Fic: The Martyr of the Mutant Race
E-mail: violet147@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: Ladies and gents, there is no slash to be had here. That's right. NO SLASH. I'm sorry. I had to do it for poor Rogue, man. And it's long, yo. Really long.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
Pairing: Rogue/John, Rogue/Bobby.
Summary: "Everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room." Set after X1, during, and after X2.


When she finally returned to class after a week of being under Dr. Grey’s care, she was not surprised to hear the whispers and taunts, and she knew that they were not just in her head. However, she had not been prepared for the venom in which the whispers were spoken in. She had an idea for what they were saying, but it still shocked her when she heard Jubilee mutter in American Lit one day, “….bet she gets an extension on it, the fucking martyr of the mutant race.”

It had been shocking, and she could not believe that Jubilee, who had been so friendly and bubbly when she first arrived, could have such a vastly different opinion of her. She tried to ignore it, but it was hard to, especially when Jubilee still smiled in her face and still talked to her in that bubbly tone.

She didn’t bring it up, though, even during a jaunt to the mall, when she absentmindedly picked up a box of hair dye, promising bold red streaks. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to do it, thought to herself that at least they would turn out really red instead of just dark burgundy if she were working with her old hair, when Jubilee sauntered up behind her, chomping on her gum like a cow would. “You should totally do it,” Jubilee said, a smile on her face. “It’d look hot.”

She ended up walking out of the store empty-handed.

But that was the only spiteful thing she ever really did. Most of the time she acted as if she had not been the girl who almost destroyed the world, the girl who could not be touched, the martyr of the mutant race. She herself hadn’t been aware she was any different until John had said something to her one day as they both sat in their three-way calculus study group with Bobby. He had left the room to grab some drinks when John had cleared his throat, tapping his pencil on his book.

She had looked up at him, waited for him to speak, but he had said nothing, just kept looking at her. “What?” she had asked, smiling a bit, waiting for him.

“Why are you here?” he had asked.

“What do you mean?”

John had sighed a bit, and finally he shut his book and scooted his chair closer to hers, looking her straight in the eye. No one had been able to do that ever since she returned home. “You’re so beyond all of this,” he had told her. When she blushed, he shook his head and took one of her hands in his. No one had been able to touch her, since she got back. “Why are you here, wasting your time?” he had asked.

The question had been shocking, because she had never thought of herself as above ANYONE, let alone everyone like John was insinuating, and she could not answer him for a moment. When she had finally opened her mouth, all she could get out was, “I-“ before Bobby walked in, complaining that Kitty had gotten into his cream sodas AGAIN and he was going to fashion her with a bell in her sleep. When she had smiled at Bobby, John had let go of her hand so quickly, it ended up hitting the table. When she looked up at John, he refused to look at her, turned his head away from her as if he would burst into flames if he looked at her a second longer.

All she remembered taking in that although she did not see herself as this…vision, this poster girl, other people did. Other people saw her as a figure, as a martyr.

It was hard for her to accept, at first. After all, if she learned anything from her strict Southern upbringing, it was manners and kindness and equality. Her mama and daddy were notoriously sweet, gentle, kind people who’d do anything in their power to help those in need. She could not remember a time when they turned anyone away, even white gutter trash or ignorant black folk or the rare Chinese immigrant who couldn’t speak a lick of English.

She used to go to church with them every Sunday, and used to pray for those in need of God’s love and sunshine. She used to go with her mama to the local women’s shelter, bringing meals and cheer and a little tap dance routine that made the women smile despite their bloodied lips and missing teeth. She used to be part of the student council in junior high and helped sponsor charity car washes and food drives and community clean-ups.

And even though they were no longer around, she still did good by her parents’ names. She always tried to give a smile when needed. She happily volunteered to tutor Rahne in biology even though she hates science. She cleaned hers and Kitty’s bathroom without having to be told simply because Kitty doesn’t like cleaning. She always left post-it notes full of cheer and a touch of Southern humor on Sam‘s notebooks simply because he was still having a hard time adjusting to New York. And she took an hour every day teaching Piotr English through classic literature, simply because it made her smile when Piotr was able to read a sentence clearly and fluently.

Still, though they were people who refused her help or her cheer. Ever since she overheard Jubilee in class, she always saw how…fake Jubilee is. Every time she offered to help Jubilee study for a final, or did nice things for Jubilee like bring up Jubilee’s clothes along with her own from the laundry room, she was always rewarded with a slight smile, but she could tell from the look in Jubilee’s eyes, that she was just being humored, that she was being talked about behind her back.

Jubilee wasn’t the only one who refused her help. Paige scowled at her every time she tried to talk with her and Sam about growing up in the South. Monet’s nose was always in the air and her eyes focused elsewhere, as if she were beneath Monet. And even though Theresa talked to her, sometimes she thought Theresa was merely humoring her, secretly whispering about her behind her back to Jubilee.

And then there’s John, who never accepted help from anyone, let alone her. Every time she tried to show him how to do a calculus problem, he brushed her off and insisted he could figure it out on his own. Every time she offered to grab him another coke when she went to get one for herself, he insisted that he could get his own drink. And every time he fell asleep in the common room and she wrapped a blanket around him, he’d wake up and hand it back to her, dragging himself up the stairs to his room.

Yet there was something about the way John refused her kindness that didn’t scream of scorn and disdain, but merely his own self-independence, and he was always a couple of paces away, it seemed. She did not realize this until one day, after the day when John asked her why she was still here, on the first day of the new year in which the sun came out and it was not too cold to stand outside. She was sitting cross-legged on a bench, reading Crime and Punishment, when she noticed that someone was standing in front of her, and she smiled when she saw it was John.

She had warmly told him to sit down, scooted her bag off the bench and sat it on the ground, scooting over to give John some room to sit. He had sat down, his thigh against hers, and as she started to scoot away, he wrapped an arm around her waist, his fingers clenched tightly around her side. She had to look at the ground before she looked up at him, and he had smiled at her, and just said, “If you don’t want to be called a martyr, don’t act like one.”

All she could do was look at him, and hold her breath as his fingers crept higher up her body, to the underside of her breast. She took in a sharp gasp, then, and willed herself to relax. That was the moment that she finally realized she unconsciously DID act as a martyr, every single day, every time a sliver of her skin was exposed, every time she had to duck out of someone’s way in the hall, every time someone slid in to sit close to her.

“Do you see them?” he had asked her, nodding with his head towards the other kids, who were littered around the playground, some playing basketball, some racing each other (with Pietro winning every time, did they never learn?), some sitting around, all chatting, all conversing, all of them taking a look at her and John, their eyes narrowed and their mouths pursed together.

“Yes,” she had answered him, inhaling a whiff of John’s cologne.

“Look at how they’re staring,” he had said. He tilted his head towards and whispered in her ear, “They’re jealous of you.”

“Why?” she had asked, tilting her head to his.

He had merely smiled, and when he removed his arm from her waist, shivers from the sudden cold went down her spine. He had winked and walked away, patting Bobby on the shoulder. She tried not to follow John as he left, tried to smile and give Bobby the opportunity to bask in her sunshine, but all she could think about were John’s words, and how John had talked about the others as if he were not a part of them, as if he was merely an observer, as if he was standing in the corner, informing her of everything he saw but refusing to jump on the bandwagon. As if he himself was just like her, beyond all of them and their pettiness and their behaviors.

She wondered for days what John was going to say, and she finally found out, late at night, right before lights out. She was in the common room, by herself even though Tabithia and Jubilee were finishing up The Recruit, sitting on the window ledge, watching the tree limbs rattle and the wind howl, admiring Ms. Munroe’s work. She did not need to hear him to know that he was in the room. His scent was like none other’s, his cologne rich and unusual and so JOHN, smelling like thirty-two flavors and then some.

“Hey,” he said to her back.

She turned her head and smiled, lovingly almost. “Hey sugar,” she greeted back.

He smiled back at her, and he had a pretty, sincere smile, when he actually took the time to do it. “She’s nuts, isn’t she?” he had asked, gesturing to Ms. Munroe out the window.

“Yeah. But she’s so good, you know. I wish I had that sort of control,” she had answered. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jubilee nudge Tabithia and roll her eyes. It shouldn’t have shocked her but it did, how blatant they were, how much an innocent comment on her part was taken, dissected, and ripped apart, taken as evidence and justification for their hatred of her.

She had turned away and looked out the window, closing her eyes tight and willing herself not to cry. She was really seen as this; this was who she was to them, and she did nothing to help stop it.

The world was silent until she heard the sweep of her hair off her shoulders, and she closed her eyes as she felt it caress of the skin of her neck, as John’s fingertips grazed her flesh like a ghost, just light enough for her brain to not signal to her skin to react. She had sighed contentedly, like a kitten, as John reached over and wrapped his arms around her in an embrace, warm and cozy and absolutely safe.

“Don’t let them beat you down,” he had whispered in her ear. She let out a murmur of appreciation as he nuzzled his nose in her hair. “If this is what you are, don’t let them stop you.”

“You said they were jealous. Why?” she had asked.

She could feel him smile against her ear. “Everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room,” he had answered.

When she finally opened her eyes, she opened them to a spectacular bolt of lightning, and she could only smile at the torrid, gothic romance of the moment. She could only think of how bittersweet this all seemed, but how right it felt, how she was nothing in his arms except everything, above labels like saint and poster girl and martyr.

This was when she started having dreams about him. She should have been disturbed by them, but she was so happy to be dreaming of something other than labs and gas chambers, that she did not think of the implications these dreams would have. She did not think that they would cause her to fall in love with him, and she did not think that loving him would be the hardest and most difficult factor in her life she would ever have to work against.

The dreams started out innocently enough, with them sitting together, his arms wrapped around her, and all she could remember was how warm she was in the dream. But the dreams became more provocative, until she was having quite vivid, quite explicit sex dreams about him. A part of her knew it was wrong; if she should have had such dreams about anyone, it should have been Bobby. It should have never been John.

But they were about John, and God, were they explicit. She could remember every detail of those dreams; the sheen of sweat that clung to John’s skin, how tight she would wrap her legs around his waist, the exact color and location of each tiny mole on John’s body (he had one right below his right pec, looking as if it had been drawn on with a fine-point marker), the pitch and depth of his voice every time he moaned against her mouth.

Everything was magnified in the dreams, every sound, every thrust, every single touch. It was his touch that made the dreams so erotic; his touch was gentle and light as a feather and hard and left an imprint on her flesh all at once; he would reach up and grab her breast roughly and her eyes would roll in the back of her head. His mouth tracing designs on her skin, from her collarbone all the way down to her navel, caused shudders all throughout her body.

She’d wake up in the mornings and spend the entire day breathless and in a haze, dropping her pencils every time she saw John touch something.

Combined with the dreams at night and his knowing smiles during the day, it was a wonder she didn’t fall in love with him sooner. Oh, she tried not to, she forced herself to look at Bobby, hold his hand, touch him, but it was not the same at all, for Bobby touched her with delicacy, with phantom fingers, and they weren’t touches at all. And for a girl who could never be touched, it was impossible to be satisified with touches as thin as the air when in her dreams she was being bruised and branded.

It was a glorious feeling, being in love. Studying for calculus, which used to be a chore, was looked forward to, because it meant they could sit their chairs next to each other and she could feel his thigh against her and think of her dream the night before. Cooking became both an erotic and joyous experience, preparing the food lovingly, a flutter in her heart as she sat the plate down on the table, a tremor in her legs when his lips wrapped around the fork, and she could see the bite of food traveling down his throat.

She always loved doing things for people, always loved being kind and helpful, but all of that was nothing compared to the way her heart swelled up every time she tried to do something for John. For the first time in her life, she had a true reason to get up in the morning and spread the cheer; for she was in love now, and she wanted others to be able to feel it, too.

And God, how she wanted him to be able to feel it, too, and she wished she could just take off her goddamn gloves and wraps her fingers around his palm, and squeeze his hand until he could FEEL all the love in her body. But she cannot, for the expression of her love would kill him, so quiet she was, content to bask in his glow, happy to let him borrow her pen, pleased to fold his laundry for him.

But happiness only lasts for so long, and it all came crashing down like it does for people like her. It wasn’t even the invasion of the school that did it, although it certainly didn’t help, being hunted like a dog in her own home. It had been made bearable, though, because Logan was there, and because on the way to Bobby’s house, she and Bobby had switched sweats (so Bobby could give directions), and she had been trying to fall back asleep, but she was freezing. Bobby was still freaked out about all of it and was keeping the car temperature low. It didn’t bother the boys, but she was cold.

But as soon as she visibly shivered, John had put his hand on her thigh, thankfully covered by her nightgown. “Come here,” he had murmured, holding his arm out. He had to nudge her before she realized what he was saying. Finally she scooted over to him and didn’t flinch as much as usual at the feel of his arm pressed against her back and her waist. “Just try to sleep,” he whispered to her, and she could immediately feel the heat radiating from his shirt, and she pressed her cheek against his shoulder. She fell asleep in five minutes flat, and she ended up having another one of her dreams, this time it was in the car with Bobby and Logan sitting up front, seemingly oblivious to her moans and his impassioned cries, and when she woke up, it was with a start and a cry on her lips.

“Ssh,” she had heard John say, wrapping her in his arms, and God, it had been perfect, it had been so warm and lovely and right, and she had let herself sink into him, falling back asleep all the while thinking to herself, He’s here for me, just me, I’m just me, not a martyr, just me…

No, everything went to hell and took a permanent vacation when they arrived at Bobby’s house. Everything had been fine, she was even able to handle Bobby’s insistence on kissing her; she tried to play it off as childish curiosity, and she genuinely felt bad about hurting him. But if he had wanted to play the game, make himself feel better about himself by valiantly wanting the girl who could kill, then she could not change his mind. So she let him have a taste, a taste of what it was like to be her, but pulling away just in time, because she didn’t want to hurt him. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.

And she certainly hadn’t wanted to hurt John, but that was what she had to do. It had almost broken her heart, but she knew she was the only one who could stop him, and he had to be stopped. He hadn’t killed anyone, but as each minute passed, each flame became stronger and more vibrant, and she knew if he had been allowed to keep going, he would have killed them. Later that night it was confirmed, by his memories, but at the time, she could see it all from the look in his eyes

She had not wanted to do it. And later she wished she never had touched him at all. It broke her heart, wishing she had never touched the man- or boy- she loved, but it did not hurt as much as what she was able to see once she grabbed his ankle, or, more importantly, what she had been able to hear.

She held on to John’s ankle for a long time, long enough for him to seep into her skin and to stain her mind with his thoughts, his memories, and his feelings. She thought she was going to pass out at first, everything inside him was so strong and colorful, but she managed to hold on, managed to work through the colors and do what she had to do. She held her hand out and soothed the flames with the ice Bobby left inside her, but all the while, her head was imploding itself on the new sighs and sounds and opinions that belonged to John. It was so much information that at first, she wasn’t able to pick any of it out and focus on it. But when time had passed, and she let go and he was able to stand up, he turned and looked at her, and the look on his face just set the voices off in her head. All screaming and raging at her, but one single voice, she could hear so clearly.

“Always have to be the fucking martyr.”

She ended up taking a tent for herself and spending the night crying, crying for all the different voices in John’s head, now in hers, crying for all the slaps and bruises John had suffered through, crying for the roller coaster way in which his emotions ran amuck inside him, crying for the fact that he could not open his eyes and SEE her, and understand what she does was never her trying to be a saint, or a poster girl, but that she simply did it because it was something she would simply do.

There was a slight tug on her tent, and in John’s voice she yelled out, “Go away!” but all it did was make her cry even harder. She heard the tent unzip and when she raised her head up, Dr. Grey was there, eyes almost black in the night, but a comforting black, not the abyss black in her mind when her essence disappears and is replaced by another’s.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you,” she had said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dr. Grey had said. She had simply smiled, albeit sadly, and scooted closer to her, holding her arms out. “Come here,” she had simply said.

And the sobs had come once again, as she laid her head against Dr. Grey’s chest and sobbed for John, for herself, for all the others trapped inside her head. It was comforting, Dr. Grey’s fingers combing through her hair, the rocking, the slight murmurs of, “Cry, honey.”

It was quiet for a long time, and when her sobs died down to silent tears, Dr. Grey had pulled back a bit, her arms still wrapped around her shoulders. “They’ll never know, Rogue,” she had said.

“Know what?”

“What it’s like.” She had smiled, but it was so sad, so resigned. “You and I are not like them. We carry not only our own burdens, but theirs as well. And then they want to spit at us and call us martyrs.” Dr. Grey reached up, pushing a lock of her hair behind her ears, fingers brushing against her skin, not there long enough for her skin to jump to life. “They’ll never know, Rogue. They will never know what it is like to live with something that does not go away. And I know this will sound like a cop-out, but there is a reason why you were born with this mutation. It manifests in those with the strength to weather it and the loneliness it entails.”

She had looked up at Dr. Grey, with tear-stained eyes, and finally the voices in her head had quieted to a dim whisper. She was able to smile, reached up and touched Dr. Grey- Jean’s, hair. “I really hope that’s true,” she had said softly, her hand falling into her lap and her tears drying a bit.

Jean had smiled back, leaned over and kissed her on the top of her head. “As much as it pains and ostracizes us, we were chosen for a reason. I mean,” Jean had laughed a bit. “Could you imagine Logan with it? His own voice is bad enough.” Both of them had laughed, for both of them knew that Logan, with all of his natural and man-made strength, could never be the lighthouse of voices everywhere and remain sane. And as much as we don’t like it, we ARE beyond them. Not better than them, but beyond them and their tribulations. Jean’s voice was loud and clear, rising above all the screams in John’s head, giving her one thing to focus on.

She had simply nodded, and watched as Jean left the tent and went back out, to where, she didn’t know. She was no longer crying, and she found she was able to sleep a bit more peacefully; the voices in John’s head finally whipped into a mere, dull whisper, and that was something she could handle.

She did have awful dreams that night, dreams in which she was walking down a dark corridor full of doors, and every time she opened a door, she was treated to another memory of John’s, another opinion, another emotion, and none of them were pleasant. The memories were full of nothing but physical pain. The emotions did nothing but tear away at your soul. The opinions were nothing but knee-jerk reactions to what he could not fathom, reactions that were engraved in him from his childhood, all negative, all destructive.

And while she cried for him, cried for his confusion and the frighteningly cold violence in which his body and mind were forced to live with, she kept hearing Jean’s voice, We were chosen, and she was able to walk away, out of John’s corridor, and back into her own persona. And for the first time since her mutation had manifested itself, she had been able to get more than five hours of sleep nightmare-free.

She wasn’t be able to say that it didn’t hurt, leaving John all alone. It was the last thing she had ever, ever wanted to do. If she had the choice, she would gladly fold his laundry for him and cook him spaghetti, but it was not her choice. If she had the choice, she would have gone after him when he walked out of the Jet, would have stopped him somehow.

She had known he would not come back. Bobby kept babbling that John would come back, he would come back, he always does, but John was not going to, not this time, and she had known it. It was just like Tyler Durden and Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club; she had known John wasn’t coming back because John knew he wasn’t coming back.

But she let him go, let him walk away and make his choice, because it was not hers to make. She would love it if he hadn’t, if he had stopped, squinted his eyes a little closer at her, and seen everything she really was, but he hadn’t, and she could not change that. She could not make him see, no matter how hard she tried, because she knew now that even if she had that choice, he would have refused to see it anyway. She had done everything she could possibly do for him, but the thought wasn't much of a comfort at all.

But if she learned anything from having all of them, from John to Bobby to Logan to Erik, in her head, it was that everyone hated the extraordinary, no matter how hard you tried or how hard you gave, or how brightly you smiled. They would always scorn you, always make snide remarks, they would always spit at you and call you a martyr simply because you’re not like them.

And really, none of them could ever know, just like Jean had said. She didn’t cry when Jean sacrificed herself to save them. None of them knew that she did not sacrifice herself; none of them could ever know that she had soared above them, had finally made the choice to become physically beyond all of them.

And Rogue hoped one day that maybe, she’d be able to be like Jean, would be able to soar above all of them, be able to live peacefully on her own, away from their stares and their jealousy, that she’d finally be beyond all of them.

But for now, although it pained her to do so, and although she did not ask for it, she would bide her time and wait patiently. She would have to let them talk, let them whisper, let them see her as the poster girl for when mutation goes horribly, horribly wrong. She would have to let them see what they want and let them say what they want.

And if she had to listen to John’s voice, whispering about her being the martyr of the mutant race…then that was what she would just have to do, if it meant that one day, it would be time to pass the torch to another, and she would be free to fly away.


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