Chapter Text
It had taken months for the cure to fail. By then, Rogue had already enrolled and begun her studies at NYU. So she started her college education as she had always dreamed and yet never believed that she could... ungloved, without a scarf, wearing adorable strappy tank tops during the few days of Indian summer that occurred late that September, just like all the other giggling freshmen girls. If Rogue was a little more grave than her peers were, if her eyes were a little more serious, no one noticed overly much. But she was able to flirt, to flounce just a little in the way that every eighteen year old girl ought to have the chance to flounce, and when her good-looking boyfriend Bobby came to visit her on the weekends from somewhere in New England, her roommate and her new friends from class just teased her good-naturedly.
It lasted through January.
In a way, when the cure finally did fail, she was even more devastated than she had been when her mutation originally manifested.
At least it was just the cat who was hurt, Rogue told herself vaguely, but really it had been terrible. Rogue and her roommate had gotten themselves a kitten named Molly, a smoke grey puff of fur who liked to leap on their heads when they came in the door. If Molly leaping on her head had been the first contact she'd had after her mutation began to reassert itself, the kitten probably would have just been knocked unconscious, and she might have survived. But that wasn't what happened. Rogue had been taking a nap, and Molly had curled up under her arm and fallen asleep beside her.
Rogue started awake suddenly, feeling strange, feeling panicked, with no idea why. Her skin was crawling. She felt strangely overwhelmed by scent -- last night's dinner, the cilantro growing on the sill, her own sweat. She felt strangely sensitive to sound -- angry honking on the street below, rustling of fabric as she stirred, something skittering behind the wall. She felt twitchy and impulsive the way that she had after Logan had saved her life on the Statue of Liberty.
Logan. Feral. Animal instincts. Her mutation. Rogue bolted upright. And noticed Molly's cold little body, still curled up for sleep.
No.
The despair was crushing. It was the first time that she had actually killed a living thing with her mutation. Rogue couldn't leave the apartment. Couldn't go to class. Couldn't face her roommate. Couldn't call and tell Bobby. Days passed, Rogue locked in her room, ignoring the knocks on her bedroom door, ignoring the phone, ignoring her body's demands for food. It seemed to take forever for Molly's impulses to fade. And she'd been such a tiny thing.
Finally, numb, she pulled a pair of gloves from the back of her underwear drawer. She dressed carefully, the old familiar routines, the routines she had rejoiced at discarding when she thought that she was cured.
She packed her duffle bag -- the same old one that she'd once thrown into the back of Logan's dilapidated trailer, a million years ago, in another life. She slipped out of the apartment when her roommate was gone, withdrew all the money that she could from her bank account, and disappeared.
The studio that she found was ridiculously small and not at all clean. She stayed there for two months and her money ran out. By then, she was at least able to get out of bed most days. She took a job as a waitress in a grimy diner. She managed to pay her rent, buy groceries. Once in a while, she went to a movie. She told people that her name was Marie Davis. She had no ID, but she didn't do anything that required one. Her employer didn't care.
Six months passed. Bobby had not found her. Logan had not found her. Her life was a monotonous hell, but as long as there was no one in it who she wanted to touch, she could almost forget what had happened.
Evidently the cure hadn't even really "cured" her mutation temporarily, merely suppressed it, because with the return of her mutation had come the return of the congregation in her head. Logan, the strongest presence, because she had almost drained him twice. Then Erik, who had held onto her until she had most of his power. They were both constant companions through virtually every day. Bobby and John and David were like fleeting whispers in the back that she rarely heard from, but they were there. Everyone she'd ever touched, in her head once again.
Neither Logan nor Erik approved of the fact that she'd gone to ground, and neither of them liked being in agreement with the other much either. Logan urged her to return to the mansion, of course. Rogue didn't know what Erik thought she ought to do, but his contempt for the cowardice of her current choices was clear. In her isolation from other people, they had become stronger, and there were days now when it almost seemed that they were sparring directly with each other in her mind. Her inner Logan seemed sensitive to the effect that his presence and Magneto's had on her and tried to control both himself and the others in order to grant Rogue as much peace of mind as possible. Erik whispered seductively to her, trying to influence her thoughts, her feelings. It enraged Logan in turn, and then his rage overwhelmed her. She wondered if she was going mad.
Erik was the only one of them who had spent any significant amount of time in New York City in his life. Sometimes she recognized landmarks, certain corners, statues that she'd never seen before. Every time that happened, it was Erik. Some days it made Rogue smile, made her feel a little less alone in this city. Which made Logan uneasy.
That was how she found the cafe. She passed it one day, not far from her dingy apartment, and thought, How remarkable, that's still there? It must be forty years now. It wasn't her own thought.
She went in and ordered a cup of strong tea. Rogue preferred coffee.
It really was a lovely place. There was a small veranda. It had actually changed quite a bit inside, but it was indeed the same establishment. Rogue developed a liking for it that was quite independent of Erik's nostalgia, though the sense of familiarity did remain part of the appeal. She began stopping by regularly.
Logan didn't like it much, but then he was so worried about Rogue that even he reluctantly came to accept it, if just for the reason that it was virtually the only time that she was around other people other than her unpleasant hours at work.
She bought herself a second-hand laptop, and she began to write sometimes, sitting in Erik's cafe. It wasn't much, as far as attempts to return to the land of the living went. But it was a start.
Sometimes now she thought about calling the mansion.
Do it, kid, thought Logan. Oh yes, imagine the pity on their faces when they see you again. Doesn't that sound appealing, thought Erik.
She wrote, confused.
She looked up to find him watching her thoughtfully.
He was wearing a dark v-neck sweater and black slacks. His autumn jacket was draped carefully over the empty chair beside him. His grey hair was neatly combed, his frigid blue eyes as sharp as they had always been. He was holding a book that had obviously drifted down toward the table when he had looked up and seen her there.
Her breath was caught in her throat. She wasn't sure if she would ever be able to breathe again. Her eyes were locked with his and she couldn't look away.
After a long moment, he tilted his head and a small smirk appeared on his lined face. He gestured for her to come join him at his table.
She suddenly found herself able to exhale again. With slow, awkward movements, she closed the laptop, tucked it into her battered backpack, picked up her backpack and her coat. Logan was telling her to get the hell out of there.
With slow, self-conscious steps, she found herself crossing the cafe and sitting down across from him, putting her backpack on the floor, and dropping her coat over top of it.
"Hello, Rogue," he greeted her, and someone overhearing him might have thought that he sounded perfectly cordial, not sinister at all.
"Hello, Erik," she responded, and her voice sounded to her like it was coming from a million miles away.
His eyes widened minutely at the way that she addressed him, and one corner of his mouth lifted further. "Why, you've still got a bit of me up there, haven't you, my dear? How unexpectedly charming."
She didn't know quite what to say to that, so she didn't say anything. Slowly she was becoming aware that her heart was racing in her chest and that the acrid taste of fear was filling her mouth.
Magneto carefully marked his place in his book (with a metal bookmark, of course; he was predictable in ways) and set it down on the table. He looked for all the world like a perfect gentleman, except for the calculating gleam in his eyes as they traveled over her, lingering at the streak of white in her hair, then moving downward and noting her threadbare, slightly stained gloves.
"It must have been quite a disappointment for you to have to put those back on."
She had no idea how he knew that she'd taken the cure, and she couldn't tell if the fleeting note in his voice was compassion or mockery. The Erik in her head scoffed at her. "It was. I ran away," she responded hollowly, hoping that at some point her pulse was going to slow down.
He nodded slowly. "I see. So the remaining X-Men don't know where you are, then?" The question sounded casual, but Rogue's inner Logan growled a warning.
"No," she told him recklessly. "I couldn't face them again. I'm on my own now. I'm alone."
His sharp gaze was moving intently over her face, studying her. "And are you lonely?" he asked, as if he had every right in the world to ask her intimate questions about her feelings.
"Very," she replied wearily, leaning forward.
"I see," he said again. There was a long pause as they continued to look at each other, which seemed not to bother him at all, as he sat through it quite still. She began to fidget, but she didn't feel like she could bear to stand up and walk away from him. The Logan in her head was railing at her to leave, but she ignored him.
Magneto lifted his tea cup and took a long sip, watching her over the rim, then tilted his head again.
"So what do you think that you'll do with yourself, now that you've left them behind?" he asked conversationally, replacing the cup on its saucer.
Rogue shrugged slightly, and her odd feeling of dissociation was finally beginning to fade, and she was fully realizing that she was sitting in an anonymous cafe in New York conversing with one of the most dangerous mutants in the world, a man who'd tried to murder her when she was barely sixteen.
Oddly, she still found herself wanting to stay. She felt somehow... captivated. By him. By something about him. Something about those frosty blue eyes.
"I don't know," she answered him slowly. "Maybe I should try to go back to school or something. Learn about something. Since I'm not going to be an X-Man."
"Education is never wasted," he agreed gamely. "And what do you think you might like to learn about?"
"Political science, maybe," she said thoughtfully, though she didn't think the answer was her own. It was his, she realized quickly, and from the look on the face of the real Magneto, she wondered if he knew it.
He smiled at her again. "You still have more than a bit of me up there, haven't you, my dear?" She shuddered visibly at the dangerous tone in his voice.
"For some reason, living alone, not talking to anyone, you've gotten stronger," she told him, knowing full well how foolish the disclosure was. "Both you and Logan have. You're the reason that I've been coming here all this time."
For some reason the voice of her inner Logan was becoming somehow more distant, and she wondered if it was BECAUSE she was here with Magneto. Maybe being in his presence strengthened him in her head, and her inner Erik was somehow able to hold Wolverine at bay.
She didn't understand how her own head worked. But the man across from her was still gazing at her with a look that turned her guts to ice.
He glanced down at the watch on his wrist and frowned, looking back at her. "Rogue, I'm afraid that I have another appointment that I simply can't miss. But I must confess that I don't wish to cut our unexpected reunion short."
She shrugged a little again. "Do you have to go?" she asked, and part of her wondered why there was such a plaintive note in her voice at the prospect of parting from a madman who terrified her completely.
The calculating look was back on his face, and he actually paused for a long moment before he responded. "Well," he finally said, "we shall have to continue this tomorrow, then. Here, at two o'clock." His tone was rather business-like, as if it was a given that she would agree.
"Okay," she heard herself say, and Magneto stood and collected his things as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Rogue sat still, watching him. He donned his jacket and pulled a pair of lightweight gloves out of the pocket, snugging them onto his hands, gazing down at her. Something about the action affected her deeply, and Rogue was astonished to find herself holding back a whimper of fear.
He paused, looking minutely surprised for a moment. She had to look away from him, she couldn't help it.
He finished arranging himself and brushed past her on his way to the door. "Until tomorrow, my dear," he nearly-whispered, his gloved hand falling briefly on her shoulder as he passed.