Chapter 6

She could still see the faintest outline from where Vertigo's blood had stained the floor. Remy had gone in to clean in up earlier, but Lorna could still swear she could see it.

It was more than just the blood. Every time she closed her eyes, the image of green and white hair stained crimson flashed in her mind. She could hear Remy's cry as the Marauder's neck snapped. Dieu!

Vertigo was a shadow in her mind now, nothing but a bad dream. Had it only been this morning? Somehow Lorna could swear it had happened in another time and place, to some other green haired woman.

"Chere, y' don't have t' stay here tonight," Remy had told her, upon catching her staring at the floor of her room. "Take m' bed if y' want."

Always the charmer, Remy?" she had asked him, turning to meet his eyes. For once, the man's eyes reflected a sincerity that even he couldn't fake.

"Didn't mean wit' me," he said, no deception in his voice. "Just meant - don't do what y' don't want."

"I will be fine," she'd assured him.

She almost wished she'd taken him up on his offer. Beyond her control, she felt herself walk over to the spot on the floor. Kneeling, she let the tips of her fingers lightly brush the stained mahogany.

No use crying over spilt milk, Lorna.

She stood, unsure if the words had been spoken aloud or were only a figment of her imagination. A quick glance around the room confirmed that she was indeed alone.

"Control yourself," she told herself, rubbing her temple. "You're too old to believe in ghosts."

She walked over to her dresser and, opening the sock drawer, took out a small silver box containing a charm bracelet. Her parents gave her the bracelet on the day she turned fourteen.

There was only one charm on the bracelet now. When her powers manifested, she had accidentally yanked the other charms off, destroying them. The only remaining charm was a tiny silver angel her family had giving her.

With a quick flex of her mind, Lorna yanked the angel off the necklace. She had no use for jewelry - didn't even wear any. She could sure use a guardian angel right about now, though.

Shoving the charm in her pocket, Lorna dropped the bracelet back in her sock drawer. Maybe she'd get new charms for it one day. For now, she needed to catch some much deserved rest.

-----

Bobby sat alone in Beast's lab, lightly tracing his fingers across the frozen skin. Why couldn't he feel the cold? It was as if he were in his own body, only slightly hardened.

"Bobby?" He recognized Kitty's voice immediately as the petite brunette phased through the wall. "Bobby, are you in here?"

"Go away, Kitty," he'd told her, drawing the blankets around his body so she couldn't see his new form.

"You weren't with the others, so I thought maybe you were here with Hank." She stepped closer, dropping one soft hand on his covered shoulder. "Bobby, what's wrong? What happened."

"Go. Away."

She'd drawn her arms around her body protectively. "It's freezing in here. Why don't you come get warmed up?"

He'd barked a short laugh, which had startled the girl. "I don't see what's so funny, I'm... oh!" She took in a gasp of air when he dropped the blanket, revealing his body of solid ice.

She traced a few light fingers across his skin before Bobby shook her off. "Have a good laugh, Kitty," he told her, "Why don't you go laugh with Remy about the Iceman?"

"I think it's kind of cool," she said, reaching back to touch the ice again.

Bobby paused, annoyed. He'd been perfectly content sulking in silence. "Really?" He turned towards the grinning girl.

"I wish I could do something cool like that," she said wistfully, letting her hand rest on his bare shoulder. "I just end up slipping through a few floors when I get startled. Not exactly X-Men caliber fighting material."

"Yeah, but you can get into buildings that no one else can," he said. "You're even more untouchable than Rogue is, in some ways."

Under her fingers, Kitty felt the solid ice begin to warm, giving way to bare flesh beneath. "Bobby, you're..."

"Yeah," he said, watching his body revert to normal. "I know."

-----

Most people would believe they had gone mad, should they wake up to see Donald Trump's face looking down at them.

"Geez, Mystique, of all the people to give me a wake-up call, ya had to pick that one?"

"Get up, Rogue, we're going shopping," Mystique said, brushing an invisible piece of lint off the suit.

"Figures ya'd be a morning person," Rogue grumbled, running a hand through her tangled hair. "What's with the impersonation bit, anyway?"

"I promised you I would buy you clothing. I'm going to have my fun in the process," the older woman responded.

Rogue gave her a look. "Ya ain't really planning on making them think yer Donald Trump, are ya?"

"I happen to know he has an account at Saks. I also know he doesn't have a credit limit. You wanted clothes, we're going to get them."

Rogue shook her head. "Ah always knew ya were crazy and now yer draggin' me into it."

"Why are you complaining? Think of it as an adventure. Haven't you ever wanted to be treated like a celebrity? What good is a shape-shifting ability if I can't choose to look like whoever I want?"

Rogue debated for a moment. Everything she had been taught was screaming that she should say no to Mystique's planned outing. Rebelliousness, however, got the best of her. "Ah'm in. Ya've talked me into it."

Mystique smiled, perhaps for the first time in Rogue's recollection. "You won't regret this. Perhaps you aren't as hopeless as I once thought."

"Maybe. But ah still think yer insane."

"I've never once denied I was, child."

-----

Logan had never been described as a sentimental man. Most people, upon meeting the abrasive Wolverine immediately dismissed him as a hard-drinking jerk. They were mostly right.

They were also quite wrong.

For years, he'd kept a box of random items from his life. Most of the items belonged to him before he lost his memory. He'd long forgotten why they were important, but instinctively he'd kept them, hoping one day something would cue a memory.

When Sabretooth attacked the van, the box had been destroyed in the fire. Sense told him to forget the box as a bunch of random junk. "That part of ya is over," he'd told himself. Still, he hadn't been surprised when he found himself putting together a new box.

The first item to go in was a shiny lock of red hair, one of his only remaining possessions from a past life. It had been in his wallet when the truck exploded. If he was a spiritual man, he'd believe it had been saved for a reason. "Dumb luck, really."

He didn't know why he had the lock of hair, or who it had belonged to. Must have belonged to a woman, though he couldn't imagine who'd have been so important that he'd have kept a lock of their hair all these years. The color was quite similar to Jean's. The smells were completely different, so it couldn't be hers.

Reaching under his bed, he pulled out the beaten wooden box that he'd purchased at an antique store for a few dollars. One by one, he pulled out the items. The lock of hair. A rock he'd found outside the Weapon X site. A pair of lace gloves.

He'd bought the gloves for Marie after he'd left the mansion the first time. They weren't really her style, but he thought she might be able to use them when the weather was too hot for her leather gloves. He'd meant to give them to her, but he'd never had the chance. Now they sat in his box, a gift for a girl he cared so much for, yet barely knew.

Who said he wasn't sentimental?

-----

"I don't trust that woman," Arclight complained to Scalphunter, who was busy cleaning one of his weapons. The two Marauders sat in the corner of Sinister's laboratory in upstate New York. Arclight kept her eyes fixated on the form of Alison Blaire - Malice - who stood hovering over the newly cloned form of Vertigo, who had just completed her incubation period.

"Why not?" Scalphunter asked, blowing invisible specks of dust from one of the chambers.

"Just don't. Make it a personal rule never to trust telepaths, shapeshifters, or anyone who can possess you," Arclight replied. "She's always watching everyone too. She'll be our downfall, mark my words."

"Don't go spreading that around, Arc," the other Marauder told her. "Once Malice switches over to that Polaris chick's body, she'll be one of the most powerful mutants around. You don't need someone like that after you."

-----

Carol used to think listening to debriefings was boring. That didn't even compare to the sheer boredom of being stuck in someone else's mind.

When she first felt herself sucked in, she threw something similar to a psychic tantrum. She threw all of her now-human force against the shields of Rogue's mind. The younger girl had built so many defenses since manifesting her powers however, that Carol was unable to break through.

There were a few others in there besides Carol, but most had faded to ghost-like apparitions now. Cody, Logan, Magneto, and a few nameless souls Rogue had absorbed wandered around namelessly, some more translucent than others. They, like her, must have fought for a way out. As months progressed, however, they lost hope, thus degenerating into shells of the people they once were.

She would not end up that way.

Once her rages calmed down, Carol drew on all her battle experiences to form a plan of attack. The first thing she needed to do was develop an understanding of Rogue's psyche. For this reason, she kept up a constant rapport with Rogue, testing the girl's limits. It also helped keep Carol in a more lifelike state than the other apparitions.

Now, she began testing the shields.

Despite the complexities of Rogue's psyche, there were cracks that promised a potential escape path. Silently so as not to draw the young girl's attention, Carol chipped away at these cracks, peeking through to find where she was.

She was at the forefront of Rogue's mind. With a few more well-placed chips, Carol was fairly sure she could break through to the front of Rogue's mind. There, on that plane, she was fairly sure she could wrestle some form of control from her captor. "I WILL have my life back."

NEXT