Something
Beyond Seeing: Part 8
by
MizzMarvel
Part 8: Different
Types of Dreams
Rogue has
begun to hang out in St. John's room a lot. It's safe there, or at least
feels like it. Plus, it really is filled with books. His small bookcase
it crammed full, they're piled on his desk and chair, and fill a few
boxes under his bed. Battered paperback romances, pristine classics
in dust jackets, plays that just consist of a bunch of photocopied pages
stapled together. He has a bit of everything, and more.
She lounges on the floor, reading Kafka, while St. John is stretched
across his bed with a pen and a pad of paper, trying to write. Occasionally,
he'll sigh, rip off a sheet, crumple it up, and toss it to the floor.
"So this Gregor Samsa guy," she asks him, though her eyes
are still glued to the book. "He just wakes up lahk this? Lahk
some bug?"
"Hey, it's not totally unbelievable..." St. John answers,
somewhat distracted. "I mean, you haven't seen ME in the early
morning yet..."
"It IS kinda lahk us, though," she goes on thoughtfully. "One
day we're just normal kids, the next we're freaks with powers and everyone's
'fraid of us..." She thinks about the newspapers she's found lying
around the house, with articles about mutants that range from saying
mutants are just another link in the evolutionary chain to declaring
them inhuman monsters, abominations to God.
"Miss Analytical..." he mutters in response. "Go join
a university, why dontcha." He sits up and tosses her the pad of
paper, which smacks her in the arm. She looks up and scowls at him.
"Sorry. Would ya read it and tell me what ya think?"
"Sure," she says. She begins to read:
"It looked like a 'What Doesn't Belong In This Scene?' picture,
he being barely more than a boy and looking like an angel. He had hair
that was the color of the near-setting sun, eyes like the high-noon
sky, and almost translucent ivory skin. He belonged at a girlfriend's
house, or at a school dance, or at the Gap, not in the damp, dank alleys
of Sydney, which were filled with the smell of rancid food and the shrill
squeaks of rats being pounced on by rabid cats. But it was he who decided
he should be there. With the other vermin, the boy told himself.
"He walked for hours, simply thinking, and waiting. On his fourth
time walking down a certain ally, he stumbled upon something. Looking
down, he saw..."
At that, St. John's story stops. "But what did he see?" Rogue
asks.
St. John groans. "Well, that's where it gets hard...where the story
really STARTS. The place where I always lose where I'm goin'."
"Too bad," she remarks. "Ah lahk what there is."
"Yeah? Jeez. Now you're forcin' me to spend more than five minutes
on somethin'. Thanks a lot." He's trying to sound sarcastic, but
underneath there's indication that he's actually pleased.
"Is Sydney really lahk that? Dark an' dirty?"
"Naw. I just needed a city people'd recognize. I was really describin'
the capital of Genosha."
Every once in a while, the house will run out of a certain item. Then
someone, usually Remy or St. John, but occasionally Sabertooth, will
hop into the rusting blue truck and drive to the capital city, an hour
away. The trip always ends up being an all-day adventure, the one undertaking
it coming home dusty and exhausted.
"It's on the coast, like we are," St. John told her once.
"But there're a lot of ports. It used to be that Genosha was wealthy
from all the importin' and exportin', the ships that'd stop for supplies
on their way to somewhere else. People worked by repairin' ships, buildin'
ships, had inns and brothels for the sailors. But now more an' more
is bein' sent by plane, an' Genosha's, y'know, obsolete. At least in
the little towns, the people can get by with farmin' and fishin'. Everyone
in the city is destitute."
It's a grim, sad picture. But when one of the boys drives off in that
beat-up old pile of junk, Rogue watches from her window and wishes she
was going too. It would mean leaving this house and playing at being
free, even for just a few hours. She wants to be able to pretend. She
needs to.
"Will ya take me next tahm?" she begs St. John.
"I don't think so," he answers, looking thoughtful and uneasy.
"Didn't ya hear what I told you 'bout it? It's not exactly a nice
place to go, y'know."
"Nicer than this!"
"Well, jeez! I know this ain't exactly Disneyland and I'm not Donald
Duck, but I somehow prefer the ol' house to rubbish-filled streets and
multitudes of dirty, hopeless wretches. That's just my opinion, of course."
"But it's OUTSIDE," Rogue murmurs, eyes welling up with tears.
She wipes them away quickly, embarrassed by the show of emotion. "It's
more FREE."
His stance softens at her outburst, and he sighs. "I'll see what
I can do."
She grins, though still red-eyed and shaky. Times like this, she knows
for sure that this is her best friend, captive or not. "Thank you,"
she says.
"Say it now," he mutters. "You might not say it when
you actually see the city."
***
At least Remy has stopped bothering her. Honestly, he never really DID
bother her, not too much, until the incident in the kitchen, but that
was enough to make her keep her distance from then on. So now he doesn't
make eye contact with her when they sit at the dining room table, sometimes
leaves a room if she enters it. Rogue isn't exactly sure whether he's
embarrassed by his outburst or angry at her for causing it, but St.
John, O Mighty Protector, still watches him with a wary eye.
There is a division now, though. For a little while, the group of teens,
excluding the Russian and Pietro, had been growing more friendly with
each other, becoming something of a clique in a tiny world where the
only other options were the Basement Three and the Lone Beast. But now
there is Remy, Evan, and Fred downstairs, and St. John and Rogue upstairs,
with almost no interaction.
The reality of that hurts her more than she could have expected it to.
While she has never been the closest of friends with either Fred or
Evan, inwardly she expected some loyalty. It didn't even have to be
complete, maybe just a nod to her in the morning in greeting. She had
been in the Brotherhood. She was (is, IS!) an X-Man. Yet they are snubbing
her completely. Like she was the one who yelled, the one who bruised
his wrist.
Rogue wonders how things will be between them if they ever get back
to Bayville. She can never forget this, just as she never forgets any
slight. She still burns at the thought of the girl who pushed her into
the mud in the third grade, rages on the inside over the mockery of
a boy when she first started dressing like a Goth. But this seems worse.
Right now, it stings more.
She misses them, and they're so close.
***
Rogue crosses the hall from St. John's room to hers. It's getting rather
late, and she's tired after reading classic literature all day. There's
a lot to think about now, giant cockroaches and weak families and lost
hope. Yet "The Metamorphosis" is one of the best books she's
ever read.
She opens her door and steps inside, a totally natural thing that requires
no thinking, but this time she stops in her tracks. On the table beside
her bed, propped up against the lamp, is a picture. A picture of her.
Rogue slowly walks up to it and takes it in her hand, studying it closely.
There's no denying that it's her, with the short hair and collar. Besides,
it just plain resembles her. Done in pencil on a plain white sheet of
paper, she's been made to resemble a Burne-Jones woman, with a wan face
dominated by large, sad eyes and full lips. It has never occurred to
her before, not in her entire life, that she could be pretty, until
now.
But who did this? The answer is clear - near the top in a caption in
characters she can't decipher, and at the bottom is a signature in the
same language.
This is the work of the Russian.
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