Skydancer

Author's Note: This is my AU way of playing in the giant sandbox that is X-Men fanfiction. Major differences from canon include but aren't limited to the following: Rogue keeping Wolverine's dog tags, Scott and Professor X being alive, Victor's character somewhat OOC from some canon, and Rogue's OC siblings Skydancer, Blaze, and Blade. Mystique is still Rogue's biological mother with an OC father who is the father of Rogue's OC sister Skydancer and her half-siblings Blaze and Blade.

Skydancer, Blaze, Blade, and Michael are all original characters.

This is a complex X-Men fanfiction with strong ROGAN elements but doesn't focus exclusively on that part of the story. This is Skydancer's story because she won't get the hell out of my head.

Mature Content Warning! Contains adult language, violence, and adult/sexual situations.

Disclaimer: Obviously any recognizable characters belong to someone with a lot more money than me.

One

I was alone when it took me. When I changed. Among the many small blessings I've been given, that one is right up there at the top of the pile. I shudder at the thought of what would've happened to me if I'd done that for the first time in front of an audience. Or God forbid in front of a camera crew. Lately there's been more and more interest in ballet, a good thing for the dance, but a bad thing for me.

In one moment my career and my life was gone.

I was the prima ballerina absoluta. The finest dancer in the world at a mere twenty years of age. People would always wonder at that, at my natural talent for the dance. How I was a prodigy. How I was gifted. I laugh to myself. If only they knew.

They knew nothing about the rigorous lessons twice daily since I was three.

They knew nothing about the sacrifice and pain it took for me to get to the top of the mountain that is professional ballet.

About sweat, blood, tights, and tears.

They knew nothing about me.

And it turned out…neither did I.

The best that I could figure out, once I stopped freaking out, is that my newest gift was an extension or evolution of my old one. My dancing ability. My mutation.

I've always, even as a child, been just that little bit stronger, more flexible, quicker to learn and pick up the moves and routine of the dance.

I wanted to be a fighter. My mother wanted me to be a dancer.

Kinda hard to argue with the woman when you're only three.

My father – God how I loved him – decided the compromise. I would dance. And if I still wanted to learn how to fight when I was six I could. As long as I kept dancing.

I still wanted to learn. And I did. Turned out all the fight training turned me into an even better dancer – and vice versa.

It wasn't just the speed, the strength, or the quick mind that set me apart.

My skin did too.

It…well…it glowed…glows. I kinda…luminesce…like a pearl. I learned quickly when that started happening when I was ten to cover it up. Not hard when you spend 90% of your time in long-sleeved tutu's and tights or in bodysuits for sparring. Makeup took care of the rest. Mutants were just starting to "come out of the closet" so to speak when I turned into a glowstick. But even at ten I could already see where it was going. Straight to Hell.

They didn't call me a prodigy lightly. My physical abilities have nothing on my mental ones. Anything that had to do with history and science and world affairs I gobbled up.

I was a strange child. Now I'm an even stranger adult. I never really had a sense of innocence about me. But I always had a sense that something was missing. There was a part of me – and it was a big fucking piece – that was misplaced somehow. Not gone or dead. Just missing. That's never changed.

I learned the other thing my skin did completely on accident. I was rushing around the house when I was thirteen, trying to find something or other before lessons, when I plumb smacked into one of my parent's assistants. All of a sudden I had another person's thoughts in my head, their memories, even their emotions.

Freaked me the fuck out.

She was fine, barely even registered the collision. And I got a crash course on building mental walls.

And then…just when I had my life exactly as my family always planned…

I started fucking floating.

I was practicing my jetés – leaps in the air like doing a split with your arms extended, gracefully of course – when bam! Airborne for reals.

Well, they always said I looked like I was trying to "become the air" when I did my leaps…

And my back fucking itched…and ached. To say I was startled would be a massive understatement.

However…all was not lost.

I was alone, in my practice room in my Manhattan loft. There – Thank God! – were no witnesses to this wonderful little feat of genetic suckage.

Although…looking in the mirrored wall…my pearl-gray wings are pretty sweet. Like an angel's wings…but a nice gray instead of white. Which suits me very well. I've never been much of an angel.

I fall to my knees as my new wings give out, the breath coming ragged and painfully fast. I'm panting, close to hyperventilating.

Wings.

I have fucking wings.

Ok. Calm down. Assess the situation, then freak out if FUBAR. Then freak out some more.

I've always kept myself in a safe little land of denial when it comes to my mutation. The mental stuff, the physical stuff, all of that can be explained away with a little recreational self-deception and a little more recreational therapy of the mind-altering kind.

Lots of people are fast, and flexible, and strong. Lots of people are freak-of-nature smart. Lots of people have superhuman drive to succeed. Lots of people glow…and can absorb thoughts and memories.

Ok, even I admit that last one is a little much to take, hence the recreational drug abuse. Sometimes. Not very often. Ok. Once. But dammit I deserved that high!

Wings though…there's no way to lie to myself or anyone else about this. No drug or cure that's going to take them away.

And the more I stare at the new me in the mirror…the less I want it to go away.

Taking a last shaky breath I climb to my feet and stretch out my new accessories. Looking into the mirror at my reflection – a petite, pretty ballerina with grey wings longer than she is tall and the same soft grey as her eyes – I like this new me. The grey wings match my eyes, always my favorite thing about myself, and go well with my black hair and white skin. I have that whole Snow White thing going for me.

With wings.

A beaming smile stretches over the woman in the mirror and I feel it's twin on my face. Nodding to myself and saying goodbye to the ballerina I used to be I fold up my wings and striding over to my cell phone sitting on a bench along one wall I make a call I've been putting off for a long time. Not to my Daddy – he passed two years ago – but to his wife. My mother.

Ring-ring-ring.

She picks up, her cold uppercrust voice just frosty enough to let me know I'm being an inconvenience. Again.

"Dara." Not even a hello, how are you.

"Mother." I matched her formal tone with equal severity. "I know."

"Know what, child?"

"That I'm adopted."

Rogue stares out from her window seat in the Manor, forehead resting softly against the glass. She shudders. It's been five years since Jean's death and she's twenty-two now. She still has a hard time getting that bitch out of her head. Make that both bitches. After refusing at the last second to take the Cure she went to Alcatraz on her own – and killed the Phoenix by absorbing her and caging her within her mind.

Thank god for Logan and Eric. The two of them kept that bitch on a leash from the start. Jean was a little harder to manage with Logan's oh-so-conflicted feelings for the redhead. Bobby and John had to help Eric with guard duty on her.

It was rough for a long time. Logan, while thankful he didn't have to kill the woman he loved, still had a hard time reconciling himself to the fact that Rogue was willing to kill and nearly become the Phoenix to save him from having to kill Jean.

Her telepathy and telekinesis is permanent now, along with Eric's metal manipulation and Logan's healing and heightened senses. Not that she's ever told anyone that. Not even Logan or the new-and-improved Professor X.

She's already a pariah among her own. Deadly skin and power absorption kinda tends to have that affect. Add in being a bona fide mutant killer and well…

Thank god for the few friends she's managed to keep. Even if four of them are only in her head.

Hey, darlin', we're still friends no matter what. Her Psyke's – the inner copies of those she's taken into herself – are better conversationalists most days than the others at the Manor.

Yeah. Psyke John pipes up. I might be on the "other side" now but I'm still your friend. Even if Bobby has turned into a major IcePrick.

Grrrr. Wolvie just growls at the reminder. At least Wolvie and Logan aren't going rounds today. Nothing makes a migraine faster than those two dimwits doing their cage-match in her damn mind.

Hey the other me's not… No. He is that bad. I smile. At least the Bobby in my head still likes me.

Don't worry so much my child. Eric's smooth voice comforts me. How many times have I told you that you're meant for great things. I rather doubt that killing one psychopath is all fate has planned for you.

I feel my friends surround me with their warmth and smile a little for the first time in a while.

Logan is still gone. I whisper back, looking over at the dog tags I have hanging on one of the four posters of my queen sized bed. He hasn't been back in almost three years. Scott's finally moving on. Emma is wonderful with him. Ro is married to Hank. Kurt's taken his vows. Bobby and Kitty…and Peter and Jubes. I can't help but wonder…where's mine?

You'll get yours, sweetheart. A voice I haven't heard for years makes my tears fall once again. David. My sweet, sweet first love. Who spent three weeks in a coma because of me. It was worth it. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Logan'll be back someday, or you'll meet someone else who can look past the skin to the wonderful woman you are. You'll get yours. I promise.

He sent me the impression of a kiss before fading back away, leaving me to my tears and the care of the others in my head.