A series by November

Chapter 78: Intentions Fall to The Floor

“Lightning crashes, an old mother dies,
Her intentions fall to the floor.
The angel closes her eyes...
The confusion sets in,
Before the doctor can even close the door...”
--Live

Just as last year, a warm and shining Christmas and New Year’s was followed by a harsh return to the outer world, to school. While the public discourse about mutants had died down a little, Colleen Richardson and her ilk quieted momentarily by last year’s scathing rebuttal, the hatred merely transmuted. It went underground.

WCC, like many universities, issued an obliging statement that no crime against, or maltreatment of, mutants would be tolerated. As in the outside world, hate crimes would be dealt with to the fullest extent allowed by law.

Rogue preferred the previous years of open discourse. The paranoia and the covertness of her enemies was unraveling her, taking its toll. Where before she was confident, assertive, and focused on her work, now she was paranoid, preoccupied with sizing up faces in the crowd, and having difficulty concentrating on her thesis during this last crucial semester. Pregnancy, and its attendant morning sickness and fatigue, also took its toll.

Even in March, as she entered her second trimester, she continued to run for the bathroom retching at all hours of the day. Jean assured her that this was normal and that no long-term damage would be done. Her weight was good and he was starting to show, her flat belly rounding in the middle like a pea pod.

She was in the computer room working on analysis of her thesis data one night, just wanting to go home and curl up in bed, when nausea struck again. She left her things and ran to the bathroom.

She vomited until she couldn’t vomit any more and then rose on wobbly legs from the stall. She ran cold water and cupped it with her fingers, rinsing out her mouth.

A bang startled her and made her want to throw up again. It was the bathroom door slamming open against the wall.

A man walked in. He was too old to be a student, was dressed in jeans and flannel. He was suddenly on her. Her mind was still racing with nausea as he shoved her roughly against the wall and thrust his forearm against her throat.

A girl came in also. She had been in Rogue’s philosophy class freshman year. She was a Tri-Delt with a tight tee shirt. The girl checked the other stalls while he slammed her against the tile counter and pinned his arms around her throat. Pain resonated on the back of her head.

Combat training forgotten, she froze, thinking only that she was going to throw up again.

She did, retching on the man's forearm, his hand, and the front of his shirt. The last of her dinner came up and he momentarily recoiled, then punched her. “You fucking bitch!” He punched her four more times in quick succession while she only tried to get her breath. The world had stretched and slowed to slow-motion. Pain bloomed warmly on her face again and again and she saw stars, just like a cartoon character.

“You’re a fucking uppity mutie bitch,” the girl said, holding a knife to the side of her throat. Rogue looked at it out of the corner of her eye. “Prancing around here like a princess, like you own the fucking place. Where’s your boyfriend now, princess?”

She waited until the girl withdrew the blade. She paced in front of the counter while the man held her neck. The girl seemed unsure of whether or not she would actually use the knife, or if she was just blowing off steam. She seemed to be deciding as she paced.

The man, however, was pressing his thumbs harder against her neck, cutting off her breath. Then adrenaline kicked Rogue’s training into high gear. She thrust her arms up and twisted out of his grasp, jabbing her elbow into his face. It made a solid thwack. She hovered against the wall in fighting stance while knife girl stood, a little stupefied.

The man blinked, trying to readjust his world view. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch. Funny what you think at a moment like this, Rogue thought, her thoughts oddly clinical, slow and eternal.

She stood, her breathing harsh, trying not to throw up, but the smell of her puke making it likely, sizing the two up, wondering what they would do next. She thought about draining them, sucking their life while holding back their thoughts and memories. It had been a long time, but she knew she could do it with the flick of a mental switch.

Her breathing was impossibly loud in the echoing bathroom. She had the feeling that she still could not get enough air into her lungs. Her loud gasping bothered her, it gave her weakness away to her enemies.

“My husband’s on his way. If you guys want to make it out of here in one piece you should just run right now.” She prayed that it sounded convincing. With nausea roiling in her gut and her heart hammering in her ears, she wasn’t sure.

The girl with the knife stood there momentarily, looking stunned by Rogue’s ability to get out of the chokehold, contemplating whether or not she wanted to bolt.

But then he charged at her, fist flying, and her weakness was that she was backed into a corner of the bathroom. Warm stars flew in front of her eye when he hit her, then warm pain bloomed on the back of her head when it recoiled against the tile. With her fingers she dug at his throat but she could not get enough leverage to block his punches. They came again and again and again. She squirmed and managed to duck so that one punch hit squarely against the tile, full on.

“Mother FUCK!” he howled. Rogue took the opportunity to duck down and to the right around him. But knife girl was there, suddenly, having gathered her wits, and she suddenly had her clawlike hand around Rogue’s neck, pushing her to the wall. “I ought to kill you slow. We’ve got someone watching the door. No one would ever know. Kill you and gut that mutant slug right out of your belly.”

Rogue learned that nothing she'd felt up until this had really been terror. She had underestimated knife girl, who had some serious anger issues. Still, her usual quickness eluded her. The point of the knife was pressing to her throat now. She felt the warm painless trickle of blood, and the urge to vomit consumed her.

One quick movement knocked the knife from the girl’s hand, over a stall door and it clattered to the tile floor within. Quick, Rogue punched.

The guy had recovered enough to come at her then, pushing her back toward the corner, landing several punches. The girl watched from the door. Without her knife she was nothing. Her eyes were wide and she was getting ready to bolt.

Rogue felt her nose break with an odd internal “clunk” sound and his strong left hand around her throat. She retched but the bile had nowhere to go. Fear of choking forced a new bloom of adrenaline through her gut. The fist tightened.

I have no choice. They’ll kill me.

Little Logan, she thought and then she flickered it. Three quick hits, barely there, but suddenly he was sputtering, veins growing in a dark web from where his hand touched her, staggering slowly back. He fell gracelessly against the counter, hitting his head hard on his way down.

“You want some of this, Tri-Delt?” she choaked hoarsely.

Knife girl bolted and Rogue reeled with the sudden infusion of the man’s life force into her. The man lay still on the tile. Rogue receded into the corner and tried to breathe. The adrenaline flow inside her body subsided, twisted, and changed to pain, low warm cramping in her belly.

The man wasn’t breathing. She needed to get up, but she was somehow afraid of him, as if he were a coiled snake who would bite her. She was irrational and she felt wetness on her thighs and then she started to scream.

They found her like that: A limp brunette in a big white shirt with long glorious hair and black leggings, yellow vomit on the front of her shirt, bruises red-purple on her face and throat, and scarlet pooling under her. She was shaking and shaking and trying not to puke at the same time she tried to breathe. “Logan,” she whispered.

The campus police arrived first, their questions like a barrage. Two cops, one old and one young. Both men. “What happened?” the older one demanded.

“He’s dead,” the younger one said quietly to his partner. Though she knew it, the official pronouncement made her look away from the questioning officer.

Logan, she mouthed soundlessly.

“What happened.”

There would be questions, accusations. I killed a man. Questions. Her mind raced as the pain in her belly bloomed forth.

“He,” she said, stuttering and trying to breathe through a wave of nausea.

“He what?” the buzz-cut older cop demanded. She wondered if anyone ever found that jarhead haircut attractive. She retched without puking and it passed, the cold fist around her stomach slowly loosening.

“He was choking me.” Her voice sounded like brittle paper. “I got a few punches in. She had a knife. Then he... held his heart, like he was in pain. He was…moving kinda slow. He hit his head on the counter as he fell. And the girl freaked out and ran. And he. Sort of. Staggered down over the floor there.”

“How long ago was this,” the officer barked stupidly. But she had begun to sob and that was all she could handle. “Logan… The baby.” Her eyes met the eyes of the younger officer, found kindness. “My baby...” My baby is bleeding out of me and nothing can catch him. No sieve, he’ll fall right through.

The pain is resounding inside and I would endure it a thousandfold if I could keep him in.

Those are the things that struck her as she whimpered on the bloody floor.

The young cop was good, skilled at calming with the tone of his voice alone. He came past the other cop and kneeled next to her, staying clear of the blood. “Miss, the ambulance should be here any minute. They’re gonna help you. Is there anyone you want me to call?”

She turned her head away. Logan. He couldn’t see her like this. She shook her head no.

Local police arrived at the scene. Old cop was conferring with them in the doorway. He told them there was a man down and his eyes met hers. They wanted to start taking pictures.

Then EMS came in, healthy navy-jacketed man and woman smelling of the outdoors. They stepped gingerly around the dead man and came to her. They also were kind. “What happened, hon?” the woman knelt down to her, her hand pressing against the floor, just clear of the blood.

“Attacked me. I’m losing my baby.”

“How far along are you?”

I’m nowhere. Nowhere along.

Rogue started crying. The EMS guy just stood there with a blood pressure cuff, waiting, indulging her, letting his partner calm the woman down.

“I...fourteen weeks.”

“Okay honey, can you let us get your blood pressure?”

To their surprise, Rogue stood up. She leaned against the wall and a trail of blood was smeared up against it. She sat down gingerly and closed her eyes slowly, kept them closed.

“Do you have any medical conditions?”

She didn’t open her eyes as the cuff tightened, straining its Velcro. She shook her head no, barely perceptibly.

“On any medications?”

No. No no no.

More quickly than she thought possible they had her strapped in and moving down the hall. Students were watching and she wanted to scream at them. A sheet covered the blood and the puke, offering frail protection of her. It felt strange to see the ceiling tiles from on her back. They moved by so quickly.

Then outdoor cold assaulted her, ripped savagely through the thin sheet.

“Baby,” she whispered as they raised her into the mouth of an ambulance.

They stung her with a needle on her hand, pushing and rooting inward. The pain was nothing like the baby flooding through her. It was hot and sharp and biting.

She was blindsided by a feeling she hadn't had in a long time. She was a grown woman, but she wanted her daddy. Charles, she thought. He would know what to say.

She wasn’t aware that she was projecting until she felt him enter her head. ~Rogue?~

~“The baby,”~ she sobbed. She couldn’t project any other words. She felt him pause, then sweep her mind gently, lovingly.

~I’m on my way.~

“Are you allergic to any medications?”

“Penicillin,” she whispered like paper as another wave of nausea hit her.

Suddenly she thought of the bathroom as a danger room sim. Scott or Storm or any of the greenest freshman could have taken out both assailants, knife and all, without using powers. Rogue was no X man.

I killed a man. I killed. I killed. And I didn’t have to.

She felt the blood drain from her face as it dawned on her.

I killed little Logan.