WHO: Rogue WHEN: after this WHERE: Camp Wanda WHAT: reflections WARNINGS: Hunger Games
The place had become infinitely more stifling since heading back from the Fallout shelter with Mimi. The smell of saltwater and sand beneath her feet was doing little to quell the burning rage that hadn’t dissipated since Mimi had confessed to Hank. While Rogue was grateful to have been told the truth from the woman, it didn’t really resolve anything, nor did the apparent loyalty that Mimi seemed to be offering her now. If anything that offered loyalty only ignited the anger that Rogue couldn’t seem to shake. Where had any of that been earlier? Why was it coming into play now?
She dug her toes into the sand, letting the water lap at her feet, wishing the coolness of it would help ease some of her frustration. Rogue had considered heading off on her own for a bit, but she didn’t quite trust leaving the other two with Mimi now. Sure, Bucky and Wanda could probably hold their own, but why leave that to chance? And heading out on her own was a surefire way to get killed, something she was still attempting not to let happen.
Rogue sat down, not caring that she might get wet and sifted through the sand, hand clutching around a rock that she stumbled across. She ran her finger along the rough edge, calculating how much force she might need to utilize it effectively.
Would it have been better to kill the girl, tell Wanda and Bucky that they’d been attacked while looking for supplies and Mimi just hadn’t made it? Rogue wasn’t sure she could have pulled off that lie, nor did she think Hank would have wanted her killing for him. It went against so much of what they believed in. Though, it was hard to see how coexistence was supposed to even work here. Not when people were killing one another over damn bags of supplies, because someone was trying to protect someone else. The smattering of working together that Wanda, Bucky and she had managed failed to override everything else that seemed to be happening. Pietro was dead, Hank as well, and Rogue didn’t doubt that more of their ranks had been killed so easily by others, written off as disposable or in the way or a million other excuses for this senselessness.
Was there a point in not falling into the game the others were all so willing to apparently play?
Absorbing people, taking on all of them, meant feeling as they did, thinking as they did for time. And some — especially the stronger ones — had a way of drowning her out. Their thoughts, their desires and beliefs mixed with hers, confusing her on what was her and what was them. That distortion was difficult to wade through and the reason she’d locked so many of those she’d absorbed away before she did have control. It’d been the only way to cope with all that was thrown at her.
It was also was why when Max had asked her to go away with him she'd said no, certain that embarking down that road would lead her down a twisting path she wouldn’t be able to get back from.
But he wasn't lingering inside of her now, there were no traces of him left, and that meant the darker thoughts were all her own.
Glancing back at the others, Rogue dropped the rock and pushed the anger down, worked at bottling it up and compartmentalizing it as she used to. She refused to let this place turn her into that sort of person again. She’d accomplished too much in the years since she left the Brotherhood to go back to it.