Rogue (cannottouch) wrote in zombieslogs, @ 2014-02-12 20:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | marie/rogue |
Who: Rogue and Bruce and Logan borrowed with permission
What: Finally cured
When: Today and a couple of days before that
Where: Stark's base
Warnings: Dream death of a character
Friday, February 7
Rogue wiped away the fog from the bathroom mirror with a few quick, careless swipes of her towel only to drop it seconds later with a surprised gasp when she glanced at it.
You’re not actually surprised are you?
She closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the sink, stubbornly shaking her head. No, it wasn’t real. There was nothing there. There was no one there.
Oh come on, let’s not play this game, Rogue. It’s a waste of time and we’re not in the mood to indulge you today.
“I’m alone. It’s just me, just me,” she muttered under her breath over and over again, clinging to the words like a shield. Bruce had already started Rogue on a treatment after running various tests on her and pinpointing what had thrown her mutation out of whack. He’d explained what he found wrong, a lot of it going over her head, but the jist of it was that the odds were in her favor of finally getting better. She believed him, she had to when the only other option she had, had been turned down vehemently by Logan. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it again after the first time Rogue had brought it up, refusing to even consider it. It seemed like she didn’t have to anyway when the personalities had noticeably quieted down after the first couple rounds of shots.
The dreams had seemed to kicked back up to an alarming frequency but Rogue could handle the dreams. They were nothing new and she preferred them to losing control of her body. It had been a couple of days since the last time someone else had been in driver’s seat and she thought that maybe it was a sign that things were actually getting better.
Well you thought wrong, didn’t you? When are you going to finally accept that you can’t get rid of us? We’re a part of you, there’s no changing that no matter what Banner tells you,” the leviathans told her, voices in sync.
She shook her head again. They weren’t there. They weren’t-- Rogue shuddered and her eyes snapped open when she felt one of the leviathans run a finger over her damp shoulder. What? That had never happened before. She could always hear the others in her head but not once had she actually felt them. She couldn’t help but glance around the bathroom but no one was there, just her. Then how?
We already told you, we’re a part of you. Don’t you get what that means? We are one and the same. What you feel, we feel. What you see, we see. Are you getting the picture? Banner might be keeping us from taking full reign again but that’s only temporary. In the meantime, we get the opportunity to be creative.
“You’re just grasping at straws,” Rogue told them with false bravado. “You’re getting weaker, you’re just trying to mess with me.” Bruce had told her it would work, he wouldn’t lie to her, not when he had been trying to help her from the moment she’d reached out to him.
”We never said he was lying. He probably does think he’s telling you the truth when he says the treatments will work,” they paused then went on in a teasing tone, ”but we know better, don’t we? If we were really getting weaker, could we do this?
The bathroom suddenly went dark. Rogue let go of the sink and stumbled back in surprise and alarm. How had they turned off the lights? She flailed in the dark and groped at the walls until she found the lightswitch. She flipped it up and down but the lights stayed off.
”The lights are fine. We don’t have the power to switch that off, but we do have the power to switch off your vision. You’re blind. Don’t believe us? Look down at the floor.”
Against her better judgement, Rogue did look down and couldn’t bite back a scream when she realized she couldn’t see the light from the hallway under the door. For that matter, she couldn’t see the door or even it’s shape.
“Rogue?” Logan’s voice came from the other side of the door and she tried to answer him but no sound came out of her mouth. Instead she let out a shuddered breath as she began to shake in fear.
”Like we said, creative. This is gonna be fun and just you wait until we get full control again. This time around, we’ll kill Logan and Banner. Might as well take advantage while we’re here, right?”
“Marie!”
Seconds later the door was forced open and Logan found her shivering on the floor.
Sunday, February 9
The episode on Friday had shaken Rogue to her core even if the blindness had only been temporary. She didn’t want to continue the treatments anymore. What was the point if it wasn’t working?
“Rogue, the treatments are working,” Bruce assured her, his voice ever calm and steady.
She refused to meet his eyes or Logan’s. She’d brought up the other option again, her death, but both of them had shut her down and since then, Logan had been walking around the place with a scowl firmly in place.
When she didn’t say anything, Bruce spoke up again. “Your blood work and scans show that it’s working, you just have to give it a few more days.”
“It doesn’t feel like it,” she finally murmured, “I can still hear them.” Hear them, feel them, and dream them. The nightmares were getting worse and she hadn’t thought that was possible. Instead of forcing her to relive their memories, she was shown what they had in store for the people she cared about in vivid detail. It was like being with the masked man all over again but this time around, Erik nor John were there to give her a break.
“Them?”
“The leviathans.”
She heard Logan get up to pace all over again and she didn’t have to actually glance at him to know that he was sporting a pissed off look. She had told him who was in control when she’d attacked him, that was one conversation she wasn’t eager to ever have again.
“And that’s it?” She finally looked up at Bruce, brows furrowed. “What about the others you said took control before? Magneto? John? Jimmy? Anyone else?” The serious look on his face faded into a smile, albeit a small one, but a smile nonetheless when she shook her head in response. “There you go. If the treatment wasn’t working, they would all still be there. Didn’t you say they were all there after Max tried to heal you?”
That gave Rogue pause. That hadn’t crossed her mind, not when she’d been too busy dealing with the leviathans screwing with her. Despite herself, her eyes lit up with hope. “They were,” she agreed.
“Just hold on a while longer, Rogue, I know it’s working. They’ll be gone soon.”
She bit her lip and nodded. “Okay.” Logan placed his hand on her shoulder and she took comfort in the small show of support, ignoring the voices telling her she was wasting her time.
Tuesday, February 11
Rogue looked down at her hands in horror. They were heavily stained with blood, with bits and pieces of skin clinging to her nails. She shook her head in denial, it wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real she thought to herself as she took a couple steps back as if she could walk away from her hands. That turned out to be a mistake as she tripped over something and fell down on the floor, coming face to face with Lorna, or what looked like the remains of her head. Rogue screamed and quickly scrambled back, unable to take her eyes away from her friend. She was lying on the floor, blood trailing down her chin from above where her face was smashed in.
”She put up quite a fight but she didn’t anticipate the new strength we have.”
Rogue didn’t have to look up to know who was talking to her. It was them, it was always them.
It’s a pity we don’t have our old body. We’ve never tasted a mutant before but we bet she would have been delicious.
She shuddered and shook her head. This wasn’t real. This was a dream, it always ended up being a dream.
”So Sam was a dream? You didn’t kill her and steal her powers?” Rogue ignored them and continued telling herself that none of it was real. That it couldn’t be. ”Yeah, that’s actually really annoying but if you don’t want to have fun, we will.”
Before she argue or put up a fight, they were seizing control of her body but it was different this time around. Before, she had felt passive, like she could only watch helplessly but it wasn’t like that now. She was still very much in control and yet she knew they had control as well. We’re one and the same, Rogue. What we feel, you feel, they reminded her. Just like that, the horror faded and was replaced with something akin to excitement. Was that coming from them or her? She couldn’t tell and yet, she found herself not caring one way or another.
“Rogue?”
The voice was unmistakable, Logan. Her lips curled up as a shiver of thrill ran down her spine, her body thrumming with her newly acquired power. Lorna had been a means to an end, an amusing one, but ultimately they had just wanted to absorb her mutation.
“Over here,” she called out, her eyes fluttering as she felt the metal coating Logan’s bones practically singing out to her as he ran her way.
He quickly rounded the corner but skidded to a stop when his eyes landed on her. By the look on his face, he knew something was up and Rogue didn’t bother to put up any pretenses for him, not when he was finally at a complete disadvantage.
“We told you we were going to become immortal again one way or another,” she taunted him and without giving him a chance to respond, she flung out her hand and forced Logan to remain still. “You should have listened to us when we told you our death was the only option.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed as he snarled at the mere suggestion that Rogue dying was the better option.
“You don’t agree then? I think we can change your mind before we kill you.”
With a flick of her fingers, Rogue easily pinned Logan down to the ground and she took her sweet time to walk over to him. She straddled his waist and grinned when she saw the anger and disbelief in his eyes.
“Let my kid go,” he gritted out through clenched teeth, Rogue’s new ability making it almost impossible for him to speak as she held him down by the metal on his skeleton.
“But that’s just it, we are Rogue,” she gleefully informed Logan as her hand hovered over his chest. Her fingers slowly curled up and his muffled yells of pain excited her like nothing else in her life ever had. His ribs cracked one by one as she forced the adamantium to curve and bend upwards, piercing right through Logan’s chest, soaking his shirt with blood. His enhanced healing factor would keep him awake and alive as long as they felt like playing with him.
Rogue startled awake and fell off her bed with a choked off gasp, the sound of laughter ringing in her ears.
Wednesday, February 12
She held her knees against her chest as she waited and waited for something, anything to go wrong. Today she’d had what was supposed to be her last round of treatment but she couldn’t bring herself to believe that that was really it, that it was over. This was just a trick right? Like the brief moment of quiet after Max had healed her when she thought she was all better. This time, though, there were no voices in her head other than her own. She swallowed and slowly let her guard down as though tempting the leviathans to come out of hiding to take control but it didn’t happen.
Nothing.
Rogue closed her eyes, for how long she couldn’t say but eventually she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder.
“What’s wrong,” Logan’s voice was full of concern and she shook her head.
She hadn’t even realized she was crying but she was suddenly aware of the tears trailing down her cheeks. “Nothing,” she mumbled but one quick glance up at Logan told her he didn’t believe her. Not after the hellish past few days she’d had.
“Really it’s nothing.” Before he could call bullshit, she wiped at her cheeks and smiled at him. A smile that actually reached her eyes for once, however watery they were. “They’re gone.”
“What?”
She guessed her tears had thrown him off but for once she wasn’t a weepy little idiot because she was afraid or in pain, she was relieved. Something she thought she would never feel again, not without death.
“It worked, they’re gone,” she told him again, her brown eyes bright.
Logan instantly got it and she got a fierce hug out of it. She wrapped her arms around him in return and laughed, honest to god laughed with nothing but delight. “I really didn’t think it would-”
“I know,” he cut her off.
She had been stressed the fuck out but so had Logan because he always hated feeling like there was nothing he could do but sit and wait when someone he cared about was losing it.
“Do you think Bruce should run a few more tests to make sure?”
“Wouldn’t hurt. Come on, kid.”
Rogue slid off her bed and favored Logan with another smile before walking out the door ahead of him, eager to have it confirmed that she was finally okay again.