Mother Knows Best…

A/N: After watching the movie Tangled, I thought of Rogue and how she was being used by Mystique. So a quick disclaimer: I don't own X-Men Evolution or songs from the movie Tangled. All I own is Charlotte and Tante Carolyn.

Dedicated to Faith, who wanted to see Rogue's point of view.

Rogue knew that the mother figures in her life weren't quite the motherly type. What with one being blind, the next being a manipulative terrorist who hated humans with a passion, and the current one also being a criminal. She supposed she just attracted psycho and delusional mother figures. And it didn't help that two of them claimed to know what was best for her.

And when her mutation manifested, asking to go outside made her feel a lot like Rapunzel who was locked away in a lonely tower. Only Rogue's lonely tower was a house filled with depressing as hell mother figures.

You want to go outside? Oh, why Rapunzel?

"Ah wanted t' be free," Rogue mumbled under her breath as she watched her classmates play in the swimming pool where she could never join them. Too much of her skin would have to be bared.

Look at you as fragile as a flower
Still a little sapling just a sprout
you know why we stay up in this tower
(I know but)
that's right to keep you safe and sound dear

God above, she would have given anything to be free of the routine. The endless training as a ballerina which she knew was a different training so she could bend herself around laser sensors or move silently across the floor to remain undetected.

Guess I always knew this day was coming
Knew that soon you'd want to leave the nest
Soon, but not yet
(But!)
Shh trust me pet
Mother knows best

Destiny had convinced her it was the outside world that made her go blind, that everything outside was too dangerous for Rogue to experience. You know, like hijacking a plane and incapacitating men twice her size. Clearly too dangerous.

Mother knows best
Listen to your mother
It's a scary world out there

It wasn't like that the few times she snuck outside to enjoy the warmth of a summer breeze.

Mother knows best
One way or another
Something will go wrong I swear

And something did go wrong. She put another boy in a coma just by bumping into him. She was so horrified that she ran home and screamed through the front door before Mystique could scold her.

Ruffians, thugs
Poison ivy, quicksand
Cannibals and snakes…the plague!
(No!)
Yes
(But!)

Rogue absently scratched at her arms, remembering the one time Mystique took her camping—coughcombattrainingcough—and she slipped from the path into a patch of poison ivy. She remembered getting slapped for mumbling that Mystique resembled poison ivy.

Also large bugs
Men with pointy teeth and
Stop, no more, you'll just upset me

Mother's right here
Mother will protect you
Darling here's what I suggest

Her first mission.

Skip the drama
Stay with Mama
Mother knows best

How she managed to hide that particular memory from the Professor, she had no idea. But she had killed. She was ten years old, and she killed a full grown man. A man who had a wife and newborn twins. A man who Mystique told her was dangerous to their kind when really, he was trying to make it known that all mutants weren't evil. Years had passed and Rogue still didn't know what Mystique was trying to accomplish.

Go ahead, get trampled by a rhino
Go head, get mugged and left for dead
Me, I'm just your mother, what do I know?
I only bathed and changed and nursed you

And then Charlie came along, and shattered her memories of what kind of "mothers" she had. She had discovered her and Kurt's issues and solved them her style.

Go ahead and leave me, I deserve it
Let me die alone here, be my guest
When it's too late, you'll see, just wait
Mother knows best

According to Charlie, Rogue and Kurt didn't owe "jack-shit" to Mystique because she was a disgrace to mothers everywhere. And they should have left her to die instead of trying to renew their familial bonds with her.

Don't forget it
You'll regret it
Mother knows best

Charlie took Mystique's place as she should have been. She convinced Rogue to go shopping with her, and even asked Kurt how his dates with Amanda went. She even went as far as running her hands through their hair soothingly when the stress became too much for both of them. She whispered goodnight at their doors before the lights went out, and she was always first to greet them in the mornings. She was even as fierce as a mother should be when one of the other ignorant kids called Rogue "Poison Touch" behind her back.

Hell, Charlie had beaten the damn kid to a near pulp in a Danger Room session for not having the guts to say it to her kid's face. Never in that moment had Rogue felt so flustered. And when she turned to her brother in confusion, Kurt smiled and said that the feeling she was experiencing was the same he felt when his adoptive parents told him they loved him.

For once in her life, Rogue was loved like she had always wanted to be.

And like always, something Rogue treasured was torn away from her. But not this time. She wasn't raised a Darkholme for nothing. She didn't care if would be against Logan's or the Professor's wishes, but she wanted her mother back. And if it meant calling up an unwilling favor from a sleazy swamp rat to find Charlie, then it was worth the risk.

She even had Kurt's approval since he was the one who kept dropping the hint that she was the best person to chase after Charlie. He had even given her a generous donation of his powers now that she had figured out how to keep the powers of mutants she had previously absorbed.

"Find unsere Mutter and bring her back home, meine schwester.

A/N: Woo. Yay, another chapter done.

Translation:

Unsere: our
Mutter: Mother
meine: my
schwester: sister