Title: Choice
Fandom: X-Men (Movieverse)
Character(s): Rogue (Marie), Wolverine (Logan), Jean Grey.
Challenge: From ES: Make the plot, theme or feel of your story about survival.
Notes: It sort of moves progressively from the end of X-Men 1 up to the end events of X2. It just happened! Three different characters and their issues with survival. 744 Words.
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Some days when the voices in her head were threatening to overpower her, Rogue felt like she wouldn't survive. Unlike Professor Xavier, or Doctor Grey, she didn't have telepathic ability, she had no way of fixating on one particular voice or making them all just stop.
They would argue, strong personalities in her mind, imprints on her very nature and soul. She could go for hours after waking up without remembering how very different she was to others, and then all of a sudden Erik would creep in and point out the highly unappetising salt content of her choice of lunch. And Logan, never one to back down from a fight, would retort that he could eat whatever she wanted.
She. Rogue would sometimes lose sight of herself under these full grown men and their developed personalities. They knew who they were, well no, Logan didn't know exactly who he was, what he was, what his real name was, or anything of his history, but he had a solid personality. He was impatient and grouchy, but he had a kind heart.
The point was that Rogue was still growing and changing, and some days it felt like what she was growing into was simply a shadow of herself, a conduit for ghosts of other people's personalities to debate forever within the confines of her mind.
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Logan would never have been who he was without his mutant power. His 'unique ability' as Xavier liked to put it. Without the power to heal so rapidly he never would have been an ideal candidate for that fucked-up son-of-a-bitch adamantium fusion to his bones. He would never have obtained the claws, blades of indestructible metal that pushed out of his knuckles on command. Not that it was a good thing to be a test subject, an even bigger freak than the rest of the mutant population.
But he wouldn't have known what it was to hunt and be hunted. He wouldn't have known to fend from the earth, or how his body could sustain itself even without food or water. He may never have discovered he could build an able shelter and survive without human contact. He may never have learnt that mostly he preferred it. His heightened sense of smell put him on level with the animals, and in his very nature he was much more like one than he was human.
He didn't like to admit he needed people, and he'd certainly never spoken it aloud, but he did fear turning into a real beast. He enjoyed his own rational thoughts, when he had them. He was safe in the knowledge that unless someone went to real extremes with his body, splitting it into various parts or removing things that could not be regenerated without that specific part to spur them on, he would perhaps never die.
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She could hear the panic in her mind, every voice, every thought swimming over her, but not engulfing her. No, she had slowly but surely learnt how to keep her thoughts and dreams and desires pure, untainted from the wants and needs of others. She knew what she had to do. The greater sacrifice here was losing all of them, not just her. Jean was already straining her powers far past their usual capacity; there was another force working inside of her, fueling her with a fiery energy, a red hot strength and will. She could feel them all, like ants, trying to make a difference with their tiny movements. Xavier would not, could not; his ethics demanded he take a backseat in this, but she could feel him worming his way into her mind.
She spoke through him, feeling Scott's heart break and wrench apart. But there were bigger things to worry about now. Perhaps she could still make it out, once she had gotten the plane far enough away to be out of danger. Perhaps she could still save herself from this watery end. But all flames die out without fuel, and her body was failing her. She had the will but not the strength; her body was only flesh and blood and it was not made to contain power such as she almost thought she could wield, almost touch and take and have. Something inside her but not of her made promises of rebirth in the fire, and she found her last fleeting thought to be that perhaps she did not want to survive anyway.
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