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SLASH FIC: Little Girl Lost 3/? [Supergirl/X-Men]
Title: Little Girl Lost
Author: Feygan
Fandom: Smallville/Supergirl/Marvelverse
Pairing: Kara/Rogue, Scott/Logan, Bobby/Beast
Warning: violence. language. obliteration of the canon timelines.
Disclaimer: I do not own Smallville, DC comics, or Marvel comics.
LiveJournal: http://feygan.livejournal.com
Home: http://www.darkgesture.com/fanfiction.htm
.
"Little Girl Lost" is the sequel to "Twisted Fairy Tales," furthering the story of Kara In-Ze, a.k.a. Supergirl as she travels the multiverse searching for a place to belong.
=======================
[ CHAPTER THREE ]
.
"Wow, that is fucking incredible."
"I know. I've never seen anything like that, and I've seen Rogue punch a hole through a car door when she was mad."
Jubilee looked at her two friends and shrugged her shoulders. "It's nothing new. She's just another mutant... like us. There's nothing special about her."
"Are you fucking insane?" Taz asked, turning to her, though her eyes kept straying back to the sight of the blond woman kicking the Sentinel's ass. "She can fly. She's super strong. She... she had lasers shooting out of her eyes. She blew on the Sentinel's arm and froze it, then snapped its arm off at the shoulder. She's like... she's like Scott, Rogue and Storm all in one. She's amazing. Most of all, she saved us, and she really didn't have to, since the Sentinel hadn't even targeted her. She's my hero!"
Jubilee crossed her arms tight over her chest. "Doesn't matter. She's nothing that big."
Taz looked at Danielle and they both rolled their eyes before focusing back on the girl kicking the crap out of the Sentinel scourge.
Jubilee hated herself for feeling so jealous, but she was.
She'd been training for months to earn her spot on the X-Men, but the first time she went up against a Sentinel, she couldn’t even save her friends. With that giant hand coming down toward them, she'd pretty much known they were doomed. They were going to wake up in a big laboratory somewhere or they weren't even going to wake up at all, and it was all her fault because her mutant gift wasn't strong enough to stop that robo-freak.
Then blondie had shown up. She'd just appeared out of nowhere and started crunching metal like it was nothing. Jubilee had felt so helpless, yet that girl was kicking ass without even really trying, and it just wasn't fair!
Why the hell did she even have a mutant power if it was going to be something so lame? Why couldn't she have been super strong or fast? Why couldn’t she have the destructive force necessary to protect herself and her friends? Why did she have to be so nearly human, but with sparks shooting out of her fingertips? It... it wasn't fair. She wanted to be stronger than she was. She wanted to have the ability to save the people that she cared about. She didn't want to be another helpless victim waiting to be scooped up by Sentinels scanning for the X-gene.
What was the point of being a mutant if her big ability was to just be able to die?
Sure, she wasn't as helpless as some of the mutants out there, the ones that had purely physical changes that branded them as freaks without helping them one bit. But she wasn't as strong and fierce as mutants like Magneto or Storm or Cyclops either. She was just a girl with a bit of something extra, but not enough to make her ever feel completely safe.
Watching the blond girl take the Sentinel apart piece by piece, she burned with a jealous rage that she was never going to be so strong. She was never going to fly.
* * *
Kara was having fun. For the first time in a long time, she was able to just let out all of her rage and anger, and once it was gone and only Kara was left behind, she could enjoy the visceral pleasure of letting go of her physical inhibitions.
Whenever she was around humans, she always had to be so careful that she didn't hurt them. But when she faced rogue Kryptonians, alien scourges, or even giant robots, she was able to fully be herself, and it was a freedom she had sorely missed.
With a hard wrench and a grunt of effort, she twisted the robot's head off its shoulders and crumpled it between her fists like a giant soda can.
It felt good to crush her enemies. She didn't get to do it very often, since she mostly stopped humanlike bad guys. But it still felt good.
Just as the robot was collapsing to the ground, there was a whistling, whooshing sound from behind her.
Kara whirled around and watched in shock as five more giant robots came flying at her through the clouds.
"What the hell are you guys?" she asked. Knowing a fight was coming, she cracked her knuckles and put herself into a state of readiness. With multiple enemies, she wasn't going to play with them as she had the first robot. Now was a time for concentrated violence and an easy ass whipping.
As the robots landed on the ground in a circle around her, Kara slipped off her pleather jacket and hoodie, dropping them toward the street below. She wanted to have her arms free, and besides, it wasn't like she needed to pretend a need for warmth anymore. Her Kryptonian body didn't feel the cold like a human's did, not with the Earth's yellow sun to recharge her batteries. It was one of the best things about being solar powered.
With a blazing grin, Kara rested her fists on her hips and took on the patented "superhero" stance. "Well, whatever you are, you've made a grave mistake today by bothering those girls. I may not get on my soapbox often, but I'm there right now, and you're gonna pay for putting me there."
"Identify yourself, mutant," the lead robot said in a rumbling deep mechanical voice.
Kara laughed. "It's been awhile since I've been anywhere where I wasn't immediately recognizable as a member of the Super family, but this is a whole new world, isn't it? My name is Kara In-Ze. I am Supergirl." She tipped herself backward and zoomed forward to slam boot first into the lead robot. There was a crunch and squeal of torn metal as she ripped through its head and popped out the other side. The robot collapsed to its knees then face forward into the ground. "Oh yeah, and I'm not a mutant. I'm a Kryptonian."
It felt good to declare her identity with pride. She didn't have to hide who she was here, because there was no Kent family to protect and Clark wasn't here to have his secret identity revealed.
For the first time in a long time she was free to be herself.
"I'm in the mood to play," she purred, her Kryptonian battle-spirit rising.
Sure, Kryptonians weren't quite the conquerors that some of their detractors might have called them, but they didn't leave enemies behind them either. They were a warrior race that had settled into peaceful rule of their empire, but they held the memory of what they once were in their veins.
Now filled with the fire of battle, she felt completely alive.
She gave a Xena-esque "Yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!" yelping-yell and sent herself flipping through the air, slamming her fists and feet into the robots.
When there was the whooshing sound of more robots appearing, her grin only got fiercer. She was having fun!
* * *
Hovering the Blackbird over the Sentinels, Scott held it steady as Storm and Rogue leaped out the hatch to join the battle below.
"There's a clear spot on the roof of that building right there," Logan said, pointing.
Scott flashed him a smile. "Thanks." The building also had a good line of fire for his optic blasts, an added bonus. Logan had probably already seen that.
Landing the Blackbird on the roof of the building looked childishly simple, but it involved lots of miniature maneuvering to get it down without knocking over a chimney or sliding over the edge. No one ever told him he did a good job landing the plane, but Scott took pride in the fact that he had never crashed it. Sure, they'd been shot down a few times, or they'd had their engine ripped out in mid-flight once, but that had nothing to do with his flying skills, which were excellent.
"All right, we're down," he said, switching off the engine and unstrapping himself.
"Meet you on the outside, slick," Logan said, thumping his shoulder before making toward the hatch.
"Where do you want me?" Jean asked, taking her time in releasing her own seatbelt.
Scott shrugged. "You can stand by me. I'll aim bursts at the Sentinels and protect you while you use your telekinesis to rip the insides out of 'em."
"Sounds like a plan," she said.
He followed her out of the plane and took up a position near the edge of the building.
When he was younger, he used to have a fear of heights. Charles had forced him to overcome it, slipping into his mind and clipping the fear right out of his brain. Sometimes he wondered what else Charles had taken out of him, but then he'd dismiss those thoughts as paranoia. Charles Xavier was like a father to him, and there was no way Charles would ever let his ideals overcome his simple human decency. No way.
"Wow, she's amazing," Jean murmured.
Scott grunted in agreement, watching the slender blond girl crush metal in her bare fists. She looked like a Barbie doll, but she fought like a dream. He had to wonder what side she was on and whether she was open for recruitment. They could really use someone like that on their team.
Raising his left hand to the side of his visor, he aimed an optic blast right through the nearest Sentinel's right eye, burning out its brain. It fell with a ground-shaking thud.
The girl turned to look at him, a surprised look forming on her face for a moment. "Who are you?" she called.
"Friends," Scott yelled back.
She looked like she wasn't going to believe him for a moment, then she shrugged and smirked. "Whatever. You didn't really need to join my fun, but since you're here now... don't get in my way." With that she spun around in midair like a ballerina, going faster and faster and faster until she was just a blur of motion, then disappeared into the rising funnel of air.
The fast moving funnel leapt across the intervening space to engulf two of the Sentinels. There was a tumble and crunch, then shattered pieces of metal and plastic were raining down to litter the sidewalk and street. The Sentinels were ground together like G.I. Joes in a blender, and when she was done, there was nothing left of them but parts.
As soon as there were no more pieces of Sentinel in her tornado she stopped spinning. For a moment, she stood framed against the light, her back straight and her beauty inhuman in its perfection, poised on the air as though it were solid ground. Then she bent her body in a snapping dive and slammed into another Sentinel doubled-up fists first, hitting with such force that it just shattered into pieces.
She was an awesome force of destruction.
* * *
Rogue and Storm took a moment to assess the situation before they each chose their targets and attacked. They didn't have to discuss what they were going to do; they just did it. Years of training--hard work since they were barely teenagers--had gone into making them the people they were today.
Sometimes Rogue remembered the girl that used to be Marie, and when she did she had to wonder what exactly it was she had become. It wasn't like she woke up every morning with a smile on her face. Sure, she was kind of, maybe, content with her life, but she couldn’t really be completely certain, because she'd never had a real chance to live any other way.
The luck of the draw had given her kind of a raw deal in the mutation department. There were people out there cursed with even worse mutations, ones so horrific that they never had a chance to make any kind of life for themselves, but her mutation wasn't a happy one either. Never being able to touch another living creature with her bare skin didn't seem so bad at first glance, but it was a wearing kind of misery that just grew and grew with each passing year that she had to cringe away from the human contact she wanted so badly.
A part of her cried out for the comfort of a simple hug, a kiss on her forehead, but it was never going to happen again, not without a layer of cloth between her and the rest of the world. And that layer didn't exist to protect her, but to save other people from coming into contact with her, because she held death in her very being.
She had nightmares where she was trapped in a crowd of people, and no matter how small she held herself, they kept brushing against her and dying. She would suck their lives out of their skin, and even as they withered away to nothing, she could still hear their horrible screams, begging and wailing, haunting her sleep, forcing her to remember them even when all she wanted to do was forget.
It hurt her to know that the ability to fly that she loved so well wasn't her own, it was just another stolen life. She had as good as killed Ms. Marvel when she sucked the power out of her and put her into a forever coma. She hadn't even had the grace to just kill the woman, and it tormented her.
She could fly and was stronger than a normal human would ever be. She could protect herself from anyone that wanted to hurt her. Mere bullets only bruised her skin. Humans couldn’t hurt her anymore, and she wished that she could give it back. Because her mutation, which allowed her to absorb the life and skills of any human or mutant she touched meant that in the end, she didn't even know if she could classify herself as a member of either race. She was a monster, and it should have bothered her even more than it did.
Because it was only when she thought of Marie that she realized what she was and what she was losing with each passing year. The rest of the time, she was stuck in the now, living every single day, thinking no further than the moment, and consequences and repercussions had no room in her mind.
It was only when she thought about how much of Marie she had lost that she considered herself a monster. The rest of the time, it didn't even seem to matter, and hadn't since she'd joined the X-Men and taken Professor Charles Xavier's ideals as her own.
She longed for human contact, but since that was never going to happen, she contented herself with focusing her entire life force on the mission the X-Men lived for. She put all of herself into Xavier's dream of a better life for mutant kind and a world where humans and mutants could stand side-by-side as one. Fighting for that dream was her human contact, and it had to be enough for her, the untouchable woman.
.
.
Throwing herself into the fight against the Sentinels, she pushed away all other thoughts or concerns. She needed to focus on the task at hand and not let herself be distracted by things she could not change.
Without a single twinge of conscience, she pushed away everything that was Marie and completely became Rogue of the X-Men. Now was not a time to be anything like human.
With a roar of effort, she slammed full force into one of the Sentinels, punching and punching until she thought her arms were going to fall off. Metal bent under her punches until she finally managed to make a hole big enough for her hand and arm to fit through to reach in and pull out a double handful of wires and circuit boards.
There was a flare of sparks and the heavy smell of burning machinery.
Rogue drifted backwards in the air to watch the Sentinel collapse with a loud thud to the ground. It didn't get back up.
She was so busy watching her first enemy fall that she didn't see the large fist swing down and hit her, knocking her through the air. Her voice rose in a surprised scream as she tumbled across twenty feet of intervening space to slam hard into an entirely too human-shaped object.
For a moment she thought she had run into Storm. And sure, Storm was tough, but she was only humanly strong and could be hurt or killed just like anyone else. Then they were hitting the ground hard, the woman she'd landed against hitting first with Rogue on top.
"You all right?" an unfamiliar voice asked.
Rogue twisted her head around and saw that she'd hit the strange blond girl that had been fighting the Sentinels by herself. The girl didn't seem to be in any pain at all, not a single bruise marring the perfection of her skin. Her clothes weren't even mussed, much less torn, which had to be the result of some strange mutant power, because there was no way that was normal.
"Ah'm..." Rogue had to pause and clear her throat before she could continue. "Ah'm all right. How are ya? Did Ah hurt ya?" She rolled off the girl and sat up, trying to see whether any harm had been done to the girl.
"I'm fine, nothing I haven't been hit with before," the girl said, standing up in one smooth motion. She turned and reached down to grab Rogue's upper arm, pulling her up. "There you go. We better get back into the fight." She rose up off the ground and zoomed off back into the fray.
Rogue just stood there for an immeasurable length of time staring after the girl, barely seeing anything at all through blurry eyes. Her mind was trapped on one thing and one thing only.
When the Sentinel had hit her, the sleeve had somehow been torn off her uniform. Her right arm was completely exposed. The girl had gripped Rogue's bare arm for a couple of seconds at least with no affect whatsoever. Rogue hadn't felt any kind of power absorption at all.
Staring at the girl, Rogue didn't quite know what to do. All she knew was that for the first time in years someone had touched her and been completely unharmed by the contact.
She had been touched.
.
TBC...
Author: Feygan
Fandom: Smallville/Supergirl/Marvelverse
Pairing: Kara/Rogue, Scott/Logan, Bobby/Beast
Warning: violence. language. obliteration of the canon timelines.
Disclaimer: I do not own Smallville, DC comics, or Marvel comics.
LiveJournal: http://feygan.livejournal.com
Home: http://www.darkgesture.com/fanfiction.htm
.
"Little Girl Lost" is the sequel to "Twisted Fairy Tales," furthering the story of Kara In-Ze, a.k.a. Supergirl as she travels the multiverse searching for a place to belong.
=======================
[ CHAPTER THREE ]
.
"Wow, that is fucking incredible."
"I know. I've never seen anything like that, and I've seen Rogue punch a hole through a car door when she was mad."
Jubilee looked at her two friends and shrugged her shoulders. "It's nothing new. She's just another mutant... like us. There's nothing special about her."
"Are you fucking insane?" Taz asked, turning to her, though her eyes kept straying back to the sight of the blond woman kicking the Sentinel's ass. "She can fly. She's super strong. She... she had lasers shooting out of her eyes. She blew on the Sentinel's arm and froze it, then snapped its arm off at the shoulder. She's like... she's like Scott, Rogue and Storm all in one. She's amazing. Most of all, she saved us, and she really didn't have to, since the Sentinel hadn't even targeted her. She's my hero!"
Jubilee crossed her arms tight over her chest. "Doesn't matter. She's nothing that big."
Taz looked at Danielle and they both rolled their eyes before focusing back on the girl kicking the crap out of the Sentinel scourge.
Jubilee hated herself for feeling so jealous, but she was.
She'd been training for months to earn her spot on the X-Men, but the first time she went up against a Sentinel, she couldn’t even save her friends. With that giant hand coming down toward them, she'd pretty much known they were doomed. They were going to wake up in a big laboratory somewhere or they weren't even going to wake up at all, and it was all her fault because her mutant gift wasn't strong enough to stop that robo-freak.
Then blondie had shown up. She'd just appeared out of nowhere and started crunching metal like it was nothing. Jubilee had felt so helpless, yet that girl was kicking ass without even really trying, and it just wasn't fair!
Why the hell did she even have a mutant power if it was going to be something so lame? Why couldn't she have been super strong or fast? Why couldn’t she have the destructive force necessary to protect herself and her friends? Why did she have to be so nearly human, but with sparks shooting out of her fingertips? It... it wasn't fair. She wanted to be stronger than she was. She wanted to have the ability to save the people that she cared about. She didn't want to be another helpless victim waiting to be scooped up by Sentinels scanning for the X-gene.
What was the point of being a mutant if her big ability was to just be able to die?
Sure, she wasn't as helpless as some of the mutants out there, the ones that had purely physical changes that branded them as freaks without helping them one bit. But she wasn't as strong and fierce as mutants like Magneto or Storm or Cyclops either. She was just a girl with a bit of something extra, but not enough to make her ever feel completely safe.
Watching the blond girl take the Sentinel apart piece by piece, she burned with a jealous rage that she was never going to be so strong. She was never going to fly.
* * *
Kara was having fun. For the first time in a long time, she was able to just let out all of her rage and anger, and once it was gone and only Kara was left behind, she could enjoy the visceral pleasure of letting go of her physical inhibitions.
Whenever she was around humans, she always had to be so careful that she didn't hurt them. But when she faced rogue Kryptonians, alien scourges, or even giant robots, she was able to fully be herself, and it was a freedom she had sorely missed.
With a hard wrench and a grunt of effort, she twisted the robot's head off its shoulders and crumpled it between her fists like a giant soda can.
It felt good to crush her enemies. She didn't get to do it very often, since she mostly stopped humanlike bad guys. But it still felt good.
Just as the robot was collapsing to the ground, there was a whistling, whooshing sound from behind her.
Kara whirled around and watched in shock as five more giant robots came flying at her through the clouds.
"What the hell are you guys?" she asked. Knowing a fight was coming, she cracked her knuckles and put herself into a state of readiness. With multiple enemies, she wasn't going to play with them as she had the first robot. Now was a time for concentrated violence and an easy ass whipping.
As the robots landed on the ground in a circle around her, Kara slipped off her pleather jacket and hoodie, dropping them toward the street below. She wanted to have her arms free, and besides, it wasn't like she needed to pretend a need for warmth anymore. Her Kryptonian body didn't feel the cold like a human's did, not with the Earth's yellow sun to recharge her batteries. It was one of the best things about being solar powered.
With a blazing grin, Kara rested her fists on her hips and took on the patented "superhero" stance. "Well, whatever you are, you've made a grave mistake today by bothering those girls. I may not get on my soapbox often, but I'm there right now, and you're gonna pay for putting me there."
"Identify yourself, mutant," the lead robot said in a rumbling deep mechanical voice.
Kara laughed. "It's been awhile since I've been anywhere where I wasn't immediately recognizable as a member of the Super family, but this is a whole new world, isn't it? My name is Kara In-Ze. I am Supergirl." She tipped herself backward and zoomed forward to slam boot first into the lead robot. There was a crunch and squeal of torn metal as she ripped through its head and popped out the other side. The robot collapsed to its knees then face forward into the ground. "Oh yeah, and I'm not a mutant. I'm a Kryptonian."
It felt good to declare her identity with pride. She didn't have to hide who she was here, because there was no Kent family to protect and Clark wasn't here to have his secret identity revealed.
For the first time in a long time she was free to be herself.
"I'm in the mood to play," she purred, her Kryptonian battle-spirit rising.
Sure, Kryptonians weren't quite the conquerors that some of their detractors might have called them, but they didn't leave enemies behind them either. They were a warrior race that had settled into peaceful rule of their empire, but they held the memory of what they once were in their veins.
Now filled with the fire of battle, she felt completely alive.
She gave a Xena-esque "Yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!" yelping-yell and sent herself flipping through the air, slamming her fists and feet into the robots.
When there was the whooshing sound of more robots appearing, her grin only got fiercer. She was having fun!
* * *
Hovering the Blackbird over the Sentinels, Scott held it steady as Storm and Rogue leaped out the hatch to join the battle below.
"There's a clear spot on the roof of that building right there," Logan said, pointing.
Scott flashed him a smile. "Thanks." The building also had a good line of fire for his optic blasts, an added bonus. Logan had probably already seen that.
Landing the Blackbird on the roof of the building looked childishly simple, but it involved lots of miniature maneuvering to get it down without knocking over a chimney or sliding over the edge. No one ever told him he did a good job landing the plane, but Scott took pride in the fact that he had never crashed it. Sure, they'd been shot down a few times, or they'd had their engine ripped out in mid-flight once, but that had nothing to do with his flying skills, which were excellent.
"All right, we're down," he said, switching off the engine and unstrapping himself.
"Meet you on the outside, slick," Logan said, thumping his shoulder before making toward the hatch.
"Where do you want me?" Jean asked, taking her time in releasing her own seatbelt.
Scott shrugged. "You can stand by me. I'll aim bursts at the Sentinels and protect you while you use your telekinesis to rip the insides out of 'em."
"Sounds like a plan," she said.
He followed her out of the plane and took up a position near the edge of the building.
When he was younger, he used to have a fear of heights. Charles had forced him to overcome it, slipping into his mind and clipping the fear right out of his brain. Sometimes he wondered what else Charles had taken out of him, but then he'd dismiss those thoughts as paranoia. Charles Xavier was like a father to him, and there was no way Charles would ever let his ideals overcome his simple human decency. No way.
"Wow, she's amazing," Jean murmured.
Scott grunted in agreement, watching the slender blond girl crush metal in her bare fists. She looked like a Barbie doll, but she fought like a dream. He had to wonder what side she was on and whether she was open for recruitment. They could really use someone like that on their team.
Raising his left hand to the side of his visor, he aimed an optic blast right through the nearest Sentinel's right eye, burning out its brain. It fell with a ground-shaking thud.
The girl turned to look at him, a surprised look forming on her face for a moment. "Who are you?" she called.
"Friends," Scott yelled back.
She looked like she wasn't going to believe him for a moment, then she shrugged and smirked. "Whatever. You didn't really need to join my fun, but since you're here now... don't get in my way." With that she spun around in midair like a ballerina, going faster and faster and faster until she was just a blur of motion, then disappeared into the rising funnel of air.
The fast moving funnel leapt across the intervening space to engulf two of the Sentinels. There was a tumble and crunch, then shattered pieces of metal and plastic were raining down to litter the sidewalk and street. The Sentinels were ground together like G.I. Joes in a blender, and when she was done, there was nothing left of them but parts.
As soon as there were no more pieces of Sentinel in her tornado she stopped spinning. For a moment, she stood framed against the light, her back straight and her beauty inhuman in its perfection, poised on the air as though it were solid ground. Then she bent her body in a snapping dive and slammed into another Sentinel doubled-up fists first, hitting with such force that it just shattered into pieces.
She was an awesome force of destruction.
* * *
Rogue and Storm took a moment to assess the situation before they each chose their targets and attacked. They didn't have to discuss what they were going to do; they just did it. Years of training--hard work since they were barely teenagers--had gone into making them the people they were today.
Sometimes Rogue remembered the girl that used to be Marie, and when she did she had to wonder what exactly it was she had become. It wasn't like she woke up every morning with a smile on her face. Sure, she was kind of, maybe, content with her life, but she couldn’t really be completely certain, because she'd never had a real chance to live any other way.
The luck of the draw had given her kind of a raw deal in the mutation department. There were people out there cursed with even worse mutations, ones so horrific that they never had a chance to make any kind of life for themselves, but her mutation wasn't a happy one either. Never being able to touch another living creature with her bare skin didn't seem so bad at first glance, but it was a wearing kind of misery that just grew and grew with each passing year that she had to cringe away from the human contact she wanted so badly.
A part of her cried out for the comfort of a simple hug, a kiss on her forehead, but it was never going to happen again, not without a layer of cloth between her and the rest of the world. And that layer didn't exist to protect her, but to save other people from coming into contact with her, because she held death in her very being.
She had nightmares where she was trapped in a crowd of people, and no matter how small she held herself, they kept brushing against her and dying. She would suck their lives out of their skin, and even as they withered away to nothing, she could still hear their horrible screams, begging and wailing, haunting her sleep, forcing her to remember them even when all she wanted to do was forget.
It hurt her to know that the ability to fly that she loved so well wasn't her own, it was just another stolen life. She had as good as killed Ms. Marvel when she sucked the power out of her and put her into a forever coma. She hadn't even had the grace to just kill the woman, and it tormented her.
She could fly and was stronger than a normal human would ever be. She could protect herself from anyone that wanted to hurt her. Mere bullets only bruised her skin. Humans couldn’t hurt her anymore, and she wished that she could give it back. Because her mutation, which allowed her to absorb the life and skills of any human or mutant she touched meant that in the end, she didn't even know if she could classify herself as a member of either race. She was a monster, and it should have bothered her even more than it did.
Because it was only when she thought of Marie that she realized what she was and what she was losing with each passing year. The rest of the time, she was stuck in the now, living every single day, thinking no further than the moment, and consequences and repercussions had no room in her mind.
It was only when she thought about how much of Marie she had lost that she considered herself a monster. The rest of the time, it didn't even seem to matter, and hadn't since she'd joined the X-Men and taken Professor Charles Xavier's ideals as her own.
She longed for human contact, but since that was never going to happen, she contented herself with focusing her entire life force on the mission the X-Men lived for. She put all of herself into Xavier's dream of a better life for mutant kind and a world where humans and mutants could stand side-by-side as one. Fighting for that dream was her human contact, and it had to be enough for her, the untouchable woman.
.
.
Throwing herself into the fight against the Sentinels, she pushed away all other thoughts or concerns. She needed to focus on the task at hand and not let herself be distracted by things she could not change.
Without a single twinge of conscience, she pushed away everything that was Marie and completely became Rogue of the X-Men. Now was not a time to be anything like human.
With a roar of effort, she slammed full force into one of the Sentinels, punching and punching until she thought her arms were going to fall off. Metal bent under her punches until she finally managed to make a hole big enough for her hand and arm to fit through to reach in and pull out a double handful of wires and circuit boards.
There was a flare of sparks and the heavy smell of burning machinery.
Rogue drifted backwards in the air to watch the Sentinel collapse with a loud thud to the ground. It didn't get back up.
She was so busy watching her first enemy fall that she didn't see the large fist swing down and hit her, knocking her through the air. Her voice rose in a surprised scream as she tumbled across twenty feet of intervening space to slam hard into an entirely too human-shaped object.
For a moment she thought she had run into Storm. And sure, Storm was tough, but she was only humanly strong and could be hurt or killed just like anyone else. Then they were hitting the ground hard, the woman she'd landed against hitting first with Rogue on top.
"You all right?" an unfamiliar voice asked.
Rogue twisted her head around and saw that she'd hit the strange blond girl that had been fighting the Sentinels by herself. The girl didn't seem to be in any pain at all, not a single bruise marring the perfection of her skin. Her clothes weren't even mussed, much less torn, which had to be the result of some strange mutant power, because there was no way that was normal.
"Ah'm..." Rogue had to pause and clear her throat before she could continue. "Ah'm all right. How are ya? Did Ah hurt ya?" She rolled off the girl and sat up, trying to see whether any harm had been done to the girl.
"I'm fine, nothing I haven't been hit with before," the girl said, standing up in one smooth motion. She turned and reached down to grab Rogue's upper arm, pulling her up. "There you go. We better get back into the fight." She rose up off the ground and zoomed off back into the fray.
Rogue just stood there for an immeasurable length of time staring after the girl, barely seeing anything at all through blurry eyes. Her mind was trapped on one thing and one thing only.
When the Sentinel had hit her, the sleeve had somehow been torn off her uniform. Her right arm was completely exposed. The girl had gripped Rogue's bare arm for a couple of seconds at least with no affect whatsoever. Rogue hadn't felt any kind of power absorption at all.
Staring at the girl, Rogue didn't quite know what to do. All she knew was that for the first time in years someone had touched her and been completely unharmed by the contact.
She had been touched.
.
TBC...