Chapter Text
Transferring from a normal high school to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters was… well, it was actually less glamorous than it sounded.
Sure, the first week or so had been insane, but that had been less about school and more about generally surviving. In her eighteen years of life, Rogue had only had three moments where she genuinely, truly thought she was about to die, and two of those had been within about a week of her getting to the school. It got to a point that Rogue almost wished she’d just stayed on the road, hitchhiking from town-to-town in an attempt to stay off the grid and away from anyone who might remember the name Marie D’Ancanto.
But now, the glamor of being nearly forced to kill hundreds of people had worn off, Rogue was starting to realize that Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters was a… well… a school. Classes, lectures, tests, homework… all of that was far, far less glamorous than expected. Sure, there were some classes that focused on student’s individual “gifts”, but… well.
Rogue’s gift wasn’t exactly a “gift”. At worst, it was a curse. At best, it was an annoyance that kept her from paying attention to the parts of school that were actually interesting.
She huffed, brushing her newly-white bangs out of her face so she could stare out the window better. She shouldn’t be staring out the window right now. Professor X was lecturing, and it actually sounded interesting. If she was going to be at Mutant High, she wanted to actually learn something…
Unfortunately for her, David had never been good about paying attention in class. He was a dreamer, his mind always on the next thing, never staying in the present. It was one of the things that Rogue had liked so much about him, back when they were dating and before her entire world had been turned inside-out.
She’d liked it a lot more when those thoughts were in his head, not hers.
For the third time in the past half-hour, she tried to look over at Professor X. She picked up her pencil, tapping it against the notebook that she wanted to fill with information, and tried to focus. Focus. Just for five minutes, just for long enough to understand what was going on in the lecture today…
…and she was staring out the window, watching the birds that were building a nest in the tree right outside, something in the back of her mind wondering if they’d be having eggs this late in the spring… again. Rogue didn’t care about birds. She didn’t care if they’d be having eggs this late in the year, and yet she was thinking it anyway.
Well, it wasn’t really her thinking it. It didn’t feel like she was, at least.
Professor Xavier liked to talk about voices. He’d done a few lectures on them in the past, and Rogue had managed to catch bits and pieces of them. Voices meant a lot of things to him. Demands. Expectations. Literal voices, ones that he could hear from all the minds he ever touched.
Rogue related to all of those kinds of voices, probably more than any non-telepath should be able to. Her head had been an amphitheater for months now, and she was starting to wonder if there was some way to get the voices to quiet. At this rate, she was going to have to ask Ms. Grey for another one-on-one session, which had been embarrassing as hell the first time and would be even worse the second. Rogue wasn’t even a telepath. She shouldn’t need to sort through the voices in her head, not in the same way that Ms. Grey or Professor X needed to. She should be fine.
Instead, she felt like she was going crazy.
“Psst. Rogue!”
The voice made her jolt, and it took her a few moments longer than usual to realize the voice was actually outside of her head for once. It took her another few moments to actually turn and look at the student next to her, and when she did she wasn’t surprised to be met with an eye roll.
“Quit spacing on me like that, girl!”
“Ah’m sorry, Jubes.” Rogue said, wincing. “Ah’m tryin’ to pay attention.”
Jubilee scoffed. “Is that what that was?”
Rogue frowned at her. Yeah, that was her trying to pay attention. It wasn’t her fault if the echo of David that lived in her head had shifted from thinking about the birds and was now wondering why chicken fingers are called chicken fingers if chickens have no fingers. If she could control him, she would, but she couldn’t.
Thankfully, Jubilee wasn’t a telepath. She’d also never been unfortunate enough to experience Rogue’s mutation, which was a gift for them both. Rogue was starting to really like her new friend, but having Jubilee’s voice in her head 24/7? Yeah, no thanks, Rogue was crazy enough as it was.
Rogue tried to look back at the board in front of the room, where Professor X had drawn some chart. She was pretty sure it was about proximity-based powers, a lot about telepathy. Maybe now, with Jubilee looking at her, she’d be able to pull herself out of her David-induced space-out session and put something down in her blank notebook.
Only the moment she looked up at the board, she felt a different presence in her mind. She could feel the scoffing haughtiness that came with it, as well as a ping of unfamiliarly familiar regret. There was something whispering in the back of her mind, something that thought the Professor’s teaching was wrong, something that wished he could just be here to correct a few little notes to give it broader meaning—
Rogue immediately shuddered, a cold chill seeping through her bones and wrapping around her soul.
Shut up, Erik, she thought to the thing in her head, trying to shove him away. She refused to call him Magneto. She refused to think about Magneto being in her head.
It was just Erik, the horrible man whose voice haunted her mind with pain and suffering and always made her more sad than he had any right to. If Rogue could control her powers, she would get that man’s voice out of her head and never hear it again.
But of course, Rogue’s powers were more curse than gift, and for some dumb reason she had to live with that.
“Rogue, you’re still not listening!”
“Ah’m tryin’ to listen,” Rogue whispered back to Jubilee, shooting her a quick glare.
Jubilee only rolled her eyes. “You’re supposed to listen to me, not the Prof!”
“We’re in class, Jubes, we’re supposed t’ listen to ‘im!”
“But that’s boring,” Jubilee said, tapping her nails on her desk. When she continued, it was in a sing-song voice. “I’ve got something more exciting…”
Rogue frowned. She tried to focus on the graph on the board, tried to grab on to what Xavier was saying, and…
And Erik was back in her head again.
She turned to Jubilee, shoving him away, and focused on her. “Ok. You got me. What’s excitin’?”
Jubilee’s eyes were sparkling. Not figuratively; literally. They did that, sometimes, when she got excited about things. There were literal bits of light that would dance around in her eyes, sparkling and buzzing and occasionally flaring up in tiny little bursts of light that would shine bright against her irises.
Rogue had learned a few things in her few months at the Institute. For one thing, everyone had weird shit that happened with their mutations. Some people had lights in their eyes, some people had skin that was never at the right temperature, and some people had voices in their heads. That was just how mutants worked, apparently, and it wasn’t usually something anyone made a big deal about.
Another thing that she’d learned was that if Jubilee had those sparks in her eyes, it usually meant that something was about to go down. And if something was about to go down, Rogue wanted to be in on it.
Jubilee grinned, apparently happy now that she had Rogue’s full attention. She leaned in, her eyes still sparkling, her voice dropping to a whisper that forced Rogue to lean in to hear.
“There’s a new mutant here,” Jubilee said, her grin growing. “And Logan’s the one helping out with ‘em!”
There was a growl from the back of Rogue’s mind, and she didn’t have to exaggerate the way that her eyebrows shot up and her eyes blew wide. “Logan?” She repeated, her words coated in the utter disbelief of the echo that filled her head.
Apparently, that was the exact reaction that Jubilee was looking for. “Yes!” she exclaimed, her voice only half a whisper, her long black hair shifting around her shoulders as she bounced in her seat.
“Logan?” Rogue asked again, trying to keep her voice from shifting into the growl that was filling her mind. “Like, Logan Logan?”
“Yeah!” Jubilee was still bouncing. “He swooped in, apparently, and now he’s the guy helping the kid settle in!”
“Why?” Rogue asked, her voice still soaked in disbelief. “I mean, Logan’s…”
“Logan is Logan,” Jubilee finished, and Rogue winced. She didn’t disagree though, because… yeah. Logan was Logan. “I’m not sure, but I’m telling you that’s what happened.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw him and Ms. Munroe run outta the kitchen this morning,” Jubilee explained. “I was just trying to make some coffee, and then something happened to the coffee machine and Logan got all snarly, y’know how he is… anyway that’s not important, what’s important is that I left, but then realized I left my keys in there and I couldn’t go to Starbucks without my keys, so I turned back around to get them and suddenly Ms. Munroe and Logan were running toward the door! I didn’t see what was happening, but Kitty told me that she heard Evelyn say that there was someone new, and—”
“Miss Lee?”
Rogue immediately winced, pulling away and trying to pretend she’d been looking at her notebook this whole time. Jubilee, somehow, had no fear; she looked right up at Professor Xavier, and actually had the gall to wave at him.
“Hey, Professor X!”
The professor raised an eyebrow, one hand still raised to point at the whiteboard he had drawn his chart on. “Miss Lee, do you have something you would like to share with the class?”
Jubilee shrugged, like it was a casual question. “I don’t think so, sir.” She actually turned and winked at Rogue after that, which made her wish she could melt into her blank notebook.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Erik’s voice was huffing out something about the future of the mutant race in the hands of the youth… we’re doomed. Rogue genuinely couldn’t tell if it was his voice tacking on the “we’re doomed”, or if that was her own thoughts.
“Well then,” Professor X continued, her voice just as civil as ever. “If that is the case, would you like to take a moment to explain this?”
He tapped a finger against the diagram on the board. Rogue couldn’t make heads or tails of it. She couldn’t even begin to guess exactly what it was, not without sounding like a doofus in front of the whole class.
Somehow, Jubilee didn’t flinch at all. “Well, you’re talking about proximity powers, right? So like, the difference in a mutation that requires touch versus one that needs, like, space and such. Same potency capabilities, different area.”
Professor X hummed. “And do you know where your own powers would fall into a typical proximity scale, Miss Lee?”
Jubilee shrugged. “A seven?”
“Very good. Now, if Miss Lee’s abilities would rank around a seven on this scale, would anyone like to guess where Professor Summer’s abilities would rank?”
Thank all that was holy, someone in the front of the class raised their hand. Rogue was able to let out a breath of relief as they answered, and she couldn’t help but feel like she’d dodged a bullet.
“I had no clue,” Jubilee whispered, her shoulders shaking from a barely-contained giggle. “Seven’s my lucky number. Professor X probably knows I was BS-ing, but what’s he gonna do if I got it right, huh?”
Every once and a while, Rogue actually considered seeing if Jubes would lend her a bit of that confidence… however, a few minutes of Jubilation Lee confidence versus a constant Jubilation Lee voice stuck echoing in her head… not quite worth it.
“Anyways,” Jubilee whispered, immediately leaning back toward Rogue as the Professor turned back to the board. “The point is, there’s a new kid, and Logan’s helping out with him. Well, him or her or them or whatever, I’m not sure yet.”
“You’re not sure?” Rogue should really, really not let Jubilee drag her into a conversation if she didn’t want to be called out in front of the class. However… well. She wasn’t getting anything out of the lecture anyway, not with Erik and David’s voices acting up in the back of her mind. She didn’t want to have to deal with those two today. And, despite the growling that echoed through her head at the thought, she was extremely interested to know why Logan might be helping out with a new kid.
As far as she knew, Logan had only ever brought one kid to the Institute before. And, according to the echo of Logan in her head, it wasn’t something he was planning to repeat.
“Yeah, I’m not sure. No one’s heard anything about this at all yet.” Jubilee wiggled her eyebrows. “That’s weird. They usually tell us the minute a new kid gets here.”
Rogue was familiar enough with that. She and Logan had been brought to the Institute after a Sabertooth attack, and that hadn’t slowed them down in the slightest; all they needed was for Rogue to agree to try the school out, and she’d been registered and in class before Logan even woke up. Xavier didn’t like to hesitate with getting his new students admitted.
“Weird, right?” Jubilee must have seen something in Rogue’s eyes, because her grin was widening. “Right?”
“Yeah,” Rogue admitted, trying to keep her voice low. “Yeah… it’s weird.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Jubilee’s voice rose a bit, and Rogue immediately shushed her. Thankfully, this time they didn’t even get a second glance from Xavier, and Jubilee was continuing a second later. “It’s weird. They’ve been here a couple hours now, and we’ve got nothing.”
“So…”
“So, I say we find out something.” Jubilee’s eyes were sparkling again. “I want to know who this new kid is, don’t you?”
A kid that hadn’t been announced to the school yet? A kid that apparently needed Logan’s help to settle in?
Yeah. Rogue wanted to know who they were.
“Alright,” she said, nodding. “Alright. You gotta plan or somethin’?”
The sparks in Jubilee’s eyes flared up. “Rogue, I always have a plan.” She reached across the space between their desks, and tapped a nail against Rogue’s blank notebook. “I’m arranging a club meeting after class.”
Rogue raised an eyebrow. “A club?”
“The club.” The lights in Jubilee’s eyes popped. “Bring your notebook. You’re not gonna want to miss any of this!”