's - er, Carol's - control over her powers. It seems that while our Southern Belle cannot 'turn off' her absorption abilities, Carol can. In fact, they seem to be in a rather curious state of dormancy unless she actively attempts to use them. Furthermore, she can control just how much - and WHAT - she takes with every absorption."
Shock rang through the expressions of those present - those who had known Rogue for years and knew of her fierce desire for just such a breakthrough.
"Beast, that doesn't make any sense!" Cyclops snarled, running a hand through his hair. This was just another complication, another distraction, from what they needed to be doing.
"Actually, Scott," Jean spoke quietly, pensively, as she still held tight to his arm - a gesture that did not go unnoticed by Wolverine. "It makes perfect sense. It means that Rogue herself, something in her mind, is the only thing keeping her from the perfect control Carol seems to be exhibiting."
With a heavy sigh, Cyclops nodded, shuffling his feet anxiously. "That's great and all… Carol, but we're needed down by the Bay. Apparently that was the area hit the hardest and they need all the manpower they can get."
Nods of agreement were shared all around, and Kitty took Peter's hand as they stood together. "We'll all go. Now that I know Rogue… Sorry, CAROL is okay - sort of - I'm ready to get back out there, too."
Kurt stood as well, although somewhat wobbly on his feet, and held out his hand. "I can take everyone," he offered with a small, tired smile. Shadowcat and Colossus were already holding tight to his shoulder when Wolverine pushed off of Beast and took a step toward the blue furred teleporter.
"Not this time, 'Crawler," the gruff Canadian shook his head. "You look like you're about ready t' join some of those others in there." He nodded his head back toward the building that was already packed with the dead and severely injured. "'Sides, I got another assignment for ya."
With furrowed brows, Nightcrawler stared quizzically at the man. "Vhat might that be, Herr Logan?"
"Take me t' Gambit."
~X~
Little did anyone realize, as they parted ways and headed out, that the worst had yet to come, and the fight was only beginning.
~X~X~X~X~X~
PLEASE review. I think my husband is right and I'm addicted to reviews. They make me feel better in the wake of the tragedy that is Ep. 5.