"Mouvement"

7: Every City is a Prison

Brief moment wherein she said, to herself mostly, that she had meant it. Every word.

She opened her eyes to blinding light and the sharp air of an enclosed space. The feeling of plastic mold and white, cheap wood in the room, as well as that of rough bed sheets and metal edges. Something in her mouth, choking her, going into her. She gagged, and felt it being pulled away.

Sounds now. First and most prominent, Scott's voice, tearing through the hum of the engine and other, faster, sharper, whispering, shrieking noises.

"Rogue! You're okay, you're alright! Thank God..."

Voices of others, garbled gibberish, undecipherable.

Then, touch. The one sense that she couldn't employ to its full potential, and therein she found the agony the echoes had spoken about. Cuts on her face, slid disk on her neck, broken arm twisted in an impossible angle, fingers broken, teeth missing... contusions, concussion, maybe even a skull fracture and each and every one of them seemed to be burning, as if doused with acid. She clenched her teeth and whimpered. Agony, yes, absolute and there, making her wish she'd have less grounding by now.

"Look at this..." a voice she didn't recognize.

"That's just impossible. How is she healing that fast?"

Blinding, white-hot pain.

"Is this her... y'know, mutant power?"

"Yes." Scott lied.

Why was he lying now?

Too much pain to care. Too much pain to see through.

But a whisper was all she needed. She needed to know he was there – she needed to touch him. This need was absolute and irresistible now, she had to. Right fucking now, damn it. She needed the colors of grey to fill her world and wash out the red, the white and the blinding. Her hand moved, her fingers expanding, reaching out for him. Hoping he'd see, hoping he'd still be there.

The feathery touch of his hand sliding into hers, their palms touching. The colors of grey, in a blinding, all-encompassing flash.

Whisper in her ear. Cracking, strained voice wheezing through clenched teeth.

"I'm right here."

Some part of him, the logical side, knew that he was supposed to keep it together. He had to keep a level head in case she was in no shape to. His assessment of the damage he himself had sustained was very, very easily discerned: two left, one right rib broken. Upper right leg pierced, through-and-through by metal, most likely requiring a tetanus shot. Lacerations on his face, cuts and one persistent cheek wound, close to his lips, with a small glass shard still stuck in it. Two fingers, index and ring, broken on his right hand. Spinning head, nausea.

Instant and temporary catharsis.

Inside, he was screaming. He was shouting, with all his might and in impotent rage that he wasn't made of steel. He was just as made of glass, just as breakable as any one of us, and that he couldn't take everything. That it was all too much, the trauma of it all, the relentless, merciless tide of events that had swept him to the shore of this desperate moment. Shock - raw, there, insistent, overtaking him. Setting him high so that when he came to realize what had just happened, it'd break him all the more.

Thoughts about her, breaking through. Revealing his need.

How much he depended on her presence, how much he counted on her. More than she ever knew, more than she could ever imagine. That in that maddening moment, she, of all things, was his anchor in the world. He didn't have a white room. He had no place that would offer him sanctuary in his own mind: he was bare to the purity of his own thoughts, facing reality and not shirking from it, but aching under the weight of it.

Truth underneath the unraveling tapestry. His truth, now hers. Made theirs.

He didn't withhold his touch, not because he wanted her to feel better. Not because he was careless, or he wanted to make a point of it to others. There was no pretense, no thought in these simple gestures, these colors of grey he shared with her.

He wanted her to understand. He wanted her to hear him, to know him, to see him, as he was, free of all masks and stripped to his most intimate. He wanted her to look at him without any illusions and tell him, she understood. She understood all the things that he couldn't express, the nameless, wordless things inside of him that he couldn't describe or put into words. Every moment of his past, every single thought he had ever had. He wanted her to understand.

And to understand her, in turn.

This was his truth. Now hers.

Made, by them both, theirs.

Tears breaking through the pain. Voices in the background, the head-splitting shriek of the siren, wailing through the calm darkness and the ambient hum. She looked at him, barely holding onto the last vestiges of her consciousness as the rest of her wounds ached their last. Smiled.

The last thing she saw was him, breathing a sigh of relief and hanging his head, tired.

She dreamt of him, well and uninjured, standing by her in the white room.

"You're here." She said.

"For you."

"Why?"

"Don't you know? Haven't you figured out who I am by now?"

"You're not Scott."

"I'm so sorry."

The room was slowly shifting, becoming her room in her Aunt's place, in Caldecott. Hard wood floors and faux-wood walls infected the white. Wool rug, elliptical and pale blue, worn from years of a child crying on it, underneath her feet. A cross on the east wall, and a picture of a pilgrim family on the Oregon Trail, framed in rosewood, hanging underneath it.

"So, what happens now?" Rogue asked. Felt that it was different this time. Different than all the other times she had dreamt of him.

"That depends. Did you mean what you said?"

A bed. Forming out of nothing, out of the safety she had built for herself and bringing with it all the memories of jeopardy. That fucking bed. Springs squeaking, one slowly eroding the mattress to stab her in the foot someday soon. The pillow, stained, old. Bed sheets, flowers, faded. The feel of it, the familiarity of every crack, every crevice, every single thing about it, came rushing back.

And there he was, ill-fitting to the scenery, standing there like he didn't know what to do.

"Ah never thought Ah'd say this, but... yes. If there's anythin' that Ah haven't done, Ah don't think Ah can do 'em now. Don't suppose Ah can go back an' change it all."

"No."

"Ya wanna know what the worst of it is?"

No response. She pretended that he did.

"Ah know everything."

His arms, around her, safe and warm. Unreal and cold. His skin, sliding against hers, his breath on her neck. The knot in her chest. He gently guided her towards the bed. She allowed him to move her there. Liked it. Soon, he was whirling her around to face him, and pulled her in. Their lips met and she, sighing a broken feeling inside her as the knot in her chest was suddenly hacked to pieces, held him as tightly as she could. Just this once, she thought, just this once. He kissed her deeply, one hand supporting her back as he laid her on the bed smelling of sleepless, restless nights.

She held him close to her heart, pulling him in, and gave in.

Momentary break where she pulled him off, and whispered to his ear as he slid against her and they embraced. The words she had never spoken, now stained her lips. Hers, given to him to be theirs.

"Ah love you."

She woke up to the sterilized confines of a hospital room. Nondescript, copied off of hundreds of other rooms in the building and disturbingly orderly. The scent of linoleum and some unidentified thing. She looked to her side. Her clothes, or whatever was left of them after they'd been torn and soaked in blood. On her, the hospital gown, and the sudden rush of cold air reminding her just how naked she was underneath. And why shouldn't she be, after all, the blue fur... no. Hank McCoy's thoughts.

Not out of the woods yet.

She threw off the covers, feeling strong enough to move. In fact, checking her body for bruises, she saw that she was quite strong. Logan's healing factor.

Cold tiles under her bare feet. Shiver.

She went to the window and pulled the blinds to the side a little bit. High noon, or right after, blinding. The sight of buildings, stacked up against one another, stretching in all directions. Cars coming and going, people, small from where she stood, following their lives' trails. The city.

So, we made it.

Of course you did. Did you ever doubt?

A little late in the game to change your discourse, momma.

She held the gown as together as she could and walked out of the room. The corridor expanded to both sides, both the same. As if she was standing right by the mirror and seeing both reflections as separate worlds, that old feeling about a mirror-world on the other side of the reflective glass. She heard the hum underneath the silence, the ambient, grumbling heart of the hospital, beating.

She chose right, as Kitty seemed to favor that direction, and went on a search for someone who knew the lay. Nurse, caretaker, someone who had been to the hospital enough times to know where anything was. Double doors ahead, with the button rigged to them, pale blue, inviting her to press it. She did.

The doors opened, each going in the opposite direction of the other, and she saw the assembled nurses and doctors, the hustle and bustle of the hospital. White coats and torquoise scrubs, galoshes and latex gloves, noise in the air and the worker bees trying to save the rest of the populace, or at least help them in some way. Rogue felt so small, so insignificant and so wrong, just standing there, one hand behind her back, like a complete fool, gawking at the scene.

A nurse, who inadvertedly put her hand on Rogue's shoulder, causing a brief surge of information to invade her newly-waking mind, asked in a voice that broke easily due to that accident three years ago with a kitchen knife and a bad fall, "Can I help you, dear?"

"Nah. Ah'm fine, Harriet. Ya know where Ah can get some info?"

Shock on her face at the mention of her name. Fear, discernible, real and urgent, looking back at Rogue.

"Oh, Ah'm sorry... you jus' touched me back there, that's why."

"What..."

"And don't worry." Rogue said, "James'll be fine. Kids always find their way. Ah found mine, and if Ah can do it, trust me, anyone can."

Rogue moved down the hall and left Harriet there, staring after her.

There was a receptionist, a woman with a very brightly-colored, floral-patterned dress and a very sharp, bright blue gaze, who pointed out to her what room Scott Summers was in, after inquiring as to her relation. She said sister, but knew that the woman wasn't buying it – and she didn't even intend on trying to sell it. But, noticing her stripes and quite possibly her annoyed look, the receptionist gave Rogue no trouble and surrendered the room number. A half-hearted thank you, and she was on her way.

Didn't take her long to locate it. Scott-by-Rogue and his spatial awareness helped her.

He wasn't as broken as she thought he would be, recalling snippets from the accident. His arm was in a sling and his hand in a cast, he had small bits of band-aids and a very large bandage on his head. He looked like he had been taped back together from scratch. He had his visor on, so it was impossible to tell if he was awake or asleep. She had that feeling, that paranoid little feeling that he was looking at her, watching her every move.

She moved in, pretending that he was watching. She might as well have been naked then and there, bare as the day she was born. Knew that he didn't see her, but through her instead.

She might as well have been naked, yes... but no. She couldn't. Instead, she approached the bed, walking almost on her tippy toes, and got close enough to hear him breathing.

A voice startled her.

"You care a lot for him, don't you?"

Rogue turned. Behind her, a woman. White business suit. Perfect, pale skin enhanced by her blue shirt. Straight blonde hair, perfect, pink lip-gloss smile and bright blue orbs looking at her through thick, black-rimmed glasses. Gray heels, leather, clacking on the linoleum floor and perfect grace in every movement.

"Oh," she stopped halfway to Scott, as if she had only then noticed Rogue standing there, "Haven't introduced myself, have I? Sorry." She held out her hand, "Emma Frost."

Rogue shirked from it.

"Ah don't shake hands." She said.

Brief twitch of a smile, almost observational. Mild amusement emanating from her.

"Aphephobia, I see. I was expecting that."

She took out a pair of blue satin gloves and put them on. Then, she held out her hand. Rogue took it.

"See, that wasn't so hard."

"You're..."

"Yes, I am the Emma Frost. President, founder, funder, teaching faculty and so on of the Academy of Tomorrow, pleased to make your acquaintance. And you are..?"

"Ah'm Rogue." She said.

Another twitch-smile.

"You don't remember, do you?"

Rogue didn't say anything.

"Suit yourself. Now, I was actually expecting you two to be in my office about two hours from now, but I see that you might be a while."

"What's this about?"

"The conditions of your tenure in the Academy, of course. What else?"

"How did you even know we were here, anyway!" Rogue asked, "Not like Ah see you watchin' the roads." A bit of Logan in her voice.

Emma Frost gave sideway glances to the room, ensuring that they were alone. She moved in closer to Rogue.

"I'm a telepath. I just heard your thoughts, or rather the chaos they made. I came as soon as I could, and all had to do, was to follow your trauma. Truth be told," she said, reclining, "I can barely stand your presence. So much chaos in your mind, so many voices."

"Yeah." Rogue said, "But Ah'm used to it by now."

"You don't have to be. I can help you."

"Help me how?"

"Help you learn to deal with it. Help you control them. Help you not let them control you."

Rogue looked over her shoulder to the still-sleeping Scott. Met his eyes that she imagined were looking at her.

"Can you help him?"

Emma Frost cast a little glance at Scott.

"He has to heal on his own."

After Emma Frost left, Rogue was left with Scott. Not wanting to disturb his sleep, despite seductive advice from Jean, she tiptoed around the bed, checking his wounds. Each one of them, even beneath the bandages, carried a piece of her. Her responsibility, her guilt. She felt that she had served to create this little work of injury and pain.

Hers, made his. Theirs now.

She wanted to lie next to him, to feel him by her side as she had all those lonely nights by the roadside, but couldn't. Too much bare skin, too much of the thing she needed to feel him against. Too much of what she wanted. Instead, she pulled up a chair and sat there, watching him.

She wondered, briefly, if they'd be alright. If they'd be free this time, from everything that had kept them under lock and key. Outside, the city was waiting for him to heal, waiting for him to wake up. Waiting for them to walk it.

She wondered if they'd find their way, because, in the end, every city was a prison, keeping its inmates secure by way of invisible guardians looming over them at every turn, never allowing them a moment's peace.

"Wake up soon." she whispered, "Ah need you..."

Her peace, her means of escape from the prison was in this room, lying broken in a hospital bed, and all she could do was to watch and pray he would heal soon.