Fic: XMMF, "Half Become Whole"
Title: Half Become Whole
Author: Sionnain
Fandom: XMMF
Pairing: This fic features Rogue and Wolverine, with implied Magneto/Rogue, as it's set in my Ideology universe.
Rating: PG13
Summary: Rogue has a surprise meeting with Wolverine, in which she wants to make a few things clear about the choices she's made.
AN: Written for the "Control" challenge for Demented_Allure, which was to write a fic inspired by Poe's song, Control. From the first moment I heard this song, it reminded me of Brotherhood!Rogue confronting someone from her past.
Half Become Whole
Surprised you to find that I'm laughing?
You thought that you'd find me in tears
You thought I'd be crawling the walls
Like a tiny mosquito and trembling in fear...
“Hey, kid.”
Rogue looks up at the man standing by her table and her fingers tighten imperceptibly on her glass of Southern Comfort and Coke.
Well. This should be interesting.
“Hey, Logan.” She speaks as if they’ve seen each other just yesterday, rather than a year ago, before she left Xavier’s.
He’s angry, she can tell. He was gone the night she ran away, and she doesn’t need the lingering remnants of his mind in hers to know that he feels like she’s betrayed him. It’s clearly written in the tense set of his shoulders, in the tight lines of his mouth and the narrowed hazel eyes fixed directly on her.
“You alone, or you got one of your cronies around here somewhere?”
Gambit and Pyro are playing pool in the back, but she doesn’t tell him that. She’s too tired for a fight, and Pyro would just make Wolverine want to start one. “I ain’t workin’, sugar. No need to worry.”
His eyes widen for a minute at her tone, and Rogue gives him a sharp smile. Did you expect me to be scared of you? At night she goes to bed with a man who tried to kill her. She is not afraid of the man who saved her life.
“Let’s go have a drink.”
“Got one,” Rogue says, holding hers up as if she’s toasting him.
“Half-empty already,” Wolverine says in a voice that tries too hard to be nonchalant.
“Half-full,” Rogue corrects him, but she stands up anyway. “Don’t try anything, Wolverine.”
He looks at her as if he’s never seen her before, and she realizes he really hasn’t. He remembers Rogue as a teammate and Marie as a scared runaway with a hopeless crush on him.
Rogue is no longer his teammate, and Marie’s affections are otherwise engaged. She’s different, now. She’s no longer a pawn in anyone’s game.
Now I get to be the queen.
* * *
“Don’t get it, that’s all. Don’t see why you’d join up with Magneto. There’s other things you can do besides be an X-Man, Rogue.” Wolverine takes a long pull of his beer.
They’re sitting at a table outside, on the deck that overlooks the parking lot. It’s nice to be outside and free of the smoke, but that must not be a popular opinion. They’re the only two out on the porch, the rest of the tables are deserted.
“Yeah? Like what? Run away?” At his wince she feels a sharp sting of satisfaction.
“That ain’t nice. You know why I left.”
“Yes. I just don’t see how spurned affections from a dead woman is more noble a reason to leave than a complete and utter lack of faith in Xavier’s idealistic dream.” She smiles a little as Erik laughs in her mind. That would be my phrasing much more than yours, my dear.
It’s still the truth, ain’t it?
“When did you get to be such a bitch?”
“You want to talk to me or insult me?” She takes another sip of her drink, but only just. She doesn’t drink very much, and she can’t afford to be drunk. She wonders what Pyro and Gambit will do if they see her out here with him. She doesn’t really want to find out.
“Why’d you leave, Rogue?”
She stares down at the green plastic table for a long moment without answering. They’re not happy memories, as much as she’s put them behind her, as much as she’s sort of glad the whole thing happened. “Surprised no one told you.”
“Yeah, well.” Wolverine leans back in the chair and watches her. He’s still handsome with his animalistic grace and his voice that reminds her of smoke and whiskey. “Want to hear it from you.”
She gives him a level look. “Why?”
“Damn it, Rogue,” he growls, smacking his hand hard on the table. Her drink rattles ominously from the impact. “You know what that did to me? To come home and find you’d high-tailed it off to them? The Brotherhood?”
She wonders what story Xavier’s told him, if he even knows about Lewiston. “No. I was too busy trying to survive, Logan. I’m sorry if you don’t approve of that.” Her voice is dripping with sarcasm.
Logan leans across the table; this is as close as he’s been to her. He opens his mouth to say something, but his eyes narrow and he sniffs cautiously. “No,” he says flatly. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Rogue blinks, confused. “Wrong about what?”
He leans closer; her hands are underneath the table now and she has the fingers of her left hand tugging on the tips of the glove on her right. He saved her life, sure, but she’ll hurt him if she has to without blinking an eye.
“Somethin’ ain’t quite right about your scent, Rogue. You don’t just smell like you.”
Heat suffuses her face and she’s glad it’s dark so he can’t see. She remembers Gambit calling her earlier, asking if she wanted to go for a drink with him and Pyro. She’d been nearly asleep after dealing with her after-violence restlessness.
Or, more appropriately, after Erik had dealt with her after-violence restlessness. She’d figured the bar would be smoky and so she’d forgone showering and just pulled on her clothes before going to meet them in the lobby.
It is his scent, then, that Wolverine smells on her. She raises her head a notch like a queen offended by a mere courtier. She refuses to be ashamed of that. “That’s none of your business.”
Her fingers pull at the glove and the satin slides off, the cool night air caressing her skin like a lover.
“I can hear you doing that, you know. Taking your glove off. You gonna drop me, Rogue?” He leans back in his chair and she can clearly read the disgust written on his face. Her fingers curl into her palm and the bite of nails on her skin sharpens her focus.
“Depends. You gonna make me?”
“I should,” he mutters, taking another drink of his beer. “Seems someone should knock some sense into you.”
Rogue stands up so quickly the chair clatters to the wooden deck behind her. “Do you even care that I’m happy now? Did you even have any idea how miserable I was at Xavier’s?”
Wolverine looks up at her, his posture tense though he remains seated. It annoys her; is she not enough of a threat to make him rise? “You can’t be happy. He’s brainwashed you.”
For a moment she’s shocked into incredulous silence. “What?”
Wolverine nods, as if he’s convincing himself of something. “Yeah. He made you touch him again, forced his head into yours, and now you can’t escape because he keeps you with him because of some mental mind-thing.”
She laughs because it’s just so absurd that he would think that. “You’re wrong, Wolverine. I joined the Brotherhood of my own free will, and he never touched me.”
“Oh, yeah? Then what’s none of my business?” He smiles and she hates what it does to his face. It’s twisted and angry, and it makes him look mean. “Why’s his scent all over you?”
“That happened after,” she snaps, arms crossed over her chest.
“He tried to kill you, Rogue!” Wolverine growls, leaning forward. “Remember?”
As if she has ever forgotten that. “Believe me, I remember.”
“Great. Then do you remember how I saved your life?” He glares at her, and she realizes that this conversation is one he’s had with her a thousand times since she left, though this is the first time she’s hearing it.
“Of course,” she says quietly, because it’s true.
“So this is how you repay me?” He’s becoming angrier now, she can tell; bright red spots of color on his cheeks, and he’s finally risen to his feet.
“Wasn’t aware the condition of you savin’ my life was that I had to live it like you wanted me to,” she answers, and if she’s honest, it’s not the first time she’s said that to him, either.
The advantage to having someone in your head is that you know how they fight. Rogue thinks it’s a useful skill. Erik thinks it’s annoying, but only when she does it to him.
“It wasn’t. But I sure as hell thought you’d have more sense than to start fucking some madman who tried to kill you,” Wolverine says bluntly.
“Shut up, Logan. You have no say in what I do or how I live my life or even who I fuck-”
He interrupts her, as if he can’t stand to hear her say that word. “Apparently not.” For a long moment they are both silent, staring off into space, lost in their own thoughts.
“You okay?” he demands suddenly. “They ain’t hurtin’ you or anything?”
Rogue sighs and leans against the railing of the deck. “Yeah. I’m okay. Like I said, I’m happy.”
He walks over and stands next to her, bracing his arms on the wooden rail. She wonders why he’s even here, in this city, and thinks about asking him. She doesn’t, though. It doesn’t matter anyway. The facility is in ruins and everyone who’d worked there is dead. They’re leaving in the morning-earlier, probably, once she tells Magneto that Wolverine is here.
“I wish I would have been there. When you’d left.”
Surprised, she turns her head and looks at him. His profile is stark in the muted light of the street lamp. For a moment Rogue waits, wondering if old feelings will surface. They don’t. “Why?”
“So we could have left together,” he says simply. “You wouldn’t have run off to Magneto and ended up his-” he shakes his head, as if he can’t quite bring himself to say it. “You wouldn’t be a killer.”
“I didn’t run off to Magneto,” she says with a shrug, finding her glove and putting it back on her bare hand. She ignores the second part of his sentence, because she is a killer. So is he. There’s no need to argue over things they can’t change. “I ran off to Canada.” She smiles briefly. “I made it as far as Lewiston, Maine.”
“Yeah. Chuck said that. Said he couldn’t find you right after you’d left-I gave him hell for it, when I got back.”
“What’d he say to that?” She is still afraid of the Professor; she knows from Logan’s mind the terror of blackness, of forgetting. She never wants that to happen to her. As awful as Erik’s memories are, at least he still has them.
“You know. The usual. He said when he got a lock on you with Cerebro, it was because you’d used your powers in Lewiston. He sent Storm to look for you. She told us that a young girl with a streak in her hair, name of Anna Marie, was fired after beating up some dude and trying to rob the place.”
Rogue laughs mirthlessly. “The guy tried to rape me but they wouldn’t believe me since I was a mutant. I got kicked out of my motel, too. I lived next to a prostitute. Ain’t that somethin’?”
“Lived in a few places like that, myself,” he says conversationally, and she smiles at him. It’s a genuine smile this time, lacking sharpness. “Can’t talk you into coming back with me, can I?”
“No,” she says quietly, shaking her head. “You can’t.”
“Just don’t seem possible, that’s all. Knew you had some problems, with your mutation, with livin’ at Xavier’s.” He’s staring out into the darkness again. “Just wish I would have been there when it all went down.”
“I don’t,” Rogue says honestly, and she lays her hand gently on his arm when she hears his sharp, indrawn breath. “Logan, I ain’t tryin’ to mean, but I am where I need to be.”
“We’re enemies, now. You know how weird that is? I only stuck around Xavier’s for you.”
It’s strange that he says that her now, when she would have given anything to have heard it before. “No, Logan. You didn’t,” she says bluntly. “I know why you stayed. You don’t have to lie.”
He turns on her suddenly, and his hands are on her shoulders. “Listen to me, kid. If you get in some kind of trouble, if you need to get out, away-you call me. You find some way to get in touch with me, you got it?”
She’s torn between being angered at his audacity and touched at his concern. “I don’t need anyone to rescue me, Logan. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah? Like the girl I picked up in Laughlin City? Like the girl I rescued off the Statue?”
“No,” she says adamantly, anger leaking into her voice. “That girl in Laughlin City didn’t know how scary the world was. That girl on the Statue didn’t understand we are at war.” She stares up at him, her voice full of conviction. “I ain’t that girl anymore, Logan. I don’t need you to save me.”
He pushes her away; gently, regretfully. “Yeah. Well, good. Got a feelin’ the next time we meet, it might be in a fight.”
She smiles and backs away, knowing she needs to leave. Pyro and Gambit will be wondering where she is and they need to let Magneto know they’re not alone here. “Might be.”
“I still mean it, Rogue. It ain’t too late to come back.”
Rogue pauses with her hand on the door that leads back into the bar. She can hear Waylon Jennings playing on the jukebox, imagines Pyro’s scowl and figures Gambit’s probably singing along.
“No. For me, it is, Logan.” She opens the door and goes into the bar, and doesn’t look back. She finds Pyro and Gambit and tells them in a low voice they need to leave, now. They take one look at her face and don’t ask why, and they settle their tab and head out.
She doesn’t look up at the deck as they pass by, but she can feel him there, watching her leave.
Author: Sionnain
Fandom: XMMF
Pairing: This fic features Rogue and Wolverine, with implied Magneto/Rogue, as it's set in my Ideology universe.
Rating: PG13
Summary: Rogue has a surprise meeting with Wolverine, in which she wants to make a few things clear about the choices she's made.
AN: Written for the "Control" challenge for Demented_Allure, which was to write a fic inspired by Poe's song, Control. From the first moment I heard this song, it reminded me of Brotherhood!Rogue confronting someone from her past.
Half Become Whole
Surprised you to find that I'm laughing?
You thought that you'd find me in tears
You thought I'd be crawling the walls
Like a tiny mosquito and trembling in fear...
“Hey, kid.”
Rogue looks up at the man standing by her table and her fingers tighten imperceptibly on her glass of Southern Comfort and Coke.
Well. This should be interesting.
“Hey, Logan.” She speaks as if they’ve seen each other just yesterday, rather than a year ago, before she left Xavier’s.
He’s angry, she can tell. He was gone the night she ran away, and she doesn’t need the lingering remnants of his mind in hers to know that he feels like she’s betrayed him. It’s clearly written in the tense set of his shoulders, in the tight lines of his mouth and the narrowed hazel eyes fixed directly on her.
“You alone, or you got one of your cronies around here somewhere?”
Gambit and Pyro are playing pool in the back, but she doesn’t tell him that. She’s too tired for a fight, and Pyro would just make Wolverine want to start one. “I ain’t workin’, sugar. No need to worry.”
His eyes widen for a minute at her tone, and Rogue gives him a sharp smile. Did you expect me to be scared of you? At night she goes to bed with a man who tried to kill her. She is not afraid of the man who saved her life.
“Let’s go have a drink.”
“Got one,” Rogue says, holding hers up as if she’s toasting him.
“Half-empty already,” Wolverine says in a voice that tries too hard to be nonchalant.
“Half-full,” Rogue corrects him, but she stands up anyway. “Don’t try anything, Wolverine.”
He looks at her as if he’s never seen her before, and she realizes he really hasn’t. He remembers Rogue as a teammate and Marie as a scared runaway with a hopeless crush on him.
Rogue is no longer his teammate, and Marie’s affections are otherwise engaged. She’s different, now. She’s no longer a pawn in anyone’s game.
Now I get to be the queen.
* * *
“Don’t get it, that’s all. Don’t see why you’d join up with Magneto. There’s other things you can do besides be an X-Man, Rogue.” Wolverine takes a long pull of his beer.
They’re sitting at a table outside, on the deck that overlooks the parking lot. It’s nice to be outside and free of the smoke, but that must not be a popular opinion. They’re the only two out on the porch, the rest of the tables are deserted.
“Yeah? Like what? Run away?” At his wince she feels a sharp sting of satisfaction.
“That ain’t nice. You know why I left.”
“Yes. I just don’t see how spurned affections from a dead woman is more noble a reason to leave than a complete and utter lack of faith in Xavier’s idealistic dream.” She smiles a little as Erik laughs in her mind. That would be my phrasing much more than yours, my dear.
It’s still the truth, ain’t it?
“When did you get to be such a bitch?”
“You want to talk to me or insult me?” She takes another sip of her drink, but only just. She doesn’t drink very much, and she can’t afford to be drunk. She wonders what Pyro and Gambit will do if they see her out here with him. She doesn’t really want to find out.
“Why’d you leave, Rogue?”
She stares down at the green plastic table for a long moment without answering. They’re not happy memories, as much as she’s put them behind her, as much as she’s sort of glad the whole thing happened. “Surprised no one told you.”
“Yeah, well.” Wolverine leans back in the chair and watches her. He’s still handsome with his animalistic grace and his voice that reminds her of smoke and whiskey. “Want to hear it from you.”
She gives him a level look. “Why?”
“Damn it, Rogue,” he growls, smacking his hand hard on the table. Her drink rattles ominously from the impact. “You know what that did to me? To come home and find you’d high-tailed it off to them? The Brotherhood?”
She wonders what story Xavier’s told him, if he even knows about Lewiston. “No. I was too busy trying to survive, Logan. I’m sorry if you don’t approve of that.” Her voice is dripping with sarcasm.
Logan leans across the table; this is as close as he’s been to her. He opens his mouth to say something, but his eyes narrow and he sniffs cautiously. “No,” he says flatly. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Rogue blinks, confused. “Wrong about what?”
He leans closer; her hands are underneath the table now and she has the fingers of her left hand tugging on the tips of the glove on her right. He saved her life, sure, but she’ll hurt him if she has to without blinking an eye.
“Somethin’ ain’t quite right about your scent, Rogue. You don’t just smell like you.”
Heat suffuses her face and she’s glad it’s dark so he can’t see. She remembers Gambit calling her earlier, asking if she wanted to go for a drink with him and Pyro. She’d been nearly asleep after dealing with her after-violence restlessness.
Or, more appropriately, after Erik had dealt with her after-violence restlessness. She’d figured the bar would be smoky and so she’d forgone showering and just pulled on her clothes before going to meet them in the lobby.
It is his scent, then, that Wolverine smells on her. She raises her head a notch like a queen offended by a mere courtier. She refuses to be ashamed of that. “That’s none of your business.”
Her fingers pull at the glove and the satin slides off, the cool night air caressing her skin like a lover.
“I can hear you doing that, you know. Taking your glove off. You gonna drop me, Rogue?” He leans back in his chair and she can clearly read the disgust written on his face. Her fingers curl into her palm and the bite of nails on her skin sharpens her focus.
“Depends. You gonna make me?”
“I should,” he mutters, taking another drink of his beer. “Seems someone should knock some sense into you.”
Rogue stands up so quickly the chair clatters to the wooden deck behind her. “Do you even care that I’m happy now? Did you even have any idea how miserable I was at Xavier’s?”
Wolverine looks up at her, his posture tense though he remains seated. It annoys her; is she not enough of a threat to make him rise? “You can’t be happy. He’s brainwashed you.”
For a moment she’s shocked into incredulous silence. “What?”
Wolverine nods, as if he’s convincing himself of something. “Yeah. He made you touch him again, forced his head into yours, and now you can’t escape because he keeps you with him because of some mental mind-thing.”
She laughs because it’s just so absurd that he would think that. “You’re wrong, Wolverine. I joined the Brotherhood of my own free will, and he never touched me.”
“Oh, yeah? Then what’s none of my business?” He smiles and she hates what it does to his face. It’s twisted and angry, and it makes him look mean. “Why’s his scent all over you?”
“That happened after,” she snaps, arms crossed over her chest.
“He tried to kill you, Rogue!” Wolverine growls, leaning forward. “Remember?”
As if she has ever forgotten that. “Believe me, I remember.”
“Great. Then do you remember how I saved your life?” He glares at her, and she realizes that this conversation is one he’s had with her a thousand times since she left, though this is the first time she’s hearing it.
“Of course,” she says quietly, because it’s true.
“So this is how you repay me?” He’s becoming angrier now, she can tell; bright red spots of color on his cheeks, and he’s finally risen to his feet.
“Wasn’t aware the condition of you savin’ my life was that I had to live it like you wanted me to,” she answers, and if she’s honest, it’s not the first time she’s said that to him, either.
The advantage to having someone in your head is that you know how they fight. Rogue thinks it’s a useful skill. Erik thinks it’s annoying, but only when she does it to him.
“It wasn’t. But I sure as hell thought you’d have more sense than to start fucking some madman who tried to kill you,” Wolverine says bluntly.
“Shut up, Logan. You have no say in what I do or how I live my life or even who I fuck-”
He interrupts her, as if he can’t stand to hear her say that word. “Apparently not.” For a long moment they are both silent, staring off into space, lost in their own thoughts.
“You okay?” he demands suddenly. “They ain’t hurtin’ you or anything?”
Rogue sighs and leans against the railing of the deck. “Yeah. I’m okay. Like I said, I’m happy.”
He walks over and stands next to her, bracing his arms on the wooden rail. She wonders why he’s even here, in this city, and thinks about asking him. She doesn’t, though. It doesn’t matter anyway. The facility is in ruins and everyone who’d worked there is dead. They’re leaving in the morning-earlier, probably, once she tells Magneto that Wolverine is here.
“I wish I would have been there. When you’d left.”
Surprised, she turns her head and looks at him. His profile is stark in the muted light of the street lamp. For a moment Rogue waits, wondering if old feelings will surface. They don’t. “Why?”
“So we could have left together,” he says simply. “You wouldn’t have run off to Magneto and ended up his-” he shakes his head, as if he can’t quite bring himself to say it. “You wouldn’t be a killer.”
“I didn’t run off to Magneto,” she says with a shrug, finding her glove and putting it back on her bare hand. She ignores the second part of his sentence, because she is a killer. So is he. There’s no need to argue over things they can’t change. “I ran off to Canada.” She smiles briefly. “I made it as far as Lewiston, Maine.”
“Yeah. Chuck said that. Said he couldn’t find you right after you’d left-I gave him hell for it, when I got back.”
“What’d he say to that?” She is still afraid of the Professor; she knows from Logan’s mind the terror of blackness, of forgetting. She never wants that to happen to her. As awful as Erik’s memories are, at least he still has them.
“You know. The usual. He said when he got a lock on you with Cerebro, it was because you’d used your powers in Lewiston. He sent Storm to look for you. She told us that a young girl with a streak in her hair, name of Anna Marie, was fired after beating up some dude and trying to rob the place.”
Rogue laughs mirthlessly. “The guy tried to rape me but they wouldn’t believe me since I was a mutant. I got kicked out of my motel, too. I lived next to a prostitute. Ain’t that somethin’?”
“Lived in a few places like that, myself,” he says conversationally, and she smiles at him. It’s a genuine smile this time, lacking sharpness. “Can’t talk you into coming back with me, can I?”
“No,” she says quietly, shaking her head. “You can’t.”
“Just don’t seem possible, that’s all. Knew you had some problems, with your mutation, with livin’ at Xavier’s.” He’s staring out into the darkness again. “Just wish I would have been there when it all went down.”
“I don’t,” Rogue says honestly, and she lays her hand gently on his arm when she hears his sharp, indrawn breath. “Logan, I ain’t tryin’ to mean, but I am where I need to be.”
“We’re enemies, now. You know how weird that is? I only stuck around Xavier’s for you.”
It’s strange that he says that her now, when she would have given anything to have heard it before. “No, Logan. You didn’t,” she says bluntly. “I know why you stayed. You don’t have to lie.”
He turns on her suddenly, and his hands are on her shoulders. “Listen to me, kid. If you get in some kind of trouble, if you need to get out, away-you call me. You find some way to get in touch with me, you got it?”
She’s torn between being angered at his audacity and touched at his concern. “I don’t need anyone to rescue me, Logan. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah? Like the girl I picked up in Laughlin City? Like the girl I rescued off the Statue?”
“No,” she says adamantly, anger leaking into her voice. “That girl in Laughlin City didn’t know how scary the world was. That girl on the Statue didn’t understand we are at war.” She stares up at him, her voice full of conviction. “I ain’t that girl anymore, Logan. I don’t need you to save me.”
He pushes her away; gently, regretfully. “Yeah. Well, good. Got a feelin’ the next time we meet, it might be in a fight.”
She smiles and backs away, knowing she needs to leave. Pyro and Gambit will be wondering where she is and they need to let Magneto know they’re not alone here. “Might be.”
“I still mean it, Rogue. It ain’t too late to come back.”
Rogue pauses with her hand on the door that leads back into the bar. She can hear Waylon Jennings playing on the jukebox, imagines Pyro’s scowl and figures Gambit’s probably singing along.
“No. For me, it is, Logan.” She opens the door and goes into the bar, and doesn’t look back. She finds Pyro and Gambit and tells them in a low voice they need to leave, now. They take one look at her face and don’t ask why, and they settle their tab and head out.
She doesn’t look up at the deck as they pass by, but she can feel him there, watching her leave.