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Crowds carried energy.
Any time that a group of human beings united around something, there was an energy that came with it. There was always an emotion that brought them together, something that drew everyone in the crowd to look at the same thing. It could be desire, it could be excitement, it could be fear. Every crowd was different, every crowd was unique, every crowd was bursting at the seams with a simmering energy that made them into something more than a handful of people. It made them a mass, an entity, a group that was united in the appreciation of something. It was a wonderful part of the human experience, something that spoke to the basics of community and togetherness.
Perhaps Rogue was selfish for wanting to be a part of that, just once. Perhaps she was making a stupid decision right now, as she ducked through the gate amid the throng of other people. Perhaps she should back out now, before everything inevitably turned horrible. And yet, she did not care. This was an impulsive decision, but one that she had wanted to make for her entire life. Just once, she wanted to see if she could do it. Just once, she wanted to be a part of something bigger than herself. Just once, she wanted to ignore her curse and live a normal life .
So she stepped through the open gates and let herself blend into the crowd, as if she belonged there. She did it without hesitation, as if it was normal; the way it should be. The way it would be if she were not cursed with death at every touch.
The scent of cheap popcorn and fried foods chased away her thoughts as she inhaled deeply. They were thick in the air, to the point that she could practically feel the grease on her face by pure proximity. The rest of her skin was protected, at least, by the thick hoodie and gloves that she wore. It was hot, but it kept the grease off of her skin. She pretended that was the only reason for them as she walked, her hands shoved deeply in her pockets as she made her way deeper into the fairgrounds, desperately trying to ignore the way that her heart was pounding.
This was fine. This was normal. She was normal.
She had to convince herself of that. Just for one night, she had to convince herself.
A few screaming kids tumbled past her, and she tried to keep from flinching when one very nearly ran into her. She was not very successful, but the boy did not touch her, not even her gloves, and a moment later the harried mother gave her an apologetic look before chasing after the kids. Rogue simply blinked and watched them run; a boy and a girl both with equally red hair and equally energetic grins. Twins, possibly. They paid no heed to the adult calling after them and instead continued laughing and running, as if they could care less about anything besides getting from one side of the fairground to the other while causing as much ruckus as possible. For a moment, Rogue found a small smile on her face and wondered what it would be like to be that young, that reckless, that carefree.
Then, she realized that the kids were probably no younger than ten. That was only two years younger than she was, if that.
She shoved her gloved hands a little deeper into her pockets and continued her walk.
There was no true aim to her steps as she wandered through the circus booths. In every direction there was someone calling for her attention, either to play some game or eat some food or win some prize. All of it cost money, money that she did not have, but that did not matter. The energy was still there, the people were still there, and simply standing in the middle of it all gave her such an adrenaline rush that she could care less that she was not participating in any of the activities. She was happy with simply existing there, in the moment, among the crowd and among the excitement that surrounded her.
She was happy.
It shouldn’t have been such a strange feeling, and she knew that. She knew that if she told that to any person in this circus, they would tell her that she should be happy more often. She did not care. They were not in her situation. They did not know who she was. They did not know what she was.
Rogue felt happy, and that was a surprise. She supposed that she should take it while she could.
The circus was set up in the middle of Central Park, and it was spread out in a sort of circular pattern. There was a large, striped tent in the middle where the acrobats and other major acts would put on a show every few hours, according to the signs tacked up to the stalls. The outskirts contained all of the games and the food, things that crying kids would beg their parents for on the way in and out of the fairgrounds. There were rides as well, simple ones like flying chairs and a ferris wheel that had somehow magically popped up in the past few days. The entire set up had appeared almost overnight with the sort of magic unexpectedness that could only be expected from a place like the circus. It was the spontaneity of it that had drawn Rogue in the first place. It felt as though if she could get away with anything, the circus would be the place that she could do it. There was no place like a circus to blend into a crowd and to leave cares behind. It was crazy, but it was worth it. It was working .
Rogue was walking in the middle of a crowd, with other people occasionally brushing past her or even almost colliding with her, and yet there were no bodies on the ground. There was no rush of bitter life in her veins. There was nothing. She was simply walking, simply existing amid the people around her, and nothing bad was happening.
A rare smile began to grow on Rogue’s face, and she let it linger as she pushed her way deeper into the circus. At first she had been planning to stay on the outskirts, the area where it would be easy to escape if things went wrong the way that they usually did. She should stay there, she knew it, but her feet were taking her in a different direction. Despite whatever the logical decision might be, she was walking closer and closer to the center of the show. There was something in her veins that gave her a strange, uncharacteristic confidence. There was something about the chatter around her, about the people that were laughing and complaining and smiling around her as she walked. It was so foreign to her to be here , in the midst of something like this. She was so used to watching from a distance, from a safe distance, that she almost didn’t know what to do with the energy surrounding her. She felt as if she could reach out and touch it, and that if she did, she would burst from an overload of pure life.
She was almost giddy from the high of it all, and that high is what gave her the courage to push forward, closer to the big top. She had not been planning to go to a show, but the signs said that there was one only thirty minutes from now. Nothing had gone wrong yet, and even though she knew it would— it always did, she had to prepare for it — something made her want to push her limits. She was here. She was in the midst of it all. When would be the next time that she had the courage to do this? When would she have this opportunity again?
The decision to push on was solidifying in her mind when she stepped into the inner ring of the circus. This was the area just around the big top, just outside of the red-and-white striped canvas. The crowds here were even bigger than the ones on the outskirts, and Rogue felt more accidental brushes against her clothing as she pushed forward. She forced herself to ignore them, to push down the anxiety that rose in her chest with each accidental elbow or shoulder someone sent her way. Her clothing was strategic. Her skin was covered. No one was dropping dead.
She was a normal girl on a normal day at a normal circus. That was the story that she was forcing upon herself. That was what she wanted to believe. She could have it for one day. She had come this far, and she was now determined to stick with it. She was going to go to a show, cheer with the rest of the crowd, and enjoy this day to the fullest. Then she could go back to her life of being careful, of being cautious, of being homeless and hungry. Here, with the energy of the crowd in her bones, she could forget about it all, even her empty stomach. Here, nothing mattered but being in the moment, and she was determined to keep it that way.
There were still thirty minutes left until the show. She had time to burn, and she was in the perfect place to burn it. The outskirts of the circus held all of the cash-grab entertainment but here, in the inner ring of the attraction, was the stuff people paid to see. Out here there were the things that would keep the guests busy until the show started. Rogue had not paid to get in— she knew her way around systems like this, and it really was not hard to slip past the tired and overworked people at the gates— and she was more than happy to join the flow of the crowd and stare at the attractions set up outside of the tent.
To one side, a man juggled torches a safe distance away from a gasping circle of onlookers. The firelight danced against the sides of the carts he was set up behind, and it illuminated his face in a way that made him look almost otherworldly. Rogue could see a few people adding coins and cash to a collection box at the man’s feet, and every time that someone dropped an offering he would toss the torches just a little bit higher. Whenever he did there would be gasps of awe, and Rogue could feel the burning exhilaration of the crowd in the air around her. It was contagious, and it made her watch more closely as the man moved with the flames. It made her itch to drop something in there for him, though a part of her still itched to snatch some for herself. She could use it, of course. But there was no way that she would risk getting caught here and now, so she continued onwards.
A bit further down the row, there was a set of massive cages that had been erected to the side of the big tent. There was a whole throng of people peering through the bars, and Rogue had to stand on her tiptoes in order to see the creatures moving around inside. A flash of bright orange and black stripes flickered between the bodies blocking her view, and Rogue felt herself gaping along with the rest of the crowd. Tigers . Two massive orange tigers inhabited the first enclosure, and she saw a flash of gold that might have been a lion’s mane in the second. The sight of the animals sent a trill of excitement down Rogue’s spine, and the electricity seemed to crackle as it met the already elated feeling of being in the midst of this crowd. She had never been the biggest animal person, but there was something about seeing a tiger that close , close enough to touch if not for the security personnel keeping children’s hands from the bars, that was so real that she couldn’t help but feel excited. More than her own reaction, it was the reaction of those around her. They were all gasping, all staring with wide eyes at the massive cats, and so Rogue stared too. She stared and she gasped, and she almost laughed to herself at the feeling of belonging that settled in her bones.
She was a part of this. She was here, staring at a massive, powerful creature, and she was sharing in the awe that everyone around her felt. All of them were united in their appreciation for the creature within the cage. In its own way, it was magical.
When Rogue finally tore her eyes from the tiger’s mystifying stripes, she found her eyes following the crowd. To her surprise, there was an even larger group of people gathering around another selection of cages just a few feet away. These ones were smaller, but the reactions were bigger. The crowd was bigger. The energy was bigger. That was enough to tear Rogue away from the tigers without a second thought.
It was difficult for Rogue to see what was in this cage. There were too many people surrounding it, and the realization made her bones hum with a guilty excitement. There was just so much going on around her that she felt bold. She felt reckless. She felt caught up in the high of the crowd, of the awed chattering around her. She hardly cared what was in the cage, but everyone else around her cared, so she must care.
In a moment of pure, determined confidence, she found herself pushing through the crowd.
The moment she realized what she was doing, she almost froze, but by then it was too late. She was already in the midst of it, shoulders pressed against her own and hands almost brushing past her as she twisted away from them. She pushed forward and wherever she moved, there was another body there. Anywhere that she stepped, she was almost stepping on another foot. There was warmth and sweat and life surrounding her at every angle, living people pushing and pressing forward in their united desire to see something in front of them. Rogue could feel that desire in her own bones, so deeply that she must have touched someone, she must have stolen this feeling from someone… but no, her hood was secure and the fabric was thick, and though her blood thrummed with energy it was all her own, all siphoned from the air around her rather than sucked from a person. Everything here was hers, and there were no screams to tell her that she had done anything wrong. There was only life surrounding her on every side, and for once she was in the middle of it.
It was suffocating, in a way. It was claustrophobic in another. More than anything, it was terrifying. All of that together made it exhilarating.
Rogue hardly even realized that she had made it to the front of the crowd until she noticed that she couldn’t feel anyone in front of her. The realization that she had just pushed her way through a crowd, to the front of that crowd, made her want to laugh out loud. She could feel a buzz in her bones, and she could feel her cheeks burning as she smiled more widely than she had in what felt like years. She looked up, hardly even remembering that she had closed her eyes until she opened them.
A pair of dark, golden, human eyes stared back at her, and Rogue felt the exhilaration in her blood turn ice cold.
She stumbled back, and her back hit something hot and solid behind her. It must have been a person because whatever it was pushed her forward again, and her eyes were forced back up to the creature again. Because that was what it was; a creature, something trapped in a cage the same way that the tigers had been. It was blue. It was skinny. It was small and lanky and made up of all sharp edges and sharp teeth. There was a spaded tail curled around it's oddly formed feet, and its bowed legs were pressed against the concrete block that it was perched on, hardly a two-foot wide space that kept it at eye level so the crowd could stare at it properly. It was dressed in a frilly red vest and a pair of tight shorts, and Rogue realized with a start that it was a kid . It was a little boy that was curled in this cage, trapped and captured by the crowd’s attention the same way that the lion and the tigers had been.
There were bars between them and a collar around the kid’s throat, but at one glance Rogue could feel it in her bones; they were the same. He was a mutant, just like she was.
The energy of the crowd crackled in the air, and suddenly Rogue wanted to be as far away from it as she possibly could.
With a shaky inhale she tried again to step back, but it seemed as if the crowd around her had solidified. Suddenly it felt impossible to move, as if something was blocking her from every direction. Someone pushed forward, shouting and pointing as they jostled her to the side in their excitement to see the attraction. Rogue stumbled and there was a thick metal fence digging into her stomach as she found herself forced against it, just a foot from the cage, just close enough that she could reach out and touch the kid inside if she wanted to. The fence seemed to be an attempt to discourage touching but she could see that it was doing nothing to stop people from reaching, from poking, from crowding around the little blue boy that was huddled in the back corner of his tiny cage, his black hair hiding his face from view as he tried to block out the noise around him.
Then, for just a moment, he lifted his head, and Rogue found herself once again trapped by that golden gaze. Two eyes, pupiless and yellow and almost unsettling in their depth connected with her own. Rogue felt pinned beneath them. There was pain in those eyes, pain that wrenched at her heart despite the fact that she was just there, just one person in the crowd. She was just a part of this mass of people, she wasn’t… she wasn’t one of them. Was she? Was that what this made her?
She needed to get out .
Rogue turned, and soon it was her side that was digging into the metal bar. She looked from right to left, her heart hammering in her chest as the crowd churned around her. Excitement and fascination and disgust and wonder hung heavy in the air, and Rogue felt as though it was going to suffocate her. She gagged on the scent of sweat and sunscreen and tried to turn again, to find some sort of exit, but it felt as though every exit was blocked. Her skin burned beneath her clothes and she suddenly realized that if she was not careful, she could be behind those bars. She certainly deserved it more than the child behind her did.
Just as the panic was beginning to scorch her bones, she found herself closest to the kid. She was not sure how it had happened, but somehow the mess of her trying to move through the crowd had gotten her to his corner. He was still watching her, his golden eyes wide and terrified to the point where she wondered if he somehow knew what she was. Somehow, he must . That, or he thought she was just another one of the crowd, another person here to stare and jeer and wonder what he was without wondering who he was… she could not tell which was worse. She could not tell which was true , and that scared her even more.
She took another step back, and she felt the moment that her sleeve pulled up and hot air hit the patch of exposed skin. Behind her, she heard the laughter of a child just a moment before she felt the brush of skin, the tiny hand that hit the sliver of her wrist.
It always went wrong.
The effect was instantaneous. She heard the startled choke as the child’s laughter cut off, and she felt the change in weight as he crumpled beside her. There was a dull thump and hiss as popcorn fell across the grass, and Rogue could taste that same popcorn on her own tongue despite the fact that she had not eaten it, and her stomach would have growled if it were busy churning with the sick bile of stolen energy flooding her system. There was a scream, and Rogue stumbled back. The metal fence bit into her back. She reached out a hand, desperate to balance herself, horribly aware of the fact that her sleeves weren’t quite covering her skin—
She was not aware that she was reaching toward the cage before it was too late.
Cold, fuzzy skin met her own, and Rogue gasped. The popcorn taste that the child had left in her mouth was gone in an instant, replaced instead by a feeling of simply being cold, too cold . She could feel a swell of emotions too— fear, surprise, pain, pain, why was there pain ?— and she nearly fell to the ground beneath the sudden weight. And then, to top it all off, images . Memories . They flooded her mind in sharp, shattered jabs, images of hands reaching and crowds shouting and people moving through the air, dipping and weaving in a way that made them seem as though they were flying despite the fact that they were far, far away.
And then, after an agonizing, horrible moment, Rogue fell. The grass crumpled beneath her as her elbows hit the dirt, her breath forced from her lungs, the buzz of the crowd humming and throbbing around her as she tried to blink the images from her mind and yank her sleeves back down over her wrists. Just in front of her, she could see the little boy with popcorn crying as his mother fussed over him. Just to her side, she could see the form of the little blue boy crumpled inside of his cage.
For just a moment, his eyes opened, and they met hers. Whether they were filled with terror or hope, she could not tell.
Then they fell again, and the shouting of the crowd overwhelmed everything else.
Rogue scrambled to her feet, her gloved hands slipping against the metal bars of the fence as she tried to grab it. She could feel the confusion around her, the fear and shock burning through the voices of the people— so many people — as they moved around her. Someone reached out, and she felt the moment that they brushed her cheek before she jerked away. There was another shout and the man— large, adult, worried and fearful and wondering where his own daughter was — stumbled. Rogue did not wait to see if he fell. She turned and she ignored the suffocating energy of the crowd as she forced her way through the wall of people. There was no determination now, there was only pure desperation as she broke out, her feet pounding against the trampled grass, her head aching from the rush of energy, her heart thudding wildly in her chest as she pushed through the disconnected jumble of stolen feelings in her chest as she ran .
She should have stayed on the outskirts. She should have listened to herself when she knew that it would go wrong. She knew , and she should have listened .
Instead she was running, shouting echoing behind her as she ducked out of the central area of the circus and dodged around people— why were there so many people ?— as she tried to get out, as far away as possible from the smell of sweat, the sound of voices, the cages and the broken gaze of a little boy staring at her in pain and fear.
At some point, two security guards tried to grab her. For a moment, they succeeded. But that was their own mistake because a moment later they were both on the ground and she was out, their knowledge leading her to the quickest exit and the cool, fresh air of Central Park buffeting her face.
She did not stop running. She did not stop running until the circus was far behind her, until her legs were burning and she was gasping for breath as she leaned against a brick wall just outside of the park, entirely uncaring for the looks sent her way by whoever happened to pass her by. Only then did she stop and slide down the wall to put her head between her knees, her shoulders shaking as she tried to regain some semblance of solidity beneath her.
Slowly, painfully, the world steadied around her. The more it did, the more she tried to sort through her mind and shove away new, stolen memories and thoughts and emotions that she did not want. She didn’t want to remember the little boy with popcorn. She did not want to remember the man with the daughter. She did not want to remember the blue creature that everyone was staring at.
Still, no matter how much she tried to shove the memories away, that burning golden gaze pierced the back of her closed eyelids. She could still feel that fear, that pain, that horrible mix of emotions that had clung to the kid in the cage.
That poor kid.
Rouge pushed her head harder against her kneecaps, her breath coming in short bursts as she tried to steady her heartbeat. The memories still hovered in her mind, as if they had been burned there. The others were fading as she shoved them away, but the mutant’s were sticking so stubbornly that she wondered how she had only touched him for a few seconds. She could still see the flying people— acrobats , they must have been acrobats— and feel the kid’s longing beneath her skin. She still felt cold, and the thought alone made her shiver and wonder how that simple metal cage could be so frigid that it still clung to her skin. And then there was the pain… what was that from? Sitting in the same position for hours? Sleeping on the concrete? Something else, something more painful? Did she even want to know?
No. She didn’t want to know any of this… and yet, now, she did.
She ran a tongue over her dry, cracked lips, and winced when it caught on her teeth. They were pointier than usual, she realized slowly, and she took off one glove to run her fingertip over the points. Fangs . They were small, sharp, and would probably fade after an hour or so. They must have been the mutant’s. At least she had gotten his fangs and not his fur or his tail. If she had a mutation like that, she would probably be in the same situation as him.
The thought settled deep within Rogue’s chest, heavy and cold like a stone. Her mutation was a curse, yes, but if she had one like that … what would she do? She would never be able to go in crowds like that. She would never be able to go outside like that. She wouldn’t be able to do anything.
What could that kid do?
The question was heavier than the thought, and Rogue found herself staring at her pale palm as she pulled her finger away from the fangs. Her skin still tingled slightly, her body buzzing from the overuse of her mutation as her brain churned with the unwanted knowledge of the people she had touched. She knew that some random man loved his daughter and worried for other kids her age. She knew that a little kid thought that the blue monster looked more sad than scary. She knew that the blue monster was himself a little kid, a little kid who loved to watch the acrobats at night and that wanted to do the same thing if they would ever let him out. She also knew that the security team would never do that, that they were as scared of him as he was of everyone else, that they spent half their security routes checking the area with the mutants just to make sure they stayed contained—
—she knew the security routes.
The realization made Rogue freeze, her heart thumping a bit more quickly as she stared at her own, ungloved palm. She had touched a security guard. Two of them. She could see their patterns in her mind. She knew their patterns .
The image of the little boy huddled in his corner came back to her. He looked so small. He looked so scared . He had been in captivity for a long, long time. From the brief contact that Rogue had, she wondered if the boy even knew what freedom was. She wondered if he knew what it felt like to simply walk among other people without being stared at as if he was an attraction, a way for someone else to make money.
She knew the patterns. She could get him out.
Crowds carried energy. Any time a group of people were united together, their emotions amplified. Any time that a group of people focused on something, their attention turned into something more. Sometimes, that attention could be suffocating. Sometimes, it could be even worse.
She couldn’t leave that kid pinned beneath those stares. She just couldn’t.
In the end, she wouldn’t. She would get him out.
She told herself that it was the least that she could do for stealing his memories, and tried not to think about how much that desperate gaze had affected her.