The Nightmare
Title: The Nightmare
Fandom: X Men: Evolution/ Wolverine and the X Men
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Characters/Pairings: Rogue, Quicksilver, others. Rogue/Quicksilver, Rogue/Gambit, Rogue/Cyclops
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They were too similar not to be friends and to not follow the same path to hell.
Notes: An attempt to show the transition from X Men: Evolution to Wolverine and the X Men. Also, anybody else notice the sexual tension between Rogue and Quicksilver in the WatXM trailer? =D
Dedication: To the Percy. You know you ship it. >D
The Beginning:
Their friendship starts off easier than most, when she passes him an extra beer bottle after a brief hooded glance. She sits with her legs crossed, balanced precariously against one of the gables of the upper roof. He refrains from asking how she managed to climb up. He's got his secrets and she's got hers. Relationships tended to end easier if they had nothing on you. He'd learned that at a young age watching his twin sister being dragged into a mental hospital, his father's presence an iron clamp on his thin, hollow body. It hurts to think of Wanda, so he doesn't. It's not like he can do anything for her anyway. When you had a father like his, you were considered lucky being able to choose what to eat for breakfast.
The girl across from him has the same look in her eyes that he sees every time he looks in a mirror. It's a dark shadow that ironically makes the eyes shine like the polished mirrors of Versailles, reflecting everything back at you and revealing nothing. Perhaps that was why he was so ready to extend the hand of 'friendship' to her.
He has never been one for making friends with girls, although he had had plenty of girlfriends back at his old high school. He was one of those guys who had an infamous reputation for "taking 'em and leaving 'em", so it comes as a surprise to him that he even wants to spend time with this girl, one whom he couldn't find anymore unattractive.
"Don't like the sun much?" He indicates her pasty complexion, one that reminds him a bit too much of a zombie movie he had watched with Evan before the big game. The last big game. He wonders if her skin has ever even caught the sun's rays.
She lets out a soft grunt and readjusts herself on her perch. "Look who's talking, albino-kid." She tugs at the sleeve of her two-sizes-too-large sweater in an subconscious instinct to hide herself from the world. Her pale hands glow in the moon's light.
His eyes land for a moment on the white locks of hair framing her face. They contrast strongly with the dark auburn of the rest of her shoulder-length hair. Without asking, he knows that the last thing those white hairs are is a dye-job. It would make more sense for the auburn of her hair to be one though.
"I burn easy," he stops looking at her directly at this point, preferring to shoot milli-second glances at her and savour the slight burn on his taste bubs as the alcohol sloshed down his throat. For once, he doesn't feel the need to sprout off the stream of random thoughts that entered his head. His eyes close. It's almost peaceful here, next to this girl who is probably even less attracted to him than he is to her. He knows her type - girls who kept "Wuthering Heights" and "Jane Eyre" under their pillows only saw the tall, dark and handsome. And if he happened to have fangs, well, that was just a bonus. He preferred blondes himself.
"Where'd you get the beer?" Okay, so maybe it has harder to keep quiet than he'd thought. But when time inches by the way it does for him, it's easy to get bored. Plus, his new 'friend' is doing a great job of keeping him amused so far. If she keeps it up, he just might keep her.
"Picked the lock on Mystique's room." She says easily, shooting him a look, daring him to comment.
He was never one to back down from a challenge.
"You're a regular Delilah, aren't you?" He pitches his empty beer bottle off the roof, before leaning into her personal space, looking for all the world like he was about to initiate a kiss. Rogue instinctively shifts her body away from him, a movement which causes her to lose her balance. Faster than she can blink, he's grabbed her by the upper arm. If he lets go now, she'll fall and end up hitting several obstacles on her way down. If he's fast enough, he could probably catch her before she breaks her neck on the ground. He's tempted and they both know it.
And because he can't help it when he's faced with an opponent of equal value to himself, he taunts her: "You humiliated the Blob in front of the red-head princess. You're going to let Toad take the blame for this, because he's the thief of the family. You dissed our glorious leader Alvers in front of the enemy. What'cha going to do to me, Roguie?"
The girl grins, her eyes sparking dangerously. She grabs his covered wrist with her free hand and squeezes hard. "I can kill you with my pinky toe."
"Would you? Would you really?"
She looks into his eyes for a long moment, before turning her head. "You're crazy." She lets go of his wrist and leans back with her eyes closed, making her body limp, the only thing keeping her from falling is his hand on her wrist.
He stares down on her face, fascinated. "So are you."
The corners of her lips lift up in a well practised smirk. "I can tell that we're going to be just great friends."
The Climbing Action (1):
One day, Rogue goes on a trip to mountains and doesn't come back.
Pietro had walked to school with her that morning as he usually did. Coping her homework, as usual. Because he had been too busy the night before phoning all of his multiple girlfriends. As usual.
"You need to stop calling me Delilah at school," she tells him, passing him her complete Math assignment. "Your latest flame - what's-her-face?"
Pietro licks the stub of his pencil (which had smoke coming off it from when he'd copied her English homework only a second ago). "Emily? Jolene? Betty? Marissa? Bambi?"
Rogue makes a face. "God, do you like have threesomes or something? Don't answer that." She smacks her gloved hand against his mouth before he can share his latest sexual exploits. "Anyway, Marissa came up to me yesterday, called me Delilah, and basically both asked me to dish the dirt on you and to keep my slutty hands off you. How'd I end up being a slut?"
"She called you Delilah?" Pietro doesn't like that. Shifting his homework under his arm, he pulls out his black date book from his back pocket. He flips to the M section and neatly crosses out Marissa's name. Rogue raises an eyebrow in his direction. He grins and casually wraps an arm around her waist. "Don't worry, o glorious dark queen of the night, I'll take care of it. After all, I don't want anyone else using my pet name for you."
Rogue raises a clenched fist dangerously close to his nose. "Pet name? pet name? I'll show you pet name." She pulls back.
Pietro shrieks, and points wildly behind her. "LOOK! SCOTT SUMMERS!"
Rogue freezes, her mirror eyes going wide. "How'd. you. know. about. him." She's got him by the shirt collar and Pietro is quite sure that she's really going to readjust his face this time.
"It's nothing to be ashamed of Delilah. Hell, even I check out the X Girls sometimes."
Rogue throws him to the ground. "Just what is so damn great about Jean Grey?" She demands, before storming off.
Pietro gets up and dusts himself off, watching her as she walks away (more like stomps off). A tiny part of him feels sorry for her. She's the Isabella Linton to Summer's Heathcliff (of all the guys in the world, she had had to choose him for her Heathcliff). Briefly, Pietro wonders how he fits into the story, before turning back to the task at hand: his homework.
That night, he feels nothing as he watches Mystique scream her frustrations and anger out on them. While the other members of the Brotherhood snivel and whine about how Rogue left them for the X Men, he remains silent. He knows exactly what his Delilah's doing as he's already done it himself.
He silently wishes her good luck and wonders whether it would be in bad taste to throw her a welcome home party when she finally figures out that it's impossible to run away from the sins of your parents.
The Climbing Action (2):
He never thought that there would come a day when Rogue would look as sad and as pitiful as she did now. She's not supposed to look this way. She's supposed to look like she would kick his ass just for the hell of it.
Pietro sits down beside Rogue on the park bench, stretching out his long legs. "Word on the street," he puts his arm behind her shoulders. "Is that you and the blue loser aren't talking."
"I killed his mother, what do you expect?" Rogue has her gloves off and is in the process of tearing a dandelion into confetti.
"She was your mother too." Pietro points out, grabbing Rogue by the shoulder in case she tries to run away.
She doesn't. All she does is just say: "I know," in a tiny voice.
Pietro does not like this version of Rogue at all. He shakes her so hard and so fast that he just manages to stop himself from giving her whiplash. "STOP IT!" He's screaming at her and he doesn't know why. "YOU'RE A FRICKING HERO!"
"Kurt hates me!" Rogue looks at him then. There are tears in her eyes and Pietro can see himself drowning in that water. It's got to go, it doesn't belong there. He could murder that blue loser at this moment, strangle the kid with his own tail.
"He's an idiot," Pietro snaps. "You saved him, Delilah. You know you did."
Rogue reaches out with her pale, little hand and barely touches his cheek. "She called me Marie."
He shakes her again. "She was a fucking monster," he snarls. "Never ever forget that."
Climbing Action (3):
After seeing Rogue and making sure she's safe in Summer's care after her traumatic kidnapping experience, Pietro has the strangest longing to nip on down to New Orleans, and feed his father's right-hand man (president of the Magneto fanclub) to some gators.
"It had to have been his eyes," he muses to himself as he observes himself in the bathroom mirror. "His hair is god awful."
The Middle:
Pietro is feeling awfully confused. He is sitting beside his twin sister, who is sitting beside their father (who has recently undergone a personality change. Pietro suspects that his father's good friend, Professor Xavier had something to do with that). At the same table is said good friend, Storm (who's like his secretary/wheelchair pusher or something) and Scott Summers (who really looks like he wants to be on the dance floor with his girlfriend right now).
They are having a "family" picnic to celebrate the defeat of Apocalypse. And luckily, Kitty has been banned from the kitchen so nobody has to worry about food poisoning.
"When'd Gambit come back?" He asks Scott, never taking his eyes off of the tall man who was currently holding Rogue's hand. Rogue was smiling and Gambit was smirking.
"He came back this morning." Scott tells him. "Been at Rogue's side ever since." Pietro can hear the hate in his voice.
Pietro is silent for only a moment as he watches Rogue smile. He finally turns away, for some reason, feeling sick. "He's not good enough for her. Only a hero deserves to get a girl like that." He grabs his father's bottle of beer, downs it, and stomps off to grab Rogue and drag her away from that sickening swamp rat.
Falling Action:
Years later, Quicksilver turns on the news.
There has been an explosion up at Xavier's. There is no way to find out how many are alive or dead or missing. They were only mutant's after all. The trash of society. If they had been human, that would have been a different matter entirely.
Quicksilver goes out for a run. He doesn't return until five days later.
The Ending:
They're older now, and because of that, they should have changed, should have transformed into different people from what they once were. But they haven't. They're Marie and Pietro, Rogue and Quicksilver, two kids still stuck in the shadow of a pair of monsters.
"Hey there Delilah," he greets as she emerges out of the shadows of their old school. He notes with interest that there is now another white streak through her hair. Her eyes are the same though. Bright, reflective, and closed. "Where's the Cajun?"
She shrugs. "He's off somewhere."
"Interesting fact: rats always leave before the boat sinks." He steps closer to her, wondering whether he shouldn't have brought a sheriff's star and cowboy hat along. Maybe Rogue will lend him one of the guns in her pocket before they have to draw. Better yet, he can just lift them off her.
Her eyes flash, and she looks more like her 'adoptive' mother than ever. But he knows that the anger is not directed toward him. "I'm impressed. You can read."
He shakes his head. "Sorry to disappoint you again, Delilah, but it was a documentary on discovery channel." He gives an exaggerated glance around the yard. "Summer's missing?"
She glares. "Leave him out of this."
Quicksilver raises his hands. He's gone too far. "Just a question. Didn't mean to offend."
Rogue steps forward into the small pool of light falling down from the streetlight. "Don't lie. It doesn't become you."
A silence fell where all they did was simply look at each other, at eyes that had never changed and would never change. Quicksilver realizes that eventually, he's going to have to draw his gun. Kill or be killed. He puts out his hand. Rogue looks down at it without seeming to acknowledge it.
"Come back Rogue. We have to finish what we started."
"What they started." Rogue snaps, anger lacing her voice. "They started it, not us. Not me."
He looks down at her and something like a cat sinks its teeth into his hummingbird heart. Does she see the same thing when she looks at him? "And we're going to finish it."
His fears are realized when she says: "You've become your father."
"And you've become your mother. I won't ask twice Rogue." And he doesn't have to. After one more brief, hooded glance, she takes his offered hand.
Side by side, they step into the night.
Fandom: X Men: Evolution/ Wolverine and the X Men
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Characters/Pairings: Rogue, Quicksilver, others. Rogue/Quicksilver, Rogue/Gambit, Rogue/Cyclops
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They were too similar not to be friends and to not follow the same path to hell.
Notes: An attempt to show the transition from X Men: Evolution to Wolverine and the X Men. Also, anybody else notice the sexual tension between Rogue and Quicksilver in the WatXM trailer? =D
Dedication: To the Percy. You know you ship it. >D
The Beginning:
Their friendship starts off easier than most, when she passes him an extra beer bottle after a brief hooded glance. She sits with her legs crossed, balanced precariously against one of the gables of the upper roof. He refrains from asking how she managed to climb up. He's got his secrets and she's got hers. Relationships tended to end easier if they had nothing on you. He'd learned that at a young age watching his twin sister being dragged into a mental hospital, his father's presence an iron clamp on his thin, hollow body. It hurts to think of Wanda, so he doesn't. It's not like he can do anything for her anyway. When you had a father like his, you were considered lucky being able to choose what to eat for breakfast.
The girl across from him has the same look in her eyes that he sees every time he looks in a mirror. It's a dark shadow that ironically makes the eyes shine like the polished mirrors of Versailles, reflecting everything back at you and revealing nothing. Perhaps that was why he was so ready to extend the hand of 'friendship' to her.
He has never been one for making friends with girls, although he had had plenty of girlfriends back at his old high school. He was one of those guys who had an infamous reputation for "taking 'em and leaving 'em", so it comes as a surprise to him that he even wants to spend time with this girl, one whom he couldn't find anymore unattractive.
"Don't like the sun much?" He indicates her pasty complexion, one that reminds him a bit too much of a zombie movie he had watched with Evan before the big game. The last big game. He wonders if her skin has ever even caught the sun's rays.
She lets out a soft grunt and readjusts herself on her perch. "Look who's talking, albino-kid." She tugs at the sleeve of her two-sizes-too-large sweater in an subconscious instinct to hide herself from the world. Her pale hands glow in the moon's light.
His eyes land for a moment on the white locks of hair framing her face. They contrast strongly with the dark auburn of the rest of her shoulder-length hair. Without asking, he knows that the last thing those white hairs are is a dye-job. It would make more sense for the auburn of her hair to be one though.
"I burn easy," he stops looking at her directly at this point, preferring to shoot milli-second glances at her and savour the slight burn on his taste bubs as the alcohol sloshed down his throat. For once, he doesn't feel the need to sprout off the stream of random thoughts that entered his head. His eyes close. It's almost peaceful here, next to this girl who is probably even less attracted to him than he is to her. He knows her type - girls who kept "Wuthering Heights" and "Jane Eyre" under their pillows only saw the tall, dark and handsome. And if he happened to have fangs, well, that was just a bonus. He preferred blondes himself.
"Where'd you get the beer?" Okay, so maybe it has harder to keep quiet than he'd thought. But when time inches by the way it does for him, it's easy to get bored. Plus, his new 'friend' is doing a great job of keeping him amused so far. If she keeps it up, he just might keep her.
"Picked the lock on Mystique's room." She says easily, shooting him a look, daring him to comment.
He was never one to back down from a challenge.
"You're a regular Delilah, aren't you?" He pitches his empty beer bottle off the roof, before leaning into her personal space, looking for all the world like he was about to initiate a kiss. Rogue instinctively shifts her body away from him, a movement which causes her to lose her balance. Faster than she can blink, he's grabbed her by the upper arm. If he lets go now, she'll fall and end up hitting several obstacles on her way down. If he's fast enough, he could probably catch her before she breaks her neck on the ground. He's tempted and they both know it.
And because he can't help it when he's faced with an opponent of equal value to himself, he taunts her: "You humiliated the Blob in front of the red-head princess. You're going to let Toad take the blame for this, because he's the thief of the family. You dissed our glorious leader Alvers in front of the enemy. What'cha going to do to me, Roguie?"
The girl grins, her eyes sparking dangerously. She grabs his covered wrist with her free hand and squeezes hard. "I can kill you with my pinky toe."
"Would you? Would you really?"
She looks into his eyes for a long moment, before turning her head. "You're crazy." She lets go of his wrist and leans back with her eyes closed, making her body limp, the only thing keeping her from falling is his hand on her wrist.
He stares down on her face, fascinated. "So are you."
The corners of her lips lift up in a well practised smirk. "I can tell that we're going to be just great friends."
The Climbing Action (1):
One day, Rogue goes on a trip to mountains and doesn't come back.
Pietro had walked to school with her that morning as he usually did. Coping her homework, as usual. Because he had been too busy the night before phoning all of his multiple girlfriends. As usual.
"You need to stop calling me Delilah at school," she tells him, passing him her complete Math assignment. "Your latest flame - what's-her-face?"
Pietro licks the stub of his pencil (which had smoke coming off it from when he'd copied her English homework only a second ago). "Emily? Jolene? Betty? Marissa? Bambi?"
Rogue makes a face. "God, do you like have threesomes or something? Don't answer that." She smacks her gloved hand against his mouth before he can share his latest sexual exploits. "Anyway, Marissa came up to me yesterday, called me Delilah, and basically both asked me to dish the dirt on you and to keep my slutty hands off you. How'd I end up being a slut?"
"She called you Delilah?" Pietro doesn't like that. Shifting his homework under his arm, he pulls out his black date book from his back pocket. He flips to the M section and neatly crosses out Marissa's name. Rogue raises an eyebrow in his direction. He grins and casually wraps an arm around her waist. "Don't worry, o glorious dark queen of the night, I'll take care of it. After all, I don't want anyone else using my pet name for you."
Rogue raises a clenched fist dangerously close to his nose. "Pet name? pet name? I'll show you pet name." She pulls back.
Pietro shrieks, and points wildly behind her. "LOOK! SCOTT SUMMERS!"
Rogue freezes, her mirror eyes going wide. "How'd. you. know. about. him." She's got him by the shirt collar and Pietro is quite sure that she's really going to readjust his face this time.
"It's nothing to be ashamed of Delilah. Hell, even I check out the X Girls sometimes."
Rogue throws him to the ground. "Just what is so damn great about Jean Grey?" She demands, before storming off.
Pietro gets up and dusts himself off, watching her as she walks away (more like stomps off). A tiny part of him feels sorry for her. She's the Isabella Linton to Summer's Heathcliff (of all the guys in the world, she had had to choose him for her Heathcliff). Briefly, Pietro wonders how he fits into the story, before turning back to the task at hand: his homework.
That night, he feels nothing as he watches Mystique scream her frustrations and anger out on them. While the other members of the Brotherhood snivel and whine about how Rogue left them for the X Men, he remains silent. He knows exactly what his Delilah's doing as he's already done it himself.
He silently wishes her good luck and wonders whether it would be in bad taste to throw her a welcome home party when she finally figures out that it's impossible to run away from the sins of your parents.
The Climbing Action (2):
He never thought that there would come a day when Rogue would look as sad and as pitiful as she did now. She's not supposed to look this way. She's supposed to look like she would kick his ass just for the hell of it.
Pietro sits down beside Rogue on the park bench, stretching out his long legs. "Word on the street," he puts his arm behind her shoulders. "Is that you and the blue loser aren't talking."
"I killed his mother, what do you expect?" Rogue has her gloves off and is in the process of tearing a dandelion into confetti.
"She was your mother too." Pietro points out, grabbing Rogue by the shoulder in case she tries to run away.
She doesn't. All she does is just say: "I know," in a tiny voice.
Pietro does not like this version of Rogue at all. He shakes her so hard and so fast that he just manages to stop himself from giving her whiplash. "STOP IT!" He's screaming at her and he doesn't know why. "YOU'RE A FRICKING HERO!"
"Kurt hates me!" Rogue looks at him then. There are tears in her eyes and Pietro can see himself drowning in that water. It's got to go, it doesn't belong there. He could murder that blue loser at this moment, strangle the kid with his own tail.
"He's an idiot," Pietro snaps. "You saved him, Delilah. You know you did."
Rogue reaches out with her pale, little hand and barely touches his cheek. "She called me Marie."
He shakes her again. "She was a fucking monster," he snarls. "Never ever forget that."
Climbing Action (3):
After seeing Rogue and making sure she's safe in Summer's care after her traumatic kidnapping experience, Pietro has the strangest longing to nip on down to New Orleans, and feed his father's right-hand man (president of the Magneto fanclub) to some gators.
"It had to have been his eyes," he muses to himself as he observes himself in the bathroom mirror. "His hair is god awful."
The Middle:
Pietro is feeling awfully confused. He is sitting beside his twin sister, who is sitting beside their father (who has recently undergone a personality change. Pietro suspects that his father's good friend, Professor Xavier had something to do with that). At the same table is said good friend, Storm (who's like his secretary/wheelchair pusher or something) and Scott Summers (who really looks like he wants to be on the dance floor with his girlfriend right now).
They are having a "family" picnic to celebrate the defeat of Apocalypse. And luckily, Kitty has been banned from the kitchen so nobody has to worry about food poisoning.
"When'd Gambit come back?" He asks Scott, never taking his eyes off of the tall man who was currently holding Rogue's hand. Rogue was smiling and Gambit was smirking.
"He came back this morning." Scott tells him. "Been at Rogue's side ever since." Pietro can hear the hate in his voice.
Pietro is silent for only a moment as he watches Rogue smile. He finally turns away, for some reason, feeling sick. "He's not good enough for her. Only a hero deserves to get a girl like that." He grabs his father's bottle of beer, downs it, and stomps off to grab Rogue and drag her away from that sickening swamp rat.
Falling Action:
Years later, Quicksilver turns on the news.
There has been an explosion up at Xavier's. There is no way to find out how many are alive or dead or missing. They were only mutant's after all. The trash of society. If they had been human, that would have been a different matter entirely.
Quicksilver goes out for a run. He doesn't return until five days later.
The Ending:
They're older now, and because of that, they should have changed, should have transformed into different people from what they once were. But they haven't. They're Marie and Pietro, Rogue and Quicksilver, two kids still stuck in the shadow of a pair of monsters.
"Hey there Delilah," he greets as she emerges out of the shadows of their old school. He notes with interest that there is now another white streak through her hair. Her eyes are the same though. Bright, reflective, and closed. "Where's the Cajun?"
She shrugs. "He's off somewhere."
"Interesting fact: rats always leave before the boat sinks." He steps closer to her, wondering whether he shouldn't have brought a sheriff's star and cowboy hat along. Maybe Rogue will lend him one of the guns in her pocket before they have to draw. Better yet, he can just lift them off her.
Her eyes flash, and she looks more like her 'adoptive' mother than ever. But he knows that the anger is not directed toward him. "I'm impressed. You can read."
He shakes his head. "Sorry to disappoint you again, Delilah, but it was a documentary on discovery channel." He gives an exaggerated glance around the yard. "Summer's missing?"
She glares. "Leave him out of this."
Quicksilver raises his hands. He's gone too far. "Just a question. Didn't mean to offend."
Rogue steps forward into the small pool of light falling down from the streetlight. "Don't lie. It doesn't become you."
A silence fell where all they did was simply look at each other, at eyes that had never changed and would never change. Quicksilver realizes that eventually, he's going to have to draw his gun. Kill or be killed. He puts out his hand. Rogue looks down at it without seeming to acknowledge it.
"Come back Rogue. We have to finish what we started."
"What they started." Rogue snaps, anger lacing her voice. "They started it, not us. Not me."
He looks down at her and something like a cat sinks its teeth into his hummingbird heart. Does she see the same thing when she looks at him? "And we're going to finish it."
His fears are realized when she says: "You've become your father."
"And you've become your mother. I won't ask twice Rogue." And he doesn't have to. After one more brief, hooded glance, she takes his offered hand.
Side by side, they step into the night.