A series by November

Chapter 4: Trippy-Ass Marvel Superhero Shit

Rogue was back in time to TA her first bio class. She was a bit apprehensive about this but after getting her first mission out of the way, it was nothing. All she wound up doing was handing out syllabi and books anyway. It was a day of firsts, and when it was over she felt she had aged a year.

She went to the medbay after, to see Carter.

Jean had him on an IV with morphine. Cleaned up, tears and blood washed away, he looked better. Thin and wiry but handsome in a goth sort of way. His hair was shaggy and black and his face white, but now there was some color in his cheeks. He looked comfortable, zonked out of his mind by the morphine.

His eyes fluttered open. "Skunk girl." He mumbled.

"You can call me Rogue." She smiled.

"Kay," His eyes closed and opened again. The pain she saw there blindsided her, made her feel small and naive and unworthy. "Din’nt mean to killer."

"I know. If you want, you can learn to control it here."

His eyes drifted closed, wiping away the pain. "Issis like- mescaline." His words were slow and slurred.

"Yeah, but it’s real," she said. "When I first got here I was pretty freaked out myself."

"When?"

"Three years ago."

"No way are you oller than me." He grinned dopishly.

"I am. A year older."

"A little young to play superhero," he teased.

Rogue gave him the raised eyebrow. "You must be feeling better, if you’re able to mock me."

"Must be," he said dumbly.

Later, Xavier and Scott came to talk to him. He and Carissa’s next of kin was their mother, who had abandoned them two weeks earlier when they manifested. Their stepfather, Bob, had a different approach. He and his redneck friends took them out into the country, poked and prodded and beat them up.

What Xavier could sense, but didn’t know, was that that after the group of them had beaten him and raped Chrissy, they left. And one of them, Dwayne, slinked back and raped him while Chrissy watched. Dwayne didn’t want his esteemed friends to know that he liked boys better than girls. He wasn’t no fag, and he didn’t need his friends thinking that either.

Xavier told them that he had several choices. Did he want to make the funeral arrangements for Carissa himself? He did. Did he want to call his mother? He wanted to tell her to go to hell, and would if only he knew where she was. Did he want to proceed with local law enforcement and press assault and abduction charges? He wanted to, but good old Bob was friends with the Chief of Police in Bumblefuck county, so it wouldn’t matter.

Xavier gave him the option of staying. When he was able to go out in a wheelchair, Rogue showed him around the school. She showed him the classrooms and the dining hall and all of her favorite little places - the trail around the duck pond, the swing hidden in the woods and the nook where the rose garden met the maze.

"Chrissy would have loved this," he said sadly, not bothering to hide his tears.

He contemplated Rogue and was glad to have found a friend, a pretty friend, even. He saw Kitty and he really wanted to stay.

She even showed him the danger room, ran a sim for him.

"What the fuck kinda trippy-ass Marvel superhero shit is this?"

At times he sat and stared out the window without moving. At other times he seemed edgy and a little aggressive sometimes sardonic. The empaths in the house could smell the guilt, the grief, seeping from him in waves, and avoided him for the sake of their own sanity.

He talked to Hank in his office, ranting about what had happened, yelling so that his voice alarmed Jean and Darla despite the closed door. Without much premeditation this turned into a twice a week therapy session. Sometimes he cried, sometimes he felt he should die for killing his sister. Sometimes he got drunk and drank still more until he retched his guts up into the toilet. It was at this time that his guilt was faintest, as if it had been purged as well.

But when Scott took him into the hangar and explained the mysteries of Blackbird Two, his fate was sealed. He had met the love of his life. He would stay. With Scott taking on more of Xavier's administrative duties, they needed a mechanic around to tend to their small flock of Birds. He mentioned this to Carter and his eyes lit up, making him seem for a second like the boy he had been. Carter would finish his training as a mechanic, and would stay at the school.