| A Rogue By Any Other Name |
| Summary: | Rogue has resigned from her TA position at Xavier's School, and left the Mansion quite distraught. Jean goes after her to see if she can get her to come back home. |
| Date: | 2016-08-07 |
| Related: | None |
| NPCs: | NA |
| Scene Runner: | NA |
| Social/Plot: | Social |
| Players: |
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Rogue had run into Logan and Kurt several days ago, and a day later she'd turned a note in at the school resigning from her Teacher's Assistant position. She'd indicated that if anyone at the school needed her that they'd be able to find her at this music store, but also that they could call her. However, she simply did not feel comfortable being there now that she knew she wasn't the Anna-Marie from this world. Kurt had looked at her like she were an alien, or something, and it'd settled all kinds of wrong inside her stomach.
As of right now, Rogue was in the back of the music shop, she'd been hired on here by the overweight guy in his 30s who runs the place. How could he say no to Rogue asking to work here? He was a notorious pot smoker and burnout who just loved music and loved his store, and… loved pretty women.
So Marie worked here now, and was sorting out a big order of instruments for the local highschool who'd put in an order to replace some of their old worn out gear.
Jean Grey was one person who immediately took the note to heart, since returning from the dead, again, she had yet to manage to find the time to speak to Rogue. An incident like a TA leaving just like that, and giving everybit a sign she was running away from the Mansion, was an immediate draw to see if she could help. If she knew about Kurt giving Rogue a hard time, she might have also given him a piece of her mind. As it were, she was unaware of problems, aside for Rogue simply bolting her position and the Mansion.
This is exactly why she tracks down Rogue's position, before finding her at the music store, and walking through it's door a short time later. She walks up to Rogue directly, "hey…" she offers quietly, measuring Rogue's reaction before she decides how to approach her.
Where Rogue came from, Jean was a troubled woman… but she hadn't ever gone through death and rebirth. The timeline she knew was a calm one… it had its bumps and bruises and conflicts witn anti-mutant monsters… but there'd never been major catastrophies or losses of lives close to her within the X-sphere.
This world, however, she could tell has seen some serious things happen, having herd bits and pieces of it. She didn't rightly know much about the version of herself, who was apparently now gone? It was too weird to even fathom looking into.
The girl with the punked-out hair sat a big box of equipment down onto one of the counters and she saw Jean approach and speak. She offered her a light nod of her head, took a moment to uncap her bottle of water that had been on the counter and sipped from it. "Well heya there, Red. Lookin' like a million dollahs as usual." She told her in her thick southern tone voice, husky and sultry as always.
"What brings you in here today, lookin' to take up the jazz flute?" She asked with a grin. "I'd pay t'see you belt out a sweet jazz song on one'a those badboys." Humor always covered up awkward moments, so she believed anyway.
Jean smiles at Rogue's compliment, "that's very kind of you, Rogue, and you're not looking too bad yourself," she winks playfully and approaches Rogue, trying to reach and take a hold of her gloved hand, assuming the girl would let her, "Rogue…if you truly wish to hear that, it can be arranged, but I wanted something far better…a few words with you, if you'd do me the honor?" She moves to lean on the counter next to Rogue, "I didn't get a chance to see you since I returned…I hope Alex didn't get you all spooked out about me. He clearly took it the hard way."
Anna-Marie shook her head, she'd allowed the hand hold, her hand was encased inside of a black glove that was extremely soft and warm. "I've only spoken to Kurt'n Logan. They were with some pale skinned broad at Harry's the othe'ah night. Bumped into'em and they explained a few things, at least a little bit anyhow. Ain't spoken t'anyone else. Haven't really even seen anyone except from afar, comin'n goin'. Everyone seems pre-occupied or lost in their lives. Which is cool. I undahstand entirely." She also had NO clue what Jean had been going through recently, coming back to life? She'd think her friend were Jesus or some such, but her apparent arrival in this timeline was so recent that any of that was still news to her.
"Domino…?" Jean asks, wondering, she's had quite the fascinating talk with her after all. Domino seemed like a good kid despite her bravado, a bit of a lost soul, but one who could handle herself. "What made you drop the TA position? What made you leave the Mansion?" Jean reaches to rest a comforting hand on Rogue's shoulder, "doesn't feel like home anymore…? What do you know about me, Rogue?" Jean wonders, she assumes Rogue is likely from a different Earth, as that's the number one reason that jumps to her own mind. She's a good sort, she doesn't fish in Rogue's mind for the answer, she wants it freely offered if at all.
The cap was twisted back onto her water bottle then and she set it aside when the hand went to her shoulder she looked back to the redhead. "I neve'ah caught the pale girl's name, but maybe." She'd never met Domino in her timeline, so it wasn't a face or name she was familiar with. She then exhaled, tilted her head side to side some as she tried to decide on the words to express the decision as to why she'd pulled back. "Kurt said I'd replaced the Rogue he knows here. He seemed genuinely… ya know… sorrowful about his firned missin'. As he should be, right?" She nodded once, looking at Jean.
"Which, just…" She exhaled sharply, grunted almost. "I don't wanna be around there if I'm gonna make people miss a girl that I ain't. It feels like I killed someone, and I get the looks cause'a it. I've seen it on othe'ahs faces as well. But I wasn't sure if I just had food stuck'n my teeth or somethin'. But now I know. I don't belong here."
She paused then. "About you?" She bit down on her lowerlip for a moment. "Where I'm from you're.. I don't know, you. Fightin' for mutant rights. Fightin' off the advances'a that way olde'ah hairy mean man, while that sexy glasses boyfriend'a yours stomps around tellin' us how t'behave bette'ah. Ya look t'be about the same age though, but you seem different somehow. You seem… more tense, less relaxed. I don't know. I'm not a head doctah."
"Are you not sorrowful about friends you're missing…?" Jean asks quietly, trying first to see if there's a similar feeling in Rogue. If she was from a different universe, then likely some people are very different for her. Having just returned from the core of the multiverse, she does get a bit of a different perspective than most. Either way, she'll apparently need to have some words with Kurt.
"Who says they are missing someone you're not? Are you not Rogue?" Jean asks, turning to look intently at Rogue, the way her green eyes set on Rogue's own eyes, it's like Rogue was the only person in the world right now, and yet she's not even using any powers. She almost has this natural empathy about her. "Who else besides Kurt looked at you funny?"
Jean eases with her own questions when Rogue tells her about what she knows of Jean Grey. The fact she knows who to think of means she knows of a Jean Grey, even if she doesn't personally knows her. "That is what I believe, and that is what I do, sure sounds like me." She then giggles unexpectedly at hearing about the interaction in the infamous triangle of herself, Logan and Scott through another, "yes, that sounds right too…tense? Mmmm…I don't feel tense." Jean Grey muses, before concluding, "what you said describes me, even though I am not from your timeline or universe, do you know what that means?" Jean asks, for a moment giving the sensation of a teacher teaching a class, calling on a student for an answer, sometimes she can't help herself. She loves to teach.
Rogue glanced toward the front of the store, seeing a regular customer come in to talk to the owner who was behind the counter, it was a big store so conversations weren't easily overhead. "I am entirely worried about all of this." She replied to Jean then. "I mean… I haven't the slighest clue what t'do about any of it though. Its like, so far outta my wheelhouse that I don't know what t'do othe'ah than pretend it ain't happenin'."
She put her right hand on the box she'd sat down ontop of the counter. "I finally have started t'feel like that school was my home… I haven't known what that sorta thing felt like, pretty much eve'ah." She frowned then. "Now it feels like its someone else's home, not mine. Looks the same, but it ain't for me. And the othe'ahs that looked funny at me were just the kids, I guess I'm young'ah than the version'a me from here, that I… shoved out, or somethin'." She huffed out a heavy sigh.
And an eyeroll later she shook her head. "Its stupid. Like a bad sci-fi movie. The kinda nerd shit that I flip past on television when browsin' the channels for topless men shows." She crossed her arms over her stomach then and lifted her right hand up to rest it against her own chin. "I don't know what t'do about it though, I came here t'hide. Hopin' maybe it'll all get fixed somehow."
It's also not been mentioned by Jean that others in the store can't quite hear them, but that's something she's totally doing right now, and likely why she doesn't seem in the slightest bit concerned to speak so openly. Even if someone ventures near by, they just can hear Jean or Rogue, it's like they're not even there in fact.
"That doesn't sound like a good solution to me. It is happening, right? Rogue…where you come from, have you been an X-Men? Did you study with Professor Charles Xavier?" Jean asks, wondering, "what did you do before you got here? Who are -you- Rogue? What defines you?" Jean asks as if she's curious to know, rather than attack Rogue for not being Rogue.
"You did no such thing Rogue," Jean asserts with a surprising sense of certainty, "you can only be you, and no one else. Your existing is a fact, it is beyond contestation, and it doesn't prevent the existing of others. You killed no one. You took away no one, and the Mansion is your home." She nods as Rogue explains her take on everything, and then laughs, "this stupid sci-fi nerd shit, as you call it, is life, welcome to a reality of endless possibilities. I think you're stronger than just hiding…I think you can make all those guys giving you weird looks change their minds. Look at Alex…he used to be a dear friend, my brother in law, in fact. He fears me now. I can sense it every time he looks at me, everytime he thinks of me…what do you think I'm going to do about it?" She asks, turning to look with her full attention at Rogue, somehow, it now seems like Jean was a student asking Rogue, as a wouldbe teacher, for an answer.
Rogue listened to the wiser woman, and it did bring her some comfort. "Brothe'ah'n laws should fear their new siste'ahs." She said softly with a slight smile following it up. "Keeps him in check." She then grinned a little.
A headshake later and she exhaled. "I came t'the school, I mean, where I'm from, a few years back. Cause I wasn't sure who I was anymore, I couldn't hear my own throughts without hearin' the screans'a tons'a othe'ahs that I'd absorbed. I wasn't even entirley sure how the absorption even worked back then. I hid myself in laye'ahs and laye'ahs a clothin' but I'd still end up accidently touchin' someone, or havin' them touch me, and it was pilin' up fast. I was losin' it. T'the point where I wanted to jump off'a bridge, or hang myself in an alley. Lotta good eithe'ah those things would do, after my Danvers experience." She licked her lips nervously and shook her head.
"I'm here for you, Jean. You'n everyone else at the school. I owe the Professah everythin' I got, cause he brought my sanity back. He brought me back from the ledge… But this is all so… heavy, ya know? I feel like I've been kidnapped in the night, run off with and brought to a place that looks like home, but ain't."
She picked up a cowbell that was owned by the store manager and she held it up. "So I come to whats like, the base level'a comfort for me, a place that is so simple, it ain't hard for me to unde'ahstand." She looked back to her friend then and smiled softly. "Some kinda comfort, ya know?"
Jean laughs at Rogue's suggested way of looking at relations between brothers and sisters at law, going as far as to give Rogue an impromptu embrace when she gives her point of view, "I should keep that in mind, maybe I was worried for nothing and everything is normal for a change."
Jean listens quietly and gives Rogue some space when she tells of her life before getting to the present, "believe it or not, I can relate to some of it…when my powers emerged," she starts and then freezes, her look becoming a bit distance, silent tears rolling down her cheeks without her actually crying. "I…," she starts, and then changes her mind, instead generalizing with, "I couldn't stop the voices in my head, I thought I was crazy, I was mentally sick…" she tries to subtley wipe her tears away, looking for a moment into the distance, and then back at Rogue, "point being, most of us don't know what is happening to us when our powers emerge. Which is why you'd make a wonderful TA, you experienced it worst than most do." She makes no mention of Carol Danvers, she knows how horrowing an experiencce that was to Rogue. If she had her opinion heard, the one she knew or this one, the only difference between them is some choices separating the timelines, parallel universes as it were, a universe for each choice. At the core, they were all Rogue, acting as Rogue, only offered different circumstances.
The moment Rogue mentions what the Professor did for her, Jean moves to stand facing her, placing both her hands on Rogue's shoulders, looking directly into her eyes again. "Yes. Exactly. You're one of us Rogue, a mutant, an X-Men, and we owe to the Professor for how he helped us…and we repay him by helping others. No matter how Kurt looks at you, or how any of the others look at you, there students who could benefit from your experience from your help. That is the Rogue I know. The Rogue that helps those she can, so they won't suffer like she did, so they'll have someone to turn to, to lean on, to learn from. When you go to back to the Mansion, get back to helping teach, and help mutants in need…that's when you're Rogue, and everybody home will see that. They will recognize that. In time, those odd looks will go away…like it or not, this universe is your home, and you can only affect it with your actions. So don't act like a scared little girl, act like an X-Men, like someone taught by Professor Xavier. Like Rogue." She doesn't even let Rogue have a moment to answer her, she simply gathers her into a tight embrace, whispering in her ear, "don't let anyone question who you are, show them who you are by being yourself. If they don't like it, they will need to change their perception."
Rogue was used to physical embraces with others meaning that she needed to lock up and not move, they needed to guide that sort of interaction because if there were a miscommunication it could end up with yet another 'dead body' falling down in front of her feet in her life, and thats just something Marie was kind of sick of! She smiled at Jean's embraces though, enjoying some comfort from someone else, because she always felt so lonely.
"You're right." She finally told her. "I mean, I know you're right. Your words are wise as eve'ah." She shook her head from right to left a single time. "I'll come back. I'll figure it all out. I just, needed some time to breathe, I guess. I don't know. My mind does that, makes me do rash things, things that generally aren't often the 'right' choice, just the choice I need t'make in that moment. If that makes any sense."
Jean isn't quick to break her embrace of Rogue, really wanting to convey to Rogue physically how much she cares, as she keeps her in that embrace for a few moments in silence as well. But she does eventually relent and lets her go. "I hope I'm right, only you get to decide that with your actions, but I believe in you Rogue…and I would love to have you back home, where you belong." She doesn't mention that she'll try to speak to others as well, that's besides the point. She really wants to make the X-Men work, no matter what comes to pass. They have Xavier's Dream to fulfill. "You do what you must, but remember, you have a home…and you are not only welcome, you are wanted there. If you ever need me, I'm a thought away," Jean winks, and gives Rogue a wave of her hand, "I guess that's what I wanted to get off my chest, see you around, Rogue, hopefully back home." With that she turns to leave.
Rogue leaned her hip up against the counter beside her, where all the music gear was for the highschool. She smiled at Jean. "Thanks, Red." She told her after the embrace had parted and the wink had been given. "You're like the big siste'ah I nevah had. The kind that has all the right words." She flashed the woman a smile as she went to leave, shot a look at the male employees who were also watching Jean leave… then she picked up the box she'd had and went for the back room of the shop.