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rogue

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His fingers flex out towards chess pieces scattered across a board, but nothing moves. They're not steel or platinum, but the base is heavy enough that Erik would have sensed the metallic properties, were he still more than the mere being he is, now. He curls his fingers in towards his palm, that utter feeling of powerlessness overwhelms him and makes him feel weak.

The coin rests heavy in his pocket and it brandishes accusation against him.

He couldn't move it, then, not to save his mother's life. It's as though he's being punished now in being incapable of moving the smallest of objects. He's been turned into a monster and to what end? He's useless. He's worse than useless. He's been turned into this monster and there is no point to the pain he's suffered. It's as though his mother has died for nothing and he cannot avenge her, not with Shaw absent, not with the perpetrators of his pain so far away.

Instead, he sits at a chess board and is human.

It's frightening. Erik's not sure he ever might have anticipated that.

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She could still feel the remains of the plasmids humming under her skin, or she thought she could. It was as distracting as the voices ever were, but those had been quieter since Rapture. She was hoping they'd stay that way. Heck, maybe in the end, Bones wouldn't even have to go poking around in there.

In her more optimistic moments, Rogue chose to believe that was how things would work out, or that they'd work themselves out, at any rate.

She was still a little scraped up and bruised, but that wasn't exactly a rarity (anymore- she kept absently brushing her fingers against the scrape on her cheek, constantly worrying it would scar, then reminding herself that touching it sure wouldn't help matters) so she didn't bother hiding it. The white cotton sundress was spaghetti strapped, and buttoned down the front and stopped around her knees. It was a beautiful day and they didn't have practice, and her jeans were still a grimy mess from her stay in the underground city. She'd meditated at the waterfall, gone for a walk, and found herself wandering into the Winchester for a quiet drink alone. What was the harm?

The moment she spotted Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, though, she regretted being in anything less than overly long denim and a hooded sweatshirt. The man had always had a way of making her feel exposed, even when she'd been covered head to toe in a body suit and dangerous to the touch. If her own feelings on his presence hadn't been enough to make her feel sorely off balance, the look on his face would have done the trick. Padding over, feeling stupid at the quiet slap her flip flops made on the wood, she stopped by the table he occupied and looked over the board.

"You winnin'?"

"I sincerely hope so, given that my opponent is myself." He feels guilty pressing Charles for constant company, though they share an abode and see each other daily. Perhaps there's some part of Erik that is so used to being alone that, instinctually, he seeks it out. He looks up at her after a long moment regarding his Knight and his Rook, debating his next move.

He allows an appraising glance before turning his attention back to the board, his fingers brushing over the Queen and lingering there. "Have you come to talk to me or is this a happenstance meeting?"

"Happenstance, sugar," she said honestly, "y'ain't given me a reason t'keep tabs on ya." She hiked up one eyebrow, glancing him over briefly in a manner that was almost teasing.

"Yet. You lookin' t'be left alone?" she asked, absently dragging a fingertip along the back of the empty seat opposite him.

"If I wanted to be alone, I'd have stayed in the privacy of my room," he replies, slightly curt. "Then, the privacy of my own room doesn't afford things like scotch," he says, taking his glass and giving it a single swirl so that it catches the light. His attention remains on the Queen and he removes his grasp of her, going back to the pawns with far more interest. "I assure you, I've done very little to make anyone want to monitor me."

Though, that may change if ever Shaw arrives. Erik hopes for the day, if he's honest.

"I believe you," she sighed, sliding into the chair and crossing her legs. She rested her elbow on the edge of the table and put her chin in her palm, and looked over the board.

"How ya settlin' in?"

Has it been nearly a month? Erik imagines that it has been, though his sense of time has stretched on painfully in this place, given that he is without a shred of his abilities. He eyes the pawn and commits to a decision, sending it to surrender to make way for stronger pieces. "How did you settle in when you arrived?" he asks, in order to buy time for a proper answer to come to his mind.

Rogue tried to think back that far. She remembered swimming, every day for as much of it as she could. Of being shy to shake a stranger's hand, a feeling that lasted well into her first year on the island. There had been nightmares that she couldn't remember, that at the time she'd managed to dismiss as just nightmares. Now she was pretty sure she knew better.

"Pretty easy," she told him. "Wasn't the first time I'd landed somewhere more're less deserted without my powers. That didn't last as long, though, and was... more complicated."

Erik had shown up that time, too.

"Got hurt a few times, didn't trust anyone as far as I could throw 'em," which was woefully short of how far she used to be able to. She shrugged a little.

"Eventually the upsides started to distract me from the fact that we're stuck here, but that works better some days'n others."

"I admit that I have yet to witness any upsides," he informs her, his tone brittle and terribly angry. He contains it because this is no place to make a scene, but he sees no point in withholding his opinions on the matter. There are people and they are, all of them, deluded into thinking they've found a kind of paradise.

He settles his covered forearms on the table, grimacing heavily as he regards the board. "What's so enticing about this place to keep a woman like you placated?"

She blinked at him once before straightening up, her hands falling into her lap.

"A woman like me," she repeated, unsure as to his meaning. She huffed out an almost silent breath, glancing away, then reigned in the indignation that wanted to bubble up and mentally smoothed her feathers.

"...No one could touch me," Rogue told him, though it was incredibly weird to be explaining her powers to Magneto.

"Not without gettin' hurt. Makes for a nice change, not havin' to wear gloves 'n bodysuits every day. Kinda thing a gal can appreciate."

"Beautiful, intelligent," he appraises, looking her over slowly. "As far as I can tell, anyhow." After all, if she can be happy here, isn't there the argument that others are able, as well? And yet, he doesn't believe that he'll be one of them. He's not the same, he's never been the same, and now a place is trying to make him think that he is.

"That was your ability?" he wonders at the cruelty of it. "Then you must be very happy. I, however, have been robbed of the things that define me."

It took every ounce of restraint she had not to blush, which lasted for about three seconds before she could feel the apples of her cheeks go hot.

"It was one of 'em. 'n it made me who I was, as much as anything else, where 'm from 'n who raised me. As often as I hoped for a cure, it was Charles Xavier who taught me that my powers were a gift, that they were important. I believed that. Still do," she added, tucking a few strands of her hair behind her ear.

"But as much as I lost, I gained a lot by landin' here. Makes me different from most o'the others. Your powers... I know how strong you were. Or, I guess, how strong you become. I know what they mean to you. I'm sorry for how bad you must be feelin' the loss."

"Charles," he echoes, his voice softening. Everyone speaks of Charles as though he's benevolent, as though he provides them with something that they wish to have. Charles has done that for him, as well, and it has made him stronger, but the rage still lives in him, buried deep and always constant. "Yes, that does sound like Charles Xavier. Did he burrow inside your head, as well?"

"He tried," Rogue said.

"I'm resistant to telepaths. Byproduct o'the nature of my powers and the fact that part of my DNA is kree. It's... complicated. Best he could do was put up some walls, help me... manage my powers. He couldn't help me control 'em, though."

"He helped with mine," Erik says, studying her curiously as he begins to wonder what makes her up. There must be something fascinating in her system to be able to repel a telepath without any outside sources, but he cannot say as to what it might be. "Before I arrived, of course. I've no idea if the power he helped to imbue me with was permanent."

"Boostin' peoples powers wasn't exactly in his repertoire," Rogue told him, looking up at him from behind a few stray strands of white that she absently pushed away.

"Or it was, but he could only help you find what y'had within' yourself. Whatever he showed you would likely be permanent, but that'd depend on you, not him."

Charles Xavier had helped Magneto increase his power? That wasn't something she'd been aware of. It raised a lot of questions.

"He didn't boost them, necessarily," Erik says, wishing that it could be simple. Perhaps he had grown lax in explanation because Charles so easily delved his way to seek out reasons that now that he had to speak things aloud, he faltered. It seemed he would have to do this through explanation, alone. "He showed me that the well I went to in accessing my abilities was...limited. That I had to look past rage."

Rage had been all he knew, thanks to Schmidt. Thanks to the war.

"He taught me that, too," she said quietly.

"Somethin' my momma never bothered to. Showed me that anger's powerful but it ain't enough, and if it ends up bein' th'only thing that drives you, then that means you've let it consume you, and then you aint' really you at all. You're just the rage."

"Your mother?" he asks, the very word a delicate subject to be spoken, but he presses through it. He refuses to allow the simple memory of his mother to stop him in his tracks. "She sounds like a smart woman."

Rogue sniffed and her posture shifted drastically as she leaned back and crossed her legs at the knee.

"Yeah, that's one word for it. Heard others lean more toward 'cunnin' like a fox'. She may be a lotta things, and there's plenty she ain't, but no one on this Earth or any other can call Raven Darkholme stupid."

Erik is entirely glad that he's not been imbibing in his scotch because he imagines he might have choked upon it at the very mention of her mother's name. "Your mother is Raven Darkholme?" he repeats, eyes slightly wild with the need for clarification.

Rogue lifted an eyebrow.

"So you know her," Rogue drawled.

"Though Ah'd assume as Mystique more'n Raven. She took me in as a kid, raised me until my powers were too much for her t'control, 'n then I went to Charles Xavier for help."

"As Raven," he clarifies, still finding those inane names the younger generation had fostered for themselves to be ridiculous -- despite a burgeoning thought at the back of his mind that itched and scratched away and told him that distance from his actual self would be wise. "Did she send you, then? Knowing what Charles could do?"

Rogue frowned a little, more curious than anything.

"Th'only one ever called her Raven that I saw was Destiny. Irene Adler." The fondness and melancholy in Rogue's voice as she said the name was clear as day. In all the ways Mystique had failed her, Destiny never had.

"And no, she most certainly did not. Did her damnedest to bring me back 'home', shoulda been my first clue that she never really cared about me. He was th'only person in the world could help me. And he did, as much as he could. Much as anyone could. But all she saw was him stealin' away her best weapon." She twined her fingers together and snuck her clasped hands almost self-consciously under chin, gaze averting to the table top where the pieces were strewn across their board.

"Ah hate this game."

He leaves aside the issue of Raven Darkholme for now, intending to build more information so that he's better equipped to understand. For now, he focuses on her comment, turning his attention to the board. He turns it, in order to play his next move against himself. "What is it you don't like?"

"The way people who're best at it," she said, green eyes flicking up to meet his with her particular brand of unflinching directness that came to her in rarer moments, now, than it used to, "use the pawns."

He gives her something of a smile as his fingers hover above a bishop. It's not particularly a nice smile, but the sort that implies that he doesn't think much of such a critique. "Do you think the same of Charles, then? He plays the game, he uses pawns."

"Ah love him," Rogue said, "Ah do, but... yeah." She casually propped her elbow against her knee and covered her mouth with her knuckles, looking thoughtfully back over the board.

It wasn't enough to hide the look of sadness that crossed her features.

Erik has been watching her and not the game for several moments, rather critical in every moment of the stare. "What is it?" he demands, turning it into something that's not a question.

Rogue started slightly, gaze snapping back to his face.

"What is what?"

"That look," he says, putting heavy emphasis on his words as he raises a brow. "That look on your face, what was that?"

She regarded him quietly for a moment. It felt a little mutinous, to speak ill of anything Charles Xavier had done in front of Magneto, of all people. Even if he wasn't quite the man she'd known. At least, not yet.

"Carin' for someone doesn't guarantee they won't let you down. That's all."

Erik gives a thoughtful sound, perusing the board for his next move as he takes into account what she has to say. It's all terribly interesting, he won't lie, but he can't imagine what Charles would have done to let anyone down, other than be his typical overly naive self. "Then what games do you play?"

"Baseball," she said without hesitation or a trace of self-consciousness.

"Ah coach the... well, basically the mutant team," she said, a quick grin pulling slightly at the corners of her mouth.

"Mostly folks I know from home, mostly heroes, lotta mutants. We dominate the field most o'the time," she said, then instantly regretted her phrasing.

"Baseball?" It takes Erik a moment to decide whether she's being serious and then, scarily enough, he realizes that she is. Of all the things that could be done with people's time, their field of dominance is...baseball. Though, he supposes they were no better, training people to run laps in order to boost them against a villain like Shaw. "How very...American."

"Red blooded'n everythin'," she agreed, tucking her hands behind her head and leaning back against the wall of the booth.

"Sugar, you find a better way t'pass the time after three years, 'n you let me know."

"While I don't begrudge you the pasttime, I still wonder at why you've decided to entertain a hobby rather than a solution for escape. Or, at the very least, how to get abilities back," Erik says, discontent with the notion of simply 'waiting it out'.

"Because you can only bang your head against a brick wall for so long 'fore you realize y'ain't doin' anythin' but hurtin' yourself. Sorry M- Erik. I've been here, what, four years now? That's half as long as I had powers back home. I went to doctors, I talked to people used t'practice magic, Ah've looked into it, b'lieve you me. Not sayin' it's impossible, just sayin' I haven't had much luck," she sighed.

"You have to understand," he begins calmly, regarding the pieces on the board and not looking her in the eye. If she's to know what being powerless means to him, he refuses to give up any emotional ground. "It's not simply about my powers," he says sharply. "It's about who I become without them. It's about all the things I lost in gaining them. Without them, those losses become...pointless," he finishes, the word gutted and emotional.

Rogue was still for a long moment, realizing again how much she was playing with some very real fire. She didn't react immediately, then, feeling a bit stupid, reached across the table to touch her fingertips to the back of his wrist.

"I understand that," she said quietly.

"Can you?" he asks, aware that his tone is icy, but it's a matter that's terribly serious to him and he doesn't wish it diminished by well-wishing. "If you can, then I feel sorry that you're able to understand, but grateful at the same moment."

"I used to be able to fly," Rogue told him, "and I was nigh unbreakable, could punch a train off its tracks, I... I miss who I was." And the walls Xavier had built for her that she didn't have there.

"What I could do, the people I could help. 'n the things I did that needed redeemin', the wrong I can't undo but was tryin' to atone for... It's hard, but I can't believe it all doesn't count for anythin' just because I'm stuck here."

"And what if, from the very first moment that you could remember, it was you being wronged against. Would you then sit back and allow such a thing to continue?" he poses the question to her, regarding her face and not the pieces. "Or would you take action and seek out atonement on their behalf?"

"You talkin' 'bout revenge?" Rogue said.

"Yeah, sugar, I've done that, too. Didn't turn out so good."

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