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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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"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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