It was a thirty-minute bus ride to her bike, which she'd hidden a couple of blocks away from where she'd first made contact with Guess the day before. It was another half-hour before she arrived back at base, only to find an irate Raven waiting at the door for her, literally foaming at the mouth.
“So this is how you
reward my patience, is it?!” Mystique screamed at her as soon as she'd walked
in through the door. “By turning up now of
all times?!”
Rogue glanced at
her watch, which read eleven thirty.
Okay, so she'd spent an inordinately long amount of time hanging around
the safe house, but she had said
she'd return in the morning and technically it was still the morning…
“Ah said Ah'd be
back in the mornin',” she replied calmly. “And it's still the mornin',
Mystique. So cut me some slack,
okay? Ah ain't in the mood.”
She walked into the
kitchen, Raven hot on her heels, fuming with rage.
“Mood? Don't talk to me about what fucking mood
you're in, Rogue, because I've been worried sick about you the past eighteen
hours, and frankly your call last night was fucking inadequate! Why did you turn your cell phone off
again?! Anything could've happened to
you and I wouldn't have been able to call!”
“If anythin' had
happened t' me, you wouldn't have been able to get through anyway,” Rogue noted
dryly, opening the fridge and grabbing some juice.
“At least if you
hadn't answered I would've known you were in trouble,” Mystique reasoned in
irritation. Rogue ignored the statement,
poured out the juice and went for some cereal.
Raven seemed to realise that her ranting wouldn't get anywhere, so she
sighed, pulled up a chair and sat at the dinner table, saying in a taut tone of
voice: “All right. We'll come back to
your blatant display of idiocy later. Now why don't you tell me exactly what
happened with that little bastard Guess yesterday?”
Rogue sat down
opposite Raven and ploughed straight into her story, somehow managing to shovel
down her breakfast in the meantime.
Raven made several interruptions here and there, questioning Rogue as to
exactly what happened - of course, Rogue found it challenging to remain
coherent, seeing as she was trying to keep any mention of Remy out of the
anecdote. But she'd had the entire
morning to come up with a plausible tale, and by the time she'd finished it,
Mystique seemed reasonably convinced.
“This presents us
with all sorts of problems, of course,” Raven noted sourly. “Trask knows there
was a concerted effort to break into the Trask Technologies database that night,
and that a considerable amount of planning went into it. He'll be on the look-out for a girl with a
white-streak in her hair as well,” she added, staring at Rogue's skunk stripe
with a certain amount of distaste.
“Don't worry,”
Rogue muttered. “Ah'm on it.”
“And I suppose
we're going to have to take some precautionary measures and leave this place,”
Mystique added peevishly, ignoring Rogue's comment. “Fortunately Forge and I
have considered such an eventuality and we've already got a place lined up. I want us out of here by tomorrow morning,
Rogue. If there's anything you need, I
suggest you have it packed by tonight, am I clear?”
Rogue said nothing,
merely giving a half-hearted nod by way of reply. In truth there was nothing she owned that was
particularly invaluable to her, apart from the butterfly pendant. All that was important was her equipment, and
the few items of clothing she possessed - all other items she owned had been
jettisoned when her previous life had ended, and so she was not unduly
concerned about Mystique's desire to vacate.
“Still, you've
managed to recover some useful information,” Mystique was continuing
thoughtfully. “We now know that Trask has already gone to great lengths to
discover what really happened with Rifkind that night, and that he'll obviously
be stepping up his efforts to uncover the whole truth. He also suspects a shapeshifter was
involved.” Her smile was twisted. “He's not stupid, I'll give him that.”
“He's also
potentially linked me to the X-Men,” Rogue pointed out in a murmur, dipping her
spoon into her cereal and suddenly deciding she couldn't stomach anymore.
“Hmm.” Raven
propped her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers together. “Things are
getting interesting. But I wouldn't have
it any other way. We'll just have to
play things cautiously from now on, Rogue.
Trask knows we're out there - at least we know he's actively looking for
us now. It does give us something of a head start. This couldn't have come at a better time,
really. Irene's pinpointed a series of
very interesting visions in her diaries that may yet turn the tide against
Trask and the Sentinels… We just have to play this right…”
Rogue grunted,
thinking on what Remy had said about Irene's predictions the night before. What if it was true and Irene's visions of
the future were nothing more than ghosts that could never be chased down? What
if they were all fighting a hopeless fight?
“Which leaves the
question of what you were doing last night,” Mystique broke in archly, her eyes
narrowed. “Just what were you doing that was so important?”
“Ah told you last
night,” Rogue replied irritably, getting up to shove her bowl and glass into
the already over-filled sink. “Ah was takin' care of business.”
“Business that kept
you up all night long?” Raven's tone was disbelieving.
“Look, if yah so
bothered about it, why don't you ask Irene what Ah was doin'?” Rogue growled
uncharitably.
“You know Irene's
power doesn't work like that.”
“Yeah, but she
coulda seen what Ah was doin' ten years ago… hell, she might even have written
about it in her Diaries!” Rogue retorted sarcastically. “Why don't you go have
a look?”
“Rouge, I will not
hear you speaking in such a disrespectful tone about your foster-mother,”
Raven's voice wavered with anger. “She is our one hope in this venture -
without her everything falls apart at the seams!”
For a moment, Rogue
would have answered back sharply - but then thought better of it.
“Sorry,” she
apologised instead, though grudgingly.
There was an awkward quiet, during which she decided to wash up the
dishes - all the while she could feel Raven's eyes, cold and accusing on her
back.
“Are you seeing
someone, Rogue?” she suddenly asked out of the blue. Rogue stared at the dishes, her heart beating
fast as she scrubbed them even harder.
“No,” she replied
firmly.
“No? Why else would you be spending whole nights
away from headquarters, supposedly sorting out mysterious 'business'?”
“If Ah was seein'
someone, dontcha think Ah'd be seein' him on a regular basis, rather than once
every year or so?” she sniped roughly.
“I don't know,”
Raven's tone was shrewd. “Times like these don't always allow for stable
relationships…”
“Ah'm not seein'
anyone,” Rogue returned in a dead tone. “And what the fuck would it matter if Ah
was anyhow?”
“It may not matter
at all. Or it may matter a very great
deal. It would depend on who he was,
what he did, what he was committed to… How much you cared for him…”
Rogue dropped the
dishes back into the sink and spun round, her expression glacial.
“So that's it,
isn’t it! Yah want me to be committed to
one thing - the mission! The fuckin' cause - your fuckin' cause! Ain't
that right?!”
“Are you committed to it Rogue?” Raven
asked, her eyes watchful as an insect's.
“Ah… yes.
You know Ah am! But that doesn't mean Ah don't have feelin's
outside of mah job! Ah ain't your
puppet, Mystique, or Irene's! Ah'm still
a fuckin' human bein', goddammit! Do you
even notice?!”
Raven's countenance
was stoical.
“I have noticed,”
she retorted calmly. “And I am very much aware of the sacrifices you've had to
make for the cause. We have all made sacrifices, Rogue. And when our fight is over, we shall bear
those sacrifices with pride.”
“And bein' with
someone, is that somethin' we should be ashamed of?!” Rogue yelled back, her
temper flaring white-hot. “Aren't emotions somethin' t' bear with pride as
well, now that people are too tired and scared and screwed up t' feel them
anymore?!”
Raven was
unruffled.
“Are you seeing
someone?” she echoed softly.
“Even if Ah was, Ah
wouldn't tell you!” Rogue screeched, storming out of the kitchen and slamming
the door behind her.
She lay face-down
on her bed, unable to cry - she was so used to holding back tears that it was
as though she couldn't shed them anymore.
Underneath her shirt, the butterfly pendant was pressing into her
breast; she could feel its imprint on her heart, marking her flesh, making her
chest throb with pain; but she wanted to feel the pain, she wanted something
cruel and vicious to hold onto, to make her feel alive, to keep her feeling
angry and hurt and abandoned. She was
furious - furious at Mystique, at the Brotherhood, at Remy, at herself. No one could help her, no one could
understand her, no one could save her, not even from herself. She was alone, and it hurt. She'd been alone all her life, even when
she'd been in the X-Men, and she was sick and tired of it, she wanted out.
She didn't even
stir when she heard the door to her room open and close again; she didn't want
to see Raven, didn't want to hear her stupid platitudes ever again…
“Are you going to
see him again?”
It was Irene's
voice not Raven's - soft, placid as ever, asking the question as if she already
knew the answer. Rogue remained where
she was and took care not to show her surprise.
“Ah don't know what
you're talk--”
“It's a dangerous
game you're playing, Rogue,” Irene interrupted shortly. “And you both know it,
don't you.”
It was a statement,
not a question. Something hard had
formed in the pit of Rogue's stomach, a leaden weight. Slowly she turned her head to see Irene
standing, small and innocuous, in the doorway.
“You've seen us,”
she whispered. Irene half-smiled and
seemed to look off over Rogue's shoulder into an imaginary distance.
“It's strange,” she
observed, her voice airy and conversational, “within this web there are many,
many strands of the future open to us, a plethora of possibilities… There are
so many conceivable outcomes for any one single event that the likelihood of
even one small, random thing being the same in more than one strand of time is
nothing short of impossible. And yet,”
she added lightly, “in a great many of these threads, the two of you are a
constant.” She paused, her unseeing eyes falling back onto Rogue's face. “Of
course, I will not deny that there are several futures where the two of you as
a couple are absent, or negligible… But on the whole, these futures are few and
far between. It's almost as if Fate had
chosen the two of you to serve a certain purpose… And I find that very
interesting, Rogue. Do you know how very
few people are bonded in this way?”
There was something
in Irene's words that sent shivers of foreboding up Rogue's spine. Slowly, she sat up, shook her head. Irene merely smiled serenely, continued.
“There are Scott
Summers and Jean Grey - in every future I looked upon, they were bonded. Then there are Charles Xavier and Erik
Lensherr. And Raven and myself, of
course. And then there are you and
him. Sometimes.”
“Have you seen us?”
Rogue questioned in a whisper, unable to hide the eagerness from her voice.
“Are we there?”
“Your future is
uncertain,” Irene frowned slightly. “I've tried to read it, but I can glean
only very little. Which leads me to
believe that your paths may splinter off into many different and unpredictable
directions… That is why I say it is a dangerous game you play, my child. Are you even certain this man can be
trusted?”
Rogue
hesitated. She couldn't honestly answer
yes. Because she barely knew him,
because in everything except her heart he was a stranger. And yet she did trust him. She trusted him more than any of the
Brotherhood, more than Raven, more than Irene herself. And for the first time she understood why.
“Ah love him,” she
murmured. It was the first time she'd
admitted it to anyone, even herself; the revelation unfurled something obscure
and primitive inside her, a warmth, a secret, the most wonderful and beautiful
secret she'd ever known…
“Ah.” Irene's voice
was sombre, regretful. “Then I am afraid that the danger you may find yourself
in may be even more acute…”
“That's what Raven
thinks,” Rogue stated in a low voice. “That if Ah love anyone, Ah won't be able
to think straight anymore… That Ah'll jeopardise the mission…”
“But you would,
wouldn't you,” Irene answered reasonably. “Next to him, the mission doesn't
matter anymore, does it. You'd drop our
cause in a moment, if it was to be with him.” She paused and smiled, not even
waiting for Rogue's answer. “It is this that Raven fears, more than anything. Not that you will abandon our ethos, but that
you will abandon her. She loves you, Rogue.”
“Well she sure has
a funny way of showin' it,” Rogue muttered bitterly.
“Raven's displays
of affection are less than sophisticated,” Irene agreed. “As a recipient of it
myself, I too have discovered this the hard way.” Her smile was faint,
nostalgic. “But if you should ever wish to leave the Brotherhood, Rogue, we
would not stop you. Not even Raven
would, though she may be most vocal in her objection. We have seen what you have suffered, and all
most willingly. Even Raven would not
begrudge you happiness.”
Rogue stared down
at her hands, followed the pattern of the lines on her palm with her eyes. After a while she spoke, her voice weary.
“Even if Ah turned away
from the Brotherhood, there wouldn't be anywhere for me t' go.” She looked
away, swallowing hard. “Remy and Ah don't have a relationship. It's just a fling. There's nowhere he
could take me, nothin' he could give me, no one he could make me. Ah don't even know what he does when we're
apart. Ah don't know where he lives, or
who he works for, or what he dreams for once all this is over. Ah don't even know whether he loves me
back. Ah don't suppose Ah'll ever know.”
It felt good, in a
way - talking to someone about it in such clear, clinical terms; even if it was
only to Irene, who never seemed to speak or think in anything but riddles. It was as if the torrid and passionate affair
had some basis in reason and logic, as if something tangible and workable could
be made out of the turmoil.
“Does Mystique…
does she know?” Rogue asked suddenly.
Irene closed her eyes briefly, took a deep sigh.
“Raven suspects
many things, but knows very little.” She opened her eyes and Rogue saw, to her
surprise, that there was real pain in them. “I try to keep it that way - as far
as I can anyhow. There was a time I
confided everything I knew to her - not just certainties, you understand, but a
myriad of possibilities; a dozen different permutations of the same future
event. At first it gave us both a sense
of purpose, to work towards that which we found most beneficial, beneficial to
us, and to the mutant race as a whole.
But…” and her mouth trembled, ever so slightly, “that path leads to
despair and often madness, Rogue. Do not
think I do not see it. In many ways, it
is I who is responsible for Raven's…instability.” She paused, her sightless
eyes falling once more on the girl who sat before her. “Over time, the anguish
of such a responsibility has forced me to withhold more from her than I may
have done in the past. It is my penance,
Rogue. To keep secrets from the one I
love most, in order to preserve that which makes her human.” She paused and
smiled a pale smile. “So now you see you are not the only one who sacrifices
much for love.”
Something in the
statement left a sour taste in Rogue's mouth.
Whether it was guilt, or empathy, or bitterness she could not tell. She swallowed the thickness in her throat and
stared down at her hands once more.
“Ah won't stop
seein' him,” she decided at last. “Not even if you or Raven ordered me to, Ah
wouldn't.”
“I don't expect you
would,” Irene agreed. “But understand this, Rogue - the two of you walk an
uncertain path, and consequently a dangerous one. Guard yourself, my child, both from him, and
those around you - even the Brotherhood.”
“All paths are
potentially dangerous, Irenie,” Rogue murmured pointedly. “At least to those
who can't see them. You just have to be
willin' to take a risk. And Remy LeBeau
is a risk Ah'm willin' to take.”
Irene smiled
faintly and turned to the door.
“You are wiser than
you know, Rogue,” she observed in a low voice. “And that is a gift you will be
in sore need of. Cherish it, Rogue. At least for the benefit of a jaded old woman
such as myself.”
She placed her hand
on the door handle, ready to go; but Rogue stopped her, before she could leave.
“Irene… You won't
tell Mystique, will you?”
She did not look
back.
“Child, visions of
the future are one thing; a dear daughter's secrets are quite another. Raven shall never hear a word of this from me, of that you may be assured.” She
pressed down on the door handle with a wizened hand, and with a last 'goodbye,
Rogue', she left.
Rogue slumped back
onto the bed and stared at the door, her expression thoughtful. Irene may have begged to differ, but for the
first time in her life, her path was very clear to her. It was more powerful than Xavier's dreams,
than vengeance for the dead, than a crusade for justice.
She loved someone,
she had someone to live for; it didn’t matter if she never saw him again, as
long as he was out there her life had purpose, and she would never be afraid of
walking this path again.
* * * * *
Go to Chapter
16 : Go to Chapter 18