Temporary
I. Hunger
It comes back as an itching in her palms, a tingle in her fingertips; she reaches out to touch the back of Bobby's neck and then draws back, feeling the old familiar tug in the pit of her stomach.
"Marie?" he says.
"I'll be right back," she says, and runs upstairs to throw up in the girls' bathroom, curled up on her knees with her head bent against the cool white porcelain. After a while she slides down to sit on the floor, her back against the bathroom stall, her hands around her knees.
She knows what she should do now is find a pair of her old gloves and slide them on, spend the rest of her life resisting what her body tells her it needs. Professor Xavier told her she'd probably have to be careful for the rest of her life. She couldn't even be angry at him for it, because she knew he always had to be careful himself.
But she can't imagine being Professor Xavier. She knows she's more like Erik. She won't starve when she can steal.
She gets up and goes to splash cold water on her face and looks at herself in the mirror. She doesn't think anything shows, and there's no one now who can read her mind. No one will know she's thinking bad thoughts. No one will make her put on her gloves.
Too bad for them, some part of her thinks, and she closes her eyes, but she knows it doesn't make the girl in the mirror go away.
II. Freeze
She wakes up tangled with Bobby in his bed and presses her forehead against his shoulder. He always feels cool despite the summer heat.
He doesn't stir in his sleep the way he usually does. She presses her hand against his back, and she can't feel him breathing. Her breath catches in her throat, and frost begins to form under her hand, and then to creep across her fingers, painless but cold.
She jerks her hand away, but the ice rushes across her skin, sheathing her arms in frost. The patch of ice she left on Bobby's skin crumbles into the sheets. His skin is very white, and he is very still.
She can't scream. It's like her throat is filled with ice. She crawls to the other end of the bed and huddles there. After a while she remembers that Professor Xavier will not come and find her.
Logan will wonder why she's not at breakfast. He will come up and open the door and see her naked on the bed and wrap a sheet around her and hold her wrapped up in it while she cries. He will say "I'm sorry, kid, I'm sorry," with his face against her hair, and then --
I'm not like Jean, she tells herself, but she can't help remembering the time he stabbed her, the shock of his claws in her chest and her struggle for breath, and when she hears his footsteps in the hall passing her door she stays very still and lets him walk on by.
III. Gloves
They're watching TV in the rec room when they first hear the news story about reports of the mutant cure failing. She can feel everyone looking at her, and she makes herself sit up very straight.
"I guess I should put my gloves back on," she says when Bobby switches off the television. The room is too quiet.
"We don't know ..." Ororo begins, and then she nods. "It would be the safest thing."
"It's no big deal," she says. "I'm used to it."
When she puts on the gloves and wraps a scarf around her neck it's like the world gets further away. Bobby still tries to hold her gloved hand or put his arm around her waist, but she's not sure she wants him to. He tells her it's just for a little while, just until they're sure, and they both know that's a lie.
She's standing in front of the fireplace staring at the mirror above it when Ororo comes up behind her and stands there without speaking. They look at her reflection in the mirror together.
"This is me," she says, looking at the scarf wrapped around her throat and her long cotton gloves. "This is me forever."
"There's nothing wrong with what you are," Ororo says. She brushes her hands over Rogue's hair from behind. It doesn't feel at all like it used to feel when her mother did that.
"I don't believe you," Rogue says, but she turns around and lets Ororo pull her in close. When Ororo hugs her tight it doesn't feel like when Bobby does it; it doesn't feel like they're saying goodbye.
IV. Blue
When she can't pretend any more that it isn't coming back, she goes down to the medical lab and stands looking at all the pretty pieces of science. She picks up a glass beaker and throws it at the wall. It makes a satisfying smash.
" Damn it!" she yells, and throws another piece of glassware at the wall.
The door opens a crack, and a blue, furred man peers in at her. "Is everything all right?"
"I didn't know anyone was down here," she says awkwardly. She's aware that you're not supposed to freak out in front of an ambassador. There's probably a special rule about that.
"I used to be a scientist," Hank says. "I like to keep my hand in."
"I guess Ororo and Logan know you're here," she says.
"Indeed they do." Hank crosses the room and peers down at one of the racks of labeled vials on a table as if the glass on the floor were unimportant. She gets out a broom and starts sweeping it up. Her hands are still shaking with rage.
"Can I help?" he says after a while.
"I got it."
"I don't mean with sweeping."
"I don't know," she says. "Can you?"
He shakes his head. "I doubt it."
"I'd rather be you," she says. "I'd tell everyone I was a mutant if I could just touch people."
"What does it feel like when you do?" he asks. She stares at him, but there's nothing but a deep curiosity in his eyes.
"It feels good," she says. "I want to do it all the time."
He doesn't look angry. He just looks like he's thinking about that. "Will you take a walk with me?" he asks after a while. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."
They stand in front of the grave where Jean isn't buried. Hank puts a hand on it. "She always wanted to save the world," he says.
"If I go crazy and kill everyone, will I get a nice headstone too?"
Hank still doesn't look angry. "It's not for how she died," he says. "It's for how she lived."
She wishes he'd get angry. She wishes someone would get angry and tell her it was selfish to leave the team when they needed her, selfish to be a bad role model, like it's her job to be happy the way she is for everybody else's sake. She knows they think it. She wishes they'd say it to her face.
"I'm not a hero," she says. "I proved that, right?"
He hasn't moved his hand from the stone. "I'm not a diplomat," he says. "But needs must when the devil drives."
"You mean we've got to."
"I mean that no one will do it for us."
After a minute she nods. "I might dye my hair," she says.
"I think that's entirely up to you."
"You could dye yours," she says, her mouth twitching. "If you get tired of blue."
"I could," he says. "What do you think would suit me?"
"Maybe pink," she says.
He nods thoughtfully, apparently considering that. On the way back to the house he offers her his arm like they're going to a dance. She puts a hand on his arm, trying not to feel the pull of his skin through the fabric of his suit.
"What does it feel like?" he asks again, looking at her hand, and she realizes it's a different question.
"It feels like dying," she says, and he nods. She wishes he looked more afraid.
V. Ghosts
She packs up the afternoon that Bobby gets out of the hospital, throwing shirts into a bag and shoving all the stuff off the dresser in after them. She looks up from closing the bag to see Logan standing in the doorway of her room.
"You running away again?"
"I got business to take care of," she says. "Don't get in the way."
He shrugs. "It's a free country."
She wishes they knew how to say more than that. "I'll be back," she says.
"If I wasn't stuck here--"
"I know," she says, and shoulders the bag.
She walks to the bus station and takes the bus to New York, curled up in the window seat with her hands in her pockets. A few people look at her gloved hands nervously. She meets their eyes, and they look away.
He'll be here, if he's still alive. It's the place he feels safest. She gets on the subway and tries to ride it without thinking about where she's going, to get off where her feet want to take her and walk through the crowd like a ghost.
She finds him in Central Park, with a metal chess set spread out across a stone table. He looks like an old man. He never has before. He hasn't seen her yet, and she slips the gloves off and puts them in her pockets and pushes up her sleeves.
She walks up to the table and sits down, and he looks up with startled blue eyes. "Don't run away," she says.
"From you?" His voice is mocking, but there's something fragile about his knife-edged smile. "I haven't sunk that far."
"Pretty far," she says.
"At least I didn't do it to myself." He picks up one of the pawns, turning it around in his fingers. "I expected more from you."
"It meant I get to choose," she says. "It isn't all about what my body can do. Being a hero's not all about your genes."
He looks at her across the chessboard. "Are you here to kill me?"
"Is that what you'd do?"
"Do I seem inclined to kill you?"
"No."
"You are one of the few things any of us has to show for the last forty years," he says. "So much has come to nothing."
"Don't tell me you're getting sentimental about a human," she says.
His blue eyes go cold. "You're not human."
"I took the cure," she says.
"It's not a final solution," he says. He opens his hand and shows her the chess piece hovering a fraction of an inch above his palm.
There's no point anymore in pretending. "I wanted a choice," she whispers.
"Everyone has a choice."
She raises her hand, stretching out her fingers. He doesn't pull his hand away. She hesitates, her fingers not quite brushing his skin.
"Will you steal my power, then?" he asks. He tips his hand, and the chess piece falls to the table with a clatter. "It won't be very useful to you now."
She shrugs one shoulder and meets his eyes. "I can wait."
The corners of his mouth twitch. "There might be hope for you yet." He pulls his hand away, and she lets him. He stands up and pushes in his chair neatly. "I must be going now," he says. "I'm sure you understand."
"You go ahead and run," she says. "I'll find you when I want to."
He doesn't turn around. "Have you taken over playing God, now?" he asks.
She thinks he might be smiling.