Ticket Out
By: Jess

Rogue used to think that mutants didn't age beyond a certain point, but then she realized it was more that most of them never got the chance to. When she first came to the school, Professor Xavier was older, and Magneto too, but most of the other mutants she came across were smooth-skinned and young. It was a school, after all, but even the instructors weren't much older than the students, and it was another thing that was different from home, no old teachers counting the days till retirement, bitter about their students' youth.

It has stayed that way all the time Rogue has been there, the people around her growing younger instead of older, it seems, but there's no Fountain of Youth at the school; it's just that the older go away and more young ones appear and so the demographic stays the same if the people don't. It's a dangerous business, being a genetic freak, what with the tendency to be persecuted and sometimes called on to fight in great, dramatic battles between good and evil. There are always casualties.

There are other things, of course, mutations gone awry, people who turn out too fragile instead of too strong, like the girl she met her third year there, Diane. Diane could float and shimmered a beautiful blue-green, but her bones were so brittle that they shattered during her first trip to the Westchester Mall, when there was a fire in the food court and she got pinned against the wall in the rush out.

Others no one likes to talk about, but Rogue thinks about them often now, thinks of boys like Ryan, one of the strongest empaths the school had ever had, who jumped from the school's roof six months after he arrived. They lose a lot of empaths that way; it's hard to find something that can dull, if not rid them of, the pain quick enough. A lot of the strong ones get rid of it their own way before the doctors can even try.

Rogue's been robbed of that decision. She spends nights alone in her room, sometimes, imagining ways to kill herself. She tries to think of things she could absorb that would kill her, but if she did it that way it would have to be for sure, because she's pretty sure she couldn't bear living on with more voices trapped inside her head. It's hard to find a way that's certain.

She's not serious, of course. Not really. She only thinks about it sometimes, almost never. She remembers a time when it would have been simple - a bottle of pills, a carefully placed slice on the arm - but those days are gone now. Now she can fly, and she supposes she's glad, because there really isn't anything as glorious as soaring above the world under your own power, the wind rushing past you and all the beauty of the world spread beneath you to see. Sometimes she thinks that if she didn't have that, she would - well, she's not sure what she would do. How do you destroy something that's indestructible? That's the whole point. You can't.

She's not sure. She goes into battle and fights, really fights, because she doesn't necessarily want to die, not every day at least. Only on the bad days, the really bad ones, when she's tired or she thinks of those who have gone before, when she's lonely for Jean or Ororo or Bobby's sweet smile and the days before he realized she was a lost cause. Then she thinks of it. Flying into a volcano could do it, she thinks. Maybe. Or drowning - she's never tried that.

In the beginning she broke everything, and sometimes she still forgets her strength. She can't remember how much glassware they went through in the kitchen those first few weeks, and even now if she's not thinking or if she gets too angry, she'll shatter a coffee mug in her hand or knock a door off its hinges just shutting it. She couldn't drive at first, either, because she kept putting her foot through the bottom of the car every time she came to a sudden stop. Professor Xavier gave her her own car that first Christmas, a fully loaded red sporty one, complete with reinforced flooring and a titanium wheel.

She's still got the car. It's in mint condition - she doesn't use it much, really, since flying is so much quicker. But sometimes she likes to sit in it and test out the flooring, doing her best to crush the steering wheel, and imagines destroying it, ramming it into a brick wall or a tree, stuffing it into a compactor at the local landfill with herself inside. She imagines the car crushed but knows that she'd stay safe inside, perfectly formed, not a scratch. It's like her nightmares about the world ending, where she watches her friends die long, brutal deaths one by one, and then watches the other people die too, people she doesn't even know, and that's not the worst part of the dream, not at all. The worst part of it all is the ending, is how she always survives, perfectly safe, perfectly alive, perfect forever, and alone.

That's just how it goes. She guesses she'll get used to it. That's how it works, after all. She's gotten used to the other things (she barely notices the gloves anymore), and this will pass too. She almost never thinks about the touching thing, only sometimes, only on the bad days, when she misses her mother's cool hand on her forehead when she was sick (she doesn't get sick anymore, though, a gift from Logan, so it's a foolish thing to miss), or her father's rough hand in hers pulling her along (she always walked too slowly, always looking at things, always thirsty to see the world). In the beginning, she used to brush people by accident all the time, would cause fainting spells in her wake. She got better at it, though, she got used to it, and on her good days she knows soon she'll stop crushing coffee mugs, too.

On her good days, and her bad days too, she thinks of Logan. She thinks of Logan often, mostly because he's the only one she doesn't have to resign herself to outliving; Logan, who looks the same every time she sees him, the same as he did the day she first met him years ago in Alaska. She looks almost the same, she knows, not quite the young girl she was at first - she got to age beyond seventeen, at least -- but she'll stay forever trapped at the age of twenty-five.

Logan's like her, Logan understands, although they never talk about it. Logan comes to see her at the school and they get to pretend it's like the way it used to be, like she's still someone who needs to be protected and he's the one to do it. He calls her kid and she doesn't mind the way she did back when the title really applied, when he used to rescue her. He always comes to the school when it's gotten bad for him, Rogue can tell from his ragged edges and the way he growls instead of speaking half the time. All the kids at the school are terrified of him.

She's the only one he'll speak to. His eyes light up, or soften, or maybe both, when they set upon her, and she knows she's not fooling herself the way she did when she was eighteen or twenty-two, when she was so desperately in love with him that it hurt. That's gone now, or maybe it's still there but it's buried under something else so much bigger that she doesn't even notice it anymore. Maybe he could love her back now; she'll never ask.

It doesn't seem so important now, when all that really matters is that he's almost as indestructible as she is. He could maybe love her now but what matters is that he reminds her of how it used to be, back when she was able to imagine a future where they found a way to fix her, a day when she could run her fingers down his face without killing him. He reminds her of when she could imagine an end for herself.

She's always glad to see him but every time she wonders why exactly he comes, if it's because he needs someone who remembers Jean and the days when they all thought finding out where he came from would be a good thing, or if he simply misses her. Sometimes she wonders if it's because he remembers the very beginning too, the Statue of Liberty, those few cuts that took forever to heal, and recognizes her as his ticket out. She can't really blame him either way.

End.