Within the past six months, Rogue had finally put together a life that, she felt at least, had some semblance of normalcy. She worked two jobs: one at a large specialty tailor’s shop, one at an art studio that was part of the community college she had been attending for a year and a half now. She’s a computer science major, and is finding it harder and harder not to let on how far ahead of her classes she really is. She’s always been fascinated by computers, and could hack into basic systems by the time she was in middle school. She’s been making money off of it quietly for about five years now.
The art studio had allowed her to make plaster replicas of her arms and hands, and the tailor shop had given her the skill to use those replicas to design and make her own gloves––better than any available in stores. Thin fabrics, impossibly small and sturdy seams, buttons here and there so they would not slip down her arm. She still liked working in the art studio best, because when her skin was covered in plaster and dust and paint, she was as safe as she was in gloves, without feeling quite so limited.
Although the desert air dries her skin, Rogue has decided that she rather likes New Mexico. She has plans. Once she graduates, she wants to live in Santa Fe, instead of her current place here in Albuquerque, because the people in Santa Fe are so different from the ones she remembers from home, even if their love of adobe makes her question their aesthetic taste. For now, she has a small, very private apartment in the middle of the city, where some semblance of anonymity is kept up and people do not try to get to know their neighbors. She likes how comfortably alone she feels, while still feeling close to something alive that all cities have at their heart. She likes being alone in cities, and especially in her apartment. Right now, however there is a man in her apartment, and Rogue is not happy about it.
Of course, part of that is because he’s in her head as well, and the man has a foul temper that almost matches hers, making her impressively bitter, but there are all sorts of things she’s learned from taking him into her head. All sorts of things that could get her killed if some of his superiors knew about it. And there are some of his superiors who would be deeply unsettled just knowing what Rogue was capable of.
“Captain Nick Fury,” Rogue mutters, settling into the armchair she’s moved so it faces the unconscious man on her couch. His dark skin contrasts with the couch’s light color, and the expensive fineness of his suit contrasts with the couch’s cheapness.
The eyelid over Fury’s good eye flutters a little. Rogue touches the side of her own face, almost expecting to feel the scars on Fury’s face mirrored on her own skin, but her flesh is unmarred under her bare fingertips. She’s only just gotten to the point that she no longer habitually reaches to adjust the eye patch that she does not wear.
Rogue is making an effort to hold onto everything she’s learned from this man, from his accidental, well-meaning touch. She’s never actually tried to keep so much before, but it’s surprisingly easy. His memories are like balloons, and all she has to do is tie them down so they don’t float away. She struggles with some things; learned skills seem especially slippery, but after what she’s learned, Rogue is determined to keep at least the most useful: speaking a few extra languages, extensive abilities in a variety of martial arts, some people-reading skills that are better than her own, lock-picking, useful chemistry like bomb-making and home-made truth serum. Nick Fury has a lot of useful skills.
He’s also waking up.
He doesn’t move, but his breathing changes just a little and Rogue knows all of his tricks now, and how to recognize them.
“You’re quite lucky that I like you, ya know,” she says in a loud, clear voice that lets him know he can’t pull off that act with her.
Nicholas Fury opens his good eye and stares at her.
Rogue stares right back. She’s draped across her chair like a cat, her legs over one of the armrests, her weight resting on the elbow that sits on the other armrest. Her hands are folded, fingers loosely knit. She is bare from her shoulders to her fingertips.
“What did you do to me?” Fury rasps. He feels like he’s been run over by a tank.
“Ah didn’t do anything, Sugah. You touched my skin. Ah cain’t control it, or don’t ya think Ah’d’ve wanted to avoid havin’ some a’ your thoughts in my head?” She gave him a dark look, solemn and a little irate.
Fury hesitated. “How many of my thoughts?”
Rogue stayed quiet for a moment. “Enough.” She still held his gaze, unflinching. “Ah did save ya life out there. Brought ya into my home afterwards, not that Ah plan on stayin’ here too much longer now. And thanks for tryin’ t’ get those bastards offa me, by the way. Scum like that Ah really don’t want up here.” She tapped the side of her head.
Fury watched her intently, and Rogue could almost read his mind. He was a surprisingly decent man, for a human, and government spy/bloodhound. Rogue suddenly knew a lot about her country’s government, and a lot of it wasn’t pretty. “Do you keep their thoughts permanently?”
Rogue smiled a little. “If they stick. Ah can make ‘em stick, if Ah try, and Ah’ve learned the hard way that tryin’ to get rid of ‘em makes ‘em linger more strongly. It’s usually best t’ just let ‘em fade, but again, that’s if Ah want ‘em gone.” She was watching him back and knew he was unsettled by how familiar the look on her face was, and how much her dark brown eyes looked like mirrors.
“What are you gonna do with mine?” he asked quietly.
“Mmm. Ah need some time to figure that out. Some of it...some of it is interestin’. And ‘fore ya ask again, Ah took a lot. You’ve been passed out for two days.” Her lips thinned as an uncomfortable flicker of remorse crossed her face. “Ya had a pretty strong grip on me, Nick. And when my mutation kicked in ya gripped harder. Ah couldn’t push ya off until ya were already weak enough ta loosen that hold.”
Fury’s jaw tightened. “I remember now.”
Rogue looked away for a moment, uneasy. “Ah’m sorry Ah hurt you. I meant it when Ah said Ah like you. You’re a good man, for the most part.” She looked at him again. “Even if ya doubt it, ya do what ya can, and some of it’s pretty amazin’ stuff.”
Fury was uneasy, but unwilling to be unfocused or careless or out of control. The girl’s eyes didn’t make it easy. “I can’t trust you.”
Rogue nods slowly, looking at the floor. “Ah know. That’s why Ah ain’t exactly given ya my name or anythin’. But...” She looked back into some of the memories she’d gotten from him. “There’s a school. Well, there’s a couple schools, but there’s one that’d take me and one that Ah think would kick me out when their psychic found out where Ah got my money from.” She looked up at Fury again. “Or at least, you think so. In either case, Ah like the sound of this Emma Frost woman. Maybe she and one or two of her friends can help me out.”
Fury looked at her with something wary and something that almost wanted to trust her. “With your skin?”
Rogue’s lips formed a thin line, quietly pained. “Ah manifested four years ago. Ah’ve been pretty alone since then.” She stretched her legs a little and shifted position a little in her chair; one of her feet had been falling asleep. “Ah’ll give the school-among-mutants life a try, see if Ah can live like somethin’ other than a total outsider for a while.” She looked at Fury again, her eyes seeming to look straight through the back of his skull. “Your idea, really. You’re very lonely,” she said.
Fury’s jaw tightened and a stern, almost angry look crossed his face.
Rogue interrupted him before he could speak. “Ah’m not propositionin’ you and Ah’m just tellin’ ya what ya already know.” She tilted her head to one side. “And Ah know ya don’t like me knowin’ this much, for a lotta real good reasons, but Ah can’t help it.” She turned and sighed, squeezing her eyes shut. “Ah’m just damned relieved you ain’t another goddamned slimeball like the ones who were tryin’ ta get their hands on me, and Ah...Goddamn, if this whole situation weren’t so fucked up and ya didn’t have quite the job that ya do, Ah’d like to have ya as a friend. Maybe somebody to drink with and discuss the perfidy of politicians and everyday people and our own damned selves.” Rogue crossed her arms over her chest and opened her eyes, glaring at him and daring him to make fun of her.
Fury stared at this impossibly young-looking girl, with her tousled brown hair and bruises from the other night. She shouldn’t have eyes that looked older than him; it almost made him wonder who else she’d touched, what the good one she’d mentioned was like, and what kind of life she’d had, for her to be able to look into his thoughts and memories and all and think he was a good man. But she was a tough one, and he was willing to bet that the age of her eyes was truer than the age shown on the rest of her face. She looked like she’d seen war, and Fury realized with a hint of unease that she had; she’d seen his wars, and probably more.
And he’d thought that the psychics he’d met had been unnerving. This girl was something else entirely. And if she were to get into the wrong hands with her powers...
Rogue saw the change in his facial expression and gave a twisted, bitter smile. “Don’t worry. Ah took care of your mission, by the books. No trace of me left behind. Ah don’t want anybody to know about me anymore than you want the people you’re thinkin’ about to use me for their own gains.” She would say nothing of the only other mutant she had met since she left Mississippi, and how she had found out he was a mutant, and what it had felt like and tasted like to breathe fire, and how much she still missed it. No. Rogue was a creature of secrets, and always had been. It was just that she now had many secrets that were not her own.
Fury looked incredulous. Rogue picked up a fat USB jump drive from the table beside her chair and lightly tossed it to him. “Here’s all the info on it. It’s encrypted, but you’ll know the password to unlock it when you see the username.”
Fury caught it without looking away from Rogue’s eyes. “You’re...”
“Rogue,” she said quietly. “My name is Rogue. Ah’ll be gone in the mornin’.”
Nick Fury nodded once, slowly, and put the jump drive in the inner pocket of his suit jacket. His hand paused for a moment before he withdrew it.
“And your guns are on the kitchen counter. You’ve got a couple clips left.” She smiled brightly, and a little viciously.
“You’ve already thought about what you’re gonna do with what you found in my head,” Fury said, low and challenging, suddenly wary again.
Rogue nodded. “Yeah. Ah’m gonna do what you want to do, but cain’t, ‘cause of ya job.” There was something about the grimness of her words that Fury found familiar.
“Like what?”
“Help Logan,” she whispered.
Fury’s entire body froze, a picture of tension. “What?”
“You heard me.” Rogue’s expression had a touch of anger in it now. “You know so much, but you tell him so little, even after everything-”
“I can’t do a damn thing!” Fury snarled, unsettled by the strength of his reaction. She knew too much, secrets about himself he avoided thinking about. It hurt.
“Don’t ya think Ah know that, Nick?” Rogue snapped. “But Ah can. Once Ah straighten out some things and get myself in order. Get you in order.” She pressed a hand to the side of her head and massaged her temple.
Fury found some of his tension easing. The girl wasn’t artifice. He could tell real-pain from faked-pain with an expertly discerning eye he’d gained from years of experience. The girl was honestly strained, and struggling, and hurting, but still going on through it. “I’m not so good at ghosting as you’ll need to be.”
“But Ah know how good Ah need to be and what Ah need to learn.” Rogue opened her eyes again and glared at him. “Ah know as well as you do. And Ah know more about computers than you do, too. More than even that little geek who helps you out.” Her smile was bitter, but bright and sharp like broken glass.
Fury folded his arms across his chest, but relaxed a little, now that he was getting better at reading her. If things were different, he could possibly share drinks with this woman, until they were both drunk enough to talk about war and the way governments work. He did not like the thought, but knew it to be fact. Just as he knew that, were things equally different, he and Logan might drink together similarly. One day, when he’d be too old for this job, he’d always told himself, he’d find Logan, who would be ageless as ever, and try to give that hairy Canadian the keys to the past he’d been looking for and Fury had found over time.
“You’ll be gone in the morning, then. To Emma’s?”
“Not immediately. Got some dancin’ to do to keep a few folks off my tail from you’re attempt ta rescue me.” A teasing smirk. “Not too bad, though. Just a local anti-mutant group with delusions of grandeur. You’re people have a file on them under section ‘mostly harmless’.” She grinned a little. “Ah love that book. Ah almost wanna ask you ta tell your geeks that they’re pretty funny.”
Fury shook his head. “Alright. But you’d better stay the Hell off everyone’s radar, kid.”
Rogue snorted at being called ‘kid’ but otherwise ignored it, watching Fury get up and walk toward her kitchen. He moved smoothly, like a man in control, but Rogue could see the occasional hitch in his movements from old wounds and old scars. There was some quality to him that she felt her body start to respond to, but she stopped herself with all-too-practiced restraint. It was something about his personality that did it; she did like him, but more than that and part of that: there was something deeply honorable in him, something that made his job very hard for him sometimes. It was that quality, and the casual strength and control she could read in his movements, that made him attractive. It made his face handsome in spite of its scars and the eyepatch he wore and the grimness of his expression.
Rogue knew she had somewhat odd taste in the people she was attracted to, but she had always liked it, and she met far more interesting people this way, even if she couldn’t do anything much with them even on the rare occasions that she could tell the attraction was mutual.
In this case, it wasn’t mutual, because Fury was unsettled by her: her mutation, her youth, how well she knew the goings-on inside of his skull. On his way to the kitchen he felt more uneasy by how efficient and spartan she clearly was, and how familiar it seemed to his own lifestyle, or that of many he knew who were older and coarser than Rogue. The rooms were stripped of anything remotely personal, which fit into two medium-sized boxes that could easily fit in the trunk of a compact car, one large duffle bag, and a large secure metal briefcase with a code-lock. There were several trash-bags filled with what Fury had no doubt was the rest of her belongings, ones she could live without, made unrecognizable and mixed with random clutter and perhaps garbage from other places. He knew she would dump them in a variety of places across town before changing cars, if she hadn’t changed cars already. He knew because it was what he would have done. He saw a metal shelf, desk, and folding table in the corner, along with three power-strips. Maybe she really was as good with computers as she had said. He could see faint shadows on the wall from where the paint had faded here and there, exposed to sunlight from the window, contrasted with places where sun had not reached it, blocked by less permanent shadows. The shadows had left faint shapes that Nick Fury recognized as the blocks and cords belonging to expensive electronic equipment.
Fury looked over his shoulder when he heard Rogue give a mournful sigh. She too was staring at the vacated den of computers, now empty of all things electrical.
“Do you have any idea how hard Ah worked on puttin’ all of it together?” She shook her head and let out a breath through her teeth. “Damn.”
“Is it in the bags?”
Rogue snorted. “Hell no. Took it all apart as much as Ah could in the electronics lab at my school, after-hours, melted down the metal in the metallurgy labs right next to where Ah work and made it into a random student sculpture. Took the rest, once it was unidentifiable, to three different dumps and one recyclin’ place.”
Nick nodded. “Good.”
“Learned from one a’ the best,” Rogue countered. Then she hesitated as he walked into the kitchen and started checking over his guns.
“Where’s the Desert Eagle?”
Rogue sighed in disappointment and pulled it out from behind her, along with its sheath, where both had been perfectly concealed at her lower back. “Ah really like this one. Gotta get me one.” She handed it to him muzzle-first.
Fury took it and nodded. “I’ve customized it you know.”
“Yeah. Ah know.” She raised both eyebrows.
Fury grimaced a little. “I’m terribly unused to this.”
Rogue smirked a little. “Welcome to my life.” She turned around and dug in the fridge. She pulled out two beers of a local brew. She knew the brewer, had talked to him about brewing. She’d planned to start home-brewing within a year or two with one of the less expensive kits he was willing to sell her. So much for that, now. She handed Fury a beer.
He took it and gave her a look. “How old are you, anyway?”
Rogue gave him a dark look. “As old as my tongue, and a little older than my teeth.”
He smirked a little. “Haven’t heard that one in a while. So you’re not quite old enough to drink, I’ll hazard.”
“My driver’s license says Ah’m twenty-three, and people believe it once they hear me talk or make eye contact for a couple seconds.”
“I’m sure. My guess is barely eighteen.”
Rogue narrowed her eyes at him and took a defiant pull of beer. “Ah’ve got memories older than you, Fury.”
Nick twisted the cap off his beer and took a swig. It was good beer. “I believe that.”
Rogue looked away for a moment.
“You could be a soldier, you know.”
Rogue smirked a little, knowing he meant it as a compliment. “If things were a little different, Ah’d like to be. As it is, Ah’m a little more self-serving.” She glanced back toward the empty metal skeletons against the wall, built by her, filled by her, used by her, and gutted by her own bare hands so she could run again.
“If I were a mutant I have a feeling I’d be in the same boat.” He paused a little. “You remind me a little of him––Logan––in the way you talk about things.”
Rogue nodded. “He...saved your life. A couple times. Even when he didn’t know himself and was all Wolverine.” Rogue swirled her beer in the bottle and watched it.
“And I’ve returned the favor once or twice.”
“Yeah. But you still feel like you owe him.” Rogue hesitated. “With you in my head, Ah feel that too, like Ah owe...but mostly Ah just think that he deserves to know...about everything, and that’s definitely not just you.” She took another pull of beer. “Ah didn’t luck out in the mutation department, that’s for damned sure,” she muttered.
Fury paused, wincing a little as she tossed his thoughts back at him, his envy of Logan’s ability to heal, but when he looked at her, he could tell she felt it too, if not more strongly because she was a mutant, and her mutation messed her up something fierce when she used it, accidentally or otherwise. Fury finished his beer and put his last two guns and their ammunition away. She’d taken them apart and cleaned them for him while he was passed out. It felt uncomfortably personal; everything did. He watched Rogue take a final swig of beer and set her empty bottle aside. He met her gaze and held it for a few moments. “Thank you,” he said curtly.
Rogue shook her head. “Thank you,” she said, as if correcting him, then added, “And Ah’m sorry.”
Nick saw it, the flicker of sincere regret and envy and relief across her features, like a flash of the ancient woman behind the girl’s face. She was too damned honest, but then, having him in her head, maybe she felt that she could be so. She did not seem like a naturally open person; in fact her nature seemed to be to remain distant. She was letting him read her, and the realization was one more little unsettling thing out of a dozen others that came from her.
She walked him to the front door and opened the three locks above the knob, including an impressive deadbolt. She opened the door. “Goodbye, Nick.”
He nodded at her. “Rogue.” And then he walked out of her apartment and into the night.
Rogue was gone in the morning.
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