Chapter Twelve
The next morning Rogue, Remy, Xavier, Logan, Storm and Hank met to discuss what Rogue had learned about Kurt.
Deciding that it was better to know for certain before breaking the news to Kurt, Dr McCoy offered to check Kurt and Mystique's DNA samples. Mystique's DNA was on file with the government after she had been captured, and Remy hacked into to the file for them. Meanwhile, Dr McCoy ran a 'routine' health check on all the kids, and ran an DNA analysis on the blood sample he had taken from Kurt.
The X-Men had some pretty fancy machinery, and Hank had the results by that afternoon. He compared it to the data that Remy had downloaded and the X-Men reconvened after lunch.
"It's true, Kurt is the biological son of Raven Darkholm, better known as Mystique," Dr McCoy announced, in a suitably grave voice.
They then discussed how best to break the news to Kurt, but Rogue kept out of that conversation. She didn't know him so she couldn't say what might be best for him.
In the end they had little choice but to come straight out and tell him, so Kurt was summoned to the professors office.
Kurt sat silently as Xavier explained about Rogue's memory-dream, her suspicions and Henry's DNA test. Sometimes Kurt would look over to Rogue, especially when they talked about her dream, but Rogue kept her eyes firmly fixed on her and Remy's joined hands.
She could only imagine the pain that her revelations were causing him, and while she thought that he deserved to know the truth, that didn't mean that she had to like being the cause of his pain.
Even when they had explained everything to him, Kurt didn't speak.
"I realise this must have come as a bit of a shock to you," the professor said kindly. "We will not tell the others, so it is your choice if you want them to know or not."
Kurt still didn't say anything and his only action was to occasionally look from the professors desk to Rogue and back again.
"Kurt," Storm came forward, wanting to comfort him. She was something of a mother figure to all the children at the institute. "I know this can't be easy but-"
"Can't be easy?" he suddenly asked. "You tell me that my mother is a terrorist who experimented on me as a child then tried to drown me, while she adopted and cared for a daughter who wasn't even her own!"
"She didn't care for me," Rogue spoke up.
"At least she wanted you!"
"Yeah, wanted to use me! She's still trying to kidnap me to use my powers!" Rogue knew that she should calm down, that she was taking her hurt out on the wrong person, but she was on a roll and couldn't. "Just look at the two of us? It may hurt to know what she did, but you got the better deal, okay? At least you're well adjusted, have friends and were adopted by people who actually loved you. I'm a mess. I was traded to Hydra, I have killed people, Kurt, and now I make my living as a professional thief! Is that what you want for your life? I wouldn't wish Mystique on my worst enemy."
"I- I have to go," Kurt said and with a puff of sulphuric smoke, he vanished.
Rogue felt awful. "I'm going for a walk." She dropped Remy's hand and headed for the door.
"Rogue, I must-" the professor began but Rogue cut him of.
"I won't leave the grounds, I just need to be by myself for a while."
***
Rogue had found her way to the gazebo that sat by the cliff edge and was looking out over the ocean, her forearms resting on the railing.
"Hey, Kid." Logan said as he approached.
"Hey." She didn't bother turning around.
"Look, I'm not gonna tell you that what you said to Kurt was right, but I'm not gonna tell you that the anger you feel is wrong either."
She turned to him, curious about his statements. He held out a fist towards her and extended his adamantium claws.
Rogue stepped closer. "Is that metal?" Tentatively she reached out and hand to touch one of the claws.
"Yup, it coats and is fused with every bone in my body."
She could hear the pain in his voice and looked up into his eyes. "Did Hydra do that to you?"
"No. The project was called Weapon X, that was their code name for me, but their methods were basically the same as the people who turned you into a killer."
She paled. She hated thinking about some of the things she'd done.
"They controlled me too," he said. "Well, they tried, and for a while they were successful. Lucky for me, I lost most of my memories about 15 years ago, so I just get flashes. That's bad enough though."
"How do you live with it?" she asked in a soft voice.
"You have to forgive yourself."
Rogue scoffed and turned away.
"I know that sounds impossible, but you weren't in control of your actions, kid. You may feel responsible, but you weren't. By taking any of that blame onto yourself, you're letting them off the hook. You were the weapon, but they pulled the trigger."
That actually made a lot of sense to her, even if she couldn't quite believe it yet.
"Thanks, Logan."
"Any time, kid. And next time you see Kurt, say sorry, got it?"
"I was going to anyway!" she snapped. She didn't like talking about feelings, or admitting when she was wrong, so it made her rather short tempered.
"Good, cos as family goes, you kinda lucked out with him."
He turned and left and Rogue smiled at his retreating figure. He wasn't a man of many words, but the few he did speak were worth listening to.
***
"Rogue?"
She turned to see Kurt standing behind her. It had been about two hours since she had seen him, maybe an hour since Logan left.
"Hi."
"I just wanted to say that I am sorry about what I said, about Mystique wanting you. That was unkind."
"Yeah, I'm sorry too. I am angry but not at you, I shouldn't have taken it out on you."
Kurt smiled and stepped a little closer. "I was hoping that even though you disowned Mystique and she disowned me, that perhaps we might be friends, if not brother and sister."
Rogue smiled. "Yeah, I'd like that."
Kurt quickly stepped towards her with his arms outstretched and Rogue flinched.
"I- oh." Again she had hurt Kurt.
"I'm sorry, Kurt. It's not you, I'm just not used to people being so forward around me."
"You let Remy touch you."
"Now I do, but I didn't at first." She took a seat on the bench and patted the space beside her. Kurt took the hint and sat down. "Mystique and Irene weren't exactly cuddly parents, so I didn't touch much as a kid, then with Hydra, the only people who came close wanted to hurt me or do tests on me. They used to use power dampeners in my cell, you see, so my powers didn't protect me."
"I'm so sorry, Rogue."
She put on a brave smile for him. Although he was only a year younger than her, she felt so old in comparison.
"It's not your fault, Kurt, it's me who's the weird one. And I'm not saying we can't hug, just give me some notice, okay?"
"Okay," he smiled, the big, goofy smile that she remembered from her first night here. "Can I hug you, Rogue?" he asked, holding his arms wide but not moving towards her.
"Sure." She hugged him carefully so that she didn't drain him and although she wasn't used to it. She had to admit that it felt nice to hug someone other than Remy for a change.
Kurt pulled away fairly quickly, probably not wanting to hurt the tentative truce they seemed to have reached.
"So how do you like the mansion so far?" he asked.
"It's okay. There's a lot of people around, and a lot of noise which I'm not used to, but I don't dislike it."
"You will get used to it," he assured her. "I was an only child before I came here, so it was new to me too, even though there was only Scott and Jean here then. Kitty came about a week after I did."
"So, what's there to do in this place?" Rogue asked.
"Want to go bowling?" Kurt asked.
"I can't leave the mansion," Rogue confessed. She even felt a little disappointed.
"No problem, I have a bowling program in the Danger Room!"
Rogue smiled. "Okay then but I should warn you, I've never played before."
"Never?"
"Nope."
"Oh well, neither had I before I left Germany. I will teach you and we will wipe the floor with the rest of the mansion in no time!"
***
Remy had settled into life at the mansion almost immediately, he was the type of person who could fit in almost anywhere.
Rogue had thought that she wouldn't like it here, because everyone was so loud and so fast and privacy had to be strictly guarded. Kitty and Kurt especially, weren't exactly good at respecting boundaries.
Kitty herself was everything Rogue thought that she would hate. She was perky, preppy, wore a lot of pink, spoke far too much, usually about inconsequential things, and she said 'like' more in 30 minutes than any normal person would in a lifetime.
However, she also took zero offence when Rogue snapped at her and even if she was hurt, she never held onto her animosity for long. Grudgingly, she was becoming a good friend to Rogue. Kitty said best friends, but Rogue wasn't willing to go that far yet.
Kurt was trying too hard to be a good friend and brother, which annoyed Rogue sometimes, but he was just so earnest and guileless that it was hard to stay mad at him.
She would miss these people when this was over. Part of her wished that she could stay but she just wasn't the do-gooder, save-the-world type.
They had been at the mansion for 10 days now but little progress had been made with regards to Apocalypse. Hank had discovered more about his past in Egypt, and a team had been duly dispatched to see what they could discover in person. Sadly they didn't find anything. That wasn't to say that there was nothing to find, but Egypt was a fairly large country.
They had checked Akkaba, where En Sabah Nur was supposedly born but found nothing. The tomb of Pharaoh Rama-Tut, a supposed nemesis of Apocalypse, had a lot of hieroglyphs relating to a white and blue mutant, but most still needed translating. They had asked locally but while there were a lot of local myths and legends about En Sabah Nur, it was impossible to tell how much was truth and how much was embellishment.
She enjoyed the training sessions with the X-Men. Not only were they skilled fighters who tested her abilities to the limit, the training programs were top notch. If only they made a miniature version of the Danger Room that she could carry around with her.
Each of the X-Men presented their own unique challenge, but she enjoyed the one-on-one fights with Logan best. Not because he was her favourite or anything, but because he presented her with a real challenge. Being invulnerable, it took a lot to hurt her but his adamantium claws and skeleton could. He had even bruised her on one occasion. In turn, thanks to his healing factor, she didn't have to pull her punches either.
She had been able to let lose in her fights with Remy when they used the power inhibitor, but that wasn't the same as using her powers! There was something so liberating about being able to go completely mad and not have to care about hurting herself or her sparring partner. And besides, she had learned to over ride the power inhibitor now, so training with that in the future was useless, unless it was to practice using her powers while it was on.
Her sessions with the Professor were going really well too. Almost all her psyches, save for Remy, were locked up now and he had taught her how to do so herself, so she would never be plagued by them again. He was also, with Dr McCoys help, studying her powers, trying to find out how they worked so that she might turn her absorption power on and off at will. She really hoped that worked, because she missed being able to touch Remy.
He thought that the key to control might be in the work she had done to turn her powers on while in the presence of a dampening field. He reasoned that if she could still turn them on when she shouldn't be able to, then she should be able to learn how to turn them off. She'd had one MRI scan already while she was absorbing Logan. Tomorrow she would have another scan while absorbing Logan, but this time with the power inhibitor turned on. She hated to admit it, but there was a tiny bit of hope in her heart that they would succeed and find the answer.
For right now though, as they lay in bed, her head resting on Remy's T-shirt covered chest, she was content to be with him even if she couldn't touch him. And they could still do stuff, they just had to be a bit more creative about it.
As she felt her eyelids begin to droop, she kissed his chest through the shirt and wished him a good night.
***
After observing the danger room sessions for a few days, Logan was impressed with Remy's fighting style. Agility might have been one of his gifts but he certainly didn't have anything like super strength, yet he could hold his own with all the kids, despite not being much older than them.
That, Logan thought, was probably a skill that the kids would find useful. Besides, it never hurt to mix training up sometimes and a new teacher might be good for them.
He approached Xavier with his idea first, who then asked Remy if he would mind teaching some of the students while they were here. Since the professor had assured him that he was free to back out with no hard feelings, Remy agreed to give it a shot. He had no idea if he could teach kids or not but he was willing to try. And no, teaching Rogue didn't count because despite still only being 18, she was no kid.
The first lesson was with the younger kids, so Remy tried his best to keep the lesson light and fast moving. Rogue agreed to help, which certainly helped keep the younger boys in line. In fact once they had demonstrated the first few moves, he assigned Rogue to the boys while he instructed the girls. The arrangement worked quite well.
The older kids took things more seriously but Remy still split them up into boys and girls so that they could get more individual teaching.
After the older kids had learned for an hour, they began to spar, one girl vs one boy, in a no powers match. The person with the most hits on their opponent after five minutes was declared the winner. The winner and loser of each match then sparred with each other.
In round one, Jean had faced off against Kurt, Scott had faced Kitty. To Remy surprise, Kurt beat Jean. His natural agility gave him an advantage, but with Jean being older and more disciplined, Remy had expected Jean to win. Scott beat Kitty, which he had been expecting, leaving Kurt and Scott to face off for the final, but first Jean and Kitty had their runners up match.
In the end, Scott took first place, then Kurt, then Jean and finally, Kitty. Remy felt a little bad for the kid, but he had noticed in other training sessions that she relied too much on her phasing powers, and she would never improve in hand to hand until she was denied the use of that power for a while. He intended to do what he could for her in the time they were here.
After four lessons though, Kitty still hadn't made much improvement and Remy suggested that they have a few one-on-one lessons. Kitty was thrilled, not only because Remy was handsome, but because she could use the time to pump him for information, also known as gossip.
"No, Kitty, you have to keep your guard up," Remy stopped their match and repositioned her arms. "Remember, defence as much as offence. Let's go again."
She was improving, just slowly. Or rather, slowly in comparison to his only other one-on-one student, Rogue, but it was wrong to compare anyone to a girl who had been trained to fight, almost since birth.
Kitty was sweating buckets by the time they were done with each lesson, but she liked Remy and she wanted him to think well of her, so she never complained in class. Afterwards was another matter, but her 'private lessons' with their Cajun guest certainly provided her with an interested audience to hear her tales of woe afterwards.
By her forth one-on-one session, she was feeling more comfortable with him, and finally asked the one question that had been bugging her for a while. She waited until they were finished and were toweling off.
"Remy?"
"Oui, petite?"
"Doesn't it ever, like, bother you that Rogue is so much stronger than you are?"
"Why would it?" he asked, pausing in the hallway outside the changing rooms.
"Well, it's just that most men like to be the strong ones in a relationship."
"So they can rescue the damsel in distress?"
"Exactly!" she grinned, pleased that he got it.
"I've never been much of one for rescuing," he said with a shrug. "Besides, I've always liked strong women, and I don't just mean in physical strength. I prefer an equal, I don't want to be no one's master."
"So it doesn't bother you when she protects you in the danger room sessions?"
"Petite, I'll take any excuse to have Rogue pressed against me," he winked at her and Kitty blushed.
"I think that is, like, totally cool of you!"
"You got a man who isn't keen on you being his equal?"
"No, I've got a man who has delusions of being a bad-ass bad-guy. Or I did."
Yes, Remy knew of such men. They generally didn't take to kindly to being out-shined by anyone, but especially their women.
"Petite, a real man is confident enough with who he is, that he doesn't need to prove that he's better than anyone else. Don't feel bad about losing the loser, just keep your eyes peeled for the right kind of homme, hein?"
"Okay," she grinned. "You wouldn't happen to have a brother, would you?" She couldn't believe she was being so bold.
Remy laughed out loud. "Oui, I do, but he's about ten years too old for you and sadly, very happily married."
"Any cousins?"
"Oh, petite, I'm afraid I like you far too much to unleash my cousins on you."
"Why, what's wrong with them?"
"Well, they'd either drive you insane, or you'd end up killing them, and I just can't see a beautiful girl like you spend the rest of her life in jail. Now go on and get changed, Rogue is making jambalaya tonight and I speak from experience when I say, it's to die for."
***
Kitty watched Rogue and Remy enviously that evening over dinner. She just loved their relationship, the banter, the gentle insults and teasing, the way he seemed to love making her blush but mostly, the way Remy looked at Rogue, as if she was the most precious thing that he'd ever seen.
Were Kitty a more bitchy teenager, she might have plotted to break them up (as Boom Boom occasionally tried to do, with a few cutting remarks and some shockingly skimpy outfits) but Kitty would never contemplate that even if she didn't like them, which she did. Instead she vowed to find herself a man who looked at her the same way that Remy looked at Rogue.