Rogue had insisted on a shower immediately after the blackbird landed.
“Ah don’t give a damn if ya’re paranoid an’ want me meetin’ yer telepath leader; Ah’m coated in muck and refuse t’ be presented ta anybody until Ah’m at least remotely presentable!”
Storm had laughed at the look on Scott’s face and led Rogue to the women’s locker room, and the showers therein.
The locker rooms were just off of the hangar, thus separate somewhat from the rest of the mansion, and due to various X-men related issues, the whole hangar and the locker rooms had been re-built (and re-designed to prevent re-occurrences of such issues) over the years since Erik had helped Xavier build the school; so Rogue’s ghosts were quiet there, for a while.
She noted without surprise the slight flare of Logan’s nostrils when she emerged from the locker room. He was clearly waiting for her, clearly watching her with his sharp eyes to try and see into her past the armor of her appearance; although her appearance was somewhat distracting, if only because she had a body like a battle-axe and lips to make lesser men’s knees turn to water when they curled into a smirk.
“Alright. Now take me to ya leader,” she joked idly, fussing a little with her damp hair as it dried. The brown, when wet, was so dark it looked nearly black, and the tendrils white stood out even more starkly, even tangled and interwoven with the brown. And she smelled very good, fresh from the shower: like a rich oolong tea, lychee, and an enchantingly sharp and almost cat-like feminine musk. She held Logan’s gaze without the faintest hesitation, and did not look away. It might have unnerved someone else.
“Then we talk later, you an’ I,” Logan said slowly, around the lit cigar he held in his teeth, which did not hinder his enunciation in the least.
Rogue smirked a little, but the amusement did not reach her eyes, her expression remaining stony and closed off. “Yes we shall,” she replied.
And Logan led her into the mansion. Scott joined them in the hall.
Rogue’s mood, on entering the mansion, was hard to define. She seemed to slip into odd mannerisms not wholly natural to her and watch the architecture with mixed curiosity, familiarity, and with a sharp eye for changes made over the years. It was only when Logan saw the half-mournful and half-sardonic smile she got, when the door to Xavier’s office was opened, that he recognized it as touches of Magneto.
Well, that and the way that she so easily drawled, “Hello, Charles,” in cold, smooth tones.
It startled the professor a little, but it was clear that there was more to her that startled him than just her words.
“Don’t try to pry much, Charles, my head isn’t a safe place for ya,” Rogue said as she approached his desk. Her southern accent was more muted. “It takes a lotta work for me to open the door, and if I don’t open it...bad things. Emma learned that the hard way, and that was before I knew anything about telepaths and what my mutation makes my mind like on the astral plane. Apparently, it isn’t so pretty.” She smiled, but it was still Erik’s smile.
“You’re truly Rogue, then?” Xavier asked.
Rogue nodded. “That’s the name.” She raised an eyebrow as she turned to Logan. “About how much did ya let ‘em see?”
Logan had followed her in, and stood halfway between her, where she stood close to the front of Xavier’s desk, and Scott, who stood like a watchful bodyguard at the office’s closed door, glaring at her and Logan both. Logan held Rogue’s gaze, reading bits of his enemy on her face, but not on the whole finding it repulsive. Rogue had clearly only kept the parts about the man that she had liked or found valuable, or which were close enough to her own personality that they stuck. It was telling, really, and what it told Logan was nothing bothersome: just that Rogue was ruthless, cold, bitter, and sardonic with a twisted sense of humor.
“They’ve seen what they needed to,” Logan answered her gruffly.
Xavier was slightly uneasy at the suggestion that there were things about his team member that he did not need to see, but he did not press the matter. “What, exactly, is your mutation, if I may ask, Rogue?”
She turned to look at Xavier as if from over the distance of a few centuries. “It’s my skin. I’ve gotten control of it only through scientific and surgical means...from quasi-legal sources. Don’t worry about them. They’re mutants themselves, although you may not approve of their methods, none of which are actually physically violent, by the way––just generally illegal.” She smiled a bit brightly. “They’re a lot less ethical than the telepaths who’ve come an’ gone under your tutelage, Charles.” Rogue sat down on one of the leather chairs set up for conferences held over Xavier’s desk. She all but lounged in it, but her back was stiff and the way she held herself had a faint Magneto air about it. “My skin, when it makes contact with the skin of someone else, effectively drains their life-force, as well as taking a ghostly replica of their psyche and personality into my head, complete with memories, thoughts, and mannerisms, etc, of varying strength dependin’ on how prolonged the skin-to-skin contact lasts. In the case of mutants, I also ‘borrow’ their powers.” She hesitated a moment. “Prolonged contact, and inability on my part to stop the pull, can lead to death, me with somebody else’s brain tryin’ to occupy an’ control mine, and permanent retainment of another mutant’s powers.”
“How many times has that happened?” Scott asked, his voice surprisingly unaccusing. He had recognized the regret at the edge of Rogue’s voice, and thought about the ruin he’d turned his junior high into when he’d manifested.
Rogue turned her head just enough to show a bit of her profile, but not enough to actually make eye contact. “Just once. In the compound Fury helped me break out of. You guys showed up not too long after that, as I recall.”
Logan heard Scott quietly clear his throat and shift his weight on his feet.
“I’m sorry,” said the man in the red shades.
“You didn’ put me there, Sugah, and ya sure as Hell didn’t help ‘em shove electrodes under my skin to turn off the micro-biotechnical stuff that helps me keep my skin under control so they could see if Ah could kill the invulnerable and invincible Carol Danvers.” She turned back to face Charles Xavier, who noted the shards of green in her eyes with new interest; he also noted that her southern drawl was much less present when she was looking at him. “Turns out, by the way, that I could,” Rogue added.
Xavier had finally unwillingly recognized traces of his old friend in the girl before him. “And Logan was also right, then, in guessing that you were part of Magneto’s plot on top of the Statue of Liberty?” Xavier guessed.
Rogue’s expression was at once brittle like broken glass, and touched with unwilling smugness that was not hers; it was an odd mix. “Yes. I was the plot, for the most part. I made the whole plan possible, so that Erik’s machine wouldn’t drain him to death.” The smugness dropped as Rogue’s flare of rage overcame the ghost of Erik in her mind. “It’d just drain me to death, after he’d lent me enough power to pull off the whole feat. Carol an’ Emma stopped him, but then all of us got picked up by the folks who ran that lovely little compound.”
Xavier’s eyes lowered to his desk and he nodded. “I see. I am very sorry that we could not have been of aid to you sooner.”
Rogue shook her head. “Ah was workin’ pretty hard to keep ya’ll from crossin’ my path.”
Xavier’s brow furrowed. “Yes...I’d become aware of that early on.”
Rogue smiled a little. “Ah’m not tellin’ you about my sources. That’s between me an’ the furball.” She jabbed a thumb in Logan’s direction, seemingly unaware of the involuntary snort of laughter this elicited from Scott.
Logan himself scowled a fraction, but let it go.
Xavier hesitated, but finally looked resigned. “All I ask, is that any potentially illegal activity––or activities––that you plan on doing whilst staying here, be undertaken only in situations of dire need, and preferably with my consultation, and that I have the power to prevent you from performing any particularly unfit illegal activities. I would caution especially against theft, arson, assassinations, black-market trading of goods and information, and undue hacking into files belonging to various branches of government.”
Rouge allowed herself to pout a little. “Well, that’s...limiting.” She sighed, but then raised her arms above her head and arched into a full-body stretch, causing a few popping sounds from her back; she punctuated the display with a murmured, “But Ah can live with that, Ah suppose.”
“And I do hope you will eventually come to trust us, Rogue,” Xavier added quietly.
Rogue’s eyes caught the light in a way that made them look predatory, even if the half-confused look she gave Xavier made her look close to human for the first time since she’d walked into his office. “Ah don’t trust anybody, Charles. Not like your people. Not even like Erik’s.”
Xavier’s gaze moved visibly to Logan for a few moments before he looked back at Rogue. “I’m familiar with the attitude. Perhaps, then, I can only hope you will eventually feel comfortable talking to me with fewer obfuscations.”
Rogue smiled a little, but it faded as she spoke. “Ah have a habit of continually obfuscating in the face of believed enlightenment. It’s a side-effect of livin’ in the shadows, and havin’ so many shadows in my head of bitter folks and the memories of wars an’ betrayals and human cruelty that made ‘em so.” She looked at Xavier a little more openly, letting him get a glimpse of something war-torn, ragged, tired and ancient. “And Ah ain’t just talkin’ about Erik.” She pulled herself to her feet and put her hands in her pockets. “It’s your job to make light, though. And ya aren’t exactly bad at it.” She gave a more encouraging smile, but it was still rough with something like embittered sadness, and had an edge to it like a knife.
Xavier’s brow was knit, the weight of his thoughts clearly immense. “I’m not sure what to say to that, Rogue.”
“Yeah, well. Try livin’ with it a while from my side.” She shrugged. “Or don’t. It’s not really your kinda thing. It’s good to finally meet ya though. You’re not nearly as unsettling as some people think. Then again, maybe Ah’m just better at it than you are.” She extended a hand, bare and with her deadly skin perfectly under control: turned off.
Xavier shook it, a faint and slightly curious smile on his face. Not Erik, surely...she’s telling me that I’ve met someone else she’s touched. Her informant, perhaps? But all he said was. “Thank you. It’s good to see you at last, Rogue.”
Rogue turned and faced the other two men, her smile turned into a cocky smirk. “So. Ya got any drinks around here?”
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