“That’s the last of it,” Kitty said as she finished stacking the cans neatly in the pantry. “I think you have enough groceries for a decade.”
“And this is just the back-up,” Marie said with amusement. “The caretaker is going to make weekly drop-offs of fresh groceries half a mile from here. All I have to do if I want something special is leave him a note and I’ll get it the next week. I think the Professor went a little overboard with the arrangements.”
Kitty closed the pantry door and leaned against it. “Is this really necessary, Rogue? The blind drops for groceries...no emailing or phone calls...I understand the ‘being alone’ part, but why do you have to cut yourself off from all contact?”
“Maybe she’s just sick of us, Kits. Ever think of that?” Jubilee said acidly from behind her.
“Jubes...” Kitty said warningly.
“No, it’s okay.” Marie turned to face Jubilee. “I know you’re not in favor of this, Jubes, but I’m not abandoning the team. I’ll be back.”
“Yeah? When?” Jubilee asked sharply. “The summer is almost over. You gonna stay ‘til fall? Get stuck up here through the winter? How long are you planning to give this crazy idea?”
Marie sighed. She knew this wasn’t going to go over well. “A year.”
Kitty gasped, while Jubilee’s face clouded with anger.
“A year?!”
“That’s what the Professor and I decided. He thinks...we both think that it’ll take awhile for me to become completely confident that I won’t accidentally touch someone. For me to let my guard down, and hope that when I do my skin will turn itself off. But if it hasn’t happened in a year...it probably won’t ever happen.”
Jubilee crossed her arms sullenly. “And after you waste a year out here in the wilderness and it still doesn’t work? What then?”
“Jubilee!” Kitty’s shocked exclamation rang out as Marie turned away, trying to hide her expression before Jubilee could see how much that had hurt.
“Shit, Roguey. I’m sorry.” Jubilee’s anger had disappeared with the usual mercurial speed of her mood changes. Now she just sounded repentant and tearful. “You know I didn’t mean...”
“I know.” Marie ran a frustrated hand through her hair, taking a deep breath before she was able to face her friends again. “Don’t you think I’m worried about that too? But this is it...my last chance. I’ve tried everything else -- neural inhibitors, sedatives, meditation. If this doesn’t work...that’s it for me.” She swallowed hard to try to get rid of the lump in her throat. “Untouchable. Forever.”
“That shouldn’t matter, chica! You’re still hot stuff. I mean look at you, anyone would be thrilled to have...”
“To have what, Jubes?” Marie’s voice was harsh. “A body they can’t touch? A brain with a few extra people rattlin’ around in there? What exactly makes me such a hot proposition? The fuckin’ stripey hair Magneto left me with or the fabulous scars....”
A glance at Jubilee’s face made Marie cut her words off abruptly. She saw Jubilee’s eyes flicker to her left cheek and then down her shoulder and arm, and she automatically pulled her hair forward over her left shoulder, letting the fall of it shadow her cheek. Jubilee looked like she was going to cry, and Marie felt the same. Snapping at Jubilee wasn’t going to help anything.
She sighed. “You’re a good friend, Jubilee.” She looked from Jubilee to Kitty. “Both of you guys are my best friends -- more family to me than my real family ever was. But just because you don’t care about that stuff doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter to other people. That it doesn’t matter to me. And if one year is what it takes to control my mutation...if it even gives me a shot at it...that’s a price I’m willin’ to pay. That’s the gamble, and I’m takin’ it.”
Jubilee’s voice was raspy with tears. “Jesus, chica. I’m being a selfish bitch, I know. I’m sorry. I just don’t want to lose you, ya know?”
Marie managed a smile. “I know. But I’ll be back, I promise. And I appreciate you guys makin’ the drive out here with me.”
Jubilee shrugged, a tiny pink paff erupting from her fingers. “Eh, we had to see this place you were holing up in. At least it’s not the little shack I expected. Pretty lush, in fact.”
Marie laughed, relieved that they had worked it out. She cast an eye around Xavier’s ‘cabin.’
“I know, right? I expected somethin’ outta ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ Instead it’s more like an episode of ‘Cribs’!”
Jubilee laughed in return. “I don’t know if it’s all that great, but -- a thirty minute drive to the nearest town? It must have cost the Prof a cool million just to run electric out to here.”
“He said that it gets a little iffy in the winter, so there’s a backup generator if I need it. But it’s definitely a plus. I can’t say I mind the idea of hot baths and all the rest of it if I do have to be on my own...”
“But what if something happens with you all alone out here, Rogue?” Kitty said worriedly.
“Trust me, the Professor left nothin’ to chance. I’ve got a sat phone...even a snowmobile if I need it. I’ll be fine, Kits,” she reassured. “I’ll work on my painting, catch up on some reading. It’ll be like a vacation.” She smiled widely. “You guys just start makin’ a shoppin’ list of all the hot clothes you’re gonna help me buy when I come down off this mountain with completely touchable skin, okay?”
“It’s a deal,” Jubilee said, her usual buoyant mood back on full display. “Now, let’s hug it out, chica, and then Kits and I are gonna have to hit the road if we want to get back to the mansion before dark.”
____________________
Marie was able to keep herself busy for the rest of the afternoon and evening. She unpacked, and then started to familiarize herself with her new surroundings. She poked in all the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen, and practiced starting up the generator in case she needed it.
She pushed the dining table aside, grunting with effort and wishing she had thought to do this while Kitty and Jubilee were still here. She hung a hook in the center of the now-empty dining space for her heavy bag, spreading her exercise mats below it. If she wanted to get right back to the team in a year she couldn’t let herself get out of shape. Her sparring might need a tune-up, but she could keep her strength and agility up on her own.
On some level she was really enjoying this. She had gone straight from her parents’ house to the streets, and then to the mansion. She had never had her own space, to set up the way she liked. Never had the freedom to move furniture if she wanted to, or blast her iPod as loud as she wanted.
As evening fell, however, her spirits started to dive. The music sounded harsh in the silence rather than comforting. She turned it off, opening the windows and letting the sounds of the wind and woods filter through the screens on the late summer breeze. She ate a granola bar, too tired to think about making a real dinner, and ran a hot bath.
She lay in the bathtub, listening to the plink of water and the sounds of crickets, feeling suddenly very alone. She dried herself off, wrapping a towel around herself and then washing her face at the sink.
As she straightened up she froze, startled by her own reflection. She had removed the mirror over her bathroom sink at home, choosing only to use the full-length mirror behind her closet door once she was already dressed and her hair was down. Now her hair was still up in a loose knot from her bath, and the light over the sink cast into sharp relief the thin jagged scar over her left cheekbone.
She tilted her head, exposing the puckered skin on the left side of her neck. With a sigh, she turned so she could see the worst of it -- a spiderweb of discolored scars and burns across her left shoulder and shoulderblade, running down her arm almost to the elbow. Even though she knew how bad it was, it had been a while since she had really looked, and it shocked her a little bit to see it again.
She thought of Jubilee’s face when she had mentioned her scars today -- so surprised, as if she had forgotten about them. Maybe that wasn’t so unexpected -- as careful as Marie was about being covered, even when they were all roommates she wouldn’t change in the same room as Kitty and Jubilee.
Her back still to the mirror she looked over her shoulder, running her fingertips contemplatively over the ridges of scar tissue. Jean had done the best she could -- even calling in Hank for consultation about the trickier skin grafts. Between the burns from Scott’s optic blast and the shrapnel from the exploding machine she was lucky she still had almost full use of her shoulder and arm, scarred as they were.
She didn’t blame Scott. She was enough of an X-Man to know that sometimes difficult decisions had to be made. That some losses were acceptable in the grand scheme of things. And yet...if she were completely honest with herself, she would admit that it still hurt a little bit. More even than the stripes in her hair, the scars were a daily reminder of her place in the grand scheme of things. A lowly pawn on the chessboard of mutant warfare. A weapon to be wielded by Magneto, a force to be counteracted by the X-Men. And, in the end, dispensable to both.
She had since made that decision for herself -- joining the team, willing to give her life for the cause. But, back then...back then, she hadn’t been a soldier, or a volunteer. She had been Magneto’s hostage, and Scott’s sacrifice. Both men had held her life in their hands, and gambled with it.
Suddenly frustrated with herself for all this pointless rumination, she pulled her hair free of its knot, letting it fall in a curtain over her face and shoulder, hiding the worst of the damage. She hung the towel up and moved into the bedroom loft, pulling on a nightgown. She started to put on gloves automatically and then pulled them off. In a burst of irritation, she dumped all of her gloves and scarves out of the drawer, shoving them back into one of her smaller suitcases and putting it up on the top shelf of her closet.
Finally, with nothing left to do, she climbed into bed. She pulled her knees up and rested her head on them. She had tried to block out Jubilee’s words, but now, alone with the silence, they replayed in her head in an infinite loop.
“After you waste a year out here in the wilderness and it still doesn’t work? What then? What then? What then?”
She thought of spending the rest of her life like this. Alone. Scared to get close to others, knowing that in doing so she would only hurt them and herself. She turned out the light and closed her eyes, letting the sadness and loneliness overtake her until finally she fell asleep.
____________________
He watched the cabin, hot fury burning in his chest. These were his woods, his territory. No one had come out here except the old caretaker, and he only stopped by once a month for an hour or so. He could tolerate that. Now all of a sudden two cars, stinking of gasoline. Loud voices and music.
The scents of strangers were tainting the air, tainting his woods. It made him want to smash something, to drive them away. He stood at the edge of the clearing, invisible among the trees, as two of them -- the loud one, smelling of electricity and bubble gum, and the quieter one, smelling strangely of shadows, got into one of the cars and drove down the dirt road.
He watched the car disappear, wondering if they would be coming back. He listened to the sounds coming from the cabin for a long time. The clattering of pots and pans, the rumble of the generator starting and stopping. Music blasting so loud it hurt his ears after long months of near-silence, and the scrape of furniture being moved.
Finally the music stopped. There was only quiet rustling for awhile, and then the running of water. He didn’t think the others were coming back, but this one...
This one was staying, an intolerable intrusion in the pattern of his life. As dusk turned to darkness he crept closer, padding through the clearing and up to the cabin’s door.
He let the anger wash over him, snicking his claws out, the bite of pain as metal split skin fueling his fury. He dug the points of the claws into the wood, preparing to scar the wood in a way that would send her running back to wherever she came from.
A scent drifted through the air, halting his action. He froze, inhaling deeply. He felt his anger lessen a bit, curiosity taking its place. With a soft hiss his claws retracted. He padded forward in pursuit of the scent, reaching up to the porch roof and swinging easily and soundlessly up onto the shingles. He crept forward until he was right beside the open window.
The sudden rush of her scent, fresh off her bath-warmed skin, made him almost dizzy for a moment. She smelled soft and sweet and enticing, and...innocent, in some odd way he had never experienced. But even that, the sunshine-and-rain sweetness of her base scent, was not what had drawn him to her.
It was the overlay to her scent that had pulled him closer. He watched through the open bathroom door as she examined her reflection in the mirror, unaware that she was being observed. His eyes traced the contours of her scars just as hers did. When she ran her fingertips over the rough skin his own fingers flexed, wondering what it would feel like.
She hung up her towel and he drew in a sharp breath. The hot rush of lust that burned through his body was sudden and completely unexpected. She was all soft pink curves and flushed skin, the tumble of light and dark hair teasing and tantalizing as it alternately obscured and revealed her bare skin as she moved into the bedroom.
He silently shoved away from the window, pushing himself back flat against the wall and closing his eyes. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, angry at his body’s unwanted response to her. He wanted her gone. And yet now all he could think about was keeping her here, having her close to him. Running his fingertips over her the way she had run them over her own skin, marking her with his mouth and skin and scent...
He stifled the low growl that rose up in his chest. He would drive himself mad thinking that way. She was not for him, would probably run screaming from him. In his small experience with women there were two kinds -- those who despised him, and those who grasped at him roughly, making his skin crawl until he had to push them away for fear of hurting them. This woman was different. Better -- made to be someone’s mate.
Against his will he found himself drawn back to the window, peering inside. She was dressed in a nightgown now. She stood on her tiptoes, making little huffs of frustration as she tried to lift a small suitcase up to the very top shelf of her closet. Finally she managed it and climbed into bed.
He sat and watched her in silence, unconsciously matching his breathing to hers, as she put her head to her knees. The overlay to her scent, the one that had drawn him to her, deepened. It was loneliness and despair, and it called to him because it was as familiar to him as the smell of the wind and the woods. Those twin scents had been his own constant companions through the meager few years that he could remember.
He crouched on the rough shingles, inhaling her sadness and wondering about her, long after she had fallen asleep.
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