A.N.: After just over two years, I'm finally updating this fic! I was away from fanfiction for a while, but I promise that I won't go so long between updates ever again.
Several of you have been asking if I plan to incorporate events from the third movie into this fic. Well, I was planning on it, but having finally seen the third movie…let's just say we'll be pretending it doesn't exist. That okay with you? Good, because including it would mean having to watch it again, and I think a second viewing would make my brain dribble out my ears or something. It was that bad.
Don't get me started. Really.
I will say, however, that this fic is probably going to be longer than my originally planned four chapters. I'm not sure how far I'll be taking it, but there will be more.
And many thanks to my betas, Huri (especially Huri, who caught way too many mistakes and stupid ideas) and Magician!
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CHAPTER FOUR: Altering Liberty
No matter how long she lived, no matter how much she matured and no matter how well she learned to deal with her past, Marie knew that she would never completely recover from what had happened to her on Liberty Island. She would spend the rest of her life dealing with the aftermath of it, dealing with the nightmares and the pain and, yes, even the guilt. She'd dragged so many others into her problems, dragged Logan into them and then nearly gotten him killed again, and part of her—most of her, maybe—still didn't think she was worth it.
Magneto hadn't helped with that last part, either. From the moment she'd come to on the boat, bound and sore and so far beyond scared that the word no longer even applied, he'd let her know just how worthless she was. Pawn, he was calling her in his thoughts. She wouldn't know that until much later, of course, until after everything was over for everyone else and just beginning again for her, but she'd seen it in his eyes even then. She hadn't needed his rants about justice to know she was going to die, either. She'd seen that in his eyes, as well, though she hadn't been able to stop herself from asking the question anyway.
"Are you going to kill me?"
Her voice had trembled more than she'd wanted, of course; even with Logan-in-her-head telling her to be brave, telling her that everything would be all right because naturally the real Logan would be coming for her soon, she was still only fifteen years old. She was still facing a madman and his psychotic, shape-shifter girlfriend with only the voices in her head to help her, and the Logan who counted wasn't here yet.
It helped only a little that she knew he would be soon. The part of her that kept whispering worthless in her head still didn't want him to come, to risk himself for her yet again. She hadn't tried to save him on the train only to let him die for her a few hours later, had she? Then again, she also knew that Logan had a promise to keep, and knowing him as well as she did, the rest of her was only hoping he'd find her in time.
Magneto had looked at her for only a second, weighing and judging and probably finding her wanting, before the answer had come. "Yes," he'd told her quietly, gravely, the intense emotion now in his voice all for his cause and not for her, and then, because she just wasn't horrified enough, he'd told her what her role in his insane plan was to be.
She'd tried to speak, to say something snappy in return or to at least tell the bastard how crazy he was, but the words wouldn't come. She was too shocked by it all, too appalled that she would be part of this. She found herself wishing that Mystique or the furry one with the bad breath—Sabertooth?—would just kill her now, before she was somehow forced to bring this curse to anyone else.
"Put her in the machine," Magneto had told the smelly goon, and she'd finally stopped struggling against the handcuffs keeping her a prisoner. The Logan-in-her-head hadn't let her quit until now, not even when the skin at her wrists tore and the blood began to flow, but the fear that surged in her at the harsh command was too strong, and she couldn't hear him anymore.
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Sabertooth had taken Marie to the top of the Statue, chained her to the machine that would bring her death and then, with unintentional mercy, left her with only her fear for company. She'd immediately started struggling again, knowing it was useless but unable to stop herself, not really noticing or caring when the tears finally came. She'd tried reminding herself that Logan was coming for her, that he would save her if anyone could. She tried telling herself that she wouldn't actually have to go through this, but hope had died the moment she'd felt the cool metal of the machine against her skin, and she couldn't pretend anymore. She'd finally had to accept that Logan wasn't going to get to her in time, and that her death would likely be very painful and far from quick.
She'd started crying in earnest, then, calling out for help even though she'd known help wasn't there…but then Magneto was there, and of course she couldn't think of anyone else with this madman so close. He was there and whispering that he was sorry—looking almost as though he meant it—even as he cupped her face in his hands, even as her powers kicked in and she began draining him. She felt his own abilities leech from him and into her, felt her hands latch onto the machine, drawn and held by a force she didn't know how to control and that still felt alien though it was now a part of her.
And suddenly, as the power she'd never wanted continued to surge through them both, as her mind opened to an even greater awareness of the metals that threatened her life, a new fear was born within her, as well. The worst part of all of this, she slowly realized, wasn't that she was going to die, or that the machine which would kill her now felt alive to her. It wasn't even that this cape-wearing lunatic was going to win and hurt so many people…no, the worst part was that when she died, she wouldn't even be herself.
She'd been too occupied with her terror, before, to think much about exactly how Magneto planned to use her, but never in a million years would she have guessed that he'd sacrifice even himself for his cause, that he'd willingly touch her when he'd probably known what would happen. And even if she could have anticipated this, he wasn't something for which she really could have prepared herself.
Magneto wasn't Logan any more than Logan had been David. When Logan had tried to possess her, he'd done it because she was his and he had to protect what was his, because forcing his choices upon her would keep her safer than her own could, because he knew what was best for her—or thought he did, which amounted to the same thing where Logan was concerned. As much as she'd had to fight him, as close as she'd come to losing herself to his control, he'd still done it for her. And as Magneto's personality and thoughts and goals flooded her mind, she finally realized that this was all that had saved her. Had Logan cared less for her, had he not held himself back for her sake, she never would have stood a chance.
Magneto was not Logan. She was still nothing more than a pawn to him, and if he tried to possess her, it was hardly because he wanted to keep her safe. No, as Erik became Marie and Marie became Erik, as Marie almost forgot why there should even be a difference between the two, she knew that Erik was trying to possess her simply because he could, because he was stronger than she was and that made possession his right. He deserved to control her, and as his thoughts smothered hers and her physical struggles mattered less than the greater mental ones, she almost agreed.
Because now she understood…
She understood why Erik was the way he was, why he was doing this. Men like the Professor and Logan had been shaped by their losses, refined by their trials, but Magneto was different. While the fires Magneto had passed through had certainly burned away many of his weaknesses, they'd also made him cold. He was almost beyond fear, now, beyond love. He cared only for his cause; even his own life meant nothing to him in comparison, so how could she have expected hers would?
Maybe that was the worst part, after all, to understand why she was being sacrificed, why Erik was doing any of this at all. To have this monster be so much a part of herself that she couldn't even hate him for what he'd done to her...
Her absorption of Magneto hadn't lasted long, and that was an accidental mercy, too. A minute, maybe two, and then Magneto's life force began to ebb, and his hold on her eased. His hands slipped away; the connection shattered. Not that it mattered, of course, because even when he'd stopped touching her and his physical self had ceased to be a factor, he was still with her, and the nightmare wasn't even close to ending. He'd dropped to the ground, somehow still alive but only barely, and she'd found the strength to scream.
That hadn't mattered, either. Nobody came for her, nobody would…and there wasn't any more time anyway, because the machine suddenly sparked to greater life and began the deadly work she now comprehended so intimately. Gears began to grind all around her, the platform under her feet suddenly lifting her to the top of the torch. It locked into place at the top, and more gears began to move. The metal bands above and around her began to spin, shattering the torch in the process and sending bits of crumpled metal flying into the bay. She didn't notice; Magneto's death trap was fulfilling its purpose by then, somehow taking her power—their power—and using it against her, draining her just as completely as she had drained Magneto. White light flared from somewhere within the machine, her power made manifest, tangible. It streamed over her and through her, searing away what little strength she'd retained in spite of everything, magnifying her curse.
And then it got worse.
They say that when death comes, you see your life flashing before your eyes—see the smiles of loved ones, relive moments of joy or regret, finally realize what meant the most to you. Marie didn't experience any of that, which was fortunate, because she probably wouldn't have known which were her memories and which were David's or Logan's or Erik's anyway. As death approached and her vision began to dim, she wasn't thinking about her parents and how much she wished things could have been different. She wasn't thinking about the things she'd left undone, the people she would miss. She wasn't even thinking about Logan and how glad she was to have known him at all, how grateful she was to have loved him even if he could never have returned it. She was only thinking of the pain.
It hurt more than she'd expected, more than Erik had expected, even though he'd gone through a lesser version of it only days before. The light felt like acid on her skin, but the pain inside was far worse, leaching into her very cells, draining her and killing her. She'd screamed again, far weaker this time because she just didn't have the energy to fight anymore, but the pain only intensified. An instant later, she couldn't even cry out.
She would have welcomed death, then, if she'd been able to think that coherently. The pain alone was enough to make her want it, and she really was tired of fighting. She didn't even care anymore about the people who would be hurt by this, didn't care anymore about how Logan would feel when he realized she was dead. She just…didn't care.
And it was a nice feeling, or would have been if she hadn't hurt so much.
Her world went black. Physical senses faded and died, and the tiny portion of her joint mind that still worked knew she'd lost consciousness. Good, she thought tiredly, ignoring both Erik's satisfaction and the resurfacing Logan's panic, it's about time.
And then there was nothing.
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Marie had never been a particularly religious person. Sure, she'd been raised a Baptist, just like practically everyone else in the South, but she'd never spent a lot of time thinking about what came after. The younger Marie had been too full of hopes and dreams and plans, and like all teenagers, she'd known nothing really bad would ever happen to her.
Until it had, and she'd found herself spending far too many nights huddled under bridges with only hunger and fear for companions. Death wasn't as foreign a concept to Rogue as it had been to the more innocent Marie, though Rogue had been more concerned with the how and when and how can I avoid it? aspects of death than with the where do I go from here? portion. Even so, she'd started piecing together all the things her mother had once tried to teach her, started thinking about lights at the ends of tunnels, about warmth and peace and the welcoming smiles of long-absent relatives. She'd started wondering if she was even worthy of heaven in the first place.
Apparently, she'd wasted her time with all that thinking, because when the machine finally killed her, there was no heaven or hell or anything in between. There was only the horror of mind and soul shattering, of having those parts of her that weren't her pulling away, separating and taking everything they were with them. She was helpless to stop it—why would she even want to stop it?—but then they were gone, and her wants didn't matter any more than they usually did. The others had left her, and for the first time since she'd kissed David, she was completely alone again.
She hadn't thought that could ever be a bad thing, but she soon discovered that it was. The silence was intense enough to be painful, and while she still didn't know how she was supposed to be feeling about all of this, she knew the part of her that was Rogue was also gone. Rogue had been David and Logan and now Erik along with Marie, and without them, she was just Marie again.
She no longer knew how to be Marie.
It was ironic, really, that it'd taken death to show her how false her dreams for the past year had been. All she'd wanted, since that first awakening of her powers, was to be herself again. She'd wanted her memories to actually be hers, to know if what she wanted was really something she wanted. And now that death had granted that wish, now that her mind was no longer something that had to be shared, she only felt…hollow.
It hurt, to be this alone.
She really wished she hadn't died.
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Marie would never know how much time she'd spent lost within her own mind, adrift in the emptiness that had consumed her when she'd died…or almost died…or whatever it was she'd done. She would never know exactly when things had changed, either; all she would ever know was that she'd been alone, so horribly alone…and then her world had shifted again, and she suddenly wasn't.
It started suddenly, progressed slowly, changed everything.
A spark of…something flared in the emptiness consuming her, the barest hint of returning other-self. She was reaching for it before she even knew what it was, instinct and desperation driving her in equal measures. She pulled it into herself, wrapped mind and soul around it so it couldn't escape again.
The spark brought a memory, and as she embraced that, as well, it didn't matter that she hadn't been the one to create it. The memory instantly became a part of her, blending so completely into her own memories that she immediately forgot it hadn't been hers to begin with.
Another spark, another memory. Was it Logan's? Erik's? She wasn't sure, but she didn't much care, either. It was hers, after all.
The memory merged with the rest.
Two memories became three, and then four, and soon her mind was being flooded with the thoughts and dreams of those other selves she'd thought she'd lost for good. Sometimes she could tell whose they were; sometimes she couldn't. Their desires fused and shifted within her, occasionally fought against each other and became something else entirely, but they were always hers.
She could hear their voices in her head again.
It wasn't exactly painless. It'd hurt to lose them, but it hurt more to get them back. She wasn't strong enough, this time, to keep any part of herself separate from them, and that changed things. They burrowed deep inside her, tore her apart and rebuilt her. Their dreams reshaped some of hers, changed the way she viewed herself and everything else. They made her doubt herself even as they gave her the confidence to fight those doubts, hated her even as they loved her. They argued over her, tried to control her, tried to protect her.
Once before, when Logan had tried to possess her, Marie had learned what it meant to battle demons. She'd learned what insanity felt like, what it was to lose control of her own mind. She'd fought those demons, had eventually beaten them back until she could regain at least a little of herself, but now...
Now, as the demons returned and the threat of insanity lurked over her once more, she found that she wasn't alone in this fight. Logan stood with her, lending her his strength, encouraging her and reminding her that if he didn't have the right to possess her, Erik certainly didn't.
Even David contributed to the battle, though he'd never been much more than a faint presence in her mind. Still, while he didn't have any of his own strength to give her, he could at least help her remember who she was. He'd known her when she was only Marie, back before Logan and Erik and her travels had changed her into someone else. He knew what it meant to be Marie, even if she didn't, and his gift to her was that core of self. The demons could invade every part of her, but as long as she didn't forget who she'd been, she wouldn't lose herself entirely.
It was another kind of strength.
Time had so little meaning, in this darkness of her mind, and she couldn't have measured the minutes or hours or even days that she'd spent fighting Erik's attempts at possession. All she knew was the fight, the struggle against herself and the others inside her. There wasn't enough left of her for anything else.
Still, some part of her was dimly surprised by how much stronger the Logan-in-her-head now was. If he hadn't been more focused on defeating Erik than on controlling Marie, she knew she wouldn't have been able to stand against him this time. He was everywhere in her mind now, a presence just as strong within her as her own. His thoughts had become entwined with hers, and only David's gift was keeping them separate at all. She wondered if he realized that she was in just as much danger from him as she was from Magneto, then decided that it didn't matter. Logan wasn't the one trying to control her, after all.
And she was already his.
It didn't last forever. However long it had taken, Logan was eventually able to shunt that-which-was-Erik to one corner of Rogue's mind, to smother his voice and bury his memories deeply enough within her that her every action and thought wouldn't be ruled by them. Erik-in-her-mind suddenly found himself trapped behind invisible bars, and while the prison wasn't perfect and she could still hear him, they all knew the battle was over.
At least for now.
The reprieve was to be a short one. Marie had run out of mercies, and before she could do more than acknowledge the end of her struggle, the darkness smothering her physical senses abruptly fled. She came back to herself with a jolt, part of her already knowing what she would find, all of her dreading it.
She opened her eyes…and her heart died within her as every fear was confirmed and her savior collapsed in front of her.
She'd saved herself, but she'd killed Logan.
She should have stayed dead.