Rogue: Annihilation (An Avengers Sequel)

37. I Saw Everything

Things kept coming to me in flashes. An image here or there, some that meant something, and others that didn't make any sense. And then I saw it.

A much younger version of my mother. Holding a child that was about my daughter's age. She put the girl down on the dresser, picked up a napkin, and began wiping something from her face.

"No," the girl squirmed.

"Hazel, honey, please stop," she told the girl, frustrated. "It's a special day, remember?"

It was then that I noticed the white dress that my mother was wearing. A wedding dress.

"Sorry, mommy."

Mom smiled and kissed the girl's cheek, picking her up once again and looking at them both in the mirror. And then it clicked – she was marrying Joseph Jackson. This wasn't a dream, it was a memory.

And just like that the scene changed, and kept changing.

I saw Hazel's childhood, I saw every time she cried, every time she laughed. Every time she saw what Jackson was doing to her mom. Every time she planned to run away, knowing that she'd never actually leave. I watched her make friends with Sam, and finally come into her own. I watched as she went from a child to a pre-teen, right before Jackson snatched her teenage years. I saw signs of her powers manifesting long before Jackson ever got his hands on her. Then I saw what Sam described. Him kidnapping her, taking her from her mother forever. Then he took away her memories, and everything went away.

"Rogue?"

All I could see was darkness, there was nothing. Was I dead?

"Rogue? Baby?"

No, I wasn't dead. I could hear someone calling me. Unless they were dead too.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y, vitals?"

Was there pain in death? Because I was definitely in pain. My body felt like it was on fire. Why did I hurt so much?

"Rogue, please wake up."

Determined to see if I was dead or not, I forced my eyes to open. For a moment there was just confusion, until I could see Tony's eyes staring back into mine.

"Tony?" I said under my breath, staring at him. Then my eyes started to well up, as the dreams I'd just had kept coming back into my mind. "Oh my God."

"Hey, you're okay, you're okay," he said over and over again as my tears turned into sobs. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"I..." I tried to explain it in my mind before voicing it aloud. "I think... I think I got my memories back."

Tony's eyes widened. "Your memories?"

I nodded, wiping away the tears that were spilling down my face. "I saw everything, all the way back to when I was Nati's age, probably younger. I remember my mom."

Tony kissed my forehead. "Rogue, that's incredible."

"Yeah," I said, nodding in disbelief. Since I'd come to S.H.I.E.L.D, all I'd wanted was to remember my mother, to remember the life I'd had before becoming 'Rogue'. And now... I could. I had the memories back, they were mine. They weren't all good, or happy, but they were mine.

"It must be something to do with the Snap," Tony postulated as I spiraled deeper and deeper into my thoughts.

"The Snap?" I questioned, pushing my older/new memories aside so that I could focus on what had just happened. "Oh my God... I snapped!" I glanced down at my right arm as everything started coming back to me. It was in a cast, but I could still see the burned scars that covered it. "Did it work? Did-did Thanos-"