Five Things Rogue Never Told Bobby Before He Died
X-men movieverse.
For Mary, from Karen.
Five.
Before the cure, she found out she could touch Piotr when he was metal. One day he’d just reached out and brushed her face, a quick smooth glide of cool steel across her cheekbones.
In the Danger Room he crushed cars, but on her face his hands were gentle. When he slid his hand down her neck she thought he was going to kiss her.
But then he picked up the chain of the dogtags round her neck and ran his thumb over Wolverine’s name before he settled them back between her breasts.
She hadn’t know a metal face could be so sad.
“Oh,” she said. “Same boat, huh?”
“Same boat,” Piotr said, and kissed her on the forehead. Cold and gentle, steel on her skin.
Four.
Logan never touched her after Liberty Island. Even when he could touch her.
If he’d ever said anything, just one thing, if he’d only held her once, she’d have said so long and see you to Bobby and her reputation and everything else.
But never, not once ever. She’d catch him watching her and she’d feel the beast at the dark edges of her mind uncurl and arch and that was all.
On the other hand, he called her “Marie” when no one else was around to hear, and that made small flames inside her flicker bright.
Three.
After the cure, Kitty had phased them both into a closet.
“I wasn’t going to take him,” she said.
“I did it for me,” Rogue told her. She was getting good and tired of saying that to everyone.
“I know,” Kitty said. Her hands fluttered towards Rogue, passed right through her hands and back again. “Damn! Damn.”
“What are you doing?” Rogue asked. Kitty didn’t lose control any more.
“I’m trying to hold your hands,” Kitty said, and then giggled, high-pitched and nervous. “Oh, this was better in my head. So much better in my head. I’m sorry. ‘Bye.”
She dropped through the floor, which left Rogue in a locked closet, with far too much time to think.
Two.
She had John’s email address and she wrote to him every day, in the ten minute gap between dinner and study hour.
“Come back,” she wrote. And: “I miss you.”
And, one evening: “He misses you too.” She held the arrow poised for a long moment before she clicked.
John never wrote back and she didn’t mind that as much as she could have.
One.
Her skin had gone cold as she kissed him goodnight.
“What was that?” Bobby asked muzzily.
“Nothing,” Rogue said, because it couldn’t be anything. She was cured now. “Nothing, darlin’. Go to sleep.”
When she woke up in the morning her arm was bare against his back and he was dead.
All the things she hadn’t told him crushed her throat to nothing, so that only moans escaped.