Could you write something fluffy for Rouge just feeling the school stress get to her and just really run down and tired all the time-the extreme amount of coffee doesn't help anymore and the whole X gang just being comforting?
Rogue looks at her computer screen and watches the words spin out into gibberish before her eyes. Chinese characters that made no sense and only brought a pulsing migraine to her temples. Hank had actually appeared in all his blue glory to plead Rogue’s case academically. Alongside Charles and Storm, they took hours to explain all the reasons Rogue should be exempt or pardoned for her missed work.
After everything she managed to transform through, endure, and survive; she cannot fail for so many conditions out of her control. The telepath will not see her suffer more and repeat her junior year for no fault of her own. Principal Kelly reluctantly agreed that maybe not all mutants were bad, and she could have her opportunity to rejoin her class (the poor girl missed over a semester between the spring concert and D-Day).
She had two weeks from Apocalypse’s official defeat to catch up on all of her work. She’s lucky she got that with her graduation track record, the southern goth has no interest in stressing Charles further or making her relationship with Bayville High worse.
She grins and bears it like much of the other things she’d gone through; she didn’t have much choice.
So, while she recuperated from the exhausting battle she studied in the infirmary. A dutiful Ororo and Hank went over the work she managed to complete (and monitor her caffeine intake). She thought she was a great student before she had her mind melted, twisted, and warped. She stares at the sentence prompt for her English paper and sighs.
“What was the hardest moment of your life and how did it transform you?”
Rogue laughs dryly but tears well in tired eyes. She’d be kicked out of school if she wrote half of that down. What did she say? Did she make up something? Lie? She’d been staring at a blank computer screen for hours, now. She can’t put any words down the way she used to. ‘God, what if Ah’m ruined…’
Maybe she was ruined from what happened to her. Broken. Used up. She’d dare not say anything, but the psyches had returned to her mind with a howling vengeance. They are louder and more embellished than her own inner monologue. Swamping every cohesive thought with their arguing. Their screams. Their terrifying whispers.
It was worse than before. She doesn’t remember where she is in it all. What she liked and didn’t like. What were her dreams? She’s surrounded by imposters and compies. Charles seems too relieved, so ashamed and afraid of what he’d done as a horseman. How could she tell him she no longer sleeps because it’s like Apocalypse is speaking in her ear? To conquer. To defy. To finish what he so bravely started.
Rogue jerks and several pages and pens clatter to the floor as she groans. Adrenaline pulses through her veins as she fights to be herself.
‘Just fail, you don’t need school anyway…’
‘Destroy this school. Forge a new curriculum, unlock all of your power so we-’
‘Just focus, you can do this. Remember your training…’
“God,” Rogue grits her teeth and looks into an empty thermos. If she made another pot of coffee someone (anyone’s guess) would haul her to the infirmary. She was still drinking twice as much as Hank’s recommendation and she knew a freakout was imminent if she drank more.
If she fell asleep like this, she’d only have nightmares. Nightmares that disturbed the peace that had finally settled over the school. Her panting and shrieks ringing out over the entire campus. And without more coffee she might fall asleep on her computer. She turns to the window and sees the sun about to dip past the horizon. “Oh man, Ah’ve been workin’ on this all…”
She sees ‘The’ typed and an expanse of white haunting her. This wasn’t possible to do in two short weeks (less since her worried friends and teachers insisted she take at least a day or two to rest). Kelly would still like nothing more than to see her fail after what she did to his ceremony.
She usually takes the past few years of her life in stride. She had no choice in the matter and moping in the last act of her childhood sounds foolish. But as she reflects on all the things she did when she was out of control, how people literally cross the street now (if she even leaves the school campus at all) when they see her, she doesn’t blame him.
She doesn’t want to be that girl.
The walking problem. From her skin to the predicament in her head, she’d truly rather suffer in silence than give the school one more thing to worry about. She can’t do it to them anymore.
‘You are tired. Relinquish control to me…’
A pencil snaps in her hand as she fights the sweeping tide in her head. How much longer of this was she expected to stand? She sent Apocalypse away. She worked with the professor tirelessly. All she wants to be is a normal eighteen year old….
‘Please…. Just stop. Stop… Ah can’t take it,’
“Rogue?” Jean is standing in an olive-colored blouse and trying her hardest not to follow the girl’s distress directly. “Ororo asked about you.” The flushed girl smiled lamely but nothing gets past her intuitive teammate anymore. It seemed like she knew and felt everything sometimes. She even predicted the professor’s words.
“Oh… She wanted to meditate today…” Even if she tries to hide it, Jean sees her stress as she looks at mountains of work piling up. “Ah don’t have time, Ah’m doin’ all the work Ah can and Ah’m still on pace to fail.” She watches in astonishment as the fallen papers rise and organize neatly on her desk (Jean doesn’t even raise her hands these days). “Maybe Ah should just be a plumber… Or a cage dancer,”
She’s not all too sure mutant college dreams come true. “Gosh, don’t be so hard on yourself.” Rogue isn’t sure what to think when the redhead takes a careful seat near her and gives a sympathetic look to the school work sprawling over the desk. “I could never bounce back after missing so much work…”
Jean was an excellent student, but it was something she worked hard at. Most people couldn’t tell that, not even Scott. Rogue unfortunately is a great gauge of sincerity but she doesn’t detect any fibbing on the redhead’s part. Her hands are interlocked and her gaze troubled as she stared through the windows. “The truth is… I have to work hard at everything.”
Rogue bites on the urge to contest that as she continued. “Like keeping my telepathy in check… So I don’t hear your thoughts right now, or the professor upstairs… Or Logan’s at the gate.” Rogue’s limited experience with her power made every thought in a five-mile radius rush into her brain. She never wanted to happen again. “You’re not alone, Rogue. I know it may feel like it but…” Jean chews her lip guiltily and Rogue realizes she knows her dirty little secret.
“I know your psyches are back. I can’t explain how,” Rogue doesn’t feel defensive for once as Jean tucks into herself. “I just felt them. It’s okay, I know you want to protect the professor but you don’t have to.” She smiles when thinks about the kind man. “He wants nothing more than to help you, Rogue. He would do anything.”
She feels foolishly emotional as she thinks about him. “What if there’s nothing he can do?” Her voice is low and hushed as Jean stares at the horizon. The same thought crosses her mind whenever he can’t look her in the eyes.
“He’ll find something, Rogue. For both of us.” She‘s pretty surprised when she doesn’t flinch away from the hand that reached for her. A far cry from the girl who came to the institute. “I promise.” The short-haired girl isn’t sure what to say as Kurt and Kitty phased into the room eagerly.
“Okay, step avayfrom the homevork.” Kurt demands, making finger guns at his sibling as she frowned at him.
“We went to three different stores to find this.” In Kitty’s hand is a vintage copy of the Dracula movie Rogue loves. Her hair is frazzled and she looks worn out. “No more work for a second. The professor says we can go in the Rec Room for as long as we want.” Rogue is a bit concerned for her old roommate’s mental health.
“Kitty. We talked about this. Ah’m graduatin’ on time if Ah have to rob a bank and steal a train to do it. Not with y’all.”
“Vhat vill a train have to do vith things?” All eyes turn to an excited looking Hank an Ororo standing in the doorway (the latter looking rather comfortable).
“You will need to do no such thing, my dear.”
“You’ve done excellently on the work you have completed. Your brain and your body need to relax.” The white-haired woman looks at Rogue warmly and commends her efforts. She’s glad she was allowed to return to school, but she isn’t happy with a teacher saddling her with an impossible course-load (just to leave Bayville and run for senator). “Charles can reconcile you having… Some help.”
Rogue’s mouth actually drops open as Jean smiles beside her. “A few classes over the summer to keep that mind I love so much sharp, you’ll be fine. You most of all just need to relax.” Jean sighs when she looks into an empty container of coffee.
“Yeah, and to quit the coffee…”
“Yes, my fräulein…. Have some fun. Please.” Rogue whimpers when he hooks his arm in his. He hadn’t forgiven himself for nearly driving Rogue off the team, out of the school, and into Gambit’s arms (it didn’t take him long to realize that mistake). He wouldn’t let her out of his sight now. “Come on. Haven’t you earned it?”
“Yeah, we’re just like…. Not letting you handle it. No offense but it didn’t go so well last time.” Rogue cracks a small smile at Kitty’s brazen honesty (a reason the two became so close). “So…. You basically have no choice?”
“Are you sure….” A door shuts and Logan’s rasp is heard in a different room.
“Yes. Mix the mint with the chocolate milkshake… Here, Rogue. Logan and I went to the place where you like to dip the french fries into the shake…”
“The one two malls away.” The grumpy-sounding man hands Bobby a vanilla milkshake seamlessly as he passes by. Now as the goth girl thought about it there was only coffee in her stomach. For the first time in years she was kind of hungry.
When Logan can sense that she’s appetized he smiled genuinely and hands her the bag to dig inside. “You eat? I was beginning to think you were an android.”
“Good, you’ve been doing all this work but your brain needs fuel…” Jean smiles at her worrisome boyfriend and plants a hand on his chest. ‘Good job.’
‘Rogue, I don’t want to overstep but a friend mentions… Maybe we have more besides your teachings to catch up on.’ The telepath is directing her stare elsewhere but Rogue isn’t upset. Before, maybe she would’ve felt persecuted. Singled out and picked on. A different girl would’ve made a fight and a scene and stomped away from well-intentioned people.
But, she was right. Doing things alone was the old way. The Mystique way, and that was done. ‘Yeah, Ah think so.’ Charles is almost startled by not having to plead or finesse this meeting out of her like he anticipated. She looked at her brother and Kitty and dared to hope that they’d all get through this. ‘But, like.. Maybe after tonight? We were gonna watch a movie…’
Charles doesn’t know what the future holds. He knows their troubles will keep coming like he’s already seen. But hearing her choose to spend time with the family she found gave him hope. That anyone could be okay.
‘Oh, yes. Naturally. It’s a date.’
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