Xavier abruptly found himself standing in a garden. He was surprised at how easy the transition to Rogue’s mind had been, and he looked around cautiously. The scent of blooming flowers, grass, and underneath it all the peculiar smell of fresh spring growth assaulted his nose while he struggled to identify the individual sounds he was picking up. There was the slight rustle of wind through soft new leaves, the humming of insects in the grass. Despite the tranquility of his surroundings, Xavier was uneasy. It took him several minutes of intense observation to identify the problem. Compared to the dozens of mindscapes he had been in, this scene was too crisp, too controlled.
As soon as he formed the thought, a figure popped into existence in front of him. Xavier stumbled back a few steps in surprise.
“Was wondering what took you so long to figure it out,” Rogue, in a white sundress, chirped brightly.
“Figure what out, exactly?” Xavier asked.
She waved her hand vaguely at the garden. “That everything here is too perfect to be real. It isn’t, you know.”
“What do you mean it’s not real?” he asked, frowning as he looked around them again.
Rogue mimicked his expression, giving him the uncomfortable feeling that he was being mocked. “I didn’t expect you to be so slow, Professor.” She turned and walked away, disappearing behind a tall, full rose bush.
“Rogue, wait!” Xavier called, hurrying after her.
Her voice drifted back faintly, borne on a warm breeze that hadn’t been there a moment before. “I’m not Rogue.”
With the revelation came a confusing mixture of smells. The fresh scent of newly formed ice was laced with the more pervasive scents of scorched metal and burning wood, and another scent, one that was so cloying and sickeningly sweet that Xavier couldn’t identify it. As he jogged toward the bush behind which Rogue - Not Rogue, he reminded himself – had disappeared, he inhaled deeply several times, trying to figure out the last scent. It was somehow familiar, something he felt he should know even though he was positive he had never smelled it before. As he passed the rose bush, his elbow brushed against it and a viciously curved thorn dug through his suit jacket and sleeve, embedding itself in his skin. Looking down, Xavier saw that he was firmly caught and no matter how hard he tried to carefully free his elbow with his opposite hand, he couldn’t do it. Gritting his teeth in anticipation of the pain to come, he jerked his elbow forward. Oddly enough, he felt no pain, but more disturbingly, he actually heard his flesh tearing as he pulled free, and a new scent joined the others. This one was salty and metallic, bearing just a trace of the same sweetness he hadn’t been able to identify.
It’s my blood, he realized. I can smell my own blood here. Tearing his eyes away from the drops of wet redness seeping through his tattered sleeve, Xavier stepped around the bush.
The garden disappeared. He suddenly felt the yielding grittiness of sand beneath his feet and a wave of heat washed over him, bringing with it a concentrated burst of the sick-sweet smell. Xavier shielded his eyes from the overly bright sun and looked around him. The tumbled, charred remains of buildings surrounded him. Scattered haphazardly throughout the rubble were slumped, rounded forms. They looked strangely out of place among the sharp, jagged edges of concrete and twisted metal beams. As Xavier walked closer to get a better view, the smell grew strong enough that he gagged. Coughing several times in a futile attempt to clear the smell from where it clung at the back of his throat, he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it over his nose. He crouched down next to the nearest form and stared at it for several seconds until his mind made sense of what he was seeing.
It was a decaying body. With a gasp that brought enough of the scent into his mouth that he could, for a moment, taste the putrid flesh before him, Xavier stood and stumbled back. He looked around wildly, trying to find Rogue – not Rogue – but all he saw were more bodies in varying stages of decomposition. The one in front of him was too far gone for him to even try to identify it, and seeing little other choice, he walked doggedly to the next slumped form.
This one was clearly a woman. Although the body was facedown, there was enough flesh left that he could see hints of roundness to the body’s shape, and brittle locks of long hair stirred desultorily in the hot wind. Xavier squinted and focused on the hair. It was a lackluster brown, but he thought he had seen a flash of white. Frowning, he walked around to the other side to get a better look. Dull grey bone peeked through the wisps of hair while sand and ash covered this side of the body. Unwilling to disturb the body, Xavier moved on to the next one.
As he approached, the sick-sweet stench grew stronger, and he realized this was the freshest body yet. The other bodies had carried with them a dry mustiness, but this one reminded him of overripe peaches swelling and splitting open on hot summer days. This one was similarly covered in the dirt and grime of the desolate landscape, its hair also a dull ashy brown, but when Xavier was only a few feet away, he saw the telltale strand of white. With a groan that hardly sounded human, he forced himself to drop his eyes to her face.
“Rogue?” he whispered desperately.
“Not Rogue,” said her voice behind him.
Xavier gasped in surprise, drawing in yet another taste of decay as he whirled around.
The Rogue from the garden stood before him. He looked from her to the body next to them, to the next closest body, and then the next. “Are they all ‘not Rogue’ then?” he asked, turning to her once again.
“Yes. And no.”
Xavier stared hard at the woman in front of him. He didn’t think she was trying to be difficult. Maybe a subtle probe at her mind might help him find some answers?
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” his guide warned, shaking her head.
Xavier blinked in surprise. “You know what I was thinking?”
Not Rogue chuckled. “Hello? Telepath in mutant-power-sucking mind. Do you really think you keep any of your abilities once you get here?”
“I…then what would be the harm in trying to use my telepathy?” the professor challenged.
“Because it would give me a headache and still not do you any good. So let’s just skip the annoyance of a headache and we’ll answer your questions the usual way, shall we?” She waved her hand around them to indicate the scattered bodies. “I told you they’re all Rogue and not Rogue. They’re parts of her, just like I am. And every one of them is here because she absorbed somebody.”
Xavier shook his head. “No, there are too many.”
“We needed many to deal with Magneto,” Not Rogue murmured.
“What?”
The girl sighed heavily and pushed her hair away from her face. “Rogue’s mind used to be like that garden, you know. All if it, not just that little bit you saw.”
“What happened? And why am I seeing Rogue’s dead body everywhere?”
“The first time Rogue absorbed somebody, it was a human boy. When he arrived, he was in the garden, and Rogue – a part of her at least – went to greet him. She knew he would be scared. Hell, she was terrified. But when David saw her, he ran. He left the garden, running too fast for Rogue to catch up, and as he got farther and farther away, she wished hard that he would just stop, that she could somehow wall him in. And a wall appeared right in front of David, too close for him to avoid running into it. The impact snapped his neck.”
Xavier shook his head in disbelief. He opened his mouth to reply and, finding he didn’t have any words, closed it again.
“Rogue was hysterical. She was crying and screaming for David to get up, afraid to touch him, thinking that she would only make it worse. But after a while she realized that he was dead, and she finally knelt down beside him. She tucked a bit of his hair behind his ear, and as she did, her thumb brushed against his forehead.” Xavier’s guide paused and looked around them in apparent wonder. “Things work differently here.”
“What does that mean?”
The smile she turned on him was brilliant and joyful. “It means that while Rogue’s touch brings death on the outside, here it brings life. David came back.”
Xavier’s breath caught in surprise. “And what happened to Rogue?”
His guide shrugged. “She died. But another came to take her place.”
“And David? Where is he now?”
Not Rogue frowned. “He’s locked up in a facsimile of his childhood home.”
“Locked up?”
“He kept running. And if you run in Rogue’s mind, you die. So don’t run, Professor.”
Xavier shook his head in denial. “No, Rogue wouldn’t do that.”
The girl’s smile was grim. “Rogue doesn’t do it deliberately.” She gestured again to the bodies decaying around them. “The lengths she goes to to keep them all alive should tell you that.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Xavier said, hating the hopelessness and confusion roiling inside him.
“It took me a while to understand, too,” his guide mused. “David was basically running around all over the place for the first couple years. He’d pop up, run away again, die again. Another part of Rogue would die bringing him back to life. Then he’d go into hiding for a while before eventually coming out again. It wasn’t until you started helping Rogue with her mental control that she was able to sustain David’s home in her mind. He’s content to stay there now, and Rogue doesn’t have to chase after him anymore.”
“And the others?”
“Magneto was a pain in the ass, let me tell you. Tried to force his way out, beat on everything he could see. He died many times for his stubbornness.”
“Rogue wouldn’t kill him, though,” Xavier protested, “and I can’t see Eric running from anything.”
“No,” his guide agreed. “He didn’t run. He attacked. He got Rogue – not Rogue, really, a part of her, you know? – by the throat and was squeezing the life out of her. She didn’t fight back. She figured she deserved to die for what she was.” The girl trailed off thoughtfully. After a few seconds she shook her head briskly and continued. “But anyway, Rogue’s mind really does not respond well to violence – she’s a regular little pacifist – and as Magneto squeezed harder, his own air supply was cut off. Fool that he is, he kept choking her, thinking that she would die before he would.” She shook her head again. “Didn’t happen that way. They both died. And another part of Rogue was sent out to revive Magneto.”
“He attacked that one, too?” Xavier asked softly.
“Yeah. That’s part of why Magneto’s such a strong presence in her mind, you know.”
Xavier’s brows drew together in confusion. “I thought that was because of how long he held on.”
“Partly. The bigger part is because of how much of herself Rogue had to sacrifice to keep him alive. His presence here outweighed hers for a while.”
“What about with Logan, then? I can’t imagine him running or attacking Rogue.”
“He didn’t. Both times Rogue absorbed Logan, he arrived here already dead.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Rogue's mind is a confusing place to be...it's been giving me some problems. This is a super short chapter. I'll have the next one up later today.