The Rogue 1.1 ~ Breathing: Reality

[scribblemyname]

Story Arc: The Rogue
Fandom: X-Men: The Movie
Story Arc Summary: Rogue and Logan have become a team as well as a family. He helps her to learn who she is after the Cure destroyed what little control she had. But when the people who once took away Logan's memories accidentally take away Rogue's and a mysterious Cajun Thief rescues her, she is caught up in a worldwide manhunt for Gambit while Logan desperately searches for her.
Disclaimers: All characters and organizations (with the exception of small, mostly unnamed minor characters) throughout the series are the product of Marvel.
Canonical Notes: This story arc follows X1, X2, and X3 as canon for characters and events. All else is pulled from comicverse and mixed heftily with my imagination. Origins is ignored, except a few situations and characters twisted to my happy use.
Language and Accents: Cajun French is courtesy of Heavenmetal (many thanks). French is courtesy of Disdainfully Arrogant and Marmottin (many thanks). I will not reproduce accents in this story arc. Imagine them in.

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Story Title: Breathing
Chapter Title: 1. Reality
Story Summary: She took the Cure thinking it would save her. It didn't.
Canonical Notes: Set immediately following the events of X3.
Author's Notes: I thought I was writing this for Without a Trace. Turns out I wasn't, but I couldn't drop it anyway.

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Do you remember us? a voice whispered, hissed out the final letter in her mind as she lay tangled up in her sheets in the darkness of the night. We're still here. We haven't left.

There were moments when everything changed, when reality skewed and everything she'd ever known to be true faltered and failed, tumbling into pieces of ash before floating away. As she lay next to Bobby in her tangled sheets, breathing hard from nightmares and voices flashing across her mind like so much lightning, she came across a realization that forced all the comfort from her soul.

She had never loved Bobby.

Rogue gasped and twisted her fingers into the bedclothes beneath her. Where was the girl that had loved adventure, lived for it, talked her first boyfriend into joyriding her aunt's car, planned the trip to Alaska, studied a bar girl's art of coyness to get her first kiss? Where was the girl who rode motorcycles and laughed and dared, that picked the name Rogue?

Or was that a final act of defiance before allowing Cody into her own mind, deeper, twisting his psyche into her own to allow him room to breathe, even if it meant strangling herself?

She had never loved Bobby.

He was too tame for her, for who she used to be.

Do you remember us?

How much of her was her anymore? How much would be allowed to remain?